June 2011

You need to know this.  The New Jersey State House passed a harsh anti-union bill yesterday – that shreds public employee benefits – cuts off cost-of-living increases for their pensions – and kills their collective bargaining rights.  The bill includes the deepest cuts to public employee benefits in the state’s history – and will affect more than 750,000 public workers like teachers, firefighters, and police officers. 

• William Goodman, Attorney, President Board of Directors w/Sugar Law Center for Economic & Social Justice. Law suit challenging Michigan's Emergency Manager law filed today.
• Ken Klukowski of The American Civil Rights Union. What is the problem with the U.S. Supreme Court?
• Macon Cowles, City Councilman-Boulder, CO / environmental & civil rights attorney.
  

I’ve been saying for a long time that Republicans have one strategy – to crash the economy so that President Obama loses in 2012.  Now – finally – it looks like Democrats have figured that out.  In a press conference on Capitol Hill yesterday – top Democrats called out Republicans for stopping anything that will help the economy. 

Are we on the verge of seeing a mass extinction in Earth’s oceans?  That’s what a group of top ocean scientists warn in a new report released this week by the International Programme on the State of the Ocean.  Because of pollution and global warming – the oceans are losing oxygen and becoming more acidic – threatening to trigger a mass extinction not seen in over 50 million years – when half of all the life in the oceans wa