One more assault on Federal workers - Bush has slashed a promised pay raise for federal workers. This article notes that legislation had been designed to bring...
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November 29, 2002
Rightwing Attack on Union's "Enron" - Well, Murdoch's rightwing New York Post blares the existence of a new report, written by former GOP Illinois Gov. James...
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Hilarious: Hu's on First - A brilliant comedy routine by playwright Jim Sherman written as Hu Jintao was named chief of the Communist Party. See...
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Bush Aide: US Will Ignore UN - For the arrogance and lies of the Bush administration, see this description of top Bush defense advisor, Richard Perle, speaking...
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November 21, 2002
"New Gore" on a Roll - Now Gore's gone and done it. He's told the truth about Bush's "war on terrorism: "Now the warlords are back...
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More on Productivity Slipperiness - Just a quick jump in with more on the productivity puzzle, which this Economist article notes gets pretty tricky. Look...
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TNR Defends Single Payer - And here's an almost immediate payout of Gore coming out for single payer health care. The New Republic weblog has...
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Who Needs to Keep Track of Nukes? - Having fired arab linguists because they are gay, the next step by the Bush administration in assuring security is, of...
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November 18, 2002
Labor Monday (11-18) - Union groups and NOW are mounting a campaign against Wal-Mart in 40 cities this Thursday to demand higher wages...
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Contemplating Gore 2004 - Gore came out for single payer health care. He's against the Iraq war. He's been campaigning for civil liberties. He's...
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SS Privatization: GOP Deceptions - Go GOP social security privatizers! Read this commentary today by former GOP Congressman Vin Weber from the Wall Street Journal....
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Report: Favoritism in Discipline in FBI - Well, Bush looks like he's going to get managerial "flexibility" in disciplining workers throughout the Homeland Security agency. And for...
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House GOP to Unemployed- Drop Dead - Having passed a miniscule 5-week extension of unemployment benefits, the House GOP has said that if the Senate passed a...
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Homeland Corporate Security Act - Well, that didn't take long. Having campaigned on eliminating job protections to make workers in the Homeland Security department responsible...
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Economist on Microsoft Trial - I haven't written anything since the court upheld the weak-ass Justice Department settlement with Microsoft, partly because I have written...
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No GOP Wave on Nov 5 - Kos has posted a full column by uber-political punter Charlie Cook on why this election was no partisan wave (a...
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Revenge of the Ground Game - As this TNR article details, one key to GOP success this year was reemphasizing personal contact and get out the...
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November 11, 2002
Labor Monday (11-11) - The AFL-CIO condemned both parties for failing to present clear plans to restore the economy. 72% of union members...
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Saving Bilingual Education in Colorado - One victory last Tuesday was saving bilingual education from an initiative, Amendment 31, on the ballot in Colorado. This article...
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McCain at Telecom Helm - One small good thing that will likely come of the GOP takeover of the Senate is that with McCain taking...
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Red-Baiting of Pelosi Begins - The rightwing attack machine is moving into high-gear. First red baiting, then I am sure the gay-baiting will begin against...
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All Praise Pelosi's Fundraising - Some liberals like Howard Keller at the NY Times don't like Pelosi because of her fundraising ability. Many conservatives don't...
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GOP Will Regret Pelosi's Rise - Remember when a bomb-thrower from the back bench of the GOP rose to power within the Republican leadership in the...
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Why Productivity Gains are a Bad Sign - Many economists are marvelling that productivity, how much is produced per worker per hour, is increasing in a recession. Usually...
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WalMart- Corporate Criminal - As this story on Wal-Mart details, when we talk about coporate criminals, we should not just talk about those that...
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November 07, 2002
Jon Stewart is God- Part 100 - "Republicans more than prevailed in yesterday's midterm elections across the country. Voters turned out strongly to express support for huge...
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NY: Working Families Party Wins - "The biggest winner on Tuesday night was the Working Families Party, a coalition of pro-labor activists and liberal Democrats which...
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Irony of Night: SD's Johnson - The sad irony for South Dakota is that it was probably the only state where the meta-issue of which party...
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November 06, 2002
Wisdom from the Right - This seems right from David Brooks, arguing that the American people: ...know that one party believes in its platform and...
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Little Chips, Big Pollution - Most people think of the microchip as embodying a post-industrial technology, the clean science of cappucino-drinking white collar workers. Yet...
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GOP Victories Power Defense Stocks - That's the headline from Reuters. Along with the body phrase that "The pharmaceuticals sector, which is also seen as a...
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Well, that sucked - I pretty much said my criticism of the Dem leadership and called for the ouster of Gephardt in my Monday...
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Webster- Ripping off Teamster Members - "Judge Webster" is about to suffer the worst fate of a "respected Washington insider"-- actually having what such insiders do...
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November 04, 2002
Labor Monday (11-04) - Roundup of labor stories, November 4, 2002 West Coast longshoremen have apparently reached a tentative agreement on the use of...
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The Muddled Election - It is odd to have an election where so much is at stake and the messages on all sides are...
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Is Internet Encryption Doomed - In the how-cool-math-has-real-implications, an Indian mathematician in August solved one of the blockbuster problems of mathematics-- how to determine if...
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Rise of "Muslim Democrats" in Turkey - Turkey goes to the polls today and leading polls is an Islamic-oriented party called Justice and Development:Justice party members only...
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Okay- maybe the Civil War isn't over - Freepers are discussing this article about how there was no "civil war" down South since "the typical Southern community was...
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More on Increases in Partisanship - Armed Liberal appreciated my post on why partisanship is increasing, not decreasing, but differed with my explanation that the deregionalization...
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Where's the Special Prosecutor? - First, Bush's Secretary of the Army is emeshed in the Enron scandal. Then, his SEC chairman is doing the bidding...
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Internet Gov Board Kills Elections - ICANN, the nonprofit board that assigns Internet domain names and directs email traffic across the global, formally voted to eliminate...
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Peggy Noonan: Obscenity - Here is the award for the most disgusting fake-praise-of-Wellstone-to-attack-Dems. She actually dares to speak in the dead voice of Wellstone....
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Wal-Mart Doing Good for Environment - Seriously. This initiative by Wal-Mart to promote energy-saving light bulbs is a major environmental initiative. "Compact fluorescent" bulbs fit in...
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The Collapse of Tax Cut Politics - You can check out Progressive States rundown of progressive successes in the states on Tuesday, but I want to focus...
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November 08, 2006
A Good Night for Progressives - Let's be clear-- this wasn't just a good night for Democrats. It was a good night for progressives, and no...
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November 01, 2006
Labor Cold War Ends - New International Labor Federation - At the dawn of the Cold War, the international union movement divided up between the ICFTU, dominated by US and Western European unions, and the World Confederation of Labor, largely allied with the Soviet Union. It's taken a decade and a half, but the irrelevancy of that division will end today as the two federations merge-- bringing together 241 labor organizations from 156 countries representing 190 million workers. The new International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) is a good step for a labor movement looking to globalize itself in the taking on global capital power....
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- Valuing Families: State Legislative Models Brought to you by Progressive States and MomsRising What would a policy that really values families look...
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October 09, 2006
Emaciated Models, Labor Regulation - There's a bit of debate in the blogosphere around Spain's new law banning underweight models from the runways in that country. See Jordan, Amanda at Pandagon and Lindsay Beyerstein at Majikthise on whether this is an intrusive regulating violating free expression or something like that and whether OSHA safety regulations are appropriate. Just to throw my two cents in-- any broader OSHA approach would seem cumbersome and bureaucratically intrusive in a deep way. But the original Spanish proposal is brilliant in its high-impact, low-intrusion approach. Regulate only the fashion week type runways, where in a single spotcheck, models can be...
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October 03, 2006
Big loss for Labor-- - The National Labor Relations Board ruled today that a range of professionals are now deemed "supervisors" and thus lose all protections under labor law. That means if they say a positive thing about unions, their bosses are free to fire them at will. The AFL-CIO has more here. To put this denial of labor rights in perspective, 32 million workers or 25% of the workforce already have no right to form a union under federal, state or local law (see this GAO report and this ARAW summary). This includes: Supervisors 16.6 million workers, 8 million new supervisors plus traditional 8.6...
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