Fact-esque

Bush Pushes Toxic Killer Rule Despite We Told Him Not To

There is no slouching toward Bethlehem for Bush. Whatever he may say publicly about "co-operating" with the Obama transition team, the NYT's Robert Pear reports that privately Bush is rushing to put regulations in place for his corporate buddies that he knows Obama doesn't want. In particular the new rule that will make it easier for corporations to legally expose their workers to illegal amounts of toxic chemicals/waste.

The Labor Department is racing to complete a new rule, strenuously opposed by President-elect Barack Obama, that would make it much harder for the government to regulate toxic substances and hazardous chemicals to which workers are exposed on the job.

The rule, which has strong support from business groups, says that in assessing the risk from a particular substance, federal agencies should gather and analyze “industry-by-industry evidence” of employees’ exposure to it during their working lives. The proposal would, in many cases, add a step to the lengthy process of developing standards to protect workers’ health.

Public health officials and labor unions said the rule would delay needed protections for workers, resulting in additional deaths and illnesses.

With the economy tumbling and American troops fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, President Bush has promised to cooperate with Mr. Obama to make the transition “as smooth as possible.” But that has not stopped his administration from trying, in its final days, to cement in place a diverse array of new regulations.

And so one is forced by his actions to consider Bush, once again, a sneaky liar and hypocrite, saying one thing while doing another (whenever he thinks you're not looking). He lost the election, his party got creamed because nobody can stand him, and his neocon policies were overwhelmingly rejected, but all it means to him is that he has to do the rest of his stealing faster and push harder to do more of the stuff that we just told him we didn't want him to do any more.

Does he think we'll thank him later, or something? Or is he just delivering the last of the orders from his corporate Masters before he's thrown out on his keister?

That's just sooooo...tacky.

The Left-Wing Bail-Out Split: Me v Bob & bmaz, et al.

There is a split developing in the newly-energized Left over the Democrats' intention to bail out the auto companies after 30 years of incompetence, mismanagement, greed, and just plain stoopidity have brought them (supposedly) to the brink of insolvency.

I have made no secret of my contempt for the management teams who have refused to acknowledge reality for 40 years, who have used their political power ($$$) to fight every single advance in environmental technology, gas mileage rules, you name it if it's good for us but not their bottom line, and who have cheerfully and continuously endangered their own industry year after year, blaming weaknesses and stinginess on their employees and the union that represents them. Some of us have had it right up to our earholes and become aware that as long as they can use their workers' jobs as excuses, they can go right on doing what they've always done because Uncle will bail them out whenever they get into trouble.

Others, however aware they may be that the automakers have been an arrogant bunch of beancounters and mindless corporate robots for 4 decades, have come down firmly on the side of saving them because that means saving the workers' jobs and an industry that is so much a part of American culture the ripples will be felt right through society if it folds.

OMG This is Funny

Happy Thanksgiving!

I'm spending Thanksgiving with my mom in Connecticut, where the rule is Always be Working, so this will be brief.  I have more than a million things to be grateful for in my personal life - chief among them right now is access to the health care that I'm hoping is going to get rid of what I just discovered yesterday is extensive sinusitis.  It's a shame that stuff doesn't start hurting like a you-know-what before it reaches extensive levels because damn, the headaches ...  but I digress in a bid for sympathy.  (send all prayers for Robin to avoid surgery to God, Inc.)

For bloggy purposes though, my number-on thank is to and for Mick Arran, who has been keeping this site afloat singlehandedly with diligent research, a lifetime of experience and knowledge and of course, his unique style, which is way too widely unknown for my taste. 

For professional purposes I've been spending nearly every free minute educating myself on the specifics of the current financial crisis (WORST SINCE THE GREAT DEPRESSION!), which we can all agree I think by now is a big wealth transfer scheme with some union busting on the side organized by shock doctrine theorists because ain't nobody that stupid. 

I've been reading some sites fairly devoted to pure economics in order to catch up on what I need to know to filter information through the screaming and I've fallen into a sort of paralysis having realized that there is so much I don't know.  Plus the often academic and clinical tone of the other sites gets me in a acquiescent mood - detached from what 1% of unemployment really means.   All the class warrior spirit drains right out of me.  Thank goodness I've got my job, which not only means that I can afford the $500 this sinusitis has cost me so far, but also, because it's all about educating the public about the value of human needs programs, reminds me that behind statistics is actual suffering.  That job has grown much more intense with the election of Obama and the sudden open of possibiities which just did not exist before.  There's lots of unlearning people have to do after the last thirty years though so I've been busy.

Back to Mick!  Mick wakes the class warrior in me up.  He energizes with his informed anger and delights with his very dry wit.   He reminds me that ecomics is really very simple: the trick with economics is not to get too deeply involved, the basics are simple, everything on top of them is yet another layer of rationalization, speculation, or tricks. Cut to the chase: What does it do?  Who benefits?  Does it seem like a fair process/split/argument? Beneath all the folderol is plain, ordinary capitalist greed and half of economics theory is there for only one reason: to justify itself.

That's my favorite "irrational socialist ideologue" talking, people and I'm beyond lucky and very grateful that he chooses to write here. 

GAO Says Chao's Labor Dept Crooked as a Dog's Hind Leg

Well, not exactly in those words, but the General Accounting Office has issued a report that confirms what I've been saying for years: Elaine Chao and her staff played with numbers regularly in order to make Bush's pro-corporate economic policies look like they were working even as the nation's financial situation was decaying like meat that had been left in the sun. In this specific case, it was to make privatization look a lot more economical than it actually was. (Via Avedon)

President George W. Bush's Labor Department misled Congress in an effort to prove outsourcing jobs to private companies was more efficient than assigning the jobs to government employees, according to a Government Accountability Office report released Monday.

The report (pdf here) found that the Department used fictional projected numbers to improve "savings reports" -- even when real numbers were already available. And when the government did find private firms to take a government job, that employee generally was either reassigned to another task with the same title or promoted.

The effort was called "competitive sourcing," aimed to increase government efficiency by having federal and private organizations compete for providing services. While part of a federal government approach since 1955, the Bush Administration has made the approach a key element of the President's Management Agenda under the Office of Management and Budget.

An investigation revealed, however, that the Labor Department -- under direction from Bush budget officials -- deliberately withheld information about true costs.

According to the report, the Department of Labor "excluded a number of substantial costs in its reports to Congress -- such as the costs for precompetition planning, certain transition costs and staff time and post competition review activities -- thereby understanding the full costs of this contracting approach."

The report noted that this approach was consistent with "guidance" given by the Administration's Office of Management and Budget.

Of course it was. Bush's first OMB Director was Mitch Daniels, an ex-Big Pharma exec, who, as Salon's Brendan Nyhan pointed out as early as Feb '02, had a teensy-weensy problem or two with, you know, facts.

Mitch Daniels was an unusual choice to head the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) in the Bush White House. A former political operative and pharmaceutical executive, he was tapped for the position last year despite a lack of experience in the intricacies of the federal budget. Since then, Daniels has become a key figure in the administration, helping design policies and pressing publicly for their enactment.

His tenure is significant for more than his political success. It is another sign of the importance P.R. tactics play in American politics. The OMB director -- once a budget expert -- is now an operative chosen for his political skills, particularly his ability to sell the administration's economic proposals in the media. In August, Daniels admitted as much, telling the Wall Street Journal that "[t]o the extent I bring anything ... to this job, maybe it's an ability to think about how a product, whether it's Prozac or a president's proposal, is marketed." Predictably, he has displayed a disturbing tendency to make dishonest claims for political advantage on federal budget issues.

So of course Elaine had "guidance" in lying. Mitch was an expert.

If Obama would let the GAO, GSA, and various IG's loose, they'd find a lot of this stuff. It isn't like there are any depts of Bush's administration that didn't lie. And the people who allowed themselves to believe that "the President wouldn't do that" need to see just how extensive the lying was.

Senator Chris Matthews of Pennsylvania?!

And as a Democrat, too. Oy.

The Northeast's dwindling cast of Senate Republicans has Democrats circling Arlen Specter's seat in Pennsylvania, convinced the party is well-positioned to make a competitive race out of the 2010 election.

Leading the pack of prospects -- at least in celebrity -- is Chris Matthews, the MSNBC "Hardball" host and a former Capitol Hill Democratic staffer. The Philadelphia native has been toying with a run for months, and this week he sat down with state Democrats to discuss the prospect of taking on the five-term GOP senator.

(emphasis added)

Rob?

Paulson Bails Out Real People...In Secret (Updated)

During Thanksgiving Week, when absolutely no one is paying any attention at all, Henry "The Money Shovel" Paulson finally noticed who was at the bottom of the pecking order - the ones who could save the economy from sinking out of sight - and decided it might be a good idea to bail them out, too.

The Federal Reserve and the Treasury announced $800 billion in new lending programs on Tuesday, sending a message that they would print as much money as needed to revive the nation’s crippled banking system.

So of course he picked a week when visibility was high and everyone would know about it and fears would calm and worried homeowners on the brink of foreclosure would breathe a sigh of relief.

Not.

Was it just Bushian perversity that it was announced on a holiday week when no one is watching the news or reading blogs? Habit? Or is he genuinely worried about the Wall Street response? Which we know will be, "AAARRRgh! You're creating 1933 all over again! Inflation!! INFLATION!!!!!!!! Worthless money! The end of the known world!"

And so on.

Tales of Old Dartmoor

David Horsey discovers the source of GM's difficulties.

Meanwhile, Tom Friedman discovers the cause of the current Depression after suffering some, um, liquidity problems of his own. You don't suppose there's a connection between those two things, do you?

From now on I'm re-defining a Friedman Unit as the amount of time it takes Tommy to realize what the rest of us have known right along. It will probably be measured in decades to make the numbers easier to handle.

SEIU Organizes - and Wins a Contract for - Home Care Workers

This is a rather incredible bit of organizing if you think about it. Most home care workers spend the giant part of their week ouit of their home office, many are what amounts to independent contractors. Yet somehow SEIU corralled them and got them to work as a unit.

The Service Employees International Union Local 1199 is expected to say today it has successfully negotiated a contract for 25,000 Massachusetts home care workers, a year after the powerful local organized the workers.

The vote, to be disclosed this morning at an event in Brighton with Mayor Thomas M. Menino, would increase workers' wages from $10.84 to $12.48 an hour over three years, and provide healthcare benefits in the second year of the contract. SEIU said last year's organizing victory was the largest union election ever in New England.

The union is still involved in an intense organizing effort aimed at unionizing lower-level employees at many of the city's academic medical centers.

Which need it, believe me. Nurses do alright but everyone else is hurting. If they can get them to band together, it could kick the absurdly low pay rates for non-professionals in Boston's hospitals right up close to a living wage, a consummation devoutly to be wished.

Citibank: Back for Seconds

People can go hungry, die in the streets, have no health care, and be thrown out of their homes by crooked lenders, and the Bush Administration sees no reason to intervene. It is "the Free Market" or "we're too broke" or even, as in one memorable speech everyone would like to forget, "We can't allow the government to insure children because that would endanger the health insurance companies' profits." But when a bank that has been buying acres of suspect mortgage loans and handing out $3000 pre-approved credit lines to dogs and 10-year-old boys finds itself in hot water, suddenly all Mr Bush's vaunted "Free Market/we can't afford it/it's socialism" is history and the Treasury doors are flung open.

Apparently, as a "compassionate conservative" Mr Bush's compassion only becomes energized when the rich start to whine. The rest of us would do him a favor if we would just go someplace invisible and die.

The panic has set in and the prop-up fever that haunts Washington hasn't yet gotten around to being concerned with ordinary folk. Citibank, however, is on its second trip to its Rich Uncle with its hand out, whining about how it couldn't possible have forseen that its unethical if not outright illegal behavior could possibly have any consequences.