n2doc
n2doc's JournalAnti-fracking activist barred from 312.5 sq miles of Pennsylvania
Court injunction brought in by oil and gas company makes even supermarkets off-limits for Vera Scroggins
Suzanne Goldenberg
Vera Scroggins, an outspoken opponent of fracking, is legally barred from the new county hospital. Also off-limits, unless Scroggins wants to risk fines and arrest, are the Chinese restaurant where she takes her grandchildren, the supermarkets and drug stores where she shops, the animal shelter where she adopted her Yorkshire terrier, bowling alley, recycling centre, golf club, and lake shore.
In total, 312.5 sq miles are no-go areas for Scroggins under a sweeping court order granted by a local judge that bars her from any properties owned or leased by one of the biggest drillers in the Pennsylvania natural gas rush, Cabot Oil & Gas Corporation.
"They might as well have put an ankle bracelet on me with a GPS on it and be able to track me wherever I go," Scroggins said. "I feel like I am some kind of a prisoner, that my rights have been curtailed, have been restricted."
The ban represents one of the most extreme measures taken by the oil and gas industry to date against protesters like Scroggins, who has operated peacefully and within the law including taking Yoko Ono to frack sites in her bid to elevate public concerns about fracking.
more
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/jan/29/vera-scroggins-fracking-activist-pennsylvania
If Henry Ford Could Pay a $15 Minimum Wage 100 Years Ago, So Can We
By Michael Moore
te of the Union address tonight, President Obama is going to call for a national minimum wage of $10.10. Then in their response the Republicans will say that'd be a huge disaster that would make the Washington Monument fall over, Mt. Rushmore explode, etc. But here's what neither Obama or the GOP will tell you:
One hundred years ago this month Henry Ford began paying his workers a minimum of $15 an hour! (It was $5 for an eight hour day – which would be worth $116.48 now.) That's right – in a much poorer America, one without TV, radio, phones or House of Cards on demand, Ford could afford it. In fact, Ford later said, he couldn't afford not to: "The owner, the employees, and the buying public are all one and the same, and unless an industry can so manage itself as to keep wages high and prices low it destroys itself, for otherwise it limits the number of its customers. One’s own employees ought to be one’s own best customers."
Tell THAT to anyone who says we can't afford a minimum wage of $15 here in 2014 – 100 years later, in a country about eight times as rich per person. The CEOs will scream and weep now just like they did then, and just like then they'll be wrong. Not only would it not destroy American businesses, it might be the only thing that can save them.
(To learn more about the national movement to raise the minimum wage to $15, check out 15 Now, led by Seattle's new socialist city councilwoman Kshama Sawant; support Fast Food Forward; and follow Nick Hanauer, who was one of the first investors in Amazon and says that America's real job creators are middle class workers.)
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/mike-friends-blog/if-henry-ford-could-pay-15-minimum-wage-100-years-ago-so-can-we
The Politely Evil Empire
How the U.S. Chamber of Commerce became the greatest (bumbling) enemy of America.
By Pete Kotz Thursday, Jan 30 2014
I. Meet America's business cheerleaders.
People tend to view chambers of commerce in the same colors as the Rotary Club or the Knights of Columbus: eager do-gooders lending a helpful hand in the name of economy and country. It's a largely accurate assessment — at least on the local level.
....
These are sainted duties. Local chambers chiefly represent small businesses, which collectively make for the nation's largest and most stable employer. After all, the florist and the restaurateur are more likely to sponsor a softball team than ship their jobs to Indonesia. Neither is prone to demanding public welfare under threat of bolting for Tennessee. The local chambers are their cheerleaders, providing mercantile expertise, all with a cheerful disposition built to illuminate the possible.
But that reputation is being smeared by their national umbrella group, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce — a nonprofit group that sounds innocuous but, since it began supporting extreme right-wing ideas and funding controversial candidates, has quietly become the baddest bully in Washington. And its behavior is causing dozens of smaller, dues-paying chambers — and some of America's most prominent companies — to flee its ranks.
II. Now meet their weird Uncle Ed, who's ruining the family name.
Think of the U.S. Chamber as your crazy Uncle Ed. He spent too much time listening to talk radio, developed a raging victim complex, and came to believe the country was being destroyed by sloth and moochery. So he formed a lobbying group to defend the one true antidote: free enterprise.
more
http://www.miaminewtimes.com/2014-01-30/news/us-chamber-of-commerce-problems/
The state of the union speech Barack Obama would never give
By Neil Macdonald, CBC News
With few exceptions (such as Gerald Ford's blunt 1975 assessment that "the state of the union is not good"
the president's annual report to Congress is an exercise in reassuring Americans they are exceptional, blessed by God, leading the world, and headed for better things.
Last night's was no different; at best, it amounted to an optimistic statement of intent by a president who has been thwarted constantly by other arms of government since assuming office.
So, let's imagine what an outsider like, say, me, might submit if asked for a more succinct, less varnished assessment of the state of the American union. It would probably go something like this:
"My fellow Americans,
"A month after I assumed office, in the midst of a financial crisis that terrified us all, I stood in this place and promised we would not just recover, but that we would emerge stronger.
"Well, five years later that hasn't happened for most of us. To quote a common jape, the economy's doing well, except for most of the people in it.
more
http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/the-state-of-the-union-speech-barack-obama-would-never-give-1.2514862
Our 'Winner Take All' Economy Is Destroying Us
by Tim Koechlin
The United States is, by every reasonable measure, the most unequal of the world’s rich countries. And this is not new development. For more than three decades, the US has been suffering from a crisis of inequality. The Democrats have not taken this crisis seriously enough. The Republicans seem hell-bent on making it worse.
Evidence of extreme and rising economic inequality in the US is quite overwhelming. In 1979, the top 1% earned about 9% of all income; in 2013, they earned 24%. The incomes of the top 0.1% have grown even faster. More than half of all economic growth since 1976 has ended up in the pockets of the top 1%. Meanwhile, the incomes of the shrinking middle class have stagnated, and the incomes of those with a high school education or less have fallen substantially. The purchasing power of the minimum wage has fallen by about 15% since 1979. One in five kids lives in poverty.
How have we responded to all of this? By cutting taxes for the rich, busting unions and vilifying the poor! Over the past few decades, effective tax rates on US corporations and the richest 1% have fallen by about a third. Among the world’s rich countries, US tax rates on the rich are near the very bottom. Since 1970, the percentage of private sector workers in unions has fallen from 29% to 7%.
It has not always been this way. Between 1948 and 1975, the income of the median US household doubled. The incomes of the bottom 20% actually grew a little faster than the incomes of the top 20% over this period. Between 1928 and 1950, the distribution of income in the US actually became dramatically more equal.
more
https://www.commondreams.org/view/2014/01/28-0
Greg Abbott Continues Lawsuit to Defend Billions in Cuts to Education
by: Emily Cadik
Hundreds of Texas school districts are back in court after a judge reopened the lawsuit that previously declared Texas's school finance system unconstitutional.
After the Texas legislature cut $5.4 billion from public schools in the 2011 legislative session, State District Judge John Dietz handed down his ruling that Texas's education funding scheme was neither sufficient nor fair. But after about two-thirds of the funding cuts were restored in the 2013 session, he recently reopened the case.
In his position as Attorney General, Greg Abbott has been defending the $5.4 billion in cuts in the lawsuit against school districts representing two-thirds of Texas public school children. He says it's just part of his job - something he is required to do. Except it's not.
While it would be unusual for Abbott to choose not to defend state law, it is neither unprecedented nor illegal. According to David Richards, former head of litigation at the Texas Attorney General's office, it is well within Abbott's right to move to settle the suit.
more
http://www.burntorangereport.com/diary/14718/greg-abbott-continues-lawsuit-to-defend-billions-in-cuts-to-education
Hillary Clinton's Enemies Can't See Straight
PAUL WALDMAN JANUARY 28, 2014
The blinding hate so many conservatives feel for her could be Clinton's greatest asset in 2016.
Rand Paul, who is weirdly a potentially serious contender for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, got asked on Meet the Press this past Sunday about a comment his wife had made about Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky. His answer was revealing, I think, of a mindset Republicans are going to struggle with mightily should Hillary Clinton run for president. I bring this up not because I think Paul's comments are all that important in and of themselves, and not because Republicans are likely to spend a good deal of time talking about Monica Lewinsky come 2016. But there's an impulse when it comes to Hillary Clinton that presents a real danger for Republicans. There are so many things they hate about her and her husband that they barely know where to start. And that hatred could well be their undoing.
If you heard "Rand Paul attacked Hillary Clinton over Monica Lewinsky," you've been slightly misled. First of all, it was David Gregory who brought it up (here's the transcript), and second, you can see in Paul's answer the conflict between his rational brain, which says, "This is not what we should be talking about," and his lizard brain, which says, "Grrr! Clinton!" A couple of times he tries to say that the issue is one for Bill Clinton's "place in history," but he can't stop himself from trying to make the case that Democrats are hypocrites because they criticize Republicans for waging a "war on women," when Bill Clinton had an affair with an intern fifteen years ago.
Even after all this time, and after the Clinton impeachment turned out to be such a disaster for them, so many conservatives still can't wrap their heads around the idea that other Americans don't think about that episode in the same way they do. For them, it's a tale of crime and injustice, the injustice being the fact that Bill Clinton got away with it. It goes right to the heart of what they hated so much about him. It wasn't that they had policy differences with him, though they did. What angered them so much about Bill Clinton was that he was better at politics than they were. He beat them again and again for so many years, and nothing embodies their frustration over those defeats more than the Lewinsky scandal. For god's sake, they cry, the guy was caught diddling a twenty-something intern in the White House, and he still managed to wiggle his way out of it!
more
http://prospect.org/article/hillary-clintons-enemies-cant-see-straight
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