Protesting and Policing

Demonstrators march during an anti-war rally in London, October 24, 2009. Hundreds of people took to London's streets on Saturday demanding that British troops be brought home from Afghanistan but an opinion poll showed fewer Britons were calling for an immediate return.

10/27/09- The media in the UK are reporting police efforts to tag and track political activists as “political extremists.” The police not only use the most aggressive techniques at political gatherings and demonstrations but compile a database of activists to facilitate targeted arrests and intimidation.

We can presume that the police are building the same databases and conducting the same kind of surveillance here. There is much less media coverage of the protests and of their politics. You’ll have to go to Democracy Now for any kind of similar coverage from a U.S. news outfit. The received wisdom of the president, the political class, and the media is that public protests do not make much of a difference, and you’d be better off, as Obama said before the G20, concentrating on local issues.

The president really insults the people who care enough to get out and protest about progressive issues here. Contrast his rejection of progressive and anti-corporate protesters at the G20 with the warm approval given the teabaggers by the GOP leadership. Despite his celebrated background as a community activist, the president is much further from the protesters on the left than the GOP is from rabble rousing anti-taxers, people who want immigrants to die in gutters outside emergency rooms.

So how is it that the politicians allow the police to tag progressive and humane anti-corporate and pro-environment protesters as dangerous extremists, while regressive anti-health care rioters are feted in the media as people with legitimate gripes?

Undoubtedly, part of the establishment’s paranoia of the progressive left comes from the fact that the left really does want to eliminate inequalities in health, welfare and condition, changes which would require social transformation. The anti-health care protesters ostensibly only want to preserve the inequalities of the present. The present situation in health care may result in tens of thousands of needless deaths every year and reduced quality of life for millions, but it is not threatening to the current politics. So protesters in favor of the status quo and socio-political inequality are permitted to bring guns to political protests, whereas anti-war protesters in New York were not permitted to mount posters on card-board tubes.

National government departments Homeland Security down to local police divisions like NYPD’s Tactical Assistance Unit, observe and track public protest. The U.S. media is not so keen on oversight of police surveillance, so its hard to know the extent of the activity. However, we can see echoes of the UK officer’s justification for the political surveillance in the FBI raids on G20 protesters in Pittsburgh last month.

In the quote below the picture, the UK police officer says that the police target only a few individuals who may turn to violence “outside the normal democratic process”. Thus, although UK protests increasingly resemble social get-togethers, the attribution of menace to the protesters by the police serves as an excuse to envelope an ever larger number of political and social-activist organizers into a police surveillance scheme. Emily Apple, who appears as Suspect A on one of the police spotting cards, writes on what happened when she and others began to track the activities of police surveillance crews (called forward intelligence teams or Fits) at protests:

Fit officers were taking photographs outside meetings, and then greeting me by name in crowds of thousands of people. Before long, they were at every meeting, every demonstration, calling me by name, making derogatory comments, and following me long after a protest had finished.

During 2002, they arrested me four times in three months, raided my house, seized my personal diaries and tried very hard, but unsuccessfully, to have me remanded.

How police rebranded lawful protest as 'domestic extremism'

From the 10/25/09 UK Guardian article “How police rebranded lawful protesters as domestic extremists”:

The term “domestic extremism” is now common currency within the police. It is a phrase which shapes how forces seek to control demonstrations. It has led to the personal details and photographs of a substantial number of protesters being stored on secret police databases around the country. There is no official or legal definition of the term. Instead, the police have made a vague stab at what they think it means. Senior officers describe domestic extremists as individuals or groups “that carry out criminal acts of direct action in furtherance of a campaign. These people and activities usually seek to prevent something from happening or to change legislation or domestic policy, but attempt to do so outside of the normal democratic process.” They say they are mostly associated with single issues and suggest the majority of protesters are never considered extremists.

Police insist they are just monitoring the minority who could damage property or commit aggravated trespass, causing significant disruption to lawful businesses. Activists respond by claiming this is an excuse that gives police the licence to carry out widespread surveillance of whole organisations that are a legitimate part of the democratic process.

They also warn that the categorisation carries echoes of the cold war, when the security services monitored constitutional campaigns such as the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and the Anti-Apartheid Movement because alleged subversives or communists were said to be active within them, although they said the organisations themselves were not subversive.

Spotter cards: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/oct/25/spotter-cards

BBC: Proposed Carbon Targets Above Historical Safety Levels

A new historical record of carbon dioxide levels suggests current political targets on climate may be “playing with fire”, scientists say.

Researchers used ocean sediments to plot CO2 levels back 20 million years.

Levels similar to those now commonly regarded as adequate to tackle climate change were associated with sea levels 25-40m (80-130 ft) higher than today.

…
What that level is has been the subject of intense debate down the years; but one figure currently receiving a lot of support is 450ppm.

On Tuesday, for example, the International Energy Agency (IEA) released its prescription for tackling climate change, which sees concentrations of greenhouse gases peaking at the equivalent of 510ppm of CO2 before stabilising at 450ppm.

The Boxer-Kerry Bill, which has just entered the US Senate, also cites the 450 figure.

“Trouble is, we don’t know where the critical CO2 or temperature threshold is beyond which ice sheet collapse is inevitable,” said Dr Overpeck.

“It could be below 450ppm, but it is more likely higher – not necessarily a lot higher – than 450ppm.

“But what this new work suggests is that… efforts to stabilise at 450ppm should avoid going up above that level prior to stabilisation – that is, some sort of ‘overshoot’ above 450ppm on the way to stabilisation could be playing with fire.”

Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8299426.stm

Oxfam: Rural Poor In Nepal Face Hunger From Climate Change

Among recent changes in weather patterns in Nepal are an increase in temperature extremes, more intense rainfall and increased unpredictability in weather patterns, including drier winters and delays in the summer monsoons. The melting of the Himalayan glaciers will also be felt well beyond Nepal’s borders. Scientists warn that if the Himalayan glaciers disappear – with some predicting this could happen within 30 years – the impact would be felt by more than one billion people across Asia.

Read the full report here: http://www.oxfam.org.nz/resources/onlinereports/nepal%20climate%20change_full%20report%20final.pdf

Israeli Jew Elected to Fatah’s Revolutionary Council

What does he hope to achieve as a Palestinian Hebrew who is a full member of the Revolutionary Council? His core message, he explains, is "to suggest" to his new colleagues that there is nothing to fear in recognising the notion of a Jewish state. "The correct response is that we will not recognise an Israel defined by political Zionism." And perhaps just as importantly, Davis believes that Fatah can expand its role from representing only Palestinian Arabs to representing all of those who oppose "settler-colonialism". "It cannot win the struggle for equality that it has waged for so long as long as it remains only representative of Palestinians. To win the moral (high ground) it has to project itself as a democratic alternative for all. That is the message I first delivered and that I have persevered with and has led to my election to the Revolutionary Council after 25 years.

BBC: As temperatures rise, treelines advance

Trees around the world are colonising new territories in response to higher temperatures. From the US west coast to northern Siberia and south-east Asia, trees are growing at higher elevations, and at higher latitudes as the climate warms. Of 166 sites studied, trees are advancing at more than half, while they are receding at just two sites. The shift is revealed by the first global analysis of treelines published in the journal Ecology Letters.

BBC: Mapping Future Water Stress

Mapping future water stress

These projections of per-capita water availability were made by Martina Floerke and colleagues at the University of Kassel in Germany. They combined different types of forecast to obtain their results. A computer model of climate change developed by the UK Met Office Hadley Centre generates projections of how temperatures and rainfall are likely to change in the future. The Kassel team applied Hadley projections on a finer geographical scale. These projections were fed into a program that models water flow in river basins. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) produces "scenarios" suggesting how society may develop economically and socially over time. The Kassel researchers used these scenarios to project water use by various sectors of the economy. This particular analysis used the A2 scenario, where economic growth and technological change are "uneven", and population growth "high". Having forecast the availability of water and the demand from industry, it was then possible to calculate how much water would be available per person at different points in the future. These are projections, not predictions, and none of the models used are likely to be completely accurate in how they forecast the future. The projections were adapted from a paper that originally appeared in the journal Hydrological Sciences in 2007.

BBC: Rural revolution How mega farms are transforming farming in Ukraine

From the BBC:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/newsnight/8218104.stm

You could call it the latest foreign invasion. No tanks this time, but a state-of-the-art agricultural army is on the move.

In large swathes of the country fleets of ultra-modern combine harvesters are bringing in the harvest from new mega farms.

Food security

But it is not Ukrainian money and know-how which is driving this agricultural revolution. It is foreign governments and companies.

The Libyans are negotiating for land here, as are the Russians and others.

Many governments are looking to secure land overseas as a way to ensure the food supply to their country does not fail.
[...]
Others go further, condemning the deals done by foreign companies as a “land-grab”, as rich countries and corporations snap up huge swathes of land in poor, developing countries.

Professor Tim Lang, one of the British government’s leading food security advisers, is one such critic:

“I feel sorry for Ukraine, here it is, it was colonised by the Russians, it was the grain basket for many, many years, it went downhill and now it is being asset stripped again by the West,” he says.

“You could say that it is good for the Ukraine, that it is getting inside investment from rich countries, that its productivity will go up, that since the collapse of the Soviet Union it has not had the requisite investment, that at least under Stalinism there was a huge amount of that sort of investment – you can paint that picture – but I’m not convinced by that.”

UK Guardian: The struggle against debt servitude

A kinder, simpler solution to the problem of runaway consumer debt: cap the interest rate at a reasonable figure.   Usury laws were once universal, probably owing to some language in the Bible on the proper rate of interest.  That all went by the wayside in the Reagan era, when states revised their usury laws to remove penalties for excessive interest.  S.C. did so in 1982.  The current Great Recession places extreme financial pressure on working people who must service debt acquired in fatter times, in some cases in complex mortgage arrangements that are partly to blame for the crisis.

London Citizens, a civic association in the UK, is sponsoring a campaign to cap the rate of interest in that country:

Following the financial crash of last year, a new issue emerged and a new campaign was forged. Our members experienced an increase in interest rates on money loans. The banks, many of which were now owned in substantial part by the public, were borrowing at half a percent but lending the money back to us at 40 times that rate, and more. Each of the major banks have credit card interest rates that start in the 20s and rise steeply with penalties. The same is true of consumption and mortgage loans when penalty payments see the rates jump into the 40s and 50s – more than a hundred times the interest charged to the banks. This is setting aside the bridging and pay-day loans sold by companies such as Shopacheck and Providential, where the interest rates start in the hundreds and go their own way from there. The cost of not earning enough to live has never been higher.

Our faith communities had no difficulty in naming this. They call it usury: the charging of excessive interest by the rich upon the poor with the corresponding transfer of whatever slender assets the weaker party had accumulated. They think it’s wrong and have decided to do something about it. And so was born the anti-usury campaign.

This has one goal: to establish a maximum beyond which it would be illegal to charge interest. We have a meeting tomorrow with the Royal Bank of Scotland where we will raise the possibility of a 10% maximum credit card. They are committed to being “responsible lenders” and we would like to help them fulfil that.

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2009/aug/11/anti-usury-campaign

Links: London Citizen

Spartanburg Herald Journal: Tax relief was tax hike for most

Source:  http://www.goupstate.com/article/20090806/ARTICLES/908061052/1083/ARTICLES?Title=Tax-relief-turned-out-to-be-tax-hike-for-most-homeowners

Tax relief was tax hike for most
$1M Spartanburg homes see big property tax cut

By Robert W. Dalton
bob.dalton@shj.com

Published: Thursday, August 6, 2009 at 3:15 a.m.
Last Modified: Thursday, August 6, 2009 at 12:20 a.m.

The majority of Spartanburg County homeowners now pay more in property taxes than they did before the much-hyped tax relief the state Legislature approved in 2006.

As an added bonus, they also pay an extra penny on the state sales tax, part of the swap lawmakers worked out to remove school operating taxes from owner-occupied property.

Owners of $100,000 homes in the city of Spartanburg paid $889 in 2006, the year before Act 388 went into effect. That dropped to $863 in 2007, but climbed to $921 last year, according to figures from Spartanburg County Auditor Sharon West. West said she wouldn’t know until September what the taxes would look like this year.

Almost 39,600 Spartanburg County homes are valued at $100,000 or below, with about the same number worth more than $100,000.

For residents with a $1 million home — 35 houses in the county are valued at $1 million or more — the 2008 tax bill was $8,791, down from $14,990 the year before Act 388 took effect.

State Rep. Harold Mitchell said the figures prove what he was saying when the Legislature debated the tax swap — that the plan was designed to bail out the wealthy. Mitchell was one of 31 House members to vote against the swap.

“The numbers don’t lie,” said Mitchell, D-Spartanburg. “The owners of these 39,000 homes are working-class citizens of Spartanburg. “There’s already a financial crunch, and their taxes are increasing at a time like this.”

State Sen. Lee Bright said he’s opposed to property taxes, period. He said it was only fair to give high-end homes the same break as more modest residences.

“Higher wage earners pay a disproportionate amount of taxes now,” said Bright, R-Roebuck. “With the amount of taxes they pay now, to say any kind of tax reduction would bail out the wealthy is not accurate.”

Bright said the real issue is the state’s spending habits. He said if lawmakers control spending, the taxing issue will take care of itself.

“We continue to talk about tax policy, but the elephant in the room is our spending problem,” Bright said.

Owners of $200,000 homes in the city paid $2,455 in 2006 and $1,795 last year. Owners of $500,000 homes paid $7,156 in 2006 and $4,419 in 2008.

One reason for the disparity is that owners of homes valued up to $100,000 already were exempt from school operating taxes under a 1995 tax relief plan. But millage increases quickly erased the modest reductions they experienced under Act 388.

Act 388 prevents local governments, school districts and other taxing entities from increasing millage by more than a formula based on population growth plus inflation. But, West said, most entities are going up to the limit.

“If they miss it one year, they can’t go back and recoup it under Act 388,” West said.

Spartanburg County Administrator Glenn Breed said the county has increased its millage the full amount both years Act 388 has been in effect.

“If you don’t approve it one year, you lose it forever — or until the act is changed,” he said.

Breed said the ongoing budget crisis has compounded the problem. The state cut about $2.5 million in funding to the county this year.

“Where do you make that up?” Breed said. “It kind of forces the issue.”

Breed said taxpayers will be “stuck in this same scenario” until the Legislature amends Act 388 or approves another property tax reform package.

Bright said that’s not going to happen in the session that begins in January.

“I know there’s been a lot of talk about repealing Act 388, but that’s not going to happen,” he said. “There are a lot of issues that are going to come to the forefront, and that’s not going to be revisited.”

1873 Bailout request from Charleston Chamber of Commerce

Charleston Chamber of Commerce prays to US Treasury for $500,000 in debt relief in this Page 1 New York Times article from Wednesday, September 30, 1873

The Panic of 1873 was surely one of the worst economic depressions in the history of U.S. capitalism.
Reading issues of the NY Times from the early days of the depression, its easy to see certain superficial similarities. The government is not changing its policies, the recent innovation of the Greenback is credited for making things better, the NY Times “suggests” that some provision be made through the cities hospitals for the deserving poor in the coming Winter. The description of the deserving widow could have come from last years ‘Goodfellows’ drive, though in 1873, with no social safety net at all, the prospect of the widow and her children surviving the Winter would be considerably reduced.
A Senator defending government intervention in currency regulation is a Republican however, and he castigates the Democrats for economic non-intervention during the crises of 1857, 1847, 1837, and 1816! Coming out of the Civil War, the Republican Party was the party of central government and national economic policy.

Most surprising to me was the tiny article I’ve reproduced above, in which the Charleston Chamber of Commerce appears to plead for $500,000 from the Federal Treasury to pay off Northern creditors. South Carolina’s business elite were much more proactive in seeking federal aid during the wildest and woolliest days of unfettered capitalism than Sanford and company in the present day.

Cowpens Brownfield and Lowered Environmental Expectations

The Spartanburg Herald Journal reports today on a toxic spill in Cowpens, SC.  The brownfield was created in the years 1969-90 through the dumping of waste from a textile mill into the soil under the plant. Tetrachloroethene has spread south and west of the plant in a plume intersecting with two unnamed creeks of the Pacolet River.

After Health-Tex closed the factory in 1990, the building sat empty. Cowpens police investigating a possible theft of copper in 1992 found about 20 55-gallon drums and smaller containers inside. Some were marked by hand as “contaminated” or “hazardous waste,” the Herald-Journal reported 17 years ago.
The Department of Health and Environmental Control placed the site on high priority, arranged for removal of the waste products in the building and conducted soil tests and some cleanup with grant money from the Environmental Protection Agency, spending about $300,000 between 1992 and November 2003.

-”Property owners near Health-Tex receive settlement money“. By Craig Peters. Spartanburg Herald Journal. Tuesday, July 28, 2009 at 3:15 a.m.
http://www.goupstate.com/article/20090728/ARTICLES/907281040/0/APS

A U.S. Department of Health and Human Resources Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry 2002 Health Consultation for the Cowpens brownfield is available on line.   This report appears to be preliminary to a full blown Public Health Assessment, and recommends further sampling from the creeks to the north and south of the site.  There is no followup report, however.

There were a lot of plans for the Cowpens brownfield at one time.  In 1999 E2SC, USC’s eco-public policy magazine, published an article by Sonja Lynn Odom, Phillip E. Barnes, and Dr. Walter H. Peters, III projecting an “eco-park” on the 228,ooo sq. ft. site:

In April 1998, a representative of the University of South Carolina’s Center for Manufacturing and Technology (CMAT) joined the CBPT [Cowpens Brownfield Pilot Team] and presented a plan to redevelop the brownfield into an eco-industrial park.

[...]

A report for the town of Cowpens, presented in May, outlined the methods used to obtain waste stream information in the upstate. A geographic information system (GIS) database has been developed to categorize types of industry and waste streams, plus other information necessary for future expansion of eco-industrial development in the upstate (Figure 2). Current interviews of companies in Spartanburg County being conducted by Belenchia’s office and CMAT personnel have resulted in potential eco-park tenants.
Other accomplishments by CBPT members include the following:

0 A landscape architect from Atlanta recently completed a concept drawing of the Cowpens Eco-Park, which will be presented at the next CBPT team meeting (See page 9).

0 The Army Corps of Engineers submitted the site assessment report for Cowpens. This report will expedite the work plan for assessment completion.

0 A $500,000 Brownfield Cleanup Revolving Loan Fund (BCRLF) Grant was awarded to the town in June 1999 to assist in any cleanup required.

0 A $1 million Cowpens Brownfield Economic Development Initiative (BEDI) Grant was written and submitted to assist in refurbishing the building on site.

Recently, a proposal for Cowpens, titled Holistic Planning for Sustainable Development, was submitted to the EPA. In this plan a host of projects to bring about sustainable development for the community were addressed. One project involves training at town meetings on the advantages of energy and water conservation, materials reuse, and other topics related to environmental issues. Other projects that reflect the eco-development theme have been presented by CBPT team members, such as development of ecotourism activities and a nature-trail network that emphasize environmental protection and the efficient use of resources.
Within the CBPT (currently having seventy members) there is a rich blend of education, background, and experience in economic development and environmental protection. With proper planning and community involvement the eco-park concept can become a successful part of the brownfield redevelopment.

None of that happened.  The funding probably dried up in 2001.  The website for this project – http://www.cowpens-online.com/ – is nonfunctional.  The Cornell University Center for the Environment referenced in the report has morphed into the Center for a Sustainable Future.  The focus now appears to be international.  The push toward eco-industrial compromises through local working groups is a concept that could be renewed.

As it is, the people living in the plume are left with cash settlements amounting to this:

$1,600 per lot with a house in the plume (85) for a total of $136,000.

$500 per lot without a house in the plume (19) for a total of $9,500.

$500 Class representation fee (nine) for a total of $4,500.

Reimbursement of litigation costs of $120,000.

There is no mention of the proximity of the Pacolet River  anywhere in the sources I reviewed for this posting.
There must be, somewhere, articles and resources on the cumulative effects of these brownfields on watersheds and rivers. Would it be too much to hope for such a report in layman’s terms and specifically regarding the Broad River basin and the Santee watershed?

References:

U.S. DHHR ATSDR 2002 consultation: http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/HAC/pha/cowpens/cow_toc.html

List of 33 online ATSDR health assessments for SC:  http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/hac/PHA/HCPHA.asp?State=SC

“Eco-Industrial Development – An Opportunity for South Carolina: Part 2; In the spring 1999 issue of E2SC, we presented the first of two articles on eco-industrial parks. The earlier installment focused on the Edisto River Basin Project in South Carolina; in this second part, the authors review the Cowpens Eco-Industrial Park Project.” By S. Lynn Odom, Phillip E. Barnes, Walter H. Peters, III. Environmental Excellence In South Carolina. Summer 1999. Pages 8 – 11. http://www.scribd.com/doc/1788976/Environmental-Protection-Agency-E2SCSum99.

• Same article in PDF: http://www.p2pays.org/ref/05/04492.pdf

4 reports on the poor state of SC’s public health, 2005 – 2009

The first and last reports given here are quite large, but are well worth studying.  “No Place To Call Home” documents the shocking state of many Community Residential Care Facilities in South Carolina.  “Behind the Numbers” documents the cuts to the SC health and social spending budget that enabled the horrible situation described in the 2009 report.

The two shorter middle pieces  discuss very briefly the problem of poverty and lack of health insurance in SC.  I want to write more on this later, but will just point toward the reports for now.

• No Place To Call Home: How South Carolina Has Failed Residents of Community Residential Care Facilities. Protection and Advocacy for People with Disabilities, Inc. 81 pages. PDF document. July 2009. Press release. Picture gallery. Cover letter to elected officials and citizens of SC.

P&A found:
• Insect infestations
• Failure to deliver medication
• Lack of heat and air-conditioning
• Inadequate food
• Contaminated food
• Untrained staff
• Yards filled with garbage
The unsafe conditions in some of these CRCFs [Community Residential Care Facilities] have continued for months or even years.
These appalling conditions exist now. Recent inspections and visits found that serious problems still exist at many facilities including: mouse droppings on the pantry shelves; roaches throughout the facility; electrical wires dangling from the ceiling; and numerous problems with medication administration, including staff giving medication without having washed their hands.
This report describes the fragmented system of oversight of CRCFs and the consequences for residents and makes recommendations to improve the safety and quality of care provided. An investigation of a CRCF may involve five or more agencies that have overlapping roles and responsibilities. Homes with even the most serious allegations against them can continue to accept new residents until the completion of the investigation, which can take years. The Department of Health and Environmental Control, which regulates CRCFs, is seriously understaffed and frequently settles cases for a fraction of the assessed fines. Individuals have no easy way to find out whether a CRCF has had violations or been fined.
Residents of CRCFs often have no family or friends to speak for them. The facilities usually have little or no access to public transportation. The isolated residents are at high risk of abuse, neglect and exploitation. Stories such as those highlighted in the report are, unfortunately, far too common.

• Dying for Coverage in SC. Families USA. 4 pages. PDF document. April 2008.

In 2006, there were nearly 2,302,000 people between the ages of 25 and 64 living in South Carolina. Of those, 19.7 percent were uninsured.2 Uninsured South Carolinians are sicker and die sooner than their insured counterparts.

• New Numbers Show Grim Truths. Sue Berkowitz, Director, SC Appleseed Legal Justice Center. 2 pages. PDF document. 2007.

The number of our citizens living at or below poverty is now 15%, up over 1.5% from 2001. More shameful still is our Child Poverty rate which is almost 21%. That is 213,858 children we have let down.
Many of our citizens may not be among those in poverty, but are certainly feeling the tension of making their paychecks last all month. That is because South Carolinian’s Median Income has not increased…It has decreased since 2000 by approximately $2000. And these numbers were calculated before the recent recession hit our pocketbooks.

While the rest of the country saw a slight decrease in the numbers of healthcare uninsured, South Carolina’s increased 4.3% from 11.8 to 16.2% of our population. At the same time our state Medicaid agency saw a decrease of approximately 150,000 beneficiaries over the last two years. It is hard to understand how our citizens are making less and fewer South Carolinians have health insurance, yet our Medicaid program, which should be a safety net for our neediest, has seen a record decrease in participation. Our current system is not doing its job.

• Behind The Numbers: Devastating Budget Cuts and the Impact on Health & Social Services in South Carolina. A Project of the South Carolina Appleseed Legal Justice Center. Report written by Megan Ehrlich. 31 pages. PDF document. March 2005

As the state is forced to cut budgets due to the lack of revenue, real citizens in our state are affected. This report examines the disturbing impact on the lives of South Carolinians, specifically the most vulnerable and needy populations. The focus is on five state agencies that provide vital health and social services: Department of Mental Health, Department of Social Services, Department of Disabilities and Special Needs, Department of Health and Environmental Control, and Department of Health and Human Services.

Based on an examination of agency-specific cuts from fiscal year 2000-2001 to the current fiscal year, service cuts, employee cuts, and the funding priorities of these agencies, we will face the very real problem of the State’s inability to provide adequate funding for health and social services to the citizens that need them most.

Testimony of Steffie Woolhandler, M.D., M.P.H. : “lesser reforms will fail”

Testimony of Steffie Woolhandler, M.D., M.P.H. Before the Health Subcommittee of the Committee on Energy and Commerce

June 24, 2009

Mr. Chairman, members of the Committee. I’m Steffie Woolhandler. I am a primary care doctor in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and associate professor of medicine at Harvard. I also co-founded Physicians for a National Health Program. Our 16,000 physician members support nonprofit, single-payer national health insurance because of overwhelming evidence that lesser reforms – even with a robust public plan option – will fail.

Private insurance is a defective product. Unfortunately, the Tri-Committee health reform plan would keep private insurers in the driver’s seat, and, indeed, require Americans to buy their shoddy goods. Once failure to buy health insurance is a federal offense, what’s next? A Ford Pinto in every garage? Lead-painted toys for every child? Melamine-laced chow for every puppy?

Even middle-class families with supposedly good coverage are just one serious illness away from financial ruin. My colleagues and I recently found that medical bills and illness contribute to 62 percent of all personal bankruptcies – a 50 percent increase since 2001. Strikingly, three-quarters of the medically bankrupt had insurance – at least when they first got sick.

In case after case, the insurance families bought in good faith failed them when they needed it most. Some were bankrupted by co-payments and deductibles, and loopholes that allowed their insurer to deny coverage. Others got too sick to work, leaving them unemployed and uninsured. And insurance regulations like those proposed in the tri-committee bill cannot fix these problems.

We in Massachusetts have seen in action a plan like the one you’re considering. In my state, beating your wife, communicating a terrorist threat and being uninsured all carry $1,000 fines. Yet despite these steep fines, most of the new coverage in our state has come from expanding Medicaid-like programs at great public expense. According to the state’s disclosure to its bondholders, our health reform has cost about $5,000 annually for each newly insured adult. That’s equivalent to over $200 billion annually to cover all of America’s uninsured.

But even such vast expenditures haven’t made care affordable for middle-class families in Massachusetts. If I were to lose my Harvard coverage I’d be forced to lay out $4,800 for a policy with a $2,000 deductible before it pays for any care, and 20 percent co-payments after that. Skimpy, overpriced coverage like this left 1 in 6 Massachusetts residents unable to pay their medical bills last year.

Meanwhile, rising costs have forced the Legislature to rob Peter in order to pay Paul. Funding cuts have decimated safety-net hospitals and clinics, and the current budget drops coverage for 28,000 people.

As research I published in the New England Journal of Medicine showed, a single-payer reform could save about $400 billion annually by shrinking health care bureaucracy – enough to cover the uninsured and to provide first dollar coverage for all Americans. A single-payer system would also include effective cost-containment mechanisms like bulk purchasing and global budgeting. As a result, everyone would be covered with no net increase in U.S. health spending. But these savings aren’t available unless we go all the way to single payer.

Adding a public insurance plan option can’t fix the flaws in Massachusetts-style reform. A public plan might cut private insurers’ profits, which is why they hate it. But their profits account for only about 3 percent of the money squandered on bureaucracy. Far more goes for marketing (to attract healthy, profitable members) and demarketing (to avoid the sick). And tens of billions are spent on the armies of insurance administrators who fight over payment and their counterparts at hospitals and doctors offices. All of these would be retained with a public plan option.
And overhead for even the most efficient competitive public plan would be far higher than Medicare’s, which automatically enrolls seniors when they turn 65 and disenrolls them only at death, deducts premiums directly from Social Security checks, and does no marketing.

Unfortunately, competition in health insurance involves a race to the bottom, not the top. Insurers compete by NOT paying for care: by denying payment and shifting costs onto patients or other payers. These bad behaviors confer a decisive competitive advantage. A public plan option would either emulate them – becoming a clone of private insurance – or go under. A kinder, gentler public plan option would quickly fail in the marketplace, saddled with the sickest, most expensive patients, whose high costs would drive premiums to uncompetitive levels.

In contrast, a single-payer reform would radically simplify the payment system and redirect the vast savings to care. Hospitals could be paid like a fire department, receiving a single monthly check for their entire budget, eliminating most billing. Physicians’ billing could be similarly simplified.

Eight decades of experience teach that private insurers cannot control costs or provide families with the coverage they need. A government-run clone of private insurers cannot fix these flaws. Only single payer national health insurance can assure all Americans the care they need at a price they can afford.

Thank you.

Source: http://energycommerce.house.gov/Press_111/20090624/testimony_woolhandler.pdf
Most links courtesy: http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/woolhandler210709.html

Uncertainty of Affordability, Coverage in the Proposed Health Care Plan

My major objection to the proposed health care reform is that it will not fix major problems which prevent many people from obtaining coverage: it will not control cost, it will not create equality of access to health care and it will not extend coverage to all.

I’ve always felt that any solution that fails to create universal equality of access could only begin as a compromised arrangement to preserve the for-profit health care industry and only end in failure of reform.

This failure will spoil the chance to provide health care to the millions who really need it and the millions who do not know that they will not be covered by their insurance until they attempt to claim it.

Under the circumstances, it is irresponsible to suggest a plan that cannot solve the problem and the only responsible solution is to work out the best transition to either single payer insurance or national health care.

Still you will find defender’s of the new plan saying that any movement is “a step in the right direction.” I heard Jonathan Oberlander make that argument this morning on NPR’s On Point . Dr. Stephanie Woolhandler, of Physicians for a National Health Program , hit the gaps and discrepancies in the President’s plan very hard, but to little effect against Oberlander’s ‘we gotta do this thing’ boosterism.

Protagonists of the President’s plan are too close to the political fight to see that the plans’ legislative success will create expectations of its effective success which the plan never envisioned. The administration’s plan will fail to satisfy the health care needs for millions. That failure will create a greater political liability in the future than fighting for universal health care would create.  People hate the insurance industry and the HMOs, but they don’t blame the government for them.

But how is it going to fail? Ellen Shaffer and John Gilman at the Center for Policy Analysis have outlined in a very condensed way some specific failings of the plan.

More information on single payer insurance and how it would address the failings of unstructured health care can be found on the PNHP page http://www.pnhp.org/facts/single_payer_resources.php.

Sunday, July 19, 2009
More on HR 3200: Public plan delayed, affordability uncertain
John Gilman (johnhgilman@yahoo.com) and Ellen R. Shafffer
Source: http://ellenshaffer.blogspot.com/2009/07/more-on-hr-3200-public-plan-delayed.html

Concerns
· State benefit mandates – to continue these mandates, state will have to pay any additional cost of affordability credits in the Exchange that are due to the mandates. With tight state budgets, states are likely to drop these benefit mandates, which will effectively reduce the scope of coverage for all state residents whether insured in or outside the Exchange.

· Delayed Implementation of Health Insurance Exchange, Public Option, and Affordability Credits and limited access once implemented.
o Exchanges do not go into effect until 2013. In that year the only employers that may insure through the Exchange are those with 10 or fewer employees. Individuals without other coverage may also enroll, but if they have been offered coverage by their employer they will not be eligible for any affordability credits.
o Beginning in 2014, any employer with 20 or fewer employees may enroll in the Exchange. Individuals without other coverage may also enroll, but if they have been offered coverage by their employer they will be eligible for affordability credits, but only if the employee’s share of premium exceeds 11% of adjusted gross income and the employee’s family income does not exceed 400% FPL.
o Beginning in 2015, and beyond, the Health Care Commissioner may, but is not required to, expand employer participation to larger employers.
· There is an individual mandate to have insurance but Affordability Credits are limited. These credits are not available unless you receive coverage through the exchange, and even then, they are not available through the exchange if you have declined coverage from your employer unless your share of premium under your employer’s plan exceeds 11% of your income.
o For those that qualify, Affordability Credits provide some protection for those with the lowest incomes, but these credits quickly phase-out and are not available for much of the middle class. Anyone with family income above 400% FPL ($43,320 for an individual; $88,200 for a family of four) is not eligible for any subsidy. The following are examples of health care costs for people buying coverage through the exchange:
§ A single person with $16,000 annual income would receive a subsidy and pay no more than a $480 per year premium (3% of income), while having a cost sharing burden of 3-5% of medical costs.
§ A couple with family income of $35,000 would receive a subsidy and pay no more than a $2450 per year premium (7% of income), while having a cost sharing burden of 15% of medical costs with an out-of-pocket family limit of $10,000 per year.
§ A family of three, with family income of $72,000 would receive a subsidy and pay no more than a $7920 per year premium (11% of income), while having a cost sharing burden of up to 30% of medical costs with an out-of-pocket family limit of $10,000 per year.
§ A family of four with family income of $90,000 would not be eligible for any premium subsidy and in addition could expect to have a cost sharing burden of up to 30% of medical costs with an out-of-pocket family limit of $10,000 per year. According to the California HealthCare Foundation, in 2008, the average total family premium for an employer sponsored PPO in California $1251/month ($15,012/year). This family would be paying over 16% of its income just for the health care premium.
· The bill permits a basic insurance plan to have high out-of-pocket expenses. Cost sharing under the basic plan can be up to 30% of medical costs, with out-of-pocket limits of $5000 per individual and $10,000 per family.
· Although the bill offers “enhanced” and “premium” plans with reduced cost sharing–it appears that everyone is entitled to the “basic” plan. The enhanced and premium plans have less cost sharing but higher premiums. Low and middle-income workers will likely not be able to buy enhanced and premium plans because they will not be able to afford the higher premiums, so they will be stuck with the basic plan and its high-cost sharing.
· Play or Pay. Employers must “play” (offer health insurance to employees) or “pay” (pay a fee to the Health Insurance Exchange Trust Fund).
o If the employer plays, the minimum employer contribution to premium (for full-time employees) is 72.5% of the premium cost for a single employee and 65% for family coverage. That means the employee with family coverage may pay 35% of the premium cost of his or her policy. (According to the California HealthCare Foundation, single employees in California pay on average 12% of premium costs, while employees with family coverage pay 24% of premium costs.)
o Employers that choose to pay must pay an amount equal to 8% of total wages (The amount is less for employers with payrolls of up to $400,000). When the employer chooses to pay, none of the amount paid by the employer is credited to his or her employees, who must obtain insurance through the exchange. Many of these employees will find themselves paying for the full cost of their insurance. See the above discussion for Affordability Credit subsidies available through the Exchange.
· State-based health insurance exchange – States, or groups of states, can form their own health insurance exchange. However, it appears that such an exchange would NOT be required to offer a public option. (See Section 208)
· State benefit mandates – to continue these mandates, state will have to pay any additional cost of affordability credits in the Exchange that are due to the mandates. With tight state budgets, states are likely to drop these benefit mandates, which will effectively reduce the scope of coverage for all state residents whether insured in or outside the Exchange.

· Essential community providers: The bill requires that only basic plans contract with essential community providers? [Page 90 - Sec 204 (b)(6)]

Good:
· Prohibits cost sharing for preventive benefits
· Establishes a minimum Medical Loss Ratio, BUT leaves exact ratio to be set by the Secretary of HHS, (effective 1/1/2011)
· Limits policy rescissions (effective 10/1/2010)
· Public Option –Provides incentives for Medicare providers to be public option providers (assures broad, diverse panel of providers)Page 122-123 – Sec 223 (b)(1) – 5% incentive to Medicare providers who also participate in Public Option]

· Medicaid improvements
o Expands coverage: Requires state Medicaid programs to cover childless adults, parents, and individuals with disabilities with incomes up to 133% FPL. Requires state Medicaid programs to cover newborns up to the first 60 days of life who do not have other coverage. These expansions will be paid 100% by federal government. BUT, these expansions do not go into effect until 2013.
o Improves primary care reimbursement: Requires state Medicaid programs to reimburse for primary care services at no less than 80% of Medicare rates in 2010, 90% in 2011, and 100% thereafter. The incremental cost of this increased reimbursement will be paid 100% by federal government.
o Establishes a five-year Medicaid Medical Home pilot program, with 90% federal matching funds for community care workers for the first two years and 75% federal matching for next three years.
o Increases pharmaceutical manufacturer rebates for brand-name drugs purchased by State Medicaid programs from 15.1% of average manufacturers’ price to 22.1%.
· Establishes the Center for Comparative Effectiveness Research

Uncertain effect
· Options for certain individuals to enroll in Medicaid or receive insurance through the Exchange (probably good)
· Eliminate SCHIP; transitions SCHIP eligibles into Exchange, but no earlier than 2013.
· 2.5% tax penalty (2.5% of modified AGI) for failure to obtain coverage, but not to exceed average premium cost; hardship exception available. (If you pass the “hardship test” your prize is not having to pay the penalty and not having health insurance.)
· Up to 50% employer tax credit for premiums paid by small employers with low wage workers
o Phases out beginning at over $20,000/ year average wage, fully at $40,000
o Phases out beginning at 11 employees; fully at 25
o Does not apply to any employee earning over $80,000
· Requires state maintenance of effort (MOE) for Medicaid and CHIP eligibility as of June 16, 2009. This assures that eligibility does not contract (good), but how able are states to do this, given their bleak budget picture.

Finally here is the Colbert take on health care:
http://www.comedycentral.com/colbertreport/full-episodes/index.jhtml?episodeId=239365

I think Colbert does support national health care – the PNHP is using his image: http://www.pnhp.org/colbert/

More seriously, here is Dr. Woolhandler’s June 24, 2009 testimony before the Before the Health Subcommittee of the Committee on Energy and Commerce in PDF: http://energycommerce.house.gov/Press_111/20090624/testimony_woolhandler.pdf

Hipsters are like Hamsters

Dash Snow, New York art person died this week. I did not know him; and though I once ran into him, I had no idea who he was until reading his obituary.
So I could be confused, in whole or in part.

July 26, 2007 — August 18, 2007 76 Grand Street, New York Thirty volunteers spent three days shredding two-thousand New York City telephone books in preparation for one of the most unusual exhibitions ever presented by a New York gallery: Dash Snow and Dan Colen’s NEST. Adapting their infamous “hamster nest” to 76 Grand Street, they reveal to the public a performance they have until now created only in private. The resulting pandemonium is on view, in addition to video and photographic documentation.

If you look at the catalog entry for this 2007 installation, you can see that Snow was a stager of events, post-rave happenings. Mostly he seems to have come from art collector money, which enabled him to party and maybe to doggedly spree for so long and document it so well that the people around him called it art. This is all laid out in the obit.
A few years back, a friend and I were wandering Broadway below Houston around midnight. She and I passed by a derelict building, a boarded three or four story stone faced building slotted into a long block. The door was open. Music was playing. The foyer was destroyed with walls ripped down to the studs with broken bits of building material, paint cans and junk laying around. So my friend and I went in.
The building was in a state of arrested demolition. Stairs led to a platformed bathroom framed up for walls either never installed or subsequently destroyed. Within the bathroom, was a toilet and a cabinet and a hooded worklight. On either side of the foyer was an entrance to the back. Beyond the foyer was all one room.
The space had been hollowed out down to the brick and crammed with ten or so studios. At the back was an apse,with three very tall windows with out glass losing the boards that separated them from the microscopic waste area out back. The artist studios were informally divided workareas, and mounds of product separated them. People were really cranking the art out. A man with a beard sat in a leather office chair amid the squalor giving us the stink eye. We had a brief conversation, basically consisting of “who the hell are you”, “I just needed to use the bathroom.” He actually laughed at that. “Mind if we look around?” I got a dismissive hand gesture, turned around and walked around, then down into the basement. The basement was like that Stephen King short story where they fight the rats. Only instead of rats, there were about a billion canvases, bits of wood, pvc, light bulbs, art junk.
We left, after I used the bathroom.
Reading Dash Snow’s Guardian obituary, I was struck by the extremely hostile tone of most readers’ comments: this is trash, another wasted life, no loss; contrasted with this:

"Dash Snow: An art icon for our times?" Francesca Gavin. Guardian. Wednesday 15 July 2009 11.14 BST

I could appreciate that, if it was indeed him whom I saw and irritated. I can also sympathize with moralistic appraisal of the Guardian readers – middle class, university educated, left liberals – that anybody with the nose ears eyes ears and skin of the art world is not just living a dream but ought to give something back. What it is you’re giving back depends on what the middle class consumers of art want, but what the artists are capable of putting out.

Around the time I found the studio space on Broadway, I went to a P.S. 1 exhibit on L.E.S artists against Reagan. I can’t recall the art so much as its political commitment: contemporary exhibit brochures incorporated manifestos in support of the people of El Salvador and Nicaragua and long lists of East Village artists signed petitions against museums accepting donations from conservative foundations. The artists of the time clearly intended to motivate attendees to organize in their own communities, and with the expectation that something would be done.
The L.E.S. artists of 1980 were coming out of a decade when the Socialist Workers Party ran candidates in NYC school board elections, when Sixties revolutionaries were still getting down to brass tacks with Maoism and you could pick up an independent leftist weekly, the Guardian on a New York newstand. This is not to mention the broader still countercultural milieu of the Village Voice, Black Nationalism, punk rock, you name it in late 70’s NYC. These movements had peaked in with the end of the war in Vietnam. The appeal to a mass movement seems nostalgic in 1980, but even more so in 2001.
The NYC and European counterculture of the nineties was rave culture and drug culture. There is or was a political component, of taking back the public space, of forming situational communities in dance culture. Groups like that aimed to reclaim public spaces in the late Nineties. Seattle seemed to surprise everyone observing, but it did come from somewhere. Not from the high-art world though.