The News Ninja's Blog

Courtesy Alternet:

“A call to arms may be wrong. We may not even know who the enemy is. And maybe the enemy is us.” — Matt Simmons

After criticizing the reckless conduct of BP in the Gulf of Mexico most of the summer, 67-year-old Matt Simmons eased into his hot tub at his home in North Haven, Maine on Aug. 8. For a short while the famous oil analyst might have pondered his grandiose plans for the world’s largest $25-billion offshore wind farm. But Simmons then suffered a heart attack and drowned.

The New York Times duly observed the passing of “the noted energy banker” while Forbes called him “the crazy uncle of the oil patch.” And that he was. Gadfly. Visionary. Contrarian. Educator. “Crude Cassandra.” Conservative. Together with millions of Americans and Europeans, I dearly miss the life-long Republican and let me tell you why.

Not too many people in the oil patch speak honestly about the world’s most powerful industry, but Simmons did. He didn’t let the money, bullshit or arrogance cloud his judgment. Or his basic reading of geology for that matter.

-Source.

Poster’s comment: Sorry for the religious iconography, but it was the only thing that came to mind . -Shinai.

Courtesy Spiegel Online:

The term “peak oil” is used by energy experts to refer to a point in time when global oil reserves pass their zenith and production gradually begins to decline. This would result in a permanent supply crisis — and fear of it can trigger turbulence in commodity markets and on stock exchanges.

The issue is so politically explosive that it’s remarkable when an institution like the Bundeswehr, the German military, uses the term “peak oil” at all. But a military study currently circulating on the German blogosphere goes even further.

The study is a product of the Future Analysis department of the Bundeswehr Transformation Center, a think tank tasked with fixing a direction for the German military. The team of authors, led by Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Will, uses sometimes-dramatic language to depict the consequences of an irreversible depletion of raw materials. It warns of shifts in the global balance of power, of the formation of new relationships based on interdependency, of a decline in importance of the western industrial nations, of the “total collapse of the markets” and of serious political and economic crises.

The study, whose authenticity was confirmed to SPIEGEL ONLINE by sources in government circles, was not meant for publication. The document is said to be in draft stage and to consist solely of scientific opinion, which has not yet been edited by the Defense Ministry and other government bodies.

-Source.

Welcome to The Head On Radio Network | America’s Liberal Voice!. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!

Courtesy LaborNotes.org

Labor’s campaign for the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) appears to have failed. It’s time for our movement to rethink a long-term strategy to change this country’s dysfunctional labor laws.

From the start, the EFCA campaign lacked a clear focus on the problem we’re trying to solve: the reign of terror that employers launch against workers when they try to organize. The numbers are familiar: only half of union organizing campaigns result in National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) election wins; only a fourth get first contracts.

Every union that does private-sector organizing has its own horror stories. Captive-audience meetings, one-on-one interrogation, plant closing threats, firings, and round-the-clock multimedia propaganda blitzes have turned the NLRB election process into the graveyard of democracy and of workers’ hopes.

Many of us have witnessed large, enthusiastic majorities of union card signers—60, 70, 80 percent of a workforce—destroyed over weeks of systematic browbeating, repression, and fear-mongering by the employer, facilitated by the labor board’s procedures.

TOO MUCH FAITH

-Source.

Courtesy Financial Times:

Walmart has suffered its first fall in quarterly sales at its US discount stores, underlining the challenges facing future growth in its home market as the economy recovers.

During the important holiday quarter ending on January 31, net sales at Walmart’s 3,400 plus US stores fell 0.5 per cent year-on-year to $71bn, while comparable store sales declined 2 per cent. Customer traffic also fell.

The retailer blamed price deflation in food and electronics for lowering the overall value of its sales, as well as the impact of store refurbishment.

The decline contrasted with the strong sales and traffic growth during its first three quarters, as low prices attracted new budget-minded shoppers.

-Source.

Courtesy Labor Notes:

Attacked daily as the biggest roadblock to improving public education, union teachers have their work cut out for them, both in the classroom and in the court of public opinion.

They responded this fall, opening their own schools in two cities.

“Teachers have been getting the most blame and the most responsibility and the least amount of decision-making power,” says Lori Nazareno, who leads a new teacher-run school in Denver.

Teachers in Boston have their own school, too, and educators in Los Angeles are pushing for community-centered models—all while a hurricane of teacher-bashing is pushed ahead by school privatizers, the press, and Obama administration policy.

TEACHERS RULE

Article continues @ Source.

Courtesy Salon:

Aug. 25, 2009 | Can there be liberalism without labor? Can a progressive movement exist in a country in which organized labor has lost its political influence? My friend Mark Schmitt, the executive editor of the American Prospect, asks that question:

The new progressive coalition follows the lines of the “emerging Democratic majority” that Ruy Teixeira and John Judis predicted in their 2002 book of that name: minority, professional, and younger voters, with help from a large gender gap. This is a coalition that can win without a majority of white working-class voters, whether union members or not … But it’s also dangerous. A political coalition that doesn’t need Joe the – fake – Plumber (John McCain’s mascot of the white working class) can also afford to ignore the real Joes, Josés, and Josephines of the working middle class, the ones who earn $16 an hour, not $250,000 a year. It can afford to be unconcerned about the collapse of manufacturing jobs, casually reassuring us that more education is the answer to all economic woes. A party of professionals and young voters risks becoming a party that overlooks the core economic crisis – not the recession but the 40-year crisis – that is wiping out the American dream for millions of workers and communities that are never going to become meccas for foodies and Web designers.

Looking back, we can see that the history of American liberalism since the Depression falls into two periods: the New Deal up until the 1970s, when industrial labor provided the muscle of the reform coalition, and the neoliberal period, when unions have been eclipsed in the alliance by the black civil rights movement and other social movements: consumerism, environmentalism, feminism and gay rights. Necessary and important as they are, there are two problems with these liberal social movements as the base of a progressive party.

-Article continues # Source.

Dear Listeners,

On Bob’s show today he mentioned a video he saw in DC.  Here is a link to that video,”The Ascent of Money”.

Watch the two-hour THE ASCENT OF MONEY | The Ascent of Money | PBS

Enjoy,

-Shinai

Courtesy Salon:

It’d be nice to believe that the various political interest groups and lobbyists who claim to be motivated by principle really were so high-minded. But not everything can be “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,” and sometimes the real motivating factor is cold, hard cash. Now, a prominent group on the right, the American Conservative Union, appears to have been caught trying to arrange a pay-for-play agreement for its backing.

According to a letter obtained by Politico, the ACU offered to sell FedEx its endorsement in a legislative disagreement the shipping company is currently having with rival UPS . When FedEx didn’t pay the $2 million to $3 million it had asked for, the ACU sided with UPS.

-Article continues @ Source.

Courtesy NYTime:

With a little-noticed order last week, we fear the Supreme Court has set the stage for dismantling the longstanding ban on corporate spending in elections for president and Congress. If those restrictions are overturned, it would be a disaster for democracy.

The justices considered a case this term about an election-year documentary made by opponents of Hillary Clinton. The issue was whether the film could air in the 60 days before an election, a period during which the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law imposes particularly strict limits on election-related communication.

The case would have been easy to resolve on narrow grounds. Instead, the court declared that on Sept. 9 it would hear arguments on whether Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce — an important campaign finance precedent from 1990 — and parts of a more recent case should be overruled.

Austin upheld a law prohibiting corporations from spending their money to elect particular candidates. The Supreme Court rightly pointed out that corporations, as opposed to individuals, benefit from special laws, including tax advantages, that assist them in accumulating large amounts of money. The ban on their spending is needed to prevent the political process from being overwhelmed and corrupted. The Supreme Court has upheld the restriction repeatedly.

The court’s new order is also deeply troubling procedurally. The question of overruling Austin was so much not a part of the Hillary Clinton film case that the parties now have to brief it — submit fully researched arguments to the court — for the first time. This is pure judicial overreach.

Continues @ Source.