Big Labors Card Check In Trouble - Road to the Middle Class

WELL, WELL, well. After all the money and the volunteers that Big Labor poured into the Democrats, it turns out that their signature issue, Card Check, is in trouble.

Card Check, you’ll remember, is Big Labor’s legislative proposal to make it easier to organize Wal-Mart. No need for a secret-ballot election. If a majority of workers at a work place sign cards then that’s it. It’s a union shop.

Back in the 2006 and 2008 election cycles, according to Michael Barone, Big Labor built a big political operation to help Democrats.

Union money and union organizers did yeoman work for Democrats in the 2006 and 2008 elections, and union leaders plausibly claim much of the credit for the Democratic capture of both houses of Congress and the White House.

Democrats were suitablly grateful and were delighted to vote for Card Check.

That was when President Bush was in the White House and he had promised to veto Card Check or, as Big Labor prefers to call it, the Employee Free Choice Act.

The House obediently passed the card-check bill on pretty much a party-line vote. Every Democratic senator not only voted to bring card check to a vote, but also co-sponsored the bill. Republican Sen. Arlen Specter voted to bring it to a vote, too.

That was then. This is now.

Now that congressional Democrats face the prospect of casting not a symbolic vote, knowing that a Bush veto was a certainty, but a real vote that will affect the real world, they started having qualms. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi let it be known that the House would not vote on card check till the Senate acted. In other words, if I’m going to ask some of my members to cast a tough vote, one that will be hard to explain in their districts, I want to be sure the Senate won’t undercut them.

As for the Senate, Specter announced he won’t vote for card check. Arkansas Democrat Blanche Lincoln, up for re-election in 2010, said she wouldn’t, either. Michael Bennet, the Democrat appointed to fill a vacant Senate seat in Colorado, who faces the voters in 2010, said card check can’t pass in its present form.

There’s a lesson here, and it’s a lesson that anyone who wants something from the politicians should take to heart.

Politicians don’t care about you or your issue. They don’t care about compassion and justice. They only care about getting elected. They’ll take your money and your sweat and smile sweetly. But when it comes to the crunch, don’t expect them to be standing shoulder to shoulder.

If you want something from the hide of the American people, whether you are a labor bigwig or an earnest environmentalist, you would do best to cultivate both sides of the aisle. Forget all your sacred principle. Principle belongs in church. If you are active in politics, remember this. If it’s politics it’s all about power.

You want something from the politicians? Then pay ’em and pay ’em good. But don’t think you can trust them.

There’s an old saying about this: Put not your trust in princes.

Sphere: Related Content |

Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.

TAGS

Faith & Purpose

“When we began first to preach these things, the people appeared as awakened from the sleep of ages—they seemed to see for the first time that they were responsible beings...”
Finke, Stark, The Churching of America, 1776-1990

Mutual Aid

In 1911... at least nine million of the 12 million covered by national insurance were already members of voluntary sick pay schemes. A similar proportion were also eligible for medical care.
Green, Reinventing Civil Society

Education

“We have met with families in which for weeks together, not an article of sustenance but potatoes had been used; yet for every child the hard-earned sum was provided to send them to school.”
E. G. West, Education and the State

Living Under Law

Law being too tenuous to rely upon in [Ulster and the Scottish borderlands], people developed patterns of settling differences by personal fighting and family feuds.
Thomas Sowell, Conquests and Cultures

German Philosophy

The primary thing to keep in mind about German and Russian thought since 1800 is that it takes for granted that the Cartesian, Lockean or Humean scientific and philosophical conception of man and nature... has been shown by indisputable evidence to be inadequate.
F.S.C. Northrop, The Meeting of East and West

Knowledge

Inquiry does not start unless there is a problem... It is the problem and its characteristics revealed by analysis which guides one first to the relevant facts and then, once the relevant facts are known, to the relevant hypotheses.
F.S.C. Northrop, The Logic of the Sciences and the Humanities

Chappies

“But I saw a man yesterday who knows a fellow who had it from a chappie that said that Urquhart had been dipping himself a bit recklessly off the deep end.” —Freddy Arbuthnot
Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison

Democratic Capitalism

I mean three systems in one: a predominantly market economy; a polity respectful of the rights of the individual to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and a system of cultural institutions moved by ideals of liberty and justice for all. In short, three dynamic and converging systems functioning as one: a democratic polity, an economy based on markets and incentives, and a moral-cultural system which is plural and, in the largest sense, liberal.
Michael Novak, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism

Action

The incentive that impels a man to act is always some uneasiness... But to make a man act [he must have] the expectation that purposeful behavior has the power to remove or at least to alleviate the felt uneasiness.
Ludwig von Mises, Human Action

Churches

[In the] higher Christian churches� they saunter through the liturgy like Mohawks along a string of scaffolding who have long since forgotten their danger. If God were to blast such a service to bits, the congregation would be, I believe, genuinely shocked. But in the low churches you expect it every minute.
Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm

Conversion

“When we received Christ,” Phil added, “all of a sudden we now had a rule book to go by, and when we had problems the preacher was right there to give us the answers.”
James M. Ault, Jr., Spirit and Flesh

Living Law

The recognition and integration of extralegal property rights [in the Homestead Act] was a key element in the United States becoming the most important market economy and producer of capital in the world.
Hernando de Soto, The Mystery of Capital

mysql close 0