We usually do “Friday Follies” at this point in the week, something totally ridiculous and silly to lighten up the end of your week. Well, we think we found this week’s edition, under the above headline that greeted readers of the Washington Post this morning, a story by Tom Edsall. Apparently, AFL-CIO President John Sweeney, for reasons known only to him, with membership, finances and political clout plummeting — and up for re-election in July — decided to have a conference call with reporters. No doubt about it, it yielded a ton of stories, from the laughable and sycophantic NY Times “Facing Dissent, Labor Chief Offers a Plan for Growth” (does this look like growth to you….?) to Edsall’s more blunt assessment in the Post.

The real action, as always, is on the various union sites committed to Sweeney’s demise. One of our many union friends and faithful blog readers called our attention to a piece entitled, “The More Things Change” on the unitetowin.com blog, (to which we link) Sweeney rival Andy Stern walks through the many holes in Sweeney’s plan. Says Stern, “They actually propose to invest less overall on helping more workers join our movement than they spend now.” This is a guy (Sweeney) running for re-election? Maybe he’s a mole for the other side.

However, no matter what you read, the facts are relatively inescapable: during Sweeney’s tenure, membership has plummeted, their political clout has dropped like a stone and now with it, their finances. The Sweeney years have seen their reserve fund drop from $61m to $31m, a hemorrhage by any standards. His remedy, as we’ve covered in this space so many times, is to throw more money down the political rathole rather than focus on organizing, as his growing number of foes suggest he do. Remember that we were the first — way back in November — to predict that Sweeney is done. He seems hell-bent on making us prophetic.

Here’s a website you just have to check out. It’s from the Center for Consumer Freedom and it’s worth a look because of the interesting information it imparts and because it’s just so damn fun — and funny. The Center, it says, “is a nonprofit coalition of restaurants, food companies, and consumers working together to promote personal responsibility and protect consumer choices. The growing cabal of ‘food cops’”, they continue, “health care enforcers, militant activists, meddling bureaucrats, and violent radicals who think they know ‘what’s best for you’ are pushing against our basic freedoms. We’re here to push back.”

And push back they do with a slew of fun facts, corrections and statistics. Among the most interesting info is a list of all the well-known folks who would be either “overweight” or “obese” under government standards, including two famous Georges — the President and Mr. Clooney — Matt Damon and Johnny Depp. In the “obese category are Tom Cruise, The Rock and the Governor of California. After looking at this site, you do start to wonder about the so-called obesity crisis, it’s origins and its ultimate goals. Their “Additional Links” are an adventure all their own, including ActivistCash.com. More on that at a later date.

There are also some pretty funny cartoons and some games as well, including the “Lawsuit Fabricator” that every manufacturer will appreciate. They’re not afraid to take on opposing groups with ill motives and “good”-sounding names, noting, as they say, “Even an ugly baby can be named, “Tiffany”. What a hoot.

Check out their site and see what you think. We’re off to grab a cheeseburger.

While we’re talking about the US Department of Labor (see “The AFL-CIO, Unburdened by Consistency”, below), here’s an idea for them:

In the Clinton Administration, ostensibly to make their website more “worker-friendly”, OSHA added to its site a section just for workers, to make it easier for them to file OSHA-related complaints against their employers. Nice. Just the good ol’ DOL, trying to be more worker-friendly.

Well, if they want to be worker friendly, put real money in workers pockets, there’s this Beck issue. In 1988, the US Supreme Court decided, Communications Workers of America v. Beck. In it, the court found that workers covered by the National Labor Relations Act can withhold their dues from the union for everything but the documented cost of collective bargaining. If union members knew about this and it was easy to get your money back, they’d do it in droves. The implication for the unions would be that they would no longer be able to put tens of millions of their member’s money down the rathole supporting issues and candidates with which their members disagree. While Beck is the law of the land today, pity the poor union member who actually tries to get their Beck money back. They run a gauntlet of procedures, roadblocks and unintelligible rules, defeating all but the most determined. Try entering “Beck”, “Rights” and “Union” into Google and see if any unions pop up with their E-Z form for refunds. Don’t bet on it.

So how about the Labor Department expands its worker-friendliness and builds a site accessible by every union member in America, where they could just log on, fill out their Beck form and submit it electronically to their union? How hard could it be? The OSHA site is state of the art, why not make a Beck site that is the same?

Let’s put a little money back in workers’ pockets!

Way back in December of 2002 — about the same time the Enron and WorldCom scandals were swirling about — the US Department of Labor(DOL) announced that for the first time in 40 years they would update the financial disclosure forms that unions are required to file. These LM-2′s as they are called, are filed annually in an effort to better inform union members as to how their dues are being spent. What a concept. At the time, the DOL noted that the forms as they then stood allowed unions to lump together costs of contract negotiation, administration, organizing, strike benefits, general overhead and political and lobbying expenses. As a result, one union was allowed to note an expenditure of $4 million as “sundry expenses”. The changes sought by DOL, which are to take effect this summer, would require more — you guessed it — transparency and disclosure.

So here comes the AFL-CIO, never ones to be bound by consistency, hoarse from all their screaming about the need for corporate transparency and disclosure, railing against the great corporate Satans to protest the new DOL rules. In fact, they have even sued the Secretary of Labor, lest these evil full disclosure rules take effect. Seems they support transparency and disclosure for everyone but themselves. There’s a great piece in the Wall Street Journal today on this topic entitled, “Big Labor’s Secrets” and noting organized labor’s, uh…what’s a nice word?….inconsistency and touting the benefits of the new rules.

Oh, and here’s a link to the DOL site where you can check out the LM-2′s that are there, and where hopefully you’ll be able to see the new improved forms later this summer.

Busy week last week. Thursday found us with our boss, John Engler over at the offices of the Wall Street Journal lunching with Bureau Chief Gerry Seib and a host of others, including John Harwood, David Wessel, Mike Schroedeer, Sarah Lueck and Jake Schlesinger. This is a very smart and interesting group, had a good discussion on a whole array of issues from health care (of course) to the need for legal reform and a certain very large Asian country. David Wessel is no stranger to us, having had dinner with our Council of Manufacturing Associations Board some years ago, in the depths of the recession. It was good to see him in some better times. Sarah Lueck knew us from the OSHA beat, before she became a health care expert, and one of the best around. The boss did a good job and was very engaging. Hope we get invited back.

Interesting editorial in yesterday’s NY Times entitled, “Wisps of Life in Congress”. The point (we think) is found in the last clause, e.g., “primal party loyalty is no substitute for effective, democratic government.” We agree, of course (who wouldn’t?), but what’s interesting is that the Times is caught in a bit of a situation ethics dilemma. The subject of their praise this time is Ohio Senator George Voinovich — a Republican and a pretty good guy, with a strong pro-manufacturing record — who last week expressed his unwillingness to support Administration nominee John Bolton to be Ambassador to the UN. “It was particularly encouraging”, says the Times, “that Senator Voinovich was swayed by the arguments of two Democratic Senators”, Biden of Delaware and Dodd of Connecticut. We wonder if the Times woud be so gushy had two Republicans swayed a Democrat. We’ll have to see if the fawning over at the Times begins next time that happens. No doubt they gushed over Democrat Senator Zell Miller’s speech at the GOP Convention.

Speaking of penguins (see below) here’s another site, Stupid Videos, full of some short, great and hilarious videos. There’s one called “Evil Penguin”, in keeping with our running hostility to penguins. There are some others, too, which have made the internet rounds and some we saw for the first time, and not from work, either. All scouting was done in our free time, yesirree (the boss reads the blog every now and then)…

Have a good weekend.

Back in February we gave you a stress reliever and time occupier (for those interminable “listen only” conference calls) that involved a penguin, a bumble and a bat. Blog hits soared and productivity plummeted for a spell as folks practiced whacking that damned penguin. Well, to show we are in touch with our feminine side, the Ladies’ Home Journal has now entered the fray with games of their own. One is called Ditto, a new take on the Match Game of old. There’s also a jigsaw puzzle, but Ditto will eat more time, or so we’re told. Some even find it downright addictive. These are not to be done on work time, of course.

Rich Galen’s comments on the filibuster, noted below, and outlined in Mullings today set us to thinking, especially since they were echoed to one degree or another by his fellow panelists, both considerable political minds in their own right.

The conventional fiction surrounding the filibuster — a canard fostered by the amen chorus on the left — is that the filibuster is somehow a creature of the US Constitution. It isn’t. You can see for yourself by clicking on this link and reading the Constitution in its entirety. Go to “Edit” on your pull down menu, click on “Find” and type in “Filibuster”, see if it comes up. It won’t. That’s because it’s a Senate rule, part of the arcana that makes up the ways of the US Senate. And, they’ve changed the rule throughout history. They may be fixin’ to change it again.

Two of the best — or at least most fun — panels were the ones on legal reform and the political outlook.

The former featured trial lawyer extraordinaire Fred Baron, Bruce Hatton of the Livingston Group and the many voices of Victor Schwartz, tireless advocate for tort reform.

Observation #1: Don’t ever have Fred Baron against you in a jury trial. He’s really good. He almost had us believing.

Observation #2: Don’t ever have Victor Schwartz against on you anything.

These guys were really good, really entertaining. You got the feeling that had done this before…

The political outlook featured Jeff DuFour of The Hill and Tamara Lipper of Newsweek. They look to an old blogger like kids, but damn are they smart. They were balanced out on the age scale by the ancient (by comparison) Rich Galen of Mullings fame, who was there at the birth of democracy.

Seriously, these 3 were just entertaining and insightful. Tamara, inveterate journalist, even got to break the story to our seqestered lunch crowd that we had a new Pope. Like we said, she’s good.

Consensus from the 3: Social Security will happen this year and Tom DeLay will ride out the current storm.

If you check out Mullings today, you’ll see a pretty good summary of Rich’s remarks, especially on the topic of the so-called “nuclear” option. Not as good as hearing him deliver it in person, but still good.