Here come some more recess appointments. The GOP is gonna howl.
It isn’t just Richard Cordray. Obama is also set to use recess appointments to install his picks to the National Labor Relations Board, according to White House officials and others familiar with ongoing discussions.
The move, which is arguably as impotant as the Cordray appointment, will ratchet up opposition from Republicans and make this an even bigger fight, since they have been attacking the NLRB regularly for its moves to streamline union elections and inform workers of their rights.
Obama is set to appoint Sharon Block, Terence Flynn, and Richard Grifin to the board — something unions have made a big priority for them in the new year. Senate Republicans have opposed the recess appointments to the NLRB on constitutional grounds, but unions charge that Republicans are only interested in rendering the agency inoperative.
Smell the fascism.
Woohoo!! .. what was it Little Tommy Friedman infamously said about Iraq? That’s what this says to McConnell.
Wow. Calvin is unreservedly excited!
It looks like a new year has started.
:swoon:
I guess that’s why Obama looked so happy heading back to Washington from Hawai’i. After 3 years of patience he finally gets to take the gloves off.
Exactly. And he can do this now because it won’t be counterproductive to legislative interests. And because it must feel really really good.
And because he can now be confident of winning the political fight. The general public, and not just political geeks, now understands about GOP obstructionism.
That was my thought too. The more the Republicans bitch and whine about Obama’s recess appointments, the more they’re calling attention to their own misconduct. Not to mention, they’re basically fighting to allow banks to keep ripping off their customers.
Even the liberal great-and-good have spoken. And they say “No”.
They say NO? Actually Drum agrees with it just wants to see the legal brief and Noah right up front says he isn’t a a lawyer and is guessing.
The Pro Forma session is a gimmick employed by both sides not legal precedent. It is time both sides stop using it and get back to doing Presidential appointments they way the Constitution lays it out …. voting
Briefs…lawyers…sounds like Obama will have the GOP spending money suing instead of attack ads.
What a couple of dumb shits. They missed the whole point. They are looking at shiny pennies and Obama is robbing the bank.
Let’s say for the sake of discussion that it isn’t ‘legal’. In order for republicans to prove it they have to take it to the SCOTUS, and the court would have to do an expedited decision. All that time Obama is making speeches asking why they don’t want to help average Americans. Then when the SCOTUS shuts him down, he can point to the court and explain how important 4 more years is. No way the republicans win that public relations battle. Then Romney speaks up, that rich prick ‘who had his baby teeth until he was 25’* telling the American people he opposes these appointments?
The politics are perfect.
*HT Charles Pierce
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This is great news and the same team haters will even have a hard time ripping the President.
O is aligning himself with the working man and consumers while GOP continues to defend the 1%. Perfect.
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Go Obama!
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."To steal a Chuck Norris Fact:
Obama doesn’t sleep, he waits.
These appointments are REALLY important. Because Obama’s appointments to the Board, the NLRB is currently functioning as a protector of worker rights, whether the worker is in a Union or not, unlike the W. Bush appointees who, most typically, had been corporate lawyers before their Board terms.
An NLRB Board member is about to be termed out. If the Republicans had been allowed to block these appointments, the Board would no longer have a quorum of seats filled, and in 2010 the Supreme Court declared that NLRB Board rulings which lack quorum votes could not be enforced. During oral arguments for that Supreme Court case, Chief Justice Roberts said that Obama should use his recess appointment power to fill Board seats so that quorum is achieved.
This should mean that not only are the politics favorable to Obama, but the legal path is clear as well. A caveat: this Court does not always honor its own precedents and principles, nor does it honor stare decisis; also, Roberts is a liar. So, it’s less certain than it should be.
If the NLRB functione as it was intended to for a good stretch of years, it is likely that the decades of stagnant compensation that the lower and middle classes have suffered through could end, and wages and benefits could rise. Today, polls show that more than half of American workers in the private sector say they would like a Union to represent them, bot only 7% have a Union. Poor labor laws, and poor enforcement of the laws whch do exist, is the cause of this. A functioning NLRB is neccesary for the middle class to sustain into the future, and for workers doing low wage jobs to survive and have the lives of dignity they deserve.