This comes out of another post I make on another thread and a discussion on Thom Hartmann yesterday. I have always thought we needed a labor party. Let's face it, most Americans either work for someone else or want to work if they are unemployed, or are former retired workers and many are small business people. That puts most of us in the majority and regardless of how we think about other issues, this is the one thing we are united in. The demonstrations by labor in Wisconsin with participants ...

happening today. (Link) Global Warming Might Spur Earthquakes and Volcanoes Andrea ThompsonDate: 30 August 2007 Time: 04:57 AM ET Earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, tsunamis and landslides are some of the additional catastrophes that climate change and its rising sea levels and melting glaciers could bring, a geologist says. The impact of human-induced global warming on Earth's ice and oceans is already noticeable: Greenland's glaciers are melting at an increasing rate, and sea level rose by ...

I guess these are the new wedge issues to get the Republicans a platform. Not far behind will be immigration and the always popular pro-life debates. Please fellow DUers be very diligent in putting down all disinformation regarding these issues and alerting on those threads instead of letting them flame on. Social Security is not broke. It has a 2.6 trillion dollar surplus and is projected to be fully funded until 2034 with no reduction of benefits whatsoever. The funds have been invested in Tre...

They are up and down the coast from the bottom of California through the top of Washington. However, I am going to limit this post to the one I am most familiar with, El Diablo here in San Luis Obispo County. You can read about it on Wikipedia ((Link)) but my main emphasis is that it's built in a canyon right behind the beachfront to begin with. It's built to withstand a maximum 7.5 magnitude earthquake. (Image) We here in California live in the land of earthquake faults and the mother of the...

It seems like one extra letter and a slight turn of phrase has turned this health care reform into a whole different animal. Let's see...a public option would be a government run health program like Medicaid or Medicare or the VA that the consumer could opt to buy into if he weren't happy with his private insurance. That would make it public and an option. The public's option seems to be about John Shmoe Public having to go into the market place and try to choose which private health plan will s...

insurance industry would like you to believe. (Link) On a day in which Congress prepared to vote on the Obama administration's proposed $800 billion economic stimulus package, the nation's largest organization of registered nurses said expanding Medicare to cover all Americans would be one of the most effective economic recovery programs -- and could virtually end the nation's healthcare crisis overnight. In a briefing for some 50 key Congressional staffers, the California Nurses Association/...

I’m tired of people saying that elected government officials need to run things like a business. It’s a bad choice and every time we get one of these business wonks in office, things rapidly go down hill. I don’t care if it’s from the municipal level to the federal level. Business’s primary purpose is to deliver a profit to its owners or stock holders from the sale of goods and/or services. Government does none of those things. It’s purpose is to serve the people in the capacity of taking care o...

problems today. (Link) Posted on January 29, 2007 Single-Payer Health Care Advocates Bring Campaign to D.C. By Mark Gruenberg PAI Staff Writer 1/29/2007 PHILADELPHIA (PAI)—At Temple University Hospital in Philadelphia, a 60-year-old woman has been hospitalized for weeks suffering from heart failure. Patricia Eakin says she should not have been in the hospital in the first place. But the woman is there, at great expense to the hospital and—because she lacked health insurance—ultimately to t...

(Link) Are you racist? The test that claims to know By Lucy Wilkins BBC News Can a five-minute online test help tell whether you are racist or not? In the US, two million people have taken one and now a UK version is available. Racism is a reality encountered every day in Britain, but how many people actually consider themselves racist? It's difficult to be sure because people's true feelings are inevitably concealed by their politeness. So much so that those who harbour prejudice somet...

According to the Pew Hispanic Center, a good place to get stats about this issue, half of them enter legally through ports of entry. Since the illegal in "illegal immigrants" is about them crossing the border illegally, it seems to make the designation of "illegal immigrants" even more inaccurate. The PHC prefers to call them "unauthorized". Since this is a pdf file I can't copy and paste so you will have to read for yourselves. (Link) It makes stationing the National Guards at the state bord...

Things we don't know because our news has gone AWOL. With all the hateful talk about immigrants, I thought I would monitor the news on the Spanish cable channels I get. The big news is about the nationwide miner's strike in Mexico due to a mining accident. The strike by members of the National Union of Mining and Metallurgical Workers of Mexico (SNTMMRM) resulted from both labor union issues and political causes. The explosion and cave in at the Pasta de Conchos mine in San Juan de Las Sabinas,...

SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER Ring smuggling illegals from South Asia halted More than 50 Indians, Pakistanis smuggled Thursday, April 13, 2006 By PAUL SHUKOVSKY P-I REPORTER BLAINE -- U.S. and Canadian authorities Wednesday announced they have broken up a human-smuggling syndicate accused of moving more than 50 undocumented immigrants from India and Pakistan into the United States. The smugglers used Seattle as a way station, according to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Roya...

I wrote a paper on this in 2004 right before the presidential elections. Here are excerpts about the state of our national health care then. I think many of these stats have gotten worse. According to a study by the National Academy of Sciences 44 million Americans or 16% do not have health insurance and many more are underinsured. More ominously in another study it was found that 18,000 unnecessary deaths occur each year because of lack of health insurance. Out of 225 nations, according to t...

This is the medical plan or extension and improvement on Medicare that should be extended to all Americans. It will take a strong grass roots movement to accomplish this as the for profit health care industry fights this proposal with the ferocity of a jihad. Their operatives are everywhere spreading disinformation anytime something like this has a chance of being debated in Congress. I recommend that considering the illigitmate government in Washington these days that we try to do this more l...

Considering that many here seem to be focusing on the illegality of the undocumented workers, I went googling with the help of a legal eagle Duer to find out what legal obligations the employer has and what he would be fined for not complying with the law. Here it is: (Link) Second, the employment eligibility of each worker will have to be verified by the employer, using an INS-specified form, the I-9. Where the JTPA program serves as the employer, as is the case for many summer youth an...

Third of homeless in San Luis Obispo County are under 21 By Nathan Welton A third of San Luis Obispo County's 2,400 homeless people are under age 21, and more than a fifth aren't yet out of junior high school. Those are some preliminary results of a unique project conducted last fall in which dozens of volunteers counted people living in encampments, campers and shelters countywide. More data will surface next month, and the numbers are released as funding shortfalls for homeless services th...

of the United States.” So spoke historian, Anna Louise Strong then a "progressive" reporter for the union-owned Seattle daily, “The Union Record”, about the Seattle General Strike of 1919 in a pamphlet she wrote to document it shortly after it was over. The History Committee of The General Strike Committee originally published in March of 1919. A movement had started in the Seattle shipyards among the craft workers because of a discrepancy in wages that happened during World War I. The worker...

This is a short history of the Bush regime and the lies institutionalized by the right wing and President George W. Bush and his Vice President Dick Cheney since they took office. It’s all been said before, but it is time to put it all in one place. It’s time to speak the truth in blunt and simple terms. Bush/Cheney did not win the presidency and vice presidency of the United States of America in 2000. A legitimate recount was stopped by their operatives who broke the law and got the Supreme Cou...