Month: February 2009

Educating on Employee Free Choice, Part 19

President Barack Obama was quoted in two major publications about his support for labor and the Employee Free Choice Act.

Detroit Free Press:

“He also discussed legislation pushed by labor that could make it easier to organize. A supporter of the “Employee Free Choice Act” decried by business, Obama said he believes there is no economic risk to workers organizing and making a living wage – especially if workers understand, as he says they seem to, that unreasonable demands on the part of labor would only serve to destroy jobs in the long run. He said he hoped to see in coming weeks forces on both sides talk about common ground which could be reached on the legislation.”

Philadelphia Inquirer:

On other topics, Obama said he would not urge a delay in consideration of the Employee Free Choice Act, legislation sought by organized labor that would make it easier for unions to win the right to represent workers.

Business groups are fiercely opposed, saying that the bill – which would allow unions to be certified by workers’ signatures, without a secret ballot, and would require arbitration – would increase costs.

“I don’t buy the argument that providing workers with collective-bargaining rights somehow weakens the economy or worsens the business environment,” Obama said. “If you’ve got workers who have decent pay and benefits, they’re also customers for business.”

At the same time, Obama said business had legitimate concerns. He said he would like to see labor and business groups work together on a compromise.

“Whether those conversations can bear fruit over the next several months, we’ll see,” he said. “But I’m always a big believer in before we gear up for some tooth-and-nail battle, that we see if some accommodations can’t be found.”

Barack Obama is a supporter of labor and I think we’ll see massive steps forward for working Americans during his presidency.

The First Opportunity for Leadership

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will be making her first trip to China next week. Today’s New York Times previews some of the issues under consideration and the potential pitfalls they see as facing the Obama administration in their dealings with China. While the title of the Times piece is “US Prepares to Broach Hard Issues With China,” it only skirts past human rights and China’s ongoing military occupation of Tibet. It seems the challenges these days is how can the US make sure that China doesn’t shut off the money spigot during tough economic times. As a result, the Times’ Mark Landler gives the distinct impression that Clinton will be disinclined from pressing on human rights issues. Whether that is true or not, I don’t know, but it certainly makes for good Conventional Wisdom.

Clinton and Obama have a unique opportunity to put human rights and freedom above and aside other economic issues. Challenging China to improve the lot of their people and to end their occupations of Tibet, East Turkestan, and Inner Mongolia — as well as relaxing tensions with Taiwa — is the morally right thing to do. And in these economic times, it’s also the hard thing to do. But we elected President Obama because we need leadership that is more comfortable doing what is right than doing what is easy. Secretary of State Clinton’s trip to China is the first real opportunity for President Obama to show that he has the mettle to lead America back to a place of respected, moral greatness. This is an opportunity not muddled by partisan fighting nor cable news bickering, but one that can be made following study and evaluation about what is right and what America’s President and Secretary of State can achieve with the power of their words. They should seize this opportunity and call for a release of political prisoners, relaxation of military presence in Tibet, and the beginning of meaningful negotiations about the future of Tibet with the Tibetan Government in Exile.

Populist Caucus To Form in House

Congressman Bruce Braley of Iowa has formed the Populist Caucus. Ryan Grim of Huffington Post reports that it will start out with twenty-one members. Here they are:

Reps. Michael Arcuri (D-NY); Pete DeFazio (D-OR); Betty Sutton (D-OH); Leonard Boswell (D-IA); Steve Cohen (D-TN); Joe Courney (D-CT); Keith Ellison (D-MN); Bob Filner (D-CA); Phil Hare (D-IL); Mazie Hirono (D-HI); Hank Johnson (D-GA); Steve Kagan (D-WI); David Loebsack (D-IA); Eric Massa (D-NY); Linda Sanchez (D-CA); Jan Schakowsky (D-IL); Carol Shea-Porter (D-NH); Peter Welch (D-VT); and John Yarmouth (D-KY).

I would expect a few other names to join – Alan Grayson, Kucinich, Donna Edwards, a number of folks from the New York City area, Pete Stark. That is, this is a caucus that is sure to grow.

Update:

I was sick and blogging too fast yesterday. Lukeness in the comments points out that Braley has formed the Populist caucus, not the Progressive one as my post originally said. The entry has been edited to correct the mistake.

Censoring Major Disasters in China

Imagine if the American government had censored the Minneapolis bridge collapse in the summer of 2007? Or the destruction of the Twin Towers on 9/11? Somewhere in between the importance of those two events lies the fire which destroyed the brand new Chinese Central TV building, which includes the Mandarin Oriental Hotel. The CCTV building was one of China’s much-touted construction projects that went along with their massive expenditures in the lead up to the Beijing Olympics. The building, in central Beijing and one of the largest landmarks in the capital, was destroyed, yet that destruction was censored by government propaganda officials and not reported in the press.

There were no pictures on the front page of The Beijing News. The home page of Xinhua, the official news agency, featured a photo from another tragedy: a stampede in South Korea that left four people dead. Throughout the morning, CCTV’s brief bulletins about the blaze omitted footage of the burning tower.

Even before the flames had been extinguished early Tuesday, pcitures of the burning hotel had been removed from the country’s main Internet portals. By afternoon, the story had been largely buried.

A directive sent out by propaganda officials made it clear that the authorities were eager to reduce public attention to the blaze, a colossal embarrassment that many people believe augurs poorly for the new year. “No photos, no video clips, no in-depth reports,” read the memo, which instructed all media outlets to use only Xinhua’s dispatches. “The news should be put on news areas only and the comments posting areas should be closed.”

It’s hard to comprehend this whitewashing in the Chinese “press” but there it is. Because this fire is an incredible embarrassment to the Chinese government, it is being hidden from the public.

I can’t imagine what it must be like to have a government so petrified of its people.

The GOP Minority’s Honeymoon with the Press

It’s starting to look like what it always looked like during the Clinton years – no matter what Obama does, he can’t win with the Beltway press. Peter Baker’s wank-tacular piece of “news analysis” in the New York Times today shows exactly what Obama is up against. Namely, the press corps refuses to recognize that Republican obstructionism has a direct relationship to President Obama’s diction regarding the economic recovery package.

Baker’s piece is titled “Taking On Critics, Obama Puts Aside Talk of Unity.” Well, yes, this is what Obama has done. But nowhere in Baker’s article does he document the causal relationship between how Republicans have obstinantly opposed Obama’s overtures and the inevitable shift towards a harder line by the Obama administration. The actions of Republicans in response to Obama’s efforts at unity and bipartisanship simply do not play into Baker’s piece, making it nigh impossible for a reader to know that President Obama isn’t taking a stand on the economic recovery out of narcissism or partisanship or because he had the urge to take pot-shots at the Bush administration.

President Obama has done exactly what the Washington press corps and the Conventional Wisdom set have asked of Democrats for decades. He put aside ideology and reached across the aisle to accomplish legislation for the good of the country at a time when we are in crisis. The Republican response to his outreach, his overtures, his invitations, and his cocktail parties has been to reject him outright. That three Republicans in the Senate have supported a watered down version of the recovery package in itself is a tremendous accomplishment in the name of bipartisanship.  Despite acting exactly as he promised to act during the campaign and putting forward a post-partisan effort to pass this legislation, Baker hits Obama at the moment when he’s pushing for the best bipartisan legislation he could possibly get from the current group of Republicans in Congress.

It might be easy for Baker to write this article. After all, false claims of equivalence have long been a hallmark of the Washington press corps’ hostility towards Democrats. In the end, that’s exactly the sort of article this is, a “gotcha!” attack on a popular president. Baker’s article could be summed up as: “Obama promised to be post-partisan, but it turns out he’s a Democrat!”

The larger problem with Baker’s piece, outside its gotcha style, is that it completely ignores the existence of Republicans from the course of events surrounding the economic recovery package. As far as I can tell from Baker’s piece, Republicans are merely passive flowers that are the subject of harsh words from Democrats. Had Obama spent more time sprinkling them with sugar water while promising to pour vinegar on nasty Democrats who want to vote for the recovery package Obama supports, perhaps then he would have lived up to whatever twisted expectations Baker has for his behavior in The Village.

It’s hard to process the extent to which Republicans are getting a pass for their absolutist obstructionism in the early days of the Obama administration. Baker’s article today is a perfect microcosm for the honeymoon Republicans are getting with the press. I’ve already seen quotes to suggest that the Obama honeymoon is over, less than a month into his administration. But something tells me that the Republican minority’s honeymoon with the press will continue for a long, long time to come…and at the expense of the Obama administration’s ability to get things done for the good of the country.

On Political Capital

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what “political capital” means. Conventionally it’s thought of in a fairly similar fashion to gold coins collected in a video game that allow the possessor to buy a bigger sword or magic healing potion. The most dynamic conventional wisdom notes that political capital will disappear if not spent in a reasonable amount of time, but that’s about as close the words “political capital” will ever find themselves to the words “savvy analysis.”

Big Tent Democrat raises a point about the relative influence of George Bush early in his first term as comparted to Obama’s early days.

George Bush, who LOST the popular vote in 2000, had the political juice to pass a 1.2 TRILLION dollar tax cut in 2001. Barack Obama, who won a sweeping victory last November, can barely muster $500 billion in stimulus spending in the face of the Greatest Depression. Some “victory.”

The issue of political capital is raised here in a somewhat roundabout way. What allows Bush, who went into office under the shadow of a constitutional crisis, let alone without winning the popular vote, to achieve a bigger ideological goal out of the gate than Obama? I don’t think there’s any objective use of a subjective measure like “political capital” that would suggest that Bush actually started his term with greater political capital than Obama has.

As far as I can tell, then, “political capital” is really a measure of ones willingness to exert ones will in Washington. It’s not a measure of what has been accrued, but rather who someone really is. You’re either willing to impose your will in a legislative fight or you’re going to enter a fight ready to concede stakes to your opponents.

The challenge facing President Obama is that so much of his campaign has been framed around post-partisan goals. Even since taking office he’s been seen decrying Washington partisanship as a problem we need to overcome (as opposed to, say, Republicans clinging to failed ideas in a time of crisis). When Obama stands up as a fighting Democrat, as he did last week with House Democrats, he is more likely to be painted as partisan than as principled (something Steve Benen noted earlier today).  Obama will have to reframe his agenda around his ideology and his principles, and away from bridging philosophically necessary divides between the Democratic and Republican parties. Only in this way will he begin to have space to exercise his will qua political capital. We can’t expect him to be able to turn electoral mandate into legislation as long as he’s incorrectly identifying the challenges that need to be overcome and who is responsible for them.

The Conscience of the Liberals

There’s a case to be made that since the nomination of Barack Obama to be President, but especially since his election, Paul Krugman of the New York Times has been the leading liberal spokesperson in America. He’s pushed back against timid policies and incorrect statements by the Obama transition hard than any other prominent Democratic figure. And his writing on the stimulus and the Wall Street bailout has been the most critical from the Left, at least in mainstream sources.

As I see it, Krugman is distilling much of the anger and energy of the progressive online movement and filtering it out to a national audience. His main targets have been policy timidity at a time when we can ill afford restraint. Republican ideas have had the spotlight for eight years. The result has been unmitigated failure. Our country heads towards an economic precipice; now is not the time for half-measures between what is wrong and what is right. Krugman’s other main target is bipartisanship, which I’ve recently blogged extensively about and is surely the nextdoor neighbor to timidity. Krugman’s column today, “The Destructive Center” is a confluence of his writings against timid Democratic policy goals and the damage non-ideological bipartisanship does during times of crisis.

During the transition, Obama said that he would take Paul Krugman’s economic advice. It’s fairly clear that he isn’t doing that, but now is the time for Obama’s team to reevaluate and start listening to Paul Krugman. He’s one of the few unabashed liberals in American public discourse and our leadership fails to listen to him at the country’s peril. Moreover, Krugman’s drumbeating columns against centrism, bipartisanship, timidity, and post-partisanship have the ability – far greater than anything the blogosphere does – to create meaningful cover for Obama and Democrats on the Hill to move to the left. He is a powerful voice with a large microphone and there are few people who can currently challenge him for the position as conscience of America’s liberals today.