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Newsletter Archives
LOUISVILLE /JEFFERSON COUNTY
DEMOCRATIC PARTY NEWSLETTER
Week of August 26, 2007
The link to this electronic newsletter is being e-mailed to 4,000+
Jefferson County Democrats
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CLICK HERE FOR CURRENT LIST OF EVENTS
Updated on a regular basis
Bulletin Board:
The Loui
sville/Jefferson County Democratic
Executive Committee meets the 4th Wednesday of every month at
5:00 pm at 901 Barret
Avenue .
Notice to our Readers & 2007 General Election Candidates:
This newsletter will carry in this space any Democratic candidates' notice of events or communications (250 words or less) to our readers that the candidate provides to the editor at rcrider@louisvilledem.com
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McConnell's Base Of Support Erodes,
By Ralph Z. Hallow, Washington Times
Sen. Mitch McConnell's close backing of
President Bush on immigration and the Iraq war is costing him support among
Kentucky Republican
s,
and, according to some party members, hurting his chances for re-election
next year.
He even could face a primary challenge from former Republican gubernatorial candidate Larry Forgy, who contends that Mr. McConnell's in-state problems are compounded by job losses to producers beyond America's borders.
“The average Kentuckian feels we are giving away this country with both hands — jobs are going, essentially the primacy of the people who made this country great is going, and Mitch McConnell is lumped with the Washington types on this,” Mr. Forgy said.
“And the war in Iraq is less troublesome in Kentucky than in many other places, but it is not popular here, and Republican voters see Mitch's views as too close to the president's on the war,” said Mr. Forgy, a Lexington lawyer. CONTINUED
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Word from Kentucky: ‘Gov. Ernie Fletcher Needs to Go’, by Mike Hall
Faye
Liebermann says:
Ernie Fletcher needs to go. He’s not a friend to working people at all.
That’s why Liebermann (see video), her brothers and sisters from the Communications Workers of America (CWA) union and hundreds of other Kentucky union members are pledging their time and efforts to elect Steve Beshear (D) governor this fall.
Labor 2007’s mobilization to elect Beshear, along with lieutenant governor candidate state Sen. Daniel Mongiardo, is picking up speed as local unions around the Bluegrass State gear up to toss out the incumbent Fletcher. During his tenure, he has worked with his corporate cronies to try to slash wages by attempting to gut prevailing wage laws and attacked workers’ rights through his campaign to outlaw union security clauses and turn Kentucky into a “right to work” for less state.
Says Larry Roberts, state director of the Kentucky Building and Construction Trades Council:
Ernie Fletcher is vehemently opposed to the interests of working people. He actively tries to attack and reduce collective bargaining every way he can—from supporting so-called right to work to attacking union security clauses. In fact, his whole agenda is to support policies that encourage low-wage strategies to ensure that only low paying jobs are created. Four more years of Ernie Fletcher would be devastating to the construction industry and to the labor movement. Many of our members are retiring, there is a boom in construction, yet Ernie Fletcher wants to do everything he can to prevent these jobs from doing good middle-class work.
Liebermann says CWA locals are fully onboard with the Labor 2007 program.
In all worksites we’re going to leaflet…we’re going to do a phone banking program, a walking program and…provide local union coordinators.
The local union program is rolling along. Earlier this month we told you the states zone coordinators were reaching to bring locals onboard. Just last week alone, the four zone leaders held nearly 50 meetings with locals from the United Steelworkers, Machinists, Electrical Workers, Operating Engineers, Letter Carriers, Boilermakers, UAW, Sheet Metal Workers, Plumbers and Pipe Fitters, Amalgamated Transit Union, Painters and Allied Trades and Iron Workers, explaining the Labor 2007 program, getting commitments and offering training.
Later this month, a two-day political training for local union coordinators is set to teach campaign skills and tactics and local union mobilization strategy from the ground up. With Kentucky being one of just a handful of states with elections this year, this race will draw lots of attention. We’ll keep you posted.
Nothing this week
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DAILY GRILL
Source is on vacation
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Quotes of the Day
"At my age, any scream is a good scream." --Former President Bill Clinton, on an Iowa woman mistaking him for Bob Barker
"I was very sick the day of the debate. I had all of the problems with the flu and bronchitis that you have, including running to the bathroom. I was just hanging on. I could not wait until the debate got off so I could go to the bathroom." --Republican presidential hopeful Tommy Thompson, on why he said at a GOP presidential debate that an employer should be allowed to fire a gay worker, after previously having blamed his hearing aid
"I'm not going to get
into a name-calling match with somebody who has a 9 percent approval
rating." --Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, on Vice President Dick Cheney
Recent Senate Votes
Recent House Votes
Congress is in recess
HUMOR
"What will the Republican presidential campaign look like without Karl Rove? Probably the same as it would have with him. Warnings about Mexicans, warnings about Arabs, and warnings about gays. They're trying ot come over the border, they're trying to come over the oceans, they're trying to come over your back." --Bill Maher
"I guess it's no wonder that a poll out this summer put
'None of the Above' over all of the other
Republican candidates. And if 'None of the Above' does get the
Republican nomination, you know two things will happen: a) the Democrats
will find a way to lose to him, and b) Bush will try to call and
congratulate him." --Bill Maher
"Michael Vick plead guilty to dog fighting charges and he may do jail
time. ... They say that this guy went through more dogs than
Bill Clinton"
--David Letterman
"We know Washington, DC, was very shaken last week when news
that
Karl Rove, the man whose mouthful advisory teets have fed so many
Beltway insiders these past six and a half years, was capping the spigot and
moving on. ... But before leaving for good -- and I use the term literally
-- last week, Rove went on his farewell tour to defend himself and his
president [on screen: Rove saying that Bush's critics are 'elite, effete
snobs']. Yeah! Who are these effete, elite snobs who criticize Bush, these
snobs with their Ivy League degrees, entertaining French guests at their
family estates on the New England coast [on screen: a photo of Bush and
French President Nicolas Sarkozy in Kennebunkport]... oh, right." --Jon
Stewart (Watch
video clip)
"But that was just the start. Chris Wallace got Karl Rove's Sunday morning
talk show tour going [on screen: FNC's Wallace saying, 'Let's take a look at
some of Karl Rove's greatest hits']. Ohh, I just bought that on K-Tel! 'Karl
Rove's Greatest Hits,' including 'John McCain's Black Baby,' 'Max Cleland:
The One-Limbed Pussy,' 'The Queers Are Coming,' and, of course, 'Schiavo-A-Go-Go.'
No need to call now, your phones have already been tapped." --Jon Stewart
"But let's get through some other hits. Do decisive politics [on screen:
Rove saying, 'What I try to do is serve a president whose attitude was let's
find ways to bring the country together']. And that would be who? Oh,
unless, oh my God, Karl Rove's been moonlighting for the president of
Match.com" --Jon Stewart
"Indiana Congressman Mike Pence hit the nail on the head. If there's one
thing that everyone I've talked to can agree on, it's that Iraq is exactly
like an Indiana market in the summertime. ... This is the sort of place
where people don't even lock their doors at night. Heck, most people don't
even have doors" --Daily Show correspondent Rob Riggle (Watch
video clip)
IMPORTANT READERS NOTE: The Progress Report will be on "recess" over the next two weeks.
NEED COMPUTER ASSISTANCE??
Democrat Activist Mike Bailey is now providing “Professional Computer Support.” He can be contacted at 502-558-4026, or mikebailey2000@usa.net.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Think Fast
Source is on vacation
INTERESTING
What's Wrong with America? By John J. Sweeney
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Earlier this month, Steve Skvara, a disabled, retired steelworker who can't afford his wife's health care, shook the AFL-CIO's Presidential Candidates Forum by asking tearfully, "What's wrong with America?"
We should all be asking that question today.
We've got six coal miners trapped beneath more than 1,500 feet of Utah coal and rock, three brave men who struggled to rescue them are dead and six more are injured.
And it's not because of an act of God. It's because of the acts of man.
The disaster still unfolding at the Crandall Canyon Mine did not have to happen. It was preventable—as were the deaths of 12 coal miners last year in the Sago Mine in West Virginia. As have been many, many more deaths of workers in America's coal mines and factories, fishing vessels, offices and construction sites.
Safety concerns about the Crandall Canyon Mine surfaced months ago, and safety experts warned of particular dangers in the "retreat mining" technique used there after it was approved by the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration. In retreat mining, coal miners essentially pull out roof-supporting pillars of coal as they work their way out of the mine. The retreat mining plan at Crandall Canyon, says Mine Workers President Cecil Roberts, "appears to have been flawed, to say the least. In our opinion, that plan should never have been approved."
No one should be surprised it was approved, though. The Bush administration has been systematically dismantling and cutting funding for workplace safety rules and oversight since it came into office.
Every day in 2005 (the most recent data available), 16 workers died on the job and 12,000 were made sick—and that doesn't include the occupational diseases that kill 50,000 to 60,000 more workers each year. In many if not most of these cases, one of two things occurred: An employer disregarded the law, or the law wasn't strong enough to protect workers.
Something is deeply wrong with America today. Working men and women have lost their value to the people who have been running this country for too long. Ruthless CEOs wring working people dry and the neocon ideologues in the White House help them.
Our wages are stagnant, our benefits are disappearing, the middle class is shrinking and, for the first time, there's a good chance our children will not be better off than our generation. We're the most productive workers in the world but we have to work more hours, more jobs and send more family members into the workforce just to keep up.
The heroes who rushed to Ground Zero to save lives and who dug and sweated and struggled for months after Sept. 11, 2001, are suffering today from neglect and indifference. Neglect and indifference left thousands stranded on rooftops and in a dark convention center after Hurricane Katrina. Neglect and indifference meant deplorable conditions for veterans recovering at Walter Reed. Neglect and indifference kill far too many of us on the job.
There's a reason so many people who never will step foot in a coal mine are riveted by the story of the trapped, dead and injured miners. There's a reason Steve Skvara's comment at our presidential forum moved so many people. There's a reason candidates committed to improving the well-being of working men and women took back Congress last year and will take back the White House next year.
Working men and women—the great majority in this country—want to fix what's wrong with America.
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A Plot Afoot in California to Swing State to Republican Presidencym by Mike Hall
As Woody Guthrie once sang in a ballad about Pretty Boy Floyd, “Some will rob you with a six-gun and some with a fountain pen.”
Today in California, Republican strategists a planning a bigger heist than anything the famed outlaw or crooked bankers pulled off in Dust Bowl America. They are trying to rob Californians of their presidential votes in 2008.
The weapon they are wielding is a double-speak ballot initiative that, if approved, would enable the Republican presidential candidate to heist about 20 of the state’s 55 electoral votes, even if the entire Golden State vote count is a double-digit win for the Democratic contender, as it was in 2004.
The ballot initiative would award presidential electoral votes to the winning candidate in each of the state’s congressional districts, drastically changing the current system in which the statewide winner gets California’s 55 electoral votes. With about 20 safe Republican districts, the GOP candidate would get quite a vote haul—about the same as winning the state of Ohio. It takes a majority of the 538 electoral votes to win the presidency.
Only two states, small-vote states Maine and Nebraska, currently award the Electoral College votes by congressional district winner.
The oh-so benignly named Presidential Election Reform Act is the brainchild, says the Los Angeles Times, of Sacramento lawyer Thomas Hiltachk, whose firm represents the California Republican Party and has worked with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R). The paper also notes the ballot measure is being backed by former Schwarzenegger fundraiser Marty Wilson, currently one of the money bloodhounds for Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.).
Steve Schmidt, another Republican consultant with ties to Schwarzenegger and McCain, told The New York Times that if the election ballot measure is approved and there is a close election: It would make it impossible for a Democrat to win the White House.
Tom Steyer, a California business leader, philanthropist and chairman of Californians for Fair Election Reform, says:
This Republican proposal is dressed up as electoral reform, but it is really an effort to rig the residential election.…Democrats would lose 20 electoral votes, and very likely the presidency, if California abandons the winner-take-all system while large Republican states like Florida and Texas do not. It is no surprise that this measure is the product of the Republican Party and clearly designed to give them a political advantage.
The initiative backers are expected to pour several million dollars into the groundwork and ad campaigns to collect the 433,971 signatures to put the initiative on the June 2008 primary ballot—and likely will spend millions more on general election propaganda. As an added bonus for the Republican backers of the initiative, opponents will be forced to spend millions to fight the vote grab.
Says Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) in a recent Huffington Post column: This isn’t reform—this is a partisan power grab by Republican operatives in the Karl Rove tradition.
VIDEOS
Generation Chickenhawk: The Unauthorized College Republican Convention Tour
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