Fwd: Rowdy Resistance

Sent from my iPhone

Begin forwarded message:

From: Stewart Acuff <acuff.stewart@gmail.com>
Date: March 4, 2017 at 6:11:43 PM EST
To: Stewart <acuff.stewart@gmail.com>
Subject: Rowdy Resistance

Our rowdy resistance is working

Our democracy's demise stalled by the passion of our people

Collective, concerted anger in the streets

And halls of raging repudiation

Our people push past the fear of fascism

Our lives lived in a degree of freedom til now

Will not easily be extinguished

In the sweet storm of civil rights

And the wretched, wasted wars we marched against

The workers freedoms we fought for

Some of us prepared for the defense of democracy

We are not soldiers just in the sun

But also in the madness of a midnight moon

We have plumbed the soul of struggle

And our own souls

We know what we were wrought to do.

Sent from my iPhone

Bernie Sanders Storms The South And Fights For Worker Rights By Marching In Mississippi

http://www.politicususa.com/2017/03/03/bernie-sanders-storms-south-fights-worker-rights-marching-mississippi.html

Eastern Panhandle Independent Community (EPIC) Radio:Sunday Morning Quaker Radio and Philosophy Broadcasts

John Case has sent you a link to a blog:



Blog: Eastern Panhandle Independent Community (EPIC) Radio
Post: Sunday Morning Quaker Radio and Philosophy Broadcasts
Link: http://www.enlightenradio.org/2017/03/sunday-morning-quaker-radio-and.html

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Eastern Panhandle Independent Community (EPIC) Radio:Philip Marlowe All Day on Saturday EPIC

John Case has sent you a link to a blog:



Blog: Eastern Panhandle Independent Community (EPIC) Radio
Post: Philip Marlowe All Day on Saturday EPIC
Link: http://www.enlightenradio.org/2017/03/philip-marlowe-all-day-on-saturday-epic.html

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Paul Krugman: Goodbye Spin, Hello Raw Dishonesty [feedly]

Paul Krugman: Goodbye Spin, Hello Raw Dishonesty
http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2017/03/paul-krugman-goodbye-spin-hello-raw-dishonesty.html

 -- via my feedly newsfeed

Who'll stop the rain?:

Goodbye Spin, Hello Raw Dishonesty, by Paul Krugman, Commentary, NY Times: The latest big buzz is about Jeff Sessions, the attorney general. It turns out that he lied during his confirmation hearings, denying that he had met with Russian officials during the 2016 campaign. In fact, he met twice with the Russian ambassador, who is widely reported to also be a key spymaster. ...

At this point it's easier to list the Trump officials who haven't been caught lying under oath than those who have. This is not an accident.

Critics ... used to complain, with justification, about politicians' addiction to spin —...presenting their actions in a much better light than they deserved. But all indications are that the age of spin is over. It has been replaced by an era of raw, shameless dishonesty.

In part, of course, the pervasiveness of lies reflects the character of the man at the top: No president, or for that matter major U.S. political figure of any kind, has ever lied as freely and frequently as Donald Trump. ...

And the question is, who's going to stop him?

The moral vacuity of Republicans in Congress, and the unlikelihood that they'll act as any check on the president, becomes clearer with each passing day. Even the real possibility that we're facing subversion by agents of a foreign power, and that top officials are part of the story, doesn't seem to faze them as long as they can get tax cuts for the rich and benefit cuts for the poor.

Meanwhile, Republican ... voters, who are the real arbiters when polarized and/or gerrymandered districts make the general election irrelevant for many politicians, live in a Fox News bubble...

And what about the Fourth Estate? Will it let us down, too?

To be fair, the first weeks of the Trump administration have in important ways been glory days for journalism; one must honor the ... reporters who have been ferreting out the secrets this authoritarian-minded clique is so determined to keep.

But then you watch something like the way much of the news media responded to Mr. Trump's congressional address, and you feel despair. It was a speech filled with falsehoods and vile policy proposals, but read calmly off the teleprompter — and suddenly everyone was declaring the liar in chief "presidential."

The point is that if that's all it takes to exonerate the most dishonest man ever to hold high office in America, we're doomed. Let's hope it doesn't happen again.

Trump administration wants to delay rule protecting savers from conflicted investment advice [feedly]

Trump administration wants to delay rule protecting savers from conflicted investment advice
http://www.epi.org/blog/trump-administration-wants-to-delay-rule-protecting-savers-from-conflicted-investment-advice/

 -- via my feedly newsfeed

Following a directive from President Trump, the Labor Department has proposed a two-month delay in implementing an Obama administration rule requiring financial professionals to act in clients' best interests when recommending investment products or strategies to people saving for retirement (known as the "fiduciary rule"). Under the proposed extension, the rule would take effect June 9 rather than April 10. The public has 15 days to submit comments on the delay.

The rule was six years in the making and has survived three court challenges backed by the financial services industry, which stands to lose an estimated $17 billion a year from ending predatory practices by brokers and other financial professionals passing themselves off as disinterested advisors. It incorporates input from four days of public hearings, over 3000 public comment letters, and more than 100 stakeholder meetings.

Unbeknownst to most people, it is currently legal for financial professionals to recommend higher-cost investment products or rollovers from 401(k)s to higher-cost IRAs when similar but lower-cost options are available, without disclosing that they are working on commission rather than making recommendations that are in their clients' interest.

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Chamber of Commerce’s recommendations to the NLRB would roll back workers’ rights to the Stone Age [feedly]

Chamber of Commerce's recommendations to the NLRB would roll back workers' rights to the Stone Age
http://www.epi.org/blog/chamber-of-commerce-recommendations-to-the-nlrb-would-roll-back-workers-rights-to-the-stone-age/

esterday, the Chamber of Commerce released ten recommendations to "fix" the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). The Chamber's policy suggestions are recycled positions that have been the subject of the nearly two dozen hearings on the agency since Republicans assumed control of the House in 2011. Arguing that President Obama's board "overturned over 4,500 years of precedent," the Chamber advances a platform that would roll back workers' rights to the Stone Age.

Since the NLRB issued its decision in Specialty Healthcare, clarifying the standard for determining an appropriate bargaining unit, corporate special interests have assailed it as inviting the proliferation of "micro" units that will allow unions to gerrymander workforces. The Chamber echoes this argument in advocating for the NLRB or Congress to overturn the decision. However, the NLRB's standard for determining an appropriate bargaining unit in Specialty Healthcare has been upheld in all seven U.S. Courts of Appeals in which it has been challenged. Data on the median size of bargaining units disproves the argument that the standard would lead to the proliferation of so-called "micro-units." Why then are the Chamber and other corporate interest groups committed to doing away with the Specialty Healthcare standard? They want employers that are committed to defeating an organizing campaign to be able to manipulate who is in a bargaining unit to make it harder for workers to organize. The National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) directs the NLRB to allow employees to organize into units that assure employees "the fullest freedom in exercising the rights guaranteed by this Act." The standard in Specialty Healthcare does just that.

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