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History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people.- Martin Luther King Jr.
 
 
Are you watching the GOP debates?  I almost hope one of them wins, just to hear "Hail to the Chief" played on calliope.--Roy Zimmerman, satirist and folk singer
 
 
I am glad we are keeping the rich on the top floors awake at night with our racket. They sure as hell keep the working class awake at night with their rackets.—Jesse LaGreca, activist and blogger, in "Occupy Wall Street Crashes Bloomberg Cocktail Party"

Prosecute the bankers, Curb the lobbyists, Overturn Citizens United, Tax the rich, Take Back the country.—Protest sign at Occupy Wall Street

Double standards and situational ethics are the way the hyperpartisan game is played.—John Avlon, The Daily Beast ("Tea Party For The Left?")

Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.—John F. Kennedy

Labor has to get back into the schools, churches, and communities. This is where we started, and this is where we will resurrect the labor movement!—Mark Case, APWU Local 277, Western North Carolina
 
 
When protecting the systems in a society becomes more important than the people the systems are designed to protect, that society is in great peril.--Dr. Wilmer J. Leon III, Truthout

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Compared to me, I guess I'd call Dr. Leon an optimist, based on the above quote (read his entire op ed here).

In my eyes, the warnings of grave peril passed long ago.  In my eyes, America extinguished the final remaining spark in its soul at 11:08 pm on Wednesday, September 21, 2011.  That's when the state of Georgia and the United States of America purposefully and knowingly executed an innocent man.

We are now officially a nation that knowingly puts innocent people to death at the same time we knowingly allow ghouls and War Criminals to walk free.  And you wonder why the people have lost faith in their institutions of government?

We are a nation that actually rewards War Criminals with book deals and punishes the acquitted poor by charging them for the costs of the failed prosecutions (and, in some cases, persecutions).  We are a nation which grants rights of personhood to corporations, while stripping rights of personhood from actual people.  A nation where a contract with a billionaire is sacrosanct, but a contract with a union is nothing more than toilet paper. 
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“Equal Justice Under The Law.”  That is a great goal.  But that goal has not been realized.—Arthur Joseph Goldberg

The specifics of the case of Troy Davis are pretty well known.  The prosecution decided upon their patsy and then fit the evidence to the crime.  Inconvenient ballistics reports were suppressed.  Witnesses coerced.  Not a single piece of physical evidence--not one--linked Troy Davis to the crime.  Of the 9 eye witnesses in the case, 7 have fully recanted their testimony.  The 8th is a man who many believe to be the actual killer.  The 9th could not physically have seen what he claims to have seen from the place everyone acknowledges he was.  And what, then, is left of the prosecution's case?  Reasonable doubt?  Hell, there's no longer even a reasonable allegation?  There is nothing.  We have just executed a man based on nothing.  Even members of the original jury have stated that they feel they were hoodwinked and even those who favor the death penalty generally have said that it's use in this case is a grave travesty and a miscarriage of justice.

The Supreme Court could not be bothered to do the right thing in this case.  Troy Davis was poor, afterall.  What does it matter if he lives or dies?  If he is innocent or guilty?  If justice is served or it is not?  "Don't disturb my dinner for matters of the worthless poor," I can practically hear those 9 fat fucks saying derisively to their clerks.  "Don't disturb me for anyone whose income is less than 7 figures."  If there is one "positive" to come from all of this, it is that we can be absolutely certain--beyond a reasonable doubt, to borrow a phrase--that the souls of every last member of the Supreme Court are so blackened and covered in the blood of the injustice they have wrought that they will, themselves, be judged by higher powers one day...and found wanting.
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This is class warfare. In America, the poor and the ignorant go to jail, while as the late Gil Scott-Heron said, "the rich go to San Clemente."--Dr. Wilmer J. Leon III, Truthout

What has become of America?  What is left of her promise to her citizens?  To the world?  

Lady Justice has been abducted and replaced by the Queen of Hearts--blindfold replaced by a cash register--screaming "Off with their heads" for any one who cannot afford the millionaire entry fee.

America has become a nation of the rich, by the rich and most especially for the rich, and the land of liberty and justice only for those who can afford it.



 
Labor Day 09/04/2011
 
The problem with unions today is that there aren't enough of them.--Martin Johns, 2011

If it weren't for unions, there would be no middle class.-- "Paul", web commenter on ABC News blog

America is being sold to the lowest bidders, and those whose jobs remain in this country are at the mercy of their employers.--Mary Shaw, writer and activist

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With Labor Day upon us, I'm sure the 5 or 6 people who happen by here each month expect a righteous rant on the subject.  But I don't have one for you.

This site is all about the quotes to me--keeping the collection alive and available, adding to it.  This front page is primarily a pressure valve--a place to let off some excess steam when such a release is required.

Labor Day is a day of reflection for me.  Labor Day is a day to remember that people died for fair wages and safe working conditions, that people died for the 8 hour work day.  It's a time to be thankful for what we have versus what we would have without unions.  

If you think for one second that your existence would be any different than that of the miners killed in Ludlow or the exploited immigrants in Lawrence, Massachusetts had it not been for unions, you're very much mistaken.  But don't take my word for it.  Now that our government is wholly owned by corporations--now that Republicans are rolling back worker protections such as the Child Labor laws and reneging on hard-earned pensions, now that Republicans are enacting laws forbidding collective bargaining itself, and, most importantly, now that Democrats are letting them and, in some cases, actively working with Republicans in this anti-worker crusade--you only need to stick around for a decade or so more and you'll live to experience it first hand.
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And if you doubt that unions are responsible for America's middle class and that only unions can save it, there is a simple graph that proves the point beyond refutation.

The red line represents union membership rates from 1967 to 2009, while the blue line represents the middle class share of the nation's wealth.  If you are making a living wage today, you can thank the unions, whether or not you're a member of one.  If you are unemployed and/or not making enough to get by, you can thank the Republicans.  It's true.  Trace any of America's systemic problems back and you'll find their origins in the administration of Ronald Reagan.  Of course that was before union bashing became bi-partisan fare.  Before a Democratic President helped define "shared sacrifice" as workers sacrificing and the wealthy sharing that loot.

So no righteous rant from me today.  Labor Day, for me, is a time of reflection.  And, besides, I see no hope for the bottom 98% of Americans in the current political system.  It appears things will have to get much much worse before they ever get better.  If a righteous rant from me were enough to change any of that, I'm sure I'd never be permitted to make one.
                                          _________

The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist.--Verbal (Kevin Spacey), in the film "The Usual Suspects" (1985)
                                          _________

Here's a fine piece by Judy Perry to help you reflect on the importance of Labor Day.

And here is a video of Woody Guthrie's "Ludlow Massacre".  Happy Labor Day.
 
 
Obama is a moderate conservative and if I were a liberal Democrat, I'd be pretty upset.--Bruce Bartlett, Domestic policy advisor to President Ronald Reagan and Treasury official under George H.W. Bush (7/27/11)
 
 
The list of horrors that people found intolerable when George Bush was in office, but are now blithely accepted because  “Sarah Palin would be worse,” grows longer every day.--Jane Hamsher, Firedoglake ("The Breaking Point")

I can’t recall a moment in my lifetime when government was so extremely out of step with the will of the American people. But it seems like the only fight to be had these days is to see who can screw the middle class the hardest.--Jane Hamsher, Firedoglake ("Up Is Down")

If "we" are broke, how come only some of us are suffering?--Van Jones
 
Obama Surrenders 06/30/2011
 
The only thing you'll get is what you're strong enough to get.--Saul Alinsky
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Cenk Uygur
To watch the news, yesterday, or read the papers today, you'd think President Obama laid the hammer down on Debt Ceiling negotiations.  On-line headlines ranged from the New York Times' "Obama: Republican Leaders Must Bend on Taxes" to HuffPo's "Obama to GOP: End Tax Breaks for Millionaires, Oil Companies", while Chris Matthews took to calling Obama "Give 'em hell Barry".  Their work done, the media then moved on to important stuff...like Lindsey Lohan's "tweets" and Mark Halperin's use of the "d" word.  (When you've finished compiling it, kindly submit to me the list of words we are no longer allowed to use; or, if its easier, the list of words we are still allowed to use.)

Yeah, President Obama put on a show yesterday.  What, apparently, only MSNBC's Cenk Uygur, myself, and the folks at Firedoglake bothered to examine was the substance behind the bluster.  And, behind the bluster lay nothing but surrender to the demands of Republican terrorists.  I was most reminded of the baseball manager who charges the umpire after a close call only to say--shouting and gesturing wildly--"I'm not here to argue the call, I just have to look like I'm arguing the call so my guys will think I'm behind them 100%!  Do me a favor and go with it, will you?" 

The President began the budget conversation by calling for a ratio of $3 in spending cuts for every dollar of tax increases.  By the time Cry-baby Cantor walked out of the Biden talks, the ratio had already been reduced to a ratio of 5 to 1.  When the President had his "Give 'em Hell" presser Wednesday, he was ostensibly arguing for a ratio of roughly $11 in spending cuts for every dollar of tax increases.  Whatever his intentions in referring to it repeatedly, the President seemed for all the world to be drawing the line at the tax exemption for corporate jets.  Except, even there, he flatly refused to draw a line.

Concessionary bargaining destroys the power of a union in the same way that cancer destroys the body.--Shamus Cooke

What the President, I suppose, views as being reasonable is seen by everyone else as weakness.  Is it any wonder Henry Waxman's informal poll of congressional Republicans found that, “To a person, they said the president’s going to cave”?  And to those of us on the left, its impossible not to wonder if Obama is a man completely lacking in core beliefs and principles.  Is there nothing this man will fight for?  Would he, literally, surrender his first born in pursuit of the mythical unicorn of "bipartisan agreement"?  I think he might.  I really do.
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And it's not as if the rest of the Democratic party has been any better.  Make no mistake, the Democratic party has ALREADY agreed to cuts in Medicare and Medicaid, regardless of whether or not we see so much as a penny's worth of concession from Republicans on tax increases or not.  And they're more than willing to cut Medicare and Medicaid even more if Republicans will agree to tax increases.  There are also cuts to Social Security the administration has agreed to--even without a quid pro quo on taxes from Republicans.  

















It is impossible to defeat an ignorant man in argument.—William G. McAdoo

Perhaps Obama simply doesn't understand that he's dealing with economic terrorists.  They are not reasonable people.  They do not care what happens to America.  And they've already told you this.  McConnell said upfront that the GOP priority is making Obama a one-term President.  Given the chance to clarify--jobs? economic growth? the War on Terror?--Mitch reiterated that all the Republicans cared about was the failure of President Obama.

As recently as this past weekend, Senator Kyl said the only way this debt ceiling impass ends is if Obama gives in to Republicans 100% (which, he assured Chris Wallace, he will).

But it's even worse than that.  Senator DeMint has already told you that (just as with healthcare), even if you give Republicans everything they want, you STILL won't get Republican votes to raise the debt ceiling.

Naive, Mr. President?  Hell, no.  I'm beginning to suspect you're dense.

The reason you don't negotiate with terrorists is because they don't care if the whole world blows up.  And, if you're ever forced to negotiate with terrorists, the only way to do so is to not care about blowing the whole thing up yourself.  If they are unreasonable, you have to be even more unreasonable.  If they are stubborn, you have to be even more stubborn.  If they are reckless, you have to be even more reckless.

Example.  When Cantor walked away, you say, "This is my final offer--$400 billion in tax increases.  If you're not back at the table by noon tomorrow, that number doubles.  Not back by Friday, we move to 2 trillion in tax increases and only $400 billion in spending cuts.  After the weekend, ALL spending cuts are off the table."

What have you got to lose, Mr. President?  They've already told you they have every intention of blowing it all up anyway.  Your best case scenario right now is that Democrats slash Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, pick up some useless pocket lint and then make up essentially ALL of the votes for the package (with the odd Republican, as with healthcare).  That's not just weak and cowardly (and terrible politics), it's bad for America.  
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Look, you either believe that raising taxes on the rich and investing in America is the right policy for our future or you don't.  If you believe in that, you fight for it, because, in your heart, you know it's right.  Democrats, these days, fight for nothing and I can only conclude from that that they believe in nothing.  Proof?

There is no more hard core belief of being a Democrat than the social safety net.  You either believe in Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid or you don't.  Those are your choices.  And neither Obama nor the vast majority of Democrats in Congress today believe in Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid.  If they did, they would FIGHT for them.  They may not want to kill the programs outright as Republicans do, but they've got no problem at all cutting the shit out of them.  The dead giveaway is that they'll dress it up as "reform" or "strengthening" or "streamlining".  But those are cuts.  And cuts are cuts are cuts.

Pat Buchanan was arguing on MSNBC today that Republicans will not give in on taxes because, in essence, it's something they believe deeply in and their base would punish them if they did give in.  But the other (unspoken) part of that argument is that Democrats WILL give in on Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security because, fundamentally, they DON'T believe in them all that deeply and because the Democratic base WILL NOT punish their representatives for betraying their core principles.  And, if that is true, then we are well and truly fucked.

Show me a guy who’s afraid to look bad, and I’ll show you a guy you can beat every time.—Lou Brock, baseball player

Yes, Obama was combative Wednesday.  But he was already reduced to fighting for pocket lint.  The President has already surrendered any notion of a genuine compromise.  He's already surrendered every Democratic principle and any possible policy victory.  What he's still clinging to is the hope of winning the appearance of a victory.  Hey, I got a shiny penny from Mitch McConnell and all I had to give him was the keys to the store, the clothes off my back and every bit of dignity I had left.  That's what was behind all that bluster.  That's the President's bottom line.  Just as it was with healthcare, the President is willing to surrender all to those who are destroying America just so long as he can make the empty claim: "I passed healthcare reform." 

You can take one of three paths to resolve the debt ceiling impass.  1) Draw a line on what you'll accept and stick to it, 2) Declare the debt ceiling itself unconstitutional and the congress irrelevant and go on about your business or, 3) Give Republicans every thing they want in the hopes they might share their pocket lint...which they won't, by the way.  Given that the first two options require a modicum of courage, we can easily conclude which way Obama will go.  If you watched a little closer than most of our worthless media did on Wednesday, you could clearly see the white flag of surrender waving.
 
 
For too long, we've been left after Election Day holding a canceled check, waving it about--"Remember us?  Remember Us? Remember us?"--asking someone to pay a little attention to us.  Well, I don't know about you, but I've had a snootful of that shit!--AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, June 7, 2011

The last time I saw EFCA [the Employee Free Choice Act] was on the back of a milk carton.--Martin Johns, 5/21/11


Barack Obama and, indeed, the Democratic Party campaigned hard in 2007 and 2008 on the Employee Free Choice Act, legislation designed to level the playing field a tiny bit for the millions of workers in this country who would like to join a union if they could do so without getting fired.  Once elected...not so much.  

Obama listened to the counsel of a handful of his billionaire financial backers, who told him to brush off his promises to Labor, rather than to the millions of small donors and voters to whom those promises were made.  While letting the Republican party do most of his dirty work, Obama as President gave no speeches on EFCA and didn't lift a finger in support.   Forbes magazine even praised Obama for his silence.  It's actually worse than that, though.  When passage of a compromise version of EFCA seemed at hand, Obama and Harry Reid conspired to stop the vote.

Obama allowed NLRB positions to remain vacant for 14 months, leaving Labor at the complete mercy of illegal corporate actions and policies since there were no cops on the beat.  Obama and Democrats sold out the Public Option in the healthcare debate, ignoring a line in the sand AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka had drawn.  And, by their repeated capitulation to Republican framing that the deficit trumps jobs as the preeminent issue in America, Obama and Democrats have not only turned their backs on Labor, but on the American people as a whole.  

Obama has unilaterally instituted a pay freeze for federal workers, applauded the mass firings of teachers in Rhode Island, and, when called upon by circumstances in Wisconsin, Obama flatly refused to honor his very specific pledge to Labor and, instead, offered a few weak-tea remarks of support while his Press Secretary undercut even those by offering, slight grin on his face, that Obama understands the need for belt-tightening and "the serious fiscal situation that the states find themselves in."

With friends like this....

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Photo by Brendan Hoffman
Don’t let any man into your cab, your home, or your heart, unless he’s a friend of labor.— Jimmy Hoffa (attributed)

So what is Labor to do?  The Republicans are clearly insane--with serfdom, slavery, and indentured servitude as firm planks in their party platform.  But the Democrats have not proven to be friends of Labor either.  

No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to one and despise the other.— Jesus Christ (attributed) (Matthew 6:24)

Even before Citizens United, both political parties had come to serve, first and foremost, at the beck and call of their corporate overlords.  How could even the best intentioned politician honestly advance policies that would result in more jobs and higher wages while beholden to those who demand policies that result in fewer jobs and lower wages?  In the Forbes piece praising Obama's lack of advocacy for EFCA, Richard Epstein clearly lays out the priority of the wealthy: "much-needed downward adjustments in wages and benefits."  That's not the "change" most of us voted for.

In more distant times, the corporate money was (more or less) balanced out by votes and pols would do their best to balance those interests.  But the money involved has grown so exponentially that the value of votes has become rather insignificant...especially when business and every politician on both sides of the aisle understand that the game is rigged--heads they win, tails we lose.  And then came Citizens United.  And then came the all out assault on unions.  And, before you know it, America is an unabashed fascist nation.
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With votes having become nearly superfluous, the powerful trade, instead, in access.  So President Obama, for example, can continue to string along Labor with empty rhetoric so long as Labor feels its only hope lies in the opportunity to present its case directly.  This is the "Carrot and Stick" game, the true meaning of which has been (perhaps purposely) either lost or twisted over time.  People think, now, that "Carrot and Stick" means that sometimes you get the carrot and sometimes you get the stick.  But it's not "carrot OR stick".   The phrase actually refers to a technique imagined to motivate a donkey to be a "willing" beast of burden.  The carrot is dangled on a string...just beyond the donkey's reach.  The stick is applied periodically to the donkey's hind quarters when, from time to time, he begins to tire of running after a carrot he's never going to get.
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Photo by "union person"
AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka fell victim to the Carrot and the Stick more than once.  Trumka thought assurances from Obama that a Public Option would be included in the healthcare bill were bankable.  Believing he was in a safe position to do so, Trumka drew his line in the sand for congressional Democrats...which Obama promptly erased, leaving Trumka looking every bit a fool.

Trumka next tried pursuing Labor's agenda without the help of the White House when workers in Arkansas demanded their unions primary "The Senator from Wal-Mart", Blanche Lincoln.  Among workers' many complaints about corporate Blanche?  Her opposition to the Public Option and to EFCA.

While throwing everything behind challenger Bill Halter, Trumka stopped short of criticizing the White House for supporting the incumbent.  (Wouldn't want to lose that access.)  But Obama's administration was less diplomatic about Labor's interests.  An anonymous "senior White House official" derisively told Politico, "Organized labor just flushed $10 million of their members' money down the toilet on a pointless exercise."

I don't know about you, but I've had a snootful of that shit!--AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, June 7, 2011

Trumka began to take note of the Carrot and Stick and he began to wield a stick of his own.

When Obama's appointment of Craig Becker to the NLRB was blocked by Republicans in 2009, Trumka urged a recess appointment.  But the President, forever seeking the unicorn of "bipartisanship", rebuffed Labor and opted instead to cut a deal with Senate Republicans.  Trumka took out his stick this time, blasting President Obama for leaving "working people out in the cold" and exhorting union members to deluge the White House with calls, letters and emails.  It was the first time in Obama's tenure that the AFL-CIO had used such a strategy and, apparently, it worked.  Obama granted recess appointments to NLRB nominees Becker and Mark Pierce at the first opportunity following the onslaught.

More recently, Trumka has been declaring Labor's independence from the Democratic party.  “Our role is not to build the power of a political party or a candidate. It is to improve the lives of working families and strengthen our country...  It doesn’t matter if candidates and parties are controlling the wrecking ball or simply standing aside — the outcome is the same either way.  If leaders aren’t blocking the wrecking ball and advancing working families’ interests, working people will not support them.”
The International Association of Fire Fighters went further, cutting off all contributions to Democratic candidates at the federal level.  “We’re tired that our friends have not been willing to stand up and fight back on our behalf with the same ferocity, the same commitment that our enemies have in trying to destroy our members’ rights,” said Harold Schaitberger, president of the 300,000 member union.  Schaitberger said the IAFF would focus its attention and resources on state and local races where unions and working families have been under relentless attack from Republican legislatures.

But even that is unlikely to be the answer.  

Why should unions support a political party that is in the control of corporate interests that the unions were designed to thwart in the first place? How can the unions get better pay and benefits for its workers when the political party they support is controlled by management?--Timothy V. Gatto, countercurrents.org (October 5, 2010) 

What is needed is a political party that does not answer to capital, but instead is entirely beholden to the concerns of the American people and working Americans in particular.  You won't find such a party in America today.  And you're unlikely to find such a party in America ever unless either there is ratified a Constitutional Amendment declaring that corporations are not people and money is not speech or the Labor movement pools its resources and builds a national Labor Party.

The Constitutional option would seem the easier, but the fact is that those in control of the mechanisms of government are so threatened by the idea that you haven't heard either party so much as whisper it.  They will never allow it.  It is, I believe, better to build a mechanism whole that would, once established, give Americans the political platform from which such an Amendment could be launched. 

Make no mistake, any effort to establish a viable political party beyond the Rs and Ds would be difficult and expensive.  A party that answers first and foremost to the interests of the American people would be a threat to the oligarchy and to both the parties that serve it.  They would undoubtedly unleash the hounds of hell to thwart any attempt to restore representation to the people.  Labor's resources are not what they once were, either.  But Labor does have resources.  And Labor has proven, time and time again, that they can rise to any challenge--Americans can build anything we put our mind to build.  

It seems to me it's no longer a matter of choice.  Labor must do something dramatic and different--and very soon--as a matter of survival.  Not just the survival of Labor, but the survival of America.  Or we can just wait for the revolution.  But a revolution will only come after decades of hardship and pain for all but the richest 10%.