The Progressive Rambler

German versus American economy

2012-02-11T16:31:00.000-05:00

MSNBC host Cenk Uygur on his weekly segment on The Dylan Ratigan show explains some differences between how Germany is handling their economy and workers compared to the United States of America.

'Mittlestand' firms powering German success

2012-02-11T16:27:00.001-05:00

The strength of its well-known global brands have been cited as a factor in Germany's economic stability, but low-profile firms that produce highly-engineered goods are also helping to aid the economy amid Europe's financial crisis. The mostly family-owned medium-sized companies, known as the Mittlestand, employ more than two-thirds of the country's workforce. Adding to the Mittelstand's success is Germany's veneration for trademark engineering, backed by an education system that offers more than 300 apprenticeships starting in high school, and creating a highly-skilled labour pool. Al Jazeera's Nick Spicer reports from southern Germany.

Conservative flunky gets key job: ethanol plant

2012-02-11T16:17:00.003-05:00

The Globe and Mail:

The mix of port authorities and politics is a regular source of headaches for the Harper government.

Now questions are being raised about Canada’s latest federal port, just hours after it was announced Friday in Oshawa by Finance Minister Jim Flaherty.

The man in charge of setting up the new body is Gary Valcour, the chairman of the Oshawa Harbour Commission, which the port authority replaces. He is also president of the Conservative riding association in Mr. Flaherty’s riding of Oshawa-Whitby.

When asked about the apparent conflict of interest, the Minister said Mr. Valcour will step down as president of the riding association. He also said the port’s new board will ultimately choose the permanent head.

But the questions didn’t stop there. Plans by an ethanol company to build an industrial plant on the port lands are at the heart of a heated local battle over the future of Oshawa’s harbour.

Oshawa City Council and environmentalists want the existing waterfront to include options for public use and strongly oppose the proposed plant. The creation of a federal port authority is raising concern that the needs of industry will win out.

Oshawa councillor Nester Pidwerbecki said he fears the seven-member board of the port authority – filled mainly by the federal government – will approve the construction of the plant, despite the unanimous opposition of city council.

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Right-wing smear artist freaks out at Occupy rally

2012-02-11T15:50:00.002-05:00

More on Andrew Breitbart:

Andrew Breitbart, right-wing race-baiter, exposed as the fraud he is

http://mediamatters.org/blog/201007210004

http://mediamatters.org/research/201007210027

Patriotic to stash money in the Cayman Islands?

2012-02-11T15:13:00.002-05:00

A woman at a Mitt Romney campaign event in Maine asks the candidate for the Republican nomination for president if it's patriotic to stash money in the Cayman Islands.

Decriminalize drug use, coalition group urges

2012-02-10T18:34:00.001-05:00

The Vancouver Sun:

Ottawa— Canada needs to give up the war on drugs and start treating drug use as a health and social issue rather than something for the criminal justice system to deal with, according to a policy group that was formally launched Thursday.

The Canadian Drug Policy Coalition is, among other things, calling for the government to decriminalize drug use and not stand in the way of harm-reduction programs, such as safe-injection sites.

"In western legal systems, the criminal law has long been seen as the instrument of last resort to be used when other means of social control has failed," Eugene Oscapella, a University of Ottawa criminology professor and member of the group's policy committee, said at a news conference on Parliament Hill. "Unfortunately, in the case of certain drugs — cannabis, ecstasy, cocaine, heroin and hundreds of other substances for that matter — it has been used as the principal vehicle of social control."

The coalition argued this approach does not reduce drug use, but creates more problems such as making criminals out of drug users, creating a lucrative black market for real criminals and preventing measures that could help those struggling with addictions.

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Apple faces outcry for labour practices in China

2012-02-10T14:43:00.002-05:00

Democracy Now!:

Protesters visited a half-dozen Apple stores around the world to deliver petitions calling for reforms in the working conditions at factories run by Apple’s suppliers in China. The protests come on the heels of recent revelations of harsh conditions and onerous work environments at Apple’s controversial Chinese supplier Foxconn, where more than a dozen employees have committed suicide. We’re joined by New York Times reporter Charles Duhigg, who helped break the story about the human costs of Apple products for workers in China. We’re also joined by Mike Daisey, whose acclaimed one-man show, "The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs," is based partly on his visits to Apple’s Chinese factories and his interviews with the workers there. "I want Apple to take real responsibility," Daisey says. "They have the resources to change this overnight."

Union campaigns to help Zellers workers

2012-02-10T14:36:00.002-05:00

The United Food and Commercial Workers Union said former Zellers employees must re-apply for the same job at Target — but at starting pay. They've launched a website to create awareness about and support for the issue.

CBC:

UFCW says its efforts will help staff at Thunder Bay store facing Target takeover

The union representing workers at several Zellers stores is campaigning against Target's hiring policy.

Target is converting more than 100 Zellers locations in Canada, including the Intercity Mall in Thunder Bay.

The United Food and Commercial Workers Union said employees must re-apply for the same job — but at starting pay.

Spokesperson Kevin Shimmin said he hopes enough pressure will change Target's mind.

“The first step is trying to get enough community support in Thunder Bay and to demand that it does the right thing,” Shimmin said.

No Thunder Bay stores are represented by UFCW, however the union said its campaign will help all workers. All workers, it said — regardless of whether they belong to the UFCW or not — are being told to apply at entry-level pay rates.

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$25 billion: relief for familes or bank bailout?

2012-02-10T14:35:00.001-05:00

Democracy Now!:

The U.S. Justice Department has unveiled a record mortgage settlement with the nation’s five largest banks to resolve claims over faulty foreclosures and mortgage practices that have indebted and displaced homeowners and sunk the nation’s economy. While the deal is being described as a $25 billion settlement, the banks will only have to pay out a total of $5 billion in cash between them. We speak to one of the settlement’s most prominent critics, Yves Smith, a longtime financial analyst who runs the popular finance website, "Naked Capitalism." "The settlement, on the surface, does look like it’s helping homeowners," Smith says. "But, in fact, the bigger part that most people don’t recognize is the way it actually helps the banks with mortgages on their own books... The real problem is that this deal is just not going to give that much relief."

US activists press Apple on worker conditions

2012-02-10T14:26:00.000-05:00

Demonstrators have gathered outside Apple's flagship retail store in New York's Grand Central Terminal to protest against worker conditions in the technology giant's factories in China. Along with protesters at several other retail locations around the US, the demonstrators outside the newly-opened store delivered a petition to employees criticising conditions for workers in the Foxconn plant that manufactures iPhones and iPads for the Cupertino-based company. Al Jazeera's Kristen Saloomey reports from New York.

Rob Ford’s political death wish

2012-02-09T16:30:00.003-05:00

Adam Giambrone, NOW:

Uncompromising mayor is guaranteeing his own irrelevance as council revolts on transit and CUPE gets kudos

Could this be the week the city actually rolls back the last 16 months of minority rule and returns to the broad Toronto consensus of the last 40 years?

Events of the last couple of weeks, and this one in particular – council’s transit rebellion and the triumph of CUPE 416 in the court of public opinion – have made it clear that the majority of residents are looking for responsible and progressive government, not a right-wing revolution.

What seems to be reasserting itself is that characteristic Toronto mix of fiscal conservatism and social progressivism. In this model, the one we know best, budgets are balanced and, slowly, progressive changes are enacted. At the same time, taxes are kept low, the lowest in the GTA, and debt levels remain below those of most mid-sized and large Canadian and U.S. cities.

Fast-forward to this week. Media observers seem to assume the settlement with CUPE 416 is a Rob Ford victory. It is certainly not a loss. But CUPE 416 and its president, Mark Ferguson, can clearly be credited with an excellent strategy that insures they will remain critical players in city decisions and grassroots politics.

While we don’t know all the terms yet, some job security for employees appears to have been negotiated, and despite all the mayor’s team’s invective about overpaid workers, CUPE members, according to reports, appear to have achieved yearly increases of around 1.5 per cent a year and more or less maintained their benefits.

While the mayor attempted to destroy the local public service unions, at most he was able to wrest minor concessions. But CUPE was savvy, at once fighting to protect the decent quality of life of its thousands of members and their families and reassuring the public that it is committed to controlling costs.

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Salvation Army workers against poverty wages

2012-02-09T13:01:00.001-05:00

On January 6, 2012, workers at the Salvation Army's Booth Centre shelter in Ottawa walked off the job to protest poverty wages. Despite saying that it aims to fight poverty, the Salvation Army in Canada pays many of its workers less than the living wage. In the case of Ottawa, the living wage has been set by ACORN Canada at $13.50 per hour. However, kitchen assistants and cleaners at the Salvation Army's Booth Centre earn a top wage of $11.31/h, while maintenance workers earn a top wage of $12.63/h. Moreover, workers at a neighbouring shelter, the Shepherds of Good Hope, earn between $2 and $5 more per hour for the same work with the same clientele.

Harper's promise: warrantless online surveillance

2012-02-09T12:55:00.003-05:00

Macleans:

“We are not in any way shape or form wanting extra powers for police to pursue [information online] without warrants.”

That was Stockwell Day, speaking to me in 2007. He was the Harper government’s public safety minister at the time, and his office came into controversy when consultation documents surfaced suggesting that the Conservatives were drafting a “lawful access” crime bill that would greatly expand the powers of police to obtain personal information about Canadians from their Internet service providers without court oversight.

If such a bill were to become law, cops would no longer need a warrant to trace, say, an Internet comment to a citizen’s name, IP address, email address, home address, and cell phone number. In fact, as long as the police had any one of the above, they could request the rest of the info from ISPs without a judge ever considering the need for such disclosure.

Last month, Canada’s privacy commissioner, Jennifer Stoddart, along with every provincial privacy commissioner in the country, sent Public Safety Canada a letter expressing their concerns about the lawful access bill. Namely, they didn’t see any need for it—ISPs already hand over whatever information police ask for, without a warrant, when the cops claim there is immediate danger or child endangerment. They called the bill “problematic” and wrote that there was “insufficient justification” for the new powers, suggesting “less intrusive” ways for law enforcement to fight crime.

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Archives: Gingrich called out over war on women

2012-02-09T12:30:00.001-05:00

Democracy Now!:

Newt Gingrich’s attacks on reporters who have asked him tough questions during the 2012 Republican presidential primary may sound familiar to Democracy Now! listeners and viewers. Watch the video above to see Amy Goodman question Gingrich about the GOP’s "war on women" and why he hadn’t apologized for calling First Lady Hillary Clinton a "bitch" — first in 1995 during his tenure as speaker of the House and again at the 2000 Republican Convention in Philadelphia.

Click here to see the 1995 comment by Gingrich’s mother that Goodman refers to in her questions. During a nationally broadcast interview on Eye to Eye with Connie Chung, Gingrich’s mother whispered that her son called Hillary Clinton a "bitch."

Inside Story: Obama taking his base for granted?

2012-02-09T12:17:00.001-05:00

After being called out on his policies and track record, is President Obama taking his political base for granted?

Occupy - Revolutionary vs. Reactionary?

2012-02-08T12:48:00.000-05:00

Can "We the People" be trusted to govern?

Santorum wins three contests - evangelical vote

2012-02-08T12:47:00.000-05:00

Democracy Now!:

Former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum has surged in the Republican presidential contest with wins in the Minnesota and Colorado caucuses, as well as a nonbinding primary in Missouri. Santorum’s win appears to have been fueled by evangelical voters, emboldening his claim to be the "true conservative" in the Republican race. The contests in Minnesota, Colorado and Missouri notably differed from earlier states in the absence of a flood of spending backing front-runner Mitt Romney. We get reaction to Santorum’s victories from Michael Brendan Dougherty of Business Insider and The American Conservative and Jon O’Brien of Catholics for Choice.

Caterpillar plays hard, so let’s play hardball

2012-02-08T12:37:00.004-05:00

In March, 2008, Stephen Harper swooped into London for a photo-op at Electro-Motive Diesel.

David Olive, Opinion, The Toronto Star:

Creating what it hoped would be a plausible excuse to kill one of London’s few remaining large private-sector employers, Cat soon after taking possession of EMD presented its London workers with a proposed new contract. EMD workers were asked to accept a 50 per cent cut in pay, to an average $16.50 an hour, and their benefits would be eviscerated.

To put this in perspective, when governments bailed out General Motors Corp. and Chrysler Corp, they also demanded workers accept pay cuts of roughly 50 per cent. Employees of the Detroit Three automakers are now paid about $42 an hour, or what Toyota Motor Corp. and Honda Motor Co. Ltd. pay their North American and Japanese workers.

By contrast, the relocated EMD jobs will pay $15 to $19 an hour for high-skill work akin to auto-making.

When EMD employees predictably balked at being stripped of a decent living wage, Cat made clear that its offer was take-it-or-leave-it. On New Year’s Day it locked out workers. Five weeks later, it fired them. Which meant that previous months of “bargaining” with the employees’ union, the Canadian Auto Workers, had been a farce.

In shutting down EMD, Cat didn’t tender the customary warning to the union or to local government, Queen’s Park or Ottawa — from which a Cat-owned EMD only last year received a $5 million federal subsidy hand-delivered by Stephen Harper during a factory visit.

We could nationalize EMD, for which there is abundant precedent across the continent. America’s third-largest bank, biggest insurer and dominant home-mortgage guarantors are now wards of the state.

Continue reading here.

US maintains embargo of Cuba after 50 years

2012-02-08T12:35:00.001-05:00

Democracy Now!:

There are no commemorations planned in Washington, D.C., but today marks the 50th anniversary of the U.S. embargo against Cuba — the longest-running embargo in the world. On February 7, 1962, President John F. Kennedy formally expanded the harsh regime of commercial and financial sanctions against Cuba that have continued to the present day. The embargo has been solidly bipartisan, notably intensifying under the Helms-Burton Act of 1996, which was passed by a Republican-controlled Congress and signed into law by President Bill Clinton, a Democrat. The United States has targeted Cuba in defiance of widespread international condemnation. "That’s been the longest-enduring embargo we have had in the world. And the question is, why is it still there? What good has it done? Of course, it has squeezed the Cuban people," said Michael Ratner, president emeritus of the Center for Constitutional Rights, who has been involved in efforts to challenge the U.S. embargo against Cuba for many years.

US foreclosures go sky high

2012-02-08T12:34:00.001-05:00

The Bank of America Plaza skyscraper in the US state of Georgia is just another lamb to the slaughter after it was auctioned off for about half the amount it was worth five years ago. Once the symbol of the area's booming commerical real estate market, it now represents its widespread failure. Al Jazeera's Patty Culhane reports from Washington.

Peggy Nash on the Campaign Trail

2012-02-07T22:04:00.000-05:00

Peggy Nash sits down with David Akin of Sun News to chat about the NDP Leadership race.

Gingrich's billionaire backer

2012-02-07T22:03:00.000-05:00

Sheldon Adelson, a casino magnate with a net worth of $21bn and the world's sixteenth richest man has thrown chunks of his vast fortune in US Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich's way. Al Jazeera's Tom Ackerman reports from Washington.

Russian scientists find ancient polar lake

2012-02-07T12:48:00.000-05:00

Scientists have been drilling through some of Antarctica's thickest ice for more than two decades as part of efforts to reach the core to examine air trapped there for millions of years. Now, a team of Russian scientists are reported to have broken through the ice to discover a vast lake that has not seen light for more than 20 million years. Al Jazeera's Tarek Bazley reports.

Syria conflict escalates, Assad’s future

2012-02-07T12:46:00.001-05:00

Democracy Now!:

Syria is seeing some of the worst violence of the 11-month uprising against Bashar al-Assad amid an ongoing international standoff over how to respond. Assad’s forces have launched what appears to be one of their fiercest assaults on the flashpoint city of Homs to date. Both the United States and Britain have closed their embassies in the Syrian capital of Damascus and withdrawn diplomatic personnel, citing safety fears. As the crisis escalates, Russia and China are facing criticism for blocking a U.N. Security Council resolution backed by the United States and Arab League calling for a political transition in Syria. To discuss the situation in Syria, we’re joined by Patrick Seale, a leading British writer on the Middle East and author of "Asad: The Struggle for the Middle East." "It’s at least a two- or possibly a three-stage crisis. Internally in Syria, the situation is getting worse by the day," Seale says. "At a higher level, there is a struggle between the United States, on the one hand, and its allies, and its opponents like Russia and China... Then there’s a third level, possibly, of Arab Gulf states like Qatar, for example, even Saudi Arabia behind it, who are obsessed and worried by Iran, and they think that Iran might stir up Shia communities in the region."

Report on workers' strike in Greece

2012-02-07T12:43:00.000-05:00

Workers in Greece are staging a 24-hour general strike in protest over new government austerity measures which would see 15,000 civil service employees lose their jobs this year. Al Jazeera's John Psaropoulos reports from Athens.