Public Sector Unions As Political Clubs
There isn’t anyone that doesn’t know that public sector unions are bankrupting nearly every major state and city in this country. What most people don’t know is how this happened.
Unless the American people figure it out, and quickly, bankruptcy is a foregone conclusion for California, New York, Massachusetts, Illinois, Michigan, perhaps New Jersey and any other state in this fair land whose budgets are busting due to extraordinary benefits provided to their government employees who are represented by public sector unions.
When I began practicing labor law 38 years ago 25% of the entire American workforce was represented by private sector unions. Today private sector unions represent only 6.9%, of the entire American workforce while public sector unions represent 30% of all public sector employees.
This is the result of 2 factors occurring simultaneously over the last 4 decades. During this period manufacturing, where private sector unions were concentrated, went to China and other low cost developing countries. At the same time the number of public sector employees increased in size exponentially and became the political force behind organized labor.
But here is the point that must be understood if we intend to avoid what is currently happening in Greece and will be happening very shortly to most of Europe. Public sector unions are not actually unions they are political clubs which support politicians through dues contributed by their members and 95% of such politicians are Socialist/Democrats. Socialist/Democrat politicians then pass legislation which increases wages and benefits to their public sector employees as payback.
There is only one way to stop this kleptocracy: Make contributions by public sector unions to political candidates unlawful. This will result in having Socialist/Democrat politicians return to representing the interests of the people that voted for them not the people who paid for them.
The Dark Heart of The American People
Why don’t we just accept the truth: President Barack Obama’s class-warfare campaign is as Marxist as you can get.
When President Obama raises the bloody flag of anti-business and infers corporate corruption inherent in the capitalist system he knows that he is reaching into the dark heart of the American people. From the inception of our government the American people have always harbored a sense that while the wealthy have produced the ability of our nation to provide ample food and material abundance far greater than any other nation on earth the wealthy can be arrogant, indifferent to our national values and at times even act in a manner inconsistent with our national interest. But the American people also know instinctively that to destroy the wealthy or to limit or restrain their power and influence will ultimately adversely redound to the preservation of the American people’s personal individual freedom. However ironically it is this tension that provides our nation its greatest advantage. But for a President of the United States to use this constructive tension for the sole purpose of promoting his political success is nothing less than demagoguery and nothing more than the tyrannical aspirations of a tin horn dictator.
Do we, as a people, the American people, have the political perspicacity, the moral fiber, the courage to look at Barack Hussein Obama in the face and call him out for who he is and for what he is doing? Our constitution has given us the ability, nay, the right to do just that on November 6, 2012. Go forth.
Take Me
When I learned that my closest friend of 30 years was diagnosed with stage 4 brain cancer I expressed to an oncologist with whom I was having dinner that if that were me I would not go through the hell of trying to beat it. He looked at me with uncontainable rage as if to say I had no right to make such a decision.
Unlike 50 years ago being diagnosed with cancer today is not necessarily a death sentence. Much has been discovered, yet much is yet to be learned. What I thought I was saying to that oncologist was something at first blush with which I naively believed he would agree. However having been so surprised by his rage made me think again. My cavalier statement to the oncologist had more to do with him than me. He spent a lifetime of study, effort and sacrifice to deal with a disease which ravages the sinews of otherwise healthy people. How could I say that I didn’t value that effort or that sacrifice? How could I look him in the eye and demean all the work of those thousands of dedicated doctors and researchers who have progressed so far in this war against humanity? Who am I to say “No, not I?” Who am I to reject the pain, the anxiety of death, the continuing burden placed upon those whom I love while I selfishly insist that I will live while the clear and unambiguous evidence is that I will certainly die? Have I no right to die when the time to die seems, how shall I say, reasonable? I have sympathy with that oncologist. But my sympathy is to myself. If I lived a reasonably painless life should I not have the right to die in the same manner as I have lived?
Jews & Obama
Filed under: International Reflections, Presidential Watch, Social Commentary, Terrorism
In the 2008 presidential election 78% of Jews voted for Barack Obama. That represented the largest concentration of votes for Obama than any other racial or ethnic group other than blacks. Why is that?
“Justice, and only justice, you shall pursue ..” was God’s command to the Hebrews, 3,500 years ago, as they prepared themselves to be a nation in the land of Canaan, a land that had not yet been conquered. Over the last 150 years however Jews have violated this command by seeking to do justice, rather than “pursue” it. Moreover Jews have abandoned “justice, and only justice” and now seek something called “social justice.” These violations of God’s command are carried out within the economic and cultural philosophy of Socialism, a philosophy which assumes that justice is knowable and those who are appointed to carry it out are flawless. The fact that neither is true results in deprivation, starvation, tyranny and untold death. All we have to do is point to those nations that have adopted this corrosive philosophy of Socialism: the Soviet Union, China, Venezuela, North Korea, NAZI Germany and yes soon even the European Union.
Jews, ignoring God’s command, have been one of the standard bearers of this godless, Socialist philosophy and see in Barack Obama as one its most attractive proponents. Jews will once again go to the polls in the 2012 presidential election and overwhelmingly vote for Barack Obama. Their commitment to Socialism is so powerful that they will do this while ignoring his continuing confrontations with Israel, one of America’s closest allies, thereby willing to sacrifice that country on the altar of doing “social justice” for the Palestinians whose only desire is the destruction of Israel.
NLRB’s New Election Rules
Filed under: National Party Politics, Social Commentary, U.S. Economics, Unions
Yesterday the National Labor Relations Board, known as the NLRB, approved new rules which unions say would literally revolutionize employees’ right to vote in favor of union representation. Being a labor lawyer for nearly 4 decades and representing unions I don’t believe a word of it.
Forty years ago private sector unions represented 25% of the American workforce. That percentage is now less than 7 and dropping precipitously. Union’s blame this on the ability of Employers to use arcane NLRB procedures to impede and forestall union elections for months and in some cases years. But the fact is that these supposedly arcane procedures were in force when the National Labor Relations Act was passed in 1936 and continued to exist when private sector union’s represented nearly one third of the entire American workforce right into the 1960’s. It’s easy for unions to place responsibility for their slow demise on procedural rules since it removes all blame from the real culprits: Manufacturing leaving the United States and going abroad and union incompetence, fatuousness and its unwillingness to apply innovation and take the necessary risks both in money and structure.
But so far all that unions have done has been to use government as its instrument of change. Millions of dollars have been given to the Socialist/Democratic Party’s campaign coffers. And unions have received little, if anything, for this effort. Now the Socialist/Democratic NLRB has given unions something they believe is finally going to change the organizing terrain thereby increasing union membership and of course the concomitant increase in union dues. Dues, of course, that will be paid to the campaign funds of Socialist/Democrats. To me it’s all just wishful thinking.
America Leaves Iraq
Filed under: International Reflections, Presidential Watch, Social Commentary, Terrorism, United States at War
Last Sunday night I observed on Fox News the last Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle, otherwise known as an MRAP, cross over into Kuwait, representing America’s total military departure from Iraq.
In March 2003 the United States Armed Forces crossed over into Iraq for the ostensible purpose of removing all of its weapons of mass destruction. We all know that none were found and that those who see America through the glasses of imperialism and hubris howled to the delight of all the Socialist Democrats who take great pleasure in seeing their country as a bumbling, despotic and violent international actor. Our current president when an Illinois state senator described America’s anticipated military engagement with Iraq as “dumb” ignoring the fact that Iraq was attacking our planes, continued to threaten its neighbors with its nuclear, chemical and biological arsenal, was killing hundreds of thousands of its own people and was already developing a nascent relationship with al-Qaeda. All of this then was undisputed.
Fast forward to today. Four thousand five hundred of our soldiers dead, thirty thousand wounded, some grievously, nearly a trillion dollars spent. But Iraq is not some backwater country. It’s a wealthy, highly educated and influential Islamic nation located at the very center of the Middle East. It shares Arabic and Persian culture and contains large segments of Sunni and Shia religious loyalties. And today, for the first time in its existence it has a chance to be free and democratic and take its place among the nations of the free world. So last Sunday night we left Iraq as America always leaves those nations to which it brings joyful freedom: head high, honorably and with the knowledge that we have once again performed our God given purpose.
Taxes & The Poor
Filed under: National Party Politics, Social Commentary, U.S. Economics
Conservative Republicans want you to believe that 47% of the American people do not pay Federal income tax means we are heading for a dependent society. I’m not so sure.
Ramesh Ponnuru a writer for National Review, one of the more prestigious conservative journals in America, opines in its November 28th issue, that Republicans are not necessarily right in warning us that the poor who pay little or no Federal income tax will vote for candidates who promise them growing benefits. Ponnuru however reminds us that prior to 1913 and the passage of the 16th Amendment providing Congress the right to lay and collect taxes on income Americans did not pay income taxes. He asks whether this fact was a flaw in America’s founding which existed into the beginning of the welfare state in the early 20th Century. Answering his own question Ponnuru holds that conservatives should seek to cut benefits rather than raising taxes on the poor. He states, “To seek to raise taxes on poor and middle-class people would be a terrible mistake. The idea is bound to be unpopular. And it would alter the character of conservatism for the worse.” He suggests that the 47% number will obviously be reduced if we if we reduce benefits and if we do increase taxes we should increase them across the board: rich, middle and poor alike. Occupy Wall Street, go home.
Thinking Domestically & Foreign
Filed under: Presidential Watch, Social Commentary, Terrorism, United States at War
In matters domestic one must think tactically and limitedly. In matters foreign one must think strategically and broadly.
In addressing domestic concerns compromise is probable and losing the battle only means you have another chance to return to the battlefield. In addressing foreign concerns compromise is merely possible and losing may be catastrophic. I refer to these well warn principles of domestic and foreign relations in the context of the present dilemma America faces with respect to Iran’s nuclear armament project. In foreign relations there are no rules, or courts of appeal, or extraneous forces upon which a nation may rely. And decisions of war or peace are made without the required time or wisdom that provides leaders with the necessary ingredients that produce judgment.
Iran, a terrorist state, a committed enemy of the United States, wants what it believes will allow it to survive for a thousand years: The ability to deliver great damage to America at little or no cost to itself. And such damage to America will in all likelihood be catastrophic.
Today America’s current leadership is paralyzed. Its vision of America allows it the luxury of believing that Iran with a nuclear weapon will be no danger to America. And its understanding of foreign relations sees no further than its past.
More important than our economic troubles the presidential election of 2012 may very well decide America’s future existence.
Remembering Pearl Harbor
Filed under: International Reflections, Presidential Watch, Social Commentary, United States at War
Next week I will celebrate my 75th birthday and I remember December 7, 1941, 70 years ago to the day, the date Japan committed a surprise attack on the United States of America, as if it were yesterday.
It was December 8, 1941 a day after the attack. I was 5 years old and Matthew Hart, another 5 year old friend in the neighborhood, inquired whether I heard the bombs last night. Matthew proceeded to tell me that the “Japs”, a term no longer used in polite company, attacked Pearl Harbor and destroyed our Navy. Matthew Hart was a true journalist. What he didn’t tell me, was something I immediately concluded, even at that unseasoned age of 5: We were going to be in a terrible war for a long long time.
How does a 5 year old know this stuff? Well he knows it when all he hears at the dinner table every single evening is his mother and father, and older brother and sister, discussing, arguing, even sometimes yelling about the current events of the world. For some reason my mother and father knew that America had the susceptibility of being attacked by inconsequential enemies.
How is it that my father, with no more than a 3rd grade education and my mother, a high school graduate, which in 1941 was in effect an advanced degree, had the perspicacity of knowing something that the Socialist Democrats of today and Ron Paul haven’t a clue? I think it has to do with the mythical ideology that all human beings are inherently good and whose first instinct is to not to harm another human being. All evidence seems to contradict such foolishness. And yet there are those who persist in imagining it.
And that is why I remember December 7, 1941, 70 years ago to the day, the date Japan committed a surprise attack on the United States of America, as if it were yesterday.
America’s Socialist Unions
Filed under: International Reflections, Presidential Watch, U.S. Economics, Unions
If there remains any doubt that the remnant of the labor movement in this country embraces Socialist ideology all you have to do is read former president of the SEIU Andy Stern’s article in today’s WSJ entitled “China’s Superior Economic Model.”
In today’s WSJ Andy Stern holds forth that China has rejected what he tellingly describes as the “conservative-preferred, free market fundamentalist, shareholder-only model” which he claims is being thrown onto the trash heap of history. And with what does Comrade Andy suggest that China has replaced this free market garbage? Sixty years of 12 5 year government controlled plans. And let me be clear about these “plans.” If you don’t like the “plan” you wind up either dead or if you are unlucky, jail. Comrade Andy describes as “pathetic” today’s America: jobless, 30 years of flat median wages, a trade deficit, a shrinking middle class and, lest we not forget the most recent mantra of the Socialist gang, including our president, phenomenal gains in wealth for only the top 1% . Those are the facts. But aren’t there facts about the China model, which he so reveres, that Comrade Andy either is clueless or is just not telling the whole truth? How about China’s environment in which its rivers are nothing but open sewers and its air is filled with excessive toxins. According the 2011 index of Economic Freedom China’s scores 52, making its economy the 135th freest country in the world. And then of course there is the question of political freedom. Comrade Andy, especially with respect to this fact, seems to have had an Alzheimer’s moment.
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