I've been following this story for a while now, and perhaps I missed a diary about it on Daily Kos. Regardless, I still feel it is important enough to highlight here, since the Labor Movement in our nation, has been at the heart and the soul of the Democratic Party for just about ever.
I honestly feel that after what has happened in Wisconsin, and Ohio, and other states that the Labor Movement has been more than patient with President Obama and our own party.
Richard Trumka has now made it very clear, and I am glad to see that he has indeed 'fired a warning shot over the 2012 election,' for President Obama and the Democrats (Blue Dogs and all). As my dad used to say: 'Shit or get off the pot.'
ABC News' Devin Dwyer reports: AFL-CIO chief Richard Trumka, who heads of one of the nation's most powerful labor unions, today called current state and federal budget proposals a "despicable canvass of cruelty" and warned of consequences for politicians who even indirectly support them.
"It doesn't matter if candidates and parties are controlling the wrecking ball or simply standing aside," said Trumka in an address at the National Press Club. "The outcome is the same either way."
"If leaders aren't blocking the wrecking ball and advancing working families' interests, working people will not support them. This is where our focus will be -- now, in 2012, and beyond," he said, a message aimed at Democrats and President Obama.
http://blogs.abcnews.com/...
That last paragraph is about as down to earth as one can get in these supposed times of 'shared sacrifice and austerity,' and I'm glad to hear Trumka, letting all the Democratic Party leaders know:
Where in the hell are your comfortable pair of shoes, and why simply 'standing aside,' as he says, is not good enough, not nearly good enough. The moral sin of 'omission,' equates to me in my own mind of that statement that says:
All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.
Edmund Burke
As far as I'm concerned, it is about time Trumka made it very clear to our party leaders where he stands on this issue. That is why in Europe, the Labor Parties over there, have indeed created their own political movements and elected those same officials into government as divergent parties of the third and sometimes fourth class.
I say that it is well past the time for Trumka to get very serious about supporting our current and failed two party system. Go Richard!!!!! Put it down and make them face the 'wrecking ball,' that was created by Wall St./the Banks that have duly infiltrated both parties, and destroyed our national economy.
Not that long ago Trumka and the Unions did a huge march in New York City on Wall Street, and the theme was: Wall St., You Broke it, You Fix it.
And that is where the rubber meets the road now in our nation, and all over the world. I was not surprised at all to see the great uprising of the youth in Spain today on the news, as the IMF, is not getting ready to bail out Portugal, and Greece is going down quickly. The bigger picture is that all of this is deeply connected to the same Middle East uprising from Egypt and across the board, is gathering speed of those that are indeed, sick and tired of being sick and tired, of the top one percent of the world's richest, getting away with economic terrorism.
That is exactly why the Republicans are going down in smoke in their own Town Halls when even the worst of the ill informed Republican/Independent voters are standing up and saying, finally: 'No, enough is enough so get your fucking hands off my Medicare and Social Security.'
It is way past time on giving either President Obama, or any other Democrats a pass on this issue. And please, no excuses. Get over it. Here was his promise:
This entire world wide 'austerity movement,' is a huge, huge FAIL, all the way around.
Of course, the one thing we don't want to face is the fact that 'we got robbed, and we got robbed big time.' Or worse than that, is to not understand that the now, the Imperial Presidency, of allowing our own sitting Democrat to continue bombing other nations (as in Libya) without Congressional approval, will indeed be held and continued by any other President, including any insane Republican that could become elected in our nation due to the reactionary party politics that are going on in our nation, as a direct result of two sets of laws that are now fully in place: One for the rich, and one for the poor.
The total destruction in our own nation of our morality and most basic tenets of our laws, and the underlying fabric of our party is an empty and feckless argument at best. In fact, I would call it the ultimate 'straw man,' argument of all time.
It is not A-OK to give either President Obama, or any of our other Democratic Leaders a pass when they sit on the sidelines, remain silent, and not having the fucking decency to stand up for the Unions in our nation, who have supported them monetarily for just about ever, to ensure that the Middle Class is not destroyed by those same Oligarchs who have taken over our government.
None of that is OK, and there are no excuses here anymore. Suit up and show up, or expect the Labor Movement to form their own party and go elsewhere Democrats.
I for one would welcome that movement.
Good for you Richard Trumka, Keep it up, and keep the heat going full on tilt boogie. It's about time.
For those of you that do not or have not seen Trumka's full remarks on his speech to the National Press Club, I've included it below:
Remarks by AFL-CIO President Richard L. Trumka, National Press Club, Washington, DC
May 20, 2011
Good morning. Thank you all for joining me here, and thank you to the National Press Club for inviting me to speak.
Friends, how can we make sense of the spectacle that's been unfolding across the American political landscape?
Politicians in Wisconsin, Ohio and a dozen other states are trying to take away workers' right to organize and bargain for a better life.
But that's not all. In state after state, politicians are attacking voting rights by imposing ID requirements, shortening early voting periods, blocking young people from voting because they're too "liberal" and even levying criminal penalties and fines for breaking arbitrary rules in the voter registration process. So it will be harder for people to vote—especially the least privileged among us. Just in Wisconsin, listen to the list of who doesn't have state-issued photo IDs that will be needed to cast a ballot under legislation that Gov. Scott Walker will sign next week: 23 percent of elderly Wisconsinites; 59 percent of Latina women; 55 percent of African American men overall; and 78 percent of African American men who are 18 to 24 years old.
Budget proposals unveiled in Washington and state capitals across our country this year revealed a despicable canvas of cruelty. In Michigan, a state senator thinks foster children should be required by law to purchase second-hand clothes. In Maine, the governor thinks more children should go to work. In North Carolina, the legislature thinks we should balance the state budget on the backs of autistic children. In Arizona, the state Senate president floats the idea of locking up protesting public employees in desert tent city jails. In New York, a billionaire mayor proposes to fire 5,000 teachers rather than tax the bonuses of the Wall Street executives who brought down the American economy.
And not just meanness. Destructiveness. A willful desire to block the road to the future. How else can you explain governors of states with mass unemployment refusing to allow high-speed rail lines to be built in their states? How else can you explain these same governors' plans to defund higher education, close schools and fire teachers, when we know that without an educated America, we have no future?
Here in Washington, the Republicans in Congress have defunded housing counselors and fuel aid for the poor, and they are blocking worker training and transportation infrastructure.
But the final outrage of these budgets is hidden in the fine print. In state after state and here in Washington, these so called fiscal hawks are actually doing almost nothing to cut the deficit. The federal budget embraced by House Republicans, for example, cuts $4.3 trillion in spending, but gives out $4.2 trillion in tax cuts that disproportionately benefit wealthy individuals and corporations. Florida is gutting aid for jobless workers and using the money saved to cut already-low business taxes. At the end of the day, our governments will be in no better fiscal shape than when we started—they are just being used as a pass-through to enrich the already rich—at a time when inequality stands at historic levels.
Think about the message these budgets send: Sacrifice is for the weak. The powerful and well-connected get tax cuts.
All these incredible events should be understood as part of a single challenge. It is not just a political challenge—it's a moral challenge. Because these events signal a new and dangerous phase of a concerted effort to change the very nature of America—to turn this into an "I've got mine" nation and replace the land of liberty and justice for all with the land of the rich, by the rich, for the rich.
You see, I believe the United States is not a place as much as it is an idea. For working people, the United States of America has offered, from its foundation, a promise that everyone can be full participants in national life. A promise that we the people make the rules so that hard work is rewarded with economic security and a fair share in the wealth we all help create. That promise has always been a work in progress. This year we commemorate the 150th anniversary of our bloodiest war – a war that resulted in the extension of the American promise to the African Americans who did so much of the work of creating the United States.
We were the first country in the history of the world to embrace the idea that you don't have to own land to vote—that citizenship comes from where you live, not what you own or who your parents were. We were the first country to make land available to those who would work the land—in the Homestead Act. And in the modern era, when giant corporations dominated our economy, we pioneered the idea that we had a right to a voice on the job—a right made real when we came together to form unions and bargain collectively. And while Boeing and the Chamber of Commerce may not like it, the law of the land protects working people who exercise that right against any retaliation by their employers.
In the 1960s, public employees won those same rights. Working people remember that these rights were not easily won. The pivotal 1968 Memphis sanitation workers' strike began with two men crushed to death in a garbage truck, and ended with Martin Luther King giving his life for the cause of public workers' right to organize together.
From the beginning of this country, through our efforts and our ideas, working people have made the American Dream real. And what is that dream? It is the idea that if you work hard and play by the rules you will enjoy economic security and build a better future for your children. It is not that a few of us will be rich, but that all of us will be treated fairly, that we will look after each other, and that we will all have a share in the wealth we create together.
This spring working people are engaged in a great struggle to defend their dream. In Green Bay and Indianapolis, in Benton Harbor, Michigan, and in Columbus, Ohio. And not just in the Midwest. In New York and Los Angeles, in Florida and Texas—in every corner of our nation.
This struggle began after last November's elections brought to power politicians in state capitals across the heartland who had a hidden agenda. An agenda worked out at posh resorts with the Koch Brothers, the American Legislative Exchange Council and other shadowy groups. Politicians like John Kasich and Scott Walker campaigned promising to do something about jobs, only to reveal when they took office that their jobs agenda was to make them disappear. But their real passion was for eliminating the rights of working people and destroying their unions—who are standing in the way of their agenda.
In response, working people took to the streets. On April 4th, under the banner, "We are One," we came together all across America, and then we did so again on May 1st when we stood together with our immigrant brothers and sisters saying again that we truly are one.
In signs all across the rotunda in the Wisconsin state house, we proclaimed we were there to defend the principle that in America, we look after each other. One of the people who was there is here with us today, and I'd like to introduce him. Alex Hanna is a Graduate Assistant at the University of Wisconsin – Madison and a co-president of the Teaching Assistants Associates of the American Federation of Teachers. Alex stood up for teachers and other public workers in Madison over the last couple of months, even as he built solidarity with workers in the Middle East. His family comes from Egypt and he strengthened links between movements for change around the world.
Thank you, Alex, for your inspiration.
Alex embodies the fact that we are not a nation of isolated individuals, we are a land of communities, of families. Our republic, our democracy, is an expression of our solidarity, our common values and our common life as a nation.
In America, firefighters rush into burning buildings every day, risking their lives to save people they have never met. Social workers care for other people's abused children, and home health workers provide care and companionship to those who need it. Every day you and I pay our Social Security taxes and Medicare, and that same money is sent out again to provide comfort and security to other people's parents and grandparents.
This is not just a matter of morality – but it also makes economic sense. And never more so than today. It will simply not be enough to beat back the Scott Walkers, the John Kasichs, and the Koch Brothers. America's economic fate depends on us coming together to educate our children, to invest in our infrastructure, to face the threat of climate change and to reverse the yawning economic inequality that threatens our future.
Let me be specific. Unemployment stands at 9%. Underemployment is at 16%. Housing prices are falling, and foreclosures remain at historic highs. Economic growth is hovering at around 2% annually—not enough to put a dent in unemployment, especially as tax cuts expire, as the Recovery Act winds down -- and state and local governments gear up for more deep cuts.
Yet instead of having a national conversation about putting America back to work to build our future, the debate here in Washington is about how fast we can destroy the fabric of our country, about breaking the promises we made to our parents and grandparents. Understand, the Ryan budget destroys jobs—it destroys almost all the jobs created during this recovery. It guts Medicare. It attacks Social Security, the one piece of our retirement security system that actually works. And now we see Speaker Boehner and his colleagues engaged in a new round of blackmail—with a ransom note that reads: "Cut Medicare, dismantle the government, destroy hundreds of thousands of jobs to fund more tax cuts for the rich, or we will cause the United States to default on its debts.
" Why is our national conversation in such a destructive place? Not because we are impoverished. We have never been richer. The American economy has never produced as much wealth as it does today. But we feel poor because the wealth in our society has flowed to a handful among us, and they and the politicians who pander to the worst instincts of the wealthy would rather break promises to our parents and grandparents and deny our children a future than pay their fair share of taxes.
America's real deficit is a moral deficit—where political choices come down to forcing foster children to wear hand-me-downs while cutting taxes for profitable corporations.
Powerful political forces are seeking to silence working people—to drive us out of the national conversation. I can think of no greater proof of the moral decay in our public life than that Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker would dare give a Martin Luther King Day speech hailing Dr. King at the same time that he drafted a bill to take away collective bargaining rights from sanitation workers in Wisconsin.
The ultimate goal of those who blame workers for Wall Street's economic crisis is to unravel the fabric of our common life in pursuit of greed and power.
In this environment, working people and our unions must do more than just protect our own right to a voice in the life of our nation. We must raise our voice to win a better future for all working families here in America and around the globe.
Here's what we are going to do. First, we are going to use that voice to end the Scott Walker agenda as a viable political strategy by winning recall elections in Wisconsin and citizen vetoes of destructive legislation in other states and retaking state houses.
Then we will spend the summer holding elected leaders in Congress as well as the states accountable on one measure: Are they improving or degrading life for working families?
And moving forward, we are looking hard at how we work in the nation's political arena. We have listened hard, and what workers want is an independent labor movement that builds the power of working people—in the workplace and in political life.
Working people want a labor movement strong enough to help return balance to our economy, fairness to our tax system, security to our families and moral and economic standing to our nation. Our role is not to build the power of a political party or a candidate. It is to improve the lives of working families and strengthen our country.
It doesn't matter if candidates and parties are controlling the wrecking ball or simply standing aside—the outcome is the same either way. If leaders aren't blocking the wrecking ball and advancing working families' interests, working people will not support them. This is where our focus will be—now, in 2012 and beyond.
We will uphold the dignity of work and restore respect for working people. In this season's political battles, teachers, nurses and firefighters have been vilified. Decent jobs with economic security have been cast as more than America's workers deserve. Low-wage, part-time, temporary, no-benefit work is being sold as the "new normal" for our economy.
We know that only a dynamic, effective movement of working people working together can reclaim the value of work. Our unions must reach out to every working person in America—to those whose jobs have been outsourced and down-sized, to carwash workers in Los Angeles, to domestic workers who have few legal rights, to freelancers and young people who have "gigs" rather than jobs. And together with the AFL-CIO's construction and manufacturing workers, pilots and painters, plumbers and public employees, bakers and others, we will be heard.
The stakes are so high, for working families, for America. Will we be a country ruled by greed, by people who would cut or take pensions away from first responders, people who would take away the fundamental human rights of our workers, who would choose tax breaks for the richest among us over a future for all of us? Or will we be a country where we choose the future, where we look out for each other, where all of us have a voice?
We'll only win investments in our future if we again embrace the idea that we are one national community. That our very identity is bound up with the promise that all of us have a voice—in the workplace, at the ballot box—and that we are responsible in a deep sense for each other. The fabric of our government, our democratic republic, is about making that responsibility for each other real.
This is the message working people have always brought to our national conversation. It is the message Alex Hanna and hundreds of thousands of others took to the streets of the Midwest this spring and that we will take to the polling places of the heartland in recall elections and in citizen veto campaigns in the coming months. And it is the message we will continue to shout this year, and next, and the next, until we are heard.
The moral character of America is worth fighting for, and that is exactly what working people are going to do in the days and months to come. Thank you.
http://www.aflcio.org/...
I honestly do not understand how any clearer Richard Trumka could have made it as clearly as he did in this great speech.
We know 'how we got here, and why we got here,' and praising the likes of Bernanke and Geithner for 'saving the economy,' is the biggest lie of all. Who got saved and who paid for it is the bottom line, and now that this bullshit meme of Austerity is failing all over the world, it's about time for someone to step up to the plate and call it for what it is:
Bullshit, that no one is buying anymore. As Rome burns, and the fiddlers keep playing the same broken record: that recovery is just around the corner, is now permanently stuck on a skip in the record, that just plays over and over again, and those that have paid and paid and paid are rightfully in a deep state of despair and anger. And why shouldn't they be?
The honest to god truth, is that the poor and disenfranchised of the entire world is sick and tired of paying, and being forced into slave labor all and thrown out of their homes illegally by the rapacious thugs and creditors, who are getting away with it on all levels, including our own government.
Just because the Republicans are a huge FAIL right now, is not another excuse to give our own Democrats a pass on these issues. In fact, it is the right time to hold them even more accountable for their actions, words, and deeds, to step up to the plate and step up for the Unions and the Middle Class.
President Obama deserves great kudos for his leadership, but ignoring the domestic agenda is not acceptable when he has now gained the bully pulpit again, and not wisely use his own political capital to further a more progressive agenda, and step up and put his 'comfortable shoes on,' when he promised to do so.
The clock is ticking and Americans need jobs, Mr. President, and Democratic Leaders. No more standing in the shadows or wavering on this issue is acceptable.
When the word 'Austerity,' is now used for those that lost their jobs, their homes, their savings, and security all for the sake of Wall St./the Banks, the Corporations and the MIC, it's a game changing moment in our nation's history.
Perhaps President Obama will put those 'comfortable shoes on,' or perhaps he will not, but that is up to him.
This is his moment and this is his time, and I'm very glad that Richard Trumka put it on the line. No more excuses.
Thanks as always.
Ms. B.