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AFT Mobilizes for Smart Investments in Economic Recovery Package |
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AFT members are mobilizing in the union’s just-launched campaign, Fight for America’s Future: It’s Dollars and Sense, to build support in Washington and back home for the far-reaching economic recovery plan making its way through Congress that helps rebuild the nation’s schools, roads, bridges and more, and protects vital services threatened by shrinking state budgets.
AFT President Randi Weingarten says the campaign
isn’t just about dollars, but about the kind of smart investments that will help slow the economic free-fall and strengthen education, healthcare and public services in order to preserve opportunity in this country.
In addition to urging their lawmakers on Capitol Hill to craft a substantial recovery plan, AFT members also are working at the local level where, says Weingarten, essential services are “too often the first on the chopping block.”
This fight must be waged not only in the nation’s capital, but in every state legislature, every city hall, every county council and every school board. There are no do-overs for students—a child is only five once; patients can’t wait for a better economic climate; and our country’s crumbling infrastructure must be modernized sooner rather than later.
The new campaign’s website includes a section where AFT members tell their stories about how the economic crisis is affecting their students, patients or clients and what they say should be the focus of a recovery package. Debra MacDougall, an early childhood educator from Washington State writes:
Our teachers are already seeing aberrant behavior in young children whose families are stressed by home foreclosures and the financial strains of not being able to put wholesome food on the table, seek needed medical attention, pay for heat, and provide the basic tools necessary to help kids be prepared to learn and to thrive in general.
Jeremiah Bain, a member of the New York State Public Employees Federation, says:
As our federal government bails out failing corporations, most Americans would benefit more from government spending that addresses decaying infrastructure, renewable fuels, and environmental protection.
AFT members can submit their comments here. The site also includes a quick poll, a video message from Weingarten, links to send a letter to lawmakers, to volunteer to take action and to support the Employee Free Choice Act.
Weingarten compares Fight for America’s Future: It’s Dollars and Sense to the union’s successful mobilization in last year’s presidential campaign.
Just as we came together to help elect Barack Obama president of the United States, we will once again unite in one clear voice for support of the America we know is worth fighting for. This campaign will decide our country’s future. Victory will take not only dollars, but the good sense to use those dollars wisely.
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Organizing For America Starts with the Employee Free Choice Act!
For More Information on EFCA please visit our website and blog
http://www.employeefreechoiceactnow.org
http://efcanow.blogspot.com/
Here is a reality check: The corporate controlled Democratic Party will do little for the “middle class” and even less for the greater majority of working people.
Congressional office admits:
Obama stimulus plan won’t meet job-creation target
By Patrick Martin
26 January 2009
Read the details here:
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/jan2009/stim-j26.shtml
“The Obama administration and congressional Democrats began the final push for passage of an $825 billion economic stimulus plan this weekend, but an analysis by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) conceded that the measure would pump far less money into the economy over the next two years and create far fewer jobs than promised.
…
While Democrats and Republicans squabble over whether the stimulus package can save or create four million jobs over the next two years—a drop in the bucket compared to the tens of millions of jobs needed—there is no such delay in action to rescue the banks. Unemployed workers are being told that there will be no help for them until 2011, if then, but Citigroup and Bank of America are showered with billions as soon as they pick up the phone and call the Treasury.
…
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Perhaps this on-going destruction of working people might have a better outcome if the following were considered.
1. The organized labor movement must now actively consider itself as representative of ALL working people, not just the “middle class” that the EFCA act is supposedly designed to help.
2. Mass media must be established nationally to agressively put forth the interests of all working people. This programming must be out there 24/7 to reach all working people to educate everyone to what is happening. THERE IS NOTHING IN MASS MEDIA DOES THIS FUNCTION. Demand a full hour every night on PBS national television EQUAL TIME to counter the control of PBS by Wall Street Journal, etc.
3. Notice must be given NOW to the corporate controlled DEMOCRATIC PARTY: If EFCA is not passed, if immediate legislation is not passed to rescue working people hanging on the edge of destitution, THE AFL-CIO will initiate a call to form a new political party to advance the economic interests of all working now. Instead of a corporate control of federal government “OF BY AND FOR THE BANKS, WEALTHY” restore the control of government “OF BY AND FOR THE PEOPLE”!
4. Some of the IMMEDIATE ECONOMIC FIXES NEEDED RIGHT NOW:
1. Massive increase in food stamps.
2. Massive increase in Section 8 housing.
3. Massive support to all the states, which are all cutting back massively on essential services (public schools, health care, etc.).
One report had this amount to be $350 billion (a mere pittance when conpared to the corporate looting of the Treasury).
4. Full maintenance and support of SOCIAL SECURITY, Medicare, etc. which MILLIONS of people are desperately relying upon.
5. WHERE WILL THE MONEY COME FROM? EASY QUESTION TO ANSWER!
a. End all foreign wars in the Middle East and Central Asia for
oil, resources, control. The military budget has been taking over 50 percent of disposable income! Shut down the 700 military bases around the world. Convert military production to production of public housing, public transportation, etc. to save the jobs of workers in military jobs.
b. Corporations DO NOT NOW PAY FEDERAL INCOME TAXES!! End all tax cuts for profitable corporations. End all subsidies to profitable corporations! RE-instate PROGRESSIVE TAXATION ON THE WEALTHY. Necessary at Federal and State levels.
c. End all tax loop holes designed to protect the super rich and corporations. As it is, the top 5 percent the most wealthiest, own and control over 90 percent of wealth in country.
d. Nationalize the banks. Regulate wall street. Nationalize the entire ENERGY INDUSTRY (oil, coal, nuclear, etc.) OIL WAS THE REAL REASON FOR ALL THE CURRENT WARS CARRIED OUT TODAY. THE OIL COMPANIES HAVE HAVE HISTORIC PROFITS IN THE LAST SEVERAL YEARS THANKS TO OIL WARS.
3. Institute a NATIONAL SINGLE PAYER HEALTH PLAN for every person, regardless of legal status, in the U.S. End corporate profiteering out of medical needs. UNFILLED MEDICAL NEEDS ARE KILLING PEOPLE BY THE TENS OF THOUSANDS EVERY YEAR!
For human survival we must transition away from gangster capitalism to a socialist economy designed to fill the economic needs of all the people.