Bill Clinton, who passed NAFTA during his reign, supports a free trade agreement with Colombia. The agreement would undercut environmental regulations, unions and workers’ rights to fill the pockets of multinational corporations.
Hillary Clinton says she would vote against such a deal and has recently employed a little “historical revision” to her initial stance on NAFTA, now claiming she has always had reservations about it. Will she fire her husband like she fired her top strategist Mark Penn for supporting the Colombian deal?
We’ll see if she sticks to her word. On Monday Bush sent the agreement to congress, which has 90 days to act on it.
And what about the violent oppression of trade unions in Colombia, Bush/Clinton? And NAFTA’s legacy of jobloss and economic hardship for U.S. workers and Mexican farmers?
Fortunately, Mike Michaud (D-Maine), co-founder of the House of Representatives Trade Working Group, says, “The Colombia FTA is dead on arrival.”
I heard this on CNN last night, but someone convinced me that the anchor must have just misspoken. Alas, though, it is true. Mike Gravel, presidential candidate from Alaska, has jumped the Democrat ship and landed in the Libertarian sinkhole.
“I’m joining the Libertarian Party because it is a party that combines a commitment to freedom and peace that can’t be found in the two major parties that control the government and politics of America. My libertarian views, as well as my strong stance against war, the military industrial complex and American imperialism, seem not to be tolerated by Democratic Party elites who are out of touch with the average American; elites that reject the empowerment of American citizens I offered to the Democratic Party at the beginning of this presidential campaign with the National Initiative for Democracy.”
Does Gravel not know that the libertarian party of the United States is the capitalist party? It wants to end all taxes, extend neoliberal trade and stop social programs (refer to Ron Paul). The party doesn’t support the war because it doesn’t support any government spending. (more…)
The future–meaning the past–of border control is being dug in Yuma, Arizona. Part of a greater Medieval revival in the US (torture, church & state, oligarchy), the city is borrowing from 14th century Europe in attempt to deter immigration through increased risk of death by drowning.
“The moats that I’ve seen circled the castle and allowed you to protect yourself, and that’s kind of what we’re looking at here,” Yuma county sheriff Ralph Ogden told the Associated Press.
The city is building a “security channel” along the border by replenishing a two-mile stretch of the Colorado river. The excavated soil would form two 15-foot high walls on both sides of the 400-foot wide area.
If you ever need a taxi in DC, you should call Union Cabs. It is a cooperative of cab drivers who were former union activists at the major taxi companies. So the company is owned by the workers.
“Alexandria’s taxi monopoly has been broken,” said Syed Hussain, a driver and president of the company. “We’re proud owners of our own company.”
Obama is “protective imitation” of Clinton’s “corporate democrat”
He did used to be for a single payer, universal health care plan, but he has since back away to a more conservative (in the international sense of the word) health care plan in response to health industry lobbyists.
Mike: “Nader looks like that character on sesame street who lives in the trashcan.” oscar:
Naomi Klein wrote a great article about the relationships among the housing crisis, class consciousness, and of course capitalism:
Remember the “ownership society,” fixture of major George W. Bush addresses for the first four years of his presidency? “We’re creating…an ownership society in this country, where more Americans than ever will be able to open up their door where they live and say, welcome to my house, welcome to my piece of property,” Bush said in October 2004. Washington think-tanker Grover Norquist predicted that the ownership society would be Bush’s greatest legacy, remembered “long after people can no longer pronounce or spell Fallujah.” Yet in Bush’s final State of the Union address, the once-ubiquitous phrase was conspicuously absent. And little wonder: rather than its proud father, Bush has turned out to be the ownership society’s undertaker.
…The idea was simple: if working-class people owned a small piece of the market–a home mortgage, a stock portfolio, a private pension–they would cease to identify as workers and start to see themselves as owners, with the same interests as their bosses. That meant they could vote for politicians promising to improve stock performance rather than job conditions. Class consciousness would be a relic.
Danny Glover is a big union supporter, especially of unite-here’s hotel workers rising campaign. Today he and two unite-here organizers were convicted of trespassing during a rally on Sept. 16, 2006 at the Ontario “Sheraton on the Falls” hotel.
Danny Glover at a unitehere rally in canada; the Sheraton on the Falls hotel.
About the South Carolina Primary: “It sure looks like Clinton and Edwards are splitting the white vote…”
Obviously, white people in SC can’t vote for a black person. Per Huckabee on the racist confederate flag: “South Carolina people know true conservatism when they see it.You don’t like people outside the state telling you how you ought to raise your kids, you don’t like people from outside the state telling you what to do with the flag. In fact, if somebody came down to Arkansas and told us what to do with our flag, we’d tell’em where to put the pole.” (more…)
The result: the unite-here local, the Culinary Workers Union Local 226, which represents 60,000 workers–far more than any other union– in Nevada is supporting Obama for the key primary.
And what does Obama turn around and do–he praises Reagan. (more…)
CNN: “The government wants to build 700 miles of fence along the Mexican border, including 370 miles of it by the end of this year. About 70 miles of fence is to be built in the Rio Grande Valley by year’s end, if the government gets its way.”
Unlike in Palestine where Israel just takes more Palestinian land to build the wall, the US wall is requiring its own folks (and assumably many of Mexico’s) living along the border to give up their homes. Understandably, many people do not want to lose their homes, and many, like Eloisa Tamez, are going to make a stand despite the court orders: “I am not backing down.”
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is pursuing more than 100 lawsuits to claim people’s homes in Texas, Arizona and California.
“It’s outrageous,” said Elizabeth Garcia of Brownsville, Texas. “They’re taking away from the people their basic rights.”
“The EPA’s plan appeared in the Federal Register Dec. 28, 2007 and seeks to exempt livestock farms from reporting non-emergency emissions of [A] ammonia, [B] hydrogen sulfide and other pollutants.” (Jan. 8 2008)
A. “Ammonia, a toxic form of nitrogen released in gas form during waste disposal, can be carried more than 300 miles through the air before being dumped back onto the ground or into the water, where it causes algal blooms and fish kills.”
B. “Large hog farms emit hydrogen sulfide, a gas that most often causes flu-like symptoms in humans, but at high concentrations can lead to brain damage. In 1998, the National Institute of Health reported that 19 people died as a result of hydrogen sulfide emissions from manure pits.”
Unfortunately, the problem is not that the FBI is underfunded. With a budget of $6.04 billion (FY2007), they can afford a few phone bills. [Sorry, the wars have no benefit despite their costs.]
But yet, of the 990 wiretapping bills in 5 FBI field offices, more than half were not paid on time. Many phone companies treated the government as if it were just a working class person–and cut their service off. But no company would allow regular folks to accrue $66,000 in unpaid bills.
And this wasn’t discovered until a Justice Department audit. I’m glad the government is too inept to actually infringe on our civil liberties as they would like. (more…)
WASHINGON — Alarmed at the increasingly populist tone of the 2008 political campaign, the president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is set to issue a fiery promise to spend millions of dollars to defeat candidates deemed to be anti-business.
“We plan to build a grass-roots business organization so strong that when it bites you in the butt, you bleed,” chamber President Tom Donohue said.
…
“I’m concerned about anti-corporate and populist rhetoric from candidates for the presidency, members of Congress and the media,” he said. “It suggests to us that we have to demonstrate who it is in this society that creates jobs, wealth and benefits — and who it is that eats them.”
total membership is 12.0%
women is 10.9%
men is 13.0%
represented is 13.1%
women is 12.2%
men is 14.0%
public sector union density is 36.5%
the local public sector is the greatest at 41.9%
the federal is lowest at 27.8%
private sector union density is7.8%
utilities industry is the greatest at 27.4%
food services and drinking places is the lowest at 1.3%, which even beats the 1.4% represented in the finance industry.
“If you look back, slavery created a caste of workers of color who were denied citizenship rights, whose human rights were abused and whose work put them beneath the floor established for free labor,” argues Maria Ontiveros, professor of law at the University of San Francisco. “To a great extent, that’s where the undocumented population is today.” Beyond the Labor Board
“I’d been working at Smithfield for three years when I fell from a ladder. They gave me medication for pain, and told me I had flat feet and that is why I had pain. I went to a private doctor who said I had a very serious problem with the bone, but the company said they’d fire me if I saw him again. They also said they’d fire me if I didn’t keep working every day. I am always in pain, but I have to support three children. Their father died and I have been working 11 years for them. I asked the trade union lawyer to fight this case, because what they are doing is not fair. At the clinic they said I was a troublemaker and they laughed at me. They said, “Fight all you want, you’ll never win!” Justice at Smithfield
The candidates:
Rudy Giuliani, 8.37
Hillary Clinton, 7.62
Michael Bloomberg, 7.25
John McCain, 7.12
Bill Richardson, 6.75
Fred Thompson, 6.5
Mitt Romney, 6.5
Mike Huckabee, 6
John Edwards, 5.87
Joseph Biden, 5.62
Christopher Dodd, 5.62
Barack Obama, 5 from Haaretz
We already know that Clinton and Richardson are the most right of the democrats, and we now learn that they’re also the best for Israel. Coincidence? (more…)
Probably based on his experiences during the strike of 1988, Letterman is not going to cross the writers’ picket lines again:
David Letterman stood on the set of “Late Night,” looked out at his studio audience, and experienced a version of the classic Actor’s Nightmare. “We have nothing to do,” the talk-show host said. “The writers aren’t here.” To fill the time, he got a shave on the air.
This is hilarious–published in volume The Social Cognitive Neuroscience of Corporate Thinking from the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences.
Design: Researchers asked couple dozen college students (for research credit) to pretend that they owned a small business and were interviewing potential employees. The participants were 19 ovulating women with an average age of 19years and 15 men with a mean age of 22years; all of the participants were heterosexual and righthanded. (more…)
I heard this on CNN last night, but someone convinced me that the anchor must have just misspoken. Alas, though, it is true. Mike Gravel, presidential candidate from Alaska, has jumped the Democrat ship and landed in the Libertarian sinkhole.
The future–meaning the past–of border control is being dug in 
