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Today the Brown-Merkley Amendment #1819 passed the Senate with a voice vote! Sen. Sherrod Brown made a brief floor speech that noted that the amendment closes a loophole by which companies evaded current Buy America requirements by breaking up jobs into small pieces that could then be outsourced.

These words are being written from the veranda of a small house in an African valley, in the hour just before dawn. In the past week I've met people from Pakistan, Great Britain, Iraq, Australia, New Zealand and several other countries, as well as South Africans from all backgrounds. And they've all asked me the same thing: What's going to happen with the Occupy movement?

The very name of a Washington conservative conference this weekend is the height of subterfuge.

Mitt Romney is down South, trying to win votes in the Alabama and Mississippi Republican primaries. So, I will respond as a Southerner to Romney's announcement that he won't be enrolling in Medicare, because he's worth $150-to-$200 million and doesn't need it: Well, bless his heart.

Once again, I reminded of Will Allen Dromgoole's poem, "The Bridge Builder," in which an old man crosses a river only to start building a bridge across it. (A "bridge over troubled water," if you will.) Asked by a traveler why he's building a bridge over a river he's already crossed, the old man speaks of one who will pass that way after him. "I am building this bridge for him," he explains.

As I said of Romney's billionaire backer Ken Griffin, Romney sound like the kind of guy who would cross that bridge, and then either blow it up or build a toll booth on it.

There’s something happening here. What it is is becoming clear. There’s a company blocking a union over there, and that’s telling you you’ve got to beware.

Breaking unions strikes deep. Back to your country it will creep. It starts when they pay low wages and exploit workers here. Pretty soon you’re fighting them there.

Originally posted on Capital Gains and Games.