Abbreviated pundit round-up: The war on workers doesn't stop to catch its breath on Labor Day

Back to a +13 for the Twitter Political Index's fav/unfav chatter about Obama and Romney

Wilma B. Liebman, former chair of the National Labor Relations Board writes:

[T]he battle against the NLRB is part of a coordinated strategy to weaken organized labor because of its financial support for Democratic candidates and its ability to rally voters.

The battle over labor law is also part of a broader war over the role of government in American society. Many conservatives have never accepted the legitimacy of New Deal laws in the first place or the role of government the New Deal ushered in

Hedrick Smith:

From 1948 to 1973, the productivity of all nonfarm workers nearly doubled, as did average hourly compensation. But things changed dramatically starting in the late 1970s. Although productivity increased by 80.1 percent from 1973 to 2011, average wages rose only 4.2 percent and hourly compensation (wages plus benefits) rose only 10 percent over that time, according to government data analyzed by the Economic Policy Institute.

At the same time, corporate profits were booming. In 2006, the year before the Great Recession began, corporate profits garnered the largest share of national income since 1942, while the share going to wages and salaries sank to the lowest level since 1929. In the recession's aftermath, corporate profits have bounced back while middle-class incomes have stagnated.

Today the prevailing cut-to-the-bone business ethos means that a company like Caterpillar demands a wage freeze and lower health benefits from its workers, while posting record profits.

Dean Baker explains why a reporter who asks "Are the American people better off than they were four years ago?" is incompetent:

Suppose your house is on fire and the firefighters race to the scene. They set up their hoses and start spraying water on the blaze as quickly as possible. After the fire is put out, the courageous news reporter on the scene asks the chief firefighter, "is the house in better shape than when you got here?"

Yes, that would be a really ridiculous question. Hence George Stephanopoulos was being absurd when he posed this question to David Plouffe, a top political adviser to President Obama on ABC's This Week. Bob Schieffer was being equally silly when he asked Martin O'Malley, the Chairman of the Democratic Governors Association, the same question on CBS's Face the Nation.

A serious reporter asks the fire chief if he had brought a large enough crew, if they enough hoses, if the water pressure was sufficient. [...]

Similarly, serious reporters would ask whether the stimulus was large enough, was it well-designed, and were there other measures that could have been taken like promoting shorter workweeks, as Germany has done.

Harold Meyerson picks apart claims that the key reason for workers' current situation is a lack of skills and education:

The primary plight of U.S. workers isn't their lack of skills. It's their lack of power. With the collapse of unions, which represented a third of the private-sector workforce in the mid-20th century but just 7 percent today, workers simply have no capacity to bargain for their share of the revenue they produce.

E.J. Dionne says that in the who-built-it wrestling match, there's campaign gold for Team Obama to be found in one of the most-laughed-at speeches at the Republican National Convention:

The United States was built not only by business people but also by those who 'labor in the oil and gas fields, mines and mills,' and by the 'hands that work in restaurants and hotels, in hospitals, banks, and grocery stores.' The words of Rick Santorum, Romney's former rival, were among the few spoken in Tampa that acknowledged the priority of labor. It's a theme Democrats should embrace.

Bill Moyers and Bernard A. Weisberger:

We are nearing the culmination of a cunning and fanatical drive to dismantle the political institutions, the legal and statutory canons, and the intellectual and cultural frameworks that were slowly and painstakingly built over decades to protect everyday citizens from the excesses of private power. The 'city on the hill' has become a fortress of privilege, guarded by a hired political class and safely separated from the economic pressures that are upending the household stability, family dynamics, social mobility, and civic life of everyday Americans.

Socrates said to understand a thing, you must first name it. As in Athens then, so in America now: The name for what's happening to our political system is corruption ' a deep, systemic corruption.

Paul Krugman, as usual, goes to the essence of the situation:

Obviously nobody cares how fast Mr. Ryan can run, and even his strange marathon misstatement wouldn't be worth talking about in isolation. What makes this incident so striking is, instead, the way it resonates with the essential Rosie-Ruizness of Mr. Ryan's whole political persona, which is built around big boasts about accomplishments he hasn't accomplished.

D.J. Taylor offers a bit too much sympathy:

The week's most terrifying spectacle, by a very long chalk, was the sight of Ann Romney marching to the podium at the Republican convention to endorse her husband's candidature. It was not, let it immediately be said, that Mrs Romney failed to produce the goods, for her speech was acclaimed by newspapers not generally sympathetic to the Republican cause. It was not that she didn't look the part, for the potential first lady seemed to fit almost preternaturally into the role that Americans feel comfortable with on these occasions, which might be defined as a superior version of the cheerleader's mother in one of those high-school romcoms.

No, it was what Mrs Romney had to do to appease the baying hordes, which was to stand before an audience of countless millions and discuss'"directly but not cloyingly", as one newspaper approvingly put it'her miscarriages, the breast cancer she has survived, and the multiple sclerosis she fights to control, as Mitt, the contender, beamed vampirically at her side. How one feels for these Republican women'for the late Betty Ford, who informed her husband's supporters in the mid-1970s that she liked to make love with him as often as possible, or Elizabeth Dole, summoned to do a repair job on her famously lugubrious other half, Bob, back in 1996'for their task, generally, is to expose themselves in public in the hope of making some unelectable stiff look a shade more fragrant to a yawning electorate.

Ben Adler has no sympathy for Mitt:

Romney's appeals to women make no sense because his positions are not good for women. Therefore, he, like Republican women, tries to spin policies that would limit women's rights as being in their best interest. It's an impressive feat of mental dexterity, but it's a far less honest approach than making the more straightforward 'traditional family values' argument that Republicans used to rely upon. They've realized that won't work, but this probably won't either.

When it comes from bloggers and other political minnows, nobody takes notice. But this time the call for Tony Blair and George Bush to be hauled to the Hague for international judgment is from none other than Desmond Tutu. Not that it will ever happen:

On what grounds do we decide that Robert Mugabe should go the International Criminal Court, Tony Blair should join the international speakers' circuit, bin Laden should be assassinated, but Iraq should be invaded, not because it possesses weapons of mass destruction, as Mr Bush's chief supporter, Mr Blair, confessed last week, but in order to get rid of Saddam Hussein?

The cost of the decision to rid Iraq of its by-all-accounts despotic and murderous leader has been staggering, beginning in Iraq itself. Last year, an average of 6.5 people died there each day in suicide attacks and vehicle bombs, according to the Iraqi Body Count project. More than 110,000 Iraqis have died in the conflict since 2003 and millions have been displaced. By the end of last year, nearly 4,500 American soldiers had been killed and more than 32,000 wounded.

On these grounds alone, in a consistent world, those responsible for this suffering and loss of life should be treading the same path as some of their African and Asian peers who have been made to answer for their actions in the Hague.