Washington D.C., November 4, 2005 – R. Thomas Buffenbarger, International President of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM), called on President Bush and politicians of both parties to abandon self righteous appeals to voters and to focus on the real economic problems facing working Americans.

“This Congress and this President act as if they were holier than thou,” declared Buffenbarger in a speech delivered this week to IAM newsletter editors in Wichita, Kansas. “They are the new political Puritans – intolerant, narrow-minded, mean spirited, avaricious, insecure and angry at the world.”

Buffenbarger’s remarks followed an address by Thomas Frank, best selling author of “What’s the Matter with Kansas,” who described the new generation of political Pharisees as thinly disguised hucksters who “talk Christ, but they walk Corporate.”

“Old-fashioned values may count when conservatives appear on the stump, but once conservatives are in office the only old-fashioned situation they care to revive is an economic regimen of low wages and lax regulation,” said Frank.

Buffenbarger called for an end of the use of code words and campaigns designed by political consultants to inflame religious intolerance and racial divisiveness. “We need to restore tolerance as an essential American virtue,” said the Machinists’ President. 

Full text of President Buffenbarger’s speech is available on the Machinists Union web site at www.goiam.org/content.cfm?cID=5730. The IAM is one of the largest and most politically active industrial trade unions in North America and represents nearly 720,000 active and retired members in dozens of industries.