Dems quietly advancing their agenda while the eye of the public is elsewhere

What’s that, you say? TA thinks the Dems are actually getting somewhere, despite the gridlock in Springfield and the ineffectiveness of Congress? How can that be?

Well, campers, it turns out that while the attention of the public is centered on more headline-grabbing issues, such as the war on the national level, and the budget crisis down in Springfield, Dems have been surprisingly effective at advancing certain aspects of their collective agenda. Sadly, for all of their posturing about being the party of the people, the goals of both the local and national Democrats continue to be out of sync with the best interests of the people, while helping their campaign supporters to feed at the public trough.

For example, the Wall Street Journal noted yesterday that the U.S. Senate voted 47-46 (45 Dems, two Republicans) to cut $2 million from the budget of the Office of Labor Standards. (here’s the link, but you need to be a WSJ subscriber). Bravo!, you say- someone is finally doing something about bloated government. Not so fast.

That budget cut is about the only one you will see supported by the Dems—and why this particular one? As reported in the WSJ, it turns out that this particular office is responsible for collecting from organized labor unions something known as LM-2 forms. LM-2 forms force unions to account for who they spend tens of millions of dollars of their members’ dues money every year. Such forms reveal startling facts about the way unions are run—one union spent $26,000 of the members’ dues money on golf for the unions bosses. It also shows that many union bosses make nearly the same amount of money that many of the so-called “overpaid CEOs” that unions like to castigate—Jimmy Warren, Treasurer of the AFL-CIO makes $825,262 yearly, while Don Hunsucker, President of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union Local 1288 makes $679,949 a year. Wow. I’d like to be paid that much for standing up for the rights of downtrodden proletariat workers (as they would no doubt characterize their jobs)—as long as it doesn’t interfere with their golf game.

This office is also responsible for rooting out union corruption, mostly embezzlement. Should you think that this is not an active or needed office, in September alone, the Labor Department announced 13 indictments and seven convictions, for a total of 97 indictments and 115 convictions so far this year.

In any event, the point is that by cutting the budget of this office, Congress is effectively reducing oversight on their union supporters, which, as everyone knows, are one of the core constituencies of the Democratic party. Dems are also working hard to end secret voting for decisions on when to admit unions into workplaces, which, if passed, will have an enormous chilling effect on the ability of workers to freely decide whether or not to unionize without the threat of peer pressure (or worse strong-arm tactics) on those individuals who do not support a union in their workplace.

Down in Springfield, similar machinations are in the works to take care of Dem constituencies while the attention of the public is on the budget shenanigans. For example, Democratic State Rep. John Fritchey from Chicago’s north side sponsored a bill (HB 1798) that would allow trial lawyers (another core Dem support group) to collect damages for “grief and sorrow” suffered by the beneficiaries of decedents in wrongful death cases, in addition to actual losses that can be calculated like lost income and medical expenses. See the Tribune story here. Governor Bag-O-Chips signed this bill into law, and in one fell swoop, managed to undo most of the last two years’ worth of successes in medical malpractice tort reform in this state. Most likely, the ones feeling the most grief and sorrow over this new law will not be the trial bar.

So, you haven’t heard of either of these issues? No big shock—most people seem to get their news nowadays mostly from TV at 10:00 p.m., and that’s good for about 8 minutes of mostly local stuff (shootings, accidents, etc.), followed by commercials, weather, more commercials, sports, still more commercials, and finally some human interest story that’s supposed to be funny or heartwarming so that we don’t go to bed wondering why we should even get up in the morning (or worse, not tune in to the news tomorrow night).

You have to at least read newspapers, or better yet, do your own research (love that Internet!—thanks Al Gore) to find out the real story behind the story. But most of us are just too busy, too disinterested, or feel too powerless to effect change to even bother rooting this stuff out. That’s what the Dems are probably counting on.