The world of the worker remains stark, as each month a quarter million jobs are lost and nearly that many new foreclosures are filed against homeowners. The unemployment rate, at 9.8 percent, is expected to rise, even as six people compete for every current job opening. By contrast, Wall Street is booming. Banks bailed out a year ago with federal tax dollars are reporting huge profits, spending millions to lobby Congress not to regulate them and paying out big bonuses again. What should be done to turn around Main Street America?

 

 

 

 

Punish Corporations that Flee Overseas

“Trickle Down” has been a total failure for two decades.  Instead of handouts to save banks and corporations, the government should be looking into creating jobs through public works projects (it worked before) and other means of putting money into the hands of working class people.  When average Americans have enough money to do more than just pay the monthly bills – housing, food, utilities, etc. – they will then be able to start saving and investing.  A successful economy involves millions of people saving and investing – not millionaire getting more millions.

Labor needs to start running our own candidates at all levels.  There needs to be more Sherrod Brown and Barney Frank-type legislators.  These people understand that the American version of capitalism is a total failure.  It perpetuates greed at the expense of the public and the nation.  We need our friends in Congress to start introducing legislation that penalizes corporations that flee to the southern states (just to save on labor costs) or leave to foreign production sites. 

Former USW President George Becker told me once that he was a true believer in the old Mineworker adage – “There are no neutrals here – you’re on our side or you’re on the wrong side.” We should start challenging elected officials that can’t seem to get off the fence – even if it means electing a Republican or losing currently-held seats.  We have been fighting a “rear guard” action for over 25 years.  It’s time to go on the offensive – from school, park and library boards, to aldermen and mayors, to state legislators and all the way to the top.  Perhaps with Rich Trumka leading the AFL-CIO we may see some of this come to pass.

Gary Gaines
Granite City, Ill. 
SOAR 7-34-2 Rapid Response Coordinator

 

Limit CEO Pay

Federal law should prohibit total CEO compensation, including bonuses, to exceed four times the highest worker’s pay.

Richard A. Bolster
Northbrook, Ill. 

 

More Regulation Essential

I believe that legislation should be passed to tightly regulate the financial institutions, insurance companies and corporations so they do not have an adverse impact on the economy.
The economy will struggle to recover as long as these institutions continue to maximize their profits at the expense of consumers and workers. Congress should revisit their credit card legislation and limit interest rates. Rates being charged used to be usury. Credit card holders faced with high rates that have no relationship to those that corporations pay are preventing consumers from buying extras or even essentials – purchases that could be stimulating the economy.
I also believe that more must be done by the U.S. Congress to stimulate job creation as President Franklin D. Roosevelt did during the Great Depression. Congress approved billions of dollars for the Iraq war which helped create an enormous deficit and now they are so “fiscally responsible” that stimulating job growth or taxing the very rich is abhorrent to them.
Unions should be at the forefront in promoting new congressional members that are not beholden to corporate lobbyist. The 2010 Congressional elections will be more important to this country than the next presidential election in 2012.

Vincent Guadagnino,
Lake Forest, Calif. 

 

Tax the Wealthy

Our lawmakers and President should create laws taxing the wealthy, everyone making more than $500,000 a year, 75% or more, for the next 20 years.  The wealthy owe us this because they’ve been stealing from us for the past 30 years.  Our leaders must also pass the Employee Free Choice Act. 

 Theresa Duperon, Esq.
Los Angeles, Calif.

 

Start a Strong Economy with Citizens

We workers have turned our back on Main Street and have fallen for the bigger-is-better (and cheaper) mentality of the Wal-Marts and Home Depots.  And we have accepted the “global” shift as necessary as businesses take our jobs overseas but still expect us to be consumers to the world market.  We need to see a shift to a consumer development mentality by the business community.

We also need to rethink our economic “brewing” techniques. If you are a coffee drinker you will know what I’m saying.  As an economy we have fallen into the “dripalator,” trickle-down approach, while I still believe that a percolator makes a better cup of coffee because it starts from the bottom of the pot and develops the flavor from there. If we want to develop a strong “cup” of economic coffee, we need to start from the bottom of the pot (every day citizens) and let the flavor rise.

Terry Havener
Johnstown, Pa.

 

Jobs, jobs and more jobs

A major union matter now is jobs. FDR gave us the 3 Cs, the Civilian Conservation Corps. It worked. We need trains, new sources of energy, not dirty coal, not Saudi Arabian oil, not nuclear energy with the waste stored under Yucca Flats in Nevada. Jobs, jobs, and more jobs.

 Eugene Blank
Portland, Ore. 

 

To Turn Around Main Street America:

1. Stop the wars

2. Rebuild our infrastructure

3. Enable local communities through their schools to train residents for jobs and work skills 

4. If a corporation is too big to fail, it is too big to exist – stop the monopolization – retake anti-trust legislation.

John and Carolee Monroe
Retired teachers and former members of CTA/NEA
Claremont, Calif.

  

Bail Out Main Street

Wall Street has been bailed out, and we have been told that this benefits Main Street.

It’s time to bail out Main Street, which, by expanding the domestic market, will benefit Wall Street.

Apart from passing a health care reform with a strong public option, there are two critical actions that need to be taken.

First, there has to be real, not piddling, foreclosure relief. That would involve some combination of a 6-month nation-wide moratorium on all foreclosures involving mortgages under $500,000; a mandatory federal purchase at 50 cents to the dollar of all troubled mortgages, replacing them with low-interest, fixed-rate, pre-payable 30-year mortgages; and roll-back of interest rates of all mortgages under $500,000 from their current level to the their average level of the last 5 years.

Second, there has to be real change, real reform in the income tax code. Zero tax on the first $50,000 of income, 90% tax on income after $1,000,000, 95% tax on income after $10,000,000, regardless of deductions.

David Arnow
Brooklyn, N.Y.

  

Pay for Single-Payer with Tariffs

We need single-payer universal health care.  This will accomplish two things.  For one thing the middle class would not have to worry about paying for health care themselves.  For another thing it would take a burden off small businesses so that they could hire more workers and focus on doing what they do best. 

To pay for single-payer health care, we should reinstate tariffs on goods produced by cheap overseas labor.  This would discourage outsourcing, further bringing jobs here to the middle class who needs them.  In addition, we should also invest in the green economy, obtaining energy from sources like solar and wind, and we should focus on making hybrids, plug-in hybrids and electric cars as well as improving access to mass transit.  This will further add to the number of jobs.

Michael Karsh
Martinez, Calif.

 

Control Banks; Reinvest Locally

The number one item that should be done to turn around Main Street is capping  all executive salaries, bonuses, “golden parachutes,” including stock options, IRA’s, and the like.  No one, I repeat, no one, is worth more than a million dollars a year in salary. 

The second, and certainly not less important, item that should be done is reinvestment in local businesses — the “Mom and Pop” businesses that contribute a huge portion of tax revenue to individual communities.  This is money that stays within the communities and keeps them alive.  Likewise, these local businesses should look at the vast number of unemployed in their own backyards and hire those who need jobs desperately so they have disposable income to spend in their communities.  These are people who may be close enough to walk to work thus clearing the air and improving their own health.

Third, mortgage companies need to be put on notice; more needs to be done to not only correct but also punish predatory lenders.  The federal, state, and municipal governments should step in and not just require, but force lenders to totally disclose their accounts, employee salaries including retirement packages and bonuses.  Then, since We-the-People are now the owners of so many lending businesses, we should demand repayment of our loans with their profits, executive bonuses, and overpriced resort conference centers.  Stockholders should then be put in control of how much executives receive in salaries and bonuses, and the federal government should have more control of how banks spend money since We-the-People now own them.  

Bonnie K. Long
Goshen, Ind. 

 

Promote Unions to Improve Main Street

Enactment of the bill in Congress to make it easier for employees to form a union would be a big step.

Ronnie Young
Waynesville, N.C. 

 

Invest in Small Business and Worker Training

For years now, we have been on a trend to solidify and consolidate American businesses.

The result has been more big boxes, more big banks, and fewer industries, including the health care industries, that dictate our economic wealth. The bailout for working Americans should include more supplements to diversification and small business as well as a real nationwide infrastructure program and worker training programs in emerging technology and green jobs.  

Susan Maroko
International Staff Representative
USW-District 7, Sub-District 1
Bridgeview, Ill. 

  

Second Stimulus Needed

Progressive Democrats of America went on record in support of a second stimulus with its May 18 publication of my assessment of the financial and economic crisis and a plan to address it.  The idea was not original — I got it from Robert Reich. And Paul Krugman and James K. Galbraith also supported it — but it was hardly part of mainstream discussion, despite Reich’s calculation that a projected $350 billion in state budget cuts and tax hikes would predictably negate nearly half the impact of the $787 billion first federal stimulus. 

Over the summer, that snowball became at least a small avalanche:  On June 29, the Financial Times reported that Christina Romer, chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, said the administration would be open to further stimulus if needed, acknowledging that cutbacks by states facing budget crises would push in the opposite direction.  Laura Tyson of the president’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board came out in favor the following week.  Even the Financial Times called for a second stimulus, specifically targeting the states, on the condition that the money be spent quickly.

As the so-called “jobless” recovery proceeds, the White House has begun looking for ways to help Wall Street without calling its measures a second stimulus.  But something quite substantial is still critical as a holding action, to keep us from going over the cliff.  Obama should recognize and level with the public about the dimensions and severity of the problem, and return to Congress for a second stimulus to help the states maintain vital services and avoid tax increases. And Congress should heed the request.

Robert Roth
Eugene, Oregon,

 

Jobs for Main Street; Reform Wall Street

Wall and Main Streets are the two basic economic systems.  Wall Street is comprised of financial capitalist owners who hire technical personnel, e.g. administrators, lawyers, engineers, and statisticians, to run their enterprises.  Main Street is comprised of small businesses and farms, industrial capitalist, entrepreneurs, etc., who produce products that most people want or that people want most.  This system is controlled by the market; whereas, Wall Street, being concerned mainly with growth, has no controls, is unstable, and causes most of our economic crashes.  Nearly all inventions and innovations come from Main Street; whereas, Wall Street concerns itself with growth policies, e.g. planned obsolescence fins on fenders, two tone paint, etc.

Producing jobs for Main Street and reforming Wall Street are the keys to ending  economic collapse.  FDR’s 3 R’s — Relief, Recovery, and Reform — are applicable, including, respectively, CCC and WPA, PWA, and NRA and AAA.  Reinstituting the draft would get young people off the streets and prepare them for useful employment.  We do not have great dams (TVA, HOOVER), or bridges (Golden Gate), or highways (US 40) to build.  But we can repair our crumbling interstate highway system, maintain our highway bridges, rebuild our infrastructure, and make money available for Main Street businesses, etc., to lend and borrow.  And we can develop new industries in our country such as renewable energy, fast trains, and national health.  And if Detroit cannot produce an efficient automobile, then the Government can.  After all, we put a man on the Moon.

Recovery projects take more time to get positive results than Relief because specifications have to be developed, bids have to be made and awarded, and workers hired. The secondary effects of putting people to work does not happen immediately either, for hired workers who have been unemployed are reluctant to spend their pay until they get back on their feet.

Robert K. Leavitt
Upland, Calif. 

  

Make American Corporations Employ Americans

American corporations should be required to pay their U.S. taxes, and they should be required to have at least a majority of their employees working on U.S. soil.  If not, they shouldn’t have the privilege of operating as American corporations!

John Latta
Richland, Wash.

 

Follow President Roosevelt

The plan we should be following is the same one President Roosevelt did. Put people to work rebuilding the infrastructure, the parks, the cities and education. Abolish military Keynesianism and reintroduce Glass-Steagall legislation. End state corporatism.

Frank Cannonito
Retired mathematics professor
Irvine, Calif.

 

Worker Ownership

I think more of the corporations should be owned by the workers rather than a privileged class of stockholders.

When a company goes into bankruptcy or just closes, there should be a law and federal loans and guidance available so that the workers can buy the building and corporate assets at a fair price and then continue production with the workers as the owners and shareholders.  When people quit or leave, their shares would be bought back and given to new workers. The longer you work at such a place, the more shares you would have.

For example, that window manufacturing plant that closed in Illinois a while back where the workers staged a sit-in — there should be a federal legal procedure for the workers to buy the assets and continue manufacturing with the workers as owners.

Of course this would require simultaneous tariffs to protect the industries we choose to keep in the U S.  Tariffs worked great for a long time until the free trade corporate types started having us all drink the Kool Aid. There was no debate about free trade. It was just forced on us before we knew what was happening. 

The result is that the U.S. is manufacturing little anymore, throwing millions out of work and threatening our security. We cannot depend on other countries to manufacture our steel, airplanes, tanks, tires etc. That is a security threat as well as a loss of jobs here at home.

Diminish the corporate elite gradually by workers buying up plants that move to third world countries and then protecting them with by fair trade or tariffs. The results of that work.

Pat Flierl
Clovis, Calif.
 

Create New Businesses

The federal government can do some things like providing tax credits for businesses that create new jobs, and grants or other assistance for new businesses. The government can even provide ideas and motivation for some new businesses by mandating fuel economy, environmentally favorable architecture, conservation projects and other things.  Beyond that, we cannot and must not depend on the government to pull us out of the current quagmire.  There is room for each of us, drawing on our unique experiences, to enter the arena and find and implement innovative ideas that will help. 
 
In the marketplace today, money is in short supply for things like home maintenance and renovations.  So a handyman or an interior decorator, finding business a bit slow, might start a new line of service providing training and supervision so customers can do most of the work themselves.  Training groups of customers to do their own renovations can be as profitable as time spent doing the work for them.  It may even be more profitable, but it costs the customers less because they are sharing the costs.  And saving the cost of labor, by doing the work themselves, may enable people to afford renovations they could not otherwise afford. 
 
If you think you have a workable idea for a new business or a new approach to solving problems in the marketplace, you can find help if you need it.  If your idea entails starting a new business, the SBA (Small Business Administration), can help you start at this link: http://www.sba.gov/
 
And if you would like to come up with an idea but you don’t know where to begin, you might try visiting http://www.grants.gov/ where you can browse through listings of federal grants to see what products and services the government feels are needed.
 
I hope reading this inspires you to start thinking about how you can contribute to
the recovery, rather than waiting for the government to
throw you a bone.   Good hunting!        

 

Go To Six-Hour Work Day

 I propose two remedies for the skewed wealth in this country. First, we should win the six-hour day (with no loss in pay). It would put people to work since there would be four shifts per day instead of three. It would also give individuals more time to spend with their loved ones and to serve in the community. The wages would be paid by the corporations and their financiers, the banks. 

The second activity that would create jobs is supporting the development of Personal Rapid Transit (PRT). That transportation technology would put people to work building the rails, modules, elevators, etc., and working on the computers and maintenance. It is the only thing that can get people out of their cars, so it is a green technology. 

Margaret R. Beegle
Associate Member of the Steelworkers,
formerly AFSCME member
Golden Valley, Minn.

 

  

Yell at Congress

Pester Congress to stop these trade deals that import foreign goods that Americans can make. For instance, sheets, bedspreads, towels, clothes, were once made in North Carolina. I loved everything I ever bought that said MADE IN THE USA. I still have many of those items. They are still usable after 25 years!!! Yeah, 25 years. 

I’m a 79 year old widow, and I don’t buy much anymore. My best furniture was made in the hills of North Carolina. Today’s crap is fiberboard, back nailed or stapled on, not screwed, no dovetails or mortise. I have 55 year old furniture that is still beautiful. I have all leather American-made shoes that are gorgeous, beautiful shoes came from New England, not this crap from Brazil or where ever. The dye from foreign-made shoes bleeds all over your feet! They only make wides, and I have skinny feet!

I could go on and on. It is hopeless no matter who is President. Greed is the name of the game. Robber barons with 2-13 houses, 12 cars, millions in jewels, clothes and only God knows what else they have stashed someplace.  How many damn dresses can a woman wear or shoes or underwear? And how much can their kids own? How many cars do they need? No CEO should make more than 10-15x as much as the lowest paid worker in his business!

I am fed up with the mind set of management. They think of themselves and their families as GODS.  False gods, as Jesus would call them! If I were only younger and healthier, I would march and yell at Congress!

Gloria J. O’Reilly
Melbourne, Fla. 

 

Hold Our Money Hostage

We should all withdraw all of our money from every bank until they change their ways. We get no interest worth mentioning anyway.  We should start a real workers’ party, which will give us what we deserve: public option, honorable government, better control of Wall Street and banks.

 Elsa Lewin
Great Neck, N.Y.

  

Too Few People Have Too Much Money

 The problem is simple. Too few people have too much money. Here are some proposals.

We need to get health care reform passed immediately. We need a public option – or better, just let people or their employers buy their health insurance from Medicare. Private health insurance companies are robbing the public blind. They are planning to raise rates even without health care reform because 2010 is an election year and the health insurance industry needs money to bribe politicians. (Bi-partisan = buy-partisan.)

We need to proceed full speed to a green technology. You can read the articles on the Apollo Alliance website for details.

We need to restore all the regulations on the banking industry that the Reagan Administration eliminated. We need to abolish APR’s and permit only fixed-rate mortgages. The deregulated banking industry has simply created a casino economy.

We are fighting a war, but the rich are not paying the same tax rate they paid during World War II. We need to pass an emergency tax rate on the rich – 88 to 91% of their income. We can use that to balance the budget and to invest in green technology.

Conservatives like to claim that World War II really ended the Great Depression. But what they don’t tell us is that World War II involved massive government expenditures. The draft took care of the unemployment problem – which might be a good reason for expanding governmnet public work projects. Some government work projects should be designed to provide jobs for college graduates who have degrees but no jobs (and student loans to pay off.) We can lower the tax rate on the rich when everybody has decent jobs and when we’ve gotten rid of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

William Joseph Miller
Los Angeles, Calif.

 

Don’t Be Treated Like a Second-Class Citizen 

When our founding fathers founded this country, they did not give the vote to blacks, and women, and the Indians were not treated so well.  In the great bail-out, Congress is taking care of Wall Street. Wall Street has given members of Congress millions of dollars toward their campaigns, and it appears Congress has not forgotten by giving billions in bail-out.  We can not match the money Wall Street is giving, but we need not let ourselves be treated like second class citizens. Join unions and progressive groups such as those online.  Give what you can.  We must be heard.

Stan Rowe
Newport, Ore.

 

March on Washington

The answer is not in Washington, D.C. The only beneficiaries of the stimulus money so far have been the banks and Wall Street. Nothing much has changed. The world of the worker remains stark.

You remember the millions who marched for immigration reform across the country? Remember the millions who marched on Washington following MLK for civil rights? Those marches surprised everyone who didn’t expect the turnout. Scared the pants off Washington for a while.

Well, I think a million man/woman march on Washington by Main Street America demanding jobs, an end to foreclosures, and the rebuilding of America is the only “noise” Washington will pay attention to. As longs as we continue sending e-mails, donating money and doing those kinds of passive actions that Washington is used to, they will win in the end, and we will end up with a half a loaf, cut up and divided by the corporations.

Angel Rodriguez
A former copper miner from Morenci, Ariz.
Glendale, Ariz. 

 

Unions Matter to Main Street

It is important Unions do change the current union organization laws so there is a level playing field for organizing workers to promote Main Street. This will provide workers such as those at Wal-Mart, Target, Sears, motels, restaurant chains, high tech companies, with livable wages to raise a family.

Wal-Mart is now the largest employer in Pennsylvania, and there is no reason why they should not permit their employees to organize throughout the nation.

What people have to understand is that these businesses if they want to be part of the America Dream should not avoid a livable wage with benefits for our community employees. They will not be able to move overseas and abandon the very people they always say comes first.

Union pension funds have provided many Wall Street investment firms, community banks, and financial planners with good paying jobs on the dimes of the workers. Banks have benefited by investing such pension funds, and reinvesting the money into small businesses and innovative entrepreneurs.  

Unions do look out for their members first and foremost. One did not see union pension funds becoming victims of Madoff-type rip offs. My Union Plus credit card provides me with the lowest finance charge and is understanding when it comes to a late payment.

Small business owners, lawyers, doctors, bankers, dentists, real estate firms, restaurant owners, and all professions and local businesses prosper when union workers flourish within a community

The American union model must be expanded in America to encompass as many workers as possible and then adopted in the Global Economy in every nation on earth.

This is why Unions matter; it has been proven they provide a far fairer and equal work environment and benefit for everyone not just their own members. If you want to help Main Street, then back Union organizing because unions do not just protect Main Street they promote Main Street!

Joseph Janos
Aliquippa, Pa.

 

Go Green to Turn Around Main Street

Go for a “Green Economy,” expand solar power, wind power etc., refurbish infrastructure, clean up polluted waterways and land areas. There’s plenty of work to be done.

Guy D’Angelo
Center Moriches, N.Y.

  

Re-regulate the Markets

 In order to make a determination of what should be done to turn around Main Street America, we first must understand what brought about our current financial crisis. Wall Street’s investment bankers regularly utilized risky investments and engaged in predatory lending habits in an unconscionable effort to produce huge, short term profits. In doing so, they sheltered risk with public funds. These efforts ultimately led to dire consequences when those loans proved not payable. Additionally, they created, maintained and justified a housing bubble which eventually led to the worst economic conditions the United States has experienced since the Great Depression.

American citizens must demand accountability in order to not only maintain the integrity of the marketplace, but also to restore our democracy. Corporate officials acted with reckless abandon at the expense of stockholders and taxpayers. They should be prosecuted and sentenced for their ruthless behavior in much the same way that we hold common criminals and street thugs accountable for illegal activity. Theft is theft no matter the circumstances!

It is time for our legislators in Washington D.C. to intervene. Recent government intervention was necessary within the past year in order to save banks and insurance companies from financial collapse. By the same token it is also appropriate that the government intervene to ensure such institutions are held accountable.

Make no mistake about it, financial deregulation led directly to the economic meltdown in America. The post-Depression regulatory system instituted during Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration has systematically been set aside, leaving only Wall Street’s “fox” to guard the proverbial henhouse.

Even today, Wall Street continues to defend the very same practices that resulted in the financial collapse. If Wall Street has its way, they will continue to remove public controls over their operations. We cannot and must not allow this travesty to continue. We must concentrate on returning to the days of strict regulations of the financial markets. That in turn will stimulate our economy by creating and maintaining high paying American jobs.

John Patrick
Assistant to the Director
USW, District 13
Baytown, Texas

 

Start a National Bank

The first thing that must be done is to rid ourselves of banking tyranny. We have to start our own national bank and put banking at the service of the people and not the other way around. What we have in this country is a massive system of fraud where the banks have used our tax dollars to steal billions of dollars with the active connivance of Geithner, Sommers and an inner circle of thieves and gangsters that inhabit the treasury system.

Paul Bennett
New York, N.Y. 

 

Create Public Jobs

Jobs, jobs, and more jobs.  Push Obama to update the Works Progress Administration WPA and Civilian Conservation Corps to create jobs for all the unemployed. They could rebuild the infrastructure using green standards, adding more trains, streetcars and bikeways. They could retrofit houses, produce renewable energy resources, rebuild New Orleans and surrounding areas, heal the people, educate kids, restore the commons.   Whatever needs doing for the people, they could get done.

Tax the very rich to pay for it.  They used the commons at a bargain price in their climb to wealth.  Now is the time for them to pay their share.

Wren Osborn
El Cajon, Calif. 

 

Inflate to Deflate to Confiscate

Having bought the government, exempted themselves from any legal or ethical restraint and XZ@&$*#&@ the peasants to the point where their lives are stressed and shortened by loss of jobs, community, homes, pensions, “investments,” savings and ability to obtain pricey corporate pill and procedure pushing that passes for health care and then, by God, maneuvered to insure the dead peasants so that they are worth more dead than alive  . . . they now turn to the next generation, who are “counseled” to take student loans that simple calculation would show to be likely too impoverishing to repay, never mind ruinous fine print late fees and interest penalties and the clever exempting of such loans from the relief of bankruptcy, to get college degrees to prepare for jobs that are gone to other peasants worldwide who have perhaps as little as the equivalent of eighth grade education in the school of hard knocks but who can do most remaining productive jobs passably but ephemerally.  

John Bland
Canandaigua, N.Y. 

 

Organize and Take Action

First get everyone to see Michael Moore’s latest on corporations, a love affair. Then get everyone to talk about it. Then get organized into groups to do something, anything.

Call the White House to tell them what you want, and don’t want: 202-456-1111.  It’s a free call. All members should have this number.

Now get organized to rally in protests wherever your group decides, at banks, at foreclosures, at plant layoffs. Have Photo-ops.

Think about joining independent parties, Greens, etc.  I am a Green and voted for Nader.

Call your representatives in Congress — also a free call:  202-224-3121.

Organize, organize.  That’s what unions do best.  We all know what is right, now make the President do that and not let them make us afraid.

Best to us all.  No one is going to save us but us.

Jean Snyder
Member, United Steel Workers
Greenbelt, Md.

 

Working Americans Unite

To turn around Main Street, working Americans must unite across racial, ethnic, religious, gender, political and social classes against the insidious concentration of wealth on Wall Street and the unprecedented takeover of our Democracy by multi-national corporate interests.

 We must be united in our recognition, support and encouragement of those true champions of working Americans such as labor leaders Leo Gerard and Richard Trumka; muckrakers Michael Moore and Jim Hightower; media personalities Thom Hartmann and Keith Olbermann; and progressive lawmakers Bernie Sanders, Alan Grayson and Sheldon Whitehouse.

Similarly we must be united in the identification, acknowledgment, resistance and condemnation of the true enemies and adversaries of working Americans who are the Wall Street billionaires; the multi-national corporate lobbyists; conservative and neo-liberal economic policies; privatization of government services; unfair and exploitive trade policies; bought and paid for corporate judges and politicians at the local, state and federal level; and plutocratic propagandists Rush Limbaugh and Rupert Murdoch.

Finally we must be united in a tireless campaign to promote and establish collective bargaining units throughout our country and world at all levels of skill, education and social occupations.  And we must never, ever waste a single one of our precious votes on a candidate who holds the interests of capital superior to those of their hard working constituents.

John O’Connor
North Smithfield, R.I. 

 

Place High Tariffs on Imported Goods

The USA cannot economically re-industrialize without tariffs that are sufficiently high enough to prohibit most all imported products from entering the USA. We should impose extremely high import taxes so that these U.S. made products are always less expensive to the consumer than the same imported product. Without extremely high tariffs, U.S. workers must compete with foreign workers at very low foreign wage scales and degraded environmental conditions.

The US government should borrow U.S. dollars back from the industrial nations and use that money to build manufacturing plants to make various consumer products in sequence one product at a time, i.e. refrigerators, washing machines, clothing, TV’s, electronics, tires, auto parts, hand tools, power tools, machine tools, appliances, etc.  Eventually all of the consumer goods that we import could be made in the USA.

These plants should periodically be for sale based upon open public competitive bidding, but at a minimum sale price at least equal to as much as the government investment, and with terms of cash only without any creative financing.

The US government must also pass laws to prohibit the export of service jobs such as accounting, telemarketing, customer service, computer aided drafting, engineering, etc. that are now provided by workers overseas through the internet.

The management should know about making the products, not creative accounting and/or creative financing.

U.S. citizens must stop selling the U.S. national wealth that was created by previous generations of agriculture, mining and manufacturing sectors of our economy during and after World War II to pay for our non-producing but high consumptive lifestyle of today.

Paying people to rake leaves, pave roads, build infrastructure, plant trees, dig holes then refill the same holes, clean up the environment, write poems, paint pictures, bailout financial investment failures, etc. with U.S. dollars borrowed from industrialized nations is nice, but these jobs will not be useful or contribute anything to correcting the basic U.S. economic foundation problem which is borrowing U.S. dollars back from foreign industrialized nations to pay for the foreign trade deficit and the federal government spending deficit. 

Gerald R. Spencer, P.E., President
Spencer Engineers, Inc.
Houston, Texas

 

QUESTION:  “The U.S. House and Senate are completing drafts of health care reform legislation. President Barack Obama has said he wants Congress to pass the legislation so he can sign it this fall. What do you believe must be included in that legislation to resolve the health insurance crisis in the U.S.?”

 

Real Public Option; Choice

The most attractive and beneficial, for the society as a whole, would be the single-pay system that is standard in most of the industrial nations of Europe. The reality, of course, is that Obama himself has already ruled this out as undoable given the historical and political conditions that prevail in the US today.

Having passed on that, the irreducible minimum the American people should insist upon is a public option alternative to the current system that will, in a short time, implode like the so-called free-enterprise system did beginning in 2008. The current system excludes some 45 million who have no health insurance at all. The cost of the current system runs about $2 trillion a year and provides less health care and protection than any of the health systems in Western Europe, Australia and New Zealand, for example. We can only expect the costs to rise and the service in general to deteriorate over the next 5 years.   

Obama must see that the public option is on the table and that he holds the feet of the Democrats in Congress to the fire—they either support a public option or they can expect nothing from his office by way of support down the line. The opposition to a public option is entrenched and powerful—Big Pharma, the insurance industry, Rightwing bloggers like Rush, Hannity, O’Reilly, the GOP and the newpaper czar Rupert Murdoch, and people of his ilk.

Obama and the Americam people must see to the creation of an authentic public option. One that allows for a real choice in medical programs.  

Dr. Gerald D. McKnight
Frederick, Md.

 

Disconnect Insurance from Employment

1) Health Insurance should not be tied to employment.

In our society, we expect employees to be fungible. They have to be able to go from job to job as needed. We do not expect employers to be loyal to their employees. If a company has to cut costs, employees are the first to go. Older employees that can be replaced with younger, cheaper employees are a common target for termination. 

Having health insurance tied to employment results in people being uninsured when they least can afford insurance. It also creates a problem for older people and people with pre-existing conditions who are terminated. Employers don’t want to hire older individuals or individuals with pre-existing conditions and insurance companies don’t want to insure them.

Having health insurance tied to employment also gives US companies a disadvantage against foreign companies who don’t have to pay for health insurance.

2) Insurers can’t be allowed to avoid individuals with medical conditions and must pay all health costs.

Two-thirds of health care costs in the U.S. are paid for through Medicare and Medicaid. Private insurers are making their money by insuring individuals who need health care the least.

Sixty-one percent of bankruptcies are a result of medical bills. Three-quarters of that 61% of bankruptcies had health insurance. No one should have to pay for health insurance that doesn’t pay all the costs and won’t keep you out of bankruptcy.

3) We need universal health care to avoid the costs of sales commissions and exorbitant executive pay.

James K. McCabe
McCabe & McCabe, Ltd.
Brookfield, Ill. 

 

Health is in the Nation’s Interest

The most important item to include in any health reform legislation is single payer.  For too long private insurers have controlled individual access to health care, which I see as a right, not a privilege; that should not be controlled by corporations.  Millions have no health coverage at all, and thousands lose theirs every day by losing their jobs in this recession.  Does anyone ever ask why health care should be tied to employment?  Consider that a healthy society is also in the nation’s interests, not only the individual’s. 

Private insurers routinely deny care for so-called “pre-existing conditions,” even those only marginally related to a current illness, and they too often deny life-saving procedures.  They raise premiums unconscionably when their insured become sick and try to use the medical benefits for which they have been paying all along.  And they do it in the name of profit!  Why does profit control an individual’s health care?

Further, why don’t private insurers cover more preventive care?  Money would be saved in the long run, not to mention how much improved patient outcomes would be.  But CEOs get credit for short-term profits earned during their tenure, not long-term profits, regardless of the impact on patients.

As an employee, I was covered by private insurance and have witnessed such problems all too often.  Government programs don’t require profit, and I’m hoping we won’t be “Harry and Louise’d” out of single payer.  I have also been covered by military medical care and Medicare, both government-run programs, and have never had a bureaucrat get between me and my doctors.  But private insurers intervene in a doctor’s care every day of the week to control their costs and ensure a profit.  In a word, it’s sickening!  Private insurers need some competition to keep them in check.

Americans are unhealthy, live shorter lives and have a higher rate of infant mortality, and we pay far more for our health care than Europeans, who suffer no loss of the individual liberties we have.  In fact, their freedom is enhanced by the “portability” of their single-payer health care, independent of their employment.

The insurance companies are, shall I say, “deathly” afraid of single payer, and they will fight it.  We must fight back by holding our elected representatives accountable.  Senator Durbin said the banks own the Senate, but we should be suspicious of the insurance and pharmaceutical companies also owning it twice over.  

Gloria Aukland,
Mesa, Ariz.

 

Appalling to Exclude Single-payer

My opinion is that we in this country desperately need a health plan like the single-payer plan which has been working for years in most of Europe and Canada. It is outrageous that this plan is not ”on the table” with the 15 other plans in Congress. 

The “consumer co-op compromise” that the Senate is discussing at present only serves to kill the full public health insurance option. 

For so long, the nation has been strongly influenced by both the insurance companies and the pharmaceutical companies. They have lied to us about what can happen under a single-payer plan, claiming it will mean we can’t choose our own doctors and will have to wait for long periods of time to get any medical help. This seems to be nonsense.  I have talked with many people in England and in Canada who say it is not true. They are very grateful for their socialized health plans and feel very sorry for us in the U.S. with the situation we are in.

If people are frightened by “socialized” programs, they might think again about our socialized libraries, socialized schools for our children, socialized parks across the country, our socialized Medicare program for those with disabilities and the elderly,  etc., etc. We need a plan, such as single-payer, which will cover the millions who have nothing and live in dread of being ill.  Those who can afford to pay and are happy with paying insurance companies, can continue on that road.

We also need to change the use of money that special interests and lobbyists use to “pay off” our Congress people. This is disgraceful.

Dallas Cline
St. Johnsbury, Vt. 

 

Let Us Care for Each Other

Our way of seeking health care as a system should be the same as our conception of firefighting.  Although the days of bucket brigades (in which everyone in the community carried water to put out a fire) are gone, and firefighting is now done by professionals hired for the job, the responsibility for providing a system to fight fires still must be shouldered by every able member of the community.  And the benefits of the system are shared by everyone equally, regardless of taxpaying status. 

So should it be with our medical needs.  We should provide for each other, through our representative government, everything we need in the way of health care.  Nothing should be left out except elective procedures such as cosmetic surgery not required by a disfiguring accident.  The fact that we have the ability to do this and yet must debate whether we should do this shows what fools we are.  Let us be wise, and say, “First we must pay for this, our health care, then we can allow our military to purchase hammers at a price of $750 per and nails for a dollar apiece if that is our pleasure.”

Aron Laub
Law Office of Aron Laub
Woodland Hills, Calif.

  

Public Option Essential

Legislation must include a public option, completely handled by the government. This option must include full ability to negotiate prices and services. Any bill that does not contain this provision will not fix the problem. The proposed comprises are either plans that will put more money in the insurance companies’ pockets or plans that will neither reduce costs nor provide affordable health care for everyone. It is time for our president and our Congress to decide whether they want a solution that will serve the American people or a bill that will continue to enrich the insurance companies. I have two children facing a world where they will either not have health insurance or will have to pay a huge premium for a bare-bones plan that only covers catastrophic events. As a union officer, I would love to be able to not spend all our time negotiating on new contracts fighting about this issue. Think of the things we could accomplish in the areas of pensions and safety if we could just say, “Keep your plan, boss! The rank and file is going to take the public option!”

Kristjan Dye
Prudhoe Bay, Ala.

 

Care for All Now

Universal public single-payer health care coverage for every man, woman and child in the United States and its territories, now. The tyranny of actuarial tables and the completely unregulated accumulation of vast wealth based on statistical probabilities and clever investments has come to its inevitable greed-fueled implosion.

It should never have been acceptable to the American people to start with; had anyone ever put forth the proposition that a third of the people in our nation should go without health care so that a tiny sliver of the population could have private jets, no one would have agreed – but they never asked us.

Mark O’Brien
St. Paul, Minnesota

 

National Health Care System Needed

We don’t need health care reform any more than we needed welfare reform in 1994. We need a real health care system run by the government and financed with taxes like Medicare. We are the only industrialized country without national health care, yet we spend twice as much as other countries for half the care. Our money goes to profits for the medical industry rather than health care and prevention. Congress listens to paid lobbyists and takes major campaign funds from the medical industry. Then, it parrots their arguments to justify doing nothing.

Economic collapse has not changed our spendthrift ways. We spend our money on war, weapons, and corporate excess in the name of national security. The working class pays for these extravagances with both blood and money, and gets shafted in return. We must insist on our rights to health, housing, education, food, and energy. National security and public safety do not exist without them!

Some developing nations and third world countries have refused to cut programs that protect workers, retirees and children. To pay for their investments in the citizenry they are levying taxes on large corporations and the wealthy and eliminating programs that give tax breaks to private sector endeavors. The Scandinavian countries and Germany are also maintaining their social networks while reining in other expenses.

In the 60s, President Johnson was accused of buying guns and butter, without being able to afford both. Our 21^st  Century government has decided to only buy guns: To hell with the butter! The truly sad thing is that the amount we spend on the military and weapons is far more then we would need to spend on domestic programs and does nothing to improve our standard of living

Carol R. Campbell
Keaau, Hawaii

 

Why Not Single-payer?

Why, oh why isn’t single-payer national health on the table? Why does the government insist on protecting and preserving the health insurance industry which contributes absolutely nothing to health care while adding to cost and interfering with health care delivery? OK, if Obama and the politicians can’t or won’t deliver single-payer, then there must at least be a strong, comprehensive public, government program as an alternative to the private insurers.

David Arnow
Brooklyn, N.Y.

 

Stop Talking, Start Covering

The only solid answer to the health-care mess in the United States is to stop all the gumming that’s going on and go full-speed ahead for a unified single-payer program that emulates Canada and provides coverage for all citizens. 

The health-insurance and big pharma lobbies should be run over with a steamroller, so we can and eliminate the billions of funds wasted on the for-profit “insurance” schemes whose primary business is to find ways to deny payment for needed medical expenses. A tight leash must be placed around the pharmaceutical industry’s neck to ban those “ask your doctor” advertisements, and drug prices should be negotiated, as they are in Canada, by a single-payer government program that spreads the medical risks by covering everyone, no exceptions, no problem with “pre-existing conditions.”

This is not socialism. This is to acknowledge that health care is as much as right as public education and police and fire protection in a civilized society.

J. Tyler Resch
North Bennington, Vt.

 

No Exclusion for Illness

Since it looks they are not going to the single-payer, a must is waiver of pre-existing conditions, caps or schedule of payment for doctors, hospitals, etc.  An MRI cannot cost $2,000 in one place and the same test $5,000 elsewhere.  Preventive medicine and nutritional advice are also very important. That will reduce costs in the long run.

Lourdes C. Garcia
Simi Valley, Calif. 

 

Single-payer System Needed

The USA needs strong single-payer health care.

Kathryn Wood
Bend, Ore 

 

Call to Support Single-payer

Single-payer is the only option that meets the criteria that President Obama has set forth.

There is a single-payer bill before the House.  It is H.R. 676, sponsored by Rep. John Conyers.  It currently has 79 co-sponsors.  It needs 280 to pass.  Can you get your Representative to sign-on?   

In the Senate there is S. 703.  The major problem is a Republican filibuster, meaning 60 instead of 51 votes are needed.  In addition, some of the Democrats in a position of authority, like Sen. Baucus, oppose it.  The great mass of ordinary people need to make their weight felt to overcome the overwhelming financial influence of the insurance companies.

Roger Mills
Stockbridge, Ga.

 

Cut the Paperwork

For reform to save money, it’s got to get doctors off piece work.  See http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/06/01/090601fa_fact_gawande.

Bill Brown
Chapel Hill, N.C.

Easy Answer

Easy answer: We must make sure that the health care that we, the citizens, are paying for doesn’t go to an illegal population. Are we required to provide social services to the world?

John BuPoint
Pleasant, N.J.

  

Reform to Solve Debt Crisis

Health care reform should be passed in the fall to prepare America to solve its ever-burgeoning long-term debt crisis. However, such legislation must include a timetable of a priority agenda that sets it in motion only after recovery of the economy.

The fact is if we pass a national health care plan, it can actually lower the corporations’ costs of benefits to their employees and make American companies more cost effective against foreign companies that avoid such costs.

Any new health care legislation has to be planned for implementation over years and must be paid for by having a healthy economy restored before actual implementation. Such benefits cannot be paid for by debt but must be paid for in new ways to dream. This may include new taxes on fast food, soft drinks, corn and corn products, and carbohydrates that add to obesity and often cause health problems.

In closing, only unions working with corporations and professionals can make this happen and look out for families and people in need, and that is why Unions Matter!

Joe Janos
Aliquippa, Pa.
 

Care Same as Congress’

We should have the same health care as our elected representatives. Our president, senators and congress people have a single-payer system that meets everyday medical needs. If these representatives won’t provide the same for us, they should give up their health care. 

Alvy L. King
Austin, Texax

 

Single-payer or Public Option

I am writing about health care reform because I believe strongly that we need single-payer health care, and I would urge its adoption. If not that, then we should certainly have a government-backed plan to compete with private insurers.

Philip Lichtenberg
Kennett Square, Pa.

 

Eliminate the Profit Motive

My opinion is that we should have a national health insurance plan with premiums paid to a government program similar to Medicare.  The premiums should be able to pay the providers a reasonable amount for the services provided, and the insured should be able to choose the providers that best serve them. We need to eliminate the profit motive.

William R. McDonald
Long Beach, Calif.

 
Eliminate Health Industry

Single-payer health care: Not some sort of coercive “national health insurance.” An effort to address the health care crisis in this country is not worth the spent political capital if it stops anywhere short of single-payer.  The point is not to reform the health insurance industry.  The point is to eliminate it!

Ric Vrana
TriMet Capital Project Planning
Portland, Ore.

Affordable Health Care for All

There must be affordable health care for everyone.  This protects hospitals and physicians as well as their patients.  Anything else is unthinkable.

Nancy Kay Kennedy
Belding, Michigan

 

Single-payer Best

Single-payer is best.  At the very least a public option is necessary.  Also there are tons of people not covered by Medicaid who have no money and no job.  These people need to be covered free.

Pay for the public option by a pay roll tax on those with incomes. Let people keep their private insurance (if they still want it) and allow for income tax deductions of all premiums and co-pays etc.

Pat Flierl
Fresno, Calif.

 

Eliminate the Bureaucrat

Get rid of the middle man, the bureaucrat. With the HMO, a patient needs to make an unnecessary visit to the primary care doctor to get an authorization for a specialist. I have a pimple or a boil or a cyst on the back of my neck. I have had this before when I had an old fashioned plan. I called the dermatologist, got an appointment within three days and went in; he looked at it, and said what needed to be done. The office visit and the time the doctor spent in doing the procedure was about 20 minutes, and problem was solved. (There was some wait time when the nurse injected the anesthetic and we waited for it to work.)

Now I need to call my primary care doctor for an appointment, wait a week get one, spend 45 minutes in her waiting room. Then she spends 3 1/2 minutes looking at my swollen bump. She records into her recorder or writes on my chart and instructs the receptionist to get an authorization and forward it to the dermatologist.

I can call him two days later. They have an answering system. But I’ll have to wait the rest of the afternoon for someone to call me back. They look for the authorization, find it, look for an open time, no not this week, next OK.

Time spent in this office waiting is 45 minutes. He looks at it. By now it is much worse. He says he needs to get authorization to deal with it. And it needs to be done in the hospital. So far 10 hours of accumulated doctor and staff time in doctors’ offices and at the bottleneck of the authorizer offices have been spent on ths. And I still have my painful THING. The system is broken.

Betty Winkler
Corona del Mar, Calif.

Tax Write-off for Health Care

Concerning health care, I oppose government control of this. With the shekels come the shackles. I favor letting all Americans take a 100% tax write-off for all health care expenses they occur, which are not covered by a health insurance plan they might have.

Lawrence K. Marsh
Gaithersburg, Md.

 

Erase Private Companies

I feel that until the private insurance companies are out of the picture, we don’t have a chance of any kind of fair health care for all.  They’ve effectively destroyed the health care system.

Sally Rosoff
Laguna Woods, Calif.

 

Diminish Role of Corporations

What we’re talking about as a nation isn’t health care reform, it is health finance reform, and we can’t have any significant reform to the way we finance health care in this country unless we diminish the role of insurance corporations in the delivery of health care. Single-payer is the goal.

Bill Anderson
Silver Spring, Md.

 

Reform a Sham

What needs to be included in legislation to resolve the health crisis in the U.S. has been excluded; a single-payer universal health care plan.  The current exercise in Congress is a sham and nothing will come of it.  To get health care providers to participate in drafting “reform health care legislation,” President Obama and Congressional leaders had to agree not to even consider a single-payer concept. 

As a result, the very same health care executives who have made fortunes while ruining our health care system will dictate the “reform” plan.  The current charade will not improve our health care system or reduce its cost.  Only if and when labor and its allies finally realize that the bosses own both major parties, and they don’t give a damn about working families will we start down the long road to economic justice and health care for all.

Wake up brothers and sisters and cut the cord to sell-out politicians in both major parties, or our children and grandchildren will be stuck in minimum wage jobs and no health care coverage.  We need our own party.

Jan Pierce
Quaker City, Ohio

 

Single-payer Will Control Costs

In my opinion, a single-payer public option must be included in any meaningful health care reform legislation. A single-payer/public plan is the only way to control costs and provide the competition that the private medical industry needs to bring down its predatory cost structure. This will provide a tremendous saving for American citizens, business, and society at large.

James G. Fordham
Coburn, Pa.

Health Care a Moral Right

A single-payer plan, such as in Canada, or a public plan, must be included. Health care should be a moral right, not a “for profit business.”

The evidence that this is true is in that I know people who have been bankrupted by the cost of caring for a loved one with an unexpected medical condition.

Marty Honig
Arvada, Colo.

 

Control the Costs!

Debate rages over the virtues of private vs. public health care and vice-versa, but the one issue left uncontrolled by current private and public plans (Medicaid, Medicare, and private insurers) is runaway health services inflation. Bring the rate of (health services) price increase in line with that of the overall consumer price index and the other problems will become much easier to fix. I am listening but am not yet convinced that any of the changes being proposed are going to reign in the inflation. 

 

 

Extend Medicare to All

I think the most important component of any health care reform effort is to include single-payer as an option. Single-payer is the most efficient way to deliver health care in that it cuts out the obscene profits going to health insurance CEOs. The money saved by taking out the profit motive would probably be enough to pay for the 50 million who are uninsured. Instead of wasting a lot of time with trying to make the lobbyists happy, Congress ought to just pass the bill currently before it that extends Medicare to every American.

Dan Zurosky
Lexington, S.C.

 

Single-payer Way To Go

Single-payer appears the way to go, but a public option is an alternative more acceptable to the lobbyists that run this country.

Jonathan Macy
Boston MA

 

Government-run Quality Care

There is really just one major reform required – provide an option that doesn’t involve private insurance.  To see the reason why, you merely must consider what the insurance industry extracts from the health care dollar (advertising, CEO bonuses, commissions, salaries, contributions to legislators designed to discourage real change, enormous amounts of paperwork, filing, storage of records, efforts to coordinate benefits, and presently efforts to exclude patients, limit coverage, question doctors’ medical decisions about optimum treatment plans, and lawsuits to contest costly adverse – from their  perspective – decisions of doctors, patients, and hospitals) compared to what the industry contributes to health care – nothing, zilch!  

Those who like the current system should be able to continue in it.  Let the insurance bureaucrats decide what procedures are available, restrict coverage, determine the dollars that are paid for all of the activities mentioned above for those who are pleased with the present system.  But we must have a government-run option.  This is the only way to get a handle on what quality care should cost and make it available to all who want it.

Frank Stewart
Windsor, Conn.

Universal Public Coverage

Health care reform must include: Universal public coverage of inpatient and outpatient care to preserve and restore function and comfort. Included must be:

• prescription drugs
• acupuncture and chiropractic treatment
• eye care
• dentistry

Utilization and prioritization should be determined by doctors on the basis of patients’ needs, not by cost accountants.

Income taxes should be graduated up to the level prevailing in the 1950’s to fund health care.

Limits such as the Medicare limit imposed on hospital days per lifetime for the treatment of mental illness should be removed.

June Forbes
Davis, Calif.

Replace Fragmented System

There already is a health care bill in Congress. It’s Sen. Conyer’s H.R. 676, the U.S. National Health Insurance Act, which has more than 70 co-sponsors. It is universal, affordable health insurance. It allows portability if someone is unemployed or changes jobs. Because everyone is covered, it spreads the risk, so the cost per person is reasonable and no one entity is stuck with the cost of coverage of only the oldest and sickest, as Medicare is now.

By removing the financial burden on employers, it allows them to compete with companies the rest of the industrialized world. Because it is single-payer, not for-profit, it diverts the more than 30 percent now going to enrich private insurance corporations, to doctors, nurses and hospitals who provide actual health care. It replaces our fragmented, dysfunctional system with one that works and will go a long way in boosting our financial health as well.

Elizabeth Sheppard
Longview, Wash.

 

Health Care for All

Health care for all!  Single-payer deserves our support.  I have a “government” health care plan.  I thought it wasn’t that good until I found out what others cost and what they (don’t) offer.  I stopped my complaints–fast.

All the Senators and Congressmen making a big fuss over how lousy a government plan will be also have a government-run health plan.  I don’t hear any of them telling us about how they have rejected the government plans and buy their health care on the “open market.” 

On the other hand, they say that the private sector will not be able to compete with a government plan.  Make up your mind folks–either it is lousy or it will attract so many people making a choice to join the government plan that the privates will not be able to compete.  

Renee Toback
Yonkers, NY

 

Health Care as Human Right

The only health care plan that would guarantee health care for all as a human right rather
than as a means of profiteering off others’ misery would be a single-payer health plan like most industrial countries and even some undeveloped ones have. Shame on us for allowing this disastrous state of affairs to flourish!

Paul Bennett
New York, N.Y.

 

Three Elements Crucial

Whatever comes from the Congress on reforming health care must contain three elements. First, every single person in the United States is covered. Opting anyone out means the rest of us pay for them. If it’s paid by taxes, individuals, employers or whatever, covering everyone is essential. Covering the poor can be the obligation of society. Second, the billing system for payment needs to be on one form. When a patient walks through the door, the health care provider knows who to bill and how much. Third, all drugs must be provided at a price negotiated for the nation as a whole. Prescriptions must be paid for by the insurance carrier.

If the for-profit insurance companies can compete on this basis-good for them. If not, good-bye. Health care providers need not check with anyone prior to treating a patient except for elective care. The definition of elective care is anything not listed as essential to the health of the patient and strictly regulated. Any insurance company will have 60 days to pay claims in full.

Harold Abbe
Camas, Wash.

 

Three Critical Components

Three things are critical:

Group health insurance must be eliminated.  This will eliminate the very real incentive to discriminate in hiring based on age, since average group age is a well established factor in establishing group rates.  It would allow consumers to “shop” for the best insurance perhaps using money directly paid by employers.

Hospitals receiving any federal funding must accept all government-approved insurances not just cozy deals with favorite insurers.  AARP (Aetna) health insurance, and other major alternatives, are not accepted at a local major hospital effectively driving older, cost conscious citizens, to the independent hospitals; good for their death statistics, good for their grants, bad for older Americans who are thereby discriminated against.

The plan must allow patients to have a knowledge of the costs and effectiveness of treatment options and share in the cost savings of choosing the more economic and additional cost of the more expensive but potentially more effective.  The “free” (knowledgeable consumer) market will then result in improved average care at lower average cost; no other approach can achieve that goal.  As it is, the doctor who operates mainly in fear of attorneys and insurance companies, makes all decisions essentially without regard to cost. Give the doctor and patient a financially safe (known and predictable outcomes based on data) place to practice, knowledge of the facts, a significant financial stake in the decision, and market forces can do the rest.  The financial share should be income-based but never go to zero and never consume more than annual income.

David A. Crosbie
Pittsburgh, Pa. 

Single-payer Cheaper

That’s Easy! Throw the whole bunch of them out and craft a new one. Actually, John Conyers, HR 676 is a good start. Comprehensive, publicly funded, privately delivered, single-payer health care for all. We need health care, not healthy insurance profits. If our legislators ever get around to doing the math, they will probably be able to balance the budget with the savings. If we quit waging war with the world, we could probably provide health care for everyone on the planet with the savings.

If businesses would do the math, they would save their companies enough money to hire more staff. If state legislators would do the math, they wouldn’t have to lay off teachers.

Those legislators who don’t like single-payer can go out and buy their own health insurance instead of having it paid with our tax dollars. I wonder if greedy would be considered a pre-condition.

Susan K. Baritell
Petaluma, Calif.  

 

Only One Option

Universal single-payer is the only feasible option.   

For-profit health insurance must be stopped.  People go bankrupt every day because of medical expenses even when they have insurance.  No other industrialized nation in the world has a system as messy as ours.

Doris Vician
Albuquerque, N.M.

Don’t Recycle Phony

President Obama’s health care “reform” plan is complete bunk.  All he is doing is recycling a bunch of phony window dressing made to look like “reform.” How sad.

What we need is simple:  Universal, single-payer health care in the US of A.  Anything else is just profit protection for some of the greediest, self interested corporations there are.

Michael J. Germain
Apple Valley, Minn.

 

Enhance Medicare

A public single-payer system is needed. Enhanced Medicare would eliminate the duplication and waste associated with private, for profit health care insurance. Excessive drug company, hospital and doctors’ profits can be reduced. Folks must maintain the right to select their health care providers. Providers will be paid by insurance premiums from employees and employers, and from asset taxes on the obscene wealth of the very wealthy collected by the U.S. government.  Increased taxes on tobacco, alcohol and gambling products will reduce consumption and help offset the costs and harm done to users.  

Unions must unite and push for a public, single-payer health care system – an enhanced Medicare system that is as good as or better than what other western industrialized workers and citizens enjoy. 

The U.S. needs good health care services at the cheapest price. Usual medical services provided by doctors, hospitals, drugs and other therapies must be included. Keep folks as healthy as possible. Improve workplace health and safety. Too many workers suffer from an unhealthy work environment; union health and safety committees can provide lists of harmful agents and dangerous work sites. Enable citizens to control their lives with end of life directives. Pay providers to keep citizens healthy; to reduce the incidence of injuries, accidents and illness. 

Establish worksite and community wellness programs to encourage folks to live well; eat healthy, exercise, avoid unhealthy behaviors, lower stress to enjoy life.  

Bill Weiss
Morganton, W.Va.

 

Easy – Single-payer

Health Care Reform  –  it’s easy: Single-payer, so that we can recoup the more than $300 billion the insurance industry sucks up in administrative costs and profits and apply it to pay for health care for all.

I prefer the French model but would be content to see Canada’s model here.

Frank Cannonito
Irvine, Calif.

 

Price Controls Essential 

Price controls for insurance policies: I understand that some versions of the plan call for subsidizing low-income people so that they can buy health insurance.  That is well-meaning, but does nothing to stop the rise in costs; it merely transfers them, in some cases, to taxpayers, i.e. the government.  The people most responsible for spiraling costs in my opinion, the health-insurance corporations, will not be made to be accountable. That’s billions of dollars to keep rich people rich. It does nothing to enhance our health. I am a cancer survivor, and if I needed to buy a policy on the market today, it would cost more than my husband and I make together. Protection for people in those cases must precede any mandatory purchase plan.  We’d be bankrupt and homeless. That isn’t a unique situation.  Single-payer is obviously the way to go, but right now there’s too much opposition, well-compensated by the  health-insurance industry.

Preventive/health maintenance:  Costs less to keep people healthy than to intervene once they are very ill.  It’s obvious but not glamorous–or profitable.

Cut loose big pharma:  there are several good sources for information on how the drug companies manipulate, cheat, and fabricate ailments, and how they compare new (more expensive) drugs to placebos rather than to older, cheaper, usually less dangerous drugs.  At the very least, mandate that people don’t pay top dollar for their drugs. 

Don’t let the religious-fanatic wing decide what services are offered:
reproductive-health issues are not negotiable. We are not Saudi Arabia; we do not have ayatollahs.  Science, not any religion, should be the basis for health decisions.  Let’s hang onto that great old Constitution!

Mary Lou Carter
Endicott, N.Y.

 

Competing Government Plan Needed

With respect to health care reform legislation: What must be included in that legislation to resolve the health insurance crisis in the U.S. is a provision for government health care insurance.  It may be necessary to tax health insurance benefits to pay for a government health care plan, but we will never get health care coverage for all U.S. citizens unless the government has a competing plan.  The insurance industry, the American Medical Association (AMA), a large majority of the medical workers who call themselves doctors, and big pharma have turned health care into a profit system that competes not on the basis of the quality of health care but solely on the basis of the profit motive. 

Edward L. Osowski
LaGrange Park, Ill.

Best Care, Lowest Price – Single-payer

Fifteen thousand physicians have agreed that a single-payer, national health care system would provide the best care at the lowest price for all Americans. In California this proposal has been examined and passed the legislature twice, only to be vetoed by our insurance-loving governor. If we have a public insurance option, the insurance companies will reject all the sick people, who will then go for the option. Burdened by a primarily seriously ill group, the cost will rise. Universal health insurance will cover everyone, sick and healthy alike, thus spreading the pain and enabling the agency to bargain with the pharmaceutical companies and other health vendors. 

No one should make a profit from the suffering of sick people, or drive the sick into bankruptcy.

Peter G Cohen
Santa Barbara, Calif.

 

Expand Medicare for All

As a participant in Medicare A and B (but not the prescription drug thing), I want to see Medicare continued and expanded so that all can participate.  But procedures need to be changed so that doctors are motivated to make decisions based solely on what is best for the patient and not on economic considerations.  For example, malpractice suits must be handled differently, and doctors must be discouraged from ordering marginally useful tests and doing unnecessary surgery.

Ella Brown
St. Louis, Mo,

 

QUESTION: Unemployment is at its highest point in decades. Foreclosures continue at alarming rates. Savings for retirement have been devastated by the stock market. How has the recession affected you or your family members?

 

Firms off-shoring jobs get Bush tax breaks; 
Sick workers get pink slips 

I’ll be 60 this year and am undergoing cancer treatment.  My oncologist wrote a letter listing needed treatment-related work restrictions; my giant corporate employer promptly laid me off so they could replace me with an Indian “resource,” who will definitely cost them less in wages, and will presumably not be extremely weak and tired.

So, among other things, many thanks (NOT) to Bush for his tax breaks to companies that off-shore jobs, and for his deregulation of investing companies - (gotta love that completely unfettered capitalism – can you give me a “rah!” for greed!) –  so that now my little bit of investments has almost disappeared. I didn’t save a whole lot until relatively recently, because I worked for a giant corporation, and one reason I chose them was because they offered a pension plan: Two-thirds of our salary, based on an average of our pay for our last five years of service, along with continuing medical benefits, until one day, when it was way too late for people my age to ever be able to make up for the change, they just “un-offered” it.  And somehow or other, this is all legal.  (I count on it that Bush and my former employer’s management will eventually reside on the appropriate level of Dante’s Inferno.)

 

Elizabeth Zelinger
Lakewood, Colo.

 

Homeowner battered by mortgage company, economy 

The Bush recession has resulted in a year-long boxing match with our mortgage company, the larcenous, perfidious Countrywide home loan corporation. We are constantly on the phone with this company, and we have been incessantly threatened with foreclosure and homelessness, and the registered letters and phone calls happen every week. 

It is stressful and time consuming, and makes our family sick. The value of our home has plummeted from 220k to 170k, and it is still falling. This long war has taken a toll on our credit, and we can’t get any financing for anything.  My car is a monstrosity, and I can’t replace it.  Virtually everyone I know is unemployed, and trying to make a living in the underground economy.  The world, as we know it, has been transformed into a meaningless vale of tears, so that a few rich bastards could consolidate their wealth. This was the worst time in our nation’s history.

Mark O’Brien
St. Paul, Minn.

 

Wife soon to lose job because of recession

My family has been directly affected by the “Bush Recession” in a very real way.  My wife is an administrative assistant for the loss prevention vice president of a jewelry company.  The company is now closing two of its three divisions.  The New York and Connecticut offices and warehouse are closing in May. 

Most of the company’s problems are related to the recession.  People who lost their jobs or fear they may join the ranks of the unemployed are not likely to buy jewelry.  It’s the kind of discretionary spending that most people will sacrifice during bad times.  Through no fault of their own, most of the folks in this company are getting the boot because of the collapse of other sectors of the economy.

So within a few weeks, our two income family will become a one income family.

 Kevin Sexton
Flushing, New York

 

Recession cost home, separated family 

I lost my home in New Mexico, my family had to move to other state in search of jobs, and I had to move to Philadelphia to live with my daughter.  My family lived together for 42 years but it became so costly just living in New Mexico, trying to make ends meet.  The Bush recession separated my family, and as a result, it was responsible for so many separations and tragedies among families.  It was devastating!

 Melva Rooney
Philadelphia, PA

 

Relatives facing foreclosure

We have been lucky enough to have paid off our house, but my brother-in-law and sister-in-law are facing foreclosure. My nephew has been laid off after building a house, and my niece is the sole support of a household that required a two person income. As in the Great Depression, the unions must be the strength of the people. My father’s Uncle Stan Coston took him to Detroit in the Thirties to see what Fords’ “goons” did to the labor union movement. It remained with him his entire life and was passed on to his children. My father, Alan Coston, worked hard to start the Teachers Union in New Mexico, and I worked as hard to start a Nurses Union (a miserable failure). In Union There Is Power.

Jeanne Jordan
Diana, Texas

 

A procession of recession losses

My sister has lost her job and my two next door neighbors have lost theirs.   Contractors that I work with are now doing work for no profit in order to keep their crews working.  Four consultants that are friends of mine have lost their jobs.  I have another two friends that are now close to losing their jobs.

Robert Stein
Laguna Beach, Calif.

 

Widow’s retirement, children’s savings disappeared 

My husband recently passed away, and over 50% of the not-so-large retirement he left for me has disappeared. So now I have little more than Social Security to live on. My grown children are also suffering financially – formerly successful small businesses now failing and savings almost used up, job income way down so they don’t know if they’ll lose their homes, etc.  But George Bush and his buddies are smiling and comfortable in the money they stashed off-shore. Don’t forget that the Bush Family Trust has for many years been heavily invested in Saudi oil, so their nest egg will last them quite a while.

Irene McDonald
Culver City, Calif

 

Teams to help unemployed needed

I was part of a team of United Steelworkers who helped assist the thousands of laid off Bethlehem Steelworkers, When our plant closed, we had 4,500 union brothers and sisters to help get new jobs . We did an excellent job because the USW trained us very well, and we had an excellent team.

 
We sure could use more of these teams throughout the US right now.

 
After we placed all these workers, the team found jobs for themselves. I was lucky to stay in the same line of work and now work for PaCareerLink. We also do an excellent job but are very busy, with hundreds of union and non-union clients coming in everyday.

 
I also see many Bethlehem Steel retirees forced back to work because their small pensions are not enough after their IRA’S have been cut almost in half due to the bad stock market.

 
Praise the Lord  the Bush Administration did not get their way and privatize social security, if they had gotten their way , our older generation would be living under bridges..

 
Tom Sedor
Northampton Pa.
SOAR 2599

 

Republican Senator just now learning of economic depression

I live in North Carolina, probably the most anti-union of the 50 states.  I live in the far-western section of the state.  In years past, Raleigh, the state capital, could have cared less what happened up here. 

Luckily, unions prospered without interference from state office-holders and a working person could make a good life for his family.

Without that union representation, and it had its own faults, I would never have been able financially to own a home, send my children to college, help them become home-owners or any of the other things that make life worthwhile.

If the labor movement doesn’t become international, we are all in for some very bad times, economically.

Sen. Burr R-NC and other political office holders are just now becoming aware of the Depression, so I would say they are at least 6 to 9 months behind the poor stiffs out in this world trying to provide for their families.

Ronnie Young
Waynesville, N.C.

 

Son loses condo home to foreclosure 

Since I am retired and any mortgages are paid, the main effect on me is higher food and fuel prices. My son lost his condominium, in which he had lived under one year, due to foreclosure.  The irony of that is, he bought it after the condo was foreclosed on another homeowner, and he considered it a great buy, since the price dropped $100,000. Unfortunately, he could not catch up with the payments, and had to agree to foreclosure. He is now living in another persons’ home. 

 Philip H. Troxler
Dover, DE.

 

85-year-old afraid to move 

I am afraid to move from my five story brownstone to a one floor loft condominium or coop, where this 85 year old artist could avoid countless steps.  Many condominiums were lost to single landlords during the great depression because owner-tenants could not pay the common charges; the buildings failed, and were taken over by affluent real estate speculators.  Fortunately, I have gentle caring neighbors.

Kendall Shaw
In a five story house in Park Slope, Brooklyn, NY
Where I love the neighbors and the neighborhood

 

Lost a lot of retirement money

Aside from losing a lot of money (on paper) in 401(k)/403(b) retirement programs, everybody is holding their own, thank God.

Thomas F. Wolfinger
Centreville, Va.

 

Lucky to have not fallen into the abyss

I am a federal employee so the unemployment crisis has affected me very little.  My job is quite secure. 

I also have always taken great care to live well within my means and am particularly careful not to take on continuing obligations such as a payment schedule if it is at all possible. 

On the other hand, my 401k, which forms a substantial portion of my retirement fund (I am not on the old federal retirement system which was a fixed pension), was affected.  I was hoping to be able to retire in two and a half years but do not think that will be possible now.

My sister is worried about her job security and that of her husband.  Fortunately, I am in a position to help out.  I already assist my other sister. 

Foreclosures also have not affected my immediate neighborhood.  Many are very long term residents and have paid off mortgages.  Also, the major realtors here live in the neighborhood–that really helps.  Nearby there are a number of homes for sale and there is increased crime. 

In short, I am very lucky.  I can see the effects around me, and it is depressing but so far I have not fallen into the abyss.

Renee Toback
Yonkers, NY

 

Two children laid off, one without unemployment

Two of my children have been laid off. One of the families has both breadwinners laid off. One of these has no unemployment benefits either.

They may loose their home if relief is not soon available. As an 81-year-old retiree, I don’t know how much I’ll be able to help. Needless to say, they weren’t taking part in any TEA parties. They just need jobs so they can once more become taxpayers.

Carroll Johnson
Douglassville, Texas

Grandkids suffering serious setbacks

The meltdown has not significantly affected me other than the increasing costs of food and other items. I am on social security.

However, it has adversely affected my children and grandchildren.  My youngest grand child has been out of work for six months and is struggling to survive.  Some of the family members are helping out financially, but it is still difficult. One of my grandsons, who is self-employed as a cement contractor, has not had but 2 jobs in the last 6 months. His wife, who is employed as a nurse at a hospital, helps them get by, but it is still very difficult.

My other grandson, who is a self-employed as a sales representative for a sunglasses and sports apparel company, has seen a reduction of 40% is his sales.

A.W. Ebright
Freedom, Calif.  

 

Credit card debt rising

I am retired and have a very limited income. The coming in has never matched the going out, and therefore my credit card debt increased over the years that I have not been working. I worked in the travel industry 40 years and had no retirement benefits. I had a friend who convinced my employer to establish a 401K, but he contributed only the first year. I had no power. Now the credit card companies have raised my interest rates and when I called to ask why, they had no reason for doing so. The have also decreased my credit limit and increased my monthly payment. I am now on the edge and not making it. We never realize that we are required to accept all these changes from credit card companies. We have no rights.

My dad was a UAW member, worked for Ford Motor and I remember as a child he needed to vote to strike. He said we can’t afford a strike but we need to support the union who is fighting for us.

Betty Winkler
Corona del Mar, Calif.

 

Retired workers supporting unemployed children

 
I am supporting my grandson who is 21 and unemployed.  My daughter and her husband have lost their business, a coffee shop in Ionia, Mich., and are looking for work.  They have no income, and there is not much of any safety net for them as they are ineligible for unemployment.
I am retired from the State of Michigan, and my funds cannot support everyone.  Hopefully, nothing will cut into my retirement, but the state is in dire straits as well. 
Many retired workers are supporting younger family members.  Please help us retain the funds we have.
 
Nancy Kay Kennedy
Belding, Mich.

 

No money left to repair car 

As I am retired an living on Social Security plus what is left of my I.R.A. The biggest downside is the decimated value of these savings. If the market doesn’t rebound in good fashion soon, I’ll be up the creek without a paddle. I have cut back on spending about as much as I can. The car needs tires and new rear struts, but I am reluctant to go into debt for them because there is no money to pay the obligation. 

John F. Conklin
Maricopa County, Ariz.

 

Country needs a better safety net

So far, I’ve been lucky.  I’d saved up the money from my last house, so I had a down payment for this one.  I work (still, I’m 67) in health care, so I have some hope of continuing.  But I’m aware, and fearful, that the prospects of my daughter and son-in law, respectively, a personal trainer, and an advertising professional, are less than rosy.  I’ve seen many patients over the past year who came in with major infections that probably would have been treated sooner with an adequate health care system.  I personally have Medicare, and so far it’s been great.  I believe it would be improved and strengthened if all citizens were allowed to buy into it, although I realize there is a lot of fraud that needs to be weeded out.  This country badly needs a more robust safety net for the people who, through no fault of their own, have made perilous choices. 

Charlotte Edwards
Summerville, S.C.

 

Child hurt by lack of medical insurance

I have been through these hard times before, as I am 76 years old. My parents knew how to deal with hard times, but one of my children fell victim more than the rest of us.  One suffered a grand mal seizure and had no insurance, and his business fell by 50%. Fortunately, my daughter then was hired on with a cruise line and quickly started the climb upwards with benefits.  I bailed-out the debts to IRS who were intent on jailing.
Then we paid off the credit cards and took my course in getting out of debt.  Two years ago I saw the writing on the wall and decided to take some of the money I had managed to save and re-invested part in a better house for less, and protected that much from the recession. 

Then, I lost a third of my IRA in about a week.  So, as a disabled retired school teacher who had worked until she was 71, I had to depend on my pensions that I had built up over my life, knowing I would need them.

I get on my computer every morning in order to communicate with blogging partners and start in telling my Congressmen what I think. I work with several groups and would love to send more money, but right now, my own family needs me.

 Joan E. Garrison
Eugene, Ore.
Retired union teacher

 

Recession damaged pension funds

I am a retired school teacher, so the Bush/GOP-Recession has not affected me personally. However, I am concerned about its effect on others. The Bush/GOP Recession has affected my mini-portfolio because the stock market cannot really rise unless more people have more money to spend. Wall Street has apparently forgotten the E, in the P/E ratio.  (This precept applies both nationally and internationally). The downturn in the stock market, precipitated by the inequitable distribution of wealth also affects Cal-STRS, my pension fund, since Cal-STRS actually runs a surplus when we have full-employment and decent wages.

I cannot understand why Wall Street doesn’t “get it.” We need to “redistribute the wealth.” After all that’s what Jesus had in mind when he told the rich man to sell all he had and give it to the poor. We need to make it easier for workers to organize in this country. We need to help workers overseas organize to get higher wages. And, we need to jump start all facets of the green economy. This will create a whole generation of new jobs – which can also be unionized. Since Cal-STRS has invested in green technology stocks, and since I am investing in green technology, the new green economy will affect me greatly.

But right now, I am far more concerned about how the Bush Recession will affect others than how it will affect myself.

William Joseph Miller
Los Angeles, Calif.

 

Job shipped overseas, causing unemployment, lower wages

I was unemployed for nearly two full years before I found a low wage assembly job, replacing a job that had been outsourced to the Phillipines.  I had been earning between $18 and $25 an hour, now I make $9, but I am just happy to have a job.

There is a current trend in my home state of Minnesota to constantly mess with unions and union members –  including constantly undermining the prevailing wage and finding loopholes in municipal laws to hire scabs when contracts specifically call for union workers.  I ran for the State Senate in my home district (SD 37) which contributed to my job issues.

But when I run again, against a hard core neo-con, anti-union, anti-worker, right winger named Sen. Chris Gerlach, R-Apple Valley, I will be making my support for our state’s version of the Employee Free Choice Act an important part of my campaign.

When organized labor and collective bargaining are respected, ALL workers benefit, even those not lucky enough to belong to a union.

I am a strong supporter of the United Steelworkers and its Associate Members program. 

Michael J. Germain
Apple Valley, Minn.

 

Sending factories overseas causes economic problems

I am retired and this problem has not reached me yet. I stand behind all union workers including the Steelworkers and the United Auto Workers. This sending factories to foreign countries is the number one cause of this situation. Why not send the gold in Fort Knox to China? The factories we have lost mean a lot more than the gold. The United States cannot survive without the factories we used to have. If we loose the automobile factories all is lost.

Richard Moeller
Bella Vista, Ark.

 

Pension benefits cut; Social Security increase needed

As a University retiree, my TIAA-CREF pension is a defined contribution plan. Its value has decreased about 40 percent. I receive a defined benefits pension from my deceased wife’s estate and Social Security. My wife’s pension is not COLA protected, so the value of each pension check diminishes monthly as the cost of living increases, whereas my Social Security is COLA protected, stays even with inflation.

Very few workers receive decent pensions.  Many workers have no pensions or have very poor plans. IRAs are under-funded and not guaranteed. Most workers receive small, insufficient pensions, way below what is needed for a decent retirement. Social Security must be increased (tripled) and become the universal pension plan for all American workers.

We must have lifetime Medicare for all Americans. Funding for Social Security and Medicare improvements will come from workers, employers and an asset taxes on the very wealthy. 

Bill Weiss
Morgantown, W.Va.

 

25 percent of retirement lost

 I am 88 years old. My retirement has decreased 25 percent since October, 2007.

David G. Wagner, M.D.
Portland, Ore.

 

Unions needed to deal with companies 

Unions are the one and only way working people have to honestly negotiate with the Corporate gang that make a lot of money at the workers’ expense and like it that way

Without a union, they tell the workers what they will be paid, how long they have to work — some without overtime pay. And if the worker doesn’t like it, they can get plenty of nonunion people to come in and settle for peanuts. 

Faye Clarke
San Diego, Calif.

 

Lost savings may cost place in retirement home

I have lost a considerable amount of my savings to the point that I am concerned about my ability to remain in the retirement community where I live.

Alice Hoffman
Haverford, Pa.

 

Retirement savings damaged

My 401k retirement account was rolled over to a Wells Fargo monthly account. It has lost 20% of its value since September 2007. 

Theodore John Wickoren
Brooklyn Park, Minn.

 

Too few defined benefit pension plans 

To begin with, this blog will not be a rant against Republican policy, though with few exceptions the stock market has fared better under Democrat administrations (Jimmy Carter and Ronald Regan are two such exceptions). About half of my 300 income tax clients are retired; with few exceptions, I can tell you that my most (financially) comfortable retired clients are those who enjoy the monthly income provided by their defined benefit pension plans. For the most part the best defined benefit pensions are those of public employees, building trades, and large company plans where union representation remains high. Most employers don’t like defined benefit plans because caring for their retired workers creates a liability which in turn causes their business to be worth less money. In my practice it seems that the older the client, the more likely they are to have a defined benefit pension. My younger retirees, as well as those clients still working are more likely to have a defined contribution pension, such as a 401K.  I hesitate to call 401K’s (or similar defined contribution plans) “pensions.” In reality, a defined contribution plan is nothing more than a tax deferred savings account. Don’t get me wrong, 401K’s and similar plans are an important part of your financial future, and now is a great time to be pounding money into them, but they do not guarantee a retiree or their spouse a life time of income the same way a defined benefit pension does.

Most of the clients I have who depend on their 401K’s/IRA’s for income are in danger of outliving their savings. The stock market of the last 8 years has been so bad that many of these retirees have no chance of seeing their nest egg recover; the looming situation is that many will run out of money before they die. The effects of the bad market (and some people’s bad choices) can be mitigated to some extent by good planning, and I hope future retirees and their advisors will learn from mistakes already made. Real pensions can be created from defined contribution plans. The trouble is that few workers know how, financial advisers and brokers don’t seem to steer retirees towards them (maybe their commissions are too low), and for unions the subject seems to be outside of the employer/employee relationship.

My days battling employers are in my past, and whining about the “dubya” years isn’t productive. The average middle class working person neither plans nor saves sufficiently for their future. Unions and the financial industry need to find a way to help and educate the middle class about creating income streams that will last as long as they do.

Dan Smith
Holland, Ohio

 

Corporate greed cost Americans more than wars

Unions help out the common citizen. There is no debate about that. I saw it first hand. When my mother needed medical services, her Steelworkers and United Mine Workers medical coverage was there to help her. It was her devotion to these unions for herself and our family that made her life worthwhile.

Under President Bush, the CEOs of banks, investment firms, and insurance entities took many loaves of bread for bonuses by knowing that higher risky loans gave them higher bonuses. They left crumbs for every American’s retirement saving plan, proving you cannot trust the business leadership of America where bonuses are concerned. These people of greed did more to damage every American than any enemy of America during World War II or any war, when the value of all of our savings, investments, and retirement plans is now reduced by 40%.

When the little guy and gals are taken care of by unions acting together, everybody is taken care of, even non-union small business, doctors, lawyers and charities. Unions matter and help provide a working wage for everybody to live better.

 

Joseph Janos
Aliquippa, Pa.

 

Workers must have a voice!

I’m 68 and retired from a white-collar job, but my parents were both AFL-CIO at the time, and strong union believers.  I learned from them the value of having a voice when dealing with management.  I can’t believe what they have gotten away with these days!  I was shocked to hear all that has been given up since then:  little or no sick days;  limited hours to avoid paying benefits;  forced overtime; creating financial or other barriers for taking or earning vacation days; no health benefits; outrageous methods to discourage unionizing; attempts to stifle whistle-blowers, and perhaps no fair recourse to conflicts or complaints. Workers MUST have a voice!

Sheila Oden
Hayward, Calif.

In June of 2007, Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter was the only Republican to vote with Democrats to end debate on the Employee Free Choice Act. The motion failed, 51 to 48, because 60 votes are needed in the Senate to end debate.

Now that Democrats presumptively have 59 votes in the Senate (with Democrat Al Franken the expected winner of the contested seat in Minnesota), Specter has announced he won’t repeat his vote to end debate on the Employee Free Choice Act, legislation which would make forming unions at workplaces less difficult.

What do you think of Specter’s reversal?

Specter’s loyalties lie with Big Business

It’s clear that his first vote to support cloture (to end debate) was simply political calculus.  He did vote against his party, but obviously knowing that the motion would fail and his vote would have no practical effect.  Thus, allowing him to have his cake and eat it too.  Something ALL politicians love to do.  Now that his vote would have the practical effect of making the EFCA law, we can see his true loyalties.  They obviously lie with the Republicans and Big Business and not with working class Americans.

Charles Sellers
San Diego, Calif 

Can’t count on Specter

As a former resident of Pennsylvania, I’m very disappointed to hear that Arlen Specter has changed his mind on the EFCA, but I am not surprised. The guy has always been a weasel and someone you really can’t count on for help with the middle class. I hope he loses his bid for re-election in 2010. Good riddance!

Dan Zurosky
Lexington, S.C.

Specter: always there when you don’t need him

I’m not surprised at all about Specter’s reversal on key labor legislation, in this case EFCA, Employee Free Choice Act.  Senator Specter, like many other so-called moderate members of Congress, who claim to be labor-friendly, is always there when you don’t need him.  Look at his vote in June of 2007.  It was doomed for failure, so the Republican leadership released him to curry favor with labor.  Unfortunately, this is a pattern for many other fair weather friends of labor, as well as Senator Specter.  They vote with labor often enough to earn or keep labor leaders’ support but, when “key” legislation like trade bills, anti-strike breaking laws and labor law reform like EFCA come along, they turn their back on workers.

This practice is not surprising nor is the practice of unions giving these legislators a pass and, in most cases, an endorsement when they run for reelection.  So, no, I’m not surprised by the reversal of Senator Specter on EFCA, and I won’t be surprised when he receives support from many unions in his upcoming reelection bid.  The rationale we will hear is “he’s with us (labor) on many issues.”  And he is.  But try finding him and other “moderates” when it really matters.

Jan D. Pierce
Quaker City, Ohio

Senator Flip Flop

The best way to deal with Senator Flip Flop is to put in his seat a Democrat who will not flip flop.  Is Ed Rendell interested and wouldn’t he be reliable on such issues?

Herbert G. Reid
Emeritus Professor of Politics, University of Kentucky
Lexington, Kentucky

Is this a new, ratty philosophy from Specter?

Anyone who has worked in a non-union shop and tried to organize a union knows the barriers placed before them: the rumor-mongering, the open threats, the veiled threats, the workplace changes that nearly but don’t quite cross NLRB rules and so on. Just getting the minimum number of cards signed means that a great many more support unionization but for various reasons are reluctant to sign. The EFCA is a self-evident no-brainer, and even if the EFCA is passed, the odds are still stacked against the unions. Passing the EFCA would, however, begin to reverse the anti-union tide that was accelerated by Reagan’s destruction of the Air Traffic Controllers union in 1981.

That sharp reversal of union power has led to a wage depression over the last 40 years, and this has a close connection to our current economic crisis. High wage earners don’t need subprime mortgages, tend not to default, and do create a domestic market to sustain a vibrant economy– low wage earners (the result of de-unionization) do not.

Specter is not a fool, and he surely understands all the above. But, did he vote pro-union in 2007 because he could do the math and realize then that he could appear pro-union but with no effect? Or was he sincere then, but now is running scared of a primary challenge within an increasingly right-wing, anti-people, anti-union, marginalized Republican Party? I guess that amounts to asking “was he always a rat or is this something new?”

David Arnow
Brooklyn, New York

Repuglican coward and corporate lapdog

 What do I think of the Republican’s reversal?  Specter rolled over and is a Repuglican coward and corporate lapdog.

The more important question is what do I think, as a resident of Colorado, of our “appointed” new Democratic(?) Senator Michael Bennet? 

I think even less of Bennet after his failure to come out in support of the Employee Free Choice Act than I do of Arlen Specter.  Bennet’s been ducking the issue like a shy prostitute, in other words how oxymoronic of him to be a Democrat(?) who can’t choose between supporting labor or supporting corporate power.

 Mary Ann Meyers
Littleton, Colorado

Specter prefers credit cards over union cards

Specter apparently favors credit cards and payday loans as the preferred “union cards” in this country.  Disgusting!  American workers deserve a living wage, and the only way to that end is unionization. 

Jacqualyne Cody
Rhinelander, Wis. 

Organizing a perceived right, not a real one

Had Senator Specter not reversed his decision, Senators would have been forced to show the vote.  Where I come from, it’s called the Employer Free Choice Act and undoubtedly it’s a perceived “right” not a real one. Been there, Still there. Ready to move forward. Put away the past.

 Kerry Joel Sudberry
Royal, Tenn.

Votes for workers when there’s not gain

It looks like Senator Spector’s big business masters allowed him to vote the way workers in Pennsylvania would prefer as long as he could safely do so without actually achieving gains for workers.  Now that the balance has shifted, he must show his true colors and tow the corporate line.

Karen Grainey
Savannah, Ga.

Time for Specter to be a statesman

The skills of a great politician include a mastery of showmanship, compromise, deal making, fund raising, and most important of all, knowing how to get reelected each and every time.  The skills of a great statesman are the courage and wisdom to dismiss all the potential rewards from those political skills to do something that you know is right and will improve the lives of the greatest number of people.

Senator Arlen Specter has shown his skills as a great politician throughout his entire career and now is the time for him to show his skills as a great statesman by voting to end the debate on the Employee Free Choice Act.

As the senior Senator from the great state of Pennsylvania, Arlen Specter knows better than anyone the damage done to working and middle class Americans by thirty years of union busting, trickle down, voodoo economic policies.  He knows that only a resurgence of strong healthy collective bargaining units across the America workforce will stop the decline in living standards and economic opportunities for all American wage earners across this great country.

The Employee Free Choice Act is a once in a generation piece of legislation that will have such a positive impact on so many lives.  It is time for Senator Specter to rest his laurels as a great politician, and step up to the plate as the great statesman that he is and vote to end the debate on the Employee Free Choice Act.

John O’Connor
North Smithfield, R.I.

Specter seeking both sides

He’s walking both sides of the street.  He knows how poorly Pennsylvanians are doing (and that the state went for Obama in the election), and he doesn’t want to appear to be unsupportive of his constituents.  But on the other side of the street, he worries about his party exacting a political price in the future for his support of Democrats.  He can tell his constituents a half-truth in his next campaign–that he voted for it–knowing most people don’t really know or bother to look up individual votes on various bills.

Gloria Aukland
Mesa, Ariz.

Pressure from RNC

I think Specter was pressured by the RNC and most likely told that he would not receive funds for his upcoming run for re-election.

Bruce Jenkins
Sunnyvale, Calif.

Buckling under pressure of the nasties

Ever since the rise to power of the nasty breed of Republican that seeks to make government a zero-sum political game — I’m thinking Newt Gingrich, Rush Limbaugh, etc. — there have been distinguished, experienced senators quitting the senate while expressing dismay at how the institution had deteriorated.  I have always seen Arlen Specter as one of the old-style, respectable men willing to continue trying to make the legislature something all Americans can be proud of.  But lately, I’m afraid, he has been buckling under the pressure of the nasties. 

It’s very sad.

Bob Persons
Newton, Mass.

Reversal provokes questions about intent

Senator Specter’s “change of heart” with regard to the Employee Free Choice Act makes one wonder.  Was he cynical when he supported it knowing that it would not pass?  After all, he scored some points with working people by his assumed support.

And, now, has he had a change of heart, or simply been overwhelmed with pressure from corporations and lobbyist?  Or was he opposed to the EFCA all along?

Mauna Richardson
La Madera, N.M.

Specter clueless about survival today

I wonder if Mr. Specter has ever had to work for his income, do a dirty job, do something he doesn’t want to, but had to, because without doing said job, there would be no food on his children’s table.  I doubt it.  Senators and Congresspeople have absolutely no idea what it is like to survive in this day and age of, at the minimum, two jobs to make ends meet. 

Or maybe they all should be laid off, given their proverbial pink slips, because those buffoons got us into this mess in the first place.  I am referring to the fact that it was Congress, which, when they stripped away the banking controls that had been enacted in the last depression, caused this current depression.  They should have to clean toilets for a while; you know, get a feel for what the rest of us have to suffer through.  

I’d be happy to make six figures to sit on my butt and listen to lobbyists all day, and I don’t want to hear about how hard these government officials work because you and I don’t have an army of staff members doing our job for us.  Don’t get me started.

Vincent Falcone
Biotechnology student, Hocking College
Amesville, Ohio

Specter tows typical GOP anti-union line

I think it is very disappointing to hear that Sen. Specter will not vote as he did in 2007. I am wondering what prompted him to vote for the Employee Free Choice Act in the first place and then change his mind this year. I have respected some decisions/stances he has taken in the past (ie voting for this in 2007) but to hear that he is towing the typical Republican party line of anti-unionism is upsetting. I am disgusted to see time and time again, politicians who are supposed to be “for the people” or the voice of the people, continue to vote for the best interests of the corporation rather than the people, the worker.

Janet Hada
Snohomish, Wash.

Sounds like RNC threats

Sounds like the RNC threatened him, doesn’t it?

Could be just general cussedness; he’s done that before, but my guess is that the party made it known that if  Specter voted against their line, he could lose support.

Again, there’s precedent for that. 

Mary Carter
Endicott, N.Y. 

Senate should change filibuster rules

When will Sen. Reid have the good sense to change the filibuster rules so that a mere majority can pass a bill in the Senate?

Jack McKissen
Grand Coulee, Wash.   

Reversal surprising and disappointing

Sen. Specter: Your reluctance to support this legislation is surprising and disappointing.  In the name of fairness, please reconsider your position.

Rev. Wesley E. Blaha
Monroeville, Pa.

Seek support of others

I think we must leave Senator Arlen Specter to vote his conscientious in peace.  He needs the support of Republicans. Let’s reason instead with the others and seek to develop additional allies among them.

David A. Crosbie
Pittsburgh, Pa.

Specter made a major mistake

Specter has made a major mistake if he is planning to run for re-election.  Several hazards await him: (1) he could be defeated by a strong candidate who is a liberal and pro-labor Democrat, of course; but he could also (2) run into terrible troubles in his party’s primary.  Far-right GOPs like to run a candidate against him, as they did last time, though he managed a narrow victory.  BUT Democrats, possibly faced with a primary in which the choice is obvious or an easy winner, could (temporarily switch parties and) vote in the Republican primary for the far-rightist in order to help insure that Specter goes down.  (There are many ways to skin a fat cat!) 

Gerald L. Houseman,
Spokane, Wash. 

Specter’s weasel votes

A reversal from Specter is no big surprise. He will vote with us whenever he knows the vote won’t matter. He votes with the Republican leadership when it counts. Look at his weasel words on the Clinton impeachment votes. His only saving grace is that any other Republican from Pennsylvania would be worse (or maybe not – integrity is something to value even if it’s in one’s opponents).

Tom Wolfinger
Centreville, Va.   

Specter sell-out

There is no sinister conspiracy behind the EFCA to thwart an employee’s freedom to choose or not to choose union representation as some opponents would have the public believe.  The EFCA is a straightforward attempt to reverse the anti-union bias that has perverted US law for nearly thirty years. Arlen Specter knows that. His refusal to support EFCA this time around is nothing short of a sell-out to political expediency now that his incumbency is challenged by strong right-wing opposition in the forthcoming Pennsylvania Republican primary election. Shame on you Arlen Specter.

David A. Blythe
Oxford, Mich.

Specter pressured by Republicans and right

I think it is awful.   Senator Specter has had a lot of pressure put on him by Republicans and the Right in general.  We need to get our folks out there with emails, calls, etc. in support of his progressive votes of late. We also need the same kinds of action to show him how many people are in favor of the Employee Free Choice Act.  Each member must contact family and friends to do the same.  We must get this act through now, at this point in history. Other potential Republicans might be Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe.  We need mass action now!

Judith Richards
Lathrup Village, Mich.

Exigencies of politics

Even as a dyed-in-the-wool Democrat, I have always admired Senator Specter’s honesty. I don’t want to think that he would vote to end debate only when he knew his vote was safe; when his vote would not be the 60th. Yet, I believe he is up for election this year and that his seat is not safe. The exigencies of politics are such that, should his vote be the 60th, he would lose his seat. I’d rather see him hold back this time with the hope that this decent man will be returned to his Senate seat.

Barbara Gunther
Bayport, NY

Tragedy for Employee Free Choice Act

I guess soul-selling is the accepted way to go when you are up for reelection. He finds ways to placate his conscience by pretending he is in the Senate to serve the people. Isn’t this par for the course among too many of our politicians?

What a tragedy when The Employee Free Choice Act hangs in the balance!

Elaine Babian
Far Rockaway, N.Y.  

Senator, you have to go

Hon. Sen. Specter, Sir: Thank you for nothing.  After sending us two identical “‘boiler-plate” letters, one on 12/22/08 and the other on 3/24/08, on your ostensibly supportive position of the EFCA, yesterday you turned around and announced your opposition to it.

Most troubling, was the report from The Patriot-News, by Charles Thompson: “On the Senate floor, Specter said he was troubled by the bill’s proposed elimination of the secret ballot, which he called ‘the cornerstone of how contests are decided in a democratic society’.”

This is troubling because you know “the elimination of the secret ballot” is absolutely false, and not part of the bill.

The article suggests your decision was politically motivated.  This is the political reality:  You have had the support of moderate Democrats in the past because of the moderate positions you have shown.  To stray to the far right would be a mistake.  Should you do that, we would actually welcome the candidacy of far right lunatics like Pat Toomey, so that he would be crushed in November of 2010.  Sorry, but if we can’t rely upon you for non-partisan votes, then you have to go.

Randi & Tom Alba
Ambler, Pa.

Specter kneeling at the alter of big business

Spector is a gutless punk who pandered to labor when there was no chance of the bill passing. Now that we have a real shot at passing this bill, he is showing his true colors. He is kneeling at the altar of big business. Unions and their members in Pennsylvania should not forget this double cross. 

Steven Elliott
Danbury, Conn.

Specter should vote for fairness

Are all Republicans the same?  We had one on our road, who signed a right-of-way for the road to be paved when a Republican was governor, but when it was a Democratic governor, he wouldn’t sign one.  They never vote on the fairness side of any issue.

Without unions our country will not survive as the leader of the free-world.  Education on union backed issues is the key to enlightenment of people who through no fault of their own, stand on the wrong side of issues.

Ronnie Young
Waynesville, N.C.

Vote change inconceivable

I cannot understand how Senator Specter could even consider changing his vote. This bill is a “no-brainer. It is vital for our economy. How could anyone not support it – where are the thoughts of those missing Democrats – amazing that we would elect persons like this to “represent” us in Congress.

Howard Lord
Montezuma, Iowa

Make the Republicans filibuster

 I think it is time to make the Republicans filibuster against the working man if that is their choice.

Robert Hooker
Upper Marlboro, Md.

A jolt

I think somebody needs to kick Arlen upside the head. 

Robert Young
Nashville, Tennessee

Specter feels threatened

I hope that Specter (and others in the GOP) have the courage to vote in good conscience for the interest of working people in Pennsylvania and the country. It’s apparent that he feels threatened by the CFG (Club for Growth) contingent, who are interested in a business agenda that is disconnected from the needs of working people. If only politicians on either side of the aisle would stand up to this anti-worker agenda, people would respond in support.

It’s very disheartening to see the path that Specter and so many others in government are taking while the middle class continues to be undermined across the U.S., by denial of basic union organizing rights and protections granted in most “civilized” nations.

Brent McFarlane
Seattle, Wash.

Specter votes for his own advantage

Arlen Specter has been a successful politician for a very long time.  

Successful politicians, for the most part, do what is in their best interests.  When Specter voted FOR the Employee Free Choice Act, he did so in order to position himself with the Democratic Party, at a time when that party’s fortunes were on the rise.  Now, he is fighting against the EFCA because he has more to gain from his fellow Republicans, and the business interests that support them, by doing so, than can be gained by siding with the Democrats. Politics as usual.

Victoria LoSchiavo
Mentor, Ohio

Specter’s decision all GOP politics

It’s about politics. The Republicans see Barack Obama succeeding beyond their and many others’ (including Democrats) expectations and so now they see themselves circling the wagons lest they help the President succeed. I say the President, because he has expressed strong support for Employee Free Choice, so anything that furthers that success will be opposed by the GOP. Come election time, they’ll come around. We need to remember that, including let’s not forget the biggest traitor of all, Senator Joe Lieberman.

Angel Rodriguez, a former copper miner from Morenci, Ariz.
Glendale, Ariz.

Specter a straw in the wind

I think Senator Specter is still smarting from the beating his fellow Republicans administered after his vote on the stimulus bill, so he is trying to assert his ideological purity with this vote. I can remember when he first ran for the Senate; he was a decent, principled former DA with crime-fighting credentials. Now he seems more like a straw in the wind, hell-bent on keeping his seat, no matter who gets hurt.

I guess we’ll have to get some other help with this….

Barbara Bruce
Mandan, N.D.

Replace Specter with pro-union Democrat

I am not surprised. After all, he is a Republican. The union members of Pennsylvania need to replace Specter with a pro-union Democrat. Unions do have an ally with Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis. We could urge Obama and Biden to resort to the nuclear option. The first step is getting all Democrats to support EFCA.

William Joseph Miller
Los Angeles, Calif.

Specter’s response unfortunate

Senator Specter’s response was unfortunate, and it probably was due to his fear of being defeated in the next Republican primary because of a YES vote.  It may be possible to deal with his concerns and to eventually gain his support, but if not, surely there are other ways to gain a Republican vote. I think the solution is to compromise- make a deal – give up something, to gain something else. Perhaps the key is with President Obama. Maybe he can help put a deal together that satisfies labor and one Republican senator.  Please recall that Specter, Snowe and Collins helped Obama before, for something I am sure each of them wanted.

Bill Weiss
Morgantown, W.Va. 

Votes for middle class when it doesn’t count

Mr. Specter has done this before.  He votes for the middle class so long as his vote won’t count; but when it counts, he always votes for the corporate hierarchy. He is a true Republican, but tries to conceal the fact.  I was surprised when he voted with Collins and Snowe for the stimulus, the only time I have seen him break his rule.

David G. Wagner MD
Portland, Ore.  

Union members must vote their interests

I think Senators are allowed to vote for their constituents when it won’t affect the outcome, but must vote with the party when required to do so or face primary opposition. 

As long as union members–or the 60 million who want to become union members–fail to vote (or vote Republican), the Employee Free Choice Act has an uphill fight. 

My county brags about being one of the “most Republican in the nation” — and 60% of the parents of public school kids are not registered. 

Arlen Specter should have been voted out long ago.  Yet, he can’t have been elected without the votes–or apathy– of labor. 

Judy Ferro
Caldwell, Idaho

 

QUESTION: Polls show strong support for “Buy American” legislation – which requires that government entities using tax-dollar supported stimulus grants buy domestically-produced products such as steel whenever possible. From your conversations with friends and neighbors, do you think most people really understand why it is so crucial to the American economy right now?

 

Yes we can Buy American

We think that Americans are currently far more aware of the values of stimulus and buying American products than they have been permitted to be for the past several years.  Because of the trust level in the current administration, driven by continuing efforts by the president to communicate with us, people are willing to make choices in line with what is best for our economy.  Hopefully, this trust we have will extend to believing in Obama’s efforts on behalf of unions too.
Jay and Lucia Weinroth
Big Prairie, Ohio

 

 

Little thought of Buy American

We are already very strongly “buying American,” but my sense is that most people have not really thought about it very much.  Local car dealerships are doing strong advertising along these lines, however, so that may pay off.
Bill Prentiss
Orlando, Fla.

Tariff now

In this day of global economy, global stimulus plans, and Uni Global Union, we must, finally, admit Americans are in a GLOBAL COMPETITION for jobs, standard of living and national economic standing. The surrender policy this nation’s corporations and politicians have given this great nation in condemning it to a service economy is a travesty. All great economic powers are based on their MANUFACTURING ability. Due to other nations taking advantage of our corporate policies of off-shoring, union busting and desperate allegiance to higher profit margins, we are in position to become a second tier economy. While other nations devalue their currency, pirate American technology, and use all protectionist measures available to them, our leaders continue to see the global economy as first priority over American security. If no one HERE has a job manufacturing American goods at a livable wage, how do they expect us to be able to

BUY anything other than Wal-Mart Chinese goods on the Chinese wages we’re receiving? I say don’t blame the Unions. Blame political and corporate greed. Give us a level playing field: tariff now.
John Buck
Point Pleasant Borough, N.J.

 

More Buy American education

People seem to understand the sentiment of buying American made goods, but they fall short in the practice.  I even know of a New York affiliate that distributed Chinese made “union logo” jackets at their December holiday meeting.  “If we bought American we couldn’t distribute them for free to our members,” I was informed by that local’s President.  He seemed only slightly embarrassed as he said this.

Sad, but true.  More ”Buy American” education is necessary.
Kevin Sexton
Flushing, N.Y.

 

Buy American and protectionism

I’ve been a union man since before I was born (my grandfather was a baker, my grandmother a seamstress, I’m a professor) and I strongly support almost every union initiative and position: except pushing for protectionist, “Buy American” legislation. Protectionism can lead to an uncontrollable retaliatory spiral that will ruin the world’s and America’s economy for years to come. “Buy American” is the wrong approach to a real problem: unfair competition, cheap wages and poor conditions in foreign countries.

The right solution includes:

1) enactment of single-payer national health so that we get guaranteed health and so that American business won’t be saddled with a competitive barrier compared to foreign companies that do not have to pay health care benefits;

2) a militant campaign against environmental and labor standards violations in other countries (not boycotts, but demonstrations at embassies, visits to the countries involved);

3) strong ties with and funding support for unionists in other countries — even symbolic short, large-scale sympathy strikes;

4) leverage our political strength to ensure that NAFTA, WTO etc. really get modified to promote better labor conditions world wide;

5) aggressive unionization here in America of all the industries that they CANNOT ship overseas, and aggressive struggles to raise the wages in those industries and sectors: food service workers, hospital workers, sanitation workers, doormen and janitors, transit workers, etc.;

6) repeal all right-to-work laws, the NYS Taylor Law penalties, etc. here and worldwide.
David Arnow
Brooklyn, N.Y.

  

Build America

The case has not been made strongly enough yet.  The Obama Administration could help make direct links between people’s basic concerns about the current state of the economy and job loss to a brighter future for every American family based on development of green industry and business built by Americans.    Unfortunately,  most people I know perceive “Buy American”  as strictly a ‘union’ issue which they don’t particularly identify with personally, and don’t understand what is good for unions is good for them.  I would like to see the issue framed as “Build America” instead of “Buy American” so that people might come to understand its importance to every American and to the global economy.   People painfully understand the economy needs to be rebuilt, and are being told to save not buy at this time.   The word “Build” instead of “Buy” better describes immediate needs.

After the last eight years of national trauma, people are skittish about ‘patriotism’ and the “Buy American” slogan may be off-putting.  So, yes, “Build America” first could lead us into a future of “Buy American.”  Also, the case for “Build America” and “Buy American” must be made by leaders outside the trade union movement as well as by our own Blue-Green Alliance.  It’s time for coalition building again.
Beth Omansky
Portland, Ore.

American imbalance

I suspect that most people do not understand that our balance of trade is so far out of balance; they may have heard that China holds around a trillion dollars of our debt, but they do not realize how much more the USA has bought from Chine than it has sold to China.  To a lesser degree, we are out of balance to Europe, Japan, and Korea. If we slow our purchasing of foreign goods, perhaps the balance will tilt back toward a more normal position.
David G. Wagner, MD
Portland, Ore.

American-made frustration

My friends feel very strongly about “Buy American,” but are frustrated because it is not easy to find American-made goods.  I would not know where to go to find American-made shoes or clothing.  Furniture and appliance stores have American, Canadian, and Asian items side by side and it is difficult to know which is which. Food and paper goods are often not labeled.  American-owned car companies purchase parts abroad, and ”foreign” ones purchase U.S. parts.
Judy Ferro
Caldwell, Idaho

Corporations selling out America

The tax structure must be changed. Freightliner closed American plants and went to Mexico. Hershey Chocolates moved to Mexico.  We have to keep the work in USA
Franz  Ortloff
Helena, Mont.

Circumventing Buy American

I think most people are not aware of the importance of Buy American and do not realize foreign countries exploit their workers. I myself think that to import to the extent that our own country has almost no domestic production of items like washers, dryers or structural steel is wrong. Some government contracts require Buy American in their subsidies for say, rail coaches, and they get around this requirement by assembling a small final component in the U.S.
Martin LaCarbonara
Woburn, Mass.

Consumers’ ignorance; manufacturers’ greed

For too long American consumers have made their purchases based on price and neither quality nor country of origin. This, coupled with the greed exhibited by manufactures and our nation’s trade policies has led to the demise of millions of good family wage jobs in the USA.

However, when the question is posed, should taxpayers dollars, meant for job creation, be spent overseas, I think that a vast majority of citizens would answer, “Of course not.”  I also believe that the recovery of our nation’s economy cannot be achieved to a great degree until we return to a nation that manufactures the goods we purchase and not a nation whose economy is based on services.
Harold Abbe
Camas, Wash.

Build American manufacturing

Instead of just passing out free money to the incompetent financial wizards at inept and possibility criminal Wall Street organizations, maybe the U.S. government should build manufacturing plants to make consumer products like refrigerators, washing machines, clothing, TV’s, and eventually all of the consumer goods that we import with that money.  We should impose import taxes high enough on these products so that US-made products are competitive in price with imported goods.  These plants should periodically and/or constantly be for sale based upon competitive bidding, but at a minimum price at least equal to as much as the government investment.  The money passed out to the financial industries does nothing to create jobs or eliminate the problems with the US economy.  Maybe it helps pay for the commissions of the U.S. salesmen of the expensive new French-manufactured private jet airplanes.  The French people making these (Falcon 20-25) airplanes are probably very thankful for Obama’s generosity.
Gerald R. Spencer, P.E.
Houston, Texas 

More solutions

Given that we are thoroughly enmeshed in World Trade, an attempt at nationalism would probably be counter productive.  Other countries would retaliate.

Instead, I should like to suggest the following changes:

1.  Re-write our trade policies to correct the off-set balance of payments.

2.  Make importers legally responsible for the safety of their products.

3.  Reward businesses that create jobs for U.S. workers.

4. Give tax relief for small businesses.
Suzanne Orr
Port Angeles, Wash.

Think past price

I don’t think most Americans think past the price. I admit I personally succumb to the temptation to pay less for imports manufactured with slave labor, although if there’s an American made product for not too much more, I will buy it.

I do make an effort to buy locally-grown food and wood products, as farming and lumber products support my neighbors. Companies like ADM and Cargill need their feet held to the fire with heavy tariffs or outright bans on importation of slave products.

Hopefully, the Obama administration will implement fair-trade mandates on imports, which will make U.S.-made products price-competitive and return our jobs.

Live long and perspire,

Jerry (Steve) Dodge
Springdale, Wash.