People Before Profit blog

CPUSA leader talks strategy for defeating the extreme right

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 17:16:00 +0000

NEW YORK -- In a speech he delivered last Saturday to a members conference of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA), Sam Webb, the party's chairman acknowledged that "it is easy to become frustrated with the pace and scale of change in recent years" but laid out an approach he believes has the potential to shape a bright future for the majority of Americans.

He opened his presentation by listing some of the things that have discouraged workers and their allies. "Nearly every section of the working class...has lost income, job opportunities and rights as the capitalist class has ferociously pressed its offensive," he declared. "The temperature of the planet has tacked upward at rates that...could endanger life." he said, adding, "Wars...and the steady expansion of U.S. military presence worldwide for geo-economic and geopolitical advantage...has continued no matter who occupies the White House."

He noted that the election of President Obama in 2008, which gave people the hope that things would change for the better but has left them with that hope not fully realized. This, he said, should not take away from some of the positive changes that have happened over the past five years including stimulus measures that "put a tourniquet on a hemorrhaging economy, the winding down of two wars, and the expansion of health care to millions formerly uncovered."

The main factor explaining the grim circumstances in which the working class finds itself, Webb declared, "is the one-sided intensification of the class struggle by the capitalist class In fact," Webb said, "the owners of the commanding heights of the economy are exploiting the current economic crisis to double down on their efforts to further shift wealth into their hands - not to mention further weaken, if not destroy, the labor movement as well as other organizational citadels of people's power."

He identified the battle over so-called "entitlements," Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, as the "epicenter" of this offensive, essentially aimed at eliminating the entire New Deal.

Webb did not leave his audience with just a tough analysis to chew on. He went on to explain how, "in the loosely organized movement of the present are early signs of an emerging political force that could well pack the wallop to give the country a new burst of freedom, economic security and peace.

"Hasn't the thinking of substantial sections of the people changed in a democratic, progressive and radical direction?" he asked. "In public opinion polls capitalism's star is sinking downward, while socialism's star is on the rise." Webb then pointed to transformation taking place in the labor movement, environmentalists and unions working together, people entering the electoral arena en masse to elect an African American president twice, and victories against racism, sexism and homophobia to make his case about the potential for fightback.

He said that going forward, what is needed is the building of a movement with "transformative power."

"The task of a movement with transformative aspirations now is to be up to its ears in the struggle for jobs, a higher minimum wage, immigration reform, gun control, preservation of earned benefits programs, sequester reversal, a federal budget that favors peoples needs, cutting the military budget and many more issues at the state and local level."

The same importance, Webb said, should be assigned to going after Republicans in next year's elections. "Defeating the right wing extremists in Congress is the key link in moving the whole chain of struggle forward," he said.

"None of this, of course will be easy," said Webb. "But that can't be a reason not to show up for the battle."

Conference photo courtesy CPUSA.

NBA player makes history by coming out as gay

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 12:56:00 +0000

WASHINGTON - The NBA's Jason Collins made history yesterday by coming out as gay - the first time an NBA player has done so while still actively playing. Collins, a center, finished this season with the Washington Wizards, and has also played for the Boston Celtics, Minnesota Timberwolves, New Jersey Nets, Atlanta Hawks, and Memphis Grizzlies. Collins made the announcement in an interview with Sports Illustrated.

Human Rights Campaign President Chad Griffin released the following statement:

"With his brave and honest announcement today, Jason Collins has forever changed the face of sports. No longer will prejudice and fear force gay athletes to remain silent about a fundamental part of their lives. By coming out and living openly while still an active NBA player, Collins has courageously shown the world that one's sexual orientation is no longer an impediment to achieving one's goals, even at the highest levels of professional sports.

"Jason Collins' commitment to living openly is a monumental step forward toward greater equality and he immediately becomes a role model for youth all across this country. His actions today tell LGBT young people that what will define our success in life is our character and dedication, not our sexual orientation. At a moment when millions are reflecting on the life and legacy of Jackie Robinson, Jason Collins is a hero for our own times.

"Today's announcement again shows that gay Americans are our teachers, police officers, nurses, lawyers and even our professional athletes. We contribute to every aspect of our American community and deserve the same equal rights as every American."

The Human Rights Campaign is the largest national lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender political organization with members throughout the country. It effectively lobbies Congress, provides campaign support and educates the public to ensure that LGBT Americans can be open, honest and safe at home, at work and in the community.

Photo: Boston Celtics forward Paul Pierce, right, passes the ball to center Jason Collins (98) as he is pressured by Charlotte Bobcats center Brendan Haywood during a game in Boston, Jan. 14, 2013. Charles Krupa/AP

Report: Food on American tables costs a life a day

Thu, 25 Apr 2013 11:08:00 +0000

WASHINGTON - The food on your dining table comes at a particularly high price, and we don't mean in dollars and cents.

We mean in lives.

A recent report from the Center for Progressive Reform, citing federal data, says one farm worker dies on the job every day of the year. Hundreds more get injured or ill.

"The hazards of farm work run the gamut," the report adds. "Oppressive heat is common in every area with major agriculture. Heavy loads and repetitive motion strain workers' bodies. Slips, trips, and falls happen on a regular basis. Irrigation equipment can electrocute workers. Tractors overturn. Workers can become entrapped in grain silos and engulfed in clouds of pesticides. In short, farm work is dangerous business."

The farm workers whom the report cites are 98 percent non-union because federal labor law excludes farm workers from its coverage. That lack of protection, among other factors - many farm workers are immigrants and 44 percent don't speak English -- are not the only workers who die on the job. They're just some of the most-frequent victims.

Last year, they were joined by truck drivers killed in crashes, 17 union workers dying in derailments, warehouse workers in Illinois and California, toiling for Wal-Mart, who collapse in 110-degree heat, and even utility linemen shot to death by irate customers, among others. Some 4,000 workers died on the job, federal data calculate.

And while industrial accidents that kill and injure dozens of workers, such as the ammonia plant blast in Texas, get the headlines, job safety and health violations, unco-vered by state and federal inspectors, occur almost every day and many go unreported.

In one typical example, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) announced just in mid-April that it wants to fine the New England Confectionery Company in Revere, Mass., $133,000 for widespread and willful health and safety violations inspectors found there last year. Multiply Revere by hundreds of plants.

Meanwhile, Workers Memorial Day ceremonies nationwide on April 28 honored all workers killed on the job, including the truck drivers, the rail workers, the ammonia plant workers and the farm workers. The theme of the observances, as always, was "Pray for the dead, fight like hell for the living."

Commemorations ranged from a prayer vigil with bagpipes and a bugle at a workers' memorial in Cumberland, Md., to an annual remembrance of the 506 workers who died over the years at U.S. Steel's plant in Gary, Ind.

Indiana's GOP governor was scheduled to attend a ceremony on the state capitol grounds, the state AFL-CIO said. And there was another memorial ceremony at the Manhattan site of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire. It killed 146, 101 years ago.

Besides the workers who die on the job every year -- a number that declined sharply since unions pushed through the law creating OSHA in 1970 -- hundreds of thousands more suffer on-the-job injuries or illnesses. OSHA does what it can to stop the carnage, unionists say, but neither the law nor the agency is strong enough.

The best honor those workers could get, the union leaders say, is for Congress to beef up OSHA's strength, adding inspectors, increasing fines, and extending its coverage to the 22 million federal, state and local government workers: Teachers, Fire Fighters, police, corrections officers and more. The maximum fine against a firm when a worker dies on the job is $7,500. And the law should have more and better protections for whistleblowers, the unionists add.

"The toll of workplace injuries, illnesses, and deaths still remains enormous," says Teamsters President James Hoffa, whose words could be echoed by other unionists when it comes to job safety and health.

"Truck drivers suffer more on-the-job fatalities than any other individual occupation. Ergonomic hazards cripple and injure hundreds of thousands of workers every year and musculoskeletal disorder cases continue to increase and remain the nation's biggest workplace safety and health problem, without corresponding standards to prevent them," he continues.

"Hispanic and immigrant workers, who often work in the most dangerous jobs and are exploited by employers, have no union protections and are afraid to speak out....Hundreds of workers are fired or harassed by their employers each year simply for voicing job-safety concerns or reporting injuries. Although there are dozens of whistleblower protection and anti-retaliation laws, some are simply too weak and others are just not aggressively enforced due to insufficient funding of the regulatory agencies."

Fixing some of the holes is the point of the Protecting America's Workers Act (PAWA), reintroduced by Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., and Rep. George Miller, D-Calif.

But the biggest sanction OSHA now lacks, and that Murray's bill does not provide, is to give the agency the power to unilaterally declare a worksite so unsafe that it must shut down. Gary Beevers, the Steel Workers vice president who heads their oil and chemical workers sector, says that power would change corporate attitudes fast.

A multi-million-dollar fine means nothing, he says, to ExxonMobil. Shutting an oil refinery whose leaking toxic fumes killed workers and others would.

Photo: Demonstrators march in honor of undocumented farm worker Maria Isabel Vasques Jimenez, who collapsed and died in a vineyard in 2008 when her employer denied her drinking water. Rich Pedroncelli/AP

FOX-y move? Koch brothers may buy major U.S. newspapers

Thu, 25 Apr 2013 09:34:00 +0000

In a move that could signify a drastic FOX-ification of U.S. news, the far-right billionaire Koch brothers are reportedly seeking to buy The Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Tribune, The Baltimore Sun, and five other daily newspapers around the country.

The others on the list are The Orlando Sentinel, The Hartford Courant, the South Florida Sun Sentinel, The Morning Call (Allentown, Pa.), and the Daily Press (Hampton Roads, Va.).

The eight newspapers are owned by the Tribune Company, currently the nation's second largest newspaper publisher. The company was taken over by creditors last year after real estate wheeler-dealer Sam Zell drove it into bankruptcy. Now the creditors - led by JPMorgan Chase among others - are selling off the newspapers. Koch Industries, headed by Charles Koch, is one of the interested buyers, according to a New York Times report this week.

It would fit with a strategy Charles and David Koch announced three years ago to advance their right-wing, so-called libertarian, political agenda.

At a private seminar of rich right-wing political donors in Aspen, Colo., "they laid out a three-pronged, 10-year strategy to shift the country toward a smaller government with less regulation and taxes," the Times reported.

The first two prongs were educating grassroots activists and influencing politics. We have seen this come to life in the past several years as the Koch brothers spent millions financing the tea party, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker's union-smashing drive, the astroturf "Americans for Prosperity," and the so-called American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).

The third prong in their strategy was: media.

Sure, the right-wing Murdoch empire already has a giant media megaphone with FOX News, and has converted the formerly liberal New York Post to a right-wing scandal sheet. Murdoch owns the Wall Street Journal too.

But reportedly, the resounding Obama victory in the 2012 presidential election spurred the view among right-wingers that they needed to take their media presence to a new level. Their massive television ads did not do the trick in 2012, so the next logical step, they evidently conclude, is to simply buy the media outright.

"A running joke among conservatives as we watched the GOP establishment spend $500 million on ineffectual TV ads is 'Why don't you just buy NBC?'" right-winger Seton Motley, told the New York Times. Motley, a columnist for notorious ultra-right media manipulator Andrew Breitbart, heads an anonymous online group calling itself "Less Government."

Washington Post commentator Harold Meyerson notes that The Los Angeles Times is the country's fourth largest paper, The Chicago Tribune is No. 9, and others are in battleground states, including two of Florida's largest newspapers, The Orlando Sentinel and The Sun Sentinel in Fort Lauderdale. Meyerson says the deal could also include Hoy, the second-largest Spanish-language daily newspaper - thus reaching the key Latino voting constituency.

Commercial newspaper owners these days are corporations, out to make a profit. And, as Meyerson comments: "All newspaper owners have politics of their own." But the sale of some of the nation's major papers to the aggressively right-wing Koch brothers would be something different, he observes: "a political transaction first and foremost," turning major metropolitan dailies into "a right-wing mouthpiece."

Tom Worstall, columnist for pro-business Forbes, disputes the idea that the Koch brothers want to influence readers' politics. It's simply an opportunity for them to squeeze big profits out of the troubled newspaper industry, he suggests. "It's possible to make a lot of money out of sweating a declining industry," Worstall writes. "It's simply necessary to reduce costs faster than revenues decline [and] a sufficiently ruthless management could strip an awful lot of costs out of the average U.S. newspaper set up."

Could both motives be in play? Based on their record, it would be hard to imagine Charles and David Koch not using newspaper ownership to push their political aims.

This would be one of the largest sales of newspapers, based on circulation, that the country has ever seen. The eight papers are valued at about $623 million.

But the purchase would be financial small potatoes for Koch Industries, an energy and manufacturing conglomerate based in Wichita, Kan., which has annual revenues of about $115 billion.

Others reportedly interested in buying the papers include wealthy Los Angeles residents led by billionaire Eli Broad (who also funds charter school efforts) and Ronald Burkle, both prominent Democratic donors, and Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., who is said to prefer to buy only The Los Angeles Times.

Photo: Madison, Wis., Feb. 26, 2011. Sue Peacock CC 2.0

Detroit needs emergency action, not an emergency manager

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 15:12:00 +0000

DETROIT - The appointment of the emergency manager to rule Detroit will not turn the city around. Nowhere in Michigan have emergency managers worked because their intent is to punish a city or town, its unions and its residents for problems not of their making.

Detroit is far from the only community feeling the shock of the economic crisis. From Stockton, CA to Scranton, PA to Providence RI, the problems hitting urban areas, and many rural and suburban communities, spreads across the entire country.

It is no surprise that Detroit has a fiscal crisis. Economist Vic Perlo as long ago as 1961 referred to Detroit as a "one crop" city ruled by the auto industry, a rule that purposely made it harder for other industries to take root.

Almost from the beginning Detroit was going to sink or swim with the fortunes of its one cash crop. No other major city in the United States was so tied to a single industry.

Globalization, automation and the seeking of ever greater profits caused all auto companies, domestic and foreign, to move production. All contributed to Detroit losing almost 90 percent of its jobs and tax base.

Another huge factor, too often overlooked, is that Detroit's Black residents have endured a long history of racism and extreme segregation. Southeast Michigan is one of the most racially segregated areas in the entire nation.

The practice of redlining, backed by Federal law, prevented African Americans from getting the government backed mortgages available to white people buying homes in the suburbs.

This practice greatly spurred the white exodus from the city contributing to a growing polarization between the city and it suburbs. While this has lessened in the past decade as attitudes regarding equality and racism have improved, the blaming of the city's elected leadership and residents as the cause of the problem resonates with far too many.

"We are all Detroit" should be everyone's cry.

With a dwindling population and tax base, Detroit, as did many other cities, took out loans to keep up with expenses, hoping a better day would come. The Wall Street caused economic crisis robbed any hope of recovery.

With the funding of essential services, like health care, retiree benefits, police, fire, and education left to local bodies, the expense becomes insurmountable when population and tax base have been eroded.

Detroit has already downsized it workforce, going from 30,000 public employees in 1970 to well under 10,000 today, but the city is still responsible for the benefits they have rightfully earned.

A more equitable way of funding, national or regional in scope, is needed.

Federal action is a must. Unemployment is at crisis levels. Mayor Dave Bing has said the unofficial jobless rate is probably close to fifty percent. Finding a job in the city is next to impossible. While it's known as the motor city, many residents cannot afford cars and rely on a poor transit system that does not connect to jobs in the suburbs.

Further austerity measures and cuts should be unthinkable.

We need a national program to rebuild our infrastructure, winterize homes, develop renewable energy, build energy efficient mass transit and more. Detroit is a logical place for such initiatives.

Since they helped create the crisis, let's give Wall Street banks a "haircut." The principal and payments of Detroit's outstanding debts to the same banks that foreclosed on the city's residents should be written down.

The real problem facing the nation is not budget deficits but growing inequality. Since the early 1980's fifteen percent of our national income has transferred from the bottom ninety percent of households to the top ten percent.

The main problem we face as a nation is not a lack of money; the problem is too much of it is in too few hands. A tax structure based on trickle down has not worked. It's time to increase taxes on the one percent.

Military spending far exceeds what is needed to safely defend our nation. Almost all of it ends up in the accounts of large corporations whose interests have more to do with making profits than providing security or fighting terrorism. Cuts are needed and money saved can help transition toward rebuilding our communities.

Finally, the auto industry profited hugely from Detroit in it's hey day. A tax on the entire auto industry, both the domestic and foreign producers, to finance transition in cities abandoned by that industry sounds reasonable.

Author and educator Diane Ravitch speaking in Detroit said school districts like Detroit, which tend to end up on the bottom of standardized test scores, are districts with "intense poverty, intense racial isolation." She said, "Schools alone cannot right the wrongs of our society." The same can be said for the city as a whole.

Art Perlo contributed to this article

Photo: John Rummel/PW

Social Security advocate says bigger cost-of-living raises needed

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 13:17:00 +0000

WASHINGTON - The current inflation measure used to calculate yearly cost of living adjustments for Social Security recipients, the Consumer Price Index (CPI), understates the inflation that the elderly face, an advocate for the program says.

And Nancy Altman, co-chair of the Social Security Works coalition, told lawmakers that instead of considering how to cut the cost of living adjustments, Social Security should adopt an alternative inflation measure that more accurately reflects the real costs - especially the higher share of medical costs - the elderly shoulder.

Altman's advocacy came at one of the first congressional hearings, by the House Social Security Subcommittee on April 18, on proposals to reduce the annual cost of living adjustments by basing them to the so-called "Chained CPI," not the regular CPI.

Congress' ruling Republicans enthusiastically embrace the Chained CPI as part of their drive to cut the budget by cutting so-called "entitlements," notably Medicare and Social Security. Democratic President Barack Obama also backs the chained CPI.

Unions and their allies defend using the current CPI to calculate the yearly cost of living adjustments. Altman noted they're not "increases," but are meant to preserve

Social Security's purchasing power. Even with the adjustments, the average Social Security recipient now gets $13,900 a year, Altman says.

Altman was a lonely voice at the witness table, defending using the current CPI to calculate yearly Social Security cost of living adjustments. The others at the GOP-run hearing all favored using the chained CPI.

She responded that a chained CPI, which reflects consumers switching between goods depending on price - say, buying more chicken when beef prices rise - would deprive the 50 million seniors, 60 percent of whom depend on Social Security for at least half of their income, of money they need. One-third depend on it for 90 percent+ of income.

"The proposal to shift to the chained CPI for Social Security and other programs that serve the elderly and those with serious and permanent disabilities is nothing more than a benefit cut masquerading as a technical adjustment," Altman contended.

If Congress really wants to provide for Social Security recipients, it should shift the base for the adjustment from the CPI to a separate price index, now unused, the CPI-E, for "elderly." The CPI-E changes the basket of goods used to calculate yearly inflation, by lowering the share of the basket for services the elderly use less, such as recreation, and increasing it for the services they use more, principally medical care.

"One can argue whether having an index account for substitution in response to lower prices, producing a lower calculation of inflation, is more or less accurate, as a general matter," she said. "However, adjusting for substitution with respect to an index which already under-measures inflation" - the regular CPI - "will simply make the measure even less accurate, because the under-measurement will be larger."

The Republicans also contend Social Security contributes to federal red ink, an accusation Altman roundly denounced as untrue. Federal law, she notes, bars Social Security from borrowing from the Treasury. Indeed, it's run a surplus since 1983, relying on money from payroll taxes and its investments in Treasury bonds.

"As people aged 65 and older grow to a projected 20.2 percent of our population in 2050, the nation is projected to allocate only 6.1 percent of gross domestic product to the provision of the basic necessities through our Social Security system. Congress could easily alleviate the pending retirement income crisis" - due to, among other causes, disappearing traditional private pensions and wipeout of 401(k) values in the Great Recession - "by increasing Social Security. Cutting Social Security will exacerbate the looming crisis," she testified.

"Whatever is done, though, it should not be done as part of a deficit reduction package," Altman said.

Photo: Fifth World Art/Flickr

Students strike vs. standardized tests, school closings (with video)

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 12:40:00 +0000

CHICAGO - High school students here went on strike today, refusing to participate in the second day of standardized testing. The test, PSAE, which juniors take, is used to evaluate the high school and to determine how much funding it will receive. Students took buses from high schools around the city to Chicago Public Schools headquarters downtown to picket and hold a press conference. (Continues after video.)

In a statement on Facebook, the organizers wrote:

"These tests put a number on our school, and on us. Standardized testing is NOT right! No student is standard! Students are more than a score. Our education and knowledge should not be limited to or dictated simply by a multiple choice test. Standardized testing shouldn't be a heavy influence on determining which schools close or how teachers are evaluated and definitely shouldn't rule our lives as students. We should be in classrooms learning and exploring not bubbling in scan-trons!

"This action is also addressing the racist and unfair 54 school closings that Mayor Rahm has imposed. These are OUR children. We can't allow a mayor close 54 schools in black and brown neighborhoods on false data as to why. We ALL must do something."

Photo: PW/John Bachtell

Tar sands refinery expanding just south of Chicago

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 16:03:00 +0000

CHICAGO - "Just three miles south of Chicago is the largest tar sands refinery in America" said Thomas Frank. "The tar sands project (in Alberta, Canada) is the largest engineering project in human history, an area the size of Florida."

Frank of East Chicago, Indiana lives in the shadows of the British Petroleum (BP) refinery at Whiting. BP will complete a massive $4 billion expansion of the refinery this year to process tar sands crude oil.

Frank was speaking April 22 at an Earth Day rally in Chicago protesting construction of the Keystone XL pipeline and the threat tar sands oil poses to freshwater, air and climate. It was one of scores of actions held across the country.

On the same day, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released a public comment saying the U.S. State Department's study lacked "sufficient information" to determine the impact of the pipeline on the environment.

The EPA commented, "Emissions from oil sands crude would be 81 percent higher than regular crude. If (greenhouse gas emission) intensity of oil sands crude is not reduced, over a 50 year period the additional CO2 from oil sands crude transported by the pipeline could be as much as 935 million metric tons."

Noted climatologist James Hansen calls this kind of discharge of greenhouse gases "game over" to achieving a stable climate.

"Indigenous peoples are on the front lines everywhere," said David Bender with the Chi-Nations Youth Group, and one of several speakers from the American Indian community. "We will not sit idle as these psychopathic corporations privatize, pollute and destroy the water essential for life."

Leonard Malatare of the American Indian Center described the struggle over the past few years by the Oglala Lakota tribe in the Pine Ridge reservation to fight the Keystone XL pipeline. Last year tribal members blocked a convoy of trucks crossing the reservation bound for the tar sands.

Oglala Lakota activists call the pipeline the "black snake" and vow to stop it. They warn it endangers the Ogallala Aquifer, which spans eight states and is source of drinking water for portions of the Pine Ridge, Cheyenne River Eagle Butte and Rosebud Reservations.

The Alberta Province does more trade with Illinois than any other state, trade based on tar sands oil production. This means Illinois and the region are already tied heavily into tar sands crude oil, a lot of which is being refined in Joliet and Lockport, Illinois and Whiting, Indiana.

The state leads the Midwest in crude oil refining capacity and is fourth in the nation.

Illinois is also a key hub for transporting both natural gas and petroleum products across North America via pipeline, truck and rail. The existing pipeline network including the Enbridge Pipeline, which carries tar sands crude to the Whiting BP refinery and the Flanagan pipeline, which activists say will carry more dirty tar sands crude south than the Keystone XL Pipeline.

As part of the expansion of tar sands refining, Indiana approved BP's water permit in 2008 to discharge 5000 lbs. of ammonia into Lake Michigan daily and 1500 lbs. of soot. Then Chicago Mayor Daley led a drive to gather a million signatures in a week and a week later struck a deal with BP.

"But nothing has changed," says Frank. "That permit is in place and BP is still dumping toxic tar sands byproducts into Lake Michigan," even after installing $400 million in state of the art pollution control equipment.

Debra Michaud of the Rainbow Action Network said although this was the 43^rd anniversary of Earth Day the situation facing the planet was direr than ever.

"More than half our nation's waterways are unsafe for aquatic life," she said. "Our oceans are on the brink of collapse, 95% of our original forests are gone, and carbon concentrations in the atmosphere are threatening life."

Michaud called for a much bigger movement to block the plans of energy corporations and to transition to a sustainable economy.

A letter was delivered to both Gov. Pat Quinn and Attorney General Lisa Madigan calling for a moratorium on efforts to radically expand fracking and a rejection of expansion of the tar sands project in Illinois.

Photo: David Bender speaking at the Earth Day rally in Chicago. Earchiel Johnson/Peoplesworld.org

Texas fertilizer plant failed to heed disclosure rules

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 15:20:00 +0000

The tragic April 17 explosion at the fertilizer plant in West, Texas was, in part, a product of a severe lack of accountability and oversight by its company, West Fertilizer. The blast killed 14 people and injured at least 200, and it's no wonder: last year, the facility was storing 1,350 times the amount of ammonium nitrate that would typically draw concern from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

West Fertilizer was required to tell DHS about the abnormal chemical amount. It reportedly failed, however, to disclose that information. Fertilizer plants are required by law to disclose with DHS any amount of the substance that exceeds 400 lbs. Filings by the company this year with the Texas Department of State Health Services (but not DHS) reveal that the plant had 270 tons of it in 2012.

Ammonium nitrate can be used in bomb making, and, perhaps disturbingly, this plant stored more than 100 times the amount of ammonium nitrate used by domestic terrorist Timothy McVeigh in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.

Though DHS had the authority to carry out an inspection of the plant (followed by a potential fine or complete shutdown), it "only has a small number of field auditors" who do that, said plant owner Donald Adair. As there was no interaction between West Fertilizer and DHS, the latter was unable to assess the ammonium nitrate quantity and devise security and safety plans based on it.

Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Mass., member of the House Committee on Homeland Security, remarked, "It seems this [company] was willfully off the grid. This facility was known to have chemicals well above the threshold amount to be regulated under the Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards Act, yet we understand that DHS did not even know the plant existed until it blew up."

Thompson shared the public's assessment that the explosion was caused when the ammonium nitrate was somehow set ablaze. "I strongly believe that if the proper safeguards were in place, as they are at thousands of DHS-regulated plants across the country, the loss of life and destruction could have been far less extensive."

This information came after the already-worrying revelation that the facility had not been inspected by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration in five years. And prior to that, it had run into other issues: it was cited in 2006 for not having a permit by the Texas Commission for Environmental Quality. It was also issued a $2,300 penalty by the EPA around that time for similar reasons.

Sam Mannan, director of the process safety center at Texas A&M University added, "This shows that the enforcement routine has to be more robust, on local, state, and federal levels. If information isn't shared with agencies, which is what appears to have happened here, then the regulations won't work."

"That's just a god-awful amount of ammonium nitrate," said Bryan Haywood, who owns a hazardous chemical consulting firm in Milford, Ohio. "As a former HAZMAT coordinator, that would have been a red flag for me."

Photo: A plume of smoke rises from the fertilizer plant explosion in West, Texas. Andy Bartee/AP

Senate immigration bill: big advances, real dangers

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 15:19:00 +0000

Last week, the bipartisan "Gang of Eight" in the U.S. Senate finally presented their long awaited immigration reform bill. The Border Security, Economic Opportunity and Immigration Modernization Act of 2013 (S.744) will soon be joined by a bill in the House of Representatives. Now comes the real fight, to pass a bill in each house, but also to modify the original drafts so as to fortify the positive elements and eliminate the dangerous and negative ones. S.744 includes some big advances and improvements over past bills, but also some real problems and even dangers.

Numerous groups are working out their point-by-point analyses of the Senate bill, which is more than 800 pages long. A useful summary has been posted online by the National Immigration Law Center; the present article takes this as its starting point.

A major positive accomplishment of this bill is to potentially legalize the vast majority of current undocumented immigrants in the United States, generally estimated at around 11 million, with 8 million or so in the work force. There are some very progressive new items in S.744 that have not been seen in other recent immigration reform legislation. For example, this bill would allow the return of many people who have already been deported and who have U.S. citizen children and/or spouses in the United States.

This is an important advance over previous legislation not only because it is humane, but also because a major reason people cross the border without papers is to be able to rejoin their U.S. families, and have no legal way to do so if they can't get visas or have already been removed from the United States previously. This would go a long way to solving a major demand of the immigrants' rights movement, which is that parents of U.S. citizen children should not be deported, and if deported, should be able to return to be with their families.

But there is a serious problem with the mechanism to be used to legalize the undocumented immigrants. A new status is created for them and their spouses and minor children, that of "Registered Provisional Immigrant" (RPI). This status would be reserved for previously undocumented immigrants who came to the United States before the last day of the year 2011 and who meet various other requirements including not having a serious crime record (no felonies and no more than three misdemeanors, among other things).

RPIs could live and work in the United States, but would not be guaranteed Permanent Legal Resident (PLR) status until they got through a 10-year probationary period (with shorter waits for DREAMers and agricultural workers). They would first be in the limbo status of RPIs for 6 years, then would have to apply for an extension, pay more fees and if approved, they would be RPI's for another four years. After that, they could apply for PLR status, and then after 3 years (not the standard 5) could apply for U.S. citizenship by naturalization.

The trouble is that the 10-year RPI status is booby-trapped. First of all, to get it extended for the second period, RPIs would have to prove that their incomes were not below the official U.S. poverty rate at that time. Secondly, they would have to prove steady employment, with no hiatus of more than 60 days of being unemployed. Finally, they could not get any means tested government benefits during the time they were RPIs, or in their first five years as permanent legal residents. They would be required to purchase health insurance in the exchanges set up by the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) but only with their own money; they would not be eligible for discounts or subsidies.

What would be the impact? At first glance, it would mean that quite a few undocumented immigrants would not be able to navigate this obstacle course: Many of them are under the poverty line as it is. Others would be knocked out of RPI status because of layoffs, factory closings and all sorts of things that might affect their employment. These are economic factors neither immigrant workers nor any other workers can control, but they would make the difference between being legalized and being deported for these workers and their families. And between the stiff fees and fines at each step of the way, and the non-access of the immigrants to government help programs, many may not make it.

And even if they are able to tough it out, the employment requirement gives their employers a powerful weapon to control worker demands for higher pay and better working conditions. One of the worst things about the current system of low paid, undocumented labor in the United States is that it undercuts workplace struggles, including unionization drives and strikes. Currently, even though many undocumented immigrant workers support union demands and would certainly like better pay, their participation in the struggle is limited because they are vulnerable to their employers' threats to get them deported, and because if they lose their jobs, it is even harder for them than for U.S. citizen or documented immigrants find new ones. This creates a situation of brutal super-exploitation of undocumented immigrant labor. The employment requirement of S.744, if not changed, would perpetuate this situation for 10 years or more.

There are other negative factors in the bill, such as new repressive measures like universal use of E-verify, plus some extremely positive ones, such as the best version of the DREAM Act we have seen so far. These will be dealt with in other articles to follow.

People's World has published "Immigration: Myths and Facts," which can be downloaded here, to help the effort to win a reform law that puts the best of American values, family, workers' and civil rights first. http://www.peoplesworld.org/immigration-myths-vs-facts-available-for-download/

Photo: Children march in Chicago, March 26, to keep immigrant families together and for immigration reform (PW/Winona Albano Bachtell).

Obama's student loan plan: Short-term gains, no solutions

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 14:21:00 +0000

A major issue for college students in the 2012 presidential campaign was the possibility that interest rates on federal subsidized Stafford loans would double from 3.4 percent to 6.8 percent on July 1, 2012. With student debt hitting $1 trillion and becoming the second largest form of consumer debt, a doubling of interest rates would only further harm struggling students and negatively impact the economy.

To remedy this potential problem, President Obama - with bipartisan support - proposed an extension of the 3.4 percent rate for one year. After a one-year reprieve, interest rate hikes for those in the Stafford loan program are again staring lower and middle class students dead in the face. This time around, however, the only proposed solutions will increase student debt.

College students and graduates currently have limited options to address the debt issue: let the one-year extension expire on July 1, 2013 and see interest rates double; accept plans to further delay rate hikes; or accept the president's proposal to tie student loan interest rates to market conditions, which would effectively raise student loan interest rates as the economy recovers.

With consensus on a long-term solution far off in Washington D.C., both the House and the Senate have proposed plans to delay the rate hike for two years or indefinitely postpone it. If the government cannot come up with a long-term solution, skyrocketing student debt will continue to adversely affect students across the country, including here in the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education (PASSHE),

According to the Project on Student Debt, two-thirds of graduating students in the United States in 2011 had an average debt of $26,600. Seventy-seven percent of students graduating from PASSHE universities in 2011 took on student loans; the average student graduated with $26,047 in student loan debt, with an estimated $20,727 coming from federal student loan programs. Students are graduating with significant debt, and allowing rates to double will only make matters worse.

Let's assume a student graduates with $10,000 in subsidized Stafford loan debt. If interest rates were to double, that student would pay an extra $2,000 in interest over the life of their 10-year loan. While this scenario may be frightening, the proposed solutions may end up being worse.

In President Obama's budget request on April 10, the president proposed changes to the way interest rates are calculated for subsidized and unsubsidized Stafford loans, as well as Parent PLUS loans. The president's "market-based solution" would peg the interest rate on these loans to the current 10-year bond rate plus an additional amount for each loan type. Inside Higher Ed describes how these formulas would apply:

"The interest rate would be the 10-year Treasury yield plus 0.93 percent for subsidized Stafford loans, plus 2.93 percent for unsubsidized Stafford loans, and plus 3.93 percent for PLUS loans for parents and graduate students."

The logic behind the proposal is that students will graduate with low interest rates during hard economic times and higher rates when the market is healthier. However, what looks to be a short-term win for prospective and current college students and recent graduates can actually turn into a Trojan Horse years down the line.

Considering that current interest rates for unsubsidized Stafford loans are 6.8 percent, Parent PLUS is 7.9 percent and the 10-year Treasury yield is at 1.84 percent, this formula would be a benefit for parents and students at the present moment. But when the economy picks up again, parents and students will most likely be paying more money for interest for all three government loans. In the years leading up to the recession, 10-year interest rates peaked at around 6.6 percent in 2000 and hovered around 4.5 to 5.25 percent in the immediate run-up to the recession. If the economy fully recovers, students will be facing interest rates that may be much higher than current rates. Using the formula quoted above, if 10-year treasury rates were between 4.5 and 5.25 percent, subsidized Stafford loan rates would be between 5.43 and 6.18 percent, unsubsidized Stafford loan rates would be between 7.43 and 8.18 percent, and parent PLUS loans would be between 8.43 and 9.21 percent. If Treasury rates returned to their pre-recession peak, interest rates would be even higher.

With the economy still "depressed" and student debt at an all-time high, policymakers and students should be discussing reforms to the way interest rates are calculated. These reforms should focus on long-term affordability and accessibility.

Education advocates worry about the government using these loans, which serve lower and middle class families, as means to generate long-term profits. ThinkProgress noted that the federal government is set to make $34 billion off of student loans in 2014, and the government makes 12.5 cents on every subsidized Stafford loan dollar. Nearly two-thirds of those in the Stafford loan program are from families with an annual income under $50,000. Education advocate Ethan Senack said, "[H]igher education loans are meant to subsidize the cost of higher education, not profit from them, especially at a time when students are facing record debt." Tying interest rates to market conditions, while possibly providing short-term relief, may be counter to this mission in the long run. Students should demand more lasting, meaningful reform.

Sean Kitchen is assistant editor of Raging Chicken Press, a small activist, progressive publication in Kutztown, Pa.

Photo: Indiana University senior holds a sign that represents the average debt a college student has after graduating, during a IU protest, April 11, in Bloomington, Ind. Jeremy Hogan/Bloomington Herald-Times/AP

City Council funds jobs center for Oakland Army Base redevelopment

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 12:37:00 +0000

OAKLAND, Calif. - A major milestone was passed April 16 in the long struggle to win jobs for local workers in redevelopment of the Oakland Army Base, as the City Council voted funds to support a West Oakland Job Resource Center and a commission to monitor fulfillment of broad community benefits requirements approved last year.

Redevelopment of the base, and its future function as a site of logistical and warehouse operations for the neighboring Port of Oakland - the country's fourth busiest container port - is expected to bring thousands of new jobs to the city.

The jobs center is seen as essential to the success of provisions won by community, labor and faith organizations, including requirements that at least half the workers on the city's portion of the former base must be from Oakland, and all new union apprenticeships during construction must go to Oakland residents.

Chants of "More jobs, less violence!" focused on Oakland residents' concerns about the city's high rates of both joblessness and violence, as participants in the 30-organization Revive Oakland! coalition rallied outside City Hall before the council meeting.

While high in the city overall, unemployment soars far higher in economically challenged areas of West and East Oakland , which have large populations of people of color.

"I'm tired of seeing our young people who want to work, without jobs," Pastor Phil Lewis of the Israelite Missionary Baptist Church told the crowd. "I'm tired of seeing our young men going in and out of prison because they have to hustle instead of going to a good job every day, even though they are looking for jobs."

Shirley Burnell of the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE) said the jobs center is vital "so people can go there to get connected with the jobs, get connected with the training that's available, counseling if they need it, to make sure they are job-ready."

Burnell emphasized the importance of the oversight commission to be appointed by the mayor, as she pointed out that "everything we've won so far is just words on paper until it's implemented." The commission will include representatives of the community, labor, employers, and the city.

Andreas Cluver, who heads the Alameda County Building and Construction Trades Council, stressed the importance of job quality: "Our job is to make sure the construction workers out there on the job site are getting a good middle class wage, including pension and medical benefits, and that they are safe and come home with all their fingers and toes ... A good job in construction, in transportation and in the warehouse is a union job, a career. So Oaklanders have a pipeline to good middle-class careers."

The City Council's action will fund the Jobs Resources Center with $300,000 annually for two years, and appropriate $200,000 annually for two years to provide city staff to aid the oversight commission's work - funds coalition members see as a good start to what they hope will become ongoing support.

When the Oakland Army Base was decommissioned in 1999, its land - the size of 200 football fields - was divided between the city and the Port of Oakland. Revive Oakland! is also active in efforts to win similar community benefits in redevelopment of the port's portion of the huge former base.

Photo: April 16 rally in front of Oakland City Hall. Marilyn Bechtel/PW

New York tenants rise up to tackle housing crisis

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 12:27:00 +0000

NEW YORK -- Standing shoulder to shoulder in a packed union hall, tenants from this city's five boroughs vowed to tackle tough housing issues including the power of landlords, developers and big banks that they say is squeezing the people of this city.

The April 18 gathering at SEIU, local 1199's Martin Luther King Auditorium was a mosaic of the myriad communities that constitute New York. Those attending were part of Our City, Our Homes 2013, a coalition of over 25 community groups that insists landlords, developers and big banks actually profit from instability and crisis in housing.

As they entered the hall participants were met, on the right hand side, by members of New York Communities for Change (NYCC), who, in their bright orange t-shirts, ensured that everyone entering was registered and provided with a snack.

Also reflecting the high level of planning, entrants, on their left, were greeted by members of Community Voices Heard (CVH) who, in their royal blue t-shirts, gave registrants placards indicating their borough of origin and their issue of major concern.

Those not registered to vote went on to the Make the Road NY members in baby blue t-shirts and non-English speakers went to Community Action for Safe Apartments (CASA) members, also in orange t-shirts. "It was like a rainbow ethnically and organizationally," jokingly remarked one of the event organizers.

Cetiliatli Nauhcampa opened the evening's program with a prayer and dance. The performance was two-part, the first to honor mother earth and the second to give strength to the tenant's cause.

" I loved it!" exclaimed Gladys Puglla, from the Bushwick section of Brooklyn. "We need New Yorkers from different countries and cultures to be united in the struggle for housing. It was nice to see the Mexican people taking the fist step and sharing their culture. I am from Ecuador and I wish that we were able to give our traditional blessing.

"This was my first time ever seeing indigenous culture at a meeting of this type," Puglla added. "As a Latino I was proud."

"New York City is either going to be for us or for those who want to push us out," Benjamin Dulchin, executive director of the Association for Neighborhood and Housing Development (ANHD), said as he began the formal program.

Dulchin connected the housing issue in the city to the current mayoral election campaign.

He hit a receptive chord with the crowd as he recalled the plight of working families over the past 20 years and how they have been hurt during the administrations of Republican mayors Rudy Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg.

"Not enough affordable housing has been built and almost three quarters of what has been built during this time is at risk. Working and poor people are the majority in this city we've been fighting to preserve. We need a mayor who will make affordable housing permanent," said Anna Melendez from Nos Quedamos/We Stay.

Participants were given a memo explaining a comprehensive platform for solving the housing crisis in New York.

"New York City requires an expansive and innovative vision for housing that addressed four key issues," it read. On stage member organizations of the Our City Our Homes 2013 coalition spoke to the importance and necessity of each of those four key issues:

Improving Code Enforcement;

Committing to a Real Affordability Development Policy;

Improving and Preserving the Public Housing Stock in NYC;

Promoting Homeownership Opportunities and Preventing Foreclosure.

The presentations were often interrupted by applause and the overall platform was adopted.

NYCC deputy director Amelia Adams said, "NYCC and our coalition partners will make sure that these issues are on the agenda for the next mayor and hold him or her accountable to the needs of low and middle income tenants and homeowners in New York City."

NYCC is already a member organization of A+ NYC, a coalition that is doing what she described in the field of education. A+ NYC recently had a bus tour where they hit the streets to develop a common vision for improving public schools. This coalition has also targeted the 2013 mayors race demanding each candidate dissociate from the corporate-driven Bloomberg education agenda.

"We need to support coalitions like Our City Our Homes," said Jarvis Tyner, a northern Manhattan resident who is executive vice chair of the CPUSA. "That means finding out if the community group or union local you belong to is a member- if not find out what it takes to join. The Giuliani and then Bloomberg version of quality of life have been more like 20 years of institutionalized racism.

"Instead of the mass incarceration of Black and Latino youth they need to start throwing in jail some of these landlords who blatantly violate housing codes-- they are putting peoples lives in jeopardy!"

Photo: Zoilo Blas

Today in labor history: Cesar Chavez died

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 12:17:00 +0000

On this day in 1993 Cesar Chavez the founder and leader of the United Farm Workers union died.

The union achieved the nation's first industry-wide farm labor contracts. Chavez was an adherent of nonviolent civil disobedience and led many strikes and boycotts for his cause.

Chavez was also an early environmentalist, warning the public of the devastating effects of pesticides on both farmworkers and consumers. Chavez fought for the rights of immigrants, refusing to let the forces of agribusiness and racism scapegoat immigrant workers.

One of the union's key tactics was the boycott. It was so effective between 1968 and 1975 that 12 percent of the country's adult population that's 17 million people quit buying table grapes.

In 2002 a U.S. postage stamp was issued honoring Chavez. At the time John Sweeney, president of the AFL-CIO said. "A stamp in his honor challenges us to remember that his life's mission is not over until every worker has a living wage, adequate health care and dignity on the job."

In 2012 President Obama attended helped establish the César E. Chavez National Monument honoring the great civil rights and union leader. The event took place during the UFW's 50^th anniversary year. Chavez and his family lived and worked at La Paz from the early 1970s until his death in 1993. His gravesite there will be part of the monument. On September 8, 1994, Chavez was presented posthumously with the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Bill Clinton. The award was received by his widow, Helen Chavez.

Chavez's birthday, March 31^st is official state holiday in California, Texas and Colorado. This year President Obama declared his birthday Cesar Chavez Day. The struggle to make his birthday a national holiday continues.

After Boston Marathon bombings, tears and questions remain

Mon, 22 Apr 2013 16:07:00 +0000

Family members and life-long pals said their final farewells Sunday to Krystle Campbell, one of the three people killed in the Boston Marathon bombing last Monday.

Eight -year-old Martin Richard of Boston's Dorchester neighborhood and 23 year-old Lu Lingzi, a Boston University graduate student from China, also died in the attacks.

People in Medford, Mass., began calling Teamsters Local 25, when they heard that members of the extreme right-wing Westboro Baptist Church were planning one of their infamous protests at the Campbell funeral today.

The Teamsters local, which represents 11,000 workers in the area, turned out 1,000 members this morning at St. Joseph's Church in Medford, forming a human shield and an honor guard to block the fringe group from coming anywhere near the mourners.

"The Campbell family and friends have already endured immeasurable amounts of heartache and tragedy this week, and deserve a peaceful funeral with time to grieve privately," said Sean O'Brien, president of the local. He warned the right wing "church" to stay away from all funerals of victims of the bombings this week.

"We will go to great lengths to make sure they don't show up at the funerals of any of the victims of the past week's tragedies, and that those we lost receive a proper burial," he said.

The Westboro Baptist Church attends funerals of servicemen or others and typically declares that the tragedies are the result of ignoring God's will, particularly his alleged teachings against homosexuality. Church members, who declared their intention to march on the Campbell funeral this morning, failed to show.

It was reported this morning, meanwhile, that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the bombing suspect captured and hospitalized Friday night is now awake and answering questions. Media reports are that he was responding to questions in writing despite being in serious condition after being removed, covered in blood, from a boat in which he was hiding in a Watertown backyard. The capture came at the end of a tense daylong manhunt that began with his 26-year-old brother dying after a gun battle with police.

Tsarnaev is being questioned under "public safety exceptions" that officials say allow them to avoid reading him his Miranda rights while they try to get what they say is information critical to the public safety. Officials have told the media that the first questions are: "Where did you make the bombs? Are there any more explosives out there? Any more cells? Are there any more people?"

The federal government charged the 19-year-old today with using a weapon of mass destruction to kill three people and wound more than 200. If convicted, Tsarnaev could face the death penalty.

President Obama said there were many unanswered questions about the bombing, including whether the Tsarnaev brothers - ethnic Chechens from southern Russia who had been in the U.S. for a decade - had help from others. The president urged people not to rush to judgment about their motives.

There is speculation that there may not have been outside help and that it is possible the brothers could have been acting alone. "All of the information I have is they acted alone, these two individuals, the brothers,'' Boston Mayor Thomas Menino said on ABC's "This Week.''

The FBI interviewed the older Tsarnaev in 2011 at the request of the Russian government. The Russians felt Tamerlan Tsarnaev was engaging in terrorist-related activity but the FBI said it found no evidence of such activity. The older Tsarnaev travelled to Russia in 2012.

The media's rush to judgment and reporting errors has been a major concern. Only minutes after the first bomb exploded when some in the media decided that a Saudi Arabian student seen running from the explosion was a suspect.

"We learned from this how easy it is for the media, in the initial rush to be first, to get things wrong," said Dr. Jamie Wilson, an associate professor at Salem State College. CNN started out talking about a suspect with dark skin or a black person and this wasn't the case.

"The important thing now," Wilson said, "is that we are all trying to heal up here. Justice has to take its full course."

Teamsters came out en masse to protect Krystle Campbell's funeral from Westboro Baptists. Te amster Nation blog

Hunt for bomber locks down Boston area

Fri, 19 Apr 2013 15:32:00 +0000

On Friday, with one suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings dead, his brother was on the run and being pursued by hundreds of law enforcement officials in a manhunt that shut down Boston and several neighboring towns.

A man identified by authorities as Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, died after a shootout last night with police. He's the man pictured wearing a black cap and described Thursday by the FBI as Suspect No. 1 in the bombings Monday that killed three.

His brother, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, appears to have escaped and police then threw a huge dragnet over the entire Boston region. In photos released by the FBI Thursday the younger brother is seen wearing a white cap. The agency called him Suspect No.2.

Police continued to track down leads all day Friday, closing off areas and holding back reporters.

A Maryland man who said he was Tsarnaev's uncle told reporters the two men had brought shame on their family and all ethnic Chechens with the attacks, which he called an atrocity. "If you are alive, turn yourself in and ask for forgiveness," Ruslan Tsarni urged his nephew.

A teacher at the high school Dzhokhar attended who lives near Tsarnaev's residence now, described the younger brother as "a wonderful kid" who seemed incapable of such acts.

Boston police ordered businesses to stay closed and told residents to stay inside and answer the door for no one but authorities. The city's subway, bus, Amtrak train systems and Greyhound and Bolt Bus - a regional carrier - have been shut down. Taxi service was also suspended. Every Boston area school is closed.

"It's unprecedented and very difficult to think about," a Boston high school teacher said. "I don't know exactly how I will discuss this with my students when we are all back in school," she said, "but I have more options then the teachers who work with the very young children do. My kids are teenagers so there a lot more possibilities when it comes to ways I can handle this. I'll be thinking about it."

Police officers in full body armor, carrying automatic weapons, were travelling the streets in convoys and going door to door in Watertown, adjoining Boston, to track the suspect down, along with what some reports began saying were two accomplices.

"As I drove past Watertown toward Peabody I saw what had to be at least 300 security vehicles standing off the highway and ramps," said John Case, an announcer on WSHC Radio in Shepherdstown, W.Va., who was visiting the area. "In addition, it looks like they commandeered a fleet of MTA vehicles too."

The unprecedented events that led to the lockdown began Thursday night with the robbery of a 7-Eleven store.

Soon after, in Cambridge, across the Charles River from Boston, Massachusetts Institute of Technology police officer Sean Collier was fatally shot while sitting in his car. Police believe the bombing suspects were responsible for the shooting.

Police say the two then hijacked a car in Cambridge and released the driver at a gas station.

As police chased the car they say the occupants tossed explosives out the window and shot at them (the police).

Police fired back and wounded Tamerlan Tsarnaev who later died. They say he was wearing explosives and a trigger when his body was recovered.

A member of the transit police force was also shot and wounded, according to reports, but his condition was not known early Friday afternoon.

According to a source briefed on the investigation, the brothers came from the Russian Caucasus and had moved to Kyrgyzstan at a young age before coming to the United States several years ago.

Photo: A resident of Watertown, Mass., tweeted this photo of law enforcement making door to door searches right outside his home (via Twitter).

Texas explosion aftermath: Willie Nelson to hold benefit show

Fri, 19 Apr 2013 14:28:00 +0000

A fertilizer plant in West, Texas exploded on April 17, killing 15 and injuring hundreds more. Members of the International Association of Fire Fighters are on the scene, attempting to pick up the pieces after the devastating disaster that left some people missing, including a worker; a member of Dallas IAFF Local 58. People nationwide have responded to the tragedy with support and sympathy, and musician Willie Nelson, who grew up near West, has said he will turn an upcoming concert into a benefit show for victims of the explosion.

Nelson lives in Abbott, Texas - five miles north of West, where he said he still has family and friends. "Our hearts and prayers go out to the people of West," he said. "There are a lot of our friends and loved ones and neighbors down there. We talked to some of them and some of them made it out okay, but some of them didn't. But they're strong and they'll be back. It's one of those things you don't get over. But you will get through it."

Though the performance - scheduled for April 28 in Austin - was originally intended to be in celebration of Nelson's 80^th birthday, the artist will now raise funds for victims instead.

"I'll be there, and my son Lukas, my son Micah, and my daughters Paula and Amy," he added. Originally, "it was set up as a birthday show. But since the West tragedy happened, we decided to start a benefit there and let other people join in. If they want to donate to the West Volunteer Fire Department, they can do so. That's where our proceeds are going to go on that day."

Currently in West, Hazmat teams from IAFF Locals 478 and 2505 (the towns of Waco and Killeen, respectively) are joining the firefighters and other emergency service workers in assessing conditions and addressing safety issues.

"People are devastated here," said Darryl Hall, a firefighter who lives in Thorndale, about 50 miles away from West. "It's hard to imagine."

IAFF president Harold Schaitberger remarked, "Our members are doing what they do best and are on the scene, making calm out of chaos by assisting their neighboring community. This is another situation where this country is counting on our first responders to be there, and our members never disappoint - they respond no matter the circumstances."

As of now, said Texas State Association of Fire Fighters president Guy Turner, "The severity of the damage remains unclear. We won't have a clear picture until the entire scene has been swept by emergency personnel."

The plant was owned by West Fertilizer, and had problems prior to this incident. In 2006, it was cited by the Texas Commission for Environmental Quality for not having a permit after a stench of ammonia emmanated from the plant. It was also issued a $2,300 penalty that same year by the EPA for failing to have a risk management plan in place.

Furthermore, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration had not inspected the facility in five years, as they are understaffed and underfunded nationwide.

Reporter Mike Elk remarked, "This kind of plant here, OSHA has not inspected it in five years. This is a non-union facility. The way OSHA typically works - as well as the EPA - is they get a call from a worker, and then inspectors show up [to look at] the plant, and they find the problems. When you have a non-union workforce like you had in this plant, that's a lot less likely, since many folks are scared of losing their jobs. If you look at OSHA's budget, OSHA is so severely understaffed. So there's some misplaced priorities."

Events such as this one may cause people to remember the words of right-wing politicians in the state who wanted less oversight from federal agencies - when in fact, too little oversight was one of the problems to begin with.

During his 2011 run for president, GOP Gov. Rick Perry had remarked, "I promise you one thing: I'll get up every day to make the government as inconsequential in your life as I can." A budget he had approved also cut funding for volunteer fire departments in Texas to $30 million from $70 million. As anyone can now see, a better-funded volunteer fire department could prove very important in a situation such as this. Certainly, those cuts were credited for worsening the wildfires that plagued Texas in 2011. The cuts, according to critics, had a direct negative impact on the state's ability to respond to disasters. And this, unfortunately, is the result.

Photo: A firefighter walks among the remains of an apartment complex destroyed by the Texas fertilizer plant explosion (LM Otero/AP).

GOP pushes to replace overtime with comp time

Fri, 19 Apr 2013 13:22:00 +0000

WASHINGTON (PAI)-Charging ahead with their ideological agenda, the right wing Republicans who run the House Education and the Workforce Committee voted on April 17 for one of their pet causes, replacing overtime with comp time.

Among groups opposing the measure, HR1406, was the National Partnership for Women and Families, whose senior advisor, Judith Lichtman, told lawmakers the week before that the tradeoff - and particularly GOP claims that it would be a joint employer-worker decision - is a forced choice based on "false premises."

Corporate chieftains and their political puppets have pushed replacing overtime with comp time for at least the past decade, but it has died in Democratic-run congres-sional committees. The GOP-run workforce panel is intent on pushing it ahead again.

Passing HR1406 would cost workers money they would earn in overtime pay, cut the number of available jobs as employers rely on comp time rather than hiring more workers and would leave the workers without the overtime or the comp time, Lichtman said. That's because the worker could request the comp time, but granting it would be up to the boss. And in the meantime, the boss could deny the overtime pay, too.

The practical effect, she says, is that the worker would take a pay cut and would wind up subsidizing the employer - because the worker wouldn't get the comp time when he or she needs it, if at all, and would have no legal recourse against the boss.

Non-union workers would be particularly hurt, because they have no bargaining power in the workplace and live in fear of losing their jobs if they even ask for comp time off, or protest getting comp time rather than the overtime pay they need, Lichtman said.

"This legislation is based on smoke and mirrors," she told lawmakers. "This 'flexibility' bill offers forced choices and false promises.

"It pretends to offer the time off people need when they need it, but in fact, it is a pay cut for workers without any attendant guarantee of time. It also sets up a dangerous, false dichotomy between time and money when, in fact, working families need both."

Rather than putting business in the drivers' seat about giving or denying both comp time and overtime, Congress should enact true family friendly legislation, Lichtman said, starting with raising the minimum wage to $10.10 or more an hour. That would help at least 30 million workers, the majority of them working women, she said.

Then it should also approve the Paycheck Fairness Act, to put some teeth in federal equal pay laws, and the Healthy Families Act, which establishes paid sick leave nationwide, she added. Both Democratic-authored bills will not even get a hearing from the GOP-run panel.

Lichtman called the GOP/business-pushed HR1406 "deeply flawed." Workers would have "less control over both their time and their paychecks. It does not guarantee the time off that workers need, regardless of their opportunity or ability to work overtime hours.

"And for the growing segment of workers whose challenges stem from the opposite problem - working too few hours involuntarily with too little predictability - this proposal would do absolutely nothing to assure access to either the pay or the paid time off they need to meet their family responsibilities."

Comp time would be useful as part of "a suite" of family friendly policies, but only if the comp time-vs-overtime decision was up to the worker "freely and fairly," not the employer, and if comp time is available and granted on demand, Lichtman said.

"But HR1406's brand of comp time is designed to benefit employers only. It does not offer any of the protections workers need. It is tone-deaf to what workers are experiencing right now." The GOP measure is "a wolf in sheep's clothing," she said.

The right wing Republicans trotted out three Southern witnesses, including a woman accountant from rural Georgia and a female human resources director from Huntsville, Ala., to campaign for replacing overtime with comp time.

The accountant said she used earned comp time to go on overseas missionary travels for her church to Nicaragua to "pray with" people there "and tell them how Jesus Christ has changed my life." The Society for Human Resource Management rep from Huntsville said comp time would let companies and workers "balance work-life needs."

"In the current climate, in which Americans are deeply concerned about losing jobs or being unable to work enough hours to make ends meet, employees will be coerced into accepting comp time instead of pay, for fear of losing their livelihoods altogether," Lichtman retorted. "And the comp time offered here may not even be available when workers need it, rendering this proposal a true wolf in sheep's clothing."

"Working families deserve better than a bill that forces them to choose between overtime pay and the family-friendly policies they desire," said Rep. Joe Courtney, D-Conn., top Democrat on the subcommittee that hosted the comp time hearing on April 12. "We should be looking at ways to give workers more power over their lives, not hand over hard-fought rights won by workers to their employers."

Photo: PW/Marilyn Bechtel

“This is only round one,” Obama says, after gun curbs fail

Thu, 18 Apr 2013 15:11:00 +0000

WASHINGTON - Speaking with families of Newtown, Conn. beside him, after the Senate killed gun curbs yesterday, President Obama declared: "All in all, this was a pretty shameful day for Washington."

But the president added that it is only "Round One" of the fight.

Only an hour earlier, with the grieving families of the Newtown massacre watching in the public gallery, the U.S. Senate voted yesterday to kill each and every major bill aimed at curbing gun violence.

"Shame on you! Shame!" shouted Patricia Maisch and Lori Haas as they listened to the roll call and it became clear that a compromise background check bill co-authored by West Virginia Democrat, Joe Manchin, and Pennsylvania Republican, Patrick Toomey, had fallen 6 votes shy of the 60 vote super-majority needed to overcome a filibuster in the 100-member Senate.

The vote was 54 to 46 with four Democrats joining the Republican minority to kill the legislation.

Only 40 senators voted in favor of a ban on assault weapons like the one used to slay 20 children and six teachers and staff at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut last Dec. 14.

Since the Newtown massacre, 3,513 people have died from gun violence across the U.S. A bill to ban high-capacity ammunition magazines died with only 46 Senators voting yes.

Haas' daughter was a student at Virginia Tech who was shot twice in that campus massacre in 2007. Maisch was a hero of the Tucson massacre, grabbing a magazine clip from the hands of Jared Lee Loughner as he attempted to reload. He had shot to death six people and seriously wound 18 others including then-Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ). Giffords has dedicated her life to fighting for the eradication of gun violence since her recovery from a near-fatal gunshot wound to the head.

She too was in the gallery when the Senate roll call was read by Vice President Joe Biden who has spearheaded the campaign for gun control legislation.

Giffords told reporters, "I will not rest until we have righted the wrong these senators have done....We cannot allow the status quo...."

She accused the senators of kow-towing to the National Rifle Association and the gun lobby so that weapons makers "can make more money by spreading fear and misinformation." She was referring to a falsehood spread by the NRA that the background check contained in the Manchin-Toomey bill would lead to a federal registry of gun owners which the NRA claims violates the Second Amendment.

Added Giffords, "Moments ago, the U.S. Senate decided to do the unthinkable about gun violence---nothing at all. Over two years ago when I was shot point-blank in the head, the U.S. Senate chose to do nothing. Four months ago, 20 first-graders lost their lives in a brutal attack on their school and the U.S. Senate chose to do nothing. It's clear to me that if members of the U.S. Senate refuse to change the laws to reduce gun violence, then we need to change the members of the U.S. Senate."

Her husband, Mark Kelly, told reporters he will work to unseat his close friend, Arizona Republican Senator, Jeff Flake, because he voted against the gun control legislation. "Friendship is one thing," Kelly said. "Saving people's lives, especially First Graders , is another thing."

Speaking with the families of Newtown, Connecticut beside him, an hour or so after the vote, President Obama said, "All in all, this was a pretty shameful day for Washington." But Obama added that it was only "Round One" of the fight.

He accused the NRA of having "willfully lied," whipping up fears that the Manchin-Toomey compromise would lead to a federal registry of gunowners. The bill explicitly outlawed creation of such a registry.

Four Democrats joined Republicans in voting to kill the measures. (It included Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid (D-NV) who supported the legislation but voted with the Republicans for procedural reasons so he can bring the bill back up for another vote).

Obama noted that "90 percent of Democrats supported the legislation but it failed because 90 percent of Republicans voted against it." They "caved to the pressure" from the gun lobby, Obama charged. "We can do more if Congress gets its act together. And if this Congress refuses to listen to the American people and enact common-sense gun legislation, then the real impact is going to have to come from the voters" in the 2014 mid-term elections.

The senators callously cast their votes even as the nation was reeling from another form of senseless violence, the bombing of the Boston Marathon two days earlier. Among the dead in Boston was eight-year old, Richard Martin. An image of the child went viral on Facebook holding a placard he had handlettered with the message, "No more hurting people. Peace."

Photo: Obama hugs Newtown families in Hartford, CT. Susan Walsh/AP

Video: Protest targets senator as immigration bill progresses

Thu, 18 Apr 2013 13:26:00 +0000

LOS ANGELES - Several thousand immigrant rights supporters representing community organizations and trade unions, such as the Korean Immigrant Workers Alliance, Los Angeles County Federation of Labor and DREAMers, young undocumented immigrants fighting for their right to stay in the only home they have known with their families, came together to rally in front of Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein's office, demanding that she be a champion for the people and support immigration reform with a path to citizenship.

Among the 11 million undocumented immigrants are 1.4 million Koreans who suffer many of the same low paid jobs, fear of deportation, as their Latino counterparts. Marchers, too large to be contained on the sidewalk, spilled out to the streets and blocked traffic demonstrating their force in numbers. (Article continues after video.)

This week the bipartisan group of senators, called the "Gang of Eight," introduced a sweeping immigration bill, which immigrant rights and labor organizations welcomed, while pledging to keep pressure on for improvements.

"This legislation, while not perfect, is a monumental step forward in ensuring that this nation has a fair, humane and effective 21st-century immigration policy that serves our nation's best interests and works for all Americans, including families, workers and businesses," said National Council of La Raza President Janet Murguía in a statement, noting the importance of the inclusion of "a real roadmap for undocumented immigrants to earn legal status and eventual citizenship."

The Dream Action Coalition, which brings together political action, social media and the movement of undocumented young people, announced its launch of a grassroots and online campaign targeting two Republican senators, John Cornyn of Texas and Jeff Sessions of Alabama, urging them to "not to stand in the way of debate."

While welcoming the progress on immigration reform, the coalition warned in a statement that "vital provisions" are lacking. "Those previously deported should have a guaranteed and quick process to apply for return and reunify with their families in the U.S.; legislation should provide practical waivers for those who have not committed violent or aggravated felonies; family unity should continue to be an integral component under the new immigration system," the statement read.

Calling the bill "another step toward addressing a real crisis," labor leader Richard Trumka, president of the AFL-CIO, said the movement for a "roadmap to citizenship for more than 11 million aspiring Americans" will win. "[W]hile Washington, D.C., is full of legislative unveilings that dissolve into recriminations and unsolved problems, this time actually is different. Our cause is unstoppable. There will be a roadmap to citizenship in 2013."

Trumka also balanced the progress with the real life problems faced by immigrant families that need immediate attention. "[W]hile we are making progress in Washington, there is an accelerating crisis of deportations in America. It isn't a crisis when violent criminals or drug dealers are deported after due process, that's common sense. But it is a crisis when workers who stand up for themselves in the workplace are deported after employers decide immigrant workers no longer know their place. It is a crisis when DREAMers are separated needlessly from their parents by deportation," he said, pledging "presidential campaign style resources" to ensure a "compassionate and constructive" law that guarantees "all workers have a place on the roadmap to citizenship, to reuniting families, and establishing long overdue worker protections."

New York Immigration Coalition began to delve into the approximately 850-page bill and offered a brief overview of the positive and negative aspects, available online here: http://www.thenyic.org/PR/BillResponse-4-17-13.

Photo: Californians continue to pressure Sen. Dianne Feinstein to be a "champion" of the people and their demand for immigration reform (PW/Rossana Cambron).

Teresa Albano contributed to this article.