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LA Free Press, 1964 Bank of America - Protest Target (1 of 3)

LA Free Press, 1964 Bank of America - Protest Target (2 of 3)

LA Free Press, 1964 Bank of America - Protest Target (3 of 3)

Yesterday, it was the Counter Culture.
Today, it’s… all about us.

Est. 1964 Re-Incarnated by Popular Demand

This is the original, 60’s, counter culture, LA Free Press. Today’s Best Alternative View & Our Old Hippie Headlines, Too! A Head Trip for Smart Minds.

Been There. Done That.

Now, A Chance to Get it Right.

November 05 – November 11, 2011

Published throughout the Week

The OWS Movement is not the ‘Arab Spring’, but it may be ‘America’s Salvation’.

The LA Free Press brings a unique perspective to a Movement that may change your life forever…

First published on September 6, 2010

By Eve Tahmincioglu (CareerDiva.net)

The headline in my local newspaper today reads: “Jobless must set sights lower.”

I wouldn’t be surprised if your local newspaper or radio station has a similar story today. This is the kind of sensational angle the media loves to focus on during all types of holidays. For example, a Christmas day massacre or a Halloween candy poisoning will get endless attention by editors, especially in this Internet age where all most media care about is how many times you guys click on a story.

But on this Labor Day, a time when we’re supposed to be celebrating the advances workers have achieved in the workplace, let’s not just roll over and accept what has become the standard employer line — you have to take less money for more work — and let’s concentrate on what needs to be done to bring back a job market with better quality jobs for the working stiff.

Today, President Obama is expected to announce a series of steps to stimulate the economy. Yes, the pundits will be tearing him apart today, saying it’s just a government bailout and the free market needs to do its thing. But if we look back in history, these types of measures the administration is touting are what brought workers back from the brink during another bad economic down turn, the Great Depression.

During that time there was a segment of society doing quite well while the regular guys and gals suffered, and during this recession many of those telling workers to accept less and do more are also doing quite well.

This from a great opinion piece in the New York Times last week called “How to End the Great Recession,” by Robert Reich, the former labor secretary under Clinton:

Where have all the economic gains gone? Mostly to the top. The economists Emmanuel Saez and Thomas Piketty examined tax returns from 1913 to 2008. They discovered an interesting pattern. In the late 1970s, the richest 1 percent of American families took in about 9 percent of the nation’s total income; by 2007, the top 1 percent took in 23.5 percent of total income.

It’s no coincidence that the last time income was this concentrated was in 1928. I do not mean to suggest that such astonishing consolidations of income at the top directly cause sharp economic declines. The connection is more subtle.

Reich has some suggestions how to make things better:

THE Great Depression and its aftermath demonstrate that there is only one way back to full recovery: through more widely shared prosperity. In the 1930s, the American economy was completely restructured. New Deal measures — Social Security, a 40-hour work week with time-and-a-half overtime, unemployment insurance, the right to form unions and bargain collectively, the minimum wage — leveled the playing field.

In the decades after World War II, legislation like the G.I. Bill, a vast expansion of public higher education and civil rights and voting rights laws further reduced economic inequality. Much of this was paid for with a 70 percent to 90 percent marginal income tax on the highest incomes. And as America’s middle class shared more of the economy’s gains, it was able to buy more of the goods and services the economy could provide. The result: rapid growth and more jobs.

By contrast, little has been done since 2008 to widen the circle of prosperity. Health-care reform is an important step forward but it’s not nearly enough.

That’s where Obama’s proposals may come in.

This news alert just in from Politico.com, according to a White House spokesman:

“The president will work with Congress to enact a new up-front investment in our nation’s infrastructure – an investment that would help jump-start additional job creation, while also laying the foundation for future growth. This initial investment would fund improvements in the nation’s surface transportation, as well as our airports and air traffic control system.” The measures include the “establishment of an Infrastructure Bank to leverage federal dollars, and focus on investments of national and regional significance that often fall through the cracks in the current siloed transportation programs,” and “the integration of high-speed rail on an equal footing into the surface transportation program.”

It’s hard to tell whether such measures will be enough, and a lot of smart and dumb people will surely be debating this today. But the bottom line is, just encouraging workers to accept a worse lot in life will not reinvigorate the middle class, and it won’t help the economy at large, right?

The answer could lie in renewed organizing efforts.

This from Amy B. Dean, co-Author of “A New New Deal: How Regional Activism Will Reshape the American Labor Movement,” in a Huffington Post piece today:

It takes the organized efforts of working people to reverse these trends toward exclusion and to ensure that each new epoch will bring a shared prosperity. During the transition to the industrial economy, it was not preordained that the auto, steel, or textile industries would provide living wages, health care, pensions, and other benefits that allowed for a stable, thriving middle class in this country. Rather, employees needed to use the institution of collective bargaining to come together, negotiate with their employers, and demand the conditions that would provide a healthy quality of life for working people.

Clearly the quality of work life is suffering.

The story telling workers to shoot low in my local paper today quoted a worker, Sue Fritz, 49, who works at a state facility helping care for people who have developmental disabilities.

“We’re working shorter with less people, and more is being expected of us. It’s a very strenuous day. To have to get up and go back in every morning…you have no choice.”

There are choices, and things do change if workers want them to.

Let’s go back in time to the first Labor Day.

Washington Post blogger Valerie Strauss offers a history lesson:

It was first celebrated in this country in the 1880s — at a time when people commonly worked 12-hour days. The first Labor Day rally, in 1882, was in support of an eight-hour workday.

A word about CareerDiva.net:

The thinking man’s and woman’s career blog.
Eve Tahmincioglu, author, journalist and columnist for MSNBC’s Your Career.

I love this site… check it out, enjoy it, take this lady’s advice, and move forward.

Yesterday, it was the Counter Culture. Today, it’s…Friday, January 14, 2011 and it’s all about us.

Est. 1964 Re-Incarnated by Popular Demand

This is the original, 60’s, counter culture, LA Free Press. Today’s Best Alternative View & Our Old Hippie Headlines, Too! A Head Trip for Smart Minds.

Been There. Done That.

Now, A Chance to Get it Right.

Published by One p.m. (PST)

January 10 – 14, 2011

The Gathering of the Tribes

A discussion of the rise in the Human Consciousness Movement.

More to Come by 1 pm (PST)

Commentary will be posted at 5 pm (PST)

Est. 1964 Re-Incarnated by Popular Demand

This is the original, 60’s, counter culture, LA Free Press. Today’s Best Alternative View & Our Old Hippie Headlines, Too! A Head Trip for Smart Minds.

This article refers directly to the Los Angeles Free Press Series mentioned above.

HERE is a link to the first postings of this Series.

After any day’s reading, come here again to find discussion on the thoughts generated and the conclusions that can be drawn. And please don’t hesitate to add whatever you have in mind!

by Steven M. Finger

Is 2012 likely to be a false call?  Has happened before – thought we should point out the many who thought they were going to be the Grateful Dead are not.  At least, not yet.

And, surely, you know all folks are not on the same wavelength – the above posting is just a reminder that much remains to be done if we are to ever reach a (beautifully) harmonic chord.  Might be why the earlier call wasn’t answered.

Come visit at 5pm (PST) for today’s complete commentary.

Key Words of our thinking in this Issue:  The Shift of the Ages, The Square Root of One Percent, Para PachaMama Global Community Network, Rainbow Family of Living Light, LETS, Local Exchange Trading Systems, Wholistic Business Assistance, Apocalypse

Here are links to the items in this Series:

Day 1 (of 5)

[1] 2012 The Shift of the Ages

[2] The Square Root of One Percent

[3] Official Opening of the Para PachaMama Global Community Network

Day 2 (of 5)

[1] The Rainbow Family of Living Light?

[2] LETS be Wholistic Business Partners

Day 3 (of 5)

[1] All dressed up… and no place to go?

[2] How do you prepare for the end of the world?

Day 4 (of 5)

[1] Rapture Watch

Day 5 (of 5)

Yesterday, it was the Counter Culture. Today, it’s…
Thursday, November 25, 2010 and it’s all about us.

Est. 1964 Re-Incarnated by Public Demand

This is the original, 60’s, counter culture, LA Free Press. Today’s Best Alternative View & Our Old Hippie Headlines, Too! A Head Trip for Smart Minds.

The Counter Culture is all about us! It’s a statement with a two-fold meaning that explains why what was once imagined may now become our better reality.

Published by One p.m. (PST)

Series 17 – Day 3 of 3

Ecology. Who Cares?

(In addition to our postings here, please check out Peter Bergman’s blog ===>)

The US based Story of Stuff Project has just released their next film, The Story of Electronics. It cleverly explains how the electronics industry ‘design for the dump’ instead of ‘design to last’ practices are hurting our environment and the health of workers who recycle our old products. The film reiterates what Greenpeace and other environmental organizations around the world have been asking the electronics industry for years, eliminate hazardous substances, take responsibility for obsolete products, and redesign electronics to last longer.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Last week, Greenpeace released the 16th edition of the Guide to Greener Electronics applauding the progress the industry has made. Philips released the first ever PVC and BFR free TV, the Econova, and Panasonic put into place a TV take back program in India, another industry first. These steps forward are a welcome momentum, but what Greenpeace, and this film shows, is more green solutions in the electronics industry is desperately needed.

Though its possible to find many more PVC and BFR free products on the market than in 2006 when the Guide to Greener Electronics was first launched, the industry is still lacking in efforts to take responsibility for the end of life of its own products. And as our Cool IT campaign is demanding, the electronics industry must also use their innovation to create solutions to combat climate change.

The Story of Electronics says that if all our obsolete electronics products ended up in the garage of the electronics industry’s CEOs we would definitely see more and safer recycling programs across the world, I couldn’t agree more. Right now, legal and illegal exporting of electronics products are moving from developed to developing nations where workers are breaking down mobile phones and laptops with rudimentary tools and practices with little to no protection. And the UN estimates that upwards of 40 million tons of e-waste is generated globally each year.

In 2008, Greenpeace campaigners traveled to Ghana to expose the hidden hazardous involved in ‘recycling’ e-waste in developing nations with no infrastructure to do so safely. Not only are the workers being poisoned by the leaching and releasing of toxic chemicals as they break down our old electronics, but so is the water and the land around these scrapyards.

The Story of Electronics is a great film that shows us the lifecycle of the electronics products we have in our homes and what changes the industry must make in order to truly produce greener products.

Renee’s original post is here:
http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/en/news-and-blogs/campaign-blog/first-reduce-our-electronic-waste/blog/28310

and Greenpeace’s vastly varied activities can be found here:
http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/en/

Number and rate of fatal occupational injuries, by industry sector, 2009*Profile of fatal work injuries by industry sector

The 10 most dangerous jobs by fatality rate are:  

For updated figures from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics:

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/cfoi.pdf