Whistleblowers need to recognize the opportunities that abound these days and convert them into tangible rights and legal protections. Yes, the government is hostile to whistleblowers (especially those from the national security sector), but with sustained, effective, and forward-looking political action, it can happen, even if not right away.

Consider the following:

• Pentagon Papers Whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg says that he’s been waiting 40 years for Edward Snowden to come along.
• A Guardian poll found that 40% of respondents believe that Snowden is a hero.
• In an interview with The Huffington Post, Ellsberg noted that the term “whistleblower” is no longer synonymous with “traitor,” as it was 20 years ago.
• Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, recently tweeted the following: “why is media using sympathetic word “whistleblower” 4 Edward #Snowden, who leaked secret #NSA program? He broke the law & made us less safe.” While Haass ultimately disputes whether Snowden meets the definition of “whistleblower,” he concedes that it is a sympathetic one.
• The issue of whether Snowden (or any other national security whistleblower) has effective avenues to blow the whistle “appropriately” is getting airtime. This is good, and hopefully it means progress, because there is much evidence to suggest they don’t. One prominent lawmaker, who is in a position to provide whistleblowers with effective avenues (but did not when given the chance), said that if Snowden had only “raise[d] his hand. Under the whistle-blower law, he is protected. Yet he chose to go to China.” The public needs to know if these channels exist and if they work.
• Legal correspondents are beginning to ask how to make room for national security disclosures.
• There is greater collaboration, interest by broader political and media groups, and cross-spectrum ideological interest, even from unlikely sources, in Snowden, government accountability, and civil liberties, the likes of which I don’t believe we’ve seen for decades. These issues are not confined to a super-minority anymore. It may be fleeting, but for the moment we have support based on an idea whose time has come, rather than a personality.

Finally, I understand that, for whistleblowers and their advocates who have been in the fight for many years and have seen many false hopes shattered, it’s easy to become discouraged or to treat this moment with suspicion. I don’t pretend to know that “this time it will be different.” But I do know that now, more than ever, is the moment to tie public support for Snowden and what he stands for to “the rights of whistle-blowers or the issue of whistle-blowing.” Ultimately, that’s the goal we’re all fighting for, right?

Every Monday for the past month, North Carolina citizens from across the spectrum have gathered at the State House in Raleigh to protest the pro-corporate, anti-rights agenda of the legislature’s newly elected Republicans. The top priority of these Republicans is to pass every law imaginable to wreck the environment and strip away the ability of people to defend their communities — which is exactly why Reverend William Barber and the hundreds of dedicated people of North Carolina will be there again this Monday, singing, chanting, and raising their voices in every way they can to make sure the corporate right doesn’t win in North Carolina.

Greenpeace activists will be there alongside Reverend Barber and groups across issues, because this fight matters in a big way — not only for North Carolina but for everyone in the country who cares about voting rights and environmental protection.

Why?

Because the big money groups fighting the citizens of North Carolina are the same big money groups fighting across the country to disempower the majority who believe in the rights of communities to be safe and self-determined. If the corporate right sees it can win in North Carolina, it will take the same tactics to every vulnerable state in the Union in a full court press against people and the environment. We can’t let that happen.

For years, the people of North Carolina have struggled against the State House influence of big corporations like Duke Energy, which has had the state’s regulators and politicians on lockdown for decades but now sees its old, dirty energy business model barreling towards obsolescence. So Duke and other old economy behemoths are getting desperate, trying to hold onto all the power they can before demographics and history sweep them aside.

Art Pope, North Carolina’s self-appointed kingmaker and honorary Koch Brother, along with the right wing legislation factories ALEC, AFP, and State Policy Network are gleefully running amok at the state house, trying to ram through legislation that would fire all the state’s environmental regulators, restrict renewable energy, wish away global warming, and make sure disenfranchised voters stayed that way.

These guys don’t divide us into social justice groups and environmental groups — they see us as all one enemy, which is why in North Carolina we are one movement. They try to take away voting rights from people of color because they know those are the people that — if empowered — will fight to make sure that coal plants and toxic waste incinerators don’t end up in their back yards. Communities of color and low-income communities are hurt first and worst by Duke’s rate hikes for dirty energy. They are hurt first and worst by pollution, since companies usually site the coal plants and toxic waste dumps in their communities. They are the people who could benefit most from solar panels on their rooftops and the ability to free themselves from the regressive, costly, polluting electricity grid that Duke currently offers. Which is why we’re standing together to make sure the people are empowered. An attack by corporate interests against North Carolina’s working people, women, people of color, or any other vulnerable group, is an attack on North Carolina’s environment too, and we will stand with our allies to fight that corporate funded threat.

Good Morning, Dinerzens.  Today’s topic is domestic servitude, but it has international implications.

Home, sweet home?

Some months ago, our County Commission gave a 32-year tax credit to a proposed “workforce housing” development in my neighborhood in Albuquerque. We didn’t have much information about the project in advance, but at one of the neighborhood meetings, the developer told those assembled that the financial partner for the building was Berkshire Hathaway. “You may have heard of them,” he said with a chuckle.

The project renderings available at the time did not appeal to many neighbors, but what rankled us the most were the tax credits and the lack of parking. The project is located in an area of downtown that has no parking requirements for any building, something the developer was totally hip to, but not the neighbors who will be impacted by the re-development of the former motel site. My county commissioner would not give me the time of day, and another said, “You progressives like transit-oriented development until it’s in your neighborhood, and then you say ‘Not In My Back Yard.’” The developer says the mostly young people who will live there “want to be green, so they’ll ride bicycles.”

“Workforce housing” is a euphemism for “low income housing” for workers earning 60% of median income. This project has 151 units, mostly studio apartments with just a few one and two bedroom options. There are 21 parking spaces that the tenants will pay extra to use. For 32 years, the property will contribute Not One Cent to fund streets and buses, schools and hospitals, among many services the residents will use. The citizens of Albuquerque and small business property owners will foot the bill for Warren Buffett’s financial investment. Low income workers will funnel more than a million dollars each year into the developer’s pockets. There are 4 employees needed for the completed project and construction jobs for some months, but most of the money generated from this operation will be electronically transferred to the home office in Portland, OR.

What I have been investigating since this project popped up is national housing policy and student loan debt, how they are interconnected and what this whole concept, cynical and planned or a result of on-going structural economic issues, portends for the generation of people who are projected to live in human filing cabinets under construction across the US.

This is where we talk about “micro-apartments.” Because it sounds so, um, urbane. And it is happening world wide, to the same young people. Every effort is being made to make it palatable. Of course 1% of the young will have it easy, but “workforce housing” will absolutely be needed.

Sallie Mae/the US Government, is making a handsome profit from a widening circle of people through student loans, and there are a variety of actions to square that off. Elizabeth Warren has taken a stab, perhaps insufficient, at the problem. Strike Debt is another option. David Dayen describes the result of student borrowing as indenture, but this is a global trend, the likely outcome of continued policies reinforcing the economic inequality and injustice our next generations face, coming of age in a time of economic hopelessness.

Student loans and “workforce housing” are structured government programs that may have broadly benefited previous generations but have now been re-written to create profits for a few by gouging the young. The government has outsourced debt-collection on student loans, and the squeeze is on.  Increasing numbers of the elderly are still paying their student debts. (Dayen’s article has many of these same links.)

Perhaps this next generation of workers will rise up. Maybe they will go back to the methods we used before social media, once so powerful in the hands of the many but now another government program gone so very wrong. It’s tragic: all the work of organizing for better living and working conditions was so 19 c.; a long time ago, and yet we are apparently doomed to repeat it.

It’s always a good day …

Boards of Canada just released their long-awaited new album Tomorrow’s Harvest. Here’s a fan-made video to the song “Reach For the Dead.” I like the use of glitch art to create haunting imagery of flight that matches the soaring sounds.

Some good news – The Guardian reports that Move Your Money UK succeeded in getting millions of customers to leave the top banks in 2012:

An estimated 2.4 million customers quit the UK’s five biggest banks in 2012 as people “voted with their feet” in response to a string of scandals, according to latest figures.

The Move Your Money UK campaign and website, which issued the figures, said they showed a “mass movement” away from the big banking groups: Lloyds, Royal Bank of Scotland/NatWest, Barclays, HSBC and Santander.

Laura Willoughby, Move Your Money chief executive, said: “The constant slew of scandals last year has opened the floodgates, and people are beginning to realise they don’t have to put up with the arrogance of the big banks.”

Housekeeping notes:

• Please review our About Us page if you need a refresher on site rules, and
• We encourage you to use our flag system — if you see an abusive comment, user or post, please flag it rather than replying. We review every flag and take the best action available to us.
• If you have questions or concerns about Firedoglake-specific issues, please limit their discussion to Watercooler posts rather than starting new posts or making off-topic comments in others. But remember,
• Firedoglake editors and staff are not allowed to comment on any moderation decisions.

What’s on your mind tonight? It’s an open conversation in the comments.

Written by Tara Murtha for RH Reality Check. This diary is cross-posted; commenters wishing to engage directly with the author should do so at the original post.

Pennsylvania is the another front in the war on women.

As we saw with 2011’s targeted regulation of abortion providers (TRAP) bill, the Republican-dominated Pennsylvania legislature routinely ignores protests from medical associations and professionals in passing bad-faith bills that politicize and endanger women’s health.

Now, Republican Gov. Tom Corbett, already suffering low approval ratings in large part because of a significant gender gap, is poised to sign HB 818. The bill intrudes on the free market by prohibiting private insurance companies that plan to sell health-care plans through Pennsylvania’s forthcoming state health insurance exchange from covering abortion, even in cases of medical emergency, health of the mother, and severe fetal anomaly.

Even more troubling, lawmakers supporting HB 818 are attempting to deceive the public by offering a non-solution: allowing Pennsylvania women to purchase abortion-specific riders from private companies not participating in the exchange.

The problem is that such abortion riders do not appear to exist.

HB 818

Even though the state exchange, established by the Affordable Care Act (ACA), won’t be set up until next year, Pennsylvania lawmakers have been working on versions of the bill since Corbett’s first week in office back in 2011.

The bill’s sponsor, state Rep. Donna Oberlander (R-Clarion/Armstrong), insists HB 818 simply underscores existing policy that already prohibits tax dollars from funding abortion. There’s no reason for the “small government” party to propose redundant legislation—except, of course, as cover for something else.

HB 818 doesn’t address tax dollars, which are indeed not allowed to be used to fund abortions (except in cases of rape, incest, and endangerment to the life of the mother) under the Hyde Amendment, Pennsylvania state law, and terms set within the ACA. What it will do is require businesses participating in the health-care exchange to offer sub-standard insurance plans to women—which, in turn, means the hundreds of thousands of Pennsylvania women expected to purchase coverage through the exchange won’t be able to spend their own money to purchase industry-standard medical care through the exchange.

No Health Exceptions

Tinkering with the free market in order to bully insurance companies into economically hijacking working women’s constitutional right to abort an unwanted pregnancy is bad enough, but HB 818 goes even further, restricting physician-advised terminations of wanted pregnancies complicated by unexpected disease or accident.

Pennsylvania lawmakers explicitly rejected an amendment to add health of the woman as an exception to the narrow restrictions, which only allow abortion coverage “where necessary to avert the death of the woman” and in cases of incest and rape, providing the rape victim already reported the assault to the authorities. (The fact that many victims often don’t report aside, protocol of communication between police, insurers, doctors, and patients is unclear.)

When lawmakers voted against a medical emergency amendment offered by state Sen. Judy Schwank (D-Berks), they voted against insurers covering the expense of medically advised terminations in cases when a pregnant woman faces, for example, a cancer diagnosis, diabetes, a car accident, or discovers a severe fetal anomaly.

“Let’s say a woman was pregnant [and] her water broke prematurely and the baby would not survive. She would not be able to get an abortion,” Sen. Schwank told RH Reality Check. At least, not without paying out-of-pocket for the procedure, which could cost tens of thousands of dollars.

“These are already tragic situations,” said Schwank. “These are babies that are wanted, and to have to add this anguish on to the situation. … I can’t understand why we couldn’t get this through.”

“Certainly I understand that there are extenuating circumstances,” Oberlander said in a PCN interview defending the bill. “However, [a health exception is a] loophole wide enough you can ride a semi truck through. Women experience a lot of different issues and side effects from a pregnancy.”

Seemingly frustrated with questions about the bill, Oberlander added, “It’s not rocket science.” Well, it’s not medical science, either; it’s religion-based health care influenced by special interests. Specifically, the Pennsylvania Catholic Conference, the public affairs arm of Pennsylvania’s Catholic bishops, and the Catholic dioceses of Pennsylvania lobbied hard for HB 818 and against the health amendment.

“I hear it in my colleagues,” state Sen. Vincent Hughes (D-Philadelphia/Montgomery), who has spoken out against the bill, told RH Reality Check, “the frustration that they continue to get [calls from the Catholic Conference], especially since the Affordable Care Act took care of everything in terms of public funding. No matter where it comes from, no public funding can be utilized for abortion.”

Two Democrats, state Sens. Tim Solobay of Canonsburg and Richard Kasunic of Fayette and Somerset, voted against the health amendment, which lost by two votes.

Rep. Oberlander also insists the bill is “consistent with the will of the people.” But 2011 polling conducted by Susquehanna Polling & Research reveals otherwise. When asked whether or not they support insurance companies participating in the exchange covering abortion “to protect the health of the woman,” 79 percent of respondents said yes.

What Abortion Riders?

By Chris Lilienthal, Third and State

Last week, hundreds of people from across Pennsylvania took the Capitol by storm to put faces to the debate over expanding Medicaid health coverage in Pennsylvania.

The “Lives on the Line” rally featured a number of speakers who talked about the stress of working full-time without health insurance. One woman named Petrina has diabetes, but her employer doesn’t offer health insurance. She had to fight back tears as she talked about the struggle to control her insulin. She is understandably terrified.

Mary Lou struggles to get through the days, given that she’s needed new glasses for years.

Cheryl from Washington County recently incurred thousands of dollars in ER charges and has no idea how she’ll ever pay it back.

And it goes on…

All of the speakers would have the security of knowing they can see a doctor when they get sick if Pennsylvania opted to take a federal opportunity provided by the Affordable Care Act (ACA) to expand Medicaid coverage in 2014 to adults with incomes up to 138% of the federal poverty line (roughly $32,000 for a family of four).

The federal government will pay 100% of the cost of new enrollees for the first three years—2014, 2015 and 2016—and will cover 90% of the costs by 2020.

Hundreds of thousands of Pennsylvanians will be eligible for health coverage under expansion, cutting the state’s uninsured rate in half. Acting on this opportunity will create jobs, strengthen Pennsylvania’s economy, and make its citizens healthier and more financially stable. Get all the facts about the expansion in a new fact sheet prepared by the Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center (PBPC).

Despite the tremendous upside, Governor Corbett has yet to decide on whether the state will expand, and there are only a couple weeks left before the Legislature breaks for the summer. That’s why the Cover the Commonwealth Campaign (of which PBPC is a member) organized last week’s Capitol rally.

And it was a success, generating good press coverage. The Governor’s office and legislators took notice, and the crowd was fired up. But more needs to be done to keep the pressure on Harrisburg to do the right thing.

You can help by calling your state legislators at 1-800-515-8134 and the Governor at 717-787-2500. Tell them: My name is ___ and I’m calling because Pennsylvania needs to accept federal funding to expand Medicaid. Thank you.

From This in Michigan…

To This in Honduras….

In Michigan, Republican Governor Rick Snyder has appointed an “emergency manager” to take over the city of Detroit, with the powers to over-ride the votes of local citizens and the decisions and contracts made by their locally elected mayor and city council. The manager has the power to abrogate previously signed union contracts with city workers and sell city assets to pay off the city’s creditors. The new emergency manager has ordered the appraisal of the Detroit Art Institute’s world class art collection with a view to its sale.

In Honduras, its post-coup president and legislature has signed a law allowing the government to sell or lease vast tracks of lands in habited by Honduran’s indigenous tribes, to private owners to establish “charter cities”, feudal-like city states which are to establish their own laws and form of government, free of pre-existing state laws and regulations.

As a part of Honduras’s “public-private partnership”, law, capitalist business have been invited to create new business cities in the wilderness, profit paradises to be totally controlled by the businesses which own them. Thus the ese corporate vandals are pillaging the world, its land, art and culture by liquidating previously sovereign states in their favor.

Honduras will now allow consortia of private corporations to set up their own city-states, free of virtually all pre-existing law and regulation by the country’s government. The “public” component of this “public-private partnership”, the putatively democratically elected Honduran government (post the 2009 Zelaya-coup) have voted to sell (or long term lease) large tracks of their country to private corporations and their agents. Hondurans living in these feudal city-states will have no democratic control of their environment.

The rules will be set by private charters, written by the corporate agents who shall decide who shall live in their states and who shall be excluded and where they will live and work if they allowed in. (Never mind that the likely territories involved long have belonged to indigenous tribes, who have not been consulted in this massive give-away of their land, but actively oppose it.)

It’s really not much different in Michigan.

The Michigan Model: The Emergency Manager Law

Thus, in Detroit, Republic governor, Rick Snyder, using the “Emergency Manager” law passed by his Republican majority in Michigan’s legislature, has appointed his own man to take over the city of Detroit and run it. Over the past 30 years, Detroit’s tax base has disappeared as its manufacturing companies, once the pride of U.S. capitalism, has abandoned Detroit to move their factories to Third World countries where workers’ wages are so much lower, thus increasing the companies’ profit margin. Detroit and surrounding areas, once prosperous, have been turned into a new industrial wilderness, unable to pay its running expenses.

Snyder’s selected “emergency manager” is a corporate bankruptcy attorney experienced in acting in the interest of creditors not Detroit voters. Under the Emergency Manager law, Detroit’s voters simply don’t count at all.

Carrying out the same neo-liberal policy being employed in Greece, that of privatizing capital assets and services, the emergency manager law empowers empowered the manager to close down those public services, such as schools, utilities, and emergency services which he considers “wasteful”, selling or renting the assets to charter schools and private companies and the like, while setting aside all the city’s labor contracts with the workers previously providing those services. Thus teachers, emergency and service workers, find themselves divested of jobs and facing the loss of their post-employment benefits such as pensions for which their unions long fought.

The new manager now in charge of running Detroit is Washington, D.C. attorney, Kevyn Orr. One of Orr’s most provocative acts has been to demand that the Detroit Institute of Art, holder of one of the U.S.’s most respected art collections, including the irreplaceable Diego Rivera wall murals, must have all its artwork appraised with a view to selling the works on the open market for the benefit of Detroit’s creditors. (Even Republican Attorney General, Bill Schuette, has expressed his objection to this outrage.)

The Honduran Model: The “Public-Private Charter City”