The Fighting 29th

All about New York's 29th Congressional District

Randy Kuhl's press release on HR 800, the Employee Free Choice Act, says:

This Orwellian bill is the most misnamed legislation I’ve seen in my years as a legislator. [...] The bill actually takes away an employee’s ability to make a ‘free choice’ on whether to organize a labor union.

At his town meeting in Henrietta on Saturday, Kuhl also mentioned that the bill was supported by the Communist Party. As I pointed out last week, Kuhl co-sponsored last session's version of the bill, and withdrew that sponsorship only after the election. Since he's saying that this bill is now an Orwellian, Communist plot, I wondered what's different about this year's version.

Not much, as it turns out. There are exactly three changes between the 109th and 110th versions of the bill:

1. The title was changed to the "Employee Free Choice Act of 2007", rather than just the "Employee Free Choice Act".
2. The word "valid" was added to Section 2 Paragraph 6.
3. The word "authenticity" was changed to "validity" in Section 2, Paragraph 7B.

I can't believe that those four changed words alone made this bill "the most misnamed legislation" Kuhl's ever seen. That makes me conclude that another Orwellian principle is at work here: the big lie. Repeat it long enough, and loud enough, and people will forget that you were for this bill before you were against it.