President Obama, Cincinnati Ohio  LABOR DAY

“Hello Cincinnati. Hello Ohio. I can’t think of a better place to be on Labor Day than at America’s biggest Labor Day picnic-with the workers and families of the Cincinnati AFL-CIO.

First, give a big round of applause to Charlie. Charlie reminds us that in these tough times, America’s working men and women are ready to roll up their sleeves and get back to work.”

“I want to salute your AFL-CIO local leaders: Executive Secretary-Treasurer Doug Sizemore, President Joe Zimmer and state President Joe Rugola. And your outstanding national leaders: a man who we thank for devoting his life to working Americans-President John Sweeney. And the man who will pick up the mantle of leadership-who we need to succeed because a strong labor movement is part of a strong economy-Secretary-Treasurer Rich Trumka.

Although Ohio’s terrific Governor Ted Strickland couldn’t be here, we have Lieutenant Governor Lee Fisher, Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner, Attorney General Richard Cordray, Cincinnati Mayor Mark Mallory, and Hamilton County Commission President David Pepper.

We’re joined by members of Ohio’s congressional delegation: Congressman Steve Driehaus and my great friend-who is at the forefront of every fight for Ohio’s working men and women, including the battle for health insurance reform-Senator Sherrod Brown.

And I’m proud to be here with a leader who is re-energizing the Department of Labor-and a daughter of union members-Secretary Hilda Solis. And my director of recovery for auto communities and workers-Ed Montgomery.

Now, like a lot of Americans, you’re having some fun today. Taking the day off. Spending time with the kids. Enjoying some good music and good food-some famous Cincinnati chili. But today we also pause. To remember. To reflect. To reaffirm.

We remember that the rights and benefits we enjoy today were not simply handed out to America’s working men and women. They had to be won.

They had to be fought for, by men and women of courage and conviction, from the factory floors of the Industrial Revolution to the shopping aisles of today’s superstores. They stood up and spoke out to demand a fair shake; an honest day’s pay for an honest day’s work. Many risked their lives. Some gave their lives. Some made it a cause of their lives-like Senator Ted Kennedy, who we remember today.

So let us never forget: much of what we take for granted-the 40-hour work week, the minimum wage, health insurance, paid leave, pensions, Social Security, Medicare-they all bear the union label. It was the American worker-union men and women-who returned from World War II to make our economy the envy of the world. It was labor that helped build the largest middle class in history. So even if you’re not a union member, every American owes something to America’s labor movement. Read the rest of this entry »

“The President is clearly not running away from this battle, but rather confronting the challenges we’ve encountered these last few weeks head-on. He’s pulling out all the stops, and this level of involvement from the President could well be a game changer. There is no better way to turn public opinion around than to have someone as popular as President Obama addressing the American people directly, without intermediaries interpreting – or misinterpreting – his ideas.”

Congressperson, Lloyd Doggett, came out to a rally of two thousand of his neighbors from across Central Texas to show his unwavering committment to the President’s three principles for health insurance reform and a STRONG and ROBUST Public Option!

Public Policy Polling shows that Virginia Democratic gubernatorial candidate Creigh Deeds has narrowed Republican candidate Bob McDonnell’s lead by half in the last month.  The poll was taken before the news broke about McDonnell’s views on a woman’s place.   The race is now in single digits.

The race to be the next Governor of Virginia is back in single digits, as Creigh Deeds has pulled to within 49-42 against Bob McDonnell after trailing 51-37 a month ago.

The movement in the race seems to be driven largely by an increase in Democratic enthusiasm for Deeds’ candidacy. For instance where Deeds was winning only 64% of the black vote a month ago he’s now at 81%, perhaps an indication that radio ads on his behalf from Barack Obama are paying off. And where a month ago Democratic interest in the election was so low that those planning to vote in November had supported John McCain by a 52-41 margin last year even though Obama won the state by six points, we now find that spread at only 49-45 in McCain’s favor. So even though the likely electorate is still considerably more conservative than the folks who turned out in 2008, Deeds is at least closing that gap.

See full article here.

Democrat Creigh (Cree) Deeds is in a hotly contested Virginia gubernatorial race against the Republican nominee Robert McDonnell.  However, last Sunday’s Washington Post expose may have cooled the race down somewhat in Deeds favor.  It appears that Bob McDonnell holds some very interesting views about women in the workplace.  The GOP candidate asserts in a thesis that he wrote during law school that working women are “detrimental to the family by entrenching status-quo of non-parental primary nurture of children.”  And though he tries to explain that he no longer holds such views McDonnell wrote the thesis when he was a 34-year old married man.  McDonnell offers up as a counter argument that his wife and daughters work thus he definitely supports women in the workforce.  What he fails to mention however is that the statement is against working mothers in the workforce and his daughters are not married with children.  As for his wife, she is a few months away from being an empty nester.  In other words, no minor children at home to parent.  So the real question is has McDonnell’s views about working mothers changed at all since the tender age of 34?

At age 34, two years before his first election and two decades before he would run for governor of Virginia, Robert F. McDonnell submitted a master’s thesis to the evangelical school he was attending in Virginia Beach in which he described working women and feminists as “detrimental” to the family. He said government policy should favor married couples over “cohabitators, homosexuals or fornicators.” He described as “illogical” a 1972 Supreme Court decision legalizing the use of contraception by unmarried couples.

The 93-page document, which is publicly available at the Regent University library, culminates with a 15-point action plan that McDonnell said the Republican Party should follow to protect American families — a vision that he started to put into action soon after he was elected to the Virginia House of Delegates.

During his 14 years in the General Assembly, McDonnell pursued at least 10 of the policy goals he laid out in that research paper, including abortion restrictions, covenant marriage, school vouchers and tax policies to favor his view of the traditional family. In 2001, he voted against a resolution in support of ending wage discrimination between men and women.

A few more zingers:

He argued for covenant marriage, a legally distinct type of marriage intended to make it more difficult to obtain a divorce. He advocated character education programs in public schools to teach “traditional Judeo-Christian values” and other principles that he thought many youths were not learning in their homes. He called for less government encroachment on parental authority, for example, redefining child abuse to “exclude parental spanking.” He lamented the “purging of religious influence” from public schools. And he criticized federal tax credits for child care expenditures because they encouraged women to enter the workforce.   “Further expenditures would be used to subsidize a dynamic new trend of working women and feminists that is ultimately detrimental to the family by entrenching status-quo of nonparental primary nurture of children,” he wrote.

Read full article here.