While your friendly neighborhood llamas are creating ways to put money in laborers’ pockets, the Bush Administration is coming up with yet another way to pick those same pockets.

Dubya and his cohorts are trying to change the federal Fair Labor Standards Act so workers who earn less than $22,100 a year will automatically qualify for overtime. (The number is currently less than $8,060 a year.) The problem, however, is that the administration also wants to make it easier for employers to classify many laborers as administrative, professional or executive personnel (i.e. salaried employees), thereby giving them essentially the same pay but exempting them from the aforementioned automatic overtime.

Now that’s a New Deal we could do without.