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Trumka: Obama Showed He Hears People Not Heard by 1%
President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address tonight made clear that he hears the people who aren’t being heard by the 1 percent, says AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka. Obama’s speech showed he “listened to the single mom working two jobs to get by, to the out-of-work construction worker, to the retired factory worker, to the student serving coffee to help pay for college.”
By laying out a vision of an America that can create jobs and prosperity for all instead of wealth for the few, Trumka said the president “voiced the aspirations and concerns of those who are too often ignored.”
Obama also made clear that the era of the 1 percent getting rich by looting the economy, rather than creating jobs, is over.
“Now it’s time for Congress to stop standing in the way of rebuilding our country and act,” Trumka said.
President Obama presented Congress a choice, Trumka said, between Obama’s vision of the need to invest to achieve stable, long-term prosperity for all and the vision of presidential candidates squabbling over how much further to cut the taxes of the 1 percent.
Obama “spoke to the confidence of working people that if we are determined and committed, we can revitalize ‘Made in the USA.’ That commitment to American manufacturing, made possible in part by enhanced enforcement of trade laws being violated by China , is welcome news to the too many productive, hard working Americans sitting idle unnecessarily.”
Trumka praised the President’s powerful insistance “on a more humble Wall Street subject to a thorough investigation of the misconduct in the mortgage markets that wrecked our economy,” and applauded the creation of a new mortgage crisis unit to be co-chaired by New York’s Attorney General, Eric Schneiderman.
Obama also sent a message of hope to America’s young people, “with his words of support for DREAM students, immigrants brought to this country by their parents and committed to the quintessentially American vision of hard work at school or in military service,” Trumka said.
The bottom line, of course, is job creation. The nation is still short 10 million jobs deficit from losses in 2008 and 2009. The addition of 200,000 jobs in December was strong and welcome growth, but the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) points out that even at that rate, the United States will not return to full employment until 2019.
Since Labor Day, Obama has been speaking out forcefully against the same staggering increase in inequality that inspired the Occupy Wall Street movement. His State of the Union speech demonstrate s a focus on job creation Republican House and
Senate leaders should follow.
Yet the Republican leadership is so out of touch it chose Indiana’s Gov. Mitch Daniels to give the party’s response to the State of the Union address, a move Trumka says represents:
the sad decline of the national Republican party and its growing fixation with the voices of CEOs instead of every day Americans.
Daniels, once a supporter of the right of working people to come together to bargain in one voice, has now become a loud, angry opponent pushing to take away that right.
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An Alternative to Capitalism (if the people knew about it, they would demand it)
Several decades ago, Margaret Thatcher claimed: “There is no alternative”. She was referring to capitalism. Today, this negative attitude still persists.
I would like to offer an alternative to capitalism for the American people to consider. Please click on the following link. It will take you to an essay titled: “Home of the Brave?” which was published by the Athenaeum Library of Philosophy:
http://evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/steinsvold.htm
John Steinsvold
“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.”
~ Albert Einstein
John Steinsvold, you need to quit spamming us with your propagandistic diatribe. We here in this AFL-CIO Now News Blog are only interested in sane, rational ideas that are progressive and honestly constructive in improving our lives, not ruin it with fanatical abortions of intellect.
President Trumka has always been a big fan of Obama, despite the endless attacks upon the labor movement and working people by the anti-labor corporatist Obama.
Working people, trade union organized and unorganized, desperately need a different choice in November. Neither the Democrats nor, of course, the Republicans care about the dire economic conditions of working people.
But President Trumka, in his support of Obama, is oblivious to the need for a new political party to fight for the needs of all working people.
This failure by Trumka and organized labor is a tremendous tragedy that will mean further impoverishment and destruction of working people as the capitalist 1% will continue to “loot” the economy.
Trumk has no plan, no strategy, no tactics to fight back.
Obama is a “con-man” who thinks he can fool all the people all the time. Or at least enough to get re-elected in November 2012.
By forever pointing to the lunatic Republicans, Obama is hoping he will frighten working people into again voting for him as “the lesser evil”.
“Obama also made clear that the era of the 1 percent getting rich by looting the economy, rather than creating jobs, is over.
This is demagogic rubbish! Obama has enthusiastically “bailed out” the Wall Street banks, slashed wages to auto workers (with UAW complicity), impoverished the bankrupt states forcing slashes in education budgets, continued all the wars for oil profits in the Middle East, refuses to create millions of public sector jobs as FDR did during the Depression of the 1930s, etc.
Please read this critical commentary on Obama’s State of the Union speech.
Obama’s State of the Union address: War and wage-cutting
By Patrick Martin
25 January 2012
The State of the Union Speech delivered by Barack Obama Tuesday night was memorable only as a further milestone in the decay of American democracy.
While billed in advance by the White House and media pundits as a “populist appeal” by the Democratic president, effectively kicking off his reelection campaign, there was virtually nothing in the speech that even acknowledged the acute social crisis in America, let alone offering any solution.
The annual presidential addresses to a joint session of Congress have taken on an increasingly empty and ritualistic character—the same empty phrases, the same perfunctory ovations, the same gimmick of individuals placed in the First Lady’s box to serve as cameos, the laundry list of proposals, either insignificant or overtly reactionary, the sickening appeals to national unity and militarism.
…
In his conclusion, Obama returned to his vision of a society run along military lines when he again invoked the raid that killed bin Laden. For Barack Obama, the cohesion of a team of trained assassins is the highest form of human solidarity.
You know!! the more I look at this blog , the more I see why this country is in the shape it is!!The alzheimers epidemic is just too rampant!!or do we just believe what we want!!!( progresso) when the President had both houses, all the repigs did was filibuster everything and the only way to grt anything passed was with their amendments that always ruined what the Pres. was trying to do!! then when idiots like you and Steinsvoid, whoops, Steinvold,SDBums, and especially Jerry Wells voted the damn repigs back in!! the only answer the pres ever gets is NO!!! It’s their way or no way!! always has been and always will be!!!the plan facts are that the rich 1% wants it all and they’ll never stop until they put all of us working class folks back into sweat shops and slavery!!! Jerry Wells, give us a better choice or shut the hell up!! the Pres does all he can to try to do for us and at the same time apease those repigs!! he has to(apease) in order to get anything done at all!!Jerry Wells, you are really so damn stupid!!! we are out of the stupid Bush war, he gave the so called bail outs to the States and if they didn’t use it to suit YOU then talk about them, at least when he gave bail outs to the big buisnesses, he wanted it paid back, asap, not with no ties like Bush did(AIG), hell, public sector jobs, are you insane? he wants to have jobs for the future , like solar power, wind turbines, you know, stuff that could get us out of the oil mess we’re in now!! but, oh hell no, the repigs can’t stand such rubbish as that!!DAMN,just think how bad that woild be for the damn oil tycoons!!! Damn man, you’re freaking NUTS!!! And to John Hitler Steinsvold, capitolism is good, just not when a few take advantage of the masses like they’re doing now!!!that’s why they should be prosecuted for their CRIMES.. you go ahead and vote repig, I just hope you’re better friends with them than I think you are!!! and to you suddencall, what’s with the far LEFT shit!!! what’s the hell wrong with the SANE MIDDLE!!! we don’t need far left or right, we need common sense middle that might be good for all and not just a few!!! Damn Wells, I just can’t get over your ignorance !!!!!!!!!!!!! DAMN!!
Obama has again pledged nothing more than lip service to either the “people who are not being heard by the 1%” or the labor movement. apparently that is enough for the labor skates of the AFL-CIO.
It isn’t enough for me nor should it be for any union member who is not part of the co-opted and corrupted labor aristocracy.
Did you notice that President Obama is the first president in decades NOT to restrict his concerns to “middle class workers”? If you’re still employed AND still middle class, you have little to complain about! When we have 4 or 5 people in desperate need of a job for every single job opening, and no entitlement to poverty relief, we had better start discussing poverty. Poverty is like quicksand, and as long as we keep ignoring it, it continues to pull more and more of the middle class into poverty.
FACT CHECK – America is NOT in Decline and President Obama is NOT a Failure: http://blog.locustfork.net/2012/01/fact-check-america-is-not-in-decline-and-president-obama-is-not-a-failure/
fast2write good read thank you
I have come to the conclusion that no matter what this president (TRIES TO DO) somebody will find fault.
The Republicans have opposed every measure to help suffering Americans that President Obama has introduced. Then they tell the big lie that it is all his fault. Remember that it was the bush administration financial types that begged Congress for the bailout to save their capitalist butts. The Republicans say that they are for the American people; but look at their actions. If they win, the whole country will be Right to Work for Less. If you vote for the multimillionaires and job cremators in this next election, you will have no one to blame but yourself when the capitalist axe falls.
sorry Progresso, I mean’t yours for hotcommodities!!!
“Remember that it was the bush administration financial types that begged Congress for the bailout to save their capitalist butts”
Obama rushed back to DC from the 2008 campaign trail to vote for TARP. He has showered the banks with money and is about to negotiate a Get-Out-Of-Jail-Free card with tthe banks, and he is pressuring State AG’s to sign on.
Finally, as Bill MOyers recently noted, the big banks have made more profit in the first three years of Obama than they did during all of Bush’s eight years.
I hated Bush, but Obama is just a continuation of Bush’s plutocratic and imperialist policies.
Pay no attention to what Obama says. Look at what he does and you will see that he no friend of the 99%.
The democratic party should have gave us a different candidate , but they did not , so we have only one choice , Vote for Obama and a democratic house /senate if you are planning on keeping your nation and your life style. When he is elected we can raise hell with him and force him to get on the left and stay on the left . If not then maybe someone will find a rope that will fit him.
This is a revolution , Corporations against the 99% , so we have to get it right and supporting republicans and republicans disguised as democrats is not going to help, not voting or voting a third party is not going to help. So get out the vote because it is harder to steal elections if there is lots of votes.It might be worth a small fine to convince people that voting for the revolutionists is not a smart thing to do.
Jerry Wells-You’re absolutely wrong when you stated Obama was anti labor. The only ones anti labor are the Repigs and Douche Baggers.All of them hate labor unions and want people to receive slave labor wages.They stand up for the 1%’ers not the President and Democrats.Here’s a few facts that are reality,true and does show the President is for working people.His job proposal for infrastucture has been presented 13 or 14 times in Congress and all have been voted against by the RepigliKKKons and Douche Baggers or fillabustered.This group of right wing bought off low life sob’s have yet to come up with a jobs bill that’ll put average Americans back to work.They talk a line of bs about the “job creaters” and not taxing them but the nation has yet to see these so called wonderful jobs.Here’s another fact Sparky,President Obama didn’t bail out Wall St,Global War Bush bailed them out before he left office.Here’s another fact,Obama didn’t cut UAW wages,it was an agreement between the company and the union.Obama saved the auto inbdustry and thousands of jobs by giving the companys a loan.All Republicans and Douche Baggers wanted the auto industry to fold,go bankrupt,and not help like they did their rip off ,thieving Wall St. cronies.Why did they want the industry to go under,it would have given their billionaires buddies an opportunity to move in,buy the company’s,then have a work force making minimum wages with no benefits.They wanted this to happen just like Romney and Bain has done many companies.In fact,if these greedy rich sob’s had taken over the auto industry,you can bet your ass the vast majority of the industry would have been outsourced and moved to Mexico-China-Korea and other country’s.
I don’t know where on this earth you get that from, John Rickman, O’Bam-ya has pulled his sucker-punch on the public in behalf of The Establishment ever since he took office! He even said he was going to cut medicare before his election! You’re just not paying attention and you are believing in his “hope” diatribe rather than looking for pragmatic answers, of which we are never going to see anything substantial to ever come from O’Bam-ya, he is a master at building sand castles at low tide near the low-tide water line. That is his history.
gov.christie of n.y said romney created plenty of middle class jobs at STAPLES&his other store which name excapes me.the average full time employe makes about 22,000a year That’s the mentality of the republican party.they would love to roll back salaries to match up with countries like china. i hope hard working union members that are repub.to wake up and smell the SHIT their shoveling.Remember REP.GOD Ronald Reagan started this anti-union war.
For two years Obama had control of all branches of government. He got everything he wanted. He failed with his policies. Now we get the same thing over again? there are 30 job creating bills sitting in the democratic controlled senate. They never get voted on. Looks the the democratic senate is stopping job creation.
hotcommodities is this one of your job creators
The Consumer Financial Protection Safety and Soundness Improvement Act of 2011 (H.R. 1315) – Improves consumer protection and provides greater economic stability by allowing the Financial Stability Oversight Council to vote to set aside any harmful federal regulation.
Just another deregulation bill NOT and I repeat, NOT a jobs bill,and not one of their bills is a job creators bill.
Tula Connell, as usual you have bought the Obama Establishment propaganda hook-line-and-sinker !!!!
This speech, and that is all it was, was typical Obama propaganda without any pragmatic progressive remediation for our problems. In fact, he patronizes the Repugnant mafia cult Party’s plank! And yes, sometimes — only SOMETIMES — O’bam-ya was talking as if he has been reading our AFL-CIO Now News Blog, but he is only TALKING, he is not making constructive proposals !!!
PART ONE
The whole beginning of O’Bam-ya’s speech was nothing but propaganda from the start, using not oration but pseudo-emotional speech-making right out of the past, using old references that are sadly worn-out and deficient in productive solutions.
He touches on technology, as if O’Bam-yas treatment of upgrading our society’s intellect is going to solve anything that fair trade regulations will not cure if only our country would embrace fair trade.
He says that businesses have created 3-million new jobs – - WHERE? That mis-information is not what the financial and economic publications are saying, they say that only ten-per-cent of the unemployment rate has been constructively improved upon! Where does O’Bam-ya get his false figures from?
O’Bam-ya harps about “… an economy built to last with (U.S.) manufacturing …” but yet he NEVER says a damn thing about how it is GLOBALIZATION AND TECHNOLOGY COMBINED which is destroying our domestic markets and domestic employment !!!
All O’bam-ya is doing is talking bull-shit, asking us to say what we can do to bring business back to our U.S.A. without his even addressing that we as a population need to begin buying U.S.-made products for most of our consumer purchases !!!
O’Bam-ya then speaks right out of the Repugnant Party speech-book, referring to our country having the highest corporate tax rate in the world, without even mentioning IN THAT SENSE how corporations receive corporate welfare subsidies from our government… but O’Bam-ya DOES suggest such corporate welfare subsidies as part of his “solutions” later in his speech.
Primarily, the very essence of what O’bam-ya is talking about is the same message that the Repugnant Party is propagandizing, O’bam-ya is offering us MORE tax cuts to businesses and subsidies to business to inspire more technology that cuts employment, as well as some “candy” for the public’s ears in the form of more debt-causing payroll tax cuts, all of which is NOT progressive Democracy, it is DEBT-CAUSING.
O’Bamya does not talk about the GENUINE precautions and remedies that will help us keep business in our USA because he is not talking about the necessary government regulation changes to do that, but he DOES make some constructive statements about our government NOT CONTINUING SUBIDIZING BUSINESSES TO LEAVE OUR COUNTRY, which the Repugnant mafia cult Party is responsible for, yet, any remedy is impossible without addressing PROTECTIVE tariffs and the necessity of outlawing GLOBALIZATION !!!
PART TWO
Instead, what does O’Bam-ya talk about? He talks about creating another government Trade Inspection Agency when we already have government processes in place. This is just like the Repugnant Party creating Homeland Security when we already have government agencies for every kind of emergency, all we needed to do was to streamline every agency for doing the work it is supposed to do AND FOR AGENCIES TO INTER-COMMUNICATE… a problem our country has had for decades and in some cases longer than a half-century! And then, O’Bam-ya slides right into his talk about subsidizing U.S. businesses with taxpayer dollars and with tax cuts and legislation to undercut foreign competition… and guess what? Tit-for-tat the other countries will react in kind!
Then he talks about the age-old strategy of turning our “unemployment system” into a “re-employment system”… guess what, O’Bam-ya, that is an old, old idea that has been tried before, nothing new there! You’re just candy-talking O’Bam-ya, there is no solution in your speech!
Raising standards for teaching and learning is also right out of the Repugnant mafia cult Party’s plank, when already the classroom competition for SCORES has superseded the LEARNING QUOTIENT which is derived from PRODUCTIVE educational processes! And then the dumbest idea, about making it so students are NOT ALLOWED TO DROP OUT of school until age 18! Maybe we do not have that as a national standard, but pretty much that is already the case! The problem is with our Establishment society in which jobs are disappearing and technology is alienating the work force! And why is that? Because employment is INHUMAN and ANTI-HUMAN! It is CORPORATE COMMUNISM mixed with GLOBALIZATION !!!!
O’Bam-ya saying that it is time for the states to do their part to finance higher education is RIGHT OUT OF THE REPUGNANT MAFIA CULT PARTY’S SONG-BOOK !!!! It was the illegal war in Iraq and Afghanistan that put our nation into the financial straits we are in, and that is because the FEDERAL GOVERNMENT REVENUE-SHARING has been CUT due to our 30-trillion dollar debt PLUS INTEREST for the two most recent wars we are in!
Next, O’bam-ya really confuses the issue over what he incorrectly calls “illegal immigration” which is an oxy-moron. But, O’Bam-ya does confirm that there is a problem, although he wants to legalize all of the illegally-born children of illegal trespassers into our country. O’Bam-ya is expressing nothing but feel-good propaganda.
Equal pay for women — it is about time! How much longer can our nation go on to illegally discriminate against the female gender about pay and promotions, WHEN IT IS ALREADY A VIOLATION OF LAW… or is supposed to be!
As O’Bam-ya continues his speech, he is patronizing the Repugnant mafia cult Partisan platform to simulate NOT getting cooperation, but to get CAPITULATION of the Democratic Party in the guise of successful diplomacy as a means to side-step the ongoing controversial sabotage by the Repugnican mafia cult Party!
PART THREE
Next, O’Bam-ya goes into the figure that U.S. oil production is at the highest production rate in eight years! Are we supposed to clap and applaud like those in Congress did over the radio and television, because we are using it all up! WE NEED TO GET OFF OIL and save some of it for future generations, because once it is all gone, it will never be restored again!
But O’Bam-ya does go into government support for energy development through the use of TAX CUTS !!! He finally says that oil subsidies for the past 100-years that shuts out clean energy methods and research must be reduced and eliminated. BUT WHAT ABOUT PURE HYDROGEN FOR FUEL? It has been used in our country for 35 years, is made by consumers and businesses, and comes from water using electrodes! But they find every scientific lie to “discredit” something that is already being used because pure hydrogen would turn The Establishment upside-down! People then could make their own community-created electricity and vehicle fuel!
Then O’Bam-ya goes into that growing propaganda about high-speed broad-band internet, which makes it FAR EASIER for our government and businesses to use our home computers to spy on civilians in their own homes! 1984 and Farenheit 415 here we come !!!!
Then O’Bam-ya’s propaganda about the phony crashes we have gone through (they were conspiracies, not crashes) by his saying “no bail-outs, no hand-outs, no cop-outs” and yet… that was all he said, he wanted to give business tax cuts and government subsidies and legislation that will enable commerce to get away with nearly everything that commerce wants to do to the exclusion of Democracy, which is all that O’Bam-ya is talking about!
And finally, all I am going to go into about O’Bam-ya’s phony “State of the Union Address”, is his diatribe about “fair share of taxes” which, although was accurately presented, was completely negated by this phony scheme of his to cut taxes and give subsidies. The lower-level consumer ALWAYS pays the taxes of the corporations in the form of higher product purchase prices.
NOW… then came the Repugnant Mafia Cult Partisan speech by Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels, of all people!
Whereas O’Bam-ya gave us fantasy Establishment rhetoric, Daniels’ lying propaganda was so disingenuous that I will not even go into it in this AFL-CIO Now News Blog unless the topic comes up! Talk about an outright liar, it is evident that the 2012 election is going to be inundated with Repugnant corporate-communist mafia cult Partisan “double-speak” and of being the wolf with feathers stuck all around his mouth saying to the farmer that he only eats cauliflower and has never eaten a chicken in his life!
the only thing that matters is if we keep on the same path and let the money changers continue with their plans all of us will be in WORK CAMPS sooner than youll know it.obama is full of shit. he had the chance to put away the military industrial complex and did not do so. he is one of them.he knows where his bread is buttered. he will say whatever is required to get reelected. i for one believe that we are not given the choice of viable candidates when money controls all elections
Work camps shmurk camps, if they can figure out a way to keep people alive in space without their bodies deterirorating, they will ship all of us out to space stations and keep earth for themselves as a recreational nirvanah!
To all those who are having emotional breakdowns because of some critical words against Obama, who have nothing to say except curses, who can only scream in their ignorance !!!!!!!!!!!!, etc. I would like to redirect your blind rage away from personal invective towards some critical thinking. Please.
First, watch this remarkable commentary against Obama by Ralph Nader, presented on Democracy Now!, in this video clip. You don’t have to read, or mis-read, but just listen. Excellent.
“He Says One Thing and Does Another”: Ralph Nader Responds to Obama’s State of the Union Address
If you Google “Obama Promises” you will come up with a number of interesting web-sites. For example:
The Tampa Bay Times
Promise Broken Rulings on the Obameter
Please note that the list of broken Obama promises goes on for THREE PAGES! Follow the “Page 1 of 3 next” link.
What does this mass of evidence mean to AFL-CIO President Trumka and the leadership of organized labor? Nothing!
The only way working people, trade union organized and unorganized, can start to FIGHT BACK against this bi-partisan class war is to call for the creation of a new political party, perhaps called the Solidarity Party, to represent the economic interests of working people.
First Principle of a new Solidarity Party: Refusal to accept all corporate funding and agendas!
Why? Because both Democratic and Republican Parties are completely corrupted by corporate campaign contributions that the needs of the vast majority are completely ignored.
Organized labor must also FIGHT BACK in mass media! The AFL-CIO should help to sponsor and produce a nightly one hour news program on PBS television to present the news and current affairs commentary from the economic perspective of working people.
When working people only have Rush Limbaugh, Fox News, and the corporate spin on PBS talk shows to listen to, then you see the ignorant and even terrifying results of right-wing and corporate indoctrination here on this BLOG.
Working people have no understanding of why they are being impoverished. We have no organizational or political strategy to FIGHT BACK!
WORKING PEOPLE HAVE NO ONE TO VOTE FOR IN NOVEMBER 2012 THAT REPRESENTS OUR ECONOMIC INTERESTS!