Something wild to start off your weekend.
Here are some excerpts from the
February Harper's Index (paywall):
• Average annual salary predicted by white Americans for a worker who is described as “black”: $29,420
• Who is described as “African-American”: $37,040 […]
• Minimum number of times since 1996 that lawyers in capital cases have accidentally missed the final appeal deadline: 80 […]
• Number of reported cases in the past decade of an Antarctic fur seal having sex with a king penguin: 4
• Then eating it: 1 […]
• Amount a Canadian woman owes a Hawaii hospital after giving birth there while on vacation last year: $850,000 […]
• Number of women who received tubectomies last November as part of a mass sterilization drive in Bilaspur, India: 137
• Number of these women who subsequently died: 16
• Number of the procedures performed by a single doctor over a ninety-minute period: 83 […]
• Date on which Bob Marley’s estate announced the launch of Marley Natural, a “global cannabis brand”: 11/18/2014
Blast from the Past. At Daily Kos on this date in 2013—Union membership takes another hit in 2012:
Surprising no one who's paying attention, the percentage of American workers belonging to a union fell once again last year, dropping from 11.8 percent in 2011 to 11.3 percent in 2012, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Public sector workers are unionized at much higher rates than private sector workers—35.9 percent to 6.6 percent—and if you pay attention to monthly jobs reports, the public sector has been shedding jobs while the private sector adds them (albeit slowly). And of course unions are under fierce attack in both the public and private sectors, through legislation targeting public workers in states like Wisconsin and through the pitched warfare of intimidation and firings in retail stores and restaurants and factories.
"Working women and men urgently need a voice on the job today, but the sad truth is that it has become more difficult for them to have one," AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said in response to the figures. "What will define the labor movement of the future, however, is not assaults or the changing economy, but how working people come together to respond to them. We enter 2013 with our eyes open and understand that these challenges offer real opportunities for working people to reshape the future."
When Trumka says the question is "how working people come together," that should and must mean not just union members but all workers, since we know that the continuing decline in union membership is bad news for all workers.
Tweet of the Day
.@neelaeast on whether Pope's climate position will influence DC: "Not going to happen unless he forms a dark money operation" #SEJ
— @kate_sheppard
On
today's Kagro in the Morning show: The owner of most of the Arabian peninsula, Mr. Saud, has died. Since he was a king, that's important. Mrs. Windsor, though, knows how to deal with these fellows. (And good on her for keeping her name, by the way.)
Armando joins in to discuss Marco Rubio's prospects, Ben Carson's past health care views, and who'll show up at the Steve King bonkers circus. Some follow-up to yesterday's gun-in-a-Walmart story. 2016 field elevator pitches. How and why the GOP can't and won't stay out of the rape minefield.
High Impact Posts. Top Comments