Obama Reaffirms Support for Employee Free Choice Act

Obama Reaffirms Support
for Employee Free Choice Act

by Seth Michaels, Feb 12, 2009

In an Oval Office interview with major newspapers yesterday, President Barack Obama reaffirmed his strong support for the freedom to form unions and bargain.

The Detroit Free Press and the Philadelphia Inquirer were among the papers that got a chance to talk to Obama about the challenges facing our economy, and Obama once again offered his support for the Employee Free Choice Act.

According to the Inquirer, Obama discounted the corporate community’s argument that workers’ freedom to form unions and bargain would be bad for the economy. The president said that, indeed, workers’ freedom to bargain was good for the long-term health of the economy.


I don’t buy the argument that providing workers with collective bargaining rights somehow weakens the economy or worsens the business environment. If you’ve got workers who have decent pay and benefits, they’re also customers for business.

The Inquirer also reports that Obama does not want to delay passage of the Employee Free Choice Act. This echoes a Jan. 30 statement by Vice President Joe Biden, who heads the White House’s task force on working families. Biden told CNBC the administration hopes Congress passes the Employee Free Choice Act this year. Both Obama and Biden were co-sponsors of the legislation in the Senate.

In his announcement of the task force Jan. 30, Obama made it clear he sees unions as essential to a strong economy.

We need to level the playing field for workers and the unions that represent their interests, because we know that you cannot have a strong middle class without a strong labor movement. When workers are prospering, they buy products that make businesses prosper.

The Employee Free Choice Act is critical to the nation’s economic recovery, a point made by numerous analysts including former Labor Secretary Robert Reich. Speaking in Florida yesterday, Reich said the bill would open the door for workers to bargain for health care, pensions and fair wages, restoring their economic security and reversing the wage stagnation that has contributed to a weak economy.

Obama and experts agree: Quick passage of the Employee Free Choice Act will improve the economy for working families.
http://blog.aflcio.org/2009/02/12/obama-reaffirms-support-for-employee-free-choice-act/

Let's get the nation back on track...

Tell Congress: Pass the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

http://www.unionvoice.org/campaign/americanreinvestment

To strengthen and grow our economy over the long term, we must create jobs and invest in renewable energy, energy efficiency, transportation, schools & health care. The time to begin is now. Endless war, occupation, and exploitation are the wrong investment. It is time to change course. Yes, we can get it done. Political Organization begins with each one of us.
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"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing."
Edmund Burke (1729 - 1797)

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Questions about FDR, Obama, and Racism...

Why was Roosevelt so "cautious?"

Roosevelt was cautious because the Great Depression was unprecedented.

The better question is why is Obama so cautious?


Why were the New Deal policies not bold enough?

The New Deal Policies were not bold enough at first,because the president did not want the American people to suffer or the ship of state to flounder. The point,however, is that when it became apparent that the policies
were not working... FDR had the sense, scruples, and courage
to move forward with more daring and effective policies. The criticisms raised by Republicans are based on ignoring this critical fact.
FDR learned from mistakes and corrected them. The Bush Cheney White House,like the Hoover White House.... ignored or denied mistakes and learned nothing.And we suffer for their incompetence.

What was holding Roosevelt back?

Roosevelt was not holding back. He was trying whatever might work until he found something that did. I prefaced my remarks about Roosevelt by the statement that he was not necessarily the brightest president, but he listened, learned, and got the job done. This may be why he was elected so many times.

What role did southern racist Democrats have to play in this?
Southerners voted for Roosevelt. This was a transformational period. Following Roosevelt's administration, Democrats lost the votes of most Southern whites. But during Roosevelts new deal, Most Southerners moved away from the racist iconoclasts who opposed Roosevelt's New Deal. This is when the Southern Racist Democrat label was becoming an anachronism.

Torture is immoral, illegal, and it does not work

Visit this link for the rest of the story... http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/28/AR2008112802242.html
By Matthew Alexander
Sunday, November 30, 2008; Page B01
I should have felt triumphant when I returned from Iraq in August 2006. Instead, I was worried and exhausted. My team of interrogators had successfully hunted down one of the most notorious mass murderers of our generation, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq and the mastermind of the campaign of suicide bombings that had helped plunge Iraq into civil war. But instead of celebrating our success, my mind was consumed with the unfinished business of our mission: fixing the deeply flawed, ineffective and un-American way the U.S. military conducts interrogations in Iraq. I'm still alarmed about that today.

...
"Torture and abuse are against my moral fabric. The cliche still bears repeating:
Such outrages are inconsistent with American principles. And then there's the pragmatic side:
Torture and abuse cost American lives." www.WritingResource.info/tortureupdate;html
I learned in Iraq that the No. 1 reason foreign fighters flocked there to fight were the abuses carried out at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. Our policy of torture was directly and swiftly recruiting fighters for al-Qaeda in Iraq. The large majority of suicide bombings in Iraq are still carried out by these foreigners. They are also involved in most of the attacks on U.S. and coalition forces in Iraq. It's no exaggeration to say that at least half of our losses and casualties in that country have come at the hands of foreigners who joined the fray because of our program of detainee abuse. The number of U.S. soldiers who have died because of our torture policy will never be definitively known, but it is fair to say that it is close to the number of lives lost on Sept. 11, 2001. How anyone can say that torture keeps Americans safe is beyond me -- unless you don't count American soldiers as Americans.
...Americans, including officers like myself, must fight to protect our values not only from al-Qaeda but also from those within our own country who would erode them. Other interrogators are also speaking out, including some former members of the military, the FBI and the CIA who met last summer to condemn torture and have spoken before Congress -- at considerable personal risk.
We're told that our only options are to persist in carrying out torture or to face another terrorist attack. But there truly is a better way to carry out interrogations -- and a way to get out of this false choice between torture and terror.
I'm actually quite optimistic these days, in no small measure because President-elect Barack Obama has promised to outlaw the practice of torture throughout our government. But until we renounce the sorts of abuses that have stained our national honor, al-Qaeda will be winning. Zarqawi is dead, but he has still forced us to show the world that we do not adhere to the principles we say we cherish. We're better than that. We're smarter, too.
howtobreakaterrorist@gmail.com
Matthew Alexander led an interrogations team assigned to a Special Operations task force in Iraq in 2006. He is the author of "How to Break a Terrorist: The U.S. Interrogators Who Used Brains, Not Brutality, to Take Down the Deadliest Man in Iraq." He is writing under a pseudonym for security reasons.

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The War Dogs...

The disappearance of many native Americans tribal cultures,
provides stark evidence of genocides which have
occurred in the short history of American culture.

We may not have had ovens... but we did have death marches
and an "open season" on Native Americans which did destroy whole
cultures.

Our young nation's groping for adulthood has been steeped in
Genocide, Slavery, Arrogance, and Intolerance. But when the
chips are down, revolutionary spirits have risen to the task
of challenging these forces as contrary to our most sacred
trusts..

Martin reminded us to protect our constitution and Bill of Rights.
While the ugly genocide perpetrated against native Americans and
overt slavery are both "behind us," this does not mean they have
disappeared.

They are baggage we carry. And as long as we remember the lessons
learned, we can move forward to more progressive and compassionate
ground. Denial of this mixed legacy serves no useful purpose. The
current right-wing fringe which controls our nation seems obsessed
witih denial.

~The war in Iraq is "going well," in spite of 700 thousand dead,
hundreds of billions wasted, millions of refugees dispossessed,|
and the loss of our reputation, credibility, and honor.

~Our economy is "doing just fine," in spite of having been crippled
debt for the next half century, while we see net job losses, lower
pay, reduced benefits, raids on pensions, rampant corruption, no-bid
cost-plus contracts on our people, and attacks on unions and working
people which are beyond the pale.

~We are "winning," by surrendering to using our troops as mercenaries
to enforce a corporate occupation and exploitation of Iraq. We should
"support" our troops by abandoning them as targets in an ill-conceived
neo-colonialist corporate agenda for occupation.

War is not Peace. Crippling Debt is not prosperity. Subversion of the
constitution is not necessary. And toture, murder, rape, and rendition
should be roundly condemed. Facts remain.

Tim

The Issues of the Day: Fear-Mongering and its consequences

It is a sad day when the United States of America has to officially dispel rumors that it might invade a neighbor simply because its leader is ill. But after six years of fear-mongering, aggression, and diplomatic blunders... this is where we are.

Condoleezza Rice, the US Secretary of State, had to reassure the Cuban people that the United States does not intend to invade. Now that the United States has established a precedent of invading non-aggressive nations at will, our nation is seen as a bully state which may "preemptively" invade any sovereign nation... at any time. While George Bush, Dick Cheney, and Don Rumsfeld see this fear-mongering as useful to our security, many Americans feel that this stance is crude, counterproductive, and beyond the pale.

The United States is no longer seen as a beacon of freedom. We are now perceived as a nation whose behavior can be unpredictable, arbitrary, and sometimes... irresponsible. This administration has abrogated signed treaties. This means we have no credibility as a partner, and our commitment is seen as an empty gesture. In addition to this breach of trust... now that our military is overextended in corporate adventurism abroad, we cannot be counted on as a partner for our friends or as a counterbalance to the forces of our enemies.

Many Americans are disturbed by these developments. Seven of ten Americans reject the arrogant overreach of this administration and their shorts-sighted social, fiscal, and military blunders. Since this rogue band of corporate CEOs seem only concerned with the interests and concerns of two tenths of one percent of America.... it is time for the other 99.8% of America to remind these lawless pretenders about civil law, constitutional protocal, and American values.

It is time for accountability. Whether it be through ignorance or incompetence, the current administration has been unable to provide leadership, security, or peace. As a result, our international reputation has been sullied and our nation is in decline. We can do better and
we deserve better. It is wake-up time in America.

best regards, Tim Flanagan

sent Monday Morning, from the St. Louis Bread Company coffeeshop on Olive Street Road, in St. Louis County, Missouri.