Searching for the word “manufacturing” in Thursday’s House floor debate on H.R. 1473, the continuing resolution, that passed by a vote of 260-167, we find first the section that eliminates funding for White House “czars.”

Sec. 2262. None of the funds made available by this division may be used to pay the salaries and expenses for the following positions:

(1) Director, White House Office of Health Reform.

(2) Assistant to the President for Energy and Climate Change.

(3) Senior Advisor to the Secretary of the Treasury assigned to the Presidential Task Force on the Auto Industry and Senior Counselor for Manufacturing Policy.

(4) White House Director of Urban Affairs.

The Detroit Free Press observes, “In the case of the car czar — actually the senior advisor to the secretary of the Treasury assigned to the Presidential Task Force on the Auto Industry and senior counselor for manufacturing policy — it hardly matters: Ron Bloom, who held the job, moved to the National Economic Council earlier this year, so it’s vacant.”

On another topic, Rep. Chakah Fattah (D-PA) complimented Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA), who chairs the Commerce, Science, Justice activities in the continuing resolution. From Congressinal Record, Page H2742:

Notwithstanding the very challenging fiscal circumstances, Chairman Wolf has worked towards a set of priorities that will help move our country forward, and I thank him for working with me on a bipartisan basis.

I want to point out our highest priority within that section of the Commerce Department, which is that of the Manufacturing and Extension Partnerships, which will see an increase above the 2010 enacted and also the Senate amendment, or H.R. 1. I am very pleased about that.

The Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP) operates out of the National Institute for Standards and Technology, working with state partnerships to provide business planning services and technical advice to small businesses. (continue reading…)

Byron York of The Examiner answers the question of why the “One Nation” rally organized by Big Labor last Saturday failed to match the earlier Glenn Beck Rally.

Because the labor movement is shrinking, aging and divided. Because the best program its leaders (and co-sponsors at the NAACP) could put together was one featuring Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, Richard Trumka, Van Jones and Harry Belafonte. And because George W. Bush is no longer in the White House. Put those factors together, and Big Labor’s big march fell flat

York notes several points we cited prior to the march: The public sector unions are growing, the private sector ones shrinking.

In broad terms, the public-sector unions lean farther left, while the private-sector unions still count among their number old-fashioned blue-collar moderates who don’t necessarily want to pay higher taxes to hire more public-sector employees. “The differences between them aren’t violent, angry, screaming differences,” says Fred Siegel, a scholar in residence at New York’s St. Francis College and a fellow at the Manhattan Institute, “but they’re important differences.”

What does a tired and aging movement do? It puts on a program with tired and aging leaders. Sharpton has long ago worn out his welcome among anyone beyond the hard-core Democratic base; the same is true for [Jesse] Jackson. The 83-year-old Belafonte’s appearance at the rally was impressive, but mostly as a vision from an earlier era. Trumka’s appeal does not go beyond the labor movement, and the young gun in the group, Van Jones, left the White House last year amid scandal. It wasn’t exactly an all-star lineup.

Is “impressive” the right term for Belafonte’s remarks? He railed against President Obama and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. If you were a union member who believes those military efforts are justified, you were out of place at the One Nation rally. If you were a union member who did not support the hard-left “progressive” agenda at the rally, well, why were you there?

For some time now Big Labor has aligned itself with “progressive” groups whose priorities run far afield from the lunchpail issues that once gave labor unions purpose. Today’s evidence of that leftly wandering agenda is the America’s Future Now conference starting today in D.C., sponsored by the Campaign for America’s Future and promoted at the AFL-CIO blog:

The America’s Future Now conference kicks off this morning. During the next three days, the largest gathering of progressive activists, leaders and lawmakers will map out an economic and political agenda for change—and the organizing strategies for taking that agenda to the country.

Those strategies will focus on fighting the corporate lobbies that stand in the way of economic justice and reform; energizing and building a movement for jobs now; and creating a progressive majority that challenges both obstructionist Republicans and timid Democrats.

“Economic justice” is code for redistributionist.

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi is addressing the group Tuesday at the Omni Shoreham, that hotbed of proletariat solidarity that also serves as CPAC’s convention site in Washington. And now that we read the full agenda, the conference does resemble a CPAC for the left.

And, hey, look! Van Jones returns from the cold!

Some of the sessions on key topics for working people include: “Health Care Reform-The Next Step,” “Immigration Reform,” “Working Class Anger-Does It Go Left or Right?” “Next Generation Progressives,” “Holding Congress Accountable” and “Can Congress Work in Polarized Age?” Click here for the full conference agenda.Also taking part in the conference are Huffington Post’s Arianna Huffington; Sen. Tom Udall (D-N.M.); Democratic Reps. Alan Grayson (Fla.), Donna Edwards (Md.) and Barbara Lee (Calif.); former White House adviser Van Jones; former Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean; NAACP President Benjamin Jealous; and Janet Murguía, president of the National Council of La Raza.

In “Nuts-and-bolts advice for the new manufacturing czar,” The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel’s business columnist, John Torinus, previews Wednesday’s press briefing by Rockwell Automation’s CEO, Keith Nosbusch, who propose a comprehensive national manufacturing strategy. (Rockwell’s news release.)

Torinus discusses the possible appointment of Ron Bloom, the White House’s person in charge of the automotive restructuring, as a White House manufacturing czar; he names several manufacturing leaders he regards as more qualified than Bloom, a former investment banker and Steelworkers union executive.

Torinus then proposes policies to compromise a manufacturing policy.  The first four suggestions:

• Keep the pressure on the Chinese government to harden the yuan. Henry Paulson got it done in the Bush administration when the yuan rose about 20% against the dollar. That was a big help to U.S. exporters, the most important job and wealth creators for the country.
• Push for balanced trade on a bilateral basis with China, so their exports to the United States are better matched to their imports from the U.S. The gigantic trade imbalance with China is one of the biggest destabilizing forces on the U.S. economy. It has to be fixed.
• Understanding that the U.S. cannot sustain itself with a lopsided service economy – we have to make things, too – drop or eliminate the corporate tax on manufacturing. Other countries have dropped corporate taxes without triggering trade pact violations. If necessary, go to a value-added tax on goods as a replacement, a consumption tax on consumers.
• Promote Toyota-like lean disciplines across the whole manufacturing sector, much as Wisconsin government is attempting to do. Persuade union leaders to support lean disciplines and junk work rules that get in the way.

There’s a lot to like in his list for strengthening the manufacturing economy. You could add other items, to be sure, such as enacting tort reforms to bring the cost of the U.S. legal system in line with other leading manufacturing countries. In the process, speak out against the campaigns by the alliance of trial lawyers and “consumer activists” that ignore risk and demonize safe products and ingredients. (Since we’re reading the Journal-Sentinel, the campaign against BPA comes to mind.)

Torinus says the “manufacturing czar” strategy repeats the Bush Administration’s practice. Not quite. There the advocate was an Assistant Secretary of Manufacturing and Services in the Department of Commerce. Admittedly, that’s post has a much lower profile than a White House point person, but it does require the vetting and accountability that accompanies Senate confirmation.

Thanks to the Van Jones debacle, we’re about to see a new round of debate about the wisdom of manufacturing czars. On Fox News Sunday this morning, Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN), a member of the Republican leadership, responded to a question about the radical-cum-green-jobs czar by calling White House czars “an affront to the Constitution”: “When you take all these people that make policy close to the president and the White House … and aren’t approved by the Congress, you’re just adding fuel to the fire by those who think Washington is taking over everything.”

We imagine most manufacturers would welcome a strong advocate in the White House to promote U.S. industry. Still, czars, prelates or factotums aside, most important are the policies the Administration and Congress pursue. First, as NAM President John Engler likes to say, “Do no harm.” And after that, there’s a lot of good substance in Torinus’ list, and we look forward with interest to the Rockwell briefing.

The old political saw is that personnel is policy. Sure. But in the case of the manufacturing economy, the primary strategy should be to have policy be policy. Good policy being good policy, that is.

Glenn Beck’s campaign against Van Jones, the White House’s green jobs czar, has escaped our notice until just recently (no cable!), but the story has definitely broken through into the bigger media mainstream. And man oh man, damning statements by a pre-White House Mr. Jones keep turning up, in this case offensive mocking of the former President. The latest:

The easy way to try to bring the price of energy down is to simply increase the supply – just being to drill more – to drill off shore, to drill here, to drill there, coal, to go with oil shell and tar sands – do whatever you can to get more petroleum into the system – And we heard our president (George W. Bush) saying just that. Thats what he wants to do. And I hate to say this, I hope I don’t offend anybody, but the President of the United States sounded like a crack-head when he said that. ‘I just – a little bit more – just a little bit- just a little bit more, a little bit more – a little bit more petroleum, I could get a little bit more.’ It was shameful. Am I wrong?

Yes. Completely. (Even though the former President Bush gave credence to the nonsensical “addicted to oil” concept, as if pricing of commodities should viewed in psycho-therapeutic terms.)

Here’s the video.

It’s hard to see how Mr. Jones can survive — or have been confirmed in the first place if he had been put in an Administration post that required Senate approval.

The latest developments from this afternoon, via The Washington Post blogs.

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs offered few signs of support at his daily briefing Friday for embattled White House adviser Van Jones, saying only, “He continues to work for the administration.”

Meanwhile, the chairman of the House Republican Conference, Rep. Mike Pence (Ind.), called on Jones to quit or be fired, saying, “His extremist views and coarse rhetoric have no place in this administration or the public debate.”

UPDATE (5:55 p.m.): Mickey Kaus says gone by midnight.

UPDATE (2:20 am. Sunday): Kaus was way off, or at least by a day. It took until late Saturday for Jones to submit his resignation. From The Washington Post:

“On the eve of historic fights for health care and clean energy, opponents of reform have mounted a vicious smear campaign against me,” Jones, special adviser for green jobs at the White House Council on Environmental Quality, said in a statement announcing his resignation just after midnight Saturday. “They are using lies and distortions to distract and divide.”

Hard to see any “lies and distortions” being to blame when his critics were using his own video statements and direct quotes to oppose him.

UPDATE (3:15 a.m. Sunday): Statement was actually released by White House after midnight, early Sunday, avoiding Sunday papers but not Sunday TV shows. Or the Internet. What poor staffer had to stay up late to hit send? (Guessing you wouldn’t trust the scheduling function on the computerized distribution system.)

Seems like an accurate summary of the state of play with S. 3036, the Lieberman-Warner climate bill, in today’s Washington Post story, “Senate Democrats May Pull Climate Bill.” Quoted is Don Stewart, communications director for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell:

We are going to have Democrats voting to end debate on what they call the most important issue facing the planet and Republicans voting to continue debate on it.

More…

• National Center for Public Policy Research, citing a new poll: “The survey found 64% of likely voters in Outer South states (North Carolina, South Carolina, Kentucky and Tennessee) oppose spending more for gasoline to reduce U.S. emissions. 74% of likely voters from the region oppose spending more for electricity to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.” The news release says Sen. Elizabeth Dole (R-NC) is out of step with her constituents; she’s a sponsor of Lieberman-Warner. (UPDATE: Similar poll in the Mountain States with Baucus as a target.) (UPDATE: Senator Byrd [D-WV] in step with his constituents, survey shows.)

• The Lieberman-Warner bill expands Davis-Bacon’s prevailing wage mandates to a wide variety of projects — non-federal construction projects, that is – yet another way in which the legislation makes energy more expensive.  James Sherk at the Heritage Foundation has an analysis. But did you know that S. 3036 had Davis-Bacon provisions in it? News to us. It’s almost as if people didn’t want the bill to be really, fully debated.

• And prize for most Orwellian statement this week in the public discussion of alleged man-made global warming goes to Van Jones, the founder of Green For All.  In an interview with “Grist,” the environmental site, Mr. Jones comes up with this claim: “There may be some solutions we haven’t thought of before. We want what we call ‘cap, collect, and invest’ to be the main policy here. We want a cap on carbon. We think it’s a human-rights issue to cap carbon. Then we say collect.” It’s a human-rights issue to cap carbon. OK. And it’s a human rights issue to collect the proceeds from the private sector and redistribute it.

UPDATE (8:55 a.m.): CQ Politics: “Both parties had said they welcomed a wide-ranging debate on the measure (S3036), but it never materialized, in part because the Senate’s ongoing clash over judicial nominations ate up precious floor time and drained the patience of senators.”