Progressive Media Advocates
Robert Reich: A bold jobs plan is also good politics. With more than 25 million Americans looking for full-time jobs, the wages of people with jobs falling, and an economy on the verge of a double dip, the President has to come out fighting on the side of average people.
Robert Reich: Had the President and the Democrats stuck to their guns during the health-care debate and insisted on Medicare for all, or at least a public option, they wouldn’t now be facing the possible unraveling of the new health care law.
Steven Conn: For thirty years inflation has not been a serious threat to the American economy, yet politicians and pundits continually fret about it. The never-ending worry about inflation is like fighting the last war rather than the current one. What’s needed today is a war on unemployment and wage stagnation, not inflation.
Sherwood Ross: All the Federal welfare checks, food stamps, and unemployment benefits don’t begin to add up to the more than $1 trillion in indirect tax breaks awarded annually to America’s middle- and upper-classes.
Seth Hoy: Much like farmers in Georgia who are experiencing labor shortages due to HB 87—the state’s new immigration law which mandates use of E-Verify—growers in Washington state fear that a similar, national E-Verify bill will have a devastating economic impact on the state’s agricultural workforce.
Robert Reich: Now that we’re slouching toward a double-dip recession, the only hope is voters will tell their members of Congress to stop obsessing about future budget deficits and get to work on the real crisis of unemployment, falling wages, and no growth.
Robert Reich: The only way out of the vicious economic cycle is for government to adopt an expansionary fiscal policy — spending more in the short term in order to make up for the shortfall in consumer demand.
Ann Robertson and Bill Leumer: As a first step, organized labor should organize massive demonstrations in major cities across the country on Labor Day to raise these demands. Working people strongly oppose these cuts and desperately want job-creation programs.
Nikki Junker: One group of people I am also hoping to meet up with are NGOs working in the human trafficking field.
Shamus Cooke: Public sector unions must mobilize their members and the community they serve to fight back. They have no other choice if they are to remain powerful or even relevant.
Nikki Junker: If I can make light out of what happened to me and have some fun with the purpose it led me to, then I don’t see a problem with it. So we shall go with our tutus to raise $1000 to fight sexual exploitation of children
Carl Bloice: If one out of ten people seeking work can’t find any, it follows that the average person has a friend, relative or neighbor amongst them. All she or he has to do is look out the window or answer the phone to be scared.
Walter Brasch: After significant compromise with the recalcitrant Republicans who want to continue to give the wealthy tax advantages while cutting significant social programs, President Obama has finally taken a stand on debt ceiling negotiations. However, in labor, wildlife management, and the environment he is still compromising rather than coming out forcefully for the principles he and the working class and environmentalists believe.
Michael Sigman: When a news story you know a little about comes along, the coverage in the mass media makes you wonder about everything else emanating from the world of “objective” journalism.
Ann Robertson and Bill Leumer: As long as the N.E.A. as well as organized labor in general remain tied to the corporate-dominated Democratic Party, public education will deteriorate, critical thinking will be undermined, wages will remain low, and the working class will continue to suffer a decline.
Seth Hoy: The Coalition for a Working Oregon, a group made up of 22 Oregon businesses, called out Smith’s proposal, highlighting E-Verify’s inaccuracies and calling for a “comprehensive retooling” of our broken immigration system.
Brent Budowsky: Let’s add a “repatriate prosperity” provision that would require participating global companies to increase the size of their American workforce by a designated amount, within a designated window, such as six months, in order to receive the tax holiday.
This one-day educational and skills-building conference will teach you all about the US healthcare system, its problems, and how to fix them.
Bill Londrigan: Working mostly behind the scenes in academic, political, and media circles for the past 40-plus years, corporations and the wealthy elite have funded a multipronged strategy to wipe out the history of the integral role played by the American labor movement in the founding and growth of our nation.
Workers and voters concerned with the increasing attacks on labor should participate in the panel discussion “Assault on Labor” on Tuesday, July 12th, 7 p.m. at Neighborhood Church in Pasadena.
Diane Lefer: Given our economic woes and high unemployment, the importance of advocacy groups and community organizations becomes very clear. Without support and backup, workers are less likely to demand their rights and risk retaliation at the very time when employers want to cut corners
Sy Slavin: While economists and national policymakers discuss economics in coldly statistical terms, research has shown that social costs of economic downturns, particularly rising unemployment rates have personal and social costs not previously discussed.
Michele Waslin: Immigration restrictionists argue that imposing a mandatory employment verification system will ensure that unauthorized workers are not able to get jobs in the U.S. and will choose to leave, leaving millions of jobs wide open for unemployed U.S. citizens. Of course, this ignores the facts.
Robert Reich: The only way back toward sustained growth and prosperity in the United States is to remake the basic bargain linking pay to productivity. This would give the American middle class the purchasing power they need to keep the economy going.
Randy Shaw: Many feel that unions have invested far too much time and money in electoral work that has not produced promised results, at the expense of ongoing worker organizing to build membership.
Judith Stein: If President Obama wants the United States to manufacture again, he must change foreign and domestic priorities. The United States is more committed to maintaining its open market than to providing jobs for Americans.
Robert Reich: Businesses are reluctant to spend more and create more jobs because there aren’t enough consumers out there able and willing to buy what businesses have to sell.
Sikivu Hutchinson: Black Skeptics Los Angeles spearheaded its First in the Family Humanist Scholarship initiative, which focuses on providing resources to undocumented, foster care, homeless and LGBTQ youth who will be the first in their families to go to college.
Carl Matthes: Despite the much-heralded 2008 success of Prop 8 in California to stop same-sex marriage, that vote, and it’s subsequent ramifications, provided not only 18,000 lesbian and gay couples with legal marriages, but the accelerant for the Prop 8 case currently being decided by SCOTUS.
Randy Shaw: Obama could regain young people’s support by lowering student loan rates, enacting immigration reform and rejecting the Keystone XL Pipeline, but time—and his political capital—is running out.
PCL offers monthly Open House Events on the 2nd Saturday at 2pm and 3rd Thursday at 6pm. Click here to learn more.
The Modern Union versus Workers’ Rights
Wendy McElroy: The raging controversy in Wisconsin over eliminating collective bargaining “rights” for government employees cast a bright and harsh light on public-sector unions.
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