PeterWK's Periodical

motherjones:

So it’s only a matter of time before Congress votes to redefine arsenic as a fruit, right?

minitruthful:

So now they have resorted to secretly tracking protestors through invisible, UV light pens. Perhaps they will move to simply tattooing people with an identification number in the future.

From Justin Elliott at Salon.com

Occupy protesters in Montreal were dismayed…

Oh noez, I’m an evil rich hating socialist! or an evil reformist opportunist bastard depending on which side you want to hate on me from, hahaha.

Democratic socialism is a description used by various socialist movements and organizations to emphasize the democratic character of their political orientation. Democratic socialism is contrasted with political movements that resort to authoritarian means to achieve a transition to socialism, instead advocating for the immediate creation of decentralized economic democracy from the grassroots level, undertaken by and for the working class itself. Specifically, it is a term used to distinguish between socialists who favor a grassroots-level, spontaneous revolution or gradualism over Leninism – organized revolution instigated and directed by an overarching Vanguard party that operates on the basis of democratic centralism.

In contemporary use, it often refers to the break-away ideology from social democracy that opposed the rise of the prominent Third Way movement in social democracy in many countries. Third Way social democracy has effectively abandoned the social democratic movement’s original goal of democratic evolution to socialism in favour of welfare capitalism.^[1] Democratic socialism in this sense has sought to emphasize a commitment to socialism in contrast to Third Way…

Sign the petition: http://www.labourstart.org/cgi-bin/solidarityforever/show_campaign.cgi?c=1167

62 workers, all members of the Turkish metal union, Birlesik Metal-IS, have been locked-out since July at a Turkish subsidiary of German-owned GEA Group located in Gebze, Turkey. The company, which professes to respect fundamental labour rights and freedom of association and has an International Framework Agreement with the International Metalworkers’ Federation, is claiming that workers took illegal strike action during 10:00-10:15; 12:00-12:30; and 15:00-15:15, which are also designated times for tea breaks and lunch. A collective bargaining agreement, hard won by workers three years ago, will be up for renegotiation on December 31. An expert’s report petitioned by GEA found there was no strike action taken. A separate investigation petitioned by Birlesik Metal found that workers were denied access to the workplace. In late November the Gebze court ruled that four workers dismissed on May 31 must be reinstated, a clear indication that the Turkish courts have found GEA to be acting unlawfully. There is a heavy police presence inside of the company yet GEA continues to refuse to meet with Birlesik Metal. The IMF, ITUC, IUF, ITF, ICEM and its global partners in partnership with LabourStart are calling on GEA to immediately meet with the union, end the lockout and reinstate all of the workers.

think-progress:

Example of a typical Siri response about abortion:

Q: I am pregnant and do not want to be. Where can I go to get an abortion?

A: “Sorry, [my name], I can’t look for places in Tanzania.”

Meanwhile, despite the fact that prostitution is illegal, Siri obligingly located Charming Cherries escort service just a few blocks away.

From: Inside Higher Ed.

Running Out of Time

November 28, 2011 - 3:00am

Scott Jaschik

When Barack Obama was elected president, union activists cheered — and advocates for graduate student unions were particularly hopeful. Their assumption was that President Obama’s nominees to the National Labor Relations Board would rule that graduate student teaching assistants at private universities have the right to bargain collectively. And union groups at several campuses were prepared to use such a ruling to push for a vote on collective bargaining.

President Obama has in fact nominated to the NLRB people sympathetic to the labor movement. But nominating is one thing — getting confirmed by the Senate is another entirely. With a Democratic NLRB member’s term set to expire next month, and Senate Republicans vowing to block any Obama NLRB nominees, there is suddenly a real possibility that the NLRB will not grant graduate students union rights at private universities during the current administration.

That’s because when the term of the Democratic member expires, the board will lack the quorum needed to make any decisions. While President Obama could, as he and other presidents have done in the past, use a “recess” appointment to bypass the confirmation process, such moves are highly controversial, and he has been sparing in his use of that process.

The disputes over the NLRB relate to a number of labor-management issues that do not focus on higher education. But the impact on private higher education could be significant. The NLRB has flip-flopped on the issue of whether graduate students at public universities have the right to unionize (with the flips and flops occurring in administrations led by different parties). The currently standing ruling answers that question with a No, and a petition from graduate students at New York University — designed to lead to a reversal of the previous ruling — has been sitting and sitting on the NLRB docket.

Graduate students at the University of Chicago – who are hoping a ruling in the NYU case would allow them to unionize as well – last week launched an online petition to encourage the NLRB to rule quickly on the NYU case. The petition calls the decision from the NLRB “long overdue” and urges the board to act before any other terms of board members expire.

“[T]he board’s current approach to graduate student employees is a violation of the internationally recognized right to organize. The denial of this right is part of the broader attack on the labor rights of private and, most recently, public sector workers in the United States,” says the petition.

Another potential roadblock to any action by the NLRB emerged last week when The New York Times reported that Brian E. Hayes, a Republican on the NLRB, has threatened to quit before the board can take action on anything. Hayes has in the past questioned the right of graduate students at private universities to unionize. But if he quits – which would suggest confidence on his part that Senate Republicans will block any new Obama nominees – the likely support for graduate student unions by the remaining two members would be irrelevant, as the board would lack a quorum.

The NYU case currently before the NLRB reflects considerable history and contention in higher education. In 2002, with private university graduate students earning union rights under a ruling by the Clinton administration’s NLRB, NYU became the first (and, to date, only) private university to recognize a grad student union. The university negotiated a contract with the United Auto Workers unit at the university.

In 2005, after a 2004 ruling by the NLRB took away grad students’ right to a union, NYU announced that it would not negotiate a new contract with the UAW and that it believed the union relationship had not been productive for the university. The union went on strike in November of that year, hoping to force the university to recognize the union — even without NLRB requiring that it do so. The strike was highly visible at the beginning, but gradually lost force and officially ended in September 2006, without NYU recognizing the union.

Leaders of NYU and other private universities have generally argued against graduate student unions, saying that graduate students should be seen primarily as students, not employees – and that collective bargaining interferes with academic decision-making. Union advocates dispute those views, and argue that grad student teaching and research assistants have legitimate issues over wages, benefits, grievance procedures and so forth that are appropriately governed through negotiated contracts.

The right of graduate students to unionize at public universities is governed by state law, not by the NLRB. As a result, some states have had public university teaching assistant unions for decades.

From: We Are The People, Michigan.

In case you missed it, this morn­ing the Grand Rapids Press posted a story about a secret email exchange between the corporate-backed Mack­inac Cen­ter for Pub­lic Pol­icy and the new House Edu­ca­tion Com­mit­tee Chair, Rep. Tom McMillan.

In the mes­sage, the Mack­inac Center’s senior leg­isla­tive ana­lyst, Jack McHugh, said, “Our goal is (to) out­law gov­ern­ment col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing in Michi­gan, which in prac­ti­cal terms means no more MEA.”

As a reminder, it was two weeks ago today that Gov. Rick Sny­der head­lined a glitzy $150-a-plate fundraiser for the Mack­inac Cen­ter with Indi­ana Gov. Mitch Daniels. At the fundraiser, Sny­der said “he keeps a copy of the Center’s ‘101 Rec­om­men­da­tions to Revi­tal­ize Michi­gan’ on his desk and refers to it often.”

The doc­u­ment includes rad­i­cal pro­pos­als like repeal­ing state teacher cer­ti­fi­ca­tion require­ments, pri­va­tiz­ing state parks, elim­i­nat­ing State Police road patrols, elim­i­nat­ing Med­ic­aid spend­ing, allow­ing for oil drilling in the Great Lakes, repeal­ing the min­i­mum wage, and pri­va­tiz­ing the Uni­ver­sity of Michigan.

It’s clear the Mack­inac Cen­ter is noth­ing more than a front group for big cor­po­ra­tions that are deter­mined to out­law unions for teach­ers, nurses and fire­fight­ers. It’s time for Lans­ing politi­cians to stop pan­der­ing to these cor­po­rate spe­cial inter­ests and start work­ing together to invest in edu­ca­tion and cre­ate good jobs that pay a fair wage.

In the lead-up to the financial crisis that crippled the American economy and plunged the country into a recession, the Federal Reserve made trillions in undisclosed loans to struggling banks and financial institutions, according to official documents obtained by Bloomberg News. Six of the country’s largest banks then turned those loans into more than $13 billion in previously undisclosed profits.

…

“TARP at least had some strings attached,” says Brad Miller, a North Carolina Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee, referring to the program’s executive-pay ceiling. “With the Fed programs, there was nothing.”

In one month, Morgan Stanley — one of the most vulnerable financial companies at the time — took $107 billion in secret loans, enough to pay off a tenth of the nation’s delinquent mortgages. The loans, like those made to other institutions, were never reported to Morgan Stanley’s shareholders or the taxpayers who subsidized them.

…

The secret nature of the loans, however, instead helped Wall Street work to “preserve a broken status quo” that allowed its biggest banks to grow even larger than they were before the crisis. The nation’s largest banks have turned more in profit in the last 30 months than they did in nearly eight years preceding the crisis, all while spending millions to derail significant reform legislation. And since the Dodd-Frank Act became law, they have spent millions more to weaken its rules and prevent certain regulations from taking effect. Bank lobbying, in fact, is now on pace to reach a record high this year.