Democracy for New Mexico

Living Wage Politics: Special City Council Meeting Wednesday!

From Terry Riley:
Living Wage.  This isn't about sneaking some unearned benefit.  This is about being paid more than people are currently being paid because the existing minimum wage is inadequate.  Now, that is a simple statement but the problem is really that simple.  There are people who are making the issue sound difficult.  They say that if you give a raise at the bottom of the wage scale then everybody will want a raise and the cost of everything will go up.  Excuse me!  The prices on everything have already gone up!  Gas at $2.20 per gallon.  If you ignore everything else, that alone is proof that $5.15 per hour is not a living wage.

If you approach this problem as a business owner and in a totally selfish manner you can still justify better pay in an ever tightening economy.  Think about how these things affect an employee's value to you.  No wonder you don't think they are worth more money, you made them too expensive to hire.

• Employees who make less than a living wage will not own a reliable car.
• Employees who make less than a living wage will not have reliable child care.
• Employees who make less than a living wage will need food stamps just to get by.
• Employees who make less than a living wage will have to use tax supported health care.
• Employees who make less than a living wage will have to use tax supported legal aid.
• Employees who make less than a living wage will have to use tax supported housing.
• Employees who make less than a living wage will change jobs with no notice. 
• Employees who make less than a living wage will be sick more often than others. 
• Employees who make less than a living wage will experience more domestic abuse.
• Employees who make less than a living wage will be more likely to steal from an employer.

Some people argue that if somebody wants to make more money they should work harder or get a better education.  How do you get a better education if you are working 60 or more hours per week at two or three jobs so you can pay most of your bills?  How can you get ahead when predatory lending is legal for paycheck loans, title loans, and tax refund loans?

How can we not support a living wage?  Don't fool yourself, this is not really a good wage.  For example, you wouldn't want to only be paid $7.15 per hour, would you?

The Albuquerque City Council is holding a special session this Wednesday, May 25th at 5 PM in the City Council Chambers which is downstairs in the City -County Building.  That is just west of the Civic Plaza downtown at the corner of Marquette and 3rd Street.

The present action is only to put this issue on the ballot in October so that the voters can choose.  The polls show that 70% of the citizens of Albuquerque support this.

I promised the City Council a large turnout in support of this measure when they deferred dealing with it at the last regular City Council meeting.  We really have to show up in large numbers because it is not clear that we have enough support to pass this.  Please don't let this opportunity to improve living conditions in Albuquerque drop.  The people deserve it and we KNOW that this kind of help is not coming from the state or federal governments.

Terry Riley
www.WhatIfYouKnew-NM.com
Veterans for Peace - Albuquerque
Veterans for Common Sense
Military Families Speak Out
Stop the War Machine
New Mexico Democratic Friends

Quote of the Day

From Think Progress:

Frist Implodes on Senate Floor

This morning on the floor of the Senate, Sen. Chuck Schumer asked Majority Leader Bill Frist a simple question:

SEN. SCHUMER: Isn’t it correct that on March 8, 2000, my colleague [Sen. Frist] voted to uphold the filibuster of Judge Richard Paez?

Here was Frist’s response:

The president, the um, in response, uh, the Paez nomination - we’ll come back and discuss this further. … Actually I’d like to, and it really brings to what I believe - a point - and it really brings to, oddly, a point, what is the issue. The issue is we have leadership-led partisan filibusters that have, um, obstructed, not one nominee, but two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, in a routine way.

So, Frist is arguing that one filibuster is OK. His problem is that several Bush nominees have been filibustered. This position completely undercuts Frist’s argument that judicial filibusters are unconstitutional. (Which is, in turn, the justification for the nuclear option.) If judicial filibusters are unconstitutional there is no freebee.
**********
There's more on Frist's hypocrisy at the Center for American Progress. These folks are shameless, aren't they?

Also, here's a link to a audio clip of Senator Harry Reid's conference call with Democratic activists today at Kicking Ass .

Nuke 'Em

In (tentative) memorium for Senate filibustering, a 200+ year democratic tradition soon to be challenged with the "nuclear option" by ruthless 2008 presidential candidate Bill Frist in his race to the bottom of the barrel:

Click image for larger version.

Daily Kos has a useful post on all the Senate rules Frist and his sheep will have to break in order to, in essence, destroy the rights of the minority in Senate parliamentary procedure.

MoveOn is organizing a call-in to convince Republican Senators that the nuclear option is nothing more than a damaging power grab:

The "nuclear" countdown has begun. Frist will move 4 rejected judges to the floor of the Senate today – meaning the final showdown could begin at any moment. Please call your senator right now and ask them to put our democracy above party lines and oppose this abuse of power.

Senator Pete Domenici
Phone: 202-224-6621
District Offices:
    Albuquerque: 505-346-6791
    Las Cruces: 505-526-5475
    Roswell: 505-623-6170
    Santa Fe: 505-988-6511

Then, please report your call by clicking here:

Suggested script:

"My name is ________ and I live in _______.  I'm calling to ask Senator ___________ to stand up against getting rid of the filibuster – I think that preserving the rules of the Senate and the rights of the minority are important to everyone in our democracy."

(Thanks to Nancy G. for the heads up. Click for more cartoons.)

Quote of the Day

"The more compelling our journalism, the angrier became the radical right of the Republican Party,'' he said. "That's because the one thing they loathe more than liberals is the truth. And the quickest way to be damned by them as liberal is to tell the truth." --Bill Moyers

From a speech Moyers gave at the Conference for Media Reform this weekend in St. Louis. You can listen to it here. John Nichols at The Nation Online writes about it.

ACTION ALERT: Call On Bolton NOW

Personal forward, please pass along…

National Bolton Call-In Days This Week!
TUESDAY, WEDNESDAY, THURSDAY

When John Bolton was nominated to be our UN Ambassador, you sprung into action to tell your Senators that a UN-basher must not fill this important post. You made your voices heard. As a result, the battle over Bolton’s nomination and over U.S. engagement in the world has become one of the major stories of 2005.

This week is the big vote and we're joining pro-global engagement groups across the country to call on the Senate to stop Bolton’s confirmation.

PLEASE TAKE A MINUTE TO MAKE THIS IMPORTANT CALL TO YOUR SENATORS.

It’s easy. Just call the number and use the script: You can use the U.S. Capitol Switchboard to help you make the calls: 202-224-3121.

Remember, when you’re on the phone with a Senator’s office, you won’t be speaking with the Senator. You’ll be calling a staff assistant whose job is to answer the phone, find out what YOU care about, and pass your views along to the Senator. Here’s a script that you can use if you’re not sure what to say:

CALLER: “Hello, my name is (name) and I live in (hometown). I’m calling because I would like the Senator to stop John Bolton from becoming UN Ambassador. We need an Ambassador we can trust to promote U.S. policy, not espouse his own radical views.”

STAFF ASSISTANT: Will either state the Senator’s position or volunteer to pass along your views.

CALLER: “Great, thanks. Let the Senator know I’ll be keeping track of his/her stance on the issue.”

“The [UN] Secretariat building in New York has 38 stories.  If you lost 10 stories today, it wouldn't make a bit of difference."

Visit our Stop Bolton Campaign site: https://www.stopbolton.org/

ACTION ALERT: PBS in Jeopardy

From FreePress:
PBS is in jeopardy. Today's New York Times describes secret efforts by Republican operatives to make our Public Broadcasting System more "fair and balanced."

Kenneth Tomlinson, the Republican chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) -- the government-funded organization that was designed to shield PBS from political pressure -- is aggressively pressing PBS to correct what he considers "liberal bias."

He secretly hired a White House staffer to help draft "guiding principles" for the future of CPB. He brought in a consultant to monitor the "anti-Bush" and "anti-Tom Delay" content on Bill Moyers' NOW program, and then set up and funded right-wing commentator Paul Gigot's new PBS program. Now Tomlinson is working behind the scenes to stack CPB's board and executive offices with Republican Party cronies.

Click here to save PBS

Together we can stop this partisan attack. Join our call to Congress, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and PBS station managers to:

1. Remove Kenneth Tomlinson from the CPB board.

2. Return PBS to the people by holding local town meetings in your community. We the public -- not partisan political operatives -- should decide what we want from PBS.

Tomlinson told the Times that he's trying to restore "objectivity and balance" to public broadcasting. This top-down partisan meddling goes against the very nature of PBS and the local stations we trust. Let the people speak and decide the future of PBS, not secret dealings by White House operatives.

Send your message now -- and forward this letter to all of your friends and colleagues, asking them to do the same.

Onward,
Josh Silver
www.freepress.net

P.S. -- To learn more, read the recent report on "Building a Public Broadcasting System that Deserves Public Support" by Free Press, Consumers Union, Common Cause, Media Access Project and the Consumer Federation of America.

ACTION ALERT: Help Preserve Medicaid

This alert is from Health Action NM: ALERT! Federal Budget Agreement Cuts Medicaid

The budget resolution conference agreement has been posted at https://www.house.gov/rules/109hconres95text.pdf. Apparently it includes:

* $10 billion in reconciliation cuts to the Finance Committee which has jurisdiction over Medicaid and a number of low income programs: in the House, $9 billion of these cuts are assigned to Energy and Commerce which includes jurisdiction over Medicaid, and $1 billion would be to Ways and Means, probably intended to come from the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp and not low income programs;

* $3 billion in reconciliation cuts to the Agriculture Committee, including food stamps;

* a tight cap on appropriations spending, at the level in the House budget; and

* $70 billion in reconciliation protection for tax cuts.

This week, both the U.S. House and Senate narrowly approved the budget. You can read some of the details on the vote at Daily Kos. Here's what we can do to fight the Medicaid cuts:
**********************
This message is from Ellen Pinnes and the Disability Coalition:

Help needed on federal Medicaid battle:
The fight to preserve Medicaid funding in the federal budget continues to broil in Washington. The final outcome of funding is still unsettled, but there's a battle on over a commission to recommend changes to the Medicaid program. This was part of the Smith-Bingaman amendment to the Senate budget resolution, which struck all cuts to the Medicaid budget and instead called for a commission to recommend changes based on sound policy rather than blind cost-cutting. It now looks like a commission will be created.

The sticking point is that the commission could end up being appointed by -- and therefore a tool of -- the Bush Administration. Sen. Smith is holding out for an independent commission from the Institute of Medicine, a respected and nonpartisan group. But it looks like Rep. Heather Wilson is supporting a partisan commission whose members would be appointed by Health & Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt.

Contact Rep. Wilson's office and tell her to join Sen. Smith and insist on an independent commission.

We supported and were grateful for her leadership in getting members of the House, including a large number of Republicans, to oppose Medicaid cuts and support creation of a commission. Those efforts could be for naught if the commission merely does the bidding of the Bush Administration, which has made clear its desire to cut Medicaid spending.

You can call Rep. Wilson's office through the toll-free number (800-828-0498) or at 202-225-6316. Or send an e-mail to Joe Moser, her staff person for health issues, at joe.moser@mail.house.gov.

Thanks for helping to make the voice of the disability community heard!

Ellen Pinnes
The Disability Coalition
PO Box 8251
Santa Fe, NM 87504-8251
Telephone/fax: 505-983-9637

Health Action New Mexico
P.O. Box 40119
Albuquerque, NM 87196
(505) 314-0656
info@healthactionnm.org

Social Justice Sunday 4/24

From Tom Soloman:
George Lakoff has declared Sunday April 24th as Social Justice Sunday, in response to Senator Bill Frist's radical plan to declare a religious war on that same day, calling it "Justice Sunday".

As Lakoff says below,

We must respond. We will call April 24 "Social Justice Sunday." We must show that spiritual progressives are alive and well and willing not just to speak out, but to shout out. The Clergy and Laity Network and DriveDemocracy.org are leading the effort.

Herewith is some background, and the message from Lakoff, posted today on DailyKos.com.

If you belong to a church, synagogue or other religious organization, please consider writing your religious leader and helping to fight this.

Background:
+++++++++++++++++++
https://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/4/15/22721/0651
The news that Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist plans to join a telecast whose organizing theme is that those who oppose some of President Bush's judicial nominees are engaged in an assault on "people of faith" is more than troubling; it is disingenuous, dangerous, and demagogic.  We call on him to reconsider his decision to appear on the telecast and to forcefully disassociate himself from this outrageous claim.

Senator Frist must not give legitimacy to those who claim they hold a monopoly on faith. They do not.  They assert, in the words of Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council and organizer of the telecast, that there is a vast conspiracy by the courts "to rob us of our Christian heritage and our religious freedoms."  There is no such conspiracy.  They have been unable to ram through the most extreme of the President's nominees, and now they are spinning new claims out of thin air. [...]

The telecast is scheduled to take place on the second night of the Passover holiday, when Jews around the world gather together to celebrate our religious freedom.  It was in part for exactly such freedom that we fled Egypt.  It was in part for exactly such freedom that so many of us came to this great land.  And it is in very large part because of exactly such freedom that we and our neighbors here have built a nation uniquely welcoming to people of faith - of all faiths.  We believe Senator Frist knows these things as well.  His association with the scheduled telecast is, in a word, shameful.  We call upon to him to disassociate himself from the claim that the Senate is participating in a filibuster against faith, and to withdraw his participation from the April 24th event.

    -- Rabbi David Saperstein
        Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism

And the call to action by George Lakoff:

Social Justice Sunday by George Lakoff
Fri Apr 15th, 2005 at 17:01:06 MST

The right-wing frame is now complete and Bill Frist has signed on with Tom DeLay: "The filibuster was once abused to protect racial bias, and it is now used against people of faith." This is not just the nuclear option; it is the thermonuclear option. The implicit claim is that every religious person is a right-wing conservative. Filibustering against horrendous right-wing judges is repudiating all believers in every religion - and being racist to boot.  The national campaign is on. Sunday April 24 is booked for national TV at a Kentucky megachurch and called "Justice Sunday."

We must respond. We will call April 24 "Social Justice Sunday." We must show that spiritual progressives are alive and well and willing not just to speak out, but to shout out. The Clergy and Laity Network and DriveDemocracy.org are leading the effort.

Religious progressives support social justice, not injustice. We want to protect life all the way from birth up until the edge of death. We will brook no government interference in difficult, even agonizing family decisions. We believe the common good is necessary if we are to pursue our private goods, and that government should use the common wealth for the common good. And we need our judges, and we need to keep them safe.

There are more religious progressives than right-wing fundamentalists. There are more of us than of them. They may be better organized, but this is changing and that change starts April 24. This is our test. Will we stand up to them? Will we write to our ministers, priests, imams and rabbis asking them to join us in speaking out? Will they put signs on their places of worship celebrating "Social Justice Sunday?"  Will we organize and hold candle-light vigils and marches on the evening of April 24? Will we invite the media to sermons on Social Justice Sunday and to vigils?

We have already begun to organize - in just hours. Drivedemocracy.org and the Clergy and Laity Network issued a press release and activated their coalition of sixty progressive religious organizations. We called upon every religious organization to join with us.

We are members of Martin Luther King's "beloved community."
George Lakoff

An Excellent Framing Resource: DemSpeak

DemSpeak is an open source initiative where Citizen Framers gather to discuss  domestic and foreign policy with the goal of framing or re-framing (re-claiming) the Progressive Message.

Our site is rich with training links, action links, links to framing resources, progressive  resources and a growing blog roll.  Not to mention a lively conversation as members and visitors work together to shape issue briefs like the one on Social Security you'll find at: https://www.deanport.com/dem/?q=node/299

At DemSpeak we don't acknowledge the toxic Blue state/Red state dichotomy. We're citizens working to change the language of politics so we can converse with the whole American family about what unites us rather than what divides us.

Progressive or conservative, religious or not, rich, poor, old or young Americans are in danger from an administration that treats the Constitution as if it were a first draft and the community of nations we helped to form and nurture as though it were a horde of barbarians at the gate.

Our future lies with our nation's children – yet so many are in desperate need of health care, education, decent housing. Spiritually, they are growing up in a climate that could result in their parents being afraid to raise them in the religion that expresses their deepest understanding of spirituality and the Divine.

At DemSpeak we're determined Progressives fighting for the future of the Republic.

Stop by, join in, use what you need.

Pax.

Nancy Virginia Varian
Daily Site Editor
www.demspeak.com

(Editor's Note: We were pleased to welcome Nancy to our DFA-DFNM Meetup last week as a new member. The site is definitely a useful resource for improving our framing and communications skills!)

Tell Corporate America to Drop the Hammer

House Majority Leader Tom DeLay is widely regarded as the most powerful member of Congress. DeLay's abuse of this power has encircled him in a web of scandal. He has already been admonished three times by the bipartisan House Ethics Committee and a political action committee he set up in Texas is currently the subject of a grand jury investigation.

A network of large corporate backers have come, cash-in-hand, to DeLay's defense. American Airlines, Bacardi USA, Nissan USA, RJ Reynolds, and Verizon have all contributed thousands to Tom DeLay's Legal Defense Fund.

Visit DropTheHammer.org to send a message to these corporations and tell them to stop enabling Tom DeLay's unethical behavior. Let these corporations know that unless they stop supporting Tom DeLay, you'll stop supporting them.

You can read a comprehensive "case file" of DeLay's scandals at the DNC site.