Okay, the video is pretty damn tacky. But it’s for a good cause. This group is advocating for a “Do Not Track Me” list similar to the Do Not Call list.
Category: Uncategorized
As US “recovery” collapses, White House rules out social relief
Posted by on September 6, 2010
This article is cross-posted from the World Socialist Web Site Perspectives series.
September 1, 2010
Recent weeks have seen a collapse in US home sales, a weakening of manufacturing activity, an upward trend in jobless benefit claims and, on Friday, a downward revision of second-quarter gross domestic product growth from 2.4 percent to 1.6 percent.
The latter figure is far below the rate of economic expansion needed to bring down unemployment, now at its highest levels since the Great Depression. On the contrary, the sharp slowdown in economic growth heralds a further rise in the jobless rate.
Month after month of mass unemployment, compounded by sweeping cuts in social services at the state and local level and wage cutting in both the private and public sectors, have already produced a social disaster for tens of millions of Americans. One million families are losing their homes to foreclosure every year. Hunger and homelessness are on the rise.
Pleading Poverty
Posted by on September 2, 2010
According to the September 2 New York Times,
BP is warning Congress that if lawmakers pass legislation that bars the company from getting new offshore drilling permits, it may not have the money to pay for all the damages caused by its oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
The company says a ban would also imperil the ambitious Gulf Coast restoration efforts that officials want the company to voluntarily support.
In other words, if you want us to clean up the mess we’ve already made, you’re going to have to let us make more messes. Or at least run a serious risk that there will be another mess.
The risk was illustrated on the very same day by a new fire at a shallow water rig about 200 miles from the Deepwater Horizon site. An Atlanta Journal-Constitution column was headlined, “Another oil rig burns, showing need for more oversight.”
More oversight, indeed. Why not just nationalize BP and use its resources, including its expertise, to clean up this mess and others like it. And then put its scientists and technicians to work on cleaner sources of energy than oil.
No Place to Hide
Posted by on September 1, 2010
Hat tip to Jeremy Wells for the links below.
Motivated at least in part by pressure from the U.S., the Mexican government essentially looks the other way when innocent migrant laborers are killed on its soil by criminal gangs. In this report on a massacre last week in which 72 immigrants were killed, the World Socialist Web Site (WSWS) notes:
In addition to being kidnapped for ransom money, migrants are also seen by gangs as possible recruits for their operations. Many migrants, coming from destitute areas of Central and South America, have little or no protection on their long and dangerous journey to the United States.
A Labor Day Appeal to AFL-CIO President Trumka
Posted by on September 1, 2010
Blog administrator’s note: I have taken the liberty of reformatting Jerry’s post for clarity.
My comment below is an edited version of one first posted on the AFL-CIO NOW blog, to the article Trumka: Palin’s Rhetoric Is Dangerous, Poisonous by James Parks, Aug 26, 2010.
The radical right, massively funded by the most reactionary corporatist elements of the ruling class, dominating the corporate owned mass media, have created a “class-war” terrorist media campaign to drown out any expression or understanding of the many crises now impoverishing millions of working people. The AFL-CIO is feeding off this terrorist media campaign, to frighten working people to again support the Democrats and Obama yet again in November 2010. There is, we think, a small but growing element within the organized labor movement that understands the need to break away from both Democratic and Republican parties. to form a party the struggles for the economic survival needs of working people.