We need a shorter work week

Ever wonder where little countries like, oh, France ... the USA and most of Europe ... , got the idea that making people work longer before they retire, ... or laying off government employees ... was just what the doctor ordered in a recession, with unemployment riding high?  Wait.  Does that sound 100 percent loose-screw, squirrel-nest nuts to anybody else?

Secret reasons to vote for Romney

According to David Brooks-No-Logic, Mitt Romney has a secret plan - which Romnibus has shared in some secret chamber with Brooks, and which makes Mr. B all quivery inside - for health care.  We are supposed to think, we can only assume, that 'Romneycare' does everything good and nothing bad, which is of course why we aren't allowed to see it.  Who would vote for that?

Probably has a secret plan for fixing the economy, too, without raising taxes or letting the rabid rich off the leash to tear into the raw meat of the huddled masses, a plan that will magically lead to Utopia, Heaven on Earth, and Xanadu, all rolled into one great big gumball-machine-prize.

Personally, I'm a big fan of the part of his secret plans where we invade Planet X and claim their utopia as our own.

Salt in open wounds

As a native Mississippian, let me just say: Surprise! Politicians in my birth-state have screwed the hardworking average Joe and Joan again - a new law making it harder for injured workers to get workers' comp. 

Demand demand

We demand more demand!

And an economic policy that goes with it.

P.S.  It's the opposite of 'supplyside' baloney, and it's based on the crazy idea that when workers make money, we spend it; when our wealthy overlords make money, they hoard it or play the stock market with it.  Duh!

Obamascare II: Now What?

-->

One danger in the Obamascare ‘debate’ (more like dueling stampedes: water buffalo vs. bison) is the part we may forget in the effort to score coup on our opponents’ hides.  That is, what working people should be coming together to achieve.  Single payer.  Universal health care.  Promote the general welfare – including well-ness.  No profiteering insurance companies.  No corporate ‘death panels’.  That is, not the imaginary ‘death panels’ of Sarah Palin LLC, but the ones that actually exist – the specialists who kick people out of the coverage sphere just for getting sick, or turn people away for being sick, too sick to be insured, or deny coverage for treatments prescribed by doctors, the high-priced lawyers who use all their showmanship in support of said pig-greedy insurance Scrooges while the patient dies, and their acolytes.  No more “are you insured?” or “may I see your card?” – just “what seems to be the problem?”  Some day, we hope.

-->

As one of our local working-class heroes here in Champaign-Urbana, Claudia Lennhoff of CCHCC, says, "I believe that you can be both a single payer supporter/activist, and someone who ALSO sees how the health reform law will benefit millions of people, AND how it will help pave the way for universal health care and even single payer in our country (both through the content of the law, and also through the community organizing possibilities implementation of health reform presents)."