Progressive New Year’s Resolution

My friend Josh Bolotsky of Living Liberally asked me what my new year’s resolution as a progressive was for a post on Open Left. Here’s what I said:

The power of the liberal blogosphere is only as great as the willingness of bloggers, commenters, and readers to take action when called upon by our peers. When we work together, we can compel Congress to hear us. In my experience this is best done with direct phone calls and visits to the offices of our Congressional representatives. So here’s my resolution: when I see the bloggers I read and trust make a call to action, asking me to pick up the phone, I’ll do it. Not just on the issues I care the most about, but on the ones that you all care about.  Solidarity means we can get more done and solidarity ensures that our movement can bring more change to our country every day. So I’ll stand in solidarity with all of you in the New Year…I hope you’ll join me.

There are lots of other great progressive resolutions at Open Left. I hope you take a look.

Important Rule of Law News

I’m traveling for work, so posting is light, but I wanted to be sure you saw these posts from Marcy Wheeler on two cases regarding FISA and illegal wiretapping that are currently under US District Court Judge Vaughn Walker’s consideration.

Vaughn Walker Will Review the al-Haramain Document

Oops! They Pissed Off Judge Walker Before He Finalizes Immunity

The al-Haramain Dates

The short version is that it looks likely that there may now be judicial review of Bush’s illegal domestic wiretapping program, something that the Bush Administration has fought fervently for years. Moreover, because of some of the dates covered in the al-Haramain case, it’s possible for the program to broadly be considered ok, while even still finding Bush at times acted without legal authorization to use it. That is, there is at least one point in time — March 11, 2004 — when Bush lacked Attorney General approval for the domestic wiretapping program. If he did anything then — and the al-Haramain documents charge that he did — then he still violated the law. I’ll be anxiously watching for Judge Walker’s decisions in these cases.

On Dawn Johnsen

Via Glenn Greenwald, President-elect Obama’s pick to head the Office of Legal Counsel, Dawn Johnsen, sounds incredibly impressive. She wrote this last March in response to revelations about the OLC, Dick Cheney, and Maher Arar.

The question how we restore our nation’s honor takes on new urgency and promise as we approach the end of this administration. We must resist Bush administration efforts to hide evidence of its wrongdoing through demands for retroactive immunity, assertions of state privilege, and implausible claims that openness will empower terrorists. . . .

Here is a partial answer to my own question of how should we behave, directed especially to the next president and members of his or her administration but also to all of use who will be relieved by the change: We must avoid any temptation simply to move on. We must instead be honest with ourselves and the world as we condemn our nation’s past transgressions and reject Bush’s corruption of our American ideals. Our constitutional democracy cannot survive with a government shrouded in secrecy, nor can our nation’s honor be restored without full disclosure. (Emphasis & excerpts via Greenwald)

I agree with Greenwald when he writes on Johnsen:

I don’t know all that much about her, but anyone who can write this, in this unapologetic, euphemism-free and even impolitic tone, warning that the problem isn’t merely John Yoo but Bush himself, repeatedly demanding “outrage,” criticizing the Democratic Congress for legalizing Bush’s surveillance program, arguing that we cannot merely “move on” if we are to restore our national honor, stating the OLC’s “core job description” is to “say ‘no’ to the President,” all while emphasizing that the danger is unchecked power not just for the Bush administration but “for years and administrations to come” — and to do so in the middle of an election year when she knows she has a good chance to be appointed to a high-level position if the Democratic candidate won and yet nonetheless eschewed standard, obfuscating Beltway politesse about these matters — is someone whose appointment to such an important post is almost certainly a positive sign. (Emphasis in the original)

Hopefully Johnsen will keep her words of March 18, 2008 in mind as she services President Obama at the OLC and her beliefs of that time become grounding for how the Obama administration handles questions of Bush administrations violations of law and the rule of law and what accountability measures are taken over the next four years. Public accountability and investigation into what the Bush administration did and on what legal grounds they did it is an unquestioned necessity to allow our country to move forward. We can’t just forget the last eight years, especially vis a vis the rule of law and illegal actions by the Bush administration. The stakes are too great to forget.

Tim Kaine to DNC Chair

I’m not a fan of Tim Kaine, but I think with Democratic control of the White House, the importance of the DNC chairmanship is significantly reduced. Kaine won’t be our party’s head — he’ll mostly be focused on helping Barack Obama get re-elected in 2012. With that in mind, I want to turn to more relevant questions regarding what a Kaine DNC will look like.

  1. Who will be the Executive Director of the DNC? This person will have a far greater impact on day to day operations of the DNC than Kaine.
  2. Will Kaine and the new E.D. continue the 50 State Strategy? Will they expand it or will they shrink it?
  3. Will Kaine and the new E.D. keep current staff at the DNC? Howard Dean put together a phenomenal staff across the country. These are top Democratic operatives that know how to win unlike few other cohorts of operatives in our party. It would be a shame to lose this institutional knowledge.

I don’t have a sense of who the new Executive Director should be, but I would like it to be someone who supports the 50 State Strategy and has a deep understanding of how the Obama campaign won nationwide.

Update:

Marc Ambinder:

As has been previously reported, Jennifer O’Malley-Dillon will be executive director of the DNC.  O’Malley-Dillon is seen by the team as a manager with an organizational background that appeals to Obama.  She is large measure responsible for Sen. John Edwards’s solid caucus performances in 2004 and 2008.  She was recruited by Steve Hilderband to join Obama’s campaign as battleground states director and spent the general election overseeing state field budgets and figuring out where to send the principals.

The DNC will retain traditional responsibilities, like planning the convention and political research. But it will significantly expand its campaign organizing capacity and probably its staff; think of it as current DNC chairman Howard Dean’s 50 state strategy on steroids. [Emphasis added]

That sounds pretty good to me.

Educating on Employee Free Choice, Part 5

Trapper John at Daily Kos has a long and detailed argument in favor of the Employee Free Choice Act, which he posted yesterday. He gives in-depth explanations about the benefits of unionization, the shortcomings of current labor law, and the need for the Employee Free Choice Act. As I’ve been presenting much about why the Employee Free Choice Act is needed and how it works, I think it’d be useful to quote Trapper John’s explanation of the failings of the National Labor Relations Board in doing what it is intended to do: help workers.

To put it plainly — it is a dangerous endeavor for employees to try and organize themselves into a union.  Over the past 40 or so years, a combination of factors — most importantly, the defunding of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB — the agency that oversees union-management relations) and the increasing sophistication of union-busting approaches — have made it extremely difficult for employees to choose to unionize.

Cornell University scholar Kate Bronfenbrenner studied hundreds of organizing campaigns and found that:

Ninety-two percent of private-sector employers, when faced with employees who want to join together in a union, force employees to attend closed-door meetings to hear anti-union propaganda; 80 percent require supervisors to attend training sessions on attacking unions; and 78 percent require that supervisors deliver anti-union messages to workers they oversee.

Seventy-five percent hire outside consultants to run anti-union campaigns, often based on mass psychology and distorting the law.
Half of employers threaten to shut down partially or totally if employees join together in a union.

In 25 percent of organizing campaigns, private-sector employers illegally fire workers because they want to form a union.

Even after workers successfully form a union, in one-third of the instances, employers do not negotiate a contract.

And it’s not supposed to be that way. In fact, even after Reagan and Bush, the United States government’s stated, legislated policy is still to promote collective bargaining, to promote unionization — as seen in Section 1 of the National Labor Relations Act:

It is declared to be the policy of the United States to eliminate the causes of certain substantial obstructions to the free flow of commerce and to mitigate and eliminate these obstructions when they have occurred by encouraging the practice and procedure of collective bargaining and by protecting the exercise by workers of full freedom of association, self-organization, and designation of representatives of their own choosing, for the purpose of negotiating the terms and conditions of their employment or other mutual aid or protection.

Got that? It’s supposed to be the sole decision of workers, not their employers, whether to join a union and demand their fair share. But as the statistcs above show, that’s not the way things work.

When employees come to their employer as a unified group and ask to be recognized as a union, the employer can force tham to go to the NLRB and file for an election. Then, the employer can force the NLRB to delay the election for months, if not years, by raising all sorts of ticky-tack legal issues. During the delay, the employer can (and probably will) harass, intimidate, and even fire employees to coerce them into abandoning their support for the union — a workplace that was 90% in favor of unionization can easily be scared into voting against unionization. And even if the employees stand strong, and vote to unionize after all the threats and harassment, the employer can refuse to bargain with the union for years, instead litigating the results of the election. And even if the employer is finally ordered to bargain with the union, it can eseentially get away with refusing to do so — and there’s nothing meaningful that the NLRB can do, because the legal remedies available to it are completely ineffective and unintimidating.

In short, federal law is suppposed to preserve the free choice of employees to choose unions, but in practice it does no such thing. And that’s why we need the Employee Free Choice Act — to restore the right of workers to choose whether to unionize, and in so doing, to restore a real, secure middle class.

The Employee Free Choice Act is a remedy to existing problems.  It’s urgently needed not merely to help workers have a safe and easy path to form unions if they so desire, but to ensure that the government mechanisms that are supposed to protect this process is functional and strong.

I’ll look forward to more great posts like this one from Trapper John – he’s a labor expert and I’m sure he’ll have more to say about the Employee Free Choice Act as the debate progresses.

Israel Using Cluster Munitions In Gaza

Gaza explosions

Photo from Times UK

A friend who used to be in the military sent me this photo of cluster munitions, fired by Israel, into urban Gaza. They’re using DPICMs, which are the artillery version of cluster bombs. In a densely populated urban area, Israel is using weapons that are incapable of distinguishing between combatants and non-combatants.

I’ve generally avoided writing about Israel over my years blogging, in part because of how contentious a subject matter it is online. I’ve found that the current fighting in Gaza has brought out similar divides – with either Israel being an unparalleled evil or Palestinians being unrepentant terrorists. But in seeing the Israeli government using cluster munitions against urban populations, knowing full well that they cannot do anything other hit harm innocent people, I’m at a breaking point. This is beyond unacceptable and it’s horrifying that there is not political will in the American governing class to condemn what are unquestionably war crimes by Israel.

Update:

It now appears that the cluster busters pictured above are not DPICMs, but rather white phosphorus.  This is equally appalling as the use of cluster munitions, as when used in the context above – an air burst, not a marker – it still burns indiscriminately. These are not weapons that are “smart”. They are being used against a civilian population. From the Times UK:

The Geneva Treaty of 1980 stipulates that white phosphorus should not be used as a weapon of war in civilian areas, but there is no blanket ban under international law on its use as a smokescreen or for illumination. However, Charles Heyman, a military expert and former major in the British Army, said: “If white phosphorus was deliberately fired at a crowd of people someone would end up in The Hague. White phosphorus is also a terror weapon. The descending blobs of phosphorus will burn when in contact with skin.”

Apologies for the mis-identification of the photo above as DPICMs. But I now have confirmation from two former artillery soldiers that this is in fact white phosphorus. That said, there are still reports that Israel is using cluster bombs in Gaza separate from what the Times documented in this photograph.

Very Late Update:

In the comments Conor Eaton-Smith points out an AP story where the Red Cross states that they do not think Israel’s use of white phosphorous in Gaza is illegal.

The international Red Cross said Tuesday that Israel has fired white phosphorus shells in its offensive in the Gaza Strip, but has no evidence to suggest it is being used improperly or illegally.

The comments came after a human rights organization accused the Jewish state of using the incendiary agent, which ignites when it strikes the skin and burns straight through or until it is cut off from oxygen. It can cause horrific injuries.

The International Committee of the Red Cross urged Israel to exercise “extreme caution” in using the incendiary agent, which is used to illuminate targets at night or create a smoke screen for day attacks, said Peter Herby, the head of the organization’s mines-arms unit.

“In some of the strikes in Gaza it’s pretty clear that phosphorus was used,” Herby told The Associated Press. “But it’s not very unusual to use phosphorus to create smoke or illuminate a target. We have no evidence to suggest it’s being used in any other way.”

Glad to see that the concern raised above regarding the specific use of white phosophorous or cluster munitions on civilian populations was in the end not warranted.

It certainly is reassuring to know that the 900+ Palestinians killed during Israel’s offensive (13 Israelis have also died) were killed by lawful weapons in lawful ways.

Local Media, State Blogs & State Legislatures

One of the issues that regular takes up untold millions of pixels in the realm of meta blogging is the extent to which statewide local blogs are replacing local news coverage. Local papers have had shrinking staffs for a long time, but it’s become dramatic in recent years. More and more papers are removing their reporters from the pool at state legislatures. As a result, with fewer reporters covering more things, the quality of coverage of state governance drops precipitously. It’s not surprising that local blogs have sought to fill that role, though I don’t know of anyone who would claim that there’s a one to one exchange between a blogger and a journalist in this circumstances, if only for the fact that so few bloggers get to blog full time.

Governing Magazine has a great article this month by Rob Gurwitt about the decline of traditional journalism covering state legislatures, the growth of blogs, and how these changes influence what elected officials are doing to get the word out about their work. Gurwitt’s piece is one of the best I can recall reading in the last five years on the dynamics that have contributed to the rise of local blogs. The article focuses a great deal on Connecticut, so it’s naturally of interest to me. He cites Christine Stewart of CT News Junkie as an example of what happens when an intrepid person seeks to do the work that is no longer being done by the traditional press.

CT. Rep Mike Lawlor is quoted in Gurwitt’s piece. His comments show a great deal of understanding of the changing footing he operates in as an elected official.

Mike Lawlor, a Democrat who chairs the Connecticut House Judiciary Committee, notes that while some legislators mostly complain about not getting their names in the newspaper anymore, “there are also curious, thoughtful, sophisticated people who are trying to accomplish things, and they’re frustrated that their constituents don’t know what’s happening at the Capitol anymore, and they can’t get them to care.” He sees in the rise of the Internet and the loosening grip of newspapers a twin challenge for legislators, because it’s created two distinct groups of constituents: those comfortable online, and those comfortable only with newspapers, radio and television.

“It’s changed how I do advocacy,” he says. “Twenty years ago, if I couldn’t get reporters to write about it, no one knew it had happened. Well, not so much anymore. Now everything is available. So if you want the relatively well-educated, tech-savvy people to know something, you know which blog to send a link to, and you can generate public opinion starting from that.” But he represents a district in East Haven, which is part of the New Haven Register’s circulation area and therefore no longer served by a print capitol reporter, and he sees the direct cost. “People who don’t go online and just read the newspaper, they’re out of the loop,” Lawlor says. “They don’t know what’s going on.”

The irony in all this, as Lawlor suggests, is that for a small coterie of interested parties, now actually is a boom time for state government news. Spurred by the inattention and over-stretched resources of traditional news providers, information about legislatures is bursting online. There are straight-ahead national news efforts such as Stateline.org; the Politicker sites; and the more ideologically slanted sites in Colorado, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota and New Mexico run by the left-leaning Center for Independent Media.

It’s worth pointing out again how strong the analysis by Gurwitt and his sources are in his piece. It’s not blogging triumphalist bunk. It’s not a column filled with pearl-clutching journalists who bemoan that bloggers will never, ever be able to rise to the hallowed levels of them and their editors. It’s a sober, serious look at the landscape at a time when newspapers are shrinking, blogs are growing, and elected officials are trying to change the way they work so their constituents can remain informed of what’s happening in their government. I highly recommend you read the full piece at Governing.com.

Tsundue on the Tibetan Resolution

My friend Tenzin Tsundue, leader of Friends of Tibet in India, has penned a long op-ed for Phayul on the process and outcome of the Special Meeting in Dharamsala called by the Tibetan Government in Exile. The meeting’s aim was to discuss the future policy of the TGIE towards China, with the direct input of the Tibetan people – a daring foray into true democracy. Tsundue provides one of the more detailed write-ups of what happened at the meeting, as well as insight into the difficulties that existed in making it a useful and productive event.

When all opinions got collected, and the group leaders met to work out a final resolution, the true test of Tibetan democracy was at hand. The Dalai Lama had expressed distrust in the Chinese government but had not withdrawn his Middle Path policy. Therefore, the choice was still between the Dalai Lama’s Middle Path or Independence.

Then, exile government circulated the result of opinions secretly collected inside Tibet. Out of 17,393 people, 8,246 said they would follow whatever His Holiness says, while 5,209 voted for Independence, and 2,950 supported the Middle Path.

The Meeting resolved to follow the Middle Path as a public mandate but decided to suspend with immediate effect, sending delegations to China, as Beijing did not reciprocate appropriately to the dialogue process. If, in the short period they continued their policy of not responding to our efforts to find a negotiated solution, we would reinstate Independence as the goal of the Tibetan struggle and demand the right of Self Determination. And it would be us who would what “short period” would be.

The eight-point resolution received five standing ovations and brought tears in the eyes of many delegates as we rose to sing the Tibetan National Anthem, we felt once again reunited for one common cause under one leadership. Whatever we spoke for was all for the freedom of Tibet and our main concern was for our brethren inside Tibet who are living under Chinese occupation. The exile government and the people will now be more active in our non-violent struggle and stop being conciliatory. We will now be more confrontational and aggressive, but we are unanimous in our resolve in maintaining our struggle non-violent.

As the meeting came to an end the Prime Minister Prof Samdhong Rinpoche delivering a unique thank you speech said: “The Chinese government this week tried to put pressure on India to stop this meeting, and the Indian government pretended as if they didn’t hear it. We want to express our deep gratitude to the people and Government of India”.

This is actually the first I’ve heard of the TGIE conducting a survey of Tibetans inside of Tibet as to what they wanted from the diplomatic process. It’s a true testiment to the undying devotion of Tibetans inside Tibet to the Dalai Lama, despite fifty years of Chinese occupation in his absence, that a majority would simply defer to whatever he thought was the best course of action. It’s an even greater statement about the Tibetan desire, shared by all people, to be independent that those who specified a choice picked independence over the Middle Path.

Tsundue’s piece goes a long way in showing how the process internal to the Special Meeting ensured an outcome that both accurately reflects the desires of Tibetans inside and outside of Tibet, while ensuring that the movement back towards a policy of Rangzen is proceeding. Personally, China’s continued refusal to conduct dialogues in good faith regarding a meaningful autonomy for Tibet makes the advocacy for anything less than independence seem foolish to me. But as both Tsundue’s essay and the poll of Tibetans inside Tibet show, the Tibetan people have a complicated relationship between their desires and their admiration of the Dalai Lama. He’s spent over thirty years advocating the Middle Path and it won’t be abandoned in one meeting. The outcome of the Special Meeting, nonetheless, makes clear that Tibetans will continue to negotiate for meaningful autonomy in good faith, while recognizing if such efforts remain fruitless, it will be time to return to what most Tibetans inside Tibet want most: genuine independence and rights afforded to them under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Educating on Employee Free Choice, Part 4

Errol Louis of the New York Daily News predicts the impact of the Employee Free Choice Act in 2009:

As Barack Obama takes office, the single most important piece of legislation aimed at helping the middle class will be the Employee Free Choice Act, a bill that makes it easier to unionize workplaces.

The law would correct an epidemic of workplace intimidation, much of it illegal, that’s unleashed when employees consider unionizing: 25% of the time, at least one worker gets fired for even proposing a union, and 51% of the time employers threaten to close a plant if workers approve a union.

That’s why an estimated 60 million nonunion workers say they’d like to join a union, but can’t – and why wages have been stagnant or falling since 2000.

If Obama wins passage of [the Employee Free Choice Act], tens of millions of people could start down the road to winning middle-class wages and benefits – exactly what’s needed to shorten the recession.

This is about as straightforward an argument for the passage of Employee Free Choice as I’ve seen expressed in a mainstream media outlet. Kudos to Louis for getting it.