Is it warm in here or is it just me?

So here I am awaiting the season's first serious snowfall, so of course I'm going to write about global warming.

What sparked this is that on Thursday Neil Cavuto - who in a height of hilarity calls his column on FauxNews.com "Common Sense" - referred to the recent snowfall in Las Vegas and used the occasion to (maybe you'd better sit down for this news) mock the idea of global warming.

Citing early cold spells in the Midwest and West, he says global warming is a case

[w]here you can kind of have your environmental cake and eat it too.

Where the earth getting warmer is warming, and the earth getting cooler is warming.

So nothing to stop Washington from big environmental spending.

The piece is, in short, more blah blah bullshit that equates weather with climate and even more, local weather with global climate. I'm reminded of a study from nine years ago about competence and self-awareness which revealed, among other things, that the most incompetent at a task actually tended to think more highly of their own abilities than those who did it well - because the latter tended to recognize their imitations while the former were so incompetent that they couldn't even recognize their shortcomings.

That is Neil Cavuto: so ignorant that he is incapable of recognizing how ignorant he is.

What makes this more than merely bitterly amusing is that Thursday was also the day that, in the words of environmentalists,

the nation's top environmental administrator has dropped "a lump of dirty coal" into Americans' Christmas stockings with a memo that says there is no reason to regulate the greenhouse gas emissions of coal plants.

The roots of this move actually lie in the case of Massachusetts v. EPA, in which a number of states, local governments, and private organizations sued the agency on the grounds that its failure to regulate greenhouse gases (including carbon dioxide) constituted a failure of its legal duty under the Clean Air Act. The EPA replied it lacked the legal authority to regulate them and it was a bad idea in any event. In April 2007, SCOTUS bluntly rejected both those defenses, ruling that the EPA had the authority to regulate those emissions and if it refused to do so, it had to come up with a scientifically-valid reason for doing so, not simply a policy position. (The full text of the decision is here.)

The Shrub gang shuffled and stalled and a year later a motion signed by 17 states, three cities, and 13 environmental groups called on the Court to order the EPA to respond to the ruling.

(It turns out that the agency had responded in December, sending to the White House an email containing its findings that greenhouse gases are pollutants that must be regulated. The WHS*, in one of those thumb-their-nose-at-reality moments that have marked their term, simply refused to open the email in order to claim they had never received a determination on the matter from the EPA.)

In June, the EPA, under White House pressure to strip its findings of any meaning, released

a watered-down version of the original proposal that offers no conclusion. Instead, the document reviews the legal and economic issues presented by declaring greenhouse gases a pollutant.

That is, it simply ignored the Supreme Court and continued to stall on regulating greenhouse gases without offering a sound scientific reason.

But other events brought the issue to a head.

Just before Labor Day weekend in 2007, the EPA issued a permit for a power plant on the Ute Indian Reservation in eastern Utah. And, in doing so, the agency opted against considering the climate-change impacts of the proposed plant's emissions.

However, last month the EPA's Environmental Appeals Board rejected the permit.

[T]he judges said the EPA did not make a strong enough case for not requiring controls on carbon dioxide, the leading pollutant linked to global warming.

In response, and this brings us to the present, on Thursday EPA Administrator Steven Johnson issued a memo "clarifying" agency rules,

set[ting] an agency-wide policy prohibiting controls on carbon dioxide emissions from being included in air pollution permits for coal-fired power plants and other facilities.

What he did was to declare that the section of regulations on the Prevention of Significant Deterioration, or PSD, permitting process which referred to "any pollutant that otherwise is subject to regulation under the [Clean Air] Act" would be understood to mean that those pollutants are subject only to "monitoring and reporting requirements" while the term "regulated pollutant" would be understood to mean

each pollutant subject to either a provision in the Clean Air Act or regulation adopted by EPA under the Clean Air Act that requires actual control of emissions of that pollutant.

If that seems like gobbledygook to you, it is, so let me translate: Johnson is saying the agency will not regulate greenhouse gases and the justification for doing so is that they haven't been regulated before.

If you doubt that, EPA rep Jonathan Shradar made it explicit, saying

the opinion simply codifies existing agency policy.

"It had been the unspoken policy of the agency," Shradar said. "All it does is put into policy what the agency has done for 30 years."

Of course, greenhouse gases were not a major consideration for most of those 30 years and for most of the time they have been, the EPA was insisting that it couldn't regulate them. Neither of those conditions now applies, which makes Shrader's statement pure hooey. And not even skillful hooey, sloppy hooey.

Still, it does mean that the agency's position can be put very simply: We refuse to regulate greenhouse gases - because we refuse to regulate greenhouse gases. Nyah, nyah. Talk to the hand.

While environmentalists were talking about lumps of coal in our national Christmas stocking, utility companies were falling all over themselves to praise Johnson's "brave" decision that, to hear them tell it, saved the nation, the world, indeed all of existence from the "catastrophic" effect (:cough: on their short-term profit) of regulating the sorts of emissions that are placing the health and safety of future generations at risk from global warming.

What's the line about knowing someone by the company they keep?

*WHS = White House Sociopaths

A small request

So Barack Obama's choice to head the Interior Department is Senator Ken Salazar (D-CO) and he has tapped one Representative Ray LaHood (R-IL, 18) to run the Department of Transportation.

According to the New York Times, Salazar's selection was "praised" by "oil and mining interests," who called him "open-minded" and "not doctrinaire," for example by "understanding" the supposed need to open public lands to fossil fuel development.

Meanwhile, he got "mixed reviews" from environmentalists, who charged he "often favors industry and big agriculture in battles over global warming, fuel efficiency and endangered species,” has "a disturbingly weak conservation record," is the "friend" of "oil and gas, mining, agribusiness and other polluting industries," and is "very unlikely to bring significant change to the scandal-plagued Department of Interior. It’s a very disappointing choice...."

As for LaHood, according to Jonathan Turley he

gleefully carried out the wishes of the Bush Administration on the House Intelligence Committee, which virtually shutdown any oversight of the unlawful programs. Even by congressional standards, he was a thuggish partisan who painted democrats and liberals as insufficiently patriotic or a danger to national security.

Overall, as Turley archly notes,

[w]hile liberals are reluctant to admit it, Obama’s cabinet is far more of an insider and establishment group than Bush’s cabinet. ... Obama’s “change” appears to be switching out the red team for the blue team - giving power to the same party leaders who have been ridiculed by voters for years for their failure to confront Bush on issues like torture, unlawful surveillance, and are cited for the very same abuses of earmarks as Republicans.

So here's the small request: Explain to me again, slowly and in great detail, why we're not supposed to criticize any of Obama's choices.

An oldie but a goodie

This is a few days old but more than worth mentioning. First, the background:

On July 22, 2005, a Brazilian man named Jean Charles de Menezes got into a car on the London subway, known as the underground. He didn't leave alive.

He was shot in the head at close range by British police who thought he was a wanted terrorist who had tried to set off bombs in the underground the day before.

A coroner's inquest was held to try to determine what happened. On December 2, the presiding judge, a former High Court judge named Michael Wright, told the jurors they could not come back with a finding of unlawful killing, claiming the evidence didn't justify it. Included was this mealy-mouthed, weaselly statement:

"In directing you that you cannot return a verdict of unlawful killing, I am not saying that nothing went wrong on a police operation which resulted in the killing of an innocent man," Wright said.

But he added that a verdict of unlawful killing could only be considered if jurors could be sure that a serious crime, such as murder or manslaughter, had been committed,

a judgment he decided to make himself on the jury's behalf.

Wright said jurors could only return a verdict of lawful killing or an open verdict, meaning they reached no conclusion. They are not allowed to attach any criminal or civil fault to individuals.

Put another way, he ordered the jury to effectively acquit the police.

Or, rather, he tried to. This is the follow-up, from Friday's International Herald Tribune:

A three-month inquest ended Friday with the jury effectively rejecting police claims that a 27-year-old Brazilian electrician lawfully was shot and killed after he was mistakenly identified as a suspect in a failed subway bombing plot in July 2005.

By an 8 to 2 majority vote, the jury returned an open verdict in the case of Jean Charles de Menezes, the harshest available to them, essentially condemning the actions of two Scotland Yard firearms officers who shot the Brazilian seven times in the head aboard a crowded subway train after mistaking him for an Islamic terrorist.

Not only did jurors reach an open verdict, they included a series of what the IHT called "damning" conclusions that essentially branded the police as liars. Significantly, Scotland Yard claimed the officers involved shouted "armed police" as they entered the car where de Menezes was sitting and that in response, he

stood up and walked towards them with his arms and hands in a position "consistent with someone who may be about to detonate a bomb hidden on their person or in a belt." They said his actions left them with no option, consistent with police procedures, but to shoot de Menezes in the head.

But based on the testimony of 17 other passengers who were in the car at the time, the jurors concluded both those statements were outright false: the police did not shout "armed police" and while de Menezes did stand up, he did not move toward the cops.

His family has branded the inquest a whitewash and has filed a court appeal to overturn the ruling barring a finding of unlawful killing. Hopefully, the jurors' findings will add weight to that appeal and lead to an investigation of an official cover-up.

It's said that "the rules are different for cops" and indeed they are: If all the facts of the situation had been the same right down to the mistaken identity except that the shooter was a civilian, not the cops, would Justice Wright have decided that jurors couldn't "be sure that a serious crime, such as murder or manslaughter, had been committed?" We both know the answer to that.

The thing is, to a certain extent the rules must be different for police in order for them to do their jobs; they must have certain authorities that are denied to the rest of us. But all too often that "need to do their jobs" becomes a basis for squashing criticism and even an excuse for criminality. It's good to know that at least one panel of British citizens is prepared to stand against that.

Footnote: The Metropolitan Police (the proper name of Scotland Yard) have already been fined $850,000 for "endangering the public's safety" in the shooting.

Light one up

Dennis Kucinich first came to nationwide attention in 1977, when he became the nation's youngest big-city mayor upon being elected mayor of Cleveland, Ohio. He served one tumultuous term in which the biggest issue was the drive by banks and business interests to force the city to sell its municipal electricity authority, Muny Light. Kucinich had been elected on a pledge to stop the sale.

It was thirty years ago today that it came to a head when the banks tried to force the sale by calling the city's loans and refusing to extend credit without the sale of the utility. Kucinich refused to fold and the city went into default.

His determination cost Kucinich the mayor's office and almost cost him his entire career: He was out of public life for 15 years until in 1993, city officials of Cleveland, which still owned Muny Light, said Kucinich's decision had saved the city and its residents hundreds of millions of dollars over that time.

Kucinich tells the story in much more detail at this link. It's worth reading because as we pillory autoworkers and praise bankers, it's wise to remember just what those we favor are capable of.

Um, what happened to that "no blank check" business?

The beginning of the week, I noted the statement of a former US ambassador to Israel to the effect that with the coming of the Obama administration, "the era of the blank check is over."

Apparently, that's true: The check isn't blank, it's filled in with B-52s. Haaretz (Israel) has the story:

U.S. President-elect Barack Obama's administration will offer Israel a "nuclear umbrella" against the threat of a nuclear attack by Iran, a well-placed American source said earlier this week. The source, who is close to the new administration, said the U.S. will declare that an attack on Israel by Tehran would result in a devastating U.S. nuclear response against Iran.

I suppose the end of the end of the blank check should be no surprise, since as Haaretz noted in a different article, before the election

[t]he Obama campaign denied that [Zbigniew] Brzezinski and other figures like Bill Clinton's former advisor Robert Malley with dovish positions on the Israel-Palestinian question were among his Middle East advisors.

Only hawks allowed in.

Now, it's important to note, as I have on other occasions regarding the transition, that this could be a trial balloon to test the public response or a strategic leak to promote a policy in internal discussions. But in either case, it still means that this is a live idea among Obama's advisers; even if it's not an agreed position, it is a topic of discussion or active dispute. In fact, since Hillary Clinton proposed exactly this idea during the primary campaign, that's it's up for serious consideration can't be reasonably doubted.

By the way and as a potential further indication of how checks are to be written, Clinton also proposed that this "umbrella" - what a touching image, nuclear war becomes like rain, kind of in the same way that autoworkers being expected to accept seeing their pay slashed by 20% or more is called giving them a "haircut" - she proposed extending that "umbrella"

to other countries in the region, like Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States, if they agree to relinquish their own nuclear ambitions.

That condition is not one to be demanded of Israel.

First Footnote: Earlier this week, Obama said he was prepared to negotiate with Iran

and would offer economic incentives for Tehran to relinquish its nuclear program. He warned that if Iran refused the deal, he would act to intensify sanctions against the Islamic Republic.

Translation: "We can do this the easy way or the hard way. But youse are gonna do what we says."

Second Footnote: The issue generated some unintentional humor from the White House, where

[a] senior Bush administration source said that the proposal for an American nuclear umbrella for Israel was ridiculous and lacked credibility. ... "[W]hat is the point of an American response, after Israel's cities are destroyed in an Iranian nuclear strike?"

Um, are you acknowledging that a cornerstone of the US's entire nuclear weapons strategy since World War II, the idea that an attack would meet a massive counterattack - that is, "deterrence," otherwise known as Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) or the "balance of terror" - is "ridiculous and lack[s] credibility?"

Cool.

Ya wanna know how bad it is? Part Three

Driven by fears of job loss, consumer confidence has crashed to a level near the all-time low recorded last July. It fell 19.4 points below November's score, according to the Royal Bank of Canada's Cash Index.

The latest grim news came on Thursday, when the Labor Department reported that initial applications for jobless benefits rose to a seasonally adjusted 573,000 for the week ended Dec. 6, the highest level in 26 years. Fully 65 percent of Americans said they're less confident about their job security now than they were six months ago. And 50 percent said that either someone in their family or someone they know personally lost their jobs because of economic conditions in the past six months.

Meanwhile, a new survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press says

[f]ully 92% of the public rates the national economy as only fair or poor, and a substantial majority (61%) judges their personal finances that way. Both measures are among the most negative recorded in Pew Research Center surveys over the past 15 years.

Some 73% of Americans say they are cutting back on holiday spending, according to the survey. That was asked only in December. On seven other measures, ranging from eating out through making major purchases to preparing for retirement, the percentage of people saying they were cutting back rose from September to October and again from October to November.

Nearly six-in-ten (59%) of those who say they are cutting back or delaying purchases report they are doing so because they worry things might get worse. Just 28% say they are cutting back because their financial situation has gotten worse.

Just? The poll also says that 4% volunteered the answer "both," that is, their situation has gotten worse and they fear it will get worse still. So virtually one-third of all Americans say their financial situation has gotten worse and that gets the adjective "just?"

Taking the context into consideration, I don't think that word means what Pew thinks it means.

Ya wanna know how bad it is? Part Two

Treasury bonds, the way the government does short-term borrowing to operate, are considered a safe if unspectacular investment. Because of their safety, they're also a pretty reliable indicator of investor confidence: Obviously, the more confident investors are, the more prepared they'll be to make riskier investments with greater possible returns - and vice versa. It's with that in mind that you should read this, from ABC News Moneybeat:

The most recent auction of $30 billion worth of 28-day Treasuries had four-times the number of buyers than they had bonds, and at zero percent interest. First time that’s ever happened.

It’s a sure sign that investors are scared. They’d rather park their cash with the government and get no appreciation – just the principle back – than risk it in the stock market or even a bank account.

Read that again: zero percent interest. Scared? Damn straight. Scared enough to be focused entirely on merely not losing rather than on any hope of gaining. Scared enough that there were four times as many of them that wanted to do that than there were bonds to sell them.

And it’s not just the four-week bonds that are pegging all-time low interest rates. On Monday, $27 billion worth of three-month Treasury bills were auctioned with an infinitesimally small 0.005% rate – the lowest on that particular term since the government first issued them in 1929.

In the secondary market today, where investors buy these bonds from the original auction winners, these three-month government bonds actually had a negative yield. Investors who want to park their money in these super-safe instruments were actually willing to give up some of their principle to get their hands on government paper.

A negative yield - you're loaning money knowing you're going to get back less than you put in - is looking like a good enough deal to enough investors to make it happen. Are investors scared? Damn straight they are.

Ya wanna know how bad it is? Part One

The Big Three - or ²/₃ of them, anyway - aren't the only ones dealing with bankruptcy issues.

According to Automated Access to Court Electronic Records, an Oklahoma City bankruptcy data company whose data is cited by McClatchy, nearly 58,000 commercial bankruptcies were filed this year through November. That not only is the largest single-year total since the change in bankruptcy law in 2005, it is 35% more than the total for all of 2007.

Things look even worse for next year, when business filings are likely to increase 40 to 50 percent, said Dan North, chief economist at Euler Hermes ACI, an Owings Mill, Md., firm that insures more than $150 billion in U.S. trade transactions each year.

North expects a wave of retail bankruptcies in the first quarter of 2009, as struggling businesses run out of gas after hanging on for the holiday shopping season. ...

The uncertainty shows no sign of abating.

The Distressed Company Alert, a weekly newsletter about troubled public companies, typically adds five to 10 companies a week to its list.

These days, it's adding 18 to 24 a week.

According to a graph acompanying the article, business bankruptcies have increased in every single quarter since the first quarter of 2006. Filings in the third quarter of 2008 were nearly triple what they were in the first quarter of 2006.

Three days late but still worth it

As an addendum to my recognizing the 60^th anniversary of the UN Declaration of Human Rights, here - thanks to my good blogging buddy JayV of Blazing Indiscretions - is a link to video of the UN on the day the document was adopted by the General Assembly.

Footnote: The site (supposedly) has a way to embed the video but it refuses to work. If I can get the sucker going, I'll add it here.

Autosuggestion

Updated I'm not going to do a whole big thing on the collapse of the proposal for aid to the auto industry because it has been gone over in fine detail elsewhere. Or everywhere.

But I did want to note a few things:

1. The proposal died in the Senate, as I expect you know, when a cloture motion got only 52 votes instead of the required 60, after which it was withdrawn. Well, I am flaming sick to death of this "gentlemen's agreement" crap that has developed with regard to filibusters. First, know what cloture is: It forces an end to debate. If it fails, the bill doesn't die, it means debate continues so there can't be a vote - preventing a vote that way, by continuing to debate it without end, being the definition of a filibuster.

But what happens now under Harry "Mr. Dynamism" Reid is that the GOPpers announce they intend to filibuster, a cloture vote is held, it fails, and the legislation is dropped.

NO! Dammit, no! You keep debating, you keep arguing, you make them stand up there and visibly block the bill and then you hold a second cloture vote and a third and however many it takes to get enough of them to give up and break ranks.

2. Where was Obama? Yes, yes, I know he's not president yet, blah blah but he will be. And I think he damn well should have been on the phone to those reactionary creeps saying, very politely, something to the effect of "As you know, I've said we're going to be going over the federal budget line by line. And I just thought you'd like a heads-up that we have some questions about [list of federally-funded projects in that senator's state]. But we can talk about that later; I know you're busy dealing with this business of aiding the auto companies. I look forward to working with you."

Now, maybe he was doing something like that and if so, good. But if he did, it becomes incumbent on him to carry through with the implied threats, to make it clear there is a price to be paid for such a betrayal of millions of American workers.

3. Right after the deal folded, Josh Marshall reported that it failed when the Dems refused to agree to making the UAW slash wages and benefits to "parity" with foreign automakers in 2009. But then he had this:

Late Update: The AP has a different take on it - suggesting it wasn't the Democrats who wouldn't agree to the immediate move to wage parity but rather the UAW. Perhaps it's simply a difference in emphasis since I would assume the Dems and the UAW leaders were operating in close consultation in the negotiations.

Oh, no, it's not. This is not a difference in "emphasis," nor is it semantics: It's spin. Spin intended to frame the discussion in a way the puts the blame on the greedy, avaricious, short-sighted, self-serving union (ptui!). And yes, of course the reactionaries intend to frame it that way. For example, the Wall Street Journal editorialized that this was "Mitch McConnell's Finest Hour."

In the Senate's Thursday night automobile showdown, the United Auto Workers said "No thanks" to a bailout with strings attached. Most Senate Republicans took them at their word and voted to block the bill. But within hours, President Bush blinked and Treasury is now scrambling to use money from the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP. Who'd have thought Mr. Bush would want to join the long line of Detroit executives in caving to the UAW?

(Marshall regained his balance shortly after the linked post of his.)

4. Another part of the framing is to talk up the idea of bankruptcy, even to ask, as (no surprise) Fox News did, "Is Bankruptcy That Bad?" What seems to always be missing from such discussions, however, is that going Chapter 11 would allow a bankruptcy court to tear up existing labor agreements. Which, bluntly, is one of the real reasons the rightwingers are favoring it.

5. Still, much, I must admit, to my surprise, despite the attempts to put the blame on workers rather than on the GOPpers who hate the idea of American workers making a decent living followed by a decent retirement, a fair amount of coverage has pointed out the real agenda at work here. And I don't mean just from sources like Rachel Maddow (who recently had two rather good rants on this) but places like the New York Times, which in the course of one of those silly "rising star" pieces it loves so much (the risers in this case being Sen. Robert Corker and UAW President Ron Gettelfinger) managed to mention that

[s]ince [Gettelfinger] took office in 2002, the U.A.W. has given up health benefits and agreed to sweeping wage cuts, and for the bailout, it was prepared to abandon pay guarantees for workers who had lost their jobs.

Mr. Gettelfinger also appeared during Congressional hearings as more of an ally - rather than usual sparring partner - of the chief executives of Detroit’s auto companies, sitting next to them while the group endured hours of grilling.

It also described Corker as an "adversary" of the UAW.

Meanwhile, McClatchy, despite giving far too much importance to supposed constituent anger over the aid package, a concept rarely advanced or recognized by the reactionaries other than as an excuse for doing what they were going to do anyway, did list as a reason for GOPper resistance "their longstanding disdain for labor unions" and in a later piece recognized that

[t]he 239,000 jobs at General Motors Ford and Chrysler are just a fraction of what's at stake.

If there were just a 50 percent contraction in the auto industry, nearly 2.5 million jobs would be lost in the first year, resulting in $125 billion less in personal income before a partial rebound in later years, according to the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, Mich. State and federal coffers would lose $50 billion from lost tax dollars, the center said.

Over three years, those figures rise to $275 billion in lost income and $108 billion in lost tax revenue. (A .pdf version of the Center's report is at this link.)

Even more to the point, the Los Angeles Times reported on Friday that

[t]he congressional drive to help U.S. automakers was generally cast in terms of protecting the reeling national economy from another body blow - the collapse of one or more of Detroit's Big Three.

But beneath the surface, what led conservative Republicans to drive a stake through the heart of a stopgap rescue plan worked out by President Bush and congressional Democrats was the chance to strike a blow against an old enemy: organized labor.

Antipathy toward unions was an undercurrent throughout the weeks of wrangling that culminated in Thursday's failed Senate vote. For Republicans - including many from right-to-work states across the South - undercutting the once-mighty United Auto Workers was seen as a way to undercut unions in general. ...

"This is the Democrats' first opportunity to pay off organized labor after the election. This is a precursor to card check and other items," read an e-mail circulated among Senate Republicans on Wednesday. "Republicans should stand firm and take their first shot against organized labor, instead of taking their first blow from it."

Some lawmakers argued that stopping the bailout would strike a blow at unions in general.

The article even managed to describe the bogus "$75 an hour" claim as "misleading," adding that

[t]he Big Three automakers have higher labor costs primarily because they have operated factories in the U.S. much longer than their foreign counterparts, so have many more retirees receiving pension and health-care payments, [labor relations expert Richard] Block said.

Even if UAW workers at GM took a 20% pay cut, it would only save the company about $1.1 billion annually because the company's unionized workforce in the United States has decreased dramatically in recent years to 55,000, he said.

The full text of the GOPper memo is here.

6. Has anyone actually calculated just how deep wages and benefits to workers and retirees would have to be cut to bring the total labor cost figure to "parity" with non-union plants?

7. Just as a sidebar, a search of Corker's Senate website produces zero responses related to insurance giant AIG, recipient (so far) of 10 times the aid the auto industry was seeking. But it does turn up a guest column he had in the Tennessean on September 27 titled "'Wall St. bailout' is really for Main St." and in which he said the bailout was necessary "regardless of how we got here." That latter consideration, needless to say, was not one applied to autoworkers and their employers.

Updated with the quotes from McClatchy news service and the links to additional info about the Center for Automotive Research report.

Si, se puede!

Okay, they're not farmworkers, Leah Fried is not César Chávez, and I expect a fair number of them do not speak Spanish, but the sentiment is much the same.

Chanting, "Yes we did," workers emerged from the shuttered Republic Windows & Doors factory late Wednesday to announce their approval of a $1.75 million agreement that ended a six-day sit-in that garnered national attention.

Several hundred laid-off workers - all union members - voted unanimously for a package that includes eight weeks' salary, two months' paid health care and all accrued vacation pay. That adds up to an average of nearly $6,000 for each worker. ...

In the end, Bank of America ponied up $1.35 million for Republic's layoff package; JP Morgan Chase kicked in another $400,000.

Eli at Left I on the News, source of the above link, notes that the plant is still being closed. Which is true, but this is still a total victory for the workers in that they got everything to which they were legally entitled (and which their former employer tried to deny then) - which was everything they demanded. Significantly,

[a]lthough the money will be provided as a loan to Republic Windows and Doors, it will go directly into a third-party fund whose sole purpose is to pay the workers what is owed them.

When I first wrote about this a few days ago, I said I was depressed at the fact that the plant closing was a scene that is "very likely to become a common occurrence" as the economy continues to head into the dumpster. But I also said that

I am so excited and so encouraged by the fact that some workers are just! fed! up! Fed up enough to stage an old-fashioned sit-in,

adding that I didn't know if it would accomplish anything in the short term but even so it was good to see that people had reached that level of anger where they're prepared to act on it.

Now, it has accomplished something in the short term, in fact everything it set out to accomplish. So for the moment, I'm going to savor the knowledge that determination, some publicity, and public reaction can make a difference: It can even move Bank of America and JP Morgan Chase. And that's saying something.

Still, there is a dark side of this. However, it doesn't lie in what the workers accomplished but why they had to accomplish it. In a later post, I cited a Republic press release but failed to realize the importance of the last item in the chronology:

11/2008 - Gillman family forms Echo Windows, LLC.

The Chicago Sun-Times said on Tuesday that

Republic Windows and Doors' change in ownership nearly two years ago unnerved some workers, who say they started fearing the company would try to open a non-union rival elsewhere.

Their fears appear to have come true, perhaps doubly. The family of Richard Gillman, a former minority shareholder who in 2006 and 2007 bought Republic outright, has set up a new company called Echo Windows LLC.

As the company's own timeline notes, that was in November - the month after they began negotiations to "wind down" Republic's operations. Also on Tuesday, the Chicago Tribune revealed that

[o]n Thursday, the day before the Chicago plant was closed, Echo Windows announced the purchase of a window manufacturing division from Red Oak, Iowa-based company TRACO.

That plant - Are you sitting down? - is non-union. So instead of the classic story of a failing business we have the equally classic story of a business - admittedly by all accounts a struggling one, but still - closing a union shop in one place in order to open a non-union shop somewhere else under a different name and trying to run away from its obligations to its employees as it does so. Which really is despicable and about which the settlement, obviously, does nothing.

This is not to take anything away from the workers at the Republic plant or from the courage and determination they showed or even from the work of the politicians whose support they gained. It is, rather, to note that for us to get the minimum to which we are legally entitled will, in the long run, simply not be enough. We have to recognize our own human rights and change to what it is we're legally entitled.

Footnote: Bob Kingsley, an official of the United Electrical Workers Union,

announced the creation of a new foundation, dedicated to reopening the plant. It will be initiated with seed money from the UE national union and the thousands of dollars of donations to the UE Local 1110 Solidarity Fund that have come in from across the country and around the world in just the past five days.

Melvin Maclin of Local 1110 announced the name of the foundation, which was chosen by the workers themselves: the Window of Opportunity Fund. Maclin said that the fund will be open to receive donations from all friends of the Republic workers and supporters of their struggle.

Another story talked about the union hoping to find a "new owner" to re-open the plant. Here's an idea: How about the union owning it? Or better yet, the workers in the plant? The ideas of worker ownership and worker self-management (also known as autogestion) are hardly new or even unusual; there are hundreds of such places in Latin America, thousands across the world, and they even enjoyed something of a vogue in the US in the latter 1970s. The National Cooperative Business Association, which defines worker cooperatives as "businesses that are owned and democratically governed by their employees," says there are 300 such worker coops in the US.

It's part of what's known as democratic socialism, the idea, at bottom, that the economy should be subject to democratic control in the same way the government should be. Some people will talk about it, some people will advocate it.

Happy Anniversary

Article 1
All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

Updated Something that appeared to pass almost completely unnoted by the major media (based on searches on Yahoo! News and Google News) was the fact that today, December 10, was the 60^th anniversary of the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Amnesty International has a 20-minute video featuring a reading of the document illustrated with graphics. That link is here.

Footnote: The day did not go completely unnoticed by major media; the Boston Globe took the occasion to editorialize in favor of a call for the UN Security Council to demand of the regime in Burma that it release political prisoners "or face a UN arms embargo." I'd certainly embargo more than arms, but it'd be a start.

Another Footnote: One place the day got some attention was in Belarus, where dozens of activists were arrested for taking part in actions in observance of Human Rights Day. Nine of them were arrested for handing out copies of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Updated with A Third Footnote: I wanted to call attention to the new listing in the right-hand column of Some Civil Liberties Groups. The word "some" is deliberate; apart from the link to the Yahoo! directory, it's limited to groups with whose work I am at least passingly familiar. The word was also chosen because I imagine the list will grow over time.

One important note about it is that I used the term "civil liberties" rather than "human rights" because the groups listed have a primary focus on political and cultural freedoms rather than relief or economic justice. That's why worthy groups such as, for some obvious examples, Global Exchange and Madre and Oxfam and Doctors Without Borders are not there.

And another

This could be put in the "Why We Can't Trust Management" folder, except that it's pretty crammed right now. So move it to "Scumbags, Misc."

Nearly three years ago, in March 2006, Taneka Talley was at her job at a Dollar Tree store in Fairfield, California. A white man entered the store and attacked her because she was black. He stabbed her in the heart. She died.

Carol Frazier, Talley's mother, adopted Talley's eight year-old son and two years ago set about filing a workers' compensation claim in order to establish a college fund for the boy.

After filling out mounds of paperwork and finally being able to prove to the workers compensation board that she was Larry's guardian and, therefore, eligible to receive Talley's death benefits, a judge suggested she get a lawyer - her claim had been denied.

Denied? Why? On what basis?

California law states an employer must pay death benefits if the employee was killed on the job and if the death was a result of the person's employment, [Moira] Stagliano[, Frazier's lawyer,] said.

But the law also allows benefits to be denied if the death stemmed from a personal connection between the victim and the attacker, such as a husband who kills his wife on company grounds.

Dollar Tree successfully opposed granting the death benefit on - get this, now - the claim that the fact that the murderer was driven by hatred of blacks established a personal connection between himself and Talley despite the lack of any known previous interaction between them and therefore her death was not work-related.

Oh. My. Word.

Well, fast forward to today:

Three weeks after a slain woman's family went public with her employer's refusal to pay out death benefits because she was killed in a racially motivated attack on the job, the company offered a settlement to the woman's son.

In a statement e-mailed to ABCNews.com, Dollar Tree's vice president of investor relations, Tim Reid, did not detail why the company reversed its decision to deny death benefits to Taneka Talley's family, but said that Dollar Tree had offered the full worker's compensation benefit permitted by California law.

"While we were advised that the claim would not be covered under the state worker's compensation law," Reid wrote, "we feel this is the right thing to do for Taneka's son."

Which you suddenly decided - doubtless by the purest of coincidences - soon after the matter became public.

Stagliano says that Dollar Tree in fact has not offered the full amount, but "We're pretty close and I believe we're going to settle it," she said.

However, something needs to be noted clearly: Dollar Tree executives continue to insist that her death was not work-related and they are just offering a settlement out of the goodness of their hearts. Put another way, they are trying to present their scumbaggery as an act of nobility.

I understand Carol Frazier's desire for a settlement and her focus on being able to send her adopted son to college. I fully understand why she would accept that settlement even as it's falsely presented as a selfless act of kindness. But I am so flaming sick of these - I can't think of an appropriate noun right now, but it would be one that would be spit out with contempt - getting away with walking away from their responsibilities as human beings, dammit, not even as employers. If it had been me, I would have accepted a settlement of lawyer's fees and expenses plus $1 - along with a requirement that Dollar Tree take out a full-page ad in the largest-circulation paper in Fairfield, California to say they were flat out wrong and indecent to have opposed the workers' comp claim in the first place.

God, they're vile.

Another labor note

Tim also had a link to an article in Counterpunch noting that

some labor supporters of the president-elect fear he may be backing away from a key campaign promise to workers threatened by recession.

While running for office, Obama said he strongly backed the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), a long overdue labor law reform measure that should be part of his promised economic stimulus plan. However, when Obama introduced his top economic advisors on Nov. 25 and talked about steps to “jolt” the economy in January, EFCA was not part of the package. More disturbingly, his new chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, declined to say whether the White House would support EFCA when he was questioned about it at a Wall Street Journal-sponsored “CEO Forum” earlier in November.

The EFCA, as I expect you know, would amend the National Labor Relations Act to allow for certification of a union when a majority of employees in a bargaining unit sign union authorization cards. Under current law, when 30% of eligible employees sign, there is an election.

There has always been a flaw, a type of uneven playing field, in that original setup in that it gives employers the ability to manipulate elections and break the law without effective penalty. If a union wins an election and is later determined to have done so unfairly (and even cheap and frivolous claims of impropriety can be successful), the result is overturned. In that case, the union has lost ground: The union had been recognized as the bargaining agent, now it's not. If management wins and is later determined to have done so unfairly (and in those cases the standards for what is "unfair" seem to be considerably higher), the result is again overturned - but management hasn't lost anything: Before the election, there was no union. After the election, there was no union. After the results were overturned, there is still no union. There is sometimes a small fine, but usually the only penalty to management for cheating is a new election. Management wins a heavy majority of such new elections because workers get discouraged, tired, ground down, and intimidated by management threats to "close up shop" or "move elsewhere" if the union wins; and sometimes they just get snowed by the lies.

Business interests, of course, respond to this grievous threat of a level field by spinning On the Waterfront fantasies of violence and physical intimidation by union goons as being a routine part of unionization campaigns and declaring EFCA would strip workers of the precious right to a "secret ballot," an argument that might have some chance of being persuasive if these same corporations didn't struggle so hard to avoid getting to the point of having such an election in their facilities at all. But clearly what they're really afraid of is workers having a real voice in the conditions under which they labor.

"The louder they squeal, the better a grip you know you have" is turning out to be a useful phrase.

Oh, and my assertion that even "cheap and frivolous claims of impropriety" made by management against unions can be successful is based on personal experience: I was involved in a campaign to unionize some nurses at a hospital. After they won the election, management sued to have the result tossed out, charging the union violated labor law. (Another management advantage is that the costs of such suits are tax deductible as a business expense.)

The basis for their claim was this: Union supporters had been handing out NLRB brochures about the right to organize. One of them was asked when the election was going to be. So she handwrote the date on some of the brochures with the note "Vote yes." No one knows just how many such brochures there were; management produced precisely six. Nonetheless, management claimed the written notes created the appearance that the NLRB favored the union and so tainted the election. In what I still find a jaw-dropping decision, the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals agreed, threw out the results, and ordered a new election - which, as typically happens, the union lost.

As a footnote to that, shortly thereafter that same hospital cut some benefits. To the astonished cries of some nurses that "They can't do that!" others replied "Of course they can - because we don't have a union."

A few years later, the hospital fired every RN on staff on a Friday and invited them to apply for a sharply reduced number of jobs on Monday. Interestingly, not a single nurse who was within about a year of being vested in the pension plan was among those rehired.

Footnote: I'll take this opening to say there's something about The Big O's "economic team" which I noticed (and I think a few others, though I didn't see it much discussed): neither the Secretary of Commerce nor the Secretary of Labor made the cut. Which I suspect tells us a lot about what priorities that "team" has.

Footnote to the preceding

Updated In other news on the labor front today, AP reports that

Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the world’s biggest retailer, agreed to pay $54.3 million to settle a Minnesota lawsuit over wages after a judge ruled the company broke state laws by requiring employees to work off-the-clock. ...

The agreement prevents the case from being presented to a jury, which would have been asked to order Wal-Mart to pay as much as $2 billion.

The company required hourly employees to work off-the-clock during training and denied full rest or meal breaks in violation of state wage-and-hour laws, Hastings, Minnesota, District Judge Robert King Jr. ruled July 1, following a non-jury trial. King said Wal-Mart broke labor laws more than 2 million times and ordered the retailer to give employees $6.5 million in back pay. ...

As part of the settlement, Wal-Mart agreed to maintain various electronic systems to ensure it complies with Minnesota wage laws. ...

“Wal-Mart’s failure to compensate plaintiffs was willful,” King wrote in his 151-page decision in July. “Wal-Mart was on notice from numerous sources of the wage and hour violations at issue and failed to correct the problem.”

This is not an isolated case. There are over 80 active suits, including class actions, against Wal-Mart on similar issues of labor law violations.

Since 2004, Wal-Mart has paid out over $520 million in back wages, damages, attorneys fees, and fines as a result of its violations of laws involving such basic rights as pay, overtime, and meal breaks against over 450,000 employees. That figure includes a 2007 settlement resulting from a investigation by the Labor Department involving illegal denial of overtime pay, in which $33 million in back pay went to some 87,000 workers.

One of the biggest cases in money terms was a $172 million verdict in California in 2005 over meal breaks. And California workers aren't finished: In April, Wal-Mart workers in the state won the reversal of a ruling barring them from pursuing a class action revolving around illegal denials of overtime pay and meal breaks resulting from Wal-Mart falsely calling them "assistant managers." That case among those still pending, as is one in Massachusetts where on September 23 the state's Supreme Judicial Court ruled that the workers can be certified as a group for the purpose of a class action.

Why do these suits keep coming up? Or, more to the point, why does Wal-Mart continue to screw its employees? Why, even after losing suits, even after having to pay out literally hundreds of millions of dollars, does the company continue to nickel and dime the workers?

Because it can. Because it's "good business" to cheat. Because it's more profitable to ignore the law and pay the settlements than it is to act lawfully and fairly. Being a corporate crook is better for the bottom line and as long as that remains true, as long as the penalties do not extend well beyond back wages (i.e., wages the company should have paid in the first place), this kind of thing will continue.

Hundreds of millions of dollars over five years? Flea bitings! Pennies! Farthings! Less than farthings! The company's sales in fiscal 2008 - that one year - were $375 billion. So that $520 million is a little over one-tenth of one percent of one year's sales.

And that's going to make Wal-Mark shake in its corporate boots? Please.

The short-term prospects for any significant toughening of the penalties for being a corporate crook are grim. But there is something that can be done right now and may, might, possibly could, have an impact: Don't shop at Wal-Mart. Or Sam's Club. If you have a membership to the latter, cancel it and make it clear why. Tell your friends what you're doing and tell them why.

That just might make a difference. And even if it doesn't, at least in the short run, refusing to pad the profits of outfits like that with your money is the right thing to do.

Footnote: Wal-Mart has another distinction. In a newly-released report, the International Labor Rights Forum lists it as one of the five worst corporations with regard to respecting labor organizing rights. (The others were Dole, Del-Monte, Nestlé, and the Russell Corporation, a subsidiary of Fruit of the Loom, Inc.)

In comments, Tim of Green Left Infoasis and Feet Meet Fire notes that the ILRF has a page where you can send a message to heads of those five companies. The link is right here.

Updated with the info about the ILRF message link.

Thinking it through

Breaking News: Bank of America said this afternoon that it will provide a “limited amount of additional loans” to Republic Windows & Doors to pay employees who occupied the factory after the bank ended the company’s line of credit, Bloomberg.com reports. BoA made a point of insisting it wasn't in any way "obligated" to do so - but we know why it did.

Now to the original post:

I was going to praise Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich for his announcement that

the state will suspend business with Bank of America Corp. until the lender restores credit to the shuttered Republic Windows & Doors company in Chicago where workers are staging a sit-in. ...

Illinois does “hundreds of millions of dollars” in business with the bank, he said.

But on second thought, maybe he's not the best symbol, since he

was arrested Tuesday on charges of conspiring to sell an appointment to president-elect Barack Obama's recently open US senate seat, prosecutors said.

But on third thought, screw that. Even if he's guilty as charged, that doesn't take away from the correctness and yes, morality of his decision regarding Bastards of America.

According to a Monday press release from Republic Windows & Doors, the company has been negotiating with BoA since October for an "orderly wind down" of the business. During those talks, the bank has repeatedly rejected company proposals (including when it said it had a buyer for the existing note) and demanded a more rapid shutdown. That included, the company claims, refusing permission to issue vacation pay to employees.

Now, the company may well not be the most impartial of sources, especially considering that by its own account it had been planning since October to shut its doors in January and still did not provide the legally-required notice to employees, but in my mind the weaselly response of Bank of America, which came down to a shrug and "nothin' to do with us," gave a good deal of credence to the company's assertions. For one, there was this bit:

Bank of America isn’t empowered to tell a company’s management how to manage its business, spokeswoman Julie Westermann said today.

Which is evasive bullshit, because what is being discussed here is not a management issue but a financing issue. BoA surely is "empowered" to determine what credit it will and will not extend under what conditions and circumstances and in the middle of a negotiation to "wind down" a company, it seems entirely reasonable to think it is "empowered" to make demands about what obligations take priority, what debts get paid first. And - as a result of Ms. Westermann's corporate spin, which didn't address the issue - we have an uncontested claim that meeting obligations to employees ranked low on that list if it was on the list at all. Low-lifes.

And then, laughably, there was this:

Bank of America, the recipient of $15 billion of federal bailout funds, said in a statement it had "provided the maximum amount of funding we can under the terms of our agreement" with Republic.

Then change the goddam agreement! What, do you think we're morons, that we think that some credit arrangement is a law of nature that can't be altered? Lying creeps.

Oh, but it's all okay, the bank just cares so much; in fact,

[t]he bank said it was "reaching out to the management and ownership of the company to see what they can do to help resolve the issue."

I'll tell you how you can help: Instead of using your bailout to buy Merrill Lynch, use it to enable Republic to pay its obligations to its employees! With a credit line! That's what the bucks are for, you twits! Scumbags.

Oh, and by the way, remember how I said on Sunday "the louder the pigs squeal, the better a grip you know you have?" Well, in the face of a state government making a business decision to support average working people, the pigs sure are squealing now.

[John] Douglas, an attorney with Paul Hastings Janofsky & Walker in Atlanta, said Blagojevich and Senator Christopher Dodd - who called on General Motors Corp. to fire Chief Executive Rick Wagoner - can’t tell companies how to run their business.

“This is a very dangerous thing,” said Douglas, who was at the FDIC from 1987 to 1989 and has since represented financial institutions including Bank of America. “There becomes an expectation that these government officials have some say over what the institution does,” he said in an interview. ...

Robert Topel, a labor and economics professor at the University of Chicago, said it’s “just silly” that a governor or member of Congress would seek to “micro-manage” a business.

“What does Chris Dodd know about running an auto company?” Topel asked. “Is Bank of America supposed to pick and choose which line of credit they want to keep open based on political pressure? It’s not Bank of America’s obligation to make sure the employer has funds to pay its employees.” [Emphasis added.]

Yeah, what do they know - in comparison to the corporations that have done so incredibly well, such as Bank of America and the rest of the bailout-beggars ponying up for tens of billions of dollars in taxpayer money to save them from their own greed-driven stupidity? What right has government got to do anything beyond just fork over the cash? Lord knows BoA doesn't place any conditions on the money it advances!

Yeah, I know. An obvious line. But still relevant.

Footnote One: It turns out that it's not just the state that may take a stand.

Cook County Commissioner Mike Quigley will introduce an ordinance to block the state’s biggest county from doing business with Bank of America, he said in an interview.

“I’m usually cautious, but this is an extraordinary example at an extraordinary time,” Quigley said. “When you talk theory, they nod and wink, but when you put in an ordinance, they know you are serious.”

I don't know how much business Cook County does with BoA but it's the biggest county in Illinois, with a population exceeding five million, so I doubt it's lunch money. And it raises the possibility of this sort of boycott spreading further.

Footnote Two: I have to wonder if there was an alternative to Republic closing: According to a market analysis from November,

US demand for windows and doors is forecast to rise 2.8 percent annually to $40 billion in 2012. Advances will be driven by the increasingly [sic] popularity of plastic windows and doors.

I don't know about the exact nature of the products Republic makes/made, but if it's not plastics, I wonder if the idea of re-tooling was considered. This is not a criticism of anyone because, again, I don't know. But I do have to wonder.

What is this, Feel Better About Barack Obama Week?

Via Raw Story comes this news from AFP:

Israel can no longer expect "blank cheques" from Washington once president-elect Barack Obama's administration takes over in January, a former US ambassador to the Jewish state said on Sunday.

"The era of the blank cheque is over," said Martin Indyk, director of the Centre for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institute who is considered close to incoming secretary of state Hillary Clinton.

That's good to hear, but we've heard similar things before about some "new, tough" US posture towards Israel and I'm reminded of the old saying about "many a slip between the cup and the lip" and wise counsel about "just words." That's especially good advice when it comes to US policy on Israel, which has been given a green light from us in the form of about $2.3 billion annually in military aid, which continues unabated even though

Israel's discrimination between Jewish settlers and Palestinians in the West Bank is increasingly reminiscent of white South Africa's apartheid system, an Israeli human rights group said on Sunday.

Jewish settlements in the Palestinian territory "have created a situation of institutionalised discrimination and segregation," the Association for Civil Rights in Israel said on Sunday.

For example, Palestinians in the West Bank live under Israeli military law while Israeli settlers there live under Israeli civilian law. There is a developed road system - but Palestinians can't use it, only Israelis can. Palestinian movements around the West Bank on "winding and dangerous roads" are further hampered by more than 600 military roadblocks and checkpoints.

In addition, Israel imposes strict restrictions on construction in Palestinian towns and villages and does not develop basic infrastructure there.

It's not just the West Bank. Beyond a little harrumphing, that green light continues to glow brightly even as Israel tries to starve the people of the Gaza Strip into submission.

The blockade of Gaza, which has gone on since June 2007, was tightened last month after some rocket attacks were launched on southern Israel from Gaza, rocket attacks which did little damage and which came in retaliation for an Israeli military incursion into Gaza, an incursion which was of course completely defensive but provoked the rocket attacks which then provided the pretext for clamping down even harder.

So now there is a shortage of cows and sheep and their prices have shot up, UNRWA warns that food aid will run out within days, and food and fuel have been allowed in on only four days over the past four weeks, leaving people to deal with food shortages, lengthy power outages, and no cooking gas.

The Association for Civil Rights report said of Gaza that

[t]he blockade policy has almost completely destroyed the industry. Unemployment and poverty are surging... The blockade caused the collapse of local authorities that are struggling to provide residents basic services such as water, sewage and sanitation.

Israel opened up some border crossings for a day as a "goodwill gesture" in the run-up to the Muslim festival of Eid al-Adha. BFD:

"The opening of these crossings is a positive step although it will have little impact unless they remain open on a regular daily basis," the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said.

"Equally important, in order to prevent a further deterioration of the situation, the list of imports into Gaza must immediately be expanded to include vital spare parts for maintenance and operation of the power plant, water and sanitation utilities and other critical infrastructure and basic services for the civilian population," OCHA said. ...

The situation has led the UN to describe conditions there as the "worst ever".

Even money is blockaded.

Israel has not allowed money to enter Gaza since October, barring Palestinian banks from transferring cash to their Gaza branches.

As a result,

[t]he World Bank and International Monetary Fund warned Saturday that Gaza's severe cash shortage may cause local banks to collapse.

The effects are already felt:

The cash shortage means around 77,000 Palestinian civil servants will not be able to withdraw their salaries before a Muslim holiday early next week. The cash shortage also forced the United Nations in November to halt cash payments to thousands of Gaza's poorest residents.

Meanwhile, the AP says it has gotten a letter sent by Jihad al-Wazir of the Palestinian Monetary Authority in which he

begged Israel to allow his agency to send money to Gaza. He said Gaza's banks hold 47 million shekels ($12 million) - less than a fifth of what is needed to pay the public servants.

Israeli officials say the request is being considered.

"Considered." Right. "Your people lack food, power, and cooking gas. Infrastructure is threatening to break down. Industry is destroyed, unemployment and poverty are 'surging,' your poor can't get help, civil servants can't be paid, and your banking system is on the verge of collapse. Well, we'll consider letting you survive. If."

If what? If the attacks cease. Once and for all. Permanently. Once you accept your place under our boot, once you passively accept your status as a defeated, subjugated, people who must come to us as supplicants for your very lifeblood, we'll think about not letting you slowly starve.

What Israel is doing in Gaza is, by any reasonable understanding of the term, collective punishment: punishing a whole group for the actions of a few. It is inhumane, cruel, disgusting, immoral, and explicitly illegal under the Fourth Geneva Convention. In fact, it is a war crime. And a good part of the reason it can continue is because we keep helping to pay for it by the billions in aid, particularly military aid, that goes to Israel.

So if it's true that we're coming to the end of the "blank check" for Israel, good and damn well about - no, make that past - time. But what we really need to consider is if until and unless Israel ceases to regard itself as exempt from the rules of civilized conduct it demands of others, until it lifts its inhumane blockade of Gaza and puts an end to West Bank apartheid, indeed until it makes an actual agreement - not a "proposal" or a "plan" or a "process," but an actual agreement - for the establishment of an independent Palestinian state, until then we really need to consider if there should be a check at all.

Speaking of Tim...

...he's the one who tipped me to this AP report:

Workers laid off from their jobs at a Chicago factory have occupied the building and are demanding assurances they'll get severance and vacation pay that they say they are owed.

About 200 employees of Republic Windows and Doors began staging the sit-in in shifts this week after learning the plant was closing Friday.

The New York Times adds that the workers are calling the sit-in a “peaceful occupation” and have no plans to leave. They said

they were notified Tuesday that the plant, more than four decades old, would close Friday. They said they were given insufficient notice and were never paid for vacation days or severance. ...

“They’re staying because the fact is that these workers feel they have nothing to lose at this point,” said Leah Fried, an organizer for the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America Local 1110, who said groups of 30 were occupying the plant in shifts. “Telling them they have three days before they are out on the street, penniless, is outrageous.” ...

The Chicago police said they were monitoring the situation but had no reason to remove the workers. “We haven’t got any reports of a criminal nature at this time,” a police spokesman said.

The workers even got some support from a surprising but still noteworthy place, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.

President-elect Barack Obama put himself on the side of the workers at the Republic Windows and Doors factory Sunday:

“When it comes to the situation here in Chicago with the workers who are asking for their benefits and payments they have earned, I think they are absolutely right,” Obama said Sunday at a news conference announcing his new Veterans Affairs director. “What’s happening to them is reflective of what’s happening across this economy.

(Link via Raw Story.)

Neither AP nor the Times could reach representatives of the company for comment, which, all things considered, may not be surprising.

The thing is, I can't describe just how mixed my feeling are about this. I'm distressed at the prospect of these people out of work. I'm angry at the management for giving them so little notice (in fact, that may have been illegal), possibly to protect their own interests (although fairness requires me to say that we don't actually know that). I'm depressed about and fearful for an economy in which scenes of closed businesses are very likely to become a common occurrence.

But dammit, I am so excited and so encouraged by the fact that some workers are just! fed! up! Fed up enough to stage an old-fashioned sit-in. I don't know how far this will get or even that it will accomplish anything in the short run - the famous occupation of the GM plant in Flint, Michigan in 1936-37 that helped to build the labor movement was against a company that wanted to continue operating, not that intended to shut down - but simply the fact that they are pissed off enough, are at the point of feeling they have nothing to lose, to do this, is just... it makes me feel "dammit, yes! And I hope to see a whole lot more, because that kind of anger is exactly what we need."

Footnote: I had though of linking to a video of Peter Finch's famous "mad as hell" monologue as Howard Beale in Network, but on reflecting that the whole idea there was that the public anger was being channeled and manipulated in ways that were to the benefit of the network, which is pretty much the opposite of what I wanted to express here, I decided it wasn't truly appropriate.

Updates

A few additions to my list of Regular Reads, Reciprocal Links, and Just Good Folks.

The Liberal Journal
BLCKDGRD
Feet Meet Fire

The last of those is a new project of Tim of Green Left Infoasis and is devoted to "Info on holding Barack Obama's feet to the fire to demand that he makes good on his promise of change."

Praise and a passing thought

If memory serves, Barack Obama has said that FDR is one of his heroes. It does seem likely he was thinking about him in coming up with this:

President-elect Barack Obama promised Saturday to create the largest public works construction program since the inception of the interstate highway system a half century ago as he seeks to put together a plan to resuscitate the reeling economy. ...

Mr. Obama’s remarks showcased his ambition to expand the definition of traditional work programs for the middle class ... to include new-era jobs in technology and so-called green jobs that reduce energy use and global warming emissions. ...

Although Mr. Obama put no price tag on his plan, he said he would invest record amounts of money in the vast infrastructure program, which also includes work on schools, sewer systems, mass transit, electrical grids, dams and other public utilities. The green jobs would include various categories, including jobs dedicated to creating alternative fuels, windmills and solar panels; building energy efficient appliances, or installing fuel-efficient heating or cooling systems.

The intent, he said, is for a plan that will save or create 2.5 million jobs by the end of 2010. It might do better than that:

[W]hen he met with the nation’s governors last week, they said the states had $136 billion worth of road, bridge, water and other projects ready to go as soon as money became available. They estimated that each billion dollars spent would create up to 40,000 jobs.

Local and regional transit systems have $8 billion more in projects that could begin immediately, like buying hybrid buses and expanding light rail systems, creating thousands of jobs.

That's close to 5.5 million jobs right there.

Okay, so let me say it right out loud: Assuming he follows through on this, BARACK OBAMA IS DOING A GOOD THING. (There. See? I can say it when it's merited.) I won't swear that I won't object to some details or the exact form the program takes, but on the principle, the principle of a jobs program of investment in infrastructure and environmentally sound energy technologies, this is a good thing. In fact, I'd better say that since I started talking about doing something like that over 28 fucking years ago. As just one example, this is from a statement I made at a public hearing in December 1984, speaking in opposition to plans to expand a naval base:

Now, I know that support for this project has been expressed by workers eager for the jobs it will supposedly create. But to my friends in the labor movement I must say: I agree with you; we need jobs. We can see all around us the need for the work you can do: the health centers unbuilt, the homes and apartments unconstructed, the roads, railbeds, bridges, and tunnels unrepaired. But your anger is misplaced. ... There's too much at stake, too much you by your work can do to build a healthier society for us to fall for a divide-and-conquer strategy.

A program such as Obama is suggesting will be bitterly opposed by the wingnuts. It will be called "socialism." (It's not.) It will be called "an unparalleled intrusion into the free market." (It isn't.) There will be - there already are - lots of bogus claims that FDR's New Deal was a failure. (It wasn't.) The one thing to remember is that the more they gripe, the surer you can be that something about this is good for ordinary people rather than the elite. Put another way, the louder the pigs squeal, the better a grip you know you have.

No, this is not socialism, it is not "transformative," it affects no private businesses except as it puts money in people's pockets to spend there. So why will corporate interests and their media lackeys fight so hard against it? Because it's good for workers. They need no other reason. It not only provides economic support (i.e., jobs) for workers but by that very fact it gives them choices. And having choices threatens to make them less, what's the word these days, "flexible?" Maybe "cooperative?"

How about "submissive?" Yeah, that's a good word. It threatens as a side effect to make workers less submissive. And that is a prospect that terrifies the elite.

So even though this is not, again, socialism, even though, as a commenter noted a few posts back, "the problem is systemic," this proposal is still a good thing for women and men who work for a living. And that is reason enough to praise it.

And now the passing thought: There are those among us who have been critical of Obama's words and nominees so far. Our objections have been dismissed, sometimes rather snidely, with the refrain "Geeze! He's not even president yet and you're griping! Me, I'll wait until he actually does something." In one case, when I noted that offering up nominees is "doing something" by any reasonable measure, I got told:

And what, pray-tell, have those unconfirmed nominees DONE in the way of implementing what policy?

As Ring Lardner put it, "'Shut up,' he explained."

Okay, for all those "Hail Obama!" people dismissive of any questions: Are you now going to refrain from praising this proposal? Are you going to dismiss my (or anyone else's) support? If not, why is this different? How is it different? He's still not president. These still aren't implemented policies. He still doesn't have the power to act on any of this. Those were the reasons you gave for rejecting any criticism. So why don't those same reasons apply to praise? If presenting intended nominees, if putting together his various "teams," is not doing something, this isn't, either. So why in this case shouldn't we "wait until he actually does something?"

Or is this yet another example of "some questions need only be asked?"