Otto Reich just appeared on NPR and stated that Aristede deserved to be deposed because he'd stolen an election. I will say no more.

I've been pretty truant with my blogging habits lately, and there's a great deal to blog - John Ashcroft hiding prisoners from the very imperial international red cross - a professor of mine once remarked that the red cross and bombing civilians seem to go hand in hand - for one. I might mention the so-called "comstitutional crisis in Connecticut over the impeachment of crooked governor and illegal strikebreaker John "G. is for 'Gifts'," i could talk about that firghtening article in the NYT about military recruitment. Hell, i could write about twelve pages of material just cursing out David Brooks and Charles Hill. I could wonder why the NYT moved the aforementioned story about ashcroft on its webpage down to the ehadline doldrums while gloating about Tiger Woods' abyssmal showing in a sport nobody outside the republican party goves a shit about. I could complain about my continuing unemployment and the concomitant feelings of depression and uselessness, review Andrew Ross's new book Low Wage High Profile, which i'm currently reading, or critique Rob Mitchum's hatchet job on Automato in tuesday's Pitchfork. But i really shouldn't gotta find a job after all. So check back later, and maybe i'll have solved my employment woes ad have something more substantial to say.

I've been pretty truant with my blogging habits lately, and there's a great deal to blog - John Ashcroft hiding prisoners from the very imperial international red cross - a professor of mine once remarked that the red cross and bombing civilians seem to go hand in hand - for one. I might mention the so-called "comstitutional crisis in Connecticut over the impeachment of crooked governor and illegal strikebreaker John "G. is for 'Gifts'," i could talk about that firghtening article in the NYT about military recruitment. Hell, i could write about twelve pages of material just cursing out David Brooks and Charles Hill. I could wonder why the NYT moved the aforementioned story about ashcroft on its webpage down to the ehadline doldrums while gloating about Tiger Woods' abyssmal showing in a sport nobody outside the republican party goves a shit about. I could complain about my continuing unemployment and the concomitant feelings of depression and uselessness, review Andrew Ross's new book Low Wage High Profile, which i'm currently reading, or critique Rob Mitchum's hatchet job on Automato in tuesday's Pitchfork. But i really shouldn't gotta find a job after all. So check back later, and maybe i'll have solved my employment woes ad have something more substantial to say.

Perhaps I was too alarmist in my last post. While the loss of card check, if the partisan and reactionary NLRB does rule it an illegal tactic, will be a huge setback to union's strategic planning and organizing, such an admittedly calamitous event might trigger - by necessity - new strategies for organizing workers - such as "minority unionism" and other unorthodox means of organizing shopfloor power - whether those shops are auto plants or nursing homes, discussion sections, day care centers, or cafeterias. Still, a declaration that a board election is the only process through which unions can gain recognition would be devastating. 50% of all NLRB-sponsored union elections are lost due to managerial anti-union attacks and intimidation. Workers are fired for organizing in one out of every three union drives. As GET-UP and GSEU have seen, even when unions (we think) win elections, employers can have ballots impounded and prevent the results of the election from being recognized for years, exploting a flawed and biased appeals process which only favors management. This kind of ruling would be unnaceptable.

I forgot to blog it yesterday - thankfully, josh didn't - but i find the republican-filled NLRB's challenge to card check neutrality extremely frightening. Should the board ban card check the american labor movement may be doomed unless workers take action to force a reversal.

Mike Bloomberg vs New York's workers



As home health care workers prepare to return to work (and for a possible second strike in 30 days if remaining agencies don't sign contracts,) and a day after protests by thousands of police, teachers, and firefighters, day care workers, members of SEIU local 1707, have walked out for what may wind up being a longer walkout. Mayor Bloomberg's insistence on a substandard contract has left workers without a contract for four years. This has to end. Bloomberg needs to value the indispensable work that day care workers do, and he needs to value the people who do this work. He does neither, and so workers must fight.

The simpsons has been coopted by Ronald Reagan's flag-draped corpse. I at first wondered if this was one final act of censorship, but the imperial ambitions of the reaganite agenda are of course far from dead, to the chagrin of untold millions around the globe - in Iraq, where reagan supported a brutal dictator named Saddam Hussein, in Guatemala, where Reagan excused the atrocities of Efrain Rios Montt's death squads as "totally dedicated to democracy" and "givena bum rap by the press," in El Salvador, where murdered nuns became international communist conspirators, in Nicaragua, in american school cafeterias bountiful with ketchup and poverty.



As the military band plays the "Battle Hymn of the Republic," I imagine John Brown, Ralph Chaplin, and ten thousand air traffic controllers with middle fingers extended, reclaiming a melody from one who never deserved it.