Month: December 2010

Last month, voters in Wisconsin and Ohio elected Republican governors who pledged to stop their state's high speed rail projects, even though they had won $1.2 billion in federal stimulus grants to begin the projects. On the same day, California voters overwhelmingly elected pro-HSR candidate Jerry Brown, who backed a bullet train proposal from LA to SD in the early 1980s, over the anti-HSR Meg Whitman.

Republicans in WI and OH wanted to redirect the federal stimulus funds to road projects, which is moronic – we need to fund 21st century infrastructure that liberates us from oil, rather than deepening our dependence on it. Jerry Brown and California voters – who themselves approved $10 billion in funds for HSR in 2008 – understand that we cannot have 21st century prosperity without it.

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and Jodi Reid

Leading up the recent failed vote on the Deficit Commission report, the California Alliance for Retired Americans recently held successful demonstrations in front of Speaker Pelosi’s San Francisco office and Xavier Becerra’s Los Angeles Office.

CARA’s rally could not have come at a better time, as the Deficit Commission zeroed in on cutting Medicare and Social Security. Calling for “No Cuts to Social Security,” seniors and union activists sang and rallied in the rain – to the tune of the Battle Hymn of the Republic.

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During the past few years, Rite Aid executives made bad business decisions that caused serious financial problems at the country’s third-largest drugstore chain. But instead of working with employees to move forward together in challenging times, Rite Aid execs are trying to make the company's loyal and hard-working employees pay for management's mistakes.

With support from the AFL-CIO, United Students Against Sweatshops and Jobs with Justice, Rite Aid workers are calling on union supporters to join with community and student allies to participate in a National Day of Action on December 15th.

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At the stroke of midnight last night, some 800,000 workers who have been looking for jobs for more than six months lost their unemployment insurance (UI)—2 million will be without help by the end of December. Why? Because congressional Republicans have chosen to side with the nation’s millionaires instead of the jobless.

They chose to extend the Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthy as their top priority this lame-duck session and essentially have told workers struggling to find work in an economy with five job hunters for every opening: “Tough luck. Happy holidays.”

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