Join PDA's End War and Occupations, Redirect Funding Issue Organizing Team (IOT); learn more here. Published by AfterDowningStreet.org. The United States today may be the planet's greatest ever war maker, but the wars are fought, the bases maintained, and the weapons manufactured against the will of the majority of U.S. citizens. We express our opposition to wars openly in ways that could not be done at all until around 1880, and in so doing we almost certainly prevent more war making and limit the tactics our government can employ. In fact, if wars were still fought in the way the U.S. Civil War was fought, with armies on battlefields, we would probably have ended war forever some generations back. Instead, the progressive blogosphere, what passes for our anti-war fourth estate, just gathered in Las Vegas with little or no awareness or notice given to the fact that wars half-way around the world were being fought from drone control booths just down the road. [more]

Published by The Huffington Post. For some who take our most basic rights for granted, it may be hard to imagine that for nearly 150 years in our republic, American women were denied the right to vote. After decades of struggle, that included protest marches, arrests, physical attacks, verbal abuse, harassment and retaliation against women for advocating suffrage, Congress finally acted, passing the 19th Amendment, which became law on August 26, 1920. The California Nurses Association will honor that tradition with a unique celebration marking the 90th anniversary on August 26 in Sacramento, Calif. We'll be marching around the West Steps of the Capitol from 4 to 6 p.m., joined by women and men from across the state. Please join us. [more]

Published by Commondreams.org. The brutality and fecklessness of the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan have been laid bare in an indisputable way just days before the House of Representatives is scheduled to vote on whether to throw $33.5 billion more into the Afghan quagmire, when that money is badly needed at home. [more]

URGENT ACTION--Call your Rep. today: Vote no for funding more war-making. Use FCNL's toll-free number: 1-888-493-5443 Published by WarIsACrime.org. Here's where the hypocrisy hits the highway. On July 1st, 162 congress members voted to require a withdrawal plan and end date for the occupation of Afghanistan, and 100 voted to fund only withdrawal, no continuation of war, while 25 voted to simply stop dumping any money into this war. [more]

Published by ZNet. The American people are hurting. As a result of the greed, recklessness and illegal behavior on Wall Street, millions of Americans have lost their jobs, homes, life savings and their ability to get a higher education. Today, some 22 percent of our children live in poverty, and millions more have become dependent on food stamps for their food. And while the Great Wall Street Recession has devastated the middle class, the truth is that working families have been experiencing a decline for decades. During the Bush years alone, from 2000-2008, median family income dropped by nearly $2,200 and millions lost their health insurance. Today, because of stagnating wages and higher costs for basic necessities, the average two-wage-earner family has less disposable income than a one-wage-earner family did a generation ago. The average American today is underpaid, overworked and stressed out as to what the future will bring for his or her children. For many, the American dream has become a nightmare. [more]

Published by AFL-CIO Blog. New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner and hundreds of other multimillionaires (and some billionaires, like Steinbrenner) who have passed away this year disproved the old adage, “the only two things certain in life are death and taxes.” They couldn’t dodge death, but their estates have dodged taxes—some $14.8 billion so far this year, according to Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa). The federal estate tax that in the past applied to multimillion-dollar fortunes fully expired at the end of 2009, after President George W. Bush’s 2001 $1.35 trillion tax cut package for the wealthy exempted larger and larger estates from the levy each year. [more]

Labor firebrand Rose Ann DeMoro of California is out to build a powerful new super union Published by Bloomberg Business Week. This past April, Rose Ann DeMoro—a former supermarket cashier from St. Louis—looked at billionaire California gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman and had an idea. DeMoro found a Los Angeles drama teacher, dressed her in a crown and faux ermine, and sent her out to tail Whitman across the state. Joined by tuxedoed bodyguards named "Goldman" and "Sachs," "Queen Meg" now spends her days taunting Whitman up close. "The new corporate aristocracy, they're used to unilateral control, no democracy," says DeMoro. "The script just wrote itself." [more]

Join PDA's End War and Occupations, Redirect Funding Issue Organizing Team (IOT); learn more here. Published by The Chicago Sun Times. Will the U.S. once more sacrifice economic justice at home for war abroad? Dr. King used to say that the bombs dropped over Vietnam exploded in America's cities. The war on poverty was lost in those jungles. [more]

Groups call on lawmakers to pass legislation to end America's addiction to oil, give oil money to Gulf relief efforts Published by Friends Of The Earth. A broad coalition of public interest, faith, and environmental groups-joined by Gulf Coast residents directly impacted by the Gulf oil spill-marked today's three-month anniversary of the BP oil catastrophe at a rally on Capitol Hill. They called on Congress to pass legislation to end America's addiction to oil and urged lawmakers to donate campaign money raised from the oil industry to the clean-up efforts in the Gulf. [more]

Join PDA's new Amend to Suspend Corporate Personhood Action Group Published by The Huffington Post. On Monday, two brothers from Minnesota, Robin and Laird Monahan, made a detour to Denver on their cross-country walk to encourage people to reclaim democracy and restore the citizen sovereignty that has been displaced by the "corporate stranglehold on all three branches of U.S. government." [more]

Join PDA's Accountability and Justice Issue Organizing Team (IOT); learn more here. Bybee: "CIA did not have an opinion from OLC" when it exceeded limits in interrogation memos Published by Judiciary.House.gov. House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, Jr. (D-Mich.) today released the transcript of the Committee’s interview of Judge Jay Bybee, former assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel during the administration of President George W. Bush and author of two of the Bush administration’s most infamous "torture memos." [more]

Join PDA's End War and Occupations, Redirect Funding Issue Organizing Team (IOT); learn more here. Published by Alternet.org. “Man, those dudes are in La La Land,” a young intern said to me on the way out of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Afghanistan on June 14, his eyes rolling. “You can't win in Afghanistan. Don't they read history?” [more]

Published by AFLCIO.org. Mine Workers (UMWA) President Cecil Roberts told the House Education and Labor Committee [yesterday] afternoon, “We can and must do a better job of protecting our nation’s miners,” and urged Congress to approve legislation to strengthen mine and workplace safety laws. [more]

Published by Keep On Keepin On. High-Energy Gathering Fires Up A New Generation of Activists inU.S. Left and Social Movements When 15,000 vibrant and politically engaged people gather in one spot for five days and organize themselves into more than 1000 workshops, dozens of major plenaries and late night parties across five major cultural hot spots, no one article can claim to give a full account and get away with it. But an event on that scale livened up Detroit, Michigan during the week of June 22-26 at the US Social Forum, when Cobo Hall and several nearby universities were buzzing with thousands of people trying to shape a new world. [more]

Join PDA's Immigration Reform Action Group; learn more here. Dramatic Street Protest Despite Torrential Rainfall Today, a dramatic protest took to the streets of Boston to protest the presence of Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer during the annual meeting of the National Governor’s Association. Despite torrential rains, a two-mile march went from the rally site at Copley Square to the Sheraton Hotel, where the governors were meeting. March organizers estimated that well over 600 people participated in the three-hour rally and march. [more]

Published by AFLCIO.org Photo: DigiSmile/Flickr Creative Commons. Saying America’s teachers would “lead and propose, not wait and oppose,” AFT President Randi Weingarten outlined a vision to “build a system of public education as it ought to be.” She said real changes could be made by focusing on good teaching, creating a curriculum that provides opportunity for students to learn and sharing responsibility and accountability with parents and administrators. [more]

PNHP California is pleased to announce The Summer Conference, our first annual conference for the California single payer community. The conference is a collaborative effort of many organizations from the State Strategy Group and includes a full lunch and dinner buffet with presentations from state and national leaders in the single payer movement: Walter Tsou, Don McCanne, Margaret Flowers, Mark Leno, Sheila Kuehl, Michael Lighty, Paul Song, Andrew McGuire, Paul Hochfeld and more. The Summer Conference has two objectives: [more]

Published by United Auto Workers. On Monday, July 12, at 2:30 p.m., UAW President Bob King and the Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr., the founder and president of the Rainbow Push Coalition, and other community, religious and labor allies will announce a new campaign to refocus our national priorities on jobs, justice and peace.

This campaign will call on our national leaders to: [more]

Join PDA's End War and Occupations, Redirect Funding Issue Organizing Team (IOT); learn more here. Published by Foreign Policy in Focus. What is a trillion? It is a big number for sure. The best explanation I have found for this mind-blowing figure is from children’s book author David Schwartz. “One million seconds comes out to be about 11½ days. A billion seconds is 32 years. And a trillion seconds is 32,000 years.” What is a trillion dollars? What can you get for that much money? [more]

Published by WorkersCompass.org. On June 28, 2010, the San Francisco Labor Council sponsored a forum on progressive taxation featuring three prominent speakers: Marty Hittelman, President of the California Federation of Teachers, Sarah Flocks, Policy Coordinator at the California Labor Federation, and Conny Ford, President of Office and Professional Employees International Union, Local 3 and Vice President of the San Francisco Labor Council. The following article constituted the basis for more abbreviated introductory comments by Ann Robertson, who chaired the meeting and is a delegate to the Labor Council from the California Faculty Association. [more]