Video: Billionaires' war against workers

Watch this great speech by Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders about the war against workers. He stood on the Senate floor yesterday and told the other senators (most of whom are millionaires),

If we don’t begin to stand together and start representing those families, there will not be a middle class in this country.

Sanders said a war is being waged by some of the wealthiest and most powerful people in this country against the working families of the United States of America.

Against the disappearing and shrinking middle class of our country…many of the nation’s billionaires are on the warpath. They want more, more, more. Their greed has no end. … (They have) very little concern for this country or the people of this country that gets in the way of the accumulation of more wealth or more power.

Wall Street's greed caused our recession, he said, and after we bailed them out, the CEO’s today are earning more money than they did before the bailout.

When we were in school we used to read the textbooks which talked about the banana republics in Latin America. We used to read the books about countries in which a handful of people owned and contolled most of the wealth of those countries. Well guess what, that’s exactly what’s happening in the United States today.

It's great stuff. Watch it.

Today's Teamster News 12.02.10

Horizon Air Pilots Approve Five-Year Agreement  IBT   ...The new contract includes dramatic improvements in work conditions where the pilots will be writing their own schedules and trips...
Teamsters Oppose Bill That Includes Retirement Age Increase  IBT   ...A new bill passed by the Illinois House of Representatives would bring sweeping changes to police and fire pension systems in Chicago...
Teamsters ratify new grocery contract with 97% vote  West Seattle Herald   ...Members of Teamsters Local 38 working for Albertsons, QFC, and Safeway in Snohomish County ratify a new 3-year contract...
Cities try to light up holidays in dim times  The Detroit News   ...Kathy Ritter, the steward of Teamsters Local 214, was off the clock, working on her own time to help ensure the downtown looks merry this year, even with a tight city budget...
FedEx to cut 172 jobs  Charlotte Business Journal   ...About 1700 jobs will be cut nationally...
County Recorder in Massachusetts Goes After MERS  firedoglake  ...  A deed recorder in South Essex, Massachusetts, is basically taking on MERS...
Recovery gathers steam  Wall Street Journal   ...The U.S. economy is starting to fire on more cylinders, though the upturn remains too weak to bring down high unemployment...
Fed Data Shows Foreign Banks Huge Beneficiaries of Emergency Lending Programs, Hedge Funds, McDonald's, Harley-Davidson and Others Also Received Help  naked capitalism   Good summary of the Fed's data dump yesterday.
Too Big to Succeed (opinion)  New York Times   ...an absence of accountability and blatant inequities in treatment are why Americans remain angry...
A new political landscape, same old lies about labor (opinion) The Hill's Congress Blog  ......Unions lift productivity on average by 19 percent to 24 percent in manufacturing, 16 percent in hospitals and up to 38 percent in the construction sector...

This just in: Fed bailed out foreign banks

Today's data dump from the Federal Reserve revealed that it loaned billions of dollars to banks headquartered in Paris, Bahrain and London.

Reports the Financial Times:

Foreign banks were amongst the biggest users of the US Federal Reserve’s emergency credit programmes during the financial crisis of 2007-2009, according to data released by the US central bank.

The revelation that foreign-owned banks were some of the biggest beneficiaries may anger both critics who saw the Fed’s efforts to support US credit markets as a bail-out for Wall Street and those who believed the rescue should benefit the American taxpayer.

Sewell Chan at The New York Times reports that the Fed helped out corporations, not just banks, with short-term iou's called commercial paper. Companies that received help included Caterpillar, General Electric, Harley Davidson, McDonald’s, Verizon and Toyota. 

The Fed created a number of emergency loan programs to ease the financial crisis. One program was called the "Primary Dealer Credit Facility."  Reports Chan:

Citigroup was the greatest beneficiary of that program, drawing on a total of $1.8 trillion in loans, followed by Merrill Lynch, which used $1.5 trillion; Morgan Stanley, which drew $1.4 trillion; and Bear Stearns, which used $960 billion. During the crisis, Merrill Lynch was sold to Bank of America and Bear Stearns was sold to JPMorgan Chase, as storied Wall Street institutions crumbled under the weight of bad loans and excessive leverage.

The data also revealed the global scope of the crisis that followed the collapse of Lehman Brothers in September 2008. The European Central Bank drew heavily on the Fed’s currency swap lines to support dollar-financed money markets in Europe. But nine other central banks, the data show, also made use of the swap lines: Australia, Britain, Denmark, Japan, Mexico, Norway, South Korea, Sweden and Switzerland.

More to come.

Buy union. Don't buy toxic toys.

Be American and Buy American over the holidays. Even better, buy union made products, like New Balance moccasins, Justice Clothing hoodies and Radio Flyer wagons. (Canada is okay too.)

Don't buy toxic toys for your kids. Avoid Toys R Us products that have tested positive for PVC, which causes health problems in children. Some of the dangerous Toys R Us toys include Zhu Zhu Pets Hamster Hangout, Club Penguin figurines and You and Me dolls.


Here are some websites to get you started on buying union products.:
www.massaflcio.org/buy-union-made
http://www.unionlabel.com/
http://www.ufcw.org/about_ufcw/ufcw_made_products/
http://www.unionwear.com/
http://workers-united.org/buyunion

And here's the website about toxic toys:
http://www.toxictoysrus.com/report.htm

Fed's Secret Loans To Be Revealed Today

During the financial meltdown of 2007-10, the Federal Reserve secretly loaned trillions of dollars to -- well, we don't know exactly who. Morgan Stanley and Merrill Lynch are good guesses. Today we'll find out who got the Fed's bailout because the new financial reform law requires the Fed to disclose that information. These emergency loans are in addition to the TARP, by the way.

Some things we do already know about the loans. For example, the Fed has loaned money to random companies like Red Roof Inn, according to Matt Stoller in a posting today on the Naked Capitalism blog. We also know the Fed funneled $13 billion through AIG to Goldman Sachs. Stoller calls that

a direct transfer of $80 from every working American to the employees of Goldman Sachs.

The Fed has a lot of real power, Stoller says. But it doesn't always know what it's doing. The Federal Reserve missed the speculative bubbles that burst over the past decade.

It should be interesting.

Tell Congress: Extend unemployment insurance

Today's the day unemployment benefits start to run out for 2 million Americans. With five out-of-work people for every job available, it isn't don't expect unemployed Americans to suddenly get up from the couch and find work. More likely they'll stock up at food pantries or move to homeless shelters.

Congress still has time to extend unemployment benefits. Doing otherwise will hurt the economy. Unemployed people tend to spend every last dollar of their benefits, which pumps money into the economy. Economists say a million more people could lose their jobs if unemployment benefits aren't extended.

The Coalition on Human Needs says that every dollar of unemployment insurance generates between $1.60 and  $2.00 in economic growth.  Every dollar of tax cuts for the wealthy generates less than 40 cents.

You can do something about this crisis. E-mail your elected representatives in Congress and tell them to continue unemployment insurance for a year. It's quick and easy -- Just click here and fill in your zip code.

Today's Teamster News 12.01.10

Evanston Council Approves Levy Increase to Fund Pensions  Teamsters Local 700   ...Evanston aldermen ... unanimously approv(ed) a 3 percent increase in the property tax levy to aid funding to the city's police and fire pension obligations...Local 700 represents about 150 Evanston police officers...
Jefferson County government wins concessions from union to help balance budget; talks with Teamsters continue  Peninsula Daily News   ...UFCW membership voted to defer raises for a year...
Teamsters Canada-represented engineers ratify CN contract  Progressive Railroading   ...the contract provides wage increases and improves benefits...
Union member earns highest Scouting honor  The Times Leader   ...James Rogers (member of local 401 and employee of YRC) is the recipient of the annual George Meany Scouting Award...
UPS to hire 50,000 for holiday work  New Mexico Business Weekly   ...From Thanksgiving to Christmas, UPS expects to deliver about 430 million packages around the world...
Small-cap Stock Alert – YRC Worldwide on the Road Again  Beacon Equity Research   ...the prospects for the trucking industry are looking good...
Tempers Flare At Kentucky Unemployment Office As Benefits Expire For Thousands  Huffington Post  ...and Indiana has armed guards at its 36 field offices...
Glow From Solar Factories Fails to Match Town's Hopes  Wall Street Journal   ...Built on technologies that are new and evolving, green industries spawn lots of start-ups, but they can shrivel just as quickly. Other countries are also pushing—and subsidizing—these same industries, making it hard for them to take root and expand in costlier locales like the U.S...
Manufacturing's Sparkle Fails to Radiate  Wall Street Journal   ...Manufacturing alone can't solve U.S. economic problems...
G.M. to Hire 1,000 to Engineer More Electric Cars  New York Times   ...The new jobs, in engineering and research, are the latest commitment by G.M. to broaden its lineup of energy-efficient models as well as to invest in its home state...
Midwest Emerges as Center for Clean Energy  New York Times   ...The upper Midwest has a history of advanced manufacturing, and machined parts and many of the basic materials of photovoltaic panels — polycrystalline in central Michigan, glass in the Toledo region, plastic films in Ohio — were already being made in the region...