Two AP articles snagged, nay, demanded my attention today. First this:

Americans' Savings Rates Decline in 2005

WASHINGTON -- Americans are spending everything they're making and more, pushing the national savings rate to the lowest point since the Great Depression.

(...)The Commerce Department reported Monday that Americans' personal savings fell into negative territory at minus 0.5 percent last year. That means that people not only spent all of their after-tax income last year but had to dip into previous savings or increase their borrowing.

The savings rate has been negative for an entire year only twice before - in 1932 and 1933 - two years when Americans were having to deplete savings to cope with the massive job layoffs and business failures caused by the Great Depression.

But not to worry, the AP economics writer has us all figured out -- he knows what the problem is!

I picked up a copy of Democracy in America last weekend as a primer to Bernard-Henri Lévy's American Vertigo, a modern update of Alexis de Tocqueville's nine-month journey through this bourgeoning nation in 1831 to discover the meaning of democracy.

While I'm eager to read Lévy's book, I was struck by a footnoted passage in Toqueville's chapter entitled What Sort of Despotism Democratic Nations Have to Fear. It seemed oddly appropriate considering the Senate filibuster defeat yesterday, the likely Alito confirmation today, and the increasing unitary executive authority sought by the president.

We have met the enemy and he is us.

We've all been told often that 9/11 changed everything. We've been told many things: that we are not safe, that we must make sacrifices, and we have had many things done in our name.

As a nation, we have enacted laws, gone to war, given up our freedom, and betrayed our principles. All that is necessary to stop this, to be the people we thought we were, is to set aside our fear of speaking up, for our leaders to set aside their fear.

I was born and raised in a white, lower middle class city near Cleveland, Ohio.

Looking back, it was a rather surreal existence—bleak factories alternately belching plumes of black smoke into the air and shifts of workers in gray coveralls into dismal parking lots depending upon the time of day. The homogenized candy-colored landscape of suburbia masked our fears that we were simply replaceable pawns of the capitalist class. We were suckled by evening television programs clinging to an idealized, sanitized-for-our- protection vision of American life so we wouldn't ask too many questions about the world or our place in it.

We played on rusting playgrounds and layed in the soft grass of expansive backyards which our dads meticulously mowed every Sunday before the big game or the obligatory visit to the in-laws. Every now and then, our neighborhood was punctured by fierce clumps of urban wilderness wedged between homes and factories. Secret places to hide, to dream, and to explore far from the disapproving eyes of bored housewives and their favored tool of passive-aggressive psychopathology—the party line telephone.

Then, we moved to a place that might as well have been a million miles from home.

They are invisible, these people who work in the "secondary market" - a shadow workforce that does our hard work that no one else will do. We pass them on the streets, at building supply stores, on jobsites and don't give them a second thought. They are literally everywhere.

Now we can know who they are and what happens to them on the job:

This report profiles, for the first time, the national phenomenon of day labor in the United States. Men and women looking for employment in open-air markets by the side of the road, at busy intersections, in front of home improvement stores and in other public spaces are ubiquitous in cities across the nation. The circumstances that give rise to this labor market are complex and poorly understood. In this report, we analyze data from the National Day Labor Survey, the first systematic and scientific study of the day-labor sector and its workforce in the United States.

I'm desperate. Please send flu remedies. I can't take it anymore.

I've blown out a mountain of snot.
I can't sleep.
My head feels like it weighs 50 lbs.
Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer has got nothing on me.

Help.

This is it, folks. My man in Washington has put out the call. Senator John Kerry has come to the people and asked for our help. If there was ever a time to give that help, to make those calls, this is it.

John Kerry via Daily Kos:

Do I support a filibuster? The answer is yes.

Yesterday Senator Kennedy and I spoke with our colleagues about it. I don't have a shred of doubt in my opposition to Sam Alto's nomination. I know Senator Kennedy does not either.

(....)I voted against Justice Roberts, I feel even more strongly about Judge Alito. Why? Rather than live up to the promise of "equal justice under the law," he's consistently made it harder for the most disadvantaged Americans to have their day in court. He routinely defers to excessive government power regardless of how extreme or egregious the government's actions are. And, to this date, his only statement on record regarding a woman's right to privacy is that she doesn't have one.

(....)Here's the bottom line though and I'll just be blunt and direct about it. It takes more than one or two people to filibuster. It's not "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington." I'm doing what I can, Senator Kennedy is doing what he can, but if, like me, you want to stop Judge Alito from becoming Justice Alito, we can't just preach to our own choir. We need even more of your advocacy.

Please, call your Senators today and tell them to vote no on Alito and support the filibuster. Alito is not acceptable.

First, some background.

It's a real war out there. Here at home.

Anti-union employers and their advisors have long spent huge amounts of time and money trying to thwart union representation. Unions are a powerful force for progressive causes, and the more unions are cut down, the easier it is for reactionary forces to win.

A recent video, Where Do You Stand? shows just how powerful and relentless this anti-union opposition is. Textile workers in Kannapolis, North Carolina spent decades fighting for union representation. Each time, the employer pulled out all the stops with powerful anti-union campaigns. In each campaign the union margin victory was greater. Meantime, the company was bought and sold over and over.

Finally, in a campaign where the new employer ran a clean election, the union won. A good contract was rapidly negotiated. And the company sent the work abroad to be done more cheaply.

It is hard work organizing workers and keeping them organized these days when it is so easy to send work abroad.

Many of the Change to Win Federation unions are focusing on organizing the service sector and in particular those jobs that cannot be sent abroad. A January 25 Bureau of Labor Statistics report shows large job losses through mass layoffs in these "safe" jobs.

What I take from this report is that finding a way to stem outsourcing / globalization is critical to overall union success. If these jobs are allowed to leave, no jobs are safe. Some will be lost as a result of decreased tax revenues and increased expenditures on welfare for the jobless. In additon, those newly unemployed will join the reserve army of the unemployed and will compete for the few remaining jobs. The result will be to drive wages down and make unionization more difficult.

If only the entire country were like the current college freshman class.

That is the gist of a new report by the Higher Education Research Institute.

A/K/A tort reform is not a piece of cake.

Last month, unbossed had a few pieces on contentious issues and ways to talk about them to conservatives. One was Talking Liberally - The McDonald's Coffee Case.

This piece picks up on litigation issues.

A new report on the state of US Education has been issued by the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics (NCES).

Details and links are below.

We here at Unbossed have, as you know, long been renowned for our exuberant irreverence. You may have noticed of late that we've been somewhat subdued. We've been more quiet, more reflective. There's been no kilt blogging. We feel that you, dear readers, deserve an explanation.

As you are aware, these are troubled times. Occasionally during such times, one will stumble across something that changes everything. A piece of information or knowledge that shakes one to the core, to our very foundations, and causes us to question both ourselves and the world around us.

Unbossed has undergone just such an experience, an existential crisis if you will. After the initial shock of discovery, we've searched our souls, looking for answers within. We've turned to each other for support and had discussions. In the end, we have discovered there are no answers, only more questions.

We have decided in the interest of the public good, that you deserve, nay, have a right, to know. We cannot guide you or assist you down this dark path, but perhaps the burden will be lessened by the mere fact of sharing it. If you do not choose to expose yourself to such, do not click more. We will not blame you. Better people have hesitated for less reason...

(caution: disturbing image in extended)

The January 2006 Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI) report gives us a snap shot of how we can expect to survive in our "golden" years.

In other words, how much gold can we expect to have to get us from retirement to our deaths?

The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) has issued a new report on paying for college education.

Details and links below.

It's been awhile since unbossed provided helpful hints to wanna-be privatizers. We've been busy. OK?

There was the Roads Scholars work and then the Red State Reflections series.

And after that the plan to solve the problems of Katrina by moving the homeless into the thousands of vacant houses in Kansas.

And so much more.

But we are back on the job of helping you wanna-be privatizers.

Today is the 56th anniversary of the death of British author and journalist, George Orwell.

Orwell, best known for his novels, Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four, was also an accomplished essayist and documented much of his own personal political evolution during writing positions with New England Weekly, BBC, Tribune, and Observer.

I've long been fascinated with the process of developing ones own political beliefs. Are they steeped in family tradition or fashioned from experience? Is the media truly an influence on ideology or simply a fact distributor that feeds a pre-existing personal orthodoxy?

(This was originally published in 1997)

I have a love/hate relationship with computers. On the positive side, males now type and I never again have to do long-division. On the negative side, they’ve ruined civilization.

I didn’t always feel this way. When computers were first coming into common use, I was quite enthusiastic about them. The older people were scared; they were like sheep being herded somewhere they instinctively did not want to go.

But my generation scoffed at them. We had been raised with constantly-changing technology. We could do things our grandparents had never even dreamed of — pick up a phone and talk to someone halfway around the world, travel farther in an hour than they could have traveled in a day when they were young. We drove, we raced, we flew. We called long-distance with abandon.

We had seen men walk on the moon, dammit — we had seen the world bloom from black & white into color through our TV screens. Everything was bigger, faster, better, brighter, more.

So when computers came, we disregarded our elders and embraced the new technology. We didn’t go blindly down the path to destruction. No, we ran with arms outflung and eyes bedazzled by visions of technological miracles, of promises of vast amounts of leisure time and becoming a paperless society — and never again having to do math.

And can you blame us? These all seemed like reasonable, if not excellent, ideas.

If AFL-CIO President John Sweeney were Bush's speechwriter it would be a very different State of the Union Address. But why speculate? Sweeney has already given that speech. See below for excerpts and a link to the whole thing.

Wednesday, January 18, Interfaith Worker Justice filed suit against the US Department of Labor. The complaint states that plaintiff IWJ is suing:

under the Freedom of Information Act (“FOIA”), 5 U.S.C. § 552, to compel the production of records relating to workers owed back wages under federal back-wage settlements whom the Department of Labor has been unable to locate. In particular, Plaintiff seeks records reflecting the names of the unlocatable workers, the companies for whom they worked, and the period of time covered in the settlement.

IWJ is seeking the names so the workers, most of whom earned poverty wages, could finally receive the money finally due them.

DOL claims that providing the names would violate the workers' privacy.

Last summer, Unbossed ran a series of articles about tollroads. They revealed the existence of an agreement designed to coerce people to use the E-470 tollroad instead of free public highways they had already paid for. Some Denver-area cities and counties agreed to (1) to lower the speed limit on a public highway from 55 to 40 MPH, (2) install unneeded stoplights, and (3) prohibit many improvements to other public highways that "compete" with E-470. All this was done to protect the pocketbooks of E-470's investors.

Legislation has now been introduced into the Colorado legislature to prohibit most of these practices.

Longtime Unbossed readers know that we have blood on our buildings and blood on our streets from worker injuries.

So, should corporations and their management be allowed to get away with murder . . . literally?

That is a question whose answer, in effect, has long been:

Yes. If a worker is killed at work or because of work, the sole remedy is workers comp for the survivors. There may be OSHA fines for those responsible for the working conditions that led to the death, and in an aggravated case where far more than negligence is shown, there can be up to 6 months jail time.

That's the price for not putting in the money and effort to make jobs safe.

But it doesn't have to be this way, and maybe will not be this way in Indiana.

Kosizen exlrrp reminds us that we are ignoring important things. In this case, it is the CBS Papers:

The greatest hoax in history is that the Republicans got the CBS papers declared false without ANY official investigation.They are FEDERAL documents! Demand a federal investigation of ther CBS papers--America needs to know the truth!!

Fifty-seven years after Chile extended the right to vote to women, Chileans have elected their first woman president. Michelle Bachelet, the center-left candidate representing the Concertación coalition, won more than 53 percent of the vote in yesterday’s runoff election against Sebastián Piñera, the center-right candidate of the Renovación Nacional.

While taking in some of the election coverage in the Chilean media last night (it was actually fairly low-key, probably due to the fact that Bachelet’s victory had been all but assured), I watched a couple of Bachelet’s campaign commercials. One of them highlighted a painful contrast between US and Chilean voters.

My local paper reported on whether different racial groups planned to observe Martin Luther King Day. The results - whites 13% and nonwhites 70%. My, my, my.

So, how are you marking MLK Day?

John Gage, President of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) has asked Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to appoint a special counsel to launch a criminal investigation into the Veterans Affairs Department's alleged misuse of federal funds for deciding whether to contract out work. Rather than spend money allocated for health care on health care, the VA is using the money to privatize VA operations.

The claims are based on studies by the Government Accountability Office that have found wrongdoing. In a time of war, it is shocking that privatizing takes priority over the horrific injuries our soldiers have suffered.

Details are below. It is not a pretty picture.

Martin Luther King died as he prepared to march in support of striking workers. He believed that justice included economic justice.

You can find links to ways to honor Dr. King's legacy here. More below.

Frodo. Frodo lives. Lives - not lives. It's time to talk about the Frodo lives we're living.

Do a restrictive search of "Frodo Lives" and you get 37,200 hits. But just about none of these are relevant to our Frodo lives. On the way to talking about what I mean, here are few examples of what searching for Frodo lives gets you.

Last night, Maryland lawmakers defied Wal-Mart and passed the Fair Share for Health Care Act, which requires retailers with more than 10,000 Maryland employees to spend at least eight percent of their payroll on employee health benefits. The bill had passed in last year’s legislative session but been vetoed by Governor Robert Ehrlich.

Wal-Mart is the only retailer in the state that has 10,000 employees but does not spend the required amount on health benefits, and the company lobbied fiercely against the bill. It made a $4,000 contribution to Ehrlich’s reelection campaign and threatened to scrap plans to build a new distribution center on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, which is one of the state’s more economically troubled areas.

Forwarded by a friend. This is both funny and scary.

ACLU pizza

For weeks - or is it months - the newspapers have been full of stories of the plight of employees at Delphi and General Motors.

What we seem to see is unions pushed to the wall, trying to save what they can for the workers these unions represent. Everywhere unions seem to be pushed around and the proud gains of the past seem to have been washed away.

But what about the workers who chose not to have union representation? We don't hear as much about them. How are things faring for the folks who said Union No!?

The confirmation of Judge Sam Alito to the Supreme Court poses some of the greatest challenges our nation has faced with respect to civil liberties, separation of Church and State, and checks and balances on the unfettered executive power of the Presidency.

Desperate times call for desperate measures.

In Amway™ parlance, I'm going to reveal "The Plan" — how honest Multi-Level Marketing can be used for progressive political organizing.

As I continually insist, we Progressives must have a vision to win. We need to create reality instead of always reacting to the reality created for us. The major failure of the environmental movement, and the Progressive movement overall, throughout the past 30 years has been the complete inability to link its goals with economics and real human beings and to create a vision that will lead us to a nation we can be proud of.

By far the majority of Americans yearn for clean water, clean air, protected landscapes and the conservation of wildlife. But if we as Progressives don't tie the protection of water, land and air to the economy and jobs that human beings need to survive, then we will surely fail in our quest.  Local communities and local economies are the bulwark against the excesses of exploitive capitalism and the environmental degradation that results from that exploitation.

Today, we will look at another, less explored aspect of a Conservation Economy: So called "Ecosystem Services".

Last November, unbossed told the story of Adam Finkel, OSHA whistleblower.

Effective January 1, Adam Finkel resigned his position with OSHA. His eloquent letter of resignation explains why. I could hardly add more.

The major failure of the environmental movement throughout the past 30 years has been the complete inability to link our goals with economics and real human beings. This simple fact has come back to haunt environmentalists and the Progressive community as a whole.

By far the majority of Americans yearn for clean water, clean air, protected landscapes and the conservation of wildlife. But if we as Progressives don't tie the protection of water, land and air to the economy and jobs then we will surely fail in our quest. Local communities and local economies are the bulwark against the excesses of exploitive capitalism and the environmental degradation that results.

We can have clean air, clean water, wild wilderness AND healthy economies.  But for the environmental movement to achieve real and lasting success, it MUST connect and permanently bind people and communities to the land and resources around them. The only lasting and tangible way to do this is by tying (not simply linking) economy and jobs to permanent landscape conservation.

Lets look at a Restoration Economy.

For the environmental movement to achieve real and last success, it MUST connect and permanently bind people and communities to the land and resources around them. The only lasting and tangible way to do this is by tying (not simply linking) economy and jobs to permanent landscape conservation.

There are many aspects of the Conservation Economy I will be discussing this week (sustainable extraction, restoration, etc). In, http://www.unbossed.com"> The Conservation Economy Part I , I demonstrated that Wilderness is the clearly the economic engine of the Western United States. Today I would like to follow up with a slightly different take on the tourism aspect of the Conservation Economy and to demonstrate the some of the success that comes from then FRAMING our argument as one of people and economy and not ONLY trees and birds and scenic beauty.

First the success...

As with the entire Progressive movment in America, one of the major failures of the environmental movement throughout the past 30 years has been the failure to link our goals with economics and real human beings. Trees with people, so to speak. For a time, this was glossed over by successes such as the Clean Water Act, the Wilderness Act and so on but it inevitably has come back to haunt the environmentalists and the Progressive community as a whole.

Yesterday, the Rocky Mountain News reported that wildlife-related activities in Colorado create $1.4 billion in economic value. In New Mexico, wildlife-releated activies account for nearly $1 billion in economic value.

Wildlife has economic clout. Today, I'd like to kick off a five-part series on the economics of conservation.

Dive in.

Exiled Maldivian independent media operating out of Colombo, Sri Lanka were raided on December 28 following false claims of a weapons cache housed at Radio Minivan and Minivannews.com according to a dispatch yesterday from Reporters without Borders.

Minivan News and Minivan Radio have been staunch critics of Maldives President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom—who has ruled the archepelago of 26 small atolls southwest of India as a dictatorship since 1978. The Maldives caught the attention of Unbossed last summer when President Gayoom threatened to secede from the United Nations after a religious fatwa determined that the UN Universal Human Rights Declaration was in violation with Islamic Law.

It never ceases to amaze me how hard core Right Wingers engage in discussion.

They don’t.

College students and middle age men rejoice!

New research from the Harvard School of Medicine suggests that moderate alcohol consumption reduces the risk of coronary heart disease.

Dr. Meir Stampfer, chair of the Harvard School of Public Health and professor of nutrition and epidemiology has teamed up with beer manufacturer Anheuser Busch to tout the medicinal benefits of beer drinking. Dr. Stampfer will conduct 30-minute lectures at company-sponsored events to "better inform the public about beer's health benefits" according to a wire release from the Health Care Advisory Board (subscription required).

I was talking to a friend the other night about political persuasion techniques and the great divide between policy discourse and the economic classes.

My theory is that the work you do—its resultant physical settings and personal interactions—have a greater influence on one's political views than we tend to attribute to it.

So try this exercise:

List the jobs you have held, the setting(s) in which that work took place and the people you interacted with on a daily basis.

How is your local peace group doing? What are the demographics of those who attend rallies and meetings? What are they doing that reaches out and brings in new people? Are they the cool place to be? What are their programs? What's wrong?

So it's January. Months of unremitting cold, snow, ice, bitter winds, and salt corroded cars, boots, roads, waterways. [Cue Vivaldi's winter from the four seasons and listen to the shivery music.]

The bright spot in all this is . . . well, that today we are over the darkest part of the year. We are just today finishing our round of winter festivals as we plunge into full frontal winter. What? Wasn't winter solstice two weeks ago? Why today?

And what can we learn from these observances about the battle against the forces of darkness?

An interesting tidbit from our friends at the Census Bureau:

Every day during 2006, 7,918 people will turn 60. Among those turning 60 this first year: George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Cher, Donald Trump, Sylvester Stallone, and Dolly Parton.

More fascinating Boomer facts below the fold, you old coot!