Bill Bumpus an injury to one is an injury to all

Tom Gallagher, Common Dreams, February 6, 2012 Do state-level “job creation” programs work? Hard to say, according to a new study. The belief in cutting business taxes as a reliable method for increasing local employment is so widely shared in the US that every state – plus the District of Columbia – offers financial incentives for businesses to “create jobs” within its jurisdiction. So deep is that belief, in fact, that states frequently don’t even consider a cost/benefit analysis necessary. At least that’s the conclusion that a Washington, DC-based public policy center, Good Jobs First, reached in Money for Something, a review of 238 separate job creation programs ... On

Dave Zirin, The Nation, February 6, 2012 I emerge from the echo-chamber of Super Bowl Sunday energized and armed with a new set of heroes and folk-tales to pass on to others. My hero on our great (near) secular national holiday wasn’t Giants quarterback Eli Manning, who one suspects would be going to Disney World whether he won or lost. It wasn’t the incredible looking Madonna, spotted backstage drinking her daughter's stemcells, or M.I.A. with her middle finger malfunction. It also wasn’t Clint Eastwood who made a commercial where I think he threatened to murder Detroit. My new heroes are the people in the Occupy and Labor movements who gathered to protest on Super Bowl Sunday. ... The

Darrell Smith & Phillip Reese, Sacramento Bee, February 5, 2012 Rose Ann DeMoro is always ready for another fight. And why not? During the past decade, the leader of the California Nurses Association has won so many of her battles. Largely because of CNA efforts, California is poised to become the first state where registered nurses make an average salary above $100,000. The union helped defeat gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman in 2010 and has become a political force, throwing financial support behind candidates for offices ranging from Santa Rosa City Council to state attorney general. And more recently, nurses flexed their muscles with a series of one-day walkouts ... Nurses

Lockout taught us power of the team. Demaurice Smith, Concord (NH) Monitor, February 4, 2012 Granite Staters have a lot of things to be proud of: their magnificent Seacoast and White Mountains, their position as the first presidential primary state in America and the AFC Champion New England Patriots. But most important, they're proud of their "Live Free or Die" tradition. And they've shown that they'll fight to keep their freedoms safe. Last year, thousands of New Hampshire families came together to defeat a "right-to-work" bill pushed by out-of-state special interests that would have jeopardized the freedom of workers to organize as a team ... NFL

Jeffrey Collins, Associated Press, February 4, 2012 Columbia - When the power goes out in South Carolina, chances are a union member repairs that line. When someone sends a letter or a package, the mail carrier or UPS driver is likely a union member. There are 59,000 workers in unions in South Carolina, doing jobs as diverse as making paper, unloading ships, fighting fires and playing music. And a number of them are angry at the suddenly fiery comments Governor Nikki Haley is making about organized labor. Haley hasn't hidden her dislike of unions during her first year in office, using Boeing's battle with the national Labor Relations Board to boost her stance ... SC

Future Tense, February 3, 2012 This morning, I was having the usual breakfast and coffee with my girlfriend with CNBC on in the background on mute. We were discussing the Regis and Kelly show and who was going to be picked as her new co-host to replace Regis. A very big decision in our house. Then the jobs report hit at 8:30, the most important piece of economic data of the month, and so we took the TV off mute to listen. The report came in with an increase of 243,000 jobs in the month and the unemployment rate fell to 8.3%. The CNBC reporters were falling over themselves with excitement on how incredible the jobs recovery  was progressing. ... The

Indiana’s New Anti-Union Law Sparks Protest at Sport’s Biggest Spectacle. Democracy Now! February 3, 2012 Occupy protesters in Indianapolis are gearing up to use the media spotlight on Sunday’s Super Bowl XLVI to rally for union rights outside the statehouse. Earlier this week, Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels signed a so-called "right to work" measure into law that critics say will result in lower wages and diminished collective bargaining rights. Indiana workers have received the backing of the National Football League Players Association, which has called "right to work" "a political ploy designed to destroy basic workers’ rights." ... Occupy

Tom LoBianco, Associated Press, February 3, 2012 Indianapolis - Indiana and NFL union leaders on Friday protested the possible layoffs of hotel workers at the Hyatt Regency in downtown Indianapolis as part of an ongoing labor fight with the hotel chain. 

Roughly 100 demonstrators marched outside the hotel chanting and carrying signs with the Hyatt corporate logo converted into a frowning face. The hotel is a few blocks from where the Super Bowl will be played on Sunday. 

"I love people who stand together to fight for what's right," NFL Players Association executive director DeMaurice Smith told protesters. ... Indiana

Isaiah J. Poole, Campaign for America’s Future, February 3, 2012 President Obama today will go to a fire house in the Virginia suburbs of Washington to tout his plan to promote hiring of veterans as first responders. It's a program that is sorely needed to address an American travesty: One out of every eight of the veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan are out of a job. But as today's unemployment report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows, the economy could still use a job corps for the rest of us as well. The news is good: 243,000 jobs were produced in January, and the unemployment rate went down to 8.3 percent. ... Jobs

David Moberg, In These Times, February 3, 2012 Warehouse workers from Wal-Mart distribution centers in metropolitan Chicago and southern California took two big steps this week toward enforcing laws on working conditions and wages, fighting retaliatory firings, and ultimately forcing Wal-Mart to live up to its responsibilities as an employer. Working through Warehouse Workers for Justice, workers at the Elwood, Il, distibution center - reputedly Wal-Mart's largest with 3 million square feet of space - filed suit against Eclipse Advantage and Schneider Logistics for firing roughly 65 workers on December 29. ... Wal-Mart

SEIU and others are embracing the movement that has succeeded as they have faded. Arun Gupta, Salon, February 2, 2012 Unions are in a death spiral. Private sector unionism has all but vanished, accounting for a measly 6.9 percent of the workforce. Public sector workers are being hammered by government cutbacks and hostile media that blame teachers, nurses and firefighters for budget crises. To counter this trend organized labor banked on creating more hospitable organizing conditions by contributing hundreds of millions of dollars to the Democratic Party the last two election cycles. In return Obama abandoned the Employee Free Choice Act ... What

Carl Bloice, Black Commentator, February 2, 2012 Next month, people in three Northern California communities will get to see and hear up close former senator Republican Alan Simpson, the man who once referred to Social Security as "a milk cow with 310 million tits," and his trusted sidekick, former White House chief of staff and Morgan Stanley director Democrat, Erskine Bowles. "Simpson-Bowles" is now a road show. These people never give up. The duo were appointed by President Obama in February 2010 to co-chair the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform ... Medicare

Jamilah King, Colorlines, February 2, 2012 Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels was not supposed to be among this year’s Super Bowl story lines. This year’s contenders, the New England Patriots and the New York Giants, should instead be taking center stage. Yet less than a week before America’s biggest sporting event of the year kicks off in Indianapolis, Governor Daniels’ fight with the state’s unionized workers over legislation that could curtail the power of their collective bargaining rights has given a new national platform to the right wing’s bitter, decades-old war against unions. Yet the NFL’s Player’s Association ... has ... come out in opposition to the proposed Right to Work ... Why

When: Saturday, February 4, 2012, 1:00 PM
Where: Park Street Station to Copley Square • Tremont & Park Streets • Park Street T • Boston

Rally at Park Street, march to the Israeli Consulate, and end with a rally at Copley Square to demand No War on Iran!

Sponsor: Occupy Boston Action for Peace. Info: 781-316-2018
February 4th: Day of Mass Action to Stop War on Iran

NO war NO sanctions NO intervention NO assassinations on Iran

Marjorie Cohn, Common Dreams, January 31, 2012 "They ranged from little babies to adult males and females. 
I'll never be able to get that out of my head. I can still smell the blood.
 This left something in my head and heart." 
- Lance Corporal Roel Ryan Briones. Last week, Staff Sergeant Frank Wuterich was sentenced to a reduction in rank but no jail time for leading his squad in a rampage known as “The Haditha Massacre.” Wuterich, who was charged with nine counts of manslaughter, pled guilty to dereliction of duty. Six other Marines have had their charges dismissed and another was acquitted for his part in the massacre. ... The

David Swanson, War Is A Crime, January 31, 2012 Imagine if a bunch of the craziest war-hungry Republicans in the House filmed themselves in a nutty bat-guano video packed with lies addressed to the President of the United States. And then imagine President Barack Obama almost immediately agreeing with them. I can think of two ways in which such a series of events could go unnoticed, as it just has. First, it could be about something insignificant. But this was about undoing the automatic cuts to the military mandated by the failure of the Supercommittee (remember, the top news story of a few months back?). ... A

James Clapper, US director of national intelligence, also says Tehran is keeping option open to develop nuclear weapons. Julian Borger, Guardian, January 31, 2012 America's top intelligence official has claimed that Iran's leadership was now more willing than before to carry out an attack inside the US, and that intelligence agencies were worried about plots against US and allied interests around the world. In a report to Congress, the director of national intelligence, James Clapper, said a plot to blow up the Saudi ambassador in a Washington restaurant - which the US blamed on Iran's Revolutionary Guard ... Iran

Do Not Say You Were Not Warned. Eileen Fleming, WeAreWideAwake, January 30, 2012 Last week The New York Times published an opine by Ronen Bergman, who answered his own question in “Will Israel Attack Iran?” “After speaking with many senior Israeli leaders and chiefs of the military and the intelligence, I have come to believe that Israel will indeed strike Iran in 2012. Perhaps in the small and ever-diminishing window that is left, the United States will choose to intervene after all, but here, from the Israeli perspective, there is not much hope for that. [O]nly the Israelis can ultimately defend themselves.” ... At

Tom Engelhardt, TomDispatch, January 29, 2012 Exclusive: New Iranian Commando Team Operating Near US (Tehran, FNA) The Fars News Agency has confirmed with the Republican Guard’s North American Operations Command that a new elite Iranian commando team is operating in the US-Mexican border region. The primary day-to-day mission of the team, known as the Joint Special Operations Gulf of Mexico Task Force, or JSOG-MTF, is to mentor Mexican military units in the border areas in their war with the deadly drug cartels. ... Iranian

Ronen Bergman, New York Times, January 25, 2012 As the Sabbath evening approached on January 13, Ehud Barak paced the wide living-room floor of his home high above a street in north Tel Aviv, its walls lined with thousands of books on subjects ranging from philosophy and poetry to military strategy. Barak, the Israeli defense minister, is the most decorated soldier in the country’s history and one of its most experienced and controversial politicians. He has served as chief of the general staff for the Israel Defense Forces, interior minister, foreign minister and prime minister. He now faces ... the most important decision of his life - whether to launch a pre-emptive attack against Iran. ... Will