I cannot say I’m too happy right now about Arlen Specter’s switch to the Democratic Party. Sure, I think it’s hilarious, but underneath that, there are implications that trouble me. Although I now consider myself an unaffiliated independent voter, my views are certainly to the left of the Southern majority, so I generally end up voting for Democrats at the national level and I take an interest in what direction the party is moving. As far as that goes, I really don’t mind that Specter is a moderate on certain issues, but I am troubled by his (current) refusal to switch his support in favor of the Employee Free Choice Act, a bill that would make it easier for employees to form a union and would give them the right to choose how they wanted to do that. I’ve come to believe that widespread unionization was a major driving force behind the boom period of the 1950s, in which household wealth (real wealth, not debt) skyrocketed and the country’s GDP grew. Unionization levels the playing field significantly in the private sector, taking away the near-absolute power that managers would otherwise have to determine salaries, benefits, and working conditions. EFCA is a good bill and it needs to become law.
Therefore it is my hope that, despite his statements that he will not switch to supporting this bill, Specter does come around. If this happens, I don’t think it would be a self-centered political move like this party switch indisputably is. Specter has a very long track record of supporting labor, which is why the unions in Pennsylvania have tended to support his election campaigns. If anything, his statement that he would oppose EFCA was a self-centered political move, a failed Hail Mary pass to try to get him through the Republican primary next year. He may very well decide to support it after all if that is where his true convictions (such as they are) lie. After all, he went on record as saying that he would not switch party affiliation, and look what happened.
In any case, whether Specter switches back on EFCA remains to be seen. I’d tentatively bet on it, but I think it would take time for him to announce that. There are other issues relating to this man’s switch, though, that are actually far more troublesome. (Read more…)
It was very gratifying to discover this article on the Internet. I have been rather despondent about the Obama administration’s indications that it would expand rather than contract the H-1B visa program, which has arguably decimated the information technology (IT) field in the United States. As much talk as there has been about “offshoring” IT operations to foreign-owned private firms, the practice of hiring people located in America at the time of the hiring has arguably done more damage to the field. This is what the H-1B visa program allows to happen.
This bill, the H-1B and L-1 Visa Reform Act, is bipartisan. And with the recent surge of populist sentiment on both the Left and the Right, it is my hope that enough senators will join from both sides of the aisle not just to pass this bill, but to pass it with a super-majority that could override a veto if necessary.
The H-1B visa program allows companies to “legally discriminate” against U.S. workers and displace them, said two U.S. senators who today introduced new legislation to “mend,” not end, the controversial program.
The H-1B and L-1 Visa Reform Act, introduced by Sens. Chuck Grassley, (R-Iowa), and Dick Durbin, (D-Ill.), is similar to legislation the two senators introduced last year. But while the bill may be similar, what has changed since then is the economy.
It would be very difficult to end the H-1B program altogether, and I recognize this reality. (Read more…)
Another tax day is over, and hopefully, your returns are safely in the mail, faxed, or e-filed to the IRS. Whether you got a refund or had to pay them this year, the odds are that you at least looked at the worksheet for the Earned Income Credit.
Whether you could take it, however, depends on your age. As strange as that sounds, this is not one of the bizarre, obscure credits that only tax lawyers and IRS employees even know about, let alone use. Indeed, age discrimination is written into one of the most common, mainstream tax credits in our code. Specifically, people under age 25 who have no children cannot take the credit that every other American under retirement age can take. (Read more…)
It gratifies me to read that the President’s science advisor, John Holdren, is a proponent of geoengineering as a possible option to counter atmospheric global warming. I have long held the position that going green is not going to be sufficient, and for two reasons: Granting that I am a pessimist, I still don’t think that humanity as a whole can do it fast enough, and secondly, global warming would still continue because of the carbon dioxide that is already in the atmosphere. It’s going to be there for centuries, because it takes that long for the earth to filter it out in the absence of geoengineering techniques.
We as a species created this mess, and it’s our responsibility to clean it up. The earth can clean itself up, eventually, but in the meantime, countless other inhabitants of the planet could die off. The most recent TIME Magazine, in fact, has a cover story about the “mass extinction” that some scientists say has already begun here. The most recent National Geographic has an article about vanishing amphibian populations. The earth could indeed clean up the mess that Homo sapiens made of its atmosphere, but at what cost? No, this is our moral imperative. (Read more…)
