Job Party

Ukraine: One ‘Regime Change’ Too Many?

March 1, 2014

Editor Comment:  Russia’s parliament has approved President Putin’s request for the use of force inside neighboring Ukraine, as the latest neocon-approved “regime change” spins out of control and threatens to inflict grave damage on international relations.

By Ray McGovern

Is “regime change” in Ukraine the bridge too far for the neoconservative “regime changers” of Official Washington and their sophomoric “responsibility-to-protect” (R2P) allies in the Obama administration? Have they dangerously over-reached by pushing the putsch that removed duly-elected Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych?

Russian President Vladimir Putin has given an unmistakable “yes” to those questions – in deeds, not words. His message is clear: “Back off our near-frontier!”

By Dave Lindorff

What’s wrong with the Obama administration’s proposal to change the way Social Security checks are adjusted for inflation from using the Consumer Price Index (CPI) to instead using something called a “chained” CPI?

Let’s start with the fundamental problem: Social Security is not a cause of the federal budget deficit, and will not be for years, even if nothing is done to raise more revenue for the program.

60min had a replay of an earlier report on corporate tax havens last night.

Which now raises even more questions especially related to this now infamous remark and backed up by many of like minded ideology:

"Corporations are people, my friend."

Followed quickly by this:

"Of course they are. Everything corporations earn ultimately goes to people."

Which people and where, are these corporate profits trickled down too?

While they renounce their corporate citizenship to dodge the corporate U.S. tax rates they stay on the trading boards of Wall Street as U.S. to be invested in.

With veterans' unemployment rising, President Barack Obama is scheduled on Friday in a visit Washington's Navy Yard to announce initiatives to prepare vets for civilian jobs.

Those boomers born during WWII and in the few years directly after may or may not remember their childhood years, I do. What your parents, coming out of the military, no higher education needed to fight our wars, or moms coming out of the factories, quickly taught the jobs needed to work in by those who for many reasons couldn't serve in the military. You grew up into that working world that had quickly grown a prosperous middle class, and with usually small but regular raises and improved benefits and safety you were prospering better then your parents.

I Demand a War Tax and call it that, it's been over a decade and counting of No Sacrifice by the Country as we demanded Sacrifice of our Soldiers and their Families, with multiple tours in two occupation theaters!

Those of us who were born during or in the years shortly after World War II grew into what our grand parents and parents with the help of our Government investments were building, joining in as we joined the workforce professions to build for our children, from the needed education professions to the skilled trades once professions.

By Dave Lindorff

In his latest speeches on the Middle East, President Obama, both at the State Department and at the G8 meeting in France, has pledged billions of dollars in economic aid to Middle Eastern countries, drawing a direct connection between the unrest and demonstrations that brought down the dictators in Tunisia and Egypt, and the joblessness and hopelessness felt by the young people in those two countries.

His adviser on international economics, David Lipton, has been more specific, saying that, “We believe that these two pillars go hand in hand. Without economic modernization, it will be hard for governments trying to democratize to show people that democracy delivers.”

Unemployment in Egypt among young men and women is about 30%. In Tunisia, it is over 40%. The White House claims that with figures like that, the future for democracy in those countries is tenuous.

Striking miners and their families being evicted from company houses

April 18 1912 - Members of the United Mine Workers of America on Paint Creek in Kanawha County, West Virginia, demanded wages equal to those of other area mines. The operators rejected the wage increase and miners walked off the job. Miners along nearby Cabin Creek, having previously lost their union, joined the Paint Creek strikers and demanded:
• the right to organize
• recognition of their constitutional rights to free speech and assembly
• an end to blacklisting union organizers
• alternatives to company stores
• an end to the practice of using mine guards
• prohibition of cribbing
• installation of scales at all mines for accurately weighing coal
• unions be allowed to hire their own checkweighmen to make sure the companies' checkweighmen were not cheating the miners.

My father was a hard working postal worker, then called a postal clerk who sorted the mail. Up till this strike he was making less take home than I started making working construction till I went into the service. He did have some benefits and a pension plan, I didn't. After the strike they started making a more comfortable wage as well as the postal service started automating, as they advanced they gave schooling in the newer technologies. He retired some years later and they lived comfortably on a decent pension for his hard work of many years, a pension he contributed to. Also around this time companies, turning into corporations, were axing older workers as they were approaching retirement age, this continued as the safety nets for dedicated hard working folks were marginalized. leaving them out of any and all pensions they had already contributed into and living off lower waged jobs then Social Security.

This is a live feed coming out of Madison:

Right now they are bouncing back and forth from the speaker at the station to show recordings from yesterday as well as some live feeds via cell phones as the rally goes on today.

Reason I'm posting this up, besides the obvious of some wanting to watch, is they announced that the 14 State Senators will be speaking at around twelve noon CST and they are hoping to bring live coverage of those speeches.

This feed comes from The UpTake.

This is in an e-mail from GRITtv:

Earlier today I posted up an article I found on one of my sites, this one related to the Green Economic growth going on mostly everywhere but here in the U.S., though here we are finally doing some things. I was going to leave it at that posting but low and behold I started streaming NPR and caught a related short interview with an author that wasn't directly related to Green but was about what we once had as an economy here in the States, which gives me the title.

A Chinese man works at a photovoltaic power plant built with Japanese help in Xining in northwest China's Qinghai province, 11 June 2008. The 300kw solar panel power plant is the first to be connected to the local power grid. | EPA/ANGHAI JIN

27 February 2011 - Investing 2% of global GDP a year, could lead to a green and sustainable future, one that will outshine predictions of GDP growth under the current economic model.

You may have heard that our center-right nation got enthusiastic, formed a grassroots movement called a tea party, and overwhelmingly voted in a more rightwing party, sending hordes of nasty socialists packing as a result of their overly progressive performance, meaning gridlock between the righteous Congress and the infidel president for the next two years. There are some problems with this story, beginning with the fact that it's completely false.

Let's get a little perspective. The Democrats have the White House, where almost all power sits now. The Democrats have the Senate, which they've chosen not to use for two years and can choose to use now if they toss out the filibuster rule. In fact they could do that this month and pass hundreds of bills that the House has passed this year that the Senate hasn't acted on. Gridlock is nothing new, it will just look different with Republicans writing the House bills that the Senate ignores.