Interesting article from RJ this morning.
JDeanIcite: NLRB Fight Shows How Far We've Fallen - The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) is trying to require big corporations to put up a poster informing their employees of their rights under the law. The big corporate, anti-union organizations are fighting this as hard as they can. They are suing in court to block the rule, while Republicans in the House and Senate are using every trick in the book to stop the NLRB requirement, right down to holding Congressional investigations of the agency, and threatening to defund it, and to shut it down by crippling its Board. Here are the things that the Republicans and the big corporations that fund them are fighting to keep working people from knowing: Under the law you have the right to:
and this unusual bit of news caught my eye this morning.
BBC: Argentine minister Ivan Heyn dies at Mercosur summit - A senior Argentine official has been found dead at the Mercosur summit in the Uruguayan capital, Montevideo. Undersecretary for foreign trade Ivan Heyn was found hanged in his hotel room, police said. He is thought to have taken his own life.
JDeanIcite: NLRB Fight Shows How Far We've Fallen - The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) is trying to require big corporations to put up a poster informing their employees of their rights under the law. The big corporate, anti-union organizations are fighting this as hard as they can. They are suing in court to block the rule, while Republicans in the House and Senate are using every trick in the book to stop the NLRB requirement, right down to holding Congressional investigations of the agency, and threatening to defund it, and to shut it down by crippling its Board. Here are the things that the Republicans and the big corporations that fund them are fighting to keep working people from knowing: Under the law you have the right to:
- Organize a union to negotiate with your employer concerning your wages, hours, and other terms and conditions of employment.
- Form, join or assist a union.
- Bargain collectively through representatives of employees’ own choosing for a contract with your employer setting your wages, benefits, hours, and other working conditions.
- Discuss your wages and benefits and other terms and conditions of employment or union organizing with your co-workers or a union.
- Take action with one or more co-workers to improve your working conditions by, among other means, raising work-related complaints directly with your employer or with a government agency, and seeking help from a union.
- Strike and picket, depending on the purpose or means of the strike or the picketing.
- Choose not to do any of these activities, including joining or remaining a member of a union.
and this unusual bit of news caught my eye this morning.
BBC: Argentine minister Ivan Heyn dies at Mercosur summit - A senior Argentine official has been found dead at the Mercosur summit in the Uruguayan capital, Montevideo. Undersecretary for foreign trade Ivan Heyn was found hanged in his hotel room, police said. He is thought to have taken his own life.
Japan
EneNews: Gov’t to check Fukushima kids for “congenital abnormalities” linked to radiation — “Rising public concern” about contamination brought about program
Global Conflict
BBC: Kim Jong-il death: 'Five million' mourn North Korea leader
CNN: New North Korean leader issued military orders, South Korea says
ExtinctionProtocol: Russia to deploy monsterous ‘Satan’ nuclear weapon in arsenal
Time: Kim Jong Il's Most Dangerous Legacy: A Thriving Nuclear Export Business
NYT: Mass March by Cairo Women in Protest Over Soldiers' Abuse
TimeBlog: Ten Grim Lessons Learned From the Iraq War
Bloomberg: Untested New North Korean Leader Seen Extending 'Kim Brand'
BusinessInsider: Does This US And Israel Joint Missile Defense Drill Say Anything About Plans For Iran? - Israel just announced it has finalized a deal with Lt. General Frank Gorenc, commander of the US Third Air Force in Germany, that will bring several thousand U.S. troops and two advanced missile systems to the country for an unprecedented defense drill.
MotherJones: Lie by Lie: A Timeline of How We Got Into Iraq - Mushroom clouds, duct tape, Judy Miller, Curveball. Recalling how Americans were sold a bogus case for invasion.
ABCNews: Iran to Family of American 'Spy': Keep Quiet
ForeignPolicy: Israel’s emerging ‘Jewish Hezbollah’?
TheAtlantic: For War Dogs, Life With PTSD Requires Patient Owners
MSNBC: Will younger Kim's aunt, uncle be N. Korea puppet masters?
Reuters: Exclusive: North Korea's military to share power with Kim's heir
LAT: South Korea questions story of Kim Jong Il's death
MSNBC: 8 US soldiers charged in death of fellow GI
Reuters: Activists say 111 killed in Syria's "bloodiest day"
CNN: Soldiers just back from Iraq get new orders: Afghanistan
NYT: Iraqi Leader Threatens to Abandon Power-Sharing
Hacker News
WSJ: China Hackers Hit U.S. Chamber - A group of hackers in China breached the computer defenses of America's top business-lobbying group and gained access to everything stored on its systems, including information about its three million members, according to several people familiar with the matter.
Reuters: China hackers breached U.S. Chamber of Commerce: report
CNN: Phone hacking rife at Morgan's Mirror, former employee says
Financial News
MarketWatch666: HALLELUJAH CORPORATIONS
Also at MarketWatch666: Glorious! in excess & way so…(CEO pay)
Reuters: Banks gorge on ECB loans
Zerohedge: As US Decouples From World, Stocks Decouple From USD
TaxPolicyCenter: A Two-Month Payroll Tax Cut is Dumb, So Is How Congress Got There - House Republicans are right about one thing at least: Extending this year’s payroll tax cut for two months is ridiculous. The trouble is they are largely to blame for the very policy they are criticizing. Congress got itself in this mess because a few dozen self-styled tea partiers have refused since last summer to helo build a consensus agreement on either short-term stimulus or deficit reduction.
HuffingtonPost: Obama and the Rule of Law - The President is confusing "legal" with "difficult to prosecute successfully." The Justice Department's repeated decisions not to risk losing at trial against Wall Street executives don't make these person's actions legal.
Zerohedge: Embattled Former Fannie CEO Takes Leave Of Absence From Fortress
WSJ: NY top court allows private securities claims - New York's top court ruled Tuesday that securities fraud enforcement by the state attorney general doesn't pre-empt private common-law suits against investment companies, keeping the door open to billions of dollars in claims by those hurt in the Wall Street crash.
Time: The Beginning of the End of the 9 to 5 Workday?
WSJ: U.S. Bargains Beckon Brazilians
BusinessInsider: WSJ SLAMS House Republicans For Payroll Tax Cut Debacle, Says They Are Throwing 2012 Election To Obama
Bloomberg: Bankers Join Billionaires to Debunk ‘Imbecile’ Attack on Top 1%
CalculatedRisk: CoreLogic: Existing Home Shadow Inventory remains at 1.6 million units
Prospect: Lemmings for Plutocracy The Senate, having struck its compromise, has gone home. The House, controlled by delusional Republicans, has gone home. Payroll taxes are slated to rise, and unemployment insurance is set to expire before they return in January.
MyBudget360: Ultimate money magician in the Federal Reserve and the art of shadow bailouts - The continuing secretive bailout of the $3.5 trillion commercial real estate market.
CBSNews: House GOP takes a political beating in payroll tax fight
ModeledBehavior: Why Not Plutocracy: Apathy Runs Deep Edition - Long time readers know that one of my big questions is why Plutocracy cannot be made to work. In particular, I wonder why society ruled by the owners of land combined with a “no serfdom” condition, doesn’t produce great outcomes.
Peak oil and Energy News
TomWhipple: FCN: The Peak Oil Crisis: 2012 – Apocalypse Now?
The Oil Drum: A Monster From The Deep
PeakOil: Did the Federal Government Invent the Shale Gas Boom?
TechReview: To Survive, Some Biofuels Companies Give Up on Biofuels
EnergyBulletin: How much dam energy can we get?
BusinessInsider: PwC: Shale Gas Will Generate Billions Of Dollars Of Savings And Create Over A Million Jobs: Shale energy is a hot topic lately. But discussion of this brand of fossil fuel is as unwelcome at the family dinner table as religion and politics due to its controversial nature. A new study published by PricewaterhouseCooper titled Shale Gas: A Renaissance In US Manufacturing provides new ammunition for those who are pro shale. According to the study, full-scale development of shale gas through 2025 would generate a staggering $11.6 billion in annualized cost savings by reducing natural gas expenses. Image: PwC Furthermore, the industry would create over 1.1 million jobs over that period. You can read the complete results of the study here.
Commodities/Metals
Mineweb: Gold rises above $1,600 as ECB tender lifts euro
Mineweb: Gold the protector as democracies move towards totalitarianism
Environmental News
YahooNews: D’oh! Oil industry lobbyists punked by enviro activist (AUDIO)
ExtinctionProtocol: Lovejoy 2012 Omen: 13th century prophecy of comet heralding great destruction?
“A comet will be seen in heaven – a star, that is, with a tail or appendage—and this apparition will signify destructions and tumults and hard strifes, and withholding of rains, and dryness of the Earth, and mighty battles, and the flowing of blood upon the Earth of the east, and from beyond the River Harbor it will reach to the very end of the west. And the just and the truly righteous will be oppressed and will suffer persecutions, and the house of prayer will be destroyed.” – Rigord of St. Denis 12th
Deadly Snowstorm Hits Great Plains
WashingtonPost: Death toll from flash floods in southern Philippines tops 1000 with more missingExtinctionProtocol: Dense fog and frigid cold settles in over northern India killing 39
DesdemonaDespair: Texas drought kills as many as half a billion trees – ‘This is a generational event’ - The massive drought that has dried out Texas over the past year has killed as many as half a billion trees, according to new estimates from the Texas Forest Service.
ClimateProgress: Top 5 Craziest Things GOP Contenders Said on Climate in 2011
TheNation: Durban: Where the Climate Deniers-in-Chief Ran the Show
ClimateCenter: Texas Tops 10 States Ravaged by Extreme Weather in 2011
WashingtonPost: Winter solstice marks the shortest day of the year Thursday morning
America in Decline
Cryptogon: FBI Says Activists Who Investigate Factory Farms Can Be Prosecuted as Terrorists
DeclineoftheEmpire: Benevolent Space Aliens Visit Earth — We're Saved!
BlacklistedNews: Getting Worse: 40 Undeniable Pieces Of Evidence That Show That America Is In Decline
DeclineoftheEmpire: Whole Lotta Arresting Going On
Salon: Can the U.S. Government close social media accounts? - The Obama administration and The New York Times are teaming up to expose and combat the grave threat posed by a Twitter account, purportedly operated by the Somali group Shabab, and in doing so, are highlighting the simultaneous absurdity and perniciousness of the War on Terror.
FDL: Fleet of Wahhhhhmbulances Arrive to Carry Off Grieving 1% - I’ve tended to ignore the litany of “poor oppressed rich folks” articles that have popped up over the last year. However, you do have to marvel at the way in which the 1% tries to pull off this trick, as if a commentary on income inequality above where it was during the Roman empire is actually just an attack on their character.
NYT: Impasse in Congress: 3 Million Could Lose Jobless Benefits - More than three million people stand to lose unemployment insurance benefits in the near future because of an impasse in Congress over how to extend the aid and how to offset the cost.
DailyKos: People calling me names violates my civil rightsTrasitionVoice: #11: The kids are not alright - There are so many times that the plea to do it “for the sake of the kids” is trotted out that the phrase has lost most of its meaning.
There was an election in West Virginia when the phrase was used by the coal industry to unseat a judge who ruled against mountaintop removal coal mining. The idea was that the few miners who were left with jobs after mechanization replaced most miners still needed to feed their kids. Never mind the kids who lived near the site or downstream, who were sucking up toxic debris from strip mining. Just elect a coal-friendly judge because coal supported jobs.
HuffingtonPost: The New Blue Collar: Temporary Work, Lasting Poverty And The American Warehouse
WSJ: Vital Signs: Slower Growth in State Tax Revenue
Cryptogon: TSA Screenings Aren’t Just for Airports Anymore
Food and Water
Reuters: Blizzard in Plains disrupts beef output
FoodFreedom: Toxic botulism in animals linked to RoundUp - Dr Mercola recently interviewed Dr Don Huber, whose letter to the USDA warning that Monsanto’s RoundUp, a broad-spectrum “herbicide” that has been linked with spontaneous abortion in animals, continues to be ignored by food and environmental safety authorities. In this important hour-long discussion, Huber, a plant pathologist for over 50 years, explains how RoundUp is destroying our healthy soils by killing needed microorganisms.Not only did his team discover a new soil pathogen, but he reports that animals are coming down with over 40 new diseases, like toxic botulism. Huber explains that before the widespread use of herbicides, pesticides and genetically modified food and feed, natural probiota would have kept Clostridium botulinum in check. Mercola provided a full transcript and highlights some of the main points (excerpted):
EneNews: Groundwater with 23,000 pCi/liter of radioactive material found around Tennessee nuke plant — Exceeds limit for drinking water
BlackSeaGrain: India's rice production to dip 6.7% by 2020
Science and Technology
ArchaeologyNewsNetwork: Plant-eating Dinosaur discovered in Antarctica
ScientificAmerican: It's a Small World: Kepler Spacecraft Discovers First Known Earth-Size Exoplanets
PopSci: Telescope Would Voyage to the Edge of the Solar System to Escape Zodiacal Light Pollution
Time: Two Earth-Size Planets Found Orbiting a Distant Star
MotherNatureNet: Twitter reveals what time we're happiest
SOTT: People more likely to lie when texting, study finds
RawStory: Mythbuster Adam Savage: Anti-piracy bill would ‘destroy the Internet’
ScientificAmerican: It's a Small World: Kepler Spacecraft Discovers First Known Earth-Size Exoplanets
PopSci: DARPA's 'Membrane Optics' Spy Satellite Could Capture Close-Up Video of Earth from Orbit
Medical and Health
BlacklistedNews: Alarm as Dutch lab creates highly contagious killer flu
ExtinctionProtocol: Hong Kong culls chickens at market, bans trade, as H5N1 found
M&C: Mass cull of chickens begins as bird flu returns to haunt Hong Kong
TheAtlantic: Hey, Washington: We Don't Have to Overhaul Medicare to Save It - Medicare needs a structural overhaul in order to avoid bankrupting the federal government--or so Republicans and many Democrats would have you believe.
TheStar: Canadian-developed HIV vaccine approved for human studiesScientificAmerican: Pharmacies Mislead Teens on Morning-After Pill
MSNBC: Boy's recovery from flesh-eating bacteria: miracle?
BigHealthReport: Studies Suggest an Acetaminophen-Asthma Link
OrionMagazine: Is the Environment Poisoning Our Children?
Doomsteading, Gardening, Urban Farming
BlacklistedNews: Get a Medical Marijuana Card, Lose Your Second Amendment Rights
ModernSurvivalBlog: Labaratory Bird Flu Strain Could Kill Millions
BigPictureAgriculture: TED Talk: Roger Doiron's Garden Plot
Doiron’s the founder of Kitchen Garden International, a network of home gardeners.
Other News
CBS: Suspects arrested in exorcism killing in Bolivia
Yahoo: Mayan region in Mexico launches 2012 apocalypse countdown
Guardian: Homeless people in the UK revealed to have life expectancy of just 47
GovSecurityNews: MLK day bomber gets 32 years in prison
Reuters: US population grows at slowest rate since 1940s: Census
Politics
FT: Republicans vote down 2012 tax deal - Republicans in the House of Representatives voted down a 2012 tax deal on Tuesday, increasing the chances of a sudden jump in payroll taxes and a halt to unemployment benefits on January 1.
DailyBail: VIDEO - Ron Paul Rips Michele Bachmann On The Tonight Show: "She Really Hates Muslims"
RobertReich: Why the Republican Crackup is Bad For America - The crackup isn’t just Romney the smooth versus Gingrich the bomb-thrower. Not just House Republicans who just scotched the deal to continue payroll tax relief and extended unemployment insurance benefits beyond the end of the year, versus Senate Republicans who voted overwhelmingly for it. Not just Speaker John Boehner, who keeps making agreements he can’t keep, versus Majority Leader Eric Cantor, who keeps making trouble he can’t control. Some describe the underlying conflict as Tea Partiers versus the Republican establishment. But this just begs the question of who the Tea Partiers really are and where they came from. The underlying conflict lies deep into the nature and structure of the Republican Party. And its roots are very old. As Michael Lind has noted, today’s Tea Party is less an ideological movement than the latest incarnation of an angry white minority – predominantly Southern, and mainly rural – that has repeatedly attacked American democracy in order to get its way.
NYT: The Long Run: Conservatives Remain Suspicious of Gingrich
DailyBail: NYT Political Analyst Declares: "If Ron Paul Wins New Hampshire, All Bets Are Off"
BlacklistedNews: Who Leads the Attack On Ron Paul?
The Forums
TinfoilPalace: Beware, the new leader of N.Korea is A LOT WORSE
TinfoilPalace: Pentagon Drill Simulation A Week Before Leaders DeathTheOilAge: Crop Yields Falling
TheOilAge: Gallup: unemployment actually increasing, not falling
HubbertsArms: botulism
HubbertsArms: PG&E Shuts Off Power to Sickened Families 2 Weeks Before Christmas
SilentCountry: Influenza News
SilentCountry: The 1% are taking your lunch
No comments:
Post a Comment