Unprotected Sandy Cleanup Hires Face Health and Safety Threats.
With
Joel Shufro, Exec. Dir. NY Committee for Occupational Safety and Health (“NYCOSH”)
and
Luzdary Giraldo, NYCOSH Community Outreach Organizer

NYCOSH is demanding employers and government agencies respond to the massive health and safety violations thousands of cleanup workers face in the wake of Sandy, so as not to repeat the 911 fiasco which continues to cost the lives of first responders. Thousands of Sandy workers are facing health and safety hazards as they clean up the wreckage, and are forced to work 10 - 12 hour
shifts often without even receiving the minimum wage.
*****************
350 Economists Warn Obama and Congress:

Unwise Deficit Reduction Could Kill Recovery.
Economy Needs Growth and Jobs, Not Austerity.
With
. Robert Pollin, Univ. of Massachusetts, Economist and
co-director, Political Economy Research Institute (PERI)
. Teresa Ghirarducci, Director of the Schwartz Center for
Economic Policy Analysis at the The New School

Warning that the U.S. economy is still “marked by mass unemployment, rising poverty, and declining wages.” 350 prominent economists issued a statement with the Campaign for America’s Future that, “the fragile recovery is threatened by obsessive concern with cutting deficits that
has infected both parties.”

The economists’ statement highlighted that drastic spending cuts adopted in a “grand bargain” aimed at avoiding sequestration could have such a contractionary impact on the still-fragile economy that the U.S. could join European countries in plunging into recession as a result of misguided
austerity policies.

http://archive.org/stream/BuildingBridgesSandyCleanupHiresFaceHealthSafetyDangersAnd  
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How Class Works: The RepublaCrats and Their Servant Economy
With
Jeff Faux, renowned economist, Founding Pres., Economic Policy Institute, author of The Global Class War and The Servant Economy

Faux explains why neither party's leaders have a plan to remedy America's unemployment, inequality, or long economic slide that America's political and economic elite spent so long making. While Republicans and Democrats brawl in public, in effect they have already cut a deal: the “American Dream” will have to be sacrificed. Faux will take us on a historical tour of the rise and fall of the idea that democratic government has a responsibility for shaping the future, delivers a savage indictment of Wall Street financiers and their Washington toadies who promote an age of austerity for the people and an age of gluttony for themselves.

http://archive.org/stream/BuildingBridgesTheRepublacratsServantEconomyWithJeffFaux_339  play stream

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Greek Tragedy, Europe’s Achilles Heel?
with
Leo Panitch, Professor of Political Science at York
University, Canada and Editor of the Socialist Register.

As the G-20 economic summit met austerity was sweeping Europe,
the future of the Eurozone was in doubt and then the Greek
government collapsed over its proposed new debt agreement with
the European Union. The deal was reached by European leaders to
stabilize the Euro and to avoid Greek default on its debt to the banks
or its leaving the euro currency zone. Anger among Greek citizens
stems from the proposed agreement’s focus on more austerity to
repay the bank loans leading to increased unemployment. A new
world recession may be drawing closer after the G-20 failed to
agree on fresh financial help for distressed countries.
***************
Hey Union Busting Is Disgusting! -
Joining the Sotheby Workers Protest with OWS

Some 400 protesters in NYC greeted Sotheby's $500 million
auction with a high-spirited, very high-decibel demonstration in
solidarity with its locked-out workers. Despite making record
profits last year, the auction house is demanding wage and benefit
cuts, and the replacement of skilled, union workers with unskilled,
non-union temporary workers.Several unions, including other
Teamster locals, UAW, CWA, LiUNA, TWU, SEIU and UFT were
represented at the demonstration, together with Hunter, NYU
and Columbia University students and faculty, and of course
Occupied Wall Street activists six of whom were arrested in an
act of civil disobedience.


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America’s Not Broke. Not Even Close. Tax the Rich!

Overall average individual wealth in the United States has risen 23 percent
since the year 2000, to $236,213 per American adult. But, wealth has
become incredibly more concentrated. We are taxing the dollars that go to
our ever-richer rich at levels far below the tax rates that America levied just
a few decades ago. Now, both an analysis of our current predicament and
a series of proposals that can help open our eyes to a far more equitable —
and brighter — future,

with
Meizhu Lui, Director of Closing the Racial Wealth Gap Initiative,
Insight Center for Community Economic Development
and
Chuck Collins, a senior scholar, Institute for Policy Studies (IPS)
and Director of IPS’s Program on Inequality and the Common Good.
Co-author of the recent report, Unnecessary Austerity, Unnecessary
Government Shutdown.

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