Politics

Bush to low-income workers: “Look! I’ve revamped the payroll system so that more of you will get overtime pay! We’re talking \$895 million more in wages here! Aren’t I great?”

On July 10, the House…voted to support the Department of Labor’s (DOL) efforts to give 1.3 million low-income workers the right to receive overtime pay. Education & the Workforce Committee Chairman John Boehner (R-OH) and Workforce Protections Subcommittee Chairman Charlie Norwood (R-GA)…praised the Labor Department for its efforts to provide additional protections to low-income workers and ensure that they are entitled to overtime pay.

Millions of workers in America are not going to lose their overtime pay in the United States if DOL completes its proposed update to “white collar” overtime regulations.  Unfortunately many Democrats, organized labor, and other opponents of this proposal are trying to scare everyone into believing that they will.

Bush gets votes.

Meanwhile…

Bush to employers of low-income workers likely to be affected by the changes: “Okay, here’s how you can get away with not having to pay them any more money after all! Aren’t I great?”

A proposed Labor Department rule suggests ways employers can avoid paying overtime to some of the 1.3 million low-income workers who would become eligible this year.

[…]

Among the options for employers: cut workers’ hourly wages and add the overtime to equal the original salary, or raise salaries to the new \$22,100 annual threshold, making them ineligible.

[…]

Employers’ options include:

[…]

Making a “payroll adjustment” that results “in virtually no, or only a minimal increase in labor costs,” the department said. Workers’ annual pay would be converted to an hourly rate and cut, with overtime added in to equal the former salary.

Essentially, employees would be working more hours for the same pay.

Bush gets votes.

And in the end, of course, real people get screwed.

Crap like this makes me sick, and really makes me worry that Bush and his cronies will be able to wheedle and manipulate their way back into the White House in November. I hope not, but I won’t say that it doesn’t make me worry.

(via Lane)

More good news from the legal front: the US 2^nd^ Court of Appeals has just ruled in Jose Padilla vs. Donald Rumsfeld (188k .pdf) that Jose’s dentention was unconstitutional.

From the introduction:

We also conclude that Padilla’s detention was not authorized by Congress, and absent such authorization, the President does not have the power under Article II of the Constitution to detain as an enemy combatant an American citizen seized on American soil outside a zone of combat.

As this Court sits only a short distance from where the World Trade Center once stood, we are as keenly aware as anyone of the threat al Qaeda poses to our country and of the responsibilities the President and law enforcement officials bear for protecting the nation. But presidential authority does not exist in a vacuum, and this case involves not whether those responsibilities should be aggressively pursued, but whether the President is obligated, in the circumstances presented here, to share them with Congress.

And from the conclusion (emphasis mine):

In sum, we hold that (1) Donna Newman, Esq., may pursue habeas relief on behalf of Jose Padilla; (2) Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld is a proper respondent to the habeas petition and the District Court had personal jurisdiction over him; (3) in the domestic context, the President’s inherent constitutional powers do not extend to the detention as an enemy combatant of an American citizen seized within the country away from a zone of combat; (4) the Non-Detention Act prohibits the detention of American citizens without express congressional authorization; and (5) neither the Joint Resolution nor 10 U.S.C. § 956(5) constitutes such authorization under section 4001(a). These conclusions are compelled by the constitutional and statutory provisions we have discussed above. The offenses Padilla is alleged to have committed are heinous crimes severely punishable under the criminal laws. Further, under those laws the Executive has the power to protect national security and the classified information upon which it depends. See, e.g., 18 U.S.C. app. § 3. And if the President believes this authority to be insufficient, he can ask Congress—which has shown its responsiveness—to authorize additional powers. To reiterate, we remand to the District Court with instructions to issue a writ of habeas corpus directing the Secretary of Defense to release Padilla from military custody within 30 days. The government can transfer Padilla to appropriate civilian authorities who can bring criminal charges against him. Also, if appropriate, Padilla can be held as a material witness in connection with grand jury proceedings. In any case, Padilla will be entitled to the constitutional protections extended to other citizens.

Charge, try, and convict Padilla. But do so under the same rules and protections as are accorded any other citizen of the United States.

Thank you, Judges Pooler, B.D. Parker and Wesley.

(via Al-Muhajabah)

Hot damn. It’s sounding more and more like the upcoming investigation into the events preceding and surrounding Sept. 11, 2001 is going to cause some major firestorms — and could seriously damage Bush’s reelection efforts.

For the first time, the chairman of the independent commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks is saying publicly that 9/11 could have and should have been prevented, reports CBS News Correspondent Randall Pinkston.

“This is a very, very important part of history and we’ve got to tell it right,” said Thomas Kean.

“As you read the report, you’re going to have a pretty clear idea what wasn’t done and what should have been done,” he said. “This was not something that had to happen.”

Appointed by the Bush administration, Kean, a former Republican governor of New Jersey, is now pointing fingers inside the administration and laying blame.

“There are people that, if I was doing the job, would certainly not be in the position they were in at that time because they failed. They simply failed,” Kean said.

[…]

Asked whether we should at least know if people sitting in the decision-making spots on that critical day are still in those positions, Kean said, “Yes, the answer is yes. And we will.”

The public testimony begins next month, and will be worth watching very, very closely.

(via Kos)

Commonwealth Magazine, unsatisfied with the standard blue (Democrat) vs. Red (Republican) political reporting of elections past, has proposed an interesting division of the country into ten seperate political regions.

this primary-color collage resonates only because it turns up the contrast. Given that more than 40 percent of voters in the blue states backed Bush and more than 40 percent of voters in the red states backed Gore, doesn’t the red vs. blue model seem, well, a bit black-and-white?

So CommonWealth decided to make a map of our own. Aiming somewhere between the reductionist red-and-blue model and the most accurate (but least useful) subdivision of the United States into infinity, we split the county into 10 regions, each with a distinct political character. Our regions are based on voting returns from both national and state elections, demographic data from the US Census, and certain geographic features such as mountain ranges and coastlines. Each region represents about one-tenth of the national electorate, casting between 10.4 million and 10.8 million votes in the 2000 presidential election.

By their map, when I moved to Seattle from Anchorage, I moved from the Sagebrush region (more centrist, 57.4% Bush/37.5% Gore/3.7% Nader in 2000) to the Upper Coasts region (more liberal, 57.5% Gore/35.8% Bush/5.6% Nader in 2000). Works for me.

(via Lane)