I think I've made that sad joke before, but my life has been largely a three decade front row seat at a phenomenon that seemed to be all of the talk recently due to the results of the Wisconsin recall. To be honest, I don't think it was quite the momentous event that many have painted it, from Ezra Klein to Kevin Drum. Rather, it was just one more story in what has been a long, brutal, and often ignored war. Wisconsin was actually to me a bit heartening -- not the results obviously, but the fight it showed, the grass roots energy, the unwillingness to take no for an answer. I do not believe in glorious defeat or other attractions of beautiful loserdom, but I damn sure would rather go down with a fight than endure what Rich Yeselson at the New Republic described as the "slow motion death spiral" -- something for which I have had a ring side seat.
I have thought about this stuff so much for so long that it is difficult to fully organize my thoughts, but here goes: First, Ezra's suggestion that there is some other type of coalition that can stand in labor's stead strikes me as questionable, even though I share his fear that the labor movement lacks the heft now to really push its agenda and that it is more likely to decline than grow in the existing political and economic environment. The labor movement is unique in that it is not just a "special interest" -- it is virtually the only political player that I can think of that pushes a broad variety of legislation, even where it does not directly or exclusively benefit its membership -- everything from the minimum wage (not too many union members are affected) to mandated paid time off (again not typically a problem for union members) to civil rights legislation to job safety regulation (which is far more important for non-union workers). Ezra's notion that the liberal community can coalesce against all special interests as a strategy struck me as unusually weak thinking for him. It's a kind of parody of good government abstraction which will have zero attraction or effectiveness in the world of power.
Second, the decline of organized labor has been ongoing steadily for quite a long time. Private sector union density has gone from roughly a third of the workforce in the 1950s to today's scant 7%. This has not been an accident. It has been part of a concerted effort between business interests and right wing politicians that never really went away (remember Taft-Hartley was passed in 1947) but that garnered significant momentum in the late 1970s -- when economic stagnation destroyed the short-lived modus vivendi that had existed in segments of the industrialized economy -- and has accelerated in ferocity since then. .The American labor law regime offers incredibly weak protection to workers and business interests and their reprehensible lackeys in the management labor bar have spent decades now cynically violating the rights of workers, secure in the knowledge that any penalties would be minimal, assessed long after the offense occurred, and cost-effective. All attempts to reform the law over the past fifty years have died under concerted Republican opposition and, of course, the filibuster (where conservative Democrats have often dealt the fatal blow.) I see no real reason for optimism while the law remains as it is.
To some extent the decline of private sector unionism was offset to a degree by the rise of public sector collective bargaining. Bargaining in the public sector flourished largely because most jurisdictions did not emulate their private sector counterparts -- most public sector workers who wanted to join unions faced no intimidation or concerted campaigns to stop unionization. (This era would seem to be drawing to an end with the rise of Walker-like tactics.)
I think that public sector unionism is not a fully satisfactory substitute for private sector unionism -- and resonates less in our capitalist culture. In my mind the NEA or AFSCME will never be the equivalent of the UAW or United Steelworkers of another era -- in part because the latter actually had the ability to shut down significant parts of the economy back in their heyday. These industrial unions represented millions of workers at a time when the working population was considerably smaller, they fought brutal battles against employer violence to win recognition, they negotiated landmark contracts that helped created the American middle class, and they were on the cutting edge of social change -- especially the UAW, which was a force for civil rights and broader social justice as well as the economic advancement of its members. Who will stand in the shoes of the UAW when it comes to fighting the good fight for an array of peoples and interests down the road? I have no good answer to that question, but sadly, I think it is a crucial one to ask.
Finally, I need to express a little bit of bitterness to my fellow lefties who are my contemporaries or a bit older. I have enjoyed the renewed vogue for organized labor that has characterized much of the liberal community over the last few years. I was especially heartened by young bloggers showing interest in a movement that had largely gotten the back of the hand from a lot of liberals over the previous couple of decades. And it's nice to see Joe Nocera put in a plug for them while praising Tim Noah's The Great Divergence." But I have to admit that there's a pretty big part of me that wonders where the hell Nocera and all of the others who are now bemoaning labor's passing were back three decades ago, when the assault began in earnest. I chose my side way back then -- I remember trying to hustle my resume at the UAW's Washington office in 1982 before I got admitted to law school. They smiled in good natured amusement as I tried to cold call them and sell my services cheaply in the midst of the horrific Reagan recession. As Eric Alterman points out in this excellent piece, back in those days it was pretty damn hard to sell most liberals on unions. They were deemed old-fashioned, irrelevant, the province of uncool, fat old white men -- when I expressed my desire to work for the labor movement, all manner of liberal people I met wondered why.
I really don't know what kind of a future unions have in this country. I am out there pushing for them every day and will continue to do so, but I cannot say I am overly sanguine about their prospects. What I am sure of is that liberalism without unions will not be the same and that the quest for broader economic justice will be immeasurably hampered if we cannot preserve them and then reverse to at least some degree their decline. The Republicans, strangely enough, understand their significance and thus, will stop at nothing to try to kill them. It is too bad that more liberals didn't recognize their value back when it would have been a lot easier to protect them.
[Feel free to treat this as an open thread as well if you wish.]
Sir C. Amen. I'm sure my meager response is not worthy of your fine post.
Most liberals I know have not had enough experience with the need for unions vis-a-vis physical damage and body breakdown that can unexpectedly or slowly end an employment.
I was a 'unionized' state university library employee for a time, years ago, which was of course stupid. Six months probation and then a lifetime slot with the state? The putting-in-a-good-eight pall was palpable, as well as depressing -- faculty, already in a tenure system, were unionized to boot. It was nuts. And insulting to true union causes -- shops and trades where people can simply wear out and need protections.
I suppose this is where teachers' unions muddy public perception. Firefighters and police -- most of us get it. Teachers are vulnerable for other reasons and they deserve respect and protections. But, also not lifetime job insurance without serious review. I've had my experience with some nastily destructive teachers who live on and on without client (that's me) evaluation. Unions disallow that. That needs some kind of fix. My fix is higher salaries and fewer ed. degree rewards and permanent installations.
Good teaching is an art as well as a calling. No?
And what do we do about low-level white collar-workers (ie. t-mobile, etc.) whose jobs get suddenly offshored? That's the conundrum for our time.
Posted by: nancy | June 15, 2012 at 12:03 AM
Now I'll have to say that, in my younger days (and formative years) unions were personified by, e.g., George Meany, stalwart supporter of the misbegotten adventure in Vietnam, or the building-trade union members who allegedly fire-bombed a non-union job site in suburban Philadelphia in the late 60's. As a result, unions always seemed to my suburban self to be thugs who were irrelevant, at best, to the creation of a better world. Unions were the manpower behind Mayor Daley shouting down Ribicoff at the Dem onvention in '68.
Now, living in a Michigan that was largely created by the UAW, which the Reps want to dismantle, and realizing the UAW was on my side when it mattered (the UAW is largely responsible for LGBT protections at GM/Ford/Chrysler), I understand the value of private-sector unions.
Posted by: Don K | June 15, 2012 at 01:11 AM
yippie, I am still conscious and have been able to read all the comments on this thread.
As a member of the so-called professional class I have never had a problem with unions although several authority figures in my distant past demonised them. I personally am quite the non-confomist so would probably be reluctant to chose a form of employment that required union membership, but if I enjoyed the work and found my peers compatible, I could certainly abide it.
The ultimate point I think about whether or not unionism is a good or bad thing is the simple weighing of the different outcomes. Without unions any type of exploitation that leads to greater profit is incentivized. It is also arguable that union labor stimulates innovation because it fixes one cost and forces management to look elsewhere for advantages, such as improved quality, increased function, or greater reliability and endurance.
On the other hand, if you can increase profits by offshoring a great deal of labor to a market where the skill set is seriously deficient and the raw materials are sub-par, and still sell your product because no one can afford anything better, you got a win-win.
Time and tide are slow to change, but all tyrants will have their comeuppance.
Pass the bottle...
Posted by: KN | June 15, 2012 at 03:03 AM
I'll have a lot to say on a lot of different angles, but I want to start where Don K did -- but with an important difference. I too was a suburban kid in the fifties, though the 'two mothers' bit made me less than typical, as did my constant reading. And one thing my reading taught me -- and occasional conversations with older people -- was the conditions unions had faced, the real sweatshops, the job insecurity and wages as low as the could be.
I never doubted, and don't doubt now, the absolute necessity of the existence of unions, of the need to fight to give people the right to use this power to ensure livable wages and working conditions. And even though there is no danger of us returning to those days -- the places where the true sweatshops exist in this country do not call for unionization but for shutting down and the society supports this -- and even though there are a lot of examples of union overreaching, this simply means that unions too must be regulated, that the government that used its 'counterveiling power' to allow them to be set up can use it against them if need be.
I don't automatically give unions the benefit of the doubt, I don't support them to build up a 'well of progressivism' that other movements can draw from -- nor do I think they are progressive in nature -- and I make a very big distinction between union leaders who will march through a hail of stones for a progressive cause, and their members -- who were, in my experience, often the ones throwing the stones.
But while I support unions, I don't exactly love them, because my experience was Don K's, only worse. There were three great causes in the Sixties, Civil Rights, feminism, and the anti-war movement, and in every case the union members were visibly on the other side.
Oh sure, there were some members and many leaders who 'marched South' but when the movement turned north, it was the union members who fought to keep blacks out, who fought to keep some unions 'ethnic property,' and when there were reports of attacks on a black that moved into a white neighborhood, it was always the working class types that led the attack -- the middle class was too busy packing.
(And those who went south may not have met union members standing against them -- because the factories weren't unionized -- but the angry mobs were greatly from that class. For some reason the movie and tv cliche had the small business owner under the robes, but history saw them as workers and the poor.)
On feminism, the unions were doubly condemned. We men, at least, were just beginning to understand it, understand what we did, second nature, that we only know learned was offensive, etc. And we saw the 'face of the enemy' in the hard hat, first of all. The totally crude male ego unleashed, and it was as ugly to us as to our women friends. It was hard to feel the pull of solidarity with them when we cringed merely watching them respond to any woman walking past.
But more importantly, maybe the union leaders had acted politically to get various occupations to allow women to enter, but the harassment they had to deal with and fight through came from their fellow workers.
But the difining issue was Vietnam -- and above all it is there that the gap across which we see you, Sir Charles, is the widest. You were in grade school, your father told you stories, but you never felt any of what Vietnam meant to us, and not just because of the deaths of friends -- many many more than in all the wars since -- or the personal danger of the draft.
We were the Kennedy Generation, once again, briefly, proud of our country, seeing no contradiction between loving America and our Progressive, Liberal dreams. We were the peace corps generation, going off to fight injustice and to help people who needed our help -- and then, too often discovering that, to our shock, it was America behind the injustice, America causing the problems we -- as representatives of America -- were trying to fix. Our idealism didn't curdle, yet, but there was a slowly growing layer of cynicism along side it.
People compare Iraq to Vietnam -- but Iraq was Bush, was Republican, was 'their war.' We had to deal with the fact taht Vietnam was ours, supported by the same President whose domestic accomplisments made him the greatest President in the century who wasn't named Roosevelt. And we saw the evil that it was causing, abroad, and to our view of ourselves and how others had begun to view us, the way it was shaking the country as nothing had since the depression. And we couldn't remember the good Johnson did, not then, because we hated the evil so much.
It was our war, it was the liberal's war, and first and foremost among the supporters were the Unions, this time members and leaders.
And all of those kept us from seeing the unions as our allies, as much as we would still defend them. And for many of us, while the unions have changed, even the members, those memories always stand between us and keep us from giving unions a full embrace.
(And for a while, it became even harder for us to listen to the liberals, the ones we still respected, and hear them demand that we should 'join in solidarity' just those groups who had committed what we -- rightly -- considered just the sort of evil acts we were fighting.)
Much more tomorrow on this and a couple of open thread bits.
Posted by: Prup (aka Jim Benton) | June 15, 2012 at 03:27 AM
One quick OT bit, following up on the Tagliabue gift to the Georgetown LGBQT Center. He'd apparently previously given a very large donation to P-FLAG (his son is gay).
And the NFL has added 'sexual orientation' to the designated categories protected by the anti-discrimination clauses of the latest CBA.
And apparently, of all the NFL figures who are gay friendly, including the owner of the Giants -- who made a video in support of SSM -- the most friendly is Robert Kraft, owner of the Patriots. Great story here.
Posted by: Prup (aka Jim Benton) | June 15, 2012 at 03:36 AM
Like SC, this for me is a topic of a lifetime, though from a series of different vantage points.
I once worked in a non-union sweatshop -- a small furniture factory where we breathed formaldehyde from particle board sawdust every day. If I hadn't been able to get out, I'd have died, but an individual solution (running away!) was available to me.
Later I worked in small non-union construction for a guy who gave me a damn good informal apprenticeship. He had been president of his carpenter's local in the 1950s; he had championed bringing black guys into the union; he wasn't going to go through the same thing for girls, but he taught us to handle our tools.
Later I was (and am) a professional organizer and have worked for three different unions at various times. These unions were some of the most exploitative employers to their own employees that I have ever known. On the other hand, if you get into the right part of the bureaucracy, the job can be a sinecure. And some of the most honorable, dedicated people I know work for unions. Most unions are hard for other entities to work in coalition with; they are usually so embattled they are completely oblivious to the imperatives of their partners whose unfamiliar strengths they do not recognize.
I have health insurance because my domestic partner has a good union job ...
What hope I have for a fighting labor movement I see in folks in the category of "excluded workers"-- the taxi drivers and day laborers, domestics and hotel maids, etc. Mostly immigrant, mostly with no hope except solidarity. They are fighters, ready to suffer epic struggles for dignity. But they can't bring the economy to a halt as the USW once could.
Posted by: janinsanfran | June 15, 2012 at 07:15 AM
On the OT, seeing the Pentagon celebrate Gay Pride Month is a beautiful thing. Sadly, I discover that George Schithers, the SF editor who had been a Colonel in the Army -- and most believe would have been a General had it not been for his gayness -- failed to live to see the day, having died in the summer of 2010. So, if anyone is celebrating with a bunch of gay servicemen relieved at being allowed to be open, maybe make a toast to someone who was so deep in the closet that I remember a discussion with some friends who knew him far better than I did, and no one was sure whether "George was gay, straight, or 'tried sex once and decided he didn't like it.'" (He only came out when he had retired.) He would have liked that.
Posted by: Prup (aka Jim Benton) | June 15, 2012 at 09:46 AM
I was a member of the IBEW when I worked as a maintenance electrician after I got out of the Navy, and of the Teamsters when I was a machine operator in steel plants, and I remain pro-union, albeit with some caveats.
There should be more clarity than presently exists between the terms “union” and “collective bargaining,” because they are not the same thing, and the former can actually weaken the latter. I have seen it. When officers are elected for very large unions and work full time in that function, no longer actually working in the trades they represent, they become what we called “suits” and tend to bargain to enhance their own position in the union rather than in the actual best interest of the workers they represent.
I have seen it happen where the company “gave in” too easily and the union “suits” manufactured controversy to make themselves appear to be doing more for the workers than they actually were. An easy contract without conflict does not look good for the union guys, because they fear it will look like they caved.
That’s one of my caveats. The grocery union in Southern California, for instance, is small enough that the officers are still wearing aprons on the shop floor, so they negotiate in very good faith, and they do not spend time and money in politics or playing “fatcat.” That union is essentially a pure collective bargaining organization, and the fees paid by members are spent entirely in their own behalf.
I unreservedly support collective bargaining, to the degree that I think it should be nationally required as an article of incorporation. That is, no company should be allowed to incorporate unless its charter includes a collective bargaining agreement with its employees. That would put all business on an equal footing, and would eliminate a lot of conflict between states over work rules.
That might also eliminate unions as we know them in the form of the IBEW and Teamsters, and that might not be an altogether bad thing. I’m not a big fan of big unions and all of the activity beyond collective bargaining in which they engage.
SC admires the causes which unions embraced in terms of passing laws, and I have mixed feelings about that. Good intention, no doubt, but I am inclined to think of anything beyond collective bargaining as overreach. I’m not arbitrarily set in that position, and certainly getting laws passed makes negotiation easier. (At which point I hear a collective “Well, duh.”) I guess I’m saying that social activism by unions can be a good thing, but it’s something which is easily overdone.
Posted by: Bill H | June 15, 2012 at 10:11 AM
I keep wanting to stick with unions, and then getting distracted by major news, but this one is really big:
From the Associated Press report:
Under the administration plan, illegal immigrants will be immune from deportation if they were brought to the United States before they turned 16 and are younger than 30, have been in the country for at least five continuous years, have no criminal history, graduated from a U.S. high school or earned a GED, or served in the military. They also can apply for a work permit that will be good for two years with no limits on how many times it can be renewed. The officials who described the plan spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss it in advance of the official announcement.
The policy will not lead toward citizenship but will remove the threat of deportation and grant the ability to work legally, leaving eligible immigrants able to remain in the United States for extended periods.
"Many of these young people have already contributed to our country in significant ways," Napolitano wrote in a memorandum describing the administration's action. "Prosecutorial discretion, which is used in so many other areas, is especially justified here."
I could find reasons to grumble, but i won't. This is just simply a good first step.
Posted by: Prup (aka Jim Benton) | June 15, 2012 at 10:38 AM
This IS big. The only question is, why did Obama wait until now? DREAM's been dead since the beginning of the present Congress.
Posted by: low-tech cyclist | June 15, 2012 at 11:27 AM
To co-opt the GOP, which was about to propose pretty much the same plan. Hallelujah!
The best part is, he's not waiting for legislation. This is an executive order, sticking it to Congress for not getting anything done. Another hallelujah! He must be taking lessons from W.
Posted by: Paula B | June 15, 2012 at 11:44 AM
Prup, while I like the action itself, of course, I have two objections that come to mind. The first is that I have always disliked governance by executive order, especially when it regards policy which Congress has declined to enact. It doesn't matter to me WHY Congress has declined; if Congress is broken it is up the the American people to fix it, not just sit back and allow the chief executive to become more and more imperial. We are happy when a President is sidestepping Congress with executive orders that we like, which strikes me as a little hypocritical since we are so unhappy when one is doing so with executive orders which we dislike.
My other objection regards my cynicism regarding campaign timing. After deporting illegal immigrants at a record pace for the first 3+ years of his term, he suddenly reverses himself with this policy just when he is courting the Hispanic vote in the upcoming election. I am not a fan of enacting policy based on campaign politics, even when I like the policy.
Posted by: Bill H | June 15, 2012 at 11:47 AM
Bill H---The man tried for 3 1/2 years. Obviously, he's not a fan of exec order either, or he would have followed W's route, which began on Day One. Unlike the orders that came out of the W White House, this one carries the BHO imprint, not that of a puppeteer running things from behind a screen. Obama is a thoughtful man. He prefers bi-partisan support for his ideas, but he gets none, and he's running out of time. I would expect more ExO's in coming months, wouldn't you? At least, he's playing to his base, which was the majority 3.5 years ago.
Posted by: Paula B | June 15, 2012 at 12:14 PM
Getting back to unions, SC asks:
Finally, I need to express a little bit of bitterness to my fellow lefties who are my contemporaries or a bit older. I have enjoyed the renewed vogue for organized labor that has characterized much of the liberal community over the last few years. I was especially heartened by young bloggers showing interest in a movement that had largely gotten the back of the hand from a lot of liberals over the previous couple of decades. And it's nice to see Joe Nocera put in a plug for them while praising Tim Noah's The Great Divergence." But I have to admit that there's a pretty big part of me that wonders where the hell Nocera and all of the others who are now bemoaning labor's passing were back three decades ago, when the assault began in earnest.
A very good question. For myself, since I'm in that age bracket, I can only say that I wasn't a lefty back then; I considered myself a Republican until 1980, was a genuine independent for another dozen years or so, and couldn't have been called a lefty until maybe 1997. But I've been pro-union at least that long.
Can't speak for those who've been lefty the whole time, but the unions' support for the Vietnam war (and especially their eagerness to beat up on hippies protesting the war) might've created some bad blood.
In retrospect, the time of NYC's Hard Hat Riot (right after Kent State) that I linked to above seems like it would have been a great 'teachable moment' for union leadership to take advantage of.
This was the time for union leadership to say to the antiwar protesters: "While we're for the war and you're against it, we understand what you're going through right now, with the National Guard shooting you dead just for protesting. They shot many of us dead too, just for trying to unionize, and many of us are still alive who remember those dark days. We had to shed a lot of blood to get to where we are now. We disagree with your cause, but we've been where you are. This is America, and nobody, not even a bunch of lazy, smelly, disgusting hippies, should be shot for taking an unpopular stand."
Gotta wonder how things would have gone down differently between the Old Left and the New Left if that had been the message from the union bosses to the protesters, rather than, "Oh, you're upset because some of you guys got shot dead by the National Guard? Sounds like a good excuse to beat up on you some more."
My impression is that it simply took a long time for the antipathy of that era to fade.
Posted by: low-tech cyclist | June 15, 2012 at 12:24 PM
Good point, l-tc. It's still not faded.
Posted by: Paula B | June 15, 2012 at 12:33 PM
Every once in awhile I get a reminder not so much of the power of organized labor but of the results of its absence. My daughter mentioned to me that two of her roommates, coworkers at a restaurant in Michigan, have an hourly wage of $2 an hour. It is presumed that they will make sufficient tips beyond that to actually earn a living. In an society with a vital labor movement this would be far less likely to happen, as labor tends to improve the lot of workers not only in industries where they have organized, but, through pressure on state and national legislation, on other industries as well. People who take for granted the 40 hour work week and overtime, child labor laws, and occupational safely laws would do well to appreciate this.
Posted by: advocatethis | June 15, 2012 at 12:48 PM
It is presumed that they will make sufficient tips beyond that to actually earn a living.
And if you know what you're doing if the restaurant is at least tolerably busy you probably will earn enough to make at least a meager living. In Pennsylvania and Massachusetts as well the minimum wage for restaurant servers is lower than the minimum wage in general is.
However none of that changes the validity of your point and I think you're right. When I was a teenager in the 1970's (& because I came from largely non-union families where the wage earners worked in professions not typically characterized by union membership) I would never have understood this phrase I encountered reading "What's The Matter With Kansas?":
"If you want to live like a Republican vote for a Democrat."
Now I do understand. Unfortunately too many other Americans still don't.
I still don't regard myself as a lefty, but in this present political landscape my spot in the center is far closer to the Democratic Party than to the Republican Party, and it has been for a couple of decades.
I also suspect low-tech cyclist has a valid point regarding how things were back in the day. I never thought about that before, but now I too wonder what would have happened if the unions had spoken up the way he speculates instead of as they actually did.
Posted by: oddjob | June 15, 2012 at 01:10 PM
In other words, Paula, this is Obama, who is a Democrat and is issuing executive orders that you like, so executive orders which bypass Congress are good things. Sorry, I don't mean that as a cheap shot, but your statement is that it's okay for him to sidestep Congress because he is a good guy with good ideas. But "good" is a subjective definition, and what happens when a president is doing the same thing with ideas which you do not define as "good?" How did you feel when Bush effectively overrode Congress by issuing an order that CO2 was not to be considered as a gas needing regulation?
And Obama did begin on "Day 1," actually. His first executive order was issued on Jan 21, 2009.
Posted by: Bill H | June 15, 2012 at 01:17 PM
And the fact that he is "playing to his base" is precisely one of my complaints. He is enacating policy for the nation as a whole, for 300+ million people, not for the benefit of "his base" and to benefit his reelection.
Posted by: Bill H | June 15, 2012 at 01:32 PM
no, bill -- he is doing it because it is the right thing and congress won't act. he is not doing it because he has hired people who tell him the executive branch is all-powerful -- to wage war, and wage war on ordinary americans and all that we believe in. the executive excesses of teh shrub era are enough to make me lose my lunch. obama has not gone with this kind of exercise of executive power very often; and yes, the content does make a difference.
Posted by: kathy a. | June 15, 2012 at 02:38 PM
Sometimes we write comments and assume our tone and/or words convey something they don't. I thought I made myself clear, but maybe not.
No, Bill, I did NOT say that as long as Obama issues an executive order I like, executive orders are fine with me. I said it looks to me like Obama, himself, uses executive orders somewhat sparingly (but I don't follow him as closely as some on this board, so I may be wrong about that). He also has attempted to push forward immigration reform measures, to no avail. The GOP is about ready to spell out its own plan, and he chose to trump them. I think that's brilliant. He's doing what voters expected of him.
Like you, I lost many a lunch over W's decisions, but Obama has not operated in the same way. Instead, he's held out -- maybe far too long -- for consensus, and not gotten any.
Again like you, I wish Congress would take the initiative on numerous issues that are screaming for attention (I don't think I need to spell them out), but we have no Congress, and haven't had one in years.
During the last administration, Bush went Congress, the press, DOJ, whatever, perhaps to make it clear he (his handlers)were intent on ruling by fiat. Now, Congressional votes follow party lines ad nauseum. What good is a Congress if members sign contracts determining how they will vote three years down the line on bills that haven't been written yet?
I don't expect my president to be either a saint or a crook, so if s/he makes an executive decision out of sheer frustration after trying to proposing legislation and failing to get it through a deadlocked Congress, I fully understand. If I don't like the decision, oh well. But, if he acts on something I liked anyway, I'm delighted, especially if I voted for him, and the issue was part of the platform he ran on. Why not?
I don't get the moral outrage over this, but maybe I'm missing something. Obama's a master at forging his beliefs with what he can get away with. What's wrong with that? It's not like these policies came out of the blue, or anything. He just chose to push it forward today, at a time when it will resonate with voters, to his favor. In other words, he's running for president.
Posted by: Paula B | June 15, 2012 at 04:33 PM
The above should say Bush went around Congress, etc.
Posted by: Paula B | June 15, 2012 at 04:34 PM
I think I included in my opinion that if Congress is broken it is up to the people to fix it, not simply sit back and cheer as the executive becomes more and more imperial.
It certainly is not consistent with what the constitution says that if the president can't get his ideas through Congress he can simply implement them by executive order. Liberals disliked the exact same process when a Republican president was doing it.
George Bush issued 288 executive orders in eight years, as best I can tell, for 36 per year; Obama is at 118 in 3.5 years, for 33 per year. Less than Bush, but not by much.
It's not about the man, it's about the office. I'm not saying that Obama should not be running the nation based on executive order, I'm saying that the President of The United States should not be doing so, whether it's Barack Obama, George Bush or George Washington.
Moral outrage? Hardly. I just said that I'm not thrilled by the ever increasing acceptance of the imperial presidency, and I have never understood the complacency with which liberals face the issue under Obama after all of the complaints regarding the issue while Bush was in office.
"He just chose to push it forward today, at a time when it will resonate with voters, to his favor." Seriously? You do not see any difference between governing and campaigning? You do not think that there should be a boundary between the two?
Posted by: Bill H | June 15, 2012 at 05:38 PM
bill, can i point out that bush spent much of his time not needing to use his (vastly expanded by fiat) executive powers, because he flamboozled the legislature and the country into supporting his wars and such, and then used the argument we were in war to do more stuff?
it's not numbers; its about how executive power is used. i am not a total fan of all obama's actions. but he is still trying to clean up the mess we were left from the shrub administration.
and you are really really wrong about the imperial executive when you are talking about obama. things did not happen even though he wanted them to, because he was blocked by congress -- blocked intentionally, blocked with almost total disregard for each issue and its pros and cons. the republican party has made its mission "defeat obama" for 4 years. we needed better from them; we needed better from congress, and from the states.
so i think there is a point of connection between us, that we need to work on who is elected from the bottom up. at the top, though -- i have to consider first who offers hope vs. who offers a deeper rung of hell.
Posted by: kathy a. | June 15, 2012 at 06:02 PM
Lance Mannion has a succinct wrap-up for us. Bumper sticker politics .
Posted by: nancy | June 15, 2012 at 07:28 PM
For anyone who's interested, Mark Schmitt and Rich Yeselson had a great hour long discussion over at bloggingheads on the labor movement and Wisconsin.
Posted by: Joe S | June 15, 2012 at 08:33 PM
Harold Meyerson at The American Prospect: Post New Deal America Needs Unions.
Posted by: nancy | June 15, 2012 at 09:08 PM
Sorry. That wasn't the only paragraph I meant to block quote from the Meyerson piece. Nonetheless. He's got it capsulized:
Posted by: nancy | June 15, 2012 at 10:12 PM
Finally home from Hartford -- for the evening. Heading to the city of Brotherly Love tomorrow and then up to NYC on Sunday to drop the lad off for his summer internship. (Once again, free being the new paid.)
I don't have time to respond to as many comments as I would like, but there are a couple I wanted to acknowledge.
Jim,
Although I was a kid, I was painfully aware of the Vietnam War for many years. I watched my father trot off to all manner of demonstrations and disturbances for many years in his role as the head of the Mass. State Police's riot unit. This was a constant fact of life in my household from the time I was about 8 until I was 12 or 13. He got hurt at a couple of them, including getting hit with a brick thrown from a roof top at Harvard -- so really I didn't need stories, I saw it in real time.
My father, by the way, was opposed to the war. An ex-marine who served between WWII and Korea, he has always been a skeptic regarding the use of force in foreign affairs.
Jim and l-t c,
The notion that the support of some leaders of organized labor for the war justified liberals turning their backs on unions later on is a bit of a mystery to me. But it confirms my own sense of what a tragedy Vietnam was in terms of destroying liberalism. Amazingly we still seem to have some of these fissures playing out some forty years later.
Bill,
You cannot have effective unionism on a purely local level. Having said that, I would also add that most local union leaders I work with -- who by the way are elected democratically for maximum three year terms -- get paid usually based on the hourly wage that they have negotiated for their members. Typically my guys get paid at a foremen's rate for 2080 hours a year -- this means that in good times, when work is plentiful they will often make less than the rank and file, who get paid overtime.
Posted by: Sir Charles | June 15, 2012 at 11:00 PM
(Once again, free being the new paid.)
Sir C. That's it, in seven words.
I keep telling mine lad, 'it's all going to work out.' But my fingers are crossed behind my back when I say it.
Good trip to you both.
Posted by: nancy | June 15, 2012 at 11:35 PM
I keep getting told that 'money didn't matter in this election!' by conservatives.
I don't get that part. If it didn't matter why did he spend 10x as much and sequester so much money for 'his legal defense' that it's more than his opponent collected?
Posted by: Crissa | June 16, 2012 at 12:39 AM
Sir Charles, I don't doubt the leadership of the union leadership you cite. I was describing the leadership of both the IBEW and the Teamsters when I was a member. Not all unions are like that, as I cited with the grocery union in SoCal. My larger point was differentiating between collective bargaining, which is a process, and a union, which can be many things, including the obsolete "trade union" where workers were assigned to companies from the union hall. We certainly don't want to return to that.
Posted by: Bill H | June 16, 2012 at 01:24 AM
Bill,
My firm represents an IBEW local and I must say they strike me as an exemplary union. I also see nothing wrong with exclusive hiring halls. I like them in fact. I want my union members to be loyal to the brotherhood first -- and skeptical regarding the beneficence of employers.
Posted by: Sir Charles | June 16, 2012 at 08:42 AM
Well, I'm certainly a fan of electricians, let's agree on that.
But the hiring hall was filled with corruption up to it's eyeballs. Getting into the union was a corrupt practice to begin with, nepotistic in the extreme and otherwise accomplished only by favoritism or bribery. Assignment was supposed to be on a strict "first back in, first back out" basis, but nepotism, favoritism and bribery could reduce your union hall sitting time to zero and the lack of same could have you cooling your heels in the hall for months at a time.
What you propose sounds like an adversarial relationship between labor and management, and that is a guaranteed loser for both parties.
After a dozen or so years in the unions I moved into plant management and was on the other side of the issue, actually serving on the management negotiating team during a Steelworkers local contract renewal in Georgia in 1979. There was a brief strike, but we managed to avoid acrimony. In fact, I was operating machinery during the strike, and taking breaks to drink coffee with the picketers (from their thermoses), who periodically came to the door to critique my operating technique.
I think that unionism, in terms of collective bargaining, on a local basis is entirely feasible so long as it is universal. The steelworkers at that time did not have a national contract, and one of the negotiating points was the competitive position with regard to other locals and other steel companies. They wanted wage parity with other locals, and did their homework to provide us with comparisons, and we needed to remain competetive in our industry, and (while not "opening our books") showed them enough of our cost structure to make our points. It was a process of being "in this together" and it turned out pretty well.
A few years later the Steelworkers went to a national contract and things changed a bit. It became a bit tougher for us in the southern states because the northern market pricing conditions did not apply well in the south. Bethlehem Steel in Birmingham was one of the first big producers to fold, which should not have been the case, because it was the northern mills that were out of local high grade ore while Alabama still had plenty.
Posted by: Bill H | June 16, 2012 at 10:28 AM
Sir C: Looks like I am going to be taking you on on a number of points. In fact, Oh Lord, where do I start? And I mean that literally, because there are at least three points where I can bore in on your comments. Your comment in the opening that:
I could argue with you on that on several fronts. No, it is not unique in this, many groups have done the same, in areas far less 'connected' to their original fight than the unions are. One example of the unions' triumph -- which, again, despite the problems I have with it, I still celebrate -- is that the subjects you describe, except for civil rights legislation, are ones that originally were the reasons why unions were both formed and supported by Progressives. They won the right to be free of just those things for themselves, first. The very basis for the initial push for unions was to give their members a minimum wage, paid time off, and safe working conditions.
That they continue to fight for these things is good, but it is no different from the early realization by some blacks that the fight against discrimination had to be against all forms of discrimination, not just those that affected them. (Which is why the first Congressional gay rights legislation was introduced by a black Congressman, Robert N. C. Nix.)
I do commend unions for coming dwn on the right side of the question "is discrimination wrong because it hurts US or is it wrong because it is wrong." (Certainly there are few union equivalents to the sort of black homophobes -- or gay racists -- who accept discriminating against other people on the very grounds they protest being used against them.) But even here the rights are all economic rights, and it is at least possible to argue that by protecting them for other people, they were assuring they wouldn't have to refight the battle to re-earn them for themselves. And I'd be interested to know how many times union members have taken action to protect those rights for others. How many times have unions struck a non-union company in support of their non-unionized workers, or to protest against bad conditions? Certainly the leaders have spoken and organized politically on behalf of these causes, but that's not the same thing.
As for anti-discrimination issues, while leaders might have been among the first to take them up -- especially in the South -- I know of few cases where they first asked their membership to authorize it in a truly secret ballot. And once the movement moved north, I can think of no group that fought harder against anti-discrimination ordinances, which foughht harder against the integration of formerly all-white neighbirhoods, that fought harder against busing to make school integration actually possible -- than the 'white working class.'
But that's just one area -- and I have a lot more to say on any of this. But then there is Vietnam and the whole question of how it affected unions. And, Sir Charles, when i said you didn't understand what was happening, and can't put yourself back into the mindset of those times, I was aware of every bit of evidence you used in your 'defense' and felt, and continue to feel, that it proves nothing about the main point I made. The problem you have is not just understanding the emotional mindset the protestors were in, but in realizing where it came from, and why it was unlike any battle I know of that you have witnessed in your post-pubescent life. In every case you've seen and become a part of, the battle lines were pretty clear, with the liberals on the 'good side' fighting the 'evil conservatives.' And we both pull a few strands of hair out when we watch a Democrat sidling towards the middle, failing to realize the importance of the fights we're in, or choosing the 'centrist' position over the 'liberal one.'
I'm going to use an analogy even further off the wall than many of the ones I used, and ask you to try and follow it. But we can 'intellectually' appreciate the feelings of Londoners in the Blitz -- maybe. It is still hard to imagine ourselves following -- to the leter -- the regulations about 'blackout curtains' and realizing that one slip would be potentially fatal. But more than that, try and imagine how it felt to hear the siren, go with your neighbors into a basement shelter, and play cards, dance, chat, argue football or just get drunk -- knowing as you did that when the all-clear sounded you might find that you house and everything you owned was now just a crater in the ground. More, knowing that if it was safe, tonight, that you might have to do the same thing again tomorrow, and for unknowable tomorrows, and every time you would have the same chance of total disaster.
Yes, it is, barely possible to 'intellectually understand' what these people were feeling, to imagine ourselves in a similar position, only we'd come at the whole experience from a compleyelt different cultural mind-set. The 'stiff upper lip' 'freeze your emotins and hide them in your belly' attitude of the English of all classes meant the experience was different than it would have been -- that it in fact was in places like the coasts which had their own 'blackout drills' -- for Americans whose culture started from somewhere else.
To understand what Vietnam meant, you have to understand that the protestors were the people most affected by the "Kennedy spring" -- by the shift in the country's mindset that happened in the first couple of months after Kennedy took office. We were the ones who could, finally, be both 'patriotic' and 'liberal,' could celebrate our countries ideals and love our country for having them -- and not celebrate the cardboard cariacature that the right had presented and labeled "Americanism."
We could 'ask what we could do for our country' now, because we'd already seen that the answer would be to work for just those ideals, to make them more real for Americans in general, to help bring the authentic ideas of democracy and freedom -- and nor the 'democracy' and 'freedom' that celebrated a dictator that was on our side -- to the world with the Peace Corps. (If we'd asked the same question during much of the fifties, the answer would have been to 'go beat up a commie.')
It was the fact of who we had become that made the battle so rough, so slow -- inside each of us as well as in the country. This wasn;t 'us against the conservatives' this was 'us against us' us againt the very heroes we had come ti love because of their fighting for what we believed in, suddenly the villains. Again and again, what made the situation so difficult, what made the resentment so great that it still remains on both sides, what made all the changes good and bad that spread from those protests so powerful can be expressed in five words, and until you can show you fully grasp all the implications of those words, i repeat that you don;t understand the Vietnam era. You've spent your life fighting with liberals against conservatives, but in Vietnam, Conservatives, Republicans were authentically irrelevant.
We weren't fighting the Nixons -- the last thing we cared about was who'd be the Republcian candidate -- and remember we'd just watched the Goldwater debacle which made it look like Republicans were irrelevant to the country as a whole. We were fighting our own heroes, the liberals who were our allies. And we were in the small minority at first.
Don't, whatever you do, think of this as the equivalent of 'liberal democrats' vs 'Blue Dogs.' The stringest of liberals were likely to be stronger in supporting the war than were the more conservative (Northern) Democrats -- the South was in a category by itself.
Our allies were one eccentric and cantankerus Senator who had spent a whole year with his chair moved into the center of the aisle to illustrate he was neither a Democrat nor the Republican he had been, and one unknown voice from Alaska, even less known than it would be the next time an Alaskan became nationally prominent.
Other than that, our side was composed of Professors -- who knew the facts of the history of Vietnam, and knew they were different from the ones the country was getting. (Remember the initial Vietnam protests were 'Teach-ins.') And they were, much more than we realized, much more than is credited now, Peace Corps returnees who had gone off to fight for American values abroad, had discovered that in many cases they were, in reality fighting American influence when they did so, and who, when they came back, wanted to fight as hard for those same values here at home -- and knew even more how Vietnam was betraying them.
But our heroes were on the other side, and we had to bring ourselves to oppose the same people we'd celebrated for their domestic attitudes. And we had to try and understand how they could 'betray themselves' and it was so easy (hearing the whispering of the ghostly Beards) to argue they'd never been sincere even in what they'd done in America, that their supposed action for ideals was really just self-interest or was overshadowed by their subservience to the 'sinister economic interests' we had to find responsible for the War. (Which, in retrospect, didn't exist. There was no more benefit to those interests in Vietnam than there was in Afghanistan -- Iraq was different.)
That's the second front I want to discuss. Ironically, after this long rant, it is actually the third part -- in the next post -- that may be the most important, and that's the comment you made @8:42. But for now, enough already, anyone who has follwed this should immediately have lunch, a drink, or something and breathe -- as I have to.
[Rant Part I ends, but to be continued -- soon. And this was started when the post by Sir C at 8:42 was the most recent, haven't seen any later ones.]
Posted by: Prup (aka Jim Benton) | June 16, 2012 at 11:50 AM
The notion that the support of some leaders of organized labor for the war justified liberals turning their backs on unions later on is a bit of a mystery to me.
SC, my thesis would be that nobody turned their backs; you had kids of college age, give or take, whose first major impression of labor unions was that of construction workers beating up on kids like themselves. It would have naturally taken quite a while for that generation to develop a concern for, or even an awareness of, labor's problems in the first place.
I doubt that there's much of a rift there anymore. The problem is, the damage to the labor movement is long since done, and none of us really know what to do to begin to reverse it.
Posted by: low-tech cyclist | June 16, 2012 at 12:03 PM
It certainly is not consistent with what the constitution says that if the president can't get his ideas through Congress he can simply implement them by executive order. Liberals disliked the exact same process when a Republican president was doing it.
Bill, as with any executive action, it depends on whether his actions are empowered by the Constitution or by the laws passed by Congress. If you have evidence that Obama has exceeded his powers here, feel free to present them.
In your shoes, I would start with the text of Obama's executive order, which is surely up on the White House web site, and see what it gives in the way of authority for his actions. Only then can you make a case that the authority he cites doesn't cover his actions.
FWIW, I think your history is a little bit off. Nobody objected to the fact that Bush, like his predecessors, was issuing executive orders. I think you're thinking of his use of signing statements.
Posted by: low-tech cyclist | June 16, 2012 at 12:23 PM
FWIW, it's not an executive order. It was a memorandum issued by Secretary Napolitano of DHS.
Aside from the part about work permits, it seems to be a straightforward exercise of prosecutorial discretion. Bill, I'll leave it to you to dig further into that part if you're interested.
Posted by: low-tech cyclist | June 16, 2012 at 01:20 PM
Let save everybody's fingers and 'page up button' and repeat the comment that's the crux of my problems with labor.
Now I was originally going to argue this philosophically, and may still, but I realzied I had a much betetr example to use against you in this discussion.
Imagine if a police union had the attitudes you speak of, imagine a police union with 'hiring halls' where a captain would go to get those officers he needed for a special assignment, or even for routine jobs -- and was, effectively, forced to take the union's choice -- made on, e.g. seniority rather than suitability for the specifics of the job.
Imagine policemen whose 'first loyalty is to their union' and only secondarily to the job, the law, the community they serve, or their supervisors. Imagine policemen automatically suspicious of their employers' and supervisors' 'good intentions' or 'benificence.'
Imagine a policeforce constrained by the sort of 'work rules' that we grant other unions, like determining the number of officers assigned to a specific task based on a schedule worked out in the CBA, like preventing a union member from taking specific actions because they are 'outside the requirements of his specific job title.' Imagine a police force where all hiring is done strictly by seniority.
Imagine a police force free to strike or to take job actions (like 'working to rule') to protest a grievance against a fellow union member, like his being dismissed or suspended or assigned to 'administrative duties' because of a questionable and possibly race-based shooting, or a claim of 'racial profiling,' or even demonstrable but not provable corruption.
Imagine a police force at all times convinced of a basic conflict of interest between its members and the employers, that assume there is a necessity for an attitude of permamnet vigilance and possible struggle against any position that 'management' or 'the city' takes.
And, bringing it back to unions in general, can youu look at that presumption of conflict for unions in general and defend it against my argument that -- because 'the consumer is the ultimate job creator' -- the ideal situation is one where labor and management understand their communality of interest in both keeping the firm/company.whatever alive and helping it grow. We no longer exist in a world where the American companies have a joint monopoly of a particular industry, where they are free to collude against the workers because they have that monopoly.
Ideally, management will treat labor as well as possible, to get the highest quality labor and products out of them. Ideally, unions will shape their wage demands taking into account the final cost to consumers, will not protect bad workers whose work hurts the business and thus lessens demand. Ideally management will realize that they benefit as much from social spending and even from government regulation as does the community as a whole, that a safe, healthy, educated workforce, good public transportation, safe food and drugs, and even aesthetic improvements to the community all pay more -- in direct monetary benefits -- than they cost in taxes and inconvenience.
But agreeing on all of these is much more difficult when the conflict of interests is stressed -- on both sides -- over the communality, and when government is seen as a zero-sum game.
[Again, written right after my previous screed, and it may be a while before I reply to anyone who thinks it worth commenting on. Afternoon may be busy.]
Posted by: Prup (aka Jim Benton) | June 16, 2012 at 01:41 PM
here ya go: the irony fairy has been drawn and quartered, via balloon juice -- john yoo's dissing of the president for his executive order about not deporting students who grew up here. john freakin' yoo, alleging "executive overreach."
let's stop re-arranging the deck chairs, shall we? there is an army of hacks willing to re-frame every step in the right direction as some kind of assault on the framer's intent, or state's rights, or religious freedom, or whatevah. they do it with sound bites; they back it up with long mindless screeds.
what we have in our favor is telling the truth about how things actually affect people. we can do that. this executive order is about fairness to kids who grew up here, in whom we have invested, and who are loyal and contributing. i've got no problem with the administration giving them temporary protection. what aids our security about deporting students who've done nothing wrong?
Posted by: kathy a. | June 16, 2012 at 01:44 PM
The President can market this action as a cost-saving measure: He has to do something with these people, and it's cheaper to give them work permits and make them pay their way than jail, appeal, and deport them.
As long as Congress doesn't pass a law saying it's illegal to do so, it's not illegal to do so. They wrote that the agency has the right to say what immigrants get to stay and work and which get prioritized.
Of course, that probably means Congress will try to write something stupid to do just that.
Posted by: Crissa | June 16, 2012 at 03:05 PM
Jim,
Except what you have described is not how hiring halls work and why they are advantageous to employers. Hiring halls are ideal for construction where work is transient and typically on a project by project basis. Hiring halls allow employers to man up or down with great rapidity and with confidence that there will be an adequate supply of skilled workers.
Hiring halls do not typically have a seniority component. Guys are referred in the order that they signed up on the out of work list. Everyone hiring hall that I deal with gives the employer the right to refuse a guy. Many allow an employer to request a guy by name. Employers can also ask for specific skills.
Hiring halls are not suited for all jobs but are ideal for construction.
Posted by: Sir Charles | June 16, 2012 at 03:48 PM
Prup, that sounds an awful lot like the police we have now.
Posted by: Crissa | June 16, 2012 at 03:53 PM
Crissa:
You are 100% right.
Posted by: Phil Perspective | June 16, 2012 at 07:51 PM
This one is for KN. 'End of the World As We Know It' -- and the best places to be -- Brazil and India.
And really. John Yoo. His wiki entry is a study in jaw-dropping cognitive dissonance. Or maybe it's just plain old useful disingenuousness we see at work.
Yoo emigrated with his parents from South Korea to the United States as an infant. He grew up in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, graduating from the Episcopal Academy in 1985. He earned a B.A. degree summa cum laude in American history from Harvard University in 1989 and a J.D. from Yale Law School in 1992. Yoo was admitted to practice law in Pennsylvania in 1993.[24] From 1995 to 1996, he was general counsel for the Senate Judiciary Committee.[1] He is married to Elsa Arnett, the daughter of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Peter Arnett.[2]
Posted by: nancy | June 16, 2012 at 08:32 PM
I grew up in the '70's, and unfortunately my formative experiences of unions consisted of the aforementioned support for the Vietnam War, hostility to young people, women and minorities, and the blatant corruption of the Teamsters, including the sudden and to this day unexplained (as far as I know) disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa. Even with all of that I remember defending unions to right-wing classmates (I recall one particularly obnoxious one) at Chicago, on the grounds that (1) unions were necessary to counteract corporate power, and (2) business had its share of corruption too, but no one was suggesting we outlaw business. Some days it was hard, though, and the split between the union members who became the Reagan Democrats and the people supporting the civil rights and feminist movements did tremendous damage to the progressive cause. Barbara O'Brien was commenting on her Mahablog that before the New Left went after unions they should have thought about whether there was anything to take their place, and of course there wasn't. We're all paying for that lack of foresight now.
And Bill, I'm sorry, but I can't take your criticism of Obama about executive orders seriously after the truly unprecedented obstructionism he's faced from the congressional Republicans. They've simply left him no choice, and I think it's obvious by how long he's tried to work with them and avoid steps like this that if they'd given just a little he wouldn't be moving in this direction. It's all well and good to say that "the people should fix Congress," but that's a process that's going to take a lot of time (and is virtually impossible in the current political environment), and meanwhile there are real people with real problems that need addressing. I applaud Obama's move here, and hope he does a lot more along these lines.
Posted by: beckya57 | June 17, 2012 at 12:08 AM
I find it kind of funny that I am only mentioned at the beginning and end of this thread.
First Vietnam. Anyone who thinks Nam was a liberal war is delusional. The right wing was accusing all democracts of being commie sympathisers since before 1960. Get tough on this or that whether it makes any sense or not. Johnson bailed in 1968. It was dissapointing that he did not have the courage or conviction or clarity of vision to stop the war before he quit, but the symbolism of his quitting should have resonated. It didn't. Then we had Nixon, who lied both about the war and his own motives and tactics here inthe US. The republican approach to achieving power has not changed, they have just created a kind of veil of immunity from being called to account for dirty tricks, criminal activity and anything else that works to their ends while holding up the opponents to an impossible standard of virtual sainthood.
Gimme a break here folks, the past 5 or 6 decades have been all about trying to keep the right wing in check. That is all. It hasn't worked very well either.
I lived through the Vietnam eraor and only avoided being chewed up in the killing machine by the skin of my teeth and then only after I had latched those teeth firmly upon the conviction to suffer anything rather than fight an unjust war.
The think that everyone here has utterly failed to remember is that for 8 years the RWNJ had a free hand to install their operatives into key government posts. They appointed something like 11,000 Liberty University law graduates - just for starters. Moreover, they moved as many of those types of appointees into ordinary civil service jobs from which they could not be easily ousted.
Obama uses his executive powers with discretion, he knows how vast the opposition is and how deeply it has infiltrated all aspects of society, perhaps he is a little naive in thinking he can counter it incrementally, but despite the fact that I disagree with many of his decisions, I have to acknowledge that they could well be the most he could do under the circumstances.
What is at stake is whether we continue down the road towards oblivion and chaos, which is the republican plan, and I make no apology at all for that because they apparently actually believe that they can determine reality based upon their ideology. Classical insanity.
We are in deep deep trouble folks. Economics is just the sugary glaze on the top of the five grain cinnamon roll that is the ecological disaster we are hotly pursuing.
In the past we have broken micro ecosystems and seen the results, more recently we have noticed horrifying trends in macro ecosystems, and are only just beginning to see the forefront of results. But what is truly terrifying is that there is a considerable latency to effect versus cause in this context, measured in years at least, decades certainly, and very likely centuries.
We can't manage the global ecosystem if we assume from the outset that it is not our responsibility to do so.
Sleep well...
Posted by: KN | June 17, 2012 at 01:09 AM
Barbara O'Brien was commenting on her Mahablog that before the New Left went after unions they should have thought about whether there was anything to take their place, and of course there wasn't.
becky - could you provide a link? I really don't remember a time when the New Left "went after unions." Unquestionably, their support of unions ranged from lukewarm to nonexistent, but that's a whole 'nother thing.
Posted by: low-tech cyclist | June 17, 2012 at 07:53 AM
First, why are people apologizing for what is nothing more than an ordinary use of the type of power the Presidency always has had? The Presidency was never designed to be merely the servant of the Congress -- and the only times it functioned like that was the period between Andrew Johnson and Wm. McKinley, and the brief revival during the terms of Harding and Coolidge. These were, not coincidently, the heights of corporate power over the government, the height of the "Gilded Age' and the attempt to revive it -- not as a period of great productivity and innovation, but simply as a time of great money making (through stocks and the market -- always sold as "Come one, come all, YOU TOO CAN BE RICH like us." And when the bubble burst, 'well, we told you it was risky, there in the smallest type, but you should have known that if there were winners, there were gonna be losers, and that most of you would be them').
But the Founding Fathers hardly saw the Presidency as a weak office, merely functioning to carry out the Congress' wishes. (If they had, wouldn't it have been more likely that Washington would have been chosen Speaker of the House and the nonentity, Frederick Muhlenberg would have been the first President, instead of vice versa?) Would the series of Adams, Jefferson and Madison been content with a weak, purely 'executive' position? And Washington had a much better idea of what the '55 men' had meant in Constitution Hall that summer, he'd been their 'presiding officer' -- which is merely another way of saying 'president' -- as well. The way he acted in that role, a mediator, a calming figure who rarely spoke but produced his effect through his mere presence, was completely different from his manner as the country's 'presiding officer.'
In fact, The Imperial Presidency (the book) was written as a last shot in the absurd war between the Kennedy Loyalists and Johnson loyalists, arguing that Kennedy wouldn't have made the same mistakes LBJ did. It should have been an embarrassment to Schlesinger, to any New Dealer, but it came out just as Watergate exploded, just at the one time Congress was actually acting to stop an 'out-of-control' Presidency. (Those of us who remember the agonizing slowness in which liberal Democrats crossed over to public opposition of the war -- even the Sainted Bobby Kennedy did not openly oppose it until after LBJ had dropped out -- hardly thought that Congress would have served as a brake as we marched into 'the Big Muddy.')
And Schlesinger's book, in fact, wound up supporting Nixon's vilest defense, when he'd gone from "I'm not a crook' to 'Yeah, I'm a crook, but so were the other Presidents, I'm just the poor slob that got caught.' And it was pounced on by centrist Democrats disgusted at the weakness the Left had shown -- instead of stopping Nixon, they gave him the greatest mandate up to that time, and then, in Watergate they were effectively silent and failed utterly to even attemmpt to fill the vacuum caused by the defeat of the last-ditch Nixonites.
Obama's action was perfectly legitimate -- my only complaint is that he could have handled DADT in precisely the same way from the beginning of his Presidency, and possibly DOMA as well. That a Bush, or a Nixon abused the powers they had did not mean that the powers weren't there or shouldn't have been, it meant just that Nixon and Bush abused the powers.
We've complained that Obama has failed to show leadership -- me more than anyone except for Jayhawk -- but when he does, when he understands that leadership is not just using 'The Bully Pulpit' but involves actions, we think we have to apologize for him.
(And you wonder what I mean by "Republicans seizing control of the dialogue.")
It also was politically brilliant, but save that for another comment.
Posted by: Prup (aka Jim Benton) | June 17, 2012 at 10:40 AM
(I see after I posted the last that there is also a Watergate thread, but the comment really did belong here.)
As for the political brilliance -- and the legitimacy -- of Obama's actions, so far, just yesterday -- haven't started looking around today's stories -- we have the very conservative Attorney General of Utah saying that Obama's actions were entirely within his power, were the right actions, and that Republicans should support and not attack him. We have the Catholic Bishops supporting him and condemning the Republicans -- okay, they are long on record on this. But even more we have Richard Land of the Southern Baptists arguing the same way.
(That's the same Richard Land who accused Obama of 'using Martin’s death to “gin up the black vote” for President Obama, whom he said “poured gasoline on the racialist fires.”' He's been one of the mpost vicious and racist of Obama's clerical opponents, yet he insisted not only that Obama was right in this case, but that republicans should join and not oppose him on this.)
Richard Land, Catholic Bishops, and the Attorney General of Utah all supporting Obama. Does this mean their followers -- or even they themselves -- wil cross the aisle and become Obama supporters? Hardly, en masse but some will. More importantly others who had simply assumed that an anti-Obama vote was automatic may at least spend a few minutes thinking about their vote, about Romney, and about Republican policy as a whole. Again, maybe not a lot of vote switching, but every little bit helps.
(And yet again I point out that there is no place for Romney to go to replace the voters he will be losing. He's already 'fished out' the pools. He's peaked, which is why I still insist that, by November, the election will be a Goldwater-level defeat.)
Posted by: Prup (aka Jim Benton) | June 17, 2012 at 11:08 AM
Hi LTC:
Here's the link:
http://www.mahablog.com/2012/06/11/the-problem-with-purity/
She's basically talking about the conflicts between the old Left, including unions, and the New Left, and the damage these did to progressivism. Her blog is well worth reading, BTW.
Posted by: beckya57 | June 17, 2012 at 01:13 PM
The link also discusses the conflicts between liberals who want to stay "pure" and outside the ickiness of politics, and the more pragmatic types who realize that working in the muck is often the only way to get stuff done.
Posted by: beckya57 | June 17, 2012 at 01:15 PM
becky: time did not permit me to comment and praise you for your comment @12:08 AM, but it is one of the most valuable comments on the thread. Again, unfortunately, time presses, but I;ll checkout the mahablog piece. It sounds damn good, and to help others, here's the link in clickable form.
Posted by: Prup (aka Jim Benton) | June 17, 2012 at 01:47 PM
Prup- remember you owe me 100 books when Romney get more than 100 electoral votes.
I was in Madison the day after the election. The feelings of defeat were palpable by liberals- teachers still wearing their "We are Wisconsin" shirts. People yelling and heckling at the capital building about Walker. But the Conservatives were taking pictures at the capital with their Walker signs. That's one divided state.
Posted by: Joe S | June 17, 2012 at 02:25 PM
Thanks, prup, and thanks for putting the link in clickable form--I have no idea how to do that. I'm a geek fail....
Posted by: beckya57 | June 17, 2012 at 02:41 PM
No, Joe, it's 500, and I'm waiting for the 5 I expect to win.
Posted by: Prup (aka Jim Benton) | June 17, 2012 at 02:53 PM
Much thanks again, Mahablog goes on my list. There is a lot of sense there -- and some familiar commenters from Benen/Maddow. If anyone clicks through, go to the home and read "The Children Are Easily Amused" and the pieces on the arrest of Mrs. Zimmerman for perjury and the right-wing response to it.
Posted by: Prup (aka Jim Benton) | June 17, 2012 at 04:14 PM
"Bill, as with any executive action, it depends on whether his actions are empowered by the Constitution or by the laws passed by Congress. If you have evidence that Obama has exceeded his powers here, feel free to present them."
And "Obama's action was perfectly legitimate -- my only complaint is that he could have handled DADT in precisely the same way from the beginning of his Presidency..."
Well, I'll take one more try at this. From a talk which Obama gave at Univision on March 28, 2011 on Univision at Bell University.
" Because there are laws on the books, that Congress has passed... There are enough laws on the books by Congress that are very clear in terms of how we have to enforce our immigration system, that for me to simply through executive order ignore those congressional mandates would not conform with my appropriate role as president.”
He said the same thing with respect to DADT several times, and that is correct under his powers and responsibilities spelled out in the constitution.
"As long as Congress doesn't pass a law saying it's illegal to do so, it's not illegal to do so."
Please show me the part of the constitution that gives the President the authority to create laws independent of Congress.
"But the Founding Fathers hardly saw the Presidency as a weak office..." Actually, they did. There was, in fact, great debate whether or not to create the office at all, and it was created to be nothing more than for the purpose of day-to-day operation of the functionality of the government. That is why they so carefully limited his power to, for instance, declare war and manage funding, powers that modern presidents have to a large degree usurped in violation of the constitution.
Posted by: Bill H | June 19, 2012 at 10:54 AM
Wanted to drop this in at the thread before the topic is superseded. It's David Seaton -- on the American left as it has situated itself further away from the working poor.
There's much here, I think, to consider going forward. Identity politics v. the traditional concerns for struggling workers, by the left, which is where we used to start.
My comment text appears to be in italics through no maneuver on my part. Hmm. Ah well. Gonna hold Bill H responsible. :)
Posted by: nancy | June 19, 2012 at 09:28 PM