Inside the Union Mind

It has been interesting to see all these union people jumping up and down and chanting their chants up in Wisconsin.

"What do we want?" ("Fill in the blank!") When do we want it?" ("Now!")

"We are..." ("We are...") "Union!" ("Union!")

It's like watching someone else's religion.

Some of the scenes are like time travel back to the sixties. Guitars. Joan Baez freedom songs. It's really pathetic.

In my column on the subject, "The Unions Have No Clothes," I identify the difference between public sector and private sector unions. With the former, the relationship between management and labor is symbiotic, not adversarial. (1) Unions contribute money for the re-election of their employers (if they're Democrats). (2) The employers don't use their own money to pay their employees. They tax it from other people or they borrow it. I thank George Will for pointing out the difference in his much finer column, "Out of Wisconsin."

The heart of my argument is this.

Margaret Thatcher faced a similar issue when she became British Prime Minister in 1979. ... Thatcher knew she would have to face down the unions over where sovereignty and the locus of democracy lay in Great Britain, in the elected government or in the labor unions. The clash in Wisconsin shows the same question is at issue in America today.

These union people speak about the "fight for democracy," and they compare their fight in Wisconsin to the fight for democracy in the Middle East and North Africa. It seems that "democracy" means widespread unionization and consequent union domination of politics. That's what Britain had between WWII and Mrs. Thatcher. It is also the same reasoning that supported the claim of East European communist dictatorships calling themselves "democracies" (like the German Democratic Republic, or communist East Germany). These are the same unions that want to do away with the secret ballot by "card check" legislation that would allow union thugs to approach people--maybe at their homes--with cards for them to sign...no pressure, of course.

The left doesn't see how these obscenely generous public service employee compensation packages are bankrupting government. To them it is not a spending problem, but a revenue problem. Ben Manski of the Liberty Tree Foundation says what seems self-evident to the "soak-the-rich" end of the political spectrum. According to him, everybody--public and private sector--should be able to quit work at 50 and be paid full salary for the rest of their lives. Paying for it should be no problem: raise taxes on the rich and the corporations. It's as simple as that. Lots of money there. Free for the taking.



In light of this, consider how closely tied the White House is to union power. Richard Trumka, the president of the AFL-CIO, is a weekly advisor to the White House.



This union dominated world of Barack Obama's community organizing dreams is an economic and political nightmare. It's good that we are having it out.
*********************
One helpful commenter at the Worldmag column shares four points of difference between public and private sector unions that david Brooks lists in his column:

1. “Private sector unions push against the interests of shareholders and management; public sector unions push against the interests of taxpayers.” (David Brooks, Op-ed, New York Times, Feb. 21, 2011).

2. “Private sector union members know that their employers could go out of business, so they have an incentive to mitigate their demands; public sector union members work for state monopolies and have no such interest.” (David Brooks, Op-ed, New York Times, Feb. 21, 2011).

3. “Private sector unions confront managers who have an incentive to push back against their demands. Public sector unions face managers who have an incentive to give into them for the sake of their own survival.” (David Brooks, Op-ed, New York Times, Feb. 21, 2011).

4. “Most important, public sector unions help choose those they negotiate with. Through gigantic campaign contributions and overall clout, they have enormous influence over who gets elected to bargain with them, especially in state and local races.” (David Brooks, Op-ed, New York Times, Feb. 21, 2011).

But how many people in the public discussion just talk about "unions" as though these government worker unions weren't a separate species?

Race, Tyranny, and Christian Politics

None of these columns made Worldmag's top 20 of the year, but they're pretty darn good, even if I do say so myself. I roll out my schtick on race, I state what tyranny is and apply it to public service unions and Charlie Rangel, and I lay out sources of the Colbert-O'Reilly fisticuffs over whether Jesus would identify with the current politics of the Democratic or Republican Party.

"[W]hat we call “race” is a vague and thus questionable basis for identifying people. A race is, after all, only an extended family that reaches far beyond one’s immediate family, community, or clan. As descendents of Adam, we are all part of the same universal family, and thus one “human race.” The census calls me “white,” but for the Census Bureau that category includes everyone from Swedes to Southern Italians, and even Arabs. But I am a Scot, so I am racially Celtic (as are the Irish, the Welsh, and the Bretons of northern France). We are racially distinct from the English, the French, and the Germans. The same significant distinctions exist among Africans, Asians, and people of other regions."
"Our Puzzling Race Problem," December 29, 2010.



"No one asks about the politics of Muhammad. They are perfectly plain in the Sharia Law of Islam and the autocracies of the Middle East. Nor are the politics of Moses in doubt. The Law he gave Israel contained not only moral and ceremonial elements, but also a complete civil law. But Jesus is remarkably different. While having fundamentally transformed the world—and continuing to transform it—He did not come with a primarily political agenda. But what He did and what He taught (and what His apostles and prophets taught) has profound implications for political life as they do for all of life."
"Would Jesus Register Republican?," December 22, 2010.

After quoting Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, David Brooks, and Gov. Tim Pawlenty on the destructive record and nature of government worker unions, I add...

"We political theorists have a technical term for people in government using public authority for private advantage instead of public service. We call it “tyranny.” These unions are organized not to help their members serve the public better but to maximize pay and benefits while minimizing work. Taxpayers want just the opposite (within the bounds of decency, of course). Essentially, government unions are public enemies. Insofar as they control our government (and they do), they have institutionalized tyranny from within our public administration."
"The Tyranny of Government Unions," December 15, 2010.

I applied the same principle to New York Congressman Charles Rangle who has made himself a very wealthy man in time he has been in office (40 years!), though the people he represents are as poor and miserable as they've ever been.

"If most people in a district live in public housing, their representative should also live in public housing. If most people in a district are served by appallingly bad public schools, their representative should have his or her children (if there are any) in those same schools. Finding this unacceptable, congressmen would soon start supporting effective ways for opening up economic opportunities for their neighbors to better themselves. Otherwise, politicians have that much less incentive to do what they legitimately can to improve their people’s overall quality of life. They become, one might say, political farmers instead of political representatives, bilking the people instead of benefiting them, standing on their backs rather than 'having their backs,' as we say."
"Prince Charlie and the People," December 8, 2010.

Happy new year.

Killing Prosperity and Security As Policy

The Democrats are working at full throttle to get this country under the firm and detailed direction of left wing bureaucrats before their two year window of opportunity closes in January of 2011 when the new Congress is sworn in. Friday's Wall Street Journal opinion page lays out what that means to us, our children, and our grandchildren. Peter Wallison explains how they are choking the source of our prosperity. Mortimer Zuckerman shows how they squandering our existing prosperity. Douglas Feith and Abram Shulsky explain how they are casting away the nuclear umbrella that has been securing our prosperity and all our liberties.

Wallison points out in "Republicans and America's New Deal" that even though Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal actually lengthened and deepened the Depression, President Obama and the old liberals in Congress has pressed forward with similar policies.

The signature initiatives of the Obama administration were very much in the mold of the old New Deal—the heedless spending, a stimulus plan focused on government employment, a health-care program that brought one-sixth of the economy under government control, and now the financial regulatory bill that would control another sixth. ...

Because of ObamaCare, the failed stimulus package, and the massive deficits that will afflict the country for years to come, the Democrats are likely to pay dearly in November. But not before those who are still in the thrall of the New Deal will have taken the U.S. financial system back almost 75 years. ...


The only good thing to come from this spectacle is that it shows the business community and American voters that the Democratic Party—despite the moderate face of the Obama presidential campaign—has not outgrown their New Deal mentality. Democrats are still the party of government and the special interests that cling to it.

In "The Bankrupting of America," Mortimer Zuckerman turns the spotlight on how the huge public service unions and the party of government serve one another at the expense not only of taxpayer, but of the country's long-term economic viability. Think of GM and California, but with no possibility of a bailout.

Public unions organize voting campaigns for politicians who, on election, repay their benefactors by approving salaries and benefits for the public sector, irrespective of whether they are sustainable. ...

What we suffer is a ruinously expensive collaboration between elected officials and unionized state and local workers, purchased with taxpayer money. ... No wonder the Service Employees International Union has become the nation's fastest-growing union: It represents government and health-care workers. Half of its 700,000 California members are government employees. More and more, it wins not on the picket line but at the negotiating table, where it backs up traditional strong-arming with political power. It spends vast amounts of money on initiatives that keep the government growing and the gravy flowing. ...

City government was developed to serve its citizens. Today the citizenry is working in large part to serve the government. It is always hard to shrink government spending. It is particularly difficult when public-sector unions have such a unique lever of pressure. We have to escape this cycle or it will crush us.

Finally,  Barack Obama is trying to bring us a nuclear free world, and isn't that special. His government's statement on how to reach this blessed goal is expressed in a document called the Nuclear Posture Review (NPR). The Defense Department states that, "The Nuclear Posture Review is a legislatively-mandated review that establishes U.S. nuclear policy, strategy, capabilities and force posture for the next five to ten years." In "The Dangerous Illusion of 'Nuclear Zero'," Douglas Feith and Abram Shulsky, both of the Hudson Institute, argue that the one awkward little catch to fulfilling this dream is that, as the document itself tells us, it requires world peace as a precondition. But on we go, just the same.

One of the conditions that would permit the United States and others to give up their nuclear weapons "without risking greater international instability and insecurity" is "the resolution of regional disputes that can motivate rival states to acquire and maintain nuclear weapons." Another condition is not only "verification methods and technologies capable of detecting violations of disarmament obligations," but also "enforcement measures strong and credible enough to deter such violations."

The first condition would require ending the Arab-Israeli conflict, settling the Korean War, resolving Kashmir and the other India-Pakistan disputes, and defusing Iran's tensions with its neighbors and with the U.S. It also means solving any other significant conflicts that might arise.

Verification would be tough, but even if technology could solve the problem, the question remains: What kind of "enforcement measures" do those who drafted the NPR imagine? ... "Strong enough" enforcement would have to include military measures. Is the idea here a U.N. military force that could fight large wars, as some diplomats proposed when the U.N. Charter was negotiated in the late 1940s? Or would military enforcement be the duty of the strongest state, presumably the U.S.? Only an arrangement verging on world government—an entity that could deploy overwhelming military power against a violator without interference by other powers—could possibly fill the bill. ...

In the event of a serious crisis, countries would race to reconstitute their nuclear arsenals. The winner would enjoy a fleeting nuclear monopoly, and then come under severe pressure to use its nuclear weapons decisively. The resulting instability could make the competitive mobilizations of the European armies in 1914 look like a walk in the park.

No matter how hard the polls turn against them, these New Left Democrats who emerged from the radicalism of the 1960s (with whom Barack Obama is noticeably comfortable) will drive home their political and economic agenda because they are sure that they know better than everyone else, and also because they are moved by a moral passion that is as deaf any appeal to the historical record, the economically obvious, and even their own political self-interest as the most fanatical jihadist.

Union Made. Union Proud.

Before there were auto industry bailouts, there was...DODGE AIRES!



GM is now bankrupt. In the 1950s, it employed over 500,000 people and enjoyed a roughly 50% market share. Now it's bust. The reason for this is plain from these figures: GM employs 92,000 workers and supports 500,000 retirees. It is what Mark Steyn calls a vast retirement community that makes cars on the side.

It is the trade unions that brought GM to it's knees. The New York Times reports Don Skidmore, president of UAW Local 735, saying, "I was angry at first, then I cried, then I got angry again." Did he really expect that GM could continue as a viable company with powerful unions forcing such suicidal business conditions on it in a competitive world economy? No, he and his union pals were not thinking past their bellies.

An even larger issue is that these unions dominate the party that is now running the country and restructuring the economy.

In a democracy, you get what you ask for.
David Brooks in "The Quagmire Ahead" gets right to the point in his summary of the evils that will flow from this move. GM execs now have no incentive to improve the company. The government will not let it fail. The way ahead is now conflict avoidance with the unions and the government. In addition, we will soon see what effect the subsidization of one company by the government has on its competitors in the industry. Speaking of the government, despite what the President said about being a "hands off" owner of the company, Democrats are already lining up with with political plans for what they want to do with the company. Building so-called "green" cars that perhaps nobody wants to buy is just one of them.

Auto Bailouts and Sinking American Prospects

In the 1970s, my dad bought American cars on point of principle. He thought it was right to support the North American auto industry. Eventually, however, he found that American car manufacturers were doing him no favors in return. So since the late 1970s, he has bought Peugeot, Saab, Volvo, and Acura (which is Honda). I drive a Honda Odyssey.

As consumers, we direct our money to the companies we think will give us the best products. But recently, the so-called Big Three American automakers went to Washington asking for $15 billion of your money and mine to make up for the money we have not been spending on their cars. The trouble has been not only that many Americans have been preferring the products of other companies. But even when we have been buying GM, Ford and Chrysler, we have been paying only the market price, which is considerably less than what the companies need to make a profit. So having failed in the marketplace, they asked the government to take from us what we have freely chosen not to give them.

Congress refused. But on Friday, President Bush gave them, by executive decree, over $17 billion from the Congressionally established $700 billion slush fund (TARP, the Troubled Asset Relief Program) designated for stabilizing the financial markets.

George Will sees not just an unwise use of public funds, but a deterioration of our constitutional system of government.

The expansion of government entails an increasingly swollen executive branch and the steady enlargement of executive discretion. This inevitably means the eclipse of Congress and attenuation of the rule of law.

Mark Steyn tells us why these car companies are failing and will continue to fail.

General Motors, like the other two geezers of the Old Three, is a vast retirement home with a small loss-making auto subsidiary. The UAW is AARP in an Edsel: It has 3 times as many retirees and widows as "workers" (I use the term loosely). GM has 96,000 employees but provides health benefits to a million people. How do you make that math add up? Not by selling cars: Honda and Nissan make a pre-tax operating profit per vehicle of around $1,600; Ford, Chrysler and GM make a loss of between $500 and $1,500. That's to say, they lose money on every vehicle they sell. Like Henry Ford said, you can get it in any color as long as it's red.

Steyn actually takes you on a jolly ride through several aspects of America's present decline: "See the USA from your Chevrolet: An hereditary legislature, a media fawning its way into bankruptcy, its iconic coastal states driving out innovators and entrepreneurs, the arrival of the new messiah heralded only by the leaden dirge of "We Three Kings Of Ol' Detroit Are/Seeking checks we traverse afar," and Route 66 looking ever more like a one-way dead-end street to Bailoutistan."

But he ends upbeat, wishing us all "a very Hopey Changemas."

Whoever said the era of Great Canadians would die with William Shatner haven't been reading Mark Steyn.

Congressional Motors

From the WSJ this morning, under the headline "US Could Take Stakes in Big Three":

WASHINGTON -- Congress and the White House inched toward a financial rescue of the Big Three auto makers, negotiating legislation that would give the U.S. government a substantial ownership stake in the industry and a central role in its restructuring.

But Iowahawk was all over this story way back on November 24th, when he leaked the advertising campaign being considered for the new era of nationalization being planned by the Pelosi Democats.

It's got a "return to the golden 70's" kind of feel to it. What do you think?

************

Innes adds:

Ask any American this question. Would the company that employs you be a better company, make a better product, be more innovative, if it were run by the government? (FYI: Rasmussen finds that "Just 14% Say Government Will Run Big Three Better.")

My closest personal experience with a government run company is the Long Island Rail Road. I like them. The conductors are friendly and the trains run more or less on time. They are yet another reason that I am glad I don't live in New Jersey. But the LIRR runs at a huge loss and the trains travel at half the speed they did forty years ago. That is not what made America great.

How is it that these three companies are faring so poorly in the auto market, whereas Toyota, Honda, Hyundai etc. are all turning profits selling American built cars? Does Congress have any clue? If they did understand, would they have the political will to do what is necessary to free these companies to make a profit? Given their illicit relationship with the unions (it is illicit for Congress, a publicly interested body, to be controlled by unions which are organized to promote narrowly private interests) and their fixation with regulation, especially environmental regulation, it seems highly unlikely.

If the federal government takes control of the banks, the auto industry and the health care system, why should it not also proceed to all the "commanding heights" of the economy? Why should these huge economic entities that control the lives of so many ordinary Americans not come under social control for the benefit of the people instead of the few? As the first post-war British prime minister put it, this would be "the embodiment of our socialist principle of placing the welfare of the nation before any section" or narrow interest. He advocated "a mixed economy developing toward socialism.... The doctrines of abundance, of full employment, and of social security require the transfer to public ownership of certain major economic forces and the planned control in the public interest of many other economic activities."

Perhaps Barack Obama will be remembered as the American Clement Atlee.

If so, we will have to suffer through decades of economic stagnation and self-inflicted misery until we learn our lesson and, in response to our tearful prayers, the Lord mercifully raises up an American Margaret Thatcher to remedy the whole mess.

What Democracy Hath Wrought

The WSJ's Matthew Kaminski's Weekend Interview is with Andy Stern, president of the Service Employees International Union-SEIU, a key interest group among the coalition that is the Democrat party. Union money was second only to Soros money in funding the huge national rush to take government back for the people. One should ignore what the titular heads of the party officially say: it is mostly legerdemain, meant to placate and distract the public, the way a magician misdirects attention in order to pull off a trick, or the way a parent distracts a fussy little one. It is a rarity, always considered a gaffe, when any of them out with what they are really up to. Obama's "spread the wealth" thing for example. Recall the war-room mobilization across the media to renounce the slander of "socialism" against the One? Unlike conservatives, who are unapologetic about being conservatives, it is hard to find a liberal besides Barney Frank who will accept the label. They know most people don't want what they are selling. They have to use subterfuge, Orwellian naming tricks, stealth legislation, the courts, and regulation through executive branch agencies to effect their policies. If taken to a vote by the people, most of the liberal agenda would still be a gleam in the eye of Wiliam Ayers and at a wholesome distance from reality.

Thus, the expectations, proclivities, and demands of leftist interest groups that have delivered us into the hands of the Democrats deserve more attention than those of elected Democrats, who, after all, must live in the limelight and be reelected. The Code Pinks, the Sierra Clubs, the Emily's Lists, NARAL, the trial lawyers, labor unions, ad nauseum, are better barometers than the Democrat political class per se. Kaminski notes in the piece that "universal health care, widespread unionization, stronger regulations on business, profit-sharing for employees, higher taxes -- all that sounds like Western Europe. Mr. Stern considers that a worthy model."

Says Mr Stern:

"I think Western Europe as much as we used to make fun of it has made different trade-offs which may have ended up with a little more unemployment but a lot more equality."

If one considers eleven or twelve percent unemployment merely "a little more", then perhaps that vaunted "equality" might seem a bargain. But then there is a lot packed into that term "equality" under socialism. Those who have seen the Europe of the working and welafare class--those Mr Stern and his ilk pretend to represent so well--understand that the equality offered by socialism is equality of poverty, with a distinctly unimpoverished upper class, reeking of solicitous concern for the masses. Ever seen the size of a flat in Rome or Paris? See what cars they drive in any European city? Wonder why everyone wears black in the cities? (black clothes don't show dirt, and since many people have only small clothing budgets, they must wear the same suits over and over. This partly accounts for the smells on a bus.) On the other hand, for those with union or government jobs--the majority of those who have jobs--things are pretty cushy--short work weeks, Adriatic vacations, retirement at fifty.

Until the thing collapses, which it must. Our unionized auto industry is European socialism writ small, and it is the model for the future Messrs. Soros, Stern, and all the leading lights among the Democrats are bringing to a town near you. We're all GM now.