Indiana Has Gone Over The Edge

Romney Speaks With Forked Tongue

USW Rejects Romney's Attack on Unions

For Immediate Release:  May 9, 2012

Contact:   Gary Hubbard, 202-256-8125, ghubbard@usw.org
    Wayne Ranick, 412-562-2444; wranick@usw.org

USW Rejects Romney’s Attack on Unions and President Obama
As guardians of the middle class, we will expose Republican distortions and lies

Pittsburgh (May 9) – Leo W. Gerard, president of the United Steelworkers (USW), today was critical of Republican Presidential Candidate Mitt Romney’s dishonest attack on President Obama and American labor unions in remarks he made at the Lansing Community College.

Gerard said, “President Obama has listened to us as American workers and laid out a vision of the America we need. One that creates jobs and prosperity for all Americans and not the 1% who have looted the economy as presumed Republican candidate Romney did when he led his private equity firm known as Bain Capital.

“Romney’s latest attack on American unions and President Obama in his address at the  community college in Michigan is what we’ve come to expect from the ‘Etch-A-Sketch’ candidate who can’t help himself in trying to pretend the demise of the Oldsmobile was the fault of the current administration and labor unions.”

When Obama announced his Task Force on Middle-Class Working Families, he declared: “I do not view the labor movement as part of the problem; to me, and to my administration, labor unions are a big part of the solution. 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.”

Gerard declared, “Romney’s record as the corporate boss at Bain Capital will show he and Wall Street raiders like him destroyed good American family jobs and converted their hard-earned pensions and health care benefits into millions for himself and his shareholders, hiding loot in tax-free, offshore secret bank accounts.

“We as guardians of the middle class will expose Romney’s lies and reveal him as a politician who seeks to deny workers’ rights in the states, and advocates schemes that exploit workers in low-wage states like South Carolina.” Affirming Obama took action to stop the economic bleeding in America caused by Wall Street, Gerard said the facts show 25 straight months of private-sector job growth with businesses creating 4.1 million jobs.

“As a union representing American workers in the manufacturing, energy and service sectors, we stand up and are ready to go to work to re-elect President Obama.”

# # #

Indiana Senator Ed Charbonneau is Bad for Indiana

Whether to allow teachers in Indiana to continue to be able to bargain for working conditions seems to me to be a no brainer. Indiana Republicans seem to have a very poor understanding of what a union even is.

Items that appear in local union contracts which on the surface might seem strange or unusual to most people, have no doubt been placed there for a very good reason at some time in the history of that community of workers.

Anyone who has ever done any work for any entity knows full well that in every group of management there usually can be found at least one wild eyed, crazy acting, member that has no regard for the safety or an understanding of the human behavior of workers causing workers to be harassed, threatened or miserable. School administrators are no different. Some of them are really good and some are simple minded, hard headed egotistical nincompoops.

I can imagine some crazed administrator insisting that the temperature in classrooms be set higher or lower than that which is most conducive to learning. I can imagine how disruptive and miserable a work day could be for a teacher if an administer had a Captain Queeg complex.

Without agreed upon rules between teachers and administration officials, only bad things can be the result and the children who are trying to learn would be the most affected.

Why Republicans in Indiana are so afraid of allowing teachers this basic right to negotiate working conditions cannot be understood by me.

My own Indiana State Senator, Ed Charbonneau, in Indiana’s District 5, not only voted for this lousy assault on teachers but has the distinction of being one that authored or sponsored the darned thing.

Mr. Charbonneau knows better. He knows what a union is.

Anti Worker Indiana Legislators

If people in Wisconsin think that the Republicans in their state legislature are acting improperly and against the best interests of the people who work for a living in Wisconsin, they shouldn't feel pregnant because we have Republicans in the Indiana General Assembly that are just as bad.

My own State Senator, Ed Charbonneau would fit in just fine up in Wisconsin. His willingness to take away bargaining rights from Indiana's teachers has given him that distinction.

Think About It

Why in tarnation would my Indiana State Senator, Ed Charbonnaeu, Republican in Senate District 5 propose to take away the ability of teachers to bargain over working conditions.
He knows full well the value of this right. So why is he wanting to take rights away from our teachers?

This is truly a slap in the face of working men and women all over our great state and he should do his best to put a stop to what he started.

What's next? Will he some day propose to take the right to bargain working conditions away from people who work in the steel mills or for NIPSCO as well?

The attempt to take this right away from workers is disgusting.......pitiful........no excuse.

The Foxx In The School House

Is Indiana Senator Ed Charbonneau Anti Union?

Indiana Senate Bill 575 takes away bargaining rights from our school teachers by limiting the bargaining to only wages and benefits.

It does not allow bargaining over working conditions.

Can you imagine working for some misguided, uncaring, nincompoop administrator in a school system and not being allowed to straighten that person out through collective bargaining?

Not all schools have nitwit administrators but when you have one with no common sense, you need to be able to negotiate changes in working conditions.

The saddest thing about this piece of right wing nutty Republican legislation is that my own State Senator is one of the authors and or sponsor.

Ed Charbonneau, from Indiana Senate District 5 is a sponsor of this bill and that really tees me off. This guy should know better.

Indiana Senator Mike Delph's Bigotry

Indiana Senator Mike Delph, a Republican from the Carmel area has proposed that Indiana become like Arizona in dealing with "illegal immigration".

In an interview not long ago he said that he's "concerned about the exploitation of cheap labor for profit and the exploitation of human beings that's going on today in the state of Indiana."

I think if Senator Delph was truly concerned about the exploitation of human beings that's going on in the state of Indiana, he would be introducing legislation that would make it illegal for companies to permanently replace workers if they are locked out or find it necessary to strike a company.

To me, Senator Delph's proposed legislation is nothing more than his way of expressing his bigotry.

Oh no, Republicans might have to work holidays

Yesterday, when Republicans learned that they might have to work until Christmas, Arizona senator, Jon Kyle, blubbered to the media that it was simply sacrilegious to expect congress to work up until one of the two most sacred holidays of Christianity.

Now, I used to work in a power plant and we had to work whenever we were needed. The soldiers fighting and dieing in Afghanistan are working through the holidays and working people all over America work during "holy week". Kyle also suggested that Senator Harry Reid was disrespecting Christmas to require that congress continue doing the country's business instead of being allowed to go home with their families and wrap presents, etc. I wonder what the homeless and those who are without jobs think of Senator Kyl's remarks.

Such hog wash, and truly disgusting. We need adults in congress. Or, maybe congress should declare that the week before and after Christmas should be national holidays for all to quit working.

Unfortunately, Jon Kyle thinks like most right wingers and we aint seen nothin yet.

A Must Listen to Speech

More ideas for Rejirklicans tax cuts for the rich

You're darned right we remember!

Republican Teaparty Contract?

“Hmmm.....The Republican Contract with America.....Brought to you by the same folks who don’t believe YOU should have any contract at all. What a concept”.

Meridith Merriner

Dirty Little Secrets

Posted on the Huffington Post, July 13, 2010

By Robert Creamer, Political organizer, strategist and author

Dirty Little Secrets the Republicans Don't Want You to Know

The Republicans have a set of dirty little (actually not so little) secrets they don't what you to know -- and certainly don't want you to think about when you go to the polls in November.

And the fact is that some of those secrets could provide Democrats with silver bullets this fall. But first let's recall the context.

Over the course of eight short years -- between 2000 and 2008 -- the Republicans methodically executed their plan to transform American society. They systematically transferred wealth from the middle class to the wealthiest two percent of Americans -- slashing taxes for the wealthy. They eviscerated the rules that held Wall Street, Big Oil and private insurance companies accountable to the public. They allowed and encouraged the recklessness of the big Wall Street banks that ultimately collapsed the economy and cost eight million Americans their jobs. They ignored exploding health care costs, tried to privatize Social Security, gave the drug companies open season to gouge American consumers and presided over a decline in real incomes averaging $2,000 per family. They entangled America in an enormously costly, unnecessary war in Iraq, pursued a directionless policy that left Afghanistan to fester, and sullied America's good name throughout the world.

Their economic policy of cutting taxes for the wealthy and deregulating big Corporations failed to create jobs. In fact, over his eight year term, George Bush's administration created exactly zero net private sector jobs. They inherited a Federal budget with surpluses as far as the eye could see and rolled up more debt than all of the previous Presidents in the over 200 years of American history. And in the end they left the economy in collapse.

This was not a disaster that could be remedied overnight. By taking bold action at the beginning of his administration, President Obama and the Democrats in Congress prevented the financial crisis from morphing into a Great Depression -- but the Republicans, some Democrats, and the powerful special interests have done everything they can to throw sand into the gears of change. Most importantly, they have stood in the way of providing enough economic stimulus to launch a robust, widespread economic recovery.

But notwithstanding Republican opposition, Obama, the Democrats and their progressive allies have -- after a century of trying -- finally passed health care reform allowing America to end its status as the only industrialized nation that did not provide health care as a right. They are on the brink of reining in the recklessness of the big Wall Street banks. And they have set the stage for massive long-term investments in economic growth and clean energy.

But it has been hard to pull the car out of the deep economic ditch and Americans are angry at the slow pace of economic recovery -- and also at the special interests that profited from their economic pain.

So the Republicans now have the audacity to argue that President Obama and the Democrats are somehow responsible for the hardships that they themselves created. In effect they want the election to be a referendum on whether the Democrats have mopped and swept fast enough cleaning up the mess that they created.

They will do everything they can to prevent America from focusing on the real choice before them in the fall elections -- a choice between going backward to the failed policies of the past that caused this catastrophe and a new direction that will create sustainable, long-term, bottom-up, widely shared economic growth. The real question before the country is whether it is willing to hand over the keys to the economy once again to the same gang that just caused the most serious economic pile up in 60 years.

That's where the dirty little secrets come in. It turns out that the leaders of the Republican Party have learned nothing from the reckless escapade that caused so much economic pain, and came perilously close to inflicting mortal wounds on the American economy.

They still actually believe -- despite what we have all just experienced -- that by "freeing" big oil, the insurance companies and Wall Street banks of the "burdens" of government accountability, that the plutocrats and the "invisible hand" of the market will lead American into the promised land of economic prosperity.

Some of the things they believe are not only dangerous to the economy, luckily they are also politically radioactive. And quite remarkably, many key Republicans are actually willing to say them out loud. Here are a few:

• Meet Congressman Paul Ryan. Ryan is the ranking Republican on the House Budget Committee. If the Republicans once again take control of the House, he will be the Chair of the Budget Committee. Ryan believes -- and says out loud -- that Medicare, one of the most popular Federal programs in history, should be abolished and replaced with vouchers for private insurance. Let's recall that one of the ways Republicans stirred up opposition to health insurance reform was by falsely accusing Democrats of wanting to cut Medicare. They convinced some unwitting seniors that "Government" should keep its hands off Medicare -- which is, of course, a "Government" program. Democrats need to make it crystal clear in this campaign that Republicans -- who opposed Medicare from its inception -- actually want to abolish the program and hand over control of health care for America's seniors to the same private insurance companies responsible for driving up rates three times faster than wages while their profits have exploded.

• Congressman John Boehner, the House Minority Leader, has endorsed another Ryan proposal to raise the retirement age of Social Security to 70 years old -- a proposal that might go over fine with a guy like Boehner who makes speeches for a living. But it won't be very popular at all with someone who has laid bricks, or run an earth mover, or waited tables for forty-five years.

• The whole Republican crew wants to resurrect the failed Bush proposal to "privatize" Social Security. The defeat of Bush's privatization plan was the turning point in the Bush Presidency. It was all downhill from there. Yet -- whether it's to pad the investment accounts of their friends on Wall Street or because they are "private markets uber alles true believers" -- the Republicans want to try it again. Only this time retirees won't have to work very hard to imagine what it would have been like if their Social Security checks had plummeted in value the way their 401K's did when the market collapsed just two years ago.

• The Republicans want to weaken and repeal the new law to rein in the recklessness of the big Wall Street banks. Most Republicans and Democrats voted to bail out the big banks to prevent a 1930's style market collapse. The difference is that Democrats supported legislation to rein in their recklessness -- that had cost 8 million Americans their jobs -- and assure that a bailout was never allowed to happen again. But with very few exceptions, the Republicans voted to a person against holding Wall Street accountable. Given a chance, they plan to team up with their pals on Wall Street to free them to return to their reckless ways at will. In fact, they told the titans of Wall Street as much in fundraising meetings, where those "masters of the Universe" were asked to ante up. Republicans claim to oppose more Wall Street bailouts, but they refuse to support legislation that would prevent one in the future and hold Wall Street accountable. That -- coupled with those big contributions from Wall Street -- is a position that is very difficult for average voters to swallow. In fact, the polling says it's down right toxic.

• Republicans have consistently voted against extending unemployment benefits to workers who have been laid off because of Bush-era policies and the recklessness of Wall Street. Remember, people who get unemployment benefits -- by definition -- are looking for jobs that the economy doesn't provide. In addition, many Republicans actually believe that the best way to spur employment is to lower the minimum wage.

• Finally, meet Congressman Joe Barton. If the Republicans win back control of Congress, he would once again most likely serve as the Chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee -- the Committee that oversees the oil industry. Congressman Barton has never met an oil company he doesn't like. In fact, he's the guy who actually apologized to BP when they were forced by the Obama Administration to take economic responsibility for the disastrous Gulf oil spill. As a political matter, that's like apologizing to Jack the Ripper.

These are politically radioactive positions that do, in fact, define the core of Republican policy if they were once again to control the gavel in either House of Congress.

We hear a lot about how Democrats have to "localize" the elections to have a chance of victory in November. And it is true that people vote for people in elections -- and the quality of Democratic candidates will give them a major edge in many races. So while it is a good idea to "personalize" the races for Congress, the last thing Democrats should do is to "localize" them, because the party that nationalizes a midterm -- and dominates the national dialogue -- almost always comes out ahead.

Instead, Democrats need to take the offensive and dominate the national conversation by talking about what the Republicans actually believe and what they would do if they win in November. Voters must be offered a stark choice between Democratic and Republican policies in the fall. If they are, "Conventional Wisdom" that keeps predicting a Democratic disaster will be proven wrong, the same way it was when it predicted that America would never elect a tall, skinny African American guy named Barack Obama.

Robert Creamer is a long-time political organizer and strategist, and author of the recent book: Stand Up Straight: How Progressives Can Win, available on Amazon.com.

House Republican Leader Wants to Raise Retirement Age to 70

ALLIANCE FOR RETIRED AMERICANS
815 16th Street, NW, 4th Floor ● Washington, D.C. 20006 ● (202)
637-5399 ● www.retiredamericans.org

For Immediate Release

Contact: David Blank (202) 637-5275
June 30, 2010
dblank@retiredamericans.org


Boehner Comments Hurtful to Workers

House GOP Leader Wants to Raise Retirement Age to 70

"John Boehner’s call to raise the Social Security retirement age to 70 is not only deeply hurtful and insensitive to workers, but also reflects a dangerously flawed misunderstanding of how Social Security is financed and operates," said Edward F. Coyle, Executive Director of the Alliance for Retired Americans, a four million-member grassroots advocacy organization.

House Minority Leader Boehner (R-OH) said earlier this week that if the Republicans were to win control of the U.S. House, the party would try to raise the Social Security retirement age to 70 as part of a fiscal reform plan.

"Raising the retirement age to 70 would be devastating to American workers, particularly those who work in physically demanding construction and service sector jobs. Americans in their late 50s and 60s are bearing the brunt of layoffs and benefit cuts from the recession. John Boehner wants to inflict further hardship among those who are already struggling to keep or find jobs. Many people this age are facing health problems. Simply put, they cannot keep working until they are 70."

"Moreover, despite his many years in Washington, John Boehner lacks a basic understanding of Social Security. Social Security - which has kept generations of retirees out of poverty - has not added one cent to the federal budget deficit. Social Security is a self-sufficient program with a dedicated source of revenue. In fact, the Social Security Trust Fund currently has a surplus of $2.6 trillion."

Also today, Coyle testified on Capitol Hill before the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform. His testimony is appended below.
________________________________________

My name is Edward F. Coyle, and I am the Executive Director of the four million-member Alliance for Retired Americans. We are a grassroots organization of retirees from labor and community-based groups.

Retirees are deeply disturbed by talk coming out of this Commission about cutting Social Security benefits and raising the retirement age.

Social Security is one of America’s greatest success stories. It has kept generations of seniors out of poverty. It did not, I repeat did not, cause these deficits. The fact is that Social Security currently has a surplus of $2.6 trillion.

The federal government does not fund Social Security - it is a fiscally conservative, self-sufficient program with a dedicated source of revenue. It is an efficient, rock-solid program, with only one percent of funds going to administrative costs. I challenge the Commission to find a federal program run as efficiently and effectively as Social Security, and one that is financially solvent for many years to come.

No one dislikes the federal debt more than today’s retirees. They do not want it to be the legacy they leave behind to their children and grandchildren. Is our federal budget deficit too large? Yes. Is it Social Security’s fault? No.

Earlier today you heard from America Speaks. Retirees are greatly disturbed that they are recommending increasing the retirement age to 69. Not only would this reduce benefits which, as I said, have nothing to do with the budget deficit, but it would be devastating to American workers, particularly those who work in physically demanding construction and service sector jobs.

Americans in their late 50s and 60s are already bearing the brunt of layoffs and benefit cuts from the recession. Raising the retirement age would inflict further hardship among a group of workers who are struggling to keep or find jobs. Many people this age face health problems in these years. Simply put, many workers cannot continue in their jobs until they are nearly 70.

The Alliance for Retired Americans strongly rejects the gloom-and-doom, sky-is-falling predictions that Social Security is going bankrupt. Not only is this factually untrue, but it is a malicious scare tactic to divert attention away from the root causes of our deficit - unwise tax and spending decisions by Washington over the past decade.

To further strengthen Social Security’s financial structure, the Alliance for Retired Americans supports raising the payroll tax cap - currently at $106,800 - for the wealthiest Americans. Right now, someone like Bill Gates is paying the same in Social Security taxes as a $106,800 worker. Experts have said that raising the cap to 90 percent of all wages would fill one-third of a projected shortfall over the next 75 years in the Social Security Trust Fund. This change would only increase taxes on six percent of all workers, but would further strengthen Social Security benefits for the remaining 94 percent of workers when they retire.

In conclusion, retirees care about more than just themselves. They worry about their children and grandchildren in these difficult times. Will they ever get to retire? And if so, what will be there for them? At a time of rising cynicism toward government, particularly among young people, it is more important than ever that our nation fully honors the promise of Social Security.

# # #

The Alliance for Retired Americans is a national organization that advocates for the rights and well being of over 4 million retirees and their families.

Simpson on The Lesser People

Poor Poor BP

The CEO of the oil company responsible for the gushing oil spoiling the Gulf Coast beaches and destroying the habitat of thousands of animals, fish, birds and whales refused to apologize today at a congressional hearing. But someone did apologize.

Republican congressman Joe Barton told BP CEO Tony Hayward that he was sorry. And what was he sorry for?...... He said he was sorry that President Obama told BP to provide 20 billion dollars for an escrow fund to help the victims of the disaster. He said that forcing BP to make good on their promise to pay all of the claims arising out of the disaster by putting the money in an escrow fund was a "tragedy in the first proportion."

It is no surprise to me that other well known right wingers are saying the same thing. Barton is from Texas.....Bush country......oil country, and he gets millions in donations from the oil companies. The people in the Gulf are suffering, and that suits right wingers just fine.

Let's Listen to Sarah Palin

Dan Coats for Indiana??