Michelle Malkin

The fact-averse radical right waged an effective smear campaign against National Labor Relations Board nominee Craig Becker.

At the forefront of the liars and deceivers was Michelle Malkin.

In true radical right fashion, Malkin took past statements out of context to make the case that Becker is a radical leftist seeking to overthrow democracy in America. If confirmed to the NLRB, Malkin tried to make the case that Americans would be sent to forced labor camps before the end of the year. Only death could save us.

To prove Becker is a left-wing nutcase, Malkin refers to an article he wrote in 1993 for Minnesota Law Review.

According to Malkin and Rupert Murdoc’s Wall Street Journal, Becker’s article proposed doing away with democracy in union elections.

Craig Becker

In a 1993 Minnesota Law Review article, written when Becker was a UCLA professor, according to the WSJ story he “believes elections should be removed from work sites and held on ‘neutral grounds,’ or via mail ballots. Employers should also be barred from ‘placing observers at the polls to challenge ballots.’”

How is barring employers from strong-arming employees to prevent organizing a union anti-democratic? Would the US democracy be better off if a sitting president, their staff and members of congress were allowed to dictate where elections should be held, and if partisan observers were allowed to stand by and watch each ballot cast so that they can challenge it?

That’s what the radical right wants in union elections. They want to allow corporations to strong-arm employees to prevent them from organizing. Becker was arguing that that is wrong and the elections should be more fair – not less.

The WSJ also said that Becker made the “extraordinary” argument that new rules should be made to limit the ability of employers to crush attempts by employees to organize. Becker said that if a corporation puts up anti-union propaganda in the workplace, union representatives should be allowed access to the workplace to do the same in favor of organizing.

Wow, Becker really is radical left-wing nutcase – giving labor unions a level playing field with corporations when employees are considering whether to organize … total wacko.

Then Malkin tried to link Becker to the disgraced former Illinois Governor Rob Blagojevich.

Here’s her logic. The Service Employees International Union allegedly gave money to Blagojevich in return for giving collective bargaining rights to Illinois home health-care workers. Around the same time Becker admits that he provided “advice and counsel to SEIU relating to proposed executive orders and proposed legislation giving home-care workers a right to organize and engage in collective bargaining under state law.”

Oh my gosh, so Becker provided advice to SEIU, a client of his, around the same time that the union allegedly bribed Blagojevich, ergo, Becker must have told SEIU to bribe Blagojevich.

The facts are that nothing the radical right-wing pro-business gustapo have dug up on Becker in any way suggests that he’s some sort of radical union thug seeking to destroy democracy and setup forced labor camps in America.

Becker’s 17-year-old Minnesota Law Review article was the work of a scholar. And the gist of his opinion was to create fairer elections, because the fact is, corporations have undue power over their workers and unions are largely locked out – making it difficult to for employees to even learn about unions, much less organize.

And as for the extraordinarily tenuous connections between Becker, SEIU and Blagojevich – it’s just that – tenuous.

So rather than listen to outright lies being disseminated by the right-wing hit squad, read Becker’s comments to questions posed by Republican Senators on Feb. 3, 2010. Republicans tried desperately to make Becker out to be the subversive radical that they themselves represent – psychologists call that projecting – but it didn’t work. See for yourself.

Obama has said he will appoint Becker during a recess. While the radical right will surely throw a hissy-fit, Bush did this all the time and nary a word from the right could be heard.

My response to Bob Herbert’s column today about unemployed twenty-something college graduates is – “that sucks.” Now imagine what it’s like to be 55-years-old and out of work. That really sucks.

The financial eggheads who didn’t see the economic disaster looming over the horizon back in 2006 are now telling us that the recession is over, but they’re wrong.

The recession is over when we say it’s over, and clearly we’re still very much recessed, unless of course you work for Goldman Sachs – then you’d probably think the Gilded Age is back again. But for the rest of us, times are tough.

Read Herbert’s column.

The New York Times reported today: “Job seekers now outnumber openings six to one, the worst ratio since the government began tracking open positions in 2000. According to the Labor Department’s latest numbers, from July, only 2.4 million full-time permanent jobs were open, with 14.5 million people officially unemployed.”

Read the entire New York Times story

Eugene Victor Debs Union Leader 1897

The “pure and simple” trades union of the past does not answer the requirements of today. …

The attempt of each trade to maintain its own independence separately and apart from others results in increasing jurisdictional entanglements, fruitful of dissension, strife and ultimate disruption. …

The members of a trades union should be taught … that the labor movement means more, infinitely more, than a paltry increase in wages and the strike necessary to secure it; that while it engage to do all that possibly can be done to better the working conditions of its members, its higher object is to overthrow the capitalist system of private ownership of the tools of labor, abolish wage-slavery and achieve the freedom of the whole working class and, in fact, of all mankind. …

Source: Howard Zinn’s “A People’s History of the United States” page 339.

Joe Hill (1879 -1915) Union Organizer

Joe Hill was a union organizer, songwriter and a hero to working men and women in America. Before he was executed by firing squad in 1915 he wrote this poem.

My will is easy to decide

For there is nothing to divide

My kin don’t need to fuss and moan

“Moss does not cling to a rolling stone.”

My body? – Oh. – If I could choose

I would to ashes it reduce

And let the merry breezes blow

My dust to where some flowers grow

Perhaps some fading flower then

Would come to life and bloom again

This is my Last and final Will

Good Luck to All of you

Joe Hill

Joe Hill (1879 - 1915)

According to the AFL-CIO Web site about Hill, here’s what happened.

On Jan. 10, 1914, Hill knocked on the door of a Salt Lake City doctor at 11:30 p.m. asking to be treated for a gunshot wound he said was inflicted by an angry husband who had accused Hill of insulting his wife. Earlier that evening, in another part of town, a grocer and his son had been killed. One of the assailants was wounded in the chest by the younger victim before he died. Hill’s injury therefore tied him to the incident. The uncertain testimony of two eyewitnesses and the lack of any corroboration of Hill’s alibi convinced a local jury of Hill’s guilt, even though neither witness was able to identify Hill conclusively and the gun used in the murders was never recovered.

Many prominent people, including President Woodrow Wilson tried to get Hill’s sentence commuted, or a pardon, or something, but the Utah Supreme Court would hear none of that. And so on Nov. 19, 1915, Joe Hill was executed by firing squad for a crime he probably didn’t commit. Perhaps he really was “a little too active to suit the chief of the burg.”