Unions: A Progressive Assault on America

President Obama Calls Wisconsin Budget Bill "Assault on Unions"


He's wrong, as usual.  Unions are an assault on America.  They've destroyed Detroit, and they turned America's industrial heartland into a rust belt.

"We've got a right to organize!"  they shout.  Sure, on your own damned time and your own damned dime!  You've also got a right to STFU, and get back to work doing what the taxpayers are paying you to do.  And while you're at it, could you explain to us why you are more entitled another dollar than the taxpayer that earned it?

Why should laid off workers fund your pension plan and your health care?
Why should private sector workers pay your pension plan, when we have to fund our own?  Why should people who have taken 5, 10 or 20% pay cuts fund you health care when you don't chip in a dime?

The private sector unemployment rate is 10%, what is the government sector unemployment rate?

In the 90's, over 100,000 active duty personnel were unceremoniously tossed from the public payroll.  Where was the outcry?  These same troops also went years with no pay raises.  Where was the liberal concern?

I'm not complaining.  This is how over 80% of us live, and we were doing just fine until the government blew up the economy.  My company simply announced two years ago that they were cutting in half their 401K matching contribution, and pay raises were a fraction of what they were in previous years.  No arbitration, no collective bargaining, just an announcement.  Each worker was free to like it or lump it or take it down the road and dump it.

We have labor laws and contract laws in this country, so lets drop the crap about government workers being abused, not having adequate representation, bla bla bla... 

How do the 80% of us not covered by unions have a “voice?”  Simple.  We talk to the boss and ask for a raise.  If we ask for more than we are worth he tells us no.  If he values us, we strike a deal mutually beneficial to both.

How do you justify a government salary? 
Government makes no profit that workers can demand a share of, as in the private industry.  That's why government unions are an abomination anyway.  FDR knew that and he was opposed to government unions.

Unionism is a fundamental mistrust of the free market place.  Union workers are afraid of getting paid what they are really worth.  It's especially absurd to see credentialed professionals band together in unions, which serves only to protect the shoddiest among them.  Most professions aim to expel the bums from their ranks in order to raise the worth of each professional; teachers unions do the opposite.

Wisconsin Looks Like Egypt, Turned into a Third-World Country by Screaming Idiots in the Democratic Party

Yeah, it's Egypt, and Obama is Mubarack.  The citizens of this country, and the residents of Wisconsin, voted to throw off the shackles of progressivism last November, and the rioting astroturfers in Madison are the government cronies straining to prop up the tyrannical status quo.  We have a president who lost big time in the last election but he refuses to accept the will of the people. Simple-minded liberals transparently capture a meme and then abuse it.  They view themselves as heroic democracy demonstrators in the public square, but it's just the opposite.

Democrats are the party of statism, Republicans are the party of the people

The Democrats are the party of yesterday, staunchly screaming themselves hoarse in defense of a rotten, outdated system that has ushered us to the brink of failure.  Now we have a sitting president unleashing his rabble of community activists, poverty pimps, professional troublemakers and race hustlers upon the capitols of various states.  Yes, the President himself has been implicated in mobilizing the red-faced, rioting hordes that are demanding a deeper reach into the taxpayers' pockets.

Welcome to the third-world.  Brought to you by the statist progressives of the Democratic party.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/editorials/ct-edit-union-20110217,0,7977108.story

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/17/AR2011021707325.html

It's Saturday...

Reagan’s Legacy

Robert Samuelson  explains Reagan’s true concrete accomplishment:  Snuffing inflation.  Yes, Fed Chairman Paul Volker did the heavy lifting, but President Reagan kept a steady hand at the wheel and resisted politically-smart but economically-stupid advice to lower interest rates sent through the roof by Jimmy Carter's disastrous policies.

The lesson liberals draw (and urge Obama to imitate) is that Reagan's political success reflected his optimistic presidential stagecraft. It wasn't policy, it was presentation. Wrong.

Reagan earned his success the hard way - by backing policies that, though initially unpopular, served the nation's long-term interests. That's called leadership, a quality Obama has yet to demonstrate. (Samuelson)

Who’s Afraid of E-Verify?
The US Chamber of Commerce.  Wouldn't want to hurt the bottom line by hiring Americans and paying them a decent wage, would we? 

Only in America could we be talking about "jobs Americans just won't do" while we have 10% unemployment.

A Plague of GOP Lobbyists

Dark clouds are forming over the House GOP agenda… 

May be storm clouds, or maybe a cloud of former GOP staffers-turned-lobbyists swarming like locusts and offering bribes, er… campaign cash in return for leaving certain programs alone.

It's already worked for farm subsidies.  The GOP treats them like a hot stove.

A number of associations hoping to retain federal funding have recently added GOP lobbyists with connections to the new majority. The hiring binge indicates Republican lobbyists are earning dividends from their party’s re-taking of the House in November and points to the headaches in store for a Republican House that wants to take a hatchet to public spending.  (The Hill)

Slashing NPR's tires will be child's play.  Cutting benefits for children will separate the men from the boys...

The National Association of Children’s Hospitals (NACH) has hired former Rep. Deborah Pryce (R-Ohio) of Clark Lytle & Geduldig to lobby for the reauthorization of the Children’s Hospitals Graduate Medical Education program, which uses $317.5 million in federal funding a year.

“As a parent of a child who battled cancer, [Pryce] is intimately familiar with the importance of timely access to specialty care,” said Jim Kaufman, NACH’s vice president for public policy.  (The Hill)

It's time for everyone to take a deep breath and realize that there are other funding sources besides the federal government.

Americans give over $300 billion to charity every year.  We donate 8 billion volunteer hours worth another $169 billion.  Swing some of that money and manpower from more frivolous enterprises like lesbian dance troups, battered husbands and Hotels for Hounds, and if we all dig a little deeper for the rest, we can fill the vacuum.  And it's all voluntary, from the heart, which is the true mark of genuine charity

GOP lobbying has already worked in one area

James Pethokoukis asks, "Did Wall Street nix GOP push to let states go bankrupt?"

In 2010 election cycle,  Wall Street campaign contributions shifted to Republicans from Democrats.

If I were a betting man I'd put my money on Hell Yes They Did!

Goldman Sachs and the other big Wall Street banksters who own the US government make money off the bond market, and state bankruptcies would send that market tanking.

Strap it on, my friends.  We're in for a bumpy ride.  It's even money that the GOP will collapse like a soggy cardboard box.  The alternative will not be pretty either.

If the GOP gets anything close to the cuts they want we will be subjected to a 24/7 litany of sob stories, old people freezing in their homes, poor children starving, hospitals closing, governments cutting back essential services.  The liberals will play the media like Satan's Bagpipes, and the crescendo of caterwauling and ululations from the left will become almost too much to bear.

We are living in interesting times.

The Death of Freddie and Fannie?

Believe it or not, a bi-partisan consensus may be forming that will finally, once and for all, sell off the vampiric monsters known as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

The signs are encouraging, but statist projects die hard...

One compromise described in drafts of the administration’s proposal would reduce the government’s role to a last line of defense for the mortgage market. A version of this idea has been advocated by David S. Scharfstein, a finance professor at Harvard who previously worked as an adviser to Mr. Geithner.

The core of Mr. Scharfstein’s proposal is to create a new government-owned corporation for the sole purpose of providing guarantees to mortgage investors. During normal times, the insurer would guarantee no more than 10 percent of mortgages, but in times of crisis, the government could raise that cap, offering guarantees to a broader range of investors so that money continues to flow into the mortgage market and credit remains available.  (NY Times - Housing)

No, No, No!  How stupid are we?  
Two quasi-government entities blow billions in taxpayer money, contributing to the housing bubble (and inevitable collapse), and the solution is to create another one?  We’re intellectually bankrupt.  Time for those who wrecked it all to get the hell out of the way and let some new thinking in.

This is a Pollyannaish dream to take the downside out of every market
Markets have downturns for distinct reasons, and they provide a necessary corrective.  Government stepping in and short-circuiting normal market signals creates bubbles, misallocates capital, wastes money and pulls down economic growth.  More insidiously, taxpayer-funded statist projects such as this allow the big bankers to keep one hand in Uncle Sam’s pocket.

A failing market needs more cash like a crackhead needs another vial
Seriously, if your brother-in-law was living riotously and careening out of control, would you loan him money?  Of course not.  You’d want him to clean up his act first.

How about a hard-working, sober brother-in-law who just fell on hard times?  You’d be more likely to lend him money.

Markets work the same way, including mortgages and lending.  Responsible people can borrow at a lower rate.  People with a record of gross irresponsibility may not be able to borrow at all.  Uncle Sam steps in where wise lenders fear to tread, and We The Taxpayers foot the bill when reckless borrowers default.

Would you invest in a foundering company?
Another example:  Which would you more likely invest in, Apple Corporation, or a man on a street corner selling steam-powered tricycles?  No contest.  You put your money where you think you will get the best return.

Markets work the same way.  Irresponsible behavior poses risks, investors see that and pull their money.  You see it in population migrations as well.  Look at Detroit. People voted with their feet and the city is shrinking.  California and New York are also bleeding out productive people and businesses.

Government “backstops” are a horrible idea, because the federal government steps in when the smart money is pulling out.  Bleeding out money (or people) is a market signal that you are doing something wrong and need to correct yourself.  Government money subsidizes failure and masks that signal, protecting the failed enterprise from the necessary pain it needs to go through to get back on firm footing.

Government money also distorts otherwise healthy markets, driving up prices.  Just look at higher education.  It has grown something like five times faster than the overall economy.

A true free market produces only what consumers can afford. Government interventions inevitably end in crashes, burst bubbles, panics, unemployment and tears.  One area where this is not true:  Higher education.  That bubble is still inflated.  Hate those increasing tuition bills?  Thank Uncle Sam.

The Next Bubble

Detroit:  The city liberalism destroyed

Are Cities and States Too Big to Fail?  We're about to find out

The socialists of all parties in the federal government created the housing bubble and the ensuing, inevitable crash, by encouraging lenders to abandon prudent, time testing lending practices. Low interest rates ushered in an era of easy money, and Freddie and Fannie backed everything mortgage companies could shovel their way, regardless of the stench.

Wall Street gambled and the taxpayer lost
Dirty Hank and his gang of pirates blew a hole in the side of the US Treasury and made it all good. Wall Street is back to record profits and bonuses, while working people despair of ever again finding a job, and the big banks are still too big to fail. 

Muni-Bombs
Blissfully ignorant and unencumbered by any capacity to learn from experience, the federal government has turned on the money spigot to our fiscally incontinent states and cities. It’s stimulus, dontcha know. See how stimulated everybody is and how the job market is booming?

Since 2000 the total outstanding state and municipal bond debt,adjusted for inflation, has soared from $1.5 trillion to $2.8trillion (see chart). The recession didn’t slow the spending. (Reason)

So the drunks are teetering on the brink of the train platform with a high speed locomotive bearing down, and good ol' Uncle Sam hands them another bottle of hooch...

The Build America Bonds program, part of the American Recoveryand Reinvestment Act of 2009, was aimed at subsidizing bonds forinfrastructure projects. Under this program, the TreasuryDepartment pays 35 percent of bond interest to the issuinggovernment. 

If a state or local government issued a bond at a highrate to make it appealing to investors—10 percent, say—the Treasurywould make a 3.5 percent direct payment to the issuer. [...] It’sno surprise that, starting in 2008, states and cities increasedtheir debt dramatically, while investors enabled thisoverspending. (Reason)

Our federal government encouraged irresponsible state and local government to be even more irresponsible by backing their bonds and even paying part of the interest collected by investors.  All funded by We The Taxpayer, and money borrowed from China.

This wouldn't be so bad if cities were using this federal largess to pay down debt and put themselves on sound fiscal footing, but they are doing just the opposite.  In his informative article, State Budget Bunk, Steven Malanga catalogs the cheap tricks that are putting cities and states deeper in hock.

Write your elected officials and preemptively tell them "NO" to any state or city bailouts.  Tell them these failed states and cities must file for bankruptcy like other financially irresponsible people are forced to do.
 
Further Reading:

Muni bond Prices Drop

State Budget Bunk

10 Conservative Principles

What is Conservatism?

Marine blogger Mustang gave us a cogent and well-stated answer in his response to my blog post, Time to Throw the Neocons Overboard:

I am a conservative. I vote conservative; this means I revere our traditional values and shun Marxist/Stalinist ideology. As a conservative, I believe in God and Judeo-Christian values. I do not support homosexual lifestyles, but neither do I condemn people who do. I do not think I should have to pay for some idiot’s abortion. I do not think it is the federal government’s business to regulate marriage, my drinking habits, or how many gallons of gasoline I consume in a week. I believe strongly that our states are sovereign and must behave accordingly. I think limited government is the best kind of government.

That's a good working definition, especially speaking off the top of ones head.  Logical, no contradictions, no bigotry.  Just a stated belief in the vision of the founders embodied in the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution.  Mustang can trace his belief all the way back to the enlightenment.

Most liberals have a hard time explaining liberalism...
...because it is an incoherent hodgepodge of pollyanic aspirations, musty dogma and high dudgeon. It has also become very illiberal, with its path winding through Fabian Socialism, illiberal nationalism, elitist progressivism and ending up in the dark caverns of tribalism, identity politics, and because-we-say-so-ism.

Conservatives stand upon the immovable stone foundations of Bastiat and Burke; but the musty tomes from which their eternal ideas spring can be intimidating.  We understand these concepts because they have been handed down through the generations and championed in the writings of great conservative thinkers like William F. Buckley, Ronald Reagan and George Will.

Conservatism:  The Definitive Definition
Russell Kirk was a great 20th century conservative writer.  Among his many writings on the subject of conservatism, which he never considered a "movement," Ten Conservative Principles is the most concise and accessible to the average citizen.  It can be read in about ten minutes and it is one of the best summaries of conservatism that can be found.

This short essay is a beautiful piece that should be read as a whole, but I will leave you with a few quotes:

Conservatives are champions of custom, convention, and continuity because they prefer the devil they know to the devil they don’t know. Order and justice and freedom, they believe, are the artificial products of a long social experience, the result of centuries of trial and reflection and sacrifice.

Change isn't always for the better...

Burke agrees with Plato that in the statesman, prudence is chief among virtues. Any public measure ought to be judged by its probable long-run consequences, not merely by temporary advantage or popularity. Liberals and radicals, the conservative says, are imprudent: for they dash at their objectives without giving much heed to the risk of new abuses worse than the evils they hope to sweep away.

Against Anarchy, Against Tyranny

The conservative endeavors to so limit and balance political power that anarchy or tyranny may not arise. In every age, nevertheless, men and women are tempted to overthrow the limitations upon power, for the sake of some fancied temporary advantage. It is characteristic of the radical that he thinks of power as a force for good—so long as the power falls into his hands.

The Right Kind of Change

The conservative is not opposed to social improvement, although he doubts whether there is any such force as a mystical Progress, with a Roman P, at work in the world.

Change is essential to the body social, the conservative reasons, just as it is essential to the human body. A body that has ceased to renew itself has begun to die. But if that body is to be vigorous, the change must occur in a regular manner, harmonizing with the form and nature of that body; otherwise change produces a monstrous growth, a cancer, which devours its host.

Tryannies are Toppling across the Middle East--Could the US be Next?

Egypt has thrown off a tyrannical regime.  When will we topple ours?

I'm not talking about President Obama; He's just a cog in the machine.  I'm referring to this large bureaucratic regime, this clanking soul-draining monster, this federal, state and municipal steamroller that is built, fed and operated by the statists of all parties.

Egypt's situation is fundamentally different than ours, for we do not suffer under a military dictatorship, but read this excerpt and broadly replace references to "military" with "bureaucracy," and you'll see what I'm talking about...

The democratic wave that has finally struck the Arab world is, among other things, a civilian protest movement against the militarization of Middle Eastern life. Old Oriental despotisms, for all their unpleasantness, did not fundamentally assault the civilian nature of Muslim societies, where men of the cloth, letters, the bazaar, and small-town aristocracies defined the “good and noble.”

Robbed of ideology and military purpose (defeating Israel became a millenarian dream, like the ancient Arab aspiration to conquer Constantinople), Arab armies became instruments of political oppression and private enrichment. (Reuel Marc Gerecht - Weekly Standard)

The tyranny we groan and strain under is a bureaucratic one
FDR built a civilian statist army back in the 1930's and put it on war footing.  Government was supposed to wage war on poverty, ignorance and those on the outside attacking us and our way of life.  Instead, it now fosters poverty and ignorance and joins in the  multicultural jihad against our borders, language and culture (Yes, I got that from Doc Savage).

This out of control government that cannot manage its own finances nonetheless lectures us on what we should eat and how we should live.  It incompetently stumbles and bumbles its way through international diplomacy and blows hundreds of billions on intelligence, only to be surprised when a friendly dictator is toppled.  Meanwhile, domestic surveillance of innocent citizens increases.

Fighting Citizens is Easier than Fighting Criminals
Governments across the spectrum have found fighting crime and improving the lives of its citizens too challenging, so it now turns on them, spies on them, regulates and scolds them.  America's army of bureaucrats long ago turned on the people it was supposed to serve, and like the Egyptian Army, enjoys its perks and will not give them up willingly.

Real criminals with real guns are robbing and killing in Denver, but the Jefferson County DA goes after a kid with an airsoft gun.  This is just one story in an avalanche of government-sponsored outrages and abuse.  The EPA demanding dairy farmers treat milk spills as hazardous waste, and calling the dust they kick up "pollution" adds to the bonfire of regulatory stupidities now raging against the job-providers in this country. Our unemployment is government-induced.

Fighting criminals and protecting borders is hard; it's so much easier and satisfying to turn the power of the state against the people.  Government is everywhere.  They have robbed us of the private nature of our lives and our societies.

The price of apathy towards public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.
-Plato