Tuesday, January 16, 2007

Psycho Bosses Depressed Workers

Being a wage slave under capitalism doesn't just kill it is also depressing......

About half a million Canadian workers experience depression, and most say it interferes with their ability to manage their jobs, Statistics Canada reported Friday.

Data from 2002 showed almost four per cent of workers between the ages of 25 and 64 reported being depressed in the previous 12 months before the survey

Job-related factors associated with depression included:

  • Night shifts.
  • Non-regular hours.
  • Work stress.
  • Occupation.

The prevalence of depression was relatively high among workers who spent fewer than 30 hours on the job. It was lower among those who worked more than 40 hours.


Of course workers are depressedwhen they are forced into working two jobs just to make ends meet. And of course they can't manage their jobs because the bosses are all psychos.

Millions of harassed workers could have their worst fears confirmed about their bosses thanks to a new test to weed out the 'corporate psycho'.

You may already suspect that your boss's smooth, charming exterior masks a sadistic control freak with a penchant for violence.

Professor Hare estimates that 1% of the general population in North America are psychopaths.

The professor believes that psychopath's cold-blooded ability to manipulate others without remorse, coupled with a veneer of charm and high energy can make them extremely successful in many walks of life.

They could be perfectly qualified for top posts in the military, politics or in huge multi-national companies as history has already shown in one notorious case.

Former Daily Mirror tycoon Robert Maxwell, who made off with the newspaper's pension fund, was named as a classic example of a man in a powerful position who might very well have displayed psychopathic traits.

Which may explain why so many bosses are criminal capitalists.

See:

Work Kills

Work Sucks

Which Is True



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The Wicker Man Review

The Wicker Man Review

Why the remake of the Wickerman is as bad as I said it would be.

See:

Wicca

Pagan


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Christy Moore - Viva La Quince Brigada

Christy Moore - Viva La Quince Brigada

Christy Moore wrote the song about the Irish who went to Spain with the International Brigades to fight against Franco and the fascists during the Spanish Civil War.It has been sung by many singers and groups since.The tune dates back to the Napoleonic Wars.

It contains a denuciation of the Irish Reactionaries and the Catholic Church who blessed them for fighting with the fascists.

Includes some vintage footage from the Spanish Civil War.

No Pasaran!


See:

Rememberance or Revisionism

Kenney is A Funny Guy




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Revloutionary Music Flashback

Tom Robinson Band - power in the darkness


Wow I was thinking whatever happened to the Tom Robinson Band. The first 'out' gay left band that was active in the Anti-Fscist movement in Britain. And lo and behold I came across this video.

So I thought I would share it with ya' all. It's a great revolutionary song.

Just like 'Rise Up' by Canada's own 'out band' the Partachute Club, though it was recuperated by McCains for their Pizza ads on TV. Which never happened to TRB.


More YouTube videos on Le Revue Gauche;

What CNN Won't Show You

Communist Manisfesto Toon

Marxism in action






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Monday, January 15, 2007

Martin Luther King Voice of the Working Class


What is often forgotten about Martin Luther King was that he was the voice the working class in America, black and white. Which is what the conservatives in the United States will never fogive him for.


"In our glorious fight for civil rights, we must guard against being fooled by false slogans, as 'right-to-work.' It provides no 'rights' and no 'works.' Its purpose is to destroy labor unions and the freedom of collective bargaining... We demand this fraud be stopped." Martin Luther King

Negroes are almost entirely a working people. There are pitifully few Negro millionaires, and few Negro employers. Our needs are identical with labor's needs — decent wages, fair working conditions, livable housing, old age security, health and welfare measures, conditions in which families can grow, have education for their children and respect in the community. That is why Negroes support labor's demands and fight laws which curb labor. That is why the labor-hater and labor-baiter is virtually always a twin-headed creature spewing anti-Negro epithets from one mouth and anti-labor propaganda from the other mouth. Martin Luther King


Martin Luther King Jr. was in Memphis, Tennessee, the day he died to support a strike by the city’s sanitation workers. The garbage men there–almost all of them black–had recently formed a chapter of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees to demand better wages and working conditions. But the city refused to recognize their union, and when the 1,300 employees walked off their jobs, marching under picket signs reading "I Am a Man", the police broke up the rally with mace and billy clubs. After the mayor threatened to fire every one of the striking workers and a local court issued an injunction against any further demonstrations, the union’s leaders called on Dr. King to visit Memphis.

King’s famous "I Have a Dream" speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. The soaring oratory was heard by millions. But if King’s voice carried that day, it was no thanks to his corporate sponsors, for he had none. Rather, the thanks went largely to the United Auto Workers, the union that supplied the microphones and paid for the electricity, funding most of the logistics of the march. Walter Reuther, the head of the auto workers’ union, was on the platform along with King and the real instigators of the march. For although King was the final speaker on the rostrum, he was not the chief organizer of that massing of humanity. The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, as it was officially called, was largely the brainchild of the labor leader A. Philip Randolph.

In their effort to lay claim to King, much as generations of politicians strove to “get right with Lincoln,” conservatives have presented an ahistorical portrait of him as an absolutist on the question of race and public policy. By their estimation, King’s “I have a dream” speech should be taken literally: He espoused a civic order where governments made no distinctions between citizens based on race. Hence he would have opposed compensatory set-asides, quotas, or timelines and targets aimed at redistributing jobs and economic resources.

The problem with this version of history is that it ignores much of what King said. In his book Why We Can’t Wait, he wrote that “no amount of gold could provide an adequate compensation for the exploitation and humiliation of the Negro in America down through the centuries. Not all the wealth of this affluent society could meet the bill. Yet a price can be placed on unpaid wages. The ancient common law has always provided a remedy for the appropriation of the labor of one human being by another. . . . The payment should be in the form of a massive program by the government of special, compensatory measures which could be regarded as a settlement in accordance with the accepted practice of common law. . . . I am proposing, therefore, that, just as we granted a GI Bill of Rights to war veterans, America launch a broad-based and gigantic Bill of Rights for the Disadvantaged, our veterans of the long siege of denial.”

Critically, he envisioned these broad-based, public-sector compensatory programs as targeting both African-Americans and poor whites, whom he labeled the “derivative victims” of slavery and Jim Crow. In this regard he leaned on the writings of W. E. B. Du Bois, who famously observed that poor and working-class whites gained nothing from Jim Crow but the psychological “wages of whiteness.” In return for the psychological boost that “whiteness” gave them, poor whites—millions of them, from slavery times through the modern age—surrendered political and economic power to their elite counterparts. King might well have been thinking of the radical white writer Lillian Smith’s 1943 parable, “Two Men and a Bargain,” in which “Once a time, down South, Mr. Rich White made a bargain with Mr. Poor White. . . . You boss the nigger, and I’ll boss the money.” According to Smith, they “segregated southern money from Mr. Poor White and they . . . segregated the Negro from everything.”

Smith’s reasoning—and King’s—was well-founded. Jim Crow divided white and black labor against each other, stunting the growth of unions, labor parties, and liberal political coalitions. Jim Crow thus drove down wages across the board and secured a political system (chiefly in the American South) where taxes were regressive, public services were minimal, and political participation was sharply limited. Remember that on the eve of World War II, poll taxes in eight Southern states disenfranchised as many as 64 percent of white citizens and virtually all eligible black voters. It’s hard to say what most working-class whites got from Jim Crow other than the satisfaction that they weren’t black.


See:

Working Class

Afro-Americans





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Blogger Beta


So I tried to set up my blog under the New Blogger Beta and everytime I do I can't get in. So WTF is the problem. Well communications of course because nowhere does Blogger tell me this little vital piece of information.....

However, the new features will only be available to users who log in using a Google account, not their Blogger account, and only a small percentage of users will be invited to switch their accounts over initially, Google said: "If you're one of them, you'll see a blue box in the sidebar of your dashboard highlighting the new version of Blogger."

Well duh. Nice of you tell PC World but not your users.

See:

Blogspot




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Rent Controls

Housing is a human right, like food. They are essential to our survival. Under capitalism they are not a right but just commodities to be traded for profit. In Alberta the boom is a bust for most of us trying to find a place to live.

When the market goes crazy and decides that housing is an investment, rather than an essential human need, then the state needs to step in and control the market. And it can begin with rent controls and expand to other curbs on the speculative market. People are not buying homes to live in but are flipping properties in order to make a profit. As Proudhon said about the Real Estate market; Property is Theft.

In Alberta the overheated housing market is creating wealth for the few at the expense of the majority. When builders find it more profitable to build condos (the ultimate profit making scheme, where you own an apartment and continue to pay rent on it!!!) than apartment buildings, then rent controls are required to balance the market place for the good of the working class.

House prices will climb 15%

For many, condos now only affordable option

Goatcher predicted that rents, after rising 10 per cent in 2006, will climb another 12 per cent in 2007 because of low vacancies. "It's pretty disappointing. The number of starts has dropped off because of costs. Pratt pointed out that "increases in price have made housing unaffordable to a large group of people."

This problem has been compounded by redevelopment, she said.

"In some cases the value of the land under rooming houses and slum housing has increased to the point where the owner can redevelop," she said.

"This removes housing stock for the socially disadvantaged and chronically poor portion of our population."


A homeless man who was given a $287 ticket for trespassing after using a shopping centre's restroom after hours wants to know what he should have done instead.



See

Downside of the Boom

The Other Alberta Boom





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Bourqued


The payola for headlines scandal has had the Canadian political blogosphere all in a tizzy for the past few weeks, since it was revealed that Pierre Bourque uses his news site/aggregator to plant paid for headlines.

Now its made the national news.

Headlines on Internet news sites can be bought

For a very outspoken guy who comments on his site and in his headlines with political comments he was nowhere to be found to answer the reporters questions.

Now Bourque is his own headline...Except on his own site....People who live in glass houses.....

BOURQUE NEWSWATCH - TOMORROW'S NEWS NOW !

"Canada's Matt Drudge" - Pierre Bourque's webservice is a source for breaking political news and gossip.

Your Ads Buried In The Paper ? Press Releases Chucked In Blue Box ?
Blame Your Ad/Pr Agency !
... Contact us now ..."


More comments on this latest Bourque story here.....and as of this edit, 8 am MDT Bourque has still not added the news story about him to his front page.....


See

Media Bias

Payola



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More Criminal Capitalists


File this under business as usual......

$78 million payday, $75,000 fine
Slap on the wrist in fund scandal bodes ill for investors

-- As a mutual fund shareholder, you wanted to believe there would be no more scandals, that the bad guys had been caught, would be punished and that the worst was over. You'd have been better off believing in the Tooth Fairy.

An agreement reached last week between former Putnam Investments top dog Lawrence Lasser and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission shows all too clearly why "minor" scandals will keep happening in the business for years to come

That's an ugly conclusion to draw about the business, but it's the logical supposition in light of the Lasser deal, which scarcely drew a headline when it was made public.

Lasser is the only fund company executive charged so far with fraud for authorizing payments to brokers for preferential sales treatment. Putnam paid $40 million to the SEC in 2005 to clear up charges that it never told fund investors or directors that it was paying for "shelf space," or the chance to have brokers make the firm's funds more of a sales priority.

These "revenue-sharing" deals are fairly common, and Putnam is far from alone in being targeted by regulators. Yet in virtually every other case where firms face charges over revenue-sharing deals, it's the business with money on the line; individuals are pretty much ignored.

Broaden the scope to other nefarious activities, and you'll find that the only times executives were named -- such as Dick Strong of the Strong funds agreeing to a huge settlement with regulators -- was when they were directly involved in allowing rapid trading and circumventing fund rules; without that kind of direct link, however, most actions have been against the business rather than individuals.

The Lasser case was seen as a step up in enforcement, a sign that regulators wanted top managers to know that their necks are on the line. Forget about it: The settlement amounted to $75,000, a one-fingered slap on the wrist.

How inconsequential is that amount to Lasser? Consider that when he left Putnam, his severance package was worth $78 million, and that the company agreed to pay his legal fees. The settlement is less than one-tenth of one percent of Lasser's out-the-door money, never mind the tens of millions of dollars he earned running the company.


And file this under there's a sucker born every minute......


He's 25, a CEO, and on the run

Police accuse Oakville man of $8M fraud

At just 25, Adam Spencer was president and CEO of an upstart information technology company and a motivational speaker, but his real job was fleecing scores of investors of $8 million and then disappearing with their cash, police allege.

"The long and short of it is I invested a bunch of money with a few other fellows and we got taken to the cleaners," said Peter Leupen, who invested $80,000 in Spencer's company, Emexis Integrated Solutions Inc.

All bought in to Spencer's "slick" sell and lofty business plan that promised investors hefty returns on their money once he took his private company public. "Certainly, he talked a great story," said Leupen, who is in media sales.

No one suspected that the recent university graduate living with his parents in Oakville had concocted a "sophisticated fraud," according to one of several lawsuits filed against the former Queen's University student who is wanted on a Canada-wide warrant for fraud.

Police allege between September 2005 and May 2006, investors bought shares in Emexis at 50 cents each with the option to purchase an equal number of shares at 75 cents with a view to taking the company public. But Spencer told them later he had changed his mind and it would remain a private firm. To compensate them, he said he would buy back all their shares for $1 apiece. But that never happened and the money collected was never returned.

At one point last year, Leupen received an email from one of the company's three vice-presidents telling him his money was with the CIBC but that the "delay was simply unavoidable in light of Enron."

The bookish young man, who has delivered lectures to entrepreneurial conferences at his alma mater, attended a 2004 conference in Washington, D.C., where he addressed a forum that brought together "thought leaders."

It appears he had been living the high life, hobnobbing with race car drivers and spending his summer weekends cutting through waves in his $120,000 Mastercraft X-Star boat. Property records show that he and his parents, John and Elizabeth Spencer, bought a $1.7 million home in Oakville last January, just months before investors started asking questions about where their money was. He drove a Mini Cooper, which had a lien against it for $45,000.


See

CEO

Stock Options
Corporate Crime

White Collar Crime


Criminal Capitalism




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The Cost of War Update

By the time you finish reading this article the United States will have spent $1 million dollars in its war on Iraq.

Besides the human costs which the administration has ignored for three years and is only now being confronted with by a Democratic congress and Senate, the other question is what is the cost to the U.S. economy.

As GB Shaw once said; "
Self-sacrifice enables us to sacrifice other people without blushing."

For sure it has increased the U.S. debt and its reliance on China to bouy the dollar, ironic that, Red China keeps the US in the Black.

Well leading economists can't figure out if the war spending is a good thing or a bad thing.

But that should be no surprise since as GB Shaw also said," if you laid all the economists in the world end to end you would still not come to a conclusion."

War is of course good for business, and that is the health of the State, as Randolph Bourne said. But just as Bush's call for Iraqization of the war harkens us back to the seventies and Vietnamization, so does the economic costs of the war.

And this article is a repeat of one that appeared earlier last year. So since April of 2006 the same folks still can't figure out what the heck the economic impact of the war is. Now that should leave us all feeling confident in the economic policy wonks in the U.S.

Along these lines, economists see faint echoes from the Vietnam era, when the Fed tried to slow the economy fueled by the war against Hanoi and by President Lyndon Johnson's Great Society programs.

This overheating was a factor in the sharp run-up in inflation in the 1970s.

"The longer this goes on ... the more closely it resembles the inflationary push that we saw in the latter part of the 1960s," said Diane Swonk, chief economist at Mesirow Financial.

Economists say it's very difficult to get at the war's economic fallout. The most complicating factor is that the military is spending much of the money overseas, which doesn't benefit the U.S. economy, said Bob Parker, a former chief statistician for the Bureau of Economic Analysis.

He said he has no doubt that the war is simulative on the home front, but measuring it remains elusive.

Smith said the war impact is "highly concentrated in a few industries and few locations," especially around major military-staging areas like Fayetteville, N.C., Jacksonville Fla., and Norfolk Va.

Companies like Halliburton Co. and Bechtel Group Inc., the privately held construction firm, have also benefited, Smith said.

Some economists who oppose the war believe it's hurting the economy in insidious ways.
The government's growing issuance of debt underlying increased military spending ordinarily might have led to higher interest rates, but Chinese purchases of U.S. dollars has helped to keep rates low.

"The problem of the war was it was so easy to finance, if that is a problem," said Robert Brusca, chief economist at FAO Economics.