Most of the carnage — the terrible illnesses and the premature deaths — is hidden.
“The people in those agencies who issue the permits, and then do very little monitoring and very little enforcement in our communities, they don’t go with us to the emergency rooms where the children are suffering from serious asthma attacks. And they certainly don’t go with us to the funeral homes where we bury people who are 40 years old and have died of cancer. They don’t see the terrible damage that this stuff is doing.”
Monique Harden, a lawyer and director of a human rights agency in New Orleans, was talking about a problem that will get no attention at all in the Congressional elections, which are primarily about foolishness and the compulsion to deceive.
The evidence has been before us for decades that black people, other ethnic minorities and some poor whites have been getting sick and enduring horrible deaths from the filth that they breathe, eat, drink and otherwise ingest from the garbage dumps, landfills, incinerators, toxic waste sites, oil refineries, petrochemical plants and other world-class generators of pollution that have been deliberately and relentlessly installed in the neighborhoods where they live, work, worship and go to school.
Two colossal environmental debacles occurred, for example, in West Anniston, Ala., a neighborhood that is mostly black and mostly poor. A chemical plant conveniently located there produced thousands of pounds of potentially deadly polychlorinated biphenyls (PCB’s) each year. For years after the danger was apparent, residents were left uninformed. Some were later found to have the highest concentrations of PCB’s in their bloodstreams of anyone ever tested.
But the PCB’s from the chemical plant were just one of many risks faced by the residents. In 2003 the military began burning deadly chemical weapons stored at the Anniston Army Depot in West Anniston. Emissions associated with burning chemical weapons include dioxins, PCB’s, furans, heavy metals and trace amounts of nerve and mustard gas agents.
The Rev. Henry Sterling, a pastor in Anniston, told me with great sadness how he had buried his niece who had died from cancer when she was just 30, and then two days later had to bury two other women in their 20’s, and then the following week two more women in their late 20’s.
He added, “My secretary was from here, and she was just 32 when she died from cancer. We have young men dying, too. But during that short period it just happened to be all women. ”
We’ve known — or should have known — since at least 1987, when a landmark study was published by the Commission on Racial Justice of the United Church of Christ, that wildly disproportionate numbers of hazardous waste sites have been placed in communities with large concentrations of black and Latino residents.
Since then an enormous amount of data has been compiled showing that government and industry alike have used black and poor neighborhoods as dumping grounds for the vilest and most dangerous of pollutants. You go to these communities, where the air can be thick enough to make you gag, and you find that the rates of cancer, heart disease, stroke and the like are off the charts.
The largest hazardous waste landfill in America is near the small, rural town of Emelle, in Sumter County, which is part of the so-called “black belt” of Alabama. It takes in hazardous materials from 48 states and some foreign countries. More than 70 percent of the Sumter County population, and more than 90 percent of the population of Emelle, is black.
The systematic placement of garbage dumps, chemical plants, oil refineries and other hazardous facilities in communities inhabited primarily by blacks and other disadvantaged groups is nothing less than an unconscionable extension of the devastating Jim Crow policies that have existed in one form or another, legally or illegally, since slavery.
More than 70 environmental, human rights and public health groups participated in a bus tour last week — dubbed “The Environmental Justice for All Tour” — that visited communities across the country that have suffered terrible damage from these blatantly discriminatory policies.
The tour was enthusiastically received at each stop, but got hardly any attention from the larger society. The message to blacks and others struggling with these hideous policies could not have been clearer: we are not in the least interested in you.
Visit The Babbling Academy
Wednesday, October 04, 2006
"The List"
David Corn
There's a list going around. Those disseminating it call it "The List." It's a roster of top-level Republican congressional aides who are gay.
On CBS News on Tuesday, correspondent Gloria Borger reported that there's anger among House Republicans at what an unidentified House GOPer called a "network of gay staffers and gay members who protect each other and did the Speaker a disservice." The implication is that these gay Republicans somehow helped page-pursuing Mark Foley before his ugly (and possibly illegal) conduct was exposed. The List--drawn up by gay politicos--is a partial accounting of who on Capitol Hill might be in that network.
I have a copy. I'm not going to publish it. For one, I don't know for a fact that the men on the list are gay. And generally I don't fancy outing people--though I have not objected when others have outed gay Republicans, who, after all, work for a party that tries to limit the rights of gays and lesbians and that welcomes the support of those who demonize same-sexers.
What's interesting about The List--which includes nine chiefs of staffs, two press secretaries, and two directors of communications--is that (if it's acucurate) it shows that some of the religious right's favorite representatives and senators have gay staffers helping them advance their political careers and agendas. These include Representative Katherine Harris and Henry Hyde and Senators Bill Frist, George Allen, Mitch McConnell and Rick Santorum. Should we salute these legislators for being open-minded enough to have such tolerant hiring practices? After all, Santorum in a 2003 AP interview compared homosexuality to bestiality, incest and polygamy. It would be rather big of Santorum to employ a fellow who engages in activity akin to such horrors. That is, if Santorum knows about his orientation.
Let's be clear about one thing: the Mark Foley scandal is not about homosexuality. Some family value conservatives are suggesting it is. But anytime a gay Republican is outed by events, a dicey issue is raised: what about those GOPers who are gay and who serve a party that is anti-gay? Are they hypocrites, opportunists, or just confused individuals? Is it possible to support a party because you adhere to most of its tenets--even if that party refuses to recognize you as a full citizen? The men on The List might want to think hard about these questions--as they probably already have--for if I have a copy of The List, there's a good chance it will be appearing soon on a website near everyone.
There's a list going around. Those disseminating it call it "The List." It's a roster of top-level Republican congressional aides who are gay.
On CBS News on Tuesday, correspondent Gloria Borger reported that there's anger among House Republicans at what an unidentified House GOPer called a "network of gay staffers and gay members who protect each other and did the Speaker a disservice." The implication is that these gay Republicans somehow helped page-pursuing Mark Foley before his ugly (and possibly illegal) conduct was exposed. The List--drawn up by gay politicos--is a partial accounting of who on Capitol Hill might be in that network.
I have a copy. I'm not going to publish it. For one, I don't know for a fact that the men on the list are gay. And generally I don't fancy outing people--though I have not objected when others have outed gay Republicans, who, after all, work for a party that tries to limit the rights of gays and lesbians and that welcomes the support of those who demonize same-sexers.
What's interesting about The List--which includes nine chiefs of staffs, two press secretaries, and two directors of communications--is that (if it's acucurate) it shows that some of the religious right's favorite representatives and senators have gay staffers helping them advance their political careers and agendas. These include Representative Katherine Harris and Henry Hyde and Senators Bill Frist, George Allen, Mitch McConnell and Rick Santorum. Should we salute these legislators for being open-minded enough to have such tolerant hiring practices? After all, Santorum in a 2003 AP interview compared homosexuality to bestiality, incest and polygamy. It would be rather big of Santorum to employ a fellow who engages in activity akin to such horrors. That is, if Santorum knows about his orientation.
Let's be clear about one thing: the Mark Foley scandal is not about homosexuality. Some family value conservatives are suggesting it is. But anytime a gay Republican is outed by events, a dicey issue is raised: what about those GOPers who are gay and who serve a party that is anti-gay? Are they hypocrites, opportunists, or just confused individuals? Is it possible to support a party because you adhere to most of its tenets--even if that party refuses to recognize you as a full citizen? The men on The List might want to think hard about these questions--as they probably already have--for if I have a copy of The List, there's a good chance it will be appearing soon on a website near everyone.
Hastert Lies Again, Gets Caught Again
The Nation
Apparently, the Speaker of the House thinks that no one who actually follows the news listens to conservative talk radio.
That's the only explanation for Hastert's claim, during a Tuesday attempt at face saving on Rush Limbaugh's show, that he and other GOP leaders had forced Florida Congressman Mark Foley to quit after it was revealed that the Republican representative had been sending "Do I make you horny?" emails to teenage Congressional pages.
"We took care of Mr. Foley," Hastert told Limbaugh. "We found out about it, asked him to resign. He did resign. He's gone."
Sounds good. There's only one problem.
Hastert was making the whole thing up.
Foley quit after the news of the emails was broken by ABC's Brian Ross. There has never been any indication that the congressman spoke with members of the Republican leadership. Indeed, by all accounts, including those of Hastert's office, Foley quit of his own accord before consulting in any way with the Speaker or any other Republican leader.
Apparently, the Speaker of the House thinks that no one who actually follows the news listens to conservative talk radio.
That's the only explanation for Hastert's claim, during a Tuesday attempt at face saving on Rush Limbaugh's show, that he and other GOP leaders had forced Florida Congressman Mark Foley to quit after it was revealed that the Republican representative had been sending "Do I make you horny?" emails to teenage Congressional pages.
"We took care of Mr. Foley," Hastert told Limbaugh. "We found out about it, asked him to resign. He did resign. He's gone."
Sounds good. There's only one problem.
Hastert was making the whole thing up.
Foley quit after the news of the emails was broken by ABC's Brian Ross. There has never been any indication that the congressman spoke with members of the Republican leadership. Indeed, by all accounts, including those of Hastert's office, Foley quit of his own accord before consulting in any way with the Speaker or any other Republican leader.
Tuesday, October 03, 2006
MAUREEN DOWD Don’t Pass the Salted Peanuts, Henry
Tom Lehrer said that political satire was rendered obsolete when Henry Kissinger won a Nobel Peace Prize for prolonging the Vietnam War.
But even the inventive Lehrer could never have imagined that Dr. Strangelove would get a second chance to contribute to misleading the public about a military catastrophe in a misunderstood land — a do-over in scarring the American psyche and reputation in profound ways.
Yet, as Bob Woodward reveals in “State of Denial,” the sequel to “Bush is a Genius,” Mr. Kissinger has been one of the few trusted outside advisers that W. has listened to on Iraq. The administration has shaped its policy to hew to the 83-year-old Unwise Man’s belief that the only way to beat an insurgency is to stick it out, no matter how many American kids and foreign civilians die.
Especially if elections are coming up. As the historian Robert Dallek, who is writing a book on Nixon and Kissinger, notes, “Kissinger was complicit in using foreign policy to try to save Nixon during Watergate.”
Bob Haldeman wrote in his diary on Dec. 15, 1970, using “K” for Kissinger and “P” for President Nixon: “K came in and the discussion covered some of the general thinking about Vietnam and the P’s big peace plan for next year, which K later told me he does not favor. He thinks that any pullout next year would be a serious mistake because the adverse reaction to it could set in well before the ’72 elections. He favors, instead, a continued winding down and then a pullout right at the fall of ’72 so that if any bad results follow they will be too late to affect the election. It seems to make sense.”
Thirty-five years later, Mr. Kissinger, the consummate fawner, was once more able to sway a president with faux deference. Dr. K encouraged W. to play the tough guy on the war, even though he’d never gone to war himself.
In September 2005, Mr. Woodward writes, W.’s head speechwriter, Mike Gerson, visited Mr. Kissinger and received a lecture declaring that the only exit strategy for Iraq was victory and a copy of the diplomat’s “salted peanut memo” from 1969, warning against resisting pressure to withdraw troops from Vietnam: “Withdrawal of U.S. troops will become like salted peanuts to the American public; the more U.S. troops come home, the more will be demanded.”
It’s the kind of logic that makes Dr. K such a valuable counselor to a president who has already declared privately that his midterm election strategy is to tar the Democrats this way: “Surrender and taxes.”
The shrink-wrapped president did not consult his own father before going to war against the same dictator. And, moving from Dr. Strangelove to Dr. Freud, two of W.’s top war counselors — Rummy and Henry the K — are men who did not bother to conceal their contempt for Bush senior as a naïve lightweight.
As Mr. Woodward notes, part of Rummy’s allure for W. was the fact that Poppy Bush considered him an arrogant, Machiavellian sort who could get you in deep doo-doo. “It was a chance,” Mr. Woodward says, “to prove his father wrong.” Or right.
It’s been clear for years that Dick Cheney and Rummy have been using the Bush presidency like an elaborate vanity production to replay Watergate and Vietnam, and to try to reverse things that bothered them during prior stints in the Nixon and Ford administrations.
As Mr. Cheney told his pal Rummy when W. gave him a second crack — a quarter-century later — at the defense chief job: “Get it right this time.”
The vice president has been diabolically successful in exploiting 9/11 to restore the Imperial Presidency to where it was before Congress and the public became such Nosy Parkers after Watergate. Mr. Cheney and Rummy have been less successful in their attempt to exorcise the post-Vietnam American skittishness about using force; their abysmal misadventure in Iraq has only reinforced it.
Mr. Kissinger’s reasoning for favoring war in Iraq had none of the idealistic gloss about democracy that the president came up with later. Like Mr. Cheney, he thought it was a good idea to invade Iraq not because it was strong, but because it was weak. “We need to humiliate” radical Islam, he told Mr. Gerson, and send the message that “we’re not going to live in this world that they want for us.”
Half a century of foreign affairs experience, and he still doesn’t understand that humiliating young Arab men — and occupying Muslim land — just radicalizes them? We’re expanding terror at a cost of about $6 billion a month.
Visit The Babbling Academy
But even the inventive Lehrer could never have imagined that Dr. Strangelove would get a second chance to contribute to misleading the public about a military catastrophe in a misunderstood land — a do-over in scarring the American psyche and reputation in profound ways.
Yet, as Bob Woodward reveals in “State of Denial,” the sequel to “Bush is a Genius,” Mr. Kissinger has been one of the few trusted outside advisers that W. has listened to on Iraq. The administration has shaped its policy to hew to the 83-year-old Unwise Man’s belief that the only way to beat an insurgency is to stick it out, no matter how many American kids and foreign civilians die.
Especially if elections are coming up. As the historian Robert Dallek, who is writing a book on Nixon and Kissinger, notes, “Kissinger was complicit in using foreign policy to try to save Nixon during Watergate.”
Bob Haldeman wrote in his diary on Dec. 15, 1970, using “K” for Kissinger and “P” for President Nixon: “K came in and the discussion covered some of the general thinking about Vietnam and the P’s big peace plan for next year, which K later told me he does not favor. He thinks that any pullout next year would be a serious mistake because the adverse reaction to it could set in well before the ’72 elections. He favors, instead, a continued winding down and then a pullout right at the fall of ’72 so that if any bad results follow they will be too late to affect the election. It seems to make sense.”
Thirty-five years later, Mr. Kissinger, the consummate fawner, was once more able to sway a president with faux deference. Dr. K encouraged W. to play the tough guy on the war, even though he’d never gone to war himself.
In September 2005, Mr. Woodward writes, W.’s head speechwriter, Mike Gerson, visited Mr. Kissinger and received a lecture declaring that the only exit strategy for Iraq was victory and a copy of the diplomat’s “salted peanut memo” from 1969, warning against resisting pressure to withdraw troops from Vietnam: “Withdrawal of U.S. troops will become like salted peanuts to the American public; the more U.S. troops come home, the more will be demanded.”
It’s the kind of logic that makes Dr. K such a valuable counselor to a president who has already declared privately that his midterm election strategy is to tar the Democrats this way: “Surrender and taxes.”
The shrink-wrapped president did not consult his own father before going to war against the same dictator. And, moving from Dr. Strangelove to Dr. Freud, two of W.’s top war counselors — Rummy and Henry the K — are men who did not bother to conceal their contempt for Bush senior as a naïve lightweight.
As Mr. Woodward notes, part of Rummy’s allure for W. was the fact that Poppy Bush considered him an arrogant, Machiavellian sort who could get you in deep doo-doo. “It was a chance,” Mr. Woodward says, “to prove his father wrong.” Or right.
It’s been clear for years that Dick Cheney and Rummy have been using the Bush presidency like an elaborate vanity production to replay Watergate and Vietnam, and to try to reverse things that bothered them during prior stints in the Nixon and Ford administrations.
As Mr. Cheney told his pal Rummy when W. gave him a second crack — a quarter-century later — at the defense chief job: “Get it right this time.”
The vice president has been diabolically successful in exploiting 9/11 to restore the Imperial Presidency to where it was before Congress and the public became such Nosy Parkers after Watergate. Mr. Cheney and Rummy have been less successful in their attempt to exorcise the post-Vietnam American skittishness about using force; their abysmal misadventure in Iraq has only reinforced it.
Mr. Kissinger’s reasoning for favoring war in Iraq had none of the idealistic gloss about democracy that the president came up with later. Like Mr. Cheney, he thought it was a good idea to invade Iraq not because it was strong, but because it was weak. “We need to humiliate” radical Islam, he told Mr. Gerson, and send the message that “we’re not going to live in this world that they want for us.”
Half a century of foreign affairs experience, and he still doesn’t understand that humiliating young Arab men — and occupying Muslim land — just radicalizes them? We’re expanding terror at a cost of about $6 billion a month.
Visit The Babbling Academy
Judge: Patriot Act challenge can proceed
Nearly three years after hearing arguments in the case, a federal judge has ruled that an American Civil Liberties Union challenge to the constitutionality of the USA Patriot Act may proceed.
The ACLU's clients, including Muslim charities, social services organizations and advocacy groups, have shown they have been harmed by the anti-terrorism law adopted after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, U.S. District Judge Denise Page Hood said in a 15-page ruling issued Friday.
The lawsuit was filed in July 2003 on behalf of the Muslim Community Association of Ann Arbor and five other nonprofit groups. The ACLU said its clients had been hurt by the Patriot Act because fear of the law has kept many people from attending religious services and making charitable donations.
It was the first legal challenge to the part of the Patriot Act that let agents obtain such things as library lists and medical information.
--MORE--
The ACLU's clients, including Muslim charities, social services organizations and advocacy groups, have shown they have been harmed by the anti-terrorism law adopted after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, U.S. District Judge Denise Page Hood said in a 15-page ruling issued Friday.
The lawsuit was filed in July 2003 on behalf of the Muslim Community Association of Ann Arbor and five other nonprofit groups. The ACLU said its clients had been hurt by the Patriot Act because fear of the law has kept many people from attending religious services and making charitable donations.
It was the first legal challenge to the part of the Patriot Act that let agents obtain such things as library lists and medical information.
--MORE--
Colorado man says he was arrested after criticizing Cheney
A Colorado man filed a lawsuit in federal court Tuesday accusing a Secret Service agent of arresting him on trumped-up allegations of assaulting Vice President Dick Cheney after he told Cheney the administration's policies in Iraq were "reprehensible."
The lawsuit said Howards saw Cheney in a crowd, shaking hands and posing for photos. He said he walked to within 3 feet of Cheney and told him, "I think your policies in Iraq are reprehensible," and then left. In an interview, Howards said he may have touched Cheney on the elbow or shoulder, like others in the crowd did.
----
Minutes later, when he was returning through the area, Secret Service agent Virgil D. "Gus" Reichle Jr. questioned him, handcuffed him and told him he would be charged with assaulting the vice president, the lawsuit said. When Reichle took him to the Eagle County jail, however, he told deputies to issue him a summons on a state charge of harassment, the lawsuit said. Howards said the harassment charge was dropped less than a month later at the request of the district attorney.
---
It was at least the second lawsuit filed in Colorado by people who say they were singled out for criticizing the administration. Three people who were kicked out of President Bush's town hall meeting in Denver in March 2003 alleged they were told to leave because of a "No blood for oil" bumper sticker on their car.
--MORE--
The lawsuit said Howards saw Cheney in a crowd, shaking hands and posing for photos. He said he walked to within 3 feet of Cheney and told him, "I think your policies in Iraq are reprehensible," and then left. In an interview, Howards said he may have touched Cheney on the elbow or shoulder, like others in the crowd did.
----
Minutes later, when he was returning through the area, Secret Service agent Virgil D. "Gus" Reichle Jr. questioned him, handcuffed him and told him he would be charged with assaulting the vice president, the lawsuit said. When Reichle took him to the Eagle County jail, however, he told deputies to issue him a summons on a state charge of harassment, the lawsuit said. Howards said the harassment charge was dropped less than a month later at the request of the district attorney.
---
It was at least the second lawsuit filed in Colorado by people who say they were singled out for criticizing the administration. Three people who were kicked out of President Bush's town hall meeting in Denver in March 2003 alleged they were told to leave because of a "No blood for oil" bumper sticker on their car.
--MORE--
Terror Inmates' Mail Still Goes Unread
WASHINGTON - Mail for convicted terrorists and other dangerous federal inmates isn't being fully read by prison authorities, and that is a risk to national security, a Justice Department review concluded Tuesday.
The U.S. Bureau of Prisons is supposed to translate and screen all mail to and from the highest-risk inmates - including terrorists, gang members and spies - for evidence of criminal activity. But that target was not being met consistently at 10 federal prisons and detention centers surveyed by the Justice Department's inspector general.
"The threat remains that terrorist and other high-risk inmates can use mail and verbal communications to conduct terrorist or criminal activities while incarcerated," concluded the report by Inspector General Glenn A. Fine. It urged the Bureau of Prisons to correct quickly the security gap, including putting tracking systems in place to ensure all high-risk inmate mail is read and analyzed.
A Bureau of Prisons spokesman said the agency agrees with the review's recommendations in whole or in part. But it is largely too cash-strapped to afford enough staff to sort through the thousands of letters and other pieces of mail federal prisons receive each week - what Bureau of Prisons Director Harley G. Lappin described to inspectors as searching for "a needle in a haystack." ....
The U.S. Bureau of Prisons is supposed to translate and screen all mail to and from the highest-risk inmates - including terrorists, gang members and spies - for evidence of criminal activity. But that target was not being met consistently at 10 federal prisons and detention centers surveyed by the Justice Department's inspector general.
"The threat remains that terrorist and other high-risk inmates can use mail and verbal communications to conduct terrorist or criminal activities while incarcerated," concluded the report by Inspector General Glenn A. Fine. It urged the Bureau of Prisons to correct quickly the security gap, including putting tracking systems in place to ensure all high-risk inmate mail is read and analyzed.
A Bureau of Prisons spokesman said the agency agrees with the review's recommendations in whole or in part. But it is largely too cash-strapped to afford enough staff to sort through the thousands of letters and other pieces of mail federal prisons receive each week - what Bureau of Prisons Director Harley G. Lappin described to inspectors as searching for "a needle in a haystack." ....
Anti-Labor NLRB Redefines Union Eligibilility
WASHINGTON - Health care industry workers permanently assigned as "charge nurses" should be considered supervisory and thus ineligible for union representation, a federal panel held Tuesday in a decision with sweeping implications for the broader labor force.
The National Labor Relations Board, in a 3-2 ruling, also said people who work supervisory shifts only on a rotating basis may be exempt from supervisory status in some cases, but not others, depending on the frequency and consistency of the supervisory shifts.
The decision in the so-called "Kentucky River" cases was long awaited by both organized labor and business.
AFL-CIO President John Sweeney immediately denounced it, saying the ruling invites employers "to strip millions of workers of their right to have a union by reclassifying them as 'supervisors' in name only."
"It's a big blow to workers who want to be in a union," said Nancy Schiffer, an attorney for the AFL-CIO. "If an employer gives you supervisory responsibility, you lose the right to have a voice at work."
The decision was one of three related rulings issued Tuesday, grouped as the "Kentucky River" cases because they were intended to clarify the supervisor question from a case several years ago involving Kentucky River Community Care Inc.
Labor unions had been closely watching the decision in the case of Oakwood Health Care, involving an acute care facility in Michigan - concerned that thousands of workers now under union protection could lose their federal protection under labor law. They were trying to determine how the decision could affect supervisors in a broad range of industries.
Sweeney said the NLRB is dominated by Bush administration lawyers. He also noted a dissenting view, which said the ruling "threatens to create a new class of workers under federal labor law: workers who have neither the genuine prerogatives of management, not the statutory rights of ordinary employees."
He charged that the NLRB has been chipping away at union rights through decisions limiting the eligibility of other groups of workers - the disabled, temporary employees and teaching assistants - to join unions. ....
The National Labor Relations Board, in a 3-2 ruling, also said people who work supervisory shifts only on a rotating basis may be exempt from supervisory status in some cases, but not others, depending on the frequency and consistency of the supervisory shifts.
The decision in the so-called "Kentucky River" cases was long awaited by both organized labor and business.
AFL-CIO President John Sweeney immediately denounced it, saying the ruling invites employers "to strip millions of workers of their right to have a union by reclassifying them as 'supervisors' in name only."
"It's a big blow to workers who want to be in a union," said Nancy Schiffer, an attorney for the AFL-CIO. "If an employer gives you supervisory responsibility, you lose the right to have a voice at work."
The decision was one of three related rulings issued Tuesday, grouped as the "Kentucky River" cases because they were intended to clarify the supervisor question from a case several years ago involving Kentucky River Community Care Inc.
Labor unions had been closely watching the decision in the case of Oakwood Health Care, involving an acute care facility in Michigan - concerned that thousands of workers now under union protection could lose their federal protection under labor law. They were trying to determine how the decision could affect supervisors in a broad range of industries.
Sweeney said the NLRB is dominated by Bush administration lawyers. He also noted a dissenting view, which said the ruling "threatens to create a new class of workers under federal labor law: workers who have neither the genuine prerogatives of management, not the statutory rights of ordinary employees."
He charged that the NLRB has been chipping away at union rights through decisions limiting the eligibility of other groups of workers - the disabled, temporary employees and teaching assistants - to join unions. ....
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