Social Justice

A federally-imposed reporting requirement goes into effect today that is a transparent attempt by the Bush administration to intimidate union activists and hamper union activity. The tactic is to do to unions what conservatives complain liberals do to businesses: Bog them down in needless paperwork.

The rule would require thousands of shop stewards and others union volunteers to file a detailed financial disclosure form to the Department of Labor, which would then post the form on the Internet. The form in question is known as the "LM-30," formally the Labor Organization Officer and Employee Report. The final ruling was published in the Federal Register on July 2. more »

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House Speaker Nancy Pelosi plans to lead a House delegation to New Orleans and the Mississippi coast starting Sunday in an effort that should draw fresh attention to what remains the shame of the nation, two years after Hurricane Katrina swept through the Gulf Coast. Their challenge is to make this trip more than either a political road show or a brief glance at the region's suffering that rates little more than a few seconds on the TV news.

At a time when the failures of conservative governance just in the last two weeks are strewn across the country like rubble from a bomb blast—the lack of infrastructure investment that led to the Minneapolis bridge collapse, the lax enforcement of mine safety standards surrounding the ongoing Utah mine collapse, the see-no-evil regulatory environment that set the stage for the mortgage lending crisis and the wider plunge in the stock market—the disastrous effects of Bush administration policy on the Gulf Coast is still without peer. It's not just the criminally bungled initial response that continues to have ripple effects on the population; it's also the policies that the administration does have in place based on its discredited notions of what's right for America.

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