Day: March 4, 2020

Closing Thought–04Mar20

“A travesty and a disgrace”

In the past I have worked as a union activist and organizer and still help when I can whenever my union asks….

I have been worried about the lack of concern and members in unions….and one of the best unions was that of the Federal employees….all that could very well change thanks to Trump….

“This administration will not stop until it takes away all workers’ rights to form and join a union.”

President Donald Trump on Thursday quietly issued a memo granting Defense Secretary Mark Esper the power to abolish collective bargaining rights for the Defense Department’s 750,000 civilian workers, a move unions decried as part of the administration’s far-reaching assault on organized labor.

The American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) condemned the memo, which was published in the Federal Register (pdf) Thursday, as “a travesty and a disgrace.”

“The administration’s divide-and-conquer strategy with respect to organized labor is as disgusting as it is shameful.”
—American Federation of Government Employees

https://www.rawstory.com/2020/02/a-travesty-and-a-disgrace-trump-quietly-issues-memo-that-could-abolish-union-rights-for-750000-federal-workers/#.XlGdg7qxeX4.twitter

Decline in Union membership is not something Americans acre about……

For much of 2019, headlines signified a labor resurgence, particularly among white-collar industries like technology and media. US public support for unions was among the highest levels in 50 years at 64%, according to a 2019 Gallup survey.

Despite the overall support for the cause, the anecdotal evidence has not shown up in the data.

The US Bureau of Labor Statistics’s latest available data on annual union membership, released on Jan. 22, shows that 10.3% of American workers were in unions, down from 10.5% in 2018. For context, in 1983, the first year for which the bureau started collecting the data, the union membership rate was about 20% with 17.7 million union workers.

https://qz.com/work/1789615/union-membership-rates-in-the-us-continues-to-decline/

Unions made our middle class and yet no one gives a crap that the middle class is disappearing along with the unions.

Maybe a little rational thought could help explain why they are declining together…..or maybe it is just a coincidence….(I do not believe in those)….

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Super Tuesday!

The 2020 election is getting serious by the vote…..we are down to 5 candidates……and Super Tuesday is the proving ground for the nomination.

Here we go….the media has tried to assassinate the candidacy of Bernie after his loss in South Carolina…..did the tactic by the corporate media succeed?

Now we have a cleat picture of the direct this election will travel….

The Super Tuesday polls are closed, and it’s shaping up to be a good night for Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders, Not so much for Elizabeth Warren and Michael Bloomberg. Biden came out strong, particularly in the South, but Sanders took the night’s biggest prize, California, as expected. He’s also leading in the second biggest, Texas. Biden racked up wins in Virginia, North Carolina, Alabama, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Massachusetts (Warren’s home state), and Minnesota. Sanders also took his home state of Vermont and Colorado. Delegates are what matter, though, and a whopping 1,344 are at stake. Sanders is expected to be the leader when all is said and done, but because these are not winner-take-all races, the full effect of the voting might not be clear until Wednesday. The states at play, in order of delegates, per the Hill and Vox:

 
  • California: 415 delegates; polls closed at 11, and the AP called the race quickly for Sanders. The key questions are how big his margin of victory will be and how many delegates his rivals can win. Sanders dominated in early results, with 67 delegates to 18 for Biden, 8 for Bloomberg and 5 for Warren.
  • Texas: 228 delegates; all polls closed at 9; the AP called it for Biden hours later.
  • North Carolina: 110 delegates; the polls closed at 7:30, and the AP called the race for Biden about 15 minutes later.
  • Virginia: 99 delegates; polls closed at 7, and the AP immediately declared Biden the winner. That the race was called so quickly bodes well for Biden because it suggests he “cleaned up” with African-American voters, per Politico.
  • Massachusetts: 91 delegates; polls closed at 8, and the AP called the race for Biden about three hours after polls closed. This is Warren’s home state, of course, and thus a bad loss for her. Worse, she was on track to finish in third behind second-place Sanders.
  • Minnesota: 75 delegates; polls closed at 9, and the AP called the race for Biden within the hour. Sen. Amy Klobuchar’s endorsement surely helped.
  • Colorado: 67 delegates; polls closed at 9, and the AP immediately called the race for Sanders.
  • Tennessee: 64 delegates; polls closed at 8, and the AP called the race for Biden about 9:30.
  • Alabama: 52 delegates; polls closed at 8, and the AP immediately called the race for Biden.
  • Oklahoma: 37 delegates; polls closed at 8, and the AP called the race for Biden about an hour later.
  • Arkansas: 31 delegates; polls closed at 8:30, and the AP called the race for Biden about 90 minutes later.
  • Utah: 29 delegates; polls closed at 10, and the AP called the race for Sanders.
  • Maine: 24 delegates; polls closed at 8
  • Vermont: 16 delegates; polls closed at 7, and the AP declared Sanders the winner of his home state at 7:20.
  • American Samoa: The US territory held a caucus, and Bloomberg won five of six delegates; Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, who was born there, won the last one.

Pay close attention to the media reports…..the fight will be in those states of the Rust Belt…..

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I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

 

1972–Deja Vu All Over Again?

This is a draft that I did not get to post in time…..this look at history may be a moot point.

1972 was the first time I voted for president…..I could have voted in 1968 but I was ass deep in mud in Vietnam and it just did not seem that important at the time.

Image

(not only do you see my political buttons from days gone by but you get a recipe as well)

And yes I voted for George McGovern…..he was the antiwar candidate and a strong Left candidate…..and now Bernie is in the early lead could this be a repeat of 1972?

George McGovern broke my young bleeding liberal heart in 1972. Bernie, oh Bernie, do not disillusion us now the way George did then.

There I was in 1972, the ink barely dry on my journalism school diploma. Working as a baby reporter at the Utica, NY, Observer-Dispatch. My generation didn’t have a letter of the alphabet, no Gen X or Y or Z, not even A, B, or C. But we were so sure we were special. And empowered. We’d shut down the nation’s universities in a general strike. We’d created and enlisted in the anti-Vietnam War movement. Those of us who didn’t get drafted. Or killed.

In 1972 the archetype of evil, Richard Nixon, was running for reelection as president. We felt as warmly toward Nixon then as we adore Trump now. Trump is nothing new for us, just something more.

My introduction to presidential politics had been in 1968, when Nixon came to Syracuse as part of the launch of his presidential campaign. I encamped at a table outside the hall where he was to speak, playing Simon & Garfunkel’s Sounds of Silence nonstop for 12 hours. At full volume. That song haunts me yet. In my innocence I was sure I went a long way toward mobilizing opposition to Nixon’s perfidy.

Is Bernie Just George McGovern Déjà Vu or Déjà New?

Bernie is taking on the establishment Dems, the Corporatists, the way that McGovern did in 1972….again is this deja vu?

It’s a perfect time to recall a famous quote from one of the nation’s foremost philosophers, Yogi Berra: Its “déjà vu all over again.”

Is the Democratic Party replaying the lost saga of 2016 but with a very 2020 twist?  Bernie Sander (D-VT) appears to have been robbed of the 2016 nomination, beaten out by Hillary Clinton (Sec. of State).  Mrs. Clinton won because the Democratic Party establishment – the “superdelegates” – trumped the popular vote, securing for her the nomination.  Following the 2016 fiasco, Sanders’ forces secured changes in the Democratic Party rules preventing superdelegates from casting votes during the first round.

Sanders vs. the Establishment Democrats: McGovern All Over Again?

https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/174394

Bernie is not my candidate for I do not consider him as antiwar….but I will support him if it comes down to it because the rest of the Dem field are owned by the M-IC and cannot be counted on to end our endless wars.

It is fascinating the freak out by the establishment who went all in for Biden and he has sorely let them down….now they are jumping on the Bernie bashing bandwagon with more fervor than before.

Like I wrote…this look back may be a moot point after Super Tuesday…..I just could not waste a good draft…..

Be Smart!

Learn Stuff!

VOTE!

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Medicare For All (Again)

As the 2020 election gets ready for the kickoff…..and the debate of importance is that of health care….the topic that effects ALL Americans…..I have tried to keep my readers abreast of the debate about Medicare For All there is even BS being spread by centrists and the MSM to make it a non-starter….

My thoughts on Medicare For All……

https://lobotero.com/2019/03/04/medicare-for-all/

https://lobotero.com/2019/10/28/can-we-afford-medicare-for-all/

More information has come to light this from the Journal of Internal Medicine…..

Insurers and healthcare providers in the United States spent a staggering $812 billion on paperwork and other administrative burdens in 2017 alone, bureaucratic costs that could be dramatically reduced by switching to a single-payer system like Medicare for All.

That’s according to a study published Monday in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine, which found that administrative costs amounted to 34.2 percent of total U.S. national health expenditures in 2017—twice the amount Canada spent on healthcare administration that same year.

The study’s authors noted that U.S. healthcare providers impose “a hidden surcharge” on patients “to cover their costly administrative burden.” U.S. insurers and providers spent $2,497 per person on healthcare administration in 2017 while Canada spent just $551 per capita, the study found.

“The average American is paying more than $2,000 a year for useless bureaucracy,” said Dr. David Himmelstein, lead author of the study and co-founder of Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP). “That money could be spent for care if we had a Medicare for All program.”

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/01/07/study-shows-medicare-all-could-save-us-600-billion-annually-paperwork-and-other

Universal health care should be already part of the social fabric of this country…..time to make known all those Congresspeople that are on the payroll of the Health industry…..I feel that would be very telling.

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/01/15/analysis-30-years-single-payer-research-shows-medicare-all-would-absolutely-save-us

Then there is the medical professions who are set to support Medicare For All…..

The fight for Medicare for All received a two-handed boost from tens of thousands of doctors on Monday when the American College of Physicians—in a move described as a “seachange for the medical professions”—officially endorsed a single-payer system as among only one of two possible ways to improve the nation’s healthcare woes.

Representing 159,000 doctors of internal medicine nationwide, the ACP is the largest medical specialty society and second-largest physician group in the country overall after the American Medical Association (AMA).

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/01/20/historic-shift-second-largest-physicians-group-us-has-new-prescription-its-medicare

You have heard the silly agrument about your private insurance, right?

Well it seems that that argument is only in the minds of those that are controlled by the industry…..

The for-profit U.S. healthcare system is so broken that a growing number of people who are fortunate enough to have private insurance coverage are still unable to afford doctor visits and other essential services due to soaring costs—leaving a larger number of Americans with unmet medical needs today than there were two decades ago.

That’s a central finding of a new study by Harvard University researchers published Monday in the peer-reviewed journal JAMA Internal Medicine, examining 20 years of government data between 1998 and 2017.

The study found that despite a major expansion of insurance coverage in the U.S. during that period—most significantly through the 2010 Affordable Care Act (ACA)—”most measures of unmet need for physician services have shown no improvement, and financial access to physician services has decreased.” The study’s authors noted that the rise of “narrow networks, high-deductible plans, and higher co-pays” has contributed to the growth of unmet medical needs in the U.S. since the 1990s.

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/01/27/medicare-all-what-patients-need-new-harvard-study-shows-even-those-private-insurance

Slogans and spin are all the opponents have…..the people want good health care…..PERIOD!

And here is how it will be funded….the fact sheet from Bernie……fact sheet.

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I Read, I Wrote, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”