Cds You Should Own: The Move ANTHOLOGY 1966-1972

The Move had to be one of the very best UK pop bands of the 60's that had absolutely no success whatsoever in the United States despite a string of successful singles in the UK. The membership of the band that included members like Jeff Lynne and Roy Wood in the late days of The Move became far better known as The Electric Light Orchestra. The Move ANTHOLOGY 1966-1972 is an excellent collection of the early nucleus of what would become ELO during the years when The Beatles, The Hollies, The Rolling Stones and other pop groups were kings of the UK charts.

The Move Anthology includes not only hit singles such as an alternate version of "Night Of Fear" which hit #2 on the UK charts, but three versions of "Fire Brigade" which was a #3 UK chart hit as well as all 12 of their career singles. Even included is The Move's version of "Do Ya" which also became an ELO hit as well.

It is interesting to hear the later material begin to evolve into the Electric Light Orchestra's roots. The band goes from a Beatleslike act around 1966 to 1968 into the unique sound that became ELO. It's quite a ride as this band finally found their ultimate identity.

This awesome four disc box set includes 62 songs, including many rare unreleased tracks and live tracks. It's certainly a great package by a terribly under-rated UK act that was virtually unknown to many in the U.S. and certainly worth owning. This 2008 UK release package is an opportunity to hear the early roots of ELO as well as one of the greatest UK pop acts of all time.

With 31 previously unreleased tracks, comprising half of the length of this entire box set package, this 40th Anniversary item includes one of the best box set books ever. The exhaustive details about each track and about their albums as well as singles is sure to please any fan of this band as well as even the curious listener who just wants to purchase a great Cd box set of a significant UK 60's pop band. The $36.97 list price for this box set also seems rather reasonable for the large amount of great packaging and music and the nice booklet included. Only the Cd mounting system for the four discs seems rather cumbersome to remove the discs as the only real negative item here. Otherwise this is sure one great Cd package.

The New Look In Union Busting, And Tax-Free Too!

Frito-Lay, a major Northwest snack manufacturer of potato nand corn chips had a large baking facility in Vancouver, Washington, that was unionized paying workers $16.96 an hour plus health, vacation and retirement benefit. Then suddenly in April 2008, the union jobs were suddenly terminated as jobs were then outsourced to a nonunion mystery source paying just $8 a hour with no benefits.

Drivers for the the Teamsters Union found out that this mystery nonunion outsourcing operation turned out to be DePaul Industries in North Portland, Oregon , a claimed nonprofit labor outsourcing business that earns $20 million dollars a year tax free. DePaul Industries was founded by a grant from from the Catholic charity, the St. Vincent DePaul Society which closed thrift stores and other fund raising projects to help the poor, with the mission of DePaul Industries to supposedly give employment to persons with disabilities. Instead, this nontaxable business instead scavenges higher paying union jobs and hires workers at less than half the wages and without benefits.

And even worse for this business founded by Catholic charity funds, strong arm tactics including firing employees who simply signed union cards with the intention of wanting to become union members for better working condition or wages has been common place at DePaul Industries.

In one case, an African American employee who attempted to unionize DePaul Industries was angrily fired by two managers, one shouting out racist statements. Hardly the sort of conduct one would expect from an organization founded with Catholic charity funds to supposedly help persons who are down and out due to disabilities.

The fact of the matter is that some big business lobby organizations such as the one run by the U.S. Chamber Of Commerce have spent millions of dollars to air ads and a misinformation campaign to oppose the Employee Free Choice Act which would have allowed exploited handicapped employees such as those at Depaul Industries to become union members simply by signing cards stating that they wish for a union to represent them. At DePaul Industries, a number of employees who simply signed these union intention cards have been fired by the company.

The racist abuse of the fired employee at Depaul Industries as well as the firings of other Depaul employees for merely signing union intention cards is typical of the abuses of employees who labor in the absence of job protections that the Employee Free Choice Act would offer.

Employees at Depaul Industries are supposed to be handicapped, yet have in the past become major sources of labor for potentially hazardous work duty such as some truck assembly for truck builder Freightliner or soldering work for electronics companies, which involves work around lead and lead fumes or machinery. Yet this claimed nonprofit organization can continue to pay no taxes, and uses outrageous firings of any who advocate for union representation and improvement of working conditions or wages.

DePaul Industries is a pretty good case example of why the Employee Free Choice Act needs to become law. Only if this current Congress finally passes this bill, would some of the worst of employee and manager abuses against workers who seek to improve their workplaces improve.

To say that handicapped workers are exploited at DePaul Industries, which also takes away good paying union jobs from other employers as they outsource to this enterprise is to say the very least here. High paying factory jobs disappear to a professional outsourcing company like DePaul Industries, ruining the American middle class which was created through high paying union jobs, and instead creating a lower class of underpaid workers living near the poverty level. That's hardly a godly mission for an organization supposedly founded by a church run charity to help the handicapped. That's mere labor exploitation.

Fiat Offers High Risk Moves During Global Recession

If anything, you have to give the management of Fiat some real respect for being so gutsy during this global recession. Other Italian brands such as Italjet have gone out of business and sold their assets to an Indian company. And Italian motorcycle maker Benelli allowed a Chinese brand to buy in on their company. By contrast Fiat not only will buy in on Chrysler, but is looking to buy GM's European operations which include the UK's Vauxhall brand, Germany's Opel, and the Swedish Saab brand. While other Italian auto or motorcycle brands are retreating economically, Fiat is bidding on a major gamble to boost it's annual vehicle sales to over $100 billion a year. That's pretty brave during a major world recession.

If Fiat's big economic gamble succeeds, they will exit this recession as one of the largest automobile manufacturing groups in the world, while other brands such as GM, Ford and Chrysler lost a great deal of market share and ground economically. India's TaTa Motors is another international automaker on the move with new models and having acquired both the Land Rover and Jaguar car line from Ford.

During a major recession, a few companies with real guts can emerge as major players, while others will suffer and could even go out of business. Will Fiat's huge gamble succeed? Only time will tell.

Speaking of real guts, dig this way cool concept ride from Fiat. Nothing very conservative there.

Representative Barney Frank Will Introduce Legislation To Overturn Three Year Old Republican Internet Gambling Ban

Representative Bary Frank(D-MA) who is the Chairman of the Financial Service Committee in the House will introduce legislation to overturn the Internet gambling ban put in place by the Bush Administration and the Republican majority in Congress at the time. Republicans who have a poor record on individual rights and civil liberties inserted language into a port security bill three years ago, making credit card transactions by consenting adults who wish to play in international gambling illegal. This led to several arrests of American executives of companies involved in Internet gambling.

My own personal opinion is that gambling is not really a good thing. However, in a free society, Republican legislators, often acting on behalf of religious right interests who are opposed to gambling, put such language into law as an expression of writing their own religious beliefs into law. Like many Republican oriented religious beliefs, opposing Internet gambling for all persons is a violation of the individual freedom of adults to choose how to spend their own money. even if gambling itself is not really a real positive influence. However, most adults who choose to gamble do so as only a fun outlet. Only a few persons have problems with gambling. And credit card companies put limits on the amount that one can spend.

Since this Republican legislation has been in effect, it has also greatly impacted the ability of friends of neighbors to use money transfer services to help out friends of neighbors using cash transfer services such as Moneygram or Western Union who have overreacted out of fear to this Republican trampling on individual rights.

The problem is that the Republican philosophy wants to control what Americans are allowed to do or how they can spend their money from cradle to grave. This party of big and intrusive government seems to know no bounds in controlling the personal behavior of Americans. Barney Frank is taking a big step in favor of civil liberties to attempt to roll back at least part of this big intrusion of government in the private lives of Americans by supporting this legislation, and deserves to be applauded for his actions.

One major difference between the two political parties is if Democrats would continue to take a strong stand for individual rights, while the Republicans continue to take strong stands against civil liberties. Nothing could better illustrate which is the true party of big government than this.

Internet poker games or fun games are popular throughout much of the world. However, in the U.S. a few religious right legislators have imposed their will to stop these fun games by citizens. Doesn't this party know no bounds in unreasonable meddling into private lives of the citizens?

The Unfulfilled Promise Of Jack Kemp

Sadly this weekend, Jack Kemp, the former football player, turned congressman, turned 1996 GOP vice presidential running mate sadly lost his brave battle with cancer. Kemp was always an honorable and decent man of high integrity. He was also part of a vanishing breed of mainstream conservatives which are disappearing faster from the Republican Party faster than the dinosaurs.

Kemp's low tax, supply side economics became a hallmark of the Reagan presidency. If anything, this proved that government can provide a temporary stimulus to the economy by several different means, either boosting spending on projects or by a temporary cut in taxes. However, the history of this tax cut only provided a few boom years and weren't enough to maintain a strong economy during the George H.W. Bush Administration. Bush became a one-term president when the economy hit the skids during his administration, The fact of the matter is that Kemp's short-sighted approach to economics would only provide a temporary economic boost to the country. There was no real plan to provide for a long range economic growth or expansion of the economy in the plan. Yet, even today many in the Republican Party still cling to this short-sighted economic view.

Just like his own brand of short-sighted economics of which the truth was that really was very little substance actually there, Kemp was always something of a disappointment as well. At one time some fans of Kemp even attempted to brand him as some sort of a GOP version of "John Kennedy". Unfortunately Kemp was nowhere near as substantial as these beliefs of some of his fans. In his ill-fated run for vice president with Robert Dole in 1996, Kemp turned out to be a real political lightweight compared to even Al Gore in the debates as well as on the campaign trail. And Kemp wasn't above saying more than few goofy things once in a while, which made you wonder if he simply lacked good judgement, or whether he was something of a kook. The unfortunate truth might well be that Kemp was actually a little of both things.

Kemp did have a real and genuine sense of compassion towards both minorities and immigrants that you don't always see as a major trait in many GOP candidates. And as HUD Secretary, Kemp did offer up a few positive changes as well as commitment to keep the programs basically intact and certainly did not attempt to completely dismantle the agency or ax many programs as some Republican HUD officials might be inclined to do. Quite the opposite, Kemp's plans to increase home ownership by low income persons were perhaps his finest of moments, although both the White House Budget Director Richard Darman as well Congress both either opposed these proposals, and only allowed Kemp a fraction of the $4 billion he sought to fund these proposals. In the end, Kemp only was awarded $361 million for the HOPE project(Home-ownership And Opportunity For People Everywhere). Kemp's further plans to improve inner city economic conditions with some sort of economic empowerment zones also suffered in budget battles with Richard Darman as well with the competing costs of the Gulf War. Like all classic "guns vs. butter" fights, guns usually win out at the expense of more butter.

Kemp wasn't a huge success as HUD head partially due to economic constraints put on his spending plans both inside the Bush White House as well as by Congress. Further, his economic empowerment ideas never seemed to really work as well as Kemp had envisioned either, but the lower level of funding could have been part of the problem as well. But Kemp did stand out as a mainstream conservative who did at least offer some fresh new GOP answers to some of old War On Poverty programs of the Lyndon Johnson era.

The ill-fated Dole/Kemp 1996 ticket was a strange marriage of two GOP politicians who did not entirely see eye-to-eye on many things, especially many economic issues. Dole was never a fan of many of Kemp's HUD spending proposals or projects, and the two formed a far less than ideal or perfect ticket where both awkwardly attempted to seem in sync with other, but not really. The Dole-Kemp ticket fared poorly against the stronger economy with Bill Clinton, that seemed to give Clinton enough cover with most voters to overlook his character shortcomings. Kemp just wasn't as impressive of a GOP candidate on a national ticket as many had hoped.

Despite plenty of shortcomings, Kemp at least offered some fresh approaches to poverty issues not normally seen in many Republican candidates, and if only his HUD proposals had more funding, then perhaps they might have worked out better than they actually did.

Kemp was a little bit of unfulfilled potential. He was a pretty good advocate of a few new ideas, although many even in his own party did not always support them. He probably wasn't exactly as good as presidential material as many of Republicans might have thought Kemp to be either. His voice seemed to wilt during the 1996 campaign, where he was really little real help to Robert Dole, who only seemed too much like some cranky old man compared to the much younger President Clinton. It was hardly a fair race at all.

Kemp shouldn't be remembered so well for his shortcomings, as much as he was a voice for a Republican alternative version to some traditional Democratic compassion issues. And Kemp seemed to be a strong advocate for fairness and economic equality for those in poverty stricken minority communities.

Kemp's desire to put many low income people in homes, or to improve the economic climate of many ghetto inner city areas by putting people into business might have been very noble goals. But the reality was really very success stories.

It was actually far more difficult to make poverty stricken members of an inner city community into business operators than Kemp had ever dreamed. Providing jobs and business opportunities to an inner city population seemed far less successful than many minority persons simply leaving that community and living in other parts of the city where safer housing and better jobs existed. More integration of minorities seemed to do far more than some of Kemp's proposals by far. Kemp was largely idealistic, and not really always entirely realistic in some of his views.

But Kemp should be best remembered as the sort of Republican that brought respect to his party, and stands as a sharp contrast to some like Rush Limbaugh or Sarah Palin of today, both of which are sharp-tongued as well as short on fresh ideas. Kemp was never without new ideas, or a reasonable tone when he spoke. Compared to the shrillness of some today, that was pretty responsible. Jack Kemp also never really turned out to be the Republican "John Kennedy" other than some hair resemblance. But he was a still a far more decent GOP leader than some today. And that's certainly saying a great deal in favor of Jack Kemp. God bless him and give comfort to his family in their hour of sorrow.

Union Workers Spend Big Money At Retailers Who Hire Nonunion Workers

One unfortunate fact is that union members often spend large amounts of cash at retailers who hire few union workers. Fred Meyer stores, which originate in the Pacific Northwest, for years had a stellar reputation as one of the best unionized retailers around. However, in recent years since the company was acquired by Kroger, the retailer has been slow to provide new union jobs even after workers vote to unionize. Kroger is also now known for hiring cheaper construction workers from free Craigslist ads who would work for just $12 an hour doing remodeling in their stores.

In The Dalles, Oregon, non-food Fred Meyer workers voted to unionize way back in November of 2007, however Kroger management has found ways to slow down progress for workers attaining their first contract. Voting to unionize seems to mean little these days when companies can hire professional labor law firms with experience in preventing workers from unionizing, even after they freely voted to unionize. Some law firms specialize in using Bush Administration era loopholes to delay or prevent onioning by workers who have already voted to unionize. During the Bush Administration, Robert Batista, a lawyer with extensive work with anti-union law firms was appointed by Bush to head the National Labor Relations Board. Batista helped to really weaken the rights of workers to unionize.

Sadly, while union workers will spend large amounts of money at retailers like Fred Meyer, the cae of hiring the $12 an hour nonunion workers from Craigslist to do construction work is way too common of a story. More professional union workers who earn $30 an hour plus $13 am hour in total benefits could probably complete construction on stores at a much faster pace with far more professional results, however Kroger is willing to bet that cheaper less professional nonunion workers can probably produce acceptable results even if the job takes longer, the work less professional or some workers even get injured on the job thanks to unprofessional safety standards compared to better unionized workers. The members of the Harrison Health and Welfare Trust, just one large union that provides medical benefits spend $800,000 a year in prescriptions at Fred Meyer pharmacies for example. And with other union members buying prescriptions at Fred Meyer pharmacies, this figure of total spending far exceeds $1 million a year that union members spend at Fred Meyer pharmacies. When the added value of all union members spending on groceries, nonfood items such as electronics, etc. is added in, union members steer millions of dollars a year in added cash flow to Fred Meyer, yet the parent company,Kroger chooses to use free ads in Craigslist to hire the cheapest possible labor to do work on their stores, and delays union membership to workers who have voted to unionize.

This is part of the problem for American labor, the higher wage jobs allow the workers to spend more on goods, and to reinvest their wages in the companies they work for, even while some companies such as Kroger seek to weaken union workforces and lower wages. at Kroger, their own brand of economic stimulus to improve their company works in reverse. They want to spend less in wages, and seem content to accept lower cash flow back in return. It all makes no sense.

New Fiat Designed Chrysler Products May Be Available In About 18 Months

With the Chrysler bankruptcy and reorganization taking place at break-neck pace in a federal courtroom, new Fiat designed Chrysler products might be available to public in as little as 18 months. Under the terms being worked out, the UAW workers union will get a 55% share in ownership of the company, the federal government 8%, and governments in Canada and Ontario both will get 2% ownership shares. Fiat will get a 20% share in the company, but that might eventually rise to a total 41% share if the government get paid back for their bailout funds.

Fiat has always had very serious marketing difficulties in North America, so this new bid to become part owner of Chrysler and revamp their car line with more fuel efficient models, will also give Fiat an opportunity to market their imported cars that do very well in Europe in sales. It will give both Chrysler a second chance to succeed as well as Fiat a second chance to improve their U.S. marketing.

Just like the mid70's when Chrysler marketed too many larger cars that got poor fuel mileage and their sales suffered and the company nearly went under for the first time requiring a government bailout, this latest crisis for Chrysler came from marketing too many larger cars, SUVs and trucks with poor mileage just when gas prices spiked a few months ago as well as the recession taking a huge bite out of Chrysler sales. During both of these crisis moments for Chrysler, the company was totally unprepared for the current market conditions, and had the wrong sorts of vehicles to market in a market hostile to larger vehicles with poor mileage.

The tiny Fiat 500 could be one of the first Fiat models to be sold in the U.S. once problems with safety and air pollution emissions are solved for the American market. The model is even smaller than the very popular BMW designed Mini Cooper cars sold here. And America seems to have a love affair for retro-styled cars, of which this latest 500 model is a new version of a longtime classic model once sold by Fiat.