Vice President Joe Biden has many talents, but a sense of irony doesn’t seem to be one of them. Witness his conference call with Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis and AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka.
In the first minute, he tells thousands of labor activists how much his political career owes to the muscle of the labor movement and how there is a quid pro quo — right before touting the Obama administration as a neutral referee in the labor fights around the country.
Then, the vice president assures his listeners that the administration sees “the absolute positive necessity of collective bargaining” — without mentioning, of course, that federal workers are denied that very same collective bargaining.
Much worse, he says that the people who worked at the Labor Department and the National Labor Relations Board during the Bush administration were “wearing black shirts.”
Whatever was the vice president referring to? We’ve asked his office for a clarification, but have received no response in the past four hours. His office owes those people either an explanation or an apology, lest they believe that a sitting vice president of the United States meant to compare the people who worked in the last administration to Benito Mussolini’s paramilitary brutes.
Vice President Biden also called Republicans (or conservatives, at least) “barbarians.” Maybe his office could address that, too. Of course, he may have just been playing to his audience: The St. Patrick’s Day call, after all, was a virtual Who’s Who of the labor movement, including the AFL-CIO, the SEIU, the National Education Association (NEA), Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW), and the Teamsters, and was live in Wisconsin, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Indiana, Florida, Missouri, New Hampshire, Maine, Minnesota, Iowa, and New Jersey.
There is a regretful tendency in Washington to dismiss what the vice president says with a shrug and say, “Biden will be Biden.” But Mr. Biden is not some loveable if overeager golden retriever who will overturn the china from time to time or do something worse to the carpet. He’s our vice president, and some decorum should be expected.
It was announced today that veteran reporter Shailagh Murray, a talented journalist who worked most recently for the Washington Post, had just become the vice president’s communications director. We wish her well.
— Michael Gonzalez is vice president of communications at the Heritage Foundation. He’s on Twitter at @gundisalvus.
Just as with the NPR execs caught on tape, the big thing this Biden incident brings home is the utterly shameless audacity and hubris of these people. It isn't that he said it to labor cronies--it is that he said it knowing it was public and it never even occurred to him or his people that there was even a shred of impropriety in it.
How do you instill shame in the shameless? The first step, perhaps, is to get their attention--by voting them OUT.
P.S.--when, as will surely happen eventually, some spokesperson comes forward and says that "of course" he "didn't mean" to compare people to Mussolini's bullyboys, I do hope somebody in the press will then ask, "Okay well, if he didn't mean THAT, what exactly DID he mean?" Let's not let this be one more case of "We can say whatever we want and when people complain we can just deny or disavow and get away with it."
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseAfter input from Brazilian security an outdoor appearance by the President in Rio has been moved indoors. Thank you Brazilian security!
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI wonder what network will give her a (non-partisan) job after she leaves Biden's side?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe only way Biden can avoid shooting himself in the foot is to stick his foot in his mouth.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseGood Old Joe.
Never fails to fail to measure up.
What _did_ he mean to say with the "black shirts" thing?
Hurry, 2012. Hurry.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseOver at the WSJ, Taranto cited a metaphor alert on Biden's remarks:
■"The only people who have the capacity--organizational capacity and muscle--to keep, as they say, the barbarians from the gate, is organized labor. And make no mistake about it, the guys on the other team get it. They know if they cripple labor, the gate is open, man. The gate is wide open. And we know that too."--Vice President Biden, quoted by the Puffington Host, March 17
I think that Biden's rhetoric in his conference call is downright inflammatory in its adversarial call to arms.
And what is with his verbal tic, man?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseOK, what I assume he meant by "black shirts" was "black hats." White hats and black hats is pretty standard (and harmless) slang for good guys and bad guys. I don't think Biden is knowledgeable enough to know who the "black shirts" were. "(S)ome loveable if overeager golden retriever" is about right, sadly.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseTHE IRONY:
Biden calls the conservatives the barbarians at the gates after the unions actually crashed the gates of the Wisconsin capitol.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseCommentators at NRO seem oblivious that liberals are conducting a full-scale political war against conservatives which features everything from character assassination to death threats:
"It was announced today that veteran reporter Shailagh Murray, a talented journalist who worked most recently for the Washington Post, had just become the vice president’s communications director. We wish her well."
You wish her well in her efforts to assist Biden in convincing the American people that Republicans are "barbarians"?
At the risk of being a disobedient conservative who fails to show the establishment-mandated deference towards America's progressive masters, I do not wish her well in her efforts to assist Biden in convincing the American people that Republicans are "barbarians".
And in order to get ahead of the curve, the next time Obama gives a SPEECH OF HISTORICAL IMPORTANCE about which every commentator on this site will feel obligated to swoon ("It was so beautifully written and eloquently delivered"), I will abstain from swooning.
Because I will know that he is lying, the past being prologue.
Finally, if G-d forbid Obama is reelected, I WON'T declare, "I may not have voted for him, but I consider it a proud day for America when a man from an historically persecuted group can yet again demonstrate how far we have come as a people!"
That was offensively craven nonsense on Election Night 2008, and it would be even more nausea-inducing in 2012...assuming that is possible.
Let's stop being Mary Poppins and just tell the truth. Liberals despise America as it is (all that racism and Islamophobia...being covertly subsidized by the Koch Brothers), and progressives therefore seek to turn the United States into a place that Michael Moore could love.
But there already is such a place.
It is called "hell".
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseTo Esther Hayman - The correct spelling is G-O-D. not G-d.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseJust words!?
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"Then, the vice president assures his listeners that the administration sees “the absolute positive necessity of collective bargaining” — without mentioning, of course, that federal workers are denied that very same collective bargaining."
I am a federal employee, and I can say for an absolute fact that this statement is 100% false. And, since it was stated willfully and knowingly, it is an absolute lie!! Federal employees DO have collective bargaining rights.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseDear Tarheels77,
Federal workers do have CB, but over a very limited subset of issues. They can't negotiate wages and benefits at all. They can negotiate a few workplace issues, like telecommuting and parking. But, as you must know, on the big issues--those at stake in Wisconsin and the other states in question--federal workers have no CB power.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse“I am a federal employee, and I can say for an absolute fact that this statement is 100% false. And, since it was stated willfully and knowingly, it is an absolute lie!! Federal employees DO have collective bargaining rights.”
In fairness to Joe Biden, he may just be ignorant, like he is on almost every issue. It’s particularly galling that the same administration that just unilaterally took away two years of Cost of Living Increases for Federal Workers is at the same time fighting for the right of State unions to pilfer the state treasuries. I believe that state workers should get paid a decent wage, but the real abuses at the State level are in the form of Pensions and Health benefits. The way of reform is pretty clear – do what the Feds did during the 90s and end the Pensions, moving to a 401(k) retirement structure, and make employer payment of premiums comparable to the private sector.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe Irony & the Hypocricy of Liberals & Union Federations. Joe Biden, the lying dimwit, will never have to live with the Obamacare or the threat of Union Goons & Boycotts. Neither will OBAMA, PELOSI or HARRY REID....they all have the CADILLAC insurance & Golden Parachutes after they are voted out in 2012.
Joe Biden has no backbone, no testicles, and he certainly has no morals or ethics. If he considers Republicans "Barbarians"....then how would he define the Excrement Richard Trumka? After all, Richard Trumka stood by and filed greivances for the 8 Union Members accused of shooting EDDIE YORK in the back of his head and killing him while he crossed the picket lines during a 1993 strike at Peabody Coal in West Virginia. RICHARD TRUMKA was the United Mine Workers President at the time EDDIE YORK was brutally murdered.
Does Joe Biden honestly support Trumka? I highly doubt it, but Joe does want Trumkas and the UNIONS votes in 2012 & he and Obama are willing to say and do anything regardless of how unethical it may be to get re-elected.
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