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LOUISVILLE /JEFFERSON COUNTY
DEMOCRATIC PARTY NEWSLETTER
Week
of September 5, 2008
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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,
-
640 Barret Avenue .
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We on
the campaign team are really excited about this one, and we wanted to share
the news with you first!
We're about to go live with a new website that's going to kick the doors
open on Mitch McConnell's record of failure,
www.MCONjob.com
The site doesn't officially launch until tomorrow, but we wanted to give
everyone who's joined our online campaign
a sneak peek at what's to come.
The way we see it, Kentuckians deserve an honest look at what Mitch McConnell
has done over the last 24 years to make Washington, DC into...well,
Washington, DC.
McCONjob.com will feature the latest news, videos, and photos showing the
many, many ways in which Mitch McConnell is letting the people of Kentucky
down, along with action alerts to let you know how you can help Ditch Mitch
once and for all.
So, with tongue firmly planted in cheek, please head over to
www.McCONjob.com and join us in taking a look at the real record of a
Senator that Kentucky can be proud to reject.
Thanks,
The
Campaign Team
www.mcCONjob.com
Democratic, Republican Platforms Show Sharp Differences
by
Seth Michaels
As the Republican Convention gets under way in
Minnesota this week and delegates recharge after the Democratic Convention in
Denver, both parties’ platforms are now available, and they illuminate key
differences as the election approaches.
When Sen.
John McCain
accepts the Republican nomination on Thursday, he’ll also be signing on to a
platform
that tilts far away from working families and toward the corporate interests
that have been the beneficiaries of the Bush administration. It stands in
contrast to a Democratic
platform
that reflects Sen.
Barack Obama’s
strong commitment to making the economy work for all.
Thea Lee, the AFL-CIO’s policy director and a
member of the committee that drafted the Democratic platform, said she’s very
pleased with the platform and the vision it sets out for the country.
I think that
this is a strong, unapologetic, pro-worker document. This year, it’s clear
that the economy is going to be the centerpiece of the election, and the
platform lays out a robust and comprehensive pro-worker economic policy.
If you look at
the outcome, it’s a good set of policies that we can be proud of.
Lee said the Democratic platform shows, in
specific language, the steps an Obama administration would take to help
working families and strengthen the economy. That includes:
- Passing the
Employee Free Choice Act
to allow workers the freedom to form unions and bargain without employer
intimidation.
Implementing a trade
policy that protects jobs and fights unfair trade practices.
Ensuring that everyone
has access to secure, high-quality health care.
Making equal pay for
women a reality.
Protecting workers with
paid sick leave, overtime protections and prevailing wages.
Investing in the
renewable energy sector, infrastructure, innovations in fuel-efficient cars
and communications technology.
Preventing privatization
of jobs and misclassification of workers.
The Republican platform touches on few, if any,
of these issues. Only seven of the platform’s 60 pages focus on the economy.
With somewhat veiled and very misleading language, it opposes the Employee
Free Choice Act. The platform promises to “aggressively” push international
trade and calls for Fast Track approval of trade deals without input from
Congress.
The McCain camp’s message on the economy is
clear: It’s not a top priority, and they won’t fight to make sure workers can
succeed.
Indeed, in a morning convention event today,
sometime McCain adviser Phil Gramm
repeated
his claims that people concerned about the economy in this election are
“whiners”—and economic illiterates.
If you’re
sitting here today, you’re not economically illiterate and you’re not a
whiner, so I’m not worried about who you’re going to vote for.
On health care,
one of the most important issues facing working families and the U.S.
economy, the Republican platform is built on a baffling contradiction. It
says “radical restructuring of health care would be unwise,” but then lays
out a plan for radical changes that would take our health care system in the
wrong direction—increasing the power of private insurance companies, leaving
millions of families on their own and changing the tax system to raise taxes
on those who get health benefits at work.
As scholars, Robert Gordon and James Kvaal point
out today at
The New Republic,
McCain’s health care proposal amounts to:
a tax agenda
that costs trillions of dollars yet delivers no benefit to tens of millions
of middle-class Americans.…Before long, nearly all families would be paying
higher taxes on their health insurance.
The difference between the Republican and
Democratic platforms isn’t just in the policy, it’s in the process as well,
Lee said. Before the writing of the platform, more than 1,600 sessions were
held around the country, organized at the grassroots level by voters who
brought together more than 30,000 people to participate.
The [Democratic platform] process was more
inclusive than ever before, and the product reflects that….If you look at all
the layers of participation, it’s a very democratic process. Each one of
these meetings is held in public.
Lee attended two of these sessions to observe—in
Washington, D.C., and in New Orleans—and said more than 100 people attended
each one. Hearing from participants about their priorities and interests
helped shape the platform, she said.
It was very
useful—these workers illustrated the issues we would be talking about, like
health care, trade and pensions, and they did so in a very compelling way.
The drafting committee also heard from national
leaders, including AFL-CIO Executive Vice President
Arlene Holt Baker,
USW
President Leo Gerard and
Alliance for Retired
Americans Executive Director Edward Coyle.
The contrast between the two party platforms—on
the issues and in terms of the input of working people—is clear, Lee said.
The Republican and Democratic platforms offer very different visions of the
challenges facing our country, and the solutions we need.
At the Republican National Convention, former Senator Fred
Thompson gave a crack at economic analogies to attack progressives and
defend John McCain’s
$300 billion tax cut for corporations and the wealthy. He said:
THOMPSON:
They tell you they are not going to tax your family. No, they’re just going
to tax “businesses”! So unless you buy something from a “business”, like
groceries or clothes or gasoline … or unless you get a paycheck from a big
or a small “business”, don’t worry … it’s not going to affect you.
They say they are not going to take any water out of your side of the
bucket, just the “other” side of the bucket!
Sounds simple enough, right? Wrong. There are some gaping holes in Fred
Thompson’s folksy but flawed “bucket” analogy.
–We’re not all in the same bucket: Over the last eight
years,
rising worker productivity has fueled huge corporate profits and
relative economic growth. But this economic growth (the “water” in
Thompson’s bucket) didn’t trickle down to American families: real wages
have
stagnated, rapidly eroded by inflation (the spiraling cost of the
“gasoline, clothes and groceries” that Thompson mentions).
–McCain’s tax cuts won’t trickle down: McCain’s $300
billion tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy give almost
half their value to the top 1% of all taxpayers. The centerpiece of the
program, a $175 billion tax cut for corporations won’t create new or better
jobs. As the CBO found in a
recent report: “increasing the after-tax income of businesses typically
does not create an incentive for them to spend more on labor or to produce
more.” In other words: no new jobs, no lower prices, just bigger corporate
profits.
–McCain borrows water from our kids: John McCain’s
massive tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy will be paid for by
either deep and draconian cuts to popular government programs, or, more
likely, through
borrowing. As the Tax Policy Center
says, “the positive effects of lower tax rates will be offset by the
costs of increased government debt…[which] eventually translates into
higher interest rates, which discourage business investment and consumers’
demand for homes and such durable goods as automobiles, or into increased
debt owed to foreigners, which mortgages the nation’s long-term economic
future.”
There are some holes in your bucket, dear Freddy.
Via the
Associated Press (AP)
-
PALIN: "I have protected the taxpayers by vetoing
wasteful spending ... and championed reform to end the abuses of
earmark spending by Congress. I told the Congress 'thanks but no
thanks' for that Bridge to Nowhere."
THE
FACTS: As mayor of Wasilla, Palin hired a lobbyist and
traveled to Washington annually to support earmarks for the town
totaling $27 million. In her two years as governor,
Alaska has
requested nearly $750 million in special federal spending, by far the
largest per-capita request in the nation. While Palin notes she
rejected plans to build a $398 million bridge from
Ketchikan to an
island with 50 residents and an airport, that opposition came only
after the plan was ridiculed nationally as a "bridge to nowhere."
PALIN: "There is much to like and admire about our
opponent. But listening to him speak, it's easy to forget that this is
a man who has authored two memoirs but not a single major law or reform
— not even in the
state senate."
THE FACTS: Compared to McCain and his two decades
in the Senate, Obama does have a more meager record. But he has worked
with Republicans to pass legislation that expanded efforts to intercept
illegal shipments of
weapons of mass destruction and to help destroy
conventional weapons
stockpiles. The legislation became law last year. To demean that
accomplishment would be to also demean the work of
Republican Sen. Richard
Lugar of Indiana, a respected
foreign policy voice in the Senate. In Illinois, he was the
leader on two big, contentious measures in Illinois: studying
racial profiling by police and requiring recordings of
interrogations in potential
death penalty cases. He also successfully co-sponsored major
ethics reform legislation.
PALIN: "The Democratic nominee for
president supports plans to raise income taxes, raise
payroll taxes,
raise
investment income taxes, raise the
death tax, raise business taxes, and increase the tax burden
on the American people
by hundreds of billions of dollars."
THE FACTS:
The
Tax Policy Center, a think tank run jointly by the
Brookings Institution and the
Urban Institute,
concluded that Obama's plan would increase after-tax income for
middle-income taxpayers by about 5 percent by 2012, or nearly $2,200
annually. McCain's plan, which cuts taxes across all income levels,
would raise after tax-income for middle-income taxpayers by 3
percent, the center concluded.
Obama would provide $80
billion in tax breaks, mainly for poor workers and the elderly,
including tripling the Earned Income Tax Credit for minimum-wage
workers and higher credits for larger families.
He also would raise income
taxes, capital gains and dividend taxes on the wealthiest. He would
raise payroll taxes on taxpayers with incomes above $250,000, and he
would raise
corporate taxes. Small businesses that make more than $250,000
a year would see taxes rise.
Why Working Families and Our Unions Support Biden
by
Tula Connell
As
media pundits have noted, Sen.
Barack Obama’s
selection of Delaware Sen.
Joe Biden
adds many years of foreign policy experience to the ticket.
Less
well-known is Biden’s long support for working families and their unions.
America’s union movement, Biden
has said,
is the only thing that keeps the barbarians at the gate.
But he
doesn’t stop there.
There
is a middle class in this country for one reason and only one reason: the
union movement.
Biden
recognizes that a five-letter word has too long been missing from the
Democratic vocabulary: Union.
At an
AFT presidential town hall with union members in July 2007, Biden bluntly
stated that the next president of the United States
better be able to
utter the word “union,” they better be able to say “union.”
Not
organized labor, not working men and women: “Union.” Because we Democrats
have been reluctant to use that word. And when we use it, we tend to only
use it when we talk to you all. I use it at the Chamber of Commerce, I use
it on the floor of the Senate, I use it when I speak to the AMA [American
Medical Association]. This is the first time…we have a chance to build the
union movement. Not stop the erosion, build a union movement.
In
reiterating how unions built and maintained this nation’s middle class and
how essential they are to the future prosperity of our nation, Biden goes
beyond being a
co-sponsor
of the
Employee Free Choice
Act, federal legislation that would level the playing field
for workers seeking to join unions. He believes it. Strongly.
On
issues from health care to jobs, Biden has a lifetime 85 percent voting
record in favor of working family issues and 100 percent record in 2007,
according to the
AFL-CIO Congressional
Voting Record. (Yep. His 2005 vote on the bankruptcy bill is
one everyone has heard about and one we all regret. Less known is that Biden
voted for an amendment to the bill that would have protected workers from
losing vacation and severance pay when their employers declare bankruptcy.
The amendment failed.)
In a
few of his recent votes on
jobs, wages
and Bush’s tax cuts for the wealthy, Biden:
Voted for an
economic stimulus package that would extend unemployment insurance.
Supported
investing in America’s infrastructure.
Opposed
Bush’s unfair tax cuts aimed at the very wealthy.
Voted to
raise the minimum wage.
Voted for the
Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act.
Voted to
ensure prevailing wages and other protections for workers on federal
projects.
Voted against
privatizing jobs in Walter Reed and other federal facilities.
Supported
investing in the energy industry to create jobs and lower energy costs.
Biden
supports early childhood education, smaller classroom size and, as far as
trade goes,
Biden says:
There
ain’t no such thing as free trade unless its fair trade, and that’s not
what’s happening now.
On
health care,
Biden:
Supports a
health care plan that offers everyone a chance at affordable, high-quality
insurance.
Voted to
allow Medicare to negotiate for lower-cost prescription drugs.
Voted to
re-authorize and improve the State Children’s Health Insurance Program.
Voted against
cutting Medicare and Medicaid.
Biden
backs working family issues and is a strong champion of unions because, to
him, it’s personal.
At a
Fire Fighters
convention last year,
he described why,
telling the Fire Fighters how first responders have often come to his aid.
From the
AFL-CIO Now blog:
Biden
spent about 10 minutes quietly and very emotionally talking about the three
personal life-saving experiences he and his family have had over the years
with firefighters. The first involved a horrific car wreck in which his wife
and daughter were killed but firefighters saved his two sons by using the
jaws of life. Years later, when an aneurism nearly struck him down, his
local fire ambulance rushed him from Delaware to Walter Reed Army Medical
Center. Recently, lightening struck his Maryland home and seven fire
companies responded to the massive blaze.
As
Biden said to more than 20,000 union members at an
AFL-CIO presidential
debate in Chicago last summer:
Where
I stand is with you. That I promise.
Check the Biden Record
Labor Day was filled with family fun, bright sun, and excitement for the
Labor Movement at many locations across the state. While at the Louisville
Zoo Labor Day Celebration, I noticed a ton of Employee Free Choice Act
Petitions that were passed around and signed by union members and their
families. I started asking what people thought about the Employee Free
Choice act. Below are some quotes from union members.
"The
Employee Free Choice Act is the only avenue where employees have the right
to form a union without interference from an employer. Should the employer
interfere with the employees' ability to form a union by majority
vote...through the federal mediation conciliation services, an arbitrator
would be able to rule what is fair and equitable for both parties to form a
union." -Kevin Baird, President of USW Louisville, KY Local 1693
"I know there are commercials out saying that the Union is the one who
intimidates, well it is just the opposite, it is the employer who
intimidates. They hold closed meetings, they fire union supporters, and the
Employee Free Choice Act will help eliminate that process to give employees
a choice." -Joe Phelps, AFSCME council 62
"The Employee Free Choice Act is to restore workers rights to form a
union! The ads on TV are very misleading." -Chris B. IAM organizer
"As and organizer, I know that we are not able to organize under the
current conditions of the Labor law...where employees can sign up on cards
and have the chance to form a union with the aid of arbitration if they
cannot bargain...we've signed up well over 250,000 petitions
nationwide...and we are here at the Zoo, because we expect at least a
thousand people to be here today and we don't want anyone to miss out on the
opportunity to sign up in support of this act." -Chris Sanders, United Food
and Commercial Workers Union Local 227
"The Employee Free Choice Act is going to give everyone the opportunity
to join a union...we are talking about our future...we are talking about
these little ones that are running around here today...so they will have
much better than we have had in the past." - Wanda Mitchell-Smith, AFSCME
"A lot of petitions are going around supporting the Employee Free Choice
Act, and our congressman (John Yarmouth) in the 3rd District here in
Louisville is very supportive of the act which allows people to have the
opportunity to form a union." -Greg Wilman, President of Louisville
Professional Firefighters Local 345
There is opposition to the Employee Free Choice Act. John McCain is
avidly against the Employee Free Choice Act as is Mitch McConnell. Getting
labor-friendly candidates in office will ensure a greater chance for the
Employee Free Choice Act to pass into legislation, allowing unions to form
without fear and intimidation from employers.
Comments:
DAILY GRILL
"The policies of our country comply with our law, which prohibits
torture."
-- Vice President Cheney,
8/27/08
VERSUS
"[T]he Central Intelligence Agency has authorized torture...Americans are
torturing."
-- Lt. Gen. Harry Soyster,
8/27/08
_________________
"We know for a fact that human activity is changing the amount of carbon
-- CO2 and CO2 equivalents -- in the atmosphere."
-- Former New York governor George Pataki (R),
6/13/08
VERSUS
Q: Are you concerned that Governor Palin recently said, "I'm not one though
who would attribute it [global warming] to being man-made?"
PATAKI: No, I'm not concerned about that. -- Pataki,
9/01/08
**************************
"I think that is her choice [to run for Vice President]. That's a
personal matter that's in her own family." -- Focus on the Family's James
Dobson on Gov. Sarah Palin (R-AK),
9/02/08
VERSUS
"It has been my observation, however, that this dual responsibility [for
working mothers] is a formula for exhaustion and frustration." --
Dobson,
8/07/98
Quotes
of the Day
Steve Schmidt, Sen. John McCain’s (R-AZ) top campaign strategist,
yesterday accused the media of being “on a mission to destroy” Gov.
Sarah Palin (R-AK) by displaying “a level of viciousness and
scurrilousness” in pursuing questions about her personal life. Schmidt said
the McCain campaign feels “under
siege” by news inquiries on Palin.
TOP
Recent Senate Votes
Senate is in recess
Recent House Votes
House is in recess
-
TOP
HUMOR
TOP
LABOR -- BUSH ADMINISTRATION PREPARES 'ANTI-UNION' EXECUTIVE ORDER:
The Wall Street Journal reports today that the "Bush administration
is weighing an executive order that would
eliminate a union-preferred method of labor organizing at large
government contractors." The new order would require such contractors "to
use secret-ballot elections for union organizing" instead of the "card-check
system in which workers can form a union if a majority of them sign a
union-authorization card." Companies tend to prefer the secret-ballot
method, but "some are willing to accept card checks to avoid a fight" with
unions. Labor leaders fear the order could "derail some current organizing
drives" and call the proposed order a "gift to the business community 'from
the most antiunion administration that we've seen.'" The order comes as the
Employee Free Choice Act -- which would make it
easier for workers to unionize -- is stalled in Congress by a
conservative-led filibuster. The Employee Free Choice Act would
guarantee
workers' right to choose between the secret-ballot or the card-check
systems.
ECONOMY -- WORKERS WORSE OFF ON PAY,
EMPLOYMENT: A Rutgers University labor scorecard reported that
workers are "in
worse shape than they've been in years," with 10 percent of Americans
"unemployed, discouraged from seeking work or underemployed." Median weekly
earnings have not grown in real terms over the last eight years, and the
federal minimum wage is now "worth 40 cents less per hour, in
inflation-adjusted dollars, than it was a decade ago." Despite these
discouraging figures, President Bush declared in his radio address this week
that "there have been some signs that our
economy is beginning to improve." In fact, Bush will leave the next
president with a record deficit of
over $480 billion, the
worst housing crisis since the Great Depression, and the
lowest rate of job creation in the last 40 years. "Professor Douglas
Kruse, a labor economist who created the scorecard, said a sharp decline in
the number of Americans able to find full-time jobs, along with growing
consumer debt and health care costs, were causes for concern."
Last Friday, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) announced Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin
(R) as his vice presidential running mate, "catching almost everyone but his
inner circle
by surprise." Of the very little that is known about Palin is her
extreme right-wing policies on a wide range of issues. For example, she
supports teaching creationism in school,
favors privatization of health insurance, boasts of being a "lifetime
member of the NRA,"
opposes stem-cell research, and declared that "she would support a
ballot question that would
deny benefits to homosexual couples." On some of the most important
issues of this election -- Iraq, energy, abortion -- Palin represents the
extreme right wing.
MEDIA -- INFURIATED ABOUT TOUGH CNN INTERVIEW, MCCAIN CANCELS LARRY
KING APPEARANCE: On Monday, Tucker Bounds, a campaign spokesman for Sen.
John McCain (R-AZ),
appeared on CNN for a tough
interview with Campbell Brown. Brown
repeatedly asked Bounds to name a foreign policy decision made by
McCain's running mate, Gov. Sarah Palin (R-AK). Citing the Bounds interview
as "over
the line," McCain
canceled an appearance on CNN's Larry King Live yesterday. According to
the Washington Post, the McCain campaign believes that the media is "on
a mission to destroy" Palin and feels "under
siege." The Post writes, "The McCain camp has been
unusually aggressive in pushing back against the media, and it seems to
hope to
persuade journalists to back off in their scrutiny of Palin." McCain
even considered
pulling out of a presidential debate set to be moderated by NBC anchor
Tom Brokaw because of what campaign manager Steve Schmidt called NBC's "irresponsible
journalism." CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer reported that CNN is
standing by Brown. "CNN does not believe that Campbell's interview was
over the line," he said. "We are committed to
fair coverage of both sides of this historic election."
Think Fast
Florida Gov. Charlie Crist (R-FL) on Thursday named Charles T. Canady to
the State Supreme Court. The move "drew
praise from conservatives," as Canady is a "a former congressman who
played a major role in the impeachment of President Bill Clinton."
Speaking last night at the Democratic convention in Denver, Barney Smith
--
a displaced manufacturing worker from Marion, IN -- delivered the line
of the night. "We need a president who puts Barney Smith before
Smith Barney," he said. (The brokerage firm
Smith Barney "had its
image tarnished for its financing of Enron Corp., the Houston-based
energy company which had an epic collapse due to dodgy accounting
procedures.") Watch it
here.
TOP
INTERESTING
McCain and the NRA are soul mates in union-busting
By BERRY CRAIG
MAYFIELD, Ky. – Sen. John McCain and the National Rifle
Association seem to be a perfect fit.
McCain is the NRA-endorsed candidate for president. He supported
a national right to work law, which the fiercely anti-union National Right
to Work Committee has wanted for years.
The NRA is cozy with the NRTWC, which also pushes hard for state
right to work laws.
The NRA claims it is pro-gun rights, not anti-union. Yet the NRA
and NRTWC often back the same candidates. Almost always, those candidates
are anti-union like McCain.
A lot of union members are hunters who own guns, especially in
rural states like Kentucky . For years, conservative, anti-labor politicians
– often aided by the NRA -- have used gun control as a wedge issue to split
the union vote and “…to divert workers from voting according to their
economic interests and that of their families," wrote Joanne Ricca of the
Wisconsin State AFL-CIO.
Unions endorse candidates “based on economic interests of their
members,” Ricca explained. "The Right sees [gun control] as a particularly
clever way to prevent workers from following the candidate endorsements of
their union.”
Ricca authored "Politics in America : The Right Wing Attack on
the American Labor Movement." The article, documented with many footnotes,
appeared on the Dairy State labor federation's website,
www.wisaflcio.org/political_action/rightwing.
Many gun-owning union members shun the NRA as a shill group for
union-busting politicians, most of whom are Republicans. “I refer to the NRA
as the ‘National Republican Association,’” said Bill Londrigan, Kentucky
State AFL-CIO president.
The name mostly fits. While the NRA sometimes endorses Democrats
-- nearly all of them less-than-labor-friendly “Blue Dog” conservatives from
Southern right-to-work states – most politicians the NRA gets behind are
anti-union Republicans.
McCain’s a good example. He votes the union way only 16 percent
of the time, according to the national AFL-CIO’s Committee on Political
Education. (Barack Obama’s COPE score is 98 percent pro-union.)
The NRA is glad to help anti-labor politicians like McCain try
to convince union members to vote on guns instead of union issues. “Guns
are a secondary issue to the workers of this country,” Londrigan added. “If
[gun owners]…don’t have a decent job, they won’t be able to afford bullets
for their guns.”
Other labor leaders are on to the NRA, too. "We know that the
NRA is communicating to our members what clearly are anti-union positions
and urging them to support anti-union candidates,"
The Washington Post
quoted Harold Schaitberger, president of the International Association of
Fire Fighters.
The Kentucky State AFL-CIO and the IAFF are part of the national
AFL-CIO, which is on the NRA’s enemies list as an organization “with
anti-gun policies.” The list, which also includes individuals and
businesses, is on the Internet at
http://www.nraila.org/Issues/FactSheets/Read.aspx?ID=15.
If you want to offer your name for the NRA’s blacklist, key in
http://www.nrablacklist.com/.
It’s a website sponsored by
stoptheNRA.com. I
turned in my name when
stoptheNRA started
four years ago. Just in case it has become lost in cyberspace, I resubmitted
my name the other day.
Ricca named names of NRA top guns who are openly anti-union. She
quoted Neal Knox, former NRA vice president. He bragged that the gun issue
"is the one thing that will spin the blue-collar union member away from his
union." Ricca also wrote that before Grover Norquist joined the NRA board,
he led anti-union "paycheck protection" ballot initiatives in a number of
states.
Norquist is chummy with President George W. Bush, whom unions
consider one of the most anti-labor presidents in history. Chuck Cunningham
is another NRA union-buster and Bush backer. He led the NRA’s national
get-out-the-vote campaign for Bush in 2000, according to Ricca. "Cunningham
was executive director of the anti-union New England Citizens for
Right-to-Work," she added.
In addition, Ricca said that while he was NRA president, movie
star Charlton Heston helped the NRTWC lobby Congress to defeat a measure to
prevent employers from breaking strikes by hiring permanent replacement
workers.
Though Heston was president of the Screen Actors Guild, he
produced a video for the NRWTC, which praised him as “their ‘world famous
ally,’” Ricca added. In 1996, Heston, a liberal pro-union Democrat turned
ultra-conservative, anti-union Republican, helped the committee’s failed
campaign to convince Congress to pass a national right to work bill, she
also wrote.
Meanwhile, in denying Schaitberger’s charge, the NRA’s Chris W.
Cox said the gun group is not against unions. “As for supporting anti-union
candidates, that is purely the result of political reality,” he said on the
NRA’s Internet website.
Metaphorically-speaking, Cox failed to practice what the NRA
preaches about gun safety with his next sentence. He shot himself in the
foot.
“The truth is,” he wrote,
“that the vast majority of union political support goes to candidates who
actively work against our freedoms” (Italics mine).
So on the one hand, Cox insists that the NRA is not anti-union.
On the other, he says unions are in league with freedom-menacing
politicians.
The NRA believes “our freedoms” include the right of civilians
to pack all the heat they want, including pistols more powerful than
sidearms cops carry and machine guns made for mowing down enemy soldiers in
war, not for hunting deer in a Kentucky woods. But I wouldn’t bet the farm
that NRA “freedoms” include the freedom to have a union. Almost all
candidates the NRA supports – from McCain down – put unions on their lists
of enemies, too.
McConnell opposed USDA
inspectors, By John Cheves, jcheves@herald-leader.com
Mitch McConnell has repeatedly urged self-policing.
Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., pressured the U.S. Department of Agriculture
for years to back off its enforcement of the Horse Protection Act, even
threatening to cut the agency's funding, according to documents obtained by
the Herald-Leader.
McConnell
has supported the Tennessee Walking Horse industry in its battle against
USDA inspectors who look for evidence of soring, the illegal practice of
deliberately injuring a horse's front feet to get it to step higher in an
exaggerated style known as "the Big Lick."
McConnell backed the industry's demand for its own inspectors — paid by
the industry, drawn from the ranks of horse owners and trainers — to have a
greater role in soring inspections, rather than the independent USDA
veterinarians who uncover and report soring more frequently.
At the same time, the industry gave McConnell tens of thousands of
dollars in campaign donations and hired his Senate chief of staff, Niels
Holch, as its Washington lobbyist and attorney.
"McConnell probably has caused more problems for horse protection
single-handedly than any other person. He set the cause of horse protection
back by years," said Donna Benefield, administrative director of the Horse
Protection Commission, a USDA-certified inspection organization in Gallatin,
Tenn.
"He has supporters here (in Tennessee) — financial supporters, if not
people who can vote for him — who are doing illegal things and don't want to
get caught," Benefield said. "It's very important to them that the law be
loosely enforced. Sen. McConnell has been their champion in that."
McConnell, the Senate Republican leader, who stands for re-election Nov.
4, declined to be interviewed for this story or answer the written questions
that his office requested.
In a prepared statement, McConnell spokesman Robert Steurer said: "Over
the years, Sen. McConnell has been pleased to work with Sen. Wendell Ford
and other members of the Kentucky delegation and Senate on behalf of this
important industry. In 1998, Sen. McConnell joined Sen. Ford and several
others in sending a letter to the USDA to express their support to improving
enforcement and correcting the regulatory problems as to how the walking
horse industry is inspected."
Holch, the McConnell aide turned lobbyist, declined to comment.
David Pruett, president of the Tennessee Walking Horse Breeders and
Exhibitors Association, and a McConnell campaign donor, said he recognized
McConnell as a friend of the industry. But Pruett said he's never personally
met McConnell and is not familiar with the senator's specific actions
regarding the Horse Protection Act.
USDA spokeswoman Jessica Milteer said the agency would not publicly
discuss McConnell's activities.
"From the USDA's perspective, we are enforcing the Horse Protection Act
to the best of our ability," Milteer said. "That's really all that we can
say."
Congress hobbles USDA
In a series of letters to the agriculture secretary and in legislation,
McConnell has told the USDA to withdraw its inspectors from more Tennessee
Walking Horse events and let the industry conduct more of its own soring
examinations.
USDA inspectors are so unpopular with horse owners and trainers, who fear
soring citations and subsequent suspensions and fines, that participants
sometimes flee events if the USDA is reported to be there. When USDA
inspectors came to a July show in Owingsville, hundreds of competitors left
rather than let their horses be examined.
Industry self-policing — the system urged by McConnell — does not uncover
soring as effectively. According to studies, USDA inspectors are far more
likely to discover and punish soring than industry inspectors.
In 2007, the violation rate at Tennessee Walking Horse shows was 15 times
higher on average when the USDA was present, according to an analysis
released this month by Friends of Sound Horses, an anti-soring advocacy
organization.
The largest group of horse veterinarians — the Lexington-based American
Association of Equine Practitioners — said this month that the industry's
self-inspection program "should be abolished, since the acknowledged
conflicts of interest which involve many of them cannot be reasonably
resolved."
It's an obvious conflict to give inspection authority to industry
participants who show horses themselves, said Dr. W. Ron DeHaven, a former
USDA administrator who oversaw the agency's Horse Protection Program. Some
industry inspection groups are led and staffed by people who were cited for
soring their own horses.
"You have lay inspectors basically checking out the horses of their
friends and neighbors," said DeHaven, executive vice president of the
American Veterinary Medical Association.
But the industry is allowed to monitor itself most of the time because
Congress limits funding for the USDA's Horse Protection Program to $500,000
a year and sometimes provides even less. As a result, USDA veterinarians
inspect fewer than 10 percent of Tennessee Walking Horse shows.
When the USDA has tried to give its inspectors a stronger oversight role,
the industry has pushed back — with McConnell's help.
In a curt 1998 letter to the USDA, McConnell said the industry was upset
about government inspectors — the industry canceled an important horse show,
he said — and he warned the agency that he would cut its horse-protection
budget for the next year if it didn't give primary authority for soring
inspections to the industry.
McConnell sits on the Senate Appropriations Committee, which decides
federal spending. A dozen other senators — all but one of them Republican —
signed that letter behind McConnell.
McConnell's voice heard
McConnell kept the pressure on the USDA as it battled the Tennessee
Walking Horse industry over soring. He dropped language into the 1999
agriculture spending bill instructing the USDA to resolve its "conflicts"
with the industry over inspections. More letters to the agriculture
secretary followed in the next few years.
"With more than 800 walking horse shows held in the United States each
year, the Department does not have the resources to attend all," McConnell
reminded the USDA in a 2000 letter. "The limited resources (of the USDA)
will not allow government veterinarians to attend more than 6 percent of
these shows."
Said DeHaven, the former USDA administrator: "Sen. McConnell's letters
came from an organized contingent within the industry that wanted the
appearance of regulation without true regulation."
"The fact is that over 30 years after passage of the law (against soring),
we still have sored horses. We aren't where we need to be," DeHaven said.
While McConnell championed the industry from Capitol Hill, his former
chief of staff, Niels Holch, lobbied the USDA and Congress to promote an
interpretation of the Horse Protection Act that was more favorable for his
employers at the National Horse Show Commission and the Tennessee Walking
Horse Breeders and Exhibitors Association.
They made an effective pair, said Robin Lohnes, executive director of the
American Horse Protection Association.
"The senator and Niels were advocating a partnership between the USDA and
industry on enforcement, but with the industry serving as the senior partner
and not the junior partner," Lohnes said.
McConnell is a powerful senator, so when he expressed displeasure, word
spread through the federal bureaucracy, former USDA officials said.
"We'd hear the name 'Mitch McConnell,' that he was one of the ones
exerting pressure on us. Like, 'If you don't back off, we're gonna cut your
funding,'" said Dr. Tom James, a longtime USDA veterinarian and horse
inspector based in Tennessee, now retired.
This chilled the agency's desire to enforce the law, James said.
"When the USDA's appropriations are threatened, it basically sends the
message that you better back off and give industry what it wants," James
said. SOURCE
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