The next two shows have been suspended.
American Income Life Insurance made a management decision that disrupted my personal cashflow. I was going to pay for the December 4th and 11th shows out of my personal pocket while waiting for sponsorship funds to arrive but now am unable to do so.
We will be back on the air on December 18th. Our guest will be Judge Jack A. Panella, Superior Court of Pennsylvania.
By Michael A. Fletcher
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, December 1, 2008; Page A02
The next labor secretary will be taking charge of an agency widely criticized for walking away from its regulatory function across a range of issues, including wage and hour law and workplace safety…..
Click on link to read the rest of this article http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/30/AR2008113001900.html?hpid=topnews
Lieberman Contributed to GOP Senate, House Candidates
By Paul Kane
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/capitol-briefing/2008/11/lieberman_contributed_to_gop_s.html?hpid=news-col-blogs
Here’s a story of the Thanksgiving spirit, forgiving and forgetting senatorial style.
When Democrats gathered last week to decide the fate of Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), a pair of senators-elect, Tom Udall of New Mexico and Jeff Merkley of Oregon, stepped up to offer symbolically important speeches.
Having ridden the wave of support for President-elect Barack Obama, Udall and Merkley spoke out in favor of the spirit of reconciliation and moving on from the campaign, in which Lieberman was one of the highest profile supporters of the Republican presidential ticket.
But no one in the room knew, as Merkley spoke, that Lieberman had supported Merkley’s opponent, Sen. Gordon Smith (R-Ore.). Lieberman, through his Reuniting Our Country PAC, gave Smith’s reelection bid $5,000 on Oct. 10, according to reports filed with the Federal Election Commission.
Lieberman’s support of Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) for the presidency was well known, punctuated by his nationally televised speech at the Republican National Convention in St. Paul criticizing Obama as not prepared to be president. His endorsement of Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), who has served as the top Republican beside him at the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, also was well known in Democratic circles.
But not even Merkley knew of Lieberman’s backing of Smith in their critical Senate race, until Capitol Briefing alerted his staff today.
“We were surprised to hear this news, but it’s time to put the election behind us. Jeff Merkley is looking forward to working with all his new colleagues on an agenda that will put our nation back on track,” said Julie Edwards, spokeswoman for Merkley.
Lieberman’s support of Smith came the same weekend he wrote an op-ed in the St. Paul Pioneer Press defending Sen. Norm Coleman (R-Minn.) for his work as chairman of an investigative subcommittee on Lieberman’s homeland security committee. The same day he wrote a check to Smith, Lieberman’s ROC PAC gave $5,000 to Rep. Peter King, the Long Island Republican. In radio and TV appearances the final days of the campaign, Lieberman also frequently said that a Democratic majority of 60 votes, a filibuster-proof level, would be a bad thing.
Lieberman’s $5,000 check was clearly not a difference maker for Smith, as Merkley still won by more than 50,000 votes. And Coleman is clinging to a razor-thin lead during a recount of his race against Democrat Al Franken.
But the internal Democratic caucus debate over Lieberman’s fate almost always focused on Lieberman’s criticism of Obama, not on his support of Republicans in Senate races. Edwards, Merkley’s spokeswoman, has said that Merkley also expressed how much Lieberman’s actions in the presidential race angered him. He did not encourage other Democrats to vote one way or the other, but did talk about moving on from the bitter fights of the campaign.
Then, on a 42-13 vote, Democrats supported keeping Lieberman as chairman of the committee with broad oversight of the Obama administration and removing him from the Environment and Public Works Committee.
Lieberman’s office acknowledged his donation to Smith, but noted that he worked hard for other Democrats as well. “While the Senator’s political action committee donated to a very few Republicans, the Senator’s pacs donated and raised over a half million dollars for wide range of Democratic candidates and organizations in this past election cycle,” Marshall Wittmann, his spokesman, said.
Bush signs law extending unemployment insurance
http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSTRE4AK3UU20081121
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President George W. Bush on Friday signed into law an extension of unemployment benefits, the White House said.
It gives seven more weeks of unemployment payments to workers who have exhausted their current jobless benefits. For those in states with the highest unemployment rates, an additional 20 weeks will be allowed.
On Thursday, the government reported the number of workers filing new claims for jobless benefits last week was at its highest level in 16 years and more than 4 million people were now receiving unemployment benefits.
(Reporting by Tabassum Zakaria, Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)
Dave Zweifel’s Plain Talk: Real culprits are ignored in attacks on auto workers
by Dave Zweifel
http://www.madison.com/tct/opinion/315311
I’m not 100 percent sold on this $25 million lifeline that General Motors wants from the federal government, but listening to some of these self-important commentators attack it as being a sop to the United Auto Workers is enough to make one sick.
Indeed, some are portraying the UAW as the real villain of the American auto industry’s enormous financial problems — not the corporate leaders who were paid handsomely to be visionaries for their stockholders but were so blinded by big car profits that they couldn’t see the sea change that was headed their way.
Many of these anti-union pontificators don’t have a problem with pumping tens of billions into those banking conglomerates like Bank of America and JP Morgan Chase where millionaire executives can pad their own accounts or throw multimillion-dollar “retreats” for the company bigshots like insurance giant AIG did with money from its first U.S. Treasury bailout. Bailing THESE guys out is necessary to save the American economy, they say, but not the men and women who have toiled 40 hours a week on the assembly line floor so they can pay their mortgages and with any luck send their kids to college.
These columnists and bloggers lump unions with corporate America as “special interests,” and since the UAW pumped lots of money into Barack Obama’s campaign this fall, they claim that’s why he and Democrats in Congress are ready to bail out GM.
True, unions do get deeply involved in elections, just like their management counterparts do. But, their “special interests” happen to be the working people who through the years have typically received the short end of the stick while corporations like Boeing, Xerox, Motorola, Dow Chemical, General Electric and other corporate special interests have made their contributions and been treated to corporate welfare by their friends in government.
It’s also true that UAW members at GM, Ford and Chrysler are paid more than are the workers at the foreign-owned American auto plants, but that’s not to say the union hasn’t made considerable concessions in an effort to help right the ship, including taking over health insurance and agreeing to wage concessions that will eventually close that disparity.
Some of these union critics would rather have the auto companies go bankrupt so that they can, with a bankruptcy court’s blessing, tear up the union contracts and eliminate other workers’ safeguards. Some won’t be happy until auto workers earn Wal-Mart-like wages. Perhaps, then they, too, can qualify for free health care that the taxpayers provide those who fall below the poverty line. That would really move America forward.
If we decide we need to provide taxpayer loans to the auto companies, we need to do it very carefully and with safeguards that will not only make those corporations stronger, but give taxpayers a good chance of getting their money back in the end.
And if it helps the working people who are the backbone of our country, that’s not a bad thing at all.
Dave Zweifel is editor emeritus of The Capital Times
http://www.gainesville.com/article/20081109/OPINION03/811080968
By Robert H. Zieger
Special to The Sun
In 1948 when Harry Truman was asked to what he attributed his stunning upset victory over Republican nominee Thomas E. Dewey, he replied “Labor did it.”
He was referring to the unprecedented commitment of financial and manpower support to his candidacy contributed by the American Federation of Labor (AFL) and the Congress of Industrial organizations (CIO), at that time separate national labor bodies.
The endless TV, newspaper, and Internet discussions in the aftermath of Barack Obama’s remarkable victory brought Truman’s quip to mind. Pundits have highlighted a number of factors to account for Obama’s showing.
African-Americans turned out in massive numbers, awarding the Democratic candidate a remarkable 97 percent of their votes.
Obama, it appears, won the battle for the “hearts and minds” of Latino and Hispanic voters, seemingly by a two-to-one majority.
Fifty-five percent of women supported him, as apparently did a majority of voters earning over $200,000 in family income.
Virtually every expert has highlighted the vote of young people, noting both the massive turnout among those in the 18-to-29 year-old bracket and the 70 percent support they awarded Obama.
Neglected in most of these postmortems, however, is the role that organized labor played in the campaign. Indeed, in this election the AFL-CIO and its affiliated organizations conducted labor’s largest political mobilization ever.
Consider these facts:
* Union members and their families comprised about 21 percent of the voting public.
* Union voters backed the Obama-Biden ticket overwhelmingly. Sixty-nine percent supported the Democratic candidate. In key battleground states such as Pennsylvania, Indiana, Ohio and Florida, Obama-Biden outpolled McCain-Palin by 41 points among union voters.
* More than 250,000 union volunteers walked the neighborhoods and distributed flyers. They made 70 million phone calls.
* The AFL-CIO’s My Vote, My Right program protected voters from harassment and petty challenges by placing 2,700 union volunteer poll monitors at key locations.
* While McCain captured a majority among those over 65 years old, retired union members supported Obama by a 46 point margin.
* McCain won among veterans, but union veterans went for Obama by a 25-point margin.
Labor activist are well aware that President Obama and the Democratic congressional majority will face difficult issues and will have to be responsive to a wide diversity of viewpoints.
At the same time, however, working people and their unions do expect that their efforts in the campaign entitle them to sympathetic consideration of their legislative and political goals. They are determined to promote health care reform, more equitable taxation, and changes in economic policy that will benefit low-wage and middle-income families.
They seek pro-worker appointments to regulatory bodies such as the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and the National Labor Relations Board.
High on their legislative agenda is passage of the Employee Free Choice Act, which would facilitate the efforts of workers to gain union representation and to achieve the benefits of collective bargaining.
Despite organized labor’s role in Truman’s 1948 victory, few of its legislative goals were subsequently realized. Recognition of the unions’ efforts in the recent election may help to prevent history from repeating itself.
Robert H. Zieger is a distinguished professor of history emeritus at the University of Florida.
Help for U.S. Automakers Is a Good Deal for Everyone
by Donna Jablonski, Nov 14, 2008
http://blog.aflcio.org/2008/11/14/help-for-us-automakers-is-a-good-deal-for-everyone/
The U.S. auto industry “cannot succeed in today’s unstable economic environment without immediate help from the federal government. And the costs of failure are unacceptable,” UAW President Ron Gettelfinger said in a Washington Post op-ed today.
If even one U.S. automaker fails, he warned, it would cost the entire country millions of lost jobs and hundreds of billions of dollars in lost sales and revenue.
The auto industry crisis, exacerbated by stalled consumer spending and lack of credit, affects much more than the Big Three automakers and the 240,000 people who work for them, Gettelfinger said. It also endangers thousands of car dealerships, small and medium-size businesses that provide parts and services to the auto giants and more than a million retirees and dependents who receive pension and health care benefits from Chrysler, Ford and General Motors.
According to Gettelfinger:
If these companies are unable to meet their obligations, the human toll on retirees and their families will be devastating. It’s also possible that the failure of these companies could impose severe costs on the federal pension guaranty program and public health care programs.
Gettelfinger also took exception to “Detroit-bashing.”
It is not the actions of our members that have caused the crisis in today’s auto industry; the crisis is being driven by economic factors that have nothing to do with labor costs or factory performance. To the contrary, our contracts have put our employers in a position to compete. The reality of today’s auto industry is that union-made vehicles are winning quality awards and that union-represented factory workers are winning productivity awards.
Recent auto industry labor negotiations are reducing or eliminating cost differences between union and nonunion car makers, Gettelfinger said.
The various demands for cuts in the wages and benefits of active and retired autoworkers as a condition of federal assistance are curious—and extremely unbalanced. To my knowledge, no one has proposed cutting the compensation of everyday active or retired bankers, bond traders and office or building personnel who work at AIG, Bear Stearns or the numerous banks that have received billions in federal aid. Why is it only autoworkers who are singled out for this dubious honor?
Gettelfinger said bipartisan efforts under way in Congress to aid U.S. automakers are “a good deal for U.S. taxpayers—because the alternative is lost jobs, closed businesses and shattered communities, which would impose severe human and economic costs on all of us for many years to come.”
Toyota, BMW, Hyundai Workers’ Senators Oppose Rescue
by Alison Fitzgerald and Jonathan D. Salant
Article link
Nov. 17 (Bloomberg) — Senators from southern states with factories owned by Asian and European car manufacturers oppose a bailout of U.S. automakers, saying the industry can thrive without General Motors Corp., Ford Motor Co. and Chrysler LLC.
Republican Senators Richard Shelby and Jeff Sessions of Alabama, and James DeMint of South Carolina, are among lawmakers trying to derail Democratic plans, supported by President-elect Barack Obama, to provide at least $25 billion in loans to the three U.S. companies.
“We have a very large and vibrant automobile sector in Alabama,'’ Sessions told Bloomberg Television on Nov. 11. “I don’t feel like this is the end of the world.'’
Alabama has two assembly plants owned by Stuttgart, Germany- based Daimler AG, one operated by Tokyo-based Honda Motor Co. and one by Seoul-based Hyundai Motor Co. Munich-based Bayerische Motoren Werke AG employs about 4,500 people at a Spartanburg, South Carolina, assembly plant.
The proposal to loan automakers $25 billion from October’s $700 billion financial rescue package will be debated during a post-election lame-duck session of Congress this week.
Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd plans to hold a hearing tomorrow on the legislation, which he supports. House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank, who is drafting the legislation with Michigan Senator Carl Levin, plans a hearing the following day. GM Chief Executive Officer Rick Wagoner and Ford CEO Alan Mulally are scheduled to testify before the committees.
`Tough Sell’
The bill will likely be a tough sell with many Republicans who, in principle, oppose government intervention in the private sector.
“Companies fail every day and others take their place,'’ Shelby said on CBS’s “Face the Nation'’ yesterday.
Bush said he opposes using money from the $700 billion fund designed to ease a global credit crisis. Instead he called on Congress Nov. 14 to use money from a previously approved proposal for auto-industry loans originally intended to aid development of more fuel-efficient vehicles.
“Taxpayers should not have to subsidize private companies that are unwilling to show they can be viable,'’ White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said today in an e-mailed statement. “It is clear that U.S. automakers must restructure in order to be viable.'’
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Nov. 15 that diverting money from the earlier plan to ease a current cash crisis would be “a step backward'’ in promoting long-term auto-industry competitiveness. Democratic leaders want to use some of the money from the $700 billion financial-rescue package to meet automakers’ emergency needs.
Senate Action
The outcome may depend on action by the Senate, where Democrats’ narrow 51-49 working majority gives Republican opponents a better opportunity to block a bailout. While the party will pick up at least a half-dozen seats as a result of Nov. 4’s elections, those changes won’t take effect until January.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid on Nov. 14 urged his Republican counterpart Mitch McConnell of Kentucky to allow a vote. McConnell made no such promise.
“Senator Reid has not yet provided us with the text of his proposed spending bill, or the cost to the taxpayer, or its impact on the deficit,'’ McConnell said. “So it would be a real challenge to promise any level of support or opposition sight unseen.'’ Kentucky has Ford, GM and Toyota Motor Corp. assembly plants, and a Toyota engine factory.
Sales Plummet
The U.S.-based automakers are seeking a cash infusion as industrywide sales have plummeted to a 17-year low as the economy slides into a recession. GM this month said it lost $4.2 billion in the third quarter, and almost $73 billion since the end of 2004. The largest U.S. automaker said it may not have enough cash to get through the year. Ford lost $2.98 billion in the third quarter as sales fell 22 percent
Job losses would total 2.5 million from an automaker failure in 2009, including 1.4 million people in industries not directly tied to manufacturing, according to a Nov. 4 study by the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, Michigan. A collapse of General Motors would cost the government $200 billion in aid to states and extended unemployment benefits, said Nariman Behravesh, chief economist at IHS Global Insight in Lexington, Massachusetts.
While sales are also falling for Asian and European manufacturers, their financial conditions aren’t as bleak.
“We have a number of profitable automakers in America, and they shouldn’t be disadvantaged for making wise business decisions while failure is rewarded,'’ DeMint said. “If the Big Three can’t make it with their current structure, they can protect jobs by reorganizing under bankruptcy protection.'’
Cornyn Also Opposes
Wesley Denton, a DeMint spokesman, said the senator plans to offer amendments to any bailout legislation approved by the House, which could make it more difficult to quickly get a bill to Bush’s desk. Senator John Cornyn of Texas said Nov. 14 that he also opposes the plan. Texas is home to assembly plants for GM and Toyota.
“The financial straits that the Big Three find themselves in is not the product of our current economic downturn, but instead is the legacy of the uncompetitive structure of its manufacturing and labor force,'’ Shelby said. The Big Three’s current crisis is “not a national problem, but their problem,'’ Shelby said.
That problem could spread beyond Michigan, Ohio and Indiana, where the U.S.-based companies and their suppliers are most heavily concentrated. U.S. automakers buy parts in many states: Ford, for example, spent $2 billion in Alabama last year and $3.5 billion with Kentucky suppliers, according to a Ford document. Companies that make parts for General Motors, Ford and Chrysler also often count Toyota, Honda and other overseas-based companies among their customers.
Slump Hits Everybody
“We’re worried. We’re concerned about it,'’ said Mike Goss, a spokesman for Toyota’s North American manufacturing unit in Erlanger, Kentucky. “The vehicles we build in North America use about 75 percent local content, and much of that is coming from the same companies that supply the Detroit Three.'’
Mike Michels, Toyota’s U.S. vice president of media relations, said the failure of one or more of the U.S. automakers would be “devastating'’ for the entire industry.
Failure to get a federal bailout won’t be for lack of Washington clout. The U.S. automakers’ lobbying and campaign giving dwarfs contributions from their Japanese competitors. GM, Ford and Chrysler spent $20.3 million on lobbying this year through Sept. 30, compared with $8.6 million for Nissan, Toyota and Honda.
Voinovich Backs Bailout
Ohio Republican Senator George Voinovich is working with Michigan’s two Democratic senators on a letter to colleagues to make the aid “a reality'’ during the lame-duck session, his spokesman Chris Paulitz said.
“The senator believes helping the automakers remain viable is truly putting Main Street over Wall Street,'’ Paulitz said.
Ohio has seven automotive assembly plants: Chrysler, GM and Honda each have two facilities, and Ford owns one. There are at least 20 additional auto-related plants in Ohio, including engine factories and stamping plants, most owned by the Detroit carmakers, according to the Center for Automotive Research.
United Auto Workers union President Ron Gettelfinger said Nov. 15 on a conference call and again today on WJR radio in Detroit that all three U.S. automakers may fail without federal financial assistance.
“We’re on the cliff here; we have to make our case,'’ Gettelfinger told reporters Nov. 15. “Would you buy a car from a bankrupt automaker? We don’t see bankruptcy as a viable option.'’
To contact the reporters on this story: Alison Fitzgerald in Washington at [email protected] ; Jonathan D. Salant in Washington at [email protected]
Dear Friends,
Democratic Talk Radio wants to thank everyone for their support of our mission. We have been devoted to bringing the Democratic message to America’s airwaves since I first bought airtime the night that the US Supreme Court imposed the Bush Presidency on our nation in December of 2000.
The show went on the air in January 2001 in Tennessee on a small AM station and soon moved to a more powerful FM station reaching a much larger audience in both northern Alabama and central Tennessee. I largely funded the effort out of personal resources. I invested over $35,000 keeping Democratic Talk Radio on the air in Tennessee.
Briefly, we broadcast nationally on the now defunct i.e. America Radio Network which was backed by the United Auto Workers union.
In the early Spring of 2008, we moved Democratic Talk Radio to the Lehigh Valley area of Pennsylvania. Our show broadcasts Thursday mornings on WGPA SUNNY 1100AM in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Sponsors paid the majority of the costs although I did invest nearly another $4,000 personally.
I want to thank all our sponsors.
The Mailroom union print shop in Allentown has been hugely helpful and supportive. I am going to be working with them as a new addition to their sales team on a commission basis. I exclusively use them for all my printing needs. The prices, service and quality are just excellent. Please let me know if I can connect you with them to meet your printing needs. We all need to print union.
The labor movement in Pennsylvania has been our greatest base of support in sponsoring the show. Laborers’ Local 1174 helped us get started by sponsoring our first 4 shows. Carpenters Local 600 and Steelworkers Local 2599 were both significantly large sponsors. The Lehigh Valley Labor Council, Steelworkers Local 10-1, Steelworkers Local 1165 and IBEW Local 380 all helped sponsor shows.
The Bethlehem City Democratic Party sponsored one show.
Collectively, they covered about 60% of the airtime costs. I paid the rest and all the travel expenses mostly out of my income as public relations representative for American Income Life Insurance. Unfortunately, my ability to help finance the show has been exhausted at least in the near term.
The travel costs and airtime costs about $250 per show. We would like to stay on the air. Democratic Talk Radio needs your financial help in sponsoring the show.
If your union or organization can help by sponsoring a show, it will help keep a pro-labor, pro-Democratic, progressive message on the air in Pennsylvania. Our show streams live on the Internet for those outside the broadcast area. Checks in any amount will be appreciated. You can sponsor a whole show or buy ads. One minute ads are $30. A thirty second ad is only $20. Personal ads are welcome.
Checks can be sent to: Democratic Talk Radio, 698 Old Baltimore Pike, Newark, Delaware 19702. For more details, I can be reached by phone at 443-907-2367 at almost any hour. My email address is [email protected]
If your union does not have cash, you still might be able to help by signing up in the American Income Life Insurance program with me personally. By doing so, you can get additional, new benefits for your members at no cost to them or your local. American Income is always a great program but signing with me personally helps give you additional advantages on the political action and public relations fronts.
By participating in the American Income program, you can show your support for the “buy union” idea while supporting my ability to bring you Democratic Talk Radio.
Currently, our funds are nearly exhausted. We will resume broadcasts as soon as sufficient funds arrive.
Today, we have just received a couple of checks from SEIU Local 668 and Teamsters Local 773. Together, they are almost enough to pay airtime costs for one more show. We have received pledges for the costs of a few more shows. With luck, we might not miss any broadcasts, or (more likely) only one.
Donors are always welcome as guests.
In time, we hope to expand our program into new markets and stations. The greater Philadelphia, Pennsylvania market is probably next followed by Delaware and Maryland or the Scranton area.
Sincerely,
Stephen Crockett
Host- Democratic Talk Radio
P.S.- I am always available as a free speaker to the membership or executive board of your union or organization. Besides business opportunities like the American Income Life Insurance program or union printing services from The Mailroom, I can speak on topics like “The Employee Free Choice Act”, “How Unions Can Work Better With The Media” or various other political topics.
http://shannynmoore.wordpress.com/2008/11/06/stolen-election-in-alaska/
We need Obama to put the US Department of Justice on this case.
Additionally, we need both the Senate and House to investigate.