Sirotablog
David Sirota is a political journalist and nationally syndicated newspaper columnist at Creators Syndicate. David writes about political corruption, globalization and working-class economic issues often ignored by both of America's political parties.
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December 1, 2007 8:58 AM
Colorado: The Place Where the GOP Thinks It's OK To Hate Workers
If ever there was a single newspaper story that showed just how much today's Republican Party hates working people, this Rocky Mountain News story is it. The headline reads "Right to Strike in Colorado Paid With Blood," and documents how after National Guardsmen mowed down striking mine workers in the early 20th century's Ludlow Massacre, the Colorado state legislature solidified workers' right to strike - that is, workers' right to withhold their labor as a way to protest the way they are treated. It was the least the legislature could do following one of the ugliest displays of worker oppression in American history.This would seem like a basic right in an industrialized countries because, really, what's the opposite? Right - forcing workers to work, whether they like it or not. However, as this article shows, even with the right to strike in Colorado "paid with blood," the Colorado Republican Party is gearing up to eliminate that right for workers.
The article includes the above picture of troops heading toward the Ludlow workers to execute them back in 1914 - and in the paper, the picture is, rather appropriately, juxtaposed next to the legislature's Republican leaders who are leading today's assault on workers.
I'm not sure what else I can add other than to note how telling it is that the Republican Party - supposedly the party of "freedom" - is now going on record saying workers shouldn't be free to protest through not working. The GOP is, in short, the party of forced labor. They are taking quite a stand with the great autocrats of history and the major third-world countries where such dictatorial policy is an everyday fact of life.
I guess that's not surprising considering the effort is being led by State Sen. Shawn Mitchell (R), a longtime Federalist Society icon - the guy who simultaneously attacks Gov. Bill Ritter (D) for supposedly acting in secret, yet who himself refuses to follow state law by complying with Open Records Act requests.
To conclude, I'll just say that having lived in a number of different states both red and blue, I have never lived in a state with a political culture where it is absolutely acceptable to support forced labor and hate workers. I don't know if I'll ever get used to it.
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About David Sirota
David Sirota is a political journalist and nationally syndicated newspaper columnist at Creators Syndicate. He is the New York Times bestselling author of Hostile Takeover. He lives in Denver, Colorado. His daily blog can be found at CREDO Action. He contributes regularly to the Denver Post's Web site, is a senior editor at In These Times magazine and is working on his second book. He has been profiled in Newsweek and the Rocky Mountain News and is widely known for his reporting on political corruption, globalization and working-class economic issues often ignored by both of America's political parties. Sirota serves as co-chair of the Progressive States Network, a 501(c)3 organization that supports state legislators and that is a partner of CREDO.
You can subscribe to Sirota's e-mail newsletter by going to davidsirota.com and signing up in the lefthand corner. To find out more about Sirota, download his official biography or see his recent media appearances. You can e-mail him at sirota@credoaction.com.
The views expressed on this blog are his own, and do not necessarily represent the views of Working Assets (publisher of CREDO Action) or the institutions Sirota works for.
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Recent Sirotablog entries
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If you think Colorado is bad enough, wait until you visit MS. Now there you can find outright hatred towards the working class from the top business scumbags. And if that ain't enough, you should see the way workers gleefully exploit each other and give top management total entertainment !
Speaking of Republicans, guess which wing-nut blowhard from Denver just admitted that a tax INCREASE would be ok if it decreased the lines at the DMV???... wait for it...
Mike freakin' Rosen
Ah... Hah HAH HAH.
"The DMV problem is a cinch, easily fixable. All it takes are some simple systems refinements, the reopening of a few more offices and some modest additional hires. This would cost mere millions. I suspect most Coloradans would be willing to pay a few pennies a day for the added convenience."
Looks like *somebody* had to get his license renewed...
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/news/2007/nov/30/rosen-the-fast-lane-this-isnt/
David,
Here's the SUPERBOMB SHOCKER against the motherfucker Tancredo to hardcode the fact that the GOP hates the working class. To all you Tancredo supporters who think he's against illegal immigration, bite on this !
Tom Tancredo Hired Illegal Laborers to Renovate His McMansion
By Max Blumenthal, AlterNet. Posted December 1, 2007.
When Republican Representative Tom Tancredo isn't railing against the "scourge" of illegal immigration on the presidential campaign trail, he relaxes in the 1053 square foot basement recreation room of his Littleton, Colorado McMansion. There, he and his family can rack up a game of billiards on their tournament size pool table, play pinball, or enjoy their favorite movies in the terraced seating area of a home theater system. Tancredo, who dodged the draft during the Vietnam War by producing evidence that he suffered from mentally illnesses, especially likes entertaining his buddies with classic war movies.
"We have friends over and I have now shown Pearl Harbor about six times," Tancredo boasted to the Rocky Mountain News about his 102-inch television. "But I mainly just show the attack scene because the sound is so good."
When Tancredo hired a construction crew to transform his drab basement into a high-tech pleasure den in October 2001, however, he did not express concern that only two of its members spoke English. Nor did he bother to check the workers' documentation to see if they were legal residents of the United States. Had Tancredo done so, he would have learned that most of the crew consisted of undocumented immigrants, or "criminal aliens" as he likes to call them. Instead, Tancredo paid the crew $60,000 for its labor and waited innocently for the completion of his elaborate entertainment complex.
During the renovation process, two illegal workers hired by Tancredo were alerted to his reputation for immigrant bashing. They went straight to the Denver Post to complain. Tancredo "doesn't want us here, but he'll take advantage of our sweat and our labor," one of the workers complained to the Post on September 19, 2002. "It's just not right."
The Post report momentarily threw Tancredo on the defensive. In a fiery speech soon after the story's publication, Tancredo blamed his foibles on the INS. "I haven't the foggiest idea how many people I may have hired in the past as taxi drivers, as waiters, waitresses, home improvement people," he boomed from the House floor. "I haven't the foggiest idea how many of those people may have been here illegally, and it is not my job to ask them." Then defiance gave way to vitriol as the congressman dubbed undocumented immigrants, "the face of murder."
Only days before the Post's story appeared, Tancredo had personally reported an honor student profiled in the Denver Post to the INS because the 14-year-old was not a legal resident of the United States. The stunt forced the boy's family to go into hiding. Fortunately for Tancredo, the ensuing revelations of his hiring of illegal labor fell below the radar of the national media, allowing his anti-immigrant crusade to proceed unabated.
Tancredo proceeded to organize over 90 anti-immigration House members into an informal but powerful caucus that has effectively prevented any non-enforcement related immigration legislation from reaching the President's desk. His Team America PAC, which is chaired by right-wing pundit Bay Buchanan, has donated tens of thousands of dollars this election cycle to nativist candidates who hope to fill Tancredo's caucus with new blood when he retires next year. Down on the border, Tancredo announced his support for the Minutemen, providing the anti-immigrant militia with a veneer of respectability while its pistol-packing members hunt for brown-skinned evildoers.
Tancredo has also played an instrumental role in shaping the way immigration is discussed in the media. Despite his third tier status in the presidential campaign, as of November 19 the congressman has appeared on Fox News more times during 2007 than any other presidential candidate. A former Tancredo staffer speaking on condition of anonymity told me recently that the congressman spends extensive time on the phone with top-rated CNN anchor Lou Dobbs, offering him tips and ideas for his daily "Broken Borders" segments.
Dobbs, in turn, has produced an unending string of specious "reports" painting undocumented immigrants from Latin America as disease-ridden criminals. In May, for example, Dobbs falsely claimed that illegal migrants from Mexico were responsible for 7000 new cases of leprosy in the United States. A wave of negative publicity forced Dobbs to acknowledge his source for the bogus story as Madeleine Cosman, a deceased white supremacist activist who often appeared at anti-immigrant rallies beside her pal Tancredo.
The success of Tancredo's efforts to project his nativist politics onto the national stage were apparent during CNN's November 26 Republican Youtube debate. In a heated exchange that highlighted press coverage of the debate, presidential frontrunners Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney competed with one another over who could appear the most draconian towards "illegals." When Romney accused Giuliani of running a "sanctuary city" for undocumented immigrants while serving as mayor of New York, Giuliani shot back that Romney had run a "sanctuary mansion" when he was governor of Massachusetts. Giuliani pointed to a lengthy Boston Globe report revealing that Romney paid a gardening service that employed illegal workers to tend the lawns of his mansion. Suddenly, the candidates with the most tolerant records on immigration issues sounded like Tancredo.
While the two rivals clashed, Tancredo stood at the far end of the stage smiling contentedly. The cause he championed for years with a band of ornery border vigilantes, white supremacists, and assorted dregs by his side had become a central theme in the race for the White House. Of all the major GOP candidates, only Sen. John McCain has countered Tancredo with big tent appeals to socially conservative Latinos. The other candidates have reliably parroted his talking points, parrying accusations of ideological impurity by accusing one another of being soft on illegal immigration. "All I've heard is people trying to out-Tancredo Tancredo," Tancredo observed during the debate. "It is great."
But there is one way the Republican candidates can never out-Tancredo Tancredo. The congressman lives in a "sanctuary mansion" built by the kind of people he has made a career out of demonizing. Tom Tancredo may have no hope of winning the Republican nomination, but in the cause of hypocrisy, he is the frontrunner.
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Max Blumenthal is a fellow of the Nation Institute and a research fellow at Media Matters for America. The winner of the USC Annenberg's Online Journalism Award, his work frequently appears in the Nation, the Huffington Post, Alternet, and the American Prospect. He is currently writing a book, Land of Sin, for Nation/Basic Books due out in July 2008.
Sure the GOP has contempt for the working class but so does the Democrats. They along with the GOP have radically extended NAFTA under the Democratic controlled Congress with hardly a peep from the liberals.
So why shouldn't the GOP feel energized when they have liberals and mainstream Democrats supporting job killing trade treaties and opening the flood gates to unlimited numbers of guest workers both legal and illegal.
Then we have the limosine liberal elitists like Max Blumenthal and Bill Scher who paint every American who wants secure borders and a stop illegal immigrations as bloodthirsty racists and nativists.
With friends like these on the left, the working and middle-class doesn't need the GOP to fuck them into poverty.
Yes, but David it right about the outright contempt. As I watched that video he posted awhile back the righties arguments were out of 1907 not 2007.
To frame basic union representation as something out of the Communist Manifesto when it is common practice in many if not most states for over 50 years.
Some of their arguments lacked any logical coherence as in a democratically elected union representative was somehow an imposition on the worker. The union mediation, somehow I guess, took away the daily interactions between Governor and state worker.
They had a problem with a union rep really only representing those who cared to vote. How dare they, what kind of an excuse for Democracy is that. That problem would be easily solved however by having union voting does on site during working hours. Hmm, why if Democracy was the issue did they not offer that suggestion.
Colorado is a oddity, that's for sure. For years one of their universities hosted the Marxists Internet Archive. Initially in the beginnings of the archive they were one of the few states to subsidize the archive.
Another item of Sirota interest:
Prior to '08, corporate lobbyists trying to get a free-for-all of deregulation from Bush, while piling on the cash to Democrats to ensure that they stay on Easy Street"
"Even as they try to shape pending regulations, business lobbies are also looking beyond President Bush. Corporations and trade associations are recruiting Democratic lobbyists. And lobbyists, expecting battles over taxes and health care in 2009, are pouring money into the campaigns of Democratic candidates for Congress and the White House."
"Two executive recruiters, Ivan H. Adler of the McCormick Group and Nels B. Olson of Korn/Ferry International, said they had seen a growing demand for Democratic lobbyists. "It's a bull market for Democrats, especially those who have worked for the Congressional leadership" or a powerful committee, Mr. Adler said."
"Few industries have more cause for concern than drug companies, which have been a favorite target of Democrats. Republicans run the Washington offices of most major drug companies, and a former Republican House member, Billy Tauzin, is president of their trade association, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America.
The association has hired three Democrats this year, so its lobbying team is split evenly between Republicans and Democrats."
"Loren B. Thompson, a military analyst at the Lexington Institute, a policy research organization, said: "Defense contractors have not only begun to prepare for the next administration. They have begun to shape it. They've met with Hillary Clinton and other candidates.""
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22062284/page/2/
GrantBurkeVT,
You should see the way these Cuban-American Reps act out here in Florida. Cuban Americans are given blank "legal" status regardless of whether they entered the country legally or ILLEGALLY. Cuban American Reps and the Senator, most of them Republican, will always rail against them "illegals" as long as they aren't Cuban. The fact is this state is filled with not only ILLEGAL Cuban workers but a lot of Cuban families who are rich are rife with Mexicans and Haitians doing their dirty work including building all those fucking McMansions ! Talk about slavery and racism in one package as if the Confederate Flag pro-Iraq-war scumbags in a Florida high school wasn't enough RACISM to give this state a bad rap already !
"Then we have the limosine liberal elitists like Max Blumenthal and Bill Scher who paint every American who wants secure borders and a stop illegal immigrations as bloodthirsty racists and nativists." - waltc
Building walls and borders is completely irrelevant as long as the policies of promoting slave-labor and even RACISM continue to exist as is the case out here in Florida and likely other states to add to it. I'll agree that the Democrats have completely tarnished themselves by going gung ho on being pro-NAFTA-expansion but after reading the article Max wrote on Tancredo, I have good reason to believe that most of his followers are in the same boat of depending heavily on ILLEGAL labor to keep their sinking boats floating these days.
You can't be serious, David Sirota. Workers were not massacred "for striking", but for intrusive behavior they did *during* the strike. I agree it was excessive, but they were not being "persecuted for striking" except in the sense that "Oedipus wanted to marry his mother." (I think I'm going to regret that analogy.)
You are correct that the opposite of the "right to strike" is "ability to force people to go to work at gun point". But that just highlights your confusion on this: striking by (non-slave) workers has NEVER been illegal, and no one has ever proposed making it illegal. All so called "bans" on striking refer to specific behavior associated with striking, NOT striking in itself. To strike, all you have to do is not go to work, and this has always been legal.
The article on Tancredo's BLATANT HYPOCRISY raises the big question: WHY COULDN'T TOM FIND AN ALL-AMERICAN CONTRACTOR?
It comes as no surprize that Tom "If'n thar's anythin' Ah hates mor'n a Mexican, it's two Mexicans!" Tancredo hired a remodeling contractor top-heavy with illegal immigrant laborers. One of Tancredo's chief House allies, Rep. Steven King of Iowa owns a construction company. The construction industry is now the number one employer of "illegal immigrants." (The Des Moines Register regularly censures King's stance on immigration on its editorial pages but has sent no reporter to discover just who is working for the congressman.)
Actually it's three-card monte played on the electorate by both politicial parties, as the official economic orthodoxy of both is free market fundamentalism. Since both parties, Democratic and Republican, agree on the myth of a "free market" economy only so-called "cultural issues" distinguish one from the other. The GOP has been particularly successful in exploiting the brutish, nasty, petty side of human nature for the past forty years.
So like abortion, "gay marriage" and "gun control," "illegal immigration" is another "issue" which Republican politicians will bluster and bellow about; threaten to build a fence along the US-Mexico border that will make the Great Wall of China look like a decorative garden borderfence,with illegal immigrant laborers no doubt; and ultimately do nothing because there isn't the funding for it and "they" don't want to raise taxes.
Meanwhile the Democrats will prance around like fairies, wring their hands, saying something must be done, and end up doing nothing to solve the systemic causes for "illegal immigration," on both sides of the border, due to the "free market" economy.
And don't forget that Tancredo's support of deregulation, privatization, offshoring, outsourcing, union busting, helping those countries doing "trade" business RIG elections, tax cuts for the wealthy and business elite, weakening of worker safety and protection laws, "free" market, wage depression, slashing healthcare benefits, "free" trade on some of the smaller looking deals he expected the media wouldn't pay attention to, etc ... With all that, I guess it's hard to find an American contractor willing to take a no-protection job. Tancredo would much prefer IGNORANT and UNAWARE workers.
"I'll just say that having lived in a number of different states both red and blue, I have never lived in a state with a political culture where it is absolutely acceptable to support forced labor and hate workers. I don't know if I'll ever get used to it." - David Sirota
Then you haven't visited South Carolina. See, slavery and racism still exists at large. It's just that unlike the older days, all that slave labor is out of this country so that anyone walking into, say South Carolina or for that matter most other states, hardly knows it except for the rising ILLEGAL labor due to VISA exploitations and loopholes and dumptrucks dumping in "illegals" south of the border and then suddenly massive product recalls. I'd say the south has grown too used to it that it's too easy to keep it coming. But then which state in this country hasn't by now ?!?
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