Congress

It is official, Rep. Dingell and Rep. Boucher have dropped their effort to overrule California's tailpipe greenhouse gas emissions law, at least for now. Their proposal ran into the strong opposition from Speaker Pelosi, environmentalist and California elected officials. They had continued pushing the issue until yesterday, when they pulled it out of the energy bill currently under consideration in the House. SFChron:

The pair sent a memo on Monday to members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, saying they would soon release a final version of the Democratic energy bill that would not contain the proposal to pre-empt California and other states from their plan to cut greenhouse gases. Other contentious provisions also would be dropped, the lawmakers said.

"You will note that a number of the more controversial issues we raised, such as coal-to-liquid fuels, fuel economy standards, a low-carbon fuel standard, various mandates, and the role of federal and state programs, are not included," Dingell, the committee chairman, and Boucher wrote in the memo.

The low-carbon fuel standard was the one getting the most heat, though Obama's position on coal-to-liquid fuels has certainly been in the news. I am a little perplexed about the dropping of fuel economy standards from the discussion. The current standards are woefully inadequate and changing them has been a priority for the Democratic leadership.

Those issues will return -- perhaps for another clash -- as soon as this fall when Pelosi has said she wants the House to consider a more comprehensive global warming bill.

"This will also give us the needed time to achieve consensus on these issues if at all possible," Dingell and Boucher told their colleagues.

Oh goodie. Boy are they stubborn.

I am fairly certain that the pair will not be able to coalesce support around overriding California's law. Speaker Pelosi is in charge and her opposition will realistically leave little chance of its revival. They will surely try, but this may be the real end of the line for this proposal.

Speaker Pelosi is not the California politician to have notified Rep. Bouscher of their opposition to his bill, which would overrule California's greenhouse gas emissions legislation. A dozen Democrats, including Rep. Jane Harman and Rep. Henry Waxman sent a letter to Rep. Bouscher. Arnold signed on to a letter along with the governors from Arizona, Massachusetts, New York, New Mexico, Oregon, Pennsylvania and Washington. AP:

"Congress must not deny states the right to pursue solutions in the absence of federal policy," they wrote.

This should set up a fight in the House Energy and Commerce committee, with some Republicans joining Rep. Bouscher and Dingell.

Looks like Speaker Pelosi's statement was not all she wrote on Rep. Boucher's attempt to override California's green house gas emissions law. They talked last night and he indicated that he was not going to back down. AP:

The Democratic author of legislation that would block California and other states from regulating global warming tailpipe emissions said Wednesday he's not budging despite opposition from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.

"The short answer is, 'We'll see,'" said Rep. Rick Boucher, D-Va., of how his dispute with Pelosi might get resolved.

Now, if Boucher wanted to go national with California's law that would be one thing, but that is not what he is seeking to do. He is trying to spin his attempts at a repeal, by claiming he is clearing up confusion. Sorry, but that just won't fly. Pelosi should continue to oppose his attempts at every turn.

Post-partisan is an illusion, as are Arnold's efforts to work with our Congressional delegation. The governor is very good at PR these days, but when reporters scratch the surface they don't find much down below. Take Arnold's heralded meetings in DC the other week. Turns out he skipped out of a meeting early, and in general his relationship with Congress pales in comparison to his predicessors.

On his recent trip to Washington, the governor met with the state's congressional delegation to discuss ways to get more federal money for California and to urge members of both parties to work together. Some members left disappointed.

Schwarzenegger had promised to stay for an hour. He left after 45 minutes, saying he needed to make his flight home.

Arnold flies private jets everywhere. There is no way that he was rushing to make a commercial flight. Even so, wouldn't you think that this meeting was important enough to stay the full time, simply for the sake of building up personal relationships with the Congressmen/women? He showed a huge lack of respect for our representatives and they aren't happy about it.

U.S. Rep. Jane Harman (D-Venice) said the meeting yielded little in the way of concrete accomplishment; she described it as more cosmetic than substantive.

And she noted that Schwarzenegger's last visit with the delegation in Washington was more than two years earlier.

"It's not new news that the partisanship in Washington is toxic," Harman said. "But to fix the problem requires more than a 45-minute meeting every two years."

(emphasis mine)

Arnold was all talk and little substance and the whole thing was designed to get a nice media cycle, but not much else. The rarity of this meeting makes his attitude all the more distressing.

It is one step forward, one step back today on the labor front. On a more positive note, the House of Representatives just passed the Employee Free Choice Act 241-185. It faces a tough slog in the Senate and certain veto by Bush. However, the people's house just voted overwhelmingly to protect workers against harassment and intimidation.

California's own Rep. George Miller makes us proud with his closing remarks today. (h/t to the Gavel)

Like Nancy Scola says over at MyDD, this comes down to picking sides: the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers or the workers? They have made it clear that they want win with fear and destroy collective bargaining.

History and recent events leave no doubt that there are those among us who really don't like unions. There are national interests committed to ripping the heart out of the labor movement. They want to, in the words of Grover Norquist, "to crush labor as a political entity" and eliminate unions. That's all that this debate is about. That's it. There are anti-union interest groups, union-busting law firms, there's an industry in this country of trying to cut the legs out from the labor movement. It's an undeniable part of the American political landscape. It has been as long as there have been unions.

There is a thriving industry designed to deny workers the ability to advocate for better working conditions. The Employee Free Choice Act would stop them in their tracks and create a much more open and accountable process.

And as Speaker Nancy Pelosi said during the debate:

The Employee Free Choice Act is the most important labor law reform legislation of this generation. But this legislation is about more than labor law: it is about basic labor rights, about the rule of the majority free from intimidation, and about protecting jobs.

It is a guarantee - when a majority of workers say they want a union, they will get a union.

Now the Senate will have to decide if they will support the workers or those who want to crush them. Free choice or threats and illegal firings? Do we respect worker's choices or show them contempt?

This will be one of the rare times where I write a post grounded in national issues, rather than local ones.

The battle for a living wage in LA highlighted a well known issue, many big businesses are openly hostile towards workers organizing themselves collectively. They will engage in any number of illegal activities to discourage unionization, to try an head off the "cancer" of a living wage, or better working conditions.

There is a legislative solution to a lot of this. Tomorrow, the Employee Free Choice Act will be introduced in Congress. This is from the AFL-CIO Weblog. The EFCA would:

• Establish stronger penalties for violations of employee rights when workers seek to form a union and during first-contract negotiations.
• Provide mediation and arbitration for first-contract disputes.
• Allow employees to form unions by signing cards authorizing union representation.

There are already 230 co-sponsors of this legislation and growing.

If we needed further proof why this legislation is needed, we have some courtesy of Steven Law, a former Bush Department of Labor official. The Daily Labor Report from the Bureau of National Affairs provides an account of his apperance in front of the National Association of Wholesaler-Distributers, where he launched a full scale attack on the Employee Free Choice act. From my friends over at EdWize:

"If you think that unionizing is a great thing," Law told the assembled, "then this (legislation) is a great thing."

The Daily Labor Report recounts an episode in the question and answer session:

According to that audience member, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters sought to organize 30 of his company's drivers in 2003, but obtained only 11 signed union authorization cards. Unless an employer learns of the organizing drive, "You have no chance to retaliate — I shouldn't say retaliate," he said to peals of nervous laughter from the audience. Rather, he corrected himself, "You have no chance to say [as an employer] what's going on."

No, you shouldn't say retaliate, nor should you speak of a living wage like it was cancer. These are people who struggle every day to provide for their families and organize collectively so they can have a voice and a seat at the table. They keep you from running roughshod over them, all in the name of profit. Open hostility to workers is deplorable and should be called out whenever it rears its nasty head.