Jonathan Tasini refutes the Democratic establishment’s condemnation of the Boston Police Union:

So far as I can tell, here is what the police have done: they’ve made some noise and made people uncomfortable. They’ve picketed at the site—oh, lord, they’ve exercised their First Amendment right by demonstrating—and other unionized workers have refused to cross the picket line, delaying work. And, by exercising their rights, the police union and its members have come under attack—and the chattering classes and opinion makers have already started framing this as a test for John Kerry…You remember when, in 1992, candidate Clinton denounced Sister Souljah for a racist remark, thereby—as political lore tells us—solidifying himself in the minds of moderate voters as a guy who wouldn’t just cater to blacks, one of the Democratic party’s “special interests.” I suppose that stance later gave Clinton the courage to find common cause with Republicans in “reforming” welfare, leading to more childhood poverty.

…Yes, this is a test for John Kerry. The Democratic Party wags are worried about the message the protesting police will send to the rest of America. If his campaign is truly about a “Real Deal” for Americans, he could start right here by telling the mayor to negotiate in good faith with the union, and call off the Democratic party hacks who want Kerry to show his political manhood at the expense of workers.

Ted at Crooked Timber channels Glenn Reynolds. Sort of.

Tanya Reinhart on the Labor Party’s failure of will:

And yet, when an opportunity to bring him down presents itself at last, the Labor Party hurries to his rescue. It doesn’t matter what he is doing or will do – Labor spokesmen explain – he has to be given a free hand because he has promised to get us out of Gaza within a year and a half. In fact, Sharon has yielded to all the demands of the dissenting ministers, and the decision on evacuating the settlements has been postponed until March 2005. Building and development in the Gaza settlements will continue, with the authorization of a special committee. Yet none of this dissuades Labor from backing Sharon.

…In the last Israeli elections, many voters who were fed up with Sharon voted for Labor candidate Amram Mitznah. But now their elected representatives are keeping Sharon afloat. Whoever is elected becomes part of the system in exchange for a few crumbs of power, instead of representing the people who voted for them and opposing the government. The disappearance of opposition is supported by an acquiescent media. Haaretz, supposedly the paper of the liberal peaceniks, tells its readers day after day that what is important now is to save the worthy Sharon, who so badly wants to get out of Gaza.

Looks like Bush is following in Reagan’s footsteps after all. Now, not only is your ketchip a vegetable, but your frozen fries are too – and a fresh one at that.

What’s the sound of one buck not stopping?

Gen Karpinski said military intelligence took over part of the Abu Ghraib jail to “Gitmoize” their interrogations – make them more like what was happening in the US detention camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, which is nicknamed “Gitmo.? She said current Iraqi prisons chief Maj Gen Geoffrey Miller – who was in charge at Guantanamo Bay – visited her in Baghdad and said: “At Guantanamo Bay we learned that the prisoners have to earn every single thing that they have. He said they are like dogs and if you allow them to believe at any point that they are more than a dog then you’ve lost control of them.”

Alyssa on the DNC’s latest attempt at LGBT outreach:

Saying that we need to pay for the protection we get from the Democratic Party-is this email really serious? I give money to the party, and I think anyone who can afford to should donate to organizations that do the work that we don’t have the time, energy, or resources to do at this particular point in our lives. But to suggest that the Democratic Party’s stance towards our rights is generous, much less that we should be paying some kind of blood money for it is downright offensive.

More on Florida’s voter purge (redux):

Thousands of eligible Florida voters may be removed from the rolls in this year’s election because of a faulty database aimed at convicted felons. Despite protests from critics and nervous election supervisors, the state will continue with plans to implement the system. Convicted felons are not allowed to vote in Florida unless granted clemency, but before 2000 there was little enforcement of the law. That year, then-Secretary of State Katherine Harris hired DBT Online to provide a database of felons to be purged from the rolls. But the list contained the names of many people who should not have lost their voting rights. Many supervisors refused to use the list, but others did. After George Bush won the state by a mere 537 votes, and with it the presidency, the felon list became a subject of national controversy and numerous lawsuits. A study by the Palm Beach Post showed more than 1,100 voters had been wrongfully turned away from the polls.

Nathan Newman recounts how America’s elderly have gotten poorer – and how the culprits have gotten better and better at disguising it:

Yep, because of the decline in the regular pension, and its replacement by hype around the 401(k), the net result of the largest bull market in American history is that today’s retirees are worse off than those in the period before Reagan unleashed the 401(k) on the world…not only did the 401(k) leave many retirees in the dust, it was a serious factor in increasing overall inequality in our society. The discusson on 401(k)s versus regular pensions is often relegated to policy wonk seminars, but this is the substance of most peoples’ retirements, and is a key factor in whether we will continue to be a society of increasing economic inequality or not. It’s a basic issue– if we invest collectively for our retirement, we will generally create simple rules for payouts that encourage greater equality. If we create a system of individual accounts, with complex rules written by rich people, the end result will be greater inequality, since that’s how the rules will end up being designed.

One of SEIU’s heroes – members taking a leave of absence to organize voters in battleground states – recounts the struggle of nurses in 1199 against understaffing and mandatory overtime:

In the past, the common practice of management was to threaten nurses with termination if they didn’t work mandatory overtime. However, because of the nation-wide nursing shortage, nurses weren’t concerned with termination because they could be rehired at a number of medical institutions. Moreover, a nurse from Mercy/Wilkes-Barre could potentially be rehired at Mercy/Scranton which is only about twenty minutes down Interstate 81. So, management’s tactic had lost its teeth. Now, the employer tells the nurses that they could be charged with patient abandonment and would recommend the PA State Board of Nursing revoke their licenses. Recently, the PA.S.B.of N. issued a statement that basically says the board will not prohibit a nurse from refusing to stay for a second shift when there is a shortage of staff. The statement went on further to say that the board is aware of no cases in which a nurse was disciplined by the board for failure to accept a second shift or mandatory overtime, when the nurse has properly informed her employer that she refuses to do the work.

So, in response to this, the nurses at Mercy/Scranton have drafted and sent a letter to the Director of Nursing saying that as of June 1, 2004, the following nurses (list of names) are refusing to do mandatory overtime unless it falls within the criteria stated in their union contract (sec 25.4, of theirs). The letter goes on to say that the current cases of mandatory overtime are clearly not caused by emergencies, sick calls from staff or unplanned events. They identify the cause to be understaffed shifts that has been happening for years.

Rocio Escobar explains why she’ll help lead SEIU’s “Bridging the Gap for Healthcare” action on Saturday:

My condition worsened because my company didn’t want to cover my medical expenses for an injury I sustained on the job. Now that I’ve gone from underinsured to uninsured, I don’t know what to do if anything else happens – but I can send a message on June 19th that it’s time to fix the health care crisis in America now.

David Bacon on transnational solidarity:

In a Service Employees union hall in Boston, a hospital worker raises her hand. “If Saddam Hussein was such a bad guy,” she asks, “why is the US enforcing his law banning unions in Iraq?” Since January, workers like this orderly have been listening to the answers to their questions given by Iraqi workers themselves, courtesy of US Labor Against the War, a network that now includes dozens of union locals and labor councils nationally. USLAW’s campaign for labor rights in Iraq is also bringing reports, videos and testimony of American unionists who have traveled to Iraq into union halls in California, Washington, Michigan, Ohio, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Washington, DC, and beyond. As a result, hundreds of union members have suddenly been able to see Iraq not just as a scene of violent conflict but as a complex nation of 24 million people, with trade unions, political parties and civil organizations trying desperately to win back control of their country.