Weak Union Morale Could Hurt Dems
Union frustration may hold Dems back in November. The Hill: "... building trade union leaders joined with the American Petroleum Institute to blast the Obama administration for stalling on the approval of the Keystone pipeline ... [The] president of the International Association of Fire Fighters (IAFF), said Sens. Kay Hagan (D-N.C.) and Mark Warner (D-Va.) would not be receiving IAFF support in their reelection races [because of] a December 2010 Senate vote on legislation that would have expanded collective bargaining rights ... Labor saw no action on the Employee Free Choice Act early on in Obama’s first term, when Democrats controlled the House and Senate. They have also griped about what they say is a lack of attention to their concerns about the healthcare law."
20 years of looser global trade have not lifted all boats evenly, finds NYT's Eduardo Porter: "... two decades worth of trade deals, including Nafta and China’s entry into the World Trade Organization, did not live up to Mr. Gore’s implicit promise that globalization would improve the living standards of most American workers. Instead, globalization is now often perceived as a leading driver of rampant inequality and wage stagnation. But what globalization did achieve was to greatly improve the lot of hundreds of millions of people in China and other corners of Asia. The lopsided results have opened a rift between the experience of global capitalism between the developed world and many poor countries ... There are, however, powerful reasons to worry about this pattern of global development..."
Chamber of Commerce lobbies NLRB to scrap union election rule. The Hill: "Under the labor board’s proposal, employers and union organizers would have to be provided with workers’ email addresses and phone numbers during a union election drive. The proposed rule, announced last month, would also consolidate election appeals into a single post-election process and allow for union petitions to be filed electronically, among other changes. Business groups and Republicans have condemned the proposal, saying it will trample on employer rights by giving them little time to talk to their employees before a union vote."
"Budding Liberal Protest Movements Begin to Take Root in South" reports NYT: "The Moral Monday movement, which began last year in North Carolina, took firm root in Georgia on Tuesday, where the arrests at the Capitol were the group’s boldest action since it started protesting here in January. There were similar protests in South Carolina, where a smaller but persistent campaign of civil disobedience played out for the third week in a row ... While these groups embrace a variety of liberal issues, from public education to voting rights, the focus in Georgia and South Carolina on Tuesday was Medicaid expansion. Both states have turned down federal funds to finance expanding the program under the health care law."
GOP May Flinch Again On Health Care
House GOP won't commit to a vote on replacing ObamaCare. Politico: "Republicans aren’t even convinced they will find consensus on any specific set of new health care bills ... Not to mention, some of the policies the GOP is considering ... already exist and don’t work very well."
Projected 10-year deficit slashed by $5T. CBPP: "Since 2010, projected ten-year deficits over the 2015-2024 decade have shrunk by almost $5.0 trillion, $4.1 trillion of which is due to four pieces of legislation enacted in the intervening years. Some 77 percent of the savings from those pieces of legislation — which include the Budget Control Act of 2011 and the American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012 — come from program cuts, 23 percent from revenue increases. Projected deficits have also fallen because of a dramatic slowdown in health spending ... Even better for the fiscal picture, CBO has concluded that the slowdown is at least partially a long-term one."
Breakfast Sides
Sens. Carl Levin and John McCain press Justice Dept to go after Swiss bankers. W. Post: "...more than 50 indicted bankers and financial advisers who helped wealthy Americans hide billions of dollars from U.S. tax collectors ... have faced charges in the United States for more than three years. Federal prosecutors know where they live. Yet the Justice Department has not asked the Swiss government to extradite any of them to stand trial ... The U.S. extradition treaty with Switzerland gives the Swiss government the discretion to deny requests tied to tax offenses, but that discretion ends when criminal conduct such as fraud is involved."
WH launches portal for local climate change data. W. Post: "The effort includes making federal data more accessible throughclimate.data.gov; launching a design competition to demonstrate the extent to which Americans are vulnerable to coastal flooding; releasing new federal map data to depict which aspects of the nation's infrastructure are vulnerable to climate change; and enlisting private firms such as Google and the software company Esri to disseminate and store data."
Decrepit infrastructure suspect in NYC explosion. Bloomberg: "Federal investigators found a leak in a natural gas pipeline next to a New York City building destroyed in an explosion that killed eight people last week. The 8-inch main pipeline, parts of which are 120-years old, failed a pressure test ..."
