SEIU Chief: If Dems Pass Scaled-Down Health Bill, Labor Will Have Trouble Staying “Focused On National Politics”
SEIU chief Andy Stern took a hard shot at Dem leaders just now for considering a scaled-down health care bill, strongly hinting that labor might not work as hard for Dem candidates in 2010 if they failed to deliver real and comprehensive reform.
“It’s gonna be incredibly difficult to stay focused on national politics if by the end of 2010 we have minimal health care and minimal changes on what’s important to our members,” he said in an interview, ridiculing the emerging Dem approach as “fear masquerading as a strategy.”
Stern unloaded on Dem leaders in resonse to reports today that they’re mulling either a scaled down bill to win GOPers or a broken up bill passed in pieces. His anger suggests Dems risk paying a big price with labor if they fail to figure out how to pass the Senate bill and fix it later, as labor wants.
Stern hinted that if House and Senate members don’t move forward with the Senate bill and some kind of fix, they could see union members spending more time on races for governor, perhaps at the expense of their reelection campaigns. “If something significant doesn’t happen in Congress, I hope the legislators appreciate that there are 37 governors races important to our members,” Stern said suggestively.
Stern ridiculed the idea that breaking up the bill would allow Dems to challenge Republicans with tit-for-tat legislative maneuvers. “It’s classic inside Washington to think that people who can’t afford insurance want to keep score between the Democrats and the Republicans,” he said. “They want to go to bed with a sense of security.”
Concluded Stern: “For the 31 million people who don’t have health care, for the 14,000 who lose it every day, for the 120 people who die every day, they elected this Congress to make change, not to set their sights lower when the going gets tough.”
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lms, thanks for that and for the Dionne.
Wow, I guess Evan Bayh read my post and got on the phone to B&J’s.
Maybe he can get ahead of the curve and change his name to Evan BestBuy.
lmsinca, PRICELESS!
Um, Question:
Who’s hitting up Playboy for cash?!?!?!?!?!?!?
Tena, Brazil the movie or the country?
BGinCHI – Well that’s a good question.
Ethan, I’d say Vitter, but I don’t think they are fetish-oriented enough for him.
This is f**king fantastic, especially in light of SCOTUS:
This week, Prince Alwaleed bin Talal al-Saud of Saudi Arabia — the largest shareholder of News Corp outside the Murdoch family — endorsed Rupert Murdoch’s son James to succeed the elder Murdoch when he retires. Alwaleed, King Abdullah’s nephew, is Saudi Arabia’s richest person and the world’s 22nd wealthiest (Murdoch is number 132). He holds large stakes in many American companies, including Citi. The prince met with Murdoch last week to discuss a “future potential alliance with News Corp,”
http://thinkprogress.org/2010/01/22/saudi-murdoch/
God help us.
# Tena | January 22nd, 2010 at 05:35 pm
Liam – yeah – that’s why it’s my favorite christmas album.
I know he’s troubled, deeply. He sure was genius then -
………………
The hallmark of a great song is when a completely different singer can also make it his own.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLqGE3C0yTQ
Ethan – I used to be convinced that Joss Whedon got it just right in FireFly – Chinese as the common language, which means they took over.
But now I think maybe we should Arabic. It’s almost like the House Saud said: Look over there! Osama! While they were quietly taking us over the way corporations takeover other corporations.
Cue Not a Member in his best Kent Brockman voice:
“I for one welcome our alien overlords.”
Yeah.
Guess the whole, “let’s ignore sustainable energy and instead pour money into OPEC” thing isn’t working out so hot.
Oy vey.
“# BGinCHI | January 22nd, 2010 at 06:03 pm
Cue Not a Member in his best Kent Brockman voice:
“I for one welcome our alien overlords.””
You have been superb today. LOL
“I for one welcome our alien overlords.”
HA!
I try to bring the joy AND the pain.
All, happy hour roundup posted:
http://theplumline.whorunsgov.com/economy/happy-hour-roundup-149/
You fools don’t realize that the esteemed “Mr.” Stern and SEI”U are the reason most Americans turned on healthcare reform? You don’t realize it’s because Stern thought he was threatening some backwoods company hick when he made the “deal” about cadillac plans that the MAJORITY of American Workers were going to get pizzed about a miniscule 12% of working people in this country getting preferential treatment? And talk about socialism? The cradle of socialism….the unions. Yep, Stern couldn’t bully the whole country like he does with business owners.
Stern and his pie card cohorts are part of the problem.
39 state labor federations, and well over 500 different union organizations endorsed single payer. Those numbers represent a vast majority of the rank and file in our nation. Stern and other labor fakers ignored the people who actually work for a living.
Not only do New Dog, Blue Dog, and spineless dog Democrats need to be jettisoned, so too do the likes of Stern. We need a return to New Deal principles, and we need real labor leaders. The bunch that is playing kneesies with the Congressional stooges for corporate America couldn’t carry water for real working stiffs.
Lastly, the nincompoops that blather on about “socialism” are poster children for why we need national health care. They would learn something about self-examination. They’d be able to tell the difference between socialism and rheumatism
Dear Andy
It’s hard being President, especially after 8 years of Bush. It almost makes you want to cry, “boo hoo”, because it’s really really hard. We all had the right attitude a year ago, that is the spirit we need from you and SEIU now. Get on our progressive bandwagon…better yet..get out and push our bandwagon…cause we need your help in getting to the finish line and socialist nirvana! Whaddya say Andy, will you get out and PUSH?
Andy Stern is the mosxt dangerous man in this country. Look at his idealogy. It comes straight out of Chairman Mao’s litle red book. The unions only represent 10% of the workforce, and you think that you are entitled to dictate national agenda. Those of us who still abide by the constitution do not want Mr. Stern destroying our country. If you can not see him for the socialist/communist that he is, than maybe you need to move to China and get a quick lesson on how he wants our country to be run.
It’s amazing what a caricature some of the right wingers here are.
Right wing extremist “Bilgeman” is especially hilarious, he has repeatedly expressed his desire to return to the days of slavery, he self-identifies himself and his friends as “Rethuglikkkans and neo-Confederates”, and apparently has a g.a.y. fascination with our President’s “Big Swingin’ D**k” because this is at least the third time he’s felt compelled to share his fascination.
Seriously, TMI (Too Much Information)-!
Right wingers are such clowns, no matter what: ‘Everything is good for Republicans and everything is bad for Dems’.
Since the recently outed right winger “Bilgeman” brought up the Dow, I looked up the Dow’s “Historical prices”, Google has a handy year long “Historical Chart” that shows that since Obama became President the Dow has gone UP about 2000 (two THOUSAND) points.
But since Republican Scott Brown was elected on Tuesday to much fanfare that he’ll block health care legislation as the 41st filibuster vote, the Dow dropped 550 points since Republican Brown was elected:
http://www.google.com/finance/historical?q=INDEXDJX:.DJI
Nutty right wingers, reality matters.
Obam threatens the banks….DOW drops, Obamacare put on hold….DOW rises. I would really like to know what BIG A** LABOR has to do with National Healthcare and Socialized medicine. Very strange bedfellows indeed
Take a family unit: There’s the breadwinner, the homemaker, 11 year old Johnny and 8 year old Jane.
The breadwinner earns a wage that benefits the entire family.
The homemaker takes care of things at home. The family benefits.
Johnny goes to school, mows the yard, washes the car, and helps with the dishes at night. His chores benefit the family.
Jane goes to school, takes the garbage out, waters the flowers, and feeds the cat. Her household tasks benefit the family.
Should the breadwinner become unemployed, the whole family suffers. Income and health care are lost to everyone. The breadwinner does not hoard what meager savings there are in order to self-indulge. Money that is available is spent in ways that benefit the entire family.
What is described above is an example of the meaning of “from each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs”.
It is basic socialism. It is socialism 101.
If we expand the family unit to include extended family more people are in the “from each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs” category. Same with neighbors and communities. Let’s face it, if a person had the wherewithal to give someone a helping hand, be it someone in the immediate family, the extended family, a neighbor, or someone across town but refused to do so, that cold-hearted decision would describe a sociopath.
Fair warning! Those who rail against helping others are attacking social democracy. Can anyone in their right mind excuse the fact that the richest 400 families in the U.S. have a total combined net worth of $1.57 trillion ($1,570,000,000,000) while so many of our people are living in economic desperation? Many in today’s desperate class were in yesterday’s “middle class”. All but the wealthy are susceptible to poverty. That includes you! One doesn’t have to be religious to see the goodness and humanity in the maxim, “do unto others as you would have others do unto you”, or in the phrase ““from each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs”.
It sure beats the corporate fascism that now has so many of us struggling to get by. The disparity in wealth and income is greater today than at any time since the 1920’s. Productivity has increased 80% since 1980, yet real median incomes for working class America barely budged, increasing by only 2% over the same span of time.
And people rail against socialism? They should be railing against corpocracy! That’s what is bleeding us dry! After all, it wasn’t your poor neighbor that sent your job offshore or robbed you of your pension!
No, Rich…it was Unions and big government.
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