Friday, April 14, 2006

Washington Post Get's Part of the Miller Story -- FINALLY!

They ignored my earlier letter about Miller's past but finally took note of the AFL-CIO, DPE denunciation of Miller's anti-American worker lobbying history.

Still, they couldn't get it right: the letters were published online at this site FIRST.

Darn it, I stayed up VERY late to put these documents online and it would be nice if the Washington Post would get it right. They must not even have bothered reading the Raising Kaine post about this because Lowell told everyone where the docs were -- right here at The Modern Patriot.

I wrote to the Post to correct them and noted that I have opposed Miller for more than 3 years and this site is far more than just "pro-Webb".

2 Comments:

Blogger Info_Tech_Guy said...

On the subject of "meanness", I'll mention this in the context of Miller and his lobbying activities: during one of the hearings in which IT workers affected by outsourcing gave Congressional testimony, an ITAA lobbying aid who accompanied Miller remarked to one of the IT workers something along the lines of "selling your sob story again, huh?" I think that this remark should be taken as a reflection of the attitudes prevalent in the ITAA -- from the top down.

I spoke with Washington Post reporter Michael Shear earlier and we had an interesting conversation. He was rather apologetic about the erroneous attribution and I'm not too upset about it. I was more concerned with people pointing to the RK blog as simply "pro-Webb" and assuming that this issue of outsourcing and anti-worker policies does not have a significance and relevance of its own. This rather odd view has cropped up in strange places -- even on the Daily Kos where JC and I have blogged on this topic.

Fri Apr 14, 12:49:00 PM GMT-5  
Blogger Info_Tech_Guy said...

"union federal employee" (UFE) brings up a number of interesting issues.

In the interest of time, I would like to say a few things which are at best only a partial response.

First, the letter and fact sheet. These were in fairly wide circulation among AFL-CIO members for quite some time -- since February. I'm sure that both the Miller and Webb campaigns knew the contents of this material. The wider media and general public were unaware of it.

It was only a matter of time before this material became public knowledge -- a fact which you also agree with.

I released this material only after I was assured that this would not violate any confidentiality. As I said in my posting, my contact is a union president and longtime anti-outsourcing ally.

Though, it appears that UFE is most angry at Paul Almeida of the DPE for allowing the distribution of this letter authored by Mike Gildea.

Frankly, I have to tell you, that while I sympathise, my experience tells me that many elected Democrats take labor for granted and don't treat labor leaders or the rank and file with the respect that they deserve.

I understand that UFE beleives that the AFL-CIO has lost leverage by criticising Miller publicly but honestly, I think that Miller has proven himself such a determined foe of labor that it would be incredible to imagine that he would be anything except the creature of corporations and the enemy of middle class Americans.

You'll note that I haven't said a single word about Webb. These DPE documents aren't about Webb. It's about Harris Miller and the fact that he is such a creature of the pro-outsourcing corporate lobbies.

Can anyone trust such a man to ever keep his word? I wouldn't.

Fri Apr 14, 04:18:00 PM GMT-5  

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