MOMocrats

The 2008 Farm Bill: Food & Fuel

I'm no policy analyst, but I do eat and I try to give my child as many organic foods as we can afford, starting with organic milk (at $3.19 $3.49 $3.99!! a half gallon). For a lot of moms, organic milk is the "gateway drug", so to speak, that leads to more organic food in the overall family diet.

And I try to keep up with all the movements that have made me more politically aware about food, and eating: slow food, the organic food movement, locavores/eating locally (aka the 100-mile diet). It's our family's way of trying to eat more nutritiously, support local farmers, reward the use of fertilizers and insect control by means other than dangerous pesticides, and reduce the carbon footprint (miles traveled, for one) of the way our food gets produced.

Where individual consumer habits intersect with policy is the government's USDA Farm Bill (final version of the bill posted here, a summary of commentary here).

Go Listen: Edwards' New Poverty Plan

On NPR on Friday, John Edwards talked about more than just party endorsements.  The only thing being reported by most of the media outlets were his statement to Michele Norris about it being difficult to make a "compelling case for the math" of a Clinton nomination. 

While I admit that I was eager for John Edwards to endorse either Clinton or Obama immediately after he dropped out of the race, I now understand why he hasn't.  John and Elizabeth Edwards are using their political capital to support the causes close to their hearts.  For Elizabeth, this is health care.  For John, the issue is poverty.

Now here's the part most media outlets ignored: John Edwards talked to Michelle Norris about his new poverty campaign "Half in Ten."  Half in Ten seeks to cut poverty in half in 10 years and eliminate it in 30 years. He mentions things such as raising the minimum wage, providing access to quality childcare, and expanding the income tax credit as steps to lift people out of poverty. 

Dreams of a Mother: Have Something to Eat

What I dream for the world is that we all eat a good meal, three times a day, with two small snacks. By good I mean nutritious and tasty. By all, I mean ALL. Every last person.

Being hungry is a primal worry. If anxiety had a sound, it would be the gurgle of stomach juices rumbling in an empty stomach. Every new mama has "Failure to Thrive" engraved on her heart as Fear About Your Infant #1. When a baby loses weight instead of gaining it. When you can see the ribs on a toddler. When a kid is peckish. Refuses to eat or has problems eating or gaining weight. When your mama looks at you and clucks, "You're looking thin. Are you eating well?", no matter how old you are. Invariably you'll hear or perhaps you've said, "Here, have another helping."

Dreams of this Mother: Affordable Housing

This Mother's Day many of us will celebrate who we are, what we've done, how we've mothered.  This holiday, while sadly commercially manufactured into another avenue for production and consumption is also a good reminder for reflection in the past and for how we want to embrace our mothering in the future.

I am the mother who advocates for affordable housing.  Of all the gifts I can give my daughter, besides love and affection and safety and fun and adventure the greatest gift I can give her is awareness.  Awareness that not everyone has the same life as she does and that there are things we can do to fix it. 

My child has the opportunity to spend a lot of time at shelters and housing programs.  She's played with children who sleep in the streets or in abandoned buildings or on the floor.  She's shared meals with children who haven't eaten regularly in days or weeks or sometimes months.  And every time without fail, she will ask me why. Why doesn't she have a place to live?  How long can she live with you?  How does she sleep in such a big room?  How does he get new toys? And from that place, she begins to think of solutions. Maybe I can give him my blankets.  Maybe we should give our food to them. Maybe they can find a home today. Her awareness is soaring but it's a sad sort of flight, one that means she'll witness the suffering without knowing how to truly reconcile it.

Classism: Is Republican Rejection of Universal Health Care a Form of Discrimination?

After MOMocrats nabbed an exclusive Q&A with Barack Obama*, we were asked by Geoff Livingston if we would welcome McCain's response to our questions in the same manner.  My initial gut reaction was, "Well, of course."  I like to think that I'm always ready to listen to rationale, reasonable people and their ideas.

But then I started to think about it a little more.

I'm impressed that John McCain's campaign reached out to bloggers, even non-political bloggers, to explain his plan for health insurance.  This is a great time to discuss health care because it's Uninsured Children's Week. 

MOMocrat Donna wrote about McCain's plan today, including all the problems she sees with his ideas. But there is a fundamental difference between the way John McCain sees health care benefit for people driven by market forces - and the way I see health care - something that should be a Right, regardless of socioeconomic status.

A $5000 tax credit sounds like a nice deal, right?  Except that families on the edge who don't currently have health insurance, usually don't have it because they don't have money left over at the end of the month after paying for basics like food, clothing and shelter.  Are they supposed to take out a $5000 loan until tax season comes around?

Oh & $5000?  For health care?  Are you kidding me?  Have you ever priced an individual policy for a family of 4?  Donna did.  Go read her post.  I can tell you right now that the quotes you'll get back won't account for the fact that your son has asthma and allergies and needs medication every month.  The insurance company will exclude that from coverage. Oh and that high blood pressure your husband has?  That, and any complication even remotely related to high blood pressure will be excluded too.  Is your wife still of child bearing age?  Routine pregnancy will be excluded.

Better start saving up for those prenatal and hospital bills now. You can bet your patootie it will come to more than $5,000.

I worked for a health insurance company before I went law school.  I analyzed claims for individual policies.  I know what they cost 10 years ago and I know they're a lot higher now.

A Tiny Glimmer of Hope on Family Leave

As I noted in a previous post, the U.S. is pretty much at the bottom of heap when it comes to family leave policies.

But today, the U.S. House of Representatives provided a tiny glimmer of hope. Or, well, the House Oversight and Government Reform Subcommittee on the Federal Workforce, Postal Service and the District of Columbia (what a mouthful!) did.

The subcommittee voted 7-3 to to approve a bill (H.R. 5781) that would give federal workers four weeks of paid leave. Originally the bill called for eight weeks paid leave but it was amended down during the subcommittee mark-up.  The three who voted nay were Darrell Issa (R-CA-49th), Jim Jordan (R-OH-4th), and Kenny Marchant (R-TX-24th).

Yes, I know how sad it is that I'm excited over four measly weeks of paid leave that would only apply to federal workers. But you have to start someplace, right?   

On citizen journalists and the validity of accounts

The fireball that has erupted over a comment made at a fund raiser has knocked me off my feet. Over the past few days, what amounts to a standard, though creatively written account of another political event/fund raiser by a citizen journalist has become the fuel for an insane amount of intolerance described here that is almost as hateful as the thinking Barack Obama is being labeled for with his remarks on economically disadvantaged small-town people.

Do I need to get into all the reasons why one might expect a man who has campaigned for last 15 months or so all over the U.S. to know better than to phrase his remarks as such? Well, that is not where I'm headed, and quite frankly, I say this with all honesty, it often falls on deaf ears. However, I do intend to speak out for my citizen journalist colleague, Mayhill Fowler, with whom I, and a number of other of other contributors, have written on The Huffington Post's Off the Bus since June of last year.

Mayhill, as far as I have known, is unabashedly supportive of Obama. She also has very keen eyes and ears as her writing attests. She is very artful at describing the scene and the atmosphere as well as the reaction she experiences at campaign events. Over the last several months, I have read her many posts, of which a vast majority are favorable to Obama's campaign efforts. And I have followed with a slight sort of envy her outright dedication to covering the campaigns, which isn't always possible when you have young children under foot as I do.

Therefore, I am appalled at the amount of backlash she has received for having written her account of this expensive San Francisco fund raiser. I have attended numerous campaign events and throughout my years training as a journalist, I've covered events, people, issues I did and did not care about, much as a citizen journalist or any journalist for that matter would cover. Some were favorable to an idea or candidate I supported, some were critical. But, all were written from the truth as I believe Mayhill's account was written.

What I don't understand is how ordinary Americans can go on the defensive over the work of a citizen journalist, who is more like they are, than any big name paid reporter on any big news operation anywhere.

The value in the citizen journalist's account is that, unlike the paid reporter, they work for free. They are beholden to no one but themselves. And therefore, they are under no  obligation to write, cover or opine about subjects but from their own unique perspective.

We must remember the amount of varying viewpoints, accounts, thoughts and questions citizen journalists may pose is the very cornerstone to the idea a free press, most crucial in this age of corporate controlled big media.

Let us not become so embedded in our support of a candidate at the expense of free thought and dissent that we forget the underlying foundation that allows our candidate his or her platform in the first place.

-Christine Modern English

Candidates Clinton, Obama, and McCain Remember Dr. King

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., January 15, 1929-April 4, 1968.

Five Years Later: What about Iraqi Women?

Three years ago, at the State of the Union Address, President Bush acknowledged a woman in the audience: Safia Taleb al-Suhail. She is a leader of Banu Tamim tribe and Ambassador to Eqypt, married to a Sunni Kurd. She lost her father to Saddam Hussein’s regime. For her, life is better five years after the American invasion.

Sadly, the same cannot be said for millions of other Iraqi women.

On the whole, Iraq is a more dangerous place today for women than it was five years ago.

A rise in theocracy-seeking political parties and the appearance of Al Qaeda in Iraq -- something that only happened after we invaded -- has meant a more restrictive life for millions of women. A 2003 report from Human Rights Watch found a significant number of women and girls were not reporting incidents of sexual violence for fear of honor killings and social stigmatization. Given the disarray of the police force in Baghdad and other cities, as well as a lack of public utilities needed for forensic examination, even when complaints are reported, they often go uninvestigated.

Women Who Weld Together, uh, Support Their Families.

Here's a project that could certainly be looked to as a model to expand upon with the new, Democratic administration that takes the reins come January of '09.   (I refuse to acknowledge any other potential outcome.  I'm blithely optimistic like that.)

A quote from Melissa Kutz, one of the participants in the project:

“I spent a lot of years trying to figure out what to do, how to make things work, and after a while you reach a point where you’re completely hopeless,” Ms. Kutz said recently at Climb Wyoming’s training center. It is a barracks-like building at Laramie County Community College, where workstations are a jumble of computers, blowtorches, copper pipe and circuit boards.

“You hear it all: ‘You’re white trash. You’re a welfare mom. Why’d you have kids if you can’t feed them?’ ” Ms. Kutz said. “But I just have never been as hopeful as I have in the past few weeks.”

This isn't a national issue; it's our conjoined human plight.  But we've gotta start somewhere.  I think it's precisely the kind of thing that our Dem nominee ought to be encouraged to broaden and develop in the coming years, if we're going to breathe new life into the idea of the American Dream - the one everyone gets to participate in.

Cross-posted at Debbie's personal blog, i obsess.