It's a bit like Alimony really ...... Yer, never saw it coming ......

I had a great weekend even though, for some of it, I had to hear about the talking head shows on TV doing their much-practiced hand wringing. Then, by accident, I watched MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough this morning as he professed his disbelief that the Governor of Wisconsin was adamant about his stance even though the unions had offered concessions on the dollars.

And, the issue is so-called collective bargaining. As an aside though, isn’t it interesting that Obama decided today to deplore the “attack” on public sector unions while since 1978, Federal employees have been denied that very measure.  

Anyway, the talking heads didn’t seem to have the collective smarts to understand the difference between the public and private sector unions. If you want the Clift Notes version, here it is:-

If I am an employer and my business is making widgets and I “collectively bargain” a deal with my employees’ union that must inevitably hit my bottom-line. So then, I have no choice, I cannot increase my prices because then I cannot sell my product to the widget buyers and my company goes broke and all my employees get fired.

On the other hand, I am an employer in a government; federal, state, or whatever. I don’t actually produce anything and neither do my employees but I “collectively bargain” a deal with my employees’ union. No problem with that because I don’t have a bottom-line. I don’t have to sell anything to anybody. I don’t have customers and I don’t want them because that would be a nuisance. It’s much easier now because, if all of a sudden I’m out of money, my bosses top up my stash via taxation, or via borrowing or by printing it.

And this Blog has talked about the implications of all three in previous posts.

Now, if you want the dissertation level stuff largely from Heritage Foundation, read on.

Collective bargaining by unions takes place very differently in government than it does in the private sector. Private-sector unions have competitors and bargain over the profits they help create. The government earns no profits. Government unions have a legal monopoly and bargain for a greater share of tax dollars. Collective bargaining in government means that voters’ elected representatives must agree on tax and spending decisions with union representatives.

Collective bargaining also politicizes the civil service. Government unions negotiate contract provisions that force workers to join and subsidize their fundraising. These subsidies have made them the top political spenders in the country. They use that money to lobby for higher taxes and protect their inflated compensation.

America can no longer afford these special-interest subsidies. State and local governments should:

§  Restore voter control over government spending by ending collective bargaining with government unions.

§  Restore a nonpartisan civil service by ending subsidies for union fundraising and giving workers the choice of paying union dues. Voters should tell the government how to spend their money, not the other way around.

§   

Collective Bargaining: The Process

Under collective bargaining, a union is designated as the employees’ “exclusive bargaining representative.” The employer must negotiate with the union over pay, benefits, and work rules. The employer may not employ workers for anything other than the union-negotiated terms. This gives the union a monopoly on the labor supplied to an employer. Even if other workers would take the job, the employer may not hire them for anything other than union rates.

The Private and Public Sectors. The labor movement grew out of the difficult working conditions of the industrial revolution. The founders of the labor movement saw unions as a way to prevent employers from exploiting workers. They also believed that labor and capital were opposed to one another. They believed that workers and management fought to divide the profits they mutually created. Labor leaders wanted monopoly bargaining power to gain clout to win more of those profits. Competition moderates union demands in the private sector. Unions know that excessive pay makes their employer uncompetitive and puts their jobs at risk.

The government operates very differently. Government employees need not fear exploitive bosses. Since the late 1800s, public employees have enjoyed the protection of civil service laws. The government also creates no profits over which to bargain. Government unions bargain for a greater share of taxes to go to their members. Since the government has no competitors and no profits, unions have little reason to restrain their demands and government has little incentive to resist them. Taxpayers, not government leaders, bear the cost of concessions.

The arguments for unions in the private sector do not apply to government. Up through the 1950s, the union movement recognized and agreed with this analysis. Movement supporters believed, as AFL-CIO president George Meany did, that “It is impossible to bargain collectively with government”t. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who signed the National Labor Relations Act, had the same view. In his words, “the process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service.”

Strikes Paralyze Public Services. Private businesses have competitors. Consequently, private-sector strikes have a limited effect on the general public. Consumers can buy from another company during a strike. A strike by the United Auto Workers against General Motors does not shut down the auto industry—Americans simply buy cars from Ford or Toyota instead.

The government generally has no competition. The public cannot purchase alternative police; alternatives to public education and mass transit are not accessible to everyone. A monopoly on essential services gives government unions tremendous leverage to force concessions from the public. Unless the voters’ elected representatives give in, they can grind large parts of the economy to a halt.

Unions are willing to use this leverage. Detroit public school teachers went on strike illegally in 2006. The teachers union ignored the Michigan law prohibiting teacher strikes. As a result, 130,000 students started the school year late while the union pressed for concessions. The final contract gave the Detroit teachers raises. In December 2005, New York City transit workers went on strike over a proposal to increase their contributions to their pension plans. The strike paralyzed New York City during the busiest shopping days of the year and cost the city an estimated $400 million a day. The government ultimately agreed to a new contract that did not increase pension contributions.

President Roosevelt deplored the possibility of strikes if government bargained collectively: “A strike of public employees manifests nothing less than an intent on their part to prevent or obstruct the operations of Government until their demands are satisfied. Such action, looking toward the paralysis of Government by those who have sworn to support it, is unthinkable and intolerable.

Binding Arbitration Imposes Terms. Many states recognize the danger of public-sector strikes and have passed laws that prohibit government unions from striking. Instead, “binding arbitration” resolves disputes between the government and unions. Under binding arbitration both unions and management make their case to an arbitrator. The arbitrator considers their arguments and hands down a contract which is binding on both sides. The voters’ elected representatives may not choose a different plan. The taxpayers must pay whatever the arbitrator awards, which is often quite generous. Studies show that binding arbitration significantly raises the cost of employing government workers.

Representative Government Undermined. Collective bargaining gives unions a monopoly on the labor supplied to government. This takes away the final say on government policy from the voters’ elected representatives. Elected representatives must negotiate with unions over acceptable spending and policy decisions. State and local governments cannot hire nonunion employees to work for different terms. If the government and unions disagree, the union can strike against the public or call in an arbitrator to impose terms.

Collective bargaining forces elected representatives to negotiate a contract with union leaders, excluding all other citizens and potential workers from the bargaining table. Voters’ representatives do not fully control spending and tax decisions. They must reach agreement with union leaders who are unaccountable to the public. This undermines the principle of voter sovereignty. Union leaders once recognized and opposed this. As recently as 1959, the AFL-CIO Executive Council stated flatly, “In terms of accepted collective bargaining procedures, government workers have no right beyond the authority to petition Congress—a right available to every citizen.”

Inflated Government Pay. Nonetheless, many state governments decided to bargain collectively. As a result, state and local government employees now earn above-market compensation.

In terms of cash wages, state and local government employees’ earnings are comparable to similar private-sector workers, but they receive much more generous benefits. As of February 2011, for instance, government employees in Wisconsin contributed almost nothing to their defined-benefit pension plans, and paid only 6 percent of their health care premiums. In the private sector, workers pay 18 percent of their premiums for single plans and 29 percent for family plans. Including the value of these benefits, state and local government employees earn noticeably more than their private-sector counterparts.

The public pays for these benefits with higher taxes and less spending on other priorities. Some union-funded organizations, such as the Economic Policy Institute, contend that state and local government employees are underpaid. These groups arrive at this conclusion using data from the National Compensation Survey (NCS). The NCS measures private-sector compensation accurately.

But for government compensation, it only measures employer pay expenditures—not the value of what the government promises to pay. Thus, the NCS ignores the value of promised pension benefits for which the government has not set aside enough money. It also ignores the value of retiree health benefits.

These benefits systematically inflate government pay. The NCS also omits the value of the strong job security that government employees receive. Studies based on NCS data systematically undercount the value of government benefits, which leads to the claim that state workers are underpaid.

Using Government to Serve Private Interests. Government unions use collective bargaining to profit at the public’s expense in ways that go beyond pay. Unions can negotiate contract provisions that direct public resources to the union. The Wisconsin Education Association (WEA) runs a health insurance plan known as WEA Trust. WEA Trust premiums outstrip those of competing insurance carriers. During collective bargaining, however, WEA presses school districts to purchase health insurance through WEA Trust. Currently 64 percent of Wisconsin school districts do so. Allowing school districts to purchase competitively priced health insurance would save Wisconsin taxpayers $68 million a year.

Collective bargaining also enables unions to negotiate work rules that benefit their members at the expense of quality public services. During negotiations, government unions typically insist on seniority pay and job security. No matter how hard or little they work, they will earn the same amount. This eliminates most of the incentive to shine on the job.

Standard pay regardless of performance also hurts the public. School districts find it almost impossible to reward good teachers or fire bad ones. One study has found that merely replacing the worst performing 5 percent of teachers with average quality teachers would move the U.S. near the top of international math and science rankings. Union contracts that prevent schools from replacing failing teachers hurt children.

Unions further negotiate provisions that benefit them institutionally at their members’ expense. Many government employees oppose their union’s agenda. In the 28 states without right-to-work laws, however, unions negotiate contracts that require government employees to pay union dues or lose their jobs. Unions also negotiate large subsidies for their fundraising. They negotiate for the government to collect union dues through its payroll system. This spares unions the expense of doing their own fundraising.

Without these provisions unions would bring in far less money. Federal law gives most federal employees the choice of belonging to a union. Most choose not to join. The federal unionization rate is only 18 percent—far lower than for states like Wisconsin, where 50 percent of state and local government employees belong to unions.

Politicized Civil Service. America has embraced the principle of a nonpartisan civil service for more than a century. Government employees should serve the public under the law and under lawful direction of elected officials—not the interests of the union or whichever political party the union favors.

Collective bargaining in government politicizes the civil service—because government unions negotiate and decide how much voters and taxpayers will pay for government services. To achieve greater concessions, they campaign for supportive politicians to be their bosses. When they succeed, unions control both sides of the bargaining table: Labor and management will collude to raise government salaries at taxpayer expense.

Unions’ special legal privileges give them enormous financial clout. Nationwide, 5.5 million state and local government employees must either pay union dues or lose their jobs. The government subsidizes the collection of these forced dues with its payroll system, raising billions of dollars for government unions.

Part of this money goes to pay union leaders’ generous salaries. Gerald McEntee, President of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) earned $376,000 in base salary in 2009. However, government unions spend far more of their money on politics. In the election year of 2008, AFSCME’s national headquarters spent 32 percent of its budget—$63.3 million—on political activities and lobbying. Local AFSCME chapters spent millions more.

Government-employee unions now spend more than any other outside group on U.S. elections. Of the five largest spenders in the 2010 election cycle outside of political parties, three were unions that represent government employees. AFSCME took the top spot, spending $91 million to elect its members’ bosses. That total dwarfed the Chamber of Commerce’s $75 million, and the $65 million raised by Republican Party-allied groups. As Larry Scanlon, head of AFSCME’s political operation said: “We’re the big dog, but we don’t like to brag.” This spending gives government unions significant political power.

Government unions use this power to campaign for higher taxes and more government employees— in order to increase union membership and the amount of money flowing to the union from dues. They are the driving force behind most campaigns to raise taxes and prevent budget cuts.

They attempt to make government expansion the path of least political resistance. If politicians refuse to support this agenda, government unions will use their power to defeat them.

At times they state this openly. A Service Employees International Union (SEIU) representative told California legislators that “We helped to get you into office, and we got a good memory. And come November, if you don’t back our program, we’ll help get you out of office.” Collective bargaining has thoroughly politicized the civil service in many states. Increasingly—and contrary to basic democratic principles—it is union leaders, not elected officials, who essentially decide how much taxes people pay, and how the government will spend those taxes.

A Policy Choice

Institutional collective bargaining was a policy decision made by state and local governments. Labor unions had traditionally opposed collective bargaining in government. During the 1950s, private-sector union membership peaked and began to decline. The union movement then came to see government employees as valuable new dues-paying members. It reversed its stance on government bargaining in the late 1950s. Beginning with New York City in 1958 and Wisconsin in 1959, many state and local governments across the country began to bargain collectively, largely as a result of union pressure.

Many other states concluded that this decision was a mistake. While 25 states have comprehensive collective-bargaining laws, the remaining 25 states limit collective bargaining for some or all classes of government employees. Voters can exercise full control over their government. Some states, such as Virginia, ban collective bargaining by government unions outright.

Restoring Voter Control and a Nonpartisan Civil Service. 

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker has proposed restoring voters’ control over their elected government. He proposes eliminating negotiations over government benefits and work rules, and requires voters to approve any wage increases beyond inflation. These changes allow Governor Walker to reduce the generosity of government health and pension benefits to close Wisconsin’s budget gap.

Walker also proposes significant steps to restore a nonpartisan civil service: He would allow government employees in Wisconsin to keep their jobs without paying union dues. Unions would have to demonstrate support among employees in an annual secret-ballot vote in order to remain recognized as the employees’ bargaining representative. The state government would also end collection of union dues through its payroll system. The changes would remove the special privileges that inflate government unions’ political clout.

Other states should follow Wisconsin’s lead and cease collective bargaining with government unions. Government collective bargaining raises the cost of public services, politicizes the civil service, and directs tax dollars to special interests. The arguments in favor of collective bargaining do not apply to government: The government earns no profits and has a monopoly on its services. Government unions bargain to get more money from taxpayers. This does not serve the public’s interests. Elected representatives, not unions, should have the final say on government policy.

States should also stop subsidizing union politicking. The law should not force government employees to hand over hundreds of dollars a year to unions, and should not subsidize union fundraising. Stopping this would go a long way toward restoring a nonpartisan civil service. American government should once again serve the needs of the people.

I hope you’ve been taking notes because there may be a test soon.

Next year, Yeh!

Useful Idiots

The term “useful idiot” is believed to have been coined by Vladimir Lenin. It originally described liberal Communist sympathizers in Western nations who, as the Soviet leader explained, would “sell us (Soviet Russia) the rope with which we will hang them (the West).”

Today’s useful idiots are a swath from that same politically correct cloth. They comprise: secular “progressives” (to include the liberal media); pinko anarchists and other Berkeley-types; President Obama and his motley stable of cracked czars and policy advisors; and the majority of Democrats in Congress.

Only the role of “international-villain-bent-on-world-domination” has changed. We’ve gone from the Soviet hammer and sickle to the Islamic crescent moon and star.

Abraham Lincoln once said: “America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.”

Our own useful idiots on the American left represent every bit the threat to both this great Republic and her unalienable freedoms as do the Muslim extremists with whom they play footsy. Liberals are the naïve, codependent enablers of a global Islamic-fascist movement bent on taking-down the “Great Satan” and his “Zionist” ally, Israel.

Although their long-term goals differ significantly, militant “progressives” and radical Islamists have a common mid-range vision: The left seeks to “repeal and replace,” if you will, our Constitutional Republic with a Euro-style secular-socialist utopia. Hard-line Islamists seek to destroy us outright and supplant our government with a global Islamic State.

Exhibit A, of course, is the “Muslim Brotherhood” – a worldwide Islamic-fascist organization heartily embraced in recent weeks by the mainstream media and the larger “progressive” movement. The Brotherhood, in its own words, seeks to “destroy” our “Western civilization from within…so that it is eliminated and God’s religion (Islam) is made victorious over all other religions.”

Frank Gaffney’s Center for Security Policy explains the group’s objective concisely: “The Muslim Brotherhood was founded in Egypt in 1928. Its express purpose was two-fold: (1) to implement Shariah law worldwide, and (2) to re-establish the global Islamic State (caliphate).”

Although the Muslim Brotherhood, Al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations certainly represent a sizeable menace, there remains a more subtle, yet equally ominous threat to our way of life.

A friend copied me on an an email from the National Muslim Law Students Association promoting an upcoming conference at Penn Law this month. And what I read turned my stomach..

The conference was titled: "Constructive Roles for Islamic Law in Western Society

“Constructive roles?” Hmmm?. “For Shariah law?” Further down I learned that Asifa Quraishi who is a University of Wisconsin law professor and founding member of the National Association of Muslim Lawyers, is to speak.

Among other things, Quraishi has advocated incorporating Shariah law, through “local Muslim tribunals,” into the US judiciary.

In a paper headlined: "No Altars: A Survey of Islamic Family Law in the United States,"she wrote: “The attitude of the US courts to the rise of these tribunals is yet unknown, but there is indication that some judges would welcome the existence of reliable arbiters of Islamic family law issues, and may even be undertaking their own consultation from Muslim authorities in the interim.”

This begs the question: Which parts of Shariah do we incorporate? The provision that renders women chattel to be beaten or killed with impunity? If that were adopted in Arizona, the Iraqi who killed his daughter by running her over with his Jeep would now be free instead of facing 42 years behind bars. And her “crime”, if you are interested? She was becoming  too “Westernized”. Or how about the death penalty for homosexuals? What about the part offering the choice between conversion to Islam, enslavement or death?

Keep in mind, Quraishi is no fly-by-night radical. She was actually tapped by the Obama administration to accompany Hillary Clinton at last year’s UN Commission on the Status of Women. 

This is frog in the pot kind of stuff. Whereas violent Islamic terrorists might prefer to take us out instantly via a suicide bomber, more “moderate” Islamists appear to favor bringing down Western civilization from within by turning up the heat ever-so-slowly. And they’re using liberal academia and our own constitutional freedoms to do it.

This mainstreaming of radical Islam, to include Shariah law, has prompted lawmakers in Oklahoma to pass – and 13 other states to introduce – laws blocking consideration of Shariah by judges on the bench. Not a bad idea when you consider that five of nine US Supreme Court Justices have admitted weighing international law while ruling on cases.

Yes, the useful idiots will, no doubt, brand this kind of pushback as intolerant “Islamophobia” while completely ignoring or questioning the irrefutable desire, shared by Muslims of many stripes, to impose the global caliphate upon the international “infidel” collective.

That’s because they’re idiots.

Indeed, if the American left has its way, we may just “tolerate” ourselves right out of existence.

Tea for Who?

Not too many people know why the “Tea Party” is thus named. Hopefully, a few would hark back to their third grade classes and cite Boston Harbor back in 1773 and that, of course, is part of it. But I doubt that many would know that TEA is an acronym for “Taxed Enough Already”.

Last year, Obama established a bipartisan debt-reduction commission; and then ignored its findings, which called for unpopular reductions in entitlements and across-the-board spending cuts. His first two budgets led to the largest deficits in U.S. history. The ensuing $3 trillion dollars in red ink prompted the Tea Party movement and led to the largest midterm defeat of the Democratic Party in the House of Representatives since 1938.

Obama has proposed a new budget with an even larger, $1.6 trillion deficit. That record federal borrowing prompted columnist Charles Krauthammer to describe it as Louis XV indulgence, an allusion to the wild royal spending that eventually brought about the French Revolution.

Even Newsweek editor at large Evan Thomas, who once gushed that Obama stood "above the world" as some "sort of God," called the president's new budget a "profile in cowardice." After Obama leaves office, a perfect storm of rising international interest rates, an anemic dollar and panic on the part of foreign lenders may force an end to this unhinged American rush to borrow and blow what it has not earned.

Gas prices in many parts of the country are nearing $4 a gallon; it could get even worse as unrest spreads throughout the oil-exporting Middle East. Yet the Obama administration once again seems to see no crisis.

It has curtailed new leases for offshore oil exploration for seven years and some, admittedly, well-meaning liberals may applaud this as a way to protect the environment. But, many of the areas that are now off-limits to American-based companies are in international waters and not even Obama the Omnipotent can prevent operations there by other countries such as China and Venezuela. So, the marine environment is not protected from anything and all we’ve achieved is to deprive the US economy and American companies and workers of the benefits that could have been ours.  Furthermore, Obama has exempted thousands of acres in the West from new drilling and he will not reconsider opening up small areas of Alaska with known large oil reserves.

Instead, the administration in 2009 pushed through cap-and-trade legislation in the House on the dubious proposition that, in times of unusually cold American winters, the planet is warming up. Accordingly, the administration would like to tax further the already high price of fossil fuels rather than go all out to look for more. Yet importing more oil from abroad and growing more subsidized biofuels at home will lead to a disastrous trifecta of borrowing even more money, ensuring greater global pollution and causing higher world food prices.

Obamacare -- the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act -- was pushed through the Senate in 2009 through backroom deal-making and special perks for fence-sitting senators. The premise was that it would save both patients and the nation billions of dollars. But updated estimates now suggest that the takeover of health care will cost the country about $2 trillion over the next decade while disrupting and making existing health plans more costly.

That worry may explain why the administration has quietly granted waivers from its own "affordable" plan to some 700 organizations covering 2 million workers -- 40 percent of them union members. Long after the president has left office, everyone else who is not so privileged and not exempted will have to live with the consequence of a cumbersome and costly new federal health bureau.

Obama just weighed in on the Wisconsin budget deadlock, suggesting that Gov. Scott Walker was out to punish public-sector unions more than to figure out a way to close a $3 billion state deficit. But unlike the federal government, Walker cannot print money, and he cannot so easily raise taxes without losing residents who might flee to lower-tax states. Bernanke has come up with the preposterous claim that “printing money stimulates the economy.” If that is the case, I assume he also believes that thermostats create heat. That Obama wants unions to know he is on their side is clear; that he cares how the people of Wisconsin are going to pay for sky-high public-employee wages, benefits and health care is not so evident.

In these lean times of nearly 10 percent unemployment and rapid hikes in gas and food prices, Obama has chastised "fat cat" Wall Street bankers, the wealthy who jet to the Super Bowl, those who junket to Las Vegas, and in general suggested that strapped American families might wish to "sacrifice" and "put off a vacation." But in "let them eat cake" style, the first family seems tone-deaf to the potential symbolism of postponing its own exclusive vacations. Michele Obama just returned from skiing at an elite Vail, Colo., resort. Last summer in Marie Antoinette fashion, she jetted to the  Costa del Sol in Spain for a costly Mediterranean vacation. The rich playground at Martha's Vineyard, not Camp David, seems now to be the favorite presidential recession-era getaway spot.

So, what's Obama doing while our economy is being destroyed and while the Middle East is in turmoil and innocent Americans are being butchered by Somali pirates? Well, he and his puppet Attorney General, Eric Holder, have made a unilateral decision to ignore "The Defense of Marriage Act" which is the law of this land and is one of the many laws that they both swore to uphold. That's what!   

Shortly after Obama leaves office, there'll be no cake for us but instead we'll be eating crow. Then a less eloquent president will have to balance budgets, pay off trillions in new debt, develop more energy, come up with a sane health-care policy, and in symbolic fashion have the first family share the sacrifice of a more mundane lifestyle.

Roll on 2012.

Wah, Wah, Wah

There are two periods in a child’s upbringing that can strike terror into actual or potential parents’ psyches. One is the terrible teens, complete with acne, puberty and the attendant hormonal thunderstorms.

And the other is the terrible twos. Both though do have one thing in common which is that neither offspring wants to listen to the parent while the difference is that the latter will have you branded as “the worst parent ever” with all their friends and anyone else who will listen.

But there is good news which is that the former will just go to their room and slam the door. The latter, however, will need yet another diaper change just after he or she lays face down in the middle of the produce aisle of the grocery store with fists and shoes drumming their protest.

I shall leave you to draw upon your own experience or instincts when I turn to little Chrissy Matthews on MSNBC and ask you to decide if he, little Chrissy, is a teen or a two.

Gallup conducted a poll just in time for President’s Day, which attempted to rate presidents according to American voters.

And, here’s how it came out;

Ronald Reagan: 19%
Abraham Lincoln: 14%
Bill Clinton: 13%
John Kennedy: 11%
George Washington: 10%
Franklin Roosevelt: 8%
Barack Obama: 5%
Theodore Roosevelt: 3%
Harry Truman: 3%

For the anally-retentive, the poll does not define the choice of the remaining 14%

In other words, Ronald Reagan was number one and Obama was not going to win a medal.

Now that was more than enough for little Chrissy to lose it, which he did a couple of nights ago . And I quote.

“Well, today's George Washington's birthday, by the way. You can call it President's Day if you're buying a mattress. Otherwise, forget it. A new Gallup poll rates which presidents the American people think are best. By the way, this is a memory quiz more than a historic quiz. ………… The greatest president in history, according to the American people with their limited memory, is Ronald Reagan.”

Then he continued, “Keep in mind, these are not historian rankings. These are people's. By the way, they should insist before anybody participates in one of these ridiculous polls, "Please list the presidents and then pick the best." Don't just go with the ones you can remember. It's like the greatest movie of all times was the one I just went to.”

By the way, note the less than immaculate use of the English language and this from someone who sometimes claims to be a journalist but at others wants to be known as a commentator. I personally would deny Matthews either label. Try rabble-rouser or Obama cheerleader instead.

Isn't it interesting though, that Matthews had no problem with Obama being listed even though he's been in office for only two years and currently is the only president besides Roosevelt to have an unemployment rate above eight percent for this many months?

Beyond this, given the "Hardball" host's adoration for Clinton, would he have groused if one of the two presidents in our history to have been impeached took top honors?

As for the memory issue, Matthews must be ignoring the appearance on this list of presidents long gone such as both Roosevelts, Truman, Eisenhower, and especially Lincoln, Washington and Jefferson.

Does it really appear folks have memory issues when Abraham Lincoln comes in second in this kind of poll?

This seems especially absurd as according to Gallup, "Reagan, Lincoln, or John F. Kennedy has been at the top of this 'greatest president' list each time this question has been asked in eight surveys over the last 12 years."

As such, Matthews' anger has nothing to do with people's memories or their intellectual capacities. He just can't stand the idea that Reagan ever comes in first at anything.

Pretty juvenile for a man that hosts an American cable news program, wouldn't you agree?

But is he a teen or a two?

The State of The Unions

There she was in a moment of serious, genuine indignation.

Rachel Maddow on MSNBC this last week bemoaned the "horrific reality" that not only were abortions NOT being performed in south central Kansas since the death of George Tiller, abortion doctor, but that pro-life protesters had the nerve to go to homes of other similar practitioners and hold signs in silence encouraging them to not open up new practices.

The sin these people had committed was the brute, horrific, intimidation that their mere presence would signal to any and all who sought the opportunity to kill children while still preborn.

I wonder what Ms. Maddow believes about the rent-a-mobs that Obama had bussed to Madison, Wisconsin this week.

Late on Friday the news cycle was abuzz that both Obama's campaign organization as well as the Democratic National Committee were both utilizing significant resources to bring tens of thousands of out-of-state protesters to march on the capital grounds in Madison, Wisconsin to interfere in what amounts to a state matter. Some of those protestors were dispatched to the private home of the Wisconsin Governor while others went  to the homes of Republican state legislators.

To be specific the protesters were objecting to ending the ability for union leadership to stifle the attempts for the state to work alongside the union to achieve extremely modest compromises, so that no state workers would lose their job.

What was the Governor asking the state employees to give up? A little bit of money.

How little? 5% towards retirement pensions and 12% towards health care coverage.

In other words, the state of Wisconsin was still willing to guarantee 95% of the pension, and 88% of the health care costs for state employees, and in doing so would be able to keep all current state employees, in a word, employed.

In New York City, Mayor Bloomberg has been unable to get local teachers' unions to make similar compromises and on Friday announced the city would be slashing the employee count by thousands. Ohio, California, New York, New Jersey and other states all face similar dilemmas.

But let's understand this clearly. A governor of a state, elected on a promise of trying to bring fiscal discipline to a state budget process, asks for small sacrifices while still guaranteeing full employment and between 88%-95% of the original benefits promised, is being protested--by largely protestors who were bussed in by the president and all parties who are loyal to him.

Hey - it's Chicago brute politics at its best!

The truth is, Obama should have kept his mouth shut and not butted in to the business of the state of Wisconsin. He's not a resident of the state, and it's not a matter that concerns the federal government, hence he has no compelling interest to interfere.

On the other hand, Governor Walker does. His decision to send troopers fanned across the state in search of legislators not showing up for work was entirely appropriate.

The progressives in Wisconsin may not like the direction the new government is headed in. But they lost at the ballot box in November as Wisconsin swept conservatives to power in the majority of local, state, and federal races in 2010. A stunning reversal for what had become one of the real playgrounds for liberals in years past.

All of this makes Obama's interference, busing in out-of-staters, and making appearances in Wisconsin media so distasteful. It's as though the President wishes to dictate his will upon a state where the voters strongly disagree. Isn't that the action of tyrants?

And what of the lack of integrity in the lives of the protestors? Thousands of teachers calling in "sick?" Hundreds of thousands of school children were abandoned by those who had taken public responsibility to teach them. Additionally Democratic State Senators abandoned their post, their oaths, and their obligations.

Much of this chaos pushed forward by organizations dedicated to the re-election of Obama.

Something tells me this will backfire badly against the Democrats, Obama, and the unions. This wave of ginned up angst, abandonment of responsibility, and the attempt to strong-arm the taxpayers of state of Wisconsin will be remembered for a long time to come.

On Friday morning, local television and radio shows took calls from Wisconsin citizens, most of whom lived in Madison or very near, some of whom were teachers and more than willing to go along with the Governor's modest request. Though they didn't like the idea of what amounted to pay cuts, they weren't willing to send their state into chaos over the matter.

In essence they seemed more willing to be decent citizens, cooperating, as to the fiscal realities the state is facing.

The dictatorial, thuggish, tyrannical organization of out-of-state mobs as sanctioned by Obama may be familiar to his Chicago roots, and similar to the methods of Jesse Jackson, but it runs exactly the opposite to the ideal of decency.

And if she were honest, even Rachel Maddow should be forced to agree.

But I regret she isn’t …….

Not a Lie. Just a Terminological Inexactitude

That's how Winston Churchill got around the protocol of the British House of Commons while still conveying the fact that some member or another was not telling the truth.


Politicians will promise just about anything to be elected. They might offer a chicken in every pot or even vow to end wars in places like Iraq or Afghanistan. That's just marketing. But, once they get elected, we expect them to be honest, at the very least.

At least we used to. But not any longer. Not since the $787 billion stimulus bill passed in 2010. Now, two years after it was signed into law on Feb. 17, it's easy to see why we've given up on political honesty. As Rep. Joe Wilson said to Obama: "You lie."

He wasn't kidding.

The whole premise of the need for such an incredibly huge spending bill was jobs. As The New York Times explained it on Oct. 22, 2009, "the Obama administration's forecast at the start of the year, which predicted that unemployment, would not climb much above 8 percent." That should earn Obama a spot in the Liar's Hall of Fame.

Now in 2011, unemployment isn't even close to 8 percent and it went as high as 10.1 percent. Unemployment has been over 9 percent since May of 2009, a 21-month stretch of pain for millions of Americans. And even though we've had some big drops in the number in the last two months, no one on the left or right believes them.

Yet you have hardly ever heard the media tell you about Obama's failed stimulus plan. That's right, failed. If you promise the largest spending bill in history is needed to keep unemployment below 8 percent and the jobless rate spends 21 months at 9 percent or higher, then you failed. Big time.

You probably didn't know that. That's because ABC, CBS, and NBC mentioned that promise just nine times in nearly two years of stimulus coverage. The remaining 98 percent of the time, Obama's disastrous overspending was ignored.

Ninety-eight percent. Super Bowl quarterback Aaron Rodgers completed about 62 percent of his passes and was named the game MVP. If he had completed 98 percent, he'd get elected to the Senate from Wisconsin for life.

Now look at how the media did completing the trip from promise to disappointment. They mustered less than 2 percent - equal to roughly one completion in the entire game. That's a stunning failure by even their pathetic standards.

Imagine President George W. Bush had failed in such an amazing way. Do you think the networks would have talked about it just nine times out of 589 stories? Not hardly. When Bush was president, network reporters covered unemployment so thoroughly, those without a job almost got a story per person.

Back in 2005, when unemployment never went above 5.3 percent, NBC reporter Tom Costello complained about "an economy just a bit off-key." We're now told America is years away from such a positive employment picture. That's not off key, that's like Yoko Ono trying to sing.

The news media take on the 2005 numbers was, naturally, mostly bad. The broadcast networks focused on job losses in slightly more than half the reports. In one typical story, Jim Acosta of the "CBS Evening News" left his viewers with a compelling image of the 8,700 job cuts at General Motors: "Just three days before Thanksgiving, GM is carving up its work force like a Butterball turkey."

The way the media attacked Bush on unemployment can be summed up in one classic Dan Rather moment from Oct. 8, 2004. The anchor led off his broadcast with the question: "Tonight, where are the jobs?"

Unemployment was at 5.4 percent at the time - about 4 million more jobs than we have in 2011. Now unemployment is allegedly at 9 percent and both liberal and conservative economists consider that number unrealistically low. NBC explained it well: "While the December drop from 9.4 percent to 9.0 percent might have looked nice on paper, digging through the real numbers shows the actual jobs picture hasn't improved at all."

The latest Gallup poll shows the unemployment rate has spiked up to 10.3 percent, and is not the 9.0 percent being reported by the Obama administration.

To sane, rational Americans, that would mean that the stimulus failed and that we shouldn't repeat our mistakes. Perhaps even try spending less.

Journalists are neither sane, nor rational. When $787 billion failed, they wanted more. CBS's Katie Couric asked if "the economy needs another shot in the arm" and John Yang of NBC told viewers Obama was "facing pressure for a new stimulus package." to solve the problem.

We're at the second anniversary of this disaster and its budget time again. Even the GOP is merely trying to make minor cuts while our budget is close to twice what it was at the end of the Clinton presidency.

It's time we admitted that the only thing that was a bigger failure than the stimulus was the news coverage it generated.

Heads You Lose, Tails You Lose!

I always wanted to be a political Dr. Seuss. I’ve always wanted the ability to tell a meaningful story that even liberals can understand.

Well, it’s here but I didn’t write it, it wrote itself.

At the time in their lives when little kids reveled in Dr. Seuss, they were also so eager to learn their letters and their numbers. Every parent remembers the time his or her offspring could count to ten and, not too far behind, came the jubilation over the mastery of simple mathematical skills.

You put down three little bricks on the table and you asked him or her to count them. Then you took one brick away and asked for a recount. With that task completed, you removed the rest and asked for a brick.

“Daddy,” they squealed,” There aren’t any bricks left.”

How come a three year old gets it but the SEIU doesn’t.

Welcome to the reckoning. We have met the fiscal apocalypse, and it is smack dab in the middle of the heartland. As Wisconsin goes, so goes the nation. Let us pray it does not go the way of the decrepit welfare states of the European Union.

The lowdown: State government workers in the Badger State pay piddling amounts for generous taxpayer-subsidized health benefits. Faced with a $3.6 billion budget hole and a state constitutional ban on running a deficit, new GOP Gov. Scott Walker wants public unions to pony up a little more. He has proposed raising the public employee share of health insurance premiums from less than 5 percent to 12.4 percent. He is also pushing for state workers to cover half of their pension contributions. To spare taxpayers the soaring costs of Byzantine union-negotiated work rules, he would rein in Big Labor's collective bargaining power to cover only wages unless approved at the ballot box.

As the free-market MacIver Institute in Wisconsin points out, the benefits concessions Walker is asking public union workers to make would still maintain their health insurance contribution rates at the second-lowest among Midwest states for family coverage. Moreover, a new analysis by benefits think tank HCTrends shows that the new rate "would also be less than the employee contributions required at 85 percent of large Milwaukee_area employers."

This modest call for shared sacrifice has triggered the wrath of the White House-Big Labor-Michael Moore axis. On Thursday, President Obama lamented the "assault on unions." AFL-CIO and Service Employees International Union bosses dubbed Walker the "Mubarak of the Midwest" while their minions toted posters of Walker's face superimposed on Hitler's. Moore goaded thousands of striking union protesters to "shut down" the "new Cairo" while the state's Democratic legislators bailed on floor debate over the union reform package.

Education Secretary Arne Duncan spurned the opportunity to condemn thousands of Wisconsin public school teachers for lying about being "sick" and shutting down at least eight school districts across the state to attend capitol protests (many of whom dragged their students on a social justice field trip with them). Instead, Duncan defended teachers for "doing probably the most important work in society." Only striking government teachers could win federal praise for NOT doing their jobs.

Yes, the so-called progressives truly believe that bringing American union workers into the 21st century in line with the rest of the workforce is tantamount to dictatorship.

Yes, the so-called progressives truly believe that by walking off their jobs and out of their classrooms, they are "putting children first."

If ever there were proof that public unions no longer work in the public interest, this is it. Big Labor dragoons workers into exclusive representation agreements, forces them to pay compulsory dues that fatten Democratic political coffers and then has the chutzpah to cast itself as an Egyptian-style "freedom" and "human rights" movement.

Meanwhile, union leaders elsewhere are quietly forcing their low-wage members to share the sacrifice in order to preserve teetering health funds. In New York state, Skidmore College campus janitors, dining service workers and other maintenance employees received late notice from the SEIU that 4.15 percent of their gross earnings will now be deducted from their paychecks to cover the cost of the health plan provided through the behemoth 1199 SEIU Greater New York Benefit Fund. (If the name sounds familiar, it's because this is one of several privileged SEIU affiliates that has received an Obamacare waiver.)

These workers are forced to join the union in order to preserve their jobs, and unlike non-union workers, they are locked into a single health plan. The SEIU has now decreed that they must pay new fees to include spouses on their plans and has hiked employee co-pays for doctor visits and prescription drugs.

What's necessary for New York union workers is necessary for Wisconsin union workers -- and for the rest of the protected union worker class in bankrupt and near-bankrupt states across America. The "persuasion of power" so ruthlessly and recklessly exercised by the SEIU and its thuggish allies must be broken by the moral courage of fiscal discipline. It's now or never.

And let us not forget that the protesters in Wisconsin can’t win.

That governor does not have a Ben Bernanke, ever willing to do his master’s bidding and print money.  

Instead, he’s stuck with a state “balanced budget mandate” which he knew about when he ran last fall. He also knew the voters of Wisconsin were with him because they voted for him a few months ago. And, if he needed further endorsement, those voters are not yelling and screaming in Madison.

The yellers and the screamers are from elsewhere and their cheerleader sits in the Oval Office; the Community Organizer in Chief.

So why do the protestors in Madison lose the war even if they “win” this one battle? As we said, Wisconsin law mandates a balanced budget and so the only recourse; massive layoffs.

Would you rather have a job?