By BERRY CRAIG Posts

Proponents of local right to work ordinances claim polls show most Kentuckians are pro-right to work.

The hours are long and the wages not so hot.About half the time, Kentucky Steelworker Chris Ormes doesn't get paid at all.But I'm loving it," said Ormes, 37, president of USW Local 1241 in Bardstown. "I'm at ground zero, and that's where I want to be."     
He means Ohio, whose electoral vote will likely decide who wins the presidential election.Ormes is a foot soldier in a small army of union volunteers who are toiling 12- and even 14-hour days to help President Obama take the Buckeye State."We'v...

 Harry Truman, meet Kelly Whitaker, Democratic candidate for the Kentucky House of Representatives from the second district.
 When the Bluegrass State GOP mailed out a flier linking her to “DEMOCRAT PARTY LEADERS” who “TRIED TO REMOVE ALL REFERENCES TO GOD FROM THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY’S NATIONAL PLATFORM EARLIER THIS YEAR,” the Baptist blasted back, Truman style.
 “I am offended, first and foremost, because I am a Christian,” said Whitaker, a pharmacist in Mayfield, the Graves County seat. “I also think it is outrageous.&rdq...

What’s more productive than turning off Rush Limbaugh on the radio?Tuning in “The Union Edge—Labor’s Talk Radio,” Charles Showalter said.Okay, the 50-year-old Pittsburgh union man might be a tad biased. It’s his show. 
“But we’re not the anti-Limbaugh,” explained Showalter, who started the program five years ago. “We don’t get into the rhetoric and the name-calling.”Showalter gets into unions and union issues. He packs a Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Radio and ...

Most Labor Day parades have one grand marshal, but the Paducah-based Western Kentucky Labor Day Committee decided 15 was more like it.

“That’s how many we’re having in our parade this year, and they are all women who belong to unions,” said Brandon Duncan, president of the non-profit, all-volunteer committee which sponsors Paducah's annual holiday processions.

The theme of Monday's parade is "Honor the Women in the Workplace," added Duncan, president of Steelworkers Local 727 in nearby Calvert City. "The Labor Day Committee chose this theme because of the great work and effort women have contributed to our workplace. We also want to celebrate the diversity, influence and changes women have brought into the workforce."

The honorees will lead the 37th annual parade down Broadway, the main street in Paducah, an historic old Ohio River town. Each of them will ride in a shiny UAW-built Corvette from the local Corvette Club.

Since 1981, the famous Chevy sports cars have been made by UAW Local 2164 in Bowling Green, Ky.

“We think this is a well-deserved honor for all of these women, each of whom has her own story to tell,” said Duncan, who is also financial secretary-treasurer of the Western Kentucky AFL-CIO Area Council in Paducah. “A lot of them are mothers who have kids and still manage to work and be active in their unions.”

A grand marshal is president of one of the largest union locals in the region. Donna Steele heads 850-member Steelworkers Local 550 at the U.S. Enrichment Corp. gaseous diffusion plant near Paducah. The facility enriches uranium for nuclear power plants.

The other grand marshals are Charla Devine, IAMAW District 154; Carla Draffen, AFT Local 1360; Sue Griggs, IBEW Local 816; Patty Grim, Teamsters Local 236; Robin Hobgood, Painters Local 500; Debbie Hosick and Amy Peacock, both Carpenters Local 357; Deborah Poe, Teamsters Local 236; Kathy Jones Pearson, Ironworkers Local 782; Patsey Reeves, Operating Engineers Local 181; Yvette Russell, Plumbers and Steamfitters Local 184; Martha Wiggins AIM-UNITE! Chapter 22; Becky Wilson, IAMAW 154; and Selina Wilson, Laborers Local 1214.

A picnic, featuring live music, traditional western Kentucky barbecue and political speaking will follow the parade, which starts at 9:30 a.m. The procession includes floats, local high school bands, antique cars and tractors, fire trucks and other units, wheeled and afoot.

Paducah’s celebration is one of the largest Labor Day observances in the Bluegrass State.

The first Paducah parade was held in 1893 and was sponsored by the old Paducah Central Labor Union, an ancestor of the area council. The original 1892 CLU charter hangs in the council hall. The document bears the large signatures of American Federation of Labor President Samuel Gompers and Peter J. McGuire, founder of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners. McGuire and Matthew Maguire, a Machinist and secretary of the New York City CLU, are credited with organizing the country’s inaugural Labor Day parade in the Big Apple in 1882.

"We like to say Peter McGuire and Matthew Maguire are the great-grandfathers of our Labor Day parade," said Jeff Wiggins, area council president and president of Steelworkers Local 9447, also in Calvert City.

The parade is the subject of a mural on Paducah's tall, concrete floodwall, which is decorated with several scenes of city history. The mural, freshly refurbished, depicts a Labor Day procession from the 1970s.

Union members are marching with a banner emblazoned with “SOLIDARITY.” The artwork shows the faces of several area union leaders, including W.C. Young, a national union and civil rights leader from Paducah, who appears just above the letter “T” on the banner.

For reasons apparently unknown, the parades stopped after World War II. A group of union volunteers resurrected the processions in 1975.

The Labor Day Committee plans parades at least six months in advance and raises money for the program from unions, businesses and individuals. “We appreciate all of our donors,” Duncan said. “We don’t get any funds from the city and county government to put this on.”       

It looks like Democrats and Republicans have something they agree on.

Both sides are happy with Mitt Romney’s pick for VP. Okay, at least in public, the Republicans say they are glad.

Ryan’s a twofer for the tea party-tilting white folks who make up a big part of the GOP base.  

First, Ryan is a Social Darwinist of the if-you're-poor-it's-your-own-fault persuasion and a disciple of the greed-is-good gospel of Ayn Rand. He hates labor unions, to boot.

Second, Ryan is a culture warrior who girds his loins against abortion, even in the case of rape or incest.

"What isn't so well known about Ryan's record, though, is that one piece of legislation he supported is so extreme that it would have turned Romney's children into criminals," Stephanie Mencimer writes on Mother Jones online.

She means the Sanctity of Human Life Act, co-sponsored by Rep. Ryan. The measure “would have enshrined the notion that life begins at fertilization in federal law, thus criminalizing in vitro fertilization—the process of creating an embryo outside of a woman's womb."

Mencimer adds: "In May, Romney's son Tagg became father of twin boys thanks to help from IVF and a surrogate mother. Tagg's son Jonathan was also produced this way. Two of Tagg's brothers reportedly have struggled with infertility issues and resorted to IVF as well." 

Anyway, the tea partiers, heretofore mild about Mitt, are wild about Ryan.

So are the Democrats, reminding everybody that Ryan “wants to end Medicare as we know it."  

Oh, yeah, Romney says, the guy in the White House is the real Medicare cutter. But writing on Talking Points Memo online, Sahil Kapur says the charges and countercharges between the two campaigns mask "a critical difference between visions: President Obama’s plan is to make the program solvent by reducing payments to health care providers, while Rep. Paul Ryan achieves his savings by transforming Medicare into a voucher-like system....The Congressional Budget Office projects that Ryan’s plan would raise seniors’ out-of-pocket expenses by $6,500 per year."

Anyway, firing up your base is the first step toward getting elected president–or dog catcher, for that matter. But the GOP base has been fired up since Obama got elected. Their disdain for the “Kenyan-born-Islamo-Socialist-FEMA-concentration-camp-commandant-who-hates-white-people” is more than enough juice to get them to the polls.

Step two in winning an election is broadening your base. At least it used to be.

It doesn’t matter if you’re a liberal or a conservative. When you have your party’s nomination, you tack to the center and woo those flaming moderates.

“Moderate” is a dirty word in today’s “compromise-is-surrender” GOP.

I guess Romney, the onetime “Massachusetts moderate” ran to the right and tapped uber-righty Ryan because he thinks the whole country has veered as far right as the GOP has, that the tea party folks who pack heat and signs claming "OBAMA’S PLAN WHITE SLAVERY” are mainstream America.

Anyway, likeability is also a big factor in winning elections. Obama is away ahead of Romney in polls that ask voters which candidate they think is the most likeable. I don’t see that Ryan helps Romney in that department.

The GOP honchos claim likeability really doesn’t matter in politics. I suspect they know it really does.

The late Sen. Paul Simon of Illinois told me it was a big reason he stemmed the Reagan tide in 1984 and unseated Charles Percy, a millionaire like Romney.

“I was going door to door in one of those Republican suburbs of Chicago. This guy came up to me on the sidewalk and said, ‘Mr. Simon, I don’t agree you on most issues. But I’m going to vote for you because I like you.'”

I don’t see the Romney-Ryan team experiencing anything like that. To a lot of voters, Romney comes across as a gaffe-a-minute Richie Rich, a guy who was born on third base and thinks he hit a triple, a panderer who will say just about anything to get elected.

Ryan is a True Believer who scares the bejeebers out of a lot of people.

Anyway, my old Kentucky home is halfway across the country from Democratic National Committee HQ in Washington. But my guess is last Saturday, when Romney chose Ryan, champagne corks were popping off the walls.

But the sounds of wailing and gnashing of teeth evidently echoed from behind closed doors at the Republican National Committee in D.C. “Away from the cameras, and with all the usual assurances that people aren’t being quoted by name, there is an unmistakable consensus among Republican operatives in Washington: Romney has taken a risk with Ryan that has only a modest chance of going right—and a huge chance of going horribly wrong,” Alexander Burns, Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Martin write on the Politico Internet website. “In more than three dozen interviews with Republican strategists and campaign operatives—old hands and rising next-generation conservatives alike—the most common reactions to Ryan ranged from gnawing apprehension to hair-on-fire anger that Romney has practically ceded the election.”

It seems Mitt Romney has finally found a union he likes.

“Solidarity was a great movement that freed a nation,” the soon-to-be GOP presidential nominee gushed on his recent trip to Poland.

I guess Romney figures he won one for The Gipper. President Ronald Reagan, Romney’s hero, never missed a chance to brag on Solidarity, the gutsy, grassroots free trade union movement which toppled Poland’s infamous communist regime in the 1980s.

Reagan said Solidarity fought for “one of the most elemental human rights—the right to belong to a free trade union.” He also declared that the Solidarity workers "remind us that where free unions and collective bargaining are forbidden, freedom is lost."

I’m a 62-year-old flaming heterosexual. I’ve been married only once, to the same woman, for going on 34 years.

We're monogamous and still in love with each other. My wife is a pillar in our town's Presbyterian Church. We are the proud parents of a teenage college student who makes good grades and doesn't do drugs.

We are what sociologists call, or used to call, a "traditional nuclear family." Call me corny for saying so, but we see ourselves as a lot like "The Waltons" -- one of our all-time favorite TV shows -- though we are Kentucky flatlanders, not Virginia hill folk. 

Yet because we have no problem with gay people getting married like anybody else, we are foes of “traditional family values,” according to the likes of Dan Cathy and Mike Huckabee. One uber-conservative blogger says we're "heterophobic."

Cathy is the now famously outed homophobic head rooster at the Chick-fil-A fast food restaurant chain. Huckabee, his soul mate, is a Republican ex-governor of Arkansas, failed GOP presidential candidate, tea party fan, ordained Southern Baptist pastor, Religious Righty and Fox News star.

Huckabee wants fellow “family values” Americans to join him in crowing for Cathy by gobbling lots of his franchised fowl on Aug. 1. Huckabee has proclaimed it “Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day.”

None of the Craigs will be chowing down at a Chick-fil-A on Aug. 1, or any other day. We love fried chicken, but homophobia of any recipe gives us indigestion.

Cathy and Huckabee denounce gay marriage in the name of a loving Jesus. They say people - including many Christians -- who dare criticize them are guilty of spewing what Huckabee calls "vicious hate speech and intolerant bigotry." Is there "tolerant bigotry?"

Chick-fil-A prez Cathy, a Southern Baptist, is more than just anti-gay marriage, according to Huffington Post blogger Steven Kurlander: "The fast-food chain's commitment has included millions of dollars donated to anti-gay groups and causes, including the Marriage & Family Foundation and the Family Research Council, according to Business Insider. The company's WinShape Foundation also has refused to admit gay couples to marriage counseling. Last year, Chick-fil-A cosponsored a marriage conference with the Pennsylvania Family Institute, which lobbied against a state effort to ban discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity. In another interview on the Ken Coleman Show, Cathy suggested that the nation could face God's wrath for supporting gay marriage. That's pretty strong, incendiary language."

Kurlander supports a boycott of Chick-fil-A: "It's one thing for a private business to run its operations based on certain religious values. And without question, its president is entitled to express his religious views and ask employees to live by them. However, when that company supports groups that attack civil-rights protections for people based on their sexual preference, it's fair to question whether that company should be allowed to operate in taxpayer-supported facilities or work with public school children. Chick-fil-A's continued support of anti-gay groups and Cathy's discriminatory comments cross the line of decency."

Likewise, I wouldn’t for a minute shut Cathy up or shut down Huckabee’s proposed love feast. The First Amendment gives them the right to preach and practice what's on their minds. It also gives us the right to boo and boycott what we consider their bigotry.

Huckabee and other Religious Righties are especially riled up over Boston Mayor Thomas Menino and Chicago alderman Proco Merino because they want to make their bailiwicks Chick-fil-A-free zones. Mayor Rahm Emmanuel backs Merino.

Of course, Religious Righties are fine with boycotts of companies they consider liberal and, you guessed it, "anti-family values."

 Anyway, it’s not just the homophobia of the Cathys and Huckabees that sticks in my craw. It’s their claim that their views are "Christ-centered."

Many Christian conservatives pride themselves on taking the Bible literally. "God Said it. I Believe It. That Settles It," is one of their bumper stickers.

True, the Good Book defines marriage as between a man and a woman. Yet in other places, the Bible says things like:

-- A wedding is legit only if the wife is a virgin, and if you find out she's not, she should be stoned to death. (Deuteronomy 22:13-21)

-- It's basically okay for a married guy to sleep around. (II Samuel 5:13; I Kings 11:3; II Chronicles 11:21)

-- Marriage between true believers and non-believers (To plenty of Religious Righties, "non-believers" includes Christians not of the Jesus-loves-me-but-He-can't-stand-you persuasion.) is taboo. (Genesis 24:3; Numbers 25:1-9; Ezra 9:11-12; Nehemiah 10:30)

-- Divorce is forbidden.(Deuteronomy 22:19; Mark 10:9)

I don't hear any thunder on the Religious Right about any of that stuff.

It's also true that the Old Testament condemns homosexuality. So does Paul in the New Testament. But what's not in the Bible is Jesus' opinion of homosexuality.

My wife, whose roots are Southern Baptist, keeps a King James Bible on the nightstand next to her side of the bed. Mum's the printed word from the Prince of Peace about gay people.

Like John Walton, I don't go to church nearly as often as my wife and son do. But growing up Presbyterian, I was taught that Jesus stressed that we are are all God’s children. (He didn't say everybody except gay people.)

I learned that we were supposed to love one another and do unto others as we would have others do unto us. Christ preached love over hate, peace over war, charity over greed and brotherhood and sisterhood over bigotry and exclusion, to boot.

Those are Craig family values.

Yet homosexuality is so scary to people like Cathy and Huckabee that they want a constitutional amendment outlawing gay marriage. Mitt Romney, the Religious Right's guy for president, if by default, says he wants our national charter so amended.

The culture warriors of the Religious Right, and politicians like Romney who'll say just about anything to get their votes, claim gay marriage is a dire threat to the institution of marriage, if not to all of Christendom.

To hear them tell it, gay marriage equals apocalypse now.

This history teacher doesn't know of any civilization wiped out by gay marriage. Generally, well-armed invaders do the trick.

Maybe it’s my live-and-let-live, judge-ye-not Presbyterian rearing, of which I am proud. I’ve never understood why so many people get so worked up over homosexuality. But I suspect that deep down inside, a lot of homophobes really are gay or are afraid they might be.

Some of the most avid gay-bashing, "family values" preachers and politicians have turned out to be homosexuals. An Internet website called “Ranker” posted a list of the top 10 anti-gay activists who proved to be gay. The list has grown to 15. It's online at http://www.ranker.com/list/top-10-anti-gay-activists-caught-being-gay/joanne?page=3.

Anyway, mark us down as “100 Percent Pro-Marriage” and “100 Percent Pro-Family,” straight and gay. Oh, yeah, Mr. Cathy, don’t bother reserving a table for the Craig party of three at a Chick-fil-A.

Another poll makes Fox News look bad.

This one says Americans believe Fox News is the most uncivil network. Another recent survey showed – again – that people who only watch Fox are less informed than all other news consumers.

A lot my fellow lefties, bless their hearts, think polls like these embarrass the Fox Newsers. The awful numbers would chagrin real newshounds. I know. I used to be one.

But the folks at Fox aren’t real newshounds. They’re rabble-rousing hacks in the tradition of the country's old-time partisan press. 

Fox is the Republican Party’s propaganda ministry. Likewise, almost all 18th and 19th century American papers were mouthpieces for one party or another.

Old-time editors and publishers never let the truth stand in the way of a good story. A “good story" was one that made your party look good and the enemy party look bad.

Seldom -- if ever -- is seen anything on Fox News that makes Democrats look good at the expense of Republicans.

At newspapers of yore, civility was for wusses. It was no-holds-barred, kick-'em-in-the-groin. And do unto others before they do unto you.

Okay, Fox rival MSNBC leans toward the liberal side. But Fox bends miles farther to the right than MSNBC tilts leftward.

Roger Ailes, Fox News president, is proud of his right-wing Republican pedigree. For years, he was a bare-knucks GOP media consultant. Ailes famously demonized Democrats in the service of Republican presidents Nixon, Reagan and George H.W. Bush. Ailes slammed Bill Clinton as "the hippie president."

Ailes, the attack ad maestro, is often linked to senior Bush’s racist Willie Horton campaign spot. Ailes vehemently denies any connection to it. But he told Time magazine, perhaps too candidly, “The only question is whether we depict Willie Horton with a knife in his hand or without it."

Anyway, Fox folks don’t give a flip about polls except the ones that gauge how Republicans are doing. Fox News chiefs don’t sweat it if their viewers know less than beans about what’s really going on in the world or if John and Jane Q Public think Fox's talking heads are less than nice and polite.

The only thing that counts with Ailes and his well-paid hired guns on TV is the only thing that counted with old-time press lords and their lackey reporters: getting people to vote their party's way on election day.

I thought of Pogo, Jim Pence, Jay Gould and Jack London when I read that almost four in ten Wisconsin union households voted to help sustain Scott Walker, the Dairy State's union- busting Republican governor.

Citing exit polls, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel online reported that in the recall election, Walker "won 37% of union households in 2010 and 38% in 2012 — about the number that polls show represents the percentage of voters in union households that are Republican."

"We have met the enemy and he is us," famously said Pogo, the wise little cartoon swamp possum.

"Never before have so few with so much promised to take away so much from so many and then laugh their asses off as the so many with so little vote for the so few with so much," aptly observed Pence, who kindly lets this union-card carrying Hubert Humphrey Democrat regularly have his say on this blogsite.

Walker would have loved Gould, a union-hating millionaire financier and railroad tycoon. “I can hire one-half of the working class to kill the other half," bragged the old Robber Baron --dubbed “the perfect eel” -- after he hired scabs to break a strike.

Of course, there’s another way to crunch the Wisconsin numbers. Sixty-two percent of union households voted for Walker’s union-endorsed challenger, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, whom Walker beat in 2010. At the same time, union members themselves voted for Barrett, 71-29 percent, according to exit polls The Washington Post reported.

If everybody in Wisconsin had voted like union members or union households, Barrett would soon be moving to Madison, the state capital.

Yet the figures also show Walker, one of the most viciously anti-union governors in Wisconsin history, still managed to sucker many union supporters.

Walker’s strategy for wiping out unions is “divide and conquer” – his words. So he started with public sector unions. His GOP-majority legislature passed his bill gutting their collective bargaining rights. 

Walker exempted police and firefighter unions, presumably thinking they were more GOP-friendly. Also part of his con job was leaving private sector unions alone.

Doubtless he counted on a lot of the exempted union members to say something like, “too bad about the teachers and government workers, but my ox isn’t being gored.”

Even so, most union members – including more than a few cops and firefighters – saw through Walker’s scam and voted for Barrett.

A lot of them figure Walker is taking a page from Indiana Republican Gov. Mitch Daniels' playbook. Walker is a big fan of Daniels, who has used the same “divide and conquer” scheme to hobble Hoosier unions.

When he first took office in 2005, Daniels nixed collective bargaining for state employees.

At the same time, he promised not to push a right-to-work law. Walker says he won’t either, for now.

Earlier this year, Daniels got behind a right-to-work bill which passed the Republican-majority Indiana legislature. If the Republicans win back the state senate in November, I'd bet the dairy farm, Walker will work overtime to add Wisconsin to the roll of right-to-work states.

Walker has a history with right-to-work, writes Jack Craver of the Capital Times online in Madison. “The governor, who sponsored unsuccessful right-to-work legislation as a state legislator, refused to state a position on the issue throughout the campaign, insisting that it would not come up in the near future.”

Right-to-work laws are designed to weaken or wipe out all unions by allowing workers to enjoy union-won pay and benefits without joining the union and paying union dues.

Meanwhile, Kentucky, too, had a near close encounter of the worst kind with Walker. Last year, he came to stump for Republican gubernatorial hopeful David Williams, a pro-right-to work Walker wannabe.

Union-endorsed Gov. Steve Beshear beat Williams in a landslide and won a second term.

Bluegrass State labor leader Jeff Wiggins thinks union members who voted for Walker will rue the day they helped keep him in office. “Their time is coming, too,” predicted Wiggins, president of the Paducah-based Western Kentucky AFL-CIO Area Council.

Also president of Steelworkers Local 9447 and a member of the Kentucky State AFL-CIO Executive Board, Wiggins said Wisconsin union members who voted for Walker elevated "selfishness over solidarity.

"It's this ‘I’ve got mine and let everybody else get theirs' attitude. Republicans like Walker, Daniels and Williams love for working people to think that way -- it's what the Republicans think.”

Of course, pitting workers against each other is one of the oldest union-busting strategies around. It’s what Gould meant.

Anyway, those Wisconsin union members who voted for Walker though he shafted thousands of other union members put Wiggins and me in mind of “Ode to A Scab,” attributed to Jack London:

After God had finished the rattlesnake, the toad, the vampire, He had some awful substance left with which He made a scab.  A scab is a two-legged animal with a cork-screw soul, a water-logged brain, a combination backbone of jelly and glue. Where others have hearts, he carries a tumor of rotten principles. When a scab comes down the street, men turn their backs and angels weep in heaven, and the Devil shuts the gates of Hell to keep him out. No man has a right to scab so long as there is a pool of water to drown his carcass in, or a rope long enough to hang his body with. Judas Iscariot was a gentleman compared with a scab. For betraying his master, he had character enough to hang himself. A scab has not. Esau sold his birthright for a mess of pottage. Judas Iscariot sold his Savior for thirty pieces of silver. Benedict Arnold sold his country for a promise of a commission in the British army. The modern strikebreaker sells his birthright, country, his wife, his children and his fellow men for an unfulfilled promise from his employer, trust, or corporation. Esau was a traitor to himself; Judas Iscariot was a traitor to his God; Benedict Arnold was a traitor to his country; a scab is a traitor to his God, his country, his family and his class.

   My buddy John Hennen is doing more than teach labor history at the “other” MSU – Morehead State University. (I’m a Murray State grad.)
   John is helping preserve labor history in his native West Virginia. We can help John.
   

   Here is a copy of a letter he sent me via cyberspace:
“Brothers and Sisters,
   “I am attaching a letter from the Friends of Blair Mountain, who are requesting that supporters consent to adding their name and affiliation to the letter for eventual publication in several media outlets.
   “You will see in the letter that the goals of the project are probably way too ambitious------Gettysburg and Colonial Williamsburg are not going to be replicated in the mountains of Logan County, WV! But the historical, conservation, and economic development messages are important for that region.
   “If you want to be included, just send me your name and affiliation (or, if you would prefer not to include your affiliation, that is fine) by e-mail and I will send that information to Dr. Lou Martin, who is representing the Friends of Blair Mountain.
   “Please respond within a few days if you want your name included in this letter.
In Solidarity,
John Hennen
   I asked him to add my John Hancock to the letter. But the more the merrier, I say. John’s email is j.hennen@moreheadstate.edu.
   Here’s the letter:  
   “Blair Mountain, West Virginia, stands at the center of American labor history. At the start of the twentieth century, the United Mine Workers of America was one of the most powerful unions in the nation but had not yet organized the southern West Virginia counties. Coal operators there were determined to keep labor costs low by any means, including repression of the rights of their workers. The struggle by those workers for a union in 1921 was a struggle for basic civil liberties in the coalfields. 
   “The Battle of Blair Mountain, where ten thousand armed miners fought the forces of Sheriff Don Chafin, who had machine gun emplacements on top of the ridge, was the culmination of a decade of armed conflict. Never before nor since have so many American workers taken up arms to fight for their constitutional rights. Blair Mountain has been discussed at dinner tables in the homes of countless miners’ families and in thousands of labor history courses at colleges and universities across the country. But the American public is still only dimly aware of the historic significance of this place in Logan County and those bloody events of 1921.
   “Now there is a battle for the very existence of Blair Mountain. West Virginians today have an opportunity to influence the future of Blair Mountain. The signers of this petition are committed to developing an economy based on the integrity of local history and culture. We as a society should not permit the mountain to be blown up. We should not allow the people around Blair Mountain to lose their homes and their community. We should preserve one of America’s most important historic sites and make it the cornerstone of a national battlefield park.
   “The Friends of Blair Mountain have drawn up plans for Historic Blair Mountain Park, a 1600-acre park in the mold of Colonial Williamsburg or Gettysburg National Military Park. The plan envisions a Welcome Center with multimedia presentations and museum exhibitions, battlefield tours, restaurants and lodging, research archives, and seasonal events. Colonial Williamsburg generates an estimated $500 million per year, and Gettysburg National Military Park brings in an estimated $380 million to its local economy. It required committed citizens with a vision to build those parks that will continue to draw large crowds for many decades to come. West Virginia has the potential to build a more sustainable economy in Logan County, but mountaineers must stand up now, recognize the historic nature of Blair Mountain, and begin the work of building the future of Logan County and southern West Virginia.

When Mitt Romney was in college during the Vietnam War, he wanted Uncle Sam to draft anti-draft protestors, according to MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell.

Romney was at Stanford in 1965 and 1966. “Romney joined a counter-protest in favor of the draft,” O’Donnell said on his TV show the other night. Romney “publicly urged his government to draft unwilling participants into the war – to draft college classmates of his into the war – to send them to their deaths as long as Romney didn’t have to go to war himself,” O’Donnell said. (Vietnam and the draft were over by the time O'Donnell graduated from college in 1976.)

You might think anybody as gung-ho for the draft as Romney evidently was would have welcomed a draft notice or maybe even have volunteered.

Romney did neither.

Oh, he’s running for president as the “pro-military” candidate  -- the bad guys wouldn't dare mess with Mitt, he wants voters to think. “…It was American military power that enabled the United States after World War II to stand in opposition to brutal and aggressive Communist dictatorship,” Romney’s website says.

He had a golden opportunity to make a personal “stand in opposition” to Communism in Vietnam. But he stayed in civvies, stateside and in France.

At Stanford, a college deferment shielded Romney from the draft. He got a ministerial deferment that allowed him to be a Mormon missionary to the French in 1966-1968.

“While he was trying, and mostly failing, to convert Parisians to Mormonism, while Romney was safe in France…tens of thousands of young Americans his age were being killed in Vietnam,” O’Donnell said.

Romney was 21, still prime military age, in December, 1968, when he came home from France. The Vietnam War was still on. He still didn’t enlist. 

On the campaign trail, Romney hasn’t said a lot about what he was doing during the Vietnam War. He talked about it to a New York Times reporter in 2007, when he was running for the 2008 GOP presidential nod.

According to David D. Kirkpatrick of the Times, candidate Romney remembered that when he was a missionary “he sometimes had wished he were in Vietnam instead of France.”

Kirkpatrick wrote that Romney defended American involvement in the war against French critics. “In hindsight, it is easy to be for the war when you don’t have to worry about going to Vietnam,” he quoted one of Romney's fellow missionaries.

Kirkpatrick said Romney told another interviewer: “There were surely times on my mission when I was having a particularly difficult time accomplishing very little when I would have longed for the chance to be serving in the military, but that was not to be.”

“Not to be?” Unless Romney was in thrall of the infidel fates, he had the power to make it be. All he had to do was head to the nearest Army, Navy, Marine or Air Force recruiting office and put his John Hancock on enlistment papers.

Many other Mormons volunteered for military service, including “some of his fellow missionaries,” Kirkpatrick wrote.

Yet Romney sought, and got, another student deferment so he could enroll at Brigham Young, where he graduated in 1971. “When the draft lottery was introduced in December 1969, he drew a high enough number — 300 — that he would never be called up,” Kirkpatrick wrote.

The lottery didn’t affect volunteering. Romney still could have gone into service.

Eventually, Romney, like most Americans, including his dad, George Romney, came to question the Vietnam War.

In 1967, the senior Romney, then governor of Michigan, famously said that when he returned from a visit to Vietnam two years before he had experienced “the greatest brainwashing anybody [could] get.”

“I think we were brainwashed,” Mitt Romney told the Boston Globe in 1970. “If it wasn’t a political blunder to move into Vietnam, I don’t know what is.”

But, Romney-like, he hedged, explaining to the Globe that he thought President Nixon sincerely believed invading Cambodia in 1970 was the right thing to do. (George Romney was Nixon’s Housing and Urban Development secretary.)  

Fast forward 37 years. Mitt is sounding hawkish again.

Okay, I’m 62. I’ll admit flat out that when I was in college hugging my coveted 2-S student deferment, I never wished I were in Vietnam. I didn’t wish for any American to be in Vietnam.

Even so, O’Donnell’s story on Romney, Vietnam and the draft reminded me of a college buddy of mine who was for the war, big time.

I asked him why he didn’t enlist. “I support the war with my tax money,” he replied.

He wasn’t joking.

I suspect my college friend is voting for Romney. I’m not.

But I don’t question for a minute Romney’s right to draft deferments for college and missionary work. I'm glad for him that he got them. Like my buddy and me, Romney beat the draft fair and square. I guess technically that makes us “draft evaders,” not “draft dodgers.” No doubt, Romney hates either handle.

Anyway, talk is cheap. Tough talk is cheapest of all. Saber-rattling ill-becomes guys who are AARP-eligible, yet, in their salad days, were pro-war and pro-draft while avoiding war and the draft themselves, no matter their motivations.

When Mitt Romney was in college during the Vietnam War, he wanted Uncle Sam to draft anti-draft protestors, according to MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell.

Romney was at Stanford in 1965 and 1966. “Romney joined a counter-protest in favor of the draft,” O’Donnell said on his TV show the other night. Romney “publicly urged his government to draft unwilling participants into the war – to draft college classmates of his into the war – to send them to their deaths as long as Romney didn’t have to go to war himself,” O’Donnell said. (Vietnam and the draft were over by the time O'Donnell graduated from college in 1976.)

You might think anybody as gung-ho for the draft as Romney evidently was would have welcomed a draft notice or maybe even have volunteered.

Romney did neither.

Oh, he’s running for president as the “pro-military” candidate  -- the bad guys wouldn't dare mess with Mitt, he wants voters to think. “…It was American military power that enabled the United States after World War II to stand in opposition to brutal and aggressive Communist dictatorship,” Romney’s website says.

He had a golden opportunity to make a personal “stand in opposition” to Communism in Vietnam. But he stayed in civvies, stateside and in France.

At Stanford, a college deferment shielded Romney from the draft. He got a ministerial deferment that allowed him to be a Mormon missionary to the French in 1966-1968.

“While he was trying, and mostly failing, to convert Parisians to Mormonism, while Romney was safe in France…tens of thousands of young Americans his age were being killed in Vietnam,” O’Donnell said.

Romney was 21, still prime military age, in December, 1968, when he came home from France. The Vietnam War was still on. He still didn’t enlist. 

On the campaign trail, Romney hasn’t said a lot about what he was doing during the Vietnam War. He talked about it to a New York Times reporter in 2007, when he was running for the 2008 GOP presidential nod.

According to David D. Kirkpatrick of the Times, candidate Romney remembered that when he was a missionary “he sometimes had wished he were in Vietnam instead of France.”

Kirkpatrick wrote that Romney defended American involvement in the war against French critics. “In hindsight, it is easy to be for the war when you don’t have to worry about going to Vietnam,” he quoted one of Romney's fellow missionaries.

Kirkpatrick said Romney told another interviewer: “There were surely times on my mission when I was having a particularly difficult time accomplishing very little when I would have longed for the chance to be serving in the military, but that was not to be.”

“Not to be?” Unless Romney was in thrall of the infidel fates, he had the power to make it be. All he had to do was head to the nearest Army, Navy, Marine or Air Force recruiting office and put his John Hancock on enlistment papers.

Many other Mormons volunteered for military service, including “some of his fellow missionaries,” Kirkpatrick wrote.

Yet Romney sought, and got, another student deferment so he could enroll at Brigham Young, where he graduated in 1971. “When the draft lottery was introduced in December 1969, he drew a high enough number — 300 — that he would never be called up,” Kirkpatrick wrote.

The lottery didn’t affect volunteering. Romney still could have gone into service.

Eventually, Romney, like most Americans, including his dad, George Romney, came to question the Vietnam War.

In 1967, the senior Romney, then governor of Michigan, famously said that when he returned from a visit to Vietnam two years before he had experienced “the greatest brainwashing anybody [could] get.”

“I think we were brainwashed,” Mitt Romney told the Boston Globe in 1970. “If it wasn’t a political blunder to move into Vietnam, I don’t know what is.”

But, Romney-like, he hedged, explaining to the Globe that he thought President Nixon sincerely believed invading Cambodia in 1970 was the right thing to do. (George Romney was Nixon’s Housing and Urban Development secretary.)  

Fast forward 37 years. Mitt is sounding hawkish again.

Okay, I’m 62. I’ll admit flat out that when I was in college hugging my coveted 2-S student deferment, I never wished I were in Vietnam. I didn’t wish for any American to be in Vietnam.

Even so, O’Donnell’s story on Romney, Vietnam and the draft reminded me of a college buddy of mine who was for the war, big time.

I asked him why he didn’t enlist. “I support the war with my tax money,” he replied.

He wasn’t joking.

I suspect my college friend is voting for Romney. I’m not.

But I don’t question for a minute Romney’s right to draft deferments for college and missionary work. I'm glad for him that he got them. Like my buddy and me, Romney beat the draft fair and square. I guess technically that makes us “draft evaders,” not “draft dodgers.” No doubt, Romney hates either handle.

Anyway, talk is cheap. Tough talk is cheapest of all. Saber-rattling ill-becomes guys who are AARP-eligible, yet, in their salad days, were pro-war and pro-draft while avoiding war and the draft themselves, no matter their motivations.

     The presidential race seemed neck and neck.
     Then, at a crucial moment in a crucial state, a big-time supporter of one candidate slammed the opposition, big time.
     He meant to rally the party faithful. But he fired up the opposition, which used the slur to make hay with swing voters.
     The insult might have cost the candidate the election.
     The year was 1884. The loser was Republican James G. Blaine. The slammer was the Rev. Samuel D. Burchard.
    
     Could Donald Trump, because he's off on another birther tear, be Romney’s Burchard?
     "Birtherism is a fringe issue that's way out of the mainstream, and it's disturbing when you see people you ... have some level of respect for, whether it's members of Congress or even Donald Trump, falling into that category," CNN quoted Steve Schmidt, a senior advisor in Sen. John McCain's 2008 campaign.
     Birtherism is cool with a lot of tea party tilting Republican white folks who still aren't that cool with Romney. Hence, he hasn’t flat told Trump to clam up.
     Evidently, the candidate of "America's values" wants to have his cake and eat it, too. Romney just let a staffer put some distance between the candidate and birtherism.  "I can't speak for Donald Trump, Gloria, but I can tell you that Mitt Romney accepts that President Obama was born in the United States," Eric Fehrnstrom told CNN's Gloria Borger. "He doesn't view the place of his birth as an issue in this campaign."     
     That doesn't mean Romney won't rub elbows with Trump -- or take his money -- any   more. The candidate was expected to be with the birther Tuesday in Las Vegas for a big fund raiser at Trump's hotel. Newt Gingrich was supposed to be tagging along, too.
     Everybody knows Trump is twice-divorced (like Gingrich). It's also not a secret that Trump is a hedonistic high roller who loves to live it up in the Big Apple and Vegas. Burchard was a mild-mannered Manhattan Presbyterian preacher who foreswore booze. But like Trump, Burchard knew how to play the pander card.
     Burchard’s barb irked Irish Catholics, most of whom usually voted Democratic.
     A lot of Irish-Americans lived in New York City. Blaine and Grover Cleveland, the Democratic candidate, believed whoever won the Empire State would probably win the election.
     All along, many well-heeled Republican WASPs scorned the sons and daughters of Erin who came to America ’s shores. They dissed them as brawling, lazy, low-life “papist” drunks who, along with the other "refuse of Europe," were ruining the country (and supporting Cleveland's party). 
     Election day was Nov. 4. On October 29, with Blaine in the audience, Burchard gave a speech in New York City to a gathering of Republican pastors, denouncing the Democrats as the party of “Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion.”
     “Rum and Romanism” meant “Irish-American.” “Rebellion” was a dig at the Democratic party’s Southern base. (Most of the Confederate leaders were pro-slavery Democrats.)
     Anyway, the Democrats jumped all over "Rum, and Romanism," especially Tammany Hall, New York City's crooked Democratic machine.
     Tammany hadn't done much to help Cleveland because he was a reformer. Many Irish-Americans were skeptical of Cleveland because Blaine claimed he was pro-British.
     Burchard's bonehead blather revved up Tammany and riled up Irish-Americans all over the country.
     The Blaine campaign immediately switched to damage control mode. Blaine's defe nders protested that their man might not have heard the preacher.
     Even Burchard  realized he blew it. He belatedly said he got carried away with "Rum, Romanism and Rebellion" and insisted he wasn't anti-Irish-American or anti-Catholic. Blaine quickly said he wasn't either and disavowed Burchard's bigotry. (Blaine's mother was an Irish-American Catholic.)
     It was too late. New York and the election were lost.
     On the other hand, Trump shows no signs of backing away from birtherism. Mum's the word from Mitt about it and not just because he doesn't want to cross the tea partiers.  
     Trump's one of Romney's prize cash cows. He has has raked in big bucks for Romney.
     On June 28, The Donald will host another fund raiser for  Romney at his Las Vegas lodgings. Trump is crazy about Vegas, though it's the desert Sodom to the Jesus-loves-me-But-He-can't-stand-you crowd. (Of course, boozing, betting and divorce are okay in their book if you're part of the anti-Obama crusade.)
     Meanwhile, Republicans like Schmidt keep warning that birtherism won’t play among independent voters in Peoria – places like Pasadena , Portland and Poughkeepsie , too.
     "In the middle of the electorate, people think [birtherism is]…bats--t crazy,” Schmidt warned, according to CNN. “The side that's seen flirting with it doesn't do themselves any favors."
     For sure, Schmidt doesn't play in GOP uber-righty circles. The true believers regularly rip him as a “RINO” – “Republican in Name Only.”
     Anyway, after the election, Blaine called Burchard “an ass in the shape of a preacher” whose big mouth was a big reason Cleveland got elected. If Obama wins again, will that make Trump an ass in the shape of bigoted, bloviating narcissistic plutocrat?

Bill Londrigan, president of the Kentucky State AFL-CIO, was on the money when he said Mitt Romney will “tell a bunch more whoppers about unions” (and President Obama).

Romney fibbed anew when he claimed Obama "denies an American company the right to build a factory in the American state of its choice."

The claim is vintage Romney obfuscation, apparently based on the dispute -- settled last year -- between the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers and Chicago-headquartered Boeing over the aircraft manufacturer's new non-union plant in South Carolina, a right-to-work state where most business owners and most politicians – even some Democrats – are less than union-friendly.

For years, Boeing was based in Seattle, where the company was founded in 1916. The union said -- and the National Labor Relations Board agreed -- that Boeing broke federal labor law by building the factory in South Carolina in retaliation against union members for exercising their federally-guaranteed right to strike.      

The IAM asked the NLRB to file the case, then requested that the panel drop it after the union and Boeing agreed to a new contract in which the company pledged to expand aircraft production in the Seattle area. The South Carolina plant stayed open.

“This case was never about the union or the NLRB telling Boeing where it could put its plants,” Steven Greenhouse of the New York Times quoted Lafe Solomon, acting NLRB general council. “This was a question for us of retaliation, and that remains the law.”      

Solomon, the union and Boeing are all glad the dispute was settled, Greenhouse wrote. Presumably, Obama is, too.

But you wouldn't know any of that from news reports of what Romney said. Once again, a Romney fib evidently went unquestioned by reporters.

Yet Romney’s getting a free pass from the media all over the place, according to bloggers Jamelle Bouie and Steve Benen.

“Constant mendacity is the norm for Romney and his campaign, and odds are good that he won’t suffer for it,” Bouie wrote for The American Prospect online. “Campaign reporters don’t have a strong incentive to challenge him on his misrepresentations, and interested parties have a hard time dealing with the deluge. In other words, we should strap ourselves in and prepare for five more months of Romney’s truth-free operation.”

I don’t understand what Bouie meant by “campaign reporters don’t have a strong incentive to challenge him on his misrepresentations.” But elsewhere in his piece he mused that “for political reporters with time and space constraint, there is no way to counter all this, even if you have the inclination. On a regular basis, the Romney campaign issues so many distortions—so many  lies--that it’s nearly impossible to keep up.”

Of course, that's idea of telling whoppers a mile a minute. It worked for Ronald Reagan, who was dubbed “the Great Communicator.” His critics called him “the Great Prevaricator” to no avail.

Anyway, on the Maddow Blog, Steve Benen has been regularly “Chronicling Mitt’s Mendacity.” The last time I looked, he was up to Volume 17, in which he quoted Bouie.

Benen also wrote that “it’s up to media professionals and voters to determine whether Romney's extraordinary detachment from the truth is going to matter in this election or not. So far, the former governor is gambling he can get away with falsehoods that are as extraordinary as they are routine, and by all appearances, for now, he's right.”

Amen, but don’t get me wrong. Reporters are just as obligated to scrutinize President Obama – and every other politician, Republican, Democratic, liberal, moderate or conservative. I’ve got no problem with our reporters even putting our pols on the hot seat face-to-face as British reporters routinely do to British politicians.

My guess is “Romney’s extraordinary detachment from the truth” is helping him. His roll of the dice that “he can get away with are as extraordinary as they routine” seems to be hitting sevens and elevens.

Romney is close to Obama in some polls and even a tad ahead in others. How much press coverage has to do with that is, of course, debatable.

So is bias, which is often in the eye of the beholder. Conservatives like Romney gripe about the “liberal media.” It’s the same media the Soviets scorned as the “bourgeoisie capitalist media” during the bad old days of the cold war.

In the end, the economy will be the main factor in determining the winner on Nov. 6. But it’s hard to beat good press. Romney and his campaign staff must be high-fiving and fist-bumping each other over the Fourth Estaters who are, for whatever reason, acting more like lapdogs than watchdogs in covering him on the campaign trail.

Meanwhile, Londrigan wants working people, especially union members, to be news hounds and check out the Romney record themselves.

"Voters only have to look at the type of vulture capitalism that Romney practiced at Bain Capital to know where he stands on unions and workers’ rights. Just ask the thousands of workers whose jobs were destroyed at GST Steel in Kansas City, Mo., when Bain Capital took over and sucked the life out of the company so that Romney and few other Bain executives could reap millions. 

"Of course, this is only a single example of the type of slash and burn predatory capitalism that Romney ascribes to and from which he made his fortune.  A worker voting for Mitt Romney is like a chicken voting for Col. Sanders!”

Londrigan suggests a good place to start scrutinizing the Romney record is by taking a gander at this video from the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades, my late grandfather Vest’s union:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=JepSVdOaGMI. He also recommends:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMndjLIQUFw&feature=relmfu.

Bill Londrigan, president of the Kentucky State AFL-CIO, was on the money when he said Mitt Romney will “tell a bunch more whoppers about unions” (and President Obama).

Romney fibbed anew when he claimed Obama "denies an American company the right to build a factory in the American state of its choice."

The claim is vintage Romney obfuscation, apparently based on the dispute -- settled last year -- between the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers and Chicago-headquartered Boeing over the aircraft manufacturer's new non-union plant in South Carolina, a right-to-work state where most business owners and most politicians – even some Democrats – are less than union-friendly.

For years, Boeing was based in Seattle, where the company was founded in 1916. The union said -- and the National Labor Relations Board agreed -- that Boeing broke federal labor law by building the factory in South Carolina in retaliation against union members for exercising their federally-guaranteed right to strike.      

The IAM asked the NLRB to file the case, then requested that the panel drop it after the union and Boeing agreed to a new contract in which the company pledged to expand aircraft production in the Seattle area. The South Carolina plant stayed open.

“This case was never about the union or the NLRB telling Boeing where it could put its plants,” Steven Greenhouse of the New York Times quoted Lafe Solomon, acting NLRB general council. “This was a question for us of retaliation, and that remains the law.”      

Solomon, the union and Boeing are all glad the dispute was settled, Greenhouse wrote. Presumably, Obama is, too.

But you wouldn't know any of that from news reports of what Romney said. Once again, a Romney fib evidently went unquestioned by reporters.

Yet Romney’s getting a free pass from the media all over the place, according to bloggers Jamelle Bouie and Steve Benen.

“Constant mendacity is the norm for Romney and his campaign, and odds are good that he won’t suffer for it,” Bouie wrote for The American Prospect online. “Campaign reporters don’t have a strong incentive to challenge him on his misrepresentations, and interested parties have a hard time dealing with the deluge. In other words, we should strap ourselves in and prepare for five more months of Romney’s truth-free operation.”

I don’t understand what Bouie meant by “campaign reporters don’t have a strong incentive to challenge him on his misrepresentations.” But elsewhere in his piece he mused that “for political reporters with time and space constraint, there is no way to counter all this, even if you have the inclination. On a regular basis, the Romney campaign issues so many distortions—so many  lies--that it’s nearly impossible to keep up.”

Of course, that's idea of telling whoppers a mile a minute. It worked for Ronald Reagan, who was dubbed “the Great Communicator.” His critics called him “the Great Prevaricator” to no avail.

Anyway, on the Maddow Blog, Steve Benen has been regularly “Chronicling Mitt’s Mendacity.” The last time I looked, he was up to Volume 17, in which he quoted Bouie.

Benen also wrote that “it’s up to media professionals and voters to determine whether Romney's extraordinary detachment from the truth is going to matter in this election or not. So far, the former governor is gambling he can get away with falsehoods that are as extraordinary as they are routine, and by all appearances, for now, he's right.”

Amen, but don’t get me wrong. Reporters are just as obligated to scrutinize President Obama – and every other politician, Republican, Democratic, liberal, moderate or conservative. I’ve got no problem with our reporters even putting our pols on the hot seat face-to-face as British reporters routinely do to British politicians.

My guess is “Romney’s extraordinary detachment from the truth” is helping him. His roll of the dice that “he can get away with are as extraordinary as they routine” seems to be hitting sevens and elevens.

Romney is close to Obama in some polls and even a tad ahead in others. How much press coverage has to do with that is, of course, debatable.

So is bias, which is often in the eye of the beholder. Conservatives like Romney gripe about the “liberal media.” It’s the same media the Soviets scorned as the “bourgeoisie capitalist media” during the bad old days of the cold war.

In the end, the economy will be the main factor in determining the winner on Nov. 6. But it’s hard to beat good press. Romney and his campaign staff must be high-fiving and fist-bumping each other over the Fourth Estaters who are, for whatever reason, acting more like lapdogs than watchdogs in covering him on the campaign trail.

Meanwhile, Londrigan wants working people, especially union members, to be news hounds and check out the Romney record themselves.

"Voters only have to look at the type of vulture capitalism that Romney practiced at Bain Capital to know where he stands on unions and workers’ rights. Just ask the thousands of workers whose jobs were destroyed at GST Steel in Kansas City, Mo., when Bain Capital took over and sucked the life out of the company so that Romney and few other Bain executives could reap millions. 

"Of course, this is only a single example of the type of slash and burn predatory capitalism that Romney ascribes to and from which he made his fortune.  A worker voting for Mitt Romney is like a chicken voting for Col. Sanders!”

Londrigan suggests a good place to start scrutinizing the Romney record is by taking a gander at this video from the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades, my late grandfather Vest’s union:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=JepSVdOaGMI. He also recommends:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMndjLIQUFw&feature=relmfu.

When Jeff Wiggins told fellow Steelworker Kip Phillips that he was the 2012 W.C. Young Award recipient, the honoree named a half-dozen other people he insisted deserved the award more than he did.

“That’s the kind of person Kip is,” Wiggins said. “He’s a very humble, very unselfish man.”

James K. Phillips Jr., 69, who lives near Benton, Ky., is United Steelworkers vice president at large and assistant to USW President Leo Gerard. He is the second straight Steelworker to win the highest honor the Paducah-based Western Kentucky AFL-CIO Area Council bestows, according to Wiggins, council president and president of USW Local 9447 in Calvert City, Ky.

The award is named for the late W.C. Young, a national labor and civil rights leader from Paducah. Young, who received the first W.C. Young Award in 1994, retired as AFL-CIO COPE Region 10 director. He died in 1996 at age 77.

Last year's recipient was Ron Spann of Paducah, who retired in 2009 as a staff representative for USW District 8.

“I am deeply honored," Phillips said. "But a lot of others are more deserving than I am." 

Phillips has packed a union card for most of his life. He has also belonged to the Bricklayers, the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers and the Paper, Allied-Industrial, Chemical and Energy Workers.

“I’m the luckiest human on the face of the earth,” said Phillips, a Paducah native. “Life has been good to me and the union has been wonderful to me.”

Phillips’ climb up the union leadership ladder began shortly after he went to work for a Calvert City chemical plant in 1969. He was elected recording secretary of his union, OCAW Local 3-727. "It was my first union office.”

He was president of his local for 19 years. For eight years, he was president of OCAW District 3, which encompassed Kentucky and 10 other southeastern states. He represented District 3 on the OCAW constitution committee for a half dozen consecutive conventions. Phillips was elected to the union's executive board, to boot.          

"Good union officers never forget where they come from. You have to always remember that you represent the people who are paying dues, especially when you are negotiating a contract. You want to get a contract that makes the members feel like paying their dues is worthwhile."

Phillips was elected OCAW international vice president in 1994. He helped negotiate the merger of his union with PACE in 1999. Phillips was elected PACE vice president and helped bring about the merger of that union and the USW in 2005.

"We were glad to have PACE and leaders like Kip," said Wiggins, who is also a member of the Kentucky State AFL-CIO Executive Board. "'United We Stand, Divided We Fall' is our state motto. We are united, and our union is strong."

Even so, Phillips worries that strong unions like the USW are the "victims of our own success." He said too many younger members don't get involved in their union, don't vote or are too easily swayed by anti-union politicians who pander to what he calls "the four Gs -- God, guns, gays and government." He added, "It drives me nuts to see so many of our members, especially in our part of the country, vote for these right-wing politicians. But a lot of our members don’t even vote or aren’t even registered to vote.” 

Phillips is concerned that many younger members don't know how hard their forbears in the union movement had to fight for just the right to organize and bargain collectively. "They assume the union has always been here and always will be.”

Phillips still travels the country, meeting union members from Maine to California. He frequently speaks at local union halls, often weaving history into his remarks.

"I tell the audiences that in my mind, there have been four revolutions in our country. Obviously, the first one was against the British when our country was created. The second one was the Civil War. It ended slavery in our country, which was supposed to be founded on the idea that we were all created equal."

He said the third revolution was the New Deal, when the country shifted from "a laissez faire economy" to the idea the government had an obligation to help people who needed help. "The fourth revolution was the civil rights revolution."

W.C. Young was part of that revolution. “Number one, W.C. Young cared about people –- all people,” Phillips said. “He grew up in segregation and had so much more to overcome to get where he did.”

Phillips said conservative Republicans are out to overturn what's left of the New Deal and to reverse the gains made by Young and other civil rights leaders. He calls Mitt Romney, the all but certain GOP presidential nominee, "the flim flam man."

Phillips pointed to Romney-backed, GOP-sponsored state laws passed under the guise of preventing voter fraud. “They are designed to disfranchise African Americans and other minorities.”

He added that the Republicans have also declared holy war on unions, notably in states like Wisconsin, Ohio and Indiana. “And they’ve somehow convinced elderly people on Medicare that the government is their enemy.”

Phillips said if right-wing Republicans succeed, the middle class, built by strong unions, will disappear, and America will become a nation in which a handful of millionaires lords it over millions of impoverished workers. “Then we’ll have a fifth revolution. I hate to say it, but it looks like our country will have to degenerate to almost third world status before working people will wake up and see what's happening to them and change things."

Ernest R. "Billy" Thompson, director of United Steelworkers District 8, reads the inscription on a personalized USW-made Louisville Slugger baseball bat he gave to Kip Phillips, right, USW vice president at large and assistant to President Leo Gerard, in honor of Phillips' earning the 2012 W.C. Young Award, the highest honor the Paducah-based Western Kentucky AFL-CIO Area Council bestows. The honoree's name and "2012 W.C. Young Award recipient" were engraved on the bat. Thompson was one of several union officials and others who praised Phillips, who lives near Benton, Ky., during the annual award dinner and ceremony at the USW Local 550 hall in Paducah. Young was a national labor and civil rights leader from Paducah. (Photo by BERRY CRAIG) 

Jeff Wiggins, left, presents the W.C. Young Award to Kip Phillips.

Berry Craig interviews Kip Phillips.

When Jeff Wiggins told fellow Steelworker Kip Phillips that he was the 2012 W.C. Young Award recipient, the honoree named a half-dozen other people he insisted deserved the award more than he did.

“That’s the kind of person Kip is,” Wiggins said. “He’s a very humble, very unselfish man.”

James K. Phillips Jr., 69, who lives near Benton, Ky., is United Steelworkers vice president at large and assistant to USW President Leo Gerard. He is the second straight Steelworker to win the highest honor the Paducah-based Western Kentucky AFL-CIO Area Council bestows, according to Wiggins, council president and president of USW Local 9447 in Calvert City, Ky.

The award is named for the late W.C. Young, a national labor and civil rights leader from Paducah. Young, who received the first W.C. Young Award in 1994, retired as AFL-CIO COPE Region 10 director. He died in 1996 at age 77.

Last year's recipient was Ron Spann of Paducah, who retired in 2009 as a staff representative for USW District 8.

“I am deeply honored," Phillips said. "But a lot of others are more deserving than I am." 

Phillips has packed a union card for most of his life. He has also belonged to the Bricklayers, the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers and the Paper, Allied-Industrial, Chemical and Energy Workers.

“I’m the luckiest human on the face of the earth,” said Phillips, a Paducah native. “Life has been good to me and the union has been wonderful to me.”

Phillips’ climb up the union leadership ladder began shortly after he went to work for a Calvert City chemical plant in 1969. He was elected recording secretary of his union, OCAW Local 3-727. "It was my first union office.”

He was president of his local for 19 years. For eight years, he was president of OCAW District 3, which encompassed Kentucky and 10 other southeastern states. He represented District 3 on the OCAW constitution committee for a half dozen consecutive conventions. Phillips was elected to the union's executive board, to boot.          

"Good union officers never forget where they come from. You have to always remember that you represent the people who are paying dues, especially when you are negotiating a contract. You want to get a contract that makes the members feel like paying their dues is worthwhile."

Phillips was elected OCAW international vice president in 1994. He helped negotiate the merger of his union with PACE in 1999. Phillips was elected PACE vice president and helped bring about the merger of that union and the USW in 2005.

"We were glad to have PACE and leaders like Kip," said Wiggins, who is also a member of the Kentucky State AFL-CIO Executive Board. "'United We Stand, Divided We Fall' is our state motto. We are united, and our union is strong."

Even so, Phillips worries that strong unions like the USW are the "victims of our own success." He said too many younger members don't get involved in their union, don't vote or are too easily swayed by anti-union politicians who pander to what he calls "the four Gs -- God, guns, gays and government." He added, "It drives me nuts to see so many of our members, especially in our part of the country, vote for these right-wing politicians. But a lot of our members don’t even vote or aren’t even registered to vote.” 

Phillips is concerned that many younger members don't know how hard their forbears in the union movement had to fight for just the right to organize and bargain collectively. "They assume the union has always been here and always will be.”

Phillips still travels the country, meeting union members from Maine to California. He frequently speaks at local union halls, often weaving history into his remarks.

"I tell the audiences that in my mind, there have been four revolutions in our country. Obviously, the first one was against the British when our country was created. The second one was the Civil War. It ended slavery in our country, which was supposed to be founded on the idea that we were all created equal."

He said the third revolution was the New Deal, when the country shifted from "a laissez faire economy" to the idea the government had an obligation to help people who needed help. "The fourth revolution was the civil rights revolution."

W.C. Young was part of that revolution. “Number one, W.C. Young cared about people –- all people,” Phillips said. “He grew up in segregation and had so much more to overcome to get where he did.”

Phillips said conservative Republicans are out to overturn what's left of the New Deal and to reverse the gains made by Young and other civil rights leaders. He calls Mitt Romney, the all but certain GOP presidential nominee, "the flim flam man."

Phillips pointed to Romney-backed, GOP-sponsored state laws passed under the guise of preventing voter fraud. “They are designed to disfranchise African Americans and other minorities.”

He added that the Republicans have also declared holy war on unions, notably in states like Wisconsin, Ohio and Indiana. “And they’ve somehow convinced elderly people on Medicare that the government is their enemy.”

Phillips said if right-wing Republicans succeed, the middle class, built by strong unions, will disappear, and America will become a nation in which a handful of millionaires lords it over millions of impoverished workers. “Then we’ll have a fifth revolution. I hate to say it, but it looks like our country will have to degenerate to almost third world status before working people will wake up and see what's happening to them and change things."

Update Sunday May 20, 2012: The Confederate flag has been hoisted.

The Paducah, Ky., City Commission has voted unanimously to oppose the flying of a large Confederate battle flag along busy Interstate 24 near the city.

“That flag stands for slavery and hate,” said Commissioner Gerald Watkins, who proposed the resolution. “This is in your face racism and prejudice. It does not reflect the views of 90 percent of the people of our community.”

Acting Mayor Gayle Kaler and Commissioner Richard Abraham supported Watkins' resolution.

Watkins is a political science professor at West Kentucky Community and Technical College in Paducah, population 25,000. He said he heard the flag would be hoisted in an 11 a.m. Saturday ceremony.

"That's why I wanted us to go on record beforehand," he said. "I thank commissioners Kaler and Abraham for their support."

Mayor Bill Paxton and Commissioner Carol Gault were absent. "But I am confident they would have voted for the resolution, too," said Watkins, a three-term commissioner and lifelong Paducah resident who is running for the state legislature.

The flag will fly over private property in Reidland, a suburb east of Paducah.

The landowner is descended from Confederate soldiers, according to news reports. The Sons of Confederate Veterans organization favors the flag.

“The flag was created to distinguish Confederate soldiers in the war,” the Associated Press quoted Ben Sewell, Sons of Confederate Veterans national executive director. “Quite frankly, that is all it has ever stood for. It’s other people who have put that stigma on it. It is a historical war flag.”

Watkins doesn’t buy it. “The Confederate states seceded from the union because they were afraid President Lincoln and the Republicans were about to free the slaves. The Confederacy was all about slavery.

"Groups like the Sons of Confederate Veterans say the Civil War was about 'states' rights.' But when the Confederates hollered 'states' rights,' they meant the right of their states to have slaves."    

Watkins, who says his ancestors include Henry Clay, Kentucky's most famous politician, backed up his claim by citing a trio of historians and Confederate Vice President Alexander H. Stephens himself.  He said James M. McPherson of Princeton University, one of the country’s leading Civil War scholars, told the Washington Post that "slavery was at the core of the events that provoked the secession of the first seven states from December 1860 to February 1861. If it had not been for the election of an antislavery party to the presidency, there would have been no secession, no firing on Fort Sumter, and no secession by the other four states...that followed the first seven out after Fort Sumter."

Watkins added that Bill Schell, a history professor at nearby Murray, Ky., State University explained that “apologists for the Confederacy claim the issue at stake was states’ rights. This ignores the fact that the only right at stake was the ‘right’ to own, buy and sell human beings as if they were cattle.”

Too, he said John Hennen, a history professor at Morehead, Ky., State University, pointed out that starting in the 1890s, when segregation and race discrimination became the law and the social order in the old Confederate States —  and in border states like Kentucky — “there was a conscious effort by white Southerners to deny that the Civil War had anything to do with slavery. Oh, no, they said they fought in defense of local sovereignty.” Hennen added that “local sovereignty” in the antebellum South meant preserving slavery and white supremacy.

Soon after he took office, Stephens, a Georgian, claimed the Declaration of Independence was wrong about all men being created equal. Said Stephens: “Our new Government is founded exactly upon the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and moral condition.”

Watkins said other foes of the flag evidently are planning a protest rally on Saturday. He said anti-flag petitions are apparently being circulated.  “The state highway department says 30,000 cars a day pass by where that flag will be," Watkins said. "I can just imagine what people will think of our community when they see it."

Watkins said the flag will hurt Paducah's attempts to lure industry. “Our city government has spent thousands of dollars trying to bring in good factory jobs. If I were considering putting a plant in here and saw that flag, I’d think twice about it. That flag will make our job of trying to bring in plants a lot more difficult."

Gerald Watkins

At least Mitt Romney is consistent about unions.

He keeps on fibbing about them.

Recently, the presumptive Republican president nominee promised to “stop the unfairness of requiring union workers to contribute to politicians not of their choosing.”

Federal law prohibits involuntary political contributions from union members.

On his official campaign website, http://www.mittromney.com/issues/labor, Romney says President Obama “pursued ‘Card Check’ legislation that would have stripped workers of the right to vote by secret ballot on whether to unionize.”

Okay, this one’s a half truth. President Obama does support the Employee Free Choice Act. But the measure would not strip “workers of the right to vote by secret ballot on whether to unionize.” 

Don't take my word for it.

Says The Christian Science Monitor: "The proposed law gives workers a choice of forming a union through majority sign-up ('card check') or an election by secret ballot."

Explains Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., a co-sponsor of EFTA: "The Employee Free Choice Act does not abolish the National Labor Relations Board election process. That process would still be available under the Employee Free Choice Act. The legislation simply enables workers to also form a union through majority sign-up if a majority prefers that method to the NLRB election process. Under current law, workers may only use the majority sign-up process if their employer agrees. The Employee Free Choice Act would make that choice -- whether to use the NLRB election process or majority sign-up -- a majority choice of the employees, not the employer."  

Under current labor law, if just 30 percent of workers say they want a secret ballot, they can have one, according to Dave Suetholz, a Louisville, Ky., labor lawyer. He said that won't change under EFTA.

Anyway, unions and other supporters of the EFCA say the measure would restore the spirit of the Wagner Act of 1935, also called the National Labor Relations Act. The bill, sponsored by Sen. Robert Wagner, D-N.Y., established two ways workers could organize a union: by secret ballot or by a majority of them signing a card saying they want a union, a process called “card check.”

Suetholz says the union-busting Taft-Hartley Act of 1947 enabled employers to require a secret ballot vote, too, even though a majority of workers inked sign up cards.

This two-step process permits employers to delay elections, thus giving them time to illegally or unethically fight off the union by

-- hiring professional union-busting consultants

-- making employees attend anti-union programs

-- forcing employees to meet one-on-one with their immediate supervisors, where the supervisors can put the squeeze on them not to vote for the union

-- threatening pro-union employees with their jobs and even firing them – while claiming, of course, that union support had nothing to do with the employee getting sacked.

Bill Londrigan, president of the Kentucky State AFL-CIO, isn't surprised by Romney's fudging of the facts on EFTA.

“Let’s face it, Mitt Romney is one of the wealthiest one percent, yet thinks he can appeal to those that work for a living,” Londrigan says. “In order to do so, he will not let the truth get in the way.

“He lies about unions. He lies about legislation that helps workers organize and he lies about the Obama administration’s labor policies. In this ‘say anything’ political environment you can expect Romney to tell a bunch more whoppers about unions as he attempts to change his stripes in the eyes of those that work for a living.”

Suetholz says a big reason he started the Louisville-based Kentucky Labor Institute was to counter truth stretching anti-union pols like Romney.

“Mitt Romney wants to preserve the ability of employers like Peabody Coal to terrorize workers for weeks leading up to the ‘"secret ballot election,’” Suetholz says. “His concern is not for the workers, but rather for the employers who routinely thwart organizing drives.”

He adds that recently, a federal court issued an injunction against the Peabody Coal Co. in southern Illinois for firing leaders of a United Mine Workers of America organizing drive.  

“The miners had over 90 percent of the union authorization cards signed when they petitioned for an election and by the end of the harrowing weeks of terror orchestrated by Peabody's union - busting firm the miners barely won their election with just over 50 percent of the vote,” Suetholz says. “Romney's objection to 'card check' is not based on concern for working people to choose their destiny and bring democracy to the workplace. His concern is for his crony owners who desperately attack any attempt by their workers to gain a voice at work.”    

Dave Suetholz

 Bill Londrigan