Letter on Voter Intimidation to AFL-CIO President John Sweeney
Below is the text of a letter sent by Bush-Cheney ’04 Campaign Chairman Governor Marc Racicot to AFL-CIO President John Sweeney via fax at 10:15 a.m. today. The letter asks Sweeney to put an end to protest activities that have led to injuries, property damage, vandalism and voter intimidation at Bush-Cheney ’04 and Republican Party offices around the country.
Bush-Cheney ’04 has created a hotline for victims of voter intimidation to report what happened. The hotline, 1-888-303-7125, will begin operation at 11:00 a.m. today.
Mr. John Sweeney, President AFL-CIO
October 11, 2004Dear Mr. Sweeney:
Over the past several weeks, acts of violence and vandalism have occurred at Republican and Bush-Cheney campaign headquarters across the country. In addition to the injuries, property damage and disruption associated with these acts, these events have created a threatening and intimidating atmosphere abhorrent to our democratic process.
On October 5th, according to news reports, witnesses, police reports and admissions of your members, the AFL-CIO, as part of a national strategy, protested at more than a dozen of our campaign and party headquarters across the country. In many locations, the protestors attempted to enter, or entered, campaign or party facilities. As one protestor said, “Actually, we’re storming into an office.” In Orlando, Florida, injuries and damage were sustained. Protestors forced their way into the facility, fracturing the arm of one staffer, and vandalized the office. In Michigan, protestors entered a headquarters and engaged in activities apparently intended to disrupt volunteers trying to make phone calls.
Protests by your organization come on the heels of several other incidents at Bush-Cheney ’04 offices around the country, including a break-in at our Seattle office where laptop computers were stolen from the Washington State Bush-Cheney ’04 executive director and the state Republican Party 72-hour director. Just last night in Canton, Ohio, a Bush-Cheney ’04 staffer was forced to lock herself in an office while another break-in was in progress. The facility was seriously damaged and property was stolen. Additionally, gun shots have been fired into Bush-Cheney ’04 offices in West Virginia, Florida and Tennessee, windows broken in West Virginia and campaign staffers threatened. In Wisconsin, a supporter of the President had a swastika burned into his front yard simply because he had a Bush-Cheney ’04 lawn sign. We urge your support in helping us ensure the safety of all individuals working on our campaign and others as we are making every effort to secure the safety of all participants in the political process.
I hope you will put an end to protest activities that have led to injuries, property damage, vandalism and voter intimidation. We will hold you and your organization accountable for the actions of your members and urge you to immediately discontinue any coordinated protest efforts that result in damage to our facilities, or injury to people who may hold different political views than your members, but who share an equal right to be involved in the political process without suffering violence, intimidation and threats.
Respectfully,
Gov. Marc Racicot, Bush-Cheney ’04 Campaign Chairman
The Democrats and the AFL-CIO will complain and say the Republicans are whining – - what will they say when these attacks escalate and someone is seriously injured and / or killed?
For the AFL-CIO and Camp Kerry to sit by and ignore the fact that these attacks are happening and to then stay silent about them will allow these break-ins and attacks to continue. This says much about who they are and what their agenda is – - they only care about getting Kerry into office – - no matter the cost.
Articles of Interest
Bush-Cheney Headquarters Ransacked
Another Bush-Cheney Headquarters Ransacked
Any time you’re ready…
Greenspan Warns of Economic Stagnation
By Nell Henderson
Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan yesterday urged Congress to act soon
to reduce future Social Security and Medicare benefits, warning that growing
federal budget deficits threaten to cause economic “stagnation” in coming
decades.
National policymakers are “overdue” in addressing the government’s very serious
looming fiscal problems, he said, testifying before the House Budget Committee.
“Something’s got to give,” he said. “We have to find a better model.”
Greenspan, as he did last week, endorsed the gradual creation of individual
Social Security investment accounts, part of President Bush’s push to
restructure the public retirement system.
But Congress appeared to be in no rush. Greenspan appeared on Capitol Hill the
day after the Senate’s top Republican suggested that Bush’s plan may have to
wait until next year as national polls indicate that support for it is slipping.
Greenspan, in some of his most forceful language on the subject, said Congress
should consider private accounts because the Social Security system is outdated.
The nation has promised retirees more Social Security and Medicare benefits than
it can deliver, he said.
Greenspan warned more explicitly than he has before that trying to meet those
obligations would have “severe” economic consequences. The higher taxes or
greater government borrowing required would eventually drive up interest rates,
retard the rise in American living standards and slow the country’s overall rate
of economic growth, leading to “a state of stagnation,” he said.
Greenspan called on Congress to act “sooner rather than later,” noting that
higher interest rates also would raise the cost of servicing the government’s
debt, possibly forcing it to borrow more, pushing rates higher and ultimately
“destabilizing the system.”
Under such a scenario, he predicted “very grave difficulties” by 2015 to 2025.
Greenspan was co-chairman of a 1983 bipartisan commission that agreed to
strengthen Social Security’s finances by raising payroll taxes and the
retirement age. In the past year, Greenspan has suggested various ways to
bolster the system’s solvency by restraining the growth of future benefits —
such raising the retirement age again and using different indexes to determine
initial benefits and cost-of-living adjustments.
But yesterday he derided such efforts as merely “patching a system which is
fundamentally inappropriate for the future of this country.”
The system worked in the 20th century because of rapid population growth, he
said. Social Security is what economists call a “pay-as-you-go” system, in which
workers’ contributions to the system are used to pay beneficiaries. As long as
the workforce grew briskly there was plenty of money to pay promised benefits.
But the population is now growing more slowly, the baby-boom generation is
close to retirement and people are living much longer. Currently, there are 3.25
workers paying into the system for every beneficiary drawing a check, Greenspan
said. By 2030, there will be about two workers per beneficiary.
Medicare expenses will also rise as the population ages. Last year, federal
spending on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid added up to 8 percent of the
nation’s total economic output, or gross domestic product. By 2030, the total
will be about 13 percent, Greenspan said, citing Office of Management and Budget
projections.
The resources needed for those programs as they are structured today seem
“increasingly likely to make current fiscal policy unsustainable,” Greenspan
said.
Funding them would drain resources that otherwise would be invested in the
private sector, in new technologies, plants and equipment, he said. That would
“cast an ever-larger shadow over the growth of living standards.”
A key goal of policy, Greenspan said, should be increasing the low rate of
collective domestic saving, which is critical for financing the investments that
raise living standards over time.
A big problem with the pay-as-you-go Social Security system, in Greenspan’s
view, is that it creates no savings.
Creating personal Social Security investment accounts would not, by itself,
improve Social Security’s finances or increase domestic saving, Greenspan and
the White House agree. But he suggested that the individual accounts might boost
saving over time.
The issue facing Congress, Greenspan said, is “a fundamental trade-off here
between a sense of security and a standard of living,” he said. “What type of
society do we want? What part of it should be guaranteed by government? What
part should be allowed free, competitive with the effects thereof?”
Democrats questioned his framing of the issue. “We’re all for raising savings .
. . but Social Security has raised living standards for the middle class,” House
Budget Committee member Rosa L. DeLauro (D-Conn.) said after the hearing. “Why
would you want to jettison that?”
DeLauro defined the problem of looming federal budget deficits as “a serious
revenue problem,” which she attributed in part to tax cuts, which Greenspan
supported and wants extended.
RE: #99
You’ve posted alot, but have said very little.
To sum up:
A full time worker paid poverty wages does not demand very much in terms of goods and services because he is NOT much of a consumer. He’s in poverty. I thought businesses were in business because of consumers?
You should care about FICA. If we are concerned about the diminishing number of workers that pay into SocSec, why are businesses moving to China? I thought the communist were bad? Aren’t we supposed to be spreading freedom and democracy?
Oh, I see… Only if it doesn’t interfere with making a buck.
Bla, bla, bla…
Apparently, it isn’t “trustworthy” when it comes to banks.
Your bank fucked you at the ATM. You went to the bank and bitched. With all your money they took note…
Or did they? You never have explained how you forced changes in your banks ATM policy.
You’ve learned a lesson (just like I did). The banks will screw you for profit. Next Christmas, you won’t go to the ATM at the mall, will you?
…Unless, of course, you want vouchers.
RE: #100
On the contrary, Sasha, the facts are on my side, I have laid them out and you know it. That’s why you go into tirades. How about those US Treasury notes held by Saudi’s and Chinese to finance $5 trillion?
If you think I screwed up on $60, what the hell do you call that?
Your bank fucked you at the ATM. You went to the bank and bitched. With all your money they took note:
I think I have explained it. My husband and I got a very nice dinner out of them. I believe the cost was higher than $60.00:smile:
“That’s why you go into tirades”- I have yet to see Sasha go into a tirade.
RE: #104
Your bank is still going to screw someone else at the ATM next year.
But as long as peejz got hers, fuck everyone else. Those are good, conservative, christian, values.
Are you going to get money at the ATM next Christmas?
No, dg. You and facts are usually about as far removed as the east is from the west.
Again, you’re afraid to confront your past crap.
So you have to come up with new crap.
You may find your brain in all that crap; like a needle in a haystack.
Whu?! Hear that whistle, dg? I guess that means your fifth lunch hour is over and you finally have to get back to work keep the world safe from floaties, skid marks, and broken urinal cakes.
“Your bank is still going to screw someone else at the ATM next year. “- Actually they will have 2 set up next year. 1-cash 1-Gift certificates.:smile: Thanks for asking. So did you give your daughter the fees back?
He can’t wait to go back there, peejz.
He’s just trying to figure out a way to make look like an accident so he can act all huffy about it later.
What is this ATM shit? I need money, I take out my wallet. No fee.
I need money, I roll a drunk.
110- A long story Walter. And hello to you.
111- I’ll give you some! Gladly:smile:
Do they still roll drunks?
Walter, it’s great. You catch one takin’ a li’l nip-nip from Thunderbird or some Wild Irish Rose…KAPOW! Got yo money!
Marc Racicot was Governor here when i arrived.
interesting fella.
now we have a Democratic Governor and Republican Lt. Governor.
they haven’t threatened each other yet, which i take as a good sign for the future of civilization.
of course, this is a state with more cows than people.
how civilized do we need to be?
I seem to remember way back near the founding that the VP was the second runner up in the election.
I’m surprised there not any assassination attempts as the one tried to make a power grab.
I can’t rememeber when they changed the rule. Help?
Labor of Politics
The AFL-CIO decides backing Democrats is more important than expanding its membership.
Friday, March 4, 2005 12:01 a.m.
The leaders of the AFL-CIO beat back an internal revolt this week, and the biggest winner was . . . the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
John Sweeney, president of the union federation for about a decade, defeated a challenge led by the Teamsters and Service workers who wanted to spend more on union organizing. Mr. Sweeney and allies prevailed with their strategy to keep pouring money into Beltway politics on behalf of the liberals who lost control of Congress in 1994. You can see why Tom Donohue, the man who has revived the Chamber as a potent political force, would be happy.
Our view of unions in the workplace has always been that if a company can’t stop its employees from being organized, that’s its problem. The problem for the AFL-CIO, on the other hand, is that fewer workers want to join unions.
The chart below shows that the unionized share of the total U.S. labor force declined once again last year, to 12.5%, down from 12.9% a year earlier and continuing a gradual but steady slide since 1983. The trend is even worse in the private workforce, where only 7.9% of employees now carry the union label. The one semi-success Mr. Sweeney can point to is in the public sector, where nearly four in 10 workers are organized and where the AFL-CIO’s political clout can be brought most to bear.
But that emphasis on politics may also be the root of Big Labor’s larger membership crisis. Back in their industrial heyday, unions were responding to the needs of workers in the marketplace. As hard as labor leaders bargained with management, they also understood they had a stake in business success. Over the years, however, and especially on Mr. Sweeney’s watch, they became much less interested in the creation of private-sector jobs.
Instead, they became part of the ideological left and its regulatory and high-tax agenda. So instead of favoring oil drilling in Alaska, which would create thousands of new middle-class jobs, Mr. Sweeney’s shop leaned toward the rich liberals of the Sierra Club. And while many union members are cultural conservatives, the AFL-CIO has spent its scarce political capital fighting conservative judges. No wonder millions of workers look at union organizers and shrug.
A genuine labor reformer would make the union agenda more relevant to today’s workers by adapting it to the global economy and the information age. That would mean making health insurance more affordable–and transportable from job to job–not more expensive through new government mandates. A real labor rebel would support tort reform because runaway asbestos claims are bankrupting companies and destroying good jobs. And such a reformer might consider personal Social Security accounts that could let low-wage workers build assets for retirement, instead of relying on industrial age defined-benefit pensions that won’t exist 40 years from now.
None of this was on this week’s agenda, of course, and Mr. Sweeney won’t hear any of it. But at least he and his colleagues will continue to occupy one of the most elegant office buildings in Washington.
I notice Da union Goon thinks most people working for minimum wage are full time employees. Da Goon is full of shit and spreading it as usual. Most people on minimum wage are not full time, nor are they other than entry level positions.
In fact, if Da union Goon paid any attention, he’d find most of his Democrap politicians don’t pay living wages to their staffs. Not even Kerry or Kennedy, the rich bastards of the Senate.
Eliminate compulsory membership and agency, and unions might regain relevance.
118
” Not even Kerry or Kennedy, the rich bastards of the Senate.”
those bastards are in good company:
Peter Fitzgerald, R-Illinois: $26,132,013
Richard Shelby, R-Alabama: $7,085,012
Gordon Smith, R-Oregon: $6,429,011
Lincoln Chafee, R-Rhode Island: $6,296,010
Ben Campbell, R-Colorado: $3,165,007
Chuck Hagel, R-Nebraska: $2,963,013
Olympia Snowe, R-Maine: $2,955,037
James Talent, R-Missouri: $2,843,031
Arlen Specter, R-Pennsylvania: $2,045,016
Judd Gregg, R-New Hampshire: $1,916,026
John McCain, R-Arizona: $1,838,010
James Inhofe, R-Oklahoma: $1,570,043
John Warner, R-Virginia: $1,545,039
Kay Bailey Hutchison, R – Texas: $1,513,046
Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky: $1,511,017
Orrin Hatch, R-Utah: $1,086,023
Bill Nelson, D-Florida: $1,073,014
Charles Grassley, R-Iowa: $1,016,024
Ted Stevens, R-Alaska: $1,417,013
they especially find good company in Sen. Frist,the Majority Leader, whose family owns HCA/Columbia. their net worth is dropping i expect due to the many multi-million dollar judgments against them for various types of fraud.
I like how you threw in the token democrat, as if he is the only righ democrat..:lol:
JG
i included him by mistake.
but:
John Kerry, D-Massachusetts: $163,626,399
Herb Kohl, D-Wisconsin: $111,015,016
John Rockefeller, D -West Virginia: $81,648,018
Jon Corzine, D-New Jersey: $71,035,025
Dianne Feinstein, D-California: $26,377,109
are the richest, at least as of 6/2003.
i’ve heard arguments here that these are the winners in the capitalistic system, if the measuring stick for success is wealth & is to be admired.
i doubt i’ll here that argument in this case.
most of these guys, along with ex presidents & despots of every political stripe will eventually wind up on corporate boards of directors & will, when one of their subsidiaries are caught doing various nefarious deeds, will be shocked, shocked i say!
it always reminds me of Claude Raines in Casablanca being shocked that there was gambling going on in Rick’s back room, as he pocketed his winnings.
shiloh, wealth envy does not become you.
It would be interesting to find out how many of those fortunes came from genuine entrepreneur ism and how many came from exploiting some government protected franchise.
pcd – you know as well as i, if i were wealthy, i’d give most of it to the Sierra Club, the ACLU, NARAL, produce Michael Moore’s next movie & contribute most of it to Muslim charities, hopeful that it would be in the secret financial pipeline to fund international terrorism.
anything to hate America.
o – & if i have anything less i’d buy this
I have never measured success by wealth. I probably could do better financially on the outside.
126. 1967 GT-500. I had a 68 convertible.
my next car will be a 67 dodge super bee. Yellow, with he superbee decals….
one of my favourite care was my 66 Dodge Dart slant/6 that was so reliable, they had to quit makng it.
you guys are so cute. you start in a pissing contest about envying wealth, then end up cordially talking about cars.
boys will be boys.
K – JG is innocent. pcd was my foil.
I’m sure he’s old enough to join in the conversation.
I was born in ’67, so I can’t contribute much to the vintage car thing.
My mother had a ’72 Javelin. It could take racing fuel it was said.
ah, you are right shiloh. i need to learn to read a bit better
I have been looking for another classic… I almost bought a 68 Corvette Convertible in Las Cruces NM last year. The engine wasn’t original… had a 383 stroker…
I have been looking for the following
69 Cougar Eliminator
66-67 Dodge super bee
67 Plymouth GTX or Roadrunner
My wife bitches about it everytime I buy an old car… But I had spent 25K + for an old car,,, for which her anger is derived, but I sell it for more each time.
JG-
not to change the subject, but….
did you happen to read my post about Hillary & the military? can i get an amen?
Where?
here
here’s a piece of H Clinton’s record you might support with enthusiasm. seems like a good days work.
(she must have been advised of your concerns)
WASHINGTON – In a rare Washington moment, something actually got done yesterday on Capitol Hill, where Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) won agreement from military bureaucrats to stop messing with the pay of wounded troops.
At a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, Clinton hounded the secretaries of the Army, Navy and Air Force with a litany of payroll horror stories.
She asked each secretary to make sure that “wounded Guard members and reservists don’t lose their combat pay allowance while they are in a military hospital, and that we postpone that until they are discharged.”
Army Secretary Francis Harvey quickly caved, saying, “Sure, yes, we will,”although Navy Secretary Gordon England balked – briefly.
Clinton interrupted him: ‒Yes’ is the right answer.â€
With a grin, England also caved, saying, “Yeah, my colleagues are in favor – I’ll support it. So the answer is yes.”Acting Air Force Secretary Peter Teets chimed in with an “indeed, senator.â€
adressing a bi-partisan problem
trying to win them over.
just for this.
not for a lifetime.
i get tired of hearing someone is all evil, all the time, with no commerical breaks.
That was the right thing to do. I don’t think that she really has the troops interest at heart, and if she does it’s about 35 years too late. But, I agree.
35 years ago?
i think she was at Yale 35 years ago. i’m not sure if the Army, Navy & Air Force would have listened then.
but i’ll take the backhanded ‘amen’, anyway.
“one of my favourite care was my 66 Dodge Dart slant/6 that was so reliable, they had to quit making it.”
How could someone with such good taste in cars be so screwed up in every other way?
Of course, a REAL girl’s car was a powder blue ’57 T-Bird.
130-Shiloh, that slant-6 was a great engine! My 91 Comanche has an inline 6 (4.0) and is the most dependable I’ve ever had. Good thing because I need it to last until I get my PhD
Shit, I finally get a little time to play and everyone leaves
Guess I might as well start on some homework…
She was a memeber of the Communist Students for Democratic Societ then,,, right?
146 – She was the president of the Young Republicans Club at Wellsley.
Go figure.
She found out that democrats weren’t so fussy about shaving legs and such.
138- So she is supporting what was talked about in January? The President talked about this then. Are you impressed that she is going along with it?
Just out of curiosity, how did this chain get started up again? Someone get banned from all the other sites?