Wis.’s Walker Sends Police After Democrats
Law enforcement officers have been sent to hunt down Wisconsin Democratic state lawmakers who are boycotting a Senate vote on Gov. Scott Walker’s (R) attempts to gut pay and destroy bargaining rights for state employees. Walker earlier threatened to call the National Guard on public employees and their allies if they protested or went on strike against his attacks on the middle class.
According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:
One Democratic senator said that he believed at least most of the members of his caucus are in another state. At least one, however, Sen. Chris Larson (D-Milwaukee) said he was still in his Capitol office listening to constituents. In a press conference just off the Senate floor, Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald (R-Juneau) said that Democrats were “not showing up for work” and that police were searching for them to bring them to the floor.
Read the full story here.
Retweet: RT @lcranston1939 Law enforcement searching for Dem senators boycotting vote on Walker’s budget plan http://bit.ly/grQ2c8 #notmyWI #WIunion #StateSOS #p2
‘America Can’t Wait for New Jobs’
Creating new and good jobs is the most urgent task facing our nation’s leaders and Americans who are unemployed or whose wages are stagnating cannot afford to wait any longer. Until we fix the jobs crisis, economic growth and fiscal stability will be hard to achieve, AFL-CIO Policy Director Damon Silvers told a congressional hearing today.
On top of the employment crisis, we are living with the consequences of our failure to invest in our nation’s infrastructure or in the technologies we need in the future, Silvers told a Democratic Steering and Policy Committee hearing on “Creating Good Jobs Now.” ”Jobs Now means rising incomes and falling deficits, it means rebuilding America.”
Jobs Now means an America where we make things again, where we export more than we import, where we lead the world toward an environmentally and economically sustainable and prosperous future. That’s the kind of future the American people deserve.
Trumka: Tuesday’s Vote Was About Jobs, Not Republican Agenda
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America’s voters are angry about the economy and the lack of jobs, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said this morning during a discussion at the National Journal’s “The Day After” conference. And if Republicans don’t listen to what the voters were saying, they will be thrown out in 2012.
Trumka said the Republicans would be making a big mistake if they believe voters endorsed the Republican agenda. The votes in fact were a rebuke to the party in power, he said. Speaking to Mike Duncan, chairman of American Crossroads, the Republican mega political action group, Trumka said:
The America people know the economy doesn’t work. They’re suffering and they’re angry because of that and you’re going to have to come up with a way to create jobs and get the economy back on the move. They’re frustrated not because too much was done, but too little was done. But now that you’re in the governing structure, you just can’t say no.
Hey, Democrats, Remember Us?
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| IUE-CWA Local 201 member Alex Reynoso protests a health benefit tax. |
“Jeff, you guys at the Union Hall aren’t listening to us! You’re talking out of both sides of your mouth. We’re fighting the benefits tax, and now you’re telling us to vote for someone who will tax our benefits! The guys here are voting for Scotty Brown.”
That was just one of the calls and e-mails that I received during the week before the Senate vote in Massachusetts. An AFSCME delegate to our labor council calculated the impact of the Obama tax on union plans and e-mailed us all to “Vote Brown!”
For a year and a half, we campaigned against the tax on our health care benefits. We trudged through neighboring New Hampshire with fliers explaining that Sen. John McCain wanted to fund health care expansion by a benefits tax.
Conservative members of my local Executive Board were adamant in saying the outcome of our health care campaign would be a tax on working people to extend coverage to poor people. Recognizing a classic Republican “wedge issue,” we argued that those without insurance include our own children. We could win a plan to tax the wealthiest and cut into the blood money of the health care profiteers.
Ultimately, we were wrong. In the last week of the Coakley campaign, the papers were full of the story: “Obama Supports “Cadillac Tax.” Sen. John Kerry cited an MIT economist who said the tax would increase wages for grateful working stiffs. I can usually figure out which chalkboard equation the classical economists are fondling: Absent merely life itself, they present a circular logic that proves itself. But the MIT argument escaped me.
Trumka: Massachusetts Voters Say Democrats Haven’t Gone Far Enough
When Massachusetts voters cast their ballots for Scott Brown on Tuesday, they were sending a message to Washington lawmakers that they have not gone far enough to create jobs, reform health care and fix our nation’s economy, says AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka. In a video message, Trumka says voters showed they don’t believe Democrats have overreached—they think that the Democrats underreached.
You see, they believe that Wall Street’s being taken care of. They believe that corporate America is being taken care of. They believe the insurers are being taken care of. But they don’t think that workers are being taken care of.
STEELING a Union’s ID
Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele has been called a lot of names. Here’s another one for him: cheater.
It’s not surprising Steele and the Republicans are embarrassed about their party. But Steele has hit a new low (insert Munch’s “Scream” here): He’s set up an RNC fundraising page on Facebook made to look like it’s the United Steelworkers union.
The “United STEELE Workers Union” page even features a hard hat with an American flag sticker front and center.
Just curious, Michael: Doesn’t a white hard hat clash with your designer suits?
Why Working Families and Our Unions Support Biden
As media pundits have noted, Sen. Barack Obama‘s selection of Delaware Sen. Joe Biden adds many years of foreign policy experience to the ticket.
Less well-known is Biden’s long support for working families and their unions. America’s union movement, Biden has said, is
the only thing that keeps the barbarians at the gate.
But he doesn’t stop there.
There is a middle class in this country for one reason and only one reason: the union movement.
