Last month, the House of Representatives passed the fiscal year 2011 defense authorization, including funding for a second engine for the F-35 fighter jet that the Department of Defense has repeatedly said it doesn’t want. Defense Secretary Robert Gates has gone so far as to recommended that President Obama veto the defense authorization if it includes money for the “costly and unnecessary” engine. But still, the House approved it, bowing to the efforts of 13 different lobbying firms and defense contractors across the country.

To its credit, the Senate Armed Services Committee did not include funding for the engine in its version of the defense authorization. This has led the second engine’s manufacturer to make an appearance at the National Press Club claiming that it’s vitally important to the taxpayer that money continue to be wasted on an engine no one wants:

“It is important to the warfighter, the industrial base and the taxpayer that this program continues to exist,” said Dennis Jarvi, president of Roll-Royce’s U.S. operations…”We’re not looking for a hand-out. All we’re looking for is an opportunity to compete.”

Rolls Royce officials, of course, “emphasized how deeply the London-based corporation is embedded in the United States, with 6,500 employees at 18 facilities in a dozen states,” exemplifying the congressional-military-industrial complex. But, given the nation’s long-term structural deficits, it is completely irresponsible to perpetuate the creation of weapons system that do nothing for national security and that even the Pentagon says serve no useful purpose.

The argument from second engine proponents is that having the federal government pay for two engines results in competition that will drive down prices for the entire program in the long run. Pentagon officials respond that “while competition would be nice, the alternative engine program does not guarantee sufficient benefits to risk additional cost hikes or developmental problems.”

U.S. Air Force Secretary Michael Donley has referred to the second engine as “another rock” on top of the F-35 program. President Obama has said regarding the second engine, “our military does not want or need these programs being pushed by the Congress, and should Congress ignore this fact, I will veto any such legislation so that it can be returned to me without those provisions.”

The New York Times reported today that Walmart is spending millions of dollars and thousands of man-hours fighting a $7,000 fine assessed by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) after a Walmart employee was trampled to death by a crowd at a store on Long Island.

Though the company has taken steps to address the problems that led to the unfortunate incident, it is continuing to resist the fine because it feels that “the government is improperly trying to define ‘crowd trampling’ as an occupational hazard that retailers must take action to prevent”:

Wal-Mart’s all-out battle against the relatively minor penalty has mystified and even angered some federal officials. In contesting the penalty, Wal-Mart has filed 20 motions and responses totaling nearly 400 pages and has spent at least $2 million on legal fees, according to OSHA’s calculations. The dispute has become so heated — and Wal-Mart’s defense so vigorous — that officials at OSHA, an arm of the Labor Department, complain that they have had to devote huge numbers of staff time to the case, including 4,725 hours of work by employees in the legal office.

“OSHA wants to hold Wal-Mart accountable for a standard that was neither proposed nor issued at the time of the incident,” said David Tovar, a Wal-Mart spokesman. “The citation has far-reaching implications for the retail industry that could subject retailers to unfairly harsh penalties and restrictions on future sales promotions.”

I’d like to think that a regulation along the lines of “don’t let crowds run through your store and trample your employees to death” would be fairly uncontroversial. But Walmart’s resistance is part and parcel of a Big Business culture that abhors common sense safety regulations.

For instance, Massey Energy, which owns the Upper Big Branch mine that exploded in April, killing dozens of miners, was part of “a surge in the number of challenges to mine safety citations [that] has clogged a federal appeals process, allowing 32 coal mines to avoid tougher enforcement measures.” And BP, the company that had a well explode and kill 11 workers, “spent years battling federal regulators over how many layers of safeguards would be needed” at such wells.

Safety regulations are put in place to, among many things, protect workers from the sort of corner-cutting that makes a company’s bottom line look better. And in BP’s case, the environment, as well as workers engaged in the clean-up, are now also at risk. In light of such disasters, it’d be nice if every proposed regulation weren’t treated as an assault on capitalism itself by the Big Business community (though I’m not holding my breath).

For months now, the Obama administration’s Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP), which is meant to facilitate mortgage modifications for troubled borrowers, has been sputtering along, with more borrowers dropping out of the program than receiving permanent modifications. Banks have been reluctant to go along with the program, as it includes no stick when they fail to provide a modification for eligible borrowers. Alternate programs meant to cut loan principal (the outstanding loan amount) have also been slow to get up and running.

As Shahien Nasiripour pointed out, according to a recent Government Accountability Office report, the average homeowner in HAMP “owes their mortgage lender more than $1.50 for every dollar their home is worth, which means they fall into the stratum of homeowners most likely to simply walk away from their mortgages.” This has led a duo of Republican lawmakers to call for ending the program “immediately,” and to advocate leaving borrowers at the mercy of private modification programs:

“It defies common sense that taxpayer money is being used to pay banks to modify loans that are likely to default anyway,” said Rep. Darrell Issa (Calif.), the ranking Republican on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. “In cases where loan changes could keep borrowers out of foreclosure, banks have a clear incentive to make changes without a need for public funds”…Issa and [Rep. Jim] Jordan (R-OH) argued that homeowners and taxpayers would be better off in private modification programs.

Despite all of HAMP’s troubles, private modification programs are likely to be much worse, leaving homeowners up to the whims of banks that can’t even keep their borrowers’ documents straight. As Tim Fernholz pointed out, private modifications “don’t usually lower monthly payments enough to keep borrowers in their homes. Even the best industry modifications [only] attempt to make mortgage payments 38 percent of monthly income.”

“What [the industry] calls a loan-modification is really a workout plan. It is designed to bring their arrears up to date because of a one-time economic dislocation,” said Kathleen Day of the Center for Responsible Lending. “That is not a remedy for someone who holds a loan that is fundamentally flawed and unaffordable.” Diane Thompson, a lawyer with the National Consumer Law Center, said that homeowners would be worse off 90 percent of the time if they were forced into private modifications instead of public.

HAMP has absolutely been a disappointment and desperately needs some fixes if it is ever going to achieve the administration’s stated goal of keeping millions of homeowners in their homes. But abandoning any attempt to help borrowers who were buried by the bursting of the housing bubble will only result in more foreclosures and blighted neighborhoods, thus prolonging our economic difficulties.