Oregon Plumbers Local Endorses HR 676

Portland, Oregon -- Plumbers and Steamfitters Local 290 has endorsed HR 676, single payer healthcare legislation introduced by Congressman John Conyers (D-MI). The 4,000 member local has jurisdiction in Northern California, Southwest Washington and Oregon.

Eric Fanning, who introduced the endorsement resolution, said after it passed: "The membership of United Association Local 290, Plumbers and Steamfitters, is fully aware of the crisis in health care where profits trump patient care. The Massachusetts plan has proven to be a failure. Senator Ron Wyden's proposed plan would tax our health and welfare contributions, and this does not benefit organized labor. Health Care for America Now (HCAN) would create a two-tiered health care system. HR 676, we believe, is the best solution to our health care crisis."

HR 676 would institute a single payer health care system by expanding a greatly improved Medicare system to everyone residing in the U. S.

HR 676 would cover every person for all necessary medical care including prescription drugs, hospital, surgical, outpatient services, primary and

Join a union, get fired

Yes, the National Labor Relations Act says workers have the right to organize and join unions. Yet a new study shows that growing numbers of them risk being fired for attempting to unionize.

In more than one-fourth of the union organizing campaigns since 2000 among workers covered by the law, some of the workers were illegally fired for being pro-union, according to the study by economists John Schmitt and Ben Zipperer of the Center for Economic and Policy Research. The latest yearly figures, for 2007, show that about 30 percent of the campaigns involved illegal firings.

The number of workers fired was relatively small – no more than 1,500 overall per year. But that included an estimated 20 percent of the activists and organizers in particular campaigns. What’s more, the threat of being fired undoubtedly kept many workers who otherwise would have supported unionization from doing so.

Not counted, either, were the unknown number of workers who were fired but didn’t raise complaints because of the lengthy legal process involved and the meager settlement they could expect – at best, reinstatement and back

Peace is no longer an option

Dear Free Press,

I believe that peace is no longer an option and without it we will destroy ourselves. Sharing the resources of the earth will create justice and will lead to peace. Only by sharing can we create the trust upon which all future agreements can be forged.

The current crisis of confidence in global and US economic leadership is due to the fact that investors have lost faith that their 401Ks, or life savings, are stable and safe. With the destruction of the middle class, the mounting trade and budget deficits, the dis-investment in the health and educational infrastructures and personal, corporate and government budget deficits; I see an opportunity for global social innovation and restructuring.

The man who suborned torture should not be a federal judge

Tell Rep. Tiberi: Impeach Jay Bybee. Jay Bybee wrote memos giving the Bush administration legal cover to undermine the Constitution. He should not be a federal judge. When presidents and federal judges take office, they must swear to support and defend the Constitution. But federal judge Jay Bybee worked long and hard to undermine the Bill of Rights — and to make sure that President George W. Bush could do the same.

On March 2, the Justice Department released a series of legal memos, some authored by Jay Bybee, that gave the Bush Administration legal cover to wiretap Americans without court approval, to send prisoners oversees where they were likely to be tortured, to use U.S. military forces for domestic purposes, and a number of other actions that previously would have been considered unconstitutional.

U.S. vs THEM

U.S. vs THEM – How a Half Century of Conservatism Has Undermined America’s Security. J. Peter Scoblic. Viking (Penguin,) New York, 2008.

In a work that is well focussed, Peter Scoblic has written an intriguing historical review of the second half of the Twentieth Century on into the recently passed Bush regime. In U.S. vs. THEM, the writing narrows on to a main theme of how the decisions and actions of the conservative/neoconservative mind have only increased the nuclear danger to the world. At times the consistency of that narrow perspective can be irritating as a bit more contextual perspective, a slightly broader sweep could have presented a broader historical picture, but that was distinctly not Scoblic’s purpose and the book needs to be read on that understanding. There is much more to conservative and neoconservative policies and actions than the increasing nuclear proliferation threat, but this work retains an accurate and direct view of the nuclear issue.

PETA

http://mattbors.com

Appoint a special prosecutor

142 Organizations Agree With Leading Senators and Congress Members: The Crimes of Bush, Cheney, and Other Top Officials Must Be Prosecuted

Statement on Prosecution of Former High Officials

We urge Attorney General Eric Holder to appoint a non-partisan independent Special Counsel to immediately commence a prosecutorial investigation into the most serious alleged crimes of former President George W. Bush, former Vice President Richard B. Cheney, the attorneys formerly employed by the Department of Justice whose memos sought to justify torture, and other former top officials of the Bush Administration.

Our laws, and treaties that under Article VI of our Constitution are the supreme law of the land, require the prosecution of crimes that strong evidence suggests these individuals have committed. Both the former president and the former vice president have confessed to authorizing a torture procedure that is illegal under our law and treaty obligations. The former president has confessed to violating the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

We see no need for these prosecutions to be extraordinarily lengthy or

Find someone else

Engaging Hamas: Will history repeat itself?

The political outcomes of the Gaza war are yet to be entirely decided with any degree of certainty. However, the obvious political repositioning which was reported as soon as Israel declared its unilateral ceasefire promised that Israel’s deadly bombs would shape a new political reality in the region.

In the aftermath, Hamas can confidently claim that its once indisputably ‘radical’ political position is no longer viewed as too extreme. “Hamas” is no longer menacing a word, even amongst Western public, and tireless Israeli attempts to correlate Hamas and Islamic Jihadists’s agendas no longer suffice.

Obama's excellent atomic omission

Two lethal words went thankfully unspoken in President Obama's address to the nation this week---atomic energy.

Unfortunately, two others---"clean coal"---were included.

An increasingly desperate reactor industry just tried to sneak a $50 billion loan guarantee package into the stimulus bill. But for the third time since 2007, it got beat by a powerful national grassroots movement and key Congressional leaders.

Nuke pushers now want reactors painted "green" in a renewable standard Congress may soon set.

Hordes of radioactive lobbyists will swarm around that and new energy and global warming legislation. Every obscure sentence in those bills will be targeted for hidden handouts. Unfortunately, some money may already have slipped through from previous Bush-Cheney maneuvering.

EDF, the French national utility, wants to force its nukes into the American market. With Wall Street unwilling, Areva---the EDF front company---would use French tax money here as in Finland, where a new reactor project is already years behind schedule and billions over budget.

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