Freedom to Marry launched their
"Democrats: Say I Do" campaign, aimed at lobbying the Democratic Party's drafting committee to formally adopt a position of supporting marriage equality into the party platform. The new platform will be ratified at the Democratic National Convention this summer. The current platform language reads (
p. 52 :
We support the full inclusion of all families, including same-sex couples, in the life of our nation, and support equal responsibility, benefits, and protections. We will enact a comprehensive bipartisan employment non-discrimination act. We oppose the Defense of Marriage Act and all attempts to use this issue to divide us.The proposed new language would read:
The Democratic Party supports the full inclusion of all families in the life of our nation, with equal respect, responsibility, and protection under the law, including the freedom to marry. Government has no business putting barriers in the path of people seeking to care for their family members, particularly in challenging economic times. We support the Respect for Marriage Act and the overturning of the federal so-called “Defense of Marriage Act,” and oppose discriminatory constitutional amendments and other attempts to deny the freedom to marry to loving and committed same-sex couples.Is the time ripe for the Democratic party to finally come out of the closet and say "I do" support marriage equality and not just wink and a nod at it?
Reid Wilson writing in the
National Journal
this week called marriage equality support
"The New Democratic Litmus Test." Wilson argues the 2016 Democratic presidential aspirants will inevitably include marriage equality supporters, and Democratic marriage equality opponents may well find themselves at a significant fundraising disadvantage.
In July 2011, President Obama's pollster Joel Benenson and George W. Bush's pollster Dr. Jan van Lohuizen were hired by Freedom to Marry to crunch the numbers. Here's what their analysis of six national polls from Gallup, Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI , CNN/Opinion Research Corporation, ABC News/Washington Post and Pew Research Center (Pew found:
The trendlines are indisputable, and a general consensus seems to be forming that marriage equality is inevitable,
Vice-President Joe Biden even said so himself.
Among Beneson and van Lohuizen's conclusions was the declaration that "support strongly correlates with age. As Americans currently under the age of 40 make up a greater percentage of the electorate, their views will come to dominate."
Young Democrats of America. YDA has 150,000+ members from chapters in 46 states and U.S. territories and over 1,500 local chapters. Emily Tisch Sussman
writing on the group's website said:
“As the Executive Director of Young Democrats of America, I represent young people, and the way we connect young people back to Democratic politics is by speaking out for what is right and taking action. Polling shows that 70 percent of voters 18-34 support the freedom to marry, and for many of our members, it’s a cause that goes to the core of why they consider themselves Democrats. It is time to realize that marriage is no longer an effective wedge issue; it is a cause that we as Democrats should be leading on.”Leadership is the key issue here.
The changing trendlines certainly are signaling to many Democratic leaders the water's fine, hop right in. The strong hand of leadership emanting from Democratic Govs. Cuomo, Gregoire and O'Malley in New York, Washington and Maryland were certainly key to marriage equality victories in the last year.
There is certainly a school of thought that Democrats should not engage "social issues" and that what voters really care about is the jobs and economy.
While the second part is almost certainly true, total disengagement from this "social issue" is not a luxury the LGBT community has the privilege to enjoy in the 2012 election cycle. Whether LGBT Americans like it or not, their civil rights will be going to popular ballot referendums, definitely in Minnesota, Maine and all but certainly in Washington and Maryland as well. North Carolina too will be voting on May 8 on a constitutional amendment to
ban virtually all unions but opposite-sex marriage.
And for some inexplicable reason Republicans seem anxious to make 2012 the year of a resurgent culture war. Inexplicable as polling shows they are out if the mainstream on all touchstone issues. Abortion, birth control and even marriage equality offers increasingly no advantage to winning the hearts and minds of the middle.
indisputably in the majority.
Viewing support through party affiliations, and non-affiliated voters, the divide is even more revealing.
Increasingly the GOP's rhetoric preaches only to their choir. Supporting marriage equality offers little risk to a Democrat to turn off the base or independents. It's becoming clear that the most adamant opposition is fast boiling down to a hardcore group of 30% mostly religious right conservative Republicans. And it isn't at all clear that a voter that doesn't support marriage equality personally considers a candidate's support a deal-breaker in an otherwise acceptable platform of issues.
Believe it or not, even the Republican party seems to be waking up to this. Earlier this year,
National Journal
took the temperature of political "insiders"—political operatives, strategists, campaign consultants and lobbyists—in both parties. They found an amazing 20 percent drop in GOP's appetite for opposing marriage equality in just under two years. All the movement on the GOP side was toward a desire to "avoid" the issue:
Republicans insiders on marriage equality | July 2011 (105 votes | April 2009 (104 votes |
| My party should support it | 14% | 8% |
| My party should oppose it | 30% | 50% |
| My party should avoid the issue | 56% | 37% |
| Other (volunteered | 0% | 6% |
But often Democrats are more comfortable discussing the politics of contrast than playing them. To do that you have to get in front of the issue, and lead the conversation in a new direction rather than just respond to what the other side is saying.
As marriage equality support becomes the majority position it becomes less and less understandable to the LGBT community that leaders should treat the issue as radioactive or an electoral albatross.
There is of course, widespread anxiety about these various ballot fights coming to the 2012 calendar, and also perhaps anxiety at the prospect of a 2008 redux.
Think back to November 4, 2008. While Democrats had every reason to cheer, for the LGBT constituency, the evening was more bittersweet. The landslide win of Barack Obama, and downticket sweeps of Democrats did not stop Proposition 8 in California, nor did it stop similar anti-gay ballot initatives in Florida, Arizona, and Arkansas.
In 2009, during the ballot fight for marriage equality in Maine, there was some criticism that Organizing for America was perhaps,
less engaged than many LGBT Democrats might have hoped. That ballot initiative failed narrowly.
Signs are encouraging that the larger Democratic establishment will be more engaged in assisting the LGBT community with these battles in 2012 than in the past.
In Maryland and Washington, the party has good incentive to unite. Like marriage equality or not, the Republicans are coming to take away the Democratic Governor's legacy. Govs. Gregoire and O'Malley's triumphs will be hollow, even viewed as a political misstep, should they be erased by voters. In both states, a united front of the Democratic base can assure the governors' fight for the freedom to marry was not made in vain and the Democratic party's legislative agenda vindicated. In Minnesota, the Democratic party, under the leadership of
Gov. Mark Dayton is showing a fierce appetite to adopt the fight as their own.
Unsurprisingly, further south of the Mason-Dixon line, the news is less encouraging in North Carolina. Moving the date of the ballot initiative
from the general to be concurrent with Republican primary was anything but helpful, at least for the LGBT community. And
Sen. Kay Hagan's comment she was "wary" of the amendment was described by North Carolinian Pam Spaulding as more
"tepid" and "pitiful" than fierce, but still better than Democratic
Gov. Beverly Perdue's statement.
The platform adoption is but one strategy for solidifying support within the Democratic base for turning these ballot initiatives into LGBT victories.
Courage Campaign and Grindr 4 Equality are focused on ensuring the DNC chip in to fund the campaign against these discriminatory amendments in Minnesota and North Carolina and ensure equal rights in other states because ultimately, money is what is needed to get our message out to voters in these critical campaigns."Courage Campaign's petition to the DNC reads:
LGBT voters and their allies have put Democrats in office for years. Now it's time for the Democratic National Committee (DNC to have our back and help secure equal rights. As many as 5 states (Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, North Carolina and Washington will face ballot referenda on marriage equality this year, where voters will vote on the rights of same-sex couples to marry.Submitted to Madame Chairwoman as she considers the appropriating of DNC resources for the 2012 cycle: the voters these equality-minded organizers will be working furiously to drive into voting booths will almost certainly be disproportionately young, progressive Democrats. Please, consider how that might end well for everyone on election night.
In 2008, the DNC chipped in $25,000 to help fight Prop 8 and then-candidate Obama called for a "no" vote. DNC Chairwoman and Florida Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz told reporters she would "certainly consider" funding the fight for equal rights. Let's show the DNC how important it is for them to help again.
The ask seems particularly effective coming from Courage Campaign as they have distinguished themselves as full-spectrum progressive organizer engaging on issues as disparate as
fair taxation,
racism,
health care reform and countless others.
Michael Cole-Schwartz speaking for
Human Rights Campaign said:
We are supportive of Freedom to Marry's and Courage Campaign's efforts. Having party support for marriage and a variety of other LGBT issues is important which is why we've testified previously, including in 2008, before the DNC Platform Committee. As we look toward these critical elections with marriage to be on the ballot in a number of states, HRC will be playing a substantial role in these fights.The LGBT community has a good friend in DNC chairwoman Wasserman Schultz, a supporter of marriage equality. She has not yet commented on the platform language, but has a long history of standing with the LGBT community, including
serving as vice-chair of the House LGBT equality caucus. House Minority leader Nancy Pelosi has already
voiced support for the proposed change in platform language. She also once said to marriage equality opponents, "The inconceivable to you is the inevitable to us."
But of course the
already transpired late last year in Australia on precisely this issue. This almost certainly presents the biggest hurdle to the successful adoption.
But even the party leader himself seems to be acknowledging the inevitable
telling Joe Sudbay and gathered bloggers in October 2010:
THE PRESIDENT: The one thing I will say today is I think it’s pretty clear where the trendlines are going.The biggest point of debate seems to be when he will—or should—get on the correct side of the arc of history?
Q: The arc of history.
THE PRESIDENT: The arc of history.
Not everyone has lost faith that the president's position will complete its evolution before November 6, 2012. In December, former Clinton White House advisor
Richard Socarides wrote of Prop 8 and DOMA constitutional challenges in the
New Yorker
:
The potential for those decisions, together with a rapid change in public opinion in favor of marriage equality, have clearly become factors in President Obama’s thinking. As a result, I believe that he will announce his support for same-sex marriage before the 2012 election.Might the president announce his personal endorsement concurrent with that of his party?
It certainly would put a bold exclamation point on his likely place in history as the first American president to declare the freedom to marry as a fundamental human right for every loving couple.
Category: Health News
Created: 2/24/2012 8:05:00 AM
Last Editorial Review: 2/24/2012
Category: Health News
Created: 2/23/2012 8:06:00 PM
Last Editorial Review: 2/24/2012
Category: Health News
Created: 2/23/2012 6:06:00 PM
Last Editorial Review: 2/24/2012
Submitted by Charles Hugh Smith from
Of Two Minds
This Is Small Business in America: Burdened, Crushed, Doomed
If you make it increasingly costly and risky to open a small enterprise, then no wonder unemployment remains high.
You hear a lot about Kafkaesque stifling bureaucracy in Greece and other struggling European nations, but America's Status Quo is trying its best to destroy small enterprise with taxes and crushing bureaucracy. I am self-employed, and have been for most of my life. When I did take a paid position, it was in other small enterprises or local non-profit organizations.
I mention this because there is an unbridgeable divide in any discussion of small business between those who have no experience in entrepreneural enterprise (i.e. they've worked for the government, NGOs/non-profits or Corporate America their entire careers and those who have.
There are all sorts of similar chasms that cannot be crossed and which quickly reveal a surreal disconnect from actual lived reality: for example, the difference between actually playing football--yes, with pads, a muddy field and guys trying to slam you to the ground--and being an armchair quarterback who's never been hit even once, never caught a pass or ever struggled to bring down a faster, bigger player. (And yes, I did play football in high school as a poor dumb skinny kid who mostly warmed the bench for good reason, but I lettered.
At the extreme of this disconnect, we have armchair generals screaming for war who have no experience of combat or war as it is actually experienced.
You get the point: it's very easy for well-paid pundits who have never started a single real enterprise or met a single payroll to pontificate about "opportunity" and small business as the engine of growth, blah blah blah. It's also easy for those with no actual experience to reach all sorts of absurd conclusions about how easy it is to turn a small business into great wealth. (No, Bain Capital or other Wall Street outposts of financialization are not "small business."
In real life, it's only easy to run a small business into the ground, especially when there's a thousand tons of junk fees, taxes and useless bureaucratic requirements on your back. Lest you think this an exaggeration, consider that it took
two years and $200,000 to open an ice cream parlor in a vacant retail space:
"Ms. Pries said it took two years to open the ice cream parlor, due largely to the city’s morass of permits, procedures and approvals required to start a small business. While waiting for permission to operate, she still had to pay rent and other costs, going deeper into debt each passing month without knowing for sure if she would ever be allowed to open.
“It’s just a huge risk,” she said, noting that the financing came from family and friends, not a bank. “At several points you wonder if you should just walk away and take the loss.”
Ms. Pries said she had to endure months of runaround and pay a lawyer to determine whether her location (a former grocery, vacant for years was eligible to become a restaurant. There were permit fees of $20,000; a demand that she create a detailed map of all existing area businesses (the city didn’t have one ; and an $11,000 charge just to turn on the water."
There is nothing mysterious about the cause of this Kafkaesque Status Quo: each city, county, state and Federal fiefdom must justify its existence and payroll, and everyone in each fiefdom will fight with every fiber of their being to protect their turf. Politically, it's a fight to the death to trim even the thinnest slice of bureaucracy, and so little if any ever gets trimmed.
Nobody will care until the city, county and state's revenues collapse as people opt out of supporting the bloated dead-weight of the Status Quo with their own sweat and blood.
The only way to survive is to not have a "real" business, i.e. you write code in your living room or parents' basement, or you do enough business in the informal sector (cash to support your high-cost formal business.
Taxes and bureaucracy are not just urban phenomena, as this insightful report from Eric in Texas shows. Eric draws a critically important causal line between the stifling of small enterprise and high structural unemployment: if you make it so costly, risky and burdensome to start a business and hire people, then no wonder unemployment is high and will stay high.
One of your recent posts made me think of how difficult reinventing communities and coming up with creative solutions for the problems of unemployment and displaced people in our society is. I think it has to do mainly with the way in which lower middle class / middle class people are overburdened with taxation. As you stated in your post, the amount of taxation is staggering. Especially for the self employed, like myself.
My wife and I pay much the same percentage taxes as you listed in your post. I live in a rural area of Texas and from time to time small acreage properties go up for sale around our home. If we wanted to buy some adjacent acreage for the purpose of inviting a few of our friends, who are teetering on the edge of unemployment and facing the prospect of real poverty, to live next to us and help each other grow food, take care of livestock and find creative self employment opportunities in our area together, the resultant burden of taxation would prevent it.
For example, as I see it, my wife and I would now be paying property taxes on two properties, one would not have the homestead exemption. Any "improvement" on the new property, e.g. a small house built for our friends, would only increase the property taxes. We would also have to consider, if we planned to live together in this way long term with the major contribution of our "unemployed" friends being their labor and time invested in our communal living experiment, what kinds of taxes we might be subject to in the future based on the way we are using each others time and energy to achieve solutions for food production, child rearing, shelter, etc. I don't know if we would be subjected to any taxation in doing these things only assuming we might be.
To attempt to sum up my reaction to your post, I will make a list of what I think would impede a lower middle class person who has some discretionary income and could provide a small house and small acreage for the benefit of a few friends on the brink of poverty, with the view to the arrangement being ultimately beneficial to all involved.
1. Increased property taxes
2. The possibility of providing mandatory health insurance through "Obama care"
3. Taxes and or restrictions on what produce we can sell through farmer's markets or through the Internet, e.g. the recent crackdown on raw milk sells, and "cottage foods" like goat cheese, homemade pies, homemade canned goods, etc. In other words, if our whole way of life is to produce locally grown food for ourselves and our extended "family" and this is threatened through excessive regulation and or taxation, I wonder if it's really realistic to pursue.
4. In Texas taxes are rising, even in this recession school taxes, property taxes, fees, etc. are all going up.
5. Federal taxes look like they are poised to increase.
If I didn't have to worry about taking on the burden of all these forms of taxation, property taxes being the most onerous to me, I might could use what capital I have to invest in a communal living arrangement that I would hope to be of benefit to my family and some of our friends.
It's the idea, ultimately, that I want to reinvent my community (for me that means bringing friends in close relationship in mutual work for mutual benefit and provide opportunities to contribute. But if that means having to tangle with bureaucrats over how much more I now owe because of my desire to do these things, I think I will be doing better to try to take care of myself, my wife, and our children, and leave the rest of my loved ones to prayer and occasional modest charity.
In short, if we were not taxed every time we tried to do something, we just might damn well do something!
Let's focus on getting rid of property taxes, and other forms of ridiculous taxation so that we can free up our energy and time to do the very things you advocated so well in your post.
I realize the benefit to myself and so many of some forms of government assistance, for example food stamps, child tax credit, energy efficiency rebates.... I think good government programs could be sustained if we did things like close our military bases around the world, brought the troops back to the states, and made education and real estate much less expensive, and allowed people to grow and market local foods without encumberance.
You wrote:
Here is the ugly truth about the Savior State, welfare state, social welfare state, or whatever you choose to call the Central State: The Savior State displaces and destroys community and social capital. By making individuals dependent on the Central State for free money, free food, free housing, etc., then the State has taken over the natural function of community.
In my opinion, it is also that the Savior State displaces and destroys even the potential for ( my main point community and social capital. By placing oppressive, punitive, discouraging, and unreasonable forms of taxation on individuals who may otherwise extend resources of capital towards helping their neighbors, friends, and even family. In this way, then, the State has decided to oppress and retard the development of communities.
Well said, Eric, thank you. Before you jump in to "correct" this view of small enterprise in America, first list how many enterprises you have started, owned or run, and how many people were/are on your payroll.
If you think it's so easy to get rich in small business, then here's the keys, and payday's on Friday.
Category: Health News
Created: 2/23/2012 6:06:00 PM
Last Editorial Review: 2/24/2012
