Tidbits and Reader Responses - December 13, 2011

-  Call Now to Support Unemployed Workers!
-  Re: West Coast Port Shutdown Sparks Heated Debate between
   Unions, Occupy (Michael Eisenscher and John Case)
-  Re: The Bomb Buried In Obamacare Explodes Today--
   Hallelujah! (Dave Ecklein, Marcosa J Santiago, P. Fine,
   Michael Munk)
-  Re: Bull Connor 2.0: The Police Response to #OWS (Paul
   Goode)
-  Re: Europe Blunders into a Blind, &  Dangerous, Alley
  (John Talbutt)
-  Re: Occupy and Historians - Demand a WPA Federal Writers'
   Project (George Fish and Jesse Lemisch)
-  Children's books about labor (Jim Williams)
-  Re: Why Durban is the Kyoto Protocol's Last Chance
   (Laurel MacDowell)
-  Re: Eric Foner: Obituary for David Montgomery (Jeff Singer
   and Cyril Robinson)
-  Re: David Montgomery (responding to Portside Labor posts)
  (Bill Harvey)
-  Re: So Chemotherapy Does Work, After All (David Arocho and
   Mike Dover)

==========

Call Now to Support Unemployed Workers!

http://www.uaw.org/articles/call-now-support-unemployed-workers

You can say one thing about Republicans - they're
consistent in their efforts to make life miserable for
the unemployed.

Take, for instance, the latest version of their
Unemployment Insurance bill. It would cut up to 40
weeks of benefits next year. But that's not the worst
part of this draconian bill: For some inexplicable
reason it cuts the most from the hardest hit states and
least from the states that have weathered the recession
better.

Senseless? Cruel? All this while they won't require one
bit of sacrifice from their billionaire friends on Wall
Street.

Call *(888) 245-3381* and ask to speak to your elected
representatives and demand the outrageous provisions of
H.R. 3630 be scrapped and UI benefits of for the
jobless be approved throughout 2012!. 

These cuts could mean a loss of up to $22 billion in
economic activity next year and translate into the loss
of approximately 140,000 jobs - our sluggish economy
cannot tolerate such a hit at this time.

This is where you come in: Call your representatives in
the House and your senators and tell them to stop
victimizing the unemployed, get serious about job
creation and continue unemployment for the millions of
Americans they are supposed to represent. Call *(888)
245-3381.* Or sign the online petition. [
http://www.nelp.org/page/content/click_to_call_renew_ui_2012/ ]

United Auto Workers Solidarity House 

==============

-  Re: West Coast Port Shutdown Sparks Heated Debate between
Unions, Occupy

I am a delegate to the ALC and was present for the debate
referred to in this article.  It contains some factually
incorrect statements about that meeting.

Michael Eisenscher

    "The Alameda Central Labor Council, with the
    approval of ILWU Local 10's president, tabled a
    motion that condemned the Occupy action, after
    several delegates argued that the occupiers deserved
    at least neutrality."

[The ALC did not consider a motion to condemn the Occupy
action. The motion referred to the council delegates by a
unanimous vote of the executive board was "not to endorse"
the shutdown. That is a far cry from "condemn." After a
30-40 minute debate, the overwhelming majority of delegates
voted in support of a motion made by Local 10 President
Richard Mead to "postpone action indefinitely." As a
consequence, the ALC ended up taking no position on the
shutdown.]

    "But the Building Trades Council denounced the
    shutdown, and the Alameda council hurriedly adopted
    a negative position December 5."

[If "Alameda council" refers to the ALC, this is not
accurate. No subsequent negative position was adopted at the
December 5 council meeting. The only action taken in
relation to the port shutdown was a decision to postpone
indefinitely any action on the Executive Board
recommendation not to endorse it.]

    "After the first resolution was tabled, the CLC's
    Executive Secretary Treasurer Josie Camacho (whose
    husband Victor Uno is an Oakland port commissioner
    and Electrical Workers business manager) pushed a
    second motion decrying the shutdown."

[This simply did not occur. Following the vote to postpone
indefinitely, the council moved to a different point on the
agenda regarding the issue of mayoral recall. Regarding
Brother Uno's appointment as a Port Commissioner, so there
is no misunderstanding, he holds that position because the
ALC lobbied hard to get him appointed so that there would be
at least one labor voice in the deliberations of the
commission. His presence on the commission has served the
ALC and working people of the East Bay well.]

===

Averting splits between the occupy movement and the labor
movement seems a very important task to address. Its hard to
criticize Occupy folks for mobilizing in the direction of
general and political strikes -- that is the kind of force
clearly needed to "enlighten" and divide ruling forces,
empower working class mobilization to win the seats it needs
at the "national bargaining table" to find the path out of
this depression, and truly change the conversation in a
genuinely democratic direction.

At the same time, most US unions do not have the freedom to
engage in strikes at will, or honor picket lines in the
middle of a contract, without incurring serious penalties,
injunctions, fines -- as well as the lost income -- or lost
employment -- of workers who DO honor the lines. Further,
the rights of rank and file workers to start, or end, a
strike are pretty close to a sacred rule -- since they bear
the burdens and costs of their decision. Great care should
be taken form fraternal relations with the labor movement
and avoid elitism or any appearance of dictating when or how
they might lose pay or jobs. That will just divide the
workers and likely throw them into arms of the employers --
who own the jobs.

One path toward unity that could be considered is the
formation of parallel workers civil rights organizations
entirely independent organizationally from the Union and its
customarily complex legal entanglements with the employers
under contract. When it comes to injunctions, mass
picketing, sit-downs -- they would be in a much stronger
legal position than the union to engage in constitutionally
protected activity that also might defy unjust laws or
courts.

Civil rights and cooperative organizations can be much
broader than the union itself, include families, unorganized
workers and supporters and allies.

John Case

==========

-  Re: The Bomb Buried In Obamacare Explodes Today--
Hallelujah!

We would be suspicious of anything written by Rick Ungar in
Forbes (of all places) about health care reform.  Ungar has
been a steadfast promoter of PPACA ("Obamacare") - see
http://www.theroot.com/buzz/rick-ungar-proof-obamacare-
working where he defends its government subsidized sale of
inadequate private policies.  Why should he suddenly
publicize a flaw in its formulation leading to its downfall?
Possibly to put PPACA opponents off guard.  Why fight it, if
it really has such an internal bomb?

We just telephoned PNHP in Chicago and  learned that Don
McCanne will come out with a statement very soon on this
Forbes "bombshell".

PPACA was largely dictated and carefully vetted by the
insurance industry, especially including their legal staff.
They have a lot to gain.  It is difficult to believe
something was uncovered in it not in their interest. No one
involved in its creation had a motive to install a "bomb",
since opponents (like PNHP) were excluded from the process.
On the almost infinitesimal possibility that some
inconvenient language accidentally got in, we are sure baying
insurance legal beagles would tree it and interpret their
way out of it.

In any event, a bomb may well be unnecessary.  We still
believe PPACA will collapse of its own weight, perhaps
crushing many people depending on medical care.  Possibly
even Obama himself, since it is his signature plan (known by
the public as "Obamacare") and one of his few initiatives
that some mistakenly still see as positive.

The only silver lining is that it may renew possibilities to
get real single-payer reform a la HR-676.

Dave Ecklein
Marcosa J Santiago MD ("Cosy", Chair Emeritus, Granite State
Physicians for
a National Health Program)

===

Is this as good as it sounds?

P. Fine

===

Unger fails to note that Obama's HHS has already given
exemptions to many insurance companies so that they don't
need to meet the "80%."

Michael Munk

==========

-  Re: Bull Connor 2.0: The Police Response to #OWS

Comparing the OWS police response to Bull Connor cheapens
the sacrifices made by those in the Civil Rights movement,
which was sustained over years at the cost of deaths and
maiming. David Love does great work, but were he old enough
to personally recall the Movement, I  doubt that he would
draw such an overheated analogy.

Paul Goode

==========

-  Re: Europe Blunders into a Blind, &  Dangerous, Alley

The only option offered the debt ridden economies is funding
at higher interest rates on the conditions of agreements
enforcing greater austerity.  It seems Merkel  and some
others hope to exploit the difficulties of the weaker
economies rather than commit to a course leading to overall
European stability. Papanderou's move to put such an
austerity agreement to a referendum was a courageous counter
move. . It looks like the Greek right, playing a roll
similar to that of colonial puppets, pulled the rug from
under him.

John Talbutt

==========

-  Re: Occupy and Historians - Demand a WPA Federal Writers'
Project

Both Brian King and I posted calls and analyses for just
such a new WPA project some time ago on the New Politics
website, http://newpol.org some time ago; they were ignored
generally by the left at the time, but as both Robert Reich
and Jesse Lemisch have pointed out , are even more vitally
needed than they were earlier in 2011, when originally
posted.  My extensive proposal for a new WPA was posted on
the above site February 3, 2011, and Brian's supportive
reply and historical analysis of the 1930s WPA was posted
there April 8, 2011.  I invite all Portside readers to read
these.

George Fish

===

Thanks for posting my WPA piece, which has brought a great
response overnight. Some of these, poignant, sensitize me to
the human dimensions of the problem that my proposal is
trying to solve.

Jesse Lemisch

==========

-  Children's books about labor

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/11/20/1035323/-Stories-of-solidarity:-Childrens-books-about-labor-and-organizing

James H. Williams

==========

-  Re: Why Durban is the Kyoto Protocol's Last Chance

With no leadership in North America, it is up to people to take action locally until the political situation changes. Bike lanes, solar panels, white roofs. Do what you can do.

Laurel MacDowell

==========

-  Re: Eric Foner: Obituary for David Montgomery

Freedom + Equality = Justice

Jeff Singer

===

I never knew Montgomery personally but I was part of the
radical movement at he the time. Montgomery was a beacon and
an inspiration for younger historians. With Foner, they
formed a group of radical historians that changed the way
history was written and conceived. There were summer camps
where people like Foner and Montgomery lectured and held
discussion groups and seminars and were active in creating a
new generation of radical scholars. The tragedy in the
disappearance of Montgomery is that at the moment people
like him are most needed, he and other are no longer with
us. What would he have said and written about all of the
pressing issues of our time? Unfortunately, we will never
know.

Cyril Robinson, professor emeritus,
Southern Illinois University

==========

-  Re: David Montgomery
(responding to Portside Labor posts:

David Montgomery, 1927-2011
http://lists.portside.org/cgi-bin/listserv/wa?A2=PORTSIDELABOR;af8564bb.1112a
and
Readers on David Montgomery and Bernie Sanders on Corporate
Personhood.
http://lists.portside.org/cgi-bin/listserv/wa?A2=PORTSIDELABOR;b155e4f4.1112b

1. RADICAL HISTORY REVIEW interview, 1980- linked at bottom
right of the page
http://chnm.gmu.edu/rhr/rhr.htm
17 pages in print- worth every minute of it.

2. NYT obit.- not bad short piece- Shelton Stromquist's
comments hit the spot

David Montgomery, 84, Dies; Chronicled Lives of Workers
By Bruce Weber
Mr. Montgomery was a labor historian whose experience as a
machinist informed his influential writing about the culture
of the factory floor.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/09/us/david-montgomery-84-dies-chronicled-lives-of-workers.html

Bill Harvey

==========

-  Re: So Chemotherapy Does Work, After All

It is difficult to fathom why this article appears here on
PortSide.  The controversies over chemotherapy are by no
means going to be settled by this or any other study,
especially one that is a metadata study.  I know it has been
a constant gripe of mine that there is so little political
analysis on the site, but in the last few months this
scarcity has been more and more apparent.  I don't expect
the editors to take much note of my concern, but I hope that
the readers will respond more positively and let the editors
here from ore of you that this is not a trivial complaint.

There are many outlets for scientific news and discussion of
the kind posted recently here on PortSide.  That there is
not is much discussion about the politics of scientific
discourse, the biases that drive so many of the studies or
about the very limited scope of these studies which often
overlook the impact of poverty and other cultural and
political factors.  It would be good for our more scientific
minded editors to share some of those articles rather than
recycling the news that you can find other readily available
sources.

This is not to minimize the importance of the issues
discussed in this article, whichever side on falls on the
controversy.  The point is that reposting these articles
does not serve PortSide's mission, and in fact impede
meeting that mission by using up valuable resources, given
the five article a day limit which the editors have self-
imposed.

David Arocho

===

Re: So Chemotherapy Does Work, After All

Thank you for publishing ORAC's Respectful Intolerance
article about chemotherapy.  The Lancet article's abstract
states, "Trials with CMF-treated controls showed that
standard 4AC and standard CMF were equivalent (RR 098, SE
005, 2p=067), but that anthracycline-based regimens with
substantially higher cumulative dosage than standard 4AC
(eg, CAF or CEF) were superior to standard CMF (RR 078, SE
006, 2p=00004)." (Comparisons between different
polychemotherapy regimens for early breast cancer: meta-
analyses of long-term outcome among 100 000 women in 123
randomised trials, Lancet, 12/6/11).

The ORAC article is somewhat incorrect in ascribing CMF as
being the European alternative to anthracycline-based
treatments, as just 5-6 years ago CMF was considered the
gold standard in the US as well, and it is still widely
used. But the article perhaps misses why it may be that in
the US we jumped on the AC/ACT bandwagon.  In Europe
physicians seem to be slower to jump on some drug and
treatment regimens (such as the US rush to anthracyclines),
and perhaps for good reason.

With respect to breast cancer surgery, Europeans are also
less aggressive. For instance, Europe has had much lower
resection rates, because they believed in larger operating
margins when removing a tumor using lumpectomy. Such
resection (repeat lumpectomy) rates were shockingly high at
most major US facilities, as high as 50% at one major
university hospital.  Mayo Clinic had always done routinely
examined frozen sections while the patient was still on the
operating table, in order to ensure adequate margins, but in
part they did this because patients couldn't easily travel
to return.  Now, other leading hospitals have begun doing so
in the last few years; why didn't they do that before? Well,
there is an expense involved of rapid pathologist
examination of the removed tissue, but there is also good
old American arrogance and machismo in surgical culture.

With respect to chemotherapy, there is also the American
overbelief in the efficacy of the latest allegedly greatest
chemo regimen.

In other words, in some ways, such as in the surgical
practice differences discussed above, life (associated with
successfully removing the tumor and its extensions), not
minimizing loss of breast tissue, appears more important in
Europe.  Yet in other ways in the US chemotherapy regimen
the argument for AC/ACT at the time was that it saves lives
more effectively than CMF or no treatment at all.

This is not an easy decision for the patient or an easy set
of recommendations for the doctor.  The trade-off between
saving lives and quality of lives is not a a simple one.

In the US, as of five years ago, oncologists had become
convinced of the superiority of AC and ACT and began
advising women to use that regimen, citing all sorts of
scary statistics showing 5-year mortality was substantially
reduced due to the power of the A (anthracycline-based) in
AC and ACT.  The National Comprehensive Cancer Network
facilities in unison appear to have adopted such a stance,
at the time, despite the short-range nature of the available
data.  Since the studies in Europe and the US were at the
time rather finite, even a concerned family member could
cast a skeptical eye.

Clearly, war is hell and chemotherapy is torture, but if it
extracts positive health results, we who combat cancer in
our own lives and those of our loved ones need to be willing
to consider it. However, what is perhaps most significant
about these findings from the Lancet article is that
patients who resisted the use of AC or ACT and preferred the
trying but true CMF were on solid grounds, especially since
it was rare that higher-the-standard 4AC doses were rarely
recommended.

But why?  Not to encourage the anti-chemotherapy zealots,
but because of anthracycline cardiotoxicity, which is
routinely under-emphasized, with the allegedly "sub-
clinical" effects rarely even mentioned and not required for
inclusion in most discussion of side effects, yet reported
in medical journals.

Cancer can be thought of in two ways, at the extremes of
social construction: as a malignancy which can be removed or
as a systemic disease.  Seen in the later way, the
predominant way cancer is viewed these days, once you have
cancer you always have cancer.  You are a person who is not
in good "health".  Seen as a malignancy which can be
removed, the person's overall health might in no way be
compromised, and once the tumor is removed one doesn't
"have" cancer.  The truth is likely in between and varies
from person to person and cancer to cancer.  But it is
important in thinking about cancer and chemotherapy to think
about these conceptual distinctions, as how one views a
condition can impact how one approaches responding to it.

When a person has cancer, they are often pretty quickly up
against what is known as the "chemo culture", "evidence
based medicine", etc..  In the case of breast cancer, part
of that culture is to emphasize life over quality of life in
some fairly specific ways.  For instance, there is the
minimization of the severe cardiotoxicity of anthracyclines
like doxorubicin (25% suffer 10% or greater declines in left
ventricular rejection fraction - heart pumping capacity as I
understand it in lay terms, and there is a universal less
than 10% effect, although that is considered "sub-clinical",
meaning the patient wouldn't notice it).

Doctors at the time would recommend ACT (doxorubicin and two
other drugs.) Yet an April 2006 JAMA study pointed out that
any chemo has at best modest impact if you are estrogen
positive and node positive, and if you plan on taking
hormones.  This caused a bit of a crisis in chemotherapy, as
the doctors were desperate to hold on to most 'effective'
treatment they had in the wake of results that made you
wonder if it is 'worth' it to boost survival odds by 6% over
88% instead of 3% over 88% just to take ACT over CMF! But
here is where the Portside article is valuable in clarifying
logic.  It points out that there are three types of people
who receive chemotherapy in most cases:

"...those who would have done well without chemotherapy, who
are treated unnecessarily; those who would do poorly
regardless of chemotherapy, who are also treated
unnecessarily; and those for whom chemotherapy is the
difference between life and death."

The problem is, often one can't know what group you are in.
The available statistics are for the population, not for the
individual.  For that third group, the impact isn't
marginal, it can be life saving. As we move to having better
and better tests for ascertaining who is who, unnecessary
chemotherapy can be reduced in impact. In the meantime,
think twice before adopting the latest greatest treatment
being extolled by doctors until longer-range results are in.

Pick your poison, but the lesson is to think critically
about all of these findings; read the journal articles and
read the newspapers.  For instance, in 2010 at perhaps the
peak of the rush to prostate cancer treatment (are there
treatment bubbles?), a Wall St. Journal article in July 2010
discussed upcoming oncotype-like tests for prostate cancer.

But you can't always count on the press either.  Most
recently, for instance, not one of the many articles about
the current debate about PSA testing for prostate cancer
mentioned the availability in the US of the PCA-3 test, used
for several years in Europe to ascertain how important it
would be to have a biopsy when PSA rises.

Its results can also be interpreted as some evidence of the
likelihood than a known prostate cancer is aggressive.  But
one must think critically about that as well!  Based upon
PSA alone, or based upon PCA-3 results, it is rare but
possible for there to be results which suggest no need for
biopsy, when a prostate cancer might well be present, of
some level of rapidity of growth.  In the absence of
symptoms, it might be safe to wait for a biopsy, but there
is also a risk in doing so.  Should men want to monitor PSA
rates a-n-d use the more expensive PCA-3 tests when PSA
rises? Yes!  The argument we shouldn't routinely give those
tests because it leads to unnecessary treatment is a problem
of the delivery system not a problem of the patient, who
deserves all the information he can get on which to make a
wise decision.

Neither the rush to treatment nor the aversion to
chemotherapy nor the most recent controversies about
mammograms and PSA tests are a rational and caring response
to the risk and presence of a malignancy in our bodies.  The
fullest possible monitoring of health status as well as
careful, considered response is needed in order to cope with
what is an infuriatingly inhumane and dehumanizing system of
high-tech medical care staffed by largely caring physicians
and nurses.

Michael A. Dover
Cleveland

==========

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