More Light Shed on ALEC’s Influence
The spotlight’s been shining pretty bright this week on the right-wing Koch brothers-funded and corporate-backed American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel examined new information out in recent days and reported that even though Gov. Scott Walker (R) and Republican lawmakers downplayed connections between ALEC’s agenda and their legislative efforts, “the similarities between some Wisconsin legislation and ALEC draft bills are striking.”
Center for Media and Democracy’s (CMD’s) Mary Bottari told the Journal Sentinel:
When you consider the 20 ALEC bills we identified and the ideas that keep coming out of this [Walker] administration, it just defies belief that there’s no relationship between these bills and ALEC.
The revelations about ALEC’s influence in Wisconsin and elsewhere stem from CMD’s new ALEC Exposed site that examines more than 800 model bills from ALEC and ties them to bills introduced in state legislatures around the country. In conjunction with the new CMD site, The Nation published a trio of articles outlining ALEC’s ties to the Koch Brothers, the drive to block and then repeal health care reform and its efforts to turn over state services to its private corporate membership.
Koch Brothers Tell Employees Whom to Vote For
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The right-wing extremist billionaire brothers David and Charles Koch are not satisfied with spending millions on Capitol Hill to mold, gut or kill more than 100 prospective bills or regulations or funding blatantly anti-worker front groups. Now they want to control how the more than 50,000 people who work in their companies think and vote.
The Nation magazine obtained and published a 14-page Koch Industries election “packet” mailed out before last November’s election to the employees, telling them who they should vote for and warning them of the consequences to their families, their jobs and their country if they voted wrong,
Experts say employers likely will send out more of this political propaganda in 2012.
Although employers can spew out political propaganda like this in the workplace, they can bar unions from even handing out a list of endorsed candidates on the job.
Says UCLA law professor Katherine Stone:
If a union wanted to hand out political materials in the workplace not directly relevant to the workers’ interests—such as providing a list of candidates to support in the elections—the employer has the right to ban that material. They could even prohibit its distribution on lunch breaks or after shifts, because by law it’s the company’s private property.
Read “Big Brothers: Thought Control at Koch” here. And make sure to check out the election packet here.
Wisconsin Sheriff Stands Up for Democracy
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Dane County (Wis.) Sheriff Scott Mahoney is a man who respects the Constitution and the right of people to protest. Mahoney pulled his deputies from guarding the Wisconsin Capitol building entrances this week after Gov. Scott Walker and his aides tried to crack down on dissent by closing the building. Walker was trying to stifle the mass demonstrations by working people who were protesting his plan to take away bargaining rights for state employees.
As Mahoney said during a press conference on March 1:
When asked to stand guard at the doors that duty was turned over to the Wisconsin State Patrol because our deputies would not stand and be palace guards. I refused to put deputy sheriffs in a position to be palace guards.
In an article on TheNation.com, John Nichols profiles Mahoney and asks why he would refuse to act as the governor’s palace guard. Mahoney’s straightforward response: He believes it is important to respect the Constitution and maintain a free and open space for honest debate and dissent.
“I smile every day at what I am seeing take place in this building,” Mahoney says.
We’re an example to the world about how to run a democracy.
Read the entire article here.
Trumka, Progressive Panelists Will Explore Worker Anger and the Elections
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The anger that American voters feel, especially working-class voters, is well documented. But the unknown is how they will express that anger on Election Day.
This Friday in New York City, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka and Working America Executive Director Karen Nussbaum will take part in a panel discussion on “Which Way for the Working Class? Elections 2010 and Beyond.”
They will be joined by New York Times columnist Bob Herbert; Eric Alterman, journalist and senior fellow at the Center for American Progress; and moderator Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor and publisher of the Nation.
Sponsored by Working America and the AFL-CIO, the discussion will center on the issues and viewpoints of working men and women at the tipping point and what can be done to shift the balance in the November elections and beyond.
Wall Street Propaganda: Blame Social Security
The President’s Fiscal Commission is holding its second pubic meeting today and when commission members say “everything is in the table,” the biggest things they are talking about are Social Security and Medicare.
The commission was created by an Executive Order from President Obama in February after a move to create a commission with much broader powers failed in the Senate. The current commission’s charge is to propose ways to address the nation’s growing debt. The 18-member commission will meet throughout the year and then present its recommendations to Obama after the fall elections. (For more information, visit Social Security Works.)
Conservative groups and Wall Street insiders, says Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR),
are spending more than $1 billion dollars to convince the public that slashing these programs [Social Security and Medicare] is the only way to protect our children and grandchildren from poverty.
Working Class Anger: Tip to the Right or Left?
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The angry working class—the good folks between the two coasts who live in what elitist pundits dub as ”Fly-Over Land”—are certainly getting a lot of TV face time, dead tree ink and blogosphere attention.
Most of the conventional wisdom paints them as part of a populist uprising, angry at the economy, distrustful of the government and, if not members of the ”Tea Party,” firmly planted on the right side of the political spectrum.
But let’s face it: Who wouldn’t be angry with an economy that’s lost 11 million jobs largely due to Wall Street’s reckless actions? What sane Americans wouldn’t be upset after working hard and playing by the rules for years only to see incomes fall and dreams of retirement security fade?
But does that mean this populist wave embraces the kind of corporate free-for-all, you’re-on-your-own economic philosophy of the Republican right, or the even-further-right fringe groups?
Inequality Could Keep Economy from Full Recovery
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The federal stimulus package is a good way to jump-start our economy, but it is not enough to solve the deep crisis of inequality that has been building in this country for decades. A recent article says the government needs to act quickly to start addressing the growing income gap.
In an article in The Nation online, Christine Owens and Annette Bernhardt, executive director and policy co-director, respectively, of the National Employment Law Project (NELP), say working families were struggling to survive even before the current recession. Although U.S. workers are more productive than ever, they are faced with stagnant wages, disappearing benefits and little job security. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that eight of the top 10 occupations projected to generate the most jobs by 2016 are low-wage jobs in the service sector.
USW’s Bloom Takes Senior Auto Rescue Post
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During his time as the United Steelworkers’ (USW‘s) director of corporate research, Ron Bloom helped revive and restructure 50 companies in bankruptcy. Now as special assistant to USW President Leo Gerard, Bloom is taking on a new assignment as senior adviser in the Treasury Department for U.S. auto industry restructuring.
Bloom began his career negotiating union contracts for low-wage workers under AFL-CIO President John Sweeney, when he was president of SEIU. Before he joined the USW, he specialized in dealing with corporations facing financial difficulties or undertaking corporate transactions. With an MBA from Harvard and experience as a vice president at the investment banking firm of Lazard Freres & Co., and his own firm, Keilin and Bloom, he has experience in corporate finance. While at the USW, his restructuring plans were recognized for preserving thousands of manufacturing jobs and health care benefits for workers and retirees alike.
Gerard says President Obama selected the “perfect negotiator, expert and innovative thinker when he chose Ron Bloom.”
Ron is very passionate in his belief that manufacturing is essential to a healthy economy. The auto industry relationship to manufacturing is as important as Goldman Sachs or Citibank is to the financial community. Ron knows this.
