Beaver County Blue

Progressive Democrats of America – PA 12th CD Chapter

Archive for the ‘unemployment’ Category

« Previous Entries

Green Jobs via the Smart Grid: Now The Task Is To Make It Global

Posted by carldavidson on May 3, 2013

monitoring.the_.gridx299.jpg

Smart power: Andrew Brown, an engineer at Florida Power & Light, monitors equipment in one of the utility’s smart grid diagnostic centers.

With Florida Project, the Smart Grid Has Arrived

Smart grid technology has been implemented in many places, but Florida’s new deployment is the first full-scale system.

By Kevin Bullis

SolidarityEconomy.net via MIT Technology Review

Why It Matters

May 2, 2013 – Conventional power grids can’t handle big storms or large-scale renewable energy.

The first comprehensive and large scale smart grid is now operating. The $800 million project, built in Florida, has made power outages shorter and less frequent, and helped some customers save money, according to the utility that operates it.

Smart grids should be far more resilient than conventional grids, which is important for surviving storms, and make it easier to install more intermittent sources of energy like solar power (see “China Tests a Small Smart Electric Grid” and “On the Smart Grid, a Watt Saved Is a Watt Earned”). The Recovery Act of 2009 gave a vital boost to the development of smart grid technology, and the Florida grid was built with $200 million from the U.S. Department of Energy made available through the Recovery Act.

Dozens of utilities are building smart grids—or at least installing some smart grid components, but no one had put together all of the pieces at a large scale. Florida Power & Light’s project incorporates a wide variety of devices for monitoring and controlling every aspect of the grid, not just, say, smart meters in people’s homes.

“What is different is the breadth of what FPL’s done,” says Eric Dresselhuys, executive vice president of global development at Silver Spring Networks, a company that’s setting up smart grids around the world, and installed the network infrastructure for Florida Power & Light (see “Headed into an IPO, Smart Grid Company Struggles for Profit”).

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Environment, Green Energy, Green Jobs, unemployment | Leave a Comment »

Filling the ‘Green Jobs’ Bucket Needs More Than a Slow Dribble…

Posted by carldavidson on April 13, 2013

Monongahela locks and dams would get $2 million from spending plan

By Len Boselovic

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

April 12, 2013 – President Barack Obama’s $3.8 trillion budget proposal calls for imposing annual per-vessel fees on the barge industry to pay for an $8 billion backlog in delayed and over-budget projects, including replacing aging locks and dams on the Monongahela River.

The White House proposal comes as a measure by Sen. Bob Casey, D-Pa., to bolster funding for the work and shift more of the costs to taxpayers could be taken up by the U.S. Senate as early as next week.

The budget proposal Mr. Obama submitted Wednesday includes $4.7 billion for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers civil works program, which includes operating, maintaining and replacing more than 200 locks and related dams on the nation’s rivers. That is nearly 6 percent less than was called for in the last budget Congress approved for the fiscal year that ended in September.

The $4.7 billion includes $2 million for replacing locks and dams on the Monongahela River at Braddock, Charleroi and Elizabeth, a project that typifies the delays and cost overruns plaguing the nation’s deteriorating locks and dams.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Economy, Green Jobs, Infrastructure, unemployment | Leave a Comment »

The Next ‘American Revolution’ Already Starting in Cleveland, Cincinnati and a Few Other Places Around Here…

Posted by carldavidson on April 9, 2013

Posted in Economy, Green Energy, Green Jobs, Organizing, Poverty, unemployment | Leave a Comment »

Philly Worst Big City for People in Deep Poverty, with Pittsburgh Not Far Behind

Posted by carldavidson on March 19, 2013

Labor Day protest for minimum wage hike. Philadelphia has the highest rate of deep poverty of any of the nation’s 10 most populous cities. The annual salary for a single person at half the poverty line is around $5,700; for a family of four, it’s around $11,700. Philadelphia’s deep-poverty rate is 12.9 percent, or around 200,000 people.

By Alfred Lubrano
Philadelphia Inquirer

March 19, 2013 – Philadelphia has the highest rate of deep poverty – people with incomes below half of the poverty line – of any of the nation’s 10 most populous cities.

The annual salary for a single person at half the poverty line is around $5,700; for a family of four, it’s around $11,700.

Philadelphia’s deep-poverty rate is 12.9 percent, or around 200,000 people.

Phoenix, Chicago, and Dallas are the nearest to Philadelphia, with deep-poverty rates of more than 10 percent.

The numbers come from an examination of the 2009 through 2011 three-year estimate of the U.S. Census American Community Survey by The Inquirer and Temple University sociologist David Elesh.

Of the 4,300,000 people living in the area around Philadelphia, there are nearly 160,000 in deep poverty – a rate of 3.6 percent – in Bucks, Chester, Montgomery, Delaware, Salem, Gloucester, Burlington, and Camden Counties as well as New Castle County, Del., and Cecil County, Md., Elesh’s analysis showed.

Nationwide, more than 20 million people live in deep poverty, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

These deep-poverty numbers don’t include noncash benefits such as food stamps, which help families survive, experts said.

The Philadelphia deep-poverty figure wasn’t a complete surprise for antipoverty advocates, since the city already has the highest poverty rate – 28.4 percent – of any of America’s biggest cities.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in budget crisis, Debt, Poverty, unemployment | Leave a Comment »

US Capitalism Redistributing Wealth ‘Upward’

Posted by carldavidson on February 20, 2013

Nine Economic Facts That Will Make Your Head Spin

By Lynn Stuart Parramore
Beaver County Blue via Alternet.org

Feb 18, 2013  |  How much will you need for medical expenses in retirement? What does it cost to keep 2.5 million Americans behind bars? Here are a few facts and figures that might surprise you.

1. Recovery for the rich, recession for the rest.

Economic recovery is in rather limited supply, it seems. Research by economist Emmanuel Saez shows that the top 1 percent has enjoyed income growth of over 11 percent [3] since the official end of the recession. The other 99 percent hasn’t fared so well, seeing a 0.4 percent decline in income.

The top 10 percent of earners hauled in 46.5 percent of all income in 2011, the highest proportion since 1917 – and that doesn’t even include money earned from investments. The wealthy have benefitted from favorable tax status and the rise in stock prices, while the rest have been hit with a continuing unemployment crisis that has kept wages down. Saez believes this trend will continue in 2013.

2. Half of us are poor or barely scraping by.

The latest Census Bureau data shows that one in two Americans currently falls into either the “low income” category or is living in poverty. Low-income is defined as those earning between 100 and 199 percent of the poverty level. Adjusted for inflation, the earnings for the bottom 20 percent of families have dropped from $16,788 in 1979 to just under $15,000. Earnings for the next 20 percent have been stuck at $37,000.

States in the South and West had the highest proportion of low-income families, including Arizona, New Mexico and South Carolina, where politicians are eagerly shredding the social safety net.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Economy, health care, Poverty, safety net, Seniors, social security, unemployment | Leave a Comment »

Usurious Credit and Debt as Our Prison Cages

Posted by carldavidson on February 14, 2013

Breaking the Chains of Debt Peonage

By Chris Hedges
Truthdig.com

Feb 3, 2013 – The corporate state has made it clear there will be no more Occupy encampments.

The corporate state is seeking through the persistent harassment of activists and the passage of draconian laws such as Section 1021(b)(2) of the National Defense Authorization Act—and we will be in court next Wednesday to fight the Obama administration’s appeal of the Southern District Court of New York’s ruling declaring Section 1021 unconstitutional—to shut down all legitimate dissent.

The corporate state is counting, most importantly, on its system of debt peonage to keep citizens—especially the 30 million people who make up the working poor—from joining our revolt.

Workers who are unable to meet their debts, who are victimized by constantly rising interest rates that can climb to as high as 30 percent on credit cards, are far more likely to remain submissive and compliant.

Debt peonage is and always has been a form of political control. Native Americans, forced by the U.S. government onto tribal agencies, were required to buy their goods, usually on credit, at agency stores. Coal miners in southern West Virginia and Kentucky were paid in scrip by the coal companies and kept in perpetual debt servitude by the company store. African-Americans in the cotton fields in the South were forced to borrow during the agricultural season from their white landlords for their seed and farm equipment, creating a life of perpetual debt. It soon becomes impossible to escape the mounting interest rates that necessitate new borrowing.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Debt, Economy, unemployment, Wall Street, Youth and students | 1 Comment »

Want to Bust a Recession? Create More Jobs, Organize More Unions…

Posted by carldavidson on February 2, 2013

Organizing McDonald’s and Wal-mart, and Why Austerity Economics Hurts Low-Wage Workers the Most

By Robert Reich
Beaver County Blue via HuffPost

Nov 30, 2012 – What does the drama in Washington over the "fiscal cliff" have to do with strikes and work stoppages among America’s lowest-paid workers at Walmart, McDonald’s, Burger King, and Domino’s Pizza?

Everything.

Jobs are slowly returning to America, but most of them pay lousy wages and low if non-existent benefits. The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that seven out of 10 growth occupations over the next decade will be low-wage — like serving customers at big-box retailers and fast-food chains. That’s why the median wage keeps dropping, especially for the 80 percent of the workforce that’s paid by the hour.

It also part of the reason why the percent of Americans living below the poverty line has been increasing even as the economy has started to recover — from 12.3 percent in 2006 to 15 percent in 2011. More than 46 million Americans now live below the poverty line.

Many of them have jobs. The problem is these jobs just don’t pay enough to lift their families out of poverty.

So, encouraged by the economic recovery and perhaps also by the election returns, low-wage workers have started to organize.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in labor, Organizing, trade unions, unemployment | Leave a Comment »

Why We Need Green Energy and a Green New Deal

Posted by carldavidson on January 22, 2013

Mountaintop Removal: Even a hero Doesn’t Get Used to This…

 

When he watched mountaintop removal mining raze the mountain all around his home and family’s land on Kayford Mountain in West Virginia, Larry Gibson became one of the country’s first people to speak out against this extreme and egregiously irresponsible mining practice. He has been inspiring people to fight against the unjust practice ever since. He has started a foundation, saved land, been in documentary movies, spoken at thousands of community meetings and shown thousands of people the destruction of mountaintop removal first hand by opening his property up visitors.

To learn more about this incredible man click here – http://earthjustice.org/mountain-heroes/larry-gibson

Click here to be a hero – http://earthjustice.org/mymtrstory

Posted in Environment, Green Energy, unemployment | Leave a Comment »

We Have Unemployed Workers, a Need for Public Works, and Money at the Top to Pay For It. Now We Need Political Will…

Posted by carldavidson on January 16, 2013

Decaying infrastructure costing families $3,100 a year, engineers warn

By Jon Schmitz 

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Jan 16, 2013 – A leading organization of engineering professionals issued another warning Tuesday about the condition of the nation’s infrastructure, saying that current investment trends threaten millions of jobs and trillions of dollars in economic activity.

A report commissioned by the American Society of Civil Engineers said under-investment stretches across the spectrum of American infrastructure, including roads, bridges, power lines, water and sewer systems, ports and waterways.

"Deteriorating infrastructure has a cascading effect on our nation’s economy," said Gregory DiLoreto, ASCE president. "If we don’t invest now, all Americans will wind up paying more in the long run."

While the report, "Failure to Act: The Impact of Current Infrastructure Investment on America’s Economic Growth," was filled with figures in the millions, billions and trillions, one smaller item might resonate more: The spending deficiency will cost the typical household $3,100 a year by 2020 if present trends continue, it said.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Community, Economy, Infrastructure, unemployment | Leave a Comment »

The Myth of the Job Creator

Posted by carldavidson on January 5, 2013

[Editor’s Note: Not only is increased demand in the form of increased purchase orders the real spur to new hiring, it’s also important that the demand be targeted. Increasing demand for goods produced in China at Walmart, for example, will create jobs in China. But if we increase demand for domestic goods and services by building local infrastructure such as the ‘Smart Grid’ and other clean and green energy projects, then much of the demand will be for increased local labor and local goods.]

By RP Watkins
Beaver County Blue via Daily Kos

The popular notion of the so-called “Job Creator” is a myth. Yet the very idea of Job Creators represents the most basic argument in the Supply Side story, a concept which postulates that economic growth requires expanding the means of production. The term Job Creator has been repeated and spun so frequently on Capitol Hill and across America, almost exclusively from Conservatives, that it has become accepted wisdom that job growth is determined by the means of production, the supply-side of the economy. It is not.

The reason is so stunningly simple and basic that it’s almost entirely invisible by politicians and pundits alike. This is because contrary to the supply-side mantra, most businesses are unwilling to expand hiring unless the new jobs are justified by sufficient Market Demand. It is for this reason that the popular supply-side policies of tax cuts and credits have done little to stimulate domestic hiring. If anything businesses have converted the government largesse of lower taxes into enhanced profitability, with little in the way of new jobs materializing.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in budget crisis, Economy, Green Energy, Green Jobs, unemployment | 1 Comment »

« Previous Entries
 
Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 87 other followers

%d bloggers like this: