What Vermont Farmworkers and Planned Parenthood Have in Common

Terry Allen, formidable journalist, photographer and Vermont citizen, tells The Guardian her personal story of an undocumented farmworker neighbor, who needed medical services. She is part of a volunteer group that helps undocumented immigrants. Carlos, one of 1000-2000 undocumented farmworkers, keeps Vermont's dwindling dairy farms productive.

He lacks a car. He lives a sequestered life, routinely working over 60 hours a week. He and others  like him live out of sight of most of us, but Allen brings Carlos to life. If you think immigration issues have nothing to do with you, read Allen's piece.

Carlos suggested saving time by going to a “doc in a box” at a strip mall, so I drove him to one.

I asked the receptionist about the cost: “$100 for the visit.” As Carlos started taking bills from his wallet, I motioned him to stop. “And for the lab tests?”

he young woman rummaged behind the counter. “Five hundred dollars, so $600 total,” she said with all the animation of one of Carlos’s cows.

“You’re kidding,” I nearly shouted. “For standard lab tests?”
 
“No way,” I told Carlos, who was probably deeply embarrassed by me. It wasn’t that he couldn’t afford it, but I knew how he sweated for that much money, and how the medical system jacked up prices for the uninsured. 

-- Terry Allen in The Guardian, see link below. 

As for the commonality with Planned Parenthood? Both Carlos and PP live under a cloud of threat. The threat comes from those on a moral high horse, fed by hypocritical haymaking. Allen points out a favorite lie from the billionaires and lovers of billionaires surrounding Trump. "Illegals" pay their fair share of taxes--and unlike wealthy Americans, they don't complain about it either. 

While on the campaign trail, Donald Trump called CNN’s Erin Burnett “naive” for suggesting “illegal immigrants” pay taxes. But nationally, they contribute an estimated $11.64bn a year in just state and local taxes, with at least 50% of undocumented immigrant households filing tax returns, according to the non-partisan Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. 

ermont’s undocumented people pay almost $4m a year in state and local taxes and, at 7.9% of income, contribute slightly more than the effective rate for the top 1% of Americans.

READ MORE HERE: www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/mar/25/undocumented-immigrants-vermont-dairy-industry

The Budget from Small Hands, Smaller Heart

OMG. Trump's budget. We so agree with what conservative writer David Brooks has to say about it. David! This is a feminist riff! Beautiful!

"Donald Trump doesn't care about domestic policy. He mostly cares about testosterone.

He wants to cut any part of government that may seem soft and nurturing, like poverty programs. He wants to cut any program that might seem emotional and airy-fairy, like the National Endowment for the Arts. He wants to cut any program that might seem smart and nerdy, like the National Institutes of Health.

But he wants to increase funding for every program that seems manly, hard, muscular and ripped, like the military and armed antiterrorism programs.

ndeed, the Trump budget looks less like a political philosophy and more like a sexual fantasy. It lavishes attention on every aspect of hard power and slashes away at anything that isn’t."

Read Brook's whole op-ed  piece in The NYTimes, commenting on Bannon, Prince of Darkness, too. 
www.nytimes.com/2017/03/17/opinion/let-bannon-be-bannon.html

Men with Guns Top Trump Budget

Trump’s 2018 US budget proposal increases defense by half, and shovels big money for homeland security, and veterans—paid for by budget cuts to health, education, diplomacy, environmental safety, and housing for the poorest. The arts, public broadcasting, women’s reproductive services, community development, and domestic violence programs were zero funded.

What a vision for the future: deport peaceable illegals and break up families, block Islamic workers and their families, and make sure 24 million of the poorest Americans can't get healthcare. Keep women pregnant, and afraid, stuck in violent marriages. This is making America great?

We need good policemen, and pay them well, but crime has been going down--and police send their kids to school, too. Nancy Pelosi calls big education cuts: a stupid economy! We agree. Dems are coming up with an alternative budget.  In the UK and Australia, women have organized a women's budget, to analyze their national budget. Why not do that here in the US?

Read more about Pelosi and Dems take here at the Hill: Trump Budget a Slap in the Face:
thehill.com/homenews/house/324308-pelosi-trump-budget-a-slap-in-the-face 
Find out about the Women's Budget Group in the UK:
wbg.org.uk/category/resources/

Congress Befriends the Banks. AGAIN.

Be very afraid. Dodd Frank regs are rolled back, Wall Street's bull is charging like it did in the 90s, and now a bill passed by the Republican House last year has less opposition in the Senate, which last year stopped it. This new bill was opposed by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass), according to Huffpo (which agrees with her that this is serious) and Investor Weekly (which gushes its passage will be wonderful). www.investmentnews.com/article/20170309/FREE/170309907/senate-panel-approves-bill-to-promote-etf-research
Warren pointed out the obvious. Loosening requirements on ETF research, allowing  broker salesmen to write their own puff pieces and call it research, was a conflict of interest. Bank of America has been lobbying hard for this one.

But conflicts of interest, especially big ones, are being normalized in Washington’s swamp, which seems freshly stocked with crocs, not drained. ETFs are Exchange Traded Funds, which purchase combinations of assets and sell ownership stock to investors. Their growth began to mushroom after 2008, and are now valued at $2.1 trillion. They charge big fees and, like mortgage securities, are complicated and hard to understand. Bank of America has been lobbying to exempt brokers who write research from any legal liability, reports HuffPo. This new bill delivers that. Without legal liability, selling is so much easier. 
 
Warren offered an amendment in committee to make them liable, but then withdrew it.  Maybe somebody broke it to her that this exemption from liability already applies to stock research. Hold Wall Street accountable? On this, Warren seems to be one of a handful trying to keep crocodiles at bay. 
Read more here: www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/congress-bank-of-america_us_58c07932e4b0ed718269a50c

Fearless Girl Faces Off Wall Street's Bull

What a great way to mark International Women's Day!

Sculptor Kristin Visbal's "Fearless Girl" was placed on Wall Street to confront its charging bull for March 8. Advertising Agency McCann NY got a permit for this week, but tweet or post to keep her there!

Back in 1989 artist Arturo DeModica put his bull there without a permit, to mark the determination of Wall Street to come back after one of their bullish crashes. Traders liked it so much, it stayed. But the truth is that mega corporations and global investments are male territory, and not just male, but pale male elites, who EconoMansplain why they keep getting richer, and we women, not so much. McCann's client, State Street Global Advisors, are urging corporations to include more women on their boards. Research shows more diverse boards with women tend to do better.  But you can't expect results from a token woman. Three or more is the charm. www.catalyst.org/media/companies-more-women-board-directors-experience-higher-financial-performance-according-latest

Let New York keep the fearless girl there at least as long as it takes for men to open doors to admit women advisors!

Better yet, let the fearless girl stay there forever, to remind Wall Street the world's children, our future, is at stake in their deals!  Thanks to artist Kristin Visbal, photographer Federica Valabrega and Tim Nudd for doing the story in Adweek. Brilliant!

Read more here: www.adweek.com/creativity/why-mccann-dropped-a-statue-of-a-fearless-girl-next-to-wall-streets-charging-bull-