in its never-ending battle against terrorism, and at first blush they don't look too good. Today it issued another one of its big national security Strategy documents, this one called "National Strategy for Information Sharing". It's all about sharing information regarding terrorism among federal, state, local agencies and with foreign governments. Coming as it does from the Bush administration, a pretty scary document at least in theory.

It's been big news that attacks in Iraq have been down this past month. Today GAO released reports on this issue. These reports follow up on reports issued last September. Here are some of the new findings.

One of the key complaints about our safety, including in Fahrenheit 911, is the neglect of our ports' security. Today GAO issued the latest in a long list of related studies about this issue - included at the end of the report, just the list of names with links takes three pages. DHS is at last taking action, but have the billions that DHS is now pumping into our ports been money well spent?

Compelled by Congress this year (H.R. 1, sect. 601) to reveal the size of the annual intelligence budget, the Director of National Intelligence issued a terse statement putting the figure for Budget Year 2007 at $43.5 billion. Walter Pincus has sources who tell him that if you add in the other intelligence budgets not included in Mike McConnell's tally (tactical intelligence for the individual military branches), the total would reach $50 billion.

In 1997 and 1998, the last years for which we have an official figure, the intelligence budgets were $26.6 and $26.7 billion. Thus the annual intelligence budgets are approximately double what they were a decade ago.

Last week, we reported on a new GAO study on DHS's use of contractors in This Nation Of the Contractors, By the Contractors, and For the Contractors.

In that story, I provided background information on the use of contractors and the laws that are supposed to prevent a government run by and for contractors.

Since it was created, the International Labor Organization has issued a number of conventions that set international workplace standards. So just imagine your workplace operated based on these standards. This will horrify you - either because yours doesn't (and most do not) and you think it should or because you think this would mean the death of the efficient workplace.

crossposted from Shai Sachs at MyDD and Planting Liberally. When he gave permission to cross-post this piece, Shai added: We will likely be changing the name of the blog to "The Progressive Workplace." and also: Also, feel free to send people along to our google group also - link

Shai's original post is below.

A huge area destroyed and in danger - but this time by fire and not water. . . .

Unions had success in filing a complaint with the International Labour Organisation against the State of North Carolina last spring. link and link Now it's the AFL-CIO that has decided to file a complaint with the ILO.

Here is news of three big settlements.

I had a job to do and I did it. Someone else did not do their job. I feel that now is the time for someone to understand the importance of accepting financial responsibilities for the damage that I and others like me have incurred to our health and quality of life during our service to the nation,” said William Van Buskirk in a March 18, 2000 hearing in Espanola, NM. He is a former Los Alamos machinist with chronic beryllium disease, diagnosed in 1971 (“Public Hearing—Injured LANL workers,” 2000).

So said Joseph Cirincione this evening at a lecture on nuclear proliferation at Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, PA. A highly respected expert in the field, and until recently the Director for Non-Proliferation at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Cirincione’s comments deserve attention, even from those who don’t believe the situation is that dire.

Released today are two GAO reports on the status of the Terrorist Watch List. My personal favorite section of this report was:

DHS Agencies Are Addressing Incidents of Persons on the Watch List Passing Undetected through Screening; TSC Has Ongoing Initiatives That Could Help Reduce This Vulnerability

So that's what's happening while I'm hanging out in the departure lounge.

You may know fees are charged for 401(k) plans, and you may know that the higher the fees the less your investments are worth, but do you have any idea what fees you are being charged? 83% of us have no idea. And that's a good thing for some, but not for the large number of us who depend on this money for retirement.

For the past year I’ve been highly skeptical of claims that George Bush had resolved upon attacking Iran. Whatever he may have wanted early last spring, there were signs by June of 2006 that Bush was stepping back from the abyss. It may have been due to push-back by the Pentagon, or the complete collapse of post-election Iraq, or possibly a temporary eclipse of Cheney’s influence. Much of the administration’s saber-rattling since then I put down as the negotiating tactics of those Mayberry Machiavellis in the White House.

But increasingly these days we’re seeing more ominous signs of actual planning.

Well, the UAW continues to organize casino workers. I've reported on prior wins and campaigns, and I think one loss. The UAW now represents more than 6,000 gaming workers in Michigan, Rhode Island and New Jersey. Here is news on some of its most recent casino campaigns.

Hillary Clinton in her own words is almost always more disappointing than the ideal candidate of her supporters' imagination. Today Michael Tomasky of the Guardian publishes an interview with her that ought to make your heart sink, that is if your heart is able to stomach all the equivocations.

But you really should. Watch No End in Sight I mean. Here's why.

This statement, made in passing by the Sunday Times defence correspondent Mick Smith, is noteworthy:

Seven American U2 spy planes have passed through RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire this year on their way to Akrotiri in Cyprus or Al-Dhafra in Abu Dhabi, the bases for flights over Iran.

Two observations crowd in:

First, the US is said to have an active fleet of only 35 U-2 planes (nominally headquartered in California). Twenty percent of them, a staggering proportion, were en route this year through England for the Middle East.

That seemed to be the theme running through GAO reports last week. Here are just a few that struck me as of high importance. I've reported on others in individual posts this past week.

Well, it was a roller coaster week in the FedEx litigation over the company's improper classification of drivers as independent contractors when, legally speaking, they were employees and entitled to the benefits and protections of employees.

A recent report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that many working Americans are working more than one job. In some states, nearly 10% of employees are holding multiple jobs.

Last year I argued in America’s slaves that the networks created by Bush’s CIA for purchasing (or seizing), for transporting, brutalizing, and holding without trial undifferentiated masses of foreign men, should not be rationalized as just a different form of imprisonment. They aren’t being treated as either war captives or criminals. Instead, I believe, the closest analogue for this system is slavery. It’s not the slavery of economic exploitation, of course, but the display of raw, unchecked power, of domination, of authority. Under Bush, when you get right down to it, this new slavery came into existence in order to crush out the very idea of resistance to his will.

Today, the Guardian newspaper highlights another dimension to the vile network created by George W. Bush: slave ships.

There is such irony in the name "Department of Homeland Security." In so many ways it has made us so much more insecure. There was Katrina, of course. The failure to allocate funds in ways and to places that were most at risk. And then there's selling off the government to private contractors. As told in detail in a newly released GAO report and testimony.

By Liz Borkowski, cross-posted from The Pump Handle

A lot of people who care about the high rates of uninsurance in the U.S. do so because it just seems wrong that the wealthiest country in the world leaves a large swath of its population without healthcare – and, thus, facing employment difficulties, financial ruin, years of unnecessary pain or disability, and an overall impediment to pursuing the American Dream.

If you’re an unpopular president with a bizarre sense of what fiscal responsibility means, this argument might not convince you. Even if it doesn’t, you should still try to bring the rate of uninsurance toward zero out of sheer self-interest. That’s because even those of us with good health insurance plans get worse healthcare when our neighbors are uninsured.

At a presentation on Tuesday Dr. Arthur Kellermann, an emergency-room doctor and professor of emergency medicine at Emory School of Medicine, explained how high rates of uninsurance affect communities’ health in several ways.

The answer is: Health and Medical Care for Civilian Employees Deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq.

Milo was helping me this morning to replace my van’s brake pads when he happened to mention another one of the Bush administration’s outlandish appointments. I’m not one to gripe (that’s as good as my motto, in fact, as a blogger). But this particular appointment does seem just a tad over the top.

With little fanfare yesterday, Bush appointed Bobby Orr as the acting Deputy Assistant Secretary for National Transportation Safety. The administration describes her as “highly qualified” for the job. How qualified? In the past, Orr has made many controversial statements about passenger safety. In particular, she has campaigned for years against mandatory seat-belt laws, which she claims are “about making everyone collaborators with the culture of death”.

That just seems a bit extreme to me.

POGO - the Project on Government Oversight - has come out with its list of very bad federal contractors. It's fortunate that unbossed has a tag for crooks, thieves, and miscreants.

The biggest proponent of the use of private debt collectors is the Tax Fairness Coalition.

So just who are they. Here's just a start on sleuthing to see what turns up. More in later days.

I've written a lot on the use of private IRS debt collectors. Here is a mini-status report.

The New York Times reports today that a new non-profit backed by strong critics of the Bush administration will assemble a team of smart and skilled researchers to generate the kind of investigative reporting that American newspapers used to do. The group plans to give away the results of their investigations to any news outlets that are willing to print the information.

To my mind, that sounds like unbossed.com with a payroll.

You've probably noticed the big push for nuclear power generation in recent months. You hear that it is clean and green. If you raise concerns about storage of radioactive waste materials for many years, you are assured that the industry has matured and learned its lessons.

I don't know whether the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC) is actually assuming responsibility for more hospitals or if it just seems that way. If the former, this may be a sign not only of problems with the way pensions are being funded but also a sign of the over all poor financial health of our health care system.

In autumn 2005, unbossed carried a series that looked at Kansas from many vantage points, including poverty, depopulation, highway policy, and agriculture. Here is one piece Homeless? Try Kansas? Part IV - Is Our “Rural Policy” to Blame? I provide this as context for examining the findings of a study on rural women and work.

There is a whole industry out there whose role is to bust unions. They sow fear and misinformation and advise employers how to come to the edge or just over of breaking the law - all for the purpose of taking away workers' right to organize unions and to ensure that no one can challenge employer hegemony. Well, now there is no busters.org with tools for union organizers.

I recently read an interesting news item from the Bureau of National Affairs on membership trends for these two union federations.

Last August 19, in FedEx and Its So-Called Independent Contractors we reported on FedEx's big loss. FedEx had claimed that drivers it had claimed the drivers were independent contractors, but the court found they were actually employees. So how did FedEx respond? It F****ed them.

In light of having been outed as a tool of Hilary Clinton, despite our best efforts to hide the truth, we have decided to reveal the secrets to our success as a tool of the Clinton-erati.

It turns out that the founder of unbossed.com, em dash, is a zombie in the pay of Hillary Clinton. Until today, my guess is that you would not known that. Read the infinitely entertaining Mr. Richard Poe for all the chilling details.

It's too easy to dismiss the latest attack on affirmative action as racism.

Sure, there is an undeniable element of modern day mandingo-ism that fuels some in the anti-civil rights movement. The success of white supremacist and anti-immigration groups to stoke fears in the heart of suburbia with images of hulking black men and swarthy Latino gang members confirms that we have a long way to go to achieve a colorblind society.

The insidious motives for turning back the clock to the "glory days" of Jim Crow seem to have much more to do with the unspoken battle that is raging in the streets of America — the war on working people.

Five years ago today the House passed J. H. Res. 114, which authorized the President (presumably in perpetuity) to use any force “necessary” against the “continuing” threat to the nation posed by Iraq…just in case Iraq did in fact pose a threat. The vote was 296-133. On Oct. 11, 2002 the Senate followed suit, by a vote of 77-23. So began the quagmire.

The lop-sided Congressional votes smoothed the way for the rush to war that was sure to follow. It was accompanied by applause and back-slapping all around.

It occurred to me to wonder how this terrible child’s fifth birthday was being celebrated now in Washington, among those who brought it into the world.

This is more up smintheus' alley than mine, but a new GAO report issued today minces no words in assessing current US actions in Iraq.

Possible. The House has now voted to outlaw them. A veto is of course likely, but this is an important step in the right direction. I have written a lot on this issue over the last couple years. You can find those stories by using the unbossed search function. It's an amazing tale that involves some people getting actual jail time!! Just the sort of people you want handling your taxes. There are also some risible pieces where the private debt collectors conduct a survey of how good a job they're doing . . . and . . . guess what? They found they are doing a great job. People the dun for money just love them!

According to the EEOC's website:

The international law firm of Sidley Austin LLP will pay $27.5 million to 32 former partners who the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission alleged were forced out of the partnership because of their age, under a consent decree approved by a federal judge. (EEOC v. Sidley Austin LLP, N.D. Illinois No. 05 C 0208.)

Last Friday, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals struck down an Idaho law that forbade voluntary payroll deductions to pay for political activities as unconstitutional.

A couple months ago, the Washington Monthly asked Ted Sorenson to write the speech he would like the next Democratic presidential candidate to give. I've still got that issue, and since then, I've read it several times. Reading it makes me realize just how degraded are the current visions of our politicians. I wish it were available from the Washington Monthly website, but it isn't. So the next best thing it has been pasted into other sites.

Here is a link to the decision by the State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli.

GAO was putting out reports last week like there was no tomorrow. I'll try to report more in depth on key reports. In the meantime, here are the ones I think deserve special attention.

Prison privatization is nothing new. Nor are advocates for it or criticisms of it. News of riots at private prisons ( link 1 link 2 link 3 link 4 ) over the years briefly raises concerns that are quickly forgotten, except by privatization critics.

A new report by GAO shows that, despite studies, legal requirements to collect data, and a serious effort by GAO to do a rigorous study, we still have no idea whether private prisons cost less or do a better job. And that is a real crime.

On November 9, oral argument will be held before the National Labor Relations Board on in the Ceremonial Courtroom, Room 643, Philadelphia City Hall, Broad and Market Streets, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on one of the most important issues the Board has dealt with in years.

Last April we described the impetus to amend the Americans with Disabilities Act in order to restore the ADA Congress thought it had enacted . . . after judges had interpreted the ADA's rights out of existence.

This past Wednesday, a trial judge in Pennsylvania ordered Walmart to pay a total of $140 million to 124,506 Pennsylvania workers Walmart had forced to work off the clock and had forbidden to take legally required breaks.

Perhaps, like me, you're less than convinced that any of the leading presidential candidates can be trusted entirely to adopt mature policies, however essential. Perhaps you're wondering whether they will definitively and forever sweep into the landfill of history all the many outrages against decency that President Bush has mounded up around the White House, like a fortress of so much manure.

Perhaps you're concerned that once again so-called liberals will try to compete with so-called conservatives in bellicosity, chest-thumping, strong-on-defensism, mine-shaft-gapism, and so forth—thus insuring some kind of continuity in the insane policies of the Bush administration. Perhaps, for example, you fear that each and every one of them would ultimately refuse to withdraw from Iraq (notwithstanding everything), out of an excess of caution regarding what the "serious people" in Washington might think of their hawkish credentials.

You should be worried, because by now virtually every one of them has publicly taken an obstreperous or incautious stance on some foreign policy issue...threatening Iran, for example. It already looks like a race to the bottom, and I fear that there'll be a lot of table-pounding before the primaries are over. This list of hawkish foreign policy advisors assembled by the main presidential candidates may give you even more grounds for concern.

In particular, I'm astounded (though not in the least surprised) to learn that Hillary Clinton relies upon the advice of that notorious Brookings-Institution fool, Michael O'Hanlon.

You'll see news reports on the web saying that a new study shows women aren't eating enough fish when they are pregnant to get vital nutrients such as omega-3 fatty acids. Ingredients needed for healthy babies. link But who is behind these new findings that fly in the face of advice to limit fish intake when pregnant, because along with the omega-3's fish these days are loaded with mercury and other substances that are very harmful, especially to fetuses?

Today's New York Times reveals that there have been even more Bush administration torture memos than the notorious 2002 torture-brief written by John Yoo. The new memos (which I'm tempted to call Yoo Two) have received plenty of attention. What hasn't been widely noted is the explicit statement in the NYT that the infamous and semi-secret "black sites" are back in use around the globe.

Torture Inc. was just off on vacation, as many of us suspected all along.

While that once may have been a ho-hum question, it's become much more interesting of late.

GAO has issued a new report on problems with voting systems that surfaced in Florida - but that could have national ramifications.

I've been arguing for nearly a year that the surest way for Congress to force George Bush's hand in Iraq is to raises the taxes needed to pay for the prolonged occupation. For altogether too many Americans, this has been a war without any apparent costs. That has got to stop.

In any case, Bush has shown that he'll ignore what the nation as a whole thinks about his policies. But he has always been attentive to what he calls his "base", the extremely wealthy, want from the government. So I've argued that Democrats should introduce legislation to raise taxes on the very rich to pay for Bush's war.

Finally, some members of Congress are doing just that.

Like other federal agencies under the Bush administration, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration has abandoned its traditional role of setting and enforcing regulations in favor of industry partnerships and voluntary programs.

OSHA’s complete failure to do its job became painfully apparent earlier this week, when the House of Representatives voted 260 to 154 to require the agency to respond to a serious workplace hazard that was first brought to its attention seven years ago.