Author Archives: Josh Eidelson

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David Bacon looks at the institutional and cultural forces behind the fight against labor studies:

The era of enlightened corporate self-interest is long gone, however, if indeed it ever existed. For more than two decades the country’s largest corporations have busted unions as a normal part of business activity, and have lost whatever interest they had in labor-management cooperation. It should be no surprise, then, that the end of union acceptance in the workplace should bring with it an end to the prestige of labor-management cooperation in academia. If employers don’t want it, who does?

As Bacon argues:

The controversy raises a fundamental question about labor rights–should joining a union be protected and encouraged by law and public policy, or are unions just a narrow private interest?

On this question, too many self-identified liberals – writing the labor movement out of its role in every social reform for which they credit enlightened governments – are on the wrong side.

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John Derbyshire shows off his “compassionate conservatism”:

On the seventh day of Kwanzaa my true love gave to me
Seven Jackson shake-downs,
Six insults to Thomas,
Five votes for Al!
Four Baraka poems,
Three profiling protests,
Two slots at Yale,
And a hook-up to BET…

Christians have no special standing.
Moslem numbers are expanding.
Flight-school lessons they’re demanding —
Sharia law is here!

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Troubling testimony from an unusual source:

”Pretty disgraceful what I saw with my own eyes. And I have always supported the police during my entire career,” he said, according to a court transcript. “This was a real eye-opener. A disgrace for the community.”

In the transcript, he also said he may have to remove himself from any additional cases involving arrests made during the Free Trade Area of the Americas summit.

”I probably would have been arrested myself if it had not been for a police officer who recognized me,” said the judge, who wears his hair in a graying ponytail.

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For those who think this site has gone too easy on Howard Dean, this article fairly and comprehensively sets forth the episodes in Dean’s record which should leave progressives concerned:

Dean slashed millions of dollars from all sorts of social programs, from prescription drug benefits for Medicare recipients and heating assistance for poorer Vermonters to housing assistance funds. In defending his cuts to social programs, Dean said, “I don’t think I have to shy away from that just because I’m supposed to be a liberal Democrat.”

Throughout the 1990s, Dean’s cuts in state aid to education ($6 million), retirement funds for teachers and state employees ($7 million), health care ($4 million), welfare programs earmarked for the aged, blind and disabled ($2 million), Medicaid benefits ($1.2 million) and more, amounted to roughly $30 million. Dean claimed that the cuts were necessary because the state had no money and was burdened by a $60 million deficit.

But during the same period, Dean found $7 million for a low-interest loan program for businesses, $30 million for a new prison in Springfield, VT, and he cut the income tax by 8 percent (equivalent to $30 million)–a move many in the legislature balked at because they didn’t feel comfortable “cutting taxes in a way that benefits the wealthiest taxpayers.” By 2002, state investments in prisons increased by nearly 150 percent while investments in state colleges increased by only 7 percent

Rosenthal takes particular pride in culling that

Dean admits that he recognized early on that the popular anger at Bush is “a raw energy, an energy that I know could be channeled.”

His suggestion is that this shows that Dean is

someone who is sure to repay our support by cutting our living standards and promoting American power abroad…

Alternatively, it could show exactly why Howard Dean might just not. Acknowledging that Howard Dean the candidate is descended more from the popular response to George Bush than from the record of Howard Dean – that he is, like any candidate, a vessel for the forces which have lifted him above the surface – should lead to more soul-searching among progressives than the conclusion either that therefore he’ll be loyal or that therefore he’ll abandon it.