Hodes-Democrats Too Liberal For San Francisco

It's a sad day when the San Francisco Examiner thinks more of personal liberty than the Representatives from a state with the motto Live Free or Die.

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Democrats: Keep secret ballot sacred
The San Francisco Examiner Newspaper,
The Examiner
Feb 16, 2007

SAN FRANCISCO - It’s nearly 60 years since the British writer George Orwell warned about the political misuse of the English language. The democratic West, he worried, was not immune to the propagandistic practices of totalitarian countries, in which the power-driven would throw glittering words and phrases about promiscuously, intending by them the public acceptance of exactly the opposite of their historical meanings. Sorry to say, but Rep. George Miller has become adept at the troubling practice.
He’s not alone, of course. Politicians on both the left and the right — and from all parties — make regular deposits in the bank of linguistic corruptions. But on Wednesday the East Bay Democrat pushed through his Education and Labor Committee an anti-freedom, anti-democracy bill with the exquisitely Orwellian title of “The Employee Free Choice Act of 2007.” There’s no love for freedom in the legislation now moving to the House floor.
“Under the Employee Free Choice Act,” according to Miller’s cleverly worded press release, “if a majority of workers in a workplace sign cards authorizing a union, then the workers would get a union. This majority sign-up process is permitted under current law, but only if the employer allows it. Many employers instead force employees to undergo an election process administered by the National Labor Relations Board. In NLRB elections, the deck is stacked heavily against pro-union workers.”
To consider the farrago of misinformation in that paragraph, it is useful to recall the purpose of the NLRB, created in the Great Depression over the objections of Big Business by the sainted President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Throughout its history the NLRB has been seen as the great enabler of union organizing, and business leaders did whatever they could to keep labor issues from reaching it for resolution. For Miller even implicitly to portray it as the tool of capitalist board rooms should offend intellectually honest progressives.
True enough, in its nearly eight decades of evolution, the board proved not to be the monstrous incubator of union bosses Big Business feared. What it has done (to the credit of FDR) is arbitrate labor disputes, establishing rules and procedures to assure fairly conducted union elections. Importantly, its existence recognizes that free-enterprising individual workers and business owners have rights, too.
What Miller really wants is to eliminate the secret ballot in union elections, substituting a “card check” system whereby union activists collect cards allegedly signed by employees and supposedly signifying their votes on such matters as allocating their assessments. Abuses of workers’ true wishes not only are potential, they are guaranteed. There is no “free choice” in this travesty, clearly a payoff to union leaders who contributed so handsomely to the Democrats’ November election victory.
Honest Democrats who hold the secret ballot as sacred should deny the congressman his power trip. We encourage readers to contact Rep. Miller at http://www.examiner.com/George.Miller@mail.house.gov.

"Secret Ballots Unfair" says Hodes

While Woodrow Wilson believed that self determination was the God given right of all free peoples, modern day Democrats like Paul Hodes have apparently decided that free and fair elections are an outdated and abhorrent concept. Citing apparent "unfairness" in the current system of secret ballot elections, Mr. Hodes and his colleagues seem to think that they've found the solution...just let union representatives collect signed ballots on their own and then turn them in. That sounds totally fair..right? I mean, a union representative wouldn't cheat, would they? I mean, that's almost as unheard of as a politician avoiding the truth right?

If anyone has been paying attention, the misnamed "Employee Free Choice Act" is a truly shocking piece of legislation that would deny employees the right to a secret-ballot election when considering representation by unions. In fact, it would illegalize employers efforts to provide their employees with additional compensation unless it has negotiated with the union to do so.

While our forefathers fought and died for the right to elections free from intimidation, Representative Hodes now thinks that "the working middle class" cannot be trusted to vote in their own best interest during secret ballot elections. Instead, in a flagrant act of political hypocrisy, he and his fellow democrats are seeking to prop up their failing union political base by denying citizens the right to choose their own path. While union representatives and their allies continue to assert that employers intimidate employees into voting against unions, the long history of American unions' unsavory connection with organized crime and documented evidence of violent coercion suggests otherwise.

Then again, this isn't exactly a point on which we should be asking Mr. Hodes to be reasonable, or fair, or even judicious. The reality is that this vote was bought and paid for long before he roamed the halls of Congress on "our" behalf. Then again, it's still sad to think that our esteemed Representative only thinks that his constituents right to self determination is worth a mere $200,000 in political donations. I guess Wilson just thought democracy was worth more important than a few cocktail parties and campaign buttons.

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Article: http://www.nhpr.org/node/12373
NPR Interview: http://www.nhpr.org/audio/audio/nht-2007-02-26-st1.wax
The Legislation: H.R. 800: The Employee Free Choice Act

Hodes on Iraq - Keep Funding It, Just Through Regular Appropriations

I wrote the earlier post prior to noticing that Rep. Hodes has recently signed onto a bill dealing with the War in Iraq.

This legislation, H.Res 97, would require a quarterly report on how reconstruction funds are being spent in Iraq and further states that Congress:

(1) should create a Truman Committee to conduct an ongoing study and investigation of Operation Iraqi Freedom contracts;
(2) that funding requests for Operation Iraqi Freedom beginning with FY2008 must come through the regular appropriations process and not through emergency supplementals; and
(3) the Administration should condition further American financial, military, and political resources upon improvement in Iraqi assumption of principal responsibility for internally policing Iraq.

This is a pretty coherent position, and, frankly, one that almost any fiscal conservative should agree with. We definitely need to investigate spending in Iraq, if for no other reason than to end years of unsubstantiated allegations of widespread abuse, we should impose general spending restraint by putting money for the war "on the books," and we need to hold the Iraqi's responsible for their efforts at self governance. Even President Bush agrees with the later of these requests.

The only real policy question I think is raised by this resolution (beyond the fact that it's a resolution and not a law) is how placing the war "on budget" is going to affect the democrats self-imposed pay-go requirements. Are we simply going to reduce military spending across the board (placing our nation at risk from other adversaries) or is Mr. Hodes willing to responsibly limit domestic spending to make up the cost difference? I think not, if history serves, this resolution calls for a massive tax increase.

Hodes gets the Axe - But Still Lacks a Plan

I was amused to see that Rep. Hodes recently had the opportunity to entertain his fellow Democrats at their retreat in Williamsburg (another imporant weekday event that forced the majority party to ignore its promise to work a full 5 day week) along with fellow freshman Rep. John Hall. Given the recent back and forth in the Concord Monitor regarding Mr. Hodes lack of a plan for Iraq, I guess he's decided to take Bruce Currie's advice and simply duck the issue. I guess it's still just easier to blame someone else.

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From The Hill
Hodes gets the Axe


Democratic staffers surprised Rep. Paul Hodes (D-N.H.) and his wife, Peggo, last Friday night at the Democratic issues retreat in Williamsburg, Va., when they presented him with his 1948 Gibson SJ acoustic guitar, which Hodes thought was back in his Capitol office.
The Hodeses met when Paul responded to a help-wanted ad to join a folk rock band that Peggo started.

A House Democratic Caucus staffer secretly lugged Hodes’s guitar, which he nicknamed “Axe,” to the retreat. Axe came in handy Friday when Hodes and New York Democratic Reps. John Hall and Joseph Crowley sang Hall’s signature song, “Still the One.”
Hodes and his wife sang “Call Me the Breeze” by J.J. Kale and “Roseville Fair” by Bill Staines, which was popularized by Nancy Griffith.