by Faiz Shakir, Amanda Terkel, Satyam Khanna, Matt Corley, and Ali Frick

LABOR

Regulatory Assault On Unions

The Bush administration's assault on organized labor is well-known, as the current union organization system is tilted against America's workers. Each year, over 20,000 U.S. workers are illegally fired, demoted, laid off, suspended without pay, or denied work by their employers as a result of union activity. In 2000, 13.5 percent of all wage and salary workers were unionized. In 2006, just 12 percent of workers were in unions, as existing laws -- and the administration's interpretation of them -- make joining a union a Herculean task that few want to undertake, even though half of all U.S. workers say they would vote to join a union. While the Bush administration has been lax on most regulatory enforcement throughout most of government, a new report from Center for American Progress Senior Fellow Scott Lilly points out that the Labor Department's Office of Labor Management Standards (OLMS) has embarked on a path of "rigorous" and "pernicious" regulatory enforcement of organized labor. This regulatory assault has resulted in a "political misinformation campaign" aimed at damaging organized labor.

BURDENING AND SLANDERING UNIONS: The Landrum-Griffin Act of 1959 "tasks the Labor Department with enforcing union financial reporting requirements and investigating their finances." In 1992, former Rep. Newt Gingrich (R-GA) urged Labor Secretary Lynn Martin to direct OLMS to significantly increase union reporting requirements because it would "weaken our opponents and encourage our allies." The Bush administration followed suit, revising the so-called LM-2 reporting form, resulting in a "radical increase in paperwork requirements placed on unions." Unions were thus forced to spend considerable sums in purchasing new software to comply with the record-keeping burdens. "Most workers don't have the time or ability to satisfy the requirements," observed Bill Samuel, director of legislation for the AFL-CIO.

HEAVILY DOCTORED DATA: OLMS and its right-wing allies appear to knowingly propagate misleading data in order to drum up allegations of union corruption. Using "double-counting" (where the Department lists an individual case multiple times by reporting as a separate "case" the date of indictment, charge, date of plea, and date of sentencing), OLMS doubled the total number of "convictions" in their data on criminal actions involving labor unions. Much of those records did not even involve union members per se, but accountants, lawyers, and business owners, observed John Lund of the University of Wisconsin. This doctored data was also picked up by the right-wing anti-union group Center for Union Facts. Furthermore, OLMS reporting on court-ordered restitution to labor unions is also misleading, reporting $23 million in court-ordered restitutions in fiscal year 2005. But, as Lilly observed, only 10 percent of that amount actually involved unions: "embedded" in the data were "cases in which perpetrators were not members of unions and the target of their crimes were not union treasuries." "President Bush is using the Department of Labor as a weapon to undermine the labor movement. ... The Bush administration's goal is harassment, plain and simple," said Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY).

POLITICAL APPOINTEES RUN OLMS: The Bush administration's injection of politics over the rule of law is well-documented. From the U.S. Attorneys scandal to Karl Rove's politicization schemes, the administration has used political appointees to create an arm of the Republican party in the federal government. OLMS was run by a career civil servant for most of President Clinton's tenure; under Bush, political appointee Don Todd -- neither an attorney nor an individual with labor experience -- was chosen to run OLMS. Todd, who led opposition research at the Republican National Committee in 1988, "is credited with helping George H.W. Bush win the presidency in 1988 by convincing Lee Atwater to use a television ad featuring a furloughed murderer." (Todd was named "RNC Man Of The Year" for this tactic.) Several other campaign operatives moved into the office. Todd's special assistant came to the Labor Department from the Republican Senate Campaign Committee, along with another assistant, Patrick Bosworth. Sean Redmond, also special assistant to Todd, was on the advance staff of Bush-Cheney 2000. Todd and his staff used their campaign communications experience to discredit unions, uploading millions of pages of data on finances of unions to the OLMS website and creating databases of legal actions taken in courts against union members. This data was conveniently picked up by right-wing groups like the Center for Union Facts, who publicized "the data that Todd had added" in their own anti-union ad campaigns. 

GLOBAL WARMING -- EPA BLOCKS 18 STATES FROM REGULATING EMISSIONS: Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administrator Stephen L. Johnson made an announcement late yesterday denying "California's petition to limit greenhouse gas emissions from cars and trucks, overruling the unanimous recommendation of the agency's legal and technical staffs." Under the Clean Air Act, states -- with permission from the EPA -- can set emissions standards that are stricter than the ones set by the federal government. California has been waiting for an EPA waiver since 2005, "and at least 16 other states had been hoping to follow California's lead." Johnson claimed that the energy bill that President Bush signed into law yesterday rendered California's effort to cut gas emissions by 30 percent by 2016 moot. David Bookbinder, the Sierra Club's chief climate counsel, vowed to fight the decision. "These guys are 0 and 4 in court, and they're about to go 0-5," he said of the Bush administration, which has lost a series of environmental court cases. California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) said he would sue to overturn the decision. "It is disappointing that the federal government is standing in our way and ignoring the will of tens of millions of people across the nation," he said. MILITARY -- ADMINISTRATION DROPS PLAN TO TAKE OVER JAG PROMOTIONS: Under immense pressure from retired military lawyers, the Bush administration abandoned its plan to take control of the promotions of members of the Judge Advocate General (JAG) corps, the 4,000-member uniformed legal force. As first reported by the Boston Globe last Saturday, the proposal would have mandated that JAGs receive approval from "politically appointed Pentagon lawyers" before promotions could be awarded. Retired JAGs immediately objected to the administration's proposal, characterizing it as "an attempt to politicize the corps of military lawyers." Maintaining independence is essential to the JAGs, who have disagreed with the President's torture policies. Promotions would have been overseen by the Pentagon's general counsel William Haynes, a Bush appointee and close Cheney ally who has been the Pentagon's point man in the disputes with the JAGs. In 2003, Haynes appointed and supervised a working group that argued the Geneva Conventions' prohibition of torture "must be construed as inapplicable to interrogations undertaken pursuant to [Bush's] Commander-in-Chief authority." IRAQ -- AT LEAST THREE OTHER WOMEN WERE SEXUALLY ASSAULTED WHILE WORKING FOR KBR IN IRAQ: Last week, Rep. Ted Poe (R-TX) said on CNN that he did not believe that the gang rape in Iraq of former Halliburton/KBR employee Jamie Leigh Jones was "an isolated case of assault." Poe then encouraged "other victims" to contact his office. In prepared testimony for the House Judiciary Committee yesterday, Poe said that his office had been contacted by three women other than Jones about sexual assaults they suffered while working for KBR in Iraq. Poe named one of the women, Tracy Barker, "who says that she was sexually assaulted in Iraq by a State Department employee who still works at the State Department today." ABC News identified the State Department employee as Ali Mokhtare, whom the Justice Department "declined to prosecute," despite "a recommendation from the State Department that he be charged." Poe said that the other two women had both reported "sexual assaults and sexual harassment by their coworkers." He also said that one of the women asserted that KBR not only protected an accused rapist, but also punished her for contacting Army MPs about the situation. In her testimony yesterday, Jones said that her job had also been threatened. KBR supervisors told her there was "no guarantee of a job," either in Iraq or back in Houston, if she didn't "stay and get over it." She also revealed that she has been contacted by 11 other women who have also been assaulted by contractors in Iraq.

"The first Democratic-led Congress in a dozen years limped out of Washington last night with a lengthy list of accomplishments," but failed "to address the central issues that swept them to power." The CIA agreed yesterday "to make documents related to the destruction of interrogation videotapes available to the House Intelligence Committee and to allow the agency's top lawyer, John Rizzo, to testify about the matter." It is unclear whether Jose Rodriguez, who ordered the destruction, will testify. The Senate yesterday confirmed Julie Myers as head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, two years after President Bush first appointed her. Myers most recently came under fire for awarding "Most Original Costume" to an employee who dressed in a racially offensive Halloween costume.  Forty-one percent of the al Qaeda fighters in Iraq were Saudi nationals, according to a West Point study. Libyan nationals accounted for the second largest group with about 19 percent of the total, "followed by Syrians and Yemenis each at 8 percent, Algerians with 7 percent and Moroccans at 6 percent." A McClatchy analysis found that "veterans coming home from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan with debilitating mental ailments are discovering that their disability payments from the government vary widely depending on where they live." Many veterans "could lose tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars in benefits over their lifetimes." "A House task force yesterday recommended creating an independent Office of Congressional Ethics that would have the power to initiate reviews of lawmakers' behavior. The new office, whose creation requires the approval of the full House," would "be the first in either chamber to allow an outside body of nonmembers to examine alleged ethical misdeeds." "Teenagers who have had formal sex education are far more likely to put off having sex, contradicting earlier studies on the effectiveness of such programs," a new report in the Journal of Adolescent Health said yesterday. "Sex education seems to be working," said Trisha Mueller, an epidemiologist with the CDC who led the study. And finally: When Steve Webb, a member of Britain's Parliament, tried to log on to his Facebook account on Monday, he "received a message saying his account had been disabled following complaints he didn't really exist." Webb, "one of the keenest promoters of online networking," has around 2,500 Facebook friends. He said that he sent Facebook "an email asking what the problem was and got a response a day later saying they had concluded that my profile was a fake." His account was reactivated within 36 hours.

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"Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey issued new restrictions yesterday on contacts between Justice Department and White House officials regarding ongoing criminal or civil investigations," a move that Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) said will "restore safeguards against political interference at the Department of Justice."

NEW JERSEY: Gov. Jon Corzine (D) announces an agreement with Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield "allowing working- and middle-class families to obtain health insurance for children at drastically reduced rates."

NEW MEXICO: State Department of Health decides against reapplying for federal abstinence-only education funds.

TEXAS: "A Texas panel has been advised to approve an on-line Master's degree course on teaching creationism."

THINK PROGRESS: Top political talk show hosts dedicate 0.1 percent of their questions to global warming.

AMERICA BLOG: Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) will hold pro forma sessions in the Senate over the holiday break in order to block President Bush from making recess appointments.

COMMON SENSE: A look at how Senate conservatives used record-breaking obstructionism to block the "things that voters want their government to do."

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VERSUS

"This study's main finding is that C-SPAN coverage of think tanks overwhelmingly favors conservative think tanks while left-of-center think tanks are underrepresented."
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