Kausfiles: A mostly political weblog.

Bulbblogging Brings the Hits!

Why do people seem to think saying

"I don't get ulcers. I give ulcers."

is winning, as opposed to obnoxious? ... It's not like saying "I don't make art. I buy art." ... 2:23 A.M.

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Michael Kinsley used to say that every time journalists' use the "from A to Z" form of expression--as in "spans the spectrum from A to Z," or "everyone from X to Y"--it only serves to show how narrow the spectrum being described is, not how broad. There's a good example this Kinsley iron law** in the press-releasey piece The Big Money ran on Mayor Bloomberg's newfangled poverty measure:

For decades, scholars and policymakers across the political spectrum—from Patrick Moynihan to researchers at the American Enterprise Institute—have argued that [the old poverty] measure is broken. [E.A.]

I submit that the distance between Daniel Patrick Moynihan and AEI is something less than vast. It would be more accurate to say that Moynihan is revered at AEI, especially Moynihan's neoconservative tendencies. Chris DeMuth, AEI's president from 1986 until recently, worked for Moynihan. And here's a Charles Krauthammer showpiece AEI lecture that builds on praise for Moynihan.

It's hard to tell if the Big Money's author, Georgia Levenson Keohane, is credulous or simply thinks her audience is. Are you impressed that in developing his new poverty measure, Mayor Bloomberg "met extensively with Rep. Jim McDermott of Washington, who in September introduced the Measuring American Poverty Act of 2008 in the U.S. House of Representatives"? Then you are easily impressed.  Keohane doesn't even deal with some of the obvious potential controversies surrounding the new measure (which produced a poverty figure for New York City that is 20% higher), Specifically,

a) Should Medicaid and other government health benefits really be counted at full dollar value? They cost what they cost. But you can't eat fancy health insurance--if it might one day pay for a $100,000 heart operation for you or someone else on the plan, that doesn't mean you're not destitute today.

b) Counting regional variations in the cost of living is a bit fishy, no? If I make enough money to live semi-comfortably in Tennessee, but choose to live uncomfortably in New York City, should I really be counted as part of America's failure to eradicate poverty? Keohane cheers Bloomberg's measure for apparently carrying this to ridiculous extremes by adjusting for varying costs of living "even within the city." It's one thing to suggest that New Yorkers shouldn't be expected to seek cheap rents in Tennessee. It's another to say people in Manhattan can't be expected to move to Brooklyn. And there's an obvious pecuniary incentive for a New York pol like Bloomberg to take into account geographic variations in cost of living--it makes New Yorkers look needier and helps him beg for more federal assisatnce.  

c) The poverty line is just a line--a necessarily arbitrary line. It's mainly useful to show trends--i.e., is there more "poverty" or less?  If the line is reformulated so more people fall below it, they are no better or worse off than before. But moving the line serves an obvious propaganda point--if "advocates" can say 23% of the population, not 18%, is officially "poor." Why not avoid the "propaganda" charge by doing what Gary Burtless of the Brookings Institution once suggested to me: refine how we measure income, but then set the poverty line so that, for the first year, there are exactly the same number of poor people under both new and old measures. That would make it harder for those on the left to use the new formula as part of a rhetorical scare campaign. Why do I have a feeling that would also reduce much of its appeal to Keohane?

**--Another journalistic iron law: Every time a reporter says a person is funny and gives an example, the example won't be funny. As in yesterday's NYT piece on Bill Richardson--

He is known for his easy sense of humor — during the 2004 Democratic convention, he distributed jars of salsa with his picture on them ... [E.A.]

This rule holds even, perhaps especially, if the person in question really is funny. I do not know whether that's true of Richardson. ... 1:23 A.M.

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Monday, January 5, 2009

A knowledgeable insider notes a source of labor leverage over on Big Business that I hadn't thought of in discussing (below) a possible Big Business sellout of small business on "card check":

Also, don't forget, the Business Roundtable [i.e., Big Business] in particular has a strong incentive to keep the unions happy on card check because of the pressure unions are exerting on capital markets issues such as access to the proxy, "say on pay," precatory proposals etc. - issues that BRT CEOs really care about.  If people really want to understand the leverage unions have, despite their small size, they should look to the power of union pension funds and such groups as CII. [E.A.]

CII seems to be the Council of Institutional Investors, whose membership includes lots of union funds. ... P.S.: It's kind of a sad commentary on American capitalists if they aren't scared of what might happen to their actual production process, but are scared of what self-styled do-gooder investors might say at a shareholders' meeting, no? ... 8:22 P.M.

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LAT vs. CFL: The PC Times turns against compact flourescent bulbs, on aesthetic and environmental grounds. I'm with the Times, against the times. Does that put me to the right of Wal-Mart or the left? ... P.S.: Or just in the Shade? ... 6:08 P.M.

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What's Worse Than Camelot? Cuomolot!

Tuesday, December 30, 2008

Enjoy your daily print newspaper. It's later than you think. ... 1:02 A.M.

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Magical Moment: One seemingly sure sign Obama is actually, really not going left, at least on economic policy: Robert Kuttner isn't sucking up!** Instead he's frankly anguished about the incoming economic team. ... P.S.: OK, there's a small, vestigial suck-up at the end. ...

**--For Kuttner's 1992 flattery of president-elect Clinton, click here, search for "epic." ...12:47 A.M.

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Monday, December 29, 2008

Fire Fire Mickey Kaus. They're falling down on the job. ... No wonder I still have this gig.

Update: They've been spurred into action, arguing

It's true that unions are poor vehicles for equitable distribution of wealth. They have also failed to cure cancer, and they haven't done anything to stop Russian aggression in post-communist Europe.

Now it's obvious unions are "poor vehicles for equitable distribution of wealth." Please tell it to Kevin Drum (and Paul Krugman). ... 7:26 P.M.

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Life in the Left Cocoon:  Promoting the Southern, corporate, anti-UAW agenda, Kevin Drum says he's "open" to "good-faith efforts to address reform" of "mushrooming work rules." But he's still for greater unionization:

Conservatives flatly oppose anything that gives labor any additional bargaining power, full stop, and that doesn't leave much room for compromise. So unions it is. Especially in the service sector, they're pretty much the only idea on the table for seriously addressing low-end wage growth, and that means I'm for 'em. [E.A.]

The only idea on the table? How about restoring economic growth and creating a tight labor market, giving all workers (not just the unionized) greater bargaining leverage? That's the traditional Clintonite formula, no? To that you could add border control to ensure that competition from unskilled immigrants doesn't undermine leverage among lower-wage workers..... Drum goes on the cite Ezra Klein for the proposition that:

the last great leap forward for unions was during World War II, and the last great expansion of the American middle class followed in its aftermath. In contrast, the most recent expansions -- which have largely occurred in the absence of unions -- have benefited America's rich. [E.A.]

Huh? The biggest recent expansion, during the '90s, a) benefitted Americans at all levels, but especially average workers and b) occurred largely while union power was ebbing. The Clintonite formula worked. Maybe it can't be achieved again. Maybe it's flawed because (sorry!) the rich got richer too in the Clinton years. Maybe a return to Carter-era union power will be better still! But those are arguments Dems like Drum and Klein won't even deign to make as long as they keep reassuring each other that they not only have the best ideas around but the only ideas around. ...

P.S.:  Klein also argues;

The countries with the world's highest growth rates -- the Nordic economies -- also have some of the world's highest rates of unionization. Denmark, Sweden, and Finland all approach 80 percent. 

There's an argument that in countries with 70-80-90 percent unionization, unions have to be more responsible--union leaders know that any inflationary wage increases are going to be paid for by their own members (who are essentially everyone), and they know that any declines in productivity will hurt their own members (essentially everyone). Not only do they have an incentive to be reasonable, but they have the power to keep their own membership--say, those unions that could get bigger-than-average increases by striking--in check. But we aren't going to get 80% unionization. We're going to get 20-25% or 30% unionization, with unions that are powerful enough to cut good deals for themselves (and impose resulting price increases on everyone else), but not so large that they have to take everyone's interests into account. ... (This is point made by Mancur Olson and noted by Robert M. Kaus a year before Klein was born. Yikes.) ...  4:06 P.M.

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They Said It Couldn't Be Done! How to Make Caroline Kennedy More Boring:  Caroline Kennedy's ragging of NYT reporters, for which she's now being pilloried, is of course one of her better recent moments:

NC: Could you, for the sake of storytelling, could you tell us a little bit about that moment, like, where you were, what you said to him about your decision, how that played out?

CK: Have you guys ever thought about writing for, like, a woman’s magazine or something? (Laughter)

DH: What do you have against women’s magazines?

CK: Nothing at all, but I thought you were the crack political team here.

Kennedy's bristling at the embarrassing, sentimentalizing conventions of journalism (at Newsweek the question was always "what were you eating") and isn't afraid to invoke some undiplomatic truths (i.e. women's magazine's often run softball crap). Either she'll keep it up--in which case maybe there's something to the idea that she has the virtues of an independent outsider--or, more likely, she'll become even more safely platitudinous. ... 3:19 P.M.

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The Aribtrariness of Wagner Act Redistribution: Richard Posner makes an essential point usually overlooked by those on the left who instinctively support unionism in the hope that it will achieve some sort of just redistribution of income:

The redistribution of wealth that they bring about is not only fragile ...[snip] ...but also capricious, as it is an accident whether conditions in a particular industry are favorable or unfavorable to unionization. [E.A.]

Or, as Robert M. Kaus put it in very small type in 1983:

The "economic power" that the Wagner Act gives unions is determined by all sorts of factors that have nothing to do with the moral basis of a union's cause. Workers who work in a single location, for example,are easier to organize than workers who are geographically dispersed, even though the latter may work in sweatshops and the former in comfortable, lighted factories. Some industries are extremely vulnerable to strikes--industries that deal in perishable goods, for example, or industries (e.g. Broadway theaters) where you can set up a picket line that will intercept a lot of customers. In other industries, advances in technology have weakened the power of strikes, as petroleum and chemical workers discovered when they walked out and found that skeleton crews of supervisors could run computer-controlled refineries for a long time. Did the chemical workers deserve to be paid less simply because their industries had become more strike-proof?

This arbitrariness is not just a trivial side effect of the collective bargaining system. A truism within the labor movement holds that "the workers who need the unions the most don't get them."  .... The answer of labor leaders to this dilemma is simple: more unions. .... But even if the law required unions in every workplace, there is no reason to think wage inequalities would shrink in any systematic fashion. Sol C. Chaikin, president of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union, often complains about the "two-tier labor force" in the United States--but he is complaining about a disparity that exists within the ranks of organized labor. ... The Wagner Act gave Chaikin's union the power to strike. Unfortunately, fate did not give it any of the chance attributes that might enable it to use strikes to boost wages dramatically above their market levels. [E.A.]

If you organized the operators of drawbridges going into Manhattan, under the Wagner Act your union will be able to extract quite a premium by striking. If you organize fast food workers, not so much. I've never understood why leftish idealists ever bought into the idea that this is distributive justice. ... 1:12 A.M.

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Sunday, December 28, 2008

Two year-end TV roundups--by Tom Shales and by Inside Cable News. One of these guys is paid an incredible amount of money. And one of them phones in a list of usual suspects. ... P.S.: From the other one:

Unlike NBC’s very public axe wielding, CNN’s cuts came about suddenly as a bunch of on the air talent lost their jobs. Most notable loss; CNN veteran Miles O’Brien. CNN has yet to publicly account for all this talent loss, which flied in the face of the public posturing done by Jonathan Klein regarding how his network was in the money.

Jonathan Klein, dissembling? We're shocked. ... 7:00 P.M.

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Friday, December 26, 2008

Don't Blame Gettelfinger: Rand Simberg's anti-UAW-work-rule post was better than mine. He has horror stories, including his own--noting that there are too many floating around for them to be "merely anecdotal." (Another bit of confirming evidence: The union firms went broke! Non-anecdotally broke.) Simberg makes a point that's especially relevant now that the UAW is arguing that labor is only "10% of the cost of the vehicle."

And the rules don’t just affect productivity — they affect quality as well. When you can’t discipline employees for being absent without leave, when you have to bring in unfamiliar workers to fill in for them, when you’re missing half your plant during hunting season — yes, the stories about avoiding buying cars built on Monday or Friday in the fall are true — you can’t expect to put out a quality product, regardless of how well or poorly designed it is. You particularly can’t expect to do so when the union rules put all responsibility for quality and production on management, but give them no authority to manage the workers and provide the workers with no incentive to build a quality product if they lack the personal pride to do so. [E.A.]

Labor may only be 10% of the cost of the vehicle, but it's still going to be a vehicle nobody wants to buy if it's poorly made. ... Note: The UAW does make some high quality cars, especially at the NUMMI joint venture with Toyota in San Jose, where they threw out the UAW work rule book. Why couldn't GM successfully spread the NUMMI system to all its other plants? Ask the UAW. ...

P.S,: Here's a Business Week profile of the UAW president Ron Gettelfinger. Seems like a reasonable guy! But that's the point. Gettelfinger isn't the problem--I suspect, for example, that the UAW leadership knows pretty well what the problems are in its factories. The problem is the system, the American adversarial labor-management negotiating system, in which reasonable people doing what the system tells them they should do wind up producing undesirable results.  Just as negotiating over work assignments means factories adjust too slowly to generate continuous efficiency improvements (which often involve constantly changing work assignments)  negotiating ponderous 3 year contracts (in which Gettelfinger must extract every possible concession to please the members who elected him) means contracts adjust too slowly to save the companies from failure if market conditions change.  From Business Week:

[T]here is a pragmatic Ron Gettelfinger as well. Three years ago, the automakers were in trouble, and he knew that without concessions there would be no jobs for his members to report to. When Detroit came looking for givebacks, Gettelfinger ultimately agreed to a contract that set back starting factory wages 30 years: New hires will begin at $14 an hour—half the wage for veterans and a pay scale not seen since the '70s. Plus, he has watched the Big Three cut some 80,000 jobs since 2005.

That also brings up a key criticism from Detroit's executives. Gettelfinger made those key concessions starting in 2005, but not until Ford and GM were reeling toward massive losses. The union has never given enough to get the companies ahead of the curve. "It's always a day late and a dollar short," says one former GM executive. [E.A.]

See also this interview, pointing out that the $14 wage scale for new hires hasn't had an impact because nobody new is being hired by the UAW's employers, who are shrinking, not growing. The obvious alternative to cutting the pay of nonexistent future workers would be to cut the pay of existing current workers--but they are the people the system tells Gettelfinger he needs to please. ...

Fifteen years ago, at the start of the last Democratic president's administration. incoming Labor Secretary Robert Reich famously said "The jury is still out on whether the traditional union is necessary for the new workplace." Tactfully put. This fall, if not earlier, the jury came back. 5:19 P.M.

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What's Worse Than Camelot? Cuomolot! I should say that I'd certainly prefer Caroline Kennedy to at least one candidate for Hillary Clinton's seat. That candidate would be Andrew Cuomo. Caroline may be boring but she does not seem evil! (For some links on why I think Cuomo is a thuggish irresponsible opportunist, click here. I also had some unpleasant dealings with his self-promotion machine at HUD, when they were busy hyping and distorting some homeless statistics in order to get his name in the paper.) ... These are not the only two people in New York state, however. ... 4:30 P.M.

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Don't Sweat the Details?

Where's the Quirk? The seemingly infallible Nate Silver counts cloture votes on 'card check,' with a particular focus on Arkansas Sen. Blanche Lincoln:

Arkansas is not the only state with a Democratic senator and low union membership. Pretty much the entirety of the South is in the same boat, with the important exception of Louisiana. But, while there aren't many union members in Virginia, North Carolina or Florida -- nor in some states like New Mexico outside of the South -- Barack Obama is quite popular in all of those areas, which he is not in Arkansas. Arkansas and really Arkansas alone presents the unique combination of Obama being unpopular and the union movement being virtually nonexistent, and among the two Democratic senators in Arkansas, Lincoln is up for re-election in 2010, whereas Mark Pryor is not. It's not a coincidence that she's hemming and hawing on EFCA. [E.A.]

Except that Pryor is hemming and hawing too. ... P.S.: Does this mean we can abandon the grail-like quest to find an instance where Silver was wrong? Not quite. But it does suggest the flaw in his mode of thinking--which seems to be to assume that pols respond in predictable ways to predictable factors (just as voters vote in predictable ways according to demographic factors). Isn't there room for persuasion and quirkiness? ... True, when I made this criticism before, during the Dem primaries, Silver turned out to be right (everyone did behave predictably). But the night is young! Someone will behave unpredictably at some point. ... P.P.S.: In this case, the quirky factor Silver would be overlooking is the inherent non-appeal of the specific "card check" idea--i.e. it's hard for pols to publicly defend eliminating the secret ballot, even if Obama swept their states. ... 10:32 A.M.

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The Devil is In the Details, But Do the Details Matter? Steven Pearlstein's confident analysis of the auto bailout makes me think its critics, myself included--may have overly depressed ourselves by focusing on the actual details of the agreement--like the "non-binding" nature of the concessions required of the U.A.W.. Here's the more sanguine syllogism:

1) There's no way GM** and maybe even Ford can survive in the long run without either a) more bailouts or b) major sacrifices from workers, dealers, creditors, shareholders. That includes concessions on wages and work rules from the U.A.W. that would make GM factories competitive with foreign transplants in the U.S. (though not, I assume, with U.S. car factories in Mexico and elsewhere). The $9.4 billion the taxpayers have just loaned GM will be gone soon enough--within months. Then what will the company do?

2) There's no political appetite for bailing carmakers out again in March--i.e. for lending much more money to the automakers beyond the $17.4 billion already designated for both GM and Chrysler. The current bailout is unpopular enough. Critics say it won't work, that the car companies will just come back for more government money in a few months. When the companies prove the critics right, do you think Obama and the Dems, even with big majorities, are going to bail them out again? Maybe make a multi-billion dollar Federal subsidy permanent--a sort of underground conveyor belt from the Treasury to Detroit? I don't think so. GM and the UAW may be shocked that the public has not rallied to their side, but that seems to be the case. Obama has certainly given no signals that he's willing to permanently subsidize uncompetitive car companies (as opposed to not letting them go bankrupt at a time when that would have semi-cataclysmic ripple effects).

3) Therefore the workers, dealers, creditors and shareholders will have to make major sacrifices. It doesn't matter whether those sacrifices are spelled out in the legislation. It doesn't matter if they are vague-but-binding agreements or mere "targets." It doesn't matter if Barney Frank and Congressional Democrats keep the targets in or take them out at the urging of the UAW. The Congress and the President don't have to demand the taxpayer's $17 billion back (the sanction Bush boasts of). They can let GM and Chrysler keep the $17 billion. But as long as they don't offer up more billions, the manufacturers (and the UAW) will have to make the necessary changes, whether or not they technically go bankrupt.

Everything else is kabuki.

I can't think of anything major wrong with this logic. It's possible that the companies and the union are somehow hoping that if the economy quickly revives and SUVs start selling they can rebound without much pain and maybe make it to 2011 when the two-tier wage structure they've negotiated will begin to kick in. If that happens, it happens. But if it doesn't, I still don't see the Democrats coming across with a second huge tranche of cash. Maybe I am missing something.

**--I'm focusing on GM because I doubt there's any way Chrysler can survive as an independent company, period. ...

Update: Jim Geraghty dissents on the crucial point #2--

The Obama Administration will  - most likely — look at whatever restructuring effort the Big Three have made and wag their finger at slow progress, but declare that due to the economic circumstances, allowing the automakers to collapse is "not an option," and then open the checkbook again. Lather, rinse, repeat. The successful reform of the auto industry will always remain six months over the horizon.

Well, one of us is wrong. ... P.S.: Sounds like Iraq, circa 2006. The Friedman Unit returns. ... 1:50 A.M.

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You know it's a slow news day when MSN is headlining the feature "Can you name the noodle?" 12:33 A.M.

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Baby, Who's Your Stakeholder Now?

Friday, December 19, 2008 

Mo' Bailout:

1) The Treasury Department has now posted the terms of the bailout. 

2) How does the UAW's Gettelfinger get away with saying these terms are "singling out workers"? The deal calls for creditors to convert two thirds of their debt into equity. There are also limits on executive compensation. Maybe they're mostly toothless in practice--but the terms directed at the UAW are explicitly toothless. They're just "targets."

3) It's not a deal:  Note that Gettelfinger says he's unwilling to abide by these provisions and makes it clear he intends to "work with the Obama administration and the new Congress to ensure that these unfair conditions are removed." So it's not really a deal. It's a deal that one party has pledged to undo as quickly as possible. Think of the fuss if there were a Republican adminstration on the way and GM vowed to undo its obligations under the arangement as soon as possible.

4) We like it except for the parts that, you know, make our constituency change: Indeed, Barney Frank has joined in the call for removal of the UAW-sacrifice "targets" once Obama takes office. Is he actually amping up the pressure on the incoming President to protect the UAW, or is he just scoring cheap points with labor at a time when feelings are raw and he can't be expected to actually do anything? I smell Kabuki! They stick in non-binding targets. Labor and its allies rebel and righteously remove the non-binding targets. Everyone wins. Gettelfinger looks strong. Dems like Frank repay their debt to labor. Republicans get an anti-union cause. Nothing has happened. The real issue is whether Obama actually forces unionzed autoworkers to shave wages and (a much bigger issue) change restrictive work rules when the actual crunch date comes around next year.

5) Here are two paragraphs for my pro-union friends who doubt that Wagner Act work rules are a) at the core of Detroit's problem and b) the hardest thing to get the UAW to reform, because they require more than an incremental increase or decrease in compensation:

The Bush plan requires work rule parity between U.S. automakers and foreign automakers — not a simple task, said Aaron Bragman, an automotive industry analyst at consultancy IHS Global Insight.

“Work rule parity is very different between the UAW and the foreign automakers,” Bragman said. “Work rules govern how you make the cars, or who can touch what in the factory. There’s such a level of detail, and how a Japanese automaker makes cars is totally different to how a U.S. company makes cars. So there are a lot of difficult issues to be fixed very quickly. GM’s Rick Wagoner says they can fix them, but analysts are not so sure.” [E.A.]

As far as the UAW is concerned, this was not a change election! ... 11:24 P.M.

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Jobs Americans Won't Will Do: A WSJ report contradicts two pieces of pro-legalization CW:

1) 'Crops will rot in the fields without legalization and a "guest worker" program': Not this year--

Growers across the country are reporting that farmhands are plentiful; in fact, they are turning down potential field workers.

2) 'Non-immigrant Americans just won't do tough, dirty jobs like agricultural field work and day labor' Not any more--

In particular, Mr. Gray has observed an influx of U.S.-born Latinos and other workers who previously shunned field work. "These are domestic workers who appear to be displacing immigrants," says Mr. Gray.

A similar situation has emerged in U.S. cities from New York to Los Angeles, where unemployed, nonimmigrant laborers are seeking informal work that typically has been performed by low-skilled immigrants ...

Note that if Americans will do the work when they're desperate--i.e. when they can't get better jobs--that suggests that at least some of them will do the work if they're paid sufficient wages (i.e. when they can't get better jobs).  The point is they will work on farms. We're just haggling over the price, and the alternatives. That means, when the economy picks up, that farmers could get much of the labor they need by ... raising wages. What a concept. ... [As long as we don't raise autoworker wages, eh?--ed The UAW's members negotiated above-market wages, demanded lots of legalistic work rules, and now want taxes on people like $10/hour agricultural laborers to bail them out when their firms go under (while deferring modest wage adjustments until 2011). Seems like a different case! But maybe your point is that restricting the flow of illegal immigrant labor can raise the wages at the bottom of the ladder, for the "least among us," while protecting the UAW protects the $50/hour "aristocracy" of the labor movement. That must be it. I wonder which course the Democratic party dogma prefers.] ... 10:29 P.M.

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March Car Crash?

Find That Lede! The lede in this story is ...

1) A man who was until recently a top aide to Gov. David Paterson, who will pick the next N.Y. senator, is very close to the Kennedys!

2) A top aide to Gov. Paterson didn't pay his taxes for five years!**

3) But at least the Kennedys didn't give this top aide to Gov. Paterson thousands of dollars! ... oh, wait!

As alert reader J emails: "What if Jesse Jackson Sr. and other relatives loaned money to Blago's ([until] very recently) top aide and now Jesse Jr. was trying to get Senate appointment?  Wouldn't Patrick Fitzgerald be investigating?" ...

**--The aide resigned in late October, a few days after the story linked above. The initial version of this item erroneously suggested he still had his job. [4:34 P.M.] ... 4:20 P.M.

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Obama in a manger ... and they say he's burdened himself with messianic expectations. ...[But Carla Bruni is there too. And Silvio Berlusconi--ed Where's Greg Packer?]  4:03 P.M.

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I'm not sure that we know all the details of the Bush-negotiated auto bailout deal, but it certainly looks as if it's pretty much the same arrangement Congress was considering a couple of weeks ago, with the same flaws. [See fourth item here.] Basically, next March, if the auto companies are fudging on the plans that will make them "viable," Obama will have a choice--either 1) kill them (by forcing a bankruptcy in which they have to actually pay back the government's $17 billion, which they will already have spent)  or 2) acquiesce in whatever insufficient semi-sacrifice they've come up with. Do you really think he's going to pick Option 1?  It's too nuclear to have any credibility. ... That leaves open the possibility that the deal will produce what the "stakeholders" want it to produce--a bailout by the taxpayers that at least temporarily lets them avoid giving up the things (like the UAW's 22-pound contract) they'd have to give up in a normal bankruptcy proceeding.

Note how the NYT describes the "compromise" struck with the UAW:

[Senate] talks had deadlocked on a demand by Republicans that the wage cuts take effect by a set date in 2009, while the union had pressed for a deadline in 2011.

The plan announced on Friday offered a compromise between the positions, by making the requirements nonbinding and allowing the automakers to reach different arrangements with the union, provided that they explain how those alternative plans will keep them on a path toward financial viability. [E.A.]

That's one way to compromise between a 2009 deadline and a 2011 deadline--make all deadlines meaningless! I mean, "nonbinding." ... Or, rather, "targets." ... The only hopeful sign that the deal actually has some bite came from the UAW, which complained of  "unfair conditions singling out workers" that weren't included in Congress's ill-fated proposal. But the union "didn't say what those conditions were." ...

Update: Presumably the union is referring to the non-binding "targets" outlined here.

The agreement calls for union wages and so-called work rules identical to those offered to the U.S. workers of foreign-based auto makers such as Toyota Motor Corp. The UAW has argued that, in accepting a two-tier wage structure as part of last year's labor deal, its wages already are consistent with Toyota's. Work rules -- which govern vacation time, break time, job classifications and the conditions under which a company can bring non-union contract workers into plans for non-automotive work -- remain a discrepancy between Detroit's auto makers and their non-unionized rivals.

For internal and external political kabuki reasons, it's in the interest of UAW leaders to complain--it shows their members that they are fighting for them, it suggests to the public that they are reluctantly doing their part--which creates grounds for skepticism about the severity of the "conditions." ... 1:09 P.M.

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What About Ford?

"Look at GM, and tell me strong unions are good for the economy"

Monday, December 15, 2008 

From Taylorism to Wagnerism: Sympathetic but ultimately damning analysis of the U.A.W. from Michael Barone. ... P.S.: A misguided Warren Court decision--basically requiring unions to prosecute individual grievances under a "duty of representation"--magnified the Wagner Act's inherent adversarialism, it should be noted. Before the decision, unions could pick and choose only the best grievances and drop the rest. (In 1957 at GM, for example, the UAW only pursued 24 grievances to arbitration, according to Robert M. Kaus). After the 60s-era liberal legalists were through creating a right of individual workers to sue their unions, even a labor stalwart like AFSCME's Victor Gotbaum would say "It's almost as if we have to protect bad workers." ... 2:00 P.M.

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We need a Czar Czar, to crack the whip on all the czars. ... P.S.: Also a federal czar policy. Right now, czar decisions are made on an ad hoc, case-by-case basis, with no attempt at czar harmonization. ... 12:40 A.M.

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A Coming GM/UAW Split? I'd missed Clive Crook's Nov. 11 article on Detroit's collapse. It's behind a National Journal subscription wall now, and a subscription to the National Journal costs roughly as much as a controlling share in the Chrysler Corporation. But here's the most relevant passage:

[T]he unions raised wages and benefits to insupportable levels, and for years blocked efforts to cut costs and increase efficiency. Worst of all, by anointing themselves co-managers, they reduced the domestic industry's ability to react promptly to shifts in demand. Is this how the Democratic Party intends to strengthen the economy?

By their own standards, admittedly, U.S. car producers have raised their game recently, and they have done it with the unions' help. Productivity in some of the domestic producers' plants is now as good as in nonunion plants run by foreigners. But this came late, and only under duress. It took the imminent collapse of the industry to moderate the unions' demands.

Unions destroyed Britain's car industry, and during the 1960s and '70s they accelerated the decline of British manufacturing and of the wider economy as well. Of course, they were far more powerful in those days than U.S. unions have ever been. Unions in America today are weak and getting weaker -- a trend that they hope to reverse with the incoming administration's help.

The point of the comparison is not to suggest that America might get a case of the pre-Thatcher British disease, but simply to question the Democrats' conviction that stronger unions serve their voters' wider interests. Look at GM, and tell me that strong unions are good for the economy. [E.A.]

P.S.: Paul Ingrassia updates the run-to-momma politics of the bailout, in which the Bush administration may give the U.A.W. what it wants, namely bailout money without either a) further specific contract concessions (as demanded by Sen. Corker and other Republicans) or b) a quasi-bankruptcy proceeding that could nullify the unions' labor contracts entirely. ...

P.P.P.S.--'But It Took Us a Year to Negotiate': The sense of victimhood that Ingrassia criticizes comes through in the following passage from Saturday's NYT:

Alan Reuther, the chief lobbyist for the union, said labor leaders back in Detroit were astonished at what Mr. Corker was attempting to accomplish — a virtual rewriting of the U.A.W. contract, which typically takes the better part of a year to negotiate. “That’s one thing that our folks in Detroit were just amazed at,” Mr. Reuther said. “Does Senator Corker really think he can do a restructuring of the industry in six hours?” [E.A.]

Hmm. I guess that's sort of what happens when you go bankrupt! The work of a year can disappear in a few hours! Did they expect Congress to (as the saying goes) leave the money on a stump in the middle of the night? ... Note also the almost reverent concern for process--as if what's being protected here isn't the workers' wages or standard of living but the traditional painstaking dance of adversarial negotiation. It's always about respect--in this case, respect for the Wagner Act's elaborate formalities. Corker was short-circuiting them. But of course it's those elaborate formalities that got in the way of innovation and helped bankrupt the industry in the first place.

P.P.P.S.: I do think that in seeking a middle ground of specific wage concessions--but stopping short of a general contract nullification--Senator Corker wound up giving the unfortunate impression of political meddling in the details of wage rates, etc. It would have been simpler to just demand that the "auto czar" have bankruptcy-like powers to void the contracts. But of course the UAW, which is now vilifying Corker, would have liked that non-meddling solution even less than what Corker proposed. ...

More--Solidarity Not Forever: If the whole bailout deal is now really about protecting this (the U.A.W. contract) from a bankruptcy-style proceeding, how long will it be before General Motors realizes its interests are sharply different--and parts company with its union co-pleader? GM might like the UAW contract to be voided, after all. GM might also like the way a bankruptcy style proceed would give it the freedom to prune its dealer networks. The main factor encouraging GM to join with the U.A.W. in avoiding bankruptcy has been the fear that consumers would stop buying cars from a bankrupt manufacturer. But as the Weekend Journal noted, consumers may have stopped buying GM cars already, in anticipation of bankruptcy. If that's true, why wouldn't it be in GM's interest to just go ahead and have a bankruptcy or bankruptcy-by-another name? Which is exactly what the U.A.W. is counting on the politicians to stop. ...

Update: The entire Clive Crook article is here, free. ... 12:02 A.M.

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Sunday, December 14, 2008
 

Maybe the Mumbai attacks really were originally supposed to take place before the U.S. election. ... 10:37 P.M.

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What Wagner Act unions are good at producing. ... P.S.: The Japanese have nothing like it! ... 9:42 P.M.

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Where Do Detroit's Inefficient Work Rules Come From?

Friday, December 12, 2008 

Why have unionized Detroit auto manufacturers manifestly lost out to their non-union Japanese competitors, even when it comes to building cars in the United States--to the point where Congress is presented with a choice of bailout or bankruptcy? There are some obvious culprits: shortsighted American managers, schlocky designers, an insular corporate culture. Here's another: the very structure of Wagner Act unionism. The problem isn't so much wages as work rules--internal strictures that make it hard for unionized competitors to constantly adapt and change production processes the way the Japanese do. 

Now that everyone is criticizing work rules, it's easy to forget that they don't represent a perversion of the collective bargaining process--they are the intended result of that process, and were once celebrated as such. Here's an excerpt from a 1983 article by Robert M. Kaus:

[R]igid work rules are not a mere by-product of unionism. They are central to the collective bargaining system and in fact have been praised by labor scholars as one of its great strengths. During the postwar era of prosperity, they were thought to dovetail nicely with the form of business organization that seemed destined to rule the world, the large corporate bureaucracy. [snip] ...

The fertile marriage of business bureaucracy and collective bargaining soon produced a large family of rules whose complexity was the subject of rapturous admiration. A textbook written by Clark Kerr and John Dunlop in 1964 noted with pride that "the web of rules becomes more explicit and formally constituted in the course of industrialization. ... The continuing experience of the same workplace tends to result in customs and traditions which begin to codify past practices. Eventually, these may be reduced to writing. ... The statement of rules then becomes more formal and elegant, particularly as specialists are developed in rulemaking and adminstration. The process of industrialization thus brings more and more detailed rules and a larger body of explicit rules. ... "

Under the Wagner Act, management manages. What the union does is complain, and negotiate for a rule limiting management's right to do what the union doesn't like. A worker protests that his job should be classified as "drilling special and heavy" instead of "drilling general." The parties butt heads, a decision is reached, and a new rule is deposited like another layer of sediment. At some GM plants, distinct job categories evolved for each spot on the assembly line (e.g., "headlining installer"). In Japanese auto plants, where they spend their time building cars instead of creating job categories, there is only one nonsupervisory job classification: "production."

Yes, faced with successful Japanese rivals, Detroit and its union have been trying to reduce the number of work rules--but the process has been slow, like pulling teeth, especially because the UAW defers to its locals, New Republic's Jonathan Cohn:

"Ford led the way years ago by reaching site-specific "competitive operating agreements" with locals at different plants, rather than sticking to one national agreement."

Cohn's trying to put the best face on things. But of course it would be much simpler to wipe out work rules in one national agreement--if Ford could do it. Thanks to the UAW's structure, it has to negotiate plant-by-plant. Who's going to win the race--Ford, or a foreign carmaker that can set up a factory in a green field and not have to deal with any of the UAW's preexisting work-rule chazerai?

That's why Democrats are deluding themselves if they think they can save Detroit by mandating that GM and Ford built high-MPG small cars in the U.S.--thanks to inefficient work rules, they'll be overpriced high-MPG small cars, and badly built high-MPG small cars. That's why Republicans are deluding themselves if they think a wage cut that saves Ford and GM $800 per car is going to make all the difference--it won't, if the trim still falls off and the carpets bunch up.

Sen. Corker's proposed bailout compromise apparently did try to tackle the issue of work rules. But the UAW balked at the Corker requirements (which would also have cut pay to parity with Toyota and Honda's U.S. factories) and the deal collapsed. That shouldn't be a surprise. A "web of rules" is what adversarial Wagner Act unions were designed to produce. ... 1:54 A.M.

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The Trouble With the Bailout Deal

Time to call a meeting of UAW defenders to sort out kinks in the party line. The NYT, blaming Republicans for the bailout deal's Thursday collapse, writes:

After Senate Republicans balked at supporting a $14 billion  auto rescue plan approved by the House on Wednesday, negotiators worked late into Thursday evening to broker a deal, but deadlocked over Republican demands for steep cuts in pay and benefits by the United Automobile Workers  union in 2009. ...

The automakers would also have been required to cut wages and benefits to match the average hourly wage and benefits of Nissan, Toyota and Honda employees in the United States.

It was over this proposal that the talks ultimately deadlocked with Republicans demanding that the automakers meet that goal by a certain date in 2009 and Democrats and the union urging a deadline in 2011 when the U.A.W. contract expires.  [E.A.]

But wait a minute--didn't I read somewhere the claim that the UAW shouldn't be blamed because its labor costs were already competitive with Honda and Toyota? Yes, I did!

The leaders of General Motors Corp. and the United Auto Workers union told Congress this week that a new union contract will virtually erase the labour cost gap between GM and foreign competitors with U.S. factories. [Nov. 19, 2008]

If the gap had already been "virtually" erased, how could the cuts required to close whatever gap remained have been "steep"? ...  12:49 A.M.

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Thursday, December 11, 2008

Hierarchy Recalibration! Let the record show that Rod Blagojevich, sitting governor of Illinois, the fifth largest state in the union, was apparently willing to sell a U.S. Senate seat and his soul, and abandon his office, for a job paying less money ($250,000-$300,000) than is made by several hosts on National Public Radio. ... Randy Newman, call your office. ...  3:14 P.M.

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Bam Sandwich? Yikes. 1) Rezko's talking; 2) The FBI's been asking about the house deal (an Election Day story I'd missed). ... 1:44 A.M.

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The Trouble With the Bailout Deal: Here's the key passage from the briefing on the bailout "deal":

Now, how does the process work? It was very important to us that there be--that this President's designee [the "auto czar"] have sticks, leverage, to make sure that all these stakeholders who are participating in the process of negotiations have a very strong incentive to make the deep and meaningful concessions that will be necessary for these companies to become viable over the long term. So there are a number of sticks. The first is, if these companies do not arrive in the negotiations at a plan that meets the test for long-term viability, that bridge financing shall be called by the President's designee. That means we get paid back at the end of the period.

The period is until March 31st, or April 30th if the Presidenti's designee want to grant a one-time, 30-day extension because they're making progress and there's likelihood of success. So at the end of that period, if there's not a plan that makes these firms viable, the government gets its money back.

Now, remember what I sad at the outset that this is a bridge to either fundamental restructuring or bankruptcy. They either have a long term plan that's viable, or we get our money back. And if we call our money back, which is required under this bill, then those firms are not going to be able to survive. That is a real incentive and a real stick for this President's designee to ensure that the stakeholders all across the board make the concessions that are necessary. [E.A.]

OK. Might work! But some questions: 1) How is the government going to "get its money back" if the money has been spent and the firms are bankrupt? Only by liquidation, it would seem. So does the bailout deal eliminate the option of restructuring (as an ongoing enterprise) under the aegis of the bankruptcy court? Either the firms are saved under the "czar," or they are liquidated, apparently.  2) The big "stick" is to kill the firms, then. Isn't that too big a stick? Like a nuclear weapon is too big a stick? Come April 29th, if the choice is to approve a half-assed "restructuring" plan that has maybe a 35% chance of succeeding, or to kill General Motors, there's going to be an awful lot of pressure not to kill General Motors, no? The threat is so big it pressures the auto czar, not the executives, investors and union members. What's needed is an intermediate threat that's more credible. How about empowering the auto czar to declare the companies' labor contracts null and void? And to indefinitely delay payment of all executive salaries and bonuses? That would get the "stakeholders" attention, maybe. 3) Shouldn't there be a different "czar" for each firm? Having a single czar for the whole industry muffles what might be salutary competitive pressures. Maybe Chrysler's workers are so desperate they'll give up more in terms of pay and work rules than Ford's workers. Shouldn't that sort of choice be encouraged? Dueling "czars" would encourage this viability-enhancing reverse solidarity. ...

Update: Walter Olson has a sharp, clarifying answer to all these questions. Sen. DeMint concurs. I tend to agree more with National Review's Jim Manzi's argument that "if we could stipulate that we could get all of the effects of an orderly bankruptcy through some government-sponsored process that just had a different name, then of course we should do it."  Even if the current deal is designed to protect existing "constituencies," as Olson claims, and eventual bankruptcy is in the cards, given the acute economic downturn there's virtue at this point in postponing the inevitable until a time when the nation can better absorb the blow.  But it would be better to have a solution now that actually saved Ford and GM and the jobs they create, instead of saving the UAW's work rules. ... 12:28 A.M.

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Wednesday, December 10, 2008

Name That Issue! Hmm. What issue would be at the top of the "legislative agenda" of Andy Stern's S.E.I.U. that Illinois Gov. Blagojevich generously offered to help pass after he was through appointing Obama confidante Valerie Jarrett to the U.S. Senate? If you said "card check"--the bill eliminating the secret ballot in union recognition elections--you win.

Rumors that the name of the bill is going to be changed to the "Rod Blagojevich F----ing Valuable Choice Act" could not be confirmed as of press time. ...

P.S.: Let's assume SEIU president Andy Stern did nothing wrong, and indeed maybe even blew the whistle on Blagojevich's offer of a "three-way" quid pro quid pro quo (after promising to "put that flag up and see where it goes"). Even so, if Stern was an authorized Obama "emissary" to the governor, in the attempt to get Jarrett a Senate seat, that should trouble opponents of "card check." Why? Because it means Obama wasn't worried about owing Stern a huge favor (if he'd succeeded in getting Jarrett the seat).  Would Obama do it if he was planning to disappoint Stern? ...

True, "card check" isn't the only issue Stern cares about. Universal health insurance would probably be considered a sufficient repayment of the favor. But "card check" will come up much sooner. ...

Update: According to several reports, the SEIU official who met with Blagojevich was not Stern, but Tom Balanoff, head of a powerful SEIU local in Chicago. The above analysis still applies--though, as Mary Katharine Ham notes, the question of whether the SEIU was indeed Jarrett's (and Obama's) authorized "emissary" or was freelancing seems fairly crucial. ... The NYT' s Steven Greenhouse implies it was Blagojevich who reached out to the union official, but a) I don't trust Greenhouse--in part because of bias** and in part because b) his story is foggy on the actual details. For example, Greenhouse mentions that a Blago aide "approached" the unnamed SEIU offical, but ignore's the indictment's claim of a later call between Blagojevich himself and the official. ... This seems like a pretty good case of Times readers not getting a clear picture of what went on. ...

**--You can hear Greenhouse on "Talk of the Nation" where he sounds only a bit more pro-Obama than Austan Goolsbee.  ...11:30 P.M.

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Caroline, No ...  12:17 P.M.

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The Big Center (Part 2): The Nation's Katha Pollitt, voice of reason, on the Ayers op-ed:

Like his memoir, Fugitive Days , "The Real Bill Ayers" is a sentimentalized, self-justifying whitewash of his role in the weirdo violent fringe of the 1960s-70s antiwar left.

I'm actually not sure I agree with Pollitt when she argues that Weatherman-style violence was counterproductive when it came to stopping the Vietnam War. It seems to me that it contributed to the sense on the part of the "silent majority" that everything was spinning out of control and it was time to reverse course. That doesn't mean Ayers isn't a self-serving fool, or that planting bombs--in one case a nail bomb, as Pollitt points out--isn't terrorism, and crazy, and criminal. ... 11:49 A.M.

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PATCO in Reverse?

Tuesday, December 9, 2008

An early version of the New York Times story on the auto bailout deal said

[T]he bill seemed likely to stop short of authorizing the broad powers that some lawmakers had urged to allow what could have amounted to an out-of-court bankruptcy proceeding, in which the automakers’ creditors could be forced to accept reduced payments, labor contracts could be rewritten and executives could be summarily dismissed. [E.A.]

Hmm. Why shouldn't the bailout deal include an explicit reopening of labor contracts? If the new "auto czar" can order the companies to restructure, tell them to build smaller cars and veto any expenditure over $25 million, shouldn't he or she be able to require the UAW to give up the precious work rules that have rendered the domestically-owned industry inflexible and inefficient for decades? To be really effective, the bailout deal would have to "restructure" the UAW itself, so that union locals don't have an effective veto over productive labor practices proven in, say, the GM-Toyota NUMMI joint venture in San Jose, California.

I don't know what the actual deal contains (later NYT and other stories are vague), but this seems like a useful** bright line for opponents of corporatist bailout-creep to draw: If the taxpayers are going to foot the bill, then the goal has to be a successful industry in the long run--not a Congressional fix designed to protect the UAW from what it would face in a normal bankruptcy. That means rewritten contracts. If the UAW members didn't want that, they shouldn't have let their firms go broke--that is, they should have made the concessions they're making now, and more, years ago, when it would have made the difference.

Requiring painful, bankruptcy-style reopening would set a cautionary precedent. Just as Rick Wagoner's removal will warn timid management, it would warn unions that their function isn't to squeeze the absolute maximum possible from their companies every moment. They need to leave enough of a margin of error so that in a downturn their industry doesn't have to come running to the taxpayers.

It would also be a useful precedent for Obama. Does he really want to have to bailout every slow-adapting union that's contributed to the Democratic party's victory? When Reagan came into office, he was lucky enough to be presented with the air traffic controllers' (PATCO) strike. It was a lucky chance to demonstrate dramatically--at relatively little economic or human cost--that labor doesn't automatically win every strike. (In the PATCO case, the union not only lost, it ceased to exist--an even more effective precedent.) If Obama lets his fellow Democrats structure a deal that saves the inefficiencies in the UAW contracts, it will be PATCO in reverse--a signal to the Democrats labor backers that under Obama they can't lose. Even if they bankrupt their industry. ...

P.S.: I'm heavily influenced in these views by this article. Now if only the type were big enough to read. ...

**--By "useful" I mean sound policy. But wringing a big concession from the union (as well as management) would also be sound political theater, given the public opposition to the bailout deal. If you're a GOP senator sitting on the fence, don't you want to loudly and successfully demand a painful concession at this point? Then you'll have cover for a "yes" vote when it counts. ...  2:50 A.M.

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Bad DREAM

We almost lost Burkle! Hillary's gift to the press: With Hillary, Obama gets the Bill Drama. And with the Bill Drama, he gets the Burkle Drama! The latest, from S.F. Chronicle: "Billionaire supermarket magnate Ron Burkle, who is former President Bill Clinton's confidant and financial benefactor, put in millions" in a failed biometric bill-paying venture run by a sketchy-resumed "visionary" who apparently knew how to party. ... Partying seems to be a common thread in Burkle investment missteps. ...[Tks to reader H.] 12:52 P.M.

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Saturday December 6, 2008

New York Daily News gossip columnists Rush & Molloy cut back to one day a week. Somewhere, Lloyd Grove is smiling. ... 11:13 P.M.

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Thursday, December 4, 2008

Mark Krikorian takes on the Illegals-Are-Leaving-So-What's-the-Problem argument (which has of necessity replaced the Illegals-Are-Here-To-Stay-So-Deal-With-It-Yahoos argument). We might as well make the borders porous, this new argument goes, "because people will just leave when the economy slows down." Yes, they will. But Krikorian notes they're leaving in part because of the economy but in part because of the enforcement efforts that people like Krikorian have championed. And, he might add, because the promise of amnesty as a reward for sticking around has faded.

But it's more than that. We don't want low-paid illegals immigrants streaming back in when the economy heats up again. One of the virtues of a hot economy, for Democrats, and certainly for Democratic adherents of Clintonomics, is that it tightens the labor market at the bottom, raising wages for the groups that have gotten screwed the worst by the forces of trade and technology over the past three decades. Sure, in boom times we need more workers. But we want employers to have at least some trouble finding help--then they have to pay more to get it (and maybe pay relatively less to their well-educated managers). It worked in the '90s. It won't work if the proximate effect of a boom isn't raises for unskilled American workers but rather more jobs (in America) for new, unskilled non-American workers. A free flow of immigrants, in this sense, functions eerily like the reserve army of the unemployed functions in paranoid Marxist theory. ("My men are demanding raises. Time for a recession," whisper the industrialists to each other over cigars at the club.) It's bad enough that the Fed takes away the punch bowl whenever the party starts getting good.** ...

Of course, sophisticated defenders of "comprehensive" reform realize this, and argue that in the future the inflows will be controlled. That argument's equally flawed (in part because many of the interests supporting "comprehensive" reform don't really want it to be controlled). But it's a different argument from the one Krikorian is refuting--which is the idea that--hey, look!--uncontrolled, natural flows solve any problem themselves. ...

**--['without all sorts of uninvited guests crashing the party and drinking the punch first?'-ed No. The full metaphor might almost work, I suppose, if the "party" is a wage-increase party, not a growth party. Immigration doesn't seem to inhibit growth. But the "punch" in the metaphor is easy money--and the immigrants aren't drinking that. I give up.] ...10:48 P.M.

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The Jobs Bank Lives! It's not for UAW workers. It's for termed-out Dem politicians in California. The aptly named Waste Management Board  ... [via Insta]  10:07 P.M.

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25% of the Amnesty with None of the Enforcement! Even if "comprehensive immigration reform," legalizing more or less all illegals, doesn't pass in the next year, a seemingly more limited measure called the DREAM Act might. In WaPo's words:

The legislation would have halted deportation efforts of children who are here illegally, giving them citizenship opportunities if they entered the country before age 16 and have lived here for five years.

They would then have six years to complete two years of higher education or two years in the military. But because the Act would apply to any illegals between the ages of 12 and 30 (as long as they entered the U.S. before age 16) it could effectively legalize millions. And do you really think the government is then going to take action against their parents, or against siblings who are also here illegally? That's why even DREAM proponents claim the act would be an amnesty for "25% of our total undocumented population."

On bloggingheads I attempt to explain why this means DREAM offers the worst of three worlds. 1) It creates a powerful magnet for future attempted illegal immigration--"Sneak into the U.S. with your children and they can be made U.S. citizens and attend U.S. colleges like their predecessors!" 2) But it doesn't have the toughened enforcement parts of the "comprehensive" compromise--so those incentivized to sneak in by Factor #1 would find it as easy to do as it is now;. Meanwhile, 3) it still leaves the bulk of the illegal population living "in the shadows."  ... All of the perverse incentives with none of the non-perverse incentives! It took decades of practice for sophisticated activists to achieve this result. ... 8:21 P.M.

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Hillary's Emoluments

Wednesday, December 3, 2008

You have to wonder, can the good Bill Gates is doing with his Foundation ever match the suffering caused by Vista? ...

P.S.:

October,  2001 --Windows XP launches. One month later, economic expansion begins..

January, 2007--Windows Vista launches. Ten months later, economy plunges into recession.

Coincidence? I'm not so sure! ...10:25 P.M.

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UAW Offers Concessions in Bailout Effort: The key paragraph--

At the meeting, the union did not discuss wage and benefit concessions for active employees, said Jeff Everett, a local Chrysler president.

One problem with the Wagner Act is that surviving in a modern economy requires fast decision-making, but negotiations with unions take time (and energy). Like pulling teeth takes time (and energy). You sometimes wonder whether boosters of Wagner Act unionism are familiar with the concept of "too little too late." ... Update: AP reports that UAW leaders did vote to "let the Detroit leadership begin renegotiating elements of landmark contracts signed with the automakers last year, a move that could lead to wage concessions."  UAW President Ron Gettelfinger "stopped short of saying the union would reopen contract talks with General Motors Corp., Chrysler LLC and Ford Motor Co. but said it would be willing to return to the bargaining table to change some terms." But "any modificati