Flotsam and Jetsam
- 03.31.2009 - 7:45 AMDog bites man story: charter school without union contracts and rigid work rules can hire more teachers. (h/t Mickey Kaus). Next thing you know high union rates and cumbersome work rules will hobble the U.S. auto industry.
Angela Merkel joins critics of Tim Geithner’s toxic asset clean-up plan: “Politically we have to be careful that in the spirit of justice we don’t reach a point where the taxpayer bears the bad risks and the privately functioning banks in the end have all the good opportunities.”
Richard Cohen has had enough of car bailouts and Geithner: “Recall his confused explanations of how he learned of those AIG bonuses. Those of us who cannot find our keys in the morning ought to have nothing but sympathy for a man who is now running a large part of the American economy. Of course, he might not have been paying attention. He can’t pay attention to everything.”
A preview of what’s in store at the national level? New York’s state budget is out and “spending and tax both soar.” $10 billion in new taxes and fees — for one state, mind you.
The wit and wisdom of Jack Murtha: “If I’m corrupt, it’s because I take care of my district.” And: “The stimulus package is the earmarks of the administration.”
Big Labor bets on Terry McAuliffe in the Virginia gubernatorial race.
The pro-card check blogging is getting a bit wacky. They lost Senators Specter, Lincoln, Nelson and probably Feinstein but everything is fine, perfectly fine, and they are battling for those undecided senators? So they can get to the magic number of 56, I guess.
Well, this is one way to spin it: “A mark of the scale of Organizing for America’s drive for pledges in support of Obama’s budget: A source sends over a pledge form from Senator Tom Harkin, whom volunteers signed up at outside a DSCC event in San Francisco last night.” Another view: this “movement” isn’t doing anything productive if they are signing up Democratic Senators. Of their 100,000 pledges of support for the Obama budget I wonder how many were not Democratic elected officials, former staffers or died-in-the-wool Obama fans.
Nate Silver says Obama needs a 65% approval rating to hold ground in the congressional mid-terms. But he’s around 58% and trending downward so if that keeps up isn’t it a real problem for the Democrats? Well, I guess they are betting unemployment will be down by then, the deficit will be shrinking and those middle class tax cuts will be a hit. (But don’t count on the tax cuts.)
Larry Kudlow has it right: “As for Detroit, the carmakers should have been in bankruptcy months ago. And it is a bankruptcy court that should have fired GM’s Wagoner and his board. Along with some serious pain for bondholders, bankruptcy would have broken the high-cost labor contracts with the UAW as well as carmaker contracts with dealers across the country. That’s what bankruptcy courts are for. . . . And why isn’t Obama’s special auto task force ordering a replacement for Ron Gettelfinger, the UAW’s president? Weren’t their oversized pay and benefit packages a big part of the problem? Well, that’s never gonna happen. The election power of the union is too strong.”
The salient point: “From now on, GM and Chrysler are Mr. Obama’s companies, and taxpayers should hold him accountable for every dollar they are forced to spend to save jobs for the UAW and to make cars that Americans don’t necessarily want.” Good luck with that.
David Brooks wryly summed up: “Well, the president certainly acted tough on Monday. In a show of force, he released plans from his Office of People Who Are Much Smarter Than You Are. These plans insert the government into the car business in all sorts of ways. They pick winners (new C.E.O. Fritz Henderson) and losers (Rick Wagoner). They basically send Chrysler off into the sunset. Joe Biden will be doing car commercials within weeks.” The Office of People Who Are Much Smarter Than You Are is awfully busy these days — setting compensation, running bank bailouts, devising healthcare, etc.
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