Five Before Chaos

One of the biggest upcoming legislative battles that will be fought is over the Employee Free Choice Act, which basically will make it easier for employees to unionize, giving them a card-check option (50% +1 sign off) as well as giving them the current option of the secret ballot. Of course, this is a huge threat to corporate America, because if working-class wages go up, there’s less for those at the top. So, of course, the right wing is putting out blatant lies about it, trying to tell workers that it will “take away their right to a secret ballot”, which is complete, utter bullshit. The only thing it’s “taking away” is the employer’s decision on how employees will see if they want to unionize, and putting the decision where it belongs: with the worker. They know how a lot of people can’t be bothered with laborious fact-checking, so they’re pinning their hopes on that strategy.

And of course, where would the right wingers be without fear and perpetual pants pooping?  Fear is all they have, and if you listen to the rhetoric, you’d think that if EFCA passes, there will be mandatory abortions, genocide of the plutocracy, and shopping malls blowing up around the nation. This new ad by the SEIU captures (and mocks) the Browntrouser Brigade perfectly:

As you probably know, the FISA reauthorization is back in the Senate now, with Big Brother Bush pushing hard for immunity for the telecom companies so we’ll never know how bad the violations of Americans’ privacy an civil liberties really are. This should bother you, regardless of what party you’re from ive you take your civil liberties seriously.

Anyways, although Sens. Leahy and Sanders have both voiced opposition to the telcom immunity, they’ve been ridiculously silent on whether or not they would actually help Sen. Chris Dodd’s filibuster. We need them to. It’s not enough to just “support” the filibuster, they need to get up off of their asses and pay more than lip service to it. So it’s very important that if you haven’t done so, to contact them now and let them know that you want and expect them to take an active roll in assisting Senator Dodd’s filibuster. You can contact Leahy here and Sanders here. Also, if you feel so inclined, leave something in the comments about what you weer told when you called.

For much more background on this, have a look at odum’s piece from this morning over at GMD.

It’s nice whenever some of Bush’s “screw the earth” policies get turned back in the courts. This time, it’s a major provision of his Orwellian-named “Healthy Forests Initiative”:

A federal appeals court on Wednesday blocked a Bush administration rule that allowed logging and burning projects in national forests without first analyzing their effects on the environment.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the U.S. Forest Service violated the National Environmental Policy Act when it issued the 2003 rule, which was billed as a way to reduce wildfires.

As part of the “Healthy Forests Initiative,” the “hazardous fuels reduction” rule exempted logging projects up to 1,000 acres and prescribed forest burns up to 4,500 acres from environmental review.

The court said the agency’s failure to properly analyze the rule caused “irreparable injury” by allowing more than 1.2 million acres of national forest land to be logged and burned each year without studying the ecological impacts.

Don’t get too happy, though. Bush is more than likely working on some nefarious rule that will reclassify these trees as “enemy combatants” or something, where they will be sent to Guantanamo, or more likely, burned, because he can’t figure out how to waterboard a tree- “I don’t know why it ain’ workin’! The damn roots just keep sucking up the water!”.

Next up, a piece of global warming legislation is advancing in the Senate, the Lieberman-Warner bill . Yeah, Lieberman actually did something good, but that’s still not getting him off the hook for all his other bullshit. Now, this legislation still doesn’t go far enough (as Bernie Sanders pointed out), but what’s important about this is it managed to make it to the floor without all of the Repub attemts to add a bunch of amendments to neuter it. A particularly funny one was one that would ease the emissions standards if they “negatively affected poor people”. Funny how Repubs all of a sudden care about “poor people” for the first time in recent memory. It was a ruse anyways, and more importantly, we’re fast reaching a point where some hard choices are going to need to be made, even if the short-term economics may not be optimal. This practice of economics always trumping environmental concerns in this country (more often than not, bitching, threatening and whining from big power producers) is in part why our environmental crisis has reached the level that it has. More on Sanders’ role in this bill over at Grist.

Brattlerouser at GMD has the scoop on H.R. 1955: The Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007. Yeah, I know, it sounds scary. According to an article in the Baltimore Sun:

(The bill) tramples constitutional rights by creating a commission with sweeping investigative power and a mandate to propose laws prohibiting whatever the commission labels “homegrown terrorism.”

The proposed commission is a menace through its power to hold hearings, take testimony and administer oaths, an authority granted to even individual members of the commission – little Joe McCarthys – who will tour the country to hold their own private hearings. An aura of authority will automatically accompany this congressionally authorized mandate to expose native terrorism.

Ms. Harman’s proposal includes an absurd attack on the Internet, criticizing it for providing Americans with “access to broad and constant streams of terrorist-related propaganda,” and legalizes an insidious infiltration of targeted organizations. The misnamed “Center of Excellence,” which would function after the commission is disbanded in 18 months, gives the semblance of intellectual research to what is otherwise the suppression of dissent.

While its purpose is to prevent terrorism, the bill doesn’t criminalize any specific conduct or contain penalties. But the commission’s findings will be cited by those who see a terrorist under every bed and who will demand enactment of criminal penalties that further restrict free speech and other civil liberties. Action contrary to the commission’s findings will be interpreted as a sign of treason at worst or a lack of patriotism at the least.

While Ms. Harman denies that her proposal creates “thought police,” it defines “homegrown terrorism” as “planned” or “threatened” use of force to coerce the government or the people in the promotion of “political or social objectives.” That means that no force need actually have occurred as long as the government charges that the individual or group thought about doing it.

F-ing great. Anyways, to add insult to injury, Congressman Peter Welch voted for this bill. Go here to give him some grief. When the hell someone’s finally going to get up the nerve to mount a primary challenge, well, it seems like that time is drawing near, don’t you?

It remains to be seen how this will fare in the Senate and how Leahy and Sanders will vote. As soon as I get more info on the Senate bill, I’ll let you know.