Friday, May 16th, 2008...7:40 am
Press Down Upon the Brow of Labor…
Tim Bee is bringing Labor Secretary Elaine Chao to Tucson for a fundraiser on Tuesday. It would be so easy for me to go after Chao for being an anti-worker Secretary of Labor: whether it comes to being dismissive of organized labor, undermining worker safety or hunting down whistleblowers. Having Chao in charge of the Department of Labor is like having Russell Pearce be ambassador-at-large to Latin America.
Here is the thing that strikes me: this is the third in a series of “big names” Bee has brought to Arizona who have been out front on dismantling Social Security. Bee has previously brought Steve Forbes and Grover Norquist down to raise money for him. One has to wonder where he is on maintaining the Social Security if these are the people that want to campaign for him.
Oh, do the folks paying for the $250 private roundtable with the Secretary recieve special lanyards or embroidered blankets?
8 Comments
May 16th, 2008 at 8:07 am
I’d nominate Rusell to be Ambassador to Mexico in the McCain administration.
It oughta be fun to watch - for a month or two.
The whole nation should have the pleasure we experienced during the Mecham administration.
May 16th, 2008 at 10:12 am
One does not need to wonder, one needs to ask the question to Tim Bee just as I did to Gabby Giffords. Why did you vote against union workers by not allowing them to vote in private on Union matters? Let us do a Tedski speculation, is it because the Union Management gave you hundreds of thousands of campaign dollars?
May 16th, 2008 at 9:42 pm
Living without R3 is living living without the internet, newspaper and T.V news. It would be like living in a cave.
May 16th, 2008 at 9:43 pm
Why not?
A few weeks ago I got on John McCain’s website and under the ’search this site’ button I typed in ’social security’ (quotated to make sure the words had to appear together) and got the reply ‘no documents found.’ So he has nothing to say about it this year.
But fortunately we do know what Senator McCain thinks about privatization. For much of the past decade he’s effusively praised the concept.
Given what happened to the Bush plan three years ago, it’s not hard to figure out why John doesn’t want to talk about social security, but you can be sure that if he became President, he’d like to have some people in Congress who were pro-privatization and maybe Tim Bee would fill that role.
May 17th, 2008 at 10:59 am
So let’s just continue to pump money into a broken system that won’t be there when I retire. Sounds like an awesome idea to me.
May 17th, 2008 at 2:15 pm
Giffords did the right thing. Employers, because of their role as “boss” and their constant proximity to workers, can exert much more pressure on workers during a certification petition than a union can. Not to say workers can’t be pressured by a union, but employers are ultimately the ones who pay the workers and the workers never forget this. Why should an employer force a time consuming, emotionally draining election on a group if a majority of workers are willing to openly support the union? Aren’t these the same folks always ranting about less government and now they want an NLRB run process that requires NLRB staff to go run the election, count the votes, wait for appeals, etc. etc.?
May 17th, 2008 at 6:24 pm
T.J.,
You are worried about the wrong system. Social Security, by-and-large, should be fine. The benefits received may be lowered, but not “slashed”.
What you _should_ be worried about is whether or not Medicaid will be there by the time you are eligible for it.
May 18th, 2008 at 2:02 am
Sirocco is correct. Medicare is in a world of hurts and is the major reason I am mad at all of the candidates in the primary-none of them have a decent and sensible solution to the problem of health care in this country.
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