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.
Mother Jones Online Museum and More Highlights at AFL-CIO Cool Tools
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The real life working-class hero Mary “Mother” Jones now has her own virtual museum that documents the struggles, victories and history of the woman once dubbed “America’s Most Dangerous Woman.”
The online Mother Jones Museum is the featured item in our newest collection of Cool Tools—the latest selection of books, DVDs, websites and other media with a working-class bent. Cool Tools also highlights three books and a DVD on Latina sweatshop workers’ struggles and victories.
The Mother Jones Museum describes itself as a “virtual museum and curricula about the amazing labor agitator.” It includes links to her entire autobiography and other documents about militant labor history. As the site states:
We believe that she still has something to teach us after all these years.
One page features my favorite Mother Jones quote:
I asked a man in prison once, how he happened to be there, and he said he had stolen loaf of bread. I told him if he had stolen a railroad, he’d be a U.S. senator.
Unions Must Seize Opportunity to Reclaim Rightful Role
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The multiple crises of global economic meltdown, climate change and challenges to democracy create an opportunity for the union movement to reclaim its rightful place in society as the voice of those who cannot speak for themselves, says author William Greider.
This is one of those moments when the labor movement needs to take a deep breath and reclaim its role as the voice of free, democratic discussion. It’s time for labor to dream bigger dreams.
Speaking to a crowd of about 200 yesterday evening at the AFL-CIO in Washington, D.C., Greider said our current economic woes are not over and the crisis runs deeper than just the financial meltdown. In his new book, Come Home, America (available from The Union Shop OnlineTM here), Greider describes our nation as “in the midst of a profound and frightening transformation, tantamount to an aging person losing weight and muscle.”
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.
