A Win for Labor

On a party line 4-3 vote, a measure to make it easier to organize labor unions in Colorado passed committee and is headed to the State Senate.

The son of a union steelworker and coal miner, I have first-hand experience in the good unions can bring and, to be fair, the bad. Unions got us decent wages and health care while they tricked my father and his companions into striking three weeks for a $1.50 per day increase over what the companies offered. On balance, collective bargaining is the only tool workers have against corporate tyranny. The bill negating the requirement for a second vote to organize eases the way for unions in Colorado.

Of course, the elitests on the Red side of the aisle opposed it.

Tancredo - Our Representative?

Someone convince me that Tom Tancredo is representative of the part of HD40 that lies within the 6th Congressional District. Here's an interesting article concerning his support of some rather dubious, racist-tainted functions from The Nation.

Tom's bid for the Presidency polled at less than two percent in Iowa, yet somehow he believes that the voter-rejected GOPer ideology and his patented xenophobia will somehow make him mainstream enough to make him a viable candidate. Perhaps to those who sing Dixie and wrap themselves in the Confederate flag, perhaps to those who really believe Miami is a third-world country, Tancredo is viable. I know he doesn't represent us in Colorado's sixth. It's time we voted that way.

It Isn't New...

"We...struggle with the old enemies of peace--business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking,
class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering...Never before in all our history have these forces been so united."

A quote from yesterday's news? Well, no. The year was 1936. The writer was Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who said in full: "Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hated for me--and I welcome their hatred."

After all, American politics has been nasty in the past. Before the New Deal, America was a nation with a vast gap between the rich and everyone else, and this gap was reflected in a sharp political divide. The Republican Party, in effect, represented the interests of the economic elite, and the Democratic Party, in an often confused way, represented the populist alternative.

In that divided political system, the Democrats probably came much closer to representing the interests of the typical American. But the G.O.P.’s advantage in money, and the superior organization that money bought, usually allowed it to dominate national politics. “I am not a member of any organized party,” Will Rogers said. “I am a Democrat.”

Then came the New Deal. I urge Mr. Obama--and everyone else who thinks that good will alone is enough to change the tone of our politics--to read the speeches of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the quintessential example of a president who tackled big problems that demanded solutions.

For the fact is that FDR faced fierce opposition as he created the institutions--Social Security, unemployment insurance, more progressive taxation and beyond--that helped alleviate inequality. And he didn’t shy away from confrontation.

It was only after F.D.R. had created a more equal society, and the old class warriors of the G.O.P. were replaced by “modern Republicans” who accepted the New Deal, that bipartisanship began to prevail.

Excerpted from a column by Paul Krugman emailed by Mike Collins & forwarded by me John Fulton