June 1, 2014

Zinn-sational Sunday morning to everyone ........

..... Just felt like sharing one of my favorite Howard Zinn quotes:

[font size="4"]“I was astonished, bewildered. This was America, a country where, whatever its faults, people could speak, write, assemble, demonstrate without fear. It was in the Constitution, the Bill of Rights. We were a democracy...

But I knew it wasn't a dream; there was a painful lump on the side of my head...

The state and its police were not neutral referees in a society of contending interests. They were on the side of the rich and powerful. Free speech? Try it and the police will be there with their horses, their clubs, their guns, to stop you.

From that moment on, I was no longer a liberal, a believer in the self-correcting character of American democracy. I was a radical, believing that something fundamental was wrong in this country--not just the existence of poverty amidst great wealth, not just the horrible treatment of black people, but something rotten at the root. The situation required not just a new president or new laws, but an uprooting of the old order, the introduction of a new kind of society--cooperative, peaceful, egalitarian.”[/font]

― Howard Zinn, You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train: A Personal History of Our Times

June 1, 2014

Professor Richard Wolff: Our economic recovery has been a "fiction"

Published on May 6, 2014

This week on the Campbell Conversations, economist Richard Wolff argues that our economic recovery has so far been a "fiction," unless you're in the top one percent, and he further claims that this problem reflects something much more fundamentally wrong with our modern system of capitalism. He finds a solution to the problem in a reconsideration of the way we govern the workplace. Wolff is the author of books such as Democracy at Work, and Capitalism Hits the Fan.

Every week Grant Reeher, Director of the Campbell Public Affairs Institute at Syracuse University, leads a conversation with a notable guest. Guests include people from central New York - writers, politicians, activists, public officials, and business professionals whose work affects the public life of the community - as well as nationally-prominent figures visiting the region to talk about their work.

The Campbell Conversations are longer interviews which encourage the character of the interviewee to be exposed. This allows you to learn more about the person, how they got to where they are, and where they plan to go. Grant attempts to go beyond the usual press conference questions and sound bites, which usually accompany a discussion about his guests.

Professor Richard D. Wolff website: http://www.rdwolff.com/

June 1, 2014

Chris Hedges: "The many failures of US society and how change can occur"

Published on Apr 10, 2014
©2014 Leigha Cohen Video Productionhttp://www.leighacohenvideo.com/

It was between 10-11 PM on April 4, th. 2014. The film by Eugene Jarecki I live in this House had been shown to over 200 people at Princeton University. Both speakers briefly spoke which was proceeded by over 1 hour of Q&A.

June 1, 2014

Our Problem Is Civil Obedience (Matt Damon reads Howard Zinn)

June 1, 2014

‘Friends Without Benefits’: ‘Job Creators’ Accrue More Terrifying Power

http://www.truthdig.com/eartotheground/item/friends_without_benefits_job_creators_accrue_more_terrifying_power_20140531


via truthdig:



Applying for a job you need but don’t really want is bad enough. But now “Zappos, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Amazon, is going to occupy the unemployed for months with (mostly futile) attempts to become virtual ‘friends’ with the online shoe retailer,” Noah McCormack writes at The Baffler.

The Wall Street Journal reported May 26:

Zappos, based in Las Vegas, plans to hire at least 450 people this year, but candidates won’t find out about those jobs on LinkedIn.com, Monster.com or the company website. Instead, they will have to join a social network, called Zappos Insiders, where they will network with current employees and demonstrate their passion for the company—in some cases publicly—in hopes that recruiters will tap them when jobs come open.

McCormack comments:

Zappos has apparently decided it is no longer good enough to be a qualified hire who is interested in the job. An interested applicant must also spend unremunerated time pretending to engage in virtual social relationships with existing employees. The American economy has become so warped that it now appears reasonable to a subsidiary of a leading public company to require people who may never be hired to spent large amounts of time pretending to be friends with people with whom they may never work.

This represents the convergence of at least three disturbing trends in the current American economy: the long-term unemployment of large numbers of people and the consequent power given to any company which is hiring; the technology industry’s revival of old prejudices under catchy new names; and the way that technology increasingly erodes any sense that our work selves are merely a component of our lives, rather than the entirety of our existence.

As warped as this hiring system is, the Wall Street Journal could only find—or, more likely, only thought to seek—people who praised Zappos’s innovative spirit. Just one booster, the founder of a talent-acquisition consultancy that works with companies including Pepsi and Walmart, said that, while Zappos had made “a move in the right direction . . . it is unclear whether potential candidates will remain engaged with the company if months go by without job opportunities.”

—Posted by Alexander Reed Kelly.

May 31, 2014

Beyond Petroleum? Not anymore. These two oil giants plan to stay oil giants, with emphasis on oil

from Grist:


Chevron and BP are pulling out of wind and solar
By John Upton


Beyond Petroleum? More like Bake the Planet.

BP and Chevron, two of the corporations that are doing the most to toast the climate, bleat at us in costly advertisements about their meager efforts to harness renewable energy. But now even their modest renewables programs are being quietly dismantled.

“Renewable energy is vital to our planet,” Chevron helpfully reminded us in one of its insincere “We Agree” ads. “At Chevron, we’re investing millions in solar and biofuel technologies.” (Millions! From a company that made $21.4 billion in profits last year.) Beyond the marketing hype, here’s an injection of reality from Bloomberg’s Businessweek:

In January, employees of Chevron’s renewable power group, whose mission was to launch large, profitable clean-energy projects, dined at San Francisco’s trendy Sens restaurant as managers applauded them for nearly doubling their projected profit in 2013, the group’s first full year of operations. But the mood quickly turned somber. Despite the financial results and the team’s role in helping launch more than a half-dozen solar and geothermal projects capable of powering at least 65,000 homes, managers told the group that funding for the effort would dry up and encouraged staffers to find jobs elsewhere, say four people who attended the dinner. …

“When you have a very successful and profitable core oil and gas business, it can be quite difficult to justify investing in renewables,” says Robert Redlinger, who ran a previous effort at Chevron to develop large renewable-energy projects before he left in 2010. “It requires significant commitment at the most senior levels of management. I didn’t perceive that kind of commitment from Chevron during my time with the firm.”

But it’s not like Chevron is acting as a renegade in an otherwise responsible industry. .....................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://grist.org/news/chevron-and-bp-are-pulling-out-of-wind-and-solar/

May 31, 2014

Our Economy Wants You to Be In Debt—5 Things You Can Do to Take Charge

from YES! Magazine:


Our Economy Wants You to Be In Debt—5 Things You Can Do to Take Charge
We pored through a debt-resistance manual created by former Occupiers to bring you these practical tips.

by Liz Pleasant
posted May 21, 2014


Last month PM Press published the Debt Resisters' Operations Manual —also known as “the DROM.” But don’t let that menacing-sounding acronym fool you: this is a book written in plain English and filled with tips and tactics for dealing with debt.

The book has been available online since September 2012, but this publishing marks the first time the manual has been printed, bound, and sold. Don't worry, you can still find a free copy online. But, hopefully, getting this book into stores will help its message reach more people—however ironic it might seem to buy one with a credit card.

"Everyone is a debtor so there’s no limit to the audience" said Andrew Ross, a member of the Occupy Wall Street offshoot called Strike Debt, in an interview with Guernica Magazine. Although Ross has gone public, most of the authors of the Debt Resister's Operations Manual have chosen to remain anonymous.

The book explains how creditors, big banks, and other lenders operate and how debtors can navigate both in and outside of the system. ...................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.yesmagazine.org/new-economy/our-economy-wants-you-to-be-in-debt-five-things-you-can-do-take-charge

May 31, 2014

David Sirota: Big Cable’s Almighty Dollar

from In These Times:


Big Cable’s Almighty Dollar
Will Comcast’s and Time Warner Cable’s money outpace public objection to their potential merger? Stay tuned.

BY DAVID SIROTA


There are plenty of reasons to worry about the proposal to combine Comcast, America’s largest cable and broadband company, with Time Warner Cable, the second-largest cable firm and third-largest broadband provider.

For one, there’s ever more consolidated control over content. There’s also the possibility of certain types of content being given special (or worse) treatment based on the provider’s relationship with Comcast and Time Warner Cable. And there’s the prospect of even higher prices. Indeed a Comcast executive recently admitted that the company will not promise bills “are going to go down or even that they’re going to increase less rapidly.”

In the capital of a properly functioning democracy, all of these concerns would prompt the federal government to block the deal. But Washington is an occupied city—occupied by Comcast’s vast army. As Time recently reported, “The company has registered at least 76 lobbyists across 24 firms.” Those figures include neither telecom lobbyist turned FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler nor Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s chief of staff, who was a Comcast vice president and raked in $1.2 million in Comcast payments since taking his government job.

All of that political power is enhanced by the $9.3 million Comcast, Time Warner Cable and their affiliates have spent on campaign contributions to federal officials in just the last few years, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. .................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://inthesetimes.com/article/16758/comcast_time_warner_merger

May 31, 2014

Social Security Threatens to Close All Field Offices

Social Security Threatens to Close All Field Offices

Friday, 30 May 2014 09:56
By Jim Campana, Labor Notes | News Analysis


Need to figure out whether it makes sense to retire at 62 or 65? Wondering how much your monthly Social Security benefit will be? Been married three times and wondering what that means for your benefit?

Answers have never been farther than your local Social Security office, where employees are extensively trained to give you accurate and helpful answers. There’s a reason Social Security is the most popular of all government programs.

But that will change if the Social Security Administration’s “Vision 2025” comes to pass. Bureaucrats are mulling closure of most of SSA’s more than 1,000 community field offices in the U.S., where 43 million people sought services last year.

Even as the number of visitors continues to grow, Vision 2025 would virtually eliminate face-to-face service, replacing it with Internet services and an 800 phone number. .............................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://truth-out.org/news/item/24045-social-security-threatens-to-close-all-field-offices

May 31, 2014

Buried Carbon Causes Deep Concern

By Tim Radford, Climate News Network


LONDON—Geographers in the US have found a new factor in the carbon cycle, and – all too ominously – a new potential source of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide. They have identified huge deposits of fossil soils, rich in organic carbon, buried beneath the Great Plains of America.

The discovery is evidence that the subterranean soils could be a rich store, or sink, for ancient atmospheric carbon. But if the soil is exposed – by erosion, or by human activities such as agriculture, deforestation or mining – this treasure trove of ancient charred vegetation, now covered by wind-blown soils, could blow back into the atmosphere and add to global warming.

Erika Marin-Spiotta, a biogeographer at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and her colleagues report in Nature Geoscience that what is known as Brady soil – ancient buried soil ? formed more than 13,500 years ago in Nebraska, Kansas and other Great Plains states.

Glacial retreat

It now lies more than six metres below the surface, and it was buried by a vast deposit of loess – wind-blown dust – about 10,000 years ago, when the glaciers began to retreat from North America.

The significance is not that it survived the end of the Ice Age and the colonisation of the Great Plains by grazing animals, but in the fact that it is there at all, at such depths. Calculations about the world stock of soil carbon have focused on the topsoil, and the role of root systems, decaying vegetation, microbes and fungi in the natural carbon cycle. Now the climate scientists who play with models of the carbon cycle will have to think again. ..................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/buried_carbon_causes_deep_concern_20140530