Judy explains why government run health care is a good thng:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dan-agin/sleepwalking-in-america-o_b_224351.html
Thursday, July 2, 2009
Cheap Labor, Plain Crashes and Whistle Blowers
Whistle blowers in the FAA have for sometime been complaining about plane unsafety conditions. They found evidence of repairman being hired that could not speak or read English, and could not read repair manuals (among other things). The whistle blowers complained that they were retaliated against by the FAA, a government agency, as the agency conceded to the wishes of the companies they were suppose to oversee. (IMF policy of "business friendly environment")
http://faa-whistleblower.blogspot.com/2009/04/thousands-of-aircraft-mechanics.html
http://faa-whistleblower.blogspot.com/2009/04/thousands-of-aircraft-mechanics.html
Saturday, June 27, 2009
Why Is The U.S. Following Failed Policies Of The IMF Instead Of The U.S. Constitution?
Lets begin with the very interesting story of Argentina which is also a member of the IMF.
President Peron ruled Argentina in its golden years. He invested heavily in public works, and gave rights to the working class such as the right to organize for better working conditions. As a result Argentina prospered and had the largest middle class in South America. It was an upcoming economic success to match Canada and other Capitalistic countries. Argentina was a rich Country made poor.
In the 1990’s President Carlos Menem also transformed Argentina by following the policies of the IMF. He implemented every “business friendly policy” in it all at one time…downsizing, corporate handouts, and selling off of public assets, and Washington approved. (Note The following was taken from the IMF website: “The IMF was conceived in July 1944, when representatives of 45 governments meeting in the town of Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, in the northeastern United States, agreed on a framework for international economic cooperation. They believed that such a framework was necessary to avoid a repetition of the disastrous economic policies that had contributed to the Great Depression of the 1930s. “http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/exrp/what.htm ). The policy turned into a disaster.
When workers protested for better working conditions the factory owners simply closed the doors and moved to countries offering a cheaper more compliant labor force. They left behind gutted empty factories, and the jobless.
While people where without work, money was free to travel. Argentinean currency started to faultier. So national banks moved forty billion dollars out of the Country, and froze all bank accounts in the dead of night with the support of judges, politicians and the police force. The rich were able to travel to obtain money, but the average citizen was robbed of their life savings in that one night. IMF policies destroyed the Argentinean middle class. Once they ate in fancy restraints. Now they rummaged their dumpsters for food. The IMF policies are not limited to Argentina. They are global stretching from Seattle Washington to South Africa. But the beauty of the Argentinean people began to rise from the ashes of that disaster.
A group of women from a closed garment manufacturing company were the first to take action. They showed up for work anyway, and ran the company themselves. Under the women the company was a bigger success than ever before. The reasons they gave: “we do not have excessive pay to anyone (CEOs), everyone is treated equally, and we do not send profits out of the Country.” They were surprised to find out how easy it actually was to run the factory they had worked in. But their efforts were not without resistance. Factory owners hearing of their success wanted their factories back. The original owners felt those factories belonged to them as it was their investment that made it all possible.
Others followed the example of the women. Even closed schools were opened this way by parents and teachers uniting.
Argentina went through five presidents in three weeks. Menem had exited the country, but returned for elections. He promised change, and the return of prosperity. He promised to put the people back to work. Some refused to vote complaining that all of their presidential choices where only men that had caused the problem in the first place. Sound familiar? Menem won the election by a small margin.
As soon as he took office he began to reward those who had financed his campaign. Factories were taken from the control of the people, and returned to the original factory owners. The first one to go was the women’s garment factory.
One can learn much more form the documentary called “The Take.”
http://www.thetake.org/
http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0218-31.htm
President Peron ruled Argentina in its golden years. He invested heavily in public works, and gave rights to the working class such as the right to organize for better working conditions. As a result Argentina prospered and had the largest middle class in South America. It was an upcoming economic success to match Canada and other Capitalistic countries. Argentina was a rich Country made poor.
In the 1990’s President Carlos Menem also transformed Argentina by following the policies of the IMF. He implemented every “business friendly policy” in it all at one time…downsizing, corporate handouts, and selling off of public assets, and Washington approved. (Note The following was taken from the IMF website: “The IMF was conceived in July 1944, when representatives of 45 governments meeting in the town of Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, in the northeastern United States, agreed on a framework for international economic cooperation. They believed that such a framework was necessary to avoid a repetition of the disastrous economic policies that had contributed to the Great Depression of the 1930s. “http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/exrp/what.htm ). The policy turned into a disaster.
When workers protested for better working conditions the factory owners simply closed the doors and moved to countries offering a cheaper more compliant labor force. They left behind gutted empty factories, and the jobless.
While people where without work, money was free to travel. Argentinean currency started to faultier. So national banks moved forty billion dollars out of the Country, and froze all bank accounts in the dead of night with the support of judges, politicians and the police force. The rich were able to travel to obtain money, but the average citizen was robbed of their life savings in that one night. IMF policies destroyed the Argentinean middle class. Once they ate in fancy restraints. Now they rummaged their dumpsters for food. The IMF policies are not limited to Argentina. They are global stretching from Seattle Washington to South Africa. But the beauty of the Argentinean people began to rise from the ashes of that disaster.
A group of women from a closed garment manufacturing company were the first to take action. They showed up for work anyway, and ran the company themselves. Under the women the company was a bigger success than ever before. The reasons they gave: “we do not have excessive pay to anyone (CEOs), everyone is treated equally, and we do not send profits out of the Country.” They were surprised to find out how easy it actually was to run the factory they had worked in. But their efforts were not without resistance. Factory owners hearing of their success wanted their factories back. The original owners felt those factories belonged to them as it was their investment that made it all possible.
Others followed the example of the women. Even closed schools were opened this way by parents and teachers uniting.
Argentina went through five presidents in three weeks. Menem had exited the country, but returned for elections. He promised change, and the return of prosperity. He promised to put the people back to work. Some refused to vote complaining that all of their presidential choices where only men that had caused the problem in the first place. Sound familiar? Menem won the election by a small margin.
As soon as he took office he began to reward those who had financed his campaign. Factories were taken from the control of the people, and returned to the original factory owners. The first one to go was the women’s garment factory.
One can learn much more form the documentary called “The Take.”
http://www.thetake.org/
http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0218-31.htm
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
How unions gave my redneck family a chance at the American dream
How Unions Gave My Redneck Family a Chance at the American Dream
By Joe Bageant, AlterNet
Posted on June 22, 2009, Printed on June 24, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/140797/
In looking back on growing up, I always remember 1957 and 1958 as "the two good years." They were the only years my working-class redneck family ever caught a real break in their working lives, and that break came because of organized labor.
After working as a farmhand, driving a hicktown taxi part time and a dozen catch-as-catch-can jobs, my father found himself owning a used semi-truck and hauling produce for a Teamster-unionized trucking company called Blue Goose.
Daddy was making more money than he'd ever made in his life, about $4,000 a year. The median national household income at the time was $5,000, mostly thanks to America's unions. After years of moving from one rented dump to another, we bought a modest home ($8,000) and felt like we might at last be getting some traction in achieving the so-called American Dream.
Yup, Daddy was doing pretty good for a backwoods boy who'd quit school in the sixth or seventh grade -- he was never sure, which gives some idea how seriously the farm boy took his attendance at the one-room school we both attended in our lifetimes.
This was the golden age of both trucking and of unions. Thirty-five percent of American labor, 17 million working folks, were union members, and it was during this period the American middle class was created.
The American middle class has never been as big as advertised, but if it means the middle third income-wise, then we actually had one at the time. But whatever it means, one-third of working folks, the people who busted their asses day in and day out making the nation function, were living better than they ever had. Or at least had the opportunity to do so.
From the Depression through World War II, the Teamsters Union became a powerful entity, and a popular one, too, because of such things as its pledge never to strike during the war or a national emergency. President Roosevelt even had a special-designated liaison to the Teamsters.
But power and money eventually drew the usual assortment of lizards, and by the mid-'50s the Teamsters Union had become one corrupt pile of shit at the top level. So rotten even the mob enjoyed a piece of the action.
The membership, ordinary guys like my dad, was outraged and ashamed, but rendered powerless by the crooked union bosses in the big cities.
My old man was no great follower of the news or current events, but he tried to keep up with and understand Teamster developments. Which was impossible since his reading consisted of anti-union Southern newspapers, and the television coverage of Teamster criminality, including murders and the ongoing courtroom trials.
All this left him conflicted. His Appalachian Christian upbringing defined the world in black-and-white, with no gray areas. Inside, he felt he should not be even remotely connected with such vile things as the Teamsters were associated with. And he sometimes prayed for guidance in the matter.
On the other hand, there was the pride and satisfaction in providing for his family in ways previously impossible. He'd built a reasonable, working-class security for those times and that place in West Virginia. Being a Teamster certainly made that possible. But for damned sure no one had handed it to him. He drove his guts out to get what he had.
There were rules and log books and all the other crap that were supposed to assure drivers got enough rest., and ensure road safety and fairness for the truckers. Rural heartland drivers saw it for the bullshit it was, but it was much better-paying bullshit. For a little guy hauling produce from Podunk, USA, to the big cities, it still came down to heartburn, hemorrhoids and longer hauls and longer hours than most driver's falsified log books showed. And sometimes way too much Benzedrine, or "bennies."
Bennies were a type of speed commonly used by truckers back then because of the grueling hauls. As a former doper who has done bennies, I can avow they are some gritty, nerve-jagging shit. Their only virtue is making you wide awake and jumpy, and after you've been awake on them a couple of days, which many drivers were, crazier than a shithouse rat.
Nearly every truck stop sold bennies under the counter. Once, while hallucinating on bennies, Daddy nearly wiped out a roadside joint. He recalled “layin' on the jake brake, down shifting and watching hundreds of the witches like in The Wizard of Oz come down out of the sky in the dark." Somehow he got 30,000 pounds back onto the road while several folks inside the diner were pissing themselves in the windowside booths.
My daddy ran the eastern seaboard in a 12-wheeler -- there were no 18-wheelers yet. It had polished chrome and bold letters that read "BLUE GOOSE LINE." Parked alongside our little asbestos-sided house, I'd marvel at the magic of those bold words, the golden diamond and sturdy goose. And dream of someday "burning up Route 50" like my dad.
Old U.S. Route 50 ran near the house and was the stuff of legend if your daddy happened to be a truck driver who sometimes took you with him on the shorter hauls: "OK boy, now scrunch down and look into the side mirror. I'm gonna turn the top of them side stacks red hot." And he would pop the clutch and strike sparks on the anvil of the night, downshifting toward Pinkerton, Coolville and Hanging Rock. It never once occurred to me that his ebullience and our camaraderie might be due to a handful of bennies.
Yessir, Old 50 was a mighty thing, a howling black slash through the Blue Ridge Mountain fog. A place where famed and treacherous curves made widows, and truck stops and cafes bloomed in the tractor trailers' smoky wakes. A road map will tell you it eventually reaches Columbus and St. Louis, places I imagined had floodlights raking the skies heralding the arrival of heroic Teamster truckers like my father. Guys who'd fought in Germany and Italy and the Solomon Islands and were still wearing their service caps these years later, but now pinned with the gold steering wheel of the Teamsters Union. Such are a working-class boy's dreams.
I have two parched photos from that time. One is of me and my brother and sister, ages 10, 8 and 6. We are standing in the front yard, three little redneck kids with bad haircuts squinting for some faint clue as to whether there was really a world out there, somewhere beyond West Virginia.
The other photo is of my mother and the three of us on the porch of that house on Route 50. On the day my father was slated to return from any given run, we'd all stand on the porch listening for the sound of air brakes, the deep roar as he came down off the mountain. Each time, my mother would step onto the porch blotting her lipstick, Betty Grable-style hair rustling in the breeze, and say, "Stand close, your daddy's home."
And that was about as good as it ever got for our family. Daddy's heart later gave way to a congenital defect, and he lost everything. He was so scrupulously honest about debts, he could never recover financially. Unable to borrow money, uneducated and weakened for life, he set to working in car washes and garages.
After his union trucking days were over, we were assigned to the margins of America, a million miles from the American Dream, joining those people never seen on television, represented by no politician and never heard from in halls of power.
Now it was only a little house by the side of the road with not enough closets and ugly asbestos shingle siding. But it was ours, just like the truck and the chance to get ahead that it offered. And we had felt like we were some small part of America as it was advertised. All because of a union job during the heyday of unions in this nation.
It was also a period of Teamsters Union corruption, replete with criminal moguls such as Dave Beck, George Meany and Jimmy Hoffa. Yet the history of the few top lizards on the national rock of greed is not the history of the people.
If a few pricks and gangsters have occasionally seized power over the dignity of labor, countless more calculating, bloodless and malevolent pricks -- the capitalist elites -- have always held most of the cards, which is why in 1886, railroad and financial baron Jay Gould could sneer, "I can always hire one-half of the working class to kill the other half." And why a speaker at the U.S. Business Conference Board in 1974 could arrogantly declare, "One man, one vote has undermined the power of business in all capitalist countries since World War II." And why that same year, Business Week magazine said, "It will be a hard pill for many Americans to swallow -- the idea of doing with less so that big business can have more. Nothing in modern economic history compares with the selling job that must now be done to make people accept this new reality."
The new reality is here, and has been since 1973, the last year American workers made a wage gain in real dollars. Hell, it's been here so long, we accept it as part of America's cultural furniture. Only about 12 percent of American workers are unionized, and even with a supposedly union friendly Democratic Congress, unions are still fighting to exist (although government employees are unionized at 36 percent, because the Empire allows some leeway for its commissars).
In fact, things are worse than ever. Employers can now force employees to attend anti-union presentations during the workday, at captive-audience meetings in which union supporters are forbidden to speak under threat of insubordination. Back in 1978, when I was working to organize the local newspaper, the management was not even allowed to speak to the workers on the matter until after the union vote results were in.
Then there's President Barack Obama, the guy soft-headed liberals think is going to turn this dreadful scenario around. He talks a good game about unions, when he is forced to. But Obama is working on the things that will "create a legacy," such as health care (which is simply a new way to pay the insurance industry's blackmail) or the economy (by appointing the same damned people who fucked it up to fix it), and immigration reform, a nicely nebulous term that can mean whatever either side of the issue wants it to mean.
Obama's not going to publicly ignore the unions. But he's not going to sink much political capital into this corporatized nation's most radioactive issue either. For him, union legislation is just a distraction from the "legacy building" of a very charming, savvy and ambitious politician. That is the assessment of Glenn Spencer of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, one of the most anti-union institutions in America. (Many thanks to Washington writer Ken Silverstein for publishing Spencer's astute observations.)
Things are changing though. Union membership climbed 12 percent last year. Twelve percent of 12 percent ain't shit, but at least it's forward motion. At that rate, it will only take us 21 years to get back to the 1956 level of union membership.
We can expect no miracles, top union leaders are still among the Empire's elites. And they are still technically accountable to whatever membership will still have jobs when the 2012 elections roll around. The least they could do is make it harder for Obama to lick off those millions of hard-earned union-support dollars from the top of the campaign contribution ice cream cone as he did in '08.
But who can be sure? Because the new union elites and their minions are lawyers and marketing professionals. They've never come down off the mountain with both stacks red hot, or gathered on the porch of a crappy but new roadside bungalow, proud because they owned it, and stood up straight because, "Boys, your daddy is coming home."
I'm not going into the current brouhaha about the Employee Free Choice Act or the "card check" bullshit here. Because what it's gonna take to restore dignity to laboring America ain't gonna be more legislative wrangling. What it takes won't be pretty, maybe not even legal in this new police state, and sure as hell won't be "within the system." Because the system is the problem.
So it will be up to us, just like it always has been … the writer, the Nicaraguan janitor, the 40-year-old family man forced to bag groceries at Wal-Mart, the pizza delivery guy, the welder and the certified nurse … the long-haul trucker and the short-order cook. And they will snicker at us from their gilded roosts on Wall Street and Pennsylvania Avenue.
Some people are bound to get hurt in the necessary fight. In fact, people need to be willing to get hurt in the fight. That's the way we once gained worker rights, and that's the way we will get them back. The only way to get rid of the robbers' roost is to burn the fucker down.
Anyone got a match?
Joe Bageant is author of the book, Deer Hunting With Jesus: Dispatches from America's Class War (Random House Crown), about working-class America. A complete archive of his online work, along with the thoughts of many working Americans on the subject of class may be found on his Web site.
© 2009 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/140797/
By Joe Bageant, AlterNet
Posted on June 22, 2009, Printed on June 24, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/140797/
In looking back on growing up, I always remember 1957 and 1958 as "the two good years." They were the only years my working-class redneck family ever caught a real break in their working lives, and that break came because of organized labor.
After working as a farmhand, driving a hicktown taxi part time and a dozen catch-as-catch-can jobs, my father found himself owning a used semi-truck and hauling produce for a Teamster-unionized trucking company called Blue Goose.
Daddy was making more money than he'd ever made in his life, about $4,000 a year. The median national household income at the time was $5,000, mostly thanks to America's unions. After years of moving from one rented dump to another, we bought a modest home ($8,000) and felt like we might at last be getting some traction in achieving the so-called American Dream.
Yup, Daddy was doing pretty good for a backwoods boy who'd quit school in the sixth or seventh grade -- he was never sure, which gives some idea how seriously the farm boy took his attendance at the one-room school we both attended in our lifetimes.
This was the golden age of both trucking and of unions. Thirty-five percent of American labor, 17 million working folks, were union members, and it was during this period the American middle class was created.
The American middle class has never been as big as advertised, but if it means the middle third income-wise, then we actually had one at the time. But whatever it means, one-third of working folks, the people who busted their asses day in and day out making the nation function, were living better than they ever had. Or at least had the opportunity to do so.
From the Depression through World War II, the Teamsters Union became a powerful entity, and a popular one, too, because of such things as its pledge never to strike during the war or a national emergency. President Roosevelt even had a special-designated liaison to the Teamsters.
But power and money eventually drew the usual assortment of lizards, and by the mid-'50s the Teamsters Union had become one corrupt pile of shit at the top level. So rotten even the mob enjoyed a piece of the action.
The membership, ordinary guys like my dad, was outraged and ashamed, but rendered powerless by the crooked union bosses in the big cities.
My old man was no great follower of the news or current events, but he tried to keep up with and understand Teamster developments. Which was impossible since his reading consisted of anti-union Southern newspapers, and the television coverage of Teamster criminality, including murders and the ongoing courtroom trials.
All this left him conflicted. His Appalachian Christian upbringing defined the world in black-and-white, with no gray areas. Inside, he felt he should not be even remotely connected with such vile things as the Teamsters were associated with. And he sometimes prayed for guidance in the matter.
On the other hand, there was the pride and satisfaction in providing for his family in ways previously impossible. He'd built a reasonable, working-class security for those times and that place in West Virginia. Being a Teamster certainly made that possible. But for damned sure no one had handed it to him. He drove his guts out to get what he had.
There were rules and log books and all the other crap that were supposed to assure drivers got enough rest., and ensure road safety and fairness for the truckers. Rural heartland drivers saw it for the bullshit it was, but it was much better-paying bullshit. For a little guy hauling produce from Podunk, USA, to the big cities, it still came down to heartburn, hemorrhoids and longer hauls and longer hours than most driver's falsified log books showed. And sometimes way too much Benzedrine, or "bennies."
Bennies were a type of speed commonly used by truckers back then because of the grueling hauls. As a former doper who has done bennies, I can avow they are some gritty, nerve-jagging shit. Their only virtue is making you wide awake and jumpy, and after you've been awake on them a couple of days, which many drivers were, crazier than a shithouse rat.
Nearly every truck stop sold bennies under the counter. Once, while hallucinating on bennies, Daddy nearly wiped out a roadside joint. He recalled “layin' on the jake brake, down shifting and watching hundreds of the witches like in The Wizard of Oz come down out of the sky in the dark." Somehow he got 30,000 pounds back onto the road while several folks inside the diner were pissing themselves in the windowside booths.
My daddy ran the eastern seaboard in a 12-wheeler -- there were no 18-wheelers yet. It had polished chrome and bold letters that read "BLUE GOOSE LINE." Parked alongside our little asbestos-sided house, I'd marvel at the magic of those bold words, the golden diamond and sturdy goose. And dream of someday "burning up Route 50" like my dad.
Old U.S. Route 50 ran near the house and was the stuff of legend if your daddy happened to be a truck driver who sometimes took you with him on the shorter hauls: "OK boy, now scrunch down and look into the side mirror. I'm gonna turn the top of them side stacks red hot." And he would pop the clutch and strike sparks on the anvil of the night, downshifting toward Pinkerton, Coolville and Hanging Rock. It never once occurred to me that his ebullience and our camaraderie might be due to a handful of bennies.
Yessir, Old 50 was a mighty thing, a howling black slash through the Blue Ridge Mountain fog. A place where famed and treacherous curves made widows, and truck stops and cafes bloomed in the tractor trailers' smoky wakes. A road map will tell you it eventually reaches Columbus and St. Louis, places I imagined had floodlights raking the skies heralding the arrival of heroic Teamster truckers like my father. Guys who'd fought in Germany and Italy and the Solomon Islands and were still wearing their service caps these years later, but now pinned with the gold steering wheel of the Teamsters Union. Such are a working-class boy's dreams.
I have two parched photos from that time. One is of me and my brother and sister, ages 10, 8 and 6. We are standing in the front yard, three little redneck kids with bad haircuts squinting for some faint clue as to whether there was really a world out there, somewhere beyond West Virginia.
The other photo is of my mother and the three of us on the porch of that house on Route 50. On the day my father was slated to return from any given run, we'd all stand on the porch listening for the sound of air brakes, the deep roar as he came down off the mountain. Each time, my mother would step onto the porch blotting her lipstick, Betty Grable-style hair rustling in the breeze, and say, "Stand close, your daddy's home."
And that was about as good as it ever got for our family. Daddy's heart later gave way to a congenital defect, and he lost everything. He was so scrupulously honest about debts, he could never recover financially. Unable to borrow money, uneducated and weakened for life, he set to working in car washes and garages.
After his union trucking days were over, we were assigned to the margins of America, a million miles from the American Dream, joining those people never seen on television, represented by no politician and never heard from in halls of power.
Now it was only a little house by the side of the road with not enough closets and ugly asbestos shingle siding. But it was ours, just like the truck and the chance to get ahead that it offered. And we had felt like we were some small part of America as it was advertised. All because of a union job during the heyday of unions in this nation.
It was also a period of Teamsters Union corruption, replete with criminal moguls such as Dave Beck, George Meany and Jimmy Hoffa. Yet the history of the few top lizards on the national rock of greed is not the history of the people.
If a few pricks and gangsters have occasionally seized power over the dignity of labor, countless more calculating, bloodless and malevolent pricks -- the capitalist elites -- have always held most of the cards, which is why in 1886, railroad and financial baron Jay Gould could sneer, "I can always hire one-half of the working class to kill the other half." And why a speaker at the U.S. Business Conference Board in 1974 could arrogantly declare, "One man, one vote has undermined the power of business in all capitalist countries since World War II." And why that same year, Business Week magazine said, "It will be a hard pill for many Americans to swallow -- the idea of doing with less so that big business can have more. Nothing in modern economic history compares with the selling job that must now be done to make people accept this new reality."
The new reality is here, and has been since 1973, the last year American workers made a wage gain in real dollars. Hell, it's been here so long, we accept it as part of America's cultural furniture. Only about 12 percent of American workers are unionized, and even with a supposedly union friendly Democratic Congress, unions are still fighting to exist (although government employees are unionized at 36 percent, because the Empire allows some leeway for its commissars).
In fact, things are worse than ever. Employers can now force employees to attend anti-union presentations during the workday, at captive-audience meetings in which union supporters are forbidden to speak under threat of insubordination. Back in 1978, when I was working to organize the local newspaper, the management was not even allowed to speak to the workers on the matter until after the union vote results were in.
Then there's President Barack Obama, the guy soft-headed liberals think is going to turn this dreadful scenario around. He talks a good game about unions, when he is forced to. But Obama is working on the things that will "create a legacy," such as health care (which is simply a new way to pay the insurance industry's blackmail) or the economy (by appointing the same damned people who fucked it up to fix it), and immigration reform, a nicely nebulous term that can mean whatever either side of the issue wants it to mean.
Obama's not going to publicly ignore the unions. But he's not going to sink much political capital into this corporatized nation's most radioactive issue either. For him, union legislation is just a distraction from the "legacy building" of a very charming, savvy and ambitious politician. That is the assessment of Glenn Spencer of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, one of the most anti-union institutions in America. (Many thanks to Washington writer Ken Silverstein for publishing Spencer's astute observations.)
Things are changing though. Union membership climbed 12 percent last year. Twelve percent of 12 percent ain't shit, but at least it's forward motion. At that rate, it will only take us 21 years to get back to the 1956 level of union membership.
We can expect no miracles, top union leaders are still among the Empire's elites. And they are still technically accountable to whatever membership will still have jobs when the 2012 elections roll around. The least they could do is make it harder for Obama to lick off those millions of hard-earned union-support dollars from the top of the campaign contribution ice cream cone as he did in '08.
But who can be sure? Because the new union elites and their minions are lawyers and marketing professionals. They've never come down off the mountain with both stacks red hot, or gathered on the porch of a crappy but new roadside bungalow, proud because they owned it, and stood up straight because, "Boys, your daddy is coming home."
I'm not going into the current brouhaha about the Employee Free Choice Act or the "card check" bullshit here. Because what it's gonna take to restore dignity to laboring America ain't gonna be more legislative wrangling. What it takes won't be pretty, maybe not even legal in this new police state, and sure as hell won't be "within the system." Because the system is the problem.
So it will be up to us, just like it always has been … the writer, the Nicaraguan janitor, the 40-year-old family man forced to bag groceries at Wal-Mart, the pizza delivery guy, the welder and the certified nurse … the long-haul trucker and the short-order cook. And they will snicker at us from their gilded roosts on Wall Street and Pennsylvania Avenue.
Some people are bound to get hurt in the necessary fight. In fact, people need to be willing to get hurt in the fight. That's the way we once gained worker rights, and that's the way we will get them back. The only way to get rid of the robbers' roost is to burn the fucker down.
Anyone got a match?
Joe Bageant is author of the book, Deer Hunting With Jesus: Dispatches from America's Class War (Random House Crown), about working-class America. A complete archive of his online work, along with the thoughts of many working Americans on the subject of class may be found on his Web site.
© 2009 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/140797/
*****How Money Is Created
I finally found something that explains the Federal Reserve to me and how it does things. I knew allot of money was being created but I didn't know the governing rules and it how this was being done .
Following sent in by Jess:
I knew money was being created because our ever growing amount of goods and services in an ever growing population should create deflation if the amount of money remains constant. In fact if money was constant instead of a bell pepper costing $1.79 today and $.05 in 1913 it should only cost a penny today (approximate figures). Although I never saw a government pie chart that showed created money as a part of our revenue.
The following link explains this well. http://www.livevideo.com/video/walkinturtle2u/2F3DE48315C642B2A846A587534159EB/money-as-debt.aspx
After you open it up, wait on it and give it a chance to load.
This is a great video of how this is done. I have read allot on this but never felt I understood it well. This is a great explanation. Look at it. This should be taught in every public school.
Love, Jess
Following sent in by Jess:
I knew money was being created because our ever growing amount of goods and services in an ever growing population should create deflation if the amount of money remains constant. In fact if money was constant instead of a bell pepper costing $1.79 today and $.05 in 1913 it should only cost a penny today (approximate figures). Although I never saw a government pie chart that showed created money as a part of our revenue.
The following link explains this well. http://www.livevideo.com/video/walkinturtle2u/2F3DE48315C642B2A846A587534159EB/money-as-debt.aspx
After you open it up, wait on it and give it a chance to load.
This is a great video of how this is done. I have read allot on this but never felt I understood it well. This is a great explanation. Look at it. This should be taught in every public school.
Love, Jess
Monday, June 22, 2009
Good Step? Or not enough?
WASHINGTON -- President Obama announced Monday that drug companies have agreed to close the "donut hole" in Medicare coverage by providing $80 billion in cheaper drugs over the next decade.
Obama said closing the gap in Medicare drug coverage will help make health reform more possible.
The "donut hole" refers to the gap in prescription drug coverage after the first $2,700 in yearly prescription costs is covered by Medicare. Then patients have to pay their own costs for drugs until costs exceed $6,100.
"This gap in coverage has been placing a crushing burden on many older Americans who live on fixed incomes and can't afford thousands of dollars in out-of-pocket expenses," Obama said.
"I'm pleased to report that over the weekend we reached an understanding that will help close the notorious donut hole in Medicare Part D. This is a significant breakthrough on the road to health care reform, one that will make the difference in the lives of many older Americans," he said.
The president invited Barry Rand, head of the senior citizens' advocacy group AARP, to appear with him. The deal was struck with Democratic Sen. Max Baucus, the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, as well as the White House.
AARP spokesman Ken Johnson said there are other parts to the agreement that have still not been completed, but he declined to provide details.
The president used the opportunity to make his sternest call yet for action, saying the drug agreement is one piece of "health care reform I expect Congress to enact this year."
Obama said the move on Medicare will help correct an anomaly in the program that provides a prescription drug benefit through the government health care program for the elderly and disabled. Under the deal, drug companies will pay part of the cost of brand name drugs for lower and middle-income older people in the so-called "doughnut hole."
The drug companies' investment would reduce the cost of drugs for seniors and pay for a portion of Obama's proposed revamping of health care.
Under the agreement, part of the $80 billion would be used to halve the cost of brand name drugs for Medicare recipients when they are in a coverage gap of the program. AARP, which represents 40 million older Americans, has long lobbied to eliminate that coverage gap completely.
The deal would affect about 26 million low- and middle-income recipients of the program's enrollees, AARP said. It would apply to brand name and biologic drugs, but not generics, the group said, and likely take effect in July 2010, assuming drug overhaul legislation becomes law.
Obama said closing the gap in Medicare drug coverage will help make health reform more possible.
The "donut hole" refers to the gap in prescription drug coverage after the first $2,700 in yearly prescription costs is covered by Medicare. Then patients have to pay their own costs for drugs until costs exceed $6,100.
"This gap in coverage has been placing a crushing burden on many older Americans who live on fixed incomes and can't afford thousands of dollars in out-of-pocket expenses," Obama said.
"I'm pleased to report that over the weekend we reached an understanding that will help close the notorious donut hole in Medicare Part D. This is a significant breakthrough on the road to health care reform, one that will make the difference in the lives of many older Americans," he said.
The president invited Barry Rand, head of the senior citizens' advocacy group AARP, to appear with him. The deal was struck with Democratic Sen. Max Baucus, the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, as well as the White House.
AARP spokesman Ken Johnson said there are other parts to the agreement that have still not been completed, but he declined to provide details.
The president used the opportunity to make his sternest call yet for action, saying the drug agreement is one piece of "health care reform I expect Congress to enact this year."
Obama said the move on Medicare will help correct an anomaly in the program that provides a prescription drug benefit through the government health care program for the elderly and disabled. Under the deal, drug companies will pay part of the cost of brand name drugs for lower and middle-income older people in the so-called "doughnut hole."
The drug companies' investment would reduce the cost of drugs for seniors and pay for a portion of Obama's proposed revamping of health care.
Under the agreement, part of the $80 billion would be used to halve the cost of brand name drugs for Medicare recipients when they are in a coverage gap of the program. AARP, which represents 40 million older Americans, has long lobbied to eliminate that coverage gap completely.
The deal would affect about 26 million low- and middle-income recipients of the program's enrollees, AARP said. It would apply to brand name and biologic drugs, but not generics, the group said, and likely take effect in July 2010, assuming drug overhaul legislation becomes law.
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