The answer, my friend, is winded from the blows...But I am still asking the questions. SEIU members and supporter (As well as a few detractors no doubt) are rallying in Salem today - after all, it's another 'Furlough Day' for them, another nick as part of the 'death-by-a-thousand-cuts' union busting technique as practiced by Republican quackery. What I want to know is how sweatshop wages in service sector pergatory serve the nation's best interests? The era of highest union membership was also America's era of rosy economic health and employment opportunity. Needless to say, the wealth of the nation was distributed in a more equitable pattern and had only barely begun its inexorable concentration in the peaks and penthouses (Or are they now referred to as 'penthomes'?...I'll take my answer off the air.
The lights are off at the DMV today. Most state offices are closed. It’s the tenth and final furlough Friday in the current 2009-2011 budget period. About 26,500 employees were required to take the unpaid days off to save state government an estimated $2 million. SEIU members reasoned: If you got furloughs, make furloughaide! And they are making it in Salem today. The event is being sponsored by a coalition of unions and advocacy groups for education, health care and other services. Organizers say they don't want Oregon legislators to balance the state budget on the backs of those who are most vulnerable.www.jwj.org/, www.seiu.org/local/oregon/
Marking the storage tanks at Hanford
Okay; Close your eyes…Don’t peek!…No cheating…All right; you can look now: The Department of Energy has ginned-up a proposal that should have citizens of Cascadia screaming and rushing the exits. What the DofE is proposing is nothing less than throwing the gates of Hanford open to the wholesale shipment of the nation’s most deadly nuclear waste. But don’t worry. There isn’t very much, hardly anything really, a mere thimble-full, says the DOE. Oh, well, if you insist: The projected amount of waste is relatively low, enough to cover a football field 7 feet deep. But wait! There’s more! Tthe radioactivity is high: 160 million curies, more than three-quarters of the radiation contained in 177 leak-prone underground tanks at Hanford. Those tanks are the focus of the nation's largest nuclear cleanup project. The DOE is considering permanent storage for "Greater than Class C" waste, which doesn't include used nuclear fuel but includes waste with radioactivity that can last more than 10,000 years. www.hoanw.org/, www.hanfordwatch.org/
This Sunday, May 22nd, is Move Over AIPAC Day. So make it count.
www.endtheoccupation.org/, www.newstatesman.com/north-america/2011/05/israel-congress-aipac-peace
- KBOO