Cogitamus

Friday Frank: A Zappadan Catch-up Post

Wow, what a week. Okay, make that month. Methinks it's high time I posted some fabulous Frank to cap off Zappadan and kick off the pre-Christmas weekend. [ I should point out that as with much of FZ's music, the lyrics might not be especially, er, work-safe--unless, of course, your co-workers and boss are Zappaphiles too.]

Let's travel back in time, then, to 1968, and visit the Royal Festival Hall, where Frank Zappa, the Mothers, and various orchestra members are performing a neoclassical piece entitled This Town is a Sealed Tuna Sandwich, which would later be featured in the film 200 Motels.

(More Zappa brilliance after the jump)

UAW Redux (and how unions help non-union workers)

UNITE-HERE Union president Bruce Raynor has an excellent piece in Thursday's Los Angeles Times about the southern-fried union busting served up by Messrs. Corker, et al. and why, in the end, if the Foghorn Leghorn caucus succeeds, the sorriest sons of bitches are going to be those who toil for the foreign car makers on the assembly lines of Dixie (back to which in a minute).  Raynor also persuasively notes what a red herring the issue of UAW members' compensation is in the scheme of things versus the salaries that are paid in the financial sector to which few Republicans object.  In short, salaries account for 70% of the costs associated with the financial sector versus 10% of the cost of producing automobiles, one of the most capital intensive activities on earth. 

As Raynor notes, killing the UAW would be a boon to the foreign automakers producing in the southern United States:

But what the foreign car companies want is to level -- which is to say, wipe out -- the union. They currently discourage their workforce from organizing by paying wages comparable to the Big Three's UAW contracts. In fact, Toyota's per-hour wages are actually above UAW wages.
However, an internal Toyota report, leaked to the Detroit Free Press last year, reveals that the company wants to slash $300 million out of its rising labor costs by 2011. The report indicated that Toyota no longer wants to "tie [itself] so closely to the U.S. auto industry." Instead, the company intends to benchmark the prevailing manufacturing wage in the state in which a plant is located. The Free Press reported that in Kentucky, where the company is headquartered, this wage is $12.64 an hour, according to federal labor statistics, less than half Toyota's $30-an-hour wage. If the companies, with the support of their senators, can wipe out or greatly weaken the UAW, they will be free to implement their plan.

In other words, non-union workers benefit by the very existence of the threat to unionize.  Companies frequently pay wages that are only slightly below the union scale to keep workers from organizing.  In the construction industry, it is not unusual for employers to pay a higher take home wage than union workers get while providing much more modest (or no) benefits.  Such a strategy works particularly well with young men, who are by definition immortal, and immigrant labor, which often wants to maximize money that can be sent home to waiting families. 

Eliminate the union "threat" and there is no reason for an employer to be so generous.  What people seem to fail to comprehend is that any concession made in a unionized environment can be met and exceeded in a nanosecond, completely unilaterally by the non-union sector.  I have seen it happen.  In the early 1990s I participated in negotiating a couple of concessionary contracts for clients who ended up taking 10 to 15% cuts in their hourly wages.  The non-union sector was able to match or exceed those cuts within a day or two.  As a result, I have come to view concessionary bargaining that is not tied to specific gains in market share as being the ultimate fool's errand for unions.  

Mark my words -- if the UAW were to cease to be a viable entity because of what the Republicans are doing, the wages of the workers at the foreign-owned auto plants in the U.S. will be cut in half within a short time -- exactly the wrong recipe for an economy that is seeking to recover.    

Back To Dumb Democrat Tricks

Pam Spaulding, of course, has excellent info and commentary regarding Rick Warren's selection to stand on a street corner and pray in public for Obama's inauguration.  But Ezra has the best insight into this, stating that

[a]n argument can be made that Obama is using Warren Warren, after all, is the author of the best selling book of all time, and Obama's demonstrated respect for the preacher might build some level of rapport, or at least openness, with that community. But I doubt it. Rather, the benefits probably flow in the other direction. Warren's legitimacy as a mainstream figure grows. His status as the country's premiere religious leader is cemented. And he keeps telling his flock that the ideas Democrats hold make them Marxists and child murderers and advocates of the slippery slope to legalized incest.

Obama's embrace of Warren might mean Obama's name is left out of the sermon, but will that be true for the next Democrat? Or the next? And so we'll have a situation where the preacher that Obama embraced is working aggressively to convince his flock to vote against Obama's would-be Democratic successors? There's a difference between reaching out to the evangelical community with respect and surrendering to it.

Quite right, except for Ezra's last statement; as far as the Evangelical community is concerned, "reaching out" to them is surrenduring to them. 

I've been expecting Obama to disappoint me.  But I had the admittedly naive idea that Obama would make compromises in the pursuit of an actual accomplishment, something intelligent.  Obama ran such a smart campaign it's surprising to see him make such a stupid - and prototypically DC Democrat - mistake.

Billy Graham was at least a neutral "friend" to American Presidents.  Rick Warren will be no such thing.  He will kiss Obama's ass in private and when he's invited to ego-stroking events, and then will scurry back to his church, as Ezra says, smearing Democrats in general if not Obama by name as pedophiles and child murderers.  And everyone that matters - you know, the DC Villagers - will nod and call it realpolitik.

Rick Warren is a liar, and Barack Obama is stupidly buying his lies.

Harold Meyerson is Stealing My Stuff

And, really, I wouldn't have it any other way. 

Meyerson pens a wonderful column about the UAW and what it has meant to the body politic in America for the last 70 or so years and why the Republicans wish to destroy it -- even if it means doing untold harm to the economy.  I highly recommend reading it.

It did remind me a little bit of this, this, and this among others. 

Meyerson is fabulous.  I can't quite believe that the newspaper that brings you Krauthammer, Will, Gerson, and Broder also features him.        

Minstrel Boy on Jeopardy Today!

Set your Tivo's and DVR's, since Minstrel Boy of Group News Blog and Harp and Sword is appearing on Jeopardy today (check your local listings).

"I'll take brilliant, irreverent, truffle-making, multiple-language-speaking, massive-amounts-of-history-knowing, more-instruments-than-I've-had-hot-dinners-playing, Vietnam Veteran Irish-Apache Gentlemen and Scholars for a thousand, Alex...".

Go MB!

Something To Read That Isn't About The Coming Depression

Between hosting a company Christmas party this week, taking my son to the ER because he got a nasty gash from a cinderblock retaining wall - and fell face-first onto a coffee table in the ER waiting room, getting a black eye from it - and getting rid of the family dog because I'm tired of him biting my son with no provocation at all, it's hard to find time to blog.  I'm pretty much just following my son around everywhere he goes, at least until the new year when our cafeteria plan deductions kick in again and we can start drawing on that for our ER copays and coinsurance.

So here's an interesting article you may not have seen yet.  It's about the history of those Christians who spread to the East instead of the West, establishing churches throughout Asia by 800 CE. Even if you don't suscribe to the belief that Jesus spent several years in what is now India studying with and teaching various Buddhists, it's clear that there was quite a bit of not only cordial relationships, but collaboration between Buddhists and Christians.  It's fascinating.

I do have one caveat:  Philip Jenkins is one of many who are apparently under the impression that the Roman Catholic Church created itself ex nihilo a few centuries after Jesus, springing into existence a fully formed, worldwide movement with immense political and economic power.  Otherwise I simply cannot fathom why he would suggest that the Christians who migrated eastward, and the Nestorians in particular, have a better claim upon the original movement centered around Jesus.  This is ridiculous; Paul's letter to the already-established church in Rome predates the earliest Synoptic Gospel, Mark, by around 20 years, which is also the approximate time that had elapsed since the events of Easter.

It's a funny thing upon which to fixate, but reading the present-day Roman Catholic Church back into the first few centuries of the Common Era is not only common, but is also the source of quite a few nonsensical ideas that find their way into books about "suppressed books" of the Bible and grand conspiracies between the early Christians and the Roman government.  Christianity spent a couple centuries not mattering very much except to serve as scapegoats for political problems, and even Constantine's famous meddling wasn't nearly as consequential for either the Church or Rome as the inheritors of the European scholarly tradition would like everyone to think.  It took a while for Christianity to become what we see today - about 2,000 years, I would think.

The Fed is Sucking Wind

In the wake of continued disturbing economic news, the Fed announced an unprecedented cut in the federal funds interest rates from 1% down to a  range of between 0 and .25%.  Additionally, they made clear that they intend to keep these low, low rates in effect for the foreseeable future:

"The committee anticipates that weak economic conditions are likely to warrant exceptionally low levels of the federal funds rate for some time."  Bernanke then added "these interest rates are INSANE!"

The Fed is also contemplating purchasing longer term treasury securities in what I believe is an effort to encourage investors to purchase corporate bonds and stocks in the hopes of higher returns.  (I am reaching the limits of my economic knowledge right about there.)

All of this leads me to believe that Bernanke is seriously worried about economic fundamentals, particularly the threat of deflation and the continued deterioration of the housing markets.  It looks like 2009 could be a very challenging year for President Obama.  Hopefully, the risks may lead to commensurate political rewards.       

Cry Me a F#*king River

Forbes has an article about the plutocrats who have lost the most money in the current market meltdown.  The poster boy is Sheldon Adelson da turd, who has seen his worth plummet from $28 billion to a mere $4 billion.

My question about any of these people is why are they still trying to accumulate wealth when they have reached this incomprehensible level of affluence?  Isn't there something pathological about this continued quest?  To put it in some perspective, even in Mr. Adelson's newly paupered status, if he took his paltry $4 billion and simply placed it in fixed income instruments paying 4% a year, it would generate $160 million a year without touching the principal, a sum of money that no human being could spend in a year if they made it their mission.

These people are the best argument I can think of for an extremely high tax rate on certain levels of income as well as a confiscatory estate tax above a certain level of wealth instead of the current world where Mr. Adelson pays a lower tax rate than I do.           

Dept. of I don't know whether to Laugh or Cry

This article on a U.S. "kidnapping expert" being seized by kidnappers in Mexico where he had gone to assist local authorities was my favorite in a sea of despair-inducing items today.  

I don't mean to belittle this gentleman's plight and hope that he is released unharmed, but it does make me wonder if hubris is not our most abundant national resource.

The article actually highlights the deeply disturbing goings on in Mexico where kidnapping and assassinations by drug cartels are striking at the heart of civil society. You would think that the American media might consider this to be a story of more cosmic significance than Governor Bagsofhair, but I see little real coverage of it on cable news.  I wonder, too, the degree to which these problems are exacerbated by the unrelenting failure that is the "war on drugs."   

The unraveling of our neighbor to the south strikes me as a story to which serious attention is owed.      

Biking to Affordable Health Care in Thailand

David Gilmore of Tucson, Arizona urges Americans to ditch their overpriced health insurance and go to Thailand to get medical care, which he does regularly and affordably:  "Join me on a little bike ride through Chiang Mai on the way to the hospital. I got a full day’s worth of medical and dental care for $172."

Outsourcing Torture

Sunday's New York Times featured an op-ed piece by one Reuel Marc Gerech proudly defending the use of torture, wonderfully styled as "pain inflicting soliciting techniques."  (Isn't this what one might face with a particularly persistent Mary Kay agent?)  He posits that the only alternative to this is to subcontract the torture to our less squeamish friends in the third world -- think of Damascus as Bangalore with genital electrodes.  (It does not occur to Mr. Gerech that torture may not only be immoral, but also ineffective.)

According to Mr. Gerech, absent either torture or rendition, the Obama administration will inevitably face the "ticking time bomb" scenario, leading to mass casualities due to the moral fastidiousness of us liberals.   

I read it in disbelief -- not that this clown wrote it -- we all know that Republicans in their post 9-11 piss- your-pants phase have lost any shred of decency they once had -- but that the Times would publish such dreck.

Listen Reuel, many of us are willing to take a chance on living with a government that neither tortures nor outsources torture.  And I live right in DC, not some red state backwater.   Yglesias also takes on this steaming pile of crap.    

And Still More Intransigence from Organized Labor

Attractive Girls Union Refuses To Enter Into Talks With Mike Greenman

Ah, the AGU, one of my favorite clients.  A union so powerful that it bills me by the hour rather than vice versa.  Largely in increments of five minutes or less.  [That's a lawyer joke -- no outraged comments please.]  (And yes, I have suggested that the organization's name be changed to the more enlightened Attractive Womens' Union, but have thus far been ignored.) 

Are you F#*king Kidding Me?

Via Trapper John at Kos, leading Senate Democrats, including Harry Reid and Dick Durbin, praised the performance of Tennessee Republican Bob Corker in torpedoing the attempt to bail out the Big Three automakers. 

I simply don't understand this crap at all.  I have generally avoided being overly harsh in criticisms of Reid.  The Senate is a tough place to run, especially with a razor thin majority.  But can you imagine Mitch McConnell praising a Democratic senator  who had just stuck a knife in the back of one of the Republican Party's biggest and most loyal constituencies?  No you can't -- because it would never fucking happen.

Bob Corker is an unmitigated motherfucking scumbag, who would rather try to kill the UAW than do something to stabilize the economy in a time of peril.  The total irresponsibility of his actions is tough to exaggerate -- wait and see what happens to the auto industry writ large, including the rat bastard southern version, if people in the parts and supply chain don't get paid as a result of GM and Chrysler going bankrupt.  It will absolutely wreak havoc throughout the economy.  

The notion that Democratic leaders would find something praiseworthy in this, rather than trash this guy at every turn is beyond me.  This collegiality shit needs to stop -- number one, it is never reciprocated (see Cleland, Max) and number two, the issues are just too damn important to pretend that there aren't serious consequences to this kind of behavior.  Corker should be flayed -- we should be running commercials about his perfidy and the betrayal of American working people by the Republicans all over Michigan, Ohio, and Indiana just to drive home the message that seems to at last be sinking in -- the Republicans do not care about you.  

Stop praising the enemy, which is exactly what Corker is.  Knee him in the nuts and let him know there is a price to be paid for this kind of thing.  Stop being pushovers.  Jesus.         

This is what you get for trusting the Wall Street Journal, folks

Atrios and K-Drum are all a-twitter over an article in the WSJ about the future of net neutrality. I didn't even bother reading the thing because I assume the WSJ is full of crap 95% of the time, and I'm not wasting my time to filter out the 5%. Short version: I happen to have Lessig right here, and the WSJ is lying about Lessig's views.  Which makes me think they put about as much effort in to the rest of the story.

This really is very simple: Lessig said at a conference recently that large service providers should be able to pay for higher bandwidth, provided that ability is open to everyone. This is what Lessig has always said, and any reporter who's doing reporting on the Internet could have taken 30 seconds to learn both.

Considering the reporter in question seems to have not even bothered to call Lessig to clarify his views, I call bullshit on the entire piece. It's this last bit that's most galling: academics are pretty approachable, and aren't shy about talking when they've changed their minds. If Lessig had, you could have asked him, Kumar and Rhoads.

We Are Most Amused, U.K.

The Yang to the Yin of Last Night's Musical Post

"Ganja Smuggling" - Eek A Mouse

Legalize it (and tax it) - a deficit reduction plan we can all get behind.

Bonus track in the same vein - "Police in Helicopters" - John Holt

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMGCbgpIf3E&feature=related

Kicking it old school in a rub a dub style.   (Picture is not actually me.)

Saturday Night Miscellany

Whiling away another evening with a bottle of wine and the keyboard to keep me company.  Just had a frightening moment where I looked in the mirror and could have sworn that my hair has begun to resemble Rod Blagojevich's.   Must get it cut tomorrow.  So what's going on in that big beautiful world of ours:

- Well the Vatican has weighed in once again on topics related to fertility, contraception, stem cell research, etc., and as always, they don't disappoint.  There's nothing I enjoy more than listening to the wisdom of childless, unmarried, old, supposedly celibate men giving us the benefit of their infinite wisdom on these topics.  They have now added those who partake of in vitro fertilization to the list of sinners, equating the disposal of excess embryos in the process to abortions.  As someone who has known a fair number of couples who have struggled with infertility, and has watched people undergo expense, discomfort, a little humiliation, and a whole lot of anxiety in the process of trying to have children, I find it incredibly galling that these asshats in mitres have the arrogance to condemn them.  It makes me long for the wisdom of Earl Butz.   It's actually worth reading the paper itself, rather than just the summary in the article.  The blithe condemnation (I almost typed "condomnation") of all non-conjugal methods of having children really pisses me off.

- There is an interesting article in the Washington Post today about some very pissed off GM workers whose factory is in, of all places, Spring Hill Tennessee.  The people who work there and those in the local economy who depend on the dollars of these factory workers are more than a little miffed at scumbag Senator Bob Corker.  Spring Hill is in Maury and Williamson Counties, places that were overwhelmingly Republican in 2008, giving McCain roughly 67% of the vote.  Perhaps these folks might want to think again about voting for the party of union busters.   

- In recent weeks there has been the usual spate of articles in which people are asked to recommend books to the incoming chief executive.  Why not?  If I had one book to recommend to Barack Obama right now it would be "The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism" by Andrew Bacevich.  Bacevich is a genuine old school conservative, a career military man who retired at the rank of colonel after 23 years in the Army.  He is a professor of history at Boston University and a frequent contributor to the Washington Post.  He has been a brutal critic of the Iraq war, who irony of ironies, lost his son to that utterly unnecessary conflict.  But it is not Bacevich's critique of the Iraq War alone that recommends him -- it is his broader rejection of imperial American power whether in Vietnam or Iraq or in the humanitarian interventions of Kosovo, Haiti, and Somalia.  Bacevich is opposed to not only the neoconservatives, but also the liberal hawks and pro-military "idealists."  He's also opposed to deficit spending, consumer culture, addiction to cheap energy, our egocentric world view, and unwillingness to defer gratification.  He is a very old-fashioned and very smart guy.  I think he is worth Obama reading because of the temptation right now to treat Afghanistan as the "good war" and to view escalation("a surge") there as a road to success.  Bacevich is very skeptical of this world view and I think rightly so.  

- One of the interesting aspects of living on the East Coast over the last ten or so years has been the recovery and then flourishing of species that had nearly been wiped out of many areas when I was young.  Everyone knows that deer run riot now in vast swaths of the area, but they have now been joined by black bear, foxes, coyotes, bald eagles, and up near my parents in Massachusetts, huge numbers of wild turkeys (not the drink either).  I live about a block from a major street in DC -- so major that three pedestrians have been killed crossing it within the last year or so withing three or four blocks from my house.  But I am also very close to the Rock Creek Park, DC's sprawling urban park.  Two weeks ago I had a six point buck stroll casually in front of my car a block from my house.  Last week my wife and I slowly followed a red fox down a neighboring street for several blocks.  My neighbors saw a large coyote by my garbage cans last summer when they were out walking their dogs.  And I often awaken to deer crap on my walkway in the mornings.  I nod knowingly when cab drivers don't want to take me home through the Park because of their fear of deer -- I had my car totalled by one (she didn't do so well either) on the interstate about an hour out of town a couple of years back.  On balance I enjoy seeing these animals, although I would prefer that they leave my walkway alone.            

Jackals and Thieves

Yes, as through this world I've wandered, I've seen lots of funny men;
Some will rob you with a six-gun, and some with a fountain pen.

"Pretty Boy Floyd" - Woody Guthrie

Detailing moral (and actual) bankruptcy on Wall Street isn't exactly a heavy lift these days.  Still, one can't help but be at least a little stunned at tales of Bernard Madoff, a former NASDAQ director,  bilking supposedly savvy investors out of tens of billions of dollars, while Marc Dreier, a prominent Wall Street lawyer, settled for swindling people out of only hundreds of millions of dollars.  As Atrios notes, what is really charming with respect to the former miscreant, is that many of his investors suspected that his superior "returns" over the years were attributable to insider trading.  Nice. 

I am curious how the glibertarians respond to such happenings in our perfectly efficient markets.  After all, investors in Mr. Madoff's Ponzi scheme included the very wealthy and powerful, such as the former chairman of GMAC (do you think that might say something about problems at General Motors) and the owners of the New York Mets and Philadelphia Eagles.

But to our friends on the right, the important thing is not the regulating of our financial markets, but rather to keep people from joining unions and punishing those that do.  Somehow in GOP Land, the lower the wages of working people the better off we'll all be.   

Blogging .20 (at least) - On a Visionary Flood of Alcohol*

"Sometime Around Midnight" - The Airborne Toxic Event

And you feel hopeless and homeless
and lost in the haze of the wine.

The evening's theme is drinking.  Hey, I know, but some themes never get old.  Mrs. Sir C. is out of town pursuing professional dreams and the 15-year old conked out at 8:30.  (Kids today!)  So I was left to drink alone, during which,as George Thorogood aptly observed, "I prefer to be by myself."  This led me to muse about favorite drinking songs and drinking epigrams from those songs.  And so a stumbling trip down lost memory lane with ten of my personal favorites.  Please add yours in comments.  I am only scratching the surface at best, particularly given my neglect of country music. 

I also decided to limit myself to one song by Tom Waits and one by the Pogues.  Otherwise, they could each fill any list.

These are truly in no particular order other than the random firing of mistreated neurons.

Ponzi Street

This is what 30 years of Deregulate-Deregulate-Deregulate-Get-the-Government-Out-of-My-Life has gotten us.  Actual e-mail from a close friend; names removed:

Hi _____--
I'm wondering if you could do me a huge favor-- I just heard on the
news that Bernard L. Maddoff was indicted in a huge investor fraud
scheme. I've had limited success in getting details on the net.
Unfortunately, my parents have ALL their money invested there. Would you
be able to scope out some details for me? I'm wondering if they will
have any chance of recovering anything...
Anyway, I'd truly appreciate it if you could find out anything (& of
course, I'd owe you big time.)
I'm totally freaking out!

In case you're wondering what this person is talking about, here's the story.  Someone oughtta punch this guy in the face, and then take all his money to redistribute to the people he's screwing.  But instead, we'll just fiddle while the country burns, taking years to try and convict him, before sending him off to some cushy country-club prison, while people like the person who wrote that plaintive e-mail just fade away.  Thank you, rightwing Republicans, Free-Marketeers, and every other arrogant, sneering, capitalism-is-an-unalloyed-good cheerleader out there. 

How to Fight the Filibuster

A must read article by William Grieder in the Nation makes the case for the Dems to grab the elephant by the balls and change the filibuster rules to allow cloture to occur at 55 votes.  (And how to avoid a filibuster in so doing.)

Now is the time for this kind of action.  I would make it the first order of business when the new Senate convenes in January.  Then I would pass a decent bailout bill for the auto industry.  And then I'd jam the Employee Free Choice Act down McConnell's malevolent throat.  

It's time to draw a line in the sand and tell the Republicans that we won big, we have a mandate to govern and solve problems, we're going to use that mandate, and we will not be held hostage by a bunch of reactionaries from dumbfucksville.   

Let's achieve post-partisan politics by making the partisans on the other side utterly irrelevant to the debate.  Oh, and if we need a couple of Republican votes, I say we all pledge to order the lobster at market prices, without even asking the wait staff what it costs.  (Do you hear that Senators Snowe and Collins.) 

Cogitamus Has AWESOME Commenters

At the risk of going all meta, on my recent post kissing up to praising the intelligence of the Cogitamus commenting community, bigbadwolf posted this gem:

i think a good way to highlight the southern auto plant issue would be for levin or stabenow to introduce a bill proposing that senators from right to work states be paid in proportion to senators from union states, the propotion being whatever the non-uaw/uaw proportion is. when the senaotrs scream, the answer is, we want you to be free and consistent. ans what would they be screaming about; the law would have to be prospective and they would be free to not stand for reelection. either they believe in right to starve laws or they don't.

This is the type of thing that GOP Senators would actually do to their Democratic "colleagues."  And there's nothing wrong with it.  Sometimes antics are required to get a point across.

It's obvious that Republican Representatives and Senators will happily force America into depression in order to bust a union.  In the particular case of McConnell, Shelby and Corker's opposition to the bailout, they're fighting for what bigbadwolf rightly calls "right to starve" laws in order to keep Japanese/Korean automakers happy, even though these states also have parts manufacturers, distribution centers, dealers and mechanics that all make their living from American automakers. 

But I can actually respect their commitment to their ideology, even as I detest them for adhering to such a hateful, destructive ideology in the first place.  "Courage of their convictions" is a phrase you've seen me use often, and I respect those who display it. 

But I have no respect for Harry Reid and most of the rest of the Senate's Democrats, because it's clear they have no courage and becoming increasingly likely that they have no convictions either.  Their ideology, if that word is applicable, is nothing more than an elevation of the US Senate's reputation for comity and gentility above all other considerations.  Harry Reid would rather savor his appearances before the cameras where he gets to play the Democratic caricature of Elder Statesman, sadly shaking his head at the Senate's regrettable inability to use the massive power of bipartisanship and civility to forge grand compromises that will save the world.

It's always a passive-voiced, impersonal sense of "partisanship" and "lack of civility" that sink these deals, even as the individuals that sabotaged the process are standing nearby, giggling and high-fiving each other at being able to grind the Senate to a halt yet again.  We know who did it, Harry.  It was Shelby, McConnell and Corker.  They're in all the papers and on all the shows blasting you and the UAW by name, you pathetic little man.  We know they're evil, they know they're evil:  they revel in it.  They relish assigning blame to you and everyone you purport to represent.  The taste of the words is sweet in their mouths.  But we can deal with their evil.  We can fight it because we can see it.  On the other hand you, Harry Reid and your Give-In-To-Them Caucus, you pretend to care, to want to fight for us.  Yet you'd allow the country, even the world, to slide into total chaos and destruction rather than risk embarrassing a few people who would let their own mothers starve if it saved their corporate patrons half a point on their capital gains tax.

McConnell, Corker and Shelby killed the automaker bailout, but Harry Reid - along with the endless supply of cowardly Democrats who have come before him and will assuredly come after - is the problem.

Louis CK

Auto Bailout News

Using their magical Senate minority powers, GOP lawmakers have managed to kill the Chrysler/GM bailout proposal.  Apparently the UAW wasn't willing to beggar its members in order to make Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Honda, Toyota, Hyundai Factories), Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Toyota Factory), and Sen. Bob Corker (R-Nissan Factory) happy.

This article has Reid saying that now they will just put the Democratic-backed plan up for a vote, but that he "predicted it wouldn't pass."  No, of course not, because it's not like there's a majority of Democrats in the Senate or anything.  Oops, I forgot that longstanding Senate rules - set forth in the Constitution, I'm sure - stipulate that Democrats require 60 votes to pass anything at all.  Passing legislation with a 51-vote majority is only for legitimate political parties, not a pathetic collection of spineless, sniveling cowards who can't be bothered to get their collective fucking heads out of their collective fucking asses long enough to do even one thing for the vast majority of Americans who don't make over a fucking million dollars a year!

Ahem.

However, this may actually be what good, union-backing progressives want to see, because the White House has reportedly made it clear to GOP members of Congress that if there isn't an automaker-centric bailout passed immediately, Paulson will use TARP funds for GM and Chrysler.  According to the anonymous sources in the linked article,

One of the sources said the a White House official made clear to a GOP Senator that would be the worst option, because the loan could go to the auto companies with few or no requirements along with it.

Yes, it would be terrible to give billions of taxpayers' dollars to a small number of large corporations without any conditions or accountability, wouldn't it? 

Unfortunately, this preferred outcome, which wouldn't put American taxpayers on the hook for any more money and wouldn't require the UAW to accept Wal-Mart's wage and benefits plan, would only occur if the White House makes good on its promises.  Once again the situation becomes worse no matter to whom we turn for a solution.

Obama Claus is Coming to Town

Yes Christmas is coming late this year for a whole lot of us here in our Nation's capital, as we anticipate January 20, 2009 like impatient children.  Every group is getting their wish list together to supply to the transition team.  

Last night I ran into a class action securities litigator who was heading up to the Hill to see what kinds of (urgently needed) reform he might be able to pitch to key people in the Congress.  

Friends of mine in the reproductive rights community are busily debating the actions, both executive and legislative, that they want to try and push right out of the starting gate.

And we in the labor movement are thinking about legislation in addition to the Employee Free Choice Act that we can pursue that will help level the playing field on behalf of our members and the employers who employ them.  I cannot describe how exciting it was to be solicited for ideas that will be pitched to a receptive administration. 

You have to understand that my history with the labor movement started shortly after Reagan broke the air traffic controllers' union while simultaneously undertaking economic policies designed to destroy the country's industrial base (and its unions).  Bush the elder was not appreciably better than Reagan.  The Clinton interregnum brought some relief, but we were never under the illusion that we could obtain major legislative goals when he took office.  Two years later, any lingering hopes were crushed with the Republicans taking control of the House and Senate.  And then the grossest insult of all, the presidency of George W., where we faced unrelenting hostility each and every day, with the ironically named Department of Labor, run by Mitch McConnell's wife, dedicated to destroying unions rather than protecting working people.  In other words, I have dwelt in utter darkness for a quarter century. 

So what was on my wish list?  My main desire is for mechanisms to combat employers who violate wage and hour laws and misclassify employees as independent contractors.  There is an epidemic of this going on in the construction industry.  These employers pay their work forces a substandard wage (often in cash), provide no benefits of any kind, while avoiding the obligation to pay either the employer or employee shares of Social Security, Medicare, federal and state unemployment, not to mention withholding federal and state income taxes, or workers' compensation insurance.  I would like to see legislation that grants a private right of action against such employers, allowing individuals to act on behalf of and for the benefit of federal and state governments to recover the taxes not paid by these employers in a manner akin to the False Claims Act or other qui tam actions.              

Of course, one thing all of the disparate liberal groups agree on is the notion that personnel is policy.  So we are breathlessly awaiting the appointment of sympathetic cabinet officers and underlings, people who will actually be dedicated to the mission of their agencies or commissions, to see federal judges put on the bench who are not Federalist Society members, an emphasis on smart people who know what they are doing and believe in sound governance. 

At the tender age of 48, I am going to get to see something completely new (to me at least).  I can't wait.