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TechnoratiNew Labor Secretary is Brown and Green
President-elect Barack Obama got it right when he announced Representative Hilda Solis as his pick for the next secretary of labor. Headlines are heralding her as the first Latino to hold the post. But the green jobs movement is jumping for joy not only because she's brown. It's because she's green. Through Solis, Obama makes clear his commitment to creating green jobs to lift the nation out of its current economic crisis.
We're thrilled that Hilda Solis shares the green jobs vision. In fact, she's already helped make it real. Rep. Solis was the original author of the Green Jobs Act, and our Green For All team worked closely with her in 2007. During that year's Congressional session, she worked with colleagues on both sides of the aisle and was instrumental in getting that hallmark legislation passed. Her work demonstrated her commitment to a socially responsible, clean-energy economy that will create millions of good-paying jobs and save our environment. She is the right secretary of labor to take advantage of a great opportunity not only to make America's economy stronger by making it greener, but also to make Americans living in poverty part of a revitalized middle class.
As Obama raises his right hand on inauguration day, he should be signing new green jobs bills with his left. Early next year, Green For All will join a coalition of groups advocating for the Clean Energy Corps. The Clean Energy Corps is a combined service, training, and job-creation effort to combat global warming, grow local and regional economies, and demonstrate the promise of the clean energy economy.
You'll hear more from Green For All in the upcoming year. We're a national organization dedicated to building an inclusive green economy, strong enough to lift people out of poverty. By advocating for local, state and federal commitments to job creation, job training, and entrepreneurial opportunities in the emerging green economy -- especially for people from disadvantaged communities -- Green For All fights both poverty and pollution at the same time. For more information, please visit our web site.
18 Comments so far
Show AllThe big question now, as one author recently put it, is "whether President Obama will bring any meaningful change to the deceptive mindset of the Washington Establishment." So far, liberals and reformers (not necessarily the same) can't be too encouraged but let's give him a chance. Solis is a good choice for DOL and certainly represents the "democratic wing of the democratic party." To read a good piece on Obama's establishment picks and his apparent "positioning to the center" go to...
http://globalinvestmentwatch.com/2008/12/23/walking-the-tightrope/
http://ontheissues.org/CA/Hilda_Solis.htm
That's Soils' voting record.
The progressives finally got their bone. Now they are supposed to get back to supporting the Obamanation.
Busca la veridade
Van Jones - PUSH! - sing and stomp! Keep the petitions and letter writing campaigns going. I look forward to writers cramp like never before.
I look at the incoming President and crunch time on the socioenvironmental front and see the wall for the mega corporations. What has passed for "creativity" will need to undergo a deconstructive evolution that will need to whirr so fast in backtracking and healing that their spiritual evolution will knock their socks off. Obama won't need to push for it, but he will need to manage one of the most collosal evolutionary leaps ever seen.
For the lucky ones fear and hubris, greed and distorted individualism will do backflips into another reality. Corporations will pray to be instantly small and wail at how slowly it will need to happen for it to happen appropriately. The David to the Goliaths this time will be themselves.
Transformation time will reawaken a desire to live as has never been known to these entities. Found in mobius mode, the myth of Newton's "ah ha" moment I wish on them, encourage them to breathe deep and know there is a power greater than themselves (teehee).
Big long cool drink of clear water - as a natural right to every human being. They will not want to hold what they have created when reality settles in and they see the actual clock. Some already see it. Some still sweat bullets and grab like madmen. Those who really understand what is happening move with it, balancing, encouraging and including the least amongst us which at times means in the transformative mode, the most powerful who will want to simply find the distinction between strength and power. The least amongst us as the poor hungry and oppressed need to come first.
Dystopian goals colapse revealing journey. If you don't know how to journey in peace, joy and creative work, you will not be able to make it.
We need federally protected urban, suburban and rural "back to the land" along with the new energy. Meet needs not desires. Do away with food aid indexed to international trade and in every package the reconstruction of means to build right livlihood.
Mega agribusiness has to be the first bubble to pop of its own accord.How long will it take? Push. Demand conscience and accountability. Thats David calling from within.
Goodby to one of the few members of Congress representing the San Gabriel Valley that isn't a knuckle-dragging, plastic-haired Republican with lips permanently pressed to Bush's butt. It's kind of sad to see the good ones leave even if it's to move up to something better.
Congratulations, Hilda. Sally Tanner would be so proud of you!
Busque la verdad!
"Barack Obama got it right when he announced Representative Hilda Solis as his pick for the next Secretary of Labor."
Barack Obama also got it right when he announced former Governor Tom Vilsack, Iowa, as his pick for the next Secretary of Agriculture. Vilsack is an outstanding choice for this position, and I'm as thrilled for his selection as Van Jones is for Hilda Solis as Labor head.
Why?
Joe
Joe,
Thanks for the query.
As a resident of Iowa, I have a lot of respect for Tom Vilsack's governing abilities. He served as Governor, 1999-2007, and he served us well. I initially supported his short-lived campaign for President in early 2007 as a favorite son.
There is a good Wikipedia article which I just reviewed. I consider it a fairly positive report, and other sources can easily be consulted.
It was my hope that Vilsack would obtain this cabinet position. As Labor and Agriculture secretaries were announced so late, I assumed someone else would be named. I was pleased when Vilsack was selected.
This is another profits-before-people appointment by Obama, just like pro-polluter Salazar for Interior and Monsanto-shill Vilsack for Agriculture.
Rep. Solis supports corporate insourcing of low-wage replacement workers. She would prop up the low-wage/no-benefit jobs and subsidize corporate profits by providing full social welfare benefits to the migrant replacement workers. Under her plan, the very same U.S. citizens who have lost their jobs to corporate insourcing -- or are suffering from falling wages caused by the corporate insourcing -- would have their taxes used to supplement the substandard wages and benefits the illegal corporate employers pay their wage slaves.
Solis demonstrated her willingness to mislead on this issue in a May 2008 interview on NPR, in which she falsely claimed that illegal migrants do not receive government benefits. (They do, and in many instances they receive them on a priority basis ahead of U.S. citizens.) She also falsely claimed that illegal migrants are "reviving" economically distressed communities. (In truth, good jobs transformed into wage-slave/no-benefits jobs have devastated communities across the country.)
She also repeated the false charge that critics of wage-slavery have incorrectly said illegal migrants are bringing leprosy into the country. (In truth, while leprosy effects only about 7,000 Americans, it is indeed being brought into the country by illegal migrants. The Department of Health and Human Services reports that new leprosy cases have more than doubled since 2000, and the majority are in people born in Brazil and Mexico. As CNN's Bill Romans reported in 2007, "the United States Citizenship and Immigration Service requires that legal residents be screened for leprosy, but that screening is not effective if a person is not symptomatic. Of course, illegal immigrants are not screened at all." http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0705/19/ldtw.01.html
Obama has broken his promises to working Americans with these horrible appointments.
"she falsely claimed that illegal migrants do not receive government benefits."
she also forgot to mention these same illegal immigrants contribute to the economy in a myriad ways by paying taxes and revitalizing old and walmart-devastated downtown areas in a host of cities across the grand ol USA.
Save the immigrant-bashing rhetoric. Its been rehashed a million times already.
Illegal migrants "contribute to the economy" by paying far less taxes than U.S. citizens pay, by costing far more in government services, and by sending roughly $60 billion a year back to their home countries. Since wages paid have a "multiplier effect" -- each dollar of wages paid has the economic impact of at least three and as many as seven dollars, because those dollars are spent and re-spent in local communities -- that missing $60 billion has a negative economic impact of $180-$420 billion per year. (By comparison, the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan cost about $200 billion a year.)
This is neither "immigrant-bashing" nor "rhetoric." It is factual and legitimate criticism of corporate insourcing, which is devastating working Americans, their families and our nation's economy.
"Illegal migrants "contribute to the economy" by paying far less taxes than U.S. citizens pay, by costing far more in government services,"
This is just plain wrong.
It's correct, factual, well documented and widely reported.
Sioux Rose
Alas, one bright star in the small galaxy of Obama appointments. We can only HOPE the $ will be allocated to these green jobs, as right now, it's being carried out in shopping carts by a private battery of Brinks-like clones who will deliver it to the moneychangers of the (Wall St) temple. From there, it's anyone's guess how it will be returned to the citizens it's been so kindly (ha) taken from.
Well this is a bright spot.
This is what I wish Obama would do on more of his appointments instead of going status quo even as the public hates status quo.
Writing as a Southern Californian whom has observed her career for years (as well as being a fellow alumnus of USC), Hilda Solis is one of the better selections Obama has made for his cabinet. Both of her parents are union members, and she is their daughter who made good the hard way. Needless to write, the audience for Fox Business channel will be wailing...GOOD!
www.wunderman-comics.com
I value your opinion Van Jones. Good to have a ray of sunshine. I wish Hilda Solis the strength and authority to fulfill her vision. A green jobs program is a necessity for so many reasons.
Joe