Justin's Political Corner

First New York, then central Pennsylvania, and then Chicago. Now St. Louis is the latest American city to be hit with a strike by non-union fast food workers demanding higher wages and the right to form a union. Over the course of Wednesday and Thursday, over 100 employees at approximately 30 different St. Louis-based restaurants walked off the job, demanding the right to form a union and a raise from Missouri’s $7.35 hourly minimum wage to $15 per hour. The strike was organized by an alternative workers’ group called the St. Louis Organizing Committee as part of a campaign called STL Can’t Survive on $7.35.

“Increasingly, fast food jobs are the only options for St. Louisans, but these workers can’t even afford to pay for rent, food, or carfare,” said Rev. Martin Rafanan, director of STL Can’t Survive on $7.35, in a statement. “If the workers earned more, fast food workers would spend that money at local businesses here in St. Louis and help lift our economy.”

The strike—which hit restaurants such as McDonald’s, Jimmy John’s, Wendy’s and Domino’s—was only a quarter a size of New York’s second fast food strike, still the largest walkout to occur in the industry. Still, the recent events in St. Louis indicate that labor unrest within the industry is not going away, and that the nationwide momentum shows no sign of abating.

A significant chunk of the jobs being gained during America’s economic recovery are concentrated in the service and retail sectors; in fact, the fast food industry is growing at twice the rate as the rest of the economy, according to The Nation’s Annie Shields. As a result, St. Louis is highly unlikely to be the last American city to be hit with a fast food strike.

h/t: MSNBC.com

House Republicans are launching their first concerted effort to win back female voters on Tuesday with the Working Families Flexibility Act of 2013, a bill that’s being packaged as a lifeline to working moms across the country.

Unfortunately, the legislation is a particularly cruel hoax—a slick attempt to give employers more power, and hourly workers much less.

At first blush, the idea sounds good. The bill would allow hourly workers to convert overtime pay into time off: in other words, instead of getting paid for extra hours, they could stockpile additional vacation time. The pitch here is that working parents could have more flexibility in their schedule and an enhanced ability to balance work and family. “This week, we’ll pass [Representative] Martha Roby’s bill to help working moms and dads better balance their lives between work and their responsibilities as parents,” House Speaker John Boehner said Tuesday.

The GOP is specifically invested in convincing women this bill is for them. The GOP spent $20,000 last week on a digital ad campaign focusing on so-called “mommy blogs,” like Ikeafans.com and MarthaStewart.com, and geo-targeting Democrats in swing districts. “Will Rep. Collin Peterson stand up for working moms?” one iteration of the ad asked.

But it’s not too hard to see how pernicious this legislation truly is. “Flexibility” is a word that should make hourly workers check for their wallets—employers hold most of the power in the relationship with hourly workers, which is all the more true if they are not unionized. So “flexibility” to decide if you want to get paid for overtime work, instead of getting fewer hours later on, can quickly become a way for employers to withhold payment for overtime work while also cutting your hours down the road.

Over 160 labor unions and women’s groups sent a letter to members of Congress on Monday, protesting that the Working Families Flexibility Act is “a smoke-and-mirrors bill that offers a pay cut for workers without any guaranteed flexibility or time off to care for their families or themselves.”

Republicans say this isn’t true, and that there are safeguards in the bill that would prevent employers from muscling their employees into surrendering overtime pay. “It is illegal for them to do that. There are enforcement mechanisms in the bill,” Eric Cantor said in February.

But this is where they’re being really tricky—the bill does give workers the right to sue over such intimidation, but denies them the right to use much quicker, and cheaper, administrative remedies through the Department of Labor. It also gives the Department of Labor no additional funds to investigate nor enforce provisions of the act.

So if hourly workers get intimidated into giving up overtime pay in exchange for working even fewer hours down the road, they’re more than welcome to hire a lawyer and sue—a rather improbable outcome given how expensive that might be. Otherwise, tough luck.

There also isn’t quite as much flexibility in the act as it seems. As the National Partnership for Women and Families points out, while the bill does allow hourly workers to turn overtime pay into as much as 160 hours of comp time, it gives them no right to decide when they can use that time—even if there’s a family emergency. That’s still entirely up to employers.

Further hampering workers’ flexibility is that once they bank more than eighty hours in comp time, employers can unilaterally decide to cash out any additional hours. Also, workers who decide later that they need to cash out the comp time they’ve earned can do so—but employers have thirty days to cut the check, which could certainly be a problem for hourly workers on a tight budget.

Moreover, this isn’t even a new idea. Republicans proposed this same bill ten years ago, prompting the late Molly Ivins to remark “the slick marketing and smoke on this one are a wonder to behold.”

The legislation, simply, is a straightforward boon to big employers. “It pretends to offer time off but actually asks [employees] to work overtime hours without being paid,” Judy Lichtman of the NPWF told reporters on a conference call Monday. She added that it’s simply a “no-cost, no-interest loan to the employer.”

House Democrats will be nearly, if not entirely, unified in opposition. “The Working Families Flexibility Act sounds good, but it is a sham and we are going to call it out for what it is. It would cause more harm than good and we are going to reject it,” Representative Rose DeLauro said yesterday during the same conference call.

Due to the Republican majority in the House, the bill is likely to pass on Tuesday, but Senate passage seems dubious at best, and the White House has already issued a veto threat.

In 1993, when Congress considered and ultimately passed the Family and Medical Leave Act—which mandates only twelve weeks of unpaid family time off—Republicans were apoplectic. One House member from North Carolina called it “nothing short of Europeanization—a polite term for socialism.” A young John Boehner, years from becoming House Speaker, said the legislation would “be the demise of some [businesses].

“And as that occurs,” he said, “the light of freedom will grow dimmer.”

h/t: George Zornick at The Nation

WASHINGTON (AP) — It seems like a simple proposition: give employees who work more than 40 hours a week the option of taking paid time off instead of overtime pay.

The choice already exists in the public sector. Federal and state workers can save earned time off and use it weeks or even months later to attend a parent-teacher conference, care for an elderly parent or deal with home repairs.

Republicans in Congress are pushing legislation that would extend that option to the private sector. They say that would bring more flexibility to the workplace and help workers better balance family and career.

The push is part of a broader Republican agenda undertaken by House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., to expand the party’s political appeal to working families. The House is expected to vote on the measure this week, but the Democratic-controlled Senate isn’t likely to take it up.

“For some people, time is more valuable than the cash that would be accrued in overtime,” said Rep. Martha Roby, R-Ala., the bill’s chief sponsor. “Why should public-sector employees be given a benefit and the private sector be left out?”

But the idea Republicans promote as “pro-worker” is vigorously opposed by worker advocacy groups, labor unions and most Democrats. These opponents claim it’s really a backdoor way for businesses to skimp on overtime pay.

Judith Lichtman, senior adviser to the National Partnership for Women and Families, contends the measure would open the door for employers to pressure workers into taking compensatory time off instead of overtime pay.

The program was created in the public sector in 1985 to save federal, state and local governments money, not to give workers greater flexibility, Lichtman said. Many workers in federal and state government are unionized or have civil service protections that give them more leverage in dealing with supervisors, she added. Those safeguards don’t always exist in the private sector, where only about 6.6 percent of employees are union members.

Republicans and business groups have tried to pass the plan in some form since the 1990s.

Democrats say the bill provides no guarantee that workers would be able to take the time off when they want. The bill gives employers discretion over whether to grant a specific request to use comp time. Opponents also complain that banking leave time essentially gives employers an interest-free loan from workers.

h/t: TPM

Stand down Twinkies hoarders, you can start eating your secret stash.

Twinkies will hit store shelves nationally by late July, Michael Cramer, executive vice president of Hostess Brands LLC told NBC News on Thursday. “We expect to be making and selling in July,” he said. “Probably the later half of the month before the product hits the stores.”

All of the classic Hostess snack brands will return, some making their return in August and September. Hostess Donettes and some of the snack cakes will be among the first to return. And “Twinkies for sure,” Cramer said.

In November, all 36 Hostess Brands, Inc., plants shut down after an extended stand-off with the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union. That Hostess company has almost completely wound down its operations, selling its assets in pieces. The bulk of the Hostess Snacks brands the public knows best — Twinkies, Cup Cakes, Ho Hos, Zingers, Ding Dongs and Suzy Q’s — were purchased in April for $410 million by hedge funds Apollo Global Management and Metropoulos & Co. Other Hostess lines, such as Wonder bread, went to affiliates of Flowers Foods, while its Beefsteak bread brand was snatched up by Grupo Bimbo, S.A.B. de C.V.

It is the new company, Hostess Brands, LLC, that will start hiring this weekend to resume operations with 200 employees at the Dolly Madison Bakery in Columbus, Ga., one of the locations shuttered in November.

As the hiring resumes, it will not be in conjunction with the unions, Cramer said. “We’re sure not going to invite the unions in. We don’t have to do it,” he said. Though of course nothing prevents the workers from unionizing down the line, he said.

But when Twinkies return to the shelves after an absence of more than six months, it will find competition.

Flowers Foods, Inc., which purchased some of Hostess’ other assets, has its own Twinkies lookalikes. Its Blue Bird brand sells Bingles while its Mrs. Freshley label sells Dreamies cream-filled cakes. McKee Foods’ Little Debbie brand also makes its own Twinkies twin called a Cloud Cake. The name’s even trademarked.

A spokesman for Mexico-based Grupo Bimbo, the world’s largest bread baker and the owners of Sara Lee and Entenmann’s brands in the United States, on Wednesday declined to say whether it was considering its own Twinkies competitor in the United States. But should Grupo Bimbo decide to jump into the fray, it has a pretty good options on hand.

Bimbo already makes a Twinkies lookalike in Mexico called Submarinos, which are available with vanilla, chocolate or strawberry filling. Bimbo Bakeries USA since 1997 has been importing strawberry-filled Submarinos into the United States under its Marinela brand catering to Hispanic customers. In 2012 it started importing the vanilla ones as well, a company spokesman said.

After this story was originally published, a reader sent a picture of another Twinkies clone he said recently hit shelves in Los Angeles. The packaging of the new Golden Creme Cakes state they are made by the Sara Lee division owned by Bimbo Bakeries USA. However, a spokesman for the company declined to confirm they are new Sara Lee products.

The hard-core Hostess fan will return to Hostess, but the discretionary snackers will be the key market to regain, predicted Gary Karp, the executive vice president at Technomic Inc., a food industry research and consulting firm. “Their absence has allowed people to try a variety of products that are out there,” Karp said.

h/t: NBCNews.com

Long-simmering tensions between labor and business over importing new workers are spilling out in the open, raising fears that an impasse between two of the biggest stakeholders in the immigration debate could scuttle comprehensive immigration reform.

The tone of what had been mostly quiet and behind-the-scenes talks between the AFL-CIO and the Chamber of Commerce has been heating up in recent days as Republicans and business lobbyists have gone out of their way to preemptively blame unions for killing a bill. It’s not clear whether the public tiff is part of tough final negotiations or a sign that talks are deteriorating — or perhaps both.

The union federation and the chamber have been in talks for months, with the blessing of a bipartisan group of senators working on immigration reform, but so far has only produced abarebones set of principles that would create a new class of immigrant workers and a new federal agency to monitor employment trends. Senators in the so-called “Gang of 8” have complained about the two sides’ progress, which could make plans to release legislation before early next month more difficult.

Randy Johnson, a senior vice president of the Chamber of Commerce who is tasked with handling immigration issues, took the dispute public on Friday, venting to reporters that business’ demand of 400,000 new guest worker visas was met with a number from labor well below 100,000. He put the chances of a deal at just 50-50.

According to a source close to the business side of negotiations, industry groups are stuck on how much employers should have to pay over market rates in order to hire immigrants and at what point those requirements would kick in. Under the plan under discussion, employers who imported workers would have to pay a premium on standard wages paid to low skilled workers in occupations typically filled by immigrants. That premium, which would come from a mix of government fees and wage requirements, would range from around 20 percent up to an average as high as 60-70 percent, rising or falling based on factors like unemployment rates, the type of job, and whether employers had exceeded agreed-upon visa caps.

Underscoring the increased intensity of talks is the surprising progress lawmakers have made in recent days on other aspects of immigration reform. Republicans of all stripes are signaling that they could accept a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants, a huge hurdle that helped wipe out previous attempts at reform. The GOP’s surprising tack to the center is upping the pressure on labor and business to work out a plan for future immigration — or risk being saddled with the blame if reform dies again.

Republicans working on immigration legislation believe that they’ve greatly increased their leverage on guest workers in recent weeks by proving they can recruit tea party conservatives like Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) to the reform cause and keep talk radio relatively quiet.

On the other side, labor is hoping the GOP’s increasing fear of provoking Latino voters, as evidenced by the RNC’s dire new report on minority outreach, will dissuade them from risking blame for a bill’s failure by holding out.

“We’re pretty confident it wasn’t busines that brought those Republicans on board … but the reality that the future of the GOP depends on a new demographic,” Ana Avendano, director of immigration and community action at the AFL-CIO told TPM. “We’ve seen no evidence that the Chamber has actually moved a single politician in the right way. What we heard is they’ve pulled McCain and Graham back from reaching a deal.”

Avendano floated the possibility that Congress might pass a bill without a temporary worker component at all if talks break down, a scenario that Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) and other Republicans working on a bill have said would be a deal breaker.

h/t: TPM

Today in union-hating by Dana Loesch: She is defending right-wing loon and The Dana Show regular Steven Crowder’s false accusations that the union member was “assaulting” him, when in fact it was the other way around.

DanaLoeschRadio.com:

 It’s insane to allege that Crowder — who wasn’t standing near the union member, who appeared to trip over his own feet rather than was “pushed,” and who had his back turned and turned with hands up in a non-threatening manner — pushed the union member. Where is Dunnings’ evidence? Why didn’t the union bring charges? Because it’s a bogus assertion. 

Prosecutor Stuart Dunnings said he didn’t obtain the full video until he got it from a far left group which is an absolute, outright lie as the full, unedited video was posted by Crowder when he posted the edited-for-TV video.The full, unedited video was always available.
Dunnings is simply protecting the union members behind the riot which saw them destroy property, put women and children in harm’s way, and assault those who were videotaped simply asking questions. It’s an embarrassment to the office in which he serves.

Dunnings did his job properly, and this is typical of her to demonize unions.


The Lansing State Journal, on the other hand, called out Crowder’s phony baloney:

Eclectablog:

It turns out that I was 100% correct. Ingham County Prosecutor Stuart Dunnings III is not filing charges in the incident because Crowder provided him with highly-edited video and the full, unedited version shows that his “attacker” was simply defending himself. 

Nice try Crowder. You’re a fraud and now everybody knows it.

Loesch and Crowder both are manipulative liars.

(Cross-Posted From DanaBusted.blgospot.com )

If President Barack Obama nominates Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Thomas Perez to head the Department of Labor, as media reports say he might, the president will be elevating one of the most effective and progressive senior administration officials to his cabinet. 

“If he were to be picked, I think he would be an excellent labor secretary,” says Eliseo Medina, treasurer of the Service Employees International Union. “This is a guy who has been dealing with issues that really matter to working people in this country.”

When Perez was nominated to head the Department of Justice’s civil rights division, some congressional Republicans sought to block his confirmation over since discredited allegations regarding a voter intimidation case involving the New Black Panther Party and Perez’s advocacy on behalf of undocumented immigrants. During the Bush years, the division had been marred by partisan politics and declining civil rights enforcement. But since Perez took the helm, the division has blocked partisan voting schemes, cracked down on police brutality, protected gay and lesbian students from harassment, sued anti-immigrant Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio for racial profiling, stood up against Islamophobia, and forced the two largest fair-housing settlements in history from banks that discriminated against minority homeowners.

Perez says he doesn’t think of civil rights as a partisan issue—he takes pride in the factthat he was first hired by the civil rights division as a career attorney under President George H.W. Bush. But now that conservatives are working hard to roll back civil-rights-era legislation, Perez’s unapologetic civil rights advocacy stands out and makes him a target for the right. 

Before Perez ran the civil rights division, he was chosen by Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley to head the state’s Department of Labor, Licensing, and Regulation. In this position, he earned plaudits from unions for taking a hard line against employers who were dodging overtime pay, benefits, and taxes by classifying employees as independent contractors. ”They were basically cheating their workers out of payment and other benefits to which they’re entitled,” says Lynn Rhinehart, general counsel at the AFL-CIO. Some of the workers classified as “contractors” were doing dangerous work, such as construction, yet because they were not employees, they could be denied worker’s compensation if injured on the job. Perez pushed for new state legislation to eliminate the practice by imposing stiff penalties on employers who break the law. The bill was signed into law by O’Malley in 2009. Fred Mason, head of the Maryland branch of the AFL-CIO, praised Perez’s “tenacity” in helping to get the new rules passed. “This is someone who understands the relationship between worker rights and human rights,” he says. 

Immigration reform advocates have high hopes for Perez, the child of exiles from the Dominican Republic. Gustavo Torres, head of the immigrant advocacy organization CASA de Maryland, told Mother Jones last year that while serving on the group’s board, Perez played a key role in turning the organization into an influential force. “We were a very small organization; we were dreaming of how we could make a difference,” Torres said. Perez “helped us develop a strategic plan to expand the organization around the state.” Perez, Torres said, “truly believes in integrating the immigrant community, and believes in comprehensive immigration reform.”

But Perez has made political enemies, too. Chief among them is Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), the ranking Republican on the Senate judiciary committee, who has been harshly critical of the civil rights division’s aggressive approach. The politicization of the civil rights division in the Bush era has been well documented, but Grassley accused Perez and the current division of similar behavior. Grassley signed a 2010 letter to Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) accusing the division of “widespread politicization and possible corruption” related to the discredited allegations regarding the New Black Panther Party. In 2011, Grassley complained that too many new hires at the civil rights division had previously worked for “liberal advocacy groups,” by which he meant civil rights organizations.

Grassley and other congressional Republicans’ latest accusation is that Perez improperly influenced a decision by the city of St. Paul, Minnesota, to withdraw its attempt to get the Supreme Court to hear a fair-housing case. The lawsuit stemmed from what the city saw as a crackdown on slumlords cynically exploiting civil rights law, and what some property owners claimed was an attempt to use building codes to displace low-income and minority renters so their neighborhoods could be gentrified. Conservatives hoped that the case would lead to a Supreme Court ruling that housing practices with a disparate impact on minorities do not violate the Fair Housing Act.

Grassley has accused Perez of convincing St. Paul to drop its federal appeal in exchange for the feds not intervening in an unrelated lawsuit, in which the city stands to lose nearly $200 million in federal grant money. That case has a racial angle too: The plaintiffs are accusing the city of misusing those federal dollars by discriminating against white workers.

If Perez is nominated, Senate Republicans will gather whatever ammunition they can—even if Grassley’s allegations prove unfounded—simply because Perez boasts the sort of résumé progressives want for a cabinet secretary. Both sides, no doubt, will see him as a nominee worth fighting over.

h/t: Adam Serwer at Mother Jones

Yesterday’s 13-hour filibuster got Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) the spotlight on CNN, a #filibuster twitter feed, and lots of buzz. Unlike other GOP-led filibusters in recent years, Paul’s supposedly had a purpose other than blocking routine legislation and presidential appointments. In delaying John O. Brennan’s confirmation as head of the Central Intelligence Agency, Paul claimed that he wanted to spark discussion about the president’s policy for using drones on American soil, against American citizens. Now, even more people want him to run for president.

Paul received gushing admiration from progressives and conservatives alike. Atlantic Wire reporter Elspeth Reeve raves, “This Is What a Filibuster Should Be,” Slate magazine’s John Vorhees compares him to the protagonist in the iconic , feel-good political drama, “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,” and Cenk Uygur from The Young Turks tweets, “The Young Turks is literally trying to deliver a pizza to Rand Paul on the Senate floor. #filibuster going for 9 hours now, must be hungry.” Given the reason Paul ended his filibuster after 13 hours on the floor, perhaps Paul’s admirers should have delivered a porta-potty instead.

Paul appeals to some liberals due to their mutual mistrust of drones, support for loosening federal marijuana laws, and some of his stances on civil liberties. Many of us were also struck by the part of his unofficial Tea Party State of the Union response which declared that the U.S. “military spending is not immune to waste and fraud.” We all appreciate a politician who seems to stand by their principles — even when we disagree with them.

But …. WAIT! We progressives need to take a giant step back and remember who Rand Paul really is: An obstructionist, narrow minded teabagger who wants to destroy the government. Because when that warm, fuzzy Mr. -Smith-Goes-To-Washington glow subsides, be afraid, VERY afraid:

1. He’s got a “thing” for Strom Thurmond: Paul concluded his speech with an admiring allusion to the pro-segregation bigot and late Senator Strom Thurmond (D-SC), who once stood on the Senate floor and filibustered the Civil Rights Act of 1957 for a record 24 hours and 18 minutes:

“And I would go on for another 12 hours to try to break Strom Thurmond’s record, but I’ve discovered that there are some limits to filibustering, and I’m gonna have to take care of one of those in a few minutes here.”

So why did Paul fall 11 hours and 42 minutes short of beating Thurmond’s record? According to Julie Weiner’s piece in Vanity Fair, Thurmond did take one bathroom break “just once, during a few-minute break to update the Congressional Record.” In addition, he brought provisions, dehydrated himself in a steam room so he wouldn’t need to pee, and read state statutes and other government texts aloud. Back then, men were men, racists were “Racists” with a capital “R,” and farm animals were skeered sh*tless.

2. He opposes the Civil Rights Act: Speaking of the Civil Rights Act (which evolved into the one signed by Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964), Rand Paul opposes that, too. In an April 17th, 2010 interview with the Courier-Journal’s editorial board in Louisville, KY, Paul responded as follows to a question about whether he would have supported the Civil Rights Act of 1964:

I like the Civil Rights Act in the sense that it ended discrimination in all public domains, and I’m, um, all in favor of that … [trails off, editor prompts, “But?” and Paul laughs] I don’t like the idea of telling private business owners … I abhor racism, I think it’s a bad business decision to exclude anyone from a restaurant … BUT, at the same time, I do believe in private ownership. But I think that absolutely there should be no discrimination in anything that gets public funding.

The part about how “there should be no discrimination in anything that gets public funding” sounds reasonable, until you consider that Paul doesn’t think ANYthing should get public funding. Paul also reduces the Jim Crow era’s myriad injustices to “a bad business decision,” because “in a free society, we will tolerate boorish people who have abhorrent behavior.”

Which brings us to this writer’s essential issue with Libertarianism: If the exercise of one person’s freedom violates the freedom of another, then the bigger, stronger, and richer will always win, and that isn’t a government, that’s a nasty, brutish and Hobbesian existence.

3. … AND he opposes the Americans for Disabilities Act (ADA): When NPR’s Robert Siegel interviewed Paul a month later on “All Things Considered,” Paul stuck his foot in his mouth yet AGAIN to reveal that he believes businesses should be allowed to discriminate against disabled folks as well. Though I suppose it technically doesn’t qualify as a “gaffe” when you speak correctly and just happen to have views that are utterly vile:

Right. I think a lot of things could be handled locally. For example, I think that we should try to do everything we can to allow for people with disabilities and handicaps. You know, we do it in our office with wheelchair ramps and things like that. I think if you have a two-story office and you hire someone who’s handicapped, it might be reasonable to let him have an office on the first floor rather than the government saying you have to have a $100,000 elevator. And I think when you get to the solutions like that, the more local the better, and the more common sense the decisions are, rather than having a federal government make those decisions.

Yes, it’s expensive to install an elevator or do major remodelling to help customers and employees with special needs, and it can be hard for smaller companies. But it’s a lot harder to live with disabilities day in and day out, and the least we can do is to modify our buildings so everyone can fully participate in our society with a measure of dignity. Plus, it’s strange how conservatives always mention how hard regulations are on “small businesses,” but they never suggest providing seed money to bring these mom and pops into compliance?

4. He opposes Obamacare: Despite the recent ruling from the United States’ conservative-leaning Supreme Court, Paul insists that the Patient Protection and Affordable Healthcare Act is unconstitutional. According to Scott Wong from Politico, “Obamacare is wrong for Americans. It will destroy our healthcare system.” Um … as if the current healthcare system hasn’t already destroyed our healthcare system? Paul also apparently thinks that he and his fellow teabagger extremists in the Republican Party are above the laws of our land and can declare things unconstitutional, even after our Supreme Court has had what is supposed to be the final say:

“Just because a couple people on the Supreme Court declare something to be ‘constitutional’ does not make it so. The whole thing remains unconstitutional,” Paul said. “While the court may have erroneously come to the conclusion that the law is allowable, it certainly does nothing to make this mandate or government takeover of our health care right.”

Oh, and Paul’s also one of those conspiracy theory nut-jobs who thinks that Obamacare will “deputize” doctors to spy on patients and snitch on gun owners, so the U.S. government can record names in massive database. Never mind that this theory has been debunked numerous times

5. He opposes gun safety laws: And speaking of guns, guess where Paul stands on gun safety laws? Hint: Back in January, Mollie Reilly from the Huffington Post reported that the Kentucky Senator shared the outline of his pro-gun strategy for challenging President Obama’s executive orders on gun safety with Fox News’ Sean Hannity.:

“Our founding fathers were very concerned about us having separation of powers. They didn’t want to let the president become a king. In this bill, [that he introduced] We will nullify anything the president does that smacks of legislation.”

Because, you know how Paul’s fellow party members clamped down when Obama’s predecessor overstepped his bounds, started an illegal war, imprisoned suspected terrorists without due process or trials, and instituted invasive search procedures in all of our airports … oh wait … they never did that.

On Thursday — sounding all bright, chipper, well-rested, and (presumably) empty-bladdered the morning after his 13-hour screed, Paul appeared on Glenn Beck’s radio show and confided that — although he doesn’t want Obama to have access to lethal weapons that could kill American citizens — he’s carrying around some mysterious lethal weapon himself:

“I’m not talking about people who are carrying a rifle around — that would be half of the South, myself included, and half of my staff,”

Yeah, we don’t need no stinkin’ gun safety laws. And in case you have ANY doubt about how Paul feels about guns and our president, here’s the “STOP Obama’s Gun Ban” email he endorsed with the image of a gun pointed at Barack Obama’s head.

6. He supports international tax dodgers: Rand Paul doesn’t just support privacy rights for potential terrorists, he also wants to help tax dodgers.

7. He opposes labor rights: Ian Milheiser from Think Progress observed on Thursday that “Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) took several minutes out of his lengthy talking filibuster” to praise a 1905 Supreme Court decision for Lochner vs. New York, which rejected a New York state law limiting bakers’ work weeks to 60 hours per week.

This case is almost universally regarded as among THE WORST decisions that ever came from the bench. Even the hardcore conservative Robert Bork — a failed Reagan era Supreme Court nominee – called the decision an “abomination” that “lives in the law as the symbol, indeed the quintessence of judicial usurpation of power.”

8. He’s Anti-Choice: Paul constantly talks about “liberty” and “freedom.” Yet, here’s another @sshole in the GOP who rejects the ultimate freedom for women: The freedom to make reproductive choices, reach their full personal and economic potential, and decide when (if ever) to have children … as men do. And (yawn) his casual dismissal of the formidable, charismatic, and well-qualified Ashley Judd’s potential run against his colleague and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) as “articulate” smacks of sexism.

9. He opposes marital equality: So much for the “liberty” Paul’s always going on and on about.

10. He opposes automatic birthright citizenship: So much for Paul’s supposed reverence for the U.S. Constitution and our slave-owning founding fathers. If Paul has his way, babies born on American soil won’t grow up to be U.S. citizens. 

h/t: AddictingInfo.org

When Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) initiated a high-profile effort to bust his state’s public sector unions in 2011, he said that he had no interest in pursuing similar efforts against private sector unions. “Private sector unions are my partner in economic development,” Walker has said. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel noted that he “has consistently downplayed seeking any restrictions on private unions in public statements.”

Walker also said in December that “he wouldn’t pursue any new bills on public or private unions in the coming legislative session.” However, word evidently did not get down to his Republican colleagues, who introduced and are fast-tracking a bill to allow employers to cut hours of union workers without the unions’ consent:

Republicans are hurrying bills through the Wisconsin Legislature that they say could prevent layoffs by allowing companies to cut back workers’ hours, but Democrats on Tuesday called them a renewed GOP attack on unions.

The bills wouldn’t require companies to negotiate with unions about cutting back hours, in contrast to almost all similar laws in other states. But a spokeswoman for the author of the Assembly version of the Wisconsin proposal said there was no intent to harm organized labor.

The Wisconsin GOP is moving this bill under the guise of creating a “work-sharing” program, which is an idea aimed at using government support to allow businesses to cut back worker hours while not laying off employees (with the government picking up the tab for the hours workers miss).

“Republicans began their war on bargaining rights with Act 10, and with this bill they have nowturned their attention to private sector unions,” said state senate Minority Leader Chris Larson (D). “This bill is a clear opening shot at undermining private sector unions.” “The Farrow-Brooks bill says that private sector unions shouldn’t be able to negotiate for their members. It’s one more step toward their goal of ending the right of Wisconsin citizens to have their voice heard in the workplace,” added State Senator Julie Lassa (D).

H/T: Pat Garofalo at Think Progress Economy

WASHINGTON (AP) — In an embarrassing setback for President Barack Obama, a federal appeals court panel ruled Friday that he violated the Constitution in making certain recess appointments and moved to curtail a chief executive’s ability in the future to circumvent the Senate in such scenarios.

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit said that Obama did not have the power to make three recess appointments last year to the National Labor Relations Board because the Senate was officially in session — and not in recess — at the time. If the decision stands, it could invalidate hundreds of board decisions.

The court said the president could only fill vacancies with the recess appointment procedure if the openings arise when the Senate is in an official recess, which it defined as the break between sessions of Congress.

The ruling threw into question Obama’s recess appointment of Richard Cordray to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Cordray’s appointment, also made at the same time, has been challenged in a separate case.

The White House had no immediate comment.

Obama made the recess appointments on Jan. 4, 2012, after Senate Republicans spent months blocking his choices for an agency they contended was biased in favor of unions. Obama claims he acted properly because the Senate was away for the holidays on a 20-day recess. The Constitution allows for such appointments without Senate approval when Congress is in recess.

The three-judge panel, all appointed by Republican presidents, ruled that during one of those pro forma sessions on Jan. 3, the Senate officially convened its second session of the 112th Congress, as required by the Constitution.

“Either the Senate is in session, or it is in recess,” Chief Judge David Sentelle wrote in the 46-page ruling. “If it has broken for three days within an ongoing session, it is not in “the Recess” described in the Constitution.”

Simply taking a break of an evening or a weekend during a regular working session cannot count, he said. Sentelle said that otherwise “the president could make appointments any time the Senate so much as broke for lunch.”

The Obama administration is expected to appeal the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court. But if the ruling stands, it means that hundreds of decisions issued by the board over more than a year would be invalid. It also would leave the five-member labor board with just one validly appointed member, effectively shutting it down. The board is allowed to issue decisions only when it has at least three sitting members.

Obama used the recess appointment to appoint Deputy Labor Secretary Sharon Block, union lawyer Richard Griffin and NLRB counsel Terence Flynn to fill vacancies on the NLRB, giving it a full contingent for the first time in more than a year. Block and Griffin are Democrats, while Flynn is a Republican. Flynn stepped down from the board last year.

The court’s decision is a victory for Republicans and business groups that have been attacking the labor board for issuing a series of decisions and rules that make it easier for the nation’s labor unions to organize new members.

h/t: AP.org