Songs to Fight the Plutocracy By: "UFCW Local 400 Anthem"

Kenneth Quinnell at Crooks and Liars:

In a great example of creativity and outside the box thinking, Vance “Head-Roc” Levy, a D.C.-based hip-hop artist, and music mentor, Dwayne Lee, have created an original song and video, "UFCW Local 400 Anthem," to raise awareness about the union and the rights of working families in general.

“We hope this music video will draw the attention of the younger membership in a fun and innovative way while at the same time teaching them about the labor movement’s history and what being in a union is all about,” said Local 400 president Tom McNutt.

The video stars Local 400 members from West Virginia, Maryland, D.C., and Virginia and their families, who joined together to share their passion and enthusiasm for Local 400 and the labor movement through song and dance.

It is this type of approach to outreach that can have a great impact on people who otherwise wouldn't think about unions as a positive force in society, particularly younger people. More groups should do things like this and create good songs to promote their organization and activities.

The full "UFCW Local 400 Anthem" Lyrics:

Hook (X3)
This side say: UFCW!
That Side you say: 400!

Verse 1:
We all want The American Dream
An honest Day’s pay working on a Good Team
Respect for the Time that we give
Dignity and Pride in the Way that We Live
Whether You lace Boots up or Slip on Dress shoes
On the Clock, the Job shouldn’t Stress You
Remember who will come to the Rescue – LABOR!
This understanding is what we need to get to!
Back in the Day before Labor Laws
We used suffer at the Hands of the The Boss
They made the Rules, Used us like Mules
Tried to play us like Fools while they wore the Jewels
Until we Organized; Through the Struggle Realized
Together as ONE we all could Rise!
Many lost their Lives on the Picket Front Line
You overworked and Tired? Then maybe it’s time to Join!

Hook (X4):
UFCW!
400!

Verse 2:
United Food and Commercial Workers
Arms locked on the job so the Boss can’t Hurt us
United we Stand; Divided we don’t stand a chance
Welcome aboard, we can help with your circumstance.
When Over worked under paid is the Norm
In every work place a Union should Form
We have the knowledge and are ready to assist you
To get the boss to the table on the Issues
Collective Bargaining: Power to the People
We want to Company to simply treat us all Equal
Fair Pay plus Health Benefits
The right to enjoy from our Labor’s Profits
Job Security in a safe workspace
The way it really should be in the First Place.
You on the Job and they trying do you Wrong?
Give us a Call! Get your game on.

Chorus:
Come on and Fight for the Side that Right
Workers Unite: JOIN US!
We’re in the Struggle Don’t take it Light
Workers Unite: JOIN US!
Fight for the Side that’s Right
Grocery Workers Unite: JOIN US!
Fight for the Side that’s Right
US Labor Unite: JOIN US!

Hook (X4):
UFCW!
400!

"Now we have to build on the progress we’ve made"

But it won't happen without a Democratic Congress.  What are you doing to make sure President Obama has one?



Full transcript here.

Call Your Questions in to Adkins-Massie Forum

Next Monday, Oct. 22, 8 p.m to 9 p.m., just before the third and last Presidential Debate.

 From Kathy Groob:

Finally, we will see Bill Adkins and Tom Massie square off at the KET candidate forum (not really a true debate) this Monday, October 22nd from 8-9 p.m.  This will be a great warm-up to the third and final Presidential debate.  

Please be ready to call in with your questions for Bill and Mr. Massie. 

Call-in number:  800-494-7605 

Questions can also be submitted online at Twitter: @BillKET or #kytonight (phone calls are preferred)

Please tweet and Facebook to your friends and supporters to tune in Monday night!

I'd say the only relevant questions to Massie are variations of "Do you support the Romney-Ryan plan to kill Medicare?"

Substitute "outlaw birth control," "cut taxes on the rich," "bomb Iran," "fire teachers, police and firefighters" for "kill Medicare" and you're good.

 

Here's a fun one for Massie: "How will you work for bipartisanship in Congress if President Obama is re-elected?"

And another fun one: "How much money has that teenaged Texas billionaire spent to promote your campaign?"

Romnesia

Someone is having way too much fun.

 

From Steve Benen at Maddowblog::

 

Character

Charlie Pierce, on what Romney revealed:

That moment when he was hectoring the president about the president's pension made him look like someone to whom the valet has brought the wrong Mercedes. 

"You'll get your chance in a moment. I'm still speaking."

Wow. To me, this was a revelatory, epochal moment. It was a look at the real Willard Romney, the Bain cutthroat who could get rich ruining lives and not lose a moment's sleep. But those people are merely the anonymous Help. The guy he was speaking to on Tuesday night is a man of considerable international influence. Outside of street protestors, and that Iraqi guy who threw a shoe at George W. Bush, I have never seen a more lucid example of manifest public disrespect for a sitting president than the hair-curling contempt with which Romney invested those words. (I've certainly never seen one from another candidate.) He's lucky Barack Obama prizes cool over everything else. LBJ would have taken out his heart with a pair of salad tongs and Harry Truman would have bitten off his nose.

SNIP

The one thing nobody can ever say now is that they didn't know the exact character of Willard Romney, and exactly how he feels about The Help, including that member of The Help who currently holds the job that Romney believes should have been his by virtue of his god-kissed, golden life.

"You'll get your chance in a moment. I'm still speaking."

Put all those Romneys together and that's what they sound like, even when they're talking to the president of the United States. It's the voice of the bloodless job-killer, the outsourcing Moloch of the industrial midwest, and the guy who poses with his Wall Street cronies with dollar bills in his mouth. People who claim to be interested in "character" should remember that.

Fourth District Repugs Running Scared

How do I know? One of them drove right off the road and over my two Bill Adkins yard signs. Backed up and did it again, until the signs were shredded and the metal frames were twisted. Hope it killed a tire and punctured the oil pan.

I'm putting two more out tomorrow - this time backed with concrete.

Run 'em again, motherfucker, and you'll flip that oversized tiny-penis-compensator you call a truck right into the ravine.

Songs to Fight the Plutocracy By: "Where is the Love?"

From Great Protest Songs:

This is a great protest song against the ‘war on terror’ and the craziness of recent American government (and their allies) foreign policy, which largely caused the ‘terrorism’ in the first place. It was released shortly after the invasion of Iraq in 2003. The superb video is a moving tribute to the people all over the world who protested against the invasion.

Uploaded by andy2000531 on May 5, 2007

Beshear Trying to Buy Off WhistleBlower

As a Kentucky taxpayer, I resent a single dime of tax money going to cover up just how illegally yet slavishly the Beshear administration sucks Big Coal's cock, to the everlasting detriment of the Commonwealth.

 

For the same reasons, I am more than willing to pay my share of a multi-million-dollar court judgment as long as a public trial thorough exposes just how illegally yet slavishly the Beshear administration sucks Big Coal's cock, to the everlasting detribment of the Commonwealth.

 

John Cheves at the Herald:

Gov. Steve Beshear's administration is attempting to settle a lawsuit filed by Ron Mills, its former mine permits director, who says he was fired in 2009 for refusing to sign illegal permits sought by one of Beshear's major campaign donors.

Mills' wrongful-termination lawsuit against the state is scheduled to be heard by a jury next week in Franklin Circuit Court. However, state officials said Wednesday they're trying to avoid a trial."We are working on an agreed disposition of the Ron Mills case," said Dick Brown, spokesman for the state Energy and Environment Cabinet, where Mills worked. That "is all that I am at liberty to discuss at this point."

 

Mills and his attorney, Bernard Pafunda, declined to comment on settlement talks. Mills claims whistle-blower status, which could protect him even though he was a political appointee who served at the governor's pleasure. He wants to be reinstated and paid $3.23 million in punitive damages and lost wages.

 

In his lawsuit, Mills says he was fired by Energy and Environment Secretary Len Peters because he refused to sign five illegal mine permits sought by Alliance Coal of Tulsa, Okla., covering 55,000 acres in Western Kentucky.

 

Alliance Coal is a leading coal producer that has given more than $585,000 in Kentucky state and federal political donations since 2007. Beshear and the Kentucky Democratic Party are among its many beneficiaries.

 

The Beshear administration has been unable to get Mills' lawsuit dismissed despite challenging it for several years in motions as high as the Kentucky Court of Appeals.

Coal operators have been buying off Kentucky governors for almost as long as Kentucky has had governors. But rarely does an appointee like Mills get fed up and refuse to go along. Even more rarely does he go public with his disgust.

 

Kentucky needs this festering boil lanced, and only a public trial of Mills' charges can do that.

Why Only Repugs Benefit From Citizens United

Because only Democrats follow the rules.

 

Seriously: everyone who thinks repugs would spend a second even considering whether to waste time finding out if some political shenanigan they want to do is legal, stand on your head.

 

From the Courier:

The state campaign finance agency has ruled that an independent Democratic group called Kentucky Family Values may not give information such as polling data to two Democratic Party committees. 

In an advisory opinion issued Friday, the Kentucky Registry of Election Finance said Kentucky Family Values, or KVF, may not provide such information for free to the Kentucky Democratic Party or the Kentucky House Democratic Caucus.


SNIP

The state party, the House Democratic caucus and KVL jointly requested the opinion.

“Independent expenditure committees are a new area of the law and we wanted to make sure we are complying with the law completely,” said James Lamb, a Washington attorney representing KFV. “We greatly appreciate the thoughtful answers and guidance and we’ll follow it completely.”

Suckers!  Losers!  Democrats!

Songs to Fight the Plutocracy: "We Not Gonna Take It"

Uploaded by RhinoEntertainment on Aug 3, 2010

Voting Guide for Kentucky Progressives

Yes, there are voting opportunities for progressives in Kentucky, and now you can find them in one easy online place.

From Kentuckians for the Commonwealth:

KentuckyElection.org is Live!

KFTC's Election website at www.KentuckyElection.org is updated with new information about candidate stances, voting locations, key links, and other information to help you cast an informed vote in the election on Tuesday, November 6.

Please share this website widely with friends and family members, through email and social media, to spread the word.

www.KentuckyElection.org

Live By the Lie, Die By the Lie

No, not all freakazoids are sexual predators, although sometimes it does seem that all sexual predators are freakazoids. Sexual crimes by freakazoids - and the subsequent coverup of such crimes by religious authorities - get publicity not, as you might think, because of the hypocrisy, but because of the false claims that require the coverup.

When you bet the whole premise of your philosophy on the claim that a particular kind of worship of a particular kind of invisible sky wizard confers superior morality on adherents, you're just begging to be deluged by moral cripples seeking a hiding place and/or hunting ground. 

From the AP:

Three female plaintiffs claim in a lawsuit filed Wednesday that an evangelical church group covered up allegations of sexual abuse against children, failed to report accusations of misconduct to the police and discouraged its members from cooperating with law enforcement.

The lawsuit was filed in Maryland state court against Sovereign Grace Ministries, a 30-year-old family of churches, with about 100 congregations. Most of its churches are in the United States, but it has planted churches in about 21 countries.

The plaintiffs allege a conspiracy spanning more than two decades to conceal sexual abuse committed by church members. The alleged abuse happened in Maryland and northern Virginia in the 1980s and 1990s. The lawsuit accuses church representatives of permitting suspected pedophiles to interact with children, supplying them with free legal advice to avoid prosecution and forcing victims to meet with and "forgive" the person who had molested them.

"The facts show that the Church cared more about protecting its financial and institutional standing than about protecting children, its most vulnerable members," the lawsuit claims.

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/2012/10/17/2374837/lawsuit-claims-evangelical-church.html#storylink=cpy

Songs to Fight the Plutocracy By: "Rock the Casbah"

For Syria and Bahrian, where the names and inciting incidents change, but the way dictators deal with protesters never does.

Uploaded by IchnosX3 on Feb 7, 2010

The Solution is Here; All We Have to Do Is Demand It

Louisville's putting a band-aid on its global warming sucking chest wound, but some states aren't waiting for the federal government to act first.

What can a single state do?  This, from David Atkins:

Stories like this make me proud to live in California.

Such audits will be crucial as California embarks on its grand experiment in reining in climate change. On Jan. 1, it will become the first state in the nation to charge industries across the economy for the greenhouse gases they emit. Under the system, known as “cap and trade,” the state will set an overall ceiling on those emissions and assign allowable emission amounts for individual polluters. A portion of these so-called allowances will be allocated to utilities, manufacturers and others; the remainder will be auctioned off.

Over time, the number of allowances issued by the state will be reduced, which should force a reduction in emissions.

To obtain the allowances needed to account for their emissions, companies can buy them at auction or on the carbon market. They can secure offset credits, as they are known, either by buying leftover allowances from emitters that have met their targets or by purchasing them from projects that remove carbon dioxide or other greenhouse gases from the atmosphere, like the woods where Mr. Hrubes was working.

Whether Mitt Romney wins or loses the presidency, California is going to be a leader on climate change, universal healthcare and much else besides. Win or lose, the final electoral map in the U.S. will once again very much resemble the civil war map. And as usual, it will be the blue states dragging everyone else along against their will, with California very much in the lead.

We have the scientific data. We have the technology. We have the money. What we don't have is the political will.  Which means enough people demanding a stop to our suicide-by-carbon can make change happen fast.

Who Owns Your Congress Critter/Candidate?

Thanks to Juanita Jean, whose World's Most Dangerous Beauty Salon you should be visiting daily:

And no, by Handy Little Tool I am not  referring to Paul Ryan.

Customer Brian sent us this very cool little widget he found where you can see who owns your congressman, senator, or candidates for those offices.

That ought to keep you busy and out of the bars for the day.

Debate Prep

From Think Progress, two essential articles to read before you watch tonight's debate.

Facts You Should Commit To Memory Before Watching Tonight’s Debate

8 Important Economic Questions For The Presidential Debate That Have Nothing To Do With Taxes Or The Deficit

Songs to Fight the Plutocracy By: "If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next"

Uploaded by ManicStPreachersVEVO on Oct 25, 2009

The Torture Shortcut

One of the ignored arguments against permitting military torture of "enemy combatants" is that it seeps into civilian society. Once torture in some circumstances is no longer inconceivable, it rapidly becomes justifiable in any circumstances.

And with local police departments militarized by the Homeland Security terrorism hysteria, torture is moving beyond justifiable to automatic. Torture has become the default way police punish citizens who fail to instantaneously obey.

Digby:

Even if you believe in Taser International's pet medical diagnosis that only afflicts people in custody ("Excited Delirium")you would think this would be considered to be wrong.

Unfortunately, police commonly taser people in the US who are already in handcuffs and in custody and it doesn't raise a hue and cry. They usually say, as the officer in that video does, that they had to do it for their own safety but it's quite clear it's because they are trying to force "compliance." They lie because it's impossible to explain how someone who is mentally ill, high on drugs or in the midst of having an epileptic fit can be expected to understand the commands to "comply." And frankly, when you listen to the agitated police screaming at the person to stop struggling, it's quite clear that if "excited delirium" exists it is a disease that afflicts the authorities as well.

I've come to believe that tasers are deadly torture devices and I think they should be banned. (I didn't always think so, but I no longer believe the authorities can be trusted with such a device.) But if they are used, there should definitely be zero tolerance for using them on anyone who is handcuffed in custody. It's as outrageously immoral as using a cattle prod. The police can back off and let the person flail if that's what it takes. Hitting them repeatedly with electro-shock on the scene is no different than hitting them repeatedly over the head with a baton.

Some people die, like this fellow, although not all do. But the minute an electrical shock in administered to suspects already custody, they become victims of torture. There is no excuse for it.

 I think I'd rather take my chances with a cop who has nothing but a gun and a nightstick.

Your Grammar Nazi

From The Nation, which knows better: 

THE LONGEST WAR TURNS 12: As the war in Afghanistan entered its twelfth year on October 7, two Special Forces soldiers were killed in Wardak Province, bringing the US death toll in that country to 257 so far in 2012. More than 2,000 US soldiers have been killed since the war began.

This is not illiteracy as much as innumerancy. The war in Afghanistan started on October 7, 2001. That means it has turned 11 years old, not 12. Although it is true that it has entered its twelfth year.

 

On the day you are born, you enter your first year. You are not one year old. On your first birthday, you turn one year old and you enter your second year.

Tell Special Interests to Stop Fucking With Kentucky's Constitution

National abortion-rights promoter NARAL has placed a constitutional amendment on Kentucky's ballot re-affirming Kentuckians' "personal right to seek, procure and perform abortions, subject to laws and regulations that promote reproductive rights and preserve women's health."

Just kidding!  But if that were true, it would be necessary and useful, unlike the constitutional amendment a national special interest actually has placed on Kentucky's November 6 ballot.

John Cheves at the Herald:

Kentucky voters will be asked Nov. 6 to consider a constitutional amendment that would protect their right to hunt and fish. Not that anyone is challenging their right to hunt and fish.

But the politically powerful National Rifle Association isn't taking chances. The NRA says that "anti-hunting extremists" in the future could convince the Kentucky legislature to outlaw or restrict hunting and fishing, perhaps as part of an animal-rights agenda. So the NRA last year urged lawmakers to put a state constitutional amendment on the 2012 ballot that would establish Kentuckians' right to "harvest wildlife." Lawmakers obliged.

"Are you in favor of amending the Kentucky constitution to state that the citizens of Kentucky have the personal right to hunt, fish and harvest wildlife, subject to laws and regulations that promote conservation and preserve the future of hunting and fishing?" the ballot question asks, in part.

SNIP

The proposed amendment will be the only one on this year's ballot. Kentuckians have amended their state constitution 40 times since approving it in 1891. They have rejected 38 proposed amendments.

Reject this one, too.

 more here: http://www.kentucky.com/2012/10/13/2370812/kentucky-voters-to-consider-amending.html#story

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/2012/10/13/2370812/kentucky-voters-to-consider-amending.html#storylink=cpy