AlterNet Special

AlterNet:
Why Millions of Women Don’t Vote

By Jacqueline Lee, Women's eNews
Posted on August 8, 2007

In "Election Day," a documentary about the experiences of voters in the 2004 election, an Ohio woman is shown having trouble casting her ballot. She had moved, and despite re-registering, went to three different poll locations because her name didn't appear on the books.

"The woman in Shaker Heights is carrying her small child in the morning and she had been getting the runaround and go-around, going from one polling place to the next," said Maggie Bowman, producer of "Election Day," released in March. "A lot of the challenges faced by working people in general are more extreme for working women."

On Aug. 26 U.S. women mark the 87th anniversary of the 19th Amendment giving them the right to vote. By some measures there is plenty to celebrate.

Women have turned out to vote at a higher rate than men since the 1980s.

In the 2006 midterm election 2 million more young women voted than in the previous comparable cycle, according to the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement at the University of Maryland School of Public Policy, which credits the rise in part to the Feminist Majority Foundation's "Get Out Her Vote" effort aimed at college women.

Moreover,55 percent of female voters cast their ballots for Democrats in House races, while only 50 percent of male voters did. In fact, female voters were responsible for key Democratic victories in the House and the Senate.

However, those figures do not reflect the fact that many women's votes are missing from the count.

In the last presidential election, 8 million women registered but did not vote; another 36 million potential female voters were not registered at all, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Faith Winter, national field director of the New York-based White House Project, a nonpartisan group working to elect a female president, says the paucity of elected women is discouraging.

"When they don't see themselves or people that look like them in the process, it's a big barrier for participation. Not seeing yourself in power is something that's particular to women." Unmarried Women Fastest Growing Group

Unmarried women are the fastest growing major demographic group and represent the largest potential group of new voters, according to "The State of Unmarried America," an annual report released on June 29 by Washington-based Women's Voices Women Vote.

But many of their votes aren't there to be counted. Of the 49.5 million single, separated, divorced or widowed women in the United States, 18 million are unregistered and 5 million are registered but don't vote.

"What would make them most likely to participate is if they have more information from sources that they trust: nonbiased, nonpartisan information," said Joe Goode, executive director of Women's Voices Women Vote. "They don't have the same social network or are not as politically engaged as married couples. The second major thing holding them back is cynicism towards politicians and politics."

Goode says the women sitting out elections are hindered in general by a high degree of instability; 40 percent of young women move every three to four years and need to re-register.

Other women may be hindered more by everyday difficulties.

"Women are voting and women are voting in high numbers every year," said Kassidy Johnson, a campus organizer for the Feminist Majority Foundation in Arlington, Va., which has a variety of programs to increase female voting. "I really believe the things that hold us back are normal, everyday things. You forget, you can't find a babysitter or you don't want to stand in line all day." Registration Challenges

Johnson points to recently married women who may not know they have to re-register if they change their names. "A woman's name does not change automatically and it costs money to change your name. You have to change your Social Security card, your voter registration card, then the roster or your license may be wrong and your name doesn't match up."

Frances Talbott-White, vice president of voter services for the League of Women Voters of Los Angeles, notes that among older people there are more frail women living in assisted living facilities or in hospitals.

"An abuse that can happen is that somebody can go to their nursing home and say, 'Let me help you with your absentee ballot,' and fill it in the way they think it ought to be filled in," Talbott-White said.

The National Asian Pacific American Women's Forum in Washington, D.C., has reported that Asian female voters face obstacles unique to their culture, as do many immigrant populations.

"For older women, a lot of it just comes from the cultural barrier, not really a stigma around voting," Priscilla Huang, the group's policy and program director, said. "Voting isn't really a part of what they did in their communities or their home countries, so it's not an ingrained process ... Women tend to rely on more English proficient family members to translate the news or tell them what is going on politically. I could imagine how this might sway or influence how they vote on things." Asian American Women Turnout Rising

However, among those Asian American women who were registered, 84 percent voted in the 2004 election and voted at a rate higher than men for the first time, according to the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey.

"In the last 2006 election, two-thirds of all first-time voters were foreign born," said Huang. "Immigrant women take voting very seriously, and they are excited to do so. So it's problematic when all the tools are not available to them."

Huang said political causes and campaigns often fail to target this group, which means they often don't feel confident enough to vote and are further marginalized.

"A good example of this is around some of the pro-choice initiatives among mainstream pro-choice groups," Huang said. "When they go out and campaign, women of color and Asian Pacific Island women in particular get left out because they may think if you're Asian, you're not pro-choice. There are no Asian voters because there's no outreach to Asian women."

A struggle still exists for married women, especially among immigrants, to vote independently of their husbands' or relatives' political views, Huang said.

Women living in domestic violence shelters or other temporary residences can be hindered from voting by fears of an abuser finding their address on public voter rolls, said Cheryl O'Donnell of the Washington-based National Network to End Domestic Violence. The organization's VotePower initiative seeks to boost domestic violence survivors' participation by educating them about safe and confidential ways to vote.

"Because of the emotional and psychological tearing down of a person, a lot of survivors don't believe that their voice matters," said O'Donnell. "So the work we're doing with voters is we're actually encouraging them to be a part of the political process and learn more about their communities and have their voices heard."

Jacqueline Lee is a Los-Angeles-based reporter interning with Women's eNews.

© 2007 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at:
http://www.alternet.org/story/59086/


Can State Governments Set Up
Universal Health Care on Their Own?

By Ezra Klein, Washington Monthly
Posted on August 8, 2007

It is one of the happy incidents of the federal system," Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis once mused, "that a single courageous state may, if its citizens choose, serve as a laboratory; and try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country." Well, quite. These days we practically expect the states to try their hand at fixing tricky national problems before the federal government steps in. So to many observers, when several states recently turned their attention to providing health care for the uninsured - one of the thorniest domestic problems of all - it looked like cause for considerable optimism.

For a start, both Massachusetts (which passed a near-universal plan last year) and California (which is seriously debating one) are trying something relatively new: individual mandates that require every person in the state to have health insurance. The fact that Democratic legislatures have pushed Republican governors - one a presidential candidate (Mitt Romney), the other a celebrity (Arnold Schwarzenegger) - to back the notion of universal care has given this perennial liberal dream a bipartisan cachet. It has also helped revive the national conversation around universal health care by moving the discussion from airy, moral exhortations to practical examples of possible paths forward. In fact, the leading Democratic presidential candidates have all committed themselves to universal health reform, some with plans that seem more than a little influenced by those statewide R&D centers. The laboratories of democracy appear to be in fine working order.

So far, so good. But we know that the politics of health care is treacherous. In the last half century, two presidents (Truman and Clinton) mounted serious efforts to provide health care to all the uninsured and failed, while another (FDR) scotched his ambitions when he appraised the obstacles. There's no reason to think that things will be any easier this time around. Consider this: congressional Democrats, despite their new majority, were recently unable to pass even minor tweaks to the Medicare prescription drug benefit. If a Democrat wins the presidency in 2008, he or she will face a daunting array of moneyed interests aiming to kill any universal health care program they attempt to pass.

Faced with such long odds, a conventional wisdom will soon develop that it would be better for Washington to defer efforts to pass universal health care, perhaps indefinitely, and instead just leave the problem to the states to figure out. Indeed, such arguments are already being voiced by ideological opponents of expanded federal power. "Let's just try many different approaches in many different states and see what happens," the Heritage Foundation's Stuart Butler told me. "The more complex an issue is, the less possible it is to actually know the best system in advance - therefore a system of trial and error in which all these pieces work together is the best way to push forward."

The idea of giving universal health care a little more time in the laboratories of democracy may sound tempting to certain cautious, bipartisanship-loving Beltway observers. But letting states continue to take the lead would be disastrous, for one very simple reason: providing health care for all citizens is one of those tasks, like national defense, that the states are simply unequipped to manage on their own. The history of state health reform initiatives (and there's quite a history) is a tale of false hopes and great disappointments. The deck is stacked from the start, and the house - in this case the insurers, the providers, and other agents of the status quo - always wins. The new raft of reforms may prove different, but they probably won't. Universal care advocates must be realistic about that, and think hard about how to convert the energy in the states into a national solution before the current crop of novel experiments fail - because fail they almost certainly will.

The current appetite for universal health care in state capitals may seem thrilling and unprecedented to some, but to those who follow the issue it carries an unsettling charge of déjà vu. Over the years, states have tried programs of many different ideological and economic persuasions. All of them failed, and not because the programs were insufficiently inventive, but because states are structurally incapable of sustaining them.

Washington State, for instance, opted for a Clintonian-style program. In 1993, it passed the Washington Health Services Act, which sought to tame the excesses of health markets and use the state's regulatory powers to mandate universal coverage, force insurers to offer comprehensive benefit packages at affordable prices, and pool purchasing power so all residents could buy in. Because the insurers would rebel against this scheme to rip apart their business model and end their ability to price out the sick while attracting the well, the state demanded that all insurers who wanted access to Oregon's market become certified through the state - that way, they couldn't undercut the program. But the insurers took a harder line than expected and instantly rebelled against the arrangement; many went so far as to cease doing business in the state. Others instantly jacked up premiums, creating total chaos. The next year, the Republican revolution washed over the statehouse, and by 1995 the new GOP majority had repealed most of the plan's elements, including the parts forcing insurers to participate. By 2000, not a single insurer remained in the now-voluntary system. Today, 13 percent of Washington's population is uninsured, compared with just over 10 percent in 1992. The state spends 12 percent of its gross state product on health care, just 1 percent less than the national average.

Hawaii, in contrast, went for the classic liberal approach: a giant government program. The state had already forced all employers to cover their workers in 1974. In 1994, hoping to cover all those without employer-provided insurance, Hawaii created the QUEST program, into which it merged Medicaid and a similar state program. Early reviews were good. At the outset, QUEST appeared so successful that Hillary Clinton used it as supporting evidence for the Clinton Health Security Act, proclaiming that Hawaii "has achieved nearly universal coverage and has less of a cost."

What happened next wasn't pretty. First, Hawaii suffered from the problem known as the "woodwork effect," where a new government program entices people out of the woodwork, leading to more applicants and higher costs than anticipated. An economic downturn proved even more damaging. It's a cruel economic irony - but an inescapable policy reality - that recessions rob government of the revenue it needs to cover the uninsured at precisely the moment that the most people need subsidies to get them through the lean times. And states are incapable of responding, since they, unlike the federal government, are constitutionally barred from running deficits.

So Hawaii responded in the only way it could: by cutting back the program. Instead of offering benefits for those whose income was up to three times the federal poverty line, it restricted eligibility to people whose income was twice the poverty line, and introduced an assets test. The dreams of universality evaporated. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, 9 percent of Hawaii's population is uninsured, compared to 15 percent nationwide, and it spends 12 percent of its gross state product on health care - exactly the same proportion as the rest of the country.

Tennessee's health reform sprang from more conservative principles. In 1994, in the thick of the Republican revolution, Tennessee replaced its Medicaid program with a new plan for low-income residents called TennCare. TennCare was part of the "managed care" movement of the 1990s, an attempt to bring some free market discipline to the apparent bloat of government entitlements. It replaced the traditional fee-for-service structures of Medicaid with a new system wherein health maintenance organizations were given a fixed fee per patient, per month, thus theoretically creating incentives to keep the patients well rather than prescribe ever more treatments. It was ambitious - seeking to cover the poor, the young, the uninsured, and even the uninsurable (mainly those with expensive or chronic medical conditions). The New York Times called it "for better and worse, the most sweeping revolution of a government-financed health care system in the nation."

Like Hawaii's experiment, TennCare seemed to work, at first. A few years after its inception, it covered a quarter of Tennessee's population. But it ultimately met with exactly the same fate as Hawaii's program. A fiscal downturn created greater need and insufficient tax revenues. Costs increased. When voters rejected a tax hike, the state began cutting benefits. By 2005, Democratic Governor Phil Bredesen had dissolved much of the program, leaving more than 300,000 Tennesseans without coverage. "I say to you with a clear heart," said Bredesen, "that I've tried everything. There is no big lump of federal money that will make the problem go away."

Finally, in the early 1990s, Oregon adopted a plan that defied ideological pigeonholing but was notable for attempting to do the one thing that really needs doing: controlling costs. Reformers fastened on an expansion of Medicaid as the quickest route to expanded access, and vowed to finance the expansion not with new funds, but with savings obtained through a rationing system that ranked treatments by cost-effectiveness and only covered those with the greatest proven benefits. By increasing access without depending on unstable streams of new revenues, Oregon's plan sought to protect itself from the fiscal downturns and strains that bedeviled other efforts. The New York Times dubbed it "a brave medical experiment." Between 1992 and 1996, the state's uninsured population dropped by 7 percent, and the electorate voted twice to hike cigarette taxes in order to better fund the program.

In 2002, Governor John Kitzhaber decided to push Oregon closer to full coverage. However, the state was undergoing an economic downturn, and had no extra revenues to spare. So Kitzhaber decided to cover more people by cutting services and increasing the amount beneficiaries would have to spend out-of-pocket. This trade-off allowed the plan to achieve bipartisan support, but also caused it to tank spectacularly. Instead of expanding by 50 percent, the program contracted by 75 percent, as the increased cost sharing and stringent payment regulations caused thousands of Oregonians to leave or be kicked off the state's rolls.

The new crop of state health care plans are trying to avoid the failures of the past by attempting something new: individual mandates. Here, Massachusetts led the way. Its plan forces everyone in the state to have health insurance, with subsidies for those who can't afford it. The genius of this approach is that many of those who lack health insurance aren't poor or ailing - they're middle-class people who have decided they're healthy enough that they don't need to spend money on health coverage. Forcing these people to buy insurance (like similar reforms that require all drivers to have auto insurance) has the useful effect of bringing more money into the system while spreading the risk. So far, Massachusetts is the first state to pass such a plan, but other states, including California, Illinois, New Jersey, and Connecticut, are contemplating universal plans with similar individual mandates.

And the early indicators from Massachusetts suggest that the new program might actually work - at least in Massachusetts. State officials recently announced that they expect to be able to afford sliding-scale premiums that would provide coverage - some of it bare bones, but still better than nothing - to 99 percent of adults in the state.

Alas, Massachusetts may be the exception that proves the rule, for several reasons. First, it has one of the lowest uninsured populations in the country: 10 percent compared to the nationwide average of 16 percent. Second, a relatively large portion of that 10 percent can afford to buy insurance without government subsidy, thanks to the fact that the state is one of the nation's wealthiest, with a median household income of about $8,000 above the national average. That leaves Massachusetts with a reasonably small number of citizens who need government support to purchase health insurance. And in that regard, Massachusetts has a third advantage: a ready-made funding source. In 1988, then Governor Michael Dukakis signed a pay-or-play universal health care bill into law. Like similar laws enacted in other states, it failed, and most of its provisions were repealed a year later by his successor. But portions of it remained, including revenue streams - totaling $540 million - dedicated to reimbursing hospitals who care for the uninsured. That's $540 million that can now go to covering the uninsured. It's also money most other states don't have just lying around.

For those reasons and others, it's unlikely that any other state can succeed at what Massachusetts is doing. That's especially true of poor states, like New Mexico, which has 26 percent uninsured and a median household income that's 20 percent lower than the national average. Even if everyone in the state without insurance were mandated to have it, only a relatively small portion could afford to buy that insurance without massively generous subsidies. To provide those subsidies, the government would have to seek tax increases of a size that no state in recent memory has been able to pass. And to sustain the program, it would have to hold firm during all manner of recessions and downturns, when the calls for tax relief grow strongest but when the program's funding may actually need to be increased.

Even states with higher household incomes have only a limited ability to fund a universal health care scheme. In Illinois, for instance, the individual mandate plan that Governor Rod Blagojevich has proposed won't be enough to cover the program's cost. So he has suggested a tax on gross receipts on all business of revenue of $1 million a year or more. The policy is widely seen as putting Illinois businesses at an onerous disadvantage compared to other states - and not just by the usual suspects. The Reverend Jesse Jackson, not exactly a die-hard supply-sider, has called it a "bad idea." When you've managed to put Jesse Jackson and the Chamber of Commerce on the same side, you've lost pretty much everyone.

Similarly, in California individual mandates won't cover the cost of Schwarzenegger's much-touted universal health care plan. He plans to lobby the federal government for $3.7 billion in annual subsidies. It's an odd expectation, given that President Bush's 2006 budget called for $4.6 billion in health care cuts to the state over the next decade. But let's assume that Schwarzenegger gets his money. What if, say, John McCain is then elected president in 2008 and is able to follow through on his constant promises to shrink the size of government, and cuts California loose? Or what if the economy takes a dive, and Congress scales back contributions? That's the end of California's program.

One of the great things about state governments is that they have more freedom than the federal government does to test new policy ideas. But it pays to look honestly at what the results of those tests actually say. And in this case, the results are pretty clear: states are no good at delivering universal health care.

No one can doubt the role Massachusetts and California have played in reinvigorating the debate over national health care. And if the reforms currently percolating at the state level help provide momentum for a national health care system in the next few years, all the effort will have been worth it. If they don't, however, they may ultimately prove detrimental. If high-profile efforts like those in Massachusetts and California can't be properly implemented, or are launched and then collapse, they'll become powerful weapons in the hands of protectors of the status quo. After the demise of Washington State's plan, for instance, the Heritage Foundation published an article stating that the program "gave state legislators around the country an experimental taste of how a Clinton-style health care plan would work - or fail to work. The result was higher costs, burgeoning bureaucracy, and micromanagement." If the example of Washington is replaced with California, this kind of attack will become far more deadly.

The rest of the industrialized world proves that nationally run care can, and does, work. But our own history proves that state-run care doesn't, and reformers should keep that in mind. Brandeis, for all his federalism, was a realist, too. "If we would guide by the light of reason," he said, "we must let our minds be bold." On health reform, the light of reason is clear. We must merely be bold enough to follow it, and not settle for smaller, unsustainable victories because we fear the battle necessary for an enduring triumph.

Ezra Klein is a junior at UCLA. He does have a blog; it’s at http://ezraklein.typepad.com. He does not work for the school newspaper. Which leaves him time to respond to your e-mails: ezrak@ucla.edu. Who do you want to see profiled in Get a Job? Drop him an e-mail and let him know.

© 2007 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at:
http://www.alternet.org/story/59047/


Battling Modern Day Jim Crow: the "Jena Six"

By James Rucker, Color of Change
Posted on August 8, 2007

Last Tuesday, more than 300 people from across the country descended on the small town of Jena, Louisiana to protest the racially tinged prosecution of the "Jena Six" - six black students who are facing attempted murder charges for their alleged roles in a schoolyard fight. The has already been convicted and faces up to 22 years in prison.

The marchers rallied at the Jena courthouse and delivered more than 43,000 signatures collected by ColorOfChange.org demanding that District Attorney Reed Walters drop the charges against the six students.

The story of the Jena 6 reads like one from the Jim Crow era—where powerful whites use brazenly oppressive and discriminatory action to keep black people "in their place"—but it's happening today.

The DA and other officials in Jena thought that their actions would go unchallenged. Indeed, until last week the story has received only a trickle of mainstream press, and the most prominent stories have been marred by serious distortions or ommissions.

What town officials didn't count on was the surge of online activism and reports from online and alternative media outlets such as Left Turn, truthout, Democracy Now, and BlackAmericaWeb, and creative pieces like this pilot episode of Radar (an internet news broadcast from GNN.tv focused on underreported stories and uncovered angles) that have shined a light on the injustice taking place in Jena.

Ever since December, families of the Jena 6 have been fighting to overcome the Jim Crow "justice" being applied to their sons. They have protested, organized, and asked for outside help to show the town's white power structure that they will not sit idly by as their loved ones are railroaded into a life behind bars.

What we saw on Tuesday is that their efforts are beginning to pay off. Mychal Bell, the first of the Jena 6 to be tried, was convicted of aggravated battery and conspiracy to commit aggravated battery. Bell was originally scheduled to be sentenced on July 31st, the day of the march, but the sentencing was postponed until September 20th. Local organizers are convinced that officials got nervous about holding the sentencing on a day when much so attention would be focused on Jena.

This small victory didn't come because the Governor or the Justice Department stepped in, and it wasn't because of a hard-hitting expose by a major news organization (all of which would be welcome developments). It was because a relatively small number of concerned citizens— informed by reports in alternative media and spurred to action by grassroots and online organizing—stood behind the Jena 6, their families, and dozens of other Jena residents who are courageously resisting injustice.

The delay in Mychal Bell's sentencing hearing is a sign that the authorities in Jena are feeling the pressure. But there's still much to be done. The outrage over Jena has yet to reach the decibel level necessary to see justice served.

The lives of six young black men are at stake and the DA has turned the police and courts into instruments of intimidation and oppression.

We can help turn things around by making it a political liability for the authorities of Jena to continue the racist status quo, and by forcing the Governor of Louisiana to intervene.

If you want to support the Jena 6, please sign theColorOfChange.org petition calling on the local DA to drop all charges and calling on Governor Kathleen Blanco to intervene.

You can also make a donation to support the legal defense of the Jena 6. The official Jena 6 website, which will be updated regularly with resources and information about the case, is at FreetheJena6.org.

© 2007 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at:
http://www.alternet.org/story/58989/


Spend, Spend, Spend: The New Model for Parenting

By Helaine Olen, AlterNet
Posted on August 8, 2007

Move over, Bugaboo. There's a new high-priced stroller in town. Meet the new Maclaren. Souped up with leather seats and handle grips, its signature motif is a hand-stitched emblem made of nine-karat gold. It's price - a mere $4,200. Interested parties ought to move fast: Maclaren has only manufactured twenty of these luxury perambulators, the better to promote their exclusivity and uniqueness.

While singularly ostentatious, a golden stroller is only a tiny piece of the $45 billion American children's luxury goods market, where parents routinely spend hundreds of dollars on kiddy goods that seem frivolous to the point of ridiculousness. A Coach leather diaper bag, $398. A sleekly designed baby bouncer, $200. A crib that looks more appropriate for a shoot in Archetectural Digest than for use by an actual infant, $1,700.

What gives? After all, Wal-Mart and Target sell some perfectly acceptable cribs for around $100 and baby bouncers and diaper bags retailing in the low two figures are easy enough to find. Well, it's simple really. In a brand obsessed society, parents are heading to the stores as a way of showing how much they love their children. But they forget that a society demonstrates the value of parents and their children not by how much equipment is available for them to purchase, but by how well they are taken care of when they need help. And by any standards the United States is falling down on the job.

Marketers point out that Generation X, the age group that makes up the bulk of new moms and dads, have always spent their way into popularity. But as they simultaneously approach parenthood and middle age (the oldest GenXers turn 42 this year) instead of wearing Candies and Vidal Sassoon Jeans to increase their social clout, they now purchase to cool for school baby gear, hoping for the same result. "During the formative years of today's parents, family, religion and government programs were very weak. They had no support systems," demographer Ann Fishman points out. "And as a result, we have these young parents who want a strong family, love their kids, want to give them everything but they don't know it doesn't mean stuff."

Instead of lobbying for a more family friendly environment, Gen X parents hit the stores, despite the fact that they carry 78 percent more debt than Baby Boomers did at the same age. But a cashmere clothing sweater set for a newborn infant set can't hide the fact that in the United States, more than one in five children live in poverty. No $2,000 designer crib can make up for the fact we guarantee the elderly medical care - but not their children or grandchildren.

Handmade wooden toys don't make up for the modern workplaces, where the decision to procreate is considered on par with a decision to take up a time-consuming hobby as numerous mothers, forced to "opt-out," can attest. And the latest prestige item - a Mandarin speaking nanny - can't compensate for underfunded schools, with even well-heeled suburban districts routinely face bruising battles over property tax rates and assessments used to pay for the education of their youngest residents.

Of course, there has always been a side of parenting that's bordered on the ostentatious. French children's clothing stores have long lined the sidewalks of New York's Madison Avenue. Nineteenth century Parisians gossiped when Napoleon III obtained a rattle made of aluminum - then a scarce and expensive resource - for his son and heir. But the mass consumption of children's luxury goods is something new - and something undesirable.

If parents are looking to buy themselves and their kids a status upgrade, jeopardizing their own - and their children's - financial futures with luxury shopping isn't the way to go.

After all, long after all that baby bling is relegated to the attic, there will be college costs to think about. Then again, mom and dad can always tell junior to take a page from their own book. They can tell the rug rats to charge it.

Helaine Olen is a freelance writer whose work has appeared in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal, Salon.com and numerous other publications. Her book, co-written with Stephanie Losee, Office Mate: The Employee Handbook for Finding - and Managing - Romance on the Job, will be published this fall.

© 2007 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at:
http://www.alternet.org/story/58982/