Politics Plus

When Rahm Emmanuel quit his post as Chief of Staff to run for Mayor in Chicago, and Obama selected William Daley to take his place, I opposed the appointment.  I thought that Daley, a Clintonista, was too Bankster-friendly and elitist to do an effective job and I was right.  Obama may have hoped that he could convince corporate criminals to play by the rules, but he was mistaken.  Needless to say, I’m happy to see Daley leave.

Last January, Obama tapped Daley to replace Rahm Emanuel with high expectations. Daley, a former banker who also served as commerce secretary in the Clinton administration, was expected to help the White House improve relations with Wall Street as it implemented a series of financial reforms in the recession’s wake.

President Obama held a press conference Monday afternoon to announce the resignation of current chief of staff William Daley and introduce his replacement, Budget Director Jacob Lew.

But Daley never seemed comfortable in the job, drawing wide criticism for his handling of the bitter and protracted legislative battles between the White House and Congress during much of 2011 that helped drag down the president’s public approval ratings.

Daley struggled to develop relations with members of both houses of Congress, and after he relinquished day-to-day operations to senior adviser Pete Rouse in the fall, his role seemed significantly reduced.

In a brief appearance at the White House on Monday, Obama announced that Daley, 63, will be replaced by budget director Jacob J. Lew, effective at the end of the month. Daley will stay in the job through the president’s State of the Union address Jan. 24 to help ease the transition.

Traditionally, the role of a White House chief of staff has included managing daily operations of the staff, weighing in on domestic and foreign policy, and helping manage relationships between the White House and Capitol Hill, Wall Street and other outside groups.

Whereas the fiery Emanuel, who had been a congressman before joining the White House and left to run for mayor of Chicago, was intimately involved in most of Obama’s decisions on politics and policy, the cooler Daley was said to have taken a more CEO-like approach to the job. Congressional Democrats complained privately that Daley acted as if they were “wasting his time,” and Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) never embraced him… [emphasis added]

Inserted from <Washington Post>

Now, I don’t know enough about Jacob Lew to project how he will do as Chief of Staff.  I do know that he dis his job as Budget Director well, and that he has a reputation for impeccable integrity, but Chief of Staff is a unique and demanding role so time will tell.  He has to be an improvement.

If you live in a so-called right-to-work state your wages and benefits are probably less than they would be if you lived in a union state.  That’s because the labor movement benefits all workers, even those who are not covered by unions. The five day work week, vacations, pensions and other benefits, and much more were all introduced to the American workplace through the efforts of Labor.  These are the kind of things that Republicans hate, so Labor is under attack, as this article by John Nichols demonstrates.

When I asked Newt Gingrich if he planned to campaign for Scott Walker in the recall election the labor-bashing governor of Wisconsin will almost certainly face, Newt answered, “Sure!”

“Scott Walker’s fight in Wisconsin has made him a national leader on issues [that are] important to Republicans,” said the former Speaker of the House. “Of course I would campaign for him.”

The Republicans who would be president disagree on some issues. But they are pretty much united in their affection for the nation’s most embattled governor.

After Walker attacked public-employee unions last February, Mitt Romney announced that he was donating $5,000 to support the Wisconsinite [Romney delinked]. And Rick Santorum hails Walker’s “tremendous courage [propaganda delinked].”

What is it about Walker—who is so unpopular that hundreds of thousands of Wisconsinites are petitioning for his recall and removal—that makes him so appealing to the leading figures in the national Republican Party?

That’s simple. Scott Walker is an anti-union zealot. And anti-union zealotry has become a core premise of the twenty-first-century Republican Party.

Attacks by Walker and Ohio Governor John Kasich on public-employee unions may have gotten the most publicity. But other governors, most notably Indiana’s Mitch Daniels, are striving to undermine the collective bargaining rights of private-sector workers.

But nowhere is the disdain for organized labor more evident than on the Republican presidential campaign trail. Never in the modern history of the Republican Party, which once made a serious effort to compete with Democrats for labor endorsements and the votes of union members, has a field of GOP presidential candidates been so united and so aggressive in opposing collective-bargaining rights for public-sector and private-sector workers. As recently as 2008, former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee appeared at the annual convention of the International Association of Machinists and received the industrial union’s endorsement in the Republican primaries. Today, just four years later, the Republican contenders are not just refusing union invitations. They are using every opportunity to explain their opposition to labor’s agenda, along with their support for legislative initiatives that are designed to undermine collective-bargaining rights… [emphasis added]

Inserted from <The Nation>

Why is this?  Very few union members are millionaires, billionaires and corporate criminals.  Those are the only people, such as the ones pictured in the graphic, whose interests Republicans represent.

Is labor always right?  Of course not.  Labor supports the Keystone XL Pipeline, increased offshore drilling, and fracking.  That’s because their focus is narrowly fixed on jobs.  However their overall influence on life for American workers has been a well demonstrated plus, and if labor loses their collective bargaining rights, it will pave the way for a national workers’ regression to the nineteenth century.

Therefore, it is critically important to keep Republicans out of political office from dog catcher up.  On a federal level, any vote that helps Republicans take power is a vote to kiss workers’ rights and benefits goodbye.