Archive for February, 2010
Public Option Annie – with lyrics (guerrilla musical at AHIP conference)
February 28, 2010Millions of workers have no job prospects in ‘recovery’
February 28, 2010BY BRIAN WILLIAMS
Despite claims that the economy is starting to rebound, millions of workers face diminishing prospects for finding a job. Long-term unemployment in the United States is at its highest level since figures on this were first recorded.
In January, 6.3 million workers had been unemployed for six months or longer, according to the U.S. Labor Department. “That is more than double the toll in the next-worst period in the early 1980s,” the New York Times reported February 21.
Long-term unemployment for women between 45 and 64 years is up dramatically. “In 1983, after a deep recession, women in that range made up only 7 percent of those who had been out of work for six months or longer,” the Times said. “Last year, they made up 14 percent.”
Most companies are not seeking to hire new workers, but to increase the “productivity” they extract from their current workforce through increased speedup, thereby making working conditions more dangerous.
At Ford Motor Co., for example, in spite of a 25 percent increase in U.S. sales in January, the bosses plan to further cut the workforce—a jobless “recovery.” Only about 300 workers accepted a buyout proposal last month and the company said it will cut a shift of 900 workers from its Michigan Mustang factory in July, raising those laid off to 1,500. Ford has cut 47 percent of its North American workforce since 2006.
The government has no serious program to provide jobs to the millions of unemployed. Instead, the Barack Obama administration’s jobs proposal gives tax breaks to businesses and bailout funds to community banks.
To Save Democracy Czech Gov. may ban Ultra-right Group that Mirror US Tea bagger Party
February 28, 2010(Too bad the US gov is too stupid to do this)
Czech government moves
to ban ultraright group
BY CINDY JAQUITH
On February 17 the Czech Republic’s Supreme Administrative Court banned the Workers Party (DS), a small ultraright group. The presiding judge said the DS is “populist, homophobic, chauvinistic, and demonstrates racist tendencies.” The ban is “a preventive one, to maintain the constitutional and democratic order in the future.”
According to Radio Prague, many cops testified in court in favor of the ban, describing DS demonstrations against Roma, an oppressed nationality referred to disparagingly as “gypsies” who have been a target of rightist groups throughout Europe.
The DS holds no national seats in the Czech Republic and just three local ones. It is expected to get about 1.5 percent of the vote in the next election. DS leader Tomas Vandas said if the ban is not overturned on appeal, party members will simply regroup under a new name.
The move to ban the DS, whose racist, anti-working-class views make it widely detested, sets a precedent to go after workers organizations in the future. According to the Prague Daily Monitor, Czech interior minister Martin Pecina said that the courts “must have the courage to fight not only with rightist, but also leftist extremism that ‘promotes communism.’”
The government initiated the action leading to the DS’s dissolution, and all other Czech parties supported it, including the Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia (KSCM). Vojtech Filip, KSCM chairman, praised the ban on the DS and said he wasn’t worried about attempts to ban his own party. Several senators have called for outlawing the KSCM, which got 14 percent of the vote in European Parliament elections last June, coming in third.
25, 50 and 75 years ago
February 28, 2010 March 8, 1985
MARION, Alabama—An important rally for Black rights was held here February 17 to defend Black activists falsely charged with voting fraud.
The rally was part of a major defense campaign fighting a broadside attack on Black political rights conducted by the state and federal governments.
Berean Baptist Church was packed with more than 300 Blacks protesting the indictment of Albert Turner, Evelyn Turner, and Spencer Hogue, Jr.—now known as the “Perry County Three.” The three are veterans of the civil rights movement and led the fight for voting rights in this small town and throughout Perry County.
The U.S. Department of Justice, the FBI, and the State of Alabama are framing up and locking up Black leaders in order to halt and roll back the fight for Black political representation.
March 7, 1960
The Cuban government took another progressive step of possibly far-reaching consequences Feb. 20 when it passed a law setting up a Central Planning Board.
Speaking for the new board, which is headed by Premier Fidel Castro, Major Ernesto “Che” Guevara, president of the National Bank of Cuba, told the Wall Street Journal last week, “We desire to employ our limited resources to greatest advantage.”
Guevara cited Cuba’s one-crop economy as responsible for 700,000 unemployed in Batista’s days. Seizures of land and industry continue to be reported daily in the Cuban press, but Guevara assured an assembly of cane planters that they have the right to keep their “tiny pieces of land” and work them “as they wish.”
March 9, 1935
The National Recovery Administration, by official administration figures, has served to increase capitalists’ profits and lower workers’ living standards. The recent report by the Division of Research and Planning on the “Operation of the National Industrial Recovery Act” blows to bits the fantastic pretense that the NRA codes have acted to transfer purchasing power from the capitalists, the haves, to the workers, the have-nots.
So damning is the evidence uncovered by investigators working on the report that the whole intent of the NRA—as announced originally—is twisted to make an apology for the results. The codes, we now learn, were by no means intended to augment the wages and shorten the hours of wage earners in general.
True or false, the argument indicates the ingenuity of the “new deal” apologists.
Washington takes aim at social programs
February 28, 2010By Ben Joyce, Vol. 74/No. 9 March 8, 2010
http://www.themilitant.com/2010/7409/740902.html
President Barack Obama has begun a new effort to resuscitate health-care “reform” legislation after months of impasse, calling a February 25 meeting to discuss a compromise between the two bills passed in each house of Congress.
Meanwhile, the president signed an order February 18 establishing a commission that he said would end the “stranglehold of debt” on the U.S. economy. These initiatives aim to accelerate cuts already being carried out in government-financed health care across the country and in other social programs.
Three days before the health-care summit, the White House released a new version of the bill, which closely resembles the one passed by the Senate in December. The legislation continues to feature an insurance mandate, which would require everyone to buy health insurance or face fines of 2.5 percent of their income or $695 per year, whichever is greater. Cuts to Medicare and Medicaid are also part of the package.
While the mandate would provide a profit bonanza for the insurance giants, the Obama administration has attempted to blunt criticism by condemning “greedy” insurance companies. He is trying to convince workers that the situation will get worse without “reform.”
“The bottom line is that the status quo is good for the insurance industry and bad for America,” said Obama in his February 20 weekly address, responding to recent moves by some insurance companies to raise their rates by more than 20 percent. “And as bad as things are today, they’ll only get worse if we fail to act.”
While the capitalist rulers are pushing their health-care “reform,” other attacks on the social wage are in the works.
The stated aim of the commission established by the February 18 executive order is to reduce the growing debt held by the federal government, which stands at more than $12 trillion. Alan Simpson, former Republican senator from Wyoming, and Erskine Bowles, former White House chief of staff in the William Clinton administration, have agreed to head up the 18-member panel.
“Everything is on the table,” said Obama after he signed the executive order.
Senate minority leader Mitchell McConnell said the panel should focus primarily on cutting spending, and that it should “come up with a way to deal with our large unfunded mandate problem: Medicare, Social Security, Medicaid.”
Medicare, which provides government subsidized health care for the elderly and permanently disabled, and Medicaid, which aids people with “low income,” were established in 1965 when the U.S. ruling class was forced to make concessions as a direct result of the massive working-class movement that brought down Jim Crow segregation, and the urban uprisings for Black rights that went along with it. Social Security was expanded in 1972 with the creation of the Supplemental Security Income program for the blind, disabled, and elderly.
A February 19 article in the New York Times reports that “virtually every state is making or considering substantial cuts in Medicaid.” The state government in Nevada, for example, is proposing to end Medicaid coverage of adult day care, eyeglasses, hearing aids, and dentures. Kansas cut Medicaid payments to providers by 10 percent as of January 1.
The unprecedented cuts in Medicaid are taking place as enrollment in the government-funded health-care program for the poorest individuals is skyrocketing. A survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation released February 18 found that a record 3.3 million people enrolled in Medicaid from June 2008 to June 2009. Enrollment rose by 7.5 percent to 46.9 million and 13 states had double-digit increases.
While cutting Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare will be “on the table” of the bipartisan commission, two areas of government spending are not: the war budget and debt service. The interest paid to the bondholders by the federal government in 2009 was $383 billion and $451 billion in 2008.
This Is How FOX told the story: Police shot and killed at least five people Sunday after gunmen opened fired
February 28, 2010This is the REAL story:
Ex-Policeman Admits Covering for Killer Cops After Katrina
2-24-2010
A retired New Orleans police lieutenant pleaded guilty Wednesday to conspiring to cover up a deadly police-involved shooting in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
The plea in U.S. District Court by Michael Lohman, 42, is part of an investigation by federal agents into several police shootings of civilians in the chaotic days immediately following Katrina. Lohman faces up to five years in prison at his sentencing May 26.
Seven officers were charged with murder or attempted murder in the Sept. 4, 2005, shootings, six days after Katrina made landfall and then battered the region. The charges were later dismissed.
The incident happened when a group of police and other law enforcement officers in a large Budget rental truck confronted six people crossing the Danziger Bridge in eastern New Orleans, according to a police report.
Police fired at several of the people, killing Ronald Madison, a 40-year-old mentally disabled man, and James Brissette, 19, the report said. The officers claimed they were fired at first, although surviving witnesses dispute that claim and say police opened fire on unarmed people.
According to federal documents unsealed Wednesday, Lohman arrived after the shooting and encouraged the supervising officers to falsify their stories to “make it appear as if the civilians who were shot on the bridge had shot first at officers.” He also approved the planting of a gun at the scene to justify the shootings, according to the documents.
On Sunday, survivors of the Danziger Bridge incident, their families and lawyers applauded the guilty plea and said they hoped more will follow.
“The fact that you have an officer who supervised these officers admitting he conspired to cover up — it doesn’t get much better than that for vindication,” said Gary Bizal, attorney for Jose Holmes, who was shot several times in the stomach during the shooting. Holmes was initially charged with shooting at officers but those charges were later dropped, Bizal said.
The case is part of a wider probe that could bring more convictions, according to prosecutors. The FBI has confirmed its investigators are looking into at least three separate incidents where police shot eight people, killing four of them and badly injuring several others. Over the past 1½ years, federal investigators have summoned dozens of New Orleans police officers to testify before federal grand juries and seized police records.
Jim Letten, U.S. Attorney for eastern Louisiana, said Lohman is expected to cooperate with investigators and federal agents will continue with all the investigations.
“We will forge ahead,” he said. “Our evidence is strong.”
Federal investigators also are looking into the shooting death of Henry Glover, whose remains were found inside an abandoned, incinerated car in Algiers, La., and Matthew McDonald, a drifter from Connecticut who was shot and killed by police in the Faubourg Marigny neighborhood of New Orleans five days after the storm, the FBI said.
Source: http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2010-02-24-new-orleans-police_N.htm
=-=-=-=-=-=
RELATED:
Families in New Orleans demand justice for relatives killed by cops
August 6, 2007
Like Ronald Madison, Ronald Goodman, 40, was mentally retarded. Unable to get him admitted to a mental facility in February 2006, his family cared for him in his mother’s house. Without proper medical attention, though, his condition deteriorated. In May his mother called the cops to take him to a hospital.
According to Goodman, the cops arrived at the house around 8:00 p.m. They claimed they heard gunfire, brought in a SWAT team, and sealed off the block. At 2:30 a.m. the first shots were fired.
The cops refused to let the family enter the house or communicate with Ronald by bullhorn.
During the siege, Goodman said, family members overheard cops bragging on their radio, “We have him on the bed crying for his mama.”
Two hours later, after initially telling the family that Ronald was fine, they admitted he had been killed.
More: http://www.themilitant.com/2007/7129/712955.html
=-=-=-=-=
Cops sued for mass pet murders during Katrina
David Edwards and Muriel Kane, Published: Tuesday June 12, 2007
ABC’s Nightline described on Monday how, in the days following Hurricane Katrina, police killed many stranded pets that had been left behind by their owners. Residents of St. Bernard Parish have since claimed they were forced to leave behind their dogs, which were then wantonly killed by sheriff’s deputies.
The dog owners have filed a class action lawsuit, asserting their pets were executed in three schools that were supposed to serve as shelters.
One woman told ABC of being forced under threat of being handcuffed to hand over the tiny poodle she never saw alive again. Animal rescuers spoke in tears of being prevented from helping and how how the animals were not killed mercifully but were shot from a distance in massive volleys that left bullet holes in school walls. The deputies have claimed they shot only dangerous animals, but another pet-owner described hearing them joking about holding “target practice” with the pets.
More: http://rawstory.com/news/2007/Cops_sued_for_mass_pet_murders_0612.html
=-=-=-=-=
FOX news story:
September 04, 2005
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,168457,00.html
Bush’s Prayers To His God Helped Him Rule the Country And Kill Innocent People Around the World
February 28, 2010Well, you cannot disagree with the fact that the Christian religion and its bible is full of violence, murder, gang rape, oppression, animal sacrifice, incest, polygamy, and so many more fun things…so when Bush(it-head) speaks of praying and getting answers in how to lead, it is most-likely one of the only times he is not lying! Like most sociopath and psychopaths, they have a twisted sense of reality, and I would say that, when someone thinks there is a great magic being in the sky that talks to them, they are clearly mentally ill, but not liars. These people who do not believe they are wacko are the real wackos. Those that think they are wackos, are not. That is the general rule of thumb.
0-0-0-0
George W. Bush: Faith Helped In Tough Times
Former President Says He Needed Prayer To Lead
http://www.wsbtv.com/politics/22695209/detail.html
Posted: 10:34 pm EST February 27, 2010
Updated: 7:48 am EST February 28, 2010
Top Industries Giving to Members of Congress, 2010 Cycle
February 28, 2010Who’s got the most juice on Capitol Hill? Here’s a list of the top industries contributing to members of the 111th Congress during the 2009-2010 election cycle. The first list shows the overall 50 biggest industries. The other two highlight the top 25 industries giving to members of each of the two major parties. In all cases, the Top Recipient listed is the individual member of the 111th Congress who received the most from the industry.
Totals shown here include only the money that went to current incumbents in Congress.
http://www.opensecrets.org/industries/mems.php?party=A&cycle=2010
The USA Should Move to Institute International Standards on Child Rights
February 28, 2010Book Review
James G. Dwyer, The Relationship Rights of Children. Cambridge University Press, 2006, $ 55.00 hardcover.
The United States and Somalia stand as the only two nations in the world that refuse to sign the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, a document that lays down the basic rights and moral standing of children. Nor has the U.S. attempted to adopt the comprehensive legislation passed in many countries, such as England’s The Children Act, which focuses on all matters pertaining to children, with the child’s welfare squarely defining all legal actions.
James Dwyer, in his complexly argued book, The Relationship Rights of Children, believes that, while the United States goes far in protecting parents” rights, it is often at the expense of the welfare of children. He does not offer why the United States leans so far in favor of parents (there are complicated historical and cultural reasons for our “difference”), but instead makes a strong case, based on two centuries of philosophical reasoning, for why children deserve the same moral and legal consideration as adults, even when this consideration steps on the rights of adults.
The debate about children’s rights, when it takes place at all in this country, is usually carried on by legal scholars, with the occasional contribution of social scientists who either study child development or who offer measures of children’s economic and psychological well-being. With Dwyer, we are offered extensive arguments from the philosopher giants, John Stuart Mill, Immanuel Kant, John Rawls and others on the value of the moral autonomy of the individual. These philosophers, he admits, focus their arguments on adults, not children. In fact, he notes, John Stuart Mill, in his theory of liberty, specifically states: “[this] is meant to apply only to human beings in the maturity of their faculties.” Not so for Dwyer. He makes a compelling case that the same moral rights apply to children.
“Critically then, each of us competent adults has rights of self-determination because it is generally assumed as a moral matter that our interests matter, and matter equally regardless of our status in society. This empirical assumption certainly applies to children as well, and if we are to respect children as equals, we must extend the moral assumption to them also–that is, that their interests matter as much as do adults’ interests in state decision making.”
CIA Helping Columbia Punish Lawbreakers who Wire Tap Their Civilians?
February 28, 2010Excerpt:
“The two also discussed how to reform training for DAS personnel. There are currently criminal investigations pending against 40 DAS officials for alleged involvement in the illegal wiretapping of journalists and human rights activists.”
Wow….Columbia is so riddled with “bad” people that the USA CIA is chatting with them to help fix them up and help them investigate those who “illegal wiretapping of journalists and human rights activists.”
Too bad this doesn’t happen in the USA.
0-0-0-0-0-0
Story:
Uribe meets with CIA director
President Uribe met with CIA director Leon Panetta on Thursday to discuss
the Colombia-U.S free trade agreement and the overhaul of Colombia’s
scandal-ridden intelligence agency, DAS.
During the hour-long meeting, Panetta agreed to speak directly with
President Barack Obama about Uribe’s desire to see the trade agreement
passed soon.
Panetta also praised Uribe’s counter-narcotics efforts and his
hard-hitting policies against the FARC.
The two also discussed how to reform training for DAS personnel. There
are currently criminal investigations pending against 40 DAS
officials alleged involvement in the illegal wiretapping of journalists and human rights activists.
More: http://www.colombiareports.com/colombia-news/news/8439-uribe-meets-with-cia-director.html
Troubled Iraq vet charged with murder dies
February 28, 2010What most Americans do not know is that Conservatives, usually Republicans who claim to be God-fearing Christians who never served a day in the military in their life, are those who cut benefits and protective armor for our soldiers and veterans.
Hence the reason why I blame these types of people for MOST of the USA’s woes. In the history of the USA, it has been the Republican Party that has had the most control and power; they have been the party that has made the most decisions that have lead us to the disasters we endure.
Whether it be the “Great Depression” to the Iraq “War”, the Republican Party, littered with Fundamentalist Christian Extremists, constantly lie about who the real “Patriots” are…it is definitely NOT them.
Those people make me sick to my stomach and I wish they would be removed!
They are a threat to America, the World and to ALL Humankind, not to mention the Environment and the very planet we depend on to survive.
Here are some thoughtful quotes about the Fascists Pigs a.k.a. The Republican Terrorist Party USA:
”When fascism comes to America, it will come wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.” Sinclair Lewis
“Fascism is a religion. The twentieth century will be known in history as the century of Fascism.” Benito Mussolini
“Fascism is nothing but capitalist reaction.” Leon Trotsky
“Fascism is capitalism in decay.” Vladimir Lenin
“…the word ‘Fascism’ is almost entirely meaningless. In conversation, of course, it is used even more wildly than in print. I have heard it applied to farmers, shopkeepers, Social Credit, corporal punishment, fox-hunting, bull-fighting, the 1922 Committee, the 1941 Committee, Kipling, Gandhi, Chiang Kai-Shek, homosexuality, Priestley’s broadcasts, Youth Hostels, astrology, women, dogs and I do not know what else… almost any English person would accept ‘bully’ as a synonym for ‘Fascist’.” George Orwell
“When and if fascism comes to America it will not be labeled ‘made in Germany’; it will not be marked with a swastika; it will not even be called fascism; it will be called, of course, ‘Americanism.’” Halford E. Luccock
0-0-0-0-0
Excerpt:
“…was a member of an infantry special-operations unit – nicknamed the Lethal Warriors – and was deployed to Iraq in 2006….after soldiers returned……some were charged with committing violent crimes. The Army at that time was accused of failing to treat their combat stress.
The crimes included robberies, stabbings, beatings, domestic violence, shootings, attempted murders and homicides, The Gazette reported.”
=-=-=-=
The tragic story of a decorated soldier accused of a brutal murder came to an end in Sahuarita last week. He died at his mother’s home in Sahuarita where he had been recovering from surgery for wounds received in battle.
Source: http://readersupportednews.org/off-site-news-section/43-war/1113-ptsd-claims-another-victim
Blogspot.com Question
February 28, 2010Hello all. Thank you in advance for any help given to me.
I have my wordpress blog, and “cross post” to Facebook and Twitter with the WordPress option available.
However, I want to also have my posts show up on my Blogpsot blog, and I seem to be unable to export it there via the option at Blogspot.
I have the “XML file” but Blogspot seems to not beable to “import” it.
Anyone else have the problem or is there no option to post on WordPress and have it cross post on Blogspot like it does on Twitter and Face book?
Another quickie.
Is there a way for WordPress to “cross post” to a Yahoogroup”
Thanks again.
Corey.
The Real Reason Democrats Never Get Anything Done – The Democratic Party’s deceitful game
February 27, 2010by Glenn Greenwald
(updated below)
Democrats perpetrate the same scam over and over on their own supporters, and this illustrates perfectly how it’s played:
Politics Daily, October 4, 2009:
Jay Rockefeller on the Public Option: “I Will Not Relent”
Jay Rockefeller has waited a long time for this moment. . . . He’s [] a longtime advocate of health care for children and the poor — and, as Congress moves toward its moment of truth on health care, perhaps the most earnest, dogged Senate champion of a nationwide public health insurance plan to compete with private insurance companies.
“I will not relent on that. That’s the only way to go,” Rockefeller told me in an interview. “There’s got to be a safe harbor.”
President Obama often says a public option is needed to drive down costs and keep insurance companies honest. To Rockefeller, it’s both more basic and more vital: The federal government is the only institution people can count on in times of need.
The Huffington Post, yesterday:
Rockefeller Not Inclined To Support Reconciliation For The Public Plan
Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.V.) threw a wrench into Democratic efforts to get a public option passed through reconciliation, saying that he thought the maneuver was overly partisan and that he was inclined to oppose it. . .
“I don’t think the timing of it is very good,” the West Virginia Democrat said on Monday. “I’m probably not going to vote for that” . . . In making his sentiment known, Rockefeller becomes perhaps the most unexpected skeptic of the public-option-via-reconciliation route. The Senator was a huge booster of a government run insurance option during the legislation drafting process this past year.
In other words, Rockefeller was willing to be a righteous champion for the public option as long as it had no chance of passing (sadly, we just can’t do it, because although it has 50 votes in favor, it doesn’t have 60). But now that Democrats are strongly considering the reconciliation process — which will allow passage with only 50 rather than 60 votes and thus enable them to enact a public option — Rockefeller is suddenly “inclined to oppose it” because he doesn’t “think the timing of it is very good” and it’s “too partisan.” What strange excuses for someone to make with regard to a provision that he claimed, a mere five months ago (when he knew it couldn’t pass), was such a moral and policy imperative that he “would not relent” in ensuring its enactment.
Cont. http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/02/23/democrats/index.html
There’s No Reason Health Industry Execs Should Get Paid Millions a Year
February 27, 2010by jay31 at 7:09 pm
February 25, 2010
http://blogs.alternet.org/jay31/2010/02/25/health-insurance-and-the-wooly-mammoth/
A friend of mine who teaches an International Baccalaureate class in a local high school asked me to speak to her class about Social Justice. An article had recently appeared in the Indianapolis Star about Indiana CEO reimbursement and I remembered that Wellpointe’s CEO, Ms Angela Braly had received 14.86 million dollars in compensation in 2007. After asking if any of the students were related to Ms Braley and discovering one whose mother was “very good friends” I assured the class I was not going to berate Ms Braly but simply ask a question: “If everyone in the class and most people of reasonably ordinary means would agree that $250.00 an hour was very good pay indeed, why would anyone pay someone 28 times that amount? If the answer is that the board of directors of Wellpointe, not we citizens decided that, why would even our capitalist country with finite wealth allow them to decide that? Why would we allow that when it seems to matter a great deal to citizens how much we pay janitors and maids. Fifteen dollars an hour or less than $32,000 annually is almost universally seen as too much pay for the jobs they do! ??
That pay would be one 476th of Ms Braly’s annual income. The student whose mother was very good friends with Ms Braly objected that Ms Braly works very hard. I told her I was sure she did, but did she work as hard as all 476 janitors and maids together who might have been paid decent wages with her income?
There is more than one model of capitalism and indeed, U.S. capitalism of today is a far cry from the capitalism of our fathers in the early post World War II years. Until the mid 1970s U.S. capitalism acknowledged a responsibility to workers and the communities in which they operated. At that time, however — in the mid 70s — U.S. capitalism became focused exclusively on adding value to its bottom line, its management and its stockholders. This meant downsizing, outsourcing, and lobbying for reduced taxes. The result has been a massive loss of good jobs, the effective extinction of the middle class, and the burdening of private citizens with additional taxes in the amount of a 33% increase over those levied on individual citizens in 1943. As if this were not bad enough, U.S. workers have been placed in competition with the lowest paid workers in the world by various international trade agreements. If we speak of elephants in the living room, this is the wooly mammoth sprawling on our national couch.
The French call this new U.S. capitalism “capitalisme sauvage” and in 2006 they took to the streets to reject it. This new capitalism thrives on Wall Street while impoverishing Main Street (laid off workers and foreclosed home owners) and the evidence of that impoverishment is apparent throughout the country. In essence therefore, changing the capitalism in this country by limiting the pay of corporate management would not be an attack on the capitalism of our fathers, but more like a return to the capitalism of our fathers, a capitalism that insisted on honesty and fair play for all U.S. citizens, even those not super-rich. If the wooly mammoth were gone from our national living room we might find the resources needed to restore our infrastructure, and protect our citizens and our soldiers; there may even be room in the living room for the middle class once again.
Christian Extremists Consider ‘Secular Coalition for America’ A “Hate Group”, Call Obama admin: “biggest anti-religious zealots in the nation”
February 27, 2010Right wing slams White House for meeting with atheist ‘hate groups’
Some conservative commentators are accusing the Obama administration of inviting “hate groups” into the White House by holding a meeting with a coalition of secularist and atheist groups.
Officials from the Justice and Health and Human Services departments met Friday with representatives of the Secular Coalition for America, an umbrella group that includes American Atheists and the Council for Secular Humanism. The coalition called it “the first time in history a presidential administration has met for a policy briefing with the American nontheist community.”
President Barack Obama was not scheduled to make an appearance at the meeting, nor were any policy changes to be announced, McClatchy news service reported.
But that didn’t stop a number of religious conservative groups from attacking the meeting as a sign the president has an anti-religious agenda.
“It is one thing for Administration to meet with groups of varying viewpoints, but it is quite another for a senior official to sit down with activists representing some of the most hate-filled, anti-religious groups in the nation,” said Council Nedd, chairman of the religious advocacy group In God We Trust.
More: http://rawstory.com/2010/02/obama-meeting-atheist-hate-groups/
More Emails To and From John Yoo, “Torture Lawyer” Missing
February 27, 2010Justice Dept. Reveals More Missing E-Mail Files
By ERIC LICHTBLAU, February 26, 2010
Large batches of e-mail records from the Justice Department lawyers who worked on the 2002 legal opinions justifying the Bush administration’s brutal interrogation techniques are missing, and the Justice Department told lawmakers Friday that it would try to trace the disappearance.
At a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Senator Patrick J. Leahy, the Vermont Democrat who leads the panel, angrily demanded to know what had happened to the e-mail files, and he noted that the destruction of government records, including official e-mail messages, was a criminal offense. He said the records gap called into question the completeness of the department’s internal reviews of the work done by the lawyers in the Bush years.
The Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility, which spent more than four years investigating the handling of the legal opinions about interrogation policies after the Sept. 11 attacks, pushed to get access to a range of e-mail records and other internal documents from the Justice Department to aid in its investigation.
But it discovered that many e-mail messages to and from John C. Yoo, who wrote the bulk of the legal opinions for the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, were missing. The office disclosed the missing messages in a footnote to its final report, which was released last week.
“We were told that most of Yoo’s e-mail records had been deleted and were not recoverable,” officials from the Office of Professional Responsibility said in the footnote.
Also deleted were a month’s worth of e-mail files from the summer of 2002 for Patrick Philbin, another Justice Department lawyer who worked on the interrogation opinions. Those missing e-mail messages came during a period when two of the critical interrogation memos were being prepared.
=-=-=-=
Mr. Leahy said the disappearance of the e-mail messages raised “serious concerns about government transparency and whether the Office of Professional Responsibility had access to all the information relevant to the inquiries.”
The original interrogation memos “were intended to provide a golden shield to commit torture and get away with it,” Mr. Leahy argued, but he said questions about how the memos were developed and what role the White House played may go unanswered.
Mr. Leahy also noted that 22 million missing e-mail messages from the Bush White House were recovered just two months ago, including batches of communications that had been sought by the judiciary committee as part of its oversight work into the 2007 firings of United States attorneys and other matters.
Despite Running A Health Industry ‘Trade Association,’ Gingrich Says He Will Not Register As A Lobbyist
February 27, 2010Lobbyist: a person who tries to influence legislation on behalf of a special interest; a member of a lobby. (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/lobbyist)
Lobbyist legally need to “Register” as “Lobbyists”
The White House seems to be working on ending the obvious abuse of politicians “Lobbying” without being “Lobbyists”:
“The release also compliments our new lobbying rules, which in addition to closing the revolving door for lobbyists who work in government have also emphasized expanding disclosure of lobbyist contacts with the government. And the President capped the year off by calling in the State of the Union for bold transparency initiatives (pdf) as part of his reform agenda for 2010 and the years ahead.” – ( Make Your Voice Heard, by Tina Tchen, February 23, 2010 http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2010/02/23/make-your-voice-heard)
=-=-=-=-=
Story:
Despite Running A Health Industry ‘Trade Association,’ Gingrich Says He Will Not Register As A Lobbyist
By Lee Fang, 2-27-10
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich has founded several businesses, including a for-profit health care firm called the “Center for Health Transformation” (CHT) and a communications firm called the “Gingrich Group.” CHT serves approximately 94 health industry corporations and lobby groups, including health insurance (BlueCross BlueShield Association, WellPoint, AHIP, UnitedHealth), health IT (L-3 Enterprise, Microsoft, IBM), and pharmaceutical companies — with each paying up to $200,000 annually. And although CHT has no registered lobbyists or lobbyists on retainer, Gingrich has used his CHT business to promote his clients’ interests in Congress
Gingrich:
Meets With Lawmakers To Help Craft Specific Policy, Legislation
Helps Clients Obtain Specific Financial Opportunities From Legislation
Advises Lawmakers On Legislative Strategy
Coordinates Meetings Between Corporate Clients, Public Officials
More: http://thinkprogress.org/2010/02/27/newt-gingrich-lobbyist/
Source: Author Lee Fang was interviewed on the Mike Feder show this evening on Sirius Left channel 146.
GOP “Compromise” on Health Care Reform: How Do You Cut a Baby in Half?
February 27, 2010Obama: Compromise on health if GOP is serious
The Associated Press
Saturday, February 27, 2010; 7:56 AM
WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama said Saturday that he’s ready to compromise with Republicans if they’re serious about it but that his health care overhaul must go forward.
Obama’s comments in his weekly Internet and radio address, two days after an all-day bipartisan summit across from the White House, were the latest sign that Democrats are girding to try to plow sweeping health care legislation through Congress with no Republicans on board.
Success will require colossal efforts on the part of Obama and Democratic leaders in Congress to round up votes after a year of corrosive debate and a Senate special-election upset that threw the overhaul effort into limbo last month. But Obama and the Democrats reject the piecemeal approach sought by Republicans and have no intention of scrapping their 10-year, $1 trillion bill and starting over as the GOP demands.
“I am eager and willing to move forward with members of both parties on health care if the other side is serious about coming together to resolve our differences and get this done. But I also believe that we cannot lose the opportunity to meet this challenge,” Obama said.
“The tens of millions of men and women who cannot afford their health insurance cannot wait another generation for us to act. Small businesses cannot wait. Americans with pre-existing conditions cannot wait. State and federal budgets cannot sustain these rising costs.
“It is time for those of us in Washington to live up to our responsibilities to the American people and to future generations,” Obama said. “So let’s get this done.”
More: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/27/AR2010022700999.html
Like George W. Bush’s Gift From the Supreme Court, Iran’s Election Still Questioned
February 27, 2010Ahmadinejad Won, Get Over It!
US conventional wisdom insists Iran’s President Ahmadinejad stole last year’s election, but proof is lacking, says Robert Parry. February 27, 2010
Many in the West may agree that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is an unpleasant politician with a rhetorical tendency to bluster about Iran’s power and to foolishly question the historical accuracy of the Holocaust, but that doesn’t answer the crucial question of whether he was democratically reelected.
Despite what you may have read in the New York Times and the Washington Post, the available evidence is that Ahmadinejad did win last June’s presidential election and that efforts – embraced by nearly the entire U.S. news media – to oust him amount to yet another case of seeking the removal of a democratically chosen leader.
Though widely ignored by the major American news media, a recent study by the Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) at the University of Maryland found little evidence to support allegations of fraud, nor to conclude that most Iranians view President Ahmadinejad as illegitimate.
PIPA analyzed multiple polls of the Iranian public from three different sources, including some before the June 12 election and some afterwards. The study found that in all the polls, a majority said they planned to vote for Ahmadinejad or had voted for him. The numbers ranged from 52 to 57 percent just before the election to 55 to 66 percent after the election.
“These findings do not prove that there were no irregularities in the election process,” said Steven Kull, director of PIPA. “But they do not support the belief that a majority rejected Ahmadinejad.”
Book Review: ‘Shadow Elite: How the Worlds New Power Brokers Undermine Democracy, Government, and the Free Market’ by Janine R. Wedel
February 27, 2010
BuzzFlash.com’s Review
This is an essential book in understanding how an elite of powerful people circulate between government, corporations, Wall Street and “K” Street and ultimately control public policy through control of Congress (through campaign contributions and appeal to fellow elites in ofice) and appointments to the Executive Branch (think Larry Summers and Timothy Geithner).
These mostly white males (and some women) view themselves as Masters of the Universe who know what’s better for America and the emerging international elite class than the hoi polloi known as voters in a democracy.
What makes Wedel’s book so valuable is that she doesn’t indulge in conspiracy theories that can’t be proven; she provides the facts and describes how this informal group of elitists is fluid in moving among the powerful institutions that control public policy, including government.
Wedel connects the dots and provides crucial insight into how the elites control policy, distribution of wealth, and acts of war, among other issues that should be decided by the citizens of the United States.
Much of this can be attributed to the globalized economy where sovereignty takes a second place to multi-national corporate and financial interests. The right wing disparages the United Nations but reveres the global corporations who really don’t have any national allegiance. How tragically ironic is that for America?
“Shadow Elite” is a book that you won’t find discussed much in the corporate media, because it reveals how the corporate world and the players who move between business and government largely control our national policies, with Congress and even the President often unable to do anything but ratify the dictates of the real decision makers, who have little interest in the welfare of the United States, but rather believe in a mythical international free market that exploits the cheapest labor and lets international financial institutions gamble assets without regulation.
“SHADOW ELITE is a powerful, searing work about how, over time, public and private have become blurred three out of four people doing the work of the federal government today are actually private contractors. Self-dealing and corruption have become endemic, with those wielding political influence and getting rich at our expense becoming less and less accountable. With this book, Janine Wedel has provided a magnificent public service”
- Charles Lewis, Bestselling author and founder of the Center for Public Integrity
“We think of networks and flexibility as good and desirable, but Wedel shows their dark side. In a study as fascinating as it is disturbing, she delves into political actors and groupings where influence is not linked to accountability. This is a path-breaking exploration of a part of our world that we really need to understand.”
- Robert Jervis, Adlai E. Stevenson Professor of International Politics, Columbia University
“Governments and administrations come and go, but not so a new breed of power brokers, who always seem to pop up just where the action is. Wearing different hats, they press their agendas in venue after venue. According to award-winning public policy scholar and anthropologist Janine Wedel, these are the “shadow elite,” the prime movers in a vexing new system of power and influence.
Wedel charts how these players make public decisions without public input in realms from domestic to foreign and financial policy. Maneuvering through their many spheres of influence, they challenge both governments’ rules of accountability and businesses’ codes of competition, ultimately answering only to each other. From the Harvard economists who helped privatize post-Soviet Russia and the neoconservatives who helped privatize American foreign policy for thirty years (culminating with the debacle that is Iraq) to many lesser-known global operators, these players flout once-sacrosanct boundaries between state and private, bureaucracy and market. This new breed, unseen by most, is steadily gaining power.
Original and eye-opening, Shadow Elite gives us the tools we need to recognize these players and understand the new system which we ignore at our peril.”
Buy more progressive premiums to support BuzzFlash progressive news and commentary (we accept no advertising, corporate or otherwise to maintain our complete independence) by going to The BuzzFlash Progressive Marketplace.
Read The Full Review: http://www.buzzflash.com/store/items/1904
Terrorist Plane Crasher Joe Stack More Accepted Than Most Terrorists
February 27, 2010“Those murderers were from Saudi Arabia, they had dark complexions and unpronounceable names; Joe Stack was your next door neighbor, an engineer from Pennsylvania by way of Texas. His fervor was more acceptable to us, less foreign to the American mind. He hated the government. He hated taxes. His sickness, and his violence, already live here, and this will not be the last time we see the smoke.”
More:
Joe Stack Not A Terrorist? Why Do Only Muslims Get Called The T-Word?
Managers were bribed to purchase inferior ingredients such as moldy tomato sauce
February 27, 2010The Latest in Food Ingredients: Bribery!
This post first appeared on Food Politics.
Posted by marionnestle at 4:35 pm
February 26, 2010
http://blogs.alternet.org/speakeasy/2010/02/26/the-latest-in-food-ingredients-bribery/
Who knew that the food ingredient business ran on bribes? The New York Times (print edition) calls its report of the latest scandal, “Hidden Ingredient: The Sweetener.” By “sweetener,” the Times is not refering to aspartame or even Splenda: it means bribes.
You are an ingredient supplier and want a big food company like Kraft, Frito-Lay, or Safeway to buy your products? Easy. Bribe their purchasing managers.
In my book, Food Politics, I discuss food industry sales tactics ranging from soft (advertising, lobbying) to hard (manipulating media, cozying up to federal officials, and suing critics). These, as I point out, are legal. Fixing prices, is not. Neither is bribery.
This is not a pretty story. Managers were bribed to purchase inferior ingredients such as moldy tomato sauce. Companies relied on the suppliers for quality assurance.
The moral: companies need to do their own product testing and consumers need to demand that they do.
Thanks to William Neuman of the Times for his excellent investigative report, handicapped as it was by not being able to interview the jailed perpetrators.
Republican Politician Implies Blacks Were Better Off Under Slavery
February 27, 2010Reminds me of when mother/monster hen Barbara Bush stated that those who lost their homes during the Katrina disaster just days before, were now living in a make-shirt homeless shelter were better off than before, when they had their homes.
=-=-=-=
GOP REP. IMPLES BLACKS WERE BETTER OFF UNDER SLAVERY
Source: http://www.alternet.org/rss/breaking_news/124659/
Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ) is well known as a diehard opponent of abortion. He formerly served as the executive director of the Arizona branch of the Family Research Institute and has called President Obama an “enemy of humanity” because of his pro-choice stance.
Franks may have gotten himself in more trouble than he anticipated, however, when he insisted to blogger and political activist Mike Stark that abortion was worse for African-Americans than slavery.
“In this country we had slavery for God knows how long,” Franks told Stark. “And now we look back on it and we say, ‘Well how blind were they, what was the matter with them.’ … And yet today half of all black children are aborted. Half of all black children are aborted. Far more black children, far more of the African-American community, is being devastated by the policies of today than were being devastated by the policies of slavery.”
Stark’s own comment on the interview is that “it sounds an awful lot to me like the Congressman is suggesting that blacks were better off as slaves. To be fair, Congressman Franks is as sincere as he is conservative. The issue of life never falls out of first place in his legislative priority list. I don’t believe for one second that he intends to insult anyone; I don’t think he sees the racism (or paternalism) in what he’s saying. Still…. This is pretty bad.”
Franks did go on to acknowledge, “Sometimes we’re a little bit emphatic and sometimes we get angry and say things that we shouldn’t say. And I apologize right here in front of everybody by saying things, especially if they’re not true, that are intemperate. But I don’t want to hide from the truth.”
Full story: http://rawstory.com/2010/02/gop-rep-implies-blacks-slavery/
Bye Bye American Pie
February 27, 2010Source: http://www.brasschecktv.com/page/810.html
Uncle Sam points out the problems we have when we buy cheap products from China. “Buy, Buy American Pie” was written and performed by the Capitol Steps. Visit them at www.CapSteps.com This is a parody and involves exageration. Tastykakes are made in the United States and not in China and definitely contain no harmful ingredients. Visit www.Tastykake.Com. Little Debbie is also located in the United States and not in China and their products contain no harmful ingredients. Visit www.LittleDebbie.Com.
Ten REAL reasons to avoid products made in China: 1. Products made with hazardous materials 2. Lack of quality control, monitoring, and safety regulations, plus corruption 3. Tainted food, deadly drugs, adulterated products 4. High levels of antibiotics and toxins in seafood 5. Exploitation of the Chinese workforce and use of child labor 6. Predatory pricing and unethical business practices 7. Massive industrialization at the expense of the environment 8. Deforestation and mining has destroyed the water supply in Asia 9. Chinese military manufactured goods 10. Manufacturing in forced (laogai) labor camps and prisons
Very Conservative – IQ 95 & Very Liberal IQ 106
February 27, 2010(American really have been dumbed down, and it is only going to get worse)
Excerpt: “”More intelligent people don’t have more children, so moving away from the trajectory is not going to happen,”
LIBERALISM, ATHEISM, MALE SEXUAL EXCLUSIVITY LINKED TO IQ
By Elizabeth, February 26, 2010 5:03 p.m. EST
Political, religious and sexual behaviors may be reflections of intelligence, a new study finds.Evolutionary psychologist Satoshi Kanazawa at the the London School of Economics and Political Science correlated data on these behaviors with IQ from a large national U.S. sample and found that, on average, people who identified as liberal and atheist had higher IQs. This applied also to sexual exclusivity in men, but not in women. The findings will be published in the March 2010 issue of Social Psychology Quarterly.
The IQ differences, while statistically significant, are not stunning — on the order of 6 to 11 points — and the data should not be used to stereotype or make assumptions about people, experts say. But they show how certain patterns of identifying with particular ideologies develop, and how some people’s behaviors come to be.
=-=-=-=
Religion, the current theory goes, did not help people survive or reproduce necessarily, but goes along the lines of helping people to be paranoid, Kanazawa said. Assuming that, for example, a noise in the distance is a signal of a threat helped early humans to prepare in case of danger.
“It helps life to be paranoid, and because humans are paranoid, they become more religious, and they see the hands of God everywhere,” Kanazawa said.
Participants who said they were atheists had an average IQ of 103 in adolescence, while adults who said they were religious averaged 97, the study found. Atheism “allows someone to move forward and speculate on life without any concern for the dogmatic structure of a religion,” Bailey said.
=-=-=-=-=
Vegetarianism, while not strongly associated with IQ in this study, has been shown to be related to intelligence in previous research, Kanazawa said. This also fits into Bailey’s idea that unconventional preferences appeal to people with higher intelligence, and can also be a means of showing superiority.
=-=-=-=
Conservative Christian Policitian Jim Bunning Wants to Leave One Million Americans With No Insurance…Says “Tough Shit”
February 27, 2010Oh…the Christian terrorist movenent in the USA is such a reflection of the history of what happens to ALL religions eventually!
Here are a few stories about this wonderful man and how he and he alone is willing to harm working and non-working Americans:
=-=-=-=
SENATOR BUNNINGS BLOCK UNEMPLYMENT BENEFITS EXTENSION
By David Lightman and Halimah Abdullah, McClatchy Newspapers David Lightman And Halimah Abdullah, Mcclatchy Newspapers – Fri Feb 26, 6:20 pm
Some unemployment benefits could dry up Monday. Newly laid-off workers wouldn’t get federal help with health insurance premiums.
Road and transit bills could go unpaid, Medicare payments to doctors would stay high and rural satellite reception could be affected, all thanks to Sen. Jim Bunning’s decision to block legislation that would keep alive a host of programs that expire Sunday night.
The Kentucky Republican, according to several sources, told Democratic colleagues “tough s—” Thursday when they tried to get him to change his mind.
More: http://news.yahoo.com/s/mcclatchy/3437997
=-=-=-=-=
ONE SENATOR v.s. WORKING AMERICANS
Sen. Jeff Merkley, U.S. Senator from Oregon
And, that point was driven home even further while I was in the middle of speaking to the challenges faced by our working families and our seniors, when the Senator from Kentucky exclaimed, “tough luck”.*
These challenges faced by our workers and our families are very real. Unemployed Americans need to feed their families. They need to take their kids to the doctor. They need to pay their rent and their mortgage. It is truly shameful for anyone to wage an attack on unemployed Americans who are struggling in this troubled economy. This 30 day extension of unemployment insurance and COBRA benefits is a very modest and reasonable proposal – and we offered the Senator from Kentucky plenty of time to debate.
More: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeff-merkley/one-senator-vs-working-am_b_479097.html
=-=-=-=-=
CLUELESS IN KENTUCKY
Published: February 26, 2010
Kentucky has lost about 60,000 jobs since the end of 2008. In December, its unemployment rate stood at 10.7 percent, the highest since 1983. So what exactly is going on in the minds of Kentucky’s two Republican senators, Mitch McConnell and Jim Bunning?
This week, Mr. Bunning single-handedly shot down a one-month extension of unemployment benefits, along with a federal subsidy for the unemployed to maintain health coverage. Two weeks earlier, Mr. McConnell, the minority leader, objected to a one-week extension to give senators time to draft a longer-term package.
It should be a no-brainer to extend unemployment insurance when around 1 out of every 10 workers is unemployed. Standard unemployment benefits end at 26 weeks, yet 6.3 million workers have been out of work for more than 27 weeks. Congress has provided a series of extensions, and without another one, 400,000 people will lose their benefits in a matter of weeks.
Senator Bunning once cared about the unemployed. When the benefit was due to expire in November, he joined a unanimous vote to extend it until the end of February. “Kentucky has been hit hard by the current economic downturn,” he said at the time. It still is, but Mr. Bunning refused to consider the extension unless it was paid for with funds from the fiscal stimulus plan. For years, Mr. Bunning didn’t seem to have a problem with blowing up the deficit for the Iraq war and tax cuts. Now he’s a deficit hawk when it comes to average Americans.
Maybe he’s preoccupied. At one point during a debate on the issue Thursday night, he complained about missing the Kentucky-South Carolina basketball game.
Intelligent Design is Worse than Ignorance
February 26, 2010February 25, 2010 by hambydammit
Christians will often say, “The universe cannot possibly have been created in exactly this way without intelligent design.” The most common way to refute this is to trot out the anthropic principle, which essentially points out that our existence only proves that our existence is possible. For whatever reason, this refutation, though perfectly sound, seems to come up short on emotional impact.
I want to look at this in a little bit more detail to give you a little bit more ammunition. To begin with, let’s look at the theist’s claim a little more closely:
Without God, this particular incarnation of the universe is impossible.
This can be rewritten slightly to express the same idea with words that will be easier for us to work with:
Besides God, there are no other possible explanations for this particular incarnation of the universe.
Cont. http://hambydammit.wordpress.com/2010/02/25/intelligent-design-is-worse-than-ignorance/
In Congress, Party Loyalty Trumps Conscience
February 26, 2010Llewellyn King
All those people who treat politics like baseball may have to start again. All those statistics about what happened in off years down through our history, all those references to recurring political phenomena, like the impact of the weather on elections, are null and void.
What’s changed?
We’re moving from government as we have known it — a system of two parties modulated by bipartisanship on many issues, where factors other than ideology matter to members of Congress — to a new order in which party loyalty trumps conscience.
Congress is acting more like a parliament than a congress. People who have been clamoring for a Congress more like the British Parliament, with features like “Prime Minister’s Question Time,” have got more than they wanted. They’ve got something like the British party system, and it is not a step forward.
Cont. http://whchronicle.com/2010/02/in-congress-party-loyalty-trumps-conscience/
Two lions and a dog live together in a zoo in Romania
February 26, 2010Whirlpool took $19 million in stimulus money…Now closing, moving to Mexico
February 26, 2010FROM: American Rights at Work E-Activist Alerts:
Whirlpool is closing a refrigerator manufacturing plant in Evansville, Indiana, putting more than 1,100 people out of work.
Even worse, Whirlpool will continue to produce these refrigerators, but not in Evansville and not anywhere else in America.
They are planning to manufacture them in Mexico, where weaker labor and environmental laws make them “cheaper” for Whirlpool to produce.
This is outrageous and unacceptable, especially in light of Whirlpool’s profitability and the $19 million in stimulus money Whirlpool recently received from the federal government. Tell Whirlpool: Those are OUR economic recovery funds, not Mexico’s!
We’re outraged. So we’re joining with our friends from the AFL-CIO to protest Whirlpool’s decisions and demand good jobs in America. Next Friday in Evansville, local workers, labor leaders, and AFL-CIO President Rich Trumka will personally deliver a petition to Whirlpool. Can you add your name?
Sign the petition to Whirlpool: Keep it made in America and save our jobs!
Too many people have lost their jobs. Too many jobs have been sent overseas. Enough is enough! Whirlpool’s management can’t take our money, shut down our factories, lay off our workers, and kill our American Dream. Together we’re going to deliver a loud and clear message to Whirlpool: keep it made in America and save our jobs.
Sign the petition today: http://action.americanrightsatwork.org/campaign/whirlpool_made_in_america
Together we will fight against corporate greed and for good jobs. Together we will rebuild the American economy, because everyone deserves a good job NOW!
Thanks for all you do to defend workers’ rights.
Sincerely, Manny, Liz, Elizabeth B. and the American Rights at Work team
P.S. We need to make sure as many of America’s workers know what Whirlpool is planning, as soon as possible. Once you’ve taken action, be sure to forward this message to all your friends and family right away, and ask them to take action too!
