Merkel and French PM Sarkozy (Gonzalo Fuentes/Reuters & The New York Times)
GERMANY AS TEAM PLAYER WITH OTHER WESTERN COUNTRIES? NOT SO MUCH THESE DAYS.
(New York Times)
Chancellor Andrea Merkel raises hackles both in Germany and among the country’s “allies” in the U.S., E.U. and NATO by showing a proclivity to go it alone on issues of international concern. Abstaining in the UN vote to approve military action against Libya and refusing to join Britain, France and U.S. in such operations are the biggest of her apostasies. But they are reflected as well in a France-offending action to restrain German nuclear power development in the wake of the Japanese crisis—and in her insistence that countries like Portugal looking for a fiscal bailout institute a program of severe “austerity” as a condition of same.
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NEW LEASES WILL ALLOW MINING OF 2.5 BILLION MORE TONS OF COAL IN POWDER RIVER BASIN, WYOMING. WITH KEN SALAZAR AS SECRETARY OF THE INTERIOR, SHOULD ANYONE BE SURPRISED?
(Counterpucnh)
Salazar, reputedly a “clean energy” advocate, has been a friend of the coal industry throughout his career. Sierra Club President Carl Pope extolled Salazar as a friend of “green jobs” and Jeffrey St. Clair and Joshua Frank say “who knew green jobs would be created to strip mine coal?”
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HAPPY BIRTHDAY, OBAMACARE! ONE YEAR AFTER HEALTH CARE “REFORM,” PEOPLE ARE PAYING MORE PREMIUMS FOR LESS COVERAGE.
(Dissident Voice)
Employers (private and public) required to provide insurance coverage for their employees are being given “waivers” that allow them to provide policies that cover only 40% of an employee’s health care expenses. Far from the reform making health care available to more people at lower cost, the private market in health care service has operated to create “underinsured, unaffordable” policies for many Americans. Kevin Zeese and other single payer advocates use such evidence to bolster their claim that a simple expansion of Medicare to cover all people would have been less costly and more effective in providing truly “universal” coverage.
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STIMULUS FUNDING FOR SCHOOLS? THAT’S SO 2010!
(Chicago Tribune)
School districts across the U.S.A. are facing severe budget deficits as stimulus funding program comes to an end and schools are faced with unsustainable levels of operation, requiring cuts in educational services and layoffs of teachers. This is seen for example in Chicago, where the interim CEO of Chicago Public Schools is pushing a program of consolidation of under-enrolled neighborhood schools in favor of a “long term” cost savings, though the immediate costs of the changeover will be high and further layoffs may result.
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COLLEGE TEACHER UNION-BUSTING PROCEEDING AT FULL TILT IN FLORIDA LEGISLATURE.
(Inside Higer Ed)
A spate of new legislation would hinder faculty unionization by such measures as forbidding payroll deductions for union dues, de-certification of unions with less than a majority of teachers on the faculty, and making it possible for a single union member to move to de-certify the union. Faculty union leaders see these as further assaults on the already-low rate of union membership among college teachers in the state and issue “Organize or die” manifestos for faculty members.
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Quote of the day…
What about a fair warning to our teachers and paraprofessionals, engineers (and) cafeteria workers who may lose their jobs. The board has a moral obligation to … stop these consolidations and closings. It’s a matter of trust, and trust is the true deficit that we face.
Karen Lewis, president of Chicago Teachers Union, on failure of school district officials to consult with teachers on plans for school consolidation
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