On this day, December 30th, in 1936 -- 75 years ago today -- hundreds of workers at the General Motors factories in Flint, Michigan, took over the facilities and occupied them for 44 days. My uncle was one of them.
The workers couldn't take the abuse from the corporation any longer. Their working conditions, the slave wages, no vacation, no health care, no overtime -- it was do as you're told or get tossed onto the curb.
So on the day before New Year's Eve, emboldened by the recent re-election of Franklin | swtor credits Roosevelt, they sat down on the job and refused to leave.
They began their Occupation in the dead of winter. GM cut off the heat and water to the buildings. The police tried to raid the factories several times, to no avail. Even the National Guard was called in.
But the workers held their ground, and after 44 days, the corporation gave in and recognized the UAW as the representative of the workers. It was a monumental historical moment as no other major company had | buy swtor credits ever been brought to its knees by their employees. Workers were given a raise to a dollar an hour -- and successful strikes and occupations spread like wildfire across the country. Finally, the working class would be able to do things like own their own homes, send their children to college, have time off and see a doctor without having to worry about paying. In Flint, Michigan, on this day in 1936, the middle class was born.
But 75 years later, the owners and elites have regained all power | cheap swtor credits and control. I can think of no better way for us to honor the original Occupiers than by all of us participating in the Occupy Wall Street movement in whatever form that takes in each of our towns. We need direct action all winter long if we are to prevail. You can start your own Occupy group in your neighborhood or school or with just your friends. Speak out against economic injustice at every chance you get. Stop the bank from evicting the family down the block. Move your checking and credit card to a | swtor gold community bank or credit union. Place a sign in your yard -- and get your neighbors to do it also -- that says, "WE ARE THE 99%." (You can download signs here and here.)
Do something, anything, but don't remain silent. Not now. This is the moment. It won't come again.
75 years ago today, in Flint, Michigan, the people said they'd had enough and occupied the factories until they won. What is stopping us now? The rich have one plan: bleed everyone dry. Can anyone, in good conscience, be a bystander to this?
My uncle wasn't, and because of what he and others did, I got to grow up without having to worry about a roof over my head or medical bills or a decent life. And all that was provided by my dad who built spark plugs on a GM assembly line.
Let's each of us double our efforts to raise a ruckus, Occupy Everywhere, and get creative as we throw a major nonviolent wrench into this system of Greed. Let's make the politicians running for office in 2012 quake in their boots if they refuse to tax the rich, regulate Wall Street and do whatever we the people tell them to do.
2011年12月30日星期五
2011年12月29日星期四
Marginalizing Ron Paul
That last item, along with the decade-old racist comments in the newsletters Paul published, is certainly worthy of criticism. But not as an alternative to seriously engaging the substance of Paul's current campaign -- his devastating critique of crony capitalism and his equally trenchant challenge to imperial wars and the assault on our civil liberties that they engender.
Paul is being denigrated as a presidential contender even though on the vital issues of the economy, war and peace, and civil liberties, he has | swtor credits made the most sense of the Republican candidates. And by what standard of logic is it "claptrap" for Paul to attempt to hold the Fed accountable for its destructive policies? That's the giveaway reference to the raw nerve that his favorable prospects in the Iowa caucuses have exposed. Too much anti-Wall Street populism in the heartland can be a truly scary thing to the intellectual parasites residing in the belly of the beast that controls American capitalism.
It is hypocritical | buy swtor credits that Paul is now depicted as the archenemy of non-white minorities when it was his nemesis, the Federal Reserve, that enabled the banking swindle that wiped out 53 percent of the median wealth of African-Americans and 66 percent for Latinos, according to the Pew Research Center.
The Fed sits at the center of the rot and bears the major responsibility for tolerating the runaway mortgage-backed securities scam that is at the core of our economic crisis. After the meltdown it was the | cheap swtor credits Fed that led ultra secret machinations to bail out the banks while ignoring the plight of the their exploited customers.
To his credit, Paul marshaled bipartisan support to pass a bill requiring the first-ever public audit of the Federal Reserve. That audit is how readers of the Times first learned of the Fed's trillions of dollars in secret loans and aid given to the banks as a reward for screwing over the public.
As for the Times' complaint that Paul seeks to unreasonably cut the federal budget by one-third, | swtor gold it should be noted that his is a rare voice in challenging irrationally high military spending. At a time when the president has signed off on a Cold War-level defense budget and his potential opponents in the Republican field want to waste even more on high-tech weapons to fight a sophisticated enemy that doesn't exist, Paul has emerged as the only serious peace candidate. As the Wall Street Journal reported, Paul last week warned an Iowa audience, "Watch out for the military-industrial complex -- they always have an enemy. Nobody is going to invade us. We don't need any more [weapons systems.]"
As another recent example of Paul's sanity on the national security issues that have led to a flight from reason on the part of politicians since the 9/11 attacks, I offer the Texan's criticism this week of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). The act would allow the president to order indeterminate military imprisonment without trial of those accused of supporting terrorism, a policy that Obama signed into law and Paul opposes, as the congressman did George W. Bush's Patriot Act
Paul is being denigrated as a presidential contender even though on the vital issues of the economy, war and peace, and civil liberties, he has | swtor credits made the most sense of the Republican candidates. And by what standard of logic is it "claptrap" for Paul to attempt to hold the Fed accountable for its destructive policies? That's the giveaway reference to the raw nerve that his favorable prospects in the Iowa caucuses have exposed. Too much anti-Wall Street populism in the heartland can be a truly scary thing to the intellectual parasites residing in the belly of the beast that controls American capitalism.
It is hypocritical | buy swtor credits that Paul is now depicted as the archenemy of non-white minorities when it was his nemesis, the Federal Reserve, that enabled the banking swindle that wiped out 53 percent of the median wealth of African-Americans and 66 percent for Latinos, according to the Pew Research Center.
The Fed sits at the center of the rot and bears the major responsibility for tolerating the runaway mortgage-backed securities scam that is at the core of our economic crisis. After the meltdown it was the | cheap swtor credits Fed that led ultra secret machinations to bail out the banks while ignoring the plight of the their exploited customers.
To his credit, Paul marshaled bipartisan support to pass a bill requiring the first-ever public audit of the Federal Reserve. That audit is how readers of the Times first learned of the Fed's trillions of dollars in secret loans and aid given to the banks as a reward for screwing over the public.
As for the Times' complaint that Paul seeks to unreasonably cut the federal budget by one-third, | swtor gold it should be noted that his is a rare voice in challenging irrationally high military spending. At a time when the president has signed off on a Cold War-level defense budget and his potential opponents in the Republican field want to waste even more on high-tech weapons to fight a sophisticated enemy that doesn't exist, Paul has emerged as the only serious peace candidate. As the Wall Street Journal reported, Paul last week warned an Iowa audience, "Watch out for the military-industrial complex -- they always have an enemy. Nobody is going to invade us. We don't need any more [weapons systems.]"
As another recent example of Paul's sanity on the national security issues that have led to a flight from reason on the part of politicians since the 9/11 attacks, I offer the Texan's criticism this week of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). The act would allow the president to order indeterminate military imprisonment without trial of those accused of supporting terrorism, a policy that Obama signed into law and Paul opposes, as the congressman did George W. Bush's Patriot Act
2011年12月28日星期三
Republican Nonsense on Regulation
A persistent GOP line of attack against President Obama is that he's inflicted an intolerable "regulatory burden" on American businesses. Mitt Romney, for instance, has been telling campaign crowds that the Obama administration has issued four times as much regulation as past presidents. This claim is false. According to Bloomberg news, the Obama administration has issued 613 new federal rules so far in his presidency. During the same period in the presidency of George W. Bush, his administration had issued 643 new rules.
Romney has, in fact, repeatedly misrepresented the Obama administration's regulatory record. As with so many Republican Party talking points these days, his claims about Obama and regulation are not intended to be factual statements. Instead, they're meant to advance a larger conservative meme: that | swtor credits regulations are necessarily and inherently bad. The standard GOP view of regulations is that they impose a cost on business and "kill" jobs in the process, while delivering no benefit to the economy or society more broadly. Examples to the contrary abound. For example, in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, the Obama administration issued new rules on deep sea oil drilling. Those regulations might cost industry $200 million or so. But it's quite obvious that the problem in this case isn't "excessive" regulation -- it's that the regulation didn't come soon enough (a disastrous oversight for which the Obama administration bears some responsibility).
The direct costs alone of the Deepwater Horizon disaster could exceed $16 billion. Had the new rules been in place | buy swtor credits prior to the disaster, billions of dollars would have been saved and a larger environmental catastrophe could have been avoided. In that vein, among the most far-reaching regulations has been the Clean Air Act, whose estimated cost savings since its passage run into the trillions of dollars. In addition, while Republicans repeatedly decry the job-destroying effects of regulations, most sober-minded economists say that the overall effects of regulations on jobs are minimal.
The GOP's attack on regulation is part of a larger attempt to discredit the idea that government can play a positive role in people's lives. That attack is itself based on a fantasy -- that in the absence of the distorting and freedom-destroying effects of government, human action would yield generally optimal outcomes for society | cheap swtor credits as a whole. Such notions themselves hearken back to Adam Smith's discussion of an "invisible hand." Leaving aside repeated misrepresentations of what Smith meant by that phrase, he was no fantasist and endorsed myriad public works and a range of what we would now call government regulations. Smith's quite sensible views on the matter derive from a simple point, one that most grown-ups acknowledge in their day-to-day lives: Our actions can have adverse consequences for others.
Government regulations can, of course, impose burdensome costs. But that's not the same as arguing that any regulation imposes a cost on individuals or businesses that otherwise would not exist. As the economist Dean Baker explains, if I dump toxic sludge onto your lawn and a law requires me to clean it up, you can argue that the "cost" | swtor gold of the regulation is simply the cost I incur to take care of the problem. There is, however, also a price that you pay for having toxic sludge on your lawn. Regulation, seen in this light, does not create new costs. Instead, it seeks to assign existing costs to the responsible parties by forcing them to clean up their messes, or by preventing those parties from creating the mess in the first place. Blanket condemnations of regulation, of the type that are de rigueur among Republicans these days, refuse to acknowledge this basic truth.
Republicans also decry the incredibly lengthy and unwieldy nature of federal rules, running as they do to thousands or tens of thousands of pages in some cases. Kevin Drum has pointed out that this is often not the result of liberals' insatiable desire to kill more trees. For example, when the so-called Volcker rule was first conceived -- the purpose of which was to limit federally insured banks' ability to engage in speculative investment -- it was pretty simple and straightforward. That was before the lobbyists set upon it like shape-shifting sorcerers. The result: a law whose preamble alone was 215 pages with nearly 400 footnotes. Drum notes that, in general, regulators prefer simple, clear rules. Industry, on the other hand, has an incentive to make those rules as unwieldy and exemption-ridden as possible. Simple rules are bad for business, Drum says, because they're "hard to evade." Of course, big business interests will publicly lament laws that run to thousands of pages. Privately, though, they're paying attorneys a lot of money to render those laws more obscure, complex, unmanageable and difficult to enforce than any regulator would ever want.
Romney has, in fact, repeatedly misrepresented the Obama administration's regulatory record. As with so many Republican Party talking points these days, his claims about Obama and regulation are not intended to be factual statements. Instead, they're meant to advance a larger conservative meme: that | swtor credits regulations are necessarily and inherently bad. The standard GOP view of regulations is that they impose a cost on business and "kill" jobs in the process, while delivering no benefit to the economy or society more broadly. Examples to the contrary abound. For example, in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, the Obama administration issued new rules on deep sea oil drilling. Those regulations might cost industry $200 million or so. But it's quite obvious that the problem in this case isn't "excessive" regulation -- it's that the regulation didn't come soon enough (a disastrous oversight for which the Obama administration bears some responsibility).
The direct costs alone of the Deepwater Horizon disaster could exceed $16 billion. Had the new rules been in place | buy swtor credits prior to the disaster, billions of dollars would have been saved and a larger environmental catastrophe could have been avoided. In that vein, among the most far-reaching regulations has been the Clean Air Act, whose estimated cost savings since its passage run into the trillions of dollars. In addition, while Republicans repeatedly decry the job-destroying effects of regulations, most sober-minded economists say that the overall effects of regulations on jobs are minimal.
The GOP's attack on regulation is part of a larger attempt to discredit the idea that government can play a positive role in people's lives. That attack is itself based on a fantasy -- that in the absence of the distorting and freedom-destroying effects of government, human action would yield generally optimal outcomes for society | cheap swtor credits as a whole. Such notions themselves hearken back to Adam Smith's discussion of an "invisible hand." Leaving aside repeated misrepresentations of what Smith meant by that phrase, he was no fantasist and endorsed myriad public works and a range of what we would now call government regulations. Smith's quite sensible views on the matter derive from a simple point, one that most grown-ups acknowledge in their day-to-day lives: Our actions can have adverse consequences for others.
Government regulations can, of course, impose burdensome costs. But that's not the same as arguing that any regulation imposes a cost on individuals or businesses that otherwise would not exist. As the economist Dean Baker explains, if I dump toxic sludge onto your lawn and a law requires me to clean it up, you can argue that the "cost" | swtor gold of the regulation is simply the cost I incur to take care of the problem. There is, however, also a price that you pay for having toxic sludge on your lawn. Regulation, seen in this light, does not create new costs. Instead, it seeks to assign existing costs to the responsible parties by forcing them to clean up their messes, or by preventing those parties from creating the mess in the first place. Blanket condemnations of regulation, of the type that are de rigueur among Republicans these days, refuse to acknowledge this basic truth.
Republicans also decry the incredibly lengthy and unwieldy nature of federal rules, running as they do to thousands or tens of thousands of pages in some cases. Kevin Drum has pointed out that this is often not the result of liberals' insatiable desire to kill more trees. For example, when the so-called Volcker rule was first conceived -- the purpose of which was to limit federally insured banks' ability to engage in speculative investment -- it was pretty simple and straightforward. That was before the lobbyists set upon it like shape-shifting sorcerers. The result: a law whose preamble alone was 215 pages with nearly 400 footnotes. Drum notes that, in general, regulators prefer simple, clear rules. Industry, on the other hand, has an incentive to make those rules as unwieldy and exemption-ridden as possible. Simple rules are bad for business, Drum says, because they're "hard to evade." Of course, big business interests will publicly lament laws that run to thousands of pages. Privately, though, they're paying attorneys a lot of money to render those laws more obscure, complex, unmanageable and difficult to enforce than any regulator would ever want.
2011年12月27日星期二
Republicans Try to Convert America Into Pottersville
In the iconic Christmas film, It's a Wonderful Life, an angel offers the beleaguered main character, George Bailey, the stark choice between a hometown named for a cruel banker or one created by and for the middle class.
The banker's town, Pottersville, is filled with bars, gambling dens and despair. The people's town of Bedford Falls is made of hope, hard working middle class families, and their homes financed by the Bailey Brothers Building & Loan.
The film's happy ending is the people of Bedford Falls banding together to rescue George Bailey and the Bailey Brothers Building & Loan that had given so many of them a leg up over the years. Republicans seek a different conclusion. They find middle class cooperation and community intolerable. They want the banker, Henry Potter, with his "every man for himself" philosophy to triumph. In the | swtor credits spirit of their self-centered mentor Ayn Rand, Republicans are trying to disfigure America so she resembles Pottersville.
A building and loan association, like the Bailey Brothers', uses the savings of its members to provide mortgages to the depositors. Members essentially pool their money to give each other the opportunity to buy cars and homes. At one point in the film, George Bailey explains this concept to frightened depositors who are trying to withdraw their savings during the panic that led to bank runs in 1929.
Bailey urges the townspeople who had crowded into the building and loan office to withdraw only what they need, not empty their accounts. "We have got to stick together," he tells them, "We have to do this together." A building and loan doesn't function without trust and cooperation.
It | buy swtor credits works well for Bedford Falls. The mortgages it provides help working people move out of the Potters Field slums and into Bailey Park, where homes well kept by their owners increase in value. Despite the success, Potter condemned this practice, saying it was based on "high ideals without common sense." He criticized the Bailey Brothers Building & Loan for granting a taxi driver a mortgage after Potter's bank had rejected his application. Potter scoffed at such practices, asking if the building and loan was a "business or a charity ward."
This is exactly what Republicans do. They describe beloved American programs like Medicare and Social Security as charities -- using the euphemism "entitlements." Like mortgages from the Bailey Building & Loan, Medicare and Social Security are not charities. They're the | cheap swtor credits American people depositing and pooling their money for the benefit of the American community.
The GOP tries to destroy programs like these that aid the middle class, the vast majority of Americans -- the 99 percent -- while Republicans protect tax breaks and special perks for the rich -- the one percent, the Henry Potters.
This time last year, Republicans demanded extension of tax breaks for the 1 percent, contending tax breaks stimulate the economy.
For the past three months, however, Republicans have fought extension of payroll tax cuts, contending a break benefiting 160 million middle class Americans did not stimulate the economy.
All year, Republicans have demanded an end to programs the middle class created to aid the majority, the 99 percent. The GOP wants to reverse the new banking regulations that were passed in an | swtor gold attempt to prevent another economic collapse caused by risky Wall Street practices. The GOP tried to to rescind the healthcare reform law that prevents insurance companies from terminating coverage when beneficiaries get sick and prohibits the practice of refusing coverage to people with pre-existing conditions.
Influential Republicans this year have called for repealing laws forbidding child labor, laws guaranteeing minimum wage and laws protecting the environment. They've demanded elimination of federal funding for organizations like the Public Broadcasting System that educates preschoolers, Head Start, which provides opportunity to poor children, and Planned Parenthood, which uses 97 percent of its funds to provide general, obstetrical and gynecological medical care to women, many of whom are rural and poor.
Republicans have decided to be the party of Henry Potter, the "meanest man in the county," a man about whom George Bailey's father said: "he's a sick man, frustrated. Sick in his mind, sick in his soul, if he has one."
Like Potter, Republicans deride compassion and community as character defects.
In the Republican world, where greed is good, it was appropriate for Henry Potter to keep the $8,000 in Bailey Building & Loan money that George Bailey's uncle, Billy Bailey, accidentally handed him.
Republicans are attempting to impose that selfish belief system on the selfless American people, people like the citizens of Bedford Falls who rush to the rescue of neighbors.
It won't work, just like it didn't in It's a Wonderful Life. Republicans will fail in their attempt to make America Pottersville because the 99 percent believe avarice is a sin, not a value. The GOP will fail because greed is not the American way.
The banker's town, Pottersville, is filled with bars, gambling dens and despair. The people's town of Bedford Falls is made of hope, hard working middle class families, and their homes financed by the Bailey Brothers Building & Loan.
The film's happy ending is the people of Bedford Falls banding together to rescue George Bailey and the Bailey Brothers Building & Loan that had given so many of them a leg up over the years. Republicans seek a different conclusion. They find middle class cooperation and community intolerable. They want the banker, Henry Potter, with his "every man for himself" philosophy to triumph. In the | swtor credits spirit of their self-centered mentor Ayn Rand, Republicans are trying to disfigure America so she resembles Pottersville.
A building and loan association, like the Bailey Brothers', uses the savings of its members to provide mortgages to the depositors. Members essentially pool their money to give each other the opportunity to buy cars and homes. At one point in the film, George Bailey explains this concept to frightened depositors who are trying to withdraw their savings during the panic that led to bank runs in 1929.
Bailey urges the townspeople who had crowded into the building and loan office to withdraw only what they need, not empty their accounts. "We have got to stick together," he tells them, "We have to do this together." A building and loan doesn't function without trust and cooperation.
It | buy swtor credits works well for Bedford Falls. The mortgages it provides help working people move out of the Potters Field slums and into Bailey Park, where homes well kept by their owners increase in value. Despite the success, Potter condemned this practice, saying it was based on "high ideals without common sense." He criticized the Bailey Brothers Building & Loan for granting a taxi driver a mortgage after Potter's bank had rejected his application. Potter scoffed at such practices, asking if the building and loan was a "business or a charity ward."
This is exactly what Republicans do. They describe beloved American programs like Medicare and Social Security as charities -- using the euphemism "entitlements." Like mortgages from the Bailey Building & Loan, Medicare and Social Security are not charities. They're the | cheap swtor credits American people depositing and pooling their money for the benefit of the American community.
The GOP tries to destroy programs like these that aid the middle class, the vast majority of Americans -- the 99 percent -- while Republicans protect tax breaks and special perks for the rich -- the one percent, the Henry Potters.
This time last year, Republicans demanded extension of tax breaks for the 1 percent, contending tax breaks stimulate the economy.
For the past three months, however, Republicans have fought extension of payroll tax cuts, contending a break benefiting 160 million middle class Americans did not stimulate the economy.
All year, Republicans have demanded an end to programs the middle class created to aid the majority, the 99 percent. The GOP wants to reverse the new banking regulations that were passed in an | swtor gold attempt to prevent another economic collapse caused by risky Wall Street practices. The GOP tried to to rescind the healthcare reform law that prevents insurance companies from terminating coverage when beneficiaries get sick and prohibits the practice of refusing coverage to people with pre-existing conditions.
Influential Republicans this year have called for repealing laws forbidding child labor, laws guaranteeing minimum wage and laws protecting the environment. They've demanded elimination of federal funding for organizations like the Public Broadcasting System that educates preschoolers, Head Start, which provides opportunity to poor children, and Planned Parenthood, which uses 97 percent of its funds to provide general, obstetrical and gynecological medical care to women, many of whom are rural and poor.
Republicans have decided to be the party of Henry Potter, the "meanest man in the county," a man about whom George Bailey's father said: "he's a sick man, frustrated. Sick in his mind, sick in his soul, if he has one."
Like Potter, Republicans deride compassion and community as character defects.
In the Republican world, where greed is good, it was appropriate for Henry Potter to keep the $8,000 in Bailey Building & Loan money that George Bailey's uncle, Billy Bailey, accidentally handed him.
Republicans are attempting to impose that selfish belief system on the selfless American people, people like the citizens of Bedford Falls who rush to the rescue of neighbors.
It won't work, just like it didn't in It's a Wonderful Life. Republicans will fail in their attempt to make America Pottersville because the 99 percent believe avarice is a sin, not a value. The GOP will fail because greed is not the American way.
2011年12月19日星期一
Republicans Declare War on the Working Class
If organized labor were to list the three worst things that could happen to it, one of them would surely be having the NLRB (National Labor Relations Board, established in 1935) close up shop. While the NLRB hasn't always performed to labor's satisfaction (indeed, its reluctance to act has been the source of consternation and heartburn), it has, nonetheless, proven itself indispensable.
When companies purposely sabotage union elections, or when they refuse to recognize a legal vote to join or form a union, or when they fail to enter into the collective bargaining process in good faith, wow gold or when they violate federal labor law by firing employees engaged in union membership drives, it's the Labor Board who hears the complaint. Without the NLRB, none of these ULPs (Unfair Labor Practices) can be addressed.
Yet, as critically important as the NLRB is, there's a chance it will be put out of business come the first of the year. Due to a 2010 ruling by the Supreme Court, unless the 5-member NLRB has a quorum (i.e., a minimum of three members), it is illegal for it to hand down decisions. In other words, unless there are at least three members runescape gold present, the NLRB has no power to stop management from violating federal labor law. They can violate it with impunity. Without the NLRB, employees could vote overwhelmingly to join a union, and the company could simply ignore them. Who's to stop them?
Here's how it stands. Republicans have not only steadfastly refused to confirm President Obama's appointees (leaving the Board without a quorum), but they have threatened to strip the Board of its operating budget, basically wiping it out. No money, no NLRB. Incredibly, with the whole country watching buy wow gold from the sidelines -- with unemployment still high and the gap between rich and poor continuing to widen -- the Republican Party has audaciously and fearlessly declared war on America's working class.
As gutless as President Obama has been in regard to labor (e.g., backing away from the EFCA, abandoning striker replacement legislation, failing to respond to attacks on the teachers' union, et al), he's been caught in the middle of this NLRB deal. On the one hand, by nominating solidly pro-union people to the Board he has appeased organized labor, but on the other hand, he cheap wow gold has mobilized Republican opposition.
In truth, that's a bit of a false dichotomy. It is Obama's job to behave like a traditional, pro-labor Democrat, and, if anything, he has been woefully derelict in that regard. Also, despite the Republican's hysterical smear campaign, we shouldn't pretend that the people Obama has nominated are "radicals." In the 1960s and 1970s these same folks would have been considered "enlightened centrists," plain and simple. In the 1940s, they would've been considered "pro-business."
Unfortunately, some nominal "pro-labor" activists have publicly criticized Obama for world of warcraft gold not being more accommodating, for not being more pragmatic, more practical. They've criticized him for failing to appoint Board members who would automatically appeal to the Republicans, as if it were Obama's job to abandon America's working class in order to please John Boehner and his corporate sponsors.
But let's be honest. If the Republican Party had its way, there would be no NLRB, no OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration), and, very likely, no Department of Labor. What prevented the elimination of those agencies was America's political landscape. But the contour of that landscape has changed dramatically.
In the 1970s the Republican Party wouldn't have dared suggest, not in its wildest dreams, that the NLRB and OSHA be dismantled. After all, it was a Republican administration that created OSHA. Considering the country's mood at the time, organized labor's influence, and, arguably, the respect working people still enjoyed, eliminating the Labor Board would have been considered, among other things, "unpatriotic." How things have changed.
David Macaray, a Los Angeles playwright and author ("It's Never Been Easy: Essays on Modern Labor"), was a former union rep. He can be reached at dmacaray@earthlink.net
When companies purposely sabotage union elections, or when they refuse to recognize a legal vote to join or form a union, or when they fail to enter into the collective bargaining process in good faith, wow gold or when they violate federal labor law by firing employees engaged in union membership drives, it's the Labor Board who hears the complaint. Without the NLRB, none of these ULPs (Unfair Labor Practices) can be addressed.
Yet, as critically important as the NLRB is, there's a chance it will be put out of business come the first of the year. Due to a 2010 ruling by the Supreme Court, unless the 5-member NLRB has a quorum (i.e., a minimum of three members), it is illegal for it to hand down decisions. In other words, unless there are at least three members runescape gold present, the NLRB has no power to stop management from violating federal labor law. They can violate it with impunity. Without the NLRB, employees could vote overwhelmingly to join a union, and the company could simply ignore them. Who's to stop them?
Here's how it stands. Republicans have not only steadfastly refused to confirm President Obama's appointees (leaving the Board without a quorum), but they have threatened to strip the Board of its operating budget, basically wiping it out. No money, no NLRB. Incredibly, with the whole country watching buy wow gold from the sidelines -- with unemployment still high and the gap between rich and poor continuing to widen -- the Republican Party has audaciously and fearlessly declared war on America's working class.
As gutless as President Obama has been in regard to labor (e.g., backing away from the EFCA, abandoning striker replacement legislation, failing to respond to attacks on the teachers' union, et al), he's been caught in the middle of this NLRB deal. On the one hand, by nominating solidly pro-union people to the Board he has appeased organized labor, but on the other hand, he cheap wow gold has mobilized Republican opposition.
In truth, that's a bit of a false dichotomy. It is Obama's job to behave like a traditional, pro-labor Democrat, and, if anything, he has been woefully derelict in that regard. Also, despite the Republican's hysterical smear campaign, we shouldn't pretend that the people Obama has nominated are "radicals." In the 1960s and 1970s these same folks would have been considered "enlightened centrists," plain and simple. In the 1940s, they would've been considered "pro-business."
Unfortunately, some nominal "pro-labor" activists have publicly criticized Obama for world of warcraft gold not being more accommodating, for not being more pragmatic, more practical. They've criticized him for failing to appoint Board members who would automatically appeal to the Republicans, as if it were Obama's job to abandon America's working class in order to please John Boehner and his corporate sponsors.
But let's be honest. If the Republican Party had its way, there would be no NLRB, no OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration), and, very likely, no Department of Labor. What prevented the elimination of those agencies was America's political landscape. But the contour of that landscape has changed dramatically.
In the 1970s the Republican Party wouldn't have dared suggest, not in its wildest dreams, that the NLRB and OSHA be dismantled. After all, it was a Republican administration that created OSHA. Considering the country's mood at the time, organized labor's influence, and, arguably, the respect working people still enjoyed, eliminating the Labor Board would have been considered, among other things, "unpatriotic." How things have changed.
David Macaray, a Los Angeles playwright and author ("It's Never Been Easy: Essays on Modern Labor"), was a former union rep. He can be reached at dmacaray@earthlink.net
2011年12月14日星期三
A Purple Heart for Christmas
I'm glad the United States is bringing America's sons and daughters, our troops, home from Iraq before Christmas.
My son Bryan died in Iraq, in a town named Albu Hyatt, north of Bagdad, Sept. 6, 2007.
He and 3 others died, but 40 to 50 troops behind them lived.
A suicide bomber gunned a newer model truck, loaded with explosives, at them from a checkpoint wow gold less than one block in front of them.
I reenacted this event with my truck, and found Bryan had one and half seconds to react in this quick ambush.
The West Point graduate who designed this roadblock got a bronze star and then a job with a private contractor.
And I got Bryan's Purple Heart for his runescape gold service.
The Iraq war has only affected a few families personally, unless you count higher fuel prices and a larger national debt.
The ones closer to the war have had their lives changed forever.
Just like mine, and Bryan's friends, who put the fire out while others in America were attending football games.
Looking buy wow gold forward to Christmas I think of past years, when we would play cards until late in the evening. Sometimes laughing until our eyes watered.
This upcoming Christmas, I thought about putting Bryan's Purple Heart medal at his chair and deal out the cards. But I know it will not be the same,
It all began with him pledging allegiance to cheap wow gold the flag and starting each sporting event with the Star Spangled Banner.
America was someone he trusted to always tell the truth.
He trusted our leaders as he trusted teachers and coaches to be on the right side of humanity.
Never did he think the people behind our flag would lie to him, burn his remains and throw his ashes into a landfill.
He was awarded world of warcraft gold a purple heart, but no answers to the Iraq war.
George Bush shrugged his shoulders and said "faulty intelligence, next question please." Later I heard him say he wishes he had better intelligence at the time.
So, if George Bush wishes this, why not tell us who was responsible for this faulty intelligence, because each source would lead to a person's name.
I know it's awkward for our Justice Department to investigate the ones who appointed them, so this would relieve that pressure.
And heaven forbid, we don't want to make this mistake again.
Maybe I should be happy with a Purple Heart medal here at Christmas, knowing we are free of Iraqi drones overhead. And not look at our rulers behind our flag.
But it's hard not to when you lose a son.
My son Bryan died in Iraq, in a town named Albu Hyatt, north of Bagdad, Sept. 6, 2007.
He and 3 others died, but 40 to 50 troops behind them lived.
A suicide bomber gunned a newer model truck, loaded with explosives, at them from a checkpoint wow gold less than one block in front of them.
I reenacted this event with my truck, and found Bryan had one and half seconds to react in this quick ambush.
The West Point graduate who designed this roadblock got a bronze star and then a job with a private contractor.
And I got Bryan's Purple Heart for his runescape gold service.
The Iraq war has only affected a few families personally, unless you count higher fuel prices and a larger national debt.
The ones closer to the war have had their lives changed forever.
Just like mine, and Bryan's friends, who put the fire out while others in America were attending football games.
Looking buy wow gold forward to Christmas I think of past years, when we would play cards until late in the evening. Sometimes laughing until our eyes watered.
This upcoming Christmas, I thought about putting Bryan's Purple Heart medal at his chair and deal out the cards. But I know it will not be the same,
It all began with him pledging allegiance to cheap wow gold the flag and starting each sporting event with the Star Spangled Banner.
America was someone he trusted to always tell the truth.
He trusted our leaders as he trusted teachers and coaches to be on the right side of humanity.
Never did he think the people behind our flag would lie to him, burn his remains and throw his ashes into a landfill.
He was awarded world of warcraft gold a purple heart, but no answers to the Iraq war.
George Bush shrugged his shoulders and said "faulty intelligence, next question please." Later I heard him say he wishes he had better intelligence at the time.
So, if George Bush wishes this, why not tell us who was responsible for this faulty intelligence, because each source would lead to a person's name.
I know it's awkward for our Justice Department to investigate the ones who appointed them, so this would relieve that pressure.
And heaven forbid, we don't want to make this mistake again.
Maybe I should be happy with a Purple Heart medal here at Christmas, knowing we are free of Iraqi drones overhead. And not look at our rulers behind our flag.
But it's hard not to when you lose a son.
2011年12月12日星期一
Obama's Shameful Dodge on 60 Minutes
As he has regularly done in the past with other media outlets, President Obama artfully dodged a straightforward question about lack of criminal prosecutions from Steve Kroft on 60 Minutes last night. The question was about how one of the things bothering people was the fact that no one on Wall Street has been criminally prosecuted for the financial catastrophe that has caused so much damage to our country. What he was really asking -- what everyone in the country is asking -- is why has there been no accountability of those on Wall Street who got rich before, during and after the meltdown they caused while the rest of the country got stuck with the bill, including historically high unemployment, foreclosures, deficits, etc.
Rather than even attempting to answer that question, the president started by saying he can't get into specific wow gold cases, which he wasn't asked about. He then gave his standard line, "I can tell you, just from 40,000 feet, that some of the most damaging behavior on Wall Street, some of the least ethical behavior on Wall Street, wasn't illegal. That's exactly why we had to change the laws."
Okay, even if that highly questionable assertion is true, he is nonetheless conceding that at least some of that behavior was illegal and therefore the question remains why he and his team refuse to prosecute Wall Street. (Evidence of those crimes was the subject of a 60 Minutes piece the prior week.)
The easy answer of some is because that's where they are doing a lot of fundraising (a bipartisan activity, I should note). While that no doubt plays a role, the more complete answer is also more complex, but no less runescape gold satisfying.
The president and his team decided early on that recapitalizing the financial industry in general and Wall Street in particular was the highest priority for the country. Their view was that, if they didn't' do that, a Second Great Depression was highly likely. They all truly believed that as went Wall Street, so goes Main Street. (This view was helped along by all the former Wall Streeters occupying the highest levels of the administration and on whom the president relied most heavily for advice on this matter.)
This view is, of course, right to some extent. If the financial industry was allowed to collapse in the fall of 2008, then Main Street would suffer gravely: everything from paychecks to credit cards to the simplest of loans for everyone from individuals to small business buy wow gold to the big companies at the heart of our economy could have ground to a halt. Moreover, they were blindly obsessed with people's confidence in the banking system (as Ron Suskind spelled out so well in his book, Confidence Men). They worried that anything that was done other than helping the banks would erode confidence in the banks, which would cause the crisis to deepen and potentially cause a downward spiral.
Unfortunately, this view resulted in an administration policy of protecting the banks from even the slightest criticism, never mind actual action. So, there was no financial crimes task force formed to investigate potential crimes and there was no serious consideration given to taking other actions against the biggest banks and the titans of Wall Street. Indeed, this view even stymied efforts to seriously investigate cheap wow gold the financial crisis so that informed reforms could be implemented. (Remember, that the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission was created very late, was given limited powers, and was structured to report only after the reform law passed.)
Indefensibly, this policy of "see no evil, hear no evil, and speak no evil" of Wall Street was followed even when the administration basically handed Wall Street the keys to the treasury and US taxpayers' pockets. In fairness, this wasn't just an Obama administration policy. It was certainly also the policy of the Bush administration, but many thought that the November 2008 election would usher in new policies that would hold people accountable.
This approach of uncritically coddling Wall Street and ignoring its role in the financial crisis was the subject of an unprecedented meeting in the world of warcraft gold White House in the spring of 2009. A number of Democratic senators demanded a meeting with the president personally to tell him directly and clearly that he was getting bad advice from his Wall Street-biased group of senior advisors and that he must take strong action against Wall Street wrong-doing. It appears that the President responded with more artful dodges along the lines of "What would you have me do? Let the banks fail? That would be devastating for the economy and the country."
Well, of course, no one was advocating -- then or now -- letting the banks fail and ushering in another Depression. However, there was a very strong view -- then and now -- that the financial industry could be saved and wrongdoing could still be punished. This view is nicely captured by the phrase that "you can save the banks, but you don't have to save every banker." Unfortunately, as the president revealed again last night on 60 Minutes, those bankers have nothing to fear from this administration (except the occasional criticism not backed up by any action). The policy of "hold no bank or banker accountable" appears to be firmly in place.
That is bad news not only for the country, but also for the president. It's one of the key reasons the American people are so mad and justifiably so: this foolish policy means that the rules that apply to everyone else, don't apply to the rich, powerful and politically well-connected banks and bankers on Wall Street. And, even worse, it means that those very same banks that only exist today because the US government with taxpayer money saved them in the fall on 2008 are now using their massive profits to fight regulatory reform that is desperately needed if we are to avoid another financial collapse.
Rather than even attempting to answer that question, the president started by saying he can't get into specific wow gold cases, which he wasn't asked about. He then gave his standard line, "I can tell you, just from 40,000 feet, that some of the most damaging behavior on Wall Street, some of the least ethical behavior on Wall Street, wasn't illegal. That's exactly why we had to change the laws."
Okay, even if that highly questionable assertion is true, he is nonetheless conceding that at least some of that behavior was illegal and therefore the question remains why he and his team refuse to prosecute Wall Street. (Evidence of those crimes was the subject of a 60 Minutes piece the prior week.)
The easy answer of some is because that's where they are doing a lot of fundraising (a bipartisan activity, I should note). While that no doubt plays a role, the more complete answer is also more complex, but no less runescape gold satisfying.
The president and his team decided early on that recapitalizing the financial industry in general and Wall Street in particular was the highest priority for the country. Their view was that, if they didn't' do that, a Second Great Depression was highly likely. They all truly believed that as went Wall Street, so goes Main Street. (This view was helped along by all the former Wall Streeters occupying the highest levels of the administration and on whom the president relied most heavily for advice on this matter.)
This view is, of course, right to some extent. If the financial industry was allowed to collapse in the fall of 2008, then Main Street would suffer gravely: everything from paychecks to credit cards to the simplest of loans for everyone from individuals to small business buy wow gold to the big companies at the heart of our economy could have ground to a halt. Moreover, they were blindly obsessed with people's confidence in the banking system (as Ron Suskind spelled out so well in his book, Confidence Men). They worried that anything that was done other than helping the banks would erode confidence in the banks, which would cause the crisis to deepen and potentially cause a downward spiral.
Unfortunately, this view resulted in an administration policy of protecting the banks from even the slightest criticism, never mind actual action. So, there was no financial crimes task force formed to investigate potential crimes and there was no serious consideration given to taking other actions against the biggest banks and the titans of Wall Street. Indeed, this view even stymied efforts to seriously investigate cheap wow gold the financial crisis so that informed reforms could be implemented. (Remember, that the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission was created very late, was given limited powers, and was structured to report only after the reform law passed.)
Indefensibly, this policy of "see no evil, hear no evil, and speak no evil" of Wall Street was followed even when the administration basically handed Wall Street the keys to the treasury and US taxpayers' pockets. In fairness, this wasn't just an Obama administration policy. It was certainly also the policy of the Bush administration, but many thought that the November 2008 election would usher in new policies that would hold people accountable.
This approach of uncritically coddling Wall Street and ignoring its role in the financial crisis was the subject of an unprecedented meeting in the world of warcraft gold White House in the spring of 2009. A number of Democratic senators demanded a meeting with the president personally to tell him directly and clearly that he was getting bad advice from his Wall Street-biased group of senior advisors and that he must take strong action against Wall Street wrong-doing. It appears that the President responded with more artful dodges along the lines of "What would you have me do? Let the banks fail? That would be devastating for the economy and the country."
Well, of course, no one was advocating -- then or now -- letting the banks fail and ushering in another Depression. However, there was a very strong view -- then and now -- that the financial industry could be saved and wrongdoing could still be punished. This view is nicely captured by the phrase that "you can save the banks, but you don't have to save every banker." Unfortunately, as the president revealed again last night on 60 Minutes, those bankers have nothing to fear from this administration (except the occasional criticism not backed up by any action). The policy of "hold no bank or banker accountable" appears to be firmly in place.
That is bad news not only for the country, but also for the president. It's one of the key reasons the American people are so mad and justifiably so: this foolish policy means that the rules that apply to everyone else, don't apply to the rich, powerful and politically well-connected banks and bankers on Wall Street. And, even worse, it means that those very same banks that only exist today because the US government with taxpayer money saved them in the fall on 2008 are now using their massive profits to fight regulatory reform that is desperately needed if we are to avoid another financial collapse.
2011年12月7日星期三
Fighting Family Jet Lag Through the Holidays
I love this story about how to combat "junior jet lag." We're in the thick of the holiday season, which is prime time for travel. School vacations and holiday visits to family make this a time of year when many people are packing up and heading across time zones. Travel can be disruptive to sleep for kids, especially travel that involves time zone changes. Long days in transit combined with time zone shifts can throw kids' schedules quickly out of whack. Parents, you know what this means: tantrums in the airport, little ones wide awake at 3 a.m. in grandma's spare bedroom, meltdowns at the dining room table, and generally difficult behavior all around. Vacationing with the whole family should be fun -- and it can be. Sleep can make a critical difference. Its worth wow gold it to plan ahead to make sure that everyone in the family, especially kids, are prepared to handle jet lag and adjust their sleep schedules.
What's behind jet lag? When we ask our bodies to adapt to a different time schedule, we disrupt our circadian rhythm, our body's powerful internal regulator, which governs our sleep-wake cycle, our ability to fall asleep and to wake feeling rested and ready to get out of bed. Our circadian clocks have a powerful effect on our mood and energy levels, and even our immune systems. This internal regulatory mechanism is finely tuned -- even very slight disruptions can have an effect on how we feel and our ability to sleep. Moving across time zones, with changes of an hour or more to the "normal" runescape gold schedule, can have a significant effect.
Let's face it, as adults we don't always weather these changes particularly well (or happily), so it's no surprise that our kids don't handle jet lag with ease and good humor. The good news is there are a number of things you can do to prepare your kids for travel that involves changes to their schedules. Taking the time to plan ahead can make a huge difference in how well your children handle the travel itself and adapt to time zone changes when you arrive. Smart preparation begins before your bags are packed:
Book reasonably. That off-hours, overnight flight to your destination may save you a bit of money, but it may not be worth it if your family is too tired and irritable to enjoy your buy wow gold time once you arrive. A good rule to go by when factoring jetlag into your planning is that it takes the body 1 day to adjust for every 1-2 time zones you cross. Designing a travel schedule that minimizes delays and avoids overnight flights can help reduce the impact of jetlag, especially with kids in tow.
Bank sleep. The best strategy starts a few weeks ahead of your actual travel. Of course, making sure your child is getting plenty of sleep should always be a top priority. But in the weeks leading up to a trip, it's even more important that your kids get ample rest. Go back to basics: stick closely to schedules for meals and homework in the evenings, make sure bedtime and wake times are consistent, turn off the TV and electronics (and especially cheap wow gold for older kids, the smartphones and computers) in the hour immediately before bed. I call it the electronic curfew!
Adjust bedtimes in advance. Use the week before you plan to travel to begin to shift your child's schedule toward the time zone where you'll be going. Now, I'm not talking about keeping kids up late into the night, or waking them before dawn! But adjusting bedtimes 15 or 30 minutes (earlier or later, depending on where you are traveling) can give your kids a head start on the adjustment they'll need to make during the trip.
When its time to travel, take a deep breath and keep these tips in mind:
Limit naps. As tempting as it might be to let your child sleep for hours on the plane, both of you may pay for that peace and quiet at your destination, rs gold when your child is up in the middle of the night, or refuses to go to bed at all. When deciding whether to allow your child to nap, keep in mind your destination time zone. Early in the day naps will have pose fewer problems than naps closer to afternoon and evening of your destination. Keeping naps brief, no longer than 30 minutes, will help prevent this extra sleep from disrupting your kids' bedtime.
Avoid medication. I hear often that parents are using over the counter sleep and cold medication to help their kids sleep during travel. It's never a good idea to employ medication for treatment beyond its intended uses. And medicating a child to sleep through travel will only further disrupt his or her sleep-wake cycle, leaving your child even less able to adapt to sleeping in the new time zone.
Get out in the light. Sunlight and exercise are two of the very best ways to help speed your child's adjustment to a different time zone. Exposure to light and physical activity will help re-set their circadian clocks. If you've arrived early in the day, getting your kids outside to play will help boost their energy and fall asleep more easily at the right time. If you arrive in the late afternoon or evening, close to bedtime, keeping kids quiet and away from bright light will help prepare them to wind down for bed.
My last tip? Parents, take care of your own sleep! If you are rested, you'll be that much better able to handle the ups and downs of travel -- and your kids' unpredictable moods -- with patience and good humor.
Happy holidays and happy, well-rested travel!
What's behind jet lag? When we ask our bodies to adapt to a different time schedule, we disrupt our circadian rhythm, our body's powerful internal regulator, which governs our sleep-wake cycle, our ability to fall asleep and to wake feeling rested and ready to get out of bed. Our circadian clocks have a powerful effect on our mood and energy levels, and even our immune systems. This internal regulatory mechanism is finely tuned -- even very slight disruptions can have an effect on how we feel and our ability to sleep. Moving across time zones, with changes of an hour or more to the "normal" runescape gold schedule, can have a significant effect.
Let's face it, as adults we don't always weather these changes particularly well (or happily), so it's no surprise that our kids don't handle jet lag with ease and good humor. The good news is there are a number of things you can do to prepare your kids for travel that involves changes to their schedules. Taking the time to plan ahead can make a huge difference in how well your children handle the travel itself and adapt to time zone changes when you arrive. Smart preparation begins before your bags are packed:
Book reasonably. That off-hours, overnight flight to your destination may save you a bit of money, but it may not be worth it if your family is too tired and irritable to enjoy your buy wow gold time once you arrive. A good rule to go by when factoring jetlag into your planning is that it takes the body 1 day to adjust for every 1-2 time zones you cross. Designing a travel schedule that minimizes delays and avoids overnight flights can help reduce the impact of jetlag, especially with kids in tow.
Bank sleep. The best strategy starts a few weeks ahead of your actual travel. Of course, making sure your child is getting plenty of sleep should always be a top priority. But in the weeks leading up to a trip, it's even more important that your kids get ample rest. Go back to basics: stick closely to schedules for meals and homework in the evenings, make sure bedtime and wake times are consistent, turn off the TV and electronics (and especially cheap wow gold for older kids, the smartphones and computers) in the hour immediately before bed. I call it the electronic curfew!
Adjust bedtimes in advance. Use the week before you plan to travel to begin to shift your child's schedule toward the time zone where you'll be going. Now, I'm not talking about keeping kids up late into the night, or waking them before dawn! But adjusting bedtimes 15 or 30 minutes (earlier or later, depending on where you are traveling) can give your kids a head start on the adjustment they'll need to make during the trip.
When its time to travel, take a deep breath and keep these tips in mind:
Limit naps. As tempting as it might be to let your child sleep for hours on the plane, both of you may pay for that peace and quiet at your destination, rs gold when your child is up in the middle of the night, or refuses to go to bed at all. When deciding whether to allow your child to nap, keep in mind your destination time zone. Early in the day naps will have pose fewer problems than naps closer to afternoon and evening of your destination. Keeping naps brief, no longer than 30 minutes, will help prevent this extra sleep from disrupting your kids' bedtime.
Avoid medication. I hear often that parents are using over the counter sleep and cold medication to help their kids sleep during travel. It's never a good idea to employ medication for treatment beyond its intended uses. And medicating a child to sleep through travel will only further disrupt his or her sleep-wake cycle, leaving your child even less able to adapt to sleeping in the new time zone.
Get out in the light. Sunlight and exercise are two of the very best ways to help speed your child's adjustment to a different time zone. Exposure to light and physical activity will help re-set their circadian clocks. If you've arrived early in the day, getting your kids outside to play will help boost their energy and fall asleep more easily at the right time. If you arrive in the late afternoon or evening, close to bedtime, keeping kids quiet and away from bright light will help prepare them to wind down for bed.
My last tip? Parents, take care of your own sleep! If you are rested, you'll be that much better able to handle the ups and downs of travel -- and your kids' unpredictable moods -- with patience and good humor.
Happy holidays and happy, well-rested travel!
2011年12月5日星期一
Occupy Movement Needs Equalism Not Marginalization
Everyone is asking what the Occupy movement stands for. Rarely do our answers reflect the scope of the aspiration that has brought us, and so many like us, into the streets. With the support of growing majorities worldwide, millions are protesting because we feel an urgent need to transform our society from a militaristic, greed-based, corrupt culture to one of cooperation, caring, and prosperity. A society in which government serves its people rather than the plutocracy now controlling it.
One of us (Liz Abzug) created and introduced the term "equalist" a few years ago, believing that it more fully characterizes the next phase of feminism. The General Assembly at Occupy Wall Street recognized the importance of equalizing women's voices early on and developed protocols for the Assembly and working groups to provide equal time for women to act as spokespeople for the movement and to express their views at meetings, even at times when there were more men than women waiting to speak.
As many of the Occupy camps work to organize for both protest and political impact, it is essential that the movement represents all of us -- that women, and people from different classes and backgrounds, feel that their voices are heard.
"Equalism" is asserting the equalist right of any citizen, regardless of economic position, race, gender, orientation, identity, or belief, to participate in -- and be served equally -- by our government. Equalism is the opposite of asserting the right of any individual or group over another.
Equalism is the means by which the optimistic, populist objectives of the Occupy protest, shared by a majority of Americans, can become reality.
In essence equalism means people power -- one person equaling one vote, instead of $3 billion in corporate lobbyist money for TV ads delivering tens of millions of votes. It means the peaceful transfer of power from the corporate and billionaire funders of political campaigns to the voters themselves.
The Second American Revolution that many Americans hope the Occupy movement ushers in is about our citizens reclaiming those "self-evident truths" proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence. The Revolution of 1776 launched the then radical notion that each citizen, regardless of birth, class, or income, should have an equal vote to elect a government whose power is derived solely from the "consent of the governed."
A majority of the members of Congress today owe their elections to a far more powerful constituency than individual voters. They are beholden to multinational corporations who typically, through their lobbyists and executives, "donate" millions of dollars for each congressional election to purchase the TV ads now deemed "necessary" to win elections. Once elected, members of Congress spend more than half their time raising money for their re-elections and "working with" the representatives of their campaign donations, instead of their constituents, to write and pass laws.
Equalization is about equalizing the power of any individual voter so that it will be greater than that of a corporation and equal to that of a voter who is a billionaire. To accomplish this, we feel that each citizen needs to "be the change we want to see" by becoming the media. This means replacing TV ads, and political coverage on corporate-controlled media, with our own actions on social networks that provide direct expression of our points of view. In this way, we can offset the marginalization of the American citizen by corporations and billionaires.
Our objective in creating the new post-partisan non-profit BeYourGovernment.org is to provide a free online system for citizens to use their social networks to support candidates (of any or no party) willing to run for office without the corrupting influence of the corporate funders of multimillion dollar TV ad campaigns. A demo of the system, which will officially launch next month on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, can be viewed at www.BeYourGovernment.org. Our beta site showcases our candidates' video debate forum, free political homepages for all citizens, and platform pages for any congressional candidates who pledge to represent people and not corporations.
As we work to equalize the playing field for honest "pro-99%" candidates to run for Congress, we feel that a true re-creation of government must also equalize the number of women and men elected to Congress. Most American women we speak to, all over the country, say they do not want to run for office because of the corrupting process of party politics and elections. But social networks and broadband-delivered web video now offer an alternative to the corrupting multimillion dollar TV ad campaigns. Far more Americans are on Facebook than will vote in the 2012 election. If millions of Occupy-supporting citizens can use their personal networks to share political expression with friends and relatives, then we have a chance to recreate government with a grassroots, bottom-up selection and election process.
We believe that if voters can hear what they offer, then new pro-99% candidates who refuse corporate funding will win primaries and elections, even when competing with more "experienced" professional politicians and incumbents.
A Second American Revolution will result from electing a congressional majority -- half of them women -- without corporate money. Is there any doubt that such a government would better represent the people of this country than the Congress we have now, which has the approval of less than 10% of voters? Imagine a government of representatives who do not receive one dime in donations from Wall Street, Big Pharma, the oil industry, or the military industrial complex. Imagine a Congress where the members are regular working people from all backgrounds and professions and where women constitute half of the House and Senate.
Then look at our reality today. The United States now ranks 70th in the world in terms of the number of women in Congress or Parliament, behind almost every developed democracy on earth. Our country also ranks 24th in Transparency International's ranking of honest governments, and 37th in health care outcomes.
These three facts are not unrelated. They grow from the corruption that class warfare by billionaires has brought to our government. Nor is it unrelated that America's military spending is greater than every other major nation's military budgets combined. And why are we the only modern democracy without a living wage for its workers? The only modern democracy to reduce environmental regulation during this age of climate crisis and environmental destruction? The only one to force millions of citizens into bankruptcy to pay for health care? How is it that we have the highest incarceration rate on earth--alongside the world's largest, most profitable private prison system? And why are we the only modern democracy in which corporations with billions in profits pay no taxes, and billionaires pay lower tax rates than janitors?
All of this is the result of a very effective, congressionally-enabled class warfare campaign that in just 30 years has nearly tripled the percentage of all income that goes to the wealthiest 1%. This represents the greatest redistribution of wealth upwards of any modern democratic nation in history.
What has inspired us most about our conversations with the young activists who are in the front lines of the Occupy movement is their optimism: their unrelenting belief that our society can undergo transformative change and create a caring, cooperative, truly democratic and functioning system. Never before have we heard such optimism expressed by young people, who have broken free of apathy and poured into the streets in numbers unseen since the seventies.
They are occupying, and so are we. We will not stand for business as usual while our lives, our families, our communities, and our planet are systematically looted and denigrated to benefit 1% of the wealthiest Americans.
The Occupy movement, uplifting millions in communities large and small, is acting like the nervous system of our society: screaming out for justice to end the searing pain caused by economic disparity and environmental degradation.
The political establishment, with their armies of riot police and a corporate-controlled media echo chamber, has worked incessantly to marginalize and diminish this movement. They are failing. And they are frightened, because they sense that their ability to control the voters is coming to an end.
We believe that as the Occupy movement becomes an equalization movement, as we use our voices and our social networks to www.OccupyGovernment.org, as we take the "buck out of the ballot," as we become and assist candidates with integrity to take over Congress and create an honest government, as we bring the people to power, our dream will become a reality.
One of us (Liz Abzug) created and introduced the term "equalist" a few years ago, believing that it more fully characterizes the next phase of feminism. The General Assembly at Occupy Wall Street recognized the importance of equalizing women's voices early on and developed protocols for the Assembly and working groups to provide equal time for women to act as spokespeople for the movement and to express their views at meetings, even at times when there were more men than women waiting to speak.
As many of the Occupy camps work to organize for both protest and political impact, it is essential that the movement represents all of us -- that women, and people from different classes and backgrounds, feel that their voices are heard.
"Equalism" is asserting the equalist right of any citizen, regardless of economic position, race, gender, orientation, identity, or belief, to participate in -- and be served equally -- by our government. Equalism is the opposite of asserting the right of any individual or group over another.
Equalism is the means by which the optimistic, populist objectives of the Occupy protest, shared by a majority of Americans, can become reality.
In essence equalism means people power -- one person equaling one vote, instead of $3 billion in corporate lobbyist money for TV ads delivering tens of millions of votes. It means the peaceful transfer of power from the corporate and billionaire funders of political campaigns to the voters themselves.
The Second American Revolution that many Americans hope the Occupy movement ushers in is about our citizens reclaiming those "self-evident truths" proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence. The Revolution of 1776 launched the then radical notion that each citizen, regardless of birth, class, or income, should have an equal vote to elect a government whose power is derived solely from the "consent of the governed."
A majority of the members of Congress today owe their elections to a far more powerful constituency than individual voters. They are beholden to multinational corporations who typically, through their lobbyists and executives, "donate" millions of dollars for each congressional election to purchase the TV ads now deemed "necessary" to win elections. Once elected, members of Congress spend more than half their time raising money for their re-elections and "working with" the representatives of their campaign donations, instead of their constituents, to write and pass laws.
Equalization is about equalizing the power of any individual voter so that it will be greater than that of a corporation and equal to that of a voter who is a billionaire. To accomplish this, we feel that each citizen needs to "be the change we want to see" by becoming the media. This means replacing TV ads, and political coverage on corporate-controlled media, with our own actions on social networks that provide direct expression of our points of view. In this way, we can offset the marginalization of the American citizen by corporations and billionaires.
Our objective in creating the new post-partisan non-profit BeYourGovernment.org is to provide a free online system for citizens to use their social networks to support candidates (of any or no party) willing to run for office without the corrupting influence of the corporate funders of multimillion dollar TV ad campaigns. A demo of the system, which will officially launch next month on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, can be viewed at www.BeYourGovernment.org. Our beta site showcases our candidates' video debate forum, free political homepages for all citizens, and platform pages for any congressional candidates who pledge to represent people and not corporations.
As we work to equalize the playing field for honest "pro-99%" candidates to run for Congress, we feel that a true re-creation of government must also equalize the number of women and men elected to Congress. Most American women we speak to, all over the country, say they do not want to run for office because of the corrupting process of party politics and elections. But social networks and broadband-delivered web video now offer an alternative to the corrupting multimillion dollar TV ad campaigns. Far more Americans are on Facebook than will vote in the 2012 election. If millions of Occupy-supporting citizens can use their personal networks to share political expression with friends and relatives, then we have a chance to recreate government with a grassroots, bottom-up selection and election process.
We believe that if voters can hear what they offer, then new pro-99% candidates who refuse corporate funding will win primaries and elections, even when competing with more "experienced" professional politicians and incumbents.
A Second American Revolution will result from electing a congressional majority -- half of them women -- without corporate money. Is there any doubt that such a government would better represent the people of this country than the Congress we have now, which has the approval of less than 10% of voters? Imagine a government of representatives who do not receive one dime in donations from Wall Street, Big Pharma, the oil industry, or the military industrial complex. Imagine a Congress where the members are regular working people from all backgrounds and professions and where women constitute half of the House and Senate.
Then look at our reality today. The United States now ranks 70th in the world in terms of the number of women in Congress or Parliament, behind almost every developed democracy on earth. Our country also ranks 24th in Transparency International's ranking of honest governments, and 37th in health care outcomes.
These three facts are not unrelated. They grow from the corruption that class warfare by billionaires has brought to our government. Nor is it unrelated that America's military spending is greater than every other major nation's military budgets combined. And why are we the only modern democracy without a living wage for its workers? The only modern democracy to reduce environmental regulation during this age of climate crisis and environmental destruction? The only one to force millions of citizens into bankruptcy to pay for health care? How is it that we have the highest incarceration rate on earth--alongside the world's largest, most profitable private prison system? And why are we the only modern democracy in which corporations with billions in profits pay no taxes, and billionaires pay lower tax rates than janitors?
All of this is the result of a very effective, congressionally-enabled class warfare campaign that in just 30 years has nearly tripled the percentage of all income that goes to the wealthiest 1%. This represents the greatest redistribution of wealth upwards of any modern democratic nation in history.
What has inspired us most about our conversations with the young activists who are in the front lines of the Occupy movement is their optimism: their unrelenting belief that our society can undergo transformative change and create a caring, cooperative, truly democratic and functioning system. Never before have we heard such optimism expressed by young people, who have broken free of apathy and poured into the streets in numbers unseen since the seventies.
They are occupying, and so are we. We will not stand for business as usual while our lives, our families, our communities, and our planet are systematically looted and denigrated to benefit 1% of the wealthiest Americans.
The Occupy movement, uplifting millions in communities large and small, is acting like the nervous system of our society: screaming out for justice to end the searing pain caused by economic disparity and environmental degradation.
The political establishment, with their armies of riot police and a corporate-controlled media echo chamber, has worked incessantly to marginalize and diminish this movement. They are failing. And they are frightened, because they sense that their ability to control the voters is coming to an end.
We believe that as the Occupy movement becomes an equalization movement, as we use our voices and our social networks to www.OccupyGovernment.org, as we take the "buck out of the ballot," as we become and assist candidates with integrity to take over Congress and create an honest government, as we bring the people to power, our dream will become a reality.
2011年12月4日星期日
U.N. Envoy: U.S. Isn't Protecting Occupy Protesters' Rights
WASHINGTON -- The United Nations envoy for freedom of expression is drafting an official communication to the U.S. government demanding to know why federal officials are not protecting the rights of Occupy demonstrators whose protests are being disbanded -- sometimes violently -- by local authorities.
Frank La Rue, who serves as the U.N. "special rapporteur" for the protection of free expression, told HuffPost in an interview that the crackdowns against Occupy protesters appear to be violating their human and constitutional rights.
"I believe in city ordinances and I believe in maintaining urban order," he said Thursday. "But on the other hand I also believe that the state -- in this case the federal state -- has an obligation to protect and promote human rights."
"If I were going to pit a city ordinance against human rights, I would always take human rights," he continued.
La Rue, a longtime Guatemalan human rights activist who has held his U.N. post for three years, said it's clear to him that the protesters have a right to occupy public spaces "as long as that doesn't severely affect the rights of others."
In moments of crisis, governments often default to a forceful response instead of a dialogue, he said -- but that's a mistake.
"Citizens have the right to dissent with the authorities, and there's no need to use public force to silence that dissension," he said.
"One of the principles is proportionality," La Rue said. "The use of police force is legitimate to maintain public order -- but there has to be a danger of real harm, a clear and present danger. And second, there has to be a proportionality of the force employed to prevent a real danger."
And history suggests that harsh tactics against social movements don't work anyway, he said. In Occupy's case, he said, "disbanding them by force won't change that attitude of indignation."
Occupy encampments across the country have been forcibly removed by police in full riot gear, and some protesters have been badly injured as a result of aggressive police tactics.
New York police staged a night raid on the original Occupy Wall Street encampment in mid-November, evicting sleeping demonstrators and confiscating vast amounts of property.
The Oakland Police Department fired tear gas, smoke grenades and bean-bag rounds at demonstrators there in late October, seriously injuring one Iraq War veteran at the Occupy site.
Earlier this week, Philadelphia and Los Angeles police stormed the encampments in their cities in the middle of the night, evicting and arresting hundreds of protesters.
Protesters at University of California, Davis were pepper sprayed by a campus police officer in November while participating in a sit-in, and in September an officer in New York pepper sprayed protesters who were legally standing on the sidewalk.
"We're seeing widespread violations of fundamental First Amendment and Fourth Amendment rights," said Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, co-chair of a National Lawyers Guild committee, which has sent hundreds of volunteers to provide legal representation to Occupations across the nation.
"The demonstrations are treated as if they're presumptively criminal," she said. "Instead of looking at free speech activity as an honored and cherished right that should be supported and facilitated, the reaction of local authorities and police is very frequently to look at it as a crime scene."
What they should do, Verheyden-Hilliard said, is make it their mission to allow the activity to continue.
Using the same lens placed on the Occupy movement to look at, say, the protest in Egypt, Verheyden-Hilliard said, observers would have focused on such issues as "Did the people in Tahrir Square have a permit?"
La Rue said the protesters are raising and addressing a fundamental issue. "There is legitimate reason to be indignant and angry about a crisis that was originated by greed and the personal interests of certain sectors," he said. That's especially the case when the bankers "still earn very hefty salaries and common folks are losing their homes."
"In this case, the demonstrations are going to the center of the issue," he said. "These demonstrations are exactly challenging the basis of the debate."
Indeed, commentators such as Robert Scheer have argued that the Occupy movement's citizen action has a particular justification, based on the government's abject failure to hold banks accountable.
La Rue said he sees parallels between Occupy and the Arab Spring pro-democracy protests. In both cases, for instance, "you have high level of education for young people, but no opportunities."
La Rue said he is in the process of writing what he called "an official communication" to the U.S. government "to ask what exactly is the position of the federal government in regards to understanding the human rights and constitutional rights vis-a-vis the use of local police and local authorities to disband peaceful demonstrations."
Although the letter will not carry any legal authority, it reflects how the violent suppression of dissent threatens to damage the U.S.'s international reputation.
"I think it's a dangerous spot in the sense of a precedent," La Rue said, expressing concern that the United States risks losing its credibility as a model democracy, particularly if the excessive use of force against peaceful protests continues.
New York Civil Liberties Union Executive Director Donna Lieberman welcomed the international scrutiny.
"We live in a much smaller, connected world than we ever did before, and just as Americans watch what goes on in Tahrir Square and in Syria, the whole world is watching us, too -- and that's a good thing," Lieberman said.
Frank La Rue, who serves as the U.N. "special rapporteur" for the protection of free expression, told HuffPost in an interview that the crackdowns against Occupy protesters appear to be violating their human and constitutional rights.
"I believe in city ordinances and I believe in maintaining urban order," he said Thursday. "But on the other hand I also believe that the state -- in this case the federal state -- has an obligation to protect and promote human rights."
"If I were going to pit a city ordinance against human rights, I would always take human rights," he continued.
La Rue, a longtime Guatemalan human rights activist who has held his U.N. post for three years, said it's clear to him that the protesters have a right to occupy public spaces "as long as that doesn't severely affect the rights of others."
In moments of crisis, governments often default to a forceful response instead of a dialogue, he said -- but that's a mistake.
"Citizens have the right to dissent with the authorities, and there's no need to use public force to silence that dissension," he said.
"One of the principles is proportionality," La Rue said. "The use of police force is legitimate to maintain public order -- but there has to be a danger of real harm, a clear and present danger. And second, there has to be a proportionality of the force employed to prevent a real danger."
And history suggests that harsh tactics against social movements don't work anyway, he said. In Occupy's case, he said, "disbanding them by force won't change that attitude of indignation."
Occupy encampments across the country have been forcibly removed by police in full riot gear, and some protesters have been badly injured as a result of aggressive police tactics.
New York police staged a night raid on the original Occupy Wall Street encampment in mid-November, evicting sleeping demonstrators and confiscating vast amounts of property.
The Oakland Police Department fired tear gas, smoke grenades and bean-bag rounds at demonstrators there in late October, seriously injuring one Iraq War veteran at the Occupy site.
Earlier this week, Philadelphia and Los Angeles police stormed the encampments in their cities in the middle of the night, evicting and arresting hundreds of protesters.
Protesters at University of California, Davis were pepper sprayed by a campus police officer in November while participating in a sit-in, and in September an officer in New York pepper sprayed protesters who were legally standing on the sidewalk.
"We're seeing widespread violations of fundamental First Amendment and Fourth Amendment rights," said Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, co-chair of a National Lawyers Guild committee, which has sent hundreds of volunteers to provide legal representation to Occupations across the nation.
"The demonstrations are treated as if they're presumptively criminal," she said. "Instead of looking at free speech activity as an honored and cherished right that should be supported and facilitated, the reaction of local authorities and police is very frequently to look at it as a crime scene."
What they should do, Verheyden-Hilliard said, is make it their mission to allow the activity to continue.
Using the same lens placed on the Occupy movement to look at, say, the protest in Egypt, Verheyden-Hilliard said, observers would have focused on such issues as "Did the people in Tahrir Square have a permit?"
La Rue said the protesters are raising and addressing a fundamental issue. "There is legitimate reason to be indignant and angry about a crisis that was originated by greed and the personal interests of certain sectors," he said. That's especially the case when the bankers "still earn very hefty salaries and common folks are losing their homes."
"In this case, the demonstrations are going to the center of the issue," he said. "These demonstrations are exactly challenging the basis of the debate."
Indeed, commentators such as Robert Scheer have argued that the Occupy movement's citizen action has a particular justification, based on the government's abject failure to hold banks accountable.
La Rue said he sees parallels between Occupy and the Arab Spring pro-democracy protests. In both cases, for instance, "you have high level of education for young people, but no opportunities."
La Rue said he is in the process of writing what he called "an official communication" to the U.S. government "to ask what exactly is the position of the federal government in regards to understanding the human rights and constitutional rights vis-a-vis the use of local police and local authorities to disband peaceful demonstrations."
Although the letter will not carry any legal authority, it reflects how the violent suppression of dissent threatens to damage the U.S.'s international reputation.
"I think it's a dangerous spot in the sense of a precedent," La Rue said, expressing concern that the United States risks losing its credibility as a model democracy, particularly if the excessive use of force against peaceful protests continues.
New York Civil Liberties Union Executive Director Donna Lieberman welcomed the international scrutiny.
"We live in a much smaller, connected world than we ever did before, and just as Americans watch what goes on in Tahrir Square and in Syria, the whole world is watching us, too -- and that's a good thing," Lieberman said.
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