Hopefraud

Democratic Lobbyists Key to Fight Against Employee Free Choice Act by Chris Kronm via Counterpunch

A little ways down the page, you'll find a link to a Naomi Klein article where she starts to create a new lexicon for dealing with what maybe I'll start calling Post-Obama-Traumatic-Hope-Syndrome.

Maybe we should add something like 'hopefraud' to the list. This what happens when Democratic politicians make promises to get elected, then renege on those promises once in office.

But Frank points to an important and under-reported piece of the story -- lobbying firms with strong ties to Democrats who are helping deep-six labor's agenda. After asking why Democrats seem treat labor like an ATM machine for campaign cash, only to turn their backs on them in Congress, Frank offers these devastating set of facts:

Follow the link above to read more, too long to quote here. But here's the key point. The Democrats made what I felt was a rather weak promise to labor to gain their support in the last election. The Democrats promised to support a bill that made some reforms that would make the action of workers forming a union a little fairer. At the time, my reaction was more along the lines of 'is that all labor got in the deal?', especially when there were other candidates in the race promising a repeal of Taft-Hartley and a general overhaul of labor law in this country. But, at least you could say labor got something that would make organizing a little easier in this country.

Not! The problem was, it was all a lie. The Democrats had no intention of ever passing the EFCA. Don't believe me. Take a look at how much effort the Democrats have put into passing this act. They did propose it, put a bill into the hopper. And they announced their own token and very weak support of the bill. But, you might ask yourself how much of a push was there to pass this bill quickly. After all, at this point with employment collapsing and debts exploding, anything that might help to give workers a little more leverage and put a few more dollars in their pocket is just what this country needs. EFCA could have been pushed with great urgency. It could have been presented as a key reform this country needs to start to pull out of this mess, and moved rapidly on the calendar. After all, during the campaign, the Democrats promised this would be one of the first things they did once elected.

We know the Democrats can do just this. After all, this sense of crisis and urgency surrounded the passing of both the Bush and Obama 'stimulus' bills by the Democratic Congress. The nation was told with loud voices that these bills, which have pumped trillions of dollars into the finance industry, must pass immediately or else we are all doomed. And the Democratic leadership pushed those bills through the Congress just as fast as they could.

But, when it comes to rights for workers, when it comes to EFCA, the bill languishes in committee. The difference in how the bills are handled by the Democrats is obvious. Key Democratic Senators 'defect' to the Republican side (as if most Democrats weren't there already), and now we learn that the lobbying effort against the bill is led by the beltway lobbying firms with Democrat connections.

Hopefraud. The pumping up of the hope of workers that electing a candidate might make things better. Followed by the continuation of the same old, same old. In other words, most major Democratic political campaigns.