--- On Wed, 1/21/09, Jenny Brown <jbrown72073 at cs.com> wrote:
> From: Jenny Brown <jbrown72073 at cs.com>
> Subject: [lbo-talk] Tom Geoghegan running for Rahm Emanuel's seat
> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Date: Wednesday, January 21, 2009, 8:34 PM
> It's an open primary in March with 5 people running.
>
> http://www.geogheganforcongress.com/
>
> I’m running for Congress in the Fifth District of
> Illinois. As a Chicago lawyer for thirty years I have fought
> for working people in this District and throughout the city.
> I have represented unions as well as people with no unions
> to protect them. In plant closings I have helped them
> recover health and pension benefits. I obtained health care
> for the uninsured. I’ve been pressing the State of
> Illinois to crack down on payday lenders.
>
> In my life as a lawyer I have lived out a commitment to one
> cause above all – to bring economic security to working
> Americans, in our District, in our country. That’s the
> same commitment I will bring to Congress. We’re deep in an
> economic crisis unlike any other we’ve known. It may last
> years. We need new and creative ways to protect working
> Americans, especially our older working people who have no
> real pensions to live on.
>
> For years we’ve heard the doomsayers: “We can’t
> afford Social Security.” “We can’t afford ‘single
> payer’ national health.” One thing we all learned from
> the $700 billion bailout: We’ve got the money to do all of
> this and more. At the moment, the Federal Reserve is
> literally printing money, to give not billions but trillions
> to banks and financial firms. To the people of this
> District, the banks and others have gotten their money. Now
> it’s your turn. Here’s the bailout I will go to Congress
> to get:
>
> First, I want to expand Social Security, our public pension
> system, to replace, not overnight but in stages, the private
> pension system which has collapsed. Social Security now pays
> about 38 to 39 percent of your working income. In other
> developed countries, it averages 65 percent. That’s where
> our fiscal stimulus should be: a commitment to reach this
> goal, a public pension that ordinary working people can live
> on.
>
> Second we have to move to single payer health care program,
> at least in phases: we might begin with extending Medicare
> to children, but the government should ultimately be the
> single payer for all. That’s not because single payer is
> the only ethical and efficient way to protect us all. No,
> it’s also because it is crucial to making us competitive
> globally. Through single payer and expanded Social Security,
> the goal is to pick up the “non-wage” labor costs that
> employers now have to pay. That’s already how other
> countries out-compete us: they have the government and not
> the private employer pick up these non-wage health and
> pension costs.
>
> Etc.
> _____
>
> Jenny Brown
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