Monday, May 05, 2008

Obama and the Teamsters

From today's Wall Street Journal:

Sen. Barack Obama won the endorsement of the Teamsters earlier this year after privately telling the union he supported ending the strict federal oversight imposed to root out corruption, according to officials from the union and the Obama campaign.

It's an unusual stance for a presidential candidate. Policy makers have largely treated monitoring of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters as a legal matter left to the Justice Department since an independent review board was set up in 1992 to eliminate mob influence in the union.

Well, this certainly is change. However, combined with his stated opposition to the Colombia Free Trade Agreement and anti-NAFTA rhetoric is also adds up to a pattern of pandering to labor. Not exactly a new kind of politics.

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