Kausfiles: A mostly political weblog.

Kiss Your Orszag Goodbye

According to National Review's impressive indictment, the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill has this payoff for organized labor:

Projects receiving grants and financing under Waxman-Markey provisions will be required to implement Davis-Bacon union-wage rules, making it hard for non-union firms to compete - and ensuring that these "investments" pay out inflated union wages. And it's not just the big research-and-development contracts, since Waxman-Markey forces union-wage rules all the way down to the plumbing-repair and light-bulb-changing level.

Stick the equivalent provision in a health care bill--requiring government-administered union wages for hospital janitors and uniform-launderers as well as nurses--and you can kiss Obama's curve-bending health-care cost-savings goodbye. ... [Thanks to reader A.] 1:42 A.M.

___________________________

"Half the U.S. servicemen in Nam lost their virginity there ..."

My BS Detector begin to vibrate and yelp at that sentence in Slate's hit-grabbing Asian babe piece.  I understand that the sexual histories of those who went to Vietnam did not necessarily replicate the experiences of my friends, most of whom avoided the draft and went straight to college. Still, I'm skeptical. ... P.S.: The piece reminded me of the NYT "ethics" column in which the normally permissive Randy Cohen suddenly turned on a seemingly innocent questioner:

I'm a white male, straight, and I'm attracted to Asian women. It's a simple question of the sort of look that I find physically attractive. Recently, an Asian friend of mine (male) confided that he found my dating patterns offensive. Am I being racist, or does he have some issues of his own? --Anonymous

Here's what this is not: a simple question about looks. Here's what it is: racism, albeit not in a malicious form. ... [snip]  Race is a cultural construct, a set of ideas. Before you try to date Michelle Yeoh, or Margaret Cho, or Madame Chiang Kai-shek, think a little harder about what those ideas are, about what you mean by "Asian."

O-kay! And ... huh? ... I claim the cracked, unexplained out-of-the blue severity of Cohen's response was echoed effectively in the second item of this Steve Martin parody (which was funnier when it didn't have a bright green background). ... 1:05 A.M.

___________________________