Category: Al Franken

by Dave Mindeman

Sen. Al Franken may be able to claim a victory against corporate dominance today. The rumors on Wall Street are that the merger of T-Mobile and AT&T may get blocked by the Department of Justice.

Senator Franken has been the most outspoken critic of this merger:

Sen Franken: "The competitive effects of a merger of this size and scope will reverberate throughout the telecommunications sector for decades to come and will affect consumer prices, customer service, innovation, competition in handsets and the quality and quantity of network coverage. These threats are too large and too irrevocable to be prevented or alleviated by conditions."

Corporations have been consolidating their hold on new technologies and a merger of this magnitude would challenge the idea of a "competitive" environment. Senator Franken has been fighting to protect the consumer against new emerging monopolies....and in this case, he may have made his case...along with others.

This is also a jobs issue:

"I urge you to compel AT&T to publicly release its plans for job cuts in the first, second, and third years following the merger approval," wrote Franken. "Many proponents of this merger have acknowledged that short-term job losses may occur, but I think it is important for the American public to understand exactly what those numbers will be, especially given the weak state of the U.S. job market."

Mergers of this magnitude always result in massive job losses. After all, less competition means that repetitive job positions will be eliminated.

Corporations are sitting on trillions of dollars in cash, waiting to make deals of this kind so that they can keep pushing for efficiences that eliminate workforce "expenses".

If this merger has, indeed, been stopped, then it is time to thank Sen. Al Franken once again.

Note: It should be noted that the unions were in favor of this merger. I understand their position...AT&T is unionized - T-Mobile is not. And granted it might have increased union membership at some point. Probably after the shake out that would cause initial duplication to be eliminated. We had also expected that the Delta NWA merger was going to help union membership as well, but the non-union vote won out. I don't trust these mergers as far as I can spit.

Category: Al Franken

by Alan Anderson

Governor Pawlenty and conservative interest group Minnesota Majority are now claiming that 1000 felons voted in the 2008 senatorial election and could have tipped the scales back to Coleman. They want an investigation. In the mean time, many of the disputed ballots are being found to be cast by individuals who were no longer ineligible to vote?.they had served their time and were again able to cast a ballot. It is 2010?..it is time to put this close election behind us. Please.

And if anyone wants to complain about disputed elections, then Democrats can always bring up the disputed 2000 election. The stakes were higher?.the presidency of the United States. In that election Mr. Gore won the popular vote by almost 540,000. That total is undisputed.

The problems in Florida, which gave Mr. Bush the necessary numbers to win the Electoral College vote by 5, were made worse when the Supreme Court, in Bush vs. Gore, said the uneven standards for the recount would do ?irreparable damage? to Mr. Bush. In what some would consider one of the worst Supreme Court decisions ever, the most activist intervention of the Court in American politics, a conservative Court chose to override the Florida Supreme Court and stop the recount. This clearly should have never happened. Conservatives have always supported states rights?especially against federal intervention. Except in this case, when they could hand the presidency of the United States to their political party. None of the conservative justices chose to recuse themselves, even though members of their family worked for the Bush campaign.

Reviews of the ballots were inconclusive. Some revealed that Bush would have won if only the four disputed counties in the court case were reviewed. Had there been a statewide recount, as was done in Minnesota, there is a strong likelihood that Gore would have won. Physically reviewing each ballot indicated that many of the discrepancies could have been discerned.

Most troubling of all the issues in the Florida election were the patterns discovered in voter trends. For example, ballots were rejected in counties where there were large majorities of Blacks, Hispanics, and older Floridians. Three times as many ballots in minority communities were rejected, compared to predominantly white areas. And clearly over-count ballots that were rejected were heavily cast for Gore. A NY Times article (Nov 12, 2001) suggested that of 113,000 over-vote ballots reviewed, 75,000 were cast for Gore and a minor candidate, whereas 28,000 chose Bush and a minor candidate. A hand count could have changed the outcome.

The worst part of the whole story in terms of American history is what happened as a result of this ?appointment? by the Supreme Court. There probably would have not been a 9/11, there wouldn?t have been an Iraq war, there wouldn?t have been a huge tax cut for the rich (coupled with relaxed oversight of Wall Street and oil businesses) that caused the greatest recession since the Great Depression, there wouldn?t have been a Roberts Supreme Court that unleashed corporate money into the political arena, there wouldn?t have been a prolonged Afghan war, there wouldn?t have been torture, there wouldn?t have been 6000 American soldiers killed, there wouldn?t have been millions displaced and more than 500,000 civilians killed in Iraq, and perhaps there wouldn?t be the political polarization that we find in today?s social climate.

Category: Al Franken

by Dave Mindeman

At NetRoots Nation, Al Franken stated this:

....But I do think that this whole approach of slowing everything down, in many ways I think it?s so that, they don?t want a jobs bill because they don?t want people to get jobs before the election. It?s a harsh thing to say, and I don?t want to impugn the motives of my colleagues, but I don?t get what they?re doing otherwise.

Of course, he is referring to the tactics of the Senate Republicans to utilize the filibuster far beyond its original intent. And of course, the Minnesota GOP had to respond:

In a statement, the Minnesota GOP Chairman Tony Sutton said that Franken ?crossed a line.? ?Al Franken?s outrageous remarks are beneath a United States senator and we would encourage him to apologize for his baseless suggestion,? Sutton said.

OK. So the first thing to note is that this "line" that Franken has somehow crossed must be a barrier with "Democrats Not Allowed" written across it, because Sutton and his GOP cohorts have no such arbitrary line stopping them.

But more importantly, what Franken contends about the Republican intent has some empirical evidence. Think Progress looked at over 100 bills that have passed the House (with large bipartisan majorities), that the Senate filibuster has left in limbo.

All told, there are 290 such bills in various forms that are sitting on the Senate agenda. You can view the entire list here....

But lets look at a few specifics:

1) Small Business Financing and Investment Act (HR 3854): This legislation would provide assistance to small businesses so they get the credit the need to obtain loans to make payroll and expand. It passed the House 389-32 on Oct. 29, 2009.

2) Republicans blocked a motion by Senator Jim Webb (D-VA) to provide immediate fixes to two areas of the law that would have clarified and protected coverage for millions of TRICARE and Veterans Administration beneficiaries.

3) Homes for Heroes Act (HR403): This legislation would expand and improve housing for homeless veterans. It passed the House 417-2 on June 16, 2009.

4) H.R. 3738, Small Business Early-Stage Investment Act

5) H.R. 3737, Small Business Microlending Expansion Act

6) H.R. 466, Wounded Veteran Job Security Act

7) H.R. 2352, Job Creation Through Entrepreneurship Act

Of course, these are all in addition to the unconscionable delay in extending unemployment benefits. The blocking of the Finance Reform Bill. The delay on Federal Health Care. And the killing of the Cap and Trade legislation which contrary to their characterization would end up creating jobs not killing them.

The Republicans are determined to stop any progress in bringing down barriers to job solutions, job creation, and ironically, help for Veterans. If Franken is crossing some line to point out this hypocrisy, then please Senator Franken, by all means, cross the line.