The American Spectator has just put its September cover feature online, a piece by W. James Antle III on Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao, “Rewarding Labor.” Antle calls the Department of Labor one of Washington’s rare enclaves of common sense:

Overtime regulations that had been unchanged since 1949 were modernized. Union financial disclosure requirements have been better enforced than at any time since Congress enacted them in 1959. Job training programs have been updated and made more flexible for modern workers. All this has been done while spending 3.4 percent less than in 2001. This year, the department submitted its lowest budget request since fiscal year 1996.

This record is noteworthy for two reasons. The first is that spending restraint and managerial prowess have been conspicuously lacking elsewhere in President Bush’s administration. The second is that we’re talking about the Department of Labor, an agency that mostly regulates work conditions and runs job training programs. As Chao puts it, “This department is one of the most important departments in the federal government because we regulate every single workplace in America.”

Antle does not include Labor’s work on education and training, another area where the department has achieved much in streamlining programs and focusing on the right priorities.

Otherwise, the article puts the right emphasis on the right places — such as the Office of Labor Management Standards’ efforts to hold organized labor accountable — and explains how Chao has been able to achieve so much in the department. It’s a good piece.

William Lerach, the father of abusive class-action lawsuits, is going to prison, but his works survive him. Even in Canada. Unfortunately.

The Toronto law firm of Juroviesky and Ricci LLP has filed a $2.1 billion class action suit in Ontario Superior Court against automakers and dealers in the United States, claiming they conspired to fix car prices 25- to 35-per-cent higher in Canada than in the United States. Defendants: General Motors Corp., General Motors of Canada Ltd., American Honda Motor Co. Inc., Honda Canada Inc., Chrysler Canada Inc., Chrysler LLC, Nissan North America Inc., Nissan Canada Inc., along with the Canadian Automobile Dealers Association and the National Automobile Dealers Association in the United States. The Globe and Mail’s story is good, here’s Juroviesky and Ricci’s news release. You can dowload the action here.

Plaintiffs are being solicited.

From Dow Jones:

BASF, the world’s largest chemical company, is pulling its shares from the New York Stock Exchange because the costs of its US listing outweigh the benefits. Bayer, a pharmaceutical group, also plans to serve notice on the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Big Board this month, a route taken by chemical company Altana and carbon supplier SGL Carbon.

More Wall Street defections are anticipated, according to Deutsches Aktieninstitut, a lobby of German blue-chip companies. DAI president Max Dietrich Kley, who was deputy chairman of BASF when it celebrated its New York listing in the millennium year, said: “Annual costs of at least €7m are matched by no corresponding utility for many issuers.”

German exporters fear graver US liabilities than exchange listing fees. DAI cites mandatory internal control systems with the risks of SEC sanctions and proliferating US class-action suits by shareholders alleging corruption. And even delisting from Wall Street may not save companies from the widening extraterritorial thrust of US law.

The article also mentions the Stoneridge case to be decided by the U.S. Supreme Court this term, which could dramatically expand the scope of class-action lawsuits. The NAM’s news release on Stoneridge and the NAM’s amicus brief are available here.

From the Wall Street Journal’s editorial, “Schip for Everyone“:

Naturally, however, there’s a budget sleight-of-hand. Known as a “funding cliff,” the yearly Schip layout increases to $13.9 billion in 2011, then abruptly cuts spending by 65% below current funding levels. This helps “score” the bill as costing only $35 billion over the five-year budget window, but it also means that come 2012 Congress will either have to pass new spending or kick kids off the rolls. The chances of the latter happening are approximately zero…

The Statement of Administration Policy on H.R. 976 is available here: “If H.R. 976 were presented to the President in its current form, he would veto the bill.” It’s on its way.

Give Bill McKibben credit for being honest about the goals of the anti-global warming collectivists. The co-founder of Step It Up 2007, lays out the agenda in its full economy-crushing splendor in a Saturday op-ed in the Washington Post, “The Race Against Warming“:

The only real hope is for decisive legislation from Congress; activists are calling for a law that commits the United States to early cuts, closes all coal-fired power plants and auctions the right to pollute so that we can raise the revenue to fund the transformation of our energy system. President Bush won’t sign such a law, so it doesn’t have to pass this fall; we’re working to set the stage for 2009, when a new leader takes over.

Coal represents about half of the total U.S. electricity production. One cannot accomplish McKibben’s goals without replacing the free market with a command-and-control economy, destroying millions of jobs in the process, and beggaring the United States as a nation. That’s his agenda.

Note, too, that McKibben’s solutions to supposed man-made global warming do not include nuclear energy.

Still, props to McKibben for making his statist goals so clear. In his world view, there’s no room for compromise.

A blog at Nader.org showed up on our search engine yesterday, thanks to this post: “The Best Money Coverage Can Buy“:

On September 26, 2007, the powerful National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) bought two pages in the Wall Street Journal to tout a prosperous, expanding group of member-companies producing products.

It occurred to me as I began the copy, that the NAM rarely bought expensive space like this in the Journal. Then after going through NAM’s introductory message, I realized why they purchased the ad.

Well, thanks for calling us “powerful,” but otherwise, what a maroon. The advertising supplement was four pages, not two, and the NAM did not buy it. It was paid for by the ads.

If you can’t get basic facts right, why should any of the following arguments be respected?

But as for the general claim that the NAM and Wall Street Journal’s editorial pages share similar views, that’s correct more often than not. The Journal’s philosophy of “free markets and free people” is one to be claimed proudly, and fought for.

But apparently freedom matters as much as the facts do to the folks at Nader.org.

From the Wisconsin State Journal, a thoroughly sensible editorial on Governor Hugo Doyle’s proposed oil tax, which he wants to make a crime for oil companies to pass onto consumers. Invidious, unconstitutional and just a disguised form of expropriation that will inevitably lead to fuel shortages. And the Journal takes Doyle’s argument to the logical next level. “Reject Doyle’s Oil Tax Proposal — The Governor’s Attempt To Gouge Oil Companies Would Set A Dangerous Precedent“:

If government can select the oil industry for a specially contrived tax, based on an arbitrary judgment that profits are excessive, what industry is the next target? Is the pharmaceutical industry ripe for an extra tax to fund health care? (Doyle told the State Journal editorial board that he would have to think about that.)

Groups are now complaining about the impact of rising corn prices on food costs. Would some future governor hit farmers with a tax to fund programs to feed the hungry?

Where would the taxes stop?

Lawmakers should stop the governor in his tracks. They should reject the oil industry tax.

The best short summary in one place we’ve seen why Doyle’s proposal is so reckless on many, many levels.

Did you know the same wood used to make baseball bats is also a staple in the manufacture of high-quality outdoor furniture, like umbrellas? The wood is Northern ash, and we learn that fact from Phil Apple, president of American Holtzkraft Inc. of Mt. Pleasantville, Penn., where we see this week’s Cool Stuff Being Made.

Lots of sawing, lathing, laminating and other treatment of wood — teak is also used — and the high-quality clothe for the creation of a furniture-grade finished product that can take years of outdoor wear. Phil takes us through the full production process; the umbrellas even tell a theme, for example the beach and ocean, for resort use.

Phil and Barbara Apple founded the company in 1985. As a business history relates, “Phillip C. Apple hails from a third generation apple farm of which he and his father the late Herbert Apple ran 1000 acres until the summer of 2002. In addition to the orchards Phil and his dad created H.V.Farms, Troyers Mill and Keystone Wood, Inc.” Holtzkraft, by the way, means woodcraft in German.

We bring this video to your attention courtesy the Pennsylvania Cable Network. As always, thanks.

To view this week’s Cool Stuff Being Made, please

“Representative Wally Herger (R-CA) is the ranking member on the House Ways & Means Committee’s Subcommittee on Trade. In a hard-hitting interview with host Mike Hambrick, Rep. Herger criticizes organized labor for its reflexive opposition to free-trade agreements, arguing that trade is a proven jobs-creator.

A federal moratorium is set to expire on state and local taxation of Internet access, opening the door to a new array of innovation-discouraging taxes. Broderick Johnson, head of the Don’t Tax Our Web Coalition, makes the case for a permanent moratorium. Another unnecessary burden is the business activity tax, also called cross-state taxation, which hits a business twice when its products are shipped across state lines. Jeffrey Hyde, senior tax counsel for General Electric, explains the problem.

Russia is more and more a place where U.S. manufacturers are doing business, and here to fill us in on the state of affairs there is Andrew Somers, president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Russia.

The NAM initiated a new honor this year to recognize community service by member companies, the Sandy Trowbridge Award. Sandy was the former president of the NAM, much appreciated for his dedication to service. The first recipient is Fairmount Minerals of Chardon, Ohio, the country’s largest producer of industrial sand. Joining Mike to discuss Fairmount’s community involvement is Chuck Fowler, president and CEO.

In our regular segments, Renee Giachino of the American Justice Partnership identifies tort reform’s winners and losers; the NAM’s Hank Cox explores “The Way It Was”; and NAM President John Engler provides “The Last Word,” warning against abuses of the Family and Medical Leave Act.

For more on “America’s Business with Mike Hambrick” and to listen to the program online, please click here.

And for video highlights, visit our YouTube page: www.youtube.com/namvideo.

A colleague reports on last night’s American Film Renaissance featured film, “Weirdsville“: “Weirdsville is Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels fused with Mall Rats.” Not so much the way of entrepreneurship, unless you count the Satanists. But a highly entertaining, well-done film…

Tonight’s feature, “Indoctrinate U,” playing at the Kennedy Center, returns to philosophical side of the American Film Renaissance, in this case the promotion of constitutional rights and free speech. The documentary by Evan Coyne Maloney highlights the attack on the marketplace of ideas on the university campus.

The Washington Post’s free distribution paper, Express, includes an excellent interview with Maloney.

The twisty tale Maloney tells is one in which the layers of identity politics and administrative rear-covering are sliced thinner and thinner until they are almost invisible. The filmmaker is shown being forcibly ejected from more than one campus for such transgressions as trying to ask a school administrator a question or requesting a look at a document.

For more on the American Film Renaissance’s D.C. features, please click here.