Our 12th CD PDA Chapter is part of this Committee. We are working to make this an important national event. HELP US FILL THE BUSES!
Contact Tina Shannon if you want to go,
via email or 724-683-1925
Come with the MLK 50th Anniversary Committee
to a March on Washington
August 24th 2013
to continue the fight for jobs and voting rights
Leaving from IBEW Hall, Sassafras Lane in Vanport/Beaver
Departure time : 3am Returning: 11pm
Pennsylvania AFL-CIO
Beaver County Blue via Phillylabor.com
The state legislature will convene on Monday, June 3rd to begin crafting a final 2013-2014 budget. We need to make sure that the state budget supports all working families in Pennsylvania.
Pennsylvania is facing a $500 million deficit. We rank 49th in the nation in job creation, which is reflected by our high unemployment rate. Governor Corbett has cut state funding by $1 billion to our school districts since he took office in 2011, while giving a $1 billion tax break to businesses. In February, Governor Corbett proposed yet another budget that is not in Pennsylvania’s best interest, making even more cuts in education and other areas necessary to keep our great state running. Corbett’s budget continues the phase out of the Capital Stock and Franchise Tax (CSFT), costing taxpayers approximately $365 million a year, and fails to expand Medicaid, which would insure half a million hard-working, low income Pennsylvanians at very little cost to the State.
On Wednesday, May 29, House Republican leaders introduced a 2013-2014 budget that is $100 million less than Governor Corbett’s budget that he proposed in February.
Continue reading Will Pennsylvania Take North Carolina’s Austerity Path?
Recent collapse of I-5 bridge in Washington State due to lack of repairs
By CUNY CED
Pittsburgh, PA is the home of a new worker cooperative, the ‘Clean and Green Laundry.’ The industrial-scale cleaning firm was brought into being by a joint effort of the United Steel Workers and the City University of New York School of Law’s Community Economic Development (CED) Clinic, both of whom are in a new partnership with the Mondragon Cooperatives, the largest worker-owned cooperative in the world, located in Spain.
Under the new partnership, the CED Clinic, in collaboration with Pennsylvania-based Regional Housing Legal Services, will help launch the job-creating effort, an eco-friendly laundry based on Mondragon’s cooperative model.
Pittsburgh Clean & Green aims to re-employ 100 primarily minority laundry workers, who were laid off when their Sodexho Corporation laundry closed. They will work in a new state-of-the-art facility in Pittsburgh’s Central District.
Photo: Industrial laundry similar to ‘Clean & Green’
CUNY’s CED Clinic will provide legal support for a new model of unionized worker cooperatives—called “union coops”—recently launched by Mondragon, the United Steelworkers union (USW), and the Ohio Employment Ownership Center (OEOC).
“Union coops can create well-paying, democratically run workplaces in communities hard hit by the economic recession,” explains Carmen Huertas-Noble, associate professor and director of the CED Clinic. “The union component of the model provides front line worker-owners with the security of a collective bargaining agreement and leverages the organizational expertise and economic power of the labor movement.”
Continue reading ‘Clean and Green’ Industrial Laundry Comes to Pittsburgh as a Worker Cooperative
By Michael Shank& Elizabeth Kucinich
Beaver County Blue via Fox News Opinion
May 15, 2013 – That Washington is holding defense cuts responsible for slow economic growth is a specious argument at best. War spending is unproductive and inflationary. Modern defense costs are capital intensive, not labor intensive, making the industry inefficient as a job creator.
The defense industry has a presence in congressional districts across this country, so cuts affect every member. But every district in the U.S. has pressing infrastructure, education, health and environmental needs, and the return on the taxpayer’s dollar is much higher when invested on these areas.
Instead of concentrating money on capital intensive, military hardware purposed for destruction, and causing long term economic drain, our very limited and valuable economic resources should be invested in building the true strength and capacity of our economy, our nation, and her people.
During the heightened banking crisis in 2009, Rep. James Oberstar, then Chair of House Transportation Committee, called for a massive Eisenhower-level of investment in transportation infrastructure. He was right.
The American Society of Civil Engineers estimates that the U.S. requires $3.6 trillion in infrastructure investment by 2020 to bring our grade D+ standards to safe standards.
This is exactly what we need: to put bridge-builders to work rather than funding technology and personnel to destroy bridges, and to take tank-making factories and repurpose them to build high-speed trains.
In prioritizing military spending, Congress is cutting the very programs that can actually strengthen our economy: Cutting federal assistance to the states, forcing them to lay off teachers, firefighters, and social workers; cutting opportunities for job creation, training, and placement programs; and eviscerating funding for children’s programs and assistance for seniors.
These actions make no economic sense.
Continue reading Military spending is not right way to boost America’s economic security
BY JESSE JACKSON
Beaver county Blue via Chicago Sun-Times
May 13, 2013 – The student loan burden is reaching crisis proportions. Young Americans are being saddled with unsustainable debts. A New York Federal Reserve Bank study found that a stunning 43 percent of 25-year-olds had student loan debts in 2012. Debt now averages over $25,000 for graduates of four-year colleges.
Student loan debt now is about $1 trillion. The only kind of household debt that continued to rise through the recession, student loans now exceed credit card debt and rank second only to mortgages. The percentage of borrowers who are more than 90 days delinquent has risen to 17 percent, up from 10 percent in 2004.
These are the young people who’ve done everything we told them to do. They worked hard, stayed out of trouble, got admitted to college and sacrificed to succeed. Then they graduated, burdened with staggering debt, into the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. Many can’t find jobs; those who do often end up with low-wage and part-time work and debts they can’t repay.
Student debt is itself a huge obstacle to the recovery. Unless their parents have money, young Americans who achieve the most can’t begin to save for a down payment on a home, start a business or save for retirement.
This crisis stems from the successful conservative efforts to starve government. Cash-strapped state governments cut the contributions made to public colleges and universities. The cost of college was slowly privatized, with more and more left to the student. Those with affluent parents had no problem; those with working parents had to take on debt.
Now the crisis is coming to a head. The sequester and other budget cuts are forcing further cutbacks.
Continue reading Banksters Devouring Our Future: Student Loan Crisis is Coming to a Head
Click photo for video
By CHRIS KARDISH
Beaver County Blue via AP
May 6, 2013 – RALEIGH — More than two dozen members of the NAACP and other activists were arrested Monday as part of continuing protests of Republican policies in the state capital, bringing to dozens the number of nonviolent demonstrators facing charges.
The demonstrators were arrested Monday by Raleigh and General Assembly police. The number of arrests, as well as the size of the crowd that turned out to offer support, grew from last Monday’s demonstrations, when 17 were arrested.
General Assembly Police Chief Jeff Weaver said law enforcement officials decided to admit them despite last week’s arrests while they determine what the law permits. He said those arrested most recently will face the same charges of second-degree trespassing, failure to disperse on command and the displaying of signs or placards, which violates building rules.
The group arrested Monday included Barber’s 20-year-old son, William Joseph Barber III, a student at North Carolina Central University; William Chafe, former dean of Arts and Sciences at Duke University; Robert Korstad, a professor of public policy and history at Duke; Jacquelyn Dowd Hall, an historian at the University of North Carolina; Charles van der Horst, a professor at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine and members of the social justice group Raging Grannies.
“I started in 1954 at the Youth March for Integrated Schools in New York,” said Vicki Ryder of Raging Grannies. “I’ve been doing this for a long time.”
By Brenda Waters
KDKA News
May 3, 2013 – ALIQUIPPA (KDKA) — The city of Aliquippa is taking a stand against gun violence and they’re starting with legislators who make the laws to the people in the community.
Mayor Dwan Walker called for all hands on deck, when it comes to fighting what many see as an epidemic that is sweeping the nation.
The chief of police, several council members, a representative from an agency called Cease Fire, clergy and funeral Director Antonio Pitts joined the mayor.
“I see families on a regular being torn apart,” Pitts says.
The community has come together in support of background checks for every gun sold.
Continue reading City Of Aliquippa Takes Stand Against Gun Violence
Smart power: Andrew Brown, an engineer at Florida Power & Light, monitors equipment in one of the utility’s smart grid diagnostic centers.
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
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”).
Continue reading Green Jobs via the Smart Grid: Now The Task Is To Make It Global
Beaver County Blue: Voice of the 17th CD of Progressive Democrats of America 