Posted on 09/06/2009 8:00:39 PM PDT by kcvl
President Barack Obama is addressing one of his key constituencies — organized labor — on Monday as union members gather to celebrate the holiday named for their movement.
As Obama prepares for a critical speech Wednesday to Congress and the nation about his efforts to overhaul health care, a supportive audience at the AFL-CIO’s annual Labor Day picnic in Cincinnati should provide welcome relief from the highly charged partisan atmosphere surrounding the issue.
Besides addressing health care, Obama will tell the assembled union members he has named Ron Bloom as senior counselor for manufacturing policy. Bloom has served since February as senior adviser to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner as part of Obama’s auto industry task force.
Bloom is traveling to Cincinnati with the president, the White House said. He will be working with the National Economic Council to “provide leadership on policy development and strategic planning for the president’s agenda to revitalize the manufacturing sector.”
The White House said Bloom would continue in his position with Geithner but would expand his role to coordinate administration manufacturing policy with the Departments of Commerce, Treasury, Energy and Labor.
“Ron has the knowledge and experience necessary to lead the way in creating the good-paying manufacturing jobs of the future,” Obama said in a statement released Sunday night.
Before moving to Treasury, Bloom was a special assistant to the president of the United Steelworkers union. He was a founding partner in the investment banking firm of Keilin and Bloom.
Despite a friendly audience at the labor picnic, where Obama is expected to be welcomed by national union leaders John Sweeney and Richard Trumka, the gathering could turn out to be a small oasis in the swing state of Ohio.
Opposition to Obama’s health care overhaul was evident Saturday at a “Tea Party” rally in the Cincinnati suburb of West Chester, where a crowd of thousands protested with signs such as “Government-run health care makes me sick” and “Leave our health care alone.”
The AFL-CIO’s Eddie Vale said the picnic — this will be the 23rd annual such gathering — normally draws as many as 20,000 people. Then-presidential candidate Bill Clinton attended the event in 1992.
Oh they don't say?
You mean the Czar Union Pimp?
I hope whoever it is can be vetted as well as Van Jones was.
More fascist appointments, calls to action, "Workers of the World Untie, You have nothing to loose but your brains," sorta thing?
Pass the Popcorn.
yitbos
Leninism Czar.
Extortion only lasts so long. Unions will destroy every bit of industry left - unless the Obama admin holds guns to their heads and makes them pay workers to do nothing.
Can the Democrats' hypocrisy be any more obvious? 15% of the nation is unemployed so what does he do. He goes to a picnic with the AFL-CIO millionaires.
Of course it will be a union communist, who else would he appoint?
As a senior adviser for the Treasury Department's auto task force, Bloom will serve as an intermediary between the Big Three and their millions of unionized employees.
founding partner of Keilin & Bloom, the investment banking advisory boutique he set up with Gene Keilin, another former partner at Lazard Freres, in New York took a job as the special assistant to the president of the United Steelworkers, one of his longtime clients. He had a major role in advising the steelworkers on the consolidation of the steel industry by billionaire financier Wilbur Ross
After graduating from Wesleyan University in 1977, Bloom worked as a labor organizer. At the Service Employees International Union, one of the nation's largest unions, he came to the conclusion that unions lacked the technical skills to negotiate with management teams and their advisors at the bargaining table. "Unions were being backed into corners by companies and couldn't understand on a sophisticated level, the company's arguments," he once said. "Labor needed to be armed with the equivalent skills."
eventually advised the United pilots again -- for a fee said to be $22 million (he claims for the 'little guy')
New auto czar Ron Bloom answers questions in Detroit about the federal government's bailout of GM and Chrysler.
New manufacturing czar!
Bloom, a Harvard Business -trained banker turned United Steelworkers official
“Bloom has served since February as senior adviser to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner as part of Obama’s auto industry task force.....The White House said Bloom would continue in his position with Geithner but would expand his role to coordinate administration manufacturing policy with the Departments of Commerce, Treasury, Energy and Labor.”
Well sure, that thing with the automobiles (cash for clunkers, new mileage standards, etc.) is working out so well - lets expand his role.
Somebody better tell the enlightened one that he will be appointing a person to do NOTHING because pretty much all manufacturing is done elsewhere and products are imported back to us......you'd think the monumental job loss numbers each month would be his first clue.
Isn’t this conversation about how powerful the Union’s are silly? 12% of the population is a member of a Union
It is only now that the Union’s voice is being jazzed up during Obama’s administration.
Once he leaves hopefully it will go back to where it used to be quiet.
The Union membership is 12% in this wonderful country, broken down: Gov’t workers 36% and 7% of not Gov’t.
I don't think the arrogant fool could buy a clue!
May be a rumor but I’ve heard that later this week The Messiah will name a Suds Czar to settle the longstanding rivalry between Budweiser and Miller. After all, large sums of money are being spent on advertising but those dollars could just be donated to The One’s campaign funds. Rahm agrees with the plan, so does Michelle; looks to be unanimous.
Huh? Twelve percent of manufacturing in union. Over fifty percent of all govt workers are union. It's not silly. Unions are behind ACORN and other groups like them.
The Union membership is 12% in this wonderful country, broken down: Gov’t workers 36% and 7% of not Gov’t.
Better check that again.
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