This week a DVD of The Abbott and Costello Show‘s 1953-54 season was released amid nostalgic fanfare. The old comedy team is mostly remembered today because of its immortal “Who’s on First” baseball routine – an almost Beckettian example of miscommunication that’s been enshrined in Cooperstown’s Hall of Fame. However, the two Jersey boys also enjoy an afterlife in conservative circles through a very similar sketch, “The Loafers Union,” in which straight man Bud Abbott proudly announces to sidekick Lou Costello that he has landed a “loafing” job at a bakery. From this spare description, fans of “Who’s on First” can pretty much guess the kind of linguistic linguine the two former Vaudevillians will make of this double entendre:
Abbott: I got a job at a bakery.
Costello: Good! What’re you doing there?
Abbott: Loafing.
Costello: Loafing?
Abbott: Loafing!
» Read more about: Abbott & Costello’s Vintage Union Bashing »
People who hate government get a lot of aid and comfort from America’s news media, which tend to give big business a party pass when it comes to incompetence and corruption. While any government agency – from Congress to your local school board – is fair game for attacks, business institutions usually come under an investigative spotlight only if the news story has already generated a lot of public heat.
For example, when the government released its report on Shell’s behavior in the Arctic, newspapers put it among the top news stories. Similarly, when the City of Los Angeles brought suits against a couple of the nation’s biggest banks for systematic lending abuses, this made the front section, although not the front page. Likewise, when an oil company paid $5.15 billion to clean up environmental contamination, it was big news.
For the not-so-big stories about corporate screw-ups,
What you are about to read is about the FCC and “net neutrality.” But not really.
As you probably know, the Federal Communications Commission is in the process of revising its rules and regulations for the Internet. It’s tried twice before and both times the telecommunications industry has (successfully) gone to court to get the rules tossed out.
One of the hottest topics is net neutrality – the idea that your Internet service provider has to treat equally whatever content is flowing through its tubes. This is important, because without net neutrality your ISP could strike separate deals with different content providers, allowing, say, Hulu to flow freely, but letting Netflix drip through at a slower pace. Or loading the Drudge Report quickly, but throttling Left Business Observer.
A secondary effect of ending net neutrality concerns what you pay to Time Warner (or AT&T or Verizon or Comcast) —
» Read more about: Net Loss: Why One FCC Commissioner Hates His Job »
The 1970s are often regarded as a time of false promise (the great broom of Watergate merely clearing the way for Ronald Reagan) or hideous excess (leisure suits, disco, Chrysler LeBarons). Sports writer Dan Epstein sees the Bicentennial decade differently, however. To the author of Big Hair and Plastic Grass, they were nothing less than the end of professional baseball’s innocence. Epstein puts his finger on one year in particular as the turning point for both America’s Pastime and America itself. His new book, Stars and Strikes: Baseball and America in the Bicentennial Summer of ’76, conjures a time and a place where greed, injustice and American piety collided.
Against the backdrop of a newly resurgent New York Yankees team and the juggernaut known as the Big Red Machine, Epstein examines how an increasingly militant baseball players union fought for free agency – a fight that would lead to far-reaching consequences for the game.
Inequality. You’re probably hearing this word everywhere, and rightly so. In the U.S. today, the top one percent own about 38 percent of the financial wealth in America. The bottom 60 percent own 2.3 percent. So what are some of the forces shrinking the middle class?
A new report by the National Employment Law Project (NELP) finds that outsourcing is one of the central factors driving down wages and working conditions in the post-recession economy. The practice allows public and private employers to evade labor laws, avoid payroll taxes, push costs onto workers and shirk their responsibility to provide basic benefits. It also leaves workers in an ambiguous legal status with no clear path to hold their employers accountable for abuses like stolen wages.
The report, “Who’s the Boss: Restoring Accountability for Labor Standards in Outsourced Work,” shows that outsourcing is a shell game for employers trying to avoid accountability,
After more than a month of unsuccessful attempts to reach Lionsgate Entertainment CEO Jon Feltheimer through letters and phone calls, it was time to pay him a visit. Rank-and-file musicians wanted to discuss Lionsgate’s practice of offshoring its musical scoring to distant countries – something that limits local musicians’ ability to earn a living and deprives our communities of tax revenue.
On Tuesday union members and supporters of the American Federation of Musicians’ Listen Up! campaign — including professional musicians, labor allies, faith and community leaders — gathered in Santa Monica’s Stewart Street Park for a rally. The spirited event included AFM Local 47’s executive board and a supportive crowd of musicians representing members from across our union. We were joined in song by our fellow AFM members and Grammy nominees Lisa Haley and the Zydakats. We heard moving speeches from Santa Monica City Councilmember Kevin McKeown and other friends,
» Read more about: Musicians Bring Campaign to Stop Offshore Scoring to Lionsgate »
With the absolute, final-final deadline for 2014 sign-ups now completely passed, and despite numerous speed bumps, implementation of the Affordable Care Act is well under way. From my view as a bedside nurse and advocate for patients and health care workers for more than 30 years, I see a chance to close some dangerous gaps in our country’s health care systems.
In the U.S. we like to think of ourselves as the best at everything. And it’s true that we have the finest health care—for those who can afford it. Unfortunately, for the average American our care is also the most expensive, with some of the poorest outcomes, in the industrialized world. Many Americans, pre-ACA, had no access to anything but emergency care, due to cost and/or pre-existing conditions. These are the biggest gaps ACA seeks to close.
My mother had her hip replaced in 2009. I’m thankful I was there,
» Read more about: An Opportunity to Close Health Care Gaps »
Twice a year Sacramento goes into a frenzy analyzing the state budget. First, in January, the Governor releases his proposed budget, then the “May Revise” appears as the Governor adjusts projections and heeds advice from Senators and Assembly members. The budget, however, is more than a long economic document. It becomes part of the Governor’s legacy, it’s a statement of his priorities, how he will want to be remembered and what he believes will be best for Californians.
Governor Jerry Brown is shaping a legacy based on fiscal responsibility. He wants to be remembered as the Governor who solved the debt crisis and bequeathed fiscal stability to California. Unlike his predecessor, Governor Brown has invested in education, by creating a solvent K-12 system and reinvesting, albeit modestly, in public higher education. However, he is missing some crucial elements that will undermine this success: namely, an investment in low-income families. The Governor forgot that it is working families who most need fiscal solvency.
» Read more about: Working Families Need a Better May Revise »
Sweeping changes underway in the nation’s health care delivery system that expose hundreds of thousands of patients to severe risk of harm are the focus of a major new national campaign by the nation’s largest organization of nurses announced today.
An unchecked proliferation of unproven medical technology and sharp erosion of care standards are rapidly spreading through the health care system, far outside the media spotlight but frighteningly apparent to nurses and patients, says National Nurses United.
In response, NNU has launched a major campaign featuring radio ads from coast to coast, video, social media, legislation, rallies, and a call to the public to act, with a simple theme – “when it matters most, insist on a registered nurse.” The ads were created by North Woods Advertising and produced by Fortaleza Films/Los Angeles. View the new videos and hear the radio ads at www.insistonanRN.org.
This week we continue our series about the shaping of California’s laws and policies by Corporate Democrats. In his second article, Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter Gary Cohn examines how a bill does not become a law when powerful business interests lobby against it.
Jim Araby was dead asleep when his cell phone rang at 6 a.m. last June. Until then the labor activist had been enjoying an idyllic family vacation in Guerneville, on Sonoma County’s Russian River. But the number appearing on his phone told him the call was from Sacramento, suggesting bad news. The voice he now heard confirmed it.
“Can you get here?” a union colleague asked. “We need you.”
Araby, a regional director of the United Food and Commercial Workers, listened in dismay as he learned that Assembly Bill 880, which more than half a dozen community groups and unions had supported,