Blog

Give union-made gifts 

Did you know all Hasbro toys and games including Monopoly, G.I.Joe and My Little Pony are made by union “elves”?

Also look for union-made household items, clothing, shoes, even espresso machines and other popular small kitchen appliances.  Check out this UAW Consumer Buying Guide for more ideas.

Is the iPhone 4S on Santa’s list? Shop AT&T and you’ll be supporting fellow workers at the only nationwide unionized wireless provider.  You can also save 15% on AT&T wireless service when you use your Union Plus discount.

And for made-in-the-USA gift ideas, check out this DailyKos article.

And you can even support unionized actors – and save with your union member discount – by purchasing theater tickets and other entertainment discounts through the Union Plus Entertainment Discounts program.

Buy union-made holiday treats, turkeys, hams and more

Check your favorite brands to see if they support America’s workers on the UFCW site.  “Buy union” when it comes to everything from coffee, turkey and ham for holiday dinners to chocolates, chips and beer for parties.

Don’t forget to use your Union Plus discounts (more…)

Progressives had some fun last week with Frank Luntz, who told the Republican Governors’ Association that he was scared to death of the Occupy movement and recommended language to combat what the movement had achieved. But the progressive critics mostly just laughed, said his language wouldn’t work, and assumed that if Luntz was scared, everything was hunky-dory. Just keep on saying the words Luntz doesn’t like: capitalism, tax the rich, etc.

It’s a trap.

When Luntz says he is “scared to death,” he means that the Republicans who hire him are scared to death and he can profit from that fear by offering them new language. Luntz is clever. Yes, Republicans are scared. But there needs to be a serious discussion of both Luntz’s remarks and the progressive non-response.

What has been learned from the brain and cognitive sciences is that words are defined by fixed frames we use in thinking, frames come in hierarchical systems, and political frames are defined in moral terms, where “morality” is very different for conservatives and progressives. What lies behind the Occupy movement is a moral view of democracy: Democracy is about citizens caring about each other and acting responsibly both socially and personally. This requires a robust public empowering and protecting everyone equally. Both private success and personal freedom depend on such a public. Every critique and proposal of the Occupy movement fits this moral view, which happens to be the progressive moral view.

What the Occupy movement can’t stand is the opposite “moral” view, that democracy provides the freedom to seek one’s self-interest and ignore what is good for other Americans and others in the world. That view lies behind the Wall Street ethic of the Greedy Market, as opposed to a Market for All, a market that should maximize the well-being of most Americans. This view leads to a hierarchical view of society, where success is always deserved and lack of success is moral failure. The rich are the moral, and they not only deserve their wealth, they also deserve the power it brings. This is the view that Luntz is defending. (more…)

Today, thousands of 99 Percenters will march on K Street in Washington, D.C. as a part of an action called “Take Back The Capitol,” taking aim at the lobbying firms that corporate interests use to influence the federal government.

A report released this month by Public Campaign demonstrates just how important it is for Americans to battle corporate special interests and reclaim our democracy. The group’s research finds that thirty big corporations actually spent more money lobbying the federal government between 2008 and 2010 than they spent in taxes. For example, General Electric — one of the top 10 most profitable companies in the world — got a net tax rebate of $4.7 billion during this period. Meanwhile, it spent $84 million lobbying the federal government.

Here’s the full list of the 30 corporations identified and what they paid in federal taxes as opposed to lobbying:

To follow today’s actions, check out Take Back The Capitol’s website, and find instant updates about the protest through the hashtag #99indc. ThinkProgress will be covering today’s events at our 99 Percent Movement special topics page.

***

Zaid Jilani also serves as editor of the 99 Percent Movement Special Topics page at the Center for American Progress Action Fund. Zaid grew up in Kennesaw, Ga., and holds a bachelor’s degree in international affairs with a minor in Arabic from the University of Georgia. Prior to joining ThinkProgress.org, Zaid interned for Just Foreign Policy and was a weekly columnist at The Red & Black, the University of Georgia’s official student newspaper. He is a co-editor at the Georgia-based blog Georgia Liberal and a regular on RT America’s The Alyona Show and The Thom Hartmann Show and has been a guest host on Al Jazeera English’s The Stream. He is also an occasional contributor to the op-ed pages of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

***

This is republished from Think Progress Economy.

“His name was Colin; here are his papers,” said the waitress presenting a bound prospectus to two diners who possess a limitless interest in the origin, diet and even friendship circle of the chicken they are about to order. The scene comes from Portlandia, the sketch comedy that skewers the bobo lifestyle.

Most of us aren’t quite so inquisitive about our food. But in an era of mass food-borne illness outbreaks, we do need retailers to provide basic information about our foods’ origins, and regulators to ensure the accuracy of these claims.

The country-of-origin labels we now rely on come from a 2008 law that ensures we know in which countries our meat was born, raised and slaughtered. The policy resulted from decades of consumer campaigning in response to slaughterhouses’ practices of routinely combining dozens of animals from diverse countries into the same hamburger patty, without having to even document the cattle’s origin.

Last month, the World Trade Organization (WTO) ruled that the law violated the global agency’s rules. A three-person tribunal in Geneva admitted that there was no strong evidence of quantifiable damage to Mexico and Canada, which challenged the law. Yet, if U.S. officials do not appeal or the appeal fails, the U.S. must weaken or eliminate the policy, or we face indefinite trade sanctions (more…)

The weather in South Africa is beautiful — warm during the day, cool and breezy at night. This is a unique and fitting place to stage the United Nations Climate Change Conference, as South Africa prepares for the impacts of climate change.

The costs of adapting to climate change are not limited to South Africa or other countries that the UNFCCC framework considers “developing.” The cost is something that we in the United States deal with on a daily basis, even if there are still powerful “climate deniers” in Congress who aren’t willing to admit it. From the costs of increasingly severe weather events to the rising cost of food from climate-related droughts, Americans pay for global warming every day.

But the biggest cost that we pay is in lost opportunity. As it stands, the U.S. is failing to take advantage of the opportunities to create good jobs by addressing climate change. This makes less and less sense as our economy struggles to regain its footing, and as millions of Americans continue to search for work.

The BlueGreen Alliance is in Durban this week advocating for a framework to address climate change that spurs economic growth and job creation in the United States. The 15 partners of the BlueGreen Alliance — 11 of America’s largest labor unions and four of its most influential environmental organizations — released a statement this week, “Fighting Climate Change, Creating Jobs,” which advocates international climate action grounded in science-based greenhouse gas reduction targets, urging the U.S. to pursue emissions reductions as aggressively as possible by taking all feasible steps to meet current near term targets. This can be achieved through investments and policies that will build a strong clean energy economy, create new jobs for American workers and improve U.S. competitiveness in the global economy.

We can accomplish these goals through smart policies and strategic investments in building a truly 21st century American economy. Growing the production of clean energy in the United States while making our transportation systems, industries, building stock, transmission and communications systems more efficient will both create jobs and ensure that America is competitive in an increasingly efficient global economy. (more…)

In another disgusting attack on workers, the National Labor Relations Board’s sole Republican member, Brian Hayes, has threatened to resign in order to deny the Board’s three-person quorum it needs to issue any rules. Hayes’ resignation threat is specifically aimed at working people in that it would cripple the Board from adopting a modest new rule that would remove frivolous lawsuits and red tape that delay union elections, which the Board intends to pass this year.

The NLRB is an independent federal agency whose members are appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate. The Board’s role is to enforce the National Labor Relations Act, the 76 year-old law that safeguards employees’ rights to organize and sets the rules for unionization in the private sector.

In June of this year, the Board announced a straightforward proposed rule governing procedures in representation cases. The Board stated, “The proposed amendments are intended to reduce unnecessary litigation, streamline pre-and-post election procedures, and facilitate the use of electronic communications and document filing.”

Anyone who has taken part in a private sector union organizing drive will tell you that employers frequently hold back the workers’ voting for eons by way of legal filings and appeals — many of which are frivolous but, by law, need to be reviewed by the NLRB. (more…)

I’m getting fed up with pompous pundits lecturing the ‘Occupy!’ movement for not having a set of specific demands.

A case in point: New York Time financial columnist Joe Nocera quoted at length in a story by Phoebe Mitchell in the Daily Hampshire Gazette on Nov 29.  He was speaking at the Amherst Political Union, a debate club at UMass Amherst.

Nocera starts off with the now usual tipping of the hat to the protestors:

“Nocera believes the anger caused by income inequality, a divisive issue across the country in this prolonged economic downturn, is the fuel for both popular uprisings. ‘If we lived in a country that had a growing economy and where the middle class felt that they could make a good living and had a chance for advancement and a decent life, there would be no tea party or Occupy Wall Street,’ he said.”

But we don’t live in such times, and the more interesting story is that OWS and its trade union allies are displacing the Tea Party, and energizing the progressive grassroots. Nocera, however, makes OWS the target.

“He believes that for the Occupy Movement to be successful, it must frame clear demands that outline a plan for creating jobs and refashioning Wall Street to benefit the entire country and not just a select few wealthy investors. Without a solid plan for moving forward, he said, the Occupy protestors will be continued to be viewed by Wall Street supporters as little more than “a gnat that needs to be flicked from its shoulder blades.”

A ‘gnat’ indeed. In due time, a progressive majority may well come to view our dubious ‘Masters of the Universe’ on Wall St as bothersome gnats to be flicked away. (more…)

At least one (Romney) may be at least o-kay if he really means what he says. At least one (Cain) is an odd mix of very good and very bad. And at least one (Perry) seems to be just naïve and corrupt on the subject.

But I have yet to report on a candidate who is proactively, deliberately, ideologically wrong on trade as a matter of high principle.

Until now. His name is Newt Gingrich.

Gingrich is, of course, already familiar to Americans from his unhappy stint as House Speaker in the mid 1990s, a stint which ended up disappointing both Democrats and his own Republicans. Republicans, of course, abandoned him as leader in 1999 after he led his party to the worst-ever Congressional loss by a party not in control of the White House.

And there was all that nastiness in 1997 about allegedly using tax-deductible charitable donations to fund a non-charitable college course he taught–and of then lying about it to the House Ethics Committee. Was he innocent? Well, the House voted 395-28 to fine him an unprecedented $300,000 as part of a deal to avoid a full hearing, if that helps the reader any.

Gingrich seemed, as recently as a year or so ago, to have been relegated to well-paid has-been land–decorated, of course, with the polite fiction of his being an elder statesman of the party.

During this earlier career, Gingrich racked up a record of supporting every major wrong move on trade issues the United States has made in recent decades. To wit:

• In 1993, he supported the North American Free Trade Agreement. (Which wasn’t even enough, according to him. He wanted to eventually add Chile to the deal with the aim of eventually expanding it to cover the entire New World.)

• In 1994, he voted for creation of the World Trade Organization and American membership.

• In 1998, he supported Most Favored Nation (now known as Permanent Normal Trade Relations) status with China. (more…)

The labor movement and its allies scored a major victory with the repeal of Ohio Senate Bill 5 (SB5), a piece of anti-union legislation signed by Republican Gov. John Kasich. In a referendum that gave voters a chance to speak on the issue, Ohioans resoundingly rejected the law, which would have gutted the bargaining rights of 350,000 public-sector workers. In a landmark defeat for Republicans, voters turned out in large numbers and voted 61 percent to 39 percent to strike down SB5.

To understand how progressives pulled off this remarkable win, I spoke with Paul Booth, one of the chief strategists behind the campaign to repeal SB5. Currently, Booth is executive assistant to Gerald McEntee, the longtime president of the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME). But he is also an organizing legend outside of the labor movement. In the 1960s, Booth served as national secretary and vice president of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), and in the 1970s he was a prominent figure at the Midwest Academy, an influential training ground for organizers. He has worked for AFSCME since 1974.

Delving into the Ohio victory, I opened with a simple question: “Why did we win?”

“The people of Ohio decided that this was as a power grab by the governor and his people,” Booth said. “They decided public service workers’ rights were worth preserving.”

(more…)

Let’s look at public policies for economic development that help us recover from the recession.

In one view of economic development, the role of government is to “make business succeed.” In this view, government should get out of the way and let markets find the most efficient outcome.

An alternative view of economic development is that government policies should raise our standard of living. In this view, government plays an active role in devising trade and industrial policies that attract investment, build industrial capacity, and create good jobs that build the middle class. And make business succeed.

To be sure, markets are powerful and efficient, but markets fail. In particular, markets fail to serve non-economic interests — not just the environment, human rights, labor rights, and public health, but markets also under-invest in R&D, education, physical infrastructure and social safety nets.

Globalization has sharpened the difference in these two approaches, by de-coupling investor and business interests from the public interest. If investors are global in their outlook, then the interests of America dim from view.

In a global economy where national boundaries are blurred, we need to think about trade and industrial policies that work for America. A year ago, I mentioned 4 policies that would help reconnect the interests of investors with public interests and communities. Here are four more. (more…)