Andy Stern has just gained yet another job.  Earlier this month, Stern also accepted a position on the Board of Directors for SIGA, a producer of anti-viral and biological warfare defense products.

But this job seems to have some policy teeth, with a think-tank title akin to Media Matters or the Center for American Progress, and it comes with perhaps some welcome company as well.

From The San Francisco Chronicle:

Andy Stern, former president of the Service Employees International Union, is joining Georgetown University’s public policy school as a research fellow.

Stern, 59, retired in May after building his union into one of the largest in the labor movement and increasing his own influence with President Barack Obama and Democratic lawmakers.

Stern will coordinate research at Washington-based Georgetown on wage reform, labor policy and retirement security, according to an announcement on the school’s website.

Stern of course maintains his position as an adviser on Obama’s deficit-reduction commission, a post to which Obama appointed him in February of this year.

This announcement comes only weeks after the announcement that Ed Montgomery, who has been serving in the White House as both a member of President Obama’s Task Force on the Auto Industry and as the Director of Recovery for Auto Communities and Workers, will leave the Obama administration to take over as Dean of Georgetown University’s Public Policy Institute.  As very active leaders in the labor movement, both Mr. Montgomery and Andy Stern certainly know one another, and have shared visits at the White House for such activities as Obama’s White House Forum on Jobs and Economic Growth.

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The liberal Democrats in New Hampshire have sunk to a new low. They are smearing a private citizen in the press because he opposes the Obama-Pelosi agenda. I’ve never really seen anything like it, but I fear it is emblematic of what will happen to other small business owners who are suffering from Obama’s policies.

Last Thursday I held a press conference in my race for Congress in New Hampshire’s First Congressional District with a gentleman named Alan Silberberg, whose auto dealership was shut down arbitrarily by Chrysler, Obama’s “car czar” and his “Auto Task Force.” The purpose of the press conference was to demonstrate how Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi and my Congresswoman Carol Shea-Porter’s policies are destroying our economy.

It’s important to know that Alan wasn’t shut down because his business was failing. He was shut down because the government’s policies put his business on the chopping block without transparency and without accountability. To let people know how he felt, Alan painted a sign on his storefront that reads, “This business now closed because of Obama’s economics.”

Folks don’t need to listen to me or to Alan. They can listen to Neil Barofsky the special inspector general for TARP:

The Obama administration’s push to accelerate General Motors Co. and Chrysler Group LLC dealership closings, aimed at helping the companies compete, may not have been necessary and added to unemployment, a U.S. watchdog said.

The Treasury Department should have considered whether speeding up the closings was worth the potential loss of tens of thousands of jobs, according to a report released yesterday by Neil Barofsky, special inspector general for the Troubled Asset Relief Program. The U.S. had rejected reorganization plans from the carmakers in March 2009, in part citing a “slow pace” for GM to scale back its dealer network.

“Such dramatic and accelerated dealership closings may not have been necessary and underscores the need for Treasury to tread very carefully when considering such decisions in the future,” Barofsky concluded.

The report may prompt congressional criticism of the administration’s handling of the automaker bailouts. Lawmakers have already complained about the job losses in their districts from dealership closings and the process by which retailers were selected for shutdowns.

Of course, the Democrats attacked me in the press for having the guts to stand up to Obama’s policies.  I’m a candidate for Congress. I expected it and I can handle it.

But I didn’t expect them to attack Alan.

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