News Stories for october 7, 2011
CHART OF THE WEEK: U.S. CEO:Worker Pay Ratio is 475:1We Party Patriots
Truly tough to look at, though not as tough to believe. The U.S. is in a class of its own when it comes to income inequality. Have a look at the above chart if you don’t agree. It’s not even clear what place we’re in overall, but I can’t imagine it’s not LAST.
Read the source story here.
Teamsters Occupy DC Teamster Nation
[...] The Teamsters were greeted with thumbs up, "Glad labor is here!" and "Love the sign!" The iconic red-and-blue "Stop the War on Workers" signs were photographed and videotaped by the dozens of photojournalists who swarmed the plaza. Firefighters, postal workers, operating engineers and members of AFSCME, OPEIU and the AFL-CIO were all there.
And a couple of cute kids. We couldn't resist the one to the right.
The Tweetosphere is telling us there are Teamsters at Occupy Cleveland right now, and we're hearing from word of mouth that they're in other cities as well (including Wall Street). Hundreds marched in Houston today as people protested in Dallas, McAllen and San Antonio; Trenton, N.J., and Philadelphia had their first rallies; hundreds marched in San Francisco; and encampments continued in Los Angeles, Chicago and Boston.
There are now Occupy groups in 627 cities. Find one near you.
Read the source story here.
Huffington Post
How the mostly young, un-unionized occupiers would mix with the older union members was an open question before the march -- not the least because union tactics, at least in the 21st century, are often so much more staid than last weekend's march onto the Brooklyn Bridge. As for whether there would be arrests, Occupy Wall Street's spokesman, Patrick Bruner, told HuffPost early in the afternoon, "I hope not, but you can never tell."
The scene in Foley Square, when occupiers and unionists became one, was an eclectic mish-mash of ages, races and ideas. Spartacists competed with Socialists, who in turn bumped into strollers. The sounds of the Rude Mechanical Orchestra, a radical marching band, carried over the droning rhythms of the Zuccotti Park drummers and the soul songs of the unions' singers. On the courthouse steps nearby a group of younger people had a banner that read, simply, "REVOLT." National Nurses United's priorities lay closer to "Tax Wall Street Transactions," according to their signs.
Max Breslow, a 29-year-old stagehand sporting sunglasses, a handlebar mustache and a Holga film camera, was impressed. This was the first time he'd made it out to Occupy Wall Street, or to any union rally in the United States, and he thought "the movement's gonna get larger, and the message is going to get more concise."
As a token to just how concise or even downright wonky some would like its message to be, a man nearby was holding a cardboard sign that said "Kill the OTC Derivative Market -- Outlaw Credit Default Swaps."
The 52-year-old actor who was holding the default swap sign, Joe Urla, acknowledged that "people don't realize what the derivatives market is."
Nevertheless, Urla added, "from a political standpoint it boils down to corruption" -- and he thought the people around him, from all their various backgrounds, recognized that problem well.
Everyone seemed to want to connect. A leader from Service Employees International Union 32BJ Local of custodial workers told the crowd "I see in the media, in the news, they say labor's joined the fight. I think that's a poor characterization. Labor's always been in the fight!"
"We're tired of the greedy sons of bitches taking our money," he added. "Does this movement have legs? Shit, Look around you!"
The crowd roared.Read the source story here.
The Stranger
I know it's coming, so I just thought I'd take a moment to head off the criticism that, now that local unions are rallying their members to join the Occupy Seattle protests, the movement will somehow lose its mojo—that it will suddenly become less authentic, less credible, less grassroots.
Well, to paraphrase Mitt Romney: "Unions are people too." Or at least, their members are.
The very notion that the grievances and demands of individual workers are any less legitimate simply because they organize themselves into a union is both absurd and offensive, as is the suggestion that organized labor could possibly co-opt the Occupy movement simply by showing up and lending its support. So please don't fall for the divisive rhetoric and tactics of the one percent and their paid proxies.Read the source story here.
The Stranger
You wanted more labor support for the Occupy movement? More than today's news about support from the King County Labor Council and the The Washington State Labor Council, AFL-CIO? You got it.
Service Employees International Union 775 president David Rolf tells The Stranger today the group will formally announce its support this evening for the Occupy Seattle movement, asking its 42,000 members to join the protests at Westlake Park and committing financial and logistical resources to the occupation.
Rolf says about the protests in Seattle, New York City, and other cities around the United States: "I think it’s the start of something big."
The SEIU is asking its members to join the protests in Westlake Park on Saturday, attend another event on Monday (details to be announced), plus another event later in the week. Rolf says today he asked the the Occupy Seattle fundraising coordinator "what they need and what is useful. We want to be helpful however we can."
The SEIU group already had members sleeping in Westlake Park last night, and they delivered 200 pairs of socks this morning.Read the source story here.
Think Progress
The Occupy Wall Street movement spread to Chicago this week, where protesters have gathered outside the Chicago Board of Trade, the world’s oldest options and futures trading center. Like the protesters in New York and other cities around the country, the group gathered to protest our nation’s growing income inequality, as the top 1 percent of Americans continue to see their incomes rise rapidly and their tax rates fall. The Chicago traders, confronted by the protesters’ “We are the 99 percent” message, crafted their own not-so-subtle reply, hanging signs in eighth-floor windows that said, “We are the 1%“:
Read the source story here.
Think Progress
Tea Party Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) — when he isn’t badly mangling the U.S. Constitution — wants to take a hatchet to the federal budget, proposing a program that “would require slashing every government program that’s not defense or Social Security (Medicare, Medicaid, veterans affairs, education, and so on) by 89.6 percent.” But at the same time, judging by a new proposal he released today, he wants to gift multinational corporations with a permanent tax break worth tens of billions of dollars.
A slew of multinational corporations — even though they already pay exceedingly low taxes — have been pushing for the enactment of a tax repatriation holiday, which would allow them to bring money they have stashed overseas back to the U.S. at a tax rate dramatically lower than the statutory 35 percent. The corporations want a short window in which this low tax rate would apply. But Lee has decided that he would just go ahead and make the holiday permanent: [...]
Read the source story here.
The New York Times
In proposing a 5 percent surtax on incomes of more than $1 million a year to pay for job-creation measures sought by President Obama, Senate Democratic leaders on Wednesday escalated efforts to strike a more populist tone and to draw Republicans into a confrontation over how much affluent Americans should pay to help others cope with a struggling economy.
[...] The new plan, devised by the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada, has a twofold purpose: to draw a sharp contrast with Congressional Republicans, who have dug in against any increases in tax rates, and to quell a revolt brewing among some Democrats who objected to parts of the White House plan.
Read the source story here.
Huffington Post
The #OccupyWallStreet protests have legs. There's no doubt about it.
If you don't believe it, just take a look at the live feed some genius put on the web.
What you won't see is a bunch of angry, middle-aged folks -- some armed -- complaining about government. Instead, you have people, many young, who know something is wrong in America -- and want to make it right for everyone. It's joyful, and inclusive, and means no harm.
Of course, voices from the right have already pulled out their jeering slogans, and otherwise try to twist the available evidence into some sinister union/commie plot to subvert America.
But I doubt that will hold, if only because your average Tea Party member agrees with the #OccupyWallStreet analysis -- that government has forgotten about its citizens and works instead for the guys who pay for their campaigns.
If you want proof of that, consider that both Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich support the protests.Read the source story here.
Think Progress
This morning, President Barack Obama bashed the Republican argument that the United States can no longer compete in global manufacturing. Earlier this week, Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-FL) said that the bankruptcy of Solyndra means that the United States should surrender the clean-energy race to China. “We can’t compete with China to make solar panels and wind turbines,” Stearns told NPR, because one advanced-technology solar company that had received private and public financing had closed shop.
“I’m not going to surrender to other countries,” Obama shot back in today’s press conference, after noting that Stearns, like dozens of other Republicans, are on record supporting the clean-energy loan guarantee program they now attack.
Read the source story here.
Daily Kos
[...] Unions have reason to be frustrated that their efforts—whether large rallies, lobby days that brought union members to Capitol Hill, or other advocacy—have been largely ignored. At the same time, if too much Occupy Wall Street coverage goes to unions, the original protesters have legitimate reason for frustration. (Though to the extent that the protesters don't mostly offer spokespeople, it's probably not a bad thing that reporters, who all too often quote the least articulate or most inflammatory person at any protest, have in unions an obvious place to go for quotes that carefully make clear the person quoted is not an Occupy Wall Street "leader" but also make the case for anger at Wall Street.
)It's a delicate balance, and one complicated by the fact that when it comes to activism on the left, the media so often either ignores or portrays it in the worst possible light. Unions have resources and research and members, all of which can help to build up Occupy Wall Street. They also have a public presence that's pretty well cemented into place, often in ways that make it difficult to avoid seeming stale, and an existing format for protest that, let's face it, can feel stale no matter how passionately you believe in the cause. Occupy Wall Street is new and fresh and drawing attention for that—but sometimes in ways that are nearly guaranteed to draw skepticism and bad coverage from the media. The question is, is there a balance to be reached between unions and the protesters that will build up and spread the protests and awareness of the issues? If there is, will it change anything about how the media covers progressive activism? (I'm more optimistic about the former than the latter.)
Read the source story here.
Dems change rules; Senate in chaos
Politico
The Senate descended into procedural chaos Thursday night as Democrats forced a change in Senate rules and shut down a GOP effort to bog down a Chinese currency bill with a series of unrelated amendments.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s move to suddenly overhaul a key Senate rule without warning infuriated Republicans and put an already bitterly divided chamber on edge as senators from both sides of the aisle traded angry accusations over whether the fight would fundamentally limit the rights of the minority party.
By a 51-48 vote, the Senate voted along party lines to change the precedent and limit how amendments can be considered once a filibuster is defeated. Under normal procedure, the Senate has 30 hours of debate after 60 senators agree to end a filibuster. Amendments can be considered during those 30 hours if each side agrees by unanimous consent to schedule a vote — or if a senator moves to waive the rules, which would then require the support of 67 senators in order to succeed.
But under the new procedure, senators can no longer move to waive the rules once a filibuster is defeated — a battle that threatens to further inflame partisan tensions and stymie legislative action at a time when frustration with Congress is at an all-time high.Read the source story here.
The Washington Post
At his presser today, Obama was asked by a reporter whether his new jobs tour has devolved into little more than a Truman-style political campaign against a “do nothing Congress.” In response, he essentially called on the media to take a stand on whether the GOP is really offering any real jobs plan of its own:
[snip]
Obama didn’t quite say it directly, but he was basically calling on the news media to take a real stand on a core question: Are Republicans really making a legitimate contribution to the debate over what to do about the economy? And he even called out reporters who, he said, already know the answer to that question. In so doing, Obama revealed palpable frustration with the state of our discourse, in particular the constant accusation that he is being “political” in pushing jobs proposals, simply because Republicans won’t pass them. His answer, translated, was: Can we all stop pretending that eliminating the EPA constitutes a jobs plan?Read the source story here.
The Hill
A multimillion-dollar stimulus package for K Street is coming to a close.
The expected passage of the trade deals with Colombia, Panama and South Korea marks the end point of a long campaign that saw the respective governments spend freely on lobbyists, lawyers and public relations to help push the deals to the finish line.
A review by The Hill of Justice Department records shows that the three countries’ Washington embassies, foreign ministries and trade agencies spent at least $15 million on lobbying, legal and PR work since the beginning of 2006 to press for passage of the free-trade agreements (FTA).
The sum includes at least $2.3 million spent by the countries so far in 2011.
The lobbying blitz on the deals — which were negotiated by the George W. Bush administration in 2006 and 2007 — has involved dozens of lobby shops and PR firms over the years.
More than 30 lobby shops, law firms and PR companies have worked the pro-trade campaign for at least one of the three countries, according to Justice records.Read the source story here.
Crooks and Liars
It's not like they weren't warned. There was already the example of Arizona, whose wrecked economy lies in ruins in the wake of SB1070 and the wave of anti-immigrant sentiment that came with its passage.
People warned Alabamans that if they went ahead and passed their own version of anti-immigrant legislation, they would suffer similar economic consequences. But they did it anyway. Now, the state's anti-immigration laws -- which involve using schoolchildren as proxies for enforcement -- are easily the most draconian and vicious anti-immigrant laws in the country.
And guess what? They are now paying the price. Not only are the schools suddenly emptying of Latino children, more tellingly, the state's tomato farmers are in crisis because there's no one available to harvest the fruit. And the authors of the legislation are just telling them, "tough luck": [...]Read the source story here.
Deepak Chopra, for Huffington Post
[...] The banks were bailed out three years ago, and once they felt strong, they lobbied with all their might to insure that no meaningful regulation would be passed. that is outrageous, of course, and so is the immorality of how Wall St., having caused the crash, continues to take ungodly risks, but now with a government guarantee that they won't fail, no matter how reckless their behavior. Right now Wall St. is the pure culture of money at its most selfish, greedy, and anti-social. If you aren't angry about that, you aren't breathing.
We stand at a pivotal moment when anger can continue to fester and feed upon itself -- if that's what you want, the Tea Party is ready to welcome you with open arms. Or anger can rebuild the system that caused all the problems. Occupy America is pure democracy against pure power, because nobody should have any illusion about who holds all the aces. I can't predict where the movement will go; perhaps it will fizzle out tomorrow with a resigned sigh.
But I do know that truth must be spoken to power. Eventually, all change starts there, by ignoring the odds and the threat of punishment, by standing up and saying "I accuse you of injustice." This action must be taken over and over again, and if the people speaking truth to power have right on their side and not just a boiling stew pot of rage, things will change. There's no reason why an Arab spring can't turn into an American autumn.Read the source story here.
Think Progress
Faced with their worst budget crises since the Great Depression, states and cities have resorted to increasingly desperate measures to cut costs. State and local governments have laid off teachers, slashed Medicaid funding, and even started unpaving roads and turning off streetlights.
But perhaps the most shocking idea to save money is being debated right now by the City Council of Topeka, Kansas. The city could repeal an ordinance banning domestic violence because some say the cost of prosecuting those cases is just too high:
Last night, in between approving city expenditures and other routine agenda items, the Topeka, Kansas City Council debated one rather controversial one: decriminalizing domestic violence.Read the source story here.
Here’s what happened: Last month, the Shawnee County District Attorney’s office, facing a 10% budget cut, announced that the county would no longer be prosecuting misdemeanors, including domestic violence cases, at the county level. Finding those cases suddenly dumped on the city and lacking resources of their own, the Topeka City Council is now considering repealing the part of the city code that bans domestic battery. [...]
- The Political Carnival:
Average income for top 1% in NY up 119%. Super PACS spending millions. OWS: "It's not working for us." - AFL-CIO Now Blog:
Union Members Join Biggest (Yet) Occupy Wall Street Action - Mother Jones:
Map: Occupy Wall Street Spreads Nationwide (Updated) - The Washington Post:
Occupy Wall Street keeps a wary distance from the Democratic Party - The Seattle Times:
Occupy Seattle protesters clash with police - The Stranger:
Mayor Issues Occupy Permits: Westlake All Day, City Hall At Night - The Columbian:
Occupy Portland vows not to get a permit, plans 'disruption' - AFL-CIO Now Blog:
World Teachers Day 2011 Honors Educators - Think Progress:
99 Percent Movement Targets Health Insurers, Pharmaceutical Companies - Mother Jones:
From Wisconsin to Wall Street, an Economic Reckoning - AFL-CIO Now Blog:
Early Voters Lining Up to Vote 'No' on Ohio's Issue 2 - Think Progress:
Poor Maine Residents Resort To Bartering For Health Care With Yardwork, Housekeeping - Think Progess:
Fox News Host Admits Network Is Trying To Build Public Enthusiasm For Health Care Repeal - The Washington Post:
14% of Americans like Congress. Who are they? - We Party Patriots:
Amidst Tepid Support for "Right-to-Work," PA GOP Turns Anti-Worker Weapons on the Prevailing Wage - Think Progress:
Big Banks Own California, Too: How Bank Lobbyists In Sacramento Killed Foreclosure Mitigation - The Raw Story:
Wisconsin Democrats want anti-union governor's picture removed - The Raw Story:
Rep. Paul Broun (R: TX): 'Occupy Wall Street' an attack on freedom - The Washington Post:
Who are the 1 percent?