The Lions and Lambs of March

March began by roaring in like a righteous she-lion with #MeToo at the Oscars, and Oprah's speech about the loud collapse of dozens of male bullies. These included two at the White House who resigned when a photo of an ex-wife with a black eye punctured their collective male denial of their crimes against women. Yet March showed no sign of leaving like a lamb.

All month we endured more stories of women’s bodies claimed as sexual property, bought and paid for—sued and countersued over then-candidate Trump’s affairs.  Pay-off money and unkept business deals to silence women before the election is part of that news-roar. A Playboy bunny and a porn star, young enough to be Trump’s daughter, both alleged that before sex he admired them for being as smart and beautiful as his daughter—ee-yew! http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/stormy-trump-compared-daughter-sex-article-1.3895543

NBC’s Heidi Przbyla and other women journalists have lately brought to the forefront a lamb that hasn’t gotten as much attention. Quieter, it bleats another tale of young female bodies treated as property. In mid-February, Planned Parenthood joined with eight local government, healthcare, and advocacy groups to sue Trump’s HHS (Health & Human Services). The Washington Post reported $220 million in sudden cuts to a reauthorized national Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program, despite evidence it was working. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2018/02/15/planned-parenthood-sues-trump-administration-for-ending-grants-to-teen-pregnancy-programs/?utm_term=.0ed6cb57010b

Reporter Przbyla found the program, begun in 2010, had bipartisan support in Congress and had trained more than 7,000 health professionals and supported 3,000 community-based organizations. The result, reported most recently in 2017, was record lows in US teen pregnancy and birth rates.  http://time.com/4843652/teen-birth-rates-record-low/

Damningly, and in keeping with Trump cuts in other programs benefiting women and children, she reported that experienced female administrators at HHS had been kept out of the decision-making loop and were told to “get in line.” Cuts came down by command from Steven Valentine, an anti-abortion abstinence activist put in charge of HHS family planning.  One administrator said she was “so rattled” that “my reaction when I got on the phone was to cry.”

But now picture her singing along with that old song of Helen Reddy’s: I am woman, hear me roar! Because a week after Przbyla’s story came out, HHS withdrew some of its cuts. And I suspect women aren’t done yet with evidence-based programs that work to prevent teenaged pregnancies. We're just done with protection of outdated male claims on women’s bodies and decisions. 

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/hhs-agrees-protect-some-funds-teen-pregnancy-prevention-program-n860581

Red and Blue Both Fly in America's Flag

E Pluribus Unum

Out of many, one. That motto was first put on an American coin in 1795, and by the late 19th century was standard.

Maybe we citizens have seen it so often by now, we've stopped thinking about its importance. Our divisions grow more polarized, with name-calling and rejection becoming more common than listening, respecting, reasoning and compromising. Pew Research has been looking at our political polarization, our many shades of red, blue, purple, fuschia, etc., at their research site, and even has a "quiz" to take if you're curious where you are on the spectrum. http://www.people-press.org/quiz/political-typology/

Now an organization calls on our higher selves. Calling on our Better Angels, this organization is actually holding workshops to help "the reds" and "the blues" sit down together and talk. Only this isn't just a photo op. They get results. They teach skills and help each side reach clear positions, teach how to fact check and agree on what is real and what is "fake." 

Their idea is that it's important to understand one another's position, be able to talk about facts and differences, and discover what you and "they" have  in common so you can reach a compromise and move forward. No one says this is easy. But this is how politics works, when it does—and lately it mostly doesn't. Better Angels is working to help E Pluribus, our very diverse America, to unite again.

Our shared money is at stake in every budget decision. What we decide together affects the economy. For appealing to our higher American selves, and our tradition of unity, statecraft and compromise, we applaud and recommend them. You can check out what they're doing, and talking about here:  https://www.better-angels.org/bam

We Interrupt This UnReal Reality Show....

The news got crazier this week, but there’s a piece that’s dangerous, but eye-glazing, —easy to miss in the midst of a porn star’s lawsuit against our President, followed by the House Intelligence Committee’s Republicans issuing an all-clear on Trumpish collusion with Russia https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/12/politics/house-republicans-russia-conclusions/index.html.

It feels like some horrible Trump reality show. You're fired, Rex, for faulting Russian government. But now for an important commercial: Pay attention to Pocahontas!

That’s Trump’s nickname for the smartest Senator on the Senate Banking Committee, Elizabeth Warren from Massachusetts (originally from Oklahoma, where her family lore claimed native blood when that was a racial slur). Warren’s books are an important source in Screwnomics. She tracked bankruptcies back in the 90s and found medical costs the top cause for rising rates. She next headed a commission overseeing TARP bank bailout program, and seeing Wall Street’s bamboozles, proposed the Consumer Protection Agency. Elected the first female Senator from Massachusetts in 2012, she and her money-saving agency have been under attack ever since.

Now she’s sounding a new warning. After the 2008 meltdown, Congress passed a banking reform bill called Dodd-Frank, and ever since Wall Street has tried to undo it. The devil’s in the details. Many of the bill’s measures, designed to regulate Wall Street’s mega banks, were hard for small banks, and resulted in bank mergers. What we need is a healthy network of local, small banks. But in a legislative effort to lessen the regulatory load on these smaller banks and credit unions, Wall Street’s bullies have laid claim to the same regulation break.

Isn’t that fair? No, all things are not equal, says Warren. S.2155 is called The Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief and Consumer Protection Act,” and is supported by 50 Republicans and 16 Democrats. What would it do? https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/05/opinions/mitch-mcconnell-bank-lobbyist-act-opinion-taub/index.html. Dodd-Frank required all bank holding companies with more than $50 billion be supervised by the Federal Reserve. What Warren has renamed as The Bank Lobbyist Act raises that threshold to $250 billion, increasing risk five-fold.

It would weaken stress tests for 25 of the 38 biggest banks in the country, megabanks like Wells Fargo, Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup. Ten years ago these same billionaire banks got billions in taxpayer dollars, after they collapsed the economy. So now they get an anniversary present??! Warren’s right to rename it. Tell your Senator you want an amendment. Yes, help community banks, but small is less risky. Wall Street’s bigness, which always puts them first in line for government welfare, crushes the communities we live in. http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/377534-warren-rankles-colleagues-in-bank-fight.

Women's Day Is Not Just a Magazine

Family Values

Tomorrow, March 8, is International Women’s Day, a good time to take stock of how far we women have come. But wait—what do you mean we’re headed backwards? Laura Liswood with the World Economic Forum points out in an article that worldwide, women’s funding for reproductive health has been reduced, and family planning is harder to come by.

There is also a glaring “under-representation of women and minorities in US cabinet-level positions.”  Pale male EconoMan rules Washington’s swamp these days.  https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/03/womens-rights-sexual-equality-in-revers

In Russia, Liswood reports, the Duma just voted 380 to 3 for decriminalizing domestic violence, so long as it doesn’t cause “substantial bodily harm,” and occurs less than once a year. Seriously?!

According to The New York Times, most in the US agree this is a better time to be a man than a woman in our society—except for Republican men. They say it’s a better to be a woman than a man, despite evidence to the contrary. No doubt, they also believe they do their fair share of housework. 

Most disturbing though was Liswood’s report on women’s voting patterns. In France, women are backing Marie LePen and her far-right nationalism, on a par with Trump here in the US. Let’s not forget that 53 percent of white women voted for Trump. Is it fear and greater job insecurity? Is it threats of nuclear holocaust cause women to hope for a strong man?

But 53 percent is still a minority of our sex, especially when you add in our savvy African American sisters. And here’s a salute to Tanya Plibersek, who is running as “minister for women” in Australia. She promised if elected her Labor party would re-establish the Australian Bureau of Statistics’ time use survey, which hasn’t been done there since 2006. Time use is an important measure of the value of unpaid work and gender inequity in household work. In 1997, Australia’s unpaid work was valued at $261 billions or almost half of Australia’s GDP that year.

Seeing what is typically invisible helps informs policy affecting parental leave, childcare, transport, education and workforce participation. Women’s groups in Australia have long argued for the survey’s re-establishment, and Plibersek put it simply: “[T]he Australian economy [and] Australian society rests upon women’s unpaid work.” US women could do a great deal more with time studies here. 

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/mar/06/labor-to-restore-survey-measuring-mens-and-womens-unpaid-housework

Fat Cats of America

My cat Azula knows I could have blogged every moment of every day this past week, reacting to: Scott Pruitt’s steady dismantling of the EPA; the Trump infrastructure proposal that promises to profit the wealthiest and further indebt the public; a White House staffed by wife-beaters without security clearance; indictments of lying Russian and American men paid to corrupt our faith in elections and facts; a social media which eats up our time while creating more billionaires and smears; and a Florida legislature voting down debate on gun control because surviving kids from our latest school massacre were actually protesting, Never Again!

How did America, the land of the free, get here? It boggles the mind. But one constant does connect it: fat cat money. Who exactly has it, and who gets to make the rules that govern money and us by essentially violent means? 

How much money should the fattest pale male cats have at their paws' disposal? As I write in Screwnomics, millions and billions sound alike, but they’re worlds apart.  Calculated in time, a dollar per second, one million adds up to 12 days. A billion is 13 YEARS. Meanwhile, the median US household (which most often these days includes two earners) is $59,039, or 16 HOURS of time. Half of us earn less and are hustling.

Up until 2016, the median had yet to catch up to where we were in 2008, before the crash, created by Wall Street’s richest. By contrast, Bill Gates, our richest fat cat, had a measly $43 billion in 2008. Now he’s worth $86 billion, or 27 CENTURIES of time. This isn’t due to his overtime pay.

I’ve nothing against Gates or cats, but I do have a problem with a system that so reliably moves money up to those who already have the most. It undermines democracy for us church mice. We need money control as much as we need gun control. The founding fathers never anticipated AR-15s or billionaires, but they did know of Kings—and declared themselves disobedient to despots.

So, be heartened by those young, caring Americans, who courageously wave our nation’s authentic power. American money can be put to much better use than more guns, more billionaires, more corrupt government and lies. Even Azula knows fat cats aren't healthy cats! 

—Rickey Gard Diamond

A Conscious CEO Among a Growing Group of Women Business Leaders

Vermont is dear to Screwnomics’ heart because of its “good neighbors with good fences” policies, and also because we call this beautiful Green Mountain State home. Women entrepreneurs, women legislators, and women “thought leaders” thrive here—and nowhere else do so many business people care about a larger picture than their dollar-profit “bottom line.” The biggest chapter of Businesses for Social Responsibility in the country, Vermont BSR, is here: https://vbsr.org/

This month, the CEO of Green Mountain Power, Mary Powell, a rare entity in herself in the energy industry, made #12 of a list of Thirty World Changing Women in Conscious Business, 2018. As background, a Catalyst study, in Nov. 2016, found that there are fewer women in the energy field than there are women in tech. http://www.catalyst.org/knowledge/women-energy

If you look at Mary Powell’s direction, predating the time of Trump, you may see why her touchy-feely management has brought her success. Says Rachel Zurer, the editor of Conscious Company Media:

““Is it just a coincidence that the first electric utility to become a B Corp is also one of the few led by a woman? We don’t know, but since she took the helm at Green Mountain Power (GMP) in 2008, Powell has continued to break barriers and shake up assumptions about what a utility can be — going as far as to call the business an “un-utility.

In one example of her obsessive focus on knowing customers, she moved the company HQ from a steel-and-glass fortress into a building shared with line-workers — in other words, the ones who meet customers every day. Under her leadership, GMP also became the first utility to partner with Tesla on Powerwall home energy solutions, and the first to offer a battery/solar off-grid package to its customers. Her focus on “leading with love” seems to be working: in a survey required by Vermont regulators in 2016, GMP received a 94 percent customer service satisfaction score and a 96 percent on providing reliable electric service.””

Powell advises other corporate leaders to “Be bold. Don’t think of yourself — think about the impact you can have. Make the mission larger than yourself.” How does she do that? What gives her hope? She said, “Love. I have long believed in the power of love: the power it holds to transform lives, the power it holds to transform companies, the power it holds to solve problems and to innovate a future that is better than our present or past.”

It’s EroNomics, the invisible passion, the renewable fuel for an economy we talk about in Screwnomics!

If you’re looking for more hope, you can access the whole list of 30 transformative business leaders, investors, and “conscious capitalists” here. This looks like a great media site. https://consciouscompanymedia.com/sustainable-business/30-world-changing-women-conscious-business-2018/

You’ll find among these another woman hero many Vermonters have shaken hands with:  the amazing Judy Wicks, who founded the White Dog Café with its local-sourced excellent food, who also founded a woman-friendly Business Alliance for Local Living Economies (BALLE). https://bealocalist.org/