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Elton Gallegly Is Anti-Union and Anti-Minimum Wage In CA 24th CD

For our economy to be strong, we must have a strong work force, and for our work force to be strong, we must have strong organized labor.  Marta Jorgensen believes this, and it shows in her support for legislation like the increase in the federal minimum wage and the major union organization bill that were passed into law last year.  

The union organization bill amended the National Labor Relations Act to allow workers to choose to organize a labor union and outline a time frame for bargaining without requiring a vote if they so wish, as well as to penalize employers who attempt to influence the formation of a union.  As a result, labor unions can fight for their workers’ rights more efficiently and more effectively.  Marta Jorgensen is a firm supporter of this law.

A living minimum wage and more efficient union organization are two important pieces in Jorgensen’s comprehensive platform, called E-Revolution.  Along with calls to change energy, environmental, and education policy, E-Revolution demands reform in American economic policy to secure a better, more stable economic future.  Aside from working to make wages more livable and labor unions more effective, Jorgensen proposes the creation of millions of new jobs in fields like alternative energy as well as plans to safeguard our future from the perils of global warming.  

By contrast, longtime Republican incumbent Elton Gallegly voted against both the minimum wage increase and the union organization bill.  With his votes last year and his long history of opposition to minimum wage increases and other labor issues, Gallegly has repeatedly demonstrated that his priorities do not lie with the nation’s working men and women.  While there were enough voices of reason in Congress to pass the federal minimum wage increase and the union organization bill despite Gallegly’s opposition, we cannot trust that this will remain the case in the future.

Marta Jorgensen knows that American workers must be able not just to work, but to live  She knows that they must be able to organize and orchestrate their power, and that when they work together they can achieve anything.  She understands that American workers must be able to work in our economy and, at the same time, that the American economy must also work for our workers.  We must have Marta Jorgensen’s sensible pro-labor voice in Congress next year.

To learn more about Marta Jorgensen’s plans and her ambitious E-Revolution platform, visit her website at JorgensenForCongress.com today.

David Graham, supporter

Join The E- Revolution In California’s 24th CD

The E-Revolution From The Jorgensen For Congress Campaign

Building A New Energy, Economic, Environmental, Educational Future

For Our Country and Our Planet

          Democratic candidate for California’s 24th Congressional District, Marta Jorgensen has formulated a bold new campaign platform called E-Revolution.  She believes this platform, so named for its focus on the strong and productive reform of federal energy, economic, environmental, and educational policies as well as on citizen engagement, is necessary for the United States to compete and survive in the new millennium.  

The first pillar of E-Revolution is energy reform.  As our older energy sources continue to pollute our environment, make us dependent on foreign governments, and slowly get used up, we must adopt clean, independent, and renewable forms of alternative energy like solar power, wind power, tidal power, geothermal power, and biofuels.  

Countries like Denmark, which already gets 25% of its energy from wind power, and Germany, which expects to get 45% of its power from renewable energy sources by 2030, have already recognized the dangers of an addiction to oil and coal.  But Marta Jorgensen believes that the United States can meet this challenge head on; we can take back the mantle of energy pioneer we once held by supporting these new technologies with tax breaks and federal mandates.

The second pillar of this platform, economic reform, seeks to return the American economy to the robust strength it once had and to create new Green and higher paying jobs for American workers.  This can be done by steering our economy toward alternative energy sources, by making our economy more efficient, by working to overcome global warming, and by creating more favorable trade agreements.

While the American oil and coal industries are losing jobs, renewable alternative energies can create and support millions of new jobs.  According to studies, wind power can account for nearly 350,000 jobs, solar power for over 260,000 jobs and $45 billion in economic investment, tidal power for thousands of jobs per plant, geothermal energy for over 20,000 jobs; and biofuel for over 200,000 jobs.  California is the natural home for many of these industries, and with them our state’s economy, already one of the largest in the world, will surely grow even larger.  

We can also make our economy more efficient.  For example, one study found that an increase in fuel efficiency standards starting in 2001 could have saved drivers in upstate New York more than $2.4 billion in gas by 2012; the savings for California, with its much bigger economy and many more residents, could have been astronomical.  Calling for stricter fuel efficiency standards and supporting the creation of new cars with alternative forms of power like electricity, hydrogen, or fuel cells can make our economy more efficient and each of us better off.

Switching to alternative energies and making our economy more efficient as well as working to reduce pollution and instituting a carbon tax will have the additional and very important effect of helping to ward off the effects of climate change.  The costs of untreated global warming is an increase in wildfires, water conservation, public health, agriculture, and flooding could be incalculable; if we take steps now to mitigate those effects, we will be able to sustain and grow our economy far into the future.

In addition, we can take steps to keep our thriving international trade alive and growing while fixing bad trade agreements so that our only exports are American products, not American jobs.  We can also address the issue of our crumbling dollar by reducing the federal deficit and paying down the federal debt.  These policies form an important part of Marta Jorgensen’s platform.

       Such sweeping economic reform may sound difficult, but it is nowhere near as hard as keeping our economy beholden to the old energy sources, old technologies, and bad trade agreements that have made our economy so weak.  But America is no weakling, and Marta Jorgensen believes that we are strong enough and motivated enough to do what we must to secure success for our economy.

The third pillar of change in E-Revolution, environmental reform, is closely related to Jorgensen’s call for both energy and economic reform.  We face serious peril from the effects of global warming, including a catastrophic rise in sea level, widespread drought, and myriad extinctions in plant and animal species all over the planet, effects that will change our world for the worse.  But Marta Jorgensen thinks we can change the world for the better; Marta Jorgensen has a plan.  

First, she calls for freezing carbon emissions and instituting a carbon tax, which will go a long way to reduce any further impact we might have on the atmosphere.  But we also need to further reduce our creation of greenhouse gases by instituting a moratorium on coal plants not outfitted with carbon capture features, calling for the replacement of inefficient incandescent light bulbs, and building a more efficient electrical grid.  In concert, these changes will drastically reduce our negative impact on the environment.

Of course, while we in the United States bear well more than our fair share of responsibility for global warming, we cannot address this problem alone.  That is why Marta Jorgensen will call for a new and stronger global treaty, more effective than the Kyoto Protocol and with a closer compliance date, and she will do all she can to make sure that this time, we sign on and we stay on.

The final pillar of E-Revolution, educational reform, centers on the need to teach our children how to succeed in an E-Revolution world.  We need programs to teach them how to work on a wind farm, how to design a better solar panel, and how to build a more efficient energy grid.  We need to make sure that they know how important our environment is what they can do as individuals to make sure we maintain it.  In short, we need comprehensive environmental education, and we need to do it on the national level.

      The four pillars of E-Revolution are closely related; if one of them fails, the success of the whole project would be cast into doubt.  Without energy reform to create new jobs in alternative energies and to make the economy more efficient, true economic reform is impossible, and without a switch to cleaner energy sources, true environmental reform is impossible.  Without economic reform to create and maintain alternative energies, true energy reform is impossible, and without a more sustainable economy, true environmental reform is impossible.  Without environmental reform to wean us off our addiction to fossil fuels, true energy reform is impossible, and without an environmental policy that seeks to overcome the problems of global warming, true economic reform is impossible.   And unless we have educational reform to teach our children how to thrive in this new world, all the gains of the rest of the project will be for naught.

We need to make E-Revolution a reality; we need to elect Marta Jorgensen.

Please support Marta Jorgensen’s campaign to unseat Republican Elton Gallegly in California’s 24th Congressional District.

             For more information, visit her website at: www.jorgensenforcongress.com.

805-742-0163

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