Little things

You probably saw this NYT article about Bush's last-minute push to irreversibly change a bunch of labor and environmental regulations; it was in a lot of newspapers and at the top of Huffington Post. The lede highlights a change to OSHA codes which would extend the process of banning hazardous chemicals from the workplace, effectively handing employers an extra couple years in which to kill their employees. (No wonder the Chamber of Commerce "unequivocally supports" it.) But let me encourage you to read the article closely, because there's some other outrageous stuff in there:

One rule would make it easier to build power plants near national parks and wilderness areas. Another would reduce the role of federal wildlife scientists in deciding whether dams, highways and other projects pose a threat to endangered species...

One rule would allow coal companies to dump rock and dirt from mountaintop mining operations into nearby streams and valleys. Another, issued last week by the Health and Human Services Department, gives states sweeping authority to charge higher co-payments for doctor’s visits, hospital care and prescription drugs provided to low-income people under Medicaid. The department is working on another rule to protect health care workers who refuse to perform abortions or other procedures on religious or moral grounds.

Both the implications of each regulation here, and the trend, should be obvious. This is an administration that has never had any interest in governing responsibly -- so naturally, in its dying days, White House policy is devolving into favors. Big Business put these boys in Washington, so it's only fair they get some rewards. Dance with the one that brung ya, I always say!

...To my left-wing purist friends: say what you want about the Democratic Party and its corporate ties, but an Obama (or Kerry) administration at least isn't actively hostile to workers, the environment, and the poor. Conservatives, on the other hand...

If only, Wal-Mart. If only

(Hello, everybody! Thus ends my prolonged blog-absence; I had rather more important things to do last week, and continuing intertube problems [for which I blame the angered Ted Stevens] this week. Apologies to my loyal readers -- both of you.)

The Wall Street Journal has a remarkable story today about Wal-Mart, whose profit margins depend largely on substandard wages and working conditions, quaking in fear at the thought that a 2008 Democratic victory will (via the desperately needed Employee Free Choice Act) force unionization on them. Look:

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is mobilizing its store managers and department supervisors around the country to warn that if Democrats win power in November, they'll likely change federal law to make it easier for workers to unionize companies -- including Wal-Mart.

In recent weeks, thousands of Wal-Mart store managers and department heads have been summoned to mandatory meetings... The Wal-Mart human-resources managers who run the meetings don't specifically tell attendees how to vote in November's election, but make it clear that voting for Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama would be tantamount to inviting unions in, according to Wal-Mart employees who attended gatherings in Maryland, Missouri and other states.

"The meeting leader said, 'I am not telling you how to vote, but if the Democrats win, this bill will pass and you won't have a vote on whether you want a union,'" said a Wal-Mart customer-service supervisor from Missouri. "I am not a stupid person. They were telling me how to vote," she said.

Well... as heartening as this is to an old social-democrat crank like me, I have to caution: EFCA is just a small step toward restoring unions to the role they should play in the American workplace, a process which (if it happens at all) will take decades. Nothing will come overnight.

Besides, today's Democratic Party is hardly the working man's best friend; it is riddled with "business-oriented Democrats" like Chuck Schumer, Bill Richardson, and Mark Warner (not to mention Evan Bayh, and I should add that if he's chosen as Obama's VP I will have to consider ritual suicide). Once in power, it is an open question whether this party can overcome its ties to the business community and work to help the people who really need it.

Certainly from Wal-Mart's perspective, it's much less effective to fight and demonize Democrats than it is to just buy us. The very same WSJ article tells the tale:

So while I'm not going to say that this "RUN! DEMOCRAT REVOLUTIONARIES!" thing is just a corporate head-fake -- that's a level of mouth-frothing I'm not yet ready to embrace -- it's certainly true that one election and one new law won't bring unions into the retail market the way Wal-Mart (for whatever reason) wants people to think. We should work for even small steps in that direction, of course, but we shouldn't let our opponents define the debate.

Roundup -- Get It Off! Get It Off Me!

It's around this time -- the last real weekend before Reading Period comes to take our souls away -- that everyone on campus basically turns into a blithering idiot. YardFest, which helpfully caused everyone to go around singing Third Eye Blind songs uncontrollably for hours, did not help in that regard. At the moment, after spending hours today cleaning bathrooms as part of the Dorm Crew Day fundraiser (executive summary: "Eww! Hair!"), my body's limp and my brain feels like a boiled cabbage that's been repeatedly mashed with a fork. So I'm going to forego my usual discursive introduction and dive right into LINKS FOR YOU. Enjoy.

--The Stand For Security movement is picking up steam and needs everybody's support. (The backstory is basically that Harvard security workers are being screwed in their contract negotiations and they need our help.) First, if you haven't signed the petition, do that, and if you're a stronger person than me you can join the fast on Monday and Tuesday. But generally, we should do everything we can to help this campaign before the end of the year. These people put themselves on the line to protect us every day; at very least we owe the same back to them.
---UPDATED (2:00 AM): There is a sit-in or protest of some kind today at 1:30 outside University Hall. Also I'm told there's a big rally planned for Wednesday, 2:30, at Holyoke Center; and if after those events the demands are not met, a hunger strike starting Thursday is in the works. Keep an eye on this developing situation.

--Garrett linked to an amazing clip from that Bill Moyers documentary we've all been hearing about; turns out you can watch all 90 minutes of it, in excellent quality, at PBS. When you find the time, please do; it's a powerful look at how deeply fucked-up our media really is.

--In non-fucked-up-media news, the Indy has launched a blog! Awesome! Those who don't read the Indy are missing out, it's often hilarious. (Also fill out their annual sex survey, it'll make you think.)

--Loud cheers for our friend Andrew Golis, of Cambridge Common fame, who looks like he's made the jump from being TPMCafe's open-thread slave into a legit writer. And it's a great, erudite post, too, worth a read on its merits as well as for its awesomeness factor.

--Meanwhile at TPMCafe, it's about time someone made this argument: "The Case For Bureaucracy". ...God, I'm such a Democrat.

--From the NY Sun, a charming Mitt Romney story:

"I feel old," Ann Romney told a crowd at the Conservative Political Action Conference. "You are!" her husband chimed in. The crowd winced. "It's a joke, we're the same age," he clarified.

I repeat: please, please nominate him. Please. (...via James Walcott, who incidentally is absolutely hilarious and should be read regularly. In this same post he compared Fred Thompson, wonderfully, to Wilford Brimley).

--From another excellent Pew poll (click for larger version):

People seem to have the ideological affiliations of Dem candidates exactly backwards. Edwards is way to the left of the other frontrunners on basically every issue; but that perception is not out there in the public yet. How will the structure of the race change as that comes forward?

--Paragraph Of The Week honors go to Whiskey Fire: "Harry Reid is not calling for "defeat." Liberals are not calling for "defeat." We're telling you that the bloody clown show is over. Take off your floppy shoes, doff your giant red noses, and go home."

--Mystery Pollster has wonderful tag clouds for the various Dems at the debate; it's a fun way to see how on-message they are and where their heads are at (if anywhere). You can make your own tag clouds, of anything, here.

--In unrelated debate news, note that when Williams asked candidates to raise their hands if they believed there was such a thing as the "global war on terror", the split was interesting -- Edwards, Biden, Kucinich and Gravel found themselves in agreement that there wasn't, while the other four agreed there was. Myself, I find "war on terror" to be a conceptual impossibility, or at best an absurdity, so I tend to agree with Edwards and Biden (a man who knows his stuff on foreign policy, one must admit). Thoughts?

--I have got to get a copy of Rahm Emanuel's new book, "The Thumpin'", if only because in it he apparently describes Washington as "Fucknutsville". A man after me own heart.

--Band Madness is down to the Elite Eight (thankfully, AFI finally got knocked out). Remaining: Queen, Bowie, the Beatles, the Stones, Zeppelin, the Who, Pink Floyd, and the Doors. While I'm still hurting over Neil Young (and also, I'm sorry but Queen did not deserve to beat Hendrix), we must soldier on. I'm pulling for The Who, underdogs to the end; who's with me? Voting opens Monday.

And I'll leave you with a quote. Michelle Malkin recently referred to Mike GW and his friends (who got arrested protesting that FBI speech last week) as evidence of liberal media bias, through logic I don't quite follow. In that spirit, I wondered if the Dems had ever been similarly held up by right-wing pundits as examples of evil liberalism. Sure enough -- National Review, 9/25/2001, from future "Corner" celebs John J. Miller and Ramesh Ponnuru:

If there really were a Captain America, he probably wouldn't be a member of the Harvard College Democrats.

We must have been doing something right. Good night everybody. This is an open thread.

San Diego Bans Wal-Mart

The San Diego City Council has voted to ban Wal-Mart Supercenters. I was interested in this for two reasons: Wal-Mart sucks and San Diego politics are crazy.

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