Let us not be dragged back into the “working mom versus stay-at-home mom” dialogue. By Roseanne Barr.

Roseanne Barr on Ann and Mitt Romney and the Mommy Wars

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I almost got sick to my stomach when I heard Hilary Rosen’s unfortunate words regarding Mrs. Mitt Romney.

It’s a shame that Rosen lobbed the Romney campaign a fat political softball they could smack over the gender fence. It’s especially unfortunate because Romney was on the ropes with American women, at least the ones with an IQ higher than Ramblin’ Rick Santorum’s. After the Republicans had alienated at least half the voting public by all but condemning birth control, suddenly Rosen’s remark enabled them to self-righteously assume the role of defenders of American motherhood. Mitt Romney, who’s shown himself to be the empty suit that even most Republicans know he is, had proven it by making ridiculous statements like “Not the language I would have used” when asked what he thought of Rush Limbaugh’s disgusting, insulting tirade directed at a young woman testifying before Congress. Limbaugh called her a slut and suggested that she owed the tax-paying public a sex tape. Mitt the Twit rolled that around in his tiny brain, and then, when pressed, he announced that he thought Rush, the painkiller lush, was just a bit over the top. God, he’s brave! Limbaugh’s insane comments were barely a blip on Romney’s radar, but the Rosen comment is a huge deal in Mitt’s world.

I say let’s find that “cleaning lady” (if she is documented) and ask HER how many hours she worked per week over the years.

Mitt Romney and his wife, Ann, last month in Illinois, Nam Y. Huh / AP Photo

The media, which are completely clueless about every single issue that affects American women, must have had a shiver run down their nonexistent spine when they realized they could dig out the old “stay-at-home mom versus working mom” script that worked so well to divide and conquer mothers and women along class lines to help defeat the Equal Rights Amendment back in my 20s.

Mrs. Mitt Romney and one of her adult sons took to the airwaves in defense of countless stay-at-home mothers whose husbands are billionaire insurance-company hucksters and corporate raiders, and both represented a decadent and crumbling empire well. Mrs. Mitt Romney claims to have worked her toned ass off, raising five Romney males all on her own, as privileged wives often do—but, no, Ann, I call bullshit on your Big Mama story, girlfriend. Your son may flash that “I adore my mother” grin on cable TV all day as he backs up your claims that you did it all on your own with no help—except from a “lady” who comes in one or two hours a week to help with housework. Of course neither Mrs. Mitt Romney nor her son knew the name of the “cleaning lady,” either, because like 99 percent of rich people, they are oblivious to those women who do work outside the home, even when they work inside the home of the Romney family. I say let’s find that “cleaning lady” (if she is documented) and ask HER how many hours she worked per week over the years.

The son seemed quite vacuous, like his father, really, but perhaps I am mistaken in my judgment of him and of Mrs. Mitt Romney. These were just my perceptions as I watched the son she raised speak on AC420 or whatever they call it. It doesn’t seem she did too good of a job, given that her son exhibits such a low level of moral awareness. Was he a passenger in the car with the dog roped in a cage on top?

Hilary Rosen should not have attacked the Leisure Class’s women—does Romney pay her, too? What a great opportunity she has given the vast right-wing conspiracy—suggesting that their women don’t work, when everybody can see that the Women of the Right are large and in charge. The picture of Ann Romney “manning” the phone banks in front of a campaign poster that reads “Mitt Romney is good for business” tells me all I need to know about her contributions to her family, her church, and her country—convincing other privileged white women that defeating feminism is necessary to save the confederacy of dunces called the GOP, which steals bread from the mouths of widows and orphans and workers’ retirement funds as it congratulates itself for dismantling all that social-safety-net, entitlement, nanny-state load of socialist insurrection and places that money instead into private hands, so that the filthy working sluts can’t get any of it for their selfish selves. They will just use it to pay for abortions and other fun things if given half a chance.

As my friend Gail Zappa pointed out: what we really need now is a party that likes women.

But why bring out this fake issue again now? Could it be to divert the conversation from the continued restrictions being placed on women’s reproductive rights and make us forget that both parties are socialists for their own causes whose joint policies of redistribution of wealth have made it nearly impossible for anyone to “choose” the stay-home option and not feel that the system is rigged against 99.9 percent of the population, no matter how hard they work?


 

Let us not be dragged back into the “working mom versus stay-at-home mom” dialogue. Let us stay on topic, working to create new solutions that work for the majority of all people in the U.S. instead of getting caught up in these silly, divisive audibles both parties employ as their Hail Mary attempts to throw us off task.

I see the holes in both parties’ stories.

That is why I am running for POTUS—to be sure that the national debate includes talking about the issues we all face instead of going to the old playbook to energize the vocal minority on fringe issues. We do not have time to fall for these distractions anymore.
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Roseanne Barr is running for president of the United States.

My 14 Year Old Son Has Brain Cancer -- Without Obamacare, We May Have Been Dropped By Our Insurance Company.

Salon / ByJanine Urbaniak

My then 13-year-old son would have reached his lifetime limit of health insurance had such limits not been eliminated by Obamacare on April 1, 2011.

 

This originally appeared on Janine Urbaniak's Open Salon blog. It was written in a response to a call for essays about people's personal experiences with the Affordable Care Act. Have an Obamacare story of your own? Blog about it on Open Salon.

Mason is my 14-year-old son, who is adorable and funny, and happens to have a very stubborn and large brain tumor. We discovered the tumor four years ago, and we have been monitoring and treating it with the help of some of the finest doctors around. Mason has lived a somewhat “normal” life, despite frequent MRIs and even chemotherapy. He did his homework and hung out with friends until the fall of 2010 when his headaches became debilitating. Scans revealed that Mason’s tumor had grown for the first time since we had discovered it. Then days before we were scheduled to meet with the neurosurgeon to discuss a surgery we had tried to avoid, Mason had a massive cerebral hemorrhage.

My boy spent 65 days in the pediatric intensive care unit (PICU) at one of Northern California’s best hospitals; during that time he underwent two brain surgeries, along with operations to insert a tracheostomy and a feeding tube. We stayed with him 24 hours a day, my husband, Alan, and I, his grandparents, and his 16-year-old brother, watching his oxygen levels on a screen, tracking his heart rate in beats per minute. The doctors kept him sedated, but every morning they turned down the propofol (Michael Jackson’s drug of choice) when the neurosurgeons came to do their examination. Three to five doctors circled Mason’s bed, one of them yelled his name into his ear. When he didn’t wake up right away, they apologetically pinched him and yelled louder.

When I was alone with Mason I put a white earbud into his ear and tuned my iPod to a song I knew he liked, “Airplanes” by B.O.B. I said it was time to wake up. “You need to come back, now,” I told him in my firm mommy voice.

During our first three weeks of hospitalization Mason racked up $1.1 million in medical bills. I worried about butting up against the $5 million lifetime limit on Mason’s health insurance policy. We had a good policy with a good company. We always paid our premiums on time and in full. But Mason wasn’t getting out of the hospital at any time soon, and there were months of rehab ahead. My then 13-year-old son would have reached his lifetime limit of health insurance had such limits not been eliminated by Obamacare on April 1, 2011. That date felt like a birthday or anniversary, something to be celebrated, when it finally arrived and we weren’t yet dropped by our health insurance company.

After two months in the PICU, we moved to a sunny room on one of the hospital’s regular floors. Our boy had just regained consciousness, though he still couldn’t talk or move his arms and legs. When the neurosurgeons came for their daily exam, we cheered when Mason managed a half-mast thumbs up. It was a huge victory.

As we celebrated our first day out of the pediatric ICU, Polly, the hospital discharge planner, introduced herself. Her job was to get the necessary approvals from our insurance company and make sure every moment of our stay was covered. This meant that she needed us to be ready to leave at any time. We needed a plan. She talked about Mason’s options for rehabilitation facilities. I soon realized that it would be challenging finding a place for a 6 foot tall 13year-old with a neurological injury. I scoured the Internet on my laptop for options.

A few days later, Polly stopped by to let me know that our insurance company representative had told her that Mason no longer needed hospitalization. Someone (she wasn’t naming names but they were clearly not a part of our medical team) suggested that we send our boy to an “interim” facility in a rundown city 40 miles away from our hospital and about 60 miles away from our home. I looked at Mason, who was enjoying his lunch through a feeding tube in his abdomen and breathing through another tube attached to a ventilator. I reminded her that Mason needed to be where he had access to neurosurgeons for emergencies. She smiled blankly and repeated something about medical necessity and pre-authorization. It was out of her hands.

Mason bought us a reprieve with a high temperature and a series of seizures. It started when his eyes fluttered from left to right, then his body stiffened. I rang the emergency button and the nurse ran for the appropriate drug. I held Mason’s hand and told him we were riding a big wave. It was pulling us under but we would always emerge. It would pass. I kept my voice low and even.

When my husband arrived later that day, I told him that at least they were not going to kick us out of the hospital now. I was aware my thinking had taken on a new and undesirable twist.

I avoided Polly. If I saw her at the nurse’s station, I ducked back into Mason’s room and locked myself in the bathroom. If she called, I let her leave a message. I spent all of my time caring for my child. Did the nurse wash her hands when she came into the room? Had Mason received his 3 p.m. meds? It’s not that I wanted to spend any extra time in the hospital, it was just that Mason was still so fragile and we had nowhere to go yet.

The insurance company appointed one of their staff nurses to support us through our medical crisis. I believe she was a compassionate and concerned human being, but I never trusted her. I imagined that her notes would go into Mason’s file for the utilization department to examine and find reasons why they should cut back on his care, or lose him from their roles entirely. Any time she called, I heard the voice of Sgt. Joe Friday from Dragnet reminding me, “Anything you say can and will be used against you.”

Several people mentioned that TIRR in Houston was one of the best neuro-rehabilitation facilities in the U.S. Footage of wounded Rep. Gabrielle Giffords arriving at TIRR was airing on every news channel. I don’t believe in coincidences, especially when thousands of people were praying for us. I called to see if TIRR was a part of our health insurance network. It was. It turned out that TIRR had expertise working with teenagers and there was excellent neurosurgical care available less than a mile away at Texas Children’s Hospital. It seemed like this was meant to be until Polly burst into our hospital room and told us that we couldn’t go. Though the insurance company approved the rehabilitation, they refused to pay for the air ambulance. We dipped into our savings, grateful that we could, and chartered our first airplane; this one came with a crew of paramedics.

The rehab doctors weaned Mason off of pain medication and fitted him for a wheelchair. He was out of bed every morning and dressed in sweat pants and a T-shirt. He began occupational, physical and speech therapy, though in the early days he often nodded off halfway through a session. A neuropsychologist said Mason’s prognosis was good. The healthy brain tissue had not been harmed by the hemorrhage. It was just a matter of getting the wiring back online in Mason’s brain, retraining his muscles and building his strength.

The insurance company rationed out Mason’s rehab approvals two weeks at a time. To meet their standards, Mason had to strike the balance between needing ongoing therapy and showing continued progress. If he stopped getting better, the insurance company would stop paying for his therapy, which presents a problem because brain injury patients typically hit plateaus in their recovery. I prayed daily for the faceless insurance company doctors who parsed out Mason’s approvals, wishing them insight and compassion.

A rehab hospital is not the place to visit if you want to pretend that awful things can’t happen to blameless people. In addition to stroke victims of all ages, there was a 30-year-old woman who was rear-ended at high speed on an interstate highway. Her mother brought her 2-month-old baby to visit whenever she could, though the young woman stared ahead her eyes not seeming to focus. There was a naval officer who suffered oxygen deprivation due to an illness he suffered on a ship somewhere in the Pacific. His mother brought me strawberries when she came to visit one Saturday. Then there were two other teenage boys, like Mason, with different varieties of brain tumors. One didn’t survive his stay, though I’m not sure what happened. The other walked out of the rehab to the cheers of his therapists and all the rest of us.

We never saw congresswoman Giffords, though I found the presence of the Secret Service reassuring. Nancy Pelosi toured the gym one afternoon when Mason was having physical therapy. I introduced myself. She smiled and complimented my beautiful boy who was walking in a harness mechanism. I meant to thank her for the healthcare bill, but it was too disorienting speaking to someone I usually watch on CNN. John Boehner didn’t stop by, maybe it was too much, seeing all these folks flaunting their preexisting conditions, exceeding their lifetime insurance limits with such brazen determination to pull themselves upright again.

P.S. Mason is back in school, finishing 8th grade. He is walking, talking and working out at the gym three times a week. He received an A- on his paper on “Of Mice and Men.”
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Janine is a San Francisco Bay Area writer. She is currently working on a collection of essays about surviving her son's brain tumor and the odd reality that comes with a diagnosis of childhood cancer.

BPA in Your Food? The FDA's Still Okay With That.

greenkozi/Flickr

By Tom Philpott

 

 

Bisphenol A, a controversial chemical used in the lining of nearly all cans used by the food and beverage industry, got a reprieve from the government last week. Responding to a court order to decide on the Natural Resources Defense Council's petition to ban the stuff on the grounds that it causes harm even in tiny doses, the Food and Drug Administration rejected the petition and upheld its approval of BPA.

That's good news for some of the globe's biggest chemical companies. According to Bloomberg News, the global BPA market is worth about $8 billion, with about a quarter of total production going into cans. (The rest goes into polycarbonate plastics, which end up in everything from water bottles to DVDs.) Bloomberg adds that the three biggest suppliers of BPA to the American market are the chemical/steel giant Saudi Basic Industries Corp.—which is 70 percent owned by the Saudi government—the German chemical giant Bayer, and Dow, its US rival. Globally, reports the US Department of Agriculture, Bayer and Dow produce "the bulk" of BPA.

While their executives had reason to cheer the FDA's decision, consumers have reason to groan. The FDA's own research shows that BPA leaches from can linings into food, and a 2011 Harvard study found BPA at heightened levels in people who regularly consume canned soup.

 

BPA is what is known as an endocrine disrupter, meaning that it has a range of effects on human development at minute doses. And Friday's decision comes less than a month after the release of a major study of endocrine disruptors by a range of scientists, including some from the US Department of Health and Human Services, who found "strong evidence" that BPA negatively affects the prostate at low doses and "undisputed evidence" that it does so for mammary glands.

And that's not all. A 2008 study published in the Journal of American Medicine looked at urinary BPA levels in 1,455 US adults and examined health outcomes controlling for "age, sex, race/ethnicity, education, income, smoking, body mass index, [and] waist circumference." The result: the higher the BPA concentration in people's urine, the higher their incidence of cardiovascular trouble and diabetes. Of course, correlation is not causation—something besides BPA could have caused the increase in health troubles. But given that the scientists controlled for a range of obvious factors, and that that BPA has proven hazardous in the laboratory, those results give plenty of reason for alarm.

Now, it's true that there remains a good amount of uncertainty in the science of endocrine-disrupting chemicals, which is relatively new. The FDA seized upon that uncertainty to justify its decision. "While evidence from some studies have raised questions as to whether BPA may be associated with a variety of health effects, there remain serious questions about these studies, particularly as they relate to humans," the agency wrote in a statement following the decision. But as Time's Bryan Walsh put it, "For most public-health advocates, chemicals like BPA should be guilty until proved innocent—and they feel there's more than enough data out there to cast doubt on BPA's innocence."
It's worth noting that alternatives to BPA are already out there and working, as my colleague Kiera Butler showed back in 2010:

In 1999, Eden Foods, which sells organic goods, began lining most of its cans with a plant-based oleoresin. CEO Michael Potter calls the switch a "no-brainer," even though the new cans cost 14 percent more. "I eat this stuff," he says. "And so do my kids." Canning trade rep [John] Rost dismisses oleoresins as impractical due to shelf-life concerns, but Potter says Eden hasn't had a single case of contamination. For high-acid foods like tomatoes, which can eat away at oleoresins, companies have turned to those paper-and-aluminum cartons already used to package certain soups. But Potter says he's not surprised that major food companies and canners are resisting the new options. "They have hundreds of millions of dollars invested in BPA," he says. "They do not want to change anything."

The FDA's scientists may truly believe that it's prudent public health policy to preserve a status quo in which Americans, including children and pregnant women, continue consuming BPA in everyday foods. Then again, it's an election year, and as this blockbuster New York Times story demonstrates, the Obama White House has not been shy about pushing the agency around for political purposes. And the companies that make BPA, as well as the major food and can-making companies that have come to rely on it, are no political lightweights.

How Train Travel Could Make a Comeback.

Photo Credit: Shutterstock/ hfng

AlterNet / ByJames McCommons

Riding the rails has more advantages than just avoiding rising gas prices.

In all the chatter over $4 gasoline, the Keystone pipeline, dueling House and Senate transportation bills and the president's proposed infrastructure investments, it would be instructive for some politicians, and even a few journalists, to board a long distance train -- not because Amtrak's ridership will soar to new heights this summer (it surely will), but because on a train you hear the zeitgeist of America.

Recently I rode the Empire Builder between Chicago and Seattle across the northern Plains and through the oil booms towns of western North Dakota. Amtrak is transportation for the masses and community-based seating rules in the dining car. I lunched with Mennonites, grandmas, public school teachers, gang bangers, a computer programmer, a scientist, golf pro, and a man who just lost a kidney. On trains, people talk to one another because there's time and there something about being adrift on the landscape that puts passengers into a reflective mood.

The fragility of the economy clearly concerned these Americans, but generally they were a hopeful bunch and surprisingly stoic about energy prices. I heard a few shrill diatribes about the conspiracy of the oil companies or the obstructionism of the "greenies," but most conversations were thoughtful and measured. No one believed Newt Gingrich can guarantee $2.50 a gallon gas or that President Obama can solve the situation by opening the spigots of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

These folks have been through gas crises before -- going back to the early '70s -- and they've heard the same bromides from the politicians.

They understand that inertia more than oil addiction is America's real affliction. "How many times does this have to happen? What can we do? I still have to drive."

Their sentiments regarding air travel were just as resigned. No matter how claustrophobic the seating, how intrusive the security, or how much the carriers nickel and dime the passengers, we all have to board airplanes occasionally. Of course, we were riding a train, which naturally led to discussions of rail transportation. Few passengers were rail fans and knew much about the industry or that BNSF Railway owns the tracks beneath our seats, or that Warren Buffet bought the entire railroad a couple of years ago for $34 billion calling it great long term bet for America.

Yet, they could look out the windows, watch dozens of BNSF intermodal freights rushing past and grasp the fuel efficiency of trains loaded with hundreds of double-stacked shipping containers and truck trailers. Railroads enabled the big box stores and their Asian supply chain and in the future, intermodal trains running between American cities could remove tens of thousands of long-haul trucks from the interstates. But we need to build out the capacity of the rail system, which was reduced from 300,000 miles in 1960 to the current 150,000 miles. Amtrak runs a 22,000 mile network but owns just 700 miles, mainly the Northeast Corridor. The freight railroads who "host" passenger trains elsewhere worry that more of those silver trains on their infrastructure will jam up freight traffic and cost them money.

The buildout will require a private-public partnership between the big railroads, the federal government, the states, and Amtrak. Several states including Illinois, North Carolina, Michigan and California are already using matching federal funds for both freight and passenger improvements. Some DOTs are buying their own trains and bringing in Amtrak as the operator. Although there's lots talk about high speed trains what America really could use are more conventional trains running on the shared infrastructure.

Long distance trains, such the Empire Builder, are often criticized as romantic holdovers from another era, but those trains are the connections for a nationwide system. In the 1960s, government didn't build interstate highways through North Dakota and Montana because many people lived there. It was done to connect the more populous regions and extend good transportation to rural areas. Rail is no different. These nuances of transportation policy were superfluous to my fellow passengers. They were just trying to get to a doctor, to grandchildren, to work or home or a few hundred miles down the line because winter driving on the plains can be downright dangerous.

At dusk, we stopped in Williston, North Dakota, the heart of the oil patch where fracking and horizontal drilling of the Bakken Formation has virtually eliminated unemployment. Hundreds of motor homes and trailers squatted on the frozen prairie. Pickup trucks jammed the motels. Roughnecks with too much money and attitude boarded the train and drank heavily in the lounge car. Most hadn't seen girlfriends and wives for weeks. Natural gas being burned off as waste cast an eerie orange glow over the coulees and buttes.

Up close, "Drill baby drill" wasn't so pretty, and from the train, it looked apocalyptic.
That night, I ate a steak dinner with a muscular young army veteran, a month out of the infantry, and headed home to Minnesota from Seattle. He'd done two tours in Iraq and another in Afghanistan and was looking for work. I suggested the oil fields, but he had already talked with some of the roughnecks on the train who told of the frigid isolation of the drill rigs and the culture of the "man camps' housing thousands of workers.

"I had enough of that life in the army," he said. Proud of his service but seared by combat he added, "Whatever I do, I just hope the biggest mistakes in my life are behind me."

Everywhere in this land, there is work to be done and people who need the work. I didn't meet anyone who thought it was a dumb idea to invest in water and sewer systems, rehabilitated schools, bridges and roads, electric cars, smart grids, alternative energy and, yes, railroads.

Some rail experts promote Interstate II-- a plan to double and triple track 20,000 to 30,000 miles of existing freight right of way. The tracks would be grade separated -- meaning intersecting roads would run under or over rather than across the tracks. Intermodal freights could run 90 mph, passenger trains up to 125 mph, and heavy coal and grain trains could go their own slow speed. Initially, power would come from diesel locomotives, but eventually the corridors could be electrified, getting juice from greener sources, such as natural gas, wind, solar, and biomass.

As I explained the concept, more than a few of my dinner mates were willing to pay for it -- including through higher gas and user taxes. They aren't obtuse. Transportation is a public good that speeds the delivery of goods and people. Civilization has costs. We all have to pay.

The only question is whether we begin to build now or fritter away more decades of infighting and lack of purpose and argue about who is responsible for $4, maybe even $5 a gallon gas.
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James McCommons is author of Waiting on a Train: The Embattled Future of Passenger Rail Service (Chelsea Green, 2009).

Why Are People Dying to Bring You Dinner? The Shocking Facts About Our Food System.

 

 

AlterNet / By Christopher D. Cook

We hear of the sweatshops behind our computers, sneakers and other attire--yet the exploitation of farmworkers has become normalized.

 

Cesar Chavez, the champion of farmworkers' rights who gets his annual day of state recognition this Saturday, must be rolling in his grave. It's been 37 years since Governor Jerry Brown, in an earlier life, signed the landmark agricultural labor relations act--and soon California legislators will debate whether to enforce rules to provide water and shade to the 400,000 farmworkers who harvest our food.

According to Assemblymember Betsy Butler, D-Los Angeles, author of the Farmworker Safety Act of 2012, "At least 16 farm workers have died since the state issued emergency regulations related to heat illness in 2005. Since all of the deaths were preventable, it's clear that the regulations and their enforcement are ineffective."

Let's replay that: every year farmworkers are dying from thirst and heat exposure due to inadequate water and shade.

In announcing AB 2346, Butler added: "It is absolutely abhorrent to think that in this day and age, farm workers are not regularly provided with shade and water. These two commodities are essentially free and we all know that no grower would let their crops go without water."

To rally support, the United Farm Workers union and other advocates will gather in Sacramento this weekend and laborers will speak of toiling thirsty and overheated in the fields.

You'd think this would be a no-brainer, but history shows a long, sorry resistance to treating farmworkers with even the most basic dignities. In July 2010, Gov. Schwarzenegger vetoed a bill to give farmworkers overtime pay after eight hours a day or 40 hours a week (New York passed such a bill in 2009). This February, after lobbying from Kraft Foods, the American Meat Institute and others, the USDA withdrew a proposed rule requiring companies doing business with the agency to prove that their subcontractors--including growers--are complying with labor laws.

Can you imagine any other profession where such injustices would be allowed? We hear of the sweatshops behind our computers, sneakers and other attire--yet the exploitation of farmworkers has become normalized. Somehow food, so intrinsic to our daily lives, escapes the kind of justice we should take for granted in 2012.

Our ongoing "harvest of shame" is about more than water and shade. It is about toxic pesticide exposures that send farmworkers to the hospital--up to 20,000 are poisoned annually according to the Centers for Disease Control. It is about rock-bottom wages for back-breaking work: more than 60 percent of farmworkers live south of the poverty line. "Hired farmworkers continue to be one of the most economically disadvantaged groups in the United States," the USDA says, noting, "they are sometimes forced to sleep in their vehicles, in tents, or completely outdoors."

Farmworkers receive just half the average hourly wage of other private-sector workers, yet their pay represents up to 40 percent of food production costs for "crops such as fruits, vegetables, and nursery products," according to the USDA.

The dirty big secret of our food is that highly exploited labor is a major cost (particularly in organic farming), and even well-meaning growers fight to keep their costs down. If food prices get too high, consumers howl for price relief. Something has to give.

This Cesar Chavez Day, let's renew a national conversation about justice and fairness for America's roughly one million farmworkers. Here's a start: in the 2012 Farm Bill coming before Congress this summer, let's create an income and health support fund for farmworkers--and a Farmworkers' Bill of Rights. Currently, taxpayers subsidize agribusiness to the tune of roughly $15 billion a year--most of it benefiting large-scale production of additives for fast food and fuels that deplete our health and the environment. Let's redirect some of that money to prevent severe farmworker poverty, chronic disease and premature deaths.

Why spend taxpayer dollars to make sure farmworkers get basic justice? We're already paying the bill every day for uninsured farm laborers who end up in emergency rooms due to acute and chronic pesticide exposures or heat exhaustion; and we're already paying the bill for impoverished underpaid farmworkers who need welfare and other supports just to survive. We can pay now to prevent farmworker suffering, or pay later for the inevitable health and economic emergencies.

Farmworkers are often undocumented and vulnerable--but not powerless. They've won some impressive battles recently, with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers extracting better pay from Taco Bell and Trader Joe's. Like Cesar Chavez' great boycotts of the early 1970s, these campaigns organized farmworkers and consumers in common cause.

It's time for consumers and policymakers to demand an end to the sweatshops hiding behind our dinner plates. It's not just one company or a few bad apple growers--it's our whole economy and policy of "cheap food," which has cost many farmworkers an arm and a leg.
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Christopher D. Cook is the author of "Diet for a Dead Planet: Big Business and the Coming Food Crisis" (New Press). He has also written for Harper's, the Economist, the Los Angeles Times and the Christian Science Monitor.

Deepak Chopra - The Use and Misuse of Gratitude.

 

By Deepak Chopra

Once a self-help term becomes shopworn, it needs to be refreshed. I think this is true of terms like faith, compassion, unconditional love and gratitude. Let me address the last one. How is gratitude a useful expression of spirituality? No one argues that it makes others feel good if you are grateful, but is that useful to their personal growth and yours? Many people find it much easier to give than to receive, for example, which makes it hard for them to feel grateful when they are on the receiving end of a gift, favor, appreciation or love. They look embarrassed and uncomfortable instead.

Until we get to the bottom of why gratitude is so hard, we cannot really understand what gratitude actually is. A few points need to be made.

1. You are genuinely grateful when your ego gets out of the way.
2. Real gratitude isn't passing and temporary.
3. Gratitude takes openness and the willingness to set your ego aside.
4. No one is grateful for things they think they deserve. Therefore, gratitude is unearned, like grace.
5. When it is deeply felt, gratitude applies to everything, not simply to goodies that come your way.

These points focus on gratitude as a state where "I, me and mine" has been set aside. In a grateful state you are vulnerable, as the ego sees it. In reality, this feeling of openness must exist in order to receive grace, love, beauty and inspiration. More than one painter and composer has thanked God formally, knowing that there is a higher source -- something beyond the isolated individual -- that brings inspiration. There is a spiritual reason for such a sense of receiving from "on high," and it doesn't need to involve God or religion.

I'm talking about connection, feeling joined to and upheld by a higher intelligence. "Intelligence" is a more neutral word than God, and to me a more appropriate one, because we all possess intelligence, and if it suddenly expands or brings us an unexpected gift (such as insight, inspiration, a creative leap), it's only natural to feel grateful. You know at those special moments that something beyond your control has made itself known. The ego dislikes this loss of control, which is why you see people frown when surprised by a sudden gift or even the unexpected words, "I love you."

So the state of open receptivity needs to exist before gratitude has any spiritual usefulness; that connection is precious. Of course, there is polite gratitude, a social gesture that is nice in its own way. There is the gratitude of survivors who have narrowly missed death and disaster. There is passing gratitude for getting satisfaction from extra money, status, possessions and praise. All of these things count, but not nearly as much as gratitude for your very existence.

That kind of gratitude is truly spiritual, since it sets up a feedback loop -- the more grateful you are, the more your soul can give. Herein lies a trap, however. I recently caught a TV thriller set in a prison where a convict tells the warden that he is spiritual but not religious. The warden asks him to explain. "You can speak your mind," he says, and the convict replies, "Spirituality is for those seeking understanding. Religion is for those seeking reward." If you use gratitude as a ploy to get more gifts and gains (We are all guilty of this at one time or another), you are not experiencing a soul connection but an imitation set up by the ego. The ego is always out to get more, and if gratitude oils the machinery, all the better.

Will gratitude help you form a soul connection? This isn't a "fake it until you make it" issue. Gratitude, being a virtue, does help to put the ego in its place. A few moments of humility is all to the good, for anyone. But in a way your discomfort when being at the receiving end will prove more useful, because it indicates that you have obstacles and resistances to move inside yourself -- if you can resist sweeping your embarrassment under the rug but use it instead for self-examination, then the true bonding with your higher self begins.
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3 Surprising Shopping Habits That Are Bad for the World.

Photo Credit: Juan Camilo Bernal / Shutterstock.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

AlterNet / ByLauren Kelley

While most progressives are aware of Wal-Mart's labor problems, they may not know about the way workers at an Amazon shipping facility are treated.

 

 

Every good progressive knows that making ethical shopping decisions is a tricky business. Many dubious shopping practices are well-known: Wal-Mart and other big box stores that famously mistreat their workers, and chain bookstores, which are putting the nation's independent booksellers out of business, for instance.

But other practices are murkier. While most progressives are aware of Wal-Mart's labor problems, they may not know about the way workers at, say, an Amazon shipping facility are treated. And they may have no idea that buying a Groupon can be a terrible deal for some small businesses -- the very businesses they want to support.

Below you'll find several examples of shopping habits you may not know were tied to shady labor practices and other problems.

1. Buying from online retailers that treat their warehouse workers like dirt.
Most of us don't think twice about comparison shopping online to find the best deal on, well, just about everything. Shoes, books, electronics, toiletries, even food -- if there's free shipping, or a 30-percent-off code, who would hesitate to hit that "add to cart" button? Indeed, the data shows that online retail sales are going up and up, with a 15 percent increase in sales this past holiday season. Cyber Monday, the online equivalent of the old Black Friday door-busters, has become especially popular, with year-over-year sales increasing by 23 percent last year.

However, as Mother Jones' Mac McClelland wrote after going undercover at an online shipping facility recently, "every time a 'Place Order' button rings, a poor person takes four Advil and gets told they suck at their job." McClelland's undercover stint as a "picker" (someone who runs -- often literally -- around a massive warehouse looking for items to ship) taught her that such facilities are a minefield of terrible labor practices. Workers are routinely demoralized, saddled with unrealistic goals, forced to work under conditions that are extremely taxing on the body, and often given no job security whatsoever.

One of the biggest problems McClelland found is online retailers' over-reliance on temporary workers, who receive low pay, few-to-no benefits, unstable work schedules, and unsure future work prospects. She reports:

The Bureau of Labor Statistics found that more than 15 percent of pickers, packers, movers, and unloaders are temps. They make $3 less an hour on average than permanent workers. And they can be "temporary" for years. There are so many temps in this warehouse that the staffing agency has its own office here. Industry consultants describe the temp-staffing business as "very, very busy." "On fire." Maximizing profits means making sure no employee has a slow day, means having only as many employees as are necessary to get the job done, the number of which can be determined and ordered from a huge pool of on-demand labor literally by the day. Often, temp workers have to call in before shifts to see if they'll get work. Sometimes, they're paid piece rate, according to the number of units they fill or unload or move. Always, they can be let go in an instant, and replaced just as quickly.

As she notes, "that is how you slash prices and deliver products superfast and offer free shipping and still post profits in the millions or billions."

McClelland's experience doesn't appear to be an anomaly. Similar conditions have been reported at warehouses for Amazon, the world's largest online retailer, as well as for much smaller businesses, like New York City's grocery delivery service FreshDirect. In each of these instances, companies exploit workers to meet consumer demand for free or low-cost shipping -- a demand that might not exist if shoppers knew the human price of those low shipping costs.

2. Buying from Groupon and other group deal Web sites can be a bad deal for small businesses.
The group deal fad may be on the wane, but at its peak many of us bought coupons for everything from $5 off a dozen cupcakes, 20 percent off at a local restaurant, or a discounted massage. Group deal sites like Groupon, Living Social and Scoutmob, to name a few, still exist, and at least in theory, they're still a brilliant idea: a business (often a small, local one) signs up to offer a specific discount, and on a certain day hoards of people will buy said discount, giving customers a good deal and businesses an influx of business.

Unfortunately, the reality of these deal sites is often not so win-win. Some business owners have spoken out about their bad experiences. Jessie Burke, the owner of Portland's Posies Cafe, wrote last summer in a much circulated blog post that signing up with Groupon was "the single worst decision I have ever made as a business owner thus far." TechCrunch broke down why Burke's experience was not unusual:

• The customers she attracted weren't likely to be regulars. One customer tried to use three Groupons at once. "What are you going to get for $39? Do you want the whole shop? And they were really offended." "Most people took a trek here. This is definitely a neighborhood shop. People don't come here from other parts of town just to get coffee." Some were abusive to staff and didn't tip.
• Most customers didn't spend much more than the deal value. Groupon told her that something like 98% spent more than the value of the Groupon. "You think maybe like $5 above the value, not like 10 cents." It's in Groupon's interests to make the deal value as high as possible because they get a cut of that. They don't get a cut of anything extra that someone spends at the business.
• There was minimal training on what to expect. Groupon sent her a link to a video. There was no explanation of how to handle things like expired coupons. "The onus of responsibility shouldn't be entirely on this little business that doesn't know the laws in the first place."
• Burke didn't do anything to convert Groupon customers into regulars, like asking them to follow her on Twitter or Facebook.
• She would like to see more transparency. "I think it's helpful for people to know that you're not actually giving someone $6, you're giving someone $3 in our case."
• Her Yelp ratings sank after the Groupon customers complained about the business.

Points like these are surely part of the reason the deals on group deal sites have become less appealing in recent months; business owners have heard too many horror stories like Jessie Burke's. And that might be for the best, because for every Groupon success story, there seems to be a few businesses that got (unintentionally) screwed over by the people who bought their "deal."

3. "Fast fashion" stores rip off artists and exploit factory workers.
Awareness is growing about the unethical tendencies of companies that shill "fast fashion" -- H&M, Zara, Forever 21 and the like -- but it hasn't grown enough. There is not the same stigma among progressives for going into an H&M as there is for going into a Wal-Mart, and yet shopping at the former isn't a whole lot more ethical than shopping at the latter. In fact, many people still think of fast fashion stores as liberating, because they democratize fashion, bringing unattainable runway designs to the masses. Fashion for the people!

The reality is that these stores achieve "fashion democracy" by exploiting workers (the vast majority of their clothes are still made in overseas sweatshops) and ripping off the work of other designers. (Good design is expensive, because it takes a lot of work!)

These businesses are also famously wasteful, having been known to destroy perfectly good clothes that could have been worn by someone in need. And they've created the false impression among shoppers that everyone should be able to buy as much clothing as they want -- at $15 a dress, why not? So shoppers buy far more clothing than they actually need, and then toss it after it falls apart or becomes unfashionable, often after a few wears. Then, it either ends up in a landfill, or if the clothes are still wearable and can be donated, it goes to a thrift store, which is probably overrun with clothing donations. As Tabea Kay reported for GOOD recently:

[W]hen we drop off our blue Ikea bags filled with used clothing, we believe that the evidence of our disposable income is being put to good use. From there, only 15 to 20 percent of worthy waste is resold in thrift shops domestically, as the U.S. market simply doesn't house the demand to absorb more secondhand clothing. The remaining T-shirts, skirts and jeans follow one of three paths: 30 percent of it is cut and repurposed for industrial wiping rags; roughly 25 percent is recycled into fiber for reuse as stuffing and insulation; and the remaining 45 percent continues life as clothing on a different continent.

It would be easy to meet this information with resignation: Well, where the hell am I supposed to shop? And indeed, it is unrealistic to assume that we can or will all start shopping exclusively at food co-ops and ethical fashion boutiques. Still, we shouldn't despair. Instead, we should use this information to fire us up about supporting workers' rights in every industry and pushing for things like ethical shopping certifications, to borrow an excellent idea from McClelland's warehouse reporting.
As for the daily deal sites, some communities are starting to launch alternatives called cash mobs, which ask participants to flock to a chosen business on a chosen day and pay full price for their goods and services. The bottom line is that we're all going to have to get creative, and stay informed, to make headway toward widely available, ethical shopping choices.
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Lauren Kelley is an associate editor at AlterNet and a freelance writer and editor who has contributed to Change.org, The L Magazine and Time Out New York. She lives in Brooklyn.