Category: Legislation

Political Scabbing and Management Threats Against Labor

No Comments

So Arlen Spector has decided to cave, again, because of his fears of being primaried, and he has announced that he will vote against cloture on the Employee Free Choice Act, and Federal Express has said that it will cancel its contract to purchase Boeing aircraft if the EFCA passes.

I am not surprised at Spector, who has never seen a principled stance that he couldn’t weasel of, though I am surprised that FedEx, which has a long history of virulent and nasty anti-union activity, put a clause in their aircraft purchase contract that allowed them to cancel if unionizing there gets easier,* is a surprise.

Needless to say, if I need to send anything, I will use the use the US Post Office or UPS, rather than those C*cks*ck*rs.

*The EFCA would change how FedEx organizes, moving it from the National Railway Labor Act to the National Labor Relations Act, which means that parts of the company could unionize, as opposed to the whole company at once.

Cows…Barn Doors…And the US Government

No Comments

So, we have the government looking to legislation giving them the authority that the FDIC does when it shuts down banks for not bank entities, such as bank holding companies and hedge funds.

And in related news, the FDIC is looking for additional authority to acutally write regulations, a function which is currently does not have.

It has strong enforcement powers, but, “but only the Federal Reserve, Office of Thrift Supervision and National Credit Union Administration can write the regulation it enforces.”

It’s about time.

House Passes Bonus Tax Bill

No Comments

Just over half of the ‘Phants voted against it, and all but 6 Democrats (I’ll post who and what should be done later) voted for a 90% tax on bonuses of companies getting bailed out by the government.

On some level I understand just how this is really a very small part of the bailout, but from news, to outrage, to bill passing the house is about 4 days, and it means something, though I’m not sure who gets that yet.

Wishing that I Was German

No Comments

Yes, that’s number 217 of the things that I never expected to say, but when I read that Angela Merkel’s governing coalition is looking to put statutory limits on executive pay, that is what I thought. When the conservatives in government argue that, in addition to encouraging bad behavior, “that growing wage disparities “pose a threat” to social cohesion,” I wonder why our policies are run by John Galt wannabes.

Securities Trading Tax Goes Mainstream

No Comments

I knew that there were some proposals kicking around, but the idea has become mainstream enough that New York Stock Eexchange CEO Duncan Niederauer has gone public with his opposition.

It appears that Rep. Peter DeFasio’s (D-0R-4) proposal for a ¼% transaction tax on stocks and derivatives, in part to fund the bailout of the banking industry.

It’s a very good idea. ¼% is inconsequential to long term investors, but to speculator types, such as day traders, it makes their business model, and the problems that they bring, much less sustainable.

It exists in most of the rest of the world, and (IIRC) existed in the US until some point in the 1960s, so it’s not the end of the world that these folks forsee, though it might cut down a bit on their commissions from churning clients investments.

Levin and McCain Look to Give Nunn-McCurdy a Steroid Injection

No Comments

They are proposing the Weapon Systems Acquisition Reform Act, which is intended to add some teeth to the 1983 Nunn–McCurdy Amendment.

Nunn–McCurdy requires congressional notice when a program goes 15% over budget, and termination when it goes 25% over budget, unless the DoD certifies it as “essential to the national security,” but this has come to mean very little, as evidenced by the F-22, DDG-1000, FCS, JSF, EFV, LCS, etc.

According to Senator Carl Levin, the measure includes:

  • Address problems with unreasonable performance requirements by requiring DOD to reestablish systems engineering organizations and developmental testing capabilities; make trade-offs between cost, schedule and performance early in the program cycle; and conduct preliminary design reviews before giving approval to new acquisition programs;

  • Address problems with unreasonable cost and schedule estimates by establishing a new, independent director of cost assessment to ensure that unbiased data is available for senior DOD managers;

  • Address problems with the use of immature technologies by requiring the Director of Defense Research and Engineering (DDR&E) to periodically review and assess the maturity of critical technologies and by directing the Department to make greater use of prototypes, including competitive prototypes, to prove that new technologies work before trying to produce them; and,

  • Address problems with costly changes in the middle of a program by tightening the so-called “Nunn–McCurdy” requirements for underperforming programs.

What is interesting here is that this is juxtaposed with the appointment of Ashton B. Carter as Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition.

Carter is a Harvard professor, and has no ties to the defense industry. His career has largely involved criticizing the defense industry while at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, and he served as Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy under Clinton.

The Iron Triangle types do not like him, which means that I do, though I hope that he has the bureaucratic chops to make this work.

Good News on Student Loans

No Comments

We have some change we can believe in, Obama is calling for an end to federal subsidies to private student loan providers.

Seeing as how the private system has resulted in:

  • Higher costs to borrowers.
  • Higher costs to the federal government.
  • Corruption in the financial aid departments of universities.

It makes a lot of sense to stop subsidizing providers of an inferior service.

Obama would use the money saved for Pell Grants.

Obama Budget Plan

No Comments

It’s a decent plan, though once again, it appears to not go quite far enough.

  • He’s rolling back the Bush tax cuts at the top tax brackets, though I think that the max marginal rate should made far higher, something like the 70% we had pre-Reagan for income above $5 million/year or so.
  • He’s spending $634 billion on expanding healthcare access, which is good, but the real need exceeds $1 trillion.
  • Closes some of the more egregious tax loopholes.
  • Cuts farm aid to big farms

He is also estimating a decent bit of revenue from a carbon cap-and-trade system, which I think is in error. He underestimates the costs of enforcement, speculative pressures, and evasion, which is why I favor a straight carbon tax.

And Now Republicans Come Out in Favor of Giving AIDS to Children

No Comments

If you ever wondered just how immoral the Talibaptist wing of the Republican party is, look no further than state Senator Dave Schultheis (R-Colorado Springs), who is opposed to testing pregnant women for AIDS, because it would lead to treatments to reduce the chance of their children catching the disease, and their children having AIDS is appropriate punishment for their promiscuity.

The frightening thing is that coming from Colorado Springs, home of James Dobson’s Focus on the Family, a significant portion of his constituents likely agree:

  • What he said during the debate: “This stems from sexual promiscuity for the most part and I just can’t go there. We do things continually to remove the consequences of poor behavior, unacceptable behavior, quite frankly. I’m not convinced that part of the role of government should be to protect individuals from the negative consequences of their actions.”
  • What he said afterward: “What I’m hoping is that yes, that person may have AIDS, have it seriously as a baby and when they grow up, but the mother will begin to feel guilt as a result of that. The family will see the negative consequences of that promiscuity and it may make a number of people over the coming years … begin to realize that there are negative consequences and maybe they should adjust their behavior. We can’t keep people from being raped. We can’t keep people from shooting each other. We can’t keep people from jumping off bridges. People drink and drive, and they crash and kill people. Poor behavior has its consequences.”

For all those wankers (that’s you Lord Saletan) who think that we can engage in meaningful negotiations with the abortion criminalization crowd, understand that they want to eliminate all forms of birth control, and re-institute criminal penalties for “fornication”.

In fact, they want to give children AIDS to punish their parents.

You can no more find common ground with them than you can with al Qaeda.

Because the Blue Dogs and the New Democrats are the Suck

No Comments

It looks like the corporate whore Blue Dog and New Democrat caucuses are doing their level best to kill the ability of bankruptcy judges to rewrite mortgages on primary residences. (Cram-downs)

Chairman of the New Democrat Caucus, Ellen Tauscher, that it’s not fair to people not in bankruptcy who are being screwed by their banks, which is complete bullsh$#.

If people have the stick of cram-downs to wave at the banks, it makes those banks much more likely to renegotiate loans.

What’s more, it only applies to loans already made, not those going forward, and, depending on draft, may only be limited to sub-prime mortgages…..It is very weak tea to begin with.

This is “I want donations from the banks” crap, and Ellen Tauscher is in a very safe Dem district, having won each election with more than 65% of the vote since redistricting.

She needs to be primaried, but according to Act Blue, she does not have a primary opponent right now…..Damn.

When You Give a Child a Loaded Gun

No Comments

Let me be clear here, the metaphor implies no adult supervision, I am not making a comment on children and their parents going to the shooting range, or enrolling a kid in a gun safety class, or going hunting with the kids.

In this case, the metaphor refers to California, where a juxtaposition of heavily gerrymandered districts, term limits, and a requirement for a 2/3 super-majority to pass any taxes, have handed a loaded revolver to the most wingnutty of ‘Phants.

Seriously, when you combine the unbalanced districts with the super-majority, and then throw in a dash of “no respect for the legislature as an institution,” because they are limited to 6 years in the statehouse, and 8 years in the state senate, and you have a heady brew.

The Dems, and Ahnuld Schwartzenegger, need to have a club to beat Republicans around the head and shoulders, I would suggest an out of cycle redistricting.

To avoid the appearance of impropriety, have as a requirement, “The length of the borders shall be the minimum practical,” which means that the districts will be mathematically as contiguous as is possible.