At Wendell August Forge Steelworkers produce artwork, mostly in aluminum and bronze, including stunning designs on gifts that include trays, Christmas ornaments, jewelry, album covers, plates and platters.

“It’s rewarding for me to make something that customers will value as a keepsake gift, something that they will cherish,’’ said Jason Fleischer, a member of Local 6346  and one of 40 employees hired by Wendell August after a fire completely destroyed the 88-year-old shop in Grove City, Pa. on March 6, 2010.  

The shop, listed on the National Register of Historic Places, was lost. But the company’s heritage – more than 4,000 unique dies used to imprint designs onto end products – was spared.  About a third of the dies were in a fireproof vault. The rest required painstaking restoration.

Will Knecht, the company’s president and current owner, said members of the United Steelwokers (USW) union did “a phenomenal job” getting the business up and running in a temporary location.

“They literally worked around the clock after the fire, never a complaint; an amazing group of employees,” he said. “I am proud to be associated with workers who have a true dedication to their job, and a work ethic that is beyond compare.” (more…)

Last year, the Women of Steel chapter at United Steelworkers Local 151G at Dal-Tile, Olean, N.Y., raised $1,570 for a local charity through a year-long effort.

The money went to the Mental Health Association of Cattaraugus County.

Lynn Zalepa, president of USW Local 151G, suggested the project, and WOS chairperson Kerri Simon carried it out, starting off with having members vote on the charity to benefit.

After raising the money through donations and a series of monthly events including bake sales, WOS presented the gift to the executive director of MHACC in December.

MHACC, a nonprofit, provides assistance to people with developmental disorders such as autism. MHACC programs include therapeutic, residential camps for children, transition groups and family support.  The local’s fundraising project will aid the organization, which lacks formal funding, in continuing these services, which it has provided for the past four years.

Dal-Tile managers Marty Reynolds, Tom Blair and Greg Edwards were instrumental in the program’s success, local union officials said.

For USW Local Union 6500 in Sudbury, Canada, it all started 23 years ago when Brother Edgar Burton’s daughters came home from school and asked if they could collect food for the less fortunate.

Burton was so moved that he began a tradition of collecting cans of food for the Sudbury Food Bank. He started by placing an empty box at the plant where he worked. Over the years, as more businesses, employees, schools and organizations joined in, this effort grew into The Greater Sudbury Business and Employee Food Drive.

In July 2010, Brother Edgar Burton passed away. In honor of his contribution and ongoing efforts to reduce hunger in Greater Sudbury, the campaign was renamed The Edgar Burton Christmas Food Drive.

In the first year Edgar collected 400 pounds of food. Keeping with his original motto to collect “one more can” than the year before, the Edgar Burton’s Christmas Food Drive has collected a total of 516 tons of food over the past 24 years (over 86 tons last year alone).  All of this was inspired by his daughters asking, “Why do some people not have enough food to eat?”

This year, along with the many cans and boxes of food collected, Local 6500 raffled a Harley Davidson Soft Tail Classic motorcycle and raised $30,000 for this cause. Local 6500 President Rick Bertrand said later, “Each year I am more proud and amazed by what the Steelworkers’ sisters and brothers of Local 6500 can achieve.”

USW Local 6500 President Rick Bertrand (center) presents a $30,000 check to the Chair of the Sudbury Food bank, Geoffrey Lougheed. In the background are Local 6500 members Norm Black, Dave Gordon, Wess Dowsett, Norm Rivard, Tim Kiley, Nick Larochelle, Mike “OB” O’Brien, and Patrick Vienot.

United Steelworkers (USW) Local Union 1533 teamed up with Fairbanks Morse Engine company over the holidays to raise $3,300 for the Salvation Army. 

Individual workers donated and groups of workers raised money by participating in bell ringing throughout “Spirit Week.”

John W. Bottorff, Fairbanks Morse vice president of human resources, said the union’s support for the Salvation Army has been a tradition. “Employees were extremely generous and proud to help in so many ways,” Bottorff said.

Volunteers conducted bell ringing at several locations throughout the Beloit area including the Save-a-Lot grocery store and Woodman’s grocery.  The group’s efforts brought the community’s total collection to more than $70,000, exceeding last year’s contribution of $63,000.

USW Local 1533 President Kevin Bishop encouraged local unions, businesses and community groups to organize support for the Salvation Army’s new program for the 2012 holidays called “Adopt a Kettle.”

Members of USW Local 3657 Women of Steel trimmed a holiday tree with red and green paper slips bearing the names and ages of children of Local 6996 members who had been locked out for months by Hofmann Industries in Sinking Spring, Pa.

WOS members from Pittsburgh, Pa. took the slips from the tree and bought presents that each child had asked for, trying to purchase as many America-made gifts as possible. Local 3657 wrapped the gifts, ranging from board games to nonobugs, and sent them to Local 6996 in time holiday distribution.

After the holidays, Local 6996 President Dean E. Showers sent Local 3657 WOS photos and a note expressing his gratitude. He said,

“Thank you again for the solidarity and kindness given to our locked-out members. Your Christmas gifts were very much appreciated by our members and their children. Your continued support enables our members to find the courage, energy, and commitment to Stand Up and Fight Back.”

Steffi Domike, co-chair of Local 3657, said it chose Local 6996 for the project because it is a fellow District 10 local, and its members had suffered terribly during the lockout.

USW District 10 Director John DeFazio packs handbags with USW Local 3657 WOS members

By Steffi Domike and Pam DelBianco
Co-chairs, USW Local 3657 WOS

When District 10 Women of Steel co-chairs Keli Vereb and Paulette Battisti delivered five huge boxes filled with handbags to Pittsburgh’s Wood Street homeless shelter on Dec. 7, they made fifty homeless women just a little happier this holiday season. The purse delivery was a joint project of District 10 and USW Local 3657 Women of Steel.

The Local 3657 Women of Steel chapter initiated the purse collection project early in November and anticipated making a delivery to the shelter in January of 2012. The initial plan was to put a Ziploc bag filled with toiletries into each purse. What surprised everyone was the number of unused and gently used handbags that members, sisters, friends and relatives quickly donated to this worthy cause.

By the first of December, over 50 purses were piled up in 4 large boxes, nearly filling the front of committee co-chair Steffi Domike’s office. Small bottles of shampoo, conditioner and lotion filled another box.

Then Paulette Battisti, co-chair of District 10 Women of Steel and new clerical staff member in the International office of the Education and Membership Development Department, decided that more could be done to make this a special gift. She contacted District 10 Director John DeFazio for a donation. Then with $250 in hand, she purchased 50 hats, 50 packages of socks, 50 pairs of gloves and 50 toothbrushes.

By early December, it was clear that there were enough purses and materials to fill them and Dec. 7 was set as the date to put it all together. Director DeFazio came into the International office to help and brought along a purse donated by the district secretary Cindy Minnick. Women of Steel activists Chris Patberg, Pam DelBianco, Barbara White Stack, Steffi Domike and Paulette Battisti set up an assembly line to quickly stuff the bags with all of the donated and purchased items.

More handbags and winter clothing are still being dropped off, so Local 3657 WOS plans to make a second delivery in January.

The Women of Steel (WOS) Committee at United Steelworkers (USW) Local 5 in Martinez, Calif., set a goal of delivering 200 holiday gifts to patients at the local Veterans Hospital.

They filled holiday gift bags with toiletries, books, movies, clothing and other items after receiving a $250 donation from the Institute for Career Development (ICD) and $500 from USW Local 5. In addition, the Steelworkers Health and Welfare Fund donated toothbrushes, lens cleaners and pill cases.

On Dec. 10, volunteers stuffed the gifts into two SUV’s, a truck, and a car to take to the hospital.  There, they took time to visit each veteran, and delivered the gifts with the help of some of the patients and hospital volunteers. (more…)

Do you have a personal story to tell about how the health insurance reform law, called the Affordable Care Act, has helped you, a family member or a friend?

As Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives plan to vote to repeal the Affordable Care Act, the USW is seeking true, personal stories about how provisions in the legislation have aided families, perhaps by enabling a child with a pre-existing condition to get insurance, a young adult to remain on a parent’s plan, or an elderly parent to better afford prescriptions with the $250 rebate. (more…)

The “deficit commission” has proposed slashing federal spending and increasing taxes in ways that will significantly cost workers. For example, the commission says the federal government should raise the Social Security retirement age to 69, eliminate income tax deductions on health insurance benefits and raise the gas tax by 15 cents a gallon. Other organizations, such as the Citizen’s Commission on Jobs, Deficits and America’s Economic Future, have suggested measures that would cut the deficit more and hurt workers less.

What should be done to cut the federal budget deficit by the trillions of dollars necessary over the next 10 years?

Let All Tax Cuts Expire

Let the Bush tax cuts for everyone expire, plain and simple.  We cannot have a government without taxpayers paying the taxes to have it!

Ronnie Young
Retired, USW Local 507
Also former member Commercial, Food, Tannery Workers
Canton, N.C.

Cutting Now Risks Prolonged Recession

The Federal Budget Deficit should be the least of our concerns right now and is being thrust into the national debate by Republicans to distract and prevent us from dealing with far more urgent matters. It is also immensely hypocritical of Republicans who clearly don’t care at all about deficit reduction. Their saint, Dick Cheney, is on record as saying “Reagan proved deficits don’t matter.” The fact that they talk about deficit reduction and extending the Bush tax cuts for the uber-rich in the same breath simply underscores their utter lack of seriousness. And history has shown that deficits grow under Republican administrations and tend to shrink under Democratic ones. That’s clearly quite true over the last two decades.

Cutting spending now seriously risks us getting sucked into the black hole of deflation that we may only emerge from after a decade or more of economic stagnation.

Obama made a huge mistake caving into the Republicans with his lamentable freeze on Federal wages. Instead of worrying about the deficit, we should be taking advantage of the near zero interest rates and engage in massive deficit spending aimed at job creation.

And we could do even more for our future by making the transition to safe, clean, renewable energy the main focus of this stimulus funding.

There is so much important work that needs to be done in this nation. The International Energy Agency recently reversed itself and now admits that “sweet light crude” oil peaked in production in 2006. We need to engage in a WWII level of national mobilization to become massively more energy efficient than we are now. And remember, in WWII almost everybody had a job. There’s no shortage of important work to do and only federal stimulus spending is going to set us on this path. Talking about the deficit is simply ridiculous and massively counter productive. We should not let our enemies frame the national debate.

Alec Johnson
Mansfield, Ohio

Downsize the Elephant: Military Expenditures

The biggest elephant in the room is Military Expenditures.  Slashing them by 75% would not be unreasonable nor harm our defense capabilities.

Taxation is next.  The rich do not need further tax cuts.  Close all loopholes on corporate taxes.

Thomas M. Alba
Ambler, Pa.

Solve Fake Deficit Problem with Tax Code

The federal deficit is the biggest non-problem I have ever seen or heard. It is totally artificial and results from a ridiculous tax policy. Implement the following and the deficit problem would vanish:

(A) INCOME TAX:

(1) Just one filing status

(2) All income (earned, indexed capital gains, interest,

dividends, job benefits, bonuses, gifts, everything)

is treated the same and constitutes gross income.

(3) Subtract $100,000 from gross income to compute taxable

income.

(4) No deductions of any kind. None. Zero.

(5) The portion of the taxable income that exceeds

$1 million is taxed at 60 percent; the rest of the taxable

income is taxed at whatever rate is necessary

to balance the budget plus 5 percent of the national

debt.

(6) Allow income averaging over 5-year periods.

(B) PAYROLL TAX:

Don’t cap the tax: include income after current cap is.

(C) INHERITANCE TAX:

Exempt the first $5 million, 50 percent of everything else.

(D) NON-TANGIBLE ASSETS TAX:

One-tenth of one percent on all non-tangible assets (equities, non-exempt

bonds, etc.) after $10 million. (Considering that the holders

of those amounts typically pay 1 percent for “wealth management

services,” this is not a lot.)

Spending should always be carried out with wisdom, and there probably should be big cuts in defense and military aid to foreign countries. But the deficit “problem” and its solution lie in tax policy. The above tax policy is simple in the extreme, protective of the working and middle classes, not burdensome on the billionaires and would eliminate the national debt in 20 years and keep Social Security solvent for the foreseeable future.

David Arnow
Brooklyn, N.Y.

Tax Wall Street Trades

1. Install a small (3 – 6 cent) tax on all trades in all stock, bond, and OTC trades. There are millions of them every day.

2. A 10-cent or less tax increase on every gallon of gasoline or over-the-road diesel, but no tax on #2 heating oil or any other fuel used for home heating.

3. Legalize marijuana and treat it the same as alcohol, to be taxed and sold in state-controlled stores.

4. Tax industrial and manufacturing use of sugar, and possibly other commodities, edible or inedible, but no tax on sugar, etc. intended for home consumption.

5. Create, sell and distribute a mandatory nation-wide “E-Z Pass” for use on all Federal highways, i.e. the Interstate system and others.

6. Establish controls on off-shore banking and money manipulation.

Henry Niese
Glenelg, Md.

Sniping About Earmarks Won’t Solve the Problem

We need more people paying taxes, and the only way to get there is to have more people building things. I’m not a smart man, but I know that means we need to bring jobs back to the U.S.

I’ve heard Bill Clinton and Jerry Springer both say that cutting their taxes creates no jobs; they just end up a little more rich. So let’s let tax cuts for the rich go by the wayside and instead funnel tax breaks to entities that will create jobs.

I’ve read that business loans are hard to come by, and expensive when found. Maybe the government could lower the cost of business loans by using unspent stimulus money to guarantee these loans so that jobs can be created.

Finally, I don’t think that the recommendations of the President’s Deficit Commission should be rejected out of hand. I’m not necessarily advocating the corporate tax cuts recommended, and I think that before sweeping changes are made to Social Security, it should be totally segregated from the general budget. Difficult decisions will have to be made by brave politicians to get this right.

I just have to believe that a bunch of pork exists in the military budget.

People can snipe all they want about eliminating things like “earmarks” and the “earned income credit,” but killing these is not going to kill the deficit. Good paying manufacturing jobs will increase the tax base and enable workers to rise above the refundable credits. Common sense changes to the tax code and entitlements will help save money.

Daniel E Smith
Former President, USW Local 87
Holland, Ohio

Three Steps to Cut the Deficit

Cut the deficit by:

l. Get out of Afghanistan now, and

2. Stop the $7 million a day to Israel, and

3. Cut down on the number of American military bases in the world starting with shutting down the one in Okinawa, and of course Guatanimo.

Jean Acton Snyder
Greenbelt, Md.

Follow Rep. Frank’s Bipartisan Commission Recommendations

The big elephant is the room is military expenditures, which take up 59 cents of every tax dollar.  That’s right 59% of our budget is Department of Defense, war supplemental, Veterans Affairs, and nuclear weapons programs, based on President Obama’s 2011 federal discretionary budget sent to Congress in January 2010 and is being voted on now. U.S. Rep. Barney Frank, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, appointed his own bipartisan commission to look at ways to reduce America’s bloated military budget.  The commission released a report in June 2010, outlining how to cut $1 trillion from the defense budget and reduce the deficit over the next decade, without compromising national security.

The most important part of the report is that we cannot achieve the necessary spending reductions simply by becoming more efficient in what we do, although that is obviously essential. It is imperative that we also reduce the overreach of America’s military involvement in parts of the world where we have no legitimate security interest and in fact often do more harm than good because of the political reaction to our intervention in difficult situations.

Labor’s response must be to the Obama administration—-follow the recommendations of Rep. Frank’s bipartisan commission.

Roger Mills
Steward
AFGE Local 3887, Council 252
Stockbridge, Ga.

First, Reform Campaign Finance

Repair our campaign finance arrangements, with a constitutional amendment if necessary.

Put a tariff on all goods from American companies that have outsourced to a foreign factory.

Break up all outsized banks. They are a threat to the whole world.

Reform our tax system, eliminating all deductions, thus giving the lawyers something to do. Exxon got a refund for their $40 billion profit.

Cut defense spending by half, and end the cost plus arrangements for major arms manufacturers.

End the Bush tax cuts for all income over $250,000.

Remove the cap from Social Security FICA tax. This would eliminate the fiscal problems of both Social Security and Medicare.

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

Cut the Military; Tax the Wealthy

Cut the Pentagon’s budget deeply. Tax the wealthy much more. Tax corporations much more.

Robert Bisson
Stuyvesant, N.Y.

Solution is Simple but Hard

Simple but hard:

1. Take the $106,000 cap off FICA.
2. Transfer tax on stocks, bond and derivatives
3. Stop the Wars, Bring the Troops Home
4. End the Tax Breaks for those over $250,000
5. Replace ObamaCare with Medicare for All

This also creates jobs as well as bringing deficits down

Carl Davidson
Aliquippa, Pa.

Create Defense Jobs First

One way to cut the deficient is to create jobs first to stop contracting out our defense contracts.  All weapons, uniforms, and all things dealing with manufacturing of ammunition, weaponry, planes, jets, uniforms, even flags should be made in America.  And any company that receives any of these contracts and contract out to other countries should be penalized.  We can no longer depend upon other countries to defend our country.  We are leaving our children and grandchildren defenseless.

Shirley Hamilton
Niagara Falls, N.Y.

Tax at 1960s Rates

Restore income tax rates to what they were in 1960.  (The cutoffs for each rate would of course be adjusted for inflation.)  Oh, and tax capital gains at the same rate as wages.

Thomas J. Murphy
Bowie, Md.

Create Jobs First

The concern about the deficit is a concern for the future. The proposals being discussed would result in an increase in unemployment. Unemployment is the most important problem facing this nation now.

Most of the proposals decrease the amount of spending one way or another and inevitably result in more jobs being lost.

What is necessary is another stimulus bill big enough (more dollars) which would create more jobs.  More jobs mean more taxes paid and thus the deficit begins to be addressed.  In the Great Depression the first spending frightened many and a diminution took place.  WWII came about and spending escalated.  We do not need another world war.  We have areas where the Government can spend in the best interest of the people, for example, the infrastructure — that is roads, bridges buildings.  A glance at today’s newspapers show that we in the US have lost our preeminence in education.  Can you imagine that nations poorer than the United States have surpassed us in math, science and college graduates. A lot needs doing now.

The creation of jobs should be the first and only priority.

John M. Stochaj
Berkeley Heights, N.J.

Impose Tariffs on Imports

Put an end to the world economy that is the biggest cause of our deficit. We need tariffs on imports. This is what would put Americans back to work. As long as corporate America can get a product shipped to the United States, shipped from half way around the world cheaper than they can make it here, they will do it. Right now we have half of the country working jobs paying no federal income tax. lt is a slap in the face of working Americans who try to tell their employers they are underpaid, then these same employers tell us that we are not paying our fair share of taxes. Unemployment is not the biggest problem in American, underemployment is. A living wage for every worker: that is what our unions should be about.

Rick Laird
Louisville, Ky.

Too Much for Top 1 Percent

There is the root cause — PROFIT, accumulating in the hands of the upper 1%. The country borrows and buys so it can wind up in profit sharing and bonus bucks in the hands of the “special GOP favored people.”

John Stone
Las Vegas, Nev.

Organize!

Waste of my time… organize!

Bill Weiss
Morgantown, W.Va.

President Can Reduce Deficit

Here are a few suggestions the President can do without a vote in Congress:

1.       All defense contracts and upcoming options are to be issued to U.S.-owned companies using U.S.-only workers.  DOD to interpret the Buy American Act that a contract or subsystem purchased for U.S. Defense is from U.S.- owned companies using U.S.-only workers with all systems and subsystems not from Egypt, Germany, or Italy as if they were U.S. companies.

2.       Cease all H1 & H2 labor visas and I-9 student visas.  Require employers to acquire workers from other regions within the US or to subcontract work to U.S.-owned companies who have ample U.S. workers.

3.       All Fannie and Freddie-owned residential property to be used for Section 8 housing, U.S. Military housing and Hospice Housing.

4.       Deny foreign taxes and operating expenses to be an authorized tax deduction.

5.       Set Social Security at age 55 and paid at the mean level of the national income and set it as a household limit. If the household has more income, then Social Security payments are to be offset by that amount.  When the household draws Social Security, the household is no longer part of the payroll system.  Households may start a business but cannot take a job another could fill while on Social Security.

6.      Make many civil violations criminal acts: If a doctor cuts off the wrong leg or is impaired while operating, and the patient is harmed or dies, that should be criminal not civil.  If a building falls down because of cheap materials, that too should be criminal fraud or possibly manslaughter not civil.

There is no black magic or political correctness here, only common sense based on decades of experience.

Kent Hammond
Raceland, La.

Recession is No Time to Cut the Debt

A severe recession is not the time to worry about reducing deficits.  Any student of U.S. economic history knows that during the Great Depression FDR ran up deficits by providing assistance to people–unemployment benefits, old age insurance (Social Security), public employment programs and other forms of job creation, all of which were economically stimulative.  In 1932 when FDR took office, unemployment was 25%.  He viewed the highest priority as getting people back to work, and rightly so.  Many deficits then become relatively short term, being paid back by turning the unemployed into wage earners who pay taxes.  Under FDR’s programs unemployment shrunk to 10%.  In 1936 when Republicans pressured FDR into concern for deficits and balancing the budget, unemployment rose again.  He and the country learned a lesson from that.  So FDR continued his programs.

What I’ve given is a very sketchy outline at best of the ’30s, but it’s founded in historical fact and remains as true today as it was then.  The President needs to ignore the deficit hawks, but instead of seeing to it that tax breaks for the wealthiest 2% were eliminated, a  “compromise” is imminent.  Extending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest is, I believe, fiscally irresponsible.  And now we see Republicans are not at all serious about  deficit reduction.

Other cost-cutting methods proposed by the deficit commission simply show that it wants to raise revenue on the backs of workers and the elderly when the most obvious means of raising revenue was eliminating the Bush tax cuts and instituting other taxes, for example on transactions and the like.

Reducing deficits at this time is the wrong approach.  Putting people back to work deserves the highest priority, even if it requires additional funding.  However, ending the wars would help our economy and the deficit picture immeasurably.  And Obama needs to get after the banks to extend small-business loans and adjust mortgages.

Gloria Aukland
Mesa, Ariz.

Simple Deficit Solution

The solution to the deficit issue is simple.  Return the income tax rates for the rich to where they were before the Bush tax cuts.  Raise capital gains rates to at least 20-25% if not higher.  Institute a tax on large investment transactions.  Cut defense spending by at least 20% and end the tax breaks that reward companies for off-shoring jobs and profits.  Develop a real industrial policy for the US that emphasizes domestic production in areas like renewable energy production and energy conservation.

Shawn Saving
Kansas City, Mo.

Increase Taxes; Cut Spending

My recommendations:

1.  Increase Social Security tax on incomes over $109,000.

2.  Increase tax on gasoline, and dedicate it to mass transit.

3.  Close tax loopholes and increase income tax rates across the board.

4.  No more wars. Cut defense spending significantly.

5.  Decriminalize drug use and tax recreational uses of drugs. (Like alcohol and tobacco are, and this would significantly reduce need for prisons, saving billion of dollars.)

6.  Look at farm supports and others.

7.  Reinvent government.

8.  Rethink culture.

Wayne Wittman
St. Paul, Minn.

Invest in America’s Future

Former Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin warned about staying out debt by staying out of wars. All wars cost money, and we must pay higher taxes or user fees to overcome such debt caused by wars. Former Secretary of the Treasury Andrew Mellon lowered the deficit from $24 Billion to $16 Billion by carefully targeting tax cuts that grow the economy and carefully targeting government-spending cuts where there is waste.

For example, does America still need 820 Military Bases around the World? Even Former Republican Dick Armey and many at the Pentagon say no. Whatever happens to closing some of the Military Bases in the South recommended by the Bi-Partisan Committee to reduce Military Base Spending?

Under President Reagan taxes were cut, for the reason that supply-side economics would increase tax revenues and close the budget gap within a few years, but it led to a $5 trillion national debt. Under President Clinton, taxes were increased, yet the economy grew faster because the marginal propensity to consume is greater than to lower one’s income. Clinton’s taxes had the rich pay more because they save more and gave to those with lower incomes that tend to spend more. It worked. The budget gap was eliminated a few years later with carefully targeted tax, and spending cuts.

Both methods worked yesterday and would work today if both parties would agree.

America should be investing in education, sciences and transportation infrastructure. All three lead to a smarter electorate, new inventions and ways to create new wealth, and a well-engineered transportation infrastructure not only provides jobs but reduces costs for all that use it to deliver and send  goods and travel and tourism.

Unions have been on the vanguard of all three of these endeavors that created an America that is the best in the world with special programs to educate our youth, living wages for workers and pension plans for the elderly, and this is why unions matter!

Joseph J. Janos
USWA & UMWA Associate Member & APSCUF
Aliquippa, Pa.

Stop Wars Bankrupting America

We’ve had a deficit for the last nine, ten years. It didn’t seem to matter when G.W. Bush was president. Now when Obama is in office, there’s concern for the deficit? The answer isn’t in deficit commissions or angry Republicans or even angry tea partiers.

I certainly don’t know what would reduce the federal deficit. For too long now, in fact the last two years, we’ve fiddled around and allowed the right wing to pretty much set the course. When the cold war ended, there was a move to spend the “peace dividend” in this country but it met heavy resistance from the Republicans and got lost in the rhetoric. We continue to squander billions on the military industrial complex, suffering lost lives to protect a corrupt regime in Afghanistan. If the Republicans want to cut spending to reduce the deficit, they can start there.

In the meantime, there are things to do in this country to get our people back to work. It’s time for President Obama to get back in the driver’s seat and set the country’s economic future in the right direction. Creating jobs to re-build our country’s infrastructure would put people to work, earn and spend their money a lot sooner. Better sooner than later. The flow of money would lift the country from its economic malaise. The reason companies aren’t hiring more now isn’t that they don’t have the money. It’s the lack of consumer demand.

As Studs Terkel said, “The key issue is jobs. You can’t get away from it: jobs. Having a buck or two in your pocket and feeling like somebody.” Jobs mean restoring confidence for workers and their ability to provide for their families. At a time when banks and Wall Street refuse to invest in creating jobs, the government needs to step in fill the void and be the employer of first choice. As the late Sen. Hubert Humphrey said in a speech to the Minnesota AFL-CIO Convention in 1977, “No nation went bankrupt building, it goes bankrupt in wars.”

Angel Rodriguez
Glendale, Ariz.

Cut Defense; Raise Taxes

End the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and bring home all the troops; then
cut the Department of Defense budget.

Remove the cap on income limits for paying into Medicare and Social Security and make the FICA Tax progressive.

Raise taxes on the top 2 percent of income earners.

Do not extend the Bush tax cuts for any income bracket.

Raise the Capital Gains Tax to 20 percent.

Gloria Donohue
San Francisco, Calif.

Cut Defense, Add Single-Payer

We should raise the pay for the military and get rid of Blackwater, et. Al., to whom we pay too much. In that way people would make the military their career choice. That would cut the jobless rate and the deficit at the same time. I believe the net result of getting out of Iraq and implementing my suggestion would be a long-needed cut in our defense budget.

Also, we desperately need to extend unemployment benefits and to extend tax cuts to people making less than $250,000 per year. We must not continue to subsidize the incomes of the wealthiest among us.

Somehow, the Supreme Court decision to give personhood to corporations must be overturned. Otherwise, corporations will select all of our leaders.

Socialized, single-payer health insurance would go a long way to cutting our deficit and making our population healthier.

Janet Davis
Olympia, Wash.

Enact a “Blow Hard Tax” on AM Radio Windbags

1. Raise taxes on people making over $1 million a year to 1960s levels.
2. Do away with capital gains taxes, all income taxed at income tax levels, including hedge fund managers’ incomes.
3. End the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan today; bring our kids home.
4. Enact a stimulus package that is five times larger than the previous bill. Let’s fix our roads, our bridges and modernize our rail service. Getting the economy going with be the best way to reduce the deficit.
5. Enact a “blow hard tax” on AM radio windbags. Tax would be per word, paid by both the talker and the listeners.

Kristjan Dye
President
USW Local 4959
Prudhoe Bay, Ala.

Repeat Poppa Bush and Clinton

To cut the federal deficit, we only need to repeat what Poppa Bush and Clinton did, cut spending and raise taxes. Cut defense, etc. The problem is Baby Bush and Obama didn’t don’t know how to use veto pen or say no to their own party.

J.D. Kirk
Covington, Va.

End the Empire

We can no longer afford a worldwide empire. As of 2005, according to official sources, the United States had 737 bases in other peoples’ countries — maybe even more by now. Time to shut most of them down.

Eleanore Lee
USW Associate Member
Berkeley, Calif.

Support Manufacturing

The Federal budget can be balanced by increasing the tax rate in the higher income levels. One of the benefits of the income tax is it has the ability to reverse the tendency for wealth to accumulate in a minority of the population and for our country to move further toward an oligarchy. Unlike the poor Russians who didn’t know what hit them, our move toward oligarchy started more slowly with the Reagan tax cuts. The tax rate on high incomes should be enough to discourage companies with weak or mendacious directors from awarding exorbitant salaries and bonuses.

Social Security is good and if an increase in payments into the system is needed, then increase the payments into the system but stop treating Social Security as a part of the Federal Budget. If the Social Security budget were kept separately, then it might not get so much stupid reaction from the Republicans. Social Security has its own income and outgo and if outgo is greater than income, then it can cash in some government bonds and the government can borrow the money from some other source. There need not be a Social Security item in the Federal budget until the trust fund runs out.

The best way to balance the budget is to have a vibrant economy and the best way to do that is to bring back manufacturing.  I believe that can be done by instituting tariffs that provide a level playing field for our manufacturers.

Cutting services is going backward. In the future the government will have to provide more as robots take over many jobs and people live longer. The current Republicans are on a path to the past.

Robert R. Scott
Knoxville, Tenn.

Stop Paying for Health Insurance for Congress

First, do away with all health care and retirement perks for members of Congress.  Make them pay for their own health care and fund any retirement plan they choose. This will add more money to the nation’s coffers.  The amount of money funding these candidates by health care corporations is obscene. Sen. Bayh comes to mind.  We are told that Social Security is no longer solvent. This is one way of endowing the trust fund with more cash.

Second, increase the actual tax rate on people earning over $250,000 per year to 44% while maintaining the middle-class tax cuts.  I’m tired of hearing that this will punish small-business owners.  Baloney!  This is break is intended for the people who fund Congressional and Presidential campaigns — those who have the opportunity to “donate” for their candidate who then enacts legislation favorable to their causes.

Third, end the corporate tax loopholes that allow corporations to escape paying any taxes!  Recent reports have declared many corporations actually pay no federal income tax due to loopholes.  This merely puts the onus to fund our government on the backs of the middle-class.  It is time for those corporations who merely place their corporate offices in off-shore tax havens to share the pain we all feel on April 15th!

Michael Ayers
Logansport, Ind.

Increase Stimulus to Create Jobs

To cut the deficit, we should basically do the opposite of the Republican prescription — which will kill the disease only by killing the patient!  Increase stimulus spending to create jobs, which will increase tax revenues since people who work pay more taxes than those who don’t.

To increase tax revenues further, raise taxes on wealthy taxpayers (families with incomes over $250,000, individuals with incomes over $200,000), raise the tax rate in the highest bracket to what it was in the 1950s, raise the income maximum for Social Security withholding to at least $1 million, and close tax loopholes for various categories of revenues that the rich and corporations have.

Other measures: pass the Employee Free Choice Act, reduce military spending by getting out of Iraq and Afghanistan (and do not replace troops there with contractors!), leave the Social Security eligibility structure alone, do the same for Medicare (better, extend it to people over  55), regulate health insurance and health-care providers to contain price gouging, regulate the banking and finance industry to bring individual institutions down from “too big to fail” and reduce the political power they wield in buying votes to support deficit reduction by starving the public.

Klara B. Kelley
Gallup, N.M.

Cut Defense, not Social Security

Congress should leave Social Security eligibility ages as is. It is unfair to those workers who work with their hands physically to continue to work until they reach 69.

Cuts should be made in the defense budget, and we should withdraw from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq at once.

We should also eliminate a tax cut for the wealthy and concentrate on passage of the middle and working class tax cuts. We need desperately to move towards income equality by increasing the wages of the working class and achieving the elimination of the gross disparity between the wages of the workers and the salaries of the wealthy executives and managers.

We need to improve and modernize the safety net that we have now. Certainly we should not cut the safety net.

Tell the President to finally stand tall and speak out.

Vieri Volterra
South Boston, Mass.

End Tax Cuts; Cut Defense

All the tax cuts should be allowed to DIE.  People without jobs will not pay taxes, and people who have a job should be thankful that they can pay taxes.

Remove all deductions from the tax code!  There should be a law that the entire tax code should be no more than 100 pages.   OK, 1,000.  Why should I pay someone $500 to figure out a way that I do not owe any taxes (I am retired with small pension).  I would rather pay $500 to the government

Completely kill the farm subsidies.  Cut the “defense” budget down to equal the amount that the entire rest of the world spends.

Enact single-payer.

Robert Hooker
USW Associate Member
Upper Marlboro, Md.

United States Must Become Just Another Nation

Please read David Brooks’ opinion in the Dec. 2 New York Times. I think he says it very well and shows a way for our Congress to get back into solving the budget crunch problems we face.

If we do not do it ourselves, eventually the International Monetary Fund (IMF) will step in and dictate the conditions of our financial reform. Then will we hear the gnashing of teeth and see the pointing of fingers. The IMF has done it to many countries, and there is speculation we could be nearing that time.

In a sense, the United States is not so big we cannot fail. We have four percent of the people of the earth and envision ourselves as god’s gift to any and all issues. So did Rome and England. I think our greatest respite will be when the United States becomes “just” another country in the community of nations.

Jay Dregni
St Paul, Minn.

Fund Social Security; DeFund Military

For Social Security I would set up a separate program that would envision long-term redemption of the IOU’s the feds have been taking out of the SSA fund over the years. This, in itself, might extend solvency to 2100.

Further, I would raise the cutoff limit on contributions by higher earners.

I believe a frank and long term look at our “defense” expenditures is essential. Currently we spend like we have a Cadillac income but exist on a used car one. Why do we need bases in over 50 countries (in many cases where local people want them gone)? We are still funding exotic weaponry when we’re fighting in mountains, deserts and jungles.

Our tax structures still reward multinational corporations that take U.U. jobs overseas. Some of these giants relocate their corporate headquarters to low-tax islands while their propaganda mills urge cuts for workers.

Aaron Libson
Philadelphia, Pa.

Raise Taxes on Rich; Reduce Spending on Military

To Raise Revenues:

• Raise the marginal tax rate to 50% on income (earnings, dividends and interest) over $250,000 per year and to 80% on income over $500,000 per year.
• Reinstitute the estate tax.
• Create a new WPA to put the United States back to work building a strong, sustainable infrastructure, so working people’s income taxes will provide revenue.
• End tax breaks for outsourcing American jobs, capital and production.

To Cut Spending:

• Stop projecting American military power across the globe by withdrawing forces and contractors from other nations and closing bases in other nations.
• Cut spending on developing and purchasing high-tech weaponry and military equipment by 50%.

June Forbes
Davis, Calif.

Send Federal Functions to the States

We should first of all cut the national federal budget by returning many federal functions back to the individual states where they properly belong, as per the Ninth and Tenth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution. For example, there is no constitutional mandate for the federal government to get involved in labor, agriculture, education, health care and disaster relief: These are all properly state matters, according to our U.S. Constitution. Secondly, we should end our boondoggling called “foreign aid” to foreign countries. We simply cannot buy friendship with money! Also, we should not fight wars on behalf of the survival of foreign governments: only that of our own merits the massive sacrifices of blood and treasure associated with our past wars.

I also agree with those who say we should limit the terms of federal politicians, make their jobs part-time and greatly reduce their pay. How much is a Congressman worth? Minimum wage?

Finally, I agree with those who say we should end this nonsense of  government financial bail-outs for the big banksters and corporations. There should be no such thing as too big to fail: Let them crash! One man’s disaster may well be another man’s golden opportunity!

Lawrence K. Marsh
Gaithersburg, Md.

Tax the Rich; Support the Unemployed

1) Stop being the American Empire– cut the “defense” budget.

2) Tax all income at the same rate meaning somewhere at or more than 40% for those making over some number (say $250,000) and include in that unearned income as well, such as interest and capital gains.

3)  Apply the Social Security tax to all income.  We will never be able to describe the Social Security trust fund as in trouble, ever again.

4) Continue supporting our workers with various stimulus packages (including unemployment), and support mass transit, green energy, infrastructure repair, etc.

Hedda L. Haning
Charleston, W.V.

Cut Defense; Increase Taxes on Wealthy

Budget Cuts:
Trim Defense Budget by 50 percent, without including pay and living allowances for active troops or the VA health programs. Bring back our overseas military who are not actually in a war zone and close those bases. Include 50 percent of the off-budget programs, and costs allocated to other departments like homeland defense etc. which are simply hidden defense spending.

Eliminate the duplicative espionage of the many competing spy agencies. Trim the state department budget, and close huge diplomatic palaces like those in Iraq and Afghanistan which are actually military forts.

Rein in the homeland security department and quit buying electronic toys rather than concentrating on training, using dogs for airport security. Shift these funds to actually securing our harbors and shipping facilities, including quarantining for invasive species and unsafe foods and drugs from abroad.

Eliminate travel and security exceptions for government officials, both elected and appointed. Let them experience the joys of the brave new world they expect the rest of us to live in!

After trimming expenses, increase income by raising corporate taxes; extending FICA taxes to all earned income; and increase tax rates as incomes rise, rather than letting the fat cats pay the same rate as retired pensioners and workers!

Carol R. Campbell
Keaau, Hawaii

Let Bush Tax Cuts for Rich Expire

1. Let the Bush tax cuts expire for the over $200,000.00/$250,000.00 group.

2. Double federal gas tax to 37 cents a gallon.

3. One half percent national sales tax exempting medical.

4. Cease production of the penny rounding cash sales to the nearest 5 cents.

5. Cease production of the one dollar bill and mint $1, $2 and $5 coins.

6. Adjust SSI payments and Medicare support, on a sliding scale, for those with a net worth of $2 million or more and/or annual income of $150,000.00 or more.

Craig Nudelman
Winter Haven, Fla.

Make Corporations Pay Taxes

I can’t understand why I have not even heard the one simple answer to the obvious solution for the national debt –  fix the corporate tax code.  It was just announced that our corporations have just made more profit than ever, and that half of them have not paid any income tax.  Exxon just announced recently that they had achieved the highest profit of any corporation ever in the history of the world and not paid any tax — yet received subsidies.  I cannot even imagine why the Republicans gave subsidies to corporations to outsource jobs overseas!  The answer: Every corporation, foreign or domestic, doing any business in the U.S. should be fined for every outsourced job so much that it would be cheaper to hire here.  Why do our monster corporate masters have a free ride?

Why are we happy to see corporations make lots of money?  It just goes into their own pockets.  They aren’t providing more jobs with these profits. They are, in fact, using the recession as an excuse to squeeze their slave employees.  The Banksters aren’t providing even any credit for small businesses.  Their profit does the government or the people absolutely no good.  Why shouldn’t these entities pay their fair share for this great country they benefit from?

The deficit commission is blinded to this obvious and simple answer.  I guess those huge campaign contributions (blackmail) are blinding.

Carolyn Maxon
Scottsdale, Ariz.

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