Civil Rights

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The new mortgage rules

In case you missed this story in today’s New York Times, it was reported that Wells Fargo has started requiring a an essay for mortgage applicants. 

[OK this is an old logo but I like it]

When Linda Falcão applied for a mortgage from Wells Fargo, she didn’t realize she would be required to write the type of essay that’s more commonly included with a college application.

So she and her husband, Kemuel Ronis, were taken by surprise when Wells Fargo asked the couple, both 50, to pen a “motivational letter” explaining why they were moving. What they found even more shocking, however, were some of the themes that Wells required them to include in their statement, specifically, their plans regarding an “increase/decrease in family” or property size.

Ok.  I used to work in Fair Housing and I think that questions about family or pregnacy, how ever cleverly asked (Did you catch the “increase/decrease”?] are illegal.  I understand that Ms. Falcao and Mr. Ronis have filed a complaint.  In addition to questions about family plans and size, Wells Fargo asked them other questions that are just strange.

Besides asking for information about their family plans, which was paired with questions about plans to change the “property size,” Wells Fargo also requested that the letter include information that supported the fact that the property, in Glen Mills, Pa., would be their primary residence. The bank also asked them to include their commuting distances to work, as well as other properties that they may own in the area. The request for the so-called motivational letter was included in the bank’s mortgage commitment letter, which offered to approve their loan if they answered the bank’s questions and provided other documentation.

A Wells Fargo spokesman said that motivation letters were generally requested when the loan underwriter had more questions about a borrower’s “occupancy intentions.” For instance, he said the company might request such a letter when a family’s existing home is not yet sold and it wants the buyer to show that the new home will indeed serve as the primary residence.

The spokesman did not say why the bank would request information about a prospective borrower’s family plans, but said that “under no circumstances would any information about family status be used by Wells Fargo as the basis for a decision on a loan application.”

So why ask?  And what do you do with the information?

I find this all disappointing as I have had good experiences with the local office of Wells Fargo when helping some homeowners avoid foreclosure.  But the bottom line:  Think twice before trying to get a loan from Wells Fargo.  I think it is past time for that new Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection that the financial reform bill set up.  Where is Elizabeth Warren when we need her?

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Religious Freedom in America

George W. Bush was right.  [Never thought I would ever write that sentence.] The war on terror is not a war on Islam.  So why are our political leaders like President Obama and the Anti-Defamation League so skittish about saying that it is perfectly OK for a religious institution to build whatever they want on private property?  Would there be this kind of fuss if the Methodist Church decided to build a community center two blocks from Ground Zero?  I think not.

I’ve been searching through a number of websites to see if there were an accurate number for the Muslims who were killed in the collapse of the World Trade Center on 9/11 without success.  The numbers I’ve found range from 40 to as many as 200.  It really doesn’t matter except that the survivors who think building an Islamic Community Center near Ground Zero seem to have forgotten the diversity of people who died.

According to Maureen Dowd in her  column in today’s New York Times, there   “…already are two mosques in the same neighborhood — one four blocks away and one 12 blocks away.”

[A worshiper enters Masjid Manhattan, which is sandwiched between two bars on Warren Street, about four blocks from the World Trade Center site. It was founded in 1970]

So what exactly is up with the President who made a strong, clear statement and then took at least a step back?  Is it the political staff who worried that because of his name and the fact that some people still insist that he is Muslim it is bad for him to say there is a fundamental right to build an Islamic Community Center even if it is 2 blocks from Ground Zero?

Dowd points out

Let me be perfectly clear, Mr. Perfectly Unclear President: You cannot take such a stand on a matter of first principle and then take it back the next morning when, lo and behold, Harry Reid goes craven and the Republicans attack. What is so frightening about Fox News?

Some critics have said the ultimate victory for Osama and the 9/11 hijackers would be to allow a mosque to be built near ground zero.

Actually, the ultimate victory for Osama and the 9/11 hijackers is the moral timidity that would ban a mosque from that neighborhood.

A bit of advice from one of your supporters Mr. President:  Do and say what you think is the right thing.  Then don’t try to take it back.  I believe that one of the reasons your popularity is falling is because you are seen as too calculating. 

One bit of refreshing news is the open letter from six Muslim/Arab Republicans.

While some in our party have recently conceded the constitutional argument, they are now arguing that it is insensitive, intolerant and unacceptable to locate the center at the present location: “Just because they have the right to do so – does not make it the right thing to do” they say. Many of these individuals are objecting to the location as being too close to the Ground Zero site and voicing the understandable pain and anguish of the 9-11 families who lost loved ones in this horrible tragedy. In expressing compassion and understanding for these families, we are asking ourselves the following: if two blocks is too close, is four blocks acceptable? or six blocks? or eight blocks? Does our party believe that one can only practice his/her religion in certain places within defined boundaries and away from the disapproving glances of some citizens? Should our party not be standing up and taking a leadership role– just like President Bush did after 9-11 – by making a clear distinction between Islam, one of the great three monotheistic faiths along with Judaism and Christianity, versus the terrorists who committed the atrocities on 9-11 and who are not only the true enemies of America but of Islam as well? President Bush struck the right balance in expressing sympathy for the families of the 9-11 victims while making it absolutely clear that the acts committed on 9-11 were not in the name of Islam. We are hoping that our party leaders can do the same now – especially at a time when it is greatly needed.

Dowd cites two other Republicans

So look where we are. The progressive Democrat in the White House, the first president of the United States with Muslim roots, has been morally trumped by Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, two moderate Republicans who have spoken bravely and lucidly about not demonizing and defaming an entire religion in the name of fighting its radicals.

I have just heard that New York Governor David Patterson, a Democrat, was trying to set up some negotiations which would result in the Community Center being built on an alternative site.  The President can start to redeem himself by calling Patterson and urging him to stop any such effort.

I say boo to the cowardly Democrats and good for the reasonable Republicans striking a blow for religious freedom.  Let’s not let our fear of terrorist attacks let the extremists win.

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Prop 8 is ruled illegal

In a ruling my husband said he could have made, Judge Vaughn Walker held this afternoon that the Califorina voter approved proposition is unconstitutional.  The Prop 8 Suporters are expected to appeal and to argue that Judge Walker is gay and therefore biased..  I call this grasping at straws.

The Washington Post quoted Governor Schwarzenegger who as Govenor was the noninal defendant.

In a statement, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) said, “For the hundreds of thousands of Californians in gay and lesbian households who are managing their day-to-day lives, this decision affirms the full legal protections and safeguards I believe everyone deserves.”

You may recall that the case was aruged by what has been described as the legal “odd couple”.  The New York Times put it this way

…the plaintiffs’ case was argued by David Boies and Theodore Olson, ideological opposites who once famously sparred in the 2000 Supreme Court battle beween George W. Bush and Al Gore over the Florida recount and the presidency. The lawyers brought the case — Perry v. Schwarzenegger — in May 2009 on behalf of two gay couples who said that Proposition 8 impinged on their Constitutional rights to equal protection and due process.

The San Franciso Chronicle reported

Within minutes of the ruling, Maria Ydil, 31, and Vanessa Judicta, 32, headed to City Hall to apply for a marriage license. It was not immediately clear if they would get a license or be allowed immediately to marry.

A crowd trailed behind singing, “The Chapel of Love.”

While they were allowed to fill out paperwork, they were denied a license because the judge issued a stay on enforcement of the ruling pending further hearings on the issue, a city official said.

From the Times

“Being gay is about forming an adult family relationship with a person of a same sex, so denying us equality within the family system is to deny respect for the essence of who we are as gay people,” said Jennifer Pizer, the marriage project director for Lambda Legal in Los Angeles, who filed two briefs in favor of the plaintiffs. “And we believe that equality in marriage would help reduce discrimination in other settings because the government invites disrespect of us when it denies us equality.”

Between this decision making its way though the appeals process and the Massachusetts decision on the Defense of Marriage Act, the Supreme Court is going to have a pivitol role in the next step toward equal rights.   I will be posting more on this in coming days, as I digest the ruling, but I think that the Loving v. Virginia decision is finally going to be extended to same sex marriage as well. 

 

 

 

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Race is complicated

3 days ago no one had heard of Shirley Sherrod who turns out to be the wife of Charles Sherrod, a founding member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.

The Nation reports on Melissa Harris-Lacewell’s appearance on MSNBC’s Morning Joe.

Up until a few days ago, most of the nation didn’t know who Shirley Sherrod was, but for people who have made a life and a career out of studying civil rights, like Nation columnist Melissa Harris-Lacewell, that name was no news to them. Shirley Sherrod is the wife of Charles Sherrod, a foundational member of the Civil Rights Movement and one of the founders of Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Lacewell explains that Sherrod “was not just a bureaucrat working away in Georgia; this is a woman who is part of a family that has made real contributions to advancing the conversation on race in America.”

And even though right-wing blogger Andrew Breitbart only showed a short excerpt of Shirley Sherrod’s NAACP banquet speech and the administration rushed to judgment, Harris-Lacewell told Morning Joe that some good could come out of this scenario. She says that a national conversation on race is a bad idea, but a national classroom on race should be considered. Embedded under all of this mess is a beautiful story of Sherrod, the Spooner Family and interracial cooperation around issues of justice, Harris-Lacewell says. “The real narrative that Ms. Sherrod was telling is the narrative of someone who’s father was killed by the Ku Klux Klan, who developed prejudices and yet found a way through her advocacy and work to be a true advocate for this white farm family.”

And lest we forget, the NAACP also rushed to judgement by first applauding her dismissal.  I guess we can forgive Ben Jealous who is too young to have lived though the SNCC days or the segregated schools attended by Shirley Sherrod.  Did he recognize the last name, I wonder.  The white family she helped, the Spooners, jumped to her defense.

Image: Former Agriculture Department official Shirley Sherrod

For wisdom on this issue, I turn to Eugene Robinson’s column in today’s Washington Post.

After the Shirley Sherrod episode, there’s no longer any need to mince words: A cynical right-wing propaganda machine is peddling the poisonous fiction that when African Americans or other minorities reach positions of power, they seek some kind of revenge against whites.

A few of the purveyors of this bigoted nonsense might actually believe it. Most of them, however, are merely seeking political gain by inviting white voters to question the motives and good faith of the nation’s first African American president. This is really about tearing Barack Obama down.

It looked like a clear case of black racism in action. Within hours, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack had forced her to resign. The NAACP, under attack from the right for having denounced racism in the Tea Party movement, issued a statement blasting Sherrod and condemning her attitude as unacceptable.

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But Breitbart had overstepped. The full video of Sherrod’s speech showed that she wasn’t bragging about being a racist, she was telling what amounted to a parable about prejudice and reconciliation. For one thing, the incident happened in 1986, when she was working for a nonprofit, long before she joined the federal government. For another, she helped that white man and his family save their farm, and they became friends. Through him, she said, she learned to look past race toward our common humanity.

In effect, she was telling the story of America’s struggle with race, but with the roles reversed. For hundreds of years, black people were enslaved, oppressed and discriminated against by whites — until the civil rights movement gave us all a path toward redemption.

So why was she forced to pull over and text a resignation?  Robinson explains

The Sherrod case has fully exposed the right-wing campaign to use racial fear to destroy Obama’s presidency, and I hope the effect is to finally stiffen some spines in the administration. The way to deal with bullies is to confront them, not run away. Yet Sherrod was fired before even being allowed to tell her side of the story. She said the official who carried out the execution explained that she had to resign immediately because the story was going to be on Glenn Beck’s show that evening. Ironically, Beck was the only Fox host who, upon hearing the rest of Sherrod’s speech, promptly called for her to be reinstated. On Wednesday, Vilsack offered to rehire her.

Shirley Sherrod stuck to her principles and stood her ground. I hope the White House learns a lesson.

Tom Vilsack, the Secretary of Agriculture has apologized and offered her a job.  President Obama called to apologize.  It seems unlikely at this writing that she will go back to work for the USDA, but one can never tell.

The New York Times story points out

That, however, is unlikely to be the end of it for Mr. Obama, who has struggled since the beginning of his presidency with whether, when and how to deal with volatile matters of race. No matter how hard his White House tries to keep the issue from defining his presidency, it keeps popping back up, fueled in part by high expectations from the left for the first black president, and in part by tactical opposition politics on the right.

The Sherrod flap spotlighted how Mr. Obama is caught between these competing political forces, and renewed criticism from some of his supporters, especially prominent African-Americans, that he has been too defensive in dealing with matters of race — and too quick to react to criticism from the right

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“I think what you see in this White House is a hypersensitivity about issues of race, that has them often leaning too far to avoid confronting these issues, and in so doing lays the foundation for the very problem they would like to avoid,” said Wade Henderson, president and chief executive of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, an advocacy group here.

I don’t pretend to know what the President should do.  On one hand you have the right including leaders like Newt Gingrich and the Tea Party quick to find reverse racism, i.e. favoritism, is anything that the President tries to do.  It is unlikely that given what is happened Congress will vote to fund the settlement for black farmers denied loans and other benefits for which he requested an appropriation.   The lawsuit was settled in 1999, but farmers have never seen a penny.  According the NPR story, some of them are hopeful that the Shirley Sherrod incident will help move things along, but I am afraid just the opposite will happen.  I hope they are right.

A small group of black farmers rally at the Agriculture Department

The White House may have, as Eugene Robinson hopes, learned the lesson not to react without all the facts.  But I fear that race is still an issue that divides us to the point we can’t talk about it.  During the Lincoln-Douglas debates. the part of Andrew Breitbart/Glenn Beck was played by Stephen Douglas.  Douglas said “I do not regard the negro as my equal, and positively deny that he is any kin to me whatsoever.”  The problem for all the modern day Stephen Douglas’s is that a black man has been elected President.  The problem for Barack Obama is being the first.  And the ultimate irony is that it is almost exactly one year since Henry Lewis Gates was arrested.

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SNCC Celebrates 50 Years

The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee is celebrating its 50th Anniversary this weekend in Raleigh, North Carolina.  SNCC’s founding conference was held April 18-18, 1060 also in Raleigh convened by Ella Baker of the South Christian Leadership Conference.  According to Claybourne Carson in his history of SNCC,  In the Struggle (Harvard University Press, 1981), Baker was the one who realize the student need for autonomy and encourage the founding of a separate student group.  Many founders and early workers are now legendary.  John Lewis, Robert Moses, Jane Stembridge, Marion Barry, Diane Nash, James Lawson, Ruby Doris Robinson, Stokely Carmichael, Willie Peacock,  Julian Bond, Bob Zellner, Charles Sherrod, the list could go on and on.  It is wonderful that they are all being celebrated.

SNCC 50th Anniversary Logo

According to the conference website

The Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee or SNCC (pronounced “Snick”) emerged from the student sit-ins that erupted on February 1, 1960 in Greensboro, North Carolina. Although just four students launched these sit-ins, within two months thousands of students across the south were engaged in similar protests against racial segregation. On April 15, 1960, some 200 of these campus-based activists began meeting in Raleigh, North Carolina on the campus of what is now Shaw University and formed SNCC. In 1961, a handful of these activists committed to full-time work in the southern civil rights struggle; some of them postponing their college plans. SNCC became an organization of grassroots organizers.

Historians characterize SNCC as the movement’s “cutting edge”. Its “field secretaries” worked in the most dangerous parts of the south seeking to both cultivate and reinforce local leadership. Its uncompromising style of non-violent direct action confronted racial injustice throughout the South and contributed to the elimination of racial segregation. And SNCC’s unique “from-the-bottom-up” approach to organizing led to the emergence of powerful grassroots organizations.

 With “One Man, One Vote” voter registration campaigns SNCC paved the way for a new generation of black elected officials across the south. By breaking the grip of “Dixiecrats” on southern politics they changed forever politics in America. It is this work that laid the foundation for the election of America’s first African-American President, Barack Obama.

NRP also had a story on Weekend Edition this morning.

The Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee has its 50th reunion this weekend. The civil rights group dates back to the first lunch counter demonstrations in Greensboro, N.C., that quickly spread across the South. One of the goals of the reunion is to get young people involved in tackling social, political and economic issues.

The story of Elwin Wilson’s apology to John Lewis was broadcast on NRP on April 16 as part of the coverage of SNCC’s 50th Anniversary.

Bunt Gill wipes raw egg off his clothing during a civil rights protest in 1960 in Rock Hill, S.C.

Bunt Gill wipes raw egg off his clothing during a civil rights protest in February 1960 in downtown Rock Hill, S.C. Among the hecklers in the crowd is a young Elwin Wilson (center, wearing a football jersey). Wilson later admitted attacking John Lewis, now a Georgia Congressman, in May 1961. He has since apologized.

These photographs from the anniversary website were taken by Danny Lyon who was a photographer for SNCC and had an exhibit at the conference.

Photo Exhibit

Of course times were very complicated and there were divisions between black and white students, between northern and southern student groups and eventually between movement men and movement women.  I was too young to go south for Mississippi Summer, so I had to content myself with boycotting Woolworth’s and going to concerts by the Freedom Singers.  By the time I was in college in 1965, I joined an SDS group and was very briefly an organizer for the Southern Student Organizing  Committee (SOCC) in Virginia.   SOCC was a southern “affiliate” of SDS and was founded at the time that SNCC was becoming a more militant, black organization.  SOCC disbanded in 1969.

So it makes me happy to see that SNCC has come full circle and is welcoming an integrated  group of third grade students from Oakland, CA as future civil rights leaders.

Future Activists

Future Activists

Happy Birthday, SNCC!

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Still fighting the Civil War

I’ve heard people chuckle in amazement at factions in other countries who still feud over “ancient” injuries, but we have our own on-going civil war.  It appears that for many, the Confederacy was never defeated and the South can rise again.  Two smart women, Melissa Harris-Lacewell and Gail Collins have written about this phenomenon each using the Virginia Confederate History Month as a starting point.

Harris-Lacewell writes of the “Two Virginias” in the Nation

Governor Robert McDonnell declared April Confederate History Month in Virginia. In his declaration Governor McDonnell called for Virginians to “understand the sacrifices of the Confederate leaders, soldiers and citizens during the period of the Civil War.”

In his original declaration, McDonnell made no mention of slavery as a root cause for the Civil War. His insistence on remembering only “leaders, soldiers, and citizens” refuses to acknowledge the existence of black people in the South. There were some black soldiers who fought in the Confederate army, but the vast majority of African Americans contributed to the Confederate effort through the violently coerced, unpaid labor that was part and parcel of the their dehumanizing, totalizing, intergenerational, chattel bondage. McDonnell seems to believe that this reality is unworthy of remembrance.

It’s taken me nearly two days to respond to the Governor’s declaration of Confederate History Month and his flip erasure of black life, suffering, and struggle because this particular news story is profoundly personal.

On my father’s side we traced our family tree as far as we could follow it and discovered we are descended from an African woman sold into slavery on a corner in Richmond, Virginia.

Harris-Lacewell continues

My father and his siblings grew up in the Church Hill neighborhood in Richmond. They attended racially segregated schools. Despite being nearly starved for school resources by the state, my father and his twin brother became the first in the family to attend college. Both became college professors. My uncle had a distinguished career as a student at the University of Virginia. My father went on to become the first Dean of African American Affairs at the University of Virginia in 1976.I grew up in Virginia. I had social studies teachers who referred to the Civil War as “the war between the states” or “the war of Northern aggression.” My interracial family experienced harassment and abuse during the two decades we made our home in the Commonwealth. But Virginia is also the place where I made lifelong friends, found spiritual communities and was educated by many tough and loving teachers. I came to political consciousness in Virginia and distinctly remember listening to every word of Douglass Wilder’s inauguration address as the first black governor. I cheered on election night 2008 when Virginia turned blue just moments before Barack Obama’s presidential win was announced.

I share this personal history because it is not exceptional. Black Americans are, by and large, Southerners. Our roots, our stories, our lives, our struggles, our joys have a distinctly Southern flavor. Slavery and Jim Crow are part of our experience, but so are church picnics, HBCU football games and jazz music. There is no Black American history that is not deeply intertwined with Southern history. It is extraordinarily painful to watch an elected official in the 21st century engage in an act of willful and racist historical erasure of our very selves.

I also lived in Virginia for many years.  My first job with the Commonwealth of Virginia was enforcing Executive Order Number One issued by a former segregationist governor, Mills E. Godwin.  E.O. 1 which was issued by every governor until Bob McDonnell forbids discrimination in state employment.  I had the day off for Lee-Jackson Day every January.  (That’s Robert E. and Stonewall.)  When Martin Luther King’s birthday was made a national holiday, the day became Lee-Jackson-King Day.  Virginia has always been different, but McDonnell seems determined to really turn back time.

Harris-Lacewell concludes

Without a hint of irony McDonnell suggested that he hopes to profit from Confederate inspired tourism. Clearly he hopes that the racial anxieties brewing in America will serve as a tourist boon for the former Confederate capital. Having profited for centuries from the forced labor of enslaved black Americans, Virginia seeks to further commodify black suffering in the 21st century. McDonnell is welcoming Rebel flag waving whites from rural Pennsylvania, downstate Illinois, and Southern California to come spend their money and steep themselves in Virginia past when white citizens, determined to keep black people as non-humans, fought back against the federal government.

Virginia has other histories that we can use to resist this false and frightening narrative. We must insist on remembering Jefferson’s Virginia that called us to be better than ourselves, to defend freedom, and to hold together our union. We must remember the histories of all the black families like my own whose struggle and strength cannot be erased from Southern history.

I have visited all the Civil War battle sites in Virginia.  I spent my honeymoon visiting the Shenandoah sites, Harper’s Ferry and Gettysburg and most of the national parks try to recognize the role of blacks, free and slave, mostly on the side of the Union.  If the Governor really wants to promote tourism there are a lot better ways to do so.

Gail Collins writes in her New York Times column

April is the cruelest month. Or, if you live in Virginia, Confederate History Month.

The state is buzzing over Gov. Bob McDonnell’s proclamation urging citizens to spend the month recalling Virginia’s days as a member of the Confederate States of America. Although since McDonnell had previously turned April over to child abuse prevention, organ donation and financial literacy, perhaps it was O.K. to just pick your favorite.

The original Confederate History proclamation was a miracle of obfuscation. It did not even mention slavery. On Wednesday, the governor apologized for that and said that slavery “has left a stain on the soul of this state and nation.”

People, what’s our bottom line here. The governor of Virginia has decided to bring slavery into his overview of the history of the Confederacy. Good news, or is this setting the bar a wee bit too low?

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The love affair with all things Confederate is way more worrisome. Once again, it’s in to talk secession. The Republican attorneys general are lining up to try to nullify the health care bill.

“Many issues of the Civil War are still being debated today,” said Brag Bowling of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, which led the push to get that proclamation in Virginia. That seems extremely depressing, as if we were Serbs stewing about what the Turks did at the Plain of Blackbirds in 1389.

Actually, a national discussion of Civil War history sounds fine — as long as we could start by agreeing that the whole leaving-the-union thing was a terrible idea. In the proclamations, it generally sounds as if everything went swimmingly until the part where the South lost and grudgingly rejoined the country.

I have been accused by at least one commentator on this blog of seeing everything in racial terms.  I think just the opposite is true.  People like Governor McDonnell and Representative Joe Wilson and, in fact, the entire “just say no” to anything proposed by President Obama is based on the President’s race.  We need to have a serious discussion about race.  I don’t know how that can happen as President Clinton tried to initiate one and failed and President Obama can’t initiate it.  Maybe Clinton tries again.  Maybe Clinton and President Carter together.  But no matter how much the McDonnell and Republicans want to go backward, the fact remains:  We have elected a black man as President and the population of the United States will soon have a majority population of people of color and there isn’t much they can do about those two things.

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Women and Health Care Reform

The House has passed both the Senate bill and “fixes” for reconciliation.  Both by more than the minimum number of votes.  Lindsay Beyerstein wrote today in the Nation

Last night, the House of Representatives passed comprehensive health care reform after more than a year of fierce debate. The sweeping legislation will extend coverage to 32 million Americans, curb the worst abuses of the private insurance industry, and attempt to contain spiraling health care costs.

The main bill passed the House by a vote 219 to 212, after which the House approved a package of changes to the Senate bill by a vote of 220 to 211. On Tuesday, President Barack Obama will sign the main bill into law. Then, the Senate will incorporate the House-approved changes through filibuster-proof budget reconciliation, perhaps as early as this week.

What role did women play in passage?  Beyerstein explains

As tea party protests raged outside, it seemed as if abortion might derail health reform. Rep. Bart Stupak (D-MI) insisted that he had the votes to kill the bill. At the last minute, Stupak was placated with an executive order from the president reiterating that the health care reform would not fund elective abortions.

The executive order is a red herring. It won’t impose any further restrictions, it just restates the status quo. Mike Lillis posted a copy of the order at the Washington Independent. The president might as well have reiterated a ban on federal funds for vajazzling. Health care reform was never going to fund vajazzling or abortion, but if Stupak finds the repetition soothing, so be it.

The chair of the pro-choice caucus, Rep. Diana DeGette (D-CO) acquiesced to the Stupak compromise, describing the overall bill as a “strong foundation,” according to John Tomasic of the Colorado Independent. Pro-choice groups will be angry, but realistically, the executive order was the best possible outcome. For a while, it looked like Democrats were going to have to make substantive concessions to Stupak. In the end, he flipped his vote for a presidential proclamation of the status quo.

In a last ditch effort to derail reform, the Republicans tried to reinsert Stupak’s strict anti-abortion language into the reconciliation package. The Republicans were trying to poison the reconciliation bill in order to threaten its chances in the Senate, explains Mike Lillis of the Washington Independent. The gambit failed. When Stupak rose to speak against the motion, he was shouted down by Republican representatives. One unidentified member called Stupak a “baby killer.”

Women who want to repeal the Hyde Amendment (and I’m one of them) are split.  Should health care reform have been the vehicle for repeal?  Anyone who thinks it is appropriate is mistaken. I’m with the pro-choice women in Congress who voted for reform.  I know that NOW and NARAL are upset that the President and Congress are “ignoring” women and “eroding” the right to choose.  I don’t see it that way.  As far as I’m concerned, I agree with Lindsay:  nothing has changed and if Bart needed cover to vote for the bill he got it.  We kept the status quo and Bart got to be called a “baby killer” and vote for the bill.  Millions of women will have access to health care and being a woman will no longer be a pre-existing condition.

Payback for Prochoicers

But I’m with Katha Pollitt.  Women need something. 

The way I see it, the Democratic Party and the Obama administration owe supporters of women’s rights a huge payback for cooperating on its signature issue.

Her list of suggestions includes full funding for Title X, passage of paycheck fairness, confront maternal mortality, pass CEDAW, and fully fund the Violence Against Women Act.  Not a bad list.  It is hard to pick which should come first, but I would fund the Violence Against Women Act and passing CEDAW.  Pollit says about CEDAW

Pass CEDAW. Jimmy Carter signed it back in 1980, but the United States is one of a handful of countries that have not ratified the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women. The others? Sudan, Somalia, Iran and a few Pacific islands. Despite the fact that Congress has burdened CEDAW with no fewer than eleven reservations, nearly all of which were placed there by Jesse Helms to please Concerned Women for America and other antifeminist and Christian groups, it still hasn’t come to a vote. So pass it, already–and Helms is dead, so dump the reservations. Don’t have the votes? Vote on it anyway. American women should know which senators think we should have fewer human rights than women in nearly every other democratic country in the world.

I don’t think repeal of the Hyde Amendment is in the cards anytime soon, but I do think we should get everything on Katha’s list.

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Waiting for the House to vote

8:30 pm Sunday, March 21.  I’ve been watching C-Span and MSNBC and listening to the debate.  It is clear that the Democrats now have more than enough votes to pass the bill (Be grateful Stephen Lynch, maybe the fallout won’t be quite so bad.), but it is not clear that I will make it to the end.  A sad occassion for this political junkie!

Some observation.  First, although I don’t know why he needed confirmation what is clearly in the Senate Bill, Representative Stupak has gotten President Obama to agree to issue an Executive Order affirming that the Hyde Amendment will apply to this Health Care Reform bill.  I think these two reactions as reported in the New York Times Prescription blog tell the story.

Travel notes from Senator Charles Grassley, the ranking Republican on the Finance Committee who ultimately balked at the Finance bill put forward in his chamber. Tonight, Senator Grassley tweets: “Flying bk DC Sun aftrnoon instead of Mon morn to get ahead of curve on Health/Stupak move “shocked”me I thought his stance wld hv kild bill.” In case you’re not accustomed to Mr. Grassley’s tweets or abbreviations (as well as some of ours in that 140-character limit), the Iowa senator is indicating that he’s shocked that Mr. Stupak would decide to vote for the health-care bill. Mr. Grassley anticipated that Mr. Stupak’s stance against abortion would’ve killed the bill.

Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood, has also issued a statement on the president’s decision to sign an executive order (designed to explicitly prohibit using federal funds for abortions).

We regret that a pro-choice president of a pro-choice nation was forced to sign an Executive Order that further codifies the proposed anti-choice language in the health care reform bill, originally proposed by Senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska. What the president’s executive order did not do is include the complete and total ban on private health insurance coverage for abortion that Congressman Bart Stupak (D–MI) had insisted upon. So while we regret that this proposed Executive Order has given the imprimatur of the president to Senator Nelson’s language, we are grateful that it does not include the Stupak abortion ban.“

So whatever Representative Stupak’s motivations, it has all worked out.  Even though I ultimately agree with Nita Lowey.

Representative Nita Lowey, Democrat of New York, issued this statement a little while ago, reflecting the rather torn views some abortion-rights lawmakers had toward their opponents on this issue. Ms. Lowey’s statement:

“As a lifelong advocate for freedom of choice and affordable health care for all Americans, I find it outrageous that health insurance reform was held hostage in an effort to restrict women’s reproductive rights.

“The underlying health insurance reform bill contains objectionable language requiring insured women to write a check for general health insurance and a separate check for “abortion rider,” going far beyond current and continued policy preventing federal funding for abortion services.

“Although the final bill language is disappointing, the bottom line is millions more American women will receive basic care to stay healthy and prevent unintended pregnancies.”

Which brings me to the agument the Republicans are making over and over again:  This bill takes away your choice.  And unfortunately enough American’s seem to believe them to make the polls negative.  However, they do, like Senator Grassley, want to control women and make the decisions for us.  They don’t seem to mind insurance companies making health care decisions and rationing health care.  They don’t worry about going to the VA which is definately government run health care.  I’m sorry, I just don’t get it.

But, despite all the unhappiness about the abortion language from NOW and others who were much more negative than Planned Parenthood, the bill will pass with between 218 and 222 votes.

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Sunday morning health care and basketball

I’m like about 90% of the country (including the President) waking up to find out that Kansas really did lose.   I watched the game, but still hoped it would be different this morning.  Yesterday was a disaster for my bracket:  I lost both Kansas and BYU from my final four and the only reason I haven’t lost Duke and Kentucky is they haven’t had their games yet.  March Madness a few years ago was like this:  upset after upset.  Great games, but hell on one’s picks.  At this point, I’m just watching to see what happens next.

And we are also watching health care to see what happens next.  The Republican/Tea Party folks must know they are going to lose.  Yesterday they showed their true colors.  The story in the Washington Post by Paul Kane begins

Members of the Congressional Black Caucus said that racial epithets were hurled at them Saturday by angry protesters who had gathered at the Capitol to protest health-care legislation, and one congressman said he was spit upon. The most high-profile openly gay congressman, Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), was heckled with anti-gay chants.

Republican members of Congress addressed the crowd both before and after the incident.  Where were they to control their followers?

Democratic leaders and their aides said they were outraged by the day’s behavior. “I have heard things today that I have not heard since March 15, 1960, when I was marching to get off the back of the bus,” said House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-S.C.), the highest-ranking black official in Congress.

Between race (I believe that the opposition to anything proposed by President Obama and the wanting to see him fail is simply because the Republicans can’t stomach having a black man in the White House.) and abortion (The opposition to a woman’s right to choose stems, I think, from a deep seeded belief that women are incapable of having their own religious convictions or of making a rational decision), I worry what happens during the fall campaigns.

So I have to turn to Paul Krugman’s column earlier this week to remind myself what we are trying to do.

So this seems like a good time to revisit the reasons we need this reform, imperfect as it is.

As it happens, Reuters published an investigative report this week that powerfully illustrates the vileness of our current system. The report concerns the insurer Fortis, now part of Assurant Health, which turns out to have had a systematic policy of revoking its clients’ policies when they got sick. In particular, according to the Reuters report, it targeted every single policyholder who contracted H.I.V., looking for any excuse, no matter how flimsy, for cancellation. In the case that brought all this to light, Assurant Health used an obviously misdated handwritten note by a nurse, who wrote “2001” instead of “2002,” to claim that the infection was a pre-existing condition that the client had failed to declare, and revoked his policy.

This was illegal, and the company must have known it: the South Carolina Supreme Court, after upholding a decision granting large damages to the wronged policyholder, concluded that the company had been systematically concealing its actions when withdrawing coverage, not just in this case, but across the board.

But this is much more than a law enforcement issue. For one thing, it’s an example those who castigate President Obama for “demonizing” insurance companies should consider. The truth, widely documented, is that behavior like Assurant Health’s is widespread for a simple reason: it pays. A House committee estimated that Assurant made $150 million in profits between 2003 and 2007 by canceling coverage of people who thought they had insurance, a sum that dwarfs the fine the court imposed in this particular case. It’s not demonizing insurers to describe what they actually do.

Beyond that, this is a story that could happen only in America. In every other advanced nation, insurance coverage is available to everyone regardless of medical history. Our system is unique in its cruelty.

And one more thing: employment-based health insurance, which is already regulated in a way that mostly prevents this kind of abuse, is unraveling. Less than half of workers at small businesses were covered last year, down from 58 percent a decade ago. This means that in the absence of reform, an ever-growing number of Americans will be at the mercy of the likes of Assurant Health.

So what’s the answer? Americans overwhelmingly favor guaranteeing coverage to those with pre-existing conditions — but you can’t do that without pursuing broad-based reform. To make insurance affordable, you have to keep currently healthy people in the risk pool, which means requiring that everyone or almost everyone buy coverage. You can’t do that without financial aid to lower-income Americans so that they can pay the premiums. So you end up with a tripartite policy: elimination of medical discrimination, mandated coverage, and premium subsidies.

Or to put it another way, you end up with something like the health care plan Mitt Romney introduced in Massachusetts in 2006, and the very similar plan the House either will or won’t pass in the next few days. Comprehensive reform is the only way forward.

Krugman concludes

Can you imagine a better reform? Sure. If Harry Truman had managed to add health care to Social Security back in 1947, we’d have a better, cheaper system than the one whose fate now hangs in the balance. But an ideal plan isn’t on the table. And what is on the table, ready to go, is legislation that is fiscally responsible, takes major steps toward dealing with rising health care costs, and would make us a better, fairer, more decent nation.

All it will take to make this happen is for a handful of on-the-fence House members to do the right thing. Here’s hoping.

Are you rethinking your position Stephen Lynch?  And what about you, Rick Boucher in Virginia?  Do either of you really want to be the vote that kills Health Care Reform?

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Anne Frank and Miep Gies

I began an infatuation with Anne Frank around age 12 or 13.  I was given a copy of Anne’s diary and read and read it.  I never saw the play on Broadway, but did see the movie which never quite measured up to the written word.  I think I read it as much for the discovery that teenaged girls, no matter what their circumstances, have the same dreams and feelings as I did for the story of courage and life under a death sentence. Anne expressed the same sorts of thoughts about her parents and other adults, about boys and sex that other teenage girls had, but never wrote down.  I’m sure she inspired my beginning to keep a journal – one which I’ve kept sporadically ever since. I’m sure millions of women were the same.

The one adult that Anne never seems to lose patience with is Miep Gies who died yesterday at age 100. 

“I am not a hero,” Mrs. Gies wrote in her memoir, “Anne Frank Remembered,” published in 1987. “I stand at the end of the long, long line of good Dutch people who did what I did and more — much more — during those dark and terrible times years ago, but always like yesterday in the heart of those of us who bear witness.”

Mrs. Gies sought no accolades for joining with her husband and three others in hiding Anne Frank, her father, mother and older sister and four other Dutch Jews for 25 months in Nazi-occupied Amsterdam. But she came to be viewed as a courageous figure when her role in sheltering Anne Frank was revealed with the publication of her memoir. She then traveled the world while in her 80s, speaking against intolerance. The West German government presented her with its highest civilian medal in 1989, and Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands knighted her in 1996.

After the Gestapo raided the Annex in August 1944, Ms. Gies found the pages of the diary scattered around and preserved them for Anne’s return.  Anne, who died in Bergan-Belson just weeks before both her 16th birthday and liberation, never returned.  Her father did return and published her diary.

Miep Gies was born Feb. 15, 1909, as Hermine Santrouschitz, a member of a Roman Catholic family in Vienna. When she was 11, she was sent to Leiden to be cared for by a Dutch family, being among the many Austrian children suffering from food shortages in the wake of World War I. She was given the Dutch nickname Miep and later adopted by the family.

When she was 13, the family moved to Amsterdam, and in 1933 she became a secretary to Otto Frank, who was overseeing the Dutch branch of a German company selling an ingredient for manufacturing jam. Mr. Frank had fled Hitler’s Germany, and he was soon joined by his wife and daughters.

Miep became a trusted employee and friend of the Frank family and joined in its alarm over the persecution of German Jews. In May 1940, the Netherlands fell in Germany’s invasion of the Low Countries. In July 1942, when thousands of Dutch Jews were being deported to concentration camps, the Frank family went into hiding in unused rooms above Mr. Frank’s office. He asked Mrs. Gies if she would help shelter them, and she unhesitatingly agreed.

The annex became a hiding place not only for the Franks but for three members of a family named van Pels — the father a business colleague of Mr. Frank’s — and Mrs. Gies’s dentist, Fritz Pfeffer.

Having married a Dutch social worker, Jan Gies, in 1941, Miep Gies joined with him and three other employees of Mr. Frank’s business in sheltering the eight Jews and caring for their daily needs. The protectors risked death if caught by the Nazis.

Mrs. Gies, while continuing to work for Mr. Frank’s business, which remained open under figurehead Christian management, played a central role in caring for the hidden. She found food for them, brought books and news of the outside world and provided emotional support, bringing Anne her first pair of high-heeled shoes and baking a holiday cake. On one occasion, Miep and Jan Gies (he is referred to in the diary as Henk, one of many pseudonyms Anne used) spent a night in the annex to experience the terror there for themselves.

Miep Gies was a remarkable woman in her own right and we should remember her for that as well as thanking her for preserving the legacy of Anne Frank.