Blog

Consumer advocate Elizabeth Warren’s first campaign ad.

By Harold Meyerson
Editor-at-Large, The American Prospect

The news that our trade with China has been bad for the American middle class has finally reached the U.S. Senate. On Monday, the Senate will take up legislation that would impose tariffs on Chinese goods so long as China depresses the value of its currency. Despite the partisan polarization that grinds lawmaking to a halt these days, the bill’s support is thoroughly bipartisan, with sponsors ranging from such conservative Republicans as South Carolina’s Lindsey Graham to liberal Ohio Democrat Sherrod Brown. The legislation is expected to clear the Senate’s 60-vote hurdle for a floor vote and move on to the House.

But the consequences can no longer be denied. Between 2001 and 2010, the U.S. trade deficit with China cost Americans 2.8 million jobs, according to a report by economist Robert Scott, issued last week by the liberal Economic Policy Institute. Most of those jobs — 1.9 million — were in manufacturing, and of those, almost half were in computers and electronics.

This wasn’t simply the consequence of China’s cheaper labor or more generous corporate subsidies. As China’s productivity soared during the past decade, the value of its currency should have risen correspondingly. Instead, China purchased dollars, which had the effect of depressing the yuan and making Chinese exports about 28 percent cheaper than they would be if the yuan had been allowed to appreciate, William Cline and John Williamson found in a study for the centrist Peterson Institute for International Economics.

Data like these have been floating around for years, of course. Until now, however, the Senate has remained largely impervious to the evidence of Chinese cheating and American decay. But elite opinion, which the Senate does heed, is finally catching up with mass opinion on whether losing our manufacturing base is a bad thing. An influential July 2009 article in the Harvard Business Review by economists Gary Pisano and Willy Shih argued that losing manufacturing meant losing our edge in innovation, that the relationship between research and production was reciprocal. This would not have come as news to Thomas Edison, but few on Wall Street or in corporate boardrooms the past two decades believed that America’s prosperity and dynamism required the retention and renewal of manufacturing.

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Sen. Bernie Sanders

 By Sen. Bernie Sanders
Independent U.S. Senator from Vermont

Sen. Bernie Sanders gave the following speech on the floor of the United States Senate. “Mr. President” refers to the president of the Senate.

Each and every day, it gets harder and harder to listen to my Republican friends who race to the Senate floor telling the American people how “concerned” they are about the $13 trillion national debt and how “we have to get our financial house in order.”

As you know, under the leadership of George W. Bush, these same Republicans turned a record-breaking federal surplus left by President Clinton into record-breaking deficits. Back then, their rallying cry was “deficits don’t matter” articulated by then-Vice President Dick Cheney. This “deficits don’t matter” philosophy gave us two wars that were not paid for — and there are estimates that the Iraq War alone will end up costing some $3 trillion, $700 billion in tax breaks to the richest one percent, a $400 billion unpaid for prescription drug program written by the pharmaceutical industry, and a $700 billion bailout of Wall Street.

But under President Obama, Republicans have seemingly taken a 180-degree turn. Now, apparently, deficits do matter. Now, they say we can’t afford to extend unemployment insurance to two million Americans who lost their jobs in the worst recession in modern history. And, they say we can’t create new jobs by rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure or transforming our energy system.

And the Republican hypocrisy is about to advance to a whole new level. In the name of “fiscal responsibility” they are opposing virtually every effort to help the middle class and working families of our country. But, when it comes to the needs of millionaire and billionaire families, they have no problem reducing revenue by hundreds of billions of dollars. In other words, they are deficit hawks when it comes to the needs of ordinary people, but they are big spenders when it comes to the needs of the rich.

Mr. President, four years ago, every Republican but two voted to completely eliminate the estate tax — a tax that has been in existence since 1916 and impacts only the very richest families in the country — the top three-tenths of one percent. This huge tax break for the wealthy, if passed, would increase the national debt by more than $1 trillion over a ten-year period. (more…)

Richard Trumka

By Richard Trumka
President, AFL-CIO

Members of Congress who flat-out refuse to vote to create jobs, stop layoffs and help the jobless should be ashamed of themselves. As we saw in the job numbers released today, this economy has a long way to go before it is creating jobs on the scale that is needed.

Could Senate Republicans deliver a harsher slap in the face to America’s working families than heading out for a long holiday recess after repeatedly blocking unemployment aid for hard-working people who’ve had their jobs taken away?

Already in this recession, more than half of Americans have lost their jobs, had their pay or hours cut or had to take temporary jobs because full-time work wasn’t available, according to the Pew Research Center. If the Republicans had set out intentionally to sink our economy into a double-dip recession, they couldn’t be doing a better job.

Face it: The private sector’s job-creating machine is dead in the water. The private sector created only 83,000 jobs last month. That’s better than losing 700,000 jobs a month, as we were when Bush left office, but it’s not enough to put America back to work. And unless Americans are earning paychecks and spending to pump fuel into our economy, there’s not going to be a continued recovery.

But every effort to dig us out of our 10.5 million jobs hole is being stymied by budget hysteria. And it is hysteria. I’m not saying the federal budget doesn’t need attention–it does, but over the long term. Right now we have an immediate jobs crisis. And unless we address it now, we’ll only make the nation’s economic conditions worse. (more…)

--------- Tula Connell --------- Photo by Joe Kekeris

By Tula Connell
AFL-CIO Managing Editor

So the U.S. Senate ran off on vacation and left the House to pass a jobs bill that the august body won’t consider for another week, when up to 1.2 million jobless workers will have lost their unemployment insurance (UI) because the Senate failed to act.

Nice.

Expect to win any elections anytime soon? Guess not. Because what working families voters care about—job creation—clearly is no match for the chance to fire up the limos and head out of town.

This makes the third time Congress let extended UI lapse and the second time Congress left town for a recess knowing it would cause massive hardship for workers unable to find jobs.

But in the view of some lawmakers, that’s just fine because helping jobless workers feed their families only encourages them to not look for jobs. Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.)—who as Dave Johnson points out makes $174,000 with the best benefits in the nation—says jobless workers on UI “don’t want to go look for work.”

Here’s a message for Judd from Deborah, a jobless worker who commented at the AFL-CIO Now blog:

I have been a lifelong Republican. I believed that if you were willing to work, you could always find a job and support yourself and your family. Confident, even cocky I suppose, in hindsight, I generally thought that welfare was a lifestyle people chose.

After working more than 20 years at a well-paying job, I was a victim of widespread job cuts. The fact that I was a long-term employee actually worked against me as bureaucrats eagerly cut many of us who had the highest salaries to maximize their savings.

Her job ended Dec. 3 and her UI is now expired.

I have faithfully applied to job after job….What will I do when my unemployment benefits end? I am outraged that our representatives seem willing to let people go under when they have lost a job through no fault of their own and there are not enough jobs to make a dent in the jobless situation.

Not enough by a long shot: There are more than five workers for every one job, according to the Economic Policy Institute (EPI). As EPI vice president Ross Eisenbrey said via MarketWatch:

People who are trying to find a job, no matter how hard they try, most will not be able to find a job in the near future. They have to have some income or they end up having their house foreclosed, or declaring bankruptcy.

Instead of stirring up class war, Judd and others should take a lesson in economics: By replacing a portion of a worker’s income, unemployment insurance benefits can support consumer demand and so fuel the economy.

Job creation is what will make the U.S. economy strong. Working family voters know that. Congress may soon, too. As AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said after Congress left jobless workers hanging:

We are in a jobs emergency—a national crisis. Millions of lives are in ruins and children are being condemned to poverty. Excuses from their elected representatives are of no help to them….Working family voters will not forget who sided with them and who did not.

***

Re-posted from the AFL-CIO Blog

Leo W. Gerard

 By Leo W. Gerard
USW International President

 Sen. Jim Bunning, the Kentucky Republican who single-handedly delayed unemployment benefits for 400,000 desperate Americans and forced an unnecessary furlough of another 2,000, should be a figure regarded with wonderment.

The awesome power he held in his hands! The utter disregard for vulnerable Americans he exhibited while wielding it!

Bunning is a Republican Superhero. He personifies the mean-spirited, hypocritical, wealthy-serving, obstructionist Republican Party. As a result, his fellow GOP senators championed him. South Carolina Republican Jim DeMint said, “He’s my hero this week.” Alabama Republican Jeff Sessions said, “I respect him for the courage he’s shown.”  Bunning’s obstruction should be “honored” by the Senate, said Tennessee Republican Bob Corker. And Texas Republican John Cornyn said he admired Bunning’s obstructionist tactics.

Eighteen Republicans joined Bunning Tuesday evening in voting to oppose extending unemployment benefits for a month and providing highway funding to re-employ the furloughed 2,000.

Republicans clearly admire obstructionism that hurts average Americans. It didn’t matter that the legislation was going to pass eventually no matter what Bunning did. It didn’t matter that Bunning could have made his hypocritical point by delaying legislation that didn’t affect people’s everyday lives. What mattered to Bunning and his backers is that Republicans — the minority in the Senate — succeeded in holding up Americans.

Though Bunning blathered about blockading the bill to ensure it did not add to the federal deficit, no such high-minded intent existed. Bunning made that clear when he agreed to end his obstruction in exchange for a vote that he knew would fail on an amendment to fund the bill.  

During the six-day ordeal, Bunning bemoaned his own losses – missing the opportunity to watch a televised college basketball game because he was forced to defend his obstructionist position on the Senate floor and losing his cool on national TV as lowly reporters attempted to follow him onto an elevator exclusively for use by high-fallutin’ Senators. And he treated others with disdain – flipping the finger at a TV news man and growling, “tough sh*t,” at two fellow senators, Democrats, of course, as they pleaded with him to release the unemployment money.

In 1998, Former President Bill Clinton described Bunning as “mean-spirited.” That’s appropriate not just for Bunning, but also for the party he represents.

This is the party that has obstructed health insurance reform for a year, preventing millions of uncovered Americans from finally securing insurance while at the same time the GOP’s impeding progress allowed greedy insurance companies to continue dropping sick policy holders. This is the party that supported former President George Bush’s unfunded stimulus bill but opposed the stimulus bill proposed by President Obama to help reverse the worsening economy and rising unemployment that he inherited from Bush. Unfunded legislation, including the Medicare prescription program, was fine by Republicans when Bush was in office. But suddenly it’s not while Obama is President.

Bunning claimed he engaged in his one-man ban on the unemployment benefit extension because Congress recently passed pay-as-you-go legislation requiring that each spending bill include a funding mechanism. Of course, what he failed to mention is that he and his Party of No voted against the pay-go legislation. This was a second no on pay-go for Bunning, who did it in 2005 as well.

Bunning and the Republicans say they are just worried sick about the national debt, but they reject all proposals to deal with it. Another example is the Deficit Commission. Bunning and his Party of No also opposed creating this commission to cut the national debt. This defines the word hypocrite.

While stopping funds for the unemployed and adding 2,000 more people to the unemployment rolls, Bunning handled another constituent group – the rich – with enormously more tender care. He and his fellow Republicans cut the taxes of millionaires while Bush was in office. And like the Bush Stimulus bill, the Republicans didn’t bother providing a way to fill the revenue hole they dug when they gave rich people the break.  

Similarly, Bunning supported a farm bill that allows farmers earning up to $750,000 a year to collect government subsidies, but felt it was fine to cut off “government subsidies” to the unemployed.  

Bunning got high-level Republican support for that position. The Senate Republican whip, Sen. Jon Kyl of Arizona asserted that unemployment benefits dissuade furloughed workers from seeking jobs “because people are being paid even though they’re not working.”  A total of two Republican senators, James Inhofe of Oklahoma and Susan Collins of Maine, publicly asked Bunning to release the unemployment checks. The others either supported his obstruction with their silence or, like Kyl, openly backed him.

Despite Kyl’s contempt for unemployed Americans who in this Great Recession are forced to compete with five others for every job opening, the real deadbeat is Bunning. In January 2009, Bunning missed more than a week at the start of Congress and refused to explain his absence. Later that year, Bunning was the only senator to miss the Christmas Eve vote on the health insurance reform bill. Bunning skipped nearly half of all Senate floor votes in December, a total of 21, one more than ailing, 92-year-old Sen. Robert Byrd missed. Bunning gets paid $170,000 by the government, and collects top-notch government health benefits, whether he shows up for work or not. But this Republican Superhero felt it was fine to cut off paltry checks and COBRA health insurance matches for the unemployed whose average benefits would add up to $15,236 a year.

In his years in the Senate, Bunning has repeatedly voted against the health insurance program for poor children called CHIP. He opposed funding for the departments of Labor, Health and Human Services and Education. He rejected additional funding for the Consumer Product Safety Commission as poisonous pet food and lead-painted toys from China flooded U.S. shores. He said no to foreclosure aid and assistance to those unable to afford winter heating bills.

Bunning embodies the Party of Obstruction. No unemployment benefits. No health insurance reform. Not even health insurance for impoverished children. No. No. No for working folks.

 The GOP is, however, the Party of Obliging corporate and wealthy interests: Yes. Yes. Yes for the rich.

Leo W. Gerard

By Leo W. Gerard
International President

The sky is falling.

For the average Working Joe or Jane in America, it is anyway. Unemployment is at 7.6 percent and rising. The Economic Policy Institute estimates that there are 4.1 job seekers now for every opening. The mortgage delinquency rate set another record last quarter, and foreclosures are predicted to top 1 million this year. Because of reckless speculation by Wall Street financiers, the stock market is plummeting, taking with it a third of the value of the retirement accounts of hard-working Americans.

If the average Jane and Joe have not lost their jobs, they’ve seen a big chunk of their retirement savings slip away. Or their kid can’t find work. Or a neighbor’s been foreclosed on.

Still, Republicans in Congress couldn’t find it in their hearts to vote for the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, commonly called the stimulus bill. They just can’t vote to support the American people – they’re “Republicants.”

An official description of the act the Republicants rejected says it:  “Makes supplemental appropriations for FY2009: (1) for job preservation and creation; (2) to promote economic recovery; (3) to assist those most impacted by the recession; (4) to provide investments needed to increase economic efficiency by spurring technological advances in science and health; (5) to invest in transportation, environmental protection, and other infrastructure that will provide long-term economic benefits; and (6) to stabilize state and local government budgets, in order to minimize and avoid reductions in essential services and counterproductive state and local tax increases.”

In the House, not a single Republicant voted for this bill to create jobs and restore economic growth. In the Senate, three brave members of the GOP stood up to the Republicants gang to pass the Recovery Act and aid suffering Americans – Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe of Maine and Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania.

The GOP made it malevolently clear during their majority years in the Bush administration that they opposed anything that would strengthen America’s middle class, but its votes this week were based on deep, and frankly justified, fear of the Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

New York Times Columnist and Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman explained it earlier this week at the Thinking Big Thinking Forward conference conducted in Washington D. C. by EPI, Institute for America’s Future, The American Prospect and Demos.

Republicans are terrified of the Recovery and Reinvestment Act because if it works, if it creates jobs and helps stimulate the economy, then Americans will think good thoughts about government action and spending.

And that could lead to new public support for government payments for important social safety net programs like health care.

Republicans have invested decades, untold millions of dollars and countless hours on Sunday morning blathering-head shows persuading Americans that government is too big. They’ve contended that taxes should be cut to force curtailment of government. Bush supporter Grover Norquist, who is president of Americans for Tax Reform and a director of the American Conservative Union, expressed it best for the group: “I don’t want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.”

They did cut taxes – for the rich. And they cut services – crucial ones, like inspection of toys so that millions of toxic trinkets imported from China got into the hands – and mouths — of American toddlers. And inspection of food and the factories producing it, so it’s possible that salmonella-tainted peanut butter has sickened 500 and killed eight.

And they placed bunglers in charge of important government agencies. This, of course, was deliberate, to make government look incompetent — an entity deserving of drowning in a bathtub. One of them was the infamous “Brownie,” Michael P. Brown, who headed the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which, in fact, drowned when called to respond to Hurricane Katrina. Brownie’s qualification to head FEMA was his service as commissioner for the International Arabian Horse Association. By contrast, he replaced James Lee Witt, former President Bill Clinton’s FEMA director. Witt won acclaim for good performance in office. His qualification to head FEMA was his tenure as director of the Arkansas Office of Emergency Services.

In addition to cutting service, conservatives eliminated government regulation. The result for America was the subprime mortgage crisis and credit default swaps, an unregulated risky transaction that helped push the nation’s financial institutions to the brink.

Americans put up $700 billion to bail out those bankers last fall. But the Republicants don’t talk about that when they say, as Republicant Congressman Jerry Lewis of California did on Friday, that the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009  is a recipe for bloated government programs that will saddle taxpayers with debt “well, well into the future.”

“Facts are stubborn things,” Mr. Lewis said.

Fact is, Mr. Lewis voted to indebt Americans for $700 billion to bail out banks.

So, clearly, spending American taxpayers’ money is not a problem for him.

Spending it on taxpayers is.

The Recovery and Reinvestment Act contains about $50 billion for shovel-ready road, airport, bridge and other infrastructure projects nationwide that will create construction and manufacturing jobs. The nation’s electricity grid is to be upgraded with $11 billion, creating similar jobs. States will get $54 billion, which will help out Mr. Lewis’ California, now $42 billion in debt. That money can go for highway and school building as well as to prevent layoffs of teachers, firefighters and other state workers.

Altogether, the $790 billion Recovery and Reinvestment bill is designed to create or preserve between 3.5 and 4 million jobs.

When the sky is falling, that’s some shelter for America’s little guys. If President Obama is right and this act succeeds in creating jobs and stimulating the economy, he will have performed a great service for struggling and suffering workers.

He will also have revived what Norquist and Brownie, Carl Rove and Bush tried so hard to waterboard: the concept that government can do good.

Leo W. Gerard

By Leo W. Gerard

International President

Within hours of Barack Obama’s election, naysayers chastened caution. Don’t go too far, they inveighed. Build trust slowly with restrained, moderate, and gradual actions, they admonished.

In other words: Start with piddling plans.

Basically, they want to abort hope — kill it before it has a chance.

That is all wrong after an election in which it’s believed that a higher percentage of Americans voted than at any time in the past 40 years; a win that brought tears to the eyes of even hardened reporters; a result that drew joyful citizens into streets across the country to celebrate, a balloting that swept even larger majorities of Democrats into the U.S. House and Senate.

This moment during which the nation is suffering great economic peril pleads for political valor. This moment screams for boldness.

Troubled times demand greatness. Franklin D. Roosevelt knew that. He’s the reason U.S. presidents are judged by the sum of their accomplishments in their first 100 days in office.

When FDR was inaugurated in 1933, the country was in the midst of the Great Depression. He didn’t waste time tinkering. After 100 days, he’d given the country the Emergency Banking Act, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Civilian Conservation Corps, the Federal Emergency Relief Act and the Tennessee Valley Authority.

Obama may not inherit a Great Depression, but he’ll take the oath during an intense recession. Look at the news that arrived the same week as his election: unemployment rose to 6.5 percent after 10 straight months of jobs losses totaling more than 1.2 million; the stock market dropped 1,000 points in 48 hours after the worst October showing in two decades; auto makers travelled to Capitol Hill begging like hobos for handouts to stave off bankruptcy, two dozen major retailers revealed sales declines, most double digit, and the New York Times reported hospitals strained as they register fewer paying patients and increasing charity cases.

These problems won’t be solved with timidity. In his first press conference after the election, Obama said resolving the economic crisis is his top priority. He said, in fact, “I will confront the economic crisis head on.” No weak-heartedness suggested there.

He said a new president can restore confidence and advance an agenda for the middle class. That is exactly what FDR did with the combination of legislation and fireside chats.

During this brief press conference, Obama got it right, emphasizing aid to the middle class. He said it is essential to pass a rescue plan that would create jobs and extend unemployment benefits. He wants aid to state and local governments so they don’t increase taxes or furlough workers.

The federal government should help both small businesses and the huge auto industry, which provides jobs directly and indirectly through its suppliers.

The $700 billion bailout must be reviewed, he said, to ensure that it is stabilizing markets, that it’s not unduly rewarding the Wall Street risk-takers who caused the crisis, and that it’s helping families avoid foreclosure.

In addition, he said it’s essential to implement policies to grow the middle class such as investing in clean energy technology, resolving the nation’s health insurance dilemma, and providing tax relief for working families.

These are the correct priorities. And his plans are audacious. Which means he needs our help.

He called for bi-partisan cooperation in accomplishing these goals. But he’ll need more than that. He will need the kind of support he got in those weeks just before Election Day.

All of those who voted for him, all of those who want to keep hope alive, and all of those who want real change must demand both houses of Congress and both political parties work with Obama to accomplish it. Those who believe in real change must make it clear that they won’t stand by and allow courageous action to be reduced to faint-hearted baby steps.

On election night, Obama told the crowd in Chicago that the victory was theirs: “I know you didn’t do this just to win an election and I know you didn’t do it for me.”

Then he warned of what is ahead:

“You did it because you understand the enormity of the task that lies ahead. For even as we celebrate tonight, we know the challenges that tomorrow will bring are the greatest of our lifetime – two wars, a planet in peril, the worst financial crisis in a century.”

With more than 10,000 volunteers across the country, the United Steelworkers campaigned hard to help get Obama on that Chicago stage to make that speech. We will back him as he works to fulfill his promises of what is a New Deal for the new century. And we urge every American who wants real change to join us to ensure his success, the nation’s success.

By Leo W. Gerard
International President

Presidential race
While some want to paint this year’s presidential race in black and white, for middle class America, it’s all about the green.
Greenbacks.
Team colors are clearly visible: The Republicans’ – green and gold. That’s obvious when their nominee, John McCain, is one of the richest men in the Senate. He’s so wealthy that when recently asked by a reporter how many homes he owned, he just couldn’t recall.
Seven, Senator, seven.
When schlepping around Arizona on the campaign trail got tough, his wife surprised him with the gift of a private jet to ease the sojourn. When asked to define wealthy, he said, for him, a guy whose worth has been estimated at $100 million, rich is $5 million.
Team colors for the chosen Democratic candidates, by contrast, are basic red, white and blue. Presumptive nominee Sen. Barack Obama’s boyhood family struggled on food stamps for a time. His chosen vice president, Sen. Joe Biden, grew up in hard scrapple Scranton and his family shared quarters with in-laws during tough times. Biden has long been ranked as one of the least wealthy members of the senate.

Kitchen tables

Biden, long a personal friend of McCain’s, noted the economic difference in his speech in Illinois Saturday after Obama introduced him as his selection for vice president. While many Americans sit down at their kitchen tables to worry over bills, Biden said, John McCain, by contrast, would just have to worry over which of his seven kitchen tables to sit down at – not over an actual bill.
Ah, the frets of the rich. And for them — and himself — John McCain wants to preserve Bush’s tax cuts.
Those tax cuts are a considerable part of the budget deficit, and the budget deficit – along with the trade deficit — is a considerable part of the declining confidence in Wall Street.
The Republicans, George Bush, VP Dick Cheney, and McCain, the self-styled “maverick” who voted with Bush-Cheny 95 percent of the time last year and 100 percent this year, took the budget surplus that Democrat Bill Clinton bequeathed them and converted it into a behemoth debt.

$4 gasoline

They took rising employment and sent it down and a burgeoning housing market sent it to bankruptcy. They took a low consumer price index and bought us the highest rate of wholesale inflation in nearly 30 years – 9.8 percent. Think $4-a-gallon gasoline.
Then, just to smack middle class America in the face, they gave the rich tax breaks. ‘Cause multi-millionaires like John and Cindy McCain, with their seven homes and private plane, need a break today.
Greenbacks. Republicans Bush and Cheney put us here, with McCain agreeing all the way. Electing McSame would result in four more years of greenbacks draining out of our wallets.
Obama and Biden didn’t come from the world of wealth that Bush, Cheney and McCain luxuriate in. They have lived the life and felt the feelings of middle class Americans. They know what it is to pay off college and car loans.

Riding the train

Biden rode a train back and forth from Washington to his district home in Delaware, chatting with conductors, never buying a second home and living in pricey D.C. He crawls on the floor to play with his grandkids.
Obama declined top dollar job offers when he graduated Harvard Law School to return to Chicago to become a civil rights lawyer and organize voter registration drives. When he was campaigning in Pennsylvania earlier this year, he wanted pictures of himself feeding a bottle to a calf at a Penn State University dairy so he would have something interesting to tell his little daughters about in their evening telephone call.
Greenbacks. Obama and Biden will help the middle class keep them in their pockets. Because they understand from firsthand experience how difficult it is to get a few there in the first place.