"Waging a Living"

I found out that tonight there is a documentary on PBS called "Waging a Living"

An excerpt from the synopsis:
"If you work hard, you get ahead. That's the American Dream in a nutshell — no matter what your race, color, creed or economic starting point, hard work will improve your life and increase your children's opportunities. Yet, this widely held dream is out of reach for an increasing number of working Americans.

Roger Weisberg's alarming and heart-wrenching new documentary, 'Waging a Living,' puts a human face on the growing economic squeeze that is forcing millions of workers into the ranks of the poor. Shot in the Northeast and California, the film profiles four very different Americans who work full-time but still can't make ends meet. Despite their hard work and determination, these four find themselves, as one of them observes, 'hustling backwards.'"

This looks like a very good, very important documentary that all Americans should see because as I've pointed out before, people are struggling in this economy. I urge everyone to watch this documentary!

Labor Unions on the defensive in upcoming NLRB "Kentucky River" rulings

As the NewStandard (a great independent, non profit newspaper) reports, 8 million workers could lose their union-protected collective-bargaining rights as a result of several impending National Labor Relations Board rulings in what is collectively known as the "Kentucky River" cases.

The NLRB, which is stacked with pro-business Bush appointees, could shift the definition of a "supervisor" in the workplace which, as a result of the anti-labor Taft-Hartley Act of 1947, would bar those with that designation from being a part of a union. Barring supervisors from unions has worked to splinter solidarity in the workplace against employers. Historically though the definition of a "supervisor" under US Labor Law has been defined as the power to hire or fire other employees. But employers are trying to change that and broaden the definition of a "supervisor" into someone who delegates responsibilities to other employees.

This is just part of a larger trend of employers in this country actively and systematically working to undermine workers' rights in tandem with weak labor laws. In 2000, Human Rights Watch published a critical report of the state of labor rights, especially the right to join and form a labor union:
"Many workers who try to form and join trade unions to bargain with their employers are spied on, harassed, pressured, threatened, suspended, fired, deported or otherwise victimized in reprisal for their exercise of the right to freedom of association."

Furthermore:
"Millions of workers are expressly barred from the law's protection of the right to organize. U.S. legal doctrine allowing employers to permanently replace workers who exercise the right to strike effectively nullifies the right."

These NLRB rulings, if they occur as expected will deprive even more workers in this country of their basic human right under the UN to take part in a labor union. Labor unions are the only institution in this country that actively fights for workers' rights. They provide workers with leverage against employers not only for better pay and benefits but also arbritary decisions such as firings. An EPI report comparing unionized and non-unionized workers in terms of salaries and benefits illustrate the importance of labor unions. It concludes that "unions reduce wage inequality because they raise wages more for low- and middle-wage workers than for higher-wage workers, more for blue-collar than for white-collar workers, and more for workers who do not have a college degree."

This comes at a time when real wages are on the decline in the US. Only those at the top of the income spectrum are receiving raises that are outpacing wages. This quote from the New York Times article sums it up best:
" wages and salaries now make up the lowest share of the nation’s gross domestic product since the government began recording the data in 1947, while corporate profits have climbed to their highest share since the 1960’s."

Its no surprise that this is happening at a time where trade unions power has been increasingly diminished. The article even mentions that but doesn't point out the forces in the federal government (the Bush administration) that are making things worse for trade unions like these "Kentucky Rivers" cases or, as the Human Rights Watch report points out, "Labor laws [that] have failed to keep pace with changes in the economy and new forms of employment relationships," and weak enforcement of current labor laws.

The Disgusting State of New Orleans a year after Hurrican Katrina

I found a blog entry through a live journal community of some of the horrible things that have happened in New Orleans since the disaster:
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Hurricane Katrina seems to have provided a perfect opportunity to privatize the entire city of New Orleans, starting with it's schools and housing

Schools
After Katrina, the Louisiana State government took over the New Orleans school district and fired 7,500 school employees including about 4,000 teachers. The rest were bus drivers, lunch workers, janitors, ect. According to Joe DeRose, Communications Director for the United Teachers of New Orleans:


"(These were) solid middle class employees, career professionals who had dedicated their careers to helping try to educate the children in one of the neediest cities in the country, a city with one of the highest poverty rates, as everybody saw in the days immediately following Katrina. They were treated with utter disrespect. There was no notification that they would be fired until one day in October, when the school board called a press conference, notified us about an hour before that they were going to have such a conference. Therefore, most people found out that they were being terminated on the 5:00 news. Those who didn't have TVs or weren't still living in the city found out in the newspaper the next morning or by phone calls from friends and relatives who were in touch with the media."


And now that the entire infrastructure of the school system has been anhilated, the privitization can begin. Just last week it was announced that $24 million of federal aid will be given for the development of private charter schools. None of this money is being given to public schools. Before the Hurricane there were 128 schools in New Orleans, now there are 25, and only four of them are public schools.


on a side note I thought it was interesting that Barbara Bush promised the Katrina victims that she would give to a charity to help the situation, but according to the Houston Chronicle

“Katrina funds earmarked to pay for Neil Bush’s software program. Former First Lady Barbara Bush donated an undisclosed amount of money to the Bush-Clinton Katrina fund with specific instructions that the money be spent with an educational software company owned by her son Neil. Since then, the Ignite learning program has been given to eight area schools that took in substantial numbers of Hurricane Katrina evacuees.”




Housing
In August 2005, the US Department of Housing and Urban Devlopment (HUD) reported they had 7,381 public apartments in New Orleans. Now HUD has announced it's plans to demolish the 5,000 remaining public housing units. HUD Secretary Alphonso Jackson said: "Any New Orleans voucher recipient or public housing resident will be welcomed home." But he didn't say how they would be welcomed; apparently with bulldozers and wrecking balls.

Much of the bulldozing comes through a federal program called Hope IV, a program that destroys low income housing in the name of creating "mixed income housing". It sounds good; like something everyone can benefit from, but such is not the case. According to Bill Quigley, law professor at Loyola University, and director of the Law Clinic and the Gillis Long Poverty Law Center at Loyola:


New Orleans has already experienced the tragic effects of HOPE VI. The St. Thomas Housing Development in the Irish Channel area of New Orleans was home to 1600 apartments of public housing. After St. Thomas was demolished under Hope VI, the area was called River Gardens. River Gardens is a mixed income community - home now to 60 low income families, some middle income apartments, a planned high income tower, and a tax-subsidized Wal-Mart! Our tax dollars at work – destroying not only low-income housing but neighborhood small businesses as well. Worse yet, after Katrina, the 60 low-income families in River Gardens were not even allowed back into their apartments. They were told their apartments were needed for employees of the housing authority. It took the filing of a federal complaint by the Greater New Orleans Fair Housing Center to get the families back into their apartments."


There has been some resistance. Last weekend there was a march in an upper-income area with the argument "If you want to mix, let's do mixed income. Let’s mix income in your community!" The group held a large banner in front of a $2 million house saying "If we're going to start mixed income, let's start here.”

I will end my rant with a quote from ten-term Republican Congressmember from Baton Rouge, Richard Baker.

“We finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans. We couldn't do it. But God did.”
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these developments really bothered me because instead of helping rebuilding New Orleans and helping those who need it the, the federal and state government is exploiting the city and pushing aside low-income people (those who suffered the most because the natural disaster).

Yet unfortunately, this isn't the end of the exploitation of New Orleans and the general gulf coast area. According to a recent report by CorpWatch:

"Disaster profiteers [are] mak[ing] millions while local companies and laborers in New Orleans and the rest of the Katrina-devastated Gulf Coast region are systematically getting the short end of the stick"because of no bid contracts to companies outside of the three most effected areas (Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama) and " 'contracting charge pyramids' where the companies doing the actual reconstruction work often get only a tiny (and insufficient) fraction of the taxpayer money awarded for projects and widespread non-payment of local companies and laborers, including what has been alleged to be the deliberate and systematic exploitation of immigrant workers, including undocumented individuals."

Local businesses get shunned and cheap labor is exploited. The Bush Administration at its best!

The Possible Future Democratic Congressional Majority

I found an interesting article on TomPaine.com written by Robert Reich, former secretary of Labor under Clinton. He talks about what the Democrats should avoid doing in Congress if they do succeed in becoming the majority party again following the November elections. The type of "partisan wrangling" that would bring about a host of Bush-bashing committee investigations in Congress. I agree it would back-fire on the Democrats as it did on the Republicans when they went after Clinton so incessantly.

It would not do good for the Democrats to just bash Bush if they took back Congress. Rather, as Reich writes, they should "use the two years instead to lay the groundwork for a new Democratic agenda...[in order to] put new ideas on the table... [and] frame the central issues boldly." This means taking Bush out of the equation and inserting real alternatives. I hope the Democrats can be competent enough to put forth such a coherent plan. Senator Biden's recent editorial in the Washington Post laying out an alternate plan for Iraq is an important step in the right direction for the Democrats. It is a coherent and well structured plan to come to grips with the increasing sectarian divide in Iraq.

But, as always, I do remain pessimistic about the Democratic Party. As this article from AlterNet attests, there are those inside the Democratic Party who too advance a corporate agenda akin to the Republican Party. These are Democratic consultants who switch between politicians and lobbying firms similar to that of the K Street Gang.

The report for which the article is based off of says this trend began under the Clinton Administration. It comes under the guise of "centrism" that Lieberman and Bill Clinton embraced along with the DLC; to promote narrow corporate interests over public ones. It is narrowing the gap between Republicans and Democrats into what the article called "the Beltway Party" of big money and big business.

Though I hope the Democratic Party does take the House since it will provide atleast a few degrees of change in Congress, these trends of seeping corporate interests are alarming. I think its important for people to understand this increasing corporate influence in the Democratic Party. If it continues, I think it may alienate many voters.

Bush and the Health Care Executive Order

As the Washington Post reports, Bush signed an executive order which "requires four federal agencies that oversee large health-care programs to gather information about the quality and price of care, and to share that information with one another and with program beneficiaries."

The article claims that "the initiative underscores Bush's belief that the nation's health-care system would be more efficient if consumers could shop for the best care at the best price, administration officials say."

Bush is quoted saying "The fact is, if you have excellent information about quality, about service and about price, people make good decisions"

Yet this philosophy isn't going to make health care affordable to the over 40 million American citizens who are uninsured. Furthermore, the the United States spends more on health care than other industrialized nations, and those countries provide health insurance to all their citizens. We end up paying more partly because our large number of uninsure citizens; $41 billion a year .

In the same article, Bush touts his health savings account "would go a long way to making consumers more interested in the cost of their health care." Yet a recent study published in "Health Affairs" rebukes that claim as one of the authors says:
“It’s hard to shop on price because the information currently available isn’t set up that way. You can know the cost of a doctor’s visit but if something is wrong and you must be treated, the costs for a course of future events is hard to assess ahead of time. It’s not like buying a car or a house.”

Furthermore, the study found that:
"HSAs and the high-deductible health-insurance plans they’re paired with can reduce the cost sharing for enrollees who spend the most and the least on healthcare, but increase it for the majority of people who fall in the middle."

Thus these health savings accounts aren't the "change agent" to reduce total medical costs in this country.

Pattern of Iraqi sectarian violence entering a "new phase"

According to an article on opendemocracy.net:

"The available evidence suggests that the war in Iraq has indeed recently entered a new phase, which will prove to be even bloodier than anything that the country has seen before. Over the past few months, guerrillas have been flowing into Baghdad from the north, west and south and have started engaging each other with a view to eliminating each other from the streets of the capital. The groups that are engaged in this struggle are working to eliminate their rivals altogether, one neighbourhood at a time."

Even scarier is the fact that Baghdad has "deliberately been transformed into a battlefield in which each party is attempting to ethnically cleanse the city of all its armed and civilian rivals."

The article goes on to discuss the evolution of the sectarian violence since the beginning of the US occupation in Iraq with the initial Sunni insurgency, to the rise of Shiite fundamentalist parties to power through parliamentary elections and the Shiite death squads that accompanied them, and the failures of the Iraqi political process to stem the sectarian violence.

Even worse is, as the article points out, is the "relative inability" of the American military to stem this current wave of violence in Iraq:
"There are simply too many fighters in the city, and their desire to control Baghdad is too great to subdue."


Just as Iraq is entering a "new phase" in sectarian violence, the US needs to enter in a new phase in its Iraq policy. We need to start thinking about an exit strategy rather then the "staying the course" mentality which obviously is leading down a path of chaos and destruction in Iraq. The presence of the American military clearly isn't a deterrent to the militias fighting in Iraq so setting a timetable for removing troops in Iraq wouldn't be, as many Republicans claim , playing into the hands of the terrorists. Rather there is growing resentment in Iraq over an "open-ended occupation." Most Iraq leaders have already asked the US to draw up a time table for military withdrawal. The sooner the US government comes to grips with this reality the better even though Bush says we will be in Iraq as long as he is president. I hope a change in Congress in November says otherwise along with the American people's ability to express their discontent through protests and demonstrations.

An article in "Time" further illustrates the difficulties in curbing violence in Iraq.

Welfare Reform and the "Shift in Policy and Perception"

When reading the NY Times article about the impact of welfare reform, its important to understand several things:

Yes "the number of people on welfare has plunged to 4.4 million, down 60 percent. Employment of single mothers is up. Child support collections have nearly doubled."

But as the article also states the booming economy in which welfare reform coincided with this which " created more jobs for single mothers surging into the work force." Thus as our economy has slowed down after 2001 "many of the most positive trends slowed" down as well.

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has a great report that highlight the weaknesses of TANF especially in a time when our economy is on the downturn. Employment rate is on the decline for single-mothers. At the same time, child poverty especially deep poverty (income below half the poverty line) increased by 774,000 while assistance from TANF declined. Thus the TANF has failed to serve "as a bulwark against deep poverty for many children."

The scariest development under TANF is that it is helping a smaller slice of eligible impoverished families. Participation has fallen from 80 percent in the early 90s (under the old welfare system) to 48 percent in 2002 under state eligibilitiy rules. This drop in participation accounts for 57 percent of the decline in welfare caseloads in the first decade of the TANF which in turn reflects "a decline in the extent to which TANF programs serve families that are poor enough to qualify, rather than to a reduction in the number of families who are poor enough to qualify for aid."
Thus the central aim of welfare-to-work in TANF isn't bringing people out of poverty rather stingier state requirements are preventing impoverished families from gaining help.

The Squeezing of the Middle Class

While our foreign policy suffers in Iraq and Lebanon, prosperity at home in the US is on the decline. An article from Newsweek begins with this staggering statement:

"For the first time ever recorded, Americans owe more money than they make. Household debt levels have now surpassed household income by more than eight percent, reaching 108.4 percent in 2005, according to a May 2006 study by the Center for American Progress. Consumer debt is now at a record $2.17 trillion, reports the Federal Reserve Board and consumers cashed out a whopping $431 billion in home equity last year. "

This is because "wages have been stagnant and they're losing the battle to keep up with the cost of living" as "prices have risen in the face of a very weak labor market."

Thus the good shape that our economy is deceptive since "it's really a corporate decision where the money is going, and right now it's really going more toward corporations and CEO pay than toward increasing wages and benefits."

Other corporations, as an article in Slate reports, including high-end places like Starbucks, Whole Foods, and William-Sonoma are feeling the squeeze since even well-off consumers are "reining in spending."

At the same time, a "nationwide debt collection industry... has exploded in size and profits." The Boston Globe profiled this industry in a 4 part article series illustrating its unscrupulous, predatory practices that exacerbate those in debt along with a system (especially in Massachussetts) that is stacked up against those in debt:
"the Federal Trade Commission, which is charged with enforcing a federal law that regulates the behavior of debt collectors, has done little in the face of an explosion of consumer outrage. From 1998 to 2005, the number of consumer complaints about debt collectors soared tenfold, from 6,678 to 66,627. Yet, in the last six years, the FTC has taken enforcement action against just 10 companies."

While "this year, an estimated 20 million Americans are three months or more past due on credit card accounts alone."

This looks like a sure fire path towards recession

Those reckless Bush tax-cut haven't done anything for middle-class Americans, instead The Republican- dominated Congress made it more difficult for individuals to declare bankruptcy from lenders with the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005

This country really does need a new direction in Congress because the majority of people are suffering under the status quo.

Shiites push partition of Iraq

The LA Times reports a scary development in Iraq:
"Leaders of Iraq's powerful Shiite Muslim political bloc have begun aggressively promoting a radical plan to partition the country as a way of separating the warring sects. Some Iraqis are even talking about dividing the capital, with the Tigris River as a kind of Berlin Wall."

I've thought that the country would be better off partitioned along secretarian line since it was arbritrarily put together by western Europeans powers but the disproportional placement of valuable resources in the north and the south like oil and gas would leave the Sunni central area at a severe disadvantage.

I think it just illustrates the growing civil war in Iraq. If things aren't settled soon, I think Shiites will start to demand partition with military force: "rival Shiite militias with ties to political parties in government appear to be responsible for as much of Iraq's violence as Sunni insurgents are, and have been known to turn their guns on one another."

At this point, I think we can start withdrawing troops out of Iraq. I don't think that our high-level of military presence in Iraq is really having an impact where it matters and where the violence is at its worst- Baghdad. The best way we can have an impact in Iraq at this point is diplomatically rather than militarily. The US military can't settle the political and secretarian issues that trouble Iraq. I just hope Congress doesn't drag its heels on this issue and the victory of the anti-war Democratic Senate candidate Ned Lamont over Joe Lieberman yesterday is the beginning of a change in our foreign policy in Iraq. The public has increasingly turned on the War in Iraq as a recent poll shows that 60% of Americans are opposed to it. Furthermore "a majority of poll respondents said they would support the withdrawal of at least some U.S. troops by the end of the year." I hope Congress will be respondent to this change in public opinion and start withdrawing our troops.

There already are some signs of this. Recently, House and Senate Democratic leaders came together to sign a letter calling for Bush to begin withdrawing troops. This is a big step for Democrats who are constantly disconjointed when it comes to these issues. As Robert Dreyfuss writes:
"the Democratic leadership has drawn a line in the sand. On one side are the Republicans, arguing: Stay the course. On the other side, there are the Democrats, saying: Get out. That is a difference that even the most obtuse voter can get a handle on. It sets the stage for a bitter, take-no-prisoners battle over Iraq over the next three months. It is going to get ugly."

This is a step in the right direction for the Democratic Party. It needs , as ironically former Senator Barry Goldwater said, to "offer a choice, not an echo" for America to win back this country. Iraq is a good jumping point for that path.

FAIR gives historical context for the Israeli-Lebanon Conflict

I found this interesting article on FAIR's (fairness and accuracy in reporting) website which gives a better context for this conflict between Israel and Hezbollah. It illustrates how Israel wasn't completely innocent leading up to this conflict. One of the most interesting parts is this:

"A major incident fueling the latest cycle of violence was a May 26, 2006 car bombing in Sidon, Lebanon, that killed a senior official of Islamic Jihad, a Palestinian group allied with Hezbollah. Lebanon later arrested a suspect, Mahmoud Rafeh, whom Lebanese authorities claimed had confessed to carrying out the assassination on behalf of Mossad (London Times, 6/17/06)." So Israel did in an indirect manner provoke Hezbollah. As a result of this event "on May 28, Lebanese militants in Hezbollah-controlled territory fired Katyusha rockets at a military vehicle and a military base inside Israel. Israel responded with airstrikes against Palestinian camps deep inside Lebanon, which in turn were met by Hezbollah rocket and mortar attacks on more Israeli military bases, which prompted further Israeli airstrikes and "a steady artillery barrage at suspected Hezbollah positions" (New York Times, 5/29/06).

Yet unfortunately, these events between Israel and Lebanon which were obviously written about in the media, were not a part of the discussion a when Hezbollah attacked Israeli soldiers. The current conflict has been "portrayed in U.S. media as beginning with an attack out of the blue by Hezbollah."

Not only that but " 'Of all of Israel’s wars since 1948, this was the one for which Israel was most prepared,' Gerald Steinberg, a political science professor at Israel's Bar-Ilan University, told the San Francisco Chronicle (7/21/05). 'By 2004, the military campaign scheduled to last about three weeks that we’re seeing now had already been blocked out and, in the last year or two, it’s been simulated and rehearsed across the board.' " Thus the Hezbollah attack was just an excuse for Israel to go into Lebanon.

I've always felt that many times events portrayed in the media lack that important context in which to understand them. This time it is detrimental to the American public and its understanding of the current situation in the Middle East.

States struggling under Welfare Changes

This article in the Washington Post, is just another example of this Congress screwing over those in poverty. This Republican-dominated Congress and administration is again passing the buck to states and showing their brand of neglected federalism:

"By Oct. 1, state and local welfare offices must figure out how to steer hundreds of thousands of low-income adults into jobs or longer work hours. They also must adjust to limits on the length of time people on welfare can devote to trying to shed drug addictions, recover from mental illnesses or get an education" because of "new rules, written by Congress and the Bush administration [that] require states to focus intensely on making more poor people work, while discouraging other activities that might help untangle their lives."

Republicans look at those in poverty in such a narrow manner by thinking that the only thing they can do is get crappy low-wage jobs. These new regulations that they set in phase out other ways that those living in poverty can improve their lives. Furthermore, you can't force people to get jobs when they are unable to. According to the EPI, "a large number of TANF [the US Welfare system] recipients experience 'barriers to employment'—circumstances that make it more difficult (or impossible) to find and maintain a job" including "physical or mental health problems, a low level of skills, domestic violence, limited English proficiency, lack of reliable transportation, unaffordable child care, and inadequate housing." Thus poverty doesn't just entail whether you are working or not, it encompasses a variety of aspects that make an individual more economically vulnerable to poverty. These "barriers to employment" can be improved by providing "work supports in order to secure and maintain jobs that pay an adequate wage. For example, women who receive child care subsidies are twice as likely to remain employed after two years than those who do not. And those who receive employer-provided health insurance are 2.6 times more likely to remain employed after two years."

Furthermore, I think its hypocritical of these Republicans who preach the conservative message of "states rights" and less federal mandates to use the federal government including the Department of Health and Human Services which "issued [in late June] strict new rules defining what counts as work -- and who must be counted" and the Republican-controlled Congress which in a recent bill signed into law "compel states to find jobs for fully half their adult clients, and they increase the required work hours from 20 hours per week to 30."

If you are interested in poverty issues, I read over the summer a great book about poverty in America called One Nation, Underprivileged: Why American Poverty Affects Us All by Professor Mark Robert Rank. It will truly change your perspective of how poverty works in America and why we need to address the issue in this country. Some of the most startling stats from the author's research is that 3/4 of all Americans between the ages of 20 and 75 will spend a year of their lives in poverty and 2/3 willl use a welfare program such as food stamps.

Pro-Business US Labor Dept Nominee

I don't get how this guy, Paul DeCamp, whose a nominee for wage and hour administrator in the Labor Dept, can say he is "a committed supporter of laws that protect workers from unfair labor practices" when he even admits he's never even defended a worker in a lawsuit against an employer. The Labor Department is supposed to protect America's Labor force and he hasn't even done that.

Under his watch at the Labor Department "large numbers of temporary and immigrant workers were victimized by wage theft and other illegal practices -- in particular during the Gulf Coast cleanup after Hurricane Katrina."

This guy is not fit to work at the Labor Department. Not only has he never defended a worker in court, he's defended, Wal-mart whose range of labor abuses are numerous including that of child labor laws, against 1.6 million women alleging sexual harassment.

The AFL-CIO blog has more about this guy.

I wish the Washington Post article would've written more about this guy's anti-labor credentials.

The Bush administration has done alot to curb labor and its rights. The Department of Labor even gave Wal-Mart a sweet-heart deal when it broke child labor laws.

Coke and Pepsi criticized in India and the Killer Coke campaign

Coca-Cola along with Pepsi came under attack with a recent report by an Indian NGO that claims that the pesticide level in both Coke and Pepsi products in India is on the rise.

"samples from 12 states showed that Pepsi products contained 30 times more pesticides than found in 2003" along with "Coke samples [that] had 25 times the amount of pesticides found three years ago."

Coca-Cola has become increasingly underfire for its ethical standards around the world.

A grassroots political campaign called Killer Coke is burgeoning internationally in order to hold Coca-Cola accountable for the profits it makes off of its Columbian Bottling Plants that contract paramillitary units to target and assasinate trade union leaders of SINALTRAINAL (National Union of Food Industry Workers) along with the environmental damage it wreaks in India. College students across the US and in Canada, the UK, and Ireland are getting involved by calling for divestment of Coke products on campus. Over 20 schools have removed Coke products from their campus including schools like NYU, Oberlin College, and Oxford University and 151 schools are involved in the Killer Coke campaign. If you are interested in bringing this campaign to your own college campus, I urge you to do so. United Students Against Sweatshops wrote a a manual to get you started. Labor unions in the US and Europe have also picked up the cause against Coke.

My own school, the University of Michigan, had temporarily suspended its contract with Coke as a result of the Killer Coke campaign but U of M Chief Financial Officer Tim Slottow decided on his own to re-new the contract without even discussing it with the students. This has been a source of anger among student activists on campus including myself.

Abortion attacked in Mississippi

Anti-abortion extremists are rallying against the last abortion clinic in Mississippi in order to get it shut down in . Ironically, one of the people among them is "Roe" (Norma McCorvey) from the landmark Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade "who since 1995 has been an evangelical antiabortion activist."

"A decade ago, there were six clinics in Mississippi, but the combination of constant harassment and onerous state regulations led one after another to shut down; since 2004, Jackson Women's Health Organization has been alone."

This trend in Mississippi, "the state leads the nation in antiabortion legislation," is unfortunately a trend that is growing on a national level since "the number of abortion providers dropped 11 percent between 1996 and 2000, and almost 90 percent of U.S. counties lack abortion services. At the national level, Republicans are working to strengthen these restrictions; last week, the Senate passed a bill making it a crime to take a minor across state lines to evade parental consent laws."

These state policies of lacking adequate abortion clinics, easy access to birth control, and proper sex education in schools has led to some scary statistics in Mississippi: "Mississippi has the third-highest teen pregnancy rate in the country and the highest teenage birth rate. It is tied with Louisiana for America's worst infant morality rate. According to the National Center for Children in Poverty, more than half of the state's children under 6 years old live in destitution."

Thus these blind social conservative state policies in terms of women's reproductive rights and sex educations have created some horrible outcomes. This should be an example of what we need to avoid on the federal level or face dire consequences.

We need to work this abortion issue out through legislation on a federal level. There certainly is enough support for it. " Polls find that two-thirds of Americans say abortion should be legal during the first trimester." Furthermore, a report written by the Alan Guttmacher Institute, an organization whose "reports are considered accurate across the political spectrum" stated that "almost 90 percent of abortions are performed in the first trimester -- during the first 12 weeks after the first day of the woman's last menstrual period -- with most performed before nine weeks." If we don't work it out eventually on a federal level and continue this path towards less availability of abortions, impoverished people will suffer the most: "low-income women are overrepresented among those having the [abortion] procedure. Sixty percent of women who had abortions in 2000 had incomes of less than twice the poverty level" since they "have lower access to family planning services" such as contraception and counseling provided by health departments, independent clinics or Planned Parenthood."

Though abortion is always suppose to be a last option, we need to make sure that it becomes less needed. One option is a bill called the Putting Prevention First Act of 2004 bill which would "would expand 'access to preventive health care services and education programs that help reduce unintended pregnancy, reduce infection with sexually transmitted disease, and reduce the number of abortions' " has lingered in Congress. We need bills like these to pass which is why I really hope Democrats win back the House!

Environmental Disaster in Lebanon

The damage Israel continues to wreak on Lebanon through airstrikes has led to an environmental crisis . Israel bombed the Jiyyeh power station between July 13th and the 15th creating an oil slick that covers 50 miles of coast:

"Almost as much oil may have entered the water as during the 1989 Exxon Valdez tanker incident in Alaska...Initial reports indicated that 10,000 tonnes of heavy fuel oil had escaped from damaged tanks, but the eventual total could be 35,000 tonnes...spillage from the Exxon Valdez accident totalled just under 40,000 tonnes of crude oil."

"The slick could compromise livelihoods when the current conflict ends" due to the effects on fishing.

How is bombing a power plant that Lebanese civilians use even remotely related to Hezbollah if thats what Israel is suppose to be targeting there? This is truly a travesty that Israel needs to end NOW!

Neo-Con swoon over Bush's blind support of Israel

Well it looks like neo-cons are falling for their old sweetheart George Bush again. This cabal of warhawks that pushed this country into the war in Iraq have once again fallen for Bush. Yet at the same time:
" 'What we are seeing are precisely the same divisions as we saw over Iraq with the neo-conservatives rallying behind Mr Bush and almost everyone else feeling rising panic at the direction of American diplomacy,' said Francis Fukuyama, a former neo-conservative."

This is indicated by the fact that the "American public opinion is evenly divided on the merits of Israel's response to Hizbollah's raid. But almost two-thirds say that the US should play a neutral broker role between Israel and Lebanon, according to a recent USA Today/Gallup Poll."

America can't be a moderator for peace in the Middle East if we stand too close to one side, it just ruins our credibility. The article mentions an excerpt from a speech from Republican Senator Chuck Hagel which I think is very profound and true:
" 'The war against Hizbollah and Hamas will not be won on the battlefield.' " The US and Israel must engage these groups before resorting to military punishment. It will only make things worse. In the end, those who really get punished are innocent civilians which we have seen in both the Gaza Strip (where nearly half the citizens have gone without water and electricity when Israel bombed their main power station) and Lebanon (especially in the recent Qana incident). Thus, as I showed in an earlier post, these actions are isolating America and turning Arab opinion against Israel in its conflict against Lebanon.

Whats pathetic though is that again Democrats won't show the same spine to defy Bush in his foreign policy like Hagel is:
"Mr Bush is largely insulated from a political backlash by the muted stance of the opposition Democrats, who are nervous of being painted as weak on national security in the build-up to mid-term elections in November."
Which makes me continually pessimistic about the Democratic Party because they refuse to stand for anything in foreign policy that much different than the Republican Party.

The article illustrated Hillary Clinton as the classic example. She is an opportunist like her husband who is moving increasingly to the right by wooing the DLC for her eventual run as a presidential candidate. Hilary condemned the Iraqi Prime Minister with "tough talk" for condemning Israel and not Hezbollah in this conflict. al-Maliki would never condemn Hezbollah, a Shiite terrorist group, since his own party the Islamic Dawa Party is a shiite group.

OH YEA:

Our stance in this Lebanese-Israeli crisis is also hurting our position among the Shia majority in Iraq.

California and the Governator leading the way towards dealing with Global Warming in the US

The Bush administration's apathy towards taking action against global warming is forcing California, who had the "12th largest source of greenhouse gases in the world last year, bigger than most nations," to handle the problem on its own by working with the UK to create "a new trans-Atlantic market in carbon dioxide emissions."

If I was the president, I'd be extremely embarassed by such an event since no one from the Bush administration is even participating in this collaboration and that one of the people involved, the governator, is from his own political party. There were "about 25 chief executive officers of major corporations around the world" in attendance including Dupont and Goldman Sachs. Bush's environmental advisor, James Connaughton (the architect of the pro-industry "Clear Skies Initiative") couldn't be there because of a "scheduling conflict." With so many important figures attending this meeting, you would think that the Bush administration would have one representative there. Well it seems that the Bush administration just doesn't care about global warming. Which is pretty obvious.

Thinkprogress writes that "Barry Rabe, a University of Michigan professor and an expert on U.S. climate policy at the state level, said the administration’s failure to attend sends the wrong message. 'It suggests certainly in this instance the federal government is really conspicuous by its absence,' he said.'"

Global warming is a real threat with an international consensus among scientists of its causes. The Bush administration must get its priorities straight in terms of taking action against global warming!

The Israel-Lebanese conflict and the massacre at Qana

Check out Professor Juan Cole's (who teaches at my school) blog for some of the best insight and information about the current crisis in the Middle East. I get alot of Middle East news sources from his blog. I myself am disgusted with the Israeli military's actions in Lebanon to systematically destroy the country. Not only have they attacked infrastructure but they've bombed food factories, Lebanese army bases, and social service centers. As a Jew, I support Israel but I don't support this. It won't make Israel any safer nor will it destroy Hezbollah. Instead Israel has killed over 750 civilians (many of them children) and created a humanitarian crisis of 700,000 displaced people. Hezbollah, as Professor Juan Cole points out, can't be destroyed by force very easily. They are not the same as Al-Qaeda, rather they are a sub-nationalist group akin to Irish Catholics in Northern Ireland. Also, the claim that Israel claims that Hezbollah militants hide among civilians is completely false, and couldn't be further from the truth.

I hope that the massacre at Qana that occurred yesterday really is a turning point in this crisis as Rami G. Khouri, an editor at the Beirut-based "Daily Star" newspaper, writes. Israel needs to work more on diplomacy especially when these conflicts usually mean civilian casualities.

Furthermore, the US' do-nothing stance is making things worse for our image across the world. According to the a Washington Post article: "if the war [in Lebanon] drags on, as appears likely, it could leave the United States more isolated than at any time since the Iraq invasion three years ago and hindered in its foreign policy goals such as shutting down Iran's nuclear program and spreading democracy around the world." The Bush administration sees this crisis as fighting against Iran, who sponsors Hezbollah, but the article provides no evidence that Iran actually orchestrated Hezbollah's initial attack and kidnapping of Israeli soldiers.

Evangelical Christians Sick of Right Wingers Politicizing their Religion

Evangelical christians may not be a monolithic group of people after all. The guy they profile, Rev. Gregory A. Boyd, may not be someone who I agree with on particular social issues like gay rights or abortion but I do agree with his stance of not forcing his religious beliefs on others through the government.

There seems to be a debate among evangelicals in concerns of their ties with the Republican Party. One pastor, Brian D. McLaren sums up this sentiment of concern over the politicized evangelical movement in the New York Times Article:

“ More and more people are saying this has gone too far — the dominance of the evangelical identity by the religious right,” Mr. McLaren said. “You cannot say the word ‘Jesus’ in 2006 without having an awful lot of baggage going along with it. You can’t say the word ‘Christian,’ and you certainly can’t say the word ‘evangelical’ without it now raising connotations and a certain cringe factor in people.

“Because people think, ‘Oh no, what is going to come next is homosexual bashing, or pro-war rhetoric, or complaining about ‘activist judges.’ ”

I think this has many people on the left so disdained about the dominant strain of Christianity in this country. That they are nothing but ignorant bigots that try to force their religious beliefs on others. I am pretty disgusted at how Republicans constantly politicize religious beliefs. If they really believed in a "culture of life" we wouldn't have the death penalty, we would have a national health care system, we wouldn't be in Iraq, we wouldn't spend so much money on worthless military garbage like the missile defense system, and we would spend more money for those in this country suffering in debilitating poverty.

Another part of the article that I thought was very interesting was this:

"One woman asked: 'So why NOT us? If we contain the wisdom and grace and love and creativity of Jesus, why shouldn’t we be the ones involved in politics and setting laws?'

Mr. Boyd responded: 'I don’t think there’s a particular angle we have on society that others lack. All good, decent people want good and order and justice. Just don’t slap the label ‘Christian’ on it.' " Though I myself am a Jew, I know that this politicized evangelical christian movement has distorted what Christianity means which is what I think the reverend is trying to say. We can't make judgments about people's faith based on the predominant strain of that faith in our country.

Bush's Voting Rights Extension Hypocrisy

On July 27th, 2006 George W. Bush signed into law an extension of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, an important bill that came out of the civil rights movement, with a strong endorsement that it "broke the segregationist lock on the voting box." Furthermore, he asserted that "my administration will vigorously enforce the provisions of this law, and we will defend it in court."

Yet at the same time the Bush Administration has been gutting the DOJ's Civil Rights Division that enforces this law. According to a July 23 Boston Globe article, in the Fall of 2002, John Ashcroft changed the hiring system to be overseen by administration political appointees rather than career lawyers. Thus a majority of people are being hired for their ideological stances rather than their experience in civil rights. It shows in the recent hiring statistics: "42 percent of the lawyers hired since 2003, after the administration changed the rules to give political appointees more influence in the hiring process, have civil rights experience" as opposed to "two years before the change, 77 percent of those who were hired had civil rights background" in the Division's voting rights, employment litigation, and appellate sections. Furthermore, these hirings since 2003 have had strong conservative credentials including 11 lawyers who were members of the conservative Federalist Society, 7 from the Republican National Laywers Association, and 2 who even volunteered for Bush-Cheney campaigns. Also "several new hires worked for prominent conservatives" including Kenneth Starr (we all remember that dirt bag), former attorney general Edwin Meese, Trent Lott, and Judge Charles Pickering.

This shift in hiring procedures has reflected in the types of cases the Civil Rights Division has taken on. They are "bringing fewer voting rights and employment cases involving systematic discrimination against African-Americans and more alleging reverse discrimination against whites and religious discrimination against Christians."

Thus Bush's strong support for extending the Voting Rights Act of 1965 seems to be just a good PR ploy rather than actually having any weight. He has the power to undermine it when it comes to enforcing the law which is what his administration is doing. This is further illustrated in his administration's support of a 2005 Georgia law requiring that all voters there get photo identification cards (costing $20 if they don't have driver's licenses) which would discourage poorer, mostly minority people. Its important that people remain vigilant over such acts by the Bush administration.

The shifting nature of the Civil Rights Division is perfectly illustrated in this excerpt from a Boston Globe editorial about the debate in the CRD over the Georgia Voting Law:

"Five career officials reviewed the law. Four of them, appointed before the hiring changes, thought the Justice Department should reject it, a power granted under the Voting Rights Act. The one hired under the new rules said the law was fair. His superiors, also political appointees, agreed"

Fortunately, the Georgia law was struck down in Federal Court but it is scary what the Bush administration is doing to undermine the Civil Rights Division and the laws that are within its enforcement jurisdiction.