Bi-Party Crist Wont Pick Partner
Florida Governor and one-time leading Senatorial Candidate Charlie Crist is finding that coming out as bi-party is not the cakewalk that he was hoping for - his old friends feel betrayed and confused, his new friends are somewhat fickle, and his enemies are gleeful as he bends and twists to distance himself from the very party whose supporters he must approach if he is to have any chance to win.
Sunday on CNN's State of the Union, Crist declined to answer the caucus question - if elected, will he caucus with Democrats or Republicans? As he has for weeks, he evaded the question by asserting that he will "caucus with the people of Florida." Unfortunately, the people of Florida don't hand out committee assignments.
A few days ago, he tried to go both ways on healthcare. He stated that he would have voted for healthcare reform then he corrected himself and said he would not have voted for the bill. He doesn't like it - not one bit! But since it's already passed and everything, he thinks we should keep it and make it better. Of course, since he wont be sitting on any committees, his opinion may not matter all that much.
And last week in liberal Broward County, he thanked God that he was no longer a Republican then travelled to a much less progressive part of the state and bragged about being a "Jeb Bush Republican."
But even as Chain Gang Charlie repaints himself as a bi-party milquetoast with compassionate leanings who still enjoys the occasional hippie punching, Kendrick Meek and Florida Democrats are gearing up to remind voters of Crist's true preferences:
(Click to listen to wav audio file.)
This is Charlie Crist calling to set the record straight. I'm pro life, I oppose amnesty for illegal immigrants, I support traditional marriage, and I have never supported a new tax or big spending program.
The fact that Meek, a real Democrat, won the party nomination over self funding former Republican Jeff Greene will make life difficult for Crist. Democrats will use the boastful conservative's own words against him again and again and Democratic voters will continue to come home to Meek - Meek presents a clear progressive choice vs. Chain Gang Charlie's newly found wishy washy middle-of-the-roadism.
Meanwhile, Marc Rub's (Marco Rubio has had the vowels removed from the end of his name for conduct unbecoming a Hispanic, per Tampa's La Gaceta newspaper) campaign is hammering Crist as a turncoat and newly enflamed liberal. Crist wont be winning too many votes from this wing of his spurned party.
So far, Crist refuses to pick sides, but he can't win with independents only, his old party still hates him, and Democrats are warming to Meek - Meek is far and away the best candidate on the issues, and he is, in fact, just the kind of "better Democrat" that we need in DC.
Crist's approval ratings are dismal and he is a man without a party. Many observers do not see a way for him to win unless he promises to caucus with the Democrats, but just as he missed his oppurtunity to switch parties and clean Meek's clock in the Dem primary, Crist may again be waiting too long to pick sides.
Teach Your Children Hell? No!
Hillsborough County voters smote the Terry Kemple campaign a death blow on Tuesday. Despite raising more money than any other candidate in the four candidate non-partisan race, Kemple's extreme beliefs and religious agenda may have turned voters off as he barely managed a humiliating third place finish with less than twenty percent of the vote.
SCHOOL BOARD MEMBER DISTRICT 6
383 of 383 Precincts Reporting
Benjamin Fink 11.83% 12,939
April Griffin 48.37% 52,883
Sally A. Harris 20.63% 22,557
Terry Kemple 19.16% 20,953
Incumbent April Griffin garnered close to fifty percent of the vote and will face surprise second place finisher Sally Harris in a runoff in November.
Right Wing Koch Suckers Swallow Wads of Kash
Charles and David Koch are the owners of Koch Industries. They are filthy, rich, and they fund a self-serving "Kochtopus" of organizations designed to destroy progressivism - a shadowy network of Koch Suckers eagerly swallowing all the cash that the Kochs can pump out.
Rachel Maddow has been all over the Koch brothers story, but for the most part, their deliberate strategy of flying well below the radar as they hide behind their proxy advocacy organizations has worked to keep their name out of the limelight.
In a must read in this month's New Yorker, Jane Mayer illuminates some of the Koch brothers greatest hits.
They were born to a wealthy Bircher daddy - a man who made much of his fortune by selling American trade secrets to evil communists - who taught them the basic American value of shirking ones moral duty to repay one's society for having provided the resources which one blatantly exploits in order to make a killing.
Put simply, they are extremely wealthy self-serving libertarians.
Unlike George Soros, who is often villified as the evil trillionaire funder of all things vaguely leftish, the Koch brothers are very secretive about the organizations they fund, and the causes that they champion through these organizations invariably tend to line up perfectly with their personal and corporate economic interests.
All Blockquotes are from
Covert Operations - The billionaire brothers who are waging a war against Obama.
by Jane MayerOf course, Democrats give money, too. Their most prominent donor, the financier George Soros, runs a foundation, the Open Society Institute, that has spent as much as a hundred million dollars a year in America. Soros has also made generous private contributions to various Democratic campaigns, including Obama’s. But Michael Vachon, his spokesman, argued that Soros’s giving is transparent, and that “none of his contributions are in the service of his own economic interests.” The Kochs have given millions of dollars to nonprofit groups that criticize environmental regulation and support lower taxes for industry. Gus diZerega, the former friend, suggested that the Kochs’ youthful idealism about libertarianism had largely devolved into a rationale for corporate self-interest. He said of Charles, “Perhaps he has confused making money with freedom.”
Freedom rules. Regulations and laws are for losers.
"There’s no one else who has spent this much money. The sheer dimension of it is what sets them apart. They have a pattern of lawbreaking, political manipulation, and obfuscation. I’ve been in Washington since Watergate, and I’ve never seen anything like it. They are the Standard Oil of our times."
- Charles Lewis, founder of Center for Public Integrity
Koch Industries is a vast conglomerate, the second largest privately held company in the US
...whose annual revenues are estimated to be a hundred billion dollars...The Kochs operate oil refineries in Alaska, Texas, and Minnesota, and control some four thousand miles of pipeline. Koch Industries owns Brawny paper towels, Dixie cups, Georgia-Pacific lumber, Stainmaster carpet, and Lycra... Their combined fortune of thirty-five billion dollars is exceeded only by those of Bill Gates and Warren Buffett.
And like the best of the classic American capitalists, they even steal from American Indians.
...the Senate Select Committee on Indian Affairs investigated their business and released a scathing report accusing Koch Oil of “a widespread and sophisticated scheme to steal crude oil from Indians and others through fraudulent mismeasuring.” The Kochs admitted that they had improperly taken thirty-one million dollars’ worth of crude oil, but said that it had been accidental. Charles Koch told committee investigators that oil measurement is “a very uncertain art.”
Koch Industries is a huge polluter. The Kochs spend more than Exxon on Climate Science denialism.
David Koch told New York that he was unconvinced that global warming has been caused by human activity. Even if it has been, he said, the heating of the planet will be beneficial, resulting in longer growing seasons in the Northern Hemisphere. “The Earth will be able to support enormously more people because far greater land area will be available to produce food,” he said.
But mostly they don't speak for themselves - why bother when they can simply create entire organizations to speak for them?
Cato Institute
In 1977, the Kochs provided the funds to launch the nation’s first libertarian think tank, the Cato Institute. According to the Center for Public Integrity, between 1986 and 1993 the Koch family gave eleven million dollars to the institute. Today, Cato has more than a hundred full-time employees, and its experts and policy papers are widely quoted and respected by the mainstream media. It describes itself as nonpartisan, and its scholars have at times been critical of both parties. But it has consistently pushed for corporate tax cuts, reductions in social services, and laissez-faire environmental policies.
Cato is also, of course, big into Climate Change Denial and they pushed Climategate incessantly.
The Mercatus Center
The Mercatus Center at the public George Mason University is a non profit under the Kochs' control.
The Wall Street Journal has called the Mercatus Center “the most important think tank you’ve never heard of,” and noted that fourteen of the twenty-three regulations that President George W. Bush placed on a “hit list” had been suggested first by Mercatus scholars. Fink told the paper that the Kochs have “other means of fighting [their] battles,” and that the Mercatus Center does not actively promote the company’s private interests. But Thomas McGarity, a law professor at the University of Texas, who specializes in environmental issues, told me that “Koch has been constantly in trouble with the E.P.A., and Mercatus has constantly hammered on the agency.” An environmental lawyer who has clashed with the Mercatus Center called it “a means of laundering economic aims.” The lawyer explained the strategy: “You take corporate money and give it to a neutral-sounding think tank,” which “hires people with pedigrees and academic degrees who put out credible-seeming studies. But they all coincide perfectly with the economic interests of their funders.”
Triad Management
The Kochs were getting pretty good at screwing with the conventional wisdom. Then they took it to a whole new level.
By 1993, when Bill Clinton became President, Citizens for a Sound Economy had become a prototype for the kind of corporate-backed opposition campaigns that have proliferated during the Obama era. The group waged a successful assault on Clinton’s proposed B.T.U. tax on energy, for instance, running advertisements, staging media events, and targeting opponents. And it mobilized anti-tax rallies outside the Capitol—rallies that NPR described as “designed to strike fear into the hearts of wavering Democrats.” Dan Glickman, a former Democratic congressman from Wichita, who supported the B.T.U. tax, recalled, “I’d been in Congress eighteen years. The Kochs actually engaged against me and funded my opponent. They used a lot of resources and effort—their employees, too.” Glickman suffered a surprise defeat. “I can’t prove it, but I think I was probably their victim,” he said.
The Kochs continued to disperse their money, creating slippery organizations with generic-sounding names, and this made it difficult to ascertain the extent of their influence in Washington. In 1990, Citizens for a Sound Economy created a spinoff group, Citizens for the Environment, which called acid rain and other environmental problems “myths.” When the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette investigated the matter, it discovered that the spinoff group had “no citizen membership of its own.”
...Triad Management, had paid more than three million dollars for attack ads in twenty-six House races and three Senate races. More than half of the advertising money came from an obscure nonprofit group, the Economic Education Trust... Charles Lewis, of the Center for Public Integrity, described the scandal as “historic. Triad was the first time a major corporation used a cutout”—a front operation—“in a threatening way. Koch Industries was the poster child of a company run amok.”
The Bush years
During the 2000 election campaign, Koch Industries spent some nine hundred thousand dollars to support the candidacies of George W. Bush and other Republicans... The Kochs have cast themselves as deficit hawks, but, according to a study by Media Matters, their companies have benefitted from nearly a hundred million dollars in government contracts since 2000.
Their filthy lucre even taints the halls of the Smithsonian - a prominent Koch sponsored exhibit on the Koch Hall underplays the significance of climate change while compeltely ignoring the possibility that fossil fuels may be a big part of the problem.
Now they are using their Americans for Prosperity front group to sponsor "grassroots" Tea Party events and organizations.
The Republican campaign consultant said of the family’s political activities, “To call them under the radar is an understatement. They are underground!” Another former Koch adviser said, “They’re smart. This right-wing, redneck stuff works for them. They see this as a way to get things done without getting dirty themselves.” Rob Stein, a Democratic political strategist who has studied the conservative movement’s finances, said that the Kochs are “at the epicenter of the anti-Obama movement. But it’s not just about Obama. They would have done the same to Hillary Clinton. They did the same with Bill Clinton. They are out to destroy progressivism.”
Read the whole article . I left out a lot.
State House 48: Tea Party Camping. With Fluoride.
Marg Baker is a Tea Party Republican candidate for Florida State House District 48, which covers parts of Northern Pinellas and Hillsborough Counties, near Tampa. She's been running a pretty standard issue Tea Party campaign. But lately she's achieved another level.
Marg hits all the right notes - she is a divorced, single pro-family, anti-government semi-retiree. She's likely on Medicare and she derives all her income from her monthly Social Security check. She knows that we can only increase state revenue by lowering taxes and doing away with regulations, and she hates the sorry state of her local water supply, which makes her sick when she drinks it.
In fact, she says that water is the most "pressing" issue for the people of her district, the essence of her campaign, if you will.
General Jack D. Ripper: Mandrake, do you realize that in addition to fluoridating water, why, there are studies underway to fluoridate salt, flour, fruit juices, soup, sugar, milk... ice cream. Ice cream, Mandrake, children's ice cream.
Group Capt. Lionel Mandrake: Lord, Jack.
General Jack D. Ripper: You know when fluoridation first began?
Group Capt. Lionel Mandrake: I... no, no. I don't, Jack.
General Jack D. Ripper: Nineteen hundred and forty-six. Nineteen forty-six, Mandrake. How does that coincide with your post-war Commie conspiracy, huh? It's incredibly obvious, isn't it? A foreign substance is introduced into our precious bodily fluids without the knowledge of the individual. Certainly without any choice. That's the way your hard-core Commie works.
Group Capt. Lionel Mandrake: Uh, Jack, Jack, listen, tell me, tell me, Jack. When did you first... become... well, develop this theory?
General Jack D. Ripper: Well, I, uh... I... I... first became aware of it, Mandrake, during the physical act of love.
Group Capt. Lionel Mandrake: Hmm.
General Jack D. Ripper: Yes, a uh, a profound sense of fatigue... a feeling of emptiness followed. Luckily I... I was able to interpret these feelings correctly. Loss of essence.
Group Capt. Lionel Mandrake: Hmm.
General Jack D. Ripper: I can assure you it has not recurred, Mandrake. Women uh... women sense my power and they seek the life essence. I, uh... I do not avoid women, Mandrake.
Group Capt. Lionel Mandrake: No.
General Jack D. Ripper: But I... I do deny them my essence.
At the same time, she likes to emphasize that her "most serious issue" is her one person quest to do away with early voting in Florida because early voting costs too much and leads to "corruption like ACORN."
Oh, and she has just thoughtfully proposed solving our immigration problem with Internment Camps!
Yes. Internment Camps.
"We can follow what happened back in the '40s or '50s."
"I was just a little girl in Miami, and they built camps for the people that snuck into the country because they were illegal," Baker said. "They put them in the camps and they shipped them back. We can do that. We can do E-Verify. We must stop them."
Baker could not be reached Wednesday to clarify what camps she means. But in World War II, the U.S. government forced about 110,000 Japanese-Americans and Japanese into internment camps after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. Presidents have apologized to those who were interned, and Congress voted for compensation.
...
"We've got to get them off the street, and they have to live and sleep somewhere," Baker said. "Not in prison, but they should be held until we ship them out and they should not mingle among the people.
"Who knows what diseases they are carrying or if they are criminals? They snuck in here and are walking among us. This is wrong.
Wait a minute. Camps in the nineteen-forties? Do you know what this means? The diseased criminal immigrants must have been in cahoots with the Reds! They were all part of a vast conspiracy, along with ACORN, to poison our water supply and sap and impurify our fluids during periods of early voting!
I need a blackboard.
Now, she made these remarks in front of a friendly 9-12 Project meetup on August 2, and they were warmly received by the audience, but no one else really noticed until the YouTube video started circulating.
Her campaign has not clarified her remarks about Miami camps in the 1940's or '50's, and there is some speculation that the model she had in mind was the Japanese internment camps of WWII, but there is another possibility.
There were camps in the Miami area for migrants in the '40's - migrant labor camps. Camps set up to house a workforce so desperate for employment that entire families were literally walking into the state hoping for a chance to work backbreaking agricultural jobs for subsistence wages. Luckily for the workers, generous area landowners stood ready to provide exactly that!
A lot of these families hailed from nearby Southern states - that is, they were American citizens, but migrant labor camps did not discriminate - they were quite happy to take in workers of all races regardless of immigration status, and to a wide-eyed pale-skinned little girl, all of those dirt encrusted farm laborers must have looked quite brown and foreign and deportable.
Most of the diverse people who comprised the influx of workers into Florida in the later years of the Great Depression came from other southern states.
These migrant laborers made their way south from Georgia and from throughout the Upper and Mid South (from Eastern North Carolina and Kentucky to Arkansas and Eastern Oklahoma) after the loss of tenant positions on leased farm land, foreclosure, falling farm yields, or the closure of textile factories and other industries forced them away from their homes.
Some Sense of Security
Migrants took whatever little possessions they could carry and traveled, often with their entire families, to the warmth and agricultural abundance of Florida in search of sustenance, shelter, and some measure of economic security.
Of course, without those handy camps, the migrants would have been walking among Marg's friends and family, spreading disease and fluoride and ACORN propaganda.
So, maybe Marg was thinking of the Japanese-American citizens who were interned by our government, or maybe she was referencing the American migrant workers who were employed by generous landowners in order that she be provided with a refreshing glass of Florida orange juice every morning.
Regardless, it is obvious that her motives are pure - lily white, actually - and that she is a woman of great vision - a woman we can trust with our bodily fluids without fear of losing our essence.
I'll give Marg the last word (from the video):
"We gotta have guns!"
Rubio Likes Dry Feet, Not Wet Backs
NOTE: The title references two US immigration policies. Wet Feet, Dry Feet:
...in what has become known as the "wet foot, dry foot" policy, a Cuban caught on the waters between the two nations (i.e., with "wet feet") would summarily be sent home or to a third country. One who makes it to shore ("dry feet") gets a chance to remain in the United States
and Operation Wetback:
Operation Wetback was a repatriation project of the United States Immigration and Naturalization Service to remove illegal Mexican immigrants ("wetbacks") from the Southwest.
The intent of the double entendre is to tersely describe the shockingly inappropriate and illogical positions taken by a first generation American. I do not mean to offend, but I, like Atrios, understand that your mileage may vary.
The story reads like a script from the ultimate Tea Party horror film: waves of foreigners illegally cross our southern border fully intending to seamlessly integrate into the expat community - folks who spurn English in favor of their native Spanish, people who retain their traditional dress and mores despite the obvious superiority of the tawdry fads of their host nation.
The foreigners undermine our laws with their exotic abattoirs and their support of terrorism. Crime rates increase dramatically. The immigrants' sheer numbers combined with their stubborn refusal to learn English force entire cities to waste precious resources going bilingual
The illegals plan to defy our laws and make a permanent life in this community, working, learning, worshipping, and popping out anchor babies ASAP to keep themselves moored in Miami.
And after literally thousands of them navigate through our porous border, the sniveling spineless America hating President grants them amnesty!
The stars of this Tea Party Circus of Horrors are the illegal immigrant parents of Florida Senate candidate Marco Rubio.
The elder Rubios, despite their reported status as uneducated peasants, managed to flee Castro's Cuba in 1959 - either by sea or by air - with the first wave of mostly elite, ruling class land owners. They illegally entered our country, gave birth to an anchor baby in 1960 - Marco's older sister - and were subsequently granted amnesty by Presidential Pardon.
In the Western Hemisphere, Fidel Castro seized power in Cuba in 1959 and embarked upon a policy making it a communist country. These wars, along with Castro's victory, led to another wave of refugees. Shortly after Castro won control, some elite Cubans fled to Miami. As the flow grew, Presidents Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, and Lyndon Johnson used the parole power to admit them. From 1959 to the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, more than 200,000 arrived. Flights were suspended after the missile crisis, although some escaped by boat to Florida.
So with such a rich family history, where does Marco Rubio stand on the hot button immigration issues that are so important to his fans?
Flip flops, tightropes, and crickets.
Rubio was criticized as a Tea Party Pooper when he came out against Arizona's immigration law. He executed a classic flip flop as he declared that the law would not, after all, lead to a police state - it turns out that Rubio is very much against immigrants who walk in through the desert.
On the campaign trail, Rubio walks a tightrope as he extols the sacrifice and hard work of his parents...
His message, though, resonates: His parents migrated from Cuba to Miami to give him a better life; the Obama administration is dangerous; the federal debt will crush the next generation.
"We are at a real crossroads," he gravely tells the gathering. "There are only two ways we can go. Either my children, your children, and your grandchildren can grow up to be the freest, most prosperous Americans ever... or else they will be the first generation to inherit from their parents and grandparents a diminished nation."
...while lambasting amnesty and calling for tough immigration policies against newcomers.
"I believe we must fix our immigration system by first securing the border, fixing the visa and entry process and opposing amnesty in any reform," he said.
So, he's against amnesty. Except for his parents. And presumably his older brother. But what about the whole 14th Amendment debate? Does Rubio think it should be repealed so that anchor babies like his sister can be deported along with their parents (unless, of course, said parents were HIS parents...)
Crickets. More crickets. And here.
Finally, today, the St. Petersburg Times reports that despite his illegal mother's apparent refusal to learn and use english,
"The fundamental issue we need to focus on is border security. These other things are really not at this moment pressing issues," said Rubio, when asked about calls to revise the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
..."I've been raised around immigration and immigrants my whole life," he said. "Legal immigration is good for America, but I also know we can't be the only country in the world that doesn't enforce its immigration laws."
It was a careful choice of words for a prominent Hispanic candidate caught between a growing national furor over illegal immigration and a cultural connection to the source of that fury.
Rubio is the son of Cuban immigrants. His wife is of Colombian descent. His mother prefers to communicate in Spanish over English.
Okay - Cuban immigrants good. Colombian immigrants good. Mexican immigrants... well, let's just sum up Marco Rubio's complex and thoughtful stance on immigration with some campaign friendly bullet points (with apologies to Orwell):
-
Whoever immigrates upon two legs is an enemy.
Whoever immigrates upon water, or upon wings, is a friend.
And, of course, an addendum: All immigrants are equal but some immigrants are more equal than others.
Unions 101 – Which Side Are You On?
"There’s no such thing as neutral. You have to be on one side or the other. Some people say, “I don’t take sides - I’m neutral.” There’s no such thing. In your mind you’re on one side or the other. In Harlan County there wasn’t no neutral. If you wasn’t a gun thug, you was a union man. You had to be."
Rand Paul doesn't know squat about Harlan County Kentucky. He should have studied up by now, and his ignorance, be it willful or just plain stupid, is a slap in the face to the Kentucky coal miners who fought and died over many generations for the right to organize the mines.
Come all of you good workers
Good news to you I'll tell
Of how that good old union
Has come in here to dwellChorus
Which side are you on?
Which side are you on?
Which side are you on?
Which side are you on?My daddy was a miner
And I'm a miner's son
And I'll stick with the union
Till every battle's wonThey say in Harlan County
There are no neutrals there
You'll either be a union man
Or a thug for J.H. BlairOh, workers can you stand it?
Oh, tell me how you can
Will you be a lousy scab
Or will you be a man?Don't scab for the bosses
Don't listen to their lies
Us poor folks haven't got a chance
Unless we organize
Florence Reece was the wife of a Harlan County coal miner and labor organizer and her simple message "Us poor folks haven't got a chance unless we organize," may resonate more today than at any time since she wrote those lines in the midst of a terror attack at the hands of deputized company gun thugs sent to arrest or beat or kill her union organizer husband Sam.
The Kentucky coal mines weren't union back then. If you worked the mines, a company payday lender issued you company scrip - actually an advance against unearned wages which was designed to trap the worker in debt - which you could redeem in the company store for shoddy overpriced merchandise.
Many lost their lives due to the neglect of operators who in some cases robbed the miner of his dignity, his honor and his rights to earn a decent living for his family. I am a coal miners daughter. One of eight children who lived in a four room company house, in a company camp, traded at the company store, with company scrip. To get silver money a miner got 85 cents in silver for every dollar in scrip. My dad did owe his soul to the company store.
As a Kentucky coal miner, you paid rent right back to your employer for the right to live in a company hovel. If you were willing to pay a little extra, you might have had running water - out on the front porch with open drainage directly into the street.
When you died, a company funeral home buried you in a company cemetery.
The absentee mine owners also owned the police and the jail - Harlan County Sheriff J. H. Blair bragged that most of his deputies were mine guards still on the company payroll. There was no democracy in a company town or coal camp - everything was controlled by the company.
The paternalistic system worked well enough in boom times - coal was king before petroleum - and the vast profits rapidly accumulated by mine owners gave them plenty of cash with which to quash any attempts at organizing while paying their workers just barely enough to get by.
But after World War One, coal prices slumped, and the subsistence wage boom times were over. A decade of pay cuts and layoffs followed, and by 1930 or so, the workers were getting really fed up. Or, more accurately, not fed at all.
Q4 Can you tell us something about the condition of the people in this hollow?
A: The people in this country are destitute of anything that is truly nourishing to the body. That is the truth. Even the babies have lost their lives, and we have buried from four to seven a week all along during warm weather.
Q5 Due to lack of food?
A: Yes, on account of cholera, famine, flux, stomach trouble brought on by undernourishment. Their food is very bad, such as beans and harsh foods fried in this lard that is so hard to digest. It is impossible for a little baby's stomach to digest them. The digestive organs are not strong enough to digest this food.
Q6 Is that the only food they have, if they have that?
A: They can only get beans. Their parents have been out of work this summer. Families have had to depend on the Red Cross. The Red Cross put out some beans and corn....
Q11 Do they give to every one that asks?
A: No the Red Cross does not give to every one. I always thought they was selfish; they didn't have the right kind of heart.
Q12 Do they give to members of the National Miner's Union?
A: No, they stop it when they know a man belongs to the union.
Q13 What did they say about it?
A: The Red Cross is against a man who is trying to better conditions. They are for the operators, and they want the mines to be going so they won't give anything to a man unless he does what the operators want him to. For instance, I will explain this. My husband took pneumonia and flux for three months. He has not been able to work since this strike. I have to carry back something for my husband to eat from the soup kitchen. The Red Cross won't give anything. We are really in destitution. I talked to the Red Cross lady over at Pineville....
Q15 Did she offer to give you any relief?
A: No, because they was members of the National Miners Union. They said, "We are not responsible for those men out on strike. They should go back to work and work for any price that they will taken them for." That was last week.
Q16 How many children die a month or a year under these conditions?
A: Now in the summer, it would be three to seven each week up and down this creek....
Q20 Are these houses sanitary and healthful to live in?
A: Therse houses bring grip, flu and pneumonia.
Q21 Is this a company house?
A: Yes.
Q22 Does the company fix it?
A: They do not fix it. Just plainly speaking they are no more interested in the men, in the miners, they have not got the sympathy that people has for stock, for the mules.
Q23 Much less, because a man who owns stock knows he must take care of it or he loses money. They don't feel that way about the miners, I believe you.
A: If I had a milk cow or a horse I certainly would be more interested in them than the coal operators is in these people.
Is your husband a member of the N.M.U.?
A: My husband is a member of the National Miners Union, and I am too, and I have never stopped, brother, since I know of this work for the N.M.U. I think it is one of the greatest things that has ever come into this world....
Q29 You know all the people in this village are suffering from lack of food?
A: Yes, they are destitute of food and clothing.
Q30 You have been a nurse in this community?
A: Yes, just charity.
Q31 You have brought children into this world?
A: Yes sir, 65. My poor husband, he did all he could do. They took their wagons and they would beg for these pumpkins and corn and that would be all they would get without any seasoning and many days they had nothing but those pumpkins. It's all right if we had the other things to fix the pumpkins up but we had nothing and it is very hard to digest that way.
Q32 What do they do with the pumpkins?
A: They feed their hogs. If you had the flavoring, you could fix up something good.
That was the testimony of Aunt Molly Jackson before the Dreiser Committee in 1931. Jackson was a blacklisted miner's wife and a midwife, a union organizer and, per Woody Guthrie, "one of America's best native ballad singers."
Actually, Woody had a little more to say about Aunt Molly Jackson.
When she saw these little babies starving to death like flies all around her, Aunt Molly got interested in good wages for their dads. She got up in front of the miners, sung them songs, made them speeches, yelled at them to lay down their tools and wait till the boss raised the pay. She tells of the meetings they had. How the winchester rifle bullets use [sic] to kick the gravel up in your face while you was out making a talk about the rich coal operators and the poor hungry miners. In a year Aunt Molly told more truth than the politicians could bear to hear, so it got too hot for her down in Kentucky.
...
I know Molly well. She's strong and she's good, and she aint [sic] afraid of the police. She says what she thinks when she thinks it. The big guys call her a red. Well, Molly, it looks like if you always say just exactly what you think is right, they'll jump on you and say you're a red.
Some folks just aint quite got the nerve to say what they think is right. But some day they'll wish they had. You aint scared of nobody, Molly. I know it. I've been around you long enough to know that. And you can't stay around Molly for even a few minutes, but what she'll speak out something that is so good, so true, and so honest, that it'll stick in your head as long as you live.
Kentucky coal miners know how to speak out. They also know how to take action.
The bloodiest battles to build a union have been in the coal fields -- in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Illinois, Colorado, and Kentucky. And surely the toughest and meanest of all the coal field where men fought for a voice and a place in the sun was "Bloody Harlan" in Kentucky.
...In 1931, coal miners in Harlan County were on strike. Armed company deputies roamed the countryside, terrorizing the mining communities, looking for union leaders to beat, jail, or kill. But coal miners, brought up lean and hard in the Kentucky mountain country, knew how to fight back, and heads were bashed and bullets fired on both sides in Bloody Harlan.
The violence ebbed and flowed, but the Kentucky miners stuck to their guns (literally) and in 1933, they won the right to organize
Unionism finally came to Harlan County in May 1933, when section 7(a) of the National Industrial Recovery Act recognized the legal right of workers to organize unions. The UMW organized the coal mines in a matter of months. By autumn of 1933, the workers signed their first collective bargaining agreement with the coal operators.
One of the most important things about Harlan County is that it attracted national attention to the plight of the coal miners, much as the civil rights demonstrations of the early 1960s brought the injustice of segregation to the awareness of the nation. In late 1931, novelist Theodore Dreiser and a team of writers came down to report on (as Dreiser put it) "terrorism in the Kentucky coalfields." And during the strike, writer Waldo Frank organized an "Independent Miners Relief Committee" to bring food to the miners. Busloads of northern college students came South to support the miners, handing out food and copies of the Bill of Rights. Florence Reece's song, "Which Side Are You On?" also served to spread the word about the conflict, and became a lasting favorite of labor and civil rights activists.
For people around the country, the Harlan County uprising of the early 1930s demonstrated the limits of the company paternalism and welfare capitalism of the 1920s. In this way, it helped pave the way for the Wagner Act of 1935, which guaranteed workers the right to organize and created a legal process for attaining union recognition. The northern writers and organizers who told the story of Harlan County to the rest of the country helped to cast union organization as American and democratic, and the actions of the companies as tyrannical, violent, and arbitrary. Finally, the ultimate victory of the miners showed that even under the most difficult conditions, in the most rural communities, workers could organize and win union representation. The mineworkers' union, with its stronghold in Harlan County and Appalachia, would remain a powerful force in the United States throughout the 1930s, 1940s, and the entire postwar era.
Winning the right to organize was not the end of the struggle for Harlan County coal workers. Violence continued for many years as miners struggled to educate reluctant owners. In April of 1941, the last union organizing gun battle in the SE Kentucky area took the lives of a mine owner and some company officers and guards as well as at least one union member.
Rhodes was a large, reckless young man who arrogantly told union men that if miners attempted to picket his mine, he would slaughter them. For months, he and Bob Robinson, a former Tennessee highway patrolman, had been parading around with their Tommy guns and challenging the miners to a fight. More than half of the employees had been signed up by the UMWA, but Rhodes ignored their demands and hired more thugs.
On April 15, 1941, the union decided to post a picket line in the safest place they could find. The pickets chose stations where they could take cover in case they were attacked by company guards, and then moved to a strategic place near the mine. When the caravan of cars came to a stop at the state line and started to unload, the fifty pickets were greeted with a broadside from fifteen or eighteen armed guards who had word they were coming and had preceded the pickets to the state line. On the first volley, one picket was killed and more than a dozen were wounded, nine seriously enough to be hospitalized.
...
The battle raged across the state line and more than a thousand shots were fired.
This was the last gun battle in southeastern Kentucky and/or Tennessee over the UMWA’s right to organize. The feudal coal barons learned a valuable lesson from this encounter, namely that times were changing. They could no longer murder miners like dogs with impunity and with the protection of state governments. They had been taught that workingmen, for the first time in American history, were thought of as first-class citizens.
Thinking back, I realize that the Harlan County gun thugs in reality got nothing for their efforts to drive out the union. Most of them died violent deaths.
The ones who survived or died natural deaths had their consciences to live with. How they did it, I do not know.
Harlan county coal miners fought and died and beat back the capitalist thugs that were treating them worse than farm animals, and they set the stage for the Wagner Act and other labor victories.
Today, the working class is being squeezed and exploited in much the same ways that the coal miners were. The elite have stolen our wealth. Payday lenders and credit cards trap the working poor in debt. Wages have been stagnant or falling for years. Working families are turning to relief agencies to feed their kids.
Don't scab for the bosses
Don't listen to their lies
Us poor folks haven't got a chance
Unless we organize
There's no such thing as neutral. Which side are you on?
ACTION:
If you are not a union member, join Working America and get involved.
If you are a union member, join Working Families and get involved.
If you're interested in forming a union at your workplace (that's a BFD!), start here and stick to it.
Support American workers - use union shops whenever you can and buy from American manufacturers when possible.
Note: This post was inspired by Ross Altman's awesome presentation of American protest songs archived at Pacifica and broadcast by Community Radio WMNF in Tampa last Friday.
Unions 101 – We Are All Working Class
Having just left Las Vegas - a trip I set out on with the trepidatious goal of avoiding as much of the traditional Vegas Strip experience as possible, I've been ruminating on the efficiency of the Vegas machine at doing exactly what it is designed to do - extracting wealth from willing victims. Then Digby pointed me to John Cole who posted a George Carlin clip and something Carlin said really stuck in my mind. Speaking of the plight of America's middle class, Carlin says
The table is tilted... the game is rigged...
And I thought to myself, "Gee, just like Las Vegas."
Mandatory Disclaimer: I loved NN10. It was my first, and I can't wait to do it again next year in a city I will feel a little more comfortable in. And I, for one, very happily noted the Union Bugs on the NN10 Made In America t-shirts and swag bags. Netroots Nation sets an awesome example by supporting American Union Workers.
With dozens of bars and restaurants, shops, swimming pools, convention facilities, theaters, bowling alleys, and more all prominently placed just steps from the hotel's colossal central square casino, the only thing I did not see at the massive Rio Hotel complex was a church - I guess they don't want the competition.
Not that that's a bad thing - Vegas is organized religion without so much hypocrisy. Nor the promise of eternal life - Vegas manages to lure its true believers with a slim but instantly gratifying chance at riches and happiness right here and now.
Dizzied by bells and smoke and flesh and booze, the faithful are efficiently bled dry and more and bigger and better cash cathedrals are swiftly erected upon their desiccated remains.
Vegas is totally upfront about what it aims to do to its followers. The marks flock to the city knowing full well that the aim of their host is to leave them penniless, and that the odds are always with the house - the game is rigged, the table is tillted.
At least Vegas uses union labor to separate the masses from their asses - churches tend to find a way to get folks to work for a lot less than their labor is worth. Much like our economy of late.
And for most folks, a trip to Vegas is voluntary. But there's nothing voluntary about being born into an economic world of rigged games and tilted tables. The victims of our economic casino are not willing dupes but the working class - we are all ensnared by a system that is increasingly efficient at extracting our wealth for the exclusive benefit of the ownership class.
It's time to change the odds, to level the table a bit, and to fix the rigged games to ensure that the increasingly elusive American dream is an attainable reward, not a jackpot with impossibly high odds of winning. It's time to join with AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka and America's Labor Unions and begin to make the odds a little better for America's working class.
Speaking as part of a panel on Building a Progressive Economic Vision, Trumka outlined the need for the the nation to invest in infrastructure, implement fair trade policies, change our tax policies, enact comprehensive immigration reform and reform our broken labor laws. The full panel included consumer advocate Elizabeth Warren, progressive Florida Democratic Rep. Alan Grayson, Center for Community Change Executive Director Deepak Bhargava, Green for All’s Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins and National People’s Action Executive Director George Goehl. (Watch it here.)
Trumka pointed out how the United States is falling behind other countries in creating green technology. While our nation is building 500 miles of high-speed rail, China has begun construction of 5,000 miles and is outspending the United States 2:1 on green technology, making it even far urgent for the United States to invest in green jobs and high-end manufacturing infrastructure now before we fall further behind.
For those who say we can’t afford to make these investments, Trumka explained how we can do it with a financial speculation tax that encourages capital to invest in concrete things and discourages unproductive speculation or paper pushing for a quick buck, all the while raising more than $100 billion. Trumka made it clear that lawmakers must not reduce the federal deficit at the expense of creating jobs.
Next up, Trumka described the need for anintegrated trade policy. The nation can’t focus solely on increasing exports, we need to focus on net exports. We can’t open our markets to other countries who won’t open theirs. We can’t support countries that murder trade unionists. All we want is to compete on a level playing field and to do that we must have fair trade policy.
Third, Trumka laid out what we must do to modify our tax policy:
We need a tax policy that encourages people to produce and manufacture things in this country, not reward those who outsource and produce things abroad. We have to close the loopholes that allow corporations who have record profits to use gimmicks to avoid paying their fair share of taxes.
Fourth, Trumka loudly and proudly spoke out in favor of comprehensive immigration reform and made it clear that every AFL-CIO union has endorsed our five-point plan for immigration reform. Current U.S. immigration policy has allowed corporations to create a permanent underclass of workers who they can take advantage of.
And finally, just as corporations have taken advantage of immigrants, they have skirted, exploited and violated labor laws that empower workers to form a union and bargain for a better life. The good jobs of the past were good jobs because workers organized and fought for fair wages and benefits. Without labor law reform, corporations will continue to take advantage of workers and no matter how much we invest in our economy, how much we increase our productivity, our wages will remain stagnant and we will continue to fall behind.
Immigration reform, a financial transactions tax, fair trade, infrastructure investment (clean energy and high speed rail leap to mind), job creation - The American Labor agenda lines up well with the larger progressive agenda. We're all in the same economic boat - if you cash a paycheck you are working class - and the American Labor movement aims to lift us all up and rebuild a strong American middle class.
ACTION:
If you are not a union member, join Working America and get involved.
If you are a union member, join Working Families and get involved.
If you're interested in forming a union at your workplace (that's a BFD!), start here and stick to it.
Support American workers - use union shops whenever you can and buy from American manufacturers when possible.
Unions 101 – Stickin To The Union
Oh, you can't scare me, I'm sticking to the union,
I'm sticking to the union, I'm sticking to the union.
Oh, you can't scare me, I'm sticking to the union,
I'm sticking to the union 'til the day I die.
Union Maid
by Woody Guthrie
I firmly believe that unions are key to a revitalization of our middle class. I have a good union job. Good pay, great benefits, including free healthcare, and a little bit of democracy in the workplace. I think that what I have is the absolute minimum that any worker anywhere should have, but I know how lucky I am to have what I do.
That's why a certain attitude amongst some of my union brothers and sisters really pisses me off. I'm talking about the mostly white mostly male mostly Limbaugh and Beck fans who are in the exact same position as me but somehow fail to see that if not for the union, they would likely be working for peanuts and eating catfood.
With that in mind, join me over the fold for an open letter to the union brother with whom I worked last night.
Brother,
Please don't take this the wrong way, but you are acting like an inconsiderate parasitic prima donna.
After we finished unclogging those tubes last night, we were talking and you started in with how you were fed up with everything, including the union.
I asked you about the union. You recited some WATB tale about how the hall is letting you down because they refused to settle a grievance by cutting corners and allowing you to change job classification.
When I suggested that you go to the hall sometime and show your face or even just pick up the phone and talk to your rep and work something out, you said you don't have time.
When I asked you why you've never been to a monthly meeting at the hall, same answer.
So then I said that maybe you ought to get a little more involved before you start bashing the union. I mean, really - the hall seems to be doing a good job representing you and they feel that it's best to stick to the contract and play by the rules and they will eventually prevail for you.
But you're a selfish bastard, and you don't have time to let the process work through.
In fact, you told me outright that "it's time to think of myself not the union." And then you said that your union dues give you the right to bash the hall to anyone who will listen.
And then the best part - after I pointed out to you that our non-union competition pays non-union workers about 1/3 less in wages and that they charge for health insurance and that the only fucking reason you make what you do is that we have a collective bargaining agreement in place to ensure that even the dumbasses such as yourself are compensated at the same fair rates as the rest of us, after all that, you had the stupidity to blurt out "I wish I was a contractor with my own vehicle. I would make a killing!"
Did you hear even one fucking work I said to you?
First, if you think your future is in dropping your union membership and becoming a contractor, I urge you to do so. You'll probably never age and never fall ill. You'll be young forever and able to work 12 hour days without ever breaking a sweat. You are super tech.
But if you were just blowing smoke about the whole contractor thing, then you really need to lose the selfish. Unions are never about the individual. There are going to be times that you disagree with your union. There are going to be times when you are frustrated beyond words. Too bad. Suck it up. If you want to change things, get your ass down to the hall and get involved. Otherwise, shut the fuck up.
I hear this whiny ass shit from brothers like you all the time. You're pissed because things aren't going 100 percent your way. You're spoiled, narcissistic twits, endlessly sniveling about your bad lot in life, privileged union members, lucky to have full benefits and a better salary than 90 percent of hourly earners in this area, but self-deluded and convinced that you are somehow a victim and that the union is your oppressor.
Listen: You are the union. I am the union. We are the union. The only way you will become a victim is if you work against the union. Whether you know it or not, your long term interests are being served by the union. By bad mouthing the union for following policy that is designed to make things fair for everybody, you are undermining your own long term security.
So, if you have a legitimate beef, come down to the hall and discuss it. You can even air your concerns to all of your brothers and sisters if you would simply show up and raise your voice at a monthly meeting.
But don't be one of the moochers who sticks around for years sucking up all the benefits of union membership, who never gives anything back to the union and who never, ever passes over an opportunity to denigrate the hard work of those who do take the time to get involved.
We don't need brothers and sisters like that.
In Solidarity,
Norwood
Labor Unions 101 – Words Have Meaning
LaFeminista posted a good Daily Kos diary about unions recently, and reading the diary and comments reminded me that despite my avid pro-union stance, until about 5 years ago when I lucked into a union job, I, like the vast majority of workers who are not as lucky as I am, really had no idea what it means to actually be a union member.
But I've managed to gain a little knowledge in the last few years and I feel that compiling and regurgitating that knowledge in a slightly altered form might be just the thing to clear some of the fog that's clouding the brains of my brothers and sisters on Daily Kos.
Join me over the fold for the first installment of my Labor Unions 101 series - Words Have Meaning.
Labor Union - A group of workers who engage in...
Collective Bargaining - negotiations on a contract that covers a union member's terms of employment. If contract talks break down or if the company grievously harms one or more of us, we may decide to...
Strike - Which is really the nuclear option - it hurts everybody. When there is a less drastic dispute, typically we might form a...
Picket Line - A group of workers demonstrating solidarity by protesting the actions of management. No one crosses picket lines except for...
Scabs - NOT my bothers and sisters. But picket lines and strikes are for bigger disputes. We usually start with a...
Grievance - An assertion by the union that one or more members has been treated unfairly by management. After a grievance is filed, a union representative and a company representative will get together and attempt to hash things out. A grievance must be filed by a representative of...
The Hall - Our collectively run Union Hall and the folks who work there. It can be a rented storefront or a dilapidated shack or just an average looking commercial building. It doesn't really matter what it looks like - it houses our business offices and it's where we get together for meetings and the planning of the revolution. We are...
Brothers and Sisters - Every member of the working class is my brother or my sister and union members are...
Craft - Any Union brother or sister. As opposed to...
Management - A supervisory employee not covered under a collective bargaining agreement. Management is paid to fight the union. Managers cross picket lines (see: Scab) and do our work when we strike. Managers have sold their soul to the company and thrive on carrying out the orders of the corporate suborners. Managers continuously fight amongst themselves and will knife each other in the back for a promotion because they have no...
Solidarity - The core tenet of unionism. Solidarity means I support my brothers and sisters above all. That doesn't mean that unions prevent the firing of horrible employees just because they are union - it means that the company will be made to justify any action against a union member. The company must honor our...
Weingarten Rights - "If this discussion could in any way lead to my being disciplined or terminated or have any effect on my personal working conditions, I respectfully request that my union representative, officer, or steward be present at this meeting. Without union representation I choose NOT to participate in this discussion." (Yes, a lot of us have it memorized.) That's right - a brother or sister is guaranteed representation by a...
Steward - Or Shop Steward - A brother or sister who has taken on extra responsibilities by agreeing to act as the union representative for a group of workers. Unfortunately, we have...
Right-to-work states - States which have passed anti-union laws as encouraged by...
Taft-Hartley - The 1947 federal anti-union act which specifies that the Steward must also represent...
Free Riders - Workers in right-to-work states who decline the chance to join the union and thus weaken the union by enjoying the benefits of union membership without paying...
Union Dues - Used for office expenses and the salaries of union officers as well as the costs of negotiating contracts and...
Organizing - Which is like proselytizing, only for a good cause. Because union shops make life better for all by putting upward pressure on...
Prevailing Wages - The wages and benefits in a region are affected by union contracts - non-union shops must be competitive if they are to attract good...
Workers - Anyone who works for a living. If you are not independently wealthy, if you rely on a paycheck to pay the bills and grow your savings, then you are a worker. If you are a worker and you are not pro-union, then you are a traitor to the...
Working Class - "The working class and the employing class have nothing in common." So says the preamble of the constitution of the...
Wobblies - The Industrial Workers of the World, or IWW, or Wobblies, are a legendary international union of workers which you can join. Formed in 1905 by socialists and anarchists, the Wobblies continue to organize oppressed American workers to this day, including Starbucks baristas and bicycle messengers, two groups who could really use a...
Break - Which I am going to take right now. If you got a problem with that, talk to my steward.
Editing The Constitution: Amendment 3
Note: Every 2 years, Florida voters get a chance to literally edit the state constitution, as proposed changes to the actual text of the document are placed on the ballot. This post is part of a continuing series.
Florida's 2010 Amendment 3 can be seen as a legacy of sorts of former Florida House Speaker Marco Rubio. The amendment, backed by Charlie Crist, Florida Realtors, and the Florida Chamber of Commerce, could wreak havoc with municipal budgets as it seeks to slash property tax revenue by $1 billion over three years.
As proposed, Amendment 3 offers first-time buyers more equal footing with homeowners, says David Hart, vice president of legislative and governmental Affairs for the Florida Home Builders Association. The proposal calls for a first-year tax break averaging about $500 for a $200,000 home. Benefits would be phased out over five years, with the special exemption ending in year six. Total benefits on that same $200,000 home would be about $1,500.
"We support it because in the case of the additional property tax benefit to first-time buyers, it helps level the playing field with longtime homestead property owners who’ve enjoyed the benefits of Save Our Homes,” Hart said. While the organization has not taken an official vote on the measure, Hart said the group thinks it will motivate buyers and spur housing starts and construction jobs....
Critics of Amendment 3 fear local governments and school districts would suffer the brunt of further property tax breaks under the proposal. If approved, the amendment will cost those local entities about $1 billion in lost revenue over three years, state economists estimate. The amendment is "of great concern to us because we’ve seen funding for schools go down over the last couple of years,” said Mark Pudlow of the Florida Education Association.
Even more alarming is the state’s shift from state funds to local property taxes to pay for schools and at the same time cut property tax revenue, Pudlow added. While schools would lose money from the additional homestead exemption in the proposed amendment, cities, counties and special tax districts would lose property tax revenue from both the new exemption and the 5 percent assessment cap on non-homestead properties.
Marco Rubio got where he is today by jumping on the property tax reform bandwagon back in 2007. That year, as incoming Speaker of the Florida House, Rubio gained national attention as he championed a complex tax swap package that would have increased the regressive state sales tax dramatically while completely eliminating taxes on homesteaded properties.
"I loved him. I absolutely loved him," recalled Margie Patchett, leader of a local antitax group. "I thought, 'This is not your standard politician. This is a man of vision.' "
The scene played across Florida — from Panama City to Spring Hill and Sarasota. Marco Rubio shaped anger over soaring property taxes into the defining mark of his two years as speaker.
Today, the issue has been overlooked as Rubio stands atop the race for U.S. Senate. But that period was the foundation of his success...
Some of the first calls Rubio made after declaring his candidacy for Senate were to contacts he made in 2007. Partly with their help, he won a series of straw polls that represented the beginning of the end of Crist's run as a Republican.
And while most House speakers don't get much attention beyond Tallahassee, Rubio enjoyed widespread exposure because of property taxes. National TV networks visited him in Miami and conservative leaders in Washington talked him up.
"He's the most pro-taxpayer legislative leader in the country," Grover Norquist said at the time...
Rubio's record on property taxes invites questions about his effectiveness. His ideas were big but mostly failed, even though his party controlled the Legislature. In the end, Crist prevailed with a simpler (and less substantial) property tax relief plan...
The day after the Tallahassee rally, the House passed Rubio's tax swap on a mostly party-line vote. That was as far as it would go.
Senate Republicans mocked the plan as a massive tax increase, even though it would have cut a corresponding level of property tax. Some of the richest Florida homeowners would have gotten huge breaks while critics said the poor would be disproportionately hurt by a higher sales tax.
His party controlled both chambers and the Governor's mansion, but Rubio's proposal was rejected in the end in favor of Governor Charlie Crist's plan which was placed on the ballot as Amendment 1 in 2008.
Amendment 1 was passed by the voters in 2008 and in 2009 the now Rubio-less Legislature, again prodded by Crist, jumped back onto the still circling tax reform bandwagon and placed this year's Amendment 3 on the ballot.
But let's back up a bit and take a look at Florida's tax system.
Florida has no state income tax. We rely exclusively on revenue from sales and use taxes and property taxes to fund state and local government.
Since the early 1930's, Florida has had a homestead exemption which essentially declares a certain amount of the value of one's primary home exempt from taxation as long as the homeowner is a permanent resident of the state.
In 1992, voters modified the homestead exemption with the Save Our Homes amendment which capped annual rises in property appraisal values (done for taxation) for homesteaded properties at 3 percent. This was sold as a way to help elderly residents facing increasing tax bills to stay in their homes.
The next major change was Crist's 2008 Amendment 1 which doubled the homestead exemption to $50,000 and also managed to make this homeowner only tax break even more regressive by ensuring that low valued homes would not be entirely exempt - the second half of the $50,000 exemption only applies to the value of a home between $50,000 and $75,000 - meaning that your home must be worth at least $75,000 to qualify for full exemtion. (YES - there are plenty of homes - right in my county! - worth less than $75,000 right now.)
Amendment 1 passed with high expectations amongst voters that their property taxes would be slashed for free. After all, this is how the Republican politicians had sold the measure to the people.
In actuality, homeowners enjoyed modest savings while Amendment 1 combined with falling property values to decimate municipal budgets which rely almost exclusively on property taxes for funding.
So in 2009, as cities and counties throughout the state were facing layoffs and hard budget choices, firing teachers, closing schools and libraries, cutting back on police and fire protection, the GOP Legislature and Republican Governor Crist did exactly what everyone expected them to do by placing yet another property tax relief measure on the ballot.
Amendment 3 would give a homestead exemption to first time buyers, eliminating the current waiting period. The measure would also halve the 10 percent yearly cap on appraisal values for all non-homesteaded properties, including businesses and rental properties.
Needless to say, the resulting loss of revenue (estimated at $1 billion over three years) will further cripple already weakened local budgets. If Amendment 3 passes, look forward to more municipal layoffs and cutbacks in services.
Florida constitutional amendments require a 60 percent super majority to pass, so there is a high threshold right off the bat, but Amendment 3 has some powerful backers, including the Florida Realtors, who are happy for any potential lifeline for the foundering real estate market.
Republican conservative anti-tax Governor Charlie Crist fought hard to get this measure through the Legislature in the closing days of the 2009 session. Since that time, however, we haven't heard a whole lot about Amendment 3.
Will independent left-leaning Senatorial candidate Charlie Crist continue to fight for this tax cut that many unions and other progressive organizations oppose? Do the Florida Realtors and Florida Chamber actually care enough at this point to wage a campaign in favor of this measure?
Interestingly, Florida Tax Watch, a group that often fights in favor of tax cuts, has recently withdrawn its tepid support for Amendment 3, and, in fact, for property assessment caps altogether, which could give folks like Crist plenty of cover to flip on the issue.
Now, a new constitutional amendment, Amendment 3, will appear on the ballot in November and if approved, reduce that 10 percent limitation to 5 percent, potentially crippling Florida’s economic future, the TaxWatch report says. It compares that scenario to being similar to the way that Proposition 13 has contributed to the near bankrupting of California.
In the end, TaxWatch said the more stringent assessment limitations outlined in Amendment 3 would:
• Lower tax revenues for local government
• Lower municipal bond credit ratings
• Impede local governments that are hamstrung in adapting to economic conditions
• Create greater reliance on other types of taxes and an unnecessarily complicated system for taxpayers
• Reduce real estate transaction activity
• Reduce jobs and compensation for transaction facilitators
• Become an impediment to a vibrant economy
With luck, Amendment 3 will fail to garner 60 percent of the vote and will thus be disappeared, but with a title that will be the most prominent feature on its ballot line yelling "PROPERTY TAX LIMIT...," many voters may have a very hard time suppressing the anti-tax impulses which have been ingrained through years of conditioning and will vote for Amendment 3 without ever making a conscious decision to do so.
I think it's likely that Rubio will come out strong for Amendment 3 - he has no choice. Crist will flip flop, siding with Florida Tax Watch, and no one, not even the hard core Dems on Daily Kos, will care what Kendrick Meek thinks, because we really don't need a real Dem on the ballot come November as long as we have Charlie Crist to fawn over.
Stay tuned.