Missouri Activists Rally for Jobless
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Cathy Sherwin, AFL-CIO Field Communications staffer in Missouri, sends us this report from St. Louis on yesterday’s Online Day of Solidarity action for jobless workers.
Jobless workers, union members and community activists stood in the freezing cold on Tuesday in St. Louis, joining activists nationwide for a Dec. 7 Day of Action in solidarity with the unemployed.
They urged Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) and the Senate to immediately restore unemployment insurance (UI) for a year for the more than 1 million jobless workers currently without any aid since Senate Republicans blocked action to maintain UI benefits for long-term jobless workers.
Right before leaving for the Thanksgiving holiday, a bill to maintain the unemployment insurance for the long-term jobless was defeated in the House. Missouri Republicans Todd Akin, Roy Blunt, Jo Ann Emerson, Sam Graves and Blaine Luetkemeyer voted to deny this critical lifeline to jobless Missourians.
Yesterday, the White House and congressional Republicans announced a deal to extend all the Bush-era tax cuts, including those for the wealthy, along with a 13-month extension of the UI program for the long-term jobless. But its fate is uncertain. Click here to read AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka’s statement.
Lloyd Schultz, jobless Painters and Allied Trades (IUPAT) member from St. Louis, said:
I can’t wait to go back to work. Unemployment insurance is the only thing keeping many of us with a roof over our heads and food on the table this winter.
Limbaugh’s Hometown Home to Active Union Movement
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Cathy Sherwin, AFL-CIO communications director for Missouri, describes why union members in a conservative county support Robin Carnahan for Senate.
Cape Girardeau, Mo., probably isn’t the first place you’d think of as a union town. It’s the hometown of Rush Limbaugh, and residents of Cape County haven’t voted for a Democrat in a presidential race since 1964. It is a Red city in a Purple state. When it comes to the union movement, however, there is more to Cape Girardeau than meets the eye.
The folks in the Southeast Missouri Central Labor Council work hard to build unity among all the members in the region. President Mark Baker and a dedicated crew of activists have been organizing our Labor Picnic for four years to give members a chance to relax with their families and friends in beautiful Cape Girardeau County Park. Along with the fishing tournament and the tug of war, candidates and elected officials flock to get a chance to meet with union members.
There’s a big struggle for the Missouri Senate seat that’s been held by a Republican since 1986. Roy Blunt, longtime Republican congressman from southern Missouri, has saturated the airwaves using big-dollar corporate donations. So given Blunt’s big-bucks backing, when 500 union members got together in a Republican county for an early Labor Day picnic in late August, what sort of reception is there for Senate candidate Robin Carnahan?
Attacks on Medicare: Desperate Attempt to Gut Health Care Reform
This might come as a shock to the 44 million Americans who receive their health care coverage through Medicare, but according to two Republican House members, Medicare has “never done anything to make people more healthy,” and it has had the biggest “negative effect” on health care than anything else in the past 44 years.
Step back from Medicare’s 44th birthday cake (click here for more on the program’s four-decades-plus success) and let that gibberish from two of the charter members of the “let’s-kill-health care reform” caucus sink in. (While we’re doing that, a tip of the hat to Jason Rosenbaum at Health Care for America Now! (HCAN) for exposing this nonsense).
You can draw two conclusions. First, Reps. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) and Tom Price (R-Ga.) are just plain out of touch with reality.
