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The Missing Link in Obama's Liberalism

Eric Alterman’s commentary on the “missing” part of President Obama’s inagural address provided insight into the “missing” commentary from organized labor.

How can the labor movement expect President Obama, or any other elected official, to continually comment on the worth of organizing and negotiation when the labor movement doesn’t present itself in the media? Having been a proud union member for over fifty years, I am always amazed that our union leadership hasn’t realized that every other entity advertises. Oh, labor tells its own story Lwith monthly magazines, or direct mail, but it doesn’t tell its own story to the general public, or even do a good job with its own members.

When the Church of Scientology had a commercial during the Super Bowl, it became obvious that labor was missing something—“The Will to Tell its Own Story.”

Every union member should be demanding the their union charge the AFL-CIO with the job of advertising labor’s stories. The AFL-CIO with minimal funding from each union member ($1 or $2 per month) could run a fully funded program to talk about the economy and why, when labor is undermined, wages go down. They could tell the American public about the disastrous effects of the “free trade” agreements that have sold out American manufacturing.

When labor begins to tell its own story, labor can expect others, including the president of the United States, to support its efforts.

The Missing Link in Obama's Liberalism

Who pays taxes? The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy just released its latest study at whopays.org. “The average overall effective state and local tax rates by income group nationwide are 11.1 percent for the bottom 20 percent , 9.4 percent for the middle 20 percent and 5.6 percent for the top 1 percent.” State consumption taxes are especially regressive, with on average a 7 percent  rate for the poor, a 4.6 percent rate for middle incomes and a 0.9 percent rate for top incomes.

'The Blackout Bowl,' or 'The Most Depressing Super Bowl Column You'll Read'

The blackout was the result of using non-union electricians in this “right to work” state.

Why Are Feminists So Angry?

Why is God addressed in the the third person in the masculine form of the pronoun for the third person? If a woman is good enough to be shot full of holes in the front lines, why is she not good enough to be pope? Patriarchy combines with religion to hold women in subjugation.

Michelle Obama's Moves

I work in school food service everyday. I see how these new regulations directly affect our school service programs in fifteen different districts. We always served healthy food long before this new initiative. Our staff is well-trained, which was a large investment. They made homemade soups and salads every day. Since you can't do nutrition in the moment, this has come to an end. Which is a waste of leftovers and resources. Homemade soups and salads are great for children! And allow us to make more homemade food on a very tight budget! Have you ever tried to feed a high school student a full hot meal with a milk for an average price of $2? Oh, and pay your staff a livable wage and keep the lights on?

We really need our government's attention at the beginning of the food chain for our children! We need to start in Washington and revamp our whole commodity system and the way our government financially assists the school food service system. I would like to propose a voucher system similar to our country's WIC program. This would eliminate all the farm-lobby manipulation of the system. This would also eliminate the environmental impact of trucking and storing all the commodities. Image the high fuel cost, pollution and other trucking costs to haul just these items! A lot of these commodities are canned or frozen, as we very seldomly receive fresh and healthy commodities! With vouchers sent right to the food sevice directors, they could order what they need when when they need it. Also eliminating our having to put away hundreds of pounds of canned and frozen foods away at the same time, which is very hard work and makes storage a huge problem, overloading our freezers and storerooms. Food service distributing companies also make us place a minimum order for more items to get our commodity orders sent to us. We could use food vouchers for fresh produce and meats, possibly working into the local farm market rather than supporting the larger farms that benefit way too much from our schools. Our children's food supply should not be used to support large irresponsible farming practices that destroy their (children's) future environment. This is an obsolete system used in the past to support an unhealthy food system. We didn't just start cooking unhealthy foods we started by receiving them from the government.

You cannot fix a system that is broken from the end of it! You need to start at the beginning and work your way out to the schools. I have never meet a school food service worker or FSD whose mission was to serve bad or unhealthy food. I'm a chef and we all strive to make our lunches colorful and delicious every day! Now let's fix this system, by getting our kids food out of the farm lobbyists' pockets by letting our local directors choose the healthy and fresh options. They could order if we had vouchers. Why does our food have to take a trip around the country before we receive it ? Also, please save all our backs, aging freezers, storage space and wasted time waiting for the commodities to come. I don't think the public knows schools have to order all commodity items months or a school-year ahead of time. We are only able to receive the options the government puts on a list. We also are a business and have to inventory all this monthly, so we waste time counting all this frozen and canned food, as well as rotating it. A school food service director has much more paperwork than a restaurant owner has. The mountain of paperwork they do has also increased. This year we have some of last year's commodities shelved because they don't fit the new regulations. So many schools have items we can't put out, such as peanut butter, sitting on back shelves. Peanut butter is a high-fat item they often give us. Why don't we donate it or sell it, you think to yourself? Well, there are laws about that, but it would be nice to get our shipping costs back! Yes we pay for the shipping of these commodities! Why PB?… with all the nut allergies and sky-high fat content, is this product pushed by the government… um, could it be lobbyists? LOL!

Thank you for listening to the truth! Here's to healthy lunches that make business sense!

After Newtown, Beware Fear-Driven Policymaking

In this complex issue, all methods that might reduce the abuse of firearms needs to be on the table. My husband and I are amazed that we hear no inclusion of the concept of gun locks in the conversations that are going on. Surely modern technology can be applied proactively and retroactively to secure guns in a manner that they can still be used for their recreational purposes while being protected from misuse. These days we have fingerprint recognition, retinal recognition and surely other methods that would reserve the ability to use the gun to the person who registered the weapon. The gun owner could be assured that the responsibility for keeping the weapon unusable by thieves, children and unqualified family members could actually be assured.

Why is this concept not being put on the table? There are millions of guns out there that could be made secure while preseerving the (abused notion of) Second Amendment rights. It is also a stimulant to a secondary industry rather than being an economic threat to the gun industry and a huge enforcement cost.

While I am mentioning that… When our Bill of Rights was being put together, having a gun was a life-or-death necessity for our pioneer forefathers. Beyond providing food for their tables and defense from frontier threats, if they were called up to defend our fledgling freedoms, they were required to provide their own gun if they wanted to be able to have one in a fight. The government wasn't providing them!

The survivalist notion that we are going to need weapons to defend ourselves from outer space invaders, the other last people on earth who want all we have, our own government… needs to be called out as far-fetched fantasy.

Keep up your good work, Ms. Harris-Perry. It is a pleasure to hear voices like yours speaking out.

Why Is President Obama Keeping a Journalist in Prison in Yemen?

Having just seen Rick Rowley's film featuring Jeremy Scahill, Dirty Wars, at the Sundance Film Festival and reading this posting, I’m wondering about the wide access to evidence available to these wonderful investigative journalists when Obama is worried about giving freedom to a reporter with apparently much more limited resources and access, and has the power to stop access at will.

In Search of Sam Cooke

It would be interesting if Robert Christgua had read Erik Greene’s Our Uncle Sam and Bg Rhule’s One More River to Cross: The Redemption of Sam Cooke, both of which were written after Dream Boogie. I’m sure he’d re-evaluate what was going on in Sam’s life at the time of his death.

A Rape a Minute, A Thousand Corpses a Year

Thank you for this incredibly informative article on rape/violence against women and the role that men play. I have always thought that rape should be called what it is, a hate crime. One that is almost always comitted by men and is all about control. I cannot understand why we keep ignoring this epidemic of violent crime simply because of whom it is exercized upon: women. I found the comments about men’s not allowing women into the gaming community particularly disturbing, because men show that they are more likely to show their prejudice if they can do it anonymously. Unless we start addressing the young men in our community, and letting them know that Silent No More is our policy, this worldwide problem is just going to get worse.

America's New Cold War With Russia

The US aims to achieve a disarming first-strike capability, according to missile engineer Bob Aldridge. GPS (NAVSTAR) was made to get an accuracy of less than thirty meters for Minuteman-3 and Trident-2, necessary to destroy missile silos. The US Navy can track and destroy all enemy submarines simultaneousl, says Aldridge. Professor J. Edward Anderson declares, "Deployment of anti-missile missiles in Eastern Europe is part of a first-strike strategy." The missiles will be operational by 2018. This leads to launch on warning by 2017 and nuclear war gets more likely. More info: Claus Eric at antiwar.com, especially the interview with Ray McGovern.