By Dick Meister
It was 7 a.m. on a cold, rainy day in the heart of downtown Oakland 63 years ago this month.
Dozens of strikers, picket signs held high, were gathered outside the Kahn's and Hastings department stores on Broadway on that gloomy Sunday morning of December 1, 1946. [...]
A letter from FreePress.net:
Cable giant Comcast and NBC Universal have just announced that they're merging to form one of the most powerful media companies in the world.
Washington and Wall Street are already saying this mega-merger is a done deal. If we don’t act now to stop it, we’ll' [...]
Now is more important than ever for the movement that swept Obama into office to get back into the streets and oppose his Afghan escalation policy
EDITORIAL We knew President Obama wasn’t going to be perfect. We knew he was a lot more of a political moderate than the [...]
CALVIN TRILLIN: DEADLINE POET
Senator Joe Lieberman
and the public option
If public option's in the bill, Joe says,
He'll work to make a filibuster stick.
If so, insurance giants then will cheer.
The poor will think of Joe when they're sick.
The Nation (11/30/09)
The most sensible job creation program comes from the AFL-CIO and a coalition of civil rights and other organizations
By Dick Meister
(Dick Meister has covered labor and politics for a half-century as a reporter, editor, author and commentator.)
Of all the ideas out there on how to [...]
J. Bradford DeLong is Professor of Economics at the University of California at Berkeley and a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. This column is from the Project Syndicate news series.
Why Are Good Policies Bad Politics?
By J. Bradford DeLong
BERKELEY – From the day after [...]
Scroll down for an excellent analysis of Obama's predicament by Center for American Progress.
I find most troubling President Obama's statement that the Bush administration didn't have the resources nor the
strategy in Afghanistan and that he will now finish the job.
I also find most troubling that his generals' [...]
It's time to quit with the patches, quit with the one-time solutions and fee hikes
EDITORIAL Rahm Emanuel, President Obama's chief of staff, likes to say that politicians should never let a crisis go to waste — but that's what happened in San Francisco last summer, when the mayor and [...]
As small business people know, the Obama administration has spent its capital largely on Wall Street and neglected the real job creation engine of the U.S. economy: small business and loans to small business.
Scott Hauge, president of Small Business California and the Paul Revere of small business, has put [...]
GOP Candidate, pushed by right, ends upstate bid
--The New York Times
The GOP's chief commissars had heard
That there was trouble in the 23rd:
Though every county chairman there had voted
For Dede Scozzafava, it was noted
That she, though certainly a high achiever,
Was not, in fact, a zealous true believer.
If any of the [...]
The Center for American Progress reports that weakness in the labor market is threatening the fledgling economic recovery. Policy should center on creating jobs to boost U.S. middle class economic security and help those who are most vulnerable.
Friday, November 20, 2009
By Christian E. Weller
(The Center for American [...]
U.S. WILL ORDER PAY CUTS AT
FIRMS WITH BAILOUT AID
--The New York Times
The government has moved to intervene
To make the pay scale slightly less obscene.
The Wall Street types consider this unfair.
Tney say they earned their money fair and square,
And 20 million, say, is only middling
For someone who's so good at [...]
San Francisco has long operated under the proposition that civilians, not police officers, should conduct investigations of complaints against cops
Editorial: San Francisco's new police chief wants more authority to discipline problem officers. He's been talking about it since the day he arrived, and he's getting some political [...]
Joe Hill told his IWW comrades just before he stepped in front of the firing squad, "Don't waste any time in mourning. Organize."
By Dick Meister
(Dick Meister, former labor editor of the SF Chronicle and KQED-TV Newsroom, has covered labor, politics and other matters for a' [...]
California Democratic Party sends a clear message to President Obama. Stop making war in Afghanistan. Will he get the message?
By Norman Solomon
(Norman Solomon is co-chair of the national Healthcare NOT Warfare campaign, launched by Progressive Democrats of America. He is the author of a dozen books including “War [...]
It was 20 years ago this month when the "Velvet Revolution" erupted in Czechoslovakia and
Eastern Europe
By Dick Meister
It’s a time of celebration in Prague this month. A time to mark the November day 20 years ago when the “Velvet Revolution” erupted. A time to mark the [...]
Mikhail Gorbachev, former president of the Soviet Union, was awarded the 1990 Nobel Peace Prize for his leading role in the peaceful conclusion of the Cold War. Today, as the Founding President of Green Cross International, he is heading an international Climate Change Task Force. This column is part [...]
For the roughly 20,000 renters living in newer units, evictions can happen on a landlord's whim.
EDITORIAL Mayor Gavin Newsom, reeling from criticism of his disappearing act last week and his failure to quickly reengage with San Francisco, has an opportunity to repair some of his tattered image, particularly among [...]
Labor Hampered by 'Vetoes of Silence'
By Dick Meister
Nothing is more basic to our democratic society than the principle of majority rule. But what if the eligible voters who fail to cast ballots were automatically recorded as voting “no”?
Ridiculous as it sounds, that’s exactly what the country’s airline and [...]
LABOR HAMPERED BY ‘VETOES OF SILENCE’
By Dick Meister
Nothing is more basic to our democratic society than the principle of majority rule. But what if the eligible voters who fail to cast ballots were automatically recorded as voting “no”?
Ridiculous as it sounds, that’s exactly what the country’s [...]
Failing the Midterms: Press overplays election results
Republican candidates won gubernatorial races in New Jersey and Virginia on Tuesday; meanwhile, Democratic candidates won two special elections for the U.S. House of Representatives in New York and California. But it was very clear which set of elections corporate [...]
Rep. Nancy Pelosi did what she could to sabotage the single payer health care position of her own party in her own state
By Norman Solomon
(Norman Solomon is co-chair of the national Healthcare NOT Warfare campaign, launched by Progressive Democrats of America.)
In Washington, “healthcare reform” has degenerated into [...]
Will Newsom emerge as an embittered, angry, and ultimately unsuccessful mayor committed to punishing his enemies or a serious leader who can live up to his own hype?
EDITORIAL It's possible that Mayor Gavin Newsom took a long look at himself, his life, and his future last week [...]
Stephen Barnett, prominent UC-Berkeley law professor and noted First Amendment and antitrust scholar and activist, 1935-2009
Photo by Jim Block
By Bruce B. Brugmann
(Special note: read Barnett's scathing indictment of Examiner/Chronicle/JOA news coverage in the San Francisco Bay Guardian (9/31/1970)
Steve Barnett would have been' [...]
Dick Meister describes the tense scene at the Berlin Wall shortly after it went up in 196l
By Dick Meister
It was 20 years ago this month that the Berlin Wall finally fell, one of the last vestiges of the Cold War. But though it's long gone, I and I'm' [...]
George Akerlof, a Nobel laureate in economics, is Professor of economics at the University of California, Berkeley. Joseph E. Stiglitz, University Professor at Columbia University and winner of the 2001 Nobel Memorial Prize, served as Chairman of the Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress. Let [...]
The tale of what really happened on Halloween Eve in 1951 in Rock Rapids, Iowa
By Bruce B. Brugmann
As I was preparing to update my annual Halloween blog, I checked the Guardian politics blog to see what the action looked like for tomorrow night on Halloween Eve.
Two years ago, [...]
CHINA POLICY
1.
So why did President Obama
Decline to meet the Dalai Lama?
It's said that he must curry favor
With Chiina. Yes, it has our waiver
To toss its people in the clink
For how they pray or what they think
And we've resolved that we won't fret
About the way it rules Tibet.
2.
For [...]
Unlocking Competition: The Need to Eliminate the Antitrust Exemption for Health Insurers
By David Balt , Stephanie Gross
(The Center for American Progress is a nonpartisan research and educational institute dedicated to promoting a strong, just and free America that ensures opportunity for all.)
View the full memo (pdf)
Competition is [...]
Josh Silver and the good people at the Free Press media reform group sent me a snapshot from Jon Stewart's Daily Show (l0/26/09) that skewered the politicians who fought net neutrality for the big media conglomerates.
A masterful job and worth a dozen mainstream editorials, which of course were [...]
CBS radio on Halloween on Oct. 30, l938: "2X2L calling CQ, NewYork...Isn't there anyone on the air? Isn't there anyone on the air? Isn't there anyone?"
By Dick Meister
“2X2L calling CQ … 2X2L calling CQ, New York …. Isn’t there anyone on the air? Isn’t there anyone on the air?' [...]
Gavin Newsom, candidate for governor of California, doesn't want to seem soft on crime, so Newsom, mayor of San Francisco, is siding with the federal authorities on deporting immigrant youth
EDITORIAL Mayor Gavin Newsom has set off something of a crisis in San Francisco government by insisting that' [...]
Well, promoter Boots Houston put out an email summarizing his West Fest event:
"West Fest, Woodstock 40th Anniversary this Sunday October 25th, 72 acts, 4 stages, 26 poster artists- FREE-9 a.m. to 6 p.m.Golden Gate Park. Let the magic begin."
But I like to think of the event as full of [...]
THREE POSSIBLE
EXPLANATIONS FROM
THE NOBEL COMMITTEE
Don't be surprised. Don't gasp. Don't faint.
We've simply said, "George Bush he ain't."
The prize diplomacy can reap'll
Prevent this guy from bombing people.
Since Henry Kissinger has won,
You know that this is all in fun.
Calvin Trillin, Deadline Poet, The Nation, Nov. 2, 2009
[...]
Now the Obama administration and congressional leaders -- with Sen. John Kerry playing a starring role in recent days -- are making a determined effort to legitimize the Afghan government as a prelude to further U.S. escalation of the war.
By Norman Solomon
(Norman Solomon, executive director of [...]
What happens when members of Congress get post traumatic stress syndrome and see blue, blue, blue
By Jess Brownell
(Jess Brownell is our Voice of the Heartland, a freelance writer who lives in Milwaukee.)
I know this was a while ago now in Andy Warhol Time, but [...]
Limbaugh defenders ignore his record of racist and race-bating remarks over a long period of time
10/16/09
In the wake of Rush Limbaugh being booted from a group of investors bidding to buy the St. Louis Rams football team, a minor media tempest has been stirred [...]
By Dick Meister
Attention fans of free enterprise: After the earthquake on Oct. l7, 1989, almost everyone with something to sell quickly began peddling earthquake specials
(Dick Meister is a longtime San Francisco journalist.)
Fans of free enterprise undoubtedly were pleased that the earthquake which caused such great damage [...]
After the earthquake of Oct. l7, 1989, commercial radio stations performed an invaluable public service and justified, if only briefly, the bright hopes when radio broadcasting was introduced 75 years ago
By Dick Meister
(Dick Meister is a longtime San Francisco journalist)
To me, and doubtless to [...]
Potrero HIll is the gem of San Francisco neighborhoods, either cut or uncut depending on your point of view.
Here is the proof: a nifty jazz breakfast at the Potrero Hill neighborhood house (Saturday morning, Oct. 17) followed by the Potrero Neighborhood Street Fair on 20th between Missouri and [...]
What we have here with Rush Limbaugh and staffers at the Weekly Standard is a coup de foudre, a thunderbolt of love that strikes without warning and cannot be denied.
By Jess Brownell
(Jess Brownell is our Voice of the Heartland, observing the political scene as a freelance [...]
B3: Jon Stewart says, "CNN: Nobody leaves more things there." In a short segment on his Daily show (l0/12/09),
Stewart gives one of the most incisive commentaries I've seen on the problem with television news. He nails,
among other things, the interviewing bloviator who allows the lies to' [...]
From the producers of the 40th Anniversary of Woodstock:
Free Concert Golden Gate Park
Sunday, October 25, 2009
Event: “West Fest” Celebrating the 40th Anniversary of Woodstock.
Attraction: 42 bands, 3 stages and 26 poster artists. Solar domes, Alternative vehicles, Electric bikes, Native American Tipi [...]
One of every five U.S. workers aged 18 to 25 live below the official poverty line. More than one third of U.S. workers under 35 are living with their parents because they can't afford to live on their own.There are solutions.
By Dick Meister
(Dick Meister, former labor' [...]
Wake up, City Hall — and get moving on community choice aggregation power
(B3 note: I made a mistake in this story. See the correction below.)
EDITORIAL San Francisco's chance to create a semblance of public power, through community choice aggregation, faces a devastating threat from Pacific Gas and Electric [...]
If neoclassical economic theory were correct, Norman Borlaug would have been among the wealthiest men in the world, while our bankers would have been lining up at soup kitchens.
Here is our monthly installment of Joseph E. Stiglitz's Unconventional Economic Wisdom column from the Project Syndicate news [...]
Dick Meister runs down some important labor stories that the mainstream press has ignored and in effect censored
By Dick Meister
(Dick Meister, formerly labor editor of the SF Chronicle and KQED-TV Newsroom, has covered labor, politics and other matters for a half-century.)
Did you know about the Bush administration’s rotten [...]
"After 34 years, will the New York Times cover the Project Censored annual release?"
By Bruce B. Brugmann
Peter Phillips, the director of Project Censored at Sonoma State University, sent me this key question with his annual Censored package:
"After 34 years, will the New York Times cover the Project Censored annual" [...]
Republicans will scream "socialized medicine" on behalf of insurance companies no matter what is in this reform package.
EDITORIAL This could very well be the pivotal moment in Barack Obama's presidency. If he loses on health care reform — or worse, if he caves in to right-wing bullying tactics and [...]
Labor's message to its friends is clear: hold fast!
By Dick Meister
(Dick Meister, formerly labor editor of the San Francisco Chronicle and labor reporter for KQED/TV’s Newsroom, has covered labor and political issues for a half-century as a reporter, editor, author and commentator.)
U.S. unions marked Labor Day this year with' [...]
