March 2012
51 posts
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Labor hits delay on new safety rule →
by: Mark Gruenberg
March 28 2012
tags: labor, jobs, unions, health, Republicans
ORLANDO, Fla. - The AFL-CIO is very upset that the Obama administration’s Office of Management and Budget is sitting on - apparently indefinitely - a proposed job safety rule to cut worker exposure to silica dust.
“Business groups have intervened aggressively with OMB, the gatekeeper on federal...
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Red States See Massive Public Sector Job Losses →
GOP = Job Killing SOB’s. Also, everything really is bigger in Texas. The Lone Star State by itself accounted for 31 percent of the total public sector loss at the state and local level.
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Mike Konczal and Bryce Covert
March 27, 2012
The conservative Republicans who took power in Pennsylvania in 2010 have had a busy year. Republican state legislators, empowered by new...
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36 Arrested Outside Sallie Mae HQ at Student Loan... →
Thirty-six students were arrested in Washington, D.C. Monday during a protest against student loan debt after they blocked the entrance to the headquarters of the nation’s largest student-loan company, Sallie Mae.
(click the link to watch the video from Democracy Now!)
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The Most Interesting Gubernatorial Candidate in... →
Partied with pirates, stalked by Nazis, tried to spring Qaddafi from Libya—the most interesting candidate for governor in the world, Neil Livingstone.
From Mother Jones:
“Taking Aim At Regulation,” reads the official campaign website. Screenshot: neil2012.com
According to his official campaign bio, Montana Republican gubernatorial candidate Neil Livingstone has, at various points...
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Israel Bars U.N. Human Rights Council Team From... →
From Huff Po:
JERUSALEM — Israel cut working relations with the United Nations Human Rights Council on Monday and will bar a U.N. team from entering Israel or the West Bank for a planned investigation of Jewish settlements, the Foreign Ministry said.
Israel accuses the council of having a pronounced anti-Israel bias because of what it says is its disproportionate focus on Israeli policy toward...
“Recognize that the very molecules that make up your body, the atoms that...”
– Neil deGrasse Tyson (via anguis218)
A great realization. (via masonicgnosis)
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Obama calls for end to oil subsidies as gas prices... →
Republican presidential candidates have shifted the general election debate to rising gas prices amid an improving economy and 24 consecutive months of job growth in the private sector.
They have argued that the president has not done enough to expand domestic energy production, despite the fact that there has been more oil produced on land and offshore than at any other time in the last...
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Obama Camp Responds To Santorum's Comments About... →
Stay Classy Santorum…
President Obama’s campaign has responded to comments Rick Santorum made about Malia’s school trip to Mexico. Stephanie Cutter, deputy campaign manager, told MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell that she is “surprised” Santorum would drag the president’s children into the political crossfire.
“I think that children, for candidate purposes,...
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Newspaper Giant Gives CEO $32 Million Severance... →
By Travis Waldron on Mar 19, 2012 at 9:35 am
When Craig Dubow resigned as CEO of the nation’s largest newspaper conglomerate amid health problems last year, he ended a six-year stint that “was, by most accounts, a disaster.” Gannett, the parent company of the USA Today and 80 other American newspapers, had seen its revenue plummet $1.7 billion and its stock price fall 86 percent, from $72 a share...
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Bishop Romney Pressured Single Mother To Give Up... →
The Boston Globe’s biography opens new windows into the candidate’s time as a Mormon lay leader. Romney was a traditionalist.
As Mitt Romney spends the next leg of his campaign courting evangelical voters in South Carolina, his Mormon faith is expected to re-emerge as a subject of serious scrutiny. But concerns won’t belong exclusively to theologically suspicious Baptists: a newly...
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Proposed collective bargaining amendments approved... →
LANSING – A trio of proposed state constitutional amendments – including a pair of union-backed measures to strengthen collective bargaining rights — earned the nominal approval of a state elections panel this morning, clearing the way for the circulation of petitions.
A fourth proposed amendment unveiled only last week, to compel more financial disclosure of corporate political...
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Labor Unions and Freemasonry
Two of my favorite things, organized labor and Freemasonry! (warning: this is a very long, but very great post) A thing many don’t know about me: I LOVE conspiracy theories. Key thing though, I’m not a totally insane paranoid who believes in all of them. The rich stay rich because of our rigged capitalist system, tax loop holes, buying politicians, and little to no enforcement of...
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Is the Federal Government Helping to Bust Unions? →
IAM Local 778 members picket outside the federally-owned Honeywell facility on October 10, 2011, in Kansas City, Mo. (Photo by IAM Local 778)
Defense contractor Honeywell pushed concessions onto striking workers—and unions say Washington supported the company behind the scenes.
BY Mike Elk
‘Nobody can screw you like your friends,’ says AFL-CIO Metal Trades Department President...
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Ugandans say Kony film is 'misleading', 'too late'... →
Overall, I think the Kony 2012 movement is still a good thing despite some problems, anyway:
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A DOCUMENTARY and social media campaign to publicize the atrocities of Ugandan rebel leader Joseph Kony has been labelled “highly inappropriate” by members of the East African nation.
In the town of Gulu, where Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) was once focused,...
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Obama directive removes harshest provisions of the... →
Some on the right and the left claimed that President Obama, in signing the National Defense Authorization Act, severely curtailed civil liberties further than even the Bush administration. However, Obama has been working cautiously to actually stop and rollback a current GOP push to further restrict American rights.
On Feb. 28, the president issued a directive that softened a provision in the...
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Worker ‘Occupations’ in 3 States Yield Successes,... →
By Mike Elk
In the last few months, workers in three different states—at the Serious Materials factory in Chicago, at a Century Aluminum factory in Ravenswood, West Va., and at AT&T’s regional headquarters in Atlanta—have engaged in “occupations” that quickly produced small results for those workers. These actions—one an actual factory occupation, the other two highly visible...
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Dennis Kucinich Goes Down in Ohio. Now What? →
This bums me out:
—By Tim Murphy
| Tue Mar. 6, 2012 8:55 PM PST
Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) SEIU International/Wikimedia Commons
You may have missed it amid Newt Gingrich’s ruminations on algae and the Romney-Santorum nail-biter in Ohio, but there was a Super Tuesday result with serious ramifications for progressive politics: In the Democratic primary in Ohio’s 9th...
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Another Republican Attack on Collective Bargaining... →
Yesterday, HB 4929 on school union dues collection went to the senate floor for a vote where it was passed by a narrow margin of 20-18. Monroe’s own Sen Randy Richardville came down on the wrong side of this bill voting to prohibit public schools from collecting union dues or service fees from wages of public school employees.
This bill came out of the Reforms, Restructuring and Reinventing...
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Speculation Blamed for Global Food Price Weirdness →
The link between commodity speculation and global food price weirdness just got stronger, and researchers warn that a new and potentially calamitous price bubble is imminent.
Previous research had blamed a combination of food-to-fuel crop conversion and financial speculation for driving food prices up in sudden, unpredictable spikes, independent of changes in supply or demand. But the market...
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Protect Our Jobs Campaign kicks off in Michigan →
LANSING – Nurses, teachers, construction workers and others gathered at the state Capitol Tuesday to launch their drive to enshrine collective bargaining as a right guaranteed to employees under the Michigan Constitution.
The “Protect Our Jobs” campaign began Tuesday collecting the 322,609 signatures needed to get the issue on the ballot. Organizers have until July 9, 2012 to file the...
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“We see that the world of finance can dominate the human being, that possessions...”
– Pope Benedict XVI
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In These Times: Which Side Are You On? Labor and... →
A worker listens to members of SEIU Local 1 speak at a rally in downtown Chicago on Sept. 28, 2011. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)
Features » February 29, 2012
Which Side Are You On?
Disenchanted with the Democratic Party, unions threaten secession in 2012.
BY David Moberg
Some want to focus on winning elections. Others see elections as part of building a new movement. AFL-CIO President...
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A Neo-Nazi in the GOP: Where's the Outrage From On... →
Arthur Jones, a neo-Nazi, outspoken anti-Semite and Holocaust denier, wants to be a Republican congressman from the Land of Lincoln.
This is neither a joke nor an exaggeration. The 64-year-old Jones, who organizes “family friendly” celebrations of Adolf Hitler’s birthday and maintains that “the Holocaust never happened,” actually is a candidate in this...
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The struggling 1%!?!? →
This is totally absurd:
Andrew Schiff was sitting in a traffic jam in California this month after giving a speech at an investment conference about gold. He turned off the satellite radio, got out of the car and screamed a profanity.
“I’m not Zen at all, and when I’m freaking out about the situation, where I’m stuck like a rat in a trap on a highway with no way to get...
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In These Times: W.W.I: The War That Begat Another →
American soldiers, fresh of the boat in France during World War I.
Culture » March 1, 2012
W.W.I: The War That Begat Another
The Lost History of 1914 shows how that year began to sow the seeds of Nazism.
BY Eve Ottenberg
Facilitating the advance of death and thus postwar fascism, Beatty argues, was the unparalleled callousness of the Great War’s elites.
Who gets to write a war’s...
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Demonstrators to Temple U.: Practice some... →
PHILADELPHIA - A group of about 50 demonstrators gathered here Feb. 20 for the second week in a row to protest what they say is an obvious lack of diversity in the construction workforce hired by Temple University. The crowd included Temple students, union members, community residents and other supporters. The demonstrators’ message was clear and aimed at the university and the big...
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Occupy Movement, Labor on Collision Course with... →
From the LA progressive:
By Randy Shaw
With organized labor increasing support for the Occupy movement – SEIU Local 1021, the Alameda County Labor Council and other unions greatly contributed to the success of the November 2 Oakland General Strike – many see the battle for the 99% as energizing traditional Democratic constituencies for the November 2012 elections. But if the Joint Select ...
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Elite Country Club Loses Money As Locked-Out Food... →
This is ridiculous. A country club for the 1% that rakes in tons of $ is trying to bust their worker’s union even though it is driving them into the ground. The fat cats are so anti union, they kill themselves just to bring down an organization that gives workers power and a fair shake.
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Rising Above the Odds With the National Labor... →
A great story on the difficulties in organizing a union.
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Posted on February 24, 2012 by dsalaborblogmoderator
by Cory McCray
Corey McCray
A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to aid the workers of a sub-contractor that Comcast employs. The workers goal...
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Why Should Anti-Choice and Anti-Gay Groups Have... →
Posted on February 23, 2012 by dsalaborblogmoderator
by Josh Eidelson
The Komen controversy showed the brilliance of ‘secondary boycotts’—and the injustice of punishing unions for using the same tactics
Josh Eidelson
When news broke that the Susan G. Komen Foundation would cease funding Planned Parenthood, the backlash was fast, furious, and gratifying. Within days, Komen apologized and...
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Deaf student may not be able to graduate with... →
This is unbelievable. Audism at its finest.
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By Catey Traylor on February 23, 2012 7:45 pm in Featured, University / 42 Comments
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Freeland junior Kelly Laatsch watches her Sign Language Interpreter, Jennifer Libiran, while working on a group project in EDU 345 class Thursday morning in the College of Education and Human Services...
