I keep mulling this over, and I can't think of any way even Republican judges can make this constitutional. But it's mindboggling that they would even try to give the legislative branch the power to decide whether a state AG is permitted to bring a prosecution without the approval of the politicians. Imagine if it was illegal for the state AGs to go after bank fraud without the permission of the politicians they've bought! They already own almost everything, I guess this is their way of trying to snatch that final crumb:

A year ago, even a divining rod would have been tempting to a reporter trying to tease out details about the workings of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). The group’s corporate, ideological and lawmaker members wouldn’t admit to an association, much less describe the model bills cooked up at its cushy confabs.

Today, it’s like shooting fish in a barrel. One need only pick up one of the 4,000 documents recently obtained by Common Cause, which has filed complaints against the group here and at the national level, and out tumble nuggets of political chicanery.

Exhibit A: The agenda from last week’s ALEC meeting in Charlotte, N.C., where its task forces polished proposed bills that are likely to pop up in the next legislative session here and around the country.At the meeting, ALEC’s Civil Justice Task Force considered a proposal entitled the ALEC Attorney General Authority Act. The boilerplate is pretty impenetrable -- one more reason lawmakers don’t write these themselves -- but the summary attached for members’ advance consideration lays out the gist pretty neatly:

“Just as a private attorney cannot bring a suit on behalf of a client without the client agreeing and authorizing such action, and then only within the guidelines allowed by the client, so it should be with the attorney general. Rather than an attorney general deciding on his or her own what authority the office may have to bring a lawsuit, the authority should be defined by the state as reflected by the specific decisions of the legislature via statute. The legislature, not the attorney general, is best positioned to balance the competing concerns that go into the decision of whether to allow a cause of action and under what circumstances.”

In even plainer English: AGs, who are typically the consumer’s lone public advocate these days, may not file suit against, say, a tobacco company, a mortgage fraudster or a national company flaunting state law, unless the legislature passes a bill saying he -- or in our case, she -- can.

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Unpaid jobs: The new normal?

Yes, America, we've reached a point where our major business publications are asking whether it will soon become "normal" to work for absolutely no compensation whatsoever. The article itself is a tragically hilarious exposé of corporate greedheads who feel all tingly when they think about growing rich off of free labor. Just look at this:

"People who work for free are far hungrier than anybody who has a salary, so they're going to outperform, they're going to try to please, they're going to be creative," says Kelly Fallis, chief executive of Remote Stylist, a Toronto and New York-based startup that provides Web-based interior design services. "From a cost savings perspective, to get something off the ground, it's huge. Especially if you're a small business."

In the last three years, Fallis has used about 50 unpaid interns for duties in marketing, editorial, advertising, sales, account management and public relations. She's convinced it's the wave of the future in human resources. "Ten years from now, this is going to be the norm," she says.

OK, so pick your jaw up off the floor and take a look at that first sentence again:

"People who work for free are far hungrier than anybody who has a salary..."

Well, yes. People who work for no money can't afford to buy food and are generally hungrier.

"...so they're going to outperform, they're going to try to please, they're going to be creative..."

"...this one guy, who redesigned my entire website for a bag of Doritos last week, I got him to literally lick my boot. He actually licked it! I thought that only happened in the movies!"

Like others who have used unpaid labor, Remote Stylist's Kelly Fallis recommends beginning with a very specific job description and conducting a thorough hiring process to screen out people who aren't going to give their all for nothing.

Candidates who respond to Fallis' postings on Craigslist and Facebook must fill out a detailed email questionnaire and undergo two rounds of phone interviews and three in-person interviews.

I can only imagine what these grueling tests consist of. My quess: Fallis has her two Doberman Pinschers take a ginormous dump on a silver plate. She then instructs job candidates to eat it. Those who swallow their pride (and a whole lot else!) will get the job. Those who refuse? BUH-BYE!

Those who join Remote Stylist, whether they are students or out-of-work 20- or 30-somethings, must agree to a four-month run and sign a hiring contract. She asks interns to commit 30 hours a week; she has been burned in the past by people who were trying to juggle a paid job with their commitment to Remote Stylist.

When you commit to Remote Stylist, you commit to living on the roof of a Taco Bell and to feeding only on pigeons and rats who get caught in the nearby heating ducts. Everything else must be sacrificed.

John Lovejoy, managing director of multimedia fundraising company Nomadic Nation, received 300 responses for an editor position and 700 cameraman applications after only one week of advertising a project to drive from Germany to Cambodia in plastic cars. Not only were the positions unpaid, but successful candidates had to pay their own expenses. One editor and two cameramen ended up quitting before the end of the trek due to rough conditions and 16-hour workdays. In retrospect, Lovejoy says, "I would screen a little bit better and make sure they understood that this wasn't a vacation."

Very true. Lots of people get paid while they're on vacations, after all.

This, then, is the Grand Future our corporate masters have in mind for the American worker: A bunch of poor suckers so desperate for any kind of work that they'll agree to be modern-day serfs. And luckily for them, the GOP has decided to adopt their strategy by telling Americans that we should be willing to take massive pay cuts so that our corporate masters will deign to hire us again. Something tells me this won't go over well in Real America once they figure out what's really up.

If we were having an actual national emergency, rather than corporations happily sitting on piles of cash and handing out record bonuses and dividends, this might --- might make sense. But since the only "emergency" here is corporate greed, I can only speculate as to why it only makes sense to take money from workers.

I think it would make a lot more sense to take 95% from CEOs:

With 9.5 percent unemployment and millions more underemployed, it seems like a daunting, almost impossible, task to find jobs for everyone. But Ken Maryland, president of ClearView Economics, has an idea: Cut everyone's pay by 10 percent.

"EVERYBODY -- from the president down to the chambermaid -- takes a 10% cut in compensation," writes Marlyand for Marketwatch. "This freed-up compensation expense is then used to re-employ the 8% (12.3 million) of the unemployed. Net-net, the nation's compensation bill has remained unchanged, and the unemployment rate is now 4.5%! Voila!"

The 4.5 percent Maryland refers to, is the optimal unemployment rate, which allows for employee turnover and doesn't risk inflation. While his idea may seem crazy, companies have begun to do it in small fashion, as Maryland points out, by having furloughs and pay cuts.

Maryland says this has a chance because there's an "inherent fairness" to the idea since everyone will be receiving the pay cut. But not really, since the employed would have to take the pay cut, while the unemployed will receive a significant increase in pay by suddenly having a paycheck.

Not to mention, the drop in pay doesn't mean a mortgage that's locked in will suddenly be cheaper or a car payment miraculously fall 10 percent. Maryland also says an issue with the idea would be making sure everyone falls in line, pointing out that unions would have a fit (although I'm not sure that CEO, whose pay increased more than anyone in business over the past 30 years, would be too happy with the idea as well).

Not to mention the biggest flaw in this proposal: Namely, why would you trust executives to hire people after they cut salaries?

You'll remember I wrote about this before, when I first found out Whirlpool took millions in bailout money and then announced they were moving this plant to Mexico.

Now they've closed the plant and soon the town will turn into a ghost town:

“We were considered the refrigerator capital of the world,” said Randall Reynolds, who was a forklift driver.

But that family tradition will soon end because Whirlpool plans to close the plant on Friday and move the operation to Mexico, eliminating 1,100 jobs here. Many in this city in southern Indiana are seething and sad — sad about losing what was long the city’s economic centerpiece and a ticket to the middle class for one generation after another.

“This is all about corporate greed,” said Ms. Ford, who took a job at Whirlpool 19 years ago. “It’s devastating to our family and to everyone in the plant. I wonder where we’ll be two years or four years from now. There aren’t any jobs here. How is this community going to survive?”

At a time when the nation’s economy is struggling to gain momentum, Whirlpool’s decision is an unwelcome step backward. It continues a trend in which the nation has lost nearly six million factory jobs over the past dozen years, representing one in three manufacturing jobs.
Connie Brasel, who earned $18.44 an hour making thermal liners for the refrigerators, sees Whirlpool’s move as a betrayal not just of the workers but also of the United States.

“This country made Whirlpool what it is,” she said. “They didn’t get world-class quality because they had the best managers. They got world-class quality because of the U.S. and because of their workers. And now they want to pack up and move to Mexico. I find it offensive.”

[...] The closing leaves not just Ms. Ford and her son without a job, but also her husband, a worker in the metal-pressing shop.

“My mom and dad told me that when they were young, there were jobs everywhere,” she said. “They said we had Whirlpool, Bristol-Myers, Mead Johnson, Windsor Plastics, Guardian Automotive, Zenith. Now if you want to find a job, there’s nothing around.”

Ask the workers who is to blame, and they say not just Whirlpool, but also President Bill Clinton for having negotiated the North American Free Trade Agreement, which eliminated tariffs on trade with the United States’ neighbors. They say the pact has siphoned jobs to Mexico.

They also blame Indiana’s governor, Mitch Daniels, saying he has largely ignored their plight, and President George W. Bush and President Obama, saying they had done little to reverse manufacturing’s decline.

“When people are unemployed for a long period, they would look at any administration, including this one, as being part of the problem and not doing enough,” said Mohammed F. Khayum, the dean of the University of Southern Indiana’s business school. “It can definitely play a role in this November’s elections unless things turn around before then.”

Our country is missing a strong industrial policy, with an administration and Congress that chooses which manufacturers are important to support --and why. As long as economic disasters like this are repeated all over the country, I don't think Democrats are going to be pleasantly surprised this November.