The New New Deal
Matt Welch | August 15, 2008, 10:46am
Are you flirting with the idea of voting for Barack Obama? Already in the Yes, We Must camp? Then one thing you might want to consider is checking in on what various Democrats have planned for the pending Restoration. For instance, Michael "Vietnam: The Necessary War" Lind is arguing in Salon (annoying ad to skip) for a "Newer Deal," in which Democrats who are seeking a "lasting supermajority" eject the social liberalism and "liberaltarianism" of the "McGovernite" Democratic era of Carter and Clinton and failure, and re-embrace Franklin Roosevelt's "It's the New Deal, Stupid" approach. Some excerpts:
The Roosevelt Party ran on economic issues, and didn't care whether voters were in favor of sex or against it on principle as long as they supported the New Deal. [...]
Nobody ever asked FDR or Harry Truman or John F. Kennedy or Lyndon Johnson their views on contraception, or abortion, or censorship. [...]
[A]lmost all of the policy proposals that excite the American public are exactly the sort of old-fashioned, "paleoliberal" spending programs or systems of government regulation that are supposed to be obsolete in this era of privatization, deregulation and free-market globalization, according to neoliberals and libertarians. Bill Clinton to the contrary, the public clearly does not think that "the era of big government is over." [...]
[A]cross the country there are lots of potential Democratic congressional and senatorial candidates who would like to move to Washington -- and might be able to, if social conservatives were welcomed to a big-tent party defined almost exclusively by economic liberalism. [...]
A big reason that the Democrats won back Congress in 2006 and are likely to keep it in 2008 is nominating and electing socially conservative economic populists like Heath Shuler. More progress. But to create an updated version of the New Deal, the Democrats have to treat economically liberal social conservatives as equal partners, with their own spokesmen and leadership roles in the party, not just as a handful of swing voters brought on reluctantly at the last moment. Conversely, Rubin Democrats and other economic conservatives should be invited to join Grover Norquist and the Club for Growth in a free-market deficit hawk party, which no doubt would prove to be as ineffectual and isolated as the Herbert Hoover Republicans during the New Deal era.
David Weigel has been chronicling the Democrats' repudiation of free-market Clintonism, plans for union-expanding "card check," and growing hostility to free trade.
Mr. Nice Guy | August 16, 2008, 10:51am | #
People keep confusing union elections with elections where you vote for people for political office. As I noted upthread this analogy is simply misplaced.
If general elections were like union elections you'd be required to watch Obama ads for an hour twice a day for the two weeks before the election while McCain supporters would be arrested if they came on the property to speak to you and the voting place would be your local Democratic Party HQ.
You guys literally don't know much about the NLRA and how it works. You just hear "elections" and think, hey, our general elections are secret ballot, so why do union supporters knock this?
So you keep getting comments like this:
"Unons can do this now, that is how a unionization vote is called for. What exactly is your problem with keeping such a vote secret? "
When people like joe and I answered this question many times already:
"Under current law, in between the submission of signed cards and the election, the employer has several weeks or months during which it 1) gets to see the cards and 2) has the entire workforce as a captive audience. They can target individuals who signed the cards, they can threaten widespread retribution." joe
"Plenty of coercion, that is even currently illegal, has been documented to go on under the elections regime in unionization. This is why the card authorization idea was floated in the first place." Me
""I've got one! We'll have the employees go into these little booths and make a mark on a piece of paper." That's been tried, and study after study concludes that it fosters an environment of bullying and harrassment and unfair labor practices (violations of the NLRA) by employers. The incentives are all there for the employers to do that." Me
As I've said before, what's your libertarian problem with the authorization cards? There's no force or fraud being allowed, so whats up? Peer pressure, OH NOES! You guys crack me up.
Mr. Nice Guy | August 17, 2008, 6:58pm | #
"For the umpteenth time, firing pro-union employees during a unionization drive is already illegal, as is threatening to retaliate against them."
And or the umpteenth time, the studies show that the incentives that the NLRA and NLRB currently provide to protect employees from employers during a unionization drive simply do not outweigh the incentives to the employers of committing the infractions and defeating the drive. If union goons break windows or jaws they go to jail while if employers fire or otherwise violate the NLRB they are forced to resinstate and make with back pay. Therefore, conceptually the employers will just use the election period to comitt unfair labor practices and empiricaly that is what is found...
It's just one of those many, many areas where there is not a "level playing field" in unionization elections, and that break for the employer (for one example, the employer can bar union reps from the place of employment while he can use as much company time as he sees fit to subject employees to anti-union speech). Having some break the union's way is how the NLRB tries for "fairness." Analogizing to a political election and how fairness if created there is just inapt, for the reasons I've noted above.
By your own professed principle you fall: you claim that you don't want the government sticking its nose in these matters at all, fine. You claim that if it is going to then it should be even handed. Fine. But I see you and other libertarians worked up to defeat what you see as a violation of evenhandedness (certification via authorization cards, which I don't concede as a violation of evendhandedness) yet where is the libertarian outcry to provide equal access to union reps to employees during election periods? If it is indeed the even handedness bothering you, then why no outcry there?
On this subject you demonstrated how little you know about labor law:
"You have to keep in mind, though, that union organizers have only one purpose for interaction with employees, while management has to interact for reasons other than to oppose unionization (you know, running the business and such). Equal time would be excessive, but union organizers should be guaranteed some access."
No one in labor law debates has to my mind put forward an argument that union reps get time equal to the amount management has in managing workers. The "equal access" debate has only been about giving union reps time equal to the amount of time management uses to engage in anti-union speech. To your credit, you acknowledged that is proper above.
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