Maine: Portland Press Herald

This morning's Portland Press Herald has this editorial that repeats the well established lie used by opponents of the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA):
Taking away the right of workers to vote in secret on whether to have a union is fundamentally unfair. In advocating for this approach, unions have ceded the high ground and lost an opportunity to build support for its concerns about employer intimidation and resistance to first contracts.

The EFCA (H.R. 800 from the 110th Congress) amends some portions of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), but not the section which guarantees workers a right to demand a secret ballot vote (Sec.

Former Portland Press Herald Reporter Jonathan Kaplan has an interesting column in The Washington Post this morning about the dwindling press corps in Washington. 

Kaplan was laid off from the Press Herald in a recent round of layoffs that resulted in the closure of the paper’s Washington D.C. and Augusta bureaus.

Kaplan writes:

The Portland Press Herald will be losing three of its seasoned political reporters, reports Al Diamon who writes the Media Mutt blog for Downeast magazine. Diamon cited anonymous sources with the paper.

State House reporter Paul Carrier and political reporter Kevin Wack are two of six reporters who have accepted a buyout from the paper. In addition, Washington, D.C. reporter Jonathan Kaplan has been laid off.