Forum Post: Unemployment is a National Emergency
Posted 11 years ago on Dec. 5, 2012, 1:03 p.m. EST by TrevorMnemonic
(5827)
This content is user submitted and not an official statement
Washington, Dec 5 - Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) today called poverty and joblessness a national emergency. “It’s our choice. Increase taxes, cut spending, put the economy in a stall, or put millions back to work,” said Kucinich.
Congressman Kucinich is author of H.R. 2990, the National Emergency Employment Defense Act which would create millions of jobs maintaining the basic infrastructure on which Americans rely every day. The bill would allow the federal government to correct crippling national deficiencies in infrastructure maintenance and education nationwide by spending money into circulation without increasing the national debt or causing inflation. It would incorporate the Federal Reserve within the United States Treasury, establish fiscal integrity, and reassert Congressional sovereignty.
The full text of Congressman Kucinich’s remarks follow.
“Nearly 50 million Americans, and over 10 million children live in poverty; 46 million Americans are on food stamps. According to the Census Bureau, without Social Security over 50% of people 65 and older would live and die in poverty.
“Why do we accept poverty? Why do we accept massive unemployment? Over 20 million Americans are without work. You can’t escape poverty without a job. Americans want jobs not unemployment checks. If you don’t have a source of income, you can’t own a home.
“The middle class is disappearing. An unfair tax system is causing wealth to accelerate upwards, which is why I opposed the Bush tax cuts. But more tax increases and no massive jobs program are a prescription for disaster. We need more taxpayers, not more tax increases. You can’t rebuild America by retaxing America.
“Poverty and joblessness constitute a national emergency. The private sector is not creating sufficient jobs. Congress has the constitutional power to coin/create money. We can use our power to put millions back to work, rebuilding America’s infrastructure. HR 2990, the National Employment Emergency Act can accomplish this. It’s our choice. Increase taxes, cut spending, put the economy in a stall, or put millions back to work.”
Unemployment is a National Emergency so is global warming and pollution destroying the environment.
Time for a national works program - implementing green technology - in industry to supply green technology infrastructure components to be installed in upgrading our infrastructure.
Need and need and need addressed in a healthy manner for all.
Jan 7, 2013
“What should really be scaring the daylights out of us—the crisis which could make all the others irrelevant—is global warming,” Bill Moyers says on the latest edition of “Moyers & Company.”
http://www.truthdig.com/avbooth/item/ending_the_silence_on_climate_change_20130107/
Climate change is an issue I've been wanting to discuss more.
Awesome program - a MUST SEE for everyone. http://www.truthdig.com/avbooth/item/ending_the_silence_on_climate_change_20130107/
Fundamental change - fundamental changes - are required - NOW.
This will only happen through the education then involvement and actions of THE PEOPLE.
Fight disinformation - promote unity - not just of individuals - but also of existing groups - each group in existence added together in support of needed change is stronger then the sum of their respective pieces.
Green jobs is an important part of addressing the unemployment emegency
http://front.moveon.org/this-is-why-you-listen-up-when-robert-redford-has-something-to-say/?rc=daily.share
Never forget ALEC's involvement.
http://www.uppitywis.org/blogarticle/what-alecs-number-one-state-do-business-looks
Truth - ALEC CATO HERITAGE and other numerous groups are the mouth pieces of disinformation and the tool makers ( legislation ) for pollution/poisoning/destruction for fossil fuel concerns.
Yep, and there's a lot more where those came from.
Unfortunately - TRUE. Think of all of the groups out there that were established just to feed misinformation or acceptable perception.
They multiply likes flies around a turd alright..
Because it is a known and successful game of manipulation - and works very well with an uneducated population where information is restricted/controlled by the few.
Seems like the perfect marriage and a no-brainier, but our government will never get on board. They are beholden to the corporate dinosaur energy industries. ;(
That is why the decision can not be left to them. I copied and posted the comment to twitter in a link to bring any who looked at it back to this Post.
Fundamental change for the better will only come through the involvement and actions of the people.
I understand, but government sets the stage and direction with subsidies, tax manipulation, corporate welfare, laws, etc., that in essence, gives an unfair advantage to the dinosaur energy industries. Essentially they're using our tax money to fight us on this issue by giving these handouts. The people alone will find it very difficult to enact change, having to battle the power of the energy industries and the bought government. My 2 cents :)
Excellent.
Dennis does great work! I am looking forward to his future revival! He has lost several elections in the past, and he finds a way to come back!
we could create millions of jobs in research and development of technologies and medicine, by building or retrofitting buildings and infrastructure with the latest smart and green technologies, breaking up monopolies and too big to fails creating millions of small businesses with well paying jobs including millions of jobs farming with the breaking up of big agriculture and mega farms and their replacement with the ethical principals of permaculture and heritage breeds of livestock and heirloom plants.
That's silly... just give us big couch factory; that's all we need.
what?
more money thrown down a rat hole.
We need another HR 2990 pushed into Congress.
Not everyone accepts poverty. Not everyone accepts unemployment.
Collective Workplaces Spell Job Security, Fair Treatment and Real-Life Democracy
Wednesday, 05 December 2012 00:00 By Graciela Razo, Truthout | Report
http://truth-out.org/news/item/13140-collective-workplaces-spell-job-security-fair-treatment-and-real-life-democracy
Amid the economic downturn in 2007, economist, professor, and Truthout contributor and advisory board member Richard Wolff laid out a vision for a radical reorganization of labor wherein employees had control of their workplaces. From choosing their work hours to coming to consensus about everyday business operations, employees would act together as their own bosses to combat inequality in the workplace.
The Story of Beyond Care
After facing insecure jobs, low wages and toxic unemployment, Susana Peralta and 19 other women turned that radical restructuring of the workplace into a reality. Their cooperative brainchild Beyond Care blossomed in 2008 as a new way to provide quality employment for their community in Sunset Park, Brooklyn.
The alternative workplace provides a necessary service of part- and full-time childcare where the women are their own bosses and chose their own hours and wages, a welcomed change from traditional workplaces.
"Not only did we create a space with fairer wages, but we found a way to employ our entire community," Peralta, the Beyond Care cooperative president said.
Peralta and her coworkers are exactly what Wolff and his new organization Democracy at Work, a collaboration with Truthout and several other partners, conceptualized for the future of employment. Democracy at Work was born in 2011 after Wolff's weekly radio show Economic Update, supported by Truthout, became syndicated in ten cities and listeners grew desperate for a solution to the abysmal employment and economic crisis.
"People wanted a solution, so we had to answer this demand," Wolff said. "The answer we came up with is democracy at work that would respond to the criticism we're making about the failures of the system to solve its own problems, to the failure of the old traditional socialism to be a model that attracts people and excites them." The fundamental idea of Democracy at Work is to create a society based on workers' self-directed enterprises. Fully egalitarian in every sense, workers run the business, share the assets and create a workspace that runs in harmony with not only its workers, but the entire community.
Wolff's argument is that workers in control of their own workplaces are much less likely to ship their own jobs overseas, underpay employees or pollute their own communities. As workers' enterprises become fully functioning, they benefit those who participate as workers as well as the customers and communities they serve. But before Beyond Care came into full operation, the women worked every day just to promote the business to get its first clients. Because they had to build up the daycare on an idea alone, with no money, it was completely up to them to gain momentum for the business. They put up flyers all over their neighborhood, trying to spread the word about their cooperative. After four years of word-of-mouth promotion and advertising, the collective got its first client. Now, Beyond Care has more clients than it can handle; the childcare center now has to turn down nearly seven clients each week because of its growing popularity. Parents love that their children are learning Spanish and that Beyond Care is entirely democratically run, Peralta added.
The women are constantly attending trainings and are currently working on expanding their services to meet the needs of children with disabilities. Unlike traditional workplaces, pleasing its customer-base is vital to Beyond Care's survival.
"If you work with an agency, you work to please your boss; when you work for a cooperative, you have more incentive to please the customers because your job depends directly on it," said collective developer Emma Yorra.
But perhaps most importantly, Peralta said, is the job security a collectively run workplace provides. No one worries about not having clients or being fired with nowhere to go. There are always clients and work to be done for the community, she said.
"We all have equal benefits and security now," Peralta said. "It isn't just for those of us who started the co-op; we're interested in something that benefits the entire community."
This "radical reorganization and democratization of enterprise," according to Wolff, gives workers complete control of their own workplaces, allows them to decide their wages and work fair hours, just as Beyond Care has been doing for the past four years. In a democratic workplace, no longer do bosses or agencies dictate how much employees should be paid - solving the issue of struggling workers barely able to pay for basic living expenses.
But job security would be the most beneficial outcome of worker self-directed enterprises, adds Jen Hill, co-founder of Democracy at Work. "When people are secure in their work-life, they have the freedom to participate in politics, home life and have time with their families, which would produce a more educated and creative society where everyone has a voice," Hill said. "Generations would be self-expressed, more equal and more secure. The opposite of what capitalism has done for us: insecurity and inequality."
Red Emma's Story
The freedom and democratic control of a cooperative gave the founding members of Red Emma's bookstore in Baltimore, Maryland, the freedom to expand further than a traditional business. Collectivized at the end of 2004, Red Emma's has flourished into a fully sustainable business, complete with a cafe serving fair-trade coffee, a space for political discussions, a free computer lab and a template for others to begin their own collective.
"We wanted to build an infrastructure that creates the world we want to see and a space that allows us to put our politics into practice," said Kate Khatib, a Red Emma's founding collective member. "Emma's is an experiment, a laboratory to see if these things we talk about in our literature actually work, and if not, why doesn't it work? What can we do instead?"
Owned and operated by 14 collective members and a group of volunteers, Red Emma's grew into a product of its own politics, giving each member a say in every aspect of the operation. But Emma's still has a few of the same obstacles many other independent bookshops across the country have. The collective still has times when it struggles with book sales or building repairs.
And although Emma's is an open collective, it takes six months to become a full member. After three months of volunteering for five hours each week and a series of checkpoints and reviews, the collective must come to a complete consensus before inviting someone to join. Then after three more months of working as a provisional member, they are eligible to become a collective member and officially added to Red Emma's ownership documents.
"Collectives offer a way to change the way we think of work," John Duda, another founding collective member said. "It's a space that changes people's expectations of what labor can look like."
Consensus becomes the basis of each workday. Every member and volunteer knows which lightbulb goes where, how much money was brought in that week and where the cooperative's produce comes from (local, family-owned grocery stores) and is encouraged to participate in each business decision.
Weekly collective meetings are run so every participant has a chance to speak. Each member focuses on a certain aspect of Emma's: public relations, book ordering, volunteers and logistics. Direct democracy developed Emma's into one of Baltimore's destination bookstores and into a worker self-directed enterprise that's able to be replicated by other business ventures.
"It's rewarding to see that it is possible to build something that is sustainable, that has a capacity to reproduce itself as an institution," Duda said. "It opens a space where people learn to live a little differently."
Democracy at Work is spreading this template to make it easier for collectives and cooperatives to sprout in cities where unemployment is deteriorating entire neighborhoods. The organization is developing informational videos to make these methods more accessible, and there are plans to organize a training institution where ideas are manifested into concrete business plans.
"We are developing a movement. We have the basic idea. We have a very enthusiastic audience," Wolff said. "It's growing, but the trick is how to find a way to glue people together, give them enough to do that they feel part of something because that's what they want."
Copyright, Truthout.
Americans have forgotten how to work together for survival or security. They need a corporation to do that now. Ugh! Corporations need an economy to provide us the jobs to make the money to buy what we need to live. Some people allowed the infiltrated government to destroy the economy with war. Oops!
"Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) today called poverty and joblessness a national emergency. "
We may have to figure out what our needs are, and work together to meet them, just to begin to survive.
but ms obama said the greatest threat to national security are fat people. so maybe its unemployed fat people.
This can help the unemployment emergency. build 2 million win turbines.
http://sierraclub.typepad.com/compass/2013/01/wind-ptc-passage.html