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McCain Campaign Threatens Oregon Union Members with Arrest |
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John McCain paid a visit to Portland, Ore., this week. As usual, AFL-CIO union members came out to try to speak to the presumptive Republican presidential nominee about important issues—and, as usual, they were turned away.
In fact, McCain campaign aides were so unhappy to be confronted that they threatened these union members with arrest if they approached the room in which McCain was holding an event.
Tom Chamberlain, president of the Oregon AFL-CIO, says McCain has shown he’s not willing to listen to working families:
Sen. McCain had an unprecedented opportunity today to show that he is as concerned about working folks as he is about his wealthy friends. Instead, he reaffirmed that he doesn’t share the priorities of working folks and he is not the candidate to turn around America.
What was McCain doing instead of listening to union members’ concerns about health care and the economy? Holding a high-priced fundraiser. McCain’s fundraisers are now charging $33,100 a person. (That’s about what THREE full-time minimum-wage workers would have made, before taxes, in 2006.)
While McCain was hosting his fundraiser, he got to avoid questions that matter to working people. For example, why has he proposed a health care plan that would create a new tax on premiums for working families, but wouldn’t cut costs or cover more people?
Nancy Cochran, one of the workers who showed up to try to talk to McCain, was disappointed, saying:
For someone who claims to be a straight talker, I feel like we got the runaround. With his plan, we’re basically on our own. It feels like we’ve been forgotten. He wants us out of sight and out of mind.
Since McCain clinched the Republican nomination, AFL-CIO union members have held dozens of events across the country to confront him about his record and ask him for real solutions to our nation’s economic, health care and housing crises. He needs to step out of his high-dollar events for his elite funders and start listening to working families about how to turn around America.
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He would rather see working people arrested than speak to them, nice one Johnny.
I ran an article on this also “OR: John McCain’s Health Care plan will make “you” pay tax on medical insurance. Workers threatened with arrest by McCain camp“
These strong arm tactics are downright un-American and more befitting of a wannabee tyrant showing his true colors. To threaten citizens with arrest from someone running for president is an outrage to the values of freedom and liberty.
Did anyone see anything about McCain’s camp threatening to have union members arrested in Oregon on any of the national news outlets? They are giving McCain a free ride, it seems; while tracking every word and move of the Democratic candidates for President. Another outrage.
It is important to remember that John McCain is an anti-labor rightwing Republican and has been that for his entire political career. He is by his own statements a Barry Gold Water-Ronald Reagan Republican and Reagan as president was the biggest union buster in twentieth century U.S. history. McCain has also represented Arizona, a “right to work” aka anti-union shop state in the House and in the Senate for twenty-six years.
He will arrest workers and trade unionists because he represents a political tradition and a party which has always done that, always supported strike breaking, anti-labor injunctions, givebacks and giveaways from unions with nothing in return. As for his “health care” plan, trade unionists would have considered it a joke in 1948, much less 2008
The scariest thing about John McCain is the fact he’s such a hot head and loose cannon. If he were elected president, when he wasn’t busy in the war against the middle class, which country would he decide had terrorists and needed to be attacked next?
Which corporation would decide it for him?
FYI–I talked with a union activist who was there. She said if she had it to do over again she would just go ahead and get arrested.