American Workers, The Supreme Court and President Obama

There were several decisions recently made public, from the Supreme Court. As I am not an attorney, it took quite a bit of reading and research to understand the basis behind the decision of the court in these matters. Plus, there are more to come, which may be more confusing to the average citizen such as myself.

Yet, there is one where I find the impetus behind one side’s behavior easy to understand while finding the decision of the Court, while not as easy to understand, explainable.

However, there is one aspect of this one, very narrow decision that I do find hard to understand. In order to delve into what I find hard to understand, let us discuss what I DO understand first.

I am speaking of the Court’s decision in which the President had “over-reach” in his Recess Appointments. Now, full disclosure dictates that I mention that I have long been a Democratic voter. I inherited this from my Italian immigrant, grandparents. They were adamant that everyone, regardless of money or property, should have equal opportunity in our great nation. This opportunity would include each persons’ right to vote, to work and happiness.

My grandparents came to this country just ahead of Mussolini, Hitler and the rest of the turmoil, which defined Europe in the 1930’s. My grandparents understood socialism, communism and fascism in a way that most Americans do not. They not only lived through all of these governmental systems vying for a way to assert themselves at different times in Italy, they absorbed their impact in some of the cruelest ways.

Bottom line, my grandparents believed in the American way of government. Sure, there were glitches that occurred while my grandparents were alive. However, compared to what they had witnessed prior to their arrival in the U.S., they considered them if not trivial, then fixable.

My grandfather died when I was eight years old, my grandmother before I was sixteen. Politics was not a subject that we spent much time discussing. However, I do know that my grandparents considered our government to be a mechanism forward. If one had a problem that could not be fixed in any other way then, one had the option of going to their local elected representative.

They were businesses owners, which entails employees, payroll, and labor law. Of course, they had been on both sides of this equation in their lives that, I believe, is what precipitated their compassion towards their workers as well as their customers. Not once did one of their employees, to my knowledge, find an occasion to call in the Union or the National Labor Relations Board on my grandpa and Noni.

However, this is not true of every business in the U.S. and, particularly not in the current labor environment. Which brings us back to the Supreme Court decision I wish to discuss, President Obama’s, Congressional Recess Appointments.

As most Americans will recall, the current Congress has been described as the “Less Than Do-Nothing, Congress”. This title has derived from the fact that our currently seated Congressmen and women have passed fewer laws than the former “Do-Nothing Congress”, which was seated January 3, 1947 until January 3, 1949. That Congress, the 80^th Congress, passed 906 bills, mostly pro-business bills.

If this sounds familiar, it is only due to the “pro-business” classification. Our current Congress, the 112^th Congress has actually passed fewer laws than the aforementioned 80^th Congress.

Finding the exact number of laws enacted during the 112^th Congress is a bit time consuming. I do know however, that this Congress did hold 57 Anti-Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) votes during their tenure. The information as to how many bills were or were not passed is merely to be used as a foundation to ascertain your own opinion of The Courts’ ruling.

You may have heard, many times in fact, that during the past five years of President Obama’s Presidency, the fights over confirming his nominees for many different openings in our government. For example, many federal judgeships went unfilled due to the inability of Congress to confirm any of the President’s nominees. Alternatively, perhaps you had heard about the inability of the 111^th Congress to confirm Elizabeth Warren to head the consumer protection agency she created. Maybe you heard via your favorite news program (unless of course, it was Fox News) or newspaper that our duly elected President has had a terrible time getting most of his nominees appointed in a timely manner?

Now, suppose you were running a business…or a government, and found that few if any of your supervisory type positions were being filled. Perhaps, upon inspection, you found that the reason behind this was not due to a lack of good candidates available. No, the reason for these vacancies was due to uncooperative (for the lack of a better term) co-workers who were just not being cooperative. would not show up for the interviews, refused to peruse the materials and resumes provided and then sat on the procedure as long as possible?

Your business may fail due to this lack of cooperation yet, you are ultimately responsible. What do you do? As most of us may recall, when something similar happened to President W. Bush, he appointed his nominees during the recesses taken by Congress during the year. This could be a solution considered both expedient and elegant by some.

Well, for W, it was. For President Obama, not so much. Even though recess appointments are constitutional, it seems that the Congresses in question did not officially “recess”. Their strategy was to merely have their geographically nearest member, go in every three days during the normal “recess” times and call themselves “In Session”. Although no actual work occurred, Congress was technically in session. (At this point, I feel I must point out that both of these Congress’ worked less than 50% of the time of most preceding members yet, received higher salaries.)

During this time of complete breakdown of this process, President Obama took the “Recess Appointment” route in order to fill the National Labor Relations Board. It had been operating at about half strength and, it had a predominance of only one party on the board. In order to ensure fairness for the working people of the United States, plus to clear up the backlog of what needed to be done, the President made "recess" appointments. If you are a worker, you should understand that this was done to protect you, your family and our economy.

Those "game-of-life" referees known as the Supreme Court decided, unanimously, that somehow this was a rule broken. Evidently, according to the Court, he should have just let us all go to Hell in a Handbasket! Even though the behavior of Congress did not really uphold the spirit of the law, it did uphold the letter of the law, according to the Supremes. How does this help, our country?

For this reason we now have Conservative rhetoric being trumpeted as if from on High! However, anyone who has ever played a sport, a game or life knows one thing. Many times in life, the “letter of the law” has nothing whatsoever to do with real life. The President, OUR President, was trying to keep our country running. If the purpose of this ruling was to intercede on the behalf of the American people, could there not have been a better way?

What Do I Tell My Daughters When...?

This past weekend I received a phone call from one of my adult daughters. As most mothers know, phone calls are not always consistent yet, are always enjoyed when one has children a long distance from them.

My joy was short lived. My daughter had run into a situation that had her upset, angry and more than a little confused. Here is some background to the story. My daughter, we will call her twin A, is in the dental field. She lives in a Southern state where the dental hygienists are not legally allowed to give anesthetic of any kind, to their patients.

Since my husband and I moved back to California, it has been our goal to facilitate the relocation of our daughters from the South, where they currently live, back home with us in N. California. As a part of this plan, twin A came out to take an extensive dental anesthesia course and is awaiting her license.

She did not hide this fact from anyone she works with and is in fact, quite proud. Once she got back home and returned to work, she discussed what she had learned with one of the dentists she works with. This was on his instigation and she thought he was genuinely interested in her achievement. They spoke about her course in a technical manner for some time. During this conversation, he mentioned a particularly difficult technique used when administering a local injection. She explained to him what she learned and the unique technique she was taught.

Everything was just fine, or so she thought. That is, until the dentist said to her, “Yeah well, don’t get cocky. It is not that easy and you are not a dentist.”

In order for my daughter to pass, the course she had to demonstrate what she had learned on two separate patients, in front of the instructors. I had the good fortune (?) to be one of those guinea pigs. She made me very proud to be her mother. She was professional, caring and had a great touch. There was a series of nine (9) injections to be given and each one was better than I had ever received in the past. I barely felt them.

My daughter continued telling me about her day with this dentist. Throughout her workday, this man repeatedly made comments to the effect that HE was the dentist while SHE was a lowly hygienist and on and on.  She did not take this course for any reason other than to return to her home state. Not to outdo this dentist, nor to take matters into her own hands when he wasn’t looking. Yet, he felt a deep-seated need to put her down for the entire day.

What do I tell my daughter? I opened with, “Well, at least you cannot get fired for not sleeping with your boss anymore, like I did at 15 years of age.” She was aghast that such a thing could have happened.

So I tried again. I tried to explain to her that not all men are like her father, my husband. Not all men like women and unfortunately, some feel it is their duty to treat us badly. That some men do not feel like men unless they are hurting or belittling women. I also mentioned that it is entirely up to her to allow an ass like that to rent space in her head free of charge. She should just forget about what he said. That, probably for the rest of her life, she will meet men like this. Those men with little to no self-esteem which derives from personal accomplishment rather than making others feel less than.

However, I was…no, I am ashamed. When I was her age, I thought that the ERA would be passed at any moment. The Women’s Movement was not about changing things for women, only! The Women’s Movement was about everybody and anybody being allowed to fill the role they were best suited for and most comfortable in. It was never about taking anything from our male counterparts but about women receiving our fair share.

Nevertheless, it hurt and the pain is still palpable, for me. Women were so close to achieving parity and now we seem to be even further away from our goals. How could this happen? How did it become commonplace for young women to think that “Feminism” is a dirty word? Who convinced our daughters that going to strip clubs with their boyfriends on a date was okay? How did this happen?

Many factors come into play when trying to determine how the Women’s Movement has gone backwards, in the last ten years or so. If you have ideas as to why this has happened or how to fix it, I invite your comments. This is going to be an ongoing theme as I continue to research this problem. Thanks in advance for taking the time to give your input.