Murray Retains Senate Seat, Quinn Keeps Illinois Governorship
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Two close major races were finally decided last night. In Washington state, Sen. Patty Murray (D) was declared the winner over Wall Street water boy Dino Rossi (R) and Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn (D) is the winner over anti-union Bill Brady.
In both races, union support was the key factor in providing the margin of victory. Illinois union family voters made up 26 percent of those who cast ballots and 59 percent went for Quinn.
In Chicago alone, 6,000 union volunteers were on the phones and doors on Election day.
The Washington State Labor Council mounted a massive mobilization for Murray. During the weekend before elections, 400 volunteers visited 9,400 union homes and made nearly 14,000 phone calls to union members urging them to get out the vote for Murray.
Murray’s win means the next Senate will be made up of 53 members of the Democratic caucus (including Independents) and 47 Republicans. The Senate race in Alaska has yet to be called but the vote count shows that both write-in candidate Lisa Murkowski (R) and tea-party backed Joe Miller (R) are far ahead of Democratic candidate Scott McAdams.
‘Tenthers’ Would Abolish Wage and Child Labor Laws, Social Security, Medicare and More
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Most cults are based in some sort of skewed spiritual vision or the worship of a charismatic leader, but there is a re-emerging cult that bows down at the feet of the 10th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Many of them want to bring their cultish beliefs to the halls of Congress and are running for election this fall.
They’re called the “tenthers” and they say federal laws and rules like the minimum wage, Medicare, Social Security, unemployment insurance, the Department of Education, even child labor laws and a laundry list of other federal laws and programs are unconstitutional.
Their rationale—irrationale would be a better word—is that if a federal power is not specifically spelled out in the Constitution, well the government doesn’t have it, according to their view of the 10th amendment.
It’s a view that has long been discredited, but reappears from time to time, such as during FDR’s New Deal era and after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled school segregation unconstitutional in the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education.
Here’s Think Progress in today’s Progress Report:
Activists Tell Pa.’s Toomey, ‘Hands Off Social Security’
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At a rally last night, Pennsylvania senior, community and worker activists condemned Republican Senate candidate Rep. Pat Toomey’s call to privatize Social Security.
Pat Worrell of the community group Action United says the action, outside Philadelphia’s National Constitution Center prior to a debate between Toomey and Rep. Joe Sestak (D), was called to tell Pat Toomey, in no uncertain terms, that
Pennsylvanians oppose his reckless suggestion to divert taxpayer dollars from Social Security to Wall Street. The recession has made it clear that the last thing we need is our Social Security exposed to the insecurity of the stock market.
During the debate, Sestak, who has the backing of the Keystone State’s unions, asserted his support for strengthening, not privatizing, the nation’s most successful social program.
Republicans Out of Step: New Survey Finds Two-Thirds Say Raise the Minimum Wage
Recently, a host of major Republican candidates have attacked the federal minimum wage while GOP party leaders have been silent about the assault. From Alaska to Connecticut and in congressional races in between, Republican Senate candidates have called the minimum wage unconstitutional, too much, or just plain unneeded.
Maybe that’s the mainstream view on their native planets, but down here in the good old USA it is far out of step. A new poll from the Public Religion Research Institute finds two-thirds of us say that $7.25 an hour minimum wage should not be abolished but should be raised to $10 an hour with automatic cost of living increases. Are you listening Joe Miller, John Raese and cronies?
Christine Owens, executive director of the National Employment Law Project (NELP), says the poll is
yet another affirmation that maintaining a strong minimum wage is a core American value. Americans overwhelmingly support a minimum wage rate that will help working families make ends meet and provide the boost the economy needs for full recovery.
RNC’s Steele Refuses to Say if Minimum Wage Is Constitutional—BTW, the Answer Is YES!
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It’s one thing for Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele to be unable to remember the federal minimum wage—$7.25 an hour (chump change to Steele, but darn important to the worker trying to stay afloat on the minimum wage).
But it is completely another and downright weaselly thing to duck and talk circles around a simple question about if he believes, like so many other Republican candidates do this fall, that the minimum wage is unconstitutional, should be abolished or reduced.
Last night on MSNBC’s “The Last Word,” Steele bent himself into all kinds of shapes to avoid saying if the Republican Party agreed or disagreed with their Alaska U.S. Senate candidate Joe Miller’s out-in-far-right-field claim the minimum wage is unconstitutional. Sure seems to be a pretty simple “Yes” or “No” kind of question.
Alaska’s Miller Claims Minimum Wage Is Unconstitutional. Really
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We’ve heard some wacky things this election season. And then again, we have some wacky candidates. But Joe Miller, the tea party/Republican U.S. Senate candidate in Alaska, gets this week’s “You’re kidding me, right?” prize for going on national television and saying the federal minimum wage is unconstitutional.
Apparently in Miller’s—shall we be kind and just say “different”—view of the U.S. Constitution, if the Founding Fathers didn’t write a minimum wage amendment, then, by gads, the federal government has no right to impose one. That’s why Miller also says unemployment insurance, Social Security, the Department of Education and a raft of other well-accepted government programs and policies are an assault on and abomination of the Constitution.
But if there’s not a Bush tax cut for the rich amendment in the Constitution…?
68 Percent of Voters Frown on ‘Phasing Out’ Social Security
Attention, Rand Paul in Kentucky, Joe Miller in Alaska, Sharron Angle in Nevada and all you other Republican congressional candidates flopping around on the far right banks of the mainstream! Phasing out, privatizing or otherwise eliminating Social Security does not sit well with the vast majority of the voting public.
The latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll finds that 68 percent of voters are “uncomfortable” with candidates who espouse such notions. Uncomfortable is putting it nicely. It’s downright painful to listen to U.S. Senate wannabes and other Republican hopefuls “babble into the vapors” about phasing out Social Security (turnabout’s fair play, Alan Simpson!).
Unions Say No to Tea Time in Alaska Senate Race
Alaskan voters couldn’t be facing two more different candidates for the U.S. Senate—Scott McAdams, endorsed by the 49th state’s working family unions, and Joe Miller, backed by the Tea Party and endorsed by Sarah Palin.
AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka says McAdams is a union person.
He understands what union workers go through, he understands what workers go through, period. And I think that he’d be a great voice and a great asset to workers, in Washington, D.C.
Thanks to our friends at The Mudflats for providing this video.
Miller, on the other hand, reports TPM’s Christina Bellatoni:
wants to eliminate the Department of Education, believes the government shouldn’t pay for unemployment insurance and says of climate change on his campaign site that it “may not even exist.”
