OB Rag

Editor: The following is an edited “executive summary” of Peter Philip’s case study – published June 10, 2011 – on SEMPRA’s plan to outsource an estimated 15,000 jobs to Mexico by building a cross-border 1250 megawatt energy transmission line to their energy facility in Mexico. The full report can be found here.

Should Green Jobs Be Outsourced? A Case Study of Lost Jobs and Lost Opportunities

By Peter Philips, PhD

The proposed Sempra 1250 megawatt (MW) tieline connecting the California grid to envisioned new wind-farms in Mexico is not just about electricity. It is also about foregone opportunities, lost human capital investment, lost worklives, lost tax revenues, and diminished economic development prospects; and also, it is about which regulatory authority, California or Mexico, should oversee the environmental impacts of building green generation capacity for the California grid.

Uploaded by ProgressOhio on Aug 23, 2011.
Read the full article to see a larger version of this video.

It is not supposed to happen in America where we value free speech and proudly revel in our history of men and women standing up and speaking to their elected representatives. But…once again, just last night (August 22, 2011), as they did in June, Congressman Steve Chabot, his staff and security team made sure that there could be no genuine human interaction or spoken question from the audience or any recorded documentation of what was said. And this occurred in a public meeting, in a public place, conducted by a public official, who while speaking to the public refused over 100 people who disagreed with him the opportunity to speak. And he had the police there to physically enforce his own private rules for public discourse.

Last week, Rep. Steven Chabot (R-OH) banned ordinary citizens from bringing cameras into a town hall meeting — even having police confiscate cameras from citizens who dared to violate this rule . Bizarrely, Chabot still allowed reporters to bring in cameras and record the event.

Coincidentally, just four days after Chabot took this extraordinary measure to prevent embarrassing clips of him from appearing on YouTube, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit handed down an opinion saying citizens have a right to film police engaged in their official duties.

By Randall Erickson / Special to the OB Rag

PARIS, FRANCE. In my last dispatch, I gave some practical examples of how «socialism» or the welfare state, if you will, functions.

I should add that the price of visiting a doctor is about 30 dollars. Specialists cost a bit more. Doctors can stay in the government system or go independent and charge more, but that extra may or may not be taken up by the mutual.

Under gray skies, over 350 people gathered along Broadway yesterday in downtown San Diego at a Labor Day “Rally for the Jobless.” Organized by MoveOn and Rebuild the American Dream, the noon event was designed to gather unemployed San Diegans and put pressure on the White House and Congress for jobs.

Waving signs, banners and flags the demonstrators dominated that block of downtown for a couple of hours, with chants, horns honking in support, and then with a rally where many local politicians spoke. “Jobs – not cuts!” was a familiar refrain from the crowd.

There I am as happy as I can be, at 58, posing in front of a camera at the 40th reunion of Tucson High’s Class of ’56.

It’s a cliche but time does fly, like a peregrine falcon diving steeply for its prey against the background of the sky, as in a few weeks I will be basking in the midst of an increasingly dwindling number of classmates for our 55th. Boy, they’re getting old – and vice-versa.

We greet this Labor Day with anxiety about the possibility of a double-dip recession, persistently high unemployment that never significantly ebbed after the depths of the 2008 downturn, and austerity budgets at the local, state, and federal levels. While many observers have drawn parallels to the Great Depression, one key difference stands out for American workers: Labor is not on the march.

In a perverse irony, the current economic crisis has been cruel to Labor. Rather than rallying workers to the union cause even though Labor did much to elect him, the Obama Administration has shown tepid support for unions after talking big about the value of Labor in his campaign. Hence the Obama era has been a kind of anti-New Deal period with the administration spending more time attacking teachers’ unions than helping American workers of any stripe in any significant way.

By Kit-Bacon Gressitt / Excuse Me, I’m Writing / September 4, 2011

U.S. Representative Michele Bachmann (R–Minn.) might not be able to sustain her Tea Party-fueled lead among the perfidy of presidential wannabes, but while she remains in the race, admit it: She makes for good entertainment — in a morbidly fascinating sort of way.

Newsweek magazine’s blatantly sexist cover image of Bachmann, declaring her the “Queen of Rage,” actually elicited a complaint from National Organization for Women (NOW). Yowza, what a coupling! If Bachmann’s campaign lasts, NOW will surely do all it can to otherwise denounce her for her homophobia, anti-women’s and civil rights positions, and bent toward theocracy. But in the meantime, fun, fun, fun!

by Jeanne Mirer and Marjorie Cohn / CommonDreams.org

The debate about the debt ceiling should have been a conversation about how to create jobs. It is time for progressives to remind the government that it has a legal duty to create jobs, and must act immediately – if not through Congress, then through the Federal Reserve.

With official unemployment reaching over 9%, the unofficial rate in double digits, and the unemployment rate for people of color more than double that of whites, it is nerve wracking to hear right wing political pundits say the government cannot create jobs.

By Bill McKibben / 350.org / September 3, 2011

Dear Friends—

I’m writing this from the lawn in front of the White House.

In front of me there’s a sprawling rally underway, with speakers ranging from indigenous elders to the great Canadian writer Naomi Klein. In back of me, another 243 courageous people are being hauled away to jail — it’s the last day of Phase 1 of the tar sands campaign, and 1,252 North Americans have been arrested, the biggest civil disobedience action this century on this continent.

Join hundreds of your fellow San Diegans – many of them unemployed – for a Rally for the Jobless.

The rally is being held on Labor Day – of all days, Monday, September 5th. It will be at noon at Horton Plaza Park between 3rd and 4th Avenues in downtown San Diego.

This event is being hosted by MoveOn San Diego and the Rebuild the American Dream movement.

Confirmed speakers include Congressman Bob Filner – who of course is running for San Diego’s mayor, Labor Council head Lorena Gonzalez, Lori Saldana who is running against Brian Bilbray for Congress, and Floyd Morrow – a long-time local activist and former city councilman.

Jobs – or the lack of them – are the single most important issue in America today. As many Americans know, we have a jobs crisis – not a deficit crisis, and as Congressional members filter back to Washington, DC after the Labor Day weekend, they need to immediately take up this critical issue.

Our fellow citizens are suffering more than they ever have in their collective lifetimes. Our best workers sit idle, while the work of rebuilding the country goes undone. People with degrees, with multiple degrees – cannot find work. The thousands of young college graduates who just accepted their degrees – there’s no jobs for them. There are no jobs for the returning vets from Iraq and Afghanistan. Millions of our jobless fellow citizens would love to become working, tax-paying members of our communities again.