Four experts discussed the new health care reform legislation at Wichita State University last Saturday.
The experts were: Dr. Richard Skibba, David Wilson (President, Kansas AARP), Bev White (President and CEO of the Center for Health & Wellness), and Monica Flask (Director of Project Acress, Central Plains Regional Health Care Foundation).



The event was sponsored by the Sedgwick County Democratic Party and WSU College Democrats.

Re-emergence of anarchism in Cuba

A UK anarchist site has this report  (Hat tip: Poumista)

Recently, on 13th & 14th of March there was in San José de Las Lajas, near Havana in Cuba, the 4th Critical Observatory event organised by the Haydee Santamaría Professorship[?]. There were a good group of attendees from across the island who presented, listened and debated around the libertarian idea and practical self-organization alternatives for today's Cuban society.
Without doubt this is an encouraging sign for those who have hoped for a long time to see a strong remergence of the path laid by Enrique Roig San Martín, Alfredo López, Enrique Varona, Marcelo Salinas and many other men & women as recollected in Frank Fernández's impressive book "Anarchism in Cuba". So it's necessary that we abroad strongly support this effort at reconstruction that is going ahead in very difficult conditions and in the face of all kinds of obstacles.

For more information, visit the blogs: http://observatorio-critico.blogspot.com and http://elblogdelacatedra.blogspot.com, or search the internet for the terms "Observatorio Crítico" y "Cuba" to find many recent references.

Sent in the name of the Cuban comrades, who have agreed to the distribution of all that this message says.

Fernandez book is recommended.  It should be interest to more than anarchists.  The link above is to a Spanish version.  Fortunately, there is an English translation by Charles Bufe available from See Sharp Press.

Goodbye doom and gloom!

Very good results for progressive, labor-left Democrats tonight.   Conway and Sestak wins in Kentucky and Pennsylvania and Halter forcing Lincoln into a run-off in Arkansas.  And. Murtha's seat in Pa was won by a big margin.  A blue, blue dog.  But not a Republican.  All of the right-wing blowhards had been claiming this as a bellwether seat for months.


There's an increasing chance that Democratic losses this November can be kept within normal, tolerable limits.  It is looking less and less like a wave election.

Wish I could say that things were looking so great for Knsas Dems.

Q&A on Arizona immigration law

Confused by the right-wing's talking points or frustrated by the thin reporting of the national and local menda? Here's a suggestion, take a look at the ACLU's Q &A on the new Arizona immigration law. Here's one.

What is the difference between this law and the federal law?

The Arizona law goes well beyond federal law because it mandates that all local police and sheriffs demand papers from people they stop and believe may be in the country without authorization. Nowhere is such requirement in federal law. This law reverses the presumption of innocence, forcing police officers on the street to demand that people prove they are U.S. citizens or otherwise in the country legally. The racial profiling this law invites with its undefined standard for what constitutes “reasonable suspicion” that someone is in the country unlawfully would violate the Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection under the law and federal civil rights protections.

There are a number of ways in which the Arizona law directly conflicts with federal law regarding the regulation and enforcement of immigration. As a threshold matter, SB 1070 presumes that the citizenship or immigration status of individuals can be determined simply, outside the complex administrative procedures set up under our nation’s immigration laws. It cannot. Moreover, the Arizona law would also impose different state penalties against people for conduct, such as authorization to work in the United States that is directly regulated under federal law. Not only is this unconstitutional under the supremacy cause, but it is also bad policy as the United States cannot have a patchwork of conflicting immigration laws depending on what state you happen to find yourself in.

Read the rest on-line or down as a PDF

Phyllis Jacobson Remembered

There are a number of remembrances of Phyllis Jacobson who played a leading role in the the creation and sustenance of New Politics, one of the most important journals of the American democratic left. Bogdan Denitch  Barry Finger Sam Farber and others

New Politics had two lives--from 1961 to 1975 and from 1986 to the present. It occupies a space to the left of Dissent (and to my left) and  has always been a valuable and thought provoking journal.

Joanne Landy and Steve Shalom write

 "The Jacobsons did not want an editorial board of clones. They welcomed board members from a range of left perspectives that supported the basic orientation of New Politics: standing "in opposition to all forms of imperialism," "uncompromising in its defense of feminism and affirmative action," and above all insisting "on the centrality of democracy to socialism and on the need to rely on mass movements from below for progressive social transformation."

If that sounds like the kind of thing you might be intersted in, check out New Politics. And if you like what you see, subsribe.

Wichita May Day Immigration Reform Rally

Here are a photo slide show and speeches by Kansas NAACP President Kevin Myles and State Representative Delia Garcia

Bumpersticker of the week (an ocassional feature)

Ks. Sec. of Labor Jim Garner on Two Programs That Work

Kansas Secretary of Labor Jim Garner made some timely remarks on the importance of OSHA and unemployment compensation at the 2010 Workers' Memorial Day observance in Wichita, Kansas. The event was sponsored by the Wichita/Hutchinson Labor Federation.

Garner points out that the unemployment benefits program has pumped $1 billion into the Kansas economy in the last year.. OSHA, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, which is celebrating its 40th anniversary, has led to a remarkable decline in deaths and injuries on the job.

Economic Non-sense from Jerry Moran

The other day I heard Rep. Jerry Moran proclaim in a radio ad "you can't spend your way" out of a recession. 

Does Moran think we can "hoard" our way out of the recession?  Does he imagine that we can get out of the recession, if everyone spends less today than they spent yesterday?

What non-sense.  Collectively, as an economy the only way to get out of a recession to spend our way of it.  Keynes called this the paradox of thrift.

A recession is a lack of effective demand.  There has been a precipitous drop in investment spending by corporations.  Due to rising unemployment, the collapse of the housing bubble, and uncertainty, consumers are spending far less. State governments are cutting back drastically.

The only sector of the economy that can pick up the slack is the federal government.  Stimulus spending has kept the economy from entering a free fall and now seems to have sparked a turnaround.

Now, the stimulus was too small because of the opposition of folks like Moran.

There is that scattereth, and yet increaseth; and there is that withholdeth more than is meet, but it tendeth to poverty.
The liberal soul shall be made fat: and he that watereth shall be watered also himself.

—Proverbs 11:24–25

Center for American Progress on the Arizona Anti-Immigrant Law

A good analysis from the Center for American Progress


Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer signed today what is now the most punitive and sweeping anti-immigrant state law in the nation. This law’s full effects will not be measurable for months to come, but it is already clear that it will be challenged in court because it denies rights guaranteed in the U.S. Constitution. And until the legal issues are settled, the new law will have a detrimental effect on Arizona’s economy, as well as city and state budgets.

The law essentially legalizes racial profiling

• The law puts communities of color in the crosshairs by requiring state and local government workers to determine if a person is illegally in the United States based on a “reasonable suspicion.”
• Legal experts maintain that the law will result in racial profiling, as it does not prohibit police officers from relying on race or ethnicity in deciding who to investigate. Of course all Arizonans don’t all look alike. Like America, Arizona is a diverse state with multiple generations of U.S. citizens. Three out of every 10 Arizonans are Hispanic, 1 out of 10 is American Indian, and 13 percent are foreign born.

The law undercuts the Constitution and imbues local police with federal authority

• Arizona is attempting to grant local police arrest authority for administrative violations of federal immigration law, even though the state police does not even have that authority under federal law.
• The measure does not require the local police to have a search warrant or even suspect that some illegal action has occurred.
• The law criminalizes the solicitation of work even though courts have previously ruled that the solicitation of work is protected speech under the First Amendment.

The law will harm the state and local economies

• The National Employment Law Project pointed out that smaller-scale anti-immigrant ordinances have cost individual localities millions of dollars. The Texas-based Perryman Group calculated that if all unauthorized immigrants were removed from Arizona, the state would lose $26.4 billion in economic activity, $11.7 billion in gross state product, and approximately 140,324 jobs.
• The Immigration Policy Center noted that, “with Arizona facing a budget deficit of more than $3 billion,” the new law will “further imperil the state’s economic future.”
• Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon and other local leaders anticipate a drop in new business ventures in the state because of the harsh new law. Phoenix Vice Mayor Michael Nowakowski observed: “We’re the laughing stock of the country because of these crazy laws.”

The law will be expensive and take cops away form community policing

• The Arizona Association of Chiefs of Police firmly opposes the law for fiscal and public safety reasons, noting that fear of government officials will diminish the public’s willingness to cooperate with police in criminal investigations and will “negatively affect the ability of law enforcement agencies across the state to fulfill their many responsibilities in a timely manner.”
• Local taxpayers will bear the heavy costs of lengthy court litigation.
• The costs to arrest, detain, process, and transport undocumented immigrants out of Arizona will drain local government treasuries. There were an estimated 460,000 undocumented immigrants in Arizona as of January 2009, making up 4 percent of the state’s population. If the federal government were to handle the entire undocumented population, the cost would be approximately $23,482 per person, based on a recent study by the Center for American Progress.

Arizona and other local and state governments are taking action on immigration because Congress has failed to enact comprehensive immigration reform that restores border security, provides a flexible visa program to meet business and family needs, and deals with the 11 million undocumented immigrants in the United States. This is a federal issue and must be handled by Congress immediately before other states start to follow Arizona’s lead.

A good reason to strike

Scores of Carlsberg A/S workers walked off their jobs Thursday to protest the Danish brewer's new limits on beer drinking at work

.
Carlsberg spokesman Jens Bekke said 250 warehouse and production workers and truck drivers went on strike Thursday on the second day of a rebellion against the new rules, which state workers can only drink beer in the canteen during the lunch break.

Hat tip: Jonathan Tasani

Dissent's New Blog: Arguing the World

Dissent magazine has started a new blog "Arguing the World."  Contributors so far have included Michael Walzer, Mark Engler, Michael Berebue, and Kevin Mattson.

Take a look.

Criticism does not exclude Muslims from the political process

An important letter to the British Guardian.

April 4th 2010, 4:53 pm

Letter to The Guardian, April 3, 2010:

We are disturbed by the visible rise, in some parts of the country, of anti-Muslim bigotry resulting in sporadic attacks on Muslims and their places of worship. We deplore this and condemn it unreservedly. However, the authors of the letter you published (Islamophobia is a threat to democracy, 25 March) are quite wrong to equate legitimate concerns about the leadership of the East London Mosque and the Islamic Forum of Europe with anti-Muslim bigotry. To do so betrays those who have genuinely suffered discrimination. The East London Mosque has frequently allowed intemperate clerics to speak on its premises, some of whom have promoted values antithetical to those required in a tolerant and progressive society.

They intimidate and bully other Muslims into accepting their contested theology as undisputed truth. Their allies and associates across south Asia have encouraged discrimination against minorities, opposed the reform of family laws and supported laws on blasphemy.

How can it be right for those of us who believe in liberal democracy to leave unchallenged those who would discriminate against religious minorities, women, homosexuals and Muslims with dissenting or heterodox views?

Criticism of incitement to religious hatred has nothing to do with excluding Muslims from the political process, as the supporters of the East London Mosque and Islamic Forum of Europe suggest. There are many impeccably non-sectarian Muslims active in political life, including in parliament, who are capable of opposing both racism and fundamentalism.

The greatest threat to democracy comes from reactionary and sectarian political groupings. We are disturbed by the rise of confessional identity politics in this country. Those who would promote such politics deserve robust scrutiny. To combat them is a moral duty.

Ansar Ahmed Ullah Nirmul Committee, Gita Sahgal Women Against Fundamentalism, Monjulika Jamali Cultural activist in east London, Denis MacShane MP, Dr Ghayasuddin Siddiqui Trustee, British Muslims for Secular Democracy, Nigel Fountain, Saikat Acharjee Lawyer, Amanda Sebestyen, Tehmina Kazi Director, British Muslims for Secular Democracy, Sandra M Kabir BRAC UK, Tahmima Anam Novelist, Amina Ali Gender equality campaigner in East London, Murad Qureshi London assembly member, Aisha Shaheed Women Living Under Muslim Laws, Dr Ahmed Zaman President, Communist Party of Bangladesh UK Branch, Harunor Rashid President, Soytten Sen School of Performing Arts, Darren Johnson London assembly member, Green party parliamentary candidate, Lewisham Deptford, Keith Angus Lib Dem parliamentary candidate, Hackney North and Stoke Newington, Rayhan Rashid War Crimes Strategy Forum-WCSF, activists’ coalition, Waliur Rahman Workers Party of Bangladesh, Peter Tatchell OutRage, Syed Enamul IslamFormer MEP candidate for London with the NO2EU: Yes to Democracy coalition, Dr Irfan Al Alawi International director, Centre for Islamic Pluralism, Dr Rafikul Hasan Khan President, Bangladesh Udichi Shilpi Gosthi UK Branch based in east London, Prof Tom Gallagher Department of Peace Studies, University of Bradford, Prof Nira Yuval Davis Centre for Research on Migration, Refugees and Belonging, UEL, Cassandra Balchin, Sujit Sen Bangladesh International Foundation, Syed Neaz Ahmad Academic and author, Harunur Rashid JSD, Zoe Fairbairns Novelist, Carolyn Hayman, Brigitte Istim, James Bethell Nothing British about the BNP, Jenny Harris Theatre administrator, founder of the Albany, formerly of National Theatre, Marieme Helie Lucas Secularism is a Women’s Issue, Victor Sebestyen, Syeda Nazneen Sultana Gender equality campaigner in east London, Dr Nowrin Tamanna University of Reading, Pragna Patel Southall Black Sisters

Herb Ellis: Remembering a jazz guitar great

Image via Wikipedia

Herb Ellis, one of the great jazz guitarists in the post Charlie Christian, pre-fusion era died on Sunday.

He was perhaps most famous as part of the Oscar Peterson Trio and for jazz duets with fellow guitarist Joe Pass. Ellis was from Texas and retired to Arkansas.. He had a twangy blues drenched sound and swung like crazy.

Sometime in the 1980s or 1990s, I think, Ellis retired to Arkansas. He continued to play and record. I enjoyed his 1992 Texas Swings on the Justice label, which featured Western swing oriented jazz, including an appearance by Willie Nelson. But it is not my favorite Ellis. That might be Herb Ellis Meets jimmy Giuffre or Nothing But the Blues, which was Ellis' personal favorite.

Here's Herb playing with Barney Kessell, a contemporary who grew up in OKlahoma city and had a similar musical approach

Two "Half the Sky" Items

Our Wichita DSA reading group discussed Nicholas Kristoff and Sheryl DeWunn'a Half the Sky, a very valuable and eye-opening survey of the oppression and subjugation of women in the developing world. The book has some flaws, but no one can deny it is an eye opener.

Here are two items from my RSS reader.

1) Grab and Run Weddings in Kyrgyztan from the International Campaign Against Honor Killings, via Mick Hartley

Since Kyrgyzstan gained its independence in 1991, there has been a revival of the ancient practice of 'grab and run' weddings.

A third of all marriages in modern Kyrgyzstan are kidnaps. Typically, a man abducts his bride by force or deception, enlisting his family to break her resistance to the wedding through hours of persuasion. If successful, the next morning the bride will sit quietly in a curtained-off area wearing the traditional white wedding headscarf and an imam will be called in to marry the couple.

The Kyrgyz phrase ala kachuu describes this process – literally, it means "grab and run". Some brides are kidnapped by strangers, others by men they know. Some escape after violent ordeals, but most are persuaded to stay by tradition and fear of scandal. In Muslim Kyrgyzstan, where virginity is revered, a girl who has been kidnapped and then leaves is considered to be tainted. If her family refuses to allow her back home because of the shame, she has few options. With their purity in question after a night spent at a man's house, many women accept what they believe is their fate.

2)13-year old school girl refutes post-modernist apologist for women's oppression

Terry Glavin writes

Alaina Podmorow is 13 years old. She wrote this article in response to a masters' thesis by the University of British Columbia's Melanie Butler, Canadian women and the (re)production of women in Afghanistan, an eruption of "post-colonial feminist theory" that sets out to attack actually-existing feminists who do real work for their real, living sisters in Afghanistan.

A snippet of Podmorow: No one will ever tell me that Muslim or any women think it’s ok to not be allowed to get educated or to have their daughters sold off at 8 years old or traded off at 4 years old because of cultural beliefs. No one will tell me that women in Afghanistan think it is ok for their daughters to have acid thrown in their faces. It makes me ill to think a 4 year old girl must sleep in a barn and get raped daily by old men. It’s sick and wrong and I don’t care who calls me an Orientalist or whatever I will keep raising money to educate girls and women in Afghanistan and I will keep writing letters and sending them in the back pack of my friend Lauryn Oates as she works so bravely on the ground helping women and girls learn what it is to exercise their rights. I believe in human rights so I believe everyone has the right their own opinion, I just wish that the energy that was used to write that story, that is just not true, could have been used to educate a girl in Afghanistan. That’s what the girls truly want. That’s what the Women in Afghanistan truly want. I have a drawer full of letters from them that says just that.

Butler's thesis, which is sadly typical, could well have been produced by the software program Postmodernism Generator, which spews out random text from recursive grammars. Here's a snippet of Butler: In their bid to help Afghan women. . . some feminist groups have failed to distance themselves from the discursive mechanisms that manufacture consent for women’s oppression in the name of Empire. Building on Krista Hunt’s analysis of feminist complicity in the War on Terror (Hunt 2006), this essay draws attention to Canadian feminists’ role in (re)producing neo-imperialist narratives of Afghan women. Focusing specifically on the NGO Canadian Women for Women in Afghanistan (CW4WAfghan), it shows how their use of feminist rhetoric and personal first-hand narratives, together with national narratives of Canada as a custodian of human rights, add to the productive power of the Orientalist tropes they invoke."

More on Alaina and her comrades here. How to support their work here.

Things getting worse for Tiahrt

Swing State Project  reports

Things have gotten a little worse for Todd Tiahrt in his race against Jerry Moran in the GOP primary to succeed outgoing Sen. Sam Brownback: SUSA now shows Moran up 42-32. Two months ago, Moran led by seven points - and by just three two months before that. The Kansas primary is not until August 3rd, so Tiahrt still has time, but he doesn't seem to be gaining much traction.

Interesting report on Iraqi election

Martin Thomas of the UK-based left-wing group Alliance for Workers Liberty has an interesting analysis of the just concluded Iraqi election. It was written before the election results were reported, but it is still relevent. The last paragraph is especially important, in my opinion.

The left had no real presence. The Worker-communist Party of Iraq originally decided to stand - a welcome move, since we in the AWL had argued with them back in 2005 that they should contest the elections then - but then pulled out. The Iraqi Communist Party did stand more-or-less independently this time, rather than joining a coalition with bigger bourgeois forces as previously - but only "more or less" independently, since they presented themselves as the "People's Union", with no distinct working-class or socialist claim. I don't know their vote, but it is unlikely to have been big.

However, there was some political movement in the run-up to the elections, and some beginning of political differentiation as distinct from the jostling of communal blocs. All the main coalitions, apparently, were at pains to present themselves as non-sectarian, nationalist, and at least semi-secular.

Maliki represented a pro-Iranian orientation, Allawi a more Arabist orientation. I don't know how much the Iraqi National Alliance has rowed back from the Islamic Supreme Council's previous advocacy of a federalised Iraq, with a southern region having the same very large autonomy that the Kurdish north already has, but in the past that has been a key differentiation between them and Maliki, who claims to represent a more unified and centralised Iraq.

As far as I know, relations with the USA were not a big issue in the election. Nor was the continuing process of selling off to multinationals licences for shares in production in Iraq's oilfields.

But the "politics" in the election were a bit more like "politics", a bit less like straight communal-bloc haggling.
This does not mean that Iraq has achieved a stable (although limited and bourgeois) democracy, or that the 2003 invasion is vindicated. Between 2003 and now have come at least 100,000 civilian deaths. Each month dozens more are killed by Al-Qaeda-type bombings. Vast numbers have been maimed or forced to flee their homes. Iraqi society has been atomised and brutalised. Even the formalities of democracy are very shaky in Iraq.

Despite the Maliki government's repeated promises of a democratic labour law, the government still has to hand laws from the Saddam era which give it a legal basis for snuffing out Iraq's much-harassed new labour movement as soon as it feels strong enough to do that. Paradoxically, a "strengthening of democracy" in Iraq in the shape of a more solid political system, and a government with more credibility and authority, could well bring a rapid risk of the stifling in Iraq of the element of democracy most important for socialists, the ability of workers to organise and agitate independently.

The shifts in Iraq do, however, show that it is (and has been since 2003) important for socialists to agitate and organise on democratic issues within Iraq, rather than limiting themselves to denunciation of the USA. They reinforce the urgency of building international support for the Iraqi union movement's demand for a democratic labour law, codifying the right to organise and to strike

Founding Fathers Supported Obama Care

Paul J. O'Rourke has a dynamite column showing that the Republican claim that the Obama Health Care Reform is unprecedented and unconstitutional can't stand scrutiny. In 1789, the Congress passed and President John Adams signed a law mandating medical insurance for seamen. (ht: Jeff Weintraub)

Officials from 14 states have gone to court to block the historic overhaul of the U.S. health care system that President Obama signed into law Tuesday, arguing the law's requirement that individuals buy health insurance violates the Constitution.

Thirteen of those officials filed suit in a federal court in Pensacola, Florida, minutes after Obama signed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. The complaint calls the act an "unprecedented encroachment on the sovereignty of the states" and asks a judge to block its enforcement.

"The Constitution nowhere authorizes the United States to mandate, either directly or under threat of penalty, that all citizens and legal residents have qualifying health care coverage," the lawsuit states.

The history lesson

In July, 1798, Congress passed, and President John Adams signed into law “An Act for the Relief of Sick and Disabled Seamen,” authorizing the creation of a marine hospital service, and mandating privately employed sailors to purchase healthcare insurance,

This legislation also created America’s first payroll tax, as a ship’s owner was required to deduct 20 cents from each sailor’s monthly pay and forward those receipts to the service, which in turn provided injured sailors hospital care. Failure to pay or account properly was discouraged by requiring a law violating owner or ship's captain to pay a 100 dollar fine.

This historical fact demolishes claims of “unprecedented” and "The Constitution nowhere authorizes the United States to mandate, either directly or under threat of penalty...”

Reform immigration for America march and rally

Last Sunday, I attended the reform immigration for America march and rally in Washington, D.C.

I was too young to attend the 1963 March on Washington, so I didn't want to miss this one. I was glad to be able to be with a group from Wichita's Sunflower Community Action.


There was a huge crowd, estimates ranged from 200,000 to 500,000,
Reports in the days leading up the march said 50,000 to 100,000 were expected. Another report said that Obama adminsitration would not move on immigration reform if there were not more than 100,000 people.

There appeared to me be a considerable labor presence--from unions with large numbers of immigrant workers. SEIU had a large tent on the mall. A SEIU member told me that Chicago SEIU brought 5 buses. Overall, SEIU says it brought 5,000 members to the rally. There was also big contingents from UFCW, Unite Here, and a few other unions. Arlene Holt Baker, executive VP of the AFL-CIO spoke. She said good things, but she is not the dynamic speaker that Richard Trumka is.

NAACP leader Benjamin Jealous gave one of the first speeches and he was excellent, as was the leader of the Urban League. I was struck by the large number of African Americans on the grounds of the mall.

The involvement of churches and workers centers did a lot to secure a great turnout.

Here's a slide show of the photos I took.

Alex Chilton RIP

Sad news, Alex Chilton, lead singer for the Box Tops and leader of the influential, but not commercially successful, Big Star, has passed.

Chilton was only 16 when the Box Tops' first single "The Letter," rocketed to the top of the charts in 1967, not only spending four weeks at number one but ending up as Billboard magazine's number one single of the year. I must have played the 45 of  "The Letter" hundreds of times.  It's a classic. 

I am still a big fan of blue-eyed soul and it makes me sad that, in many ways, American popular music is more segregated today than it was forty years ago. And, the few areas that are partial exceptions (rap)strike me as musical dreck. On the other hand, I guess I ought to remember that the Jackson 5 and the Osmonds are other, less inspiring, of the cross-ethnic music of the 1960s.