By Ron Ault
President
Metal Trades Department, AFL-CIO
The Reagan Administration sold the American people a bill of goods called “De-Regulation” purportedly as free enterprise working at its best to reduce prices, improve services and improve the quality of products. Natural competition was supposed to have businesses vye for your dollar by lowering prices and offering you a better deal. AT&T, airlines, the meat & poultry industry, public utilities, the broadcast & print industry, oil companies, drug companies, public hospitals and private health care industries were all un shackled from government regulation and were free to run their business as they saw fit…but they were no longer protected from competition as a public utility nor required (in the airline industry) to service unprofitable routes in smaller cities and rural areas. Gasoline was around $1.50 a gallon and U.S. telephone, mail and airline services were the envy of the free world. Deregulation of other industries accelerated under both Bush Administrations. Today, there is no meaningful regulation or controls on industry.
But, deregulation proved to be something altogether different.
Deregulation brought us the collapse of the airline industry Eastern, TWA, Value Jet, People’s Express, Delta, US Airways, and UAL bankruptcies. We got Bernie Evers’ WorldComm, Ken Lay’s Enron, and the Oil Companies’ $3.00 a gallon gas gouging…dead dogs and cats from un-inspected contaminated pet food, “E” coli deaths from contaminated un-inspected meats and produce, untold thousands of deaths from the “for profit” health care industry that has absolutely nothing to do with real health care, and just the latest debacle of the drug industry in a long and continuous list of debacles, drug company CEO’s lying about “Oxycontin” being a miracle drug and not being addictive.
“Trust me” say the captains of industry…on commercial network television channels that no longer gives us a factual news broadcast but instead, columnist commentary and entertainment news magazine format filled with fluff about celebrities like Kobe Bryant, Anna Nicole Smith, Brittany Spears, Barry Bonds and Lindsey Lohan . Real news doesn’t sell nor does it have high enough ratings for advertising dollars.
For profit corporations cannot be entrusted to monopolize essential goods and services without strong Congressional oversight and a system of checks and balances. CEOs caught every day lying and cheating the American public. One only has to look at the energy sector. Dominated by multi national corporations and foreign state-owned businesses, they are only concerned about profits. The law of supply and demand doesn’t exist in the oil industry. Just look at today’s record highest gasoline prices in history…crude prices are lower than last year and supplies are so high Chevron has to rent super tankers to store crude in the Gulf of Mexico as they don’t have any where else to put it—all oil storage facilities are totally full. Production quotas are dictated by OPEC—the oil producing nations. This is nothing more than price fixing and commodity manipulation by greedy nations in collusion with even more greedy corporations. There is no better example of corporations that should be regulated as a public utility than the energy companies, and no one can argue that energy isn’t an essential service required by every American.
The so-called “Health Care Industry” is another shameful example of corrupt corporate greed that is killing Americans every single day in the name of profit…just look at the thousands of new life-saving drugs developed every year that are patented but never marketed because the margin of profit just doesn’t fit the corporation’s formula as only a few thousand patients each year fall victim to these deadly illnesses. But Viagra and other erectile dysfunction drugs have billions of dollars of profit, so they get center stage advertising, free samples for doctors to give out to establish a need and a customer base. Same story for diet drugs…that is the largest R&D effort in drug history; not curing cancer nor finding a cure for diabetics…community and charity hospitals have just about gone the way of the dinosaur…for-profit Health Care provides neither health nor care…you get the level of health services you can pay for…those who can’t afford to pay, die.
It is time for Americans to demand better from our elected officials. Demand that Congress pass laws regulating all public transportation, food, medicine, utilities, health care and energy companies. Make profit margins in these essential goods and services exactly the same as real inflation, so Americans are protected against price gouging. Excess profits from these industries should be returned to the government to pay for regulating the industries and to provide coverage for those who cannot afford coverage.
“Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did, and it never will. Find out just what people will submit to and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue till they have resisted with either words or blows or both! The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they suppress.”
Frederick Douglass
Escaped Slave and Great Abolitionist, 1857
Friday, May 11, 2007
Wednesday, March 7, 2007
Veterans as a Profit Center
Move aside, soldier. You were a hero when you could carry a weapon. Now, you’re just a used up piece of equipment—no more important than a broken down humvee. We’ve got to find some place to put you so you’re out of the way and we won’t have to see those awful scars.
Sound harsh? That’s how our nation has been treating veterans for more than a century, especially the ones who come home in less than one piece.
And, it’s worse than shameful.
Every war our nation has fought, from the Revolution through today, put the sons and daughters of working people at the tip of the national spear. You’ll always find the chicken hawks who make the speeches, rattle the sabers and wave the bloody shirts far behind the lines tucked safely away cheering for our side.
When the time comes to make good on the promises to young recruits—the earnest men and women who made the sacrifices, faced the enemy and earned the title of veteran—the hypocrites look the other way. And, somehow, the money that flowed so freely to fight the war has dried up. A billion here or there for Halliburton; suddenly there’s nothing left for the veterans.
This war—in Afghanistan and Iraq—its execution and its aftermath, is personal for working families. I recall my own experiences in Vietnam, and I can relate. My own nephew has finished three combat rotations. Many labor leaders like me have sons or daughters in uniform. Many of our union members—friends and brothers like Don Bongo at Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard—have both served and sent children into service. For us, this is a family issue.
We bear the burden of worry for loved ones sent to war. We carry the sorrow for the casualties. Our families endure not merely the loneliness of separation, but the financial sacrifices, too. We see the pinch on today’s American military, with too many families scrimping to make ends meet, and those spouses and children left at home too often forced on rely on food stamps and public assistance.
Yet, we still see service to the nation as a noble privilege. Unfortunately, not many among America’s political and corporate elite feel the same way.
Our families share the frustration and agony of the vets who return, some with broken bodies, some with broken spirits, or both. For many, the human toll will last a lifetime—pain they will try to relieve with alcohol or drug. They will encounter difficulties in employment and relationships, and homelessness. All these conditions are predictable and very preventable.
The same people who sent out the call to war somehow never thought to prepare a place for the warrior. Since 9/11, America has been creating 200,000 new veterans a year—yet the Bush Administration has failed to request adequate funds to maintain a modicum of medical services through the Veterans Administration. Today’s veterans will put up more than $700 million of their own money in “user fees” to “buy into” VA services. We wouldn’t want to have to ask those wealthy beneficiaries of President Bush’s trillion dollar tax cuts to dip into their pockets for it, now would we?
There is no recess of hell too deep or hot to house the souls of those who proclaim they “support the troops” then turn around and ignore veterans, belittle them, or trample their dignity with bureaucratic red tape. And, there must be a niche in hell even deeper and hotter for those who exploit the plight of veterans for profit.
The Walter Reed scandal is a case in point, but only one of far too many.
As California Rep. Henry Waxman revealed in his subpoena demanding that the Army produce General George Weightman as a witness before the congressional committee investigating this scandal, the Army knew the conditions that existed. They thought no one else would ever find out. In fact, the guilty knowledge goes right up the chain of command through the Pentagon and to the White House. Here and there a courageous underling stood up and warned of the problems—it was Garrison Commander Col. Peter Garibaldi who had the courage to put that warning about the “risk of mission failure” on paper—but those words were ignored.
No surprise, either, that a key contributing factor in the “mission failure” at Walter Reed was that wonderful concept known as “outsourcing” that led to the Army handing over a $120 million contract to IAP Worldwide Services, a firm run by two former Halliburton executives (one with the appropriate last name of Swindle). The process of replacing 300 trained, experienced and dedicated federal workers with some 25 employees of a for-profit contractor to handle facilities maintenance at the complex. Small wonder there was mold and rodents.
Someone like Gen. Weightman may take the fall for Walter Reed, and there will no doubt be other scapegoats trotted out for public humiliation when other identical scandals related to the care and treatment of wounded veterans surface. But behind the scapegoats is a long line of culprits who are equally or more guilty of gutless behavior, criminality, greed and malfeasance. The buck should find its way to that big desk in the Oval Office where “the decider” works.
Understandably, given the scope, level and breadth of corruption that has characterized the past six years of this administration, there is a kind of institutional attention deficit disorder infecting the nation. There is just too much going on to wrap the public’s mind around. We’re grateful to Rep. Waxman for his quick response in scheduling hearings on the Walter Reed matter. We’re now asking congressional leaders from both parties to make veterans issues, especially the treatment of wounded veterans a top priority and to hold extended hearings nationwide to bring this whole sordid mess to the top of the heap. We invite union members from the Metal Trades to share their stories with us and give us an opportunity to bring them forward for official scrutiny.
# # #
Sound harsh? That’s how our nation has been treating veterans for more than a century, especially the ones who come home in less than one piece.
And, it’s worse than shameful.
Every war our nation has fought, from the Revolution through today, put the sons and daughters of working people at the tip of the national spear. You’ll always find the chicken hawks who make the speeches, rattle the sabers and wave the bloody shirts far behind the lines tucked safely away cheering for our side.
When the time comes to make good on the promises to young recruits—the earnest men and women who made the sacrifices, faced the enemy and earned the title of veteran—the hypocrites look the other way. And, somehow, the money that flowed so freely to fight the war has dried up. A billion here or there for Halliburton; suddenly there’s nothing left for the veterans.
This war—in Afghanistan and Iraq—its execution and its aftermath, is personal for working families. I recall my own experiences in Vietnam, and I can relate. My own nephew has finished three combat rotations. Many labor leaders like me have sons or daughters in uniform. Many of our union members—friends and brothers like Don Bongo at Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard—have both served and sent children into service. For us, this is a family issue.
We bear the burden of worry for loved ones sent to war. We carry the sorrow for the casualties. Our families endure not merely the loneliness of separation, but the financial sacrifices, too. We see the pinch on today’s American military, with too many families scrimping to make ends meet, and those spouses and children left at home too often forced on rely on food stamps and public assistance.
Yet, we still see service to the nation as a noble privilege. Unfortunately, not many among America’s political and corporate elite feel the same way.
Our families share the frustration and agony of the vets who return, some with broken bodies, some with broken spirits, or both. For many, the human toll will last a lifetime—pain they will try to relieve with alcohol or drug. They will encounter difficulties in employment and relationships, and homelessness. All these conditions are predictable and very preventable.
The same people who sent out the call to war somehow never thought to prepare a place for the warrior. Since 9/11, America has been creating 200,000 new veterans a year—yet the Bush Administration has failed to request adequate funds to maintain a modicum of medical services through the Veterans Administration. Today’s veterans will put up more than $700 million of their own money in “user fees” to “buy into” VA services. We wouldn’t want to have to ask those wealthy beneficiaries of President Bush’s trillion dollar tax cuts to dip into their pockets for it, now would we?
There is no recess of hell too deep or hot to house the souls of those who proclaim they “support the troops” then turn around and ignore veterans, belittle them, or trample their dignity with bureaucratic red tape. And, there must be a niche in hell even deeper and hotter for those who exploit the plight of veterans for profit.
The Walter Reed scandal is a case in point, but only one of far too many.
As California Rep. Henry Waxman revealed in his subpoena demanding that the Army produce General George Weightman as a witness before the congressional committee investigating this scandal, the Army knew the conditions that existed. They thought no one else would ever find out. In fact, the guilty knowledge goes right up the chain of command through the Pentagon and to the White House. Here and there a courageous underling stood up and warned of the problems—it was Garrison Commander Col. Peter Garibaldi who had the courage to put that warning about the “risk of mission failure” on paper—but those words were ignored.
No surprise, either, that a key contributing factor in the “mission failure” at Walter Reed was that wonderful concept known as “outsourcing” that led to the Army handing over a $120 million contract to IAP Worldwide Services, a firm run by two former Halliburton executives (one with the appropriate last name of Swindle). The process of replacing 300 trained, experienced and dedicated federal workers with some 25 employees of a for-profit contractor to handle facilities maintenance at the complex. Small wonder there was mold and rodents.
Someone like Gen. Weightman may take the fall for Walter Reed, and there will no doubt be other scapegoats trotted out for public humiliation when other identical scandals related to the care and treatment of wounded veterans surface. But behind the scapegoats is a long line of culprits who are equally or more guilty of gutless behavior, criminality, greed and malfeasance. The buck should find its way to that big desk in the Oval Office where “the decider” works.
Understandably, given the scope, level and breadth of corruption that has characterized the past six years of this administration, there is a kind of institutional attention deficit disorder infecting the nation. There is just too much going on to wrap the public’s mind around. We’re grateful to Rep. Waxman for his quick response in scheduling hearings on the Walter Reed matter. We’re now asking congressional leaders from both parties to make veterans issues, especially the treatment of wounded veterans a top priority and to hold extended hearings nationwide to bring this whole sordid mess to the top of the heap. We invite union members from the Metal Trades to share their stories with us and give us an opportunity to bring them forward for official scrutiny.
# # #
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
The Metal Trades Department
The Metal Trades Department is a trade department of the AFL-CIO. It was chartered in 1908 to coordinate negotiating, organizing and legislative efforts of affiliated metalworking and related crafts and trade unions. Twenty national and international unions with a total membership of over 5,000,000 are affiliated with the MTD today. More than 100,000 workers in private industry and federal establishments work under contracts negotiated by MTD Councils. Workers retain membership in their own trade unions.
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