Month: July 2006

Selling Us Down the Kentucky River

Leaving for school tomorrow, now seems a good time to reflect upon the greatest current threat to labor unions: the group of cases that are collectively called “Kentucky River.” Jonathan Tasini efficiently sums them up: In a normal, sane world, these cases (involving nurses) would not pass the smell test: the employers are seeking to classify these nurses as “supervisors” because they exercise “independent judgement” (“yes, that patient is going into cardiac arrest so I better do something”) and “responsibly direct other employees.” Doing so, according to a study by the Economic Policy Institute, would potentially take as many as 8 million workers out of union bargaining units. Poof. with the stroke of a pen. If the Bush-dominated National Labor Relations Board rules as predicted against the rights of professional, skilled and educated workers than the boss whose workers I have been organizing for the past few months can legally […]

More Notoriety

You can’t even pump your gas in this town without people interviewing you for a newspaper article (See next to last paragraph). A YELLOW LIGHT FOR POLICE’S RACE PLAN Experts and LI drivers say Suffolk police should proceed with caution in project to record race of those stopped for traffic violations BY JENNIFER MALONEY Newsday Staff Writer July 12, 2006 Law enforcement experts and Suffolk residents reacted with skepticism yesterday to the Suffolk police department’s plan to gather data as a check against racial profiling. The opinions came a day after Suffolk police said they are recording the race of drivers stopped on the Long Island Expressway and Sunrise Highway for routine traffic violations in an effort to document if cops are profiling residents by race. The department, which began the initiative about two months ago and will continue for the next six to 12 months, hopes the data gathered […]

Frank Zeidler, Greatest Living American, Is Dead

Frank Zeidler, former Mayor of Milwaukee and Chairman Emeritus of the Socialist Party USA, died last night at the age of 93. Frank occupies a unique place in history as the last bona-fide Socialist mayor of a major American city, serving three terms between 1948 and 1960. To the rest of the country, Milwaukee in the 1950’s seems so bland, so middle-American and middle-class that it was the setting of the tv sitcom “Happy Days.” The most political that “Happy Days” ever got was that Richie Cunningham voted for Adlai Stevenson while his father supported Ike. Meanwhile, their Socialist mayor was holding regular press conferences on the steps of City Hall to denounce the state’ red-baiting Senator, Joseph McCarthy. The Socialists were a major political party in Milwaukee in the first half of the 20th century, electing numerous state legislators, city council members, a Congressman and two mayors before Frank. […]