News Of The Good

After the week we had, I think I need a dose of the good. And actually, the Congress has provided some of it. Not only have Pelosi and Reid held the line on offshore drilling (for now; after Obama's hedge I expect something including some offshore elements before the year is out), they worked together to pass a consumer product safety bill that actually includes some good and stringent standards, and if we get a legitimate President, we might enforce them:

The measure, approved by the Senate in an 89 to 3 vote last night and now awaiting President Bush's signature, represents the most significant expansion of the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) since it was created in 1973. It also marks a fundamental shift in the federal government's approach to protecting consumers from dangerous products: transforming a reactive stance to a preventive one by dealing with hazards before goods reach the marketplace, including products manufactured overseas [...]

Lead, the toxic metal that last year turned up in cherished playthings such as Elmo and Dora the Explorer, effectively would be banned from toys and children's products. So will some phthalates, a class of chemicals in soft plastic used in teethers, pacifiers and other items that infants and toddlers put in their mouths. The phthalate most commonly used in children's products, diisononyl phthalate (DINP) will be banned for two years, pending a study.

Toymakers would be required to have independent labs test products before they are sold -- a practice many consumers assumed was already happening until last year's wave of toy recalls. And voluntary safety standards would become mandatory, including a requirement that powerful rare earth magnets in toys not fall out or come loose. From 2003 to 2006, one child died and 19 others required surgery after swallowing magnets.

Consumers could eventually see labels certifying toys have been tested before being sold. When they buy a toy online or through a catalog, they would be able to see the same warning label that appears on packaging to warn parents of small parts or other potential hazards.

This includes a doubling of the Consumer Product Safety Commission budget (yes, a regulatory agency is being strengthened under Bush), and violators will see their penalty caps moved up to $15 million from $1.8 million. That's good.

The House got the Lily Ledbetter Equal Pay Act through the House, which would go as far as the federal government has yet to close the persistent wage gap between men and women. Every single Democrat in the House voted for the bill, and there's some momentum to get this through the Senate.

Meanwhile, the FCC struck a major blow for net neutrality and Internet freedom this week.

A divided Federal Communications Commission has ruled that Comcast Corp. violated federal policy when it blocked Internet traffic for some subscribers and has ordered the cable giant to change the way it manages its network.

In a precedent-setting move, the FCC by a 3-2 vote on Friday enforced a policy that guarantees customers open access to the Internet.

The commission did not assess a fine, but ordered the company to stop cutting off transfers of large data files among customers who use a special type of ''file-sharing'' software. Associated Press reports on Comcast's activities led to the complaints filed with the FCC.

This is a real victory. The precedent is set and it allows the Congress to move forward with its own legislation codifying the principle. Comcast and the telecoms who want to open up another revenue stream and stifle innovation online have been delivered a mortal blow.

And it was Bush's handpicked FCC Commissioner who gave the deciding vote. Believe it or not, this news of the good includes an Administration initiative on homelessness that appears to have worked quite well, based on the principle of getting the chronically homeless who eat up almost all of the resources and services off the streets first.

DG: What is Housing First? How is it different from more traditional programs to alleviate homelessness?

DM: For a long time the way that government and the social service world worked to help homeless people was through a range of services and interventions that tried to help people on the street, tried to get them into shelters, tried to provide them with substance abuse or job counseling. This whole idea became known as the "continuum of care" -- a continuum of services.

Housing First is a really different idea. The idea is that you want to get people into housing as quickly as possible, especially people who would be considered chronically homeless. You have a small population of people who are persistently homeless and may not be able to get out of homelessness without serious, ongoing help. These people use an enormous amount of resources. They take up an enormous number of shelter beds. The idea is that you find a permanent solution for these people, it immediately reduces the number of homeless people on the street, it helps the people who are most in need, and then in theory, it frees up the resources that might be wasted on them for people for whom sort of a quick bit of intervention, a little bit of counseling, a leg up, might get them back on their feet and independent.

Malcolm Gladwell did a New Yorker profile on this idea a few years ago and it made a lot of sense. Amazingly, the Bush Administration decided to actually put it into practice. To get a substantive decline in homeless during a economic downturn and foreclosure crisis is pretty incredible.

OK, I'll go back to being depressed now...

...And You Will Know Him By The Trail Of Dead (Bills)

I saw Bill Maher on Friday in an interview with former Mexican President Vicente Fox, lamenting that Bill Clinton and Arnold Schwarzenegger wouldn't be able to face off as Presidential candidates due to Constitutional violations. "Isn't that sad," he said. For all his conceits as a free thinker, Maher represents a kind of baseline Hollywood groupthink when it comes to Arnold, reading the headlines and the magazine covers but never bothering to uncover the whole story. That story can be easily divined from this weekend's veto massacre. In addition to stopping the California DREAM Act, he vetoed needed legislation for the state's migrant farm workers, allowing them to organize through a "card check" system. He even disabled a bill that would have added a sunset clause to the card check system, making it ever harder for them to organize and support themselves and their families. Here's another bill that went down the drain:

On Saturday, another bill was vetoed, AB 377, by Assemblymember Juan Arambula (D-Fresno). It would have required an employer who is a farm labor contractor to disclose in the itemized statement furnished to employees up to five names and addresses of the legal entities that secured the employer's services.

According to the sponsor of the bill, the California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation more than 40,000 California farms grow fruits and vegetables on almost four million acres in this state, so it is not surprising that a 2006 survey of Central Valley farm workers found that 70% could not identify the name of the farm they were working on.

The same survey found that 56% had not been paid the minimum wage when working on a piece rate; 31% had not been paid all the overtime they were owed; and that 42% had unexplained deductions made from their pay. Between 60% and 80% of harvest work is done by labor contractors. Without being able to readily identify the farm who hired the contractor, enforcement actions against the contractor are unlikely to either make the worker whole for wages owed or to have any deterrent effect at all against a grower who shares legal responsibility for the contractor's labor law violations.

So while Governor Schwarzenegger told the hundreds of farm workers who were at the Capitol in September that he was supportive of their goals, in the end, he vetoed these bills and sided with agribusiness.

Indeed, this is part of a persistent pattern by the Governor to make life harder for working families while protecting the corporate interests that helped get him elected. Far from a governor of the people, he is simply a corporatist who has the backs of the elite. Because we don't have a functioning political press, this contempt for the average Californian will probably not make it too far off the blogs and insider political circles. But they have real-world consequences that people will only discover when they are put in the situation that legislation could have covered, and they aren't likely to connect the dots. A sampling of the pro-worker legislation that was vetoed:

• SB 549 (Corbett)-this bill would have protected the job of a worker taking time off to attend to the funeral of a family member.

• SB 727 (Kuehl)-this bill provided that employees covered by family temporary disability insurance (FTDI) could take the leave to care for a grandparent, siblings, grandchildren and parent-in-law.

• AB 537 (Swanson)-this bill expanded the definition of family under the California Family Rights Act (CFRA) to allow eligible workers to take job-protected leave to care for a seriously ill adult child, sibling, grandchild, or parent in law.

• AB 435 (Brownley)-this bill would have addressed harsh limitation periods on bringing certain wage discrimination claims. These claims are frequently brought by working women who have been underpaid relative to their male counterparts, and many of these women are struggling to raise kids in single parent situations.

• AB 1636 (Mendoza)-this bill would have expedited a job retraining voucher to disabled workers unable to return to their former jobs; workers such as these are struggling to adapt to replace the income needed for the family to survive.

• SB 936 (Perata)-this bill would have increased the benefits paid to permanently disabled workers over a 3 year period. Since 2004 these workers have seen their benefits slashed by 50% or more according to studies by University of California researchers. At the same time, insurer profits have exceeded all benefits paid to or on behalf of disabled workers; it’s a concept that is clearly not family-friendly. The families and kids of disabled workers suffer as they struggle to keep pace with the financial devastation of injuries.

AB 435 is the state version of the Lily Ledbetter Pay Act, attempting to remedy a horrible Supreme Court decision from earlier in the year. So Arnold is putting himself squarely in the position of Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, John Roberts and Smuel Alito. This is our post-partisan "leader."

Furthermore, he vetoed meaningful health care reform in AB 8, and put forth flawed legislation of his own that has no chance of coming out of the legislature, partially financed by the stupid, shortsighted practice of leasing the lottery to private interests.

I'd like to say that there's an "on the other hand," a couple bills Arnold allowed through that provide aid or comfort to the working class. But on these issues, he comes down squarely on the side of his corporate buddies. It feels like spitting into the wind to keep noting this. Maybe someday Bill Maher won't have a big-time TV show, he'll be working for his own retirement, and he'll realize that he's been screwed by this Administration. But I wouldn't bet on it.

More Congressional Progress

The House passed bills supporting divestiture of the governments of Iran and Sudan, which is a unique way of using dollar diplomacy to pressure these regimes to stop their support of actions like genocide (in the case of Sudan) or support for terrorism (Iran).

The House also passed The Fair Pay Act to end wage discrimination in the workplace. This is in reference to a Supreme Court decision whereby a pay discrimination case had to be filed within 180 days to be actionable. This bill would reverse that. But it's likely to be vetoed.

Also the Democrats passed ethics reform legislation through the House despite GOP obstructionism. They refused a conference and so the Democratic leadership simply reconciled the bill on their own and stopped the amendment process. GOP whiners could have allowed a conference if they wanted a place at the table.

This has been a good few months for the Democratic Congress. Whether or not the public will recognize this remains to be seen.

UPDATE: Yes, it is kind of hilarious that Ted Stevens, the guy who had his house raided by the FBI and the IRS yesterday, might block passage of the LOBBYING REFORM bill. It sure makes sense, though. Why would he want lobbying reform?