elections

Election Mandate to Protect Social Security and Medicare

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National Nurses: Message from Working People

to Wall Street- America is Not for Sale

Nurses Call on President, Congress to Honor Electoral Mandate

with Pledge To Protect Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid

 

National Nurses United, the nation’s largest union and professional association of registered nurses said today that the national election delivered an unmistakable message Tuesday:

“From the Presidential race to Senate races to local ballot measures, American voters Tuesday delivered a strong message to Wall Street, billionaires and secretive corporate funded political committees – America is not for sale,” said NNU Executive Director Rose Ann DeMoro.

“Working people and unions played an essential role in re-electing President Obama, bringing populist candidates like Elizabeth Warren and Tammy Baldwin to the U.S. Senate, and defeating a major attack on unions in California, Proposition 32.”

“The power of working people overcame the efforts to overwhelm our political process with massive spending by the 1 percent, and to prevent people from voting through disgraceful voter suppression efforts. The votes of women are a direct repudiation of attacks on women’s health and rights. The alliance of workers and communities of color in this election is an affirmation of the future for our diverse nation,” said DeMoro.

“We celebrate the election results, and offer our congratulations to President Obama and the other NNU-endorsed candidates who won on Tuesday. But it is also time to send another message,” said DeMoro.

“Wall Street can not win this vote through the back door. We must be a nation that honors humanity, not austerity, and that rejects the attacks on workers and efforts to roll back the rights of working people,” DeMoro continued.

“Main Street communities are still hurting. We still have too many people who are jobless, facing un-payable medical bills and the loss of their homes, and worried about their retirement security and economic future.

“The President and Congress should stand with the people who elected them and reject any cuts in Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid, strengthen Medicare  by expanding it to cover everyone, and insist that Wall Street begin to repay our nation for the damage it caused our economy with a small tax on Wall Street speculation, the Robin Hood tax.”

“Nurses across America are standing together today with a renewed commitment to work for a more humane, caring society. Our nation deserves no less,” DeMoro said.

Charles Idelson

Communications Director

National Nurses United

510-273-2246 (office)

415-559-8991 (cell)

www.nationalnursesunited.org

elections

PA 12th CD Is a Key Battleground

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Critz-Rothfus race tests GOP growth in Western Pennsylvania

Western PA’s 12th Congressional District
By Timothy McNulty
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Oct 28, 2012 – In his congressional run two years ago, newcomer Keith Rothfus commonly dressed like a bookish lawyer, in a rep tie and blazer.

This time, with whimsical ads declaring he’s a “regular guy,” he is at a Westmoreland County gun shop clad in a flannel shirt and windbreaker. “God, guns and guts made this country. Let’s keep all three!” say free bumper stickers by the register.

“This is a new thing for me,” the 50-year-old says, waiting by the counter to make remarks assailing the Obama administration on gun issues early this month. “I’ve never been up in the polls before. In 2010 I stuck my head out, and now they’re taking shots at me.”

The powerful National Rifle Association had just endorsed his Democratic opponent, Mark Critz, in the Nov. 6 election, but no matter. The attacks are raining hard on both candidates in the nationally watched 12th District congressional race outside Pittsburgh, in a contest that points the way toward Western Pennsylvania’s political future.

Mr. Critz of Johnstown the Democratic incumbent, has many of the same conservative positions as his Republican challenger from Sewickley, but Mr. Rothfus takes them a few clicks further right. Both criticize President Barack Obama’s health care bill, though the Democrat says he would keep parts and the Republican pushes for full repeal. Both are anti-abortion, but Mr. Critz supports exceptions in cases of rape, incest or the health of the mother while his GOP opponent supports it only when the mother’s health is at stake.

Their biggest differences are over taxes and trade.

A conservative intellectual in the mold of U.S. Sen. Pat Toomey, Mr. Rothfus is wont to quote historian Amity Shlaes when questioning government spending in a recession, and would consider cutting the Education Department and placing sunsets on other federal roles (though not defense, veteran or senior programs).

Mr. Critz supports raising taxes on the wealthy to help curb the nation’s deficit, while Mr. Rothfus says tax increases would dampen the very economic growth needed to reduce it.

Continue reading PA 12th CD Is a Key Battleground →

Environment

Climate Is Systemic Cause of Storm Intensity

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Yes, Global Warming Systemically Caused Hurricane Sandy

Yes, global warming systemically caused Hurricane Sandy — and the Midwest droughts and the fires in Colorado and Texas, as well as other extreme weather disasters around the world.  Let’s say it out loud, it was causation, systemic causation.Yellow cabs line a flooded street in Queens, New York in hurricane Sandy’s wake. (Photograph: KeystoneUSA-ZUMA / Rex Features)

Systemic causation is familiar. Smoking is a systemic cause of lung cancer.  HIV is a systemic cause of AIDS.  Working in coal mines is a systemic cause of black lung disease. Driving while drunk is a systemic cause of auto accidents.  Sex without contraception is a systemic cause of unwanted pregnancies.

There is a difference between systemic and direct causation.  Punching someone in the nose is direct causation. Throwing a rock through a window is direct causation. Picking up a glass of water and taking a drink is direct causation. Slicing bread is direct causation. Stealing your wallet is direct causation. Any application of force to something or someone that always produces an immediate change to that thing or person is direct causation.  When causation is direct, the word cause is unproblematic.

Systemic causation, because it is less obvious, is more important to understand. A systemic cause may be one of a number of multiple causes. It may require some special conditions. It may be indirect, working through a network of more direct causes. It may be probabilistic, occurring with a significantly high probability. It may require a feedback mechanism.  In general, causation in ecosystems, biological systems, economic systems, and social systems tends not to be direct, but is no less causal.  And because it is not direct causation, it requires all the greater attention if it is to be understood and its negative effects controlled.

Above all, it requires a name: systemic causation.

Continue reading Climate Is Systemic Cause of Storm Intensity →

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 →

2012 Election, GOP, Right Wing, Voting Rights, Women

Deny the GOP It’s Secret Weapon: Progressives Who Are Dispirited and Disengaged

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Three Reasons Why The Race Is So Close – Nine Reasons Why Obama Will Win

By Robert Creamer
Progressive America Rising via HuffPost

Oct 21, 2012 – As Election Day grows closer, some pundits seem almost breathless in their prediction that the Presidential election will be close. Well, of course it will be close. It has been obvious from the campaign’s first day that it would be close. But there is overwhelming evidence that President Obama will win.

Why is the race so close?

1). First and foremost, the Republican’s trickledown, let-Wall-Street-run-wild policies sent the economy into a catastrophic recession just as Obama took office. This was not your run of the mill business cycle recession. It was caused by a financial collapse the likes of which American had not seen since the Great Depression.

The historic evidence is very clear that whenever there is a recession induced by a financial collapse, it take years for an economy to recover. American did not fully recover from the Great Depression itself until World War II – almost twelve years after the stock market collapsed.

Had the Republicans remained in office and responded as Republican President Hoover did in 1929, the same fate could have awaited America once again. But instead, the Obama Administration moved immediately to stimulate the economy and shore up the financial system – and especially to rescue the auto industry – using policies that in most cases the GOP opposed.

Those policies have set the economy on a path toward sustained growth. But the Republicans have been hell bent on stalling growth with the expressed purpose of defeating Obama this fall. They have sabotaged the economy by preventing even a vote on the Americans Jobs Act that most economists believe would create another 1.7 million jobs and would have prevented massive layoffs in state and local governments.

Mitt Romney is like an arsonist who complains that the fire department isn’t putting out his fire fast enough – and then tries to convince America to allow him to take over the effort armed with buckets of gasoline – the same failed policies that caused the fire in the first place.

Continue reading Deny the GOP It’s Secret Weapon: Progressives Who Are Dispirited and Disengaged →

2012 Election, Democrats, GOP, PDA, Voting Rights, Women, Youth and students

Get Out the Vote. Especially Women, Youth and Trade Unionists. It Matters…

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New Poll Puts Presidential Race As A Dead Heat Between President Obama And Mitt Romney

NBC News calls it a 47-47 tie

By Glenn Blain
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Oct 21, 2012 – The race for the White House is a dead heat.

An NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll released Sunday showed President Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney tied at 47% with barely two weeks to go before election day.

Obama had held a 49-46 lead among likely voters in the most recent previous NBC/WSJ poll, which was conducted before any the presidential debates.

The new poll revealed Obama with a wider lead among all registered voters, 49% to 44% but showed his support weakening in key demographics.

Among women voters, Obama’s lead had slipped to its slimmest margin yet this year, 51% to 43%. Romney leads among men 53%-43%. Mitt Romney lost some ground gained by first debate, according to polls, but still doing strong.

Continue reading Get Out the Vote. Especially Women, Youth and Trade Unionists. It Matters… →

2012 Election, Youth and students

Challenge of Young Voters: Harsh Realities Curb Enthusiasm

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Youngest Voters Favor Obama but Are Uneasy With Politics, Poll Finds

By Libby Sander
The Chroncile of Higher Education

Oct 17, 2012 – On the eve of the next presidential election, young Americans are showing far less enthusiasm for voting—and much greater skepticism about the political process—than they did four years ago, according to a new poll from Harvard University’s Institute of Politics.

Nearly two-thirds of the 18- to 29-year-olds in the poll, released on Wednesday, said they were registered to vote. Fifty-two percent said they thought President Obama would be re-elected, while 15 percent thought he would lose. They overwhelmingly favored the incumbent on such matters as the economy, immigration reform, health-care policy, and foreign policy.

But young voters also indicated a clear uneasiness with the electoral process, and with Congress. Disenchantment was strongest among voters between 18 and 24 years old. Four years ago, 43 percent of voters in that age group said they were politically active; now only 22 percent do.

Continue reading Challenge of Young Voters: Harsh Realities Curb Enthusiasm →