WHY BOYCOTT WAL-MART AND OTHERS

An interesting situation with a friend who wanted to go and buy peanuts because they were on special at a very low price.

I have expressed my disdain for a whole bunch of corporate giants that have no social conscience. I have also indicated that I carry my own little boycott against those firms I know are terrible employers, homophobic or donors to right-wing extremist causes.

Today; my friend, who is somewhat disconnected to the political world and lives his life stuck in books while he tries to get his nursing degree asked me if I wanted to go with him to Wal-Mart and buy peanuts because they were running a very tempting special.

I recoiled at the idea and soon let him know why. I told him that for every penny he saved on those peanuts and anything else we all, collectively bought there, we will have to pay one thousand times over that price in terms of lost freedoms, underpaid jobs, no benefit for its employees and worst of all he would be patronizing a business that is actively seeking to condemn, repress and even criminalize his sexual orientation. No, thanks, I just as soon pay a higher price. Actually John, I will be more than happy to give you the difference in the price that you pay at Wal-Mart as opposed to what I pay at a regular store.

He didn’t answer.

ARE LABOR UNIONS NECESSARY?

Procession in memory of victims of the Triangle Shirtwaist fire

In this day and age, are Labor Unions relevant?

Twice in my life I belonged to a Labor Union; first one was when I was a singer in my late teens I belonged to AFTRA and then I had to take off a year between high school and college to save enough money to pay for tuition and worked in an assembly line putting together dishwashing machines…then I had to join The Machinist Union.

As I was a very right-wing conservative in those days (hard to believe) I was even working in the Goldwater campaign and as is expected, Republicans were demonizing labor unions then as they are now. I really disliked labor unions and I didn’t understand their history nor did I stop to think what was the reason for their existence, how they came into being.

After that period of darkness in my life and total disregard for social consciousness, I went off to college and learned a little bit about history. The thing that still haunts my thoughts is the ” Triangle Shirtwaist fire” where 146 garment workers either burned to death or jumped 10 stories to their deaths…all because the owners of the factory had locked the exit doors to keep the sweatshop conditions and prevent anyone from bailing out.

Those were the days when it was a true paradise for the super wealthy and the corporations…they had their government working for them and the politicians in their pockets. Even judges and law enforcement were the instruments of repression at their disposal.

The long history of struggles coming from workers to obtain even meager gains in America is legendary. It wasn’t just that fire that caused public opinion to shift in favor of organized labor; it was a series of events that made it clear that America had become a country of only “THE HAVES AND THE HAVE NOTS”

When I look at the concerted efforts from Republicans to eradicate labor unions, when I see how politics is dominated and influenced by the lobbyists of special interest groups…when I see the obscene amounts of money spent by these special interest groups to lie and mislead Americans so they vote Republican…I draw a very conclusive parallel between the situation at the beginning of the last century and that of today. Undoubtedly the Republicans would like to return to that period of time when money was king and the people little more than slaves.

There is no doubt in my mind that Republicans want to turn back the clock…not to the 1950’s where the WASPHROMS had a lofty life but instead, the Republicans would like to go all the way back to 1910 where moneyed folks and companies did whatever they wanted without government interference.

It is not surprising that the attacks that were begun by the DEAR LEADER REAGAN have continued and increased to the point that the Republicans are now on their last set of initiatives to decimate the labor unions…and it had to be applied in Wisconsin where a lot of these labor movements got their start.

It is also very clear to me now that the FREE ENTERPRISE system is the best economic model but it has to have regulations or it doesn’t work for everyone…why? because then greed overwhelms everything and we all know that greed has no conscience. The rich and the corporations when left to their own devices will seldom do “the right thing”. Invariably the rich will hoard their money and the corporations will try to exact more productivity from their workforce for less money…because the bottom line is what matters…not society, not the country, not humanity

Laura Clawson gives us a very accurate account and a historical perspective of that infamous fire in this Sunday, March 20 article; one hundred years later:

Triangle: Remembering the Fire

If you're like me, you learned about the Triangle Shirtwaist fire in high school history, but what you learned was fairly sketchy—the opening paragraph of its Wikipedia entry probably about captures it:

The fire caused the deaths of 146 garment workers, who either died from the fire or jumped to their deaths. Most of the victims were recent immigrant Jewish women, age 16-23. Many of the workers could not escape the burning building because the managers had locked the doors to the stairwells and exits. People jumped from the eighth, ninth, and tenth floors. The fire led to legislation requiring improved factory safety standards and helped spur the growth of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union, which fought for better working conditions for sweatshop workers.

As you might guess, that leaves out rather a lot.

This is the week of the 100th anniversary of the Triangle fire, and tomorrow (Monday) night at 9:00, HBO is airing a new documentary. Triangle: Remembering the Fire is relatively brief, but it adds a great deal to the sketch, on several levels.

The documentary first places the Triangle fire in context: Less than two years earlier, garment workers had gone on strike in the Uprising of 20,000, making outrageous demands like a 52-hour work week and overtime pay.

Meanwhile, the fiercely anti-union owners of the Triangle factory met with owners of the 20 largest factories to form a manufacturing association. Many of the strike leaders worked there, and the Triangle owners wanted to make sure other factory owners were committed to doing whatever it took—from using physical force (by hiring thugs to beat up strikers) to political pressure (which got the police on their side)—to not back down.

Soon after, police officers began arresting strikers, and judges fined them and sentenced some to labor camps. One judge, while sentencing a picketer for “incitement,” explained, “You are striking against God and Nature, whose law is that man shall earn his bread by the sweat of his brow. You are on strike against God!”

The Triangle company held out, the workers went back, and the safety concerns they raised went unaddressed. That New York's garment workers had been fighting for better treatment, and that many of the fire's deaths might have been prevented had they succeeded, is a central part of the context Triangle: Remembering the Fire provides.

That context of struggle is crucial to understanding the fire's aftermath, in which New York instituted a range of workplace protections. Frances Perkins would later famously call March 25, 1911 "the day the New Deal began."

We don't, in other words, have fire alarms and sprinklers and adequate exits and other workplace protections because big employers want us to have them. We don't have them solely because of tragedy. We have them because workers have joined together and fought for them. In 1911, workers' struggle was the context that made the Triangle fire something other than a meaningless accident, that showed a way to prevent similar tragedies.

Triangle: Remembering the Fire does something else as well. It vividly, forcefully puts the humanity of the Triangle workers in front of us. Much of it is told by descendants of the fire's victims and survivors, and augmented by photos of the victims. It takes hold of you, all their beautiful serious faces—teenagers working 60 or 70 hour weeks, recent immigrants struggling to get ahead. And after the fire, their families were left struggling to identify them from the smallest remnants, seemingly inconsequential possessions that survived.

The care this documentary shows for the workers of the Triangle company is exquisite, so much so that finally the list of the fire's victims is complete. Michael Hirsch, one of its writers and co-producers and a longtime member of the Daily Kos community, searched out the final six names:

No New York City agencies and no newspapers at the time produced a complete list of the dead, Mr. Hirsch said. The most thorough list — 140 names — was compiled by Mr. Von Drehle when he wrote his book, and that was largely based on names plucked from accounts in four contemporary newspapers.

The obscurity of their names is evidence of the times, when lives were lived quietly and people were forced by economic and familial circumstances to swiftly move on from tragedies — with no Facebook or reality television cameras to record their every step and thought.

Mr. Hirsch, 50, an amateur genealogist and historian who was hired as a co-producer of the coming HBO documentary “Triangle: Remembering the Fire,” undertook an exhaustive search lasting more than four years. He returned to the microfilms of mainstream daily newspapers overlooked by researchers before him and to ethnic publications that he asked to have translated, like the Yiddish-language Jewish Daily Forward and Il Giornale Italiano. He estimates that he consulted 32 different newspapers.

(He also appeared on CBS News Sunday today.)

Triangle: Remembering the Fire is an indispensable memorial to the 146 working men and women who died horrible deaths on March 25, 1911, doing justice to both the story of lives lost and families grieving and to the story of struggle for workers' rights and the importance of government regulations.

Those two sides of the story would often be called the human side and the political side, but this documentary ultimately reveals the inadequacy of that binary opposition. The Uprising of 20,000 is a human and a political story, with women risking their livelihoods and freedom for better working conditions. The long hours and brutal working conditions garment workers faced—including the fire that killed 146 of them—are a human and a political story. "Government regulations" and "workplace safety laws" sound like dry terms, but this is what they're about: nothing less than people's lives. And that is something to remember when you hear the likes of Scott Walker and John Kasich arguing that employers oughtn't be bound by those pesky government regulations.

SOURCE: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/03/20/957577/-Triangle:-Remembering-the-Fire

PHOTO SOURCE: http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.blank.org/sweatgear/img/triangle.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.blank.org/sweatgear/ss.html&usg=__xzCXNsg580_5ssIsIr3DC9blejk=&h=333&w=506&sz=26&hl=en&start=31&sig2=w5tHS7PMgmQXBlTe1VdIqw&zoom=1&tbnid=enHMCWI1JvvztM:&tbnh=108&tbnw=153&ei=O0uHTfnnHM-DtwfsoKHlDQ&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dphotos%2Bof%2BTriangle%2BShirtwaist%2Bfire%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DX%26biw%3D1024%26bih%3D561%26tbs%3Disch:10%2C912&um=1&itbs=1&iact=hc&vpx=431&vpy=202&dur=10&hovh=182&hovw=277&tx=155&ty=91&oei=d0qHTcKABJCDtge70e3fBA&page=3&ndsp=17&ved=1t:429,r:7,s:31&biw=1024&bih=561

http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_bjqmGmHDb1w/SC01Q4kEaVI/AAAAAAAAAdk/FVp3fd9RCEA/s320/Triangle%2BShirtwaist%2BFire.jpg&imgrefurl=http://nwcohs.blogspot.com/2011/02/american-experience-triangle-fire-on.html&usg=__tNjba7Snfa85GbklezKqUz9vsB4=&h=287&w=220&sz=18&hl=en&start=0&sig2=_DGwfw-nLvytQl0ZqsPzeQ&zoom=1&tbnid=ZJouh4TlId7uJM:&tbnh=168&tbnw=125&ei=a0uHTcbGD8qctwf2-aHFBA&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dphotos%2Bof%2BTriangle%2BShirtwaist%2Bfire%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DX%26biw%3D1024%26bih%3D561%26tbs%3Disch:10%2C228&um=1&itbs=1&iact=hc&vpx=427&vpy=119&dur=340&hovh=228&hovw=175&tx=85&ty=97&oei=d0qHTcKABJCDtge70e3fBA&page=1&ndsp=16&ved=1t:429,r:12,s:0&biw=1024&bih=561

REPUBLICAN-TEAHADIST RETURN TO THE CULTURE WARS

The Class Wars thing is not working out for them

Nor is it working out to vilify single mothers like Dan Quayle did or demonize homosexuals because our culture has evolved to where being gay is no longer an abomination save for a few who hold erroneous interpretations of the Scriptures.

Keeping our country safe is no longer an excuse to elect Republicans…Obama has done that and more…he has actually gained the respect and admiration of the rest of the world even if the Teahadist-Republicans insist that he is apologetic and submissive to foreign nations.

What is left for them? What could the Republicans possibly cling on to and gain some support? Why, it is killing babies…yes, who wants to kill babies, right? So they are embracing this pro-life and all repudiation of abortions in the most vigorous way. There are laws proposed in many states that not only would it make it difficult for a woman to terminate a pregnancy but it actually criminalizes it and makes them relinquish their right to their own bodies to the government.

Republicans make no pretense of being the party of the rich, no, the super-rich and the corporations. They are conducting a scorch-earth initiative to decimate LABOR UNIONS as this is the only remaining organized group that is involved in politics and usually supports Democratic candidates.

If Teahadist-Republicans are successful in swaying enough people with their farce about abortion rights they may be able to win the 2012 elections. The much wanted theocracy side by side with a plutocracy will then deprive the American people of their most valued right: a participatory democratic process where people agree to be governed as long as those they elect represent their wishes and their will.

A new quotes post - Clarence W. Dupnik, sheriff of Pima County and Dilma Rousseff, President of Brazil

“I prefer the noise of the free press to the silence of dictatorships.” – Dilma Rousseff, President of Brazil

“I consider that Brazil has a sacred mission to show the world that it is possible for a country to grow rapidly without destroying the environment.” – Dilma Rousseff, President of Brazil

What is the significance of your election as President of Brazil?

“So, I am here to state my first post-election commitment: To honor Brazilian women so that this unprecedented electoral victory now becomes something normal and can be repeated and expanded in companies, public institutions and organizations that are representative of our entire society.” Dilma Rousseff, President of Brazil (Retriever Weekly, November 2010)

“When you look at unbalanced people, how they respond to the vitriol that comes out of certain mouths about tearing down the government. The anger, the hatred, the bigotry that goes on in this country is getting to be outrageous. And unfortunately, Arizona I think has become the capital. We have become the mecca for prejudice and bigotry.” — Clarence W. Dupnik, sheriff of Pima County, commenting after yesterday’s shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords on the Teabag nutjobs currently running the Republican party

"Pretty soon, we're not going to be able to find reasonable, decent people who are willing to subject themselves to serve in public office." - Clarence W. Dupnik, sheriff of Pima County

Three Kings’ Day – GOVERNMENT IS TOO BIG – SO SAY THE TEAHADIST REPUBLICANS

A day for children to get presents, a tradition in my country

Although I am not religious, I was raised in a predominantly Catholic country where the Church traditions are closely intertwined with the popular culture. Our Christmas celebrations didn’t include gift giving…that was done on January the 6^th in celebration of Gaspar, Melchor and Baltazar…otherwise known as the Three Wise Men or the Three Kings.

This was a holiday that was strictly for children and I have indelible memories of stepping out into the street and seeing all the neighborhood children showing off the new toys brought to them by the Three Kings.

I have particularly fond memories of that although my parents were somewhat frugal and didn’t shower me with toys like the other neighbor children. I was always envious of them but one year we went to a party given by the Corp of Engineers and they had a raffle. One of the prizes was a Lionel model train and I won it. You can’t imagine how thrilled I was…I did for once have a toy that was better and more expensive than any of the toys the other children got that Dia de los Reyes.

Much to my chagrin, I never even got to take the train set out of the box because my selfish father put it away only to sell it the following December and I got to see it running in one of the display windows of a store in my hometown. I still don’t know what he did with the money he got for it.

The following year, amazingly enough, I went to the same party but this one time I won the first prize at the raffle; which was a Schwinn bicycle. It was magnificent and I would have the kids in my neighborhood come over to look at it...when they would ask me if I intended to ride it I would answer that as soon as I could reach the pedals I would. I really don’t remember how we managed to take it home as we were riding the bus in those days. But what really got forever printed in my mind was my father’s reluctance to let me ride it. It sat there in my bedroom all year…granted, I could not reach the pedals quite well and it was a heavy bike for a scrawny kid like me.

Then the following December came and the bicycle was gone. My dad had taken it to the local department store and sold it to them. Only this time we found out what he did with the money: he gambled it away in a cock fight.

GOVERNMENT IS TOO BIG – SO SAY THE TEAHADIST REPUBLICANS

But what are they proposing to remedy that?

When these right-wing asshats repeat the mantra of the Republicans that ‘GOVERNMENT IS TOO BIG” it pushes all the buttons that make me indignant and cantankerous; I immediately question whether their ideology is a valid one because I don’t see them offering any alternatives.

Government is as big as it needs to be for what is arguably the only world super power. Are these Teahadist-Republicans saying that they no longer wish for America to be the most powerful nation in the world? Are they willing to give up all that power and all the privileges that go along with it when America becomes a third-rate power?

Tha is what I think would happen if we reduce the size of our government:

Instead, I think that we ought to take a long look at our priorities and our wasteful spending. We also have to remedy the redistribution of wealth that has already taken place…from the poor and middle class to the very rich…a privileged class that comprises only 2% of our country; making us not just an oligarchy but also a “WELFARE STATE FOR THE VERY RICH” and that my friends is the worst kind of SOCIALISM and social re-engineering.

The first thing America has to do is to tax its citizens fairly, and that includes eliminating all those undeserved and unfair tax cuts for the very rich.

We must end this business of “outsourcing”; that should become a dirty word for us. To outsource contract to companies like Haliburton which moved its headquarters out of the US to avoid taxation. We have to end once and for all rewarding corporations for outsourcing jobs to other countries. Subsidies to these companies must stop; let us return to the concept of bidding for contracts instead of awarding them to Cheney and his cronies.

We have to realize that history has taught us a very important lesson: that no matter how many men and women we have in uniform; the present day adversarial struggles don’t use troops any more. We could have a million military personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan and we are not going to alter the outcome…did we learn this from Vietnam?

We also have to reduce the size of the military to reflect a different kind of warfare: one that is based on technology and intelligence, not troops. We must close most of the military bases we have abroad and let those countries we are defending…well, defend themselves…they are big boys by now and certainly affluent enough.

I think that one good place to start with the much needed reduction of the military is by eliminating weapons programs that are obsolete or useless. It is not going to do us any good to have 1000 nuclear missiles pointing at nowhere when two or three would be enough to destroy mankind. It is useless to think about us having fourteen different kinds of fighter jets when not one of them will ever see an air scuffle. It is furthermore useless to have all these generals conducting “war games” that are tantamount to military tic-tac-toe and which only has the purpose of entertaining these bored, warmonger top brass .

We must eliminate the monopolies of health insurance companies that use up more than 17% of our GNP and offer nothing in return. The sooner we realize that these companies do not produce anything, manufacture no product and exist for the sole purpose of making an obscene profit, the better it is going to be for America…these companies are dead weight, nothing more than parasites.

When you talk about government being too big the Republicans and Tea Baggers are referring to regulations and rules…some of which were instituted as a result of the Great Depression and it kept us on solvent grounds all of these years. But because there was a systematic and pervasive elimination of these regulations because of the Republican ideology…we saw ourselves in the biggest economic crisis since the Great Depression.

We as a nation have seen not just the decimation of the middle class but also the destruction of the political process that assured us participation by the people. I am afraid if we don't soon institute campaign reforms we will indeed throw the baby with the bathwater out the window and destroy this noble experiment we call DEMOCRACY that has served us so well and has provided an example for other countries to follow. For goodness sake, let's stop considering corporations the same as human beings...they are not...they are entities that exist for the sole purpose of profits and we all know that greed has no conscience...corporations as a rule have very little social conscience.

We must as a country stop useless endeavors of social engineering. We have to stop this “WAR ON DRUGS” that has only brought about a situation worse than when we had liquor prohibition. We must as a country get government to regulate banks and Wall Street and get government out of our bedrooms.

We have to restore our commitment to science, education and technology…that is what makes us competitive in the world. Teaching Evolution may satisfy some of the more ignorant base of the Republican Party but it does nothing to provide this nation with the scientists it needs to compete.

We have to end our dependency on fossil fuels and once and for all end the stranglehold the oil companies have on our nation. Brazil did it in the early 70's when they were a third-rate, poor nation. There is no reason why we, with our technology in hand can't do the same.

And for crying out loud, let’s debunk and discredit once and for all that failed Reaganomics premise that suggests giving to the rich will allow wealth to percolate down to the middle class and the poor. It didn’t work!

SOURCE: http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.japanfocus.org/data/US_military_bases_in_the_world_2007.PNG&imgrefurl=http://www.japanfocus.org/-Peter_J_-Katzenstein/2921&usg=__Kws_EMVFZQjzNb2fFTmnwDy6-Qo=&h=625&w=1425&sz=19&hl=en&start=0&sig2=pqUnPsCxdbUltOqznP1-9Q&zoom=1&tbnid=XtKNkzhnV1u9fM:&tbnh=88&tbnw=200&ei=kEcfTd2PN4SKlwey9rTcCw&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dphotos%2Bof%2Bus%2Bmilitary%2Bbases%2Babroad%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DX%26biw%3D1008%26bih%3D571%26tbs%3Disch:1&um=1&itbs=1&iact=hc&vpx=311&vpy=101&dur=215&hovh=149&hovw=339&tx=109&ty=101&oei=kEcfTd2PN4SKlwey9rTcCw&esq=1&page=1&ndsp=13&ved=1t:429,r:1,s:0

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