With record numbers of voters expected to turn out for the November elections, there is still a big risk that all votes won’t be counted, according to a new report.
Voting in 2008: 10 Swing States, released this week by Common Cause and the Century Foundation, examined progress in voter issues since 2006 in Florida, Georgia, Michigan, Missouri, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Colorado, New Mexico and Virginia. The report looked at voter registration, voter identification, caging, deceptive practices, provisional ballots, voting machine allocation, poll worker recruitment and training, voter education and student voting rights. Click here to view the report and here to view a chart showing each surveyed state.
At a union roundtable discussion in Johnstown, Pa., yesterday, AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Richard Trumka met with a panel of 15 union sportsmen from 12 different western Pennsylvania unions to discuss Sen. Barack Obama’s positions on issues ranging from trade to guns.
Trumka says Obama is offering the right solutions for what’s wrong with our economy. He told the assembled union members that talking with their friends and neighbors about Obama and the important issues is the best way to make sure we have a pro-worker president next year.
This election is going to decide the direction of the economy, where we go. Whether the economy is going to help you, or hurt you. Whether it’s going to be changed or it isn't going to be changed. It's up to you, it's very, very important for you and for your future, the future of our communities and our children, to know the facts, where the candidates stand on the issues and then vote what's best for the country.
The last time we faced a Bush recession, presidential candidate Bill—"It’s the economy stupid!"—Clinton offered voters an economic alternative to the failed Bush I policies and went on to create eight years of national prosperity.
Today, as the Bush II recession explodes, littering the nation's economy with failed banks, Wall Street bailouts and disappearing jobs, Sen. Barack Obama offers an economic plan to steady the economy and bail out Main Street. (Click here to view Obama's new two-minute campaign ad in which he details his economic plans.)
Speaking at the Machinists (IAM) convention last week, Obama said that for nearly eight years, the Bush administration—with the backing of Sen. John McCain, who has a 90 percent Bush voting record—sat back and watched as
corporate lobbyists wrote our laws and put their clients' interest ahead of what's fair for the American people.
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Hurricane Ike caused flooding and damage to downtown Houston. |
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Ed Sills, director of communications for the Texas AFL-CIO, sends this latest update from the areas devastated by Hurricane Ike. To help find and provide assistance to union members in need, the Texas AFL-CIO has re-activated the hotline it used following Hurricane Rita to provide information to survivors of Hurricane Ike. Union members who have suffered destruction or serious damage to their homes may call 1-888-TAFLCIO to find out from the state labor federation about resources that are available to hurricane survivors.
Hurricane Ike may finally drive home to Texas lawmakers the difficult situation workers are put in when they have to wait four weeks to get the first week’s unemployment pay. The issue is one that the United Labor Legislative Committee has grappled with over many legislative sessions, as we have tried to streamline the process by which jobless Texans receive subsistence funds.
Sen. Barack Obama is earning the support of union members around the country for his plans to help restore our economy and rebuild our middle class.
Peggy Griffith, Mike Parker and Rebecca Davis are just three of the union members who are proud to support Obama and will reach out to other union members to make sure he wins this fall.
Griffith is a member of Communications Workers of America (CWA) Local 4302, which serves Canton and Akron, Ohio. She’s the elected secretary for her local. Griffith, who’s profiled in September’s issue of CWA News, supported Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton in the primary but is enthusiastic about working for Obama. She wants to ensure that the next president will make health care accessible and affordable, restore the middle class, appoint pro-worker Supreme Court justices and sign the Employee Free Choice Act.
Sarah Palin's denigration of community organizers is the domestic equivalent of her getting a passport for the first time in her 40s—the first demonstrates how out of touch she is with mainstream America, just as the second highlights her unfitness for understanding the global world we live in.
Attempting to dismiss Sen. Barack Obama's work as a community organizer in Chicago, Palin stated at the Republican National Convention:
Being a mayor is kinda like being a community organizer, only you have actual responsibilities.
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