Stein: “The Real Thing”
In regard to your cover story on Jill Stein (“Voters, Fasten Your Seatbelts,” Sept. 2, 2010): We are lucky that a person of Jill Stein’s intelligence, integrity and vision is willing to run for office in our tainted political environment.
Imagine if someone who really cares about the right things became a powerful public official, someone “unbought and unbossed,” someone who is driven by facts and not by ideological zealotry or personal gain. Who can’t see how corrupted our democratic process has become? Who thinks it’s going to change without a citizen uprising? Desperate times often bring out dangerous demagogues. But—here is an outsider who is different. She’s “the real thing”—a real public servant; she’s been one all her life. I’ve worked with her for years on clean government and environmental issues. She’s reasoned, she’s moderate, she’s principled, she’s the candidate we always wanted.
Don’t be afraid of a “third party”—listen to her point of view, and look at what the other candidates have already done. Decades of voting for the “lesser of two evils” is how we got into this mess. Vote for what you want. That’s the only way to get it.
Shirley Kressel
Boston
To Annoy LGBT Readers?
I’ve been wondering for some months why the Valley Advocate publishes letters to the editor from non-local readers. Some appear to be “bulk” letters, sent to any newspaper that will print them. The most recent was a homophobic rant written by Paul Kokoski of Hamilton, Ontario headlined “Disappointed in Mexico” and published in the Aug. 26 issue. Kokoski drags out the old saws: “homosexuals” are pedophiles, gayness is immoral and destroys the family unit.
I wonder if this particular letter was printed simply to annoy the many folks in the Valley who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or allies, or in some misguided attempt to make the Advocate appear “balanced.” It seems as if the Advocate has little enough space for local coverage, without printing letters from outside the Connecticut River Valley area.
Michele Spring-Moore
Northampton
Editor’s note: Since the Advocate has had an online edition, we have received more and more letters from readers in distant places as well as the Valley, and we print them at our discretion.
Left Yawning by DA Candidates
An endorsement by current District Attorney Scheibel is the kiss of death for my vote for Cahillane. But the support of Mayor Higgins and State Senator Rosenberg does Sullivan no good either. The two candidates’ clear gift for raising campaign contributions makes them both look suspect. And their status quo political positions leave me yawning in my chair.
Another fine reason to skip this election until the Democrats clean up their act and give us something to vote for.
Tom Taaffe
Northampton
No Free Space for Corporate Shills
In his recent letter to the Advocate (“No Free Lunch,” Sept. 2, 2010), Employment Policies Institute Research Fellow Michael Saltsman disguises self-interested special pleading as a criticism of Maureen Turner’s “It’s Enough to Make You Sick” (Aug. 26, 2010).
Saltsman summarizes Turner’s article in a sentence: “Paid sick leave supporters endorse mandated paid sick days for employees—as long as someone else is footing the bill.” He insinuates that supporters of paid sick leave are utopian fools who believe that employers are “cash cows that can be milked for every conceivable benefit that the working public would like to enjoy.” Since the “hard truth” is that paid sick leave will increase the cost of labor to employers, they will be forced to “offset” this cost by doing “more with less”—that is, by lowering wages generally, “cutting back on customer service and trimming the number of entry-level workers they hire in the first place.”
However, Saltsman neither makes the logic of his argument explicit nor draws out its conclusions. Allow me to do so.
Saltsman presents himself as advocating for the interests of all workers, especially entry-level ones. Thus, to the extent that he states one, his major premise appears to be that all workers would be better off if no workers (including Saltsman himself) had paid sick leave. Employers could then “offset” their lowered labor cost in numerous ways. They could improve customer service, delivering more for less. They could raise the wages of all workers, including the minimum wage. And they could create more entry-level jobs at a continually increasing minimum wage.
It’s not hard to understand why Saltsman does not draw these conclusions. In the interests of full disclosure, I am a dues-paying member of Western Massachusetts Jobs with Justice, and Jobs with Justice is a member organization of the Massachusetts Paid Leave Coalition that Turner’s article described as having pushed, unsuccessfully alas, for the Paid Sick Days Act. In turn, as Turner’s article describes, the Coalition is comprised “of dozens of religious, social justice, labor and community groups.”
In other words, I, like many other activists in Massachusetts, pay to advocate for workers’ and human rights, and I support paid sick leave for all workers because it improves the quality of life for workers and their families and lessens the threats to public health if sick people with infectious diseases are not forced to be in schools, daycare centers, and places of employment. While I do not pretend to speak for all those activists, I do not start from Saltsman’s real premise that the right of employers—especially employers of minimum-wage workers—to maximize profits simply trumps all other interests in society.
Saltsman, on the other hand, is paid for his advocacy by EPI, which, as SourceWatch.org points out, “is one of several front groups created by Berman and Co., who lobbies for the restaurant, hotel, alcoholic beverage and tobacco industries.” Berman created EPI in 1991, SourceWatch continues, to “argue the importance of minimum-wage jobs for the poor and uneducated.” In short, as SourceWatch observes, EPI’s real mission is to serve “the vested interests behind its pronouncements” by working “to keep the minimum wage low so Berman’s clients can continue to pay their workers as little as possible.”
I’m not surprised that a corporate shill misrepresents a news report. But surely the corporate media provides enough venues for right-wing hacks to string decontextualized non sequiturs together without interruption. The Advocate is under no journalistic obligation to provide another.
Mark Clinton
Professor of Political Science
Holyoke Community College
Rein in Bad Spelling
In my mailbox recently was a colorful flyer boldly proclaiming: “Guy Glodis Will Reign In Wasteful Political Spending.” Now, is Guy Glodis actually pledging to “rule as a monarch” in Wasteful Political Spending? Perhaps he envisions himself as the Reigning King of the Realm of Wasteful Spending! Perhaps he actually intended to say: “Rein in Wasteful Political Spending.” In this case, does he really expect Massachusetts voters to elect to the office of state auditor someone who can’t even spell?
Christopher Stoney
Amherst
