Fire in the Hole.

Just a wee bit of clarity, then some music, and finally a benediction. The content herewith is derived from past posts.

Labor Day is May 1, by Jonah Walters (Jacobin)

Today is a boss's holiday.

 ... Tragically, our labor movement was never strong enough to buck the tyranny of capitalism for good. And today, with union membership in dramatic decline and workers under sustained attack from the political establishment, this militant past often feels like a distant, even irretrievable, memory.

But American workers did contribute at least one lasting legacy to the international movement for working-class liberation — a workers’ holiday, celebrating the ideal of international solidarity, and eagerly anticipating the day when workers might rise together to take control of their own lives and provide for their own well-being.

That holiday is May Day, not Labor Day.

---

Fathom the note on Woody Guthrie's guitar, and follow the link to hear the songs.

Top Ten Labor Day Songs, by Peter Rothberg (The Nation)

In honor of Labor Day, I’ve revised a previous attempt at the impossible task of naming the best songs ever written about working people. The list is highly debatable; songs about work and working people cut across genres and generations. I know it’s a travesty to neglect “Which Side Are You On?” and Johnny Paycheck’s classic “Take This Job and Shove It.” It also seems impossible that I’ve excluded Bruce Springsteen, Billy Bragg, Nina Simone, and John Mellencamp, and given such short shrift to the rich history of punk rock odes to the insanity of wage slavery. Hopefully, these songs will get people thinking about their own favorite musical celebrations of the working condition.

Dan Canon's congressional campaign was in full swing on Labor Day, 2017, and the candidate (he lost in the 2018 primary) had cogent thoughts about Labor Day. Well, it's about time someone around here did, and consequently, I believe they're worth repeating.

---

A couple of thoughts about Labor Day:

I've represented workers against big business here in my community for a decade now. Union folks don't often get to me, because they have a line of job protection that most American workers don't have. Most of the employment protections non-union folks *do* have were also a direct result of the labor movement. Overtime pay, workplace safety rules, anti-retaliation provisions - these are all thanks to unions, and affect most workers whether they've ever paid dues or not.

The issues brought to the fore by labor unions are more important now than ever. As plenty of people have rightly pointed out, our insane wealth gap has just emboldened the rich to take even more, not to generously lavish the working class with raises and pensions, because almost no one is telling them they can't. Labor unions tell them they can't. So oligarchs over the last decade or so have been pretty brazen about trying to break the back of organized labor as a whole. They keep the concentration of wealth at the top from getting even worse, and the top is pretty adamant that they'd *like* for it to get worse.

But it's too simplistic to say that the effort to gut unions is just based on greed. It's also part and parcel of the GOP/new-American-fascist agenda. Down here, if we are organized, we are a threat to the top. The more and better we are organized, the more of a threat we pose. And so naturally, the more divided we are, the less a threat we pose to an increasing concentration of wealth and power at the top. In fact, if we are very divided, we might not even notice such concentration at all. We might deny that it exists. We might think it doesn't affect us. We might not have time to care.

This is why there's a concerted effort to divide us up. Black v. white, Christian v. Muslim, straight v. gay, cis v. trans, etc. It makes us disorganized. Unfocused. Weak.

Where would you start a campaign of disorganization, were you to run one? Who would be among your primary targets? I bet one would be: the folks who have already known how to organize and get results for more than a century.

That's the reason we see our friends, families, and neighbors in the labor movement under attack. It's not just about making a few more dollars at the expense of someone else's hard work. It's about perpetuating divisions and preventing the amalgamation and galvanization of those of us down here below.
Let's all buy a drink for a union member and tell 'em we've got their backs. They've had ours for more than a hundred years.

Labor Day 2019: It SHOULD be honored on May 1. Today is a boss's holiday, but we'll celebrate with songs about working people, and thoughts by Dan Canon.

Just a wee bit of clarity, then some music, and finally a benediction. The content herewith is derived from past posts.

Labor Day is May 1, by Jonah Walters (Jacobin)

Today is a boss's holiday.

 ... Tragically, our labor movement was never strong enough to buck the tyranny of capitalism for good. And today, with union membership in dramatic decline and workers under sustained attack from the political establishment, this militant past often feels like a distant, even irretrievable, memory.

But American workers did contribute at least one lasting legacy to the international movement for working-class liberation — a workers’ holiday, celebrating the ideal of international solidarity, and eagerly anticipating the day when workers might rise together to take control of their own lives and provide for their own well-being.

That holiday is May Day, not Labor Day.

---

Fathom the note on Woody Guthrie's guitar, and follow the link to hear the songs.

Top Ten Labor Day Songs, by Peter Rothberg (The Nation)

In honor of Labor Day, I’ve revised a previous attempt at the impossible task of naming the best songs ever written about working people. The list is highly debatable; songs about work and working people cut across genres and generations. I know it’s a travesty to neglect “Which Side Are You On?” and Johnny Paycheck’s classic “Take This Job and Shove It.” It also seems impossible that I’ve excluded Bruce Springsteen, Billy Bragg, Nina Simone, and John Mellencamp, and given such short shrift to the rich history of punk rock odes to the insanity of wage slavery. Hopefully, these songs will get people thinking about their own favorite musical celebrations of the working condition.

Dan Canon's congressional campaign was in full swing on Labor Day, 2017, and the candidate (he lost in the 2018 primary) had cogent thoughts about Labor Day. Well, it's about time someone around here did, and consequently, I believe they're worth repeating.

---

A couple of thoughts about Labor Day:

I've represented workers against big business here in my community for a decade now. Union folks don't often get to me, because they have a line of job protection that most American workers don't have. Most of the employment protections non-union folks *do* have were also a direct result of the labor movement. Overtime pay, workplace safety rules, anti-retaliation provisions - these are all thanks to unions, and affect most workers whether they've ever paid dues or not.

The issues brought to the fore by labor unions are more important now than ever. As plenty of people have rightly pointed out, our insane wealth gap has just emboldened the rich to take even more, not to generously lavish the working class with raises and pensions, because almost no one is telling them they can't. Labor unions tell them they can't. So oligarchs over the last decade or so have been pretty brazen about trying to break the back of organized labor as a whole. They keep the concentration of wealth at the top from getting even worse, and the top is pretty adamant that they'd *like* for it to get worse.

But it's too simplistic to say that the effort to gut unions is just based on greed. It's also part and parcel of the GOP/new-American-fascist agenda. Down here, if we are organized, we are a threat to the top. The more and better we are organized, the more of a threat we pose. And so naturally, the more divided we are, the less a threat we pose to an increasing concentration of wealth and power at the top. In fact, if we are very divided, we might not even notice such concentration at all. We might deny that it exists. We might think it doesn't affect us. We might not have time to care.

This is why there's a concerted effort to divide us up. Black v. white, Christian v. Muslim, straight v. gay, cis v. trans, etc. It makes us disorganized. Unfocused. Weak.

Where would you start a campaign of disorganization, were you to run one? Who would be among your primary targets? I bet one would be: the folks who have already known how to organize and get results for more than a century.

That's the reason we see our friends, families, and neighbors in the labor movement under attack. It's not just about making a few more dollars at the expense of someone else's hard work. It's about perpetuating divisions and preventing the amalgamation and galvanization of those of us down here below.
Let's all buy a drink for a union member and tell 'em we've got their backs. They've had ours for more than a hundred years.

My friend Barry reminds me there used to be a Labor Day horse show and chicken dinner at the Optimist Club in Georgetown.

Somewhere in the dozens of photo albums archived downstairs, which inherited me as their keeper when my mother sold the house, there is photographic evidence of the Labor Day horse show and chicken dinner at the Optimist Club in Georgetown.

Earlier today my old pal Barry Sears devoted a social media post to the topic, and it inspired memories.

Growing up in Georgetown, next to Christmas, Labor Day was the biggest day of the year. The Georgetown Optimist Club held its annual Horse Show and Chicken Dinner that always drew large crowds. It always meant days of preparation to set up booths and the large tents used for dining. Watching those men raise the huge tents was always amazing to me.

It also meant that my best friend, Roger A. Baylor and I got to run a Coca Cola booth and pour soft drinks all day. That was major stuff! Great fried chicken and homemade desserts we're a treat. Our mothers worked serving food, my dad was a cashier in the food tent and Roger's dad ran the bingo tables.

There was a lot of stuff to buy, but the best was snow cones and the cotton candy from Fuzzy.

I sure do miss those days and it's sad that event is now history.

And with this recollection, a massive and disorderly jumble of sights, sounds and smells washed over me, like a glimpse into a lost world. Like most worlds, it probably already had passed when I first experienced it. Beginning in the mid-1970s, Georgetown commenced the process of becoming something completely different.

Accordingly, I spent time over coffee this morning trying to imagine what the (then) 58-year-olds at the Labor Day celebration during the Bicentennial year of 1976 were reminiscing about over their fried chicken, pie and iced tea. Back then, I probably was wondering if there was any way to score a beer or two.

Memory is bizarre and selective in the best of times -- then you get old and have no choice in the matter. Barry's is better than mine. He reminded me of the time when the aforementioned Fuzzy told us about the ballyhooed appearance of country music great Hank Snow at the Washington County Fair.

Apparently the musician Snow was a bad gig for snow cones.

"He couldn't draw flies," snorted Fuzzy, and we though this was both hilarious and original.*

I've no clear idea how long the horse show and chicken dinner persisted into the modern age. The last time I can recall attending was 1979 or 1980. By this time the founding generation was in its 50s, and both the Labor Day event and the Optimist Club itself gradually transitioned in the decades to follow.

Those big tents were made redundant by a steel-beamed shelter house, which later was transformed into the all-weather building there today. The grand old house was torn down. The horse show grounds at the top of the hill became a baseball diamond.

Meanwhile, college had freed my inner urbanite, and I became whatever I am today -- primarily, a serial self-exile and a European trapped in New Albania, one who'll probably never come to grips with my past. They were the best of times ... and you know the rest.

But Barry's words made me smile, and this morning, that's something I needed.

---

* No sooner than I finished writing this, Barry revised it; seems he was at the Washington County Fair with another friend, saw Fuzzy there, and heard the story. Nonetheless, it still seems that I heard it from Fuzzy at Labor Day. At this point, I'm not sure it matters. 

Labor Day should be May 1. Today is a boss's holiday, but we'll celebrate with songs about working people, and thoughts by Dan Canon.

Just a wee bit of clarity, then some music, and finally a benediction. The content herewith is derived from past posts.

Labor Day is May 1, by Jonah Walters (Jacobin)

Today is a boss's holiday.

 ... Tragically, our labor movement was never strong enough to buck the tyranny of capitalism for good. And today, with union membership in dramatic decline and workers under sustained attack from the political establishment, this militant past often feels like a distant, even irretrievable, memory.

But American workers did contribute at least one lasting legacy to the international movement for working-class liberation — a workers’ holiday, celebrating the ideal of international solidarity, and eagerly anticipating the day when workers might rise together to take control of their own lives and provide for their own well-being.

That holiday is May Day, not Labor Day.

---

Fathom the note on Woody Guthrie's guitar, and follow the link to hear the songs.

Top Ten Labor Day Songs, by Peter Rothberg (The Nation)

In honor of Labor Day, I’ve revised a previous attempt at the impossible task of naming the best songs ever written about working people. The list is highly debatable; songs about work and working people cut across genres and generations. I know it’s a travesty to neglect “Which Side Are You On?” and Johnny Paycheck’s classic “Take This Job and Shove It.” It also seems impossible that I’ve excluded Bruce Springsteen, Billy Bragg, Nina Simone, and John Mellencamp, and given such short shrift to the rich history of punk rock odes to the insanity of wage slavery. Hopefully, these songs will get people thinking about their own favorite musical celebrations of the working condition.

Dan Canon's congressional campaign was in full swing on Labor Day, 2017, and the candidate (he lost in the 2018 primary) had cogent thoughts about Labor Day. Well, it's about time someone around here did, and consequently, I believe they're worth repeating.

---

A couple of thoughts about Labor Day:

I've represented workers against big business here in my community for a decade now. Union folks don't often get to me, because they have a line of job protection that most American workers don't have. Most of the employment protections non-union folks *do* have were also a direct result of the labor movement. Overtime pay, workplace safety rules, anti-retaliation provisions - these are all thanks to unions, and affect most workers whether they've ever paid dues or not.

The issues brought to the fore by labor unions are more important now than ever. As plenty of people have rightly pointed out, our insane wealth gap has just emboldened the rich to take even more, not to generously lavish the working class with raises and pensions, because almost no one is telling them they can't. Labor unions tell them they can't. So oligarchs over the last decade or so have been pretty brazen about trying to break the back of organized labor as a whole. They keep the concentration of wealth at the top from getting even worse, and the top is pretty adamant that they'd *like* for it to get worse.

But it's too simplistic to say that the effort to gut unions is just based on greed. It's also part and parcel of the GOP/new-American-fascist agenda. Down here, if we are organized, we are a threat to the top. The more and better we are organized, the more of a threat we pose. And so naturally, the more divided we are, the less a threat we pose to an increasing concentration of wealth and power at the top. In fact, if we are very divided, we might not even notice such concentration at all. We might deny that it exists. We might think it doesn't affect us. We might not have time to care.

This is why there's a concerted effort to divide us up. Black v. white, Christian v. Muslim, straight v. gay, cis v. trans, etc. It makes us disorganized. Unfocused. Weak.

Where would you start a campaign of disorganization, were you to run one? Who would be among your primary targets? I bet one would be: the folks who have already known how to organize and get results for more than a century.

That's the reason we see our friends, families, and neighbors in the labor movement under attack. It's not just about making a few more dollars at the expense of someone else's hard work. It's about perpetuating divisions and preventing the amalgamation and galvanization of those of us down here below.
Let's all buy a drink for a union member and tell 'em we've got their backs. They've had ours for more than a hundred years.

Closing thoughts on Labor Day by Dan Canon.

I looked but could find no evidence that Mayor Jeff Gahan has thoughts.

About Labor Day.

---

A couple of thoughts about Labor Day:

I've represented workers against big business here in my community for a decade now. Union folks don't often get to me, because they have a line of job protection that most American workers don't have. Most of the employment protections non-union folks *do* have were also a direct result of the labor movement. Overtime pay, workplace safety rules, anti-retaliation provisions - these are all thanks to unions, and affect most workers whether they've ever paid dues or not.

The issues brought to the fore by labor unions are more important now than ever. As plenty of people have rightly pointed out, our insane wealth gap has just emboldened the rich to take even more, not to generously lavish the working class with raises and pensions, because almost no one is telling them they can't. Labor unions tell them they can't. So oligarchs over the last decade or so have been pretty brazen about trying to break the back of organized labor as a whole. They keep the concentration of wealth at the top from getting even worse, and the top is pretty adamant that they'd *like* for it to get worse.

But it's too simplistic to say that the effort to gut unions is just based on greed. It's also part and parcel of the GOP/new-American-fascist agenda. Down here, if we are organized, we are a threat to the top. The more and better we are organized, the more of a threat we pose. And so naturally, the more divided we are, the less a threat we pose to an increasing concentration of wealth and power at the top. In fact, if we are very divided, we might not even notice such concentration at all. We might deny that it exists. We might think it doesn't affect us. We might not have time to care.

This is why there's a concerted effort to divide us up. Black v. white, Christian v. Muslim, straight v. gay, cis v. trans, etc. It makes us disorganized. Unfocused. Weak.

Where would you start a campaign of disorganization, were you to run one? Who would be among your primary targets? I bet one would be: the folks who have already known how to organize and get results for more than a century.

That's the reason we see our friends, families, and neighbors in the labor movement under attack. It's not just about making a few more dollars at the expense of someone else's hard work. It's about perpetuating divisions and preventing the amalgamation and galvanization of those of us down here below.
Let's all buy a drink for a union member and tell 'em we've got their backs. They've had ours for more than a hundred years.

The workers' holiday? That'd be May 1 -- and American workers did that.

Just as long as we're clear about the fact of the matter, I'm down with today.

Labor Day is May 1, by Jonah Walters (Jacobin)

Today is a boss's holiday.

 ... Tragically, our labor movement was never strong enough to buck the tyranny of capitalism for good. And today, with union membership in dramatic decline and workers under sustained attack from the political establishment, this militant past often feels like a distant, even irretrievable, memory.

But American workers did contribute at least one lasting legacy to the international movement for working-class liberation — a workers’ holiday, celebrating the ideal of international solidarity, and eagerly anticipating the day when workers might rise together to take control of their own lives and provide for their own well-being.

That holiday is May Day, not Labor Day.

Solidarity Forever: Songs about working and working people.

Note the note on Woody Guthrie's guitar, and follow the link to hear the songs.

Top Ten Labor Day Songs, by Peter Rothberg (The Nation)

In honor of the Labor Day holiday, I've revised a previous attempt at the impossible task of naming the best songs ever written about working people. The list is highly debatable; songs about working and working people cut across musical genres and generations. I know it's a travesty to not include "Which Side Are You On?" or Johnny Paycheck's classic "Take This Job and Shove It." I also feel terrible neglecting Bruce Springsteen, Billy Bragg, Nina Simone and John Mellencamp and giving short shrift to the rich history of punk rock odes to the insanity of wage slavery. Hopefully, these songs will get you thinking about your own favorite musical celebrations of the blood, sweat and tears that exemplify the working condition.

The NABC Weekend: It isn't May 1, but it's Labor Day nonetheless.

The Bicentennial Park concert series closed last Friday with a rainout, and Labor Day usually provides a break between the crowded summer schedule and the insane amount of events crammed into September and the first two weeks of October.

Of course the very fact of the coming weekend's dedication to "labor," in a country opposed to a living wage, illustrates our customarily oblivious American exceptionalism. We've detached our "labor" holiday from the rest of the world’s.

For more than 125 years, May Day also has been considered International Workers' Day, which we Americans eventually chucked to another time on the calendar (Labor Day, at summer’s end) so as to avoid confusion with the Commies. Why? Labor and left-wing political movements first established May 1 as International Workers’ Day in memory of those who were killed and wounded during the Haymarket Massacre in 1886, which took place in Chicago.

Tomato and watermelon season draws to close, and while it's far too early (and hot) to contemplate autumn's symbolism, I'm beginning to feel elegiac. My guess is that this too shall pass ... as soon as I go to work.

The usual Labor Day antics.

We should be celebrating this holiday in May.

For more than 125 years, May Day also has been considered International Workers' Day, which we Americans eventually chucked to another time on the calendar (Labor Day, at summer’s end) so as to avoid confusion with the Commies.

I personally stick to pre-summer, primarily to avoid embarrassment such as that appearing each year around this time at Freedom to Screech.

Their (labor) movement pushed to better the conditions of the work place and strove to secure respect and appreciation for those who work hard. Now it seems like some unions are destroying our country.

If we really must, then here's a reprint worth reading.

REWIND: Will work for something real.

For Labor Day weekend consideration, here's a look back at a thoughtful piece about economic development from YES! Magazine's David Korten, reprinted in its entirety under a Creative Commons license. It originally was posted by Bluegill on Sept. 6, 2010, and you may find it useful to turn to the comments section there, where a spirited discussion ensued.

REWIND: Labor Day screeching, and Labor Day reading.

(Originally published in September, 2009)

The first part of the transgendered professor's Labor Day screed are the words of Samuel Gompers, and as we've come to expect, Ms. Denschak makes no effort to attribute them.

Just for the fun of it, here's a section of the Wikipedia article on Gompers.

He joined Local 15 of the Cigarmakers' International Union in 1864, and was elected president of Local 144 in 1875. He was elected second vice-president of the international union in 1886, and first vice-president in 1896. He served in this capacity until his death. In 1877, the union nearly collapsed. Gompers and his friend Adolph Strasser used Local 144 as a base to rebuild the Cigarmakers' Union, introducing a high dues structure and implementing programs to pay out-of-work benefits, sick benefits, and death benefits for union members in good standing. He told the workers they needed to organize because wage reductions were almost a daily occurrence. The capitalists were only interested in profits, "and the time has come when we must assert our rights as workingmen. Every one present has the sad experience, that we are powerless in an isolated condition, while the capitalists are united; therefore it is the duty of every Cigar Maker to join the organization. ... One of the main objects of the organization," he concluded, "is the elevation of the lowest paid worker to the standard of the highest, and in time we may secure for every person in the trade an existence worthy of human beings."

Whoa -- sounds damned near Commie to me.

REWIND: Will work for something real.

For Labor Day weekend consideration, here's a look back at a thoughtful piece about economic development from YES! Magazine's David Korten, reprinted in its entirety under a Creative Commons license. It originally was posted by Bluegill on Sept. 6, 2010, and you may find it useful to turn to the comments section there, where a spirited discussion ensued. 

10 Common Sense Principles for a New Economy
It’s time we the people declare our independence from the money-favoring Wall Street economy.

by David Korten

I find hope in the fact that millions of people the world over are seeing through the moral and practical fallacies underlying the Wall Street economy and-—by contributing to the creation of a New Economy--are taking charge of their economic lives.

Here are ten common sense principles to frame the New Economy that we the people must now bring forth:

1. The proper purpose of an economy is to secure just, sustainable, and joyful livelihoods for all. This may come as something of a shock to Wall Street financiers who profit from financial bubbles, securities fraud, low wages, unemployment, foreign sweatshops, tax evasion, public subsidies, and monopoly pricing.

2. GDP is a measure of the economic cost of producing a given level of human well-being and happiness. In the economy, as in any well-run business, the goal should be to minimize cost, not maximize it.

3. A rational reallocation of real resources can reduce the human burden on the Earth’s biosphere and simultaneously improve the health and happiness of all. The Wall Street economy wastes enormous resources on things that actually reduce the quality of our lives— war, automobile dependence, suburban sprawl, energy-inefficient buildings, financial speculation, advertising, incarceration for minor, victimless crimes. The most important step toward bringing ourselves into balance with the biosphere is to eliminate the things that are bad for our health and happiness.

4. Markets allocate efficiently only within a framework of appropriate rules to maintain competition, cost internalization, balanced trade, domestic investment, and equality. These are essential conditions for efficient market function. Without rules, a market economy quickly morphs into a system of corporate monopolies engaged in suppressing wages, exporting jobs, collecting public subsidies, poisoning air, land, and water, expropriating resources, corrupting democracy, and a host of other activities that represent an egregiously inefficient and unjust distribution of resources.

5. A proper money system roots the power to create and allocate money in people and communities in order to facilitate the creation of livelihoods and ecologically balanced community wealth. Money properly serves life, not the reverse. Wall Street uses money to consolidate its power to expropriate the real wealth of the rest of the society. Main Street uses money to connect underutilized resources with unmet needs. Public policy properly favors Main Street.

6. Money, which is easily created with a simple accounting entry, should never be the deciding constraint in making public resource allocation decisions. This is particularly obvious in the case of economic recessions or depressions, which occur when money fails to flow to where it is needed to put people to work producing essential goods and services. If money is the only lack, then make the accounting entry and get on with it.

7. Speculation, the inflation of financial bubbles, risk externalization, the extraction of usury, and the use of creative accounting to create money from nothing, unrelated to the creation of anything of real value, serve no valid social purpose. The Wall Street corporations that engage in these activities are not in the business of contributing to the creation of real community wealth. They are in the business of expropriating it, a polite term for theft. They should be regulated or taxed out of existence.

8. Greed is not a virtue; sharing is not a sin. If your primary business purpose is not to serve the community, you have no business being in business.

9. The only legitimate reason for government to issue a corporate charter extending special privileges favoring a particular enterprise is to serve a clearly defined public purpose. That purpose should be clearly stated in the corporate charter and be subject to periodic review.

10. Public policy properly favors local investors and businesses dedicated to creating community wealth over investors and businesses that come only to extract it. The former are most likely to be investors and businesses with strong roots in the communities in which they do business. We properly favor them.

------------------
David Korten is co-founder and board chair of YES! Magazine, co-chair of the New Economy Working Group, president of the People-Centered Development Forum, and a founding board member of the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies (BALLE). His books include Agenda for a New Economy: From Phantom Wealth to Real Wealth, The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community, and the international best seller When Corporations Rule the World.

Live @ Five September schedule, and Labor Day movies, and Indiefest ...

The city of New Albany's Live @ Five concert series will return for three final dates in September: 14th, 21st and 28th. All three shows are from 5:00 p.m. until 8:00 p.m., and all three will take place at the Bank Street venue, opposite Bank Street Brewhouse.

The city also will be staging a Labor Day weekend program on Saturday, September 1, at the Riverfront Amphitheater. The program, which is slated to start at 5:00 p.m. and finish before midnight, probably will include two movies, and adult beverages and non-alcoholic drinks will be available.

Finally, as reported yesterday, there's the Indiefest and Southern Indiana Craft Beer Showcase on Saturday, September 22, at a temporary venue to be formed from the 400 block of Bank Street and the two parking lots adjacent to the Carnegie Center. Meanwhile, the Carnegie's annual fundraiser, A Taste for Art and History, is scheduled for Friday, September 7.

The Harvest Homecoming Parade follow all these events on Saturday, September 29, and then the festival itself ... but I'm not ready to go into it, at least yet.

REWIND: Will work for something real.

For Labor Day, a thoughtful piece about economic development from YES! Magazine's David Korten, reprinted in its entirety under a Creative Commons license.

10 Common Sense Principles for a New Economy
It’s time we the people declare our independence from the money-favoring Wall Street economy.

by David Korten

I find hope in the fact that millions of people the world over are seeing through the moral and practical fallacies underlying the Wall Street economy and-—by contributing to the creation of a New Economy--are taking charge of their economic lives.

Here are ten common sense principles to frame the New Economy that we the people must now bring forth:

1. The proper purpose of an economy is to secure just, sustainable, and joyful livelihoods for all. This may come as something of a shock to Wall Street financiers who profit from financial bubbles, securities fraud, low wages, unemployment, foreign sweatshops, tax evasion, public subsidies, and monopoly pricing.

2. GDP is a measure of the economic cost of producing a given level of human well-being and happiness. In the economy, as in any well-run business, the goal should be to minimize cost, not maximize it.

3. A rational reallocation of real resources can reduce the human burden on the Earth’s biosphere and simultaneously improve the health and happiness of all. The Wall Street economy wastes enormous resources on things that actually reduce the quality of our lives— war, automobile dependence, suburban sprawl, energy-inefficient buildings, financial speculation, advertising, incarceration for minor, victimless crimes. The most important step toward bringing ourselves into balance with the biosphere is to eliminate the things that are bad for our health and happiness.

4. Markets allocate efficiently only within a framework of appropriate rules to maintain competition, cost internalization, balanced trade, domestic investment, and equality. These are essential conditions for efficient market function. Without rules, a market economy quickly morphs into a system of corporate monopolies engaged in suppressing wages, exporting jobs, collecting public subsidies, poisoning air, land, and water, expropriating resources, corrupting democracy, and a host of other activities that represent an egregiously inefficient and unjust distribution of resources.

5. A proper money system roots the power to create and allocate money in people and communities in order to facilitate the creation of livelihoods and ecologically balanced community wealth. Money properly serves life, not the reverse. Wall Street uses money to consolidate its power to expropriate the real wealth of the rest of the society. Main Street uses money to connect underutilized resources with unmet needs. Public policy properly favors Main Street.

6. Money, which is easily created with a simple accounting entry, should never be the deciding constraint in making public resource allocation decisions. This is particularly obvious in the case of economic recessions or depressions, which occur when money fails to flow to where it is needed to put people to work producing essential goods and services. If money is the only lack, then make the accounting entry and get on with it.

7. Speculation, the inflation of financial bubbles, risk externalization, the extraction of usury, and the use of creative accounting to create money from nothing, unrelated to the creation of anything of real value, serve no valid social purpose. The Wall Street corporations that engage in these activities are not in the business of contributing to the creation of real community wealth. They are in the business of expropriating it, a polite term for theft. They should be regulated or taxed out of existence.

8. Greed is not a virtue; sharing is not a sin. If your primary business purpose is not to serve the community, you have no business being in business.

9. The only legitimate reason for government to issue a corporate charter extending special privileges favoring a particular enterprise is to serve a clearly defined public purpose. That purpose should be clearly stated in the corporate charter and be subject to periodic review.

10. Public policy properly favors local investors and businesses dedicated to creating community wealth over investors and businesses that come only to extract it. The former are most likely to be investors and businesses with strong roots in the communities in which they do business. We properly favor them.

------------------
David Korten is co-founder and board chair of YES! Magazine, co-chair of the New Economy Working Group, president of the People-Centered Development Forum, and a founding board member of the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies (BALLE). His books include Agenda for a New Economy: From Phantom Wealth to Real Wealth, The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community, and the international best seller When Corporations Rule the World.

(Originally posted by Bluegill on Sept. 6, 2010)

Live together or die alone.

Will work for something real.

For Labor Day, a thoughtful piece about economic development from YES! Magazine's David Korten, reprinted in its entirety under a Creative Commons license.

10 Common Sense Principles for a New Economy
It’s time we the people declare our independence from the money-favoring Wall Street economy.

by David Korten

I find hope in the fact that millions of people the world over are seeing through the moral and practical fallacies underlying the Wall Street economy and-—by contributing to the creation of a New Economy--are taking charge of their economic lives.

Here are ten common sense principles to frame the New Economy that we the people must now bring forth:

1. The proper purpose of an economy is to secure just, sustainable, and joyful livelihoods for all. This may come as something of a shock to Wall Street financiers who profit from financial bubbles, securities fraud, low wages, unemployment, foreign sweatshops, tax evasion, public subsidies, and monopoly pricing.

2. GDP is a measure of the economic cost of producing a given level of human well-being and happiness. In the economy, as in any well-run business, the goal should be to minimize cost, not maximize it.

3. A rational reallocation of real resources can reduce the human burden on the Earth’s biosphere and simultaneously improve the health and happiness of all. The Wall Street economy wastes enormous resources on things that actually reduce the quality of our lives— war, automobile dependence, suburban sprawl, energy-inefficient buildings, financial speculation, advertising, incarceration for minor, victimless crimes. The most important step toward bringing ourselves into balance with the biosphere is to eliminate the things that are bad for our health and happiness.

4. Markets allocate efficiently only within a framework of appropriate rules to maintain competition, cost internalization, balanced trade, domestic investment, and equality. These are essential conditions for efficient market function. Without rules, a market economy quickly morphs into a system of corporate monopolies engaged in suppressing wages, exporting jobs, collecting public subsidies, poisoning air, land, and water, expropriating resources, corrupting democracy, and a host of other activities that represent an egregiously inefficient and unjust distribution of resources.

5. A proper money system roots the power to create and allocate money in people and communities in order to facilitate the creation of livelihoods and ecologically balanced community wealth. Money properly serves life, not the reverse. Wall Street uses money to consolidate its power to expropriate the real wealth of the rest of the society. Main Street uses money to connect underutilized resources with unmet needs. Public policy properly favors Main Street.

6. Money, which is easily created with a simple accounting entry, should never be the deciding constraint in making public resource allocation decisions. This is particularly obvious in the case of economic recessions or depressions, which occur when money fails to flow to where it is needed to put people to work producing essential goods and services. If money is the only lack, then make the accounting entry and get on with it.

7. Speculation, the inflation of financial bubbles, risk externalization, the extraction of usury, and the use of creative accounting to create money from nothing, unrelated to the creation of anything of real value, serve no valid social purpose. The Wall Street corporations that engage in these activities are not in the business of contributing to the creation of real community wealth. They are in the business of expropriating it, a polite term for theft. They should be regulated or taxed out of existence.

8. Greed is not a virtue; sharing is not a sin. If your primary business purpose is not to serve the community, you have no business being in business.

9. The only legitimate reason for government to issue a corporate charter extending special privileges favoring a particular enterprise is to serve a clearly defined public purpose. That purpose should be clearly stated in the corporate charter and be subject to periodic review.

10. Public policy properly favors local investors and businesses dedicated to creating community wealth over investors and businesses that come only to extract it. The former are most likely to be investors and businesses with strong roots in the communities in which they do business. We properly favor them.

------------------
David Korten is co-founder and board chair of YES! Magazine, co-chair of the New Economy Working Group, president of the People-Centered Development Forum, and a founding board member of the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies (BALLE). His books include Agenda for a New Economy: From Phantom Wealth to Real Wealth, The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community, and the international best seller When Corporations Rule the World.

Labor Day screeching, and Labor Day reading.

The first part of the transgendered professor's Labor Day screed are the words of Samuel Gompers, and as we've come to expect, Ms. Denschak makes no effort to attribute them.

Just for the fun of it, here's a section of the Wikipedia article on Gompers.

He joined Local 15 of the Cigarmakers' International Union in 1864, and was elected president of Local 144 in 1875. He was elected second vice-president of the international union in 1886, and first vice-president in 1896. He served in this capacity until his death. In 1877, the union nearly collapsed. Gompers and his friend Adolph Strasser used Local 144 as a base to rebuild the Cigarmakers' Union, introducing a high dues structure and implementing programs to pay out-of-work benefits, sick benefits, and death benefits for union members in good standing. He told the workers they needed to organize because wage reductions were almost a daily occurrence. The capitalists were only interested in profits, "and the time has come when we must assert our rights as workingmen. Every one present has the sad experience, that we are powerless in an isolated condition, while the capitalists are united; therefore it is the duty of every Cigar Maker to join the organization. ... One of the main objects of the organization," he concluded, "is the elevation of the lowest paid worker to the standard of the highest, and in time we may secure for every person in the trade an existence worthy of human beings."

Whoa -- sounds damned near Commie to me.