Welcome! "What's Happenin'?" is a casual community diary (a daily series, 8:30 AM Eastern on weekdays, 10 AM on weekends and holidays) where we hang out and talk about the goings on here and everywhere.
We welcome links to your writings here on dkos or elsewhere, posts of pictures, music, news, etc.
Just about anything goes, but attacks and pie fights are not welcome here. This is a community diary and a friendly, peaceful, supportive place for people to interact.
Everyone who wants to join in peaceful interaction is very welcome here.
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Good Morning!
July, 2012 by joanneleon
"Although it is true that only about 20 percent of American workers are in unions, that 20 percent sets the standards across the board in salaries, benefits and working conditions. If you are making a decent salary in a non-union company, you owe that to the unions. One thing that corporations do not do is give out money out of the goodness of their hearts."
~Molly Ivins
The Company Store Labour Day Song & Corporate Greed Anthem
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News
Coalition Stages Historic Charlotte March Before DNC Convention
CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- On Sunday afternoon, the Coalition to March on Wall Street South demonstrated amid Charlotte's mega-banks, chants bouncing off the towering steel and glass. The coalition's messages of income inequality, big-bank ruthlessness and money ruling politics may have been old, but for the city, the raucous sight was not.
The historic march stretched at least two city blocks and attracted large crowds along the route. Organizers said it at least equaled the mass protest during Bank of America's shareholders meeting this past spring. Ben Carroll, one of the organizers, estimated that protesters may have numbered between 2,000 and 3,000. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Chief Rodney Monroe suggested to The Huffington Post that it was more like 800 protesters. Either way, the visuals were impressive.
Charlotte: Making It Possible Your Rights Are Suppressed During the DNC (And After)
Busloads of police from around the country are entering the city of Charlotte to help maintain the illusion of security and to control dissent during the Democratic National Convention (DNC). They will patrol the area in and around the Time Warner Cable Center, where the convention is to be held, on bicycles, motorcycles and in vans or golf carts. They are sure to be armored. The weather is also expected to be rainy over the next few days giving the protest a fitting climate for the dystopian reality that is created at these conventions.
Officers in the city have an ordinance for “extraordinary events” in place, which will make it possible to exact maximum control over the area. As described in the ordinance passed in January, an “extraordinary event” is a “large-scale special event of national or international significance and/or an event expected to attract a significant number of people to a certain portion of the city.” The convention is also a “national special security event,” which denotes events of “political, economic, social, or religious significance” that may render them particularly attractive targets of terrorism or other criminal activity.” That means the DNC is an extraordinary national special security event, one that poses so much risk to society that totalitarianism must engulf an area for the entire period of the event in order to ensure the community is rendered inactive and politicians, lobbyists, donors, party operatives, etc., can all have their event without any interference.
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Authorities also hyped the threat of “anarchist extremism.” That never quite manifested itself either. However, this threat more closely resembles the type of “terrorism” the authorities fear because during extraordinary national special security events it takes on a particularly broad definition: those who engage in civil disobedience and resistance outside the confines of whatever structure that is the site of the event. It is also a threat the authorities are willing to manufacture with security resources, particularly informants, so that there is criminal activity to crack down upon to justify the incredible show of force at these events.
Obama Owes Us An Explanation
When President Barack Obama takes the stage this week at the Democratic National Convention, inside Charlotte's aptly chosen Bank of America Arena, he owes us an explanation for why the economy has been working so much better for financial behemoths than it has for ordinary people.
He needs to enhance our understanding of why, nearly four years after he moved into the White House, millions of Americans are still threatened with the loss of their own homes. He needs to bring us up to speed on why tens of millions of working-age people are scrambling to find adequately paying jobs.
Chris Hedges: Hear the 99% Roar
Black Report: Majority of Wall St. Money Now Goes to Romney
Bill Black is the author of The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One and an associate professor of economics and law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. He blogs at New Economic Perspectives. Here he’s interviewed by Paul Jay of the Real News Network.
BLACK: Well, today I looked at what you would learn, if you read The Wall Street Journal, about finance, our premiere business reportage. And what you’d learn is something really quite extraordinary. You would learn that money had shifted dramatically in this election. Whereas in the first time the then-senator Obama ran for the presidency, he received 57 percent, or the Democrats received 57 percent of the funding, now the Republicans received 63 percent. And in this news report, mind you, not an op-ed, not an editorial, the reporters said that this was due to the fact that President Obama had demonized the industry. So, again, this is supposedly a straight news report that President Obama had demonized banking in the United States, and as a result, the banking industry had turned on him.
So this is just an extraordinary invention, because President Obama has actually bailed out the financial industry and indeed has protected the financial industry from criticism and from meaningful transition.
That funding shift sounds like the ratchet effect to me.
From the AFL-CIO:
Labor Day: Tell Your Co-Workers, Friends and Family How Much You Appreciate Them
If you haven’t sent a thank you e-card or video to the people whose work you appreciate, Labor Day is the time to do it.
AFL-CIO’s new online application will help working people reclaim Labor Day as a day to recognize that everyone's work matters. On the new app, at www.aflcio.org/thankyou, participants can send thank-you cards and videos through Facebook and e-mail to friends and others whose work they depend on.
Opinion: Organized labor lifts up the middle class
As we enjoy ourselves this Labor Day weekend, let’s take a moment to remember that this holiday is dedicated to organized labor — the people who brought us the weekend, paid holidays, paid vacations, pensions, health care and all the things that all workers today enjoy to some degree. Let us also not forget that it wasn’t the non-organized workers who lifted most folks to the middle class by forming unions and bargaining collectively for their welfare and the welfare of their families.
Reports from Yemen say a U.S. drone strike killed 13 civilians. U.S. media says Yemeni "warplanes" killed them. One article from the Yemen Post seems to have been removed since yesterday. The UPI article has not been pulled.
Reports: U.S. drone kills 13 in Yemen
SANAA, Yemen, Sept. 2 (UPI) -- An airstrike carried out by a U.S. drone killed 13 civilians, including three women, the Yemen Post and Xinhua reported Sunday.
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"The U.S. drone strike missed its suspected al-Qaida target and mistakenly hit two vehicles in the Yemeni city of Rada in Baidai province, killing up to 13 civilians, including two women," the official told Xinhua by phone.
Yemeni warplane misses target, kills 10 civilians -sources
(Reuters) - Ten civilians including a 10-year-old girl were killed in a Yemeni government air strike that had apparently missed its intended target, a car carrying Islamist militants, tribal officials and residents there said on Monday.
Blog Posts of Interest
Immunizing Crimes: Blankfein, Zirbel, and Arpaio, but Whither Corzine? by Marcy Wheeler at emptywheel.net
Special Forces Suspend Training of Afghans in Program Petraeus Started by Jim White at emptywheel.net
Natalie Merchant - Which Side are You On?
We are ready for some serious change. We are ready to take up the tools of a free and analytic press to peacefully undermine the stranglehold of the kleptocrats on our battered democracy. We are ready to expose and publicize their greed, lies and illegal machinations and hold their enablers in government and the media to account. Are you in?
"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."
~ Margaret Mead
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