Working Indiana - Working for Democracy and Justice

Last night was another productive night for our crew of street walkers in New Haven.  We signed up 39 new members of Working America/Working Indiana in the Meadowbrook subdivision in New Haven.  Jane Gresham, Howard Traxmoor, Tom Braun, Tom Lewandowski, and I were out for about an hour and a half and heard more tales of woe--especially about layoffs.  There does seem to be greater interest in this neighborhood in receiving more information and participating in issue forums. 

Using the DSM-IV (the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) as their guide, filmmakers Joel Bakan, Mark Achbar and Jennifer Abbott persuasively argue that Corporations like human beings fall within a professional psychiatric taxonomy.  In their 2003 documentary,

Wheel about and turn about and do jus' so.  Eb'ry time I wheel about I jump Jim Crow

--Thomas "Daddy" Rice--

In 1974 Congress passed a comprehensive law aimed at protecting American workers’ pension and fringe benefits.  ERISA [the Employee Retirement Income Security Act] was primarily designed to address shortcomings in the nation’s pension system.  These problems arose shortly after the close of the Second World War as a flood of returning G.I.s replaced America’s aging workforce.  Following the collapse of Indiana’s Studebaker Corporation, i

Writing in the East European Constitutional Review (Fall, 1997) Christian Lucky contrasts the Yazoo case—an early land privatization scandal, with the looting of formerly public asssets in post Communist Russia.  Comparing early America’s experience with corruption and privatization with contemporary events in Russia, Lucky identifies what he believes to be a common thread: “the distribution of former state assets may largely hinge on who is situated at the crossroads of politics and property.  The allocative principal is essentially lawless and follows politi

Reporting in the New York Times December 19, 2007 Mary Walsh relates the findings of a Pew Center study of public pensions.  Ms. Walsh summarized the Pew findings: “Almost half of the states have been underfunding their retirement plans for public workers and may have to choose in the years ahead between their pension obligations and other public programs.” 

Last night was another great night, in fact, our best ever with 53 new Working Indiana members joining from New Haven. Jane, Howard, Bill, Cheryl and I continue to be stoked up by the responses from the doorsteps. There are now 861 of us, signed-up Working Indiana members. We're reaching the point of critical mass for our education and organization efforts to take form on this web site.

 A “moral obligation” assures investors that, although there is no direct promise to fund this unlimited indemnity obligation from appropriations, the State will try to do so and it will be bound to try very hard indeed.  For, failure to honor the indemnity would likely poison Indiana’s credit in the bond market, bringing governance to the same precipice Indiana found itself facing in 1837.  This sort of indirect promise or suretyship has been identified as p

 Like many public/private collaborations which tout their ”businesslike“ approach, the Toll Road lease departs from the real world business model in an important way: lack of accountability.  Pouring concrete to ”jump start“ the state economy at the cost of eight billion dollars (Skurski’s estimated loss figure) is a strategy that will be testable only over time.  The politicians who have delivered this miracle will be long out of office before it