Returning veterans often have a hard time adjusting to civilian life and the Writers Guild of America, East (WGAE) Foundation is helping them find an outlet to tell their stories. Since April 2008, the foundation has held weekend-long writing workshops in which professional writers mentor veterans and active duty military personnel, encouraging them to express themselves in writing.

John Markus, first vice president of the foundation, says the workshops have caught on in the communities where they have been held. They are open to any member of the armed forces who has served in recent conflicts and who has a desire to write. Workshops  have been held in Columbus, Ohio, and San Antonio, with more planned.

Markus says the WGAE members, many of whom are major award winners (Markus has won an Emmy) don’t try to tell the vets what to write. Instead they help vets navigate through writing process. Not all of the stories are about war or military life, but vets are encouraged to write about whatever is on their minds. Says Markus:    

We specifically did not want to influence content. We reassured vets that they would own their material. If they wanted to try and get it published or find an agent or get studios to read their scripts, we could facilitate that.

The free workshops cover a weekend with small groups of writers and vets reading and critiquing each other’s works and sharing experiences. The writers get as much, if not more, out of the sessions as the vets, Markus says:  

We leave the workshops feeling that we get more than we give. There is a deep inspiration that comes from helping someone discover their gift. We all feel they have given so much to this country that this is a small favor in return for their service.

For the vets, Markus says, there’s clearly a feeling of catharsis in exploring what they’ve been through.  

[The vets] work out situations that they’ve struggled with and explore challenges of service whether it’s being with their fellow soldiers or being under fire or being lost in convoys.

For the WGAE, it allows us to do what we do best-encourage writers and tell them what their options if they want to write for film, TV and journalism. We’re there for them. As they look to their future as writers fulltime, we can be a safety net.

Because of the growing popularity of the workshops, the WGAE Foundation is exploring the possibility of expanding the workshops to families of veterans and other groups, such as laid off auto workers in Detroit. As Markus says:

We’re definitely doing more.

Sgt. Kimberly Munley, a civilian police officer at Fort Hood and an AFGE member, is being hailed as a hero for shooting the alleged gunman in yesterday’s bloody rampage at the Army base in Texas.

Today, AFGE released a statement honoring Munley’s “service, courage and commitment.” AFGE President John Gage said Munley “acted with great heroism.” Added Gage:

We offer our thoughts, our prayers, our support and our strength to our brave soldiers and their families, and our brothers and sisters, who are affected by this senseless and pointless tragedy.

Munley, 34, is a member of AFGE Local 1920 and the mother of a 3-year-old. She and her partner were the first to arrive at the Soldier Readiness Center, where Maj. Nidal Hasan allegedly opened fire, killing 13 and injuring 31.

Munley shot the alleged assailant four times, despite being shot herself. She currently is recovering from her injuries and is in stable condition.

Lt. Gen. Bob Cone, commanding general at Fort Hood, told CNN that Munley’s actions stopped Hasan cold and saved lives. He said Munley is a “trained, active first responder” who acted quickly after she “just happened to encounter the gunman.”

AFGE represents 1,700 civilian defense employees at the Army base, including civilians in the Soldier Readiness Center, employees at the base hospital and officers of the installation’s civilian police force.

NBC reported that Goldman Sachs received the same amount of swine flu vaccine as Lennox Hill Hospital that serves a huge population of low- and middle-income New York families. 

Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center received 200 of the 27,400 doses that it requested for its workers, according to the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. The Associated Press reports that while Citigroup received 1,200 doses and Morgan Stanley 1,000, 

manager Linda O’Hanlon at Uptown Pediatrics in Manhattan said her office has received 500 doses so far—not enough for a practice with almost 7,000 patients.

“We have about 800 appointments” set up for patients who want to get vaccinated, she said.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says those who should be first in line for a swine shot are those at highest risk, but the CDC has no way to enforce how the vaccine is doled out. The federal government supplies the vaccine to state and city health departments, which in turn determine how the limited supply is distributed.

New York City health officials say the large financial firms and other companies that received does of the H1N1 vaccine have on-site health clinics and the doctors there are obligated to only provide flu shots to those in the at risk groups. But there is no way to ensure that investment bankers and derivative cowboys aren’t muscling their way to the front of the line.   

On the website MomLogic, Julie, whose children haven’t been able to get vaccinated because of the shortage, writes: 

How are bankers, brokers, and traders put before high-risk children who actually need the vaccine most?

My pediatrician is out of the swine flu vaccine and said he can’t get it for weeks. That means my kids are currently unvaccinated. During 2009, at least 114 children have been killed by the swine flu. How many stockbrokers have died of swine flu this year? Not 114, I can assure you!

United Steelworkers (USW) President Leo Gerard is outraged—as we all are—over the news that a planned $1.5 billion Texas wind farm—seeking financing with U.S. stimulus money—will create only 30 permanent jobs here, but 2,000 jobs in China.

Taking candy from a baby: A consortium of Chinese and American companies goes to Washington and announces plans to build a $1.5 billion windmill farm in west Texas using $450 million in U.S. stimulus funds, which will create 2,330 jobs—2,000 of them in China.  

The baby—Washington’s Energy Dept., specifically—doesn’t cry or whine or spit in the consortium’s face. That’s what’s really wrong with this story.

So accustomed to being bought and sold, Washington simply begins processing forms so it can hand over your tax dollars to create jobs in a turbine factory in the city of Shenyang, China, at a subsidy of $193,133 each.

It’s like these bureaucrats live in Wonderland. Or an America where the unemployment rate isn’t 10.2 percent. Or where 40,000 American manufacturing facilities didn’t disappear in the past decade. Or where banks didn’t repossess nearly a quarter million American homes in the past three months.

We’ve got a message for Washington: Hell no! We’re not giving tax dollars to China. What’s wrong with these businesses and our government? It is the $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. It’s not the Chinese Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

It’s bad enough that we’ve off-shored our factories and technology and jobs over the past 20 years. We’re not off-shoring our stimulus cash, too. In fact, we’re tired of serving as the schoolyard wimp of the world. We need our own industrial policy so we can stand up and compete in the world market, manufacturing the likes of wind turbines. And we need it now.

China has an industrial policy. And it uses that policy to dominate. Here is how Keith Bradsher of the New York Times described China’s policy to become a world leader in renewable energy, which, of course, would include construction of wind turbine factories:

Calling renewable energy a strategic industry, China is trying hard to make sure that its companies dominate globally. Just as Japan and South Korea made it hard for Detroit automakers to compete in those countries—giving their own automakers time to amass economies of scale in sheltered domestic markets—China is shielding its clean energy sector while it grows to a point where it can take on the world.

China protects its chosen industries in many ways. It provides low-interest loans, some of which don’t have to be repaid. It may give free land on which to construct buildings. And there are other perks that Bradsher described:

When the Chinese government took bids this spring for 25 large contracts to supply wind turbines, every contract was won by one of seven domestic companies. All six multinationals that submitted bids were disqualified on various technical grounds, like not providing sufficiently detailed data…even as Chinese companies that had never built a turbine were approved….

Later, Bradsher describes European disgust at the Chinese treatment:

European wind turbine makers have stopped even bidding for some Chinese contracts after concluding that their bids would not be seriously considered, said Jorg Wuttke, the president of the European Union Chamber of Commerce in China.

China has a policy. It ruthlessly protects its own industries.

China was among the many countries that complained bitterly when the United States included “Buy American” provisions in the stimulus bill. In fact, Vice Commerce Minister Jiang Zengwei told a press conference in Beijing in February that China would not do such a thing. “We won’t practice a ‘Buy China’ policy,” he said. Four months later, that’s exactly what China did, instituting its own stricter “Buy China” policy as part of its economic stimulus program.

China did what China felt was necessary for its economy. And it ignored foreign criticism.

That’s hardly the U.S. tactic. Wilting under criticism, Congress diminished the Buy American provisions before passing the stimulus.

As a result, we’ve got a consortium—U.S. Renewable Energy Group, Cielo Wind Power and A-Power Energy Generation Systems—so bold that it believes it can get nearly half a billion dollars in American stimulus money for 2,000 Chinese wind turbine jobs. The consortium says it would import 240 Chinese turbines to Texas, where 300 temporary construction jobs would be created and another 30 permanent jobs established.

The wind turbines could easily be made in the USA. Bradsher, of the Times, says the Chinese concede that while their turbines cost slightly less initially, they have higher repair costs. He wrote:

United Nations data from trading of carbon credits shows that the Chinese-brand turbines produce less electricity because they are more frequently out of action.

Really, is that what we want to buy with American tax dollars for a wind farm in west Texas?

If the United States put half the effort into supporting its renewable energy industry that China does, there would be no way this consortium building windmills in Texas would be looking overseas for turbines.

China has a plan. In its strategy, it doesn’t consider America first or the remainder of the world first. And that’s what the United States must do. We need an industrial policy that makes no apologies for putting America and American workers first. And when that’s the calculus, no American official would ever countenance a request to give $450 million in American taxpayers’ dollars to a turbine factory in China. And no American consortium would consider making such a stupid request.   

In the meantime: Hell no! They don’t get our dough!

Obama’s signature came just hours after it was announced the nation’s unemployment rate had soared to 10.2 percent in October, from 9.8 percent in September. 

The legislation provides an additional 14 weeks of benefits to unemployed workers in all states and an additional six weeks for jobless workers in states with an unemployment rate of 8.5 percent or higher. 

The House first passed a UI extension Sept. 23. But it wasn’t until Nov. 4 that Republicans dropped their fight against the bill and allowed a vote. The House passed the Senate’s version the following day.  

In a statement announcing the signing, the White House says the bill 

builds on the successes of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to help spur job creation and help struggling workers [and] strengthens the safety net for workers who cannot find jobs—immediately helping 700,000 people and eventually helping over a million.

Joshua Anijar, a zone coordinator for the Florida AFL-CIO, sends us this report on a recent activist training session that drew more than 200 union members from Central Florida Labor Council unions in Orlando late last month.  

This was the Central Florida AFL-CIO’s first activist training and it will become an annual event to help equip union members with the skills and training that will help in organizing, political and other mobilizations. We had rank-and-file union members from more than two dozen unions and constituency and other labor groups. 

Fernando Redon from Electrical Workers (IBEW) Local 606 says the daylong session with speakers and workshops 

gave my members a chance to get training on topics that can help them be more active in their local meetings or on the job site, while giving them a larger perspective and education of worker struggle, dignity and justice. 

After Florida AFL-CIO President Mike Williams opened the session, several members of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) talked about their campaign to improve working conditions and wages for workers in Florida’s tomato fields. 

CIW’s keynote presentation described their successfully waged mobilizations against some of the nation’s largest fast-food corporations, including McDonald’s, Burger King, Subway and Taco Bell. They also spoke about CIW’s new campaign aimed at Publix, Florida’s largest grocery store chain. (Click for more on CIW’s most recent win). 

The union activists were also briefed on state legislative issues, labor law and workers’ rights and the role constituency groups such as the A. Philip Randolph Institute (APRI), Coalition of Labor Union Women (CLUW), Labor Council for Latin American Advancement (LCLAA), Alliance for Retired Americans and AFL-CIO/United Way Community Service Project. 

The afternoon’s workshops included sessions on the current fights for health care reform and the Employee Free Choice Act, organizing strategies, labor law, communication and media relations and labor history. 

Josh LeClair from AFSCME Council 79 says the well-attended and successful training session 

is another example of how we have been building a strong and powerful labor movement in central Florida.

Hotel workers began a three-day strike this morning at the Grand Hyatt Union Square in San Francisco. The strike comes two weeks after members of UNITE HERE Local 2 voted by a 92 percent to 8 percent margin to authorize strikes at any of the 31 upscale hotels in San Francisco.

Local 2’s contracts with the luxury hotels expired in June. Since then, the union has been trying to negotiate new agreements. But despite earning record profits over the past five years, the hotels are using the recession as an excuse to demand changes in eligibility for the employees’ health care plan that would eliminate coverage or put it out of reach for many workers.

“This is a limited strike,” said Local 2 President Mike Casey. 

It’s intended to send a clear signal to this corporation that they cannot use a temporary downturn to permanently drive down workers’ living standards.

While demanding workers take concessions, the Pritzker family, which owns the Grand Hyatt, is conducting an initial public stock offering today expected to raise close to $1 billion.

Says Aurolyn Rush, a 13-year telephone operator at the Grand Hyatt:

Hyatt’s cashing out almost a billion dollars for its owners, but at the same time they’re pushing to make health care unaffordable for me and my family? That is unforgivable, and we’re not going to stand for it.

Penny Pritzker, who chairs four major corporations, including Classic Residence by Hyatt, is a vocal opponent of workers’ freedom to form unions, strongly opposing the Employee Free Choice Act.

Earlier this year, Pritzker, who serves on President Obama’s White House Economic Recovery Advisory Board, joined with other billionaires to fight the Employee Free Choice Act. She also served as the Obama campaign’s national finance chairwoman. Click here to learn more about Penny Pritzker.

Hyatt has sought to maximize profits on the backs of workers at its hotels across the country:

• In Boston, Hyatt recently fired all 98 housekeepers at its three nonunion hotels, replacing them with lesser-paid temporary workers with no benefits. Since then, these housekeepers have been engaged in the fight of their lives. The Massachusetts AFL-CIO is leading a march and rally at the Boston Hyatt Regency on Sept. 11 in support of the housekeepers.
• Some 150 workers, union activists and students rallied Oct. 28 at the Indiana Statehouse to show solidarity with workers at three Indianapolis hotels, including the Hyatt Regency. The workers have been trying to form a union at the hotels for year despite a fierce anti-union campaign by management. The Indianapolis workers were joined by members of the nationwide “Hope for Housekeepers” tour. “Hope for Housekeepers” is a movement of women, founded by Hyatt housekeepers to stop the abuse of women in the hotel industry and bring a message of hope to Hyatt housekeepers and women working as housekeepers across the globe.

Union activists across the country are taking part in the National Week of Action for Health Care, and you can see what’s happening on the ground and share your own experiences with our new health care photo site.

You can submit your own photo here and vote for your favorite photos here.

Don’t forget to call your members of Congress using our easy call-in tool here. Your efforts will make the difference in finally winning affordable, high-quality coverage for everyone.

Health care reform means real benefits for working families—lower costs, better coverage and a fairer system. We can’t wait, and thousands of grassroots union members have been leading the way in making sure we get reform.

Stunningly bad news on the nation’s jobless rate today: Unemployment worsened in October to 10.2 percent, a huge jump from 9.8 percent in September. That’s 15.7 million jobless workers, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Worse, the unemployment and underemployment rate is a shocking 17.5 percent—more than 27 million American workers without full-time jobs.

The construction, manufacturing and retail industries had the biggest losses, with 62,000 construction jobs lost in October, 61,000 in manufacturing and 40,000 in retail. Health care and temporary employment were the only bright spots, with health care jobs increasing by 29,000 and temp jobs by 44,000.

The nation’s jobs situation would be even more dire without the Obama administration’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. Nearly 1 million jobs have been saved or created because of the economic stimulus plan, and the White House says the nation is on track to meet the president’s goal of 3.5 million by the end of next year.

But as today’s numbers show, the overall jobs situation isn’t improving any time soon, according to Economic Policy Institute Director Larry Mishel, who predicts that one-third of the U.S. workforce will be unemployed or underemployed in 2010.

Long-term unemployment is the worst in 24 years, and there now are more than six workers for every available job. The U.S. Senate finally passed an extension of unemployment insurance, and President Obama is expected to sign the bill today. But far more needs to be done.

In short, the nation needs jobs.

Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman says although “the apocalypse has been postponed” because of the Obama administration’s economic recovery package passed by Congress earlier this year, it’s essential to follow up with further fiscal action—that is, spending money now to create long-term benefits, like jobs—to prevent prolonged suffering.

Economist Julianne Malveaux puts the case succinctly:

Absent public job creation, it is likely that the economy will not fully recover.

Help certainly isn’t coming from Wall Street or Big Business.

Now that they have pocketed their bailout cash, Wall Streeters are impervious to the nation’s ongoing jobs disaster. In fact, an annual report by Johnson Associates on financial industry payouts projected they will be up 40 percent from 2008, when they plunged in the midst of the financial crisis.

In 2008, Wall Street handed out nearly $20 billion in cash awards and billions more in stock and other incentives to employees based in New York.

Wall Street is celebrating a “recovery” based on a 3.5 percent increase in the gross domestic product (GDP) in the third quarter of this year. But America’s workers know there can be no recovery unless everyone who wants to work can find a good job.

This alarming jobs report “should be a wake-up call to sleepy politicians,” says AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka:

Every day, it becomes more urgent that the federal government step up to the plate with bold actions to boost job creation. Such action should include urgently needed fiscal relief to state and local governments, community jobs programs, additional investments in infrastructure and green jobs and credit relief to small and medium-sized businesses. Failing to act puts us at very real risk of a lost generation—of hard-working Americans who can’t put food on the table and bright young people who never realize their potential.

The AFL-CIO and our allies are unveiling an effort this month to push for immediate job creation, among other critically needed economic aid for working families. The nation needs to act fast to stop the hemorrhage of jobs and the economic crisis among working families.

Imagine voting on a ballot initiative and knowing that everyone who didn’t show up at the polls still got to vote—because their votes would be counted as “No.”

That’s the process for airline and railway workers when they vote on whether to join a union. The election results are tallied not by how manypeople voted—but by the entire pool of workers in the bargaining unit, with all non-voters automatically “casting” a “No” vote.

Given the undemocratic process, it’s no surprise these workers have an even harder time than usual getting a union voice on the job.

Unlike most of the nation’s workforce, airline and railroad employees are governed by the Railway Labor Act (RLA), which was passed more than a decade before the Depression-era National Labor Relations Act that created the bulk of our nation’s labor laws.

The AFL-CIO Transportation Trades Department (TTD) and its 32 unions in September requested the National Mediation Board (NMB), which governs the RLA, to allow airline and railroad workers to vote either “Yes” or “No” for union representation and to determine the outcome by a majority of the votes cast. Majority voting. What a concept.

And this week in a 2–1 majority, the NMB proposed new rules. But it’s not a done deal. The NMB has said it will decide whether to adopt the proposed rule after the 60-day public comment period, but its adversaries started campaigning against this weeks ago.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is one of the biggest opponents of the rule change. The same outfit that is spending $100 million to push “free enterprise” as a publicity stunt while in reality attacking financial regulatory reforms that would aid the free enterprise system, doesn’t cotton much to new-fangled ideas like democracy. Good thing that group wasn’t around in 1776.

Meanwhile, the Bush-appointed Republican member of the NMB is having fits over the decision. In a letter to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ken.) and eight Republican lawmakers who had written the NMB opposing the rule change, Elizabeth Dougherty whined that she had been left out of the decision-making, according to the Daily Labor Report (subscription required).

Dougherty would know something about leaving people out. This from Ed Wytkind, TTD president:

Unionization in the airline industry has slowed in recent years. Why? Union-busting campaigns are alive and well—because the current election policy encourages and rewards employer-run voter suppression campaigns. For example, almost 100 percent of Delta flight attendants voted in favor of unionization in 2008.

But thanks to Delta’s campaign to discourage its employees from voting (the company called it “Give a Rip” and was essentially instructing employees to destroy government-issued ballots), turnout was below 50 percent and the overwhelming support for a union was nullified. Shockingly, the Bush NMB saw no evil in Delta’s unlawful conduct and voted 2–1 to refuse to even investigate more than 100 charges of illegal interference and coercion.

Dougherty was one of the two NMB Republican members leaving the Delta workers out in the cold.

Another opponent of the majority voting process, Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.), joined McConnell and his cronies, saying if the proposal is adopted, he will “use all available tools at my disposal,” including options available to lawmakers under the Congressional Review Act, “to see that this assault on employee rights does not stand.”

How is it an assault on employee rights to insist on a more democratic voting process, Johnny?

And as the Wonkroom points out today, opponents of the Employee Free Choice Act have portrayed themselves as defenders of democracy, protecting the “secret ballot” for workers everywhere. But when it comes to bringing democracy to union elections covered by the NMB, these supposed lovers of fair elections show their true colors and oppose the rule changes.

Flight attendants and most other workers at pre-merger Delta, based in Atlanta, are nonunion, while most of Northwest’s frontline employees are represented by unions. Says Flight Attendants-CWA President Patricia Friend:

Now that the NMB has announced that, for the first time in recent years, airline employees seeking union representation will have a chance for truly fair elections, flight attendants at Northwest and Delta are excited for that opportunity.

The airline CEOs and their friends seem to be the only ones trying to defend the current system. But sitting members of Congress would never choose the NMB election standards for themselves. As Wytkind states:

Even when more than 90 percent of those who vote choose a union, they are routinely denied representation by those who didn’t vote….Other than airline CEOs and their lobbyists, no one else can defend this system. I wonder if some of the U.S. senators who are carrying the airline industry’s water would support an amendment to the U.S. Constitution or to the election law in their state that forces them to face the voters under such onerous rules? I doubt it because in most of their elections, they would have lost.

(Comments may be submitted by mail or hand delivery to the National Mediation Board, 1301 K St., N.W., Suite 250E, Washington, D.C. 20005; by fax to 202-692-5085; by e-mail to legal@nmb.gov; or through the Federal eRulemaking Portal at www.regulations.gov.)

This is a cross-post from the Firedoglake blog.

Biden, who chairs the White House Task Force on Middle Class Families, met with a panel of  scholars assembled by the Center for American Progress (CAP) and Economic Policy Institute (EPI) to discuss the challenges facing America’s middle class in the 21st century economy.

At the live webcast event, EPI President Lawrence Mishel said unions set standards in the workplace. Decent standards help ensure “employers are not competing to see who can make the jobs worst, but who can make the products better,” Mishel said.

Heather Boushey, CAP’s senior economist, said unions are important for workers so they can approach employers about sharing the benefits of productivity and about the ways to have more workplace flexibility.

And it can’t just be about one worker. These are challenges for everyone. I don’t think we can overestimate the important role of unions in building a middle class and what they can do if we help them grow again.

Biden said middle-class life is much more fragile than it should be with families struggling to pay medical bills. In America today, it is more than likely that both parents work long hours but find it harder to buy a decent home and send their children to college, he said.

It’s not just about a paycheck, it’s about a standard of living. [It's about] any family that can’t afford to go without two paychecks in a row without finding themselves really up against it and having to make really difficult choices.

The panel identified several trends that affect middle-class families, including a steady erosion of good manufacturing jobs, corporate attacks on unions, the growing economic role of women, the need for a work-and-life balance in today’s economy, economic inequality and mobility, and the increased gap between productivity and wages.

University of Massachusetts professor Ralph Whitehead and Mishel pointed out that although U.S. workers are more productive and better educated than workers of previous generations, they do not share in the benefits of the economic growth that results from their efforts.

Other panelists included Melody Barnes, director of the White House Domestic Policy Council, and Jim Kessler, vice president of the nonpartisan think tank Third Way.

In a massive show of support for health care reform, the nation’s largest organization for doctors, the American Medical Association (AMA), today urged the House to pass the bill it begins debate on today, H.R. 3962, Affordable Health Care for America Act.

The AMA’s historical backing for health care reform follows this morning’s endorsement of the House bill by the largest U.S. advocacy group for seniors, the 40-million member AARP. As we noted yesterday, the bill has many provisions that will immediately benefit to seniors.

The American Cancer Society Action Network also is throwing its support behind the bill, calling it “an exceptional opportunity” to improve our health care system.

These groups are joining a broad coalition, from businesses to civil rights organizations, groups for youth and for seniors, unions, medical professionals and faith groups, all asking Congress to pass this critical bill that will expand health care coverage, cut costs and put patients first. This support is critical, as the closer we get to real reform, the harder the insurance companies and their lobbyists and front groups will fight to block it through scare tactics and falsehoods.

Want to get involved? Click here to call Congress.

Here’s more news from the battle for health care reform:

• At the Huffington Post, Art Levine looks at what the union movement is doing to fight against a new tax on middle-class families’ health benefits.
• In the Washington Post, columnist E.J. Dionne explores the need for health care reform to provide immediate, palpable assistance to families.
• Also writing in the Washington Post, Harold Meyerson explains why the House bill is a stronger, fairer bill than what we’ve seen from the Senate, calling it better policy and better politics.
• At the New Republic, Anthony Wright of Health Access California talks about why we need to include employer responsibility in health care reform—and why we need real reform to protect the millions who now have employer-based health coverage.
• Here’s more confirmation from economic experts that having a public health insurance option saves money.
• Finally, health care experts are weighing in on the “reform proposal” released by Rep. John Boehner (R-Ohio), and it’s not pretty. Ezra Klein calls it “a major embarrassment,” Jonathan Cohn says it’s “even worse than you’re hearing” and health advocacy group Families USA calls it “destructive” and based on “discredited ideas.” The short version? It saves less money than H.R. 3962 and gives insurance companies even more power than they already have—plus, the Congressional Budget Office found that while we currently have 17 percent of people uninsured, after 10 years of the Boehner plan, our country would have…17 percent of people uninsured.

In Maine and Washington State, voters Tuesday overwhelmingly told the extremist right-wing, anti-worker crowd to take their efforts to cripple state governments and slash vital services and shove them.

In both states, the so-called Taxpayer Bills of Rights (TABOR)—long a part of the reactionary holy grail—went down by double-digit margins. Maine voters said “No” by a 60-40 margin and TABOR was defeated in Washington 55-45. It was the third time in recent years Mainers saw through the hype and said “No” to Tabor.

According the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center (BISC):

The Grover Norquist, Club for Growth, Glenn Beck, Tea Party crowd tried to use the bleak budget picture as an opportunity to ratchet down even harder as states look to find the revenue necessary to protect priorities, create jobs, and get their economies going—but voters rejected that failed approach again….

These votes in Maine and Washington prove that the tea party anger that has been hyped for months doesn’t translate into majorities and election victories. The right wing base remains out of sync with moderates and independents.

In Maine, union activists and voters rallied around the effort to put another stake through the heart of a TABOR initiative. As Matt Schlobohm, Maine AFL-CIO Public Policy & Political Mobilization director, says:

The work that our affiliated local unions and councils did educating and mobilizing our members and the general public was a significant reason we so soundly defeated TABOR.

The Washington State Labor Council AFL-CIO (WSLC) mobilized its members and was part of broad coalition that sent a TABOR ballot measure (Initiative 1033) to defeat. Had TABOR passed, says the WSLC, it would have

capped revenue for state, county and city governments, making it illegal for local lawmakers to spend more than the previous year’s budget on schools, police, fire protection, roads, libraries, parks, hospitals and other services. I-1033 was deliberately timed to lock in the budget cuts forced by the recession.

BISC notes that TABOR measures have been a central tenant of the extremist agenda for several years, but voters and state legislators have seen through the charade and, except in Colorado in 1992, defeated the initiatives.

In 1992, Colorado became the only state—before or since—to approve TABOR. The damage was severe. Colorado dropped to 49th in the nation in education funding and the percentage of low-income children with no health insurance doubled. In 2005, voters in Colorado suspended the revenue restrictions.

In a column on Huffington Post, BISC’s Kristina Wilfore warns that Tuesday was not the last time we’ll see the TABOR crowd try to disguise itself as some sort of populist uprising.

They’ll be back. The irony is that those who supposedly are speaking for the people—and positioning themselves as representatives of the populist outrage in this country—don’t hold themselves accountable to what the people actually want and vote for. They lost this central test to their agenda, and it doesn’t matter to them.

For more on previous TABOR battles click here, here, here and here.

BREAKING: The U.S. House of Representatives this afternoon passed the unemployment insurance extension bill, by a 403-12 vote. The bill is on its way to President Barack Obama who could sign it as early as tomorrow.

After weeks of Republican stalling and obstruction that cost hundreds of thousands of jobless workers their unemployment insurance (UI)—the Senate last night approved extending UI to workers who have lost or will lose their benefits by the end of the year.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) promised to move quickly—as early as today—to ensure a House vote on the bill so President Obama can sign the legislation and get the checks moving again. Said Hoyer last night:

For too long, Senate Republicans blocked progress on extending unemployment insurance, which would provide immediate and tangible help to those who need it most, while also boosting our economy. Democrats remain focused on doing everything we can to assist Americans struggling to make ends meet and extending unemployment benefits is part of that effort. Now that this legislation has passed the Senate, I will bring it to the House Floor for a vote.

The bill also extends the first-time home buyers’ credit and some business tax credits.

Apparently Republican lawmakers saw little hypocrisy in blocking help for the jobless for more than a month, then voting unanimously (98-0) for the bill. It likely wasn’t a sudden epiphany that moved them, but simple political expediency—judging by the comments on our blog from angry workers, the Party of No Senators likely heard an earful about their obstructionism.

In September, the House passed a benefits extension, but several times last month Senate Republicans blocked votes on the bill. The bill that passed last night would provide an additional 14 weeks of benefits to employed workers in all states and an additional six weeks for jobless workers in states with a 8.5 percent or higher unemployment rate. Because the Senate made changes to the House bill, a second House vote is requited.

Nationwide, official unemployment stands at 9.8 percent and is expected to get even worse when October’s jobless numbers are released tomorrow. Some 26 million U.S. workers are unemployed or underemployed, and the long-term jobless rate is the highest since 1981. More than one in three people who are unemployed have been out of work for at least six months, according to National Employment Law Project (NELP).

The murder two years ago of Rafael Santiago Cruz, an organizer for the Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC) in Monterrey, Mexico, is part of a corrupt system of supplying immigrant labor to harvest crops on America’s farms, says FLOC President Baldemar Velasquez. Over the past two days, Velasquez and members of his union have been in Washington, D.C., meeting with members of Congress and international human rights panels to push for justice in Cruz’s murder.

Yesterday, FLOC brought the case of Cruz’s murder before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), an arm of the Organization of American States. After Cruz’s killing in 2007, the IACHR ruled that the murder was committed for political purposes related to the work of FLOC in defense of the rights of migrant workers and granted protective measures to Velasquez and FLOC staff located in Mexico. 

The Mexican government has done little to solve the case. Of the four people who are known to have participated in the murder, all but one of Cruz’s killers remain at large, said Leonel Rivero Rodriquez, a Mexican human rights lawyer, at a briefing today at AFL-CIO headquarters.

The failure to fully investigate Cruz’s murder is indicative of the anti-union policies of the administration of Mexican President Felipe Calderón Hinojosa, who last month took over the country’s second largest electrical power distributor, fired the entire 44,000-person workforce and disbanded their union.     

Cruz was found bound and beaten to death in FLOC’s Monterrey, Mexico, office April 9, 2007. The union opened the office in 2005 to help guest workers obtain legal visas to work in North Carolina.

The FLOC office also fights corruption in the recruitment process. Velasquez says union investigations uncovered widespread corruption among Mexican labor recruiters, and Cruz, who had been on the job in Monterrey for less than a month before he was killed, was helping workers obtain legal visas without paying the exorbitant fees demanded by some recruiters.

Velasquez said:

Human rights and labor rights will remain unrealized unless we persist in challenging the criminal elements who would like to use recruitment programs for bribes and extortion.

Most of the workers who are granted visas work on tobacco fields. On the tobacco farms, workers face long hours and unsafe working conditions. But the battle to protect the workers is not with the farmers who directly employ them, Velasquez said. The battle is with the major companies who pay the farmers for their products. That’s the impetus behind FLOC’s campaign against R.J. Reynolds, the giant tobacco company, he said.

The ultimate answer to protecting immigrant workers is comprehensive immigration reform, Velasquez said. But “we can’t wait for immigration reform,” he said.

We’ve got to be out there and defend people and if you do it long enough and good enough, good things happen.