Views and Opinions


This loony billionaire wants to cut your Social Security
Posted: May 16, 2012
Source: Teamster Nation
Loony BillionaireYou may have never heard of Pete Peterson, but you've heard of his campaign to destroy Social Security.

Peterson, a Wall Street billionaire, has spent half a billion dollars trying to convince Americans that Social Security is going broke and therefore needs to be privatized.

Social Security is not going broke.As David Cay Johnson recently reported, Social Security,
...took in more than it spent last year, added $95 billion to its surplus and lifted 20 million Americans of all ages out of poverty...
Peterson is on the radar screen this week because he's hosting a "fiscal summit" in Washington. (We prefer digby's characterization: the "Poor People Ritual Sacrifice confab.") Ryan Grim at Huffington Post took the opportunity to review Perterson's tax records from 2007-11. Grim found,
Peterson has personally contributed at least $458 million to the Peter G. Peterson Foundation to cast Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and government spending as in a state of crisis, in desperate need of dramatic cuts. Peterson's millions have done next to nothing to change public opinion: In survey after survey, Americans reject the idea of cutting Social Security and Medicare. A recent national tour organized by AmericaSpeaks and largely funded by the Peter G. Peterson Foundation was met by audiences who rebuffed his proposals. 
But Peterson has been able to drive a major shift in elite consensus about government spending, with talk of "grand bargains" that would slash entitlements, cut corporate tax rates and end personal tax breaks, such as the mortgage deduction, that benefit the middle class.
This is a stunning amount of money. As Grim points out, all corporations and unions spent less than $4 billion on lobbying in 2011.

We'll just leave you with Esquire blogger Charles Pierce's description of Peterson's campaign to drive 20 million Americans into poverty:

..."centrist" economic "solutions" that would give the Pete Petersons of the world their golden dream of pumping Social Security money into the Wall Street casino and casting the elderly and the infirm onto the tender mercies of the private health-insurance market. And all of this in the middle of a soft recovery from a disastrous recession. If there was ever a time when the country needed "centrist" solutions less, and a vigorous and raucous class-based debate over who should profit from the American system, it's right now.

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Operating in the Dark
Posted: May 14, 2012
Source: The New York Times, editorial
The Web site of Representative Daniel Webster, Republican of Florida, instructs visitors to click on a link for “Census data for the 8th district” to learn about the area’s economy, businesses, income, employment, homeownership and other important features. And yet, on Wednesday, Mr. Webster declared that the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey — the source for much of that data — is an unconstitutional breach of privacy.

He then proposed an amendment to the bureau’s 2013 appropriation to forbid any money from being spent on the survey; the amendment was passed by most House Republicans and four Democrats.

This is know-nothingness at a new level. The American Community Survey, which gives annual updates of Americans’ economic, demographic and housing characteristics, is widely considered a vital tool for business decision makers. It is also a bipartisan creation.
Read the complete source story here.

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Mean Boys
Posted: May 13, 2012
Source: Charles M. Blow, New York Times columnist
Mitt the menace.

That’s the image that emerged of a high-school-aged Mitt Romney from a Washington Post article this week that recounted allegations of his mean and even violent behavior as a prep school student in Michigan.

The allegations include shouting “atta girl!” when a “closeted gay student” spoke out in class and walking a blind teacher into a closed door after which Romney is reported to have “giggled hysterically.”

But nothing is more disturbing than an alleged attack on John Lauber, “a soft-spoken new student one year behind Romney” who “was perpetually teased for his nonconformity and presumed homosexuality.”

Lauber bleached his hair, which apparently “incensed” Romney.

So one day Romney reportedly led a “posse” of other boys “shouting about their plan to cut Lauber’s hair.” According to the article, the boys came upon Lauber, “tackled him and pinned him to the ground. As Lauber, his eyes filling with tears, screamed for help, Romney repeatedly clipped his hair with a pair of scissors.”

One of the boys involved described Lauber as “terrified.” Another schoolmate said that Lauber was “just easy pickin’s.” Another called the incident “vicious.”

In an interview with Fox Radio on Thursday, Romney laughed as he said that he didn’t remember the incident, although he acknowledged that “back in high school, you know, I, I did some dumb things. And if anybody was hurt by that or offended, obviously I apologize.” He continued, “I participated in a lot of hijinks and pranks during high school, and some might have gone too far. And, for that, I apologize.”

There is so much wrong with Romney’s response that I hardly know where to start.

But let’s start here: If the haircutting incident happened as described, it’s not a prank or hijinks or even simple bullying. It’s an assault.

Second, honorable men don’t chuckle at cruelty.

Third, if it happened, Romney’s explanation that he doesn’t remember it doesn’t ring true. It is a searing account in the telling and would have been even more so in the doing. How could such a thing simply melt into the milieu of other misbehavior? How could the screams of his classmate not echo even now?

Fourth, “if someone was hurt or offended, I apologize” isn’t a real apology. Even if no one felt hurt or offended, if you feel that you have done something wrong, you can apologize on that basis alone. Remorse is a sufficient motivator. Absolution is a sufficient objective. Whether the person who was wronged requests it is separate.

Lastly, this would have been an amazing teaching moment about the impact of bullying if Romney had seized it. That is what a real leader would have done. That is what we would expect any adult to do.
Read the complete source story here.

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Holding Down and Terrorizing a Crying, Pleading Boy Is Not a "Prank," Mitt
Posted: May 10, 2012
Source: Paul Constant, in The Stranger
Dan posted on this earlier this morning, but Republicans are trying to dismiss it as a "boys will be boys" kind of thing, and it's not true. This is important. I want you to read this passage at the beginning of the Washington Post story:

John Lauber, a soft-spoken new student one year behind Romney, was perpetually teased for his nonconformity and presumed homosexuality. Now he was walking around the all-boys school with bleached-blond hair that draped over one eye, and Romney wasn’t having it.

“He can’t look like that. That’s wrong. Just look at him!” an incensed Romney told Matthew Friedemann, his close friend in the Stevens Hall dorm, according to Friedemann’s recollection. Mitt, the teenaged son of Michigan Gov. George Romney, kept complaining about Lauber’s look, Friedemann recalled.

A few days later, Friedemann entered Stevens Hall off the school’s collegiate quad to find Romney marching out of his own room ahead of a prep school posse shouting about their plan to cut Lauber’s hair. Friedemann followed them to a nearby room where they came upon Lauber, tackled him and pinned him to the ground. As Lauber, his eyes filling with tears, screamed for help, Romney repeatedly clipped his hair with a pair of scissors.

The incident was recalled similarly by five students, who gave their accounts independently of one another.

That's more than a kick-me sign surreptitiously clapped onto some nerd's back. That's assault. Here's Romney's apology:

"Back in high school, I did some dumb things, and if anybody was hurt by that or offended, obviously I apologize for that,” Romney said in a live radio interview with Fox News Channel personality Brian Kilmeade. Romney added: “I participated in a lot of hijinks and pranks during high school, and some might have gone too far, and for that I apologize.”

He claims to not remember the incident. Let me repeat that: He claims not to remember the incident where he held down a boy who was crying and screaming for help as he cut the boy's hair with a pair of scissors. It's obviously a scene that burned itself in the memories of at least five other participants, but Romney calls it a "prank" and says he doesn't remember it.

Look, everyone does shitty things as kids, it's true. But this kind of violence in response to nonconformity doesn't just wash itself out of someone's system when they turn 30. This is an issue of character.
Read the complete source story here.

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Rob McKenna: Crappy Lawyer or Crappy Liar?
Posted: May 10, 2012
Source: The Stranger
When 90 women filed suit against Washington State attorney general Rob McKenna on May 3, accusing him of violating professional ethics and asking a King County Superior Court judge to compel McKenna to reverse legal pleadings attacking President Obama's health-care-reform law, McKenna's campaign was quick to dismiss the claims as "frivolous," the women's lawyer as "laughable," and the women themselves as "shrill."

But whatever the legal merits of this case, the evidence the plaintiffs laid out seems irrefutable to me: McKenna has repeatedly misled Washington residents by arguing one thing in a court of law and another in the court of public opinion.

McKenna's official position on Obama's health-care-reform act, repeated both on his state website and in multiple public statements, is that the bulk of the provisions of the law are good for Washington and its residents—and that these good-for-us provisions can and should be upheld by the US Supreme Court even if the controversial individual mandate, which McKenna thinks is unconstitutional, gets invalidated. Over and over, McKenna has insisted in public that his lawsuit, now under consideration by the high court justices after high profile oral arguments in March, "does not challenge" and "will not affect most provisions in the 2,400-page bill."

Yet in multiple legal pleadings and arguments, McKenna has taken the exact opposite position, asking courts to invalidate the entire health-care-reform law and all of its protections.

"Either Mr. McKenna has falsely stated his position concerning the best interests of his client—the citizens of Washington—or he has acted directly against those interests," University of Washington law professor Robert Aronson concludes in expert testimony appended to the women's suit. Either action (falsely representing a client's best interests or acting directly against those interests) could be grounds for sanctions or even disbarment.

And if, as the suit alleges, McKenna did mislead the public about the legal arguments he was making in court, it wouldn't be the first time.
Read the complete source story here.

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Ryan Shrugs: Overlooked GOP Budget Provision Would Fuel Offshoring With New Tax Incentives
Posted: May 8, 2012
Source: In These Times
GOP House Budget Chair Paul Ryan reigns as the GOP’s resident economic genius, even as the productive base and health of his own southeastern Wisconsin district deteriorates under the impact of the very policies he has championed: deregulation, cuts to the social safety net, and “free trade”-fueled offshoring of jobs.

In recent years, Ryan’s congressional district has been hollowed out by the loss of major employers like Delco in Oak Creek (3,800 jobs, mostly going to Mexico), Chrysler in Kenosha (850 jobs sent to Mexico with the help of auto industry “bailout” funds), and General Motors in Janesville (a plant closing wiped out 2,800 jobs directly and another 3,000 jobs in nearby supplier plants). 

A devotee of hyper-capitalist author Ayn Rand, Ryan has seen the misery and, well, shrugged, just like Rand's Atlas. At least that's what his latest federal budget, which was passed by the House in late March, implies. In the face of suffering in his district and across the nation, Ryan's "Path to Prosperity" would deepen the economic polarization of America by heaping new riches on the 1%. A little-understood provision in it would make the exodus of jobs even worse by creating huge new tax incentives for corporations to relocate more jobs and assets overseas.

Although praised by Mitt Romney as “marvelous,” Ryan’s plan is so extreme it has gained criticism from even the conservative U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and other theologians for its sweeping cuts on programs serving the poor—which comprise about 62 percent of deficit-cutting measures in the budget—despite their tiny share of the overall federal budget. While cutting $3.3 trillion from safety-net programs such as Medicaid and food stamps, Ryan, a practicing Catholic, is all for creating $3 trillion in new tax breaks for corporations and the rich.

A PERNICIOUS PROVISION
Among the most pernicious provisions of Ryan’s tax breaks is a plan to halt the authority of the U.S. government to tax the foreign profits of U.S. corporations once they are brought back into the country, notes tax expert David Cay Johnston, author of Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense and Stick You With The Bill. Known in right-wing parlance as “extra-territoriality,” this proposal would be disastrous to both U.S. jobs and tax revenues.

“Ryan’s plan would insure that any profits created offshore by U.S. corporations would never be taxed by the U.S. government,” explains Johnston, who won the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for his work as The New York Times' tax reporter. “This would create a tremendous incentive to move more and more U.S. jobs overseas to escape taxes on the profits that foreign workers produce for them,” Johnston says.
Read the complete source story here.

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Those Revolting Europeans
Posted: May 7, 2012
Source: The New York Times
Both countries held elections Sunday that were in effect referendums on the current European economic strategy, and in both countries voters turned two thumbs down. It’s far from clear how soon the votes will lead to changes in actual policy, but time is clearly running out for the strategy of recovery through austerity — and that’s a good thing.

Needless to say, that’s not what you heard from the usual suspects in the run-up to the elections. It was actually kind of funny to see the apostles of orthodoxy trying to portray the cautious, mild-mannered François Hollande as a figure of menace. He is “rather dangerous,” declared The Economist, which observed that he “genuinely believes in the need to create a fairer society.” Quelle horreur!

What is true is that Mr. Hollande’s victory means the end of “Merkozy,” the Franco-German axis that has enforced the austerity regime of the past two years. This would be a “dangerous” development if that strategy were working, or even had a reasonable chance of working. But it isn’t and doesn’t; it’s time to move on. Europe’s voters, it turns out, are wiser than the Continent’s best and brightest.

What’s wrong with the prescription of spending cuts as the remedy for Europe’s ills? One answer is that the confidence fairy doesn’t exist — that is, claims that slashing government spending would somehow encourage consumers and businesses to spend more have been overwhelmingly refuted by the experience of the past two years. So spending cuts in a depressed economy just make the depression deeper.

Moreover, there seems to be little if any gain in return for the pain. Consider the case of Ireland, which has been a good soldier in this crisis, imposing ever-harsher austerity in an attempt to win back the favor of the bond markets. According to the prevailing orthodoxy, this should work. In fact, the will to believe is so strong that members of Europe’s policy elite keep proclaiming that Irish austerity has indeed worked, that the Irish economy has begun to recover.

But it hasn’t. And although you’d never know it from much of the press coverage, Irish borrowing costs remain much higher than those of Spain or Italy, let alone Germany. So what are the alternatives?
Read the complete source story here.

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New York Times' Scathing Smackdown Of Roger Ailes And Fox News' Brand Of Journalism
Posted: May 6, 2012
Source: News Hounds
Bill Keller, the former executive editor of The New York Times – and a frequent Fox News target – wrote a scathing editorial about Roger Ailes and Fox News. Finally, a mainstream journalist not only gets exactly what’s wrong with Fox but is able to express it in perfect prose.

There are so many nuggets in the piece, I can’t reprint them all here and still feel confident I’m on the right side of the copyright laws. But starting with the title, Murdoch’s Pride Is America’s Poison, here are a few of the most golden ones:

Partisan journalism, while not my thing, has a long tradition. Though I do wonder if the folks at Fox appreciate that this genre is more European than American.

My complaint is that Fox pretends very hard to be something it is not, and in the process contributes to the corrosive cynicism that has polarized our public discourse.

I doubt that people at Fox News really believe their programming is “fair and balanced” — that’s just a slogan for the suckers — but they probably are convinced that what they have created is the conservative counterweight to a media elite long marinated in liberal bias. They believe that they are doing exactly what other serious news organizations do; they just do it for an audience that had been left out before Fox came along.

…Traditional news organizations, for all their shortcomings, see it as their mission to provide — and test — the information you need to form intelligent opinions. We aim to challenge lazy assumptions. Fox panders to them.
Read the complete source story here.

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Working hard vs. hardly working
Posted: May 2, 2012
Source: The Maddow Blog
National Review ran an odd item the other day, "harping" that President Obama "vacations too much." NR's Jim Geraghty noted that he, among others, is "irked and fascinated by the commander-in-chief's regular getaways as economic hard times persist."

I have to admit, I more or less assumed this would be the one aspect of Obama's presidency the right would be inclined to ignore. After all, Ronald Reagan took 436 days during his two terms, setting an all-time record. Facing 9.5% unemployment, Reagan took off for a month-long break, which included a period in which the president's aides stopped relaying news to the Republican president so as to not interrupt his sojourn.

George W. Bush took 977 days off, which not only blew Reagan's record away, it set a benchmark no one will ever surpass -- Bush spent the equivalent of more than two and a half years away from the office.

When Obama's time off comes close to the vacation time for the 40th and 43rd presidents, the right will be justified in making this a topic of conversation. Until then, these criticisms are pretty silly.

Besides, if fair-minded political observers want to complain about an institution taking too much time off, I'd recommend looking away from the White House and towards the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue.
If you were to stroll by the House chamber today -- or tomorrow, or the next day, or the day after that -- you would arrive at the ideal time to see what the lawmakers do best: absolutely nothing.

It's another recess week for our lazy leaders. Oh, sorry: "Constituent Work Week" is what they're calling it these days, as if lawmakers were filling potholes and making calls to Social Security rather than raising campaign cash.

By the time the Republican-led House returns next week, members will have been working in Washington on just 41 of the first 127 days of 2012 -- and that was the busy part of the year.
Read the complete source story here.

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The Boss and Everyone Else
Posted May 2, 2012
Source: The New York Times, editorial
One lesson of the financial crisis is that excessive pay led to excessive risk-taking. To help curb exorbitant pay, the Dodd-Frank reform law included a so-called say-on-pay provision, which requires companies to put their pay practices to a shareholder vote at least every three years.

The law also included a pay-gap provision, which requires companies to calculate and disclose the ratio of the chief executive’s compensation to the median pay package at the company. Say-on-pay, though nonbinding, lets investors influence executive pay, while the pay-gap ratio is crucial to determining whether executive compensation is excessive and to judging the effect of pay gaps on company performance and the broader economy.

Nearly two years after the passage of Dodd Frank, say-on-pay is slowly emboldening investors to question executive pay, most prominently this year at Citigroup, where shareholders recently rejected a $15 million pay package for the bank’s chief executive, Vikram Pandit. But the pay-gap provision has not yet gone into effect.

The delay is disturbing. The law specifically directs the Securities and Exchange Commission to require companies to compute and report the pay gap. Unlike other provisions in Dodd Frank, where Congress gave the S.E.C. the authority to weigh in on issues, but not a statutory mandate, the pay-gap provision does not leave crucial details up to regulators. Some regulatory guidance is needed, for example, in explaining how to factor in the pay of part-time workers. But, for the most part, Congress did not create much leeway for regulators — or for corporate opponents — to do anything but follow the law. Yet the S.E.C. has not issued the pay-gap rules. The main problem seems to be foot-dragging in the face of objections from corporate lobbyists, who claim the ratio would be too complex to calculate. But the real issue is not complexity; it is the reluctance of executives and boards to reveal and justify what are bound to be some very large pay gaps.
Read the complete source story here.

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By James P. Hoffa, General President, International Brotherhood of Teamsters
Published in The Detroit News on April 11, 2012
No Room In Our Democracy For ALEC
Posted May 1, 2012
Source: Teamster.org
Working Americans scored a big victory last week when four corporations withdrew their membership from a secretive group called the American Legislative Exchange Council. Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Kraft Foods and Intuit listened to their customers and quit ALEC. I hope their example is followed soon by the rest of ALEC’s members -- both the corporations that fund it and the state politicians influenced by it.

Only recently has ALEC been exposed publicly. A year ago, the Center for Media and Democracy in Wisconsin began to draw attention to ALEC’s extensive reach, its influence and its secrecy.

The Center found that 2,000 state lawmakers throughout the country belong to ALEC. They introduce bills written by and for ALEC’s corporate members, including Koch Industries, Walmart and other multinational corporations. The corporate members’ goals are corporate profit and corporate power. They want more tax breaks, an end to unions, monopolies and contracts to run private prisons and schools. 

What do the lawmakers get out of it? Their dues are nominal, and many of them receive ALEC “scholarships” – all-expenses paid vacations at luxury resorts where they meet wealthy political donors. As the Center reports, “For a few hours of work on a task force and a couple of indoctrination sessions by ALEC experts, part-time legislators can bring the whole family to ALEC’s annual convention, work for a few hours, then stay in swank hotels and attend cool parties.”

Michigan lawmakers understandably aren’t publicizing their membership in ALEC. But its influence in our state can’t be missed. ALEC, for example, worked through the Mackinac Center to pass Public Act 4, which gave the governor enormous power to appoint unelected officials, sell off the public assets of Michigan’s cities, break up employee unions and privatize public services.

In Wisconsin, ALEC-alumni Gov. Scott Walker’s bill stripping government workers of their collective bargaining rights mirrors ALEC’s anti-union philosophy. In Ohio, ALEC drafted much of an anti-worker bill that was copied as SB5, since overturned by voters.

More than 50 bills written by ALEC have been introduced in Virginia over the past few years. In New Jersey, Gov. Chris Christie’s plan to replace public schools with corporate schools was written mostly by ALEC. Utah’s governor just signed a bill demanding Congress turn federal lands over to the state.  

In Georgia, four Senators who belong to ALEC co-sponsored a bill to make picketing a crime punishable by a year in prison. The bill was so clearly a violation of First Amendment rights that the tea party, civil rights groups and Teamsters united to defeat it.

I hesitate to even call this group “conservative.” There’s nothing conservative about privatizing national parks, restricting the right to free speech and selling off public education to for-profit corporate schools. And there’s no room in our democracy for such a predatory organization.

To read archived articles from General President Hoffa, click here.

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Romney spokesman claims credit for Obama auto rescue Mitt repeatedly slammed
Posted: April 30, 2012
Source: Daily Kos
Mitt Romney tells two basic types of lies: the kind where he's feeling awkward and unpopular and is just trying to make his audience like him more, for even an instant, and the brazen, ridiculous, intentional campaign lie. The latter case is where we get a campaign predicated on the idea that you just shake the Etch A Sketch and no one will notice. Just as the idea of the Etch A Sketch originated with Romney campaign adviser Eric Fehrnstrom, so do some of the most blatant lies. That's certainly the case with Fehrnstrom's new attempt to claim that President Obama's rescue of the American auto industry was all Mitt Romney's idea:

"[Romney's] position on the bailout was exactly what President Obama followed. I know it infuriates them to hear that," Eric Fehrnstrom, senior adviser to the Romney campaign, said.

"The only economic success that President Obama has had is because he followed Mitt Romney's advice."
Fehrnstrom's position is that because Romney called for managed bankruptcy in November 2008, and months and months later Obama did have the auto companies go through managed bankruptcy, Romney deserves credit for Obama's success. There are, as you might imagine, a few tiny problems with this position. First, the auto companies, the people who worked on the auto rescue in the Bush and Obama administrations, and economists outside the process agree, contra Romney, that managed bankruptcy only became possible because of the aid the government gave the auto companies between the time Romney suggested immediate bankruptcy and the time they actually entered that process. What Romney advocated at the time he advocated it has been widely discredited by economists in both parties. No private capital was available to make managed bankruptcy possible; in fact, Bain Capital, the company Romney ran for most of his career, refused to invest.

Second, Romney has continued saying that President Obama rescued the auto industry in the wrong way. In February, he wrote a Detroit News op-ed to that effect. He actually wrote "The president tells us that without his intervention things in Detroit would be worse. I believe that without his intervention things there would be better." Subsequently, challenged on that at a debate, he said "Those monies they put in beforehand were—it was wasted money." But two months and a shake of the Etch A Sketch later, we're supposed to start believing that President Obama did the right thing ... but only because Mitt Romney told him how.

It's not just that Mitt Romney is, personally, a habitual liar. Though he certainly is that, the real issue is that his campaign is calibrated around the idea that blatant mendacity won't be penalized by the media or the Republican base, so lying is an acceptable and politically safe way to try to appeal to independent voters.

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American Enterprise Institute And Brookings Must-Read: 'The Republicans Are The Problem'
Posted: April 28, 2012
Source: Think Progress/The Washington Post
Two leading political scholars — representing the conservative American Enterprise Institute and the centrist Brookings Institution – have published a must-read article, “Let’s just say it: The Republicans are the problem.”

[snip]

The article opens:

Rep. Allen West, a Florida Republican, was recently captured on video asserting that there are “78 to 81” Democrats in Congress who are members of the Communist Party. Of course, it’s not unusual for some renegade lawmaker from either side of the aisle to say something outrageous. What made West’s comment — right out of the McCarthyite playbook of the 1950s — so striking was the almost complete lack of condemnation from Republican congressional leaders or other major party figures, including the remaining presidential candidates.

It’s noat that the GOP leadership agrees with West; it is that such extreme remarks and views are now taken for granted.

We have been studying Washington politics and Congress for more than 40 years, and never have we seen them this dysfunctional. In our past writings, we have criticized both parties when we believed it was warranted. Today, however, we have no choice but to acknowledge that the core of the problem lies with the Republican Party.

The GOP has become an insurgent outlier in American politics. It is ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.

When one party moves this far from the mainstream, it makes it nearly impossible for the political system to deal constructively with the country’s challenges.

Read the complete source story here.

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Demonizing unions makes no sense
Posted: April 26, 2012
Source: Delaware Online
We luv organized workers signI read a guest opinion from the conservative Caesar Rodney Institute last month that suggested that our unions are hurting our economy and driving the state into debt while politicians simply roll over for them.

Let me say this clearly: Unions are not “the enemy.” This game of creating a boogeyman for our problems does nothing to get at the heart of any issues our state and country face.

The vilification of hard-working people has become so common in recent years that many of us forget just who unions and union members are and what they have done for all of us.

Union members are part of middle-class America. They aren’t living high on the hog, cashing checks and putting their feet up at some ritzy country club. They work hard every day to earn a living, put food on the table and put their kids through school. They are two-income families who are trying to save enough so they can retire at 65.

Union members are more than construction workers. When someone tries to use the word “union” in a negative way, they stir up images of construction workers sitting around doing nothing or lazy government workers.

It’s worth pointing out that there are unions for dozens of fields, including teachers, nurses, police, firefighters, chemical workers, mechanics, hotel workers and food service employees. They keep us safe, educate our children, build the homes in which we live and fix the power when it goes out.

Union members are part of the fabric of society. This “us versus them” theme is ridiculous. Walk out on your front steps and look left, look right and look across the street. Chances are at least one of your neighbors belongs to a union Their kids play on your kids’ Little League team. They do charity work and volunteer. They attend your church.

Unions have made huge contributions to employment at all levels. Critics love to say that unions are hurting our economy and damaging the workplace. People should not forget that it’s unions that brought us child labor laws, the 40-hour work week, a grievance process, safe work conditions, minimum wage, weekends and overtime pay.
Read the complete source story here.

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The Koch Brothers – Exposed!
Posted: April 26, 2012
KochsSource: Rolling Stone
If the Koch brothers didn't exist, the left would have to invent them. They're the plutocrats from central casting – oil-and-gas billionaires ready to buy any congressman, fund any lie, fight any law, bust any union, despoil any landscape, or shirk any (tax) burden to push their free-market religion and pump up their profits. 

But no need to invent – Charles and David Koch are the real deal. Over the past 30-some years, they've poured more than 100 million dollars into a sprawling network of foundations, think tanks, front groups, advocacy organizations, lobbyists and GOP lawmakers, all to the glory of their hard-core libertarian agenda. They don't oppose big government so much as government – taxes, environmental protections, safety-net programs, public education: the whole bit. (By all accounts, the Kochs are true believers; they really buy that road-to-serfdom stuff about the the holiness of free markets. Still, you can't help but notice how neatly their philosophy lines up with their business interests.) They like to think of elected politicians as merely "actors playing out a script," and themselves as supplying "the themes and words for the scripts." Imagine Karl Rove’s strategic cunning, crossed with Ron Paul’s screw-the-poor ideology, and hooked up to Warren Buffett's checking account, and you’re halfway there.

For years, the brothers shunned the spotlight. David Koch used to joke that the family business, the Wichita, Kansas-based Koch Industries – with annual revenues* estimated at $100 billion, it's the second-biggest private firm in America – was "the largest company you’ve never heard of." But when Barack Obama became president, the Kochs, like a lot of right-wingers, flipped out. They threw their weight behind a stealth campaign to turn back the president’s "socialist" agenda: They were early backers, some say puppet masters, of the Tea Party movement, and when the tea-infused GOP retook the House in the famous midterm "shellacking" of 2010, it was with a big assist from Koch money. (They later blessed the brief, ill-fated presidential run of Tea Party-favorite Herman Cain. That's how crazy – or cynical – these guys are.) Progressive activists and the news media started paying attention – most notably ThinkProgress and Jane Mayer of The New Yorker – and pretty soon the Kochs had become the poster boys of "the 1 percent" and a surefire fundraising tool for the Democratic Party; at the mere mention of the Koch name, liberal wallets fall open.

Now the Kochs are the subject of a blistering (but to all appearances factual) documentary by the activist filmmaker Robert Greenwald. Koch Brothers Exposed aims to show how the brothers' machinations affect the lives of "living, breathing human beings," as Greenwald put it to me at the film’s New York premiere in late March. "When I learned about the damage the Kochs were doing to our democracy, I wanted to make sure more Americans understood what they're up to."

On the evidence of Koch Brothers Exposed, the more relevant question is: What aren't they up to? The film – scrappy and low-budget, but effective all the same – weaves together a string of shorter videos produced over the past year by Greenwald’s nonprofit Brave New Films, each looking at a separate tentacle of the "Kochtopus," as lefty wags have dubbed the Kochs' network. It recounts how the brothers have: Read the complete source story here.

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End the Delays Deadly to Workers
Posted: April 25, 2012
Source: Huffington Post
Wear black on Saturday. It is Workers' Memorial Day, a time devoted to commemorating those killed on the job.

A month later, on soldiers' Memorial Day, the nation will recognize those who sacrificed their lives for American ideals, for a nation's freedom. That ultimate gift is given in most cases valiantly and voluntarily. No one, however, volunteers to sacrifice their life for corporate profit. Every day in workplaces across this country, the lives of 12 workers are taken, not given.

The shield Congress erected in 1970 to protect workers -- the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) -- is mutilated from relentless attacks by corporations and their battering ram -- the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The delays in OSHA rule-making that corporate carping achieves cost workers their lives. Congress must intervene to restore OSHA's power to act swiftly.

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) detailed the delays in a report issued last week titled, "Multiple Challenges Lengthen OSHA's Standard Setting." The GAO found it takes OSHA longer than seven years to issue a new standard. In one case, it was 19 years. And it's getting worse. It took 70 percent longer to finalize standards in the 1990s than it did in the 1980s, and another 30 percent longer in the 2000s.

The GAO determined that this was a result of increasing demands on OSHA. These occurred as corporations sued to stop enforcement and new mandates for review of proposed rules were stacked on top of existing ones. The GAO said defenders of the delays argue that the layers of obligations balance worker protections with employer costs.

So the very corporations and Chamber of Commerce that constantly deride government red tape demand it for this special case -- to delay implementation of rules to protect workers. And this is their justification: Corporate profits trump worker lives.

There's no doubt that the rules OSHA implements actually save lives. Members of my union, the United Steelworkers (USW), are alive today because of OSHA's lockout/tagout rule. The GAO noted this in its report.

The lockout/tagout standard, established in 1989, requires corporations to install devices and adopt procedures that prevent workers from accidently switching on big machines while co-workers are cleaning or repairing them. The GAO wrote about this rule:

"In a 2000 review, OSHA attributed a 55 percent reduction in machinery-related fatalities at 10 steel-producing companies between 1990 and 1997 to the provisions in this standard."
The quicker such a regulation is implemented, the more worker lives saved. But now, for OSHA, "quick" is anything less than seven years and nine months. For standards limiting exposure to some highly-toxic substances, including silica and beryllium, exposed workers have waited much longer than seven years. OSHA has been working on a silica standard for 15 years and a new beryllium standard for 12.

Beryllium is so dangerous that no safe level has ever been established. It causes a devastating lung disorder called chronic beryllium disease (CBD). It is so hazardous that office workers in factories where it's used and family members of workers who handle it can be struck down by tiny particles carried on shoes or pant cuffs. This year, my union and Materion Brush, the only U.S. producer of pure beryllium metal, recommended a new standard that is 90 percent lower than the current limit.

That, however, followed years of obstruction by industry officials. This is typical of corporations fighting standards that will save lives but cost money. They strangle proposed standards by suing and by entangling them in red tape. The lawsuits, the GAO report says, mean OSHA must provide extraordinary levels of proof. And the suits have restrained OSHA from using its full powers to protect workers.
Read the complete source story here.

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Mitt Romney, American Parasite
Posted: April 22, 2012
Source: Seattle Weekly
Ask Mitt...he'll lie.It was the early 1990s, and the 750 men and women at Georgetown Steel were pumping out wire rods at peak performance. They had an abiding trust in management's ability to run a smart company. That allegiance was rewarded with fat profit-sharing checks. In the basement-wage economy of Georgetown, South Carolina, Sanderson and his co-workers were blue-collar aristocracy.

"We were doing very good," says Sanderson, president of Steelworkers Local 7898. "The plant was making money and we had good profit-sharing checks, and everything was going well."

What he didn't know was that it was about to end. Hundreds of miles to the north in Boston, a future presidential candidate was sizing up Georgetown's books.

At the time, Mitt Romney had been running Bain Capital since 1984, minting a reputation as a prince of private investment. A future prospectus by Deutsche Bank would reveal that by the time he left in 1999, Bain had averaged a shimmering 88 percent annual return on investment. Romney would use that success to launch his political career.

His specialty was flipping companies—or what he often calls "creative destruction." It's the age-old theory that the new must constantly attack the old to bring efficiency to the economy, even if some are destroyed along the way. In other words, people like Romney are wolves, culling the herd of the weak and infirm.

His formula was simple: Bain would purchase a firm with little money down, then begin extracting huge management fees and paying Romney and his investors enormous dividends.

The result was that previously profitable companies were now burdened with debt. But much like the Enron boys, Romney's battery of MBAs fancied themselves the smartest guys in the room. It didn't matter if a company manufactured bicycles or contact lenses; they were certain they could run it better than anyone else.

Bain would slash costs, jettison workers, reposition product lines, and merge its new companies with other firms. With luck, they'd be able to dump the firm in a few years for millions more than they'd paid for it.

But the beauty of Romney's thesis was that it really didn't matter if the company succeeded. Since he was yanking out cash early and often, he would profit even if his targets collapsed.

Which was precisely the fate awaiting Georgetown Steel.
Read the complete source story here.

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Why the battle over Mitt Romney's `silver spoon' upbringing matters
Posted: April 19, 2012
Source: Greg Sargent, Washington Post Columnist
After President Obama proclaimed yesterday that he hadn’t grown up with a “silver spoon” in his mouth, Mitt Romney took great umbrage, declaring that he wouldn’t apologize for his father’s success. Indeed, the Post’s Amy Gardner reports that Romney is sensitive to claims that he grew up wealthy, and has even taken to asserting that he grew up middle class and only moved to a tony suburb in his teens, when his father took over American Motors.

But Alec MacGillis reads the leading book on Romney’s life story and finds that Romney is subtly revising his biography to downplay the advantages of his youth. MacGillis concludes:

Romney’s hardly the first candidate to try to talk down his roots. And yes, his outsized wealth is the direct result of his own hard work at Bain Capital. But it requires willful blindness to ignore the advantages that carried him through his first decades in life. And it’s the job of the rest of us to hold him to the basic facts of his biography, even as he now tries his best to blur them.

Yes, it’s important to hold Romney to the facts for their own sake. But there’s another layer to this that’s worth unpacking.

The upbringings of Obama and Romney — and the contrast between them — are relevant not just because presidential races are a clash of personalities and biographies. They also bear directly on the basic policy argument between the two men over how best to create opportunity and shared prosperity, a central dispute in this campaign.

Obama argues that government needs to play a larger role in facilitating opportunity, via more investments in education, financial aid, and so forth. He cites himself as an example of someone who might not have been able to advance in life without such assistance.

Romney, by contrast, argues that the government activism to combat inequality Obama advocates amounts to government-enforced “equal outcomes,” or worse, the politics of “envy” and “class warfare.” Romney insists that rolling back government and unshackling the private sector is the best way to combat inequality, by creating opportunity, shared prosperity and social mobility. Romney, too, has cited himself as proof of what the private sector can accomplish along these lines, if only we’ll let it. He has directly equated his own success with the benefits that “free enterprise” can shower on anyone.

In other words, both men are citing themselves as walking emblems of their own policy visions. No one is claiming that Romney didn’t earn his money or that he isn’t a very hard worker. But if Romney is going to argue that his own success proves that unshackling the free market is the primary way to facilitate broadly shared prosperity and opportunities for those who currently don’t share in either — and that Obama’s call for more government efforts to promote both would be counter-productive — the early advantages Romney enjoyed are directly relevant to the debate.
Read the complete source story here.

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Jonah Goldberg: The Gilded Age Was Awesome for Poor People
Posted: April 16, 2012
Source: Crooks and Liars
Professional wingnut revisionist historian Jonah Goldberg was very upset that President Obama called the GOP budget -- which pays for tax cuts for rich people by cutting services for poor people -- "Social Darwinism". In a nearly fact-free piece, which he wrote for the Weekly Standard (undoubtedly in crayon), he argues that...

...it’s worth noting that the so-called red-in-tooth-and-claw Gilded Age was a time of massive, historic economic growth. It was when America overtook Britain as the economic powerhouse of the globe. That’s one reason the left has always hated it. When Europe was boldly embracing socialism, America was proving that capitalism was better at generating wealth and lifting people out of poverty.

What a mess.

First, the Gilded Age is generally regarded as the era after the Civil War (ca. 1870s) until the Progressive Era (ca. 1900s). Which European countries were "boldly embracing socialism" before 1900?

Second, anyone who thinks the Gilded Age was an era in which the masses were "lifted people out of poverty" is pathetically, horribly misinformed.

While the rich wore diamonds, many wore rags. In 1890, 11 million of the nation's 12 million families earned less than $1200 per year; of this group, the average annual income was $380, well below the poverty line.

And here's the best part. Jonah argues that it's unfair to characterize the extreme laissez-faire economics of the Gilded Age "Social Darwinism," because that term was simply an invention of a "liberal" historian in the '40s.

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