What Did You Sacrifice to Afford Health Care?

What Did You Sacrifice to Afford Health Care?
Sometimes, when you're up to your chin in alligators, it's hard to focus on the fact that there's a big, broad, alligator-free world waiting somewhere out there, beyond the edge of the swamp.

In this case, it's hard for most Americans to even imagine that nobody in the rest of the developed world lives this way. We've been living inside the restrictions and making the trade-offs required to hang onto our all-important health care coverage for so long that we don't even realize that we're cutting those deals, or what we're giving up, or how thoroughly those choices have come to dominate and limit our lives.

If you're an American under 40, you can't remember a time that the health care system didn't work this way -- or that keeping coverage wasn't a dominant factor in making your life choices. If you're older than that, the memory of another, happier era beyond the swamp is dim, and fading fast.

This was one of the things that struck me hardest when I arrived in Canada five years ago. The swamp-blindness was so dark and deep that it took a while to adjust to a world without alligators. It's almost impossible to describe to folks back home how different life is when health insurance simply doesn't factor at all into how you choose to live your life. There's almost no language for it. Rather than even attempt it, I sometimes just ask my American friends and relatives to open up their imaginations, and answer the question for themselves:

* How would your life be different if you never had to worry about getting, keeping, or affording health care again?
* What other choices might you have made?
* Where else would you be right now?
* How would it change your plans for the future?

I've seen people reduced to tears of rage and frustration by these questions. When you really stop and think about it -- pause for a few minutes to take it all in, past, present, and future -- it becomes clear that the full absurdity and the sheer enormity of the sacrifices we have to make for an almighty health care card are the greatest obstacle to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness that most of us are burdened with today.

Polls say most Americans who have health care are satisfied with it. But nobody ever asks them if they're satisfied with what they've had to do to get it, keep it, or afford it.

What would you do differently? I watch my Canadian neighbors live their lives, and the world beyond the swamp comes into sharp and stunning focus.

My neighbors go to the doctor when they need to -- and often, when they don't. If they're just feeling funky for a day or two, they go. If the splinter is too big to handle with a needle, they go. Anything goes a little bit sideways -- they go.

By American standards, they're probably overusing the system. (My husband once asked an employee who was nursing a cough, "Have you seen a doctor about that?" The guy just looked at him, confused. Of course he'd seen a doctor. Up here, only an American would ask such a stupid question.)

But the upshot is that the small symptoms of really big things -- little lumps, creeping blood pressure, wounds that don't heal right, coughs that don't go away -- are caught and diagnosed early in a GP's office, instead of months or years down the road in a full-blown crisis at the ER, which is now the American way. And this is central to cost containment: getting emergent problems calmly headed off right away in a $30 office visit is a lot more cost-effective than having to deal with the full catastrophe later on in a $3,000 emergency-room drama scene. And it allows people to maintain their good health through the years, instead of delaying treatment until it's too late to recover it and permanent damage is done.

My neighbors heal, recover, and go on with their lives. The U.S. disability rate last year was 19.1 percent, and rising fast. In Canada, it's 14.3 percent -- and Statistics Canada believes that the only reason their stats are creeping up these days is that people who once hid their disabilities are now more willing to admit them.

That disability rate affects the country's economic competitiveness. Americans just don't have the time or money to spend on a proper recovery after a major event, or get the full course of treatment that a chronic condition requires to be truly well-managed. Fearing for our income or our jobs, we hurry back to work too soon. Our insurance doesn't cover necessary follow-up therapies, so things may not heal thoroughly or properly. We can't afford the drugs, so we cut the pills in half, or stop taking them entirely.

The result is that too many of us end up far more impaired than we need to be -- and may, in fact, never be quite right again. Deferred maintenance -- which is what this is -- takes a ferocious toll on the American workforce, which is now being forced to compete with workers around the world who get better care, make better recoveries, and are able to return to work at full strength.

My neighbors start small businesses. Americans routinely stay chained to jobs they hate because they can't afford to lose coverage. Canada has an exuberant entrepreneurial culture, fueled by favorable tax structures for small business and a preference for Main Streets over malls. Canadians may bet the house and the kids' college funds on a new venture; but they never think twice about whether or not they can afford to leave BigCo because they'll lose their insurance, or what will happen to the new business if they get hit by a delivery truck, or how they'll afford some kind of minimal coverage for their new employees. Unburdened by health care costs or concerns, their ventures are far more likely to thrive.

My neighbors go back to school. Low-cost government-subsidized universities combined with assured health care make it easy for people to make mid-course career adjustments, pursue their passions, and expand their horizons. The upshot is a better-educated, more capable workforce that's constantly improving its skills.

My neighbors quit jobs they hate. "Take this job and shove it" is a lot easier -- and sweeter -- when your boss isn't holding an almighty health care card over your head. Bosses know this, too, and working conditions are often better as a result.

My neighbors stay home with their kids. They can afford to do that, because they're not wholly dependent on whichever breadwinner can manage to find a job with a decent health care plan.

My neighbors invest. They've got stable household budgets that aren't being thrown off by surprise health events. Because Canada doesn't have a mortgage interest deduction, most Canadians reduce interest costs by taking out 10- or 15-year mortgages. The payments really squeeze the family budget for that decade -- but by their 40s a lot of them own their homes outright, something most Americans will never achieve. Home ownership, college savings and retirement funds are all big-money investments that you simply can't commit to if you're liable to be hit with five-figure medical bills at any moment.

My neighbors travel. Americans don't get vacation time; and when they do get it, they tend to stay in-country. A lot of Canadians take three weeks off in the winter to go somewhere fabulous and warm (understandable, given the climate). The sheer variety of these escapes boggles me yet: They fly off to build schools in Guatemala, or take holiday jobs in New Zealand, or learn French in Morocco. Even the guy who paints my house can afford to do this, because he's not spending half his annual income on health care premiums. That $15K-a-year savings will buy a whole lot of margaritas in Cancun.

The result is a population with broad global awareness, and extensive global ties -- a necessary thing for a country whose economy depends completely on trade. And it may be an important factor in keeping Canada progressive. According to Diana Kerry, who ran her brother John's overseas campaign in 2004, Americans who own passports vote Democratic three to one. So travel makes you liberal. Who knew?

My neighbors seldom go bankrupt. The Canadian bankruptcy rate has soared in the past year to 4.3 per thousand. In the U.S., it's 11.1 per thousand. The entire difference between these two figures is accounted for by the fact that 62 percent of all U.S. bankruptcies were driven at least in part by medical expenses.

But tidy numbers like this elide a harder reality: Bankruptcy doesn't just cost us financially. It also destroys the foundations of our social capital. When the house, the dreams, and the future are gone, very often the marriage is the next thing that goes, too. Bankruptcy travels in close company with domestic trouble, divorce, drug use, homelessness, and broken families. (After medical-bill refugees, the second most common people in bankruptcy courts are recently divorced women.) If, as conservatives like to remind us, the family is the basic unit of civilization, then our health care system is directly making its profits by pulling down our social foundations -- and ultimately undermining our ability to hold our civilization together.

My neighbors have never seen anyone die because they didn't have health care. With 22,000 Americans dying every year due to a lack of health insurance -- that's one every 24 minutes -- there aren't many of us who don't know someone who lost a loved one because they couldn't get the treatment they needed. (For me, it was my father.)

But when I share this factoid with Canadians, they invariably do a long double take. They lean back, squint, stare, and pause to reassess my credibility (if not my sanity). It's literally unbelievable. They can't even process it. I must be making it up, or at least exaggerating. It's just beyond the realm of imagining that a rich nation like America would let that kind of thing happen -- let alone let it happen sixty times a day, for years on end.

And yet, they know things are bad down here, because everybody who goes South buys travel insurance before they cross the border. Everybody has heard scary stories about people who got sick or hurt and ended up in an American ER with a five-figure bill to pay. It's just a stupid risk, and they're not willing to take it.

What would you have done differently if you'd never had to worry about health insurance? How would life be different now? How would it change your plans for the future?

Go ahead. Think about it. Let yourself get good and angry. The current system has robbed an entire generation of Americans of their full potential. It has made us serfs. It has narrowed our horizons. It has undermined our families and communities. It has deprived us of the chance to save, to own a home, to educate ourselves and our children, to see the world, to retire in comfort, and to live to a healthy and robust old age.

It has left us in this swamp, chin-deep in alligators. And the first step in getting back out is getting very clear in our own minds that there are other places where people don't live this way -- and then angry enough to lean on our leaders, and make it just as clear to them that we don't intend to live like this any more, either.
Your representatives need to hear from you. Today.

Because your future is still out there -- and the most important thing you need to get there is a health care plan nobody can ever take away.

Sara Robinson is a Fellow at the Campaign for America's Future, and a consulting partner with the Cognitive Policy Works in Seattle. One of the few trained social futurists in North America, she has blogged on authoritarian and extremist movements at Orcinus since 2006, and is a founding member of Group News Blog.
© 2009 Campaign for America's Future All rights reserved.

GOP Thinks $2 Billion F-22 Project Is Funded By Monopoly Money

Barney Frank: GOP Thinks $2 Billion F-22 Project Is Funded By Monopoly Money
Barney Frank at his deskLast week, over the objections of Defense Secretary Robert Gates and the Obama administration, the House Armed Services Committee restored funding for the basically useless F-22 fighter jet, in the process stripping funding for nuclear waste cleanup efforts. Last night, Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) filed an amendment to restore the waste cleanup funds and eliminate the money for the F-22. The move came after months of Republicans issuing dire warnings about the consequences of suspending the F-22 program: Frank Gaffney, for example, declared it would lead to “diminished military capability, emboldening enemies, and alienating our friends.”

On a press call hosted by the Center for American Progress Action Fund this afternoon, Frank pointed out Republicans’ hypocrisy in railing against the deficit while simultaneously funding a $2 billion air force jet that has never once flown a mission in Afghanistan or Iraq. Frank said so-called deficit hawks act as though the Pentagon is funded with “Monopoly money”:

I am of course struck that so many of my colleagues who are so worried about the deficit apparently think the Pentagon is funded with Monopoly money that somehow doesn’t count.

Frank also dismissed concerns that eliminating the F-22 will cost jobs:

These arguments will come from the very people who denied that the economic recovery plan created any jobs. We have a very odd economic philosophy in Washington: It’s called weaponized Keynesianism. It is the view that the government does not create jobs when it funds the building of bridges or important research or retrains workers, but when it builds airplanes that are never going to be used in combat, that is of course economic salvation.

Supreme Court Pulls Teeth From the Voting Rights Act

Supreme Court Pulls Teeth From the Voting Rights Act
Once an election is done, it is hard to undo.

That's true in Iran, and it's also true in the United States.

This is why it is important to get the rules by which elections are held right before elections are held.

For this reason, one of the essential components of the Voting Rights Act -- arguably its most powerful tool for combating discrimination and disenfranchisement -- has long been a requirement that officials get approval from the Department of Justice before they change the way in which elections are conducted.

Allow states, counties, municipalities or school districts in the 16 states that are wholly or partially with historic patterns of discrimination to opt out of the review, and they will be able to organize and hold elections that renew those patterns. That's why the requirement has been referred to by law professors as "one of the crown jewels of the civil rights movement."

Foes of the Voting Rights Act have long focused on weakening Section 5 of the act, the provision that requires election officials in the states covered by the act to obtain federal permission before making changes to voting procedures, moving polling-place locations, requiring so-called "citizenship checks" and redrawing voting district lines. They rightly argued that to do so would remove the teeth from the measure that has long been disdained by southerners pining for the days before what former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott referred to as "all the laws of Washington" changed the way things were done in Dixie.

On Monday, the Supreme Court tarnished the crown jewel, giving state and local officials new flexibility to "opt out" of the requirement that they obtain permission when changing election rules. The court ruling does not invalidate the Voting Rights Act -- as some had feared -- but it does undermine it.

The court, with only one justice (Clarence Thomas) in partial dissent, said that the Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District No. 1 in Austin, Texas, can avoid the advance approval requirement.

The ruling is being interpreted as a signal all local jurisdictions in a Voting Rights Act state can at least apply for what is referred to as "a statutory bailout."

That was a reversal of a lower federal court that had preserved the Voting Rights Act as it was intended to operate.

That's a dangerous move, say civil rights supporters.

As Georgia Congressman John Lewis, who has watched the court's deliberations closely, says, "No one can deny the fact we've made progress. But that's not the question. That's not the issue. The issue is we need this tool to guard against the possibility of reverting back to our dark past."

Lewis is right. Invalidating the Voting Rights Act would be a shock to the body politic. But dismantling the measure tooth by tooth should still be recognized for what it is: a judicial assault on history, and on the future.

The Voting Rights Act is still on the books -- despite evidence from recent hearings that Chief Justice John Roberts and some of his conservative activist colleagues would like to do away with it. Voters can still sue under its provisions when they believe they are victims of discrimination. Unfortunately, notes Laughlin McDonald, who directs the ACLU's voting rights project, few plaintiffs will have the financial resources to pursue these complex cases.

So the high court has taken a big whack at the Voting Rights Act.

Now it falls to the Obama administration's Department of Justice -- which has sent good signals regarding its commitment to enforcing voting rights protections -- and the Congress to put the teeth back in the act.

Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vermont, has warned that any attempt by the court to strike down the Voting Rights Act "would be conservative activism pure and simple."

The same goes for pulling the act apart tooth by tooth.

Glenn Beck Embarks On Another ACORN Smear-a-thon

Glenn Beck Embarks On Another ACORN Smear-a-thon, This Time With A Heavy Dose of Obama Conspiracy Theory

Glenn Beck must still be feeling the sting of his epic fail at Wednesday night’s ACORN party. Last night (6/19/09), he ramped up the attacks on the party-goer he had smeared the night before, declared ACORN a socialist organization working to destroy, then recreate the American economy, and baselessly suggested that President Obama is actively involved in the conspiracy. With video.

Beck began the discussion by once again attacking ACORN party-goer Heather Booth whose only crime was to speak politely to ambush-reporter Griff Jenkins after being waylaid outside the party.

“So who is this woman?” Beck asked, with sinister implications. He enlisted the services of Matthew Vadum who, like Beck seems to have a special axe to grind against ACORN. Once again, there was nobody to defend Booth nor any voice to counter the inflammatory rhetoric coming from Beck and Vadum. Very fair and balanced - not!

Beck, with his customary exaggerated self-importance, went to a dry erase board with a diagram of a tree to “prove” that because Booth's husband had once been connected to the radical 60’s group SDS (and Bill Ayers, “Professor” Beck neatly threw in), that meant ACORN was “socialist nonsense” connected to violent revolution. For good measure, Beck threw in an attack on President Barack Obama: “Anybody who says, ‘Well, he just knows Bill Ayers; you know he was just a neighbor of Bill Ayers... He knows (his emphasis) all of these people.’” At the top of ACORN’s tree were, as Vadan put it, “the money men who shower ACORN with funds” such as George Soros, “the toxic mortgage king and queen, Herb and Marion Sandler,” Roseanne Barr, and Barbra Streisand.

“Remember... all socialist,” “Professor” Beck instructed. Then, turning to face the camera, he said pompously, “This is why this is important.” He sighed with exaggerated concern. And then moved in for the ultimate smear. “Barack Obama, we’ve never known who he is, right? He’s, he’s, he’s FDR, he’s JFK, he’s Lincoln. No, he’s not. No, he’s not. He’s a community organizer.” Beck’s voice rose melodramatically. “There are new acorns on the tree!” He started drawing. “My theory is that Barack Obama is building a country, almost software, it’s like the Matrix. It’s running on top of the software of the Constitution or the republic that we have. He’s got a new framework. There’s a new skeleton being built slowly but surely - and invisibly!”

“It’s a new, radical, left-wing political infrastructure,” Vadum added. “And so by creating these structures and funding them with tax dollars... you create a loyal army of followers. It’s also happens to be the Chicago way of graft and corruption.” He spoke condescendingly, perhaps hoping that if he acted self-important, maybe nobody would dare ask for any proof.

“Professor” Beck lectured again. “In the 1960’s, the idea was to create a structure... then collapse the economy of the United States, so that structure would be in place. 1960’s theory.” Mugging for the camera, he said sarcastically,”Sure that’s not what’s in anybody’s mind.”

“This is not some wild-eyed conspiracy theory,” Vadum added gravely.

Mind you, neither he nor Beck had offered a single fact to show that ACORN was socialist, revolutionary or in any way disreputable, much less show any connection between it and Obama or even Ms. Booth in 2009. But on a day when Beck’s sensitive widdle feewings were obviously still tender from the massive ego hit he took two nights before at the party, maybe smearing others with unproven conspiracy theories was his way of telling himself he's still a big man, after all.

via Newshounds

9 Conservative Myths About Right-Wing Domestic Terrorism

9 Conservative Myths About Right-Wing Domestic Terrorism
By Sara Robinson, Campaign for America's Future

It's been a wild couple of weeks for those of us in the wingnutology business. Our services have been in tremendous demand as the mainstream media try to sort out the meaning of what Scott Roeder and James von Brunn did.

I've done an average of one radio show every day for the past two weeks trying to help various lefty talkers around the country make some sense of it all; and I'm generally gratified at how seriously people are starting to take this.

At the same time, I'm also appalled (though, sadly, hardly surprised) by the conservative mythmaking that's going on around the very serious issue of right-wing domestic terrorism. So it's obviously time to pull together another "Firing Back" piece to give progressives what they need to separate fact from fiction when these talking points start flying.

I've actually had every one of the following myths pitched to me by on-air interviewers, phone-in callers and/or online commenters over the last two weeks. Most of them have come up over and over, which suggests to me that you're likely to encounter them, too. So let's walk 'em through:

1. These are just "lone wolf" psychos who are acting alone. You can't hold anybody else responsible for what crazy people decide to do.

True and false. But mostly false.

It's true that every one of the nine right-wing terrorists who've made the news since Jan. 20 had a history of mental illness, domestic violence, and/or drug abuse. Several were military veterans who were having a really hard time adjusting to civilian life. None of these people could reasonably be considered sane; and, for whatever twisted reasons, they made a personal choice to do what they did.

But it's not true that they were acting alone. People who are dealing with these kinds of demons are often drawn into movements that offer a strong narrative that helps them make sense of a world that never seems to add up right for them. They're usually drawn into organizations like Operation Rescue or the Minutemen that are nominally nonviolent, but which also indoctrinate them into a worldview that justifies and motivates people to commit terrorist acts. They come to believe that they must do this to save the world, to serve God and to be the heroes they desperately want to be.

They're already walking sticks of dynamite. But it takes the heat of that apocalyptic, dualistic, eliminationist, pro-violence narrative to light their fuses and make them explode.

Unfortunately, these groups also make it easy to take that final step over the line, because they often have close ties to other, more secretive groups that do advocate and plan terrorist violence as a solution. Operation Rescue teaches that killing abortion doctors is justifiable homicide, and then feeds its most extreme members into the Army of God.

The Aryan Nations and several other white nationalist groups supplied the nine members of The Order, a racist terrorist group that killed two people (including left-wing talker Alan Berg) and stole over $4 million during a nine-month spree in 1984. Al-Qaida got many of its recruits from the nominally nonviolent (but still radical) Hizb al-Tahrir. Of course, when violence actually occurs, these groups always denounce it -- but they also usually have a very good idea of who was involved, because they've been hanging around with the perpetrators for quite a while themselves.

One of the things the public is finally beginning to understand is that the "lone wolf" story has never been accurate, because these guys are never really alone in the world. Every one of them was well-marinated in large, long-established subcultures that put them up to terrorism and promised to make heroes out of them if they succeeded.

2. These terrorists are really left-wingers, not right-wingers. Because everybody knows that fascism is a phenomenon that only occurs on the left.

False does not even begin to cover the absurdity of this claim.

Fascism has always been a phenomenon of the right. Every postwar academic scholar of fascism -- Robert Paxton, Roger Griffin, Umberto Eco and onward -- has been emphatically clear about this. Benito Mussolini admitted as much. It's part of the very definition of the word.

Jonah Goldberg has gotten a lot of traction on the right for his argument that fascism is somehow a left-wing tendency; but in his badly argued, barely researched tome Liberal Fascism, he gets here by taking logical leaps that no college professor would accept from the greenest freshman.

The worst, perhaps, is the way he conflates "fascism" with "totalitarianism." There is such a thing as left-wing totalitarianism: Stalinism and Maoism both qualify. But they were communist, not fascist, movements. It's only when totalitarianism happens on the right that we call it fascism.

Still, this idea has caught on like wildfire and is being widely promoted by right-wing talkers like Glenn Beck. If you want the full takedown on this, I refer you to Dave Neiwert's exhaustive series of debunking articles, which are linked to in the sidebar at Orcinus.

3. Public right-wing groups like Operation Rescue or the Minutemen don't advocate violence, so these acts have absolutely nothing to do with them.

As noted above: These groups may not engage in violence themselves, but they do provide the narrative and worldview that convinces people that terrorism is the only available means of getting what they want. As I wrote here, these narratives have a very specific structure that sets people up for terrorism:

Long before they turn dangerous, political and religious groups take their first step down that road by adopting a worldview that justifies eventual violent action. The particulars of the narrative vary, but the basic themes are always the same. First: Their story is apocalyptic, insisting that the end of the world as we've known it is near. Second: It divides the world into a Good-versus-Evil/Us-versus-Them dualism that encourages the group to interpret even small personal, social or political events as major battles in a Great Cosmic Struggle -- a habit of mind that leads the group to demonize anyone who disagrees with them. This struggle also encourages members to invest everyday events with huge existential meaning, and as a result sometimes overreact wildly to very mundane stuff.

Third: This split allows for a major retreat from consensus reality and the mainstream culture. The group rejects the idea that they share a common future with the rest of society, and curls up into its own insular worldview that's impervious to the outside culture's reasoning or facts. Fourth: Insiders feel like they're a persecuted, prophetic elite who are being opposed by wicked, tyrannical forces. Left to fester, this paranoia will eventually drive the group to make concrete preparations for self-defense -- and perhaps go on the offense against their perceived persecutors. Fifth: Communities following this logic will also advocate the elimination of their enemies by any means necessary in order to purify the world for their ideology.

Once people have accepted these ideas as truth, terrorist violence begins to seem like an unavoidable imperative -- and lone wolves, smelling blood, will start to hunt for targets.

More Then Most of Us Want to Know About IG Gerald Walpin

More Then Most of Us Want to Know About IG Gerald Walpin
President Obama’s decision to fire the Inspector General of the AmeriCorps Gerald Walpin is a snooze fest, but the Right seems to think this is the worse abuse of Presidential power since Watergate. They conveniently ignore the HUD scandals of the Reagan administration, Iran-Contra, Bush’s use of the US Department of Justice as a tool of the RNC for vote caging and conservative crony welfare. Proving once again that the new Republican party, like the old Republican party cannot get its priorities straight. First there was an objection to the way Walpin was terminated. President Obama straightened that out by suspending Walpin for thirty days with full pay. Time in which members of Congress like Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa who has shed more tears over poor Gerald then he has over the troops that died in Iraq for Bush’s lies.

As we all know the average rightwing skull is resistant to any reality that does not bend to the “alternate reality” spun by such rags as the Washington Times and Fox News. Walpin was removed after a unanimous request from the AmeriCorps board of directors where the co-chair is a Republican. Norm Eisen, the president’s ethics counsel reported “The Board’s action was precipitated by a May 20, 2009 Board meeting at which Mr. Walpin was confused, disoriented, unable to answer questions and exhibited other behavior that led the Board to question his capacity to serve.” Again, if Walpin or his supporters have evidence compelling enough to get a reversal of the Broad’s and the presidents opinion, they have time to do so. We also know that a Bush appointee Acting US Attorney for the Eastern District of California, Lawrence Brown “had filed a complaint about Mr. Walpin’s conduct with the oversight body for Inspectors General, including for failing to disclose exculpatory evidence.” – in regards to Walpin’s investigation into St Hope and some federal funds they received. Perhaps most starling about Walpin’s conduct of which little is mentioned is that he wrote two editorials ran by the SacBee in which Walpin played trial by media. He appointed himself judge and jury. He laid out what evidence he thought he had. IGs authority extends to investigating and reporting their findings to the DOJ and Congress, not to carry on what appeared to be a kind of vendetta against Mayor Kevin Johnson ( while Johnson is a Democrat, from what research I’ve done into his governing style and policy positions I can’t say I’m a big fan. Why he wanted to get into politics is beyond me – it doesn’t suit his personality). Anyway imagine a Democratic IG writing editorials about a Republican mayoral candidate just before an election. Creating a situation in which the Republican has no recourse to defend himself in the legal arena of a courtroom where he can face his accusers and charges with appropriate legal counsel. Walpin was not willing to had off his findings to the California branch of the DOJ for them to evaluate and proceed with criminal charges, Walpin decided to side step our legal system and hold his own little court. Walpin did all of this without even conducting a proper audit as claimed by a Republican US attorney,

In August 2008, Walpin referred the matter to the local U.S. attorney’s office, which said the watchdog’s conclusions seemed overstated and did not accurately reflect all the information gathered in the investigation.

“We also highlighted numerous questions and further investigation they needed to conduct, including the fact that they had not done an audit to establish how much AmeriCorps money was actually misspent,” Acting U.S. Attorney Lawrence Brown said in an April 29 letter to the federal counsel of inspectors general.

Walpin’s office made repeated public comments just before the Sacramento mayoral election, prompting the U.S. attorney’s office to inform the media that it did not intend to file any criminal charges.

In settling the case, the government agreed to lift its suspension of any future grants to the academy and Johnson agreed to immediately repay $73,000 in past grants. The academy was given 10 years to repay the remaining $350,000.

Brown said at the time of the settlement that prosecutors determined there was no fraud, but rather a culture of “sloppiness” in St. HOPE’s record-keeping.

Kevin Hiestand, chairman of the board of St. HOPE Academy, said in a statement it was “about time” Walpin was removed. “Mr. Walpin’s allegations were meritless and clearly motivated by matters beyond an honest assessment of our program,” he said.

Its also difficult not to connect the dots between Walpin’s past statements and his zealous fixation on Mayor Johnson and disrespect toward the President,

Romney also took heat yesterday when he did not swiftly disavow the remarks of Federalist Society member Gerald Walpin, who introduced Romney by praising him for fighting against what he called the ”modern-day KKK . . . the Kennedy-Kerry Klan.”

”Today, when most of the country thinks of who controls Massachusetts, I think the modern-day KKK comes to mind, the Kennedy-Kerry Klan,” Walpin, who sits on the society’s board of visitors, said to hearty laughter.

Thus far Walpin wants the Right, the media or anyone that will listen to ignore his sloppy gathering of evidence regarding St Hope – according to the US Attorney’s office lacked any evidence of maliciousness or corrupt intent. Walpin wants everyone to ignore his rabid Right behavior in describing two distinguished US senators, both decorated veterans. Walpin wants everyone to ignore that he thought it was just fine to phone in his work from home. Walpin wants everyone to ignore his erratic behavior, confirmed by a Republican board member. Walpin also wants everyone to believe he is being attacked because he was out to save the tax payers money – if that was his motivation why did someone with such an extensive legal resume do such an alarmingly careless job of fact finding and violating the legal guidelines of his job with his trial by media campaign.

Union Busting Ended My Love Affair with a Beer

Union Busting Ended My Love Affair with a Beer By Mike Elk
Over many years, I have developed an intimate relationship with the sweet, lager taste of Yuengling Black & Tan. After moving to the cutthroat world of Washington, D.C. politics, I found that Yuengling always comforted me with memories of my working class roots and the world of flannel hunting jackets, wedding receptions at union halls, 4th of July barbecues, and tailgate parties that represented my native Western Pennsylvania. I took pride in introducing my friends to this beauty of a beer—cheap, delicious, and made by union workers back home in Pennsylvania. Women had come and gone, dogs had died, but Yuengling had always been there for me - until now.

This past weekend when I discovered that Yuengling had illegally busted their union, I was emotionally devastated. I had just bought a case of Yuengling earlier that same day and had it sitting at home in the refrigerator waiting for me. What would I do? I was broke and couldn't possibly afford to buy another case of beer, but at the same time I couldn't possibly enjoy drinking a Yuengling knowing what they had done to their workers. So instead, I found myself at home, watching a baseball game on a Saturday night, and enjoying a nice, cold glass of milk as I struggled to deal with how Yuengling had betrayed not only its workers, but me.

Quickly I found my outrage shifting from beyond Yuengling to the lack of U.S. labor law protecting workers from such abusive, unfair practices. It turns out that the company had petitioned for a decertification election to kick the union out of the brewery when the contract of the union expired. Dick Yuengling, the owner of Yuengling Brewery, gathered all the workers and told them that "the writing was on the wall". He said that if they didn't vote to kick the union out, he would close the plant, and ship the work to a non-union facility in the South. The workers, scared of losing their job in a region with high unemployment, voted to ditch their union and save their jobs.


While threatening to close a plant if a union wins such an election is highly illegal, the Yuengling Company has been able to get away with due to the weakness of U.S. labor law. According to a study recently released by Kate Bronfenbrenner of Cornell University, employers threaten to close facilities in 57% of union elections if workers choose a union, despite the fact that this threat is carried out only 2% of the time. This is because under U.S. labor law the penalty for threatening to close plants or firing workers during a union election is that the boss merely has to post a piece of paper saying they broke the law.

As one longtime union organizer once put it to me "If the penalty for robbing a bank was you had to post a piece of paper saying you robbed a bank, we’d all be bank robbers!"

Under current U.S. Labor Law, employers can freely violate the law without serious penalty. As a result, workers are fired from their job in 34% of union elections and companies illegally threaten to close a facility in 57% of all union elections. In this economy, losing one's job is tantamount not just to losing more than just a job, but also to losing home to foreclosure and more gravely - one's health insurance. As a result of the ability of bosses to freely intimidate with such Gestapo-style tactics, 58% percent of workers indicate they would like to join a union, but only 8% of private sector employees are members of one out of the fear of what their bosses might do to them for trying to join a union.

The Employee Free Choice Act would give U.S. labor law real teeth - leveling heavy fines against employees who unlawfully intimidate or threaten workers. The Employee Free Choice Act would allow workers to join unions free of intimidation a process of majority sign where workers merely would have to get 50% of their co-workers to sign a card to be part of a union.

Currently, The biggest obstacle to the passing the Employee Free Choice Act is quite ironically the very Senator who represents the workers at Yuengling Brewing - "Democrat" Arlen Specter. Quite ironically, Arlen Specter, who had in previous years voted for the Employee Free Choice Act, has fallen victim to the same type of corporate intimidation and flipped his position to being against the Employee Free Choice Act. Its time that Arlen Specter show solidarity with the 20,000 workers that are fired every year for attempting to join a union. Arlen Specter needs to vote for the Employee Free Choice Act, which would protect the rights of workers to freely join unions that the overwhelming majority of his constituents favor especially the once unionized workers of a once dear friend - Yuengling.