Leo W. Gerard

By Leo W. Gerard
International President

Republican Party Chairman Michael Steele appears to be suffering philosophical identity confusion, you know, like some people experience sexual identity confusion.

He’s got an organization named United STEELE Workers Union, white hardhat emblem and all, collecting members for him on Facebook. It had 255 worldwide as of June 19.

This is disconcerting on so many levels, least of which is that I head the original, authentic United Steelworkers Union (USW). It has, by the way, 1.2 million retired and active members in North America.

Far more importantly, Steele historically has expressed hostility toward unions. When President Obama agreed to help General Motors restructure in bankruptcy, for example, Steele said it was “another handout to the union cronies who helped bankroll his presidential campaign.” Now that there’s a union created in his own image, if Steele slams labor organizations, is he criticizing himself? Has he become a “union crony?”

Steele can perch that white hard hat atop his head, but he’s going to have to labor at learning some hard philosophical lessons before becoming a real steelworker, a true union man.

A union brother or sister knows it’s all for one and one for all. Our union brothers and sisters don’t see themselves as “ownership society” islands. That’s because they know when the sun stops shining, it’s nice to have union siblings to help clean up after the hurricane.

To join, Steele must learn that a union man has his brother’s back; he doesn’t stab him in the back. This may be a tough lesson for the Republican. Consider, for example, what Mark Bergeron, the STEELE Worker Union Facebook group administrator, says on his blog about the party’s 2008 nominee for president:

“How far to the left do we as Conservatives go to satisfy some of our Moderate ( Liberal ) Republicans? What sacrifices will we make to the Moderates? Abortion? Illegal Immiration [sic], a little more Socialism? Less Fiscal Responsibility? My point is that we have already made concessions to these softies and we got John McCain.”

In addition to insulting McCain, that smacks of exclusion. It is the Republican Party wringing itself out, shedding diversity at the insistence of its most conservative, self-appointed, over-amplified leader, Rush Limbaugh. So it has been reduced to little more than wealthy white protestant males — and wannabes. A union, by contrast, is a collective. By nature, then, it is inclusive. This may be a tough one for Steele to accept, considering he refused to stand up to Limbaugh earlier this year when the talk show host insisted he, not Steele, headed the Republican Party.

The STEELE Worker Union Facebook site says the group is interested in organizing. That’s a great first step in the correct direction. An important function of an international union, like the United Steelworkers, is to help employees at individual workplaces organize their local unions. Those efforts in recent years, however, have been thwarted by corporate campaigns of intimidation against union organizers and sympathizers. This is documented in a study called, “No Holds Barred: The Intensification of Employer Opposition to Organization,” released in May by Cornell University professor, Kate Bronfenbrenner.

Bronfenbrenner, who has researched labor issues for a quarter century, documents employers obstructing unionization by firing union organizers, threatening to close down the shop, cutting wages and benefits, and forcing workers to meet one-on-one with supervisors who interrogate them to determine whether they support the union. Bronfenbrenner found employers conducted these coercive tactics, many of which are illegal, in the run-up to union elections more frequently than in the past to dissuade workers from voting for unionization.

The upshot is that organizers and union sympathizers risk their livelihoods and corporations are increasingly killing unions. The Employee Free Choice Act now before Congress would significantly reduce that. It would allow workers — rather than the employer — to decide how to form the union. It would give workers the right to choose whether to form their union by collecting signatures from a majority of the workers or by conducting a secret ballot election. The threat-filled period before balloting could be eliminated, if the workers wanted.

The United Steelworkers union actively and vociferously supports the Employee Free Choice Act. If Michael Steele wants to be a real union man, he must do so as well. I will be waiting to hear from him. If I do, I will be glad to take him under my wing and mentor him. I will make him an Associate Member of the real United Steelworkers union. We will embrace him. Of course, I will warn my male members to be careful not to actually hug him because this is a guy, so touchy about unions, that he even used the word “crazy” to describe civil unions.

Robert Borosage

Robert L. Borosage  
Co-Director Campaign for America’s Future

Congressional Republicans are marginally more popular and significantly less contagious than the swine flu. Even conservatives are keeping their distance. House leader John Boehner’s perpetual tan has become a presidential punch line. Senate leader Mitch Dr. No McConnell is known only for obstruction. Ideologues like Rush rush to fill the leadership vacuum, seeking to purge the party of any lingering moderates. It’s gotten so bad that neo-con Bill Kristol suggests that leading presidential candidates for 2012 might well be the oft disgraced Newt Gingrich and..gulp.. Darth Cheney himself.

Cheney and Gingrich are worth paying attention to – not as presidential contenders but as very sophisticated conservative political combatants. Both are brass knuckled politicians, steeped in the Lee Atwater school of anything goes wedge politics. And both are laying down clear markers for the debate to come.

Cheney’s torture campaign managed to spook querulous Democrats about Guantanamo and force Obama into the lists to respond to him. Cheney’s speeches were less analysis than rant, but they told a clear story:

America is at war. Evil enemies lurk in dark corners. After 911, the Bush administration took the steps necessary – some of them harsh, some unspeakable, but all necessary – to keep us safe. Now Obama is dismantling vital elements in that protection, emboldening our enemies, confusing our friends, and weakening our defenses.

In Cheney’s words, “The administration seems to pride itself on searching for some kind of middle ground in policies addressing terrorism… But in the fight against terrorism, there is no middle ground, and half-measures keep you half exposed…There is never a good time to compromise when the lives and safety of the American people are in the balance.”

Cheney is betting on failure. He has set Obama up to take the rap if there is another terrorist strike in America, or if things go badly in Iraq or Afghanistan. He’s essentially advising Republicans to forget the moderating steps of the Bush second term, and to draw a bright line in assailing any retreat, any compromise, any turn to legal or constitutional niceties.

Gingrich pursues the same strategy on the economy, only he’s willing to throw Bush under the bus. In his speech before the Conservative Political Action Convention, he lacerated Obama for ushering in the “European socialist” takeover of America’s economy. At same time, he tied Obama to Bush in what he calls “a Bush-Obama big spending program that was bipartisan in its nature. Last year the Bush Obama plan had a 180 billion stimulus package in the spring which failed. It came back with a 345 billion housing package in the summer which failed. It then had a 700 billion Wall Street bailout in October which failed. It had a 4 trillion dollar Federal Reserve guaranty which failed. The Bush-Obama plan was continued. We didn’t get real change. ..We got big spending under Bush, now we have big spending under Obama, and so we have two new failures.”

Gingrich recycles the old standards of the Reagan conservative mantra to describe the choice facing the country:

“They have shared openly and honestly with us their vision of higher taxes, bigger government, more bureaucracy, greater corruption, more political power by people unworthy of doing it, and a policy which will kill jobs, cripple the economy, trap children in schools that are disasters and weaken America’s future. They have every right to have that vision and we have every right to go to the polls and defeat it.

We should have as a goal 435 campaigns in this country of people dedicated to representative government, to lower taxes, to less power in Washington and to taking back from the bureaucracy the power it can’t possibly use over the American economy.”

In Gingrich’s speeches, there is very little on how we got into the mess we are in. Rather the focus is on the failure to get the economy going and the choice going forward.

Again, Gringrich is betting on failure. If, as is likely, unemployment keeps rising over the next year, foreclosures continue, any recovery is halting at best, Gingrich’s argument is designed to blame Obama rather than the mess that conservatives left him.

Democrats must engage on this level of analysis. That is why the mantra of not “litigating the past” is foolish. Democrats have to tell clearly the story of how we got into the hole we are in — both abroad and at home.

Obama is the best at this. His response to Cheney was compelling, but circumscribed:

Unfortunately, faced with an uncertain threat, our government made a series of hasty decisions. I believe that many of these decisions were motivated by a sincere desire to protect the American people. But I also believe that all too often our government made decisions based on fear rather than foresight; that all too often our government trimmed facts and evidence to fit ideological predispositions. Instead of strategically applying our power and our principles, too often we set those principles aside as luxuries that we could no longer afford. And during this season of fear, too many of us — Democrats and Republicans, politicians, journalists, and citizens — fell silent.

…I categorically reject the assertion that these [waterboarding and other tortures] are the most effective means of interrogation. What’s more, they undermine the rule of law. They alienate us in the world. They serve as a recruitment tool for terrorists, and increase the will of our enemies to fight us, while decreasing the will of others to work with America. They risk the lives of our troops by making it less likely that others will surrender to them in battle, and more likely that Americans will be mistreated if they are captured. In short, they did not advance our war and counterterrorism efforts — they undermined them, and that is why I ended them once and for all.

On the economy, Obama has evoked the language of biblical parable in contrasting the economy built on sand with that build on rock. The economy built on sand, begun under Reagan, with top end tax cuts, deregulation, the cult of the CEO, the myth that markets would police themselves that led to a frenzy of speculation, greed, corruption and the placing of bigger and bigger bets with more and more borrowed money until that economy collapsed on its own excess.

“We cannot rebuild this economy on the same pile of sand. We must build our house upon a rock. We must lay a new foundation for growth and prosperity – a foundation that will move us from an era of borrow and spend to one where we save and invest; where we consume less at home and send more exports abroad. “

It’s easy to scoff at Gingrich and mock Cheney. Voters weren’t buying the conservative mantra when McCain and Joe the Plumber trotted it out in the campaign. But don’t misunderestimate the right. There is no question that conservatives will learn the narratives put out by Cheney and Gingrich. The conservative movement excels at teaching their choir the lines of the hymnal. Over time, they will work hard to make Obama own the economic mess they left behind, and decry signs of weakness abroad.

It is vital that the real story be told – and not just by the president, but by neighbors to neighbors, citizen to citizen. The story on how conservative policies and follies led us into the hole we are in – and now are obstructing the efforts to get us out.

Robert Borosage

Robert L. Borosage

Co-Director Campaign for America’s Future

Conservatives hail the Obama appointments; progressives express misgivings. Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill celebrates Obama as “pragmatic,” which she says may dismay some “on the left.” David Corn says this isn’t the change progressives voted for. The media wallows in the “disappointment of the left.”

Welcome to the new “post-partisan” world, in the silly season on political punditry. Turns out the center has triumphed once again. But that, of course, depends on what you mean by center.

Last weekend, pragmatic centrist Barack Obama called for a bold recovery plan, grounded on strategic public investment rather than tax cuts to “help save or create” 2.5 million jobs, “while rebuilding our infrastructure, improving our schools, reducing our dependence on oil and saving billions of dollars.” Elements that would include a “massive effort” to make federal buildings energy efficient, the “largest investment in roads and bridges since the creation of the federal highway system in the 1950s, “the most sweeping” program to upgrade and repair the nation’s schools; and a new push to extend broadband to every corner of the country. While refusing to talk numbers, Obama pledged to “do what’s required to jolt this economy back into shape,” with anonymous advisors suggesting $500-700 billion as a possible price tag.

In scope and substance, Obama’s plan tracks the elements of the Main Street Recovery Program, released by the Campaign for America’s Future, and endorsed by over 100 unions, citizen action, women’s, environmental and other progressive groups, and some 120 progressive economists. (To see the program, endorse or improve it, go here)

Now Republicans are reinventing their Keynesian heritage. Emil Henry, an assistant Treasury Secretary under Bush, writes that “investment in key infrastructure is consistent with Reagan principles,” and that investment in “renewable energy will be key in our future.” William Kristol suggests “small government Republicans” are virtually extinct, and suggests that Republicans support a “huge public works stimulus plan,” only insist on directing the dollars to the “underfunded defense procurement rather than to fanciful green technologies.” (Now that’s a winning agenda: apparently spending about as much as the rest of the world combined on our military isn’t enough.)

Bill Sher in his invaluable “progressive breakfast; memo, writes that now rabidly anti-government conservative business lobbies like The Chamber of Commerce and National Association of Manufacturers are climbing on the infrastructure bandwagon.

Welcome to the new center: post-partisan progressivism. “We’re all Keynesians now,” Richard Nixon once famously announced. And now the catastrophic failures of conservatism have set the stage for a new era of progressive reform. The election gave Obama a mandate and a majority for progressive reform: an end to the war in Iraq, health care for all, investment in new energy and education. He doesn’t seem to have backed off on any of his major commitments yet. And the economic crisis is forcing an ever bolder response, driving the entire “center” to the left.

So to all the newborn progressives — the DLC émigrés, the Third Way centrists, the Blue Dogs and abashed Cons — welcome to the new center. And get ready for the most intense period of progressive reform since the Great Society. Only one thing. As the economic crisis gets worse and goes global, don’t settle in. We’ve only begun to define the new economy which will come out of the collapse of the old.

By Robert L. Borosage
Co-Director Campaign for America’s Future

History was made yesterday. The American people demanded an economic bailout strategy that helped Main Street as well as Wall Street. When congressional leaders came up short, fierce public pressure forced the House to vote “No.”
But, with the financial crisis deepening, saying “no” is not enough. It’s time to act.
Tremendous pressure is already mounting from the White House and Wall Street to exploit people’s anxiety, dress up the same weak bill and ram it through this week! Congress needs to hear from you NOW, to resist this pressure and take a stand to rebuild Main Street and reign in Wall Street.
Tell Congress: Resist Wall Street. Stand up for Main Street. Deliver a new “New Deal.”
The defeated bailout package promised more failed trickle-down logic — bailout the financiers at the top and prosperity would trickle-down. To get the economy back on track, we need a new “New Deal” that rebuilds the economy from the bottom up.
• Invest In Main Street: On Main Street, jobs are disappearing, infrastructure is crumbling and local budgets are straining. A $200 billion economic rescue package for Main Street would generate clean American energy, extend unemployment benefits, aid states and localities to avoid debilitating cuts and modernize our crumbling infrastructure.
• Save The Homeowners: Defaulting mortgages are at the heart of the crisis. Keeping deserving people in their homes is critical to shore up Main Street and Wall Street. The bankruptcy courts need to have the power to renegotiate mortgages and reduce foreclosures.
• Hold Wall Street Accountable: Instead of simply propping up reckless firms, we should establish a Reconstruction Finance Corporation that can take over financial firms, sort out the solvent from the insolvent, close down some and merge others. We also need modern regulation that cracks down on the abuse. And taxpayers deserve preferred shares in any bank or investment house that we are forced to rescue.
This sort of new “New Deal” economic rescue plan puts Main St. first. It’s what Congress should have done from the start. Tell Congress now: Resist Wall Street. Stand up for Main Street. Deliver a new “New Deal.”
Make no mistake, the financial crisis is serious and severe. Big problems require bold solutions. And problems caused by conservative policies need progressive answers.
Conservatives are regrouping now. They’ll try to put progressives on their heels, and pander to Wall Street with more deregulation and top end tax cuts — the same conservative policies that derailed the economy and ravaged the markets in the first place.
You beat back Wall Street once, but their pressure will not let up. Congress needs to hear your voice again NOW to build on this stunning victory. Your voice already stopped a bad bill, now it can pass a good one.
Tell Congress: Resist Wall Street. Stand up for Main Street. Deliver a new “New Deal.”