Texas Longhorns with newborn calf in Bluebonnets

Texas Longhorns with newborn calf in Bluebonnets

Please note I have a new phone number...

512-517-2708

Alan Maki

Alan Maki
Doing research at the LBJ Library in Austin, Texas

It's time to claim our Peace Dividend

It's time to claim our Peace Dividend

We need to beat swords into plowshares.

We need to beat swords into plowshares.

A program for real change...

http://peaceandsocialjustice.blogspot.com/2013/03/a-progressive-program-for-real-change.html


What we need is a "21st Century Full Employment Act for Peace and Prosperity" which would make it a mandatory requirement that the president and Congress attain and maintain full employment.


"Voting is easy and marginally useful, but it is a poor substitute for democracy, which requires direct action by concerned citizens"

- Ben Franklin

Let's talk...

Let's talk...

Saturday, January 25, 2014

My response to Congressman Keith Ellison.

From: Alan Maki 
Date: Sat, Jan 25, 2014 at 1:57 PM
Subject: Re: Give Workers a Fair Deal
To: "Keith Ellison, U.S. Representative" , ZZZ Ellison Keith , Karen Monahan , Kathleen Blake , Shar Knutson , eliot.seide@afscmemn.org, "uniting_people@lists.riseup.net" , Ron Letnes , Duane Kamrath


Yes, Keith; let's blame the Republicans for standing in the way of making wages real living wages.

But; what is your excuse you make for yourself and your fellow Democrats here in Minnesota who have a super-majority yet refuse to use this super-majority to create a real living Minimum Wage for ALL working people?

You, Keith, are one of the primary obstacles to ending one of the two primary sources of poverty:

Poverty wages.

Any school child understands workers paid poverty wages are going to be poor.

A school child may not thoroughly understand the connection between wages and cost-of-living but these school children certainly understand something is wrong when they go to bed hungry and go off to school hungry. 

Yet, as a member of Congress, you refuse to acknowledge this connection between cost-of-living wages and poverty just as you refuse to acknowledge that unemployment, under-employment and part-time employment is another major cause of poverty.

If you understood these connections between these two major sources of poverty you would insist that your fellow Democrats with their super-majority legislatively tie the Minimum Wage to all cost-of-living factors as tracked by the United States Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics as the Consumer Price Index (CPI) and then index this real living Minimum Wage to inflation with periodic increases to improve the lives and livelihoods of all working people.

And you would ask your fellow members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus to sign on to similar federal Minimum Wage legislation as well as introduce legislation that would result in an Act of Congress for a Basic Income Guarantee along the lines advocated by Tom Paine back in the late 18th Century. In addition, you would bring forward real full employment legislation making it mandatory that the president and Congress work together to attain and maintain full employment--- anyone who wants a job gets a job paying real living wages--- if the "free market" can't maintain full employment then massive government funded universal social programs have to be devised to put people to work providing the requirements of society leading to improving the conditions for everyone. Think in terms of WPA, CCC and CETA.

Now you want to blame the Republicans for standing in the way of federal "contractors" receiving living wages.

But, what about the role of Democrats in creating this most hideously racist Indian Gaming Industry in connivance and collusion with a bunch of vicious and violent white mobsters forcing 44,000 Minnesotans to work in loud, noisy, smoke-filled casinos at poverty wages without any rights in their places of employment protected by state or federal labor laws as Native Americans are left to languish in poverty as the the profits are skimmed off the top by these rich white mobsters who own every facet of this industry from the slot machines and table games to the hotels/motels, bars and restaurants to even the gift shops which peddle cheap sweatshop produced merchandise from China, India, the Philippines and Bangladesh pawning this merchandise off--- illegally--- as Native American Indian handcrafts?

You yourself take massive amounts of campaign contributions from the Minnesota Indian Gaming Association whose Executive Director is as crooked and corrupt as they come, and white, while the wife-beating Kevin Leecy oversees it all and lo-and-behold, the Minnesota Indian Gaming Association is the biggest lobbying interest opposed to raisin the Minimum Wage.

John McCarthy owns Tony Doom Enterprises, the primary business which produces all kinds of campaign paraphernalia which he sells to you politicians--- with one hand out in front he is handing out the money of which Native Americans are entitled to combat the growing poverty due to racist discrimination in employment, housing and education; and with his other hand McCarthy takes back these campaign contributions to bolster the profits of his own business. And between election cycles, McCarthy and his wife-beating accomplice in this scam, Kevin Leecy, are dishing out hundreds of millions of dollars in bribes.

And now we hear rumors that Governor Mark Dayton with his Democratic super-majorityis working on a "compromise" on the "increase" to the Minimum Wage with the Chamber of Commerce and they have agreed, "in principle," to "raising" the Minimum Wage to $7.75 an hour.

And hear you come blaming the Republicans for poverty wages.   

The oldest trick in the book used by wily lawyers who know their client is guilty as hell yet to seek to blame the crime on someone else.


On Sat, Jan 25, 2014 at 10:36 AM, Keith Ellison, U.S. Representative <noreply@list.moveon.org> wrote:
Alan,
Americans seem to be working harder and harder, but still are unable to make ends meet. 
That’s why I’ve been pushing so hard to raise the minimum wage to make sure that folks who are working full time can afford to raise a family.
But Speaker Boehner and House Republicans are standing in the way, backed by their corporate CEO buddies – who now make 273 times the salary of the average worker at their company. 
Fortunately, there’s something we can do right now that Boehner can’t stop.  President Obama can sign an executive order to help the 2 million workers employed by government contracts who make below a living wage.
That’s more low wage workers than work at Walmart and McDonalds combined.  These 2 million workers are the folks who cook at museum restaurants, or clean federal buildings. 
That’s why I need you to sign a petition to President Obama asking him to be a hero for these hard working federal contractors. 
The President’s State of the Union address is this Tuesday, and it would be the perfect time to take a bold step toward an economy that works for everyone.

Stand with me and urge President Obama to help federal contractors make a living wage.
Thank you for all you do.

--Keith Ellison 





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-- 
Alan L. Maki
Director of Organizing,
Midwest Casino Workers Organizing Council
 
58891 County Road 13
Warroad, Minnesota 56763

Phone: 218-386-2432
Cell: 651-587-5541

Primary E-mail: amaki000@centurytel.net

Right-wing hate

Not a day goes by where I don't get a call from someone asking me how I endure the personal vicious and malicious right-wing attacks against me like those orchestrated and funded by the cowardly, wife-beating, right-wing, billionaire recluse Richard Mellon-Scaife the Pittsburgh banker-industrialist who pays the Nazi-lover Herbert Romerstein and the degenerate Trevor Loudon to attack me:

 http://www.trevorloudon.com/2013/02/help-keywiki-expose-minnesotas-socialist-elected-officials-2/#comment-350686

You know, I have put up with these attacks from these two-bit, half-assed fascist bastards for my entire life.

Their attacks are meant to scare, frighten and intimidate.

They can kiss my ass and go to hell.

Move To Amend

My advice, for what it is worth, to my activist friends in Move To Amend:

I hope your organization, Move To Amend, has a way to track the outcome of which precinct caucuses have the resolutions introduced and which precinct caucuses pass the resolutions in the different parties.

It took us six years before we could get a resolution in support of single-payer universal health care passed by the State Convention of the MN DFL because those placed in charge of resolutions passed by the precinct caucuses kept saying the resolutions never made it to their committee.

We had to finally take photos of the resolutions as they were placed into the envelopes to prove the resolutions were being passed and then once the resolution was forced to be brought before state convention delegates it was passed by a boisterous 72% majority; but, those who refused to support the resolution immediately went to work in their same dirty ways to undermine this resolution.

We face the same kind of contemptuous opposition when it comes to the Minimum Wage. The Minnesota DFL has one of the best resolutions now part of its platform on the Minimum Wage that is based on a resolution I wrote which was passed by hundreds of precinct caucuses across the state, yet not one single Democrat in the state legislature, nor the Governor, is paying any attention to the resolution.

My point:

Unless there is a very well organized campaign to back up these resolutions and follow them through to legislation and then insisting the legislation actually gets implemented the best resolutions mean very little.

A perfect example of how these politicians even evade enforcing the "law of the land" when they actually turn the concerns of the people into laws is the case of Affirmative Action.

In this case, a smiling Hubert H. Humphrey stood beside President Lyndon B. Johnson as Johnson signed into like his Executive Order #11246, as Affirmative Action is known.

Humphrey was all to pleased to see Affirmative Action signed into law and forcefully carried out in Mississippi but here in Minnesota Affirmative Action has never been enforced.

So, while Move To Amend may become the "law of the land;" don't be surprised if these corrupt politicians ignore the enforcement of its intent the very same way these politicians ignore the United States Constitution and Bill of Rights when it comes to just about everything else.

This is why I suggested at the Uniting People Forum in Duluth that we need to create and build an alternative anti-monopoly political party and organization like the socialist Minnesota Farmer-Labor Party and its grassroots back-bone the Minnesota Farmer-Labor Association which ultimately Farmer-Labor Governor Elmer Benson forged into a mighty "People's Lobby" or "People's Front" and in this way very important and significant reform expanding democracy and improving the lives and livelihoods of Minnesotans became a reality.

But, let's not get lulled into thinking because the majority of the people support the excellent initiatives of Move To Amend its goals and objectives even should they become the "law of the land" will be enforced without the constant involvement and mobilization of the people through an alternative working class based progressive people's party like the old socialist Minnesota Farmer-Labor Party which was the most successful alternative to date to the thoroughly corrupt Democratic and Republican Parties looking out for Wall Street's interests, assets and profits.

It is simply too much to expect that a thoroughly corrupt Democratic Party like the Minnesota Democratic Farmer-Labor Party which brought into existence the Indian Gaming Industry here in Minnesota which has resulted in over 44,000 Minnesotans working in loud, noisy, smoke-filled casinos at poverty wages and without any rights under state or federal labor laws and a party which refuses to take action to stop the mining companies from swindling the workers out of their pension funds is going to live up to what Move To Amend is for.

I would call to your attention the obituary of Elmer Benson, arguably Minnesota's most honest ever politician and just as popular as socialist Governor Floyd B. Olson, written up in the LA Times and his feelings about the Minnesota Democratic Farmer-Labor Party and how he lived to resent and despise his own role in this merger of the two parties:

http://articles.latimes.com/1985-03-16/business/fi-27186_1_minnesota-politics

Governor Rudy Perpich also lived to taste the wrath of his own Minnesota Farmer-Labor Party when they dumped him after he proposed turning the Taconite Tax into a real tax to wholly fund public education in place of this regressive Property Tax system where you have Democrats and Republicans in the State Legislature saying they are opposed to tax hikes but on the local levels their bureaucrats are constantly raising these regressive property taxes under the guise of "increased property values and assessments."

Rudy Perpich, after meeting with his long-time friend Gus Hall--- a meeting that these corporate owned Democrats despised--- also came to the conclusion that some kind of new political party similar to the old Minnesota Farmer-Labor Party was going to be needed if serious reforms were going to be won.

And, as we know, Paul Wellstone was probably murdered as he was tinkering in his mind with this idea, too, as he fought a lonely battle with the warmongers in both political parties.