Ohio

Meet Joe the REAL Plumber

Tula Connell — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 07:36:16 -0700

Sen. John McCain, meet Joe the plumber. Unlike Samuel Wurzelbacher, Joe’s given name is…Joe.

And, unlike Wurzelbacher, he’s a licensed plumber.

Joe Moenck, a plumber in Zumbrota, Minn., is a member of Plumbers and Pipe Fitters (UA) Local 6—which, like all building and construction trades unions, has high professional standards for its members—such as making sure they hold a license to practice their craft.

Moenck was dismayed to see McCain repeatedly trot out “Joe the Plumber” during this week’s presidential debate with Sen. Barack Obama. Says Moenck:

I felt that when John McCain was talking about Joe the Plumber, I didn’t feel that that was sincere. He didn’t mention the middle class in the last two debates at all. It upset me that he brought this up strictly because he had to, because his ratings are low among the middle class. I don’t think he believes what he said, but he knows his support is low there and said that strictly for the ratings, as a campaign strategy.

When “Joe the Plumber” Wurzelbacher met Obama in Toledo on Sunday, Wurzelbacher expressed concern about being taxed on earnings of $280,000 per year should he ever start a small plumbing business.

But, as Moenck can tell you, hard workers like him in the building trades aren’t paid anywhere near $250,000 a year. For Moenck—and even for Wurzelbacher, who right now makes far less than his dream salary—Obama’s tax plan would mean a decrease in taxes by more than $1,200 a year—more than under McCain’s tax plan. And should Wurzelbacher ever pull in $250,000, he’d only pay a few hundred dollars more in taxes under Obama’s plan. Not a deal-breaker for a guy thinking of starting a small business.

Wurzelbacher also has a bit of an agenda. He’s a member of the Associated Builders & Contractors, a nonunion trade group that has endorsed McCain.

So, in addition to Moenck, we’d like to introduce McCain to a few other real Joe the plumbers.

There’s Joe Gutzwiller, a licensed plumber in Indianapolis and member of UA Local 440. Gutzwiller shares a lot in common with Moenck, including seeing through McCain’s pretensions of support for America’s middle class.

I heard the one about health care, where McCain wants to tax our benefits, and I just think he’s looking out for bigger businesses and corporations leaving middle class people out of the whole picture.

I think Obama is actually trying to help out middle class people who are feeling the effect of our economy. From what I’ve seen in the debates, he’s trying to prevent future problems and give the middle class a tax break to help stimulate the economy.

And then there’s Joe Tatum in Virginia, who’s been a licensed plumber for 35 years after apprenticing with UA Local 10.

McCain thinks we make over $200,000. I don’t make anywhere close to that. If I did, I could retire now instead of waiting ’til I’m 62.

Over in Colorado, Joe Martinez, a plumber and member of UA Local 3, has this to say:

John McCain doesn’t understand working families and I don’t understand how any plumber can vote for John McCain. He’s just not in touch with the working man at all.

And there’s Joe Vicena, a member of UA Local 75 in Milwaukee, who sees McCain as continuing the same disastrous economic policies as George W. Bush.

Our jobs are being sent overseas, people are losing their pensions and their 401(k)s, and the stock market is tanking. We need change in a positive manner. McCain is not the person to do it. He is absolutely not the person. Me and my family can’t take four more minutes, much less four more years, of the missteps and mispolicies we’ve had the past eight.

Moenck, Gutzwiller, Tatum, Martinez and Vicena agree with their union that Obama is the best choice for America’s plumbers—and all middle-class workers—because, as under Bush, McCain’s economic policy would benefit the wealthiest and flush the rest of us down the tank. As Moenck puts it:

If the middle class doesn’t have money to call Joe the Plumber, Joe the Plumber’s not gonna be in business very long.

(This is a cross-post from the Firedoglake blog.)

Talking Cities: A Video Letter from the Nation's Mayors

Harry Moroz — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 08:45:09 -0700

As final preparations for the last presidential debate are made – water glasses weighed and secret memoranda consulted – both candidates have revamped their economic plans for the economic crisis now gripping the country.

McCain was uncertain, at first, about whether to release a revised plan. But even after deciding that certain “economic news and conditions” demanded such action, he seems to have omitted several critical elements from the proposal. No, if you were concerned, he remembered to include a cut in the capital gains tax. And yes, if you’re worried he was going soft, he will employ a surge strategy to prevent foreclosures.

What McCain forgot is perhaps less obvious, unless you’re Mayor Doherty of Scranton, Mayor Wilder of Richmond, or Mayor McLin of Dayton. Although the McCain-Palin team rallied recently in each of these cities – McCain even announced Palin’s vice presidential candidacy in Dayton – the Republican’s campaign seems not to have taken to heart their experiences in these swing state cities.

Indeed, the McCain-Palin ticket thrived off the rallies’ rabid crowds , but their economic recovery plan provides no aid for the struggling state and local, including city, governments that employ, provide benefits to, and protect the crowds. Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Ohio all face midyear FY2009 budget gaps and city governments are increasingly pessimistic about their economic health. This is just one more example of the McCain camp’s failure to address urban issues.

Tonight is the final opportunity that both candidates will have to demonstrate their understanding of the importance of cities. We’ve put together a short video to remind the candidates why cities matter:

Ohio Secretary of State Brunner Does Right by Voters

Michael Kwiatkowski — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 05:45:21 -0700

Project Vote has estimated that, in 2008, voter caging could result in as many as 600,000 eligible voters-mostly low-income Americans, people of color, and youths-being stricken from the Ohio voter rolls without notice or due process.

The Growing Power of the Fair Trade Uprising

David Sirota — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 13:32:19 -0700

LOUISVILLE, KY - I spent yesterday in Ohio's three biggest cities - Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinnati. With the Buckeye State among the hardest hit by lobbyist-written trade policies, it wasn't surprising that NAFTA was at the center of discussion at events for THE UPRISING in Ohio (you can listen to my Ohio NPR interview from yesterday here for a taste).

Over the last few years, polls show the public has moved to something of a consensus position on trade: full-on opposition to NAFTA-style pacts. That's for good reason as this Associated Press report shows. Tearing down tariffs and protections without regard for the consequences is not only a dangerous departure from the policies that built America's economy, but also a deliberate way to force American and foreign workers into a wage-cutting, environment-destroying, union-busting race to the bottom.

The AP story shows the destructive domino effect of NAFTA and the subsequent NAFTA-style agreements like China PNTR. When multinational corporations shift jobs to Mexico, right-wing trade fundamentalists in Washington offer up a "let them eat cake message" telling workers in Ohio that the shift at least helps impoverished workers south of the border. Then, of course, those workers in Mexico are forced to slash their own wages to compete with desperate workers in China. When the jobs inevitably shift to China, Mexico is left in shambles, and then Chinese workers are forced to slash their own wages to make sure jobs don't go to Vietnam or North Korea, where corporations are angling to employ enslaved labor.

Meanwhile, many of these trade fundamentalists like Tom Friedman and Fareed Zakaria flaunt their supposed environmentalism and humanitarianism by publicly worrying about issues like global warming and the erosion of human rights in the developing world - even though the domino effect they cheer on creates pressure on governments to reduce their pollution controls and human rights in order to retain foreign investment.

The problem, of course, is that it's hard to argue with NAFTA backers because they aren't interested in facts. It was none other than Friedman who admitted he vigorously backed a recent NAFTA-style trade deal without even bothering to read it. He, like every other reporter and commentator in Washington, calls NAFTA-style pacts "free trade" - despite the fact that they include thousands of pages of protectionist provisions for corporate profits, despite the fact that even the original architects of NAFTA have long admitted that these agreements aren't free, but instead create "managed" trade. That's the big problem - these deals are managed to enrich the elite at the expense of the rest of us.

Just like it's impossible to argue about reality with deranged religious fundamentalist terrorists, it's impossible to argue with deranged trade fundamentalists who cloak economic terrorism in the language of enlightenment. It gets to the point where Limousine Libertarians in wealthy enclaves like Boulder take to the websites of major newspapers to cite charts showing the decimation of Americans' wages as proof that NAFTA works for Americans.

Left for dead, of course, is a place like Ohio.

Wealthy pundits from New York and Washington drop into the Buckeye State every four years to berate the occasional Democratic presidential candidate who dares to question NAFTA at the quadrennial photo-op at an abandoned manufacturing plant. In the general election, those Democratic presidential candidates then inevitably hire teams of Wall Street insiders who back NAFTA as their top economic advisers, and then scurry to business publications to reassure corporate lobbyists that no, they aren't really serious about reforming our trade policy. Their Republican opponents, meanwhile, head to places like Colombia to tell the right-wing regime there that America - that purported beacon of freedom to the world's masses - will be helping murderous developing-world governments continue to brutalize workers.

But this quadrennial cycle of deception may finally be changing - and not because of the benevolence of any presidential candidate, but because the political tectonics of trade have shifted so dramatically thanks to those who are doing the unglamorous - but critical - work of leveraging real power.

Groups like Public Citizen and the Citizens Trade Campaign have ignored the Partisan War Syndrome that plagues parts of the blogosphere and the progressive left, and used this election as an instrument of the uprising - rather than seeing the election as an objective unto itself. They have, for instance, used the hard-fought Democratic primary to elicit concrete commitments on trade policy from the candidates - including nominee Barack Obama. Those efforts have been supported by a group of industrial state lawmakers, who have similarly leveraged the election as a way to force a conversation about trade into the national political debate. That conversation has been so intense it even wedged its way into the Republican presidential nomination through the candidacy of Mike Huckabee - a candidacy that won Republican primaries in some of the most conservative states based, in part, on his fair trade message.

These moves around trade suggest the emergence of true movement thinking out of the tumult of the uprising I describe in my book. This fair trade movement may continue to be ignored by the media (and, frankly, much of the blogosphere), but it represents one of the most encouraging transpartisan developments of the last few years. Out of the shadows of the crumbling factories that I have driven by here in Ohio may indeed come real change - if this movement continues to coalesce.

This is an ongoing series from the national tour for THE UPRISING. You can order The Uprising at Amazon.com or through your local independent bookstore.

Ohio Debate: The Good, The Bad & The Silly

David Sirota — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 10:13:25 -0800

I was on CNBC this morning discussing the presidential race, and the impact of issues like NAFTA on the upcoming Ohio primary. You can watch it here.

As I said to start the interview, NAFTA and trade policy in general is playing a huge role in this campaign. As the Economic Policy Institute shows today, that's understandable in a place like Ohio - and it's terrific that our country is finally having a debate about globalization. Along these lines, three moments stuck out to me last from Hillary Clinton's performance last night (full transcript here) - a good moment, a bad one, and a silly one.

The good - Both Clinton and Obama took very strong positions on trade. Clinton in particular addressed the ridiculous provisions in our current pacts that let multinational corporations sue state and local governments for laws that protect workers, the environment and consumers:

"I have put forward a very specific plan about what I would do, and it does include telling Canada and Mexico that we will opt out unless we renegotiate the core labor and environmental standards -- not side agreements, but core agreements; that we will enhance the enforcement mechanism; and that we will have a very clear view of how we're going to review NAFTA going forward to make sure it works, and we're going to take out the ability of foreign companies to sue us because of what we do to protect our workers."

The bad - Clinton continued to pretend she never supported NAFTA - in contrast to her record giving many speeches over the last decade in support of NAFTA. Clinton actually wore a straight face when she said this last night:

"I have been a critic of NAFTA from the very beginning."

The silly - After the debate on trade, moderator Tim Russert asked Obama about Louis Farrakhan, and Obama harshly repudiated the Nation of Islam leader's anti-semitism. Clinton followed by attempted to claim that standing up against anti-semitism when running for statewide office in New York is a sign of her own courage:

"I faced a similar situation when I ran for the Senate in 2000 in New York. And in New York, there are more than the two parties, Democratic and Republican. And one of the parties at that time, the Independence Patty, was under the control of people who were anti-Semitic, anti- Israel. And I made it very clear that I did not want their support. I rejected it. I said that it would not be anything I would be comfortable with. And it looked as though I might pay a price for that. But I would not be associated with people who said such inflammatory and untrue charges against either Israel or Jewish people in our country...And, you know, I was willing to take that stand."

While I appreciate anyone standing up against any kind of race/ethnic/religious hate, trying to portray standing up to anti-semitism as a specifically courageous move in New York politics is just downright silly. It is certainly admirable - but it isn't courageous in New York, a state with one of the largest Jewish communities in the world.

The Ohio Debate Primer on Trade

David Sirota — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 17:04:06 -0800

On Tuesday night, the Democratic candidates for president will debate in Cleveland just one week before Ohio's pivotal primary. Most analysts expect America's lobbyist-written trade policies to take center stage in the Buckeye State — a place hit hard by trade-related job losses and wage cuts.

In the lead-up to this debate, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have been sparring over the North American Free Trade Agreement — a proxy battle over the larger issue of trade. Undoubtedly, this NAFTA argument will bleed into the Tuesday night debate, and so here's an objective look at the issue of trade and the records of both candidates that you might want to keep next to you as the rhetoric starts to fly (note: Neither the Campaign for America's Future or me personally have endorsed either candidate — this is a strictly nonpartisan, non-candidate-endorsing review).

NATIONAL POLL NUMBERS: Americans now strongly oppose the NAFTA trade model — the model that includes all sorts of protections for corporate profits (intellectual property, patents, copyrights, etc.) but no similar protections for other priorities (wages, jobs, the environment, human rights, etc.). In October, a Wall Street Journal/NBC poll found the vast majority of Americans believe our current trade policies are bad for the U.S. economy. That included Republicans by a two-to-one margin. In January, Fortune magazine's poll showed 68 percent of Americans say our trading partners are benefiting the most from our trade policy. A December 2005 Gallup Poll shows that these numbers are part of a trend: The number of Americans who say our current trade policies are a threat have climbed back to 1992 levels. Finally, a post-election poll in 2006 found that unfair trade deals was listed as the number one concern among Republicans voters who considered supporting a Democratic candidate for Congress.

OHIO POLL NUMBERS: For the two Democratic candidates, the issue could not be more politically significant in Ohio. Back in 2004, exit polls from Ohio's Democratic primary found seven in 10 Democratic voters blamed foreign trade for taking away jobs. Two years later, Sherrod Brown crushed his Republican opponent in Ohio's 2006 U.S. Senate race on a campaign promising to fight lobbyist-written trade policies. A Rasmussen Poll just out today finds "just 16% of Likely Democratic Primary Voters believe the North American Free Trade Agreement—NAFTA—is good for America." Fifty-five percent "say the trade agreement negotiated by the Clinton Administration is bad for the nation." Additionally, "By a 53% to 14% margin, voters believe that Obama opposes NAFTA while there are mixed perceptions on where Clinton stands." In all, "35% believe she favors NAFTA, 31% believe she opposes it and 34% are not sure. This issue is critical in a state that has lost thousands of manufacturing jobs."

CANDIDATES' PUBLIC STATEMENTS: Both Clinton and Obama have pledged to amend NAFTA-style trade deals, add tougher labor and environmental standards, and better enforce trade laws on the books. On the specific issue of NAFTA, over the last week, Clinton has been denying she ever supported that 1993 trade agreement. Here is a look at her public statements about NAFTA in the past. Obama, meanwhile, has been attacking Clinton for publicly supporting NAFTA up until 2004. And though Obama has never endorsed or bragged about NAFTA as Clinton did, he has made statements suggesting he at one point supported the NAFTA model. You can see some of those statements here, courtesy of a Clinton mailer.

CANDIDATES' VOTING RECORD: Both Clinton and Obama voted against the Central American Free Trade Agreement — a bill that expanded the NAFTA model. Both also supported the Peru Free Trade Agreement, whose labor and environmental standards were mildly stronger than NAFTA's, but whose overall structure was still the destructive NAFTA model.