HELP KROGER WORKERS GET A FAIR CONTRACT!!

ATTENTION COMMUNITY: Call Kroger's CEO Dave Dillon at 1-866-221-4141. Tell him that you Support the Cincinnati Kroger Workers in a FAIR CONTRACT! One that includes:
* Quality, Affordable Health Care
* Fair Wages
* A Responsible Benefits Package
Because a Fair Contract is more that just a worker issueit affects our whole community! More Info or to volunteer to help in the workers' fight: Ellen Dienger, 513-807-3898, ellend@ufcw1099.org.

America Votes participating groups include:
ACORN, AFL-CIO, AFSCME, Alliance for Retired Americans, American Association for Justice, American Federation of Teachers, Americans United for Change, Association of Trial Lawyers of America, Ballot Initiative Strategy Center, Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence United with the Million Mom March, Campaign for America's Future, Change to Win, Clean Water Action, Communities for Quality Education, Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund, Democracy for America, EMILY's List, Equality Cincinnati, Equality Ohio, The Human Rights Campaign, INDN's List, IUPAT DC 12,

The Clinton machine

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2008 election

I am amazed that anyone actually believes that, having systematically put in place the mechanisms for a dictatorship, Cheney et al. plan to simply hand all that over to someone else.

Does anyone really believe that there won't be another convenient 9/11, followed by martial law, canceled (or mock) elections, permanently suspended civil liberties, mass detentions, and the glove off the dictatorship for all to see....and fear?

Cheney should be placed in an isolation chamber for the indefinite future. Otherwise, it's all over, folks.

Aurora Dairy exemption from check-off program challenged; USDA should demand retroactive payment from faux organic milk producers

Cornucopia, WI—The Cornucopia Institute has sent a formal request to the Chief of the USDA’s Dairy Promotion and Research Program, requesting that the program collect almost three years’ worth of unpaid dairy promotion “check-off” assessments from the Colorado-based Aurora Dairy.

Since February 2005, the USDA has exempted organic dairy producers from paying the 15 cents per hundredweight assessment that it requires of all conventional dairy producers. Aurora initially claimed the organic exemption, but following a comprehensive investigation of improprieties, the USDA's national organic program found that its milk did not qualify as organic.

The exemption rule states that a producer must not only be certified organic, but must also “handle or market only products that are eligible for a 100 percent organic product label under the NOP as described in 7 CFR part 205.”

Banned from Canada for war protest

On the invitation six members of the Canadian Parliament to speak October 25 on Canada’s Parliament Hill as a member of a panel called “Peacebuilders Without Borders: Challenging the Post-0/11 Canada-US Security Agenda,” I arrived at the Ottawa airport in the morning of October 25 to be met by three members of Parliament and to hold a press conference at the airport.

Burn, baby, burn -- the California celebrity fires

What color is your disaster?  It makes a difference.  A life and death difference.

Dig:

    Population of San Diego fire evacuation zone:  500,000
    Population of the New Orleans flood evacuation zone:  500,000

    White folk as a % of evacuees, San Diego: 66%
    Black folk as % of evacuees, New Orleans:  67%

Size counts, too.  Size of your wallet, that is:

    Evacuees in San Diego, in poverty:  9%
    Evacuees in New Orleans, in poverty:  27%

The numbers would be even uglier, though more revealing, if I included evacuees of the celebrity fire in Malibu.

The President didn’t do a photo-strafing of the scene from 1700 feet this time.  Instead, we have the photo op of George, feet on the ground, hanging with Arnold the Action Man.  (However, I’m informed that the President was a bit disappointed that he didn’t get to wear one of those neat fireman hats like Rudi G got at Ground Zero.)

The weak slat under the bed of democracy

When I was an adolescent, Canandaigua, my small hometown in the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York, got its first radio station, WCGR. You can hear it to this day, at 1550 on the AM dial.

Back then, beaming out a signal of 250 mighty watts, WCGR (announcers said it stood for "Watch Canandaigua Grow Rapidly"), broadcast music, news and farm reports to a radius extending about as far as you could throw a rock.

Nonetheless, I thought it was a wondrous and glamorous place – show business! -- and often climbed the stairs to their dusty studio, up above a Main Street storefront. The twin sons of the station’s owner were schoolmates and my father bought on the air advertising time for his drugstore, so no one paid much attention to my hanging out.

One day, I came across some promotional 45 rpm records. They were interviews with celebrities – with spaces left for any given announcer at any given station to ask the pertinent questions, which were conveniently provided by the record company. In an instant, you could make it appear as if your local DJ was actually interviewing Nat King Cole or Bobby Vinton or Carol Channing.

Jonesborough justice

Of the eleven major peace rallies organized around the country by United for Peace and Justice last Saturday the smallest and most unusual took place in Jonesborough, Tennessee.  Jonesborough is a town of about 4,000 people in the northeast corner of Tennessee, within a couple of dozen miles of both Virginia and North Carolina.  The people of Jonesborough can imagine the number of U.S. troops who have died in Iraq by imagining their entire local population dead.

Rallying for peace and justice in Jonesborough is something of an act of reclamation, and it's about time it happened.  Jonesborough is the oldest town in Tennessee and was a center of the abolition movement.  But, as if to offer a perfect illustration of the wisdom of the nation's founding fathers' distaste for political parties, the people of eastern Tennessee have largely stood by the Republican Party as it has mutated into the party of racism and militarism.  Our rally of about 400 peace activists on Saturday was greeted by about 50 pro-war activists revving their Harleys, honking their horns, and screaming their vicious messages of hate with the utmost vein-popping fury.

The pro-war undertow of the Blackwater scandal

The Blackwater scandal has gotten plenty of media coverage, and it deserves a lot more. Taxpayer subsidies for private mercenaries are antithetical to democracy, and Blackwater’s actions in Iraq have often been murderous. But the scandal is unfolding in a U.S. media context that routinely turns criticisms of the war into demands for a better war.

     Many politicians are aiding this alchemy. Rhetoric from a House committee early this month audibly yearned for a better war at a highly publicized hearing that featured Erik Prince, the odious CEO of Blackwater USA.

     A congressman from New Hampshire, Paul Hodes, insisted on the importance of knowing “whether failures to hold Blackwater personnel accountable for misconduct undermine our efforts in Iraq.” Another Democrat on the panel, Carolyn Maloney of New York, told Blackwater’s top exec that “your actions may be undermining our mission in Iraq and really hurting the relationship and trust between the Iraqi people and the American military.”

See the Problem?

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