KY-2nd Challenger Standing Up for Workers - Literally

He's a country guy with a country accent and a country look, but he speaks Pure Populist straight from the heart. He's challenging anti-worker, anti-family repug and BP apologist Brett Guthrie. And right now he's the biggest and bravest Real Democrat in Kentucky.

Kentucky's own Hillbilly recorded Ed Marksberry out on the streets protesting with Whirlpool workers losing their jobs to Mexico.



The plant is located in Evansville, Indiana, right across the river from Henderson, Kentucky, where many of its workers live. From the New York Times:

Having seen her father make a solid living at the Whirlpool refrigerator factory, Natalie Ford was enthusiastic about landing a job there and was happy years later when her 20-year-old son also went to work there.

But that family tradition will soon end because Whirlpool plans to close the plant on Friday and move the operation to Mexico, eliminating 1,100 jobs here. Many in this city in southern Indiana are seething and sad — sad about losing what was long the city’s economic centerpiece and a ticket to the middle class for one generation after another.

“This is all about corporate greed,” said Ms. Ford, who took a job at Whirlpool 19 years ago. “It’s devastating to our family and to everyone in the plant. I wonder where we’ll be two years or four years from now. There aren’t any jobs here. How is this community going to survive?”

At a time when the nation’s economy is struggling to gain momentum, Whirlpool’s decision is an unwelcome step backward. It continues a trend in which the nation has lost nearly six million factory jobs over the past dozen years, representing one in three manufacturing jobs.

Connie Brasel, who earned $18.44 an hour making thermal liners for the refrigerators, sees Whirlpool’s move as a betrayal not just of the workers but also of the United States.

“This country made Whirlpool what it is,” she said. “They didn’t get world-class quality because they had the best managers. They got world-class quality because of the U.S. and because of their workers. And now they want to pack up and move to Mexico. I find it offensive.”

Whirlpool has operated the plant since 1956, and at the factory’s peak in 1973 it employed nearly 10,000 workers.

Susie Madrak at Crooks and Liars concludes:

Our country is missing a strong industrial policy, with an administration and Congress that chooses which manufacturers are important to support --and why. As long as economic disasters like this are repeated all over the country, I don't think Democrats are going to be pleasantly surprised this November.

Ed Marksberry is a carpenter who understands jobs have to come first, a veteran opposed to stupid wars that make us less safe, a fiscal realist who knows only millions of new jobs and health care reform will reduce the deficit.

He sounds a lot more like the rural "real Americans" of the Second District than the incumbent does.