YES!!

President Obama, in remarks at the White House today:

I also believe that we have to reverse many of the policies towards organized labor that we've seen these last eight years, policies with which I've sharply disagreed. I do not view the labor movement as part of the problem, to me it's part of the solution. We need to level the playing field for workers and the unions that represent their interests, because we know that you cannot have a strong middle class without a strong labor movement. We know that strong, vibrant, growing unions can exist side by side with strong, vibrant and growing businesses. This isn't a either/or proposition between the interests of workers and the interests of shareholders. That's the old argument. The new argument is that the American economy is not and has never been a zero-sum game. When workers are prospering, they buy products that make businesses prosper. We can be competitive and lean and mean and still create a situation where workers are thriving in this country.

So I'm going to be signing three executive orders designed to ensure that federal contracts serve taxpayers efficiently and effectively. One of these orders is going to prevent taxpayer dollars from going to reimburse federal contractors who spend money trying to influence the formation of unions. We will also require that federal contractors inform their employees of their rights under the National Labor Relations Act. Federal labor laws encourage collective bargaining, and employees should know their rights to avoid disruption of federal contracts.

And I'm issuing an order so that qualified employees will be able to keep their jobs even when a contract changes hands. We shouldn't deprive the government of these workers who have so much experience in making government work.

"[W]e know that you cannot have a strong middle class without a strong labor movement."

Yes. It's the dawn of a new day for labor in this country.

Your Liberal Media

Media Matters documents something that is readily apparent to any observer: Republicans commenting on the stimulus package are far more common than Democrats. The old rationale was that, well of course they do - they are running things. I wonder what their excuse is now?

List of Things Every Republican in the House Opposes

Courtesy of Clammyc over at Kos, here's a list of things that every single Republican in the House of Representatives actively opposes:

* An increase in the maximum benefit under the former food stamp program (now called the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program or SNAP);
* An expansion of broadband internet access to rural areas of America;
* Programs to improve infrastructure and develop rural communities;
* Improvements to the criminal justice system;
* funding for science and technology research;
* Funding for the Community Oriented Policing Services;
* Funding to repair, maintain and renovate the Department of Defense (DoD) facilities;
* Energy efficiency projects and modernization of heating/cooling and electrical systems at the DoD;
* Improving Army barracks;
* Energy related research and development (renewable energy programs and expansion of existing weatherization activites);
* Funding for the Army Corps of Engineers (remember the levees in New Orleans that weren’t funded?;
* Modernization of the nation’s electrical grid;
* Construction and repair of Federal facilities;
* Funding for clean water programs and water infrastructure projects;
* Capital improvements and maintenance for Forest Service and National Park Service, the Superfund program and wildland fire management;
* Funding for the Department of Health and Human Services;
* Funding for labor and employment training programs/Department of Labor;
* Renovations to elementary and secondary schools;
* Pell Grants and other student financial assistance;
* Educational programs aimed at elementary and secondary education;
* Defense construction projects – including hospitals, barracks and day care centers;
* funding for the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) to be used on maintaining VA medical facilities and cemeteries;
* Funding for Information Technology projects at the State Department;
* Funding for highway construction;
* Funding for housing assistance programs administered by the Department of Housing and Urban Development;
* Grants to states and cities for community development;
* Refundable tax credits for middle and lower income families;
* Increase tax credit for higher education;
* Extension of tax credit for renewable energy production;
* Increase the earned income tax credit for lower income families with three or more qualifying children;
* Increased funding for emergency unemployment benefits for those who exhaust the amount of benefits they collect;
* Temporary increase in amount of unemployment benefits;
* Assistance to states for spending on Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program;
* Extension of Medicaid coverage to certain unemployed workers;
* Assistance with COBRA premium payments for certain unemployed workers; and
* Incentives for health care providers to use "health information technology" which would reduce health care costs for providers and lower premiums.

This is what the republicans feel is not as helpful to American families as capital gains and corporate tax cuts.

This

This is a towering, monumental song, filled with compassion and grace, mixed with a kind of bewilderment at the madness that makes men practice war.

Want A Thriving Middle Class?

Robert Reich has a post over at TPM Cafe where he advocates strong unions as a means of reviving the long-term prosperity of the American economy.

Why is this recession so deep, and what can be done to reverse it?

Hint: Go back about 50 years, when America's middle class was expanding and the economy was soaring. Paychecks were big enough to allow us to buy all the goods and services we produced. It was a virtuous circle. Good pay meant more purchases, and more purchases meant more jobs.

At the center of this virtuous circle were unions. In 1955, more than a third of working Americans belonged to one. Unions gave them the bargaining leverage they needed to get the paychecks that kept the economy going. So many Americans were unionized that wage agreements spilled over to nonunionized workplaces as well. Employers knew they had to match union wages to compete for workers and to recruit the best ones.

Fast forward to a new century. Now, fewer than 8% of private-sector workers are unionized. Corporate opponents argue that Americans no longer want unions. But public opinion surveys, such as a comprehensive poll that Peter D. Hart Research Associates conducted in 2006, suggest that a majority of workers would like to have a union to bargain for better wages, benefits and working conditions. So there must be some other reason for this dramatic decline. But put that question aside for a moment. One point is clear: Smaller numbers of unionized workers mean less bargaining power, and less bargaining power results in lower wages.

It's no wonder middle-class incomes were dropping even before the recession. As our economy grew between 2001 and the start of 2007, most Americans didn't share in the prosperity. By the time the recession began last year, according to an Economic Policy Institute study, the median income of households headed by those under age 65 was below what it was in 2000.Typical families kept buying only by going into debt. This was possible as long as the housing bubble expanded. Home-equity loans and refinancing made up for declining paychecks.

But that's over. American families no longer have the purchasing power to keep the economy going. Lower paychecks, or no paychecks at all, mean fewer purchases, and fewer purchases mean fewer jobs.

I would add: Dr. Reich didn't mention the provisions of Taft-Hartley that allow states to ban closed shops (in so-called "right to work" states), but repealing those parts of Taft-Hartley would go a long way to getting Southern workers into unions.

Bonus: Unionizing the South, where most of the "right to work" states are, would get Southern working-class voters voting for the Democrats, reliably, every single election.

Imagine grateful Alabamans, Georgians, Mississippians all voting gratefully for the party that helped them organize and improve their lot in life.

Christianity in America

Commenter David Raber over at Vox Nova comments on the extent to which the USA is a Christian country:

We might ask ourselves if the Christian religion has had much real effect at all on the way our government and society is organized. Do we have a society built more along the lines of Jesus’ teaching than say, that of ancient Rome? Well, we managed to get rid of slavery about a century and a half ago, and we don’t have gladitorial games anymore (not to the death, anyhow). So there’s that.

But to what degree are most people in their daily lives guided by Christian principles? We may have good intentions, but the fact is that we live in a world where such principles are virtually irrelevant.

For example, how do I love my neighbor as myself in a business transaction? Our whole economic system is based on the assumption that I will take my neighbor for just as much as I possibly can–”whatever the traffic will bear.”

Maybe one day we will figure out on the practical level how to live pretty much like followers of Jesus, with a lot less tolerance for everyday social sin; then perhaps we will look at our present system as something akin to gladitorial combat or slavery; but I don’t see that day coming soon.

Thoughts from a homeless guy

I just read this on craigslist, and it is an unvarnished look at what the concerns of the homeless are. "There but for the grace of God" is a cliche, but it could use a closer examination from most of us. I suspect that, with the current hard times, more Americans may come to appreciate what they have, even as they lose the less important things, the things that are more about status and prestige than about truth and real, eternal value. Please God.

The Rich are Still Hurting

A commenter on a thread over at TPM Cafe pretty much sums up my own view of the big picture of the financial crisis:

There are massive amounts of money to be made by engaging in the shell game financial industry. Our country lionized those who did that, always hoping some of it would dribble down to us. If that industry had been regulated the economy would have grown at a sustainable rate, fortunes wouldn't have been made, lost, made again in a single day of trading, and our major loss would have been a big reduction in billionaires - don't we need an endless supply of those? We sure acted like we did.

I Used to be a "Conservative"

I started my adulthood as a conservative Republican. I voted for Ronald Reagan in 1980 and 1984, and for Bush the elder in 1988 and 1992. I argued against welfare, and for the Reagan arms buildup. Needless to say, things changed for me. Andrew Sullivan sounds like he's been on a similar journey:

But what has emerged in recent years is a darker, more authoritarian strain of conservatism - rooted in the cultural and racial conservatism of the South, partial to a near-dictatorial war-presidency, believing in American exceptionalism to the extent that it exempts America from the moral norms of the rest of the world, and rooting the legitimacy of the American constitution in only one religious tradition (narrowly defined).

These characters want to redefine conservatism around this theocratic, authoritarian, self-justifying ideology. I am more than happy to share the term liberalism with others. I am not going to have the word conservative coopted solely by these religious radicals.

Two Incidents Involving Planes and New York

Andrew Sullivan muses on the contrast between 9/11 and the heroic captain of the plane that ditched in the Hudson River:

Seven years later, two pilots who have since remained remarkably distant from media attention, were in a similar cockpit in the same crowded area and their over-riding concern was to prevent any civilian casualties at all. That's why they even avoided small airports which might have led to a crash into inhabited neighborhoods. With enormous expertise, gained by rigorous training in a civilized society, they managed to land safely on the river and save everyone both on board and on the ground.

It seems to me that dignity and training and expertise and humaneness are the values of our society at its best. All of them are self-evidently superior to the values of vainglory, amateurism, impulsiveness and cruelty that bedevil our enemies. If these are the grounds on which we fight this war - and they are ours to choose - then we will win. And we will deserve to.

GOP Lies About Stimulus Plan

Know that "Congressional Budget Office Report" that "shows" that the stimulus package won't actually help the economy for years? There's only one problem: The report...doesn't exist:

Reports of a recent study by the Congressional Budget Office, showing that the vast majority of the money in the stimulus package won't be spent until after 2010, have Democrats on the defensive and the GOP calling for a pullback in wasteful spending.

Funny thing is, there is no such report.

"We did not issue any report, any analysis or any study," a CBO aide told the Huffington Post.

Rather, the nonpartisan CBO ran a small portion of an earlier version of the stimulus plan through a computer program that uses a standard formula to determine a score -- how quickly money will be spent. The score only dealt with the part of the stimulus headed for the Appropriations Committee and left out the parts bound for the Ways and Means or Energy and Commerce Committee.

James Howard Kunstler, On Obama's Meta-Task

Mr. Obama deserves credit for a lot of things, but perhaps most amazingly his ability to see "hope" in a public so demoralized by their own bad choices that the USA scene has devolved to a non-stop Special Olympics of everyday life, where absolutely everybody is debilitated, deluded, challenged, or needs a leg up, or an extra buck, or a pallet on the floor, or a gastric bypass, or a week in detox, or a head-start, or a fourth strike, or a $150-billion bailout. There's a lot of raw material from sea to shining sea, admittedly, but how do you re-shape it into a population guided by a sense of earnest purpose, with reality-based expectations, with habits of delayed gratification and impulse control, and a sense of their own history? That will be quite a trick. Many of us -- myself included -- will be pulling for Barack. Maybe the power of his rhetoric and his sheer buff physical presence can whip this republic of overfed clowns into shape.