Hot News for March 2009

1--Introduction of Employee Free Choice Act Gets High Priority in Congress
2--Without Enough Votes, Democrats Do Great Water Torture in 'Voter ID' Hearing
3--House Democrat: Senate No Longer 'Land of the Giants'
4--Workers Beaten Down Over Last 30 Years, Leading to Economic Meltdown
5--'Buy American' Resolution Goes to House Appropriations Panel
6--UT Regents Vote to Keep UTMB on Galveston Island

1) The Employee Free Choice Act was introduced today in both the U.S. House and U.S. Senate, marking the firing of the starting gun on a huge battle over whether workplace majorities will get a fair shot at bargaining collectively when they wish to do so.

AFL-CIO President John Sweeney issued this statement:

"Today is a banner day for working Americans, a milestone on the road to rebuilding our nation’s middle class – and it couldn’t come at a more crucial time. We thank the House of Representatives and the Senate for introducing the Employee Free Choice Act, which will restore workers’ freedom to bargain for fair wages, job security, better health care and secure pensions. Special thanks also goes to Congressman Miller, Sen. Kennedy and Sen. Harkin for being the lead sponsors and champions for America’s working families.

We are confident the Employee Free Choice Act is going to become the law of the land.

The introduction of this bill so early is a strong message that Congress is ready to move forward to help working families build an economy that works for everyone. It is common sense legislation that makes good on a simple promise: If a majority of employees in a workplace want a union, they should be able to have a union and bargain for a better life. That’s why the Employee Free Choice Act has broad public support. Independent polling shows that 73 percent of the public supports it – and that support comes from every region, every demographic group and every political party. Even moderate and liberal Republicans support the Employee Free Choice Act, as do a wide array of progressive and public interest allies of working families.

Still, the debate will be tough. Wealthy corporate interests don’t want to give up power and they are spending hundreds of millions of dollars to lie about what the bill does. But hard working Americans will not let their voices be silenced by wealthy CEOs and corporate lobbyists. Already, all across the country, working men and women are mobilizing at the grassroots, calling on Congress to pass the Employee Free Choice Act.

Passing the Employee Free Choice Act will allow workers to have a voice at work, lift their standard of living and build stronger communities as well as stronger families. The bill will allow workers to form a union if a majority indicates in writing that they want one, taking away the right of corporations to demand a ballot election they can readily manipulate. Workers can also choose a ballot election if they prefer –but it will be their choice, not their company’s."

For more information, go to www.employeefreechoice.org

2) The Texas Senate is engaged in a long hearing of the Committee of the Whole on the so-called "Voter ID" bill by Sen. Troy Fraser, R-Horseshoe Bay.

The final vote is all but certain: 19 Republicans against 12 Democrats in a purely partisan fight.

The start of action yielded a peculiar ruling for the books: Sen. Robert Duncan, R-Lubbock, who is in the chair for the hearing, ruled that rules requiring posting of notice of a hearing do not apply to the Committee of the Whole because they would vitiate the Senate's ability to resolve into such a committee at any time and for any legitimate reason. Likewise, the ability of any one senator to ask for a delay (known as a "tag") before a committee considers legislation does not apply when the Committee of the Whole meets, Duncan ruled.

This yields a paradox. The rules of the Senate are supposed to apply to the Committee of the Whole's operations, yet they don't.

So now the "Voter ID" fight has yielded two extremely toxic precedents, giving any 16-member Senate majority the ability in the future to ram legislation through the ordinary barriers by doing this: First, passing a Senate rule that exempts the topic from the two-thirds requirement; and second, skirting the committee posting and "tag" process by steering a measure into a Committee of the Whole.

The procedural attack lost, Democrats decided to extend discussion. As this is being written, it is closing in on 8 p.m., several "invited" witnesses have yet to testify and it is entirely possible that the public will not be able to weigh in until after midnight.

That said, the Democratic caucus is extraordinarily well-briefed as they build the record they would use if the measure becomes law and is challenged before the U.S. Justice Department. They also are clearly going to make this hearing last as long as they can, analyzing the measure line by line, word by word, atom by atom. Given the stacking of the rules, it's the only price the Democrats can exact in this debate.

Ironically and apparently by calculation, the first witness for the bill was Hans Van Spakovsky, who gained notoriety when he overruled career lawyers at the Bush Justice Department to pre-clear the mid-decade congressional redistricting by the Texas Legislature in 2003. Democrats roasted him by pointing up the criticisms of those career lawyers and at one point, Spakovsky, whom Democrats busted when Bush appointed him to the Federal Election Commission, said then-Sen. Barack Obama had engaged in a "lie" in criticizing him.

Every Democratic senator is taking part in turning Fraser's bill into a pin cushion, but special props go to freshman Sen. Wendy Davis, D-Fort Worth, who asked Fraser some penetrating questions and was on the receiving end of his remark that "I have trouble hearing women's voices." (Fraser apparently was having trouble hearing several senator's questions, but he had no comment on men's voices.)

If anything changes, I'll file again tonight. Otherwise, the crystal ball on this hearing isn't looking fragile.

3) The San Antonio Express-News posted this quotation from state Rep. Jim Dunnam, D-Waco, as Democrats in the House warned that the "voter ID" debate has the potential to bring the House to a standstill as well as the Senate:

"The most disturbing thing about what the Senate's doing is that they are putting a particular issue above all the needs that we have," Dunnam said. "We're only here for a few days every two years, and for them to say that that's the most important thing going on the state of Texas just shows that the Senate is not the Land of Giants like it used to be."

Meanwhile, Paul Burka dismantles the "voter ID" proposal in this posted April article on the Texas Monthly web site:
http://www.texasmonthly.com/2009-04-01/btl.php

4) New York Times columnist Bob Herbert runs through some sordid economic history in his discussion today of how our economy got to this point:

March 10, 2009
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Reviving the Dream
By BOB HERBERT

Working families were in deep trouble long before this megarecession hit. But too many of the public officials who should have been looking out for the middle class and the poor were part of the reckless and shockingly shortsighted alliance of conservatives and corporate leaders that rigged the economy in favor of the rich and ultimately brought it down completely.

As Jared Bernstein, now the chief economic adviser to Vice President Joseph Biden, wrote in the preface to his book, “Crunch: Why Do I Feel So Squeezed? (And Other Unsolved Economic Mysteries)”:

“Economics has been hijacked by the rich and powerful, and it has been forged into a tool that is being used against the rest of us.”

Working people were not just abandoned by big business and their ideological henchmen in government, they were exploited and humiliated. They were denied the productivity gains that should have rightfully accrued to them. They were treated ruthlessly whenever they tried to organize. They were never reasonably protected against the savage dislocations caused by revolutions in technology and global trade.

Working people were told that all of this was good for them, and whether out of ignorance or fear or prejudice or, as my grandfather might have said, damned foolishness, many bought into it. They signed onto tax policies that worked like a three-card monte game. And they were sold a snake oil concoction called “trickle down” that so addled their brains that they thought it was a wonderful idea to hand over their share of the nation’s wealth to those who were already fabulously rich.
America used to be better than this.

The seeds of today’s disaster were sown some 30 years ago. Looking at income patterns during that period, my former colleague at The Times, David Cay Johnston, noted that from 1980 (the year Ronald Reagan was elected) to 2005, the national economy, adjusted for inflation, more than doubled. (Because of population growth, the actual increase per capita was about 66 percent.)

But the average income for the vast majority of Americans actually declined during those years. The standard of living for the average family improved not because incomes grew but because women entered the workplace in droves.

As hard as it may be to believe, the peak income year for the bottom 90 percent of Americans was way back in 1973, when the average income per taxpayer, adjusted for inflation, was $33,000. That was nearly $4,000 higher, Mr. Johnston pointed out, than in 2005.

Men have done particularly poorly. Men who are now in their 30s — the prime age for raising families — earn less money than members of their fathers’ generation did at the same age.

It may seem like ancient history, but in the first few decades following World War II, the United States, despite many serious flaws, established the model of a highly productive society that shared its prosperity widely and made investments that were geared toward a more prosperous, more fulfilling future.

The American dream was alive and well and seemingly unassailable. But somehow, following the oil shocks, the hyperinflation and other traumas of the 1970s, Americans allowed the right-wingers to get a toehold — and they began the serious work of smothering the dream.

Ronald Reagan saw Medicare as a giant step on the road to socialism. Newt Gingrich, apparently referring to the original fee-for-service version of Medicare, which was cherished by the elderly, cracked, “We don’t get rid of it in Round One because we don’t think it’s politically smart.”

The right-wingers were crafty: You smother the dream by crippling the programs that support it, by starving the government of money to pay for them, by funneling the government’s revenues to the rich through tax cuts and other benefits, by looting the government the way gangsters loot legitimate businesses and then pleading poverty when it comes time to fund the services required by the people.

The anti-tax fanatic Grover Norquist summed the matter up nicely when he famously said, “Our goal is to shrink the government to the size where you can drown it in a bathtub.” Only they didn’t shrink the government, they enlarged it and turned its bounty over to the rich.

Now, with the economy in free fall and likely to get worse, Americans — despite their suffering — have an opportunity to reshape the society, and then to move it in a fairer, smarter and ultimately more productive direction. That is the only way to revive the dream, but it will take a long time and require great courage and sacrifice.

The right-wingers do not want that to happen, which is why they are rooting so hard for President Obama’s initiatives to fail. They like the direction that the country took over the past 30 years. They’d love to do it all again.

5) State Rep. Jim Keffer, R-Eastland, has filed a "Buy American" resolution that has won the support of the United Labor Legislative Committee. Here is the text of the proposal, which was referred to the House Appropriations Committee:

Bill Number: TX81RHR 716 Filed: 03-04-2009

Author: Keffer

R E S O L U T I O N

1 WHEREAS, Since this recession began, a staggering number of
2 Americans have lost their jobs, and the heavy burden of
3 unemployment is causing the economy to weaken further; and
4 WHEREAS, The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act signed by
5 President Barack Obama on February 17, 2009, appropriates $787
6 billion in federal funds to jumpstart economic recovery; the
7 stimulus package is designed to help economically devastated cities
8 and states, to create or save some 3.5 million jobs, and to invest
9 in infrastructure, green energy, and technological innovation; and
10 WHEREAS, In order for the stimulus funds to have the greatest
11 impact and to maximize the creation and preservation of jobs, they
12 should be spent, as much as possible, on domestic materials, goods,
13 and services; and
14 WHEREAS, The Congressional Budget Office has noted that the
15 most effective type of fiscal stimulus is one that directs money to
16 people who are most likely to spend it quickly; thus, when a
17 stimulus allows a United States household to purchase the items it
18 needs, demand in this country is increased, and the initial
19 stimulus sets in motion further periods of economic consumption in
20 a process known as a "multiplier" effect; the degree of stimulus
21 provided depends on how much of the resultant spending goes to
22 purchase domestically produced goods, because if the additional
23 consumption is satisfied by imported goods, the income of foreign
24 producers rises, and the stimulus is essentially exported; and

1

1 WHEREAS, The number of American workers drawing unemployment
2 aid jumped to a record high of nearly five million in early February
3 2009, and this labor market deterioration is sending the economy
4 into a deeper spiral; in order to maximize the effectiveness of the
5 stimulus package at this crucial moment, it is imperative that the
6 funds be spent domestically whenever practicable, using American
7 tax dollars to amplify aggregate demand and create the greatest
8 number of American jobs possible; now, therefore, be it
9 RESOLVED, That the House of Representatives of the 81st Texas
10 Legislature hereby express its intent that funds provided to the
11 State of Texas by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act be
12 spent, as far as practicable, on domestic goods, materials, and
13 services.

6) Good news for Galveston arrives from the Houston Press, in the form of news that the UT System Board of Regents has voted to keep the storm-damaged University of Texas Medical Branch on Galveston Island.

Here are the early details:

HOUSTON PRESS

UT Regents Vote To Keep UTMB On The Island
By Richard Connelly in Hurricane Ike
Tuesday, Mar. 10 2009 @ 3:43PM
Great news for Galveston residents: The UT board of regents has voted to keep UTMB on the island.

The bad news: They still have to get funding from the legislature to do so, and are throwing around figures like "a billion dollars over time."

But that's another bridge to cross, at another time. For now, the impassioned outburst from the island has succeeded where a lot of people thought it might not -- rebuilding the hospital and medical school after it was ravaged by Ike.

Not long ago, UT officials were talking of moving the facility inland. Now they not only want to keep the John Sealy Hospital open, keep the teaching and trauma center open, but also build a new 214-bed surgical tower.

It's terrific news for the hard-hit community. Let's just hope the second part comes through, too.

http://blogs.houstonpress.com/hairballs/2009/03/utmb_galveston_ike.php