Trying To Close Dubya's "Back Door"

Last week in this post, I noted the following quote from George W. Milhous Bush about Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's plan to hold "pro forma" sessions that would last approxi- mately 30 seconds over the holiday break; Incurious George had this to say in response:

“If 30 seconds is a full day,” Mr. Bush said, “no wonder Congress has got a lot of work to do.”

Hah hah, you moron (as the post also noted, Dubya had taken as much vacation time in three years as Bill Clinton took in seven, and I believe that, by now, he has shattered the record set by Ronnie Ray Gun - and never forget how we loved "The Gipper" for his "optimism"...easy to have a good outlook on life when you're well connected and rich).

Well, as the post also noted, the point of Reid's maneuver was to prevent the "Dear Leader" from making recess appointments, and this New York Times story tells us of one that Dubya would likely make for some human slug named Robert J. Battista, whose term as head of the National Labor Relations Board ends today.

Hmm, Labor Relations...you would ordinarily think of mediation on behalf of workers with management disputes, right? Well, never forget that Battista belongs to Bushco, so...

Senate and House Democrats attacked the Republican-led National Labor Relations Board at a Congressional hearing on Thursday, saying its recent decisions had favored employers over workers.

The Democrats focused on 61 board decisions issued in September that, among other things, made it harder for unions to organize workers and harder for illegally fired employees to collect back pay.

“This board has undermined collective bargaining at every turn, putting the power of the law behind lawbreakers, not law victims,” said Senator Edward M. Kennedy, the Massachusetts Democrat who is chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.

At the hearing, Wilma B. Liebman, a Democratic member of the five-member board, which oversees unionization rules for workers in private industry, repeatedly clashed with the board’s Republican chairman, Robert J. Battista.

“Virtually every recent policy choice by the board,” Ms. Liebman said, “impedes collective bargaining, creates obstacles to union representation or favors employer interests.”

...

At Thursday’s hearing, a hotel housekeeper, Feliza Ryland, testified about her fight to win back pay after the board ruled in 2001 that she and 43 other workers had been illegally fired in 1996 in a labor dispute with Grosvenor Resorts in Orlando, Fla.

“It has now been more than 11 years since I was unlawfully fired,” Ms. Ryland said, “and I am still waiting to see the back pay, still waiting to see justice.”

In a decision in September, the board sharply reduced the workers’ back pay, saying they forfeited the right to full back pay because they picketed for several weeks in an effort to get their jobs back instead of looking for new jobs. The board’s majority wrote that giving full back pay would “reward idleness.”

Very Dickensian on the part of the NLRB, I must say.

This is a link to their website; I've been trying to determine the political composition of the five-member board, but my slightly educated guess is that it is a Repug majority (would Bushco have it any other way?)

And this Washington Post article tells us of two other potential recess appointments that Reid is trying to block with his pro-forma sessions. One is Charles Pickering to an appeals court seat; as noted here by People for the American Way, Pickering's decisions on civil rights cases had been overturned frequently by appeals courts, and he also intervened in trying to obtain a reduced sentence for a defendant convicted in a case of burning a cross on the lawn of an interracial couple's property (actually, I'm not sure whether or not Pickering is a racist - the jury seems to be out on that, if you will - but I would say that his understanding of the law and legal procedure is questionable at best).

The other recess appointment Reid is trying to block is that of Sam Fox as ambassador to Belgium (Fox being a leading Swift Boat ad campaign contributor who, of course, utterly chickened out here when confronted by John Kerry during Fox's hearing for the Belgium post last February).

I definitely have issues with Harry Reid at this moment (and speaking of the Senate, click here to support Chris Dodd's FISA filibuster; not happy with Dodd either for sucking up to Imus, but he's standing tall at this moment as well), but Reid deserves our support for doing what he can to oppose more Bushco contamination of our government and our courts.