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AS OTHERS SAY IT
Pay for your own convention
--The Ledger, Lakeland, Fla.

    As voters watch the expensive sets and glitz of the national political parties’ conventions, they may wonder who’s paying for all this. The answer: They are.
    Taxpayers are footing a large share of the bill for the conventions, and they shouldn’t have to. To begin with, each convention will get more than $16 million in federal money to help pay for convention operations. To make matters worse, Congress voted to appropriate $50 million in Homeland Security funds to pay for security at each convention.
    There’s really no reason for this expense when money is tight and the federal government operates at a tremendous deficit.
    The conventions are no longer a decisionmaking part of the election process. Nominees have long been set. The Democratic National Convention last week and the Republican National Convention this week are nothing more than political theater. They are scripted campaign commercials on free network television time.
    While the federal government is operating in the red, the campaigns are awash in revenue. Both presidential campaigns are raising tens of millions of dollars each month. They and their parties should pay for their conventions.

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Convention highlights

First published: Sunday, August 24, 2008

Here's a day-by-day look at this week's event at the Democratic National Convention; the major events begin each day at 5 p.m.:
MONDAY

The convention kicks off with a lineup of speakers and programming designed to highlight Barack Obama's "American story," including a prime-time address from Michelle Obama. New Yorkers will want to tune in for an address from American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten, aformer New York City teachers union president. Also: avideotaped tribute to ailing Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., and speeches by Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

TUESDAY

The theme of economic opportunity is highlighted. New York Gov. David Paterson is planning to deliver asobering message about tough economic times facing the nation. Former Virginia Gov. Mark Warner will deliver the keynote address -- designed to help boost Warner's chances in aSenate race and Obama's hopes of winning the state. The headline speaker is Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., whose address will come on the 88th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment that guaranteed women the right to vote. Outside the convention hall, thousands of Clinton supporters are expected to rally and march to honor her achievements.

WEDNESDAY

The state-by-state roll call will formally pick the Democrats' presidential nominee. Both Clinton and Obama's names will be in nomination, but political junkies will want to watch to see how long aroll call goes before Clinton intervenes. (Clinton has said she will cast her own superdelegate vote for Obama.) The headline prime-time speaker will be Obama's vice presidential nominee, Sen. Joseph Biden. Another attention-getting speech will be delivered by former President Bill Clinton; also, New York Sen. Chuck Schumer speaks along with several U.S. Senate hopefuls. The night will focus on "securing America's future," including atribute to military service members and veterans.

THURSDAY

The convention shifts from the Pepsi Center in downtown Denver to INVESCO Field as Obama accepts his party's nomination. He is expected to speak from the center of the stadium, with adiverse group of supporters onstage and delegates from every state clustered on the field around him. The candidate, organizers say, aims to "communicate the urgency of the moment, highlight the struggles Americans are facing and call on Americans to come together to change the course of our nation."

-- Jennifer Dlouhy

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Carl Strock THE VIEW FROM HERE
Employee free choice? Not exactly
Carl Strock can be reached at 395-3085 or by e-mail at carlstrock@dailygazette.com.

    There is a bill kicking around Washington that I like very much or at least I like the name of it. It’s the Employee Free Choice Act, also known as HR 800, and the reason I like it is that the name is almost exactly the opposite of the true purpose of the bill.
    The true purpose of the bill is to limit the free choice of employees by preventing them from voting on whether they want to join a union.
    It mandates that if more than 50 percent of the employees of a workplace simply sign cards in response to a union organizing effort saying that they want to join, without any oversight of the conditions under which such cards are signed, that would be sufficient to trigger union representation, and the National Labor Relations Board would be forbidden to conduct a secret ballot, as is done now.
    You will not be surprised to learn that the bill is backed by labor unions and is in fact their top legislative priority.
    Obviously it would make it much easier for them to expand their ranks. I mean, if you can buttonhole a worker on his front porch and spin him a line on why it’s in his interest to sign this little card here, and then have his signature count as much as a secret ballot, you don’t need a Ph.D. in psychology to see what the result will be.
    Have in mind that when the United Food and Commercial Workers tried to organize the 683 workers at Price Chopper warehouses in 2001, they readily got the approximately 225 signatures required to force an election, but by secret ballot only some 130 workers voted in favor of unionizing.
    So obviously signing a card handed to you by a possibly pushy or intimidating organizer is one thing and voting in the privacy of a voting booth is something else. It doesn’t take a genius to figure that one out.
    So clearly the Employee Free Choice Act has little to do with employee free choice and very much to do with bolstering the power of labor unions.
    For the most part it is supported by Democrats and opposed by Republicans.
    Nationally, Barack Obama suports it, because, as he says, “It will make it easier for unions to organize, make it harder for companies to block unionization,” which is surely true enough.
    John McCain voted in the Senate last year to block it.
    Locally, Democratic Rep. Kirsten Gillibrand supports it and so do the leading Democrat contenders for the seat now held by Rep. Mike McNulty, they being Paul Tonko, Phil Steck, and Tracey Brooks, all of whom boast of their union endorsements.
    The Republican candidate for the seat, Jim Buhrmaster, opposes it, and so does Sandy Treadwell, Republican challenger to Gillibrand. “The secret ballot is a longstanding fundamental right,” Treadwell says, stating the obvious.
    How could anyone take away that right with a straight face and dare to call it “free choice”?
    I asked one of the bill’s most ardent advocates, Frank Natalie, president of the Schenectady Central Labor Council, an affiliate of the AFL-CIO.
    He said the supposedly free elections conducted by the National Labor Relations Board are undermined and vitiated by the “harrassment and intimidation of workers” perpetrated by employers before the elections. He said employers regularly threaten to close their plants, move to Mexico, or reduce wages in order to scare workers into voting against union representation.
    Which they might do. I don’t know, though I suppose union organizers might well engage in their own intimidation, harrassment and propaganda, all of which would constitute an election campaign, in my view, to be settled in the secrecy of the voting booth.
    I asked Natalie how he would feel if the situation were reversed and there were a bill in the hopper that would allow an employer to defeat a union drive by getting his workers to sign cards against the union without taking a vote. “Would you be outraged?” I asked.
    “Yes, I would,” he acknowledged.
    In any case, that is the stated reasoning of the unions, which you can study for yourself on the AFL-CIO Web site. Secret-ballot elections aren’t really fair. The employer has the advantage — even though unions win about 60 percent of those elections, which they don’t tell you.
    I think the true reason is the simple one that unions have been declining in strength and numbers since the 1950s and are desperate to recover. In the 1950s, 36 percent of the American work force was unionized, and today the number is only 12 percent.
    We get a little different view here in New York, because our unionization rate is the highest in the country, at 25 percent. But even here, you have to remember that the preponderance of union strength is among government workers, who are protected from market forces.
    We also get a little different view politically, because in our state government Republicans have been as subservient to the public-employee unions as have Democrats, which is not true nationally.
    “The unions have invested so much in Democrats, and the Democrats owe the unions so much,” says Neil Golub, head of Price Chopper’s parent corporation. “Now they want to totally shift the balance of power.”
    He contends that Democrats who voted in favor of this bill last year, like Gillibrand and McNulty, “are actually taking away American rights,” by depriving workers of the secret ballot, and I wouldn’t argue.
    But then politics is politics, and it’s as hard for Democrats to defy organized labor as it is for Republicans to defy big oil companies or backwoods Christian preachers.
    Anyway, it’s called the Employee Free Choice Act. It passed the House, got filibustered to a halt in the Senate and is now a defining issue between Democrats and Republicans.
    If you wish to make yourself heard on this subject, you may do so on my blog at www.dailygazette. com.