Under Reagan, the unions were in a bit of a death spiral, but since the early 90s, while the unions have been treading water on numbers between 15 and 16 million members, that's still 15 to 16 million folks funding a multi-billion dollar set of institutions that are still doing far more than most on the progressive side usually realize.

Posted at July 10, 2008 12:22 PM in response to Do Blogs Take Labor Issues Seriously?

Please note I'm not even trying to defend Obama's vote on FISA. Maybe it's because I never drank the kool-aid to begin with that I'm not going to go all fluttery with outrage every time he makes some compromise for political purposes.

The reality is that you judge a candidate on his overall policies and whether he is, on balance, better than his or her opponent. And by any measure, Obama is not only running on a platform far more progressive than McCain's, he's running on one far more progressive and populist than any recent Democratic politician. Which itself is only a relative good, but it's a good unto itself.

So I'll celebrate the serious robin hood taxes built into his campaign, his promotion of labor standards in trade deals, his attack on the bankruptcy bill, and the host of other good issues. And yes, let's all attack Obama for a bad vote on FISA and educate the public to put pressure on him in any similar future issues. But keep it all in proportion to the rest of what he's running on.

Posted at July 9, 2008 6:00 PM in response to Obama Moves to the Populist

The fact that such programs have to be available to heterodox religions is another reason many of the religious right have been leery of the idea as well.

Posted at July 2, 2008 12:05 PM in response to Obama's Plot to Destroy the Religious Right

Really-- church food pantries are the same thing as murderous mercenaries like Blackwater? It's this crazy level of antipathy to religious organizations which is what keeps liberalism from winning the loyalty of a lot of working class folks.

And the idea that government shouldn't partner with anyone is ridiculous, since "government" needs to tap all the venues the marginalized have human contact for most effectiveness. Sure, there may be too much privatization of public services, but that is a separate question from whether, when the government does provide funds to outside non-profits, should they encourage collaboration with religious non-profits as well as secular ones.

Posted at July 2, 2008 11:21 AM in response to Obama's Plot to Destroy the Religious Right

It's actually clear that you can't "understand what he is talking about" if you jump to declare what I was saying is that we should close our borders and stop having Vietnamese employed.

Of course it's good that Vietnamese workers are getting paid for making t-shirts. It would be even better if they were getting paid more and able to buy even more goods, which would in turn feed more employment in the U.S. and other countries around the world. Yes, trade CAN be a win-win situation, but only if more of the gains from trade go to workers, not just to ever fattening corporate profits.

This really isn't that tough a concept to understand and in a global food crisis where hundreds of millions of people in the developing world are threatened with starvation due to rising food prices, citing a few car purchases in urban Vietnam isn't a credible counter-argument to the problems of global capitalism.

Posted at May 15, 2008 11:31 AM in response to Fair Trade, Immigrant Rights, Free Labor

Yes, John Derbyshire and I did agree because we read the same speech. But Obama was clearly talking about how the divisions over race have been a roadblock to political changes and how those with economic privilege have taken advantage of those divisions for their own benefit.

THere is no way to read the speech in any other way, nor any way to understand Obama's affinity with Rev. Wright. Yes, Obama argues that he's sees more opportunity for political change and more successes for black American than Rev. Wright has in recent decades, but he also has been clear that "unity" is not something you can naively wish into existence -- a point he said in his speech -- but must be built on understanding the way race has been used by the elite to stop that unity.

Obama was an Alinksyite organizer and his speech comes right out of that tradition of understanding both the obstacles to unity -- of race, of class and political paralysis -- with his own charismatic bent articulating how to move forward. But the analysis is quite recognizable and brilliant in its own right.

Posted at March 19, 2008 1:06 PM in response to Obama: How Race Card Protects Class Privilege

True-- government can be convoluted, especially as major social change is being made-- and real universal care is major social change.

So yes, if we passed a law that closely regulated available health insurance services with serious cost controls, collected general revenues to fund subsidies for people to buy that insurance, and limited all costs to a fixed percentage of family income, the difference between such a system and a single payer system would be in the bureaucratic structure but not in the efffective results.

Which is why progressives should focus in like a laser on this issue of limiting all health care costs, INCLUDING to stress out-of-pocket costs, as a percentage of income. We achieve that and any system created will achieve most of the results people want from a single payer system.

Posted at February 27, 2008 3:00 PM in response to Mandates versus Affordability

Yes-- that's why much of the Congressional Black Caucus represent heavily latino districts.  See this Time Magazine piece:

Nationwide, no fewer than eight black House members--including New York's Charles Rangel and Texas' Al Green--represent districts that are more than 25% Latino and must therefore depend heavily on Latino votes. And there are other examples. University of Washington political scientist Matt Barreto has begun compiling a list of black big-city mayors who have received large-scale Latino support over the past several decades. In 1983, Harold Washington pulled 80% of the Latino vote in Chicago. David Dinkins won 73% in New York City's mayoral race in 1989. And Denver's Wellington Webb garnered more than 70% in 1991, as did Ron Kirk in Dallas in 1995 and again in 1997 and '99.

Latino voters, like many voters, no doubt are biased towards the familiar, which currently helps Clinton, but there is nothing in current political reality that says that Latino voters won't support a black candidate.

Posted at January 30, 2008 9:02 AM in response to McCain and the Failure of Anti-Immigrant Politics

Not sure which union you mean here?   Do you mean the teachers who brought the lawsuit against the special strip caucuses or the Culinary for supporting them?

Posted at January 25, 2008 12:07 PM in response to How Nevada Caucuses Killed Myth of Union Intimidation

And who funds "movement conservativism", aside from the religious and NRA folks, other than big corporate interests?  Movement conservativism is well documented to have been assembled by a range of corporate foundations and big business interests.  

Look at the funding for major rightwing think tanks and you will find rivers of corporate cash, just as those same corporations fund the elections of elected spokespeople for movement conservatism. 

Sure, corporate America has its own factions, but a large chunk of it has been allied arm-in-arm with movement conservatism from the beginning.

Posted at January 4, 2008 12:10 PM in response to Obama Delivers on the Ground