COMMENT

...The danger is here...

...The bill makes no provision for working mothers who cannot afford child care, who lose their jobs because of illness or accident, or who simply lack the skills to earn a living wage...

...In the middle of September, the National Academy of Sciences released a study that said needle-exchange programs greatly reduce the spread of the HIV virus and do not encourage more drug use...

...decisions over birth are not for the mother to make but for the state to make...

...Forget it...

...The earned-income tax credit, small though it is, has long been a favorite program of both parties, since it rewards work by giving the working poor a small tax credit...

...They have no right to tell The New York Times and The Washington Post what to print, and the Times and the Post are foolish to turn over their editorial decision-making to the government and to any terrorist who wants to publicize his case...

...Then a deputy sheriff who was active in the anti-abortion movement arrived to foist anti-abortion literature on her...

...They asked the girl if she had made an appointment for an abortion...

...The day before Gloria Steinern came to Madison, the following account appeared in The New York Times...

...Hold the Presses Who's running the newsroom these days...

...Under the financial limits set by Congress, states would be unprepared for any medical or economic emergency, such as a recession or an epidemic...

...Feingold's staff says the Senator hopes to work out a better bill in conference committee...

...Powell even drew up plans for using nuclear weapons in the war against Saddam Hussein...

...She took particular issue with Rush Limbaugh and his use of the term "femiNazis...

...How many more people will have to die from using contaminated needles before the Clinton Administration lifts the ban on federal funding for nee-dle-exchanee programs...

...Politicians and the pundits who swim in Washington's think-tanks have promoted the theory of "compassion fatigue"—that the poor are a nuisance and a drain on the well-off, that welfare creates poverty, and that what the homeless and hungry need is a swift kick in the pants...

...As Reagan's National Security Adviser, Colin Powell threatened to cut off aid to any Central American country that did not go along with the U.S.-backed contra war against Nicaragua...

...they're in law enforcement...

...She spoke to a huge audience at the university, mostly of young women...

...But they screwed up their courage on the correction: "the decision to run the missing passages . . . was made without checking with the Justice Department...

...Here's the guy who hindered investigations into the My Lai massacre when he was an Army bureaucrat in Vietnam...

...That's what the Christian Coalition and many Republicans have in mind for women in this country, and it's the danger that Gloria Steinern and the women's movement have been warning against for thirty years...

...I believe that nothing can be harsher to women and children in need than to continue a system that has failed them year after year after year," said Bob Dole, demonstrating his utter alienation from the experience of poverty...

...That's a lovely twist: take away people's benefits, then take away their ability to seek legal recourse...

...The message is clear: stick it to the poor...

...His solution for the great economic injustices of this country is more of the same...

...The Democrats, and most of all President Clinton, find themselves helping the Republicans dismantle welfare because they are afraid that if they don't go along, they'll be accused of being obstructionist, or worse, soft...

...That was the least of it...

...That night, ten squad cars surrounded the house where the family was staying...

...This unwarranted invasion cost hundreds of lives...

...Check His Record Everyone, it seems, from Ralph Reed to Kweisi Mfume is going agog over Colin Powell, but before Gallup anoints our next President, let's check his record and his rhetoric...

...It is always younger and poor women who lose their rights first.' —Gloria Steinern Study after study has shown the effectiveness of needle-exchange programs in reducing the spread of ? ? ? ? ? ? ? the HIV virus...

...One year ago, a fifteen-year-old Nebraska girl was considering an abortion...

...Prior restraint goes against everything the First Amendment stands for...

...That's not all...

...That's why Ralph Reed and William Bennett find him agreeable...

...He wants something...

...The states are encouraged to run social experiments—tying welfare to school attendance, job training, and other behaviors...

...And his record is one of loyal service to the American empire...

...And what happens to women who can't find the jobs that they're required to get...

...I'm an unabashed capitalist," he crows...

...It's disgraceful that the nation's two leading newspapers caved in to the Unabomber and agreed to publish his 35,000-word manifesto...

...But people's lives are at stake here...

...Now that the National Academy of Sciences has come forward with its evidence, the bureaucrats are again dragging their feet...

...Boy, they must have been nervous over at the Post and the Times after a typist omitted a paragraph and a half in the published version of the Unabomber's manifesto...

...The same week the Unabomber and the Justice Department brought the Times and the Post to their knees, a federal judge in Cincinnati tossed his gavel into the newsroom and brought Business Week to its knees...

...It would also eliminate legal representation for poor people who want to get divorced...

...Ralph Nader points out that, under the new welfare legislation, people who are cut off from food stamps, veterans benefits, or social security, even by mistake, will also be denied access to lawyers...

...This girl was essentially conscripted by the state into having a baby against her will...

...Both companies urged the judge to stop the presses on Business Week, and the judge agreed...

...But will it follow through on this urgent public-health issue...

...His program is built on platitudes...

...They then began beating her father and calling father and daughter both "baby killers...

...She noted that feminists themselves were targets of the Nazis, and that one of the very first moves Hitler took when he came to power was to outlaw abortion...

...We need to keep that vision alive...

...In the Unabomber case, journalists were told what to print...

...A judge has no right to be in the newsroom, and neither does the Attorney General or the Director of the FBI...

...war against Iraq, which cost hundreds of thousands of lives, including many in the now notorious "Turkey Shoot," when divisions of Iraqi soldiers were mowed down and buried alive as they tried to retreat...

...Congress wants to create Medicaid block grants, like the new welfare block grants, and let the states decide whether to provide medical insurance to the poor...

...Now that theory is being put into practice...

...Face it," one White House official told The Washington Post, explaining why Clinton is willing to give in to the Republicans on welfare...

...If lawmakers really wanted to address the reasons people are on welfare, they'd have to address the problem of poverty in America...

...The history of such experiments gives little reason for hope...

...Here's the guy who staunchly defended the Pentagon's policy of discrimination against gays and lesbians in the military...

...That's the kind of macho posturing we just don't need more of in this country...

...He's for personal responsibility, and individual bootstrap effort...

...In an almost unprecedented case of prior restraint, the judge ordered Business Week to pull an article from its current issue...

...Here's the guy who served as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the Bush Administration when it invaded Panama...

...Standing on principle with Senator Moseley-Braun were Daniel Akaka of Hawaii, Bob Kerrey of Nebraska, Bill Bradley and Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey, Patrick Leahy of Vermont, Paul Sarbanes of Maryland, Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts, Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York, Paul Simon of Illinois, and Paul Well-stone of Minnesota...

...It is a reprehensible move, and one that bodes ill for our future...

...When the first few studies came out, Health and Human Services refused to make them public, much less to act on them...

...She was inspiring and reassuring, even in the midst of the rightwing assault on feminism...

...It's easier just to blame people on welfare...

...These policies cost tens of thousands of lives...

...Lauch Faircloth, Republican of North Carolina, also voted against the bill...

...The county attorney then had her detained for two days on the grounds that the abortion would place her life in danger, though there was no medical evidence to that effect...

...This finding paves the way for the Clinton Administration to unilaterally lift the ban on federal funding for needle-exchange programs...

...Democrats and Republicans alike have been hyping the idea of welfare reform for years, picking at festering resentments of the black "underclass" and unmarried women with babies...

...By treating welfare, not poverty, as the problem, politicians have persuaded many middle-class Americans that the pittance the government hands out to families that fall below the poverty line is the source of a huge range of social ills...

...By doing away with the federal guarantee of welfare assistance, legislators in both houses of Congress have voted to wash their hands of the poor...

...Republicans in both the Senate and the House are pushing legislation that would eliminate the right to Medicaid, the federal health program for poor people, most of which goes to the care of the elderly and disabled...

...A judge finally released her to her family, but only on condition that she not have the abortion...

...At best, these experiments paint a happy face on serious, structural, economic problems, requiring welfare recipients to attend seminars designed to raise their "self-esteem," and then throwing them out into the job market with a copy of the want ads...

...The Senate Labor and Human Resources Committee slashed $10.8 billion from the federal student-loan program, and legislation now before Congress would cut funding for legal-services programs in half...

...Some of these truly needy include Campbell Soup, Pillsbury, and McDonald's...

...Business Week had obtained confidential information about a lawsuit between Procter & Gamble and Bankers Trust...

...The House Ways and Means Committee endorsed a $23 billion cut in the earned-income tax credit for low-income families...

...In the long term, they'd have to take on the gross disparity in wealth and income and power in this country...

...The danger is now...

...Here's the guy who served as National Security Adviser in the Reagan Administration while it was waging an illegal war against the government of Nicaragua and bolstering the brutal death-squad regime in El Salvador...

...In the Business Week case, they were told what not to print...

...Three days later, the Post issued this correction: "The Washington Post inadvertently dropped seventy-two words when it published the 35,000-word manuscript of the Unabomber Tuesday and is printing the passages today...

...Nor does it deal with the problem of unemployment and low-paying, no-benefit jobs...

...The federal government is letting go of its end of the safety net...

...As this becomes increasingly clear, the majority of Americans— including the poor, workers, students, and the elderly—have the opportunity to unite and insist on a better, more generous society...

...the door struck the girl and her father in the face...

...Here at The Progressive, we know a thing or two about it, since in 1979 we had to put up with a six-month prior-restraint order before we could publish "The ?-Bomb Secret...

...Americans won't need to use their imaginations to see the harsh effects of abandoning minimal guarantees of food, shelter, and medical care for poor families...

...Here's the guy who led the U.S...

...The helping hand of government envisioned by liberal politicians in the New Deal and the Great Society is not only withdrawing, it's giving the poor a slap in the face...

...Here in the United States, she said, the ideology behind the anti-abortion movement at bottom is quite similar: to entrench the patriarchal order by making women have babies against their will...

...The police barged in and took the fifteen-year-old girl away...

...Throughout his career, Powell has unwaveringly supported U.S...

...At the same time, the Senate voted to retain the Market Protection Program, a subsidy that helps huge corporations promote their products overseas...

...Everyone but the very rich is going to suffer from the wanton destruction of social programs...

...She'd told her parents about it, and her boyfriend...

...Conscripted Birth Gloria Steinern came to Madison the other day...

...It will no longer uphold any minimal standard of humanity...

...then there were two CDC studies in Connecticut, released in August, that showed how giving away clean needles led to a dramatic decrease in the sharing of dirty needles among drug addicts...

...Nothing harsher...

...We lost the election...

...Only eleven Democrats opposed the Senate bill...

...While the Clinton Administration wastes time wringing its hands, more needle users are contracting the HIV virus, and more Americans are dying of AIDS...

...There will be no assurance that poor people and their children won't simply starve...

...we'll never know how many are buried in mass eraves...

...The Senate bill includes a five-year time limit on welfare benefits, and a requirement on states that 50 percent of recipients be working by the year 2000...

...After more than sixty years of maintaining a good-faith national commitment to protect all needy children, the Senate is on the brink of committing legislative child abuse.' —Senator Edward Kennedy on the Senate welfare bill How did we become such a mean-spirited nation...

...Way to go, fellas...

...It's something or nothing...

...She explained the reasoning behind this: fascist governments have always seen women as the means of reproduction of the dominant race and the dominant social order...

...aggression overseas, no matter the costs in human lives...

...If President Clinton signs the draconian new legislation, and he shows every indication of doing so since he's the one who got the "welfare-reform" ball rolling, it will be up to the states to decide how to administer welfare...

...But there is little doubt that the final version—a compromise between the Senate bill and an even more punitive one passed by the House—will be harsher, not milder, on the poor...

...there was a 1994 review of the California study ordered by the Health and Human Services Department, which confirmed the earlier study...

...When the family called the police, the police took the boyfriend's side...

...Senate Republicans are calling for even more drastic cuts...

...As Jeff Cohen and Norman Solomon have noted, Powell gave this boast on the day of the Panama invasion: "We have to put a shingle outside our door saying, Superpower lives here...

...At every opportunity, Colin Powell exalts the free-enterprise system, profit-making, and getting government off the backs of business...

...The Democrats in Congress are little better...

...Philip Lee, Assistant Secretary for Health, said that needle exchange is a complex public-policy strategy, and that Congress has serious reservations about it...

...We are a wealthy enough nation to provide basic nutrition, health care, child care, education, and medical benefits for all...

...Legislation proposed by the House Commerce Committee would eliminate federal eligibility and benefit standards, and set grants at a level designed to cut $182 billion over the next seven years...

...Among those voting for it were several from whom we might have expected more, including Tom Harkin of Iowa, Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein of California, Christopher Dodd of Connecticut, Barbara Mikulski of Maryland, and Herb Kohl and Russ Fein-gold of Wisconsin...

...Needle and Damage Done How many studies will it take before the Clinton Administration decides to do something to fight AIDS...

...What happens to women and their children after five years...

...They did so, they said, at the request of the Attorney General and the FBI...

...In the short term, they'd have to focus on such unsexy issues as low wages, high unemployment, inadequate job training, and expensive and inferior child care...

...But Janet Reno and Louis Freeh aren't in journalism...

...In both cases, the First Amendment was the victim...

...The boyfriend was fiercely anti-abortion, and he came to her family's home with some of his friends, banged on the door, and kicked it in...

...There was a 1993 California study prepared for the Centers for Disease Control that demonstrated this...