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LOUISVILLE /JEFFERSON COUNTY
DEMOCRATIC PARTY NEWSLETTER
Week
of August 29, 2008
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CLICK HERE FOR CURRENT LIST OF EVENTS
Updated
on a regular basis
Bulletin Board:
-
The Louisville/Jefferson County Democratic
Executive Committee meets the 4th Wednesday of every month at
5:00 pm at
Democratic Headquarters,
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640 Barret Avenue .
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Machinists President Attacks Republican Era Ripoffs
Leaders of the IAM, serving as delegates and committee officials at the
Democratic National Convention in Denver, will press for economic reforms
that repair damage done by Republican policies over the past eight years.
Nearly 50 IAM members, from New York to California, are in Denver this week
as delegates, super delegates and committee officials.
“The 2008 general election will be an intense, no holds barred fight,” said
IP Tom Buffenbarger, a member of the Platform Committee. “Democrats can – and
should – fight to protect all Americans from the price gouging and rip offs
perpetrated by Republicans during the past eight years.
“We have a duty to our members who saw their pensions stolen, their contracts
shredded and their pockets picked by the most anti-union administration in
U.S. history,” said Buffenbarger. “We plan to highlight the Republicans’
shameful record of hostility toward blue-collar union members.”
“The rise in fuel, utility and credit card rates during the past eight years
is a wake-up call,” said Buffenbarger. “Electric utility rates for
residential customers went from 8.58 cents in 2001 to 10.52 cents per
kilowatt hour in 2008, an increase of 22 percent, a gut punch that hits
hourly employees especially hard.”
'We have to get in their faces,' Trumka
says of racist remarks from union members
So many of the political stars would seem to
be aligned for the Democratic Party this year.
A wide majority of voters tell pollsters
that the nation is on the wrong track. The Republican president has an
approval rating that rivals Richard Nixon's just before his resignation.
Yet, as Sens. Barack Obama and John McCain
prepare to formally accept their party's nominations, their competition
appears rooted in a near deadlock.
"There are more undecided voters than ever
before," Karen Ackerman, the political director of the AFL-CIO acknowledged
yesterday. Many of them are union members in a year in which union leaders
hope that a change in the party in the White House would add leverage to
their stalled agenda on trade, health care, organizing rules and other
issues.
"For us in the labor movement, this should
be a no-brainer," Gerald McEntee, the president of AFSCME told thousands of
union members and delegates here in the eve of the Democratic National
Convention.
As the gavel is about to fall on the
convention, several labor leaders were candid in confronting a difficult
challenge they and the candidate they support face in trying to win the White
House.
In a briefing for reporters, Ms Ackerman
acknowledged that the union's challenge was heightened by attitudes toward
their nominee's race.
"It's complicated, obviously, by the fact
that there has never been an African-American candidate for president," she
said.
Mr. McEntee put it more bluntly later in the
afternoon at a labor rally in the Colorado Convention Center.
"They are going to say to so many of our
white members in Appalachia, you can't vote for him, he's black," he
thundered "We've got to say to them, 'That's bull.' Don't let them do this to
us again, we should have learned our lesson."
Polls suggested that white working-class
voters were a one of the tougher constituencies for Mr. Obama throughout his
primary battle with Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton. That demographic hurdle
remains in his battle with Mr.
McCain.
Rich
Trumka, the secretary-treasurer of the AFL-CIO, was open in confronting
that reality as he spoke near the end of an afternoon-long rally yesterday.
He described an encounter with "a woman I'd
known for years," outside a Fayette County polling place before the
Pennsylvania primary. He said she told him first that she would not vote for
Mr. Obama because he was a Muslim. She cited the rumors that he would not
wear a flag pin. Mr. Trumka said he told her neither was true. Then, he said,
"her voice dropped a little bit and her eyes dropped down to the ground and
she said, 'Because he's black."
"I said, 'Look around. Nemacolin's a dying
town. There're no jobs here. Kids are moving away because there's no future
here. And here's a man, Barack Obama, who's going to fight for people like us
and you won't vote for him because of the color of his skin?
"Brothers and sisters, we can't tap dance
around the fact that there are a lot of folks out there just like that woman.
...Those of us who know better can't afford to look the other way," Mr.
Trumka said.
"We can't afford to shrug our shoulders; we
can't afford to look away and we can't let those bigoted wisecracks to go
unchallenged.
"That's why when we hear people say,
'America is not ready for a black president we have to get in their faces."
Mr. Obama's status as the first
African-American nominee of a major party underscores his party's challenges
in attracting white working-class votes.
But the problem is not new with him. While
he won a majority of the popular vote, exit surveys showed that former Vice
President Al Gore trailed among white working-class voters by 17 percent.
Four years later, Sen. John F.Kerry did still worse, trailing by 23 percent
with that demographic group.
Post-Gazette politics editor James O'Toole
can be reached at jotoole@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1562.
During his radio show today, conservative talker Rush Limbaugh asked
former Gov. Mike Huckabee (R-AR) how he believed the Republican party would
respond if
Hurricane Gustav makes landfall in New Orleans during the Republican
National Convention. “I think they’ve called in Pat Robertson to pray it off
the coast,” Huckabee
jokingly responded.
BIG OIL'S NEW DARLING Posted
by Jim Hightower
John McCain built his maverick image in part by being a Republican
senator who’s willing to go against Big Oil. As recently as June 13, he
had this to say about the petro giants: “I am very angry, frankly, at the
oil companies, not only because of the obscene profits they’ve made, but
at their failure to invest in alternate energy to help us eliminate our
dependence on foreign oil.”
Good stuff! McCain has long stood up to oil corporations on such big
issues as their demand that we open all of America’s
shorelines
to their drilling rigs. But, suddenly, that John McCain has disappeared.
On June 16 – only three days after his “angry” speech – he made another
talk in which he reversed his position. “My friends, we have to drill
offshore,” he now says. “We have to do it.”
Really? Why? Because, he explains, “The oil executives” told him it
would be a good thing.
Wait… I thought he was angry at those thieves. Not any more. You see,
right after his June 16th flip-flop speech, he flew off to Texas for a
round of fundraisers with – guess who? – oil executives! On June 17th,
for example, he had a closed-door luncheon with energy honchos at the San
Antonio Country Club – and walked out with a love offering of $1.3
million for his presidential campaign.
A McCain spokesman rushed out to assert that it is “completely absurd”
for anyone to suggest that the senator’s switch on drilling had anything
to do with oil money. Well, maybe he’s confused by the “position=money”
relationship of politics, but the oil barons definitely are not. Prior to
McCain’s miraculous conversion, they had not been big backers of the
senator, but once they heard his new position, the money spigots opened.
As one advisor to oil companies said of McCain’s switch: “I think the
industry was very appreciative.”
“Industry Gushed Money After Reversal on Drilling,”
www.washingtonpost.com, July 27, 2008.
“The Corrupting Influence Of Oil Money,”
www.thinkprogress.org, July 31, 2008.
“Big Oil’s bets,”
www.oilwatchdog.org, July 29, 2008.
In This Election,
It’s the Economy—and Race by
Tula Connell
The issue of
race in this presidential campaign is one we talk around, or whisper about,
or don’t discuss publicly at all. Or, as with some McCain supporters, the
issue of race is used as an ugly bludgeon in the spirit of Jim Crow.
But
AFL-CIO
Secretary-Treasurer
Richard Trumka
is taking the issue head on. Beginning with a
recent speech
to the
United Steelworkers
and continuing in other union venues, Trumka directly addresses how working
people can, and must, combat the racism of those who say they will not vote
for a black man as president. In
addressing union
leaders, Trumka also speaks to all of America’s workers:
There’s not a single good reason for any worker—especially
any union member—to vote against
Barack Obama.
There’s only one really bad reason to vote against him: because he’s not
white.
A lot of good union people just can’t get past the idea that
there’s something wrong with voting for a black man. Well, those of us who
know better can’t afford to look the other way.
[There’s] no evil that’s inflicted more pain and more
suffering than racism—and it’s something we in the labor movement have a
special responsibility to challenge.
Trumka urges
union leaders, and all of us with a stake in the economic policies of the
next president, to confront, head on, our inchoate and irrational fear of
black Americans.
When you hear someone say America isn’t ready for a black
president, you have to get in their face and say: “You may not be ready for
Barack Obama, but I sure as hell am!”
His initial
speech was greeted by surprise—surprise that someone of his rank took on the
issue—and praised as the opening of a long-needed dialogue. And, yes, his
words were not universally welcomed, a reaction he addresses in an open
letter to union members
here.
Yet, in
experiencing firsthand how divisions of race and ethnicity have been used by
employers to undermine worker solidarity on the job, many union members have
a visceral understanding of how and why Obama opponents are subtly and not
so subtly seeking to attack him. And having already fought these battles,
union members are well prepared to do so again. As Trumka puts it:
We’ve seen how companies set worker against worker—how they
throw whites a few extra crumbs off the table and how it’s black and Latino
workers who get the dirtiest, most-dangerous jobs. But we’ve seen something
else, too. We’ve seen that when we cross that color line and stand together,
no one—and I mean no one—can keep us down. That’s why, imperfect as we are,
the labor movement today is the most integrated institution in American
life.
When he headed
up the
Mine Workers
union, Trumka led two major strikes against the Pittston Coal Co. and the
Bituminous Coal Operators Association. The actions resulted in significant
advances in employee-employer cooperation and the enhancement of mine
workers’ job security, pensions and benefits. Such victories of workers over
hard-bitten and often brutal employers will be far fewer going forward
unless we dramatically change the anti-worker culture that has been created
in this country over the past eight years.
The bottom
line, says Trumka, is nothing less than the future of our nation.
I don’t think we should be out there pointing fingers in
peoples’ faces and calling them racist. Instead we need to educate them that
if they care about holding onto their jobs, their health care, their
pensions, and their homes.
If they care about creating good jobs with clean energy,
child care, pay equity for women workers, there’s only going to be one
candidate on the ballot this fall who’s on our side, only one candidate
who’s going to stand up for our families, only one candidate who’s earned
our votes…and his name is Barack Obama!
Do you think John McCain will do these things for America?
I don’t.
(Trumka’s full
speech to the Steelworkers is
here.)
Biden: A Friend of
Working Families by
Donna Jablonski
Sen. Barack Obama has chosen as his running mate a friend of working
families in Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.). Biden earned a
100 percent voting record on working family issues in 2007 and a
lifetime record of
85 percent.
In
addition to working-family-friendly positions on health care, Social
Security, Medicare and other critical issues, Biden is a staunch supporter
of workers’ freedom to form unions and “bargain with their employers for a
better life for themselves and their families.” A co-sponsor of the Employee
Free Choice Act, Biden told a Fire Fighters union presidential forum last
year: “There is a middle class for one reason and only one reason in
America. Organized labor. That’s why it exists.”
The Bush administration, he said, has been “waging a war on labor’s
house….This administration has lined up 10 deep to strip away a hundred
years of labor progress.”
The AFL-CIO has endorsed Obama and launched a website,
Meet Barack Obama,
to educate and mobilize union members. This fall, the AFL-CIO is carrying
out an unpecedented grassroots mobilization to elect champions of working
families to Congress and the White House.
Comments:
Congressman John Yarmuth (KY-3) on the Vice Presidential nomination of
Senior Senator Joseph Biden (DE):
“Senator Biden will make a great Vice President. I have known him for 35
years, and I have always admired his post-partisan approach to governing.
Senator Biden has been a leader in our efforts to fully support our
veterans, expand the children’s health care program, protect America’s
workers, and ensure that all students have access to a high-quality
education.”
DAILY GRILL
"[The Lugar bill] was a minor housekeeping measure. ... It was so
relatively unimportant and uncontroversial." -- Karl Rove,
8/25/08
VERSUS
"[The Lugar bill] eliminates conventional weapons stockpiles and assist
other nations in detecting and interdicting weapons of mass destruction." --
Sen. Richard Lugar (R-IN),
1/11/07
*****************
"[There is a] conservative majority of the American people." -- Rush
Limbaugh,
8/25/08
VERSUS
"[T]he nation's middle class displays broad consensus on...support[ing] a
universal national health insurance plan, requiring employers to provide
paid family and medical leave, making it easier for employees to join labor
unions, and allowing bankruptcy judges to change mortgage
payments to keep homes out of foreclosure." -- Drum Major Institute,
8/18/08
****************
I will not speak this morning about the presidential campaign." --
Vice President Cheney,
8/27/08
VERSUS
"President Bush stood firm, along with a number of notably courageous
members of Congress, some of them from Arizona."
-- Cheney,
8/27/08
Quotes
of the Day
"We can't simply drill our way to energy independence if you drilled
everywhere, if you drilled in all of John McCain's backyards, even the ones
he doesn't know he has." –Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer
TOP
Recent Senate Votes
Senate is in recess
Recent House Votes
House is in recess
-
TOP
HUMOR
"Michelle Obama said she's been in love with Barack ever since he took
her on their first date and bought her ice cream. Isn't that sweet? Yeah,
meanwhile, John McCain's wife Cindy says she's been in love with McCain ever
since he hit her over the head with a club and dragged her back to his
cave." --Conan O'Brien
"The Republican Convention is next week.
John McCain's campaign told
President Bush that despite his low popularity, he will be allowed to
speak at the first night of the convention. He also told Bush that the
convention starts in December." --Conan O'Brien
"Well the great thing about the
Olympics, of course, is you have people who are otherwise enemies
putting aside their differences and pretending to get along for a couple of
days. I'm sorry, that's the Democratic convention." --Jay Leno
"Hillary Clinton spoke at the Democratic Convention. It was pretty amazing,
she gave her entire speech while biting her tongue. Do you know how hard
that is?" --Jay Leno
"Did you all see Michelle Obama's speech last night? Terrific, wonderful
speech. You know, it was all the stuff she wanted to say on 'The View,' if
she could have gotten a word in edgewise." --Jay Leno
"In fact, while Michelle Obama gave her historic speech, Barack Obama
watched the whole thing from a family's living room in Missouri. He was in
Missouri. I mean, I know it's tough getting a hotel room in Denver right
now, but come on." --Jay Leno
"Hey, did you see his daughter Sasha interrupt him last night at the
convention? She was so cute. Well, last night, John McCain was on our show,
and his daughter was in the audience as well, and she was equally as sweet.
Take a look at what happened last night with McCain [on-screen: McCain
footage cut with an elderly woman waving and saying 'Hi Daddy' from the
audience]." " --Jay Leno
"And as you know, Barack Obama has chosen Delaware Senator
Joseph Biden as his running mate. Well, Biden has 35 years of experience
in Washington. So between the two of them, that's almost 36 years of
experience." " --Jay Leno
"It was so nice today in New York City that John McCain is buying a house
here. Last week, they asked John McCain, they said, how many houses do you
own, he said, 'I'll have to get back to you.' And I was thinking about this,
I have two houses, actually three if you count the 'Champagne Room' at
Flashdancers." --David Letterman
"You folks watching the
Democratic Convention? Today, I don't know if you know the line-up of
speakers, we got Dennis Kucinich, Sen. Bob Casey, a keynote speech from
former Virginia Gov. Mark Warner -- wow, break out the Budweiser, let's get
it out!" --David Letterman
"And of course, today Hillary Clinton spoke at the Democratic National
Convention. And
Bill Clinton was there and Hillary spoke, and Bill cheered and applauded
during Hillary's speech, he was cheering and applauding, and so was his
date." --David Letterman
"And then what they did, they showed an inspirational film about the
political career of Hillary Clinton, and whoa -- moving, terribly dramatic
and very insightful The name of the film about Hillary Clinton I believe was
entitled 'The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pantsuit.'" --David Letterman
TOP
ETHICS -- CHENEY LINKED TO TED STEVENS'
CORRUPTION TRIAL: Newsweek reports that in a conversation "secretly
tape-recorded by the FBI on June 25, 2006," scandal-clad Sen. Ted Stevens
(R-AK), who was recently indicted on allegations that he hid major financial
gifts, "discussed
ways to get a pipeline bill" through the Alaska Legislature with Bill
Allen, an oil-services executive accused of providing the senator with about
$250,000 in undisclosed financial benefits." In the conversation, Stevens
promised Allen, "I'm gonna try to see if
I can get some bigwigs from back here and say, 'Look...you gotta get
this done.'" Two days later, Vice President Cheney undertook the unusual
move of writing a letter to the Alaska Legislature urging members to "promptly
enact" a bill to build the pipeline. The letter was unusual because the
White House rarely contacts state lawmakers about pending legislative
matters. "We wanted the federal government to tell the state to act quickly
on it," Stevens said, confirming that he did ask Cheney to write the letter.
ENVIRONMENT -- BECK ENCOURAGES LISTENERS TO
'WIPE OUT ANY POTENTIAL ENERGY SAVINGS' AT THE DNC: In April, Speaker
of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) promised that the Democratic National
Convention this week will be the "greenest,
most sustainable" convention in history. The
greening efforts include the use of
biodegradable balloons and signage, an army of volunteers for recycling,
and a calculation of the convention's
carbon footprint. Responding to these efforts, conservative
global warming denier Glenn Beck mockingly called on his listeners
yesterday to participate in a "carbon
ONset program" aimed at counteracting progressive efforts to offset the
environmental impact of the convention. On his website, Beck is encouraging
Americans to "use
more energy for mother nature." "We are asking you to make just a few
small sacrifices to completely wipe out any potential savings," wrote
Beck. On his radio show yesterday, he also offered suggestions for how his
listeners could help "raise
70 million pounds of carbon." "How many extra miles can you pledge? Can
you drive five extra miles a day," asked Beck while repeatedly claiming that
it needed to be done "for
the children."
MEDIA -- LIMBAUGH FALSELY CLAIMS UNITED
STATES IS 'MAJORITY' CONSERVATIVE: Quoting the
American Thinker, on his radio show Monday, Rush Limbaugh used a
cherry-picked poll to falsely argue on his radio show yesterday that a
"conservative majority" exists in America. He focused on a single question
from
a recent Battleground Poll in which respondents were asked to place
themselves on a conservative-to-liberal ideological spectrum. Sixty percent
of respondents labeled themselves "very
conservative or somewhat conservative. The truth is, however, that the
so-called "conservative majority"
does not exist. While many American's may call themselves conservative,
the overwhelming majority of Americans support progressive policies. Indeed,
a majority of Americans
want universal health care,
want to expand environmental protections,
support increasing the minimum wage,
oppose the Iraq war, and
want to raise taxes on the wealthy to pay for national priorities, to
name a few. The Drum Major Institute found in their recent survey of the
American middle class that
a majority of both Democrats and Republicans favor similar policies. And
after eight years of conservative rule, a record 81 percent of Americans
believe the country is on the "wrong
track."
Think Fast
"Tax and accounting loopholes that largely benefit rich taxpayers
and companies cost the U.S. government
$20 billion a year even as the pay gap between chief executives and
employees has widened," according to a new report by the Institute for
Policy Studies and the group United for a Fair Economy.
Americans who lack health
insurance will spend about $30 billion out of pocket on medical
care this year, according to a new report from George Mason University and
The Urban Institute. At the same time, "others -- mainly the government --
will end up covering
another $56 billion in costs.
"In northern Greenland, a part of the Arctic that had
seemed immune from global warming, new satellite images show a
growing giant crack and an 11-square-mile chunk of ice hemorrhaging
off a major glacier, scientists said Thursday."
Filmmaker Spike Lee was engulfed by a horde of reporters as he hit the
town yesterday evening in Denver. When one reporter identifying himself as a
correspondent for
Fox News tried to ask Lee a question, the actor responded, "I
don't do Fox News," and immediately disappeared into a restaurant.
"In another large-scaled workplace immigration crackdown,"
federal officials raided a Laural, Mississippi factory on Monday, "detaining
at least 350 workers they said were in the country illegally."
The Pentagon estimates that "as many as 300,000, or 20 percent,
of combat veterans who regularly worked outside the wire, away from
bases, have suffered at least one concussion." But "some veterans -- it is
impossible to know how many -- remain unscreened." "No
doubt that there are significant numbers out there," says Dr. Barbara
Sigford of the Department of Veteran Affairs.
Daily Show host Jon Stewart called Fox
News' "fair and balanced" slogan an insult "to people with brains."
"I'm stunned to see Karl Rove on a news network as an analyst," said
Stewart, adding only "Fox News Sunday" moderator Chris Wallace "saves that
network from slapping on a bumper sticker...Barack Obama could cure cancer
and they'd figure out
a way to frame it as an economic disaster."
"There's quiet buzz in Washington this week that convicted GOP lobbyist
Jack Abramoff and several colleagues -- including scam-artist Michael
Scanlon -- will be sentenced soon for their roles in the
2005 tribes-and-bribes scandal.” The sentences “could come as early as next
week,
during the Republican convention."
Sheila Bair, the chairwoman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation
warned yesterday "that the outlook for the ailing banking industry
was bad -- and getting worse." Bair said "the swelling tide of
toxic home loans is proving to be even more worrisome than initially
feared," adding that “we
haven’t seen the trough of the credit cycle yet."
"The United States is spending more money than ever on private
security contractors in Iraq as thousands of troops return home
amid steady declines in insurgent attacks."
Over $1.2 billion will have been spent this year on "contractors, who
protect diplomats, civilian facilities and supply convoys."
Prosecutors for the Department of
Justice "asked federal judges in Washington and Florida to
shave years off the sentence" of
disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff,
"citing his work in an investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation
that
sent numerous people to prison
and contributed to the Republican Party's loss of Congress."
"Private contractors account for more than one-quarter of the
core workforce at U.S. intelligence agencies," according to new
numbers released by the government. The figures illustrate "how much of
the nation's spying work has been outsourced" since 9/11.
Some lawmakers have "buyer's remorse" over ethics rules
they passed last year. "It's a pain in the ass!" said Rep. Jim Moran (D-VA)."Members
of Congress used to not have to worry about finding lunch or dinner at
convention," notes The Hill. "I
bought my own fried chicken and french fries instead of gong to a
catered event," said Rep. Rush Holt (D-NJ).
TOP
INTERESTING
Yesterday, Fox News reporter Griff Jenkins waded into the
Re-create
‘68 protest outside the Democratic National Convention in Denver, where
he was
greeted with expletives as he antagonized the crowd by asking “what’s
your actual message” and “do you not believe in freedom?”
On Fox and Friends today, host Brian Kilmeade acknowledged that Jenkins
was intentionally instigating the crowd. At the end of the segment, Kilmeade
signed off by saying that Fox was “going to continue to send” Jenkins “out
to cause trouble.” “I hope so,” responded Jenkins.
Watch
it:
It looks like GOP ‘sucker bait’ is still attracting some union fish,
By BERRY
CRAIG
MAYFIELD, Ky. – Thirty-four percent of union members and retirees are
undecided about the election “and are open to either candidate,” according
to an AFL-CIO report.
One in three
people who pack union cards don’t know whom to vote for? I don’t get it.
-- A recent
Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg Poll
has President Bush’s overall job approval rating at 25 percent.
-- Through last
year, Sen. John McCain, the Republican who wants to succeed Bush, had voted
for Bush-backed bills almost 90 percent of the time, according to a 2007
Congressional Quarterly report.
He voted the Bush way 95 percent of the time in 2007.
-- McCain has
voted for union-supported legislation only 16 percent of the time, says the
AFL-CIO’s Committee on Political Education.
There’s more:
-- Sen. Barack Obama, the Democratic presidential hopeful, has a
COPE score of 98 percent.
-- He’s been with Bush on bills
less than 41 percent of the time through
2007, including just 40 percent in
2007, Congressional Quarterly
says.
So
what gives with 34 percent undecided union voters?
No doubt some of them are white
people who are reluctant to vote for Obama because he is African American.
Others may be inclined to believe the lies being spread by Internet nut jobs
and other right-wing crazies that Obama’s a Muslim who hates his country and
swore his oath of office on the Koran.
“A lot of union
members also have their own hot buttons,” said Jeff Wiggins, a Steelworker
who sits on the Kentucky State AFL-CIO executive board. “They don't vote on
union issues. They vote on social issues that don't have a thing to do with
their jobs or their unions.”
Those issues
include “the Three-Gs,” Wiggins added. “God, guns and gays -- Republicans
run on them all the time.”
The social issues
are sucker bait that attracts union fish. “I had a guy the other day tell me
he’d vote for union candidates if they’re against ‘partial-birth abortion,’”
said Wiggins, who is putting hundreds of miles on his union-made Ford SUV as
Kentucky Zone One coordinator for the AFL-CIO’s Labor 2008 program.
Wiggins, who is
also president of the Paducah-based Western Kentucky Area Council, AFL-CIO,
has visited dozens of union halls in Western Kentucky, his territory. He
talks up AFL-CIO-endorsed office-seekers from Obama down through candidates
for the Kentucky legislature. He hands out stacks of pamphlets and other
literature and gives away bright yellow “Labor 2008” tee shirts.
“Barack Obama votes with us 98 percent of the time and John
McCain votes with us 16 percent of the time,” Wiggins said. “That makes
Obama 82 percent better for labor.
“John McCain is ‘John McSame’ as in the same old anti-union
policies of George W. Bush. It’s as simple as that.”
McCain’s message
for union voters is simple, too. He’s against abortion, “partial birth” or
otherwise. He loves God and guns, but not gay rights.
But mum’s the word
from McCain on union issues when he’s fishing in labor’s lake. He’d just as
soon union members didn’t know he also loves right to work, NAFTA and CAFTA,
but not the Employee Free Choice Act.
In his address at
the Steelworkers’ 2008 convention, Leo W. Gerard, the union president,
warned against union-busting politicians like McCain who try to scam workers
with social issues.
“….In
one election, it might be gun rights,” he said, “…In another it’s tax cuts
or the right to life.
“But the bottom line
is always the same. Distract and deceive. Divide and conquer.
“Time and again, they
try to fill our hearts with fear. Time and again, their strategies get some
of our members voting for politicians who couldn’t give a damn about working
people.”
In 2004, 38 percent of union
members voted to reelect Bush – who in his first term had proven himself to
be one of the most anti-union presidents in history -- over union-endorsed
Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., a CNN election day exit poll showed. You’d think
convincing union members to vote against their own interests would be
mission impossible for anti-union candidates. But with the “Three Gs” for
sucker bait, it’s been mission accomplished for a lot of them.
Wiggins knows
about the report that says around a third of union members are on the fence
over the presidential election. “The fact that they’re undecided means we
can still win them over,” he said.
“The choice is clear: Obama is 98 percent with us.
McCain is 84 percent against us.”
Gerard agreed that Obama is the
right choice. “....If we
want a president hell bent on privatizing Social Security, McCain will give
us that, just like Bush did,” he said in his speech. “If we want a president
who voted to legalize scabs, we’ll get that with McCain, the same as we did
with Bush. If we want the union cut out of bargaining health care benefits,
that’s what McCain wants to do.
“If we want our health care benefits taxed
as income, that’s what McCain plans to do. If we want a president who’ll
veto the Employee Free Choice Act, McCain’s all for that, just like Bush
was.
“If we want a
president who says he’s never seen a free trade deal he doesn’t love, that’s
exactly what McCain says….John McCain will stick us with four more years of
legalizing scabs, undercutting our pensions, messing with our health care,
and cutting more rotten trade deals that are killing our jobs.”
Obama supports the
Employee Free Choice Act, Gerard said. Obama “will go to bat for universal
health care that lowers costs.” He has “a plan to revitalize manufacturing”
and he “…wants to restore a measure of sovereignty to our lives by making
workers the top priority in any trade deal he negotiates,” according to
Gerard.
“So, sisters and
brothers,” the top Steelworker concluded, “There’s a real choice this time
around. We can have real change by shooting for the stars. Or we can shoot
ourselves in the foot and get four more years of Bush’s assault on working
people with John McCain.”
And, an
economic surplus is now a huge deficit funded by China buying our paper...JTS
Number of uninsured drops; poverty holds steady
The
number of people lacking health insurance dropped by more than 1 million in
2007, the first annual decline since the Bush administration took office,
the Census Bureau reported Tuesday.
The
poverty rate held steady at 12.5 percent, not statistically different from
the 12.3 percent registered in 2006. The median _ or midpoint _ household
income rose slightly to $50,233. And the number of uninsured dropped to 45.7
million, down from 47 million in 2007.
The
numbers represent a kind of scorecard on President Bush's stewardship of the
economy at the kitchen-table level. However, they only go as far as the end
of last year, before the current economic downturn started gathering force.
Indeed, they could come to be seen as a snapshot taken at the high point of
the administration's tenure.
The
picture is mixed.
"The
gains that occurred last year were welcome, but unfortunately, they are too
little, too late," said Jared Bernstein, a senior economist with the liberal
Economic Policy Institute in Washington. "The median household is no better
off now than they were back in 2000, despite their deep contribution to the
nation's economic growth during this period."
For example, after adjusting for inflation, last year's median household
income of $50,233 was not significantly different from the figure for the
year 2000, which was $50,557. "The American work force is baking a bigger
economic pie, but the slices haven't grown at all," said Bernstein.
The welcome news on health insurance coverage was tempered by the fact that
private coverage continued to erode. Government programs _ such as Medicaid
for the poor _ picked up the slack, resulting in the overall reduction in
people without health insurance. The uninsured rate also fell to 15.3
percent, down from 15.8 percent in 2006.
"A
lot of the fall is due to the increase in public coverage," said David
Johnson, who oversees the Census division that produced the statistics. The
number of uninsured children also fell in 2007, after an increase in 2006
that had interrupted years of progress in getting more kids covered.
But
seen over a longer period of time, the health insurance numbers are not
reassuring. The number of uninsured _ and the rate _ are higher today than
they were at the outset of the Bush administration in 2001. That year, 39.8
million people, or 14.1 percent, were uninsured.
Buy American Mention of
the Week
None this week
GOOD
NEWS
Although gasoline this year climbed to over $4 per gallon, "the traffic
death toll -- according to one study -- appears headed to the
lowest levels since Kennedy moved into the White House. The number is
being pulled down by a change in Americans' driving habits."
VIDEOS
McCain
Revealed: The Briefing Book
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