Franklin County Democrats

“What do freelancers in L.A., NYC, and Topeka have in common? That’s what Freelancers Union wants to find out! While independent workers constitute a considerable segment of the workforce, there is limited information about these workers. Freelancers Union aims to fill that knowledge gap through their Annual Independent Worker Survey. They use the survey results to inform the public (2009’s survey results covered by The Wall Street Journal and USA Today) and policymakers about issues that affect independent workers and to shape their advocacy agenda to push for legislative changes. Their 2009 survey results showed that 40% of freelancers had trouble getting paid in that year alone, and Freelancers Union was able to push policymakers to introduce legislation (The Freelancer Payment Protection Act) in New York State to help combat client nonpayment. Needless to say, the more respondents, the better the data, so take a few minutes to complete the survey.”

Link to survey:  www.surveywriter.net/in/survey/survey937/2010Advocacy.asp

Thanks,

Althea Erickson
Associate Director of Advocacy and Policy

This week’s chapter from Thom Hartmann’s Rebooting the American Dream is Wal-Mart is not a Person!  Another fantastic chapter that will expand your view of how we got into the situation this country is in.  Thom mentions his book Unequal Protection which I have read and encourage you to check out at your earliest convenience for an in-depth look at how corporations have been granted all the rights of personhood without actually being a person.  This is at the root of many ills facing this country.

http://www.truth-out.org/wal-mart-is-not-a-person66831

In 2003, after my book Unequal Protection was first published, I gave a talk at one of the larger law schools in Vermont. Around 300 people showed up, mostly students, with a few dozen faculty and some local lawyers. I started by asking, “Please raise your hand if you know that in 1886, in the Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad case, the Supreme Court ruled that corporations are persons and therefore entitled to rights under the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.”

Almost everyone in the room raised their hand, and the few who didn’t probably were new enough to the law that they hadn’t gotten to study that case yet. Nobody questioned the basic premise of the statement.

And all of them were wrong.

Happy Birthday – Martin Luther King

January 15^th is the birthday of Martin Luther King Jr.  Many know that Mr. King was one of the most prominent Civil Rights Leaders in America but are unaware of his close relationship with the Labor Movement.

In fact, he was killed in Memphis, TN on April 4, 1968 while helping the sanitation workers in their battle to achieve recognition of their union rights.  This brief nine-minute video tells that story and features one of Martin Luther King’s last speeches – and one of my favorites.  Enjoy your holiday!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBDgH435oaU&feature=related

How’s Your Retirement Fantasy?

While watching a ball game the other day a commercial about retirement planning caught my attention.  The ad featured an animated gentleman complaining about other commercials that focused on retirement planning.  His point was the overwhelming disconnect between how the advertising world portrayed retirement and his reality “I just want to retire comfortably; I don’t want to sail around the world or buy a vineyard.  My goal is to take care of myself and our family, a vineyard – really?”

 While post-work fantasies play out in the media world, the real world reveals just how lofty a goal taking care of oneself in retirement is going to be – really!

 According to a recent article in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Take charge of 401(k) to keep retirement in sight  ”People are not even close to where they need to be in total savings,” said Laurie Nordquist, director of Wells Fargo Institutional Retirement. “Barring a miracle, a winning lottery ticket or a big inheritance, they’re going to be forced to dramatically cut back their lifestyles after retirement.”

If that isn’t bad enough consider that 1 in 3 Americans has ZERO in any retirement account .

Even worse, 43% of Americans have less than ten thousand dollars in retirement savings (Business Insider).

Retirement Security is also facing tremendous pressure from the decline of Defined-Benefit Pensions.  According to the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), single-employer Defined-Benefit Pension plans have declined from 92,000 on 1990 to under 29,000 in 2009.

This trend is accelerating as almost every labor dispute in the last two years has included employer demands to either eliminate Defined-Benefit Pension plans or “grandfather” existing workers while removing the option for newer workers and substituting Defined-Contribution or 401(k) plans ( UAW-Big 3,  Steelworkers-Honeywell in Metropolis, IL  and Machinists – Boeing).

 Of course, the corporate media has served as cheerleader for this push to rid their fellow corporations and advertisers of responsibilities associated with Defined-Benefit Pensions and has recently turned its attention to Public Sector Workers with a zeal only a cheerleader could aspire to.  This story on 60 minutes is one example.  Economist Dean Baker puts the 60 minutes story into context  . 

That said, it is apparent the “3 legged stool” of retirement – Private Pensions, Personal Savings, and Social Security is wobbling like a drunken sailor on the Titanic.  With Defined-Benefit Pensions in decline, 401(k)’s underperforming, and savings almost non-existent it seems like an odd time for crotchety Alan Simpson and the Deficit Commission to propose reducing Social Security benefits. 

 A recent study by Mark Rank of Washington University in St. Louis showed more than half of Seniors are at risk for Poverty.  Considering Social Security provides over forty percent of the average recepients income, now is not the time to reduce benefits because its surplus has been used for war and tax cuts for the rich.

 Declining retirement security will affect younger Americans directly as fewer jobs become available because Seniors are forced to keep working just to get by.  One of the reasons Franklin Roosevelt pushed for Social Security was to provide an incentive for older workers to retire and create job openings for younger workers.  This same thought process was behind the “30 and Out” Pensions bargained by former UAW President and TIME “Man of the Year” Walter Reuther.

 To avoid this oncoming disaster for American Seniors we should,

 Enact policies that encourage Defined-Benefit Pensions.  The 401(k) experiment has failed the majority of Americans.

 At least, maintain Social Security which will only require modest changes (Check out the chart of where the U.S. stands on retirement benefits among the industrial nations.  Hint: about the same as health care ranking).   

 Expand Social Security 

I look forward to your comments on this issue. 

This week we feature Chapter 9 of Thom Hartmanns, Rebooting the American Dream – Put Lou Dobbs Out To Pasture.   This is my favorite chapter so far and explores several aspects of the wage stagnation/job insecurity/declining middle class elements of the American economy.

Under the guise of satisfying a consumer demand for low prices, multinationals have accelerated outsourcing ever since the Reagan years and pushed the “free trade” and “globalization” ideology that has given us the NAFTA and GATT/WTO processes initiated under President George H. W. Bush and finished by President Bill Clinton. As a direct result, American blue-collar workers saw their jobs vanish as factories making things from jeans to precision tools moved to Mexico and other countries. Not to worry, the Bush and Clinton administrations assured workers, just learn new skills so you can join the “service economy,” which included millions of new “Do you want fries with that?” and “Welcome to Wal-Mart” jobs, and the wonderful new Internet that would bring millions of new computer software and hardware engineering jobs to America.

The right wing/conservative echo chamber is at it again.  Time to activate the old bait and switch campaign.  Predictably, the campaign launched during the debate around the tax cut “compromise”.   Remember this a few short weeks ago?  After making deficit reduction the centerpiece of their campaigns upon returning to Washington D.C. the first order of business was to give $430 billion in tax breaks to the richest Americans.  Some of those benefitting the most from these tax bonuses are the very financial “innovators” that helped gut our economy and create this Great Recession.

But, helping wealthy Americans while the country is facing long-term massive unemployment, ballooning trade deficits, and growing budget deficits at the local, state, and federal level will not win many elections.  What to do?

Let’s change the subject and blame someone/something else, in this case Public employees and their unions.  As usual, once the bait and switch campaign begins all events are funneled through that prism.  When the blizzard hit the east coast it was the workers fault that the streets weren’t cleared.  Never mind the fact that Republican darling Chris Christie – Governor of New Jersey spent the blizzard at Disney World,  All Budget Deficits are now the fault of the workers.  Hell, their average $40,000 annual pay and their average pension of $19,000 per year is going to be the death of the Republic!  Rand Paul even stated that public workers make twice the wages of equivalent private sector workers!   Just because the fact is that public workers earn 11% less than their private sector counterparts is no reason for a U.S. Senator to miss an opportunity to play bait and switch.

This tactic has gotten so ridiculous even foreign countries are noticing, such as this story from the English paper The Gaurdian – America’s Union Busting Backlash . 

Robert Reich has written The Shameful Attack on Public Employees, this article rebuts the reed-thin argument of the right and their bait and switch campaign.  Here’s an excerpt.

It’s far more convenient to go after people who are doing the public’s work – sanitation workers, police officers, fire fighters, teachers, social workers, federal employees – to call them “faceless bureaucrats” and portray them as hooligans who are making off with your money and crippling federal and state budgets. The story fits better with the Republican’s Big Lie that our problems are due to a government that’s too big.

Above all, Republicans don’t want to have to justify continued tax cuts for the rich. As quietly as possible, they want to make them permanent.

But the right’s argument is shot-through with bad data, twisted evidence, and unsupported assertions.

Economist Dean Baker addresses the real reasons deficits are on the rise in Big News the Stock Market Fell

 The workers perspective on this deceptive campaign is offered in this video, Stop the Lies

I offer my salute to this time-worn bait and switch tactic by offering this link to a YouTube video of The Who – Won’t Get Fooled Again

The following excerpt from Thom Hartmann’s book 11 Ways to Rebuild America is featured in Chapter 8 – They Will Steal It.

In the middle of our discussion about the United States and its unfortunate military adventures abroad, Dick dropped on me the most profound comment I’ve ever heard about foreign policy and human nature: “I don’t know why America always thinks she has to run all around the world forcing people to take our way of governance at the barrel of a gun,” he said. He paused for a sip of wine, and then added with a sly grin, “When you’ve got something really good, you don’t have to force it on people. They will steal it!”

The January 3, 2011 edition of the Springfield News-Leader featured my latest Op/Ed “Plan would encourage workplace freeloaders“.  Please feel free to comment and share with friends because Missourians don’t need a $5,000 pay cut!

2011 is the 103rd annicersary of Ford Model T production.  This vehicle and the assembly line used to make it transformed both industrial production and America.  Put yourself in place of one of these workers and picture doing it for eight hours! 

Another interesting aspect of this car is its all-terrain handling abilities.  Check out the footage of this vehicle on sand, mud, rock, and road.  It had to be good since paved roads were a rarity.  Hope you enjoy this video as much as I did!

Chapter 7, Cool Our Fever from Thom Hartmann’s Rebooting The American Dream.  In this chapter Thom examines the American relationship with oil and other natural resources.  In particular, different ways to reduce the “strategic value” of oil to the U.S. economy.  What makes this a great read is the real world solutions presented, such as the way a cloud covered Germany has become the world’s #1 producer and user of solar energy.

In 1999 progressives in Germany passed the 100,000 Roof Program (Stromeinspeisungsgesetz),8 which mandated that banks had to provide low-interest 10-year loans to homeowners sufficient for them to put solar panels on their houses. They then passed the Renewable Energies Law (Erneuerbare-Energien-Gesetz) and in 2004 integrated the 100,000 Roofs Program into it.9 The Renewable Energies Law mandated that for the next 10 years the power company had to buy back power from those homeowners at a level substantially above the going rate so the homeowners’ income from the solar panel would equal their loan payment on the panel and would also represent the actual cost to the power company to generate that amount of power had it built a new nuclear reactor.

At the end of the 10 years, the power company gets to buy solar power from its customers at its regular rate, and it now has a new source of power without having to pay to maintain (and eventually dismantle) a nuclear reactor. In fact, while the reactor would have had a 20- to 30-year lifespan, the solar panels typically have a lifespan of 50 years.

Enjoy the rest of the chapter