Redistricting Florida

            With the Mother-of-All-Presidential-Recounts still vivid, current legislative conflict and legal wrangling underway in Florida, dominated by a grand jury-challenged Florida Governor Rick Scott, promises another raucous and rollicking 2012 election in the Sunshine State.   Home to the nation’s fourth largest population, the third most recipients on Social Security, the second largest number of Medicare recipients and with the 2010 census adding two delegates to twenty- nine Presidential electors, Florida is considered a Must Win in 2012.

            As the Washington Post has identified Florida’s redistricting efforts as the No.1 State to watch, a disdainful Republican-led State Legislature was already ‘analyzing’ and stalling implementation of two newly voter-approved Constitutional amendments regarding State redistricting.  With the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2000 Gore-Bush decision which overturned the Florida State Supreme Court still in mind, Governor Scott and his legislative cronies are now attempting to pack the State Supreme Court with three additional appointments prior to approval of the new redistricting maps.  In addition, a comprehensive “voter suppression’ law and reduction in early voting days, both of which benefit the Democrats, have contributed to Scott’s voter approval rating sinking to 29%.

            Despite a 700,000 voter registration margin, the Democratic Party has been largely unable to turn that advantage into electoral success with Florida considered a Republican-leaning State. One look at its convoluted map of State and Congressional Districts with thin ribbons of contiguous parcels creating incoherent districts, ranked by Redistricting the Nation as among the least ‘compact’ in the Nation, explains a Democratic loss of power since the 1990’s in favor of a Republican-dominated State government and a lopsided U.S. House delegation of 19 R’s and 6 Democrats.   The State’s 3rd (Brown), 18th (Ros-Lehtinen) and 22nd (West) Congressional Districts have been identified among the ten most gerrymandered Districts in the country. 

            By 1990, with Democrats asleep at the wheel, Republican National Committee Chair Lee Atwater initiated a brilliant National redistricting strategy to elect more Republicans that twenty years later, still dominates the country’s political landscape. 

 

            While the U.S. Constitution established the national standard for Congressional districts assuring political equality with the ‘one (wo)man, one vote” concept that all States adhered to, Republican operatives found a clever way to subvert that Constitutional principle.  Shrewdly recognizing every politician’s ultimate goal of self-preservation, Atwater’s strategy was to offer big city urban Democrats a safe District with the combination of voters that would assure re-election in exchange for locking up suburban Districts for Republican candidates thereby removing both urban and suburban Districts from truly competitive races.   While the agreement created urban big city districts for minority Democrats many of which would have

gone Democratic anyway, the long term advantage of removing what had been viable Districts went to the Republicans.   

            One prime example cited in One Party Country (Tom Hamburger and Peter Wallsten) is that of Corrine Brown, then a member of the Florida State House.  Brown negotiated a new Congressional seat that began in Jacksonville and ran 150 miles south to Orlando and in 1992, won that seat.  She has been re-elected every two years since and is now legally challenging Florida’s new redistricting amendments.   

            The result of Atwater’s redistricting efforts in Florida resulted in Republican control of the State Senate in 1994, the State House in 1996 and the election of Jeb Bush in 1998 which set the stage for the 2000 Presidential coup.  In addition, the national Republican sweep of the House of Representatives in 1994 was less of an ideological shift than a success of Atwater’s redistricting strategy across the country. Time has proven Atwater’s prescient scheme correct leaving just two dozen House races, out of 435 Congressional Districts, truly up-for-grabs every two years. . 

            Like most States, the Florida Constitution allows the State Legislature to perpetuate an undemocratic process as it re-apportions itself while the U S. Constitution requires the States to reapportion the House of Representative seats every ten years.  Florida’s reapportionment history has been in turmoil since passage of Voting Rights Act of 1965 with violations leading to a State Supreme Court intervention in 1992 which created three black and two Latino-majority House Districts.  By 1998, the Florida Constitutional Revision Commission included a proposed Redistricting Commission until pressured by the Republican Party and minority elected officials to withdraw the measure from the 1998 ballot.  As a result, ten uncontested House races in 2000 brought another Voting Rights Act challenge in 2002. 

            In 2010, FairDistrictsFlorida, a non-partisan coalition including the AARP, League of Women Voters, NAACP and Democracia Ahora collected 1.7 million signatures supporting a Constitutional change for Congressional and State Legislative seats which set tighter guidelines on the State Legislature’s ability to gerrymander districts restricting any political party from designing favorable districts.     

            By Election Day, Florida voters had been paying attention as Amendments 5 (State legislative districts) and 6 (Congressional districts) were approved by 63% as they rejected a confusing Republican-initiated Amendment 7.   That same day, Rick Scott, who was a co-owner of the Texas Rangers with George W. Bush, was elected Governor with 1.1% of the vote.  

            If the Amendments function as designed, Republicans fear they might lose as many as five U.S House seats.   With a 2010 State population increase of 2.8 million residents (17.6%), Florida will gain two seats during reapportionment which, according to the Pew Hispanic Center is mostly due to an increase in the State’s Latino population. 

 

            With a tight timeline to meet the compliance schedule, the State Legislature will convene earlier than usual in January, 2012 and, under FairDistricts, must adopt a new reapportionment map by March 15th after which the State Supreme Court and the Department of Justice must sign off.    While State-wide and Congressional Candidates are required to file nominating petitions by June 22,  it is possible that new District line will not yet be finalized thereby, once again, favoring incumbents and preventing party primaries.    

            If the Court determines that the State Legislature maps (Congressional and State Districts) are not sufficient, the State Legislature may hold a Special Session to approve a new plan.  If a second try fails, the Court has two months to design its own plan.  In other words, final authority for approving Florida’s new redistricting maps to take effect in 2012 rest with basically the same State Supreme Court as 2000.   

            After election day, FairDistrictsFlorida morphed into FairDistrictsNow which is now embroiled in an on-going challenge as the Republican legislative super-majority use all their wily tricks to undermine the Amendments.


            Because of Florida’s history of voter disenfranchisement, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 requires that the U.S.  Department of Justice review and issue a ‘pre-clearance’ for any new voting-related process  Upon passage of the two Amendments in November, then-Governor Charlie Crist formally filed that request to the DOJ before leaving office.

            In what some see an act of brazen presumptuousness four days after taking the oath of office, Scott quietly directed his newly appointed Secretary of State, who had been president of a political action committee dedicated to defeating Amendments 5 and 6, to withdraw the popular Amendments from DOJ review.  There is good reason for concern here since Florida’s Secretary of State in 2000, Katherine Harris, who double-dutied as George Bush’s state-wide campaign Chair, used her position to avoid a full state-wide recount which ultimately elected her favorite “Godly man.”

            After FairDistrictsNow sued Scott and sat-in at the Governor’s office in early February, Scott relented and Republican legislative leaders resubmitted the State’s request for pre clearance approval to the Justice Department including a dissent requesting Justice to disapprove the Amendments as ‘detrimental’ to minority voters.  In addition, as the State House was making deep cuts in education and other social safety net programs, allocated $800,000 of public funds to a legal suit to block the publicly-approved Amendments as an ‘unlawful” abrogation of the State Legislature’s authority.

            Proponents of the Amendments see further obfuscation and delays as State Senator Dan Gaetz, Chair of the Senate’s Redistricting Committee, promises up to 30 public hearings on the already-voter-approved Amendments around the State, Gaetz’s son, Rep. Matt Gaetz sponsored legislation to allow draft redistricting maps to be kept secret until they are introduced as formal bills.  Without proposed new district maps to comment on, FairDistrictsNows questions the  purpose of unwarranted costly public hearings. 

            Scott’s Judicial ‘reform’ proposal which came as a surprise to the State’s Judicial Branch and the Florida Bar Association are seen as an effort to rein in an independent Judiciary.   The proposal would add three Justices appointed by the Governor and split the Court into civil and criminal divisions with a Governor-appointed Chief Justice, strip rulemaking from the Court and hand it to the Legislature, pay Judges based on how many cases they decide, allow Senate confirmation of Governor-appointed Justices but automatic appointment if the State Senate does not act and allow the State Legislature to repeal a Court rule.

            Retired Supreme Court Justice Ken Bell who was appointed by Republican Governor Jeb Bush in 2002 predicted that the proposal would "dramatically alter the separation of powers" in State government adding that "these measures will, no doubt, lessen the independence of the Judiciary."

            Democrats allege that Republicans are still angry with the State Supreme Court’s 2010 decision to remove  three redistricting amendments from the ballot that Justices found “confusing and misleading.”   Court reform opponents have challenged Republican efforts as threatening the country’s historic separation of powers and its checks and balances concept designed to protect citizen civil rights and freedoms.

            Meeting the legally mandated timeline for new reapportionment maps and to accomplish Scott’s Court packing gimmick will be a challenge as amendments to the State Constitution must have voter approval and the approval process for the reapportionment maps is also legally mandated.

            The only potential for Republicans to put these measures on the ballot before the November, 2012 Presidential election would require a three-fourths vote of the Legislature which would necessarily include Democratic votes.  To hold the line, the woefully outnumbered Florida Legislative Democrats must develop a built-in BS detector and strategic smarts, together with the courage to go down swinging in the face of  a nationally coordinated drive to dismantle the core foundations of civil government.

Agriculture, Rural Development and FDA Appropriation (HR 2112) of 2012

            With little media scrutiny, the week before Father’s Day the House of Representatives spent 25 hours during a three day period debating over 60 amendments to a $125 billion Agriculture, Rural Development and FDA Appropriations (HR 2112) for 2012.  

            The spending bill included a massive $700 million cut to the once sacred WIC (women, infants and children) program which offers nutritional assistance to 10 million at-risk pregnant women and postpartum mother and children up to five years of age. With an estimated 350,000 recipients in jeopardy of losing benefits including very young malnourished children, Republican funding for WIC is inadequate to provide for the existing need, especially during the current financial debacle.   The proposed Ryan budget (of Medicare voucher fame) would cut WIC $833 million. 

            Suffering cuts as to render some programs effectively dysfunctional, the spending bill included a devastating $285 million cut to the FDA jeopardizing food safety inspections.  A Democratic-sponsored amendment to restore $1 million to fund the FDA's new regulatory authority over raw and processed food industries was defeated 193 - 226 with 12 Republicans voting with the Democrats.  Additional cuts included  a  $170 million cut to Emergency Food Assistance which provides groceries to food banks serving low income citizens including seniors, a $20 million cut to rural development low income housing and small business loans, a decimated cut for the fledgling Rural Energy for America program,  a $40 billion cut to the Commodity Supplemental Food Program which provides emergency food assistance, a $354 million cut to the Agriculture Research Service and the National Institute for Food and Agriculture which funds food safety research and University extension Ag programs and blocks implementation of new school lunch standards adopted in the 2010 Food Safety Modernization Act. 

            On occasion, House Democrats with a strong progressive caucus are capable of heroic action and this time, they stepped up to the plate citing ‘reckless’ cuts to anemic children who are familiar with hunger as a constant way of life while reciting numerous Biblical quotes. Democrats offered a vigorous defense of WIC citing the moral responsibility of elected officials and the expected dire consequences to the country’s most vulnerable children as Federal and international nutrition programs were on the chopping block.   

            While the Appropriations bill was in the full Committee, Rep. Rosa deLauro (CT) offered a successful amendment with bipartisan support to increase WIC $147 Million.  Just prior to Floor consideration of the bill, the Rules Committee stripped out deLauro’s already adopted amendment setting the stage for a robust Floor debate.  Rep. John Conyers (MI) citing four decades in Congress summed up the Democrat’s passionate resistance to WIC cuts as “an all time low” as he challenged ‘anyone with a conscience” that would result in more hunger for the poorest and neediest children already suffering from malnutrition. It is simply un-American,” Conyers said “immoral, heartless and unconscionable to take food away from the mouths of hungry children in the name of deficit reduction.  Ladies and gentlemen have we no shame.” 

            In an example of politics at its finest, Democrats with short-term memory loss repeatedly made the point that one week of Bush tax breaks for the wealthy would pay for one year of WIC payments.  With a pitiful maximum payment of $42 a month in some states, a 6 – 12 month eligibility period and a politically vulnerable constituency, WIC is an easy target for balancing the budget by politicians of both parties.   

            Republicans whose children have full bellies responded about ‘low priority programs’ as if the subject of debate were inanimate objects rather than the lives of American mothers and their children repeated their talking points as ad nauseum mantras - “stop spending money we don’t have,”  “we’re borrowing 40 cents out of every dollar we spend,” and ‘we have a spending problem, not a revenue problem.”  

            In a squabble that weaved through the debate, Republicans took delight in reminding  Democrats that in 2010 $562 million was deleted from the WIC budget by the Obama Administration. Democrats responded that the fund transfer was due to fewer participants with unspent funds at year’s end and that no recipients lost their benefits.  R’s argued that it was the Democrats who drained the contingency fund of any carryover monies for future use.    

            With no reference to Scripture, Rep. Paul Brown (GA) distinguished himself as a first class Doofus by offering multiple amendments including further cuts to WIC, reduced funding for the Food for Peace program, elimination of international food and child nutrition programs and cuts to USDA office rent, building maintenance and vehicle fleet.  Broun, who was a General Physician before election to the House, was challenged by Rep. Norm Dicks (WA) for actions incompatible with the Hippocratic Oath to ‘do no harm.’  Fortunately, Broun’s Republican colleagues joined Democrats in voting down every one of Broun’s amendments. 

            The Food for Peace program (which feeds an estimated 5 million children in foreign countries) survived at least three more amendments from Republican budget-cutters.

            Neither did Rep. Virginia Fox (NC) who bears a striking resemblance to Mrs. Doofus quote the Bible when her first amendment to cut $82 million from breast feeding programs lost in a bi-partisan vote (306 – 119).  Her second amendment to eliminate funding for locally grown food programs (ie farmer’s markets) narrowly succeeded with 17 R’s voting with Democrats, 201 against 212 amendment supporters.

            Not to miss an opportunity to deprive women their constitutionally-protected right to choose, Rep. Steve King (Iowa) offered an amendment banning telemed communication funds from being used to prescribe RU486, known as the ‘abortion pill.”  King’s amendment passed with 240 votes including 13 Democrats and 178 against including 9 R’s.   Just when you might think that King could not outdo his reputation as mean-spirited, he offered an amendment to ban payment on the final settlement to black farmers who had been discriminated against by USDA.  The suit had been settled long ago although some payments remain to be distributed.   King’s amendment lost 262 -156. .

 .          In another attempt to use a budget bill to legislate policy, Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana offered a successful amendment to ban Federal funds to implement the USDA’s climate change plans with 238 (including 10 Democrats) vs 179 against.  The voice vote accepting Rep. Don Young's (AK) amendment to prohibit FDA funds from approving genetically engineered salmon showed that Republicans can appreciate the health benefit of Omega 3. .     

            There were no hallelujahs as amendments offered by Rep. Shirley Jackson Lee (TX) addressing ‘food insecurity’ issues and ‘food deserts’ with a lack of access to fresh healthy foods for rural and big-city urban Americans affecting 24 million Americans were turned back.  Amendments in support of urban community gardens and cooperative farm programs for low income farmers were also defeated.       

            One explanation for irrational Republican intransigence on issues that no thoughtful legislator should oppose, besides loyalty to their Corporate donors and in some cases a racial bias, is plain and simple politics.   Petty and small-minded, it is not in the best interests of the R’s to agree with or do anything that makes the Democrats or the President look good.  That is how our political class functions today and why it is virtually impossible to accomplish anything of importance in Congress.    

            The Ag Appropriation included a 50% cut to the Commodity Future Trade Commission (CFTC) which rarely shows signs of life yet has oversight authority on the speculative oil market, regulation of the derivative market and new regulatory authority in the President’s financial reform legislation approved in 2010.   Not content with a budget reduction from $308 million to $172 million, Rep. Garrett (NJ)'s amendment to delay regulation of the derivative market and blocked funding for the CFTC in response to banker complaints passed on a 230 - 189 vote.

            The final amendment was introduced by newly elected Rep. Kathy Hochul from New York’s overwhelmingly Republican 29^th District.  In her initiation on the House floor, Hochul did a great job attempting to restore funds to the CFTC citing the need for ‘law and order’ on Wall Street and oversight of the oil speculation market.   Rep. Kingston called her amendment ‘unnecessary’ as R’s defeated the rider 233 to 185.  

            After Hochul’s Amendment, the Agriculture spending bill was adopted on final passage 233 – 200.   Sixteen R’s voted against passage and 1 Democrat voted in favor.   .

            While the President has raised some objections to the House bill, he has given no indication of a veto.  The Bill now goes to the Senate where frightened Democrats who would not know how to fight if they were given boxing gloves will be in damage-control mode after which the House and Senate bills will go to a conference committee (behind closed doors) for Reconciliation before proceeding to the President's desk for a signature or veto.  

The Politics of Abortion

            As Congressional abortion critics focus their relentless assault on a woman’s right to choose, one consequence of the 2010 elections has been coordinated attacks on Planned Parenthood at both the State and Federal level.  Up-close observers know the debate to be more than just a divinely-inspired reverence for life. With House control firmly in Republican hands and a narrow, unreliable Democratic margin in the Senate, Planned Parenthood funding is at its most vulnerable to a testosterone-laden Congress than ever.  

            My interest is more than passive since many years ago, my sixteen year old sister gave birth to Brian, a beautiful baby boy born ‘out of wedlock’

            Not unlike today’s self-proclaimed pro-lifers who attempt to legislate morality via the budget process, the Comstock laws of 1870 targeted “lewd and lascivious” literature through the mail including educational information about abortion, contraception, family planning and sexually transmitted disease with twenty four States adopting similar laws.           

            Having seen her own mother struggle with 18 pregnancies and 11 children and die at 40 years of age, Margaret Sanger opened the country’s first clinic in Brooklyn in 1916 dedicated to reproductive health services for women and men including contraception and family planning. A nurse who founded the American Birth Control League in 1921 and organized a World Population Conference in 1927, Sanger was arrested in a police raid for disseminating birth control information and arrested a second time for violating the Comstock laws.  By 1937, a New York State Court lifted the Comstock ban and Planned Parenthood was on its way to becoming a respected and steadfast voice on behalf of women’s reproductive health .                     

            It is no accident that Congressional Republicans, devoid of intellectual purpose and lacking anything remotely resembling a domestic policy, have found it politically advantageous to stir the anti-abortion-Planned Parenthood pot with vigor.  As the Republican’s routinely whip their base to a fine froth of distraction to cover the absence of policy ideas, the Beltway media remain oblivious to the charade.   Having found a vocal if irrational element in American society who become easily aroused at the mention of public employees, National Public Radio and climate change, Planned Parenthood finds itself in the eye of a perpetual storm that promises to not go away anytime soon.    

            Democrats, however, are not relieved of their role to defend a woman’s constitutionally protected right to make her own health choices and to keep her patient-doctor relationship private.  Even as Democrats were protecting Planned Parenthood during the recent threat of a government shutdown in early April, Congress and the President agreed to ban the use of local government funds to pay for abortions in the District of Columbia.  In a protest the next day, DC’s Mayor Vincent Gray and six City Councilors were arrested in front of the Capitol.

         Too often, Congressional Democrats have provided the margin of victory for the Hyde Amendment which was adopted in1976 as a rider to the Appropriations bill funding the Department of Health and Human Services.  The lack of Democratic leadership on a wider variety of issues is a larger systemic problem which has allowed the Hyde amendment to survive annual authorizations for the last 30 years - even when Democrats have controlled both houses of Congress.  Denying all Federal funds for abortion, the Hyde amendment makes its way each year through the legislative labyrinth to passage without benefit of  Congressional committee public hearings, without witnesses or medical testimony as well as too little factual evidence.   

            Our Founding Fathers were well aware of the dangers of a strong Church and religious influence on public policy thereby setting the stage for the First Amendment which guarantees the separation of Church and State. In 1776, both the States of Virginia and Pennsylvania identified freedom of religion (including freedom from religion) as a personal choice directed only by reason, conviction and conscience without Government or Church intervention.  

In 1973, the Supreme Court upheld the Fourteenth Amendment ruling in Roe v. Wade that the Constitutional guarantee of the right to privacy extended to reproductive choice.  By 1975, the National Conference of Catholic Bishops established the Catholic Conference to lobby for the overturn of Roe as it collaborated with other conservative and evangelical organizations such as the National Right to Life Committee and the Moral Majority.  

With an unbelievably long and violent history, the Catholic Church has always been more than a little apprehensive about sex and politics.  In flagrant disregard for the Constitutionally protected separation of Church and State, the Bishops issued a Pastoral Plan for Pro-Life Activities which called for all church related organizations to pursue a "pro-life legislative plan" including support for criminalization   As the Catholic Conference continues to openly influence public policy at both the State and Federal level, the Plan’s apparent success has seen many Catholic elected public officials, some threatened with excommunication,  cross the ‘separation of powers’ line in acquiescence to the Church.

  

Any Church foray into partisan politics while conducting a massive pr campaign to influence public policy oversteps itself as it attempts to have religious dogma accepted as government policy obligating all citizens to subscribe to beliefs against their own conscience.  Use of the pulpit on behalf of public policy is exactly what Thomas Jefferson and James Madison were worried about.   Abortion is particularly unique in this regard as divorce is considered a private matter of personal choice. 

During Congressional consideration of health care reform in 2009, it was reported that Church representatives who openly lobbied both sides of the aisle threatened to kill the entire bill if offending abortion language were not removed.

           

            With legal abortions available in predominately Catholic Germany, France and Italy since the mid-1970s, it is curious that abortion in the U.S. remains such a politically hot-button – even after Roe v. Wade presumably settled the issue.  Such is a commentary on Congressional willingness to protect the Constitution against all threats – foreign or domestic.               

At the center of the anti-choice movement is an irrational male-dominated opposition    who will never find themselves pregnant.  Exploitation of abortion has become the showpiece for a patriarchal agenda that encourages an open disdain for women; - hectoring men and, in some cases, psychologically disturbed men, who believe they are imbued with a God-given right to impose their beliefs on a woman’s intimate life choices. While honest differences of opinion may exist, if those differences are dictated by religion or superstition purporting to be science, those opinions lose all credibility.  Such institutions of chaste malehood, all of which receive generous Federal tax exemptions worth billions of dollars, have no authority to dictate others’ moral behavior.

            While opposition to abortion is defined as a traditional conservative value, the Roe decision was based on protecting each individuals’ right to privacy, a Constitutionally protected right to be free from unwarranted government intrusion.  Yet abortion opponents remain blind to their own hypocrisy as they argue against Obama’s health care mandate as an unprecedented expansion of government sovereignty into the private lives of Americans dictating citizen choices.

            There are, of course, abortion opponents with intelligence and sensitivity just as there are good men of conscience who care about women, all are a distinct minority and drowned out by the shrill of the politically inspired.         

            After her delivery, my sister was taken to a Home of a particular theologic persuasion for unwed mothers.   Her son, a perfect baby unlike many newborns who resemble a wee version of Winston Churchill, with a small angelic face framed by his parent’s dark hair, captured our hearts immediately.   Brian’s father, still a high school student, as was my sister, came from a ‘good’ family with adequate financial resources, wanted to marry but the idea was rejected as impractical. 

            The Home required that, after birth, the new mother and her baby remain for two weeks during which  time, the baby slept in a small crib next to his mother’s bed where she would assume all the 24-7 duties of a new mother.  During that time, Brian’s father visited and helped with his son’s care.  For two weeks she nursed her baby, changed his diapers, bathed him and bonded with her child as any new Mother would.   At the end of those two weeks, the mother would hand over her child for adoption.   

            That morning, we waited, as my sister, grim and in shock, appeared to have stopped breathing, numb with the horror of  what was about to take place.  We were aware that Brian’s new parents were waiting in the next room when suddenly the door opened.   A woman, quiet and confident, entered, walked to my sister, wordlessly took Brian from her arms, and walked back out the door.  The psychic pain at that moment, physical and emotional, was indescribably crushing.  We watched helplessly as her child left her life.  No one cried, no words were spoken, we were left with the agonizing finality and a wound that has never healed.   We would never see Brian again.

            In the eyes of the Church, the rationale for the two-week residency was necessary to reinforce the consequences of the evil deed that these wild, bad girls had committed, young women with no life experience to understand the possible life-long impacts to their young lives, to drum home the message that pre-marital sex and pregnancy must not happen again – ever.

            Such pregnancy homes may provide an important support network for those young women who lack the maturity or resources to assume an adult responsibility but the haunting  dilemma of whether sacrificing her child to strangers was the ‘best’ solution for my sister, Brian’s father or their son has not dimmed over the years.   The immeasurable tragedy for my sister, her lost boy and perhaps millions of other women who relinquished their babies, did not end the day their children were taken.  In those days, the Church was omnipresent and teenage girls were not well enough informed to know the benefit of  Planned Parenthood’s contraceptive and sex education counseling beforehand.

            Today, America has the least generous maternity leave in the industrialized world , a WIC (women, infant and child) program that is inadequately funded and as Save the Children statistics show, American women are at-risk to death from pregnancy related causes.    Planned Parenthood can count on continued challenges to its existence by an obsessed right-wing and religious establishment not easily deterred. 

            Today, Brian would be an adult man perhaps with a family of his own and we pray he knows that somewhere there is a Mother and an Auntie who think of him often with great love. 

Quote of the Month

"When I first entered on the stage of public life, I came to a resoluition never to engage, while in public office, in any kind of enterprise for improvement of my fortune, nor to wear any other character than that of farmer."
Thomas Jefferson, 1820

Intervening Women

In the 1970’s, there was a national ferment against the construction and operation of commercial nuclear power reactors with many being built in geologically vulnerable and/or highly populated areas.  At the root of that controversy, unknown to the general public except bureaucrats at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the nuclear industry‘s high priced lawyers, were a handful of exceptional women who became ‘intervenors’ against utility applications during the NRC’s licensing process.  

Created by Congress in 1974, the NRC’s mission was for "the development, use, and control of atomic energy to promote world peace, improve the general welfare, increase the standard of living, and strengthen free competition in private enterprise."  Nowhere in its Mission is mention of protecting the public health and safety while the aforementioned goals have long since been deemed a failure.

In order to participate in an NRC licensing hearing, an individual must file a petition to intervene within 30 days of public notice, identify an ‘interest’ that may be affected and include at least one “admissible” contention which the person seeks to litigate. Once granted ‘standing,’ the petitioner becomes a legal party to the proceedings. The NRC further states that in order to “participate, the public must explain the nature of their interest and set forth the reasons and bases for their concerns.”

The NRC’s Adjudicatory Process identifies the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board as administrative judges who are “employees of the NRC” yet have the peculiar distinction of being “independent from the NRC staff. The judges have no stake in the outcome of a proceeding and reach objective decisions based on the record.”   The ASLB conducts public hearings, makes rulings on the proceedings and ultimately makes a license recommendation to the full Commission   

As the NRC staff discovered almost 40 years ago, none of these intervening women were deterred or intimidated despite an NRC public participation process that contained considerable hurdles not designed for easy public access.  Candidate Obama’s opinion in a 2008 interview with the Keene Sentinel editorial board that “the NRC is a moribund agency that needs to be revamped and has been captive of the industry it regulates” remains as true today as it did in the 1970’s.    

They were all middle aged women or older and most had been housewives much of their adult lives.  All educated, they had no experience, with one exception, of dealing with government bureaucrats or nuclear energy issues yet all displayed highly developed built-in BS detectors.  Each was feisty and knew a dog-and-pony show when they saw one.  With not a shrinking violet among them, none succumbed to deliberate efforts to confuse them or intimidation by snooty Ivy League law degrees. 

Most worked from their dining room tables interpreting lengthy, complex interrogatories from utility attorneys and funded their interventions at great personal expense – both monetarily and emotionally.  Each innately exhibited leadership qualities as they understood their role to educate an uninformed public and an often apathetic media to the immediate and long term health and safety hazards of nuclear reactor operations. 

            *   Already in her 70’s when she organized the Citizens Committee for Protection of the Environment in 1966, Irene Dickinson easily became the heart-center of the “Intervening Women’s” network.  With the energy of a teenager, Irene opposed Consolidated Edison’s plans at the Indian Point location, 34 miles north of New York City with vigor and as her efforts spread around the country, she was readily available for strategic consultation and technical advice as well as a valuable resource on anticipating tactics from the NRC and nuclear industry.   

Under the pressure of reams of NRC inspection reports and depositions to be answered, Irene became a savvy, proficient intervener and a persistent questioner who would not be denied.  She introduced a multitude of State and Federal officials to more than they ever wanted to know about the hazards of nuclear pollution, radioactive spent fuel, seismic faults, inadequate evacuation plans and ‘abnormal occurrences.’    

By 1979, she turned over voluminous files containing over 6,000 pieces, all alphabetized and catalogued in 22 boxes, to Columbia University’s archival collections.   Thanks to her efforts so many years ago, former Governor Mario Cuomo, then Senator Hilary Clinton and current Governor Andrew Cuomo have all called for a shutdown of the Indian Point plant..   

           

            *   In 1973, Carrie Barefoot Dickerson was 56 years old and the grandmother of five when she became aware of plans to build two GE nuclear reactors near her farm in northeast Oklahoma, setting for the musical Oklahoma and near Will Rogers’ childhood home.  A former school teacher and later author, Dickerson formed the Citizen’s Action for Safe Energy and the legal challenge to the proposed Black Fox Power Plant was on.  As a registered nurse, Dickerson questioned the health effects of nuclear waste and the daily release of radioactive emissions during routine operations that has been linked to birth defects and an epidemic of cancers.

           

In 1982, after an arduous nine year battle with 500 citizens arrested at the site in 1979, her retirement savings depleted and her farm mortgaged, Black Fox became the first nuclear reactor to be canceled due to a combination of legal and citizen action during construction.  Until her death in 2006 at 89 years old, Carrie Barefoot Dickerson continued to actively promote safe, renewable energy sources.

.           *   In 1967, when 48 year old Midland, Michigan resident Mary P. Sinclair’s letter to the editor questioning the safety of a proposed nuclear reactor along Lake Michigan stirred considerable heat, she knew she had a tiger by the tail.  A former technical writer for the Atomic Energy Commission, armed with a home fax machine and full size photocopier, Mary Sinclair became an NRC intervener.  By the early 1980’s, the sinking and cracking of buildings designed to contain the plant’s twin reactors was discovered.  By 1983, Dow Chemical pulled out of the project; by 1984, Consumers Power backed out of its contract after spending $4 Billion with construction 85 % complete and by 1987, the Midland nuclear project was converted into a natural-gas fueled power plant.  

During her years as a nuclear intervenor, Sinclair endured considerable community ire when the family car’s brake lines were cut, their mail box bombed, her husband’s business boycotted, receipt of life- threatening letters and being spat upon while grocery shopping.  In commenting on Sinclair’s role in cancellation of the Midland reactor, a spokesman for Consumers Power said, “I want to blame her but I don’t want to give her any credit.”  In 1994, Mary Sinclair earned a PhD in Environmental Communications at 75 years of age and continued to question the storage of spent fuel at-reactor sites 300 yards from the shore of Lake Michigan until her death in early 2011.   

            * In 1967, Vermont Yankee Power Company announced plans to construct a nuclear power reactor along the Connecticut River.  By 1971, Atomic Energy Commission’s (forerunner of the NRC) public hearings began as Esther Poneck organized the New England Coalition on Nuclear Pollution to intervene against construction.  Since the plant was situationally-located, formal interveners included the States of Vermont, New Hampshire and Massachusetts with NECNP attracting scientists of national stature from neighboring universities as expert witnesses.  The following year, the utility, citing an emergency lack of electrical capacity (with no supporting documentation), was granted an ‘interim’ operational license. The AEC rejected nuclear waste as a relevant issue in a licensing proceeding since storage of nuclear waste would be resolved “at a later time,” presumably by the Federal government. 

           

Descendant of a Quaker family that dates back to (almost) the country’s founding and owner of a 500 acre farm 20 miles north of the proposed reactor, Poneck, a psychologist and member of the first graduating class of the New Jersey College for Women in 1918, was joined by her equally-formidable daughter Diana Sidbotham, a 1954 Vassar College graduate and classical singer.  The mother-daughter tag team continued their opposition to nuclear power including the Seabrook reactors which continue to operate without an approved emergency evacuation plan.     

           

Poneck, known as a Grand New England Lady, continued to oppose nuclear projects throughout New England until her death in 1991 at 91 years of age.     

           

            *  Dr. Judy Johnsrud established the Environmental Coalition on Nuclear Power in 1970 when she became the original intervener against Three Mile Island construction in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.  Johnsrud went on to participate as an intervener against construction of the Limerick nuclear power plant and the proposed Peach Bottom reactor, both located in high population density areas. With a Ph.D in Geography and a brilliant analytical mind, Johnsrud analyzed the features of each site and today, the Limerick plant is considered to be the third highest earthquake risk in the United States  

A longtime citizen activist who criss-crossed the country speaking to safe energy groups and testifying before the NRC and State regulatory commissions, Judy is considered an expert on all aspects of nuclear power and remained active until health considerations forced her recent retirement at 80 years of age.  

             *   With a BA in Anthropology from the University of Michigan in 1954, Kay Drey made her first speech against nuclear power in 1974 before a Missouri State Senate Committee.  In 1976, Drey became state-wide coordinator of the Citizens for Reformed Electric Rates which sponsored Proposition 1, a successful ballot initiative against a rate increase to finance construction of the Calloway Nuclear power plant in Fulton, Missouri which passed with 65% of the vote.  

Drey participated in the intervention against the Calloway reactor which began operation in 1984 and the cancellation of the Marble Hill nuclear plant in Indiana and provided expert testimony on operating safety issues at the Dresden reactor in Joliet, Illinois.   Now 77 years old, Kay continues a 25-year effort to clean up nuclear waste from the uranium purification sites located in downtown St. Louis.  

            *  A music and English Literature major at the University of Vermont in 1950, June Allen organized the North Anna Environment Coalition in Virginia when she learned from a local geologist that the proposed nuclear reactors at North Anna, 86 miles south of Washington, D.C., sat astride an existing geologic fault.   

Soft-spoken and well-dressed, Allen’s investigative talents and ability to cut-through utility and NRC double-speak were apparent as she became an eloquent, hard-nosed intervener in 1972 pointing out what she saw as collusion between the NRC and Virginia Electric Power Company.  A classical pianist who wore pearls, Allen testified before Congress identifying the “nuclear-industrial complex” as an inherently unsafe technology and frequently attended VEPCO stockholder meetings. On one occasion, when spied in the audience, VEPCO’s Chairman stopped the meeting, extended an arm,  pointed a finger directly at June and announced with great indignation, “There is Mrs. Allen.”   

After the reactors at North Anna began operation, June continued to expose the health effects of radiation and as she succumbed to breast cancer in 2010 which she she believed to be caused by  radiation exposure.

            *   A graduate of the University of North Carolina with an English major in 1949 and once part

of Walter Cronkite’s staff at CBS in New York City, Faith Young first learned of the Tennessee Valley Authority’s plan to build the world’s largest nuclear complex from the morning edition of the Nashville Tennessean.   Young’s 150 acre beef cattle ranch was one mile from the site of the proposed four GE reactors to be built at Hartsville, 50 miles northeast of Nashville along the Cumberland River, and amidst a historic rural farming community of Dixon Springs with antebellum homes that date back to 1787.

One-half of a southern belle duo, Steel Magnolia #1, Faith organized the Concerned Citizens of Dixon Springs and intervened with the NRC in 1973 as construction began at Hartsville in 1975.  As a result of President Carter’s direction to review TVA’s planned reactors, all reactors at Hartsville were cancelled by 1984 as too expensive and unnecessary with a $2.5 billion ‘white elephant’ cooling tower. still visible today from Young’s farm.   

In 1985, Young was arrested while speaking at a TVA meeting on the Watts Bar reactor and held in Knoxville County Jail until the hearing concluded at the end of the day.  The next morning’s headline read “TVA Arrests Two Grandmothers.”

           

            *   While not a formally designated intervener but as a direct result of the Hartsville intervention, Steel Magnolia #2 Jeannine Honicker, who was arrested with Young in 1985, filed a 92 page Petition with the NRC in 1978 to shut down the entire nuclear industry based on excessive radon  emissions from the milling and mining of uranium (with a half life of 4.5 billion years).  The Petition was heard by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1982.

           

A leukemia diagnosis for Honicker’s 19 year old daughter as she read Dr. John Gofman’s book “Poisoned Power” was enough to motivate the Nashville native to become an anti-nuclear activist.   Today a 78 year old Mary Kay hostess, Honicker continues her efforts for a safe energy future, she recalls that her daughter’s illness was ‘too high a price to pay for electricity.” 

  
            *          *

            After the first nuclear chain reactor split the atom in 1942, it was only a matter of time before an industry would figure out how to create an extremely complex, danger and expensive way to boil water courtesy of U.S. taxpayer subsidies.  The Intervening Women were quick to discover an ingrained NRC resistance to ‘abnormal events’ as evidence of recurring safety problems and ‘isolated incidents’ were “lacking specificity.”    Touted today by President Obama as a ‘clean’ non-polluting energy,' nuclear reactors are known to release radioactive gases and liquids during routine daily operations.  In the wake of Fukushima, the NRC and nuclear industry representatives continued to offer faulty assurances of immunity from Japanese radiation which has since been declared the world’s most catastrophic nuclear accident.   

The Intervening Women were the first American citizens to publicize the scientific consensus that radiation damages cellular DNA, that there is no safe dose of radiation, that even low-level radiation exposure is cumulative and that our children are most vulnerable.

Today, exposure to radiation is a well-known risk factor for thyroid cancer as a 2009 National Cancer Institute Report cited an “alarming” unexplained 6.5% increase in thyroid cancers from 1997 – 2006.   As an increase of 11,000 childhood thyroid cancers have been traced to Chernobyl and a recent UK study found ‘significant excess’ of childhood leukemia near nuclear energy sites, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences is currently conducting a study of cancer risks near NRC licensed facilities.

Four of the Intervening Women are gone - yet all remain legends within the safe energy movement that continue to spread their message of safe energy across the country.  In the aftermath of Chernobyl, Three Mile Island and Fukushima, their legacy has grown, each a true American Heroine, extraordinary women with extraordinary accomplishments, as they followed a sometimes lonely and bitter path. 

Almost half a century later, the Intervening Women deserve to be honored for their pioneering efforts, their diligent research and analysis and their persistent commitment to a safe and secure planet for all the world’s children. 

    

Recommended Reading

"One Party Country"  by Tom Hamburger and Peter Wallsten

"A Covert Affair:  Julia Child and Paul Child in the OSS"   by Jennette Conant

Congressional Votes - May 2011

With the Obama Administration in support, the Patriot Act Reauthorization continues its assault on American civil liberties with approved roving wiretaps on varying communication devices, continued monitoring of library records and other personal information as well as require businesses to turn over private personal information.  

Needing a 2/3 vote, the House of Representatives voted to approve Reauthorization  250 (including 54 Democrats) – 153 (including 122 Democrats)  

In the Senate, Sen. Ron Wyden cited alarm at a secret “classified government reinterpretation” of existing laws and statues that would allow unfettered access to American’s private information.

Senate vote 72-23 to reauthorize the Patriot Act with the following Democrats in opposition:

Akaka (D-HI)                                                              Lautenberg  (D-NJ)
Baucus (D-MT)                                                            Leahy (D-VT)
Begich (D-AK)                                                            Merkley  (D-OR)        
Bingaman (D-NM)                                                       Murray (D-WA)
Brown (D-OH)                                                            Sanders (I –VT)
Cantwell (D-WA)                                                         Testerl (D-MT)
Coons (D-DE)                                                             Udall (D-CO)
Durbin (D-IL)                                                               Udall (D-NM)
Franken (D-MN)                                                         Wyden (D-OR)
Harkin (D-IA)

National Defense Authorization Act of 2012  HR 1540 – included

• Forever War Amendment to remove language which would allow Presidential authority to initiate military operations without Congressional Approval and negate the War Powers Act.   The Amendment failed 187 (with 166 House Democrats) – 234.

• Narrowly defeated an amendment to ‘accelerate transition of military operation’ out of Afghanistan on a vote 204 (with 178 Democrats) – 215

 The Act also

      Defunded the U.S. Institute for Peace (at the same cost as 4 hours of the Afghanistan

            War)

      Established a new military holiday honoring the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars

      Required suspected foreign terrorists to be tried by military and not civil courts.

The Act, adopted on final passage vote of 322 – 96 (90 Democrats) now goes to the Senate Armed Services Committee for action.