With Politico reporting that U.S. Rep Dan Lipinski will oppose health care reform unless it restricts women’s access to abortion coverage, the Campaign for Better Health Care is planning a rally tomorrow afternoon at his LaGrange office (19 W. Hillgrove, Thursday, March 11 at 4 p.m.)

Meanwhile, Huffington Post reports that two more Senators are backing  a public option, putting the total publicly committed at 38, and likely votes up into the 40s (51 votes are needed under budget reconciliation).  “With a push from the White House, the public option is now within striking distance.”

But President Obama has been backing off support for a public option ever since he won the 2008 election by campaigning for one.

He also campaigned on reducing lobbyist influence.  But it was shortly after that election that the basic parameters of the ultimate deal – coverage for preexisting conditions in exchange for a heavily-subsidized individual mandate; and, of course, no public option – were spelled out by an insurance industry lobbyist.  (Indeed, this has been the insurance industry’s program for many years.)

And somehow — though the House bill with a public option would do lots more to control costs, and be more popular to boot — that’s what’s on the table.

The Civic Federation and the editorial writers are calling for a “balanced approach” to the state’s budget crisis that includes cuts along with revenue increases.

With Governor Quinn issuing his budget address today – heavy on cuts and borrowing, as Progress Illinois notes — the Responsible Budget Coalition points out that the state has been cutting spending and borrowing money for years now.

“As a result, even before the current crisis, Illinois ranked 49th of 50 states in education funding, slashed its state workforce to the smallest in the nation per capita, and underfunded human services by $4.4 billion since 2002″ – not to mention $5 billion in unpaid bills to local service providers.  (For more see CTBA’s recent study.)

“It is critical that lawmakers act now to balance their past pattern of cuts, borrowing and payment delays with adequate revenue. They should enact HB 174.”

That bill would raise the rate on the income tax and expand the sales tax to consumer goods, while increasing the personal exemption and property tax credit. It would raise $5.2 billion a year.  It passed the state Senate last year with Governor Quinn’s backing, but House Speaker Mike Madigan refuses to bring it to a vote.

In a statement this morning, the Responsible Budget Coalition points out that the economic crisis is creating much greater demand for public services – and that job losses from budget cuts in the middle of a recession would hurt the state economy far more than a tax increase would.

Raising a ruckus in Washington D.C. this week is National People’s Action, the annual convocation of community activists. Organized by NPA, the national network of community groups that’s headquartered in Chicago, they come to the nation’s capital each spring to confront policy makers and demand action.

Today a group of community leaders is meeting with Ben Bernanke, chair of the Federal Reserve, at 2 p.m. eastern time.  Among other things, they’re calling on him to stop banks that received bailout funds from financing payday lending.

According to NPA, Wells Fargo provides financing for about a third of the nation’s payday operations.  Wells Fargo received $25 billion in TARP funds.  Other bailout recipients also finance payday lending.

“Payday lending is stripping wealth from already wealth-starved communities,” said Rev. Robert Bushey of the Central Illinois Organizing Project in Decatur.  “This is bad for families, communities, and the entire economy.”  Bushey is representing Illinois People’s Action and chairing today’s meeting.

Payday lenders charge interest rates as high as 400 percent, and a typical $300 payday loan costs the borrower $500 in interest payments, according to the Center for Reponsible Lending.

NPA is also calling on Bernanke to force big banks to do more to prevent foreclosures, and to strengthen community reinvestment regulations to ensure that bailout funds get to underserved communities.

In a statement, Bushey said that the Fed’s lack of action on payday lending by bailed-out banks shows “why we need an independent consumer protection agency” that covers payday loans and other financial products.

Wednesday is National Women and Girls’ HIV/AIDS Awareness Day, and the Chicago Female Condom Campaign is holding trainings for service providers and for high school students on how to use the new, improved female condom, which the FDA approved last year.

About 40 HIV and family planning service providers are expected for a training session at the AIDS Foundation of Chicago, 200 W. Jackson, from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Wednesday, March 10.

From 2 to 5 p.m., a training will be held at the Young Women’s Leadership Charter School, 2641 S. Calumet.

All trainings are open to the media (for more see the group’s press release).  A third training takes place Friday at 4:30 p.m. at Mujeres Latinas en Accion, 1823 W. 17th; it includes a condom hunt.

The trainings are part of a new public awareness campaign by a coalition of health groups, in a city with high rates of gonorrhea, chlamydia and syphillis and where 1,500 new HIV cases were reported in 2008.

The female condom is “the only barrier method available for receptive partners for prevention of HIV, sexually transmitted infections, and unintended pregnancies, and it’s an important option for both women and men,” said Jessica Terlinowski, policy manager for Chicago AIDS Foundation and coordinator of the campaign.

The original female condom, which was approved in 1993, failed to catch on, in part because users found it awkward and expensive.  The new version, tagged the “FC2,” is made of stronger, thinner material that’s quieter and feels more natural – and it’s signficantly less expensive, so that community health centers and public clinics can purchase them in the quantities they need, Terlinowski said.

The campaign is sponsoring a bulk purchasing drive  for health centers, and lists three dozen community organizations and six city clinics where the FC2 is available for free.

One goal of the campaign is to publicize the FC2 as an option for men as well as women, Trelinowski said.  “The name is misleading,” she said.

The trainings reflect the group’s finding that “it’s really important that it be presented in a positive and affirming way,” she said.  “We want to make sure service providers have the language and the familiarity so they can talk about it in an effective way.”

The campaign is also pushing local drug stores to begin stocking the FC2.

***

Also marking National Women’s HIV/AIDS Awareness Day, the Red Pump Project (cofounded by CMW’s own Lovette Ajayi) is on its second year of mobilizing bloggers to spread awareness of the day and the issue.  The group is holding a fashion show fundraiser on March 25 (6 p.m. at the Bottom Lounge, 1375 W. Lake), where it will honor pioneering AIDS activist Rae Lewis Thorton with the group’s first Living Legacy Award.

Rosie Carrasco of the Latino Organization of the Southwest, Leticia Marquez of UE, Graciela Guel from Mexicanos Unidos, Marilu Vargas of Our Lady of Guadelupe, Jatziry Garcia from Radio Arte, and Ana Guajardo from the Immigrant Workers Center of South Chicago, will be among women leaders from the Mexican community calling on President Obama to renew his commitment to immigration reform and stop raids and deportations currently breaking apart thousands of families.

The International Women’s Day event takes place Monday, March 8, at 11:30 a.m. at Casa Michoacan, 1638 S. Blue Island, and is building for the national march for immigrant rights in Washington, D.C. on March 21.  The Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights plans to take 200 buses with 10,000 Chicagoans to the protest.

Earlier on Monday morning, ICIRR will release a report on the state of immigrant women in Illinois (8:30 a.m. at the Chicago Foundation for Women, 1 E. Wacker, 20th floor).   Flavia Jimenez of ICIRR, Betty Gao of the Chinese American Service League, Nadiya Arshi from Muslim Women Resource Center, and Neusa Gaytan from Mujeres Latinas en Accion, and others will provide personal testimonies of overcoming obstacles to develop as community leaders.

Wage theft is growing dramatically (as recent Newstips have indicated) — some advocates describe it as an emerging business model in an economy increasingly dependent on contingent labor — but weaknesses in Illinois law allow many employers to get away with it.

On Monday, state legislators and labor and community groups will announce legislation to increase penalties for employers who steal wages and remove obstacles to enforcement of wage law in Illinois.

State Sen. William Delgado (D-2) and State Rep. Lisa Hernandez (D-24) will be joined by workers who have experienced and fought wage theft and their supporters in the Just Pay For All Campaign at a press conference (Monday, March 8, 1:30 p.m., outside the Thompson Center, 100 W. Randolph) to announce the introduction of SB 3568.

The bill would amend the Illinois Wage Payment and Collection Act to establish an administrative hearing procedure under the Illinois Department of Labor for wage theft claims below $3,000, and would allow employees to recover legal costs if they file successfully for unpaid wages in civil court.

Smaller wage claims often fall through the cracks of the existing system, said Chris Williams of the Working Hands Legal Clinic, which handles many such cases.   He said that of 10,000 wage claims filed with the Illinois Department of Labor last year, 75 percent were for amounts under $3,000, and half were under $1,500.

Currently the labor department can investigate wage theft claims and make determinations but has no enforcement power; that requires a separate, potentially costly court action by the attorney general’s office.  And private attorneys must rely on contingency fees, which don’t cover costs in smaller cases.

(Working Hands takes wage theft cases as part of its mission as a nonprofit legal clinic supporting workers centers which organize low-wage and contingent workers, Williams said.)

The bill would also bring the state’s wage payment law into line with other labor law which allows workers to sue individual owners, in addition to companies, in order to recover wages.  In part this removes barriers to enforcement established by the Illinois Supreme Court in a 2005 decision (Andrews v. Kowa Printing), which required employees to prove “knowing violations” by owners.

“This would be a big advantage when a company goes into bankruptcy,” said Williams, citing the Duraco case (recently reported here) in which “two brothers who are robbing the people who worked for the company are hiding behind [bankruptcy] reorganization.”  Working Hands recently filed suit on behalf of former Duraco workers, claiming hundreds of thousands of dollars of unpaid wages.

The bill would also increase penalties and fines, including criminal penalties for repeat offenders, and establish a Wage Theft Enforcement Fund paid for by fines and fees.  It would add a penalty of 2 percent a month when back wages are paid, to “eliminate forced interest-free loans” from workers to employers, Williams said.

The bill was initiated by the Working Hands Legal Clinic along with others in the Just Pay For All Campaign, including the Chicago Workers Collaborative, Immigrant Workers Project of South Chicago, and the Latino Union of Chicago.  Several labor and immigrant groups are endorsing the bill.

The Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern is presenting a staged reading of “My Kind of Town,” John Conroy’s play about the Chicago police torture scandal, Monday, March 8 at 6 p.m. at Thorne Auditorian at Northwestern’s law school, 375 E. Chicago.  It’s free.

The Center has produced a short video to promote the performance.  Conroy explains the play asks “how this happened, why it happened for so long, why are twenty men still in jail on the basis of suspect confessions, and why only one man has been indicted after 35 years.”   And he and others tell why a drama may be the best way to tell the story:

U.S. Rep. Jan Schakowsky is among nine members of Congress calling on Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to press human rights issues in her meeting with the new president of Honduras today.

Meanwhile Father Ismael Moreno, a Jesuit priest and social justice advocate in Honduras, will be visiting Chicago this weekend; a press conference is planned for tomorrow morning at 10 a.m. at Casa Michoacan, 1638 S. Blue Island.

Clinton announced Wednesday that U.S. aid to Honduras, which was suspended after last June’s coup, is being restored.  She is meeting today with the new president of Honduras, Porfirio Lobo, and calling on other Latin American nations to recognize the post-coup government.

“The Honduras crisis has been managed to a successful conclusion,” and “it was done without violence,” Clinton said the other day.

“It’s an outrageous thing to say,” writes longtime observer Mark Weisbrot at CEPR, “given the political killings, beatings, mass arrests, and torture that the coup government used in order to maintain power and repress the pro-democracy movement. The worst part is that they are still committing these crimes.”

The letter (pdf) signed by Schakowsky, Rep. John Conyers, and others, calls on Clinton to press for a halt to “ongoing violations of human rights” and an “escalating pattern of violations.”

It cites the killing of a number of trade union and opposition activists in recent weeks and expresses alarm over a blanket amnesty for crimes committed in the coup issued by Lobo, who was elected in November in an election held under martial law.

Moreno is director of the Jesuit Social Analysis Center in El Progresso, Honduras.  He is also director of Radio Progreso, a fifty-year-old radio station that is part of the Catholic Network, which is noted for its independent journalism.  Moreno has received numerous death threats since the coup, and the station was raided by the military and shut down termporarily.

Moreno’s Saturday morning press conference is sponsored by La Voz de los de Abajo, a local Honduran solidarity group, and the National Alliance of Latin American and Caribbean Communities.

He will speak on the human rights situation and the opposition movement in Honduras later on Saturday, March 6, at 7 p.m. at Decima Musa, 1901 S. Loomis.