Still on vacation...

Sorry for the lapse of the latest news, I have been taking a little time off. I figure with about a year straight of using all of my spare time writing on the net, I think I deserve to take it easy for about a month.

There's also a lot of stuff going on I want to write about, but it's still in the panning out phase. Stay tuned, I have a lot of things planned for the site.

Here's a little Bill Moyer's you may have missed

Bill Moyers on LA Labor, the march and what it takes to get bye in today's America

"Working the best job I've ever had in my whole life, I'm still, I mean, I am a breath away from drowning. I'm $20 away from being on the street. I am one car payment away from being re-poed. I'm barely surviving. I'm leading a substandard lifestyle because I make substandard wages."- Jaron Quetel, American worker

This story appeared on the Bill Moyers Journal on June 13th.

Excerpt of script

What's happening to American workers is not the result of natural forces alone. No, it's happened because corporate and political powers connived to keep wages down while shredding their workers' safety nets. For some time now the Great American Wealth Machine has been cranking out jackpots for the people at the top and pushing working people further down the ladder. The growing divide - that roaring inequality - is the subject of this broadcast.

Consider this: For the past thirty years the productivity of American workers has increased by 76 percent. But their real hourly wages have risen less than two percent. So the paradox is that people are working harder but still falling behind. Take this young man we recently met in California in our report from producer Peter Meryash and correspondent Rick Karr.

Video: Elaine Chao, Bush's Sec. Of Labor get's her nails done for McCain fundraiser, Bill Moyers on OSHA unreported injuries

Elaine Chao’s Labor Department doesn’t see a problem, though. Elaine’s OSHA claims poultry plants are “safer than ever,” pointing to supposedly lower rates of reported injuries. The devil’s in the details, though.- American Rights at Work on Elaine Chao's stance on the poultry industry

2 SUV's and 6 security personal, just a few blocks from her home, wow Elaine must have gotten really gussied up for John McCain and her husband Senator Mitch McConnell.


Kentucky protesters get booted away from across the street of Senator McConnell's, John McCain fund raiser.

According to Shame on Elaine (6/29/08):

Matt Gunterman sums up the problem with this scene:

So, by my rough calculation, it probably cost on the order $450 to get Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao’s nails done.

Workers in Kentucky struggle to fill up their gas tanks because gas is $4/gallon and inflation is rising.

Workers in Kentucky worry that they won’t have a job tomorrow because the second Bush recession promised to be even worse than the first.

Workers in Kentucky wonder if they’ll meet next month’s mortgage, while Wall Street fat cats get bailed out by Washington.

But does any of this worry Elaine Chao, wife of Sen. Mitch McConnell (R) and George W. Bush’s Secretary of Labor?

Go read the rest of Matt’s post.

The Bush Legacy Bus - with some great music
"you took our jobs and sent em overseas, now we owe billions to the red Chinese"- Takin My Country Back by The Honky Tonkers For Truth


Elaine Chao

Heres a little about Elaine Chao, from a previous story on Feb.19th. 2008: Carhartt, Red Wing Shoes and more union news you may have missed, ideas, blurbs and dumbed down Americans

Now American Rights at Work has launched a web-based campaign exposing Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao’s dismal record through www.ShameOnElaine.org which according to Talking Union:

Unlike her cohorts in the Bush Administration, Elaine Chao has escaped much-needed public scrutiny of her time on the job. From littering the Labor Department with corporate insiders to dismantling worker safety protections and collaborating with her husband, Sen. Mitch McConnell, on a blatant anti-union political agenda, Elaine has disgraced her role as Secretary of Labor.

Like most union activists we knew Elaine was a stinker – but until ARAW pulled all the information together at one spot, we had no idea just how bad her record is. We’re sure you’ll share our outrage over what we found out she was up to instead of serving in the interest of workers:

• Hired a former colleague from the Heritage Foundation who actually wrote a report titled “How to close down the Department of Labor.”
• Cut over 100 inspectors at the MSHA and, as a result, hundreds of mines weren’t inspected and tragedies such as Sago and Crandall Canyon might have been prevented.
• Had Chao-themed coins, lanyards, and fleece blankets printed at taxpayers’ expense.
• Failed to issue a rule requiring employers pay for their workers’ safety gear—contributing to 400,000 workers injured and 50 dead.
• Had an auditorium named in her honor – thanks to her husband’s $14.2 million earmark to enhance the Mitch McConnell Center at his alma mater, the University of Louisville. Of course, Elaine never attended the university.

Thats just the tip of the iceberg, my buddy Richie at UnionReview.com has been following her views on the American worker for a while and I pointed out in a comment:

Lets not forget

We are angry and smelly workers, according to the US Secretary of Labor
… In her infinite wisdom, Department of Labor Secretary Elaine Chao lectures workers on how we can stop losing our jobs to foreign workers: …
…and…
Secretary of Labor on Employee Free Choice Act
… will veto if it gets to his desk. The president and Elaine Chao say that private ballot elections should be preserved because “it is …

At the Shame on Elaine site theres also, among other atrocious misdeeds, an article about the North Carolina poultry industry, which as you may have read about first right here on JoesUnionReview, the newspaper in the local area, the Charlotte Observer has been doing what has become a rarity in todays Main Stream Media, an expose. Shame On Elaine notes:

Elaine Chao’s Labor Department doesn’t see a problem, though. Elaine’s OSHA claims poultry plants are “safer than ever,” pointing to supposedly lower rates of reported injuries. The devil’s in the details, though.

The poultry story has created quite a stir, the AFL-CIO Web Blog is currently engaged in a debate in it's comments section pertaining to a story about the newest employer exploitation here on American soil. Slaves, Sharecroppers, Now Immigrants.

OSHA under the umbrella of Elaine Chao's DOL

BILL MOYERS: Businesses, on the other hand, say the requirements are cumbersome, and have long pressured the agency for weaker standards of regulation.

The pressure's paid off. THE NEW YORK TIMES' Stephen Labaton reported last year that since George W. Bush became president, the agency has left worker safety largely in the hands of industry, and has issued the fewest significant standards in its history.

Video on the production of The Charlotte Observers investigative report "The Cruelest Cuts" and the under reporting of workplace injuries, which has been covered here at Joe's with:U.S. Lawmakers worried about safety after Charlotte Observers expose on the poultry industry

From the narrator in the video:

In North Carolina, the number of OSHA poultry plant inspections fell from 25 in 1997 to nine in 2006. South Carolina poultry plant inspections dropped from 36 in 1999 to 1 in 2006.

Nationwide, OSHA workplace safety inspections at U.S. poultry plants have dropped to their lowest point in 15 years. In fact the government rewards companies that report low injury rates by inspecting them less often. And Washington's regulators rarely check whether companies are reporting accurately.

Please also note that the video features testimony by Bob Whitmore, a long time OSHA employee , who has been placed on Administrative leave to testify in the hearing, Mr.Whitmore was also the 200th. person to sign the petition against OSHA's lack of a standard in combustible dust

"As an OSHA employee, I was ashamed and deeply offended by my Agencies response at Rep Miller's Hearings. Like Rep. Miller said "I again see no sense of urgency from OSHA". The OSHA Watchdog has acted like a Lapdog again." - Bob Whitmore , Maryland

Read More about combustible dust
Read More about MeatPacking industry

OSHA News at Unbossed

• Under-Reporting Workplace Injuries and Illnesses (6/23/08)
• Constructing Unsafe Workplaces (6/26/08)
• More on Construction Industry Injuries (6/26/08)

Government, Industry Play the Numbers Game on Worker Safety in Meatpacking Plants-Labor Notes

Shirah from Unbossed at DailyKOS
More James Pence Video's at Hillbilly Report

Hillbilly chimed in on the comments with this gem, thanks brother

Video: Bill Moyers addresses conference for media reform: labor, health care, middle-class, tying it all together

"...and I see a link between that process and the stock market frenzy which scorns long-term investments, genuine savings, in favor of quick turnovers and speculative bubbles, whose inevitable bursting leaves insiders with stuffed pockets and millions of small shareholders, stock holders, employees and home owners, out of luck, out of work, and out of hope." -Bill Moyers

From YouTube:

Legendary journalist Bill Moyers address the National Conference for Media Reform in Minneapolis, June 7, 2008. Presented by FreePress.net. For more speakers, press coverage, and info, visit: http://www.freepress.net/conference

Watch Video

At around 30+ minutes in, he clearly ties everything together.

Heres the part I felt like typing:

What do we need to know? We need to know that we are in trouble.

Napoleon told his secretary in the thick of battle that if the news on the front is good, don't wake me, if it's bad wake me immediately.

My friends, you don't need to be a reporter with your eyes open to see the news from the front is bad, but I as a reporter see it all the time.

I report the assault on nature, evidence in coal mining that tears the tops off mountains and dumps them into rivers. Sacrificing the health and lives of those in the valleys, for short term profit.

..and I see a link between that process and the stock market frenzy which scorns long-term investments, genuine savings, in favor of quick turnovers and speculative bubbles, whose inevitable bursting leaves insiders with stuffed pockets and millions of small shareholders, stock holders, employees and home owners, out of luck, out of work, and out of hope.

...and then I see a connection between those disasters and the repeal of regulations designed to prevent that type of human and economic damage.

Who pushed for the removal of that fire wall? The political marionettes in Washington, who danced to the speculators tune and were rewarded with campaign contributions and lucrative lobbying jobs when they have delivered the goods. Even honorable opponents of the practice get trapped in the web of a system that can effectively limit politics to those who can afford to spend millions of dollars in their race for office, and know that their careers depend on pleasing their donors, while deserting their voters.

Then I draw a line to the statistics that show real wages lagging behind prices, the compensation of corporate barons soaring to heights unequaled anywhere among other industrialized democracies. The greatest income inequality since the roaring 20's. The relentless cheese pairing of Federal funds devoted to Public Schools to retraining workers whose jobs have exported and to programs of health care, all of which natch away the ladder, which American's of scant means, but willing hands and hearts, could work and save their way up to some middle-class security.

...and I connect those numbers to campaigns to campaigns by our triumphant reactionaries against labor unions and higher minimum wage and to their success in reframing the tax codes so as to strip them of their progressive character, laying the burdens of the social contract on the shrinking middle-class, awash in credit card debt as workers struggle with the rising cost of health care, affordable housing, and college tuitions for their children.

While huge inheritances go untouched, tax shelters abroad are legalized and the rich get richer, and with each increase in their wealth, are able to buy themselves more influence over those who make and execute the laws.

Edward R Murrow told his generation of journalists, no one can eliminate their prejudices, just recognize them.

Here is my bias, extremes of wealth and poverty cannot be reconciled with a truly just society, capitalism breeds great inequality that is destructive, unless tempered by an intuition for equality, which is the heart of democracy.

When the state becomes the guardian of power and privilege to the neglect of justice to the people have neither power nor privilege, you can no longer claim to have a representative government.

Video: Bill Moyers addresses conference for media reform: labor, health care, middle-class, tying it all together

"...and I see a link between that process and the stock market frenzy which scorns long-term investments, genuine savings, in favor of quick turnovers and speculative bubbles, whose inevitable bursting leaves insiders with stuffed pockets and millions of small shareholders, stock holders, employees and home owners, out of luck, out of work, and out of hope." -Bill Moyers

From YouTube:

Legendary journalist Bill Moyers address the National Conference for Media Reform in Minneapolis, June 7, 2008. Presented by FreePress.net. For more speakers, press coverage, and info, visit: http://www.freepress.net/conference

Watch Video

At around 30+ minutes in, he clearly ties everything together.

Heres the part I felt like typing:

What do we need to know? We need to know that we are in trouble.

Napoleon told his secretary in the thick of battle that if the news on the front is good, don't wake me, if it's bad wake me immediately.

My friends, you don't need to be a reporter with your eyes open to see the news from the front is bad, but I as a reporter see it all the time.

I report the assault on nature, evidence in coal mining that tears the tops off mountains and dumps them into rivers. Sacrificing the health and lives of those in the valleys, for short term profit.

..and I see a link between that process and the stock market frenzy which scorns long-term investments, genuine savings, in favor of quick turnovers and speculative bubbles, whose inevitable bursting leaves insiders with stuffed pockets and millions of small shareholders, stock holders, employees and home owners, out of luck, out of work, and out of hope.

...and then I see a connection between those disasters and the repeal of regulations designed to prevent that type of human and economic damage.

Who pushed for the removal of that fire wall? The political marionettes in Washington, who danced to the speculators tune and were rewarded with campaign contributions and lucrative lobbying jobs when they have delivered the goods. Even honorable opponents of the practice get trapped in the web of a system that can effectively limit politics to those who can afford to spend millions of dollars in their race for office, and know that their careers depend on pleasing their donors, while deserting their voters.

Then I draw a line to the statistics that show real wages lagging behind prices, the compensation of corporate barons soaring to heights unequaled anywhere among other industrialized democracies. The greatest income inequality since the roaring 20's. The relentless cheese pairing of Federal funds devoted to Public Schools to retraining workers whose jobs have exported and to programs of health care, all of which natch away the ladder, which American's of scant means, but willing hands and hearts, could work and save their way up to some middle-class security.

...and I connect those numbers to campaigns to campaigns by our triumphant reactionaries against labor unions and higher minimum wage and to their success in reframing the tax codes so as to strip them of their progressive character, laying the burdens of the social contract on the shrinking middle-class, awash in credit card debt as workers struggle with the rising cost of health care, affordable housing, and college tuitions for their children.

While huge inheritances go untouched, tax shelters abroad are legalized and the rich get richer, and with each increase in their wealth, are able to buy themselves more influence over those who make and execute the laws.

Edward R Murrow told his generation of journalists, no one can eliminate their prejudices, just recognize them.

Here is my bias, extremes of wealth and poverty cannot be reconciled with a truly just society, capitalism breeds great inequality that is destructive, unless tempered by an intuition for equality, which is the heart of democracy.

When the state becomes the guardian of power and privilege to the neglect of justice to the people have neither power nor privilege, you can no longer claim to have a representative government.