Mitt Romney uses Boeing union issue to appeal to tea party

[TomCADem]

Source: Washington Post

Mitt Romney’s harsh critique Monday of the federal government’s efforts to block Boeing from bringing thousands of non-union jobs to South Carolina was not a new line of attack for Republican presidential candidates who for months have used the conflict to portray the Obama administration as beholden to union bosses.

But the moment did provide a chance for the former Massachusetts governor to take a position fully in step with his party’s conservative wing. Primarily because of his support for a health-care overhaul in his state that became the base for President Obama’s national plan, Romney has struggled to win over tea party activists, whose energy and uncompromising stance on reducing the size and scope of government have redefined the Republican Party.

“It’s the most egregious example of political payback, where the president is able to pay back the unions for their hundreds of millions in political contributions at the expense of American jobs,” Romney said of the National Labor Relations Board’s decision to sue Boeing for trying to move thousands of jobs from unionized facilities in Washington state to a new $1 billion facility in South Carolina, a right-to-work state.

“It’s an assault on business,” Romney said, even going so far as to use the term “union stooges” to describe Obama’s appointees to the NLRB. “It’s an assault on jobs. It’s an assault on states that have right-to-work policies. It’s simply the product of political payback. And frankly, it should not be part of our political system. It’s unseemly.”


Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/mitt-romney-uses-boeing-union-issue-to-appeal-to-tea-party/2011/09/12/gIQAvgUqNK_story.html

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Romney is once again playing up his anti-union beliefs to draw Tea Party support by attacking President Obama's pro-union NLRB appointees. There is a reason why Mitt Romney is corporate America's preferred candidate. He wants to repeal Healthcare Reform, Financial Reform, and gut the National Labor Relations Act.

[tropicanarose]

1. of course the non union jobs would come with terrific benefits and a living wage too, right? rop

insert sarcasm font

[Rincewind]

2. They would pay

just exactly the amount needed to keep the workers from joining the union, and not one cent more. And if anyone at the plant even mentions the union, they will threaten to shut the plant down, and move it out of state, or even out of the country.

[No Elephants]

3. Romney has a very odd idea of what consitutes a "union thug."

Obama's nominees are a career NLRB guy and a career lawyer, the first beng nominated for General Counsel to the Board and the second being nominated to be a board member. https://www.nlrb.gov/news/president-obama-nominates-lafe-solomon-be-general-counsel-terence-f-flynn-be-member-national-la

Oddly, that would still leave a vacancy on the board, which currently has three members. (Full board = five members https://www.nlrb.gov/who-we-are/board

The Chair, Pearce, an Obama interim appointment, was also a lawyer. https://www.nlrb.gov/who-we-are/board/mark-g-pearce-chairman

Some of the above were labor law lawyers, but they could just as easily have represented employers against employees, unions and the Board. Their bios don't say. Regardless of whom they represented, though, again, they were LAWYERS, not thugs.

Craig Becker, board member, another Obama nominee, was a union lawyer--a summa cum laude graduate of Yale Law.

No offense to the muscularly-challenged, but, based on his photo, "thug" is about the last word you might choose to describe him. Looking at him, "scholarly," "bookish," "slight" and "probably mild-mannered" are some of the the words that leap to my mind.

Brian Hayes, another board member and Obama appointee, "had most recently served as Republican Labor Policy Director for the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions." https://www.nlrb.gov/who-we-are/board/brian-hayes

I think an apology from Romney should be demanded.

UTMA. (Union Thugs, My Ass).

[jmowreader]

4. States with "right-to-work" policies SHOULD be assaulted!

Romney may as well hang it up...there's no way he can play crazy enough to appease the teabaggers, especially since he signed an insurance mandate. He's currently backpedaling from it, but the fact remains that his signature is at the bottom of it, and teabaggers don't forget anything except that Republicans controlled both houses of Congress plus the White House when 9/11 and the elimination of the Clinton budget surplus happened.