Labor council head berates Bush's policy

BY TIM DEVANEY
OF THE NEWS STAFF

Brewer — Jack McKay, president of the Eastern Maine Labor Council, wants to see President Bush in black-and-white stripes and standing behind bars.

“[Bush] should be put in jail for what he’s done to the American middle class,” McKay said after a press conference Monday morning in Brewer, “and for the policies that he’s made.”
Lois Bloomer, the Penobscot County chair for the Republican Party, was shocked by McKay’s statement.

“Good grief. That’s ridiculous,” she said. “How can people blame the current situation entirely on the president? Many people and all of Congress [are responsible]. [The blame] should be equally shared.

“I don’t really believe that at this point people are having to choose between food and medicine and housing, and if they are it’s because they made poor choices with their mortgages. You can’t blame that on the president,” she said.

McKay complained about Maine’s economy and the current status of the middle class in America.

“Look at all the families in our region and the thousands [of people] that have lost their jobs,” he said. “Many have lost their homes and been forced to choose between food and medicine. It’s an outrageous situation, which directly results from George Bush’s policies, which have devastated working families. He should be held accountable for that.”

“I don’t believe people are devastated,” Bloomer said. “I believe in Yankee ingenuity and people helping people and neighbors helping neighbors.”

According to the Web site of the U.S. Department of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics, www.bls.gov, in January 2001, when Bush took office, Maine’s unemployment rate was 3 percent. Seven years later, in January 2008, Maine’s unemployment rate had risen to 4.9 percent. The nation’s unemployment rate dropped from 4.7 percent in 2001 to 4.6 percent in 2007.

“I don’t see what’s wrong with the unemployment rate,” Bloomer said. “It’s not that bad. I think the unemployment rate is mostly for people who don’t want to [or can’t] work anyways.”

McKay, the featured speaker at an EMLC press conference Monday at the Solidarity Center in Brewer, was on hand to announce the EMLC’s July Fourth Solidarity Celebration. During an interview after the press conference he was asked about the Bush Legacy Bus, which is designed to remind citizens of Bush’s policy decisions, according to McKay. He then said that the president’s policy decisions were bad enough to send him to prison.

“It’s important to remember what Bush and the far-right agenda has done to this country,” McKay said. “He’s run us right into the ground in every way. [America has a] troubled image abroad. [Bush has] done a number on the middle class, uprooted civil liberties and squandered the nation’s treasury on an unending war in Iraq. It’s very important to help people remember what he actually did.

“We may be witnessing – especially for Main citizens – the greatest drop in living standards since the Great Depression. It’s time to turn America around.”

McKay called the EMLC’s efforts to help local families a “Band-Aid.”

“Band-Aids are good,” he said, “but what we really need are different policies. They make a difference and it’s possible in the richest country in the world.”

The Employee Free Choice Act is one policy in particular McKay wants enacted.

“Employers are steadily gaining more and more power over employees in the workplace,” McKay said. “And EFCA is a policy to help balance power and wealth in America by making it easier for workers to organize a union.

“Current law favors employers in a number of areas. It’s weak, unwieldy and perverted by anti-union [people], which has made it more difficult for American workers to organize unions for themselves.”

This article was published in the Bangor Daily News during the summer of 2008.