Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Stupid labor leaders and the corrupt Democratic Party have created a monster...

Now here is some real food for thought...

Surprise, surprise.

Labor leaders who have invested workers' pension funds in some of these huge corporations and who pushed the Democrats to bailout Wall Street bankers and big business now cry that these same recipients of these public bailout funds are taking a lot of that money and "investing" it in the campaign to defeat the Employee Free Choice Act and undermine the rights of working people to organize... and these fools are the ones who are going to use the EFCA to organize workers?

Its time for working people to smarten up and get rid of these labor "leaders;" we need to dump the Democratic Party, too.

Alan L. Maki

Bailout Recipients Hosted Call To Defeat Key Labor Bill

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/01/27/bank-of-america-hosted-an_n_161248.
html

January 27, 2009 01:10 PM


Three days after receiving $25 billion in federal bailout funds, Bank of
America Corp. hosted a conference call with conservative activists and
business officials to organize opposition to the U.S. labor community's top
legislative priority.


Participants on the October 17 call -- including at least one
representative from another bailout recipient, AIG -- were urged to
persuade their clients to send "large contributions" to groups working
against the Employee Free Trade Act (EFCA), as well as to vulnerable Senate
Republicans, who could help block passage of the bill.


Bernie Marcus, the charismatic co-founder of Home Depot, led the call along
with Rick Berman, an aggressive EFCA opponent and founder of the Center for
Union Facts. Over the course of an hour, the two framed the legislation as
an existential threat to American capitalism, or worse.


"This is the demise of a civilization," said Marcus. "This is how a
civilization disappears. I am sitting here as an elder statesman and I'm
watching this happen and I don't believe it."


Donations of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars to
Republican senatorial campaigns were needed, they argued, to prevent
America from turning "into France."


"If a retailer has not gotten involved in this, if he has not spent money
on this election, if he has not sent money to [former Sen.] Norm Coleman
and all these other guys, they should be shot. They should be thrown out
their goddamn jobs," Marcus declared.


Earlier he argued: "As a shareholder, if I knew the CEO of the company
wasn't doing anything on [EFCA]... I would sue the son of a bitch... I'm so
angry at some of these CEOs, I can't even believe the stupidity that is
involved here."


Audio of the conference call, which was obtained by the Huffington Post, is
excerpted throughout this piece to provide a clearer insight into the
pitched battle surrounding the Employee Free Choice legislation. At one
point, relatively early in the call, Marcus joked that he "took a
tranquilizer this morning to calm myself down."




"This bill may be one of the worst things I have ever seen in my life," he
said, explaining that he could have been on "a 350-foot boat out in the
Mediterranean," but felt it was more important to engage on this fight. "It
is incredible to me that anybody could have the chutzpah to try and pass
this bill in this election year, especially when we have an economy that is
a disaster, a total absolute disaster."


The legislation -- which would allow workers to form a union either by
holding a traditional election or having a majority of employees sign
written forms -- is virtually certain to face a Republican filibuster.
Obama and Senate Democrats have stated their commitment to the bill, though
the timing of the vote remains a topic of heated debate.


Weeks before the November election, Marcus, Berman, and others saw this
ominous political landscape taking shape. Hoping to aid opponents of EFCA
in the Senate, they pleaded with participants on the call, mostly stock
analysts or individuals with investment portfolios, to urge clients to prop
up the campaigns of endangered Republican candidates, including Norm
Coleman of Minnesota, Gordon Smith of Oregon, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky,
Elizabeth Dole of North Carolina, and Roger Wicker of Mississippi.


"If there are not enough Republicans operating as a firewall, after this
election it is going to be very difficult to hold the line," predicted
Berman. "The only way after these elections if we don't have a filibuster
proof Senate... is to make this issue so hot in some states so that even a
Democrat who is up for election in 2010 has to think twice about whether or
not they are going to let this thing go by."


At one point, another individual on the call suggested that participants
send major contributions to Berman's organization as a way of affecting the
election without violating the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law. "Some
organizations have written checks for $250,000, $500,000, some $2 million
for this," said the man, likely Steven Hantler, the director of free
enterprise and entrepreneurship at Bernie Marcus' Marcus Foundation.


Citing the massive war chests that unions have brought to the EFCA fight,
Marcus asked participants to make campaign donations rather than lobbying
payments. "Fire all these guys in Washington," he said of the K-Street
operators, "they are worthless anyway."


In an interview with the Huffington Post, Berman said that there "was
nothing on that call that spoke to funneling money to anybody." Indeed, at
a separate point, Marcus discussed the need to contribute to issue advocacy
and education activities. The call, Berman continued, was designed to
explain some of the economic implications of passing EFCA and was "one of a
series with people around the country who are connected to businesses."


"There has been, though it has changed in the last few months, a fairly
significant deficit in terms of understanding what this law is about,"
Berman said. "I know a number of business groups have held calls with
people about the impact of this legislation... The unions who are a
proponent of this have not made it a high profile issue. I think they have
learned from their polling that it doesn't poll well, which is why they
don't' want to make it a public issue."


As for the business community, Berman added, "I do think that most
businesspeople fully appreciate the damage that out-of-control labor
leaders have caused for other businesses. There is no appetite for finding
out if you are going to have to be the next business to deal with other
labor issues."


A Bank of America spokesman declined a request for public comment, and the
bank's representative on the call played a minor role. The conference call
was referenced in a November 5 Bank of America research document, in which
the company noted that EFCA "increases the likelihood that retailers would
be unionized, which could drive higher labor cost at retail." On "the flip
side," however, the document said the bill would increase the "spending
power of lower income consumers as this would be a de facto wage and
benefit increase."


As evidenced by its dual interpretation of the legislation, Bank of
America's role in the EFCA fight is a bit murky. The company, as stated by
an official there, hosted the call for the purposes of equity research,
meaning that their goal was to represent the opinions of clients and not
the bank itself. But their involvement in an effort to drum up support for
defeating the labor-backed legislation, so soon after getting bail out
funds from the federal government, left a bad taste in the mouth of some
union officials.


"Bank of America is now not only getting bailout money. They are lending
their name to participate in a campaign to stop workers from having a
majority sign up [provision]," said Stephen Lerner, Director of the Private
Equity Project at SEIU. "The biggest corporations who have created the
problem are, at the very time, asking us to bail them out and then using
that money to stop workers from improving their lives."

Sunday, January 25, 2009

State lawmakers bet gambling can help with budgets

Not once has a single article in the mainstream media nor the alternative media ever addressed the issues surrounding the fact that some two-million casino workers employed in the Indian Gaming Industry work under the most Draconian conditions--- smoke-filled casinos and poverty wages without any rights under state or federal labor laws. This article continues in the same way without respect for working people.


State lawmakers bet gambling can help with budgets

By GREG BLUESTEIN, Associated Press Writer Greg Bluestein, Associated Press Writer – Sun Jan 25, 2:24 pm ET AP

ATLANTA – A tell-tale sign America's chips are down: States are increasingly turning to gambling to plug budget holes.

Proposals to allow or expand slots or casinos are percolating in at least 14 states, tempting legislators and governors at a time when many must decide between cutting services and raising taxes.

Gambling has hard-core detractors in every state, but when the budget-balancing alternatives lawmakers must consider include reducing education funding or lifting sales taxes, resistance is easier to overcome, political analysts said.

"Who wouldn't be interested if you're a politician who needs to fund programs?" said Bo Bernhard, director of research at the International Gaming Institute at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas — a government-funded program.

While gambling has not been immune from the recession, it has held up relatively well compared with states' other revenue streams, such as income and sales taxes. This helps explain why past industry growth spurts have been preceded by economic downturns, experts said.

For example, Rhode Island opened the country's first racetrack casino in 1992, and four states soon followed. More recently, states faced with sagging revenues during the 2001 recession joined multistate lotteries such as Powerball and gave more leeway to Native American tribes seeking to expand their casinos.

Analysts say the latest round of gambling initiatives are noteworthy in volume and ambition — a sign that the industry aims to capitalize on states' badly bruised economies.

"From the gambling industry's point of view, this is their big chance," said Earl Grinols, an economics professor at Baylor University who specializes in gambling.

Ohio's casino advocates, including lobbyists working for Penn National Gambling Inc., are pushing a variety of large-scale development projects. In Georgia, a developer working with Dover Downs Inc., wants to transform a blighted section of downtown Atlanta with a 29-story hotel that would attract tourists with more than 5,500 video lottery terminals.

The developer pitching the $450 million Atlanta project, Dan O'Leary, estimates $300 million a year in revenues would be funneled to the state, helping to pay for a popular lottery-funded scholarship that provides in-state college tuition for students with "B" averages.

Even Hawaii, which along with Utah is one of two states without a lottery or other form of legalized gambling, may consider a change. Aides to Gov. Linda Lingle, long an opponent of gambling, say she is open to discussing it as a way to close the state's growing budget gap.

Gambling proponents are quick to tout its bells and whistles: a $54 billion annual industry that employs more than 350,000 people, with most state gambling revenues coming from lotteries, racetracks and betting devices such as slot and video poker machines. Twelve states reap tax money from full-fledged casinos, and 23 others have casinos on Native American reservations, which generally do not pay taxes to states.

But while advocates argue that casinos will help attract jobs and revitalize downtrodden areas, religious groups and other critics fear gambling has a disproportionately negative impact on lower-income people, and does not provide long-term economic growth.

They point to research that shows casinos attract crime, foster gambling addiction problems and divert money from other businesses.

"We've got gambling in 48 states, and you'd think if it worked, you wouldn't have budget problems or education problems," said Tom Gray, a field director for StopPredatoryGambling.org.

Many of the gambling proposals seek to expand footholds in states that already allow limited gambling.

Kentucky's House speaker had proposed allowing video gambling terminals at the state's racetracks, and legislators in New Hampshire, New York and Texas are seeing proposals this year to allow similar gambling terminals at their tracks. Casino advocates plan to push for casino-style gambling in hurricane-ravaged Galveston, Texas, as well.

Lawmakers in other states are talking about reversing hard-fought crusades to tighten restrictions on gambling.

Nine years after South Carolina lawmakers outlawed video poker, state Sen. Robert Ford is fighting to make it legal again. Since July, lawmakers have cut roughly $1 billion from the state's budget to address revenue shortfalls.

"Gambling ain't no blight on society," Ford said.

In Ohio, where voters repeatedly have rejected ballot proposals to expand gambling, Gov. Ted Strickland said he is willing to listen to proposals to help close a $7 billion shortfall in the next two-year budget.

While analysts have long considered gambling to be almost recession-proof, the economic downturn has seen layoffs, declining revenues and falling stock prices hit casinos. State-run lotteries are faring better, though: More than half of the states with lotteries have reported rising sales over the past six months.

Amid the rush to embrace gambling because of short-term budget problems, some experts say a long-term perspective is needed.

After gambling is approved and revenues are allocated, it's not something lawmakers are likely to reconsider down the road — no matter how much economic conditions may improve.

"Once you have legalized a form of gambling, the moral argument draws away and gambling is looked at as a cost-benefit analysis," said I. Nelson Rose, a gambling law professor at Whittier Law School in Orange County, Calif. "So many states have opened those doors now."

___

Associated Press Writer Seanna Adcox in Columbia, S.C., contributed to this report.

Saturday, January 3, 2009

The New York Times lavishes unjustified praise on Hilda Solis

The New York Times is fully aware of Hilda Solis' miserable voting record in support of the "Compacts" creating the Indian Gaming Industry which now employs well over two-million workers in smoke-filled casinos at poverty wages without any rights under state, federal or tribal labor laws.

Any Congressperson who would support sending human beings to work under such Draconian conditions cannot be expected to champion the rights of working people.

It is shameful and disgraceful that the New York Times would publish such an Editorial while never having had the courage to write one single word about the "Compacts" creating the Indian Gaming Industry which is run by a bunch of mobsters.

Not one single slot machine in this country is owned by a Native American band or tribe... this is an industry created using Native American communities as a front for organized crime in the same way the mobsters ran Cuba for so many years until the historic Cuban Revolution put an end to this "relationship" fifty years ago as they chased Batista and Meyer Lansky from the country.

This New York Times "Editorial" is as self-serving and hypocritical as the outfit calling itself "Progressives for Obama" whose leader and founder, Tom Hayden, who travels about the country singing similar praises for his colleague from California, Hilda Solis, while he voted for and supported the very same "Compacts" denying casino workers their basic human rights, dignity and a voice at work.

Of course, it is difficult to blame this country's mouth-piece for big-business in not taking up the issue of casino workers when John Sweeney and organized labor working in cahoots with the corrupt Democratic Party have turned a blind eye towards this injustice in favor of Democrats receiving huge campaign contributions from the Indian Gaming Industry.

The New York Times knows no shame... so, what's new?

Ignoring the plight of two-million casino workers in the Indian Gaming Industry fits in nicely with Barack Obama's newly discovered and adopted "politics of pragmatism."

Surprise, surprise; The New York Times has been a proponent of the not-so-new "politics of pragmatism" for many years because it serves capitalism so well.

What is also not new is that the "Progressives for Obama" founders--- also the founders of the "New Left" who aim to become the new leaders of the "new" New Left" are also are practitioners of the "politics of pragmatism;" Tom Hayden has been a practitioner of such politics for many years as he made the transition from student radical to AIPAC poster boy to fervent supporter of Barrack Obama so easily. Together with Bill Fletcher, Jr. and Carl Davidson and a host of anti-communists they have formed "Progressives for Obama." Is it any wonder that these "Progressives for Obama" would now hail this Editorial from the preeminent mouth-piece of Wall Street... The New York Times and sing similar praises for Hilda Solis who just happens to be another cheerleader for Israel's carnage of the Palestinian people... anti-labor, imperialist sleaze really does stick together.

As for the Employee Free Choice Act... isn't it strange the New York Times does not advocate rescinding "at-will hiring, at-will firing" legislation on the books in some twenty-eight states which will render the Employee Free Choice Act useless... apparently The New York Times knows something about "at-will hiring, at-will firing" which it would like to see not discussed anymore than the "Compacts" creating the Indian Casino Industry where casino workers are treated much like the Palestinian people.

Capitalism certainly spins a deadly web upon which these parasites feed upon their trapped victims... of course, the capitalist soothsayers at The New York Times live pretty high on the hog, too, for spreading lies and confusion. And, when these capitalist soothsayers at The New York Times are not spinning their lies in the service of imperialism; they simply ignore any indignities, abuses and injustices inflicted on working people as the capitalists extend their drive for ever greater profits and control... from American Indian reservations to Gaza.

The New York Times has a lot of gall talking about workplace health and safety standards as not a word has ever been published about how working in smoke-filled casinos is destroying the health of millions of workers at some 450 casinos comprising the Indian Gaming and Hospitality Industry stretching from coast to coast like "right to work for less without any rights colonies." Gees, kind of like Puerto Rico and Gaza.

Alan L. Maki
Director of Organizing,
Midwest Casino Workers Organizing Council



New York Times Editorial - December 28, 2008

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/29/opinion/29mon1.html

There is no doubt that President-elect Barack Obama has
chosen a labor secretary who could be a transformative
force in a long-neglected arena. The question is
whether he will let her.

Hilda Solis, a United States representative from
Southern California, is the daughter of immigrant
parents with union jobs. She has been an unfailing
advocate of workers' rights during eight years in
Congress and before that, in California politics.

Ms. Solis has been a leader on traditional workplace
issues, like a higher minimum wage and an enhanced
right to form unions. She also has helped to expand the
labor agenda by sponsoring legislation to create jobs
in green technology, and in her support for community
health workers and immigration reform.

Her record in Congress dovetails with the mission of
the Labor Department, to protect and further the rights
and opportunities of working people. It also dovetails
with many of the promises Mr. Obama made during the
campaign, both in its specifics and in its focus on the
needs of America's working families.

The main issue is whether the Obama administration will
assert a forceful labor agenda in the face of certain
protests from business that now - during a recession
- is not the time to move forward.

The first and biggest test of Mr. Obama's commitment to
labor, and to Ms. Solis, will be his decision on
whether or not to push the Employee Free Choice Act in
2009. Corporate America is determined to derail the
bill, which would make it easier than it has been for
workers to form unions by requiring that employers
recognize a union if a majority of employees at a
workplace sign cards indicating they wish to organize.

Ms. Solis voted for the bill when it passed the House
in 2007. Senate Republicans prevented the bill from
coming to a vote that same year. Mr. Obama voted in
favor of bringing the bill to the Senate floor and
supported it during the campaign.

The measure is vital legislation and should not be
postponed. Even modest increases in the share of the
unionized labor force push wages upward, because
nonunion workplaces must keep up with unionized ones
that collectively bargain for increases. By giving
employees a bigger say in compensation issues, unions
also help to establish corporate norms, the absence of
which has contributed to unjustifiable disparities
between executive pay and rank-and-file pay.

The argument against unions - that they unduly burden
employers with unreasonable demands - is one that
corporate America makes in good times and bad, so the
recession by itself is not an excuse to avoid pushing
the bill next year. The real issue is whether enhanced
unionizing would worsen the recession, and there is no
evidence that it would.

There is a strong argument that the slack labor market
of a recession actually makes unions all the more
important. Without a united front, workers will have
even less bargaining power in the recession than they
had during the growth years of this decade, when they
largely failed to get raises even as productivity and
profits soared. If pay continues to lag, it will only
prolong the downturn by inhibiting spending.

Another question clouding the labor agenda is whether
Mr. Obama will give equal weight to worker concerns -
from reforming health care to raising the minimum wage
- while the financial crisis is still playing out.
Most members of his economic team are veterans of the
Clinton administration who tilt toward Wall Street. In
the Clinton era, financial issues routinely trumped
labor concerns. If Mr. Obama's campaign promises are to
be kept, that mindset cannot prevail again. Mr. Obama's
creation of a task force on middle-class issues, to be
led by Vice President-elect Joseph Biden and including
Ms. Solis and other high-ranking officials, is an
encouraging sign that labor issues will not be given
short shrift.

There are many nonlegislative issues on the agenda for
Ms. Solis. Safety standards must be updated: in the
last eight years, the Labor Department has issued only
one new safety rule of its own accord; it issued a few
others only after being compelled by Congress or the
courts. Overtime rules that were weakened in 2004 need
to be restored. To enforce labor standards, the Labor
Department will need more staff and more money, both of
which have been cut deeply by President Bush.

Only the president can give the new labor secretary the
clout she will need to do well at a job that has been
done so badly for so long, at such great cost to the
quality of Americans' lives.