Day: August 8, 2008

Russia Invades Georgia

No dipstick, not the state of Georgia; the former Soviet territory of Georgia.

Georgia launched a major military offensive Friday to retake the breakaway province of South Ossetia, prompting Moscow to send tanks into the region in a furious response that threatens to engulf Georgia, a staunch U.S. ally, and Russia in all-out war.

Hundreds were reported dead in the worst outbreak of hostilities since the province won defacto independence in a war against Georgia that ended in 1992. Witnesses said the South Ossetian capital of Tskhinvali was devastated.

The fighting broke out as much of the world’s attention was focused on the start of the Olympic Games and many leaders, including Russia’s Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and President Bush, were on their way to Beijing.

The timing suggests Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili may have been counting on surprise to fulfill his longtime pledge to wrest back control of South Ossetia — a key to his hold on power.

Saakashvili agreed the timing was not coincidental, but accused Russia of being the aggressor. “Most decision makers have gone for the holidays,” he said in an interview with CNN. “Brilliant moment to attack a small country.”

Ten Russian peacekeepers were killed and 30 wounded when their barracks were hit in Georgian shelling, said Russian Ground Forces spokesman Col. Igor Konashenkov. Russia has soldiers in South Ossetia as peacekeeping forces but Georgia alleges they back the separatists.

Georgia, which borders the Black Sea between Turkey and Russia, was ruled by Moscow for most of the two centuries preceding the breakup of the Soviet Union. The country has angered Russia by seeking NATO membership — a bid Moscow regards as part of a Western effort to weaken its influence in the region.

Union Decertified By Workers

The customer service and warehouse workers at Comcast Corp.’s Merrillville’s office voted Wednesday to decertify from the IBEW union.
Jerry Rankins, business representative for the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 21, said 24 of the 25 eligible workers voted, with 15 voting to decertify and nine voting to remain with the union.

Rankins said the decertification is the result of disparity of wages that Comcast pays its union and non-union workers. He also said the IBEW may file a challenge to the election with the National Labor Relations Board because of perceived irregularities to the behavior of Comcast in respect to election.
“It’s part of Comcast’s national strategy to get rid of unions,” he said. “They (Comcast workers) hope to get a raise in pay now that they’re non-union. With the price of gas, they are all facing economic struggles. They wanted to stay union, but their financial circumstances dictated they had to make a tough decision.”

Arctic Energy Sources

Across the globe, reserves of oil and gas that were previously regarded as uneconomical are being actively explored and developed. From the Arctic to East Asia to the South Atlantic, untapped billions of barrels of oil are attracting the interests of energy companies and speculative finance capital, seeking to take advantage of the high price of crude oil.

One of the greatest potential oil and gas bonanzas is to be found beneath the Arctic Ocean. A report issued by the United States Geological Survey (USGS), 24 July estimated that the Arctic region holds around 90 billion barrels of oil—equal to the total proven reserves of Russia, the world’s second biggest oil producer.

Up to 30 percent of the world’s unproven natural gas deposits could also lie beneath the ice, as well as a possible one-fifth of untapped reserves of natural gas liquids. To date, most of the Arctic Ocean is international water, covered all year by a thick ice sheet.

Russia, like all countries around the North Pole, claims sovereignty over the seas up to 200-nautical miles (370 km) from its coast. To reinforce its claim over a further swathe of the Arctic, in 2007 a scientific submarine dropped the Russian flag under the North Pole as part of a geological survey of the seabed.

Russia recently confirmed that it regularly sends a fleet of around eight nuclear-powered ice-breakers to patrol in the Arctic Ocean. The vessels are capable of ploughing through eight-foot thick ice and can stay at sea for months on end.

Russia’s increased activity in the Arctic has raised concerns in Washington that it is losing out in the race for control over the region. Coast Guard Commandant Admiral Thad Allen commented on Russia’s ice-breaker activity in the Arctic.

Just another confrontation with Russia in the making.  Between oil and missiles, there whole chest thumping thingy is just the beginning of yet another “Cold War”, only there will be a new name for the same types of stand-offs.

More High Tech Jobs To Be Lost

Memory chip heavyweight Hynix Semiconductor Inc. announced plans to close down its only North American plant, located in Eugene, Oregon, in the next two months. The closure will result in the elimination of over 1,400 jobs. As of August 1, the first pink slips had already been handed out.

The closure of Hynix’s Eugene plant is the largest loss of jobs in Oregon this decade. Kim Jong-kap, chairman of the South Korean company, flew to Oregon to personally convey the news to the governor and the mayor of Eugene. The July 23 announcement apparently caught state and local officials by surprise.

Hynix, the second largest producer of memory chips in the world after Samsung Electronics, has been battered by the unusually steep decline in global prices for memory chips. The average price fell a dramatic 39 percent in 2007.

Laid off high-tech workers will find themselves job-hunting in an economy that is reeling from the collapse of the housing market and rising fuel prices. Over the last few years, two major high tech companies, Intel Corporation and Hewlett Packard, have downsized operations in Oregon.

Unemployment in Oregon currently stands at 5.5 percent, identical to the national level. However, losses in well-paid construction jobs, down 7,500 jobs since June 2007, have been balanced by gains in notoriously lower paying jobs in retail and the leisure and hospitality industry. June was the first month since May of 1996 that Oregon’s unemployment rate was equal to the national rate. In 2003, Oregon led the nation, and exceeded the national rate by 2 percent, with an 8.5 percent unemployment rate.

Civilian Response Corps–Conclusion

In case there is any doubt, I do not think that this is a good idea. A call for volunteers is an admission that the social contract between the people and society is a failure. That contract is one entered into by the people with the state to provided stability and security and the state provides these things in return for the support of the people. The problem is the state has degraded into a sort of “dictatorship”, where it defines the terms on its own terms and disregards the concerns of the people.

Volunteerism is used to make up for the shortfall in the services provided by the state. This scheme is forcing the individual to take responsibility for the services of the state. While the individual is doing “his” part to help those less fortunate, they are inadvertently assuming the responsibilities of the state, and thus allowing the state to gut all domestic programs.

I say–it is time for the state and its “elected” leaders to be forced to honor the terms of the contract that they have with the people of the US. It is time for the people to become the most important factor in the social contract that they have with the state.  It is time for the domestic policies to become the priority of the politicians and the country, then volunteers would not be needed.

Today In Labor History

08 August

Cripple Creek, Colo. miners strike begins – 1903

Amalgamated Meat Cutters & Butcher Workmen of North America merge with Retail Clerks International Union to become United Food & Commercial Workers – 1979

Cesar Chavez is posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Bill Clinton, becoming the first Mexican-American ever to receive the honor – 1994

The Clinton’s Again?

Asked if Obama was ready to become president, a readiness point Hillary Clinton hammered hard throughout the campaign, Bill Clinton clearly dodged the question, saying he doubted….

… anyone was ever ready for that job, that he had learned a few things in his early White House weeks in 1993.

Then he added, Obama “is smarter than a whip, so there’s nothing he can’t learn.”

Asked about regrets over his sometimes polarizing role in his wife’s unsuccessful campaign, he first said he wasn’t going to talk about it, then proceeded to do so. “I got bad press,” Clinton said. “Why? Because I told the truth that there was a different standard applied to the finest candidate I ever supported.”

Asked specifically about his role in Sen. Clinton’s campaign, he suggested the media check the voting results where he had campaigned in places like South Carolina, Pennsylvania and West Virginia, implying the results were positive for her where he had campaigned.

Then he added, “There are things that I wish I’d urged her to do. Things I wish I’d said. Things I wish I hadn’t said. But I am not a racist. I’ve never made a racist comment and I never attacked [Obama] personally.”

Then later that week, Hillary was still calling Obama her opponent when speaking to a group of supporters.

What is going on here?

The Clinton’s are still pissed that they lost the nomination to this upstart freshman senator.  They somehow feel that they were mistreated by Obama and his campaign.  They also seem to be a bit miffed at their role within the prep work for the convention.  They are still concerned that they are not getting their share of the ass kissing, after all they did control the Party for some 16 tears.

The Clinton’s also seem to be a ship without a rudder–they had NO alternative plan in case they did not win the nomination.  That was the arrogance of her campaign–that she was the inevitable nominee.  But with that illusion shattered they continue to be a thorn in the side of the Dem Party.

The next question is–how will this play out at the convention?

Secret Union Ballots

An Op-Ed by George McGovern in the WSJ

As a congressman, senator and one-time Democratic nominee for the presidency, I’ve participated in my share of vigorous public debates over issues of great consequence. And the public has been free to accept or reject the decisions I made when they walked into a ballot booth, drew the curtain and cast their vote. I didn’t always win, but I always respected the process.

Voting is an immense privilege.

That is why I am concerned about a new development that could deny this freedom to many Americans. As a longtime friend of labor unions, I must raise my voice against pending legislation I see as a disturbing and undemocratic overreach not in the interest of either management or labor.

The legislation is called the Employee Free Choice Act, and I am sad to say it runs counter to ideals that were once at the core of the labor movement. Instead of providing a voice for the unheard, EFCA risks silencing those who would speak.

The key provision of EFCA is a change in the mechanism by which unions are formed and recognized. Instead of a private election with a secret ballot overseen by an impartial federal board, union organizers would simply need to gather signatures from more than 50% of the employees in a workplace or bargaining unit, a system known as “card-check.” There are many documented cases where workers have been pressured, harassed, tricked and intimidated into signing cards that have led to mandatory payment of dues.

Under EFCA, workers could lose the freedom to express their will in private, the right to make a decision without anyone peering over their shoulder, free from fear of reprisal.

There’s no question that unions have done much good for this country. Their tenacious efforts have benefited millions of workers and helped build a strong middle class. They gave workers a new voice and pushed for laws that protect individuals from unfair treatment. They have been a friend to the Democratic Party, and so I oppose this legislation respectfully and with care.

To my friends supporting EFCA I say this: We cannot be a party that strips working Americans of the right to a secret-ballot election. We are the party that has always defended the rights of the working class. To fail to ensure the right to vote free of intimidation and coercion from all sides would be a betrayal of what we have always championed.

Some of the most respected Democratic members of Congress — including Reps. Marcy Kaptur of Ohio, George Miller and Pete Stark of California, and Barney Frank of Massachusetts — have advised that workers in developing countries such as Mexico insist on the secret ballot when voting as to whether or not their workplaces should have a union. We should have no less for employees in our country.

I worry that there has been too little discussion about EFCA’s true ramifications, and I think much of the congressional support is based on a desire to give our friends among union leaders what they want. But part of being a good steward of democracy means telling our friends “no” when they press for a course that in the long run may weaken labor and disrupt a tried and trusted method for conducting honest elections.

While it is never pleasant to stand against one’s party or one’s friends, there are times when such actions are necessary — as with my early and lonely opposition to the Vietnam War. I hope some of my friends in Congress will re-evaluate their support for this legislation. Because as Americans, we should strive to ensure that all of us enjoy the freedom of expression and freedom from fear that is our ideal and our right