Populist Daily

Politics, Culture and American Life

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    The Dangerous State of Our Legal System

    February 8th, 2010 · Courts and the Law, Politics

    When Barack Obama became our 44th President, we thought that things would begin to change. And they have. But not much. Yet some people might still say that these things take time and we will gradually get back to normal. That may not happen. And if it does not happen, you are not safe. Not safe in your car, your home, your workplace or your church.

    We now know that there is strong evidence that the legal system has been gerrymandered. Karl Rove and Dick Cheney apparently decided that, since the courts are the last resort of freedom and justice, they would put their own people into the judiciary sot that they can have their own brand of freedom.

    Infiltration of the Justice Department by all these Right Wing Neocons is not news. We know of it from the situation of the 8 U.S. attorneys who were fired in late 2006 for refusing to carry out political attacks on Democrats or back off of investigations on Republicans during elections and how they were fired for their recalcitrance. Now we know the answer to the question some of us were asking: what about the ones who did not resist instructions to prosecute cases without merit?

    If these 8 refused to act, what about the others, those who were not fired? After all, we know about the loyalty tests, the selection of attorneys after review by members of the Federalist Society, and selection from a few, highly Fundamentalist, conservative law schools. We know the depth infiltration of Neoconservative operatives, that is, attorneys with identified Neocon viewpoints and activist intentions. It seems pretty obvious, doesn’t it? With 93 U.S. Attorney appointments, certainly many were going to do what they were told. What happened when they did. We know what happened when they didn’t. [Read more →]

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    The Supreme Court Disgracefully Wrong on Freedom of Speech

    February 6th, 2010 · Courts and the Law, Politics

    Many people, on both sides of the political spectrum understand the implications of the recent Supreme Court ruling that says that corporations may basically act as if they are individuals when it comes to political “speech.” They refer to the transfer of a dollar or a billion dollars, which they regard, stupidly…yes, stupidly…as the same thing.

    We must make a quick aside here to point out that we consider “stupid” to be a specific term. When humans are confronted with a complex situation, they do not stand before it in almost bovine manner, perplexed at its solution. When legal matters, for example, are so complex as to have serious consequences in multiple different ways to multiple different parties, a Supreme Court that would simply take up the simplest manner, chew on it and spit it out, must be considered…in light of their elevated stature…”stupid.”

    Was it stupid for the Supreme Court under Justice Roger B. Taney, a name that will, yes, live in infamy, to declare, in the Dred Scott decision, that human beings were chattel and others could own them? Today we would see that as having been so myopic, even in its day that we would now call it “stupid.”

    Were these Justices merely stupefied by the complexity of the society and the gravity of the consequences? Yes, they were. People are not property. It was not only stupid. It was catastrophic, as it turned out. We can only hope that this foolish, myopic decision does not have similar results.

    In coming years, it will be reviewed by those who will eventually find their way to the court and those Justices will see it as “stupid.” They will recognize that this court, and these justices, Chief Justice Roberts and the other four Justices, Alito, Scalia, Thomas and Kennedy have been so blinded by contemporary miscellany, such transient thoughts, that they could somehow miss the truth that the concept of “freedom of speech” has attached to it modifiers that cannot simply be brushed aside or combined without consideration.

    Has our educational system become so flawed that those we put on the top bench in the country, in this land supposedly…and especially by the Party that put them on the highest court…dedicated to Democracy could produce such shallow thought? [Read more →]

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    Why Neoconservatives Vote Against Jobs.

    February 5th, 2010 · Politics, jobs

    It is no secret that the Neoconservative Republicans and their friends on talk radio are against job creation. They voted 100%, every single one, against the Stimulus bill, the $787 billion jobs bill that has already created 2 million jobs. They voted overwhelmingly in late 2008 against even the Bush Administration’s attempt to push funds into the collapsed market, which, it has been estimated, saved millions of jobs.

    Since then, they have repeatedly attacked jobs programs and programs that would allow new jobs in the workplace. For example, the new jobs bill, being considered now in the House of Representatives and in the Senate, that is designed to create another 2 million jobs, even while the current stimulus program is still working its way through about one-third of its funds, adding jobs every month. They say that they will again vote against jobs in early 2010 before they even see the bill.

    This is a new big jobs bill, passed in the House and is now under consideration by the Senate. It has about $154 billion ready to create jobs for the 15 million unemployed. It is desperately needed, especially after recent job numbers that show some new action is needed. That bill is now being considered by the Senate with Senator Reid stating that he will try to have a vote early in February. Senator Mitch McConnell, head of the “Just Say No” faction, called Neoconservative Republicans in the Senate has already said that he will filibuster the bill.

    There are 15 million people in the country who need jobs and the head of the Republicans in the Senate has said that he will filibuster a jobs bill even before the Senate has had the chance to see the final bill. That is where we are today. [Read more →]

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    We Can’t All “Just Get Along.” Here’s Why.

    February 4th, 2010 · Media, Politics

    Our political system is broken. It didn’t happen accidentally. It was deliberate and it has been happening for a long time, gradually, methodically. Corporations have taken all their chips and gone all-in with the Neoconservative Republicans. And the Neocons are now 100% for corporations. They are the arm of corporations in Congress.

    Take the Republican votes recently. They voted against bailing out the banks. Well, some may say…prodded by the Sean Hannitys of the world…that is good. Why should these rich banks get any money? Well, no one wants to give money to big banks, but they held all the cards. If they shut down, they would recover. But if they shut down, and some think that is just what some people wanted them to do, the economy would have come to a halt.

    Probably an additional 2,000 banks would have closed including some of the nations’ top banks. That would have canceled loans and lines of credit to huge numbers of corporations. As many as 40,000 manufacturing companies would have shut down. General Motors and Ford would have closed their doors, putting about 2,000,000 more people out of work as the effects of that spread through the economy. Michigan would have reached Depression-Era unemployment statistics and maybe even surpassed them.

    So why did all the Republicans in Congress vote against bailing out banks…even under George W. Bush? They saw a political opportunity. They would tighten their relationship with the Right Wing, the oil and energy, the drug companies, the mining companies. They didn’t care that the economy shut down. Not most of the biggest companies. Much of what would happen would work out for them and they were ready for it.

    So, now, the Neoconservative Republicans (the only kind left in the Party) work exclusively for the corporations. They work against health care reform. They work against legislation to keep union organizers from being fired for trying to have unions. They work against green energy and for more oil and gas drilling. They work against anything that has to do with preventing global warming. And they work for any legislation that will increase the power of corporations to lobby and to campaign against Populist measures. [Read more →]

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    David Brooks and Neocon Advice to the Elderly

    February 3rd, 2010 · Culture, Economics, General, Politics

    “There you go again…” as a famous “B” movie actor once memorably said…memorable because he happened to be President at the time. Oh yes, we really did have an actor as President. But he was also a union president at one time. Granted, it was a union of actors, but he was elected.

    One of these days, when the interest on the national debt has grown so large we have to cut back on toilet paper, we will look back on 2001-2008 and say something like “Remember the Dubya Era” or something memorable so that we never forget the Bush Era. We need something memorable because, the Neoconservative Republicans are like cockroaches. They were virtually exterminated in the 2008 election and by 2009, they were back.

    They are seemingly indestructible. Perhaps it is like the saying that the poor are always with us. Maybe the ignorant are always with us too, so we need to keep reminding them that a disaster happened in 2008 and not just to everyone else. And it could happen again.

    David Brooks is a conservative columnist and he is definitely not ignorant. But he often takes the anti-progressive, anti-middle class side of the political argument in order to gently push the conservative agenda, much of which, perhaps as a University of Chicago graduate, he believes.

    In a recent column in the New York Times, Brooks talks about “geezers.” Wow. Isn’t that pretty “anti-pc?” Brooks quotes Freud and Shakespeare to somehow indicate that the elderly gradually withdraw from active life. While this is true in many cases, it is less and less true, and there are many contrary examples, like George Bernard Shaw, who could keep up with Brooks at way-plus-80, or Isaac Bashevis Singer who wrote for the New Yorker or Konrad Adenauer who ran Germany when both were well into their 80s.

    Mark Twain, Robert Frost and Pablo Picasso all did some of their best work in their later years. Cezanne worked his whole life only to find success in the paintings he did after sixty. So what’s the point, David? [Read more →]

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    The Truth About the National Debt

    February 2nd, 2010 · Economics, Politics, jobs

    Attention: propaganda groups! Neocons to propaganda groups: Come in Please! Attention!

    Let’s distract the Helots, the Tea Baggers. Let’s send them to the opposite end of the economic spectrum, from the recovery and the need for jobs to the huge deficit so that they will not really understand what is happening in this country and what has been happening for the last 29 years. Use the word “Deficit” as often and in as frightening a way as possible. Get them to write out the word “deficit” on their signs. Make sure that they spell it correctly this time. Drop “Nazi” and “Commie” for a while and use the word “Deficit.”

    If you don’t, they are going to stop at some point and ask…”what does this obstruction have to do with a job? I need, or my brother needs, or my son or my niece or my neighbor needs….a job!”

    Well, OK. Maybe…just maybe…we Populists could distract those idiots in the “tea party” mobs ourselves for a minute. What a pathetic lot they are. Maybe we could entice them with a photo of Sara Palin to sit down on a curbstone for a minute or even for five times their maximum attention span…five minutes…and learn some facts about the economy and deficits.

    It is history. And as boring as that is for drop-outs, it is necessary if even a single one of them is interested in truly changing the way we do things in Congress and in the country. Actually, that’s doubtful. 75% of them are probably your basic, simple racists. But here goes anyway.

    In the early 1980s, Ronald Reagan cut taxes. He and his wife and General Electric and the out-of-power Republicans wanted to cut taxes as a way to get into the White House. Cutting taxes always works. But GE also wanted to develop a big military contracting industry. The former because that is what GE does as a business, cut costs and increase margins. The latter they wanted to do because that is also what GE does. It makes military hardware, including the key component of a jet fighter or bomber…the engine.

    Ronnie and GE decided that the thing to do was to renew the war on the Communists. Scare the shit out of the people by shouting, falsely: The Russians Are Coming! Of course, in reality, the Soviets had long since been dead broke. We knew it, Intelligence told us as early as the mid-70s but if we told you, then you would want to cut military spending. [Read more →]

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    We Need Unions Today More Than Ever.

    February 1st, 2010 · Courts and the Law, Culture, Economics, Politics, jobs

    Under the Bush Administration, unions found themselves once again under siege. The last 29 years have been a battle against corporate lobbyists, Right-Wing radio commentators, and congressmen-turned-lobbyists. Many in the public, including many Democrats have forgotten the debt we all owe to the literally dead and wounded union warriors in the long struggle for the 10-hour day, then the 8-hour day, the two-day weekend and the minimum wage.

    The fight most aptly was typified by a comment by George W. Bush, a man who was born with a silver foot in his mouth, who never worked an honest day in his life and who now is worth between $20 million and who knows—a billion? He said it to a woman in Omaha, Nebraska, a place that understands Republicans and a state that always votes for Republican presidents. She said that she was working three jobs. And he said…wasn’t that fantastic that she was doing that…that it was uniquely American!

    And it is. In most other areas of the world, where industry and technology have created modern post-industrial societies people work fewer hours—about 35 hours per week. They have health care, unemployment of about 40% of income for up to as many as 48 months, twice as much annual vacation as we do and retirement benefits that assure that no one who worked a lifetime ends up in poverty. [Read more →]

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    The Sunday Not-So-Funnies

    January 31st, 2010 · Media, Politics

    The Sunday morning news and opinion programs draw very few crowds. As with many things having to do with politics…only unimportant things like…life….and….death, the American people are more involved with people who sing, dance, tell awful jokes or appear on situation comedies where the entire universe of people laughing is relegated to the laugh track.

    Still, Washington watches and the serious-minded, a smaller and smaller group in this country, tend to watch on a regular basis. This Sunday, on a program called THIS WEEK, an ever enigmatic Barbara (WA-WA) Walters presided over a panel that included, absurdly, Roger Ailes, Professor Paul Krugman, Ariana Huffington, and the tidy George Will.

    Ailes is an anti-American, pro-corporation, war monger who runs the Fox News Channel. He is the former head of the Republican Party. He was hired to create a propaganda network for Rupert Murdoch, for the Neoconservative wing of the Republican Party, which now has gone so far Right that it has recently split, for international Fortune 100 Corporations, and for the Chamber of Commerce. [Read more →]

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    The Don Seigelman Travesty: How Neocons Corrupted the Justice System

    January 29th, 2010 · Courts and the Law, Politics

    I think anyone would agree that if a former Governor of a state, one who is running for a return to office and is ahead in the voting is falsely indicted by the local U.S. Attorney for the opposite political party, it is a very significant issue.

    If a governor can be indicted on false charges, convicted, and sent to prison for years, then how safe are you?

    This is exactly what happened in Alabama, and it has repercussions throughout society. We have to say “in our opinion” because these guys were good at their pseudo-Nazi tactics and Seigelman did do what they said. But was it criminal? When you own the jurors and you can get away with all kinds of things that cannot be proved unless you can break through the “omerta,” the wall of silence (that many remember from the old Alabama civil rights, KKK days) you can make someone a criminal for J-walking.

    Don Seigelman is an Alabama Democrat. And while one might joke that he is an endangered species, his situation is no joking matter. He was elected as Secretary of State, Attorney General, Lt. Governor and finally Governor of Alabama…all as a Democrat. Then came the Bush Administration and Karl Rove.

    Siegelman is a Catholic, though his children are raised Jewish. He is a Rhodes Scholar and although from Alabama, graduated law school from Georgetown. He studied international law at Oxford, and is a former cop and a black belt in karate. He is a complex, intelligent, agreeable man. In other words the exact opposite of Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama, of George W. Bush and of political Neocon fanatic Karl Rove.

    In the 2002 election for governor again, Seigelman was ahead, despite the vicious attacks and multiple lies of the opposition, a typical Rove campaign like that run against American patriot and war hero, Senator Max Cleland. Rove was reportedly overseeing the campaign and determined to remove the popular governor who seemingly could not be defeated, even in this heavily “Red” state. [Read more →]

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    Neoconservative Obstruction and How to End It.

    January 28th, 2010 · Politics

    Since 2007, there has been a Democratic majority in the House of Representatives and a slim majority of 51-49 took over in the Senate (although Senators Tim Johnson and Robert Byrd were often unavailable.) Consequently, the Neoconservative Obstructionist Party began to use the filibuster to shut down legislation. The filibuster requires that the majority party or any group wishing to pass legislation in the Senate can be forced to produce 60 votes to shut down a filibuster. Only after a cloture motion is filed and a 60-Senator vote passes can the legislation itself be voted on.

    Using this technique, the Republicans were able to delay the minimum wage bill, and shut down further legislation on over 142 occasions. In some cases, the Democratic Senate, would file a cloture motion and get the necessary 60 Senate votes to close off debate and have a vote. Sometimes, as in the case of some of the health care reform debates, they could not get the necessary votes to close debate and vote on the bill.

    After the Democratic Senate took over in January of 2007, and had a slim majority of 51-49, the Republicans filibustered 40 times by that July. Forty times the Republicans filibustered bills in less than 6 months. A Republican Senator told Democratic Senator Keith Conrad of North Dakota that it was a deliberate strategy on the part of Republican leadership to prevent the passage of any popular legislation by the Democrats.

    By December of 2007, the Republican obstructionist senators in the 110th Congress had put forward 62 filibusters which was a new record. By the end of the 110th Congress, the Republicans had filibustered 142 times not only a record but a record by more than 60. Sixty filibusters was almost the entire total for the 109th Congress.

    Cloture, or the act of ending a filibuster so that a vote can be taken on a piece of legislation, is filed by motion of the majority party. In many cases, the Democrats had to file for cloture and go through the time-consuming procedure simply because of the huge number of amendments and endless debate that Republicans carried on to extend debate and keep Congress from enacting laws.

    If all this obstruction were not enough, Senator Jim DeMint, Republican Senator from South Carolina, used an obscure and rare Senatorial objection, a procedure that put a hold on the President’s nominee for the head of the Transporatation Security Agency, Erroll Southers, a former FBI agent and counter terrorism expert. Southers is African-American. DeMint is from South Carolina. DeMint says that he put the hold on because Southers will not commit to whether or not he will make the agency employees union workers.

    DeMint has not put a hold on any Caucasian appointees of any department so far as we can determine. And since Senators have no relevant input on how a government agency manages its day-to-day employee relations, racism is the only logical reason why DeMint would hold up this essential anti-terrorism appointment of an exceptionally qualified African-American. Is Senator DeMint being profiled, as a white-southern politician? It should be pointed out that, without citing any specifics, DeMint, from the same area as Strom Thurmond, the hyper-racist segregationist, said that he wanted to “destroy” the programs of President Barack Obama, who is also, obviously, African-American. [Read more →]

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    It’s About Jobs…and the Economy…and How We Got Here!

    January 26th, 2010 · Economics, Politics, jobs

    Americans need jobs. Yes, you can say that the Gross National Product has increased a certain amount or fallen back a certain amount. You can say that our exports have risen as a percentage of our Gross National Product. You can say that the index of home values has risen against the year-over-year index. You can say that the market indices show that there is a rising investor confidence.

    But those things mean nothing. The essential starting point, that which is the cause of everything else in the economy…is a job. People need jobs. People need jobs to make money to survive. Right now, in addition to those who are gainfully employed, at least 15 million more people need jobs. That’s something like 17% of the total number of households or potential workers. But percentages don’t make any difference either. It is 100% when it happens to you.

    First, how did we get here? Second, how we can fix it? Of course, it will only be fixed, no matter what the solution, if enough people really start to scream bloody murder at their Senators and Representatives.

    The way we got here is actually very simple. We don’t have much industry in this country. The last big wave of new industry was the IT business which flourished under Clinton. After about eight straight years of increased jobs and national income, by 2000 people were doing pretty well. In the late 1990s, in some parts of the country, unemployment was less than 2%.

    But the IT business was beginning to cool off by 2000, and when Bush II came into office, in the typical Dubya, day-late and dollar-short way, he decided that he would take some of the surpluses that had been generated under Clinton and create tax cuts. He would give the money back to citizens because “they know how to spend it better than the government.”

    It turns out that they didn’t. His tax cuts immediately set in motion a different set of economic conditions that wiped out the potential deficit reductions that Clinton had put in place. What would have been at minimum a cut in the national debt from $5 trillion down to at least only $2 trillion, instead resulted in deficits, which eventually ended in an $11 trillion national debt by 2008 and a recession that cost almost another trillion in one year. [Read more →]

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    The Supreme Court: The Unthinkable May Have Happened.

    January 24th, 2010 · Courts and the Law, General, Politics

    For decades, if not for a century or more, we in the United States have been proud to believe that our Supreme Court has made decisions, for the most part, without the influence of partisan politics, public pressure, or historical tradition. No political party, no group of protestors or no matter the number of years a situation had been in place would divert them from the fairness of their judgment.

    But is that still true? Or has the Supreme Court of the United States, the last line of defense for the average citizen, been taken over by reactionary forces fueled by conservative corporate power and corruptive religious influence?

    In 1954 and 1955, in Brown v. Board of Education, the Supreme Court, in an era when segregations was coming to an end and violence dissention was an everyday part of the lives of many Americans, as African-Americans finally stood up for their equal rights, the Supreme Court made a statement about equality in life and education.

    In 1963, in Gideon v. Wainwright the Supreme Court decided that those accused of a crime have the right to legal counsel.

    In 1966, Miranda v. Arizona said that it could not be assumed that an accused knows that self-incrimination is not mandatory and must be advised of the right to remain silent.

    In 1973, Roe v Wade said that a woman has the right to abort a fetus unless it can survive outside the womb, even if that requires artificial assistance. In other words, the decision of whether or not to abort a fetus is not that of the state but of the woman, under the prescribed circumstances. Prior to this in almost all states, abortion for any reason was a crime.

    In 1978, in Buckley v.Valeo, the Supreme Court said that there can be limits on campaign contributions but that in general, spending money to influence elections is a form of free speech. .

    In all these decisions, which, in some respects made up for the bad decisions of earlier centuries, like the Dred Scott decision, that some human beings could be considered property of others, the Supreme Court seemed to moving forward with society as people became more egalitarian and more socially conscious. But, are they still? [Read more →]

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    The Supreme Court Says: Corporations, Yes–Americans, No.

    January 22nd, 2010 · Courts and the Law, Culture, Politics

    Yesterday, January 21, 2009 may have been a watershed moment in the short timeline of American history. Many say it was. If they are right, and you are among the vast middle class, no matter how benevolent your employer or how prudent your personal economics, your future is in jeopardy.

    The Supreme Court yesterday voted 5 to 4 to allow corporations the same right as you when it comes to contributing to election campaigns at all levels. You have the right to give as much as you wish– $5, $500 or $5,000. Corporations are now equal to you. They can give $5 or $500,000 or $50,000,000! Now you are both equals, thanks to the genius of Chief Justice Roberts and his band of reverse merry men.

    For many years, Congress has tried to prohibit this. In a series of votes by the Supreme Court in the past, corporations have been regulated in the ways in which they could influence election campaigns. It was in exactly this period of the last century when Theodore Roosevelt began to change the way Americans looked at the influence of industrial moguls and how that influence was adversely affecting American lives.

    You may feel that this Supreme Court is a bought-and-paid-for group of majority shills for Corporate America and the Republican Party. Many people who thought otherwise have assuredly changed their minds today. The word “radical departure” and “pro-active” court are being spread across the Internet like a sandstorm. Even Independents who only days ago voted a Republican into the Senate in Massachusetts are shaking their heads.

    This is a decision that is either so esoteric that it simply does not compute for the average citizen or it is a simple matter of elections having consequences. Justices Roberts and Alito were considered at the time of their appointments to simply be ciphers for the Bush Administration. No one wants to think that the members of our highest court are “on the take.” We always want to believe in their objectivity. Of course the Dred Scott case, in which pro-slavery forces won, would obviate that conclusion.

    Many have said already that this is the worst decision of the Supreme Court since the Dred Scott decision. And it could have such dire consequences—corporations literally taking over government completely by influencing enough key elections—that it may indeed turn out to be not only the worst decision of the Supreme Court but, in fact, the final decision of any consequence by the Supreme Court. If corporations, rather than controlling approximately half of government today, should suddenly control two-thirds or 80%…there would be no need for a Supreme Court. Neither Nazi Germany nor Fascist Spain needed a Supreme Court. All the lower courts were run by the Party. Decisions were a foregone conclusion from which no appeal was granted. [Read more →]

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    What’s the Matter with Massachusetts?

    January 20th, 2010 · Politics

    Scott Brown, the Republican member of the Massachusetts state legislature, who appeared nude in Cosmopolitan Magazine, is the new Senator from Massachusetts. He claims to be something like a Republican-Independent-Populist-Neoconservative-tea-bagger. His claim to populism is apparently that he owns a pickup truck. He apparently also likes baseball and football, as did George W. Bush.

    In a speech, at a victory rally, Brown said that he will vote against health care which he says that no one wants. Of course, it is easy for him to say, since Massachusetts itself voted almost the identical kind of health care for themselves years ago that is now the federal plan. Something like 80% say that they want to keep it. In addition, the people of Massachusetts prefer a pickup-truck driver and sports fan to an attorney general. We had that with Bush. How did that work out for us?

    Apparently, by voting Brown into office they are telling the rest of us that they simply don’t want the rest of the country to have health care, even if it would, as the CBO has said, save the American people $100 billion over ten years and save the lives of 47,000 people and keep a minimum of 500,000 people out of bankruptcy. It would also have put pressure on Massachusetts health insurance firms to finally lower their rates? Now? Not.

    If you have health insurance, your company is laughing so hard that they may call today an insurance-employee holiday. Brown has proudly already said that he will be the 41st and deciding Neoconservative vote for the health insurance industry and against the American people.

    Maybe it was the tax cuts. Tax cuts? Oh yes, that was what he promised last night. To create jobs by giving tax cuts! Where have we heard that before? Of course, tax cuts were given us by George W. Bush twice and by Ronald Reagan and during those two administrations we went into debt by $10 trillion and we lost, not gained, millions of jobs. The average unemployment under Reagan was 7.5%. Bush never created enough jobs to cover the ones lost in the recession–that began before but continued after–the 9/11 tragedy. If this is Scott Brown’s new solution to unemployment, he should go back to modeling in the nude. [Read more →]

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    Look For the Union Legacy.

    January 19th, 2010 · Culture, Economics, jobs

    America is a society that is governed by the principle of majority rule. In a free society, some form of majority rule is the most logical application of governance. For centuries, workers have organized under the same principles of majority rule in order to use the collective power of the group to create greater leverage with their employers.

    Assemblages of workers have organized into active participants in their own negotiations with employers. The Catholic Knights of Labor, the Industrial Workers of the World, the American Federation of Labor (AF of L) , the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) and the United Mine Workers, and new and aggressive unions such as SEIU and UNITE have all made their contributions to the betterment of wages and conditions for American workers.

    Was it necessary? Centuries after guilds and unions in Europe had been established and respected, unions failed here. In Philadelphia in 1791, for the first time in North America, carpenters went on strike for a 10-hour day and overtime. They lost. It would not be the last time, but the first of many, many times that American workers would lose a battle for better wages and hours. In the Industrial Revolution, men who had craft skills were often thrown out of work by the machine. Twelve-hour days and 64-hour weeks were not uncommon.

    In the late 18th century, cordwainers in Philadelphia who went on strike for better wages were jailed on conspiracy charges. Union workers who tried to negotiate less than 80-hour weeks and some minimal working rights for children were considered conspirators and terrorists. .

    In the mid-1800s most workers were fighting for a 10-hour day and 60-hour work week. Only by 1868 did any group successfully win an 8-hour day and 48-hour work week. And those employees were government workers and the agreement only existed on paper, never effectively in the workplace.

    Children were cheaper to hire and easier to control. Because life was often difficult on farms in the early days of the country, it was not uncommon for children to work along side their parents up to 60 hours a week. It was probably for that reason that children in the industrial workforce were common in cities as well until the early 1920s. Half the workforce in the cotton mills in the Northeast prior to 1900 were children under 15 and some were as young as 7. years old. In 1910, there were still 2 million children under 15 working in the labor force, even in difficult and often dangerous work, such as in coal mines. To put that in further perspective, in December of 1906 alone, some 3242 miners were killed in mining accidents. [Read more →]

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