Stella Dora workers fighting for their jobs

Striking Stella D'oro workers at Judson Church "Resistance + Recovery" event.  Does President Obama need to increase the spending of his economic stimulus plan? According to Noble Prize winning economist Paul Krugman, yes. Krugman recommends the President spend a little over a trillion dollars  to undo this economic train wreck handed to him by the incompetent Bush administration. However, the World Socialist web site says Obama's stimulus package is still top-heavy with all sorts of goodies for the rich fat-cat bastards that got us in this mess in the first place. For example the site says, "Despite the talk of a "21st century New Deal", the $825 billion package includes no proposals for government public works projects, let alone plans to hire the millions who have lost their jobs" Further it states, "A third of the package will be used to pay tax cuts, half of which are for big business. The House bill includes $7.7 billion in grants for investors  in renewable energy, while the Senate Finance Committee inserted a provision that would give companies tax relief on forgiven debt, a measure for which the US Chamber of Commerce and casino giant Harrah's Entertainment lobbied hard". I know, your saying what about the money Obama wants to spend on infrastructure rebuilding. Well the World Socialist web site says that it still wont be enough to repair all the nation's crumbling roads, bridges and highways. It says the Obama plan calls for spending $ 30 billion for roads and $10 billion for transit and rail. Unfortunately, its not enough because the site says, ...."the American Society of Civil Engineers estimates that it would cost at least $1.6 trillion to bring the country's crumbling bridges, roads and schools back to "good condition". GroundZero estimates it would take at least $2.1 trillion to kick start our failing system. Perhaps its time for real economic change. Let's bail out the workers and not the banks. Why not have the government fund worker cooperatives and let the workers run the factories which the rich fat-cat "outsourcers" have abandoned. Mr President lend me your ear!  And boycott Stella D'oro cookies people. The workers there have been on strike for five months. Victory for the workers!-KS 

Worker Co-ops in the USA

Ed Ott, far left of NYC Central Labor Council with Ricky and Raoul, third from the right of UE Local 1110. Ricky and Raoul are members of workers of Republic Windows of Chicago who occupied their factory until the owners were forced to agree to their basic demands for vacation pay, severance pay and temporary health care coverage which their bosses owed them after Republic closed its doors. The Bank of America, which was recently bailed out by U.S. taxpayers initially refused to loan Republic money for their weekly expenses. The eyes of workers across the nation and the world were on the union workers of Republic Windows in December 2008. This event took place at Judson Church in NYC 1/31/09  Addendum: At the labor event at Judson, many in the audience asked why didn't the workers try to create a workers co-op and run the factory themselves. Raoul replied that it would cost them $15 million to get the raw materials and machinery to to produce the windows. As more and more factories also closing, with scores of workers losing their jobs perhaps the Obama administration should take a look at a experiment of investing into worker co-ops. The government could target certain industries, like Republic which I think made green, energy efficient windows. Assemble the expertise in business and labor promote the concept of letting workers run factories in America. Wall Street no longer has the gumption or interest in manufacturing things in the US anymore. Workers in Argentina have accomplished this feat of worker co-ops. Why can't we do this here? Everything from our underwear (Mens Fruit of The Loom is made in Honduras) to microprocessors (Intel makes chips in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam) is made abroad at the expense of the economic livelihood of  American workers. I'm sending this writing on my blog to President Obama to offer what I think would be a solution to keeping good paying jobs in our country. Worker co-ops could be a way where Americans can have good paying jobs that help pay the mortgage and move our consumer based economy. What Wall St. won't do let American labor do it! Worker co-ops in the USA! Updated 2/21/09

Electric Lady Recording Studios

'Beyonce' The Cat

Fix Our Broadcast Media Mr. President

Last tuesday was indeed a glorious day. Before millions in our nation's capital and around the world, Barrack Obama became our 44th president. He has a huge task ahead of him. Obama inherited two wars and an economy in tatters. I'm not exactly exuberant of his political-centrist picks for his cabinet, but I believe Obama had to go centrist due to the dire state of affairs confronting the nation. He had to hit the ground running and picking a more left-progressive cabinet might waste precious time fighting the GOP in the conformation process. That said I believe the president must address the issue of America's failure of a news media. Yes. The same news media that failed to investigate and ask the hard questions concerning the build-up to the Iraq War. With a few exceptions the major networks, ABC, CBS NBC as well as CNN and MSNBC capitulated to the full court press of an administration hell bent on going to war. We later discovered after the fact that the Bush adminstration was being spoon fed disinformation-misinformation by Iraqi malcontents like Ahmed Chalbi and straight-up crackpots like the Iraqi defector known as "Curveball". The New York Times had to print a mea culpa concerning it being used as a sounding board for the disinformation of Douglas Feith's Office of Special Plans through its reporter Judith Miller. We must have unbiased and fair reporting. Not the gung-ho for war theatrics and special effects laden tripe presented during the build-up and invasion of Iraq. During a anti-war demonstration in New York in 2003, I asked some British nationals why the majority of their country was against the war and ours was for it he replied, 'I think we get better news than you get here'. Quoting part of  a  May 7, 2003 article by Mark Weisbrot, he states, ...."Americans may have a lower literacy level than other high-income countries, but they are not any more stupid than anyone else. The people of Europe-including the British and Spanish whose governments joined the "coalition of the willing"-overwhelmingly opposed the war because the media in those countries, while presenting Bush and Blairs statements, also gave the other side of the story".  Phil Donohue was kicked off MSNBC because they thought his probing questions of the war was unpatriotic. We must institute reforms and safeguards to prevent such complicity by the broadcast media from ever happening again. We must rebuild the firewall between the bank and the journalistic aspects of our broadcast media. We should have had more of a presence of people who tole us from the get-go that the war would be a disaster. Instead, we got a chorus line of political war hawks and former admirals and generals. A successful democracy in one that is informed. Over the last several years folks from both sides of the political spectrum has called for lessing of corporate control and the reform of our broadcast media. I hope that the Obama administration will take call for media reform seriously. 

Kenneth Sullivan

Producer-director of

Ground Zero Television