Worth Paying Attention To.

Ahhh. It's good to be back at the GTL HQ shack. The staff and I took a much-needed Bahamas vacation to replenish our psychic ammo reserves following the billion-dollar campaign season and election.

It's good to be back.

I know how worn out everyone is with politics right now so I'll be brief an let you get back to your soap opera or whatever you are using to replace the hustle and bustle of the Big Game.

Simply, today is the last day that the Original C-Minus Man has left to push unpopular pro-business regulations through the OMB and have the 60-day waiting period not bleed over into the Obama administration. Regulations enacted today will be harder for Big O to reverse.

I am not fully educated on these plans but I do know that the Family and Medical Leave Act is being amended according to the corporate wish list: a worker can still invoke the FMLA in order to take an unpaid leave. The change will be that he or she may not use accrued sick time to offset the loss of income resulting from the unpaid status of the leave.

This is asinine and unfair, but entirely keeping with industry's hostility to the FMLA. They fought against it tooth and nail during Clinton's administration, and this change will cause many people to hold off on a leave they may have been saving for. I have met people who "banked" their vacation or "PTO" hours in order to have a surgery, and used these hours to offset the loss of income.

To me this is an example of a worker who is motivated to work and, at the same time, not to starve. "What the hell," Bush says, "let her starve. I'm off to Crawford anyway."

By the way, the GTL feels that the FMLA is one of Bill Clinton's crowning achievements, second only to his honoring Monica's request that he not you-know-what in her mouth.

That's integrity!