UNITED WE STAND

Wednesday, December 2, 2009

at 8:44 PM

BLUE COLLAR CAMPAIGN.
For a stronger America:
The off-year elections are over. After the holidays, campaigns will be kicking into high gear. Politicians and campaign people are fine tuning positions, modifying platforms, signing up volunteers and putting in new phone lines.
With that in mind, a friend asked me, had I’d won my bid for Congress and could fight for a single cause, what would it be? The answer was easy, I’ve thought long and hard about it: Sustainable Living Wage Jobs.
Sounds good, right? Reasonable, short, and simple. Well, not really. The living wage part is sound and pretty basic, it’s the “sustainable” part that’s complex.
A living wage job is most easily described as a job where all your bills, in a modest lifestyle, can be paid in a 40 hour work week, with a little something left over for leisure activities. Now we get to the “sustainable” part and that’s where it gets complicated.
The reality is:
1) No job can be long sustained without a trained and educated workforce.
2) No job can long be sustained without a healthy workforce.
3) No job can long be sustained without favorable regulations and fair trade policies
4) The best way to sustain Living Wage Jobs is through collective bargaining.
In brief:
1) It was no accident that California became the 6th largest economy in the world. The climate is great, yeah, but It was because of our education system. It was good and it was free! People came from all over the country to establish a California residence for a free college or University education. Businesses were attracted by the same magnet; the best educated work force in the world. In the last several decades, state and federal political judgement have failed us. California is now the 47th worst in a field of 50 and UC tuitions and fees are about to go up by 32%.
2) Our workforce is aging and health insurance costs are sky rocketing. Without serious healthcare reform with a strong public option, the health of our workforce and our small businesses (the nations largest employers) are in serious trouble. One of the reasons our auto manufacturers are in the straits they’re in is because of the costs of medical benefits, approximately $1700.00 per car. Imagine a labor contract that didn’t include those medical costs; higher employee wages, greater corporate profits. Win-win situation.
3) Contrary to the propaganda, free trade is not a race to the top. It is, in fact, a well thought out, long term plan to lower the standard of living across the developed world, from middle class to working poor. It has long been a Conservative ideal that middle class folks with leisure time and expendable income are a threat to the stability of a Capitalist Society and the status quo of our American oligarchy. Call me a protectionist if you will, but I love my standard of living. Since Reagan, I have watched that standard decline and the wealth of a nation move to the top 1%. We cannot stop our businesses from crossing borders, we cannot stop globalization, but we can stop the systematic destruction and dismantling of the middle class. We can put our foot down or exit the WTO. We can end the Most Favored Nation status with our most unfavorable trade partner, China. We can end the notion that Free Trade is good for the American People.
4) The surest way to keep workers happy and productive in a living wage job is to make them feel a part of the company. The best products and services come from Companies where there is some level of rapport between company and employee. A feeling of contribution from both sides of the stained glass, a sense of shared responsibility, not just a laborer or a pay check. The best way to do this is through collective bargaining. A mutual participation in the decision making, in quality of product, in the quality of life of employees at every level, and in the growth and general well-being of the company.

Before you jump on any bandwagon, find out where your candidate or elected official stands on these basic blue collar issues. Keep the American middle-class strong, you have a voice, use it.

The latest budget resoution by the Rebublicans is an entirely new approach. A concept like this must have taken years to formulate and to unveil it now is genius. Let's see, limit healthcare for our seniors, our disabled and our poor through a voucher system that allows for-profit Corporations to raise, cut, or limit services so long as the lowest possible standard are met and give the wealthiest Americans and corporations massive accross the board tax cuts...
Wait a minute, that sounds like every Republican plan since Reagan. Sounds like more of the "There you go again" funneling of Americas wealth solely to Americas wealthiest. It's going to be alright though, because if your 55 or older, you'll still have the Medicares single-payer, comprehensive healthcare that you've paid into your entire working life. As for the rest of us, I'm 54, we'll get to play "Wheel of Fortune" just like on the slot machines in Vegas, with a one size fits all voucher from a federal block grant. It'll mean ever more out of the pockets of folks on fixed incomes and ever more into the pockets of Insurance Compnay CEOs' and who couldn't agree that that is good for America.
The congress is, if you believe them, in a life and death struggle over cutting 30 or 60 billion dollars out of the budget for the coming year. Didn't they just give away 900 billion dollars to the wealthiest 20% of the nation over the next ten years by extending the Bush tax cuts? Here's an idea, instead of sending Grandma in front of the Republican Medicare Death Panels with a under funded voucher and half her social security check, how much is 900 billion divided by 10? I'll bet that would cover it.
And to you Democrats who had the chance to put through a budget but didn't? The cost of cowardise is replacement and you can be replaced, as many found out in the last election.
George Parmer
Blue Collar Campaign

A letter to the Right and the Left from a Liberal:
Dear conservatives, tea-baggers, libertarians and other Republicans, your day ended when Bush/Cheney termed out and Barrack Obama was voted in. The People spoke. All your crying, whining, obstructionism, racism, Swiftboating and Fox News smear tactics have accomplished is to remind people that your Party is incapable of governing. You had your chance make this nation stronger and instead tried to privatize it and make a profit. The biggest terrorist attack in the history of this nation happened on your watch, you led us into 2 unfunded wars costing trillions of dollars, your fiscal policies and massive tax-cuts to the wealthy landed us directly in the middle of the Great Rebublican Recession. Your solution to every economic problem is tax cuts for the wealthy, knowing full well that the only people who benefit are the wealthy. Your" business friendly" agenda has resulted in massive corporate welfare and massive cuts in education and other vital social programs to the nations most vulnerable. What you call Free Trade is really just off-shoring labor costs, off-shoring enviromental costs and off-shoring profits. It is nothing more than a direct assault on Americas' middle class in a worldwide money grab by the wealthy and a race to the bottom for labor.
A typically low turn out in mid term elections due to Progressives dissapointment in this Administration, an activist and extreme Supreme Court causing billions of dollars to be spent by your Corporate allies managed to win you the House, but clearly, again, the People spoke; You were not given contol of the House because of your ability to govern, but simply to balance what the People saw as a do-nothing or do-too-much (depending on the perspective)Democratic majority.
To the Progressives, liberals, working-class activists and other Democrats: get a backbone. Stop trying to impose or imbue candidates with your personal beliefs and positions, like our President. Understand who they really are and learn to work with them or vote for someone else, but vote. Staying home, sitting one out, is never an option. Our failure to get a public option in the Affordable Healthcare Act, pass a budget, fix the Bush tax-cuts, our inability to put through campaign finance reform to counter the flood of money by the far-right cost us the House and left our nation for sale to the highest bidder. Get out and vote. Fix this mess.
George Parmer- Working for a stronger America
Blue Collar Campaign

The Reading

The reading of our Constitution at the opening session of the 112th Congress was quite a show. Was it also a valuable lesson about who and what the Congress is sworn to represent and one that should be repeated at all future opening sessions, or was it just another kind of pathetic attempt at political onemanship where one side tries to out-patriotic American the other? The answer is clear and simple; Yes it was. Showmanship aside, reading our Constitution is never a bad thing. The U.S. Consitution is a brilliant piece of work that has been the cornerstone of our great democracy and should be held up at every oppurtunity to be examined and reflected upon. Was it perfect at conception? No it was not, but still pretty exceptional. The problem, judging by the media chatter and water cooler conversations leading up to and after "The Reading", is that far too many Americans clearly have little or no understanding of what the Constitution says or means. Whether we are willfully unknowlegable, uneducated, or ignorant, the results are the same. It's also clear that many of those who do understand the Constitution have no problem using our ignorance to persuade us to their ideology or just to club us over the head. I've listed of a few instances of both below in brief, that I find interesting.
Liberal talk show host Rachael Maddow and former ultra-conservative U.S. Senator Rick Santorim used the "3/5 Compromise"(Article 1, paragraph 2, section 3) portion of the Constitution to rile their respective base. Ms. Maddow said, and I'm paraphrasing, "...they didn't read the part about blacks being counted as 3/5 human" and Sen. Santorum said, again paraphrasing " I don't see how a black man could decide how much of a human someone else is", refering to abortions. They are both well aware that the compromise stemmed from negotiations over taxation and fair representation not the humanity or lack thereof of any segment of the population. Although more complicated than this brief summation, the end result was to count slaves and indentured servants as 3/5 of a person while free men were counted as whole. Many people through the years have concluded that this was purely a race based compromise but the truth is, in many cases, black men in the Free States were allowed to vote and indentured servants were seldom of African descent.
Another example of "used and abused" is the Second Ammendment. The ratified version reads simply, "A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed." Some would have us believe that this amendment guarantees all Americans the right to arms, period, without qualification. Others believe it is an anachranism and that in a modern society with police and a standing army , it is simply no longer necessary or tenable. Historcally, the thought and purpose of the 2nd Amendment stemmed from a debate between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson about a standing army. John Adams felt we would be best served by an standing Army trained and ready to protect a fledgling nation from any and all outside forces. Thomas Jefferson felt that a standing army would become isolated and insular from the civilian population they were sworn to protect and that we would best be served by a series of well organized militias. To that effect the Second Amendment was written and adopted. Now, will understanding the thought processes behind the 2nd Amendment likely change the opinions of the polorized? Probably not, but it might give pause to those on the fence about assault rifles and 30 round clips

The 14th Amendment was adopted in 1868 after the Civil War to insure that freed slaves were given the same rights as all other Americans. Unfortunately,as we are all well aware, it didn't work out quite like that. To speak to one point of the Amendment only, the Roberts Supreme Court addressing a small portion of the 14th Amendment, "any person born or naturalized" , was used in support of an activist clerk to bestow full, unqualified and unprecedented personhood on Corporations. The Roberts Court, Chief Justice John Roberts himself, crafted the case he wanted his court to hear and effectively drowned the voice of the People with a virtual flood of Corporate dollars, by legislating from the bench in the so-called Citizens United v. the FCC. The club over our heads is that this conservative wing of the Roberts Supreme Court knew full well that whatever precedent coporate person-hood enjoys can be laid squarley at the feet of a court reporters summation of the ruling for Santa Clara County v Southern Pacific Railroad, not the actual ruling itself.

This list could go on for quite some time, but that is not my intent. My intent is to point out that as long as we remain ignorant, we're like baby seals waiting for the club to strike. And it will strike. Patriotism, like many good and bad habits, is learned. Our children are running around out there either ideologically tainted by our own hatreds and fears, or simply ignorant of the greatness that our forefathers envisioned for this nation. Instead of teaching our children the unadulterated facts, ideals and intentions of our Constitutuion and it's framers, we allow states like Texas to remove Thomas Jefferson, maybe James Madison and even George Washington from their text books because of their "liberal bias". We are doing a huge disserivce to ourselves, our childern, our nations future and and the U.S. Constitution we all claim to hold so dear. Let's stop trying to politcize everything, especialy history and teach the facts. Reading, writing and arithmatic are important, but the soul of our nation is captured in the words of this revered document, why not try and understand it? Science, art and social studies seem to have fallen by the wayside on our quest to pass the test. We are creating a generation of children that can read, write and count, but have no understanding of the beauty of art, no curiosity for the science of the universe we live in and a lack of understanding of the basic concepts of that which made this the greatest nation in the history of the Earth.

Read a book, think for yourself. Let's not allow our history to be rewritten and our future taken from us because we can't be bothered to spend a little time educating oursevles. Let's stop balancing budgets on the future of America and educate the children. It's the least we can do. The very least.