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Guns vs. Butter

Exposing the Truth

Submitted by Evergreene Digest Contributing Editor Chante Wolf

Amazon Warehouse Workers Sue Over Security Checkpoint Waits

  • Workers deserve to be paid for the time they spend waiting on the security line because it's not by choice -- and because "you drove God knows how far to this place, and you just worked 12 hours," Busk argued.
  • The Morning Call’s Amazon Sweatshop Probe

Dave Jamieson, Huffington Post

Thanks to Evergreene Digest reader Tom Dooley for this contribution. 

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05/08/2013 | Whenever he clocked out after his 12-hour shift at an Amazon warehouse, Jesse Busk had one more critical task to perform before he could hop into his car and head home to sleep: Pass through the sprawling warehouse security checkpoint.

The purpose of the checkpoint was to prevent workers like Busk from pilfering electronics or other pricey goods from the Amazon stock. The process deeply annoyed Busk, but not because of any indignity he may have felt in being checked for contraband. What bothered him was the time it required after an exhausting day -- up to 25 minutes, all of it unpaid.

Full story…

Related:

The Morning Call’s Amazon Sweatshop Probe, Ryan Chittum, Columbia Journalism Review

 

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Special Project | The Fight for the American Dream, Week of May 12, 2013

  • "The top 1-percent have the best houses, the best educations, the best doctors, and the best lifestyles," Nobel Prize winner Joseph E. Stiglitz concludes, "but there is one thing that money doesn't seem to have bought: an understanding that their fate is bound up with how the other 99-percent live. Throughout history, this is something that the top 1-percent eventually do learn. Too late."
  • 11 New Items including:
    • Standing up to the big banks
    • The Real Cost of Austerity
    • Target handbook unlawfully discouraged union activity, NLRB says
    • The Housing Market Recovery Is ‘A Complete Hoax’
    • How the Rich Benefited From the Recovery
    • Bail-out is out, bail-in is in: time for some publicly-owned banks,
    • Austerity debunked
    • The terrible cost of Washington’s wars
    • The Question of Socialism (and Beyond!) Is About to Open Up in These United States
    • The World Trade Organization's "Papal" Conclave
    • The Confiscation of Bank Savings to “Save the Banks”

David Culver, Ed., Evergreene Digest

Adam Zyglis

Standing up to the big banks, Rob, Occupy Our Homes

Three brave Michigan families are standing up to the banks that ravaged our economy, and they need your support!

The Real Cost of Austerity, Truthdig

  • It’s high time our elected officials started listening to the wisdom of economists like Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman, who for months has been consistently warning us about the dangers of austerity. And once again, he’s been proved right.
  • Everything We Know About What’s Happened Under Sequestration

Target handbook unlawfully discouraged union activity, NLRB says, Julie Beck, Inside Counsel 

  • Store must hold another union election, company must revise certain policies
  • Costco CEO: Raise The Minimum Wage To More Than $10 Per Hour

The Housing Market Recovery Is ‘A Complete Hoax’ Truthdig

Five Star Institute economist Mark Lieberman has shown that banks are keeping more than 7 million homes off the market in this manner in order to “reduce listings, create the illusion of ‘scarcity,’ and push up prices,” Whitney reports. The housing market recovery, then, is “a complete hoax.”

How the Rich Benefited From the Recovery, Les Leopold, AlterNet / Truthdig

  • (While Most of Us Got Nothing)
  • Austerity debunked

Bail-out is out, bail-in is in: time for some publicly-owned banks, Ellen Brown, Web of Debt / Nation of Change

  • “[W]ith Cyprus . . . the game itself changed. By raiding the depositors’ accounts, a major central bank has gone where they would not previously have dared. The Rubicon has been crossed.”   —Eric Sprott, Shree Kargutkar, “Caveat Depositor
  • Everything Is Rigged: The Biggest Price-Fixing Scandal Ever

 

Drew Sheneman

 

 

Austerity debunked, Aljazeera

The terrible cost of Washington’s wars, Bill Van Auken, World Socialist Web Site

  • The vast resources wasted and the incalculable human suffering inflicted by the bloated US military and intelligence apparatus pose the urgency of building a genuine mass movement against militarism and war.
  • Sequester Cuts

The Question of Socialism (and Beyond!) Is About to Open Up in These United States, Gar AlperovitzTruthout

  • With Americans' interest in socialism rising, we need to seriously consider alternative designs to the current system, argues Alperovitz, in this practical critique of some known models.
  • Can Civilization Survive Capitalism?

The World Trade Organization's "Papal" Conclave, Robin Broad, Triple Crisis 

  • At some point, we are going to have to move to a global governance system where trade is the “servant” of a global economy that works for communities, workers, and the environment.
  • Potato Chip Capitalism

The Confiscation of Bank Savings to “Save the Banks” Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research

 

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The Real Cost of Austerity

  • It’s high time our elected officials started listening to the wisdom of economists like Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman, who for months has been consistently warning us about the dangers of austerity. And once again, he’s been proved right.
  • Austerity debunked
  • Everything We Know About What’s Happened Under Sequestration

Truthdig

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Flickr/401(K) 2013

May 7, 2013 | For those pushing austerity as the solution to America’s economic ills, here’s a reality check: According to a new study, austerity policies have cost the U.S. roughly 2.2 million jobs.

In the 46 months since the recession ended, federal, state and local governments have cut approximately half a million jobs, a study by Michael Greenstone and Adam Looney at the Brookings Institution found. After other recessions since 1970, the government typically hired about 1.7 million workers.

Reports such as this one show that it’s high time our elected officials started listening to the wisdom of economists like Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman, who for months has been consistently warning us about the dangers of austerity. And once again, he’s been proved right.

Full story…

Shutterstock illustration of American candle burning.

Related:

Austerity debunked, Aljazeera

 

Everything We Know About What’s Happened Under Sequestration, Theodoric Meyer, ProPublica

May 7, 2013 | When the annual White House Easter Egg Hunt faced cancellation this year due to the package of mandatory budget cuts known as sequestration, the National Park Service kicked into high gear. It rescued the event 2014 held since 1878 2014 with money from “corporate sponsors and the sale of commemorative wooden eggs,” according to the Washington Post.

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