Recent comments

  • Now they want to put Union Picketers in Prison...   13 years 19 weeks ago

    This post reminds me of my days spent at the Walter A. Reuther Center in Black Lake , Michigan. A conversation I heard on the show they were talking about overtime pay. As I remember it, the overtime rule was instituted as a penalty to corporations working their workers more than 40 hours/week.Most people today think its so they can make more money which is only half true.I may be wrong but I don't think so. More people should know this, but the school textbook printers want to bury all of the Union struggles and effects.

  • Daily Topics - Monday February 27th, 2012   13 years 19 weeks ago

    The Occupation Party is a new third party that stands in solidarity with the populist message of Occupy Wall Street.

    We are planning to occupy the political process and take the people’s message into Congress by electing representatives and senators who are people from the 99%, not the political elite.

  • Daily Topics - Monday February 27th, 2012   13 years 19 weeks ago

    clarification on our website address www.theoccupationparty.org

  • Now they want to put Union Picketers in Prison...   13 years 19 weeks ago
    Quote The Lordy Grand Old Party Sovereign:...interfering with the resident's right to quiet enjoyment...
    This sounds like the attitude of an absolutist sovereign indeed. These are little sunkings. Welcome in the 1600s!

    Or, as I said above, Warsaw Pact apparatchiks. Who often felt like little sunkings too.

    Here we go again!

  • Now they want to put Union Picketers in Prison...   13 years 19 weeks ago

    Our CWA UNION contract expires around april, and at least some picketing activity is typical during the contract negotiations.. Seems like interesting timing, because we negotiate a new contract every 4 years.. I wonder if other contracts are nearing negotiation time..

  • Now they want to put Union Picketers in Prison...   13 years 20 weeks ago

    The plutocrats are overreaching yet again. On the one hand the powers that be are overturning laws that protect workers and the environment through organizations like ALEC. On the other hand the powers that be ignore laws against torture and spying and assassinating citizens. If they just ignore some laws why do they put so much effort to overturn other laws? Could it be that they are afraid that “we the people” might demand accountability some day? You betcha!

    http://pastebin.com/gm2UV08D

  • Now they want to put Union Picketers in Prison...   13 years 20 weeks ago

    Doesn't this law amount to a Bill of Attainder? And shouldn't it therefore be unconstitutional?

  • Daily Topics - Friday March 2nd, 2012   13 years 20 weeks ago

    Thom, today you said that first class mail is secure. This is not at all true!

    In the fall of 2007, the Bush administration conducted an illegal domestic spy program opening and searching first class mail. Then Bush went on National Television after the program was completed, announcing that they would be (in the future) conducting "random" searches of first class mail and "the people who's mail had been opened would be notified". If you search online you will find numerous stories in the media about it from that time, one example: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2003508676_mail04.html During the fall of 2007, 100% of my first class mail, 2 items were opened, and marked exactly as Bush later stated. The letters were slit open, and marked with the words "Your mail has been opened." The two items were about 1 month apart. One was a check from a relative for a birthday or something. The other was from another relative and I don't remember what the contents were. We knew each peace had not been damaged in transit as we have received damaged mail before and it is handled differently, we instantly recognized this as illegal spying by the administration. Typically damaged mail is placed in a new envelope with the return address of the postmaster of the postal facility that handled the item. The usual resin that mail is damaged is that it becomes jammed in the sorting equipment, it is torn where it snagged in the machine and is severely crumpled as hundreds of envelopes pile up behind it. Even though damaged mail envelopes have tears, they are not completely open. We did not keep the illegally opened envelopes because we felt no one would believe that this was illegal spaying, we did not anticipate the program would be announced. When Bush announced that it would be done, we knew he was lying about the timing because he used the exact words that had been printed on our opened mail months before. The opened mail had one more distinguishing feature, Its entire surface had been printed over with a semi transparent pattern of black ink to make it look as if it had been soiled. The soiling had the unusual properties that it completely covered the surface and was nowhere dark enough that the original addressing could not be clearly read through the applied ink. It was an ink probably form an inkjet printer, it did not smudge or rub-off onto other items. Making the ink coating so that the original addressing could be read was important to not increase the cost of delivering the mail. The total numbers of opened envelopes could have been in the 10s of thousands. This soiling marking was clearly intended to make people believe that their mail was opened because it had been damaged, and thus not make a fuss about the spying. About 70 to 80% of all announced homeland security test programs, like the airport X-rays and seaport security measures, have been tested in Baltimore. Besides the convenient location, close to large numbers of federal facilities, Baltimore is considered to be a typical American City because it has every feature found in American cities, sea ports, airports, tunnels, large bridges, manufacturing, tall buildings and a diverse population for a few. Washington is not a typical city because it is dominated by government. The locations of the mail spying program have not been disclosed. I don't know the precise reasons I was selected for the mail opening domestic spy program, but there are a number of things that made me a likely candidate. First, I live about 2 miles south of BWI airport, about 2 miles north of the NSA and Fort Meade is next to my housing development on the East. A high percentage of the community is current or ex military. I was interviewed once about the person next door for the periodic renewal of his security clearance. I told the interviewer that they must do allot of interviews in this development, she replied they call this the "cleared neighborhood." I'm a former federal employee, so by definition Homeland security has access to my records. At the time the program was announced there was much speculation in the media why it was done without warrants. Answering that question requires some understanding of how large scale spying programs are conducted. It is well known there are a number of methods for tapping bulk telephone communications that date back to the 1960s. It has been estimated that well over 1/2 (possibly approaching 100%) of all soviet long distance telephone traffic was monitored through the use of spy satellites intercepting microwave links and other methods. Submarines have been routinely used to place monitoring devices on soviet undersea cables, particularly to soviet military facilities in the Pacific. Clearly, the US could not deploy enough manpower to monitor even a tiny portion of this phone traffic before the digital revaluation made speech to text possible. The way the system has worked for years is that every link is categorized as to the timing and amount of traffic on each monitored link. Then automated equipment would simply log the number of calls on the link as a function of time. Any change in the number of calls either up or down would trigger a closer examination, individual calls would be listened to in order to determine what caused the change in traffic. The point of this is that statical information is the staring point of nearly all large scale spying programs. The most fundamental tool in code breaking is the statical frequency of the occurrence of alphabetical letters in the suspected language. Simple codes can be easily broken by unskilled people, even by someone that does not speak or read the langue by applying letter frequency data two an encoded message a few hundred words long. It is possible to deduce the language an encoded message is written in by matching the encoded letter frequencies with the known frequencies of various languages without decoding the message or understanding the language. I believe the objective of the Bush mail spying program was to build a statical data base of the nature of first class mail between individuals and businesses. The contents of the majority of mail can be determined by simply looking at the address and return address. We all do this every day when we pick up our mail. Address for utility companies, medical facilities, magazine publishers, mail order and so on need nothing more for explanation. Only one of a kind mail cannot have it's contents accurately guessed. If you want to detect using the mail for terrorist prepossess you have to understand what non-terrorist related mail looks like. The quantity and frequency of different types of correspondence needed to be established with the goal of knowing what percentage of a persons mail would need to be examined to determine the range of activities they are engaged in. By definition the objective of the mail opening domestic spy program being to compile statistical information makes it ineligible to be authorized by warrant from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) or any other court. Every peace of mail goes through automatic readers to read the addresses for sorting. This makes it is a simple matter to store the address — return address pairs and then add them to a data base. This data base is then used to build linkage lists of who is commentating with who via mail. The mail linkage lists can be added to similar list for phone calls, email and social networks. In the intelligence comity this, and much more is refereed to as total information dominance.

  • Now they want to put Union Picketers in Prison...   13 years 20 weeks ago

    Well, this reminds me of the other, once Soviet-communist-ruled, Georgia. The Bolsheviks fought free unions too.

    This fits fairly well into my current topic: showing how similar in nature libertarianism and Leninist communism are. And this proves me right. Both, communism and libertarianism, suppress free unions.

    President Reagan argued pretty much like in the Leninist Russia at that time: Workers wouldn't need unions, government would care for their rights.

    Ha! Libertarian/Soviet-bolshevist government monopoly: Liberty only for the monopolists. That's libertarian!

  • With estimates that gas might hit $5 a gallon this summer - Americans are screwed at the pump   13 years 20 weeks ago

    Consumer action is the most progressive solution that can have an immediate effect on our economy. Eliminate as many petro-chemical products form your life as possible. Embrace conservation technology as the answer to reduce dependency. This will be the cornerstone for the new green economy and for the future.

    In reply to the republican move to impose by legislation unneccesary medical treatments including vaginal probes, that go against the advice of our medical profession. This is an affront to all americans who believe in freedom and liberty.

    There is a movement in CA to enact legislation to force all registered republican males to undergoe an anal probe so they can see what it is, that is stuck up there. There will be no ammendments for eye diversion.

  • Daily Topics - Friday March 2nd, 2012   13 years 20 weeks ago

    The vote in the senate doesn't guarantee that employers won't determine what's covered; employers already decide which health benefits to cover and which to exclude. Unless coverage is mandated by law, any employer can choose to cover anything they like with their health care plan. Some cover abortion and others specifically exclude it. I saw one once that refused to cover any medical condition at all resulting from an abortion. Some cover sex changes and others don't. You're not guaranteed prenatal care. The problem really is employer-sponsored health care. It shouldn't be up to my boss what I get to have coverage for, since I pay a huge amount for it. But it is.

  • With estimates that gas might hit $5 a gallon this summer - Americans are screwed at the pump   13 years 20 weeks ago

    You are deluded, BluePillOrRed - Speculation trumps Supply and Demand. Unless there was a SURPLUS of refined petroleum products in the US, we would be a net importer instead of a net exporter. When Goldman Sachs is allowed to purchase more than 50% of all oil futures, with NO actual need for oil to sustain their "production" (what, exactly is it that GS produces, anyway? ... question for another blog) and no ability even to STORE all the oil they've "purchased", THEY CONTROL THE MARKET, and Supply and Demand go out the window.

  • With estimates that gas might hit $5 a gallon this summer - Americans are screwed at the pump   13 years 20 weeks ago

    I first saw Thom's original post for this thread in his newsletter, wherein it ended with the question "What do you thnk we should do to decrease gas prices?", and a link to this thread. I'm a bit surprised by this question. The alternative question I would pose is "Where do we WANT the price of gas to be?" Speaking as a guy who drives 35 miles each way from home to work and back (18,000 miles a year! - and that does NOT make me at all unusual!), I actually think the price of gas should be HIGHER, not lower, to increase demand for, and development of, alternative vehicles that use other, CLEANER types of fuel!

  • With estimates that gas might hit $5 a gallon this summer - Americans are screwed at the pump   13 years 20 weeks ago

    Then we don't need to destroy the People's commons with fracking, pipelines, tar sands, shale oil and other Fossil Fuel atrocities. We need to shift to legitimate export that offers legitimate "net out ahead overall" jobs.

  • With estimates that gas might hit $5 a gallon this summer - Americans are screwed at the pump   13 years 20 weeks ago

    Conchy - I have 2 comments on your post -

    1) Please differentiate between "answers" and "solutions".

    2) Simple solution - Legislation that restricts the purchase of futures of ANY commodity to those whose business models REQUIRE that commodity. For oil, that would be airlines, railroads, trucking companies, etc. In other words, KEEP THE BANKSTERS AWAY FROM FUTURES MARKETS!

  • With estimates that gas might hit $5 a gallon this summer - Americans are screwed at the pump   13 years 20 weeks ago

    Is it not possible for the President to do two things to do immediately:

    1. End the exeption to trading in oil futures granted many large banks by Bush?, and

    2. Direct CFTC to raise margin rates on oil future trading to 90 or 100%.

    I realize that traders would simply establish offshore trading operations, but the action would give traders something to think about - and hopefully panic them into dumping their present holdingsw - there by tankin (no pun) the price of gas.

    Maybe that should be Pres Obama's "October Surprise".

  • With estimates that gas might hit $5 a gallon this summer - Americans are screwed at the pump   13 years 20 weeks ago

    Benefits of rail upgrades are not just measured by the average speed increases. Like substandard bridges for automobiles about to fall down, rails needing upgrades are frequently in pathetic shape and require repairs before they become completely unusable. Not just Amtrack will benefit from the increased speed, commercial traffic will also benefit. Almost certainly automobile traffic will improve due to reduced wait time and improved safety. I am willing to bet that some new, expensive, overpasses will be built that are mostly to benefit automobiles that would otherwise have to wait.

  • Has the US become the worlds oil refinery?   13 years 20 weeks ago

    Fines and Penalties in the Oil, Gas and Fossil industries need to be retooled to exceed the cost of noncompliance.

    Wow, I don't believe that even has to be said!

  • The Banksters like Stealing Candy from Little Children   13 years 20 weeks ago

    Libertarianism, anarchism, communism are extreme ideologies and very destructive.

    Jesus was the LIBERAL who drove the libertarian money changers out of the temple.

    H A L L E L U J A H !

  • The Banksters like Stealing Candy from Little Children   13 years 20 weeks ago

    I wonder what's the matter with Liberty-First. He said he was a liberal once, but it can't be. Maybe he was because we liberals are racial tolerant, but he doesn't share liberalité. And I guess since he had success economically he didn't need liberalité any longer and claimed liberté, not ready to care about other people.

    Définition liberalité: Disposition à donner. Don généreux. (disposed to give, generous)

    Définition libertaire: Qui pousse à l'extrême l'exigence de liberté en matière politique. Anarchiste. (demanding liberty to the extreme, anarchist)

  • The Banksters like Stealing Candy from Little Children   13 years 20 weeks ago

    Our American Webster's proves you an ignorant. And you are an ignorant.

    I was talking to LIBERALS, I don't discuss the term LIBERAL with a libertine ignorant.

    This here is copied form Webster's homepage and very enlightening: Libertarians have always been heretics, which absolutely is the definition of my 1719 dictionary. They are spitritual very much related to anarchists. Libertarians believe in their own advantage and greed, that's all. No values. The meanings of these old expressions don't change. Now Webster's:

    ______________________________________________________________

    Definition of LIBERTINE1usually disparaging : a freethinker especially in religious matters2: a person who is unrestrained by convention or morality;specifically : one leading a dissolute life

  • With estimates that gas might hit $5 a gallon this summer - Americans are screwed at the pump   13 years 20 weeks ago

    Here are excerpts from President Truman’s 1948 Speech that are appropriate to what’s happening today with the Republican Party and the oil problem:

    The Democratic Party puts human rights and human welfare first.

    But the attitude of the Republican gluttons of privilege is very different. The bigmoney Republican looks on agriculture and labor merely as expense items in a business venture. He tries to push their share of the national income down as low as possible and increase his own profits. And he looks upon the Government as a tool to accomplish this purpose.

    These Republican gluttons of privilege are cold men. They are cunning men. And it is their constant aim to put the Government of the United States under the control of men like themselves. They want a return of the Wall Street economic dictatorship.

    That is what happened in the 1920's, under the big business rule of the Republicans. Those were the days when big corporations had things their own way. The policies that Wall Street big business wanted were the policies that the Republicans adopted. Agriculture, labor, and small business played second fiddle, while big business called the tune.

    You have had a sample of what the Republican administration would mean to you. Two years ago, in the congressional elections, many Americans decided that they would not bother to vote. Well, others thought they would like to have a change. And they brought into power a Republican Congress-that notorious "do-nothing" 80th Republican Congress.

    To gain this end, they will stop at nothing. On the one hand, the Republicans are telling industrial workers that the high cost of food in the cities is due to this Government's farm policy. On the other hand, the Republicans are telling the farmers that the high cost of manufactured goods on the farm is due to this Government's labor policy.

    That's plain hokum. It's an old political trick. "If you can't convince 'em, confuse 'era." But this time it won't work.

    Please click on below for the full speech:

    http://trumanlibrary.org/publicpapers/index.php?pid=1814&st=plowing&st1=

  • With estimates that gas might hit $5 a gallon this summer - Americans are screwed at the pump   13 years 20 weeks ago

    I've said since the 70's that the oil companies should be regulated like utility companies--if they're still being regulated..

  • With estimates that gas might hit $5 a gallon this summer - Americans are screwed at the pump   13 years 20 weeks ago

    The increased price of oil above the market of “supply and demand” is driven by financial speculation in the Commodity Market with no intention of ever using this commodity. The Commodities Futures Modernization Act of 2000 signed by President Clinton allows deregulation of commodities and speculation, which drives up the price of gasoline at the pump.

    Remember what Senator Mitch McConnell said: the Republican Party’s priority is to make President Obama a “one term President”.

    The Republicans cannot win on an even playing field. They have to take off focus the Obama Administration’s successes including more production of oil. They constantly confuse everything.

    The Republicans do not want to be perceived as a “do nothing Congress” as perceived in 1948 with President Harry Truman, but instead are doing something with stupid legislation on everything except the economy, only to confuse.

    Here is what President Truman said in 1948: That's plain hokum. It's an old political trick: "If you can't convince 'em, confuse 'em." But this time it won't work.

    Address at the National Plowing Match (18 September 1948); as quoted in Miracle of '48: Harry Truman's Major Campaign Speeches and Selected Whistle-stops (2003); edited by Steve Neal.

  • Has the US become the worlds oil refinery?   13 years 20 weeks ago

    I can't figure out why he hasn't banned the export of gasoline products either, except that it's an election year and it would probably kill him off politically. But then so could $5.00 per gal gas too, so it's a dillema for him, and we pay the price of the political games.

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