Then along came Ronald Reagan, who cut personal income taxes by 25 percent in 1981, and then whacked them again in 1986, lowering the top individual rate from 50 percent to 28 percent, and raising the lowest rate from 11 percent to 15 percent.  /Note: Reagan had help in this piece of Robin-Hood-in reverse from Democrats like Dick Gephart in the House and Bill Bradley in the Senate, cementing a Congressional tradition of bipartisanship in the screwing of the little guy./

George W. Bush did much more damage by doling out tax cuts that will cost us $2.5 trillion over the decade ending next year, with 50 percent of the money going to the richest people in our country.  Economist Lester Thurow called it “the greatest redistribution of wealth in history without a revolution. The result?  A humongous increase in the federal deficit, a recession that just keeps on giving out grief to working families, and a weakened  federal government that’s having to scramble to keep up with human needs.  

Now comes national health care reform, which the House bill proposes to pay for by splitting the cost between “savings” from wiping out Medicare and Medicaid fraud and inefficiency, and a surtax on individuals making more than $500,000 per year and couples earning more than $1 million — the upper 1.3 percent of taxpayers. The servants of the wealthy in the U.S. Senate are proposing to eliminate the House surtax on the rich, and replace it with a tax on so-called “Cadillac” health plans, which will be paid mostly by folks driving around in Chevy pick-um-up trucks and minivans.  /Note: The only real fun in the debate in the House was when Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas) said the Republican alternative plan — which would have covered only 3 million uninsured — was “skimpy as a hospital gown.”/

We should reject the House and as well as the Senate payment plans and stick the top 5 percent of taxpayers with the entire tab for health care reform, the $1 million they stole from the rest of us in what economist Lester Thurow once called “the largest transfer of wealth without a revolution in history.  Whatever “savings” we might be able to gain from eliminating fraud and inefficiencies in our  current health care plans for the elderly and the poor could be used for extending benefits beyond the 36 million uninsured covered under the House legislation.

Re-soaking the rich is only fair — they’ve become incredibly wealthier over the last 10 years, while most of the rest of us have become much poorer.  And they alone had money left over to buy into the stock market at the bottom. Doubling the surtax will also begin to get us back to a truly graduated federal income tax.  And because we will have dipped into their pockets, the wealthy will be forced to launch new entrepenueral schemes to replenish their bank accounts, creating new jobs and helping restore our economy as they gin up new piles of profits.

Is this a perfect plan or what?

My misgivings about the surgery are aroused by what happened some years ago when I abruptly stopped drinking alcoholic beverages. I was in Lower Manhattan on 9/11 and ended up in crowded bar in the Gramercy Park Hotel that evening, swapping what if’s with a bunch of rounders who kept repeating, “You know, timing is everything.”  Somehow, my double Irish wasn’t mixing well with the dusty taste of copper pennies still in my mouth, or the pervasive odor of smoke still in the air.  Whatever.  I stopped drinking for eight months, astounding my wife, children and friends who knew that my affection for John Barleycorn was more than a schoolboy crush.

I’d always worried about would happen if I stopped drinking.  Would I lose my ability to tell good jokes, or to react with great revulsion to the bleatings of known Republican barflies, or lose my bubbling, charming personality altogether?  You can imagine my shock when I discovered that stopping drinking hadn’t changed me, but had changed everyone around me.  When I would walk into a party, people would start telling jokes with punch lines that weren’t very funny.  Whenever I entered a pub, everyone began talking so loud I couldn’t understand anything being said. If I engaged someone at a wine-graced dinner in a discussion of substance, they responded with arguments that were either illogical or infantile.  Needless to say, I was forced to start drinking again just to get things back to normal.

Now my question is, will not wearing glasses disturb the status quo in a similar manner?  Will it change me?  Or will it change other people?  There’s no doubt in my mind, for instance, that my youthful success as a student was due to two factors: my last name begins with an “A,” and I was always forced to sit at the front of the class; and, I wore glasses, raising academic expectations I had to live up to.  What’s more, the well-practiced axiom that “girls don’t make passes at boys who wear glasses” left me with more time to read than most other boys.  Wearing glasses eventually caused my peers to nickname me, “professor,” and “Dr. Abernathy,” and I’m convinced their perception of me, rather than my actual performance, has been responsible for anything I been able to achieve in life.

So what will emerge as unintended consequences if my cataract surgery is successful and I’m able to see better and discard my eyeglasses?   Will my clients begin to seek out a new communications consultant who seems to be more studious and thoughtful than me?  Will the agents and publishers I’m pursuing with my creative efforts assume that a writer who works from a fully upright position can’t be very serious or determined?  Will women suddenly begin making passes because I no longer wear glasses, threatening my long relationship with the one person in my life who’s always seen me through her own blessedly rose-colored lenses?  Will I change, or will the people around me change?

I’ll let you know in a few weeks.

One speaker says this is the largest teacher’s rally in the history of DC. Another, a 10-year veteran, tells how she was called in and fired by a brand-new principal who hadn’t even had time to do even one performance evaluation. A well-spoken young woman says, “Do the Math — less teachers for more students does not add up to a better education. An older man, black like seventy percent of the crowd, says, “There’s an old African saying that when spiders unite, they can bring down a lion.” One, two, three four, escort Rhee right out the door. Escort? I told you these were nice people, professional nice people. A woman bumps into me and stops to apologize. But if they are so nice, what the hell are they doing out in public yelling at their boss?

Michelle Rhee is an acclaimed schools administrator who was hired two-and-a-half years ago by new DC mayor Adrian Fenty to reform a school system that is in desperate need of it. When I visited the city’s famed Cardoza High that same year whilst producing a video about vocational training, I was ashamed as a citizen, a taxpayer and as an erstwhile parent. Windows broken out. Walls crumbling, paint peeling. All but one set of restrooms out of order. Heat not working. A wreck, just like virtually every other public school in out nation’s capital, heartbeat of the free world, bastion of culture. Rhee went right to work savaging what was left, the teachers who were struggling to hold together a decrepit 50,000-student educational system with bubble gum and bailing wire.

A year ago, Ms. Rhee publicly rolled out a contract offer she thought the Washington Teachers Union, still recovering from a corruption scandal, would be hard-pressed to reject. It called for a questionable system of “performance pay” and union negotiators turned it down. The teachers have now been bargaining without a contract for 14 months.

In June of this year, Chancellor Rhee terminated 248 teachers after having hired 900 new ones. Then, just as schools were opening in September, she and Mayor Fenty announced a “budget shortfall” of $35 to $40 million and used it to justify the termination of another 229 teachers and over 100 security and service personnel, all without the use of their own new evaluation tool, IMPACT. Rather, the teachers say, the firings were done by individual school principals, and many “excellent teachers, popular teachers, smart teachers” were fired. The media revealed no budget problem exists — although local funding has been cut slightly by the mayor and the city council, economic stimulus money from the feds made up the difference and the system has total funding of $779.6 million dollars, a nine percent increase over last year, while student enrollment has dropped from 47,744 to 44,681.

One wonders whether the Chancellor is attempting to do less with more, or just trying to weed out teachers who’ve asked too many questions and challenged too many principals. Whatever her motives, her timing is awful — it’s just plain destructive to lay off teachers, increase class sizes, weaken security and curtail maintenance just as school is starting. And she’s infuriated parents, teachers, union officials and city politicians alike with a haughty, condescending style, acting first, consulting and communicating only when forced to do so. Fenty? He’s seems not only to be her boss, but her mentor, both of them public relations and employee relations trogdolytes.

When the teacher’s national union president, Randi Weingarten, speaks to the rally, she intones over and over, “These cuts hurt kids.” A woman walks around in a Mother Jones costume, carrying a sign that says, Rhee must go. Newly-elected AFL-CIO president Rich Trumka says, “A real expert is not someone who hires 900 and fires 400,” and calls the cuts “a screwy case of mismanagement …. a cold hard case of union-busting.” The president of the city council says he and his colleagues did not cut the budget. The president of the union representing the service workers compares Fenty to Adolph Hitler and Rhees to Heinrich Himmler.

I agree with Trumka: “screwy mismanagement” is the correct phrase. It’s the legacy of the DCPS (District of Columbia Public Schools). My guess is that things are going to have to get worse before they get better, and that’s what really hurts kids.

$75,000           One-year charm school scholarships for Redskins running back Clinton Portis,

U.S. Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA), and DC Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee

$200,000         Two-year charm school scholarships for Iranian President Mahmoud

Ahmadinejad, North Korean dictator Kim Il Jong, U.S. Sen. John McCain

(D-AZ), and DC Mayor Adrian Fenty                                                                                       

$3,600             One-way ticket, Paris to Los Angeles for movie director Roman Polanski                              

$2,500             Contribution to primary opponent of U.S. Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-AK)                             

$900                Set of left-handed golf clubs for Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez            

$4,500             One-way ticket, Kabul to Atlanta for Afghan President Hamed Karzai                                

$400,000         Grants to Iraq, Afghanistan, Chechnya and Florida to develop accurate

and secure voting machines                                                                                

$65                  Bo Derek blowup doll with defibrillator for Italy’s Prime Minister Berlusconi

$40,000           Eyeglasses for at least 100 Pakistani soldiers                                                                     

$1,500             Bowling lessons for former GOP House majority leader Tom Delay

$25,000           Joint vacation in Utah for Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, former House

Speaker Newt Gingrich and their wives (just the current ones)                                         

Send your suggestions to me at ray.abernathy@gmail.com and I’ll add them to the list and forward it to my high-level contacts in the White House (no crude language, please).  Meanwhile, here are some ideas on how we could have made better use of the $1 trillion dollars we’ve spent so far on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, courtesy of the ANSWER Coalition (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism):

What can $1,000,000,000,000 do for our students?

                                    216, 000,000   The number of children who could have full health care coverage.

                                    18,000,000      The number of students who could get a free college education.

                                                            That’s every student currently in high school.

                                    13,333,333      The number of teachers who could be hired with a $75,000 annual salary.

                                    1,000,000        The number of homeless school children in the U.S.. They could all be

                                    `                       living in a decent home.

Any parallel ideas on how we could better spend a trillion dollars?  Send them along!

Yeah, yeah, yeah. This happened a long time ago and the victim and most all of Hollywood have forgiven him, but I’m a daughter daddy and I’m in a ranting mode over what Polanski did and got away with, as well as how the media is using the wrong words in covering this nasty story.

For starters, a hypothetical parallel to make a point. A thug approaches an old man walking down the sidewalk, bashes the man’s head in with a pistol, and lifts his wallet. Did he “have robbery with” the old man, indicating the old man somehow participated willingly in the deed? Or did he “rob” the old man, the old man being a victim rather than a participant? Does a murderer murder? Does a rapist rape?

The point is, words matter, just as facts matter. In the Polanski crime (it’s a crime, not a “case,” as some of the media describe it) the facts are ugly and clear, the girl having told them to a grand jury, the perpetrator (not just a “movie director”) having admitted them, and New York Times reporter Jim Dwyer having reported them on September 30. But the words being used to write about the crime are misleading.

According to Dwyer, Polanski lured the girl (whom Dwyer should have described as a “child,” and not just a “girl”) to the Hollywood home of actor Jack Nicholson under the pretense of a photo shoot, which more precisely should have been called a“porno session” because the 42-year-old movie director began his crime by photographing the child naked in a tub. Polanski treated her to some Champagne and a Quaalude, called her mother to let her know they were running late, then, knowing the child was only 13 and ignoring her repeated requests to stop, performed oral and vaginal sex on her. After learning the child was not taking birth control pills, he “penetrated her anally” (an act I cannot properly describe, even from the Left Bank of the Potomac). Polanski tried to plead guilty to a lesser charge, but a judge (probably a daughter daddy) threatened not to accept it, so Polanski fled to France, where he’s been making movies and living the high life ever since.

The day before Dwyer’s story broke, Wall Street Journal reporters Deborah Ball and Tamara Audio committed their own word massacre in the second paragraph of their piece, “Polanski Seeks Release From Swiss Prison,” as they wrote: “The court said that it received today an appeal of an order to arrest Mr. Polanski, who is wanted in the U.S. for having sex with a 13-year-old girl in 1977 (underline mine).” The next day the Journal’s Law Blog opined:: “So if Roman Polanski ultimately winds up doing time in the U.S. for having sex with a 13-year-old girl, it won’t be without a fight lodged by a U.S. lawyer used to big-stage cases.” And in the national section of the New York Times, writers Michael Cieply and Doreen Carvajal described the crime as a “case involving sex with a 13-year-old girl,” before quoting the same French cabinet member using the word “rape”.

I found an ugly irony in the lede to another story in the Times that day, “Guinea’s Capital Fades Into Ghost Town After Soldiers Rampage.” Reporting from Dakar, Adam Nossiter wrote: “Streets were deserted and shops were shut tight Tuesday in Conarky, Guinea after government troops went on a brutal rampage at an opposition rally, shooting, stabbing, raping and assaulting dozens of men and women in a packed stadium. Variations of the rape-word were appeared four times in the story. The phrase “had sex with” was never used, leading me to wonder if in the media mind black soldiers “rape,” while famous movie directors “have sex with.”

Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post brought the importance of these words into sharp focus from another direction when he wrote in his column on October 2:

Was Polanski filled with remorse? Not when the British novelist Martin Amis interviewed him in 1979. “If I had killed somebody, it wouldn’t have had so much appeal to the press, you see?” Polanski told Amis. “But …. (having sex), you see, and the young girls. Judges want to (have sex with) young girls. Juries want to (have sex with) young girls. Everyone wants to (have sex with) young girls.”

Robinson went on to explain why he had substituted this phrase (which in this case is totally appropriate) for the word Polanski had actually used:

I’ve had no choice but to bleach the color out of Polanski’s language. For “having sex,” he (Polanski) used an Anglos-Saxon vulgarity that I couldn’t even think about printing in a family newspaper.

Aha! Now we know what Polanski did, which isn’t “rape” at all. See, words do matter.

My guess is that the French won’t extradite Polanski and that media will continue misusing the language when reporting on sex crimes. But two questions about the Polanski rampage will probably remain unanswered (I told you this would be a rant). What kind of a mother would allow her 13-year-old daughter to go off on a unchaperoned “photo shoot” with a 42-year-old man? And what kind of a father would allow his daughter’s f _ _ _ _ _ _g rapist to breathe and roam free for over 30 years?

During the friendly debate over a diversity resolution , so many beefy white guys were jumping up and testifying for “diversity, full inclusion and participation” that I first wondered if they thought LGBT was an acronym for “ladies’ garments being torn.”. But it became apparent that 14 years of leadership by John Sweeney had produced a significant advancement over bigotry and discrimination. When Sweeney told a Diversity Conference earlier in the week that “no worker should ever again have to enter through the back door to the house of labor,” the delegates jumped out of their seats. Elizabeth Bunn, the eloquent secretary-treasurer of the United Auto Workers called him “our quiet lion” in the movement to elevate women, minority, youth, LGTB and disabled members into union leadership positions.

The new team elected to continue Sweeney’s work over the next four years reinforced the notion that “this is not your father’s union movement.” Arlene Holt-Baker, who was re-elected executive vice president, is a black woman. The new secretary-treasurer is Liz Shuler, at 39 the youngest person ever elected to one of the top AFL-CIO offices. And Rich Trumka, who moved up from the second slot to the top spot, isn’t your average burly coal miner — during the presidential campaign last fall, he challenged union members across the rustbelt not to give in to their worst instincts by voting against Obama because he was black. And in his acceptance speech to the convention Trumka roared,“What does labor want? We want a nation where it doesn’t matter what the color of your skin is, or what sex or religion you are, or whether you’re gay or straight, or what country your family’s from because here in America, we believe everyone ought to have their chance to step into the winner’s circle.”

The progress made by the AFL-CIO proved you can win the battle against bigotry if you work at it. When Sweeney took office in 1995, the AFL-CIO was practicing it’s own versions of “don’t ask, don’t tell,” and “separate but equal,” and there were only two women and no blacks on its governing executive council. Sweeney increased the size of the council and named women, minorities and LGBTs to the new spots, then instituted new preferential hiring and promotion standards at AFL-CIO headquarters in Washington and in its hundreds of state and local labor federations across the country. In 2005, he pushed for the passage of an official convention resolution that set out firm goals and set quotas for affiliates and state and local bodies, a splendid statement of affirmative action.

The new AFL-CIO executive council elected in Pittsburgh includes 12 women (two of whom are gay), three latinos, and seven African-American men. That adds up to not quite 50 percent, not enough, but it’s a helluva lot less “male, pale and stale” than the U.S. Congress, or, for that matter, the U.S. Supreme Court.

Check out all the speeches referenced at http://www.aflcio.org/convention2009.

Noon.  Senator Arlen Spector — our Democrat-turned-Republican-turned-Democrat from Pennsylvania — just told the convention that “single-payer should be on the table,”  that we shouldn’t settle without a “public option,” and that he will only support a Employee Free Choice Act that is “totally satisfactory to labor.”   He mentioned “prompt certification” and “binding arbitration,” but I guess the words “card check” got stuck in his throat.  Whatever.  The delegates gave him a half-standing ovation anyway.  

10:30 a.m.  When Dennis van Roekel finishes his speech, someone says aloud to no one in particular, “I think it’s just amazing that he’s here.”  That’s because van Rokel is president of the National Education Association (NEA), which is not only the biggest union in America, but with 2.5 million members is the biggest union in America not affiliated with the AFL-CIO.  Down through the years, the NEA has been at war over the affections of school teachers with the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), which has nearly 1 million members and is the “teacher” affiliate of the AFL-CIO.  However, for the last few years, the NEA and the AFL-CIO have been talking about a “unified” labor movement and in 2006 the two bodies reached a “partnership” agreement that allows local and regional chapters of the NEA to affiliate with the AFL-CIO at the state and local level, as well as nationally.    van Roekel was introduced by  Randi Weingarten,  president of the AFT and she lathered on the praise.  He praised her back and went on to preach the “power of unity,” the need for national health care, labor law reform,  and the never-ending necessity for change.  By the time he finished, tongues were wagging all over the convention floor about  merger possibilities.

8:00 a.m.  I am reading USA Today (for lack of a New York Times) when I’m shocked by the obituary of Jody Powell, Jimmy Carters erstwhile press secretary. I was in the room so many years ago when Jody was hired to be  Carter’s driver in the peanut farmer’s campaign for governor of Georgia.  We had a falling out in 1976 when Carter was running for president and I was the source for “The Pathetic Lies of Jimmy Carter,”  Steven Brill’s earthquaking piece in Harper’s.  For many years, Jody leaves any room I enter.Fast-forward to January, 2008.  I am pedaling a bike in rehab at Sibley Hospital in Washington following a relative minor heart attack.  The fellow pedaling next to me is Jody Powell, rehabbing from open heart surgery after suffering a major heart attack while chopping wood.  For six weeks we talk and get reaquainted, after a fashion.  He recovers; I recover and we go our ways.  Then yesterday he dies of another heart attack while chopping wood.  The moral of this story:  don’t chop wood. 

6:30 a.m.  I am standing in line outside the Pittsburgh Convention Center waiting to be body-scanned because President Barack Obama is addressing the AFL-CIO convocation today.  I recall a conversation yesterday with a member of the Federation’s security team who tells me a secret service type told him that while Bill Clinton received hundred of threats every day, Obama receives thousands.  I am quite content to stand in line.

3:00 p.m.  Wonderful actor-musician-trade unionist-icon Theodore Bikel speaks either in favor of, or in opposition to, the AFL-CIO political resolution. I can’t comprehend what he’s saying, but I’m enthralled by the gravitas with which he says it.  He closes with:  “I’m not afraid of the working class.  We will alter history only when we alter the language as well.”

12:30 p.m.  Caroline Kennedy is speaking, delivering a joint tribute to her departed uncle, Ted Kennedy, and  to John Sweeney.  She looks remarkably untouched by the vice of tragedy that has clamped her family so tightly for so many years.  She’s unassuming, gracious, happy, composed. Her smile is genuine as she recounts how Teddy would add up the years of service shared by his brothers, himself, and his nephews and proclaim, “85 years of Kennedy’s voting with labor!”  She says, “Senator Kennedy had no bigger friend than John Sweeney,” and you know she’s not handing out a gratuitous platitude.  She quotes Yeats on behalf of her uncle, “Think where man’s glory most begins and end/And say, my glory was I had such friends,” and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., saying, “Let us rise up tonight with greater readiness. Let us stand with a greater determination. And let us move on in these powerful days, to make America what it ought to be.”  Sweeney remembers Kennedy insisting on a visit to the AFL-CIO even as his illness worsened, then introduces a video which wrings emotion from the delegates and lifts them into a prolonged ovationm. A cutaway to Caroline as the house lights come up shows her dabbing one eye.  Mine won’t stop watering.   See convention webcast and acess other information, including Caroline Kennedy’s full remarks, at http://www.aflcio.org/convention2009

11:45 a.m.  Pennsylvania junior Senator Bob Casey speaks, enabling many hungover delegates to take 30-minute naps.

11:20 a.m. Party’s getting rough on the convention floor as debate ensues over a resolution supporting passage of the Employee Free Choice Act.  After AFSCME president Jerry McEntee pledges $500,000 to the media fund, steelworker president Leo Gerard hits the mike, tells the gut-wrenching story of a Los Angeles car wash worker who was beaten and hospitalized last week for union organizing, and pledges $510,000.  Gerard holds up a full page ad from this morning’s Pittsburgh Post-Gazette opposing the Act and tells the sponsors of the ad to kiss his ass.  AFSCME VP Henry Nicholas from Philadelphia  tops Gerard’s pledge by $10,000 more.  AFSCME staffers in the curtained off office next to mine begin groaning at the apparent loss of their annual wage increase.   

11:05 a.m. Just remembered an interesting story from last night.  Pittsburgh was a hotbed of historic organizing, especially for the mine workers, who were beaten, maimed, terrorized and killed by employers who were not thrilled about paying living wages and providing safe working conditions.  The workers, rough and ready immigrants from Italy and Poland, wore red kerchiefs around their necks to let co-workers know they were union supporters.  Thus, the sobriquet “redneck” was born.  And you heard it here.

10:50 a.m.  Strange sightings among convention attendees:  John Wilhelm, president of the Change to Win union UNITE/HERE, who is in a knockdown-dragout fight to the death with SEIU president Andy Stern; and, Sal Roselli, president of an independent health care union in northern California, who is in a knockdown-dragout fight to the death with SEIU president Andy Stern.  Brother Stern has not been spotted, and is presumed  alive and well and hunkered down in Washington.

10:05 a.m. Holey moley, did John Sweeney just say, “Any union not busy being born is busy dying?”  Did CWA President Larry Cohen just say, “BS” from the podium?  Must be the organizers have taken charge.

9:15 a.m.  Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis is waking up the delegates  by telling her personal story of growing up the daughter immigrant parents from Nicarauga and Mexico, her father working in a battery plant and organizing for the Teamsters, her mom a Mattel assembly line worker for 20 years before she getting a job and a union card as a rubber worker.   She’s straightforwd, serious, and unsmiling as she intones, “My philosphy is that it’s not a good job unless it’s a safe and secure job,” and says she’s hiring 650 new wage and hour inspectors and enforcers, and that since July OSHA has conducted 689 investigations resulting in $1.6 billion dollars in fines.  Well into her speech, she promises she and President Obama will make the “best possible case” for the Employee  Free Choice Act unions are counting on to help restore their membership ranks.  The delegates hit their feet in a standing ovation.  She smiles for the first time, a big one.

11 a.m. President John Sweeney just spoke to the AFL-CIO “Diversity is Power” Conference, where he was interrupted 10 times by applause and received six standing ovations in a 15-minute speech.  Introduced by AFSCME Secretary-Treasurer Bill Lucy as a man who “has had the greatest impact on the labor movementne of any labor leader in the last 75 years,” Sweeney recounted the federations 14-year campaign for diversity, inclusion and full partipation of women and minorities.  Lucy announced that a milestone was being reached at this convention: fully 43 percent of the delegates are women and/or minorities. UAW Secretary-Treasurer Elizabeth Bunn praised Sweeney for not pounding on tables and being “our quiet lion.” Sweeney said diversity is a “moral imperative,” but added there are “practical persuasions.”  He said, “We don’t have one dues rate for African-American, Hispanic, or Asian-Pacific-American members, and another rate for the rest of our members.  Our women members don’t pay lower dues than our male members.  We don’t have lower dues for our gay and lesbian and transgender members of for members with disabilities.  So why should they get fewer opportunities  to lead and learn.  We don’t have a two-tier dues rate, and we cannot afford a two-tier leadership culture. ” A full text of  all of Sweeney’s convention speeches can be found at http://www.aflcio.org/aboutus/thisistheaflcio/convention/2009/.

8 a.m. The 2009 AFL-CIO Constitutional Convention opens this afternoon at 3 p.m. in Pittsburgh.  Today’s activities are largely ceremonial, starting with a welcome by pro football hall-of-famer, former Steeler star and progressive political activist Franco Harris, and ending with retiring AFL-CIO President John Sweeney’s farewell address to the troops.  An opening reception follows, with entertainment by Joe Grushecky and the Houserockers (this is, after all the most blue collar city in a blue state in America).  On Monday night, award-winning film maker Michael Moore will premiere his highly anticipated latest film, “Capitalism: a Love Story.”  On Tuesday, President Barack Obama will make a highly anticipated visit to the convention.  On Wednesday, legendary and highly anticipated coal miner’s son  Rich Trumka will be elected to succeed Sweeney.  He is not expected to sing, but will rock the house with his highly, highly anticpated acceptance speech. Watch this space …..

ut