“Patients not profits, Medicare for all. Aetna profits, people die, Medicare for all,” were the chants heard in the lobby of the Midtown office of the Aetna health insurance company on Tuesday morning. Dozens filled the halls to demand that all life-saving procedures requested by doctors for patients be immediately approved by company bureaucrats. One activist held a sign, “Aetna is the real death panel.” Demonstrators with the Mobilization for Health Care now want an end insurance abuse and to win health care for all.

From The New York Time’s City Room blog:

The police said that 17 people were arrested after refusing to leave the lobby of an office building on Park Avenue where the insurance company Aetna has offices. They were charged with criminal trespass. In addition, the police said, three of those arrested were charged with obstructing governmental administration.

Organizers said it was the first step of a national campaign meant to publicize their views and challenge claims made by right-wing radio hosts and Republican officials.

“The myths about government death panels are pure hysteria,” an organizer, Mark Milano, said on Park Avenue. “The real death panels are people who are paid by insurance companies to deny health care to patients.”

Check out this great video about the action and join the campaign on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/pages/Mobilization-for-Health-Care-for-All/134530106378?ref=mf&v=wall

- Sarah Massey

Check out this cool use of crowdsourcing to submit the best public ideas on a national broadband plan. Having just spent two weeks in Paris where broadband was ubiquitous, I realize how very far behind the U.S. is in this integral infrastructure. The New America Foundation and Google have made it easy for you to join the conversation. Please let our government know how important it is to you to communicate.

- Sarah Massey

For Immediate Release: July 16, 2009

As part of the economic stimulus legislation (ARRA), Congress charged the FCC with creating a National Broadband Plan by next February.

The Commission has called for “maximum civic engagement” in developing a broadband strategy, reflecting input from all stakeholders. Initial comments have been filed and now it’s the public’s turn to contribute their views and ideas.

To encourage public input, the New America Foundation is joining forces with Google to launch a Google Moderator page to aggregate public opinion on this critical policy issue. Google Moderator provides the general public with a forum to submit and vote on ideas you think the Commission should include in its National Broadband Plan.

After two weeks, Google and NAF will take the most popular and most innovative ideas and submit them to the official record at the FCC on your behalf.

We hope you will post your views on Google Moderator - and also forward this to your contacts and constituents.

We can all help answer the FCC’s call for input from stakeholders ‘outside the beltway,’ including “industry, American consumers; large and small businesses; federal, state, local, and tribal governments; and disabled communities.”

Among the key elements of a national broadband plan under consideration:

• The most effective and efficient ways to ensure ubiquitous broadband access for all Americans;
• Strategies for achieving affordability and maximum utilization of broadband infrastructure and services;
• Evaluation of the status of broadband deployment, including the progress of related grant programs;
• How to use broadband to advance consumer welfare, civic participation, public safety and homeland security, community development, health care delivery, energy efficiency, education, worker training, entrepreneurial activity, job creation and other national purposes.

As Commissioner Michael Copps noted, “Broadband can be the great enabler that . . . opens doors of opportunity for all Americans to pass through, no matter who they are, where they live, or the particular circumstances of their individual lives.” A national broadband plan promises far-reaching consequences for economic growth and equal opportunity across all sectors for decades to come.

You can join the discussion at: http://moderator.appspot.com/#16/e=a4977

For media requests, please contact Kate Brown, Media Relations Manager, at 202-596-3365(w) or 202-213-7051(m).

New America’s Wireless Future Program develops and advocates policy proposals aimed at achieving universal and affordable wireless broadband access, expanding public access to the airwaves and updating our nation’s communications infrastructure in the digital era. For more information, visit http://www.newamerica.net/programs/wireless_future.

About the New America Foundation
The New America Foundation is a nonprofit, nonpartisan public policy institute that invests in new thinkers and new ideas to address the next generation of challenges facing the United States.

Just this past Wednesday (24 June 2009), a bill cosponsored by 106 Representatives was introduced to the House that would place the currently undemocratic trade agreement system into the hands of the people. The bill is called the TRADE Act, an acronym standing for “Trade Reform, Accountability, Development and Employment” (HR 3012). If passed, it would protect human rights and put environmental safeguards into effect in both past and future multinational trade agreements. It would also vastly increase the transparency of such agreements, rightly giving the ultimate power not to a select few, but to Congress. The bill is sponsored by Rep. Mike Michaud (D-Maine), the Chairman of the House Trade Working Group. Its wording advocates a strong position on core labor standards which promote fundamental human rights as defined by the UN. The bill will not only ensure these rights for US citizens, but will also protect the rights, human and otherwise, of the citizens of the country with which the agreement exists. The bill requires that in order for the US to start or continue trade with a country, that country must live up to basic human rights laws that are already in effect in the US. Passing the TRADE Act would help to give needed jobs back to Americans by making it less economic to outsource labor to countries with bad human rights records simply because they have cheaper labor.

The bill itself makes provisions that would not only change the way future agreements are created, but would call for an extensive review of agreements already in place. This would include a review of trade agreements’ impact on citizens both in the US and the country in question, and would require renegotiation of existing agreements when necessary. This would ease concerns that have been ever increasing among the world populace. Call to mind the massive protests over the G8 Summits each year, and you’ll get the idea. Up to this day world trade and all things monetary are being regulated by organizations like the World Bank and the World Trade Organization. These institutions are responsible for closed-door agreements that are written “by and for corporations” (GlobalExchange.org).

Examples of WTO rulings include laws making it illegal to ban a product because of the way it is produced, not excluding morally negligent practices like child labor. According to GlobalExchange.org, the WTO has also ruled that “governments cannot take into account ‘non commercial values’ such as human rights or the behavior of companies that do business with vicious dictatorships such as Burma.” Additionally, the WTO has blocked countries with rampant health concerns like AIDs from producing generic drugs. The WTO has cited rulings of companies’ “right to profit” to enforce such policies, and has often undermined countries’ preexisting laws in doing so.

“The TRADE Act acknowledges rights greater than a corporation’s supposed right to profit,” says Ben Beachy, the Mid-Atlantic Regional Organizer of Witness for Peace. “These include the rights of family farmers to a stable livelihood, the rights of parents to affordable medicines, the rights of all of us to environmental protections. The TRADE Act spells the overhaul of the NAFTA model that has not only failed to recognize, but has outrightly trampled, such basic human rights.”

Beachy states that the TRADE Act “launches a new era of trade.” It is “the first bill of its kind to call for the sort of trade we could support–the sort that places public health, democratic process, and decent work at the center.”

Americans are now personally aware of the disfunctionality of the current economic systems and the reality of just how global our nation’s trade has become. People are trying to learn more about what got us into this situation and how to change it. At the same time, however, it appears that the bigwigs responsible have not changed much at all, nor do they seem to have any intentions of doing so. That is where this legislation comes in. It is proactive yet extremely necessary to ensure the democratic power of the US in this globalizing world. In order to maintain control by the people, an ideal this country was based on, legislation like the TRADE Act is absolutely fundamental. For the first time, it requires that a trade agreement be approved by both Congress and the President (TRADE Act, pg44): Constitutional ideals which have been grossly ignored until this point.

A large success for transparent business practices exists in the bill’s stipulation that “if the trade agreement contains provisions related to dispute resolution, these provisions must “incorporate due process rules and procedures, including insuring… proceedings are open to the public; that public access to information… related to disputes is provided in a timely manner; and that conflict of interest rules apply fully to adjudicators.” It also requires that any dispute settlement panel addressing environmental and human rights issues “include panelists with expertise in such issues” (TRADE Act, pg34-35)!

In order to ensure acceptable treatment of citizens by US trading partners, the bill mandates that every two years a report be issued by the Government Accountability Office (GAO). This report will cite information regarding whether that country is democratic, respects fundamental human rights and religious freedom, has taken measures to combat public and private corruption, complies with multilateral environmental agreements, has adequate labor and environmental regulations, provides for governmental transparency, and maintains the due process of law. Additionally, there are exceptions to the Act in cases where a country is shown to pose a threat to the national security of the US.

The GAO would also provide information on the effects of existing International Trade like NAFTA and CAFTA which are among the trade agreements that have become considerable examples on which all other trade agreements are based. Their creation included corrupt, unmonitored and extremely exclusionary tactics that have set an unfortunate standard for international trade policies and practices. If the TRADE Act were passed, these agreements would have the potential to be tweaked or improved if Congress felt changes were necessary.

The TRADE Act is a refreshingly non-ethnocentric piece of literature that promotes the right to self-governance and autonomy, significantly pushes environmental protection and human rights causes, helps ensure the transparency of international trade, and has the potential to change the face of America to the world.

By Kelly Flanagan

If you are a reporter and reading this, try this exercise: you’re a single parent; you have two children, ages two and seven; you have a high school diploma. Write yourself a budget: give yourself a job in line with your qualifications (with a typical salary), then figure out how much a typical apartment in the L.A. basin area costs, how much to budget for food, health care, child care, transportation. The assignment serves a purpose: to bring home the fact that it is impossible to support a family on minimum wage. The numbers simply cannot work. You can make up relatives to take care of the children while you’re working, you can make up a second or even a third job, you can pretend that L.A.’s public transportation works well enough that you won’t spend hours commuting, you can discover the holy grail–a minimum wage job with health insurance!–but no matter how many miracles you make up, you’re going to be relying on credit cards and getting deeper and deeper in debt.

Since the ’90s, real wages have dropped. While this economy means that everybody is feeling the pinch, a press that already underreported the “working poor” has stopped talking about them altogether. Every story is about how the formerly-rich and -middle class are dealing with cuts in income. This makes sense in one sense; reporters are, in essence, reporting about the trends as they themselves are experiencing them. As reporters are being laid off right and left, those who are left are seeing budgets drying up for local news coverage, and advertisers don’t target the working poor because the working poor have no money. So reporting is going for the most accessible story, the cheapest to produce, the one that will resonate with advertisers’ target demographics: how their own class is dealing with this economy.

Barbara Ehrenreich wrote an excellent article, Too Poor to Make the News this weekend, pointing out that while the press will pay lip service to unemployment, stories about the working poor who are losing the minimum-wage jobs that barely got them by are not “sexy” enough. People losing their houses are more likely to get press sympathy than those who simply can’t make their rent. And at the same time, nonprofits that service low-wage populations have seen their endowments drop and donations decline, leading to layoffs and service cuts.

Economic stimulus money isn’t likely to get to the people at the bottom. Measures enacted to get it to the people who need it most, like reforming unemployment insurance, have been stymied by several state governors more interested in political rhetoric than their constituents. Affordable universal health care is gearing up for a fight against an apathetic or even hostile Congress. When the press doesn’t cover the people who are hurting the most, it’s easy to say that modernizations to unemployment and health care aren’t necessary. If the press were to show the true state of poverty in America today, the public would demand that something be done.

Unfortunately, as I see it, the press is too afraid of losing what’s left of its own industry to use their platform to leverage change.

- Janaki Spickard-Keeler

Abandoning emerging economies to the assistance of the International Monetary Fund is like assigning a child to a tutor who is not only failing, but bullying other children and selling drugs on the side. However, leaders at home and abroad have failed to realize the disservice they are committing and have promised the IMF 1.1 trillion dollars.

On June 10, 2009, the House Subcommittee on Terrorism, Nonproliferation, and Trade convened to examine issues relating to the current global, economic situation. The hearing, “Foreign Policy Implications of US Efforts to Address the International Financial Crisis: TARP, TALF, and the G-20 Plan,” devoted a significant amount of time to the domestic impact of trade agreements like the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) and the Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility (TALF), yet subcommittee Chairman Brad Sherman (D-CA) opened the hearing with a statement that questioned the policies and practices of the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Chairman Sherman accused the financial institution of enacting policies that were “utterly blind to the anti-genocide, anti-proliferation and anti-terrorist policies of the United States.” Such policies will allow for the likely 250 billion-dollar expansion to drawing rights to finance governments like Iran, Sudan, Syria, Burma and Zimbabwe. While, according to witness Dr. Nancy Birdsall, “efforts” are being made to reform IMF governance (such as expanding China’s voting share from 3.7% to 5.6% - currently, Belgium and the Netherlands combined hold a greater share than China), nothing is being done in regards to which nations are granted loans.

Further, and equally important, emerging nations in need of economic assistance have experienced economic mismanagement by the IMF. The IMF’s common prescription for economic growth, full liberalization of the markets, most often results in cuts to social services, high interest rates, and in the case of Malawi, the removal of all agricultural subsidies. Eight years after enacting such “recommendations,” the price of a bag of fertilizer doubled and Malawi farmers found themselves unable to purchase even one bag.

Dr. Nancy Birdsall, President of the Center for Global Development, however, supported the G-20 plan at Wednesday’s hearing, stating that “the IMF today is not the IMF of old.” She claims that the IMF now recognizes and supports the practice of deficit spending during economic crises, especially in the arenas of health and education.

Birdsall’s position is contrary to studies that show that countries engaged in IMF programs suffer. Harvard and New York University studies report that once a nation enters an IMF program, growth does not just slow, it retards.  One study found that countries under IMF programs grew at a rate of 2.04% while those not involved in IMF programs grew at a rate of 4.39%. Another study found that IMF participation had a direct negative impact on growth by producing a stigma which discourages private investors. In these times of frugality, why would the government throw needed taxpayer dollars away on a failing business?

The G-20’s plan to fund the IMF is a plan to keep the markets of developing nations open to U.S. exports. The United States’ economy, in 2008, was almost completely dependent upon exports, one-third of which went to emerging markets. In the race to save developing nations’ economies, the world powers are racing to save themselves.

While the ideal of aiding developing nations should not be opposed or criticized, it is the manner in which the major governments seek to do so with which one finds offense and fault. We should be investing in these countries through government grants and a new, modernized Foreign Assistance Act which could provide the necessary capital and assistance to transform the economic environment by developing infrastructure, education, and better health programs, but we should be doing so in a fair, effective and humanitarian manner. In 2007, the U.S. spent only 21.8 billion dollars on foreign aid, approximately 1/50 of what the G-20 leaders have promised the International Monetary Fund. The effort to remove the proposed 109 billion-dollars from the war funding bill should not be an exercise in penny-pinching; it should be an effort to find a better way.

-Kimberly Killen

Photo Credit: Africa Renewal http://www.un.org/ecosocdev/geninfo/afrec/vol22no3/malawi2.jpg

Peruvian government forces attack indigenous protesters defending their ancestral lands. PHOTO: Thomas Quirynen

As Peru wakes up this morning, many will decide whether to engage in strikes to stand against “free trade” and support indigenous people of the Amazon who were tragically attacked last week by their government. The official death toll from last week’s police attack on indigenous people in Peru is 30 lives lost, though it is estimated that many more have died. They died while protesting the harmful impact of the US-Peru Free Trade Agreement on their forests, their families, and their ancestral lands.

When viewed from outer space, one might say that the main objective of the human race since the Industrial Revolution has been to develop. “Development” is a sacred word to your local town hall, the sounding floor of the UN, and micro-financiers from Ghana to Sri Lanka.

And we’ve been very good developers. We’ve built everything to make us go faster, longer, and stronger, from malls to missiles to microchips. The standard of living of the average person in the US has increased to include all the standard comforts that may have been afforded by your typical feudal lord from England or Japan. Yet, if you take a more nuanced view of humans, and actually ask one of us, “What is the goal of your life?” The answer you usually get is something that boils down to “I just want happiness.”

Do our developments lead to happiness?

In an insightful New York Times column, Daniel Gilbert says that happiness levels in the US have decreased since the before the global economic collapse that we’ve been experiencing for the past eight months. But he makes the important distinction that human happiness is not really in flux according to increased or decreased wealth. The real reason that the economic collapse has impacted happiness has more to to with uncertainty. He writes:

But light wallets are not the cause of our heavy hearts. After all, most of us still have more inflation-adjusted dollars than our grandparents had, and they didn’t live in an unremitting funk. Middle-class Americans still enjoy more luxury than upper-class Americans enjoyed a century earlier, and the fin de siècle was not an especially gloomy time. Clearly, people can be perfectly happy with less than we had last year and less than we have now.

So if a dearth of dollars isn’t making us miserable, then what is? No one knows. I don’t mean that no one knows the answer to this question. I mean that the answer to this question is that no one knows — and not knowing is making us sick.

So it is actually financial uncertainty, not the decrease in our bank accounts that is making us unhappy. Gilbert concludes:

Our national gloom is real enough, but it isn’t a matter of insufficient funds. It’s a matter of insufficient certainty. Americans have been perfectly happy with far less wealth than most of us have now, and we could quickly become those Americans again — if only we knew we had to.

Happiness has nothing to do with the fact that the average American is less able to engage in highly consumptive activities like going to Disneyland or stuffing their closets with unneeded fashion and accessories.

So why has our global society spent the last 150 years seeking more and more stuff, leisure, and comfort, like we’re on some crazy global joy ride? Not to make us happier, that’s for sure. We can be perfectly happy without a bull market, a trust fund, or land holdings. And for most of us, who aren’t among the rich and famous, that’s something to smile about.

- Lacy MacAuley

The proposed Panama trade plan would harm intact, ecologically sustainable communities like that of the Kuna indians. Photo source: www.lizasreef.com

People and planet should come before profits, but the proposed Panama trade plan would mean greed rules. The Senate Finance committee is meeting tomorrow to discuss the proposed Panama Trade Promotion Agreement. Top trade negotiator Ron Kirk is trying to ram through this agreement by July 1, when the Panamanian head of state Martin Torrijos leaves office. But this is just another free trade agreement that is bad for the people of Panama, it’s bad for the planet, and it’s no good for people of the US. We should call upon Congress to stop it now.

There’s a rancher that I know who raises cattle in the Chiriqui province of Panama, who I’ll only call Uncle Rickie. I met Uncle Rickie when I traveled to Panama in November of 2008, and I remember him for being a jolly fellow with a big belly who proudly bounced his new granddaughter Antonia, his first grandchild, on his knee.

If the Panama agreement went forward, Uncle Rickie would have to contend with a host of difficulties. The first would be that US cattle ranchers, who enjoy hundreds of millions in subsidies from the US government (US livestock farmers got handouts of about $344 million in 2003, for example,) would suddenly be able to sell duty-free to Panamanians. At the same time, Uncle Rickie will have to compete with a dramatic influx of cheap pork products from the US. Pro-pork lobbyists think that increased sales to Panama will result in $20.6 million in increased revenue. Uncle Rickie will have a lot of trouble making a profit by selling his beef to the Panamanian market, and eventually he may have to sell his land.

Farmers should be allowed to sell to their local markets. Local, living economies are good for everyone. If officials pass the harmful agreement, farmers like Uncle Rickie will no longer be able to carry on farming. Who would be there to buy the land of farmers who are forced to sell? Companies from the US and other rich nations, and maybe some wealthy Panamanians who support this agreement. This leads to a consolidation of power and decision-making as fewer people own more and more of planet earth. But people have a right to self-determination and autonomy, and the Panamanian government should respect that right.

(more…)

For the last two weeks, I have been pitching important stories about protecting voting rights and turning around America’s economy. To my dismay, I am finding that my calls to some long-time media contacts are not answered because they have been downsized or shut-down. News & Notes on NPR was one of the most intelligent pieces of coverage of the black community, in my opinion; unfortunately it has been discontinued. Neil at the Affinity Lab saved me a pitch call that wouldn’t get answered when he told me AJC’s opinion page editor Cynthia Tucker is moving to DC. What does this signal? Just now, an old contact at AP’s email bounced back. Is he gone, too?

The ever-vigilant and always fabulous Will Robinson posted this on his Facebook 5/5: “An interesting Brit podcast on future of US newspapers. Next we need look at the low ratings for local TV news programs - especially the 10 and 11 PM local newscasts. With news staff cuts, ESPN, and the weather channel/weather.com are the local TV newscasts the next domino to fall after newspapers? What happens to local and state government when the press is now longer there to be a watchdog?” See Lacy’s blog about the Rocky Mountain News. See Frank Rich on suicide watch for newspapers at the Times.

While Massey Media has, since the beginning of the century, advised our organizations and clients on Internet media, new media, web 2.0, 3.0 and running successful communications campaigns without a full reliance on the press, I fear the loss of traditional media also means a choking off of voices and outlets.

How will journalism survive? According to Rich, “… nobody really knows what form journalism will take in the evolving post-newspaper era.” But, we all know that real investigative reporting takes money. Where will that come from? Some of my colleagues from the world of newspapers have gone to institutes and foundation-supported efforts. Yet, if reporters have foundation-credentials vs newsroom-credentials, are elected leaders going to feel it necessary to engage them or will they be able to close the door? Are reporters participating in truth-telling without the backing of a proven and wide audience?

In addition to the theoretical questions about how journalism will evolve, there is the question about what out-of-work reporters do for a paycheck. My uncle was a long-time newspaper editor who has gone on to do great work in public relations in support of public schools. Yes, there are great careers for reporters, even being a Whitehouse Press Secretary, and there will always be demand for great communicators.

Yet, journalists miss the the newsroom. (See the fun new thriller State of Play) The noise of the newsroom, the tension of meeting a daily deadline and following leads, create an energy that can’t be replicated online.

We, at Massey Media, work in a open space, akin to a newsroom. The Affinity Lab is a cooperative workspace for DC entrepreneurs. Sometimes, the room can get exciting. When a group is trying to launch a new program, we all pitch in, like 1Well’s fundraiser or Affinity Lab’s recent public relations push. The energy heats up with dozens of people pitching in to create our shared success. We bring in different types of funding: clients, foundations, sales, membership fees, and our synergy is loose. It works.

I suggest that jobless journalists use an Affinity Lab-style cooperative to save reporting. Jobless journalists can be members and pay a fee or have sponsor pay. (Affinity Lab starts at $235/month. ) Jobless journalists can come together in a shared workspace would be the start to recreating a newsroom feeling. Out of newspaper employees would organize by skills and interests: Those with sales and financing experience get to work at finding investment dollars. Journalists go back to work, maybe reporting on the demise of the newspaper. The tech people build new media for delivering the stories, and so forth. The question that needs to be answered is who will pay for journalism in America? I suggest an incubator be built so we can preserve truth in our democracy.

- Sarah Massey

On April 7th, with the help of Massey Media, the AFL-CIO and Working America launched the Unemployment Lifeline campaign.

This online resource is the first of it’s kind, synthesizing aspects of Wikipedia and Facebook to create a new “one stop shop” approach to out of work Americans dealing with unemployment.

Simply by entering your zip code, you gain access to a wealth of information and resources as well as an entire community of people to offer support. UnemploymentLifeLine.com is a living, growing resource that users can add useful contacts to and add their own comments about their experience.

Here is one of our clips that was syndicated by NBC in over 18 media markets:

http://nwahomepage.com/content/fulltext_news/?cid=81071

Check it out!

- Lyle Harrod