The battle is joined. Witness Madison, Wisconsin and soon Ohio. Public employee unions are the last bastion of unions in America. Currently, about 8% of private sector workers belong to unions while more than 1/3 of public employees still belong to unions. Conservative America and their corporocrat supporters are out to change that, for the worse.
As result of their lost rights to organize and bargain collectively, private sector employees have seen dwindling wages, pensions and health care benefits while their workweek increases to about 48 hours per week. Public employees, because they're still organized, still have some reasonable benefits left. The coporatocracy and their minions, like Governor Walker (R-WI) are out to drive a wedge between public and private employees and then drill a stake through the last vestige of those who stand for employee rights in America.
What is at stake? Historically, organized labor is responsible for:
- The forty hour work-week.
- Abolition of child labor.
- Paid vacations.
- The minimum wage.
- Women's and civil rights/ anti-discrimination.
- Worker's compensation.
...and much more. Why was Martin Luther King in Memphis, TN in 1968? He was supporting sanitation workers who were on strike when when a right-wing extremist shot him to death. He was standing up for worker's rights and the right to collective bargaining. The very rights that Gov. Walker is trying to take away. Bottom line: Civil rights, labor rights and education are joined at the hip. Martin knew that fundamental truth, and you should too.
If the corporatocracy has their way, you will lose those rights forever. They will ban the right for workers to organize and bargain collectively with their employer for decent wages and working conditions. Discrimination, poor wages, longer work weeks, vacations, health care benefits and more are all at hand when the right to organize disappears.
Who is the corporatocracy? They are the CEOs and Wall Street financiers who are reaping billions in profits while denying the little people their few. They are the billionaires who buy off our politicians so that hey can get tax cuts, and then convince the ignorant that government deficits result from too much spending. They insist that we have to cut social security, medicaid, WIC and other social support programs to pay for the tax cuts. That's exactly what's happening in WI and in WDC. The deficit comes not from too much spending, but from too many tax cuts for the corporatocracy.
Example: Bill Gates is the hidden face of the corporatocracy. His Gates Foundation funds the
National Center for Teacher Quality (NCTQ) that masquerades as pro-education. But they are partners with the extreme union-busting Center for Union Facts with their "Labor Pains" web site. They are hot to abolish teachers unions, and if they nail the other public employee unions along the way, so be it.
Bottom line: The farther we go down the path to Kafka's Amerika the more we will pay in blood to reverse directions.
We'll be in Helena on Monday (Feb 21st) to fight for our rights. We hope to see you there.
On this first Sunday of 2011, we can see the battles of 2011 shaping up. The Sunday papers are full of alarmist articles that light reader's hair on fire with dire projections/predictions and editorials that ponder solutions. Much of the focus is all about government, the proper role, cost and efficiencies thereof and how those can be melded into a return to prosperity. These are not new problems or new arguments. They portray Americans as pitted against one another, and that is the reality. The real question is: How do we get a collective "win" out of this confrontation?
What we're really seeing is an animalistic, epic battle for resources that all societies face when scarcity comes, and come it will in cyclical economies. A NY Times front page story http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01... is prototypical in what we should expect to see in 2011. It pits the "public employee" against the "working American" and ponders the resolution.
The Garden State (NJ) is accurately portrayed as the most severe example of the problems facing state governments across the country. The NYT article is well written, but it is written for the business reader and published in the Business section which begs a question. Does any newspaper have a "Labor" section? Naturally, the unions don't come off well in the story, nor do public employees or teachers. The reader's comments smoke the author out pretty well on these items.
The lead NYT editorial then discusses the unfelt economic recovery and how cuts on the state and local level will mitigate any real economic growth and/or reduction in unemlpoyment in 2011. True, bad news for Obama and bad news for America.
Montana's Lee newspapers are running a parallel piece by Charles Johnson that frames the debate in the upcoming legislature. The Helena Independent posted op-eds by MEA-MFT President Eric Feaver and GOP State Senator Ryan Zinke, both very decent people with the best interest of Montanans at heart. Those op-eds, while not diemetrically opposed, do represent different interests. "Smaller government" with a "structurally balanced budget" i.e. a much smaller budget across the board, cannot be consistent with the perceived necessary provision of government services to sustain our health, welfare and economy in the 21st century. Something has to give. So Montana is, indeed, a microcosm of the nation. Published salutes to Jim Peterson and Mike Milburn are also prominent in today's papers along with editorials hoping for collective, sound solutions. Wouldn't we all love that; optimism abounds at the beginning of the legislative session.
In framing the America vs America conflict, let's first consider the "public employee", painted as the poster-child of big-bad government by business and anti-labor interests. The fact is, as pointed out by Feaver and many in the the NY Times reader's comments, that most public employees are hard working middle class Americans. They live right next door, they pay the same taxes and have the same real-life problems as private sector employees. The agenda and rhetoric of anti-government, anti-labor conservative corporocrats provides the proof: Public employees are unionized by necessity as a means to defend themselves and protect their interests. From my "professional left" (and proud of it) perspective, the right to organize as a workforce is fundamental, and public employees are no exception. Of course, my corporocrat counterparts would disagree.
Now let's consider the private sector employee. Concomitant with their loss of labor-organization and collective representation, they have suffered declining wages and benefits for the last thirty years. This is largely the upshot of Reagan's 1980's new conservatism where the CEO is king, stock prices are THE barometer for success in business, and employees are chattel. The losses for defenseless private sector employees, as compared to the unionized public sector, have set the stage for the current middle class cannibalism that is a large part of America vs America.
Reagan's policies gutted labor law enforcement in favor of the Gilded Age ideology, but the anti-labor public relations victory from his bully pulpit did much more to lower the status of unions in the public eye. Unlike public employees, private sector employees largely lost the right to organize and collectively represent their interests. Make no mistake, poor leadership and corruption in organized labor have played right into the conservative game plan all along. But I would submit that pendulum is starting to swing back as Americans recognize the necessity for collective representation in the workplace and modern union leadership is vastly improved over the Hoffaesque versions of the past. The major challenge for modern labor leaders is to avoid the past affliction of promoting their union over the necessity of representing the best interests of their member-employees. Political bargains made by union leaders are often too compromising on that front.
So, the sectorized split of the American middle class among public and private sector employees, or unionized versus non-union employees, is a large part of today's America vs America battle. The other main component is provided by income disparity. Reagan and now Obama both make no apology for unfettered attainment of wealth, be it legitimate or otherwise. Witness the latest financial crash and TARP bailout. There is no doubt that the losses of the middle class have directly translated into gains for Reagan billionaires. This Ayn Rand ideology most certainly proves true in the New Gilded Age transfer of wealth between classes. So it should be according to our new conservatives and corporocrats.
Therein lies the class warfare, income disparity version of America vs Amercia. It recently played out in the federal lame duck session whereby conservatives and Obama cleverly linked unemployment benefits to tax cuts for the wealthy. That link had no legitimacy except to provide a false debate of one versus the other. New-Gilted-Age corporocrats, Republican and Democratic alike, got their uppper-income tax breaks while the perception of Obama's protecting the poor and unemployed played to gullible liberals (....er...excuse me "progressives").
The next act in that play comes this spring where "cutting the deficit" means open season on government benefits for poor and middle class Americans. Look for Obama and congressional leaders repeat the strategy of the lame duck session, were "compromise" nets out to more for the business class at the expense of the populace. And so the beat of modern corporatocracy goes on, further dividing America by income and class.
The bottom line here is that Americans cannot expect a government that is overwhelmingly influenced by the business class to fairly represent their interests as employees. They simply have to do that themselves. The first step is to deny any legitimacy to the notion that public employees are substantially different than those in private sector. Indeed, the private sector workforce needs to emulate the public sector by both defending and utilizing their right to organize and provide collective representation.
Moreover, I would submit that, done correctly, an organized workforce is a net positive for business and economic growth. Striking a proper balance of power in the workplace provides accountability for management, shared goals and ownership and ultimately a fairer means to spread the resulting economic benefits between economic strata. Once again the overriding principle applies that only education-training and organized collective representation in the workplace can protect wages and income for employees.
However, too narrow a focus on Montana and even the United States leads us to forget that we live in a global economy. The competing interests are not limited to our shores vis the flat, smaller world as the niche for resource competition. Global oil consumption is the best example. American consumption has actually declined in the last two years, but our domestic prices are rising because emerging nation (China and India) consumption has risen. America vs America does not serve us well if we're to compete in the global arena.
Ultimately the 21st century economy with its New Gilted Age onset represents our greatest challenge. America's test is to manage our intranational competition so that we can prevail in the international arena. That starts to play out in our 2011 legislature beginning this week. Will something emerge from the postulates of Zinke and Feaver that will ultimately prevail over the Dave Lewis agenda? Are the promises of the GOP leadership, namely Sen. Peterson and Rep. Milburn, valid in constructively working with Governor Schweitzer and even the minority Democrats? If so then we might expect that the session will result in sound, collective solutions from the 2011 session.
Results on the national level are a quantum step up from Montana. Will the populist Obama that we elected prevail over Obama the corporocrat who is now governing? Will sound, collective decisions from the federal government allow America to regain a balance between labor and management and between economic strata, that is so critical to the future of our nation? Conventional wisdom states that a stable, prosperous middle class is the base alloy of our democracy. Achieving that economic goal intranationally is the only means to competing internationally in both economic and social terms. Finding the line between healthy internal debate and a disparate ravaging for resources between sectors seems difficult.
Those questions, on the local, national and international levels define 2011 and the ongoing 21st century. The competition for resources tests our individual and collective ability to reason verus our animal nature to compete. Perhaps the first federalist paper states it best: "Whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force. If there be any truth in the remark, the crisis at which we are arrived may with propriety be regarded as the era in which that decision is to be made; and a wrong election of the part we shall act may, in this view, deserve to be considered as the general misfortune of mankind."
The author of that paper, Alexander Hamilton, and the other founding fathers saw that as specific to their era. Realistically, our very human nature dictates that we must face that test regularly, and 2011 is no exception.
Unfair free trade agreements have already had a devastating affect on Montana families. According to a new 2010 report by the Economic Policy Institute, Montana has already lost 3,600 jobs due to unfair trade agreements with China--all during Rehberg's time in office.
Rehberg can talk all he wants about "jobs" but the fact remains that he supports trade arrangements that will ship the jobs of hardworking Montana families overseas. We deserve a Representative who will work to create jobs right here at home and stand up for the middle class, not someone like Rehberg who wants to ship our jobs overseas.
Dennis Rehberg claims he bases his votes on what he hears in his so-called "listening sessions," he says:
"I think there's a direct correlation between how a representative votes and how much time they've spent listening to the people they represent. After hearing what Montanans had to say about these important issues, I can't imagine voting differently than I have."
HUH?!?
Just where, exactly, is he hearing the support for expanding unfair free trade agreements that ship Montana jobs overseas?
If what Rehberg says above is true, Rehberg's spent more time listening to (and representing) the multi-national corporation lobbyists who line his pockets than ordinary Montanans.
REHBERG RECORD:
"Free trade is a critical part of American business," [Rehberg Press release 11.8.07]
In order to preserve my right to a secret ballot election, and for my own protection, I knowingly and without restraint and free from coercion sign this Agreement revoking and nullifying any union authorization card I may execute in the future. I hereby authorize Regis to submit this Agreement at such future time as any union seeks to establish majority status through any card check procedure and, based upon this Agreement, any union authorization card bearing my signature should not be countered to establish union majority status.
The parent corporation is protecting workers from themselves! And "free from coercion"? Hardly:
Gorder, who worked at the 10th Avenue South salon for eight years, said employees were called into a meeting earlier this month where managers played a video aimed at convincing them to resist unionizing.
"They were trying to scare the staff into signing that paper," Gorder said. "I don't feel like my staff or I should have signed it or should have had to sign it."
Gorder said she was pressured by her boss days later to get her staff to sign the document.
"She said, 'I would do what the company wants you to do,'" Gorder said.
I'm sure the Chamber of Commerce, that champion of workers' rights, will come galloping to the rescue, right?
From Dan Testa's report on the Employee Free Choice Act:
But opponents of the bill counter that its main purpose is to boost membership in unions whose size, influence and reach are dwindling.
"Workers are not seeing the benefits of joining a union," Brown said. "I really feel they've lost their way; I think that's why their numbers are declining."
Brown charges that the bill could run the risk of interfering with businesses by mandating a government arbitrator settle disputes, and it could force higher wages out of small companies in an economy where profit margins are already thin. Furthermore, he added, the illusion of higher wages could be mitigated by having to pay union dues.
"It's a sneaky way, I think, of selling something that they can't sell straightforwardly, so they're doing it kind of backdoor," Brown said.
Of course the EFCA is about increasing membership in unions! That's the whole friggin' point! Remove the current worker-unfriendly barriers to unionization (that Testa elaborates on in this report), and more people join. Brown himself admitted that in an earlier Chuck Johnson report when he said, "the last report I saw from the National Labor Relations Board, they (unions) are winning two out of three elections. What do they want?" Er, they want employers to stop harassing workers who want to join a union. And imagine if penalties for harassing workers were actually punitive, and that disputes were quickly adjudicated, and the process couldn't be strung along for weeks or months. Unions would win a lot more than two out of every three elections!
Brown is somehow arguing that businesses should have the right to harass their workers and delay elections because unions are so dang popular...which is an odd argument to make, isn't it?
As for the benefits of unionization, well, ask a union worker. You'll spot them easily enough. They're the ones with decent health care benefits, vacation time, and pay...
Here's a video from the Center for American Progress Action Center on the difficulties facing workers who want to unionize (h/t Ezra Klein):
Given the study from Matt that showed union intimidation of workers is a myth, and the hurdles unionizing workers face and lack of penalties for employers who break labor laws, you'd think the Chamber of Commerce, with its sudden interest in workers' rights, would come rushing in to suggest reforms that would free workers from intimidation and illegal anti-union tactics, right?
Check this out: A Billings long-term health care worker and her fellow union members issued a YouTube challenge to conservative commentator Bill O'Reilly to walk a day in their shoes.
The challenge came after O'Reilly continually tried to paint the Service Employee International Union as a "radical" organization.
How radical is SEIU? In Montana we help long-term care workers -- some of our nation's lowest paid and most vulnerable workers -- earn better wages and get health insurance and training so that the elderly, ill and injured homebound citizens they care for -- another extremely vulnerable segment of the population -- get better service.
Sounds... um... scary? Hardly. A better word might be noble.
"Labor unions are a big part of the solution" to the nation's economic crisis, said President Barack Obama to the leaders of the AFL-CIO earlier this week.
Obama addressed the issue of unions as part of his continued support of the Employee Free Choice Act in a meeting with the nation's top labor leaders on Tuesday this week.
Obama's central points: labor unions will help rebuild the American middle class and will always have a seat at the table.
More words from Obama below:
"I do not view the labor movement as part of the problem. To me, and to my administration, labor unions are a big part of the solution. We need to level the playing field for workers and the unions that represent their interests - because we cannot have a strong middle class without a strong labor movement....And as we confront this crisis and work to provide health care to every American, rebuild our nation's infrastructure, move toward a clean energy economy, and pass the Employee Free Choice Act, I want you to know that you will always have a seat at the table."
Yesterday, vice-president Joe Biden echoed Obama's remarks and added context. For instance, Biden said, worker productivity has increased almost 20 percent from 2000 to 2007, but wages fell by $2,000.
"If our basic bargain had been intact, if paychecks rose with productivity growth, as they did from World War II to the early '70s, families would have gained $10,000 over that period, instead of losing $2,000," Biden said. "This is all going to be difficult, and one of the most difficult things will be to reinstitute that basic bargain. I think the way to do that is the Employee Free Choice Act."
"If you've got workers who have a decent pay and benefits, they also are customers for your business," Biden said.
He also said the legal playing field on which employees and management contend must be level.
"I have a simple, basic belief," he said. "If a union is what you want, a union you're entitled to have."
Look, I get it. I understand that some people really, really hate labor unions and would like to see them outlawed. They'd rather the communist countries never had to face Solidarity, that American workers had no weekends, and that children still engaged in back-breaking labor. Well, they probably don't rather that, but they may be willing to accept it if only we could get rid of the terrible unions that...
OK, I don't get it. I don't really get what people hate about unions existing.
That being said, people do hate them. They hate them enough to characterize the Employee Free Choice Act as getting rid of secret ballots for workers when it does no such thing (it simply makes their use a decision of workers rather than management).
And they hate them enough to attempt to prohibit them from engaging in political debates over ballot initiatives. Rep. Scott Mendenhall is carrying a bill, the major impact of which would be to keep organizations like MEA-MFT and MPEA from going to bat for the interests of their members in ballot initiative fights (strangely, there is no similar prohibition on corporate expenditures to ballot initiatives).
Of course, Rep. Mendenhall can't just come out and call it the "Silencing Organized Labor Act of 2009." No, it's the "Montana Clean Government Act" and it appears primarily aimed at no-bid contracts. It just defines no-bid contracts as including collective bargaining agreements. It has to specifically do that because no one in their right mind thinks of CBAs when someone says no-bid contracts. It's like if the bill to abolish the death penalty defined the death penalty as any penalties imposed by the justice system. It's absurd. It's bait and switch.
Read Yglesias. It's no surprise that there would be a correlation between employee choice, unionization, economic freedom, and prosperity. When workers are free to join unions, they tend to in large numbers. Unionized industries give workers the power to solve their disputes without resorting to policy changes. That means disputes get sorted out through contract negotiations instead of Congressional fights.
Bam, worker freedom->unionization->economic freedom->prosperity. Even better, that prosperity is shared because you have a middle class that can bargain for its fair share.
MSNBC apparently got its hands on a GOP Senate memo sent Wednesday morning, before Republican Senators filibustered the auto bailout:
This is the democrats first opportunity to payoff organized labor after the election. This is a precursor to card check and other items. Republicans should stand firm and take their first shot against organized labor, instead of taking their first blow from it.
Whatever the merits, or lack thereof, of throwing $15 billion at the auto industry, it seems Republican Senators are missing the big picture. Instead of asking the right question -- will the loss of millions of jobs and our domestic manufacturing capacity hurt the nation on the cusp of the worst recession in a lifetime? -- they're in partisan attack mode.
More on Baucus' and Tester's support of the Republican filibuster later.
Last night, the Senate rejected a bailout for the U.S. auto industry, thanks to a Republican filibuster. This was after Dick Cheney -- Dick Cheney! -- tried to bully the GOP Senate leadership into supporting the bailout, warning them, "if we don't do this, we will be known as the party of Hoover forever."
Why are Senate Republicans -- and Dennis Rehberg -- killing the auto industry, when they rushed, without question, to bail out the rich executives and stock brokers of Wall Street investment firms and banks?
Union wages. The deal essentially fell apart over wages for US union workers. The filibustering Republicans wanted union wages to be slashed, now, not in 2011 when the union contract expires, to match Japanese wages.
To begin with, the disparity between the average wages of Japanese and US autoworkers is misunderstood and exagerrated. The Notorious Mark T has been over this already, noting that the difference is in part the "legacy costs," the money owed in health care benefits and pensions to retired workers, which we know is the result of US big business' antipathy towards universal health care. The wage figure also includes wages for white collar workers, and the fact that the auto industry is shrinking, so there's fewer entry-level wages being doled out. And, as John Judis points out, the Japanese wage is also the result of the industry's practice of building plants in "right to work" states and deliberate undercutting of workers' wages. That is, their wage is a result of "despicable" corporate behavior.
So, the province of Ontario apparently had card check legislation in place for fifty years and there's no record of any employer in the entire province ever complaining of unions intimidating workers into signing up for the union against their will.
Presumably that means that only workers who supported the unions were ever intimidated by union organizers. Or something. Eh?
Funny, isn't it that we often forget the meaning and purpose of Labor Day? Usually we drive off somewhere with the family and stuff ourselves silly, maybe drink a little too much beer. But really, it's a day for working people. Maybe we've forgotten how hard it was to get basic rights at the workplace -- a minimum wage, the 40-hour workweek, protection from discrimination -- but the fact is, we don't think about those things when we barbeque today.
It's also ironic, then, that today opens the Republican National Convention. Republicans have actively been working against working-class people for decades. In Montana, for example, the Republican Party inserted a "right to work" provision in the state party platform, which would effectively destroy state unions' ability to negotiate on behalf of workers.
Republicans -- especially the kind currently found in office -- favor trickle-down economics, which gives the wealthiest among us all the tax breaks and economic advantages, while the rest of us hover around hoping that some of that money comes down to the rest of us. Republicans give out lavish contracts to cronies in the military contracting business and wage wars to protect oil for their cronies in the energy business, while working Americans, refugees from Katrina, languish in trailer park camps across the South, while our schools and roads rot, while middle class wages bottom out and health care costs spike.
And you won't hear a single word this Convention about protecting workers from harassment, intimidation, or release from their employers if they choose to support and form a union at their workplace. That's right: one of our only recourses to demand and receive good wages and working conditions -- forming a union -- isn't a right.
So as you chow down your rack of ribs or brat or that side of elk you've had on ice, don't forget that, even in these times of relative (but slipping) prosperity for workers, there's still a lot of work to do...
There's always plenty of bravado at both parties' political conventions, but Iverson made a bold prediction in the governor's race that he repeated at least once.
"You heard it here first," Iverson said. "Roy Brown is going to beat Brian Schweitzer in November."
A bold prediction! This will be put in the time capsule until November, then we'll see if he got it right. And, yes, I know the party boss is supposed to be a cheerleader. Still, it's fun pestering Iverson with his mistakes.
* * *
Johnson brought up the story that Democrats Kevin O'Brien and Bryce Bennett were turned away from the convention by hotel staff and police. (Montana Headlines, for one, was quite passionately on the side of the Republican party.)
But what Johnson failed to mention was that it seems O'Brien and Bennett had the right to attend and film under Montana's sunshine laws. Apparently, anywhere at least half of a legislative caucus assembles is considered a public meeting, and open to reporters and members of the public - who may wield video cameras, if they choose.
Keeping O'Brien and Bennett out appears to have been in violation of the law. I'm sure they have a valid reason to take the hotel, policy, and MT GOP to court for violating their rights...
* * *
The biggest news, however, of the convention was this bit:
Public Service Commissioner Brad Molnar of Laurel was angry over what he said was a right-to-work provision added to the party's platform, but it wasn't debated on the floor.
It says: "We believe that work rules and membership in labor bargaining units must remain free and flexible."
Right-to-work laws ban so-called "closed shops," which make payment of union dues a condition of employment. Unions strongly oppose right-to-work laws.
"I think this was a severe breach of the peace we had with unions," Molnar said. "For 12 years, they thought Republican control (of the Legislature) would mean right to work. There still isn't enough votes to do it."
A union member himself, Molnar predicted this new platform language "will be a rallying point to hurt Republicans unnecessarily."
"We recognize the right to collective bargaining," he said, "and the government should not interfere in a contract between two entities."
The Republican party is now officially anti-labor and anti-union.
Here's a news story that should leave most of the state with head aches. It looks like the Ballot Measure Gang That Can't Shoot Straight is back. In 2006, we endured a rather painful experience with some fringe libertarian elements working hard to put 3 measures on the ballot -- until a Montana judge determined that they had committed massive fraud in order to gather the necessary signatures.
The measure is different this year -- they're now attempting to limit the lobbying ability to public employees unions by referring to their collective bargaining agreements as "no-bid contracts." This is the kind of political spin that gives bullshit a bad name.
But, just for fun, let's see just how much this measure seems to line up with the approach taken by the nasty trio from '06:
I-156 appears to be part of a multistate effort. An effort to push a nearly identical ballot measure in Nevada was dropped in March, while a somewhat similar one has qualified for the South Dakota ballot. It is unclear at this time who the financial backers are behind these efforts.
The leader of the Nevada effort, Republican activist Kris Munn told the Las Vegas Review-Journal March 26 that the initiative and another one weren't his idea, but he agreed to be their public face when the backers, whom he refused to name, asked him. Munn said that the I-156-like measure and another one were backed by "some heavy donors" from in and out of state.
Do the locals even appear to have any control over the decisions of whether to move forward? No.
"Right now, the people I've been associated with on this have done a poll, and they're wondering if they're prepared to put money in it," he said. "My associates, they're feeling that right at this time, we may have put it in too late."
Asked who these I-156 backers are, Everett referred a reporter to Chris Gallus, the Helena lawyer who drafted it. Asked the same question, Gallus said he had to check with Everett. Neither called back.
Is it represented by the same lawyer as the dastardly trio from 2006? Yes.
[Eric] Feaver noted that Gallus also was the lawyer for three 2006 ballot measures - to cap increase in state spending, make it easier to recall judges and give property owners the right to seek payment if they claim that government action damaged their property.
This is an embarrassment. Now, I'd never claim to completely independent of the national progressive movement, but I've never taken these kinds of ridiculous marching orders from anyone -- and I doubt anyone in the progressive movement would ever be silly enough to ask.
Honestly, Howard Rich, Paul Jacobs, and the rest -- please stop trying to impose cookie-cutter solutions on our state. Montana's conservatives are far more relevant when they're trying to figure out how to address our state's needs, not just be a face for some rich whackjobs.
The United Auto Workers are striking General Motors. Trapper John explains why this matters. The UAW as much as anybody built the American middle-class. In the coming days, right-wing talking heads will dismiss the strikers, saying they need to just accept pay cuts, while the heart of the issue in the short-term is really health care. It's a national problem, not a Big Three problem, and not a UAW problem.
One of the biggest lies of the modern era is that the UAW with its health care demands is responsible for the woes of American car companies. The reality is that the UAW actually sought originally to keep that burden off the car manufacturers and spread it across all employers -- with health care and pension plans that weren't dependent on or tied to a single firm. It was the manufacturers who opposed that thinking and created the employer-driven health care system that plagues the companies today.
Fitting for both (post) Labor Day and John Edwards' visit, it's a good time to mention that Edwards won the endorsement of the steel and mining unions yesterday:
Wearing blue jeans and a windbreaker displaying the U.S.W. and U.M.W.A. logos, Mr. Edwards spoke for about ten minutes to union members and supporters who gathered outside the Mellon sports arena here. He used the opportunity to highlight his health care plan, trade policies and the issue of safety for mine workers in the wake of the Utah mine disaster.
"I promise you that when I am president of the United States we will not have a mine company executive who is responsible for the safety of mine workers," he said. "We will have somebody who actually understands what needs to be done to keep workers safe who are toiling in the mines every single day."
Of course Edwards isn't the only Democratic candidate to win union endorsement. Chris Bowers has the union endorsement scorecard. Chris Dodd is the big surprise on this list, having won the nod from the International Association of Firefighters, a big deal in post-9/11 politics, but Senator Clinton's also receiving a number of endorsements.
In a related presidential campaign politics, Senator Edwards has been going after typical inside-the-Beltway politics, calling our government a "rigged system" against working- and middle-class Americans and Hillary Clinton an eager participant in that system.
"From my time in the White House and in the Senate, I learned you bring change by working in the system established by the Constitution," Mrs. Clinton said at an early afternoon rally in Concord, drawing a pointed contrast to the outsider messages of Mr. Obama and Mr. Edwards. Referring to the Roosevelts and Johnson, she said, "They got big things done because they knew it wasn't just about the dream, it's about the results."
"I want to work within the system," Mrs. Clinton said. "You can't pretend the system doesn't exist."
Er...that's not very inspiring. Business as usual, eh Senator? Count me out. We need some serious reform to pry the dominance of corporations from our government, not Republican lite.
