UNDERNEWS January 5, 2000 Free-range journalism from Washington's most unofficial source ----------------------------------------------------- THE PROGRESSIVE REVIEW Editor: Sam Smith 1312 18th St NW #502, Washington DC 20036 202-835-0770 Fax: 835-0779 E-MAIL: [EMAIL PROTECTED] PROGRESSIVE REVIEW INDEX: http://www.prorev.com/ UNDERNEWS: http://www.prorev.com/indexa.htm SUBSCRIBE: Reply with "subscribe" as subject UNSUBSCRIBE: Reply with 'unsubscribe' as subject ----------------------------------------------------- WORD There's a difference between populism and liberalism. Populism means listening to the people and hearing what they have to say. Liberalism says, "The people are idiots; let's find out what the experts think." -- Jay Waljasper, Utne Reader STROKE OF PEN The Labor Department's announcement that employers are liable for the home safety of telecommuters makes millions of workers vulnerable to intrusion by corporations, insurance companies, and the government. Even by the Clinton administration practice of ignoring normal democratic procedures whenever convenient, the move was extraordinary as it consisted of neither an executive order nor a properly issued regulation. Rather, OSHA claimed it was simply applying existing law: WASHINGTON POST: The advisory is not a proposed rule, but rather a declaration of existing policy the agency deems already to be in effect. Although the advisory does not provide specifics, in effect it means that employers are responsible for making sure an employee has ergonomically correct furniture, such as chairs and computer tables, as well as proper lighting, heating, cooling and ventilation systems in the home office . . . [OSHA] is not requiring employees to routinely inspect the home work sites of their employees. But the advisory does hold employers responsible for any illnesses or injuries that office in the home workplace. SARAH LUECK, WALL STREET JOURNAL: Facing a loud outcry from business groups, Labor Secretary Alexis Herman quickly retreated from any broad interpretation of a recent Occupational Safety and Health Administration notice that would hold employers responsible for the safety and health of employees working at home . . . "The federal government has neither the desire nor the resources to investigate private homes," she said . . . Critics said OSHA's interpretation of current rules would unfairly require businesses to monitor employees' homes -- a costly undertaking that some consider an invasion of privacy. They also said it would discourage employers from approving increasingly popular "telecommuting" arrangements that allow workers to stay home with their families and communicate with their offices by computer. "This is a step toward having the safety police run our homes," said Rudy Lewis, president of the National Association of Home Based Businesses, in Owings Mills, Md. "It could mean that if I have telecommuters working for me, I have to worry about whether their children have left a toy out where my employee might trip over it. ... Next thing you know, employers and federal inspectors will be telling workers how to arrange their furniture at home for the perfect work environment." EUGENE SCALIA, WALL STREET JOURNAL: Everyone agrees that employers cannot skirt their safety and health obligations by sending employees home to do dangerous work, like mixing hazardous chemicals. But what makes OSHA's new policy so surprising is the agency's eagerness to regulate not just circumvention schemes and especially hazardous activities, but everyday conditions in American homes. "Ensuring safe and healthful working conditions . . . should be a precondition for any home-based work assignments," the advisory states. One effective means of discharging this responsibility is "periodic safety checks of employee work spaces," the advisory declares. "In some circumstances the exercise of reasonable diligence may necessitate an on-site examination." VIN SUPRYNOWICZ, MOUNTAIN MEDIA: All disclaimers aside, this is precisely a first extension of the government's slimy tentacles into the business of having someone inspect "home work stations," where everything from locked exit doors and heaps of papers (fire hazards, you understand) to the presence of smoking materials, "unsecured" self-defense firearms, and the kind of reading material or home hobby equipment that might raise a curious agent's eyebrow, will be duly noted. (Furs and fancy cars? IRS might be interested. Bruises on the kids? Inform Child Protection. Hispanic nanny? Memo INS. Grow lights on the aquarium? Wonder what else they might be growing?) LAND OF THE FREE ASSOCIATED PRESS, FORT LAUDERDALE, FL: A 9-year-old boy was handcuffed by a sheriff's deputy who spotted him riding his bicycle without a helmet after officials say the deputy told him to wear one. Palm Beach County sheriff's officials say the incident, captured on videotaped Saturday, does not warrant an internal investigation and are backing the deputy. WE'VE TRIED THIS ALREADY AND IT DOESN’T WORK SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST: Cynical voters have elected a eunuch as mayor in a central Indian town in the hope of improving civic services. Besides the mayor, Kamala Jaan, three other eunuchs have been elected as councillors of Katni town in Madhya Pradesh. Voters said that as male councillors had been useless, they had given eunuchs a chance to run the municipality. During campaigning in Katni, the four eunuchs promised better roads, drainage and sewerage and clean drinking water . . . Some defeated candidates have, however, questioned the constitutional validity of eunuchs contesting elections and occupying public office. SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST http://www.scmp.com/News/Asia/Article/FullText_asp_ArticleID-200001050322167 66.asp THE STATE OF AFRICA INTERNATIONAL TRIBUNAL ON AFRICA: Today, half of the African people are living on less than one dollar per day. If things continue to deteriorate, the African continent will be further ravaged by poverty. Murderous wars and conflicts -- which are developing one after the other and affect over half the countries in Africa today -- bestow upon the African continent untold tragedy and suffering. Because of these wars and conflicts, hundreds of thousands of civilians have been killed or uprooted. There are officially 6 million refugees, and 12 million others wander from one side of the continent to the other with only poverty and death as their future. The destruction of industry and of the infrastructure across the continent is being accelerated. The peoples of the towns and countryside are faced with mass unemployment. The only future offered to youth is poverty or the armed gangs that are tearing the African continent apart. (There are officially over 300,000 child soldiers.) . . . Poverty, economic collapse, and disintegration are first and foremost the result of the burden of the foreign debt payment. The figures are no secret: the global amount of the debt of the African continent totals $350 billion; the yearly payment on "debt" service alone by African countries is $33 billion. This so-called "debt" is mainly the accumulation of the debt service. The debt service on the public debt in Cote d'Ivoire (Ivory Coast), for example, accounts for $3.7 billion of the $6 billion owed. We must stop this bleeding of the resources of the African continent. Taken as a whole, the debt service payments of the African states are four times higher than the combined budgets for education and health care. In 1997, Niger and Ethiopia had to use half their budgets to pay the debt service. Zambia used 44% of its budget, and Malawi used 35% of its budget. Fifty percent of export income is devoted to the payment of the "debt." A recent study by the World Bank shows that if the amount of money allotted to "debt" repayment had been used for real development, the yearly income per capita in a country like Zambia would have reached $10,000 dollars, instead of the $600 dollars today. INTERNATIONAL TRIBUNAL ON AFRICA mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]. THE FREE TRADE SCAM GEORGE MONBIOT, GUARDIAN: The Transatlantic Economic Partnership is a slower and subtler creature than the World Trade Organization or the MAI. One by one it aims to pull down the "regulatory barriers" impeding the free exchange of goods and services between Europe and America. What this will mean in practice is that once a product has been approved in one part of the new trading bloc, it must be accepted everywhere. If the US government, for example, decides that injecting cattle with growth hormones is safe, Europe will have to adopt that as its regulatory standard. The master plan is now falling into place. A greatly expanded Europe will form part of a single trading bloc with the US, Canada and Mexico, whose markets have already been integrated by means of the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA. NAFTA will grow to engulf all the Americas and the Caribbean. The Senate has already passed a bill (the Africa Growth and Opportunity Act) forcing African countries to accept NAFTA terms of trade. Russia and most of Asia are being dragged into line by the International Monetary Fund. Before long, in other words, only a minority of nations will lie outside a legally harmonized neo-liberal world order, and they will swiftly find themselves obliged to join. By the time the world trade agreement is ready to be re-negotiated, it will be irrelevant, for the WTO's job will already have been done. The world will consist of a single deregulated market, controlled by multinational companies, in which no robust law intended to protect the environment or human rights will be allowed to survive. CULTURE OF IMPUNITY BLOOMBERG NEWS: President Bill Clinton will join the New York investment firm Lazard Freres following the end of his presidency in January 2001, Washingtonian Magazine reported, citing unnamed sources. Clinton would be paid a salary of $8 million with $2 million in possible bonuses and he'd join his friend Vernon Jordan who became senior managing director at Lazard Freres in January and may have helped arrange a post for Clinton, the magazine said. LOCAL HERO REP. RALPH REGULA, an Ohio Republican, who attached a paragraph to a later approved bill that forbade a couple of dozen federal agencies except in emergencies to use federal funds to answer their phones with machines during "core business hours" unless they offer the option of reaching a live bureaucrat on the line. ------------------------------------------------ For a free trial subscription to UNDERNEWS send your postal address with zip code. Copyright 2000, The Progressive Review. Matter not independently copyrighted may be reprinted provided TPR is paid your normal reprint fees, if any, and is given proper credit. Because of its quantity, TPR's mail is not always answered, but it is always read. The editor is cheered or remorseful as appropriate and posts some of the more interesting messages at http://www.prorev.com/letters.htm. * * * * * * * * * * THE PROGRESSIVE REVIEW 1312 18th St NW (5th Floor) Washington DC 20036 202-835-0770 Fax: 202-835-0779 [EMAIL PROTECTED] Editor: Sam Smith INDEX : http://prorev.com RECENT UNDERNEWS : http://prorev.com/indexa.htm TODAY'S HEADLINES: http://prorev.com/altnews.htm THE REVIEW FORUM: http://prorev.com/letters.htm For a free trial subscription to both our bi-monthly hard copy edition and our regular e-mail updates send your e-mail and terrestrial address to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To order "Sam Smith's Great American Political Repair Manual" (WW Norton): http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0393316270/progressiverevieA/
