Just hopped off the conference call with Richard Trumka from the AFL-CIO.
This morning, the AFL-CIO leadership voted in overwhelming favor (higher than 90%) of "active support" for the current health care proposals in the face of slight changes to the excise tax agreement.
Cross posted from Border Jumpers, Danielle Nierenberg and Bernard Pollack.
The bus ride from Lusaka, Zambia to Harare, Zimbabwe with a company called EasyGo Bus company lasted four hours longer than it should have (total trip was nearly 12 hours). We spent four hours at the border crossing, where everyone’s belongings were examined, less for security and more to squeeze as much money as they could from undeclared goods. Baboons outnumbered people at the crossing, they have mastered the art of swiping food from unaware passengers, and they seemed to want to be near the humans most afraid of them (ie. me).
Once we got going our bus abruptly stopped. A wild elephant stood in the middle of the road, staring down our bus, ears flaring. It was mad, and ready to charge. Seeing all the Zimbabwean passengers freak out made me really scared about our safety. Slowly the bus began to reverse away, even the driver was scared, and we sat and waited in silence till the elephant got bored.
When we finally arrived in Harare, it was nearly midnight, and the bus station isn't exactly the friendliest place for a bunch of Americans to chill out at that hour looking for a taxi. Our backpackers hostel is called "One Small World" and every room is named after the capital city of a different African country (we stayed in Windhoek, Namibia). We had a series of jam-packed days ahead, so we passed out, only to awaken to the fact that the water didn't work and the power was out. Power outages are something we've gotten used to, spending nearly three days in the dark in Lilongwe, and facing outages nearly everywhere in East Africa.
After the economic collapse here, inflation skyrocketed the Zimbabwe currency out of control (ever seen a trillion dollar bill?) As of today, they are using the US dollar as the main currency for the country (with several people telling us that it will soon switch to the South African Rand).
We started the day meeting with Raol DuToit, who'd spent twenty years with the World Wildlife Fund and now works directly for rhino conversation. Listening to Raoul, he was an encyclopedia on every major conservation issue relating to Southern Africa. Following that meeting, we visited an Italian restaurant called Leonardo's to break bread with a true hero of mine: Wellington Chibebe, the Secretary-General of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions. A dedicated activist his whole life, Wellington is arguably the most important public figure in the fight for freedom and democracy in Zimbabwe. Despite having been jailed numerous times, badly beaten, and under constant surveillance -- this brilliant, mild-mannered man spent a few hours passionately telling us about the struggle to bring change to his country, the heroic role the labor movement plays in the movement for democracy, and the spirit of the people to overcome fear.
ZCTU was the force behind creating the first successful electoral opposition to President Robert Mugabe, winning a presidential and parliamentary elections for the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), whose leader and the current Prime Minister under the 2008 power sharing agreement Morgan Tsvangirai, is also the former Secretary-General of the ZCTU. They won against seemingly insurmountable odds: almost all print, television and radio was controlled by the ruling party, people faced massive voter intimidation and suppression, and opposition activists were routinely arrested and jailed.
Wellington spoke with great hope and urgency about the direction of the country, feeling that some progress is being made under the 2008 power sharing agreement (Mugabe refused to give up power, but shares the government with the MDC), and also stressed that the labor movement belonged to no political party and would be an independent voice holding politicians accountable and standing strong behind policies of good governance and democracy. He reminded us that even good politicians sometimes lose their way.
Afterwards we visited the editor of "The Worker", Ben Madzimure. This newspaper, sponsored by ZCTU and supported by the Solidarity Center. "The Worker" is one of the five independent print media sources not controlled by the government, and one of it's most important watchdogs. The newspaper reaches deep into the country thanks to the structure of the ZCTU. Zimbabwe is one of the most literate on the African continent (approximately 90 percent), so their role in distributing alternative perspectives is so critical. I can't say enough about how important a role they serve, when almost all other print, television, and radio is government controlled.
The next day we spent with the leadership of ZCTU. Having the time to learn and listen from these courageous men was an experience I will never forget. As much horror that I felt about what continues to happen in Zimbabwe against the poor and basic democratic freedoms, as I looked at these strong and resolute leaders in the eyes, I couldn't help but feel so much hope for the future, especially after meeting with many rank and file members at the local level later that day.
We also spent the morning meeting with the General Secretary of the General Agriculture and Plantation Workers' Union of Zimbabwe, Getrude Hambira. She spoke about the current conditions for farm workers, many of whom are terribly exploited with few ways to adequately redress exploitation.
In addition, we visited the research arm of ZCTU, the Labour and Economic Development Research Institute of Zimbabwe. They are part of a regional alliance of labor researchers, called African Labour Research Network (ALRN), also supported in part by the Solidarity Center and the Canadian Labor Congress. They've put together a training manual that outlines ZCTU’s "8 core socio-economic rights" and are using that material to train union activists across the country.
More than 80 percent of jobs in Zimbabwe have been informalized resulting in a very large informal sector. These informal sector workers, often the most exploited and the most ignored, formed a union in 2002 called Zimbabwe Chamber of Informal Economy Associations, an associate of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU), to help win a voice in government.
We were given the opportunity to visit two community projects coordinated by the informal workers association with President Beauty Mugijima and program coordinator Elijah Mutemeri.
The first project was a village where they were working with the local community to build a school in an area where hundreds of people were forced to relocate during "Operation Restore Order." As part of a de-urbanization program under Mugabe, the controversal leader of the country, nearly 2 million workers were forcibly removed from their homes in cities, stripped of their belongings, and forced to live in rural areas, without any agriculture skills or training. We met with this community, who although they had very little resources and volunteer support, where trying to build a school to teach area children. They recently succeeded in getting accredited by the local government and the community is pushing local public officials for additional resources to build the school. The visit was especially inspiring because the teachers working there endured long commutes because they believed in helping the community. Many families in the makeshift town were also raising orphan or abandoned children, as well their own.
The second project we visited was an orphanage for children that the union was helping support. As we arrived children were singing, clapping, and rushing to us to offer hugs and high fives. Most of these hundreds of kids lost their parents to HIV/AIDS, and the orphanage provides them not only a place to go to learn and go to school, but also gives them a family.
The teachers and caretakers who work there are mostly volunteers and you can see that they shared a deep commitment and passion for the future of these kids.
Lots more to say about Zimbabwe, but I am well above 1,000 words. I just want to publicly thank Fisseha Tekie of the Solidarity Center and all the incredible people we met during our short visit.
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In Tuesday's live Web chat, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka talked about what we need to do to fix our economy in both the short term and the long term-and touched on a vital, too-infrequently discussed issue: the need to end the stranglehold neoliberal economic thinking has on our politics.
Spurred by Milton Friedman and other economists, the neoliberal agenda is based on the radical principle that it's markets, not people, that matter most. By nature, the neoliberal principle is hostile to collective bargaining, public regulation and all manner of ways to leverage community power to balance out the power of wealth. Trumka sums up Friedman's poisonous political philosophy:
He believed that anything that got in the way of the free market was something that was bad and should be eliminated. Any regulation on business is bad, so get rid of it; any tax on business is bad and distorts the marketplace, get rid of it. A union is bad and distorts the marketplace, so you have to get rid of it.
For the last 30 years, that's the system that we've had here. It brought us to this crisis.
On Dec. 15, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka will host a live online conversation on the nation's jobs crisis--and you can take part.
Starting today, you can submit questions and vote on other ones submitted to the AFL-CIO's "Open for Questions About the Jobs Crisis." Trumka will answer the top-rated questions in the live online video discussion at 4 p.m. EST on Tues., Dec. 15.
• Sign in here to participate if you have a Google account.
• If you don't have a Google account, create one here.
Trumka will engage with union members and working family activists around the country and share solutions for restoring good jobs and revitalizing the nation's economy.
Tune in here at 4 p.m. EST on Dec. 15 and get involved by submitting or voting on questions.
The second in a series on the AFL-CIO's job creation proposals.
As part of the AFL-CIO's five-point plan for job creation, we're making concrete proposals to address the nation's immediate jobs crisis while keeping an eye on creating a sustainable economy in the future.
Investment in rebuilding the nation's infrastructure can put millions of people to work now and improve our country for the long term. The United States has some $2.2 trillion in unmet infrastructure needs. That's a lot of work that needs to be done, at a time when 26 million people are unemployed or underemployed.
Part 1 in a series on the AFL-CIO's plan to address the jobs crisis.
To tackle our nation's ongoing jobs crisis, the AFL-CIO has put forth a five-point plan to put people back to work and restore our economy. AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka presented this five-part plan at the White House Jobs Summit last week.
The first step in this plan is to extend a lifeline to the people who have been hit the hardest by the jobs crisis.
Today at the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka and other leaders joined together to call for urgent action to create jobs and rebuild the economy.
In a live webcast panel discussion, the consensus was clear: Without quick action, an entire generation could be mired in economic turmoil. The nation can, and must, put people back to work-while addressing critical needs for the future of our communities.
The scale of the jobs crisis is obvious: Since the beginning of the recession, more than 8 million jobs have been lost. The official unemployment rate is at 10.2 percent, with more than 26 million unemployed or underemployed. These figures are even more severe among African American and Latino communities. Young people are at risk of permanently stunted opportunity, and the jobs crisis is rebounding throughout the country with increased hunger and poverty, massive numbers of home foreclosures and diminished access to health care.
Trumka will be part of a noted panel in "Spotlight on the Jobs Crisis" at the Economic Policy Institute (EPI).
With unemployment at its highest rate in more than 20 years, Trumka says America needs bold, quick action to put people back to work, in addition to longer term, structural fixes for our economy. The AFL-CIO initiative he announces will include calls to extend help for the unemployed, rebuild the nation's infrastructure, provide aid to struggling states and communities, create federally funded community-based jobs and increase lending to small and medium-sized businesses to spur job creation.
Progressives rejoiced when Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announced this week that the final Senate health care bill would include a public option. The announcement was a major victory for left-wing Democrats.
Better yet, it would be a public option without a trigger. Earlier proposals called for a triggered public option which would only take effect if private insurers failed to bring down costs on their own. Under the opt-out compromise, the public option would come on line automatically (albeit not until 2013), but states would later have the option of quitting.
The jubilation was short-lived. Alex Koppelman of Salon explains:
Progressives didn't even get 24 hours to celebrate the victory they won in getting Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to include a version of the public option in his health care reform bill. The celebration was cut off Tuesday afternoon with the news that Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., will vote with Senate Republicans to filibuster the legislation.
The Democrats have 60 Senate votes. If they all vote for cloture, a procedural motion to stop debate, the Republicans can't filibuster the bill. The Senators who vote for cloture can still vote against the bill. Reid's strategy for passing the bill was to get all Democrats to vote for cloture and let them vote their conscience on the actual bill. Even without Lieberman, Democrats have the votes to pass the bill by majority vote if they can avoid a filibuster.
Health care is the most important domestic policy initiative of the Obama administration. Would Joe Lieberman really torpedo reform? The Senate leadership thinks Reid is bluffing, according to Steve Benen at the Washington Monthly.
I understand the argument. Lieberman loves attention and power. By threatening to join the Republican filibuster, he gets both-Democrats have to scramble to make him happy, since there's no margin for error in putting together 60 votes. Lieberman gets to feel very important for the next several weeks by making this threat less than 24 hours after Harry Reid stated his intentions, but that doesn't necessarily mean he wants to be known forever as The Senator Who Killed Health Care Reform.
I find it very easy to believe, however, that Lieberman is capable of doing just that. He left himself some wiggle room, but not when it comes to the public option-he's against it, no matter what, even with all of the compromises thrown in.
In other words, if this is all a ploy for leverage, why would Lieberman open by swearing that he won't support a bill with a public option? You'd think he'd just say he was keeping his options open and force Reid to make him a counter-offer. Reid has already decided that the public option is politically non-negotiable. He's afraid that the base won't come out for the 2012 elections if they don't get what they want. Benen speculates that Lieberman wants to be the Senator Who Killed Health Care because he wants to drum up massive Republican support for his 2012 reelection bid. On this theory, Lieberman is joining Rep. Joe "You Lie!" Wilson (R-SC) and Balloon Dad in the quest to make bank on ridiculous publicity stunts.
Senator Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) says that she will side with the Republicans to filibuster the bill "if she has to," as Evan McMorris-Santoro reports for TPM. Snowe was the only Republican to vote for the Finance Committee's health care bill.
Reid must walk a fine line. The administration really can't afford to alienate organized labor before the 2012 elections. Newly elected AFL-CIO President Ricahrd Trumka continues to push for his three core demands for health care reform: a public option, a mechanism to make employers pay their fair share, and no taxes on health care benefits. Last week, AFSCME President Gerald McEntee said that his union would oppose legislation that taxed benefits, but Trumka hasn't gone that far, as David Moberg reports at Working In These Times.
Finally, in other health-related news, Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), the division of the Labor Department that oversees workplace safety, has issued a sweeping new report condemning Nevada's state-level OSHA program. As I report for Working in These Times, the investigators found that NOSHA inspectors were being pressured by their superiors to write up employers on lesser charges, even when their repeat offenses killed workers.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about health care by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Pulse for a complete list of articles on health care reform, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, health care and immigration issues, check out The Audit, The Mulch, and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.
More than 5,000 people are packing the streets of downtown Chicago this morning, chanting, marching and rallying against Big Bankers and financial institutions that have taken taxpayer money and are using it to give big bonuses to CEOs and to lobby against financial reforms that would ensure they don't go back on the public dole.
The crowd is marching to the Sheraton Chicago Hotel & Towers, site of the American Bankers Association meeting, to protest the banking industry's greed and irresponsibility that crippled our economy, leaving millions of workers behind.
After the house of cards they built collapsed, bankers and the financial industry took $700 billion in taxpayer funds for a bailout. But rather than reform their failed practices, they want to go back to business as usual-with the chance of again precipitating another financial collapse and need for taxpayer bailout in coming years.
On Wall Street today, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka is calling for tough new regulations on the financial industry and a new approach to making the U.S. economy work for working people.
Trumka spoke today at the New York Stock Exchange as part of the new AFL-CIO leadership team's national tour to set out a jobs-focused, progressive vision for the economy-and to fight back against the corporate agenda that left workers behind.
We've let wealth concentrate for too long, Trumka said. The past decade has shown us the folly of building an unfair and unequal economy that only works for a few, while working people pile up debt to get by. We need to be able to protect consumers from abuses by mortgage lenders and credit card companies and hold accountable those whose greed and irresponsibility have undermined the economy, Trumka said:
Banks and other financial institutions must be held accountable for making this mess that required trillions of dollars of our money to clean up. For the pain they've inflicted on families who face financial ruin-unemployment, wiped out pensions, foreclosures and bankruptcy.
Something bad happened in the past 10 years to young workers in this country: Since 1999, more of them now have lower-paying jobs, if they can get a job at all; health care is a rare luxury and retirement security is something for their parents, not them. In fact, many-younger than 35-still live at home with their parents because they can't afford to be on their own.
These are the findings of a new report, "Young Workers: A Lost Decade." Conducted in July 2009 by Peter D. Hart Research Associates for the AFL-CIO and our community affiliate Working America, the nationwide survey of 1,156 people follows up on a similar survey the AFL-CIO conducted in 1999. The deterioration of young workers' economic situation in those 10 years is alarming.
AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Richard Trumka appeared on CNBC this morning for a frank talk about health care, politics and the future of the country.
As described this week in Huffington Post, Trumka is laying out a fundamental proposition: When it comes time for millions of union members to mobilize, educate other union members and get out the vote, they'll work on behalf of candidates who support real health care reform that provides quality, affordable health care to all and gives people the opportunity to choose a public health coverage plan alongside private options:
We finally said, look, this is the minimum. If you're going to do something, do something that works. If you're going to have health insurance reform, you must have a public option in it. if you don't, don't expect us to support you.
(Much more going on around universal healthcare than the usual Beltway Banditry dominating the news. - promoted by Paul Rosenberg)
In Canada, it took the dogged determination of one province, Saskatchewan, and a visionary leader Tommy Douglas, to pave the path to a national health care system, which they call Medicare.
For all the detractors of the Canadian system in the studios of Fox News and the board rooms of rightwing think tanks, consider this one note: In 2004, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation conducted a national poll to select the greatest Canadian of all time. The winner in a landslide --Tommy Douglas.
While the federal window remains open for reform, with two national single payer bills, John Conyers' HR 676 in the House and now Bernie Sanders' S 703 in the Senate, many nurses, doctors, and health activists are turning to the states to lead as well.
With the final White House Forum on healthcare scheduled Monday, April 6 in downtown Los Angeles, advocates of single payer/guaranteed healthcare have one more opportunity to shake up what has become a dreary conventional wisdom about the presumed acceptable parameters of the debate.
Hundreds of nurses, doctors, healthcare and labor activists will rally at 9 a.m. outside the California Endowment, 1000 North Alameda St., Los Angeles.
It will mark the fifth time, at all five White House regional forums, that the single payer/Medicare for all message will come to the stage, outside and inside the forum. You can extend that to the town hall meeting at the White House last week where the President was asked why we can't have a national healthcare system like they have in other industrialized nations.
(Reform or deform? Things are so bad that they can't prevent SOMETHING from being done. But the corporate powers that be are fighting like mad to prevent it from being anything remotely like what we need. - promoted by Paul Rosenberg)
Haven't we heard this song before? It sure looks like the people who already control our healthcare system are framing the biggest issues of the present healthcare reform debate.
From the back rooms to the committee hearings to the White House summits to the front pages of the newspapers, the demands of the insurance industry are given enormous deference and accommodation.
Is it fear of Harry and Louise, the insurance campaign that some believe torpedoed the muddled Clinton health proposal? Is it the considerable influence of insurance industry contributions in the pockets of many legislators?
Or perhaps it's the caution or lack of will of some liberal groups to press for more fundamental reform--such as a single payer/expanded Medicare for all approach--that permits the industry and its conservative champions in Congress to dominate the terrain.
It's time to lay to rest the myth that spending billions on more high tech is the salvation for rising healthcare costs. Some people will peddle any notion to avoid addressing the best way to rein in costs, pushing the insurance companies out of the way with a single payer system.
It's become an article of faith that a national system of electronic medical records would produce huge savings. President Obama made it a centerpiece of his healthcare plan during the campaign (as did Sen. John McCain), and has emphasized it repeatedly in legislation and speeches.
Why in the world are we allowing the perpetrators of the health care crisis to set the terms of the debate on how to clean up their mess?
Join nurses, doctors, and health care activists Tuesday for a day of calls in Congress and a protest against the insurers as we convey a different message.
As we move into the fall campaign season, the McCracken for Congress campaign is receiving several important endorsements. Earlier this month we were honored to receive the endorsement from the Pennsylvania AFL-CIO. This is a key endorsement from an organization that is a leader in supporting the rights of the working people, not only in the 5th district, but in Pennsylvania and across the nation.
White House Announces Bush Administration to Leave a Record Budget Deficit of $482 Billion.
Since January when we began our campaign for the 5th District seat in the US Congress, I've consistently stressed that my biggest concern is the fiscal mess that has happened in Washington. This week, White House officials admitted the Bush administration would leave office in January 2009 with a record budget deficit sitting on the books of $482 BILLION. This record $482 billion deficit is coupled with a record debt of $9.5 trillion.
On January 20th, 2001, when George W. Bush was sworn in to his first term in office and the Republican Party had control of both houses of Congress, the United States government had a record budget surplus, our economy was in a period of record expansion and the national debt was being paid down. In fact, if the Bush adminstration would have continued the fiscally responsible polices from the 90's by continuing to grow the surplus and pay down the debt, the federal debt could have been retired by 2013.
The bus ride from Lusaka, Zambia to Harare, Zimbabwe with a company called EasyGo Bus company lasted four hours longer than it should have (total trip was nearly 12 hours). We spent four hours at the border crossing, where everyone’s belongings were examined, less for security and more to squeeze as much money as they could from undeclared goods. Baboons outnumbered people at the crossing, they have mastered the art of swiping food from unaware passengers, and they seemed to want to be near the humans most afraid of them (ie. me).
Following that meeting, we visited an Italian restaurant called Leonardo's to break bread with a true hero of mine: 
Afterwards we visited the editor of "The Worker", 
The first project was a village where they were working with the local community to build a school in an area where hundreds of people were forced to relocate during "Operation Restore Order." As part of a de-urbanization program under Mugabe, the controversal leader of the country, nearly 2 million workers were forcibly removed from their homes in cities, stripped of their belongings, and forced to live in rural areas, without any agriculture skills or training. We met with this community, who although they had very little resources and volunteer support, where trying to build a school to teach area children. They recently succeeded in getting accredited by the local government and the community is pushing local public officials for additional resources to build the school. The visit was especially inspiring because the teachers working there endured long commutes because they believed in helping the community. Many families in the makeshift town were also raising orphan or abandoned children, as well their own.
The second project we visited was an orphanage for children that the union was helping support. As we arrived children were singing, clapping, and rushing to us to offer hugs and high fives. Most of these hundreds of kids lost their parents to HIV/AIDS, and the orphanage provides them not only a place to go to learn and go to school, but also gives them a family. 