Eleanor Arnason's Blog, page 80

Snow

A new storm in the Upper Midwest. 9-17 inches predicted in the Twin Cities metro area. The demonstrators in Madison have been forced inside by the weather there. I went to the local coffee shop before noon and spent a couple of hours revising a new hwarhath story. Now I am back home, about to settle on the couch to read a Tate Hallaway novel.

From Egypt...

NASA Photo of the Day

A mere 46 million light-years distant, spiral galaxy NGC 2841 can be found in the northern constellation of Ursa Major. This sharp view of the gorgeous island universe shows off a striking yellow nucleus and galactic disk. Dust lanes, small, pink star-forming regions, and young blue star clusters are embedded in the patchy, tightly wound spiral arms. In contrast, many other spirals exhibit grand, sweeping arms with large star-forming regions. NGC 2841 has a diameter of over 150,000 light-years, even larger than our own Milky Way, but this close-up Hubble image spans about 34,000 light-years along the the galaxy's inner region. X-ray images suggest that resulting winds and stellar explosions create plumes of hot gas extending into a halo around NGC 2841.

I keep posting these NASA images (a) to remind myself and everyone that our tax dollars do some wonderful things and (b) because the beauty of the universe is an antidote to the nastiness of human behavior.

Not all human behavior, by any means. The demonstrators in Egypt and Bahrain and the other Arab and African countries and Wisconsin are noble and worthy of the stars.

Army Fires on Demonstrators in Bahrain

Demonstrations in Wisconsin continue. Long live ordinary people and their struggle for rights!

Army Fires on Demonstrator in Bahrain

Demonstrations in Wisconsin continue. Long live ordinary people and their struggle for rights!

NASA Astronomy Photo of the Day

On Valentine's Day (ET) the Sun unleashed one of its most powerful explosions, an X-class flare. The blast was the largest so far in the new solar cycle. Erupting from active region AR1158 in the Sun's southern hemisphere, the flare is captured here in this extreme ultraviolet image from the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO). The intense burst of electromagnetic radiation momentarily overwhelmed pixels in SDO's detectors causing the bright vertical blemish. This X-class flare was also accompanied by a coronal mass ejection (CME), a massive cloud of charged particles traveling outward at nearly 900 kilometers per second. Skywatchers at high latitudes should be alert for aurorae tonight.

Happy Valentine's Day

Unions in Wisconsin

This is from Firedoglake re the new Republican governor of Wisconsin:

(Governor) Walker and his conservative allies talked about this plan (to break public employee unions) almost immediately after the election, getting support from southern-state Governors with right-to-work laws in place and the American Legislative Exchange Council, which has stimulated discussion over this idea in several states since November. The bill would strip workers' ability to bargain over everything but pay, and salary increases wouldn't be allowed to increase more than inflation. Furthermore, public employees would have to pay more in health and pension costs, contracts would last only one year at a time, employees would have to re-certify the union annually and individual members would be able to withhold dues from their union. Such stripping of protections invariably leads to poor working conditions, as well as low wages and benefits. That's why Walker put it into a budget bill.

And this is from the Huffington Post, quoting the Associated Press:

Gov. Scott Walker says the Wisconsin National Guard is prepared to respond wherever is necessary in the wake of his announcement that he wants to take away nearly all collective bargaining rights from state employees.

Walker said Friday that he hasn't called the Guard into action, but he has briefed them and other state agencies in preparation of any problems that could result in a disruption of state services, like staffing at prisons...

The right of private sector employees to be members of unions is governed by federal law, but state and local unions are covered by Wisconsin law. The right to collectively bargain over a broad array of issues, including salary and benefits, is granted under that law. Walker and the Legislature can add or remove negotiable issues by changing that law, the State Employment Labor Relations Act.

There's nothing stopping Walker from proposing a law change, said Paul Secunda, a Marquette University law professor who specializes in labor law.

Obama's Budget

Obama's budget is going to cut heating assistance to low income Americans by 50%.

After Patrick told me this, he asked me to find out the daily cost of the wars against Iraq and Afghanistan. The 2011 budget figures work out to 470 million dollars a day.

Per the Cost of War website, the two wars have cost 1 trillion 152 billion dollars to date. We could have rebuilt this country, instead of destroying two distant countries that were no threat to us.

Unions in Egypt

From Common Dreams:

Egypt's military rulers called for an end to strikes and protests Monday as thousands of state employees, from ambulance drivers to police and transport workers, demonstrated to demand better pay in a growing wave of labor unrest unleashed by the democracy uprising that ousted Hosni Mubarak's regime.

Military police and soldiers surround remaining protestors as they try to clear Tahir square in Cairo, Egypt, Monday Feb. 14, 2011. Egypt's military rulers dissolved parliament Sunday, suspending the constitution and promising elections in moves cautiously welcomed by pro-democracy protesters.(AP Photo/Hussein Malla) The statement by the ruling military council that took power from Mubarak appeared to be a final warning to protest organizers in labor and professional unions before the army intervenes and imposes an outright ban on gatherings, strikes and sit-ins.

As the US demonstrates, a country that has free elections, but does not have strong unions, is not a working democracy.