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Question: What do you call a card-check bill with no card-check?
Answer: Bullshit!
1. "We need to stand up to the business lobby that's been getting their friends in Congress and in the White House to block card check. That's why I was one of the leaders fighting to pass the Employee Free Choice Act. That's why I'm fighting for it in the Senate. And that's why we'll make it the law of the land when I'm President."
2. Obama blasted the GOP Bush regime as "the most anti-union administration in history," before saying that "if a majority of workers want a union, they should get a union," referring to a key EFCA provision: Enshrining card-check majority recognition of unions in labor law, rather than at the employer's discretion.
3. Still, having spent $80 million to help elect Obama, some unions are counting on the Democrat to deliver on his campaign promise. As Gerry McEntee, head of the American Federal of State, County and Municipal Employees candidly told the Washington Times (much to the delight of Republicans, who broadcast his remarks in press releases), "the payback would be the Employee Free Choice Act -- that would be a vehicle to strengthen and build the American labor movement and the middle class."
4. On his campaign Web site, Obama openly embraced the card check legislation, which is supposed to make it easier for workers to organize unions."Obama and (Vice President-elect Joe) Biden believe that workers should have the freedom to choose whether to join a union without harassment or intimidation from their employers. Obama co-sponsored and is a strong advocate for the Employee Free Choice Act, a bipartisan effort to assure that workers can exercise their right to organize. He will continue to fight for EFCA's passage and sign it into law," according to the site.
5. The provision of a controversial bill that would give workers the right to unionize as soon as a majority of employees in a workplace signed cards saying they want a union has been dropped, a move designed to make it easier for the legislation to pass.
6. What is close to emerging, according to reports, is a bill that would leave out the original measure's ''card check'' provision but would require shorter unionization campaigns.
And so on.
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Q: What do you call a stimimulus design to create immediate impact and jumpt-start the economy in the short-term (and point to hell breaking loose if it doesn't pass now)?
A: "A Two-Year Recovery Plan", that was NEVER intended to create immediate impact and jump-start the economy in the short-term.
July 18, 2009 2:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
So is it more like Newspeak or doublethink?
Doublespeak or newthink?
Big Obama is watching you!
July 18, 2009 2:56 PM | Reply | Permalink
Q: What do you call it when people are unwilling to post a reply to the topic actually under discussion and constantly revert to their own narrow bete noires?
A: Conservative babble.
July 18, 2009 4:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
Although I'm not on exactly the same political page as Lalo, in this instance I think he was indeed "on the topic" of political doublespeak, which obviously figures in my diary.
I know it's weird, Tankard, for a leftist like me to be on the same side of an issue as a conservative like Lalo, or whatever he may be somewhere on the libertarian/conservative spectrum, but it isn't like he was calling Obama a "socialist" or yammering about how any stimulus would suppress free enterprise, and...
He's right about the ridiculous, slo-mo stimulus.
Anyway, I'm glad to see your moniker on my diary, even though I can't agree with you about Lalo.
July 18, 2009 5:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
But the stimulus is not the topic, and double-speak is not the topic. The topic is card check.
Conservatives constantly change the topic as quickly as they can whenever fair treatment of workers is discussed, and Lalo will change the topic of any thread -- as he (?) did this one -- to "Obama is bad" without offering the slightest evidence that he knows what he's talking about.
BTW, RR, where would the stock market be now, where would unemployment be now, where would the recession be now without the benefit of the stimulus? Be fairly precise. I'll wait.........................................................................................................................................................................................................Oh, you don't know? OK, I'll settle for an imprecise estimate then......................................................................................................................................................................................................Oh, you still don't know, or you can't offer any solid basis for you estimate?
The prosecution rests, your honor.
July 19, 2009 9:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
Incidentally, unless you and the practitioner of minstrelsy above are brain dead, you may have noticed that I am no fan of the current President either. But I get annoyed with singers who only know one note and who are not singing Jobim.
July 19, 2009 9:35 PM | Reply | Permalink
At least we agree about the bossa nova!
And here's an amazing version of Insensatez from somewhere you might not expect it...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_dfG6BM75uY
July 20, 2009 3:55 AM | Reply | Permalink
You call it centrism. Centrism is the donut hole of policy. It pretends to be all things but delivers on nothing.
July 18, 2009 5:21 PM | Reply | Permalink
Outstanding!
That really deserves a place in a book of political aphorisms!
July 18, 2009 5:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
ditto:)
July 18, 2009 6:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
Marc Ambinder has also posted an obituary for card-check in the Atlantic...
July 18, 2009 7:16 PM | Reply | Permalink
The White House may be correct in the short run, but this kind of short run thinking has been leading to the destruction of the middle-class for decades now. How do you stimulate the economy withou? stimulating the economic power of the working middle class. We've been defining the economy as Wall Street for far too long.
July 19, 2009 10:57 AM | Reply | Permalink