Archive for April 2009
Does Wal-Mart really care? Big Blue takes on Big Coal
[youtubehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UNb_JHvOK5k&feature=player_embedded]
That’s right, the world’s biggest and baddest employer now wants to protect the enviroment. Sure, they deny dignity to millions of workers, destroy small town commerce, and fight for Republicans, but they really care about CO2 emissions. Do you believe that?
Cecil Roberts (UMWA) President on the Ludlow Massacre
President Roberts has become the finest UMWA president since John L., and like John L. and fine wine, he is only getting better with age!
Possible Interrogation Probe Dashes Hopes for Bipartisanship Under Obama
The blowhards, unpatriotic fascists at FoxNews are reporting that the ‘Era of Bipartisanship died.’ Really? When did it start?
Mark your calendar: April 21, 2009. That’s when the Era of Bipartisanship died.
That’s what some Republicans suggested after President Obama opened the possibility of a congressional investigation and prosecution of Justice Department lawyers who authorized “enhanced” interrogation techniques on terror suspects during the Bush administration.
If the coffin needs a final nail, it will come if Democrats decide to fast-track Obama’s legislative priorities through a budget maneuver known as “reconciliation.”
Republicans and some Democrats oppose the tactic because it would prevent a long debate on what they consider complex issues.
Fighting for Living Wages
Fighting for Living Wages
April 23, 2009 <!–csalafia–>
Nobody in America who works full time should live in poverty. However, the fact is as of April 2007 over 37 million people, more than the population of the State of California, do. According to recent US Census figures, 5 million more people are poor today that were not in 2000. Nearly 8 million live in neighborhoods of concentrated poverty where at least 40% of the residents are poor.
Perhaps the most telling statistic is that over 25% of all full time workers do not make enough to keep a family of four above the poverty threshold. The Federal Minimum Wage is an idea whose time has come and gone. The time has come to replace the Federal Minimum Wage with locally derived living wage standards.
Thinking globally, a salary of $40,000/year or more puts one in the top 1% of wage earners in the world. Here in the US, however, that income will put you nearly $10,000 below the US median income. The root question is why are more people falling into poverty in the wealthiest country in the world? One of the biggest reasons for this is that wages in the United States have remained essentially stagnant for the last 30 years. Yet inflation, in terms of the increase in the cost of living, has increased 3% per year, on average, over the same time period. In addition, the real value, adjusted for inflation, has decreased over 25% since 1967.
Read the rest at the link above
The Ludlow Massacre
Progressives today don’t have to reinvent the wheel. We’re fighting for the same things progressives, liberals, radicals have always fought for: democracy applied broadly, justice applied equally, a fair distribution of our nation’s resources. We can look back and see what worked and what didn’t for our forbears. We can examine what kinds of people, and philosophies, and systems opposed them. Then we can look and see the very same kinds of people, and philosophies, and systems opposing us today.
This is a general them I thinkl is lacking in today’s blog world, where we fight for every news cycle.
That’s one reason I’m writing this post. Another reason is that, ever since I first read about Ludlow, in the “early springtime” I get that tune in my head.
