Hear hear.
Life under Capitalism
“I see a cascade of shit pirouetting from your penthouse office, caking each layer of management, splattering all in between.”
a Daily Star hack has had enough of the paper’s nastiness and inflaming of Islamophobia and quits his job:
When you assign budgets thinner than your employee-issue loo roll there’s little option but for Daily Star editors to build a newspaper from cut-and-paste-jobs off the Daily Mail website, all tied together with gormless press releases. But when that cheap-and-cheerful journalism gives the oxygen of publicity to corrosive groups like the EDL – safe in the knowledge it’s free news about which they’ll never complain – it’s time to lay down my pen.
You may have heard the phrase, “The flap of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil sets off a tornado in Texas.” Well, try this: “The lies of a newspaper in London can get a bloke’s head caved in down an alley in Bradford.”
The Downward Spiral: EU want to restrict wages across Europe
Dutch public news broadcaster has gotten its hands on a joint draft proposal (PDF) by EU bigwigs Herman van Rompuy and José Manuel Barroso on how to strengthen the EU economies in the wake of the bankers’ crisis (they don’t call it that). As The Wall Street Journal sees it their proposals “soften” the stricter German ones that had been put forward a few weeks earlier. For those of us not belonging to their target audience however these proposals, if enacted, will mean further restrictions on our ability to organise ourselves, earn a decent wage for a decent day’s work.
For example, there should be a “review of the wage setting arrangements to enhance decentralization in the bargaining process” and member states should “ensure wage restraint in the public sector”, not to mention “further opening of sheltered sectors by measures taken at national level to identify and remove unjustified restrictions on professional services as quotas and closed shops” and “overhaul of commercial legal systems to reduce red tape”, more “labor market reforms”, “tax reforms” and finally, “aligning the retirement age with life expectancy” and “reducing early retirement schemes” should also be priorities for member states.
In short, we should have less room to organise ourselves to negotiate the price of our labour, if you work for the government or in a public organisation you can expect even less sympathy from the EU than from your own government, less protection against (unfair) competition, less legal oversight of business, less protection against being fired, more money for fat cats and less for us and finally the chance to work until we die as retirement ages keep creeping up.
Welcome to the downward spiral. Not mentioned: tackling the obscene bonuses and salaries the economic wreckers we laughingly call bankers still “earn”.
It’s always about money: if it looks like it isn’t, look closer
Gin and Tacos highlights one of the lesser known parts of the Wisconsin emergency budget repair bill, one that would let the governor sell off public infrastructure at fire sale prices:
16.896 Sale or contractual operation of state-owned heating, cooling, and power plants. (1) Notwithstanding ss. 13.48 (14) (am) and 16.705 (1), the department may sell any state-owned heating, cooling, and power plant or may contract with a private entity for the operation of any such plant, with or without solicitation of bids, for any amount that the department determines to be in the best interest of the state. Notwithstanding ss. 196.49 and 196.80, no approval or certification of the public service commission is necessary for a public utility to purchase, or contract for the operation of, such a plant, and any such purchase is considered to be in the public interest and to comply with the criteria for certification of a project under s. 196.49 (3) (b).
Noted in comments, a nice added bonus:
“(c) If the department sells or contracts for the operation of any state−owned
heating, cooling, and power plant under sub. (1), the secretary may identify any full−time equivalent positions authorized for the state agency that has operating authority for the plant, the duties of which primarily relate to the management or operation of the plant, and may decrease the authorized full−time equivalent positions for that state agency by the number of positions so identified effective on the date that the state agency no longer has operating authority for the plant.”
Meanwhile on the other side of the Atlantic, David Cameron is helping Middle East states on the road to democracy by selling them weapons:
So, following Cameron’s logic, it’s cool to flog things that kill people to countries as long as they’re on an ‘open and participatory’ trajectory. If people get killed or maimed on the journey? Let’s not think about that. That British weapons seem to be being used to prevent states becoming ‘open and participatory’ rather than being used to usher in democracy and universal values has passed the Prime Minister by.
Cameron can point to testimonies from satisfied customers like Khadaffi, who is using British bullets and tear gas to put down his people’s longing for democracy. Money trumps morals and has always done.
The spirit of Tahrir Square comes to Wisconsin
Thousands of union workes protest against the governor of Wisconsin’s proposed bill to take away workers’ rights. This bill was supposedly needed to combat a budget shortfall. Guess what? There wasn’t any shortfall:
Wisconsin’s new Republican governor has framed his assault on public worker’s collective bargaining rights as a needed measure of fiscal austerity during tough times.
The reality is radically different. Unlike true austerity measures — service rollbacks, furloughs, and other temporary measures that cause pain but save money — rolling back worker’s bargaining rights by itself saves almost nothing on its own. But Walker’s doing it anyhow, to knock down a barrier and allow him to cut state employee benefits immediately.
Furthermore, this broadside comes less than a month after the state’s fiscal bureau — the Wisconsin equivalent of the Congressional Budget Office — concluded that Wisconsin isn’t even in need of austerity measures, and could conclude the fiscal year with a surplus. In fact, they say that the current budget shortfall is a direct result of tax cut policies Walker enacted in his first days in office.
Union workers, inspired by what’s happened in Egypt, Tunesia and elsewhere have begun to fight back against this cynical move. The Democrats are nowhere to be found [UPDATE] because that way the Wisconsin state senate lacks a quorum to actually sign this bill in law. From Crooked Timber:
Today the Senate Democrats buggered off to Rockford, Illinois (which, it has to be said, displays heroic dedication, as anyone who’s been to Rockford will know) so that the Senate lacks a quorum. This gave a huge boost to the protesters, who had been anticipating a vote and defeat today. I’ve chatted with one Democratic legislator and my wife with another: both report that the Republicans are really rattled by the response, having simply not anticipated it (no-one, absolutely no-one, did—everyone I know has been stunned, and that includes leading union organisers). I have to say the Democrats in the legislature have been solid—like the union leaderships they seem to understand that, as one just told me “we’re in the fight of our livesâ€. And there is a sense among the demonstrators that this is the one to win.