Welcome to your Saturday Night EENR! Tonight’s theme is a big blue map.

Tonight’s stories below the fold:

• Bill Maher Stalked by Big Blue Map
• Carpenters Building a Big Blue Map in Nevada
• True Blue Majority
• YouTubes You May Have Missed
• JRE Diary Roundup

Bill Maher Stalked by Big Blue Map

Suddenly, big blue maps are showing up everywhere! Talk show host Bill Maher is even being stalked by one. Check it out sneaking up behind him in this next clip! Oh yeah, and John Edwards is in the clip too.

I will be carefully checking Open Secrets after next quarter’s fund raising reports come out. I expect Bill Maher to put his money where his mouth is, otherwise you never know what that big blue map may be capable of. Mwahahahahahahahahaha!

Carpenters Building a Big Blue Map in Nevada

In Nevada today, John Edwards spoke to the Carpenters Union, which has endorsed him, and laid out his plan to train low-income workers and connect them to good paying union jobs.

“Right now, our public jobs programs send job seekers into low-wage jobs and do nothing to help build the middle class. I have a plan called Training Works to connect hard-working Americans to smart training for good-paying, union jobs that actually exist,” Edwards said at the Carpenters International Training Center.

Along with his Training Works plan, which includes Career Ladders to train low-wage workers on the job for higher-wage, higher-skilled jobs in their same field, Edwards talked about his Green Collar Jobs program to create over 1 million new jobs in the ‘new energy economy.’

Carpenters Union International General President Doug McCarron spoke about why the Union has chosen to endorse Edwards.

“The Carpenters Union chose Edwards as the candidate with the best chance of winning the White House and the person who will best represent hard-working families,” Carpenters Union International General President Doug McCarron said.

The Carpenters Union is one of the largest and most politically active unions in Nevada. The union, which represents over 12,000 members in the state, endorsed Edwards last month. Edwards has also received support from the United Steelworkers of America and the Transport Workers of America, giving him the largest bloc of labor support for any presidential candidate in Nevada.

McCarron continued, “John Edwards has committed to campaign in all 50 states when he wins the nomination. He believes that all Americans, whether they see themselves as Democrats, Republicans or Independents, want real change and bold leadership, and he is confidant that his message of telling the American people the truth and fighting for real change will win these voters and states.”

And this segues nicely into our next story…

True Blue Majority

Yesterday, John Edwards was in California to receive the official endorsement of the California SEIU, 656,000 members strong. During his speech, Edwards described his True Blue Majority initiative, a strategy to campaign in all 50 states and build a super majority for the Democrats in Congress.

“The press and the pundits think the most electable candidate is the one with the most money and the most ties to Washington,” said Edwards. “The problem is the press and the pundits have confused the candidate who would win an election inside the Beltway with the candidate who can win an election in the rest of America. I believe any candidate who takes money from lobbyists and special interests is not electable, and I believe any candidate who defends the broken system in Washington will not win.

Edwards continued: “The most electable candidate is the one with the best ideas who is committed to bringing change to every corner of America. The people who want change don’t just live in blue states or big cities. They don’t just live in swing states – they live in every state in this country, and on every street in America. I believe that if we offer real change, if we reject the broken system, say no to the corporate interests and stand once and for all with the people, nothing can stop us. We’ll not only win the White House, we’ll elect super-majorities in the House and the Senate as well.”

Just how likely is it that Edwards could win over red and purple states and help candidates for the Senate, the House, and on down the ballot in those states?  Plenty likely, according to a Global Strategy Group polling memo released earlier this week.

The memo by Edwards campaign pollster Harrison Hickman examines polls from many different polling organizations to come to its conclusions.

Nationwide general election polling shows John Edwards is the Democrat with the best chance of defeating the Republican candidate in the 2008 general election for President. Edwards is the only Democrat with a significant lead in a head-to-head match-up against Republican frontrunner Giuliani. Against the other three major Republican candidates, Edwards’ average margin of victory is identical to or better than that of Barack Obama, and significantly higher than Hillary Clinton’s average margin.

Edwards also outperforms the other Democratic candidates in match-ups with Republican candidates in key battleground states including Iowa, Missouri, and Ohio. Further, unlike other Democrats who must “run the table” in states where Democrats have been competitive in recent elections, Edwards brings new states into play. This provides alternate scenarios – and a margin for error – when it comes to amassing 270 electoral votes.

More detailed analysis is available in the memo.

There’s the big blue map again! It’s following me!

YouTubes You May Have Missed

Here are two YouTube videos from the Edwards campaign that came out two days ago, but they don’t have very many views.  I didn’t see them, and I suspect you may have missed them too.

You Are The Guardians

Rebuilding New Orleans

JRE Diary Roundup

John Edwards is Fighting to Restore Real American Leadership by jamess
Iowa shakeup, California SEIU WILL work for Edwards in Iowa by Wade Norris
Following Senator Edwards’ Example on FCC Media Consolidation Question by Karita Allegheny
John Edwards is a Friend to Women by Todd Bennett
Hope… by Chaoslillith
Edwards for a True Blue Coalition by AJ WI

Contribute to turn the map blue! Remember, your donation is matched up to $250.

We’re big! We’re bad! We’re blue! Let’s get MEAN!

I saw Bill Maher on Friday in an interview with former Mexican President Vicente Fox, lamenting that Bill Clinton and Arnold Schwarzenegger wouldn’t be able to face off as Presidential candidates due to Constitutional violations.  “Isn’t that sad,” he said.  For all his conceits as a free thinker, Maher represents a kind of baseline Hollywood groupthink when it comes to Arnold, reading the headlines and the magazine covers but never bothering to uncover the whole story.  That story can be easily divined from this weekend’s veto massacre.  In addition to stopping the California DREAM Act, he vetoed needed legislation for the state’s migrant farm workers, allowing them to organize through a “card check” system.  He even disabled a bill that would have added a sunset clause to the card check system, making it ever harder for them to organize and support themselves and their families.  Here’s another bill that went down the drain:

On Saturday, another bill was vetoed, AB 377, by Assemblymember Juan Arambula (D-Fresno). It would have required an employer who is a farm labor contractor to disclose in the itemized statement furnished to employees up to five names and addresses of the legal entities that secured the employer’s services.

According to the sponsor of the bill, the California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation more than 40,000 California farms grow fruits and vegetables on almost four million acres in this state, so it is not surprising that a 2006 survey of Central Valley farm workers found that 70% could not identify the name of the farm they were working on.

The same survey found that 56% had not been paid the minimum wage when working on a piece rate; 31% had not been paid all the overtime they were owed; and that 42% had unexplained deductions made from their pay. Between 60% and 80% of harvest work is done by labor contractors. Without being able to readily identify the farm who hired the contractor, enforcement actions against the contractor are unlikely to either make the worker whole for wages owed or to have any deterrent effect at all against a grower who shares legal responsibility for the contractor’s labor law violations.

So while Governor Schwarzenegger told the hundreds of farm workers who were at the Capitol in September that he was supportive of their goals, in the end, he vetoed these bills and sided with agribusiness.

Indeed, this is part of a persistent pattern by the Governor to make life harder for working families while protecting the corporate interests that helped get him elected.  Far from a governor of the people, he is simply a corporatist who has the backs of the elite.  Because we don’t have a functioning political press, this contempt for the average Californian will probably not make it too far off the blogs and insider political circles.  But they have real-world consequences that people will only discover when they are put in the situation that legislation could have covered, and they aren’t likely to connect the dots.  A sampling of the pro-worker legislation that was vetoed:

• SB 549 (Corbett)-this bill would have protected the job of a worker taking time off to attend to the funeral of a family member.

• SB 727 (Kuehl)-this bill provided that employees covered by family temporary disability insurance (FTDI) could take the leave to care for a grandparent, siblings, grandchildren and parent-in-law.

• AB 537 (Swanson)-this bill expanded the definition of family under the California Family Rights Act (CFRA) to allow eligible workers to take job-protected leave to care for a seriously ill adult child, sibling, grandchild, or parent in law.

• AB 435 (Brownley)-this bill would have addressed harsh limitation periods on bringing certain wage discrimination claims. These claims are frequently brought by working women who have been underpaid relative to their male counterparts, and many of these women are struggling to raise kids in single parent situations.

• AB 1636 (Mendoza)-this bill would have expedited a job retraining voucher to disabled workers unable to return to their former jobs; workers such as these are struggling to adapt to replace the income needed for the family to survive.

• SB 936 (Perata)-this bill would have increased the benefits paid to permanently disabled workers over a 3 year period. Since 2004 these workers have seen their benefits slashed by 50% or more according to studies by University of California researchers. At the same time, insurer profits have exceeded all benefits paid to or on behalf of disabled workers; it’s a concept that is clearly not family-friendly. The families and kids of disabled workers suffer as they struggle to keep pace with the financial devastation of injuries.

AB 435 is the state version of the Lily Ledbetter Pay Act, attempting to remedy a horrible Supreme Court decision from earlier in the year.  So Arnold is putting himself squarely in the position of Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, John Roberts and Smuel Alito.  This is our post-partisan “leader.”

Furthermore, he vetoed meaningful health care reform in AB 8, and put forth flawed legislation of his own that has no chance of coming out of the legislature, partially financed by the stupid, shortsighted practice of leasing the lottery to private interests.

I’d like to say that there’s an “on the other hand,” a couple bills Arnold allowed through that provide aid or comfort to the working class.  But on these issues, he comes down squarely on the side of his corporate buddies.  It feels like spitting into the wind to keep noting this.  Maybe someday Bill Maher won’t have a big-time TV show, he’ll be working for his own retirement, and he’ll realize that he’s been screwed by this Administration.  But I wouldn’t bet on it.