Sen. Barack Obama and his campaign have recently stepped up their rhetoric on the mortgage foreclosure crisis, and senior economic adviser Austan Goolsbee wrote a piece in Sunday’s Washington Post pledging that Obama would take immediate steps to regulate subprime loans.

The problem, says AFSCME President Gerald McEntee on the Huffington Post, is that Goolsbee was an outspoken defender of subprime loans just one year ago. In addition, contributors from the subprime lending industry have provided more than a million dollars to Obama’s campaign.

Senator Obama should answer this simple question: Is he planning on following the public advice of Professor Goolsbee on the subprime crisis, or is he working behind the scenes to keep his fat cat contributors happy?

Read the full post.

While in the Middle East last week, Sen. John McCain incorrectly asserted that Iran is training al-Qaeda terrorists and sending them into Iraq. The statement, which McCain has repeated several times, revealed that the senator is apparently unaware that Iran is a Shiite country that views al-Qaeda, a prominently Sunni group, as an enemy.

McCain apologists in the media played down the remark, with FOX News managing editor Brit Hume reassuring viewers that it was just a misstatement, nothing more than “a senior moment.” AFSCME President Gerald McEntee disagrees, and in his latest entry on the Huffington Post says it is McCain’s ignorance – not his age – that is at issue.

It is disturbing that John McCain appears not to know that al Qaeda is a Sunni organization, and he doesn’t understand the key role sectarian divisions play in the violence unleashed since our invasion of Iraq. No wonder he supports keeping our troops there for 100 years.

Read the full post.

John McCain spent last week touring Europe and the Middle East. He met with the President of France who should have been very thankful for the thousands of jobs that McCain has sent his way.

McCain stepped in to make it easier for EADS/Airbus to get the contract for the Air Force refueling tankers over Boeing. As covered by the Associated Press, TIME Magazine and others, three of his campaign advisers lobbied for EADS and his campaign received $28,000 from EADS execs, lobbyists, and employees after starting to speak out on EADS’ behalf.

According to AFL-CIO’s blog, if Boeing had won the contract, it would have supported 44,000 good jobs in more than 40 states, many of which would have been union jobs.

This week our nation marked a grim milestone: the 4,000th American fatality in Iraq. The following is a statement from AFSCME President Gerald W. McEntee:

“Five years into this disastrous war, we are still squandering billions of dollars and destroying the lives of young men and women and their families who answered the call to serve our country. Our service members have done their job and it is time to bring them home. We need to stop throwing troops and resources into the quagmire of Iraq. Our priorities at home - securing quality health care for all Americans, rebuilding aging bridges, levees and roads, improving our schools, and revitalizing our struggling economy - are ignored while our country is bogged down in an unwinnable war. It is time to end the madness and set a new direction for our country.”

More commentary is available on the Huffington Post.

For 70 years, Social Security has worked for America, providing guaranteed benefits in retirement, and to workers and their families in the event that they become disabled or die before retirement. Sen. John McCain, as noted in the blog Crooks and Liars, is promoting a dangerous and irresponsible scheme to privatize Social Security.

McCain told the Wall Street Journal recently that he still supports President Bush’s discredited 2005 push to divert Americans’ hard earned Social Security into risky private accounts, which failed because of widespread opposition, including from AFSCME. His plan would hurt all of America’s working families, and would lead to huge cuts in guaranteed benefits that workers have earned and are counting on. Matthew Yglesias at The Atlantic gets it right when he says that McCain’s proposal is “a lethal combination of bad ideas and total lack of comprehension.”

While he may be a maverick, Senator McCain’s plan would radically transform Social Security from guarantee of retirement security for millions into a gamble.

On the five-year anniversary of the Iraq War, we need to ask the question: How much more are Americans willing to pay for President Bush’s war in Iraq?

Video from Americans United For Change.

The Disadvantage of Privatizing Medicare

In 2003, right-wing members of Congress and the White House implemented a stealth plan to ultimately privatize Medicare. Medicare Advantage, as the program is known, moves seniors and the disabled out of traditional, government administered, Medicare and into private health insurance plans.

The problem is these private plans are more costly than the traditional Medicare program, they provide less care, and they threaten the long term financial solvency of the Medicare program. As noted in a recent Des Moines Register editorial, insurance companies are getting their pockets lined, while enrollees in this program wind up paying more for less care.

Congressional investigators have concluded these private plans cost taxpayers more per beneficiary than traditional Medicare, pad the profits of insurance companies and can end up costing those enrolled in the plans more money for some services than if they’d remained in traditional Medicare.

The privatization of Medicare will ultimately lead to substantial increases in health costs to Medicare beneficiaries, substantial cuts in benefits, or a combination of the two. Just as AFSCME and its allies stopped the privatization of Social Security, we must now act to protect Medicare.

AFSCME University of California employees (AFSCME Local 3299) are taking back their university. To that end, they’ve launched a special website: www.takebackuc.org.

The new site educates the general public about the important links between workers’ contract demands, patient care and student services at the University.

In short, UC Students are paying more for fewer services, and workers are struggling to make ends meet due to sub-standard wages. Meanwhile, the UC administration has put executive compensation above all else.

Local 3299’s campaign for justice has the support of hundreds of political, clergy, faculty and community leaders. You can show your support by checking out www.takebackuc.org.

This from the Washington Post:

“There is no such thing as a free lunch, and there is no such thing as a free war. The Iraq adventure has seriously weakened the U.S. economy, whose woes now go far beyond loose mortgage lending. You can’t spend $3 trillion — yes, $3 trillion — on a failed war abroad and not feel the pain at home.”

And as public service workers, we see all too well the pain here at home. Crumbling infrastructure, funding cuts to the critical social services, schools lacking in basic supplies.

“More from Linda J. Bilmes and Joseph E. Stiglitz and their Post Op-Ed: “As we head toward November, opinion polls say that voters’ main worry is now the economy, not the war. But there’s no way to disentangle the two. The United States will be paying the price of Iraq for decades to come…and the cost will grow the longer we remain.”

Indeed.

(from American Rights at Work and their Shame on Elaine Campaign)

On this day in 1913, President William H. Taft signed legislation creating the Department of Labor to “to foster, promote and develop the welfare of working people, to improve their working conditions, and to advance their opportunities for profitable employment.”

It was also on this day in 1933 that President Franklin D. Roosevelt nominated Frances Perkins for Secretary of Labor, the first female to ever hold a cabinet-level position.

The past seven years have been tough under the reign of Elaine. From dismantling worker safety and health protections to ruining DOL employee morale, we hope Elaine’s departure in 2008 brings an end to this dark era. It’s time for the Department of Labor to get back to working for all America’s workers.