Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all convictions, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
W.B. Yeats, The Second Coming
Showing posts with label 2004 Election. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 2004 Election. Show all posts
Thursday, January 20, 2005
Thursday, December 30, 2004
More Election Thoughts
And as 2004 comes to a sorry end, a young man's thoughts turn to -- what else -- November 2006 and November 2008. It's December 30th , some say a week past the darkest day of the year. As far as I'm concerned, however, the darkest day of next year will fall on January 20.
Some decent articles have appeared lately on the elections -- past and future. First, by David Moberg in the Nation about labor's contribution to the last election and what the Democratic party -- and the labor movement -- can learn for the next.
Reading this, you wonder why the number one priority for every Democrat and progressive in this country isn't rebuilding the labor movement.
First,
Some decent articles have appeared lately on the elections -- past and future. First, by David Moberg in the Nation about labor's contribution to the last election and what the Democratic party -- and the labor movement -- can learn for the next.
Reading this, you wonder why the number one priority for every Democrat and progressive in this country isn't rebuilding the labor movement.
Union members turned out in greater numbers than average: They are 8 percent of eligible voters but were 14 percent of voters in the presidential election, and another 10 percent of voters came from a household with a union member.So what are the problems facing labor and Democrats?
They also voted disproportionately for Kerry. A postelection poll by Hart Research for the AFL-CIO found that union members voted for Kerry over Bush by 65 percent to 33 percent. In the battleground states, where labor's effort was most intense, Hart found that AFL-CIO members voted for Kerry 68 percent to 31 percent. Other exit and postelection polls showed a slightly smaller majority--ranging from 61 to 63 percent--of union members voting for Kerry nationally.
***
It's been hard for unions struggling to maintain their numbers to expand their clout at the ballot box. Although union membership has declined as a percentage of the workforce, the number of union-household voters did increase this year. At the same time, overall turnout was up, and the union-household share of the electorate slipped 2 percent from 2002. Unions also boosted members' support for Kerry a couple of points above Gore's vote. There will always be conservative union members who vote Republican, but the diverse nature of membership gives unions a better chance than many progressive groups to sway swing voters.
Because unions can use dues money only for political work among members, the challenge for labor--and the Democrats--is straightforward: "We don't have enough union members," says AFL-CIO political director Karen Ackerman. If unions represented the same share of the workforce that they did twenty years ago, Kerry would almost certainly have won.
***
The results of labor's strong economic message were dramatic, nevertheless, with union members supporting Kerry even when they were part of demographic groups that were generally stalwart Bush backers. While white men overall favored Bush by eighteen points, white male union members favored Kerry by twenty-one points. Gun owners in the general public favored Bush by twenty points; unionist gun owners favored Kerry by twelve points. Kerry lost seniors overall narrowly, but won by a margin of forty-one points among seniors in unions. Weekly churchgoers gave Bush a margin of twenty-one points, but if they were union members, regular churchgoers voted for Kerry by twelve points. Economic issues, argues UNITE HERE (textile workers, hotel and restaurant employees) political director Chris Chafe, "can bring out your values messages. Healthcare is a moral issue for us. Social Security and retirement with dignity are moral issues with us." It's a morality, wedded to self-interest, that resonates far beyond labor's ranks.
First,
Many union members are rightly cynical about how seriously top Democratic politicians are committed to the economic issues that unions emphasize, especially trade and corporate power.And then there was the war:
Perhaps because it was tied to Kerry's muddled position, however, the labor movement did not vigorously oppose the war during the campaign. Some unions didn't mention Iraq; the AFL-CIO produced one leaflet criticizing spending $200 billion on Iraq while needs are unmet at home. At least labor did not actively support the war (in sharp contrast with the Vietnam War), and several big unions, including AFSCME, SEIU and CWA, advocated withdrawing US troops now. Yet in the end, even though union members were primed to make their presidential decision in terms of a troubled economy and a misguided war, only 51 percent who ranked the war as the first or second mostSo what is to be done, according to Moberg?
Political work must be ongoing, not intermittent spurts around election time. The education work must also be more thoughtful than a series of election-year leaflets, not only promoting deeper understanding of the core economic issues but also critically analyzing America's role in the world. There must be more effort to get members to reach out to each other in their workplaces and communities: The flood of union staff and members from blue to battleground states showed great solidarity, but it's ultimately no subsitute for home-grown networks. Most of all, there's an urgent need to make the right to organize freely at work the new civil rights movement--and to reform internally to make such organizing possible.Michael Gecan of the Industrial Areas Foundation had some provocative thoughts in the Washington Post. He criticized Democrats' use of celebreties like Bruce Springsteen to rally the troops. I don't necessarily agree with that observation. I went to the Kerry-Springsteen rally in Columbus a couple of days before the election. I think a good rally now and then can be energizing for the soul. And we needed all the energy we could get. I take his other thoughts much more seriously:
Scores of thousands of people, many of them paid (how else do you squander $200 million?), knocked on millions of doors during this campaign. The Democratic-leaning canvassers left information, repeated a canned sales pitch and moved along. They did not engage the people in real conversation. They did not listen to their concerns. They did not recruit real volunteers to work on their own blocks. They did not take the time to find out which pastor or rabbi was a leader in an area and which congregations people attended. They were progressive salespeople with a high quota of contacts and no time to relate, who disappeared from people's towns and lives the very moment, on election night, that they learned the sale had not been made.Personally, I didn't do nearly enough talking with (or listening to) those whose political opinions differed from mine. But when I did, I found it enormously educational. Not that it changed my mind (and I'm not sure I changed any of theirs), but it did make me much more aware of where they're coming from, where they get their opinions and what they're based on. And that's the kind of information we need in order to develop the responses that will resonate with those who now get most of their political information from talk radio or their churches. Somehow talk radio was talking to them more effectively than we were. We've got a few years not to learn to talk -- and listen -- more effectively. Let's not waste them.
It was as if they had never been there. And in a way, they never were. These two tendencies -- celebrity worship and quick-hit canvassing -- betray the central problem at the heart of the Democratic Party's political culture. The party has no time or patience for the complex work needed to listen to Americans, to understand their range of views and positions, and to engage them on their deepest interests. Even worse, many in the hierarchy of the Democratic Party have contempt for ordinary Americans -- for their red faces and moderate churches and mixed, often moderate, views.
No amount of money can solve this problem. No think tank has the answers. No rising senatorial star can save the day. And no Hollywood hero can substitute for the fundamental changes the Democrats need to make to contend for the large, pivotal middle of the American electorate.
Thursday, December 09, 2004
Bush to America: Eat Shit and Die!
While I was in Columbus working on the campaign, I took an evening off to visit my daughter at Kenyon College. After dinner, I went back to her room to check my e-mail. As I was about to leave, one of her friends revealed that she was probably going to vote for Bush.
Now, my first instinct when someone intelligent tells me they're going to vote for Bush is to tell them to "Eat Shit and Die, sucker."
But a patient man am I, down to my fingertips, the sort who never could, ever would, let an insulting remark escape his lips. Instead, I calmly asked her why she was voting for Bush. She explained, first, that she really liked Ronald Reagan (this from a woman who was born in 1986.) Second, she said that she believed in small government.
Well, it turns out that I should have gone with my first instinct:
But they've convinced many naive people that "small government" means saving hard-earned taxpayer dollars from being wasted on lazy bureaucrats and wasteful government programs. When actually, small government (EPA style) means that more people are going to eat shit and die.
Is this what people thought they were voting for on November 2?
Now, my first instinct when someone intelligent tells me they're going to vote for Bush is to tell them to "Eat Shit and Die, sucker."
But a patient man am I, down to my fingertips, the sort who never could, ever would, let an insulting remark escape his lips. Instead, I calmly asked her why she was voting for Bush. She explained, first, that she really liked Ronald Reagan (this from a woman who was born in 1986.) Second, she said that she believed in small government.
Well, it turns out that I should have gone with my first instinct:
The Environmental Protection Agency is close to issuing new guidelines making it easier for sewage authorities to dump partially treated wastewater during heavy rainfalls, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post.And why is EPA considering rolling back these regulations? Beause upgrading municipal wastewater treatment plants will cost too much and municipalities don't have the money. And why don't they have the money? Tax cuts. Why tax cuts? Because Republicans believe in "smaller government" and tax cuts are the best way to "starve the beast." Why smaller government? Because George Bush and his business supporters want less regulation.
***
Nancy Stoner, who runs the Natural Resources Defense Council's clean water project, said the new policy "means more people will get sick and more people will die. This is really a very significant issue from a public health standpoint."
Joan B. Rose, a water pollution microbiologist at Michigan State University, said the EPA's proposal ignores scientific findings that link wastewater to the spread of disease, adding that the Clean Water Act does not cover many unhealthful viruses and parasites.
"Sewage is the source of a lot of major pathogens," Rose said, adding that one study found the risk of disease from blended waste was 100 times greater than that associated with fully treated waste.
The EPA estimates swimmers experience 3,500 to 5,500 cases of "highly credible gastrointestinal illness" each year because of improper sewage treatment.
But they've convinced many naive people that "small government" means saving hard-earned taxpayer dollars from being wasted on lazy bureaucrats and wasteful government programs. When actually, small government (EPA style) means that more people are going to eat shit and die.
Is this what people thought they were voting for on November 2?
Wednesday, November 17, 2004
Democracy (sic) in America: The Streets Of Columbus
In Columbus, Fraud Wasn't the Problem. Fairness Was
I don’t know University of Texas professor James K. Galbraith, but we have some things in common. We both left our jobs and our families and traveled to Columbus, Ohio to work on getting John Kerry elected. And both of us were upset (traumatized, in my case) at the long lines in the rain and cold that turned away countless, mostly Democratic voters.
In my case, I only cursed the darkness. Galbraith has analyzed it:
Voter suppression or just good old American underfunding of basic human (democratic -- small "d") needs? I don't know. It doesn't really matter.
Galbraith’s solution is voting by mail. This is, of course, fraught with its own potential for fraud and manipulation, but from our experience, it sounds like the better alternative. Or we maybe we could just fund our democracy adequately...
I don’t know University of Texas professor James K. Galbraith, but we have some things in common. We both left our jobs and our families and traveled to Columbus, Ohio to work on getting John Kerry elected. And both of us were upset (traumatized, in my case) at the long lines in the rain and cold that turned away countless, mostly Democratic voters.
In my case, I only cursed the darkness. Galbraith has analyzed it:
The vote in Ohio raised another issue, yet more serious for the future. Was the election conducted fairly? And, in particular, what effect did new machine technologies, used in many parts of the state, have on the vote? That forces us to consider the votes that were not cast.All I can say is “amen.”
Kerry did very well in Ohio. By the method described in the previous section, he exceeded his "expected vote"--based on Al Gore's 2000 performance--by nineteen full percentage points. This was better than Bush's gains in the state, which were seventeen points above expected values, in a state where turnout rose by just under ten full percentage points, from 53 to nearly 63 percent. Kerry's campaign had a terrific ground operation, which had canvassed his strong neighborhoods repeatedly and knew his voters. If Kerry lost the state, it was because Bush did just well enough so that Kerry could not quite overcome the deficit with which he'd started. Yet--as I wrote earlier--a scandal of this election became clear to me personally at 6.30 PM on election day, as I drove a first-time voter to her polling place in south Columbus. We arrived to find voters lined up outside, three and four across, for about a hundred yards, in the rain. Later the line moved indoors; we were told that the wait had averaged two hours for the entire day. By the time the doors closed at 7.30 PM, it was considerably longer.
Why such a line? The turnout--on average in the state, twenty percent above the previous base--was a factor. But in Franklin County high turnout was entirely in line with rising registrations, and the Election Commission obviously knew about it. The real problem was a grotesque shortage of voting machines. At Finland Elementary, where three precincts voted, an election officer told me that the smallest had some 400 registered voters, the middle-sized one had more than 800, and the largest had "thousands." Voters were being limited to five minutes to finish their ballot, and because of its length and complexity most were using the full time.
Each precinct had two functioning voting machines. The largest precinct was supposed to have three machines. One was broken at the opening, and later replaced with another machine that also did not function. Five minutes per voter means twelve voters per machine per hour. Ohio polls were open for thirteen hours, for a maximum throughput of 156 voters per machine, or 312 voters per precinct in this case. That's barely enough for a 75 percent turnout in the smallest precinct of the three. And the lines for all three precincts were jumbled together--so even if your machine was ready for you, you had to wait.
This situation played out all over the city of Columbus on election day, with lines reported at ninety minutes to two hours from start to finish. One of my drivers spent two and a half hours accompanying a single elderly voter to the polls. Commentators marveled at the turnout. But you cannot judge from the lines. You have to know the number of machines and the time it takes to vote. In relation to registrations, turnout in Franklin County was only 2 percent higher in 2004 than in 2000--by far the lowest proportionate gain of any major county in Ohio. While Kerry won Franklin County, he could have done much better. Vote suppression worked, in the face of the greatest get-out-the-vote drive I've ever seen. Raising the increase in turnout of registered voters to ten percent (as happened in Cuyahoga County) would not have made the difference in the state.
Nevertheless: it is an injustice, an outrage and a scandal--a crime, really--that American citizens should have to wait for hours in the November rain in order to exercise the simple right to vote.
Voter suppression or just good old American underfunding of basic human (democratic -- small "d") needs? I don't know. It doesn't really matter.
Galbraith’s solution is voting by mail. This is, of course, fraught with its own potential for fraud and manipulation, but from our experience, it sounds like the better alternative. Or we maybe we could just fund our democracy adequately...
Monday, November 15, 2004
Election Reflections
OK, I've been back from Ohio for almost two weeks now, and I've reached the final stage of dying/grieving:
Stages of Grieving
Denial: Wah the fuh? What about the exit polls, cheating, Diebold, paper trails...?
Anger: The headline from the British Daily Mirror said it all: "How Can 59,054,087 People Be So DUMB?"
Bargaining: OK, OK, just give us the Senate, you can have the Presidency. OK, just a few more Democratic Senators. OK, just save Tom Daschle.
Depression: No, I'm not getting out of bed until October 2008. OK, maybe 2006. I don't care about my job. The kids can go to hell. The dogs can starve. Friends? I don't need no stinkin' friends. Just turn off the damn radio and hide the newspapers -- and sharp objects. Defeating George Bush was my life, and now it's over, gone....
Acceptance: OK, I'm up, I can see clearly now. I solemnly accept the fact that George Bush is President for another four years (barring impeachment)and I accept the fact that I must do everything I can to fight for the other half of this nation who believes that this is the most disasterous administration this side of Herbert Hoover. Just let me at 'em....
Ohio
Going to Ohio was the perfect cure for Pre-Election Anxiety Disorder. I was working with my old union, AFSCME, talking to locals about making sure members vote, working on phone banks and canvassing door-to-door. It was great to be among union members again -- people who could see through the Bush B.S. and were willing to work hard to get that guy out of the White House. And then there were the thousands of people from elsewhere in the country -- working with their unions or with America Coming Together, taking time off work, away from their families -- because there was nothing more important than getting this crowd out of Washington.
Getting anti-Bush Democrats out to vote, making sure they knew where to vote, and what documents they needed was certainly worthwhile work. I have serious doubts, however, about how persuasive phone-banking and door-knocking is in terms of actually persuading undecided voters to vote for Kerry. People will talk to their family, friends, co-workers, and maybe even union reps about how to vote, but probably not a strange (probably out-of-state) voice on the phone or face at the door reading a canned script. Even having deep-sixed the script, one wonders...
In fact, the most useful "debate" I had with semi-undecided voters was when I visited by daughter one night at college and got into a two-hour debate with some of her Republican-leaning friends. (Unlike me, my daughter is capable of having friends of the Republican persuasion.) They were depressingly uninformed, hadn't watched the debates and had absorbed much of the anti-Kerry propaganda, and they were mostly voting as their parents did. But they were curious, open-minded and not at all unwilling to debate their esteemed elders. They're freshmen. There's hope there.
But I must admit that it was rather shocking while walking precincts to run across the occasional young African American family who had decided to vote for Bush because "we're Christians." The whole values voter thing has been debated up and down since the election. The general consensus seems to now be that "values voters" weren't much more important than economic issue voters (who went for Kerry), or "terrorism voters" (who went for Bush.) I must admit to having my doubts after looking at the turnout in the rural areas of Ohio (in the 80 percents) vs the cities (mid-60's), as well as reports from a colleague working in southern Ohio who reported that most of his "ones" (Strong Kerry) had turned to "fives" after church the Sunday before the election when all of the ministers threatened to resign if everyone didn't vote for Bush.
SEIU Education Rep Deborah Rosenstein wrote an interesting piece about her campaign work in West Virginia. Regarding the "values" issue, she writes:
ELECTION DAY
I worked with Election Protection on election day. These were the attorneys that would make sure that people -- especially new voters -- weren't harassed and challenged by Republican operatives. The Republicans had been planning to challenge tens of thousands of new voters. Although after much back-and-forth, the courts finally allowed the challenges to proceed, nothing much came of them because some of their pre-election challengers had been threatened with jail for making unsubstantiated accusations.
I was charged with dispatching attorneys around Columbus where voters were having problems. The main problem, however, was not Republican challengers, but long lines in the rain. It wasn't uncommon in the African American parts of town to have two to four hour waits -- in the rain. While we received inspiring reports of voters who were going to vote -- come hell or (literally) high water -- it is clear that many voters with small children or less flexible jobs were not able to vote. How many, no one knows.
One of our attorneys walked across the street to ask a Franklin County Board of Elections official why they weren't better prepared for the predicted high turnout. "Oh, we knew we were going to have a huge turnout, but we didn't have money to buy more voting machines."
The only thing I could think was $200 billion and counting to allegedly bring democracy to Iraq, but not a dime for democracy in America.
Democracy in Gambier...
As I mentioned above, my daughter is a freshman at Kenyon College in Gambier, OH. Aside from being a great school, Kenyon is now nationally (and notoriously) known for having the longest voting lines in the country. My daughter got in line at 11:00 a.m. and voted at 8:00 p.m. The last vote was cast in that polling place at 3:55 a.m.
Politics in Washington
Things here look pretty dreary. But oddly, I'm not as pessimistic as I could be. True, George Bush, who just won one of the closes elections of this century, thinks he has a mandate. But he thought he had a mandate when he lost the last election. More important than what George Bush thinks is whether Democratic Senators -- and most particularly Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) -- believe he has a mandate. (The House is a lost cause, and was a lost cause before the election. The Republicans might as well have all 435 seats for all the effectiveness the D's Tom DeLay allows the Dems to have.)
Ideologically, the Senate isn't that much worse than it was before. Zell Miller was more Republican than Bill Frist. Breaux and Hollings were no great shakes. (Both of them, along with Zell, voted to repeal the ergonomics standard.) Edwards, Graham and Daschle are certainly serious losses, but we gained Obama in Illinois and Salazar in Colorado.
And then there's this analysis by the New Yorker's Hendrik Hertzberg:
No Mandate. No Honeymoon.
Signed,
Name
(One of the 57,123,038 people not represented by George Bush)
Stages of Grieving
Denial: Wah the fuh? What about the exit polls, cheating, Diebold, paper trails...?
Anger: The headline from the British Daily Mirror said it all: "How Can 59,054,087 People Be So DUMB?"
Bargaining: OK, OK, just give us the Senate, you can have the Presidency. OK, just a few more Democratic Senators. OK, just save Tom Daschle.
Depression: No, I'm not getting out of bed until October 2008. OK, maybe 2006. I don't care about my job. The kids can go to hell. The dogs can starve. Friends? I don't need no stinkin' friends. Just turn off the damn radio and hide the newspapers -- and sharp objects. Defeating George Bush was my life, and now it's over, gone....
Acceptance: OK, I'm up, I can see clearly now. I solemnly accept the fact that George Bush is President for another four years (barring impeachment)and I accept the fact that I must do everything I can to fight for the other half of this nation who believes that this is the most disasterous administration this side of Herbert Hoover. Just let me at 'em....
Ohio
Going to Ohio was the perfect cure for Pre-Election Anxiety Disorder. I was working with my old union, AFSCME, talking to locals about making sure members vote, working on phone banks and canvassing door-to-door. It was great to be among union members again -- people who could see through the Bush B.S. and were willing to work hard to get that guy out of the White House. And then there were the thousands of people from elsewhere in the country -- working with their unions or with America Coming Together, taking time off work, away from their families -- because there was nothing more important than getting this crowd out of Washington.
Getting anti-Bush Democrats out to vote, making sure they knew where to vote, and what documents they needed was certainly worthwhile work. I have serious doubts, however, about how persuasive phone-banking and door-knocking is in terms of actually persuading undecided voters to vote for Kerry. People will talk to their family, friends, co-workers, and maybe even union reps about how to vote, but probably not a strange (probably out-of-state) voice on the phone or face at the door reading a canned script. Even having deep-sixed the script, one wonders...
In fact, the most useful "debate" I had with semi-undecided voters was when I visited by daughter one night at college and got into a two-hour debate with some of her Republican-leaning friends. (Unlike me, my daughter is capable of having friends of the Republican persuasion.) They were depressingly uninformed, hadn't watched the debates and had absorbed much of the anti-Kerry propaganda, and they were mostly voting as their parents did. But they were curious, open-minded and not at all unwilling to debate their esteemed elders. They're freshmen. There's hope there.
But I must admit that it was rather shocking while walking precincts to run across the occasional young African American family who had decided to vote for Bush because "we're Christians." The whole values voter thing has been debated up and down since the election. The general consensus seems to now be that "values voters" weren't much more important than economic issue voters (who went for Kerry), or "terrorism voters" (who went for Bush.) I must admit to having my doubts after looking at the turnout in the rural areas of Ohio (in the 80 percents) vs the cities (mid-60's), as well as reports from a colleague working in southern Ohio who reported that most of his "ones" (Strong Kerry) had turned to "fives" after church the Sunday before the election when all of the ministers threatened to resign if everyone didn't vote for Bush.
SEIU Education Rep Deborah Rosenstein wrote an interesting piece about her campaign work in West Virginia. Regarding the "values" issue, she writes:
Long days, little sleep-- just what the doctor ordered. The bonus was that thanks to some good old friend with whom I stayed, I had excellent dinners instead of the traditional fast food and pizza that we generally subsist on during these campaigns.In almost every conversation I had with Bush supporters -- be they strong or weak supporters-- they would quickly agree with and/or inform me that Bush represents rich people and that they guessed that Kerry would be better on the economy, healthcare, social security, union rights, etc. BUT-- they need to vote for the sake of the unborn babies, for the children who might be hurt by gay marriage, for freedom around the world and for Iraqi people in particular. They wanted me to understand how much they wished, for themselves and their families, that they could vote for Kerry, but they needed to vote for something bigger than themselves-- altruism, as they saw it.
***
The good news, I think, is that what the 'red' folks have in common, instead of some sort of shared 'culture,' is that they want to vote for something beyond what they perceive to be a narrowly defined self interest... it's our job (progressives, union organizers/educators, etc)-- it seems-- to stand up and say, yes, I vote for more than my paycheck as well, and here's how I define the greater good-- this is what social justice means to me/us, and here's how our values differ from those of Bush and his administration-- what our values are when it comes to children, to people in Iraq, etc. Instead of avoiding topics that aren't narrow union issues, we must do the exact opposite.
ELECTION DAY
I worked with Election Protection on election day. These were the attorneys that would make sure that people -- especially new voters -- weren't harassed and challenged by Republican operatives. The Republicans had been planning to challenge tens of thousands of new voters. Although after much back-and-forth, the courts finally allowed the challenges to proceed, nothing much came of them because some of their pre-election challengers had been threatened with jail for making unsubstantiated accusations.
I was charged with dispatching attorneys around Columbus where voters were having problems. The main problem, however, was not Republican challengers, but long lines in the rain. It wasn't uncommon in the African American parts of town to have two to four hour waits -- in the rain. While we received inspiring reports of voters who were going to vote -- come hell or (literally) high water -- it is clear that many voters with small children or less flexible jobs were not able to vote. How many, no one knows.
One of our attorneys walked across the street to ask a Franklin County Board of Elections official why they weren't better prepared for the predicted high turnout. "Oh, we knew we were going to have a huge turnout, but we didn't have money to buy more voting machines."
The only thing I could think was $200 billion and counting to allegedly bring democracy to Iraq, but not a dime for democracy in America.
Democracy in Gambier...
As I mentioned above, my daughter is a freshman at Kenyon College in Gambier, OH. Aside from being a great school, Kenyon is now nationally (and notoriously) known for having the longest voting lines in the country. My daughter got in line at 11:00 a.m. and voted at 8:00 p.m. The last vote was cast in that polling place at 3:55 a.m.
Politics in Washington
Things here look pretty dreary. But oddly, I'm not as pessimistic as I could be. True, George Bush, who just won one of the closes elections of this century, thinks he has a mandate. But he thought he had a mandate when he lost the last election. More important than what George Bush thinks is whether Democratic Senators -- and most particularly Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) -- believe he has a mandate. (The House is a lost cause, and was a lost cause before the election. The Republicans might as well have all 435 seats for all the effectiveness the D's Tom DeLay allows the Dems to have.)
Ideologically, the Senate isn't that much worse than it was before. Zell Miller was more Republican than Bill Frist. Breaux and Hollings were no great shakes. (Both of them, along with Zell, voted to repeal the ergonomics standard.) Edwards, Graham and Daschle are certainly serious losses, but we gained Obama in Illinois and Salazar in Colorado.
And then there's this analysis by the New Yorker's Hendrik Hertzberg:
In Thursday’s Times, a front-page news analysis argued that “it is impossible to read President Bush’s reëlection with larger Republican majorities in both houses of Congress as anything other than the clearest confirmation yet thatIt is clear that our only hope lies with Senate Democrats -- with their ability to use the filibuster to safeguard the rights of the minority. So, as soon as you're finished reading this, dash off a letter or fax to your Senator(s) if they're Democrats, as well as a copy to Harry Reid (D-NV). Four words:
this is a center-right country—divided yes, but with an undisputed majority united behind his leadership.” That is certainly true in institutional terms.
But it is not true in terms of people, of actual human beings. Though the Republicans won nineteen of the thirty-four Senate seats that were up for grabs last Tuesday, for a gain of four, the number of voters who cast their ballots for Republican Senate candidates was 37.9 million, while 41.3 million voted for Democrats—almost exactly Bush’s popular-vote margin over Kerry. When the new Congress convenes in January, its fifty-five Republicans will be there on account of the votes of 57.6 million people, while the forty-four Democrats and one independent will be there on account of the votes of 59.6 million people. As for the House, it is much harder to aggregate vote totals meaningfully, because so many seats are uncontested. But the Republicans’ gain of four seats was due entirely to Tom DeLay’s precedent-breaking re-gerrymandering of the Texas district lines.
No Mandate. No Honeymoon.
Signed,
Name
(One of the 57,123,038 people not represented by George Bush)
Thursday, November 04, 2004
I'm Still Here
Back from Ohio. Just taking a bit of a break. Spent yesterday in bed, sleeping, fighting off the nausea, sleeping.
I had a lot of mail pleading with me not to cease publication of this blog. I'm not going to do that, but I will be focusing on finding a way to make it a bit less personally burdensome.
In the meantime, I'll be back at it slowly over the next few days. Trying to get myself together, rest, read, spend time with my family, and then the American Public Health Association comes to town this weekend which will keep me busy for a few days.
I'll have something more profound to write soon (Like what workplace health and safety activists can do to save humanity -- stuff like that. )
Meanwhile, if you're looking to find some meaning in all of this, check out some of the political blogs:
Suburban Guerrilla
Tapped
Altercation
Talking Points
Daily Kos
My DD
Atrios
Kevin Drum (Washington Monthly)
Emerging Democratic Majority
And finally, for those of you who still think that something is rotten in the state ofDenmark Ohio, check out Ohio Voter Suppression News.
I had a lot of mail pleading with me not to cease publication of this blog. I'm not going to do that, but I will be focusing on finding a way to make it a bit less personally burdensome.
In the meantime, I'll be back at it slowly over the next few days. Trying to get myself together, rest, read, spend time with my family, and then the American Public Health Association comes to town this weekend which will keep me busy for a few days.
I'll have something more profound to write soon (Like what workplace health and safety activists can do to save humanity -- stuff like that. )
Meanwhile, if you're looking to find some meaning in all of this, check out some of the political blogs:
Suburban Guerrilla
Tapped
Altercation
Talking Points
Daily Kos
My DD
Atrios
Kevin Drum (Washington Monthly)
Emerging Democratic Majority
And finally, for those of you who still think that something is rotten in the state of
Monday, October 25, 2004
Off to Ohio
I’m heading to Ohio in the morning to get out the vote. The doctor recommended it as the only cure for PEAD. That’s Pre-Election Anxiety Disorder, for those of you who are lucky enough to have avoided it. As it is, I’d be rather useless at work or at home over the next week anyway. Better I should be in the thick of it than obsessing from the outside. My country needs me. (And, I’m good luck. The last time I did GOTV was 1996 in Florida. We won Florida that year.)
It also probably means very little or no blogging for the next week (depending on my energy level and access to a computer). But, I’m assuming that many of you will be working on the election so hard that you won’t have time to sit in front of your computer anyway. Right?
Aside from being our only hope for saving this country (and the world) from itself, the election marks another milestone. When I began this blog 19 months ago, I committed to doing it at least through the election. I figured whatever was going to happen on November 2, it would require a re-evaluation of my life anyway, And here we are.
I haven’t decided yet what I’m going to do. I’d like to reclaim some of my the free time I used to have to….what did I used to do? Read? Watch mindless tripe on T.V.? Hang out with my kids (as if they want to hang out with me…)
On the other hand, I’m still having fun doing this. And I still think it’s important to have some way of communicate to workers, activists and others something about the conditions that American workers face every day on the job, how that environment is affected by politics, and what we can do collectively to change it. There needs to be a way to monitor what’s going on in Washington and around the country that affects workers’ ability to come home alive and healthy at the end of the day. There needs to be a vehicle that can expose how money, control issues, and willful negligence doom so many thousands of workers in this country to early deaths or lives lived in pain.
My last post (below) is the Weekly Toll. And by the looks of it, things aren’t getting any better. The first five articles list six people killed in trench collapses – “accidents” that shouldn’t be happening any more, accidents that should be sending employers to jail. Several stories this week involve multiple fatalities – three workers were electrocuted in one. Others offer grizzly stories of life and death in American workplaces: a man falls into a vat of boiling asphalt, another couple were crushed in machinery. One drowned in a sewer. And then there’s the poor woman who couldn’t even find out why her husband fell into a machine that crushed his skull – a week after her husband’s employer received an award for its outstanding safety program.
Meanwhile, OSHA tiptoes obliviously through the tulips, merrily sowing alliances and partnerships with its business buddies hither and yon as if all workers need is a few more fact sheets, web pages and speeches about how “safety pays.”
It’s enough to make a guy start a blog. It’s enough to make you do everything you can to get these guys out of office. It’s not that the Democrats have all the answers. It’s not that you don’t have to beat them over the head regularly. But at least they respond, at least they care, for the most part. So not it's time to put my money where my mouth is. As I wrote when I started this thing, peopleburden fun. I don’t know. It’s hard to think straight when you’ve got a raging case of PEAD.
So I’m off to slay some dragons, to fight for truth, justice and the American way. Wish me luck. Wish us all luck.
Here’s hoping that we’ll meet again soon in a better world.
-- Jordan
It also probably means very little or no blogging for the next week (depending on my energy level and access to a computer). But, I’m assuming that many of you will be working on the election so hard that you won’t have time to sit in front of your computer anyway. Right?
Aside from being our only hope for saving this country (and the world) from itself, the election marks another milestone. When I began this blog 19 months ago, I committed to doing it at least through the election. I figured whatever was going to happen on November 2, it would require a re-evaluation of my life anyway, And here we are.
I haven’t decided yet what I’m going to do. I’d like to reclaim some of my the free time I used to have to….what did I used to do? Read? Watch mindless tripe on T.V.? Hang out with my kids (as if they want to hang out with me…)
On the other hand, I’m still having fun doing this. And I still think it’s important to have some way of communicate to workers, activists and others something about the conditions that American workers face every day on the job, how that environment is affected by politics, and what we can do collectively to change it. There needs to be a way to monitor what’s going on in Washington and around the country that affects workers’ ability to come home alive and healthy at the end of the day. There needs to be a vehicle that can expose how money, control issues, and willful negligence doom so many thousands of workers in this country to early deaths or lives lived in pain.
My last post (below) is the Weekly Toll. And by the looks of it, things aren’t getting any better. The first five articles list six people killed in trench collapses – “accidents” that shouldn’t be happening any more, accidents that should be sending employers to jail. Several stories this week involve multiple fatalities – three workers were electrocuted in one. Others offer grizzly stories of life and death in American workplaces: a man falls into a vat of boiling asphalt, another couple were crushed in machinery. One drowned in a sewer. And then there’s the poor woman who couldn’t even find out why her husband fell into a machine that crushed his skull – a week after her husband’s employer received an award for its outstanding safety program.
Meanwhile, OSHA tiptoes obliviously through the tulips, merrily sowing alliances and partnerships with its business buddies hither and yon as if all workers need is a few more fact sheets, web pages and speeches about how “safety pays.”
It’s enough to make a guy start a blog. It’s enough to make you do everything you can to get these guys out of office. It’s not that the Democrats have all the answers. It’s not that you don’t have to beat them over the head regularly. But at least they respond, at least they care, for the most part. So not it's time to put my money where my mouth is. As I wrote when I started this thing, people
need to know that politics matters, voting matters -- in national and local elections. It matters in big ways and small way, but it also matters in how safe their workplaces are going to be. It matters whether their children are going to grow up with unhealthy injured parents, or no parents at all. People need to understand that everything is connected. Tax cuts, growing deficits, appropriations, executive orders, regulatory "reform" -- it all affects our safety every day.So, I don’t know what I’ll be doing after the election. I’m probably too addicted to go cold turkey, I although a vacation sounds tempting. I may think about turning this into a group blog, sharing the
So I’m off to slay some dragons, to fight for truth, justice and the American way. Wish me luck. Wish us all luck.
Here’s hoping that we’ll meet again soon in a better world.
-- Jordan
Thursday, October 14, 2004
The Great Presidential Debate You Didn't Watch
Due to overwhelming popular demand, President George W. Bush and Senator John F. Kerry agreed unexpectedly to one final debate over workplace health and safety issues. The debate was held earlier this evening. Due to the last-minute nature of the debate, it was unfortunately not televised. But I did manage to get a copy of the transcript.
Following is a transcript of the fourth and final presidential debate between President Bush (R) and Sen. John F. Kerry (D). The moderator of the nationally untelevised debate is Geraldo Rivera.
RIVERA: Good evening from Groundhog State University in Smallville, PA. I'm Geraldo Rivera of CBS News. I want to welcome you to the fourth and last of the 2004 debates between President George Bush and Senator John Kerry.
As Jim Lehrer told you before the first one, these debates are sponsored by the Commission on Presidential Debates.
Tonight the topic will be workplace safety and health, but the format will be the same as that first debate.
RIVERA: Gentleman, welcome to you both.
By coin toss, the first question goes to Senator Kerry.
Senator, you’ve been highly critical of this administration, calling it anti-worker because of its failure to enforce the Occupational Safety and Health Act. Yet we have the lowest level of injuries and illnesses in this nation’s history.
So what’s wrong with what this administration is doing?
KERRY: That’s not nearly good enough. More workers were killed in the workplace last year than the year before. 5,559 workers were killed in 2003, compared with 5,534 in 2002 . That means that more people die on the job in this country last year than were killed on 9/11, in Afghanistan and in Iraq put together. And that’s only the tip of the iceberg. 50,000 to 60,000 died from occupational diseases. The number of reported workplace injuries was over 6 million, and that number is clearly understated.
And yet we’re spending just over $400 million on Occupational Safety and Health, while we’ll be spending $200 billion in Iraq and Afghanistan, where, by the way, we let Osama bin Laden escape from the cave of Tora Bora because we outsourced the job of capturing him.
BUSH: We’ve reduced injuries and illnesses because we've reduced the adversarial relationship between OSHA and employers and we’ve increased the OSHA budget during my watch. And if employers violate the law, we will hold them to account, we will come down on them hard. Just like we held to account a terrorist regime in Saddam Hussein.
In other words, in order to make sure we're secure in the workplace and in the world, there must be a comprehensive plan.
My opponent just this weekend talked about how terrorism could be reduced to a nuisance, comparing it to prostitution, illegal gambling and workplace fatalities. I think that attitude and that point of view is dangerous. I don't think you can secure America for the long run if you don't have a comprehensive view as to how to defeat these people.
KERRY: We clearly need to dedicate more resources to workplace safety. We've got 2,000 job safety inspectors in the country responsible for overseeing and enforcing the safety and health laws in more than 6 million workplaces.
OSHA actually has fewer staff today than it did in 1980. The workforce and the number of workplaces has grown, but the agency's resources have not grown
RIVERA: President Bush, you’re opposing the Corzine bill which makes it a felony and calls for significant jail time when a worker is killed on the job due to a willful violation of the law by the employer. Why shouldn’t an employer go to jail when he knowingly violates the law and a worker dies?
BUSH: Well, Geraldo. We’re talking about accidents. I mean shit happens. Mistakes are made. And these employers aren’t bad people. These are small businessmen, trying to make a living, who can’t possibly read all those OSHA regulations.
Look at all the labor laws and regulations that they are expected to comply with. They have to face these every day. I wonder how many of us in government really realize the burden we are asking them to shoulder. Is this the most effective way to protect workers?!
There are more words in the Federal Register describing OSHA regulations than there are words in the Bible. They’re a lot less inspiring to read… and a lot harder to understand!
This is not fair.
It’s not fair that small businesses are expected to know every rule and regulation without any decent help from the bureaucrats who write them, promulgate them, and penalize them if you aren’t abiding by them!
It’s not fair to you small businessmen, and it’s not fair to the American worker. My opponent talks about helping workers. But you can’t help workers if regulations cause businesses to shut down. His record in the United States Senate does not match his rhetoric. He voted to increase regulations 2,398 times.
And it's not like we're not doing anything. Were focusing major programs on important issues like seatbelts and workers who take drugs.
RIVERA: Senator.
KERRY: Thank you Geraldo. The law provides for criminal penalties only in cases where a willful violation has resulted in the death of a worker. A recent New York Times article revealed that over the past 20 years, the agency failed to seek criminal prosecution against 93 percent of the companies whose willful violations of safety rules caused workers to die. The level of criminal penalties in the Occupational Safety and Health Act basically make the events a misdemeanor, which means that these are not high priority cases for the Justice Department to take up and prosecute. Do you know that the penalty for causing the death of a worker by willfully violating safety laws is half the maximum for harassing a wild burro on federal lands?
Senator Corzine has introduced a bill to make criminal violations of OSHA a felony, which is a step in the right direction.
And not only is OSHA not prosecuting as many employers as they should, but they've totally gone out of the standard making business. Twenty-four rules that were in some stage of development on OSHA's agenda under the Clinton administration were withdrawn by this administration and not one major new regulation has been issued. These aren't just regulations, they're protections for workers.
BUSH: Well, it’s just simply not true that OSHA has stopped issuing standards. That’s kind of like one of those e x a g e r a t i o n s. Why just a couple of weeks ago, OSHA issued a formal proposal to protect workers from the hazards of hexa- hexa- hexavalium chromates.
We’re going a different way. Our way protects health and safety in a way that provides the most flexibility and economic growth. We’re trying to get this economy moving again and the best way to do that is to reduce burdensome regulations.
I believe the role of government is to stand side by side with our business owners to help them make their workplaces safe, to form partnerships and alliances with them, not punish them for making honest mistakes.
My opponent talks about helping workers. But you can’t help workers if regulations cause businesses to shut down. Remember, he voted to increase regulations 3,298 times. I mean, he's so pro-regulation that Ted Kennedy is Massachusetts' most pro-business Senator.
KERRY: That’s hexavalent chromium. It causes lung cancer. And the only reason the administration issued that proposal is because they were under a court order to do so.
RIVERA: OK, lets go to one very contentious issue: ergonomics. President Bush, one of the first actions you took as President was to sign a bill repealing the ergonomics standard even though musculoskeletal disorders like back injuries and carpal tunnel syndrome are the biggest source of workplace injuries in this country. What has your administration done to address this serious problem?
BUSH: Well Geraldo, I’m glad you asked that question because I’m very concerned about musco—muscu—uh back injuries. I know about what it’s like to work hard. In fact, a lot of this job has been a major pain in the, in the uh, neck. Heh. Uh…
But seriously, as soon as the ergonomics standard was repealed – and by the way, Geraldo,it would have cost American businesses over $100 billion every year and put small businesses out of business. Now let me finish. There’s one more thing. Do you know how long that ergonomics standard was? It was 600 pages long. It was a typical liberal Democratic attempt to tell employers how to run their jobs – and it was 600 pages long! And there was no science behind the standard. 600 pages.
But Geraldo, we have a comprehensive plan to address ergonomic hazards – outreach and assistance, guidelines, research and enforcement. And it’s been working. We’ve put out three guidelines – for health care, for grocery store workers and for poultry plant workers. And we’re enforcing. When employers show disregard for their workers, we enforce. We’re tough on them.
RIVERA: Senator Kerry.
KERRY: Geraldo, let me look right into the camera and say this. I strongly support implementation of a mandatory ergonomics standard and one of the first actions I take as president will be to order the Occupational Safety and Health administration to begin work on a new ergonomics standard.
Some people may not know this, in fact the President probably doesn’t even remember this, but the ergonomics standard was initially promised under his father’s administration back in 1990. Secretary of Labor Elizabeth Dole committed the agency and the department to developing and initiating an ergonomics standard.
And, let me ask you President Bush, did you even bother to read the standard before you killed it?
BUSH: (snorting) 600 pages. 600. A lot more than My Pet Goat. Ha. Heh, Want some wood? Oh, never mind.
KERRY: Because it was actually only 8 pages long. The other 592 pages was the justification that Congressrequires to show that the standard makes economic sense. And it wouldn't have cost anywhere close to $100 billion. They would have cost businesses only $4.5 billion to implement but would have saved $9 billion through increased productivity and reduced sick days.
Now workers have no protection. Geraldo, I’ve talked to workers in Ohio, Florida, Wisconsin, Iowa, New Mexico, Pennsylvania and New Hampshire … and maybe even Colorado who process chickens, who hang thousands of live chickens above their head every hour, 8 or 10 hours a day. We had a standard to protect workers from that kind of abuse, and now it’s gone.
The Bush administration has refused to move forward any new regulation. Instead, it has put forward a voluntary approach based on guidelines and outreach. They've said they’re enforcing under what’s known as the general duty clause, but in almost four years, OSHA has issued less than 20 ergonomics citations – for a hazard causing 1.8 million serious injuries a year.
And these injuries aren’t just bad for workers, they’re bad for the economy as well. This is a huge problem economically. The cost of these injuries is massive. These injuries probably account for half of all the worker's compensation costs. They are soft tissue injuries, the type of injuries that take time for people to recover from -- some people never recover -- so people lose a lot of time from the job. An average case of carpal tunnel syndrome results in 27 days off the job, for example.
We can do better. And when I’m president we will protect workers.
BUSH: Well, Geraldo, those are terrible jobs. Those workers should go get new jobs, safer jobs. We’re growing jobs in this country. But perhaps the best way to create safer jobs and keep this economy growing is to make sure our education system works.
I went to Washington to solve problems. And I saw a problem in the public education system in America. They were just shuffling too many kids through the system, year after year, grade after grade, without learning the basics.
And so we said: Let's raise the standards. We're spending more money, but let's raise the standards and measure early and solve problems now, before it's too late.
No, education is how to help the person who's got a lousy job. Education is how to make sure we've got a workforce that's productive and competitive and safe.
RIVERA: Senator. The final question is about the high death rate among Hispanic workers in this country. I can personally relate to that. I’m Hispanic and I’ve faced danger many times on the job. Let me tell you about one time when I was in Iraq, I….oh, never mind.
OK, where was I? Senator Kerry, the rate of fatalities among Hispanic workers is 25% percent higher than the rate recorded for all workers, and foreign-born Hispanic workers are more likely to die than Hispanics born in this country. Why is that happening and what can we do?
KERRY: It's a major problem, Geraldo, and I have a plan. Last week, I met a worker from Mexico. He had been working on construction projects in the United States for eight months, sending whatever money he can spare home to support his wife and four kids. He usually makes $10 per hour, often working 10 to 14 hour days without overtime pay. He said the most dangerous jobs are the ones where he works up high, such as roofing and painting, and he rarely wears a harness. In fact, his friend was just killed on the job.
He told me he was scared sometimes, but he had to do it because he needed the money. He said "If you say 'I'm scared,' then (the bosses) say 'I'll find another.'
They don’t speak English well, they need the money and they’re afraid to complain because they’ll be fired, or if they’re undocumented, they’ll be deported. They're intimidated, discriminated against, exploited and they're dying.
This administration has done almost nothing to help these workers. In fact, President Bush has refused to issue a standard that was almost finished by the Clinton administration that would force business owners to buy protective equipment like boots and gloves for these workers. And every year since he became President he has tried to cut money from grants for training these workers.
BUSH: Well that’s just not true, Geraldo, we’re dong a lot to try to help Mexicans. We’re doing more outreach, OSHA has a Spanish language webpage. . I created a Hispanic Workers Task Force. And the biography of Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao has been translated into Spanish, Chinese and Korean.
The problem is that many people are coming to this country for economic reasons. They're coming here to work. If you can make 50 cents in the heart of Mexico, for example, or make $5 here in America, $5.15. You're going to come here if you're worth your salt, if you want to put food on the table for your families. And you don’t care if you’re going to drown in a tank of grease, water and chicken parts or cut your belly open because you haven’t been trained to operate a chain saw. And so in order to take pressure off the border, in order to make the borders more secure, I believe there ought to be a temporary worker card that allows a willing worker and a willing employer to mate up, to join up in order to be able to fulfill the employer's needs, so long as there's not an American willing to die on the job, to suffocate in a silage pile, or be buried in freshly poured concrete.
Now, as for the training grants, I wouldn’t use the word ‘cutting',” I don’t think that these training programs should be based on one-on-one training. We are developing materials and technology to get information out to more people. We’re using all the internets.
KERRY: Now George, that’s complete bullshit and you know it. Give me a break! That so-called “Summit” was nothing but a stupid photo-op for the Secretary of Labor to give away some money in a swing state. I’ve had it, I’ m sick of your simpering, simian smirks and stupid ignorant responses. Blah, blah, no child left behind. More like no billionaire left behind you sick bastard! More liberal than Kennedy. Ha! You make me sick! You and your simpleton wife and bimbo daughters can all go to hell!
RIVERA: President Bush, Senator Kerry, Thank you. We gotta go.
Following is a transcript of the fourth and final presidential debate between President Bush (R) and Sen. John F. Kerry (D). The moderator of the nationally untelevised debate is Geraldo Rivera.
RIVERA: Good evening from Groundhog State University in Smallville, PA. I'm Geraldo Rivera of CBS News. I want to welcome you to the fourth and last of the 2004 debates between President George Bush and Senator John Kerry.
As Jim Lehrer told you before the first one, these debates are sponsored by the Commission on Presidential Debates.
Tonight the topic will be workplace safety and health, but the format will be the same as that first debate.
RIVERA: Gentleman, welcome to you both.
By coin toss, the first question goes to Senator Kerry.
Senator, you’ve been highly critical of this administration, calling it anti-worker because of its failure to enforce the Occupational Safety and Health Act. Yet we have the lowest level of injuries and illnesses in this nation’s history.
So what’s wrong with what this administration is doing?
KERRY: That’s not nearly good enough. More workers were killed in the workplace last year than the year before. 5,559 workers were killed in 2003, compared with 5,534 in 2002 . That means that more people die on the job in this country last year than were killed on 9/11, in Afghanistan and in Iraq put together. And that’s only the tip of the iceberg. 50,000 to 60,000 died from occupational diseases. The number of reported workplace injuries was over 6 million, and that number is clearly understated.
And yet we’re spending just over $400 million on Occupational Safety and Health, while we’ll be spending $200 billion in Iraq and Afghanistan, where, by the way, we let Osama bin Laden escape from the cave of Tora Bora because we outsourced the job of capturing him.
BUSH: We’ve reduced injuries and illnesses because we've reduced the adversarial relationship between OSHA and employers and we’ve increased the OSHA budget during my watch. And if employers violate the law, we will hold them to account, we will come down on them hard. Just like we held to account a terrorist regime in Saddam Hussein.
In other words, in order to make sure we're secure in the workplace and in the world, there must be a comprehensive plan.
My opponent just this weekend talked about how terrorism could be reduced to a nuisance, comparing it to prostitution, illegal gambling and workplace fatalities. I think that attitude and that point of view is dangerous. I don't think you can secure America for the long run if you don't have a comprehensive view as to how to defeat these people.
KERRY: We clearly need to dedicate more resources to workplace safety. We've got 2,000 job safety inspectors in the country responsible for overseeing and enforcing the safety and health laws in more than 6 million workplaces.
OSHA actually has fewer staff today than it did in 1980. The workforce and the number of workplaces has grown, but the agency's resources have not grown
RIVERA: President Bush, you’re opposing the Corzine bill which makes it a felony and calls for significant jail time when a worker is killed on the job due to a willful violation of the law by the employer. Why shouldn’t an employer go to jail when he knowingly violates the law and a worker dies?
BUSH: Well, Geraldo. We’re talking about accidents. I mean shit happens. Mistakes are made. And these employers aren’t bad people. These are small businessmen, trying to make a living, who can’t possibly read all those OSHA regulations.
Look at all the labor laws and regulations that they are expected to comply with. They have to face these every day. I wonder how many of us in government really realize the burden we are asking them to shoulder. Is this the most effective way to protect workers?!
There are more words in the Federal Register describing OSHA regulations than there are words in the Bible. They’re a lot less inspiring to read… and a lot harder to understand!
This is not fair.
It’s not fair that small businesses are expected to know every rule and regulation without any decent help from the bureaucrats who write them, promulgate them, and penalize them if you aren’t abiding by them!
It’s not fair to you small businessmen, and it’s not fair to the American worker. My opponent talks about helping workers. But you can’t help workers if regulations cause businesses to shut down. His record in the United States Senate does not match his rhetoric. He voted to increase regulations 2,398 times.
And it's not like we're not doing anything. Were focusing major programs on important issues like seatbelts and workers who take drugs.
RIVERA: Senator.
KERRY: Thank you Geraldo. The law provides for criminal penalties only in cases where a willful violation has resulted in the death of a worker. A recent New York Times article revealed that over the past 20 years, the agency failed to seek criminal prosecution against 93 percent of the companies whose willful violations of safety rules caused workers to die. The level of criminal penalties in the Occupational Safety and Health Act basically make the events a misdemeanor, which means that these are not high priority cases for the Justice Department to take up and prosecute. Do you know that the penalty for causing the death of a worker by willfully violating safety laws is half the maximum for harassing a wild burro on federal lands?
Senator Corzine has introduced a bill to make criminal violations of OSHA a felony, which is a step in the right direction.
And not only is OSHA not prosecuting as many employers as they should, but they've totally gone out of the standard making business. Twenty-four rules that were in some stage of development on OSHA's agenda under the Clinton administration were withdrawn by this administration and not one major new regulation has been issued. These aren't just regulations, they're protections for workers.
BUSH: Well, it’s just simply not true that OSHA has stopped issuing standards. That’s kind of like one of those e x a g e r a t i o n s. Why just a couple of weeks ago, OSHA issued a formal proposal to protect workers from the hazards of hexa- hexa- hexavalium chromates.
We’re going a different way. Our way protects health and safety in a way that provides the most flexibility and economic growth. We’re trying to get this economy moving again and the best way to do that is to reduce burdensome regulations.
I believe the role of government is to stand side by side with our business owners to help them make their workplaces safe, to form partnerships and alliances with them, not punish them for making honest mistakes.
My opponent talks about helping workers. But you can’t help workers if regulations cause businesses to shut down. Remember, he voted to increase regulations 3,298 times. I mean, he's so pro-regulation that Ted Kennedy is Massachusetts' most pro-business Senator.
KERRY: That’s hexavalent chromium. It causes lung cancer. And the only reason the administration issued that proposal is because they were under a court order to do so.
RIVERA: OK, lets go to one very contentious issue: ergonomics. President Bush, one of the first actions you took as President was to sign a bill repealing the ergonomics standard even though musculoskeletal disorders like back injuries and carpal tunnel syndrome are the biggest source of workplace injuries in this country. What has your administration done to address this serious problem?
BUSH: Well Geraldo, I’m glad you asked that question because I’m very concerned about musco—muscu—uh back injuries. I know about what it’s like to work hard. In fact, a lot of this job has been a major pain in the, in the uh, neck. Heh. Uh…
But seriously, as soon as the ergonomics standard was repealed – and by the way, Geraldo,it would have cost American businesses over $100 billion every year and put small businesses out of business. Now let me finish. There’s one more thing. Do you know how long that ergonomics standard was? It was 600 pages long. It was a typical liberal Democratic attempt to tell employers how to run their jobs – and it was 600 pages long! And there was no science behind the standard. 600 pages.
But Geraldo, we have a comprehensive plan to address ergonomic hazards – outreach and assistance, guidelines, research and enforcement. And it’s been working. We’ve put out three guidelines – for health care, for grocery store workers and for poultry plant workers. And we’re enforcing. When employers show disregard for their workers, we enforce. We’re tough on them.
RIVERA: Senator Kerry.
KERRY: Geraldo, let me look right into the camera and say this. I strongly support implementation of a mandatory ergonomics standard and one of the first actions I take as president will be to order the Occupational Safety and Health administration to begin work on a new ergonomics standard.
Some people may not know this, in fact the President probably doesn’t even remember this, but the ergonomics standard was initially promised under his father’s administration back in 1990. Secretary of Labor Elizabeth Dole committed the agency and the department to developing and initiating an ergonomics standard.
And, let me ask you President Bush, did you even bother to read the standard before you killed it?
BUSH: (snorting) 600 pages. 600. A lot more than My Pet Goat. Ha. Heh, Want some wood? Oh, never mind.
KERRY: Because it was actually only 8 pages long. The other 592 pages was the justification that Congressrequires to show that the standard makes economic sense. And it wouldn't have cost anywhere close to $100 billion. They would have cost businesses only $4.5 billion to implement but would have saved $9 billion through increased productivity and reduced sick days.
Now workers have no protection. Geraldo, I’ve talked to workers in Ohio, Florida, Wisconsin, Iowa, New Mexico, Pennsylvania and New Hampshire … and maybe even Colorado who process chickens, who hang thousands of live chickens above their head every hour, 8 or 10 hours a day. We had a standard to protect workers from that kind of abuse, and now it’s gone.
The Bush administration has refused to move forward any new regulation. Instead, it has put forward a voluntary approach based on guidelines and outreach. They've said they’re enforcing under what’s known as the general duty clause, but in almost four years, OSHA has issued less than 20 ergonomics citations – for a hazard causing 1.8 million serious injuries a year.
And these injuries aren’t just bad for workers, they’re bad for the economy as well. This is a huge problem economically. The cost of these injuries is massive. These injuries probably account for half of all the worker's compensation costs. They are soft tissue injuries, the type of injuries that take time for people to recover from -- some people never recover -- so people lose a lot of time from the job. An average case of carpal tunnel syndrome results in 27 days off the job, for example.
We can do better. And when I’m president we will protect workers.
BUSH: Well, Geraldo, those are terrible jobs. Those workers should go get new jobs, safer jobs. We’re growing jobs in this country. But perhaps the best way to create safer jobs and keep this economy growing is to make sure our education system works.
I went to Washington to solve problems. And I saw a problem in the public education system in America. They were just shuffling too many kids through the system, year after year, grade after grade, without learning the basics.
And so we said: Let's raise the standards. We're spending more money, but let's raise the standards and measure early and solve problems now, before it's too late.
No, education is how to help the person who's got a lousy job. Education is how to make sure we've got a workforce that's productive and competitive and safe.
RIVERA: Senator. The final question is about the high death rate among Hispanic workers in this country. I can personally relate to that. I’m Hispanic and I’ve faced danger many times on the job. Let me tell you about one time when I was in Iraq, I….oh, never mind.
OK, where was I? Senator Kerry, the rate of fatalities among Hispanic workers is 25% percent higher than the rate recorded for all workers, and foreign-born Hispanic workers are more likely to die than Hispanics born in this country. Why is that happening and what can we do?
KERRY: It's a major problem, Geraldo, and I have a plan. Last week, I met a worker from Mexico. He had been working on construction projects in the United States for eight months, sending whatever money he can spare home to support his wife and four kids. He usually makes $10 per hour, often working 10 to 14 hour days without overtime pay. He said the most dangerous jobs are the ones where he works up high, such as roofing and painting, and he rarely wears a harness. In fact, his friend was just killed on the job.
He told me he was scared sometimes, but he had to do it because he needed the money. He said "If you say 'I'm scared,' then (the bosses) say 'I'll find another.'
They don’t speak English well, they need the money and they’re afraid to complain because they’ll be fired, or if they’re undocumented, they’ll be deported. They're intimidated, discriminated against, exploited and they're dying.
This administration has done almost nothing to help these workers. In fact, President Bush has refused to issue a standard that was almost finished by the Clinton administration that would force business owners to buy protective equipment like boots and gloves for these workers. And every year since he became President he has tried to cut money from grants for training these workers.
BUSH: Well that’s just not true, Geraldo, we’re dong a lot to try to help Mexicans. We’re doing more outreach, OSHA has a Spanish language webpage. . I created a Hispanic Workers Task Force. And the biography of Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao has been translated into Spanish, Chinese and Korean.
The problem is that many people are coming to this country for economic reasons. They're coming here to work. If you can make 50 cents in the heart of Mexico, for example, or make $5 here in America, $5.15. You're going to come here if you're worth your salt, if you want to put food on the table for your families. And you don’t care if you’re going to drown in a tank of grease, water and chicken parts or cut your belly open because you haven’t been trained to operate a chain saw. And so in order to take pressure off the border, in order to make the borders more secure, I believe there ought to be a temporary worker card that allows a willing worker and a willing employer to mate up, to join up in order to be able to fulfill the employer's needs, so long as there's not an American willing to die on the job, to suffocate in a silage pile, or be buried in freshly poured concrete.
Now, as for the training grants, I wouldn’t use the word ‘cutting',” I don’t think that these training programs should be based on one-on-one training. We are developing materials and technology to get information out to more people. We’re using all the internets.
KERRY: Now George, that’s complete bullshit and you know it. Give me a break! That so-called “Summit” was nothing but a stupid photo-op for the Secretary of Labor to give away some money in a swing state. I’ve had it, I’ m sick of your simpering, simian smirks and stupid ignorant responses. Blah, blah, no child left behind. More like no billionaire left behind you sick bastard! More liberal than Kennedy. Ha! You make me sick! You and your simpleton wife and bimbo daughters can all go to hell!
RIVERA: President Bush, Senator Kerry, Thank you. We gotta go.
Tuesday, August 24, 2004
Bring Workplace Safety Into the Campaign
Well it's about time to get out there on the campaign trail and let everyone know why the decision they make at the ballot box (or computer) may affect their likelihood of coming home from work alive and health. But what to say?
I am posting here an article I wrote for Labor Notes (which you can now subscribe to for $5)about the Bush record on occupational health and safety. There are other election-year health and safety factsheets from AFSCME and CWA. (If anyone knows of any others, let me know.)
OK, so we know George Bush and crew are a workplace safety disaster, but what has John Kerry done for us lately?
He condemned Bush's MSHA for putting miners at risk
He's called fro improved chemical plant security.
His spokesperson called DOL's Hispanic "Summit" a "photo op."
He has earned business anger by supporting a new ergonomics standard.
He's been accused by the bad guys of being an "environmental extremist" and earned the support of Nixon's EPA head.
And while he was a presidential candidate, John Edwards called for a plan to decrease workplace deaths and injuries by strengthening laws and hiring more federal safety personnel."
I am posting here an article I wrote for Labor Notes (which you can now subscribe to for $5)about the Bush record on occupational health and safety. There are other election-year health and safety factsheets from AFSCME and CWA. (If anyone knows of any others, let me know.)
OK, so we know George Bush and crew are a workplace safety disaster, but what has John Kerry done for us lately?
He condemned Bush's MSHA for putting miners at risk
He's called fro improved chemical plant security.
His spokesperson called DOL's Hispanic "Summit" a "photo op."
He has earned business anger by supporting a new ergonomics standard.
He's been accused by the bad guys of being an "environmental extremist" and earned the support of Nixon's EPA head.
And while he was a presidential candidate, John Edwards called for a plan to decrease workplace deaths and injuries by strengthening laws and hiring more federal safety personnel."
Thursday, August 05, 2004
Kerry Criticizes MSHA Head; Promises Improvements
Political folklore states that the Democrats lost West Virginia in 2000 because of gun control and environmental issues. People continue to buy the NRA line that equated a ban on assault weapons with taking away peoples' right to go hunting. And, unfortunately the old jobs vs. the environment issue still plays well in areas of chronic high unemployement. And the United Mine Workers' ambivalent attitude toward the environmental movement and environmental regulations hasn't helped much.
What we have here is a failure to communicate.
Democratic Presidential candidate John Kerry seems to be attempting to get away from the charged political issues and turn the discussion toward issues that affect workers -- especially mineworkers -- every day when they go to work. Kerry promised to put someone in charge of the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) who is committed “to protect the workers, not the coal companies,” according to his campaign.
The United Mine Workers have not been impressed with MSHA's performance:
What we have here is a failure to communicate.
Democratic Presidential candidate John Kerry seems to be attempting to get away from the charged political issues and turn the discussion toward issues that affect workers -- especially mineworkers -- every day when they go to work. Kerry promised to put someone in charge of the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) who is committed “to protect the workers, not the coal companies,” according to his campaign.
Dave Lauriski, who is in charge of MSHA, worked as a coal company executive for 30 years. Like John Henshaw at OSHA, Lauriski had demphasized regulations and argues that "the agency needs to focus more on safety training, education and compliance assistance."In a prepared statement, the Kerry campaign harshly criticized the Bush administration’s record on coal-mine safety.
“George W. Bush has had the wrong philosophy and has installed a mining executive to the top position when he should have put someone who is an advocate for mine workers,” the statement said.
The United Mine Workers have not been impressed with MSHA's performance:
West Virginia, the second largest coal producing state, lead the nation last year with 10 fatalities, including three in a January explosion at the CONSOL Energy McElroy Mine near Moundsville.The Kerry campaign promised to implement the recommendations of that GAO report and committed to:
After that accident, MSHA’s lead investigator said that the agency did not inspect the job as frequently as necessary.
In October 2003, Lauriski himself cited “unexcused deficiencies” by MSHA personnel charged with overseeing a Cody Mining operation in Kentucky before a fatal accident there in June 2003.
Ray McKinney, MSHA’s administrator for coal mine safety and health, has rejected a freedom of Information Act request for documents that might detail those “unexcused deficiencies.”
Also last year, the U.S. General Accounting Office found that MSHA inspectors frequently failed to return to mines to ensure that serious safety problems were fixed.
Lawmakers had asked for the GAO review after 13 workers died in a series of explosions at the Jim Walters Resources No. 5 Mine near Brookwood, Ala., on Sept. 23, 2001.
- Monitor the timeliness of inspections conducted as part of the six-month review of certain mine plans.
- Ensure that mine operators correct hazards identified during inspections in a timely manner.
- Develop a plan to address expected shortages in the number of qualified MSHA inspectors as current employees retire.
- Revise the systems used to collect information on accidents and investigations.
Tuesday, July 20, 2004
Kerry-Edwards: "In memory of my brother..."
Donna Puleio Spadaro received a mailing from the Kerry-Edwards campaign asking whether she had a story that the candidates needed to hear about why the election matters to her.
Turns out Donna did have a story to tell -- about her brother who was killed on the job.
Turns out Donna did have a story to tell -- about her brother who was killed on the job.
Election Day 2004 is the day we call for an end to the “silence” of the very agencies assigned to protect workers from these injustices. We must fight to make workplaces safer. We must toughen laws that make the willful killing of workers a felony not a misdemeanor. The downgrading and abatement of violations until they amount to little more than a meaningless “slap on the wrist” must be stopped. Our country cannot become a low wage economy where safety is ignored and dead workers are an accepted cost of doing business. In memory of my brother, I plan to support Kerry-Edwards in 2004.
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