By Dave Lindorff

I was listening to Robert Reich, once the left end of the spectrum
in the Clinton cabinet, talking with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer a few days ago,
and Reich, who has in the past sometimes made sense, was talking about
how Americans’ incomes had fallen over the last eight years of the
Bush/Cheney administration and that it was necessary to get their
incomes back on an upward trend, so that they could “start shopping
again.”

Now I understand Reich was trying to make the case that the bailout
so far has been focused on the banks and the insurance industry, and
that none of this will help unless ordinary people start getting some
relief, but still, there’s something completely twisted and out of
whack when the best we can come up with is that we need to get
Americans back into the malls.

By Dave Lindorff

Now that the street dancing is over, and President-elect Barack
Obama is measuring the drapes for the new Oval Office (let’s hope he
loses the mounted Saddam Hussein matching pistol set and that he has
the direct hard-wired link between the Vice President’s Office and the
Pentagon severed), it’s time to start focusing on how to make this new
president live up to his mantra of “Change We Can Believe In.”

Well over 65 million people voted Obama in on the belief that he
meant what he said with that largely empty slogan. They are going to be
hugely disappointed if he doesn’t deliver.

By David Swanson

"Jacked: How 'Conservatives' Are Picking Your Pocket (Whether You Voted for Them or Not)" is a short book by Nomi Prins that makes an excellent education for those remaining Americans who still do not understand that right-wing politicians take from those who work and give to those who live in luxury off the sweat of others.

At the end of World War II, corporations paid half the cost of the federal government. They now pay 7 percent, and many of them pay 0 percent. Unless you are very wealthy, you pick up the tab, and the tab has grown. The federal government now spends more than what it spends on everything else on the military alone, and that cost keeps rising.

By David Swanson

John Bowe's terrific new book called "Nobodies: Modern American Slave Labor and the Dark Side of the New Global Economy" takes the reader on a journey ending in the question I've placed above this essay.

In these times of severe economic stress upon the middle class and the poor classes of our country, while the richest are becoming wildly richer, I beg of you to please support campaigns and legislation to correct the unfairness and to improve the distribution of economic wealth to those that properly deserve it.  
It is the workers of America that need your help, and need it now.
We have suffered greatly for many years, it is time to turn this around in favor of the working people of America instead of the wealthy.  It is time for the wealthy to payback what they owe the rest of us.

In recognition of Labor Day, here's a list of some of the current legislation in Congress affecting workers and businesses:
* H.R. 2, the Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2007. This act was passed by both the House and the Senate. It incrementally raises the federal minimum wage from $5.15 to $7.25 per hour, with the final stage taking place in July 2009.

Why does Alabama, one of the poorest states in the Union, continue to vote Republican?

       Maybe it wouldn't, if you knew how your elected representatives are actually voting!

          ALABAMA'S SENATORS: RICHARD SHELBY (R)  AND JEFF SESSIONS (R)

              Here's how they voted in 2006 on some Labor-related issues

1. BUDGET RESOLUTION/SPENDING CUTS—

By David Swanson

They have taken untold millions that they never toiled to earn,
But without our brain and muscle not a single wheel can turn.
We can break their haughty power; gain our freedom when we learn
That the Union makes us strong.

The House has just passed the Employee Free Choice Act, a bill that would effectively restore to Americans the internationally and domestically recognized but nonexistent right to form unions. The US labor movement has invested untold millions in lobbying for this victory, and plans to invest untold more in trying to achieve the same victory in the Senate in the coming months. Should that happen, the fate of the bill is already known. Cheney has promised to have Bush veto it.

By Associated Press

President Bush is ready to veto an anti-terror bill unless Congress kills a provision he doesn't like. At issue is a plan to let airport screeners unionize. An administration spokesman says if that stays in the legislation, Bush's senior advisers will urge a veto.

36 Republicans in the Senate are vowing to back the president up, which means any override attempt by Democrats will fall short of the two-thirds needed.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff warns that airport screeners are as much on the front lines of the terror war as the military is. Chertoff says "Marines don't collectively bargain" over where they're going, and when it comes to screeners, the government needs flexibility.

"So tax cuts work? Since we cut taxes a second time in 2003, we've added 7.4 million new jobs. Tax cuts equaled new jobs." -- Dubya, who fails to add

Bush borrowed from the Saudis to cut taxes for the super rich.
He claims 7 million new jobs - over six years.

Clinton raised taxes on the super-rich and created 24 million new jobs.
Bush wants you to think 7is greater than 24.

Maybe for the faith-based, that's a fact. For the rest of us,
24 beats 7 and Clinton didn't force us to repay the Saudis.

[received this by Email]

I’d like to take this opportunity to warn everyone out there to remain cautious when traveling in severe weather…especially in this weather. I’ve experienced the worst winter weather could dish out (as far as I’m concerned), so this is advice is more like a warning based on personal experience.

Want to know how I started out my day? Let’s go through the timeline:

3:30am (EST): I wake up to the screeching sound of my annoying alarm clock. I walk towards my north-bedroom window and observe the winter conditions outside. I wonder to myself why, on a day that the media says the US Postal Service could postpone mail delivery despite their motto of “rain, sleet, or snow” does my employer insist that we still travel over 40 miles to OSU? Where’s the logic? I take my shower, and then prepare to go to work.