Bad Faith Bipartisanship

The Obama administration has consistently made good on President Obama’s campaign promise to govern as a post-partisan and look to bring Republicans into the governing process. Multiple Republicans were nominated to cabinet posts. And despite fears to the contrary by Republicans and Beltway journalists, the administration has refused to pursue any policy course that could possibly be described as “vindictive” following eight years of Republican failure and lawbreaking.

But how has the administration been repaid for their magnanimity? Well as anyone who has paid attention to the Republican Party over the last forty years (and especially the last sixteen) would expect, the Republicans have remained committed to partisan obstructionism for the sake of politics. No matter how far President Obama has gone to bring Republicans along on the path of rebuilding this country, their response has not changed. They opposed the stimulus effectively unanimously. They opposed national service. They opposed making banks accountable to government oversight. Every where we look, we see partisan Republican obstructionism (though liberal Democrats seem far more likely to be called out for partisan behavior).

The latest example is found in Kansas Senator Sam Brownback. Brownback had come out strongly in favor of the nomination of Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius for Secretary of Health and Human Services. In fact, his endorsement initially augured a swift confirmation for Sebelius. Now, months later, Sebelius languishes awaiting confirmation and Brownback is making noises about opposing her.

This is a joke, played out on repeat, because it’s the only joke the Republican Party knows how to tell. It’s as if a political party was created around the premise of bad faith in all their business.

Hopefully the administration and Democratic leaders in Congress are cognizant of what is happening. The press certainly isn’t in an uproar over Republican obstructionism of the popular president’s election-mandated agenda, so it will require an iota of scrutiny for the Democrats to see what’s going on on their own. As much as it might be comforting to treat their political opponents as good faith agents to be worked with for the betterment of the country in a way that was entirely absent the previous eight years, Republicans do not operate in good faith. Policy efforts aiming to achieve their goals with the help of mythical good faith Republicans are sadly doomed to failure. It’s time to reevaluate, sharpen our collective elbows, and start muscling through the agenda President Obama was elected to implement.

Old Time Filibuster

I agree with Chris Bowers, it’s time to change the rules of the Senate to end the practice of silent filibusters that Republicans are using to stifle the President’s agenda with no public debate. Bowers’ suggestion isn’t to go nuclear in the Bill Frist sense of removing all rights from the minority in the Senate to slow the majority’s legislative agenda, but to require filibusters to exist in public, with public debate, forcing the minority to defend their obstructionism. Most importantly, I don’t think the country can afford to wait until the Republicans use the lazy man’s filibuster to kill meaningful healthcare reform and energy policy reform. The time to make this change is now so we can have a fruitful public debate about the President’s agenda and why Republicans are so opposed to it.

Accountability Stand Ins

I have an idea for Roger Cohen. If he’s so fundamentally opposed to upholding the rule of law in the United States of America that he would rail against the prosecution of Bush administration officials and intelligence operatives who broke the law by torturing or advised that the law be broken, then we should find an alternative solution. Cohen suggests a Truth Commission, but I think it should be done with a twist. After all, knowing what illegal activities happened (though we already know many when it comes to torture, rendition, warrantless wiretapping, and secret prisons) is nice, but it’s not the point. Cohen thinks this is a better option, as prosecutions of law breakers would “lacerate” country.

Here’s my suggestion: if people like Roger Cohen think the rule of law in America is so unimportant and slight that we survive as a country when the people who break our laws are not prosecuted, but still wants everyone to know what happened, why not hold trials for the Jay Bybees, John Yoos, and others of the world who should be investigated and prosecuted — but leave them out of the docket. Instead, have media figures like Cohen stand on trial in their place, ready to serve whatever punishment the justice system metes out to Bybee, Yoo, Bradbury et alia. After all, the fundamental problem that Cohen seems to have is that a Democratic administration or Congress prosecuting Republican officials for their illegal actions is that it would be inherently divisive and partisan. Prosecuting non-partisan opinion column writers for the crimes of the people they don’t want to see prosecuted bears none of the same risks.  I’d be curious to see if Cohen’s desire for comity is so great that he would bear the weight of punishment of those people he defends in columns like this.

Criminal penalties exist precisely because maintaining the law does indeed require putative measures when it is broken. The persistent drive by moderate columnists to apologize for the Bush administration’s illegal actions while simultaneously describing out country as a frail thing, incapable of honestly looking in the mirror at was done in our names, is sickening. To go along with eight years where the rule of law was a quaint idea relegated to liberal blogs, having to watch a press corps actively trying to stop the revelation of facts about what happened during the previous administration and resist prosecution for law breakers is almost too much.

Hunter of Daily Kos had what I consider to be a very important piece in the debate on how people who believe in the rule of law and what it means for America should be reacting to the drive to not hold anyone accountable for illegal actions done as part of the Bush administration’s post-9/11 regime.  In his closing he writes:

But for today, I can only say damn you all to hell. Damn you all for making us — us, of all people, average citizens with no positions of power, with no power at all save whatever we can wring out of the thin air, and with nothing at stake but a sense of shared, basic, foundational morality — yet again rail for our own country to exercise a shred of the morality, the justice, the national greatness that it professes for all to hear. I was once outraged; I was, after that, ashamed; now I am only incredulous.

Roger Cohen has the ability to put pressure on those in power to hold  lawbreakers accountable for their actions. Instead he’s yet another voice for forgetting about the rule of law in pursuit of blissful comity. What a sorry situation. The government is supposed to follow the law. The judicial system is supposed to determine what has happened and how people should be punished for their illegal actions. And the press is supposed to always drive for greater transparency, scrutiny, and accountability. The extent to which things are not how they should be in America right now is too great to easily capture with words. At this point, only jaw-dropping shock seems to cover it.

Shafting Labor

Thomas Frank has an indispensable piece in the Wall Street Journal on the Democratic Party’s propensity to rely on labor votes and labor grassroots electoral efforts to win, then stab the labor movement in the back when it comes to actually passing legislation that helps America’s workers (while siding with big business interests and their heavily moneyed lobbying efforts). Frank notes that a number of the key lobbying shops for Wal-Mart are Democratic and progressive branded, a sign that the white collar parts of the Democratic elites are simply either indifferent to the plight of working Americans or fundamentally opposed to progressivism when it is placed against a hefty paycheck from a big business client.

Frank doesn’t really touch on the political dynamics that have emerged within the Democratic Party on the Employee Free Choice Act as addressed by Andy Stern of the Service Employees International Union in a Washington Post editorial board meeting earlier this week.  While Frank is right that Democratic consultants helping business in their fight against America’s workers is deeply problematic, the elephant in the room that Stern addressed is that labor has been left on its own in this fight, without the White House whipping on the Hill to pass Employee Free Choice. The question naturally arises, is there a substantive difference between Democratic consultants helping the Wal-Marts of the world stop Employee Free Choice Act and the administration backing off campaign promises to pass this critical piece of legislation that will grow the economy and rebuild the middle class?

It’s also worth noting that the problem of getting Democrats to support Employee Free Choice outside of the political campaign season does not start and end with the White House. Unions have been ineffective at getting key swing votes — conservative Democrats and moderate Republicans — who supported Free Choice in the past to stay with us. This gets back to problem Frank identified in the beginning, namely that “Democrats torpedo the most trustworthy member of their coalition,” out of a lack of genuine support, understanding, or influence by corporate money. This whole situation is frustrating beyond belief, to say the least.

Disclosure: While I’m proud to work for the Service Employees International Union, this post was written without their knowledge and does not represent anyone’s views but my own.

Not All Lobbyists Are Created Equally

The New York Times has an article today on the emergence of a problem area in the Obama administration’s nearly-blanket exclusion of lobbyists from holding positions in the administration. Essentially while President Obama’s campaign promise to shut out lobbyists has largely worked, it has also meant many uniquely talented individuals who have spent their career lobbying for non-profits, charities, and human rights groups are ineligible to roles they would be excessively well suited for. At issue is the simple reality that not all lobbyists are created equally. It is fairly nonsensical for administration officials to contend that someone who has spent a career working for Human Rights Watch is indistinguishable from someone who has spent their career lobbying for Philip Morris, Pfizer, or Wal-Mart.

The article reminded me of the exchange during the 2007 Yearly Kos Presidential Forum, where Hillary Clinton was heavily booed for saying she would continue to accept lobbyist contributions to her campaign.

While Clinton’s answer was politically problematic in front of a very progressive audience that largely, at that time, backed Obama and John Edwards, in hindsight the point she’s making should be quite clear. Lobbyists fighting for nurses, firefighters, child care workers, or victims of genocide simply are not the same as lobbyists for major corporations. Unfortunately for Clinton, while she was making a true assertion about different types of lobbyists, she would not extend that distinction to her finance department’s guidelines for accepting donations. That is, she used nurses to cover for pharmaceutical lobbyists and was largely punished for it politically.

Making exceptions to this policy wouldn’t be hard. An easy guideline would be to limit acceptable lobbyists to those that have worked in social services, human rights, labor unions, and environmental organizations. Or, on the other hand, you could exclude anyone who has lobbied on behalf of a Fortune 500 company or industry lobbying group. This would work because the problem isn’t constitutionally protected lobbying activities, but the influence of money on politics. I’ve never heard of Human Rights Watch being associated with someone like Jack Abramoff, though I can’t say the same for many business lobbies. Those are the areas whose influence the Obama administration should seek to reduce in their house, not people working honorably for human rights and charitable purposes.

Educating on Employee Free Choice, Part 28

IBEW Local 1597 member Mike Semm has an op-ed in the Grand Island Tribune about the need for the Employee Free Choice Act to be passed during these tough economic times. He begins by framing the economic crisis we’re in:

We know the economy has been broken since long before the latest financial tsunami.

Just look at the numbers – worker productivity soared over the last twenty-five years, leading to record profits.  And yet, wages have stayed flat.  Working people are struggling to stay afloat as health care costs spiral out of control.  Foreclosures are at an all time high.  Millions of jobs are gone and millions more are at stake.

So where did all those profits go?  You guessed it!  The wealth that we created, our life savings and our pensions, were unfairly used to fund the fairy tale financial schemes that were concocted on Wall Street.  As it turns out, you can’t really spin straw into gold.

Leading economists agree that we’re living in the worst economic crisis – and the greatest economic inequality – since the Great Depression.  Last year, the average CEO made in one workday what the average worker made in a year.

And goes on to show Employee Free Choice as key to the solution of this economic disparity.

A new Gallup poll shows that a solid majority of Americans support legislation that would make it easier for workers to form unions and negotiate for better health care, wages and job security.  Millions of Americans want to be able to form and join unions, but they shouldn’t have to risk their livelihoods in the process.

That’s why Congress recently introduced the Employee Free Choice Act – a common sense piece of legislation that will let workers decide how they want to form a union.  Workers would be able to choose between the two current methods of forming a union – either with an election or by gathering a majority of signed authorization cards.  The only difference
is that today, the boss gets to make that choice for you.

Instead of going through a typically long and costly ordeal, the Employee Free Choice Act will create a level playing field for workers and management to come to the table and negotiate a fair contract.

To be sure, some corporations would rather keep things the way they are.  A coalition of powerful corporate interests – including several bailout recipients – has amassed millions of dollars to try to defeat this critical legislation through several front groups.

Great piece, Mike! Thanks for making the case for Free Choice for your fellow workers.