The Budget Thugs: What Do They Know About the Economy?

Monday, 10 December 2012 11:06By Dean Baker, Truthout | News Analysis

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What would Michelle Rhee (pictured center), the hero of the "school reform" movement, do to a public school teacher if all of that teacher's students had huge drops in scores from the prior year? The economic experts among the Debt Fixers all fit this failed-teacher description, says Dean Baker. (Photo: Brendan Smialowski / The New York Times )Ed Haislmaier, a senior scholar at theHeritage Foundation, made himself famous in this video where he appears to be assaulting people protesting a conference organized by Fix the Debt. While this act of bad temper may be uncharacteristic of the public behavior of this corporate-sponsored crusade to cut Social Security and Medicare, it does reflect the way in which they hope to bully their agenda through the political process.

The line from Fix the Debt, an organization that includes the CEOs of many of the country's largest corporations, and allies like The Washington Post is that we better have cuts to Social Security and Medicare because they say so. Note that they did not try to push this line in the elections. Everyone knows that cuts to these programs are hugely unpopular across the political spectrum.

The Fix the Debt strategy was explicitly to wait until after the election. They would then go into high gear pushing their agenda of cutting Social Security and Medicare regardless of who won the elections. Remember, we need these cuts because they say so.

It is worth repeating the "they say so" part, because this is the only way we could know that cuts to Social Security and Medicare are necessary. It is possible to tell stories about countries where a meltdown in financial markets forced sharp budget cuts, but there is zero evidence of that for the United States. Investors are willing to lend the U.S. government vast amounts of money at extremely low interest rates. The only reason that we have for believing that financial markets will panic if we don't make the Social Security and Medicare cuts that the Debt Fixers want to make is because they say so.

For this reason, it is worth considering what the Debt Fixers know or don't know about the economy. This means bringing up a still fresh wound: why did none of these people see the housing bubble whose collapse wrecked the economy?

It is important to understand the bubble was not hard to see, nor did it require much knowledge of economics to realize that its collapse would devastate the economy.

The bubble was an unprecedented nationwide run-up in house prices. For the 100 years from 1896 to 1996, nationwide house prices had, on average, just tracked the overall rate of inflation. In the decade from 1996 to 2006, house prices rose by more than 70 percentage points in excess of the rate of inflation.

How could anyone following the economy miss this? There are reports on house prices released every month; did none of the Debt Fixers ever look at them during the bubble years?

And there was no explanation for this extraordinary run up of prices in the fundamentals of the housing market. Population and income growth in the last decade were slow, not fast. And there was no corresponding increase in rents. If fundamentals were driving the explosion in house prices, then there should have been some pressure on rents, as well. And vacancy rates were hitting all-time highs. How does that fit with a supply-and-demand story driving up house prices?

The fact that the housing bubble was driving the economy was also not hard to see. Typically, housing construction is less than 4 percent of gross domestic product (GDP). It peaked at more than 6 percent of GDP in 2005. Couldn't the Debt Fixers find the GDP data released every month by the Commerce Department?

Housing wealth was also driving a consumption boom as the saving rate fell to nearly zero in the years from 2004-2007. Did the Debt Fixers think that people would keep borrowing against their homes when the equity in their homes disappeared?

The bursting of the bubble meant a loss in annual demand of more than $1 trillion when the construction and consumption boom both collapsed. What exactly did the Debt Fixers think would replace this demand?

Did they think that firms would suddenly double their investment as they saw their markets collapse? Did they think that consumers would just spend like crazy even as their housing wealth vanished? If they have a theory as to how the economy could quickly replace the demand generated by the housing bubble without large government budget deficits, it would be great if they would share.

The reality is that the Debt Fixers and their allied economists and policy wonks saw none of the above. They were completely out to lunch in their understanding of the economy.

The Debt Fixers and their allies will have to explain for themselves how they managed to miss something as huge and important to the economy as the housing bubble. However, missing an $8 trillion housing bubble is not a small mistake. It is the sort of thing that, in other lines of work, gets you fired and sent looking for a new career.

What would Michelle Rhee, the hero of the "school reform" movement, do to a public school teacher if all of that teacher's students had huge drops in scores from the prior year? The economic experts among the Debt Fixers all fit this failed-teacher description.

This means that when we get a whole bunch of seemingly important and knowledgeable people telling us that we must cut Social Security and Medicare because the markets demand it, we have to remember that these are people who were just recently shown to be completely out to lunch in their economic judgment. If the Debt Fixers expect the country to take their pronouncements seriously, they should be forced to answer one simple question: when did you stop being wrong about the economy?

Copyright, Truthout. May not be reprinted without permission of the author.

Sens. Franken/Klobuchar Fight Trans Pacific Pact

Sen. Franken takes the lead in Senate effort to 

sway Trans-Pacific TPP trade negotiations

http://advocate.stpaulunions.org/2012/12/06/franken-takes-the-lead-in-senate-effort-to-sway-trans-pacific-trade-negotiations/

December 6, 2012 By Union Advocate 1 Comment

U.S. Sen. Al Franken, shown here at a union rally in St. Paul, co-authored a letter to President Obama urging enforceable protections for workers’ rights in the TPP.

As negotiations on the latest U.S.-backed free-trade agreement resumed in Australia this week, U.S. Sen. Al Franken of Minnesota led a bipartisan appeal to President Obama, urging his administration to craft an deal thatprotects American jobs and workers’ rights worldwide.

Sen. Franken, a DFLer, joined Republican Sen.Olympia Snowe of Maine in authoring a letter to Obama on the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a proposed free-trade agreement currently encompassing 11 countries and reaching all corners of the Pacific Ocean.

The Senators want Obama to ensure the new free-trade agreement is “crafted to maximize good job creation and market expansion while minimizing the incentives for further off-shoring of middle class jobs,” according to the letter (click to download as pdf).

Twenty-two other Senators, including Minnesota DFLer Amy Klobuchar, signed onto the letter.

The Senators voice specific concern in the letter about including enforceable protections for labor rights in the TPP – a provision that has been lacking in previous free-trade agreements entered into by the U.S.

“A country that denies these rights to workers is providing a hidden subsidy that keeps wages artificially lower than they otherwise would be if workers were free to organize and bargain – a subsidy that makes U.S.-based producers less cost-competitive,” the letter says. “The free exercise of fundamental labor rights is key to improving the standards of living and expanding export markets while labor suppression merely ensures that middle classes – and export markets – will be smaller than they otherwise would be.”

Congress has been mostly shut out of TPP negotiations, now in their 15^th round. As a result, letters like Franken’s are as close as federal lawmakers can come to influencing the talks before the TPP lands in Congress for a ratification vote.

Josh Wise, director of the Minnesota Fair Trade Coalition, which is closely monitoring TPP negotiations, equated the Senators’ letter to the committee hearing that takes place before a bill reaches the Senate floor.

Members of the Minnesota Fair Trade Coalition protested outside Cargill’s offices in Hopkins last July, targeting the company for its involvement in secretive TPP negotiations.

Wise praised Minnesota’s Senators for taking a “strong stand for the rights of workers in Minnesota and around the globe.”

Countries currently engaged in TPP talks with the U.S. are Australia, Peru, Vietnam, Chile, Malaysia, New Zealand, Singapore, Vietnam and Brunei.

Although members of Congress – and the media – have been shut out of negotiations, a handful of multinational corporations like Cargill have been included in the talks – a big reason why it is critical for lawmakers like Sen. Franken and Sen. Klobuchar to speak out, Wise added.

“With countries such as Vietnam, which has been referred to as the ‘low cost labor alternative to China,’ being party to the Trans-Pacific Partnership, it is vitally important that our elected officials do everything in their power to ensure that this massive free-trade deal does not repeat the results of NAFTA and create a race to the bottom for wages and working conditions,” Wise said.

GOP Leaders, Corp CEOs Psychpaths

Schizophrenics, Psychopaths Holding America Hostage

Wednesday, 05 December 2012 00:00By Dr Brian Moench, Truthout | Op-Ed

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Pedro Correa stands in the remains of his home on Kissam Avenue in the Staten Island borough of New York, November 30, 2012. (Photo: Chang W. Lee / The New York Times)"The greatest threat to the United States will never be al Qaeda, Russia, China or Iran. It will be our failure to wrest control of public policy from the inmates of our own insane asylum," says Brian Moench.

My father, a psychiatrist whose practice focused on the severely mentally ill, used to say, "Well, schizophrenia is better than no phrenia," and, "In poker, a paranoid always beats one of a noid." He also pioneered the subspecialty of forensic psychiatry, before it had a name, in that he was often asked as an expert witness to evaluate psychopaths and the competency of criminals to stand trial. Not all criminals are psychopaths, and certainly not all psychopaths have violated the law. Serious mental illnesses are family tragedies not to be trivialized. But in ruminating about a post-election America, I've been struck by how large portions of the country are mired in schizophrenic distortions of reality and how prominent business leaders and politicians overtly display personality traits common to psychopaths. Vestiges of widespread mental illness abound.

Although hurricane Sandy has likely been the trigger for a sharp rise in the percentage of the population who believes the climate crisis is serious and must be addressed in public policy, still, about 30 percent of American adults don't believe it, and there is no indication that the leaders of the Republican Party have joined the "Reality" Party. Let's briefly outline how disconnected this position is.

Eighty international scientific societies have endorsed the concept of a primarily human-caused climate crisis that is already starting to threaten the health and well-being of millions, and soon to be billions, of people in the next few decades. The total number of scientific organizations that dispute this is zero. If you were watching a basketball game where the score was 80 to 0, with one minute left in the fourth quarter, and you decided to bet your entire nest egg on that losing team, no one would argue that you were not severely delusional.

Almost weekly, more studies are published strongly suggesting that the chaos and destruction built into the greenhouse gas phenomenon has been underestimated and that climate-related extreme outcomes are happening even faster than worse casepredictions of even a few years ago.  Our own Pentagon, the insurance industry, theWorld Bank, the United Nations, the American Meteorological Society and virtually every other country in the world accepts the science. The American Republican Party and the Fox News/right wing entertainment complex are the only organizations in the world that deny the validity and reality of the science. And because the Republicans control the US House of Representatives, there is no hope any legislation will be passed to address the climate crisis. Inability to discern reality is the hallmark of schizophrenia.

One of my professional friends - smart, well-educated, and seemingly otherwise sane - has been relentlessly trying to sell everyone I work with on the conspiracy theory that Barack Obama's real father was an African-American communist activist, Frank Marshall Davis, and that Obama's secret agenda is mind control and the collapse of the American way of life through diabolical UN-mandated sustainable land use planning - a pillar of Glenn Beck's circus tent of amazing conspiracy theories. People who believe others are reading their minds, controlling their thoughts, or plotting to harm them are usually medicated to make them safe to live among us. But institutions that promote the same paranoid delusions are rewarded with handsome profitability.

For the first time since the Civil War, hundreds of thousands of American citizens have petitioned the federal government to allow their states to secede from the union. This is more than just a new expression of undying racism. It is also a sharp detachment from reality. The efficacy of tax cuts for the rich as an economic stimulus, has no empirical substantiation - in other words no basis in reality, just like global warming denial.

Much has been written about the Karl Rove/Republican/right wing/Fox News bubble and their group delusion in truly believing that their polling heralding a Romney victory was superior to everyone else's reality. Rove is also widely thought to be the source of the famous quote from a George W. Bush insider, offered to Ron Suskind for an article in the New York Times Magazine in 2004, "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality." That's how schizophrenics talk and think.

Psychopaths often appear normal, even charming. Underneath, they lack conscience and empathy, making them manipulative, volatile and often (but by no means always) criminal. The psychologist Kevin Dutton in his book, The Wisdom of Psychopaths, notes society, and especially Wall Street, admires and rewards many of the qualities of psychopaths - fearlessness, emotional sterility, supreme confidence, ruthlessness, lack of remorse, refusal to take responsibility, narcissism and delusions of grandeur. Who could argue that those characteristics virtually defined the Wall Street crowd responsible for blowing up the world's economy in 2008? In fact, a recent study showed psychopaths were four times more common among business leaders than among the general population. [1]

A 2005 British study compared the psychological profiles of 39 senior business executives at leading British companies with those of mental patients in the UK's Broadmoor Special Hospital. The business leaders scored a clear "victory" in the three traits normally used to identify the emotional dysfunction of psychopaths: histrionic personality disorder, narcissistic personality disorder, and compulsive personality disorder.

Other studies suggest that financial elites, like psychopaths, are more likely to feel like rules and societal constraints don't apply to them. Mitt Romney's entire business and political career, especially his approach to paying taxes, is the freshest, most conspicuous example of this personality trait.

Dr. Dale Archer, a psychiatrist and frequent guest on "FoxNews.com Live" of all placeswrites, "Physically, studies have shown that the brain chemistry is different in powerful politicians, leading to sensation seeking and risky behavior. They have lower levels of the brain chemical monoamine oxidase-A, which means they have higher highs when they engage in risky behavior and that they get bored much more easily than the norm."

Enter the 71 corporate CEOs behind the current Campaign To Fix The Debt. These are CEOs making the media rounds and spending $30 million dollars pounding the table on achieving federal deficit reduction exclusively by dismantling the social safety nets - Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security - while they sit on their own massive retirement funds averaging $9.1 million. These are the same CEOs who have contributed mightily to and benefited personally from the deficit they now want closed. Their companies have received trillions in federal war contracts, subsidies and bailouts, as well as specialized tax breaks and loopholes that virtually eliminate the companies' tax bills - companies like Goldman Sachs, Honeywell, AT &T and Boeing. And no, they are not offering to reduce their feeding at the public trough, instead they want us to turn away the poor, disabled and the vulnerable, calling government support for them "low priority spending." Meanwhile, CEOs of the major fossil fuel companies have enough scientific expertise to know that their business model of extracting all the carbon they can get their hands on threatens the very survival of all of mankind, yet they are undaunted in doing exactly that. Who cares about the collapse of civilization when there are quarterly profits to be made? How are these captains of the fossil fuel industry not psychopaths?

Psychopaths are notoriously refractory to treatment or behavioral modification, another trait they share with business and political elites. As F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote in The Great Gatsby, "Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me...They think, deep down, that they are better than we are.” Our nation's responses to the climate crisis, the federal deficit, our economic stagnation and many of our other serious challenges are still being held hostage by people who manifest a detachment from reality as profound as that of schizophrenics. We are still allowing a powerful elite, who behave like psychopaths, to steer our government towards protecting their interests at the expense of everyone else. The greatest threat to the United States will never be Al Qaeda, Russia, China or Iran. It will be our failure to wrest control of public policy from the inmates of our own insane asylum.

JOBS First, not GOP Deficit Scaremongers

Today's Numbers Show Why Jobs Must Come First

By Robert Reich, Robert Reich's Blog

07 December 12

oday's jobs report shows an economy that's still moving in the right direction but way too slowly, which is why Washington's continuing obsession with the federal budget deficit is insane. Jobs and growth must come first.

The cost of borrowing is so low - the yield on the ten-year Treasury is near historic lows - and the need for more jobs and better wages so high, and our infrastructure so neglected, that a reasonable government would borrow more to put more Americans to work rebuilding the nation.

Yes, unemployment is down slightly and 146,000 new jobs were created in November. That's some progress. But don't be overwhelmed by the hype coming out of Wall Street and the White House, both of which would like the public to believe things are going quite well.

The fact is some 350,000 more people stopped looking for jobs in November, and the percent of the working-age population currently employed continues to drop - now at 63.6%, almost the lowest in 30 years. Meanwhile, the average workweek is stuck at 34.4 hours.

The slowness of the jobs recovery isn't because of Hurricane Sandy, which it turns out had very little impact on November's job numbers (the hurricane's negative effects were more than offset by a Thanksgiving earlier than normal, and an early start to the Christmas buying season). And it's not because of any uncertainty over the looming "fiscal cliff." Most consumers in November remained oblivious about any pending cliff.

The reason the economy is still under-performing is overall demand is inadequate. Businesses won't create more jobs without enough customers. But consumers can't and won't spend because they don't have the money. Unless or until the private sector - businesses and consumers - are able to boost the economy, government must be the spender of last resort.

But the nation has bought into the Republican frame of thinking that we have to "get our fiscal house in order" before the economy can get back on track. Although Barack Obama was reelected and Democrats gained seats in the House and Senate, that frame is still dominating debate.

And even though we're near a fiscal cliff that illustrates how dangerous deficit reduction can be when so many people are still unemployed, the White House and the Democrats seem incapable of changing the frame of debate.

But remember: Jobs must come first. Job creation must be our first priority.

Robert B. Reich, Chancellor's Professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley, was Secretary of Labor in the Clinton administration. Time Magazine named him one of the ten most effective cabinet secretaries of the last century. He has written thirteen books, including the best sellers "Aftershock" and "The Work of Nations." His latest is an e-book, "Beyond Outrage." He is also a founding editor of the American Prospect magazine and chairman of Common Cause.

Port of LA Strike Continues for 4th Day

Port of Los Angeles Strike Rolls on as Negotiations Continue

By Brian Sumers, Mercury News

04 December 12

egotiations to end the labor strike at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach continued for a fourth consecutive day Sunday, but sources close to the talks said the sides likely were not close to reaching an agreement. | PHOTOS

Reacting to the perceived stalemate, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa wrote a letter to both sides Sunday urging them to work around the clock and bring in a government or private mediator to help resolve the issues. The sides have been negotiating, intermittently, since Thursday night.

"The cost is too great to continue down this failed path," Villaraigosa wrote. "Mediation is essential and every available hour must be used."

In broad terms, the key issue remains staffing levels, sources say. Negotiators with the International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 63 Office Clerical Unit want to protect employment for as many of their members as possible, while management officials want more flexibility to control the number of temporary and full-time office workers they hire.

Many elected officials and retail executives had pushed the sides to negotiate an end to the work stoppage - possibly one that would even put the strike on hold while the sides continued to talk - but a quick resolution may no longer be possible, sources say.

In the meantime, many containers destined for Southern California sit elsewhere - on ships that cannot be serviced in Long Beach or Los Angeles or at other ports on the West Coast and Mexico.

The strike began at midday Tuesday when some members of the Office Clerical Unit - one of the smallest ILWU locals with only about 800 total members - walked off the job at APM Terminals Pacific Ltd., the largest terminal operator at the Port of Los Angeles. It spread on Wednesday, effectively shutting down three of six terminals in Long Beach and seven of eight terminals in Los Angeles after other union members refused to cross the picket lines.

The complex is by far the busiest shipping hub in the United States - Los Angeles is the top port by container traffic, and Long Beach ranks second, according to industry data.

Many members of the Office Clerical Unit, who provide back office and logistics support to most of the major terminal operators, have been working under terms of a set of contracts that expired in June 2010. Union members claim managers at many of the terminal companies have been quietly shifting jobs to lower-wage workers in other states and countries, an accusation denied by the employers. Management negotiators say the new contracts must stop so-called featherbedding - or providing temporary and permanent jobs to workers even when there is no work to perform.

The strike is only affecting terminals where the union has contract disputes, so a Disney Cruise Line ship called Disney Wonder was able to dock without difficulty on Sunday morning, Port of Los Angeles spokesman Phillip Sanfield said.

But the port's focus is cargo containers, the majority of which arrive from Asia on gigantic ships. And Sanfield said port officials are urging both union and management to come to an agreement soon, so the containers can move to warehouses across Southern California and beyond.

"Cargo continues to back up and concern is mounting throughout the worldwide logistics chain," Sanfield said. "We need resolution to prevent further economic damage."

Many logistics industry analysts initially said the strike occurred during a historically weak period for international trade because most retailers have already received their holiday shipments.

But the longer the strike lasts, the deeper the impact on the supply chain, industry experts say. Jonathan Gold, vice president of supply chain and customs policy for the National Retail Federation, said in an interview Sunday that it took retailers roughly six months to recover from the impact of a 10-day lockout in 2002 that affected ports throughout the West Coast.

"This shutdown of the ports doesn't just impact the retail industry," Gold said. "You've got manufacturers who are operating just-in-time supply chains, and you've got exports that aren't moving because the ports are shut down. We're in day five. We need it to end now because it's going to take some time to clear through the backups."

The National Retail Federation is one several groups to ask President Barack Obama to wade into the dispute. Under the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act governing union-management relations, Obama could invoke an emergency mechanism and ask a federal court to order an 80-day cooling-off period. President George W. Bush used the power during the 2002 lockout.

But Gold said the federation has not heard back from the White House regarding its request, which it delivered by letter, and observers say it is unlikely the president will get involved - at least soon.

Several sources have calculated that the strike is costing the economy more than $1 billion a day, but Jock O'Connell, an international trade economist who studies the shipping industry, said Sunday in an email that the figure is slightly misleading. O'Connell said it will be several weeks before anyone will be able to come up with a good estimate on the true economic cost of the strike.

"That billion-dollar-a-day number wrongly assumes that all of the cargo being delayed or diverted will never be delivered and would have to be entirely written off," O'Connell said. "To be sure, someone in the supply chains will sustain losses because of late deliveries, but nearly all of those goods not being handled right now at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach will eventually reach a market."

The strike's local impact could be greater if shippers decide to bring their goods to other ports in the future, but that also won't be known quickly. Logistics industry experts say no shippers like to send their goods to areas known for trouble, but they acknowledge most North American ports have some reliability issues - whether due to labor unrest, poor infrastructure or bad weather.

East Coast ports have had their own issues recently. The ILWU's East Coast counterpart - the International Longshoremen's Association - recently postponed plans for a strike that could have crippled trade there this fall. And the Port of New York and New Jersey still has not fully recovered from damage inflicted by Hurricane Sandy in late October.

Michigan GOP Ram Through Anti-Union Law

Michigan Republicans Pass 'Right to Work' for Less Bills Without Hearings or Input from Residents

5COMMENTS

12/07/2012

Chris Savage

Chris Savage is a Michigan-based political writer and owner of Eclectablog. You also can follow him on Facebook and Twitter.

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka and President Barack Obama spoke out against "right to work" for less legislation yesterday. These types of laws reduce wages and benefits for working families. 

Two days ago, I reported that Michigan Republicans, along with Gov. Rick Snyder, were planning on making Michigan the nation’s 24th “right to work” for Less (RTWFL) state by the end of the year. The timetable was, apparently, far more aggressive than that. The very next day after Snyder announced RTWFL was “on the table,” he held a joint press conference with House Speaker Jase Bolger and Senate Majority Leader Randy Richardville saying that he was asking for the legislation to be passed and that he would sign it into law.

“I do not view this as something against the unions,” Snyder said. Rather, he went on, it’s about “workers [having] the right to choose who they associate with.”

What happened next must have set a new record for the speed at which the Michigan legislature gets bills passed. By the end of the day, both the Senate and the House vacated existing “placeholder” bills, dropped in new RTWFL language and passed a total of three bills—two in the Senate and another in the House. No committee hearings. No floor debate. The Democrats could do virtually nothing as the Republicans steamrolled the bills through without any formal public input whatsoever.

A procedural speed bump put in place by Democrats delayed moving the Senate bills to the House by one day and there is a mandatory five-day waiting period before the House can take action. This allows union-supporting citizens to express their disdain for these new laws, just as they did on Thursday as thousands of Michiganders descended on the capitol building. In the onslaught of this informal public input, House Speaker Bolger locked down the capitol building. Tempers flared, protestors were maced and it took a court order requested by the Democrats to get the building opened again.

The bills include a $1 million  appropriation. Michigan law precludes citizen referendums to overturn laws with appropriations, so not only was there no opportunity for public input before the bills were voted on, there will be none afterwards, as well.

Michigan AFL-CIO President Karla Swift told me, “Today was a dark day for democracy in Michigan. The people were shut out of their own capitol so that lawmakers could better serve corporate special interests. But working people in this state are resilient, and will keep fighting until their voices are heard.”

Michigan Democratic Party chair Mark Brewer was a bit more gloomy. Referring to the role multimillionaire Dick Devos played in the RTWFL legislative action, he issued a statement saying, “The Tea Party takeover of the Michigan GOP is officially complete. Snyder, Bolger and Richardville have shown they are nothing more than puppets for Dick DeVos.” DeVos is reported to have assured Republicans that if they faced recall, he would bankroll their fight against it. He’s reported to have threatened to withhold campaign donations from the same lawmakers if they didn’t vote to pass the bills.

I spoke to a number of union members who were in Lansing yesterday. Katie Oppenheim, a nurse and Michigan Nurses Association member, said, “What can I say? It is a sad day in Michigan—in so many ways. As a nurse and union member, I fear for the safety of patients and nurses. Through collective bargaining, we have been able to negotiate adequate staffing, adequate rest periods and safety equipment. I think the corporate mentality will completely take over.”

Rick Catherman, a teacher and Michigan Education Association (MEA) member from Chelsea, wrote me after an exhausting day, much of which was spent outside in the freezing cold, waiting to be allowed back into the capitol building. It was a “Day of ‘The Big D’s,'” he wrote—“Democrats, Demonstrators, Disappointment, Disgust and Determination! For the state Democrats, it was a day of disappointment and disgust with their colleagues for rushing this damaging legislation through with no committee meetings or testimony, or opportunity for input from citizens of Michigan. Union workers, however, were determined demonstrators."

Catherman continued:

It was great to see state leaders standing with the demonstrators. Lansing Mayor Virg Bernero, MEA president Steve Cook, Karla Swift, UAW president Bob King, along with current state representatives and senators—all were there with us.

The energy in the capitol building from demonstrators was amazing–teachers standing with nurses, auto workers and service and food workers, all standing up for the citizens of Michigan. Nurses standing up for their patients, teachers standing up for our students. It was amazing.

Christine Barry, owner of the state blog Blogging for Michigan, reflected on the day’s events in light of our state’s important place in the labor movement.

My great-grandfather and my uncle were in the hole, my other uncle was in Little Fisher and my grandma and grandpa were on the outside,” she said, referring to significant labor protests in Michigan labor history. “We already fought this battle. We fought this battle with door hinges and water hoses and broomsticks and rolling pins. We were beaten and shot at and we were hungry and cold. We faced down the National Guard and the company police and we won the right to unionize our work. We have union shops because we earned them, and no corporate hack is going to take them away and call it freedom.

One of the biggest ironies — or, perhaps, hypocrisies — of yesterday’s action is the language used by Gov. Snyder and Republicans as they justified what they did. They referred repeatedly to “choice” and “freedom.” However, on the very same day, the House passed incredibly regressive anti-Choice legislation limiting women’s access to reproductive and abortion services and also a committee passed a replacement bill for the now-repealed Emergency Manager law, an anti-democratic law that disenfranchises local communities and takes away their voice in elected government. These are odd ways to celebrate “choice” and “freedom.”

Michiganders are tough and resilient. It’s only through highly gerrymandered state House and Senate districts that Republicans are able to have such complete control over our state legislature. Michigan elected President Barack Obama by a 10-point margin last month and sent Democrat Debbie Stabenow back to the U.S. Senate by an even wider margin. In 2014 and beyond, those who betrayed Michigan’s labor legacy are sure to pay the price politically. What is done can be undone and so it shall be.

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Michigan State AFL-CIO

5th Day of ILWU Strike

Port of Los Angeles Strike Rolls on as Negotiations Continue

By Brian Sumers, Mercury News

04 December 12

egotiations to end the labor strike at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach continued for a fourth consecutive day Sunday, but sources close to the talks said the sides likely were not close to reaching an agreement. | PHOTOS

Reacting to the perceived stalemate, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa wrote a letter to both sides Sunday urging them to work around the clock and bring in a government or private mediator to help resolve the issues. The sides have been negotiating, intermittently, since Thursday night.

"The cost is too great to continue down this failed path," Villaraigosa wrote. "Mediation is essential and every available hour must be used."

In broad terms, the key issue remains staffing levels, sources say. Negotiators with the International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 63 Office Clerical Unit want to protect employment for as many of their members as possible, while management officials want more flexibility to control the number of temporary and full-time office workers they hire.

Many elected officials and retail executives had pushed the sides to negotiate an end to the work stoppage - possibly one that would even put the strike on hold while the sides continued to talk - but a quick resolution may no longer be possible, sources say.

In the meantime, many containers destined for Southern California sit elsewhere - on ships that cannot be serviced in Long Beach or Los Angeles or at other ports on the West Coast and Mexico.

The strike began at midday Tuesday when some members of the Office Clerical Unit - one of the smallest ILWU locals with only about 800 total members - walked off the job at APM Terminals Pacific Ltd., the largest terminal operator at the Port of Los Angeles. It spread on Wednesday, effectively shutting down three of six terminals in Long Beach and seven of eight terminals in Los Angeles after other union members refused to cross the picket lines.

The complex is by far the busiest shipping hub in the United States - Los Angeles is the top port by container traffic, and Long Beach ranks second, according to industry data.

Many members of the Office Clerical Unit, who provide back office and logistics support to most of the major terminal operators, have been working under terms of a set of contracts that expired in June 2010. Union members claim managers at many of the terminal companies have been quietly shifting jobs to lower-wage workers in other states and countries, an accusation denied by the employers. Management negotiators say the new contracts must stop so-called featherbedding - or providing temporary and permanent jobs to workers even when there is no work to perform.

The strike is only affecting terminals where the union has contract disputes, so a Disney Cruise Line ship called Disney Wonder was able to dock without difficulty on Sunday morning, Port of Los Angeles spokesman Phillip Sanfield said.

But the port's focus is cargo containers, the majority of which arrive from Asia on gigantic ships. And Sanfield said port officials are urging both union and management to come to an agreement soon, so the containers can move to warehouses across Southern California and beyond.

"Cargo continues to back up and concern is mounting throughout the worldwide logistics chain," Sanfield said. "We need resolution to prevent further economic damage."

Many logistics industry analysts initially said the strike occurred during a historically weak period for international trade because most retailers have already received their holiday shipments.

But the longer the strike lasts, the deeper the impact on the supply chain, industry experts say. Jonathan Gold, vice president of supply chain and customs policy for the National Retail Federation, said in an interview Sunday that it took retailers roughly six months to recover from the impact of a 10-day lockout in 2002 that affected ports throughout the West Coast.

"This shutdown of the ports doesn't just impact the retail industry," Gold said. "You've got manufacturers who are operating just-in-time supply chains, and you've got exports that aren't moving because the ports are shut down. We're in day five. We need it to end now because it's going to take some time to clear through the backups."

The National Retail Federation is one several groups to ask President Barack Obama to wade into the dispute. Under the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act governing union-management relations, Obama could invoke an emergency mechanism and ask a federal court to order an 80-day cooling-off period. President George W. Bush used the power during the 2002 lockout.

But Gold said the federation has not heard back from the White House regarding its request, which it delivered by letter, and observers say it is unlikely the president will get involved - at least soon.

Several sources have calculated that the strike is costing the economy more than $1 billion a day, but Jock O'Connell, an international trade economist who studies the shipping industry, said Sunday in an email that the figure is slightly misleading. O'Connell said it will be several weeks before anyone will be able to come up with a good estimate on the true economic cost of the strike.

"That billion-dollar-a-day number wrongly assumes that all of the cargo being delayed or diverted will never be delivered and would have to be entirely written off," O'Connell said. "To be sure, someone in the supply chains will sustain losses because of late deliveries, but nearly all of those goods not being handled right now at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach will eventually reach a market."

The strike's local impact could be greater if shippers decide to bring their goods to other ports in the future, but that also won't be known quickly. Logistics industry experts say no shippers like to send their goods to areas known for trouble, but they acknowledge most North American ports have some reliability issues - whether due to labor unrest, poor infrastructure or bad weather.

East Coast ports have had their own issues recently. The ILWU's East Coast counterpart - the International Longshoremen's Association - recently postponed plans for a strike that could have crippled trade there this fall. And the Port of New York and New Jersey still has not fully recovered from damage inflicted by Hurricane Sandy in late October.