From Now to November---Never Forget

All true. No overstatement.

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Thanks, Republicans!

5 Ways to Stop Corporations From Ruining the Future of Work

From none other than  that champion of the "little guy", Professor Robert Reich.

5 Ways to Stop Corporations From Ruining the Future of Work

Artificial intelligence, robots, and other advanced technologies are already transforming the world of work – and their impact is just beginning. They’ll grow the economy and make it more efficient. But unless American workers are involved, that growth and technological change will benefit only those at the top.

The challenge of making economic growth and technological change benefit all working people and not just those at the top is the same challenge I’ve written about and talked a lot about over the years. It’s the challenge of reversing widening inequalities of income, wealth, and political power. A big part of the solution is making sure workers have a voice and a union. That way they have more bargaining leverage to get a piece of the pie that in recent years has been going almost entirely to the top.

We shouldn’t think of emerging technologies as things we have no control over – as if they just happen automatically, inevitably. We have the power to shape technological progress. We need to assert our roles as workers and members of a democratic society to ensure that new technologies benefit all of us.

Here are five ways to do so:

First, workers need a stronger voice, from the boardroom to the shop floor. Workers at all levels should participate in the design, development, and deployment of technology in the workplace – as they do in Germany.

This is not only good for workers. It’s also good for companies that otherwise waste countless dollars trying to figure out how best to use new technologies without consulting frontline workers who are closest to processes and products, and know how to get maximum use out of new technologies.

In the early 2000s, Home Depot spent over $1 billion in automation but reduced investment in their workforce. In the end, because workers were left out of the process, many of these automated systems failed and had to be scaled back.

Second, if we want corporations to invest in innovation and their workers we need to reform Wall Street. So instead of buying back their own shares of stock to manipulate stock prices and laying off employees to boost short-term profits, corporations can make the long-term investments that are necessary for their competitiveness and for the competitiveness of their workers.

Every corporation can get access to the same gadgets. What makes a corporation uniquely competitive is its people – how its workers utilize the new technologies.

Third, we need to rebuild strong collaboration between government and business in researching and developing new technologies, so they work for the benefit of all. That’s what we did in the three decades after World War II, when the Defense Department worked with the private sector to develop the Internet, telecommunications, and aerospace; when the National Institutes of Health did basic research for pharmaceuticals and medical breakthroughs; and our national laboratories pioneered research on biofuel, nuclear, wind and solar energy.

Conservatives often object that it’s not the role of government to steer technological development. Yet most of the cutting-edge technology that’s the crowning achievement of the United States’ private sector was in fact developed as a result of public innovation and public funding.

Our government is still steering technological development. The difference now is we have the capacity to steer that development in a way that generates broad-based prosperity, not just jaw-dropping incomes for a few innovators and investors.

Fourth, a more open and forward-looking industrial policy can help steer the nation’s economic growth toward combating our central challenges – climate change, poverty, our crumbling infrastructure, costly and inaccessible health care, lack of quality education.

Tackling big ambitious goals like transitioning to clean energy can encourage collaboration between different sectors of the economy. Backed by the right technologies, they can also be sources of the good jobs of the future.

Conservatives claim the government shouldn’t pick winners and losers. But that’s what we’ve done for years. We already have an industrial policy when the government bails out Wall Street banks, gives special tax breaks to oil, and hands out subsidies to Big Agriculture. But it’s a backwards industrial policy, led by powerful industry lobbyists. We need a forward-looking industrial policy that develops the industries and jobs of the future, and does so openly, in ways that benefit working people and society.

Finally, we need to assure that our workers are protected from the downsides: That new information technologies along with their increasing potential for monitoring and surveilling workers don’t undermine worker autonomy, dignity, and privacy. That the use of algorithms to manage workers doesn’t give top management unwarranted power in the workplace. And that workplace technologies don’t make work more unpredictable for millions of workers.

Workers need some control over how these technologies and the data they produce are used. And for this they need strong unions.

New technologies advancing toward our workplace shouldn’t reduce the standard of living of Americans. They should raise our standard of living. But that won’t happen automatically.

Workers need a voice. Government needs a responsible role. We deserve a forward-looking and open industrial policy. And the rules of the game need to be fair. We should all be able to steer the direction of technological change and influence how new technologies affect our lives.

Link:

Robert Reich

https://robertreich.org

US Immigration Over 100 Years

"We cannot afford to continue to use hundreds of thousands of immigrants merely as industrial assets while they remain social outcasts and menaces any more than fifty years ago we could afford to keep the black man merely as an industrial asset and not as a human being."

- Theodore Roosevelt, in speech to the Knights of Columbus, Carnegie Hall, New York, 12 October 1915.

Link:  Tomgram: Aviva Chomsky, The Criminalization of Immigrants From Clinton to Trump

Really, Think About Those Ten Commandments

Martin Luther King Day, VI

Martin Luther King Day, V

Martin Luther King Day, IV

Martin Luther King Day, III

Martin Luther King Day, II

Martin Luther King Day, I

Catholic beggars on the Plaza

So yesterday I went to the Plaza Art Fair as I do annually. I love it. I always will.

I love seeing any and all new artists, especially the ones who are creating truly unique, wonderful pieces in whatever medium. That, more than anything, is why I go though I enjoy it regardless.

I go in, I see the art, I dodge the people, I try to tell a select few artists how I enjoy their work and I get out.

Twice yesterday, while there, I was approached by two students from St. Vincent de Paul grade school, asking if I would, one way or another, support them--and their school--by buying a candy bar or just making a donation or some such.

And I have to tell you, the chutzpah of both the school, in allowing such a thing, and the kid's parents, for dressing them up and making them do it strikes me as just absolutely shameful.

Begging, mooching for support, on a street corner, in public, on the Country Club Plaza in broad daylight when actually, the kid could be out playing. Shoot, for that matter, he or she could even be doing something useful or more productive like cutting the lawn or studying.

There's just no shame with these people.

Forget that these families seem to come from what are clearly at least middle-class families who could go to a public school so they don't have to incur any additional expense. The way some of the mothers and children look, they may honestly even be from upper-class families but there they are, out begging on the street corner.

Then, forget that the Catholic church has so many sexual predators in priest's clothing.

Forget that the male hierarchy has and still does go to great, great lengths to protect those same predators and abusers instead of protecting the children, first.

Forget that a priest was just found guilty of it here, locally.

Worse yet, forget that their current Bishop, Finn, was just found guilty of doing just that--protecting a priest who had sexually exploited Catholic school children at, apparently, three different, local Catholic grade schools.

Forget that this has happened all over the planet, in many, many different nations of the world.

Forget that this sexual abuse has gone on for literally centuries, seriously.

Forget that it still seems to keep happening.

Sure, forget all that.

Just clean up the kids, dress them up up in those adorable little uniforms, and put them out on the street corner to hawk their Catholic school and beg for financial support.

It galls me every time I see them out there.

Then there's this headline that I just got, today, in my email:

Papal Nuncio left Ireland after vast sums of money found in his bank accounts

"A former Papal Nuncio left Ireland under a cloud after vast sums of South American funded money were found in his bank account.

Archbishop Gaetano Alibrandi left Dublin and the Vatican’s diplomatic service in 1989 after investigations into his financial affairs."

Further proof of why, no way in heck do I want to have any money--any money at all, in any form--go to these people.

Cute and bright as the kids seem to be, each time I had to just wave them off and tell them I don't support the Catholic schools. Geez. Make us the heels.

Someone has to be a Grinch about this so I guess it has to be me.

Let me make it clear, here, too--I was nice to the kids. It's certainly not their fault. Hopefully, one day they can break away from all that entrapping dogma and abuse.

It's almost enough to ruin a perfect weather day at the annual art fair.

Link: http://www.snapnetwork.org/

http://www.irishcentral.com/news/Papal-Nuncio-left-Ireland-after-vast-sums-of-money-found-in-his-bank-accounts-170813076.html

Labor Ready: The big, shameful success on the backs of the poor, Part V

Finally, the last thing I'm aware of and that I will report here, that Labor ready uses for its success, on the backs of its poor and working poor employees is that it is not uncommon for the company to tell a "temp" to arrive at the office at 6 am (oh, boy!), then have them sit in the reception area of that local office for an hour, then, an hour later, at 7, have them drive an hour to a job. The problem? They DON'T pay them for the time from 6 to 7, in spite of telling them they are to be there, and they also don't pay them for the time from 7 to 8 that it might take to get to the client's facility. It's all just gratis--free time spent--wasted--waiting for work. It's yet another example of how this very large and successful company preys on its workers and exploits the daylights out of them, for their own benefit and at the employees' expense in both time and wages. It's obscene, as I said before. Their slogan should be "Labor Ready: Expendable Temporary Labor" or "Exploitable" or "Disposable" , the way they treat these people they're so dependent on for their own existence and success.

Labor Ready: The big, shameful success on the backs of the poor, Part IV (of 5)

Next to last--I guess--on this list of examples of how big, successful Labor Ready exploits the poor and working poor of the country so it can be that big, profitable company it is is this, number 4: the wages it pays it's office staff. On average, the most common wage per office employee, nearly as I can find, is that they pay them $10.00 per hour. Try living on that. And don't think it's not demanding. You try getting up far before dawn, rushing to the office, opening up--daily except Sunday--and trying to locate and then coordinate all the workers you can for all the companies who have phoned to say they need good, hard-working employees, if even temporarily. It's a long day, it's arduous and demanding and isn't for the faint of heart, by a long shot.

Labor Ready: The big, shameful success on the backs of the poor, Part III (of 5)

Number three on the list of revolting rules that the Labor Ready company has and uses to keep poor people poor also has to do with the mileage the "temp" may drive to do their work. Here's the obscene deal: After the company pays only approximately 20 cents per mile to the temp/driver (and pocketing the very much larger 35 cent difference they're reimbursed by the government--see the earlier post today), Labor Ready then pays the temp. But here's the grossness of the thing--they pay the temp the mileage as though it's part of wages. The problem? First, it takes and keeps yet more money from the likely poor and needy temp/employee but, far worse--this is mileage. IT SHOULDN'T BE TAXED. IT'S NOT PART OF WAGES. What's terrific about this for Labor Ready is that it can then all too likely KEEP THAT MONEY, TOO and once again benefit, at the expense of the employee. I'm telling you, these people are grossly, grossly immoral. This, to me, seems like it would GO AGAINST THE FEDERAL TAX CODE AND BE ILLEGAL. I hope it is. And I hope they're caught. Then, I hope they're fined heavily and money is returned to the employees. It seems as though it should be a civil lawsuit, to me, in Federal Court. It should be a class-action suit against them.

Labor Ready: The big, shameful success on the backs of the poor, Part II (of 5)

Here it is, the 2nd way the very big and successful Labor Ready Corporation and company exploits the poor and working poor of the nation, all so they can have higher profits: If a person working for the company--a "temp", as we know them--drives the other temps to the job site, the company pays mileage. All well and good, right? You would think so. But here's the problem--Labor Ready pays about 20 cents per mile for miles driven. The problem--the big, grossly unfair problem is that they are reimbursed by the government 55 cents per mile. That means that for every mile one of these temps is paid to drive others to a work site, LABOR READY IS POCKETING AN ADDITIONAL 35 CENTS PER MILE THAT SHOULD ACTUALLY BE GOING TO THE EMPLOYEE WHO DID THE DRIVING. This alone, worked out for all these temporary employees, all across the nation, must mean millions of dollars of more profit for the company. In the meantime, the temps working for them are either scraping by or just barely able to scrape by and are waiting for that paycheck at the end of the day. It's disgusting. What they do, time and again, their techniques and rules and habits are horribly immoral, at least. It's obscene. Stay tuned for part III!

Labor Ready: The big, shameful success on the backs of the poor, Part I (of 5)

I've been doing some research and have to report on what I have found to be the shameful and very shameless success of the Labor Ready temporary help company and how it's so very much on the backs of the poor and working poor. As it shows above, this is part one--the first way they expoit their help so grossly--of 5 total parts (unless I find yet more ways). The first example of how they exploit their employees is that they charge their corporate and company clients approximately at least $16 per hour for each employee. The employee--worker's--take? Usually $7.25 per hour. So you know, this is virtually always very back-breaking work, too, so you know. They keep $9.00 per hour for every $7.25 the hard-working employee gets. That's the first one. Trust me, it gets worse. MUCH worse. More later.

The world gone mad

The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) has pointed out--rightly, it seems--that Bishop Finn and the local Catholic Diocese may challenge US pornography laws in their defense of Shawn Ratigan and the Bishop. Talk about a world gone mad. The Catholic Church, going against the nation's pornography laws, all so they can try to defend a former priest who, it is known, took terribly inappropriate pictures of young and very young children in local Parishes he worked for and then stored those on his computers. All this was revealed in a brif article in the Kansas City Star Friday (see link below). It's bad enough yet another in a long line of Catholic priests has abused his positionn and exploited childern who were entrusted to him. It's yet another bizarre twist to think that this church organization would fight the nation's pornography laws that were designed to protect all our citizens, but especially the children, and instead, that this church would fight to tear those laws down, all so it could save itself and one of its priests and the church's hierarchy. A topsy-turvy world gone mad. It makes me nearly nauseous. Links: http://www.kansascity.com/2011/11/11/3271959/mark-morris-digesting-the-legal.html; http://www.snapnetwork.org/_bishop_to_challenge_us_child_porn_laws_snap_responds

Great news on sexual abuse by priests in the Catholic Church

The bad thing is that any of these sexual abuse cases--across the world--ever took place. The good news now is that finally, organizations are taking these worldwide cases to the International Criminal Court (ICC) at the Hague. From NPR today: Clerical Abuse Victims Seek Justice At World Court And who else is doing it but the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP): "...the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, known as SNAP, and the human rights group the Center for Constitutional Rights say the Vatican has yet to implement a policy to crack down on abusive priests and cooperate with law enforcement. The groups are delivering more than 20,000 pages of documentation from all over the world to the International Criminal Court, or ICC. Attorney Pam Spees says the evidence shows that crimes of clerical sex abuse constitute a "widespread or systematic attack directed against a civilian population." Maybe, with this exposure, the Catholic Church will finally be held accountable across the globe for their actions and non-actions, as it applies. Maybe now the children and members of the church who decide to remain in this organization can look forward to not being expoited one day, should this be successful. Here's hoping. Link to original post: http://www.npr.org/2011/09/13/140424290/sex-abuse-victims-want-hague-tribunal-to-investigate-vatican

Agreed. Lets go get 'em

There was a pretty fascinating one-half page advertisement in The New York Times today, in the very important first section by the Catholic group, the Knights of Columbus.

Now, normally, the last thing I'm going to do is even mention any Catholic group, let alone agree with them but I think they got it right this time.

Under the title "Now is the Time for Change", in big, bold letters, they write that "The United States is suffering an economic crisis, a leadership crisis and a moral crisis."

They go on:

We must do something...Now."

Most Americans would have long ago agreed with this.

They write that their "polling shows more than three-quarters of our country believes the corporate world's moral compass is pointed in the wrong direction. Moreover, a majority of Americans, and two-thirds of executives, gave a grade of D or F in ethical matters to the financial and investment industry."

They say that "We have lived with this lack of business values too long. It is a problem that cannot be legislated or regulated away."

Okay.

Agreed.

And way overdue.

But the thing is, what they're saying needs to be taken to its logical, harsh, complete truth and that is that CAPITALISM HAD FAILED US.

Captialism has failed us and the corporations of America are eating us alive.

Corporations are chewing up their employees and workers, using them and spitting them out, at the end of their work-cycles as desperate, poor, unsupported people who have no resources--because it all went to the CEOs and the corporation itself--and no health care coverage.

All this in the name of "unfettered Capitalism" and progress.

We need to stand up and force our government to stand up for us.

We need to take power back from corporate America.

So the Knights of the Columbus is on the right track on these issues but at the end of the advertisement, they merely ask for us to "join us in creating a Culture of Volunteerism..."

Volunteering to help one another is not enough. Volunteering won't get this done.

Getting lobbying, lobbyists and corporate lobby money out of our election system--now, that will start to get something done.

Then we'll start to get our corporations to stop completely exploiting all of us.

Link to ad here:

Perfect Synergy and Symmetry

Remember when it used to be that the wealthy people had their country clubs and everyone wanted to belong and go there and exclude all the other "little people"? And it lasted forever. There have always been groups created to exclude other people and/or groups. It's always been that way.

Well, it occurred to me today, after driving to work the same way every work day, that just the opposite "perfect place" has been created for the lower social and economic levels of our society.

Surely you've noticed the perfect marriage when McDonald's restaurants have started locating in--yes, in--and around Wal-Mart stores?

Isn't that magnificent? You couldn't get better zoning if you legislated it. Really, that's magnificent. What better place to put these 2 organizations and their customers than side by side? Or, better yet, as I said, one INSIDE the other. Man, that's perfect.

One has horrible food that's absolutely bad for you, almost completely, while the other virtually abuses its employees. Talk about perfect. One exploits its employees to make money while the 2nd takes that same money and gives them fatty, unhealthy foods to "reward" them for that same hard work.

Even their logos are similar and work together.

I think Wal-Mart should buy McDonald's, personally, and marry the two even closer. It just doesn't get any better than that.

So now the underclass has a place to go to both shop and eat. Perfect. Like I said, it's the complete "Country Club" for the lower class. All they need now is a swimming pool.

I'm sure it's only a matter of time.