"When We Took Over the Government"

I remember sitting in a meeting back in the mid-1990s and listening to a federal bureaucrat named Elaine Kamarck, a Clinton appointee, talked about all of the changes that the administration had made since 1993. To make the point about how life was different under the Clintons as opposed to 12 years of Republican administration, she juxtaposed then and now, using the phrase "when we took over the government." I had visions of Daniel Ortega pistoleros vaulting the White House fence off of Pennsylvania Ave. Hillary sitting in the Oval Office, wearing camo, boots up on the desk, drawing on a Cuban cigar.

I had my second when-we-took-over-the-government moment this week reading about the Obama counterattack on the furor building over his surreptitious plan to nationalize healthcare:

• The lame plot by an amateur White House to have Americans rat out their fellow citizens who disagree with the President's plan for government-controlled medicine

•  The spam attack from 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. containing the approved talking points on healthcare reform. (And where, oh where, did they get all those email addresses? Check the video below)

• And now the real counterattack: sending union sluggers into the town hall meetings across American this weekend to intimidate Americans exercising their right of free speech
  

The town hall meetings are American democracy at its best. The tide has turned on Pres. Obama, although he doesn't know it yet. He is an academic liberal, a policy wonk, more comfortable in the salons of DC or New York than in upstate Pennsylvania or backwoods Alabama. The reason the tide has turned is that opponents of the President have drawn him out of the Beltway and made him fight on Main Street where he's not comfortable. 

The President's answer so far is to stay within his comfort zone. He is relying on support from special interest groups like the AARP, the AMA, or Big Labor--veteran Beltway lobbyists--to win the battle for him. 

In doing so, the President has set up an us-against-them scenario. In his mind and the minds of advisors David Axelrod, Rahm Emmanuel, Linda Douglass, and mouthpiece Robert Gibbs, they've taken over the government and they don't like being told what they can't do. 

Under this scenario it appears that we--the American people--have become the opponents, of our own government, according to Axelrod's spam message.  I am indignant and find it reprehensible that a president and his administration would think of the American people as his opposition.

Guess what, Dave? You haven't taken over anything. You control a building or two. Maybe state-run media. But that's not the government. The government's in session right now on Main Street. Read Amendment X. 

Just thought you might like to know.

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Choice or Coercion?

Democrats in the new Congress pledge passage of the so-called Employee Free Choice Act. The bill would amend the National Labor Relations Act to eliminate secret ballots among workers seeking to unionize.

For the last 70 years the NLRA has provided a framework of industrial democracy that is second to none in the world. But organized labor says the law needs to be changed because management intimidates workers and uses the election process as a way to fire union organizers. Union bosses want to replace secret ballots with a "card check" process which they say would be more transparent.

Companies oppose the plan because it would involve more government interference in the private sector and would increase cost at a time when the economy is very fragile.

A few thoughts from this former union member, organizer and negotiator:

• In a Zogby poll union members by the stunning margin of 84% to 11% said that employees should have the right to vote whether to join a union


• Despite Big Labor's claim that secret ballot elections limit unionization, unions last year won a full two-thirds-66%- of the elections they called


• Despite the claim of labor bosses that employers can use the ballot process to intimidate workers into voting against union representation, fewer than 3% of union elections end up with employees fired for organizing the shop


• No less than the U.S. Supreme Court 40 years ago (the liberal Warren Court) said that the card check process is "admittedly inferior to the election process."


• Rather than management intimidating union organizers, the federal courts have found that it is the union bosses who sometimes use the card check process to bully workers into joining a union.


• When the Democratic congressmen who will once again approve this bill in the new Congress met to elect their leadership following the November election they voted in secret--the very same right they now seek to take away from workers.

I'm all for pro-worker legislation. But not a bad bill that would only result in swelling the coffers of union bosses without having any noticeable effect on the lives of working men and women.

Just thought you might like to know.