Cross-posted at the Huffington Post
Today’s working families are juggling ‘Ozzie and Harriet’ policies in a web 2.0 world, and it’s simply not sustainable. Workers are struggling to care for their families while both parents hold jobs. Families are straining to meet increasing child- and eldercare responsibilities. Parents have little savings to fall back on, and few jobs – and even fewer good jobs – to apply for, should they lose the jobs they have.
Every day we see the consequences, which include more sick children at school and daycare, more families facing foreclosure and bankruptcy because illness struck, and more mothers and fathers struggling mightily to juggle their work and family responsibilities.
Those realities make a mockery of our claim to value families, and they are the reason that paid sick days, paid family and medical leave, flextime and other work/family measures have overwhelming public support. They are the right policies for our families, our economy, and our times.
National Work and Family Month just ended with ample evidence about the work that needs to be done. Residents of Milwaukee are still awaiting the implementation of the paid sick days law they approved two years ago with nearly 70 percent support. New York City workers are still waiting for Speaker Christine Quinn to recognize that paid sick days legislation is good for both the city’s workers and its businesses. And we’re all still waiting for Congress to complete FY2011 appropriations that we hope will contain modest funds for state paid leave programs.
Yet despite all these delays–and an election that may well put in office more opponents of the reasonable, modest work/family policies the nation urgently needs– I am convinced that success on family support programs is inevitable. That’s because measures like paid sick days, paid family and medical leave, flextime and others are not risky, not untested, not damaging to businesses, and not harmful to our economy. In fact, where these policies have been put in place, businesses and employees have grown stronger.
So regardless of the outcome of this election, it’s only a matter of time until fair-minded lawmakers from both parties join workers in saying: Enough.
That day will come sooner if workers and advocates join together to speak out, organize, and demand the programs and policies Americans deserve.
There are many challenges before us, but there is no doubt that our nation can and will do better for working families. The cost of continuing inaction is simply too high.
I call and email my reps and Obama everyday – We need to reinforce those grass roots groups to unite to inform the American people about what is really going on.
Hightower: How Wal-Mart, Google and Other Corporate Giants Are Trying to Trick Progressive Consumers
Large corporations are trying to put on a progressive face. Don’t be fooled.
The signature phrase of America’s booming good food movement has been expanded from “organic” to “local and sustainable.”
Good! The phrase suggests great quality, strong environmental stewardship and a commitment to keeping our food dollars in the local economy. If you support the local-economies movement, as I do, no doubt you’ll be thrilled to hear that a new, local food store is coming soon to your neighborhood. In fact, it’s even named Neighborhood Market.
Only, it’s not. It’s a Wal-Mart. Yes, the $400-billion-a-year retail behemoth, with 2 million employees laboring in 8,500 stores spread around the globe, now is putting on a “local” mask. The giant is promising to buy 9 percent of the produce it’ll sell from local farmers. Big whoopie. This means that 91 percent of the foodstuffs offered in its “Neighborhood” chain will come from Wayawayland. Wal-Mart is to local what near beer is to beer. Near beer is not beer … and Wal-Mart is not local.
But even the 9 percent number is a deceit, for Wal-Mart says that it defines “local” as grown in the same state. Excuse me, but in California, Florida, Texas and other such sizable states, that can be a mighty long truck-haul away. Not exactly what us locals would call “local.”
As for being sustainable, Wal-Mart is bragging about a billion-dollar investment it’ll make to shrink its environmental footprint a bit. That’s a nice gesture, but come on, this outfit has humongous feet that bestride the whole world, and even a billion bucks won’t shrink that footprint. Also, it’s made no commitment to organic production, nor did it rule out peddling genetically engineered Frankenfoods as part of its “sustainability” gimmick.
Who does Wal-Mart think it’s fooling? It’s not coming to our neighborhoods to be local and sustainable, but to drive out our homegrown enterprises and extract profits from our own communities.
Flimflamming seems to be the favorite corporate sport these days, even by outfits that pose as ethical paragons. For instance, if you Google Google, you might learn that this Internet powerhouse once proudly promised to do no evil.
In CorporateWorld, however, ethics are often discarded like an old suit that no longer fits. Thus, this $24-billion-a-year, do-no-evil corporation is now a voracious tax-dodger.
A Bloomberg News reporter reveals that Google transfers a big chunk of its annual profits to a subsidiary in Ireland. Then, prior to tax time, Google funnels these profits into a shell corporation in the Netherlands, from which they are bounced into yet another shell corporation in Bermuda. It’s not natural beauty that draws Google to the islands, but the fact that Bermuda assesses no taxes on corporate profits. Bottom line: Google escapes paying a billion dollars a year that it ethically owes in U.S. taxes.
Meanwhile, such computer powers as Cisco and Oracle are lobbying furiously to reprise a tax flimflam that multinational corporations pulled on us during the George W. Bush regime. They were allowed to pay a mere 5 percent tax rate on profits they had stashed abroad — in exchange for pledging to invest this money in American factories and jobs. They got their tax break, then reneged on their job-creation promise, with many corporations actually grabbing the giveaway while firing employees.
Now, they’re demanding another tax holiday in return for bringing home a trillion dollars in profits they’ve squirreled away in foreign tax havens. Amazingly, like rubes at a medicine show, Republicans in Congress are swallowing this same old snake oil, pushing legislation to let super-rich corporations do it to us again.
Before GOP leaders give in, they should recall the words of George W., the guy who enabled the first scam. “Fool me once, shame on — shame on you,” he said.
“Fool me — you can’t get fooled again.”
Of course, it’s us taxpayers who’ll get shafted by this corporate tomfoolery.
I support repealing Obamacare and carefully enacting a series of health care laws that will provide universal coverage and bend the cost cost curve. Some ideas that were not included in current legislation but should be addressed include: TORT reform, cross state lines insurance competition, etc. Obviously, I am a fiscally conservative, and although you and your organization may have the best intentions, I have no desire to see this great country fail the way the European countries with ideas similar to yours are currently failing. Specifically, the cost of this healthcare plan will worsen our crushing debt and potentially threaten the vitality of the United States of America.
I am so pleased with the content and message of this letter. Thirty years ago I was a stay at home father. Today it is even more important to give families the kind of support that actually values values families, rather than paying lip service to some bullet point messages and sound bites. Thank you, thank you.
We must protect our new health care agenda. Americans need the plan that our President has set before us.
I agree with you. Paid sick leave seems fair to have.