REMARKS OF AFL-CIO PRESIDENT RICHARD TRUMKA
ALASKA AFL-CIO BIENNIAL CONVENTION
ANCHORAGE, ALASKA
August 26, 2010

Thank you, Vince [Beltrami], for welcoming me here to be with the men and women of the Alaska AFL-CIO … .

[To Vince] And thank you for giving me the opportunity to join you, my brother, here at your convention.

[To delegates] Let me tell you something…. your president is something special … he tells it like it is, and he fights for the way it should be… always

(Lead applause)

It is an incredible honor to be here with ALL of you—the hardest-working men and women in Alaska ….

And it’s a pleasure to visit a place where so many of our working families are still working, thanks to an economy that’s a lot like your great state—huge and quite a distance from the lower 48.

It’s not pretty down in the Great Recession, in the worst national economy in 75 years… 15 million Americans are out of work. Half of them have been unemployed for longer than six months. And as many as 26 million Americans are under-employed, working any job they can find for a fraction of what they once brought in.

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A Shock-Jock’s job is to toy with emotions and bring out passions. The most talented of this breed can have a crowd ready to riot over the potential cutting of Social Security Benefits just a few minutes after riling up the same crowd over excessive government spending for socialist programs. (Of which SS is the largest.) These people have made an art out of manipulation and their comments are DESIGNED to push the limits, but the question is, “when has it gone too far?”

From Wired: Turner was convicted in federal court in Brooklyn on Friday of threatening to assault or murder a federal official or judge, and faces a maximum 10-year prison term under the law, with a likely 10 to 16 months under federal sentencing guidelines. His sentencing date has not been set. “Let me be the first to say this plainly: These judges deserve to be killed. Their blood will replenish the tree of liberty. A small price to pay to assure freedom for millions,” the 47-year-old blogger wrote. He blogged at turnerradionetwork.blogspot.com that the three judges of the Chicago-based 7th U.S. Circuit of Appeals should be “killed” for upholding a Chicago handgun ban last year.

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Fairfield University’s Center for Faith and Public Life has been awarded a two-year, $200,000 grant from the Ford Foundation to study the education of undocumented students at Jesuit universities. Fairfield University will lead the project, collaborating with Santa Clara University in California and Loyola University Chicago.

Under the grant, a research study will seek to survey and understand the social context and current practices and attitudes in American Jesuit schools of higher education regarding undocumented students. The study will consider, among other things, structures that support or challenge the higher education of undocumented students; best practices and strategies for ensuring their eventual success; a potential collaborative model for helping students as they move through their university years; and issues facing students after graduation.

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For a while now, many in the western world have been watching Hugh Chavez with a combination of suspicion, horror, and morbid fascination. The story of the charismatic leader of Venezuela couldn’t have been more Hollywood if it was given a script treatment by a team of B-Movie specialists. He’s a lifetime military man and aristocrat who participated in a failed coup attempt, somehow survived to become a political force, ascended to the presidential office and now aspires to be the reincarnation of a long-dead revolutionary leader.

From his comical grandstanding at the UN, to his unrelenting attack on anything resembling liberal or oppositional media, to his use of Venezuela’s oil wealth to buy allies even as his own people suffer double-digit inflation and shortages of even t most basic necessities, Chavez has been an enigma wrapped in a farce, presented as a revolutionary… but is he crazy?

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Imagine that you’re homeless… that’s pretty bad, right?

Now imagine that 19 years ago a woman named YOU as the father of her 5yr old daughter… getting worse.

Now imagine that the papers naming YOU as the father were sent to a house that you don’t live in… really?

Flash-forward 19 years and your mother dies, leaving you with tens of thousands in inheritance. In the meanwhile, a DNA test has proven that you are NOT the father of that child… Not GREAT news, but at least is seems that bad luck can’t ALWAYS hit the same person.

Now imagine that the courts tell you that it’s too late: you should have responded to the papers that you never received and those tens of thousands in inheritance will go to the child who isn’t yours, instead of perhaps helping you to NOT live under a bridge in LA… figures.

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I’ve never really understood the furor that’s generated in this country every time something “indecent” happens on TV; any by ‘indecent’ I mean ‘what the FCC defines as indecent.’ — Why is it that half the country loses their minds when somebody says a curse word or when there is a ‘wardrobe malfunction?’

From CNN: A three-judge panel on the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals said in a 32-page ruling that the FCC’s indecency rules created “a chilling effect that goes far beyond the fleeting expletives at issue here.”

FCC commissioner Michael Copps said in a statement that the court’s decision was “anti-family.” He said the FCC’s policy was “constitutional and enforceable,” but he called on the commission to “immediately to clarify and strengthen its indecency framework.”

Not too long ago a bunch of us uberGeeks discovered something strange in the P2P (peer-to-peer) community. Many of us had fat pipes to the Internet, but our P2P transfer speed seemed to take a dive on a regular basis. A little investigatory work by some techies discovered that Comcast was injecting “TCP Reset” packets into the data stream, effectively killing our transfer sessions each time they hit full-speed.

Comcast argued that this was a necessary step because P2P traffic was illegal (not true) and they needed to be proactive in their network management (true). The problem with that reasoning is that many of us used P2P for legal purposes (I used it to seed downloads of my IPTV show) and customers actually PAID for higher speeds that Comcast was making impossible to reach.

Several class-action lawsuits emerged and after years of wrangling we now can say that Comcast is ready to reimburse its users… $16 each.

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Here’s an interesting little bit of legal news. There’s now a class-action lawsuit against AT&T that claims AT&T and Apple had a secret agreement to form an iPhone monopoly that forced potential iPhone users to sign up with AT&T service.

From Wired: A lawsuit alleging that Apple and AT&T secretly formed monopoly with their exclusive iPhone agreement has received class-action status, meaning the plaintiffs now represent everybody who’s bought an iPhone in the United States.

I’m no fan of AT&T and I have philosophical differences with Apple’s business practices, but even I have trouble stomaching this as a legitimate suit instead of a legal shakedown. I may not like the fact that Apple locks down their phone, but it IS their device and nobody is forced to buy it. There are plenty of other smart phones on the market and to take away a manufacturer’s ability to have “exclusive contracts” is a great way to kill competition between the carriers.

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From Valley News: According to the one-paragraph statement, Hartford police found an “unknown male subject on the third floor” of a Stony Creek townhome who was taken into “temporary custody” before paramedics treated him for a known medical condition.

The unknown male subject found in the home? He was actually the 34-year-old African-American who owns the home and has lived there for four years.

And the part about taking him into temporary custody?

Hartford police neglected to say that in the process he was: blasted with pepper spray; struck with a nightstick; handcuffed, wrapped in a blanket and hauled — naked — out of his home, according to a neighbor and what the man says police later told him. When the neighbor tried to tell cops that the handcuffed man on the pavement was the homeowner — not a burglar — he said he was threatened with arrest for interfering in police business.

The victim — I don’t know how else to describe someone who has undergone such an ordeal — is Wayne Burwell, a 1998 Dartmouth graduate and standout track athlete. He’s a personal trainer who works with many high school and college athletes. A framed photo of one of his clients is displayed in the office of his small gym. The picture shows Ben Lovejoy, a former Dartmouth hockey player, hoisting the Stanley Cup trophy while playing for the 2009 NHL champion Pittsburgh Penguins. “Wayne, thanks for everything,” wrote Lovejoy.

A law firm in West Palm Beach sues companies…

No… that’s not the story… of course a law firm sues… that story here is that they sue for infinitesimal amounts: usually in the $3-$17 range. They’re not looking for the settlement, they want the legal fees.

From the Sun Sentinel: Some of the lawsuits seek as little as $3.89 in damages. A $16.99 lawsuit isn’t uncommon. Many are in the $38 range. Few crack $50.

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The cracks have been appearing for months now, but now they’ve developed into full-blow chasms. Remember the Democratic party in 2004? The one that couldn’t look at a light bulb and agree whether it was on or off? Yeah… that one… well it seems like they’re back. Last night, Republican senate candidate Charles Djou won a senate seat in Hawaii, a state that hasn’t had a republican representative in 20 years. That in itself is a big story because Hawaii is a democratic stronghold. However, the bigger story is that he was victorious even though the Democrats had won 60% of the vote. How did that happen? Well it seems that there were TWO Democratic candidates because the other Hawaiian senator, Daniel Inouyea brought a private grudge-match into the public arena, endorsing a second candidate out of spite. Welcome back to amateur hour.

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This past week the Republican party selected Rand Paul as a US Senate candidate for Kentucky. Among the issues that seem to be driving his campaign is the belief that there is something very wrong with the Civil Rights Act of 1964: namely that businesses should be free to freely discriminate against whomever they please. It is the contention of Rand and his supporters that we don’t need federal intervention and that business should have a free hand to not only discriminate, but to do anything that the market will bear.

On Thursday, Rand received support from FOX News Anchor John Stossel who brought Rand’s argument to it’s logical conclusion by stating that the section of the Civil Rights act of 1964 that deals with businesses ought to be repealed. He states:

“It’s time now to repeal that part of the law because private businesses ought to get to discriminate. And I won’t ever go to a place that’s racist and I will tell everybody else not to and I’ll speak against them. But it should be their right to be racist.”

All of this hoopla brings up one pressing question: “Do we have the RIGHT to be racist?”

More after the Jump »

Here’s an interesting bit of news for those who want more funding for science. — The Democrats just pulled bill H.R. 5116 which would have increased funding for science and math. Now I’m sure that there will be those who point at this action as proof of Democratic hypocrisy, publicly supporting education and research while privately torpedoing the measure that could have done just that. However, a quick look at what happened with H.R. 5116 shows something that is much more troubling than that… namely, how easy it is to derail good legislation.

Here’s how it went down…

H.R. 5116, also known as the “America COMPETES Act” was cruising: It had passed its committee in a 29-8 vote in April and was well on its way to a full vote in the house. Rep. Ralph Hall, the ranking member of the House science committee and the distinguished Republican gentleman from Texas, realized that there were not arguments that we could offer AGAINST money for education in Math and Science, so instead he used a procedure known as the “to recommit” which is a way of sending a bill back into committee to deal with specific changes that the representative wants to make.

Now the Democrats could have voted against the motion to recommit and instead pushed through to a vote on the bill, but the problem was that Rep. Hall had slipped in a provision that the Democrats didn’t want to be seen voting against… specifically:

“Prohibiting any Federal employee who has been disciplined for downloading, viewing, or exchanging pornographic material from receiving a salary on the taxpayer dollar.”

With that provision, 121 Democrats jumped ship and voted for the motion to reconsider. They may have wanted to support science and math education, but they were not going to risk having their voting record indicate that they voted for porn which is no doubt how their republican challengers would have spun the vote in the next election.

This is nothing earth-shattering. This sort of political maneuvering happens all the time and it’s NOT limited to one party. Both Democrats and Republicans are well-versed in the arts of killing a bill, or at least in the arts of “getting their due” when it comes time to vote.

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From Wired: The Motion Picture Association of America said its member studios would not authorize the early movie releases unless it won the ability to deploy Selectable Output Control. The reason: Analog video signals can easily be recorded, while digital video standards include a copy protection scheme that lets providers set a no-copy flag on the signal. Digital rights group, Public Knowledge, said millions of older televisions, including 11 million HD sets, would be affected, a number the MPAA disputes. Owners of those devices would not have the luxury of being able to view the latest theater blockbuster at home through video on-demand services. “The FCC is allowing the MPAA to control your television,” John Bergmayer, Public Knowledge staff attorney, said in a telephone interview.

In a decision that could only be described as “disturbing” the FCC has granted studios the right to turn off certain outputs on set-top boxes. (You know… the thing that you plug your TV into for content.) — They aim is understandable, movie studios want to offer consumers the ability to watch first-run movies while they are still in the movie theaters (at a major premium of course) but before they pull the trigger on that convenience, they want to plug the “analog hole” that they say would allow viewers to bypass copy protection and record said movie. — It all sounds good (I mean, really… who USES the analog outputs on their cable boxes anymore?) until you consider the ramifications of such a decision.

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From CNN: Former FEMA director Michael Brown is not backing off his charge that the Obama administration wants to use the Gulf Coast oil spill as a plot to put an end to offshore drilling.

“They want a crisis like this, so that they can use a crisis like this to shut down offshore and gas drilling,” he said Tuesday night on CNN’s “AC 360°.”

His remarks came a day after he told Fox News’ “Your World with Neil Cavuto” that the oil slick is “exactly what they want, because now he can pander to the environmentalists and say, ‘I’m going to shut it down because it’s too dangerous.’ While Mexico and China and everybody else drills in the Gulf, we’re going to get shut down.”

Is it just me, or is it somewhat ironic (pathetic?) that the man who failed George W. Bush by downplaying the Katrina disaster is now trying to downplay the Gulf oil spill? — Really?

What’s worse is the fact that he’s saying that the Obama administration “wants” this disaster so that they can “pander to the environmentalists.” — By the same logic, couldn’t we say that the Tea Baggers, Fox and the RNC REALLY wanted the Times Square bomb to go off so that they could pander to the fear-mongers? Couldn’t we say that Rush Limbaugh wants the US to be defeated overseas so that Obama will “fail?” — Hey Brownie… Pot… Kettle… Black.

Here’s a story that’s not funny… except for the fact that it really is…

A man from California was arrested this morning for DUI. — Now that in itself isn’t a big enough story to warrant national coverage. — The twist in this story that puts it over the top is the fact that the driver in questions is a Republican Senator… who was leaving a gay club… who has a history of voting against any equal-rights (i.e. “Gay Rights”) bill that come across his desk.

Yup… nothing tickles us like hypocrisy.

From CBS13:“Sources tell CBS13 a state senator from Southern California was arrested for allegedly driving drunk after leaving Faces, a gay nightclub in midtown Sacramento, early Wednesday morning. The California Highway Patrol pulled over Senator Roy Ashburn at 2:00 a.m. Wednesday after an officer noticed a black Chevy Tahoe swerving at 13th and L Streets. Ashburn, a father of four, is a Republican Senator representing parts of Kern, Tulare and San Bernardino Counties with a history of opposing gay rights.”

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