What Matters Today

April 10, 2013

Dr. King’s ‘Two Americas’ Truer Now than Ever

Rev. Andrew Young with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Feb. 7, 1968 (AP Photo)

You may think you know about Martin Luther King, Jr., but there is much about the man and his message we have conveniently forgotten. He was a prophet, like Amos, Isaiah and Jeremiah of old, calling kings and plutocrats to account — speaking truth to power.

King was only 39 when he was murdered in Memphis 45 years ago, on April 4th, 1968. The 1963 March on Washington and the 1965 March from Selma to Montgomery were behind him. So was the successful passage of the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act. In the last year of his life, as he moved toward Memphis and his death, he announced what he called the Poor People’s Campaign, a “multi-racial army” that would come to Washington, build an encampment and demand from Congress an “Economic Bill of Rights” for all Americans — black, white, or brown. He had long known that the fight for racial equality could not be separated from the need for economic equity — fairness for all, including working people and the poor.

Martin Luther King, Jr., had more than a dream — he envisioned what America could be, if only it lived up to its promise of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for each and every citizen. That’s what we have conveniently forgotten as the years have passed and his reality has slowly been shrouded in the marble monuments of sainthood. MORE

Money & Politics

April 10, 2013

Taking on Murdoch, SOPA and the FCC

by BillMoyers.com Staff

From the digital divide to media consolidation to net neutrality, Craig Aaron, president and CEO of Free Press, is on the front lines of media reform. In a discussion with Moyers & Company’s Michael Winship, Aaron says he’s hopeful for the future of the movement. “I think our opponents have very deep pockets. I think they haven’t begun to try all of their dirty tricks. But ultimately, I believe that organized people can still beat organized money, and that’s what we’re trying to do,” he says. The conversation* was recorded at the National Conference on Media Reform in Denver, organized by Free Press.

* Winship lost his voice in Denver, so he apologizes in advance for his froggy interview technique! MORE

Perspectives

April 10, 2013

Amy Goodman’s ‘Other’ America

by BillMoyers.com Staff

In a wide-ranging conversation, Amy Goodman, host and executive producer of Democracy Now! tells Moyers & Company‘s Michael Winship why she believes independent media is essential to a functioning democracy. Recorded at the National Conference on Media Reform in Denver, Goodman reflects on the modest beginnings of her program — now broadcast worldwide — and the role it plays in today’s media universe. “What we’re doing is bringing out the voice not of a fringe minority or a silent majority, but the silenced majority, silenced by the corporate media — which is why we have to take it back,” she says. MORE

BillBoard

April 9, 2013

Obama Budget Ignores African-American Jobs Crisis

by Theresa Riley

Campaign for America’s Future blogger Isaiah J. Poole writes about some hard truths in the African-American community that he hopes President Obama and the Democratic Party will keep in mind as they debate budget cuts in the coming weeks and months. He points out that Friday’s jobs report shows that more than one in eight African Americans is looking for a job — twice the white unemployment rate.

Citing a number of recent reports, Poole lays out what he refers to as a “crisis” in the African-American community warning the president and Democrats that they better start paying attention or suffer the consequences at the ballot box.

When President Obama formally unveils his fiscal 2014 budget on Wednesday, a lot of the progressive movement focus will be on his plan to cut Social Security benefits through a reduced cost-of-living adjustment called the “chained CPI.” But there will be another scandalous policy decision reflected in that budget as well, and this one is a sin of omission: There will not be an all-out effort to address the depression-level unemployment conditions among African Americans. MORE

Perspectives

April 9, 2013

Mad Men and Shortchanged Women

by Theresa Riley

Peggy Olson on Mad Men; Photo Credit: Jordin Althaus/AMC

One of my favorite scenes in Sunday’s Mad Men premiere was watching Peggy kick ass at work while confidently and constructively berating her male underlings for their weak copywriting. It was a rare modern moment that could have played out in an office on Madison Avenue today.

But there’s another parallel that’s a lot less fun, and also relevant today. It’s a sad fact that Peggy and many women today have more in common than an appreciation for skillful wordplay or for men with creative facial hair, because in 2013 women are still making less money than men — a lot less. In 1967, women were making about 56 cents for every dollar men made. Nearly 50 years later, we’ve made some progress, yes, but not much: exactly 21 cents worth.

Today is Equal Pay Day, the 92^nd day of the year, symbolizing how far into 2013 women have to work in order to make as much as their male counterparts made in 2012. Women in the United States make about 23 percent less than men. The wage gap is even greater for women of color. MORE

Perspectives

April 8, 2013

Is the Keystone XL Pipeline the “Stonewall” of the Climate Movement?

by Bill McKibben

This piece was first published on TomDispatch.

Protestors against the Keystone XL pipeline dressed as referees throw red penalty flags during a rally on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, Jan. 24, 2012. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)

Protestors against the Keystone XL pipeline dressed as referees throw red penalty flags during a rally on Capitol Hill in Washington, Jan. 24, 2012. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)

A few weeks ago, Time magazine called the fight over the Keystone XL pipeline that will bring some of the dirtiest energy on the planet from Alberta, Canada, to the U.S. Gulf Coast the “Selma and Stonewall” of the climate movement.

Which, if you think about it, may be both good news and bad news. Yes, those of us fighting the pipeline have mobilized record numbers of activists: the largest civil disobedience action in 30 years and 40,000 people on the mall in February for the biggest climate rally in American history. Right now, we’re aiming to get a million people to send in public comments about the “environmental review” the State Department is conducting on the feasibility and advisability of building the pipeline. And there’s good reason to put pressure on. After all, it’s the same State Department that, as on a previous round of reviews, hired “experts” who had once worked as consultants for TransCanada, the pipeline’s builder.

Still, let’s put things in perspective: Stonewall took place in 1969, and as of last week the Supreme Court was still trying to decide if gay people should be allowed to marry each other. If the climate movement takes that long, we’ll be rallying in scuba masks. (I’m not kidding. The section of the Washington Mall where we rallied against the pipeline this winter already has a big construction project underway: a flood barrier to keep the rising Potomac River out of downtown DC.) MORE

News & Notes

April 7, 2013

Sequestration Means Less Affordable Housing, More Homelessness

by Greg Kaufmann, The Nation

We’re proud to collaborate with The Nation in sharing insightful journalism related to income inequality in America. The following is an excerpt from Nation contributor Greg Kaufmann’s “This Week in Poverty” column.

(AP Photo/Adam Nadel)

Sequestration can seem a little vague, abstract, difficult to wrap your head around.

But here’s what it means when it comes to housing: up to 140,000 fewer low-income families receiving housing vouchers, more children exposed to lead paint, higher rent for people who can’t afford it and a rise in homelessness.

These are among the human costs of sequestration noted in a new paper by Doug Rice, senior policy analyst at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, who has worked on housing policy for ten years.

“These kinds of cuts are really unprecedented,” Rice told me. “The Section 8 voucher program has been around for nearly 40 years — it was created during the Nixon Administration and has had strong, bipartisan support for its entire history. Part of that support has consisted of Congress providing adequate money to ensure that the vouchers currently used by families are renewed from year to year.”

But for just the third time in 39 years, Congress will not fund local housing agencies so that they can renew all current vouchers. A $938 million cut in the voucher program translates to a 6 percent shortfall below what is needed to maintain assistance to the same number of families in 2013 as last year.

“Here we are in 2013 looking at severe cuts in the number of families that receive assistance, even at a time when the number of families in need has been rising sharply,” said Rice. MORE

News & Notes

April 5, 2013

Watch the National Media Reform Conference

by Theresa Riley

Moyers & Company Senior Writer Michael Winship and I are attending the National Media Reform Conference in Denver, Colorado. Now in its ninth year, the gathering, organized by Free Press, has become an annual check-in for media makers, media reformers and others concerned about media and Internet policy, increasing media ownership diversity, quality journalism and the ways in which media and the Internet can (and should) strengthen our democracy.

Free Press is offering a live stream of some of the panels and keynotes that will be going on over the weekend. MORE

Smart Charts

April 5, 2013

Two Americas, Then and Now

by John Light

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. makes his last public appearance at the Mason Temple in Memphis, Tenn., on April 3, 1968. The following day King was assassinated on his motel balcony. (AP Photo/Charles Kelly)

During a speech at Stanford University in 1967, one year before he was assassinated, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “there are literally two Americas. One America is beautiful… overflowing with the milk of prosperity and the honey of opportunity.

“But tragically and unfortunately, there is another America. This other America has a daily ugliness about it that constantly transforms the ebullience of hope into the fatigue of despair. In this America millions of work-starved men walk the streets daily in search for jobs that do not exist. In this America millions of people find themselves living in rat-infested, vermin-filled slums. In this America people are poor by the millions. They find themselves perishing on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity.”

Not much has changed since 1967. Take a look at these charts about American poverty from King’s day through today using data from the U.S. Census Bureau.

When King delivered his “Two Americas” speech, a household in the top five percent income bracket was at least six times wealthier than a household in the bottom twenty percent. Since the late 1960s, the rich have been growing wealthier far more quickly than the poor. MORE

Money & Politics

April 4, 2013

Washington’s Revolving Door Keeps Spinning

by John Light

SEC Chair Mary Schapiro testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington in her former role as SEC chair. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)

Mary Schapiro, until recently the chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission, has passed through Washington’s lengendary revolving door to a new job at Promontory Financial Group, a company well-known as a fixer in the nation’s capital. The Wall Street Journal describes Promontory as “a consulting firm that has built a reputation as a shadow regulator by hiring scores of former government officials” who help banks struggling to comply with – or influence — the rules.

Click the chart to zoom in. Courtesy of Zero Hedge

Schapiro will join many government agency alumni at Promontory — The Wall Street Journal places the number of former regulators there at around 100. Promontory’s founder and CEO Eugene Ludwig is a former regulator himself. He served as President Clinton’s comptroller of the currency from 1993 to 1998. One of their more recent hires is Julie Williams, a key player in writing the Dodd-Frank bank reform law. She served for three decades at the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, working at different points as the chief counsel and the acting comptroller of currency. Schapiro will also be working alongside many other former SEC staffers, including longtime Wall Streeter Arthur Levitt, who was the longest serving SEC chair, and former Acting SEC Chair Laura Unger. MORE