Sears Canada outsources 250 Regina call centre jobs to Philippines where minimum wage in Manila is 382 pesos or $8.63 CAD per day; CEO rolling in cash

zombie doctrine of Reaganism

The Powell Memo and the Teaching Machines of Right-Wing Extremists

"The notion that any action by government is bad, except when it benefits corporations and the rich."

also a good read from Harold

Economists for an Imaginary World

Talks fail; Hydro workers hit picket line

Wages, length of contract said to be issues

By: Aldo Santin - Winnipeg Free Press

PICKET lines went up at several Manitoba Hydro facilities across Winnipeg and the province Friday night, after talks broke down between the utility and one of its unions.

The strike affects about 3,000 mem­bers of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 2034 -- linemen, truck drivers, meter techni­cians, mechanics and welders.

"Hopefully this will not be very long but no talks are scheduled," Lauris Kleven, business manager for Local 2034, said Friday night while walk­ing the picket line at the hydro yard in Point Douglas at 35 Sutherland Ave.

Hydro president Bob Brennan told media earlier in the day that the union's demands exceeded what the utility's customers can afford to pay.

The main issues have only been de­scribed as wages and contract length.

Read more from Santin HERE

Senator Sanders and Michael Moore

Michael Moore's Message to Barack Obama and Blue Dog Democrats

Mexican consul tampered with migrant farm vote

Threatened Mayfair Farms workers with blacklisting before union decertification vote was held.

Winnipeg (17 Aug. 2009) - The Mexican consul visited migrant Mexican farm workers in Manitoba and threatened to blacklist them from ever coming to Canada again if they did not vote to decertify their union at Mayfair Farms in Portage La Prairie, says a spokesperson for group supporting the workers.

The vote to abandon the union, which they had previously chosen to join, was announced earlier this month.

Read more Here

Why We Need Health Care Reform

By BARACK OBAMA
Published: August 15, 2009 NYT

Sick for Profit

The Health Insurance Racket:
Getting Rich by Denying Americans Care

Robert Greenwald on the Ed Show for Sick For Profit: Aug. 10, 2009

As Democrats have pointed out, the angry hecklers disrupting town-hall meetings convened by members of Congress are not always ordinary citizens engaging in spontaneous grass-roots protests or even G.O.P. operatives, but proxies for corporate lobbyists. One group facilitating the screamers is FreedomWorks, which is run by the former Congressman Dick Armey, now a lobbyist at the DLA Piper law firm. Medicines Company, a global pharmaceutical business, has paid DLA Piper more than $6 million in lobbying fees in the five years Armey has worked there.

But the Democratic members of Congress those hecklers assailed can hardly claim the moral high ground. Their ties to health care interests are merely more discreet and insidious. As Congressional Quarterly reported last week, industry groups contributed almost $1.8 million in the first six months of 2009 alone to the 18 House members of both parties supervising health care reform, Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer among them.

Then there are the 52 conservative Blue Dog Democrats, who have balked at the public option for health insurance. Their cash intake from insurers and drug companies outpaces their Democratic peers by an average of 25 percent, according to The Post. And let’s not forget the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee, which has raked in nearly $500,000 from a single doctor-owned hospital in McAllen, Tex. — the very one that Obama has cited as a symbol of runaway medical costs ever since it was profiled in The New Yorker this spring.

Read More Here

Also From Factcheck

Canadian Straw Man

CPR Administers Bad Facts, Again

Olbermann: Legislators for Sale

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

At a recent town hall meeting, a man stood up and told Representative Bob Inglis to “keep your government hands off my Medicare.” The congressman, a Republican from South Carolina, tried to explain that Medicare is already a government program — but the voter, Mr. Inglis said, “wasn’t having any of it.”

A very small niche of America's uber-wealthy have pulled off what may well be the biggest con job in the history of our republic, and they did it in a startlingly brief 30 or so years. True, they spent over three billion dollars to make it happen, but the reward to them was in the hundreds of billions - and will continue to be.

"the Select Few"

That's how it works. And it works that way because we let it. The game goes on and the insiders keep dealing themselves winning hands. Nothing will change - nothing - until the moneylenders are tossed out of the temple, the ATM's are wrested from the marble halls, and we tear down the sign they've placed on government - the one that reads, "For Sale."

Just Another Cog in the Machine