March 10, 2009

 

WASHINGTON, DC- Following a Health, Education, Labor and Pensions hearing today on Rebuilding Economic Security: Empowering Workers to Restore the Middle Class, U.S. Senator Bob Casey (D-PA) released the following statement:  

“In my judgment, it is appropriate at this hearing to discuss the Employee Free Choice Act, but also the trauma that the American family is living through in this recession.  We need to talk about helping to provide economic security for families who don’t have it.  One of the best ways to ensure economic security for workers and their families is for that worker to be a member of a union.

I can walk down the street with my head held high knowing I'm not affiliated with a party whose public position is that my president and country should fail just to make their point.

Frank Schaeffer Author of Crazy for God: How I Grew Up as One of the Elect, Helped Found the Religious Right, and Lived to Take All (or Almost All) of It Back visits D.L. Hughley to talk about What's Left of the GOP :

I've been a bit of a left-wing rabble-rouser for a few years now, and I can attest that no one in that movement ever prayed for George W. Bush to fail. (Drop dead, maybe.) We did not want him to fail in Iraq. We prayed that he would find the wisdom to choose a different course, but when that didn't work out, that he would spare the lives of countless Iraqis and US soldiers and cease hostilities as soon as possible. We would have all sat down and shut-up if our troops had, in fact, been greeted as liberators and not as occupiers, and the caches of WMD that President Reagan had sold to Saddam Hussein had been found. No one would have been happier to be wrong than I. Anyone that tells you otherwise is prevaricating, to be polite.

We didn't have to do anything, it turns out, to ensure Bush's failure. He saw to that himself.

Mr. Schaeffer's letter to Republicans as published on The Huffington Post:

Dear Republican Leaders: The Republican Party has become the party dedicated to sabotaging the American future. Check out the sermon I just delivered about the Republican Party on CNN when being interviewed by D.L. Hughley -- and/or read on.

Andy Stern, the president of SEIU, is quoted as saying that the greatest social program in history was the United States union movement. That nothing raised the standard of living of more people and it didn't cost the government a dime.

It would seem that President Obama agrees. From today's Philadelphia Inquirer:

On other topics, Obama said he would not urge a delay in consideration of the Employee Free Choice Act, legislation sought by organized labor that would make it easier for unions to win the right to represent workers.

Business groups are fiercely opposed, saying that the bill - which would allow unions to be certified by workers' signatures, without a secret ballot, and would require arbitration - would increase costs.

"I don't buy the argument that providing workers with collective-bargaining rights somehow weakens the economy or worsens the business environment," Obama said. "If you've got workers who have decent pay and benefits, they're also customers for business."

 

From Joy Sabl, Democracy for Pittsburgh:

 

Just because "our" team is now in office, that doesn't mean the need
for oversight disappears. Even if this is not "your" big issue,
consider signing the petition to make it clear that we're staying on
the ball.

As a biologist and also as a diver, I can vouch for the bad effects of
"open" aquaculture. Even so-called "organic aquaculture" methods
(involving lower fish densities) do not address the basic problems.
These are nutrient runoff from food and feces; serving as an
unintentional culture medium for blooms of viruses, bacteria and
parasites that harm wild populations (particularly destructive to tiny
wild fry that would not otherwise encounter large parasites until
later in life); and the escape of farmed fish into wild populations,
compromising the quality and genetic diversity of wild fish.

This "heads up" came today. Please consider signing.

http://www.care2.com/go/z/e/Afu9G/Y7yM/vUob

Our wild pacific salmon fisheries are the best-managed in the world.
There are movements afoot to revive other US fisheries by properly
managing wild stocks. With overfishing of many species, we are at a
crossroads: we can commit to healthy oceans, healthy fish stocks and
managed fishing plans (which will allow the oceans to feed us if we
treat them well). Or we give up on the oceans, and the wild fish
stocks, and use the sea as a convenient location for pens of fish that
have to be artificially bred and fed. For more, see here:
http://community.adn.com/node/137528

Until well into this century, salmon was so plentiful, easy to fish
and cheap that there were rules that workers could not be fed salmon
more than 3 times a week. Salmon was also used as dog food and
fertilizer. If we treat rivers and oceans and fish populations well,
they will rebound to feed us amply.

P.S. Farmed tilapia and catfish are fine, as far as effects on wild
fish--those are closed, landlocked, freshwater ponds.

Juan Cole on Bush's swan song:

Friday, January 16, 2009

W.'s Twilight: A Man of Feeble Temper

W. said goodbye to us last night, in an appearance that was surely notable for most Americans mainly because of the annoyance that he delayed by fifteen minutes their prime time shows like Gray's Anatomy and Eleventh Hour.

The Bard reminds us that we cannot attribute the dominance of the unworthy ruler to fate, or the stars. If we diminish ourselves and make ourselves underlings and give up our birthright as free citizens, bowing down to a would-be emperor, then we ourselves must accept the blame.

"Ye gods, it doth amaze me,
A man of such a feeble temper should
So get the start of the majestic world,
And bear the palm alone. (1.2.129)

Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world
Like a Colossus; and we petty men
Walk under his huge legs, and peep about
To find ourselves dishonourable graves.
Men at some time are masters of their fates:
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves, that we are underlings. (1.2.135)"

Cont'd

Last February Governor Rendell signed Pennsylvania's new Open Records law. This law opening the records of government for examination by any citizen became fully effective on January 1 of this year.

The Office of Open Records which oversees government compliance with the new law has established a website to make the process easier. You can find the Open Records website here:

http://openrecords.state.pa.us

Snipped from the Citizen's Guide on the open Records website:

The most significant change to the Right-To-Know Law is that all records are presumed to be public records unless disclosure is barred by: 1) state or federal law or regulation, or judicial order; or 2), privilege, e.g., attorney-client, doctor-patient, or 3) one of the exceptions in Section 708 of the Right-to-Know Law.

The burden is now 100 percent on the Agency to establish why the record is not available.


Commonwealth Agencies: Any office, department, authority or other parts of the executive branch, state-affiliated entities, independent agencies, and includes the Governor, Attorney General, Auditor General and the Treasury Department.

Local Agencies: Any political subdivision, intermediate unit,  or charter, public trade or vocational school [or] any local, intergovernmental, regional or municipal agency, authority, council, board commission or similar governmental entity.

The depression of 1929 is the wrong model for the current economic crisis

By SCOTT REYNOLDS NELSON for The Chroncle of Higher Education

As a historian who works on the 19th century, I have been reading my newspaper with a considerable sense of dread. While many commentators on the recent mortgage and banking crisis have drawn parallels to the Great Depression of 1929, that comparison is not particularly apt. Two years ago, I began research on the Panic of 1873, an event of some interest to my colleagues in American business and labor history but probably unknown to everyone else. But as I turn the crank on the microfilm reader, I have been hearing weird echoes of recent events.

When commentators invoke 1929, I am dubious. According to most historians and economists, that depression had more to do with overlarge factory inventories, a stock-market crash, and Germany's inability to pay back war debts, which then led to continuing strain on British gold reserves. None of those factors is really an issue now. Contemporary industries have very sensitive controls for trimming production as consumption declines; our current stock-market dip followed bank problems that emerged more than a year ago; and there are no serious international problems with gold reserves, simply because banks no longer peg their lending to them.