A Stitch in Haste

Just a quick update to celebrate the death of two very stupid ideas proposed by local hack politicians.

First, the Maryland legislature's obnxious Bill of Attainder against Wal-Mart, cloaked under the deceptive name of "Fair Share Health Care Act," has been vetoed by Governor Robert Ehrlich. This snide law, which I lambasted in this post, would have required that any employer with more than 10,000 workers spend at least 8% of their labor expense on health care or pay the balance directly to the state's Medicaid fund.

Guess how many "employers with more than 10,000 workers" there are in Maryland. That's right — exactly one: Wal-Mart.

As a senior Wal-Mart executive pointed out:

Next time around ... it might not be 10,000 employees, it might be 200. Then you are talking about a very different scenario that involves everyone in the business community, not just Wal-Mart..."

Precisely. If a crippling law only applies, for example, to businesses that employ 50 or more workers, then you can be damn sure than there will be legions of businesses with exactly 49 workers. Which of course is not such a great thing for all those 50th or 51st workers who are never hired. And as for Wal-Mart, how refreshing it would have been if the local hack politicians had had the intellectual honesty to call this bill by its proper name, the "F*ck Wal-Mart Act" (or "FWMA").

On the downside, the FWMA passed the Maryland Senate with enough votes to override the veto. The vote in the House was just shy of veto-proof. Stay tuned.

Second, the San Francisco Insane Asylum Board of Supervisors finally got around to granting bloggers the luxury of, um, blogging without running afoul of the city's other First Amendment restrictions. For background, see this post -- one draft version of the San Francisco law (there were apparently multiple draft versions) could have been interpreted to require any blog with more than 500 hits to disclose the identity of its sponsors. It now appears that a "clean" version of the bill, specifically exempting blogs, was passed by the Board and signed into law.

Of course, it's debatable just how "clean" any campaign finance law ever is. (Hat tip to Overlawyered.)