Rebuffed in Congress in their effort to eliminate secret-ballot elections in the workplace through the Employee Free Choice Act, organized labor has turned to the states. But, because the anti-democratic “card check” is so unpopular – people understand the threat of coercion it poses — the labor unions have limited their push, relying on their allies in the legislatures and governor’s offices. The approach means that only public employees are being deprived of the workplace ballot.

From Associated Press:

MARLBOROUGH, Mass. – Governor Deval Patrick has signed into law a bill that makes it easier for public sector employees to unionize.

The Democratic governor signed the so-called “Majority Authorization bill” before a friendly crowd at the AFL-CIO’s 50th convention celebration.

It requires employers to recognize a union without an election once more than half its work force signs union cards.

Public sector employees can now unionize through a “card check” written option instead of the elections.

Patrick says the law “is about leveling the playing field between labor and management.”

Management being, among others…Deval Patrick. “Stop me before I do something bad!”

Same thing happened in August in Oregon with the public employees.

Meanwhile, the Change to Win workers front has decided to increase its union dues to finance its political activities, charging members more so they can lose their claim to secret-ballot elections.

The 10-cent surcharge, which may raise up to $14 million over the two years, will go for education campaigns centered around politics and several issues, notably including health care and the right to organize. “The way we focus on organizing and politics is very different” from the AFL-CIO, Burger added.

The convention resolution approving the assessment, and laying out the federation’s overall plan for the next two years, says the money will be used “to build a state-of-the-art coordinated political program to ensure the election of a pro-labor president in 2008 and pro-labor majorities in the Senate and House in order to pass the Employee Free Choice Act.”

(Thanks to Laborpains.org for the info.)

Representative Wally Herger (R-CA) is the ranking member on the House Ways & Means Committee, Trade Subcommittee, responsible for the pending U.S. free-trade agreements with Peru, Colombia, Panama and South Korea. In this week’s Vodcast highlights of “America’s Business with Mike Hambrick,” Representative Herger discusses trade’s prospects in Congress.

Herger challenges organized labor for reflexively opposing any free trade agreements, despite trade’s importance to the U.S. economy and jobs creation. For every job lost because of trade, 10 are created, Herger observes.

Also on this week’s Vodcast is Broderick Johnson, head of the Don’t Tax Our Web Coalition, calling for a permanent moratorium on taxing Internet access. NAM President John Engler closes with “The Last Word” commentary on the Family and Medical Leave Act.

For the full Vodcast and more NAM videos, please go to the NAM’s YouTube page. And you can download the file to a mobile video device or watch the vodcast on your PC by visiting www.AmericasBusiness.org.

E.J. Dionne, the Washington Post’s skilled amanuensis of the conventional Beltway wisdom, draws on the UAW-GM settlement to ask for more clarity from the Democratic candidates on economic issues. From “Detroit’s Creative Bargain”:

[To] govern successfully, progressive parties — and especially the Democrats — need more clarity than they have now on how to save middle-class living standards, how to grapple with the impact of global trade and how to marry economic dynamism with social justice.

But, however regrettable the fact, the political process now works to punish specificity. Why not wish for something achievable?

Something achievable like a well-structured debate, perhaps.

The media could help, too. How often do we need to parse every tiny nuance of each candidate’s already well-known position on Iraq? Why can’t news organizations host debates focused solely on how to build a just and growing economy in a world very different from the one our grandparents inherited? Maybe GM and the UAW could sponsor it.

Sounds good. The Democratic candidates have addressed economic issues, but almost solely in the context of labor-sponsored public appearances, which produce little but sloganeering. But isn’t Dionne missing something?

ENGLEWOOD CLIFFS, N.J., Sept. 6, 2007—CNBC/MSNBC/The Wall Street Journal announced today that they are jointly sponsoring the first Republican Presidential debate of the 2008 campaign focusing on economic issues. The two-hour debate is scheduled to be held on October 9 in Dearborn, Mich. and will be broadcast live …..[snip]

“This debate will focus on issues that are at the heart of every Presidential election, namely the economy, taxes, fiscal discipline and government regulation,” said Mark Hoffman, CNBC President. “This will mark the first time in the 2008 presidential campaign that all declared Republican candidates will be asked to provide voters with specific plans for the American economy and American workers in an increasingly global marketplace.”

Sponsor a similar event for the Democrats, and we’re good to go.

Odd that Dionne overlooked this event.

The Examiner newspaper today continues its series of articles on America’s broken system of civil litigation, “Lawyers Gone Wild,” turning to one of the NAM’s great allies to reveal the wildness of Delaware. From “How they do it: Favorite tactics of liability lawyers that tip the scales for their fame and fortune“:

WASHINGTON (Map, News) – Something unexpected is happening in Delaware these days as the number of asbestos liability lawsuits filed in the “small wonder” state’s judicial system has increased 345 percent in a few short years.

New asbestos cases have become so common in Delaware that state judges are hearing as many as 85 a day, according to Steve Hantler of Overlawyered.com. Hantler, who is Chrysler’s assistant general counsel for government regulation, is a regular contributor to the widely read Web site that covers the costs of excessive litigation.

“Out-of-state law firms are now busy turning Delaware into Ground Zero of the asbestos litigation morass but the overwhelming majority of plaintiffs have no connection to Delaware whatsoever,” said Hantler, who is also chairman of the American Justice Partnership, an educational group supporting tort reform backed by the National Association of Manufacturers.

The tactic is forum shopping, the hunt for the most “creative” of judges, those who view the court system as a means of correcting “economic injustice,” and for the most resentful of juries, who want to stick it to the man. And politicians allied with trial attorneys work to exploit these forums.

Other stories in today’s package.

If Judge Roy Pearson of the $54 million suit over misplaced suitpants has a theme song, surely it must be “Mr. Fancy Pants.” He IS Mr. Fancy Pants.

Chances are your pants are not as fancy as the pair
Of very fancy pants that Mr. Fancy Pants will wear
When everybody’s marching in the fancy pants parade
He’s gonna pass the test
He’s gonna be the best
The best in terms of pants

You look in every catalog you shop at every store
Cause even though you have a hundred pants you want some more
When suddenly you see the greatest pants you’ve ever seen
And even though you know
It’s gonna cost a lot of dough
You have to have the world’s best pants

Say a little prayer for Mr. Fancy Pants
The whole world knows
They’re only clothes
And deep inside
He’s sad

They make the big announcement and the trophy goes to you
You thought you had some fancy pants and now you know it’s true
You look at Mr. Fancy Pants and hold the trophy high
Everybody cheers
While he’s blinking back the tears
He doesn’t even have the best pants

Say a little prayer for Mr. Fancy Pants
It’s all he had
But don’t feel bad
He’d do the same
To you

The clip is of Jonathan Coulton performing “Mr. Fancy Pants” in San Francisco, hauling out his new toy, the Zendrum Digital Midi Controller. There’s tons of Coulton material on YouTube and his website, including interactive fan stuff. He’s very funny, and in a not-mean way. And he’s playing in Annapolis Saturday.

UPDATE (1 p.m. Monday) A good interview with Coulton at Masslive.com.

Where would your career be without the Internet?

I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have a career without the internet.

Because I found the traditional path to a successful music career so disheartening, I chose to pretend it could be done a different way – by staying at home, putting music on the internet, and letting the audience come to me. That’s the amazing thing, word of mouth has become such a fluid medium that the internet does most of the work for me. And it makes it possible to ignore geography – you can aggregate all these tiny pockets of fans from all over the world into a fan base big enough to keep you afloat.

David Freddoso passes on an e-mail from a reader at The Corner.

Maybe I’m missing something but if I ran a business, SCHIP expansion would have me jumping with joy: I’d kick dependents off of employees’ insurance plans as fast as I could. Just think of the immediate (who cares about future costs?) cost savings if I could jettison a hefty percentage of dependents?

And another:

I have a business with about 500 employees & I’ve already thought that if [SCHIP] passed I would be calling the union for a reopener. Who needs my coverage when the govt will supply for you?

Single-payer health care, bit by bit.

With Senate passage of SCHIP expansion now expected, a few not-so-random observations about its financing mechanism: a 61 cent increase in the tobacco tax. From the Indianapolis Star:

WASHINGTON — Indiana smokers, who recently absorbed a state tax increase, would pay higher federal taxes to expand a federal-state children’s health insurance program under a bill approved by the House on Tuesday…[snip]

The bill would raise the federal cigarette tax 61 cents, to $1 per pack. Indiana recently increased the state cigarette tax 44 cents to 99.5 cents to pay for a new state health insurance plan for low-income Hoosiers.

From the Capital Times, Madison, Wisconsin on current budget discussions between Governor Doyle and legislators:

Doyle and Democrats want to impose new taxes on oil companies and hospitals to pay for road projects and health care. They would expand the availability of health insurance to 98 percent of the state’s residents, including all children, raise the tax on cigarettes by $1.25 per pack and double a fee paid by sellers of homes.

From David Harsanyi’s blog:

Today, Department of Revenue agents will begin targeting Tennessee motorists who are spotted buying “large quantities of cigarettes in border states” – and naturally, they will be charging them with a crime and in some instances also seizing their cars.

From the MacKenzie Institute, Canada, a 1994 report, on smuggling and other crimes involved in black-market cigarettes, after the dramatic increase in tobacco taxes: “Sin-Tax Failure: The Market in Contraband Tobacco and Public Safety.”

The nuclear renaissance blooms. From the Houston Business Journal, Tuesday:

Two license applications to build nuclear power units have been filed in the United States for the first time in almost three decades. If approved, the units will be built in Texas.

NRG Energy Inc. (NYSE: NRG) and Co., a Texas-based operating company in which NRG has a 44 percent stake, propose to power more than 2 million homes with no greenhouse gas emissions.

The South Texas Project’s website is here and NRG’s news release can be found here.

Eric McErlain of NEI attended the Capitol Hill news conference announcing the filing and has a report complete with video.

The American Spectator carries an article by William Tucker, “The Nuclear Renaissance Begins.” Interesting point:

NRG’s choice of Texas is also a bit of a surprise. For years, industry analysts have predicted the first new reactors would be built in the South, where the Progressive tradition continues of regulating utilities while guaranteeing them a return on their investment. The argument was that nuclear would need this regulatory protection in order to attract money from Wall Street. In Texas, NRG will be entering a freewheeling deregulated market where the South Texas Project will have to stand and fall on its own. “We’re confident these projects can be built on schedule and on budget,” says Crane. “With natural gas prices rising and coal being pressured to reduce its carbon emissions, nuclear is going to be competitive.”

And who gets credit for coining the term, “nuclear renaissance?” It’s certainly popular, if proleptic.

Good commentary appearing this week on Congress’ ill-conceived and doomed-to-fail legislation that replaces the free market (OK, a mixed market) with industrial policymaking on energy. From Andrew P. Morriss, senior fellow at the Institute for Energy Research, Houston, Texas, “De-Clogging Energy Regulation“:

Politicians are right in suggesting that America faces certain serious energy problems, but they’ve misdiagnosed both the problems and the cure. America’s energy markets, including the infrastructure that makes trading in energy possible (made up of pipelines, oil and gas terminals, and refineries), are clogged with the debris of almost a hundred years of state and federal regulation. This “regulatory cholesterol” is as damaging to our economy as the “cholesterol” analogy suggests. Remaining within the analogy, the proposals that have been made by politicians are the equivalent of recommending that a heart patient in need of a triple bypass eat more steak instead of undergoing surgery. If we are going to meet our future energy needs, we need to unleash entrepreneurs on the problem. And that means politicians need to get out of the way, not add another layer of regulation.

Really an outstanding column. Read the whole thing.

The U.S. economy also exports litigiousness.

The high Canadian dollar has demonstrated the difference between prices here and the same goods in the U.S. And now that gap may help a case wind up in court. A Toronto law firm has filed a $2 billion class action lawsuit against North American auto manufacturers, claiming they jacked up the price of new cars to discourage Canadians from buying an automobile across the border.

The suit covers anyone who bought a new car between August 2005 and August 2007 and names Honda, Nissan, Chrysler and the troubled GM in both Canada and the U.S., which is still reeling from the effects of a newly settled UAW strike. Both the Canadian Automobile Dealers Association and the National Automobile Dealers Association, a U.S. partner based in Virginia, are also cited.

Absurd that the courts should be involved in a matter of trade and currency. But …

U.S. businesses struggle under the excessive structural costs not faced by our major competitors, things like employee mandates, overregulation, high corporate taxes and tort costs. We do not endorse leveling the international playing field by making other economies less efficient (by, for example, adopting the U.S.’s awful system of civil justice).

Meanwhile, in other Canadian car news:

A prominent automotive industry analyst is saying that the deal struck between General Motors and the United Auto Workers to shift health-care costs to the union could herald “the darkest day in the history of the automotive sector in Canada.”

Dennis DesRosiers, president of Toronto-based DesRosiers Automotive Consultants Inc., has commented that the landmark agreement to establish a $51-billion retiree health-care trust for GM’s workers has essentially created a $25-per-hour cost advantage to build cars in the United States instead of Canada, once Chrysler and Ford follow suit.

Even with Canada’s single-payer health care system?