As we write this, the World’s Greatest Deliberative Body, the United States Senate, is debating class action legislation. (If you’ve not already sent a letter to your Senator urging support for S.5, the Class Action Fairness Act, without amendments, please do so by clicking here.) At the moment, they’re voting on trial lawyer pal Ted Kennedy’s amendment to exempt civil rights — and more importantly, labor — class action lawsuits from anything dangerous like reform. This is important to Sen. Kennedy and his pals over at the AFL-CIO because increasingly, frivolous class action claims have become a staple of corporate (organizing) campaigns. Hate to see that cartel broken up, wouldn’t we?

In any event, we wanted to breathe a little perspective into this debate. On the left you’ll see links to a few websites that fairly well chronicle the excesses of the trial bar. Overlawyered.com, thanks to Walter Olson, author of “The Rule of Lawyers”, is filled with anecdotes, cites to real cases and fun facts about over-reaching lawyers and ridiculous lawsuits. Also check out M-Law.org, Michigan Lawsuit Abuse Watch. There you’ll find the sadly hilarious fruits of our litigious culture, including the “Whiplash Awards” for stupid lawsuits and our favorite, “Wacky Warning Labels”.

To round out your reading, and in fairness, you should also wander over to the dark side and check out the American Trial Lawyers Association website as well. Their defense of the McDonald’s spilled coffee case is well nigh hilarious, made moreso by the fact that they’re serious in defending this asinine case.

Objection, anyone….?

Item: The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill announced last week that its favorite ambulance-chasing son, former Senator John Edwards will be heading up its new Center on Poverty, Work and Opportunity (no, not “Opportunism”).

[Insert your own joke here]

Multi-millionaire Edwards knows a thing or two about poverty, having impoverished many people and businesses in his career by suing them and greatly enriching himself in the process. Clearly his favored solution to ending poverty is to hurry up and sue somebody — income transfer at its finest, keep a little (like a third) for yourself.

We’ll remind you that during his time in the Senate, Edwards managed an NAM Vote Rating of a puny 7%, making him one of the Senate’s top job-killers.

Here’s hoping that somewhere back in the stacks of UNC he stumbles upon some old research on the topic which still holds true today, i.e., that the best cure for poverty is not a lawsuit but a good job.

Official Washington was all abuzz recently over news that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) harbors dreams of some day revamping its personnel policies. Apparently, DHS wishes to abandon the current inert and byzantine federal system of labyrinthine, arcane and often indecipherable rules, unwieldy personnel practices, bloated bureaucracy and snail-like processes and replace it with one based on — God forbid — merit. Worse yet, word was that the White House was fixin’ to let this meritocracy cancer spread to other agencies as well. Under the new plan, raises and promotions would be based on — gulp — performance rather than the current system of Newton’s First Law of Motion, i.e., “a body at rests stays at rest.” Among other draconian measures, the rules would limit the employee discipline and appeals process to three months — yes, three months — rather than the current “end of civilization” time frame.

This pinned the outrage needle on groups representing federal employees and their Congressional protectors. The unions cried “favoritism” and “politics”, as if tossing employees out into the cold cruel world of rules of the private sector marketplace would leave them somehow unprotected. As we manufacturers know all too well, among the rules of the private sector workplace are some 68 labor and employment laws that provide lots and lots of protection.

The unions, of course, showing some rare nimble moves of their own, when four of them joined to file suit the same day, in hopes of preventing any whisper of merit from creeping into the federal system.

Stay tuned.

A few things to round out the week:

– Trying to maintain a link to manufacturing in all (OK, most) things posted on the blog, this was sent to me by a real live manufacturer, an NAM Board member nonetheless. WARNING: Do not open unless you have lots of time to kill, as it’s a bit addictive. It involves hand-eye coordination, a golf club and a cartoon penguin. The person who sent it reached 315, we reached 321, not on work time of course. Give it a try. Click on the Bumble with the bat, click again as the penguin starts to fall and you’re good for an hour at least. Note to the folks from PETA: No penguins were injured in the making of this blog.

– Hope everyone enjoys the Super Bowl on Sunday, the game that happens in between the commercials. Not sure it’ll be the same without Janet Jackson. That must not have been an American Manufacturer’s wardrobe that malfunctioned, we’re quite sure. In any event, you’ll (hopefully) see some good football, but you’ll also see the handiwork of America’s manufacturers: the munchies, the lights, the Gatorade, the Under Armour and the Lombardi trophy, among others. Click here for an article by our Dave Kralik on the great work of US Manufacturers in making the Super Bowl possible. Be proud.

Have a good weekend!

We’ll hit highlights of the President’s speech from last night over the next few days and weeks, including a pretty darned persuasive case for Social Security reform (i.e., allowing ordinary folks to do what Congress can do with their retirement funds), but this morning, all we can think about is The Moment. Watching live, seeing the spontaneous moment when Safia Taleb al-Suhail turned and hugged Sgt. Byron Norwood’s mom just said it all. The message was clear, i.e., “Your son gave his life to make my people free and we are grateful.” In a city where everything sometimes seems scripted and nothing is left to chance, this was one of those rare, emotional, unscripted moments, and because it was, so unbelievably powerful. Made us proud to be Americans.

Remember that cool little Magic 8 Ball? You’d grab it in your hand, ask it a question, turn it over and — presto! — your answer would appear through the window on the bottom. “Don’t count on it” it might say, advising caution, or “Yes – definitely”, the green light to go for the gusto, or any one of 20 answers.

Well, we’re thinking that the Washington Post and some Congressional Democrats have a Magic 8 Ball all their own. When they get in a policy pickle of one sort or another, they grab it, give it a shake, turn it over and peer through the magic window. Problem is, their 20-sided oracle within has very few options. “Raise taxes” would be one, “Cut benefits” would be another and, judging from the latest Social Security debate, “There is no crisis”. In short, classic old school thinking.

The Washington Post weighed in with an editorial this week, joining the Hertzberg Ostriches (See, “The Ostriches Gather”, below). There’s no crisis they say and anyway, why not just raise taxes or cut benefits? If benefits are not cut, they would need to raise the FICA tax by as much as 80% in the out years. Just what the economy needs. As for cutting benefits, is this something they want to propose?

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, for his part, echoed the “no crisis” mantra of the left this week, vowing that none of his minions would vote for the radical notion of allowing people the option of investing a portion of their Social Security in a personal account. Of course not. Too much power in the hands of the individual, not enough in the hands of government.

However, the whole debate on that side is all so pointless. If the Post and Hertzberg believe we should raise taxes and cut benefits, then where is their standard bearer? Where is the brave Democrat who will author that bill, who will stand up and say yessirree, this is the fix to end all fixes: we’re gonna raise your taxes and cut your benefits?

Anyone….?

Didn’t think so.

That’s what’s so disingenuous about it all. They might have a little more credibility if instead of nattering from the sidelines they actually had a sponsor and were supporting a bill with their favorite Magic 8 Ball solutions: Raise taxes, cut benefits. Sen. Reid, maybe? Sen. Kennedy? Sen. Clinton? Sen. Kerry?Hmmmmm….wait….Let’s give the ball a shake here…

Turn it over…

One minute….

“Don’t count on it.”

Those of us who have crossed the two decade mark in Washington are fond of saying that this city exemplifies the movie, “Groundhog Day“, in that it’s the same day over and over again. For example, in almost any year, you can find a debate about tax reform and about trade. On the latter, it was Fast Track, then NAFTA, then PNTR, but the debate was the same: free trade or not. In any year divisible by 4 there is a minimum wage battle and every year we have the annual appropriations running of the bulls. Leave Washington, fall into a coma, come back, pick up right where you left off. There’s Sen. Kennedy, sitting right where he was when we left.

There is another interesting aspect of this Groundhog Day world in which we live. As in the film version, with the repetition of the day comes the absence of any institutional memory among any of the players. And so some Congressional Democrats can crow about there being no crisis in Social Security in spite of the fact that they cheered when President Bill Clinton said there was and when Al Gore brandished his lockbox. There are a thousand more examples like this. Click on “View or Submit a Comment”, below and let us know your favorite. The AFL-CIO is particularly unabashed about throwing old stands out the window in favor of new ones, and in using a steady stream of excuses as old ones grow outdated. No matter, every day starts fresh. Nobody remembers.

And so we just keep grinding it out, making sure manufacturers’ voices are heard here in debate after debate, even if it’s the same one. In short, to quote “Bluto” Blutarski, another statesman from another seminal film, when it comes to matters here in Washington, “It’s never over!” Hang in there.

Happy Groundhog Day!

After all that’s been written and speculated about the NAM’s trade agenda (and the imagined rifts by those who would have it so), we announced today the NAM’s Trade Agenda in a morning roundtable with reporters. This is an agenda worked out over the last several months in regular meetings between large and small manufacturers, termed by one small manufacturer who particpated as, “a win for everyone”. When all was said and done, they coalesced around the following agenda:

– Achieve Broad Trade Liberalization with Effective Reciprocal Market Access in the WTO Doha Round (TPA Renewal, WTO Membership)

– Achieve Full Implementation and Enforcement of FTA/WTO Commitments and Rules

– Expand Market Access and Economic Benefits for U.S. Manufacturing through Free Trade Agreements (FTAs)

– Eliminate Trade-Distorting Subsidies & Defend, Preserve and Enhance the Effectiveness of WTO-Consistent U.S. Trade Law

– Reduce Trade Distorting Effects of Divergent National Regulations and Standards

– Promote Innovation through Strong Intellectual Property Protection, Enforcement and Anti-Counterfeiting

– Promote Trade Education and Advocacy to Improve U.S. Competitiveness

We also proposed a China-specific agenda, including:

– Revalue the Chinese Yuan to Reflect Economic Fundamentals

– Enforce and Enhance Intellectual Property Laws

– Retain China’s Non-Market Economy Status as Negotiated in PNTR

– Eliminate Chinese Administrative, Regulatory and Standards Barriers

– Expand Exports to China

– Promote Fair Competition

In addition, the NAM Trade Agenda identified five countries that we feel are best suited in the near term for bilateral trade agreements with the U.S. Remember that bilateral trade agreements lower barriers to entry for US-made goods. Remember, too, that 80% of our trade deficit is with countries with which we don’t have trade agreements. We cede that ground to other competitors.

Arnold Allemang of Dow Chemical, chair of the NAM’s International Economic Policy Committee stressed that this was a consensus document, and noted that access to customers is what’s important, noting that 95% of all customers are outside the US.

We know it’s not news when peace breaks out, but no matter how our foes would like to slice it, at least on the matter of trade, peace reigns in the manufacturing kingdom. On this, as with so many other issues, we speak with one voice.

Don’t believe us? Here’s a press release from a group of small manufacturers on the topic.