Educating on Employee Free Choice, Part 12

Paul Krugman writes on the need for the Employee Free Choice Act in this month’s issue of Rolling Stone. Krugman has a lengthy letter about what Obama should do and this is one of his key items. Krugman is wrong about the timeline – the chances of passing Employee Free Choice this year is great and likely to happen this spring or summer.

“What caused the Great Compression? That’s a complicated story, but one important factor was the rise of organized labor: Union membership tripled between 1935 and 1945. Unions not only negotiated better wages for their own members, they also enhanced the bargaining power of workers throughout the economy. At the time, conservatives warned that wage gains would have disastrous economic effects — that the rise of unions would cripple employment and economic growth. But in fact, the Great Compression was followed by the great postwar boom, which doubled American living standards over the course of a generation.

“Unfortunately, the Great Compression was reversed starting in the 1970s, as American workers once again lost much of their bargaining power. This loss was partly due to changes in the world economy, as major U.S. manufacturing corporations started facing more international competition. But it also had a lot to do with politics, as first the Reagan administration, then the Bush administration, did all they could to undermine the ability of workers to organize.

“You can make a start on reversing that process. Clearly, you won’t be able to oversee a tripling of union membership anytime soon. But you can do a lot to enhance workers’ rights. One is to start laying the groundwork to pass the Employee Free Choice Act, which would make it much harder for employers to intimidate workers who want to join a union. I know it probably won’t happen in your first year, but if and when it does, the legislation will enable America to take a huge step toward recapturing the middle-class society we’ve lost.

Electing Senators

My friend and long-time Connecticut blogger Gabe Rosenberg has an op-ed in the Hartford Courant on the sad practice of using appointments instead of elections to fill vacant Senate seats. I’m happy to say that like Gabe I’m an old fashioned democrat who likes to his senators chosen through elections. Gabe writes on the current Senate replacement manouvers in New York, Colorado, Illinois and Delaware:

I’m not saying that Bennet and Kennedy are unqualified or would make bad senators. On the contrary, they are accomplished public servants and are, by all accounts, brilliant. They would make excellent senators. But call me old-fashioned: I like my senators elected.

On second thought, they are unqualified, but not because they lack experience or talent. The only constitutional requirements for a senator are age, citizenship and residency. To which states should add one more: They must be elected.

Although those appointed in Illinois, Colorado and New York will serve only until the 2010 election, they have a built-in advantage should they choose to run then, when the voters will finally be able to pick their senators. Being an incumbent with two years to build name recognition and a campaign war chest, cement political ties and bring home pork — barring a public relations nightmare such as the Blagojevich Senate yard sale — is an invaluable leg up.

Ironically, the appointment that initially had the worst stink from the cigar smoke of a back-room deal turns out to be the only one that ultimately will allow a fair start for all the candidates in 2010. In Delaware, Vice President-elect Joe Biden’s replacement will be his chief of staff Ted Kaufman, who has pledged to serve only until a special election and not to use the appointment as a springboard to keeping the seat. The move is widely seen as a way to clear the field for Biden’s son Beau, who is Delaware’s attorney general, to win the seat in 2010.

To which I say: So what? At least he will be elected. To his credit, Beau has repeatedly rejected the opportunity to follow in his father’s footsteps via appointment.

Like Tom Geoghegan’s recent op-ed in the New York Times, Gabe’s piece adds to what continues to be a growing drum beat for massive reform of the Senate vacancy-filling process nationwide. The process in which four Senate seats will be simultaneously filled by Governors and not the electorate is enough to both reveal the shortcomings in current law and practices, as well as create the impetus for change. Gabe points out in his column that CT state representative Tim O’Brien is again planning on introducing legislation that mandates all Senate vacancies in Connecticut be filled through special elections. I’d hope that similar bills drop in at least Illinois, Colorado, and New York. And while the fine people of Delaware seem to already get that democracy is better than fiat, it’d be equally good to see that state take up legislation that mandates what Ted Kaufman is sensibly doing in practice.

Organizing for America

Today President-elect Barack Obama announced the creation of his post-campaign entity that will continue to harness the energy of his campaign volunteers moving forward. I’ll be curious to see how this develops and what the new organization takes as its mandate. Nonetheless, I do like that Obama sees continued potential for his supporters to organize amongst themselves, locally and nationally, to achieve great things.

Educating on Employee Free Choice, Part 11

Giving union formation control to bosses and not workers is extremely rare in the modern industrialized world. Yet that’s how it currently works in the US and why passing the Employee Free Choice Act is so important. Matt Yglesias points out the company the US keeps with our current labor laws.

In review, of the ten countries Heritage deems to have the largest degree of economic freedom, seven feature majority sign up as an option for workers trying to form a union. Then there are two East Asian dictatorships. And then there’s the United States of America. The next ten spots on the list are composed of nine labor-friendly countries and Bahrain—a small Persian Gulf dictatorship.

The US is in the company of dictatorship by not having  majority sign-up. This is not good company to keep. I’m embarassed by it — hopefully members of Congress are too and will decide to advance modern laws that support economic freedom for American workers.

Unions & The US Airways Crash

Marcy Wheeler has post up making a critical point about yesterday’s US Airways crash into the Hudson: namely, everyone responsible for the safe landing and recovery of all passengers on board without a fatality, with the exception of the Coast Guard, were union workers. That includes:

Marcy concludes:

Bob Corker and Richard Shelby like to claim that union labor is a failed business model.

But I haven’t heard much about Bob Corker and Richard Shelby saving 155 people’s lives.

Indeed.

Krugman on Accountability

The Shrill One is shrill. And right.

Why, then, shouldn’t we have an official inquiry into abuses during the Bush years?

One answer you hear is that pursuing the truth would be divisive, that it would exacerbate partisanship. But if partisanship is so terrible, shouldn’t there be some penalty for the Bush administration’s politicization of every aspect of government?

Alternatively, we’re told that we don’t have to dwell on past abuses, because we won’t repeat them. But no important figure in the Bush administration, or among that administration’s political allies, has expressed remorse for breaking the law. What makes anyone think that they or their political heirs won’t do it all over again, given the chance?

…

Meanwhile, about Mr. Obama: while it’s probably in his short-term political interests to forgive and forget, next week he’s going to swear to “preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.” That’s not a conditional oath to be honored only when it’s convenient.

And to protect and defend the Constitution, a president must do more than obey the Constitution himself; he must hold those who violate the Constitution accountable. So Mr. Obama should reconsider his apparent decision to let the previous administration get away with crime. Consequences aside, that’s not a decision he has the right to make.

Holder & FISA

One of the things I would have wanted to ask Attorney General nominee Eric Holder (were I a Senator on the Judiciary Committee) would be if he thought Title II of the FISA modernization legislation passed last July was constitutional. Jon Kyl asked him if he thought the whole bill was constitutional. Holder responded that the law, having been updated by Congress, is constitutional.

As a reminder, Title II of the modernization of FISA was retroactive immunity for telecom companies that helped the Bush administration spy on Americans without warrant.

So either Holder hasn’t read Title II as passed by Congress this summer (and is thus not speaking about it) or he believes retroactive immunity is constitutional. Neither thought is encouraging as far as the rule of law is concerned.

Update:

There’s a caveat here. Holder hasn’t been read into the wiretapping program. He  doesn’t know what happened at the least filtered level, nor does he know the legal justifications that were used to conduct it. It’s possible that he’s withholding judgment on retroactive immunity’s constitutionality until he knows those details. But I think the question of Title II’s constitutionality isn’t one of specifics, but principles. Retroactive immunity for any crime strikes against the rule of law.

Update 2:

Kate Klonick, now of the Washington Independent, has more on Holder and FISA, including an exchange with Russ Feingold in which Holder seems to make clear that the President is not allowed to violate FISA.

Feingold: Is there anything in the FISA statute that makes you believe that the president has the ability under some other inherent power to disregard the FISA statute?

Holder: No, I don’t see that in the FISA statute.

This again is going to have bearing on how the Obama Department of Justice looks on the Bush administration’s actions under FISA.

Retroactive immunity for telecoms for two reasons. First it sets a vicious blow to the rule of law in America, regardless of what it is in regards to. Second, as the Bush administration hid behind national security and executive privilege, discovery in cases against telecoms became the only reliable way to find out what happened under Bush’s warrantless wiretapping program.

If Holder is read into the full wiretapping program and if he believes Bush violated FISA, then the quote above would mean that in the current Attorney General’s opinion Bush illegally wiretapped American citizens. How Bush and his associates would be able to escape prosecution at that point would be beyond me. Or more precisely, in such a scenario the decision to pursue charges against Bush et alia would become a political question and not a legal one.

Update 3:

Here’s video of the exchange between Feingold & Holder.

Educating on Employee Free Choice, Part 10

Art Levine, writing at the Huffington Post, has a very interesting article on the leading anti-American worker shill, Rick Berman. Berman runs the anti-union, corporate front group “Center for Union Facts” and has been the lead on a number of other anti-worker and anti-consumer front groups on behalf of Big Business.

The Center for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington yesterday launched BermanExposed.org, which has a ton of background information about Berman and his shady pursuits. Here’s how CREW announced their site yesterday:

Melanie Sloan, executive director of CREW, said today, “Richard Berman has become wealthy by deceiving the public through scare tactics, sleazy ads, and bogus websites. BermanExposed.org lists in one place Berman’s pay-for play activities, and demonstrates that his real expertise is making money.

Before one more story is published citing Berman as a credible expert, we encourage journalists and consumers to take a look at BermanExposed.org to better understand Richard Berman’s number one goal: to be the best snake-oil salesman ever.”