All posts by carldavidson

2012 Election, budget crisis, unemployment

The Real Crisis: When Everything Decent Is ‘Off the Table’

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By Carl Davidson
Beaver County Blue

Leave it to the New York Times to look for a silver lining in the dark cloud of a Wall St-right wing victory on ‘The Deal’ over the phony budget crisis.

“Democrats can look forward to the expiration of the Bush tax cuts next year,” says their Aug 1, 2011 editorial, “and will have to make the case in the 2012 elections for new lawmakers who will undo the damage.”

In other words, the bondholders will be paid on time, the markets will be stabilized for a short time, and matters will continue to get worse for the jobless and the rest of us. Tighten your belt another notch and get used to it. As for 2012, you have ‘nowhere to go’, so don’t expect much.

Continue reading The Real Crisis: When Everything Decent Is ‘Off the Table’ →

budget crisis, health care, Right Wing, safety net

How To Deal Seriously with Health Costs

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Save Lives and Money by

Expanding Medicare to All

By Dr. Quentin Young
Beaver County Blue via Fire Dog Lake

July 31, 2011 – With media attention focused on the debt-ceiling drama in Washington, and with so many Americans rightly preoccupied with the frightening level of joblessness and bleak state of the economy, it might seem strange to urge a national celebration of Medicare’s 46th anniversary this Saturday, July 30.

After all, if we’re to believe top lawmakers, Medicare is part of the problem, right? Aren’t we supposed to be talking about raising the eligibility age from 65 to 67, reducing benefits, increasing seniors’ co-pays and deductibles or, even more dire, abolishing the program altogether and handing seniors vouchers to buy private insurance?

Wrong. Despite its market-obsessed detractors and those who would weaken the program in the name of deficit reduction, Medicare is the solution, not the problem. More precisely, an improved Medicare for all – a single-payer health system – is the right prescription for treating not only our health care woes, but our ailing economy as well.

How so?

The biggest albatross around the neck of our health care system is the private insurance industry, which remains firmly entrenched under the new federal health law.

Continue reading How To Deal Seriously with Health Costs →

budget crisis, Environment, Right Wing

Debt Hoax Swindles: Turn on the Lights, and Watch the Roaches Run

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Hidden In The Budget:

The End Of Almost Every

Major Environmental Regulation

By Ariel Schwartz

Today via Fast Company

walruses

Once the debt ceiling debate is settled, Congress is going to have to re-focus on the budget that almost shut down the government a few months ago. As part of that process, members of Congress have attached various provisions to the appropriations bills. One bill includes policy riders that deal with longstanding environmental rules–things like the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and the Endangered Species Act. It’s called the 2012 Interior and Environmental Appropriations bill [1] and as currently written, it would scale back or reverse decades of environmental protections, including:

Removing Clean Air Act protections

One rider on the bill would nix the EPA’s funding to enforce the Clean Air Act’s upcoming Mercury and Air Toxics standards for power plants, which are intended to cut soot and smog pollution. The same rider would stop the EPA from enacting the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule (aka the "good neighbor policy"), which limits power plant pollution that drifts into other states.

Most of the regulations being targeted are Clean Air Act rules put on the books in 1990 (signed by the first President Bush). "These are things people have been aware of for a long time," says Tony Kreindler, director of strategic communications at the Environmental Defense Fund. "Most companies out there that are affected have been preparing for a long time." But Kreindler explains that some companies–such as American Electric Power–have been bitterly fighting the rules, saying they haven’t had enough time to prepare, "while all along everyone else has known somehow that the day has been coming for 20 years."

If funding for the Mercury and Air Toxics rule is upheld, Kreindler estimates that it could prevent 17,000 premature deaths. Another 17,000 could be saved by the good neighbor policy. So if these policies are not upheld, well, do the math.

Continue reading Debt Hoax Swindles: Turn on the Lights, and Watch the Roaches Run →

2012 Election, Economy, Environment

Save Us from the ‘Business Guy’ Candidates

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Mitt Romney at Screen Machine in Ohio

By Carl Davidson
Beaver County Blue

Some things just drive you nuts.

Take Mitt Romney. Yesterday the GOP’s presidential wannabe toured Screen Machine, a factory in Pataskala, Ohio, just outside Columbus.  The plant make heavy construction equipment, rock crushers to be exact.

Romney and the owners, Doug and Steve Cohen, held a typical photo-op. Mitt took the occasion to blast both Obama and ‘government’ as ‘bad for business.’

Really? What did Mitt have in mind? A wimpy stimulus package? A failure to build more infrastructure? In that case, he might have a point.

Continue reading Save Us from the ‘Business Guy’ Candidates →

Environment, Marcellus Shale

The Marcellus Shale’s Bigger Picture

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Clean Water, Green Energy and the Big Blue Marble

By Carl Davidson
Beaver County Blue

A Reuter’s story this morning about the rising threat to the water supplies of 12 East Coast cities connected a few dots for me. The threat comes from burning carbon and climate change, which will raise sea levels and wreak havoc in numerous ways.

"Rising sea waters may threaten U.S. coastal cities later this century, while the Midwest and East Coast are at high risk for intense storms, and the West’s water supplies could be compromised, "the story led off. "These are among the expected water-related effects of climate change on 12 cities across the nation over the remainder of the century, according to a study released on Tuesday by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), a leading environmental group.

"A lot of people think of climate change in the global context, but they don’t think about the local impact climate change might have, particularly on water-related issues," said Steve Fleischli, a senior attorney with NRDC’s water program."

Perhaps it’s because my daughters and grandkids live in New York City that the story caught my eye. ‘We’ll have to make room for them here in Beaver County,’ up in the hills on the west slope of the Alleghenies, I first thought.

But what about the Marcellus shale fracking by the gas drillers? We might not have any decent water here, either.

Continue reading The Marcellus Shale’s Bigger Picture →

Blue Dogs, PDA, safety net

Messages Sent to Congressman Atmire:

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No  cuts in Social Security!

No cuts in Medicare!

Tax Speculation to Fund Clean Energy and Green Manufacturing Jobs!

Windmills Not Weapons, End the Wars!

Join us for our ‘Brown Bag Lunch’ Vigils every third Wednesday at 12 noon at  Altmire’s Aliquippa office on McMinn St near the Dairy Queen

budget crisis, Wall Street

Turn the Tables on a Rigged Game

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By Carl Davidson

Beaver County Blue

Our local conservative newspaper, the Pittsburgh Business Times, carries an instructive story this morning, July 21, 2011, about how to solve our revenue problems, only it fails to make the critical point. So I’ll lend a hand. It says:

“Pennsylvania casinos brought in $81.4 million in tax revenue from table games during the fiscal year that ended last month, according to the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board. Of that, about $71.3 million went to the state’s general fund and another $10 million went to local municipalities and counties that host the state’s 10 table game casinos.

“The Rivers Casino on the North Shore was responsible for $8 million in state tax revenue and $1.2 million in local payments through its table games operations during the past fiscal year.”

It goes on to break the numbers down even more.

Now I can enjoy a day at the Casino. I recently took my Mom and stepfather, a retired J&L worker, to the Rivers for his 84th birthday. I hit the nickel slot for $1.50 on my first try, but ended up leaving $5 in the hole.

Continue reading Turn the Tables on a Rigged Game →

elections

Why ‘Middle Class’ Drives Me Bonkers

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By Carl Davidson

Beaver County Blue

Here’s a perfectly decent chart showing how the value created by increasingly productive Pennsylvania workers ‘trickles up’ to the top. Fine, then comes the claim that the ‘middle class’ is shrinking because workers aren’t getting a fair share.

What drives me nuts is that the same people are called ‘middle class’ and, indirectly, also ‘working class.’  Why do we need to be in two classes? The first is entirely arbitrary and, as the chart shows, only has to do with income levels. The second is about your relation to production, and not owning any means of production, ‘be your payment high or low’ (Marx).

Here’s the rub. The use of ‘middle class’ can be heard to be dismissive of those workers in greatest need. We need unity between both groups, those in greatest need and those more recently pushed down. ‘Working class’ is a fine inclusive term for that. Let’s brush aside the disdain from those who think themselves our ‘betters’ and take more pride in who we are.

Bob Dylan, for goodness sake, even uses the word ‘proletariat’ in his last album, another fine Latin word for ‘people of no property.’ But I’ll settle for ‘working class’ for now.

Environment, Marcellus Shale, Steelworkers

Is Wider Unity on the Shale Issue Possible?

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A Stronger Steelworkers’ Voice Is Needed

in the Marcellus Anti-Fracking Movement

A Stronger Steelworkers’ Voice Is Needed

in the Marcellus Shale Anti-Fracking Movement

By Carl Davidson
Beaver County Blue

There’s a specter haunting Western PA. It’s the prospect of a working class divided by a fear of water pollution destroying the property values of small homeowners on one side, and on the other side, by the promise of new wealth from the exploitation of natural gas in the Marcellus and Utica shale deposits.

A similar fear divides West Virginians over ‘mountaintop removal’ mining. Little towns are split between those who want food on the table and those fearful of poisoning their children.

Steelworkers can certainly see the problem in our own terms. It takes a lot of steel pipe to drill down two to four miles, then drill out a horizontally for another mile in a dozen directions. The tube mills are getting the orders and steelworkers are back to work. On the other hand, steelworkers know the dangers of poisoning the ground and the rivers better than most.

Continue reading Is Wider Unity on the Shale Issue Possible? →

fair trade, labor

Vigil Against the Columbia Free Trade Agreement

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Sign in Colombia: ‘No to the Free Trade Agreement with the U.S.

Monday, July 11    12:00 noon

Congressman Jason Altmire’s Office

Aliquippa Office

2110 McLean Street

Aliquippa, PA 15001

Fifty-one union leaders were assassinated in Colombia last year — more than in the rest of the world combined.  At least 17 have been assassinated so far this year.

As the Colombia Free Trade Agreement races towards a vote in Congress, our elected officials will be forced to pick a side.  Will they stand with union members, small farmers, human rights advocates and others in the United States and Colombia who oppose the FTA?   Or will they stand with the transnational corporations who profit off the violent suppression of workers’ rights, the forced displacement of Afro-Colombians from their land and the dumping of subsidized agricultural commodities?

So far, Congressman Altmire is "undecided" on the Colombia FTA.  Our time to influence his vote is quickly running out.  Please join us as we hold vigil outside his office at noon on Monday, July 11th as part of a national day of action.  We’ll be reading the names of our murdered brothers and sisters in Colombia and other remembrances to the Congressman’s office.

Sponsored by: United Steelworkers and PA Fair Trade Coalition

Co-Sponsors: 4th CD Chapter of Progressive Democrats of America

RSVP at amy@citizenstrade.org