Adding some Business to those Maine Labor Murals

Once again I'm drawn to the story of the Maine Labor Murals.  They're safely hidden out of sight where no one will be corrupted by those images for a while, but that doesn't mean they won't be talked about. Judy Taylor, the artist who painted the murals is offering to hang her father's war medal on one of the empty walls:
  

She said it was heartbreaking to learn that LePage may have decided to remove the mural after getting an anonymous letter that said the mural was reminiscent of brainwashing tactics in communist North Korea.
Taylor's father served in the Korean War as a forward observer.  "He was a man who stood by every word he spoke," she said in her statement. "Perhaps we should hang my father's Bronze Star for his service in Korea in the now-empty reception area of the Maine Department of Labor until the mural is returned, as a symbol of the importance of remembering our history and not shuttering it away."

There's also talk that the Governor could be in lukewarm (in olden days it would have been hot) water over breaking the contract with the artist.  Is there no end to the pain Gov. Paul LePage will have to suffer over his actions?  One can only hope.

There have been any number of responses to the removal of the murals, but the one that brought me to write about it again is a video put together by video producer Geoffrey Leighton showing how the murals could regain some legitimacy by adding some corporate faces to the mix.  Brillliant!



Note:  I found this video via The Liberal Light Facebook page, which then led me to The Maddow Blog, and now I'm posting it here. Passing it on. Networking is how we're going to get things done.  I see a trend growing on our side, finally.  We're networking, we're blog-reciprocating, we're joining together to spread the overwhelming evidence of wrong-doing in every corner of this country. 

If we keep it going we can't fail.
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No more pussyfooting: The Republicans and the C of C are trying to kill us

Historically, nothing has terrified conservatives so much as efficient, effective, activist government. “A thoroughly first-rate man in public service is corrosive,” the former president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce argued in an interview published in the journal Nation’s Business in 1928. “He eats holes in our liberties. The better he is and the longer he stays the greater the danger. If he is an enthusiast–a bright-eyed madman who is frantic to make this the finest government in the world–the black plague is a housepet by comparison.” 

Rick Perlstein, "Enemies of State"

My thanks to AmiBlue, who wrote about this in a piece called "Don't tell 'em, sell 'em" over at Dagblog.  This is powerful stuff.  The Big Business assault was (and is) even worse than we could ever have imagined.  The quote above by the C of C flack would be chilling enough today, but considering it was the battle cry already in 1928, it shows clearly the kind of relentless, never-ending  propaganda we're up against.

 From Perlstein's article:

Consider the famous December 2, 1993 memo by William Kristol entitled “Defeating President Clinton’s Health Care Proposal.” The notion of government-guaranteed health care had to be defeated, he said, rather than compromised with, or else: “It will revive the reputation of the party that spends and regulates, the Democrats, as the generous protector of middle-class interests. And it will at the same time strike a punishing blow against Republican claims to defend the middle class by restraining government.” Kristol wrote on behalf of an organization called the Project for a Republican Future. The mortal fear is that if government delivers the goods, the Republicans have no future. 

They have big money behind them.  They have the recent supreme court decision behind them.  They have the Republican Party, the right wing media and much of the mainstream media behind them.  And they have an astonishing number of just plain folks who just don't get it behind them.

Incredible, considering their goal has always been to do the rest of us in so that they can grow richer and stronger--but that's the enemy, that's the battle, and that's what we're up against.

We have to keep working at stopping them, and what worries me is I'm hearing from so many people on our side who say they're disheartened and discouraged and disgusted and are ready to quit.  This is not the time to quit!  They may have big money and big numbers on their side, but might, dammit, does not make right.

They'd like nothing better than to see us all surrender.  They're thrilled by the cave-in of the only other entities with enough power to puncture their armor--the White House and a solid number of  Democrats in Congress.

If you can read that stuff above and still walk away, then do me this one last favor:  Turn around and look out there.  Weep with me on the shore as we watch our beautiful ship taking on water, listing, groaning, losing power.  I see it as a battle ship.  You might be seeing it as a cruise ship.  Either way, it's ours and it's sinking and if there are lifeboats on the way, they're too little, too few, too late. 

But have a nice day.
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Cross-posted at Dagblog here.
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Get this straight, Corporate Pimps: There ARE NO JOBS!

How many times does this have to be repeated:  There are 15 million unemployed in this country, with 6.8 million chronically unemployed.

Most of them spend their days looking for work.  When they hear about the possibility of jobs, they'll stand in long lines just waiting for a chance at an interview.  They would rather stand in line for a job than stand in line for an unemployment check, but the check is a lifeline when there are no jobs.

Most of them have families who are suffering because there are no jobs.

Most of them had good jobs before the Republicans and turn-coat Democrats took up the phony cry about good wages killing us all and turned the entire country over to Big Business, who in turn thanked us all for bending over and kissing their asses by sending our jobs to corrupt slave wage countries.

They rub salt in the wounds by expecting us to buy those sweatshop goods at whatever price they tag them.  They're cheaply made and cheap to produce--facts not in the least reflected in the dazzlingly audacious price tags.  Talk about chutzpah.

They scream bloody murder because people aren't buying enough but they'll kill every chance American workers might have to earn enough to pay for their pirated booty. (Again with the chutzpah.)




And now the final slap in the face:  The Republicans in the Senate (and one Democrat, Ben Nelson) voted against an unemployment benefits extension.  Two reasons, according to them:  They don't want to add to the enormous deficit they created in the first place, and they don't want to be giving unemployment checks to people who would otherwise have to be out finding a job.

What hogwash.

Never mind that there are at least five people clamoring for every available job, including those jobs that only old people and teenagers used to take:  Fast food flippers, car washers, Walmart greeters. . .what's next?  Shoe shiners and apple sellers?

The real reason--as perverse and cold-blooded as it can get--is that the Republicans don't want the Democrats to have any kind of an edge that might win them the majority again in November.  The bastards are fighting for their political lives and using the already miserable and downtrodden as pawns

So let's say the Republicans win back the majority in November. (A likely prospect, given the baffling inattention of their followers and the woeful inability of the Democrats to fight against our domestic enemies.) What will they do to improve the lives of all our displaced American workers?  What kinds of jobs will they create?  Will the poor get richer and the rich get poorer?  Will all our troubles be over?  Will happy little bluebirds fly?

* La
** La la
*** La la la. . .

I'm waiting. . .

Ramona

It All Comes Down to Loyalty

For a nation that can’t stop bragging about how great and powerful it is, we’ve become shockingly helpless in the face of the many challenges confronting us. Our can-do spirit was put on hold many moons ago, and here we are now unable to defeat the Taliban, or rein in the likes of BP and the biggest banks, or stop the oil gushing furiously from the bowels of earth like a warning from Hades about the hubris and ignorance that is threatening to destroy us.    Bob Herbert, NYT, 5/31/10

  Just as we saw in Wall Street's devastating economic disaster and in Massey Energy's murderous explosion inside its Upper Big Branch coal mine, the nastiness in the gulf is baring an ugly truth that We the People must finally face: We are living under de facto corporate rule that has rendered our government impotent.

Thirty years of laissez-faire, ideological nonsense (pushed upon us with a vengeance in the past decade) has transformed government into a subsidiary of corporate power. Wall Street, Massey, BP and its partners — all were allowed to become their own "regulators" and officially encouraged to put their short-term profit interests over the public interest.    Jim Hightower, Alternet, 6/2/10

There was a time when America was known for its greatness.  We were a prosperous country with an upper class that put its riches back into the American economy.  Our middle class, our vast majority, was vibrant and full of life.  Our poor were always with us, but our homeless and hungry weren't so overwhelming in numbers that our shelters and our food banks couldn't keep up.

There was a time when anyone who wanted a job could find one.  Fathers could earn enough to take care of an entire family, and mothers, if they chose, could stay home and care for them.

There was a time when we built factories on American soil and produced goods and made steel and planted crops in such abundance that we not only sustained ourselves, we were actually able to export the remainder.

There was a time when, if we could have looked ahead, we would have had enough sense to be ashamed of what we have become.

What a waste.  All that hard work, all those years of working together to build an America we could all be proud of, and look where we are.

Every day in every way I resent the hell out of the people who put us here.  I've lived through the good times and I've lived through the bad times.  I've watched as greed and selfishness and yes--disloyalty--have eroded  a workable system that had been in place since the aftermath of the Great Depression, and is now plummeting us back into a reprise of those same dark days.

Big business is running our country into the ground.  Big business doesn't care because big business is global now.  If they lose here, they'll gain somewhere else.  Big business has no shame and they have no sense of loyalty.  They live big here because they can.  They can because there are enough Americans who will watch their backs and circle the wagons whenever they think big business is being attacked.  Since the days of their most exalted hero, Ronald Reagan, capitalism at all costs has been hammered into their pointy little heads.  (Never mind that, thanks in large part to the bleatings of their most exalted hero and his most vociferous followers, a good number of their capitalist pals have taken their booty offshore and have completely abandoned ship.)

The Republicans, the Tea Partiers, PalinCorp, Fox "News", the Right Wing pundits, and certain of the DINOs are working hard to distract us from the increasingly obvious truth:  Big business has run amuck and is destroying us.

Why those people feel the need to defend those Terminators is beyond me, but they're apparently going to defend them to the death of us. The mainstream media, either by intent or shortsightedness or fear of ratings, is big into aiding and abetting the Destroyers of All Things American.  Even C-Span, the seeming last bastion of objectivity, is turning right just when we need them to stay focused.  More and more, they highlight the rightward-leaning, and seem to delight in covering everything Tea Party as if they were an actual political party and not simply an angry mob whose only solution to this mess is to pump up the anger.

Defending the status-quo encourages the undermining of our economy.  There is something decidedly ludicrous about that claim to want to "take our country back". The only ones who want to go back to that are the ones who made (and are still making) obscene bundles of cash off of our collective misery.

If they really wanted to take our country back they would be fighting against the disloyal, dishonorable corporations that chose to build factories outside America using foreign slave labor in corrupt, unregulated countries rather than  live by the necessary rules and pay decent wages and benefits.

They wouldn't be waving the American flag while chanting "Drill, baby, drill".

They wouldn't be buying into the corporate lie that all things public, including health care, Social Security and schools, should be privatized so that corporate interests can have the control and keep the profits.

They wouldn't be so bent on electing people who despise the very idea of good, all-encompassing government but wouldn't mind collecting a paycheck while they're attempting to destroy it.

If those people had any sense of loyalty toward this country, they would, instead, be climbing out of that comfy bed they've made with the worst of Big Business and think twice about railing against anyone wanting to put a stop to the most destructive, out-of-control business practices this country has seen since we let this same thing happen in the 1920s.

It all comes down to loyalty.  Do we privatize or do we keep "a government of the people, by the people, and for the people".  Every member of Congress pledges this Oath of Office:

I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God.

 Every time we say the Pledge of Allegiance we pledge loyalty to these United States.

Some of us actually mean it.

Ramona
*
*

No, Really - The Sky is Falling!

Even as the American economy shows tentative signs of a rebound, the human toll of the recession continues to mount, with millions of Americans remaining out of work, out of savings and nearing the end of their unemployment benefits. Economists fear that the nascent recovery will leave more people behind than in past recessions, failing to create jobs in sufficient numbers to absorb the record-setting ranks of the long-term unemployed.
Call them the new poor: people long accustomed to the comforts of middle-class life who are now relying on public assistance for the first time in their lives — potentially for years to come.

 Peter S. Goodman, NYT 2/21/10

 _______________________________________

The lost decade for the economy

The U.S. economy has expanded at a healthy clip for most of the last 70 years, but by a wide range of measures, it stagnated in the first decade of the new millennium. Job growth was essentially zero, as modest job creation from 2003 to 2007 wasn't enough to make up for two recessions in the decade. Rises in the nation's economic output, as measured by gross domestic product, was weak. And household net worth, when adjusted for inflation, fell as stock prices stagnated, home prices declined in the second half of the decade and consumer debt skyrocketed.

Washington Post - 2 26-10

____________________________________________________

Henny Penny is exhausted.  She's been running around like a chicken with her head cut off, trying to make the Big Guys see what's coming.  The sky is not only falling,  great chunks of it are already on the ground.  The Big Guys in charge have no use for small pullets bringing bad news.  From where they sit, everything looks fine.  Life is good.  Nothing a well-positioned tax break couldn't fix.  And besides, the depression never happened, and the recession is over, so stuff a sock in it.  (But all you little people still collecting paychecks?  Don't forget to pay your taxes by April 15.)

I'm remembering a time not so long ago when we built things and made things and anyone who wanted a job could find one, but for years now we've been hemorrhaging jobs like Niagara flows water.  The unemployment numbers are drooping, not because so many people are back to work now, but because so few people are still collecting unemployment benefits.  Many millions of people without jobs aren't being counted anymore.  For millions of people who used to be employed, job seeking is a fruitless game, and they've quit playing. That's not to say they're not still out there--by the millions. 

This from the Bureau of Labor Statistics for January, 2010:

In January, the number of persons unemployed due to job loss decreased by
378,000 to 9.3 million. Nearly all of this decline occurred among permanent job losers.

The number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks and over)
continued to trend up in January, reaching 6.3 million. Since the start of
the recession in December 2007, the number of long-term unemployed has risen
by 5.0 million.

In January, the civilian labor force participation rate was little changed at
64.7 percent. The employment-population ratio rose from 58.2 to 58.4 percent.

The number of persons who worked part time for economic reasons (sometimes
referred to as involuntary part-time workers) fell from 9.2 to 8.3 million
in January. These individuals were working part time because their hours had
been cut back or because they were unable to find a full-time job.

About 2.5 million persons were marginally attached to the labor force in
January, an increase of 409,000 from a year earlier. (The data are not
seasonally adjusted.) These individuals were not in the labor force, wanted
and were available for work, and had looked for a job sometime in the prior
12 months. They were not counted as unemployed because they had not searched
for work in the 4 weeks preceding the survey.

Among the marginally attached, there were 1.1 million discouraged workers in
January, up from 734,000 a year earlier. (The data are not seasonally adjusted.)

Discouraged workers are persons not currently looking for work because they
believe no jobs are available for them.

So let's multiply one person without a job by 9.3 million.  (Because we surely wouldn't want to waste our time thinking about just one miserable person.)  Okay, now we have 9.3 million people collecting unemployment checks.  But let's say six million of them have a partner and a couple of kids.  Now we're talking about 24 million people trying to survive on that one check. (Unless both partners are, you know, unemployed.)  Then add all those other people noted above in the BLS report and multiply them by the numbers in their families, and. . .
We're talking real numbers.


So my first solution (because I don't have a real job and I've had time to think about this) was to encourage the unemployed and underemployed to take on two part-time jobs.  The unemployment numbers would plummet, our work force would be productive,  and we wouldn't look like such ninnies to the rest of the world.

My plan would have everybody working for less, but working, which is the main thing--and all of those jobs just waiting to be filled would be filled.  (Because everybody knows if you really want a job in this country you can find one.)   Health care bennies would have to go, but let's face it--they were on their way out, anyway.

So that was my original plan.  That was yesterday.  Today I had the brainstorm of all brainstorms, and I am hyped!   Get this:  We export our unemployed to the countries that provide us with our goods!  China, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Bangladesh, Viet Nam, Hong Kong, Swaziland (Swaziland??). . . They have factories over in those places.  Our workers need jobs.  Voila!

My God, it's brilliant.  No more fuss about unions or OSHA or health insurance.  No more worrying about where or how all those people are going to live.  Send the workers AND the jobs overseas.  No more jobs anywhere in America!  (except--see below*.)

What a relief.  You don't know how I've been worrying about this.  Something just hasn't been right for a long time now.  It's true I have a few details to work out, but then I'll be sending it on to congress ASAP.  Remember, you read it here first.  And--it would help me a lot if you stood by me when the Republicans try to take credit for it.

So here it is:

Since only the wealthiest one percent of the population would still be living in America,  they could do away with the Constitution and, in fact,  the entire government, and run everything from their gated communities, with CEOs and Boards of Directors and, if need be, hefty under-the-table bribes.  They would need  massive assistance from *hired help, of course, but that could be worked out, too.  The help would live outside the gates in company housing, arriving in buses at their scheduled time to mow the sweeping lawns and polish the frosted titanium faucets and pick the nits out of the privileged heads of the gated children. (Their own children would be laboring overseas, too, so no need for baby-sitters.  Or, come to think of it, public schools!  Man, this is getting better all the time.)

The help would receive paltry but steady paychecks which would go toward their rent, and they would, of course, owe their souls to the company store.  There would be company doctors and company hospitals, paid for by deducting health expenses from their pay, but services would be basic so if they became really sick, they would die.

But here's the good thing:  There would be no slums, no welfare, no food banks, no jails, no prisons.  The poor (which by this time is nearly everybody) would be working in the factories overseas and the common criminal element* would be shipped off to Effincommies Archipelago, a previously uncharted chain of desert islands surrounded by sharks and patrolled by pirates, where they would finally be productive,  turning out Marni shearling vests and Brioni leather bomber jackets and over-the-knee Christian Louboutin boots,  working v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y in order to keep that shortage thing going so the prices would stay at dazzle level.   (The *rich criminal element, if you were wondering, would be forgiven by an Almighty God of their choosing.)


I'm already seeing a few problems with my plan, but once the rich get wind of it all the kinks will be worked out to their advantage.  I'm thinking--who's going to be here to buy the cheap stuff?  The stuff our former American workers are over there making?  Never mind how K-Mart and WalMart and Target and Macys and Nordstroms and Saks are going to feel about it.  How is China going to feel about it? 

And who decides on the lucky few who would be left to help the helpless rich?  Who wouldn't want a job like that?  So I thought about a TV show, an "American Idle", where three or four judges would call in likely candidates, insult them in brutally clever ways,  and take so long pretending they weren't going to hire them, the lucky few would promise to work for even less.

If that didn't work, it could be done by holding a lottery, I suppose.  It is, after all, the American way.  We have a penchant for deciding everything by whim or by chance.

So what do you think?  But before you answer, remember that the best government is no government, and my plan, so far, is the only one that effectively addresses that.  And don't worry about me (and I won't worry about you).  I have relatives in Canada and if I can get there before the other DPs I'll have a place to stay.

Ramona

Take Me to Our Leader

The reasons for the stillbirth of the new progressive era are many and much discussed. There's the death of liberal and moderate Republicanism, the reluctance of some administration officials and congressional Democrats to challenge the banks, the ever-larger role of money in politics (see reluctance to challenge banks, above), the weakness of labor, the dysfunctionality of the Senate -- the list is long and familiar. But if there's a common feature to the political landscapes in which Carter, Clinton and now Obama were compelled to work, it's the absence of a vibrant left movement. 

Harold Meyerson, Washington Post, 1/6/10

__________________________________________

 Alas, it's true.  The "left movement"--the true left movement, not the middle-of-the-road "Progressives" nor the loony "Lefties"--is no longer vibrant.  We lost our glow long ago, when we decided the worst thing we could ever do to ourselves was to get in the position of being considered Socialists.  We even dropped "social programs" from our lexicon lest someone should suspect us of Commie leanings.  Then we dropped social programs altogether, just in case.

We either forgot or ignored the real contributions unions had brought us since before our grandparents were young, and turned on them just when we needed them the most.  We let the actor Ronald Reagan make the first incision and then stood back, wringing our hands, while the strength of our labor movement slowly seeped away.

Our voices were no more than mere whispers when American jobs by the millions moved to foreign countries.  No representative howls from these quarters when American manufacturing and American wages moved toward the downslide while corporate America's profits went soaring through the stratosphere.

We never completely bought the notion that all was right with the world, that our path to prosperity was named "deregulation", that the people in power had even a nibble of a clue, but every time we turned around someone wicked or more cunning was stealing our soapbox.  So we shut up.  Or so it seemed, for all the good our grousing and complaining did.


For eight long Bushwhacked years, we moaned and groaned and predicted the predictable outcomes.  And when they came, we got nothing for our troubles except to be able to utter a wholly unsatisfying "We told you so".  Because for eight long Bushwhacked years we, the Liberals afraid to speak our own name, had no real leaders.

Nobody stood out as the one willing and courageous and strong enough to take on corrupt big government and big business (even more dazzlingly corrupt).  We've had many voices--many fine voices--like Eleanor Roosevelt, FDR, JFK, MLK, Walter Reuther, Cesar Chavez, Barbara Jordan, Mario Cuomo, Ted Kennedy, Hillary Clinton, Russ Feingold, Dennis Kucinich,  Anthony Weiner, Sheldon Whitehouse, Byron Dorgan (Yes, I've heard--but he still has a voice), Elizabeth Warren, Bill Moyers, Rachel Maddow.  We've had Molly Ivins, Michael Moore, Jim Hightower, and now Al Franken, who's laughing all the way to the Hill.

But where is the one strong leader leading the charge to help put our country back together again?  To take on the jammers and scammers in high places?  To demolish the Fat Cats' havens?  To get people back to work?  To keep families healthy and safe, without poverty looming?   For awhile there, we thought it was going to be Barack Obama.  For a while, I think even Barack Obama thought it was going to be him.   But it isn't.  It's clear he's not the one.


No leader.  Oh, well. . .so be it.

What??

Wait, that was last year.  This year--2010--we're going to have to do it ourselves.  We who see ourselves as the perennial, ineffectual caretakers are going to have to make our presence known.  Don't answer to "Liberal", I don't care.  Call yourselves "Progressives", I don't care.  Just do what liberals have always done.  Help the poor, feed the hungry, nurture the children, restore human dignity, and advocate, always, for equity and honesty.

This year is the year of the PEOPLE.  We are the people.  Only we can make it happen.  We can't do it alone.  We can't even do it with rooms full of like-minded people.  In order to be heard, we have to do it by the millions.  There are millions of us out of work with nothing but time on our hands.  There are millions of us who are retired, with no real schedule, who remember what it was like when the middle class was on top and want that back again.  There are millions of us with brain power and skills working at no-hope jobs through no fault of our own.  And there are millions of us who are union members who need a refresher course in labor struggles and organized ass-kicking.

2010.  The Year of the People.   Last I looked, that's us.

Ramona

(Cross-posted at Talking Points Memo here.)

Watch out for Big Business Watching Out for You

After co-sponsoring the original labor bill in 2005, and wholeheartedly endorsing the Employee Free Choice Act in 2007 (the only Republican senator to do so), Arlen Specter has now reneged and will vote against it for what he wants us to believe are the purest of reasons:

"On the merits [of voting against the bill], the issue which has emerged at the top of the list for me is the elimination of the secret ballot which is the cornerstone of how contests are decided in a democratic society. The bill’s requirement for compulsory arbitration if an agreement is not reached within 120 days may subject the employer to a deal he or she cannot live with. Such arbitration runs contrary to the basic tenet of the Wagner Act for collective bargaining which makes the employer liable only for a deal he or she agrees to. The arbitration provision could be substantially improved by the last best offer procedure which would limit the arbitrator’s discretion and prompt the parties to move to more reasonable positions. "


This is phony. The secret ballot is the second step to voting in a union. The first step is getting 50% of the workforce to agree to holding an election. In most, if not all, instances that's done by signing cards indicating you either want or don't want to have a vote on union representation.

Specter says, "The problems of the recession make this a particularly bad time to enact Employees Free Choice legislation. Employers understandably complain that adding a burden would result in further job losses."

What burden? According to Specter and all the others who oppose the EFCA, it's not necessary anyway. Any employee group who wants a union is free to hold secret ballot elections now. That's true, isn't it?

No, it's not. Of course it's not. Employers can and do thwart any inclination to bring in unions. Specter talks about "intimidation" by those mythical union thugs who, if they knew your name, would come pounding on your door at all hours to get you to sign, but barely mentions the very real pressures employers put on their employees if even a hint of the word "union" wafts through their doors.

So a recession isn't a good time to be talking about forming unions. How about when times were good and Big Business was raking in the dough? When CEOs and COOS and stockholders were sitting on their satin cushions singing the praises of Free Market capitalism? When American jobs were being outsourced to third world countries, paying the lowest possible wages so that profits could go toward living the lavish life and not toward anything as mundane as sharing? Could they talk about forming unions then?

Let's get some real numbers in here. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, union membership in 2008 was a mere 12.4% of the workforce. Within that percentage, the union membership rate for public sector workers (36.8 percent) was substantially higher than the rate for private industry workers (7.6 percent).

So who is cheering the loudest now that Specter has caved? The Chamber of Commerce is positively giddy over it. So is the National Association of Manufacturers. And this is where it gets personal for me.

John Engler, former Republican governor of Michigan, is now the president of the National Association of Manufacturers. (They must feel like the Maytag repairman here in America)

This is what Engler said about Specter's decision: "I am very pleased that Senator Arlen Specter has decided to vote against cloture on the EFCA. EFCA is a flawed piece of legislation that will destroy jobs and prolong the current economic recession. Manufacturers stand behind Senator Specter's decision to vote against EFCA and appreciate this decision to put working men and women, the economy and the nation first."

Now, before you get all dewy-eyed about this, let me just warn you. I know John Engler and he's no FDR. He's no Warren Buffett, either. Trust me.

When John Engler was governor of Michigan, my Michigan, darkness fell across the villages in LiberalLand. We never had a chance. Reaganism, Big Business boosterism, and the nonsense called "Trickle Down" were still very much in vogue.

The governor's mission, at one point, (after he had already done away with poverty programs) was to kill any state funding for the Arts. The Arts are always the wretched stepchildren whenever belts need tightening (after programs for the poor, of course), and we should have seen it coming.

In the early 1990s I applied for and received a state grant to work on a lengthy writing project. I was thrilled beyond belief when my application was accepted, but foolish, foolish me. . .I completely forgot who we were dealing with. Most of the grantees--the smart ones--took their money and ran. Some of them chose to leave their grant money in the state's coffers until the next year, but I was one of those who chose to take half of the grant in one year and leave the other half for the next.

Even before the next year rolled around, Engler was already making noises about Arts excesses, and in spite of petitions and marches to the Capitol steps and pleas to our legislative and congressional leaders, any grant monies we were supposed to receive were taken away. Gone. For good.

We had contracts. We had it in writing. It was promised to us. And the contracts were not honored.

Now, that might not seem like such a sad story, given what is happening in Michigan today, but I offer it here as an example of how easily The Powers can ignore honorable contracts whenever they think they have the right.

We should know by now that without watchdogs, without binding equity, without the force of numbers, the masses in this country will never come out ahead. If the past eight to 12 years haven't shown us what happens when the Chamber of Commerce and all its attendant abettors run the show, I don't know what it's going to take to make it any clearer.

They'll get away with this phony attack against the unions and the EFCA if we let them. Big Business in America doesn't deserve even a moment of hesitation, of let-up now. Write your congresspeople, write our president, blog this issue to death. Do whatever it takes to send the message that American workers made this country and American workers deserve to share in the riches. It's so fundamental, it shouldn't even be an issue. So again I ask: How the hell did we let this happen? And when are we going to do something about it?

Ramona