The Eviction of the Bird Lady

Most of us have been exposed to the dry refrain of the repetitively chanted statistics associated with the foreclosure crisis. Here is a snapshot of the reality of the crisis that millions are currently facing.

Written by Miki Aberle

The bird lady...bless her heart. She flagged me down after I was done running - she seemed about as out of breath as I was, and when she apologized for not having on a bra in her dishevelment, I told her it was okay because I had on two (true story). This was my attempt to make her smile because I've never seen anyone look so desperately sweet; (nearly) all of her belongings were strewn throughout her front yard and driveway - all except the iron-wired bird cages and wooden perches...

Apparently Paula, whose name I later learned, was being evicted according to the man with a badge standing in the midst of this woman's shattered life. She couldn't have been under 60 years-old. Everything had to be out of the house within the next hour if she wanted a chance of keeping it. The help she had earlier said they'd be back and failed to return, so she tirelessly drug everything she could out of what used to be her home.

The PT Cruiser in the driveway was momentarily acting as shelter to four tropical birds while their dismantled cage parts were scattered in various areas of the second floor of Paula's previous dwelling. She didn't have the strength to carry them down the stairs, which is where Miki comes in.

One by one I carried cage parts and what seemed like actual trees down the stairs, pretending to care for it all like I knew Paula did; if not, this 45 minute chore could have been strategically handled in much less time, and while the man with the badge watched me struggle and told me he was "sorry but couldn't help," I knew Paula was watching me too. I didn't want her to feel like yet another person didn't respect or care about what used to be her life.

Maybe that's why she told me I was an angel and should have my wings...(apparently she's into things that fly).

After the Billionaires Plundered Alabama Town, Troops Were Called in ... Illegally

By Mark Ames, AlterNet. Posted October 24, 2009

"We have to tolerate the inequality as a way to achieve greater prosperity and opportunity for all," says one Goldman Sachs adviser. But tell that to the people of Samson, Ala.

One of this year's more disturbing stories that were ignored was the illegal Army occupation of Samson, Alab., in March following a shooting spree that raged across two towns by a disgruntled worker, leaving 11 people dead. Read entire article here

Roger Eugene Ailes for President

Would it be wonderful to see Roger Ailes run for president? The smell of death is all around the Republican Party. Sara Palin or Roger Ailes, what leadership! The new Wig Party begins its decent into oblivion!

President Reagan Rests in Peace ... But Will His Voo-Doo Economics Ever Die?

Posted by Dave Johnson, Campaign for America's Future at 10:51 AM on July 31, 2009.

What are you going to believe, what “free market” ideologues tell you or your own lying eyes?

There are things you can see in front of your face, and then there are things that conservative “free market” ideologues tell you.

One example is when they talk about the minimum wage. (An increase in the national minimum wage goes into effect today.) Conservative “free market” ideologues tell you that raising the minimum wage “costs jobs.” They say that if employers have to pay a few cents more per hour they won’t employ as many people.

But then there is something you can see in front of your face: whenever the minimum wage is raised, things get better. Things obviously get a little better for the people who work at the minimum wage, and for their families. As this works its way up the food chain things get a little better for the people and stores these workers rent and buy from. But also, studies looking into the effect of what actually happens after the minimum wage is raised show that the net effect is no loss of jobs.

Here is why. Read entire article here!

The American Dream just turned into a Nightmare

This might be news to some, but there are many who feel that there is something happening to our economy besides just the current recession. I truly think that the word depression more aptly describes our current situation. But for now I will stick to the word, recession because it is softer and more acceptable.
There is a school of thought that postulates that our economy is undergoing some sort of massive transition. Jeff Jarvis from BuzzMachine writes:

In the financial crash, we are seeing two forces at work: first, a corrupt system of unregulated leverage gone mad — virtual value (which is to say, bullshit) created in derivatives — but second, a world whose fundamental structure is changing in ways we can’t yet fully fathom.

In “What would Google Do?” Jarvis believes our pre-crash economic system will be replaced by a system based on “information and abundance.” What exactly this new economy will look like is any ones guess at this point. The fact that our technology is growing exponentially makes predictions even more difficult. Who would have thought a year ago that a mobile social networking tool (Twitter) would be relied upon by network news to transmit on the ground real time coverage of the recent elections in Iran? Our ability to deliver information is certain to grow and evolve in ways that we now cannot imagine. I carry with me everyday a device that allows me to communicate and access information that would have been just a dream just a few short years ago. What ever system replaces our pre-recession economy, it will certainly have rapid and continuous change as a part of its makeup.

In my mind, our current recession/transition is a perfect storm of events and evolution. The economy that existed before the recession was an economy stuck in the past and was perpetuated by banking/corporate/governmental control. The world and the world’s technology were changing and our pre-recession economy was not allowed to evolve in ways that would have softened the transition that we are currently going through. So when the crash of our totally antiquated and fatally flawed economic system finally happened, there was a backlog of problems, jobs and industries that had not even begun to change.

The results of this backlog are all around us today. Who would have thought whole industries would need to be severely downsized and/or restructured? The automotive and newspaper industries are the first of many to feel the searing pain of massive change. Many more industries are sure to follow.

Of course the real losers in this high stakes game that is being played out are the workers. The everyday, go to work, play by the rules workers, who for years (sometimes many years) did everything right to be employed in good paying jobs. Millions will find that the industries that they spent their lives training for or working in, no longer exist. They are as outdated as the industries and jobs that they worked in. So we have a situation where millions of workers need to be reeducated and changed to fit the jobs of an evolving new economic system. We need to provide these workers with the tools to “remake” themselves. How we do this is any ones guess? Many low skilled and already economically disadvantage workers may not be able to adapt to what is coming. We may have to accept a number of workers as “lost causes” and provide support indefinitely to them.

The highly skilled and educated among us, who now or will soon find themselves jobless are faced with the daunting challenge of “reeducating and remaking” themselves, while they attempt to downsize their lives to fit the realities of the new world. Lives that were built and then sustained by the old system are not easily changed. Everything they worked for (houses, cars, toys) was being sustained by a economic system that no longer exists. The adjustment to this reality is nothing less than a generational psychological trauma.

The American Dream just turned into a nightmare. Playing by the rules and doing what you are told no longer means a path to the white picket fence house and two cars in the garage. There will be fewer routes to guaranteed success. The future will belong to those who can adapt, reeducate and remake themselves. The future will require us to leave the past completely behind.

Bernie Sanders has a plan!

With health care reform and the Employee Free Choice Act hanging in the balance, Bernie Sanders has plan!

Bernie Sanders Demands Democrats Commit to Stopping Health Care Filibuster

One of the Senate's most vocal progressives is demanding that the Democratic Party commit to voting against filibustering health care legislation now that, with the impending arrival of Al Franken, the party has 60 caucusing members.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), called on the White House and Democratic leadership in Congress to ensure that party members agree unanimously to support cloture on legislation that would revamp the nation's health care system. Democratic senators on the fence, he added, could still oppose the bill. But at the very least they should be required to let the legislation come to an up-or-down vote.

"I think that with Al Franken coming on board, you have effectively 60 Democrats in the caucus, 58 and two Independents," Sanders said in an interview with the Huffington Post. "I think the strategy should be to say, it doesn't take 60 votes to pass a piece of legislation. It takes 60 votes to stop a filibuster. I think the strategy should be that every Democrat, no matter whether or not they ultimately end up voting for the final bill, is to say we are going to vote together to stop a Republican filibuster. And if somebody who votes for that ends up saying, 'I'm not gonna vote for this bill, it's too radical, blah, blah, blah, that's fine.'" Read entire article here.

Organizing and Mobilizing with Flair

For four days next week, the campus of the National Labor College (NLC) in Silver Spring, Md., will reverberate with the sounds of music, poetry and creative chants and art.

From June 20-23, some 100 union and social justice activists will participate in the annual Great Labor Arts Exchange and Conference on Creative Organizing, programs that combine union mobilization and outreach with songs, skits, art, poetry, theater, posters, cartoons and film.

For 31 years, the Great Labor Arts Exchange has celebrated the rich cultural heritage of working people and served as a forum that brings together talented labor artists, activists, cultural workers, educators and students. Read entire article here.

Don't buy Starbucks' Coffee

Spilling the Beans About Starbucks' Union-Busting Tactics
by: ZP Heller

Put down that grande non-fat caramel macchiato or whatever Starbucks concoction you're drinking. Turns out the coffee giant has a nasty history of being anti-barista, anti-union, and thus anti-Employee Free Choice Act as well.

The National Labor Relations Board has repeatedly found Starbucks guilty of illegally terminating, harassing, intimidating, and discriminating against employees attempting to unionize. Late last year, a judge ruled Starbucks had committed over a dozen violations of the National Labor Relations Act at a few New York stores. Starbucks has settled five such labor disputes in the last few years in New York, Minnesota, and Michigan, spending millions on legal fees to avoid exposing their anti-worker ways. Read entire article here!

Republicans: The Indulgent Parents

by Dana Houle

You've seen them. Maybe it's a friend or a sibling. Someone you see out in public. Maybe, even, you've pondered the past and recognize it might have been your parents, or maybe even you: indulgent parents. Parents who never set limits, never enforce boundaries. Parents who never tell their children no. And you know what happens. Their kids usually grow up to be monsters, or face a tough transition to adulthood, because they think everything should be handed to them on a silver platter. They can't understand why the world doesn't roll over for them the way their parents did. They often become embittered and disillusioned, and sometimes even nihilistic. And their parents often experience shame and regret, and feel like they've become hostage to the monsters they helped create.

In American politics, the spoiled children struggling to deal with a reality they don't like and didn't expect are those voters who make up the rightwing of the Republican base. The indulgent parents of American politics are the leaders, elected officials and apparatchiks of the Republican party. Read entire article here.

iPhone

I have been immersed in my new device, the iphone. It represents a revolution in communication. I am still in awe of this device. Nothing on the market even comes close to doing what the iphone can do. I have also been playing with Twitter - another revolution in communication and social networking. More on this later.

Glenn Beck and the Definition of Sedition

Click on the following link of Glenn Beck and think about whether the following definition applies?

Sedition is a term of law which refers to covert conduct, such as speech and organization, that is deemed by the legal authority as tending toward insurrection against the established order. Sedition often includes subversion of a constitution and incitement of discontent (or resistance) to lawful authority. Sedition may include any commotion, though not aimed at direct and open violence against the laws. Seditious words in writing are seditious libel. A seditionist is one who engages in or promotes the interests of sedition.

Because sedition is typically considered a subversive act, the overt acts that may be prosecutable under sedition laws vary from one legal code to another. Where those legal codes have a traceable history, there is also a record of the change of definition for what constituted sedition at certain points in history. This overview has served to develop a sociological definition of sedition as well, within study of persecution.

The difference between sedition and treason consists primarily in the subjective ultimate object of the violation to the public peace. Sedition does not consist of levying war against a government nor of adhering to its enemies, giving enemies aid, and giving enemies comfort. Nor does it consist, in most representative democracies, of peaceful protest against a government, nor of attempting to change the government by democratic means (such as direct democracy or constitutional convention).

Put simply, sedition is the stirring up of rebellion against the government in power. Treason is the violation of allegiance to one's sovereign or state and has to do with giving aid to enemies or levying war. Sedition is more about encouraging the people to rebel, where treason is actually betraying the country. Sedition laws somewhat equate to Terrorism and Public Order laws.

Maybe we could tax Hell?

There is one source of wealth in America that has too long been a sacred cow. You know those thousands of funny looking buildings that seem to occupy every other corner in many communities. They are commonly known as churches. What if we require churches to pay taxes on their income? I know I have just touched the 3rd rail of the American psyche. How dare I suggest that an organization involved in the institutionalized belief in fairy tales should have to pay taxes. What was I thinking? I hope I don’t go to Hell now? I wonder if we could tax Hell?

The Realities of Climate Change

A Self-filling Prophecy
If you think preventing climate change is politically difficult, look at the political problems of adapting to it.

By George Monbiot. Published in the Guardian, 16th March 2009.

Quietly in public, loudly in private, climate scientists everywhere are saying the same thing: it’s over. The years in which more than two degrees of global warming could have been prevented have passed, the opportunities squandered by denial and delay. On current trajectories we’ll be lucky to get away with four degrees. Mitigation (limiting greenhouse gas pollution) has failed; now we must adapt to what nature sends our way. If we can.

This, at any rate, was the repeated whisper at the climate change conference in Copenhagen last week(1). It’s more or less what Bob Watson, the environment department’s chief scientific adviser, has been telling the British government(2). It is the obvious if unspoken conclusion of scores of scientific papers. Recent work by scientists at the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, for example, suggests that even global cuts of 3% a year, starting in 2020, could leave us with four degrees of warming by the end of the century(3,4). At the moment emissions are heading in the opposite direction at roughly the same rate. If this continues, what does it mean? Six? Eight? Ten degrees? Who knows? Read entire article here.

Rove and Cheney: War Criminals Among US

As Rachel Maddow is fond of saying during her news hour, “I need someone to talk me down” as to why there are so many criminals from the last administration still able to walk among us? Not only are they allowed to walk among us, but they are allowed to give interviews and pretend to be journalists! When will people like Rove and Cheney be held accountable for the great crimes they have committed? There are certainly many others from the Bush administration who also need to serve time behind bars. But can someone tell me if any of these people will ever pay for the damage they have caused? Each time the corporate media gives the Bush administration criminals another chance to repeat their lies, spin, and propaganda; I am almost driven into convulsions. Please someone, convince me that someday these bastards will have to pay for their crimes. For gods sake is there no real justice in America? Someone please tell me that one day, I will never have to again endure the media sanctioned pronouncements of war criminals!

Ethix Merch leading the way in marketing Union made Products!

Secretary of State Clinton explained to the Chinese media during her recent visit, "We have to incur more debt … the US needs the investment in Treasury bonds to shore up its economy to continue to buy Chinese products."

Joshua Holland in his most recent article, The Spectacular, Sudden Crash of the Global Economy very nicely sums up the rise and fall of the global economy. He writes: In a short period of months, the entire system of global capitalism has screeched to a halt. No one knows what happens next. Read entire article here.

In my mind what happens next is a return to the past. I have memories of touring a shoe factory near a city where I grew up. Yes, we used to make shoes in the United States. My father owned shoes that were made less than 20 miles away from where he lived! And these shoes were made by union workers who took pride in what they did earned a decent wage for doing it.

We need to return to the local and regional production of goods that we now buy from production facilities located thousands of miles away. The days of exploitation are over. It is time to build new local/regional economies that are environmentally friendly and provide dignity and rights to workers.

Companies like Ethix Merch are leading the way in marketing high quality union made products at affordable prices. I encourage you to check out their web site. We can change things for the better. Companies like Ethix Merch and you will make it happen!

Forcing Burger King to Backtrack on Employee Free Choice

Reposted from Open Left
by ZP Heller

All week long, Brave New Films, SEIU and many progressive bloggers have been holding Burger King's feet to the deep fryer. Together we exposed Burger King's horrendous working conditions; launched a contest asking people to Have It Their Way with Goldman Sachs (Burger King's top shareholder) for squandering $6.5 billion of the bailout on bonuses while average BK workers earn less than the federal poverty line; and staged peaceful demonstrations at Burger Kings across the country protesting the fast-food chain's low wages, lack of healthcare, and lobbying against unionization legislation. So what was Burger King's response? They served up this flamebroiled pile of garbage yesterday: "Burger King Corp. (BKC) believes unions serve a purpose in some workplaces and a number of its guests, vendors and franchisees have positive union membership experiences. BKC is not anti-union. BKC and its franchisees serve a diverse consumer base and, therefore, aim to remain neutral on political issues."
Read entire article here