La Cueva blogs

Some Great State AGs! - February 07, 2012 The last midterm election was good here in CA. We got Dems, most of them progressive, elected to every single statewide office while the party took a ...more

Dem Club Not Giving Up on Single-Payer - February 07, 2012 I've had my share of disappointments/irritations with the Gardena Valley Democratic Club, but I was heartened last night at the E-Board meeting ...more

Preventing Infiltration of OCCUPY - February 06, 2012 Chris Hedges writes about the "Cancer in the Occupy Movement" in his latest column. Who were, he asks, those guys in OCCUPY OAKLAND who dress ...more

SPORTS SATURDAY - February 04, 2012 Robert Lipsyte comes up with some good reasons that progressive activists and especially OCCUPYers should watch the Super Bowl. One is that Tim Tebow ...more

SPORTS SATURDAY - February 04, 2012 Well, well, well! What did I find this morning? One hell of an article with a provocative title (which is OK) http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/02/04-3?nocache=1 "IS ...more

Oh, Indiana! - February 03, 2012 What has caused the labor movement untold grief--and hasn't received much media attention until now--is corporate PR. "Right-to-Work" is ...more

Looking Ahead to 2012 DNC - February 02, 2012 I've been reading some articles about how OCCUPY would like to replicate the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. While I hope that we ...more

Clearing Out The Notebook - February 01, 2012 HEALTHCARE. State senate leader Darrel Steinberg was unable to persuade two of the four Democrats who abstained from voting to come on board for SB 810, ...more

Games Pols Play--Again! - January 30, 2012 I've pounded away relentlessley in the past on this topic, but it's not going to stop me from doing it again. Twice in recent years California ...more

SPORTS SATURDAY - January 28, 2012 The week of the Super Bowl each year I browse through Advertising Age to see who is advertising and, more importantly, how much they are spending. While ...more

From The POPULIST ERA... - January 27, 2012     WALL STREET OWNS THE COUNTRY Speech by Mary Elizabeth Lease (circa 1890) This is a nation of inconsistencies. The Puritans ...more

Parenti on Healthcare - January 27, 2012 Ah, Parenti! His recent trip to the hospital confirms his feelings about profit-driven healthcare. A few highpoints: Upon his discharge after ...more

Elevator Speech for What OCCUPY Stands For - January 26, 2012 Paul Bucheit's gem about inequality on CommonDreams http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/01/25-8 can be adapted into a great ...more

State of the Union Address - January 25, 2012 As usual, the Barack Obama delivered a great speech last night, particularly on domestic issues. The question is, who gets credit for him using ...more

Short-lived Laugh - January 24, 2012 Bill Moyers and Michael Winship have a piece on CommonDreams about The Revolving Door. They saw a headline on GAWKER entitled, "Citigroup to ...more

From Hedges - January 23, 2012 I stand corrected. No sooner than I wrote on the previous post that the state of South Carolina was good political theater--and I still believe that ...more

South Carolina: The Political Loony Bin - January 23, 2012 Say one thing for South Carolina, it's long on political entertainment; Jim DeMint, Joe Wilson, Mark Sanford, Herman Cain. Strom Thurmond was its ...more

SPORTS SATURDAY - January 21, 2012 Yesterday marked the 15th anniversary of Curt Flood's death. I remember following the news about his funeral. It was sad that not a single active ...more

Revisiting Citizens United - January 20, 2012 Robert McChesney and John Nichols nail one in The Nation http://www.thenation.com/article/165733/after-citizens-united-attack-super-pacs on what ...more

GOP - January 19, 2012 Damn I hope the GOP goes on to its convention this summer with no clearcut winner! http://www.lyricsmode.com/lyrics/j/james_darren/goodbye_cruel_world.htmlThough ...more

Inequality No Longer a Taboo Topic - January 19, 2012 GOP presidential front runner Mitt Romney recently said he liked the ability to fire people. Well, members of the 1% don't mind that all that much. ...more

Election for LA City Council - January 18, 2012 Spent the last several days working on a campaign for city council--in vain. It looks like Joe Buscaino will be the next councilman in the city's ...more

Add MLK - January 13, 2012 Coming up on two years since the great Howard Zinn died, the article below from The Progressive shows some interesting similarities between the two. ...more

MLK - January 13, 2012 Heading into the the Martin Luther King holiday weekend, I can't help but wonder what he'd be up to were he alive today. Probably a lot even ...more

Child Labor - January 12, 2012 Last night I got shivers listening to a tape of an NPR show about child labor in China. For one, there was the enormity of some of the Chinese electronics ...more

Marching for Healthcare - January 11, 2012   On Monday a group of activists protested in both Sacramento and in Pershing Square in downtown Los Angeles in support of SB 810, the single-payer ...more

GOP Primaries - January 10, 2012 Many fellow activists think Mitt Romney's nomination is a foregone conclusion. I'm not so sure. For one, Iowa is a caucus. Today in New Hampshire ...more

By The Numbers - January 09, 2012 From a study of 265 companies by Citizens for Tax Justice (CTJ): 3%--The average state corporate tax paid by these companies.   6.2%--The ...more

SPORTS SATURDAY - January 07, 2012 Damn does it ever gladden my soul to hear that the NFLPA--the football players' union--publicly and unapologetically come out against the right-to-work ...more

Mythbusting - January 06, 2012 You constantly hear it when you encounter the financial conservatives: 'Rich people deserve what they get because THEY'RE the ones who create ...more

On Ron Paul - January 05, 2012 Much as I think the Republican debates/primaries are a jobs program for late-night comics, Ron Paul does have some redeeming characteristics. He is against ...more

Ideas for OCCUPY - January 05, 2012 Always looking for ideas to incorporate into OCCUPY and Les Leopold has a piece on Alternet containing seven. Banks should: Only be allowed to lend ...more

Flyin' Out of The Chute! - January 04, 2012 Today two (CA) assembly Dems plan to introduce legislation that would overturn the Citizens United decision of two years ago. Not surprisingly, both ...more

SPORTS FRIDAY - December 30, 2011 Let there be no doubt. I make my sports picks (who I root for) based on the most equitable distribution of the sports wealth. So heading into 2012, what ...more

MORE GOP Hypocrisy - December 30, 2011 Assisted by ALEC, about a dozen states have passed laws requiring people to produce an ID to vote. Republicans make incessant noise about "voter ...more

Pop Quiz: What Were The Headlines A Decade Ago? - December 29, 2011 Quick! Think! What was the main story in the headlines at this time in 2001? Want some hints? Ken Lay, Jeffrey Skilling, Andrew Fastow, Arthur Anderson. ...more

Just What a Good Offensive Coordinator Would Do - December 28, 2011   When it comes to elections, especially ones that figure to be close, the GOP emulates a good offensive coordinator in football: if something ...more

Ben Nelson: Good Riddance! - December 27, 2011 I just read that Ben Nelson, the DINO (Dem In Name Only) from Nebraska, is retiring. Kinda nice of him to give the party some advance notice so we could ...more

Must Read for Baby Boomers - December 27, 2011   Michael Thomas' piece on Daily Beast is a must read, especially for 'Boomers. Now 75. Thomas goes back to the beginning of his writing ...more

SPORTS SATURDAY - December 24, 2011 Thinking about progressive types in the sports world one can't overlook JOHN CHANEY, the former longtime Temple University basketball coach. On the ...more

SPORTS SATURDAY - December 24, 2011 What's happening to former Olympian Lee Evans is like what happens to many who serve in the military: they are revered while serving, get some "heroes' ...more

Yeah! Something for Unions! - December 23, 2011   Finally, something for unions! The NLRB is about to pass a bill streamlining the elections for workers to gain representation. This is a ...more

Eery Parallels - December 22, 2011 Having recently read Phillip Roth's novel The Plot Against America and currently winding up Sinclair Lewis' It Can't Happen Here, both set ...more

Re Budget, OCCUPY LA Costs - December 21, 2011 According to the short piece below, the total cost for restoring the lawn around LA City Hall and the LAPD's overtime for raiding and tearing ...more

"The Market" Cures All? - December 21, 2011  Even with the US economy in shambles for all but one-percenters, there are those who continue to bow before "The Market" as the cure ...more

Slew of Great Slogans - December 20, 2011 I went to the OCCUPY LA site four times before it was raided and permanently closed and to the OCCUPY PORT in Long Beach last week. Between the two there ...more

Little Noticed Battle for the NLRB - December 20, 2011 An obscure but extremely important battle is taking place for the survival of the National Labor Relation Board (NLRB). Unions have often had issues ...more

Revolving Door Cont. - December 19, 2011 The NY Times' Thomas Edsall pens a gem on CommonDreams about the "revolving door"--politicians who in retirement go to work in the industry ...more

Bits 'n Pieces - December 19, 2011 "If voting changed anything it would be illegal." I wouldn't go quite as far as Helen Keller on this topic. I would, however, heartily ...more

SPORTS SATURDAY - December 17, 2011 Some athletes go into politics after retiring from their sport. Here is a list of some of them: FOOTBALL John Runyan JC Watts Lynn Swann Pete ...more

Here's Why OCCUPY - December 16, 2011  Add Ron Wyden to the list of reasons for the existence of OCCUPY. Most DEM activists consider him reliably progressive. Now, read below.          Reply ...more

At The Core Of Just About Everything - December 16, 2011 It's been nearly two years since the Supreme Court gave corporations the same rights as people in the Citizens United case. Inspired by the OCCUPYS, ...more

16 Qualities of a Successful Organizer - December 15, 2011 Just checked out Eric Mann's Playbook For Progressives: 16 Qualities Of The Successful Organizer and I'm firing all 16 into a blog post right ...more

Defining The Opposition - December 15, 2011 Should some passerby happen to ask you about the opposition--1%--while you're protesting at an OCCUPY, here's something by Jamelle Bouie in ...more

Lack of Memory and GOP Hypocrisy - December 14, 2011 Hypocrisy. To the GOP it has never been an issue. Newt Gingrich takes $1.5 miilion from Freddie Mac over a period of years but doesn't hesitate to ...more

We Need MEMORIES Like Elephants' - December 14, 2011 If you asked someone about Enron in, say, 2004, you most likely would have got a blank look. What happened in late-2001 was ancient history by then. ...more

Yesterday on the Waterfront - December 13, 2011 The OCCUPY THE PORTS on the West Coast plus Houston was a success yesterday. The one in Long Beach drew around two thousand protesters despite inclement ...more

Future Grist for OCCUPYS' Mill? - December 12, 2011 Last night after the Progressive Dem Club meeting a woman told me that there were some California state legislators--DEMS--who were wavering about supporting ...more

Elections Have Gone From Cycles to Lifetimes - December 12, 2011   Tom Engelhardt nails one writing about how elections have become longer and longer and now verge on the perpetual. He cites Mitt Romney as the ...more

SPORTS SATURDAY - December 10, 2011 Being a politically progressive activist AND a sports fan, I often find myself in somewhat awkward situations. Several months ago I was talking to a ...more

John Nichols on the Koch Bros - December 09, 2011   We should be taking more action against the Koch Brothers. Not that there hasn't been any already. John Nichols lays it right out there in ...more

When OCCUPY LA and the LA City Council Agree... - December 08, 2011 While I'm still a bit bummed by the recent LAPD raid on OCCUPY LA (and the subsequent mistreatment of arrestees), I feel that we've already accomplished ...more

Joshua Holland on the Top 1% - December 07, 2011 Josh Holland has a piece on Alternet that could be a nice little "elevator speech" should someone ask a progressive activist, "Who are ...more

On Organizing - December 06, 2011 Recruiting someone. As an activist I've yet to do that. I've managed to convert some people to my point of view on a given issue, get them to ...more

Update on Protesters Arrested at OCCUPY LA - December 05, 2011   LAPD may have used less force during the raid on OCCUPY LA last week, but according to this report it isn't going to win any Amnesty International ...more

Like Carlos Slim--In My Dreams - December 05, 2011 Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones invited Rip Snoart to his specially-built owner's suite at the Rose Bowl to watch a rare pro football game (exhibition) ...more

SPORTS SATURDAY - December 03, 2011 Bobby Valentine, the new skipper of the Boston Red Sox, is proof positive that in the main ex-jocks make lousy pols. Dave Zirin writes in his Nation blog ...more

Exploring OCCUPY Demands - December 02, 2011 From WORKING CLASS AMERICA here is a set of demands for OCCUPY/the 99%: Tax Wall Street for gambling with our money. Pass ...more

Re Scheer, Villaraigosa, OLA - December 01, 2011 Robert Scheer made a great point yesterday on Truthdig Radio (KPFK): if Mayor Villaraigosa and others who profess they were worried about the homeless ...more

Will OCCUPY Help Unions Organize? - November 30, 2011   I read with interest Mike Elk's piece, "What Can Labor Learn From Occupy?". While I won't ever become a union organizer, I ...more

Another Win for Labor - November 30, 2011 John Nichols of The Nation writes about how the state of New Hampshire tried to pass legislation to make it a right-to-work state but failed. The bill ...more

What Next? - November 29, 2011 While the OLA site, the largest of any of the OCCUPYs, is still standing, it seems the time has come for a shift in strategy. Two questions come to mind: 1. ...more

Pearls From Richard Wolff - November 28, 2011 Richard Wolff nailed one in a speech on Alternative Radio over the weekend. While his talk contained a number of salient points, one that stood out was ...more

Visit to OLA - November 28, 2011 On Saturday afternoon I visited Occupy LA to see up close if what I heard was really coming to pass. Sadly, it was. There were already fewer tents ...more

SPORTS SATURDAY - November 26, 2011 I'm donned in Powder Blue and Gold as I type this post. Why? Because they are the colors of the Heavens and the Bruins--and not necessarily ...more

Post #2: Right From The Source - November 23, 2011 On KPFK's "Something's Happening" last night Gary Null managed to find a candid Wall Streeter who came right out and said it:  ...more

Post #1: Slogans for Occupy Torrance this afternoon - November 23, 2011 This afternoon will be the most-trafficked of the year on Hawthorne Boulevard in Torrance, which has a fair amount of it on just about any day.  ...more

From Les Leopold - November 22, 2011   Les Leopold has a great article for activists on Alternet, "Five Ways The Financial Elites Are Destroying Democracy". While it is chock ...more

Where Were You and What Were You Doing on This Day... - November 22, 2011 I was sitting in Mrs Christiansen's class at Adams Elementary School. The principal sent an aide around to inform students and faculty of the tragic ...more

Creativity a Hallmark of OCCUPYS - November 21, 2011   One thing OCCUPY doesn't lack is creativity. It came up with the 99% label. which is not only eye-catching but also extremely apt. OWS marchers ...more

SPORTS SATURDAY - November 19, 2011   Football is a game whose participants don’t have very good politics, at least on the whole. Look at some of the ex-players who have run for ...more

Tough Road Ahead - November 18, 2011 That OCCUPY'S popularity has dropped, albeit slightly, in recent polls doesn't surprise me. The powers-that-be never hesitate to employ relentless ...more

Occupy Torrance, Misc - November 17, 2011 The OCCUPY TORRANCE event yesterday had about the same number of people as the previous week. which is decent considering the colder weather. On the ...more

What Bloomberg Personifies - November 16, 2011   Glen Ford is right in his piece on CommonDreams. New York City Michael Bloomberg personifies what the OCCUPYs are all about: rich people throwing ...more

Elevator Speech for OCCUPY Torrance - November 15, 2011 Last week at the Wednesday OCCUPY Torrance someone suggested having a leaflet to hand out to passersby that could sum up who we are and what we stand ...more

Looking Back... - November 14, 2011 My how time flies! It's been 15 years since Loretta Sanchez unseated longtime Congressman Robert "B-1 Bob" Dornan down in The Orange. I ...more

SPORTS SATURDAY - November 12, 2011   Dave Zirin makes an interesting compairson between the students at Penn State, who were rioting because of the firing of football coach/icon ...more

Take Heed, Walker! - November 10, 2011 Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker has got to be worried right now. No way he could have missed what happened Tuesday night in Ohio and Arizona. Nor could ...more

The Fruits of Grassroots Activism - November 09, 2011 Things went pretty well for Dems yesterday. On the local level, two of them, including the one I'm supporting, qualified for the runoff in January ...more

Look Who's Running Articles About Inequality! - November 08, 2011   All the recent organizing outside the electoral system has had an effect on what leads in the mainstream media. Take my old employer, the Daily ...more

A Moral Economy - November 07, 2011     Francis Fox Piven pens a piece on Alternet about how the OCCUPYs have brought the topic of poverty into mainstream political conversation ...more

SPORTS SATURDAY - November 05, 2011   Just found this nice short article that makes me feel like recent progressive activism is accomplishing things. One involves Janice Hahn. I ...more

From Krugman... - November 04, 2011 "The American Dream: You've got to be asleep to believe it." This was a sign I saw at Occupy LA two weeks ago. It's an apt slogan when ...more

Corporate America's Tentacles Have Got Dems, Too - November 03, 2011   The new revelations about former New Jersey Senator and Governor John Corzine is further proof that politicians, save for an elite few, are not ...more

Preparing for Afternoon Protest in...Torrance - November 02, 2011 Last week we launched OCCUPY TORRANCE, a weekly protest in front of the Wells-Fargo in the city's financial district. The vast majority of the responses ...more

Corporatocracy IS the 1% - November 02, 2011 In Carl Gibson's piece on CommonDreams, he notes that former Ron Paul aide Llewellyn Rockwell has written that it is solely the government that is ...more

Moore, Misc - November 01, 2011 Michael Moore summed things up nicely in an interview with KPFK's Susie Wiseman...'It's not difficult to figure out what's going on. ...more

Hittin'em Where It Hurts - October 31, 2011 All Dem Clubs have reached a consensus about pulling money out of Bank of America and putting it into a local credit union or at the very least a bank ...more

A Great Name - October 28, 2011   From the group that brought us OCCUPY comes another great idea: a 1% transactions tax for Wall Street. ADBUSTERS have dubbed this the "Robin ...more

Boosts for the Occupys - October 27, 2011 In my view, OCCUPYS have received a couple of boosts over the past two days. One was yesterday when Scott Olsen, a two-tour Iraq veteran, was critically ...more

Finally Some Movement on Wall Street's Crimes - October 26, 2011   A major gripe of the Occupy Movement has been the fact that there has been scarcely any  action taken against the people responsible ...more

Vote on Healthcare in CA - October 25, 2011 Heard over the weekend that some of the same CA state legislators who voted for a single-payer healthcare bill twice in recent years are wavering right ...more

Trip #2 to OLA - October 24, 2011 Yesterday a group of Dems went to Occupy LA and came away favorably impressed. While the overall crowd was less than the previous one a few weeks ago ...more

SPORTS SATURDAY - October 22, 2011 My convictions are being tested in this World Series. Normally I don't have a problem; it simply comes down to the most equitable (re) distribution ...more

Facilitating a Revolt of the Guards - October 21, 2011   I think it began in Wisconsin late last winter. When Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker began to implement his (Koch Bros?) anti-union agenda, ...more

From Lakoff... - October 20, 2011 After some people from OCCUPY approached George Lakoff about offering some "framing" suggestions for the fledgling movement, he eventually ...more

How 'BOUT That (Economic) Recovery! - October 19, 2011 While some pols are starting to acknowledge OWS, there are still a lot of economists out there who actually think there's an economic recovery going ...more

From The Nation... - October 18, 2011 JOHN NICHOLS In his current column in The Nation, Nichols ponders whether progressives should mount a primary challenge to Barack Obama. A host of heavyweights ...more

Rough Draft for Set of Occupy Demands? - October 17, 2011 The Occupy Long Beach debut went fairly well on Saturday--reasonably good turnout and a good march through the adjacent downtown. It's good to have ...more

SPORTS SATURDAY - October 15, 2011 I'd be a bit remiss if I didn't make a belated post about AL DAVIS. He was the only person in sports history who served in the capacities of ...more

EXPLODING! - October 14, 2011 From an old Buffalo Springfield tune, "Something's Happening Here..." And something is--all over the globe; Melbourne, Sydney, And here ...more

OWS Has Predecessors in US History - October 13, 2011 Occupy Wall Street is all the rage right now, but this isn't the first time in US history that people have stood up and taken on corporate power. ...more

New Free Trade Agreement - October 12, 2011   The new free trade agreement in Congress demonstrates a couple things in no particular order: How quickly they forget. About ...more

Visit to Occupy LA - October 11, 2011 Spent a couple of hours Sunday at Occupy LA and I was impressed. Diversity! Age, race, interests. Printed material a go-go out there. If a high school ...more

SPORTS SATURDAY - October 08, 2011 So far in the MLB Playoffs things are working out pretty well from the perspective of an equal distribution of the wealth. First and foremost, the Brewers ...more

Quick 'n Dirty Facts For Our Skeptics - October 07, 2011 Take a look at the historical trend for our opposition, the top 1%: 1947--12% of the US wealth while the rest of us split up the other 88%. 1967--10.7%, ...more

Results Already? - October 06, 2011   While it might be premature to say this, Occupiers may have already achieved some results from Congress. Oregon Congressman Peter DeFazio ...more

One BIG REASON for OCCUPYING - October 05, 2011       The Occupying of cities hasn't been going on all that long and does not yet have a nice, concisely-worded set of "demands". ...more

Hypocrisy Never an Issue with GOP - October 04, 2011 Rick Perry is 61 years old. He relentlessly bashes public employees, just like the rest of the GOP's crop of presidential candidates. One thing, ...more

Occupy LA - October 03, 2011 Occupy LA is on! Several hundred protestors marched during the day and camped out overnight in front of City Hall. But there's another sign that ...more

SPORTS SATURDAY - October 01, 2011 DAVID SIROTA has an interesting piece on Democratic Underground, "How Baseball Explains Modern Racism", about a study done by Southern ...more

UNIONS GETTING INTO THE ACTION ON OCCUPY WALL STREET - September 30, 2011 Damn if this isn't good--though long overdue--news! Money that large corporations inevitably come back and snap unions right in the keister. They ...more

HEDGES on the OCCUPYs - September 30, 2011   "There are no excuses left. Either you join the revolt taking place on Wall Street and in the financial districts of other cities across ...more

Serial Killer of the English Language - September 29, 2011   The title of this post is Alan Grayson's description of Frank Luntz, the GOP's language guru. His work is...well, take a look at some ...more

Moore on Occupy Wall Street - September 28, 2011 One heckuva good show on Democracy Now! this morning. Amy Goodman spent the entire hour with rabble-rousing/award winning filmmaker and author Michael ...more

We're #1! - September 27, 2011 Attention ripsnorts, yahoos and sodbusters from San Diego to Maine, from Butte to Broward County. There's reason to celebrate: we're still number ...more

Josh Holland on Class Warfare - September 26, 2011 Joshua Holland lays out some interesting facts on exactly how the rich wage class warfare against the rest of  us. Some of these are good for a ...more

SPORTS SATURDAY (on Friday) - September 23, 2011 Rania Khalek pens an interesting piece on Alternet about six particular sports owners http://www.alternet.org/story/152420/6_right-wing_sports_team_owners_bankrolling_their_radical_agenda_with_your_tax_dollars/My ...more

Movements Over Government? - September 23, 2011 Katrina Vandenheuvel and Robert Borosage write in The Nation, "Can a Movement Save the American Dream?" My answer is that it'll have to. ...more

Death for Troy Davis, Never CEOs - September 22, 2011  Last night after a reprieve from the Supreme Court that lasted several hours, the state of Georgia executed Troy Davis for the killing of ...more

Helping Those Occupying Wall Street, Bits 'n Pieces - September 21, 2011 There are people occupying Wall Street as I type this post. Here are some articles about the people recently dubbed "The 99-Percenters" ...more

More on Class Warfare - September 20, 2011 Josh Holland pens a good piece on the topic on Altnernet today. He lists a bevy of good points, including: Unlike other generations of Americans, people ...more

Reporting on Occupy Wall Street, Misc - September 19, 2011 Good news coming from the OCCUPY WALL STREET event in Manhattan, New York this Saturday. The crowd, estimated at around 5,000, wasn't as big as hoped, ...more

SPORTS SATURDAY - September 17, 2011 Sometimes I base my sports picks on the progress of a university, like UCLA. The vast majority of the time, however, I do it based on the most equitable ...more

Occupy Wall Street - September 16, 2011 Tomorrow there's a protest in downtown LA at the BofA, 7th St @ Figueroa from 9 AM 'till noon. This will be in conjunction with the main one ...more

Electoral Politcs AND Direct Action - September 15, 2011 ELIZABETH WARREN announced her candidacy for the US Senate seat in Massachussets currently held by Scott Brown. Wareen's announcement and recent ...more

Bread 'n Circuses? - September 14, 2011 I didn't watch the Republican Presidential rodeo--er, debate--on Monday but I am not surprised by the reaction of the attendees when the moderator, ...more

From GORE VIDAL... - September 13, 2011 A bit different source for a post today. Just started reading The Last Empire, a collection of essays by Gore Vidal, and this one caught my eye ...more

Love That Title! - September 12, 2011 "Go Berserk, Young Man!". http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/09/12-1?nocache=1 Talk about a catchy title! Heckuva an article, too. Paul ...more

SPORTS SATURDAY - September 10, 2011 Since the end of the 1990s it has been slim pickins for us Bruin fans on the football field; one win over USC since 1998, barely a .500 record overall. ...more

Tenth Anniversary of 9/11 Attacks - September 09, 2011 IAN MASTERS, a frequent critic of KPFK management for giving too much time to conspiracy theorists in general and especially on the 9/11 attacks ...more

Populist Party? - September 08, 2011 SCOTT HORTON writes on the possibility of resurrecting the Populist Party from over a century ago. They had it right back then by emphasizing taking ...more

From Gary Null on KPFK - September 07, 2011 Gary Null has surpassed all the people on KPFK's Wednesday/"Somehing's Happening", in my view...Last night he turned us on to some ...more

Re Labor 'n Politics - September 06, 2011 From YESTERDAY...Had an interesting conversation with a guy around my age about both labor and politics. When I brought up to him that GE should be hiring ...more

SPORTS SATURDAY - September 03, 2011 There's no doubt about who I'll be rooting for in MLB's postseason: the Milwaukee Brewerers! Why? For one, they haven't won a pennant ...more

The GOP is BLATANT! - September 02, 2011   One thing the Republican Party doesn't do is hide where it really stands. That has been particularly true over the past several years and is ...more

Free Speech Isn't Always What It Seems - September 02, 2011 Interesting episode on the first day of tabling for a LA City Council Candidate. My partner and I received clearance to table--sit and gather signatures ...more

UNIONS - September 01, 2011   Coming up on Labor Day, Joe Uehlein nails one on how the labor movement has for probably the last century simultaneously held two theories: one, ...more

Brandeis Was Prophetic - August 31, 2011 "We can have democracy in this country, or we can have tremendous wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both."--LOUIS ...more

Downgrading Democracy - August 30, 2011 A fairly apt title for a COMMENT piece in the current edition of The Nation. The writers lament how poll after poll reveals what the vast majority of ...more

Democratic Awards Dinner - August 29, 2011 Saturday night I attended my first Franklin D and Eleanor Roosevelt Democratic Awards Dinner. My impression? Great concept, fair event. The purpose of ...more

SPORTS SATURDAY - August 27, 2011 Sports terminology finds its way into a lot of other fields, especially politics. Not long ago at one of my Dem club meetings, for example, a local pol ...more

Reich Goes Yard! - August 26, 2011 Using a baseball metaphor barely a week shy of Labor Day. Reich is right. We should use the one day of the year that honors workers for protests, not ...more

Similar Scenario Across The Atlantic - August 25, 2011 Austerity cuts; upping the retirement age, cutting public employees' salaries. Scandals that cry out for investigations being ignored by both the ...more

Scheer Sums It Up Well - August 24, 2011 Robert Scheer's latest column "Amnesty for the Indefensible" is further proof that we're in the early stages of fascism. The Obama ...more

Electoral Politics as the Only Way? No! - August 23, 2011 A question for those who think that electoral politics are the only way: when was the last time either political party had a bigger advantage than the ...more

A Hypothetical Situation - August 22, 2011 A company wants to join an employers' advocacy group; National Association of Manufacturers, Business Roundtable, West Coast Wholesalers Coalition ...more

SPORTS SATURDAY - August 20, 2011 Another one from The Nation's sports issue. Noam Chomsky writes about his impressions of listening to callers on sports talk radio stations and ...more

The Revolving Door - August 19, 2011 Lee Fang of ThinkProgress, Thom Hartmann and a number of other wrote yesterday about the latest episode in the ever-revolving door between government ...more

From The Vault... - August 18, 2011 Going through some old stuff off the Internet this morning, I came across "Coporatism and the Art of Political Code" by Mike Bohrer. Candidates ...more

Defense Spending - August 17, 2011 Question: Have you felt more secure over the past decade? You damn well should. Why? Because we've spent $8.8 TRILLION over the past decade, more ...more

Another Question to Pop on Conservatives - August 16, 2011 ...more

A Quick 'n Dirty Post - August 15, 2011 Heckuva an idea from a GVDC colleague yesterday: write up a hellatious WPA-like plan concentrating on improving infrastructure--roads, bridges, parks, ...more

SPORTS SATURDAY - August 13, 2011 FROM THE NATION'S SPORTS ISSUE... JOCKS vs PUKES: I can't help think back to an earlier piece by Robert Lipsyte while reading this one about ...more

Parenti - August 12, 2011 Came across a lengthy and, of course, stimulating article by Michael Parenti from about five weeks ago entitled, "Making The World Safe For Hypocrisy". ...more

Mayors and New Sports Stadiums: A Love Affair - August 11, 2011 The Nation's sports issue is outstanding! Neil DeMuse's article on the relationship between mayors and new sports stadiums/arenas is timely as ...more

Electoral Politics - August 10, 2011 FROM WISCONSIN   Damn it was depressing to hear the news this morning that Dems picked up just two seats in the Wisconsin recall election, one short ...more

Amy Goodman Interview w/Barbara Ehrenreich - August 09, 2011 Amy Goodman did a great interview with Barbara Ehrenreich on the tenth anniversary of her best-selling Nickle and Dimed. In doing research for her book ...more

Fascism? - August 08, 2011 Yesterday at the Dem club breakfast I laid the question right out there: how can Jeffrey Immelt simultaneously be one of the president's top economic ...more

SPORTS SATURDAY - August 06, 2011 Robert Lipsyte comes from the perspective of the brainy guy who gets picked on in high school by football players and later "stumbles into" ...more

Getting Up Off The Mat, After Corporate America - August 05, 2011 We live in a corporatacracy, says Bruce Levine in his piece on Z Magazine. Why does he say this? For one, none of the legislation passed matches ...more

A Troubling Trend - August 04, 2011 "Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power."--BENITO MUSSOLINI Over the ...more

Making Jack Anderson Proud - August 04, 2011 "The incestuous relationship between big business and government thrives in the dark." JACK ANDERSON has to be proud smiling down on Lisa ...more

Misc - August 03, 2011 I can't help but think about how little media play the Progressive Caucus gets. It has 85 members, easily the largest in Congress. It has high-profile ...more

Summing Up The Debt Ceiling Debate (charade?) - August 02, 2011 "Our democracy is but a name. We vote? What does that mean? It means that we choose between two bodies of real, though not avowed, autocrats. Tweedledum ...more

A Review - August 01, 2011 Yesterday at a Democratic Club weekly breakfast I shared a recent article by Paul Bucheit of US Uncut about how the Tax Foundation recently reported ...more

SPORTS SATURDAY - July 30, 2011 Dave Zirin writes in the sports issue of The Nation http://www.thenation.com/blog/how-sports-attacks-public-education on how sports are hurting ...more

"class warfare" vs Class Warfare - July 29, 2011 It is, indeed, amusing, to hear certain rich guys cry out "class warfare" when a US President mentions increasing taxes slightly on people earning ...more

Just a Thought... - July 28, 2011 Listening to economist/writer Rick Wolff on Democracy Now! this morning a thought came to mind: A company decides it wants to join an employers' ...more

A Question Conservatives Don't Want To Answer - July 27, 2011 Paul Bucheit, a professor and active member of US Uncut, came up with a gem yesterday on CommonDreams, http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/07/26-1. ...more

Ah, The WPA! - July 26, 2011 Sitting at the Bartlett (Senior) Center in downtown Torrance, I find myself pining for a new WPA. It's hard not to since the adjacent--contiguous, ...more

By The Numbers - July 25, 2011            From Holly Sklars "CEOS to Workers: More for Me, Less for You" on ...more

SPORTS SATURDAY - July 23, 2011 From about a week ago an article about Tiger Woods caught my curiosity. It was about how he has fallen upon hard times with his divorce settlement and ...more

A Great Find: Cienfuegos - July 22, 2011 Jim Lafferty is on vacation, so listening to KPFK last night I wondered who'd replace him in that slot. It was an alternative radio tape of PAUL ...more

REVOLT! - July 21, 2011 The title of a quick and dirty piece by Lawerene Morley on Adbusters. I especially love the way Morley sums it up early on. If it is to be successful ...more

Back to ALEC - July 20, 2011 "...corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong ...more

Elizabeth Warren - July 19, 2011   The battle over gettting Elizabeth Warren to head the newly-created Consumer Financial Protection Board (CFPB) is emblematic of the struggle ...more

(Ever So) SLIGHT PROGRESS - July 18, 2011 Over the past several months I've pounded away at my activist cohorts with the message that Corporate America, not the GOP, is the real target and ...more

SPORTS SATURDAY - July 16, 2011 As the days past it looks as though the NFL season could be pushed back or possibly canceled. As a college/high school football fan this wouldn't ...more

ALEC on Healthcare - July 15, 2011 ALEC knows what it's doing. When Barack Obama was elected in 2008 it realized that with a slightly left-of-center president and a Democratically-controlled ...more

All About "ALEC" - July 14, 2011 I didn't need anyone telling me that Corporate America has an absolute stranglehold on government. Easily 90-percent of my posts deal with the subject ...more

Victory - July 13, 2011 Learning about Janice Hahn's nine-point victory in the 36th CD this morning I felt both relief and gratification. It would have been disastrous, ...more

Pounding Pavement in 36th CD - July 12, 2011 Over the weekend plus yesterday a partner and I put in some significant hours walking precincts in the 36th CD for today's election. We covered ...more

SPORTS SATURDAY - July 09, 2011 MARVIN MILLER came to the moribund Major League Baseball Players Association from the United Steelworkers Union in 1966. Right away he knew he had his ...more

Surprise! They're Using PRISON Labor in Wisconsin - July 08, 2011 The ink has barely dried on Wisconsin Governor' Scott Walker's signature stripping public workers of their collective bargaining rights and one ...more

Disparity in Wealth - July 08, 2011 An unlikely candidate to be talking about the dangers of US' growing inequality in wealth: Zbigniew Brzezinski. On Thom Hartmann's Show yesterday ...more

ESKOW I:: Hedge Fund Managers - July 07, 2011 A whole host of good stats and talking points in RJ Eskow's piece from a week ago on Alternet: "If the Top 25 Hedge Fund Managers Paid Taxes ...more

Cause for Optmiism? - July 06, 2011   Does The Left have cause for optimism in the not-too-distant future? Dr Richard Wolff thinks so in his piece on Smirking Chimp and Alternet. ...more

Bloody Thurdsay - July 05, 2011 Some ILWU history today. During the tumultous spring and summer of 1934 six longshoremen were killed leading up to and in the General Strike of that ...more

SPORTS SATURDAY - July 02, 2011 BILL VEECK! I hadn't thought about him for a while until browsing through a Zirin blog a few minutes ago. During his time in baseball he owned the ...more

With All The Deregulation We've Had This Should Be A Golden Age... - July 01, 2011 Robert Parry's piece on alternet is worth a gander--maybe two. Over the past three-plus decades the freemarketeers have received almost everything ...more

Certain US Corps Shouldn't Have Access to Military, CIA - June 30, 2011 Last April there was a piece on Huffington Post about how General Electric, a corporation that received TARP money a couple years ago and a tax refund ...more

Going Behind Enemy Lines - June 30, 2011 For the first time in my 23 years of political activism I went "behind enemy lines", attending a town hall meeting held by the opponent of ...more

The State of Working America, Then and Now - June 29, 2011 A story on CommonDreams causes my to harken back to the early 1970s. I was attending Long Beach State and had just come to a unionized company. My wage ...more

Anecdotally Speaknig... - June 28, 2011 Sunday at a Dem Club weekly breakfast I mentioned to a colleague that corporatons had too damn much power and that the answer to what ails society lies ...more

SPORTS SATURDAY - June 25, 2011 Here's one clever letter-to-editor (LAT) that kinda sums up my feelings: Ticket: $40 Parking: $15 No. of Dodgers' runs: 0 New Ownership: ...more

Minimum Wage Increase in Haiti Blocked by Major US Firms--Wikileaks. - June 24, 2011 This morning Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez had Kim Ives and Dan Coughlin of Haiti Liberte on Democracy Now! talking about the recently-released documents ...more

Wiener's gone. What about Clarence Thomas? - June 23, 2011 http://thinkprogress.org/progress-report/ http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2011/06/23/251092/thomas-hearts-crow/ From Progress Report an aritcle comparing ...more

American Diplomacy Now Corporatized - June 22, 2011 One of WikiLeaks' greatest achievements has been to expose the exorbitant amount of influence that multinational corporations have over Washington's ...more

The IWW Revived! - June 21, 2011 Great piece on Truthout http://www.truth-out.org/organizing-wobbly-ground-learning-solidarity-unionism-starbucks/1308684065about the revival of the Industrial ...more

UNIONS - June 21, 2011 David Macray correctly posits that, while struggling, labor unions STILL POSSESS a most lethal weapon: money. The problem is spending it wisely. Macray ...more

SPORTS SATURDAY - June 18, 2011  Dave Zirin asks in the opening sentence of his Nation column http://www.thenation.com/blog/161493/understanding-vancouvers-hockey-riot, "How ...more

Wall Street's Ingrates - June 17, 2011 The title says it all. They are, indeed, ingrates. And not just Wall Street, but Corporate America as a whole. Not that this is that new to anybody following ...more

Feingold Telling It Like... - June 17, 2011   Damn it's great to see Russ Feingold up and about again after losing his seat last November! Along with Bernie Sanders, he might have ...more

A Converted Climate Change Denier on KPFK - June 16, 2011 D.R. Tucker, a right winger who for many years denied climate change but has now converted, appeared on Brad Friedman's (BradBlog) show yesterday ...more

Hightower on Single-Payer in Vermont - June 15, 2011 That lovable Texas populist writes about the kick-tail activism goin' on in the state of Vermont. The small state (625,000 with a single US House ...more

Nice Little Stat to Drop on 'Snorts - June 15, 2011 Interesting little nuggest of info to drop on ripsnorts or pseudosnorts: According to ThinkProgress, the amount of proposed cuts to vaious food assistance ...more

More Round 'n Round - June 14, 2011 Judd Gregg, the three-term Senator from New Hampshire, is retiring after his current term to go to that beacon of benevolence, Goldman Sachs. Now Thom ...more

Continuing The Roll... - June 14, 2011 One of my Dem Clubs is behind firing off letters to local state polls urging them not only to vote for the new single-payer bill, SB 810, but exhorting ...more

APT POLITICAL POETRY - June 11, 2011 CALVIN TRILLIN of The Nation has come up with some tape measure three-run homers in his years doing "Deadline Poet". Here are a couple from ...more

SPORTS SATURDAY - June 11, 2011   RANDOM THOUGHTS ON ONE OF DAVE ZIRIN'S BLOGS Shut Up and Play? Patriotism, Jock Culture and the Limits of Free Speech That ...more

US UNCUT and "FRIDAY FUN" - June 10, 2011  The anti-corporate tax dodging group US Uncut is joining forces with The Yes Men to embark on a mission to recoup some US tax monies major ...more

A More Militant Labor Movement? - June 09, 2011 AFL-CIO head Rich Trumka trumpeted strong words at a rally in front of about a thousand nurses the other day: "I've had ...more

Some Welcome Good News - June 09, 2011   From Firedoglake Jane Hamsher reports that more Americans blame our unnecessary wars than either Medicare or Social Security for the sad (tragic?" ...more

Round and Round... - June 08, 2011 The door just keeps revolving! Ten days ago it was three-term New Hampshire Senator Judd Gregg going to Goldman Sachs. Yesterday it was former Indiana ...more

AFL-CIO Embracining Single-Payer: A Good Sign - June 08, 2011             Good article from Labor Notes about the national AFL-CIO embracing single-payer. President Rich Trumka ...more

Recent HIstory of Tax Cuts - June 07, 2011 Zilani Jaid pens a good piece on ThinkProgress on looking back on the tenth anniversary of the George W. Bush tax cuts. They amount to $2.5 TRILLION ...more

SPORTS SATURDAY - June 04, 2011 A look at some people in the sports media (in no particular order. This will be a work in progress: PROGRESSIVES DAVE ZIRIN: He is the sports editor ...more

SIROTA: Is US Becoming Corporate Police State? - June 03, 2011 David Sirota lays out nicely what many have been thinking for some time now: that there is creeping fascism in the US. The use of  state power is ...more

R.I.P. GERONIMO PRATT - June 03, 2011 Elmer "Geronimo" Pratt, a Black Panther and target ot Richard Nixon's COINTELPRO program who spent 27 years in prison for a murder he almost ...more

Orwellian Lingo and Corporate Tax Dodging - June 02, 2011 The title speaks volumes about the media's routine use of Orwellian language. Buchheit could have expounded a bit on the word "we", ...more

Germany's Doing Things Right - June 02, 2011 Last fall I read Thomas Geoghegan's Were You Born on The Wrong Continent? and came away impressed. Geoghegan spent several months in Germany studying ...more

The GOP Field - June 01, 2011   "The 1928 Republican Convention began with a prayer. If the Good Lord can see fit to bless that bunch, the rest of us should be able to ...more

Elevator Speech for Tea Partier - May 31, 2011 A couple weeks ago I got into to something of a "debate" with a woman who sounded like a Tea Party-type on whether government controlled industry ...more

VT Becomes First State to Approve Single-Payer Healtchare - May 31, 2011 On Friday Vermont Governor Peter Shumlin (D) signed legislation making Vermont the first state in the nation to approve a single-payer healthcare system. ...more

Corporate America on Education: It Likes FOLLWERS - May 31, 2011 Excellent title to Glen Ford's piece "The Corporate Dream: Teachers as Temps" on both CommonDreams and The Black Agenda Report. It certainly ...more

SPORTS SATURDAY - May 28, 2011 Re the lockout of NFL players, I'm for--FOR--the players for several reasons. They pissed off owners and some of their media poodles by requesting ...more

Gazing Out on Memorial Day Weekend - May 27, 2011 Tonight after listening to "Left, Right and Center" on KCRW  I'll watch a movie about war, probably either "All Quiet on ...more

Plugging US Uncut - May 26, 2011 I can't pass up the opportunity to plug my newest group! In this week's Nation magazine Allison Kilkenny writes about how it is demanding that ...more

Who's in Charge? - May 25, 2011   Thom's blog American can no longer label tuna products as "dolphin safe"   If you thought our government was in charge of making ...more

Grab Bag - May 24, 2011 What a contrast between Malcolm X's "Ballot and the Bullet" speech, which I heard last week on KPFK honoring what would have been his 86th ...more

SPORTS SATURDAY - May 21, 2011 Since my candidate lost in the special election on Tuesday, I'll be moving on to support the Democratic candidate, Janice Hahn, in the upcoming election ...more

Remembering Malcolm X - May 20, 2011 I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that yesterday would have been Malcolm X's 86th birthday. Radio station KPFK ran shows all day yesterdays ...more

Squeezed! - May 20, 2011  David Rosen pens an intriguing piece "The Big Squeeze: How Americans Are Being Crushed By Financial Insecurity and Doubt". Some of ...more

Twelve Steps Toward Political Revelation - May 19, 2011     An outstanding new book by Walter Mosley. The title is apt since he suffered from addictions to alcohol and cigarettes earlier in his life. ...more

Elections, Female Snorts, Schwarzenegger - May 18, 2011   Damn! Another defeat for a progressive, non-machine candidate! With such a large field in the 36th CD I figured this might be our opportunity ...more

BANKS - May 17, 2011  "I hate banks. They serve only themselves. They're the first ones in with fees, the first ones out whenever there's trouble."--EARL WARREN "I ...more

SPORTS SATURDAY - May 14, 2011  On Thursday Yahoo listed the highest paid athletes in 2010. This is likely to produce some world-class bleating among Birthers and general 'snorts ...more

Electoral Politics - May 13, 2011 I emphasize direct action over voting in my posts but I am not quite to the Emma Goldman point where I want to completely neglect electoral politics. They ...more

Single-Payer Heatlhcare: Resilient as a Texas 'Roach - May 12, 2011 Early 1994. Then-President Bill Clinton introduced a bill which, while not what local progressives wanted, offered a window of opporutnity to get a single-payer ...more

Yeah! Les Leopold on Hedge Fund Managers - May 12, 2011  "7 Ways Hedge Funds Lie, Cheat and Steal", an overdue piece on the subject by investigative journalist Les Leopold. He begins ...more

Game Plan for Taking On Corporate America - May 11, 2011 One heckuva field of articles to choose from today! Bruce Levine lays out a very interesting game plan for taking on Corporate America on Truthout.org http://truthout.org/tenfold-path-guts-solidarity-and-defeat-corporate-elite/1305062921A ...more

Book By Another Chomsky - May 10, 2011 I recommend a book by another Chomsky--Aviva--They Take Our Jobs! 20 Myths About Immigration. It is both good read and informative, something you ...more

Distribution of the US Wealth since 1980 - May 10, 2011               While it's damned difficult talking to people on The Right about the ...more

SPORTS SATURDAY - May 07, 2011 ...more

Breitbart - May 06, 2011 Andrew Breitbart, the right-wing hoaxster whose antics brought down ACORN, is now attmepting to smear labor educators. QUESTION: why hasn't anyone ...more

A Monster of Our Creation - May 06, 2011 Apt title, outstanding article by Robert Scheer! Osama bin Laden was one of many such individuals, most of whom were dictators, who began ...more

A Victory for Labor! - May 05, 2011 About 500 workers at SoCal Rite Aide stores won a significant victory yesterday by signing a relatively strong first contract, including a wage increase, after ...more

Fantasizing as Film Producer - May 04, 2011  A couple friends mentioned over the weekend they still liked watching the cop shows, where the emphasis in on street crime; carjackings, bank robberies, ...more

Re Death of Osama Bin Laden - May 03, 2011 “There was no corner of the known world where some interest was not alleged to be in danger or under actual attack. If the interests were not Roman, ...more

SPORTS SATURDAY - April 30, 2011 Atheletes tend to have one thing the voting population needs more of: memory. Take this one example from baseball. STAN WILLIAMS was a big, ...more

Re Immigrants - April 29, 2011  From Aviva Chomsky's "They Take Our Jobs!" and 20 other myths about immigration:  Immigrants take American jobs.   Immigrants ...more

May 1 Retrospective - April 29, 2011          Sunday marks the day the rest of the world, or at least the developed world, celebrates Workers' ...more

States Rights - April 28, 2011 Going back at least as far as the infancy of the Civil Rights movement Republicans have been loud and unapologetic about states rights. Now it has come ...more

Geezer Uprising! - April 27, 2011 Another apt title. Dave Lindroff points out there is a very formidable obstacle standing in the way of proposed cuts to both Social Security and Medicare: Baby ...more

Does Government Know Who the Boss Is? - April 27, 2011 Dave Johnson has an interesting piece on Truthout.org by this name. Sometimes the government can surprise you. Obama named Hilda Solis, a modern day version ...more

Grab Bag - April 26, 2011 When the BP oil spill happened last year and residents of communities effected by it went to look at it, they were told to leave or face arrest--not by ...more

SPORTS SATURDAY - April 23, 2011 Now that MLB has placed the Dodgers in financial receivership, the question for me is, how can the city buy the team? As Dave Zirin writes in his excellent ...more

Retorts to Snorts' "We're #!" - April 22, 2011 Ripsnorts never cease to amaze with the "We're #1!" line, even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. One good way of combating ...more

Earth Day Observations, Reflections - April 22, 2011 I remember the very first Earth Day in 1970. I was a senior in high school and we did a skit in our government class. Richard Nixon was president. Nixon, ...more

KOCH BROS' THOUGHT CONTROL - April 21, 2011  A long piece in The Nation by Mark Ames and Mike Elk "Big Brothers: Thought Control at Koch"  that is both interesting and ...more

1st Anniversary of BP Oil Spill - April 20, 2011 "NIL, Baby, NIL". Another great headline, playing on ripsnorts' line from the 2008 elections, "Drill, Baby, Drill". David Rosen nails ...more

Big US Firms Increase Hiring Abroad - April 19, 2011 BY DAVID WESSEL U.S. multinational corporations, the big brand-name companies that employ a fifth of all American workers, have been hiring abroad ...more

HEDGES: Throw Out The Moneychangers! - April 19, 2011 Damn! How do you pass up on a piece with this title? You don't! It includes most of what Hedges said last Friday in a speech outside a BofA ...more

SPORTS SATURDAY - April 16, 2011  On almost this day (4/25) in 1976 Rick Monday, then playing center field for the Chicago Cubs, stopped two fans who had jumped down ...more

Tax Day Cometh - April 15, 2011 Chuck Collins lays out a wealth of useful info for activists in his article "On Tax Day, Remember The Tax Dodgers". Here are some of ...more

Budget Battle - April 14, 2011  I applauded President Obama for coming right out and saying that we cannot afford to keep giving millionaires and billionaires tax breaks while ...more

U.S. Robin Hood Movement, Political Comedy - April 13, 2011 You've gotta love the title of Les Leopold's latest piece on Alternet.org: Hedge Fund Gamblers Earn the Same In One Hour As a Middle-Class Household ...more

From Several Fronts... - April 12, 2011 FROM... The PROGRESSIVE DEMOCRATIC CLUB ended up with a dual endorsement for Marcy Winograd and Janice Hahn in the election for the 36th ...more

SPORTS SATURDAY - April 09, 2011 I've been a sports fan all my life, but the past 25 years I've been much more fond of college sports. Why? A couple of reasons. For one, in college ...more

By The Numbers on Corporate Taxes - April 08, 2011  Paul Bucheit's "The Mindless Mantra of Wall Street: The Corporate Tax Rate Is Too High" on CommonDreams has a wealth of good stats for ...more

GOP Recklessness vs Dem Bambiness - April 07, 2011       Ari Berman lays it out nicely in his piece for The Nation. This is a case of Democratic Bambiness succumbing to Republican ...more

SCHEER GOES YARD! - April 06, 2011  That deafening roar you hear in the distance isn't coming from Connecticut Huskies fans, rather from progressives everywhere cheering Robert Scheer ...more

More Proof Corporate America Runs The Show - April 05, 2011  "In the Soviet Union, government controls industry. In the U.S., industry controls government." The late environmental novelist EDWARD ...more

MANNING MARABLE - April 02, 2011 MANNING MARABLE, a great progressive who combined scholarship and activism, died yesterday at the age of 60. Marable's 600 page book on Malcolm X will ...more

SPORTS SATURDAY - April 02, 2011 The Final Four. I haven't watched that much of the tourney except for my Bruins losing to Flordia--again--and snippets of games here and there. But there's ...more

New Addition to Obama's Reelection Team - April 01, 2011  Further proof that Corporate America has a near-stranglehold on this Distraction: the choice of Jim Messina to head his reelection team. Messina ...more

Some Advice on Taking On Corporate America - March 31, 2011 Les Leopold offers some great advice as to what we progressives (and others) can do to take on Wall Street and the rest of Corporate as well as one ...more

Scheer on Obama's Corporate Addiction - March 30, 2011 Robert Scheer is on the mark in his column "Fatal Addiction". Obama is not nearly what I hoped he'd be as far as standing up to corporate power. ...more

DECLARE ALL-OUT WAR ON CORPORATE AMERICA - March 29, 2011  Not that it's really all that surprising, but Congressman Eric Cantor (R-VA) admitted in an interview on NPR that one of the Republicans' goals ...more

THE PROTEST - March 28, 2011 Saturday was everything I hoped it would be. Estimates ranged as high as 20,000 attendees. Maria Elena Durazo was there. Mahlen Mitchell, the charismatic ...more

SPORTS SATURDAY - March 26, 2011 Dave Zirin goes yard in a short piece about the NFL and its owners. They are some of the richest and most well-connected people on the planet. They ...more

Common Enemy - March 25, 2011 General Electric is different things to different people--or organizations. It likes to outsource and bust unions, so labor views it one way. It loves ...more

Looking Forward to Saturday Labor March/Rally - March 24, 2011 The labor march in downtown LA on Saturday will be larger than expected, a helluva good thing! I was beginning to become concerned that the momentum gained ...more

Scott Walker Didn't Invent Union Busting - March 23, 2011 Someone might get the impression that union busting began with Scott Walker, the governor of Wisconsin. Not so. It has been around a while, burgeoning ...more

Some Good Signs - March 22, 2011 Last night at a meeting of one of my Democratic clubs the evening ended strong. First a guy gave a slide show of what's going on in Wisconsin and afterward ...more

A Different Sort of March Madness - March 21, 2011 Great article by Paul Bucheit on CommonDreams. http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/03/21, "March Madness for Corporate Tax Dodgers". Just a ...more

On The Environmental Front... - March 21, 2011 President Obama is surrounded by people who favor nuclear energy and hasn't indicated any change of heart despite what happened in Japan last week. Jerry ...more

SPORTS SATURDAY - March 19, 2011 Basketball is in the spotlight with The Tourney in full swing. As far as politics go, it is the most progressive sport, although baseball has a better ...more

The Unemployed - March 18, 2011  Paul Krugman has a poignant piece "The Forgotten Millions" on the unemployed today, a topic that hits home with me. Despite polls ...more

All Paths Lead Back To... - March 17, 2011 It's no longer a secret. Trace progressives'--society's--problems back to their source and you'll arrive at either Corporate America's or the uber-rich's ...more

Capitalism is Beyond Reproach? - March 16, 2011 Gleaning some of the gems from the Gary Null Show in the wee hours of Wednesaday morning...Over the past 40 years we have seen our standard of ...more

Mix Match - March 15, 2011   Dean Baker lays out some interesting points in "The Key to Rebuilding Workers' Power: Unrig the Rules." He says getting the Fed to devalue ...more

POWER CONCEDES... - March 14, 2011 Love the way Chris Hedges lays it out there and mixes in good, relevant history in his latest column, "POWER CONCEDES NOTHING WITHOUT A STRUGGLE"http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/03/14 "Big" ...more

SPORTS SATURDAY - March 12, 2011 I know it's not football season yet but...One thing that kinda sticks in my craw is the fact that the city of San Pedro goes so wholeheartedly for USC. ...more

Random Thoughts on Madison - March 11, 2011     John Nichols writers on his Nation blog about how Michael Moore correctly sensed a "magic moment" both last Saturday and earlier ...more

Unprecedented? - March 10, 2011 On Pacifica Radio this morning Amy Goodman asked Michael Moore if the restructuring and subsequent signing of the bill stripping public employees of collective ...more

Elevator Speech for Direct Action - March 09, 2011 You're in an elevator with a fellow progressive who cringes at the mere mention of direct action and is content with limiting his/her activism solely ...more

The More, The Merrier - March 08, 2011 Damn it's great to see like-minded groups forming and immediately jumping into the fray! I'm talking about People's Action Network in Washington DC, which ...more

Krugman, Herbert Confirm Beliefs - March 07, 2011 In his column yesterday (3/6) Paul Krugman  confirms what many of us have known instinctually for the past decade: that having a college degree is ...more

SPORTS SATURDAY - March 05, 2011    Will the labor dispute between NFL players and owners lead to a lockout? The Nation’s Dave Zirin joined former Denver Broncos player ...more

SPORTS SATURDAY - March 05, 2011  Determined to find something from either the MLBPA or at least a player, preferably the Milwaukee Brewers, I went to the union's website and found ...more

Working Class Dividing Itself, Boomers - March 04, 2011 Les Leopold writes about how the working class has become divided and places the blame on the White House, Congress and, to a lesser extent, the labor ...more

Hodgepodge - March 03, 2011 FROM... LEE FANG, THINKPROGRESS: Fang attempted to pin down Tim Pawlenty, the Governor of Minnesota and a potential GOP presidential candidate next ...more

Obama's Digression on Healthcare Through The Years - March 02, 2011 One only need look at President Obama's digression on the subject of healthcare to get an understanding of how things work:  As a state senator ...more

More on Hedge Funds, Managers - March 01, 2011 With all the hoopla surrounding the "pampered/overpaid/thuggish" public employees in Wisconsin, I couldn't help but think back to Les Leopold's ...more

From Moore, Hedges - February 28, 2011  FROM... MICHAEL MOORE: You'd never know it from the US media, but there's more to Canada than what's going on with Justin Bieber. Canada is ...more

HEDGEFUND MANAGERS, NOT PUBLIC EMPLOYEES - February 27, 2011  It occurred to me yesterday while chatting with people at the first US Uncut event that there has been something conspicusously absent ...more

SPORTS SATURDAY - February 26, 2011 With the battle in Madison still raging, I'm becoming a bit dismayed that no one from the Milwaukee Brewers or the players' union has said anything ...more

More on WI...... - February 25, 2011 From The Progressive, what's going down in Madison right now:  Is more than just public unions. It is the fate of the middle class. And, by extension, ...more

"The Prank" and More on Unions - February 24, 2011 Damn I love the "prank" call made to Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker by a progressive blogger posing as (billionaire) David Koch yesterday. What ...more

Unions, US Uncut - February 23, 2011 Unions should embrace US Uncut. For one, the first action is against B of A which, like a number of other banks, received substantial bailout ...more

Madison, Unions, Etc - February 22, 2011 Unions should embrace US Uncut. Why? Because they are targeting its foes. Take B of A, the target of its first action this Saturday. It not only ...more

Encouraging Signs At Dem Club Mtg - February 21, 2011 ...more

SPORTS SATURDAY - February 19, 2011 The news below gladdened my soul. I have long lamented why more pro football players have not become involved in labor issues both during and especially ...more

Dividing - February 18, 2011 Dividing. Corporate America has always done it, too often successfully. Go back to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. Who ended up taking the heat for ...more

Mixmatch - February 17, 2011 http://www.alternet.org/economy/149942/is_wisconsin_our_egypt_15%2C000_protest_off-the-wall_right-wing_governor%27s_policies/Fifteen thousand people showed ...more

Games Pols Play - February 16, 2011 Twice during Arnold Scwharzenegger's two terms as gov a single-payer bill reached his desk. And, not surprisingly, both times he vetoed them. Now ...more

Getting Closer To The Real Source - February 15, 2011        RICHARD WOLFF: There's little discernable difference between the budget proposals of the major parties. He describes ...more

Democracy Here and Abroad - February 14, 2011 Yesterday at the Progressive Democrat Club monthly meeting a woman said in no uncertain terms, "Republicans are waging war on the middle class! We've ...more

SPORTS SATURDAY - February 12, 2011 I agree with Dave Zirin. The Packers' Super Bowl win was "one for the people". Like he (Zirin) says, it might not have been Tahrir Square in ...more

Meet The Anti-(public) Union Network - February 11, 2011 Discover The Network Out To Crush Our Public Workers campaignforamericasfuture.org  By Dave Johnson Johnson does a helluva job laying out how ...more

Obama's Response to Egypt - February 10, 2011   ttp://www.truthdig.com/report/item/hey_obama_read_wikileaks_20110209/I agree with Robert Scheer's column "Hey Obama, Read WikiLeaks" on ...more

Clearing Out The Notebook - February 09, 2011  While waiting at the food bank this morning I went through all the stuff I'd pilfered off the Internet in my "job search" lately I came ...more

Following The Brits' Lead - February 08, 2011   Johann Hari has a great piece on Alternet about how everyday Brits are rising up to make corporate tax cheats pay up. How did they do it? It began ...more

Income Inequality, Hedges - February 07, 2011 This might dismay a lot of ripsnorts and delusionals--not necessarily a bad thing--but according to the CIA's World Fact Book, Egypt rates ahead of the ...more

SPORTS SATURDAY - February 05, 2011 A friend e-mailed me yesterday asking my thoughts on the Super Bowl tomorrow. He said he had no rooting interest, but was going with the Packers since ...more

Acting Outside ELECTORAL Politics - February 04, 2011  I've been pushing in previous posts for progressives to act outside the "electoral box". Johann Hari lays out an interesting plan in the ...more

Corporations Have It Coming, Going Re Pols - February 03, 2011 A couple of interesting pieces by Lee Fang: 1. As the KOCH BROS were amassing fantastic profits over the past several years they were also LAYING ...more

What Do Corporations REALLY Think Of Democracies? - February 02, 2011 In Amy Goodman's piece "Why Corporations Choose Despots Over Democracies" on Truthdig today she writes, Egypt has been the second-largest ...more

Why Not Here? - February 01, 2011 Wow! Two million people protesting in Egypt! They've got every right to; half the population living in poverty, rising food prices, a corrupt government, ...more

Herding Donkeys - January 31, 2011 Some observations from Ari Berman's Herding Donkeys: Howard Dean deserved much better from the Obama Adminstration after his near-masterful performance ...more

SPORTS SATURDAY - January 29, 2011   I would have like to have seen the Jets win last weekend. Their only Super Bowl appearance was in 1969. To give that some historical perspective, ...more

Back to "Class", A Different GOP - January 28, 2011 Corporate Crime and No Punishment  Russell Mokhiber,  http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/01/28-6 Succinct piece on a fact of American ...more

Remembering Howard Zinn - January 27, 2011   On the first anniversary of Howard Zinn's death I found this column from the Novermber, 2000 issue of The Progressive: "A Campaign ...more

Voting vs Our Own Intersts - January 26, 2011   Re David Morris' "State of the Union: Why Do We Act Against Our Own Self-Interest?" My snap answer is, because of a half-century of ...more

Two From The (NY) Times - January 25, 2011 BOB HERBERT, "RAISING FALSE ALARMS"http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/25/opinion/25herbert.html?ref=bobherbert"If there is a better program ...more

Corporate Power - January 24, 2011 Keith Olberman's firing does, indeed, cast a chill over the remaining employees at MSNBC--Ed Schultz, Rachel Maddow--who know without hearing anything ...more

SPORTS SATURDAY - January 22, 2011  Damn I miss college football! My picks for tomorrow's games:   NFC--Green Bay. Why? Because it keeps the focus on the ...more

What's So Special About The Financial Sector?  The first time I've seen a piece by Les Leopold in a while and he really nails it on both CommonDreams...more

Conflict of Interest, Class Warfare - January 20, 2011  "A Supreme Conflict of Interest" Common Cause has sent out an e-mail about how Supreme Court Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence ...more

Wikileaks & Bof A - January 19, 2011 "I hate banks. They serve only themselves.They're the first ones in with fees, the first ones out whenever there's trouble."--EARL WARRENI ...more

More MLK - January 18, 2011 "In our glorious fight for civil rights, we must guard against being fooled by false slogans, as 'right-to-work.' It provides no 'rights' and no 'works.' ...more

SPORTS SATURDAY - January 15, 2011 Almost as I finish this post I will be off to watch the Green Bay Packers vs the Atlanta Falcons play-off game. This one's a win-win for me. Why? Because ...more

MLK - January 14, 2011   The day before marching in a parade honoring Martin Luther King I will devote a post to his memory. An editorial in The Capital Times (WI) asks ...more

Loughner's No Terrorist? - January 13, 2011           Why, asks Sahar Aziz on Truthout, is Jared Lee Loughner not classfied as a terrorist? While he is suffering from ...more

Hartung on War Profiteering - January 12, 2011            William Hartung writes a poignant piece on war-profiteering onTomDispatch. KBR, Dyncorp, ...more

El Pulpo, 2011 - January 11, 2011   Frank Norris wrote The Octopus about a century ago documenting the seemingly endless reach of the Southern Pacific Railroad. Its reach was ...more

The Pentagon, Electoral Politics, Misc - January 10, 2011 Nick Turse has an interesting article today re the total number of military bases we have both in the US and abroad. http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/01/10-0 Turse ...more

SPORTS SATURDAY - January 08, 2011 I'm looking forward to Monday's game between Auburn and Oregon. I'll be pulling for the latter, since it has never won a national championship in football ...more

Last PR, Misc - January 07, 2011 Obama's choices for replacing Rahm Emmanuel and Larry Summers disappointed, though not surprised me. There is a reason for this: corporate interests dominate ...more

More PR - January 06, 2011     That public employees' unions have been under a relentless PR attack over the past year is not surprising when you consider that unions ...more

Adam Smith - January 05, 2011 Conservatives like to quote Adam Smith--selectively. One of his quotes I'll bet you've never heard is (paraphrased), 'Why is it that employers may join ...more

PR - January 04, 2011 On New Year's Eve the state of New York laid off 900 workers. When NY City residents were unable to dig themselves out of the record snow in the ensuing ...more

Looking Critically at Capitlism - January 03, 2011        Published on Saturday, January 1, 2011 by the Guardian/UK  Rick Wolff echoes what many have been saying about ...more

2010 Honor Roll - December 30, 2010 John Nichols' 2010 Honor Roll is enjoyable as heck. Some samplings from right off my head: Most Valuable Senator: Bernie Sanders. This is as unanimous ...more

'Snorts, Sports, Misc - December 29, 2010 GARY NULL made a good point to a caller in the wee hours re dealing with people who refer to people who listen to KPFK as "left fringe" ...more

Big Pharma - December 28, 2010  The pharmaceutical industry is the salt of the earth. There's no other way to put it. It burns taxpayers through Medicare and Medicaid, and pays ...more

Viewing America Through European Eyes - December 27, 2010 Democratic Ramshield. Damn that's a helluva name for a writer or progressive website! And it produced a helluva article today on Alternet:   Then ...more

GOP Hypocrisy Not New - December 23, 2010 The Census Report that Texas and other Red States will pick up seats may work to progressives' advantage. Why? Because 50-percent of the increase is from ...more

Alliance for Democracy (AfD) - December 22, 2010 The Alliance for Democracy is an organization whose mission is to rein in corporate power. It formed in 1995 after Ronnie Dugger, the founder of the Texas ...more

No Doubt About Who's Calling The Shots - December 21, 2010 I haven't followed developments on the upcoming vote on Internet neutrality as closely as I should have, but judging by what I've heard on KPFK and read ...more

Bits 'n Pieces - December 20, 2010  Chris Hedges begins his weekly column http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/bitter_memories_of_war_on_the_way_to_jail_20101220/ reflecting on ...more

SPORTS SATURDAY - December 18, 2010 The pickins are a little slim for about a week; just a few college and high school bowl games. Plenty of hoops, but I won't get into those until the beginning ...more

Haiti & WikiLeaks - December 17, 2010   The recent disclosures by WikiLeaks shed light on recent history in Haiti. Democratically-elected president Jean-Bertrand Aristide has been twice ...more

Corporate Logos for Cash in LAUSD No Surprise - December 16, 2010 The announcement that LAUSD will allow corporate logos in order to raise some badly-needed cash comes as no surprise, given that corporations have already ...more

Why Electoral Politics Alone Are A Dead End - December 15, 2010 We need more than simply getting the correct candidates into office. I have been trying to convince fellow activists of this well-before the midterm ...more

Moore on Assange - December 14, 2010 "Why I'm Posting Bail Money For Julian Assange" By Michael Moore, CommonDreams.org,  12/14/10 We were taken to war on a lie. Hudreds of ...more

Hartmann on Healthcare - December 13, 2010 MEDICARE "PART E"--FOR EVERYBODY By Thom Hartmann, T.O., 12/13/10 Great piece! Timely, took since CA progressives will soon be working ...more

SPORTS SATURDAY - December 11, 2010 Earlier this week the Orioles' DH Luke Scott unleashed some real "pearls of wisdom", some TeaParty-esque comments about President Obama and how ...more

Selling War - December 10, 2010 Found an interesting new website called QUESTION MORE. http://rt.com/usa/news/usa-wars-iraq-propaganda/ The Pentagon budgets half a billion dollars ...more

Unions - December 09, 2010 MAKING UNIONS MATTER AGAIN Jane McAlevey, The Nation, 12/2 McAlevey nails a couple things I've always believed:  While it is practical ...more

Mixed Bag - December 08, 2010 http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/blog/big_league_stew/post/Answer-Man-Luke-Scott-talks-Nugent-hunting-and?urn=mlb-292970After reading Luke Scott's interview ...more

No Denying Media is a Big 'Ol Corporate Toady - December 07, 2010  http://www.alternet.org/news/149098/wikileaks_exposes_the_corporate_media%27s_deference_to_power Several posts ago I went into Lee Fang's piece ...more

Powerful But Gloomy - December 06, 2010 http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/happy_as_a_hangman_20101206/  Chris Hedges' weekly column (above) "Happy as a Hangman" opens ...more

Sports Saturday - December 04, 2010 Tonight I watch my beloved--and this year beleaguered--UCLA Bruins try and salvage a miserable season against cross-town rival USC. Why am I a UCLA fan? Well, ...more

The Media, too - December 03, 2010 Corporations have their endless tentacles in the Fourth Estate, too. Lee Fang writes on ThinkProgresshttp://thinkprogress.org/2010/10/23/koch-meeting-journalists/ about ...more

A Different Take on Taxes, Misc - December 02, 2010 Europe's take on politics is different--and, in my view, better--than ours. Europeans elect their pols to be good stewards of the public's money. In return, ...more

GOP "Compassion" - December 01, 2010 As Republicans blocked an emergency measure to extended benefits to the unemployed, I could not help but think back--way back--to the 1992 presidential ...more

Returning to a Locally-based Economy - November 30, 2010   http://www.truth-out.org/stop-them-eating-my-town65481 Thom Hartmann begins with a helluva quote in an article that is an adaptation from a chapter ...more

Doing Something! - November 29, 2010 ...more

Propaganda - November 27, 2010 I found this blog on the Center for Media and Democracy site. Part of taking on Corporate media will entail educating the public about how corporations ...more

Yeah! Action! - November 24, 2010 Unions in Portugal are leading the first general strike in 22 years to protest cuts in social services. Students in the UK are protesting massive fee hikes. ...more

Suite Crime - November 23, 2010   Politicians like to talk about getting tough on street crime. Few, however, want to deal with the issue of what Ralph Nader calls, "suite ...more

A Change in Strategy - November 22, 2010 Last week Sarah Seltzer wrote, "The 16 Dumbest Things Americans Believe". Danny Goldberg has now written a piece which could easily be a sequel, ...more

Bernie Sanders - November 20, 2010 ...more

Lessons From Midterms - November 19, 2010 http://www.truth-out.org/midterm-elections-puncture-illusions-liberals-are-more-afraid-mobilizing-their-own-base-than-they-arStanley Aronowitz lists a ...more

Healthcare - November 18, 2010 Donna Smith asks "What does private insurance add to US health?" in her article on CommonDreams by the same name. What Value Does Private Insurance ...more

Random Thoughts About Subsidies - November 17, 2010 I often think back to a Progressive Magazine article I read about the development of Taxol, a drug used in the treatment of certain types of cancer that ...more

Education is Corporatized, Too - November 16, 2010  Paul Thomas writes http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/11/16-4about how education has become corporatized over the past few decades, citing current ...more

Class Warfare--Again! - November 15, 2010   More and more "class warfare" is becoming mainstream. Robert Reich, for example, Secretary of Labor in the Clinton Administration, has ...more

Football - November 13, 2010 Some sports musings today... After I watch UCLA on television this afternoon I will head out to see a community college football game. It will be ...more

Veteran's Day, Proving Adam Smith correct - November 12, 2010 ...more

Student Fee Hikes Proposed in CA, Student Protests Across The Pond - November 10, 2010 In the US: Fees may be going up again for UC students. University of California president Mark Yudof is proposing an 8% fee hike, to take effect next year. ...more

Obama's Trip to India - November 09, 2010   Re the President's trip to India. Two hundred business executives accompanied him, including ones from Wal-Mart. How many labor reps were in ...more

Untitiled - November 08, 2010 Chris Hedges raises some cogent points in his column "A Recipe for Fascism" on truthdig.org: 1. The liberal class, which remains rooted ...more

Single-payer healthcare - November 06, 2010   Over the past several weeks there has been an outbreak of cholera in Haiti. To all those who oppose Obamacare and especially any single-payer (Medicare, ...more

Labor, Grayson - November 06, 2010 Good article in Labor Notes http://www.labornotes.org/2010/10/secondary-strikes-are-primary-labor-revival about secondary strikes. What are they? It ...more

Round 'n Round - November 05, 2010 I've written in a host of posts about the revolving door between industry and government. Tuesday the trend continued in fine fashion:  Dan Coats, ...more

Hartmann, Rosen, Misc - November 04, 2010      ...more

Things are OK in CA - November 03, 2010 http://www.alternet.org/story/148723/it%27s_not_the_end_of_the_world_--_7_things_progressives_need_to_keep_in_mind_about_last_night%27s_gop_%27wave%27/comments/ Well, ...more

Giants, Early Election Observations - November 02, 2010   At 3: 30 PM we here at United Democrats of the South Bay have some cause for optimism. Our base's turnout has been reported to be much higher than ...more

Fair Trade/"Free" Trade, World Series/Equal Distribution of the Wealth - November 01, 2010 Check out article by Lori Wallach and Todd Tucker of Public Citizen on "Free" vs Fair Trade agreements. http://www.alternet.org/economy/148666/candidates_across_u.s._attack_jobs_and_tax_dollars_going_overseas_but_ignore_the_real_heart_of_the_problem While ...more

Working in Local Campaign Offices - October 30, 2010 Short post today...There seems to be a correlation between the polls and the number of volunteers we get, at least this year. Jerry Brown has pulled away ...more

Opposition Research, Sports, Misc - October 29, 2010 ...more

Supreme Court, What if... - October 28, 2010  Thom Hartmann points out in his blog yesterday the pro-Chamber of Commerce bent of the current Supreme Court. Since Samuel Alito joined the court ...more

Still More France - October 27, 2010 http://www.alternet.org/economy/148623/france_riots_over_pension_reforms_while_americans_lose_their_homes_in_record_numbers_with_hardly_any_protest Mike ...more

Back to France - October 26, 2010 The French are at it again. And US workers should be paying attention. That means you, too, ripsnorts. Set aside the garbage, macho talk about the French ...more

Back to Class Warfare - October 25, 2010  "We can have democracy in this country, or we can have tremendous wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both."-- ...more

Musings About Local Democratic/Progressive Politics - October 24, 2010 As I write this I'm listening to talk (gossip) about local politics. This is in the city of Carson, one of the most racially diverse but solidly Democratic ...more

Sports & Equitable Distribution of the Weatlh - October 23, 2010 Yesterday the Texas Rangers qualified for their first trip to the World Series with a 6-1 win over the New York Yankees. Later today the San Francisco ...more

LABOR QUOTES - October 23, 2010 "Labor is prior to and independent of capital. Capital is but the fruit of labor and never would have existed had labor not come first. Labor ...more

Hedges, Sports - October 21, 2010 HEDGESJust finished reading Chris Hedges' Empire of Illusion and I highly recommend it. One particular part of the book caught my attention, a quote by ...more

The Homeless as a Target for Yahoos - October 20, 2010   http://www.alternet.org/news/148486/%22kicked%2C_set_on_fire%2C_beaten_to_death%22%3A_shocking_rise_of_violence_against_america%27s_homeless/?page=entire The ...more

Midterms - October 20, 2010 Just heard that JOE SESTAK, who defeated the newly re-converted Arlen Specter in the Democratic Primary in Pennsylvania last June, has taken the lead ...more

Conservatives' Selective Quotes - October 19, 2010  Conservatives like to quote Adam Smith, sometimes at length. But here's one of his quotes I'll bet you've never heard them utter: We rarely ...more

Yesteryear's GOP, Distribution of Wealth in Sports - October 19, 2010  http://www.thomhartmann.com/blog/2010/10/republican-party-has-lurched-so-far-right-dwight-eisenhower-would-not-be-elected   Thom Hartmann's ...more

Fightback on Social Security - October 18, 2010   Rick Wolff's "Another Outrage: Pushing Back Social Security Benefits" on truthout.org. The Obama Administration, like Sarkozy's in France, ...more

Protests in France Over Retirement Age - October 16, 2010  I haven't done a lot of opposition research but I happened to come across the following site in looking for more news about the French protesting ...more

Obstacles for Activists: American Exceptionalism, Sanctity of Defense Spending - October 15, 2010  AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM Germany performs well in the global economy. Like we once did, it makes things. Its workers do well, too. Very ...more

A Different View of Public vs Private Ownership - October 14, 2010         Michael Parenti's piece "Death and Profits: The Utility Protection Racket" on CommonDreams.org merits a read. The ...more

Nader's "17 Traditions" - October 13, 2010 Highly recommend Ralph Nader's The Seventeen Traditions for both a short and amusing read, and for some good insight into Corporate America's #1 Nemesis. ...more

Debate, Media, Misc - October 13, 2010 Re the debate last night between Jerry Brown and Meg Whitman: Both candidates refrained from using the word "poor people" and Brown ...more

Robert Reich, From The Activist Front - October 12, 2010   ROBERT REICH has been outstanding lately on economic issues and was so this morning on Margaret Prescod's "Sojourner Truth" show ...more

GOP QUOTES From Today, Yesteryear - October 09, 2010  "Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would ...more

Wordsmithing - October 08, 2010 Short blog today. Calling Democrats from the office in Carson, I've coined a new term for Whitman and Fiorina collectively: Masters of Outsource. ...more

Deindustrialization, Reflecting - October 07, 2010 Having read Michael Snyder's piece below on the deindustrialization of America I can't help but reflect back on the way Torrance (CA) used to be. ...more

Long Term Unemployment - October 06, 2010 http://www.alternet.org/economy/148421/the_black_hole_of_long-term_unemployment/?page=entire This is a subject dear to my heart for obvious reasons. The ...more

March to Nowhere - October 05, 2010 http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/march_to_nowhere_20101005/ CHRIS HEDGES wasn't impressed with the One Nation march on Saturday.  The liberal ...more

Peek-a-Boo... - October 04, 2010 http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/03/weekinreview/03mcintire.html?_r=1&ref=mike_mcintire Great stat gleaned from Mike McIntire's "Secret Sponsors" ...more

Some Labor History - October 02, 2010 One hundred years ago yesterday a bomb exploded at the Los Angeles Times Building on First and Broadway, killing 21 people and injuring 100 others. Late ...more

More on Protests in Europe - October 01, 2010 From The Guardian, a report by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) that there could be more social unrest because 'it fears global unemployment ...more

Shifting The Terms of The Struggle - September 30, 2010 http://www.alternet.org/economy/148339/left_versus_right_is_meaningless_--_it%27s_us_versus_the_corporations   Barry Ritholtz nails it in his piece ...more

Grab Bag - September 29, 2010 Last night I couldn't help but be amazed by the way gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman attacked unions as soon as the mic went on in her debate with Jerry ...more

Health Care and CA Elections - September 28, 2010 http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/09/28-8   Henry Abrons of Physicians for a National Heatlhcare Program (PNHP) writes about what if ...more

Equitable (Re) Distribution of Wealth in ...Sports! - September 27, 2010 A topic dear to my heart. My ultimate wish for the US--or global economy. It is there for the viewing in Major League Baseball in the final week of the ...more

Update on General Strike in Spain 9/29 - September 25, 2010   http://www.culturespain.com/living-in-spain/culture-spain-%E2%80%93-update-on-the-general-strike-in-spain-29th-september-2010-the-politics-of-apathy After ...more

British journalist/author Paul Mason appeared on KPFK's Democracy Now! show this morning with Amy Goodman and Juan...more

Poverty Figures, Misc - September 23, 2010  Yesterday I resumed going to the food bank I have been approaching two years (in January). While waiting in line I overheard a woman, who said she'll ...more

Class Warfare - September 21, 2010     Class warfare. Republicans dislike the rhetoric. But they really don't mind it. And why would they? They constantly win. Eric Cantor accused ...more

"Enthusiam Gap" in Upcoming Elections - September 20, 2010 http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/09/20-6 David Sirota, "Who is Responsible for the Progressive "Enthusiam Gap"? In a nutshell, ...more

Blackwater & Other Corps, sports - September 18, 2010 ...more

Whiny Billionaires - September 17, 2010 Poverty Rises as Wall Street Billionaires Whine http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/09/17-5 Yesterday the Census Bureau reported that the poverty level ...more

Elections: A Waste of Time? - September 16, 2010 Norman Soloman wrote an article on CommonDreams.org that may have been a response to Chris Hedges' column on Monday entitled "Why Election Are Not ...more

General Strike in Spain, Dems - September 15, 2010   Spain has got it right. The General Strike scheduled exactly two weeks from today (9/29) is exactly the direction we in the US should be going. ...more

Victory for Carwasheros - September 14, 2010 http://www.alternet.org/economy/148172/victory_for_the_carwasheros_--_their_bosses_weren%27t_just_greedy%2C_they_were_criminals_/   Hail ...more

Agreeing With Hedges Again - September 13, 2010   Do Not Pity the Democrats http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/do_not_pity_the_democrats_20100913/ Posted on Sep 13, 2010   By ...more

Documentary on Obesity, Misc - September 11, 2010 Watched an interesting documentary on obesity "Killer at Large" last night that featured Jim Hightower, Ralph Nader, Michael Pollan ...more

Back to BP - September 10, 2010  http://www.prwatch.org/node/9038Why is Oil Giant BP Helping Develop California Schools Environmental Curriculum?Should an oil giant responsible for ...more

No Doubts About Who' s In Charge - September 09, 2010 This morning environmentalist Bill McKibben was on KPFK's "Democracy Now!" talking about Jimmy Carter. It was 31 years  he told the nation ...more

Politics - September 08, 2010 Now that it is officially political season, some politics... The way for Dems to mitigate the damage that many predict in November is for the White ...more

Corporate America Knows What It's Doing - September 07, 2010  Laurence Lewis writes an interesting article on Alternet that while Glenn Beck is a charlatan/carnival barker with his antics, the people behind ...more

General Strike in Spain 9/29 - September 04, 2010 http://www.wafb.com/Global/story.asp?S=13080256 Largely unknown in the US, unions in Spain have scheduled a general strike for Wednesday, ...more

PR - September 03, 2010 http://www.truth-out.org/flying-flag-faking-news62920 John Pilger, "Flying The Flag, Faking The News" on truthout.org, gets into Edward ...more

The Source of the Surge - September 02, 2010 http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/09/02-0 Tom Andrews writers on CommonDreams on how increased activism and anti-war sentiment among the public was ...more

More Honduras, Bill of Rights for CA Middle Class - September 01, 2010 Came across the "Friendly List of Dictators" compiled by Dennis Bernstein and Laura Sydell this morning and thought about Honduras. Sure ...more

Honduras - August 31, 2010 Interesting segment yesterday on "Strategy Center" on KPFK. Antonio Gonzalez's guest spoke talked about Hondura a little over a year after ...more

Democracy in America - August 30, 2010 James Kwak, who co-writes with Simon Johnson on "Baseline Scenario", says in a piece today that what Alexis de Toqueville observed in the US ...more

An "Elevator Speech" to Persuade Workers to Unionize - August 28, 2010 Yesterday I wrote about a possible "30-second business card/elevator speech" about your vision for the US to while drinking in ...more

Beck&MLK - August 27, 2010 http://www.alternet.org/news/147993/glenn_beck%E2%80%99s_mlk_dream_is_perverse%2C_but_what%27s_our_vision/ Glenn Beck has nerve to compare himself to ...more

Liquidating The American Empire - August 26, 2010 Chalmers Johnson's "Liquidating Our Empire. Three Good Reasons and Ten Steps to Take to Do So" is similar in format though longer than April ...more

Monsanto - August 25, 2010   http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/08/25-3  Monsanto is omnipresent, as April Davila discovered recently. She encountered ...more

Corporations' Relentlessness - August 24, 2010   Arshad Khan's piece on Commondreams.org "Democracy or Lobbyocracy?" 8/22 explains nicely why we should take direct action against ...more

Mosque at Ground Zero - August 23, 2010 "Bigotry is Corporate America's 12th man." How's that for mixing the lingo of sports and politics? I think it fits. The current controversy ...more

General Observation - August 21, 2010 In politics you know how much something challenges corporate power by the amount of resistance it receives. The controversy surrounding Elizabeth Warren's ...more

Misc - August 20, 2010 Being introverted and not especially organized, I find the Internet a Godsend. But that said, I don't think it is a substitute for good, in-depth, investigative ...more

Affecting Meaningful Change: What it will take. - August 19, 2010  You gotta love Michael Moore. The mere mention of his name causes many ripsnorting yahoos to grit their teeth and mutter to themselves. On top of ...more

Unions' Image - August 18, 2010 ...more

CEO vs GOV/PRES - August 17, 2010 According to conventional wisdom, being the CEO of a company is identical to being the head of an executive branch of government. I challenge this. Two ...more

Bombing of LA Times Bldg - August 16, 2010   October 1 marks the 100th anniversary of the bombing of the Los Angeles Times Building, then on First and Broadway. Two members of the Iron ...more

Getting Radical - August 14, 2010 Listening to Michael Hudson on KPFK yesterday afternoon I learned of a general strike planned for Spain on September 29. Didn't hear hide nor hare ...more

Democratic Elites - August 13, 2010 http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/08/13-8 David Sirota laments the defeat of Andrew Romanoff, a true progressive, to the Democratic establishment ...more

Unions and Corporate Power - August 12, 2010 Unions are an unmistakable challenge to corporate power. Republicans understand this very well and will fall on their swords to keep them away from their ...more

Dan Rostenkowski passed away today at the age of 82. I remember him when I first became active in 1988. He spoke at the Democratic National Convention...more

Beating Up on Public Employees - August 10, 2010 http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/blogs/dean_baker/ Dean Baker has a good post on Talking Points Memo. Why is it that people like to blame ...more

The Wobblies, Facebook - August 09, 2010  Kind of an interesting combo, don't you think... I'm currently reading An Oral History of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), aka the ...more

What would GOP DO if... - August 07, 2010 Should the GOP manage to recapture Congress this November, it will be interesting to see what they actually do. They won't be able to just "say no" ...more

High Net Worth Individuals, the mentality of (many) sports fans - August 06, 2010   http://www.rdwolff.com/content/economic-recovery-few Merrill Lynch and Capgemini have compiled lists of who they call High Net Worth Individuals ...more

The Deficit - August 05, 2010   I have never believed the deficit was as imminent of a threat to the nation as the deficit hawks would have us believe and Joshua Holland makes ...more

The Internet and Privacy - August 05, 2010 I read with intense interest the waitresses who got fired because she complained--on her Facebook page--about the chintzy, five-dollar tip a couple ...more

GOP - August 04, 2010 I haven't seen any of my Republican friends in a while, but it'll be interesting when I eventually do. My question to them will be, what does your ...more

Technology: A Mixed Bag - August 03, 2010   http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/08/03-5 Re yesterday's post about how Howard Zinn's questioning of basic assumptions made him dangerous, ...more

Zinn - August 02, 2010 Yesterday I listened to Howard Zinn's speech "Second Thoughts on the First Amendment" on KPFK's Alternative Radio program. I'd heard it before, ...more

Scandalwatch - July 31, 2010 Last night I watched "The Hammer", a documentary about former House Majority Leader Tom Delay, the stunts he pulled in Texas to gerrymander five ...more

Sports - July 30, 2010 Sports. I've been a fan all my life and played high school and semi-pro football. And to this day many of my friends are former teammates. Many of them ...more

Hallelujah! House Dems Tackling Corporate Power! - July 29, 2010 http://www.truth-out.org/dems-take-supreme-courts-giant-sellout-our-democracy-corporations61836Much to the delight of progressives, some House Democrats ...more

Healthcare - July 28, 2010 One of the better things about the recently-passed healthcare bill is that it does not prohibit states from enacting their own healthcare systems. And, ...more

Minimum Wage - July 27, 2010 ...more

Parenti - July 26, 2010 Nobody gets after the issue of class the way Michael Parenti does. I found this article from 10 years ago: http://www.michaelparenti.org/Superrich.html The ...more

MISC - July 24, 2010 From Thom Hartmann's Blog 7/23: Voodoo Economics Partially Rolled Back.... Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has announced that the Obama administration ...more

By The Numbers - July 23, 2010 BY THE NUMBERS From "America Can't Afford its Empire" William Collins, alternet 865--Number of US military bases in foreign countries. 175--Number ...more

Challenging Corporate Power - July 22, 2010 ACORN no longer exists because of a hoax. It was the target of this hoax because it challenged corporate power. One of ACORN's functions was to register ...more

Semantics: Exactly What Constitutes "Controversail"? - July 21, 2010 ...more

Friendly Dictators Through The Years - July 20, 2010 http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/US_ThirdWorld/dictators.html Came across "Friendly Dictators' by Dennis Bernstein and Laura Sydell from ...more

Consumer Protection, Misc - July 19, 2010 From Thom Hartmann, Who Will Protect Consumers? According to a source close to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, he is openly against the potential ...more

Activist Supreme Court - July 16, 2010 For years conservatives have complained about "activist" Supreme Courts when they were liberal, especially the Warren Court. Recently Republican ...more

Musings, The Founding Fathers, Misc - July 15, 2010 Yesterday waiting for the food bank to open I thought of someone I'd encountered there last year. Like me, he was unemployed and broke. Yet when I mentioned ...more

Unemployment - July 13, 2010 Les Leopold brings out some cogent points in "Why The Idiocy About Unemployment?" http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/07/11-4 This is a topic ...more

Class: Just laying it out there - July 12, 2010 Re World Cup Final: it could've been much worse when viewing it from the perspective of redistribution of the wealth. Spain, a team that had never been ...more

Wealth Inequality - July 09, 2010 http://www.thenation.com/article/36893/unjust-spoils Robert Reich lays it out nicely in "Unjust Spoils" in The Nation.Consider: in 1928 ...more

Walmart - July 08, 2010 Timely. An article by Pat Garofalo appears on The Wonk Room the morning after I watch Robert Greenwald's, "The High Cost Of Low Prices. The Piece: ...more

BP and Pentagon - July 07, 2010 Interesting piece of info yesterday on KPFK: the Pentagon is the nation's largest consumer of oil, and British Petroleum is the largest provider of ...more

Bloody Thursday, Saul Alinsky - July 06, 2010 Yesterday was Bloody Thursday. Longshoremen and others in the maritime industry commemorated the death of six West Coast workers during the spring and ...more

World Cup - July 03, 2010 Soccer wasn't around when I went to high school. Not only wasn't there a school team, but I don't even remember playing it in PE. Given this, it is ...more

Labor Takin' It To The Streets - July 02, 2010 http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/07/afl-cio-taking-it-to-the-streets-against-republicans-during-recess.php?ref=fpi Hallelujah! During the Fourth ...more

Ralph Nader - July 01, 2010    Ralph Nader:Questions for Supreme Court Nominee Kagan   He has yet to earn the forgiveness of the Democratic Establishment. ...more

Anecdotes, Supreme Court, misc - June 30, 2010 Listening to Gary Null on KPFK in the wee hours of the morning interview some homeless people in New York and talk about the vile state of politics there. ...more

Midterm Elections - June 29, 2010 Looking at the midterm elections nationally, there are things progressives can run on. Most recently there is the GOP filibuster of unemployment extensions. ...more

Fear of Disucssing Redistribution of Wealth - June 28, 2010 http://www.commondreams.org/print/57723 The topic of redistributing the wealth should NOT be a topic to fear. Rather, it should be common sense. For regular ...more

Response to Aritcle on Sanders' Bill - June 26, 2010 Just got a response from one of the people I sent the article about Bernie Sanders' bill to increase the tax for people who inherit estates between $10 ...more

Good piece, good new site - June 25, 2010 http://nplusonemag.com/ How could I resist an article entitled, "Full Employment"? I couldn't. Good new site, too, n+1. Sadly, this term isn't ...more

Class Warfare - June 24, 2010 Coupla nuggets off CommonDreams.org and Truthdig.org today. 1. http://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2010/06/24-0 Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) ...more

Hatch Joins The Circus - June 23, 2010 Yesterday Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT) joined Jan Brewer and the rest of the ripsnorts by saying he thought it would be a good idea if unemployed people ...more

Oliver Stone, Tariq Ali on Amy Goodman - June 21, 2010 Oliver Stone is back producing movies in a big way; "South of the Border" debuts this Friday in New York, "Wall Street II" comes out ...more

WAR - June 18, 2010 David Degraw has an excellent piece on war, specifically war profiteering http://www.alternet.org/story/147217/the_u.s._war_addiction%3A_funding_enemies_to_maintain_trillion_dollar_racket/ To ...more

Clearing Out The Notebook - June 17, 2010 Going through the host of stuff I've downloaded off the Internet over the past several months re challenging corporate power I found some nuggets: 1. ...more

BP's Past - June 16, 2010 Corporations have benefitted disproportionately from both the military and the intelligence gathering agencies. And that includes British Petroleum. ...more

Clarifying - June 15, 2010 http://www.truth-out.org/bp-its-not-a-contest-between-us-and-britain-its-a-contest-between-citizenship-interests-and-shareho Robert Reich has an intersting ...more

Confirming What We Already Knew - June 14, 2010 Hallelujah! Congress is pushing for tougher bills re Wall Street/Bank overhaul. And, shock of shock, lobbyists are suddenly reappearing to make a ...more

Talk About Nerve! - June 11, 2010 Off Alternet this morning: John Boehner (R-OH) wants taxpayers to pick up the tab for British Petroleum. This coming at a time when Congress, Republicans ...more

Reassessing Election Day - June 10, 2010 With a lot less fatigue and 48 hours lapsed since the election, I'm upgrading its outcome from "fucked up". The reason for the upgrade? Specifically ...more

Moving On - June 09, 2010 Fucked up night! While working a GOTV precinct with my regular partner, we encountered a lot of positive responses during the afternoon. Trouble was, these ...more

KPFK Will Share a Game Ball if Marcy Wins - June 08, 2010 I'm optimistic as hell on voting day. The Winograd Campaign has a group of dedicated volunteeers that ranks high among all the ones I've seen in over 20 ...more

Another Fiction: Judges as Impartial - June 07, 2010 Curt Anderson has an interesting piece on Common Dreams, "Polluted Justice: Many Federal Judges Have Oil Links", More than half of the federal ...more

Since Yesterday's posting... - June 05, 2010  My brother brought home a copy of this week's LA Weekly, which I only pick up if there's a real reason to. In it was an article--some have called ...more

Curious Take From Boxer Challenger - June 04, 2010 Last night on the KPFK evening news they had a brief interview with MICKEY KAUS, a little-known Democrat challneging Barbara Boxer. Kaus sounded ...more

Personal Again - June 03, 2010  A story on Msn online confirmed what I knew firsthand--the job search for older workers is both longer and harder.  The focus of the piece was ...more

Tuesday's Election for the 36th CD - June 02, 2010 Just got an e-mail from a friend about a piece re the upcoming election in the 36th CD. It was from a woman--a local activist--writing in support of Harman, ...more

Reclaiming the Language of Class Warfare - June 01, 2010 Chris Hedges nails another one on truthout.org http://www.truthout.org/chris-hedges-this-country-needs-a-few-good-communists60024 The Obama Administration's ...more

Observations While Tabling - May 29, 2010 ...more

More on Class - May 28, 2010 Dean Baker poses an interesting question in his article on alternet.org today: would workers, especially non-union ones, have a job if they screwed up ...more

Class Consciousness - May 27, 2010   Class consciousness. There just isn't enough of it. Even in these nail-tough economic times you encounter types who are unemployed, broke and standing ...more

Hodgepodge - May 26, 2010 Official government statistics aside, things don't look improved at the food bank I have been going to for the past 17 months. There are people in line ...more

Interesting Bill From Alan Grayson - May 24, 2010 When the heatlhcare bill was being debated, the mainstream media lasered in on what finanacial impact. Alan Grayson (D-FLA) has introduced HR 5353, ...more

Rand Paul's Win in KY - May 21, 2010 ...more

Baseball - May 20, 2010 You gotta love Mark Heisler. He's an ex-sportswriter and honest-to-goodness progressive/populist. His article today is How Baseball Became America ...more

Yesterday's Primary Elections - May 19, 2010 I was happy to learn last night that JOE SESTAK won the Democratic Primary in Pennsylvania over Arlen Specter. Sestak is a progressive populist Democrat ...more

Proposition 16 in CA, misc - May 18, 2010 Re Yasha Levine's article on Alternet re Prop 16 in California,   Welcome to Gilded Age 2.0, a time when government has become an appendage ...more

Different standards for Supreme Court Picks - May 17, 2010 The notion that we are an egalitarian society is a real fiction. This is apparent with who gets the death penalty. Death row is packed exclusively ...more

Diamondbacks, misc - May 14, 2010 Gustavo Arellano devoted a segment of his excellent show on KPFK 90.7 FM yesterday to taking action against the Arizona Diamondbacks because of the recently ...more

Labor May Have to Abandon Obama? - May 13, 2010 ...more

Labor May Have to Abandon Obama? - May 13, 2010  Interesting article on Alternet.org by Mike Elk, "Labor Unions May Have to Abandon Obama to Defeat Corporate America."  As the unionized ...more

For Moveon.org - May 12, 2010 Short blog today. A week ago yesterday Moveon.org had a meeting re taking on corporate power directly. I just thought of a couple of questions worth researching ...more

Updates on -ISMs, Other Terms - May 11, 2010 Off CommonDreams.org, "Socialism, Capitalism and Other Fallen Stock" by Pierre Tristam.   FlaglerLive.com Socialism, Capitalism, ...more

Obama's nomination of Kagan - May 10, 2010 Just read an article about Elena Kagan by Marjorie Cohen on Alternet that thinks she will pull the court to the right. I would have preferred Obama pick ...more

Test Case Goes Well - May 07, 2010 This morning waiting for the Work Source Center to open I encountered a guy who appeared to have some Teabagger in him. He said things "weren't ...more

A Third Way - May 06, 2010 In Jim Hightower's column last week he cited a couple of very insightful stats: In 2009 corporations spent $2.95 billion on lobbying. This is six ...more

Moveon.org Meeting Last Night - May 05, 2010   My expectations were fulfilled last night. An overflow crowd, at least for this fair-sized room at the Harry Bridges Institute, and a lot of people ...more

Hopeful - May 04, 2010 While I have written a lot in the past several months about how progressives should place less stock in electoral politics (getting the right person elected ...more

Bleep Bipartisanship - May 03, 2010 Please, Mr. President, don't revisit bipartisanship. It hasn't worked. And it won't. Once upon a time it could have. Abraham Lincoln once said labor was ...more

Final Moyers Show - May 01, 2010 Bill Moyers' final show last night on KCET went well. I particularly enjoyed the segment with JIM HIGHTOWER.  Hightower played the role ...more

Nailing It - April 29, 2010 I've said in a number of previous posts what progressives really need to do to affect meaningful change is go right to the source--the people who really ...more

Senate Hearings - April 28, 2010 ...more

That Grand Old Party... - April 27, 2010 They're something to behold, aren't they? Yesterday Republicans voted as a bloc to stop any debate on a financial reform bill in the Senate. The games ...more

Learning From Baseball - April 26, 2010   Although the season is three weeks old, I watched baseball for the first time over the weekend. Despite the fact that a number of former players ...more

GUNS - April 23, 2010 Just read a Nation e-mail urging me to sign a petition for Congress to close a loophole allowing criminals to purchase guns. It was timely.After the ...more

Earth Day #1 - April 22, 2010 Ah, I remember it well. I was a senior in high school. Nixon would soon create the EPA and the revelations about My Lai weren't six months old. ...more

Challenging corporate power - April 21, 2010   On Tuesday nights I always leave the radio on KPFK and wake up to Gary Null's commentaries. This morning he had a couple of great points on ...more

Getting Waylaid - April 20, 2010   Coming to the job search today I realized that lately I haven't paid enough attention to tasks related to challenging corporate power. So, ...more

Weekend Report - April 19, 2010 ...more

Misc - April 16, 2010 Just read a short but interesting post on Jonathan Tasini's "The Working Life" blog. House members Raul Grijalva (D-AZ) and Marcy Kaptur ...more

Mixmatch - April 15, 2010 We need something BIG! I'm not talking about a march on Washington or Wall Street, although that wouldn't hurt either. Rather, I'm talking about a ...more

More Encouraging News for Progressive Dems - April 14, 2010 Over the weekend Marcy Winograd, the candidate I have been tabling for at the Farmers Market in Torrance for coming up on a year got Jane Harman's ...more

Tax Time - April 13, 2010 President Obama Cut Taxes for 98 Percent of Working Americans in 2009 CTJ has new state-specific reports that aim to clear up this widespread misunderstanding ...more

Long, political weekend - April 12, 2010   Just as the post title suggests. On Saturday, tabling for a few hours in Wilson Park, then off to Region 17 Candidates' Forum in Harbor City. On ...more

Unions for - April 09, 2010 The grievance system and arbitration. In my view they are under-utilized in selling the benefits of unions to the unorganized. I learned this in my last ...more

EFCA: When? - April 08, 2010 Over the past year EFCA has been pushed onto the backburner by healthcare, the economy and a host of other issues. But it hasn't gone away. And it won't. ...more

Me, 'Boomers, Misc - April 07, 2010 Continuing on the theme of my last post, I have been getting food assistance for all but the first six months of being unemployed. The lines were long ...more

My Job Search - April 06, 2010 The US economy may have shown signs of picking up over the past week but I certainly haven't felt the improvement. Far from it. I have been looking ...more

"Infigting" Among Dems - April 05, 2010 On Friday a friend and I tabled for an assembly candidate in Hermosa Beach. We set up next to a woman and her husband tabling for the Congressional ...more

Chapter President of Teabaggers on KPFK - April 02, 2010 The Teabaggers have always amazed me. I know many of them have legitimate gripes, but some of their arguments I just don't understand. Yesterday on KPFK ...more

Rationale for the last two posts - April 01, 2010 Re the last two posts. Progressives need to do something to counter the incessant barrage of corporate PR. All of us at some point have encountered people ...more

PR Cont--Again - March 31, 2010 Continuing the theme of yesterday's post, of all the feats accomplished with PR against labor, the most impressive, in my view, was the one that ended ...more

PR Cont - March 30, 2010 A Brief History of PR that has hurt unions: The Ludlow Massacre. When Colorado National Guardsmen opened fire on the tents of striking miners in ...more

The Undercover Role of PR - March 26, 2010   Phil Gramm, the ex-Senator and Representative from Texas, always used to bad-mouth public employees as "freeloaders". This was amusing ...more

Lesson(s) of Heatlhcare Victory - March 25, 2010 The main lesson to be learned from the healthcare victory is from now on the White House must mobilize its base in order to get things done. When the President ...more

Declining Real Wages of US Workers - March 24, 2010 There is ample evidence out there that the real wage of the average US worker has declined over the past four decades; 'Boomers remember well the ...more

The Price of Challenging Corporate Power - March 23, 2010 Earlier I heard a guest from ACORN on "From The Frontlines" on KPFK talk about some of the reasons the national group will ...more

The Healthcare Vote - March 22, 2010 No one disputes that the healthcare bill that just passed is lacking. But of all the things we fellow progressive activists wished it didn't contain ...more

NFL Players - March 19, 2010 Yesterday I saw online that Jon Runyan, an offensive tackle for the Philadelphia Eagles and San Diego Chargers, has decided to run for Congress--as a Republican. ...more

Major CA Races - March 18, 2010 I can't say I'm ass over teakettle for Jerry Brown in the upcoming race for governor. Anymore he's extremely unpredictable. When Marcy Winograd, challenger ...more

Kucinich - March 17, 2010 When I listened to Dennis Kucinich's press conference this morning on KPFK I could not help to think back to a scene near the end of the movie Cool Hand ...more

MISC - March 16, 2010 ...more

We Should Emulate Germany - March 12, 2010   Labor attorney and Congressional candidate Tom Geoghegan was a recent guest on Jon Wiener's program on KPFK promoting his recent article in Harpers. ...more

Organizing - March 11, 2010 I have been unable to convince any of the union people I come into contact with at Democratic functions to take seriously my suggestion to organize the ...more

Still More on Language - March 09, 2010 Language means plenty in politics, as I have covered this topic in a couple previous posts. The most conspicuous absence is the term "exploitation" ...more

War Profiteering II - March 08, 2010 I'm playing wordsmith today. "Jackaling". It is making money from the government off other people's misery and misfortune, identical ...more

War Profitering - March 05, 2010 A final add on lost--wasted--government funds: war profiteering. Smedley Butler, a four-star USMC general and the nation's only winner of two ...more

Legalizing Pot - March 04, 2010 It is not unprecedented. We did it during the Great Depression. We can do it now--and it will help a lot! Someone from LEAP said that if we legalized pot ...more

Plugging Gaps in Government Budgets - March 03, 2010 The headlines in our regional Daily Breeze revealed more gloom. More cuts of LA City employees. More cuts for LAUSD. More cuts for the higher education ...more

Bunning - March 02, 2010 The sports fan in me heightens my intersest in Jim Bunning. In the 1950s and 1960s he pitched for the Detroit Tigers and Philadelphia Phillies. ...more

Games Pols Play - March 01, 2010   We need a mechanism to keep our people in line. I'm thinking back to EFCA. It not only came up a year ago, but also when George W Bush was ...more

Exposing the Real GOP - February 26, 2010 ...more

More Healthcare - February 25, 2010 Short blog today since in less than a half-hour I'm off to a PDA meeting...So it go a little testy today in the conference. The president should do ...more

Healthcare Conference Tomorrow - February 24, 2010 Wouldn't you just know it. Republicans are now balking at doing anything at the healthcare conference tomorrow. This is the time to haul out expanding ...more

More politics, misc - February 23, 2010 ...more

Democratic Club Endorsements - February 22, 2010 Something is in the air...Yesterday afternoon I went to the Progressive Democratic Club's monthly meeting. There were endorsements at this one, and ...more

Do They Get What's Going On....? - February 19, 2010 No sooner than I wrote yesterday's blog a couple of stories come out about the public option coming alive. The first was on how several states--Minnesota, ...more

Idea to Get Obama in line - February 18, 2010 In an interesting piece on Commondreams.org today John McArthur suggested running a primary challenge to Obama in 2012 rather than whine and be the type ...more

Language, Misc - February 17, 2010 I mentioned in a blog a few weeks ago how the topic of MERIT is seldom if ever mentioned anymore by rightwingers. This is understandable given what ...more

Getting Motiviated in CA for 2010 elections - February 16, 2010 Getting fired up for the 2010 governor's race in California will be no easy task. Jerry Brown. That says it all. I'm not one to worry about what yahoos ...more

More on Image - February 12, 2010 Glen Greenwald wrote an excellent book on how so many Republicans live the opposite of what they portray themselves as in office. John Wayne, a GOP icon ...more

Dems Taking The Offensive - February 11, 2010 Prior to hearing the president's unfortunate remark about bank execs' pay, there were some good signs brewing in Washington; Harry Reid vowing to ...more

Obama's pirouttes - February 10, 2010 Just read where President Obama said he 'didn't begrudge bank execs' bonuses'. This is troubling, if not maddening. There is tremendous anger out ...more

Unions, Corporations as "Equals" - February 09, 2010 People on the right have this notion that corporations and unions are of equal financial strength. If they don't come right out and say it, they imply ...more

Redisbribution of Wealth in Professional Sports - February 08, 2010 The Saints' win yesterday continued a welcome trend in professional sports over the past several years: a redistribution of wealth. Last year the ...more

The GOP: Yesterday and Today - February 05, 2010 Just saw a political cartoon by Mr Fish on TruthDig.org. An apropo one, with a modern day Republican denouncing Abraham Lincoln. It suddenly occurred ...more

More on class, organizing - February 04, 2010 "We rarely hear, it has been said, of the combinations of masters; though frequently of those of workmen. But whoever imagines, upon this account, ...more

Howard Zinn: RIP - February 03, 2010 I discovered Howard Zinn shortly after becoming politically active in the late 1980s. I especially appreciated his take on activism, that when ...more

The Role of Corporate PR in Molding Minds - February 02, 2010 They're unemployed. They're broke. They get their sustanance from local foodbanks. They've got a high school education plus a handful of community college ...more

Class - January 29, 2010 ...more

State of the Union Address - January 28, 2010 As usual, the President gave a great speech. He touched on a lot of topics and conceded that he made mistakes/miscalculations during his first year in ...more

Deafening Silence on Union Busters - January 27, 2010 Filth. Gutless wonders. Wasted cum. All apt descriptions of union busting firms, which lurk in the shadows and call the shots for management during ...more

Disconnect - January 26, 2010 During his 1992 Presidential reelection campaign George HW Bush went into a supermarket. When he came up the the checkstand he couldn't keep his eyes ...more

Language - January 25, 2010 No economist of any political bent denies it. While productivity has risen dramatically over the past four decades, especially the last two, workers' wages ...more

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The Power of Image - January 23, 2010 Just finished reading Glen Greenwald's Great American Hypocrites. It was insightful and should be required reading in the months leading up to a mid-term ...more

More on challenging corporate power - January 22, 2010 The late Australian political scientist Alex Carey stated that the 20th century was marked by three important developements: the increase in democracies, ...more

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Progressive agenda until 2010 elections - January 21, 2010 No more Mr Nice Guy. The president has made more good-faith attempts at bipartisanship and what has it got him? Absolutely nothing! Fuck'em! Fire up The ...more

NFL Conference Championships - January 21, 2010 In the AFC you have one team, the Colts, who seek to make their second Super Bowl appearance since 1971 (they won it in 2007), and another whose only other ...more

Lately I've been trying to persuade political cohorts on the idea of waging war against corporate power rather than putting all our proverbial eggs into...more

Election Aftermath - January 20, 2010 And trash the idea of bipartisanship. The president has made good faith efforts to achieve it, with one of if not the most bipartisan cabinets in history. ...more

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Electoral politics vs direct action - January 15, 2010 Lately I have been trying to persuade progressive cohorts we should place less emphasis on getting the proper people elected and more on taking direct ...more

Re Smedley Butler, Haiti - January 14, 2010 Smedley Butler, the most decorated Marine general in US history, made reference to Haiti in his most famous quote about being a 'gangster for Wall ...more