Government

Obama: Cap CEO Pay And Raise Minimum Wage For Fed Contracts

October 5, 2013 Michelle Chen, inthesetimes.com Educate! Finance and the Economy, Government, Worker Rights and Jobs

Obama could tighten up the cap on CEO pay for federal contracts -- limit it to the salary of the Vice President, $230,700 -- and at the same time raise the minimum wage of workers under federal contracts $7 an hour. If Obama took these two steps it would not change the amount of money spent on federal contracts, it would shrink the wealth divide, and left thousands out of poverty and give them a wage they can live on. Right now the federal government is the largest employer of low-wage workers who earn too little on which to live. President Obama could make these changes without the involvement of Congress through the power of executive orders. This decision is in his discretion. The only person stopping President Obama from taking these sensible, fair steps is President Obama. Workers and taxpayers should insist on fairness in federal contracts.

VIDEO: Acronym TV Weekly Resistance Report 009

October 5, 2013 Dennis Trainor, Jr, AcronymTV, www.popularresistance.org Resistance Report Corporatism, Finance and the Economy, Government, Video

One of the most telling poll numbers of this current moment in time is 10%. That, according to a CNN poll taken before the government shutdown, registers the lowest approval rating ever for congress. As unpopular as Congress is, a recent poll from the Brookings Institution reveals that there is something that may soon be even more unpopular: Capitalism.  This week, the five stores covered in the Resistance Report explore some of the reasons why.

This Week In Pictures

October 5, 2013 Staff, www.popularresistance.org Educate! Education, Energy, Environment, Government, Health Care, Housing, Immigration, Israel

Each week we are collecting photos from twitter of actions around the country and around the world. Here are photos from Sept 28 to Oct 5. Many of these events were not covered by articles on PopularResistance.org. This week includes BDS protest in London against Sodastrean, a fracking protest in Texas, Tea Time in the streets of Berlin to stop evictions, Arab women calling for safe abortions, health benefit cuts to women health services, First Nation's peoples taking back their lands to stop fracking, government workers on furlough sitting in at the Capitol, Light Brigade pink's slips Congress, free health care attracts over 1,000 in Virginia, immigration reform protests outside ravaged Sandy building, students and workers unite at UCLA for better schools, and protest in Spain against the "political mafia." It is great to see so much happening!

Pentagon Spent $5 Billion on Weapons on the Eve of the Shutdown

October 4, 2013 John Reed, www.foreignpolicy.com Educate! Government, Wars and Militarism

The Pentagon pumped billions of dollars into contractors' bank accounts on the eve of the U.S. government's shutdown that saw 400,000 Defense Department employees furloughed. All told, the Pentagon awarded 94 contracts yesterday evening on its annual end-of-the-fiscal-year spending spree, spending more than five billion dollars on everything from robot submarines to Finnish hand grenades and a radar base mounted on an offshore oil platform. To put things in perspective, the Pentagon gave out only 14 contracts on September 3, the first workday of the month. Here are some of the more interesting purchases from Monday's dollar-dump.

Indian Country Hit Hard By Government Shutdown

October 3, 2013 Kevin Taylor and Jenni Monet, www.america.aljazeera.com Educate! Government, Native Indians

The federal government plays a critical role for the 1.7 million American Indians and Alaska Natives in the 566 federally-recognized tribes, providing key services that include health care, schools, social programs and law enforcement protection, all supported by its long-standing treaty obligations made with Native Americans. Some essential services will continue during the shutdown, such as law enforcement and firefighting, according to the Bureau of Indian Affairs. And the 176 Indian Health Service hospitals and clinics will stay open. But the shutdown means freezes have already been placed on nutrition programs, foster care payments, financial assistance for the poor and anti-elder abuse programs. Some tribes risk losing all their income in timber operations if federal employees aren't there. Vital contracts and grants will be stalled.

The Government Shutdown — An Anarchist Dream?

October 2, 2013 Nathan Schneider, www.wagingnonviolence.org Educate! Anarchism, Government

Many may be surprised, for example, that actual anarchists aren’t necessarily rejoicing over the U.S. government’s latest form of self-annihilation. What they see taking place is a transfer of power from one kind of oppression, by a government that at least pretends to be democratic, to another that has no such pretensions. They point out that the shutdown won’t stop the NSA from spying on us, or police from enforcing laws in discriminatory ways, or migrant workers and nonviolent drug users from being imprisoned at staggering rates. The parts of government that the shutdown strips away are among those that bring us closer to being a truly free, egalitarian society: food assistance to ensure that everyone can eat, health care that more people can afford, and even public parks, where some of our greatest natural treasures are held in common. Meanwhile, ever more power is being handed over to corporations that are responsible only to their wealthiest shareholders.

ObamaCare: The False Debate Between Republicans and Democrats

October 2, 2013 Scott Tucker, www.truthdig.com Educate! Government, Health Care, Human Rights

The right-wing assault on Obamacare is a distraction, but the “progressive” (or rather party line) defense of the Affordable Care Act is also a dead end. While the tea party and MoveOn descend to mud wrestling, Dr. Don McCanne of Physicians for a National Health Program is not just staking out the moral high ground in the debate on health care. He is also making the practical case for the kind of health care we, the people, both deserve and can afford. McCanne quotes passages from the daily news, political debates, and medical journals, and adds his running commentary. These columns are collectively titled Quote of the Day, and can be found archived at the website of PNHP. His columns are also available by email subscription. McCanne’s daily comments on health care range over both present policies and the possibilities of comprehensive reform.

Federal Workers Laid Off By Shutdown Take Grievance To Capitol

October 2, 2013 Cool Revolution, www.dcmediagroup.us Resist! Finance and the Economy, Government, Worker Rights and Jobs

Without any appropriations from Congress, there is no authorization to spend money to keep government services deemed nonessential running. 800,000 federal workers have been furloughed without pay until the budget impasse comes to an end. Only a handful of them, however, were out on the west Capitol steps today. Protestors emphasized that they were there as individuals and didn’t represent the agencies they worked for. One woman, who preferred not to disclose her name of that of the department she works for, said she was there in solidarity with other federal workers. She said that it had been “a long season of demoralization” at her agency, and people felt “ground down.”

First Nations Reclaim Stewardship of Native Lands

October 2, 2013 Krystalline Kraus, www.rabble.ca Educate! Environment, Food and Agriculture, Government, Indigenous Rights

The lands of the Signigtog Mi'kmaq have never been ceded or sold; for centuries, the British Crown claimed to be holding the lands in trust for them. However, the Original people of the territory, together with their hereditary and elected leaders, believe that their lands and waters are being badly mismanaged by Canada, the province and corporations to the point of ruin. Now facing complete destruction, they feel that the lands are no longer capable of providing enough to support the populations of the region. Because of these threats to their survival and way of life, the Mi'kmaq people of Signigtog are resuming stewardship of their lands and waters to correct the problems and are planning measures to restore them back to good health. Last July, the Signigtog District Grand Council notified the province of New Brunswick that they had served shale gas developer Southwestern Energy (SWN) with an eviction notice.

El Salvador Bans Round Up Over Deadly Kidney Disease

October 1, 2013 Staff, www.sustainablepulse.com Educate! Government, Health Care

The move comes amidst a mysterious kidney disease afflicting the region’s agricultural laborers. Central America’s health ministries signed a declaration in March 2013 citing the ailment as a top public health priority and committing to a series of steps to combat its reach, the Center of Public Intergrity revealed. Over the last two years, the Center for Public Integrity has examined how a rare type of chronic kidney disease (CKD) is killing thousands of agricultural workers along Central America’s Pacific Coast, as well as in Sri Lanka and India. Scientists have yet to definitively uncover the cause of the malady, although emerging evidence points to toxic heavy metals contained in pesticides as a potential culprit. El Salvador presented findings from an ongoing official study, conducted jointly with the Pan American Health Organization, suggesting that pesticides and fertilizers containing heavy metals may be to blame.

Washington’s Warring Brothers

October 1, 2013 Alan Maass and Lance Selfa, www.socialistworker.org Educate! Finance and the Economy, Government, Health Care, Media

"The pattern has been for Republicans to demand savage cuts and right-wing social policies, and for Democrats to offer to meet them halfway. The Republicans then insist they'll never compromise--and the Democrats offer to meet them two-thirds of the way. Fast forward to the end, and the outcome is rarely very far from what Republicans wanted in the first place. Actually, the Democrats sometimes don't offer to meet the Republicans halfway--because in the era of neoliberalism and austerity, they've already started out there[...]The mainstream media's simplistic analysis--Democrats vs. Republicans, Tea Party conservatives vs. the GOP establishment--camouflage what's really taking place: a bipartisan drive for austerity where both parties ignore what the public want."

What Do We Need To Build A Movement?

September 30, 2013 Chris Hedges, www.truthdig.com Strategize! Democracy, Education, Environment, Finance and the Economy, Freedom of Speech and Assembly, Government, Human Rights, Occupy

We must develop a revolutionary theory that is not reliant on the industrial or agrarian muscle of workers. Most manufacturing jobs have disappeared, and, of those that remain, few are unionized. Our family farms have been destroyed by agro-businesses. Monsanto and its Faustian counterparts on Wall Street rule. They are steadily poisoning our lives and rendering us powerless. The corporate leviathan, which is global, is freed from the constraints of a single nation-state or government. Corporations are beyond regulation or control. Politicians are too anemic, or more often too corrupt, to stand in the way of the accelerating corporate destruction. This makes our struggle different from revolutionary struggles in industrial societies in the past. Our revolt will look more like what erupted in the less industrialized Slavic republics, Russia, Spain and China and uprisings led by a disenfranchised rural and urban working class and peasantry in the liberation movements that swept through Africa and Latin America. The dispossessed working poor, along with unemployed college graduates and students, unemployed journalists, artists, lawyers and teachers, will form our movement. This is why the fight for a higher minimum wage is crucial to uniting service workers with the alienated college-educated sons and daughters of the old middle class. Bakunin, unlike Marx, considered déclassé intellectuals essential for successful revolt.

The Battle For Wisconsin: The Revolt of 2011

September 30, 2013 Tom Crean, www.socialistalternative.org Strategize! Democracy, Finance and the Economy, Government, Wisconsin, Worker Rights and Jobs

The uprising in Wisconsin in February and March 2011 was an event of enormous historical significance for the American labor movement. Hundreds of thousands of workers and young people rose up against the attempt to strip public sector workers of their collective bargaining rights. Despite ending in defeat, it potentially marked the beginning of the end of a very long, deeply demoralizing retreat. This pamphlet is a detailed account authored by an active participant in the struggle. It shows how rapidly the movement developed and how quickly it radicalized. It highlights the role of high school student walkouts in paving the way for teacher sickouts, which galvanized the wider resistance. Once begun, the movement touched a deep nerve across the country and demonstrated beyond all doubt that when organized workers take a stand for their rights they can win support from much broader sections of society.

South Korea: The 13th Pan-Citizen Candlelight Rally

September 29, 2013 metempirics, www.storify.com Resist! Elections, Government, Surveillance

The National Intelligence Service (NIS) has come under fire for interfering with the latest presidential election for the Internet posts that tried to sway readers against the opposition. A flurry of protests have taken place in major cities for several months now, almost regularly every weekend. Many people shouted anti-NIS slogans in the rain. College students marched through the streets against NISgate. College students hold a placard bearing the phrase "Dissolve the NIS and Restore Democracy.

Obama’s NSA Review Panel Is Not Independent Of NSA

September 28, 2013 Stephen Braun, www.ap.org Educate! Government, NSA

With just weeks remaining before its first deadline to report back to the White House, the review panel has effectively been operating as an arm of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which oversees the NSA and all other U.S. spy efforts. The panel's advisers work in offices on loan from the DNI. Interview requests and press statements from the review panel are carefully coordinated through the DNI's press office. James Clapper, the intelligence director, exempted the panel from U.S. rules that require federal committees to conduct their business and their meetings in ways the public can observe. Its final report, when it's issued, will be submitted for White House approval before the public can read it. Even the panel's official name suggests it's run by Clapper's office: "Director of National Intelligence Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technologies."

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