Scheduled for a House vote as early as this evening is H.R. 2831, the Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. Sponsors are selling it as a simple legislative fix of the Supreme Court’s ruling in Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., but the bill actually blows years of employment law out of the water. (To see an example of the purposely misleading arguments for the bill, check out the People for the American Way activities – There’s even a “Correct the Court” website.) The bill effectively eliminates any statute of limitations on filing employment discrimination claims, inviting frivolous lawsuits ad infinitum, ad nauseum. Yet another trial lawyer full-employment act.

Congress didn’t write deadlines into employment law just to be mean and capricious. Deadlines not only provide certainty for an employer, they also help correct problems. If an aggrieved employee waits for years to charge employment discrimination, the violations might go unrecognized and unaddressed.

Our NAM’s Key Vote Letter is available here, and the one-page Manufacts is here. To contact your House member, please click here.

Bad bill, and the misrepresentation is even worse.

Congress is heading in the wrong direction on energy, former Delaware Governor Pete DuPont observes in today’s Opinionjournal.com, offering a cogent summary of energy policy is off the tracks. The United States needs to be able to build oil refineries, make use of coal, and expand nuclear power, he argues. And stop restricting access to our domestic energy supplies!

The U.S. has substantial supplies of oil and gas that could be accessed if lawmakers would allow it, but they frequently don’t. A National Petroleum Council study released last week reports that 40 billion barrels of America’s “recoverable oil reserves are off limits or are subject to significant lease restrictions”–half inshore and half offshore–and similar restrictions apply to more than 250 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. (We consume about 22 trillion cubic feet a year.)

Access to the 10 billion barrels of oil in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Reserve has been prohibited for decades. Some 85 billion barrels of recoverable oil and 420 trillion cubic feet of natural gas exist on the Outer Continental Shelf, but a month ago the House again, as it did last year, voted down an amendment that would have allowed the expansion of coastal drilling for oil and natural gas. All of which leaves the U.S. as the only nation in the world that has forbidden access to significant sources of domestic energy supplies.

Then the Senate voted in June to mandate a reduction in projected future oil usage of 10 million barrels a day, or 35%, which, since our domestic oil production is declining, means less imports. In other words, Congress wants to block drilling for more American oil while at the same time blocking the importation of oil — not a rational energy policy.

Which drives home his point that any “energy crisis” is more a crisis of politics.

DuPont is chairman of the National Center for Policy Analysis, and the National Petroleum Council’s report he cites is available here.

The “skills gap” really worries manufacturers. A shortage of skilled employees pretty soon hits the bottom line, precluding expansion or the ability to even serve customers.

When business and government and educators talk about the problem, they usually focus on the younger generation as the best place to expend effort. The Dream It! Do It! campaign, for example, concentrates on higher schoolers up to adults in their mid-20s.

All well and good, but don’t forget the Baby Boomers, says Sandra Westlund-Deenihan, president of Quality Float Works in Schaumburg, Ill, and an NAM board member. Just because that generation is aging out of the workforce doesn’t mean that its members should simply be ignored. Their skills, experience and desire to keep working should be encouraged even as the Boomers enter retirement.

And Sandy has some suggestions to make it so. From The Business Ledger:

I believe that our leaders in Washington have a role to play in this. Some employers may have questions regarding liability, 401(k) and other matters if we adopt such a program. I must admit I don’t have those answers. However, I believe that Congress can take a proactive approach in developing some guidelines for employers so we know the “rules of the game.”

Furthermore, I believe incentives for employers to hire baby boomers and educational materials about the assets this generation provides could create a tremendous boost for us in this process. The program must offer clear benefits for employers who will get access to trained workers and clear benefits to individuals who are interested in pursuing post-retirement careers.

A good discussion of the value of a generation — and of its individuals — who should have the option of enjoying both worlds, work AND retirement.

Objections to Florida Governor Crist’s grandiose energy dreams are sounding louder. We especially liked this comment in a Miami Herald story about his push — his order, it’s described as — to obtain 20 percent of the state’s electricity from alternative fuels in 10 years.

”We have a better chance of having electricity beamed down from the Starship Enterprise than from some of the technology we see today,” said Paul Barber, a Salt Lake City-based consultant for Florida Crystals, which burns sugar cane waste to generate power.

Unlike California, which imports energy from neighboring states to meet its renewable energy requirements, “Florida doesn’t have that capacity.”

And please note: That comment comes from a company that SUPPORTS alternative fuels.

The acknowledgement of reality is particularly timely because the U.S. House may soon consider a similar federal requirement of 20 percent in the upcoming energy legislation. As the San Francisco Chronicle reports:

The Democratic speaker from California has told environmentalists she supports raising fuel economy standards to at least 35 miles per gallon and requiring utilities to generate 20 percent of their power from renewable sources such as wind, solar or biomass by 2020.

But neither measure is part of the energy bill now, and Pelosi has not committed to bringing the proposals to the floor as amendments — although she’s leaning toward putting the electricity standard to a vote.

There’s a reason some states have such a requirement, and others don’t — some places lack the wind to generate wind power or other affordable sources of alternative energy. Places like Florida, for example. A renewable fuels standard will serve only to make electricity prohibitively expensive for manufacturers, the tourism industry and consumers. (Turn off that air conditioner! We’re not made of money, you know.)

Very, very busy week as Congress heads toward the August recess. With the Ledbetter Act coming up on the House floor today, there’s no time for beux gestes, bons mots or bonhomie. So let’s get to it.

The House convenes at 10:30 a.m., with business to start at noon. The Senate convenes at 2 p.m. Both the Senate and House are supposed to take up lobbying reform this week (New York Times story here.) Conference reports for the homeland security/port security bill, and the Water Resources Development Act reauthorization may also make it to both chambers.

The Senate’s floor schedule leads with H.R.976, the “Small Business Tax Relief Act, which serves as the vehicle for the SCHIP legislation.

Washington Post, Page A03 Sunday (A1 in early editions), “Fewer See Balance in Court’s Decisions.”

About half of the public thinks the Supreme Court is generally balanced in its decisions, but a growing number of Americans say the court has become “too conservative” in the two years since President Bush began nominating justices, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

Nearly a third of the public — 31 percent — thinks the court is too far to the right, a noticeable jump since the question was last asked in July 2005. That’s when Bush nominated John G. Roberts Jr. to the court and, in the six-month period that followed, the Senate approved Roberts as chief justice and confirmed Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr.

Quick, and don’t cheat. Name five decisions the Supreme Court handed down in the last term. And were those decisions “conservative” or “liberal?”

All this polls tells us is that after a year of being told incessantly — and incorrectly — by the media that the court was handing down “conservative” decisions, more people in a survey say the court is more conservative, and maybe too conservative. One of the cases most often cited to make the argument is the court’s ruling upholding the federal ban on partial-birth abortion. Conservative? The law passed the Senate in 2003 by a vote of 64-34 and the House by 281-142. Seems pretty popular, bipartisan, not by any stretch “conservative.” The court’s ruling upheld the policymaking branch’s ability to make policy. Only those who prefer an activist court, one that legislates, would term that “conservative.”

And look at the first person quoted in the story: Ralph Neas, president of People for the American Way. A Google search of the Washington Post and Ralph G. Neas has him cited 67 times. What a circle of circles: Post writes stories arguing the court is conservative, quotes Ralph G. Neas warning of its dangerous conservatism, contracts for poll that shows public has been influenced by Washington Post saying court is conservative, and then quotes Ralph G. Neas avering it so. And the media wonder why people don’t trust them.

If you drive a car, ride a bus or plane, use an elevator, or have typed on a keyboard to get to this blog, then you probably have taken all those things for granted. That’s the way of today’s America–we have more than any civilization in history and yet we take for granted–and sometimes seem to punish–those who give us the wherewithal for all this bounty.

You realize how poorly we understand how our energy got to us when you a read a story about today’s exploration for oil and natural gas at the bottom of the oceans.

Reporters Russell Gold and Ana Campoy brilliantly captured this world of oil and gas exploration that most of us never see in an article recently in the Wall Street Journal and in other newspapers. I’m including a link to one of the articles. It profiles The Independence Hub, floating in the deepest water of any offshore platform. It will pull up a billion cubic feet of natural gas every day! This one platform will produce enough energy to heat nearly 5 million U.S. homes.

The reporters want to tell us how the biggest rigs are used less as smaller reservoirs of gas and aging fields can best be tapped by underwater well heads. Moreover, by having the wellhead gear on the seafloor, it’s out of the way of hurricanes.

Unfortunately the link above does not include the graphics and map that accompanied the WSJ piece on July 26. For me, they were as interesting as the analysis that went with it. Here’s what was in the graphics–

The map shows the Gulf of Mexico overlaid with a grid that shows where some of the most interesting oil and gas drilling it taking place, tiny specks not far from the delta of the Mississippi River. The illustration show one of the floating rigs that operates there–who knew these gargantuan steel structures could float?!!–and the spaghetti of umbilical cords that carry orders, chemicals and electricity down two miles to the well heads on the sea floor. Here are the steps shown in this very effective drawing by Erik Brynildsen:

Step 1: The Platform. Operators monitor production and send orders to the wellhead. If you’ve been on an offshore platform, you know this is much bigger than a lego block.

Step 2: 125 miles of “umbilicals” carry orders, electricity and chemicals down to wellheads. Computers monitor all of this activity and ten different fields feed into the Independence Hub.

Step 3: Modular wellheads or “trees” regulate flow and pressure with valves and chemicals injected into the well. How do they get these well heads atop the pipelines when it is two miles down from the ocean’s surface? I have trouble getting a horseshoe on a metal pole from twenty feet. I can’t imagine the engineering skill to not only match up the wellheads, let alone the drilling that goes below the sea floor to the deposits of oil and gas. Could you do this?

Step 4: Flow Lines. They send production from wells through centralized manifolds and up to the platform.

Step 5: It handles separation of gas from water, sand, etc. brought up from the sea bed. In other words, natural gas does not just flow up ready to get burned in your oven. It’s got to be transformed, clean up and sent onward to customers like you and me.

Step 6: The gas is sent on to the mainland via pipeline, also running along the bottom of the seabed.

Who takes all this for granted? Most of us who have never seen it. And then there’s those members of Congress who not only take all this for granted, but they want to penalize those companies that have the brains and bucks to get all this done.

By the way, if you wondered why I mentioned the keyboard in the beginning, it is because it is made from plastics and of course they are made from chemicals that originate from natural gas feedstocks. There’s another story there, and if you want to know how we are driving U.S. manufacturing abroad because of our short-sighted natural gas policies, read The Manufacturing Institute’s newest report on that topic–The Hidden Backbone of U.S. Manufacturing– by clicking here.

Commenting further on Secretary of Agriculture Mike Johanns’ speech Friday at the National Press Club, we note he mentioned the NAM by name, among those groups criticizing the farm bill reauthorization because of the multibillion dollar tax increase added at the last minute (without any public hearings).

We did some research at the USDA. I always tell people if you want information, I’ve got it, because we have data on everything at the USDA. I asked the question, have we ever done a Farm Bill with a tax increase rolled into it? One time — 1933, Farm Adjustment Act of 1933, only time. Ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court.

We don’t pass farm bills that way. But the most remarkable thing about this, the most remarkable thing about this is that we put farmers and ranchers in this position of supporting a tax increase on another industry to finance their program. Remarkable.

And now we have pitted America’s farmers and ranchers against the National Association of Manufacturers, the Organization of International Investment, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the United States Council for International Business, and I could go on and on.

We haven’t broadened the support for farm policy; we have narrowed it.

Thing is, the opposition was reluctant, generated at the last minute by the surprise tax increases on foreign investment.

Any large piece of legislation like the Farm Bill is bound to have good and bad in it; H.R. 2419 contained provisions that many manufacturers were receptive to — the energy title, for example, with its language encouraging development of bio-fuels. And, politically, who wants to oppose a farm bill? For one thing, it’s tiresome to be attacked as being an enemy of rural America, which is the usual disingenuous rhetoric levelled against any criticism.

Johanns expressed hope that the Senate takes a different approach, producing a farm bill that embraces both reform and fiscal responsibility. Agreed. As the Secretary said,

If there was ever a time when our farm programs needed friends, it is now. Have you read the editorials across the United States about these programs? If there is ever a time when we need friends for our farm programs, it is now. It is no time to be making enemies.

The USDA has already posted a transcript of Ag Secretary Mike Johanns’ speech Friday at the National Press Club. Johanns offered a devastating critique of the sudden, surprise tax increase tacked onto the farm bill reauthorization as unprecedented, bad policy and bad politics. (We have previously commented on the tax increase on foreign investment here, here and here.)

Johanns’ speech — written at the last minute in response to developments — warrants wide distribution as a powerful rebuke of the wrong strategy, the wrong SUBSTANCE, House advocates embraced in passing the legislation.

Final point on the tax policy itself, these are companies that have come to the United States; they have built manufacturing plants, oftentimes that employ rural residents, and provide jobs.

Now maybe there is somebody out there that says, you know, Mike, I still think we should tax these folks. Okay. How do we go about doing that in our system? We put a bill in, we go to the Ways and Means Committee, we have a hearing. People come in from a group like this and they say, “We don’t think you should do it because here are the ramifications. You’re going to abrogate 58 treaties that are out there.” And other groups come in and say, “No, I think we should tax them!” And we air it in the bright light of day. And then the Ways and Means Committee takes a vote, and then it’s sent to the House floor where it’s debated, and everybody gets a fair shot.

Now let me compare this process, which I think is a very honorable process, to what happened. This got brought over, rolled into a rule, no public hearing before the Ways and Means Committee, and it was acted upon. Acted upon under what circumstances? The passage of a Farm Bill. What! The passage of a Farm Bill. That’s how this came, this very important issue involving international relations and treaties and tax policy and U.S. jobs was acted upon in a rule for the Farm Bill.

No airing, no public hearing before Ways and Means.

It’s just not the way we should be doing business. It is just not the way to fund a Farm Bill, and it’s never been done before. It’s remarkable, it’s historic, and I might add not in a positive way.

Read the whole thing.

Last week in “Cool Stuff Being Made” we visited RGM Watch Company in Mount Joy, PA, a manufacturer of high-end, precision hand-crafted watches. Company founder Roland G. Murphy started his career in product development for Hamilton (then part of the SMH, now part of the Swatch Group).

Which got us thinking about the history of watchmaking, and its endless attention to detail, which led us a bit far afield for this week’s “Cool Stuff Being Made” — this 1947 industrial film, “What Makes a Fine Watch Fine?”

Produced by the ubiquitous maker of training films, the Jam Handy Organization, this 20-minute documentary begins with vignettes of celebratory watch presentations (high school graduation, birthday, retirement) and then takes one through a tour of the Hamilton Watch Co. factory in Lancaster, PA. Still fresh in the company’s list of achievements was its mass production of the Hamilton marine chronometer, used widely in WWII, but the film goes deep into watch production at all levels, especially the critical importance of accuracy and detail. Really an excellent industrial film of the era, one that doesn’t lend itself to being poked fun at from a distance of 60 years later.

The film comes courtesy of the Prelinger Archives, one of many entertaining and useful resources at www.archive.org.

To watch this week’s “Cool Stuff Being Made,” please go to this page, “What Makes a Fine Watch Fine?” And for photos from the film, please go to this page.