Liberal Hypocrisy on Card Check

Barack Hussein Muhammad bin Obama promised during his empty-suit campaign for president, "I'll make [card-check] the law of the land" after the election. This was, of course, a promise to one of his largest en banc constituencies - labor unions - whose perceived best interests do not necessarily coincide with the best interests of business, the economy, or the country.

The woefully-named Employee Free Choice Act, or EFCA (perhaps the only conceivable analogy would be to name abortion-on-demand legislation "The Rights of the Unborn Act") would necessarily infringe upon the free choice of employees all over the nation by mandating that voting for unionization of companies, and ultimately of entire industries, no longer be done by secret ballot, but rather by a process known as "card check." Card check would make every individual employee's vote on the issue of unionization a public matter and would open employees up to harassment, intimidation, and pressure from labor goons everywhere.

Don't let the irony escape you here: liberal Democrats, who do not even want voters to have to give any objective evidence of their identity (in my home state Democrats have said that asking a voter to present a driver's license, other state ID, or voter registration card on election day is "racism" and "intimidation") in national and state elections, nevertheless want votes for unionization to be matters of public information. As long as "public" is defined as "union."

Liberal Democrat, Obama, and Union, thy very name is liar and hypocrite. Let's take a look at how important secret ballots have been to these bedwetting socialists in the recent past....

Rep. George Miller (D -CA), the sponsor of the EFCA, wrote a letter cosigned by other congressional Democrats to Mexican officials demanding that secret ballots be respected in 2001 Mexican union elections. He wrote

"We understand that the secret ballot is allowed for, but not required, by Mexican labor law. However, we feel that the secret ballot is absolutely necessary in order to ensure that workers are not intimidated into voting for a union they might not otherwise choose."

Get it? Mexican employees need to be protected from "intimidation" in union elections by the secret ballot. Apparently, American workers are not due the same consideration.

Even the egregiously corrupt AFL-CIO has lobbied for the secret ballot - when it served their interests to do so. In a 2001 brief filed by the union with the National Labor Relations Board, the AFL-CIO stated that a secret ballot

"provides the surest means of avoiding decisions which are the result of group pressures and not of individual decisions."

And of course, these bedwetting socialists are more than happy to hide behind the secret ballot when things get sticky for themselves. Asked whom she would support in an interparty vote for the chair of the powerful Energy and Commerce Committee, Democratic Rep. Louise Slaughter of New York said, "It's a secret ballot, thank the Lord."

EFCA has nothing to do with worker rights. It is a final, last-gasp attempt to resuscitate a (thankfully) dying center of corruption in American politics - trade unions. Since workers are no longer fool enough to vote for unionization out of their own free will - only to later watch the unions destroy their jobs, towns, and lives; just ask Detroit - unions are seeking governmental license to engage in intimidation, pressure, and harassment that they would reject for Mexican workers and themselves in one final attempt to preserve this center of Democratic party corruption.

Hypocrisy and lies - now that's change only Democrats can believe in!

Source: "Fairness Demands Secret Votes" by John Boehner in U.S. News & World Report, March 2009.