This is the first video made by a former union buster.

A new year brings with it lots of hope.

Let’s hope 2010 brings a health care reform bill that does not penalize working families with a tax on their coverage. Because right now, as New York Times columnist Bob Herbert aptly describes it, there is a ”middle-class tax time bomb ticking in the Senate’s version” of the health care reform legislation.

The bill that passed the Senate with such fanfare on Christmas Eve would impose a confiscatory 40 percent excise tax on so-called Cadillac health plans, which are popularly viewed as over-the-top plans held only by the very wealthy. In fact, it’s a tax that in a few years will hammer millions of middle-class policyholders, forcing them to scale back their access to medical care.

Jon Walker at Firedoglake took a look at a report released in December by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which found the health care tax “will result in most people getting worse health insurance from their employer, insurance that covers less.” Walker translates the report’s conclusions this way:

Your employer will reduce what your current insurance plan [covers] and put in place high co-pays and deductibles. The result is that many people with employer-provided health insurance will see their insurance get much worse. For younger, healthier employees, possibly getting less comprehensive insurance but maybe higher wages (I think it is very doubtful that there is a pure dollar for dollar passthrough), this might be a decent deal. For older, less healthy employees this is a very bad deal. They will be forced to pay much more out-of-pocket for their health care.

More cost, less coverage for working families. Yet portraying the tax as only affecting ”Cadillac plans,” purposely obscures how it will harm America’s working families. 

Or, as Herbert puts it:

The tax on health benefits is being sold to the public dishonestly as something that will affect only the rich….

For most of us, the world of thoroughbred horse racing begins and ends with the Triple Crown, those few weeks in the spring when the world’s best horses run in the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness and the Belmont stakes.

But beyond the glamour that gilds the top of the horse-racing world, there’s a dirty secret that tarnishes racing’s carefully crafted image—the fate of the run-out and worn-out horses at the bottom-rung tracks far from Churchill Downs or Pimlico.

Every year, thousands of horses are shipped across U.S. borders to slaughterhouses in Canada or Mexico, while thousands more are neglected, abused or abandoned.

There are humane alternatives. Jim Tremper, a member of the New York State Public Employees Federation (PEF), an AFT affiliate, has been running the Thoroughbred Retirement Foundation’s (TRF’s) horse farm at the Wallkill Correctional Facility for the past 25 years. That work is the centerpiece of the new documentary “Homestretch,” much of it filmed at Wallkill, now available on DVD.

Tremper is a vocational instructor at Wallkill, where he says the horse farm serves a dual purpose. First, it’s a place where horses can rest and get rehabilitated after often being severely abused. Second, the foundation’s work helps the inmates who feed, exercise, treat and train the horses to learn responsibility and redevelop a sense of trust. The goal for both inmate and horse is to find a new life on the outside.

Our goal is to help the inmates become better citizens upon their release and provide much needed care to the retired thoroughbreds.

In the latest issue of the PEF Communicator, he says he hopes the documentary will reach “the right audience.”

The people who don’t know what is going on when a race horse is finished with its career. This film could change the mindset and show what can be done with these animals when they can no longer race. They still have the power to rehabilitate.

The film chronicles the pairing of the inmates and rescued, end-of-career race horses as they come together to care for and save each other, says the filmmaker, Sheri Bylander. Tremper, says Bylander

allowed me to become an insider in a way that’s very necessary for a documentary. From the minute I set foot on the farm, his compassion for the inmates and horses become clear.

The goal of “Homestretch” is to raise the public’s awareness of abuse and cruelty that many horses face at the finish line of their careers. Tremper says the film already has had an immediate impact on the inmates working with the horses at Wallkill.

The loved the attention. They loved being in the spotlight. They developed a deeper meaning in the work they do with the horses. The filming helped them realize their work is necessary, important and special.

Click here for more information on the film or to purchase a DVD of “Homestretch.”

Here’s your chance to take a look at the work world as seen through the lenses of 15 members of the Electrical Workers (IBEW) and choose what you think are the top photographs in the IBEW’s 2009 Photo Contest.

The finalists—out of more than 300 submissions—offer a fascinating and, at times, stunning perspective of the varied work IBEW members perform every day. Among the photos are:

* A dizzying look down past the feet of a worker perched high above the ground in a lattice framed electrical tower;

* A spectacular sunrise over a power plant in the Nevada high desert;

* An abstract wall of heavy-duty yellow linesmen’s gloves; and

* Four workers balanced atop two power poles directing a helicopter delivery of a large crossbeam.

Click here to check out the other 11 photographs and vote for your top three. After you pick, you can see the results from the voting thus far. Each visitor is only permitted to vote once, so choose carefully. The vote closes Jan. 10.

Winners will be announced later this month. The winners and honorable mentions will be featured in an upcoming issue of the Electrical Worker and we’ll showcase the winner here as well.