ProgressiveDem

FYII, Wednesday, March 17, 2010

2010-03-17T19:28:00Z

Obama made backroom deals to kill the public option.

A meager, less than New Deal jobs bill passes the Senate; a "pathetic job performance in meeting America's jobs crisis."

Roman Catholic hierarchy in US, Ireland, and elsewhere can longer speak with any moral authority after their shameful, criminal cover-up of many decades of clergy sexual abuse of children.

Kucinich to vote yes on health care bill.

GOP must have a "stupid farm" where it raises Republican senators. But that GOP stupid farm is not limited to the senate....Michele Bachmann in the House of Reps leads the idiot pack there: her latest imbecilic pronouncement.

Joseph Goebbels, the Third Reich's top propagandist who believed in the power of lies, would have enjoyed Karl Rove's new book, a compendium of lies.

GOP road map for America's future as promulgated by front man, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI): raise taxes on the middle class and slash them on the rich, shove Social Security retirement savings onto Wall Street, and hand insurance companies even more control over the nation's health care.

Disappointed with Obama and Many Dems on Capitol Hill, Labor Fights On With New Strategies and Alliances

2010-03-17T18:01:00Z

Quo vadis, organized labor?

Getting gobsmacked by the Obama administration and Congress after all the hard work that unions did in helping elect the president and Dem members of Congress is a cause for disappointment and dismay, but also an opportunity to reassess and re-strategize.

David Moberg at In These Times writes about union leaders' meeting in Florida to do just that.

"....a little over a year after unions played a major role in electing a new Democratic president and strong congressional majority, they felt increasingly frustrated. They welcomed Labor Secretary Hilda Solis warmly, but they questioned Vice President Joe Biden sharply over issues like the need for a major new stimulus package. And they declared how “appalled” they were by Obama’s “unacceptable” support for mass firings of 93 Central Falls, R.I., high-school teachers and staff.

"Organized labor isn’t just hunkering down and hoping for better days, as it often has in the past. It can’t afford that now. “You’ve got to talk about fighting on,” says AFSCME (public employees) organizing director Jim Schmitz. “It’s an existential issue for the labor movement.”

"Unions will be taking their campaign into communities—as [AFL-CIO President Richard ]Trumka did in joining a rally in Evansville, Ind., against a Whirlpool plant closing just before the meeting, and as the AFL-CIO did with local Orlando allies in holding a community forum. The gathering of a couple hundred in the Painters union hall featured workers dealing with unemployment, a student deep in debt with few job prospects, overloaded social service providers, and an electrical contractor facing depressed consumer demand and a credit crunch for small businesses.

“ 'The clear solution is to change the system,” Trumka told the rally. “We can do it, but only if we do it together as a community.” The AFL-CIO jobs program is itself less a plan to change the system than a plan to save the system—and workers with it.

"The proposed new stimulus includes:

• extended aid to the unemployed (approved now through the end of the year)

• renewed aid for state and local governments (there’s a $178 billion shortfall this year for states alone)

• infrastructure projects (a start on roughly $2.3 trillion in deferred maintenance, as well as new investment in high-speed rail and other needs)

• public-service jobs in high-unemployment areas, and

• redirection of the TARP (Troubled Assets Relief Program, or bank bailout) balance to lending to small- and medium-sized businesses.

"Trumka dismisses deficit hawks, who forget that most of the current deficit stems from Bush tax cuts, two wars and a deep recession resulting from policies of financial market deregulation. 'The U.S. does not have a short-term deficit problem,' Trumka argues. 'It has a short-term jobs problem. And the longer we wait [to create jobs], the greater the long-term debt and deficit problems become.'

"New jobs—generating new income and taxes—will repay part of the stimulus cost. But Trumka told the rally, “It’s time for Wall Street to pay for the 11 million jobs we’re short since the awful financial crisis they gave us began.” Wall Street can pay for the crisis by reimbursing the government for all TARP costs, by paying higher taxes on bonuses and by requiring hedge fund operators to pay normal income-tax rates (not lower capital gains tax rates) on all their income.

"Most important, says AFL-CIO policy director Damon Silvers, the government should impose a very small—three to five one-hundredths of a percent—tax on all financial transactions, which could generate $400 billion a year. But, he says, “most important from our point of view, it shifts financial markets from speculation to investment.”

"The AFL-CIO and its allies are pushing for tough-minded re-regulation of the financial sector, including an independent Consumer Financial Protection Agency. And it wants regulation of the “shadow capital markets” (like hedge funds), a strong regulator responsible for systemic risk with powers to take over failing banks, restoration of fairness in the housing market and prohibitions against banks operating their own proprietary trading (like having a hedge fund).

"The AFL-CIO is also attempting to broaden the definition of the labor movement. It is seeking closer relationships with groups of workers who are organizing themselves—day laborers, independent contractors, domestic workers, cab drivers, farmworkers, freelance professionals, worker center organizers and many others—who may not be able or willing to form a union. And they are relying more on groups like Working America, Jobs with Justice, American Rights at Work and Interfaith Worker Justice to expand the fight for workers’ rights.

"Ultimately, incoming AFL-CIO organizing director Elizabeth Bunn says, 'History taught us organizing does not follow the law. The law follows organizing. We must be about organizing.' But until there is a change in the laws and regulations, as well as the intense anti-union ideology and behavior of American managers, every year will be a tough, existential year for organized labor."

St. Patrick's Day: A Celebration by Those With Immigrant Legacy of Emigrants

2010-03-17T16:24:00Z

On this St. Patrick's Day at the beginning of the second decade of the 21st century, it's fitting to wonder why this holiday is celebrated in the US by the non-Irish.

It's much more than about green beer and shamrocks.

Irish woman, Sadhbh Walshe, comments at The Guardian:

"But it's not surnames that start with an O' that bring these people together nor is it to celebrate a catholic saint, who offers only a limited version of Irishness to those of us who are atheists or Protestants or subscribers to the numerous other belief systems on offer. What brought all these communities together in Queens and what causes millions of people from all sorts of backgrounds across America to become Irish for the day is the shared bond of being immigrants.

"As one of those immigrants, I can attest that leaving your country and your family behind to find a more feasible life in a foreign land is no small decision. And it is one that's made, more often than not, out of necessity rather than choice. As almost every family in America, other than the natives, has someone from some generation who has made that decision, it's no surprise that they can connect so easily with the diaspora of a nation who has lost so much of its population to emigration.

"I'd like to think anyway that St Patrick's day is something more than a grand old excuse for a party – not that there's anything wrong with that. But either way, this year again the Irish Taoiseach Brian Cowen who hails from County Offaly will meet up with the great-great-great-grandson of a fellow Offaly man called Fulmouth Kearney, better known outside of Ireland as President Barack Obama, and the business of the White House will be put on hold for the day so that a nation of immigrants can celebrate the legacy of a nation of emigrants."

Food for thought when discussing revising immigration laws to be just, fair, humane, and moral, unlike the shameful current situation fueled by racist, bigoted right wing hatred of immigrants.

Common Good Missing In Health Care Reform and in the Median Penalty for Violation of Safety Laws That Cause a Worker's Death

2010-03-16T22:13:00Z

Here are two stories that show the injustice and immorality fueled bycorporate greed and government, both GOP and DINO, that does verylittle to nothing about it.

What has happened to the common good and general welfare?

The 21st century is shaping up to be another 19th century GildedAge, where the lives of regular Americans are held to beinconsequential and cheap. While true under the criminal Bush regime,that was supposed to change under President Obama.

From Mike Hall at AFL-CIO Now Blog: "When a worker is killed on the jobbecause of an employer’s serious and willful violation of the nation’sjob safety laws, the median penalty the employer faces isn’t time injail–it’s a mere $3,675.

"It’s time to put some real teeth and a bigger enforcement hammerinto the Occupational Safety and Health Act, (OSH Act), witnesses tolda House hearing today. In prepared testimony URL TK), AFL-CIO Safety and Health Director Peg Seminario asked the House Workforce Protections subcommittee

" 'What kind of message does it send toemployers, workers and family members, that the death of a workercaused by a serious or even repeated violation of the law warrants onlya penalty of a few thousands dollars? It tells them that there islittle value placed on the lives of workers in this country and thatthere are no serious consequences for violating the law.'

"Subcommittee Chairman Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-Calif.) has sponsored a bill, Protecting America’s Workers Act (H.R. 2067), that would increase OSH Act civil and criminal penalties for the first time since 1990. Says Wollsey:

" 'Congress needs to put teeth into thesepenalties so that employers are held accountable for their bad behaviorand no longer view penalties as a part of the cost of doing business.'

"Along with increasing the amount of civil penalties, includingsetting minimum fines, the bill establishes a penalty of up to 10 yearsin prison for an employer–including top executives–for criminalbehavior that results in the death of a worker.

"Not only haven’t the penalties that most safety and health expertstermed too weak to begin with not been increased in two decades,inflation has eaten 40 percent of their real dollar value. In addition,says Seminario:

" 'The maximum civil penalties [$7,000 for a "serious" violation] providedfor under the OSH Act are rarely assessed. Indeed, just the opposite isthe case. In FY 2009, the average penalty for a serious violation ofthe law was $965 for federal OSHA and $781 for the state OSHA planscombined. Again this is the average penalty for violations that pose asubstantial probability of death or serious physical harm...' "

From Raw Story about Michael Moore on Countdown discussing the upcoming health care reform vote:

"As O'Donnell and Moore touch on some of the specifics of the healthcare reform bill, Moore explains "If I drove up an old AMC Pacer heretonight and said 'here, Larry, I'm giving you a free car,' I don'tthink you'd say 'get the hell, get that out of here.' I think you'd say'well, that's nice, Mike' and maybe you've got a sixteen-year-old you'dgive it to."

" 'So that's what this bill is,' Moore continues. 'It's the AMC Pacer. It runs. But it really doesn't take care of themain problem which is the profit motive will still dictate everything.The insurance companies will still be in charge. Even after they, ifyou have insurance with them, and this is really what I had covered inthis film, it was really about the people who have insurance, who, oncethey have it, then can't get the bill paid. Because they run youaround, they're going to look for loopholes.'

" 'Even.. You know what this bill says if they deny you coverage? Let'ssay they actually just say go ahead and say deny you because of apre-existing condition, the fine is $100 a day. Per individual you havedenied. So just think about that," says the Michigan native filmmaker."The insurance company is going 'So, for a year, that would 36,500dollars, but the operation is going to cost $100,000. You know what? Ithink we'll take the fine.' "

So,in the 21st century, workers' lives are valued at a maximum$7,000....maybe; median for those killed on the job is $3,675 even whendue to an employer's serious and willful violation of the nation'ssafety laws.

And, in the 21st century, the United States still lacksuniversal health care, available in just about most otherindustrialized nations.

Shameful and appalling.

FYII, Tuesday, March 16, 2010

2010-03-16T20:37:00Z

The latest Rube Goldberg rendition of HCR bill leaves Americans at the mercy of ruthless insurance companies,

Clarence Thomas' wife injudiciously organizes Tea Party group "that will likely add to a further patina of politics surrounding the Court...could raise recusal issues in future cases for Clarence Thomas."

What else is the DINO Obama administration going to screw up? Chance to re-shape judiciary slipping away.

So many progressive Democrats in Congress seem to have caught the Capitol Hill fever or Rahmflu....just can't keep their promise on the public option.

Those pesky details: Loopholes, ambiguities, and unanswered questions in Dodd's "finnacial regulation" bill.In the end, since the Senate and House is controlled by the biggies, like the financial industry, Dodd made sure his bill didn't go far enough to be considered real New Deal legislation only form not substance.

Obama just like Bush when it comes to congressional oversight of intelligence: wants limited or none. And this is change?

Typical GOP tactic: whining about a congressional procedural rule they "set new records" using when they were in the majority but upset when Dems use it.

Why are progressives, Dems and other center-left critters surprised by the right wing hires at CNN or the unjournalistic shenanigans of Politico aka the Cheney stenographic bureau?

Former GOP congress critter from Texas and tea bagger Dick Armey...clueless about Jamestown or Alexander Hamilton. Sounds like was educated by the historically ignorant right wing, religious fundamentalist controlled Texas School Board. What does that say about those who vote for these idiots?

Will Unregulated Wall Street Casino Gamblers Force Struggling American Workers To "Take it on the Chin" Again?

2010-03-16T19:36:00Z

Already struggling US workers will take it on the chin again in reduced or continuing stagnant wages when greedy corporate Wall Street gamblers' leveraged buyouts and other high risk gambling debts come due beginning in 2012.

From Nelson D. Schwartz at the NYTimes: "When the Mayans envisioned the world coming to an end in 2012 — at least in the Hollywood telling — they didn’t count junk bonds among the perils that would lead to worldwide disaster.

"Maybe they should have, because 2012 also is the beginning of a three-year period in which more than $700 billion in risky, high-yield corporate debt begins to come due, an extraordinary surge that some analysts fear could overload the debt markets.

"With huge bills about to hit corporations and the federal government around the same time, the worry is that some companies will have trouble getting new loans, spurring defaults and a wave of bankruptcies.

"Sovereign debt aside, the approaching scramble for corporate financing could strain the broader economy as jobs are cut, consumer spending is scaled back and credit is tightened for both consumers and businesses.

"Even Moody’s, which is known for its sober public statements, is sounding the alarm.

“ 'An avalanche is brewing in 2012 and beyond if companies don’t get out in front of this,' said Kevin Cassidy, a senior credit officer at Moody’s.

"As was the case with the collapse of the subprime mortgage market three years ago, derivatives played a big role in the explosion of risky corporate debt. In this case the culprit was a financial instrument called a collateralized loan obligation, which helped issuers repackage corporate loans much as subprime mortgages were sliced, diced and then resold to other investors. That made many more risky loans available."

And these risky financial casino tools are still not regulated.

The article continues: "The period from 2012 to 2014 represents payback time for a Who’s Who of private equity firms and the now highly leveraged companies they helped buy in the precrisis boom years.

"The biggest include the hospital owner HCA, which was taken private in 2006 by a group led by Bain Capital and Kohlberg Kravis & Roberts for $33 billion, and has $13.3 billion in debt payments coming due between 2012 and 2014. Another buyout led by Kohlberg Kravis, for the giant Texas utility TXU, has $20.9 billion that needs to be refinanced in the same period."

As Jonathan Tasini at Working Life warns: "And who do we think will be asked to assume the burden of the leveraged buyouts and gambling-gone-bad? The workers. Because of companies can't get new loans, the first thing that will happen is a wave of severe cuts in wages--on a population that already has not seen real wage hikes in decades, compared to productivity.

"The talk of recovery is not dealing with the real world of people."

More FYII, Monday, March 15, 2010

2010-03-15T21:54:00Z

Senator Chris Dodd is another elite 100 club idiot: giving the Fed and Bernanke who were either incompetent or complicit regarding the Wall Street caused financial meltdown "would gain new powers over non-bank financial firms and keep much of its authority over banks....[in] a new bill that leans heavily on the Fed to fix the U.S. financial system..."

Meanwhile, none of Obama's picks for the Fed warned of the housing bubble; these nominees must explain "what they think went wrong and how these mistakes could have been prevented."

Taking on China's currency manipulation head on; momentum building for action.

Deja vu all over again: DoD official running private contractors playing James Bond in a conflict zone.

Two stories conveniently missed by the mainstream media: botched raid in Afghanistan kills two pregnant women; "federal judge in Chicago on March 4 to compel former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to respond to charges by to US torture victims that Rumsfeld authorized their torture by US forces at Camp Cropper in Iraq"

GOP keeps on pushing Social Security privatization....GOP: greed over people.

US-Israeli kerfuffle highlights unspoken negative realities of that relationship; one given voice recently: "Israel's actions are endangering US troops in the region."

What happened to all those Dems who pledged not to vote for any health care "reform" bill that didn't have a public option?

Obama Avoids the Wisdom and Advice of Prescient, Knowledgeable Progressive Economists

2010-03-15T21:50:00Z

President Obama has proven that he is not a populist but a corporatist and not a true Democrat but a Clintonite/Rubinte bending under the apparent control of the financial industry and caving to the GOP.

Nothing exposes his DINO, corporatist bona fides more than his economic crew filled with the likes of Wall Street supporters Tim Geithner and Larry Summers and Obama's renomination of the incompetent Ben Bernanke at the Fed.

Obama deliberately avoids the wisdom and advice of such prescient, knowledgeable economists such as Dean Baker, James K. Galbreath and Nobel Prize winners Joseph Stiglitz and Paul Krugman.

Eric M. Johnson at In These Times writes the following about the eminent economist, Joseph Stiglitz: "If you’re masochistic—or have a lot of Adderall—economist John Maynard Keynes’ 75-year-old opus, The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money, is full of gems that shine light on the modern pickle over regulatory reform and ideological direction.

"To wit: 'The difficulty lies not in the new ideas, but in escaping from the old ones,' Keynes wrote. That is an apt summary of the message that Nobel-laureate and New Keynesian economist Joseph Stiglitz is preaching as he tours the country with his new book, Free Fall: America, Free Markets, and The Sinking of the World Economy (W. W. Norton, January).

"The Obama stimulus bill, he argues, was neither big enough nor enacted fast enough.

"Stiglitz and his followers want, among other things, rigorous regulation, including the separation of investment banking, commercial banking, and hedge funds, and another round of ecoomic stimulus. To Stiglitz, size does matter, and it’s a problem: the market share of the five largest U.S. banks grew from 8 percent in 1995 to 30 percent today.

“ 'I didn’t expect universal support for the perspective that I push for,” says Stiglitz, “but at least very strong support. I have been a little bit amazed at, for instance, within the economics profession, the number of economists that seem to still believe the efficient market hypothesis. There are even those who say, ‘What are people upset about with unemployment? That is just an opportunity to enjoy more leisure.’ “

"Where should average citizens channel their anger?

"For starters, Stiglitz says, people should demand that Congress limit the size of banks — in other words, break the big banks into smaller units.

“ 'Because they are too-big-to-fail, they can borrow at a lower interest rate, he says. 'And as they grow bigger they garner more of the market. We ought to tax them to level the playing field.' ”

FYII, Monday, March 15, 2010

2010-03-15T17:33:00Z

Trying to defend the indefensible---using criminally scandal ridden private mercenary company Xe, formerly Blackwater, " Obama's State Department emloyed these hypocritical excuses: "The state department did not have to pay overtime or provide benefits or vacation time to the contractors. They were not saddled with extensive travel and housing costs. And they did not have to outfit them with weapons and gear....[and] because the department does not want to be perceived as hiring mercenaries."

DINO Obama administration has embraced the GOP education agenda, trying to privatize public schools and undermining teachers...instead of blaming the teachers, what about putting responsibility on the parents?

Vatican protecting the pontiff against news report that alleges pope was involved in clergy sex abuse cover-up in his former archdiocese of Munich.

A trip down recent memory lane for those hypocritical, deliberately forgetful members of the GOP: lists for Republican offenders, Republican sex scandals, Republican sex offenders, and Bush crimes and scandals.

Pity students in Texas as right wing fundamentalists wield power on Texas Board of Education as it removes Thomas Jefferson in textbooks replacing him with "religious right icon, John Calvin." One comment suggested that it should be the Texass Board of Education.

Revisionist history Bushites all seem to be related to Pinocchio; especially the Rove-Cheney delusional duo.

Obama's Self-Inflicted Disastrous First Year: General Welfare and Common Good Sacrificed on the Altar of Bipartisanship

2010-03-13T17:37:00Z

President Obama chose caving to an obstructionist, prevaricating GOP in pursuit of a mythical "bipartisanship" rather than fighting for the general welfare and the common good.

He also showed his administration to be more DINO than true Democratic, more Wussacrat than real Democrat, corporatist not really populist.

Art Levine comments on Obama's futile bipartisanship at In These Times: "Now that President Obama is finally embracing reconciliation and seeking at long last to fire up his base in support of health reform, it's worth asking whether Obama's quest for bipartisanship cost us too much in lost jobs and meaningful health legislation."

(Although Glenn Greenwald argues that both Obama and the Wussacrats in Congress have scammed us about really wanting to pass effective health care reform.)

Levine continues: "And where was all this fiery anti-insurance industry rhetoric from Obama last year when the right-wing dominated messaging? Long after it became clear that the president wasn't going to get any Republican support for his proposals outside of a stray vote or two—whether for his $786 billion economic stimulus bill or for healthcare reform—he and Democrats continued to water down the bills in the search for an elusive 60 votes."

Levine quotes from centrist George Packer's piece in the New Yorker, regarding the meager Recovery Act aka stimulus bill, watered down in the name of bipartisanship, yet not one Republican in the House voted for it.

He writes: "As Packer explains it, the political and policy weaknesses in the recovery package which, experts said at the time, should have been more expansive and focused more on job creation, set the template for problems with other reforms, including health care:

" '....the key to Obama's first year is the Recovery Act. It set the pattern for everything that followed: intelligent but cautious policymaking; legislative compromises that watered down the bill's impact without enlisting more than a tiny number of Republicans; an immediate campaign by opposition politicians and media to declare the program a failure; a weak, uncoordinated Administration effort to explain and champion the stimulus package; gradual public disillusionment. ' "

"In Packer's piece, he looks at the impact in south-central Virginia, with unemployment in some sections as high as 20%, and the reactions of workers and a first-term Democratic Congressman, all saying that Obama had an opportunity he didn't seize:

" 'Dean Price, the owner of a truck stop outside Martinsville, Virginia, which produces biodiesel fuel, told me: 'The American people were thinking radical change--not the status quo. Just the way Obama blamed Bush after 9/11, saying, 'You told America to go shopping,' people are going to point the finger at him and say, 'You had an opportunity and you wasted it.' "

Wall Street Pattern: Fraud & Lies while Timothy Geithner as then Head of NY Fed Derelict or Culpable for Aiding & Abetting

2010-03-13T17:31:00Z

No wonder regular Americans are angry. While tens of millions of them are unemployed, and others struggling with stagnant wages, all those Wall Street gazillionaire crooks who caused this economic catastrophe were given hundreds of billions of taxpayers' dollars, courtesy of a no questions asked bailout by the Bush and Obama administrations.

We learn more every day about Wall Street's greedy criminals who continue their fraudulent business as usual

Like the following reported in the NYTimes: "It is the Wall Street equivalent of a coroner’s report — a 2,200-page document that lays out, in new and startling detail, how Lehman Brothers used accounting sleight of hand to conceal the bad investments that led to its undoing.

"But the examiner, Anton R. Valukas, also for the first time, laid out what the report characterized as “materially misleading” accounting gimmicks that Lehman used to mask the perilous state of its finances. The bank’s bankruptcy, the largest in American history, shook the financial world. Fears that other banks might topple in a cascade of failures eventually led Washington to arrange a sweeping rescue for the nation’s financial system.

"According to the report, Lehman used what amounted to financial engineering to temporarily shuffle $50 billion of troubled assets off its books in the months before its collapse in September 2008 to conceal its dependence on leverage, or borrowed money. Senior Lehman executives, as well as the bank’s accountants at Ernst & Young, were aware of the moves, according to Mr. Valukas, the chairman of the law firm Jenner & Block and a former federal prosecutor, who filed the report in connection with Lehman’s bankruptcy case.

"Richard S. Fuld Jr., Lehman’s former chief executive, certified the misleading accounts, the report said.

“ 'Unbeknownst to the investing public, rating agencies, government regulators, and Lehman’s board of directors, Lehman reverse engineered the firm’s net leverage ratio for public consumption,' ” Mr. Valukas wrote.

" 'Mr. Fuld was “at least grossly negligent,' the report states, adding that Henry M. Paulson Jr., who was then the Treasury secretary, warned Mr. Fuld that Lehman might fail unless it stabilized its finances or found a buyer.

"Lehman executives engaged in what the report characterized as “actionable balance sheet manipulation,” and “nonculpable errors of business judgment.”

And this from Naked Capitalism: "The unraveling isn’t merely implicating Fuld and his recent succession of CFOs, or its accounting firm, Ernst & Young, as might be expected. It also emerges that the NY Fed, and thus Timothy Geithner, were at a minimum massively derelict in the performance of their duties, and may well be culpable in aiding and abetting Lehman in accounting fraud and Sarbox violations.

"We need to demand an immediate release of the e-mails, phone records, and meeting notes from the NY Fed and key Lehman principals regarding the NY Fed’s review of Lehman’s solvency. If, as things appear now, Lehman was allowed by the Fed’s inaction to remain in business.....the NY Fed at a minimum helped perpetuate a fraud on investors and counterparties.

"And most important, it says that the NY Fed, and likely Geithner himself, undermined, perhaps even violated, laws designed to protect investors and markets. If so, he is not fit to be Treasury secretary or hold any office related to financial supervision and should resign immediately.

"It is time for Geithner to go. He is not fit to serve as Treasury secretary."

Many of us were appalled when Obama nominated Geithner. Then again, it speaks volumes about Obama.

FYII, Saturday, March 13, 2010

2010-03-13T17:28:00Z

FedEx CEO, Fred Smith, one of President Obama's favorite business execs, and rabidly anti-union, lobbies hard to maintain his company's special advantage in keeping its drivers, "who are already systematically misclassified as independent contractors so that FedEx doesn't have to pay them benefits, from their right to collective bargaining." What does that say about Obama?

"Why a Big Mac costs less than a salad."

Consequence of the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq: goodbye women's rights.

New House earmark rules just a slight speed bump to be flattened and/or evaded by lobbyists, defense contractors and congress critters to keep government money flowing.

Perhaps Palestinians should declare their independence.

Those DINO scammers on Capitol Hill just keep pissing on the Democratic base and other regular Americans.

FYII, Thursday, March 11, 2010

2010-03-11T20:37:00Z

WWII "fly girls" WASPs honored with highest civilian award, the Congressional Gold Medal.

Netanyahu's message to Obama and Biden.

How Social Security works for people with disabilities.

Patrick Kennedy calls press "despicable" for not covering Afghan was resolution; "the first major congressional debate about U.S. military operations in Afghanistan since lawmakers authorized the invasion of that country in autumn 2001." Rep. Alan Grayson's brief remarks in that debate. The House vote on removing US armed forces from Afghanistan.

Say what? FDIC thinks its a good idea for pension funds to bail out failed financial institutions.

What does Wall Street actually produce besides financial catastrophe?

Another in the growing list of cases of Bank of America foreclosing on the wrong house (including, in this case, holding a pet parrot hostage in the dispute) and then when sued insisting it acted reasonably.

Anything you tweet can be used against you.

Corporate welfare at its finest: $100 billion plus student loan industry bailout.

Not the Party of FDR, Truman, Kennedy & Johnson: Capitol Hill and White House Now Filled With Wussacrats and DINOs

2010-03-11T20:33:00Z

Democrats on Capitol Hill and in the White House have become DINOs of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Rather than the traditional party of the people and the party of the 21st New Deal, it is often indistinguishable from the GOP, the greed over people Republicans.

The spinelessness of the Obama administration, spun as "bipartisanship" aka caving to GOP obstructionists which has been proven to be damaging to regular Americans, has earned them the appropriate name, Wussacrats.

That apparently permanent minority invertebrate mind set has been the reality in both chambers of Congress since the the mid 1990's and continues among Democrats even though now in the majority.

DINO Wussacrats also describes both the Clinton and Obama presidencies, the former famous for "triangulation" aka out GOPing the Repugs, and the latter embracing the process and filling his administration with former DINO Clintonites.

As Michael Moore said: "Democrats are in for an ass-whipping of biblical proportions in November if they don't get off the dime and do the job they were sent there to do," he said on The Rachel Maddow Show. "Don't they see that?"

Jim Hightower weighs in (from AlterNet): "Yes, America needs a new Viagra, specifically targeted to stiffen backbones -- in particular, the limp backbones of Barack Obama's team, as well as the flaccid spines of Democratic congressional leaders. Where's the drug industry when we really need it?

"The Obama-ites seem incapable of firm stands. They excite us by boldly addressing our economic woes, then they seduce us by proposing stout actions. But when it comes time to follow through -- it's droopsville.

"Take America's job crisis. Obama and the Democrats eloquently empathize with the plight of struggling families who are falling out of the middle class. They point out that after Wall Street banksters crashed our economy and created the Great Recession, which began in December 2007, the number of jobs available to Americans has plummeted by more than 8.4 million. Since then, another 2.7 million jobseekers have come into the workforce. That leaves us in a hole that is 11.1 million jobs deep.

"The White House and Congress correctly note that our economy must not merely stop losing jobs, it must create more than 400,000 new positions a month for the next three years just to get us out of this hole. Nothing is more important, they tell us, blowing kisses of compassion and promising satisfaction.

"Sure enough, after a lengthy romancing of their Republican colleagues (who are devout believers in an abstinence-only job-creation policy), the Democrats finally made their move last week. With the support of five GOP senators, the "jobs, jobs, jobs" bill passed in both houses of Congress.

"But ... what a letdown. To win those five Republican senators, Democratic leaders shriveled their job investment program from a robust $266 billion to a frustratingly puny $15 billion.

"In fact, the Democrats' response is even weaker than it appears. Rather than directly creating jobs that pay workers, the $15 billion is going into tax breaks for businesses. The convoluted hope is that the money will "encourage" the recipients to hire a few people who're suffering from long-term joblessness. This trickle-down approach is even more pathetic than trying to fight a house fire with a squirt gun, for it doesn't even put the squirt gun in the hands of the people caught in the fire.

"What the Democrats have done is to pass a do-nothing Republican bill, a reality that was blurted out by Sen. Orrin Hatch, one of the five GOPsters to vote for it: "This is a conservative approach to help put our economy back on track through tax relief, not government spending."

"What a fraud. And an insult. Remember when Wall Street bankers shouted "Fire!" two years ago? Both parties rushed to the rescue, not with "conservative" tax relief, but with trillions of public dollars that they put directly in the hands of the same Wall Street arsonists who started the fire.

"We expect pious Republicans to consider millions of struggling American workers to be less worthy than a few greedheaded bankers, but not the Party of Roosevelt. Yet one Democratic leader said of this feeble bill, "Better something than nothing."

"Maybe they're fooling themselves -- but not us, and certainly not the jobless. This bill is nothing. And if Democrats don't stiffen their spines, they'll be nothing, too."

More FYII, Wednesday, March 10, 2010

2010-03-10T22:02:00Z

Labor's view of Obama and the Democrats: "disappointing, disillusioning, and unengaged."

Time for workers to say enough: Ten steps to take to stop manufacturing plant closures (like Whirlpool, that took taxpayers stimulus monies) and stop job elimination.

Don't ask, don't tell not just about gays but might have been US military's philosophy for decades long carcinogenic contaminated water at Camp Lejeune.

US hubris and narcissism ongoing regarding Iraq where the US created a mess and those media cheerleaders who supported Bush's illegal invasion of Iraq now backpedal from their phony "regret" of that unlawful transgression....give them an Oscar for hubris.

Obamacare bill not reform but "catering to the big players in the medical-industrial complex."

Corporate profit before people's health and safety a continuing reality; food product company ignores salmonella at its plant and knowingly continued selling its product says FDA.

Super rich try to scuttle estate tax with lies so they can continue not paying their fair share of taxes.

Yet another warning about Wussacrats needing a backbone to add to the stack....since they were a minority on Capitol Hill (from the mid 90's until 2006) these mostly DINOs continue their lack of a spine. Now we also have a DINO Wussacrat president and administration...just what we needed: more invertebrates claiming and pretending to be Democrats.

Whiny, corporatist right wing GOP Chief Justice of the Supreme Court who thinks he should be immune from criticism.

Not to excuse Democrats' ethics problems, but "The Republican list of ethics problems was seemingly endless, and, unlike Democrats, the GOP actually tried to shield their members from repercussions."

Two Separate Americas Continue To Exist in This Country

2010-03-10T21:59:00Z

What to make of some the Pollyanna statements about the meager uptick in hiring.

Take it with a hefty dose of salt and the following bucket of cold water reality.

From Roger Bybee at Working In These Times: "The latest unemployment report, showing an unemployment rate stuck at 9.7% in February, offers ambiguous signals about the pace and breadth of the recovery.

"But more fundamentally, the figures simultaneously show a drastic slowing of job loss—35,000 Americans lost their job last month, compared to 650,000 one year earlier—combined with the troubling persistence of long-term unemployment.

"The United States even added 1,000 manufacturing jobs in a sector that has been hammered not only by the recession, but by the persistent off-shoring of job to low-wage nations like China and Mexico. But this gain is tiny compared with the 5.6 million jobs in manufacturing lost since 2000, representing 32% of the nation's industrial employment.

“ 'It’s almost two separate Americas,' said Lakshman Achuthan, managing director of the Economic Cycle Research Institute. One America is experiencing normalcy, while the other remains locked into the worst conditions seens since the Great Depression. “ 'They have been left behind, and their problems are not solved by recovery.' ”

"One indicator of the persisting crisis: males between the ages of 25 and 54—in their primary erning years—have a 19.4% unemployment rate. The picture is far worse among African American and Latino workers.

"The Times outlined a set of grim statistics that reveal ongoing long-term unemployment, and bleak prospects for bringing back high-wage manufacturing jobs given America's de-regulated policy toward the export of jobs...

"....Janesville, Wis., where General Motors closed down a huge assembly plant and wiped out the last 2,800 jobs there after years of relocating work to Mexico, is a community already stretched to the limit by high unemployment, foreclosures, families running short of food, increasing homelessness, and high levels of spousal abuse.

"Of course, the suffering is not limited to blue-collar communities. A professional woman in Georgia recently wrote me an e-mail detailing her bleak situation. She held an important human-relations job in a company before she was seriously injured in an auto accident.

" 'I had worked almost eight years at a job … that I loved and been promoted three times," she writes. "When I came back to work from disability, I had a new boss and I was laid off.'

"Even with college credentials and a professional expereience, she is finding work impossible to find. "I live in the highest unemployment county in Georgia," she says. " 'Job fairs turn people away at the door, because there are so many of us trying to find work.' "

FYII, Wednesday, March 10, 2010

2010-03-10T19:45:00Z

When Democrats stay true to their party's principles rather than becoming Wussacrats, they win GOP votes, too.

Many people have noticed the continuing hypocrisy of this president...on the stump, Obama decries the greedy actions of the for profit, private health insurance corporations, yet as one wise blogger asks: "If the private insurance industry is so evil, why would you ever possibly force me to be their customer?"

Updating political dictionaries; e.g. "Treason" refers to Democrats criticizing a Republican administration during a war while "Patriotism" refers to Republicans criticizing a Democratic administration during a war.

Democrats need too remind everyone, especially members of the GOP and those living in states and congressional districts represented by GOP elected officials that: The national debt doubled under George W. Bush and tripled under Reagan. George W. Bush had the worst job creation record in 60 years. Taxes are historically low and have been for twenty years.

DOJ's "anti-trust concerns" decision about ES&S's purchase of Diebold (giving it a virtual voting machine monopoly in the US--- presence in 90% of the states) does nothing "to ensure the accuracy or ability of citizens to oversee their own elections run on unobservable, easily manipulated, oft-failed electronic voting systems..."

Economic inequality increases: while unemployment and poverty continue to rise, number of "they're in the money" millionaires rose by 16% last year.

It's not enough that the Obama administration followed Dubya's lead in bailing out the financiers while essentially telling regular Americans to go pound sand, is Obama's myopia about bipartisanship putting Americans at massive financial risk (in addition to Three Mile Island and Chernobyl risks) regarding nuclear expansion?.

Japan's dog washing machine more popular with owners than dogs...maybe owners should try out the machine on themselves, first.

FYII, Tuesday, March 9, 2010

2010-03-09T21:21:00Z

"...letting bankers do what they want is a recipe for disaster..." No kidding.

Iraq's parliamentary elections are over and, as in 2005, when tens of thousands of Iraqis braved suicide bombers to vote, this time tens of thousands braved mortar fire to "give the West its 'democracy.' "

ACLU ad challenges military commissions questioning whether Obama has morphed into Dubya.

Offshoring jobs and firing American workers OK with the Wusscrats on Capitol Hill.

Afghan conflict: a deliberate manipulation of perceptions with propaganda by US military.

Israel plays the US for a fool, as Biden is in Israel brown nosing...the VP should explain this.

Right wing witch hunt aided and abetted by the reactionary GOP on Capitol Hill and their myopic, Wussacratic enablers.

Complicit in our own enslavement?

A second bumbling, female Democratic Secretary of State....shameful.

Obama and his administration's view of the Democratic base: trained seals and doormats.

Despite The Recent Financial Meltdown, Some States Play With Public Pension Funds Money At The High Risk Wall St. Casino

2010-03-09T21:16:00Z

It's as if the economic meltdown never happened....at least in the myopic eyes of some states.

They are willing to again act like Las Vegas gamblers with public pension funds and play in the Wall Street casino that caused the financial catastrophe.

People should be very, very concerned by this news.

From the NY Times: "States and companies have started investing very differently when it comes to the billions of dollars they are safeguarding for workers’ retirement.

"Companies are quietly and gradually moving their pension funds out of stocks. They want to reduce their investment risk and are buying more long-term bonds.

"But states and other bodies of government are seeking higher returns for their pension funds, to make up for ground lost in the last couple of years and to pay all the benefits promised to present and future retirees. Higher returns come with more risk.

“ 'In effect, they’re going to Las Vegas,' said Frederick E. Rowe, a Dallas investor and the former chairman of the Texas Pension Review Board, which oversees public plans in that state. “ 'Double up to catch up.' "

"Though they generally say that their strategies are aimed at diversification and are not riskier, public pension funds are trying a wide range of investments: commodity futures, junk bonds, foreign stocks, deeply discounted mortgage-backed securities and margin investing. And some states that previously shunned hedge funds are trying them now."

These states seem determined to Ignore the age old advice that the odds are always with the house, apparently resolved to commit fiduciary irresponsibility by deliberately gambling with public funds in many unregulated, exotic and murky financial areas, disregarding the financial debacles of the 1980's (e.g. Michael Milken, Ivan Boesky) and the recent massive financial disaster in this country.

More FYII, Monday, March 1, 2010

2010-03-01T20:02:00Z

A war criminal continues his obscene rantings.

"Ending private insurance's chokehold on health care."

Those forgetful aka prevaricating Republicans who loved reconciliation when they controlled Congress.

"GOP to the Unemployed....drop dead."

1,000 US military death in Afghanistan, a sobering statistic, as 30% of those troops dying in Afghanistan have been veterans of the Iraq conflict.

DINO shill for Big Business and Wall Street, Senator Blanche Lincoln of AK, has a Dem primary opponent.

Why the US Ceased To Be a Manufacturing Powerhouse and the Unemployment Crisis Gets Worse

2010-03-01T19:58:00Z

When did this country cease to be a manufacturing powerhouse? When it ceased producing what its people consume.

So says Richard McCormick, editor and publisher of Manufacturing & Technology News, in an interview by Leo Gerard, President of the USW, the United Steelworkers.

Here are a few excerpts from that interview that shed light on the economic crisis and unemployment disaster.

McCormick states: "The loss of the manufacturing sector’s political influence also occurred with the rise of the finance sector, which became the dominant force in political gift-giving. The Wall Street financial sector does not give one-half hoot about American jobs.

"The loss of America’s industrial capability also coincided with the persistent selling of economic ideology to the American public and its politicians that the country would be a lot more prosperous getting rid of crappy manufacturing jobs and creating jobs in the service and “knowledge” sectors. That grand experiment in creating a “post-industrial economy” just suffered a monumental collapse.

"Americans have allowed the big corporate multinational companies and their agents to take control of their political system. It remains to this day a system that is stacked against American workers and American taxpayers.

"The U.S. government continues to craft policies that are beneficial for companies that outsource jobs.

"A friend of mine works at the Commerce Department. He says that free trade is a farce. The United States has tariffs of 2 percent or 3 percent on incoming products. Yet the United States trades with countries with tariffs that are 10 times higher. Is that free trade? He has a simple solution to the U.S. trade crisis: hold up a mirror to any nation trading with the United States. Whatever their tariffs are on U.S. products entering their country, that is what the U.S. tariff should be on their products entering America.

"The United States government lets American companies that have set up shop in China get away with not having to abide by American standards – even though their products are being sold in the United States.

"It is morally wrong.

"Any foreign product sold in the United States should be required to be produced under the same conditions as is required for producers of the same product in the United States."

Leo Gerard asks: "When I go to Washington, what I hear is that we don’t need manufacturing. That’s old and dirty. So many politicians say the U.S. can move to a financial and service economy. You disagree with that. Why?

McCormick replies: "I hear it too, though a little less often, thank goodness. This argument is what has led to the demise of the United States. People are just starting to realize that as manufacturing goes offshore, high-end jobs in design and research and development go with it. When a plant closes, the supply chain disappears. This supply chain includes materials and parts producers, software providers, like CAD (computer-aided design), ERP (enterprise resource planning) and dozens of other high-tech equipment providers, machine tool companies, maintenance, accounting, packaging – the list goes on to include such things as the local restaurants, janitorial services and those dependent on the plant’s tax revenues, like librarians, county clerks, police officers and teachers. These are service jobs, all of which depend on manufacturing. One manufacturing job supports 15 other jobs. No other category of job has such a high multiplier. The United State must do whatever it can to start creating manufacturing jobs."

Read the rest here.

FYII, Monday, March 1, 2010

2010-03-01T17:20:00Z

Chile's quake 500x more powerful than the recent one in Haiti; hundreds are killed and the death toll rises and 2 million people are displaced; but the danger of an after quake Pacific tsunami thankfully didn't materialize.

In secret talks, US bankers, the crooks who helped cause the economic meltdown, reacted furiously to any "socialist" attempts to decrease their pay.

How private contractors continue getting rich at the government trough: "U.S. State Department has completely failed to do any serious oversight of the private contractors to whom they paid 1.6 billion dollars to provide police training at dozens of sites around Afghanistan."

Secretary of Labor Solis a gem in Obama's usual cow pie selections of high level officials.

A recent study "found little evidence to support allegations of fraud, nor to conclude that most Iranians view President Ahmadinejad as illegitimate" contrary to mainstream media blather.

Greece, Goldman Sachs, and derivatives, those exotic financial instruments that Bernanke, Obama and his economic team, and Congress don't want to regulate.

Right wing terrorists, the "obssesed and deranged" coddled by GOP politicians, seem to be making a comeback

Democratic Party and Labor Still Don't Get It: They Must Be 21st century New Dealers Fighting for Economic Justice for Hardworking People

2010-02-26T19:42:00Z

The Democratic Party better get its act together and quit kowtowing to DINOs in the White House and on Capitol Hill. There should
be no DINOs in the party, period.

And the Democratic Party better get serious about the jobs crisis, now.

While organized labor is doing better than the Dems at highlighting the massive unemployment disaster, it needs to pressure the Democrats much, much more.

If not, the Dems and labor will lose public support big time.

Roger Bybee at In These Times writes:

"The last time that banks and corporations subjected hard-working Americans to this level of misery, the people responded by flocking in droves to the vibrant industrial union movement and Franklin Delano Roosevelt's efforts to establish a measure of economic justice in America.

"But more than 70 years later, working people are turning off to both the labor movement and the Democrats. It would appear that ordinary Americans are feeling that the forces they once counted upon in tough times—labor and the Dems—are not there to protect their most vital interests.

"A new survey by Pew shows an astonishing drop in public support for labor since the Great Recession's start, as Akito Yoshikane pointed out on this site yesterday.....

"While other polls and coffee-shop conversations all reveal that Corporate America—especially banks and health-insurance companies—is more despised than at any time in living memory, it seems clear that working people have expected far more action in their defense from the both Democrats and labor.

".....leading Democrats seem unwilling to frankly acknowlegde the extent of deeply-rooted unemployment and long-term human wreckage, as detailed here, here and here.

"So we are witnessing a parade of top Obama officials like Lawrence Summers and Timothy Geithner and Democratic Party hacks working to convince the American people that the economy is on the mend.

"It seems that the top Democrats are rolling out much the same message that they used so disastrously in 1994. As progressive activist Steve Cobble put it, the message amounted to, 'You're actually doing better than you think you are,' words that served only to inflame workers whose real wages were falling and who were watching more jobs relocated to Mexico.

"The absence of urgency about jobs begins at the top with President Obama, who still declines to push for a massive public-works program to create jobs.

"President Obama's address to the Business Roundtable—the elite of the elite of Corporate America—was anything but a declaration of a national jobs emergency and a call for major corporations to end their policies of job destruction and the off-shoring of work to Mexico, China, India, and other low-wage nations. At this point, it appears that only an electoral wipeout or fierce pressure from labor will alter Obama's cautious, complacent course. Obama offered only a mild explanation of his economic policies.

"The main cause of labor's decline in popularity, while complex, is its too-close embrace of the Democrats, I would argue. The union movement has increasingly shifted its resources to lobbying Congress and state legislators, and has been tainted by its association with the Obama Administration's sleazy backroom deal-making with the insurers, drug companies, and job outsourcers. At the same time, labor has not left a visible impression of relentlessly fighting plant closings, foreclosures, and evictions at the local level across America.

"As a consequence, the public has been feeling cut adrift, with once-reliable allies no longer battling on their side. New AFL-CIO President Rich Trumka, despite making the right moves in his short tenure, must directly combat the public's perception by turning up the heat on the Obama Administration and Congressional Democrats by mobilizing working people in the communities where they live."

FYII, Friday, February 26, 2010

2010-02-26T18:12:00Z

"Social Security works for women; Social Security works for America."

How many times does it need repeating? It's not the debt: that's the least of our worries.

US military intelligence spied on domestic groups like Planned Parenthood in 2002.

Using money as leverage for the common good.

The continuing question: Why don't the Dems force the GOP to have a real filibuster? as Sen. Jim Bunning (R-KY), a GOP dimwit, says "tough shit" to unemployment benefits.

"....many of the most damaging acts inflicted on the country by Washington are enacted by bipartisanship....the harmonious joining together of Republicans and Democrats is ongoing when it comes to such terrible legislation as the extension of the Patriot Act, an abusive, destructive rights violating monstrosity of the Bushite era.

Glenn Beck and his ilk: tyranny's hideous image within our midst...it is happening here.

More FYII, Thursday, February 25, 2010

2010-02-25T22:31:00Z

Instead of states and localities being helped by the federal government, they are being scammed and defrauded by the financial industry with an exotic instrument: interest rate swaps that make big bucks for the banks and bankrupt everyone else.

A dismal situation: What happens when the poor get poorer?

No surprise....GOP health care plan (what an oxymoronic phrase) worse that you think.

Another GOP hypocrite, Mitt Romney, and the myth of his jobs creation as MA guv.

The International Olympic Committee—that sewing circle of monarchists, extortionists, and absolved fascists—likes to hide behind the pretense of nobility...in the hands of the IOC, the Olympics are a fraud.

Obama administration on Consumer Financial Protection Agency: one step forward, two steps back. BTW, why hasn't Geithner been fired yet?

Obama Continues To Disappoint Workers and Organized Labor, More Anti-Worker Incidents Occur

2010-02-25T22:27:00Z

With the unjust and huge unemployment numbers, there's nothing like some anti-worker news to show the extent of that anti-labor injustice.

That this is happening during a so called Democratic administration's term is shameful and makes a damning statement about the corporatist DINO White House.

One of the stories highlights the consequences of Obama and his Education Secretary Arne Duncan's education policy: which is like Bush's, only worse.

From James Parks at the AFL-CIO Now Blog: "In the middle of the worst jobs crisis since the Great Depression, more than 90 dedicated professional educators find themselves put out into the street. On Feb. 23, the Central Falls, R.I., school trustees fired the entire teaching staff of Central Falls High School, supposedly because of declining test scores at the school, which is located in Rhode Island’s smallest and poorest city.

"In all, 93 persons were put in the street—74 classroom teachers, plus reading specialists, guidance counselors, physical education teachers, the school psychologist, the principal and three assistant principals. Negotiations over ways to improve the school between teachers and the school superintendent broke down when school officials insisted that teachers add new duties, some without any extra pay at all.

"In a rally before the trustees meeting, some 500 union members and community supporters called on the board to reconsider its decision...."

However, there is more to the story.

From the Providence-Journal: "Jim Parisi, field representative for the Rhode Island Federation of Teachers, said Gallo was punishing teachers. “It is never acceptable to threaten anyone’s job as a bargaining tactic. Not in this state,” he shouted.

"U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan has taken notice.

“I applaud Commissioner Gist and Superintendent Gallo for showing courage and doing the right thing for kids,” Duncan said Tuesday night."

So the Obama administration's so called education "reform" condones and applauds firing all the teachers.

As Danny Weil wrote last year: "Arne Duncan is part and parcel of an educational movement that we are increasingly witnessing in New York, Washington D.C., New Orleans and Chicago, Texas and elsewhere: a movement towards centralizing decision-making regarding public schools in the hands of an elite autocracy

"....a neo-liberal turn that goes beyond issues regarding the private operation of individual charter schools and instead twists and turns its way right into the heart of privatizing the public urban sphere in entirety, while making the government simply a boardroom or ‘secret parliament’ for powerful corporate interests.

"The Obama education policy differs little from the Bush administration’s policy of hitching student and teacher performance to what many in the educational community and beyond call inauthentic assessments that actually force teachers to teach to the test and do little to encourage critical thinking or collaborative problem solving. Nor does the Obama policy seem to differ much in setting goals for the rapid expansion of charter school networks and non-profit and for-profit ‘providers’ to run them. Where it is more far-reaching than the Bush educational plan, however, is in its commitment to expand the charter school market by forcing all the states in the nation to pass legislation for the creation of charter schools."

If firing 90 teachers from one high school isn't extremely anti-labor enough, this should put the icing on the cake: company threatening workers who protest a plant closing.

From Dave Johnson at Blog for Our Future

".....what's this? Whirlpool Threatens Workers: Protesting Plant Closure Risks 'Future Jobs'

" 'A major corporation planning to shut down a factory in Indiana has warned its union workers that they'll endanger their future job prospects if they protest the plant's closing.

'. . . Activists planned a high-profile protest for this Friday, with AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka visiting the plant for the first time. But Whirlpool says the effort is futile -- they are fully committed to shutting the plant down. The company, however, still seems quite wary of the potential for bad publicity. In a memo sent to its employees and passed along to the Huffington Post, [link added] Paul Coburn, division vice president for Whirlpool's Evansville Division, offers a fairly explicit warning to his workers: If they join Trumka's protest they would seriously risk future employment opportunity.

"Threatening workers who show up at the protest that they risk future employment? Click through to read the entire report and to see Whirlpool's letter."

FYII, Thursday, February 25, 2010

2010-02-25T22:23:00Z

Sunlight Foundation introduced a great way to watch the live health care follies: when a politician starts speaking,,,,Sunlight shows their top campaign contributors. E.g. Sen. Tom Coburn had the floor..his top career industry donor has been health professionals, who've given the Oklahoma lawmaker $984,889.

As House voted to kill health care industry's anti-trust exemption, Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY) "offends" GOP members with the facts. How can you offend greedy hypocrites?

Unemployed people are organizing.

Is Obama trying to prove he's an honorary member of the Wall Street crooks club? Keeping Bernanke at the Fed was nuts. Ben was asleep at the wheel and helped cause the economic meltdown with its massive unemployment and now he wants another chance to do it again. Bernanke was part of the problem and not the solution.

What a Tory win in the UK would mean: fat cats and evangelicals....could have been written about the GOP, the Bush regime and DINOs in the White House and Congress.

Little things mean a lot: smokeless stoves a boon to village women in Pakistan.

More FYII, Wednesday, February 24, 2010

2010-02-24T22:55:00Z

Stealing from the government, Blackwater even uses South Park alias.

Canadians respond to ice hockey loss to US.

"There is no Social Security crisis; Social Security works for America."

Appalling that some in the GOP think that terrorist suicide attack on IRS office in Austin that killed an innocent victim was justified.

The Reagan years: treason and deliberate economic incompetence.

Senatorial Hypocrites "Astounded" by Contractors Outnumbering Federal Work Force at DHS

2010-02-24T22:16:00Z

Capitol Hill seems to be filled with elected Casablanca Captain Renaults, absolute hypocrites like Lieberman and Collins who are "astounded" that contractors outnumber full time federal work force at the Department of Homeland Security.

From CNN: "The Department of Homeland Security has more contractors working for it than full-time employees, a situation two members of Congress said Tuesday was "unacceptable, untenable and unsustainable."

"Sen. Joseph Lieberman, the chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, and ranking Republican Susan Collins said they were "astounded" to learn there are more than 200,000 contractor employees at the department.

"The civilian work force of Homeland Security numbers 188,000, according to an estimate provided to the senators by Homeland Security.

"In a letter sent Tuesday to the agency's Secretary Janet Napolitano, Lieberman and Collins said the figure "raises the question of whether DHS itself is in charge of its programs and policies, or whether it inappropriately has ceded core decisions to contractors."

Who the hell increased exponentially the number of private contractors who proceed to rip off the government? GOP regimes who handed a no questioned asked cash cow to their cronies.

The criminal Bush regime's goal was to privatize government; another way of enabling crony contractors to make out like bandits doing work for the government more expensively and often less effectively than utilizing more economical, experienced Civil Service employees.

A great portion of US intelligence is outsourced to private companies with no public accountability. In fact, "the DNI [Director of National Intelligence] found that 'those same contractors recruiit our own employees, already cleared and trained at government expense, and then 'lease' them back to us at considerably greater expense."

Look at the terrible problems caused and crimes committed by Pentagon, State, and other departments and agencies' reliance on unaccountable private mercenary companies like Blackwater now Xe have resulted in crimes committed by these same so called "security" corporations.

Unfortunately, many of these contractors are a part of Washington's revolving door, including former high ranking military double dipping at the government trough while receiving a generous pension and health care coverage and other benefits.

Government's massive utilization of contractors has become a scandalous scam and fraud; and they are more expensive (those ubiquitous cost plus contracts are infamous) and more often much less effectual than Civil Service workers; a losing situation for regular hardworking Americans.

Time to end this fraud and horrific waste of taxpayers' hard earned money.

FYII, Wednesday, February 24, 2010

2010-02-24T20:21:00Z

Not for the first time or the last time, Marja campaign in Afghanistan launched for PR purposes: to influence domestic US opinion.

There's the happy talk about GM crops, then there's the reality.

Many Democrats from coal producing state ignore logic and science.

No surprise....US plans for not leaving Iraq (or Afghanistan, or Pakistan.....)

Vermont reactor shutdown might throw a monkey wrench into Obama's woodenheaded plans, aka hack move to build more nuclear reactors using billions in taxpayers' money to make energy companies richer and put Americans' health and safety at risk.

The "new GM" northern strategy: go non-union.

Obama's Health Care Follies: US Will Continue Shamefully Trailing Other Industrialized Nations' Universal Health Care

2010-02-24T18:59:00Z

After watching the finesse and experience of Canada and Great Britain's men and women's curling teams in action, it's no wonder that the US men's and women's teams have sunk like stones.

I wonder how many of those watching these events realize that most of the countries represented at the Winter Olympics have universal health care, but not the United States.

And the Rube Goldberg health care follies that the DINO Obama administration unveils tomorrow is indicative of just how shamefully and tragically the US continues to miserably trail other industrialized nations in quality affordable health care for all.

The reality is that the corporatist White House and Congress, led by spineless Wussacrats, are deceiving and betraying regular Americans and consigning tens of thousands yearly to unnecessary death because of lack of health care.

Obama and the majority Democratic Congress continue to prove they're not real Democrats by slapping ineffective band-aids on a gaping wound and calling it a success or claiming that it's the best they can do while they and their GOP hypocritical colleagues are covered by top notch health care provided by the government.

Physicians for a National Health Care Program explain the reality at CommonDreams: "President Obama's health care proposal, preserving as it does a central role for the for-profit, private health insurance industry, is incapable of achieving the kind of universal, comprehensive and affordable reform the country needs, a spokesman for a national doctors' group said Wednesday.

" 'Regrettably, the president's proposal is built on some of the worst aspects of the Senate bill,' " said Dr. Quentin Young, national coordinator of Physicians for a National Health Program, an organization of 17,000 doctors who support single-payer, Medicare-for-All approach to reform. Young's statement comes on the eve of the president's bipartisan summit in Washington.

" 'For example, the president's proposal would ship hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars to the private health insurance industry in the form of subsidies,' Young said. 'And to help finance this, it would impose a new tax on health benefits of workers, especially those in high-cost states'

" 'Its individual mandate would force millions of middle-income uninsured Americans to buy insurers' skimpy products - insurance policies full of gaps like ever-rising co-pays, deductibles and premiums. Such policies already leave middle-class American families vulnerable to economic hardship and medical bankruptcy in the event of a serious illness like cancer,' continued Young, citing a recent study.

" 'Even so, at least 23 million people would remain uninsured,' he said. 'We know that being uninsured raises your chance of dying by about 40 percent,' he continued, citing another recent study. 'That translates into about 23,000 unnecessary deaths each year. As physicians, we find this completely unacceptable.' "

More FYII, Tuesday, February 23, 2010

2010-02-23T21:14:00Z

"Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) introduced the "Stop Outsourcing Security Act" on Tuesday. If passed, the act would force the United States to phase out its controversial use of private security contractors in war zones like Iraq and Afghanistan."

Tom Friedman's fact free propaganda continues to roll on....unrelenting idiocy on parade to fool some of the people all of the time.

"Deja vu Iraq all over again...a new director general of IAEA more malleable and naive than his predecessor may provide new grist for the same old spin on Iran's spreading misinformation.

Re: torture memo authors John Yoo and Jay Bybee and "mens rea" or guilty mind...."had the same compelling motivation in rendering false legal advice. Each sought a specific high office that the recipients of the memos were able to give to them...." or quid pro quo.

John "brown nose torturer" Yoo, argued that the president was God, especially Dubya, with omnipotent, imperial power to order the deliberate massacre of civilians or the crushing of a detainee's child's testicles and contended in a public debate that the legality of crushing a child's testicles "depends on why the President thinks he needs to do that."

Typical Americans Face More Massive Unemployment, Widening Economic Inequality, and Unfair, Regressive Taxation

2010-02-23T19:29:00Z

No wonder regular Americans' anger is increasing to the boiling point. They have become Washington's punching bags.

Throw the bums out is aimed at both the GOP and the Democrats. It's well deserved.

Nothing is being done to effectively overcome and fix massive unemployment, the widening chasm of economic inequality, and unfair, regressive taxation, as the richest of the rich and corporations that control government have turned it into a mechanism to serve the wealthy oligarchy, relegating typical Americans to serfdom.

Basically the corporatist White House and Capitol Hill, with its inadequate, meager stimulus and stingy jobs bill are telling those Americans bearing the brunt of this staggering economic inequality and huge unemployment burden to suck it up and keep struggling, while the economic meltdown criminals and their Bushite/Obama enablers get wealthier on the backs of those same struggling Americans.

From Robert Borosage at Campaign for America's Future:

"Yes, there is a class war, Warren Buffett once said, and my class is winning. The IRS study of taxes paid in 2007 makes his point. The top 1% of taxpayers averaged about $138 million in income, and paid taxes at a rate of 16.6%.

"As Buffett says, their secretaries pay a higher rate. No wonder Republicans and conservaDems like the much regretted Evan Bayh are fighting to lower the estate tax rate as part of a "jobs" bill. These folks will have a lot to put in the estate that's never been taxed as income.

"Ah, for the extremist liberal days of Ronald Reagan when capital gains were taxed at the same rate as income.

And David Sirota sheds more light on unfair, regressive taxation in which the richest get richer as the rest of us struggle to keep jobs with stagnant wages.

"Pulitzer Prize-winning Tax Notes reporter David Cay Johnston has a big scoop (subscription required):

" 'The incomes of the top 400 American households soared to a new record high in dollars and as a share of all income in 2007, while the income tax rates they paid fell to a record low, newly disclosed tax data show.
'In 2007 the top 400 taxpayers had an average income of $344.8 million, up 31 percent from their average $263.3 million income in 2006, according to figures in a report that the IRS posted to its Web site without announcement that were discovered February 16. (For the report, see Tax Analysts Doc 2010-3372 .)
'The figures came at the peak of the last economic cycle and show that widely published reports in major newspapers asserting that the richest Americans are losing relative ground and "becoming poorer" are not supported by the official income data.
'The long-term data show that under current tax and economic rules, the incomes of the top earners rise when the economy expands and contract during recessions, only to rise again. Their effective income tax rate fell to 16.62 percent, down more than half a percentage point from 17.17 percent in 2006, the new data show.' "

"I can't say I'm surprised, but I can say I am sickened. At a time when both Republicans and the Obama administration want us to believe our deficit problems should be solved through "reforms" (read: cuts) to Social Security and Medicare, we should be having a discussion about out of control defense spending and the ultra-rich watching their tax rates decline."

Meanwhile Mike Elk reports: "Earlier today, I learned from trusted sources on the Hill that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid will propose only a 15-day unemployment and COBRA extension.

"Such a move is absolutely pathetic and unacceptable. About 1.2 million million Americans are expected to lose their unemployment benefits at the end of the month. While a 15-day extension will allow people to continue receiving aid, hundreds of thousands of people will still receive notices from state unemployment offices saying that they will stop receiving aid."

These senatorial hypocrites (most of whom are millionaires and multi-millionaires) who receive six figure salaries, top of the line health care and other benefits thanks to the taxpayers are consigning hardworking people to 21st century serfdom.

At the same time, these senatorial hypocrites take money from their corporate handlers and crony Wall Street casino gazillionaires that cost these hardworking Americans their jobs.

Economist Dean Baker reminds us that the Federal Reserve may be breaking the law, under Obama's re-confirmed economic meltdown and unemployment enabler, Ben Bernanke. (What does that say about Obama?)

"The mistakes of Bernanke, along with Alan Greenspan, in allowing the housing bubble grow to dangerous levels are the main reason that the country is stuck is suffering from high unemployment. Millions of people are out of work not because they lack the skills or willingness to work hard. They are out of work because Ben Bernanke messed up in managing the economy. But Ben Bernanke still has his job.

"Is the Fed breaking the law? That is a question that members of Congress should be asking. The Humphrey Hawkins Full Employment Act, which governs the Fed's operation, requires the Fed to pursue price stability and full employment, which is defined as 4% unemployment. It would be hard to maintain that current policy is consistent with these goals.

"At this point the Fed is explicitly discussing its plans for an exit strategy, moving away from its policy of quantitative easing. This means we should anticipate a general upward movement in interest rates in coming months, although the speed of this movement is not clear.

"This is troubling because the economy is expected to remain very weak by almost everyone, including the Fed itself. The Congressional Budget Office projects that the unemployment rate will average near 10% in 2010, 9% in 2009, and 8% in 2012. Unemployment is not projected to fall to 5% until 2015. If the Fed is retreating from its quantitative easing and allowing interest rates to rise, its policy will be doing little to push down the unemployment rate more quickly.

"Unfortunately, more quantitative easing or the targeting of a higher inflation rate do not appear to be on the Fed's agenda. Its sole concern appears to be ensuring that inflation does not begin to accelerate. This is not only perverse given the fact that inflation is slowing and is expected by nearly everyone to continue to slow for the next several months, it also would appear to violate the law governing the Fed's conduct.

"The Fed does not have the option to ignore the full employment part of its mandate, as it appears to be doing at present. Congress should carefully question the Federal Reserve Board chairman, Ben Bernanke, when he gives his semi-annual Humphrey-Hawkins testimony this week. He should be forced to explain how doing nothing to counteract the five years of high unemployment projected by the Fed and others is consistent with its mandate to promote full employment."

FYII, Tuesday, February 23, 2010

2010-02-23T19:26:00Z

Drug industry hooks physicians early: more than half of medical residency programs accepted drug industry financial support.

The Bushite/CIA torture-rendition regime's tentacles extended into Capitol Hill.

Obama's Bushite-Iran Contra scandal holdover, Bob Gates, wants Europe to bankrupt itself with military spending just like the US.

The reality of the so called "public option": "a feeble public insurance plan to the insurance market has been but avery poor excuse to support 'insurance reform' that will criminalizethe uninsured, divert billions of tax dollars to subsidize unaffordableprivate insurance premiums and protect pharmaceutical industrysuper-profits."

Bye-bye to Bayh, the Indiana "drama queen...an embarrassment to his constituents, his party and an affront to democracy."

RIP Alexander Haig who enthusiastically defended the rape and murder of four American nuns in El Salvador.