Month: December 2008

More Important Than We Know

by digby

Here’s an article laying out some of the arguments about “Card Check” aka the Employee Free Choice Act:

Is it pay-back time or about time? When it comes to “card-check,” slang for the Employee Free-Choice Act – one of the first pieces of legislation likely to go before Congress when it reconvenes in January – it depends on who you ask.

Today, if a union organizer goes into a workplace and gets 30 percent of the employees to sign a “union interest” card, an election is ordered by the National Labor Relations Board. A secret-ballot vote is held six weeks later, giving both union and employer time to lobby the workers.

Under card-check, not so much: If a majority of employees sign a union card, then the union becomes the bargaining unit. No more six-week campaigns, no more elections. It’s a done deal; you’re essentially a union shop.
[…]

“Card-check gives a better opportunity for workers to have an easier way to form a union at their workplace,” explains Bill George, president of the Pennsylvania AFL-CIO.

He pushes back at critics who say it goes against the fundamental American right to a secret ballot: “Bottom line is that there is too much power in the hands of employers, and middle-class workers are not getting their fair share of the profits.”

“If you want to say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to a union, you should be able to do that in the privacy of the voting booth,” counters James Sherk, a Bradley Fellow in Labor Policy at the Heritage Foundation.

“Promoting unionism is not a wise idea in the middle of a recession,” Sherk adds. The real issue in his mind is not whether unions are good or bad. “The issue is, are these specific conditions” – not using secret ballots – “good or bad? I would argue (that) no matter the economic circumstances, workers have the right to a private vote.

“They have the right to vote ‘yes’ or ‘no’ on unionism without the union officials or their co-workers being aware of how they voted.”

You can make an argument that each side sees a benefit to a different process, says Purdue University professor Bert Rockman.

“Signing the union petition card is an indication of discontent with present conditions in the workforce; the unions argue that is sufficient,” he explains. Democrats are likely to cave to that argument since unions are an important, if fading, constituency of their party.

A secret ballot, on the other hand, allows employers to do many things. They can respond to some of the discontent, indicating that they care and that everyone is better off without a union, or they can argue about the cost to the workers of unionization.

Can you see what’s wrong with that argument?

The secret ballot allows employers to “indicate they care” and “argue about the cost to the workers of unionization.” Why would anyone object to that? No mention of the retaliation, threats and intimidation workers often suffer for six long weeks until they can cast their vaunted secret ballot.

This is a bizarre issue for the Republicans to go to the mattresses on, but that appears to be what they are doing. I’ve mentioned before just how weird it is that the crowds at McCain rallies would break out into a near frenzy at the mention of “secret ballot.” Clearly, the talk radio gasbags have primed them. There must be a reason why, in the midst of their doldrums and retrenchment, their guns are still blazing at something this obscure and I would guess that it’s because they feel fundamentally politically threatened by this is some ways that aren’t completely obvious. They’ve never liked unions, but I would guess that they see a particular threat in the midst of this economic crisis.

Health care and unionization — if they happen, the right has both a political and structural problem on their hands which will make it very difficult for them to come back in a big way — at least for quite some time. When it comes to our two party system, the Republicans understand quite well that these are the kinds of successes from which long term realignments are made.

Galtian Privilege

by digby

Ah memories. Here was McCain’s top Wall Street supporter, John Thain, six months ago, when asked what he hoped his legacy would be when he was chosen for an important job in the second McCain administration:

I very much hope my legacy will be that I restored a great institution to an even greater position in the world

Today:

Despite $11 billion in losses and 30,000 lay-offs , Merrill Lynch CEO John Thain is reportedly seeking a $10 million bonus, prompting New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo to reach out to the firm’s board of directors urging them not to grant the “shocking” payment to Thain in light of the firm’s “abysmal” performance.
Merrill CEO, John Thain, Faces Fight for $10 Million Bonus
Merrill Lynch CEO John Thain is reportedly seeking a $10 million bonus despite $11 billion in losses and 30,000 lay-offs.

Cuomo’s office fired off a letter to Merrill’s board this morning after the Wall Street Journal reported that Thain has suggested to the board of the financial giant that he should be awarded a bonus during a year in which 30,000 Merrill employees were laid off.

Cuomo reminded Merrill that it had informed his office on November 5th that any bonus would be based on performance and executive retention needs.

By that measure, Cuomo said, “utilizing Merrill’s own criteria, a bonus of this size appears unjustified.”

Thain joined Merrill as CEO in 2007 when the firm was already in trouble and received a $15 million signing bonus before he began a top-to-bottom review of the company. His salary is $750,000 a year.

Merrill has managed to stay afloat through the banking industry crisis in a large part because of the merger Thain engineered with Bank of America, according to attorneys who have examined the firm’s financials. The merger was approved last week by shareholders for both institutions.

But a key underpinning of the deal is the $15 billion in public funds that the Treasury Department provided BofA and $10 billion offered to Merrill that it is expected to accept once the merger with BofA is completed. As such, any bonus to the firm’s CEO would be “a thumb in the eye” of taxpayers, Cuomo said.

“In terms of performance, Merrill has reported losses for every quarter this year and has lost more than $11 billion for the year as a whole. Indeed, Merrill’s decision to be taken over by Bank of America seems to have been the only thing that saved Merrill from collapse,” Cuomo said. “Clearly, the performance of Merrill’s top executives throughout Merrill’s abysmal year in no way justifies significant bonuses for its top executives, including the CEO.”

But it’s all good. Republicans are back!

House Minority Leader John Boehner (Ohio) issued a memo late Sunday insisting that the victory of Anh “Joseph” Cao over Jefferson is a sign that the tide is turning for Republicans.

“The Cao victory is a symbol of our future,” wrote Boehner. “In the two years ahead, House Republicans will demonstrate our commitment to reform by holding ourselves to the highest possible ethical standard…[and] presenting principled, superior solutions to the challenges facing our country.”

In that vein, the Boehner memo sought to highlight the ongoing ethics questions surrounding New York Rep. Charlie Rangel — evidence that Republicans will seek to use Rangel’s problems as a cudgel against House Democrats in the coming months.

The Louisiana Republican Party issued their own release in the wake of the Cao victory (in keeping with the idea that success has a thousand fathers but failure is an orphan), claiming that the wins on Saturday were a validation of the reform agenda of Louisiana Governor — and potential 2012 presidential candidate — Bobby Jindal.

“The voters spoke and their resounding choice for reforming government, ending corruption, and reining in spending — all championed in Governor Jindal’s own campaign — won,” said communications director Aaron Baer.

[…]

“While I don’t think these victories mean that the GOP has miraculously fixed everything that is currently broken, I do think that they are really positive data points,” said Alex Vogel, a prominent Republican strategist. “Just like the Democrats took advance comfort from the special elections they won leading up to the 2008 elections, we should certainly view these overtime wins as a sign that the sun is rising again.”

It was hell for conservatives being out in the wilderness for these long four weeks. Thank God that’s over and they can begin the job of reforming government and holding Democrats’ feet to the fire on corruption. Lord knows they have built up enough credibility in the last month to do that.

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Innoculation

by digby

Washington Whispers:

As President-elect Barack Obama continues to build his national security staff, now focused on intelligence, it is possible that he might ask CIA Director Mike Hayden to stay on for a while, intelligence sources say. Much of the speculation about the CIA job has been that Obama wants a change, in part because he disagreed with the CIA’s detention policies. But officials are pushing back a little on that issue, suggesting that Hayden has been carrying out the policies backed by Congress and the president before he arrived at Langley, not freelancing on his own. “It’s unfair to blame Hayden for things that occurred long before he took the job. But he deserves credit for standing up for the folks over there at CIA, even though a lot of the stuff he has dealt with didn’t happen on his watch,” said an intelligence official. “Administration policy and American law shape what the CIA does. If the president says he doesn’t want something done, that’s it. These are his programs,” added the official.

February 2008:

“The circumstances under which we are operating … are frankly, different than they were in late 2001 and early 2002,” Hayden said. “Very critical to those circumstances was the belief that additional catastrophic attacks against the homeland were imminent. In addition to that, my agency … had limited knowledge about al Qaeda and its workings. Those two realities have changed.”

Hayden told reporters later that the interrogations of Mohammed and Zubaydah were particularly fruitful.

From the time of their capture in 2002 and 2003 until they were delivered to Guantanamo Bay prison in 2006, the two suspects accounted for one-fourth of the human intelligence reports on al Qaeda, Hayden said.

Some analysts have questioned Mohammed’s credibility under interrogation. But Hayden said most of the information was reliable and helped lead to other al Qaeda suspects.

He told the committee he opposed limiting the CIA to using interrogation techniques permitted in the U.S. Army Field Manual, which bans waterboarding. CIA interrogators are better trained, and the agency works with a narrower range of suspects in its interrogations, he said.

Hayden said fewer than 100 people had been held in the CIA’s terrorism detention and interrogation program launched after the Sept. 11 attacks, with fewer than one-third of them subjected to any harsh interrogation techniques.

But applying the field manual’s limitations to the CIA, he said, “would substantially increase the danger to America.”

It’s hard for me to see how he reconciles those statements with a new policy. It seems to me that if he honestly believed that the danger to the country would be “substantially” increased if the CIA were not allowed to torture, he cannot in good conscience work for someone who disagrees. Or he was lying.

The politics of this are getting really interesting. Last week there was a lot of fretting about the left being hostile to the CIA and holding it to a ridiculous standard by insisting that members of the torture regime not be elevated or retained in high level jobs in the new administration. I mentioned a couple of times that I thought it was a bit of a stretch to believe that the Obama transition team was so cowed by some blog posts that they asked Brennan to remove his name. Certainly, these unnamed, unhappy CIA sources seemed awfully gullible if they believed that liberal bloggers had such power.

Greenwald gives the full treatment today to the way the Brennan backlash story was coordinated through the media. It’s quite astonishing. But this leak to Washington Whispers makes me think there might be some method to the madness if the real point was to inoculate Hayden (or a similar company man.) After all this complaining over Brennan, Obama can’t be seen to have “succumbed” to another blogger witchhunt at this point or risk have the village roar that he’s being held hostage by the left on national security.

Obama certainly doesn’t have to nominate a company man just because they want him to. But it’s the kind of thing the bureaucracies do to protect their turf and show who’s boss when a new president comes to town, particularly among the police and national security state apparatus. (They may be particularly inclined to do it this time after the humiliation routinely meted out by Dick Cheney over the past eight years.)

It’s just a theory, of course, and this floating of Hayden could just be wishful thinking. But if the CIA is seeking to pressure the new administration to hire one of their own, this would be a clever way to frame it: if Obama doesn’t pick one of theirs, he will be portrayed as captive to the Left on national security. And naturally, the press runs with it because it fits their favorite storyline as well.

Whatever is happening, this notion that liberal bloggers vetoed a choice to run the CIA just doesn’t scan. Whether my speculation above is correct or not, there’s definitely something else going on.

In God We Trust

by digby

Ferchristsake. And I mean that literally:

A group of atheists filed a lawsuit Tuesday seeking to remove part of a state anti-terrorism law that requires Kentucky’s Office of Homeland Security to acknowledge it can’t keep the state safe without God’s help.

American Atheists Inc. sued in state court over a 2002 law that stresses God’s role in Kentucky’s homeland security alongside the military, police agencies and health departments.

Of particular concern is a 2006 clause requiring the Office of Homeland Security to post a plaque that says the safety and security of the state “cannot be achieved apart from reliance upon almighty God” and to stress that fact through training and educational materials.

The plaque, posted at the Kentucky Emergency Operations Center in Frankfort, includes the Bible verse: “Except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain.”

“It is one of the most egregiously and breathtakingly unconstitutional actions by a state legislature that I’ve ever seen,” said Edwin F. Kagin, national legal director of Parsippany, N.J.-based American Atheists Inc. The group claims the law violates both the state and U.S. constitutions.

But Democratic state Rep. Tom Riner, a Baptist minister from Louisville, said he considers it vitally important to acknowledge God’s role in protecting Kentucky and the nation.

“No government by itself can guarantee perfect security,” Riner said. “There will always be this opposition to the acknowledgment of divine providence, but this is a foundational understanding of what America is.”

Maybe atheists should just declare atheism a religion. Then they could sue for the right to have the statute also say that there is no proof that God exists and that people had better use their minds and free will to keep themselves safe (and stress that fact through training and educational materials.)

I’ve written before that I don’t think there’s any way to end this unconstitutional insistence on religion in government unless they are forced to share the public space with those they abhor.

Americans of the past were not being primitive and stupid when they put religion firmly into the private sector. They understood that it’s the only way to keep religion truly free as well as keep the church from dominating public life as it had done in Europe for centuries.

To a lot of these religious zealots, those were the best of times, I guess. Bring on the inquisition.

Hippie Punch Of The Day

by dday

I am gobsmacked by this HuffPo piece by Steve Hildebrand, punching the hippies on the left for… having opinions. Hilbebrand begins by outlining the challenges President-elect Obama faces – on the economy, on Iraq and foreign policy, on repairing the nation’s reputation around the world, on the crisis of the uninsured, on global warming – all problems that this amorphous “left” knows all about and has been describing in detail for several years, and then he says this:

I could go on and on. The point I’m making here is that our new president, the Congress and all Americans must come together to solve these problems. This is not a time for the left wing of our Party to draw conclusions about the Cabinet and White House appointments that President-Elect Obama is making. Some believe the appointments generally aren’t progressive enough. Having worked with former Senator Obama for the last two years, I can tell you, that isn’t the way he thinks and it’s not likely the way he will lead. The problems I mentioned above and the many I didn’t, suggest that our president surround himself with the most qualified people to address these challenges. After all, he was elected to be the president of all the people – not just those on the left.

As a liberal member of our Party, I hope and expect our new president to address those issues that will benefit the vast majority of Americans first and foremost. That’s his job. Over time, there will be many, many issues that come before him. But first let’s get our economy moving, bring our troops home safely, fix health care, end climate change and restore our place in the world. What a great president Barack Obama will be if he can work with Congress and the American people to make great strides in these very difficult times.

First, note the “some people say” technique, marginalizing critics by disembodying them. Then, note the frame, that only the very serious people are thinking about these challenges, while “the left” is screaming about ideology, because they want the world to go to hell, I guess. It’s also “not a time” to draw conclusions about Cabinet and White House appointments. In other words, you should just STFU and enjoy the new dawn with your dear leader.

That’s not really how America works. And this lashing out from a senior Obama aide at a really small group of critics, who aren’t really displaying much more than concern, and who for the most part have offered support for the policy pronouncements coming out of the transition, is extremely depressing. I don’t think he’s serving his former boss very well by seeking to silence dissent and building straw men on “the left,” lying about their interests and concerns.

David Sirota dispatches with this pretty easily. But I’m really frustrated by it. Instead of writing a letter to, say, the actual people that are going to obstruct Obama’s agenda, like the ones who will filibuster the auto industry rescue, Hildebrand finds it important to break up all gatherings of five hippies in a field. That’s important to the survival of the nation. That’s worth the effort.

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Until He Turns Blue

by digby

This is how responsible, conservative grown-ups react to a crisis:

With job losses mounting and Detroit’s Big Three automakers facing a battle on Capitol Hill over emergency federal aid, President-elect Barack Obama on Sunday predicted more hard times for the U.S. economy before it starts to turn around, and Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) threatened a potential filibuster of any attempt to bail out the automakers.

[…]

Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), a staunch ally of the U.S. carmakers, and Shelby, who has emerged as the leading opponent of any aid package for the Big Three, sparred over the whether the American government should rescue U.S. automakers during an appearance on “Fox News Sunday.”

Levin said he was “confident” that Congress would consider a bailout bill for the auto industry, but stopped short of predicting whether it would pass. Democratic leaders in the House and Senate are considering a $15 billion “bridge loan” to help out the automakers.

“I think they’re very close to a deal, I think there will be a deal and that will happen in 24 hours,” Levin told host Chris Wallace. “Obviously, that’s a much more complicated question of whether the votes are there. What I’m confident of is that a bill will be introduced.”

But Shelby, who also voted against the $700 bailout bill for the financial industry, called it a “bridge loan to nowhere,” and said General Motors, Ford and Chrysler have to undergo a fundamental restructuring of their operations rather than look for federal help.

[…]

Shelby also threatened a filibuster of any auto aid agreement, but was unsure whether he had the votes to sustain it.

Shelby is a traditional conservative — in the mode of Herbert Hoover. That tradition is one that’s been out of fashion for about 80 years now and there’s little reason to bring it back. If you want to relive the Hoover years, take Charleston lessons. Or read some F.Scott Fitzgerald and leave the economy to more modern thinkers.

Deadly Force

by digby

Here’s a lovely story about a man who allegedly grabbed a policeman’s taser in a scuffle and used it on one of the officers.

They shot him.

A Day Which Will Live In Infamy

by digby

I haven’t seen a lot of discussion about Pearl Harbor day today. But considering the crossroads at which we find ourselves at the end of the Bush era, this piece about the Japanese attacks and doctrine of preventive war (aka the Bush Doctrine)gives an important historical overview of why (until the neocon fanatics took over) the US did not assert that doctrine.

That is not to say we didn’t invade other countries on trumped up rationales or thin evidence. We certainly did. But it was a given among western democracies after the two horrifying wars of the 20th century that wars of aggression were a no-no. But just as Bush and Cheney decided that 9/11 changed everything such that even the civilized taboos against torture were out of fashion, they openly flouted and then discarded the world’s consensus on this issues after WWII. We became what we had once abhorred.

Defending The Company

by digby

There’s been quite a bit of chatter about the Brennan withdrawal suggesting that CIA veterans and long time professionals are really angry with “the left” for saying that someone who was a high echelon member of the agency and who had knowledge of the torture regime should not get the job of agency head. Apparently, they don’t think the rest of the world cares if Obama fails to deliver on his promise to end that practice once and for all and can’t see the foreign policy necessity of starting with a clean slate at the top. They would be wrong.

But more irritating is this complaining that’s evidently bubbling up from Langley that the left is hostile to the CIA and are trying to tie their hands, etc. The fact is that the left has been the CIAs staunchest defender during the Bush years, never blaming them for the bad decisions of the political bosses and standing behind them when the right tried to crucify them for the failure of 9/11 and WMD. Once again, no good deed goes unpunished. Meanwhile, for the past 30 years, the right has consistently characterized the CIA as a bunch of hapless, if not unpatriotic, fools, writing things like like this, as recently as a year ago, and yet is never seen as an enemy.

Back when we were embroiled in the Valerie Plame scandal, and “the left” was defending her and other analysts at the CIA who were being used as punching bags by the Bush defenders, I wrote a post about the CIA’s relationship with both the left and the right over the years that I think is worth reprising at this moment:

I’ve been thinking a lot about how the Plame affair has brought up an interesting political contradiction: the right is openly contemptuous of the CIA while the left is a vocal supporter. I think it’s probably a good idea to clarify that bit so we don’t get confused. The fact is that both sides have always been simultaneously vocal supporters and openly contemptuous of the CIA, but for entirely different reasons.

(I usually don’t speak for “the left” but for the purpose of this discussion I will use my views as a proxy for the lefty argument.) I’m not generally a big fan of secretive government departments with no accountability. I always worry that they are up to things not sanctioned by the people and it has often turned out that they are. I have long been skeptical of the CIA because of the CIA’s history of bad acts around the world that were not sanctioned or even known by more than a few people and were often, in hindsight, wrong — like rendition, for instance. I don’t believe that we should have a secret foreign policy operation that doesn’t answer to the people. They tend to do bad shit that leaves the people holding the bag.

But I didn’t just fall out of the back of Arnold’s hummer, so I understand that a nation needs intelligence to protect itself and understand the world. I also understand that the way we obtain that information must be kept secret in order to protect the lives of those who are involved in getting it. I have never objected to the idea that we have spies around the world gathering information about what our enemies are up to. I also think that intelligence should, as much as possible, be objective and apolitical. Otherwise, we cannot accurately assess real threats. If the CIA (and the other intelligence agencies) only make objective analyses, the buck will stop at the president, where it always properly should.

Therefore, I see this Plame affair — and the larger matter of the pre-war WMD threat assessment — as a matter of compromised intelligence and an extension of the 30 year war the right has waged against what it thinks is the CIA’s tepid threat analysis. Never mind that the right’s hysterical analyses have always turned out to have been completely wrong.

But then accuracy was never the point because the right takes the opposite approach to the CIA’s proper role. They have always been entirely in favor of the CIA working on behalf of any president who wanted to topple a left wing dictator or stage a coup without congressional knowledge. This is, in their view, the proper role of the CIA — to covertly advance foreign policy on behalf of an executive (of whom they approve) and basically do illegal and immoral dirty work. But they have never valued the intelligence and analysis the CIA produced since it often challenged their preconceived beliefs and as a result didn’t validate their knee jerk impulse to invade, bomb, obliterate, topple somebody for reasons of ideology or geopolitical power. The CIA’s intelligence often backed up the success of the containment policy that kept us from a major bloody hot war with the commies — and for that they will never be trusted.(See Team B, and the Committee on the Present Danger parts I and II.)

Therefore, the right sees the Plame affair as another example of an inappropriately “independent” CIA refusing to accede to its boss’s wishes. They believe that the CIA exists to provide the president with the documentation he needs to advance his foreign policy goals — and if that includes lying to precipitate a war he feels is needed, then their job is to acquiesce. When you cut away the verbiage, what the right really believes is that the US is justified in invading and occupying any country it likes — it’s just some sissified, cowardly rule ‘o law that prevents us from doing it. The CIA’s job is to smooth the way for the president to do what he wants by keeping the citizen rubes and the allies in line with phony proof that we are following international and domestic laws. (This would be the Straussian method of governance — too bad the wise ones who are running the world while keeping the rest of us entertained with religion and bread and circuses are so fucking lame.)

Back in the day, they used to just admit that they were engaging in Realpolitik, and as disgusting as that is, at least it was more honest than the current crop of neocons who insist that they are righteous and good by advancing democracy and vanquishing evil using undemocratic, illegal means. It makes me miss Kissinger. At least he didn’t sing kumbaya while he was fucking over the wogs.

I have no idea where people who don’t pay much attention to the political scene would come down on this. It may be that they think the government should have a branch that does illegal dirty work. But I suspect they would also think that the president should not be allowed to run a secret foreign policy or stage wars for inscrutable reasons. Indeed, I think most people would find it repugnant if they knew that there are people in government who think the president of the United States has a right to lie to them in order to commit their blood and treasure to a cause or plan that has nothing to do with the one that is stated.

Of course, that’s exactly what happened with Iraq. The right’s greatest challenge now is to get the public to believe that they were lied to for their own good.

They obviously didn’t meet that challenge.

The larger point is this. Brennan’s pals at CIA are bellyaching about “ill-informed liberal bloggers” and in doing so are obviously trying to create solidarity with the right wing and are doing so during a period of liberal ascension. It’s perverse. The right loathes them far more passionately than the left, and would prefer that the whole agency be replaced with something far more political and quasi military than it already is. The left just wants them not to perpetrate illegal acts that inevitably make America less safe when they are found out — as is more and more likely in this globally sophisticated media world. This isn’t all about morality, although it’s certainly the foundation of the argument. It’s also practical: torture, rendition, toppling foreign governments with secret coups, all that dirty work, has ended up hurting America’s standing in the world.

The left and right obviously have different reasons for both mistrusting and supporting the CIA. But the rationale for those differences is stark and I find it very telling that the CIA tends to keep quiet when they are being publicly brutalized by the right but go into high dudgeon when the left rather mildly suggests that someone closely associated with the Bush torture regime (who failed to speak out forcefully, by all accounts) would be an inappropriate choice to head the agency. According to the practices of the village, this is how they expect to get back in the good graces of the “center-right” political establishment. You just can’t go wrong by disparaging the left — even when they defended you against character assassination and derision for eight long years. Indeed, beating them up is all the more impressive because of it.

Absolutist Liars

by digby

BTD at Talk Left takes Ross Douthat to task for his disingenuous ramblings asserting that “Pro-Life” advocates are allegedly willing to compromise while the pro-choice advocates are absolutists. As he points out, the abortion laws are hardly sweeping as it is. Third trimester abortions are nearly unheard of and second trimester abortions are difficult and arduous to obtain. We have states making it nearly impossible for women to exercise their constitutional rights by failing to provide any low cost reproductive services and the anti-choice zealots forcing doctors who provide them out of the state. It’s not like women haven’t made many compromises already on this one. But the anti-choicers will not settle for anything less than making a pregnant woman basically give up all rights to her autonomy.

Here’s the bottom line: in the phrase “pro-choice” is the word choice, which means: