Friday, March 27, 2009 - Posts
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Friday, March 27, 2009
Really, I can monetize anytime I want to. You don't believe me? ... 9:21 P.M.
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Let me guess: Both are instantly likeable but unjustly denigrated precisely because of their popularity? ... 9:23 P.M.
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Auto czarito Steven Rattner's $245 million investiment in Maxim, Blender and Stuff isn't looking very good these days. Stuff was closed long ago. Now Blender's print edition has been shut down. Luckily, Rattner is one step ahead of the posse now busy restructuring the American automobile industry. ... 9:52 P.M.
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Employee Free Choice On the Move! Now Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein is waffling on "card check." Look for Marc Ambinder's note on how this only better positions the anti-secret-ballot legislation for 2012! ... 11:17 P.M.
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I was worried that anti-card-check lobbyists had made the horrible mistake of killing it quickly, before they'd put their kids through college. But no, there is still talk of a compromise that's damaging to their business clients. Sen. Harkin seems to be trying to use the Starbucks Plan as a push-off point in order to give labor an incremental victory. Faughnan speculates Harkin's trying to save some of the (hated by business) arbitration provisions. As usual. Jennifer Rubin isn't buying the threat. ... P.S.: What, exactly, did labor spinners gain by their now-discredited braggadocio ("100% confident")? ... 11:55 P.M.
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The Moral Arbitratiness of the Strike Power: Stuart Taylor clarifies why the arbitration provisions of the "card check" bill are actually a fairly powerful repudiation of Wagner Act unionism:
While the National Labor Relations Act has required employers for more than 60 years to bargain in good faith, it has never authorized officials to impose contract terms or order employers to make concessions -- and for good reason. ...
The premise of U.S. labor law has long been that the government should not take sides in labor disputes or impose terms on recalcitrant employers, but rather should guarantee the right to strike so that unions can use whatever raw economic power they possess to force concessions
Right. The fundamental idea behind the Wagner Act was that wages would be set by the economic contest between employers and, on the other side, workers exercising their power to strike. If an employer stiffed a union, then the union would respond by walking out and--if the strike was successful--forcing the employer to cut a deal. Unions were proud, self-sufficient actors that could look after themselves. The idea behind the arbitration provisions in "card check" is that the strike power is not enough to guarantee economic justice--the government has to step in and set wages. This shift has subversive implications that go way beyond union organizing campaigns--implications defenders of unionism, in particular, may find disturbing: 1) If the strike power doesn't correlate with economic justice--e.g., some unions routinely don't have enough power to achieve the wages they deserve--isn't it possible that the strike weapon gives some unions more power than is justified? Transit worker unions and drawbridge operators come to mind, if not teachers and hospital workers. 2) If the government can come in and set fair wages, who needs strikes? Who needs unions? Why not eliminate the middleman and just go straight to arbitration? ... 11:59 P.M.
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Isn't now the time to start a daily "paper" covering the West Side of Los Angeles? Over a million people live here. Affluent people. People semi-obsessively concerned with local issues like crime, traffic, development, city and state politics and ill-served by the magisterial L.A. Times in far off downtown, which has to cover all of Southern California and seems to think paying attention to the West Side is somehow elitist, if not racist. ... You could hire five reporters--cheap, these days--and you'd have about four more reporters covering the area than the Times has. If they're the right reporters it shouldn't be that difficult to steal the Times' richest readers and the advertisers who want to reach them. (Many of those readers already get the New York Times for its national and international coverage. You would be the local supplement.) ... P.S.: If the LAT loses the West Side--well, let's note that the paper is already in what looks like a death spiral. Here's an opportunity to put it out of its misery, quickly, and build something in its place--without the LAT's toxic "legacy asset" of stuffiness.... We want to know whom Mayor Villaraigosa is dating, and we want to see her picture. And if John Edwards visits his mistress at the Beverly Hilton and gets chased into a bathroom by National Enquirer reporters--hey, you know, maybe that's a story! (The LAT didn't think so.) By covering politics in a way that got at least a few hundred thousand readers to pay attention, you could take the first, big step toward changing the apathetic culture of Southern California (the culture that lets Democratic interest groups fill the void and call the shots). ...
Anyone with some money want to be our Graham? Wouldn't take all that much money. ... Not you, Burkle! ... Mr. Anschutz? How about it? You wouldn't have to use swear words. Honest. ... Or Gov. Schwarzenegger. Got something better to do when you leave office? .. .
Update: LAT City editor Shelby Grad points to the paper's "new web page and blog devoted to Westside News." It's less than compelling. ... 8:21 P.M.
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