A few weeks ago I spoke to the residents of a senior center in Milwaukee's central city.
It was diverse group of older working class men and women - a Vietnam vet, a disabled County employee, a retiree from A.O.Smith, a retired nurse. Not surprisingly, all were supporting Barack Obama.
After the discussion, a couple of women approached me with a concern. I had heard before when a colleague told me that her 82 year old mother and several friends were afraid to vote for Barack Obama because they feared for his life.
My colleague wrote her mother: “…if Dr. King had not made the sacrifice that he did for our nation we would not be where we are today...I am sure that Barack and Michelle have discussed his safety and are willing to make the sacrifice. By not voting you will be silently voting for MaCain and Palin.”
She asked me: “What else can we tell this population of potential voters that feel this way Mike?”
I replied: “Your mother is right that when the status quo is challenged there is push back.”
Little did I know at that time that the McCain Palin campaign would launch the most vicious personal attacks on a presidential candidate in recent history.
I continued:
Your mother knows better than I Frederick Douglas' truth that “...without struggle, there is no progress…that power concedes nothing without a demand. It never has and it never will.”
But history is informed by Douglas' insight. Let me tell you a story about my family that you could share with your mother.
When the Nazis were rounding up the Jews in Europe, many good people,
including some Jews, argued that to resist would make things worse. Six
million innocent people perished.
I had two aunts (women who survived and married my uncles) who were captured by the Nazis. One was imprisoned in Auschwitz. Her father, mother and youngest sister were murdered. She, her sister and brother were old enough to work so they were sparred.
My other aunt, Mariam, was 13 years old, a child really, when Hitler's army invaded Poland. Her brothers, 18 and 19, were captured, strip naked and shot as she watched. Later she also witnessed the murder of her older sister and child.
A local farmer hid my aunt. He provided her with a baptismal certificate, a medallion, some bread and water and said “Tomorrow is Sunday, lots of people will be on the road. Start walking and don't look back.” She did.
Eventually she was captured. Her life was spared, but she was enslaved for several years.
My aunts, both now dead, didn't often talk about that period of their lives. They took the farmers’ advice and tried not to look back. They lived with demons to be sure. But they tried to lead their lives with a dignity that belied their experience.
My parents made sure I knew this history. They believed that silence in the face of injustice equals complicity; that without struggle there is no progress.
So what would I tell your mother?
I would tell her that the blood and sweat, the hopes and dreams of her parents and those who came before are now embodied in the movement to elect Barack Obama. He carries my aunts’ dreams for a decent world as well. If we let him down, out of fear, we are letting anyone who has been unfairly treated or struggled for justice down, and we are letting ourselves, our children and their children down as well.
Barack is demonstrating that we have one life and we should live it with purpose. Talk to your mother. We need her vote. My aunts needs her vote. History needs her vote.
VOTE FOR CHANGE ON NOVEMBER 4th! VOTE!
Friday, October 31, 2008
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Why Paid Sick Days Is A Sound Economic Development Measure
WHY PAID SICK DAYS IS A SOUND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT MEASURE
As academic researchers on economic development and workplace productivity, we urge Milwaukeeans to vote YES on the city’s sick leave referendum.
Milwaukee has the seventh highest poverty rate in the nation, a 51% African American male jobless rate and the largest racial disparities in unemployment and poverty in the country. 43% of the city’s workers earn less than $20,000 a year and many are among the 122,230 Milwaukeeans (47% of the private workforce) who do not have paid sick days.
In this economic context, everyone agrees that Milwaukee needs more family-supporting jobs. Yet, employment that lacks paid sick days forces employees to choose between their jobs and caring for their families. A job that does not provide employees with paid sick days so they can care for their families is not a family-supporting job.
The lack of paid sick days hampers economic development in Milwaukee in myriad ways:
• It costs workers job stability, as employees who become too ill to work or who take off to care for a sick child or parent are frequently fired;
• It costs companies in workplace stability and productivity, in turnover, training, and absenteeism, and health care expenses;
• It contributes to Milwaukee’s high rates of student absenteeism as older siblings stay home to care for their sick younger brothers and sisters because their parents are denied that right;
• It creates public health obstacles to workplace productivity, forcing sick employees with contagious diseases to work.
Opponents say mandatory paid sick days are a worthy objective but not economically viable. Some have even invoked the possibility of recession as a reason to oppose improving our city’s workplaces.
But these opponents simply offer the same discredited methodology and arguments that backward employers and their academic apologists have used throughout history in opposing child labor laws, the minimum wage, workers compensation, clean air and water regulations and virtually every other labor standard this nation has adopted. In every case the opposition characterized the new labor or community standard as a job killer. And in every case, after the standard was established, the business community adapted, the economy grew and our country, its workers and their families were better for it.
In the 1990’s business lobbyists used the very same arguments now being used against paid sick days to oppose raising the minimum wage. But after states and even cities raised their wages above the national minimum, economists found that the chicken little scenarios of the opponents did not occur: that incremental increases in the minimum wage did not increase unemployment or cause minimum wage paying firms to lay people off.
Facing similar dire warnings, San Francisco enacted a paid sick leave ordinance in 2007. However, despite an economic downturn affecting all counties in the Bay Area, San Francisco maintained a competitive job growth rate that exceeded the average rate of nearby counties.
Internationally, of the twenty most competitive economies, only the United States does not guarantee its workers paid sick leave.
Economies and firms can try to compete on price and cost. But in world where two billion people live on less than two dollars a day, Milwaukee will not succeed by trying to get poor. The only way Milwaukee can thrive is by getting smart- competing with high skill, high productivity, high-wage employees.
Indeed, opponents of the sick leave referendum, such as the Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce (MMAC) point out that many of their members already provide paid sick leave. These MMAC members should welcome higher standards for all employers, which would protect them against unfair competition from businesses without standards, and would prevent a destructive race to the bottom in workplace standards.
Providing all Milwaukee workers with paid sick leave is the right thing to do. It is also the smart thing to do because firms that treat their employees humanely benefit from increased commitment, inventiveness and productivity, the keys to competing in an increasingly competitive global economy.
We urge the citizens of Milwaukee to VOTE YES on the sick day referendum.
Zohreh Emami, PhD, Professor of Economics, Alverno College
Marc Levine, PhD, Professor of Urban Studies, UWM Center for Economic Development
Michael Rosen, PhD, Economics Instructor, Milwaukee Area Technical College
As academic researchers on economic development and workplace productivity, we urge Milwaukeeans to vote YES on the city’s sick leave referendum.
Milwaukee has the seventh highest poverty rate in the nation, a 51% African American male jobless rate and the largest racial disparities in unemployment and poverty in the country. 43% of the city’s workers earn less than $20,000 a year and many are among the 122,230 Milwaukeeans (47% of the private workforce) who do not have paid sick days.
In this economic context, everyone agrees that Milwaukee needs more family-supporting jobs. Yet, employment that lacks paid sick days forces employees to choose between their jobs and caring for their families. A job that does not provide employees with paid sick days so they can care for their families is not a family-supporting job.
The lack of paid sick days hampers economic development in Milwaukee in myriad ways:
• It costs workers job stability, as employees who become too ill to work or who take off to care for a sick child or parent are frequently fired;
• It costs companies in workplace stability and productivity, in turnover, training, and absenteeism, and health care expenses;
• It contributes to Milwaukee’s high rates of student absenteeism as older siblings stay home to care for their sick younger brothers and sisters because their parents are denied that right;
• It creates public health obstacles to workplace productivity, forcing sick employees with contagious diseases to work.
Opponents say mandatory paid sick days are a worthy objective but not economically viable. Some have even invoked the possibility of recession as a reason to oppose improving our city’s workplaces.
But these opponents simply offer the same discredited methodology and arguments that backward employers and their academic apologists have used throughout history in opposing child labor laws, the minimum wage, workers compensation, clean air and water regulations and virtually every other labor standard this nation has adopted. In every case the opposition characterized the new labor or community standard as a job killer. And in every case, after the standard was established, the business community adapted, the economy grew and our country, its workers and their families were better for it.
In the 1990’s business lobbyists used the very same arguments now being used against paid sick days to oppose raising the minimum wage. But after states and even cities raised their wages above the national minimum, economists found that the chicken little scenarios of the opponents did not occur: that incremental increases in the minimum wage did not increase unemployment or cause minimum wage paying firms to lay people off.
Facing similar dire warnings, San Francisco enacted a paid sick leave ordinance in 2007. However, despite an economic downturn affecting all counties in the Bay Area, San Francisco maintained a competitive job growth rate that exceeded the average rate of nearby counties.
Internationally, of the twenty most competitive economies, only the United States does not guarantee its workers paid sick leave.
Economies and firms can try to compete on price and cost. But in world where two billion people live on less than two dollars a day, Milwaukee will not succeed by trying to get poor. The only way Milwaukee can thrive is by getting smart- competing with high skill, high productivity, high-wage employees.
Indeed, opponents of the sick leave referendum, such as the Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce (MMAC) point out that many of their members already provide paid sick leave. These MMAC members should welcome higher standards for all employers, which would protect them against unfair competition from businesses without standards, and would prevent a destructive race to the bottom in workplace standards.
Providing all Milwaukee workers with paid sick leave is the right thing to do. It is also the smart thing to do because firms that treat their employees humanely benefit from increased commitment, inventiveness and productivity, the keys to competing in an increasingly competitive global economy.
We urge the citizens of Milwaukee to VOTE YES on the sick day referendum.
Zohreh Emami, PhD, Professor of Economics, Alverno College
Marc Levine, PhD, Professor of Urban Studies, UWM Center for Economic Development
Michael Rosen, PhD, Economics Instructor, Milwaukee Area Technical College
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Palin courted conservative DC insiders and they swooned
It turns out that Sarah Palin didn't come out of Alaskan tundra to be picked by John McCain as his vice presidential candidate.
Richard Cohen reports in today's Washington Post that leading conservative intellectuals and activists were actively courted by Palin while cruising in Alaska more than two years ago.
Cohen writes:
In 2007, several conservative journalists got off their cruise ships and met Sarah Palin. They saw the present, and she was a babe.
The cruises were sponsored by the National Review and the Weekly Standard, journals of significant influence in conservative circles. The ships disgorged some top conservative editors and writers, who on two occasions were invited at the governor's mansion. Almost to a man, they were thunderstruck.
What followed, once everyone returned to the lower 48, was a gusher of mush -- praise, love notes, sweet nothings and, altogether, the sort of mooning one does not usually hear from the likes of William Kristol, Fred Barnes, Rich Lowry, Dick Morris and my Post colleague Michael Gerson. In short order, important writers set themselves the task, in print and on television, of promoting Palin and, in the process, making perfect asses of themselves. They succeeded at both.
The account of that summer of love comes from yet a third magazine, the New Yorker. In it, Jane Mayer detailed the efforts of the highly ambitious Palin to become well known in the Washington political-journalistic milieu she pretends, in proper demagogic fashion, to detest. After an apparently bravura saying of grace, she wowed her guests with some excellent halibut cheeks and the Category 4 force of her personality. Some of them sank into a kind of delirium known to high schoolers and praised her as "my heartthrob" (Kristol), "a mix between Annie Oakley and Joan of Arc" (Gerson) and, so far not evident, "smart" (Barnes).
The entire article is linked here.
Richard Cohen reports in today's Washington Post that leading conservative intellectuals and activists were actively courted by Palin while cruising in Alaska more than two years ago.
Cohen writes:
In 2007, several conservative journalists got off their cruise ships and met Sarah Palin. They saw the present, and she was a babe.
The cruises were sponsored by the National Review and the Weekly Standard, journals of significant influence in conservative circles. The ships disgorged some top conservative editors and writers, who on two occasions were invited at the governor's mansion. Almost to a man, they were thunderstruck.
What followed, once everyone returned to the lower 48, was a gusher of mush -- praise, love notes, sweet nothings and, altogether, the sort of mooning one does not usually hear from the likes of William Kristol, Fred Barnes, Rich Lowry, Dick Morris and my Post colleague Michael Gerson. In short order, important writers set themselves the task, in print and on television, of promoting Palin and, in the process, making perfect asses of themselves. They succeeded at both.
The account of that summer of love comes from yet a third magazine, the New Yorker. In it, Jane Mayer detailed the efforts of the highly ambitious Palin to become well known in the Washington political-journalistic milieu she pretends, in proper demagogic fashion, to detest. After an apparently bravura saying of grace, she wowed her guests with some excellent halibut cheeks and the Category 4 force of her personality. Some of them sank into a kind of delirium known to high schoolers and praised her as "my heartthrob" (Kristol), "a mix between Annie Oakley and Joan of Arc" (Gerson) and, so far not evident, "smart" (Barnes).
The entire article is linked here.
Saturday, October 25, 2008
McCain and Palin have crossed the line with their McCarthyite attacks
I received another McCain campaign mailer this weekend claiming that Barack Obama is a terrorist.
Enough is enough!
McCain, Palin and the Republican Party have crossed the line with their McCarthyite attempt to associate Barack Obama with Bill Ayers and the Weather Underground. Their irresponsible and dishonest ads are promoting an atmosphere of fear and anger that increases the potential for violence against Barack Obama and his campaign volunteers.
Barack Obama is a United States Senator, a former editor of the Harvard Law Review, constitutional law professor, and community organizer and a candidate for the President of the United States. His Grandfather fought in World War II. His Grandmother, gravely ill, was a bank Vice President.
He is no more a terrorist than I am the Pope!
Obama was 8 years old when Bill Ayers was active in the Weather Underground. The fact that Obama and Ayers, Chicago's Citizen of the Year in 1997, have served on some philanthropic boards together and live in the same neighborhood is irrelevant. I serve on several boards and know nothing about the personal or political histories of my fellow directors. Nor do I have any control over my neighbors political activities or their past actions even though I have been welcomed into their homes.
William C. Ibershof, the lead federal prosecutor of the Weathermen in the 1970s, recently repudiated McCain's efforts when he wrote::" I am amazed and outraged that Senator Barack Obama is being linked to William Ayers’s terrorist activities 40 years ago when Mr. Obama was, as he has noted, just a child."
It's a thoughtful letter that repudiates the McCain campaign's unprincipled attempt to malign Barack Obama for events that he had no role in.
McCain's suggestion that Obama condones violence and intimidation to pursue political objectives turns American history on its head.
Violence and terror have mainly been used as political weapons by the American right wing.
Following the Civil War the planter class that had provoked the War by seceding organized violent, white supremacist paramilitary organizations like the White League in Louisiana and the the Red Shirts in Mississippi, North and South Carolina, to terrorize and murder African- Americans for exercising their newly won freedoms.
Black political participation declined precipitously, reconstruction was betrayed and African Americans were stripped of their constitutional rights for almost 100 years.
The terrorist Ku Klux Klan enforced the post-reconstruction system of racial segregation (Jim Crow) throughout the south through beatings, cutting off fingers, burning down houses, and destroying the crops of African Americans.
Murder was common. There were 5,000 lynchings which were often treated like festivals by white families enjoying the spectacle of execution as entertainment in the post Civil War period. More often, victims were lynched by a small group of white vigilantes under the cover of night. While hanging was most common, some victims were beaten, burned, stabbed, shot, or slowly tortured to death.
Violence was also been routinely used against American workers for trying to bring democracy to the workplace. Workers were routinely fired, evicted from the company owned housing, beaten and murdered for simply trying to organize. From the Colorado and West Virginia coal wars through Andrew Carnegie's use of the Pinkerton National Detective Agency to the Henry Ford's secret police headed by the notorious Harry Bennett, terror was employed by employers against their own employees.
Enough is enough!
McCain, Palin and the Republican Party have crossed the line with their McCarthyite attempt to associate Barack Obama with Bill Ayers and the Weather Underground. Their irresponsible and dishonest ads are promoting an atmosphere of fear and anger that increases the potential for violence against Barack Obama and his campaign volunteers.
Barack Obama is a United States Senator, a former editor of the Harvard Law Review, constitutional law professor, and community organizer and a candidate for the President of the United States. His Grandfather fought in World War II. His Grandmother, gravely ill, was a bank Vice President.
He is no more a terrorist than I am the Pope!
Obama was 8 years old when Bill Ayers was active in the Weather Underground. The fact that Obama and Ayers, Chicago's Citizen of the Year in 1997, have served on some philanthropic boards together and live in the same neighborhood is irrelevant. I serve on several boards and know nothing about the personal or political histories of my fellow directors. Nor do I have any control over my neighbors political activities or their past actions even though I have been welcomed into their homes.
William C. Ibershof, the lead federal prosecutor of the Weathermen in the 1970s, recently repudiated McCain's efforts when he wrote::" I am amazed and outraged that Senator Barack Obama is being linked to William Ayers’s terrorist activities 40 years ago when Mr. Obama was, as he has noted, just a child."
It's a thoughtful letter that repudiates the McCain campaign's unprincipled attempt to malign Barack Obama for events that he had no role in.
McCain's suggestion that Obama condones violence and intimidation to pursue political objectives turns American history on its head.
Violence and terror have mainly been used as political weapons by the American right wing.
Following the Civil War the planter class that had provoked the War by seceding organized violent, white supremacist paramilitary organizations like the White League in Louisiana and the the Red Shirts in Mississippi, North and South Carolina, to terrorize and murder African- Americans for exercising their newly won freedoms.
Black political participation declined precipitously, reconstruction was betrayed and African Americans were stripped of their constitutional rights for almost 100 years.
The terrorist Ku Klux Klan enforced the post-reconstruction system of racial segregation (Jim Crow) throughout the south through beatings, cutting off fingers, burning down houses, and destroying the crops of African Americans.
Murder was common. There were 5,000 lynchings which were often treated like festivals by white families enjoying the spectacle of execution as entertainment in the post Civil War period. More often, victims were lynched by a small group of white vigilantes under the cover of night. While hanging was most common, some victims were beaten, burned, stabbed, shot, or slowly tortured to death.
Violence was also been routinely used against American workers for trying to bring democracy to the workplace. Workers were routinely fired, evicted from the company owned housing, beaten and murdered for simply trying to organize. From the Colorado and West Virginia coal wars through Andrew Carnegie's use of the Pinkerton National Detective Agency to the Henry Ford's secret police headed by the notorious Harry Bennett, terror was employed by employers against their own employees.
More recently, terror was used by states rights extremists against Americans organizing non-violently to extend citizenship rights to African Americans.
Emmitt Till, Medgar Evers, Michael Schwerner Andrew Goodman, James Chaney, and Viola Liuzzo among others were brutally murdered. Others were viciously beaten, including Georgia Congressman John Lewis, and hosed. Bombings, most notoriously of the 16th Street Baptist Church, were frequent.
Pro-life terrorists bombed and burned women's health clinics and murdered doctors who performed legal abortions more than 150 times between 1982 and 1996.
McCain and Palin's attempt to undermine Barack Obama's growing support by labeling him a terrorist has not worked.
It won't because he is not and because the American people have real concerns like the losing their jobs, their homes, their life savings, their health care and their sons in daughters in an ill conceived war. But by suggesting that Barack Obama is a terrorist and associating him with the 9/11 attack on America, McCain and Palin are creating an atmosphere of hate and fear that is fertile ground for extremists among their followers.If there is, God forbid, an attack on Barack Obama, the blood will be on their hands.
Friday, October 24, 2008
Sarah Palin's lipstickgate!
Remember when Sarah Palin talked about being a plain old hockey mom, a self-described pitbull with lipstick?
Well today we learned that Ms. Palin's been buying a whole lot of lipstick, and rouge too.
Or at least her traveling makeup artist, Amy Strozzi, was.
Now hockey moms know all about traveling teams. But traveling makeup artists? Not so much.
It turns out that Ms. Strozzi was the highest paid McCain staffer for the first two weeks of October taking home a sweet $22,800.
Not only that. Ms. Palin also has a traveling hair stylist, Angela Lew. She pocketed another $10,000.
And earlier this week we learned that the Republican Party dropped a cool $150,000 at Neiman Marcus and Saks Fifth Avenue, not your typical hockey mom turf, outfitting Palin.
Of course, the serious issue is the McCain campaign's hypocrisy in trying to paint Senator Barack Obama as an out of touch elitist when it is John "I don't know how many houses I own" McCain and Sarah "Neiman Marcus" Palin who have tastes the rest of could only dream about.
Well today we learned that Ms. Palin's been buying a whole lot of lipstick, and rouge too.
Or at least her traveling makeup artist, Amy Strozzi, was.
Now hockey moms know all about traveling teams. But traveling makeup artists? Not so much.
It turns out that Ms. Strozzi was the highest paid McCain staffer for the first two weeks of October taking home a sweet $22,800.
Not only that. Ms. Palin also has a traveling hair stylist, Angela Lew. She pocketed another $10,000.
And earlier this week we learned that the Republican Party dropped a cool $150,000 at Neiman Marcus and Saks Fifth Avenue, not your typical hockey mom turf, outfitting Palin.
Of course, the serious issue is the McCain campaign's hypocrisy in trying to paint Senator Barack Obama as an out of touch elitist when it is John "I don't know how many houses I own" McCain and Sarah "Neiman Marcus" Palin who have tastes the rest of could only dream about.
Monday, October 20, 2008
McCain's hand is in Joe the plumber's pocket
After the last presidential debate, John McCain declared Joe the plumber the winner.
A day later we learned that Joe's name was Sam and he wasn't really a plumber.
More importantly, Joe better watch out. John McCain's hand is in his pocket.
Despite productivity increases of almost 20%, plumbers, pipefitters and steamfitters haven't done well over the last eight years of Bush inspired high income tax cuts, the kind that John McCain wants to make permanent. Almost all of the economic gains of the past eight years have gone to the wealthiest Americans. The richest 1% of Americans, averaging $1,5 million annually, capture more of the nation's income than at any time since 1929. The average working family earns less today in real dollars than they did in 2000.
John McCain's Republican Party has presided over one of the largest redistributions of income and wealth in American history. McCain, one of the richest men in the senate, isn't opposed to redistribution. He just prefers to redistribute it upward. His approach is less like Robin Hood and more like Robin Hood in reverse!
Winner of the Noble prize in economics, Paul Krugman, writes about this and more in his latest NYT's column.
A day later we learned that Joe's name was Sam and he wasn't really a plumber.
More importantly, Joe better watch out. John McCain's hand is in his pocket.
Despite productivity increases of almost 20%, plumbers, pipefitters and steamfitters haven't done well over the last eight years of Bush inspired high income tax cuts, the kind that John McCain wants to make permanent. Almost all of the economic gains of the past eight years have gone to the wealthiest Americans. The richest 1% of Americans, averaging $1,5 million annually, capture more of the nation's income than at any time since 1929. The average working family earns less today in real dollars than they did in 2000.
John McCain's Republican Party has presided over one of the largest redistributions of income and wealth in American history. McCain, one of the richest men in the senate, isn't opposed to redistribution. He just prefers to redistribute it upward. His approach is less like Robin Hood and more like Robin Hood in reverse!
Winner of the Noble prize in economics, Paul Krugman, writes about this and more in his latest NYT's column.
On November 4th remember which political party is been better for your wallet?
Bulls, Bears, Donkeys and Elephants
By TOMMY McCALL
Since 1929, Republicans and Democrats have each controlled the presidency for nearly 40 years. So which party has been better for American pocketbooks and capitalism as a whole? Well, here’s an experiment: imagine that during these years you had to invest exclusively under either Democratic or Republican administrations. How would you have fared?
As of Friday, a $10,000 investment in the S.& P. stock market index* would have grown to $11,733 if invested under Republican presidents only, although that would be $51,211 if we exclude Herbert Hoover’s presidency during the Great Depression. Invested under Democratic presidents only, $10,000 would have grown to $300,671 at a compound rate of 8.9 percent over nearly 40 years.
(reprinted from the New York Times, October 14, 2008)
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