I am a firm believer in unions. But, for the love of God, their appetites make pigs look like Twiggy.

One night — I think it was on Nightline — I watched one of those sigh-it’s-sad-and-sober and it’s-the-end-of-an-American-way-of-life-sniffle stories about automotive workers being forced to take early retirement. One woman who was interviewed said that it would be a struggle for her to no longer make $60,000 a year as a janitor. A janitor? Who earns $60K? Excuse me? And she gets great health insurance, a pension, and lord only knows how many other perks?

And now President-elect Obama is spending his first days catering and pander-bearing to the labor unions and to the auto industry that is so poorly run it deserves to go out of business.

Then there are those Boeing machinists who just finished off yet another strike on November 1st because, by God, who can get by on this salary?

The average Machinist base wage for the past year was about $54,000, and with overtime about $65,000.

Look at that photo. Do those people look hungry to you? Or like they’ve been sleeping under bridges? One woman had some good ol’ C.S. (that common sense my parents always emphasized):

“I don’t think the strike ever should have happened,” said Sluys. “It’s a dangerous thing to do in this economy.”

No kidding. And now the Democrats and Obama want to end secret ballots in order to FORCE people — through intimidation (JUST LIKE IN THE CAUCUSES!) — to join the piggy unions?

Lots of people NEED unions.

There’s that receptionist at a medical office I go to. She gets minimum wage. I happened to see her working nights at a pizza parlor, and she was so embarrassed that I saw her that she hid in the kitchen until I left.

I felt so badly for her.

I’ve seen how the medical personnel at that office treat her — they’re bossy, condescending, demanding, and rude. They accost her verbally in FRONT of us patients. It’s awful. And for a lousy $8 an hour, so paltry she has to work a second job at night and then pray that no one sees her.

And there are millions of Americans like her.

$60,000 a year?

$54,000 a year?

People like that receptionist I know would be utterly THRILLED to get $30,000 a year.

Shame on those piggy union members.

And shame on the piggy Democrats pocketing all their campaign donations and making THEM the top priority instead of stimulating small businesses, and more.

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P.S. Teacher’s unions need to go, like yesterday. They permit nasty battleaxes to stay on the job who are abusive — emotionally and verbally — to children, and have no business in the classroom. Then school district have to pay huge settlements to get rid of the worst. They dare not fire those who are merely horrible.

It’s dumb.

I’m tired.

So I’m just ranting.

You can rant too! It’s fun! It’s bracing!

OPEN THREAD!!!

The title tells the story:

Then blogger J. Justin Wilson reveals the depressing details:

I just got off the AFL-CIO’s kick-off conference call with Obama. What a tragedy of errors.

First of all, Sen. Obama was about 40 minutes late to the show. You can image how fantastic 40 minutes of Muzak went over. Finally, John Sweeney introduced Obama.

Next …

After rattling off nearly the exact same speech he delivered a few months ago to the AFL-CIO (see above [video]), Obama proceeded to hang up. Click. Just like that.

Someone at the AFL-CIO muttered something like “is that it?” and then we went back to hold music.

A lady came back on and made an excuse, saying Obama’s line was cut off and that he would come back on the call. Minutes pass, and then she came back on and said that Obama had left the building. …

Go to “Stood Up and Hung Up” to view a video and to listen to the actual phone call.

Oh well. I completely understand.

It is such an annoyance to have to talk to those “typical” little people.

:::::

P.S. Originally I described the blog as “pro-labor.” That is not entirely true. However, the facts of the event — backed up with an AUDIO — remain true.

In the nearly two months since Obama became the presumptive nominee, he has tried to present himself as a moderate, edging ever closer to the middle of the road. Fortunately enough, Obama has left a “footprint in the sand”, his voting record. He has one of the most liberal voting records in the United States Senate. Recently, McCain had this to say about Obama’s voting record:

That’s his voting record. All I said was his voting record-and that is more to the left than the announced socialist in the United States Senate, Bernie Sanders of Vermont.

Could he really be farther left than Senator Sanders (D-VT)? Yes his voting record supports his far left liberal leanings, right down to partial birth abortions! The seed of his far left leanings were developed in those summer days post high school, pre-college and a future on the horizon, while he spent days on a Waikiki Beach, with none other than late self professed communist, Frank Marshall Davis. The influence was great as Obama followed in Davis’ footsteps by becoming a Chicago-based community organizer.

His association with Trinity UCC was no mistake either. Reverend Wright spewed forth Marxist after Marxist sermon from the pulpit. He preached Black Liberation Theory as we well know now. Obama sat in that church for 20 years because he saw it as a tool. A tool, where he could affect change, and reach for the presidency he wrote about here as a youth. This what his third grade teacher said about that:

Third-grade teacher Fermina Katarina Sinaga, now 67, has perhaps the most telling story. In an essay about what he wanted to be when he grew up, Obama “wrote he wanted to be president,” Sinaga recalled.

TUCC and Reverend Wright made a wonderful, but scary back drop for Obama’s meteoric rise as a politician.

Now Obama talks about a presidency that will last 8 - 10 years. He says he will accomplish many things in his first term. Among them is the following list from Investor’s Business Daily Editorials:

• “Universal,” “guaranteed” health care.

• “Free” college tuition.

• “Universal national service” (a la Havana).

• “Universal 401(k)s” (in which the government would match contributions made by “low- and moderate-income families”).

• “Free” job training (even for criminals).

• “Wage insurance” (to supplement dislocated union workers’ old income levels).

• “Free” child care and “universal” preschool.

• More subsidized public housing.

• A fatter earned income tax credit for “working poor.”

• And even a Global Poverty Act that amounts to a Marshall Plan for the Third World, first and foremost Africa.

His new New Deal also guarantees a “living wage,” with a $10 minimum wage indexed to inflation; and “fair trade” and “fair labor practices,” with breaks for “patriot employers” who cow-tow to unions, and sticks for “nonpatriot” companies that don’t.

Of course he has more plans to socialize human resource departments at companies. Obama wants to micromanage companies by insisting certain requirements be met, like 7 paid sick days a year. He suggests these mandates without considering the small business person and their company bottom line, a backbone of our country.

Obama certainly appears to be following in his father’s, Barack Hussein Obama, Sr.’s footsteps, who espoused massive taxes on the “rich” and redistribution of wealth”. Obama Sr, even believed in 100% taxation of wealth as long as the government gave the citizens something back they was commensurate with the taxation. More on that here.

With the economy slowing, even in a recession, gas prices high at the pumps, prices rising in every other area of our lives as transportation costs are passed on to us, we can’t afford this type of quiet stealth socialism. Obama seems to think ending the Iraq War will free up billions of dollars for the “big” government but he seems to forget we borrowed money from China to stay the days and months to come in Iraq.

Obama, who appears to not understand that the USA is using a non-existent credit card to fund the war among other things, will with his ever growing socialistic plans further push the economy in the toilet and stall the economy. It is time for Obama to take a course on economy, Economy 101.

Well, not really all of a sudden, it’s just a few days after the AFL-CIO decided to throw in the towel and endorse Obama over Clinton now that Clinton has put her campaign on ice.  And just a few days before Obama is scheduled to appear before the national conventions of both of the major teachers’ unions.  The AFT has recommended its convention meeting next week in Chicago endorse Obama, as has the National Education Association, before which Obama speaks tomorrow, July 5.

When I pointed out at the Edwize Blog sponsored by the United Federation of Teachers, the big New York division of the AFL-CIO affiliated AFT, that Darling-Hammond backs the same key policy proposal (repayment of centuries of “education debt” to people of color) as Bill Ayers, long-time education advocate and co-worker of Obama, and that Ayers and Obama are far from being “casual acquaintances” as Leo Casey of the AFT had contended, Casey replied with the following false claims on the Democratic Left Yahoo group: 

1) that I had painted an “unrecognizable caricature” of Darling-Hammond;

2) that I had contended that the $110 million Chicago Annenberg Challenge that Ayers and Obama ran together for five years was a “political front” for Ayers and his politics;

3) that Obama had only a “quite superficial grasp of what [was] going on” at the Annenberg Challenge the board of which he chaired and was not “involve[d] in the nitty-gritty” of the five year long project and that he was only “lending..his name and his ability to make a couple of telephone calls to get things done.”

4) that I contended there was “some sort of sinister hidden connection between Obama and Ayers”

None of this is true and Casey provides no documentation at all for any of his specious contentions.  I wrote the following reply to both Democratic Left and Edwize, but so far neither site has “approved” my posts (pretty remarkable for Democratic Left, a site that considers itself an opponent of authoritarianism in modern political life) so I am putting up a copy here:

Well, at least Leo now seems to be admitting that Ayers and Obama were more than “casual acquaintances” as he asserted on Democratic Left and on Edwize.

So now on to the second line of defense.

Frankly, I am not sure what that is because I only assert two things: Obama and Ayers have a longstanding political relationship - which is clear from the public record; and two, Ayers and Darling-Hammond are now advocating a race-based solution to education - the repayment of centuries of “education debt” to people of color or, in other words, reparations. Nothing you have said contradicts this.

I did not paint a portrait of Darling-Hammond or caricature her as you have speciously asserted. I only stated the facts as supported by her public record. She and I have exchanged emails on this issue and this is reported on my blog. She herself has never suggested that I have made any factually incorrect statements about her.

I never suggested the Annenberg Challenge which Obama and Ayers ran together, though not alone, was a political front as you, again without substantiation, contend I did. In fact, Ayers was quite open about his political goals and those goals run right through the lengthy grant proposal, the annual reports of the organization and its board minutes, which I have reviewed (though some board minutes were not provided me).

Some in Chicago shared those goals. Some understood the background of his views and others did not. I view the local schools councils as an attempt to create a new center of power that was aimed at the power of the teachers’ union. They were set up in the wake of an unpopular teachers strike in 1987. Obama and Ayers were active in the lobbying effort for that “radical” reform, as Ayers called it in his proposal to the Annenberg Foundation.

I do not consider such local councils a democratic step forward for school progress, but rather as a potential base of power for those with a different kind of agenda, based on racial politics and “social justice” teaching. A genuine democratic alternative would be built, as Dorothy Shipps has written, in district wide assemblies elected by the public that are transparent and accountable.

I have not imputed any particular agenda to Ayers, Obama or Darling-Hammond, other than to note that Ayers and Darling-Hammond support repayment of the education debt as a top priority. Obama has not stated what his views are on this very clearly though he indicated sympathy for the idea while campaigning in South Carolina. 

Given the long and close ties between Ayers and Obama and the professional ties among education debt repayment advocates Ayers, Darling-Hammond and Ladson-Billings, it is reasonable to ask if this kind of race-based approach to educational problems is going to be part of the Obama presidency.

Obama was not as you contend an elected official when he first worked on school reform with Ayers in the late 80s, nor was he even yet a candidate when he became Chairman of the board of the Annenberg Challenge in 1995. He was a relative unknown and quite a junior person at that point, just two years out of law school when Ayers submitted the grant proposal, with only a voter registration drive to his credit since leaving Harvard.

Thus, I think it is a fair question to ask why Obama would have been chosen to head up such a prestigious effort as the $110 million Annenberg Challenge. I think Ayers backed him because he knew he could rely on Obama to support Ayers’ agenda of propping up the troubling and troubled local schools councils.

And, in fact, the record of the Challenge - its annual reports, mid term reports and board minutes - indicate that that is precisely what happened. Even when concerns were raised by a business sector representative on the board that the councils represented a potential “political threat” to school principals (and unions??) Obama backed Ayers in pushing money into the school council election process.

Finally, when you suggest that Obama played no significant role in directing the Challenge, are you suggesting that as chairman of the board of a major non profit corporation in the state of Illinois, that Obama had a hands-off attitude? That he was NOT aware that the Challenge was signing off on, for example, a $175,000 grant to Ayers buddy Mike Klonsky, as they did in 1995 for the Small Schools Workshop Klonsky was recruited to head up by Ayers? That suggests to me a problem of fiduciary duty. Quite unlikely for a Harvard Law School graduate - and frankly, more worrying for me about Obama if true.

No, I think Obama knew exactly what he was doing when he voted as a board member to approve the disbursement of millions of dollars in order to intervene in the Chicago school wars. And so did Ayers. They were using each other for advancement of their careers and their shared political perspective on education policy. 

The Challenge ended in 2001. It is certainly reasonable for voters to ask seven years later for Obama to explain the relationship and Ayers’ influence on his approach to education policy.



While no one could, or should, impute to Obama any support for the terroristic activity of Ayers, Dohrn and others, there is an important connection between Ayers’ politics then and his approach to education policy today: Ayers and the Weather Underground promoted a politics built around the absurd idea of “white supremacy,” which Ayers calls even today the “monster in the room” at the heart of American life. 

This was linked to another idea that was widely held among the maoist elements that took hold in the early 70s in the US: that American workers and their unions were part of a giant labor aristocracy that exploited workers of the south, the so-called Third World. Inside the US, the Weather Underground argued that global form of “unequal exchange” was reproduced in the relationship between white and black workers.

Thus, when an idea like repayment of centuries of accumulated “education debt” is proposed as the top priority of the next federal government as it has been by Darling-Hammond, Ladson-Billings and Bill Ayers, all of whom have links to Obama it is reasonable to ask what Obama’s view are on such a critical issue. The presumptive nominee has yet to explain how it is that his education advisor can promote such an idea and yet he remains silent on it.

I would think the members of America’s teachers’ unions would like to know the answers to such questions as well before they decide how to approach the upcoming elections.

::::::

My most recent previous article here: “How is it under that bus, Comrade Klonsky?”

Read my other posts here at No Quarter.

About me: I am a law professor and political scientist on the faculty of Santa Clara University School of Law in Santa Clara, California, which is in the heart of Silicon Valley. I teach courses on the global capital markets, the international economy, corporate governance and international labor and human rights. Prior to joining the faculty I was in private legal practice in New York and in Palo Alto. I also have an extensive background in the labor movement and advise a wide range of unions, workers and institutional investors on financial and legal issues. This website is an independent project and hence is my responsibility and it is not affiliated in any other way with the law school or Santa Clara University.

However, shortly, we will reveal additional details about the membership of the Chicago-headquartered billionaire Crown family on the board of directors of Northern Trust, which granted the Obamas their advantageous loan. Crown family members have been major donors to Obama’s campaigns, and serve on his elite fundraisers group for his presidential campaign.

Among the most disturbing stories of Obama’s many efforts to give political and legislative advantages to the Crown family’s holdings, Senate candidate Barack Obama promised Illinois’ Maytag workers he’d work to protect their jobs — and took campaign donations from the beleagured workers — but then met with Lester Crown, on the board of directors of Maytag, to take his campaign donations. Crown later told the press that Obama never raised the workers’ fate with him. The machinists lost their jobs to Maytag’s Mexican plant. From my story, “Machinists’ Union TELLS It Like It Is ,” quoting a must-read article at TradingMarkets.com, “Obama’s fundraising, rhetoric collide: Union says senator did little to save jobs“:

Obama had a special connection to Maytag: Lester Crown, one of the company’s directors and biggest investors whose family, records show, has raised tens of thousands of dollars for Obama’s campaigns since 2003. But Crown says Obama never raised the fate of the Galesburg plant with him, …

These are the ties that bind:

Barack Obama plays the “populist” routine in his campaign speeches, but he delivers to his billionaire benefactors, not the common working stiffs who are losing their jobs and their homes.

Now for a quick round-up of bloggers’ reports on the Obamas’ “sweetheart” home mortgage from Northern Trust, on whose board a billionaire member of the Crown family sits:

Hot Air blog:

Barack Obama’s home loan has more questionable aspects than just the Tony Rezko connections, according to the Washington Post. After ten years as a prominent Chicago politician and in his first year in the Senate, Obama got a $1.32 million loan below market rates without paying the normal extra fees — a rate which saved him $300 per month on his mortgage. Obama managed to do this despite the extraordinarily large mortgage and his lack of history with the lender:

The couple wanted to step up from their $415,000 condo. They chose a house with six bedrooms, four fireplaces, a four-car garage and 5 1/2 baths, including a double steam shower and a marble powder room. It had a wine cellar, a music room, a library, a solarium, beveled glass doors and a granite-floored kitchen.

The Obamas had no prior relationship with Northern Trust when they applied for the loan. They received an oral commitment on Feb. 4, 2005, and locked in the rate of 5.625 percent, the campaign said. On that date, HSH data show, the average rate in Chicago for a 30-year fixed-rate jumbo loan with no points was about 5.94 percent. [...]

Thus far, no evidence has arisen that the Obamas took advantage of a “Friends of Angelo” program, as Chris Dodd and Kent Conrad did with Countrywide. However, the difference in rates — especially for such a large mortgage — gives the appearance of a political favor, at the very least. Combined with the Tony Rezko’s financial involvement in the deal, at a time when Rezko had little income other than that from a shady Iraqi financier and fraudster, and it looks as though people in Chicago really wanted to see the Obamas move into that house.

Northern Trust has helped out Barack Obama in other ways … their employees have donated $71,000 to Obama’s campaigns. When Obama rejected public financing, were these donations the kind that he insisted represented the moral equivalent of the system he championed until he found that he could outraise and outspend his opponents?

Obama has spent plenty of time castigating credit lenders in this campaign for their capricious practices and bad management. He has rung the populist bell. …

The Swamp, Chicago Tribune’s blog — which generally downplays the importance of the WaPo story:

[C]oming as it does after all the disclosures of the erstwhile Friends of Angelo program at Countrywide Financial which apparently benefited some members of Congress and at least one former member of the Obama campaign team, James Johnson, who headed up Obama’s vice presidential selection process until stepping down because of the scandalette, this story about Obama’s mortgage is certainly worth knowing about.

Redstate.com blog:

Obama, caught off-guard about Johnson’s sweetheart Countrywide deals, initially tried to defend his vice presidential talent scout. But, Obama threw Johnson, under the bus, just a few days after Johnson’s Countrywide sweetheart deals came to light.

Obama is spinning his sweetheart mortgage deal as the lender competing for Obama’s business:

Obama spokesman Ben LaBolt said the rate was adjusted to account for a competing offer from another lender and other factors.

[. . .]

The Obama campaign called the rate “consistent with Northern Trust policies, and it reflected the base rate set for that period discounted to address the competition for the account and other opportunities, such as personal financial services, that the relationship would bring to Northern Trust.”

It’s those “other factors” and “other opportunities” that worry me. Those “factors” and “opportunities” could be anything, including special access to a grateful U.S. Senator or a President.

Presidents, and U.S. Senators, need to avoid the appearance of impropriety. As with Obama’s relationship with the crook, Antoin Rezko, Obama’s judgment once again failed both Obama and America.

“I have always opposed NAFTA.”

“I don’t think NAFTA has been good for America - and I never have.”

“Ten years after NAFTA passed, Senator Clinton said it was good for America. … Well, I don’t think NAFTA has been good for America - and I never have.” –Senator Barack Obama in Toledo, Ohio on February 24, 2008

Now in an interview with Fortune magazine out on Monday June 23, 2008, the very junior Senator from Illinois wants us to believe that was just rhetoric. He really didn’t mean what he said.

“Sometimes during campaigns the rhetoric gets overheated and amplified,” –Senator Barack Obama in a Fortune magazine interview to be published Monday June 23, 2008

Never mind the heat of battle rhetoric, how about the more reflective printed word?

In his own flyer, Obama is quoted as saying that “one million jobs have been lost because of NAFTA, including nearly 50,000 jobs here in Ohio.” But those figures come from an anti-NAFTA source, the Economic Policy Institute written by Robert Schott. Other economists have criticized that report’s methodology and its conclusions as having overstated the impact of NAFTA, rather they point to a lax enforcement of regulations that have permitted an exodus of American manufacturing jobs and primarily to China, Korea and other East Asian countries not to Mexico or Canada. Other economic studies have concluded the trade deal resulted in much smaller job losses or even a small net gain. Here’s what the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace has to say on NAFTA’s effects on American jobs:

NAFTA’s net effect on jobs in the United States has been minuscule, given the size of the U.S. economy and the importance of other trading partners.

The best models to date suggest that NAFTA has caused either no net change in employment or a very small net gain of jobs.

And that’s now after seven years of the Bush Administration failing to enforce regulations that shed American jobs. Under President Clinton, it was a far different story. Here’s Professor of Economics Brad Delong (an Obama supporter, I might add) of the University of California at Berkeley writing in July 2000:

It is time to conclude that NAFTA–the North American Free Trade Agreement–is a success.

His article largely is about the impact of NAFTA on Mexico but he finds that economic benefits accrued to all members of the trade pact. However, he does note the following:

Far from shrinking, employment in autos and auto parts in America has grown by more than twenty percent since the beginning of NAFTA. Far from falling, hourly earnings of U.S. automotive workers have risen since the beginning of NAFTA.

Even as recently as February 2008, just about the time Obama was making his comments in Toledo on how he had always opposed NAFTA, Professor Delong was writing that NAFTA was not the cause of Ohio’s woes.

And, of course, if we go back to his Senate campaign of 2004, Obama said this:

“The United States benefits enormously from exports under the WTO and NAFTA.” quoted in an article by Ron Ingram, Obama, Keyes Court Farmers, Decatur Herald & Review, on September 9, 2004. Source: Lexis/Nexis.

So he was for it before he was against before he was for it. Sound familiar? And so much for the “I never have” part of his argument.

And one more point, I may not remember what I had for lunch earlier this week, but I do remember what I have said over the years, maybe because I have core convictions and that is just it with Senator Obama, he has no core convictions. It’s always what is politically expedient for him at the time.

More on this topic and perhaps others once the full interview is out. He can excuse his “rhetoric” as a slip of the tongue but the printed word is a little harder to dismiss.

_________

From my blog, By The Fault.

Effective May 1, 2008, as matter of principle, I am resigning from CSEA as President of Chapter 645 and as a CSEA union member.

My reason for this principled decision is because I can’t support or work on behalf of a union that allows and condones bigotry and racist remarks by Keynote Speakers and does not publically and forcefully correct the error when brought to the Presidents’ attention.

On Tuesday April 29th, a paid CSEA keynote speaker by the name of Lee Mun Wah, gave a presentation to the assembled members of CSEA. Throughout Lee Mun Wah’s presentation of “multi-cultural diversity,” he repeatedly blamed European white males for the suffering of others.

In addition, I understand CSEA has not endorsed a presidential candidate, but permitted the Keynote Speaker, Lee Mun Wah, to use the CSEA platform to, by his words, endorse a presidential candidate, Senator Barack Obama, defending hate speech by Senator Barak Obama’s spiritual mentor Reverend Wright, while denigrating the other two candidates.

I, sir, am a white male of Scottish heritage and personally had absolutely nothing to do with the imprisoning of Japanese American’s during WWII, or the death of Lee Mun Wah’s mother, or ANY of the racist examples he put forth. I will not be associated with an organization that permits the use of “white guilt,” calls me a bigot or ANY other form of racism and does nothing to address it.

I cannot stand by while a photo of the jet crashing into the World Trade Towers is used for marketing purposes in describing a “stereotypical” group of younger people. Among the many innocent lives to perish, I had friends die in that building that day, on 9/11/01. How dare CSEA use that tragic event, in the manner it did.

Nor can I condone, when a training “skit” is used to depict a registered Republican and a member of CSEA listening to the members of the audience laugh in condemnation, and so such disrespect. It saddens me that the CSEA leadership shows the same indifference, lack of respect and in-sensitivity for CSEA members,. that Lee Mun Wah showed. I expressed my views to CSEA leadership and was ignored. Your lack of response to my serious concerns is deplorable.

In closing, I held the belief that CSEA’s mission was about the workplace rights and well being of its union members. That belief has been damaged beyond repair because of your indifference to my real concerns, and I will make it my duty to alert media outlets that CSEA is more interested in multi-cultural racism and citizenship for illegal aliens, then the welfare of its own members.

I was and will be, deeply offended by Lee Mun Wah remarks and CSEA’s lack of response in repudiating them.

Respectfully,

Adrian Gillies

UPDATE: Here’s a rumor I just heard. “The Obama people are handing out official Democratic party literature with Obama stickers stuck inside telling people that the democratic party has endorsed Obama.” (I’ve heard numerous similar reports during elections in other states, so this does not surprise me. I hope it’s not true, but it’s from a good source and it’s known behavior by Obamabots.)

HERE IS HRC’s LEGAL HOTLINE: 877-472-9460
______________________________

Hillary Will Stand Up for Your Jobs, Your Future

INDIANAPOLIS, IN- Hoosiers for Hillary today launched a new 30-second television ad emphasizing that Hillary will fight to turn the economy around and create new jobs across Indiana. …

The ad features footage of Hillary speaking to Hoosiers at a “Solutions for the American Economy” town hall at Ben Davis High School in Indianapolis on March 29. Throughout her campaign in the Hoosier State, Hillary has proposed real solutions to the economic challenges that Hoosiers are facing and made the case that she is the jobs and economy candidate for Indiana.

As President, Hillary will fight for “your jobs, your health care, your futures.” The spot, titled “Jobs,” will air throughout Indiana.

To watch the ad, click here:

Following is a script for the ad.

Jobs
:30

Hillary Clinton: I think this election, particularly here in Indiana is about jobs, jobs, jobs, jobs.

Announcer: She’s ready to turn our economy around, stop tax breaks for companies that move jobs overseas, fix unfair trade deals, stand up to China, create five million new jobs.

Hillary Clinton: The next president has to begin putting the American people first. Your jobs, your health care, your futures.

I’m Hillary Clinton and I approved this message.

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

TEXT RE UPDATE #2:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 22, 2008

Contact: Press Office, 703-875-1271
press@hillaryclinton.com

Statement from Hillary Clinton on Equal Pay Day

“Equal Pay Day, the day that women’s wages catch up with our male counterparts from the previous year, reminds us that while Americans have made great strides towards equality, we still face important challenges.

“Even forty years after the Equal Pay Act was signed into law, women only receive .77 cents for every dollar men earn, and the gap is significantly more for women of color. In Pennsylvania, women who work full time earn 74.8 percent of what men earn. In Indiana, its 72.6, and in North Carolina women earn 79.7 to each dollar earned by men. On average, families forfeit $4,000 a year because women don’t receive equal pay for equal work. I am a proud sponsor of the Paycheck Fairness Act, which will toughen penalties in enforcing the provisions of the Equal Pay Act and help realize the promise of pay equity.

“There are heroines standing up for equal pay for equal work. Lilly Ledbetter, whose years of pay discrimination were upheld by the Supreme Court because she did not file a lawsuit before she had evidence of the discrimination, inspired me and my colleagues to introduce legislation to ensure that cases like hers are decided on the merits not on technicalities.

“As the voters in Pennsylvania go to the polls today, the wage gap is a stark reminder of what is at stake in this election. As President, I will continue to work for pay equity because it’s not a woman’s issue, it is a fairness issue and it is a family issue.”

###

In this just-released ad, Hillary argues for protecting American jobs that directly impact our nation’s defense — rather than outsourcing to the Chinese:

Hoosiers for Hillary today launched a new 30-second television ad highlighting Hillary’s plans to protect American defense manufacturing jobs from being sent overseas. The ad features former employees of Magnaquench who lost their jobs along with more than 200 Hoosiers when the company closed its Indiana plant and shipped production of high-performance magnets used for the U.S. military’s “smart bombs” to China.

As President, Hillary will fight to keep the nation’s defense jobs here at home, because “American workers should build America’s defense.” The spot, titled “Closed,” will air throughout Indiana.

And here is the script:

Hillary Clinton: Right here over 200 Hoosiers built parts that guided our military’s smart bombs to their targets.

They were good jobs, but now, they’re gone to China.

And now America’s defense relies on Chinese spare parts.

George Bush could have stopped it, but he didn’t.

As your president, I will fight to keep good jobs here, and to turn this economy around.

I’m Hillary Clinton and I approve this message because American workers should build America’s defense.

Right on, sister.

::::::::::::::::::::

P.S. I don’t like the idea of the Chinese making components in the prescription drugs I take. I want AMERICAN WORKERS to make my vital prescriptions.

A DNC picket line

They’re complaining that the DNC’s refusal to seat Florida and Michigan delegates will prevent dozens of union members who are delegates from attending the convention, and they want DNC Chairman Howard Dean to resolve the dispute.

And being realistic, the unions are comparing the DNC 48 state strategy to something union members everywhere fully understand: A Lock Out.

“We’re getting locked out,” said Williams as he and the other union members picketed the DNC. Williams estimated that as many as a dozen building trade union members, and 30 union members overall, would be part of the Florida contingent to the Democratic convention.

The only trouble I see with this analogy is that it is the DNC that has gone on strike. They are no longer working for all Americans. The DNC message is clear: When it comes to expanding Democratic prosperity nationwide, Florida and Michigan need not apply.

UPDATE: A very special thanks to Birgit for bringing this to my attention.

Fla., Mich. Construction Workers First Picket, Then Meet With D

After the meeting with DNC Executive Director Tom McMahon and Political Director David Boundy, several of the picketers said they appreciated the time and attention, but remained unsatisfied with what they were being told.

Mike Williams, president of the Florida Building & Construction Trades Council, was similarly disappointed.

“Their response was basically that they are still in the mode of trying to get something done,” said Williams.” “Frankly they did not have any more to tell us than the feel-good press releases of (DNC Chairman Howard) Dean and the congressional delegation.”