Still think minimum wage workers are mostly teenagers who work part-time and not adults with families?  For serving his country as a Marine during the Iraq war – he now gets to fight for his right to a living wage and against unfair labor practices. Watch the video above and listen to this Marine Vet describe what it’s like to raise a family while morning for a $7.25 minimum wage.

Watch and Listen

The post WATCH: Marine Vet Describes Working For Minimum Wage appeared first on Madness & Reality.

In yet another round table discussion that made me feel like the lone black waiter or shoe shine boy at a country club, the Morning Joe crew discussed the latest move by the Senate to advance an increase to the federal minimum wage. Their special guest and person of authority for the segment was none other than Sen. Coburn who didn’t hesitate to beat his chest for being the lone Republican to vote against the minimum wage increase in 2007. This was the last time the minimum wage was increased, as like then, Coburn voted against even bringing the legislative measure up for a vote. During the interview, Willie Geist asked the Oklahoma Republican if he “turned his back” on his own state by voting against raising the minimum wage to $10.10 on Wednesday. In his response, Coburn argued that the “benefit is small, the cost of lost jobs is great, it goes against free market principles.”

Now I’m not going to bore you with yet another argument that proves that Coburn and for the most part all opponents of raising the minimum wage is wrong. Heck, I’ve written about it time and time again on this very website — and no, raising the minimum wage will not kill jobs. However, what really made my ass chafe was Coburn’s justification for voting against helping to lift 28 million Americans out of poverty. Hey, might as well given that those austerity cuts have made things harder for working stiffs, right?

“How did they pick $10.10?” he said. “Why not $22? Why not $100? That makes everybody make $200,000 a year. The fact is, what we have is an economic system on its butt right now because we have poor leadership and poor policy.”

Yeah, he didn’t miss an opportunity to take a shot at the president. According to Coburn, the real problem in America has nothing to do with income inequality, a shrinking middle class, or wages being stagnant for, like, ever. Geist pointed out that people working full-time for $7.25 an hour — the current minimum wage — could only make $15,000 a year, which is well below the poverty line.

His response?

“I don’t believe you ought to interfere in the market!” Coburn insisted. “If Oklahomans want a minimum wage, we ought to have it. I don’t believe there ought to be a national minimum wage. That’s my position. I’m the only member of the Republican Party that’s still here that voted ‘no’ on the last one.”

“And I believe that markets work better than bureaucrats, and I think there’s lots of downsides, and there’s lots written in the economics field on raising the minimum wage,” he continued. “So if you want to prove the point, let’s raise them all to $20 or $25. If you want to give somebody a livable wage.”

“Because at $25 you put them at median family income, which has not increased since 1989 in this country.”

Great! At least he admits that living om $7.25 per hour is pretty shitty, hence the reason for raising the minimum wage which as is isn’t even tied to inflation. And I say that because the last time I made $10 per hour was some time back in the early nineties. It was a different time then and the national hourly wage rate was somewhere around 412.50 per hour. But, as much as an increase in the minimum wage is needed, and as nice as $10.10 sounds, the truth is while giving low-wage workers more breathing room from week to week, it isn’t enough.

But don’t tell that to Coburn, folks. If it were up to him, the “free market” would decide the worth of one’s labor. Well, there’s one problem with that: The last time the market was left up to men like Coburn, black people were working for free in America. And I’m sorry, as oppressed as workers are today, do we really want to leave the wealthy to their own devices when it comes to paying workers for their labor? Sorry, Senator Coburn, but that “free market” stuff hasn’t worked out well for many of us.

The post Tom Coburn: Abolish the Minimum Wage, Let the “Free Market” Set Wages appeared first on Madness & Reality.

This from WTVB 4:

Levia, a 23-year-old single mom with twins, works two jobs and is putting herself through nursing school. During her morning shift as a manager at McDonald’s last week, while several local fire departments worked in sub-zero temperatures to put out a house fire, Levia says she saw a way to help.

 

Olean firefighters ordered 25 breakfast sandwiches and hash browns, and Levia says she pulled $83 out of her pocket and paid for it herself.

 

“Just because I appreciate everything they do,” she explained.

 

Then a little bit later, another department ordered $70 of food.

 

Levia sent her boss a text message to see if the company would pay the tab. She thought they might because she claims they regularly give free meals to police officers who stop by.

 

“It’s very common in our store,” she said.

 

But Levia’s boss said no, McDonald’s would not donate the food. Levia then called the corporate office and got the same answer.

 

So once again, she and fellow workers picked up the tab.

 

When word spread that Levia paid the bill, some firefighters called her boss and complained, thinking the restaurant made Levia feel obligated to pay for their meals.

 

Levia says after that, her boss told her, “You opened a whole bee’s nest.”

 

At her next shift, after eight years of working for McDonald’s, Levia was fired. She says the reason given was she swore at a superior – something she denies.

 

“I did say this is ‘freaking’ ridiculous. But it was not implied to anybody,” she said.

In a world where greedy corporations like McDonald’s refuse to compensate employees by offering the dignity of a living wage, what Levia did was highly commendable. She didn’t have to do what she did. But even so, it’s good to know that there are still some genuinely good people in this world. Unfortunately, however, people like Levia aren’t appreciated.

To that point, the owner of the Olean McDonald’s, gave WTVB the following statement:

“The Meyers Organization has always valued the employees who serve our customers every day. We likewise continue to be an ardent supporter of our police and fire departments, along with other first responders. They are always welcome in our restaurants, and we will continue to support them in the future.

 

“We are aware that certain allegations have been made concerning the reasons for Heather Levia’s termination. Out of respect for Ms. Levia and her privacy, it would not be appropriate to comment in detail on the reasons she is no longer employed by our organization. Still, it should be pointed out that the allegations are absolutely not true. We would never penalize an employee for showing appropriate gratitude for the work of our firefighters.”

Levia said that she has already received job offers.

Which is good, because it says that good deeds and good people are still welcomed..

The post McDonald’s Manager Fired After Paying for Food for Firefighters appeared first on Madness & Reality.

Many of them are citing an increased cost of business as a result of the Affordable Care Act, otherwise commonly known as ‘Obamacare‘. While they may be slight increases in cost as a result of the policy which requires the provision of health insurance coverage to employees. The fact that small businesses are given tax breaks as incentive to participate (and in some ways offset cost) in providing coverage is being largely ignored by business owners. Add to that, the fact that ‘Obamacare‘ doesn’t go into full effect until 2012. But don’t tell that to Papa John’s Pizza CEO John Schnatter, who now says that he will have to reduce the hours of his employees as a result.

This from The Huffington Post:

Papa John’s CEO John Schnatter said he plans on passing the costs of health care reform to his business onto his workers. Schnatter said he will likely reduce workers’ hours, as a result of President Obama’s reelection, the Naples News reports. Schnatter made headlines over the summer when he told shareholders that the cost of a Papa John’s pizza will increase by between 11 and 14 cents due to Obamacare.

“I got in a bunch of trouble for this,” he said, referring to the comments he made in August, according to Naples News. “That’s what you do, is you pass on costs. Unfortunately, I don’t think people know what they’re going to pay for this.”

Schnatter went on to say he’s neither in support of, nor against the Affordable Care Act, even admitting that “the good news is 100 percent of the population is going to have health insurance.” But he’s not the only one in the chain restaurant industry to admit that workers hours may be reduced, since Obamacare mandates that only employees that work more than 30 hours per week are covered under their employers health insurance plan. For example, Darden restaurants, the parent company of Olive Garden and Red Lobster, has already experimented with reducing workers hours in anticipation of the legislation.

Others have responded to the added costs of Obamacare more harshly, includingApplebee’s which has said it won’t hire new workers because of the law. Just this week, a Georgia business owner also claimed he cut employees due to Obamacareand in fact had specifically laid off those who he thought had voted for President Obama.

So lemme get this straight: Papa John’s Pizza cannot afford an eleven to fourteen cents increase in cost per pizza because of ‘Obamacare’. But, they can afford to give away 2 million free pizzas with the help of NFL superstar Peyton Manning, now that he has returned to the league?

Meh, I don’t know about you, but I think Papa is full of shit, as are the other businesses attempting to fool us all. But hey, don’t say I didn’t tell you when they cut out delivery, and start selling pies for $30 a pop because of Obama. At any rate, it’s good to know that you can still run out and buy a hot and ready pizza for $5 thanks to Little Caesars. Uh-huh, surely their employees would appreciate you doing that.

Yep, “Pizza Pizza,” muthafuckas — Papa John’s is full of shit!

You probably thought you’d never read the sentence: Thanks to marijuana, Peyton Manning’s timing is flawless.

Colorado voters passed Amendment 64 last Tuesday, a law that legalizes marijuana in the state for recreational use. The timing couldn’t be better for Denver Broncos quarterback Peyton Manning, though not because he’s like a pot head or anything. Just two weeks ago, Manning purchased 21 Papa John’s franchises in Colorado.

Not seeing the connection? It’s the munchies. Stoners love to eat pizza. It’s one of their favorites, due to pace of delivery, range of variety, ease of ingestion and just general deliciousness. So odds are in a state where recreational use of marijuana is legal, there will probably be way more people eating Papa John’s.

It’s not just the added dollars spent on the pizza munchies that is likely to bring the state of Colorado some extra dough from weed legalization. Amendment 64 is estimated to bring the state $60 million in combined savings and added tax revenue.

Even before Colorado voters passed the law, Manning was confident that buying the pizza franchises was a savvy move.

“It’s a smart investment now and will be long after I’m done playing football,” saidManning was quoted by NBC News after sealing the deal on October 26.

Better ingredients, better pizza my ass, Papa.

The post Papa John’s Pizza Set to Reduce Workers Hours Because of Obama Win appeared first on Madness & Reality.

According to the report, jobs paying between $13.83 and $21.13 per hour, made up about 60 percent of the jobs lost during the recession. Those jobs have been slow to return during the recovery as mid-wage jobs have made up just 27 percent of the jobs gained. Yep, the bad news is that low-paying jobs have constituted roughly 58 percent of the jobs gained since 2010. At a glance it would seem that we’re worse off now than four years ago. However, the fact that manufacturing has grown in three years under Obama than eight years of the Bush administration bodes well.

Check this out:

The BGOV Barometer shows U.S. factory positions have grown since early 2010, arresting a slide that began toward the end of the 1990s. It’s the best showing since the era of Bill Clinton …

“This is the first sustained increase we’ve seen in a long time,” Macpherson said. … The progress so far also contrasts with the job losses seen during the recovery from the 2001 recession, when George W. Bush was president, he said. More jobs at factories are mainly an outcome of longer-term trends including rising productivity and innovation, a weaker dollar and free trade agreements, he said.

So while budget cuts to state and local government have taken away a major source of mid- and higher-wage jobs as noted by the NELP report. The fact that manufacturing is finally growing (despite last August being the third consecutive month of contraction) is a welcome sign to the millions of people currently employed in pow-wage jobs within the service industry.

“The Republicans in Washington claimed to draw their ideas from a website called ‘America Speaking Out.’ It turns out that one of the ideas that’s drawn the most interest on their website is ending tax breaks for companies that ship jobs overseas. Funny thing is, when we recently closed one of the most egregious loopholes for companies creating jobs overseas, Republicans in Congress were almost unanimously opposed. The Republican leader John Boehner attacked us for it, and stood up for outsourcing, instead of American workers.” – President Barack Obama

Of course there’s no way we can expect every single manufacturing job to return. However, with China’s slowing economy, and the recent boost in home construction and the real estate market. It’s easy to see that we’re on the right track, and we’re obviously better off than we were four years ago. No thanks to George W. Bush’s stimulus package that included those massive tax cuts of course.

Yeah, how did that “stimulus” work out for you?

The post US Manufacturing Growth Faster Under Barack Obama Than George W. Bush appeared first on Madness & Reality.

In fact, Romney loves America so much, that he recently shared a story of just how “lucky” it is to be born (or living) in America. A point not uncommon and often pointed out by notable speakers like Warren Buffet at speaking engagements om occasion. Some may liken it to political jingoism; but the fact is, it is accepted as a patriotic gesture. Heck, even Barack Obama himself has expressed on many a occassion that his story would not be possible anywhere else but the United States.

So what’s the big deal about Romney being patriotic, RiPPa? Well, nothing really; that is, with the exception that the story he told involves Bain Capital (you remember them, don’t you?) and a factory in China that uses very cheap labor to produce its products. So what’s the big deal, RiPPa, everybody knows that companies employ cheap labor to produce products overseas. Well, this is true, but you just have to hear Romney tell it for himself. As I mentioned before, the following story was told at a fundraiser; also of note, is the fact that it was captured by a hidden camera.

The factory as Romney describes in the following video, was surrounded by armed guards in towers, and housed at least 12 women to a room. Romney’s point was that, “95% of life is settled if you’re born in America.” A point not lost by the wealthy donors in attendance, I’m sure.

Check it out:

(H/T Political Wire)

The post Video: Romney Caught Discussing Bain’s Exploitation of Chinese Labor appeared first on Madness & Reality.

I won’t presume to having a pulse on what’s going on in the city of Chicago. However, among the news of the one-day-old teacher strike, it’s good to know that people like Mitt Romney are on top of it. You know, people like him who see organized labor as a hindrance to being a slave master the free market, and the concept of school choice (which ultimately means modern-day segregation).

However, be that as it may, given the sudden concern about the education of Chicago’s students, who are believed to be abandoned by greedy teachers. What’s important (at least to me) is that we must stop treating teachers and other public employees like they are “the help.” Believe it or not, there are many teachers dedicated to educating our youth. Many of whom who are not just in it for the lengthy summer vacation. Truth is, many Chicago teachers are disgusted by Chicago’s failing school system. And when I say they’re failing, as Dylan Matthews writes, it’s pretty bad.

Chicago performs quite poorly on national assessments of educational quality. As Reutersnotes, fourth-graders in Chicago performed an average of nine points worse than the big city average and sixteen points worse than the national average on the math section of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), the national gold standard for measuring learning. On reading, they were eight and seventeen points worse than big city and national averages, respectively. That’s a bit better than Los Angeles or Washington, D.C. but worse than New York.

Chicago also has shorter than average school years and school days. Many students areonly in class for 170 days a year as of a few years ago, below the state minimum of 176 days and the national average of 180 days; under Emanuel, the year was lengthened to 180 days. The school day in Chicago averages five hours and forty five minutes in elementary schools (as opposed to the national average of six hours and forty-two minutes) and seven hours for secondary schools, above the national average of 6.6 hours. Emanuel and teachers recentlynegotiated a deal to hire 500 new teachers to allow for a 90 minute school day extension without increasing hours for current teachers.

So while many assume this to be about money, the reality is, the demands of Chicago’s teachers are well beyond that narrative. But don’t tell that to the many opponents who are of the opinion that Chicago’s average teacher salary of $74,839 a year is more than enough compensation.

Watch the following:

The Chicago Public Schools in March unveiled an evaluation system (pdf) in which standardized testing makes up 40 percent of the rubric, a percent that increases by 5 percent every year thereafter (45 percent in year two, 50 percent in year three, etc.), which was designed by panels that included teachers, principals, and teachers’ union officials (including the president). The system goes above and beyond the state requirement that testing make up 20-40 percent of teacher evaluations. The teachers’ unions are resisting this system, calling it too punitive.

Teachers also want laid off teachers to be able to be automatically “recalled” to positions if they open up. Emanuel would allow these teachers to apply to new openings, but given his desire to focus layoffs on worst-performing teachers, does not want automatic recalls. Finally, the teachers’ union is demanding smaller class sizes (both to improve working conditions and to improve student learning and life outcomes) and air conditioning for classrooms that don’t currently have it.

With Cook county, Illinois having the largest black population per capita in the country, and given the city’s much-talked-about problems with crime and poverty. Any improvement that promotes and encourages a healthier work environment for teachers, has to be a good thing. So while many may look at the current strike negatively and use students as pawns to advance their own self interests. To me, in the interest of improvement, this is a necessary move by Chicago’s 30,000 teachers; and, it’s my hope that this can all be worked out soon for the betterment of 350,000 kids.

The post Chicago’s Teacher Strike is Very Necessary and Not Just About Money appeared first on Madness & Reality.

So I’m watching the GOP debate several weeks ago on MSNBC and while on break they ran an ad that completely blew my mind. It was an anti-immigration ad sponsored by capsweb.org, a group based in California. This wasn’t your typical anti-immigration ad, and what struck me, was the fact that the ad had nothing to do with the problem of “illegals” in California. Instead, the ad’s targeted issue was that of too many legal immigrants being in the state of California. Yeah, can you imagine that? I could understand taking issue with undocumented immigrants, but legal documented immigrants? I don’t know about you, but this sounds a bit crazy; especially when you consider the story of the first settlers on American soil. Check out the ad that has been running in recent weeks:

More legal immigrants reside and settle in California permanently than in any other state. The flow of workers has not stopped since the recession hit. The policy is having a particularly insidious effect in states like California, with millions unable to find a job and unemployment rates topping 12 percent. As a result, California has been forced to borrow $40 million a day from the federal government to pay unemployment benefits. At the same time, the Federal government continues to flood California with legal immigrants and temporary workers with no calls for an end to foreign workers in sight.

The TV ad, airing on both broadcast and cable networks, illustrates the lack of attention to legal foreign workers by first presenting the word “illegal”, since illegal immigrants has been the primary media focus. The spokesperson then separates the word “legal” out, saying, “But what about these workers; legal foreign workers?” The commercial ends by combining the letters to form the word “ill” to describe California’s economy and joblessness, partly attributable to legal and illegal immigration.

Now I’ve written about the immigration debate on many occasion. As an immigrant myself, this is indeed something near and dear to my heart. Having said that, it really irritates me when I see this played out in the media. Much of this garbage is in fact rooted in racism, and much of the propaganda is often void of facts. So, me being me, allow me to show you something which kills the noise. It’s something that I’be been saying forever, but yet and still, facts like the following are rarely brought to the table when it comes to any debate on immigration and policy.

According to study conducted by Economist Giovanni Peri, a professor at the University of California-Davis. There has been no negative effect on the wages of native-born Americans given the influx of immigrants, undocumented or otherwise. In fact, according to his study, in a new working paper for the National Bureau of Economic Research, the addition of highly skilled immigrants have positively impacted the wages of native-born Americans, According to his study, there is no correlation between the influx of immigrants, and poverty as is often believed. He concluded that immigration doesn’t increase the poverty rate by depressing the wages of low-income, native-born Americans and can actually decrease poverty when higher-skilled immigrants enter the workforce.

Here’s this from his report:

There is essentially no effect of immigration on native poverty at the national level. At the local level, only considering the most extreme estimates and only in some localities, we find non-trivial effects of immigration on poverty. In general, however, even the local effects of immigration bear very little correlation with the observed changes in poverty rates and they explain a negligible fraction of them.

Here’s a more detailed summary:

WASHINGTON — There is broad consensus among economists that immigration has a small but positive impact on the average income of Americans over the long term. But far less analysis has been done on the impact of immigrants on the labor market in the shorter term, particularly when viewed through the lens of the recession and its lingering labor market effects.

In a new Migration Policy Institute report, The Impact of Immigrants in Recession and Economic Expansion, University of California, Davis economist Giovanni Peri finds that immigration unambiguously improves employment, productivity and income but that it also involves some short-term adjustments (such as worker retraining or adoption of new technology).

The paper was commissioned to inform the work of MPI’s Labor Markets Initiative, which is conducting a comprehensive, policy-focused review of the role of legal and illegal immigration in the labor market.

The report, which examines short- and long-run impacts of immigration on average and over the business cycle of growth and contraction, finds that:

• Immigrants do not reduce native employment rates over the long run (10 years), while increasing productivity and average income for native-born workers. Immigration to the United States over the 1990-2006 period can be credited with a 2.9 percent increase in real wages for the average U.S. worker.
• The adjustment process, however, is not immediate. When immigration occurs during a downturn, the economy does not appear to respond as quickly as it would during economic expansions and there is evidence of modest negative impacts on employment and average income in the short run. These impacts dissipate over periods of up to seven years.
• During periods of economic growth, by contrast, new immigration creates jobs in sufficient numbers to leave native employment unharmed even in the short run. This holds true even for less-educated workers. Immigration during economic expansions has no measurable, short-term negative effect on income per worker.

“Adjustments to employment, productivity and income are more difficult during downturns,” Peri said. “This suggests that the United States would benefit most from an immigration system that better adjusts to economic conditions, allowing legal immigrant inflows to be more responsive to the economic cycle.”

In the report, Peri suggests allowing employers’ demand for work visas to play a stronger role in determining the number of visas issued annually, and that a share of the visas be allocated to less-skilled workers, particularly those who perform primarily manual jobs that native workers increasingly are much less interested in filling.

“This report offers further evidence yet of the need for the immigration system to become significantly more responsive to the U.S. economy’s constantly evolving labor market needs, so that the benefits of immigration can be captured more fully and any negative effects neutralized,’’ said MPI President Demetrios Papademetriou. “Establishing an independent executive-branch agency that would make regular recommendations to the president and Congress for adjusting employment-based immigration levels would inject a greatly needed degree of flexibility into the current rigid immigration system.”

Oh well, I can keep repeating this stuff until the cows come home. The truth is, people still won’t believe it. They would rather take commercials like the one above at face value. In doing so, they’ll never ask who or what is actually behind such a commercial. Sadly, they’ll never see it as racist because with the face of immigrants being “those damn messikan fence jumpers,” they’ll seek solace in criminalizing them rather than seeing the economic value of immigration to this country. Bet hey, don’t tell that to the fine patriots who make up Californians For Population Stabilization.

It’s always convenient to blame the foreigners…

The post So “Illegal Immigrants” Are As Bad As “Legal” Immigrants? appeared first on Madness & Reality.

Fascism should be more appropriately be called corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power. — Giovanni Gentile

Happy Labor Day, and I hope that you have had an opportunity to gather with friends and family to observe the many that died in order to make fair wages, the 40-hour week hour week, and vacations a reality.

Not familiar with the history of labor struggles? That’s OK, our Corporate Media and their bland whores — the well-paid, hair-sprayed teleprompt readers — would never focus on such a history. No, I don’t blame you for forgetting about Labor and its impact on our lives. After all, there’s much more important stuff to think about.

The history of Labor in the USA is one that is rarely ever discussed and until recently, you would be hard put to find any historical documentation on the history of Labor. There is a good reason for this: it’s not a very pretty history. For those of us of a conservative orientation mouthing empty clichés about the “good ole days,” well, Bubba, they weren’t so good.

Not unless you consider child labor, or the lack of responsible overview in the workplace, as good. One school teacher, Samuel Yellin, wanted to teach Labor history to his high school students but was unable to find a textbook, so he wrote his own, American Labor Struggles. Until Howard Zinn and others who would come after, this was the only book that documented the history of the US government’s and Big Business’ vile response to the Labor movement.

One of the more heinous of episodes in the history of Labor struggles, The Ludlow Massacre (click here for a more in-depth treatment), reads like something out of the history of a fascist state — which is what corporatization (rule by corporations) is, in fact. When I first read this as part of a deal I made with my then high school-aged son, I was shocked that such things, with all our lip service to individual freedom and fairness, happened in the United States:

On April 20, 1914, 20 innocent men, women, and children were killed in the Ludlow Massacre. For some time, coal miners in Colorado and other western states had been trying to join the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) for years. They were bitterly opposed by the coal operators, led by the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company.

As a result, for their striking, the miners and their families had been evicted from their company-owned houses and had set up a tent colony on public property. The ensuing massacre was a carefully planned attack on the tent colony by Colorado militiamen, coal company guards, and thugs hired as private detectives and strikebreakers. They shot and burned to death 20 people, including a dozen women and small children. Later, investigations would reveal that the tents were intentionally set on fire. The miners had dug foxholes in the tents so the women and children could avoid the bullets that the corporate-hired thugs would randomly shoot through the tent colony. The women and children were found dead, huddled together at the bottoms of their tents.

The Baldwin Felts Detective Agency had been brought in to suppress the Colorado miners. They brought with them an armored car mounted with a machine gun (the Death Special, they called it) that roamed the area spraying bullets. The day of the massacre (April 20^th), the miners were celebrating Greek Easter. At 10:00 AM, the militia ringed the camp and began firing into the tents upon a signal from the commander, Lt. Karl E. Lindenfelter. Not one of the perpetrators of the slaughter was ever punished, but scores of miners and their leaders were arrested and black-balled from the coal industry.

A  monument erected by the UMWA stands today in Ludlow, Colorado in remembrance of the brave and innocent souls who died for freedom and human dignity.

Today, people enjoy taking potshots at Unions. Much of this is the result of a media controlled by the very forces that opposes unionization; some of it is the result of bonehead actions taken the union leaders themselves. However, the only thing standing between you (if you’re not a CEO) and complete servitude are unions, which is why conservatives abhor the Labor Movement.

I find it hard to write about individual improvement when there is so much denial going on in our country. To stay quiet during times of atrocity is to be complicit in its crimes. This is true of almost anyone who lived in Nazi Germany. Most of those people weren’t evil, they simply didn’t act. Like us today in the USA, there was too much to do, they were too busy, going about the time-consuming activities of daily living, to speak out. So after they came to get the butcher, then the teacher, and finally the neighbor, there was no one around to help when the same forces came for them because there was no one left to speak out against the evil.

In the past, people have asked me to write about actions we can take to improve things. That comes later. Before we can act, we must become aware. I write in the hopes that even one person can gain some awareness. Mass movements of social change are founded in this notion of enlightening one mind at a time. History shows us, as Margaret Meade observed many years ago: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful people could change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” The fact remains that the same mindset that is the cause of the problem can never be used to bring about a solution. Solutions require a change of mind, an evolution of the individual and collective consciousness.

I will leave you with the words of someone who was a lot better at this than I will ever hope to be:

“We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty,” Edward R. Murrow said in 1954. “We must remember always that accusation is not proof, and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law.

“We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men, not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate, and to defend causes that were for the moment unpopular.”

Remember to give thanks to all those men, women, and children who had the fuckin’ cojones to lay down their lives for their convictions so that we could enjoy better lives.

My name is Eddie and I’m in recovery from civilization…

The post Labor Struggles: The Ludlow Massacre appeared first on Madness & Reality.

A public union employee, a tea party activist, and a CEO are sitting at a table with a plate of a dozen cookies in the middle of it. The CEO takes 11 cookies, turns to the tea partier and says, ‘Watch out for that union guy. He wants a piece of your cookie.’

I was raised to believe in the American Dream. I believed that if I worked hard enough, if I was smart enough, if I got good grades in school, went to a decent college, played by the rules, and worked really really hard, that I could grab at least a measure of that American dream. When I was a child, I was assured that the depth of American ingenuity and expertise would save us all and that we would become an enlightened society pursuing the further reaches of human nature with the increase of leisure time, as technology and human evolution converged to create a more noble model of society. A great society preoccupied with eradicating poverty, hunger, and disease.

I believed in an American future in which we would conquer space, where solutions for previously untreatable diseases were right around the corner. I was assured that the tension between technological innovation and the environmental havoc it sometimes caused would be resolved.

I believed in this dream because so many people were actually out there on the frontlines fighting to ensure such a society. Everywhere people were engaged in critically questioning the status quo. People of color, women, and people of different sexual orientation were fighting and challenging the oppressive institutionalized systems that kept us from becoming a greater whole. And in spite of all the conflict, there was the real sense of hope in that people were doing more than talking about it — we were all somehow engaged in ensuring the American Dream for all people.

When I was a child, I was assured that we would develop viable alternative energy sources. Lies. A cure for cancer. Lies. I was told of a future wherein people — for the first time in human history — could commit the bulk of their lives for their intellectual, spiritual, and material benefit. Lies.

Welcome to the future, my friends. I live in a city where it is illegal to be black or brown. Here the color of your skin, not your grades, determination, or educational attainment, matters most. Today, being smart is considered elitist. Worst of all, today you work longer hours for less money — if you’re fortunate enough to be working at all. You’re less likely to be able to have access to decent health care, if you have any health care options.

Welcome to the future, it is now — a future of disappointment. And the only reason you haven’t noticed is because you’re too busy jerking off to the latest online celebrity sex tape or watching “reality” shows of “celebrities” whose talents apparently have more to do with sucking NBA cock than being able to actually sing or dance. Or perhaps you’re too busy watching American Idol or Snowdrift Snookie’s latest idiotic political pronouncements. Either way, we’re amusing ourselves to death.

For the past few weeks, regular, working-class people in Wisconsin have been staging mass protests in numbers that dwarf anything the Pee Farters — with their access to billionaire dollars — could only dream of. Sustained, mass protests fighting for the right to bargain collectively, arguably one of the main reasons we ever had a middle class of any worth in this country.

Sadly, the “libruhl” media (inexplicably owned by a handful of multinational corporations) has effectively ignored, misinterpreted, or downplayed this moment in history. God forbid some dimwit neocon Medicare recipient farts at a town hall meeting and the same quiescent media will stampede over itself to cover it, dissect its fragrance ad nauseum, and pontificate endlessly on its meaning.

The major economic theory of the past 30 years, the trickle down theory, is not just a cruel hoax, but most of the good industrial jobs have left the country, and the middle class has been disemboweled. There is no free time. You’re fortunate if you can get a job whose major requirement is knowing how to ask, “Want fries with that?”

Still, while you and I struggle to make ends meet, living lives of quiet desperation, the wealthiest Americans have quintupled their net worth, even in the midst of an economic disaster that only a fool would label a recession.

Here is the American Dream of the future today: no jobs, no prospects, no leverage, no short-term solutions, no long-term plans, no big ideas to save us. While the bottom four-fifths struggle to stay afloat, and the upper one-fifth cautiously tread water, the top 1 percent continue to accumulate wealth at a rate not seen since the Gilded Age.

In the future of today, CEOs earn monster salaries, corporations receive taxpayer welfare, and we have half the U.S. Congress boasting of being millionaires. Meanwhile, medical liabilities bankrupt the rest of us at record levels, one person in ten is out of work, and food stamp usage sets new records every month.

Even with near-record unemployment, the Department of Commerce reported in November 2010 that U.S. companies just had their best quarter… ever. Businesses recorded profits at an annual rate of $1.66 trillion in the third quarter of 2010, which is the highest rate (in non-inflation-adjusted figures) since the government began keeping records more than 60 years ago.

Shrinking incomes, fewer jobs… but bigger corporate profits. Not a good sign. Somehow, many of you have been convinced that the answer is doing more of the same: give more to the rich and we’ll all benefit from the resultant odiferous trickle down. What’s obvious is that the rich are not only dedicated to hanging on to what they have (duh!) but also committed to accumulating more, gets maybe a yawn from the dumb-down, apathetic American voter. In fact, our country’s concentration of wealth is worse than Egypt.

This is nothing but class warfare and when you try to show, whether through charts and graphs or real-life examples, that the system is rigged in favor of the wealthy and powerful, you’re labeled as unpatriotic, a socialist and/ or communist. What often happens is that, instead of yelling back, “Hell, yes, we’re talking fucking class warfare!” liberals usually fell over themselves in apology, vehemently denying the accusation. They react as if talking about class warfare is tantamount to treason. Center-right politicians like Obama get spooked and fall in line, saying “Look, Eddie, we can’t do social engineering through the tax code. And there’s no reason to declare class warfare.” It’s pathetic.

The wealth gap has become so alarming that even billionaires like Warren Buffett acknowledge that the Bush-era tax cuts should be allowed to expire. In fact, Buffett contends, the wealthiest Americans should pay even more in taxes. The people in Wisconsin, representative of the majority of Americans, that bottom 4/5 who are barely keeping afloat, are now fighting this fight and it barely registers a yawn from many of you.

Someone suckered us along the way. The future we bought into was great until we fell asleep and woke up to find that at some points the future becomes the present, and the fact that it was once the future doesn’t mean it’s all fucked up once it arrives.

My name is Eddie and I’m in recovery from civilization…

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