Category: Politics

Vlad and Boris with “Song for Sarah”:

Never again (via “The Caucus” at The New York Times)!

The last time Mr. McCain canceled an appearance on “The Late Show With David Letterman” Mr. Letterman was not amused, and he has not let go of his fury. Mr. McCain has been the butt of Mr. Letterman’s disdain (feigned or not) ever since.

So when Mr. McCain found himself stuck on the tarmac here in Philadelphia, with what aides described as a two-hour delay on planes flying to Newark, he knew he had to act.
Thus began the great McCain Airlift of 2008.

Mr. McCain’s campaign plane turned around, and the campaign hired a small helicopter to whisk him, his wife, Cindy, two of their aides, and two Secret Service Agents, to their rendezvous with comedy.

I hearby christen thee “Plumbergate”:

‘Joe the plumber’ isn’t licensed
Local man focus of presidential debate

“Joe the Plumber” isn’t a plumber — at least not a licensed one, or a registered one.

…

According to Lucas County Building Inspection records, A. W. Newell Corp. does maintain a state plumbing license, and one with the City of Toledo, but would not be allowed to work in Lucas County outside of Toledo without a county license.

Mr. Wurzelbacher said he works under Al Newell’s license, but according to Ohio building regulations, he must maintain his own license to do plumbing work.

>He is also not registered to operate as a plumber in Ohio, which means he’s not a plumber.

Mr. Wurzelbacher said he was hired by Mr. Newell six years ago and that the possibility of him eventually buying the company was discussed during his job interview.

…

Mr. Wulzerbacher’s notoriety has raised the ire of Tom Joseph, business manager for Local 50 of the United Association of Plumbers, Steamfitters, and Service Mechanics, who claimed that Mr. Wulzerbacher didn’t undergo any apprenticeship training.

“When you have guys going out there with no training whatsoever, it’s a little disreputable to start with,” Mr. Joseph said. “We’re the real Joe the Plumber.”

Mr. Joseph said Mr. Wulzerbacher could only legally work in the townships, but not in any municipality in Lucas County or elsewhere in the country.

“This individual has got no schooling, no licenses, he’s never been to a training program, union or non-union, in the United States of America,” Mr. Joseph said.

If I was making the big money at The New York Times, I might give even my blog entries a second look over. Then again, maybe Adam Nagourney (reacting to last night’s McCain/Obama debate) knows something we don’t:

Throughout the 90-minute debate tonight, Mr. McCain offered voters what amounted to a reprise of all the attacks that have been lodged at Mr. Obama over the past year, by Mr. Obama’s Democratic Republican opponents, Ms. Palin, Republican leaders and, at times, Mr. McCain

No period at the end of that sentence, either.

Anyone who reads this blog (I mean, the both of you) knows that I’ve devoted a fair amount of space to 1972 Democratic presidential nominee and former South Dakota Senator George S. McGovern. Here and elsewhere, I’ve defended his policies &mdash particularly his foreign policies — because I truly believe they would have been a far more rational path to American success for the past four decades instead of the long, militaristic road we’ve trod since the Vietnam War. I went to last year’s McGovern Conference to meet him and some of the others who participated and wrote about his run for the White House 36 years ago. And I did a fair amount of research and writing on a book project on McGovern’s foreign policy that will probably never see the light of day at this point.

However. As with anyone you might admire, there are always points of disagreement. Last fall, when I met him, McGovern was supporting Senator Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination this year. Couldn’t really see how that meshed, apart from his lon association with the Clintons. And, of course, for at least a couple of months, he’s been speaking out against the Employee Free Choice Act. Then, last week, commercials against the EFCA featuring McGovern started appearing across the country.

I’ll let my dad, the retired managing business representative for a trade union take it from here.

Darrel:

I know you’ve been an admirer of George McGovern. I have been, too (and I voted for him in 1972, when you were still a bit young to vote). So I was really disappointed this morning when I saw him appearing in a commercial sponsored by the groups opposing the Employee Free Choice Act. The same sponsors are bashing those Democrats like [Jeff] Merkely who support this labor-sponsored proposed legislation.

McGovern said in the ad that he came to his position opposing the proposal after studying both sides of the issue. But I think he and others fail to understand that under current law, employers can recognize a union which gathers authorization cards from a majority of employees without going through a secret-ballot election. Currently, however, the choice on whether or not to grant such recognition is completely up to the employer, not the employees. I think that, at least in this case, our old friend McGovern may be suffering from the same syndrome that afflicted Elizabeth Furse when she endorsed Gordon Smith for the U.S. Senate.

Opponents of the Employee Free Choice Act claim that union organizers may high-pressure employees into signing authorization cards and that the only way to make sure employees really want union representation is to have a secret ballot election held by the NLRB.

At my local union meeting today, one of the reps told a story that illustrates where the pressure on employees actually comes from. The union organizers were handing out flyers to employees entering the company’s parking lot, and planned to leaflet the exiting employees as they left. Soon, supervisors informed employees in the plant not to accept any flyers as they left. The supervisors then stationed themselves near the exit to observe whether these instructions were followed (and probably to take down the names of those employees who disobeyed). I’ve had exactly the same thing happen in years past when I was helping to organize.

When it comes to coercion of employees on the question of union representation, employers hold vastly more power over employees than do union organizers. George McGovern ought to know that.

Dad

With character witnesses like this guy you know you’re going to get off the hook:

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell on Friday praised Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens’ sense of honor at his trial on corruption charges, calling his reputation for honesty and integrity “sterling” in the quarter-century they’ve known each other. “As we say in the infantry, this is a guy you take on a long patrol,” said the retired four-star Army general and former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

…

[W]hen defense attorney Brendan Sullivan asked Powell to describe Stevens’ reputation for honesty and integrity, Powell’s answer was simple: “In a word, sterling.”

“There was never any suggestion that he would do anything that was improper,” said Powell, who told jurors he knows Stevens “extremely well” after having worked with him on military appropriations issues for decades.

…

Stevens has always been honest and upfront — “someone whose word you can rely on”— when he worked with him on Capitol Hill, Powell said.

“I had a guy who would tell me when I was off base,” Powell said. “I had a guy who would tell me when I had no clothes on.” And as people in the courtroom started to chuckle, Powell smiled and added, “Figuratively.”

Powell added that Stevens has always put his country first, even when Powell had to go to him to explain that the military needed to draw down some of the forces in Alaska. Stevens didn’t like the idea, Powell said, but listened to the arguments and finally agreed to support it for the good of the country.

“He fights for his state, he fights for his people but he always has the interests of his country at heart,” Powell said.

Since I got a mention in Mike’s Blog Roundup at Crooks & Liars yesterday, I checked in on my server logs to see a respectable increase in traffic for the day, but as is often the case, some of the other items in the report were disturbing.

Most particularly that the top search term associated with people who have come to the site so far this month is former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard and politician “david duke.” (I hadn’t realized that Duke’s successor in the Louisiana House was Sen. David Vitter.) I wonder if there’s any connection to the tenor of the McCain campaign’s recent days? Not only is “david duke” the top term, it’s been clicked through more times in just the first nine days of October than my usual top terms (the seemingly-dormant game engine otoy and the late Ugandan dictator Idi Amin) usually get in an entire month.

Strange.

Nicole Belle at Crooks & Liars notes Sen. John McCain’s float of former eBay CEO Meg Whitman as a Treasury Secretary in a McCain/Palin administration during the debate last night.

I like Meg Whitman. She knows what it’s like to be out there in the marketplace. She knows how to create jobs. Whitman was CEO of a company that started with 12 people and now, 1.3 million people in America make their living off eBay.

I’ve commented elsewhere about the validity of that 1.3 million figure, but Daniel Gross took a more in-depth look at it at Slate back in May, after McCain had claimed that “1.3 million people in the world make a living off eBay.”

The number can be traced to a 2006 study conducted by ACNielsen on behalf of eBay. The company surveyed eBay sellers around the globe, including 2,000 in the United States. And it concluded that “approximately 1.3 million sellers around the world use eBay as their primary or secondary source of income,” with an estimated 630,239 in the United States. Take careful note of the phrasing, however: primary or secondary. That could mean 50,000 use eBay as a primary source and 1.25 million as a secondary source. Or it could mean the split is closer to 650,000-650,000.

EBay doesn’t break out the numbers, but it’s a safe bet the reality is closer to the former. Even the minority of sellers who meet the company’s “power seller” requirements aren’t coming close to “mak­ing a living” selling on eBay. To reach the lowest level, bronze sellers must rack up $12,000 in sales (sales, not profits), or move 1,200 items over the course of a year. “A bronze-level power seller isn’t making a full-time living on eBay,” says Cindy Shebley, who began selling on eBay in 1999. “They have to really crank it up and get into higher tiers, like titanium.” Levels rise from silver ($3,000 or 300 items per month) to Titanium ($150,000 or 1,500 items per month). Shebley is a silver-level seller (mostly photography and lighting equipment) but says most her income comes “from supporting sellers as a consultant and a teacher.” Shebley teaches classes and is working on a new book, How To Market an eBay Business.

It’s an astounding tribute to the strength of the eBay model that in the face of the looming worldwide recession the number of Americans making a living off of selling stuff on the Internet has gone from “most” of 1.3 million in the spring to an actual 1.3 million as of yesterday, at least in the telling of John McCain.

Then again, if Gross’ analysis is closer to the actual truth, it’s just another example of McCain’s tenuous grasp of economic reality.