Richard Trumka's address to nurses

http://www.nationalnursesunited.org/blog/entry/remarks-of-afl-cio-president-richard-trumka

National Nurses United Assembly

Washington, District of Columbia

June 7, 2011

 

Thank you, Rose Ann DeMoro, for inviting me here today – there’s nowhere I’d rather be and there’s nobody I’d rather be standing beside. 

 

And thank you, nurses! It’s great to see each and every one of you in Washington! I love the way nurses fight for patients, for quality care, for fairness and progressive values! 

 

You’re standing tall all across our country, and you make the entire labor movement better for it! You make America better... every single day.

 

And let me tell you this, your nine points that together describe our shared values, truly illustrate your commitment to all the working men and women, all the children and all the seniors of our communities and our country.

 

Your commitment to a single-payer health care system is inspiring, and the idea of paying for it with a financial speculation tax is just. 

 

And let me congratulate you on your tremendous organizing successes in Florida and Texas, and on winning your contract at Washington Hospital Center! 

 

Your organizing and your actions, including your daylong strike right here in DC, are powerful statements for middle-class standards.

  

Back in early March, I went down to Washington Hospital Center – one of the most renowned hospitals in Washington -- and I rallied with the nurses there.

 

A few weeks earlier, I was told, only two nurses had been scheduled overnight to work in Labor and Delivery.  Two nurses! 

 

That night, each nurse carried a patient load of six women who were delivering babies. That meant that each nurse cared for 12 patients. Six moms and six newborns! That’s too many. Thank God there were no emergencies, and thank you for speaking up about it! 

 

Why were only two nurses scheduled? Not for a lack of money, I can tell you that.  And not for a lack of quality nurses. 

 

No, two were scheduled because two is cheaper than three. 

 

Without your voice, two nurses would have been scheduled in Labor and Delivery, until there was an emergency, until something went terribly wrong, until a tragedy occurred, and that is not OK.

 

Without your voice, the Wall Street ethic would have continued to run rampant at Washington Hospital Center – and at health care facilities all over America. 

 

Your work’s not done there, but you’ve made your mark. It takes nurses who truly care about quality care to raise a stink about staffing decisions, so patients don’t have to suffer. 

 

And it takes nurses who truly care about a fair shake for Main Street to raise a stink about the Wall Street agenda, so working Americans don’t have to suffer!

 

You won’t be quiet, will you?  No. I know you won’t be silenced.

 

You know, it’s the same thing all over. Right here in Washington, politicians are fighting over how much to cut from our federal budget, but not because America’s broke. The fact is, our nation has never been richer! 

 

This deficit hysteria is an excuse, nothing less, for politicians to pay back their Wall Street backers with more tax cuts. 

 

Instead of downsizing, American needs jobs -- jobs with living wages. 

 

Instead of demonizing teachers, we need to prepare our children for the future by making sure every single one of them has access to quality public education. 

 

Instead of downgrading public pensions, we need to make sure all working people have solid retirement security. 

 

Let me say it again: America is not broke. 

 

But working people feel poor because our nation’s wealth has all gone to only a handful among us, and they and the Wall Street politicians would rather break promises to our parents and grandparents and deny our children a future than pay their fair share of taxes. 

 

Still, a lot of people are saying, "I don't need government services. I made it on my own and you should, too." But I say to anybody who buys into that myth: We didn't build this country with a philosophy that says, "I got mine."  

 

My father and grandfather didn’t get out of the mines alive by taking care only of themselves. We did it with each other, for each other. United.

 

Some of us may have climbed the ladder, but all of us built the ladder—we make it possible with our public education system, our local governments and our roads and highways.

 

In the labor movement, we're all about that ladder.

 

We built that ladder for our families and neighbors, and do you know what makes that ladder strong? It's the voice on the job and the security that comes from a union contract. That’s how we turn bad jobs into good jobs—that's how we build a ladder to the middle class.

 

That's what we are. That's what we do.

 

Together, we’re going to build up our working families, and return America to prosperity the only way it’s ever been done -- by working people standing shoulder-to-shoulder and fighting for what’s right -- and we won’t be quiet until we win! 

 

And together with the AFL-CIO's construction and manufacturing workers, pilots and painters, plumbers and public employees, engineers and bakers and others, we will be heard.

 

Sisters and brothers, let’s use our voice to piece together the fabric of America’s common life, by holding our elected leaders accountable. 

 

We’ll hold them to a simple standard: Are they helping or hurting working families?

 

And we’ll build up our labor movement—in the workplace and in political life. 

 

We want an independent labor movement strong enough to return balance to our economy, fairness to our tax system, security to our families and moral and economic standing to our nation.

 

We can’t simply build the power of any political party or any candidate. For too long we’ve been left after the election holding a canceled check and asking someone to pay attention to us.  No more!  No more!

 

Our goal is not to help candidates or parties, our goal is to improve the lives of working families and strengthen our country, and that’s what we’re going to do. 

 

When it comes to politics, we’re looking for real champions of working women and men.  

 

And I have a message for some of our “friends.”  It doesn't matter if candidates and parties are controlling the wrecking ball or simply standing aside—the outcome is the same either way. 

 

If leaders aren't blocking the wrecking ball and advancing working families' interests, working people will not support them. This is where our focus will be—now, in 2012 and beyond.

 

We will uphold the dignity of work and restore respect for working people. 

 

This year, teachers, nurses and firefighters have been vilified. 

 

Decent jobs with economic security have been cast as more than America's workers deserve. Low-wage, part-time, temporary, no-benefit work is being sold as the "new normal" for our economy.

 

Well, that “new normal” is not good enough. And you’ve taken a stand against it, and so have working people all across America.  

 

We've been given a moment, and it's our job to turn this moment into a movement.  

 

It has to be a movement for jobs.

 

It has to be a movement big enough for every worker who wants to form a union to bargain for a better life.

 

It has to be a movement to fight against intimidation, and for an economy that honors the dignity of all workers and our fundamental freedoms every single day.

 

We'll work for it. We'll stand for it -- Together. To bring out the best in America.  To bring out the best in ourselves, and each other.

 

To build the future we know we can have, we must have, for ourselves, for our children, for our grandchildren.

 

And we will never, ever back down.

 

It’s time to stand together against the worst of Wall Street, with the best of America. 

 

Stand for those who want to work but who cannot find jobs, for the families fighting to keep their homes out of foreclosure, for the workers trying to keep jobs that are good enough to support families and send kids to college, for our veterans and young people, for health care workers, for private workers, for public workers, for all workers.

 
Thank you, and God bless you and the work you do.

AFL-CIO's Trumka Calls for Labor Movement Separate from Parties: 'I've Had a Snootful of This Shit!'

by John Nichols

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka sent his strongest signal yet about the labor movement’s frustration with the dysfunctional politics of the moment—where Republicans go to extremes on behalf of big banks and multinational corporations, Democrats compromise and working families are left out of the equation.

Speaking this week at the National Nurses United conference AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka told those gathered, "Together, we’re going to build up our working families, and return America to prosperity the only way it’s ever been done -- by working people standing shoulder-to-shoulder and fighting for what’s right -- and we won’t be quiet until we win!"

Speaking Tuesday to the National Nurses United conference in Washington, where more than one thousand nurses from across the country rallied to begin the push to replace the politics of setting for less with a unapologetic demands for a new economic agenda, Trumka found a plenty of takers for his agressively progressive message.

“We want an independent labor movement strong enough to return balance to our economy, fairness to our tax system, security to our families and moral and economic standing to our nation,” declared Trumka, who in recent months has been repositioning the AFL-CIO as a force that will hold Republicans and Democrats to what he describes as “a simple standard: “Are they helping or hurting working families?”

“We can’t simply build the power of any political party or any candidate. For too long we’ve been left after the election holding a canceled check and asking someone to pay attention to us. No more! No more!” the federation president, a former United Mineworkers union chief, shouted above the cheers of the nurses.

Then he described a scenario all too familiar to union activists: that of trying to get officials who are supposed to be allies of the working Americans to act on their behalf with the same energy that Republicans bring to aiding corporations.

“For too long, we’ve been left after Election Day holding a canceled check, waving it about—‘Remember us? Remember us? Remember us?’—asking someone to pay a little attention to us,” recalled Trumka, who like many union leaders was frustrated with the failure of the Obama administration and Democrats in Congress to pass the Employee Free Choice Act and other needed labor law reforms. “Well, I don’t know about you, but I’ve had a snootful of that shit!”

There was no way to misread Trumka’s message for Democrats who have strayed on issues ranging from EFCA to trade policy to mounting an absolute defense of Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.

“When it comes to politics, we’re looking for real champions of working women and men. And I have a message for some of our “friends.” It doesn’t matter if candidates and parties are controlling the wrecking ball or simply standing aside—the outcome is the same either way,” he explained. “If leaders aren’t blocking the wrecking ball and advancing working families’ interests, working people will not support them. This is where our focus will be—now, in 2012 and beyond.”

Trumka chose exactly the right setting in which to deliver that message. The NNU (which also welcomed this writer as a speaker at its gathering) has long advocated for a more miltant stance when it comes to politics, as evidenced this week by the union’s mass protest outside the headquarters of the US Chamber of Commerce. As the nurses blocked traffic, NNU executive director Rose Ann DeMoro led the crowd in chanting “Our street!” and then pointing at the Chamber building and shouting “Wall Street!”

That determination to take the fight to Wall Street is at the heart of the NNU’s new “Main Street Contract for the American People” that, among other things, demands that elected officials take a “Which Side Are You On?” pledge.

The pledge contrasts Wall Street’s push for “tax cuts for the rich and powerful” and “replacing Medicare with vouchers” with a Main Street Contract that seeks:

1. Jobs at living wages to reinvest in America.

2. Equal access to quality, public education.

3. Guaranteed healthcare with a single standard of care.

4. A secure retirement with the ability to retire in dignity.

5. Good housing, and protection from hunger.

6. A safe and healthy environment.

7. The right to collectively organize and bargain.

8. A just taxation system where corporations and the wealthy pay their fair share.

9. Restoring the promise—life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for all.

As Trumka speaks about that “simple standard” to demand of elected officials, politicians and their parties, he and the rest of the labor movement could find few better places of beginning than that pledge to support the NNU’s “Main Street Contract for the American People.”

© 2011 The Nation

New world re-order

The Zeitgeist Movement spreads to Ventura County

By Shane Cohn 05/12/2011

One state, two state, red state, blue state. Partisan divide. Republicans. Democrats. Tea Partiers. Dictators. War on terror, war on drugs. Spending cuts. Health care. Tax hikes. Birthers. Oil. Privatization. Credit rating. Scorched earth. Political intransigence. How do we save the world?

The Zeitgeist Movement (TZM) believes the solution lies in a resource-based economy in a modern global society. Peter Joseph — The Zeitgeist Movement founder whose controversial films have spawned a revolution — is calling for a top-to-bottom global makeover of society.

So is an enormous worldwide following that continues to multiply.

I met with Joseph at a coffee shop in Venice Beach, as arranged by a member of the Ventura County Chapter of The Zeitgeist Movement. A man dressed in black with a slightly unkempt goatee and eyes curious and clear, Joseph is startling yet approachable. And for a man whose confident revelations seem to spin as fast as Superman can fly, he is easy to speak with. So I asked him a question thousands of people have already asked him since he released a series of controversial, anti-establishment Zeitgeist films and founded The Zeitgeist Movement in 2009.

Can the world we live in really be re-imagined into something more sustainable, something mirroring near-Utopia?

And so he began presenting the idea that the economic system we live in is a sick paradigm for self-destruction, where the main problem is not the flaws in the system but the entirety of the system. He began throwing around a number of ways for the transition to occur, most hinging on the elimination of the monetary-based economy that makes the world go round and establishing an automated work force to replace menial labor.

Backed by credible examples and hard data, the essential message in Joseph’s three films and the movement’s charter can be summed up as this: Our greatest social problems are the direct results of our economic system. The monetary-based system on which the world operates is a broken and corrupt scheme that promotes obsolescence for the sake of profit. Sustainability and resourcefulness only hinder that idea in a monetary-based economy. If there is not a radical global shift toward a sustainable, tech-driven and, yes, a moneyless society, class division will dramatically increase as the world’s resources are depleted. Humans cannot escape nature’s dictatorship, and without a system that centers on resources as the vital principle, human quality of life will systematically deteriorate.

The goal of a resource-based economy is to create a unified systems approach to global management based on what the earth’s resources are needed for and then applied in the most strategic and scientific way. 

Danette Wallace, founder and director of the TZM Ventura County chapter said when she first watched Zeitgeist: Addendum, she was struck by the concept of a resource-based economy. “It hit me like a ton of bricks. It was something I never heard of before. I had been researching the money system for years, and I knew it was a non-sustainable system. Nobody had ever offered a solution for it, just temporary fixes here and there. But when he was talking about this concept, I sat straight up and thought it was so amazing. I’ve never been an activist before. It never appealed to me. But this is something that can help everything.”

A filmmaker and musician, 31-year-old Joseph was raised in North Carolina, the son of a mail carrier and social worker. An avid percussionist, he attended a prestigious conservancy for college, but dropped out when he realized the debt he was accruing was leading him headfirst into the workforce where he would toil to clear his name from debt as another cog in the system. So he worked sporadically as a musician and film editor, but on account of his twisted fascination with the economic system, he began working as a day trader. As Joseph began studying and investigating the money-based system that fuels economies, he finally had enough. He drew from his creative background to craft Zeitgeist: The Movie, which he launched online to address his frustrations with the system. 

His life was never the same. 

Along came the viewers, then the need for a website, a DVD, a noncommercial release and eventually inclusion in film festivals. Though Joseph has since admitted that some of the radical claims made in that first movie are not associated with current Zeitgeist rhetoric since the movement itself was established after the second film, its appeal was global and it became obvious to him that the citizens of the world craved a radical systemic shift, and sought answers.

Joseph didn’t know it, but his ideas were directly in line with those of renowned 95-year-old futurist Jacque Fresco and his organization The Venus Project. Fresco’s Venus Project is a “comprehensive plan for social reclamation in which human beings, technology, and nature will be able to coexist in a long-term, sustainable state of dynamic equilibrium,” according to the website.

After Fresco viewed the Zeitgeist film online, he reached out to Joseph and turned him on to some of his books that center on the idea of a resource-based economy, which Fresco is widely credited for developing. Within that idea alone, Joseph felt he had the ability to answer the questions his film posited. He soon thereafter released Zeitgeist: Addendum, featuring Fresco and his Venus Project, at which point the project grew into a full scale movement.

When Joseph released the movement’s third and most recent film, Zeitgeist: Moving Forward, earlier this year, people throughout the world tuned into the premiere: 340 theaters, 60 countries, 295 cities and 30 different languages.

Having amassed an estimated 500,000 members worldwide since its inception in 2009, TZM may be the largest, most rapidly expanding global grassroots movement in the continuum of social change.

“Basically, we’re just trying to point out that what society is doing is not sustainable,” said Joseph. “We’re talking about a complete physical reconstruction of society so it can be sustainable. So, public awareness is the first step, and we’re still not even remotely close to that.”

“The idea is basing all decisions initially on resources and learning to maximize their efficiency,” 

Joseph elaborated.

“You begin to realize you can create a world where people have access to things they would never have access to in their lives. Instead of ownership, which in most contexts is very wasteful, you create a system of sharing for certain things…. It’s a totally different comprehension of society where we need maturity to understand a world where people actually share the world and respect each other’s activities instead of it all being about property.”

For as much momentum and awareness as TZM has generated, its startling proclamations have obviously attracted the naysayers who decry TZM as an arm of communism, conspiracy theorists, anarchy, or just wide-eyed dissidents dreaming of an unattainable Utopia.

But Joseph welcomes such dialogue and calmly dismisses such claims made against him and TZM, using such opportunities to further expand the ideas of values, resource economics and sustainability in a global system.
“They call it a Utopia and say it can’t happen,” said Joseph. “They can’t fathom it because they are so used to the deprived, neurotic, twisted world where people are trying to screw each other over as fast as possible for their own self-interest, which is essentially what this system is based on.

“It’s not about getting mad and breaking windows. That doesn’t do anything but reinforce power and lead to more police, more military, and that can lead to a police-state. Ultimately, we want concentrated nonviolent action, not against the U.S. but against the entire global manifold, saying ‘you can’t do anything if we don’t participate.’ The fabric of the system is based on participation in it.”

Joseph isn’t exempt from the system in any way, nor does he claim to be. As he consistently reiterates, society is far from being aware and capable of such a dramatic shift and it will takes years of outreach to slow-burn into the reality he and many have imagined.

Formed in June 2010, the Ventura County Chapter of TZM boasts a membership of about 50, with approximately a dozen regulars attending biweekly meetings. Members discuss ways to canvass for mass awareness, distribute TZM films and discuss ideas and technology that support a resource-based economy. 

“This is something that literally includes every human on the planet,” said Wallace, who also co-hosts a weekly Zeigeist Internet radio address. “I feel really fulfilled, and the people I come into contact with have the same feelings and goals.”

TZM chapters continue popping up in far reaches of the world, surpassing any expectation Joseph ever had. It’s undeniable that the ideas presented by TZM have a global appeal, helping quench a thirst for an alternative operating system of reality and satisfy the desire for a sustainable future. TZM is not a threat of any kind, though Joseph admits to having received plenty of death threats for challenging the status quo. Instead, it aims at being more of a wake-up call to the reality that if collective human thought and behavior continue to function solely as a self-serving financial mechanism, a social breakdown is imminent.

Joseph, Wallace and fellow TZM members across the world know there will never be a religion or ideology that unites humanity. But critically thinking and sharing ideas about a sustainable future, as presented by TZM, has them believing that this may be the best shot the world has.   

To watch the Zeitgeist films, go to www.zeitgeistmovie.com. Or to read more about TZM, visit www.thezeitgeistmovement.com. For more information about the Ventura County chapter, visit www.zmvc.org.
shane@vcreporter.com
 

REPORT: You Have More Money In Your Wallet Than Bank Of America Pays In Federal Taxes

http://thinkprogress.org/2011/02/26/main-street-tax-cheats/

Today, hundreds of thousands of people comprising a Main Street Movement — a coalition of students, the retired, union workers, public employees, and other middle class Americans — are in the streets, demonstrating against brutal cuts to public services and crackdowns on organized labor being pushed by conservative politicians. These lawmakers that are attacking collective bargaining and cutting necessary services like college tuition aid and health benefits for public workers claim that they have no choice but than to take these actions because both state and federal governments are in debt.

But it wasn’t teachers, fire fighters, policemen, and college students that caused the economic recession that has devastated government budgets — it was Wall Street. And as middle class workers are being asked to sacrifice, the rich continue to rig the system, dodging taxes and avoiding paying their fair share.

In an interview with In These Times, Carl Gibson, the founder of US Uncut, which is organizing some of today’s UK-inspired massive demonstrations against tax dodgers, explains that while ordinary Americans are being asked to sacrifice, major corporations continue to use the rigged tax code to avoid paying any federal taxes at all. As he says, if you have “one dollar” in your wallet, you’re paying more than the “combined income tax liability of GE, ExxonMobil, Citibank, and the Bank of America“:

[Gibson] explains, “I have one dollar in my wallet. That’s more than the combined income tax liability of GE, ExxonMobil, Citibank, and the Bank of America. That means somebody is gaming the system.”

Indeed, as politicians are asking ordinary Americans to sacrifice their education, their health, their labor rights, and their wellbeing to tackle budget deficits, some of the world’s richest multinational corporations are getting away with shirking their responsibility and paying nothing. ThinkProgress has assembled a short but far from comprehensive list of these tax dodgers — corporations which have rigged the tax system to their advantage so they can reap huge profits and avoid paying taxes:

- BANK OF AMERICA: In 2009, Bank of America didn’t pay a single penny in federal income taxes, exploiting the tax code so as to avoid paying its fair share. “Oh, yeah, this happens all the time,” said Robert Willens, a tax accounting expert interviewed by McClatchy. “If you go out and try to make money and you don’t do it, why should the government pay you for your losses?” asked Bob McIntyre of Citizens for Tax Justice. The same year, the mega-bank’s top executives received pay “ranging from $6 million to nearly $30 million.”
- BOEING: Despite receiving billions of dollars from the federal government every single year in taxpayer subsidies from the U.S. government, Boeing didn’t “pay a dime of U.S. federal corporate income taxes” between 2008 and 2010.
- CITIGROUP: Citigroup’s deferred income taxes for the third quarter of 2010 amounted to a grand total of $0.00. At the same time, Citigroup has continued to pay its staff lavishly. “John Havens, the head of Citigroup’s investment bank, is expected to be the bank’s highest paid executive for the second year in a row, with a compensation package worth $9.5 million.”
- EXXON-MOBIL: The oil giant uses offshore subsidiaries in the Caribbean to avoid paying taxes in the United States. Although Exxon-Mobil paid $15 billion in taxes in 2009, not a penny of those taxes went to the American Treasury. This was the same year that the companyovertook Wal-Mart in the Fortune 500. Meanwhile the total compensation of Exxon-Mobil’s CEO the same year was over $29,000,000.
- GENERAL ELECTRIC: In 2009, General Electric — the world’s largest corporation — filed more than 7,000 tax returns and still paid nothing to U.S. government. They managed to do this by a tax code that essentially subsidizes companies for losing profits and allows them to set up tax havens overseas. That same year GE CEO Jeffery Immelt — who recentlyscored a spot on a White House economic advisory board — “earned total compensation of $9.89 million.” In 2002, Immelt displayed his lack of economic patriotism, saying, “When I am talking to GE managers, I talkChina, China, China, China, China….I am a nut on China. Outsourcing from China is going to grow to 5 billion.”
- WELLS FARGO: Despite being the fourth largest bank in the country, Wells Fargo was able to escape paying federal taxes by writing all of its losses off after its acquisition of Wachovia. Yet in 2009 the chief executive of Wells Fargo also saw his compensation “more than double” as he earned “a salary of $5.6 million paid in cash and stock and stock awards of more than $13 million.”

In the coming months, politicians across the country are going to tell Americans that the only way to stave off huge deficit and balance the budgets is by gutting programs for the poor, eviscerating support for the middle class, eliminating labor rights, and decimating the government’s ability to serve the public interest. This is a lie. The United States is the richest country in the history of the world, and income inequality is higher now than it has been at any time since the 1920′s, with the top “top 1 percentile of households [taking] home 23.5 percent of income in 2007.”

It is simply unfair for Main Street Americans who’ve already been battered by one of the worst economic crises in our history to have to continue to sacrifice while the rich and well-connected continue to rip off taxpayers and avoid paying their fair share. That’s why a Main Street Movement consisting of Americans who are fed up with the status quo is rocking the nation, and one of its first targets should be tax dodgers like Bank of America and Boeing.

UPDATEAll across the country, Main Street Americans are protesting tax dodgers like Bank of America. A picture from one such demonstration (HT: @loril):

UPDATEOn its Twitter account, US Uncut notes that protesters outraged at Bank of America's tax avoidance shut down a major branch in Washington, D.C. today.

UPDATEHundreds of demonstrators descended on a Bank of America branch in San Francisco, some carrying signs mocking the bank's logo as "Bankrupting America" (HT: @jashsf):

UPDATEOne Uncut US demonstrator carried a sign that read: "I pay almost 1/3 of my measly income, Bank of America pays NOTHING?!!!" (HT: @allisonkilkenny):

UPDATEThis art school dropout in Maine was outraged at having to pay more taxes than Bank of America (HT: RawStory):