Think Progress » Gingrich: Obama cares more about ‘protecting the rights of terrorists’ than the ‘lives of Americans.’ The right wing’s response to the failed underwear bomber has been all too predictable — accusing liberals of being anti-patriotic and calling for greater ethnic profiling of Muslims, while ignoring the Bush administration’s failure to prevent terrorist attacks, catch Osama bin Laden, or distinguish real threats from imagined ones
Another Statistic | The Rick Smith Show
I am one of those workers. I have spent the last 16 years working for Roadway Express and it illegitimate spawn YRC. I knew back in 2003, when Yellow Freight, the nation’s number #2 LTL carrier at the time purchased number #1 Roadway Express, that my days were numbered. Yellow Freight had a big reputation of buying up profitable companies (Preston immediately comes to mind) bleeding them dry and cutting them off to die destroying numerous decent family sustaining jobs in the process.

Labor News Headlines December 30, 2009
Pennsylvania Supremes Hand Workers A Win
Big UFCW Organizing Election Coming In January
Teamsters Try To Salvage Car-Hauling Jobs –
South Africa Coke Workers Stick To Their Guns On Raise Demand –
Economic Report: U.S. Manufacturing Jobs Decline Projected To Continue –


WIN Looks Back At A Year Of Massive Jobs Loss As Workers And Unions Struggle For Change - 12/31/09Immense economic pain was inflicted upon millions of U.S. workers and their families in 2009 as Wall Street banks were bailed out with hundreds of billions of dollars. The banksters quickly returned to their old greedy ways. AFL-CIO President Rich Trumka led a protest at the banker’s convention in Chicago.

TSA leadership vacuum: Case of politics Think of it as FEMA in the middle of hurricane season without a FEMA director: the Transportation Safety Administration in high terrorism season without a TSA director

Fla. AG Wants to Review Federal Health Care Bill - ABC News Florida's attorney general said Tuesday that he is looking at possibly suing the federal government over concerns about proposed health care legislation moving through Congress. Attorney General Bill McCollum, who is running for governor in 2010, said he's particularly apprehensive about the constitutionality of a requirement in the federal bill that people pay a fine or tax if they don't obtain the required health insurance.

Tennessee ABC Leader Fired from N.Y. Project, Undocumented Workers Arrested Ernie Hartman, business manager of Elmira, N.Y., Local 139, had long advocated that Chemung County residents and others nearby should be given priority over out-of-state labor in local construction projects

The Cash Committee: How Wall Street Wins On The Hill The question was simple: Should the lending practices of auto dealers be regulated? It was already October and the 42 Democrats and 29 Republicans on the House Committee on Financial Services had spent the better part of the year hashing out the details of a new federal agency dedicated to protecting consumers from dangerous and deceptive financial products

SunCruz parent files for bankruptcy - Orlando Business Journal: The parent of SunCruz Casinos, which has a ship based at Port Canaveral, filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy protection on Monday. SunCruz owes the Canaveral Port Authority more than $302,000 in wharf and other fees, as previously reported by the Orlando Business Journal

Majority Of Tea Party Group's Spending Went To GOP Firm That Created It The political action committee behind the Tea Party Express (TPE) -- which already has been slammed as inauthentic and corporate-controlled by rival factions in the Tea Party movement -- directed around two thirds of its spending during a recent reporting period back to the Republican consulting firm that created the PAC in the first place

Tea party movement could become part of the political establishment -- It could be the birth of a party. Fueled by anger at politicians and distrust of the government, the rapidly growing tea party movement could upend the political establishment in the 2010 elections -- ultimately becoming a permanent, game-changing force in American politics. Or, it could fizzle.

Can Charlie Crist Survive Florida's Right-Wing Uprising? - TIME A new voter poll was released a couple of weeks ago that showed Florida Governor Charlie Crist dropping into a tie with former state House speaker Marco Rubio — an underdog Crist had led by more than 20 points last summer — in next year's Republican primary race for the U.S. Senate.

Jeff Cohen: New Year's Resolution: Don't Apologize for Democrats For the new year, let's resolve: Don't defend Democrats when they don't deserve defending. And that certainly includes President Obama

Think Progress » Republicans Who Opposed The Stimulus Continue To Pan It As A ‘Failure,’ While Also Taking Credit For Its Success Every Republican in the House and nearly every Republican Senator voted against the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (also known as the stimulus). Although the Congressional Budget Office has credited the stimulus with creating up to 1.6 million jobs, the same GOP politicians who opposed the stimulus have attempted to justify their opposition to the policy by smearing it as a failure. But as ThinkProgress has documented, the same politicians are returning to their districts to take credit for the economic success of the stimulus.

Think Progress » Republicans Who Opposed The Stimulus Continue To Pan It As A ‘Failure,’ While Also Taking Credit For Its Success Every Republican in the House and nearly every Republican Senator voted against the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (also known as the stimulus). Although the Congressional Budget Office has credited the stimulus with creating up to 1.6 million jobs, the same GOP politicians who opposed the stimulus have attempted to justify their opposition to the policy by smearing it as a failure. But as ThinkProgress has documented, the same politicians are returning to their districts to take credit for the economic success of the stimulus.
FOX News: Best year yet: The Swamp It's been a good year for FOX News: For many of its news and opinion shows, the best year yet. It may help the already No. 1-rated cable news channel to have a Democratic White House declare war -- or at least have the spokesmen and women of the Obama administration maintaining, as they did at one point this year
Orlando Sentinel - Central Florida Political Pulse – Florida Chief Justice issues foreclosure ‘mediation’ order TALLAHASSEE — Facing the nation’s worst foreclosure crisis, Florida Supreme Court Chief Justice Peggy Quince has Ok’d recommendations from a panel of experts to order foreclosure cases into a new “managed mediation” program where debtors could try to negotiate their way out of losing their homes.
Robert Reich's Blog: 2009: The Year Wall Street Bounced Back and Main Street Got Shafted In less than a year, Wall Street was back. The five largest remaining banks are today larger, their executives and traders richer, their strategies of placing large bets with other people's money no less bold than before the meltdown.
Starbucks Union | IWW Starbucks Workers Union Steamed Baristas Shut Down Fort Worth Starbucks Drive-Thru, Demand Affordable Healthcare and Paid Sick Days for those with H1N1

Orlando Sentinel - Central Florida Political Pulse – Resident flight means just 1 new congressional seat for Florida

Newly crunched population data shows the recent slowdown of Florida’s population growth — the state either lost population in the past year, or gained about 100,000 people, depending on who’s counting — could keep it from picking up the two additional congressional seats that had been forecast for the next decade.

WSLC Online -- 2009 Resolutions

SUPPORTING THE PAID VACATION ACT OF 2009, HR 2564 Resolution #5
Still Nervous, Many Businesses Are Hiring Temporary Workers - NYTimes.com
The hiring of temporary workers has surged, suggesting that the nation’s employers might soon take the next step, bringing on permanent workers, if they can just convince themselves that the upturn in the economy will be sustained
Think Progress » Health Insurance Industry Registers Its Disapproval Of Senate Health Care Bill
In the New York Times today, Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman writes in defense of the Senate health care bill. “[F]or all its flaws and limitations, it’s a great achievement,” he says. “It will provide real, concrete help to tens of millions of Americans and greater security to everyone.” But the health insurance industry and business lobbyists weren’t quite as joyous in their reaction.

In Cleveland, Worker Co-Ops Look to a Spanish Model - TIME

While officials, pundits and the everyday folks who have to pay bills lament unemployment rates that won't go down and wages that won't go up, some Rust Belt planners and union leaders are feeling optimistic: they're taking inspiration from the Basque region of Spain, where a network of worker-owned cooperatives launched amid the rubble of the Spanish Civil War has grown to become the country's seventh-largest corporation, and among its most profitable

UCF loses to Rutgers in St Petersburg bowl | floridatoday.com | FLORIDA TODAY

ST. PETERSBURG — The UCF Knights got to sit at the adult table Saturday night, the plate in front of them full of everything they desire.

Do It Yourself: Building Your Own Bamboo Bike : NPR

The Bamboo Bike Studio is run by three men in their late 20s who know a lot about bamboo and a lot about bicycles. On a cool autumn morning, two of them are out on a bamboo harvest — in a dense grove near New Brunswick, N.J.

AFL-CIO NOW BLOG | Working More, Getting Paid Less Productivity rose 8.1 percent in the third quarter, the largest gain since 2003, as employers pile more on their staff. Meanwhile, pay is stagnating and worker stress increasing because of the larger workloads and the constant fear of being thrown out of a job to join the more than 15 million workers officially unemployed.

10 Greediest People of 2009 | Corporate Accountability and WorkPlace | AlterNet As ordinary Americans reel from the Great Recession, these gluttonous all-stars continue to claw in absurd amounts of money.

Gov. Charlie Crist aide departing to be Chamber chief - Florida - MiamiHerald.com A high-ranking state economic development official is leaving his post to become chief of the Florida Chamber of Commerce Foundation

Matt Reed: Posey pushes funds, then votes them down | floridatoday.com | FLORIDA TODAY Here's one to chew on: U.S. Rep. Bill Posey, R-Rockledge, joined Rep. Suzanne Kosmas, D-New Smyrna Beach, in securing hundreds of millions of dollars in federal earmarks for Space Coast projects. Then, Posey joined all 174 other House Republicans and voted against the $1.1 trillion omnibus spending bill, giving a conservative-looking thumbs-down . . . to his own projects

Health plans on collision course - - POLITICO.com
Despite a last-minute weekend deal that put the Senate on the brink of passing health care reform this week, liberal and moderate Democrats remain on a collision course over the bill, as both sides dug in Sunday for the next phase of negotiations.

In Two Days Time, Health Care Reform Went From Uncertain, To A Foregone Conclusion At sundown on Friday, Democrats didn't have a lock on health care reform. That changed late Friday night over a handshake between Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. On Saturday, Reid signaled his confidence that his party was unified and ready to move forward by drawing the amendment process to a close and committing the Senate to voting on his bill.

Just Who Are Those Florida Swing Voters? A Closer Look at No Party Affiliation (NPA) Registrants and Self-Proclaimed Independents

Jobs outlook not expected to improve until second quarter | tallahassee.com | Tallahassee DemocratFlorida's unemployment rate rose last month to 11.5 percent, within a half-point of a state record, the state announced Friday. Rebecca Rust, chief economist for the Agency for Workforce Innovation, said the jobs picture isn't expected to improve until the second quarter of next year. Loss of construction work continued to spur the rising jobless rate, while employment in the Tallahassee and Gainesville areas was bouyed by government work rolls

PolitiFact | Rove says Obama's approval ratings after a year are worst of any president President Obama has "the worst ratings of any president at the end of his first year."

PolitiFact | And the runners-up ... PolitiFact readers overwhelming chose Sarah Palin's claim that the health care bill contains "death panels" as Lie of the Year. A resounding 61 percent of our 4,864 voters picked death panels as the top lie. No other finalist in the field of eight statements

SunCruz workers anxious floridatoday.com FLORIDA TODAY
PORT CANAVERAL — SunCruz's Surfside Princess casino ship hasn't budged for one week, and a group of employees plan to ask state lawmakers to pressure the company to brief workers on possible outcomes with the operation.
Tea Party More Popular than Dems, Repubs... and Other Utterly Meaningless News PEEK AlterNet
All indications suggest we've become a nation of hyper-polarized bickering lunatics, screaming at each other over issue after issue.
AFL-CIO NOW BLOG Trumka Takes on the ‘Neoliberalism’ that Broke U.S. Economy
In Tuesday’s live Web chat, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka talked about what we need to do to fix our economy in both the short term and the long term—and touched on a vital, too-infrequently discussed issue: the need to end the stranglehold neoliberal economic thinking has on our politics

Promising new jobs, Crist to sign rail bill | Ocala.com | Star-Banner | Ocala, FL
TALLAHASSEE - Gov. Charlie Crist, citing the prospect of "jobs, jobs, jobs," today will sign into law a sweeping measure meant to put in place the framework for a statewide rail system that will one day crisscross the state
DOT's "Wafflegate" needs a closer look -- South Florida Sun-Sentinel.com
For all the good it promises, the rail legislation approved last week by the Legislature smacked of a sweetheart deal. Now there's controversy to back up that suspicion — roughly 8,000 e-mails between CSX officials and Florida Department of Transportation top administrators have come to light suggesting the freight line had a major role in crafting the bill.
Angry liberals: Why didn't Obama fight? - - POLITICO.com
More than anything else in Barack Obama’s presidency so far, health reform has exposed a get-a-deal-at-any-cost side of Obama that infuriates his party’s progressives
House Dems: Senate is 'dithering' - - POLITICO.com
House Democrats’ long-simmering frustration with the slow pace of the Senate has begun to boil over, with a broad swath of Democratic representatives accusing their Senate colleagues of failing both their party and their country
FloridaPoll
Florida likely voters have mixed opinion of President’s health reform proposal but majority hold favorable opinion of President; GOP leads generic Congressional ballot
Dozens rally in Orlando against health care legislation -- OrlandoSentinel.com
As President Barack Obama called Senate Democrats to the White House Tuesday to solidify support for health care reform, groups opposed to the legislation met in Orlando and in cities throughout the country for a "senate emergency rally."
Jobless Floridians encounter delays in getting extended unemployment benefits - St. Petersburg Times
Nearly six weeks after President Barack Obama extended unemployment benefits in hard-hit states like Florida, Janet Husted of St. Petersburg is still waiting for her first check
Brevard Commission OKs 13K new homes | floridatoday.com | FLORIDA TODAY
Developers can create new communities containing more than 13,300 homes across 36 square miles of Space Coast woodland and cattle pasture, the Brevard County Commission ruled Tuesday
Organizing for America | BarackObama.com | Join the team for the final push
Video about Organizing for America
Organizing for America | Event | Brevard Rapid Response Phonebank: Make your voice heard by ringing for reform!
Please come out and help to make your voice and the voice of Floridians across the state heard as we head into a critical moment in the fight for health insurance reform! As the debate around health insurance reform continues in the Senate,

14 DEC 09

Danish police arrest 1,225 protesters - - POLITICO.com COPENHAGEN — As heads of state begin arriving for climate talks in Copenhagen, jittery police have arrested 1,225 people during two days of demonstrations in the Danish capital, prompting criticism from activists and the press.

Paul Cottle: Being 'last in the nation' won't spark innovation tallahassee.com Tallahassee Democrat Florida students are pretty much last in the nation for science."

Water shortage: South Florida water fights resurface with dry weather -- South Florida Sun-Sentinel.com A return to dry weather is reigniting long-smoldering South Florida water fights, worsened by new strains on backup supplies that leave less water to go around.

Don't fall for it -- OrlandoSentinel.com Entrenched Florida politicians and their special interest allies in Tallahassee and Washington, D.C., are getting nervous about a pair of proposals that could weaken their grip on power.

McCollum, Sink spar for control of Florida's investments, pension funds -- OrlandoSentinel.com TALLAHASSEE The fallout from the 2007 meltdown of Florida's Local Government Investment Pool is leaching into the political campaigns of two of the fund's trustees.

Michael Peltier: Conservative groups targets GOP rail backers» Naples Daily News TALLAHASSEE — When lawmakers successfully passed legislation last week that could bring more commuter and high speed rail to the state, 80 Republicans climbed aboard. Now conservative “Tea Party” activists who think the rail legislation amounts to a government-sponsored boondoggle say come election time, some of those GOP lawmakers may pay the price.

Are Americans a Broken People? Why We've Stopped Fighting Back Against the Forces of Oppression AlterNet
A psychologist asks: Have consumerism, suburbanization and a malevolent corporate-government partnership so beaten us down that we no longer have the will to save ourselves?

Marines looking for a few good toys to meet rising demand floridatoday.com FLORIDA TODAY
COCOA — Heidi Trentham knows that she's still short of toys to fill the need for this year's Marine Corps Reserve Toys for Tots distribution in Brevard County

Sparks of resistance in the labor movement? SocialistWorker.org
AFTER A grim year for organized labor, those committed to class-struggle unionism can find a few good reasons to be cheerful this holiday season

Dogs, cats and swine flu’s promiscuity « The Pump Handle
Swine flu started in pigs (although we don’t exactly when or where), adapted to and passed to humans who returned the favor and passed it back to pig herds. Then we heard that turkeys in Chile had contracted the virus, followed by ferrets and a house cat.

Alex Sink: Who's Jim Morrison? - The Fine Print
Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink doesn't have much to say about whether Jim Morrison, the deceased singer of The Doors, deserves a posthumous pardon.

Transparency and Economic Recovery: What States Are Required To Do and Why They Should Do It Progressive States Network
The new American Recovery and Reinvestment Act contains significant funding for the states, but it also has tight new transparency rules requiring states to track how all federal funds are being spent and the number of jobs created

International Gun Ban Treaty? / Q: Has Obama found a "legal way around the Second Amendment"? A: The administration’s agreement to talk about writing a United Nations treaty to regulate arms exports and imports is a far cry from banning possession of firearms, which Obama says he doesn’t want to do and the Supreme Court has said can’t be done anyway.

Palm Bay tests community gardening idea FLORIDA TODAY PALM BAY — City leaders will plant a seed to see whether community gardens could be perennial favorites among green-thumbed citizens.

Brevard cat shooting a legal puzzler floridatoday.com FLORIDA TODAY Margaret Wetzel was leaving her house around sunset three weeks ago when she heard a loud metallic bang, "an ungodly cat scream" and five gunshots. It was the sound of her next-door neighbor, Bob Lester, a 77-year-old Vietnam War veteran, shooting her 20-plus-pound cat, Harry.

Take Action: Remembering Crystal Lee Sutton action. the eCard that goes to your members of Congress honoring Crystal Lee Sutton – the real "Norma Rae."

Take Action: Stop the Double Standard for T-Mobile Workers! action. Mobile's parent company, Deutsche Telekom, boasts about its respect for workers in its native Germany. But when it started T-Mobile USA, the company changed its tune - harassing and intimidating workers in America who try to form a union

PolitiFact Vote now for 'Lie of the Year'! You've heard of the Person of the Year and the Sportsman of the Year -- get ready for PolitiFact's Lie of the Year.

America Needs Jobs Now
Video from IAM network