By John J. Sweeney

Read more from President Sweeney.

To paraphrase the late Sen. Lloyd Bentsen, I know change—and the John McCain/Sarah Palin ticket is NOT about change. The McCain/Palin team has tried to appropriate Barack Obama's "Change" theme. Maybe they mean chump change for workers instead of real paychecks.

Change is creating Social Security and Medicare so the elderly can live in decency. Change is integrating schools and expanding opportunity for people regardless of their skin color or nationality, religion or sexual orientation. Change is bargaining a union contract that improves life for hardworking families. Change is what America desperately needs right now, when 80 percent of the public says our country is on the wrong track.

Here's what change is NOT.

• Wailing against Washington lobbyists—but having them run your campaign and deliver as your star fundraisers, as John McCain has.
  
  
• Claiming you're "mavericks" and deriding congressional earmarks when you consistently vote with President Bush and your running mate seeks and accepts more money per capita in earmarks (commonly called pork) than any other state governor.
  
  
• Lying and stonewalling. About taxes: Contrary to McCain/Palin ads and speeches, Barack Obama will put more tax dollars back into the pockets of working families. About talking one way and voting another: on retraining workers, on veterans issues, on health care, on energy, on you name it. About that Bridge to Nowhere: Palin really, really wanted it—and when it crashed and burned in Congress, she kept the money for her state anyway. About the perversity of continuing to claim Palin said "no thank you" to the Bridge to Nowhere when the claim has been thoroughly discredited. About claiming to represent a change from politics as usual when Palin helped run a campaign organization for indicted Sen. Ted Stevens and she and the McCain camp are trying to stonewall the investigation of her firing of Alaska's public safety commissioner.
  
  
• Adopting Bush economic policies as your own, although they have driven working families to their knees, prompted record home foreclosures and bankruptcies, killed millions of jobs, silenced workers' voice at work—and lavished favors on millionaires, CEOs and big corporations.
  
  
• Making America's health care crisis worse. Taxing workers' employer-provided health coverage, giving employers more incentives not to cover workers, throwing working families into an unfair and unaffordable private insurance market to fend for themselves with a paltry tax break as a leaky lifeboat—that's not change, but it is the McCain/Palin plan.
  
  
• Blocking workers' rights and opportunities. The Bush administration has been one of the most anti-worker, anti-union in history—and McCain's ticket promises more of the same. More opposition to the Employee Free Choice Act, which would enable workers to form unions and bargain for a better life without corporate intimidation. More undermining prevailing wages. More job-killing trade deals. More opposition to job-creating infrastructure projects. More of what's ailing working families.

McCain/Palin aren't about change. They're about more of McSame.