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Hours after he was seated, Sen. Al Franken, D-MN, let it be known that he would be sign on as a co-sponsor to the Employee Free Choice Act, the labor-backed provision that would allow unions to more easily organize, as his first legislative activity.

"I just became a cosponsor of my first bill in the Senate, the Employee Free Choice Act," the Minnesota Democrat declared at a gathering at the AFL-CIO on Tuesday evening.

Despite taking a backseat in terms of media attention, EFCA remains very much a hotly-debated measure within the halls of Congress. And while Franken's vote will likely boost Democratic efforts on health care and judicial nominations (he is poised to sit on the HELP and Judiciary Committees) it could be on labor matters where his voice is most felt. Certainly the union community, which is pushing for a vote on EFCA sometime this year, feels relieved that it is one senator closer to preventing a Republican filibuster on the measure.

Franken, who was officially sworn into office on Tuesday after an eight-month recount, told the AFL-CIO crowd that he shared common interests with them. According to Eddie Vale, a spokesman for the union group, Franken described the long tradition that exist in Minnesota of "having two Senators who are very pro workers and working families." "He said it was an honor to be sworn in today and walk through the aisles with Mondale and to be sworn in on Paul Wellstone's Bible," Vale recounted. "He stressed that both men were champions of the labor movement."

Paul Wellstone would be proud.

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Via Media Matters, via rightwing site Newsbusters.org.

The above video exchange was first highlighted by NewsBusters.org, who approvingly cited Burnett's observations as noting "a teachable moment," which "reflects how secret ballots could end up in an election as to whether or not unionize a company."

Oil is not going up because...

"North Korea, Syria - I mean these are places when they always have elections, there's always a couple of people who don't vote for the right guy," Cramer said. "But I think the price of oil is going to tell you exactly how everything is going to play out in Iran, which is it's much ado about nothing."

and for Newsbusters, "a teachable moment", as Media Matters points out.

However, as Jim Cramer's colleague, "Street Signs" host Erin Burnett pointed out - this is a teachable moment. It reflects how secret ballots could end up in an election as to whether or not unionize a company:

CRAMER: I mean obviously, you were able to vote against this guy, but the idea you thought there was going to be a fair count.

BURNETT: And it wasn't a secret ballot. I think that's important. They're going to know - they know everybody and how they voted.

CRAMER: Absolutely.

BURNETT: It makes a strong point for this whole union conversation we're having in this country.

CRAMER: The card check, the card check.

BURNETT: But, we'll leave that debate ...

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The cast of Morning Joe while fear mongering about the EFCA can't manage to name a single successful unionized company, even though they work for one. Media Matters and TPM are already all over this one. Jamison Foser at Media Matters:

The Morning Joe crew was on an anti-union tear this morning, claiming the union label on a company means "sell." Mika Brzezinski went so far as to say of unions: "They cripple the system that makes a company work." Collectively, the journalists on Morning Joe couldn't name a single "successful" unionized company.

.....

Oh, what the heck, let's take one more example. GE is one of the world's largest companies; in 2006, its revenues were greater than the gross domestic products of 80 percent of UN nations. The company made more than $18 billion in 2008 -- again, billion with a b, and again, those are profits, not revenue. All that despite (or, perhaps, because of) the fact that 13 different unions represent GE workers.

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It looks like Arlen Specter is coming to terms with the cold reality that he can't be a "Democrat" and stand in opposition to working families. As usual, the Republican-like Ben Nelson does as much damage as he can to good progressive legislation like EFCA.

“Card Check” deal is a “fool’s errand”Sen Ben Nelson, D-NE, told me he does not see a deal happening this year at all. He sees no way to put a compromise together that’s pallatable. “You take away the arbitration issue, and you still have the ‘card check’, so that doesn’t work. You take away the ‘card check’ and you still have the arbitration problem. And if both go away, you’re left with nothing. It’s a fool’s errand to do this. I just don’t see an agreement happening,” Nelson said.

Way to go, Ben! That's acting like a good FOX News Democrat. But as soon as this report comes out, there's news of a compromise in the works with Specter being part of the solution.

Feinstein, Specter Compromises Pave the Way For Passage of Employee Free Choice Act

New compromise measures from Dianne Feinstein and Arlen Specter may pave the way for the passage of the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA).

As Harkin says, the Feinstein compromise has the advantage of "protecting the secret ballot, so people can do it in private," which neutralizes that particular right-wing criticism of the bill.

The other bone of contention has been arbitration clause of the Employee Free Choice Act. Specter himself supports "last best offer" arbitration. It's also called "baseball arbitration," and has incentives to get both parties to quickly make their best, most reasonable offer. Bill Samuel of the AFL-CIO says "we're open to that."...read on

I'm tired of hearing excuses and I'm tired of Democrats like Ben Nelson and Evan Bayh that block real change in America.

ConsumerAffairs.com:

Under heavy fire from critics for the bank's losses in the economic meltdown, former Bank of America chairman Kenneth Lewis will step down as chairman, to be succeeded by Dr. Walter E. Massey. Lewis will remain as President and CEO.

All 18 board members were said to "comfortably" resist votes to remove them from the board, but the vote to split the duties of chairman into different posts was successful. Massey, an accomplished scientist and a member of many corporate governing boards, most recently served as president of his alma mater, Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia.

The announcement came after a raucous shareholder meeting in Charlotte, North Carolina today, where investors and activists grilled him for pushing the acquisition of debt-riddled Countrywide Financial and Merrill Lynch, as well as for accepting billions in taxpayer money during the first round of bailouts of the financial market last year.

Countrywide, formerly the world's largest mortgage lender, was acquired last year by Bank of America for $4 billion amid rumors that it would seek bankruptcy protection due to mounting losses from the collapsing housing market. The additional acquisition of Merrill Lynch saddled the banking giant with an estimated $70 billion in capital losses, while shareholders saw their investments drop by an average of 76 percent.[..]

The Service Employees' International Union (SEIU) launched a campaign to remove Lewis as chairman, after it was revealed that Bank of America used $25 billion in taxpayer money it received for executive compensation and buyouts of competitors, while squeezing the credit lines of its customers.

SEIU actually liveblogged the shareholder's meeting and deserves all sorts of credit for really holding Lewis's feet to the fire.

I think Lewis should just be grateful that the shareholders didn't opt to treat him the way that Icelanders have treated the bankers that caused their financial crisis. Just sayin'...

From The Ed Schultz Show:

Ed Schultz talks with Stephen Lerner of the Service Employees International Union about who’s looking out for the workers in the fight over the Employees Free Choice Act.

Ed Schultz takes "centrist" Democrats to task for back peddling on this important issue. They need to just call them what they are. They're not centrists. They're corporate DINO's.

h/t The Political Carnival and The Plum Line

Joe the Plumber gets called out for being the clueless shill he is. He hasn't read the bill and can't answer questions about it, but he's more than happy to take someone's money to go out there and campaign against it. There's the face of the Republican Party, folks. Doesn't have a friggin' clue and willing to say anything for money.

From The Plum Line, whose title I stole for this post and could not have stated any better:

Oof. Looks like Joe the Plumber’s campaigning against the Employee Free Choice Act in Pennsylvania didn’t go so well.

Mr. Plumber, whose appearances were organized by the anti-EFCA group Americans for Prosperity, admitted he knew “little” about the legislation after being confronted with questions at one of the events yesterday in Harrisburg by a Pennsylvania progressive group. He was also heckled by dozens of Pennsylvania union workers, according to a local report.

And after his rough time in Harrisburg, he skipped a subsequent rally in Philadelphia, according to union officials who were there.

Here’s some video of the grilling Mr. Plumber took from the group, Keystone Progress, which prompted the irritated plumber to respond: “I know a little about a lot of things. But I don’t know a lot about everything.”

Pressed on the specifics of the law, Mr. Plumber repeatedly refused to answer, and finally lost his cool, telling his questioner: “Drop it, brother, drop it. I never said I was an expert, man.”

Not an expert indeed.

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The cast of The West Wing has come to Washington DC to support the Employee Free Choice Act. Bradley Whitford and Richard Schiff weigh in with David Shuster on the need to debunk some of the myths being put out there well funded anti-union campaigns being run by right to work groups and corporate America. They note the importance of being allowed to form a union without fear of being fired or retribution from ones' employer as we have now and hope to put some real faces on those types of stories which are all too common when workers try to organize.

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Good to see. Sam "Joe the fake Plumber" Wurzelbacher was met by some real plumbers in Pittsburgh. His latest gig is attacking the Employee Free Choice Act for the anti-labor group Americans for Prosperity. Hopefully Mr. Wurzelbacher is continued to be greeted as warmly on the rest of his stops.

Think Progress has more. The report is from local affilitate KDKA. At the end of the segment they claim that Wurzelbacher supports union members but just not their leadership. Anyone who would say something like that obviously doesn't understand anything about unions because you cannot separate the two.

Arlen Specter dealt a serious blow to the passage of the Employee Free Choice Act.

Senator Arlen Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican, said he opposes the “card-check” union organizing measure, dealing a setback to U.S. labor’s top legislative goal. Specter said that he is likely to be the “decisive vote,” to block the Democratic-backed bill that would make it easier to form unions.

“The problem with the recession makes this a particularly bad time,” Specter said on the Senate floor today. Employers fear the measure “will result in further job losses,” he said.

Back in 2007, Specter voted for "cloture"which means that he cut off the debate of the topic and stoped Republicans from whining about it which is a show of support for EFCA, but now he's using his "cloture" vote as a way to give him a cowardly excuse not to vote for it this time.

In voting for cloture - that, is to cut off debate - in June 2007, I emphasized in my floor statement and in a law review article that I was not supporting the bill on the merits, but only to take up the issue of labor law reform. Hearings had shown that the NLRB was dysfunctional and badly politicized. When Republicans controlled the Board, the decisions were for business. With Democrats in control, the decisions were for labor. Some cases took as long as eleven years to decide. The remedies were ineffective.

UPDATE I: Specter’s Defection On EFCA Fails To Win Over Right Wing

If Senator Arlen Specter had hoped that bailing on the Employee Free Choice Act yesterday would make him the toast of the town among his right wing critics, he probably woke up this morning feeling like he has a pretty crushing hangover — after doing a lot of drinking alone.

Conservative groups and politicians, far from won over by Specter’s announcement, continue to hammer away at the embattled Senator, suggesting that his abrupt move on EFCA will do little or nothing to reduce his vulnerability to a primary challenge from the right...read on

Howie Klein sizes up the playing field to see what our options are.

The math says that if Ted Kennedy is healthy enough to vote and Al Franken gets seated and all the Democrats-- including Evan Bayh's anti-Obama bloc-- all continue to back the bill (even WalMart's cowardly Democrats, Blanche Lincoln and Mark Pryor), then Employee Free Choice passes if Specter sticks to his guns.

With today's craven and cowardly announcement by Specter, more worried about his primary challenger from the fringes of the Republican right than about his own dignity or, more important, Pennsylvania working families, the Democrats will either have to put off the vote until after the 2010 election or persuade either Olympia Snowe (R-ME) or retiring George Voinovich (R-OH), neither of whom is a union-hater, to switch their votes.

Big Business is quite happy with his choice, but in reality it makes no sense. The right already hates him and he's in a state where jobs are needed. He's taking the path of going far right to try and appease the wingnut base, but he knows they will never be appeased np matter what he does. He will still face a primary challenge. (See Jason Rosenbaum for more on this point.)

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Lanny Davis visited the set of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. to push for his "third way" corporate compromise on the Employee Free Choice Act. Costco, Starbucks and Whole Foods have teamed up and are calling themselves the Committee for a Level Playing Field. As Steve Benen notes in his article:

Lanny Davis, a former special counsel to President Clinton, is reportedly helping to push this compromise, and told the Post that he's received positive feedback from about 20 Senate offices. We don't know which 20, but not surprisingly, Sen. Mark Pryor of Arkansas, a right-leaning Democrat who may break with his party over EFCA, said the proposal "could result in a reasonable compromise."

From TPM some good news:

Backers of the EFCA "alternative" have enlisted Lanny Davis, the former Clinton White House adviser turned supporter of Joe Lieberman's 2006 re-election bid, to plead their case on the Hill. And it's not going well so far, to say the least -- senior Democrats are pushing back hard at the compromise offer with a series of talking points that blast the EFCA "alternative" as "written by CEOs, for CEOs."

TPMDC has obtained a copy of the complete memo on the business-friendly deal, which is available after the jump. The takeaway is clear: Senior Democrats aren't buying what Davis is helping Costco, Whole Foods, and Starbucks try to sell.

Down with Tyranny calls the proposal a Trojan horse.

Ah... the rub. While the Greeks hide in the high reeds, grumbling that they oppose leaving such a lovely, costly horse to the tenacious damn Trojans, the modern day Trojans-- or at least the labor unions (if not the Bayh Bloc weak-kneed Democrats) have already figured out the trick. Yesterday the AFL-CIO let the Chamber of Commerce type Dems know that they're not buy into any so-called "compromise" that still allows management to subvert the will of the majority and still allows them delay contract negotiations ad infinitum since without that first legally binding contract the union is still at their never-tender mercies.

Davis refers to himself as a "pro-labor liberal" Democrat in this segment. If this is "pro-labor" lord help us.

John Amato:

This deal is not a compromise and makes things much worse for workers even if right wing union haters are feigning anger at Big Business for coming forward with this plan. If Lanny Davis was really for the working class then he should not be trying to broker this deal. I wonder how much he's being paid to jump into this battle and speak for the Big Guy?

Digby, Howie Klein, Robert Greenwald and myself co-hosted a blogger get together at Brave New Films Tuesday afternoon to meet with a true progressive candidate named Tom Geoghagen. He's running to grab Rahm Emanuel's vacant seat in IL. and and showed off his progressive chops big time. He was very impressive as he spoke about many issues that would have a huge impact on America if he's able to win that seat. He's a real leader, not some yes man and as a labor lawyer he knows what's been happening to working class families all across America. He touched on an interesting concept that I haven't heard any one else touch on.

Since we've spent so much money bailing out the financial institutions, Tom thinks that working families should get the same consideration when it comes to their own credit record and with some help they should get the same fresh start as the banking industry was given. Without the private jets and huge bonuses of course.

After he spoke for about 30 minutes and then a Q&A, Robert and Howie grabbed me unexpectedly and off I went into the studio with Tom to ask him to explain in simple terms what the Employee Free Choice Act really is since there's so much misinformation littering the airwaves about it by the corporate elites.

It's insane watching the right wing freak out over the fact that all this act does is give the employees and not the employers the choice of how to unionize. That's it. In this video, Geoghagen gives a very straight forward answer that dispels a lot of the anti-union nonsense that the Orrin Hatches of the Republican party are spewing. After meeting him, listening to him and speaking with him about the issues, I'm convinced he's an excellent choice for Rahm's seat and is a person that I am fully endorsing.

Howie writes:

Yesterday I got to hear author and congressional candidate Tom Geoghegan speak live. Robert Greenwald and the folks at BraveNewFilms hosted a blogger get-together for the progressive candidate running in Illinois' 5th CD. I knew he was already a good candidate from his writing and from trusted friends in Chicago; that's why we endorsed him and added him to our ActBlue page. But seeing him live... it's like the difference from hearing a band's recorded songs and seeing a live concert.

Katha Pollitt called him "the next Paul Wellstone" in The Nation and Thomas Frank wrote that he's a "true reformer" in the Wall Street Journal. This morning Don Rose endorsed his candidacy in the Chicago Sun-Times.