The Republican strategy on Capitol Hill of legislating through hostage taking worked yesterday – and now unions are screwed. House Republicans demanded that a routine FAA spending bill include harsh anti-union language that makes it harder for transportation workers to organize. The change raises the threshold for seeking a union from 35% to 50% for transportation workers – and Republicans basically said if Democrats don’t agree to it then they’ll shut down the FAA again – just like they did last year.
Yesterday – despite 19 labor organizations writing a letter to Democrats calling on them to oppose the bill – Democrats caved. A majority of Senate Democrats helped pass the bill and new anti-union law for transportation workers by a 75-20 vote. As a letter from the Communication Workers of America read, “Rewarding the House Republican Leadership's desire to rewrite decades of long standing labor law in a flash by inserting an unrelated and controversial labor provision…sets an extremely dangerous precedent."
Indeed it does – unfortunately – it’s been all too common in this 112th Congress – paid for by over 300 million bucks in corporate spending.
Comments
Shameful. Period.
Democrats had better wake up out of their stupor and read the handwriting on the wall. The middle class has been pushed and shoved and crowded and now, with the all out assault on unions, it is being targeted for complete annihilation so that the Chamber of Commerce can present its members with the ultimate gift of a cheap and powerless labor force. And Democrats just go along? When Scott Walker and the Republican legislators in Wisconsin over-reached nearly the entire State rose up in one voice and said "We're mad as hell and we're not going to take it anymore!" Individual Democrats had better declare their loyaly now and stop equivocating or be prepared to be swamped along with offending Republicans in the progressive wave that's building and getting ready to push back.
We've got work to do. The proto-Whigs may be headed off the Corporate Cliff, but that does not mean that the Democrats will inherit the earth. Lesser evils may win in the short-term, but we are taking names and will kick ass when the time comes as it is sooner than later.
Obama and the Dems have dropped more than one Union ball. Where the hell was he with his comfortable shoes in Wisconsin? He has also failed to changed the makeup of the NLRB by asking for the resignation of GOP commissioners and appointing labor-friendly commissioners.
It really is not easy being Purple, and the embedded moles left by Bush/Cheney and the lack of a real Congress back up can explain a lot of things I don't like. I am angry about the FAA anti-union stuff, and yet I can understand how tough it is to navigate the pathology while trying not to announce that the apocalypse is about to happen. If you are the pilot, you have an interest in bringing the deathstar back in one piece, even if it goes directly to the scrap pile once it has landed. I think that is where Obama is.
There's only one way to deal with people that are out to destroy your way of living. I hope I live long enough to see it too. For those dems that voted with the regressive idiots you need to be replaced with real progressives not wannabee repugnuts. WTF is wrong with dems voting against their supporters own interests? I personally would have made the repugnuts carry through with their threat to shut the governemnt down especially in an election year.
Dems didn't cave....they are just being modern-day Dems. Wringing their hands and voting for legislation they actually support...and claiming they had no other choice.
The devil made them do it. LOL. The party of FDR is long dead.
Retired Monk - "Ideology is a disease"
It isn't really that difficult to understand. The parties are beholden to the same interests.
Rhetoric is not policy. Rhetoric makes up the script of what is nothing more than political theater.
Solutions are to be found outside of the political realm. The party loyalists (be they Republican, Democratic, Libertarian or what have you) ought to let go.