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America’s unionized private workforce has declined by approximately 27 percent since 1958. This, according to McMahon, has been a sign that unions have failed to respond to workers and market forces.

“(Small businesses) have to be nimble and flexible in their costs,” McMahon said. “Labor unions have not figured out a way to deal with that.”

He added that this reduction has led to a retirement and pension crisis for labor organizations.

“If you understand the Social Security problem, then you understand their problem,” McMahon said.

Union rep: card check vote imminent, BRUCE SIWY, Daily American Staff Writer

When I spend a little time looking around for relatively reasonable criticism of the Employee Free Choice Act, I have a hard time finding anything of substance. This piece, from a small paper in Pennsylvania, at least tries to set out somethi8ng resembling a debate. The E.F.C.A. is both so important and so simple, though, that critics can’t quite get a handle on it.

I certainly don’t meant to imply that the right’s rhetoric is based in an ideal of informed debate! But on certain issues like the current climate change bill they do at least make some effort at argument. I’d say that their arguments fall apart on closer examination, but at least they go through the motions.

E.F.C.A., however, generates the same cynicism and manipulation that surround the debates over terror and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Saddam Hussein has nukes that can hit the U.S. in 45 minutes; the terrorists have a plan to kill thousands of people tomorrow and only by torturing them can be stop the plot; E.F.C.A. is the end of the world as we know it.

As blog readers know by now, ACTA has just launched a campaign to highlight some of the impressive strides that many institutions have made in advancing intellectual diversity and academic freedom in recent years. One such campus was South Dakota State University. Between 2005 and 2008, the South Dakota Board of Regents enacted a number of reforms pertaining to intellectual diversity, including the requirement that a “Freedom in Learning” statement appear on every course syllabus at all of the system’s campuses. The statement adopted by the South Dakota State Administration informed students of their right to be graded solely on academic merits, and also told them that if they “believe that an academic evaluation reflects prejudiced or capricious standards,” they may contact the department head or college dean.

ACTA’s Must-Reads, Posted by Sandra E. Czelusniak on June 25, 2009

The interesting thing about the American Right Wing is that they seem to have read Orwell and decided that the “war is peace” strategy was in fact a great strategy. If you just keep repeating something, even if it’s diametrically opposed to anything resembling truth, much less common sense, it takes on a certain veracity. Drink the kool-aide often enough and you can’t tell the difference.

That’s what seemed to happen with the ACTA and ‘diversity.’ (Not that they are much different than other ‘center-right’ groups.) They almost always sided with the Bush administration’s attempts to purge college campuses of dissent; this was done under the name of “diversity,” of course. Now that the Shrub is gone, they are on the lookout for other ways to muzzle thinking.

And, once again, they want to encourage diversity by creating conditions that make it as unlikely as possible. Anyone who’s taught American students knows that their complaints about their professors are a tangled mess at best and almost impossible to interpret. Cyncial– or just practical– professors know all the tricks for getting good evaluations.

Groups like ACTA, though, know that promoting student rights and especially student evaluations of professors, can have a powerful chilling effect on academic debate, especially among non-tenured professors. In part that’s becuase the easiest, maybe the only way, to get tenure (a relatively rare thing now) is to play it as safe as possible.

If you are an adjunct, and the majority of college teachers are adjuncts, these evaluations can cost you your job. A contracting economy only sharpens the effect. So this is how you read “diversity” in these right wing contexts. It’s mostly a discussion of management, that is, of keeping the range of discussion as narrow as possible.

There’s a lot to avoid. Every once in a while, though, we get a few peaks behind the great and mighty OZ’s curtains. Here in Illinois, for example, there’s been a little storm cloud of trouble as it’s emerged that powerful people can gain admission to the University of Illinois, even if they are not qualified. I wonder if the ACTA will denounce this practice, too.

Momentum for universal health care is slowing dramatically on Capitol Hill. Moderates are worried, Republicans are digging in, and the medical-industrial complex is firing up its lobbying and propaganda machine.

But, as you know, the worst news came days ago when the Congressional Budget Office weighed in with awful projections about how much the leading healthcare plans would cost and how many Americans would still be left out in the cold. Yet these projections didn’t include the savings that a public option would generate by negotiating lower drug prices, doctor fees, and hospital costs, and forcing private insurers to be more competitive. Projecting the future costs of universal health care without including the public option is like predicting the number of people who will get sunburns this summer if nobody is allowed to buy sun lotion. Of course the costs of universal health care will be huge if the most important way of controlling them is left out of the calculation.

Robert Reich’s Blog, June 19, 2009

I think common sense and plain speaking has taken a serious hit in the last several weeks, especially when it comes to health care. First was the growing realization that we’ll be talking about a “public option” rather than universal health care. It sounds like a too-clever-by-half Clinton strategy. I don’t think the voices of big Capital will be fooled by this sort of semantic game.

I’ll admit that there is something pleasing about the idea of setting up a alternative system so well run it puts most of the private system out of business. If done well, even a “public option” would have enourmous advantages, as Reich suggests, from the economies of scale to the built in administrative savings. Something tells me that big Capital won’t be fooled by this, either.

Reich is correct: Obama needs to become a champion of common sense and of good old American progressive pragmatism, making a very public case for universal health care and against the big Capital interests who seem hell-bent on driving the car right off the cliff, taking us with them. If we can get this and the Employee Free Choice Act we have a running chance at real change.

RESOLUTION

Recognizing and supporting the National Day on Writing.

Whereas people in the 21st century write more than ever before for personal, professional, and civic purposes;

Whereas the social nature of writing invites people in every walk of life, in every kind of work, and at every age to generate and share ideas with other people through the written word;

Whereas more and more people in all occupations consider writing to be essential and influential in their work;

Whereas newly developing digital technologies expand the possibilities for composing in multiple media at a faster pace than ever before;

Whereas young people using forms of digital media are leading the way in new forms of composing;

Whereas even proficient writers continue to learn how to write for different purposes, audiences, and occasions throughout their lifetimes;

Whereas effective communication contributes to building a global economy and a global community;

Whereas the National Council of Teachers of English, in conjunction with its many national and local partners, celebrates the importance of writing through the designation of a National Day on Writing, which will occur this year on October 20, 2009;

Whereas the National Day on Writing celebrates the foundational place of writing in Americans’ personal, professional, and civic lives and emphasizes the importance of writing instruction and practice at every grade level and in every subject area from preschool through post-graduate education;

Whereas the National Council of Teachers of English maintains a National Gallery of Writing, which contains examples of writing by individuals from throughout the United States; and

Whereas the National Day on Writing encourages all Americans to write and to enjoy and learn from the writing of others: Now, therefore, be it

Resolved, That the House of Representatives–

(1) supports the National Day on Writing;

(2) strongly affirms the purposes of the National Day on Writing and encourages participation in the National Gallery of Writing as an exemplary living archive of the centrality of writing in the lives of Americans; and

(3) encourages educational institutions–

(A) to publicize and promote the National Day on Writing;

(B) to celebrate the writing of their students and employees through the submission of compositions to the National Gallery of Writing; and

(C) to support the efforts of community members, including businesses and civic associations, to submit compositions to the National Gallery of Writing.

Library of Congress, 111th CONGRESS, 1st Session, H. RES. 524

“NCTE is eager for the Resolution to get to the floor for a vote. You can have a part in that move by writing to your Congressperson in the U.S. House of Representatives to ask her or him to become a cosponsor for the bill. ”