Saturday, January 10, 2009
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
MORE
Milwaukee Area Labor Council AFL-CIO to me
show details 11:16 AM (5 hours ago)
Reply
Dear Tom Laney,
The “Milwaukee Opportunities for Restoring Employment” (MORE) Ordinance is an essential tool for bringing economic recovery to Milwaukee’s Main Street. The legislation will come before the Common Council for its first hearing on Monday, February 2nd.
Essentially the MORE Ordinance extends the City’s Resident Preference Program (RPP) and Emerging Business Enterprise Program (EBE) provisions to private development projects seeking financial assistance from Milwaukee’s taxpayers. The ordinance includes a prevailing wage requirement as well as increased apprenticeship training and job opportunities for residents of Milwaukee’s poorest neighborhoods. The ordinance has been endorsed by the Milwaukee Area Labor Council, The Milwaukee Building Trades Council, as well as member unions.
The MORE ordinance is the culmination of more than a year’s worth of work by members of the Good Jobs and Livable Neighborhoods Coalition (GJLN) and Milwaukee Innercity Congregations allied for Hope (MICAH). There are currently 6 aldermen who have signed on to support the ordinance, understanding that their leadership is needed to address the job crisis facing the City of Milwaukee.
Will you be one of Milwaukee residents and community leaders who will help us pass this ordinance? Please come stand with us at the Community and Economic Development Committee meeting at 8:30am on Monday, February 2nd at City Hall.
For more information contact Todd Sprewer at 443-0682
City Hall
200 East Wells
Room 301-B
8:30am on 2/2/2009
opieu 9 afl-cio
Visit the web address below to tell your friends about this.
Tell-a-friend!
If you received this message from a friend, you can sign up for Milwaukee Area Labor Council AFL-CIO.
This message was sent to tlaney1776@gmail.com. Visit your subscription management page to modify your email communication preferences or update your personal profile. To stop ALL email from Milwaukee Area Labor Council AFL-CIO, click to remove yourself from our lists (or reply via email with "remove or unsubscribe" in the subject line).
show details 11:16 AM (5 hours ago)
Reply
Dear Tom Laney,
The “Milwaukee Opportunities for Restoring Employment” (MORE) Ordinance is an essential tool for bringing economic recovery to Milwaukee’s Main Street. The legislation will come before the Common Council for its first hearing on Monday, February 2nd.
Essentially the MORE Ordinance extends the City’s Resident Preference Program (RPP) and Emerging Business Enterprise Program (EBE) provisions to private development projects seeking financial assistance from Milwaukee’s taxpayers. The ordinance includes a prevailing wage requirement as well as increased apprenticeship training and job opportunities for residents of Milwaukee’s poorest neighborhoods. The ordinance has been endorsed by the Milwaukee Area Labor Council, The Milwaukee Building Trades Council, as well as member unions.
The MORE ordinance is the culmination of more than a year’s worth of work by members of the Good Jobs and Livable Neighborhoods Coalition (GJLN) and Milwaukee Innercity Congregations allied for Hope (MICAH). There are currently 6 aldermen who have signed on to support the ordinance, understanding that their leadership is needed to address the job crisis facing the City of Milwaukee.
Will you be one of Milwaukee residents and community leaders who will help us pass this ordinance? Please come stand with us at the Community and Economic Development Committee meeting at 8:30am on Monday, February 2nd at City Hall.
For more information contact Todd Sprewer at 443-0682
City Hall
200 East Wells
Room 301-B
8:30am on 2/2/2009
opieu 9 afl-cio
Visit the web address below to tell your friends about this.
Tell-a-friend!
If you received this message from a friend, you can sign up for Milwaukee Area Labor Council AFL-CIO.
This message was sent to tlaney1776@gmail.com. Visit your subscription management page to modify your email communication preferences or update your personal profile. To stop ALL email from Milwaukee Area Labor Council AFL-CIO, click to remove yourself from our lists (or reply via email with "remove or unsubscribe" in the subject line).
Sane Econ
I wonder if I could ever transform myself from being "conflict-oriented." Rather than the semblance of cooperation currently touted by the NEW-UAW, a genuine cooperation would necessarily include my right to an equal share in the design, investment, and direction of the industry with voting and traditional striking and grievance rights, should things go as they have historically.
Republic Windows is a shining example of the full possibility of the American Experience. With a little help from a sit-down strike and solidarity donations, plans are in the works to not only pay severance packages, but also forming a new company and resuming a collective and cooperative production system.
Zanon Ceramics also comes to mind.
We could very well organize a sane economic program right under the noses of big, corporate and government financiers, starting with fair-trade, home/garage-made, union/guild product retail stores, giving people an alternative to Chinese Slave Shit. Through occupations, we can win the right to recover our lost industries and enterprises, so they can be run democratically by those that do the work. Through conversations and planning, guys and gals can band together to start new collectives from scratch, like the Union Cab Cooperative of Madison, WI.
It should be said that this new economic program must include the tenets of morality and justice as central. As a consumer, I consider these things. As often as I can afford, I buy from unionized workers or directly from worker-producers.
"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for dinner;
Liberty is a well-armed lamb, contesting the vote." - Benjamin Franklin
Republic Windows is a shining example of the full possibility of the American Experience. With a little help from a sit-down strike and solidarity donations, plans are in the works to not only pay severance packages, but also forming a new company and resuming a collective and cooperative production system.
Zanon Ceramics also comes to mind.
We could very well organize a sane economic program right under the noses of big, corporate and government financiers, starting with fair-trade, home/garage-made, union/guild product retail stores, giving people an alternative to Chinese Slave Shit. Through occupations, we can win the right to recover our lost industries and enterprises, so they can be run democratically by those that do the work. Through conversations and planning, guys and gals can band together to start new collectives from scratch, like the Union Cab Cooperative of Madison, WI.
It should be said that this new economic program must include the tenets of morality and justice as central. As a consumer, I consider these things. As often as I can afford, I buy from unionized workers or directly from worker-producers.
"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for dinner;
Liberty is a well-armed lamb, contesting the vote." - Benjamin Franklin
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
Sen. Richard Shelby Hates My Dad
By David R. Radtke
David R. Radtke is a partner in the Michigan law firm of Klimist, McKnight, Sale, McClow & Canzano and a member of the AFL-CIO Lawyers Coordinating Committee.
I have a confession. My father is an autoworker. I know that some people will recoil in disgust upon learning that fact, but it gets worse—he's a retired UAW autoworker and he and my mother live on a pension and have retiree health care benefits that supplement Medicare. In other words, he is public enemy #1 to Sens. Richard Shelby, Bob Corker and Jim DeMint.
According to these senators, my dad and his cadre of active and retired UAW-represented autoworkers are responsible for this country's economic downturn. In the color-coded chart of America's enemies, they are right below Al Qaeda and moving up fast.
My dad is despised by the right and the left. Right-wing Republican senators rail against my dad on the Senate floor because he's lazy, overpaid and coddled. For some on the left, their view of class consciousness compels them to speak out against anyone who has middle-class existence without the rigors of a college degree. My dad also is detested by the rich and the poor. Rich people don't like my dad because if workers earn good wages and benefits, it somehow diminishes their own affluence. Many poor people don't like my dad because they have dead-end, low-wage jobs, nonunion jobs with no benefits. It's America's version of class warfare, where you hate other workers that have more than you but idolize their bosses.
Since I've already established that my father is the scourge of "right-thinking" Americans—high school educated, union member, blue-collar job and now retired with a pension and health care benefits. But let me tell you a little more about him.
My dad grew up in Hamtramck, Mich., a Polish enclave surrounded by the city of Detroit. His mother was born in Poland and his father was second generation German-Polish. My dad graduated from Hamtramck High School in 1955 and, like nearly everyone of his classmates, went into the military. After two uneventful years in the peacetime Army, he returned home and married my mother. He got a job servicing office machines and my mom worked at the phone company.
None of their friends or relatives went to college. None. They all got blue-collar union jobs in factories or driving trucks or working for the government.
After a few years, me and my sister were born and my mom quit her job. My dad got into a tool-and-die apprenticeship program in a small factory and served a four-year apprenticeship. He also joined the UAW and my parents bought a three-bedroom, 1,300-square-foot brick ranch in Warren, Mich.
After getting his journeyman’s card, my dad got a job at Chrysler. He worked at various plants in Metro Detroit as a tool-and-die maker. I remember he was laid off a few times and went on strike once. When my sister and I were in grade school, he was often on the afternoon or midnight shift, so he would wake up for an hour or so in the morning to see us before school.
At some point, my parents bought a small, empty lot for $1,500 on a little lake in northern Michigan. My dad and his cousins built a little two-room cabin. Other than two weeks at Disney World, we spent every vacation at that cabin.
I vividly remember the tension and unease in our house when Chrysler was in deep financial trouble in the late 1970s. After Congress gave Chrysler a loan (which it paid back early, with interest) we had a gold Plymouth Volare—with a bumper sticker that said: THANKS, AMERICA.
When I was six years old, I had a serious medical problem that required two surgeries, extended stays in the hospital and many, many doctor visits and tests. Because my dad had UAW-negotiated health care, our family was not financially devastated.
Later, my dad transferred to an office job with Chrysler's parts division where he continued to use his knowledge of tooling and parts. It also was a UAW-represented job, but it was 9-to-5, so he saw my sister and I every day.
Just weeks before I was to head off to college, my dad had a heart attack shoveling snow. He was hospitalized for a short time and was off work for a couple months. Because of the UAW contract, his medical treatment was fully covered and he received sick pay. The UAW contract also guaranteed that he could return to his job when he recovered. Because of these benefits, I didn't have to drop out of college and get a job. Instead, I was able to continue my education with my parents' help and student loans.
When my dad retired after nearly 30 years at Chrysler, he retired with a union-negotiated pension and retiree health care benefits that supplement Medicare. My parents still live in the same three-bedroom brick house in Warren and spend a lot of their time with their five grandchildren.
Other than the short time my dad was off after the heart attack, he never missed a day of work. He raised a family and now he and my mother have a comfortable life.
But dad's not alone. Most of my parents' friends live much the same life. They are now in their 70s and they have modest, secure lives. They have lived what I was taught to be the promise of this country. Each generation progresses from the previous. Every person who works has financial security, decent health care and a dignified retirement. I learned this lesson in the public schools I attended and have heard it in speeches made by many politicians.
So, when did it become acceptable to be against that ideal? How can U.S. senators stand on the Senate floor and denounce millions of Americans like my dad? Workers who spent their lives raising families, paying taxes, adding to their communities and laboring in good union jobs for a middle-class life—the vaunted American Dream. Well, it's not acceptable and it is those senators who should be denounced.
David R. Radtke is a partner in the Michigan law firm of Klimist, McKnight, Sale, McClow & Canzano and a member of the AFL-CIO Lawyers Coordinating Committee.
I have a confession. My father is an autoworker. I know that some people will recoil in disgust upon learning that fact, but it gets worse—he's a retired UAW autoworker and he and my mother live on a pension and have retiree health care benefits that supplement Medicare. In other words, he is public enemy #1 to Sens. Richard Shelby, Bob Corker and Jim DeMint.
According to these senators, my dad and his cadre of active and retired UAW-represented autoworkers are responsible for this country's economic downturn. In the color-coded chart of America's enemies, they are right below Al Qaeda and moving up fast.
My dad is despised by the right and the left. Right-wing Republican senators rail against my dad on the Senate floor because he's lazy, overpaid and coddled. For some on the left, their view of class consciousness compels them to speak out against anyone who has middle-class existence without the rigors of a college degree. My dad also is detested by the rich and the poor. Rich people don't like my dad because if workers earn good wages and benefits, it somehow diminishes their own affluence. Many poor people don't like my dad because they have dead-end, low-wage jobs, nonunion jobs with no benefits. It's America's version of class warfare, where you hate other workers that have more than you but idolize their bosses.
Since I've already established that my father is the scourge of "right-thinking" Americans—high school educated, union member, blue-collar job and now retired with a pension and health care benefits. But let me tell you a little more about him.
My dad grew up in Hamtramck, Mich., a Polish enclave surrounded by the city of Detroit. His mother was born in Poland and his father was second generation German-Polish. My dad graduated from Hamtramck High School in 1955 and, like nearly everyone of his classmates, went into the military. After two uneventful years in the peacetime Army, he returned home and married my mother. He got a job servicing office machines and my mom worked at the phone company.
None of their friends or relatives went to college. None. They all got blue-collar union jobs in factories or driving trucks or working for the government.
After a few years, me and my sister were born and my mom quit her job. My dad got into a tool-and-die apprenticeship program in a small factory and served a four-year apprenticeship. He also joined the UAW and my parents bought a three-bedroom, 1,300-square-foot brick ranch in Warren, Mich.
After getting his journeyman’s card, my dad got a job at Chrysler. He worked at various plants in Metro Detroit as a tool-and-die maker. I remember he was laid off a few times and went on strike once. When my sister and I were in grade school, he was often on the afternoon or midnight shift, so he would wake up for an hour or so in the morning to see us before school.
At some point, my parents bought a small, empty lot for $1,500 on a little lake in northern Michigan. My dad and his cousins built a little two-room cabin. Other than two weeks at Disney World, we spent every vacation at that cabin.
I vividly remember the tension and unease in our house when Chrysler was in deep financial trouble in the late 1970s. After Congress gave Chrysler a loan (which it paid back early, with interest) we had a gold Plymouth Volare—with a bumper sticker that said: THANKS, AMERICA.
When I was six years old, I had a serious medical problem that required two surgeries, extended stays in the hospital and many, many doctor visits and tests. Because my dad had UAW-negotiated health care, our family was not financially devastated.
Later, my dad transferred to an office job with Chrysler's parts division where he continued to use his knowledge of tooling and parts. It also was a UAW-represented job, but it was 9-to-5, so he saw my sister and I every day.
Just weeks before I was to head off to college, my dad had a heart attack shoveling snow. He was hospitalized for a short time and was off work for a couple months. Because of the UAW contract, his medical treatment was fully covered and he received sick pay. The UAW contract also guaranteed that he could return to his job when he recovered. Because of these benefits, I didn't have to drop out of college and get a job. Instead, I was able to continue my education with my parents' help and student loans.
When my dad retired after nearly 30 years at Chrysler, he retired with a union-negotiated pension and retiree health care benefits that supplement Medicare. My parents still live in the same three-bedroom brick house in Warren and spend a lot of their time with their five grandchildren.
Other than the short time my dad was off after the heart attack, he never missed a day of work. He raised a family and now he and my mother have a comfortable life.
But dad's not alone. Most of my parents' friends live much the same life. They are now in their 70s and they have modest, secure lives. They have lived what I was taught to be the promise of this country. Each generation progresses from the previous. Every person who works has financial security, decent health care and a dignified retirement. I learned this lesson in the public schools I attended and have heard it in speeches made by many politicians.
So, when did it become acceptable to be against that ideal? How can U.S. senators stand on the Senate floor and denounce millions of Americans like my dad? Workers who spent their lives raising families, paying taxes, adding to their communities and laboring in good union jobs for a middle-class life—the vaunted American Dream. Well, it's not acceptable and it is those senators who should be denounced.
UAW vs. Poor
The modern UAW seems to be completely oblivious to the Poor. Instead of sucking up to the Free Traitors and all the unemployment and poverty the Free Traitors are creating, the UAW could take a few lessons from the Friars.
Instead of hanging out in Vegas, golfing with the enemy, padding their salaries and bennies while cutting ours, the UAW "leaders" need to visit these Franciscans and get a new perspective on what dog-eat-dog really does to working folks.
Of course, that perspective would not really be new since the true UAW viewed the system through the eyes of the Poor - not the Rich.
And then they ACTED accordingly:
Click the following to access the sent link:
Detroit Franciscan friars sell fair-trade coffee to aid the poor, ministry*
Instead of hanging out in Vegas, golfing with the enemy, padding their salaries and bennies while cutting ours, the UAW "leaders" need to visit these Franciscans and get a new perspective on what dog-eat-dog really does to working folks.
Of course, that perspective would not really be new since the true UAW viewed the system through the eyes of the Poor - not the Rich.
And then they ACTED accordingly:
Click the following to access the sent link:
Detroit Franciscan friars sell fair-trade coffee to aid the poor, ministry*
Emigrant's Guide
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Dawn K. Brohawn
Economic Justice Media
Center for Economic and Social Justice
E-mail: thirdway@cesj.org
ANNOTATED EDITION OF WILLIAM COBBETT'S "THE EMIGRANT'S GUIDE"
ISBN 9-780944-997017 • Economic Justice Media • $20.00 • 240 pp.
ARLINGTON, VIRGINIA, USA. Economic Justice Media, has published an annotated edition of THE EMIGRANT'S GUIDE, a rediscovered classic by William Cobbett (1763-1835), the "Apostle of Distributism." This new edition features a foreword by Michael D. Greaney, Director of Research of the Center for Economic and Social Justice ("CESJ"). The foreword examines Cobbett's focus on widespread direct ownership of the means of production, and the need to educate today's workers in the necessity of becoming an owner of a moderate capital stake sufficient to supplement or even replace labor income as a means of generating an adequate and secure income.
William Cobbett was a British journalist, reformer, and politician. Greatly admired by Gilbert Keith Chesterton (with Hilaire Belloc the founder of "distributism") and Dorothy Day of the "Catholic Worker Movement," Cobbett decried the economic helplessness of the average person and the political disenfranchisement that inevitably follows. To Cobbett, economic power was rooted in one thing: access to the means of acquiring and possessing private productive property, which more and more modern commentators are beginning to realize is the basis of a sound political as well as economic order.
As Chesterton said of Cobbett, "The chief mark of the modern man has been that he has gone through a landscape with his eyes glued to a guidebook, and could actually deny in the one, anything that he could not find in the other. One man, however, happened to look up from the book and see things for himself; he was a man of too impatient a temper, and later he showed too hasty a disposition to tear the book up or toss the book away. But there had been granted to him a strange and high and heroic sort of faith. He could believe his eyes."
Readers of Cobbett's best-selling History of the Protestant Reformation in England and Ireland (1827) and The Poor Man's Friend (1829) will recognize many familiar ideas. At 240 pages THE EMIGRANT'S GUIDE not only offers a fascinating and entertaining study of early 19th century America, but is also an invaluable supplement to Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America and Orestes Brownson's The American Republic.
THE EMIGRANT'S GUIDE can be purchased on the internet from Amazon and Barnes and Noble, or by special order from many bookstores. Bulk quantities (10 or more copies) for delivery within the continental United States can be ordered directly from the publisher, CESJ, www.cesj.org, P. O. Box 40711, Washington, DC 20016, at the wholesale price of $16.00 per copy plus $1.50 per copy shipping.
"Economic Justice Media" is the imprint of the Center for Economic and Social Justice ("CESJ"). CESJ is a non-profit think tank in Arlington, Virginia, that bases many of its programs and proposals on the natural law and the binary economics of Louis Kelso and Mortimer Adler.
#30#
Contact: Dawn K. Brohawn
Economic Justice Media
Center for Economic and Social Justice
E-mail: thirdway@cesj.org
ANNOTATED EDITION OF WILLIAM COBBETT'S "THE EMIGRANT'S GUIDE"
ISBN 9-780944-997017 • Economic Justice Media • $20.00 • 240 pp.
ARLINGTON, VIRGINIA, USA. Economic Justice Media, has published an annotated edition of THE EMIGRANT'S GUIDE, a rediscovered classic by William Cobbett (1763-1835), the "Apostle of Distributism." This new edition features a foreword by Michael D. Greaney, Director of Research of the Center for Economic and Social Justice ("CESJ"). The foreword examines Cobbett's focus on widespread direct ownership of the means of production, and the need to educate today's workers in the necessity of becoming an owner of a moderate capital stake sufficient to supplement or even replace labor income as a means of generating an adequate and secure income.
William Cobbett was a British journalist, reformer, and politician. Greatly admired by Gilbert Keith Chesterton (with Hilaire Belloc the founder of "distributism") and Dorothy Day of the "Catholic Worker Movement," Cobbett decried the economic helplessness of the average person and the political disenfranchisement that inevitably follows. To Cobbett, economic power was rooted in one thing: access to the means of acquiring and possessing private productive property, which more and more modern commentators are beginning to realize is the basis of a sound political as well as economic order.
As Chesterton said of Cobbett, "The chief mark of the modern man has been that he has gone through a landscape with his eyes glued to a guidebook, and could actually deny in the one, anything that he could not find in the other. One man, however, happened to look up from the book and see things for himself; he was a man of too impatient a temper, and later he showed too hasty a disposition to tear the book up or toss the book away. But there had been granted to him a strange and high and heroic sort of faith. He could believe his eyes."
Readers of Cobbett's best-selling History of the Protestant Reformation in England and Ireland (1827) and The Poor Man's Friend (1829) will recognize many familiar ideas. At 240 pages THE EMIGRANT'S GUIDE not only offers a fascinating and entertaining study of early 19th century America, but is also an invaluable supplement to Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America and Orestes Brownson's The American Republic.
THE EMIGRANT'S GUIDE can be purchased on the internet from Amazon and Barnes and Noble, or by special order from many bookstores. Bulk quantities (10 or more copies) for delivery within the continental United States can be ordered directly from the publisher, CESJ, www.cesj.org, P. O. Box 40711, Washington, DC 20016, at the wholesale price of $16.00 per copy plus $1.50 per copy shipping.
"Economic Justice Media" is the imprint of the Center for Economic and Social Justice ("CESJ"). CESJ is a non-profit think tank in Arlington, Virginia, that bases many of its programs and proposals on the natural law and the binary economics of Louis Kelso and Mortimer Adler.
#30#
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)