The one truly stunning ad on Super Bowl night was a moving two-minute Chrysler commercial featuring actor Clint Eastwood. Aired at halftime, the ad hailed the renewal of the American automobile industry and featured images of union firefighters and factory workers.
At the 50-second point in the ad, images from last year's mass pro-union protests in Madison were featured.
But something was missing: union signs.
The images from Madison were taken from a historic video by Matt Wisniewski, a Madison photographer whose chronicling of the protests drew international attention and praise. Wisniewski's work went viral, and was even featured in a video by rocker Tom Morello.
Chrysler used Wisniewski's award-winning video with permission. But the union presence — and some Wisconsin history — were lost in translation.
Wisniewski's original video, from an evening rally at the King Street entrance to the Capitol, features images (at the 2-minute, 17-second mark) of signs raised by members of Madison Teachers Inc. (MTI), the local education union that played a pivotal role in the protests. One sign features the MTI logo, another reads: "Care About Educators Like They Care for Your Child."
In the Chrysler ad, the MTI logo is missing and the "Care About Educators" sign is replaced with one featuring an image of an alarm clock. Several other union signs are simply whited out.
The Chrysler ad also eliminates the identification on a statue of Col. Hans Christian Heg, the Wisconsin Civil War hero who rallied a Scandanavian unit to fight for the union with the cry: "Norsemen ... the government of our adopted country is in danger. It is our duty as brave and intelligent citizens to extend our hands in defense of the cause of our Country ..."
Heg became a reference point for the hundreds of thousands of protesters who rallied at the Capitol in February and March of 2011, and who linked their activism to a tradition of answering the call to defend basic rights and ideals. Many of the largest rallies at the Capitol were held on the grounds where Heg's statue stands, including the the rally featured in the Chrysler ad.
The US Chamber of Commerce lobbied to kill a bill that would have helped cover medical expenses and compensation for first responders and survivors of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, according to documents available online.
The Chamber’s aim was to keep open a tax loophole benefiting foreign corporations that the $7.4 billion bill would have closed to provide funding for the American emergency workers.
So what do the Chinese Government and the Rightwing mega-lobbying group calling itself the U.S. Chamber of Commerce have in common? Apparently, they are both interested in hacking into the computer networks of their perceived political opponents and appear to be using very similar techniques and tools to do so, as The Nation's Lee Fang reported on Monday.
On October 10, 2012, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and three industry groups filed suit against the Securities and Exchange Commission in federal court in Washington, D.C., seeking to overturn the recently-promulgated SEC rule implementing the Dodd-Frank Act provision requiring disclosure of payments to foreign governments relating to oil, gas and mining projects.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the nation’s most powerful business lobbying organization1, has been campaigning against unions, fair labor practices, increases in the minimum wage, and legal protections for America’s workers for nearly a century. The Chamber’s anti-union initiatives are just one part of its multi-issue agenda. Unlike other anti-union organizations, this prominent lobbying force does not hide its alignment with big business.
Prudential Financial sent in a $2 million donation last year as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce kicked off a national advertising campaign to weaken the historic rewrite of the nation’s financial regulations.
BACK in the 1990s when Thomas J. Donohue was president of the American Trucking Associations, a subordinate raised a question at a staff meeting.
Some of the association’s members, the aide said, wondered whether it was really necessary for the group’s president to fly on a private jet.
Mr. Donohue, a scrappy Irish-American born in Brooklyn and raised on Long Island, turned to his chief of staff and asked how many seats his jet had. “Well, eight, sir,” the aide said. “Tomorrow morning I want you to call and get a 12-seater,” Mr. Donohue shot back. The subject never came up again.
The Chamber of Commerce is one of the biggest obstacles to progressive change in the United States. Claiming to represent the interests of American business, it is the largest lobbying group in the nation, with over 300,000 anonymous dues paying members and a staggeringly deep war chest and immense influence in both parties. From its cyclopean headquarters on H Street and Connecticut Avenue NW, the Chamber mobilizes its diverse membership to combat everything from environmental regulation to minimum wage increases.
Dennis Kucinich and Ben Manski speak to Wisconsinites on February 12th, 2013 as part of Liberty Tree's "Shut the Chamber!" campaign kickoff (complete audio below, courtesy of WORT 89.9FM, followed by printed excerpts).
Paving the way for a new mine, lowering income taxes and finding ways to train more workers for available jobs are among the priorities cited by top Republicans, who will control the Legislature.
The two-year session begins Monday and will run through May 2014. Republicans have a 59-39 majority in the Assembly, with one vacancy in a heavily GOP district, and an 18-15 majority in the Senate. Gov. Scott Walker is also a Republican.
Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, R-Juneau, said much of the Legislature’s work will revolve around the governor’s proposed budget, expected to be submitted in mid-February.
“The budget controls the landscape for the first six months,” Fitzgerald said.
The election may have ended almost two weeks ago, but in Arizona, it goes on. Perhaps it’s fitting for a state with its own time zone, but as of last night, there remained over 100,000 uncounted votes in the state’s two largest counties, leaving election officials unable to officially certify the results of a number of the state’s high profile races, including the Senate race, several House contests, and Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s reelection bid. Friday was the deadline for counties to finish counting ballots, but the state blew past it yesterday when Maricopa, which contains Phoenix, and Pima County, which contains Tucson, said they needed more time.
As the White House begins a series of meetings today on the looming "fiscal cliff," a coalition of the largest corporate firms and advocacy groups is lobbying for wide-ranging cuts in government spending, including to programs like Medicare and Social Security. The group, which includes 80 of the country’s most powerful CEOs, is called the Campaign to Fix the Debt. It was co-founded by former Clinton White House Chief of Staff Erskine Bowles and former Republican Sen. Alan Simpson, previously the co-chairs of President Obama’s bipartisan National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform. Critics have accused the group of using the budget crisis to push for corporate tax cuts.
Initial accounts of last Tuesday’s presidential election contemplated what seemed to be a significant decline in turnout from 2008. Those reports may have been premature, at least in part. Some states, particularly those where much balloting is conducted by mail, have yet to finish counting their returns. It is likely that there are several million votes left to be counted in California, for example. Nonetheless, it seems probable that we will see something of a split in the number of people who turned out to vote in 2012.
In many of the states where the campaigns focused most of their attention, more people voted than in 2008. Turnout is likely to have declined in many non-battleground states, however.
The Supreme Court will consider eliminating the government's most potent weapon against racial discrimination at polling places since the 1960s. The court acted three days after a diverse coalition of voters propelled President Barack Obama to a second term in the White House.
With a look at affirmative action in higher education already on the agenda, the court is putting a spotlight on race by re-examining the ongoing necessity of laws and programs aimed at giving racial minorities access to major areas of American life from which they once were systematically excluded.
South Carolina Republicans on Friday asked the state's highest court to stop a recount of votes in Richland County, arguing that a GOP candidate fairly won a disputed legislative race.
The state party made the request to the Supreme Court a day after a circuit judge ordered that ballots and voting machines in Richland County be guarded by state police while state election officials reviewed them. County election officials had planned to certify election results Friday, but that process is on hold.
State election officials said they planned to begin their count Friday afternoon.
Phil Ejercito, a Madison-based freelance photographer, took the usual steps prior to showing up Tuesday to photograph what turned into the election night victory party for Wisconsin’s new senator, Tammy Baldwin.
After showing identification, he was handed press credentials and then guided to the press area that included nearly 100 other journalists.
But as 8 p.m. approached and the ballroom at Monona Terrace began to fill with roughly 1,000 members of the public, a velvet red rope similar to what you’d find in a movie theater started to be drawn tight to cordon off the media area.
Stealing your vote is easier than ever now that the media has decided it can't afford the exit polling that helped track irregular ballot counts in more than a third of the states. Here's why it's important, and what you can do.
The news that America's mainstream media has cancelled exit polling in 19 states, means that insider election theft this November is now even harder to track, and therefore easier to get away with - something that scarcely seemed possible.
Did Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio—the face of Arizona’s anti-immigrant movement—really win a sixth term of office on Tuesday?
That is one question that Latino organizers are asking Wednesday after receiving reports that perhaps as many as 300,000 ballots remain uncounted in Maricopa County, with what they say are a sizeable proportion coming from non-white voters who unexpectedly were given provisional ballots after their names were not on polling place voter lists.
