tagged w/ AFLCIO
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Andy Richards on our Field Communications staff describes the eight signs to look for to see if your governor is hooked on the Kochs.
The addiction of governors across the country to the Koch brothers’ agenda seems to be growing stronger every day. Here are some warning signs your governor might have a Koch problem:
1. Are they planning on attending the upcoming Koch brothers invitation-only strategy session in ritzy Vail, Colorado?
Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell has already confirmed his attendance. Just because your governor hasn’t announced his or her attendance doesn’t mean he or she is not planning on going. The Koch brothers hold biannual seminars but like to keep their strategy sessions secret so they don’t out their followers. If you have the opportunity, ask them!
2. Did your governor support attacks on collective bargaining rights for public service workers?
The Koch brothers’ front group, Americans for Prosperity, pushed attacks on the collective bargaining rights of firefighters, teachers, nurses, police officers and other public service workers in Wisconsin and Ohio and other states. During the Wisconsin struggle, Gov. Scott Walker was recorded taking a call from a prank caller he thought was David Koch and openly discussed the assault on working families.
3. Is your governor pushing massive tax breaks that would benefit the Koch brothers and other corporate cronies?
The Koch brothers fought hard for the Bush tax cuts to continue in December but they also took their fight for tax breaks for the rich to their Koch-addicted governors. In Ohio, Gov. John Kasich taped a personal thank you video for Americans for Prosperity for the group’s work pushing a repeal of the estate tax, which would only benefit the rich in Ohio.
4. Was your governor working to destroy environmental standards that would pay for their Koch addiction?
The Koch brothers—who own stakes in companies that purchase oil, ethanol and toxic chemicals—have long advocated against environmental standards and regulations in order to enrich themselves. Now, they are using their connections to governors like Scott Walker, John Kasich and Michigan Gov. John Snyder to push through their agenda to destroy policies that keep our neighborhoods free of pollution and water safe to drink.
5. Is your governor pushing privatization of schemes that would benefit the Koch brothers?
As collateral to satisfy their Koch addiction, many governors are handing over public assets and services to companies the Koch brothers have a stake in. The Wisconsin budget repair bill included language that was a blatant handout to Koch Industries.
6. Has your governor been behind efforts to suppress the vote and disenfranchise voters?
In order to maintain their stranglehold over governors and other legislators, the Koch brothers and their front group American for Prosperity have worked to get bills passed that would disenfranchise millions of voters across the country. In North Carolina, Americans for Prosperity bused in people to support a voter ID bill.
7. Does your governor and state legislators operate in secrecy and change the rules of the game to push their agenda?
One of the egregious examples of the Koch brothers influence in silencing democracy and allowing governors to operate in secrecy is Michigan’s emergency manager law. This law allows Gov. Rick Snyder to appoint an emergency manager to rule over cities and void decisions elected officials have made in the past. The Mackinac Center for Public Policy, which is founded through contributions from the Koch brothers, has been advocating for an emergency manager law since 2005.
8. Does your governor have a debt to pay to the Koch brothers after accepting money from them in the last election?
Based on numbers from the National Institute on Money in State Politics, the Koch brothers gave more than $600,000 to candidates in 2010 alone.
http://blog.aflcio.org/2011/06/24/8-signs-your-governor-has-a-koch-problem/Andy Richards on our Field Communications staff describes the eight signs to look for... more
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Now, I never aim to inspire defeatism, but today I aim to inspire disillusionment, which is a very different thing. I think we can all agree it’s a good thing to be without illusion, and right now there are far too many of us who believe in this illusion that the folks at the top got their through legitimate means, and maintain their position through legitimate means, that The Man’s game is a fair one.
The Man? Yeah. Normally, I don’t like abstractions like this, but for the sake of understanding our economic situation, I find it’s easier to understand if we lump the so called “captains of industry” together into one entity. If we lump the Wall Street Banks, the Globalist Chemical Companies, the Globalist Factory Farms, the Military Industrial Complex, everything that isn’t Labor, into one entity. Because it really is, us versus them.
Right now we’ve got a Republican President who is pretending to be a Democrat, and we’ve got a Republican Party who is trying to send our nation back to the time of Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle.” We had a regressive corporate shill in Clinton who totally fucked working people of America over with NAFTA and the WTO. We had regressive corporate shills in GW Bush and Reagan who busted unions and rolled back labor protections, environmental protections, consumer safety protections, all in the name of the fuckers at the top making shit loads of money while you die of cancer because of their pollution in your air, water and soil.
An illusion we need to dispense with is that we all share equally in our nation's prosperity, that a rising tide lifts all boats, as it were.
Truth is, as the rich get richer, we get poorer, which is clearly demonstrated by this chart you can view over at StateOfWorkingAmerica.org
The lower 90% of Americans, by income bracket, have actually seen their mean wages decline since 1977, while the top 1% by income bracket, have seen their income balloon wildly, seeing their already absurdly high income triple, while our income has declined. We’re working more today, for less money.
Another illusion is that most people you know are middle class. This is bullshit, pure and simple.
Most people who think that they are middle class are actually working poor, and hover just above the poverty line.
And to the Union Labor in WI, who is saying publicly that they’re willing to negotiate all their benefits away... This isn’t a time to be negotiating. This is a time to get aggressive. Shit is getting serious, people are losing their homes, the whole fucking economic system is collapsing, and people are suffering. This is the time to go for the whole goddamn cake.
Why? Well, there’s something you should know:
It was never in the plans for you to make any money, to make anything of yourself.
It was never in the plans for anybody but the rich, the REALLY rich, to get ahead in life.
That is an illusion started with the Horatio Algers stories of rags to riches. We love these stories here in America. They show real life examples once and a while as fluff peices on the nightly news. But these cases are extreme statistical outliers, you’re more likely to get rich playing the lotto than by working hard and keeping your head down. It doesn’t matter that it’s never going to fucking happen to you. The Rags to Riches story still a cornerstone of the American Dream. But Horatio Algers wrote fiction, and dreams are fantasies experienced while asleep.
You are poor. How do I know? I don’t. But by pure statistics alone, I’m certain you are. You might be in denial about this, but the truth remains, you’re poor.
You’re just one severe illness away from being homeless, and losing everything, but maybe you don’t know it. There are middle class people, people with insurance, who get cancer, cap out on their claims, lose everything, and die homeless. And with cancer rates rising every passing year, this is lottery game you’re far more likely to win.
Unless things begin to change, and I mean REALLY CHANGE, you're going to be poor FOREVER, too. And your kids are going to be poor. My generation is the first generation that will do worse than their parents. Not because we’re lazy, but because the free-market economic system is collapsing in on us, and we’re being forced to take shittier jobs, without union protection, without benefits, with lower wages. Thanks to NAFTA and the WTO, my generation has to compete with children in China who are literally working for rice. We have to compete with workers in Mexico who get paid 7 cents and hour. Unless we change things, we’re going to keep getting poorer and poorer.
When you get poorer, the rich get even richer.
How? That’s just the rules of the game. The game called “Free Market Capitalism.”
The Super Rich, the parasites down on Wall Street, they own the whole goddamn Monopoly game. They own the playing board, they own the shoe and the thimble and the scottish terrier, they own the dice, and they own the money. They are The Man. We all play by their rules. Don’t beleive me? Have you checked your credit score lately? Oh, it doesn’t look so good does it. Maybe that’s because you have too much credit card debt. Or not enough credit card debt. Or maybe you don’t pay your statements off fast enough. Or maybe you pay your balance off too fast. Or maybe it’s just all just fucking bullshit set up by the bankers on Wall Street to control your spending habits so they can steal even more of your goddamn money by making interest off of your debt.
So, What are the rules?
The rules go like this: you work for them your whole life, give up every waking moment to earn that money that you so desperately need to stay alive, and then when you get it, you pay rent back to your capitalist master for permission to keep living. So that you can keep living to do what? To keep working, until you get too old to work and become either social securities problem, or if social security is gone by then, you become your kids problem. And if your kids can’t support you because they’re competing against workers in Mexico who get 7 cents an hour, then you end up on the street curb with the rest of the trash that nobody wants.
You’re a fool to think that the money you earn is ever really yours. That money is owned by The Man, and he’s only lending it to you temporarily, so that you THINK you’re making progress. They’ll take it back from you soon enough. And no I’m not talking about taxes. The Man gives you just enough of their money so that you stay just happy enough, or just confused enough, that you don’t fully realize you’re being totally fucked every moment of your life.
Every breath you take, they are snatching their money back from you. You want to buy food so you don’t starve to death, you pay The Man. You pay Kraft Foods, Inc and you pay Con Agra and you pay Monsanto. You can’t get to your job by public transport so you have to buy a car. You get your loan to buy your from The Man.
The Man charges you interest on this new debt you just created, and The Man immediately begins to trade your debt with his buddies, as if it were money.
If time is money, it stands to reason that money is time, and when you are in debt, you owe your time on this earth to the Man. When the man is trading your debt like money, what he’s really doing is trading your life away. He is selling derivatives on his ownership of your every breath. He’s trading in futures of YOU, with the implicit guarantee that you’ll keep slaving your sorry ass to the bone so that The Man can turn more profits, because you promised to give The Man back all the money he just gave you and then some.
So now you’re working for The Man for free. How does it feel to be a slave? Shut up, go watch TV. Don’t talk politics. How dare you question America, the greatest best country on earth that god ever gave to man? Gave to man? Or gave to The Man?Now, I never aim to inspire defeatism, but today I aim to inspire disillusionment,... more
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asherp
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Right now in Wisconsin their Koch Brother funded, dick-wad Governor is trying to strip public employees the right to organize. What’s hidden behind the awesome demonstration in which labor has occupied the capitol building, is the fact that the labor groups have conceded to every budgetary demand, except losing their right to organize. Gov Walker won’t budge, proving that this is about one thing and one thing only: Union busting. And any attack on unions should be viewed as a full-on assault on the middle class.
This is class warfare motherfuckers.
America, we’ve been so scared shitless, and so willing to compromise away everything that we have, we’ve got nothing left to bargain with and so now begging just to hold on to our last shred of dignity. And even then we’re trying now to parse that last shred into slivers and use them as bargaining chips. We have been so passive, that we have allowed all the gains won by the labor movements of the 1920s and 30s, the socialists of the midwest, and the wobblies and the communists during the 1940s... all of it to be taken away.
Our forefathers in the labor movement must be rolling in their graves.
They were beaten, shot at, and died for your right to a 40 hour week.
They were beaten, shot at, and died for your right to a weekend.
They were beaten, shot at, and died for your right to organize.
They were beaten, shot at, and died for your right to overtime pay.
They were beaten, shot at, and died for your right to safe workplace conditions.
These are all things that we take for granted. But to get even these little consolations, they had to be beaten, shot at and killed.Right now in Wisconsin their Koch Brother funded, dick-wad Governor is trying to strip... more
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1 year ago
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A sharply divided federal appeals court has exposed retail giant Wal-Mart to billions of dollars in legal damages after it ruled that a massive class action lawsuit alleging gender discrimination over pay for female workers can go to trial.A sharply divided federal appeals court has exposed retail giant Wal-Mart to billions... more
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Several thousand demonstrators marched through the New York financial district this past week in a protest led by labor unions. They said Wall Street's biggest banks must account for record profits while average Americans still suffer financially.Several thousand demonstrators marched through the New York financial district this... more
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Unions and liberal groups are dismissing Democratic Sen. Harry Reid’s $15 billion jobs bill as puny while calling for larger stimulus measures.Unions and liberal groups are dismissing Democratic Sen. Harry Reid’s $15... more
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