Hilda Solis

It might seem natural that on Labor Day weekend, The Washington Post would offer a profile of the Labor Secretary in their Sunday "Kids Post" section. Next to a large picture of Hilda Solis holding a doll from Central America she keeps in her office, the headline was "Secretary of Hard Work: Hilda Solis has been working since she was 10. Her main job now is helping other people find employment."

Here's what's unnatural. While working in details like her collection of dolls from all over the world and photos of the red,white, and blue M&Ms on her desk, the "Kids Post" profile never mentions how the employment picture is doing under Solis and President Obama. Here's another problem: the Post seems to have misled the children about her upbringing.

Check out Labor Secretary Hilda Solis [she of the solicitude for the rights of illegal immigrants at the expense of American workers] on the CBS Early Show this morning.  She ticks off a list of industries in which the government will make "investments" because "we know" they will be growing in future years.  Kinda like the Obama admin "knew" solar energy was the wave of the future when it "invested" about a half-billion in taxpayer dollars in Solyndra, a company that backed by a major Obama fundraiser.

Participating in pure partisan politics, Solis claimed the unemployment rate in Rick Perry's Texas would be "much higher" were it not for the spending of stimulus money there.  Right.  That vaunted stimulus that for only $800 billion managed to keep the national unemployment to only 8%.  Oh, wait, three years later it's 9.1%.  Never mind.  View video after the jump.

The Washington Post barely covered the Obama administration’s declaration to go all soft on deportations on Friday. They ran a 320-word Reuters dispatch on A-5 with zero opponents in it, and no suggestion this new policy was a bald-faced political move for Obama to improve his sinking approval ratings among Hispanics.

But in a front-page story Monday, Post reporter Peter Wallsten calmly explained that this is exactly what it was: “While most of Washington was embroiled in the debt-ceiling drama last month, about 160 Hispanic leaders from across the country filed into the White House one day, largely unnoticed. For two days, they enjoyed full access to top presidential advisers, Cabinet members and administration officials from across the government.”

During her 1PM ET show on MSNBC on Friday, host Andrea Mitchell decried President Obama showing willingness to extend all the Bush tax cuts: "We got the big hint from Robert Gibbs yesterday that that is now on the table as far as the President's concerned. How does extending tax cuts for the very – the wealthy, the millionaires, how does that help the unemployed?"

Mitchell directed that question to Labor Secretary Hilda Solis, who expressed opposition to extending the tax cuts: "Well, in my opinion, given our analysis, it's not going to be a job creator. We can look back at what happened in the previous decade and we know that that's not true." Mitchell interrupted her, demanding to know why Obama would give in on the issue: "Then why is the President willing to negotiate that away now? Is it because he's negotiating from weakness?"

Obama administration Labor Secretary Hilda Solis (pictured at right with what I would guess is her ideal car of the future) shamelessly used Labor Day weekend as an opportunity to score political points.

In a presentation that was more a political stump speech than an informative presentation, Solis recited a litany of alleged accomplishments. Many of them have no relationship to what her department does, while some are also objectively wrong. Second, she set up a host of straw men in the form of "those who would" and "to those who want to" to make her department and the administration where she works appear as if they and they alone are the bulwark against rapacious employers and their political allies.

The YouTube video is present at this DOL page (direct YouTube link here). What follows are selected transcribed excerpts, with specific critiques:

In a commercial, President Obama's Labor Secretary Hilda Solis tells illegal immigrants that she will help them get paid a "fair" wage. Solis insisted that it doesn't matter if a worker is documented or undocumented they still deserve to be paid "fairly".

The Eyeblast Blog has the full details on how the government justifies fighting for people who are employed illegally to be paid more.

The top-left corner of the Saturday Washington Post carried the decidedly inaccurate headline "For Obama Cabinet, A Team of Moderates." Reporter Alec MacGillis asserted that Obama finished assembling "a team full of outsize personalities with overlapping jurisdictions and nominees who are known more for pragmatism than for strong leanings on the issues they will oversee." Hillary Clinton and Tom Daschle, no strong liberal leanings?

Naming Rep. Hilda Solis (lifetime American Conservative Union voting score: a tiny 2) to the Labor spot wasn’t moderate: "the daughter of a union family who has a strongly pro-labor voting record, came as a relief to some liberals who had grown slightly anxious about Obama's commitment to organized labor's agenda....But many of Obama's other picks reflect his apparent preference for practical-minded centrists who have straddled big policy debates rather than staking out the strongest pro-reform positions."

Liberals have "the strongest pro-reform positions." Can't a centrist be a reformer? The Post story stars former Bush speechwriter Peter Wehner warning about all this pragmatism as a potential problem:

President Elect Barack Obama picked Rep. Hilda Solis (D-CA) as his Labor Secretary today. While groups like La Raza, N.O.W., and NARAL are likely to be pleased, Solis is also likely to please the liberal group Media Matters.

In late May of this year, she teamed up with Media Matters to present a report ( titled "Fear and Loathing in Prime Time/Immigration Myths and Cable News") that said cable news shows hosted by Bill O’Reilly, Glenn Beck, and Lou Dobbs presented a negative image of “undocumented immigrants.”

Media Matters has the You Tube Video video here. At the very end of the video Solis says, “We all have to be responsible as well and make the cable companies responsible.”

On May 27th, Solis was interviewed by National Public Radio about the Media Matters report. The new censorship doctrine may very well come in the form of government-mandated diversification of media. Solis talks about wanting a more accountable media and that certain cable shows have already “incited” “hate crimes.” (my emphasis throughout:)