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Okay, something to like on a 102-degree day:

The Obama administration on Tuesday sued Arizona over the state's strict new immigration law, attempting to wrestle back control over the issue but infuriating Republicans who said the border required more security.
The administration argued the Arizona law, which requires state and local police to investigate the immigration status of anyone they reasonably suspect of being an illegal immigrant, is unconstitutional and would sap law enforcement resources.

That said, the reasoning that it would "sap law enforcement resources" is less relevant than it doesn't address the root cause of immigration--the impoverishing of millions of people because of bad economic policy that this country pursues.

If it wasn't so tragic, I'd be laughing until my belly hurt at the hand-wringing about the shaky nature of the economy. I've been saying this for many months, particularly every time I've seen the foolish predictions of the recovery around the corner. So, now, the stock market has a deep drop and people all of a sudden wake up to a new reality--except that reality has been what everybody else has been living with for a very long time.

The recovery isn't happening--and the immoral way in which the Congress is treating unemployment benefits is only part of the problem. Until we get a serious debate about how to inflate peoples' wages and give people decent, paying work, the promises of "recovery" are just fool's gold.

[Yes, the last couple of weeks I have not posted here--it's been really busy and there is also only so much the brain can take--even mine. I will try harder]

Nothing changes:

As the House and Senate move to finalize regulatory-overhaul legislation, the Federal Reserve has emerged as likely to retain most of the power and independence Fed officials have feared they might lose.

I have, for a very long time, been very skeptical about every pronouncement of the good news about the "recovery" that seems to be around the corner each time a snippet of data comes out that political leaders grab on to to try to reassure an angry and frustrated citizenry. You can't say that the economy is "good" or "getting better" when one in five Americans still does not have good paying work.

And even the market euphoria that popped up here and there appears to be on very shaky ground, per The Wall Street Journal:

The only other time in 80 years that the Dow has fallen that far, that fast so early in an economic rebound was in 1950, when North Korea invaded South Korea to start the Korean War. Then, the Dow fell 13.6% in 31 days from peak to trough, according to a study done for The Wall Street Journal by Ned Davis Research. Stocks recovered in 1950 and remained in a bull market for another decade.
This spring, the stock decline has been blamed on things like fears of spreading debt woes in Europe and the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, severe problems but somehow less bone-chilling than a Communist invasion. The fact that the market has proved so fragile has made even some optimistic analysts wonder whether the troubles might be deeper than people had believed.
"This correction has had more legs than we thought," says Tim Hayes, Ned Davis's chief investment strategist.

The troubles are deep.

I am hardly surprised by this:

More than six years before the biggest sex discrimination lawsuit in history was filed against Wal-Mart Stores, the company hired a prominent law firm to examine its vulnerability to just such a suit.
The law firm, Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, found widespread gender disparities in pay and promotion at Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club stores and urged the company to take basic steps — like posting every job opening and creating specific goals to promote women and minorities — to avoid liability.
The 1995 report said that women employed by Wal-Mart earned less than men in numerous job categories, with men in salaried jobs earning 19 percent more than women. By one measure, the law firm found, men were five and a half times as likely as women to be promoted into salaried, management positions.
Without significant changes, the lawyers said in their confidential analysis, Wal-Mart “would find it difficult to fashion a persuasive explanation for disproportionate employment patterns.”

The smartest thing for Wal-Mart would be to finally give up the fight and admit wrongdoing. Then, it can go back just to exploiting poor people.

This is very good news:

In a city of secret economies, few are as vital to the life of New York as the business of nannies, the legions of women who emancipate high-powered professionals and less glamorous working parents from the duties of daily child care so they might get to work.
Those nannies, as well as other domestic workers who make possible the lives of New York’s eternally striving work force, have long gone without basic workplace guarantees that most employees take for granted.
That appears likely to change soon.
The State Senate this week passed a bill that would require paid holidays, sick days and vacation days for domestic workers, along with overtime wages. It would require 14 days’ notice, or termination pay, before firing a domestic worker.
The Assembly passed a similar measure last year, and lawmakers expect that the two versions will be reconciled and that Gov. David A. Paterson will sign what they say would be the nation’s first such protections for domestic workers. It would affect an estimated 200,000 workers in the metropolitan area: citizens, legal immigrants and those here illegally as well.

I was proud to have spent time working with Domestic Workers United and playing a tiny part, along with hundreds of other activists, in making this happen. We spent collectively thousands of hours lobbying Albany for this bill over the past couple of years. So, it's nice, particularly with the background of the racist Arizona legislation, to feel that New York is taking the lead in protecting so many workers, including many who are undocumented.

Last month, I wrote about a welcome change in the laws covering union organizing in airlines and railroads. Looks like this is causing some action:

Delta Air Lines Inc., on the heels of last month's federal rule change making it easier for aviation workers to organize, is facing a stepped-up recruitment campaign by labor organizers.
While votes haven't yet been scheduled, unions have set to work putting up information desks at airline-staff lounges and visiting employees at their homes to prepare for elections that could be held this summer. At stake are tens of thousands of flight attendants, ticket agents and baggage handlers at the world's largest airline by traffic—and the last major U.S. carrier with less than half its staff covered by union contracts.

This may not get you a better meal on your flight but it will put more food on a worker's plate at home.

Here we go, another example of a lack of courage:

Days after a federal judge blocked his efforts to furlough half the state work force, Gov. David A. Paterson is drafting a plan that would lay off thousands of government workers at the beginning of next year, a move officials say is necessary to help balance the state budget.
A senior administration official involved in preparing the plan said Monday that Mr. Paterson would direct state agencies to begin picking which positions could be eliminated starting Jan. 1, 2011.

So, the theme here is: blame the people who have had no hand in the economic crisis that has starved state budgets--state workers were not the Wall Street pirates who robbed America, state workers were not the high-income earners who have escaped paying their fair share in taxes and state workers were not the leaders who made foolish decisions to flush trillions of dollars down the drain to pay for immoral wars. Yet, state workers are being told, "you will now pay the price".

This was predictable:

This year is shaping up to be even worse than last for the millions of high school and college students looking for summer jobs.
State and local governments, traditionally among the biggest seasonal employers, are knee-deep in budget woes, and the stimulus money that helped cushion some government job programs last summer is running out. Private employers are also reluctant to hire until the economy shows more solid signs of recovery.

That is why we needed a much bigger stimulus program back in 2009 and why the Congress should inject more money into the economy and not be thinking at all about deficits. Incredible, I'm on the same side as Larry Summers on this point.

If Democrats wonder why more than half the people in the country think that the party of FDR cares more about the concerns of big corporations, no need to look any further than this:

House leaders cut the cost of the package by roughly $44 billion, in part to address complaints from Blue Dog Democrats that the price-tag was too high. Some of the spending in the bill is offset with targeted tax increases on business, so the net amount the bill will add to the deficit over 10 years is $90.5 billion, according to a Congressional Budget Office estimate released Wednesday night.
There are 54 members of the Blue Dog Coalition in the House. Blue Dog members said the group will not vote as a bloc, and some Blue Dog members may ultimately support the package in its current form

Rather than invest in a huge jobs program, which the people truly need, there is foolish handwringing over the deficit--which is not a problem. And, of course, every time someone suggests helping the people, the switch goes off in some fool's mind (I'm sorry to use such language) labeled "tax cuts".

And you wonder why we have a crisis in the country.

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