All posts by carldavidson

Banks, Debt, unemployment, Youth and students

Strangling the New Working Class in Its Crib

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College Dropouts are Drowning in Debt

By Suzy Khimm
The Washington Post

WASHINGTON, May 29, 2012 — As the nation amasses more than $1 trillion in student loans, education experts say a vexing new problem has emerged: A growing number of young people have a mountain of debt but no degree to show for it.

Nearly 30 percent of college students who took out loans dropped out of school, up from less than a quarter of students a decade ago, according to an analysis of government data earlier this year by think tank Education Sector. College dropouts are also among the most likely to default on their loans, falling behind at a rate four times that of graduates.

That is raising new questions about the wisdom of decades of public policy that focused on increasing access to higher learning but paid less attention to what happens once students arrive on campus. And some education experts have begun to argue that starting college — and going into debt to pay for it — without a clear plan for a diploma is a recipe for disaster.

"They have the economic burden of the debt but they do not get the benefit of higher income and higher levels of employment that one gets with a college degree," said Jack Remondi, chief operating officer at Sallie Mae, the nation’s largest private student lender.

Continue reading Strangling the New Working Class in Its Crib →

2012 Election, African-Americans, Right Wing, Voting Rights

Update on Challenging Voter ID

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Yet Another Reason to Defeat All GOP Candidates—If You Needed One

 

Viviette Applewhite is 93-year-old and has voted in nearly every election for the last 60 years. She marched with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., in Georgia. She has tried for years to obtain photo ID to no avail. Under Pennsylvania’s new voter ID law, Ms. Applewhite’s vote will not be counted. She is a plaintiff in our lawsuit to stop voter ID.

Learn more about ACLU-PA’s challenge to Pennsylvania’s unconstitutional voter ID law at: http://www.aclupa.org/legal/legaldocket/applewhiteetalvcommonwealt/index

2012 Election, Civil Liberties, GOP, labor, Racism, Right Wing

April 4 Vigil Vows to Fight GOP Efforts to Deny Voting Rights

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HB 934 Exposed as ‘Modern-Day Poll Tax

By Carl Davidson
Beaver County Blue

Some 80 labor and civil rights activists, together with a few elected officials, gathered at dusk at the Beaver County Courthouse April 4 for a candlelight vigil. The somber but militant event commemorated the anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and protested the current efforts of rightwing PA Republicans to block citizens from voting in 2012.

mlkrally 008 “They’re declaring war on us,” said Lynwood Alford, a member of the Beaver-Lawrence Central Labor Council and leader of the Minority Coalition. ‘Taking away our voting rights is taking away the little power we have in the fight for survival.”

Alford repeated the refrain several times as he introduced new speakers. The vigil was sponsored by the Beaver-Lawrence Central Labor Council, SEIU Local 668, the USW, and the Beaver County NAACP. The 12 CD Progressive Democrats of America also endorsed the vigil, and turned out a good-sized contingent.

The target of everyone’s anger was the passage into law of HB 934 last month, the so-called ‘Voter ID Law’.

Continue reading April 4 Vigil Vows to Fight GOP Efforts to Deny Voting Rights →

Community, Infrastructure, trade unions, Youth and students

Occupy Pittsburgh and Transit Union Join Forces vs. Cuts

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Protesters Demand More Public Transit Funding

By Noah Brode
Essential Public Radio

April 4, 2012 – Several dozen protesters gathered outside the City-County Building in downtown Pittsburgh Wednesday to decry proposed public transit cuts.

Occupy Pittsburgh and the local Amalgamated Transit Union teamed up to demand that the state provide more funding to the Port Authority of Allegheny County. PAT is facing a $64 million budget deficit, and plans for a 35% service cut to take effect this September.

ATU Local 85 President Patrick McMahon said Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett must take action to fund public transit.

“After the public hearings for the next round of service cuts, our governor made some comments about our contract, and he was going to ‘wait and see’ what happens before he does anything with transit,” said McMahon. “We should not be waiting to see. I wrote a letter to him asking him to get involved.”

Continue reading Occupy Pittsburgh and Transit Union Join Forces vs. Cuts →

Afghanistan, antiwar, Militarism

Where Can We Find a Congressman to Speak for the Antiwar Majority?

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CNN Poll: Afghan War Support Hits New Low

Beaver County Peace Links via CNN Political Unit

(CNN, April 2) – Support for the war in Afghanistan has fallen to an all-time low with the majority of Americans saying the U.S. should withdraw all of its troops from Afghanistan before the 2014 deadline set by the Obama administration, according to a new poll.

The CNN/ORC International survey released Friday indicated only 25% of Americans favored the war in the Asian country. A majority of Republicans voiced opposition to it, for the first time since the war began in 2001.

Just 37% of the general public said things are going well for the U.S. in Afghanistan, while only 34% said America is winning the war. The approval likely contributed to the 55% of those surveyed who said the U.S. should remove all of its troops from the country before 2014.

Twenty-two percent expressed support for the 2014 timetable and an additional 22% said the U.S. should keep some troops in Afghanistan beyond 2014.

Leaders at the Pentagon have recently responded to low poll numbers by stressing the importance of fighting the war on the ground.

Continue reading Where Can We Find a Congressman to Speak for the Antiwar Majority? →

health care, Manufacturing, Steelworkers, trade unions

Aliquippa’s 1937 J&L Workers Come Up In Supreme Court Wrangling Once Again—This Time Over Health Care

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Ten Steelworkers, Five Justices, and the Commerce Clause

By Amy Davidson
The New Yorker

If there had been Twitter, instead of news tickers, in February, 1937, reporters and other observers would have been using it to follow the arguments before the Supreme Court in National Labor Relations Board v. Jones & Laughlin Steel Corp.

It was the central case of five, argued in one extraordinary round, which challenged the constitutionality of the National Labor Relations Act, also known as the Wagner Act.

The J. & L. dispute involved ten steelworkers who had been fired from the company’s Aliquippa, Pennsylvania, mills for trying to organize a union. As with this week’s hearings on the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, those deliberations were being watched with an anxiety that extended well beyond any concern for the protagonists in the suit, or even the law in question, to an entire vision of government.

Jones & Laughlin and its companion cases involved the Commerce Clause, the constitutional conductor for a whole orchestra of New Deal programs and Franklin D. Roosevelt’s more urgent efforts to pull the country out of the Great Depression. (It gives Congress the power “to regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian tribes.”) The post-1937 conception of the Commerce clause has, as Jeffrey Toobin noted yesterday, become an assumed part of any number of government efforts today; it is the defense for challenges to the individual mandate but also to other aspects of the A.C.A., like provisions protecting people with preëxisting conditions.

Continue reading Aliquippa’s 1937 J&L Workers Come Up In Supreme Court Wrangling Once Again—This Time Over Health Care →

2012 Election, African-Americans, Racism, Right Wing, Violence

Tragedies, Crimes and Trayvon Martin

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How Newt Played the ‘Race Card’ Against Obama’s Decency

By Carl Davidson
United Steel Workers Blog

Every so often an outrage happens that lights up the sky, like when lighting strikes at night, and all of a sudden everything previously hidden in darkness and shadow stands out in sharp, bright relief.

The murder of Trayvon Martin was such an event, even though it took a while for the rolling thunder of its full impact to spread across the country. Slowly at first, and then in greater leaps, the news media, after being nudged, picked it up.

Continue reading Tragedies, Crimes and Trayvon Martin →

2012 Election, African-Americans, Civil Liberties, GOP, Right Wing

Yet Another Reason to Defeat the GOP Across the Board

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More of the Same: Voter Suppression = Corporate Domination

By Ja-Rei Wang
AFL-CIO Now

March 21, 2012 – Pennsylvania has become the latest state to pass a voter ID law in the Republican-led nationwide effort to deny the vote to millions.

H.B. 934, which Gov. Tom Corbett signed into law last Wednesday, will effectively disenfranchise 691,000 Pennsylvanians who do not currently have a driver’s license, according to a 2006 Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT) estimate. African Americans, seniors, people with disabilities, the working poor and students are twice as likely as others to lack ID. Voter ID bills introduced across the country would disenfranchise more than 21 million eligible voters.

Continue reading Yet Another Reason to Defeat the GOP Across the Board →

Economy, Green Jobs, Infrastructure, unemployment

Our Infrastructure Emergency Can Be a Source for Green Jobs

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Locked and Dammed: The Region’s 23 Locks and Dams Are on the Brink of Failure

By Len Boselovic
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
This is the first of a four-part series.

March 18, 2012 – Pittsburgh’s three rivers, an economic engine since Lewis and Clark departed the city for their epic exploration of the West, are flirting with disaster.

The region’s 23 locks and dams, which annually move 33 million tons of coal, petroleum and other commodities that fuel the local economy, are on the brink of failure, according to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the federal agency charged with maintaining them.

Continue reading Our Infrastructure Emergency Can Be a Source for Green Jobs →