The fight for justice is an ongoing struggle. It is generational and the struggle is passed on year after year. There are victories and defeats, villains and heroes.
We lost a great American Hero this week in our fight for justice.
I’m talking about Senator Ted Kennedy.
Here is a clip of him confronting years of Republican efforts to block any increase in the Minimum Wage in 2007 (hat tip TPM). This is why we called him the Lion of the Senate:
To the jump...
As some may know my writing about and my investigation of the Jack Abramoff scandal and the Republican Culture of Corruption grew out of a fight for justice for the foreign contract workers trapped in the Kafkaesque Hell that was (and is) the labor system on the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, a US Territory some 40 miles north of Guam in the Western Pacific.
Sweatshops, forced labor, stolen labor, deception, human trafficking and on and on were (are) the state sanctioned rules that guaranteed abuse for workers in this rogue US Territory. By 1992, the problem was so bad that the Bush I Department of Labor levied over $9 million in fines for abuse against one CNMI Garment Manufacture (owned by Abramoff and GOP patron Willie Tan). By the following year it was clear that US Federal control over labor and immigration laws had to be extended to the Territory and that the CNMI had to be covered by the US Minimum Wage if the abuse was to be stopped. There was bipartisan support for this effort to end the abuse.
Then the GOP won the 1994 mid-term elections. Then the sweatshop pirates of Saipan hire Jack Abramoff to be their lobbyist. And then legislation was blocked until Democrats regained control of Congress in 2006.
In 2007 the Minimum Wage was finally increased and finally extended to the Marianas Islands. It should have been an easy vote, but the Republican obstructionists still did everything they could to block it.
In the debate (in the clip above), Senator Kennedy exploded at these weasels (emphasis added):
<span style="background:yellow;">What is the price, we ask the other side? What is the price you want from these working men and women? What cost? How much more do we have to give to the private sector and to business? How many billion dollars more are you asking, are you requiring? When does the greed stop, we ask the other side.</span>
That is the question and that is the issue, make no mistake about it. They have on the Republican side 70 more amendments--70 more amendments. We have none. We are prepared to vote now. Seventy more amendments. Oh, yes. We want an increase in the minimum wage, we want this, we want that, but silence over there, or let's have some other kinds of amendments that have virtually nothing to do with this. Do you have such disdain for hard-working Americans that you want to pile all your amendments on this? Why don't you just hold your amendments for other pieces of legislation? Why this volume of amendments on just the issue to try to raise the minimum wage? What is it about it that drives you Republicans crazy? What is it? Something. Something. Are you going to require us to have a cloture vote next week? I can see it already: Amendments that have already been filed that are going to be related in case we do get cloture to delay this even further.
What is the price workers have to pay to get an increase? What is it about working men and women that you find so offensive that you won't permit even a vote, denying the Senate of the United States the opportunity to express ourselves? We don't want to hear any more from that side for the rest of this session about permitting or not permitting votes in here when you are denying on the most simple concept: an increase in the minimum wage. We don't want to hear any more about that. This is filibuster by delay and amendments. I have been around here long enough to know it when I see it and smell it. That is what it looks like, that is what it is, make no mistake about it. Make no mistake about it.
The Minimum Wage was increased in 2007 and finally in July it was phased-in to an unlivable wage of $7.25 and hour. A meager increase blocked by the GOP for over a decade. We can not allow Republican obstruction and corruption to block another increase to the Minimum Wage for yet another decade. We can not allow them to block endless needed reforms any longer. And yet, that is what they do. Their idea of "bipartisanship" is when you let them get away with endless obstruction.
Currently they use the obstructionist tactics they employed to protect sweatshops, human trafficking and labor abuse on the Marianas Islands to block Health Care Reform. They will use the same tactics to block legislation to deal with the climate crisis, immigration reform, extending unemployment benefits, re-regulation of financial markets, lobbying reform, and whatever else you might wish to add to the list.
They need to learn a new definition of "bipartisanship": the train is leaving the legislation station, you can either get on board and help or stay at the station and be WATB.
Senator Kennedy taught us that yes, we can work with Republicans to fashion legislation, but that they must be serious. Otherwise it is a waste of time. And when the Republicans were operating only in obstructionist mode then Senator Kennedy, the Lion of the Senate, could and would unload on them. He called them out and forced votes to move legislation along.
Well, we now need some others to step up and confront these Republican obstructionists for the pointless delaying tactics they have been using since day one of the 111th Congress.
It is time for us and for other Senators to step up and ask the other side what Senator Kennedy asked them:
What is the price?
How much more do we have to give to the private sector and to business?
How many billion dollars more are you asking, are you requiring?
When does the greed stop?
These are the questions one always has to ask Republicans and conservatives whether the legislation is to end sweatshops and human trafficking or to reform health care. "When does the greed stop?" is a fitting question for the GOP whether the issue is taking care of our troops, our children or our planet.
It is a question that Senator Kennedy asked them for more than forty years.
We can do no less.
Cheers