My Home About Me

Further evidence that the Democratic congress doesn't really want to pull all the stops out for its union masters, and that the GOP minority is a unified bulwark against the worst craziness. From the Wall Street Journal:

Democrats did their duty for the AFL-CIO yesterday, offering and then quickly losing a vote on the Senate floor to eliminate secret ballots for union organizing elections. Democrats could muster only a single Republican vote -- Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania -- and so the bill went down to a GOP filibuster, 51-48.

The way the vote was managed says a lot about how little Democrats really wanted to debate this "card check" legislation in public. ...Leaving workers to fend for themselves against the gentle persuasion of, say, the Teamsters isn't a big political winner.

So it's not surprising that Democrats staged their losing vote the same day as a key immigration vote that was certain to get far more public attention. Democrats also did little PR work, and the vote itself had a ritual quality to it, like some of those Republican votes on cultural issues when Tom DeLay was House Majority Leader: Hold a largely symbolic vote, check off a box to pay off your election supporters, and move on to something that most Americans might even care about.

Nearly every business lobby made the vote one of its main priorities for judging which Members to support in 2008, suggesting how dangerous they believe this would be if it ever did become law.

bailout   Basic Materials SPDR (XLB)   bond trading   bond yields   capitulation   climactic   commodities   credit crisis   Currency ETFs   day trading   Deron Wagner   DJIA chart   economic data   Emini's Nas 100   emini's S&P 500   emini's S&P 500e   ETFs (exchange trade funds)   ETFs (exchange traded funds)   Gold Miners ETF (GDX)   Japanese Yen ETF (FXY)