Gideon Resnick at The Daily Beast details the reaction to Donald Trump’s attacks on union leader Chuck Jones:
[O]n Thursday, a number of unions throughout the country, who had kept close watch on the situation, expressed disappointment and anger with a future leader of the free world using his position to bash one of their own. After all, Trump put up the best numbers in union households since Ronald Reagan won his second term in 1984.
“The attacks on Chuck Jones, president of United Steelworkers Local 1999, must stop immediately,” Elaine Kim, of 32BJ SEIU, the largest building service workers union in the country, said in a statement to The Daily Beast.
“Jones was doing his job defending working men and women and the families that depend on them by speaking out and sharing the facts about the deal with Carrier. To attack Jones and his family is not only beyond the pale but anti-worker and un-American. To speak the truth is a freedom generations of Americans died for, and worth defending today and forever. We call on those who cherish that freedom, including those in positions of influence, to join us in standing with Chuck Jones, loudly and publicly.”
The message of solidarity was apparently heard loud and clear.
Steven Greenhouse at The Los Angeles Times is up with an excellent takedown of Trump:
In Trump’s two tweets, it was unclear whether he was blaming Jones, the steelworkers union or unions in general for the fact that companies were fleeing the country. It was a doubly confused attack because the Donald J. Trump Collection, which is nonunion, has had many shirts produced in Bangladesh and China and suits made in India and China. Moreover, Trump was wrong to suggest that it’s only unionized factories that flee the country. American companies have also closed many nonunion factories — think apparel and furniture — and outsourced those operations.
Trump’s second tweet had an enigmatic phrase: “spend more time working-less time talking.” There, it was ambiguous whether he was referring to the steelworkers union or to unionized workers in general. If he meant the latter, by asserting that Midwestern workers toil too little and talk too much, he was essentially insulting many of the blue-collar workers who voted for him. If Trump was saying the union itself should spend less time talking, that seems to contradict his assertion that the steelworkers hadn’t done enough to save the Carrier plant. To save it, the union presumably would have needed to talk more, not less, with Carrier.
Paging Melania Trump…
With the full power of the presidency just weeks away, Mr. Trump’s decision to single out Mr. Jones for ridicule has drawn condemnation from historians and White House veterans.
“When you attack a man for living an ordinary life in an ordinary job, it is bullying,” said Nicolle Wallace, who was communications director for President George W. Bush and a top strategist to other Republicans. “It is cyberbullying. This is a strategy to bully somebody who dissents. That’s what is dark and disturbing.”
Robert Dallek, a presidential historian, called the verbal attack unprecedented and added: “It’s beneath the dignity of the office. He doesn’t seem to understand that.”
Margaret Hartmann points out that the Carrier deal will ultimately kill more jobs:
In exchange for $7 million in tax breaks from the state of Indiana over the next decade, Carrier agreed to invest $16 million in its in-state facilities. (Carrier is still moving 600 jobs from the Indianapolis plant – and all 700 jobs from its Huntington, Indiana facility – to Mexico.) United Technologies CEO Greg Hayes admitted in an interview with CNBC earlier this week that the money will mostly go toward automation, telling Jim Cramer.
Turning to cabinet appointments, The New York Times details why Andrew Puzder is the wrong choice for Labor Secretary:
The central problem for workers today is persistently low pay, even at profitable companies with highly paid executives. Mr. Puzder, however, has been adamantly opposed to a meaningful increase in the federal minimum wage, which is $7.25 an hour. Mr. Trump has said he could stomach an increase to $10, which is still abysmal. Ideally, a labor secretary, who is supposed to have a deeper understanding of this issue, would push for much more. But Mr. Puzder has said that a big raise would mean fewer jobs for workers starting out. Even if that was true, and the evidence suggests otherwise, there are millions more who would benefit from raising the minimum wage.
Joan Walsh at The Nation says Democrats should fight all of Donald Trump’s nominees:
[S]o far, presented with these political gifts, Democrats have been fairly silent. They’ve pledged to fight Sessions, and they should, but no one else has come in for much attack, although today Senator Ed Markey said he would oppose Pruitt’s nomination to head the EPA, and Schumer had some tough words for Pudzer as labor secretary. That’s good news, but it’s not enough.
On one level, I understand the need for Democrats to “pick their battles.” They may be more likely to win GOP support to actually block a nominee or two by being selective. But no one has yet marshaled an argument to Trump voters that they’ve been hoodwinked: that the outsider candidate has picked a cabinet of insiders, who make an utter mockery of his promises to look out for the “forgotten man.” Democrats should be making the case, as Ben Adler argues in The Guardian, that Trump is “a self-dealing political profiteer and a tool of the business and political elite.” Jeff Hauser of the Revolving Door Project has suggested that Democrats refuse to consider any appointments until Trump discloses and then divests himself of his global and largely secret financial empire—especially since we can’t trust Trump’s picks to monitor his self-dealing.
Paul Waldman points out that Democrats must also stand firm and not help Republicans dismantle progress on health care and health insurance:
There are times when being the party of no is smart not just for political reasons, but for substantive ones as well. This is one of those times.[...] soon enough, Republicans will own health care. If and when they pass some form of repeal and some form of replacement, they'll be on the hook for everything anyone doesn't like about the American health care system. Premium increases? Republicans' fault. Narrow provider networks? Republicans' fault. High copays? Republicans' fault. Can't afford coverage? Republicans' fault. Had to wait 45 minutes and the doctor was rude to you? Republicans' fault. Now they'll see what Barack Obama has been dealing with.
On a final note, author Homer Hickam pens a poignant tribute to John Glenn:
Mark Twain famously said that God looks after fools, drunks and the United States of America. Add to that somewhat tongue-in-cheek maxim a certain American hero named John Glenn. Trudging along for years as a dispassionate politician, he caught fire again when he got it into his head to fly aboard the Space Shuttle in 1998. By all accounts, once he secured a seat, he gloried in every second of the training and his days in space. It is my hope that during that time, the optimism of the New Frontier returned to Glenn’s life. For the spirit he gave a beleaguered nation so long ago, it was the least we Americans could do for him.