(Help Charlie meet his goal of $100 for every mile carpetbagger McClintock traveled to the district. – promoted by Julia Rosen)

Charlie Brown, running for Congress in California’s 4th District, needs our help! I just received this email in my inbox, as I’m sure hundreds of you also have. Let’s send Charlie into battle well-armed and prepared for these foreign invaders (quite literally foreign– none of the Republicans running in this race even come from the 4th District) by sending in a donation to the Brown campaign!

For those of you who DON’T know Charlie Brown and have been living under a rock for the last year and a half, here’s a link to his website:

www.charliebrownforcongress.org

Here are a few other links to get you aquainted.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Brown_%28California%29

Lincoln News messenger article

Grass Valley Union article

Charlie has been a tremendous voice for those of us in the 4th District, and he’s been leading by example even from the campaign trail. Charlie is donating 5% of his campaign funds to local charity organizations that service veterans and their families. You can find more information on Charlie’s Veterans Challenge by clicking here.

Dear Friends,

As you know, last week, another career politician from outside the 4th District–Southern California State Senator Tom McClintock–entered the GOP primary to replace Rep. John Doolittle.  

We asked you to help us raise one hundred dollars for every one of the 418 miles separating McClintock’s office in Thousand Oaks with our office in Roseville–between partisan politics as usual and a new standard of leadership in the fourth district.  

So far, you are doing a great job.  Hundreds have already contributed and we are more than halfway to our March 31st goal as of this morning.

Click here to contribute and keep the momentum going.

You may be aware that last week, LA Tom also announced that he wasn’t planning to move into the district until after the election.  That means he won’t even be able to vote in the same races as the people he claims to represent.   McClintock’s arrogant brand of partisan political opportunism exemplifies what’s broken in Washington.

This race was never truly about John Doolittle. It was and is about changing a system that promotes career politicians who care more for personal gain than the common good. John Doolittle, Tom McClintock and Doug Ose are all symptoms of the same partisan problem—birds of a feather, feathering their nests.

And we already know the consequences of representatives who put political partisanship first.  It’s $4.00/gallon gas, and record amounts of oil imported from the middle east.  It’s Americans working harder for less, unprecdented waste of our tax dollars, the stifling of the American innovation, and the exportation of American jobs.  It’s 30 years of inaction on our borders, Al Qaeda growing resurgent in Afghanistan, and more blank checks for no bid contractors and Iraqi politicians.  

Our campaign has been about results, accountability and putting patriotism before partisanship.  That’s why we donate 5% of every dollar we raise to veterans service providers.  That’s why we pitched in to help during the Tahoe fires.  That’s why more than 11,000 of you have donated to this campaign for change.

Please, contribute today to help us put a stop to the kind of politics that cares more about partisan sound bytes, than solving America’s problems.  We can, and we must.

I promise you, every day from now until the next election— we are going to get up early, work all day and keep doing what has made us so successful so far. We are going to unite the people of this district and this nation behind the battle tested vision we need to get America back on track—country comes first.  

Our goal is $41,800 by the FEC Deadline of March 31st.

Click here to help us welcome Tom McClintock to town and send Charlie Brown to Washington. Every dollar counts and now is the time to make your voice heard.

Thank you in advance for your continued support.

Very Sincerely,

Todd A. Stenhouse

Campaign Manager

P.S.  Click here to donate today and help us raise $100 for every mile Senator Tom is going to have to drive to get from Southern California to our district.  And please forward this urgent message to five friends.

(Bumped – promoted by jsw)

OK, SEIU staffers, you’re not helping your cause by registering anonymous brand new snarky user IDs just to jump into the SEIU-CNA war.  Just stop it.  By violating basic norms of behavior (no shilling, no sockpuppetry) and the really really basic site rules that have been so recently pointed out to you, all you’re doing is tossing away your credibility with people (e.g., bloggers), who would normally be your natural allies.

And if you don’t care about us, think about this:  you’re undermining your own case.  How do you think that a real ordinary SEIU member trying to make their point is now going to be viewed?  If you now disclose your affiliation and try to make your case, how do you think you’ll be viewed?  Sure, you could continue to try circumvent our ability to know who you are and you might eventually succeed, but at this point, you’ve poisoned the Calitics well for almost anyone taking the SEIU side in this dustup unless they disclose up front that they’re spokespersons for SEIU (and still… well, this has not been a good day for you).  

Last, maybe you could come by and participate in the Calitics community for some purpose other than attacks on other unions.  That would be great.  We’d love to have diaries on what SEIU is doing outside of this internecine fight.  And you’d have some positive on-line street cred among our community, rather than the negative credibility you’re building up.

Older parts of this post are on the flip.

As some people may know, there have recently been some fairly substantial disputes among the Service Employees International Union, the United Healthcare Workers, and more recently, the California Nurses Association.  Calitics is generally a union-friendly blog, and if union members want to use Calitics to publicize their positions, or even hash out their differences, we are happy to have their participation in almost every case. What we at Calitics will not tolerate is a failure by community members to disclose the nature of their affiliation (such as employment and position) with candidates, campaigns, or organizations with respect to which they comment.

That sort of failure to disclose violates our very simple, easy-to-understand, common-sense rules. Unfortunately, we are seeing that failure more and more frequently, and in some cases, we believe that the failure is deliberate.  We have two new users, Lloyd and blanca, who registered within two hours of one another, from the same IP address, and using email addresses that either directly or with a bit of Google help, suggest very strongly that they are actually employed by SEIU in public relations roles.

Lloyd then attacked CNA in a diary that is almost nothing more than a reprint of a SEIU press release.

Blanca proceeded to attack Sal Rosselli of UHW in two cut-and-pasted comments (one, two).

In both cases, the perspective presented is that of an ordinary union member, which at best not seems not to be the whole truth.

This behavior is not acceptable here. Our rules are simple and easy to follow.  If SEIU, CNA, and UHW want to slug out their differences in diaries and comments here at Calitics, that’s fine, as long as everyone follows the rules. Don’t make us intervene or post meta-diaries like this any more than we have to.

Everybody should get out their Bob Mulholland novelty masks, just for the party access possibilities:

The road to the Democratic National Convention in Denver may go through San Jose.

The state Democratic Party is holding its annual meeting here the final weekend in March, and party officials are awaiting word on whether Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama will accept invitations to appear.

Why would the dueling Democrats come when Pennsylvania holds the next crucial primary April 22?

One word: superdelegates. And perhaps a chance to throw in a megabuck fundraiser or two.

“There will more politicking going on at this convention than in decades,” predicted Bob Mulholland, adviser to the state party. Mulholland would know. He’s one of about 20 uncommitted superdelegates in California whom the campaigns are heavily wooing in their quest to secure their party’s nomination.

The convention is right in the sweet spot, a few weeks before Pennsylvania.  And the fundraising opportunities in the Bay Area are numerous.  I don’t think there’s any question that Obama and Clinton will be on hand.  But will there be chocolate fountain parties for uncommitted superdelegates only?

This week in Ohio there was a major victory for democratic, member-led, social justice unionism.  A hospital chain hand-picked a union, SEIU, which is known for being friendly to employers, and attempted to impose this company union on employees without a democratic process or any show of support among workers.

Local nurses, together with the National Nurses Organizing Committee/California Nurses Association, started an effort to block this anti-democratic, top-down deal and were successful–in a major victory for RNs, patients, and healthcare reform.

Story below the flip

You can read more in the Chicago Trib, or from the California Nurses Association, below.  

A bit of background: The Service Employees International Union is known for “partnering” with major corporations–whether that’s Wal-Mart on healthcare reform, nursing home companies on blocking nursing home reform, or their own employers, including HMOs and hospital chains.  When they partner with their employers, they agree to work together for the good of the company, which puts the needs of members second to the needs of the employers, and ends their ability to advocate for social justice and truly progressive reforms, including single-payer healthcare.  

This is a danger to the entire labor movement, and the main reason SEIU bolted from the AFL-CIO a few years ago.

But this extraordinary story–which included having the hospital chain actually file the papers for the union–is a new step for SEIU, and fortunately one that has been stopped.

One journalist reports she was told, “It’s like the workers will have two bosses, and they pay dues to one of them.”

Here’s the full NNOC/CNA statement:

Hospital Chain and Hand Picked Union, SEIU, Forced to Cancel Rigged Election After Protests by RNs and Other Employees – ‘A Victory for Employees, Patient Care, and Union Democracy’

After public exposure and protests, the Catholic Healthcare Partners chain and its hand picked union, the Service Employees International Union, today cancelled rigged elections — called without a single sign of support from the employees — planned this week for 8,000 registered nurses and other employees at nine Ohio hospitals in Cincinnati, Lima, and Springfield.

“This is a significant victory for employee rights, patient care protections, and workplace democracy, and a huge setback for a hospital industry and SEIU that hoped to make this shoddy abuse of what should be a democratic process into a national model,” said Rose Ann DeMoro, executive director of the National Nurses Organizing Committee/California Nurses Association, which challenged the sham elections.

CHP and SEIU arranged the votes through a top-down deal that “turned decades of labor law rights for employees on their head and made a mockery of constitutional protections of free speech,” DeMoro noted.

With the collusion of the Bush administration’s National Labor Relations Board, the employer filed for the election without any showing of support for SEIU, and maneuvered to stifle opposition and block potential participation from any legitimate union, she said.

CHP even resorted to the extreme action of going to court to obtain an injunction to block NNOC/CNA RNs from talking to the nurses about their rights and their ability to stop the hospital from imposing an unwanted union on them, while the hospitals were also blocking employees from internal discussions about the rushed vote.

DeMoro sharply criticized CHP and SEIU, along with the labor board for “determining among themselves the destiny of a workforce that is primarily women. The chauvinism and arrogance of their behavior is appalling, and has received the repudiation it so richly deserved.”

“But their conspiracy of silence and the whole shoddy scheme fell apart when it was exposed to the light of day and the nurses and other employees became aware that they had alternatives to a union selected for them by their employer,” said DeMoro.  

“They pulled the election precisely because it was abundantly clear there was no support from the very employees for a union imposed on them by their employer and disgust with the underhanded abuse of their constitutional rights.”

The cancelled elections, DeMoro added, are a “huge blow to SEIU International’s corrupted approach to growth at the expense of the public interest or a democratic voice of the workers.”

“SEIU depends on the complicity and support of employers even without any indication of support from the workers they are pretending to represent. That’s not what unions should stand for, and it’s not democratic,” said DeMoro. She noted growing opposition from SEIU members across the nation, reflected on the website www.reformseiu.org.

Finally, DeMoro also criticized the role of the labor board. The planned CHP elections were a template for new rules proposed by the NLRB to sanction employers filing elections without worker support, a form of company unionism that the 1935 law creating modern labor law rights was intended to stop.

But the current NLRB, stacked with anti-union appointees by the Bush administration, “has been steadily gutting workers’ rights, and turning the board into a vehicle for suppressing worker democracy and rights rather than protecting them. This election, and the rules now proposed, are a critical component of that ominous trend,” DeMoro added.

Note: I am a healthcare activist with the National Nurses Organizing Committee/California Nurses Association.  We are the nation’s largest RN union, the nation’s fastest-growing union, and sponsors of state and federal bills for guaranteed healthcare on the single-payer model, aka Medicare for All

When did it become politically incorrect for women candidates to be passionate about running for public office?  As I sit here reading the events surrounding the resignation of the Obama campaign’s foreign policy advisor, Samantha Power, I can’t help but feel this strikes yet another blow for fight for equal representation for women.  Yes, Ms. Power’s remarks crossed a political boundary, but even more disturbing is her reasoning for using the word she did.  Ms. Power twisted Senator Clinton’s passion, drive, ambition and commitment to her presidential bid with a negative spin comparable to that of little children on a playground.  Is this typical of how the average woman views female candidates?  

Unfortunately, I am finding through my work as Founder of the CALIFORNIA LIST that Ms. Power is not the exception to the rule.  Women elected officials are in decline in California and female candidates are becoming more and more a tough sell – even to their fellow women.  Why?  Recent focus groups of women voters moderated by pollsters at Fairbank, Maslin, and Maullin found that those traits that make a woman inherently feminine are sometimes the biggest obstacles.  Women candidates who are passionate about the issues are instantly labeled in the media as emotional or wimpy and those who are too restrained are cold and un-nurturing.

I don’t know about you, but compassion and strength are high on my list of must haves for those I want representing me.   After all, insatiable passion has been the catalyst to some of American’s greatest heroines.  Cady Elizabeth Stanton’s passion for equality drove her to spearhead the American women’s movement securing a women’s right to right.  Rosa Parks’ passion against racial inequality drove her to sit in the “white section” of that Alabama bus.  Passion is essential and ambition is the breeding ground for all positive change. Research indicates that women electeds consistently champion those issues women voters number as a top priority such as education, health care, the environment, and reproductive choice.  It follows that women need to equal the playing field in the male dominated political arena to have our voices heard.  Electing women matters and supporting viable women candidates give that us the voices that represent our choices.

The mission of the CALIFORNIA LIST is to augment the pipeline of Democratic women candidates and elected officials in statewide offices. Our goal is to create a future generation of progressive female leaders while strengthening the bond between informed voters, statewide representatives, and political activists in California.  Visit our website and let us know why you think women are a declining resource in the California political landscape.

Bettina Duval is the founder of the California List, a political fundraising network that helps elect Democratic women to all branches of California state government.