The following article by Democratic strategist Robert Creamer, author of Stand Up Straight: How Progressives Can Win, is cross-posted from HuffPo:
If you’re like most ordinary Americans, you’re not thrilled that ever since George W. Bush came into office 15 years ago your income has flat lined.
It probably doesn’t make much sense to you that CEO pay and Wall Street bonuses have exploded while most Americans can’t keep up with the rising cost of living.
Bush came into office with a mandate from the CEO class to change the rules of the economic game, and ever since ordinary people have paid the price while Wall Street banks, big corporations, CEOs and billionaires have wallowed in their increasing wealth.
Well if you didn’t like the way the CEO class used their huge political donations and fleet of lobbyists to manipulate the economic rules last time, wait until you see what they’ve cooked up now.
An outfit called the “Center for Individual Rights” — which is a front group for the notorious Koch Brothers financial network and other mega-wealthy right wing CEOs — has filed a lawsuit asking the U.S. Supreme Court to substantially weaken the ability of working people to negotiate together for better wages and working conditions.
The case will be argued in January. If the court rules in favor of the corporate CEOs, it will turbo-charge their efforts to divert an even greater portion of the country’s income into higher pay and bigger bonuses for them and billionaire investors like the Koch’s.
It’s really quite astonishing when you take a step back and think about it. The CEO and billionaire class has already been so successful in changing the economic rules that they have managed to siphon off virtually all of America’s economic growth over the last 15 years. But that just isn’t enough. Their greed seems insatiable.
Now they want to make things even worse for ordinary people by making it harder for them to negotiate together to raise their pay.
The case before the court is called Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association.
The law stipulates that when the majority of people vote to form a union, the union is required to represent everyone in the workplace, whether an employee is a union member or not.
It is also settled law that anyone who decides they don’t want to be part of the union (a right that all employees have), but who benefits from the agreement on wages and benefits the union negotiates, should contribute their fair share of the cost of negotiating and administering that agreement.
And it is important to know that no one is required to join a union, and therefore no one is required to contribute to the political or lobbying program of a union. Those who elect not be a member only need to pay the cost of the negotiations on their behalf.
Seems only fair, right?
But the Center for Individual Rights, and their corporate CEO backers, want to take away this basic right of working people — to come together and negotiate as a group in order to secure safe working conditions, and wages and benefits that allow them to support a family.
That basic right benefits the entire community, since if ordinary people have money in their pockets, they turn around and spend it at stores and shops and buy products that create more jobs.
Right now the case is restricted to “public employees,” but if they win on this case, you know what’s next — the same restrictions on the rights of workers for all employees.
The lawsuit has been brought for one and only one reason. The Koch Brothers and the other CEOs want to weaken — and ultimately eliminate — the rights of workers to band together into unions and negotiate over wages and working conditions. Then the CEO gang would have unlimited power to pay their workers as little as the market will bear, while keeping as much as possible for themselves.
After all, they know that in an increasingly global economy, if they don’t have to negotiate with their employees over wages and working conditions, they can drive wages lower and lower.
They know that if they make yet another change in the rules governing the economic game, they can make our economy even more unbalanced than they have made it over the last 15 years.

Read more…

According to Politico’s “weekly bipartisan survey of the top strategists, activists and operatives in the four early-nominating states: Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada,” Republicans will lose the 2016 presidential election if Trump runs an independent candidacy. As Steven Shepard reports,

Roughly 4 in 5 GOP insiders, 79 percent, said it would be either “impossible” or “very difficult” for the Republican nominee to win the general election if Trump launches a third-party bid, based on electoral math and a general inability for the party’s nominee to focus on the Democratic competitor…”Impossible is a strong but appropriate word,” said a New Hampshire Republican.

Shepard quotes an unnamed Iowa Republican, who put it succinctly: “The current electoral path to the White House for the eventual Republican is so narrow that any third- or no-party candidate with the ability to peel away conservative and anti-Washington independent voters spells certain defeat for any Republican nominee.”
Shepard notes that 84 percent of Democratic insiders also agree that an independent Trump run would likely doom the GOP’s 2016 White House bid. The ‘insiders’ did not speculate on Trump’s chances, should he get the GOP nomination, a prospect many Democrats would no doubt welcome.
Shepard notes, however, that other “insiders” believe that an independent run by Trump would also fail. Trump may indeed be bluffing with his independent candidacy saber-rattling, in order to tone down criticism from his GOP competition. If so, it appears to be working to some extent.
In any case, it would be folly for Dems to count on either development — Trump winning the GOP nomination or his going rogue. Rather Dems should be prepared for both possibilities, plus a scenario in which a different Republican wins their party’s nomination and gets Trump’s endorsement.

Republicans are sweating bullets when asked to repudiate Donald Trumps bigotry toward Muslims and Mexicans, and so far have only provided limp criticism of Trump’s call. But voters who want to uphold America’s best values about tolerance and brotherhood can take some comfort that one party, at least, refuses to give Trump’s bigotry an easy pass, as evidenced by recent statements from Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders and Martin O’Malley.
Hillary Clinton has just posted a strong statement against Donald Trump’s bigotry and his GOP rivals weak response on her campaign web page:

Donald Trump has made a name for himself in this election by trafficking in prejudice and paranoia. Now he says he wants to stop all Muslims from entering the United States. It’s a shameful idea. It’s also dangerous. At a time when America should be doing everything we can to fight radical jihadists, Mr. Trump is supplying them with new propaganda. He’s playing right into their hands.
Now some Republican candidates are saying that Donald Trump’s latest comments have gone too far. But the truth is, many GOP candidates have also said extreme things about Muslims. Their language may be more veiled than Mr. Trump’s, but their ideas aren’t so different.
Ben Carson says that a Muslim shouldn’t be president. Marco Rubio compares Muslims to members of the Nazi Party and refuses to rule out monitoring and closing of mosques. Jeb Bush and Ted Cruz have suggested that we implement a religious test for Syrian refugees–one that only Christians would pass. Chris Christie says not even 3-year-old Syrian orphans should be let in. And they insist on using the phrase “radical Islamic terrorism”–in fact, they criticize anyone who says anything else–even though it drives the exact narrative the jihadists want to advance: that we’re at war with an entire religion.
When you take a step back and see what the Republican field as a whole says about Muslims–not just one or two candidates for President, but nearly all of them–it’s hard to take seriously their attempts to distance themselves from Mr. Trump. He’s just articulating the logical conclusion of what the rest of them have been saying. As Mr. Trump said in an interview this morning, “They condemn practically everything I say, and then they always come to my side.”

Sen. Bernie Sanders has also made his contempt for Trump’s bigotry clear, as noted by John Wagner at Post Politics:

“What somebody like a Trump is trying to do is to divide us up,” Sanders told host Jimmy Fallon. “A few months ago, we were supposed to hate Mexicans. He thinks they’re all criminals or rapists. Now we’re supposed to hate Muslims. And that kind of crap is not going to work in the United States of America.”
…”Throughout history, you’ve had demagogues trying to divert attention away from the real issues,” Sanders said. “This country today faces some enormous problems. You know, we have a middle class that is disappearing. We have almost the wealth and income going to the top 1 percent. We have climate change. We have a corrupt campaign finance system.”
“I think what the American people understand is, given the problems we face, we’ve got to stand together, come together and create a decent life for all of our people and stop the scapegoating of one group or another,” Sanders said.

Former Maryland Governor and Democratic presidential candidate Martin O’Malley was equally-strong in condemning Trump’s fear-mongering, reports Maryalice Parks at abcnews.com:

“Let me ask you this. Who is next? Catholics? Trade unionists? Artists? We’ve seen this road before, and it does not lead to a good place,” he said.
“Panic and political opportunism are a toxic mix — a mix that can often precede fascism or the plunging of our republic into a security state,” O’Malley added. The audience jeered and booed at his references to Trump.
After the speech, reporters pressed O’Malley on whether he thought Trump himself was a fascist. O’Malley would not say so explicitly, but said the language Trump uses is similar.
“When he pushes things like registries and ID cards based on things like religion, I do believe that is the sort of appeal that historically has often preceded fascism,” he said. “We should not think that we are so superior as a nation that we cannot ourselves fall victim to those sorts of appeals.”

Clinton added,

He’s also taking aim at our values. Our country was founded by people fleeing religious persecution. The notion that here, people are free to practice their faith, whatever it is, is one of America’s most cherished principles…Nearly 3 million Americans are Muslims. They’re our family, our friends, our neighbors, and co-workers. They serve in the military, save lives as doctors and nurses, and serve our communities as police officers, firefighters, teachers, and civic leaders. They’re patriots–proud Americans, just like the rest of us. They deserve better than this.”

Clinton called on Trump’s fellow Republican candidates to come forward and speak out against hate-mongering and scapegoating: “Now is the time for all of us–especially Republican leaders–to stand up to hateful, dangerous words and deeds.”
Given the GOP candidates’ sorry record thus far, it could take a while.