Beat
Bush in 2004
I’ve had my fill of George W. Bush!
Why? Well, I will try to stick to the issues that affect us
railroaders the most.
I think the most important reason is the
Bush administration’s absolute anti-union stance. It’s
just more of the same by the folks that brought us Reagan
and Bush Sr. If anything, it’s worse and more blatant.
First we get hit with President Bush’s tax plan which
shifts the burden from his rich supporters to us, the working
class. Then there is his attack on overtime pay. He says that
he wants to help those who are working for wages at the poverty
level by requiring that they receive overtime pay. But he
and his cronies included a section in the Law which shows
the employers how to get out of paying overtime to these same
low paid workers. The excuse? “Well they would have
found the loop-holes anyway.” I guess they would since
there are so many of them built in. Meanwhile, they set up
a comp-time-for-overtime-work system for the rest of us. You
have to ask yourself if our next contract “negotiation”
won’t have some proposal to bring our overtime rules
in line with the new national standard.
Do you think that we would be paying for
our health care coverage if Bush had not become President?
We negotiated for years to the health care benefit to where
it was with no payment by us for the coverage. Oh we paid
all along because for everything we won in our health care
benefit, we gave up something else such as wages, vacation
time, or other benefits. Now, not only are the things we negotiated
away lost to us, we must also pay an unreasonably high amount
monthly for our coverage.
Mr. Bush’s Medicare Bill helps the
drug companies at the expense of our Seniors. Not only does
it prohibit Medicare from negotiating lower prices, but it
stops us form exercising our “right to shop around”
by banning the purchase of prescription drugs in Canada. It
was designed to do one thing, guarantee the obscene profits
enjoyed by drug companies. To add insult to injury, Mr. Bush
has us, the taxpayers, paying to air TV commercials which
try to put a positive spin on the Medicare changes and take
the heat off him during the up-coming elections. Do they think
our seniors are the easily fooled?
Mr. Bush’s latest plan is his “Guest
Worker” scheme. He claims to be worried about the illegal
immigrants working here in the U.S., and wants to help them
out by setting up a plan by which an employer can go south
of the border and hire workers which then come here and work
with a permit. It’s just a way for the companies who
can’t move abroad to cash in on the low wage, foreign
worker bonanza which has stripped the country of its manufacturing
jobs. We need leaders who would support reform in poorer nations
with the creation of good paying union jobs, with benefits,
there. Then those who are forced to enter our country to work
illegally in an effort to support their families would not
have to leave home and our employers would not be tempted
to move abroad seeking cheap labor. How long until we begin
to see these “Guest Workers” in the railroad industry?
Then there’s the budget deficit. Mr.
Bush started out with the highest budget surplus ever enjoyed
by an in-coming President and has quickly changed that to
the biggest deficit ever while plunging the country into a
recession that has affected us all. Explain to your kids how
they will have to pay off this debt.
Mr. Bush’s foreign policy is a disaster.
First he tears up every treaty he can get his hands on, insulting
our friends and allies in the process. Then after a relentless
campaign of fear and lies, he pushes us into war and demands
their help. Iraq was being dealt with properly by the use
of sanctions which were working and posed no real threat to
us. Now our sons and daughters, husbands and wives, friends
and relatives are over there making the sacrifice. Our brave
service people did not second guess this action and responded
in the finest tradition when sent. We honor and respect them
and support their efforts. Part of the respect we owe them
is to use their services wisely.
Did I say I’ve had my fill of George
W. Bush? I’ve had way more than my fill. How about you?
Get out there and follow the AFL-CIO lead. Vote Union. Vote
Democrat for President.
Support our troops.
A. Working Carman
|
