During a debate last night with former Gov. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), Sen. John Sununu (R-NH) reiterated his opposition to the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA).

The EFCA would allow workers at a company to unionize by signing cards of consent, instead of having to undergo a full unionization campaign and vote. However, Sununu said that the bill “would take away the worker’s right to a secret ballot,” and that workers would “have to tell everyone” what their choice was when deciding whether or not to unionize:

This legislation would take away the worker’s right to a secret ballot when deciding whether or not they want a union. Signing a card is a public act and when you have to tell everyone what your choice is, how you’re voting, you become subject to intimidation. Maybe intimidation by other workers, maybe intimidation by employers. Either way, the worker’s right is compromised.

Watch the video here.

Sununu has also said that the EFCA “would force workers to stand up and declare their vote in front of both union bosses and employers,” and that the act could “potentially erode the foundations of free elections everywhere else.”

Contrary to Sununu’s assertion, the EFCA “would not eliminate traditional elections.” Instead, it would prevent employers from forcing their workers into a secret ballot election, and mandates that employers “recognize the majority sign-up process whether they like it or not.”

It’s important that workers be allowed to avoid an election, if they so choose. As David Madland wrote “workers considering forming a union face an undemocratic system that permits intimidation. Employers legally can force workers to attend anti-union meetings, including ‘one-on-one conversations’ with supervisors, which happens in over 90 percent of organizing campaigns.”

Furthermore, “even after workers successfully form a union, in one-third of the instances, employers do not negotiate a contract.” The EFCA would “strengthen penalties for such labor law violations and prevent employers from delaying first-contract negotiations.”

Sununu is not alone among conservative lawmakers in opposing the EFCA. Earlier this month, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) called it the “most insidious bill” he’s seen during his time in Congress, while Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) called it a “threat” to democracy. Both Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) and Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) have characterized it as “un-American.”

However, there is nothing “un-American” about easing the path towards unionization for American’s workers. Or maybe the 60 million U.S. workers who “would join a union if they could” are all un-American too.

When it comes to taxes and the economy, John McCain has got his dancing shoes on.

In the early 2000s, John McCain eschewed his reputation as a radical tax cutter by opposing the Bush tax cuts because they “came at the expense of middle class Americans.”

But now he’s waltzed all the way back to the far right, proposing not only to extend the Bush tax cuts, but double them by giving away another $300 billion in budget-busting tax breaks for corporations and the wealthy while leaving out 100 million Americans.

In the last month, he’s made overtures to the middle class, promising mortgage relief and a new set of tax cuts for the middle class. But when the details were revealed, they turned out to be just more giveaways to corporations and the wealthy.

Watch him go:

Dancing shoes? Maybe he’ll just add taps to his $520 loafers.

Digg It!

UPDATE: Embeddable code after the jump.

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During an interview with Fox News’ Neil Cavuto yesterday, Karl Rove derided Sen. Barack Obama’s (D-IL) plan to return the top two federal income tax brackets to the levels at which they were under President Clinton. Rove claimed such action would “devastate” small businesses.

To back up his assertion, Rove reeled off a long string of numbers – including “in the top 1 percent, 73 percent of the filers are small business people. 663,000 out of 912,000 filers in the top 1 percent are small business people” – to suggest that Obama would tax a huge percentage of small businesses. Watch it:

Rove is using an intimidating slew of numbers to spread falsehood. First, only 1.9 percent of small businesses file in the top two federal income tax brackets. That leaves 98.1 percent of small businesses unaffected by Obama’s suggested rate change.

Furthermore, because of the Treasury Department’s broad definition of small business, “many of the roughly 650,000 filers with small-business income who face one of the top two tax rates are merely passive investors who have nothing to do with running the business.” As the Center on Budget Policy and Priorities found:

About 35 percent of “small-business owners” with incomes above $200,000, and about 58 percent of “small-business owners” with incomes over $1 million, received some or all of their business income in the form of passive investments. The Treasury definition also counts as “small-business income” the fees that CEOs are paid for sitting on corporate boards.

Under the Treasury definition, “the $84 of income President Bush received in 2001 from a passive investment in an oil and gas company made him a ‘small-business owner.’” It’s hard to see how taxing this income would devastate actual small businesses.