Click here to sign on in support of worker rights!

If you listen closely and pay particular attention to the rhetoric coming out of the corporate-led media and Congress, you'll notice that a blind defiance is building as the debates continue on the economic future of our nation. The "blindness" comes mostly from the extreme right of the Republican party and the hardliner Reaganites who still cling to the failed "trickle-down" freemarket theories of the 1980s. But the Republicans are not the only ones in the pockets of Big Corp. Many of our Democratic leaders are also blinded by the color of money, as many believe can be clearly seen in the recent healthcare roundtables held by Senators Max Baucus(D-MT) and Chuck Grassley(R-IA), where Senator Baucus claims to have the "people's" ear while medical professionals are arrested at the proceedings for protesting the lack of single-payer healthcare advocates. I have yet to hear of a poll taken that does not show a majority of Americans in favor of a public single-payer system. Additionally, polls show most doctors, nurses and other healthcare professionals also favor single-payer. Including the conservative members of the American Medical Association. So how can Senators Baucus and Grassley, among too many others, believe the contradictions they follow? In their minds, trickle-down economics was not at all a failure. Never was. They believe in a kind of social Darwinism that says workers have no rights that are not given by the corporation, that we workers are devoid of the intellectual faculties that are otherwise necessary for the kind of wealth they enjoy, and the government needs to stay out of the way. It's Feudalism. It's corporate Fascism. And what they gain from the polarization they create is exactly what they want. To keep the population at odds with their own best interests, while they meanwhile rob us of more of our own future wealth and opportunity. And most importantly, our dignity.

A major aspect of the healthcare debate centers on the insurance industry's economic stake, and the current business-based delivery system. One of the fears that the opposition uses to delude us is to make us believe that our insurance is somehow inextricably tied to our jobs, and in order to keep us adequately covered, we must sacrifice in other areas of our employment. With 50 years of steady globalization and the growth of the multinational corporations has come an ever growing income disparity in America and around the world. A disparity larger than any since just before the Great Depression. Labor organizing fought an uphill battle for the next 30 years to bring us Minimum Wage, Overtime, holiday pay, Unemployment Insurance and work safety standards, among other rights and benefits. Then in the mid sixties, the corporations began to mount an ever-increasing public campaign of deception, jobs off-shoring, strategic bankruptcies, mergers, splits and whatever they could do to reverse those gains and break up the unions for good. They have come very close to succeeding.

Along with the healthcare debate, the Employee Free Choice Act is also quietly being readied for public debate and congressional consideration. It will be as hard, if not harder of a fight.

SEIU has made another clever and humorous video below to help us fight back against the Big Brother Corporation for our worker rights. Take a look at it and please sign the petition HERE.

Excerpt from the SEIU Action:

For decades, America’s CEOs ran the show, leaving the American people to fend for themselves.

The damage done to the American economy was a direct result of this era of CEO excess. To get back on track, we need to change the way that we do business.

The Employee Free Choice Act is a common sense economic recovery for working families that will pump billions into our nation’s economy. By empowering workers to form unions, we can better negotiate safer working conditions, honest wages, and better healthcare.

Click here to sign on!

Some good reading on the subject from Amazon.com

ACORN, Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, is and has been getting a bad rap from right-wing corporate sponsored elected officials and their "master" lobbyists. The truth is that ACORN is doing more than your elected officials, or the financial institutions to help keep families in their homes. There is nothing in it for them except the satisfaction that comes from compassion and selfless generosity.

While helping families in Pennsylvania they discovered a simple and effective method for achieving their goal.

Please take a moment to sign their Action Alert so that your members of Congress can learn this secret too!

Here is an excerpt from their Action Alert:

We've found a solution to the foreclosure crisis that will keep families in their homes. It's so simple and so powerful, we're calling it the Philadelphia Miracle.

The Philadelphia Foreclosure Diversion Program required lenders seeking foreclosures to sit down with homeowners and mediate a resolution. They succeeded in keeping 78% of families in their homes.

Take Action Here

PDA, The Progressive Democrats of America, continues the Fight for HR 676 and Single-payer Healthcare with their national slogan "Healthcare Not Warfare" and the political movement behind it.

Healthcare, regardless of which side of the debate you are on, is a common need among us all. It is literally a matter of life and death, the difference between having affordable, quality and available healthcare. Or not. I think the real question is only whether we as a society, a culture, a civilization; a nation are ready to embrace our future with an eye towards a more sophisticated and compassionate view of our Humanity. A future where our "inalienable" rights extend beyond the words, "Life, Liberty & The Pursuit of Happiness", to a deeper understanding of what those words mean in the larger context of a world that is now united by our technologies and the human resources we could muster in solving the problems that confront everyone. The will must surely be there, individually, but the way is often overshadowed by the sheer immensity of the challenge. And that is exactly why there are groups such as PDA, who can take those individual political desires and join them together as one larger voice. It takes very little time to sign a petition. Less than any individual option a citizen has to redress his or her elected officials. A petition also has more powerful effect on those who receive them, from the physical volume of signatures alone. If the campaign has succeeded in it's goal.

HR676 is the bill that supports Single-Payer Healthcare for everyone. I believe there are some things that should be a birthright in the 21st Century, and healthcare is one of them. But even if you do not support a single-payer option that could work as effectively as Medicare and Medicaid have when they are allowed to function properly, you should still think about whether you believe healthcare should be a totally privately run for-profit activity administered by the insurance and pharmaceutical industries. In fact before you decide one way or the other, please take a moment to read the post below which asks a very simple question about healthcare.

http://century-club.com/blog1.php/2009/03/25/a-simple-question

Continuing in the spirit of the previous "Earth Day" post, I bring you this action alert from the non-profit environmental legal firm, EarthJustice. They were founded in 1971 as the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund.

EarthJustice Action Alert

The following is from their About Us page.

Earthjustice at a Glance

Earthjustice is a non-profit public interest law firm dedicated to protecting the magnificent places, natural resources, and wildlife of this earth, and to defending the right of all people to a healthy environment. We bring about far-reaching change by enforcing and strengthening environmental laws on behalf of hundreds of organizations, coalitions and communities.

The title from this post is the EarthJustice title for their action alert concerning a form of the greenhouse gas, Carbon Dioxide or CO2. Black Carbon, as it is called in the bill introduced on Earth Day by Senators John Kerry (D-MA), Barbara Boxer (D-CA), Tom Carper (D-DE) and Jim Inhofe, the Oklahoma Republican known as the Senate's chief global warming skeptic, that would require the EPA to study black carbon pollution and within a year come up with solutions for reducing emissions.

I believe this is an important concern. In fact I'm puzzled in how this issue is being framed in the public forum, as an unheard story, and is why I added the question mark to the title.

Black Carbon is more commonly known as "soot". This is stuff that comes out of industrial smokestacks. But it also comes out of automobile tailpipes, and as a result of burning fossil fuels such as gasoline or diesel, bio fuels such as ethanol, and from biomass.

And what puzzles me is that Earth Day was originally able to gain the support it did back in 1970, because at that time air and water pollution were of major concern to the population of the United States and others. The environmental joke of the day was usually about Los Angeles and how narrow was daylight visibility from all the smog. The EPA was created specifically to address air pollution. Apparently they determined that black carbon wasn't a pollutant, and it was this chemical distinction that was obviously lost on me. I have assumed all these years since that all visible pollutants were being regulated, and most of what I was supposedly seeing coming out of the smokestacks was some form or the other of steam. Was I being deluded or have I been deluding myself? What about everyone else?

The important thing is that this is at least being looked at now. And hopefully will be addressed in the final climate bill that is being currently developed in the House of Representatives.

Please click on the link below to learn more and sign the petition. Below that is a short video they put together to playfully illustrate the seriousness of this greenhouse pollutant.

EarthJustice Action Alert

HAPPY "EARTH DAY", THE 39TH EDITION!!!

CARE.org is running a letter campaign aimed at dealing with global climate change and it's effect on impoverished nations around the world. Many of which are suffering environmental disasters as a result of activities by the industrial nations of the planet.

"Climate change is not only affecting butterflies and polar bears, it’s affecting humans, too. For people living in extreme poverty — 60 percent of whom are women — climate change presents a profound threat to their very survival." -- From CARE.

Let's answer President Obama's call for immediate action to help the world's poorest people by asking Congress to enact legislation now!

     SIGN ON HERE

I've also posted Earth Day sentiments on my other blogs, which you are encouraged to visit.

PatriotRebel

JellyFish

Taxpayers didn't cause this economic crisis, but we sure are paying the price.

Bank of America CEO Ken Lewis leads the way in the predatory, self-serving culture that gets executives rich at the expense of everyone else.

In just two weeks, Bank of America's shareholders will meet to decide CEO Ken Lewis' future at the company. Our government - and by extension, taxpayers - are the single biggest shareholder of Bank of America's stock.

This is our chance to send a message that it's time for Bank of America CEO Ken Lewis to go.

We're asking you to sign a "taxpayer's proxy card" to show your support for firing Lewis and reforming Bank of America - and we'll deliver it directly to Bank of America.

Watch our shocking new video about why we need to fire Ken Lewis, and sign your name to a "taxpayer's proxy card."

Send a letter to the President! Ask him to give Peace A Chance...

Excerpt:

President Obama has introduced a military budget that is $21 billion larger than the Bush military budget. On top of this he is preparing to ask Congress for more war funding for Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan - an additional $75.5 billion is expected. Please take action now and urge Congress and the President to reduce military spending, stop killing civilians with drones and other weapons, and end the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan now!

Don't you think it might be time to begin working towards real Peace?

War and military power do not promote Democracy. I know that and you know that.

War and violence only promote hate and resentment, which then turns into more violence.

If you woke up tomorrow to the sound of soldiers at your door, who force their way into your home, wouldn't you feel violated? Wouldn't you feel confused and angry?

Do you really believe there are so many people in the world whose only goal in life is to promote violence? Who care nothing for Family, Community or Justice? If it were true, if there were so many people who felt that way, unprovoked, wouldn't you see them in your own neighborhood? People are Human no matter where they are. Human Beings are the same everywhere. If so many become aggressive together, there must be a reason.

Think about it...

Then PLEASE join this campaign. Send our President a message that we, as Americans, as fellow Human Beings desire Peace on Earth and Good Will towards All peoples.

CLICK HERE TO SIGN ON:

Excerpt:

Ken Lewis, the CEO of Bank of America, for instance, made $35 million in the last two years, while the average teller at Bank of America makes just $21,000 per year.

Tell your senators that we need to rebuild the middle class by giving workers the chance to earn fair wages and benefits. Tell them to support the Employee Free Choice Act.

CLICK HERE to send an email.

From MoveOn.org Political Action

Excerpt:

There can't be real reform on Wall Street until the CEOs who brought down the banks we had to bail out are long gone. And the best way to start is by firing Bank of America CEO Ken Lewis. He's the worst of the worst. Here's our petition to get this ball rolling.

I think everyone knows in their gut that this whole "economic meltdown" stinks. I know the more I learn, the stinkier it gets. Today I'm hearing that "they" (whoever they are) want to sell us "Bailout Bonds". Didn't we just hear that no one in the financial industry wanted anything to do with the "toxic" assets that have been blamed for the collapse? But now they want us to believe it is a good investment for "us"?

The truth is we never should have "given" them the first dollar. Don't kid yourself,you're never going to see a single penny of that money returned to the public tax fund (were you expecting a big fat rebate check in 5 years?). At the most you might hear some government economist reciting some good balance sheet numbers on the National Debt, which whether true or not will have absolutely no effect on your tax burden. When was the last time you saw anything go up in price, like gas, during some kind of national emergency, and come back down to where it was before the crisis? Do you remember the weeks leading up to the September revelations? The oil futures spike? That was Wall Street preparing us and making some quick cash. And did gas prices return to normal? Have you noticed they are creeping up again? Just like your credit card interest rates, your milk, your healthcare insurance, and all the other things they know we need...

No, I agree with MoveOn. These guys gotta go. To jail would be nice, but not some cushy Federal pen. Real jail!

MoveOn,org has put this petition together to send to Washington. You can sign it HERE:

Over 20,000 people, including me, signed a letter asking CNBC to hold Wall Street accountable. The Progressive Change Campaign Committee teamed up with some New York comedians to deliver the letter to CNBC's headquarters.

   They had some fun along the way -- check out the video here:

PUT YOUR NAME ON THE PETITION HERE!