News Stories for November 10, 2011
The Washington Post
Election Day 2011 is (almost) over, and with the benefit of a little sleep and some coffee, it’s time to mine the results for lessons.
Here are four we came away with:
1. The unions can still bring it
Yes, the unions came up short earlier this year in Wisconsin – twice – but in both a state Supreme Court race and in the state Senate recall elections, they caused Republicans a major, expensive headache. Well, in Tuesday’s elections, unions caused Republicans a major headache AND they won big.
The unions overwhelming victory on Issue 2, which nullifies Ohio Gov. John Kasich’s (R) law curbing the collective bargaining rights of unions, left Kasich conciliatory and unions jubilant.
You have to believe, after seeing what happened in Wisconsin and Ohio, that budget-cutting Republican governors are going to think twice about crossing labor. It’s just too much of a hassle.Read the source story here.
Teamster Nation
We're just not sure how many people got, or are getting arrested, tonight at Sotheby's, where months ago the 1% running the auction house threw 43 Teamsters art handlers out of work just because they could.
We are sure that Teamsters, union allies, students and OWSers are making Sotheby's and their customers very, very uncomfortable tonight. For a little while we watched the livestream of tonight's protest at Sotheby's here. We saw the sidewalks just swarming with police officers. We heard the "vibe is hair raising." And this:
@catherina_guate #Sotheby's tonight was most ballistic action I have seen at #OWSAccording to the live feed, it seemed the law enforcement officers getting OT to protect Sotheby's entitled jerks are not exactly enthusiastic about the entitled jerks.
Read the source story here.
The New York TimesOrganized labor’s early flirtation with Occupy Wall Street is starting to get serious.
Union leaders, who were initially cautious in embracing the Occupy movement, have in recent weeks showered the protesters with help — tents, air mattresses, propane heaters and tons of food. The protesters, for their part, have joined in union marches and picket lines across the nation. About 100 protesters from Occupy Wall Street are expected to join a Teamsters picket line at the Sotheby’s auction house in Manhattan on Wednesday night to back the union in a bitter contract fight.
Labor unions, marveling at how the protesters have fired up the public on traditional labor issues like income inequality, are also starting to embrace some of the bold tactics and social media skills of the Occupy movement.
Last Wednesday, a union transit worker and a retired Teamster were arrested for civil disobedience inside Sotheby’s after sneaking through the entrance to harangue those attending an auction — echoing the lunchtime ruckus that Occupy Wall Street protesters caused weeks earlier at two well-known Manhattan restaurants owned by Danny Meyer, a Sotheby’s board member.
Organized labor’s public relations staff is also using Twitter, Tumblr and other social media much more aggressively after seeing how the Occupy protesters have used those services to mobilize support by immediately transmitting photos and videos of marches, tear-gassing and arrests. The Teamsters, for example, have beefed up their daily blog and posted many more photos of their battles with BMW, US Foods and Sotheby’s on Facebook and Twitter.Read the source story here.
Greg Sargent, in The Washington Post
Yesterday, voters in Ohio soundly repudiated a central goal of the conservative economic and ideological agenda, defeating Governor John Kasich’s law rolling back the bargaining rights of public employees by over 20 points, 61-39.
Today, a new Post poll finds that a majority of Americans wants government action to reduce inequality.
Think these things are related?
For context, consider this. Exactly one year ago, sweeping Republican victories across the country left many convinced that the public had delivered a clear mandate for conservative governance. One of the central targets would be the power of public unions — if those powers could be rolled back, labor’s irreversible decline would continue apace. Pundits confidently predicted that public employees everywhere would make easy public scapegoats amid our dire economic climate.
But it’s now clear that this confidence produced a serious misreading of the public mood, and led to an overreach that stirred a real and meaningful national backlash. While labor and Dems fell just short of victory in Wisconsin, the months-long feat of organizing there — and the public’s clear support for the public employee unions in Scott Walker’s crosshairs — can now be seen as the first stirrings of this backlash. Then came Occupy Wall Street, the Elizabeth Warren candidacy, and the renewed focus on inequality and the true nature of shared sacrifice — and, now, a stinging rebuke in Ohio to the conservative fiscal worldview.Read the source story here.
Politico
A top House Democrat says he has “serious concerns” that Boeing tried to inappropriately influence lawmakers in its ongoing fight with the National Labor Relations Board.
In a letter released Wednesday, Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) said new documents indicate that Boeing, which the NLRB has accused of retaliating against workers in Washington state for striking at a Boeing plant, contacted lawmakers to try to halt the NLRB from filing formal action against them.
Among the details raised by Cummings: Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) told NLRB Acting General Counsel Lafe Solomon that if the labor board went ahead and filed a complaint against Boeing, that he would go “full guns a-blazing” on the matter.
Graham told Solomon that Boeing “had no interest” in settling the issue before NLRB issued its formal complaint, according to Cummings.
Read the source story here.
The Washington Post
What can you say about a debate in which one candidate had perhaps the worst moment ever in a presidential debate — Rick Perry’s brain freeze about the third of the three government agencies he wants to eliminate — and he didn’t even give the most embarrassing performance?
No, that would be Herman Cain. Look, he wasn’t going to be the nominee at any point during the cycle, and he certainly wasn’t going to be the nominee after it turned out he was an alleged serial sexual harasser. But after dragging American political rhetoric to a new low, referring to the House Minority Leader and a former speaker as “Princess Nancy,” it’s about time that Cain was called to account for insulting the American people and the political process for the farce that he’s engaging in. Whether it’s not knowing that China has nuclear weapons, or repeatedly botching his own position on abortion, or any of a number of other gaffes, Cain has made Perry look like a well-briefed genius throughout the campaign. And Wednesday night, he was even worse.
Yes, he’s that bad.Read the source story here.
The Guardian
Historic Hurricane-Force Blizzard Pounds Alaska, Climate Change Likely to Worsen Erosion
Anything built from now on that produces carbon will do so for decades, and this "lock-in" effect will be the single factor most likely to produce irreversible climate change, the world's foremost authority on energy economics has found. If this is not rapidly changed within the next five years, the results are likely to be disastrous.
"The door is closing," Fatih Birol, chief economist at the International Energy Agency, said. "I am very worried – if we don't change direction now on how we use energy, we will end up beyond what scientists tell us is the minimum [for safety]. The door will be closed forever."Read the source story here.
At the UW Today, a March to "Defend Education for the 99 Percent" The Stranger
Alex Miller, outreach coordinator for the Washington Bus and chronicler of Seattle's Occupy protests, was at today's "Defend Education for the 99%" march at the UW. He writes:
Around 175-200 folks (although I'm terrible at guessing crowd sizes) marched from Red Square to the Chase Bank and Wells Fargo at the corner of 45th and the Ave. The crowd was mostly students with sizable portions of UAW and SEIU folks as well.Read the source story here.
There were easily 50 cops there, I'd say closer to 70. They were wrapped all around Chase bank and there was a lineup of bike cops in front of them keeping protesters about 20 feet away. They delivered unsigned checks of $2 billion to Wells Fargo and Chase to be signed and directed towards social services. A teach-in with professors on campus is schedule for 4:30 and then a second march at 6pm.
Teamster.org
Ohio Teamsters’ leadership tonight said the defeat of Senate Bill 5 showed that Ohio voters support collective bargaining. SB5 would have stripped more than 350,000 public workers of nearly all their collective bargaining rights.
“On behalf of all Ohio Teamsters and organized labor, the citizens of Ohio sent a message to Gov. Kasich and the Koch brothers, ‘Keep your hands off our rights to collectively bargain’,” said William Lichtenwald, President of Teamsters Local 20 in Cincinnati and the Ohio Conference of Teamsters.
“I hope the politicians in Columbus wake up and start listening to the middle class and looking out for our interests as opposed to corporate interests,” said Randy Verst, president of Teamsters Joint Council 26 in Cincinnati.
“Extreme politicians tried to shift the burden of the economic crisis to the middle class,” said Al Mixon, Secretary-Treasurer of Teamsters Local 507 in Cleveland and a Teamsters International Vice President. “They tried to destroy our basic right to freedom of speech, the freedom to negotiate, the freedom to have a voice in the workplace. SB5 doesn’t just affect labor, it affects everybody. If they take away our basic rights, then they’ll take away everybody’s. Fortunately, Ohioans have come together to defeat this bad legislation. We won’t get fooled again.”Read the source story here.
The Washington Post
Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown, on a conference call just now, offered an extensive interpretation of last night’s results in his state. In so doing, he made a strong case for the liberal vision, emphasizing the public’s instincts for fairness, the need to take active steps to fortify the middle class, and the imperative of battling against class warfare. Class warfare from the top down, that is.
Brown’s interpretation is worth dwelling on at some length, because it suggests a very clear path forward for Democrats heading into 2012.
Brown started out by making a historical point that invests the results with newfound significance: “This was the first time in our nation’s history there was a statewide vote on bargaining rights.”
Brown noted that yesterday’s results, when viewed in a historical context, reveal that the middle class didn’t grow organically — and that it doesn’t have organic staying power, either.
“If you pay attention to history, you know that collective bargaining is perhaps the single biggest reason we have a strong middle class in this country,” he said. “It has provided a path to the middle class for hundreds of thousands of workers.”
“The middle class doesn’t happen on its own — and it doesn’t unravel on its own, either,” he said. “Last night Ohio took a very big step towards rebuilding the middle class.”Read the source story here.
AFL-CIO Now Blog
Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear (D) won a second term Tuesday, burying “a Scott Walker wannabe” under one of the largest landslides in recent Bluegrass State history.
Beshear, who earned the Kentucky State AFL-CIO endorsement, piled up 56 percent of the vote to 35 percent for Republican Senate President David Williams. Independent Gatewood Galbraith finished third with 9 percent.
[...] Meanwhile, five other labor-endorsed Democrats won Tuesday, including Jerry Abramson, the new lieutenant governor. In addition, Attorney Gen. Jack Conway and State Treasurer Todd Hollenbach earned second terms. Also, Alison Lundergan Grimes will be secretary of state and Adam Edelen, state auditor.
Read the source story here.
Teamster Nation
Ohio was a huge victory for workers last night, but voters in Iowa also made history. In a special Senate election, Democrat Liz Mathis soundly defeated anti-worker Republican candidate Cindy Golding by a 56-44 margin. Mathis was all that stood between sanity and the Kochification of Iowa.
With Mathis's win, Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad’s anti-worker agenda will be kept in check by a 26-24 Democratic majority in the state Senate. Democrats will maintain this edge throughout the 2012 legislative session. Republicans had wanted a Golding win to maintain a 25-25 tie and move their anti-worker priorities and lower taxes on corporations.
Read the source story here.
The Stranger
There's only one coherent message that can be ascertained from last night's elections, and it's that America is not willing to follow Republicans down their teabaggy road. An anti-union measure in Ohio didn't pass, and an anti-woman bill that would practically make menstruation an act of manslaughter failed in Mississippi. And in Maine, a GOP-led law that would end that state's Election Day registrations was shut down by voters, too.
This is very relevant to the 2012 race, because nearly every Republican candidate (save for Jon Huntsman) has some sort of anti-union boilerplate—hell, it's written into most of their budget proposals—and they're all stridently anti-abortion. In preparation for the 2012 election, too, Republicans across the country have been hard at work to make it more difficult for people to vote, because when fewer people vote, Republicans win.
In a minor election year, we have a wholesale rejection of the greater Republican agenda, making this a bad sign for the candidates who have pummeled each other in their desperate race to the right. The assumption that Republican candidates have made as they've spoken on the record again and again over the last six months is that America wants to take their country as far to the right as they can—reverting, as much as possible, to a pre-FDR state. Voters are signifying that this is a serious tactical mistake, and they're warning the right that if they don't come back to the real world soon, they'll reject whoever wins the Republican nomination.Read the source story here.
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Think Progress In a week, the GOP will again vote on a Balanced Budget Amendment, the cockamamie economic proposal they have toyed with several times over the last several months, including during the debate over raising the debt ceiling. The vote is part of the final compromise to raise the debt limit, in which President Obama and Senate Democrats promised to hold a vote on such an amendment, despite the fact that such votes have failed numerous times in the past.
Republicans have taken to ignoring the obvious perilous consequences of the amendment even as voices on both sides of the aisle denounce it as the “worst idea in Washington.” The current amendment, former Reagan adviser Bruce Bartlett said, “looks like it was drafted by a couple of interns on the back of a napkin.” Today, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) added to that criticism, releasing a study noting that such an amendment would make future recessions “deeper and longer” and saying that if a BBA had been enacted prior to the 2008 recession, the “effect on the economy” would have been “catastrophic.”
Read the source story here.
The Stand
[...] Meanwhile, here in Washington, powerful corporate interests offered a reminder of the seamy side of politics: that elections can be bought by those who stand to profit from changing our laws. Costco spent a record $23 million to circumvent the State Legislature and privatize liquor sales in Washington. It was especially sad to see the Initiative 1183 ads offer voters the false hope that our state’s schools and public safety services will benefit from new revenue if they voted “yes.” The truth of the matter is that I-1183 does nothing to prevent the devastating state cuts being proposed today. In fact, the hidden costs of increased liquor consumption in Washington state, and false privatization “savings” of replacing good family-wage jobs with low-paid jobs, will make our state’s problems worse not better.
Thankfully, voters saw through the latest snake oil being sold by initiative profiteer Tim Eyman. The defeat of his Initiative 1125 was a recognition that selfish anti-government interests should not be allowed kill jobs and harm our state economy in the pursuit of their ideology. This is a time for Washington leaders to be advancing bold ideas on how to create jobs and pull our state out of its downward economic spiral, not a time to mire our state in transportation – and political – gridlock, and further erode faith in the public sector.
Read the source story here.
AFL-CIO Now Blog
In New Jersey yesterday, 34 graduates of the New Jersey AFL-CIO Labor Candidate School won election to various local and state offices. That brings to 684 the union member/candidate wins since the unique school opened its doors in 1997.
Working family candidates in several closely contested state Senate and Assembly races won their battles and Democrats maintained control of both houses. New Jersey State AFL-CIO President Charles Wowkanech says the election was “a great victory for working families.”
Read the source story here.
The New York Times
Gov. Rick Perry of Texas arrived at the Republican presidential debate here on Wednesday night on a mission to get his candidacy back on track. The first hour passed without incident. The second hour did not.
He emphatically declared that he planned to eliminate three government agencies in Washington. But as he began to explain, he could think of only two.
“Commerce, Education,” Mr. Perry said before pausing for an uncomfortable moment as he looked from side to side, counting on his fingers and flipping through his notes. As his rivals volunteered suggestions, a moderator asked Mr. Perry if he could name the third agency.
“The third one, I can’t,” he finally said, a sad look on his face, after 53 seconds had gone by. “Sorry. Oops.”
For any other candidate, the moment may have been quickly forgotten or easily explained. But for Mr. Perry, whose candidacy has been consistently undercut by his debate performances, the gravity of the matter grew obvious as chuckles in the Republican audience turned to gasps. The lapse reinforced negative stereotypes about his candidacy, a point that was made clear after the debate when he made a rare trip into an adjoining room to face reporters and try to brush away what had happened.
“I’m glad I had my boots on tonight,” Mr. Perry said, “because I sure stepped in it out there.”Read the source story here.
Politico
Concerns about women’s access to contraception contributed to the last-minute defeat of the Mississippi's "personhood" anti-abortion amendment, abortion rights supporters said after Tuesday’s vote.
The amendment, earlier seen as a shoo-in, lost by a 16 point margin in one of the most conservative and anti-abortion states in the country. Its supporters are seeking to get similar “personhood” initiatives on the 2012 ballot in several states, including Nevada, Ohio and Florida.
Opponents of the amendment, which would have given fetuses full rights as persons from the moment of fertilization and could have criminalized forms of birth control that prevent implantation, said it reflected a growing effort by the anti-abortion movement to target reproductive health services beyond abortion. And that, they said, places it out of step with public opinion even in a conservative state like Mississippi.Read the source story here.
- Daily Kos:
Poll: Ohio voters are likely to penalize politicians for Issue 2 support - AFL-CIO Now Blog:
Ohio Results Show Voters Say Focus on Jobs, Not Partisan Attacks - Crooks and Liars:
After Election Defeat, Ohio Gov. Says It's 'Time to Pause' Anti-Union Efforts - The Seattle Times:
Voters kick state out of liquor business - Teamster.org:
Student Transportation Of America Workers Vote 'Teamsters Yes!' - The Stand:
Trumka: ‘It’s a great day for common sense’ in Ohio - Think Progress:
Obama’s SEC Asks Big Banks To Sign ‘Never-Do-It-Again’ Pledges, After Banks Repeatedly Broke Past Promises - Think Progress:
Bank Of America Charges Interest On A $0 Credit Card Balance - We Party Patriots:
Get a What? A Job? 70% of Occupy Wall Streeters are Employed, Compared to 56% of Tea Partiers - The Political Carnival:"VIDEO: Unprovoked assault by police on UC Berkeley students
- Labor Notes:
Ohio Unions Deliver Stunning Defeat to Republicans - Daily Kos:
Lindsey Graham threatened NLRB prior to Boeing complaint - In These Times:
Presidential Commission Recommends Concessions for Railroad Workers - Main Street:
November 8, 2011: The 99 Percent Strike Back - Time Mag. Swampland:
Election 2011: A Victory for the Silent Majorit - Swampland:
Joe Walsh Goes Off on Constituents - The News Tribune:
Liquor board, stores brace for new world - Huffington Post:
Rick Perry Jobs Program Falling Fall Short Of Goals - We Party Patriots:
The Six Largest Banks’ Share of GDP = 64%, Up from 17% in 1995. - The Seattle Times:
Highway overhaul gaining bipartisan momentum - The Washington Post:
How lobbyists make government regulations more burdensome