Paid sick leave: The next liberal litmus test?

Fri, 29 Mar 2013 16:33:00 +0000

There's a new must-support issue for ambitious Democrats across the nation: paid sick leave. And if you want to see how important it has become, just look to the current race for New York City mayor.

Before Thursday, City Council speaker Christine Quinn (generally an ally of Mayor Michael Bloomberg) hemmed and hawed for three years over whether to put forth a paid sick leave bill, despite the fact that eight in 10 New Yorkers support it. The issue placed her in an uncomfortable bind, trapped between Bloomberg and the business community (all of whom oppose it) -- and workers and unions on the other side.

But after previously using her power to block the bill (despite the majority of the City Council supporting it), Quinn realized her situation had become politically untenable. And on Thursday, a compromise was reached that requires companies with 15 or more workers to offer employees at least five paid sick days. As the New York Times noted, the deal represents a "raw display of political muscle by a coalition of labor unions and liberal activists.

Swing state thievery

Fri, 13 Jul 2012 15:00:00 +0000

Pennsylvania has gone Democratic in every presidential election since 1992. Democrats have a nearly 1 million person voter registration advantage in the commonwealth. And last time around, Barack Obama crushed John McCain by 620,478 votes — garnering 54.5 percent and the state’s largest majority since Nixon’s 1972 landslide.

But like many so-called swing states throughout the country, Pennsylvania took a hard right turn in 2010 when the Tea Party took over the mainstream of the Republican Party. Pennsylvania now has a Republican state House, Senate, attorney general and governor. One of our senators, Tea Party Republican Pat Toomey (also elected in 2010), is the former head of the Club for Growth. Our governor, Tom Corbett, was one of the original then-attorneys general to sue the Obama administration in 2010 over the Affordable Care Act. At one point, Corbett pushed so hard for an invasive ultrasound bill, he told the capitol press corps that women just need to “close [their] eyes” to avoid seeing the government-mandated fetal video.

Salon.com > Randy LoBasso

Paid sick leave: The next liberal litmus test?

Swing state thievery