Jobs

Obama Must Toss the Bums Out of Treasury, End the Wars and Start Leading

dlindorff — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 12:13:46 -0500

By Dave Lindorff

If you are sitting in class taking a test, and you’ve chosen to sit
amongst your bone-headed, slacker friends, don’t turn to them for help
when you can’t figure out of any of the answers. They may all tell you
the same thing, but they’ll all be wrong.

That’s the situation President Obama finds himself in today in the
White House. Having surrounded himself with the very Wall Street con
men who set up the crooked game that led to the current financial
crisis and economic collapse, and finding that the lousy advice they
have been giving him since last January has left the country still
mired in deepening economic decline, with the banks still not lending
and unemployment still mounting, and with growing signs that instead of
bottoming out and starting to recover, the economy is threatening to
fall a second time, to new lows and higher unemployment, Obama has
turned to the same rotten advisors for answers.

A few days ago, in an interview with Fox-TV while he was in China
off all places (a country that has made a stupendous stimulus
investment to create domestic jobs!) Obama warned, for the first time,
that America faces the possibility of a “double-dip” recession. That’s
fine as far as it goes. I agree. But what did he say the risk was? Not
that the government has been failing to put significant numbers of
people back to work, but that the government keeps piling up deficits.

This has to be the lamest economic thinking since Herbert Hoover
started tightening the screws on government spending at the onset of
the Great Depression in 1930.

Clearly the American government needs to do just the opposite of
worrying about deficits. The only growth the US economy has seen to
date has been the result of government funding—the cash-for-clunkers
program gave a brief restoration of pulse to the auto industry, and the
$8000 tax credit for buying a first home kicked up home sales briefly.
We know this because when the clunkers program ended, auto sales
crashed, and when the deadline approached for the end to the new home
tax credit, home building plunged almost 11%. The hundreds of billions
of dollars poured into so-called “shovel-ready” state and local
projects like roads, schools, etc., may have added or saved as much as
a million jobs, but the economy lost many times that many jobs over the
same period.

The problem with these stimulus programs is that they are
inefficient ways to create jobs or preserve jobs. If roughly one
million jobs were created through the stimulus spending of say $200
billion (assuming that the February $800-billion stimulus program, to
mollify Republicans, consisted of one-half tax cuts and only one-half
actual federal spending, and that this federal spending was spread
evenly over a two-year period, that’s $200,000 per job!

If, instead, Obama had chucked the dunces at Treasury and in his
Council of Economic Advisors, and instead asked your Labor Secretary to
initiate a wide-ranging $200-billion-per-year jobs program, hiring the
unemployed at perhaps $20-25,000 per person to do everything from teach
in overcrowded urban schools to laying high-speed rail trackbeds, from
cleaning up parks to putting insulation in homes, he could have given
jobs to close 8 million people—people who would have then spent their
money on goods and services and helped rally the economy from the
bottom up.

Deficits? Who gives a damn about deficits at this point! The
country is up to the gills in debt without creating any jobs. (It’s
kind of like my mortgage. Why would I worry about using my credit card
to buy food for the week if I was low on cash, when my mortgage has me
deep in the red for the next ten years? Obama’s financial advisors, on
the evidence, would tell me I should let my family go hungry, because I
need to worry about my total debt load.) If you’re worried about
deficits, Mr. Obama, end the god-damned wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
It is costing one million dollars a year to send one lousy grunt to
Afghanistan or Iraq. And you want to have at least 100,000 guys over
there. That’s $100 billion a year right there—enough to hire four
million unemployed Americans back here at home!

This president is well on the way to rescuing President Hoover from
history’s crap heap by one-upping him in the realm of economic
mismanagement. We already have Obamavilles springing up around the
country. We haven’t started calling them that, but Naming Day isn’t far
off.

At least Hoover didn’t mire the country in another war while the economy was collapsing around him.

President Obama is on a short leash at this point. His fans, and I
was one of those who was willing to give him a shot last November, are
mostly giving up on him. Activists are already turning on him. My union
friends are disgusted. My African-American friends just shake their
heads in dismay. Liberal friends act embarrassed. A leftist friend,
retired, who devoted a month to campaigning for Obama full time in
Pennsylvania last fall now writes angry letters almost weekly to
Obama’s former campaign manager David Plouffe and others, blasting
Obama’s handling of the bank crisis and his Afghan War plans. Clearly
Obama cannot continue to appease Republicans and cater to Blue Dogs in
Congress and expect to be re-elected in 2012.

Indeed, if he doesn’t toss the crooks and charlatans in the Fed,
the Treasury and his Council of Economic Advisers out, and doesn’t stop
listening to the self-serving crazies in the military, he won’t even
have a Democratic majority in Congress by the end of next year.

President Obama, aren’t you tired of being an embarrassment to your
friends and family? Aren’t you tired of being mocked by your foes?

Come on. We’re sick of your speeches! Suck it up, be a
leader.finally and kick some butt. Do something unconventional and
daring. End the wars, bring the troops home, announce a huge jobs
program, issue an executive order expanding the Medicare program, raise
taxes on the wealthy to back where they were in the 1960s, and let’s
get the country moving forward again.
__________________________

DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based journalist. His latest
book is “The Case for Impeachment” (St. Martin’s Press, 2006). His work
is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net

Labor conditions in Middle America

rbenmac — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 22:43:09 -0400

video of Town Hall meeting in Winona, Mn showing return of 19th Century labor conditions.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93SVckQlAX4

Fix the economy by restoring jobs back to the U.S.A. Reject NAFTA. Impose import duties on U.S. Mgrs. impoting their own goods.

Gregory Lee Crowell — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 18:17:01 -0500

Force U.S. manufacturers to bring back jobs for the U.S. workers whose jobs they have outsourced in order to reduce their costs of labor. How do we do this? Tell those nations that we are trading with under international trade agreements that we do not believe that they are trading fairly with us and that unless they begin to do so we will reject our compliance with the trading agreements and declare them null and void. When we have nullified those trade agreements, the U.S. should impose import duties on U.S. Mfgrs. equal in amount to the difference between the foreign wages paid to the foreign workers and the minimum U.S. hourly wage for the same number of hours for which the Mfgrs. have paid their foreign workers. In other words we should make reimported foreign manufactured goods as costly to the U.S. Mfgrs. via import duties as it would have been had they not outsourced those jobs in the first place. If the U.S. Mgrs. don't like it then they can sell those same foreign made goods in the nations in which the goods were manufactured. They will lose the U.S. market for their foreign made goods unless they are willing to pay the U.S. import duties. That's the kind of tax rebate that would really help the U.S. economy to get out of this recession.

Creating and regaining lost, permanent U.S. jobs is the best way to get our nation out of recession. A temporary tax rebate is not a permanent fix. It is not even a short term fix. Only when U.S. workers have jobs can they continue to make mortgage payments; buy gasoline at its current price; pay for medical insurance; buy food, clothing and make minimum credit card payments. What will happen when the $800.00 per person tax rebate is spent? Will it have prvided a jobless worker's family with the continued wherewithal to pay for his or her familiy's needs. No, of course not!

What it will do is to give a tax rebate to all U.S. persons who have paid taxes including a great number of wealthy people who don't spend any more for anything because the already have what they need. In our economics classes we learned about the law of diminishing marginal utility which is, in other words: "The more you have of something you needed the LESS you want more of it." So, why rebate to the wealthiest who are less likely to spend it? That's another reason not to go for a "temporary, UNtimely fix" that won't, in the long run, solve th recession problem.

The "Temporary" fix will only benefit the wealthiest people. It will not solve the problem which is the continued loss of U.S. jobs to those abroad. How many jobs has the U.S. created in China, India,Latin America and the rest of the world outside the U.S.? Ask the Bush administration and the Republican neo-conservatives that question. A correct answer will show how many jobs have left the U.S. permanently and the rate at which more jobs will leave our country in the long run future.

Please. Democratic members of Congress. Insist on combating the effects of continuing job losses abroad. Reject N.A.F.T.A. and all similar treaties. Insist on fixing the unemployment problem, also, by undertaking construction of new public infrastructure in the U.S. hiring only legal U.S. residents..

Alabama's Republicans: Their Voting Record on Labor Issues

rabid viola — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 14:04:14 -0400

Why does Alabama, one of the poorest states in the Union, continue to vote Republican?

Maybe it wouldn't, if you knew how your elected representatives are actually voting!

ALABAMA'S SENATORS: RICHARD SHELBY (R) AND JEFF SESSIONS (R)

Here's how they voted in 2006 on some Labor-related issues

1. BUDGET RESOLUTION/SPENDING CUTS—

S. Con. Res. 83—Based on Bush administration recommendations, the fiscal year 2007 budget resolution called for cuts, or underfunding, in many vital working family programs. Sens. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) and Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) offered an amendment to increase funding for labor, health and education programs by $7 billion. The amendment passed March 16 by a 73-27 margin.

Shelby: voted NO

Sessions: voted NO

2. BUDGET RESOLUTION—

S. Con. Res. 83—The Bush administration budget plan outlined in the FY 2007 budget resolution called for substantial cuts in Medicare and Medicaid and other programs that strengthen and improve jobs, health care and education. But even these proposed cuts do not offset the huge tax cuts—mainly for the wealthy—called for by the White House. In fact, the budget resolution would add $266 billion to the deficit over the next five years, and the $873 billion spending cap would result in a significant loss of federal support for education, veterans’ medical care, law enforcement, transportation and other vital services for millions of Americans. The resolution passed March 16 on a 51-49 vote.

Shelby: voted YES

Sessions: voted YES

3. BUDGET RECONCILIATION—

H.R. 4297—Congress adjourned in December without passing the fiscal year 2006 budget reconciliation bill that contained President Bush’s fifth round of tax cuts for the rich. By May, however, the Republican leadership had lined up enough support to pass a $70 billion tax cut. Nearly half of the benefits in H.R. 4297 would help households with incomes of more than $1 million, and 55 percent of the benefits would go to the 3 percent of households with incomes above $200,000. Contrary to Bush administration claims that the bill benefits middle-income tax payers, the three-quarters of U.S. households with incomes below $75,000 would receive just 5 percent of the tax benefits, and 68 percent of U.S. households would receive no tax benefits at all. The bill passed May 11 by a 54-44 count.

Shelby: Voted YES

Sessions: Voted YES

4. IMMIGRATION/GUEST WORKERS

—S. 2611—The comprehensive immigration reform bill included a new program to admit 500,000 guest workers per year on H-2C visas in a variety of occupations. The new visa program lacked sufficient protections for existing wages and benefits. The H-2C visa program would allow employers to petition for temporary workers without a requirement that the work be seasonal or truly temporary, essentially granting employers the ability to turn long-term, skilled work into temporary jobs filled with an easily exploitable workforce, resulting in lower pay and benefits for all.

Sen. Byron Dorgan, (D-N.D.) offered an amendment to strike the new H-2C visa program from the bill. The amendment was tabled (killed) on May 16 on a 69-28 vote.

Shelby: Voted YES (kill it)

Sessions: Voted NO (keep it)

IMMIGRATION/GUEST WORKERS

—S. 2611—The new H-2C guest workers program included in the immigration reform bill also contained a provision to allow an automatic 20 percent increase each year above the initial 500,000 visa limit.

Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) offered an amendment to reduce H-2C non-immigrant guest worker visas from 500,000 to 200,000 per year and eliminate the 20 percent increase per year. The amendment passed by a voice vote after a motion to table it failed May 16 on an 18-79 vote.

On the Motion to table it,

Shelby: Voted: YES

Sessions Voted: NO

ESTATE TAX REPEAL

—H.R. 8—President Bush and Republican congressional leaders have long sought to repeal the federal tax on wealthy estates at the same time when critical domestic programs are being squeezed as a result of earlier Bush tax cuts for investors and wealthy families. Not only would repeal of the estate tax benefit just the wealthiest 0.5 percent of the wealthiest estates, the proposal would cost nearly $1 trillion between 2012 and 2021. Future generations of workers, students and the elderly should not be asked to shoulder the added burden of paying for more tax cuts for the super rich. In addition, the media campaign to repeal the estate tax has been bankrolled by 18 wealthy families whose net worth exceeds $185 billion. A cloture motion to end debate on the bill failed June 8 on a 57-41 vote.

On the Motion:

Shelby: Voted YES (end debate and pass it)

Sessions: Voted YES

ESTATE TAX AND MINIMUM WAGE

—H.R. 5970—After the House passed H.R. 5970, a package that combined an increase in the federal minimum wage from $5.15 to $7.25 an hour with "poison-pill" provisions that would slash the estate tax and cut pay for tipped workers, the Republican leadership of the Senate refused to strip the poison-pill provisions and allow the Senate to vote on a minimum wage increase with no strings attached.

Democrats strongly objected to attaching poison-pill amendments to a minimum wage increase. In June, the Senate had already rejected one of those provisions―legislation to gut the estate tax—and for good reason. The estate tax provisions of H.R. 5970 would blow a $753 billion hole in the federal budget, and those costs would ultimately have to be paid for with budget cuts in programs that serve working people, such as Medicare, Medicaid, veterans’ programs and unemployment insurance. This would not be a fair deal for working people, since H.R. 5970 would give an average tax cut of $1.3 million to the richest 8,200 estates in the country. Another poison pill in H.R. 5970 would have cut pay for up to 1.1 million tipped workers in seven states by as much as $5.50 per hour, or $11,440 per year.

The Senate killed H.R. 5970 by failing to muster the necessary 60 votes to overcome procedural hurdles. The final vote on Aug. 3 was 56-42.

Shelby: Voted YES

Sessions: Voted YES

* EMPLOYEE FREE CHOICE

--S. 842-- The Employee Free Choice Act would that ensure when a majority of employees in a workplace decides to form a union, they can do so without the debilitating obstacles employers now use to block their workers' free choice. The Employee Free Choice Act allows workers to freely choose whether to form unions by signing cards authorizing union representation. It also provides mediation and arbitration for first-contract disputes and establishes stronger penalties for violations of employee rights when workers seek to form a union and during first-contract negotiations. The legislation never came to a vote in 2006. The Senate bill won 42 cosponsors. It is included in the Voting Record but not included in the year-end or lifetime percentages.

Workers won the battle in the House of Representatives 241 to 185 (see how your representative voted), but the war for Employee Free Choice rages on in the Senate and at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. Anti-worker senators are threatening to filibuster and President Bush has promised to veto the bill.

Workers need your support now more than ever. Learn more about the Employee Free Choice Act and send a clear message to the White House and to your Senators: Pass the Employee Free Choice Act Now.

Unpatriotic Outsourcers

EnderW — Sat, 04 Mar 2006 14:09:57 -0500

EMAIL THIS TO EVERYONE YOU KNOW ASAP

This is not just a matter of patriotism, this is a matter of National Security!

When corporations have no loyalty to the citizens of the United States, the citizens of the United States should have no loyalty to corporations.

We are in a unique situation right now. The President of the United States has now proven himself to be completely disloyal to America on such a scale that it is now unparalleled.

This last week, President Bush, while touring a India pledged to make it easier for the corporations that have absolutely no loyalty to the United States to make Americans in middle class jobs unemployed, and to hire people in a foreign country that has conspired with the owners of American corporations to destroy the middle class in the United States.

It's one thing to have corporations that are disloyal to the people of the United States of America, nothing new there, but when we have a President of the United States who conspires with such corporations to destroy the middle class in the United States, we have a problem. When the President of the United States of America declares a class war against Americans, we have a problem.

President Bush no longer trusts the citizens of the United States to program the infrastructure of the United States, or the world. President Bush instead wants a country with dubious motives to write your operating systems, to program your telephone systems, to program your banking, and almost everything else.

President Bush no longer trusts the citizens of the United States to take your calls when you have a problem with something.

President Bush no longer trusts the citizens of the United States to create and produce new products.

President Bush no longer trusts the citizens of the United States to sell products.

President Bush no longer trusts the citizens of the United States to process the tax returns of the citizens of the United States.

President Bush is not only the most disloyal person in the United States, he is encouraging the disloyal corporations to not only destroy the middle class, but also to send all of our major infrastructure projects to countries with dubious motives that may very well use that infrastructure against us in the future.

Can we seriously trust this treasonous piece of dung to abide by the Constitution and Laws that protect our own civil liberties when he encourages these corporations to send the programming of our communications infrastructure and even the operating systems that make our computers work to a country with dubious motives? India does not recognize our civil rights, and when such things are sent overseas, we have no way of knowing what the hell they are doing!

Bush wants to call opponents to all of this either racist or isolationist. Mr. Bush, you disloyal piece of trash, unlike you, we can call ourselves PATRIOTS - and we are of all colors and creeds!

Bush's supporters on this matter like to bring up the argument of "well, we have to make America competitive on the global stage" and other such tripe along a similar line. Well, we should all answer back with a single voice that we don't give a flying frack if some dyslexic cokehead former college jock who gratuated because of affirmative-action grades and makes a multimillion dollar salary because he's a sociopathic jerk who gets off on screwing people is more competitive in anything, when we are living on poverty wages. People who make such arguments are no less disloyal to the United States of America than the dyslexic cokeheads running such corporations. Anyone who believes such tripe or thinks he should be loyal to such people needs to be put in a room with very soft walls and be given a nice tight straitjacket, because such people are not only a danger to themselves, they are a danger to US!

We don't think these infrastructure, sales, manufacturing, and service jobs should be sent to foreign countries with dubious motives, just so you can destroy the pesky middle class here in the United States of America, just because your major donors can make another few million a year in salary, and up their dividends by fifty fracking cents a quarter.

Mr. Bush, you treasonous piece of trash, there are things that make America great, and our middle class is one of the main things. Your pronouncement in India only proves that you seek to destroy the middle class in the United States of America.

Mr. Bush, you have no loyalty to us. We have zero loyalty to you.

I hereby call for a MASS-SELLOFF of all stocks in all companies hiring Indians over Americans. How do you get even with the rich? You make them poor.

Disloyalty should never be rewarded with our dollars. It's time to put some of these corporations out of business, and put our money into companies that believe in a strong middle class in the United States of America. Companies that are willing to make a little less if if means that it will improve the middle class, instead of sending them to apply for a job at Wal-Mart or McDonalds.

To those that are reading this: If you are a loyal citizen of the United States of America, and think a strong middle class is what makes America great, then please cut and paste this into an email and send it to everyone you know! This is a matter of PATRIOTISM. Let's teach that traitor Bush, and all of his disloyal corporate sponsors that we will not tolerate their DISLOYALTY! The fight can begin on Wall Street, so that hopefully we don't one day have to take the fight to the streets - as the founders of this great country did because of the abuses of the British East India Company, LLC, and the King who owned it.

Bush has lost the poor vote. Now he and his Party have lost the middle class vote. All they have left is a group Bush once publically called his "Base", the ultra-rich, who are utterly disloyal to the United States of America.

This nation is at war, that is a fact, and Bush has now defined the enemies: Himself and his corporate sponsors.

If you are reading this, and want to make a positive difference, call your account manager as soon as his office opens, and tell him one thing: "SELL! SELL! SELL!", and transfer your investments into some more patriotic companies that refuse to send thir jobs overseas. Let's teach Bush a lesson! If we can wipe two or three thousand points off the Dow, we can make a statement that we won't tolerate their crap! Email this to everyone!

Let's put these dyslexic cokehead former college jocks with affirmative-action grades and seven, eight, nine, and even ten-digit salaries, whose only qualification for the job is their disloyalty to America and their savvy at screwing people, right where they want to see the middle-class. In the fracking poor-house. "Vengance is mine, sayeth the Lord", well, that may be, but God takes too long.

When corporations have no loyalty to the citizens of the United States, the citizens of the United States should have no loyalty to corporations.

When the President of the United States of America has no loyalty to the citizens of the United States of America, the citizens of the United States of America should have zero loyalty to the President of the United States of America.

Mr. Bush, you pathetic unpatriotic piece of dung, in the words of my generation UP YOURS!!!! You are now the first president in US history to promise another country OUR JOBS!

2 Internet Campaign Jobs

Bob Fertik — Thu, 08 Dec 2005 19:59:51 -0500

Matt Stoller writes,

Two Job Openings: Arizona and California

Use your web skills to face off against wingnut Senator Jon Kyl from Arizona or Ahhhnold in California.

Don't let these jobs go begging!