All posts by carldavidson

elections, GOP, Voting Rights

No End to Republican Plans to Rig the Vote

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The GOP’s New Electoral College Scheme Includes Pennsylvania

By Reid Wilson
Beaver County Blue via National Journal

Dec 17, 2012 – Republicans alarmed at the apparent challenges they face in winning the White House are preparing an all-out assault on the Electoral College system in critical states, an initiative that would significantly ease the party’s path to the Oval Office.

Senior Republicans say they will try to leverage their party’s majorities in Democratic-leaning states in an effort to end the winner-take-all system of awarding electoral votes. Instead, bills that will be introduced in several Democratic states would award electoral votes on a proportional basis.

Already, two states — Maine and Nebraska — award an electoral vote to the winner of each congressional district. The candidate who wins the most votes statewide takes the final two at-large electoral votes. Only once, when President Obama won a congressional district based in Omaha in 2008, has either of those states actually split their vote.

But if more reliably blue states like Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin were to award their electoral votes proportionally, Republicans would be able to eat into what has become a deep Democratic advantage.

Continue reading No End to Republican Plans to Rig the Vote →

Economy, labor, unemployment, Youth and students

Snapshots of Ourselves, the Working Class

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Who are the 23 Million ‘Underemployed’ Workers?

By Heidi Shierholz
Beaver County Blue via EPI.org

Nov 28, 2012 – The number 23 million is often loosely used in public debate to mean the number of people “looking for work.”

But who does this number count and not count? First, it includes 12.3 million people who meet the official definition of unemployment: jobless workers who are actively seeking work.

Second, it includes the 8.3 million workers who are working part time but who want and are available for full-time work (“involuntary” part-timers).

Third, it includes the 2.5 million people who want a job and are available to work, but have given up actively seeking work (“marginally attached” workers). These three groups together—23.1 million strong—make up the group commonly referred to as the “underemployed.”

Who is not counted in that 23 million? Workers who are underemployed in a “skills or experience” sense (e.g., a mechanical engineer working as a barista). Unfortunately, there is no official measure that counts people who are underemployed in this way.

The figure below shows how the number of “underemployed” workers has evolved since 2000. The number of underemployed workers increased over the weak business cycle of 2000–2007 from 10.0 million in the fourth quarter of 2000 to 13.2 million in the fourth quarter of 2007. It then shot up in the Great Recession to a peak of 26.9 million in Oct. 2009 before modestly improving to its current level.

Organizing, Racism, Seniors, Voting Rights

Here We Go Again, Get Ready for Round Two

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Judge Expects Summer Trial on Pennsylvania’s Voter ID Law

By Karen Langley
Beaver County Blue via Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

HARRISBURG, Dec 13, 2012 – The legal battle over the Pennsylvania voter ID law is set to continue for months after a judge this morning said he anticipates a summer trial on a request for a permanent injunction.

The law requiring photo identification at the polls was the subject of an extended courtroom battle that resulted in an order lifting the requirement for the election last month while postponing a decision on permanently stopping the law.

Commonwealth Court Judge Robert Simpson, who issued the temporary injunction, said he expects to issue an order in the coming days scheduling a trial for the summer. The schedule would be intended to allow time for the Supreme Court to review the decision before the November 2013 elections.

Senior Deputy Attorney General Patrick Cawley, arguing for the state, suggested holding the trial sooner so the future of the law could be resolved before the May 21 municipal primary. But attorneys for the parties challenging the law argued more time is needed for legal discovery.

The parties referred to the possibility of a hearing in the spring to determine whether the law will be enforced during the May primary election. Karen Langley: klangley@post-gazette.com or 717-787-2141 .

elections, Venezuela, Voting Rights

Western PA Labor Lawyer Checks Out Election in Venezuela

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Robin Alexander, second from right

In Venezuela for the Election, I Learned a Lesson in Democracy

By Robin Alexander
Beaver County Blue via UE News

I had the opportunity to accompany* the presidential election in Venezuela as part of a delegation of 245 members of government, election commissions, journalists, professors, judges and representatives of women’s, human rights, and other NGOs from across the world.** As our election approaches and I have watched with outrage the efforts by the Republican Party to limit access and the right to vote here in Pennsylvania and a variety of other states, I find myself wishing that our system here in the US was as fair and democratic as that in Venezuela.

Finger dipped in ink to show that you voted Elections are held on Sundays to make it easier for working people to vote. A major outreach effort has resulted in the registration of 96.5% of eligible voters. Although voting is not compulsory, 81% of the population voted in the last election. Sophisticated technology is used to eliminate all possibilities of fraud or manipulation of data. In addition, the voting machines issue a receipt that can be viewed by the voter to confirm that his or her vote has been properly registered. These papers are then placed by the voters in more traditional ballot boxes and, after the polls close, an astounding 54% of those boxes are counted manually to ensure that the final tape from the voting machine is correct.

The election was hard fought, but Hugo Chávez was re-elected with an 11% margin and the process was so unquestionably democratic that the opposition candidate, Henrique Capriles, conceded defeat gracefully, stating “The will of the people is sacred.”

Continue reading Western PA Labor Lawyer Checks Out Election in Venezuela →

Economy, Environment, fair trade, Green Energy, Marcellus Shale, Wall Street

Exporting Gas And Oil Will Not Erase The Trade Deficit

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Western PA as a Case in Point

US trade deficit 2012

By EMS News
Beaver County Blue via Culture of Life News

The US continues the program of selling commodity raw materials while importing manufactured goods.  This futile trade deal is also not working because always, the value-added labor that goes into production is lost when a country trades this way.  If a country has a small population and lots of raw materials, it can get rich doing this but not a country with 350 million people.  Even Saudi Arabia, due to making birth control illegal, has a rapidly growing population that is eating into oil export values and soon will erase it entirely.  Japan, with half the population of the US, is seeing its trade decline, too.  While importing energy due to Fukushima.

The trade deficit was hardly mentioned during the last election.  It is as if it doesn’t exist.  Even though it is the core problem within our economy, one that has been papered over, literally, by the US printing trillions of extra dollars.  Inflation has been kept down due entirely to trade partners holding excess US dollars in FOREX accounts overseas.  But the US is desperate to generate some funds to cover the river of red ink flowing through our economy so of course, we do this by exporting lumber, gasoline, gas and oil as well as other primitive commodity products.

Naturally, this doesn’t plug the giant hole in our economy! Nonetheless, DC pundits and politicians tell us gravely, we must do this more and more and eventually it will fix things. Here is the latest delusional story from DC misleading people about the trade deficit: Natural gas exports: A boon to the economy – The Washington Post

Continue reading Exporting Gas And Oil Will Not Erase The Trade Deficit →

Environment, Green Energy, Infrastructure, Marcellus Shale

Fracking Fukushima, Batman—Is that a Natural Gas Well Making Undergrounds Explosions Near a Nuclear Power Plant?

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The Beaver Valley Nuclear Power Station in Shippingport, Pennsylvania.

By Paul E McGinniss
Beaver County Blue via EcoWatch

On Oct. 3, Chesapeake Energy was issued a permit by the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) to drill for natural gas by fracking one mile from the Beaver Valley Nuclear Power Station in Shippingport, Pennsylvania. 

This is disturbing news considering in January evidence proved that Ohio earthquakes were caused by a fracking wastewater injection well.

Shockingly, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s (NRC) regulation and oversight rules do not cover any related activity off site, including wastewater injection wells, oil and gas drilling—including fracking—or any other types of projects that are in near proximity to nuclear power plants.

So who oversees how drilling for oil and natural gas and related activity might affect the safety of nuclear power plants? Apparently no one.

According to Shale Reporter, an indendent website that provides an unbiased presentation of information about Marcellus Shale issues:

Continue reading Fracking Fukushima, Batman—Is that a Natural Gas Well Making Undergrounds Explosions Near a Nuclear Power Plant? →

Economy, Green Jobs, Manufacturing, unemployment

Worker-Owned Businesses Might Be Answer to Unemployment in City of Reading, PA – and Elsewhere

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Street scene in Reading

Concept means employees have stake in success of companies

By David Mekeel
Reading Eagle

Oct 27, 2012 – With poverty high in Reading, city officials are willing to try just about anything to create decent-paying jobs.

Friday afternoon, they heard a pitch for an idea that has worked elsewhere and might be just right in Reading.

Seattle-based filmmakers Melissa Young and Mark Dworkin, in town for the Berks Arts Council’s seventh annual Greater Reading Film Festival, were the featured guests at a lunchtime roundtable session focused on employee-owned businesses.

Young and Dworkin have created a documentary on the subject titled, "Shift Change: Putting Democracy to Work," which will be screened during the festival.

The film, and Friday’s discussion, centered around the concept of community-first businesses, in which employees have a real stake in the company.

"If the business does well, they do well," Dworkin said. "There’s an incentive to work hard, not to shirk off."

Employee-owned businesses can take many forms, Dworkin and Young said.

Some have no management structure at all, with decisions being made by consensus. Others have professional management, with an elected board of employees overseeing their decisions.

Continue reading Worker-Owned Businesses Might Be Answer to Unemployment in City of Reading, PA – and Elsewhere →

2012 Election, GOP, Obama, Racism, Right Wing

White Racial Resentment: The Elephant in the Room

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AP Poll: A Slight Majority of Americans Are Now Expressing Negative View Of Blacks

By Associated Press
October 27, 2012

WASHINGTON — Racial attitudes have not improved in the four years since the United States elected its first black president, an Associated Press poll finds, as a slight majority of Americans now express prejudice toward blacks whether they recognize those feelings or not.

Those views could cost President Barack Obama votes as he tries for re-election, the survey found, though the effects are mitigated by some people’s more favorable views of blacks.

Racial prejudice has increased slightly since 2008 whether those feelings were measured using questions that explicitly asked respondents about racist attitudes, or through an experimental test that measured implicit views toward race without asking questions about that topic directly.

In all, 51 percent of Americans now express explicit anti-black attitudes, compared with 48 percent in a similar 2008 survey. When measured by an implicit racial attitudes test, the number of Americans with anti-black sentiments jumped to 56 percent, up from 49 percent during the last presidential election. In both tests, the share of Americans expressing pro-black attitudes fell.

“As much as we’d hope the impact of race would decline over time … it appears the impact of anti-black sentiment on voting is about the same as it was four years ago,” said Jon Krosnick, a Stanford University professor who worked with AP to develop the survey.

Continue reading White Racial Resentment: The Elephant in the Room →