Day: July 29, 2008

Is Media Biased Toward Obama?

The news media has devoted significantly more attention to the Democrat since Hillary Clinton suspended her campaign and left a two-person contest for the presidency between Obama and Republican John McCain, according to research conducted by the Project for Excellence in Journalism.

News executives say there are reasons for the disparity, such as the continuing story about whether Clinton and Obama’s supporters can reconcile. They even partly blame McCain. By criticizing Obama for a lack of foreign policy experience, McCain raised the stakes for Obama’s trip, “especially if he winds up going in to two war zones,” said Paul Friedman, senior vice president of CBS News.

McCain’s group have been whining about this since they both became the presumptive nominees.  McCain says he cannot catch a break and that Obama is getting all the press.  A study done by George Mason University confirms that Obama is getting more press coverage, but that is not as good news as one would expect.  It seems that the coverage of Obama is in the neighborhood of 70% negative.  Yes, he, Pbama, is getting the press, but only about 15% of it is positive coverage.

Will the McCain people stop whining and move on now?  Maybe they should consider that the darling of the 2000 elections, McCain, would get more coverage if he had more to say than “the surge is working” or that the candidate is flipping and flopping just as badly as Obama.  Or maybe the campaign could cease the “poor pitiful me” angle.  They are starting to look desperate and pathetic.

Union Backed Health Care Reform Plan

Kip Sullivan wrote about this plan in Labor Notes.

If Barack Obama wins the fall election, he will be under more pressure to establish universal health insurance than any president in U.S. history. This will be due not only to public disgust with the current health care system, but to the hard work of organizations dedicated to universal health insurance.

But the most powerful of these groups, including the AFL-CIO and Service Employees (the major Change to Win health care union) are promoting a solution that won’t fix the problem.

Their plan would fatten the insurance industry and make it an even more formidable opponent of true reform than it already is.

If SEIU and the AFL-CIO get their way, the day that all Americans have affordable insurance will be pushed into the unforeseeable future.

The labor-backed plan, which they call “guaranteed affordable choice,” would create a public program like Medicare that would allegedly compete with the nation’s 1,500 insurance companies. Americans would get tax-financed subsidies to purchase insurance from either a private insurance company or the public plan. Competition, which has never worked in the health insurance industry, would magically come to life.

By leaving the bloated insurance industry smack in the middle of our health care system, “guaranteed affordable choice” would have taxpayers and premium-payers continuing to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on unnecessary administrative costs.

The Coming Deficit

The White House predicted yesterday that President Bush would leave a record $482 billion deficit to his successor, a sobering turnabout in the nation’s fiscal condition from 2001, when Bush took office after three consecutive years of budget surpluses.

The worst may be yet to come. The deficit announced by Jim Nussle, the White House budget director, does not reflect the full cost of military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, the potential $50 billion cost of another economic stimulus package, or the possibility of steeper losses in tax revenues if individual income or corporate profits decline.

The new deficit numbers also do not account for any drains on the national treasury that might result from further declines in the housing market.

What they forgot to include is that it does not include the funds for the wars of aggression or the wars of revenge or the wars of……..whatever you want to call them.  This deficit figure does not include the latest forclosure bill that the Prez has said he will sign.

This is just the WH trying to manipulate the figures to make the deficit look better than it really is.  Keep in mind that when there is a deficit and the WH wants to try and balance budget the funds with entitlements are the first to be hit.  That includes Social Security, education, and healthcare, if there is any progress there.  In other words, to balance a budget, programs designed to assist the American people will be hit.  The people will suffer while NOTHING is asked of corporate America.  Something to think about.

Longshoremen Reach A Deal

As was reported in the WSJ,

West Coast port operators reached a tentative deal with dockworkers on a new contract, thereby averting the risk of any further work disruptions at 29 ports in California, Oregon and Washington.

The two sides reached the agreement after what they labeled “a marathon weekend bargaining session.” The deal comes more than three weeks after the 26,000 dockworkers’ last contract expired July 1.

The deal will come as a relief to shippers who had watched with increasing worry as the dockworkers engaged in a series of work slowdowns in recent weeks at the ports of Los Angeles, Long Beach and Oakland.

The agreement is subject to ratification by both the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, which represents the dockworkers, and the Pacific Maritime Association, which represents terminal operators, ocean shippers and stevedores at the 29 ports.

In a press release late Monday, leaders from the two sides said they wouldn’t reveal details of the tentative six-year agreement for the time being.

If ratified, the agreement will avoid a repeat of what happened in 2002, the last time the union’s contract expired, when a negotiation impasse and a series of slowdowns at the docks eventually led to a 10-day lockout, snarling the nation’s supply chain and costing the economy billions of dollars.

Automakers May Get Loans

Backers of a program that would lend up to $25 billion to automakers and auto parts suppliers said today they had garnered 71 U.S. House members to support their search for $3.75 billion in funding over the next couple of months.

The program, known as the Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing Incentive Program, was meant to help automakers meet fuel economy standards of 35 miles per gallon by 2020. Created but not funded by Congress last year, the program would provide low-cost loans to cash-strapped automakers and their suppliers for engineering fuel-efficient vehicles or converting old plants.

The $3.75 billion would cover the government’s borrowing costs for up to $25 billion in loans, along with a small reserve for defaults.

While House and Senate Democrats have raised the idea of a second economic stimulus plan — the most likely carrier for such a proposal — the Bush administration has opposed it so far, and the prospects are murky. Congress won’t consider any such plan before leaving for August recess this week, and with no plans to convene after the election, the plan would need to be passed sometime in September.

My reaction is why?  These companies were aware of the coming crisis but yet did nothing to avoid it.  Their answer has been to fire or layoff workers.  I say screw them!

Today In Labor History

29 July

A preliminary delegation from Mother Jones’ March of the Mill Children from Philadelphia to Pres. Theodore Roosevelt’s summer home in Oyster Bay, Long Island, publicizing the harsh conditions of child labor, arrives today. They are not allowed through the gates – 1903

Following a five-year table grape boycott, Delano-area growers file into the United Farm Workers union hall in Delano, Calif. to sign their first union contracts – 1970

The Sweet Smell Of Toxins

Fragranced laundry products and air fresheners emit dozens of different chemicals, including some regulated as toxic or hazardous under federal law, according to a new study.

Yet none of the potentially toxic chemicals is listed on the product labels, according to researcher Anne C. Steinemann, PhD, a professor of civil and environmental engineering and public affairs at the University of Washington, Seattle. She says consumers should be given more information about such products.

In a laboratory, she put each product in an isolated space at room temperature. Then she analyzed the surrounding air for volatile organic compounds (VOCs) — small molecules that evaporate from the surface of the product into the air. She used advanced methods called gas chromatography and mass spectrometry to identify the VOCs.

She detected nearly 100 VOCs, all at levels above 300 micrograms per cubic meter — an arbitrary threshold picked by Steinemann because it is considered high enough to pose potential concern in case of exposure.

Of the identified VOCs, 10 are regulated as toxic or hazardous under federal law, with three of those classified as hazardous air pollutants, she says. The three classified as hazardous air pollutants include acetaldehyde, chloromethane, and 1,4 dioxane.

McCain On Taxes–Part2

The AP is reporting that Republican presidential candidate John McCain drew a sharp rebuke Monday from conservatives after he signaled an openness to a higher payroll tax for Social Security, contrary to previous vows not to raise taxes of any kind.

Speaking with reporters on his campaign bus on July 9, he cited a need to shore up Social Security, saying: “I cannot tell you what I would do, except to put everything on the table.”

He went a step farther Sunday with his reponse on a nationally televised talk show to a question about payroll tax increases.

“There is nothing that’s off the table. I have my positions, and I’ll articulate them. But nothing’s off the table,” McCain said. “I don’t want tax increases. But that doesn’t mean that anything is off the table.”

That comment drew a strong response Monday from the Club for Growth, a Washington anti-tax group. McCain’s comments, the group said in a letter to the Arizona senator, are “shocking because you have been adamant in your opposition to raising taxes under any circumstances.”

Asked for an explanation of McCain’s latest comments, campaign spokesman Tucker Bounds said the Arizona senator “has a clear and demonstrated record of opposing tax increases. John McCain is going to cut taxes” and improve government discipline, he said.

Promises never to raise taxes have bedeviled past Republican officeholders. Before being elected president in 1988, George H.W. Bush said, “Read my lips, no new taxes.” But facing severe budget problems, he reneged on the promise. Some conservative groups never forgave him.