Remember how "chips" was a major driver of the economy in the 80s and 90s? Then the Internet drove the economy late 90's and early 2000s? The world understands that "green energy" is the next big industry that will drive the world economy. Actually, the rest of the world has understood this for some time and has been investing and inventing and innovating and building. Meanwhile over here America's big oil and coal companies bought themselves a Presidency and an anti-government ideology and a climate-change-denial industry that has cost us 8 years and counting.

Now we're playing catch-up, and the rest of the world is determined to keep us from taking the lead.

In The Big Chickens Keep Coming Home to Roost, Leo Hindrey writes about the Chinese plan to buy part of the wind-generation arm of a company called AES,

China's state-controlled investment fund, China Investment Corp. (CIC), plans to invest $2.2 billion to acquire 15% of the stock and, forebodingly, 35% of the actual wind-generation business of AES, the Arlington, VA-based company that is deeply involved in developing and managing vital aspects of our nation's critical infrastructure - specifically, our power grids, electricity transmission and alternative energy production.

Hindrey expects China to use its stake in this company to get them to buy components from Chinese instead of American companies, as they help grow the American green grid.

...anyone who has ever been in business knows that a massive 35% ownership stake will inevitably create "incentives" for Chinese-sourced products to be used in AES's projects here in the U.S., incentives which will undercut our domestic innovation and against which no fair-dealing American manufacturer can easily compete.

. . . And strong evidence of this predisposition can be found in the new Chinese-sponsored $1.5 billion wind farm in Texas that recently applied to the federal government for financing from the stimulus package - a wind farm that will create only 30 permanent jobs in the U.S. but 2,000 to 3,000 permanent jobs in China where the wind turbines will be manufactured.

This will means lots and lots of jobs going to China. His solution?

Rather than allowing CIC and others to, on the one hand, use U.S. tax dollars to stimulate their economies and, on the other, often acquire the very technologies which represent much of our future jobs opportunity, our government needs to start buying American, bolstering domestic manufacturing, and protecting our intellectual property.

American competitiveness is severely hobbled by our "free market" and anti-government attitudes. Other countries have national economic/industrial strategies and we don't. Please read this from Hindrey:

In the world today, there are two general sets of business and trade rules. One set resides in the older developed countries, such as the U.S. and Europe, where companies still compete mostly on their own on the basis of their business acumen and product value differentiation. The other set resides in the world's largest emerging markets, most notably China, where there are elaborate policies to protect domestic enterprises, induce foreign corporations to shift their production facilities and technology to them, and anoint selected "champions" as the nations' chosen global competitors - and, as we are seeing with the AES deal, make overseas investments that gobble up competing facilities and technologies.

It is crucial to our future to understand that the rest of the world is moving ahead full-speed with the green revolution and that our competitors have developed national strategies where their governments work to guide/assist and grow their businesses to this end. And we have not. We are held back from this by our "free market" belief that it is "wrong" for our own government to help our own people and businesses.

One way our competitors hold us back is by encouraging this internal American "free market" and anti-government ideology. When we tried to get a "Buy American" requirement in the stimulus plan our competitors cried "protectionism" - so we weakened it. The result was that our stimulus dollars created lots of jobs - in other countries! One Texas wind farm deal, for example,

The group’s calculations last week put the number of American jobs at a little more than 300 — most of them temporary construction jobs, along with about 30 permanent positions once the wind farm is operating. Mr. McGarr told The Wall Street Journal that more than 2,000 Chinese jobs would be created by the deal.

Look, it is time to just drop this ideological nonsense. Just stop listening to these self-serving ideologues and leave it behind. The free-market deregulation nonsense created the conditions that caused the economic collapse. We know that. Leave it behind. The anti-government nonsense is holding us back from repairing our economy and developing strategies to take part in the green manufacturing revolution. We know that. Leave it behind.

When people keep telling you that the earth is flat and demanding that we follow flat-earth policies that keep harming us and holding us back, over and over, you finally have to stop listening to them and leave them behind. It's time. Let's start doing what organized, intelligent adults should be doing: taking care of each other, empowering each other, bringing each other up. That is what government is and that is what it can do if we let it. Let's give it a try.

The transformation of America’s environmental movement began, as ex-United Steelworkers board member David Foster recalls, in late 2004 in a borrowed conference room at a table surrounded by union officials, top aides and the always-present group of Washington assistants.

“We’re in this together,” Foster remembered Sierra Club Executive Director Carl Pope and Frances Beinecke, head of the Natural Resources Defense Council, telling USW President Leo Gerard.

About the same time, another group of environmentalists began networking with equally unlikely partners.

Jonathan Lash, president of the World Resources Institute, asked General Electric CEO Jeff Immelt to help lobby for a national climate policy. The dialogue they launched eventually became the basis of legislation now in Congress to cap greenhouse gas emissions.

“We had been lobbying for what we felt was right but not seeing the interconnectedness,” Foster said of the different efforts and their unusual coalitions.

Today, alliances between Big Business, labor and environmental groups — once nearly impossible to imagine — are not only restructuring political advocacy but also shaping policy in President Barack Obama’s Washington.

Labor unions, Fortune 500 corporations, utility companies and other corporate interests have joined forces with environmentalists in at least five different lobbying coalitions. The labor-environmentalist pact eventually became the Blue-Green Alliance, a strategic partnership of six unions, NRDC and the Sierra Club. And the meetings between Immelt and Lash grew into the United States Climate Action Partnership, an association of 26 utilities, manufacturers and technology companies and five environmental organizations.

All of the groups are focused on a very big goal: a cap-and-trade system that will curb greenhouse gas emissions across the economy.

“We are talking about transforming the energy economy of the country and the world,” said Beinecke. “Our aim is to have the biggest tent possible, taking into account what the concerns are — from business to labor to the environmental community — and crafting something that can get the broader support.” 

The alliances are particularly remarkable because in the past, environmentalists had frequently battled with both labor and business over conservation efforts, new environmental standards and cleanups.

“It was a fairly ‘out there’ decision,” Beinecke said of forging the alliances, “because you were going in not knowing what you were going to come out with.”

Read full story...

The Tax Revolters burst onto the national scene amid an inflation-battered economy. They blamed “big government” for what ailed America, and they offered a simple remedy: cut taxes. Lower taxes, they promised, would get average Americans back on track.

The Tea Party zealots have, like the Tax Revolters, also coalesced in tough economic times. They attack “big government,” too. They even make the same promises about taxes.

But the Tea Party types, so far at least, haven’t scored any early political success. The Tax Revolters did. In 1978, in a ballot-box stunner, they passed a statewide initiative in California known as Prop 13, an unprecedented cap on property taxes.

Within a few short years, almost half America’s states had followed suit with tax cuts and caps of their own. In 1980, at the national level, this Tax Revolt surge would carry Ronald Reagan into the White House. One year later, a pliant Congress would give President Reagan the biggest across-the-board federal tax cut in U.S. history.

Tax relief had become, in the wink of an eye, America’s most potent political creed. Tax cutting and capping would go on to dominate the nation’s political discourse for the next three decades, an entire generation.

And what do we have to show for all this cutting and capping? Last week, researchers offered up two new studies that offer up a useful assessment.

The first, funded by the Social Security Administration, looks at the wealth of American families. That wealth, the Tax Revolters assured us,would start amassing again once taxpayers yanked “big government” out of our pockets.

The second new study zeroes in on state and local taxes. After years of tax revolting, this Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy report asks, who exactly is paying taxes at the state and local level? Who has benefited the most, in tax terms, from the Tax Revolt the Tea Party zealots are now so fervently seeking to extend?

The answer: The rich have benefited the most. The Tax Revolt that began back in the late 1970s has, in state after state, let the affluent off the tax hook.

In fact, notes the new Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy analysis, “nearly every state and local tax system takes a much greater share of income from middle- and low-income families than from the wealthy.”

In the entire United States, the analysis adds, “only two states require their best-off citizens to pay as much of their incomes in taxes as their very poorest taxpayers must pay, and only one state taxes its wealthiest individuals at a higher effective rate than middle-income families have to pay.”

America’s most affluent 1 percent now pay, on average, just 6.4 percent of their incomes in state and local taxes. But they actually pay even less than that, since they can deduct their state and local taxes from their federal tax bill. The state and local tax burden on America’s rich, after taking this offset into account, drops to 5.2 percent.

Middle-income families — to be precise, those families who make up the middle fifth of America’s income distribution — pay, after the federal offset, 9.4 percent of their incomes in total state and local taxes.

America’s poorest families pay even more. Tax collectors take 10.9 percent of the incomes of households in the nation’s bottom 20 percent, more than double the share they take from the incomes of the nation’s top 1 percent.

The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy paper, Who Pays? A Distributional Analysis of the Tax Systems in All 50 States, covers non-elderly households. Incredibly, the study details, some states “ask their poorest residents — those in the bottom 20 percent of the income scale — to pay up to six times as much of their income in taxes as they ask the wealthy to pay.”

Now you could argue that none of this matters. The Tax Revolters, after all, didn’t claim that their tax cutting and capping would have low- and middle-income people paying taxes at a lower rate than the rich. They claimed, instead, that massive tax cuts, taken as an amorphous whole, would help just about everybody get considerably richer.

That hasn’t happened, as Brookings Institution researchers Barry Bosworth and Rosanna Smart document in a paper just published by the Boston College Center for Retirement Research, with funding support from Social Security.

Bosworth and Smart “explore the consequences of the housing price bubble and its collapse for the wealth of older households.”

Along the way, the two investigators dive into the overall family wealth data the Federal Reserve has been collecting since the early 1980s. Tapping into another federal data set, they bring the family net worth picture up-to-date for 2009.

For low- and middle-income families, their numbers tell a depressing story.

All American households — poor, middle, and rich — have lost wealth since the subprime mortgage collapse and last fall’s financial meltdown. On average, since 2007, Americans have lost 26 percent of their total net worth.

But low- and middle-income households under age 50 haven’t just lost a big chunk of the wealth they held in 2007. These households have actually lost all the wealth they had gained since 1983, the first year with Federal Reserve family wealth data available.

Back then in 1983, the bottom third — by income — of U.S. families under age 50 had an average $24,000 in net worth to their names, as measured in year 2000 dollars. The housing bubble helped boost this bottom-third average net worth to $27,000 in 2007.

Today, in the wake of that bubble’s collapse, researchers Bosworth and Smart put average bottom-third net worth at just $17,000, in those same year 2000 dollars.

Middle-income households under age 50, meanwhile, held an average net worth of $50,000 in 1983. The current net worth of this middle third, after adjusting for inflation: $45,000.

Older households in the bottom and middle income thirds — those over age 50 — have, to be sure, seen their after-inflation net worths increase between 1983 and 2009. But these households have lost at least 22 percent of the wealth they held in 2007. As older families, Bosworth and Smart note, they now “have less time to recover.”

That recovery may take some time.

Back in the middle of the 20th century, governments in the United States routinely taxed the rich to pay for the programs that built a vibrant middle class. The Tax Revolt that began three decades ago, by demonizing taxes, gave the rich a free ride and gutted those programs.

That demonization today continues, with politicos beholden to that rich cynically fanning the Tea Party flames. They don’t care who gets burned. The rest of us should.

Sam Pizzigati edits Too Much, the online weekly on excess and inequality.

A 20 gigawatt wind farm that will be the world's largest is scheduled for completion by 2020 and, as the Bloomberg article also notes, the country will also be building the world's largest solar installation and embarking on an enormous reforestation project. (They've either been paying attention to the latest research indicating that forests can attract their own rain, or they're just sick to the teeth of the dust storms. Either way, they're being proactive.) For a country that doesn't want to be tied to binding international targets, China's still doing a good job of jumping into the climate problem with both feet.

How could we get there?

First, we obviously have very different economic and social considerations. China has high labor flexibility because they're bringing a lot of people up from nothing and they've made a point of creating jobs for their majority of unskilled and semi-skilled workers, so they've developed a track record of delivering on employment promises. The US job market experience over the past three decades has largely been one of trading downwards in both job quality and availability, leaving an electorate that's sensibly distrustful of the elite's willingness to secure new opportunities for them. Being at different points in our cultural dialogue, the exact same solutions aren't going to work in both countries.

But what about the New Deal, or the Danish model? At the previous link, Meteor Blades of Daily Kos discusses the need for new approaches at the president's upcoming jobs summit and quotes Robert Kuttner, from his book, Obama's Challenges:

On the one hand, the Danes are passionate free traders. They score well in the ratings constructed by pro-market organizations. The World Economic Forum Competitiveness Index ranks Denmark third, just behind the United States and Switzerland, and even the far-right Heritage Foundation ranks Denmark eleventh, giving it demerits only for the size of its public sector. Denmark’s financial markets are clean and transparent, its barrier to imports minimal, its labor markets the most flexible in Europe, its multinational corporations dynamic and largely unmolested by industry policies, and its unemployment rate of 2.8 percent, the lowest in the OECD. [Now 4.1%, and the lowest in the OECD – MB.]

On the other hand, Denmark spends about 50 percent of its GDP socially and has the world’s second-highest tax rate after Sweden, as well as strong trade unions and one of the world’s most equal income distributions. For the half of the GDP that they pay in taxes, the Danes get not just universal health insurance but also generous child-care and family-leave arrangements, unemployment compensation that typically covers around 95 percent of lost wages, free higher education, secure pensions in old age, and the world’s most creative system of worker retraining.

What makes the flexicurity model both attractive to workers and dynamic for society are six key features: full employment; strong unions recognized as social partners; fairly equal wages among different sectors, so that a shift from manufacturing to service-sector work does not typically entail a pay cut; employer freedom to hire and fire as necessary; a comprehensive income floor; and a set of labor-market programs that spend an astonishing 4.5 percent of Danish GDP on programs such as transitional unemployment assistance, wage subsidies, and highly customized retraining. In return for such spending, the unions actively support both employer flexibility and a set of tough rules to weed out welfare chiselers; workers are understood to have duties as well as rights.

Danish workers don't have to be afraid of losing their jobs, or switching jobs, or of being abused by their employers. Denmark clearly has the labor market flexibility and high employment that the Chinese prioritize, but without any of that unpleasant social unrest. Everybody gets what they want, nobody gets left behind.

Why won't we do that? More, why won't we do that so our industrial sector can fearlessly retool to profit from the biggest challenge our species faces?

Climate change is now responsible for so many natural disasters that it's already a major humanitarian crisis. Coastal cities may be washed away, flooding and shifting rainfall threatens food security, and melting ice is already causing water shortages that are projected to get worse.

Solving each of these problems is a job opportunity for millions of people. Indeed, because of the persistent truth that it takes more effort to fix a problem than to avoid it, humans have created an enormous amount of work for ourselves.

All the reasons to move fast on transitioning to an efficient, clean, renewable energy economy are good ones. There's no labor shortage preventing the work from getting underway at once. Most of our international competitors are doing it and making loads of money at it. So again, what's the hold up?

Update: And if we needed one more reason to act urgently to create these new industries, Nouriel Roubini, one of the economists exiled to the hinterlands of polite opinion for the crime of being right, says that under business as usual, the jobs aren't coming back for years. That's a major problem for political incumbents anywhere in the world.

I'm no brilliant, 11th dimensional chess player, but it seems to me that unless Democrats want to fall prey to a 'throw the bums out' sentiment in the next election, they'd better get moving on job creation with a powerful quickness.

We've got a jobs crisis in this country, and we need to fix it—now!

This fact shouldn't come as a surprise—in fact, a look around our nation makes it painfully obvious. The "official" unemployment rate is 10.2 percent--that's one in every 10 workers without a job—but that doesn't include the millions who have been unemployed and discouraged in the long term, and the millions more who are barely getting by with part-time work.

While millions go without work, some people are talking about "recovery"—as though numbers on Wall Street or profits at the big banks are the same as the real economy for working families. Wrong. We're still in crisis--and if we don't create jobs now, we will slide even further.

We have to put America to work—at good jobs that support families. We've tried out the everything-must-go, trickle-down, bubble economy for the past decade, and it's been a disaster. If we're really going to have a recovery--not just a recovery on Wall Street or for the big banks, but for real people—we absolutely must create new jobs.

Last summer at an event in Ohio, I met a young woman who is facing this crisis head-on. Lacey, who is not yet 20 years old, wants to become a teacher. But after her dad's factory closed and he was laid off, she had to put off her hopes of attending college to help her parents keep a roof over their heads. Lacey took a job in a school cafeteria--until the state budget got cut, and she got laid off, too. After months in which she and her father were both searching for jobs, Lacey said she felt lucky to find a part-time, fast-food job that pays half of what the cafeteria paid. Lacey has more unemployed friends than friends with jobs, and, like a third of workers her age, she's still living with her parents. Here's what Lacey said to me that day:

I wanted to be a teacher to help children get the education they need to get ahead. But now I feel like I'm just going backward myself. I'm really scared for the kids my age. We want to work. We need jobs.

We owe Lacey our support. We owe Lacey and millions like her a future to be hopeful about—not one to be feared. Lacey and her generation could find their future permanently stunted, their potential never fully met. That's unacceptable. We can't afford to let that happen.

The recovery package passed by Congress this year was a major accomplishment, and it saved our country a million jobs, but it only takes us part of the way toward repairing the damage done to our economy. We need serious, active investment in job creation. Our economy has lost more than 8 million jobs since the recession began in December 2007--that's a big hole to fill.

What does our jobs agenda look like? It's based on five key points that will give working families the help they need now and set us on a better course in the long term. Congress and the Obama administration must take these steps to turn around our dangerous slide.

1. We must extend the lifeline for jobless workers. The families who have been hit by this economic crisis are at risk of losing unemployment benefits, food assistance and health care benefits at the end of the year. We need to act now to prevent the human suffering and economic damage that would result.
2. Rebuild America's schools, roads and energy systems. We must put people to work to fix our nation's broken-down school buildings and invest in transportation, green technology, energy efficiency and more.
3. Increase aid to state and local governments to maintain vital services. State and local governments and school districts have a178 billion budget shortfall this year alone—while the recession creates greater need for their services. States and communities must get help to maintain critical frontline services, prevent massive job cuts and avoid deep damage to education just when our children need it most.
4. Fund jobs in our communities. While workers go without jobs, important work is left undone in our communities. These are not replacements for existing public jobs. They must pay competitive wages and should target distressed communities.
5. Put TARP funds to work for Main Street. The bank bailout helped Wall Street, not Main Street. We should put some of the billions of dollars in leftover Troubled Asset Relief Program funds to work creating jobs by enabling community banks to lend money to small- and medium-size businesses. If small businesses can get credit, they will create jobs. The administration can act on this immediately.

Families like Lacey's are hurting, and they need support. Millions are losing not only their jobs but also their homes, their health care and their hope. We can't afford to do nothing—America's working families are demanding action now and we intend to fight for them. We'll work with businesses, government and community organizations to make a jobs agenda a reality. We'll call out and fight back against those who would block progress, and we'll work hard to support leaders who do the right thing.

We need jobs now.

.

Out-of-work Utah workers may be eligible for an additional 13 weeks of emergency unemployment compensation.

Authorized Friday by the U.S. Department of Labor because the state's unemployment rate has been above 6 percent for three consecutive months, the extension becomes available in the benefit week beginning Nov. 8.

Eligible claimants can expect to receive their payments by Nov. 18.

Bill Starks, unemployment insurance director for the Utah Department of Workforce Services, which administers the program, said the agency is identifying unemployed Utahns who may be eligible and intends to notify them by Nov. 9.

After receiving a letter, potential recipients may file a claim on the department's Web site, http://jobs.utah.gov, or by calling one of four state offices:

» Salt Lake and south Davis counties: 801-526-4400;

» Weber and north Davis counties: 801-612-0877;

» Utah County: 801-375-4067;

» Elsewhere in Utah: 888-848-0688

This 13-week continuance follows an original extension in July of 2008 that provided 20 weeks of benefits to unemployed workers who had exhausted their regular state unemployment benefits. Starks said more than 15,000 unemployed Utahns have used up their original emergency benefits.

The reasons for both collapses were very much the same: people who believed that a totally free market, with no interference from government, is the way — the only way — to achieve prosperity pursued policies in the years preceding both crashes that allowed greed to rule and income to become heavily concentrated at the highest levels, leaving too little in the hands of most people to consume all that was being produced.

In both cases, credit was used to allow people with insufficient income to continue to buy. The economy kept rising — but in the end, this credit burst just made the collapse more dramatic.

The economic and political arguments after both crashes have also been remarkably similar, with conservatives calling for spending freezes and tax cuts, condemning proposals for government action to deal with the problems as "socialism."

What Franklin D. Roosevelt understood during the Great Depression and what we must see now is that this is a false debate. Capitalism and government intervention are not an either/or choice. We have to find ways to get the obvious benefits of the market system while minimizing that system's risks. And those ways necessarily involve government action.

"No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise," Winston Churchill once noted. "Indeed," he continued, "it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government — except all the others that have been tried." The same could accurately be said of capitalism: No one should pretend that capitalism is perfect or all-wise. Yet those who worship the market as God pretend just that. Capitalism is the worst economic system — except for all the others that have been tried.

The Founding Fathers of the United States well recognized the flaws in democracy. As Churchill would nearly two centuries later, they believed that democracy is the best — or 'least bad' — political system, but that it contains within it many inherent dangers.

We need to realize now that capitalism is the 'least bad' economic system, and likewise, contains within it many problem areas. Therefore, we need an economy that is basically capitalist, but with a system of economic checks and balances to make it work properly and lessen those dangers.

One of the most prominent of those dangers is that income will become too concentrated at the top, undermining the functioning of a consumer-based economy. When Barack Obama said during the campaign, "When you spread the wealth around, it's good for everybody," opponents cried, "Socialism!" In fact, it is the only way to make modern capitalism work well.

Just a spoonful of socialism helps the capitalism go up.

Robert S. McElvaine teaches history at Millsaps College. A 25th anniversary edition of his book The Great Depression is being published this week by Three Rivers Press, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group.

Office of the Vice President

For Immediate Release - October 19, 2009

 Vice President Biden Unveils Report Focused on Expanding Green Jobs And Energy Savings For Middle Class Families

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Vice President Biden today unveiled Recovery Through Retrofit, a report that builds on the foundation laid in the Recovery Act to expand green job opportunities and boost energy savings by making homes more energy efficient.  Joining the Vice President today were Nancy Sutley, Chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality; Steven Chu, Secretary of Energy; Hilda Solis, Secretary of Labor; Shaun Donovan, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development; and Karen Mills, Administrator of the Small Business Administration. 

At a Middle Class Task Force meeting earlier this year, the Vice President asked the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) to develop a proposal for Federal action to lay the groundwork for a self-sustaining home energy efficiency retrofit industry. In response, CEQ facilitated a broad interagency process with the Office of the Vice President, eleven Departments and Agencies and six White House Offices to develop recommendations for how to use existing authority and funding to accomplish this goal.  These recommendations are described in detail in the Recovery Through Retrofit Report.   

“Recovery Through Retrofit is a blueprint that will create good green jobs – jobs that can’t be outsourced, and jobs that will be the cornerstones of a 21^st-Century economy,” said Vice President Biden. “And, thanks to the Recovery Act’s unprecedented investments in energy efficiency, we are making it easier for American families to retrofit their homes - helping them save money while reducing carbon emissions and creating a healthier environment for our families.” 

“This report builds on the foundation laid in the Recovery Act to expand green job and business opportunities for the middle class while ensuring that the energy efficiency market will thrive for years to come,” said Nancy Sutley, Chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality.  “An aggressive program to retrofit American homes and businesses will create more work, more savings, and better health for middle class Americans.”  

Existing techniques and technologies in energy efficiency retrofitting can reduce energy use by up to 40 percent per home and lower total associated greenhouse gas emissions by up to 160 million metric tons annually.  Retrofitting existing homes also has the potential to cut home energy bills by $21 billion annually.  Yet, despite the real energy cost savings and environmental benefits associated with improving home energy efficiency, a series of barriers have prevented a self-sustaining retrofit market from forming.  These barriers include a lack of access to information, financing and skilled workers.  

The recommendations and actions in this Report have been carefully designed to help overcome these barriers and to leverage Recovery Act funding to help ensure that the energy efficiency market will thrive long after the Recovery Act money is fully spent.    

Some recommendations in the report include:  

·        Provide American Homeowners with Straightforward and Reliable Home Energy Retrofit Information:  Consumers need consistent, accessible, and trusted information that provides a reliable benchmark of energy efficiency and sound estimates of the costs and benefits of home energy retrofits.   

·        Reduce High Upfront Costs, Making Energy Retrofits More Accessible:  Access to retrofit financing should be more transparent, more accessible, repayable over a longer time period, and more consumer-friendly.   

·        Establish National Workforce Certifications and Training Standards:  A uniform set of national standards to qualify energy efficiency and retrofit workers and industry training providers will establish the foundation of consumer confidence that work will be completed correctly and produce the expected energy savings and benefits.  Such standards should incorporate healthy and environmentally friendly housing principles, as outlined in the report titled, the Surgeon General’s Call to Action To Promote Healthy Homes (2009).  Proper certification and training standards will ensure that retrofitted homes are healthy homes.  Consistent high-level national standards will spur the utilization of qualified training providers that offer career-track programs for people of all skill levels, promote and expand green jobs opportunities and facilitate the mobilization of a national home retrofit workforce. 

To read the full report and recommendations, please go to http://www.whitehouse.gov/assets/documents/Recovery_Through_Retrofit_Final_Report.pdf

“As Secretary of Labor I'm working to help build the clean energy economy of tomorrow by investing in our workers today," said Secretary Solis "Training for green jobs can empower workers to climb the career ladder, sustain a family and provide a secure retirement. Through Recovery through Retrofit, we're committing to meet the needs of workers, employers and homeowners, so we can shape our clean energy future into one that supports working families and is inclusive of the diversity of our nation.”

"I am proud to join my colleagues today in announcing Recovery through Retrofit," said Secretary Donovan. "It will allow us to work closely together to remove barriers to creating more energy efficient homes for American families.  This initiative will not only lead to cost savings for homeowners and reduce negative environmental impact, but will also be a powerful vehicle for economic recovery by creating quality middle class jobs and lasting neighborhood benefits. This is another demonstration of HUD's commitment to creating jobs for the new economy in high growth industries by encouraging and investing in “green” building and energy retrofits." 

"This initiative will not only result in considerable cost savings for homeowners on their energy bills, but also put resources in the hands of green sector small businesses who will in turn create good-paying jobs in communities across the country," said SBA Administrator Mills. 

EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, who was unable to attend this event due to travel added, “This is the Recovery Act at work.  Communities will benefit from good jobs, families will benefit from lower energy bills, and we will all benefit from reduced air pollution and a growing green economy. Our Energy Star program can help families cut up to 30% off their energy bills -- saving the average household more than $700 a year through efficiency investments.  EPA is proud to be working with all of our partners to help people save money when they need it the most, and build a new foundation for prosperity through a growing green economy.” 

The Department of Energy today also announced $454 million under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act for energy efficiency efforts nationwide.

The Department is now accepting applications for a new $390 million "Retrofit Ramp-Up" program that will deploy innovative approaches to energy efficiency building retrofits. These Recovery Act funds will help create new partnerships to deliver energy bill savings to entire neighborhoods and towns.  Bringing energy retrofits to whole neighborhoods at a time will simplify the process for homeowners and significantly reduce costs. When applied on a national scale, the program could save billions of dollars annually in utility bills for households and businesses and create thousands of jobs across the country. In addition, the Energy Department announced $64 million in energy efficiency funding for cities, counties, and Indian tribes.  

"The Retrofit Ramp-Up initiative is designed to slice through the barriers identified in this report - inconvenience, lack of information, and lack of financing - and to make energy efficiency easy and accessible to all," said Secretary Chu.  "We want to make our communities more energy efficient, block by block, neighborhood by neighborhood -- eventually expanding to entire cities and states.  We can literally bring energy efficiency to the doorsteps of the American people."  

Separately, the Department of Energy will accept state proposals to use State Energy Grant or Energy Efficiency Conservation Block Grant funds for Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) pilots.  This is an innovative model which allows communities to provide financing to homeowners to install renewable energy systems and retrofit buildings that can be paid off over time on their property tax bills.  Today, the White House is announcing a “Policy Framework for PACE Financing Programs” developed through an interagency process to ensure that effective homeowner and lender safeguards are included in PACE programs.   

To read the framework, please go to http://www.whitehouse.gov/assets/documents/PACE_Principles.pdf

To ensure implementation of the Recovery Through Retrofit Report’s recommendations, CEQ will continue to convene an interagency Energy Retrofit Working Group which will be co-chaired by the Department of Energy, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Department of Labor, and the Department of Agriculture.   

The group will track the progress of the Report’s recommendations, develop additional strategies to support expansion of the retrofit market, including recommendations for rental housing, and operate as the single point of contact for the implementation of this effort.   Within thirty days, the group will submit an implementation plan to the Vice President.  Moreover, the group will report to the Vice President regularly on its progress toward implementing each of the recommendations identified in the Report. 

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What civilized country operates like this? In case God-and-country defenders of the status quo need reminding, America’s for-profit health insurance system serves neither.

Reform advocates must hammer away at this relentlessly: health insurance reform is a moral issue more than an economic one.

Nicholas Kristof delivered further proof that the system is morally bankrupt in the October 4 New York Times.

Travis and Michael Waddington hoped to donate a kidney to their father, David, 58, a wine retailer and victim of polycystic kidney disease. PKD had destroyed David’s kidneys. Since the disease is genetic, Travis and Michael needed to be tested for the disease themselves before donating. Yet a positive result might mean the sons might never be able to get insurance. So their doctors advised against getting tested. Another advised getting tested under fictitious names. To protect their sons, husband and wife shot down the idea, even at the risk of David’s life.

Eventually, David received a kidney from a deceased donor, but Michael recently began experiencing PKD symptoms and now faces an insurance nightmare now all too familiar, obtaining affordable insurance – or any insurance – after being diagnosed with a serious illness.

Closer to home, an acquaintance recently donated a kidney to his father under somewhat different circumstances, but with similar risks. Such acts of mercy by organ donors (talk about risky behavior) present insurers with an elective pre-existing condition, and present donors with a moral dilemma. Fortunately, his father’s insurance covered both transplant surgeries. But both the son’s own physician and the transplant surgeons recommended that he say nothing to his insurer. It was illegal to deny coverage or insurance to organ donors, doctors told him. Nonetheless, they often heard of it happening.

Why tempt fate? He told his insurer nothing.

Kristoff calls an insurance system that forces patients into such impossible choices, “the disgrace of the industrialized world.”

But that’s putting it mildly. As T.R. Reid puts it in The Healing of America, our system is virtually a worldwide laughingstock. One thing on which experts at international health care symposia can agree, Reid explains, is that the U.S. for-profit insurance system is a mess. “Bashing the U.S. system is a standard agenda item.”

Joanne Ford, a patient on Social Security disability and wearing Coke-bottle eyeglasses, arrived for a Remote Area Medical free clinic in Knoxville. She came hoping to get a new pair for free. But nearly last in line, she almost missed her chance. Interviewed by 60 Minutes, Ford said tearfully, “I am sad that we are the wealthiest nation in the world and we don’t take care of our own.”

Even the socialist bogeymen of Europe treat their own better.

For-profit insurance can be cruel and capricious, not unlike the age of Dickens that Keith Olbermann invoked in a recent hour-long commentary. America’s uninsured have "a 40 percent higher risk of death than their privately insured counterparts," a new Harvard study finds. Furthermore, 45,000 Americans a year die from lack of health insurance. Like Dickens’ London, America’s working poor too often are either invisible or else blamed as surplus population –– impediments to the economic fortunes of their “betters.”

It is a seasonal tradition to revisit cherished redemption stories during the coming dark nights around the solstice, to refresh human connections not just to family and friends, but to our fellow men. Defenders of the status quo, especially, need to refresh theirs.

America would do well to revisit those redemption stories earlier this year as it considers how best to rehabilitate a business more informed by Wall Street than A Christmas Carol. For-profit health insurance is rare in the civilized world, and rightly so. It is a cold-hearted business more interested in serving the numbers on its balance sheets than the humanity behind the numbers.

That calls into question the humanity of its defenders, like the conservative radio icon who brags about taking on all comers with half his brain tied behind his back. That would be the feeling half. The human half. The half that Messrs. Scrooge and Potter let atrophy as an impediment to being good men of business.

Right now, a popular caterer downtown has posters on her door. A child needs an operation. A strawberry blonde boy in an adult-sized straw hat. He has a severe immune deficiency disease. He is with his parents at Duke University Medical Center for a bone marrow transplant. There's a pancake breakfast to raise money.

You might as well hold a bake sale to buy a bomber.

What civilized country operates like this?

By STEVEN GREENHOUSE

Published: September 4, 2009

WASHINGTON — The A.F.L.-C.I.O.’s president has signaled a significant shift to try to move a long-stalled pro-union bill, saying he would support a change that calls for speedy unionization elections, a provision that would replace the much-attacked card-check provision.

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Times Topics: American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations

In an interview, John J. Sweeney, the federation’s president, said he would accept a fast election campaign instead of card check because it would meet his goal of minimizing management interference during organizing drives.

Mr. Sweeney said he “could live with” fast or snap elections “as long as there is a fair process that protects workers against anti-union intimidation by employers and eliminates the threats to workers.”

The move away from card check would be a victory for the business community. Randel Johnson, senior vice president for labor, immigration and employee benefits at the United States Chamber of Commerce, nonetheless criticized the proposal for elections after a short campaign.

“That has the effect as a practical matter of eliminating the ability of the employer to educate its employees about the potential adverse effects of unionization,” Mr. Johnson said. “It still begs the question, what is wrong with the existing secret ballot process?”

In recent months, several crucial Democratic senators have told organized labor that they could not round up the 60 votes needed to assure passage of any bill containing card check.

Despite such warnings, labor leaders continued to cling publicly to the idea; Mr. Sweeney’s comments were a major departure from that position.

“If modifying that in some way or another is going to bring some more votes for the bill, I think that’s worth it,” Mr. Sweeney said.

Under Mr. Sweeney’s idea, a secret ballot would be held probably within five or 10 days of a substantial number of workers petitioning for a union. Such a brief length of time would be far different from the current practice when campaigns often last two months, giving companies time to persuade workers to vote against a union.

Even before President Obama took office, labor made it clear that its No. 1 legislative goal was a law that would make organizing easier, including a so-called card-check provision that required employers to recognize a union as soon as a majority of workers signed cards favoring a union.

But card check faced huge opposition from Republicans and corporations, which complained that it would largely replace secret ballots. Under current law, companies that face organizing drives can insist on secret-ballot elections, which unions say they often lose because of management’s lengthy and intense anti-union campaigns.

In an interview Thursday evening, Richard Trumka, the A.F.L.-C.I.O.’s secretary-treasurer, who will become the federation’s president on Sept. 16, stopped short of endorsing fast elections.

He said the A.F.L.-C.I.O. wanted to make sure that any legislation contained three components: a process in which workers were free of intimidation; greater penalties against employers that break the law during organizing drives, for instance by firing outspoken union supporters; and binding arbitration to prevent employers from indefinitely dragging out negotiations without ever reaching a contract.

Business groups denounce the binding arbitration provision, saying it would be wrong to have federally appointed officials issuing rulings that determine a company’s wages, hours, pensions and working conditions.

Echoing Mr. Trumka, Mr. Sweeney said he would accept snap elections only as part of a bill that also called for binding arbitration and stiffer penalties against management.

Mr. Sweeney said President Obama had assured labor that as soon as health care legislation was passed — if it was passed — he would work with labor and the Democrats to pass the pro-union legislation, known as the Employee Free Choice Act.

Mr. Sweeney voiced optimism that the bill would pass.

“It’s going to be this year,” he said.

Mr. Sweeney said that corporate lobbyists would find it harder to attack fast elections than card check because business could no longer contend that labor wanted to eliminate “sacrosanct secret-ballot elections.” But some corporate lobbyists are already attacking snap elections as “ambush elections.”

David Bonior, a former House Democratic Whip who heads a group, America Rights at Work, that has campaigned for the pro-union bill, said he still hoped card check could be salvaged.

“The first preference for everybody in labor is the original bill,” he said. “And if we preserve the principles of the original bill and there are some changes — and if we can get 80 to 90 percent of what we started with — I think people would move forward on that.”

Meanwhile, a Gallup Poll released on Thursday found that while 66 percent of Americans continued to believe unions were beneficial to their own members, fewer than half of Americans — 48 percent, a record low — approved of unions. That was down from 59 percent a year ago.

Sign in to RecommendMore Articles in Business » A version of this article appeared in print on September 5, 2009, on page B3 of the New York edition.

Judy Barnett
Assistant to the President

801-972-2771

Richard Trumka admits that unions were outmaneuvered on a key element of the Employee Free Choice Act — a bill making it easier for workers to organize.

But the all-but-certain incoming president of the AFL-CIO says that legislative black eye will also carry a price — and warns that the business community and both parties ought to prepare for a more aggressive brand of labor politics once he’s in charge.

“[We] could have done a lot of things,” Trumka said in an interview with POLITICO, acknowledging that unions did not do enough to combat the business community’s portrayal of organized labor’s top legislative priority as merely an attempt to strip workers of the right to a private ballot in union elections.

“But we didn’t, and we are where we are.”

Beefy, blunt and with an accent that bears more than a trace of his western Pennsylvania roots, Trumka’s philosophical assessment about the bill known as EFCA could have just as easily been applied to the broader labor movement.

With domestic manufacturing a shadow of what it was, union membership has plummeted. And as if a decline in dues wasn’t enough of a threat, labor has been beset by high-level feuding and turf warfare in recent with years, when a significant group of unions broke from the national AFL-CIO and created their own federation, Change to Win.

It’s against this depressing backdrop that the unopposed Trumka is expected to take over the federation in September.

Now the AFL-CIO’s Secretary-Treasurer, the No. 2 slot, Trumka is unapologetically old-school labor in his view of corporate America. Like his father — whose picture dominates an office full of photographs — he worked in a coal mine. He rode to the presidency of the United Mine Workers as a reformer who wanted to democratize a fractured union and made a name for himself as a hardball player not afraid to do battle with equally tough coal companies.

He has served in his current post since 1995, when he ran on the same ticket with current AFL-CIO President John Sweeney, who is retiring, and was widely seen as being groomed to take over the federation.

Now 59 and poised to finally be organized labor’s de facto leader, Trumka says unions ceded too much to the political parties, and he intends to bolster labor’s voice.

“We’ll stake out a clear position when it comes to the economy ... and we’ll stick to that position,” he said. “We’ll support those people that do support it, and we’ll oppose those people that don’t ... whether they’re Democrat or Republican.”

In a sign that he won’t be afraid to anger some elements of the liberal coalition, Trumka doesn’t hesitate when asked about backing one recent Democratic convert, Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter.

Trumka, who keeps a farm and still votes in his native state, said confidently that Specter will “be there” with labor on the union organizing bill and will likely have the support of the Pennsylvania AFL-CIO in a potential Democratic primary next year.

“I think he’ll probably be endorsed and win the primary,” Trumka said.

The labor leader offered high praise tempered with some concern about the advisers President Barack Obama has surrounded himself with.

Asked if Obama is a labor president, Trumka said: “I think he’s been very sensitive and been good to workers, absolutely. He comes from a workers’ point of view. His background is that way.”

But what of the president’s retreat from the tough-on-trade policies he espoused during the heated Democratic primary? Where did that candidate go?

“I think he’s still over there,” Trumka said. “I think some people around him probably would like to see him move.”

And who would that be? “Some of his economic advisers,” Trumka said, acknowledging that he’s referring to National Economic Council Director and free-trader Lawrence Summers along with unnamed others.

April 9, 2009

WASHINGTON – Today, President Barack Obama announced that the General Services Administration (GSA) will accelerate its purchase of new cars for the government fleet by investing funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to buy about 17,600 new, fuel efficient vehicles produced by American auto companies by June 1, 2009.

On March 30, President Obama directed his administration to speed up the purchase of these vehicles to increase demand for American auto companies during these difficult economic times.  The GSA moved faster than any time in its history to launch this aggressive fleet purchase strategy.  By purchasing fuel efficient vehicles from American automakers over the next two months, this move will help stimulate the economy, support the auto industry, and achieve energy-efficiency goals.

President Obama said, “The problems that caused this economic crisis weren’t created in a day, and it will take time and hard work to get our economy back on track. But I am 100 percent committed to a strong American auto industry, and we will stand with America’s auto workers and their families during these difficult times.  As a part of our commitment to the American auto industry, I charged my administration with using Recovery Act funds to purchase a new fleet of fuel efficient government vehicles to increase demand for our American auto companies and stimulate the economy.  I am pleased to announce today that my team has moved swiftly to accelerate this purchase and give our American auto industry and our economy a boost.  This is only a first step, but I will continue to ensure that we are working to support the American auto industry during this difficult period of restructuring.”

Also today, President Obama’s Director of Recovery for Auto Communities and Workers, Dr. Edward Montgomery, visited Cleveland, Ohio to discuss the administration’s commitment to a strong American auto industry.  At a meeting with Governor Ted Strickland, members of the Ohio delegation and local officials, Dr. Montgomery discussed the accelerated fleet purchase and the administration’s efforts to stand behind American auto companies and their workers.

Details about the GSA accelerated fleet purchase are below: 

• The GSA will spend $285 million of Recovery Act Funds to purchase about 17,600 commercially available fuel efficient vehicles for the government fleet before June 1, 2009. All purchases will be made from manufacturers with an existing contract with the GSA, which are General Motors, Chrysler and Ford.

   

• This includes the purchase of 2,500 hybrid sedans that will be ordered by April 15. This is the largest one-time purchase of hybrid vehicles for the federal government fleet in history.
  

• By swapping out less efficient federal vehicles for new hybrid and fuel efficient ones, this strategy will reduce gasoline consumption by 1.3 million gallons per year and prevent 26 million pounds of CO² from entering the atmosphere.
  

• GSA will also dedicate $15 million to pilot advanced technology vehicles in the GSA Fleet. Pilot programs will focus on commercially available compressed natural gas and hybrid buses, and all-electric vehicles. These orders will be placed by September 30, 2009.

   

• Each vehicle purchased under the GSA’s accelerated strategy must have a higher miles-per-gallon rating than the vehicle it replaces with the overall goal of at least a 10 percent increase in fuel-efficiency for the entire procurement.
  

This accelerated GSA purchasing strategy is one component of the President’s overall commitment to supporting auto demand during this period of restructuring in the industry. Moving forward, the Administration will continue to work on several fronts to increase the flow of credit to auto consumers and dealers, and will work with Congress to pass an incentive program for people who turn in older, more fuel inefficient cars for cleaner cars. 

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And things are going to get a lot worse because the totals don't take into account the erosion of coverage in Utah and nationwide due to the recession.

"These numbers were very high even before the economic downturn," said Ron Pollack, executive director of Families USA, author of the report. "The key motivating factor is the cost of care, which as eaten away at working family budgets, and at the same time, their dollar is buying less care and costing more in co-payments and higher premiums, both for the families and the businesses that provide a medical insurance benefit."

There were 784,000 Utahns — 32.2 percent of residents under age 65 — uninsured at some point in the two past calendar years. Utah was at the national average — 33.1 percent.

In addition, 557,000 of those uninsured Utahns or 71 percent were uninsured for six months or more during that time.

An estimated 86.7 million Americans were uninsured at some point during 2007-08, Pollack said.

"The huge number of people without health coverage in Utah is worse than an epidemic. At this point, almost everyone in the country has had a family member, neighbor, or friend who was uninsured, and that's why meaningful health care reform can no longer be kept on the back burner," he said.

The Families USA report reveals additional important demographic information about uninsured Utahns:

More than four out of five, or 84 percent, were in working families, working full or part time.

More than half, or 53.9 percent, of those individuals and families with incomes below twice the poverty line — $42,400 of annual income for a family of four in 2008 — went without health insurance at some point in 2007-2008.

In addition, almost one quarter, or 23.2 percent, of those individuals and families with incomes at or above twice the poverty line went without health insurance at some point in 2007-2008.

While whites accounted for the largest number of uninsured, Hispanics/Latinos were much more likely to be uninsured than whites: 57.2 percent of Hispanics/Latinos went without health insurance in 2007-2008, compared to 27.7 percent of whites.

Interior boss Ken Salazar issued his first secretarial order Wednesday, a "moonshot for energy independence" that propels solar, wind, geothermal and biomass projects ahead of oil and gas development.

"For the last administration, renewable energy just was not a priority," Salazar said during a telephone news conference.

Not so for the Obama administration. With Salazar's declaration, the production, development and delivery of large-scale alternative-energy projects vault to the top of Interior's to-do list.

It was unclear Wednesday whether the federal order would complement -- or clash with -- similar efforts under way in Utah.

Through an initiative of Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr., the state has mapped its renewable zones and estimated the costs and benefits of development that appear beneficial for Utah. The state expects to funnel about $34 million from the federal stimulus package toward clean-energy projects.

A bill before the Legislature, sponsored by House Majority Leader Kevin Garn, R-Layton, would provide financial incentives for alternative-energy-equipment manufacturers and developers who want to work in the state.

And another measure, pushed by Sen. Curtis Bramble, R-Provo, would set up a mechanism to fund transmission lines to connect renewable-energy projects already producing electricity to the main grid.

That's the kind of planning that is necessary but has been lacking, said Marc Smith, executive director of the Denver-based Independent Petroleum Association of Mountain States.

"We support moving in a sustainable direction in regards to energy policy, and we support wind and solar," Smith said. "At the same time, we feel it's important for the administration to plan in a comprehensive manner" to determine the economic feasibility of transmission.

And with renewables accounting for less than 2 percent of the nation's energy, "double and double them again and you're still in the single digits," Smith said. "The irony is that natural gas both complements and enables renewable energy."

The Wilderness Society -- which has lobbied the White House for significant reform on how electrical grids are planned, built and managed -- applauded Salazar for "taking seriously the challenges global warming poses to our nation's health and well-being."

Salazar said that even if the Southwest's renewable zones excluded sensitive lands, enough area would remain to produce 88 percent of the West's energy needs with solar alone.

"There's huge potential here," he said.

Utah Clean Energy, a Salt Lake City-based nonprofit organization, in a report commissioned by Huntsman adviser Dianne Nielson, estimated that energy savings and renewables could meet all of the state's projected energy-demand growth through 2020.

Interior's first task will be to map -- as Utah has done -- the nation's renewable-energy zones in a way that doesn't harm the environment, Salazar said.

Another goal: Put people to work by clearing the backlog of alternative-energy-permit requests that lagged under the Bush administration.

Hundreds of applications for solar- and wind-energy permits piled up under the previous policy of speeding oil and gas development, putting the new energy economy's engineering and production employment on hold.

"With no permits," Salazar said, "there can be no jobs."

The quest for energy security will require working with other federal agencies, states and tribes to develop a way to deliver renewable energy to customers.

"We have to connect the sun of the deserts and the wind of the Plains," Salazar said, "to places where people live."

One Interior agency, the Bureau of Land Management, already has estimated that Western wind-project developers could build on 20.6 million acres. More than 25 million acres could go to solar development and geothermal potential covers more than 40 million acres. Wind- and wave-energy projects are possible on both coasts and in the Gulf of Mexico.

Salazar said the broad environmental impact studies the Bush administration completed for geothermal and wind development may undergo revisions to reflect the new renewable-energy focus.

But oil and gas development still is under way. "In the last six weeks we have had five major oil- and gas-lease sales onshore, netting more than $32 million in revenue for taxpayers," Salazar said. "And next week, I will be traveling to New Orleans to participate in a lease sale for the central Gulf of Mexico."

Interior has set up an energy and climate-change task force to measure renewable potential on public lands across the nation. The panel has been working since Jan. 21.

"This has been bad process. This has been bad form and I would suggest that this has been an abuse of the majority position by the Majority Party," Romero said.

Republican lawmakers, Governor Huntsman and national conservative pundits see preserving secret ballots as a necessary protection against proposed federal legislation that will supposedly make it easier for small businesses to unionize. They believe secret ballots are a fundamental component of democracy, and need to be protected in the state constitution.

But Senate Democrats argued at length that the constitutional amendment is a bad idea, calling the proposal irresponsible, a red herring, despicable, and based on fear and intimidation. This prompted Republican Sen. Steve Urquhart to urge lawmakers to keep their tempers in check during the stressful last days of the legislative session.

"Temperatures, obviously, are starting to rise in the body. I think there have been some fairly disparaging remarks made in the discussion we've just had," Urquhart said. "I just want to clarify that my vote isn't based on fear, my vote is based on reading the bill, looking into the issue, and simply deciding that I want to cast an ‘aye' vote."

All 21 Republicans in the Senate joined Urquhart in voting for the bill, while all Democrats said no. It now heads to the governor's desk to be signed. However, it will be up to voters in the 2010 general election to decide if the amendment should be added to the constitution.

The hearings, which will be conducted in two sessions over one day, precede the introduction of any formal piece of legislation. But as one labor official describes it, leadership seems to be "clearing the deck," readying the body for quick action once issues with Senate seats in Minnesota and Illinois are resolved.

"This shows that: A. the Senate is likely going to be taking the lead," said the source, "And it is also showing that B. The Senate is interested in clearing the deck, in that they will offer a view of what is happening on the bill ahead of when it is actually voted on. They will wait to actually introduce the legislation once [Al] Franken is seated and [Roland] Burris is resolved."

Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) will chair the hearings in the place of the ailing Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.). And while the title of the session will not mention the Employee Free Choice Act, the labor official said, the substance will be all about that legislation, which would create more and easier avenues for unions to form.

"The hearing is likely going to hinge on the economic impact of EFCA," said the official. "It is going to be framing EFCA in the context of the current economic crisis."

There will be four witnesses in each session: three from the pro-EFCA side and one from the anti-EFCA side. The full list is below:

House members approved and sent to the Senate a proposed constitutional amendment requiring employees wanting to form unions to use secret ballots.

Supporters say the measure protects a fundamental principle of democracy. Opponents call it an anti-union move to fend off efforts to make it easier to organize labor.

HJR8, sponsored by Rep. Carl Wimmer, R-Herriman, is a pre-emptive strike against the proposed federal Employee Free Choice Act, a labor-backed law unions say would level the playing field with management when trying to organize.

Wimmer argued the pending federal legislation will take away the ability for people to privately vote their consciences.

"We are going to protect secret ballots. They're under attack," he said.

Labor officials disagree.

"The debate didn't have anything to do with protecting the rights of the secret ballot, it was about employer intimidation, and we saw the very best of that at the Capitol today," said Jim Judd, president of the AFL-CIO of Utah.

Read full story...

• Education: Explain the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act;
• Transparency: Show how, when, and where the money is spent;
• Accountability: Provide data that will allow citizens to evaluate the Act’s progress and provide feedback.

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act is an unprecedented effort to jumpstart our economy, create or save millions of jobs, and put a down payment on addressing long-neglected challenges so our country can thrive in the 21^st century. The Recovery and Reinvestment Act is an extraordinary response to a crisis unlike any since the Great Depression.  With much at stake, the Act provides for unprecedented levels of transparency and accountability so that you will be able to know how, when, and where your tax dollars are being spent. Spearheaded by a new Recovery Board, this Act contains built-in measures to root out waste, inefficiency, and unnecessary spending. This website, Recovery.gov, will be the main vehicle to provide each and every citizen with the ability to monitor the progress of the recovery.

As the centerpiece of the President’s commitment to transparency and accountability, Recovery.gov will feature information on how the Act is working, tools to help you hold the government accountable, and up-to-date data on the expenditure of funds.

The site will include information about Federal grant awards and contracts as well as formula grant allocations. Federal agencies will provide data on how they are using the money, and eventually, prime recipients of Federal funding will provide information on how they are using their Federal funds.  On our end, we will use interactive graphics to illustrate where the money is going, as well as estimates of how many jobs are being created, and where they are located. And there will be search capability to make it easier for you to track the funds.

The first incarnation of Recovery.gov features projections for how, when, and where the funds will be spent -- which states and sectors of the economy are due to receive what proportion of the funds. As money starts to flow, far more data will become available.

To read or listen to the full story, click here...

This morning (February 25, 2009) Senator Karen Mayne discussed anticipated increases in road constrcution in Utah and announced the launch of the work Zone Safety Campaign to improve safety among motorists and road construction crews.

The Work Zone Safety Campaign is a cooperative effort of the Workers Compensation Fund of Utah, Local #3 Operating Engineers, Granite Construction, and the Utah Department of Transportation. 

Senator Mayne expressed appreciation to the State Legislature for its support of transportation in the state of Utah and for its continued effort to make our highways safe.

Read full story....

The union coalition AFSCME (American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees), along with Americans United for Change, started running ads targeting Cantor for encouraging Republican opposition to the economic recovery plan. The House whip reacted with an ad of his own, depicting AFSCME workers as curse-spewing bullies.

Read full story... (Note - Rep. Cantor is quoted using foul language in this post)

His wife, Senator Karen Mayne, said her husband “always felt he had a charge to take care of the people here and make sure their needs were met.”

Read all about it in the Taylorsville/Kearns Journal.

This was originally posted on the Utah Senate Democrats blog

Read more...

Why is this recession so deep, and what can be done to reverse it?

Hint: Go back about 50 years, when America's middle class was expanding and the economy was soaring. Paychecks were big enough to allow us to buy all the goods and services we produced. It was a virtuous circle. Good pay meant more purchases, and more purchases meant more jobs.

Read more...

__________

Suppose you want to form a parents committee at your child's elementary school to present the concerns of parents to the school administration. To legitimately form a committee that speaks on behalf of the parents' common interests, couldn't you simply get written approval from a majority of the parents?

Or should you be absolutely required to petition the school district or local government to organize a secret ballot election before forming the committee -- an election, moreover, that the school administration could repeatedly appeal? Which should be more important: freedom of association and majority rule or cumbersome bureaucracy?

This analogy illustrates the central issue hidden by the misinformation and scare tactics of the deceptively named "save our secret ballot" campaign. In response to the proposed federal Employee Free Choice Act, Rep. Carl Wimmer, R-Herriman, is advocating the drastic step of amending the Utah Constitution to decree that the only permissible way we Utah workers can form unions is through bureaucracy-laden secret ballot elections, which appeals and frivolous litigation by corporations can obstruct for years.

Wimmer, who admitted publicly that he had not even read the Employee Free Choice Act before announcing his proposal ("Utah one of states targeted in labor fight," Tribune , Dec. 30), falsely claims the act endangers Utah workers' ability to form unions by secret ballot. Wimmer's characterizations of this legislation are completely untrue.

Under current law, 30 percent of employees in a given workplace can petition the National Labor Relations Board to organize a secret ballot election on whether to form a union. If a majority of workers vote to unionize, a union is formed. The Employee Free Choice Act, a short and straightforward bill available online, in no way affects this procedure.

Under this legislation, workers could form a union through a secret ballot election, or they could form a union if a majority of employees state in writing that they want their workplace to be unionized. The act simply allows unions to be formed and recognized by simple majority rule, a fundamental principle of democracy, and gives us as workers more options when considering whether to form a union.

We need alternatives to the current system of elections, which often becomes mired in bureaucratic red tape and frivolous litigation by corporations.

This legislation would sustain and enhance current protections that safeguard the integrity and fairness of union formation. Federal law prohibits employees or corporations from coercing other employees to vote for or against unionization. Furthermore, even if a union is formed by secret ballot or direct majority rule, a petition signed by just 30 percent of employees forces a secret ballot election on whether the union should cease to exist.

Wimmer is proposing a constitutional amendment that is unnecessary and antidemocratic. It would restrict your right as Utah workers to negotiate with corporations and pursue your economic freedom. To limit our ability to determine our financial future, while the economy is faltering and unemployment is rising, is deeply troubling, especially since unions improve economic security for families.

Union workers earn 30 percent more and are 63 percent more likely to have employer-provided health benefits than non-union workers. Nationally, an estimated 53 percent of non-union, non-managerial workers--60 million people--say they would join a union now if they could. Moreover, non-union workers earn more in industries and regions with a strong union presence.

Except when absolutely necessary for the common good, government should not be in the business of taking away rights or limiting economic freedom. In these difficult times, we need more tools, not fewer, to build the future we want for our children and ourselves.

Jim Judd is president of the Utah AFL-CIO. Patrick Thronson manages Thronson and Associates Strategic Communications. Another signatory is Wayne Holland, international staff representative for the United Steel Workers.

To read or hear the entire NPR story, click here.

We're steelworkers. We slurry and smelt aluminum. We mine for iron ore and create cement. We make glass and metals of many kinds. We produce paper and paper products. And we craft energy-saving wind turbines that help save our Earth.

We're nurses and nurses' aides. We make Harley Davidson motorcycles and Carrier air conditioners. We're rubber workers who make your tires; metal workers who make the materials that go into buildings, homes, automobiles, planes and roads.

We serve you at banks and teach at universities. You'll find us in oil refineries and grocery stores. At utility companies and in chemical plants. We work in the public sector and in forestry. We drive taxi cabs and work in airports. We're security guards and electricians. We're miners and pharmaceutical workers.

We're 1.2 million active and retired members strong. You'll find us fighting for a better life for all workers in union halls, at the work place, in the courts and in legislatures. We're global, we're local and we're online.