Kerry launches on-line campaign against overtime rules

A campaign discussion about overtime has become a sort of on-line tussle. Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry launched an on-line petition drive yesterday to protest Bush Administration rules which would curtail overtime pay.During an appearance in Des Moines, Kerry said he finds it extraordinary that while corporate C-E-Os are walking away with billions of dollars, the Bush Administration “is prepared to beat up on the average working person and now suggests they should not get overtime pay.” Kerry says a petition on his campaign website urges the President to “pull back from this illconsidered and extraordinarily unfair policy of taking overtime away from average Americans.” Howard Dean, one of Kerry’s competitors, had already launched a similar petition drive on his own website, and in a prepared statement Dean’s Iowa campaign manager welcomed Kerry to the effort to “stop the Bush Administration from taking overtime pay away from millions of workers.” Kerry, when asked if he was trying to steal Dean’s thunder, said the last person he heard about “who claimed he invented the Internet didn’t do so well” — a reference to former Vice President Al Gore’s campaign misstep. Dean campaign manager Jeanni Murray says Dean has “taken on-line activism to a new level” and since April has encouraged activists to sign more than a dozen petitions posted on his campaign website.