Apparently, I’m not the only one getting lots of searches for “newalliancebancshares.” If folks are looking to find out how to cash in on what DeStefano rightly called a “bank robbery” before deciding to cut and run, they’ve come to the wrong place. If you want to know how we can stop anti-democratic subversions of the will of the depositors like this one, check out this piece on State Senate Majority Leader Martin Looney’s support for a bill that would flex the muscle of the state banking commission a bit.
Author Archives: Josh Eidelson
…today, angered by President Bush’s call this week for a constitutional amendment banning gay marriages, they hope to take their relationship one step further in New Paltz, N.Y., where the mayor, Jason West, has said he will perform marriages for up to a dozen same-sex couples today.
After making headlines in San Francisco and Massachusetts, the national debate over gay marriage migrated today to a smaller stage, the Hudson Valley community of New Paltz north of New York City, after Mr. West said that several gay couples would be married.
…Mr. West is expected to perform ceremonies for gay couples that solemnize a marriage, the first such ceremonies in New York State, where same-sex couples have historically been refused marriage licenses.
UFCW President Doug Dority announces the end of the Supermarket Strike:
After five months, the picket lines remain strong, our members remain united, and customers continue to honor the workers’ picket lines costing the supermarket conglomerates billions of dollars in revenue. Every day, support for the fight for affordable health care grows stronger. Community and religious leaders have put their bodies on the line in acts of civil disobedience. There have been scores of arrests from Los Angeles to the San Francisco Bay area to Baltimore, Maryland. There are daily rallies, demonstrations, picket lines and handbilling from Seattle and Portland to Washington, DC. The Southern California supermarket strike has become a national cause.
The men and women on the picket lines are genuine heroes. Their sacrifice for affordable family health care has motivated and activated workers across the nation. I am honored to be part of their union, and I am humbled as well as inspired by their dedication, strength and selflessness. These members will never be forgotten. They will always be honored and respected. We owe them a debt of gratitude. They have sent a message to employers everywhere that attempts to eliminate health care benefits will come at a high price. Workers will not sit idle as their families are denied health care protection. Workers will stand united and fight for health care.
Through their struggle, the striking and locked out workers have performed a service for the whole country. They have sounded the alarm for all of America—your health care benefits at work are at risk. If the supermarket giants—profitable, growing Fortune 50 mega-corporations—can launch an attack on health care benefits, then every employer is sure to follow. They have sounded the alarm that the American health care system is ready to collapse.
…We can protect our members for another contract term, but the system continues to falter, exacting an increasing cost on both workers and employers and leaving more and more families without health care. Now is the time for action. 2004 is the year to put health care reform on the political agenda and demand that every candidate for office commits to comprehensive, affordable health insurance for every working family.
Evan Cobb asks the right questions about the Yale expansion explored in this articicle:
who’s going to teach all these new undergraduates?
…How about Yale picking up the bill?
…who’s going to work in these building?
…instead of going out and enrolling more of the same, can the university make a committment to diversity, and not just in the token look-how-many-non-Asian-minorities-we-have way? How about a less embarassing financial aid rate and start enrolling students from a more diverse socioeconomic spectrum?
Today marks the second day of the GET-UP Strike:
The protesters handed out blue flyers that said, “Welcome to Penn-Mart. We’re rolling back educational quality.” The flyer spoofed Wal-Mart, which has been criticized for how it treats employees.
…Earlier in the week, Penn officials sent a message to employees intimating that they could be docked pay and disciplined if they missed work because of the strike.
Yesterday, Barchi and Penn president Judith Rodin sent out a more tempered letter. “The picketers have agreed not to interfere with the free movement of people on our campus,” they wrote. “In that same spirit of civility, we ask that you treat the picketers with respect.”
From the Times:
Columbia University’s president, Lee C. Bollinger, yesterday condemned a series of race-related incidents on campus, including the publication of a racially offensive cartoon in an alternative student newspaper last Friday. In a message sent to the Columbia community, he said several statements and events that demeaned blacks and other minorities “have proved unusually offensive to members of the Columbia University community, including me.”
Mr. Bollinger, the former president of the University of Michigan, who is widely known for his defense of affirmative action in two lawsuits that went up to the United States Supreme Court, said in an interview that he hoped to find ways to make Columbia a more comfortable place for minority students. His comments followed a meeting that he and other Columbia administrators had with black student leaders on Friday.
“I was saddened by the pain and frustration that they expressed about various encounters on the campus and the number of incidents that made them feel unwelcome,” he said. “That, together with the publication of another offensive statement over the weekend, made me feel I really needed to say something to the community.” Several hundred students protested the incidents, gathering on the steps of Low Library on Monday and yesterday; they said they would demonstrate through the week.
More shameful posturing from John Kerry on gay marriage:
In his most explicit remarks on the subject yet, Kerry told the Globe that he would support a proposed amendment to the state Constitution that would prohibit gay marrriage so long as, while outlawing gay marriage, it also ensured that same-sex couples have access to all legal rights that married couples receive.
“If the Massachusetts Legislature crafts an appropriate amendment that provides for partnership and civil unions, then I would support it, and it would advance the goal of equal protection,” the senator said yesterday, stressing that he was referring only to the state, and not the federal, Constitution. He has said he would oppose any amendment that did not include a provision for civil unions. “I think that you need to have civil union. That’s my position,” he said Tuesday.
…Earlier this year, Kerry was the only member of the state’s all-Democrat congressional delegation who chose not to sign a letter urging the state Legislature to reject a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. When the Legislature convened last month to consider amendment language, Kerry stayed silent, a position that drew criticism from several gay media outlets. New England’s largest gay-targeted newspaper, In Newsweekly, cited Kerry’s “flip-flops” on the issue of gay marriage in an editorial to be published today that endorses his rival, Senator John Edwards, for the Democratic presidential nomination.
Human Rights Campaign President Cheryl Jacques:
Senator Kerry’s endorsement of a discriminatory amendment in Massachusetts is deeply disappointing. Make no mistake, civil unions single out a group of people for second-class treatment. That is discrimination, and it does not belong in any Constitution. While we acknowledge the Senator’s strong opposition to a federal constitutional amendment, supporting a divisive measure in his own state is exceptionally disheartening and frankly muddies the water on his actual position. Candidates who say they are against marriage for same-sex couples – but for civil unions – must clarify and affirm their support for the more than 1,000 federal benefits, rights and responsibilities that marriage provides but that civil unions do not. Marriage – not civil unions – unlocks the door to important federal protections…
Fifty million Indians go on general strike against the Indian judiciary’s opposition to the right to strike and the legislature’s assault on social welfare:
The strike, called by the central trade unions and industrial federations, was total in West Bengal, Kerala and Tripura and resulted in a “bandh-like” situation in Assam, Haryana, Orissa and Jharkhand. In Tamil Nadu, Government employees and teachers did not participate as they had been penalised last year for abstaining from work. The Indian National Trade Union Congress, supported by the Congress, and the Sangh Parivar-backed Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh and Hind Mazdoor Sabha also kept away.
The president of the Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU), M.K. Pandhe, told presspersons that the working class had “magnificently responded” to the strike call. The working class had asserted its right to strike in the face of the prohibition by the Supreme Court, the “disastrous” economic policies of the Centre — which had resulted in deepening poverty, growing unemployment, reckless privatisation and closures — and the repeated attacks on the labour class. “The massive response to the strike by the working class thoroughly exposes the hollowness of the massive propaganda blitz by the National Democratic Alliance Government on the so called feel good factor.”
There were reports of lathicharge and large-scale arrests in Delhi, Haryana, Orissa and Pondicherry. No flights took off from Kolkata and rail traffic was disrupted at several places…
Sam Smith offers some perspective on social security:
1. The trustees make three long-term estimates. The one that politicians and the media invariably use is the most pessimistic which assumes economic growth so low that you certainly wouldn’t want your Social Security invested in the stock market because it wouldn’t be going anywhere. Using the more reasonable intermediate projection, the trust fund will not run out until after 2040.
2. The trust fund is an artificial accounting creation If it runs out, then Social Security can be funded from other sources including the incredibly bloated military budget. To understand this game, imagine the defense budget came out of a trust fund. Would we stop defending ourselves when this fund was drained thanks to typical defense cost overruns?
3. While it is true that there will be an increase in older Americans in coming decades, there will also be a smaller percentage of younger Americans to educate and take care of. In considering public costs, it is the combination of these two – the so-called dependent population – that matters. Here is what you are not being told: the dependent population was larger during the Kennedy administration than it will be in 2020 during the Great Social Security Crisis. Incidentally, as of 2000, the total dependent population was 39% so we’re talking about a one point increase.
In short, you are being conned on Social Security and the media is doing nothing to defend you.
The Times’ write-up of tonight’s debate suggests that Kerry and Edwards, both of whom oppose both gay marriage and a constitutional ammendment to ban it, chose to stake out less than bold stances on the issue:
“What’s happening here is this president is talking about, first, amending the United States Constitution for a problem that does not exist,” Mr. Edwards said. “The law today does not require one state to recognize the marriage of another state.”
Mr. Kerry, of Massachusetts, attacked Mr. Bush for raising the issue in the first place.
“He’s trying to polarize the nation,” Mr. Kerry said. “He’s trying to divide America. You know, this is a president who always tries to create a cultural war and seek the lowest common denominator of American politics, because he can’t come to America and talk about jobs.”
Needless to say, being told that your rights needn’t be excised from the constitution because they don’t yet pose much of a threat of being realized anyway is, one suspects, less than comforting to millions of gay couples in this country. And while there is of course truth in the oft-repeated argument that the Republicans exploit social issues to distract people from their economic interests, you don’t win people over to your side by telling them that your stance on the issue isn’t something they should be concerned about. Kerry deserves credit for voting against the Defense of Marriage Act, and it was good to see Edwards try to position himself to Kerry’s left on the issue by offering greater certainty that he would vote against it today, but there remains a serious lack of moral leadership on this issue.
Kerry was right on target, on the other hand, on the death penalty, saying pretty much exactly (with the exception of his support for executing convicted terrorists) what every Democratic candidate should when asked why he wouldn’t want to see perpetrators of heinous murderers killed:
“My instinct is to want to strangle that person with my own hands,” he said. “I understand the instincts, I really do.” He added: “I prosecuted people. I know what the feeling of the families is and everybody else.
“But we have 111 people who have been now released from death row ? death row, let alone the rest of the prison system ? because of DNA evidence that showed they didn’t commit the crime of which they were convicted.”
Edwards, unfortunately, took this one as a chance to move to Kerry’s right.
Then there’s this troubling continuation of Kerry’s muddled record on trade:
On trade, Mr. Kerry was asked to square his support for inexpensive clothes and goods from overseas for consumers with his support for labor unions seeking better wages and job protections.
“Some jobs we can’t compete with,” he said. “I understand that. But most jobs we can.” Mr. Edwards seized the issue, as he sought to draw a sharp a contrast by noting different votes the two men have cast on trade pacts over the years.
Kerry did get something else right though:
Mr. Kerry was then asked to name a quality of Mr. Edwards’s that he wished he had himself, but appeared not to entirely grasp the question. “I think he’s a great communicator,” Mr. Kerry said. “He’s a charming guy.”
Looking at the transcipt, Sharpton effectively called Edwards on his support for the PATRIOT ACT:
I don’t see how anyone that supports civil rights could support the Patriot Act. You talk about a difference of direction, Senator Edwards, the Patriot Act…The Patriot Act that you supported is J. Edgar Hoover’s dream. It’s John Ashcroft’s dream. We have police misconduct problems in California, Ohio, Georgia, New York, right now…And your legislation helps police get more power. So I think that we’ve got to really be honest if we’re talking about change. Change how, and for who? That’s why I am in this race.
And he provided the needed historical perspective on gay marriage:
I think is not an issue any more of just marriage. This is an issue of human rights. And I think it is dangerous to give states the right to deal with human rights questions.
And Kucinich (who, incidentally, captured 30% of the vote for second place in Hawaii) tried, with limited success, to focus the debate on the policy differences between the four candidates rather than the personal differences between two of them:
I think the American people tonight will be well- served if we can describe, for example, why we all aren’t for a universal, single-payer, not-for-profit health care system. I think the American people will be well-served if we can describe why, for example, Senator Kerry and Senator Edwards are not for canceling NAFTA and the WTO, as I would do, because that is how you save the manufacturing jobs. And I think they’d be well-served if they would be able to see the connection, as I will just explain, between the cost of the war in Iraq and cuts in health care, education, job creation, veterans’ benefits, housing programs. See, this debate ought to be about substantive differences which we do have.
And I have the greatest respect for Senator Edwards and Senator Kerry, but we have substantive differences along these lines that I think it would help to explicate here tonight.
He hit this one just right:
Well, I’m glad to point out something that all those people who don’t have health insurance and all those people who have seen their premiums go up 50 percent in the last three years already understand. And that is that Washington right now is controlled by the insurance interests and by the pharmaceutical companies. And our party, our Democratic Party four years ago, John and John, I went to our Democratic platform committee with a proposal for universal single-payer health care. And it was quickly shot down because it offended some of the contributors to our party.
I just want to state something: We must be ready to take up this challenge of bringing health care to all the American people. And that’s what I’m asking everyone here to make a commitment to. Single payer…
HERE President John Wilhelm on the UNITE – HERE merger:
Our members are the same people: service workers, immigrants, African-Americans, living in the same neighborhoods all across North America. Together with UNITE, we can grow faster. Together, more service workers will achieve the American dream. And together, we will have the strength we need to bargain with giant global corporations.
…This is a non-traditional merger of two non-traditional unions. Our outstanding members and staff are recognized even outside of the labor movement; both unions are regarded for their work on behalf of progressive causes.The HERE Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride brought together activists of every stripe,and UNITE is largely responsible for developing the anti-sweatshop movement in the U.S.and Canada.
UNITE President Bruce Raynor:
This merger substantially increases our ability to fight for the rights of our members and the tens of thousands of new members that we will represent in the future and to make sure that America’s working families share in the success of the world’s richest nation.We are stronger together at the bargaining table,at shop floors,in city halls,state capitals and in Washington, DC.
…when it comes to struggles with companies that refuse to do the right thing by their workers, we are not afraid to dig in our heels. We are known for outsmarting and outlasting even the toughest companies. We both have aggressive organizing campaigns underway and the merger will allow us to intensify and expand these efforts. We need unions that are dynamic and powerful enough to take on the big corporations that are dominating the lives of Americas families.
The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities reports that unemployment benefits will soon run out for three-quarters of a million long-term unemployed workers:
“Last week the Administration backed off its own optimistic job-growth projections for the rest of the year,” said Isaac Shapiro, senior fellow at the Center. “Now that it has begun to recognize the hard realities of the current labor market, the Administration also needs to recognize that the federal unemployment program was switched off too soon and should be resumed.”
Josh Eidelson 