The executive council of the AFL-CIO, the nation’s largest labor federation, called for a massive second economic stimulus package yesterday, modeled after FDR’s Works Progress Administration, noting that the agency put 3.5 million people to work in 1935 alone. The council, after a one-day meeting yesterday in Silver Springs, Md., declared:
“President Roosevelt’s strategy can be re-engineered to help revitalize the modern manufacturing sector by putting the jobless to work renovating factories and public structures, while others can develop financing and marketing plans to support domestic production and jobs.”
In addition to the WPA-type program the federation said the second stimulus plan must include an additional seven weeks or more extension of jobless benefits, another increase in food stamp benefits, more aid to state and local governments to prevent further layoffs and service cuts and more spending on infrastructure and clean energy products.
The federation said the measures are called for because the current recession is much deeper than anyone had first thought.
The call for the second stimulus was issued after the executive council met in a closed-door session with Jared Bernstein, a top economic aide in the Obama administration. During the session Bernstein talked about the administration’s pro-labor moves, said the first stimulus is slowly beginning to work and that the administration is not yet ready for a second stimulus.
AFL-CIO Policy Director Thea Lee said, in a phone interview, that Bernstein told the council that “one third of the stimulus money has been spent or is in the pipeline.” Lee said the union leaders directly pushed the administration spokesman for a second stimulus package and that “Bernstein said they’re not ready to talk about that yet.”
Labor has, of course, been more than ready to discuss a second stimulus.
Richard Trumka, AFL-CIO secretary-treasurer, has been calling for one for several months.
Earlier this month Trumka said the first stimulus, at $787 billion, was “too small for an economy with a 9.5 percent jobless rate, falling industrial production, rising foreclosures and declining gross domestic product.”
The union leaders went further in their warnings about the economy yesterday than they have gone in any statement thus far. Their statement said that, within 12 months, one third of all U.S. workers could end up finding themselves in either the category of unemployed or underemployed.
The executive council also announced plans for two big labor mobilizations in August – one on health care and another on the Employee Free Choice Act.
Both campaigns are intended to counter the on-going business backed efforts against both health care reform and labor law reform.
Sources say the labor leaders were angry about the decision of the Democratic-run 111th Congress, due to divisions within the Democratic majority, to put off final decisions on health care until after Sept. 8.
Even as the council was meeting unions were funneling 50,000 phone calls to members of Congress as part of a national day of action on health care reform.
Discussing the Employee Free Choice Act after the meeting, AFL-CIO Organizing Director Stewart Acuff said, “The important thing is to preserve the essential elements of the Employee Free Choice Act: Restoring the freedom to organize and bargain collectively. That’s the measure by which any tweaking of the law will be judged.”
The council itself reaffirmed the federation’s strong support for the bill’s majority sign-up provision, which calls for recognition of a union as soon as a majority of workers sign cards indicating that they want representation by that union.
Acuff said that alternatives to majority sign-up, including mail-in ballots, mail-in authorization cards and quick NLRB elections were not discussed much at the meeting but were also not ruled out. “These would be dramatically better than what we have now,” he said.
Current law allows long campaigns that give employers the opportunity to harass, intimidate and fire union organizers.
Senate sponsor Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, continues to insist that majority sign-up is still on the table. “Nothing is agreed to until everything is agreed to,” he is saying.
After the meeting AFL-CIO Legislative Director, Bill Samuel and AFSCME President Gerald McEntee described some of the discussion on health care reform.
“We reviewed what’s happened so far and talked about our success in beating back the idea of taxing health benefits,” Samuel said.
“But if the Senate Finance Committee decides to let employers off the hook and to ax the government run public option, we’ll have to see what to do,” said McEntee.
McEntee’s union, alone, has some 16,000 members out campaigning for health care with a strong public option and is running a national television ad campaign on the issue.
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
Labor issues call for a new New Deal
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
White House school reform plan draws mixed reaction
Teachers unions and advocates gave a mixed reaction to a $4.35 billion education reform initiative announced by President Obama and U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan last week.
Billed by Obama as “one of the largest investments in education reform in American history,” the new program is part of the $787 billion economic stimulus plan passed by Congress and signed into law by Obama in February.
Under the “Race to the Top” program, states will compete for federal funding grants for innovation in education.
"Rather than divvying it up and handing it out, we are letting states and districts compete for it,” Obama said as he and Duncan announced the program last Friday. “That's how we can incentivize excellence and spur reform and launch a race for the top in America's public schools.”
Duncan said his department will be “scrutinizing state applications for a coordinated and deep-seated commitment to reform.”
Among the more controversial elements of Race to the Top are requirements that promote the growth of charter schools, link teacher evaluation and pay to student performance and push for national student performance standards — presumably measured by standardized tests.
Duncan said states will be awarded grants based on their readiness to implement four core reforms:
* “adopt common, internationally-benchmarked K-12 standards that truly prepare students for college and careers.” To speed this process, Duncan said, the Race to the Top program will set aside $350 million to fund the development of” rigorous, common state assessments.”
* “monitor growth in student learning—and identify effective instructional practices.”
* “identify effective teachers and principals, reward and retain more top-notch teachers—and improve or replace ones who aren't up to the job.”
* "institute far-reaching reforms, replace school staff, and change the school culture.”
Duncan emphasized that the four reforms are interrelated, and “one reform reinforces the others.”
“When teachers get better data on student growth,” he said, “it empowers teachers to tailor classroom instruction to the needs of their students and boost student achievement.”
“When principals are able to identify their most effective and least effective teachers, it makes it easier for them to place teachers where they are needed most—and provide struggling teachers with help.”
“When superintendents have the authority to tackle their lowest performing schools by replacing staff and shaking up the school culture, they will have the ability—for the first time—to close or remake the dropout factories in our urban districts that are at the root of our dropout problem.”
Obama said the Race to the Top competition “will not be based on politics or ideology or the preferences of a particular interest group.”
“We will use the best evidence available to determine whether a state can meet a few key benchmarks for reform — and states that outperform the rest will be rewarded with a grant,” the president said.
Many education reform advocates, including teachers and their unions, are concerned that the competition guidelines appear to place excessive reliance on standardized multiple-choice or fill-in-the-blank tests
National Education Association President Dennis Van Roekel said in a statement that the NEA would “encourage the Education Department to think more broadly about what it views as the basic tenets of a student’s educational experience.”
“If we continue to focus narrowly on test scores, then students in need of the most support will continue to get more test prep rather than the rich, challenging, engaging education they deserve,” Van Roekel said.
“Teachers should be evaluated on their practice using multiple criteria, not just one,” he said.
Likewise, Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, said on the AFT website, “Hopefully we will agree that teacher evaluations must be improved the right way. We need meaningful, fair and multiple measures for supporting and evaluating teachers so that evaluations aren't based on one observation by a principal or one standardized test score."
Weingarten and Van Roekel along with state and local teachers union leaders were among the invited guests at the July 24 announcement of the Race to the Top initiative.
One of the local leaders, Jean Clements, president of the Hillsborough (Fla.) Classroom Teachers Association, a joint affiliate of the AFT and the NEA, addressed the gathering. "There is no 'one thing' that will improve teacher quality or student achievement," she said.
She cited successful joint initiatives by her local union and school district including high-quality mentoring and coaching, well-trained principals who work collaboratively with teachers, adequate resources, and professional growth opportunities at all career stages.
Noted educator and reform advocate Deborah Meier says the drive for national standardized testing gives her “chills.”
In a July 14 interview posted on her web site, Meier condemns reliance on standardized tests. “We have made what can be measured cheaply (and thus is easily ranked) the definition of being ‘well-educated’,” Meier says. “We have defined ‘achievement’ and even ‘performance’ to scores on paper-and-pencil tasks, largely of the multiple choice variety, without any evidence that this is wise policy, or will produce either a stronger economy or a stronger democracy. (Or even stronger college performance!)”
The two national teachers unions said they would study the details of the Race to the Top proposal and, in Van Roekel’s words, “use the 30-day comment period to find common ground with the administration.”
suewebb @ pww.org
Raul points the way for Cuba on July 26
Original source: morningstaronline.co.uk
Raul Castro has said that the global economic crisis means tougher times ahead for Cuba, but the country has no-one to blame but itself for poor farm production.
In a speech marking Revolution Day, the Cuban president said that the island can't simply pin all its problems on Washington's 47-year-old trade embargo.
He implored Cubans to take better advantage of a government programme initiated last year to turn unused state land over to individual farmers.
"The land is there, here are the Cubans," he said, pounding the podium. "Let's see if we get to work or not, if we produce or not, if we keep our word."
The 78-year-old Mr Castro called agricultural production Cuba's top priority and a matter of national security.
"It is not a question of yelling 'Fatherland or death! Down with imperialism! The blockade hurts us'," he said.
"The land is there waiting for our efforts."
On the third anniversary of the last time his 82-year-old brother Fidel was seen in public, the younger Mr Castro showed signs that he is getting more comfortable with national addresses.
He opened his speech with a joke about the stage's lack of shielding from the sun.
Tens of thousands of supporters, most wearing red T-shirts or caps, filled a grassy plaza dotted with red and black July 26 flags.
Revolution Day commemorates the date in 1953 when the Castros led an attack on the Moncada army barracks in the eastern city of Santiago.
Cubans consider it the beginning of the revolution that culminated with dictator Fulgencio Batista's ousting on New Year's Day 1959.
An eight-story tall banner on a building behind the crowd featured a picture of both Fidel and Raul thrusting their arms skyward under the words The Vigorous and Victorious Revolution Keeps Marching Forward.
Mr Castro has asked Cubans to be patient as he implements "structural changes" to a struggling economy.
He also has said he'd be willing to meet US leaders over any issue.
Officials from Cuba and the US discussed immigration this month for the first time since 2003.
The Obama administration lifted restrictions on Cuban-Americans who want to travel or send money to the island.
But the US has said it wants to see small political or economic reforms before going further.
Monday, July 20, 2009
Young Republicans elect a new leader who's under fire for racist remarks
Original source: southernstudies.org
The Republican Party has been trying to revamp its image as more inclusive of diversity -- but the newly elected leader of the party's youth branch may set that effort back.
At their annual convention in Indianapolis last week, the Young Republican National Federation elected as their new chair Audra Shay (in photo) of New Orleans, the group's former vice chair at large. Shay, a 38-year-old Arkansas native, defeated Rachel Hoff, the group's director of media relations, by a vote of 470-415, according to The Daily Beast.
The online news site has been covering the story in depth, revealing racially offensive comments made by Shay on Facebook:
Specifically, a thread where one of her friends posts that "Obama Bin Lauden [sic] is the new terrorist... Muslim is on there side [sic]... need to take this country back from all of these mad coons... and illegals," and Shay responds eight minutes later with: "You tell em Eric! lol."
When two Facebook friends including the head of the African-American Young Republican Chapter complained about the racist remarks, Shay reportedly responded by unfriending them. She later released a statement disavowing her support for the remarks and pointing out that under her chairmanship the Louisiana Young Republicans raised $90,000 for a minority outreach media campaign.
But the Daily Beast also reported that in October 2008, following news that Sarah Palin was being hung in effigy outside a home as an offensive Halloween decoration, Shays posted to Facebook, "What no Obama in a noose? Come on now, its just freedome [sic] of speech, no one in Atlanta would take that wrong! Lol."
She later added, "Apparently I could not spell last night. I am wondering if the guys with the Palin noose would care if we had a bunch of homosexuals in a noose."
House bill: Taxes the wealthy to keep America healthy
The health care bill presented by the House leadership this week pays for the health insurance of the 20 percent of the people who cannot afford it with a surtax on the richest 1 percent.
Nothing like this has ever emerged from the leadership of a U.S. Congress.
At best, throughout American history, Congress has, under pressure from labor and the peoples’ movements, closed various tax loopholes for the rich, given tax credits to workers or created programs like Medicaid for the poor. The programs for the poor were paid for with funds raised from a progressive income tax system that everyone pays into, and never by any type of transfer of wealth from the rich to those in poverty.
It is a testimony to the power of the massive labor-led coalition that has been battling for health care reform that the House is saying, for the first time ever, that those in society who can afford it should pay for the health insurance of those who cannot.
While the right wing is doing everything and anything, including coughing up blood, in its effort to kill the proposal, the labor movement is out there telling everyone how fair it really is.
“The wealthiest 1 percent of American households take home 20 percent of all income in the country – the highest percentage since the time just before the crash that started the Great Depression,” said the AFL-CIO in a statement it released after the Senate health committee approved its version of a health care reform bill a day later.
The federation noted that, unlike the House bill, the Senate’s health committee bill “does not address financing.” Labor is calling upon the Senate to adopt a bill that includes the House’s funding strategy.
“Instead of taxing working families’ health care benefits, as some senators propose, the House bill lands on the side of fairness. In most cases, all or a large part of the surcharge (on the rich) is offset by the savings they will realize from comprehensive health care reform,” says the AFL-CIO.
That point is well taken because many of the lawmakers most opposed to taxing the rich have been leaders on the bandwagon calling for taxes on workers who currently have employer provided health insurance.
The AFL-CIO points out that no one making less than $192 (yes, that’s one hundred and ninety two) an hour would be affected by the surcharge.
The right wingers in the Senate say the House funding mechanism is a deal breaker they can never support because it means more taxes for the very people who supposedly invest, innovate, hire and thereby keep the economy humming along. The result, they claim, will be to hurt everyone, including the working people and poor who the plan means to help.
Robert Reich, Secretary of Labor during the Clinton administration, countered that argument today when he said, “There’s no reason to suppose that taking a tiny sliver of the incomes of the top 1 percent will reduce all that much of their ardor to invest, innovate and hire in the future. Yet if this tiny sliver means affordable health care for a far larger number of Americans, who will be able to get regular checkups and stay healthy and productive, the positive effect on the American economy is likely to be far greater.”
Another major argument conservatives are making against the House funding mechanism is that it will hurt small businesses.
The facts are that less than 5 percent of small business owners would be paying any surcharge.
Only the profits of a small business would be taxed. A couple whose income comes entirely from a small business would have to earn more than $350,000 in business profits, after paying all their expenses, including salaries, before the surcharge would affect them at all.
Still not willing to cede the point, right wingers say, “even so, it will be a job killer because it will reduce the incentive small businesses have for expanding and hiring more workers.”
This argument also is false because those add-on workers are paid out of pre-tax income.
Purchasing of new equipment by small businesses would also not be discouraged because most small businesses can write off up to $250,000 of the costs of such equipment.
The AFL-CIO summed it up this way: “A small surtax on the wealthiest 1 percent buys health care reform for America. That’s not much to finally get a handle on costs that are dragging down the entire economy. Even the wealthy will get a big chunk of their money back in savings. Their premiums won’t go up as fast, and no one will have to pay the hidden $1000 insurance premium add-on to cover costs for uncompensated care. The House health care surtax is a fiscally responsible investment. It will pay steady returns every year.”
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
Obama reported firm in his support for EFCA
From: PWW
A top aid to one of the union leaders present at a White House meeting with President Obama today said the president remains firmly committed to passage of the Employee Free Choice Act, the bill that would make it easier to unionize.
“He told the leaders that his administration is firmly committed to the bill but as of now there is no formal timeline on when it would get to his desk,” the aid said.
Lawmakers have been struggling to work out a “compromise” on the bill because several Democrats have been wavering and a 60 vote majority is needed to break any Republican filibuster.
The aid also said that the labor leaders, who emerged from the meeting with the president late in the afternoon, assured him that the administration has labor’s full support on health care reform.
Union leaders present at the meeting represent unions in both labor federations, the AFL-CIO and Change to Win. The independent National Education Association was also represented.
For more information: "Union leaders meet with Obama" at pww.org/article/articleview/16353/.
Friday, July 10, 2009
The Faces of the Communist Party
Here is a great video developed and produced by some participants in the recent National Marxist School of the Communist Party.
Happy Independence Day!
From: CPUSA Online
Today is our nation's birthday. It commemorates the great struggle that severed our colonial dependence on Britain and gave a fresh impulse to the unending struggle for freedom.
Revolutions are never complete. While expanding the boundaries and possibilities of freedom, our revolution also had its limitations: the abominable institution of slavery remained; political rights were limited to white male property holders; the new nation was formed on lands unlawfully and violently expropriated from Native American peoples; and the revolution unfolded in a nascent bourgeois society, which over time widened many of the inequalities that were embedded in colonial life.
Nonetheless, the American Revolution constituted a landmark in human history. For the first time sovereignty and consent rested, not with a king, not with an aristocratic order, not with a church, but with the people. Freedom was proclaimed a universal right of humankind. And many old modes of deference and hierarchy melted away.
The revolution of 1776 set the stage for the second American Revolution in 1865—culminating in the abolition of slavery—and subsequent struggles to expand boundaries and impart new content to freedom.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the greatest leader in our land in the 20th Century, was well aware of the limitations of our revolution. Yet he heralded its achievements and ideals and challenged the nation to live up to full meaning of its creed.
That challenge has yet to be fulfilled, although in electing President Barak Obama our nation took another step down freedom road.
Let's celebrate this Independence Day with family and friends, while recommitting ourselves to complete that journey in the years ahead.
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
Call-in day presses Congress to pass public option
The grassroots health care movement mobilized thousands of phone calls to Capitol Hill July 8, demanding enactment of health care reform with a strong public option that goes into effect immediately with no delaying “trigger.”
The Campaign for America’s Future initiated the July 8 call-in, urging supporters, “No month will be as critical as the month of July in the fight to win health care for all.”
The House and Senate are both moving fast to complete the drafting of health care reform legislation before they recess in early August.
Prospects for a public plan option are improving, thanks to increasing grassroots pressure, the CAF statement, signed by co-director Roger Hickey, said. But, it warned, “the massive lobbying effort from the insurance and drug companies is far from finished and several senators have yet to take a stand.”
The group pointed to a victory: Sens. Arlen Specter, D-Pa., and Kay Hagen, D-N.C., both endorsed the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pension Committee bill that includes a public option after first saying they opposed it. Both changed their positions after MoveOn.org mobilized the senators’ constituents to demand they support inclusion of a public option.
“The lesson,” the center said, is: “when we mobilize the grassroots, we make democracy work for the common good.”
The phone number of the Capitol Hill main switchboard is (202) 224-3121 or toll-free 1-877-762-8762.
This reporter phoned his congressman, Elijah Cummings of Maryland, for no charge from Washington State to express appreciation for his support of the public option.
MoveOn.org also initiated a second call-in campaign, this time to the White House, to protest Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel’s support of a “trigger” mechanism that would postpone implementation of a public option until the nation reaches some point of extreme crisis in the future.
“The ‘trigger’ is a trap to kill health care reform,” says a statement from MoveOn. “It would delay the public health insurance option for years even though we’re facing a health care crisis now.”
Right now, when key committees are finalizing health care legislation, “Emanuel’s remarks will only embolden conservative opponents of reform,” MoveOn continued. “He should be standing with the majority of Americans for a strong public health insurance option — not disastrous half-measures like the ‘trigger.’”
The Huffington Post reports that Emanuel has been floating the idea of a “trigger” since January, a “Trojan horse” of the medical-insurance lobby.
The White House public comment line is 202-456-1111 or 202-456-1414. (Again, this reporter phoned the White House and, after a three or four minute wait, was connected to a receptionist who listened to my message supporting the public option but opposing the “trigger.” She thanked me for the call and assured me my views would be conveyed to the president).
greenerpastures21212 @ yahoo.com
