A few years ago, one of the things the SEIU's Andy Stern talked about was moving away from employer-based health insurance and allowing contract workers to purchase insurance through their union. I thought that was a pretty good idea. It would be one way to help people like this:

Over the past decade, U.S. businesses increasingly have relied on contract workers as a way to keep a lid on health care and retirement benefit costs and to give them more flexibility to adjust payrolls as conditions change. Now, with the American economy flashing code red, companies from Wall Street to Silicon Valley are casting off temporary workers and freelancers left and right, typically without any severance pay.

While the ability to shed contingent workers helps protect corporate profits, economists say it's a net negative for the economy. That's because while companies may save on labor costs, they aren't likely to use those savings to boost investment with the economy so weak, preferring instead to rebuild their balance sheets.

Meanwhile, the people who lose their jobs will be forced to cut spending drastically, particularly because many of them earn below-average pay and thus have little savings to fall back on. The overall result is a decrease in demand, further depressing the economy. Says Dimitri B. Papadimitriou, president of the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y.: "Clearly there is a macroeconomic impact. It begs the question of what our social safety net is all about."

[...] Here in the U.S., the cutbacks of temporary workers mean the labor market is in much worse shape than the headline 8.5 percent jobless figure for March would suggest. Throw in part-timers who would like to work more and unemployed workers who have given up their job search, and you come up with a jobless rate closer to 15.6 percent, according to one measure buried in the Bureau of Labor Statistics' monthly Employment Situation report.

"The numbers are astounding," says Beth Shulman, an analyst with the Russell Sage Foundation, a New York-based social science research group. "These workers, often at the lower end of the pay scale, are losing hours, income, and benefits. That only worsens the recession."

NiemanWatchDog:

Her son is on his second deployment in Iraq, where his military camp recently burned to the ground as a result of an electrical fire. Mary Hornig thinks journalists should be asking if anyone is going to do anything about shoddy contracting - and whether there is any limit to what will be asked of the armed forces.

Q. Who has responsibility for shoddy contracting resulting in electrocutions and fires on military sites in Iraq? Where is the accountability? Why are our servicemen and women risking injury and dying in showers and housing units in Iraq?
Q. Will Halliburton contractors continue to be awarded electrical contracts based on past sub-par performance?

Q. Will military personnel be compensated for their losses resulting from electrical fires and if so, at what percentage of their losses?

Read on

Supporting the troops is just another Republican talking point.

Most of the time, the conservative culture-war efforts are simply annoying. Some far-right activists will try some stunt, it’ll fail in the courts, and the rest of us can focus our attention on real problems.

But it’s much harder to tolerate conservative intolerance when national security is at stake.

This morning’s Christian Science Monitor reports that the Army is preparing to offer a staggering $150,000 retention bonus to service members who are proficient in Arabic, “in reflection of how critical it has become for the US military to retain native language and cultural know-how in its ranks.” Indeed, as the war in Iraq goes on, and the military subsequently finds fewer and fewer people anxious for extended stays in the desert, retaining trained troops is becoming a critical centerpiece of many commanders’ strategies. The supply of Arabic speakers just isn’t keeping up with the demand created by ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“The military’s conventional language training program, the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, Calif., could not churn out enough American soldiers proficient in Arabic, Kurdish, Dari, Pashtu, and Farsi, and the military quickly turned to private contractors to fill the gap,” reporter Gordon Lubold writes. “Numerous programs have sprouted up, including one at Fort Lewis, Wash., where soldiers are given a 10-month immersion program in language and culture.”

The Army is taking almost every step imaginable — from six-figure bonuses to civilian interpreters in the warzone to recruitment campaigns targeting Arab-American communities — to beef up its language capability.

Well, almost every step imaginable. While the military is searching desperately, and willing to pay enormous sums for those proficient in Arabic, the exact same military, at the exact same time, has driven 60 linguists who specialize in Arabic or Farsi out of the military because of their sexual orientation.

Republicans, including John McCain, think this makes sense. I have no idea why.

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Download | play Download | play (h/t Heather)

From Wednesday's Countdown, with guest host Rachel Maddow (MSNBC, for pity's sake, give this woman a show already!), we give you the latest in the never-ending list of scandals that is the Bush administration:

First up, the truth that proves the lie that the private sector handles government functions more efficiently than the government could. Turns out, not so much...in fact there is currently a backlog of more than 900 cases languishing alleging federal contractors defrauding the federal government because the Justice Department could not keep pace with the number of whistleblowers coming forward.

"Even if no new cases are filed, it might take 10 years for the Department of Justice to clear its desk. Cases in the backlog represent a lot of money being left on the table," said Patrick Burns, a spokesman for Taxpayers Against Fraud, which advocates for Justice to receive more funding to support cases by whistle-blowers and their attorneys.

Supporters of federal intervention in the cases say the dividends are substantial: In recent years, verdicts and settlements have returned nearly $13 billion to the U.S. government.

And that's just for the 100 or so cases on average per year that Justice has been able to litigate. Forget Iraqi oil, seems like if the DoJ could actually keep pace with all the fraud, we could finance the Iraqi War with the proceeds, or at least put a significant chunk of the national debt away.

Next up is the disturbing variation of IOKIYAR where it turns out that military trainers arrived in Guantanamo for interrogation training with a class based entirely on a Chinese treatise on how to elicit propaganda fodder through torture of US troops during the Korean conflict. Maddow:

That chart was taken from an article called, “Communist Attempts To Elicit False Confessions From Air Force Prisoners of War.” This was a study of how the Chinese tortured propaganda fodder out of Americans in the Korean War. Prolonged standing, exposure to cold, all that ‘enhanced interrogation’ stuff? We called it torture when the Chinese did it to our guys in Korea. And we know it produces false confessions. So why are we using these techniques?

I hope that the administration remembers this before they work themselves up into any lather over mistreatment of our soldiers in the Middle East...we can hardly hold them to higher standards than we hold for ourselves. And finally, and most poetically, it turns out that the politicization and careful hiring practices of the DoJ, as described by Gonzales' protege Monica Goodling and Bradley Schlozman, has put the DoJ in a bit of a bind, because you see...it was illegal. And now who is left to represent the DoJ but those idiots who passed their ideology and partisan thresholds. Oops.

First Draft: How Karl Rove played politics while people drowned.

Our Future: The Department of Defense (DOD) now employs contractors to keep contractors in check in Iraq, under a new framework for war industry management solidified last month.

No Comment: Where's the Maher Arar report?

The KC Blue Blog: Attention values voters! Yet another Republican child molester added to the endless list of GOP criminals. Maybe asshats like this guy are part of the problem?

ANNALS OF JOURNALISM: National Conference for Media Reform in Minneapolis...One of the "smartest people" Fareed Zakaria knows...The incredible, shrinking newspapers...Hatred for sale...The press takes a look at the Strange World of Black People...Millionaire pundit values...Video and transcript of E&P's Greg Mitchell on Moyers last night...Rush says McSame isn't a real man...NPR's lazy, clueless coverage of Gitmo trials...Speaking of clueless coverage...

I think it would be wise to never "misunderestimate" George W. Bush. His time in office may be drawing to a close, but he appears to be determined to make sure his policies in Iraq stay intact far past his tenure. Yesterday, Patrick Cockburn in the Independent UK revealed that Bush had a plan to keep us in Iraq indefinitely, regardless of the result in November:

The terms of the impending deal, details of which have been leaked to The Independent, are likely to have an explosive political effect in Iraq. Iraqi officials fear that the accord, under which US troops would occupy permanent bases, conduct military operations, arrest Iraqis and enjoy immunity from Iraqi law, will destabilise Iraq's position in the Middle East and lay the basis for unending conflict in their country.

But the accord also threatens to provoke a political crisis in the US. President Bush wants to push it through by the end of next month so he can declare a military victory and claim his 2003 invasion has been vindicated. But by perpetuating the US presence in Iraq, the long-term settlement would undercut pledges by the Democratic presidential nominee, Barack Obama, to withdraw US troops if he is elected president in November.

The timing of the agreement would also boost the Republican candidate, John McCain, who has claimed the United States is on the verge of victory in Iraq – a victory that he says Mr Obama would throw away by a premature military withdrawal.

That's right, let's callously play with millions and millions of lives for some partisan advantage. The Iraqi government is understandably reticent to keep giving US forces carte blanche to destroy their country, so today, Cockburn has more:

The US is holding hostage some $50bn (£25bn) of Iraq's money in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York to pressure the Iraqi government into signing an agreement seen by many Iraqis as prolonging the US occupation indefinitely, according to information leaked to The Independent.

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The U.S. Attorney Purge scandal may be over, but the Bush administration hasn’t changed its habit of ridding itself of those guilty of independent thinking.

The battle over dioxin contamination in this economically stressed region [of Michigan] had been raging for years when a top Bush administration official turned up the pressure on Dow Chemical to clean it up.

On Thursday, following months of internal bickering over Mary Gade’s interactions with Dow, the administration forced her to quit as head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Midwest office, based in Chicago.

We’ve learned quite a bit in recent days about the White House interfering with EPA regulations on dioxin contamination, but it’s especially bold, even for the Bush gang, to fire the one career official who was looking out for the public’s interests.

For the past year, Gade has been locked in a heated dispute with Dow about long-delayed plans to clean up dioxin-saturated soil and sediment that extends 50 miles beyond its Midland, Mich., plant into Saginaw Bay and Lake Huron. […]

Though regional EPA administrators typically have wide latitude to enforce environmental laws, Gade drew fire from officials in Washington last month after she sent contractors to test soil in a Saginaw neighborhood where Dow had found high dioxin levels.

Michigan Environmental Council President Lana Pollack called Gade a “woman of unquestioned credentials and integrity who was doing her job enforcing our environmental laws.”

In this administration, that’s not a compliment.

That list of disgraced ex-Bush administration officials keeps getting longer and longer and longer...

Housing and Urban Development Secretary Alphonso Jackson announced Monday he was resigning after seven years on the job.

Jackson, 62, is under criminal investigation and has been fending off allegations of cronyism and favoritism involving HUD contractors for the past two years.

He also was under intense pressure from Democrats to resign.

The FBI has been examining the ties between Jackson and a friend who was paid $392,000 by Jackson's department as a construction manager in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.Jackson said he needs time to attend to personal and family matters.

He did not take questions or elaborate on the family reasons he cited for the decision.

Jackson resigns at a time when nation's housing industry is in a crisis so serious that it has imperiled the nation's credit markets and led to a major economic slowdown.

The Seminal points out that this is the last of the Bush Texas cabal to leave.

NOW on PBS:

Temporary workers and independent contractors make up nearly a third of the U.S. workforce, and represent a growing asset to companies who rely on freelance flexibility. But corporations are using the designation "freelancer" to avoid paying health care and other benefits, even though many of these workers put in the same hours as their covered counterparts. This week, NOW looks at the effect of this tactic on the lives and personal economy of freelance workers.

We also examine an Enterprising Idea to help independent workers manage their personal needs, including benefits, networking, and investment help. Freelancers Union, founded by former labor lawyer and MacArthur grant recipient Sara Horowitz, provides a safety net for over 60,000 workers, but how is it viewed by the traditional labor movement?

This is part of NOW's series on social entrepreneurs called "Enterprising Ideas".

At NOW's website, learn more about the issue, read personal stories of freelance workers, and watch recent more NOW reports of America's hard-pressed workforce.

I've been freelancing for several years in order to be able to be at home with my kids. Luckily, we have health insurance through my husband's employer because a private account would be completely cost prohibitive. While my situation is extraordinarily lucky, it is gratifying to see a recognition that freelancers and temp employees deserve benefits as well.

NY Times: (reg. req'd)

Suddenly, on that May day in 2005, the copter dropped CS gas, a riot-control substance the American military in Iraq can use only under the strictest conditions and with the approval of top military commanders. An armored vehicle on the ground also released the gas, temporarily blinding drivers, passers-by and at least 10 American soldiers operating the checkpoint.

"This was decidedly uncool and very, very dangerous," Capt. Kincy Clark of the Army, the senior officer at the scene, wrote later that day. "It's not a good thing to cause soldiers who are standing guard against car bombs, snipers and suicide bombers to cover their faces, choke, cough and otherwise degrade our awareness."

Both the helicopter and the vehicle involved in the incident at the Assassins' Gate checkpoint were not from the United States military, but were part of a convoy operated by Blackwater Worldwide, the private security contractor that is under scrutiny for its role in a series of violent episodes in Iraq, including a September shooting in downtown Baghdad that left 17 Iraqis dead.

None of the American soldiers exposed to the chemical, which is similar to tear gas, required medical attention, and it is not clear if any Iraqis did. Still, the previously undisclosed incident has raised significant new questions about the role of private security contractors in Iraq, and whether they operate under the same rules of engagement and international treaty obligations that the American military observes.

"You run into this issue time and again with Blackwater, where the rules that apply to the U.S. military don't seem to apply to Blackwater," said Scott L. Silliman, the executive director of the Center on Law, Ethics and National Security at the Duke University School of Law.

Officers and noncommissioned officers from the Third Infantry Division who were involved in the episode said there were no signs of violence at the checkpoint. Instead, they said, the Blackwater convoy appeared to be stuck in traffic and may have been trying to use the riot-control agent as a way to clear a path.

You know, I get frustrated in rush hour traffic too, but that's ridiculous. I have to agree with Markos:

The use of these mercenaries has been glorified by the Right for years. But at the end of the day, their actions have hampered and perhaps even sabotaged our mission while endangering our troops.