On Thu, 20 Jul 2000, Lisa & Ian Murray wrote:
> As one of the organizers of that drive who worked at FedEx' largest station
> in DC maybe I'm just biased, but all the opinions in our case sucked. Gould
> and others hemmed and hawed for 5 months after FedEx bought protection by
> holding up the FAA reauthorization bill in Sept.-Oct. '96. Yet they had
> ample opportunity to make the decision while FedEx was in legal "limbo".
> Gould and the others used a classic lawyers dodge [using the passive voice
> in opinions]in the 1st decision...
> I wonder how the Republicrats spent the blood soaked bucks$$
Ian, I understand being pissed off at the GOP and Hollings for pushing through the FedEx exemption and understand being pissed off at the two Dem appointees who voted wrong in the first case, but I still don't get being pissed off at Gould who voted right on the first case. And using "lawyers dodges" is what lawyers and especially judges do, since otherwise they can easily be overturned on appeal for obvious bias.
The NLRB is a quasi-judicial forum whose only power is to interpret statute. It is not their job to overturn the clear intent of Congress and FedEx bought that clear intent, unfortunately. Gould just bowed to his responsibilities under the law; anything else would just get overturned and lead to even harsher calls for his removal than the GOP mounted throughout his tenure.
Pissing on Gould is just avoiding concentrating responsibility where it belongs - those who controlled the Conference Committee that inserted the FedEx provision into the Aviation bill without a democratic vote on the amendment. And that only occurred because the GOP controlled both houses of Congress. The Dems tried to filibuster the bill but it was a little late in the game to pull that off given the importance of the rest of the bill.
The reason I don't like generic Dem-bashing (as opposed to bashing specific Dems like Hollings in this case) is that it leads to exactly this kind of frustrated firing squads against allies, rather than dealing with the real consequences of the GOP being significantly worse for working people when they have control of Congress.
-- Nathan Newman