People Before Profit blog

National forum on police crimes to be held in Chicago

Wed, 30 Apr 2014 14:52:00 +0000

The "police are at the cutting edge of racist and political repression," says the Chicago Alliance Against Racial and Political Repression (CAARPR). On May 16-17 at the University of Chicago International House, the group will hold a National Forum on Police Crimes.

The forum is devised to promote a "renewed effort to build a multi-racial, multi-national movement" against police crimes, government surveillance, mass incarceration, and the "systemic injustice institutionalizing present day penal slavery, now widely recognized as lying at the root of the "New Jim Crow."

"New Jim Crow" refers to what many in social justice movements see as a new form of slavery happening within our justice system. Michelle Alexander's "The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness" speaks of a "new system of racialized social control" that "creates and maintains racial hierarchy much as earlier systems of control did. Mass incarceration operates as a tightly networked system of laws, policies, customs and institutions that operate collectively to ensure the subordinate status of a group defined largely by race."

The movement to Stop Police Crimes began in 2012 with the formation of the Organizing Committee To Stop Police Crimes. This committee was to organize a People's Hearing on Police Crimes and to provide an organizing vehicle for the community.

There have been two hearings organized by the Committee in close relation with affected communities and victims of police crimes. Both were well attended with testimony from victims and their families. A clear objective came from these hearings to pass legislation creating an elected Civilian Police Accountability Council for the historically corrupt Chicago police department. The National Forum will build on the momentum created from these hearings.

A University of Illinois Chicago study found that since 1960, a total of 295 Chicago police officers had been convicted of serious crimes, with 102 convictions since 2000, 47 of which were drug and gang related crimes. The study also found that both police authorities and public officials have up to now failed to provide adequate anti-corruption oversight and leadership.

It should be noted that the study only used the 295 convictions, not including non-criminal misconduct and unethical behavior. The study also acknowledges the issues of unreported crime and misconduct and the famed "blue wall of silence" cover-ups that make it difficult to find the true extent of police corruption.

Also tied in to this "blue wall of silence" are cases like the shooting death of Flint Farmer. Farmer, a 29-year-old African American man, was killed by police officer Gildardo Sierra, who fired 16 shots, one wounding Farmer in the thigh, and three in his back as he lay face down and injured. Farmer held only a cell phone, which Sierra says he mistook as a weapon.

Despite police squad car footage showing the incident and Sierra's own admission that he had consumed "multiple beers" before the killing, Cook County state's attorney Anita Alvarez declared the shooting justified. Alvarez has ruled that each of the 70 police killings of civilians since 2009 was justified.

The Forum will include panels on police accountability and breakout sessions focusing on police crimes against specific groups like the labor movement, the undocumented community, and the LGBTQ community. Saturday evening after closing comments, the Charlene Mitchell Human Rights Awards Dinner will be held at Trinity United Church of Christ, followed by a rally with keynote speaker Angela Davis.

Sign CAARPR's petition to form an elected Civilian Police Accountability Council at http://naarpr.org/petition-elected-civilian-police-accountability-council/. The agenda for the forum can be found here: http://naarpr.org/national-forum-police-crimes-tentative-agenda/ (en español http://naarpr.org/programacion-para-el-foro-nacional-de-delitos-policiales), and you can register here: http://naarpr.org/national-forum-police-crimes/

Photo: http://naarpr.org/save-date-national-forum-police-crimes-angela-davis/

Dreamers in Virginia can pay instate tuition

Wed, 30 Apr 2014 13:36:00 +0000

Immigrants' rights advocates and Latino organizations are hailing a ruling by Virginia's attorney general, Democrat Mark Herring, that students who are accepted by the federal DACA program can pay instate tuition to attend state colleges and universities. DACA is the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, started by President Obama in 2012, which gives interim legal status to young people (under 31 years of age) who were brought to this country by their parents or other adults "without inspection" (i.e. undocumented), as long as they pursue their schooling or military service and don't get convicted of crimes.

Herring's announcement was made in a letter to Virginia college and university officials, and announced publicly by him on Tuesday at the Arlington campus of the Northern Virginia Community College.

The right to study at instate tuition rates will make a large difference in DACA students' ability to access higher education. Tuition for instate students in Virginia currently averages $3,900 a year for two year institutions and over $10,000 a year for four year institutions. It is more than double that for out-of-state students, which would have applied to the DACA beneficiaries before Mr. Herring's ruling. This is more than the annual household income for many immigrant families; undocumented immigrants have also not been able to get scholarships.

The ruling is based on the logic that by dint of DACA these "dreamer" students are legal in the state of Virginia as long as they also establish legitimate Virginia residency. Herring, therefore, argues that his ruling is in simple conformity to existing law, that everybody legally a resident of Virginia gets to study at the instate rate. State versions of the DREAM act which would have accomplished the same thing have been blocked in two consecutive legislative sessions by the large right-wing Republican majority in the House of Delegates, the lower house of the General Assembly.

Virginia now joins the 19 states which permit instate tuition for such students, generally after hard struggles by immigrants and their allies.

About 8,100 young people in Virginia have so far acquired DACA status. Elsewhere, the right to pay instate college and university tuition has improved the graduation rates of immigrant students.

The ruling was praised by Latino and immigrants' rights organizations, as well as business groups and others. In a statement Edgar Aranda-Yanoc, Chair of VACOLAO (The Virginia Coalition of Latino Organizations) said "These hard-working Virginia students who have grown up and are an important part of our state's economic future will finally be able to study at the state's public universities without the barrier of out-of-state tuition".

Republicans denounced the move as illegal, because they claim it did an end-run around the General Assembly. But for the most part they did not frame their objection as an attack on "dreamer" students. A quick online poll by the Washington post showed majority public support for Herring's move.

Herring was elected in November of last year by a very close run margin over a right-wing Republican opponent.

On Jan. 23, he announced that as attorney general, he would not contest a lawsuit which sought to overturn Virginia's legislative ban on same sex marriages. This action was also denounced by the Republicans as high-handed. However, it was widely praised by civil libertarians and advocates for LGBT rights and has not produced a massively negative reaction at the grassroots level.

Photo: Dreamers take part in an immigration reform demonstration. Valerie Fernandez/AP

#ImagineSocialism: Join the May 1 Google Hangout

Wed, 30 Apr 2014 11:04:00 +0000

On Thursday, May 1, the Communist Party USA will host a Google Hangout with Jacobin magazine founding editor Bhaskar Sunkara and Imagine: Living in a Socialist USA co-editor Michael Steven Smith. CPUSA Secretary-Treasurer Roberta Wood will lead the conversation addressing just what socialism in the United States might look like and how we might get there.

According to a recent poll, nearly half of U.S. young people now have a favorable view of socialism. What could this shift mean for our country? What have we learned from past struggles and how can we use those lessons moving forward? And what would socialism really look like in the modern United States?

Join the #cpusa95 conversation: May Day, May 1, 8 p.m.-9 p.m. Eastern time:

https://plus.google.com/events/cnc19qk46noe3kpbs7pcgnq9utg

https://www.facebook.com/events/472247596241624/

GOP-Ryan budget slashes Medicare, college aid and stirs voter anger

Tue, 29 Apr 2014 17:41:00 +0000

Lawmakers returned to the nation's capital this week with their ears still ringing from voter anger at the so-called Paul Ryan budget narrowly approved by the House just before spring recess.

It would slash non-defense spending in the coming decade by $5 trillion, cutting to the bone every vital human needs program while increasing Pentagon spending by $500 billion.

The Ryan plan would also end Medicare as we know it, turning it into a voucher and putting profiteering private insurance companies in charge of senior citizen's health care.

On April 10, the House voted 219 to 205 for the Ryan budget with the Democrats voting unanimously against. They were joined by 12 Republicans in voting "No."

The Republicans rammed it through even though a bipartisan budget plan drawn up by Rep. Ryan and Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., in December already laid out spending targets for the current fiscal year making a new budget unnecessary. The Democratic majority Senate is hardly likely to approve it.

Even so, the House Republicans demanded a chance to vote on their "steal from the poor, give to the rich" budget scheme as an election-year ploy. The tea party Republicans feigned anger that the Ryan budget does not go "far enough" in slashing programs like food stamps, already cut by $8.6 billion.

Ironically, the Democrats believe the Ryan budget has dramatically improved their chances of turning out the voters in this November's midterm elections to win a net gain of 17 House seats to regain majority control of the House.

Distributed to Democratic House members when they returned to Washington was a memo titled "Battleground: The Middle Class" by Steve Israel, the Democratic Congressional Committee chairman. Israel writes that Ryan and his budget are "politically toxic" and "one of the defining issues of the midterm elections."

Just hours after his budget squeaked through the House, Ryan delivered a speech to the GOP's Lincoln Dinner in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

Standing outside was a crowd of picketers. Norm Sterzenbach, a retired union electrical worker, told reporters that Ryan's scheme to privatize Medicare will sharply escalate "out of pocket health care costs," adding, "Personally, I'm scared of what it would mean to my health care and the health of other Iowans."

Sterzenbach also denounced Ryan's plan to repeal Obamacare and reopen the infamous "doughnut hole" in the Prescription Drug Program. Obamacare closed that hole.

In Marquette, Mich., Rep. Dan Benishek, a Republican who voted in favor of the Ryan budget, also faced the music from his constituents. A crowd gathered in the freezing cold and snow outside his office with placards that proclaimed, "Ryan Budget: Path to Failure" and "Ryan Budget = College Collapse." Another placard held by a young protester read simply, "Down With Dan!"

Said Susan Dejong, a retiree living on Social Security and Medicare, "The Ryan budget begins to dismantle Medicare as we know it. Medicare is a good program. It's effective. It's comprehensive. And I just don't feel that they should mess with Medicare."

Nolan Craft, recently elected Vice President of the College Young Democrats at nearby Northern Michigan University, told a reporter, "Benishek supports the Ryan budget and that will affect students in a really negative way. It will halt Pell Grants for ten years and we'll have to start paying interest on our student loans immediately. We're out here to stop that..."

Lee Saunders, president of the 1.6 million member American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees, said, "Yet again, the House GOP has voted for a budget that hurts families, kills jobs, and would send the economy back into a tailspin. Only the corporations and the wealthy benefit from its wide open tax loopholes and additional tax breaks."

He pointed out that the Republican-majority House turned thumbs down on alternative budgets proposed by Democratic House members and by the Black Caucus and Progressive Caucus. Those alternatives, Saunders added, would have strengthened Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security while bringing in tens of billions in added federal revenues by closing tax loopholes on the banks and corporations and imposing fair taxes on the wealthy.

At the same time, the House blocked a vote on a Senate-approved measure to restore unemployment benefits for two million long-term unemployed. The Economic Policy Institute estimates that the Ryan budget, if enacted, would destroy three million jobs.

Fox News commentator Juan Williams asked rhetorically if the Democrats could win back the House next Nov. 5. His answer: "Yes."

Writes Williams, "The Democrat's biggest advantage is that they are running against Republicans ... House Republicans just passed a budget with cuts to education and savings from making Medicare a private plan. Basically, the House GOP in their preoccupation with the far right, just handed the Democrats a great weapon for beating up House Republicans in the fall races."

Photo: Protesting Rep. Paul Ryan, speaking in Kenosha, Wis., April 26, 2011. (AP Photo/Jeffrey Phelps)

Union leaders, Labor Dept. honor the fallen on Workers Memorial Day

Tue, 29 Apr 2014 14:51:00 +0000

WASHINGTON (PAI)--Union leaders and Obama administration Labor Department officials honored the fallen - workers killed on the job over the decades - with somber statements on Workers Memorial Day, April 28. Many declared that one death on the job was one too many. But remembrance was not the only theme of the observances.

The Senate Labor Committee holds an April 29 hearing on employer retaliation against worker whistle-blowers who report job safety and health violations to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). The New York Council on Occupational Safety and Health (NYCOSH) released a report on safety and health enforcement, or lack of it, in the Empire State. And in Manhattan, unions and their allies marched on a dangerous jobsite.

"No worker should die on the job. Every one of the 150 working men and women who die every day from injury or occupational disease serve as a constant reminder of the dangers too many face at the workplace," AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said.

"I saw those dangers myself as a third-generation coal miner, and I know the heartache that ripples through entire communities when one of our own dies. As we keep those who died in our thoughts and prayers, we should rededicate ourselves to holding companies account-able for putting profits over people, and we must demand stronger safety standards in the workplace." The latest available federal data show 4,628 workers died on the job in 2012.

"Much has been done to improve worker safety, but until every worker, from the farm to the factory, is guaranteed the peace of mind of a safe workplace, our job will never truly be done," Trumka declared. Excerpts from other statements included:

"We honor those we have lost by remembering that safe jobs save lives and by working toward the day when each of us can go to work and return home safely to our families and loved ones," said Laborers President Terry O'Sullivan.

"Though the Occupational Safety and Health Act has been the law of the land for more than four decades, we still have much to be done to make work safer, particularly in the construction industry. In 2012 - the most recent reporting year - construction fatalities rose 5 percent over 2011. It was the first annual increase in six years, resulting mostly from transportation incidents, such as highway flaggers being struck by cars, and from falls, trench cave-ins and equipment mishaps...In addition to accidents, workers are needlessly exposed to dangerous materials. In 2013, we made significant progress in limiting exposure to silica and look forward to implementation of a silica safety standard."

"Workers everywhere deserve a safe place to work, and those corporations that exploit workers for profit and put them in danger must be held accountable," the United Food and Commercial Workers said. "UFCW takes to heart the words of activist Mother Jones to 'pray for the dead and fight like hell for the living' by reaffirming our dedication to supporting workers here in the U.S. and around the world who are fighting to uphold their basic rights - including safe jobs, workplace fairness and collective bargaining."

"No one should have to live in fear that they might die at work," said Amalgamated Transit Union President Larry Hanley. "This Workers' Memorial Day we renew our commitment to fight for a safe workplace for all, and a decreasing number of workers who lose their lives on the job."

"All too often, however, workers die needlessly because employers cut corners, and stop following the regulations that are supposed to protect their employees from danger," he warned. ""Some legislators are now advocating rolling back the laws that mandate these regulations to increase employer profits - worker safety be damned. This has to stop. Transit workers are at risk too, as operators are now subjected to an ever-increasing onslaught of deadly assaults.

"And, because they are legally exempt from paying overtime, interstate bus companies feel free to overwork their low-paid drivers causing the driver fatigue that leads to injury and death on our highways. At ATU we fight unceasingly to protect our members and the public we serve."

"No one should have to sacrifice their life for their livelihood," said Labor Secretary Thomas Perez. "It's always worth remembering that in 1970, the year OSHA was created, there were an estimated 14,000 workplace fatalities. That's a staggering number - think about it: it's more than one life lost every hour of every day - day and night, weekends and holidays. But today, with a workforce twice as large, that number has dropped to 4,628 - the second lowest annual total since BLS first conducted the census of fatal injuries in 1992.

But frankly, that's 4,628 too many. And so every single one of us, every morning when we wake up and our feet hit the floor, must commit ourselves more than ever to this cause."

Perez singled out reducing worker exposure to silica, following the Occupational Safety and Health Administration's recent hearings on its proposed rule to accomplish that - and on industry opposition to the reduction.

"How many more families have to bury their loved ones before we do something?

The fact is that we've been studying this issue for decades and decades. In 1936, Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins convened a national conference of experts to study silicosis. This is a summary of their findings, in Secretary Perkins' own words: 'This report shows how silicosis occurs, where it occurs, and what the disease is. And it makes recommendations for its practical control. Above all, the report emphasizes that [if] these control measures [are] conscientiously adopted and applied...silicosis can be prevented.'"

NYCOSH's It's No Accident: A Report On Workplace Deaths in New York State - Focus On Construction, called that sector the deadliest industry, with immigrants comprising half of all construction deaths. Most were preventable, it said. Its other points included:

*OSHA fines are too low to incentivize safety, with an average fine of $12,767; and It would take OSHA 103 years to inspect every New York worksite. With only 71 inspectors, OSHA staffing is at its lowest level in five years. The report recommended "substantially increasing" OSHA's budget, inspectors and inspections.

*A recommendation to protect New York's Scaffold Safety Law. The law holds employers accountable when they cut corners on workers' safety when working at heights and put workers lives at risk.

*Implement U.S. Labor Department pilot projects targeting specific industries where high percentages of immigrants work, including construction, and increasing the number of OSHA staffers "who are qualified interpreters and who are fluent in the most common languages spoken by limited English proficiency workers."

"It's sad enough that all of these men and women died," said NYCOSH Executive Director Charlene Obernauer. "But to think that their deaths could have been prevented is just tragic. I hope our elected officials learn from these deaths and implement our common-sense recommendations before another preventable death occurs."

Teachers union leaders hit Supreme Court anti-affirmative action ruling

Fri, 25 Apr 2014 16:17:00 +0000

WASHINGTON - The leaders of the nation's two teachers' unions criticized the U.S. Supreme Court's April 22 ruling upholding an anti-affirmative action amendment to the Michigan constitution. Both union presidents also called the decision particularly troubling since it comes on virtually the 60^th anniversary of the court's historic 1954 Brown vs Board of Education decision that outlawed segregation in the U.S.

The decision was so troubling to National Education Association President Dennis Van Roekel, a Phoenix secondary school teacher, that he said it subjects minority group students to "separate and unequal political processes that put undue burdens" on them.

The justices, by a 6-2 vote, said Michigan voters had the right to insert the anti-affirmative action language in their state constitution years ago, overturning affirmative action plans at the state's universities. Eight other states also constitutionally banned affirmative action.

Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for three of the six-man majority, said the High Court isn't overturning affirmative action itself, but he placed a high value on the referendum that approved the amendment. His justification fooled nobody, least of all Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who wrote a scathing dissent and, in a first for her, read it from the bench.

"This refusal to accept the stark reality that race matters is regrettable," Sotomayor said, before giving examples of how.

Kennedy also didn't fool either Van Roekel, or American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten, a New York City teacher. NEA signed a friend-of-the-court brief, with the Service Employees, in favor of affirmative action. Both unions represent hundreds of college professors and workers.

The brief said diversity in schools, from kindergarten through college, "is critical" to the schools' "missions of preparing students to function as citizens of our increasingly diverse country." NEA and SEIU also said "affirmative action proponents should not be disadvantaged in the political process based on their views that it is appropriate to take race into account to ensure student bodies are fully representative of all groups in our society."

"Today's decision turns back our nation's commitment to racial equality and equal treatment under the law by sanctioning separate and unequal political processes that put undue burdens on students," Van Roekel said. "The court made it harder to advocate and, ultimately, achieve equal educational opportunity.

"Having spent 23 years in the classroom, I saw first-hand the important role diversity played in the classroom and how learning from people with different backgrounds and perspectives can benefit all students, our workforce and our country as a whole. Fostering educational diversity and greater opportunity is critical to our nation's future.

"Sixty years after Brown, we find ourselves still separate and unequal, and the fight wages on to level the uneven playing field. It's in everyone's interest to see that talented students from all backgrounds get a close look and a fair shot at overcoming obstacles to educational opportunity. Yet, the Supreme Court's decision places roadblocks" in the way of ensuring public universities are places of "a fair and equal exchange of ideas," he said.

The court "struck a troubling blow to our nation's commitment to equal opportunity for all students. This decision has made it clear that equal treatment trumps equal opportunity, and it gives states the ability to write affirmative action out of their law books," Weingarten said. "This ruling, taken with the Supreme Court's evisceration of the Voting Rights Act, takes us backward on racial equality. We agree with Justice Sotomayor that 'this refusal to accept the stark reality that race matters is regrettable.'

"Every student, regardless of race, gender or ethnic background, deserves access to a quality higher education, and today's decision will make it harder to deliver on that promise," she added. And "colleges and universities are strengthened through diverse student bodies, which provide richer learning environments for all students."

Photo: NEA

Fair trade “fashionistas” mark Bangladesh disaster with action

Wed, 23 Apr 2014 13:21:00 +0000

This week marks the one-year anniversary of the worst disaster in clothing industry history. On April 24 last year an eight-story building in Bangladesh collapsed killing 1,129 garment workers. Months before 112 garment workers in Bangladesh perished in a factory fire. They were sewing clothes that had been ordered by big name stores like Walmart.

More than 95 percent of apparel sold in the United States is produced abroad, according to Chicago Fair Trade, a coalition of more than 70 organizations. The coalition is lobbying Chicago's City Council to make the city a "sweatfree community." The coalition opposes taxpayer dollars going to buy "items produced in poverty wages and inhumane work conditions."

The New York Times reported last year that the federal government spent more than $1.5 billion on clothing made in factories that had violated local labor laws, including in Bangladesh. Violations included "padlocked fire exits, buildings at risk of collapse, falsified wage records and repeated hand punctures from sewing needles when workers were pushed to hurry up."

The tragedy in Bangladesh opened people's eyes and started them thinking about purchasing a "fair trade wardrobe," according to Jonit Bookheim, who sits on the board of Chicago Fair Trade. Bookheim is also marketing director for Chicago-based Mata Traders, which specializes in "fair trade fashion."

One visit to Mata's website and you begin to understand the important differences between "fair trade" and "free trade." Mata's blog, "Fair Trade Stories," details the relationships Bookheim and her partners have built with the women artisans who produce Mata's unique clothing line. Harshali and Surita Auntie are two women in one of the many cooperatives based in India and Nepal from which Mata imports.

Bookheim says the partners personally know all the women who make Mata's products. "We see them throughout the years," she says. "Harshali just had a baby. On one visit, I got to see where she lives. Literally in one small room three of them - Harshali, her brother and sister - slept there. They had a little aquarium with a turtle. They would roll up their mats after they slept," she recounted.

"One of the most amazing things we do is stay connected to the women in the cooperative. It is not like one and done," Bookheim said in a recent interview.

Bookheim recognizes the retail outlets and labels that have taken serious steps to know their supply chain producers and audit their practices. But Mata, as a member of the Fair Trade Federation, follows a more stringent code of business practices, she said. One principle is building long-term relationships, Bookheim explained. "You don't start a business relationship without the intention of it being long term," she said.

Bookheim explained the difference between Mata and other companies: "Most companies don't know who's producing. They have contractors and contractors of contractors and have never been" in the country where their garments have been produced. With fair trade, companies use the trading relationship to end poverty through transparency and equitable relationships, she said.

The ultimate goal of the fair trade movement is not to make products but to "empower women in poor communities," Bookheim said.

The women who work at the coops that Mata works with get more than a job and the paycheck that goes with it. Bookheim said the co-op provides support with health care, childcare and maternity leave. "If a woman needs help opening a bank account or if they are in a domestic violence situation," there is a ready-made support network.

"A lot of women can't read or write, so there are literacy classes," she said. Women have savings programs allowing their members to borrow money and not get into a difficult situation with shady loan sharks, Bookheim said. These coop organizations and fair trade businesses help break the cycle of poverty in sustainable and real ways, she said.

Mata founder Maureen Dunn started the business after she, Bookheim and Michelle King Thomas, best friends from college, took a yearlong trip around the world in 2003. They "loved being immersed in other cultures," Dunn said.

The trip "opened our eyes to the world. But it also opened our eyes to the extreme poverty," Bookheim said. They spent four months in India. Dunn became captivated with the textiles there. After saving up money, Dunn went back and bought tapestries, leather sandals and the like to sell here. Dunn and her friends set up home shows and traveled to Martha's Vineyard to sell the items. Customers began to ask if the items were fair trade. That's how Mata was born. Officially started in 2007, Mata boasts 35 percent growth every year.

"People are learning more about fair trade. You see more fair trade products in major stores now," Bookheim said, adding that Americans can "vote" with their dollars for a better world.

Chicagoans will join pro-labor fashionistas across the globe in declaring April 24 "Fashion Revolution Day," calling on the public to wear clothes inside out to remember the garment workers who died and to help others think about where their wardrobe comes from.

Photo: via Mata Traders blog.

Today in eco-history: First Earth Day teach-in held

Tue, 22 Apr 2014 16:35:00 +0000

The late environmentalist, Sen. Gaylord Nelson, D-Wis., founded Earth Day as an environmental teach-in first held on April 22, 1970.

While this April 23, Earth Day was focused on the United States, an organization launched by environmental activist Denis Hayes took it international in 1990 and organized events in 141 nations.

In 2009, the UN moved to make Earth Day a global holiday. The General Assembly unanimously adopted a resolution by Bolivian President Evo Morales to designate April 22 as "Mother Earth Day."

In 2011, Marc Brodine wrote in the People's World:

"The environmental movement is not really a single movement with a unified approach. Some organizations focus on electoral activism (the League of Conservation Voters), others on preserving undeveloped land (the Nature Conservancy), others on legislative action and coalition building (the Sierra Club), others on threats of species extinction, to list just a few.

"Alongside these movements, there are many scientists and inventors working hard at finding new and better ways of accomplishing energy production, manufacturing, agriculture, and transportation.

"Additionally, there are many organizations, including unions, which organize to fight particular health and environmental threats, and there are many millions of people who strive to make better choices for the environment in their own lives."

Union workers are speaking out more clearly and loudly than ever before for "good jobs, green jobs" and a clean energy economy.

The Blue-Green Alliance Foundation unites 14 of the U.S. largest unions and environmental organizations. Acting together, through more than 15 million members and supporters, they are a powerful voice for building a cleaner, fairer and more competitive American economy. Their staff designs public policies, performs research, and runs advocacy and public education campaigns.

One of the major environmental concerns in the U.S. today is the proposed Keystone XL pipeline, a 36-inch pipeline dedicated to carrying diluted bitumen from Hardisty, Alberta to Steele City, Nebraska, ultimately carrying tar sands oil from Canada to refineries in tax free "Foreign Trade Zones" on the Gulf Coast.

Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif., has this to say on the project:

Reject Keystone XL; Our Focus Should Be on Investing in a Sustainable Energy Future: "We need to invest in a sustainable energy future. For our children's sake and our grand children's, we must not continue to build massive fossil fuel infrastructure that increases emissions, threatens our climate and makes extreme weather more likely. President Obama should reject this project."

Bill McKibben of 350.org which is assiduously organizing against Keystone XL, says: "There are an awful lot of reasons to oppose Keystone XL, from the danger of spills to the hideous damage the mining does on native land in Alberta.

"Underlying them all, however, is the sheer quantity of carbon that the pipeline will pour into the atmosphere-and a new report provides the vivid numbers. In a single year, the pipeline will add as much carbon dioxide to the atmosphere as all the cars in California, Washington, Oregon, Florida, Michigan, and New York combined."

The American Society of Civil Engineers recently issued their 2013 report card on America's infrastructure - and it was only a D+.

The Communist Party USA posted a statement that instead of the environmentally disastrous and economically unsound Keystone XL pipeline:

"We need a real jobs program to create living wage jobs that don't harm the environment!

There are thousands of infrastructure projects which could put tens of thousands of unemployed construction workers to work, hundred of thousands of jobs retrofitting both residential and commercial buildings and cut heating bills, and millions of jobs building the new energy economy and smart electrical grid to have a sustainable future."

Photo: NASA

Originally posted April 22, 2013

Labor group defends workers at military bases against right wing attacks

Tue, 22 Apr 2014 14:21:00 +0000

WASHINGTON - Good Jobs Nation, the leading supporter and organizer of fast food workers' nationwide campaign for decent pay, benefits and the right to organize, is defending the Obama administration's future pay hike for those workers at the nation's military post exchanges (PXs) against an attack by congressional right wingers.

The pay hike would start Jan. 1 under new contracts that fast food firms would sign with the military to have restaurants such as McDonald's, KFC and Burger King at PXs, where military personnel and families buy food and goods at reduced rates.

The 40 right wing lawmakers, led by House Education and the Workforce Committee Chairman John Kline, R-Minn., and Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., want to stop the pay hike, which also includes decent benefits, such as health care coverage. Wilson, who initiated the anti-pay raise move, is notorious for rudely calling the president - out loud - a liar during Obama's comments on health care in the president's 2009 State of the Union address.

Kline, Wilson and 38 GOP colleagues wrote on April 10 to Labor Secretary Thomas Perez, demanding he dump the PXs from Obama's executive order. Obama's order would raise the minimum wage for fast-food workers, under future contracts, to $10.10 hourly, from $7.25. With benefits, which the workers now lack, total compensation would be about $14 hourly. The increase would benefit tens of thousands of PX fast food workers.

The Republicans contend fast food providers cannot afford to pay the workers a decent wage and benefits because their contracts with the PXs bar them from passing on the increased costs to consumers - military personnel and their families. That would lead the fast-food concessionaires to close their restaurants at PXs, the lawmakers allege.

Good Jobs Nation Policy Director George Faraday told The Fiscal Times that the lawmakers are wrong. "The specter of mass layoffs being raised is an illusion. If they care about the welfare of military spouses" - many of whom now work at the fast-food restaurants in PXs - "they should care about whether military spouses are making a living wage."

Several lawmakers, led by Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., have also gone to bat for the fast-food workers at the PXs, in an op-ed in The Huffington Post. And the right-wingers aren't the only ones writing to Perez about the fast-food workers. The Congressional Progressive Caucus weighed in on the issue, too, in an April 2 letter. It told Perez fast-food contractors at all federal facilities - not just PXs-routinely engage in wage theft against their workers, even at the present minimum wage.

"Without stronger wage theft enforcement, these wage increases and overtime protections could be at risk. If federal contractors failed to comply with wage and hour laws when the minimum wage was $7.25, they may be more likely to ignore the new minimum wage of $10.10 as well as the new overtime regulations," it said. "Recent studies indicate that federal contractors are among America's worst perpetrators of wage theft." The caucus cited a Senate report showing DOL had to levy 32 percent of its wage theft fines against the contractors.

Photo: In Oakland, fast food workers rally vs. poverty wages. Marilyn Bechtel/PW

Cowboys and Indians fighting together this week against the XL Pipeline

Tue, 22 Apr 2014 13:23:00 +0000

Cowboys and Indians are fighting on the same side this week in the nation's capital.

The Cowboy and Indian Alliance is marching on the Capitol in Washington for Earth Day today through April 27 to protest the TransCanada Keystone XL Pipeline. The group is setting up a tipi camp outside the White House for the five-day duration of the protests.

The protest camp will formally close on April 27, with the message of "reject the Keystone XL." Saturday, April 26 has been designated as "a day of action." On that date everyone present will be asked to put his or her thumbprint mark on a tipi.

There will be speakers from the tribal peoples, ranchers, farmers and refinery committee members who will be directly affected by the pipeline and its tar sands oil. The speakers have pledged to lead the resistance should KXL be approved at any point. The Alliance is inviting everyone to come to their tipi camp on the National Mall to put more public pressure on President Obama to eventually reject the Keystone Pipeline altogether.

The Alliance is a coalition of Native American Nations, ranchers and farmers who live along the route of the proposed pipeline. In what is a historic first in decades, Native peoples and white farmers and ranchers are united in common cause against a common enemy. This unity was prompted by realization of the deadly danger of tar sands oil to all human beings, irrespective of race or nationality.

When tar sands oil (also known as diluted bitumen or dilbit) spills it emits a smell that causes immediate physical sickness including dizziness, burning throats, headaches and watery eyes. Bitumen is the thickest, dirtiest of oil with the consistency of peanut butter. To move it through the pipelines it must be either diluted or heated to extremely high temperatures. Tar sands oil spills pose extremely difficult cleanup problems because of the drastic measures oil companies must use to transport this hazardous sludge toward faraway refineries. This is a main reason why the Cowboy and Indian Alliance is fighting so hard to stop TransCanada from obtaining White House approval.

In Nebraska there is a massive underground water supply - the Ogallala Aquifer - that is also a source of water for several other states in the region. If TransCanada ever succeeded in ramming the KXL Pipeline through this ecologically sensitive and vulnerable region, the water supply of millions of people would be frightfully jeopardized. An oil spill would ruin the entire region beyond repair and the Native nations, farmers and ranchers realize this all too well. That is why the Alliance has resolved to do everything in its power to stop the pipeline in its oil soaked tracks.

As for the late April Alliance protest a list of organizations in support includes Oceti Sakowin People of the Seven Council Fires, Bold Nebraska, 350.org, CREDO, The Sierra Club, Center for Biological Diversity, Chesapeake Climate Action Network, Conservation Law Foundation, Labor Network for Sustainability, and the Natural Resource Defense Council.

As of April 18^tthe White House announced a delay of the Pipeline decision: a delay is good, but what is needed is a Presidential rejection. At stake is the health and lives of millions. The KXL Pipeline must be defeated! Join the actions in Washington DC!

Photo: This morning at the Capitol. AP Photo

Calif. family to Fannie Mae: Don’t take away our American dream

Fri, 18 Apr 2014 14:57:00 +0000

AZUSA, Calif. - Jaime and Juana Coronel should not have been foreclosed on in 2010, but they were. Now they have been paying rent for three years, and are pre qualified for a loan to buy back their home, of 25 years, at current market value.

But Fannie Mae refuses to sell at market value - around $200,000 - even though that's the price they are going to sell it to anyone else. Fannie Mae has a special price for the Coronels - almost twice the current value - $400,000!

The Coronels are taking a stand to end Fannie Mae's policy of punishing homeowners who were impacted by the housing crisis that Fannie Mae helped create.

Their family, neighbors, and members of the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment joined with the couple to let Fannie Mae know that they will not be moved without a fight

In this video, Juana tells (in Spanish) how her son recently bought a home one block away to be close to his parents. Her grandchildren enjoy the ability to be close to their grandparents. She asks that Fannie Mae have a heart and do the "human thing."

A real estate agent from Century 21 was on hand to verify that the Coronels do in fact qualify for a loan under the current market value of the home and that Fannie Mae's current offer is excessive.

Juana Cornel ends by telling Fannie Mae, "You are taking our American dream away from us, because you do not want to be fair to us and sell this home at the fair market value."

In related news, on April 10, Democracy Now reported, "The Blackstone Group, a private equity firm, is now the largest owner of single-family rental homes in the country. In one day alone, Blackstone bought up 1,400 houses in Atlanta. And as private equity firms gobble up huge swaths of the housing market, they are partnering with big banks to bundle the mortgages on these rental homes into a new financial product known as "rental-backed securities," reminiscent of the "mortgage-backed securities" that helped cause the last financial crisis."

Photo: The Coronels and their supporters call on Fannie Mae to do the right thing (PW/Rossana Cambron).

“Another gift to the 1 percent:” Testimony Tuesday slams Ohio tax shift

Fri, 18 Apr 2014 11:13:00 +0000

COLUMBUS, Ohio - On Tuesday, Tax Day - the deadline for filing income tax returns - a crowd led by Ohio state Rep. Nina Turner slammed GOP Gov. John Kasich's latest tax cut proposal as "just another gift to who least need it, Ohio's wealthiest top one percent."

It was the third of what is being called "Testimony Tuesday." The rallies at Ohio's Statehouse are being supported by organized labor, the state Interfaith Alliance, women's groups, retirees and poor people's organizations. They are inspired by the huge and growing "Moral Mondays" demonstrations in Georgia and the Carolinas.

Rally speakers attacked the overall shifting of Ohio's tax burden from wealthier to poor and working families, combined with harmful cuts to state programs that support working, middle class and poor folks.

"This morning you got up, your heating and electricity worked, and a city worker picked up your garbage," said Progress Ohio Director Brian Rothenberg. "A police officer helped someone who may have been stranded due to the late snowstorm we're having and another worker was out there in the weather fixing a pothole. You may drop your child off at a library where public workers will help them before they attend their public school. Your elderly parents are helped by numerous funded public services and you'll drive over our public roads to get where you're going."

"These and more public services are what we pay for when we pay taxes and it's our patriotic duty to do so," Rothenberg said. "However, now we're told to take these for granted, that it's OK for billionaires to hire consultants to not pay, to put the entire burden on us."

Rothenberg spoke of a recent government study that showed that the average Ohioan will pay $749 this year in taxes to make up for General Electric paying no taxes here.

A similar theme was hit on by state Rep Patrick Carney, who asked the crowd (to a resounding "No") if it was "OK that those making over $300,000 in Ohio will get a $6,000 tax cut under the governor's plan, while the rest of us will have to pay more for less services?"

Carney noted, "Even Crane's Business Report, a marked non-liberal, pro-business Cleveland paper, openly worried about this approach harming the ability of regular Ohioans to be able to continue to fuel the recovery if this goes though."

Speaking for retired Ohioans, Norm Wernet, Ohio president of the Alliance for Retired Americans, expressed outrage that retirees "have to pay now, again, after we were the ones that built this economy."

Turner, a candidate for secretary of state in next November's election, told the rally that Testimony Tuesdays will continue, and continue to get bigger, regardless of whether she wins in November.

"Got up and it was snowing again," said retired Communications Workers of America workers Karl and Sharon Kay, "but we felt we had to come and have our say. It is still a democracy and we have to stand up for working and retired folks. If we don't participate, the rich will run everything!"

Photo: Via State Sen. Nina Turner/Facebook

Top 4 radical conclusions from Piketty’s “Capital In The 21st Century”

Thu, 17 Apr 2014 14:03:00 +0000

French political economist and author of "Capital In The 21st Century" Thomas Piketty is making a groundbreaking book tour of U.S. policy and academic centers armed with mounds of data that is shaking up economic prognosticators. Nearly every economist of any reputation must now deal with the stunning evidence behind the inequality trends Piketty illuminates. Even Robert Solow, Nobel Prize-winning economist, famed for discounting the dangers of excessive inequality over the "the long run" in market economies, was ready to dialog with Piketty at the Economic Policy Institute's forum this past week. His book, which draws on massive data retrieved from previously untapped tax reporting resources, is literally shaking the foundations of even liberal economic thinking because of four principal conclusions:

1. Increasing concentration of wealth (primarily returns to capital) in the U.S. and Western Europe is returning to its historic dominance in the capitalist system after a brief 35-year period of relative shared prosperity. Economic surveys defining the "top" incomes as the top "20 percent" disguised the rate of concentration in recent years. When looking at the top 1 percent and higher the actual travesty of inequality is uncovered. Standard government economic data collection missed this. But tax records reveal it.

2. The wealth of the 1 percent, and even more the .1 percent, is increasing at 2-3 times the overall growth rate of the economy (GDP). The median income worker, on the other hand, received virtually no gains from increased productivity. And workers who fall below median income have seen their share of national wealth and income dramatically cut.

3. Concentration of wealth historically leads to concentration of political and institutional power, and concentration of political and institutional power leads to more concentration of wealth. This is a stunning conclusion, at least for many mainstream economists, who assumed more faith in automatic market stabilizers for imbalances in national income and wealth distribution.

But, there is a reason Piketty chose his book title to echo Karl Marx's classic work. One of his conclusions, and a central theme is: the abandonment of classic political economy (the interaction of economics and public institutions) by many professional economists in the academic and government communities in favor of very mathematical models, was, and is, a mistake.

4. Global capital is too strong and mobile now for any one country to regulate it. A global tax and redistribution mechanism must be in place to prevent inequality trends from tearing up not just individual nations, but sending the whole world into a hell not unlike the one that ended the last "Gilded Age" in 1912: World Wars I and II.

Piketty's thesis identifies the billionaires and the transnational corporations they control as the principal challenge. Without mentioning the word "socialism," he includes the little-mentioned but pervasive presence of Marx's Capital in the background,

In that sense he does, I believe, a great service: he establishes, in very close to scientific terms, the economic foundations of a profound democratic program that can unite nearly all working people, peoples of color and many national origins, men and women, young and old, professionals and small business. It is a foundation that unites the democratic outlooks of Benjamin Franklin, Martin Luther King Jr., Eugene Debs, Cesar Chavez, Mother Jones and Abraham Lincoln - even Elizabeth Warren, Barack Obama, Joseph Stieglitz and Sam Webb too!

Piketty is right, and it's simple to say: The returns to capital are too high; the returns to working people too low.

Photo: Thomas Piketty (via inequality.org)

House GOP rams through latest devastating Ryan budget

Mon, 14 Apr 2014 16:09:00 +0000

WASHINGTON (PAI)--Brushing aside dissent and objections from unions, workers and the Democratic minority, the House's ruling Republicans jammed through a GOP-written budget blueprint for the fiscal year starting Oct. 1, by a 219-205 vote on Apr. 10. Democrats opposed it 193-0. Solons then scattered for a 2-week recess.

The blueprint sets priorities for legislators as they start writing actual money bills for government programs. It also has recommendations on other legislation, starting with - again - repeal of the Affordable Care Act with nothing to replace it.

Like prior GOP-written budgets, this blueprint also orders deep cuts in Medicaid and replaces Medicare with a voucher. It would raise the minimum age for Medicare to 67. The budget blueprint would also cut food stamps, job training, student aid and other domestic programs. And the GOP would cut federal workers' pay by 5.5 percent and says feds would get 401(k) accounts, not regular pensions.

House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis., listed federal pay and benefits among "identified waste," in his opening address. He also claimed his blueprint would bring the overall federal budget into balance in a decade.

Union leaders said Ryan's budget blueprint is heavily weighted towards the rich and against the middle class, workers and the poor:

Service Employees President Mary Kay Henry: While Ryan's budget "is not a joke, it certainly is foolish. It's foolish to think that any of the extremist proposals peppered throughout his budget will help our economy or the millions of Americans who are struggling to get by."

Besides repealing the health care act, turning Medicare into vouchers and cutting corporate taxes, the GOP budget "caps spending for critical services millions rely upon, scales back financial regulations, reduces access to job training programs, reduces access to higher education," turns food stamps into a block grant "and the list goes on," Henry said. "For these and many other reasons, this is truly a terrible and hurtful budget proposal. Ryan put forward a budget that asks everyone to make sacrifices except for the wealthy and corporations."

AFGE President J. David Cox: "What's another term for an insatiable monster hell-bent on savagely devouring everything in its sight? The Ryan budget. Each year this monster gets hungrier, bolder, and more pitiless against its prey, the VA nursing assistants, Border Patrol agents, Social Security claims representatives, Defense Department weapons repair technicians, and EPA scientists who make up the federal workforce...It's morally repulsive and fiscally dishonest.

"The message: If you're a young person thinking about a career in public service, the Ryan budget would pay you far less than your parents earned for the same work. If you're in the middle of a career devoted to caring for wounded soldiers in a VA hospital, tighten your belt a few more notches, because frozen pay was just the beginning. Now they'll cut an additional 5.5 percent of salary," said Cox, a retired VA nurse.

"And for new and current employees alike, a promise that you'll be forced to do the work of three employees, as only one of every three who retire will ever be replaced. Too bad if you care about food safety; one USDA inspector would be responsible for doing the work previously done by three."

AFGE also highlighted other harms, to federal workers and the entire country, in the GOP budget blueprint. They included eliminating student loan reimbursements, a $791 billion cut, compared to this year, in non-defense spending, a cut in benefits for federal workers injured on the job, and more privatizing of airport screeners. Pell grants for low-income college students would drop by $125 billion and new federal workers would not get regular pensions, but 401(k)-style accounts.

AFSCME: The GOP budget "cuts are even deeper and more harmful to pay for big new tax cuts for the wealthy and to boost Pentagon spending," the union's legislative staff said. It reported the Budget Committee OKd the GOP blueprint by a party-line vote after rejecting Democratic amendments to - among other things - raise the minimum wage and enact comprehensive immigration reform.

"Spending reductions in this budget of more than $5.1 trillion over the next decade would incapacitate state and local governments, leading to massive cuts in vital public services and enormous job losses that would threaten our fragile economic recovery. The Economic Policy Institute projects the proposal would result in the loss of three million jobs next year. Fully 69 percent of its cuts come from low-income programs while defense spending is increased by $483 billion," AFSCME said.

"Funding for programs including job training, public education, student loans, child care, infrastructure, health care research and more would be cut by least 24 percent. Job training programs would serve 3.5 million fewer individuals, Head Start would serve 170,000 fewer children, and Title I would serve 3.4 million fewer disadvantaged K-12 students, likely resulting in the loss of 29,000 jobs for teachers and aides." And Ryan would use all the spending cuts to fund a cut in the top tax rate for the rich from 39.6 percent to 25 percent, while also cutting corporate tax rates to 25 percent, AFSCME said.

Laborers President Terry O'Sullivan called the GOP budget "an April Fool's joke" as it shortchanges money to repair roads, bridges and mass transit. "The Ryan-Republican budget proposal for ending the duct-tape approach to our nation's transportation infrastructure simply rips off the tape, without a long-term fix, allowing roads and bridges across the country to become more congested, pot-hole ridden and dangerous," O'Sullivan said.

"Instead of fully investing in the creation of hundreds of thousands of good construction jobs, his proposal destroys a program necessary to ensure the nation has a robust transportation system. This will be catastrophic to the construction industry and have a damaging ripple effect throughout the economy," he added. O'Sullivan reiterated transportation unions' call for a new long-term highway-mass transit-funding bill, paid for by a higher the federal gas tax. The tax, 18.4 cents a gallon, last went up in 1993.

Photo: AFGE Facebook page.

Today in eco-history: The worst storm of the Dust Bowl

Mon, 14 Apr 2014 13:12:00 +0000

On April 14, 1935, The "Black Sunday Storm," one of the worst dust storms in U.S. history, caused immense economic and agricultural damage

The conditions were the most severe in the Texas and Oklahoma panhandles, but the storm's effects were felt in other surrounding areas.

The storm was harsh due to the high winds that hit the area that day. Along with the drought, erosion, and the unanchored soil, the winds caused the dust to fly freely and at high speeds

The "Dust Bowl" of the 1930s at first claimed western Kansas, eastern Colorado, northeastern New Mexico, and the Oklahoma and Texas panhandles. By 1934 dust storms had reached The Great Plains, stretching from North Dakota to Texas, and from the Mississippi River Valley to the Rocky Mountains.

In 1935, after the massive damage caused by these storms, Congress passed the Soil Conservation Act, which established the Soil Conservation Service (SCS) as a permanent agency of the USDA. The SCS was created in an attempt to provide guidance for land owners and land users to reduce soil erosion, improve forest and field land and conserve and develop natural resources.

The destruction caused by the dust storms, and especially by the storm on Black Sunday, caused hundreds of thousands of people to relocate. Poor migrants from the American Southwest flooded California.

On this same date in 1939, John Steinbeck's novel, "The Grapes of Wrath," was first published. The novel focuses on the Joads, a poor family of tenant farmers driven from their Oklahoma home by drought, economic hardship, agricultural industry changes and bank foreclosures forcing tenant farmers out of work. Due to their nearly hopeless situation, and in part because they were trapped in the Dust Bowl, the Joads set out for California. Along with thousands of other "Okies", they sought jobs, land, dignity, and a future.

The book won the National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize for fiction, and it was cited prominently when he won the Nobel Prize in 1962.

The film "Grapes of Wrath," based on the novel came out in 1940.

Here is an oft repeated quote from Tom Joad:

"I'll be all around in the dark. I'll be everywhere. Wherever you can look, wherever there's a fight, so hungry people can eat, I'll be there. Wherever there's a cop beatin' up a guy, I'll be there. I'll be in the way guys yell when they're mad. I'll be in the way kids laugh when they're hungry and they know supper's ready, and when the people are eatin' the stuff they raise and livin' in the houses they build, I'll be there, too."

Photo: This image is in the public domain. It contains materials that originally came from the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Wikimedia commons.

Immigration activists arrested at civil rights meet

Fri, 11 Apr 2014 15:45:00 +0000

While civil rights hero Rep. John Lewis was speaking on civil disobedience at the "We Shall Overcome" Civil Rights Summit at the LBJ Presidential Library, April 9, four immigration reform activists chained themselves around a statue of Martin Luther King Jr. on the University of Texas at Austin. The protest, organized by United We Dream, was to "protect Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream of civil rights for all, including the immigrant community" and to call on President Barack Obama, who was scheduled to speak the next day, to "not only speak in memory of LBJ and what he was able to accomplish, but also be on the right side of history by keeping families together," the group posted on their Facebook page.

The four activists, who remained chained overnight, were joined by students and local activists, including a group of fourth graders, for a march to the summit, which celebrated the 50^th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act. The marchers, carrying signs calling Obama the Deporter-in-Chief and calling attention to the "2 million 2 many" deportations during his administration, were scheduled to meet the president's motorcade before he spoke.

The juxtaposition of the three-day summit and the protest was startling. Mavis Staples movingly sang the classic civil rights anthem, "We Shall Overcome;" protestors too used the song used to greet the president before his April 10 speech. Or when three of the activists who had chained themselves had just been arrested, Rep. Lewis spoke of activists who had been arrested for sitting at lunch counters.

Immigrant rights activists insist the president can end the draconian deportations, which was backed up by Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi.

The "notion that the administration doesn't have some prosecutorial discretion on deportations is ridiculous," House Minority Leader Pelosi said, in an email from America's Voice.

In that same email she also argued that "immigration activists shouldn't train all of their fire on Obama" as that lets Speaker John Boehner and other Republican leaders off the hook for their own inaction on comprehensive immigration reform.

Pelosi also said, though she insists that comprehensive immigration reform is still possible, that she's well aware that the legislative window is rapidly closing.

The president did not speak on his plans for immigration reform as the protesters hoped, only referencing the immigration reform that Johnson pushed forward.

On the Civil Rights Act, he said, "Only the law could anchor change and set hearts and minds on a different course."

In a quote that might give some hope to immigration reform activists, he rejected the cynicism of the people who told LBJ to hold back on the reforms he was pushing forward because he has "lived out the legacy of those efforts".

He also said "we are here today because we know we cannot be complacent." It has been clear that immigration reform activists take this attitude to heart, persevering through arrests and inaction, and continuing to be hopeful.

Photo: Immigration activists are learning from the civil rights movement that unjust laws have to be challenged including by nonviolent direct action (SEIU).

Minimum wage hike drive moves into high gear

Fri, 11 Apr 2014 11:47:00 +0000

The labor-backed campaign to raise the minimum wage resumed the week of April 13, as the "Raise The Wage" bus headed for more states, while Maryland became the second state to enact a multi-year hike of the wage to $10.10 an hour.

The bus will head for Nevada, Nebraska, Ohio, Colorado, Georgia, North Carolina and Iowa, said Jeremy Funk of Americans United for Change, the labor-backed coalition that sponsored the vehicle's prior caravan to more than a dozen states.

Meanwhile workers can mobilize to urge federal lawmakers to raise the wage, as Congress left town for home states on April 10, starting its Passover-Easter break.

The U.S. minimum wage, $7.25 an hour, has not increased since the middle of the GOP Bush administration. Senate Labor Committee Chairman Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, and veteran Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., are pushing legislation to raise it to $10.10 hourly by 2016, in three 95-cent hikes, and then index it to inflation.

They also would raise the wage for "tipped workers" - servers and others who depend on tips - in stages from $2.13 an hour to 70 percent of the regular minimum. The tipped wage hasn't increased in more than 20 years.

Unions strongly support raising the minimum wage. AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Liz Shuler notes 70 percent of minimum-wage workers are women, most of them single parents. The average minimum-wage worker is aged 30. Half are college grads.

But Republicans, in both Congress and the states, are blocking the increases where they can, though polls show majorities of Republicans, Democrats and independents support a hike. "The Republicans can get on the train and raise the minimum wage or be kicked off the train and let the Democrats do it," Americans United for Change Executive Director Brad Woodhouse told an April 7 phone press conference.

Despite GOP opposition, the overwhelmingly Democratic Maryland legislature raised the wage to $10.10 hourly, but spread the hike over five years. It also did not index the increase. That follows a decision by the two big Maryland suburban counties around D.C. to join with the capital and raise the wage on their own, even more.

In GOP-run Nebraska and Florida lawmakers aren't on the train, senators said.

Nebraska State Sen. Jeremy Norquist reported that a minimum wage hike failed there on a 20-20 tie vote. The Nebraska senate - its only legislative body - is 2-to-1 Republican. Now organized labor and its allies will gather signatures to put the increase on the November ballot, he added. It needs 120,000 names. "Even in a conservative state like Nebraska, we're seeing great public support," Norquist added.

Florida State Sen. Dwight Bullard said a minimum-wage hike bill will be introduced this year, and he hopes to get it to the floor this year, too. If not, Bullard plans to bring it up next year.

"Our current minimum wage is $7.93 and the tipped wage" - in a tourism-dependent state - "is $4.65. We've seen efforts to reduce that," he said.

Photo: Give America a Raise bus tour stop in Louisville, Ky., April 1. Secretary of State of Kentucky Alison Lundergan Grimes spoke. Give America a Raise website.

Many “Obamacare” critics accepted its subsidies

Wed, 09 Apr 2014 15:35:00 +0000

WASHINGTON (AP) - Several big corporations have reaped millions of dollars from "Obamacare" even as they support GOP candidates who vow to repeal the law. This condemn-while-benefiting strategy angers Democrats, who see some of their top congressional candidates struggling against waves of anti-Obamacare ads partly funded by these companies.

Among the corporations is a familiar Democratic nemesis, Koch Industries, the giant conglomerate headed by the billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch. They and some conservative allies are spending millions of dollars to hammer Democratic senators in North Carolina, Alaska, Colorado, Iowa and elsewhere, chiefly for backing President Barack Obama's health care overhaul.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., renewed his criticisms of the Kochs this week. In a Senate chamber speech, Reid noted that Koch Industries benefited from a temporary provision of the health care law.

The Early Retiree Reinsurance Program, Reid said, "helped the company pay health insurance costs for its retirees who are not covered by Medicare." Reid asked sarcastically: "So it's OK for Koch Industries to save money through Obamacare" even as Koch-related groups seek the law's repeal.

When Congress enacted the health care law in 2010, it appropriated $5 billion for the temporary reinsurance program. The goal was to subsidize employers' costs for workers who retire before they become eligible for Medicare. Hundreds of employers applied - many were corporations, cities and public universities - and virtually all the money was soon distributed.

"If the Affordable Care Act is so awful," Reid asked, "why did Koch Industries use it to their advantage?"

Federal records show that Koch Industries received $1.4 million in early retiree subsidies. That's considerably less than the sums many other employers received. A Koch Industries spokesman said he had no comment on Reid's latest criticisms.

The Koch consortium may be the loudest "Obamacare" critic among the subsidized employers. But many others accepted the subsidies while heavily backing GOP House and Senate candidates, most of who call for repealing the 2010 health care law.

For instance, United Parcel Service received $37 million from the program's subsidies for early retirees. From 1989 through this year, political action committees affiliated with UPS donated $32 million to federal candidates and political parties. Of that, 64 percent went to Republicans, according to records compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics.

Union Pacific Railroad's employee health system received $9.7 million in subsidies. Republicans received more than two-thirds of the nearly $20 million in political donations from the railroad's PACs in the 25-year period tracked by the center.

Altria Client Services Inc. received nearly $11 million in the early retiree subsidies. And Republicans received 71 percent of the nearly $24 million in Altria-related political donations from 1989 to 2014.

One of the biggest subsidy recipients was AT&T, at $213 million. More than half of the $56 million in AT&T-related political donations went to Republicans during the 25-year period.

Spokesmen for AT&T and Altria declined to comment about accepting "Obamacare" subsidies while funding candidates who want to repeal the law.

Other companies that steer most of their political donations to Republicans, and the early-retiree subsidies they received, include: Pfizer, Inc., $23 million; GlaxoSmithKline, $14 million; Southern Company Services, $7 million; Lockheed Martin Corp., $4 million; CSX Corp., $2.2 million; KMPG LLP $1.4 million; and Deloitte LLP, $1.2 million.

The data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics omits much of this year's heavy political spending, because many major players are not required to report donations. The Koch-funded group Americans for Prosperity is among those "super PACs" that can keep their finance details private, even as it dominates the airwaves in some states, like North Carolina, with competitive Senate races.

The Kochs and their allies show little sheepishness about denouncing a federal health law that benefited them. In fact, the Koch-related group FreedomPartners is spending more than $1 million on ads criticizing Sen. Mark Udall of Colorado and Rep. Bruce Braley of Iowa, Democrats running in tight Senate races.

Their alleged wrongdoing? Accepting campaign donations from health companies that benefit from "Obamacare."

Photo: Koch brothers related groups funded tea party demonstrations against President Obama and the Affordable Care Act (CC).

Key lawmaker warns highway-mass transit money is running out

Wed, 09 Apr 2014 15:03:00 +0000

WASHINGTON (PAI) - Money to repair the nation's crumbling roads and rehab its creaky mass transit lines will run out by July, a key lawmaker on budget issues warns.

In an Apr. 8 floor speech, Senate Budget Committee Chairman Patty Murray, D-Wash., added that the highway-mass transit trust fund could be exhausted by then, bringing construction projects to a dead halt at the height of construction season.

That would not only force present construction workers off the job, but prevent future hiring, she added. Indeed, the uncertainty over the future funding has already stopped highway projects in Arkansas, Colorado, and elsewhere, she said.

All that harm and a crisis could be avoided if Congress approves a new long-term highway-mass transit bill - and the federal gas tax that funds the projects - before the current law expires on Sept. 30, she added. She pleaded with colleagues to set aside partisan sniping and do so.

Laborers President Terry O'Sullivan made the same points. Murray and O'Sullivan cited federal data for their warning that the trust fund is about to run out of cash.

"With the Department of Transportation now warning of a shortfall in the highway trust fund as early as this summer, Congress needs to get moving right away on a highway bill reauthorization before it is too late," O'Sullivan said.

"Cities and states that rely on this funding to keep our highways efficient and safe will soon be forced to delay or cancel critical new projects, which could be catastrophic to the construction industry and have a damaging ripple effect throughout the economy.

"With an 11.3 percent construction unemployment rate, we still have plenty of workers who are ready and willing to rebuild our congested, pot-hole ridden and dangerous roads and bridges," he pointed out.

"If Congress doesn't act, we are headed toward crisis in just a few months," Murray warned. It would be "a construction shutdown that could ramp up when the highway trust fund reaches critically low levels, and get worse and worse if we don't solve the problem."

Murray pleaded for bipartisan support to renew the trust fund with a new highway-mass transit bill. She may get it in the Senate, but the GOP-run House is another matter. There, the Tea Partyites who control the GOP oppose highway spending and laws to help workers.

"As soon as July - just a few months from now - the Department of Transportation predicts the highway trust fund will reach a critically low level," Murray explained. "If this isn't resolved, construction projects to improve our roads and bridges could shut down and leave workers without a paycheck."

"This crisis could also cost jobs," she warned. "Construction is at its peak in the summer months. But without funding, states might have no choice but to stop construction and leave workers without a job.

"This is unacceptable, and it's unnecessary. Congress must act to avoid this construction shutdown. There is no reason to lurch to another avoidable crisis when workers and families across the country are still struggling."

While Murray and O'Sullivan warned of one looming transportation funding crisis, the tax-writing Senate Finance Committee took a small step in the same field. It voted to restore the full pre-tax mass transit voucher subsidy, $250 monthly, that employers could give to workers to take buses and subways to their jobs.

Until the end of 2013, vouchers for both mass transit users and drivers were $245 monthly. The transit voucher dropped to $130. The parking voucher rose to $250. The Finance Committee voted to make them equal and make the mass transit voucher retroactive to Jan. 1, undoing prior congressional inaction. That led union leaders to turn their attention to the GOP-run tax-writing Ways and Means Committee.

"Without action, there will remain a bias in the tax code against public transpor-tation, the millions of working people" who use it and firms that use the benefit to cut payroll costs, AFL-CIO Transportation Trades Department President Ed Wytkind wrote.

"The transit tax benefit allows employers to use pre-tax dollars to pay for employees' transit expenses. By reducing payroll taxes, commuters save as much as $2,940 a year on their transit costs. The tax benefit also incentivizes the use of public transportation, which reduces commutes, keeps people employed and makes transportation accessible and affordable for all," he added.

The split between the declining transit voucher and the rising parking voucher "is an effective tax on transit users" and hits hardest at the 70 percent of transit users who are working families or poor, Wytkind said. "The status quo" - the split - "is unacceptable."

Treasury Employees President Colleen Kelley gave Ways and Means the same points: "The mass transit benefit provides much needed relief in reduced commuting costs for many working people...Restoring it to parity with parking also encourages greater transit ridership, which helps lessen congestion on the roadways, reduces pollution, conserves energy, and saves money in road construction and maintenance."

Photo: Sen. Patty Murphy. Erika Schultz/AP

Senate Republicans block equal pay bill

Wed, 09 Apr 2014 14:05:00 +0000

WASHINGTON - GOP senators today prevented debate on and killed the Paycheck Fairness Act, a mini-version of which President Obama ordered into existence yesterday for employees of federal contractors. The bill the Republicans killed today aims to end unequal pay between men and women.

It failed 53-44, falling seven votes short of the 60 it needed to advance to the floor. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid - who supports the bill - voted against it so he could bring it back to the floor later in this session.

"Are they so repulsed by equal pay for hardworking women that they'll obstruct equal pay for equal work?" Reid said. "I'm at a loss as to why anyone would decline to debate this important issue."

The Senate vote was along party lines, as it was on two prior occasions when the measure failed in 2010 and 2012.

The law would forbid employers to retaliate against workers who discuss company payroll policy and the wages they are paid with other workers, and require employers to disclose payment and demographic information in addition to preventing them from punishing workers who discuss their salaries. It would also allow civil pay discrimination lawsuits against employers.

Debra Ness, president of the National Partnership for Women and Families, called the vote a "deeply disappointing missed opportunity to advance fair pay for America's women and families.

"Now is the exact time for Congress to advance measures that promote the economic security of America's women," Ness said. "Women are breadwinners in two-thirds of families and head more than 15 million U.S. households. "

This week, the National Partnership released a new analysis of the wage gap in all 50 states that shows that women and their families lose thousands of dollars in critical income each year and that they have significantly less money to spend on food, gas, rent and other basic necessities. The consequences for America's families, and for the state and national economies are significant, the study found.

"By blocking this bill, the Senate has failed to even allow debate on giving women the most basic of protections: a safety net against egregious discrimination in the workplace," said Deborah Vagins, ACLU senior legal counsel and co-chair of the National Paycheck Fairness Act Coalition. "The president's actions on pay equity yesterday were huge victories for federal contractors, so it's disappointing that Congress wouldn't extend these protections to all workers. As long as women workers continue to make less than men doing the same jobs, we will continue to fight for the Paycheck Fairness Act."

After the vote, Democrats said they would keep up the fight.

"This isn't over," said Washington Democratic Sen. Patty Murray. "Equal pay for equal work is going to remain at the forefront of our agenda in the months ahead, and we aren't going to let Republicans off the hook on an issue this important."

Photo: Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada asksed about his GOP opponents on Wednesday, "Are they so repulsed by equal pay for hard-working women that they'll obstruct equal pay for equal work?" AP