The Unions are Disconnected from Reality (Wisconsin, etc.)

An excellent piece by Jeffrey Carter of the Points and Figures blog, pointing out how disconnected from reality the union argument is when it comes to the economy, budgets, deficits, benefits and so on ....

Mr. Carter takes on Richard Trumka, the head of the AFL-CIO.

As usual, the union argument centers around hyperbole, personal attacks and false arguments.

http://pointsandfigures.com/2011/03/05/dissecting-richard-trumka/

Richard Trumka was given a large space in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal to make his pro-union case. Let’s go point by point and see how far off the reservation Trumka is. I am sure this summer at the union country club, they will be slapping his back while he plays 18 with someDemocratic politicians. You can bend the facts as much as you want, but sooner or later they have a way of slapping you in the face.

Trumka asserts that workers have been given a choice. Give up their rights or get laid off. His first mistake is to assume collective bargaining is a “right”. It’s not a right. Nowhere in Thomas Jefferson’s eloquent elucidation of the “inalienable rights” to man, was a carve out for collective bargaining. Collective bargaining is a point that was won at a bargaining table, and now is being lost at a bargaining table. Remember, they did have an election in Wisconsin and it was no secret what the Republicans wanted to do. Collective bargaining is better classified as a privilege, like a drivers license.

There is a side point here too. Unionized collective bargaining for public employees is a giganticconflict of interest. It’s not at all like a union negotiating with a private firm-which can be advantageous for the firm.

His second straw man is the assumption that unions built the middle class. That’s totally false. The middle class was built by entrepreneurs. They developed great businesses and hired workers for them. As a matter of fact, many times unions impede the development of more innovation within many businesses depriving people of innovative jobs. They also add to the cost of doing business, making the economy less efficient.

Trumka goes on to cite the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

“It’s also recognized in Article 23 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This right ensures that there is sufficient spending power to drive the consumer demand, which makes up two-thirds of our GDP.”

Of course, that’s not a United States concept, we already codified that in our Constitution back in 1778. This is that beacon of liberty and hope, the United Nations paradigm. You know, the UN, where Libya sits on the Human Rights Council. If I followed all the commands of the UN, I get the feeling I’d wind up in a gulag somewhere.

Trumka then characterizes the Republican governors as radical evil emperors, seeking to destroy people.

“a group of radical Republican governors is working overtime to export the most short-sighted private-sector labor practices into the public sector. Not only are they demanding steep cuts in wages and pensions for public workers, they also want to take away workplace rights, so that workers can no longer bargain for better compensation and benefits”

In fact, these guys aren’t radical at all. They are just asking that employees contribute a little more toward their benefit packages. Trumka also cites a poll that has been proven to be biased in the way it asks questions about collective bargaining and workers. Rather than be objective, Trumka shades the truth.

He goes on to say that government budgets are in trouble because of the recession. Well, he is correct that because of higher unemployment there is less tax revenue to pay for things. However, the core reason government budgets are in trouble is because of the medical and pension liabilities they are liable for in the future. Additionally, many of these governments used a fallacious net present value discounting factor to put these liabilities on their balance sheets, understating the amount by billions of dollars. The federal government has also understated it’s liabilities by trillions by keeping Social Security and Medicare off balance sheet. It’s not the recession stupid, it’s the true cost of the future liabilities that is breaking the bank.

If they were publicly traded corporations, they’d be in jail.

Trumka advocates for tough rules and doesn’t specify what they would be. I assume a higher wage, trade barriers, more restrictions and regulation, and mandatory division of cash flows. For a peek at how that works out, just look at the economic development in the US over the past two years.

ECONOMIC UPDATE

If one takes a peek at year over year unemployment numbers, Trumka makes even less sense.

Weekly earnings are up $18 year over year for a 2.3% rise. Hours worked is up. Overtime is up. Of course, the labor participation rate is down to it’s lowest point in years at 64.2%.

CPI excluding energy and food is up only 1.6%. Energy was up 13.4%, and food was up 2.1%. These are January 2011 numbers so you know that the energy component will be up significantly in February.

If Trumka really wanted to help his workers, he would advocate for three changes in public policy

1. End the ethanol subsidies. This would bring food prices down tremendously.
2. Allow for exploration of all energy resources, no strings attached. Allow nuclear plants to be built. Cost of energy would plummet.
3. Make the corporate tax rate a flat tax of 15%, and end all subsidies to corporations.

The American worker would find a job as our economy exploded.

AZ Psycho Loughner indicted ... BUT

Loughner Indicted on 49 Counts March 4, 2011 2:31 P.M. By Daniel Foster Jared Loughner has been charged with 49 federal counts in connection with the slaughter in Tucson in January. As the Post notes, the indictment employs a novel legal argument. Forty-six of the counts rely on construing the Safeway parking lot where the shootings took place as “protected federal ground, as if it happened inside Congress.” I’ll leave it to the discretion of the far, far abler legal minds here to comment on the wisdom of that tactic. Loughner Indictment: Legally Suspect and Tactically Foolish March 4, 2011 5:18 P.M. By Andrew C. McCarthy Dan, I think the Justice Department’s strategy in the Loughner case is legally suspect (to say the least) and tactically foolish. There are federal charges that apply to the shootings of the federal officials. That’s the federal case here. To the contrary, shooting people who are not federal officials in a mall is not a federal offense — such shootings are state crimes, for which Arizona provides very severe sentences, including death if death has resulted. Justice is hanging its jurisdictional hat on the “federally protected activity” aspect of the civil rights laws. The purpose of this provision is to give the feds a vehicle to go after people who purposely try to stop someone from enjoying the benefits of a federal program. So if some misguided soul tried to vent his disagreement with, say, the “cash for clunkers” program by standing outside the car dealership and intimidating would be participants, he would be interfering with a federally protected activity even though this sort of menacing, ordinarily, would be a state offense, not a federal offense. The idea is to protect obvious federal interests. The idea is not to create federal cases whenever the commission of a state crime has some incidental, attenuated federal consequence. We know this not only because the relevant statute (section 245 of the federal penal code) homes in on clear federal interests — speaking of interference with a federal “benefit, service, privilege, facility, or activity” (meaning that “activity” must be understood not as any old activity but in the vein or benefit, service, etc.). We also know it because the statute has a high scienter requirement — calling for the government to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant willfully interfered with his victim because the victim was trying to enjoy some federal benefit, service, privilege, facility, activity, etc. While it is a truism that “ignorance of the law is no excuse,” that becomes nearly untrue when Congress prescribes a mental element of willfulness. The government then has to prove that the defendant acted maliciously — fully aware that he was violating the law in question. I don’t mean fully aware that he was shooting people — as I said, there are narrow laws dealing with that. I mean fully aware that he was shooting people for the specific purpose of interfering with their enjoyment of the federal activity of meeting with a member of Congress. That’s a stretch. If DOJ’s theory is sound, the question becomes: is there any activity that cannot be spun as federally protected — especially given Leviathan’s ever expanding girth? If I am out enjoying a beautiful day when I get robbed, can it be said that my assailant intended to frustrate my enjoyment of the Clean Air Act? What Justice is doing here will be seen as a dramatic federal intrusion into the realm of state law enforcement. Many people who want to be supportive of the prosecution of this heinous series of crimes will be put off by it. Moreover, Justice is making a foolish tactical mistake by over-complicating what should be straightforward shooting crimes that can be tried perfectly well in state court. Let’s set aside “federal activity” for a moment. Any jury in the Loughner case was already guaranteed to face difficult questions about criminal intent because of the defendant’s apparent mental instability.If you’re the prosecutor, why would you want to force the jury to grapple, in addition, with the complexity of whether the event in question was a “federal activity”? And why give defense lawyers such an advantage? They already have a lot to work with on the issue of Loughner’s sanity, no small thanks to Sheriff Dupnik’s reckless commentary. Inviting them to argue that Loughner was too disturbed to have willfully interfered with anyone’s federal rights can only bolster their claim that Loughner was similarly unable to form the intent necessary to commit murder and attempted murder. If I’m Loughner’s lawyer tonight, I’m thinking: we’ve got a real shot here. The worst case I ever had to prosecute involved a New York City undercover detective shot by drug dealers who decided to rob him rather than sell him cocaine. Miraculously, the detective survived, but his injuries were so severe he blacked out and, coupled with the fact that he’d been shot in the back by a hooded gunmen (who’d first made him beg for his life), he could not identify the shooter. The shooter was acquitted at his trial in New York state court. The police and DEA then asked us to take the case federally. Under the “dual sovereignty doctrine,” the usual double jeopardy rule does not bar a federal prosecution after a state verdict. The feds invoke dual sovereignty very sparingly — the general guideline is that the authorities should get one chance to convict someone for a single crime. But exceptions are made in heinous cases, like the attempted murder of a cop carried out in an exceptionally sadistic manner. So we tried the shooter and his confederates. It was very painful for everyone involved: the trial took nine weeks and the jury was out nine days before hanging, 11-1 in favor of conviction. The main problem was an implacable juror who would not reason with the other jurors. But those other jurors told me afterwards that one of the things that really bothered them was: Why, in an attempted murder case, did they have to wrestle with whether this small-time street drug gang in the Bronx was somehow engaging in activity that affected interstate or foreign commerce. The answer was simple: it was our jurisdictional hook, the only way we could make a state shooting of a city cop a federal crime. Absent that, we had no case. We weren’t crazy about being in that situation, but what we were doing was not novel. It was a tried and true commerce clause theory that cocaine is not grown in New York — it had to have crossed state lines (really, international borders) to get to the Bronx, even if our defendants were several rungs down the ladder from that part of the biz. But the jurors were troubled by it. And these were great jurors — thoughtful and very much in favor of giving the bad guys their comeuppance as long as the evidence was there. Still, they didn’t understand what on earth interstate commerce had to do with the shooting, and they were annoyed, given the tough proof issues involved in the case, that they had to take time to wrestle with something so seemingly irrelevant. I’m not saying it can’t work. We convicted the shooter on a retrial. My point, however, is that we had trouble even though we were working on a proven theory of federal jurisdiction, and we had to do what we did because we were the last resort in a very tough case. By contrast, the Justice Department is rolling the dice on a novel and dubious theory of federal jurisdiction, and doing it under circumstances where there is no reason the state offenses cannot be successfully tried in state court. Last stray Loughner indictment thought March 4, 2011 6:57 P.M. By Andrew C. McCarthy Section 245 of Title 18, U.S. Code, is the civil rights provision that the Justice Department relies on for its extravagant theory that state crimes can be turned into federal crimes by declaring that some protected federal activity is ongoing. I can’t help but notice that it is the same statute that protects voters and poll-watchers from intimidation by the likes of the New Black Panther Party. Why is the Justice Department using a statute so dubiously to invent new federal crimes while ignoring an obvious violation of the very same statute? Need I ask? They are playing with fire, unnecessarily.

Hypocrisy Watch Weekend: 1st up, Planned Parenthood

A Liberal columnist, Kirsten Powers (formerly a Democratic "strategist") excoriates Planned Parenthood, who is under fire for being an abortion advocacy group receiving taxpayer funds under the guise of focusing on "women's health".

Apparently, that's not quite true ...

‘Whatever you think of abortion rights, this is not the kind of organization that taxpayers should be funding’

‘Whatever you think of abortion rights, this is not the kind of organization that taxpayers should be funding’ March 4, 2011 2:01 P.M. By Kathryn Jean Lopez Read this Kirsten Powers column: To preserve its federal subsidy, Planned Parenthood continues to claim that without its contraception services the abortion rate will go up. This deception smacks of a fleecing of taxpayers in an effort to promote an ideological agenda, rather than a sincere effort to help women plan families. What is that ideology, exactly? To find out, you have to dig through Planned Parenthood’s tax forms because the group certainly isn’t going to tell you. According to its most recent tax filing, the purpose of Planned Parenthood Federation of America is to provide leadership in “[a]chieving, through informed individual choice, a U.S. population of stable size in an optimum environment; in stimulating and sponsoring relevant biomedical, socio-economic, and demographic research.” So it is, in reality, a population-control organization. Funny, this was never mentioned in the gauzy $200,000 advertising campaign launched last week. It also doesn’t make it into the “About Us” section of the group’s website, which repeatedly claims its mission is to protect women’s health, when in fact the real mission is to keep the birth rate at whatever level the leaders believe it should be. To hear Planned Parenthood and their supporters, they exist only to provide Pap smears or breast exams or prenatal services. In fact, President Cecile Richards has gone so far as to erroneously imply that they provide mammograms. (A spokesperson for the group confirmed to me that this is untrue.) Planned Parenthood officials are allowed to believe whatever they want and to pursue whatever goals they choose. But their dishonesty in how they present their organization to the public, along with ignoring basic statistics about their area of expertise, makes you wonder what else they are hiding. It’s also hard to deny that they are at core a blindly ideological organization, not a run-of-the-mill charitable nonprofit. Whatever you think of abortion rights, this is not the kind of organization that taxpayers should be funding. Read the whole piece. She bought the Planned Parenthood line about women’s health, just asAbby Johnson, a former Planned Parenthood clinic director in Texas, did. Just as many well-intentioned Americans do. But there is every reason not to. Thanks, Kirsten. A column like hers is powerful. And add that to what Lila Rose and Live Action have encountered — most recently, an openness to helping sex traffickers do their business. Add that to the evidence of lax reporting we were already made aware of in Kansas. Add that to what we have long known about Planned Parenthood’s eugenics history. Add that to so much that we have too long overlooked as America’s largest abortion provider, a profit-maker, continues to get government funding. Read Abby Johnson’s testimony, too, if you haven’t. I talked with her here.

The Insanity of the Left, Obama, Dems, NY Times about spending, deficits, debt

It really is insane; this country will go broke with such irresponsibility.

Byron York sums it up well this morning by calling out the NY Times:

NYT: GOP politicians say 'we're broke.' But that's 'obfuscating nonsense…' http://ow.ly/471Uz

'A country with a deficit is not necessarily any more 'broke' than a family with a mortgage or a college loan,' says NYT…

Therefore, since we're not 'broke,' NYT says GOP plan to cut $61 billion out of a $3,800 billion budget would be 'ruinous…'

Doesn't sound like folks who will ever acknowledge that $15 Trillion Debt, $1.5 Trillion deficits, and growing are unsustainable and ultimately disastrous for the country ...

Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Bahrain, Saudi ?, Wisconsin, Obamacare

It's all a mess, isn't it ?

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/261054/obamacare-s-gift-states-huge-unfunded-medicaid-mandate-katrina-trinko

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/261032/awash-waste-andrew-stiles

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/261066/why-dont-we-just-spend-three-times-much-andrew-stiles

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/28/AR2011022803264.html?nav=hcmoduletmv

Krauthammer

On President Obama’s comments about Medicaid while meeting with the nation’s governors yesterday: Obama now is pretending he’s the man who wants to see states experiment on their own. He’s a federalist! Well then, why did you pass a national health-care law which imposes all these mandates [on the states] and has all these governors screaming that it’s unaffordable and also inflexible? The fact is that the Obamacare law imposes on states the following eligibility standard. You have to give Medicaid to people up to 130 percent of the poverty line. It was originally intended as a plan for the poor. Now it’s becoming an entitlement. And on the S-CHIP program, which is the one that is for the assistance of children, in some states the eligibility requirements are so expansive that a family earning about $70,000 is eligible. Now that’s insane. It’s unaffordable. It would add 20 million people on the rolls in this decade. In 2019, there will be 85 million Americans on Medicaid, costing a total of $900 billion a year. Utterly unsustainable, but that’s what’s in the law.