Yesterday the NAM’s Keith Smith drew attention to the upcoming Pittsburgh gathering of lefty bloggers and activists, Netroots Nation, and its panel on the Employee Free Choice Act, “The Secret Plan to Defeat the Right Forever.”

As Keith suggested, defeating the right forever is a purely political goal, far different than unions’ claim to pass the legislation to help workers. It’s inflammatory, too. “AFL-CIO — Defeating the Right Forever!”

The AFL-CIO doesn’t appear too troubled by the left-wing battle cry, promoting the event at its blog in a post, “Netroots Nation: Why the Fight for Employee Free Choice Matters“:

We’re getting excited this week for the second annual Netroots Nation conference, where more than 1,000 progressive bloggers and activists will meet face to face. We’ll discuss issues key to the future of our nation—including building a stronger, fairer economy by restoring the freedom to form unions and bargain.

Thursday afternoon’s panel, “The Secret Plan to Defeat the Right Forever,” offers an up-close look at why labor law reform like the Employee Free Choice Act is critical to a bigger, stronger empowered middle class and progressive movement.

That’s a clear statement of the AFL-CIO’s goals in passing the Employee Free Choice Act: to create a “bigger, stronger, empowered middle class and progressive movement.”

A movement that, judging by the Netroots Nation agenda, might often be at direct odds with the interests of that individual employee. Try getting a West Virginia worker to join a union by saying, “You’ll promote a progressive agenda. We even  oppose coal mining in your state.“

The fourth annual gathering of the Netroots (formerly known as the YearlyKos Convention) will be held August 13–16 in Pittsburgh, PA. The Netroots Nation 2009 meeting will include panelist including the AFL-CIO’s Stewart Acuff. One of the panels will be focusing on the egregiously named Employee Free Choice Act.

From their website:

The Secret Plan to Defeat the Right Forever

Thu, 08/13/2009 – 4:30pm, 311

Modernizing the nation’s labor law is critical to expanding union membership—which in turn, will ensure conservatives become a permanent minority, as newly-empowered workers actively engage in political action and demand a new way of doing the nation’s business…

So that’s their reason for supporting the EFCA. It’s politics! Why else would labor bosses support a proposal that would put 600,000 hard working Americans out of work?

From Jane Hamsher, the drum majorette of the marching left, at the Huffington Post, “Feinstein, Specter Compromises Pave the Way for Passage of Employee Free Choice Act”:

George McGovern was recently dis-invited from the Progressive Magazine’s 100th anniversary event because of his outspoken opposition to the bill on behalf of his good friend Rick Berman.  If McGovern is interested in reclaiming his reputation among progressives as something more than the pawn of a right wing astroturfing scumbag, he now has the opportunity to acknowledge that these compromises would satisfy his concerns.

Not countenanced: The possibility that McGovern reached his opposition to the Employee Free Choice Act through reason, principle, and personal experience as a business owner, as described in his Wall Street Journal op-ed, “The ‘Free Choice’ Act Is Anything But.”

In any case, the Progressive Magazine is now shunning him as a deviationist. Better tear down those photos of George Meany, too.

Elsewhere among the Internet drum and fife corps is this report from the AFL-CIO Blog, “Netroots Nation Salon: The Fight for Employee Free Choice, Online and Off.” Stewart Acuff claims, “You play the game all the way through. This is a dynamic process, and we’re at the 3-yard line—you can’t just walk off the field now.”

Maybe they are, maybe they aren’t. In any case, these entries always read like propaganda from the party line. No creative thinking, admission of fault, or engagement with the issues — just rhetoric to march to.

UPDATE (8:15 a.m.): Now that we do some more reading, other accounts have McGovern withdrawing himself, siting a scheduling conflict. The Progressive Magazine’s 100th anniversary International was held in Madison, Wisc., at the start of the month.

The AFL-CIO blog is promoting a speech by Stewart Acuff, a top aide to AFL-CIO President John Sweeney, on the occasion of May Day, the international labor day established by the Second International in 1889.

Acuff places himself and the workers under the boot of oppression, crushed by powerful forces of destruction. Man, oh, man, it’s a grim world view:

See, while they told us you are on your own, they did all they could to make it so. While they ignored climate change and global warming and more and more kids with asthma and more and more cancer cases, they were busting our unions, outsourcing and contracting out and privatizing our work, Wal-Marting our economy, telling us we have to compete in a global economy that sends 13-year-old girls to factories and factory dorms and the whims of supervisors in the Caribbean Basin, that murders trade unionists in Colombia, that sends 9- and 10-year-olds to work in Vietnam and Pakistan and uses slave labor in China.

The blog post then approvingly quotes the May Day declaration by the International Trade Union Confederation, which proposes:

We demand nothing less than a full-scale transformation of the world economy. A new global economy is required, which is built on social justice.

A full-scale transformation of the world economy…

Covering the announcement by Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) that she will oppose the Employee Free Choice Act, The Hill cites her statement:

“I consider both the labor and the business communities to be my friends.  However, now that we need all hands on deck, including business and labor, to get our economy moving again, this issue is dividing us,” Lincoln said in a statement. “While I may not have been clear about my position in the past, I am stating today that I cannot support Employee Free Choice Act in its current form and I can’t support efforts to bring it to Senate consideration in its current form.”

And…

“I will consider alternatives that have the support of both business and labor but my pledge today is to focus my full attention on the priorities I have mentioned that affect every working family in Arkansas,” Lincoln said.

When Senator Specter (R-PA) announced his opposition, organized labor generally made nice, trying to keep the lines of communication open with him. But with Lincoln…

“Senator Lincoln’s decision to stand with Big Business over working families at a time when CEOs make 344 times that of their average employee, and as jobs disappear by the minute, is disappointing at best. Yet we share Majority Leader Reid’s belief that our efforts to improve the working conditions and lives of millions of Americans through the Employee Free Choice Act will not be derailed,” said Jon Youngdahl, political director for the Service Employees International Union.

Unions say Lincoln abandons working families. That’s tough. (UPDATE: A vague statement, that. What we meant was, that’s certainly harsh rhetoric from the unions.)

Meanwhile, from the Arkansas Lincoln to the Nebraska Lincoln, where Stewart Acuff whistles past labor’s political graveyard. From the Journal-Star, “Unions near victory, labor official says”:

Organized labor is “very close” to winning a breakthrough legislative victory that could help restore a healthy middle class, a top national union official said in Lincoln.

“We want to reverse a 30-year assault on the freedom to form unions and bargain collectively,” said Stewart Acuff, special assistant to AFL-CIO President John Sweeney.