It is widely reported that the Republicans are looking for a face-saving way to back down from the standoff they created on the budget and the debt ceiling. According to these news accounts, this route could involve another stab at the “grand bargain,” a deal that includes some tax increases and cuts to Social Security and Medicare.
This prospect should inspire outrage beyond the fact that it would make the Republicans huge winners coming from a disastrous losing position. (Polls show that shutting down the government to keep people from getting health care is not a popular position.) That’s an issue for political junkies; the more important point is that millions of seniors who are already struggling would be asked to make further sacrifices for basically no reason whatsoever.
What is not in dispute right now is that most seniors are not doing very well. The median income for a person over age 65 is less than $20,000 a year.
» Read more about: Will Seniors Lose in a ‘Grand Bargain’? »
“Frankly, I’m surprised that American jobs are so controversial.”
These words, spoken by Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy (LAANE) senior researcher Linda Nguyen-Perez, hung in the air of a Chicago hotel conference room last week during the American Public Transportation Association (APTA) Annual Meeting.
Linda and I attended the conference on behalf of the new Jobs to Move America campaign, explaining our effort to transit agency officials, consultants and transportation equipment manufacturers from across the nation. The budding coalition behind this movement unites community, small business, labor, faith, small business, philanthropy, academic and environmental groups, including LAANE, all of whom want to maximize the 5.4 billion American taxpayer dollars that public transportation agencies spend every year, to improve transportation systems, create good American jobs and generate opportunities for such struggling unemployed American workers as veterans, single parents and residents of low-income neighborhoods.
» Read more about: Are American Manufacturers Afraid of American Jobs? »
Whether BART [Bay Area Rapid Transit] closes down this week will come down to one issue and one issue only: whether the BART Board of Directors shows leadership or continues to act to hold Bay Area transit riders hostage by using the same playbook a small minority of elected officials in Washington, D.C. have used to close down our federal government.
No one in the Bay Area—whether they ride BART or not—wants to see a BART strike. This is especially true of BART workers, who live in one of the most expensive regions in the world and do not receive a paycheck while they are on strike.
To demonstrate their commitment to reaching a deal before a cooling-off period expires tonight, BART workers have put a proposal on the table that is fair and affordable and incentivizes BART workers to keep the system one of the nation’s best.
» Read more about: BART Directors Must Act to Avert Midnight Strike »
Under the dark cloud of government shutdowns and other conservative-created mayhem shines a silver lining — the recent gains of California’s low-wage workers. Governor Jerry Brown has signed one law raising the state’s minimum wage and another that provides domestic housekeepers, maids and nannies with the right to get overtime pay. These were huge triumphs in a climate of constriction and budget cuts. Such policies will improve the lives of hundreds of thousands of workers, as well as their families and communities.
These legislative victories are only as powerful as the organizing behind them. It was the huge numbers and commitment of thousands of organized workers (unionized or not) raising their voices that made it impossible for lawmakers to ignore their needs.
The exciting part of activating this new swath of workers is that many have historically not hailed from communities associated with trade unionism. Many come from low-income and/or immigrant communities of color.
» Read more about: California Love: Low-Wage Worker Activism »
San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed made it official today – sort of. Speaking to a pension “restructuring” conference at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, Reed said he hoped to file papers “in a few days” to put a ballot measure before voters that would allow cities in California to gut the retirement plans of their public employees. But he acknowledged that he and a group of fellow activists weren’t sure whether to put the measure on the ballot for November 2014 or sometime in 2016. (If the pension group wants to beat an approaching deadline and keep 2014 open as an option, it has to file papers soon.)
The lack of urgency contrasted with Reed’s half-hour talk, during which he painted a picture of a California teetering on the brink of pension-fund disaster, in which public safety employees would be laid off, libraries closed and retirement benefits decimated.
“Time is of the essence,” Reed warned – claiming that the longer his proposed amendment to the state constitution is postponed,
“I would dispel the rumor that is going around that you hear on every newscast, that if we don’t raise the debt ceiling, we will default on our debt,” says Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK). “We won’t. We’ll continue to pay our interest.”
This is crazy talk. While the Treasury Department could prioritize interest payments after October 17 – the day the Treasury Department says it no longer has legal authority to pay the nation’s debts – and not pay Social Security and Medicare, this would buy a few days at most.
Meanwhile, interest rates will soar, stock prices will plummet, the global economy will begin spiraling downward, and millions of Americans wouldn’t receive their Social Security and Medicare.
So why are Republicans talking like this? Because they want to sound as if they’re willing to blow up the economy if they don’t get their way.
» Read more about: Debt Ceiling Talk from Congress’s Crazy Corner »
“Can Google Solve Death?” read the cover headline of a national news weekly. It cleverly enticed readers to read the story inside. The question also represents one of the major problems facing human beings. No, not death, but hubris.
Hubris was one of the themes of the great Greek tragedies in the fifth century before the Common Era. The Greek playwrights like Aeschylus, Euripides and Sophocles understood all too well the capacity of humans to extend themselves beyond their ability to limit the damage caused by their actions.
So great families disintegrated, monarchs fell and society itself came close to collapse – all because people in power could not stop themselves from reaching beyond their limitations as human beings. We do the same, but in new ways with unknown consequences.
Global climate change comes instantly to mind. Last spring, for the first time in human history,
Across the nation, private companies are looking to take over public services. A legislative battle in Sacramento over a bill to privatize state trial courts epitomizes the promises and pitfalls of privatization.
Assembly Bill 566 (Wieckowski, D-Fremont) would require that before contracting services out, courts must provide proof of cost savings, create employment standards, engage in a competitive bidding process and undergo regular financial and performance audits. The bill now sits on the governor’s desk for signature or veto, and the lobbying on both sides is intense.
As in most debates over outsourcing of public services, its opponents’ central claim is that privatizing essential courtroom services such as court reporting, processing cases, probate investigations and interpretive services, saves dollars.
Yet the track record on privatization of public services and assets is decidedly mixed. Public agencies that hire private companies without strong mechanisms of accountability, transparency, rigorous evaluations of contracting costs and standards have learned this the hard way.
» Read more about: Private Control of Public Services Requires Extra Care »
The caption under this front-page photo in Friday’s Los Angeles Times read: “Gov. Jerry Brown, center, is surrounded by cheering officials, from left, state Sen. Kevin de Leon, L.A City Councilman Gil Cedillo, Senate President Pro-Tem Darrell Steinberg and L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti.”
Missing from that list is the smiling woman right behind Brown. That’s Angelica Salas, executive director of Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights in Los Angeles (CHIRLA), a key leader of the immigrant rights movement in California and nationwide and a major force behind passage of the bill that Brown was signing. Salas is also missing from the news story that accompanied the photo. The article quoted politicians and law enforcement officials, but none of the activists whose years of work resulted in this new law as well as several other recent legislative victories, including a domestic workers bill of rights and an increase in the state minimum wage to $10 an hour.
The U.S. Supreme Court’s new term, which began yesterday, could spell a world of hurt for working Americans. People who believe this aren’t simply looking at worst-case scenarios — in which, say, the conservative majority sides on every point with plaintiffs represented by the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation. No, their view rests on the conservatives’ well-established penchant for producing rulings that go far beyond the original cases before the justices – rulings that make laws that didn’t previously exist, grant awards that weren’t sought and answer briefs that were never filed.
But equally as ominous as the handful of labor-related cases that will start pleadings in November is McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission, which began arguments today.
It seems like only yesterday that the high court, in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, pried opened a portal to a spending orgy by lifting limits on how much corporations and unions could contribute to election campaigns.
» Read more about: McCutcheon v. FEC: “Citizens United” on Steroids »