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Tuesday, December 23, 2008
Alert reader D on the SEIU chief Andy Stern's defense of "card check" in a bloggingheads discussion with Robert Reich:
His substantive problem is that he assumes the conclusion, which is that workers need and want unions. Anything that interferes with that is therefore by definition wrong and is contrary to their will or at least to their best interests. If workers vote a union down it must be because they were intimidated, because a negative vote like that would be like a man voting against eating. It would be unnatural and open to suspicion. Stern could not stand up to a good interviewer for five minutes. Even Reich knew he was not responding to the question and was unconvincing - which is saying plenty.
One of the good things about bloggingheads is that if you can't make your case there you can't make it anywhere. You have the time, you have a non-disrespectful, non-cross-examining interlocutor, you're in familiar surroundings and don't have distractions.
In the process Stern dances around the issue of taking away the secret ballot, saying the issue is "whose choice about how to form the organization is this, the employers or the workers." No, the issue is how do you determine what the workers' choice is. If Stern wants to have a secret ballot about whether to have a secret ballot, then he'd be amending the labor law to give workers the choice he says he wants to give them. (Maybe that's not a bad compromise.) ...
P.S.: A common tactic of card check proponents is to say that opponents aren't really against the elimination of the secret ballot, they are really against unions. Hey, why can't I be against both? There are two legit issues here: democratic principle and whether more American-style unionization is the answer to our economy's problems. Yes, if there were a procedurally fair reform that promised to dramatically increase the unionization rate, I'd have a more difficult choice. But this isn't that case. I'm willing to bet that a) workers who vote anonymously, free of the collective social pressure that can come with public voting, will rationally decide, often enough, that the drawbacks of unionization (in terms of the adversarialization of the workplace, lost productivity, and winding up like Detroit) outweigh the benefits, and b) workers who do decide to unionize their companies will find those companies losing out in the marketplace and shrinking (as has been the case, most conspicuously, with Detroit). ... Bet (a), at least, is a bet Stern obviously doesn't want to take--even though in the bhTV interview Reich is clearly, if timidly, trying to push him in the direction of a package of reforms aimed at curbing employer "coercion" rather than ending the secret ballot. ... 7:54 P.M.
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"We don't report stuff like this" Except, you know, when it involves John McCain and not Pinch Sulzberger. ... Keep rockin! ... 6:01 P.M.
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Monday, December 22, 2008
The "Community" Strikes Back: Matt Yglesias is kidding either himself or us when he claims that he won't self-censor just because Jennifer Palmieri, "Acting CEO" of the outfit he blogs for (the "Center for American Progess Action Fund") commandeered his site** to post a disclaimer in BS-ese after Yglesias criticized a CAP ally. He writes:
Under the circumstances, it’s better for me, better for CAP and CAPAF, and better for everyone to understand that I’m writing as an individual not as the voice of the institution. Pointing that fact out isn’t contrary to me having an independent voice, it’s integral to having one. ...[snip] ... My role is to say what I think on the blog; that’s what I’ve always done and will keep doing.
No. Next time Yglesias wants to write something that might alienate one of CAP's numerous friends, he has to ask himself a) do I want Jennifer Palmieri to come squat on my blog again, and b) even if she doesn't, do I want the hassle of arguing with her or my bosses to prevent them from acting to ... er, "clarify" the situation in some other way? That has to tip the scales slightly--and, if my experience is any indication, more than slightly--in favor of pulling your punches and avoiding the hassle. ... Keep in mind, Palmieri didn't intervene because what Yglesias said was wrong--factually or logically---but rather simply because what he said differed from the position of the "institution." Why doesn't she get her own blog? ...
This is all hugely embarrassing for CAP. Palmieri, last seen helping John Edwards lie, owes Yglesias a published apology. I would think Yglesias could and should insist on it--he was a prestige acquisition for CAP, and it would damage them if he left. As things stand, he's been semi-emasculated.
Keep rockin'.
P.S.: Is the group Third Way's "domestic policy agenda" really "hyper-timid incrementalist bullshit"? America wants to know! Or it does now! Isn't the first rule of flackery don't issue a denial that just gives more publicity to the charge you are denying? ...
**-- I should not have said "commandeered." I regret the error. CAP is a key leader in the progressive movement. I look forward to working with them in the future. What I meant to say is that Yglesias "allowed Palmieri an opportunity to issue a different opinion." Our fraternal Soviet comrades are welcome in Prague anytime! ... [via Insta] 9:58 P.M.
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"Redistributive Change"--Bernstein, not Sunstein: David Bernstein's take on that Obama "redistributive change" radio interivew seems sound. As Obama's defenders note, he was opposing using the courts to achieve RC, though perhaps as a practical matter and not as a matter of principle. But Obama cadre Cass Sunstein didn't do his reputation any good if he really pretended Obama only meant (in Ben Smith's summary) "narrower forms of redistribution -- education, legal filing fees, legal representation, and other issues." Obama was clearly talking more generally--certainly when he seemed to endorse redistribution through political action. Anyway, if one of the "narrower forms of redistribution" was a constitutional right to "welfare" or a minimum income, how much broader do you have to get to violate the venerable and politically central American consensus that income should only come with work? ...
Still, as Bernstein notes, we knew Obama believed in "redistributive change." The question is always what that means. Traditionally Democratic pols leave it alarmingly vague, with no identifiable stopping place at which enough redistribution is enough. Obama is no exception. But this radio interview makes him seem both smarter and a bit less paleoliberal than most voters probably think he is.
If this is the best they've got on him ... 1:59 A.M.
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I never met Dean Barnett. I don't know what he looked like, never knew what he did for a living or, until today, when he died from cystic fibrosis, how old he was. But as soon as I stumbled onto his Soxblog a few years ago I knew this was a clear-headed, humane, no-BS person--the sort of person the Internet is supposed to discover and promote, which it did. Barnett was a man of the right. Here is the gracious tribute he posted when Steve Gilliard, a caustic Kos blogger whom he admired, died-- also at 41.
Mark Steyn told us to pray. It didn't work. Fuck. 12:15 A.M. .
Monday, October 27, 2008
Everybody's Pitching In (6)! Chris Martin has done his part! ...9:59 P.M.
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"Realignment" ain't what it used to be: Just when the Democrats are about to achieve permanent political dominance, political analysts go and discover that permanent political dominance is no longer possible. Typical! The NYT's John Harwood blames a persistently large number of swing voters and young, solution-oriented voters. I'd add the Feiler Faster Thesis, which means that any realignment-eroding adjustment process should now happen within one or two election cycles, rather than over decades. .. Karl Rove's dream of a Republican "realignment" turns out to have been more deluded than the neocon dream of a democratic Iraq. The latter didn't really kill the former, which was doomed all along. ... Of course, Rove is a student of history, and those who don't ignore history are condemned to think it will be repeated. ... .P.S.: Talk about "swing voters" seems a shorthand way of describing the result of a) ideological convergence b) declines in powerful interest groups (e.g.,unions) and c) fading historical memories. After the 2000 election, it appeared that these factors would guarantee us a future of painfully close elections--"50-50 Forever." That no longer resonates--not only do we seem about to have a non-50-50 election, but even formerly stable mass institutions like stock markets are routinely experiencing wild swings. Still, in politics at least the swings are now likely to swing back quickly. (And I still don't quite see why, over time, the swings wouldn't also become less wild. But they probably said that about stock markets too). ... 9:40 P.M.
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Now, about those guns you are clinging to ... : Obama on his absurdly overcelebrated race speech:
My gut was telling me that this was a teachable moment and that if I tried to do the usual political damage control instead of talking to the American people like an adult—like they were adults and could understand the complexities of race that I would be not only doing damage to the campaign but missing an important opportunity for leadership.
There are good reasons to have high expectations for an Obama presidency, but the possibility of more "teachable moments" isn't one of them. Is the presidency an adult education class? The whole concept of seeing voters as needing "teaching"--as opposed to persuading, or even selling-- seems more than a bit condescending. [He was just sucking up to Joe Klein--ed Good point.] 2:47 A.M.
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Andrew Gumbel's Nation take on Republican "vote suppression" is too level-headed for most of my Westside L.A. neighbors--he swipes at "hardworking but underqualified Internet campaigners" who "were breathlessly denouncing nonexistent political plots cooked up by the Republicans and the makers of touch-screen voting machines." Gumbel's conclusion is that "the wheels started coming off" the GOP effort this year. And
even the most insidious vote suppression technique makes just a marginal difference--one half-percentage point here, another there--and comes seriously into play only in a close race. Such tactics can't prevent an Obama landslide, if that is what we are about to see, or overturn a two- to three-point victory in any given state.
P.S.: I still don't see what's so terrible about the practice of "caging," which, according to Gumbel, is when a party sends out "out nonforwardable mail" and "uses returned envelopes to question the eligibility of the addressees." Presumably the evidence provided by the envelopes can be rebutted, and the Democrats could do the same in Republican districts. The adversarial system at work! ... On the other hand, I still worry, along with the "underqualified Internet campaigners," about touch-screen voting machines. They seem to add little but ineradicable distrust to the electoral process. ..
P.P.S.: Gumbel predicts a voting machine shortage in Virginia. ... .2:27 A.M.
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Leftish bloggers worry about what they'll do if Obama ... wins. 2:26 A.M.
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"Bill the Union Boss" anti card-check ad. ... Mike Murphy's original Johnny Sack ads explained the issue more effectively. .... 2:25 A.M.
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