CAJ note: Last night we joined one million households across the country on Rep. Michele Bachmann’s tele-townhall. Bachmann referred to this article [below] by Kevin Bogardus during the call.
The Congresswoman said that Speaker Pelosi has blocked debate on the bill and that this legislation is a shell. It was an aviation bill [which readers can verify for themselves by doing a simple web search] that was stripped and replaced with this “stimulus” spending bill. Bachmann made it very clear the purpose of this bill is to get Democrats re-elected: the money will go to Unions and PACS and, after skimming some money for themselves, those groups will return the rest of the funds to Democrat campaign coffers. She said Speaker Pelosi knows her Democrats are in deep trouble in November and she will try to spend as much as possible to keep her majority and her power in the House.
In other words, your taxes are funding endangered Democrats running for re-election to Congress in November, whether or not you intend to vote for them.
During the Q & A segment of the meeting callers were clearly very, very angry at this and everything else that has taken place in Washington during the past 20 months. Also on this call to comment and field questions were Reps. Steve King, Joe Barton, and Louis Gohmert.
Rep. Bachmann paid $100,000 for this massive telephone town hall last night. We urge our readers to support her campaign this season as she is being challenged by a heavily-financed Democrat, as one might imagine. Speaker Pelosi nearly succeeded in running Bachmann out of office in 2008. She will try again this November: Bachmann is clearly thorn in Pelosi’s side.
Teachers’ unions plan to rev up recess action to protect Democrats’ majority
Kevin Bogardus
The Hill
8/8/2010
Several unions will pivot off expected House passage of the latest jobs bill to rev up their campaign machinery during the August recess.
The House plans to vote Tuesday on Senate-passed legislation that provides $16 billion in extended Medicaid benefits and $10 billion in education funding for the states.
The schools funding has big significance for union members, many of whom could lose their jobs if the money doesn’t come through. Labor officials plan an onslaught against those who oppose it.
For the most part, that will mean Republicans, as labor is digging in to protect a threatened Democratic majority.
“We are set to launch a robust field plan across the country during the month of August, including advertising and grassroots events,” said Gerry McEntee, president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), in a statement. “We intend to highlight the clear choice Americans will make in November between Democrats who are working to protect jobs and move the economy forward and Republicans who are willing to wreck the economy for political gain.”
AFSCME in particular is hugely affected by the legislation since it is the largest public sector union in the country, but other unions plan to campaign off the jobs bill vote too.
The AFL-CIO will begin a series of rallies, phone banks and letters thanking House members who voted for the legislation. In contrast, union members will campaign against candidates — likely primarily GOP ones — who voted against the bill and “put their political interests ahead of 900,000 jobs,” according to a union official.
The labor federation will be concentrating its resources in 23 states, with high priority given to California, Illinois, Nevada, New York, Ohio and Pennsylvania. Political staff trained by the AFL-CIO will be on the ground in those states, along with press aides to drum up media interest.
“We will do the most intensive on-the-ground education program that we have done in a number of years,” AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said. “We will be hitting every one of those battleground states.”
The core of the program is to get union members to convince their colleagues to become politically active, and vote. The AFL-CIO hopes to prompt those talks with leafleting, phone banking and canvassing door-to-door, which began in July.
Also during the recess, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) is joining in a coalition with several others, including US Action, Health Care for America Now and Americans for Responsible Taxes, to campaign against Wall Street. In several states, workers will be rallying against the financial sector for its role in the housing crisis as well as meager small-business lending.
In addition, voter registration drives will be held in California, while Pennsylvania Democratic gubernatorial candidate Dan Onorato is expected to take part in SEIU’s “Walk a Day in My Shoes” program, where he spend the work day with a nursing home worker. To earn SEIU’s endorsement in 2008, several Democratic presidential candidates, including President Obama, took part in the program.
The United Steelworkers will also be active this month, said the union’s president, Leo Gerard.
“During this recess, we will be ramping up our on-the-ground operations, especially in the heavy industrialized states where our membership is the strongest,” Gerard said. “Our objective is to make sure we define the choice between the likes of John Boehner and a Nancy Pelosi, between a Harry Reid and a Sharron Angle.”
According to Gerard, those states include Alabama, Illinois, Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania.
A sentence in this article was corrected on Aug. 9 at 3:54 p.m.
Update: Video of AFL-CIO President Trumka: “We don’t have a deficit crisis.”
AFL-CIO President: Richard Trumka also calls the reports of massive deficit spending “fiction,” and blames the media for reporting it…
…What Trumka ignores, of course, is that deficit spending is crowding out private spending and is thus responsible for making the jobs situation worse, not better. Even more spending will prolong joblessness in this country. Obama, by the way, has done more deficit spending in his first 421 days in office than Bush did in more than 4 years…
