Today's Teamster News 09.02.14

Trade
Trade deal could cost us jobs, wages (opinion)   Miami Herald   ...Sadly, members of Congress — and the public they are supposed to represent — are being left out of important talks about a trade deal that could end up costing us our jobs and wages while jeopardizing our clean air and water...
TPP nations kick off fresh official meeting in Vietnam  Global Post   ...it is uncertain how much closer they can move over contentious issues, official sources say, as not a few issues remain to be resolved, while Japan and the United States -- the biggest economies in the Trans-Pacific Partnership -- have yet to secure a bilateral deal seen as key to advancing the broad negotiations...
State Battles
Did Gov. Scott Walker Violate Campaign Laws? (opinion)  New York Times   ...Mr. Walker and his aides brazenly violated state campaign finance regulations barring coordination between independent groups and candidate campaigns, first by rounding up the money and then by telling the groups how to spend it...
Indiana’s working families deserve a raise (opinion)  Indianapolis Star   ...Our wages haven’t remained stagnant by chance. The rise in political and corporate attacks on working people has meant that for decades wages have declined or remained flat. The drop in labor union participation over the years has contributed to falling labor standards in Indiana and across the country...
War on Workers
Eric Cantor joins Wall Street bank  Politico   ...(Former House Majority Leader Eric) Cantor is expected to receive a pay package of $3.4 million in his new role...
Atlantic City facing unprecedented economic collapse  Philadelphia Inquirer   ...The closing of three casinos, starting with Showboat and Revel this weekend followed by Trump Plaza two weeks later, and the rapid-fire loss of 5,700 jobs, draw historic comparisons to longer-term collapses of U.S. industries such as steel...
Study: Citizens United elected more Republicans  Washington Post   ...The 2010 Supreme Court decision that helped usher in a new era of political spending gave Republicans a measurable advantage on Election Day, according to a new study...
This is why it feels like the recession never ended  Washington Post   ...Say that you're a median wage earner, right in the 50th percentile. And let's say that in 2007 you could buy a week's worth of groceries for $100. Fast forward to today: those exact same groceries cost $115, but you only have $112 dollars in your pocket...
It’s harder to reach the American dream if you’re reaching all alone (opinion)  Reuters   ...No job is inherently marginal. Lousy jobs in places like non-union Phoenix are middle-class jobs in unionized New York City...

Today's Teamster News 10.22.11

Mexican long-haul trucks take to U.S. highways today, angers Teamsters  Examiner   ...Despite a protest rally from Teamsters, a speech from Jim Hoffa Jr. and bi-partisan Congressional members, Mexican long-haul trucks will take to U.S. highways today... Investors Ask Sotheby’s to Rethink James Murdoch’s Board Position  artinfo   ...A union-affiliated investor group, CtW Investors, publicly called upon Sotheby’s corporate board and its chairman, Michael I. Sovern, to rethink the implications of keeping James Murdoch (son of Rupert) on as a director...
Cantor Cancels Wharton School Speech Amid Plans for Protest  Bloomberg   ...House Majority Leader Eric Cantor canceled a speech today at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, where anti-Wall Street protesters had planned to gather outside...
McCormick Place labor deal touted as boost for convention business  Chicago Sun-Times   ...Labor agreements with the Teamsters and carpenters unions will give large conventions the certainty about costs that they need to book shows at McCormick Place, officials said Friday in announcing the agreements...
What Rick Scott doesn't want you to see  Orlando Sentinel   ...Information is power in the framing of politics and policy, and Gov. Rick Scott's administration is working hard to tightly control what comes out...
Forecast predicts Walker won't meet jobs goal  Associated Press   ...An economic forecast by Gov. Scott Walker's own administration predicts that Wisconsin will fall far short of adding the 250,000 new private-sector jobs by 2015 that the governor promised as a key part of his successful election campaign...

Today's Teamster News 09.28.11

Ethics Complaint Prompts Investigation Into Scott's Prison Privatization Plan  IBT   ...Florida's Ethics Commission has found that the ethics complaint filed by the Teamsters Union is "legally sufficient" and will result in an investigation into Gov. Rick Scott's plan to privatize the state's prisons...
Snyder signs Mich. public worker health cost bill  Associated Press   ...Many local government and public school employees in Michigan will be required to pay more toward their health insurance under a new law signed by Gov. Rick Snyder...
Postal Service employees rallying nationwide to support reform bill  Washington Post   ...Postal workers rallied nationwide on Tuesday in hopes of drawing attention to Democratic-backed legislation supported by their labor unions that they think would best fix the U.S. Postal Service’s financial woes...
california protesters...
Cantor Presses FEMA On Status Of Disaster Aid For His District  Talking Points Memo   ...it's a bit rich that Cantor is trying to make sure disaster relief funds get to his district as quickly as possible given that he was perhaps the key actor in the Capitol Hill showdown which threatened to halt all of FEMA's activities...
Protesters disrupting foreclosure auctions in California  naked capitalism   ...Over the next 2 weeks, the Make Banks Pay California group plans to have a variety of actions in the San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles to “make Wall Street banks pay for destroying jobs and neighborhoods with their greedy, irresponsible and predatory business practices...”
Report: Consumers spent less, earned less in 2010  Associated Press   ...People spent less last year on food, cut back on entertainment and eating out at restaurants and gave less to charity. At the same time, they paid more for gas and health care -- trends that have continued this year...

Cantor fiddling while his disaster-struck constituents suffer

Eric Cantor, the baby with a nail gun House Majority Leader, is playing another game of chicken with the Senate, this time over disaster relief. Only it's disaster relief that's desperately needed by his own constituents.

Jim Rowley at Bloomberg News wrote a terrific story about the damage to Louisa County, Va., caused by recent disasters: the earthquake, Hurricane Irene and torrential rain. The epicenter of the Virginia earthquake was the Town of Mineral, squarely in Cantor's district.

Writes Rowley,

The 5.8-magnitude earthquake in Republican Eric Cantor’s Virginia congressional district destroyed more than 30 homes, forced two public schools to close and gave the budget-cutting House majority leader a reminder that all politics are local.

Shock waves toppled chimneys and gravestones near the epicenter outside rural Mineral, Virginia, and shut down Dominion Resources Inc.’s North Anna nuclear power station 11 miles away. Louisa County officials estimate the Aug. 23 quake - - which rattled the Capitol and other buildings in Washington and sent tremors beyond New York City -- caused as much as $90 million in damage in the county, said Mineral Town Manager Willie Harper. That exceeds the $85 million non-capital county budget for 2011-2012.

The U.S. Senate has passed a $7 billion bill to fund the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), which aids disaster victims such as those in Louisa County. The House, under Cantor's leadership, is delaying a vote on half that amount. House Republicans want to attach the FEMA funding to a resolution that continues to fund the federal government beginning on Nov. 18. To complicate and delay matters, Cantor is insisting that funding for disaster relief be offset by budget cuts elsewhere. Note that Cantor doesn't demand offsets for tax cuts or wars.

Reports ABC's The Note,

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., appear to be on a collision course that could once again threaten to shut down the federal government.

At issue is the amount of disaster relief funding Congress should enact to help hurricane, flood and tornado-ravaged communities.

Cantor publicly blames the Senate for holding things up -- though it's the House that hasn't passed a disaster relief bill. Meanwhile, back home,

Structural damage forced Louisa County school officials to close the county’s only high school and a nearby elementary school...The county is busing more than 550 students of the damaged Thomas Jefferson Elementary School to modular classrooms set up outside another school 10 miles away...

The county’s 1,400 high school students are attending classes three days a week at the Louisa Middle School. The 1,100 middle-school students are using the classrooms the other two days and alternate Saturdays...

Cantor’s staff has been helpful in answering questions about the application procedure for federal assistance and how the county can qualify, said Robert Dube, the Louisa County administrator.

The delay is frustrating for people who don’t know “what they are going to do when winter sets in” because “they lost their only source of heat” from chimney damage, Dube said. “They don’t have the means to fix it.”

Cantor: Rebuild schools in Iraq, not here

What is this guy thinking? House Majority Leader Eric Cantor doesn't want to rebuild schools in America, though he's okay with U.S. taxpayers paying to rebuild them in Iraq.

Reuters reports,

U.S. House Republican Leader Eric Cantor said on Monday he will not support President Barack Obama's proposal to renovate U.S. schools as part of the administration's bill to spur job growth.

"Anything that is akin to the stimulus bill I think is not going to be acceptable to the American people," Cantor said. He added that Obama should focus instead on cutting federal regulations that he says kill U.S. jobs and that any extension in jobless benefits should be tied to reforms in the unemployment program.

ThinkProgress points out the hypocrisy: 

Cantor ... voted for over $120 billion to rebuild Iraq and Afghanistan, funds that were used to construct and repair schools, roads, bridges, and other critical infrastructure.

Now, Cantor is opposing President Obama’s proposal to spend $30 billion to modernize 35,000 American schools.

He also wants to cut federal funding for first responders to offset disaster aid. Joan McCarter at DailyKos writes that Cantor must really hate America. 

ThinkProgress has an easy way for you to tell your elected representative to pass President Obama's jobs bill. Just click here.  

Sign a petition here:

Cops kick Eric Cantor's constituents out of hotel room they rented

This has been a dispiriting August for those of us who embrace democratic principles. Members of Congress refuse to meet with their constituents, kick them out of their offices, ban cameras, charge admission to meet with them, even circulate watch lists of people who criticize them.

This is not what democracy looks like.

It may well be that members of Congress have gotten used to the police-state atmosphere of the Capitol. Heavily armed guards surround the building, the plaza in front is often filled with police vehicles and scary looking black SUVs, and you can't even walk into the building any more without a pass or a guide. There's a new subterranean "Visitor's Center" where the riff-raff constituents have to enter; it ought to be called the "Servants' Entrance."

But the latest episode really takes the cake. It's brought to us by DailyKos:

This August, Eric Cantor's congressional office did not hold any town hall events for his constituents. Instead, yesterday his campaign hosted a "Cantor Advisory Council Meeting," which is a quarterly event designed primarily for his supporters. Cantor describes the advisory councils as being "open to the public," but this one was only advertised on a local tea party website. Additionally, media are barred from attending the events.

Sensing an opportunity to confront Eric Cantor over the lack of congressional action on jobs, over 200 local activists led by Progress Virginia and Virginia Organizing rented the ballroom above the one in which the advisory council was being held. However, about an hour before the meeting was scheduled to begin, hotel management appeared with a large police presence and told the activists to leave.

"Hotel management told us we had to leave immediately," saod Anna Scholl of Progress Virginia. Scholl added that about a dozen sheriff's deputies accompanied hotel management to make the demand.

Blue Virginia brings us the video of the rally they held in the parking lot instead. Somehow we can't link to Blue Virginia. Wondering if we should be suspicious....

Oh, and if you're not famliar with Eric Cantor, he's the House Majority Leader who wants to destroy America -- but we guarantee he'll save the banks at all cost.

House GOP: On the road to national failure

Ewww.

We are awash in depressing news this morning about the ill intentions of the troglodyte Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, who resembles nothing so much as a baby with a nail gun, has announced the extremist Republicans this fall will try to kill environmental and labor regulations while pushing tax cuts for businesses.

Let's just get this out of the way: If Cantor doesn't like regulations, he should go to Somalia. We'd see how well he fares on his own in a country with no central government. We think the warlords would make quick work of the Virginia Republican once he's shed of his hangers-on, coatholders, hacks, Tea Party acolytes, bag men and talking-point dispensers.

And about those tax cuts for business: If they're so wonderful, then why does GE report so much of its income in countries with higher tax rates than the U.S.? As David Cay Johnson points out,

Washington politicians say high corporate tax rates are driving U.S. companies to invest offshore where tax rates are lower. But that is not General Electric’s experience.

GE’s disclosures show that over the last decade it paid much lower tax rates in America than offshore, just the opposite of the Washington political mantra. Even more puzzling, the U.S. corporate giant chooses to take more of its profits in other lands despite the higher tax rates there.

Given that GE has a roughly 1,000-person tax department dedicated to paying as little as possible in taxes, what the disclosures show is that something other than tax policy is driving GE’s business decisions. 

You would think Cantor understands that regulations are important to prevent things like, oh, nuclear meltdowns -- especially after last week's earthquake may have damaged the North Anna nuclear power plant in his district.

But Cantor can only recite from memos written by corporations that pay for his political campaigns because they want to loot the government. Solving America's real problems just isn't on the agenda.

Well, here's something we think extremist House Republicans like Cantor should memorize. It's from James K. Galbraith's book, The Predator State, and it describes what increasingly appears to be our road to national failure:

Where the reactionary branches of business, the worst polluters, the flagrant monopolists, the technological footdraggers, are given control over the system and capital markets reward them, their more progressive counterparts will eventually give up, disappear or move away. Bad business practices will drive out good. Ultimately the country will become a repository of the worst business practices and correspondingly unable to assert leadership in the world economy at large.