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By a one-vote margin, the US Senate passed “fast-track” authority, in June to expedite passage of the disastrous Trans-Pacific Partnership deal, which will export beaucoup more of our country’s middle-class jobs. That’s the kind of pro-corporate stupidity the Republican Congress specializes in these days. But wait – here’s where it gets nutty: The key votes for fast track came from a baker’s dozen of Senate Democrats.
Fast track is a railroad job to enthrone global corporate power over us. It will allow the Obama administration to send the massive, 12-country trade scam to Congress for an up-or-down vote, with little debate and no amendments allowed. Details of this thing are being negotiated in strict secrecy between top government officials and top executives of some 500 global corporations. Workers, consumers, and all the rest of us commoners are shut out. The majority of Americans oppose this giveaway – so what’s with the 13 turncoat Dems?
Not to worry, they say, trade benefits everyone! Do they think we have sucker wrappers around our heads? Americans know that these trade schemes make the superrich richer, while the incomes of practically everyone else go south. There’s still a chance to defeat the TPP, because a gritty, well organized populist coalition is rallying grassroots opposition to reject this raw deal. To join the fight, go to www.citizen.org/trade.
And don’t forget the 13 Democratic sell-outs. If any one of them had stood with the people on the fast track vote, we would’ve already derailed TPP. The 13 senators who said “Nuts to you” are: Michael Bennet (CO), Maria Cantwell (WA), Tom Carper (DE), Chris Coons (DE), Dianne Feinstein (CA), Heidi Heitkamp (ND), Tim Kaine (VA), Claire McCaskill (MO), Patty Murray (WA), Bill Nelson (FL), Jeanne Shaheen (NH), Mark Warner (VA), and Ron Wyden (OR).

Doug Hughes: Protecting democracy from plutocrats

The price of liberty is said to be eternal vigilance. But just being watchful rarely does anything to stop the theft of our rights. Instead, the real price of liberty is open defiance – the courage to stand against the oppressors. And the price of that can be prison.
Doug Hughes has dared to defy the corrupt, plutocratic order that the moneyed elites, both political parties, and the Supreme Court have imposed over us. Dismayed and disgusted that We the People are blocked by big money from having our voices heard and responded to, this Florida letter carrier chose to get heard with one dramatic act of civil disobedience. In April, Hughes flew his homemade gyrocopter across Washington and onto the lawn of the US Capitol to protest the usurpation of our most basic freedom: the right to be self-governing.
This was no stunt, no spur-of-the-moment outburst, but a thoughtful, well-planned, non-violent stand against the tyranny of money. Undertaken in the spirit of Henry David Thoreau and Martin Luther King, Jr., this mailman-on-a-mission was fully aware of and prepared to pay the price of civic defiance. Sure enough, on May 20, a federal grand jury indicted this messenger of democracy on a mess of charges that could add up to more than nine years in prison. Far from backing away, however, he’s now calling out you and me: “We spend billions protecting the United States from terrorists,” Hughes recently wrote. “It’s time for American’s to spend time protecting democracy from plutocrats.”
This is Jim Hightower saying… One time when Thoreau was in jail for his defiance of authority, his friend Ralph Waldo Emerson happened by and asked: “Henry, why are you here?” Thoreau retorted: “Why are you not here?” We can best honor Doug’s sacrifice by “being there” in the fight to save democracy from plutocracy. To help Doug and his family during his fight go to www.GoFundMe.com/sn8gc2s. And to join the fight, go to www.DemocracyIsForPeople.org.
“Letter Carrier Indicted in Flight Of Gyrocopter Onto Capitol Grounds,” The New York Times, May 21, 2015.
“I flew a gyrocopter onto the Capitol Lawn to save or democracy,” The Washington Post, May 15, 2015.

Hello Congress: Meet your poverty-wage food servers

Back in 2008, Democratic Sen. Diane Feinstein declared: “There are parts of government that can be run like a business and should be run like a business.”
Thus, the chairwoman of the Senate committee overseeing Congressional facilities privatized the restaurants and other food services in the US Senate. Sure enough, those dining spots now turn a profit, because they are being “run like a business” – specifically a business like McDonald’s. Restaurant Associates, the New York outfit that got the House and Senate food contract, profits by paying poverty-level wages and generally mistreating the cooks, wait staff, and other people who put the “service” in food service.
Wages are less that $12 an hour, well below the very-expensive cost of living in the Washington area. “Everybody has second jobs,” says one weary worker. And when our $174,000-a-year members of Congress adjourn for the three months or so of vacations they take each year, the food service workers are sent away with no pay at all. In fairness, I should note that Restaurant Associates did give a pay raise to some workers not long ago – it was 3¢ an hour. That’s not a raise, it’s an insult!
“I serve food to some of the most powerful people on Earth,” says a Senate cook. “They often talk of expanded opportunity for workers, but most don’t seem to notice or care that workers in their own building are struggling to survive.”
Care? A key Republican committee chairman, Rep. Tom Graves, recently showed how much Congress cares about inequality by refusing even to consider requiring food service contractors to pay a living wage: “It’s really not within the scope of this committee to micromanage all contracts,” he sniffed.
Think of how that makes the Capitol dining staff feel. If I was ol’ Tom, from now on I wouldn’t eat anywhere in the Capitol without taking a food taster with me.
“In Congress, Income Inequality Fact of Life For Food Servers,” www.bigstory.ap.org, May 4, 2015.