EFCA update

Obama is evidently promising union leaders that he will pass the Employee Free Choice Act. For those that don't recall or are unfamiliar, the EFCA would remove the need for a secret ballot election for workers to unionize. Rather they would simply need a majority of workers to sign cards endorsing unionization -- with no time limit for submission. If you know who signs such cards then you also know who hasn't -- and can intimidate them.

It's so digusting that television ads pushing for EFCA refuse to even say what it is.

I think that there are plenty of issues that reasonable people can disagree on, but I simply don't understand how Obama or anyone else can push for such legislation that removes the secret ballot, a fundamental aspect of democracy as we know it.

The evidence continues to mount that Obama is not the centrist pragmatist he campaigned as but a radical liberal. Comparisons are mounting with Jimmy Carter but this is wrong, with Johnson and FDR much more appropriate. Remember, it was under Carter that we implemented free market moves such as deregulation of the trucking and airline industries (which is why I could fly one way to Sacramento from DC for $129 booking 5 days in advance). We will see no such thing from Obama.

Update: Steve Chapman also sees the Johnson parallel:

Lately, [Obama] brings to mind Lyndon Johnson, who imagined that the country could easily afford both endless war and a costly array of new programs.

LBJ illustrates the dangers of taking an election victory for a far-reaching mandate. He got the Great Society passed, but two years after his landslide victory, Republicans made big gains. In 1968, Johnson didn't even run for re-election, and Richard Nixon won the presidency -- which the GOP would hold for 20 of the next 24 years.

We'll see.