MORE Bad News For The GOP

Joe "The Plumber" is leaving. The Party.

Non-Joe the Non-Plumber cause a bit of a stir with his now-infamous "queer" comments. He actually knows some friends who are actually gay but he'd never let these "queer" friends (and "queer is not a slur - it's in the dictionary" he said) near his actual kids.

Those kids are so lucky to have a dad like that, huh?

Well now, he's pissed. At the GOP. Time Magazine is reporting:

Samuel Wurzelbacher, better known as Joe the Plumber, tells TIME he's so outraged by GOP overspending, he's quitting the party — and he's the bull's-eye of its target audience.

What's the party of Limbaugh to do?

More on Joe "The Plumber"

Word has it that my good friend Fred will be talking about Joe Wurzelbacher (erroneously known as "Joe The Plumber") today on KDKA.

Seems that Monsieur Le plombier was in the area yesterday.

Here's KDKA's coverage.

A couple of things to emphasize about Jon Delano's reporting. First off, some local unionized plumbers don't like the fact that Mr Wurzelbacher isn't licensed to be a plumber. Good enough for me. If the licensed practitioners reject the label due to a lack of a license on Joe's part, then he's not a plumber. Hey I helped my father-in-law replace the faucet in the kitchen this weekend. Does that make me a plumber? Of course not. It belittles all the training necessary to get a plumbing license.

So simply put Joe the plumber isn't.

But this is somewhat beside the point. As Jon reports (2:00 in):

The big issue is whether the Employee Free Choice Act takes away the workers' secret ballot in unionizing.

Tim Phillips, president of Americans for Prosperity is quoted as saying:

It takes the right of the secret ballot away from American workers when they're deciding whether or not to join a union. It's almost unamerican in many ways.

Jack Shea, president of the Allegheny County Labor Council says otherwise:

It's a lie. They're lying.

Unfortunately, Delano doesn't delve into which one is telling the truth (though in fairness, he does state early in the piece that the bill "would make it easier to unionize companies").

You can thank me next time you see me, Jon. Here's the facts:

The text of HR 1409 is here. The bill would amend National Labor Relations Act (29 U.S.C. 159(c)) with the following:

Notwithstanding any other provision of this section, whenever a petition shall have been filed by an employee or group of employees or any individual or labor organization acting in their behalf alleging that a majority of employees in a unit appropriate for the purposes of collective bargaining wish to be represented by an individual or labor organization for such purposes, the Board shall investigate the petition. If the Board finds that a majority of the employees in a unit appropriate for bargaining has signed valid authorizations designating the individual or labor organization specified in the petition as their bargaining representative and that no other individual or labor organization is currently certified or recognized as the exclusive representative of any of the employees in the unit, the Board shall not direct an election but shall certify the individual or labor organization as the representative described in subsection (a).

Here's the National Labor Relations Act. You can hunt down 29 U.S.C. 159(c) on your own, if you like.

But what does all that mean above? Christopher Beam of Slate writes:

Here's how it works currently: Say you work at a factory and you want to form a union. First, you approach your favorite union and request a bunch of blank cards. (Here's what they look like.) Then you go around to your colleagues and ask them whether they want to sign up. If they do, they sign their name to the cards. Once you get 30 percent of the total work force to sign cards, you're eligible to hold an election on whether to form a union. (Workers usually wait till they get at least 50 percent or 60 percent, just to make sure they will win the election.) You then present the cards to the National Labor Relations Board and the employer. The employer can then either recognize the union right away or request a secret-ballot election, which must happen within 60 days. If more than 50 percent of employees vote for a union, they've got a union. If not, they don't.

And what would things look like if the EFCA passes? Beam:

The essential change of the EFCA would be to allow the employees—rather than the employer—to decide whether to hold a secret-ballot election. If at least half of the work force signed cards saying it wanted a union, there would be a union—without the rigmarole of a full-blown election.

Workers still have the option of holding a secret ballot election, of course. But, again, as a practical matter, it's hard to imagine why a group of workers, having just won a union, would then also decide to hold an election. Sure, a smaller group of workers—it'd have to be at least 30 percent—could still petition for a secret ballot. But the legislation clearly states that "[i]f the Board finds that a majority of the employees in a unit appropriate for bargaining has signed valid authorizations … the Board shall not direct an election but shall certify the individual or labor organization as the representative." [emphasis in original]

It's simple: the choice of a "secret ballot" would be up to the employees not the employers. Something you don't hear too much from the media, huh?

Now go back and look at what Phillips said. And now look at what Shea said. Who's right? Since the workers would now have the option for a secret ballot (after collecting the necessary signed cards), it's hard to see how that "right" is taken away from them by the EFCA.

It is taken away from the employers. And maybe that's what got the Americans for Prosperity all in a tizzy.

The Trib Editorial Board Distorts

Well, "distorts" might not be the right word. LIES might be a better one.

Take a look at today's editorial. First they set up the whole "Joe The Plumber" thing and then get to the distortion:

...Big Media scrutinized "Joe's" background. And it appears that it might have had lots of help from Ohio's Democratic Party apparatus, now under investigation.

The Columbus Dispatch says officials want to know if state and law-enforcement computer systems were illegally accessed to mine personal information about Mr. Wurzelbacher.

Driver's license and SUV information thrice was pulled from the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles database. Information also was accessed by computers assigned to the offices of Ohio Attorney General Nancy H. Rodgers, the Cuyahoga County Child Support Enforcement Agency and Toledo Police Department, The Dispatch reported.

If the allegations are true, it will confirm how Democrats in power abuse that power in pursuit of the destruction of those who dare oppose their policies.

BUT (and there's always a big but when fact-checking the Trib's editorials) let's take a look at the actual reporting from The Columbus Dispatch.

Some questions to keep in mind: Do they report that Ohio's Democratic Party apparatus is now under investigation for peeking into Joe's files as is (at the very least) implied by the Trib's editorial? Do they report that the Ohio Democratic Party had anything to do with someone accessing the files? Do they report the same about the national Democratic Party?

Let's take a look. The Dispatch first reported the story on the 24th:

State and local officials are investigating if state and law-enforcement computer systems were illegally accessed when they were tapped for personal information about "Joe the Plumber."

A few paragraphs down, however, they reported:

It has not been determined who checked on Wurzelbacher, or why.

Then on the 25th they reported:

The Republican presidential candidate reacted today to a story in The Dispatch about the use of state computers to access personal information about "Joe" - suburban Toledo resident Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher.

State and local officials are investigating why his driver's license and vehicle registration information was accessed shortly after Wurzelbacher became a household name.

Republicans, including McCain, painted the news as a politically motivated invasion of privacy and an attempt to dig up dirt.

And they added a few paragraphs later:

Who accessed the information, and why, has not been determined. Access to BMV data is restricted to legitimate government purposes. Illegal access can be a crime.

Nowhere in the reporting from the Columbus Dispatch is there any connection made between the local or national Democratic Party and whomever accessed Wurzelbacher's files. And yet the Trib's editorial board clearly implied that there is a connection using the Dispatch's reporting as evidence. I'd say that goes beyond distortion into dishonesty. But that's just me.

It's still possible someone in the Democratic Party over stepped the line in Ohion. But unless and until that's reported no responsible editorial should implicate anyone with such wrong doing.

And no responsible political party should either (as the Ohio Republicans have already done). But considering this is the McCain campaign - a campaign that pushed a hoax story before all the facts were in - it's not surprising that they'd dive headfirst into the mud.