Karlene Keogh Parks is running as an independent for the Phoenix city council.  She recently sent The Data Port a short note outlining her position on the nature and usefulness of labor associations.She gets it exactly right.

When politicians in right-to-work states attack “unions” it is important to know who exactly they’re talking about.

Firefighter Bradley Harper and Police Officer Daryl Raetz laid down their lives in service to the people of Phoenix last weekend and both were dues paying union members.

Unions have names.

Unions have faces.

They are the names and faces of the thousands of men and women who work hard on our behalf every day. Labor associations advocate for their safety equipment, the resources their members need to get the job done, and yes, for the compensation that will now go to the families of these fallen heroes.

Some of our city employees say goodbye to their families every morning and place themselves in harm’s way so we can be safe. Do we the taxpayers have a responsibility to them? You bet we do, and politicians who cheapen that obligation by throwing “union” around like it’s a dirty word don’t speak for me.

Even when we disagree, it’s possible to do it in a respectful and constructive way. I believe it’s important to always remember this:

There is a wall in the Phoenix Law Enforcement Association’s office hung with the photographs of those who have made the ultimate sacrifice for the people of Phoenix. There is another similar wall at the United Phoenix Firefighters office. Both of those walls are filled with pictures of union members.

On neither wall will you find the photograph of a politician.

Karlene Keogh Parks

karleneforcouncil.com/

Looking back, November was a very good month.

President Obama’s re-election was happily received by his supporters and received with stunned disbelief by the big-money gang. So many corporate jets flew into Boston’s Logan airport that parking was at a premium, because everyone wanted to be on hand for the Romney victory celebration. Sigh.

It was a very good month for women in politics and for a political powerhouse organization that flew under the political radar. The organization was Emily’s List, dedicated to supporting pro-choice Democratic women.

Emily (Early Money Is Like Yeast) helped elect 9 out of 10 of the women it supported for Senate and 18 of  the 24 it backed for the House of Representatives.

It was a good month for a little political  fun-poking, with comedians  like Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert getting more than a few chuckles at the gob-smacked astonishment of the other side that it could actually lose.

But it was not a good month for those of our fellow Americans who voted for Romney, and can’t come to terms with what his loss means about changing attitudes and values in America. The issue of gay marriage, for example, is simply not an issue for most of us, particularly the young. It is not viewed as an attack on the institution of marriage, but simply an extension of it. Not an issue stout enough to hang an election on.

Flight is one kind of response to unthinkable change, which explains why so many Americans are signing petitions to secede from the union. Been there. Done that. Didn’t work. But I don’t believe it is a constructive response  on the part of the rest of us to make fun of fellow Americans who are clearly caught up in the shifting tides of societal change they find hard to come to grips with. It was an election it was hell to lose.

Organized labor played an important role in the election. Two post- election events are an important sign that non union, low wage workers are a sleeping giant that is at last beginning to stir.

Walmart workers demonstrated their dissatisfaction with part time work and no benefits and workers in fast food restaurants hit the street in New York over the same issues. It takes considerable courage to risk losing one of your part time jobs by taking part in a public job action.

So what does December hold in store? A reform of the Senate’s filibuster rule? I hope so, but I doubt it. Avoiding the “fiscal cliff?” More likely, since the Democrats are in a much stronger position than they were in the debate about extending the debt limit.

The election is behind us but the class war is not. It’s going to be fun to watch as it unfolds in Congress and on the picket lines.

Financial markets are booming. The Dow is up 11% this month.  Financial institutions are delighted. (The jobless are, well, still jobless.) Who is responsible? Well, indirectly, or maybe directly, it is German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who dragged the Euro-Zone banks into agreeing to take a fifty percent haircut on their Greek bonds. The markets cheered.

In this morning’s NY Times  column Paul Krugman puts it all in perspective. (Italics are mine.

 It’s worth stepping back to look at the larger picture, namely the abject failure of an economic doctrine — a doctrine that has inflicted huge damage both in Europe and in the United States.

The doctrine in question amounts to the assertion that, in the aftermath of a financial crisis, banks must be bailed out but the general public must pay the price. So a crisis brought on by deregulation becomes a reason to move even further to the right; a time of mass unemployment, instead of spurring public efforts to create jobs, becomes an era of austerity, in which government spending and social programs are slashed.

This doctrine was sold both with claims that there was no alternative — that both bailouts and spending cuts were necessary to satisfy financial markets — and with claims that fiscal austerity would actually create jobs. The idea was that spending cuts would make consumers and businesses more confident. And this confidence would supposedly stimulate private spending, more than offsetting the depressing effects of government cutbacks.

You all know how successful that has been. The banks are hoarding money that might be leant to business start-ups and the jobless are still jobless. Nothing has trickled down.

Now the results are in and the picture isn’t pretty. Greece has been pushed by its austerity measures into an ever-deepening slump — and that slump, not lack of effort on the part of the Greek government, was the reason a classified report to European leaders concluded last week that the existing program there was unworkable. Britain’s economy has stalled under the impact of austerity, and confidence from both businesses and consumers has slumped, not soared.

 

Pow! Take that, Confidence Fairy!

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