Author: susie

The party abandoned the working class

~ susie ~ 1 Comment

William Greider lays it all out:

A party truly connected to the people would never have dared to make such a claim. In the real world of voters, human experience trumps macroeconomics and the slowly declining official unemployment rate. An official at the AFL-CIO culled the following insights from what voters said about themselves on Election Day: 54 percent suffered a decline in household income during the past year. Sixty-three percent feel the economy is fundamentally unfair. Fifty-five percent agree strongly (and another 25 percent agree somewhat) that both political parties are too focused on helping Wall Street and not enough on helping ordinary people.

Instead of addressing this reality and proposing remedies, the Democrats ran on a cowardly, uninspiring platform: the Republicans are worse than we are. Undoubtedly, that’s true—but so what? The president and his party have no credible solutions to offer. To get serious about inequality and the deteriorating middle class, Democrats would have to undo a lot of the damage their own party has done to the economy over the past thirty years.

Long ago, the party abandoned its working-class base (of all colors) and steadily distanced itself from the unglamorous conditions that matter most in people’s lives. Traditional party bulwarks like organized labor and racial minorities became second-string players in the hierarchy that influences party policy. But the Dems didn’t just lose touch with the people they claimed to speak for; they betrayed core constituencies and adopted pro-business, pro-finance policies that actively injure working people.

The shift away from the people was embraced most dramatically when Bill Clinton’s New Democrats came to power in the 1990s. Clinton double-crossed labor with NAFTA and subsequent trade agreements, which encouraged the great migration of manufacturing jobs to low-wage economies. Clinton’s bank deregulation shifted the economic rewards to finance and set the stage for the calamity that struck in 2008. Wall Street won; working people lost. Clinton presided over the financialization of the Democratic Party. Obama merely inherited his playbook and has governed accordingly, often with the same policy-makers.

“The people,” of course, are still present in the party, but they’re treated mainly as data for election strategies. The voters themselves resemble the supernumeraries in a grand opera: they appear on stage at election time, always lavishly praised by the pols. But they are given no lines to speak or songs to sing.

Now convict the bastard

~ susie ~ 1 Comment

donblankenship

They say the arc of the universe bends toward justice, and I’m glad the universe finally got around to indicting Don Blankenship:

Don Blankenship, the longtime chief executive of Massey Energy, was indicted today on charges that he violated federal mine safety laws at the company’s Upper Big Branch Mine prior to an April 2010 explosion that killed 29 miners.

U.S. Attorney Booth Goodwin this afternoon informed representatives of the families of the Upper Big Branch Mine Disaster victims that a four-count indictment had been handed up by a federal grand jury charging Blankenship.

The indictment alleges that Blankenship conspired to cause routine, willful violations of mandatory federal mine safety and health standards at Upper Big Branch during a period from Jan. 1, 2008, to April 9, 2010, according to a notice Goodwin’s office sent to the families.

The notice also said that the indictment alleges Blankenship was part of a conspiracy to cover up mine safety violations and hinder federal enforcement efforts by providing advance warning of government inspections. The indictment also alleges that, after the explosion, Blankenship made false statements to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission about Massey’s safety practices prior to the explosion, the notice to families says.

The indictment comes after a more than four-year investigation by Goodwin that began following the mine disaster on April 5, 2010, but expanded to examine a troubled safety record that critics have long argued put coal production and profits ahead of worker protections.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Steve Ruby has led an unprecedented government effort to link major safety lapses at Upper Big Branch and other Massey mines up the corporate ladder to Blankenship, who was known for keeping a firm grip on every aspect of Massey’s operations during nearly two decades at the company’s helm.

Blankenship has previously denied any wrongdoing, insisted that Massey put the safety of its miners first, and promoted his theory that the Upper Big Branch explosion was fueled by an uncontrollable flood of natural gas that inundated the Raleigh County mine.

“If they put me behind bars … it will be political,” Blankenship wrote in a May 2013 article posted on a blog he has used to defend his record and attack his critics.

Two government and two independent investigations, though, blamed the Upper Big Branch deaths on a pattern by Massey Energy of violating federal standards concerning mine ventilation and the control of highly explosive coal dust, both of which set the stage for a small methane ignition to turn into a huge coal-dust-fueled explosion.
Continue reading “Now convict the bastard” →

Help, help, I’m being repressed

~ susie

It is my deep religious conviction that state Sen. Donna Campbell is a witch, and must not be suffered to live. Amen!

Texas businesses would be allowed to fire LGBT employees and turn away LGBT customers under a new proposal issued Monday by state Sen. Donna Campbell (R).
Campbell’s proposal would strengthen existing protections in Texas for the “right to act or refuse to act in a manner motivated by a sincerely held religious belief,” a legal maneuver that critics have described as a “license to discriminate.” This year, many state legislatures have considered putting the religious rights of business owners over the civil rights of would-be customers. Similar proposals in Kansas, North Carolina, South Dakota, Arizona, and Oregon ultimately failed this year, while a number of other states have held that the law protects LGBT folks from discrimination even if that discrimination is based in scripture.
Mississippi signed a license to discriminate into law, and Kentucky lawmakers overrode the governor’s veto to put their own religious freedom law into effect. In Pennsylvania, lawmakers who are trying to extend non-discrimination protections to LGBT couples have so far been stymied.

These laws have come into vogue after numerous anti-LGBT small business owners have refused service to LGBT clients in Kentucky, Hawaii, Oregon, Vermont, New Mexico, Iowa, Colorado, and other states in recent years. Many of these disputes involve bakeries and other vendors who refuse to contract for services at same-sex weddings, but some businesses have refused to print Pride t-shirts or put rainbow frosting on an order of cookies.

Conservative political forces have leaped to these companies’ aid, arguing that their religious convictions about sexuality trump everyone else’s civil rights against discrimination. Those calls grew louder after this summer’s Supreme Court decision that a retailer called Hobby Lobby did not have to provide health insurance that covers birth control due to the company’s religious views, a ruling that reversed decades of precedent whereby legal protections tied to religious faith were limited to actions that did not impede other people’s rights.

Sen. Campbell’s new proposal in Texas is her second bite at the license-to-discriminate apple. Her first, in 2013, didn’t go very well. Critics pointed out that by amending the state constitution as she proposes, lawmakers would empower Westboro Baptist Church protesters to attend military funerals rather than protesting them from afar. One commentator applauded Campbell’s intentions but warned that the way her proposal was written might some day allow a person to claim a sincere religious belief in the right to an abortion, effectively legalizing abortion in Texas.

Very bad trade

~ susie ~ 1 Comment

Louisiana Runoff 2014

What’s left of the environment for Mary Landrieu?

Legislation to approve the Keystone XL pipeline cleared a procedural hurdle in the U.S. Senate on Wednesday, setting up a vote on the project next week.

Democratic Senator Mary Landrieu, who faces a runoff vote in Louisiana on Dec. 6, had pushed for vote on Thursday on the bill.

Her Republican opponent, U.S. Representative Bill Cassidy, pushed for a vote on a similar bill his chamber, as each competed to support TransCanada Corp’s pipeline that would send some 800,000 barrels per day of Canadian oil sand petroleum to refineries in Texas.

The non-competing janitor

~ susie ~ 3 Comments

Vibrations

First of all, I’m still shocked. When I was a recruiter, we knew judges routinely threw out non-competes for anyone who wasn’t a strategic employee — because a non-compete for a low-level employee was considered coercive and an improper restraint of employment. So I can’t believe that so many judges are now actually holding people to these. Given my druthers, I’d turn down a job from any place that made me sign one. But we don’t always have a choice, do we?

So I’ll share a little tip with you about what I’d do whenever I was given a non-compete. (Because I’m kind of anti-authoritarian that way!) I’d tell the HR person I misplaced the paperwork, and then I would hand it in a day later — unsigned. No one ever noticed. Via Danny Westneat at the Seattle Times:

To get the $15-an-hour job last spring, Almeida was required to sign a “restriction on competition” clause that said if he leaves, he can’t work for two years for any firm doing similar work in ServiceMaster’s “geographic area” — which the company’s lawyer told me means King, Snohomish, Island, Yakima and Kittitas counties.

ServiceMaster of Seattle, a franchise in a $3.4 billion national corporation, now is trying to force Almeida to forfeit his $18-an-hour job at Superior Cleaning of Woodinville.

The noncompete clause would mean Almeida also couldn’t work in any water- or fire-damage job, janitorial, office cleaning, window washing, floor or carpet cleaning or other job ServiceMaster does.

“ServiceMaster of Seattle hereby demands that you immediately cease all employ with Superior Cleaning,” reads a “notice of violation” letter the company’s law firm wrote to Almeida (who lives with his aunt in Lynnwood).

“Failure to do so will require (ServiceMaster) to initiate a legal action against you to obtain a court order enjoining you from working for one of (ServiceMaster’s) direct competitors.”

When I got the lawyer who wrote that on the phone, my question was admittedly not very nuanced: “Seriously? You’re going after a $15-an-hour worker over a noncompete clause?”

Brian Boice said employment contracts that restrict workers are common and the issue at this pay grade is training. The company spends “a lot of money and effort on training inexperienced workers, and we don’t want to end up training them for our competitors.” He accused Superior of chronic poaching of ServiceMaster’s workers, Almeida included.

Almeida says in his three months at ServiceMaster he did not get any training. He agrees he signed the noncompete clause, but says he thought it would apply to managers who are high enough to have client lists. Or to people who leave to start competing businesses.

“I’m a helper,” he says. “I come to work and get my orders and follow them. I figured I was way too far down the ladder to matter.”

Lately there is no rung too low. The New York Times reported last summer that a camp counselor and a hair stylist lost jobs due to noncompete clauses. Last month news hit that some Jimmy John’s sandwich outlets used noncompete contracts to stop sandwich makers from defecting to any business “selling submarine, hero-type, deli-style, pita and/or wrapped or rolled sandwiches and which is located within three miles of … any such Jimmy John’s Sandwich Shop.”

It’s hard to conjure what intellectual property or trade secrets are at stake in making the Turkey Tom. Or in wet-vaccing carpets. It’s one thing to make engineers or lawyers sign noncompetes. But cleaners?

“I think this is just taking advantage of blue-collar workers,” said Larry Weinberg, the CEO of Superior Cleaning, who currently employs Almeida. “It’s like we’re going back to the feudal societies of the 12th century, where the vassals are indentured to their corporate lords. We’re still in America, right?”

See no evil

~ susie ~ 2 Comments

Gaza conflict: Pulled from the rubble

I am as shocked as you are that Israel refuses to cooperate:

The Foreign Ministry announced Wednesday it would not cooperate with the UN inquiry of the summer Gaza conflict, and rejected an entry request issued by three members of the investigative committee seeking to gather evidence, leaving them stranded in Amman.

The decision not to cooperate with the probe was approved by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman, the Ynet news website reported.

The Foreign Ministry said the decision came about because of the UN Human Rights Council’s “obsessive hostility” toward Israel and “one-sided mandate.” It also cited anti-Israel statements made by inquiry head William Schabas as a factor in the move.

“While Hamas fired thousands of rockets toward Israel, the UN Human Rights Council decided it would determine in advance Israel’s ‘guilt’ and set up an investigative committee to serve as a rubber stamp to its known positions,” a ministry statement said.