FASCINATING FOOD FIGHT - AT 11:20 A.M. ET:  You have to admire a man who fights on principle, even when he knows it will cost him party invitations and access even to the White House.  From The Politico:

The president of one of America’s largest labor unions, Gerry McEntee, has emerged as a major obstacle to the White House’s efforts to maintain a unified front in the health care debate.

One does not defy Dear Leader.

The veteran president of the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) has crossed lines that few labor leaders – even those who quietly agree with him – would go near.

McEntee led workers in chanting a barnyard epithet to describe Senate Finance Committee chairman Max Baucus’s health care bill, which would levy a new tax on expensive health care plans. He published an op-ed in U.S.A. Today warning, in terms that could be used against Democrats in the midterms, that the plan could tax the middle class and cost workers their health care.

And he is probably right.

And he blew off a plea from White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and published an open letter promising to “oppose” legislation that contained the tax – published over the objections, several labor officials said, of other union presidents whose names appeared on the letter.

I hope he packs heat.

"We have had just about enough of his gratuitous slaps,” said a senior White House official Friday, calling the politically charged language “outrageous and unacceptable” from an ally — even from one that had, the official noted, devoted substantial resources to health care efforts.

They'll be angry...until they need union help again.  Then McEntee will become the greatest union leader they ever saw.

But it's gratifying to see some presidential allies willing to speak out about the mess that the White House calls health-care "reform."

October 17, 2009