Pat H May 16, 2012, 2:45 pm  1934 Minneapolis Teamster Strike (Source: marxist.org) Erik Loomis at Lawyers, Guns and Money has been doing an excellent series of illustrated posts that chronicle some of the major events in American labor history (a total of 26 so far). This week the focus is on Minneapolis in 1934: On May 16, 1934, a mere week after longshoremen in San Francisco walked off the job and roiled the west coast, truckers in Minneapolis went on strike in an action that would lead the way for the Teamsters to represent truckers across the nation and help lay the groundwork for the organization of industrial workers across the nation during the 1930s.
Mr Loomis has also written about the Haymarket Riot of 1886, the Triangle Fire of 1911, and the Bisbee Deportation of 1917. Each one is a history lesson in itself. Bob Morris May 16, 2012, 9:15 am  Bank run 1933 “Provopoulos told me that of course there’s no panic but there’s great fear which can evolve into panic,” he said.
The panic will be coming soon enough. Pimco says 17-nation Euro currency union will not last
Bob Morris May 16, 2012, 5:45 am 
Just because shale oil is theoretically recoverable doesn’t mean it’s economically or environmentally desirable to do so. Steve Hynd explains why. Bob Morris May 15, 2012, 9:56 pm Well, this is maddening and nonsensical. A goofy carbon emissions trading scheme in Germany makes it cheaper to return to coal than continue moving towards clean energy. Bob Morris May 15, 2012, 6:04 pm George Zimmerman had broken nose, black eye. FBI may charge George Zimmerman with a hate crime.
Can you imagine what it will be like outside the courthouse during the trial, with protesters from all sides there? Pat H May 15, 2012, 2:15 pm  Field-workers, Goodrich Tobacco Farm, near Gildersleeve, Conn., 1917. Lewis Wickes Hine, American. (Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.) Last month the US Department of Labor bowed to political pressure spearheaded by agribusiness lobbyists like the American Farm Bureau Federation and cancelled its planned revision of safety rules for farm child labor, a follow-on to similar rules for kids working in non-farm industries that the Department had issued in 2010. Although a lot of noise was made about the threat these rules posed to family farms amid claims of government overreach, they were specifically aimed at underage migrant farm labor. A Washington Post article noted that that Labor Department tried to avoid controversy by emphasizing that children working on their parents’ farms would be excluded from the proposals. That exemption is actually a matter of federal statute under the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938. The Labor Department lacked the authority to change it. It’s worth noting that a Labor Department summary of the proposed changes stated clearly that the parental exemption “allows the child of a farmer to perform any task, even hazardous tasks, at any age on a farm owned or operated by the parent.”
The parental exemption as interpreted by the Labor Department applies to relatives who assume the role of parents, so expressed concerns about farm children not being allowed to work on their grandfathers’ or uncles’ farms were equally unfounded. The outcome of this brouhaha has been a complete cave of the Obama administration to the interests of agribusiness. Once again, the top 1% have triumphed, this time at the expense of some of the poorest in our land. Actually, the migrant children in the fields today, facing severe poverty and limited educational opportunities, starkly represent how far modern industrial farming has drifted from the bygone bucolic ideal of the family farm.
Bob Morris May 15, 2012, 9:45 am 
How do power companies transition from dirty energy to renewable energy while keeping the lights as they do it? The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) is finding out, as they work towards a clean, renewable energy future. What they are doing makes an instructive case study for other utilities, many of whom are mandated to do the same. The State of California says utilities must provide 33% renewable energy by 2020. This means that LADWP eventually needs to stop using coal. But, you say, coal plants aren’t allowed in California, so how can LADWP be using coal power? Well, it comes from hundreds of miles away from coal plants in Utah and Arizona. Bob Morris May 15, 2012, 6:30 am Toronto Hydro is installing smart transformers and equipment. Among the benefits are real-time reports on performance which allow action to be taken immediately, tracking illegal power use, and isolating problems to a single household rather than shutting down power for thousands. Bob Morris May 14, 2012, 9:27 pm Filmmaker Amy Berg recounts a harrowing story of child abuse and how a serial child molester went free for the better part of two decades in this documentary. Oliver O’Grady was a Catholic priest who served in a number of parishes in Southern California during the 1970s and ’80s. O’Grady was also a habitual child molester who abused dozens of youngsters who were entrusted to his care, and while his superiors in the church were aware of O’Grady’s crimes as early as 1973, they opted to simply move him from one congregation to another rather than turn him in to authorities or strip him of his ordination.
The sexual abuse and pedophilia in the Catholic Church has been institutionalized for decades. You can watch the entire Deliver Us From Evil online. Pat H May 14, 2012, 3:30 pm  Chas. H. Yale's forever Devil's auction, U.S. Printing Co., c1899 (Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.) After a couple of weeks with a higher than average number of firearms being found by TSA agents, the period between April 27th and May 3rd, 2012, was quieter. - Firearms: 23 - 22 loaded; 1 unloaded
- 1 artfully concealed prohibited item found at checkpoints
Blogger Bob and the rest of the TSA Blog Team either had a very slow week or exactly the same things were found as last reported, including black plastic dagger, knife in walker and tomahawk. In Washington DC, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform led by Darrell Issa (R, just up the coast a bit) had some strong words to say about TSA management practices in a report highlighting the agency’s willingness to buy expensive equipment without sufficiently testing its effectiveness. “Little has changed in the past three years and the systemic flaws continue to plague the TSA. These flaws are exacerbated by a management structure that seems content to throw millions of dollars at untested solutions that are bought in excess and poorly deployed and managed. That is not a security operation, but rather a recipe for disaster.”
In at least one case, the TSA bought (and is paying to store) more screening devices that it needed in order to get a discount, hoping that they would eventually find a use for them. If you wonder what happens to all the things passengers “voluntarily surrender” before being allowed to board their planes, look no farther than Harrisburg. There’s some money in this for a cash-strapped state. Pennsylvania has been selling off TSA-collected items since 2004 — total revenue roughly $700,000 — but recently has begun selling the stuff by the lot, at the online government auction site www.govdeals.com.
Exactly how much stuff are we talking about here? No one knows, because no one is keeping track (but Newark Airport alone collects four tons of prohibited items annually). | Independent Voter NetworkArticles by Bob Morris on California and Arizona renewable energy, budget and border issues |
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