East End Food Coop is one small piece of the ‘new economy’
By Molly Rush Post-Gazette Op-Ed
March 17, 2014 – More and more people have come to distrust our economic system. Low wages, job insecurity, underemployment and loss of pensions stress the social fabric. Compounding the effects on our communities is a growing distrust of a political system driven by the power of major financial donors to candidates and officeholders.
The billionaire Koch brothers, for instance, not only have a war chest of $400 million for targeted campaign contributions, but they also manipulate public discourse by underwriting so-called think tanks that justify legislation benefiting Koch investments in extractive industries, petrochemicals and poisonous pesticides.
The Koch brothers are just one powerful vested interest bent on confusing the public about complex political and social challenges. Add the power of banks and mega-corporations to stack the deck against small businesses and families, and you have a collision between the public good and an unsustainable economy. It is no wonder that so many people feel overwhelmed and discouraged.
“What Is to Be Done?”
That is the title of a book by political economist Gar Alperovitz. He is behind what is being called the New Economy, which is taking root around the United States and right here in Western Pennsylvania.
The idea is to develop an economy that gives people a decent livelihood in a thriving community. We already have the makings of a new economy here in Western Pennsylvania due to some creative initiatives now underway.
Obama proposal sets aside more funds for Mon River, Olmsted lock projects
Overlooking the landside lock, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and barge industry executives walk atop the Charleroi Lock and Dam during a tour of the Locks and Dams 2, 3, and 4 of the lower Monongahela River in June 2012.
March 4, 2014 – President Barack Obama’s proposed fiscal 2015 budget includes $9 million for continuing long-delayed work on a vital lock and dam project on the Monongahela River, more than four times the funding it received in the current fiscal year.
The White House budget proposal also includes $160 million for continuing construction at an Ohio River infrastructure project plagued by massive cost overruns. Paying for that project, located about 600 miles down the Ohio from Pittsburgh at Olmsted, Ill., has prevented the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers from providing additional funding for the Mon River work and other projects.
The barge industry and the federal government evenly split the cost of major lock and dam construction projects overseen by the Corps. The industry’s share is generated by a tax barge operators pay on the diesel fuel they use.
But river industry officials have complained about covering cost overruns at Olmsted, where the price tag has ballooned from $775 million when Congress authorized the project in 1988 to $3.1 billion.
More than half of the 200-plus locks and associated dams overseen by the Corps were built more than 50 years ago, which is how long they were expected to last.
RALEIGH — State NAACP President William J. Barber II laid out goals for a diverse coalition of groups Saturday afternoon at a rally attended by thousands of people from all over the state and the nation who marched, sang, chanted, cheered and even danced through downtown Raleigh.
Organizers said the “Mass Moral March” was intended to push back against last year’s Republican-led legislation in North Carolina.
Barber called for well-funded public education, anti-poverty policies, affordable health care for all that includes the expansion of Medicaid, an end to disparities in the criminal justice system on the basis of class and race, the expansion of voting rights and “the fundamental principle of equality under the law for all people.”
Rev. Barber (back) addresses Moral March
“We will become the ‘trumpet of conscience’ that Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. called upon us to be, echoing the God of our mothers and fathers in the faith,” he said. “Now is the time. Here is the place. We are the people. And we will be heard.”
The mammoth crowd that gathered in downtown Raleigh represented a variety of causes that joined last year’s Moral Monday protests, but the event also brought in groups and individuals usually on the fringes of state politics.
Susan Fariss of Mocksville drove three and a half hours to hold up a sign supporting the legalization of medical marijuana.
“I have several health problems that cause me pain,” Fariss said. “I have tried Vicodin and different muscle relaxers, but no matter what I’ve tried, I’m in pain. My doctor told me he could not prescribe it, but he recommended medical marijuana.”
Holiday Clinkscale, 60, of Raleigh climbed atop a big potted plant on Fayetteville Street and twirled an American flag above his head. He wore a leather jacket decorated with red, white and blue stars and stripes. Clinkscale wore the regalia on behalf of “depressed” African-American men.
“Black men in Raleigh couldn’t wear red, white and blue after the Civil War when we were freed, or they would have been executed,” he said. “You see a lot of black men here today looking depressed.”
Wake County attorney Daryl Atkinson was at the march, but the look on his face was one of purpose.
Atkinson, who volunteered to represent some of the people arrested at last year’s Moral Monday protests, said he had a long list of reasons for attending the rally.
“Everything from trampling on our voting rights, to the repeal of the Racial Justice Act, not extending unemployment benefits and not expanding Medicaid. The list goes on,” he said.
Hannah Osborne, a student at N.C. State University, said she came to the rally Saturday morning to “promote women’s rights and a woman’s right to choose.” She and her father, Dale Osborne, a pastor at Binkley Baptist Church in Chapel Hill, held purple signs that read “Stop the war on women.”
The march, known as the Historic Thousands on Jones Street, or HKonJ, was organized by the state NAACP and Barber. He and his group drew national attention last year for organizing the Moral Monday demonstrations to protest what they called “immoral” legislation enacted by Republican leaders including Gov. Pat McCrory and House Speaker Thom Tillis. Those policies included new abortion restrictions, an election-law overhaul that will require voter ID and cuts to unemployment benefits.
The McCrory administration tried to block previous Moral Monday events. In late December, a Wake County District Court judge overturned a decision by the administration to keep demonstrators off state Capitol grounds and confine the events to Halifax Mall, a big grassy area enclosed by the state office and legislative buildings.
One of the biggest southern marches against state policies since Selma in 1965. That’s how North Carolina NAACP President Rev. Dr. William J. Barber the Third describes the Moral March On Raleigh this coming Saturday.
[Rev. Dr. William J. Barber III]: “The Moral March on Raleigh is part of the anti-racism, anti-poverty, pro-labor deeply moral Forward Together movement. And with diversity and solidarity, thousands will stand against what we believe are morally indefensible, constitutionally inconsistent and economically insane policies being passed by our North Carolina General Assembly and signed by the governor of this state.”
Saturday’s march is part of the Moral Mondays Forward Together Movement, which last year resulted on a thousand civil disobedience arrests at its Moral Mondays protests a the North Carolina capitol.
Beaver County MLK Coalition to Join Moral March in Raleigh
Beaver County Protest Vigil against PA voter ID law
A coalition of activists from the Beaver-Lawrence Central Labor Council, the NAACP, and the 12th CD Chapter of Progressive Democrats of America will travel to Raleigh, NC this Friday for a march and rally. They will march in solidarity with the people of NC who are pushing back against the anti-democratic and austere laws passed by the right-wing NC legislature.
The Moral March on Raleigh will mark a new high point in the Moral Monday’s movement that has seen thousands of civil disobedience arrests in protest of extremist legislation passed by the Tea Party controlled legislature.
The Beaver County MLK 50th Anniversary Coalition organized buses to the Washington DC march and rally this past August.
For more information on the Moral March in Raleigh go HERE.
HARRISBURG, Pa.– Thousands jammed the streets around the State Capitol building here today to protest the latest in a sting of attempts by state Republicans to kill union rights for public workers and eventually all workers in Pennsylvania.
Busload after busload of workers arrived from around the state, filled the streets and marched into the Capitol building itself where, reminiscent of the historic Wisconsin protests, they packed the rotunda in the center of the building.
They protested House Bill 1507, what the right wing American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and theKoch brothers call a “Paycheck Protection” bill. They have already been targeting direct mail into the state to spread lies in support of this bill, claiming that taxpayers are paying for union dues collection for public employees, and that teachers and state workers are forced to contribute to political and legislative activism.
The facts are clear, the Pennsylvania AFL-CIO says, even though you won’t hear them in the commercials that the Koch brothers are financing. Automatic payroll deduction of dues is not mandated by any law, rather it is bargained for during contract negotiations. This deduction does not cost taxpayers money. Unions already agreed to reimburse the state for costs associated with deductions of PAC funds, but according to the State of Pennsylvania, there is no measurable cost to be reimbursed.
The Republican goal is obvious, unions say. The legislation would force unions to spend resources to collect union dues, and make it nearly impossible to collect the fair share fees that non-members must pay to cover their union representation. At the end of the day that means unions will be weakened, and have less ability to advocate for employees in the workplace and in the legislature. This would open the floodgates for a wide range of anti-worker legislation that would be sure to follow.
“There is no doubt that the passage of HB 1507 would mean that Pennsylvania would become the next right to work state” the Pennsylvania AFL-CIO said in a statement it issued. ” Don’t be silent on this issue. We expect this bill to move very quickly, with significant resources flooding into Pennsylvania to back this latest attack on the middle class.”
Train loaded with explosive shale oil derails downtown Philly over Schuylkill River near major university and hospital neighborhood
Philadelphia Near Disaster
by Randy Shannon
Philadelphia narrowly skirted a major disaster when a Bakken shale laden train derailed over the Schuylkill River and the Schuylkill Expressway, which bisects the city. Five previous derailments of shale oil trains resulted in massive explosions with five mile radius evacuations. One derailment burned 15 acres of downtown Lac-Megantic, Canada and vaporized 42 people.
Safety issues presented by deteriorated track, such as the 100 year old railroad bridge in Philly, aging rolling stock, and insufficient maintenance, are the result of the takeover of the transportation system by finance capital. Railroad people no longer own the railroads…and profit becomes the only objective. The solution is public ownership and control of our transportation infrastructure. Instead of selling off control of highways and riverways, public ownership needs to be expanded.
The exploitation of shale oil is an irrational pursuit of ever higher oil profits. Shale fracking is energy intensive, consuming massive amounts of natural gas, and it destroys millions of gallons of water that cannot be replaced. America needs to tax the hell out of shale oil and fund a Marshall Plan sized project for building a solar energy infrastructure. Oil burning should be taxed so that only the most critical uses are affordable and so that profits are more easily found in renewable solar, wind, and geothermal energy investments.
Below is a press release on this incident by Protecting Our Waters.
Philadelphia Derailment of “Oil Bomb” Train Sparks Outrage;
Near-Miss from Disaster is Sixth Derailment of Bakken Shale Train Since June
Groups Press for Immediate Halt
Philadelphia, PA – Outrage is building among residents whose lives are put at risk by the mile-long oil and gas trains coming from the Bakken Shale formation in North Dakota, Montana and Canada, in the aftermath of the oil train derailment yesterday in Philadelphia. The derailment occurred in a densely populated neighborhood, over a major highway, near several large universities, Children’s Hospital and the University of Pennsylvania medical complex. Rapid evacuation of a five-mile radius from any future oil train explosion and fire in the Philadelphia area, or any urban area, would be impossible. When a similar train exploded and burned on December 30th, 2013 in Casselton, North Dakota, evacuation was urged for a five-mile radius to avoid damaging inhalation of toxic smoke.
Pennsylvania judge strikes down state’s voter ID law
January 17, 2014 10:28 AM
Rally in Harrisburg, PA against voter ID laws
Larry Roberts/Post-Gazette
By Karen Langley / Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
HARRISBURG — A Pennsylvania judge has found the state’s voter ID law unconstitutional.
According to the ruling from Commonwealth Court Judge Bernard McGinley, the requirement to present an acceptable form of identification when voting in person “unreasonably burdens the right to vote.”
The requirement was challenged in court after Republican legislators passed it and Gov. Tom Corbett signed it into law by in March 2012.
Marian Schneider, a local attorney volunteering at
the “My Vote, My Right” awareness event on Smithfield
Street, September 18, 2012.
Opponents of the law celebrated the decision. House Democrats noted that their members had uniformly opposed the law. Senate Minority Leader Jay Costa, D-Forest Hills, said his members were pleased.
“Senate Democrats have said clearly and repeatedly that the voter ID law was an overreach that would result in the disenfranchisement of hundreds of thousands of voters,” he said in a written statement. “It was a law that should have never been approved and we are very happy that the court turned aside the measure today.”
He called the law a clear effort by Republicans to limit participation in Pennsylvania elections.
First Energy Bruce Mansfield Plant on Ohio River in Beaver County, PA
SHIPPINGPORT — Union representatives for workers at FirstEnergy Corp.’s Bruce Mansfield coal-fired plant walked out on negotiations Monday amid accusations that the company has violated the current contract and wants to end health care subsidies for retirees.
“How can we move forward with a new contract when you have already violated the current agreement?” asked Herman Marshman Jr., the president of International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 272. “You can’t have an agreement if nobody’s abiding by the agreement.”
After two negotiating sessions last week, Marshman said the union walked out on the latest one Monday angry over FirstEnergy’s approach. The current contract expires Feb. 15, he said.
LU 272 members at Bruce Mansfield donated $6,400 in cash and 302 pounds of food (45,000 meals) to the Salvation Army in 2013 Harvest for Hunger campaign.
FirstEnergy has violated the agreement 29 times, Marshman claimed, endangering the safety of employees. One example he cited was the company having emergency medical technicians assigned clerical work instead of being positioned to respond to a crisis.
“Our issue is that if they’re not on their station … then they have to stop doing whatever they’re doing and go back to their station to get their equipment to attend to the emergency,” said Marshman, a 34-year employee and plant system operator.
As for retirees, Marshman said FirstEnergy wants to eliminate health care subsidies for them as of Jan. 1, 2015. That, he said, is just one of 20 concessions the company has proposed.
Beaver County Blue: Voice of the 17th CD of Progressive Democrats of America 