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Nurses Offer to Buy President's Shoes to March With Workers
Nurses Offer to Buy President's Shoes to March With Workers
by Rose Ann DeMoro, National Nurses United
Tuesday, March 1, 2011, www.CommonDreams.org
The past two weeks have been a "Where's Waldo" moment for President Obama.
He's been largely a bystander while tens of thousands of American workers, joined by students, and community allies, marched in Madison's snow and freezing temperatures, and slept on the floors of the capitol to defend their most fundamental right to freedom of assembly and a collective voice.
On Monday, the President told U.S. governors, "I don't think it does anybody any good when public employees are denigrated or vilified or their rights are infringed upon."
Pay Up, Corporate Tax Dodgers
Pay Up, Corporate Tax Dodgers
We're chumps unless we force Congress to stop tax haven abuse
Published on Monday, February 28, 2011 by www.OtherWords.org
by Chuck Collins
Instead of cutting state and federal budgets, the United States should crack down on the corporate tax dodgers thumbing their noses at us.
Across the nation, states are making deep cuts that will wreck the quality of life for everyone to close budget gaps that total more than $100 billion.
But there's a more sensible option. Overseas tax havens enable companies to pretend their profits are earned in other countries like the Cayman Islands. Simply making that ruse illegal would bring home an estimated $100 billion a year.
The next time you read a story about some politician bemoaning that "there's no money" and "we have to make cuts," just point to artful tax dodgers in our midst.
Banks Become Nursery Schools, Classrooms, Shelters, Youth Centers And Launderettes In Protest Over Public Service Cuts
Reclaiming the banks: activists turn British banks into creches, classrooms and launderettes in protest over public service cuts
February 26, 2011
By DAILY MAIL REPORTER
www.dailymail.co.uk
Activists stormed more than 40 banks across Britain in protest over executive bonuses and public service cuts - and turned them into a variety of ad hoc walk-in centres.
UK Uncut said demonstrators set up creches, laundries, school classrooms, libraries, homeless shelters, drama clubs, walk-in clinics, youth centres, job centres and leisure centres at branches of Royal Bank of Scotland, NatWest and Lloyds.
At 10am in Camden, north London, demonstrators invaded a NatWest and set up a creche [nursery school) where children played, practiced musical instruments while parents caught up.
"You Have More Money In Your Wallet Than Bank of America Pays In Taxes"
"You Have More Money In Your Wallet Than Bank of America Pays In Taxes"
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...and Boeing, Citigroup, General Electric, Exxon-Mobil, Wells Fargo and...
February 26, 2011
by Zaid Jilani
Today, hundreds of thousands of people comprising a Main Street Movement — a coalition of students, the retired, union workers, public employees, and other middle class Americans — are in the streets, demonstrating against brutal cuts to public services and crackdowns on organized labor being pushed by conservative politicians. These lawmakers that are attacking collective bargaining and cutting necessary services like college tuition aid and health benefits for public workers claim that they have no choice but than to take these actions because both state and federal governments are in debt.
What All Working Families Should Know, Just Say No More Cuts for Workers - by Rose Ann DeMoro of National Nurses United
What All Working Families Should Know
Just Say No: No More Cuts For Workers
----------------
By Rose Ann DeMoro
Executive Director, National Nurses United, AFL-CIO
www.nationalnursesunited.org
There should be two lasting lessons to emerge from the heroic labor-led protests in Wisconsin.
First, working people--with our many allies, students, seniors, women's organizations, and more--are inspired and ready to fight.
Second, we need to send a clear and unequivocal message to the right-wing politicians and those in the media suggesting further concessions from working people.
Mock Memo to Obama and Congress: It's the Corporate and Military Economy, Stupid!
Date: Saturday February 26, 2011
From: Margaret Flowers, Congressional Fellow, PNHP
Diane Wittner, Chesapeake Citizens
Kevin Zeese, Prosperity Agenda
To: President Obama and Congress
Re: Immediately Implement Four-Part Budget
President Obama and Congress, this memo reflects the needs of your employers: hundreds of millions of U.S. citizens, residents, tax paying Americans who are working hard and playing by the rules.
Your new budget proposals for our country are deadly. Instead, please implement this four-part solution immediately:
1. Make Corporate and Bank Tax Dodgers Pay Taxes Too
= over $1 trillion saved in ten years
http://www.usuncut.org/about
2. Re-Do Pentagon Budget and War Strategy: Implement Lawence Korb's Five Point Plan, along with that of the Sustainable Defense Task Force, and end Iraq and Afghanistan occupations
= over $1 trillion saved in less than ten years
Why Isn't Wall Street in Jail? Amy Goodman Interviews Rolling Stone's Matt Tabibi
From Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi: Why Isn't Wall Street in Jail?
By Amy Goodman, Democracy Now!
Posted on February 25, 2011
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/150056/
Nobody goes to jail,” "writes Matt Taibbi in his the new issue of Rolling Stone magazine. “This is the mantra of the financial-crisis era, one that saw virtually every major bank and financial company on Wall Street embroiled in obscene criminal scandals that impoverished millions and collectively destroyed hundreds of billions, in fact, trillions of dollars of the world’s wealth." Here is the complete interview from which we played an excerpt on our Feb. 22 show. Taibbi explains how the American people have been defrauded by Wall Street investors and how the financial crisis is connected to the situations in states such as Wisconsin and Ohio.
Attacks on Unions Barking Up the Wrong Money Tree
Published on Friday, February 25, 2011
Attacks on Unions Barking Up the Wrong Money Tree
by Michael Winship
"More cheese, less sleaze!"
That was the funniest group chant at Tuesday’s rally of several hundred union and other progressive activists outside the Manhattan headquarters of Fox News.
Several "cheeseheads" were in attendance, their noggins topped by the now familiar wedge-shaped, orange hatwear made popular by Green Bay Packer fans. On Tuesday they were out in the twilight chill expressing their opposition not to lactose intolerance but Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s intolerance of organized labor. (Unadorned by cheddar, I briefly spoke at the gathering as president of an AFL-CIO affiliated union, the Writers Guild of America, East.)
How Corporations Have Mastered the Art of Not Paying Their Fair Share of Taxes
If they paid taxes proportionate to the benefits they get from government, US citizens would finally get the tax break they so desperately seek.
February 21, 2011
by Richard D. Wolff
Nothing better shows corporate control over the government than Washington's basic response to the current economic crisis. First, we had "the rescue", then "the recovery". Trillions in public money flowed to the biggest US banks, insurance companies, etc. That "bailed" them out (is it just me or is there a suggestion of criminality in that phrase?), while we waited for benefits to "trickle down" to the rest of us.
Don't Cut Precious Programs, Make Corporate Tax Dodgers Pay Too - USuncut.org
Record-Breaking, Profit-Making Corporate Tax Dodgers Ought To Pay Taxes Too:
An Equitable Solution To Getting Back What's Gone Missing: Our $1 Trillion
---------------------------
US Uncut is a new movement inspired by UK Uncut, the anti-austerity movement that has swept the UK.
US Uncut is about taking action against unnecessary and unfair cuts to public services across the US. Washington’s proposed budget for the coming year sends a clear message: The wrath of budget cuts will fall upon the shoulders of hard-working Americans.
Obama seeks to trim $1.1 trillion from the budget in the next ten years by cutting or eliminating over 200 federal programs, many dedicated to social services and education. For instance, it cuts in half funding to subsidize heating for low-income Americans; limits an expansion of the Pell grant program for students; and decreases Environmental Protection Agency funding by over 12%.
Targeting U.S.Corporate Tax Dodgers - US Uncut's Call To Action, Saturday February 26
US Uncut
From the February 16th blog of www.usuncut.org:
(http://www.usuncut.org/blog/a-call-to-action)
The “progressive tea party” has been born. Inspired by the UK Uncut movement, the popular revolutions sweeping through North Africa, and articles in the Nation and Washington Post, activists in Mississippi, Chicago, New York, California, Maine, Oklahoma, North Carolina, Washington DC and elsewhere have started US Uncut to mobilize against corporate tax cheats who are costing America billions of dollars each year and forcing the government to propose deep cuts to vital services and pay freezes for hardworking families.
As reported by many major news outlets in 2008, the Government Accountability Office found that between 1998 and 2005 approximately two-thirds of all American corporations did not pay ANY income tax. Of the largest corporations, 25 percent did not pay any federal income tax despite generating over $1.1 trillion in revenue.
Turning Tax Dodger Bank Into Schools, Community Centers, Libraries, Forests - UK Uncut
UK Uncut: peacefully occupying, then turning tax dodger bank branches into schools, community centers, libraries, forests..."because it's society that's too big to fail, not a broken banking system."
Saturday, February 19, 2011
from The Guardian/UK:
-------------------------------
Barclays Branches Targeted in Protests Against Tax Avoidance
UK Uncut mounts direct action against 50 branches as Barclays admits it paid 1% corporation tax in 2009
by David Batty
More than 50 branches of Barclays bank across the UK have been targeted by activists protesting against tax avoidance.
The direct action by UK Uncut, taking place in more than 30 towns and cities including London, Liverpool, Manchester and Birmingham, came as Barclays was forced to admit it paid just £113m in UK corporation tax in 2009 – a year when it rang up a record £11.6bn of profits.
Go Wisconsin Workers and Students! "What's Disgusting? Union Busting!" Chant Wisconsin Crowds
From The Nation Magazine:
"What's Disgusting? Union Busting!" Chant Wisconsin Crowds That Swell to 30,000; Key GOP Legislators Waver
by John Nichols
"I have never been prouder of our movement than I am at this moment," shouted Wisconsin AFL-CIO President Phil Neuenfeldt, as he surveyed the crowds of union members and their supporters that surged around the state Capitol and into the streets of Madison Wednesday, literally closing the downtown as tens of thousands of Wisconsinites protested their Republican governor’s attempt to strip public employee unions of their collective bargaining rights.
Solidarity With Wisconsin Teachers and Public Workers!
From The Nation Magazine:
A 'Dictator' Governor in Wisconsin Sets Out to Cut Wages, Slash Benefits and Destroy Public Unions
by John Nichols
Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s proposal to strip public employees of most collective bargaining rights, cut pay and gut benefits without any negotiation the most radical assault yet by the current crop of Republican governors on the rights of workers has inspired outrage in a historically progressive and pro-labor state.
Chevron Ordered to Pay Ecuador $8.6B
From the Wall Street Journal via the Daily Beast...
Chevron Hit With Record Judgment
By BEN CASSELMAN, ISABEL ORDONEZ and ANGEL GONZALEZ
An Ecuadorian judge on Monday ordered Chevron Corp. to pay $8.6 billion to clean up oil pollution in the country's rain forest in what is believed to be the largest-ever judgment in an environmental case.
And if the U.S. oil giant doesn't publicly apologize in the next 15 days, the judge ordered the company to pay twice that amount.
Chevron shares rose today despite a court ruling in Ecuador ordering that oil giant to pay more than $8.6 billion in pollution damages. Jonathan Cheng has details and a brief wrap of the rest of today's market action.
The ruling brings to an end one chapter of a legal drama that has played out in courtrooms in Ecuador and the U.S. for nearly two decades.
Introducing The Progressive Strategy Handbook
From Truthout (www.truth-out.org)
Introducing the Progressive Strategy Handbook
Source URL: http://www.truth-out.org/introducing-progressive-strategy-handbook67700
by Joe Brewer
Sunday, 13 February 2011
Are you ready to build the progressive movement that America desperately needs? This is the moment you’ve been waiting for. We’ve finished writing the Progressive Strategy Handbook that you — the community — paid for last fall through a crowdfunding campaign.
So you want to be part of a real progressive movement? You’ve come to the right place.
We are tired of sitting idly by hoping that our elected officials will set a bold and visionary agenda for progressive change. We know that our political system is fundamentally broken and that swapping out one corporate-sponsored politician for another is only going to preserve, if not strengthen, the status quo.
My Parable’s New Ending (At Least In Egypt ;-)
Three Hundred Gold Coins and a Fistful of Figs
By Diane Wittner
Once upon a time in ancient Egypt, there lived a Pharaoh who had great wealth and power. He had many palaces, and was worshipped as a divinity up and down the Nile River delta. The Pharaoh had thousands upon thousands of slaves. He was known throughout the land to be a cruel and cunning ruler.
To those who somehow escaped enslavement, the Pharaoh offered land along the fertile Nile valley, fine homes, slaves of their own, and beautiful wives. Very quickly the Pharaoh had a loyal - or indifferent and therefore harmless - following of courtiers. After some years, the comfortable and unquestioning children of these courtiers were counted, too, as reliable supporters of the Pharaoh.
Kick Oil Out of the Arts: Crowd-Fund U.K. Campaign Against BP Arts Sponsorship
Here's an email from PLATFORMlondon.org, Liberate Tate and Art Not Oil:
Hi there friends and colleagues in the USA and Canada...
Please support PLATFORM's new crowd-funding initiative!
www.indiegogo.com/LicenceToSpill
So earlier this year, a British-based oil company completely screws up a fragile and beautiful coastline around the Gulf of Mexico, causes many deaths, horrendous environmental devastation, job losses... and yet this same company BP still thinks it can get away with cleaning up its image through sponsoring high-profile museums in Britain like Tate, National Portrait Gallery and Natural History Museum and many others? And now, just yesterday, BP announced it's going big into the nightmarish Tar Sands in Canada... (and let's not start on Shell...)
Rest In Peace, Ambrose Lane
Ambrose Lane Sr., anti-poverty activist and radio host, dies at 75
By Emma Brown
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
Ambrose I. Lane Sr., an anti-poverty activist who became a political and religious commentator as host of the talk show "We Ourselves" on Pacifica Radio's Washington station, WPFW, died Sept. 14 of complications from congestive heart failure at Johns Hopkins University Hospital in Baltimore. He was 75.
Mr. Lane, who had been a mainstay at left-wing WPFW (Channel 89.3) since 1978, used his platform as the host of "We Ourselves" to champion social justice and highlight issues related to poverty and race. He served as a member of the Pacifica National Board, which oversees a network of public radio stations around the country. He also served as Pacifica's interim executive director in 2005 and 2006.
New York Times Actually Announces A Mass Progressive Demonstration in DC! Better Late Than Never!
From The New York Times:
September 26, 2010
Liberal Groups Planning to Rally on National Mall
By STEVEN GREENHOUSE
Hoping to overshadow last month’s large rally led by Glenn Beck that drew many Tea Party advocates and other conservatives, a coalition of liberal groups plan to descend on Washington on Saturday to make the case that they, and not the ascendant right, speak for America’s embattled middle class.
Predicting a crowd of more than 100,000, some 300 liberal groups — including the N.A.A.C.P., the A.F.L.-C.I.O., the National Council of La Raza and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force — are sponsoring a march on Saturday in the hope of transforming the national conversation so it focuses less on the Tea Party. The groups sponsoring the rally, which is called “One Nation Working Together,” say they hope to supplant what they say is the Tea Party’s divisiveness with a message of unity to promote jobs, justice and education.
The Economy We Need! The Great Transition, The Great Revaluing, The Great Redistribution, The Great Reskilling...
From the New Economics Institute:
In its report "The Great Transition" our London partners the New Economics Foundation (neweconomics.org) sketch an outline of how to reach what E. F. Schumacher would have called an "economy of permanence."
The sections of the report include: The Great Revaluing, the Great Redistribution, the Great Rebalancing, the Great Localization, the Great Reskilling, the Great Economic Irrigation, and the Great Interdependence. We wi ll focus on each element separately in future eNewsletters.
"In the Great Revaluing, we make the case that building social and environmental value should be the central goal of policy-making. We also argue that this needs to be true for private as well as for public decision-making, with market prices reflecting real social and environmental
Overworked and Underpaid? Workers Pushed to Threshold, Wage Growth Declines
By Akito Yoshikane
As Labor Day approaches, many Americans are breathing a sigh of relief for the extra day off. On a day that celebrates unions and the eight-hour work day, many workers are feeling like their hard work isn’t exactly paying off the way it used to.
Even as productivity has continued to climb, wages have been either stagnant or declining. Household income for the average working family has continued to fall, but men, latinos and those without a college education have experienced an especially sharp deceleration of wage growth since the recession, according to a new briefing paper by the Economic Policy Institute.
Rein In The Corporations
Big business dominates politics and government, but the people have an opportunity to regain control
By Charlie Cooper
4:50 PM EDT, August 26, 2010
"The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic State itself." — FDR
The corporate stranglehold on media, elections and congressional bill-drafting has locked our economy into obsolete and unproductive channels. Corporate influence has even led the Supreme Court to rule this year that corporations are "persons" with "rights." The court's bizarre logic shows just how precarious our democracy and our economy have become.
