09/29/06

E Messenger

The Electronic Newsletter of the Florida AFL-CIO

BREAKING NEWS: FOLEY RESIGNS

Congressman resigns after e-mails questioned

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Rep. Mark Foley, R-Florida, submitted a letter of resignation from Congress on Friday in the wake of questions about e-mails he wrote a former male page, according to a congressional official. Foley, 52, had been considered a shoo-in for re-election until the e-mails surfaced in recent days.

Foley Will Not Seek Re-election (Roll Call.Com)

Friday, Sept. 29; 3:08 pm
Rep. Mark Foley (R-Fla.), stung by recent revelations of potentially inappropriate contacts with a former House page, will announce today that he is not seeking re-election, according to a senior House Republican aide.

ABC News reported on Thursday that Foley had a series of e-mail exchanges with the former page in which Foley asked for personal information, including a photo. The aide sent them on to a staffer in another office, repeatedly calling Foley’s request “sick sick sick.”

Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) said he was "surprised" by the announcement.

"I don't know what the situation was," said Hastert, who did not speak to Foley. "I was notified by the [National Republican Congressional Committee]."

— John Bresnahan and Susan Davis

FTAA Cases Continue: Union Members Win Major Victory

Numerous panels have concluded that the police operated outside of the law and now the courts have agreed…why has no one been prosecuted for the shameful treatment of our members and retirees?  Where is Florida’s Attorney General on this?  Why has no one been held accountable? 

The National Lawyers Guild

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE, September 27, 2006

Contacts:
Carol Sobel (310) 922-76001
Andrea Costello (352) 246-5690

PROTESTERS UNLAWFULLY ARRESTED AT FTAA DEMONSTRATIONS WIN VICTORY

In a significant victory for constitutional rights, today, the Eleventh Circuit handed down its ruling denying qualified immunity to several officers who engaged in unlawful arrests at the demonstrations against the meetings of the Free Trade Area of the Americas in Miami, Florida, during November 2003. This ruling clears the way for the demonstrators who suffered constitutional rights deprivations to proceed with their litigation.

The case, Killmon, et al. v. City of Miami, et al. was brought to challenge the widespread assault on the civil rights and civil liberties of protestors during the demonstrations, including challenging the so-called "Miami model," a deliberate and coordinated effort by over 40 local, state and federal authorities to engaging in silence dissent and engage in widespread political profiling, and swept the streets of anyone viewed as being an anti-FTAA activist, effectively suspending the Fourth Amendment in the city for ten days using excessive force and unlawfully arresting hundreds of people engaging in lawful political protest.

"We are elated by the ruling," stated Carol Sobel, lead counsel for the Plaintiffs, "What went on at the FTAA protest was a blatant violation of constitutional rights."

"The Court has firmly rejected the 'just following orders' defense raised by these officers," said Andrea Costello, also lead counsel for the Plaintiffs. "This sends a clear message that there will be accountability for those officers who targeted people for false arrest based on their political beliefs and affiliations."

The deputies, with the Broward Sherriff's Office, had claimed that their actions were not in violation of the law and that they should be immune from liability. They asserted that there was probable cause to arrest three protestors hours after, and miles away from the site of a mass permitted rally solely because of their association with those protests. The Plaintiffs, whose claims were at issue in the appeal, had been arrested after they were herded and ordered to walk down railroad tracks following mass sweeps of the streets after the largest rally by the AFL-CIO that was part of the week long demonstrations.

One Step Closer to Fascism

Published on September 28, 2006 by TruthDig

Habeas Corpus, R.I.P. (1215 - 2006)
With a smug stroke of his pen, President Bush is set to wipe out a safeguard against illegal imprisonment that has endured as a cornerstone of legal justice since the Magna Carta.

by Molly Ivins

AUSTIN, Texas - Oh dear. I’m sure he didn’t mean it. In Illinois’ Sixth Congressional District, long represented by Henry Hyde, Republican candidate Peter Roskam accused his Democratic opponent, Tammy Duckworth, of planning to “cut and run” on Iraq.

Duckworth is a former Army major and chopper pilot who lost both legs in Iraq after her helicopter got hit by an RPG. “I just could not believe he would say that to me,” said Duckworth, who walks on artificial legs and uses a cane. Every election cycle produces some wincers, but how do you apologize for that one?

The legislative equivalent of that remark is the detainee bill now being passed by Congress. Beloveds, this is so much worse than even that pathetic deal reached last Thursday between the White House and Republican Sens. John Warner, John McCain and Lindsey Graham. The White House has since reinserted a number of “technical fixes” that were the point of the putative “compromise.” It leaves the president with the power to decide who is an enemy combatant.

This bill is not a national security issue—this is about torturing helpless human beings without any proof they are our enemies. Perhaps this could be considered if we knew the administration would use the power with enormous care and thoughtfulness. But of the over 700 prisoners sent to Gitmo, only 10 have ever been formally charged with anything. Among other things, this bill is a CYA for torture of the innocent that has already taken place.

Death by torture by Americans was first reported in 2003 in a New York Times article by Carlotta Gall. The military had announced the prisoner died of a heart attack, but when Gall saw the death certificate, written in English and issued by the military, it said the cause of death was homicide. The “heart attack” came after he had been beaten so often on this legs that they had “basically been pulpified,” according to the coroner.

The story of why and how it took the Times so long to print this information is in the current edition of the Columbia Journalism Review. The press in general has been late and slow in reporting torture, so very few Americans have any idea how far it has spread. As is often true in hierarchical, top-down institutions, the orders get passed on in what I call the downward communications exaggeration spiral.

For example, on a newspaper, a top editor may remark casually, “Let’s give the new mayor a chance to see what he can do before we start attacking him.”

This gets passed on as “Don’t touch the mayor unless he really screws up.”

And it ultimately arrives at the reporter level as “We can’t say anything negative about the mayor.”

The version of the detainee bill now in the Senate not only undoes much of the McCain-Warner-Graham work, but it is actually much worse than the administration’s first proposal. In one change, the original compromise language said a suspect had the right to “examine and respond to” all evidence used against him. The three senators said the clause was necessary to avoid secret trials. The bill has now dropped the word “examine” and left only “respond to.”

In another change, a clause said that evidence obtained outside the United States could be admitted in court even if it had been gathered without a search warrant. But the bill now drops the words “outside the United States,” which means prosecutors can ignore American legal standards on warrants.

The bill also expands the definition of an unlawful enemy combatant to cover anyone who has “has purposefully and materially supported hostilities against the United States.” Quick, define “purposefully and materially.” One person has already been charged with aiding terrorists because he sold a satellite TV package that includes the Hezbollah network.

The bill simply removes a suspect’s right to challenge his detention in court. This is a rule of law that goes back to the Magna Carta in 1215. That pretty much leaves the barn door open.

As Vladimir Bukovsky, the Soviet dissident, wrote, an intelligence service free to torture soon “degenerates into a playground for sadists.” But not unbridled sadism—you will be relieved that the compromise took out the words permitting interrogation involving “severe pain” and substituted “serious pain,” which is defined as “bodily injury that involves extreme physical pain.”

In July 2003, George Bush said in a speech: “The United States is committed to worldwide elimination of torture, and we are leading this fight by example. Freedom from torture is an inalienable human right. Yet torture continues to be practiced around the world by rogue regimes, whose cruel methods match their determination to crush the human spirit.”

Fellow citizens, this bill throws out legal and moral restraints as the president deems it necessary—these are fundamental principles of basic decency, as well as law.

I’d like those supporting this evil bill to spare me one affliction: Do not, please, pretend to be shocked by the consequences of this legislation. And do not pretend to be shocked when the world begins comparing us to the Nazis.

To find out more about Molly Ivins and see works by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

Labor Movement Launches New Website in the Fight for Truth!

Have you seen those ridiculous advertisements from “Union Facts.Com?”

Well, if you are an E Messenger regular you know we have been debunking this sham for months.  No the great folks at American Rights at Work have launched an excellent website, taking the fight directly to those who would lie about our proud movement! 

www.AntiUnionNetwork.org.

The site sheds light on this powerful, well-financed, well-coordinated but virtually unknown web of organizations and individuals that play an enormous role in fostering a climate to severely limit workers’ ability to form unions. The website features profiles and analysis based on reliable research and news updates on Anti-Union Network (AUN) members including Richard Berman and the Center for Union Facts, the National Right to Work Committee, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and for-profit unionbusting consultants. And we’ve only just begun. There’s a long list of organizations in the AUN and we’ll continue to add new profiles to the website.

www.AntiUnionNetwork.org.

Listen to the Wombat

A simple, positive message from our friends at Foundation for a Global Community.

Click here to learn from the Wombat

http://www.globalcommunity.org/flash/wombat.shtml

AFL-CIO Now!

 (From the Blog, AFL-CIO NOW at http://blog.aflcio.org)

When it Comes to Minimum Wage, Republican Congress Can Run—But Not Hide

by Mike Hall, Sep 28, 2006

It looks like members of Congress will run out of town this weekend, on their way back to campaigning for re-election after a two-week session. But while they can run, Republican leaders can’t hide from voters their repeated efforts to prevent an increase in the nation’s $5.15-an-hour minimum wage.

Now, 10 years after Congress approved the last raise, the federal minimum buys less than it has in more than half a century—fewer groceries, far fewer gallons of gasoline, less medicine and less for rent.

At a Capitol Hill press conference today, AFL-CIO President John Sweeney joined Sens. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.), Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) and Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) to denounce Republican leaders for fleeing to the campaign trail before acting on a long-overdue minimum wage increase.

Says Sweeney:

It is an absolute disgrace that this Republican-led Congress is leaving town without raising the minimum wage for working people.

When working people don’t do their jobs, they risk not getting paid. But when our leaders in Congress refuse to do their job, they not only get paid—they get a raise. Since minimum-wage workers got their last pay raise in 1997, Congress has voted itself nine pay hikes totaling more than $30,000 per year.

Republican leaders in both the Senate and House have used parliamentary maneuvers, legislative trickery and downright deception to block an up-or-down vote on legislation to raise the federal minimum wage to $7.25 an hour.

Says Kennedy, the main force behind Senate efforts to give working people a raise:

Almost 15 million hard-working Americans would get a well-deserved raise. But the Republican leadership is against the increase. They kowtow to corporate special interests who strongly oppose it. So they’ve had to work hard all year to block what the American people clearly want.

Recent polls show nearly 90 percent of the public backs raising the minimum wage—
support that cuts across party lines.

Says Sweeney:

The American people know what needs to be done….But this Republican Congress has other priorities. Its first priority is to give the richest 8,200 estates in America tax breaks averaging $1.3 million dollars each, which would blow a $753 billion hole in the deficit. In effect, Congress told minimum-wage workers to stand in line behind Paris Hilton and the Wal-Mart heirs—at a time when the average corporate CEO has to work only until lunchtime on the first day of the year to make as much as a minimum-wage worker makes in a year.

Says Durbin:

In America, if you follow the rules, get up and go to work every day, you shouldn’t live in poverty. But as the prices for gas, health care and rent continue to rise, month after month, year after year, President Bush and the Republican leadership in Congress have consistently blocked any increase in the federal minimum wage.

Angered and frustrated by Republicans’ stalling tactics, grass-roots activists at the state level are moving to boost the pay of the nation’s lowest-paid workers. In the upcoming elections, voters in six states will decide on ballot initiatives that seek to boost their states’ minimum wage levels above the current federal rate. More than 30 wage bills have been introduced in state legislatures over the past two years, and lawmakers in 11 states have voted for minimum wage hikes.

Dan Lewandowski, a state senate candidate in Illinois, joined today’s press conference to talk about state wage efforts and his pledge to fight for an increase in the Illinois minimum wage if he unseats a 14-year Republican incumbent. Lewandowski says it’s a matter of economic common sense locally and nationally:

We have to help our working men and women to get more money in their pockets for their expenses When they have more money to spend, that helps the local economy, too.

Joining the lawmakers was Julie Smith, a former minimum-wage worker who spoke about the difficulties facing such workers. She is now working for ACORN on the Ohio ballot initiative to raise the minimum wage.

You can get more info from the AFL-CIO and ACORN, which are working together to raise the minimum wage, by going to the AFL-CIO’s America Needs a Raise website and ACORN’s Taking It to the States site.

Click here to send a message to your U.S. House representative that it’s time for Congress to pass a real minimum wage increase—with no strings attached.

Read more at AFL-CIO NOW at

http://blog.aflcio.org

Paycheck Deception hits Supreme Court

(From Ed Sills, Texas AFL-CIO)

The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to decide whether states may constitutionally enact "paycheck deception" laws that require unions to erect a major bureaucracy as a precondition for engaging in legislative lobbying or political education of union members and retirees.

The New York Times notes that the court has previously ruled that workers who pay "agency fees" without joining the union can seek a refund of the portion of their dues that goes to activities that are not directly related to bargaining.

But "paycheck deception" laws, which are partisan Republican efforts to weaken labor unions, go well beyond the Supreme Court's state requirement

and force unions to obtain yes-or-no permission from every dues-payer,

including voluntary members, for these activities.

In Texas, no paycheck deception bill has emerged from legislative committees, in large part because the union community has spoken decisively against the idea.

It should be noted that we are not talking about political contributions to candidates here. Such contributions can only come from separate political action committees that receive voluntary contributions for that purpose,

such as the Texas AFL-CIO Committee on Political Education. Instead,

"paycheck deception" proponents are trying to kill off efforts to persuade

legislators to take pro-worker positions and programs to inform union

members and retirees on legislative and political issues. An example of this

kind of activity, often enough, would be this e-mail news.

Nathan Newman of the blog Talking Points Memo offers this analysis of the pending case:

Supreme Court to Consider Whether States Can Cripple Union Free Speech Rights

By Nathan Newman

Is is constitutional for state governments to cripple the First Amendment rights of union members to raise money to participate in the political process?

That is the question that the United States Supreme Court will address this term in reviewing a case from the Washington Supreme Court, Washington v. Wash. Edu. Assoc. (combined with a parallel case)

Back in 1986, the US Supreme Court decided that employees benefitting from a union contract had a right to request and receive a refund of the portion of "agency fees" paid to the union that went to political activities. However, in 1992, voters in the state of Washington approved a law that went further and stated, a bit ambiguously, that no political funds could be collected "unless affirmatively authorized" by each individual.

The Washington Supreme Court struck down this rule as unconstitutional, since the procedure mandated by the state for enforcing the individual authorization procedure would be "extremely costly", thereby draining funds from union members and undermining their First Amendment rights. The US Supreme Court has stated that "the majority also has an interest in stating its views without being silenced by the dissenters," so the state imposing costly bureaucratic mandates on a union should be seen as itself a denial of free speech by the vast majority of union members who support a union's political activities.

Whatever the final resolution of the legal dispute -- and the consistently anti-union positions of the US Supreme Court in recent years does not bode well for protecting union members' free speech rights -- the decision by the Washington Supreme Court does emphasize the injustice of states imposing bureaucratic mandates like "paycheck protection" to cripple union member participation in the political process.

Notably, large corporations spend billions of dollars in politics without dissenting shareholders having ANY right to protest their money being used to undermine labor, consumer and environmental laws. Yet the rightwing activists who campaign for the bureaucratic crippling of union participation in politics are silent on that pervasive corporate corruption of the political process -- highlighting that despite the rhetoric, this whole campaign is not about solicitation for the rights of non-union workers but merely uses those workers as tools to serve the corporate interests that fund the anti-union network of groups that promote these kinds of laws and lawsuits.

From the Economic Policy Institute

Revisiting NAFTA

Still not working for North America's workers

http://www.epi.org/content.cfm/bp173  

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Snapshot for September 27, 2006.

More Children are Uninsured

By Elise Gould

The rate of uninsured children in the United States has increased for the first time in seven years, from 10.8% in 2004 to 11.2% in 2005. From 2004 to 2005, the number of uninsured children grew by 361,000 to a total of 8.3 million uninsured children.

Children have experienced declines in employer-provided health insurance in each of the past five years, but public health insurance programs—Medicaid and the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP)—have offset this trend, preventing many children from becoming uninsured when their employment-based benefits were lost. But in 2005, this phenomenon reversed as fewer children were insured by either employer-provided or publicly provided health insurance.  

Children experienced declines in employer-provided health insurance coverage of 5.1 percentage points in the last five years. In 2000, 65.6% of children had employer-provided coverage, whereas in 2005 only 60.5% did. While the number of children insured by Medicaid or SCHIP increased from 2000 to 2004, 184,000 fewer children (nearly 1%) had Medicaid or SCHIP in 2005 than in 2004.

The weakening of the public safety net combined with the continued erosion in employer-provided coverage is pushing more children off the rolls of the insured.

The author thanks Jin Dai and Rob Gray for their research assistance on this Snapshot.

Check out the archive for past Economic Snapshots.

A weekly presentation of downloadable charts and short analyses designed to graphically illustrate important economic issues, Snapshots are updated every Wednesday.

Trade Watch….Produced in conjunction with the Florida Fair Trade Coalition

In this space we will highlight news and views on international trade agreements, the myths of free trade and news from the Fair Trade Movement.

The 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) required the U.S., Canada, and Mexico to grant corporations new rights that many feared would be used to export jobs, jack up drug prices, attack environmental and food safety laws and squeeze farmers and consumers alike. Twelve years later we are living the damage of the NAFTA model: wages stagnant as prices rise, 3 million lost U.S. manufacturing jobs, and a $717 billion trade deficit that threatens global economic stability. In Mexico, some 1.3 million Mexican campesinos lost their livelihoods, hunger rates have jumped, and desperate migration has increased. The Bush administration wants to expand this failed NAFTA model to the entire hemisphere in a 34-nation Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). But much of South America, reviewing NAFTA’s damage, said no. To pressure Brazil, a target of U.S. oil, pharmaceutical, and other corporate giants, the administration is pushing deals with smaller nations, threatening to end these nations’ existing tariff-free access to the U.S. market to push governments into deals opposed by their own people. The Peru-US Free Trade Agreement (PUFTA) is such a NAFTA expansion.
More NAFTA will be bad for our economy. With the highest U.S. trade deficit ever, and the only major U.S. export being our well-paying jobs, we can’t afford any more NAFTA-like trade deals. If Congress approves PUFTA or a broader Andean Free Trade Agreement (AFTA), more U.S. factories will move overseas, the wages of jobs staying here will continue to be pushed down and more family farmers will go bankrupt. We need to change this broken trade model!  

The Bush administration rejected Peru’s request to have enforceable labor standards in this pact. Peru's then-president Alejandro Toledo requested that real, enforceable workers’ rights protections be included in PUFTA. The Bush administration rejected that idea. Yet, Bush’s own State Department found rampant use of child labor in Peru. So much for the administration’s argument that workers’ rights can’t be in trade deals is because “our partners don’t want them.” Wages and working conditions in all nations are when trade pacts encourage corporations to race to the bottom.

Peru FTA subjects U.S. to int’l tribunals, cash fines if our government acts to keep Dubai World Ports from running U.S. ports. Under PUFTA investor and service sector rules, because DPW operates a port in Peru, outrageously DPW would obtain new rights to operate ‘landside port activities’ within the U.S.  

Peru FTA endangers the Amazon, lungs of the planet. The Amazon basin in Peru is among the earth’s most bio-diverse areas. The investment rules in the PUFTA would empower foreign investors to demand cash payments at international tribunals if they are stopped from pillaging for timber, mineral and energy resources. Despite Peru’s requests, the administration rejected FTA protections for biodiversity and indigenous peoples’ traditional knowledge. Trade pacts like PUFTA gut vital environmental protections.  

It is immoral to put Big Pharma’s profits over lives. Talk about protectionism! The monopoly patent rules in the Peru FTA will jack up prices for essential medicines – causing people cut off to die unnecessarily from HIV/AIDS and other treatable diseases. The Big Pharma rip-off of exorbitant drug prices that we suffer should not be exported to other countries – instead we need a fix!  

Peru FTA is a stepping stone to FTAA – a danger to U.S. farmers: The only purpose of PUFTA is as a stepping stone to a Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). Brazilian and Argentine agribusinesses enjoy subsidies that have helped make them powerhouse exporters of beef, citrus, sugar, soy, and cereals. Export surges under an FTAA from these nations could seriously undercut U.S. family farmers. We need to fix the trade system that led to rock-bottom commodity prices and family farm bankruptcies, not expand it.  

For more information, please contact: Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch   www.tradewatch.org  202-546-4996

A Half-Truth in the Florida 22nd

Republican Rep. Shaw falsely implies his opponent lied about being a lobbyist

September 28, 2006

Summary

Republican Rep. Clay Shaw, defending the seat he has occupied for a quarter of a century, attacks Democrat opponent Ron Klein for being a lobbyist who has "sold influence to developers, insurers, [and] government contractors." Shaw's ad even shows a picture of Klein's "lobby/law firm" located "steps away from the Capitol" to insinuate the state senator wasn't truthful when he denied lobbying fellow legislators.

While Klein has registered as a lobbyist in Palm Beach County, he has not registered to lobby the state legislature and Shaw has produced no evidence that Klein did so.

Analysis

The Shaw campaign released "Registered Lobbyist" Sept. 23.  The ad falsely implies that Democratic challenger Klein had improper dealings with the state legislature.

Wait a minute, indeed.

The ad shows an excerpt from a Klein TV ad which features the state senator saying, "I've never lobbied the Florida Legislature." An announcer then says, "Wait a minute. Ron Klein is a registered lobbyist" and goes on to say he "sold influence to developers, insurers, government contractors."  The ad even shows a picture of Klein's law office in Tallahassee which the announcer points out is "steps away from the Capitol."

The insinuation from the ad is clear: Klein lobbies the state legislature even though he denied doing so. But wait a minute: Klein doesn't deny being a registered lobbyist – at the county level. The Palm Beach Post reports  that in 1999 and again in 2004 Ron Klein registered as a lobbyist in Palm Beach County to represent Cigna Health Care and EB Developers. Despite the impression created by this ad, Klein's lobbying stops at the county's border.

Florida law dictates that in order to lobby the state legislature a lobbyist must register with the state annually, and the Florida Legislature's Lobbyist  Directory shows no 'Ron Klein' as a registered lobbyist. When Klein says "I've never lobbied the Florida legislature" the evidence actually supports him.

Listen Carefully

At one point the ad does mention that Klein would "lobby local politicians," but the single word "local" is easy to miss, especially since the ad goes out of its way to show the state Capitol building and sets itself up as rebutting Klein's denial that he ever lobbied the legislature.

Klein has been a member of the state legislature since 1992. Until this year, Klein co-chaired the Governmental Relations, Lobbying, and Administrative Law practice group at the law firm in which he is a named partner, Sachs Sax Klein. In 2006 the firm opened an office just a few blocks from the Capitol in Tallahassee, but the firm's managing director, Steven Sachs, told the Palm Beach Post on Sept. 19 that Klein has not been involved in the Tallahassee office.

A different issue

Rep. Shaw says that even lobbying local Palm Beach County officials poses an ethical conflict for Klein, telling  the South Florida Sun-Sentinel,"You can't represent a company in front of a group you're supposed to be representing [in Tallahassee]." We take no position on that issue, except to note that it's not the issue raised in Shaw's ad. It's true that both Klein's previous House district and his current Senate district include parts of Palm Beach County, which means he might have been lobbying local officials who also depend upon him to represent local interests at the state level.

The ad would have been accurate to say that Klein is registered to lobby county officials that he represents in the state legislature. Instead, it falsely implies that he wasn't telling the truth when he said he never lobbied fellow members of the state legislature.

 No on Amendment 3 Campaign

FORCES LINE UP TO SEPARATE "SIMPLE" FROM "MAJORITY"
St. Petersburg Times Column -- September 26, 2006; by Howard Troxler

Here are some of the folks who think it should be harder for the people of Florida to amend our state Constitution: U.S. Sugar Corp., BlueCross BlueShield, Publix, Lykes Bros. Inc., The St. Joe Co., TECO Energy, the Florida Association of Realtors, A. Duda and Sons, and the Florida Chamber of Commerce. On top of those guys, lots of other corporations and prominent individuals in Florida's agribusiness, land development, construction and retail sectors think the same way. http://www.sptimes.com/2006/09/26/Columns/Forces_line_up_to_sep.shtml

Builders Back Rule-Changing Amendment

Tampa Tribune -- September 27, 2006
by Mike Salinero
Developers are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars in support of a ballot measure that would make it more difficult for residents to amend the Florida Constitution. Amendment 3, which the Legislature placed on the Nov. 7 ballot, would change the requirements for passing citizen initiatives from a simple majority vote to a 60 percent plurality.  http://www.tbo.com/news/metro/MGBVNUA7LSE.html

TRUST THE VOTERS
Orlando Sentinel Op. Ed. -- September 29, 2006
by Bill Sublette
As Floridians, our lives have been profoundly influenced by citizens taking initiative to amend Florida's Constitution.

They have limited political terms, mandated smaller classrooms, banned smoking in public places, required universal pre-K, limited property-tax increases, required government in the sunshine and capped state taxes. All were issues that Tallahassee politicians refused to address.
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/opinion/orl-myword29b06sep29,0,7685100.story?coll=orl-opinion-headlines

AFL-CIO News

Statement by AFL-CIO President John Sweeney
Press Conference on the Minimum Wage
430 Dirksen Senate Office Building
September 28, 2006

 It is an absolute disgrace that this Republican-led Congress is leaving town without raising the minimum wage for working people.

 When working people don't do their jobs, they risk not getting paid.  But when our leaders in Congress refuse to do their job, they not only get paid - they get a raise.  Since minimum wage workers got their last pay raise in 1997, Congress has voted itself nine pay hikes totaling more than $30,000 per year. 

For minimum wage workers, it's a sadder story.  Over the past 10 years, inflation has eaten away at the value of the minimum wage, and now its buying power is lower than it's ever been since 1955. 

Working families are struggling to deal with the rising cost of health care, housing, gas, and food -- but their wages are not keeping up.

 The American people know what needs to be done.  Eighty-eight percent support an increase in the minimum wage -- and that includes 72 percent of Republicans.

 But this Republican Congress has other priorities.  Its first priority is to give the richest 8,200 estates in America tax breaks averaging $1.3 million dollars each, which would blow a $753 billion hole in the deficit.  In effect, Congress told minimum wage workers to stand in line behind Paris Hilton and the Wal-Mart heirs - at a time when the average corporate CEO has to work only until lunchtime on the first day of the year to make as much as a minimum wage worker makes in a year.

 Then Congress tried to link a minimum wage increase to a pay cut of up to $5.50 an hour for workers who earn tips for a living.

 Talk about having your priorities upside down.  This Republican-led Congress is completely out of touch with the economic concerns of working people. 

The sad thing is Congress could easily pass a minimum wage bill if its leadership wanted to.  A majority of both the House and Senate supported a clean increase in the minimum wage to $7.25.  But instead, Republican leaders bowed to pressure from their corporate friends.  They decided to block a clean vote on increasing the minimum wage to $7.25.  They decided to play political games to make sure a minimum wage bill never became law.

 So what do we do now?  I think American workers are going to support candidates this November who will get the job done, who really mean it when they say they support an increase in the minimum wage, and who aren't just saying whatever it takes to get elected.

 And I think voters will be approving minimum wage ballot initiatives in November in six states: Arizona, Colorado, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, and Ohio.  The AFL-CIO and ACORN are leading the minimum wage movement together - I'm glad that Julie Smith is here representing ACORN.  Union members and ACORN members are hitting the streets and working the phones to reject the failures of Congress and vote changes at the state level - that's exactly what we did to pass state minimum wage legislation this year in 12 states.  We're going to win these ballot initiatives too, and show Congress what

voters want.

Politics and Such

  HOUSE REPORT DETAILS 485 CONTACTS BETWEEN ABRAMOFF TEAM AND WHITE HOUSE OFFICIALS
Hundreds of contacts between top White House officials and former lobbyist Jack Abramoff and his associates "raise serious questions about the legality and actions" of those officials, according to a draft bipartisan report prepared by the House Government Reform Committee.

If you have suggestions on how we may improve this online publication or have information you would like to see posted please contact our communications director at (850) 224 – 6926 or at rtemplin@flaflcio.org. 

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