Government picks fight with its workers, our neighbors

Bill Knight column for 8-26, 27 or 28, 2019

“Trickle-down” is a phrase noted for its use in the disproven economic theory that enriching the wealthy eventually will help everyone else.

It also can be applied to decisions in Washington that can flow down to the local level like water. It’s easy to take federal workers for granted, reminding one of the lyric, “You don't miss the water 'til the well runs dry” that Harry Belafonte sang in “Crawdad Song.”

That’s true whether it’s President Trump shutting down government or attacking government unions.

Trump in July got the U.S. Court of Appeals in the D.C. Circuit to rule 3-0 that it lacked jurisdiction to block three White House executive orders affecting 2 million federal workers, union and non-union, restricting their rights on the job.

The orders limit subjects of bargaining, let bosses implement rules to fire workers fast and with little right of appeal, throw unions out of their cramped offices in federal buildings – where union reps meet with workers over grievances – and deprive them of phones, computers and even paper.

Changing past practice, Trump also requires union stewards to represent workers in grievances on their own time and at their own expense, prohibits workers from contacting Congress, and compels federal agencies to devise unfavorable contracts with unions.

Despite a lower court judge overturning the orders a year ago, the July decision essentially reinstates Trump’s decrees.

Elsewhere, the Trump administration this summer proposed a rule enabling federal workers to drop union membership – and opt out of paying membership dues – any time after their first year of membership. The new measure would allow supervisors to intimidate or threaten workers to resign from their union, or even refuse to join in the first place, unionists say.

Published in the Federal Register, the proposal follows “Janus v. AFSCME,” the 2018 Supreme Court decision that barred public sector unions from collecting “fair-share dues” from workers who are represented by the union, but who decline membership. The “Janus” suit was funded by Right-wing think tanks.

The proposed rule says it’s “consistent with ‘Janus’ [in that] upon receiving an employee’s request to revoke a previously authorized union dues assignment, an agency should process the request as soon as administratively feasible, if at least one year has passed since the employee initially authorized union-dues assignment from the employee’s pay.”

But the supposed effort to make labor law consistent throughout the public sector is obviously just union-busting.

 “The entire labor movement stands with our dedicated federal workers and will put our full strength behind fighting for the workplace protections all working people deserve,” said AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka. “Our voices will not be silenced by concerted union busting.”

J. David Cox, President of the American Federation of Government Employees – representing about 700,000 federal and District of Columbia government workers – said the change is “part of an all-out assault on federal employees’ collective bargaining rights.

“They are throwing out our contracts, enforcing illegal executive orders, and now trying to make it harder for workers to join and stay in the union,” he said. “Their ultimate goal is to destroy federal-sector unions, and we will do everything in our ability to prevent that from happening.

 “The union-busting framework laid out in the executive orders and actions already at the bargaining table demonstrate clearly there must be a check on the president’s power to destroy federal employees’ union rights,” he added.

Such dramatic changes in the terms of employment aren’t confined to Washington, national parks and federal lands, of course. For instance, downstate Illinois’ federal employees, unionized or not, work in:

The Department of Agriculture (Peoria’s “Ag lab”), USDA/Natural Resources & Conservation site in Havana, Coast Guard stations along the Illinois River, Department of Commerce offices, Customs & Border Protection, Federal Aviation Administration, air traffic controllers and TSA workers at airports, Federal Bureau of Investigation employees, Federal Correctional Institute workers (such as the Pekin prison), Federal courts’ staffers, the Federal Mediation & Conciliation Service, the Federal Public Defender offices, Food & Drug Administration locations, the Internal Revenue Service, Justice Department U.S. Attorneys and Marshall Service, Labor’s Wage & Hour Divisions, the National Labor Relations Board regional offices, Occupational Safety & Health Administration sites, Secret Service personnel, the Social Security Administration, and Veterans Administration facilities.

The appeals panel ruled that federal worker-management relations law requires federal employees to first take complaints to the Federal Labor Relations Authority (the U.S. government’s equivalent of the National Labor Relations Board). If they lost there, the unions could then go straight to appeals court and the U.S. Supreme Court, the appeals-court judges said.

This latest “trickle-down” trick isn’t abstract or distant. The administration offensive on federal employees affects our neighbors and, ultimately, us.

Hollywood ‘psych-out’

Bill Knight column for 8-22, 23 or 24, 2019

Mental illness is in the news, with claims that mass shootings would decrease if mentally ill Americans were disarmed (which experts say is foolish since there’s no correlation and focusing on such troubled people unfairly stigmatizes them.)

Hollywood has rarely helped, so this week – the 29^th anniversary of the death of influential behavioral psychologist B.F. Skinner – here’s a snapshot of the movie tradition that for decades has exploited mental illness and psychology to dramatic, if not therapeutic, effect.

When Jeff Bridges treats Kevin Spacey in “K-Pax” or Billy Crystal helps Robert DeNiro in “Analyze This,” the private/privileged relationship between patient and therapist forms the film’s foundation. There’s a line of psychiatrists and psychologists who deal with something that’s often inexact and usually challenging, and mental/emotional conditions that can be daunting, if not frightening.

Of course, movies’ depiction of psychologists is no more exact than police, housewives or workers. Some doctors exploit their patients; others care too much. Think of kind Bob Hartley (TV’s “Bob Newhart Show”), the understanding Jennifer Melfi (Lorraine Bracco) in HBO’s “Sopranos” or the villainous Robert Elliott (Michael Caine) in the movie “Dressed to Kill.”

“Hollywood has always been fascinated with psychiatrists,” said Glen Gabbard, co-author of “Psychiatry and the Cinema.” “By having a psychiatrist in the movie, you can enter the mind of a character as they confess inner thoughts.”

The first U.S. movie to feature a psychiatrist was “Dr. Dippy’s Sanitarium” in 1906. By mid-century, psychology and its movie image became more common. Since, filmgoers have seen dramas ranging from “Vertigo” and “Love & Mercy” to “The Group” and “The Caine Mutiny”; comedies (Mel Brooks’ “High Anxiety” and “The President’s Analyst”; melodramas (“Possessed” and “Dark Mirror”); thrillers (“Asylum,” “The Shining”); romances (“Lady in the Dark,” “Benny & Joon”) and horror (“Psycho,” “Asylum Blackout”).

Sometimes settings are key (“Shock Corridor”). And for every shallow “Couch Trip” (a sort of big-screen “Frazier”) there’s a substantive “Freud,” John Huston’s biopic of the father of psychoanalysis.

There are many, from “Final Analysis” to “The Dream Team,” but here are 10, so lie back; relax. Now: How does that make you FEEL?

“Captain Newman, M.D.” (1963). Alternately serious and light-hearted, this stars Gregory Peck as an World War II psychiatrist treating GIs affected with PTSD (then called “battle fatigue”). It features Eddie Albert, Tony Curtis, Bobby Darin. Angie Dickinson and Robert Duvall.

“Charly” (1968). Cliff Robertson earned an Oscar for his portrayal of a developmentally disabled man whose IQ is boosted by doctors’ experimental treatment that boosts his IQ, but at a price.

“Girl, Interrupted” (1999). Winona Ryder stars as a delusional teen institutionalized after a drug overdose. Other patients suffer different conditions: a compulsive liar, a sexual-abuse victim, and a mesmerizing personality. Angelina Jolie, Vanessa Redgrave and Whoopi Goldberg co-star.

“Nuts” (1987). Martin Ritt directed this drama about a prostitute (Barbra Streisand) accused of murder and facing a dilemma: be declared insane and go free but suffer the consequences, or be found sane and risk imprisonment. Dreyfuss is a lawyer torn between facts and truth. Its cast includes Karl Malden, Eli Wallach and James Whitmore.

“One Flew over The Cuckoo’s Nest” (1975). Producer Michael Douglas, director Milos Forman and star Jack Nicholson made this adaptation of Ken Kesey’s novel superb -- the first film since 1934’s It Happened One Night to sweep the major Academy Awards. Nicholson plays a petty criminal who manipulates a transfer from jail to a mental institution, supposedly for an exam. While there, he inspires patients to question authority. Louise Fletcher is great as a domineering nurse; Christopher Lloyd, Danny DeVito and Will Sampson co-star.

“Pressure Point” (1962). Sidney Poitier stars in this drama about a doctor treating a racist neurotic jailed for sedition for Nazi sympathies. Through analysis, surprises emerge help explain his condition. Bobby Darin and Peter Falk co-star.

“Prince of Tides” (1991). Barbra Streisand is a psychiatrist who’s helped treating a troubled woman (Melinda Dillon) by the patient’s brother (Nick Nolte). Gradually, the doctor unravels the sister’s background but falls in love with the brother. It co-stars Blythe Danner and George Carlin.

“Spellbound” (1945). Ingrid Bergman and Cary Grant star in Alfred Hitchcock’s melodrama about an asylum administrator hiding a problem. A psychiatrist and the promise of love may help. (It features an intriguing sequence by surrealist Salvador Dali.)

 “Sybil” (2007). Based on a true story about a woman whose abusive childhood caused her to develop multiple personalities, this starx Tammy Blanchard and Jessica Lange (It’s better than the sanitized TV mini-series starring Sally Field.)

“Three Faces of Eve” (1957). Joanne Woodward won an Oscar for her role as a shy girl who has multiple personalities, from sophisticate to siren. Lee J. Cobb, Vince Edwards and David Wayne co-star.

Trump favoring industry at expense of EPA - and world

Bill Knight column for 8-19, 20 or 21, 2019

When the Trump administration last week announced that is was significantly weakening regulations protecting endangered species and other threatened wildlife, most folks weren’t stunned and some undoubtedly feel bad for animals, but few probably thought of the endangered species closest to home: human beings.

The move came from the Interior Department, not the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), but it’s part of a pattern of backward action and controversies about our environment.

Last month, the White House defended the administration’s environmental performance.

“President Trump’s leadership and policies have made the air, water and environment cleaner,” said Deputy Press Secretary Judd Deere. However, as Washington Post fact-checker Jacqueline Alemany reported, “There is little substantiating that statement.”

Indeed, despite overwhelming scientific consensus, Trump still scoffs at climate change’s existence and withdrew the U.S. from the Paris Agreement; his administration deleted climate change references on government websites; and this summer he relaxed regulations on coal plants – when Alaska recorded 90-degree temperatures for the first time in a century, Antarctica sea ice was measured at record low levels, and July was the hottest month since records-keeping started in 1880,

It all casts doubt on EPA’s purpose, and first became obnoxiously obvious a year ago, when the administration cut official estimates of the financial consequences of climate change. Instead of about $50 in economic damage from each ton of carbon dioxide (the previous EPA’s estimate), the administration said it would be between $1 and $7. New York Times journalist Brad Plumer explained that Trump’s EPA is confining its analysis to the country, not the planet, AND deemphasizing the impact on future generations.

There’s much more:

* Last year, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt resigned after questions about his spending and apparent ethics violations;

* in June, four former EPA Administrators (Democrats and Republicans) criticized Trump and his EPA. Gina McCarthy (Obama’s EPA chief), William Reilly (from the George H.W. Bush administration), Lee Thomas (Ronald Reagan’s head of the EPA), and Christine Todd Whitman (George W. Bush’s EPA Administrator) told a House Energy and Commerce hearing they’re alarmed by Trump’s EPA’s direction. “EPA is supposed to pay attention to the economic benefit of its regulations, but the environment and health come first,” Reilly testified;

* also in June, a report by State Department analyst Rod Schoonover was blocked by the White House from a House Intelligence Committee hearing. His 12-page statement detailed how greenhouse-gas emissions raise global temperatures and acidify oceans, and contribute to storms’ frequencies and intensities;

* the EPA in May changed the way it calculates how many people could die from pollution. “The Trump administration analyzed the cost of replacing the 2015 Clean Power Plan with a new plan that lightens restrictions on the coal industry,” reported Rolling Stone newsman Ryan Bort. “The [proposed] Affordable Clean Energy could result in up to 1,400 deaths per year by 2030 [but] it will not include this death estimate. The administration is using a ‘new analytical model’ based on the false idea that there are no public-health benefits to making the air any cleaner than what federal law requires”;

* current EPA administrator Andrew Wheeler – a former lobbyist for the Murray Energy coal company, this summer announced the deregulation of rules controlling coal pollution, letting states exempt plants from doing anything; and

* EPA Assistant Administrator Bill Wehrum, the Washington attorney who represented fossil-fuel interests, resigned in June amid a Congressional inquiry about him improperly helping former industry clients.

Maybe it will take states to help. Illinois is one of 18 states where previous targets for decreasing CO2 emissions have been achieved.

“State legislatures across the country during 2018 accepted the reality and energy consequences of closing coal and nuclear power plants and the desire by many to transition to ‘green’ energy sources,” reported the Boston-based Nixon Peabody law firm, which specializes in government relations and regulatory issues.

Illinois officials are backing away from coal. For instance, in June the Pollution Control Board unanimously proposed changes that, if approved, decrease caps, require the reduction of at least 2,000 megawatts of electric generation by coal-fired electric generating units this year; and require Illinois’ EPA to reduce the annual mass caps if some operators retire any units before the effective date of this rule.

Despite such steps, the White House and its industry bootlickers make protection difficult – and illogical

Howard Learner, director of Chicago’s Environmental Law and Policy Center, told Chicago Tribune reporter Michael Hawthorne that Trump’s attempts to bail out fossil-fuel corporations is like “subsidizing landline telephones while the cellular market grows bigger.”

Except that the United States is Earth’s second-biggest polluter, and pollution and climate change are far more harmful than phones.

Yes, humanity may be endangered.