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The Duke Ellington collective
Stephen Brown Published: 2 May 2012 tls
David Schiff THE ELLINGTON CENTURY 336pp. University of California Press. #24.95 (US $34.95). 978 0 520 24587 7
It wasn't easy being Duke Ellington: every night, along with your tuxedo and your Brylcreem, to put on a mask of urbane sophistication, to say "I love you madly" even when playing to a segregated audience in some Southern dance hall, to give that audience music that was popular in part because of the prejudices it reinforced - the "jungle" style - even as it glowed with a brilliance only available [...]
Tidbits and Announcements - May 16, 2012
* Re: Don't Return to a Grim Chapter of Our History (Jeff Singer) * Re: No Country for Rich Men (Stan Nadel) * The Daniel Singer Millennium Prize * Contemporary LGBT rights in Cuba with Mariela Castro May 29 at 7:00 - New York Public Library
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* Re: Don't Return to a Grim Chapter of Our History [...]
Court ruling may force advocacy groups to disclose secret donors
By Matea Gold
http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-pn-court-ruling-may-force-advocacy-groups-to-disclose-secret-donors-20120515%2c0%2c6306060.story
May 15, 2012, 9:57 a.m.
WASHINGTON -- Advocacy groups spending millions of dollars in the 2012 campaign are now faced with the prospect of having to reveal the donors who have been secretly financing their efforts after a federal appellate court panel refused to block a lower court order requiring the move. [...]
The wrong Carlos: how Texas sent an innocent man to his death
Groundbreaking Columbia law school study sets out in shocking detail the flaws that led to Carlos DeLuna's execution in 1989
[For the full report, go to this url -- moderator: http://www3.law.columbia.edu/hrlr/ltc/]
Ed Pilkington in New York
guardian.co.uk, Monday 14 May 2012 23.00 EDT
'Los tocayos Carlos' - Hernandez and DeLuna looked so alike that they were sometimes mistaken for twins. Photographs: Corpus Christi police department/DeLuna family/Hernandez family/Texas dept of criminal justice/Corpus Christi Caller Times A few years ago, Antonin Scalia, one of the nine justices on the US [...]
Older Workers Have Highest Long-Term Jobless Rate
By Mike Hall AFL-CIO News May 15, 2012
http://www.aflcio.org/Blog/Political-Action-Legislation/Older-Workers-Have-Highest-Long-Term-Jobless-Rate
Older workers who lose their jobs have the highest rate of long-term unemployment compared to any other age group. In 2011, more than half of jobless workers, ages 50 years and older, were out of work for more than six months. The trend continues this year. [...]
Mexico's Cananea Strikers: Fighting for the Right to a Union BY DAVID BACON WEDNESDAY MAY 16, 2012 5:10 PM http://www.inthesetimes.com/working/entry/13220/fighting_for_the_right_to_a_union_and_to_stay_in_mexico/
Trade union activists, including members of the miners' union, Los Mineros, protest in Mexico City's main square, the Zocalo, on September 1, 2011. The protest, called the Day of the Indignant, was organized by unions to demand jobs, labor rights and an end to the repression of political dissidents. (Photo copyright David Bacon) [...]
Labor chief faces challenges as advocate for federal workers By ERIK WASSON The Hill May 15, 2012 http://thehill.com/business-a-lobbying/227333-federal-workers-defense
For 13 years, Colleen Kelley has served as one of Washington's leading advocates for federal workers.
As president of the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU), Kelley has had a hand in every major deficit negotiation of the last year. She has tangled with the Tea Party and gone up against GOP standard-bearers Reps. Darrell Issa (Calif.) and Paul Ryan (Wis.). She represents everyone's favorite: the tax collectors. [...]
New York Cabbies Drive for Dignity
By Mike Hall AFL-CIO News May 15, 2012
http://www.aflcio.org/Blog/Organizing-Bargaining/New-York-Cabbies-Drive-for-Dignity
The 45,000 taxi cabs in New York City have been described as the seventh-largest transportation system in the United States-and at the AFL-CIO Innovators webpage, writer Robert Struckman notes:
If you ask a driver, there's a good chance he or she will tell you, "I'm a member of the National Taxi Workers Alliance (NTWA)." [...]
Two Items on Greece
1.New Greek Elections Called as Left Holds Firm Against Austerity Drive 2. Greece: Trying to Understand SYRIZA
1 - 1 - 1 - 1 - 1
New Greek Elections Called as Left Holds Firm Against Austerity Drive
Coalition efforts fail to build consensus; financial markets tremble as possible Euro exit looms
Common Dreams staff Common Dreams May 15, 2012 [...]
Tidbits and Announcements - May 15, 2012
* Breaking: Common Cause files historic filibuster challenge * Re: Occupy Isn't About Electing Democrats--It's About Exposing a Broken System (Ethan Young, David McReynolds, Gordon Fitch) * Re: Natural Selection Is Still With Us (Steve Lane, Lorna Salzman) * Re: The Reports of Dinosaurs Dying of Farts Are Greatly Exaggerated (Thad Williamson) * Nurses and Tom Morello Heal America, Tax Wall Street, May 18 in Chicago. * Re: Oregon Attorney General election (Jim Greig) [...]
Nurses Push Tax on Trades to Help Sick
By Sarah Anderson Chicago Sun-Times May 15, 2012
http://www.suntimes.com/news/otherviews/12452745-452/nurses-push-tax-on-trades-to-help-sick.html
Of all the street actions leading up to the NATO summit, the one that might seem most perplexing is a nurses’ rally for a tax on securities trades. Financial markets are pretty remote from hospital bedsides, you might think.
Why would nurses get mixed up in an issue like that? [...]
No Country for Rich Men
From Manhattan to Monaco, the world's wealthiest people are disconnecting into a class of stateless transients.
By Sam Pizzigati OtherWords May 14, 2012
http://www.otherwords.org/articles/no_country_for_rich_men
Back in 1863, a short story took the American reading public by storm. Edward Everett Hale's The Man without a Country told the tale of a poor treasonous soul sentenced to spend the rest of his life endlessly sailing the world in perpetual exile, as a prisoner aboard Navy warships. [...]
Labour Needs a Fresh Leader The Hindu http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/article3405299.ece May 11, 2012
by Vijay Prashad
On May 28, a select group of delegates will enter a room in the International Labour Organization (ILO) in Geneva to elect the body's next Director-General. Nine candidates are in line for the post. The ILO's byzantine process revolves around a tripartite structure, with the employers (the International Organisation of Employers), the workers (largely the International Trade Union Confederation, ITUC) and the governments sharing the task of selecting the next Director. [...]
Occupy Isn't About Electing Democrats--It's About Exposing a Broken System
By Max Berger, AlterNet
May 14, 2012
http://www.alternet.org/story/155325/occupy_isn%27t_about_electing_democrats--it%27s_about_exposing_a_broken_system
As long as there has been a thing called Occupy Wall Street, there have been people who've suggested it should become the left's version of the Tea Party. Josh Harkinson's piece is a notable contribution to the conversation because it comes after eight months of in-depth reporting on the movement. Harkinson, like Jennifer Granholm, suggests that Occupy should recruit and run candidates, so the left has champions in Congress and can credibly threaten less ideologically aligned Democrats. According to this logic, it [...]
More Unions Applaud Obama for Marriage Equality Stance
By Kenneth Quinnell AFl-CIO News May 12, 2012
http://www.aflcio.org/Blog/Other-News/More-Unions-Applaud-Obama-for-Marriage-Equality-Stance
This is a cross-post form Crooks and Liars
Thursday, I reported that several major labor unions expressed support for Barack Obama's statement that he supports the right of all Americans to marry, regardless of their sexual orientation. More unions expressed their support for the president and marriage equality in a move that, as I pointed out yesterday, is good for Obama, for unions and for LGBT Americans: [...]
DSA Statement on the European Elections
Democratic Socialist of America News From DDS May 14, 2012
http://www.dsausa.org/pdf/Statement_on_French_Elections.pdf
One week after Socialist Francois Hollande won the election in France, this Sunday the Social Democrats won almost 40% of the vote in the most populous state in Germany. It is too soon to say what these results (and the more complicated ones in Greece) will mean for Europe, but DSA welcomes these signs of a potential turning of the tide against the austerity politics of the 1%. [...]
Some Good News, Lots of Bad News
Victor Grossman, Berlin
Bulletin No. 42, May 14, 2012
In a way, it’s a “good news” and “bad news“ angle. The good news: the Christian Democratic Union of Angela Merkel took a real whipping in the election in North Rhine-Westphalia (usually abbreviated to NRW), the largest German state in terms of population. Her smiling, almost benign mien, with little bluster or braggadocio, disguises less and less her tough advocacy of austerity – a code word for overcoming deficits not by hitting big banks and big biz, who caused the calamity, but rather the [...]
Russia Today and the New Cultural Cold War
By Steve Horn
This article was published at Nationof Change Monday May 14, 2012
http://www.nationofchange.org/russia-today-and-new-cultural-cold-war-1337002874.
For those frustrated with the sorry state of the U.S. mainstream news media, Russia Today's RT America is a nice diversion from the norm.
With punchy coverage on political and social topics of great importance, be it the ongoing collapse of American news networks, domestic drone use, the U.S. covert war in Somalia, poverty and economic inequality, Occupy Wall Street, among many other topics, some would even go so far to claim that it is better than [...]
National Coalition Urges Congress to Consider Sweeping Social Security Proposals for Women, Caregivers and Same-Sex Couples THE NATIONAL COMMITTEE TO PRESERVE SOCIAL SECURITY & MEDICARE May 11, 2012 http://www.ncpssm.org/news/archive/ss_proposals_wrapup_release/
"The truth is -- as our nation ages and retirement income continues to decline for millions of Americans - Congress should be talking about the adequacy of Social Security's benefits not cutting them. Congress should examine the inequities that have created a poverty rate for senior women and widows that is 50% higher than other retirees 65 and older. We can break this Social Security glass ceiling...in fact, we must do [...]
Analysis of Proposed Illinois FY2013 General Fund Budgets Center for Tax and Budget Accountability April, 2012 http://www.ctbaonline.org/New_Folder/Budget,%20Tax%20and%20Revenue/CTBA%20%20FY2013%20Proposed%20Budget%20Analysis_FINAL.pdf
[moderator: the full report, with accompanying charts and graphs, may be found at the link above]
1. INTRODUCTION Many of the fiscal problems that have plagued Illinois over the last decade remain apparent in the FY2013 General Fund Budget proposals that the Governor and Illinois House of Representatives have put on the table. These problems include a significant accumulated deficit that, at a minimum, will be just over $7.7 billion, a failure to invest adequately in basic core services like educating our children [...]
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