Mn-prog-events Mailing List: Progressive Calendar 05.31.09

[David Shove (shove001]

             P R O G R E S S I V E   C A L E N D A R   05.31.09

1. Stillwater vigil    5.31 1pm
2. Nurses/single payer 5.31 3pm

3. Peace walk          6.01 6pm RiverFalls WI
4. Grand jury training 6.01 6:30pm

5. Leo Gerard    - US Chamber of Commerce: Vs American middle class
6. Vijay Prashad - The angry curmudgeons: reeling Republicans
7. Joel Albers   - HMO you ugly (demo chant)

--------1 of 7--------

From: scot b <earthmannow [at] comcast.net>
Subject: Stillwater vigil 5.31 1pm

A weekly Vigil for Peace Every Sunday, at the Stillwater bridge from 1- 2
p.m.  Come after Church or after brunch ! All are invited to join in song
and witness to the human desire for peace in our world. Signs need to be
positive.  Sponsored by the St. Croix Valley Peacemakers.

If you have a United Nations flag or a United States flag please bring it.
Be sure to dress for the weather . For more information go to
<http://www.stcroixvalleypeacemakers.com/>http://www.stcroixvalleypeacemakers.com/

For more information you could call 651 275 0247 or 651 999 - 9560


--------2 of 7--------

From: "Of the People" <info [at] jamesmayer.org>
Subject: Nurses/single payer 5.31 3pm

Nurses Are Tough! They'll Make It Happen!
Hear R.N. Geri Jenkins Of The California Nurses Association
on how & why to make single payer a reality, & protect the real health &
real wealth of the nation

On:
James Mayer Of the People with James Mayer
Sunday at 3:00 P.M.
AM950 KTNF or www.am950ktnf.com
May 31, 2009

Geri Jenkins, registered nurse and co-president of the country's new
national 150,000 member nurses' union advocating for a single-payer health
insurance program, will join James Mayer and point out not only how we can
demand and get Single Payer Universal Health Care, but how it will help
the economy recover.  Our country can no longer afford not to have it!

A new study released by the Institute for Health and Socio-economic Policy
supports the contention that single payer health care can drive the
economic recovery and create new jobs.  The study was presented to members
of Congress by the Leadership Conference for Guaranteed Health Care.

Off-air, you can reach us by calling James Mayer at 651-238-3740, by
e-mail at info [at] jamesmayer.org, or by U.S. mail: James Mayer, 970 Raymond
Ave., St. Paul, MN Zip Code 55114.


--------3 of 7--------

From: Nancy Holden <d.n.holden [at] comcast.net>
Subject: Peace walk 6.01 6pm RiverFalls WI

River Falls Peace and Justice Walkers. We meet every Monday from 6-7 pm on
the UWRF campus at Cascade Ave. and 2nd Street, immediately across from
"Journey" House. We walk through the downtown of River Falls. Contact:
d.n.holden [at] comcast.net. Douglas H Holden 1004 Morgan Road River Falls,
Wisconsin 54022


--------4 of 7--------

From: luce <luce [at] riseup.net>
Subject: Grand jury training 6.01 6:30pm

Grand Jury Training and Infosession
Monday, June 1st, 6;30pm
Walker Church, 3104 16th Ave. S., Minneapolis
Come if you want to learn about how grand juries work, or if have grand
jury experience to share.

Politically active? Or know anyone who is? Then you should be concerned
about grand juries, which are used by the government to gather information
on political movements and to disrupt those movements by causing fear and
mistrust.  Grand juries can happen anywhere, at any time, and it's
important that we protect ourselves and our communities against State
repression by understanding their tricks and knowing how to respond.


--------5 of 7--------

U.S. Chamber of Commerce: Betting Against the American Middle Class
By Leo Gerard Camapign for America'a Future
May 26, 2009
http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/2009052226/us-hamber-commerce-betting-against-american-middle-class

[We think of the Chamber of Commerce as respectable(worthy) because it is
so respectable(rich). But it is a main home of the ruling class enemy that
wishes us nothing but poverty and powerlessness. -ed]

Randel K. Johnson, vice president of that esteemed group, the U.S. Chamber
of Commerce, recently revealed a corporate-squelched truth in a slip of
the tongue.

During a debate on May 15 with Stewart Acuff of the AFL-CIO about the
Employee Free Choice Act, Johnson admitted - finally - that the act
preserves secret ballot elections for unions. The act would allow workers
- rather than employers - to decide whether to form a union by conducting
a secret ballot election or by collecting signed membership cards from a
majority of workers.

Incredibly, for as much as unearned-bonus-grubbing-CEOs have lied about
secret ballots in their relentless campaign against the Employee Free
Choice Act, that was not Johnson's revelation.

No, here's what he disclosed: If the act passes, he said, "It would be a
rare union that would decide to risk a normal secret ballot election."

Risk. Interesting word, Mr. Johnson.

The Chamber of Commerce knows there's a huge risk to secret ballot
elections. And the Chamber likes it that way. Employers stack the deck
against workers in secret ballot elections. They don't publicly admit it
though. That's why Johnson's use of the word "risk" was so surprising.

The Chamber and big corporations like Wal-Mart are intent on defeating the
act because it would remove from employers the power to force workers to
conduct secret ballot elections.  It would strip from employers that
ability to generate risk, to defeat unions, and thus to further shrink
wages and the American middle class.

A Cornell University professor, Kate Bronfenbrenner, who has researched
labor issues for a quarter century, issued a new study last week that
clearly illustrates the risk of secret ballot elections and how employers
have labored long and hard to increase that risk in recent years. It's
called, "No Holds Barred: The Intensification of Employer Opposition to
Organization."

Among the tactics she documents employers using in the weeks before the
"secret ballot" election to thwart unionization are firing of union
organizers, threats to close the plant or cut wages and benefits, and
forcing workers to meet one-on-one with supervisors who intimidate and
interrogate them to determine whether they support the union.

Bronfenbrenner concluded, "This combination of threats, interrogation,
surveillance, and harassment has ensured that there is no such thing as a
democratic `secret ballot' in the NLRB (National Labor Relations Board)
certification election process. The progression of actions the employer
has taken can ensure that the employer knows exactly which way every
worker plans to vote long before the election takes place."

Her study showed employers implementing these tactics more frequently than
in the past. When she compared organizing campaigns in this five-year
period to those in the studies over the previous 20 years, she discovered
two disconcerting facts: the cases in which employers used 10 of these
threatening techniques in the run-up to elections more than doubled. And
employers focused much more on coercive and punitive methods rather than
positive procedures such as unscheduled raises and promotions.

Not surprisingly, she also found that as employers exploited harsher
tactics and intensified their attacks in the weeks before "secret
balloting," the union was more likely to lose. And, conversely, she found
that in campaigns where public sector workers tried organizing and
government agencies refrained from coercive and illegal tactics, the union
was significantly more likely to win.

If it weren't so easy for employers to create risk for workers, millions
more could get the union protection they want. Surveys show an increasing
number of American workers desire a union. In the mid 1990s, it was 40
percent. Now it's 53 percent. Yet only 12.4 percent of American workers
have that protection - and the better wages and benefits that go with it.

Bronfenbrenner addressed this issue in her report: "Our findings suggest
that the aspirations for representation are being thwarted by a coercive
and punitive climate for organizing that goes unrestrained due to a
fundamentally flawed regulatory regime that neither protects their rights
nor provides any disincentive for employers to continue disregarding the
law."

She continues: "Unless serious labor law reform with real penalties is
enacted, only a fraction of the workers who seek representation under the
National Labor Relations Act will be successful."

That reform is the Employee Free Choice Act, and there's the point of
Johnson's use of the word risk. The Chamber of Commerce intends to kill
the act and leave risk fully on the shoulders of workers. As
Bronfenbrenner showed, that would mean fewer will be unionized. Middle
class wages and benefits would continue to decline.

It is time for American workers to stop bearing all of the risk. They're
working for less and bailing out the very people who are obstructing their
ability to fairly bargain for more.

In October, Bank of America, which has received more than $45 billion in
taxpayer bailout money, hosted a conference call with conservatives and
business officials, including a representative of AIG, which has received
more than $100 billion in taxpayer bailout money, to organize opposition
to the Employee Free Choice Act. Then in March, just days after the act
was introduced, Citigroup Inc., which got $50 billion in bailout money,
hosted a similar conference call, this one led by Glenn Spencer of the
U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

During the October call, Bernie Marcus, co-founder of Home Depot, said he
should be on a 350-foot boat in the Mediterranean, but he thought fighting
the Employee Free Choice Act was more important because, "This is the
demise of a civilization. . . This is how a civilization disappears."

Yes, the Employee Free Choice Act could contribute ever so slightly to
dissipation of a decadent class. Unionization is how the middle class
re-emerges. America could do without a few filthy-rich boys lolling on
yachts in the Mediterranean. At the heart of America, however, must be a
strong and broad middle class


--------6 of 7--------

The Angry Curmudgeons
Reeling Republicans
By VIJAY PRASHAD
CounterPunch
May 29-31, 2009

In 2004, a pall of gloom fell over American liberalism. George W. Bush was
re-elected the United States. President against all odds: a quagmire in
Iraq and a faltering economy were not sufficient to bury the Republican
Party. In fact, the opposite, as conservative strategists plotted for a
permanent Republican majority. The Republican Whip, Congressman Tom DeLay,
whose nickname was the Hammer, spoke for his Republican troops: "If 1994
was the year we stopped thinking like a permanent minority, 2004 is the
year we start thinking like a permanent majority: unified, aggressive,
rightfully confident of victory".

In Pennsylvania, the Republican ascent fuelled the campaign of former
Congressman Pat Toomey, who ran in the primary election against the
long-time Republican Senator Arlen Specter. Toomey cut his teeth in the
world of finance, dealing in currency swaps and derivatives, and then
became a Republican politician with a commitment to free markets and
minimal taxes. People like him formed the Club of Growth in 1999, which
heavily supported Toomey's campaign for the Republican seat against
Specter. To them, Specter was a RINO: Republican in Name Only. Specter
prevailed, but only barely. The year 2004 seemed to sound the last post
for the Democratic Party and for "moderates" (such as Specter) in the
Republican Party. Conservative ascendancy was complete.

A few months before the citizenry went out to vote for Bush over Senator
John Kerry, conservative icon and head of the Americans for Tax Reform
Grover Norquist published an article called "The Democrats are Toast" in
Washington Monthly. Norquist argued that the social basis of liberalism
had vanished. As more Americans had their retirement in the stock market,
and as fewer Americans belonged to unions, the language of class
resentment or warfare had no appeal. The Democratic Party, without access
to state largesse, was enfeebled. It would soon vanish, as the Whigs
before it. The jubilation in the Republican camp was met by utter
despondency among the liberals. If Bush, with the lodestone of Iraq around
his neck, could not be defeated, then the game seemed over.

In the summer of 2004, as the country geared up for the election, cultural
critic Thomas Frank published What's the Matter with Kansas? How
Conservatives Won the Heart of America. Frank's thesis was elegant:
conservatives have shifted the terrain of American politics away from
"bread and butter" issues towards "moral" issues, such as abortion and gay
marriage. When confronted with this "moral" agenda, the working class
tends to vote for the conservatives, and therefore against its own class
interests. The brilliance of the conservative strategy, Frank pointed out,
is that it is fated to be a war without end, since on none of its issues
can it actually win. There is too much resistance to the abolition of
abortion and to the sanction against gay marriage.

Victory is not as important as the existence of the issues, for they are
useful to divert attention away from the eviscerated economy and the
collapse of the social security net. Frank's analysis attempted to unmask
this powerful but decadent thing called conservatism and to salvage a
weakened but essential populism. The book was an instant bestseller, and
it became a reference point after Senator Kerry's defeat at the hands of
what appeared to be a weakened Bush.

Signs of change were, however, in the very entrails of victory. DeLay won
with 55 per cent of the vote in his own re-election in Texas, but his
total was down 8 per cent, while the Democrat gained 6 per cent of the
votes. Specter defeated Toomey in a highly partisan primary, and then
walked away with the support of many Democrats in the general election. An
enlivened Democratic Party turned to Vermont Governor Howard Dean to lead
them out of the wilderness, and a young Senator Barack Obama offered a new
vocabulary of post-partisanship around which many of the wizened elders
gathered. But at that time all this was wishful thinking for the liberals.

It was only when the "men of stern morality" fell off their white steeds
in 2005 that the conservative unravelling began. Corruption cases against
the Republican leadership threw the party into disarray by the summer of
2005. The machinations of a lobbyist, Jack Abramoff, brought down Majority
Leader DeLay and many of his closest associates (including Republican
operatives Ralph Reed, formerly of the Christian Coalition, and Norquist).
Governmental drift in Iraq was horrible enough but it appeared cognisable
when matched with its paralysis after the devastation of Hurricane
Katrina.

The Republican coalition was built on at least three parts: the
theo-conservatives who had strong vows to "moral" issues (or at least to
strong positions against homosexuality and abortion rights), the
neoconservatives who pledged themselves to the exercise of U.S. military
power overseas (with an especial fealty to Israel's defence), and the
economic conservatives (who were given over to a dogmatic laissez faire
public policy).

These sections hardened over the Bush years, giving no quarter on their
various grievances and commitments. They became petulant in their defence
of their obligations, intolerant even when evidence showed them to be
wrong or hypocritical. There was no apology for the pillage of the
exchequer. American conservatism was remorseless, and heartless. President
Bush's approval ratings fell to about 40 per cent (it would be near 20 per
cent when he left office four years later). In the mid-term election of
2006, the Democrats took control over the legislature. A Democrat won
DeLay's seat with 51 per cent of the vote, the first time a Democrat won
this Texas seat since 1976 (he lost the seat two years later to a
Republican).

Two years later, Obama handily defeated the Republican John McCain to take
the White House. DeLay's permanent majority dissolved. The excecated
zealousness of the Republican base prevented the pragmatic Republicans
from saving themselves.

It is this bullheadedness that led Senator Specter to switch political
parties in April 2009. At a surprise press conference, Specter announced:
"Since my election in 1980, as part of the Reagan Big Tent, the Republican
Party has moved far to the right. Last year, more than 200,000 Republicans
in Pennsylvania changed their registration to become Democrats. I now find
my political philosophy more in line with Democrats than Republicans".
Despite the considerable opportunism in Specter's decision, it was also
governed by a truism, which is that the Republican Party is now a prisoner
of its various special interests that eschew pragmatism.

A few days after Specter's transformation, The New York Times' columnist
Bob Herbert wrote: "It's not a party; it's a cult. This is the party of
[radio talk show host] Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin, [former Congressman]
Newt Gingrich, and the dark force who can't seem to exit the public stage
or modify his medieval ways, Dick Cheney".

Former New Jersey Governor and moderate Republican Christine Todd Whitman
weighed in, asking for others of her persuasion not to abandon the
Republican Party, for if more do, "we lose what ability we have left to
affect policy, and that is going to be devastating to our nation.. We
cannot simply be the party of no." Things are at such a pass that the
Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi told the press: "I say to Republicans in
America, take back your party".

But that is what the Republicans have become: the curmudgeon relative at
family occasions who needles everyone in the room, arrogant in his
certainty and superiority. Just as the Democratic intelligentsia hustled
to create new concepts for their party in the wake of 2004, Republican
writers have now gathered together to make sense of the moment.

Most of them are unwilling to give up any of the shibboleths of their
movement. Obsession with small government is at the centre of things,
although this looks ridiculous besides the vast expansion of the U.S.
government under Bush (particularly the military wing).

Talk of liberty is also shallow: the Republicans are quick to interfere
with the private rights of citizens (through increased state surveillance,
restrictions on health care, and prohibitions on various social
interactions); and their version of economic liberty means less regulation
for large corporations rather than more oxygen for small businesses. The
petulance towards social welfare looks miserly when put beside the
haemorrhaged national economy (5.7 million jobs lost since December 2007).

Senator Jim DeMint, Republican of South Carolina, went after the Obama
spending plan, saying that the President is "the world's best salesman of
socialism". This is not what the extended unemployment insurance payments
and the mortgage supports seem to the average citizen. "Lenin and Stalin
would love this stuff," said former Republican presidential candidate Mike
Huckabee, but the fact is that it is the American population that seems to
love it as much (Obama's popularity is now at 63 per cent). A survey of
the Republican base showed that more than half want the party to be led by
someone like Sarah Palin, which means to be more intractably right-wing.

Grand New Party

Analysis of the Republican's impasse goes in two directions. Party
stalwarts believe that the problem of the party is tactical: a more
effective fund-raising platform, a better message, and a more robust
get-out-the-vote campaign are all that is needed for the Republicans to
recapture power. Others believe that the problem is far graver, that
American conservatism has lost its footing.

In 2005, two young Republican intellectuals, Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam
(whose parents migrated to the U.S. from Bangladesh), published an article
called "The Party of Sam's Club" in the right-wing Weekly Standard.
Drawing the phrase from Minnesota Republican Governor Tim Pawlentry's
comment that the Republicans have lost the "Sam's Club Republicans",
Douthat and Salam argued that the conservatives should renew their
relationship with the working class: not enough to throw them the red meat
of social issues, but to proffer a more generous bargain with them on
social and economic issues.

Three years later, Douthat and Salam extended their argument into a
well-received book, Grand New Party: How Republicans Can Win the Working
Class and Save the American Dream. Here they reproduced their critique of
the increased narrowness of the Republican vision, and returned to
conservative themes from the 1950s.

In many ways, Grand New Party has all the same ambiguities of Up from
Liberalism, the 1959 screed from conservatism's enfant terrible, William
F. Buckley Jr. (who exited the world stage in February 2008, as his
movement began to fall apart). Buckley argued for a strict conservatism,
but not one that was utterly heartless. "Conservatism cannot be blind, or
give the appearance of being blind, to the dismaying spectacle of
unemployment, or any other kind of suffering," he wrote, although he would
prefer that conservatives champion voluntary donations rather than state
plunder. Douthat and Salam too promote elements of social welfare ("the
working class wants, and needs, more from public policy than simply to be
left alone").

Douthat and Salam are at their best when they go after Thomas Frank's
binary between the cultural and the economic. Can there be an economic
policy that is not itself cultural? Divorce is one of the cornerstones of
the rights movement, but it is not equally applied across the classes.
"Working-class voters are less likely to benefit from sexual freedom and
more likely to suffer from its side effects," they point out, meaning that
the working class has a harder time than the elite managing two households
on their meagre wages. The conservatives generally go after divorce with
an unreasonable, antiquated morality, attacking the individuals for
breaking up the family.

Douthat and Salam point out that globalization has made the family an
unsustainable institution for the working class; they might just as well
have said that the wrecking ball is wielded by capitalism in general, and
not just globalization.

The heart of American conservatism, the family and the community, is on
its knees because of globalization, which must be reconstructed in the
interests of ordinary people and not just the bankers.

This anti-globalization position is far removed from the citadel of the
Republican Party, as it is from the ideological core of liberalism (which
is equally given over to globalization). It is unlikely to gain any
traction in the mainstream, although it is a welcome mat for populists who
might wish to forge an alternative to the two dominant parties.

The Republican Party is not going to disappear overnight. It is not just a
congeries of ideas or a group of elected officials. It commands a large
section of the electorate, and it is a vast apparatus of organisations and
chapters. It would be senseless to write the obituary of American
conservatism, particularly given the continued feebleness of American
liberalism and the virtual absence of American radicalism.
Both the Republicans and the Democrats are laid waste by financial power,
which lays waste the fabric of American democracy. But the Republicans are
nonetheless dented, aware that their orthodoxy is undesirable to the
citizenry.

Vijay Prashad is the George and Martha Kellner Chair of South Asian
History and Director of International Studies at Trinity College,
Hartford, CT His new book is The Darker Nations: A People's History of the
Third World, New York: The New Press, 2007. He can be reached at:
vijay.prashad [at] trincoll.edu


--------7 of 7--------

Date: Thu, 28 May 2009 18:19:46 -0500
From: Joel Albers <joel [at] uhcan-mn.org>
To: uhcan-mn [at] yahoogroups.com
Subject: HMO You Ugly

This is the cheer some of us will be doing, along w/ choreography at the
demo this tues at United Health HMO this tues june2. This esp means you
Roger, or anyone else. its a definate crowd pleaser.Let me know if you
want to take part in this cheer for tues. 9am at UHG. -joel

HMO You Ugly Cheer:

u-g-l-y
HMO you cheat and lie
you ugly, uh-huh, uh-huh you ugly

g-r-e-e-d
your premium rates don't fool me
you greedy, uh-huh, uh-huh you greedy

e-v-i-l
money can't save your soul from hell
you evil, uh-huh, uh-huh you evil

r-u-i-n
HMO this is your end
you ruined, uh-huh, uh-huh you ruined

y-l-g-u
you is ugly backwards too
you ugly, uh-huh, uh-huh you ugly

f-r-e-e
is what health care needs to be
yeah free, uh-huh, uh-huh yeah free


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   - David Shove             shove001 [at] tc.umn.edu
   rhymes with clove         Progressive Calendar
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