West Virginia Blue
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Wondering why you may have seen anti-union "educate the workers" commercials over the weekend?
Sen. Rockefeller is CHAIR of the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. What is he trading away for rural airport support?
Democrats and Republicans have been unable to pass a long-term reauthorization because Republicans insisted it include a provision that would change mediation rules such that workers who abstained from unionization votes would be counted as if they'd voted "no."
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The Communications Workers of America - which has led the push to pass a clean FAA reauthorization - will amplify their efforts Monday. But they're short on time. And if the bill passes unchanged, it threatens to widen a rift between labor and incumbent Democrats this election year.
"CWA and other opponents urge the U.S. Senate to delete the provisions of the proposed compromise legislation that would amend the Railway Labor Act and to instead move a clean version of the FAA legislation forward," CWA said in an official statement.
NPR radio was heralding the return of the conference committee just this morning, and the tortuous path over the last four years to FAA reauthorization. They highlighted the extra flights in and out of National Airport. This is very good for John McCain.
Shelley likes this kind of stuff. We don't have much time. You know what to do.
Those mythical little people just can't seem to get a break.
When it comes to hating Mitt Romney, its not because he's rich, which is what he believes, but how he became wealthy. Unlike other famous entrepreneurs, such as Walt Disney and Steve Jobs, Romney's greed is all too present in his politics. Bill Maher makes a good, rather funny, point in his money flaunting habits by comparing him to the money loving stars of hip-hop. Take a look.
The Alliance for American Manufacturing (AAM) came out today in support of legislation introduced by Congressman Nick J. Rahall, II (D-WV), the Ranking Member on the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, that would strengthen Buy America laws and would require Federal agencies to be more transparent in reporting where taxpayer dollars are being spent.
I for one was appalled to find out the steel for the replacement of earthquake damaged bridges in the San Francisco area was foreign. Nicky Ray and a lot of other people know it doesn't make any sense.
I collect a Social Security Check every month, and am truly glad to have the support of that very successful program. We all know that the Republican Party, the new Catfood Commission (The Super Congress), and all of the wing nut Republican Presidential candidates are for privatizing Social Security.
The ups and downs of the stock market the last few months should make Americans acutely aware that the market is no place to be when you are counting on funds being available for retirement. The Market has been down as much as 400 points today. The turmoil in Greece and Italy and the problems with the Euro are affecting us here in the US and will continue to cause severe problems for investors.
John Cole at Balloon-Juice.com has an excellent post on the subject of the Euro and the Stock Market today. The breakdown on the subject by Paul Krugman in particular should provide a wake up call.
HT Crooks and Liars... thanks to Democracy for America! Best motivational video I've seen that makes me want to get out and work hard for President Obama and Democrats in 2012.
"A direct assault on Internet users" is what the ACLU is calling it. Yesterday a U.S. House committee approved HR 1981, a broad new Internet snooping bill. They want to force Internet service providers to keep track of and retain their customers' information -- including your name, address, phone number, credit card numbers, bank account numbers, and temporarily-assigned IP addresses.
A few weeks ago Demand Progress sent out an action alert about S.978, or as it has become known: the 10 Strikes bill. Within days, hundreds of youtube users began to post their own videos in opposition to the bill. It was a veritable youtube mass-protest.
Demand Progress has recently posted a video to showcase these protests and help educate others on the ills of this bill.
Here in the United States we've always had a little bit of a problem reconciling the way we apply our ideologies at home and abroad. We have great expectations for foreign governments implementing the values we hold sacred in this nation, like democracy, self-determination and free speech. Unfortunately, our government sometimes feels less comfortable asserting these values domestically.
The most recent expression of this dialectic is in the US government's approach is in it's signing of a statement supporting a UN report asserting that access to the Internet is critical to individuals being able to enact their human rights. This occurs concurrently with a series of bills and industry regulations that would limit expression and free speech on the Internet domestically. The most important of these are:
1) SB 978, or the "10 Strikes" bill, which makes a minimal amount of unlicensed streaming a felony charge carrying a maximum of 5 years in prison.
2) SB 968, the PROTECT IP Act or PIPA, giving the government power to "seize" domestic sites and force search engines, ISPs, and other "information location tools" to block foreign "rogue sites" accused of copyright infringement.
3) A "3 Strikes" Policy not a law, but a dangerous industry agreement between ISPs and copyright holders to restrict the bandwidth and access of users who have been accused of infringement. The agreement would be based on 3 incidents of infringement.
Minneapolis, MN - Last Friday Demand Progress spoke out against the "10 Strikes" bill (S. 978) championed by Senator Amy Klobuchar. We called on the Senate to decelerate their efforts to pass this unfortunately written anti-piracy legislation. The 10 Strikes bill makes the streaming of unlicensed material a felony with a prison sentence of up to 5 years. In its current form only 10 streams of the content would be necessary to entail the maximum penalty.
The lobbyists for Big Content don't ever seem to let up, they're beginning to lose ground on the Internet Blacklist Bill (PROTECT IP) but already they're preparing their next move. This week a "Ten Strikes Bill", which would make streaming or embedding copyrighted content a felony offense, is set for a vote by the Senate.
This bill has been proposed by Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) just as she is set to speak at the Netroots Nation conference, in honor of her past support for Net Neutrality. Lets hope the conference-goers call out the Senator for her hypocritical positions on Internet freedom.
I'm flummoxed by the collective insanity gripping our nation. Now that the fumes of a Tea Party Express bus have filled the halls of Congress, all eyes are on an phantom deficit monster instead of the very real suffering of the unemployed.
Meanwhile, back in reality the evidence accumulates that the state of our economy is even worse that official statistics portray.
The Fed's Jeremy Nalewaik argues that a measure of GDP using income levels is a more reliable guide to the actual business cycle than the traditional measure of GDP using spending. If that's true, says Justin Wolfers, the recession started nearly five years ago and was much deeper than we think: GDP per capita dropped 7% and is still well below its pre-recession level.
Note: No data available for WV and 6 other states.
Close to 10% of homeowners with mortgages have more than 25% negative equity. This is trending down slowly - the decline is apparently mostly due to homes lost in foreclosure.
Count me as unimpressed with falls in the unemployment rate 100% of which are declines in labor force participation, and 0% of which are the result of increases in the employment-to-population ratio...
A sick economy constrained by demand works very differently from a normal one.... When demand is constraining an economy, there is little to be gained from increasing potential supply... if more people seek to borrow less or save more there is reduced demand, hence fewer jobs.... After bubbles burst there is no pent-up desire to invest. Instead there is a glut of capital... consumers discover they have less wealth than they expected, less collateral to borrow against and are under more pressure than they expected from their creditors. Pressure on private spending is enhanced by structural changes....
What, then, is to be done?... The central irony of financial crisis is that while it is caused by too much confidence, borrowing and lending, and spending, it is only resolved by increases in confidence, borrowing and lending, and spending. Unless and until this is done other policies, no matter how apparently appealing or effective in normal times, will be futile at best. The fiscal debate must accept that the greatest threat to our creditworthiness is a sustained period of slow growth. Discussions about medium-term austerity need to be coupled with a focus on near-term growth. Without the payroll tax cuts and unemployment insurance negotiated last autumn we might now be looking at the possibility of a double dip. Substantial withdrawal of fiscal stimulus at the end of 2011 would be premature. Stimulus should be continued and indeed expanded.... [It] is a false economy to defer infrastructure maintenance and replacement, and [not to] take advantage of a moment when 10-year interest rates are below 3 per cent and construction unemployment approaches 20 per cent to expand infrastructure investment. It is far too soon for financial policy to shift towards preventing future bubbles and possible inflation, and away from assuring adequate demand...
After all,
"[T]he greatest threat to our creditworthiness is a sustained period of slow growth. Discussions about medium-term austerity need to be coupled with a focus on near-term growth. Without the payroll tax cuts and unemployment insurance negotiated last autumn we might now be looking at the possibility of a double dip. Substantial withdrawal of fiscal stimulus at the end of 2011 would be premature. Stimulus should be continued and indeed expanded.."
We've been critical of Motion Picture Association of America for their support of the deeply flawed PROTECT IP ACT (PIPA), citing numerous possible malicious and inadvertent exploitations that the bill could be used for. We have been using this evidence to gain support for our petition to Congress against PIPA, and MPAA's response has been to restart to ad hominem attacks on our organization rather than the substance of our opposition.
So assuming the War Powers Resolution passes constitutional muster, the way for the Congress to get the American armed forces out of Libya is with a concurrent resolution, which is passed by both houses of Congress. That's important. The reason the War Powers Resolution calls for a concurrent resolution is precisely because it's considered and passed by the entire Congress, which is granted the power to declare war in the Constitution, not just with one house or the other, but the whole thing. Declarations of war, of course, are traditionally made using joint resolutions, which differ from concurrent resolutions in that they are signed by the president. But the War Powers Resolution is all about cutting the president out of the loop (which is why there are such serious constitutional questions about its validity), so naturally the preference was for a resolution passed by the entire Congress, but not dependent on the president's acquiescence.
Boehner's resolution is just a simple House resolution. It won't go to the Senate at all, and thus won't be expressing the voice of the Congress. In addition, there's the simple fact that Kucinich's resolution directs the president to remove U.S. forces from Libya, whereas Boehner's resolution merely demands a stack of reports and that certain documents be turned over to the House. In fact, Boehner's document reads much more like a House subpoena to the executive branch than any sort of direction to the president about what must happen regarding U.S. forces in Libya.
Come on Nick... why would you commit to the Republican Agenda on the issue of raising the debt ceiling by voting NAY on House Resolution 1954? The Bill itself was nothing more than a political ploy by House Republicans to force the hand of the administration and Democrats on issues such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid as the discussion goes forward.
You can see who the Democrats that voted NAY are by clicking here. Sadly Nick Rahall is one of those who voted to bring about the disaster that House Republicans are looking for when our country defaults on its debt.
Republicans refuse to lower defense spending, are unwilling to raise taxes on the wealthy, and to increase the upper limit on payroll taxes for Social Security and Medicare. I for one am really disappointed.
Call Rahall now to let him know how you feel... or use his web contact page to send an email by clicking here.
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