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Category Archives: Economy
Our Infrastructure Emergency Can Be a Source for Green Jobs
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
To Move Forward, We Still Need Unions, and in a Big Way
Robotics and High-Tech Manufacturing
Manufacturing Illusions
By Robert Reich
Beaver County Blue via Robert Reich’s Blog
Feb 18, 2012 – Suddenly, manufacturing is back – at least on the election trail. But don’t be fooled. The real issue isn’t how to get manufacturing back. It’s how to get good jobs and good wages back. They aren’t at all the same thing.
Republicans have become born-again champions of American manufacturing. This may have something to do with crucial primaries occurring next week in Michigan and the following week in Ohio, both of them former arsenals of American manufacturing.
Mitt Romney says he’ll "work to bring manufacturing back" to America by being tough on China, which he describes as "stealing jobs" by keeping value of its currency artificially low and thereby making its exports cheaper.
Rick Santorum promises to "fight for American manufacturing" by eliminating corporate income taxes on manufacturers and allowing corporations to bring their foreign profits back to American tax free as long as they use the money to build new factories.
President Obama has also been pushing a manufacturing agenda. Last month the President unveiled a six-point plan to eliminate tax incentives for companies to move offshore and create new lures for them to bring jobs home. "Our goal," he says, is to "create opportunities for hard-working Americans to start making stuff again."
Meanwhile, American consumers’ pent-up demand for appliances, cars, and trucks have created a small boomlet in American manufacturing – setting off a wave of hope, mixed with nostalgic patriotism, that American manufacturing could be coming back. Clint Eastwood’s Super Bowl "Halftime in America" hit the mood exactly.
Continue reading To Move Forward, We Still Need Unions, and in a Big Way
Steelworkers Back Obama & Criticize Romney on ‘Playing By the Rules’ in Trade Deals
USW Statement on Obama’s 2013 Trade Enforcement Budget
Pittsburgh (Feb. 12) – Leo W. Gerard, international president of the United Steelworkers (USW) issued the following statement today on hearing reports of President Obama’s budget proposal that’s going to Congress, asking millions for a new trade enforcement center and the resources to more effectively enforce U.S. trade laws:
“President Obama has acted to enforce America’s laws against unfair trade since coming to office and announced in his State of the Union address last month, a clear commitment to this effort. The USW is especially pleased to know the President’s budget will be asking for millions of dollars to arm his new Interagency Trade Enforcement Center (ITEC) with the resources needed to fight for American jobs.
“Too many American workers have had their jobs stolen from them by foreign unfair, predatory and illegal trade practices. Many of our trade competitors agree to the rules, but then fail to abide by them. Enforcing our laws – and the commitments other countries have made – must be high priority. President Obama is devoting resources to accomplish that goal.
“Our union members work hard and play by the rules. We want a government that will stand up to foreign unfair trade for all American workers. President Obama has demonstrated a willingness to do just that.
Continue reading Steelworkers Back Obama & Criticize Romney on ‘Playing By the Rules’ in Trade Deals
Structural Reform: The Case for Public State Banks
Meet Occupy Wall Street’s Favorite Banker
By Ryan Holeywell
SolidarityEconomy.net via Governing Magazine
Jan 4, 2012 – Try to find a bank president that’s beloved by supporters of the Occupy Wall Street movement. It’s not impossible. You’ll just have to travel to North Dakota.
Meet Eric Hardmeyer, who bears the unlikely distinction of being perhaps the only banker in America who, in addition to being embraced by Wall Street protesters, has been exalted by the likes of Michael Moore, Mother Jones magazine, and the Progressive States Network, among other progressive stalwarts.
That’s because Hardmeyer heads the Bank of North Dakota (BND), the country’s only publicly-owned state bank. The institution, located ironically enough in a solidly red state, has become the darling of progressives who have become frustrated with corporate banks they say helped cause the financial crisis and resulting credit crunch.
Now, state lawmakers nationwide are pushing for the North Dakota model to be replicated in their home states. Since 2010, state lawmakers in at least 16 states have introduced bills to create a state bank, something similar, or study the issue, according to a study by the National Conference of State Legislatures. So far, momentum is slow. The movement has yet to produce another Bank of North Dakota, but advocates are hoping to raise the issue again in 2012 legislative sessions. Their pitch: publicly-owned banks can help create jobs, generate revenue for the state, strengthen small banks, and lower the cost of borrowing for local governments by offering loans below market rate.
Hardmeyer, who was named bank president in 2001, hasn’t always been such a well-known figure. But his profile has been raised over the last year – including in Bloomberg BusinessWeek — and now he regularly fields calls from state lawmakers and other officials inquiring about his institution. “There hasn’t been a big push anywhere that I’m aware of until recently,” said Hardmeyer in a late December interview with Governing. “They’re interested in how it works, why it works, [and] what the roadblocks are.”
Continue reading Structural Reform: The Case for Public State Banks
The Banksters vs. the Rest of Us
Tale of Two Cities: GOP Tries to Convert
America’s ‘Bedford Falls’ Into ‘Pottersville’
By Leo Gerard
Beaver County Blue via HuffPost
In the iconic Christmas film, It’s a Wonderful Life, an angel offers the beleaguered main character, George Bailey, the stark choice between a hometown named for a cruel banker or one created by and for the middle class.
The banker’s town, Pottersville, is filled with bars, gambling dens and despair. The people’s town of Bedford Falls is made of hope, hard working middle class families, and their homes financed by the Bailey Brothers Building & Loan.
The film’s happy ending is the people of Bedford Falls banding together to rescue George Bailey and the Bailey Brothers Building & Loan that had given so many of them a leg up over the years. Republicans seek a different conclusion. They find middle class cooperation and community intolerable. They want the banker, Henry Potter, with his "every man for himself" philosophy to triumph. In the spirit of their self-centered mentor Ayn Rand, Republicans are trying to disfigure America so she resembles Pottersville.
A building and loan association, like the Bailey Brothers’, uses the savings of its members to provide mortgages to the depositors. Members essentially pool their money to give each other the opportunity to buy cars and homes. At one point in the film, George Bailey explains this concept to frightened depositors who are trying to withdraw their savings during the panic that led to bank runs in 1929.
Division on the Right: Why GOP Collapse on the Payroll Tax Could be a Turning Point Moment
By Robert Creamer
Beaver County Blue via HuffPost
Dec 23, 2011 – In recent American politics, every major shift in political momentum has resulted from an iconic battle.
In 1995 the tide of the 1994 "Republican Revolution" was reversed when Speaker Newt Gingrich and his new Republican House majority shut down the government in a battle over their attempts to cut Medicare to give tax breaks to the rich (sound familiar). The shutdown ended with – what pundits universally scored — as a victory for President Clinton. That legislative victory began Clinton’s march to overwhelming re-election victory in 1996.
In 2010, Democrats passed President Obama’s landmark health care reform. But they lost the battle for public opinion – and base motivation. That turned the political tide that had propelled President Obama to victory in 2008 and ultimately led to the drubbing Democrats took in the 2010 mid terms.
The Republican leadership’s collapse in the battle over extending the payroll tax holiday and unemployment benefits could also be a turning point moment that shifts the political momentum just as we enter the pivotal 2012 election year.
Here’s why:
1). Since the President launched his campaign for the American Jobs Act, he has driven Congressional Republicans into a political box canyon with very few avenues of escape. The jobs campaign has made it clearer and clearer to the voters that the "do nothing Republican Congress" bears responsibility for preventing the President from taking steps that would create jobs.
The New Blue Collar
Temporary Work, Lasting Poverty
And The American Warehouse
By Dave Jamieson
Progressive America Rising via HuffPost
JOLIET, Ill., and FONTANA, Calif. — Like nearly everyone else in Joliet without good job prospects, Uylonda Dickerson eventually found herself at the warehouses looking for work.
"I just needed a job," the 38-year-old single mother says.
Dickerson came to the right place. Over the past decade and a half, Joliet and its Will County environs southwest of Chicago have grown into one of the world’s largest inland ports, a major hub for dry goods destined for retail stores throughout the Midwest and beyond. With all the new distribution centers have come thousands of jobs at "logistics" companies — firms that specialize in moving goods for retailers and manufacturers. Many of these jobs are filled by Joliet’s African Americans, like Dickerson, and immigrants from Mexico and elsewhere in Latin America.
But many bottom-rung workers like Dickerson don’t work for the big corporations whose products are in the warehouses, or even the logistics companies that run them. They go to work for labor agencies that supply workers like Dickerson. Last year, she found work as a temp through one of the myriad staffing agencies that serve big-box retailers and their contractors. Thanks largely to the warehousing boom, Will County has developed one of the highest concentrations of temp agencies in the Midwest.
Dickerson, grateful to have even a temp job, was taken on as a "lumper" — someone who schleps boxes to and from trailers all day long. As unglamorous as her duties were, Dickerson became an essential cog in one of the most sophisticated machines in modern commerce — the Walmart supply chain. Walmart, the world’s largest private-sector employer, had contracted a company called Schneider Logistics to operate the warehouse. And Schneider, in turn, had its own contracts with staffing companies that supplied workers.
Recession Hitting Local African-Americans Hard
Housing equity has plummeted, taking families’ wealth with it
By Mark Roth
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Dec 5, 2011 – Joyce Davis began to see the change in Penn Hills after the recession hit.
Ms. Davis is executive director of the Lincoln Park Community Center, which runs a food pantry that serves about 150 families each month. About 90 percent of them are African-American.
Before the latest economic slump, said Ms. Davis, who is also head of the Penn Hills NAACP chapter, the pantry served only 90 to 100 families each month, and the main customers were elderly people and single mothers.
But in the last few years, she has seen more and more men who have either lost their jobs or can’t find work.
"They basically don’t have enough money to really take care of the needs of their families," she said. "I have had people come who have actually cried because they said ‘Before, I was making donations to the pantry, and now I need help from it.’ "
It doesn’t surprise her.
Continue reading Recession Hitting Local African-Americans Hard
Jobs Campaign: Why Workers Need Solidarity Across All Income Levels
North Hills Food Pantry
Wider Poverty Has Taken Root in Pittsburgh Area Suburbs
By Rachel Weaver and Jill King Greenwood
Beaver County Blue via PITTSBURGH TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Nov 27, 2011 – Five years ago, Deidra and David Vaughn were proud, new owners of a $119,000 two-story, five-bedroom Shaler home, complete with a swimming pool.
He made about $30,000 as a social worker for nonprofits, and she collected Social Security medical disability benefits. They weren’t rich, but with three children at home, they got by — until he lost his job not long after they became homeowners.
As David Vaughn, 38, tried for years to find work in his field, the family struggled to save their home from foreclosure. They finally found a buyer for it in September. Now, they rent from her sister.
"We’re looking to see how we can get things back to normal," Deidra Vaughn, 31, said last week as she stocked up on groceries at the North Hills Community Outreach food pantry. "I’d like to see my husband back in his field, hopefully, when the economy gets better. Every day is a struggle."
Poverty — which federal guidelines define as having income of $26,170 or less annually for a family of five — once was widely associated with inner-city communities, but during the nation’s economic downturn, it infiltrated more middle-class neighborhoods. A Brookings Institution analysis of census data showed that from 2000 to 2010, the number of poor individuals in suburbs grew 53 percent, compared with 23 percent in cities.
In Western Pennsylvania, Beaver, Lawrence and Fayette counties experienced the highest increases in poverty rates, census data show.
Continue reading Jobs Campaign: Why Workers Need Solidarity Across All Income Levels
Beaver County Blue: Voice of the 17th CD of Progressive Democrats of America 