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July 30, 2005
Tha State of the Bay
From the Chesapeake Bay Foundation
July Survey Finds More than 1/3 of Bay is a 'Dead Zone'
Tuesday, July 26, 2005
By: CBF Staff
The 2005 dead zone is living up to predictions. Earlier this summer, EPA predicted problems for this summer and test results now show more than 36 percent of the Bay’s mainstem holding too little oxygen. And the problems aren’t limited to the mainstem; testing in many Chesapeake Bay tributary rivers has turned up “bad water” as well.
“It is alarming and depressing that dead zones are becoming a summer routine,” said Roy A. Hoagland, CBF Vice President for Environmental Protection and Restoration.
In Maryland, from Fort McHenry in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor down through the Magothy and Severn Rivers, dissolved oxygen levels are unhealthy to just plain gone. On Maryland’s Eastern Shore, the Corsica River, Eastern Bay, and the Little Choptank River are all in poor shape for dissolved oxygen.
In Virginia, CBF staff have documented "bad water" in the Rappahannock, York, and Piankatank rivers and watermen have reported dead fish and crabs in pots in the Great Wicomico.
Like animals on land, nearly all of the Chesapeake Bay’s aquatic life, from worms and crabs on the bottom, to perch and striped bass above and underwater grasses in between, depend on oxygen to survive. Low dissolved oxygen levels can impair growth and reproduction and stress living resources, making them vulnerable to disease. Water with no oxygen will kill most aquatic animals.
"If we are to stop "dead zones" from appearing in the Bay, we need to invest in the Bay. That means our elected officials need to provide the leadership necessary to substantially increase funding to upgrade sewage treatment plants and to provide farmers the resources they need to reduce pollution from agriculture,” Hoagland said.
Posted by Melissa at 11:58 AM | Comments (0)
July 27, 2005
Unions reinvented
(from the LA Times)
The AFL-CIO has failed to recognize that times are changing and workers' lives are evolving. That's why the labor movement must split.
By Andrew L. Stern
Andrew L. Stern is president of the Service Employees International Union.
July 26, 2005
Our world is undergoing the most profound economic transformation in history. Corporations are changing, technology is changing, the political climate is changing, and as a result, workers' lives are also changing. To fulfill their mission for working people in the 21st century, unions must change as well.
Fifty years ago, when the AFL-CIO was founded, one in three workers had a union, and unions were an essential vehicle for achieving the American dream. A union job was a ticket to the middle class, and union wages and benefits helped raise every American worker's standard of living. But today, with only one in 12 private-sector workers in a union, the labor movement is not strong enough to ensure that work is rewarded throughout the economy.
Polls show that at least 50% of working people in the U.S. today want a union where they work. But U.S. labor laws, written for the industrial economy, are outdated, and employers use their excessive power to stand in the way.
And, to tell the truth, it's not just employers who are to blame. Unions share responsibility by failing to have the focus, strategy and resources to unite more workers in each industry.
Helping more working people form unions can be done. Our union, the Service Employees International Union, decided nine years ago to transform itself to help working people organize unions in whole industries, markets or states. Our members voted to make difficult changes in priorities, including spending 50% of our national resources to help more workers organize and build unions. That meant reallocating money from traditional union services that were useful in the short run but did not contribute to workers' strength in the long term.
The result is that more than 900,000 new workers — homecare workers, janitors, child-care workers and security officers — have joined the SEIU and gained paychecks that can support a family, affordable healthcare and a retirement with dignity.
But unions, overall, continue to decline. And the AFL-CIO — the national labor federation for the last half-century — has failed to make the hard decisions and take the necessary steps to make the union movement grow again. For months, a group of major unions has been talking to the AFL-CIO leadership on how to reorder priorities and modernize the federation's strategy and structure. But to no avail.
That's why we at the SEIU and three other major unions declared over the weekend that we would not participate in the AFL-CIO national convention in Chicago this week. And on Monday our union — with 1.8 million members — along with the 1.4-million-member Teamsters announced we would withdraw from the federation, effective immediately.
The Teamsters and the SEIU have joined with five other unions — Unite Here, the Food and Commercial Workers, the laborers, the carpenters and the farm workers — to form the Change To Win Coalition, representing nearly 6 million workers. This is a dramatic step that we hope will open up opportunities similar to the surge in worker unity and organization when the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) was created in the 1930s because the American Federation of Labor (AFL) failed to adapt to the changing economy of that era.
Union members can be effective partners with employers if they start from a position of strength and equality. In California, for instance, United Healthcare Workers West has united more than 140,000 healthcare employees to negotiate innovative agreements with hospital chains such as Kaiser Permanente, Catholic Healthcare West and Tenet on issues, such as safe staffing levels, that affect the quality of care.
We also are committed to acting independently from any political party — Democrats or Republicans — and being an aggressive watchdog for the public interest. In Los Angeles, for instance, at a time when the city has bold new leadership, unions must be a reliable voice for policies on issues, such as education and healthcare, that benefit everyone.
We live in a world in which companies, not countries, are making the global economic rules. No one is going to reverse globalization. But a global economy needs policies that benefit working people, not just giant corporations. Workers in global companies need global unions to negotiate agreements across borders that help raise living standards for workers, instead of continuing the race to the bottom.
These principles for change were at the heart of our unsuccessful talks with the AFL-CIO. The Change To Win unions intend to move forward to pursue new strategies at the national level, while continuing to work at the local level with effective labor councils such as the L.A. County Federation of Labor.
The next decade can be a time of innovation and energy that will bring to life a new American dream. But to ensure that work in today's economy is valued and rewarded, unions must have the vision and the courage to change.
For more information, links, or to comment go to the Unite to Win Blog.
Posted by Melissa at 06:07 PM | Comments (0)
July 20, 2005
Dear Red States,
Swiped from DC Media Girl
We’re ticked off at the way you’ve treated California, and we’ve decided we’re leaving. We intend to form our own country, and we’re taking the other Blue States with us.
In case you aren’t aware, that includes Hawaii, Oregon, Washington, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois and all the Northeast. We believe this split will be beneficial to the nation, and especially to the people of the new country of New California.
To sum up briefly: You get Texas, Oklahoma and all the slave states. We get stem cell research and the best beaches.
We get Elliot Spitzer. You get Ken Lay.
We get the Statue of Liberty. You get OpryLand. We get Intel and Microsoft. You get WorldCom. We get Harvard. You get Ole’ Miss.
We get 85 percent of America’s venture capital and entrepreneurs. You get Alabama. We get two-thirds of the tax revenue, you get to make the red states pay their fair share.
Since our aggregate divorce rate is 22 percent lower than the Christian Coalition’s, we get a bunch of happy families. You get a bunch of single moms.
Please be aware that Nuevo California will be pro-choice and anti-war, and we’re going to want all our citizens back from Iraq at once. If you need people to fight, ask your evangelicals. They have kids they’re apparently willing to send to their deaths for no purpose, and they don’t care if you don’t show pictures of their children’s caskets coming home.
We do wish you success in Iraq but we’re not willing to spend our resources in Bush’s Quagmire.
With the Blue States in hand, we will have firm control of 80 percent of the country’s fresh water, more than 90 percent of the pineapple and lettuce, 92 percent of the nation’s fresh fruit, 95 percent of America’s quality wines (you can serve French wines at state dinners), 90 percent of all cheese, 90 percent of the high tech industry, most of the U.S. low-sulfur coal, all living redwoods, sequoias and condors, all the Ivy and Seven Sister schools, plus Harvard, Yale, Stanford, CalTech and MIT.
With the Red States, on the other hand, you will have to cope with 88 percent of all obese Americans (and their projected health care costs), 92 percent of all U.S. mosquitoes, nearly 100 percent of the tornadoes, 90 percent of the hurricanes, 99 percent of all Southern Baptists, virtually 100 percent of all televangelists, Rush Limbaugh, Bob Jones University, Clemson and the University of Georgia. We get Hollywood and Yosemite, thank you.
Additionally, 38 percent of those in the Red states believe Jonah was actually swallowed by a whale, 62 percent believe life is sacred unless we’re discussing the death penalty or gun laws, 44 percent say that evolution is only a theory, 53 percent that Saddam was involved in 9/11 and 61 percent of you crazy bastards believe you are people with higher morals than we lefties.
Sincerely,
Author Unknown in New California.
Posted by Jim at 05:41 PM | Comments (0)
July 12, 2005
So Much News
There is simply too much going on to post one article, so.... if you have not yet visited The Huffington Post, do it!! Today's issue features two articles on our favorite senator from Pennsylvania, Santorum, who is not not only, in effect, robbing Pennsylvania schools of needed funds but also insulting all of Boston
I also recommend the blog archives where you can scroll through authors by name and catch up on all of your favorites. ENJOY!
Posted by Melissa at 05:51 PM | Comments (0)
July 01, 2005
Operation Yellow Elephant
Get your stickers and buttons...
here.
Posted by Jim at 10:19 AM | Comments (0)