The Attack Of The Laffer Curve

Art Laffer is an economist famous for his rule, the Laffer Curve. Unlike Paul Krugman, who is a NOBEL prize winning economist, Laffer has, one, actually had his theories work in the real world, two, he hasn't been proven horribly wrong by advocating for a near trillion dollar stimulus as the school solution to our economic meltdown, and three, unlike Krugman, he hasn't yet been economic advisor to a failed criminal enterprise like Enron. I realize these things render Laffer less than qualified to the left, but let's listen to him explain the Laffer Curve anyway:



The Laffer Curve is at the heart of supply side economic theory. Under his theory, tax policy is dynamic. The opposite of that is the claim of the left, that tax policy is static - that raising rates by x percent will always yield x dollars. When the left claimed that the Bush tax cuts caused our deficit, they did so using the canard that, if only we had left taxes high, we would have taken in that much more revenue. The reality was that the Bush tax cuts raised government revenue significantly.

The Laffer curve applies equally in the positive and negative at the state level. Just compare Texas and California.

In response to the Great Recession, Texas resisted the urge to raise taxes and instead cut its spending "to the bone." Today, its economy is "humming," with revenues up over 20% over 2011 and sales tax receipts at an all time high.

California, on the other hand, did not cut spending, it raised taxes to the highest in the nation, fully expecting the money just to roll in. The opposite has occurred. After the vote on increasing tax rates, tax revenues actually fell 10% by a billion dollars.

I wonder how many times the Laffer Curve has to be proven before someone on the left finally admits to its validity. Ha ha - just joking.

At any rate, we are going to get another chance to test it this year, with Obama tax rates taking us back to the Carter era. Anyone want to bet against the curve - that the government will actually collect the $600 billion in new revenues over the next ten years. Only Krugman, Pelosi and a few others living in a fantasy world of socialist economics would ever take that bet. But we as a nation will pay for it.

Tweet

Read More...

Summary only...

California's (& France's) Soak The Rich Scheme Not Quite Working Out As Planned (Updated)

At the urging of unions and the left, Californians recently passed Prop 30, raising state taxes on high earners to the highest in the nation. The left assured voters that the danger of high earners and businesses abandoning California in light of Prop 30 was ridiculous scaremongering. Gov. Brown even commissioned sage academic studies from sociologists at Stanford University to prove it.

This from Breitbart:

California State Controller John Chiang has announced that total state revenue for the month of November 2012 fell $806.8 million, or 10.8%, below budget.

Democrats thought they could hammer “the rich” by convincing voters to pass Proposition 30 to create the highest state income tax in the nation. But it now appears that high income earners have already “voted with their feet” by moving themselves and their businesses out of state, resulting in over $1 billion shortfall in corporate and income taxes last month and the beginning of a new financial crisis.

Who would have guessed that economics trumps sociology. Perhaps Gov Brown should have gotten a Stanford economist of some note to advise the state.

But hey, its not all bad for economy of deep blue California:

As panic spreads that goosing taxes on the rich may have created enough “tax flight” that the California will actually collect less taxes, there was welcome news that a business had committed to opening in the State. Executives of the 99 Cents Only Stores Inc. proclaimed they would be opening a new location in Beverly Hills on formerly posh Rodeo Drive.

Somewhere (probably in Texas), John Galt is laughing uncontrollably.

Here is my one red line. Any attempt to use our tax dollars to bail out failed blue states should be the clarion call for a second civil war. No more of this. The left needs to live with the consequences of their decisions or they will happily bleed us dry. California is one of several states that needs to go into bankruptcy, with all of their union contracts broken, their ridiculous public sector pensions slashed, and their environmental laws removed from the books.

I am going to make a new label for posts of this ilk - "I told you so." I imagine it will get very long between now and 2016.

Update: France is experiencing the same issues as California, as rich frogs hop over the border to Belgium in order to avoid the new, draconian 75% wealth tax recently imposed by France's socialist government. Gerard Depardieu is the latest to go Gault, leading the socialist mayor of Paris to express sorrow at Depardieu's lack of "generosity." So it is now "generosity" when a person is forced to pay taxes at the point of a government gun. The left are insane.

Tweet

Read More...

Summary only...

VDH: The Sacking Of California By The Modern Vandals

This is certainly one of the more depressing posts one can imagine reading - Victor Davis Hanson, writing from his farm in rural California, discusses how the state is descending into anarchy akin to that which marked the start of the Dark Ages.  It is a horrific story that he details:

I am starting to feel as if I am living in a Vandal state, perhaps on the frontier near Carthage around a.d. 530, or in a beleaguered Rome in 455. Here are some updates from the rural area surrounding my farm, taken from about a 30-mile radius. In this take, I am not so much interested in chronicling the flotsam and jetsam as in fathoming whether there is some ideology that drives it.

Last week an ancestral rural school near the Kings River had its large bronze bell stolen. I think it dated from 1911. I have driven by it about 100 times in the 42 years since I got my first license. The bell had endured all those years. Where it is now I don’t know. Does someone just cut up a beautifully crafted bell in some chop yard in rural Fresno County, without a worry about who forged it or why — or why others for a century until now enjoyed its presence?

The city of Fresno is now under siege. Hundreds of street lights are out, their copper wire stripped away. In desperation, workers are now cementing the bases of all the poles — as if the original steel access doors were not necessary to service the wiring. How sad the synergy! Since darkness begets crime, the thieves achieve a twofer: The more copper they steal, the easier under cover of spreading night it is to steal more. Yet do thieves themselves at home with their wives and children not sometimes appreciate light in the darkness? Do they vandalize the street lights in front of their own homes?

In a small town two miles away, the thefts now sound like something out of Edward Gibbon’s bleaker chapters — or maybe George Miller’sRoad Warrior, or the Hughes brothers’ more recent The Book of Eli.Hundreds of bronze commemorative plaques were ripped off my town’s public buildings (and with them all record of our ancestors’ public-spiritedness). I guess that is our version of Trotskyization.

After page after page of chronicling the lawlessness to which rural California is being subjected, Hanson notes that the police in cash-strapped California are far more focused on pinching the middle class - a reliable source of funds - than investigating and arresting the modern Vandals who are destroying all about him.

The state’s reaction to all this is a contorted exercise in blaming the victim, in both the immediate and the abstract senses. Governor Brown wants to raise income taxes on the top two brackets by 1 to 2 percentage points, making them over 11 and 12 percent respectively. That our schools are near dead last in test scores, that many of our main freeways are potholed relics from the 1960s, that we just passed the DREAM Act to extend state financial support for college-age illegal aliens, and that the overtaxed are fleeing the state do not register. Again, those who in theory can pay, should — and should keep quiet about why they must suddenly pay a 12 percent income tax that was not needed, say, in 1991, 1971, or 1961, when test scores were higher, roads better, and communities far safer.

There is, of course, a vague code of silence about who is doing the stealing, although occasionally the most flagrant offenders are caught either by sheriffs or on tape; or, in my typical case, run off only to return successfully at night. In the vast majority of cases, rural central California is being vandalized by gangs of young Mexican nationals or Mexican-Americans — in the latter case, a criminal subset of an otherwise largely successful and increasingly integrated and assimilated near majority of the state’s population. Everyone knows it; everyone keeps quiet about it — even though increasingly the victims are the established local Mexican-American middle class that now runs the city councils of most rural towns and must deal with the costs. . . .

The influx of over 11 million illegal aliens has had a sort of ripple effect that is rarely calibrated. Sixty percent of Hispanic males in California are not graduating from high school. Unemployment in rural California runs about 20 percent. There is less fear now of arrest and incarceration, given the bankruptcy of the state, which, of course, is rarely officially connected even in small part to illegal immigration. Perhaps because illegal immigration poses so many mind-boggling challenges (e.g., probably over $20 billion lost to the state in remittances, the undermining of federal law, the prejudice shown against legal immigration applicants, ethnic favoritism as the engine of amnesty, subterfuge on the part of Mexico, vast costs in entitlements and subsidies), talking about it is futile. So most don’t, in fear of accusations of “racism.” . . .

Do read VDH's whole column at NRO. Reading this, I feel as if I am reading a dispatch from a spy across the front lines and in enemy territory. It certainly doesn't sound like someplace in the U.S. Indeed, even in third world countries where I have lived, there was nothing like that described by Dr. Hanson. How does one even contemplate righting such a state, where the asylum has been in the hands of the inmates for fifty years?

Read More...

Summary only...

Monday Links

The NYT covers the blowout at the Deepwater Horizon. Obama's commission tasked to report on the blowout is now scheduled to issue its final report in mid-January.

Elizabeth Scalia lists the eight stories that shaped 2010.

At World Affairs, identifies a troubling, systemic and humorous lack of judgment in the Muslim World. Mossad trained rats and sharks indeed. These people are nuts.

Will Obama stand up for Iraqi Christians? I doubt it.

André Glucksmann explains our debt to the ancient Athenians in The Original Birth of Freedom

Per Sen. Coburn at No Sheeples, fiscal Armageddon cometh.

The top ten reasons businesses are fleeing California.

And on a related note, the 2010 Census shows that people are fleeing high tax / strong union states. They are settling in locales with little or no income tax and right to work laws that weaken unions.

If you have not read it already, do see Tom Blumer's great analysis of the Pelosi-Obama-Reid economy and the destruction it hath wrought. What amazes me is how these people sell themselves as protectors of the working man and minorities when the reality is that they are anything but. When will a Republican with some fire in the belly go on a crusade to point that out. Perhaps Marco Rubio might be best positioned to do that.

Read More...

Summary only...

Politicizing Science At U.C. Berkley

If this isn't politicized science, then I don't know what is. Dr. James Enstrom, a research scientist at U.C. Berkley, has been fired after serving over 36 years with the university. His sin - taking positions at odds with the latest act of economic suicide by the state of California, the proposed ban on trucks in the state that do not meet new, strict environmental standards. The new standards are based on decades old research and, in large part, on a study by a person who faked his academic credentials. The nominal reason given by U.C. Berkley for firing Dr. Enstrom is because his "research is not aligned with the academic mission of the Department." See if you can spot in the story where his research has gone awry.

This from Fox News:

. . . Enstrom says his studies show no causal link between diesel soot and death in California – findings that once again set him far apart from the pack and put him in direct conflict with the California Air Resources Board, which says its new standards on diesel emissions will save 9,400 lives between 2011 and 2025 and will reduce health care costs by as much as $68 billion in the state.

The expected benefits of the new standards have been used to justify their estimated $5.5 billion price tag, which opponents say will cripple the California trucking industry at a time when the state can least afford it. The new standards, the critics warn, also could set the stage for national regulations.

Enstrom questions the science behind the new emissions standards, and he has raised concerns about the two key reports on which they were based – exposing the author of one study as having faked his credentials and the panel that issued the other study as having violated its term limits.

He says his views are what have gotten him fired, raising serious concerns not only about the diesel regulations but about academic freedom and scientific research as a whole.

"It's quite unfortunate that it's come to this, considering I've been in this school 36 and three-quarter years," Enstrom said. "… but the reason I'm so passionate about this is because the careers of thousands of California businessmen are on the line."

Enstrom says he is committed to exposing flaws in the science and procedures by which the California Air Resources Board (CARB) passed a series of regulations on diesel exhaust, the last phase of which will require trucks and buses that enter the state either to be retrofitted or replaced entirely to meet new emission standards.

"The Scientific Review Panel of Toxic Air Contaminates in 1998 declared diesel exhaust a toxic substance based on studying truckers and railroaders from back in the '50s, '60s and '70s, when emissions were much higher," Enstrom told FoxNews.com. "They never factored in, for example, that a very high percentage of truckers are also smokers when evaluating heath issues they may have had, yet they were using this research to declare that all diesel exhaust is a toxic substance." . . .

Enstrom also blew the whistle on a CARB staffer, Hien Tran, who authored a report that was central to the legislation – after faking his credentials.

"He said he had a Ph.D. from UC Davis. Turns out he had bought his Ph.D. online for $1,000," Enstrom said.

Tran was demoted, but his report was still used to "set the context for the health benefits of reducing diesel emissions" when the board voted on the trucking regulations, CARB spokesman Stanley Young told FoxNews.com.

What the board didn't take into consideration, Enstrom says, were the many studies, including his own, that contradict its conclusion that diesel soot has caused premature deaths in California.

So in February, he and other scientists presented the board with some of their findings, and in June he co-authored an op-ed for Forbes.com in which he voiced his concerns with the regulations.

Less than a month later he received a letter from UCLA saying his contract would not be renewed . . .

Next time you hear a greenie - or anyone on the left - complain about politicized science during the Bush years or in opposition to anything green, kick them. Kick them in the groin with extreme force. Then repeat as necessary until they have undergone an epiphany. Politicized science does not mean disagreeing with an outcome. It means attempting to silence opposing views.

Read More...

Summary only...

California & The Public Sector Unions

Gov. Schwarzenegger writes today in the Wall St. Journal about the depths of the economic problems facing California and how the devil's pact between the left and public sector unions are destroying the state. The graphs above are mind numbing. All of the economic pain in California is being felt by the private sector while the public sector is propped up and threatens to bankrupt the state with its rapaciousness. If there was ever a poster child for the evils of public sector unions, California is it. This from Gov. Schwarzenegger:

. . . As former Speaker of the State Assembly and San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown pointed out earlier this year in the San Francisco Chronicle, roughly 80 cents of every government dollar in California goes to employee compensation and benefits. Those costs have been rising fast. Spending on California's state employees over the past decade rose at nearly three times the rate our revenues grew, crowding out programs of great importance to our citizens. Neglected priorities include higher education, environmental protection, parks and recreation, and more.

Much bigger increases in employee costs are on the horizon. Thanks to huge unfunded pension and retirement health-care promises granted by past governments, and also to deceptive pension-fund accounting that understated liabilities and overstated future investment returns, California is now saddled with $550 billion of retirement debt.

The cost of servicing that debt has grown at a rate of more than 15% annually over the last decade. This year, retirement benefits—more than $6 billion—will exceed what the state is spending on higher education. Next year, retirement costs will rise another 15%. In fact, they are destined to grow so much faster than state revenues that they threaten to suck up the money for every other program in the state budget. (See the nearby chart.)

I've held a stricter line on government employment and salary increases than any governor in the modern era (overall year-to-year spending has increased just 1.4% on my watch). Nevertheless, employee costs will keep marching upwards because of pension promises, and they will never stop doing so until we get reform.

At the same time that government-employee costs have been climbing, the private-sector workers whose taxes pay for them have been hurting. Since 2007, one million private jobs have been lost in California. Median incomes of workers in the state's private sector have stagnated for more than a decade. To make matters worse, the retirement accounts of those workers in California have declined. The average 401(k) is down nationally nearly 20% since 2007. Meanwhile, the defined benefit retirement plans of government employees—for which private-sector workers are on the hook—have risen in value.

Few Californians in the private sector have $1 million in savings, but that's effectively the retirement account they guarantee to public employees who opt to retire at age 55 and are entitled to a monthly, inflation-protected check of $3,000 for the rest of their lives.

In 2003, just before I became governor, the state assembly even passed a law permitting government employees to purchase additional taxpayer-guaranteed, high-yielding retirement annuities at a discount—adding even more retirement debt. It's as if Sacramento legislators don't want a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, but a government of the employees, by the employees, and for the employees.

For years I've asked state legislators to stop adding to retirement debt. They have refused. Now the Democratic leadership of the assembly proposes to raise the tax and debt burdens on private employees in order to cover rising public-employee compensation.

But what will they do next year when those compensation costs grow 15% more? And the year after that when they've risen again? And 10 years from now, when retirement costs have reached nearly $30 billion per year? That's where government-employee retirement costs are headed even with the pension reforms I'm demanding. Imagine where they're headed without reform. . . .

I am under no illusion about the difficulty of my task. Government-employee unions are the most powerful political forces in our state and largely control Democratic legislators. But for the future of our state, no task is more important.

Read More...

Summary only...

California Broke-n

The poster child for the ills of progressivism and public sector unions, California, has yet to pass a state budget for the upcoming fiscal year, with the legislature apparently in full denial mode as to any need to cut spending. The state comptroller announced today that, without an approved budget, it will begin issuing IOU's at the end of this month.

Read More...

Summary only...

Will We End The Largest Theft In History?

What has been the largest theft in history? Was it the 1990 art theft from Boston's Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum? That theft was worth a paltry $500 million. Was it Bernie Maddof? His Ponzi scheme cost investors $18 billion. No, the greatest theft in history has to be what we see playing out across the U.S. today, in every locality where you see the toxic combination of Democrat politicians and unions.

Unions, profligate state and local governments, and the Obama administration are executing the greatest theft in history - legally transferring hundreds of billions from the private sector wallets and into the insatiable union maw, to then be laundered back through into the campaign chests of Democrat politicians. This type of theft has been going on for decades - but what has brought it to the point of crisis is the combination of our failing economy and the vast overreach of unions. What was part and parcel of American politics over the past few decades now stands in stark relief for the toxin it is. And until Americans start to realize how they are being legally scammed at the point of the police power of the state, it will continue ever on.

I cringe when I think of my tax dollars going to fund bloated union pensions - as they are today at GM and Chrysler. I become apoplectic when I realized that Obama took money from my wallet as part and parcel of the Stimulus and transferred it to state and local governments to keep grossly overcompensated public sector union works employed so that they could continue paying dues. And I am grabbing for the keys to my gun rack when I read the of the next attempted theft. Here are a series of stories:

This from McQ at Q&O:

llinois seems bound and determined to take the title of "poster child for failed state government" away from basket cases Michigan and California.

Illinois is now billions behind in paying its bills. As Comptroller David Hynes points out:

“This is what the state owes right now to schools, rehabilitation centers, child care, the state university — and it’s getting worse every single day,” he says in his downtown office. Mr. Hynes shakes his head.

“This is not some esoteric budget issue; we are not paying bills for absolutely essential services,” he says. “That is obscene.”

Well not that obscene apparently, to the governor. In the midst of all of this, he’s decided now is a great time to give many on his staff 20% raises.

No, seriously – raises. How freakin’ politically tone deaf can you be

Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn has handed out raises—some of more than 20 percent—to his staff while proclaiming a message of "shared sacrifice" and planning spending cuts of $1.4 billion because the state is awash in debt.

The Democrat has given 43 salary increases averaging 11.4 percent to 35 staffers in the past 15 months, according to an Associated Press analysis of records obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.

. . . And as if that’s not bad enough, the state is handing out 7% “cost of living” raises to government unions:

On July 1st this year, 40,000 or so AFSCME state employees happily collected a 7% percent “cost of living adjustment”. July 1st next year, they will get another 7%. In short, in 2 years, they will get a 14% raise. Even in good years, 7% is well over inflation.

Almost 6 billion in debt and unable to pay for “absolutely essential services” and yet handing out 7% cost of living raises to government union employees and up to 20% raises to staffers in the governors office?

This would be the same Gov. Quinn today quoted in the Daily Caller stating "We need more help from Washington to protect against job cuts and health care cuts. If we don’t do that, we’re following Herbert Hoover economics." The utter corruption and shamelessness of it all is stomach churning. This governor gives truth to the apocraphyl story of a boy who killed his parents and then asked for clemency from the Court because he was an orphan. He really does need to be hung by his thumbs and turned into a pinata.

As bad as the above is, it is hardly an anamoly. It is being replicated, to a greater or lesser extent, in many states and localities throughout the U.S. The public sector has no intention of feeling the pain of the recession, nor of doing anything other than soaking the private sector and demanding ever more. Utterly corrupt Democratic politicians are, in many cases, playing along. California is legend for the size, power, and insatiability of its public sector unions. There is an exceptional article in City Journal discussing the rise of California's public sector unions and how they have turned California into a golden goose (only for themselves, of course; California is hemmoraging the private sector companies that are expected to pay for the golden goose):

The camera focuses on an official of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), California’s largest public-employee union, sitting in a legislative chamber and speaking into a microphone. “We helped to get you into office, and we got a good memory,” she says matter-of-factly to the elected officials outside the shot. “Come November, if you don’t back our program, we’ll get you out of office.’

The video has become a sensation among California taxpayer groups for its vivid depiction of the audacious power that public-sector unions wield in their state. The unions’ political triumphs have molded a California in which government workers thrive at the expense of a struggling private sector. The state’s public school teachers are the highest-paid in the nation. Its prison guards can easily earn six-figure salaries. State workers routinely retire at 55 with pensions higher than their base pay for most of their working life. Meanwhile, what was once the most prosperous state now suffers from an unemployment rate far steeper than the nation’s and a flood of firms and jobs escaping high taxes and stifling regulations. This toxic combination—high public-sector employee costs and sagging economic fortunes—has produced recurring budget crises in Sacramento and in virtually every municipality in the state.

How public employees became members of the elite class in a declining California offers a cautionary tale to the rest of the country, where the same process is happening in slower motion. The story starts half a century ago, when California public workers won bargaining rights and quickly learned how to elect their own bosses—that is, sympathetic politicians who would grant them outsize pay and benefits in exchange for their support. Over time, the unions have turned the state’s politics completely in their favor. The result: unaffordable benefits for civil servants; fiscal chaos in Sacramento and in cities and towns across the state; and angry taxpayers finally confronting the unionized masters of California’s unsustainable government. . . .

Do read the entire article. A companion piece on City Journal, discusses how the left and the Unions have falsely tried to blame the disaster that is California on Proposition 13, the voter-passed 1978 initiative that made it much harder to increase property taxes.

I also blogged here on a related story of a Milwaukee teachers' union that refused to bargain in good faith to bring teachers' benefits in line with the private sector, thus closing the locality's $47 million shortfall. The union refused to make any concessions, forcing the lay off of more than 400 teachers - and they did so without consulting the teachers themselves:

The Milwaukee Teachers Education Association was immovable on benefits in part because it placed a bet on its Democratic friends in Washington rushing to the rescue. "The problem must be addressed with a national solution, a federal stimulus package that will restore educator positions," Pat Omar, the union's executive director said in June. The union's strategy in recent weeks has been to stage rallies demanding a federal bailout, and it used hundreds of school kids at those rallies as political props.

What the above stories all have in common is that the profligate states and public unions are now turning to Obama with the expectation that he will once again transfer hundreds of billions out of our pockets and into theirs. (And this is just to keep the unions afloat now . . . we are still awaiting the soon to come union pitch to have all American tax-payers pick up the tab for their underfunded pension plans.) This from The Hill:

The nation’s leading public-sector employees union will launch a newspaper advertising campaign this weekend to pressure centrist Senate Republicans to support increased federal aid to states.

The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees will spend $175,000 on newspaper ads targeting Maine Sens. Olympia Snowe (R) and Susan Collins (R) and Sens. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) and George Voinovich (R-Ohio).

The union is bracing for a major cut in public-sector jobs over the next year as states and cities scramble to balance their budgets. Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody’s Economy.com, predicted earlier this week that as many as 400,000 workers could lose their jobs in the next year.

AFSCME President Gerald W. McEntee is warning centrist Republicans that blocking increased aid to states will add to the federal deficit as unemployment rises.

“The GOP filibuster of the jobs bill means more pain for working families, more debt and a prolonged recession. We’re telling senators that it’s time to stop the obstruction. It’s time to pass the jobs bill!” McEntee said in a statement Friday. . . .

“We estimate that if no additional fiscal aid is forthcoming, the massive shortfalls that states will be forced to close could result in as many as 900,000 jobs lost,” said Mike Leachman, senior policy analyst at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. “We’re talking about teachers being laid off and healthcare workers and others.”

. . . Brown acknowledged that the state assistance is important to Massachusetts but added “we need to find a way to pay for [it].”

“The federal government is clearly addicted to debt and wants to raise taxes on Americans during a time when we can least afford it. This bill was defeated in a bipartisan manner,” Brown said in a video statement posted on his website.

Brown has introduced his own proposal to extend unemployment benefits and cover state budget shortfalls. The deficit-neutral legislation would be paid for largely with un-obligated funds from the 2009 federal stimulus package.

Labor officials have dismissed Brown’s proposal as “robbing Peter to pay Paul” because the stimulus program was designed to spur job creation. Labor sources believe Brown’s action shows he’s feeling political heat over the state funding issue. . . .

AFSCME and Americans United for Change also launched a $100,000 television ad campaign at the end of June pressuring Snowe and Collins to support Democratic jobs legislation including state Medicaid assistance.

The AFL-CIO organized a 200-person rally in Portland on June 30 press Snowe and Collins to support the bill. The union organized a rally outside one of Brown’s offices on the same day.

A Senate Democratic leadership aide said Reid would make another attempt to pass funding for state governments before the August recess.

“We hope to again consider assistance to states (FMAP) in the coming weeks so that states do not have to lay-off more workers and businesses and taxpayers don't see their taxes increased in a recession,” said Reid spokeswoman Regan Lachapelle.

You will of course note what is missing from the Reid spokeswoman's statement. That would be any indication that, instead of soaking taxpayers for even more, that public sector unions are willing to accept even the slightest in cut-backs. The individual employees - many of whom have no choice about whether to join a union if they want to be, say, teachers - may well be willing to accept such accomodations, but the unions themselves are not, and thus neither are the Democrats.

I have, over the past few months, blogged extensively on the utter travesty of public sector unions and, in particular, how they are a toxic parasite on society. See Public Sector Unions: A Toxin, A Crisis & An Opportunity" and the related posts listed at the bottom thereof. Public sector unions, along with Democrats, are conducting the greatest theft in history. It is coming from your wallet and mine. The only way they will be stopped before they bankrupt us and destroy our nation will be to make unlawful all public sector unions.

Welcome, Larwyn's Lynx readers.

Read More...

Summary only...

Unions & Teachers - The Alpha & Omega

California schools used to be the best in the nation. Today, however, they have declined to near the very bottom, ranked now 49th. But in at least one area, California educators have moved to the top. California public school teachers may be failing their students, but the are the highest paid teachers in the nation. Think of it as reverse merit pay, compliments of an immensely powerful teachers union.

I blogged on the cancer of public sector unions here and, in particular, the truly insidious problem of teachers unions. There is little justification for unions today - they won their core battles long ago - and indeed, market realities are seeing private sector unions decline into oblivion. But public sector unions are growing phenomenally and today, outnumber private sector unions in membership. It is a travesty. Public sector unions are causing a major economic crisis in states. Operating outside the constraints of market forces, they soak taxpayers, seek to expand government, they protect the incompetent, they are wedded to the Democrat Party, and they cause major inefficiencies. Nowhere is this more true than in California.

A recent report on lobbying and political contributions in California over the past ten years shows that the most money spent, by two to one, was by the California Teachers Association. They spent $211.8 million. It should be noted that the next closest in spending was also by a public sector union, The California State Council of Service Employees, which spent $107.4 million.

Bookworm Room, commenting on these expenditures as well as the recent Supreme Court decision allowing corporations the right to political speech, adds:

By the way, do you want to know one of the ways in which the Teachers’ Union spent that money?

For example, the California Teachers Association, which represents 330,000 public school teachers in the state, spent $26 million to defeat a school voucher system in 2000 and another $50 million to kill three other ballot measures.

It makes more laughable than ever the Democrats’ hysterical attack on the Supreme Court for making the way clearer for corporate voices to speak. The fact is, corporations are infinitely more representative of America’s varied voices than are the huge blocks of unions, all of which are aimed at consolidating vast amounts of political power under “progressive” control.

As you will note, much of the expenditures were meant to protect the failing California school system from any competition. A similar story, though this time occurring in Harlem, is told by Carpe Diem:

From the Wall Street Journal:

Today there are 24 Harlem charter schools. They select students by lottery, and they educate about 7,700 of the community's 50,000 school-age kids. Another 5,700 children matriculate at one of Harlem's 30 private and parochial schools.

"Harlem now has more school choice per square foot than any other place in the country," says Eva Moskowitz, who operates four charters in Harlem. Nationwide, the average black 12th grader reads at the level of a white eighth grader. Yet Harlem charter students at schools like KIPP and Democracy Prep are outperforming their white peers in wealthy suburbs. At the Promise Academy charter schools, 97% of third graders scored at or above grade level in math. At Harlem Village Academy, 100% of eighth graders aced the state science exam. Every third grader at Harlem Success Academy 1, operated by Ms. Moskowitz, passed the state math exam, and 71% of them achieved the top score. . . .

With that kind of success, reflected in that kind of demand, who could object to more charter schools? Easy question.

The United Federation of Teachers and its political acolytes in the New York state legislature are hell-bent on blocking school choice for underprivileged families. Worried that high-performing charters are "saturating" Harlem, State Sen. Bill Perkins and State Assemblyman Keith Wright have backed legislation that would gut state per-pupil funding at charter schools and allow a single charter operator to educate no more than 5% of a district's students. Unions dislike charter schools because many aren't organized. But how does limiting the replication of successful public education models benefit ghetto kids?

These obstructionists, Mr. Clark says, aren't doing the community any favors. "The teachers unions ought to be ashamed of themselves because they know better than I do how bad these schools are," he says. "Everybody on my block and in my building and around the corner . . . they all want charter schools. They don't want a political debate."

To paraphrase Dennis Byrne:

If there’s ever an illustration of how “progressive” elites and organized labor are attempting to keep the very people they supposedly care about locked up on the plantation, it’s their consuming opposition to charter schools in Harlem and elsewhere.

For more on the travesty occuring in Harlem, see the NYT article, In Harlem, Epicenter for Charter Schools, a Senator Wars Against Them.

I have vast respect for good teachers and principles. But teacher's unions - and indeed, all public sector unions - are a different matter entirely. They harm the efficiency of every sector in which they are involved, and in the sphere of education, their impact has been near catastrophic. And yet, they are protected at every step of the way by the left.

While only 2.6% of the $787 stimulus went to fund small business loans - the economic engine of our economy - over a third of the stimulus went to keep public sector employees in their jobs - and continuing payment of their union dues. More evidence of that today, and more evidence of how wedded the Democrats are to public sector and teachers unions, from Big Government:

Based on the Recovery.gov data, more than two third of the 594,754.3 jobs “created or saved” with the stimulus funds were “created or saved” in the Department of Education. Basically, what the administration meant by shovel ready projects was funding for your next door teacher.

This is a national crisis and a civil rights issue. The public sector unions - and teachers unions in particular - need to be broken.

Related Posts:

- Public Sector Unions: A Toxin, A Crisis & An Opportunity

- Read'n, Writ'n & Unioniz'n

- What, Marx Or Lenin Weren't Available?

- Gov. Chris Christie, What Leadership Looks Like

- California: From Riches To Public Sector Unions To Ruin

- Detroit's Public School System, School Board & Teachers' Union

Read More...

Summary only...

California - From Riches To Public Sector Unions To Ruin

I posted here that public sector unions are an economic cancer in our nation, in addition to being the single most fundamental roadblock to improving our nation's vastly underperforming school systems. Exhibit One to that argument is California, a state that continues to sink under the incredible weight of its left wing excesses. George Will recently described this people's paradise as a Unionocracy. How bad is it and how did California utterly squander its riches - this from Newgeography:

For decades following WWII, people flooded into the golden state in search of weather, opportunity and the good life. California delivered. Under Governor Pat Brown in the 1960s, California had wonderful weather, plentiful water, new highways, and the best public school systems in America. Every student had access to a strong community college system and top students were guaranteed admission to the University of California. Agriculture, Hollywood, aerospace and construction provided more jobs than workers.

The 1970s brought harbingers of California’s future. The environmental movement muzzled a robust real estate industry with alphabet agencies like AQMD, CEQA, EIR and CCC. Building moratoriums raised home prices along the coast. Aggressive land use controls pushed development inland creating urban sprawl and long commutes as residents sought affordable housing inland. Governor Jerry Brown quipped, “If we do not build it, they will not come” and shut down highway construction, public school construction and added layers of new regulations. The people came anyway. . . .

In 2001, the dot come bubble burst. The politicians in Sacramento, emboldened by an endless supply of money from the dotcommers to state coffers, spent over $100 billion while revenues fell to just $70 billion. They ran up a $38.2 billion deficit in 2002 under Governor Gray Davis – more than the other 49 states combined. The people recalled Davis in 2003 and replaced him with the Terminator, Arnold Schwarzenegger. . . .

California survived the bursting dot com bubble with yet another round of real estate escalation (the housing bubble) that lifted home prices by 20% per year. Spending escalated in line with home prices. More regulations were added to burden industry. Taxes were raised. Tuition increased. California added “The Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006” as if California alone could stem global warming. In response to 9-11, politicians passed SB 400, a feel good law that allowed cops and fireman to retire at 50. It was budgeted to cost “just $400 million” per year. Last year it cost $3 billion. Then, they passed SB183 the next year, applying the same benefits to non-safety state employees like billboard inspectors. When the housing bubble burst in 2007, California found itself with a $20 billion deficit – again.

This time, California will not climb out so easily. Federal regulators, implementing the Endangered Species Act that was invented in California, diverted water from the farms of the Imperial Valley to the ocean to protect the engendered Delta Smelt. This tiny fish, with no commercial value, threatens the well being of tens of thousands of agricultural workers and contributes to unemployment figures worse than the Great Depression. California’s schools now rank 49th in the nation. They no longer generate the brilliant minds that fueled past economies. California’s 11.6% income tax has forced many high income earners to no income tax states like Florida or Nevada. The housing industry that created 212,960 units in 2006 was only able to build 36,000 units in 2009.

Former state librarian and California historian Kevin Starr talks about the potential of California being the nation’s first failed state. John Moorlach, Orange County Supervisor says, “We better start talking about this. What are we going to do when the entity (state government) above us crumbles? I think we are already technically bankrupt.” He should know: Orange County went bankrupt in 1994. The City of Vallejo, population 120,000, was forced into bankruptcy in 2008 by commitments by its politicians to pay its City Manager $400,000 per year and its fireman an average of $175,000 annually.

The biggest obstacle facing California’s recovery is a dysfunctional pension system created by politicians indebted to the public employee unions. The pension obligation is now $17 billion per year. California has 260,000 state employees and 38,000 are paid more than $100,000 per year. The University of California employs another 250,000 and 19,000 are paid over 100,000 annually. These generous salaries have been converted into lifetime annuities. The Legislative Analyst’s Office estimates the unfunded pension obligations of California to total $237 billion. In an era of retiring baby-boomers, this trajectory is clearly unsustainable. With tax receipts down, huge pension obligations and a state budget deficit of $20 billion, the vast majority of municipalities in California are suffering deficits and facing the prospect of Chapter 9 municipal bankruptcy.

Schwarzenegger . . . told the Sacramento Press Club, “No single issue threatens the fiscal health of this state more than our exploding pension obligations. Over the last 10 years, our pension costs have gone up by 2,000 percent from $150 million per year to $3 billion a year (for state government workers). That means hundreds of billions in unfunded liabilities and it means the $3 billion we are spending now will go up to $10 or $12 billion.”

In October, state Treasurer Bill Locker told lawmakers they needed to reform the pension system or “it will bankrupt the state.” The California Public Employees’ Pension System chief actuary has described the current pension system as “unsustainable.” Adam B. Summers, a policy analyst at the Reason Foundation and author of “California Spending By The Numbers: A Historic Look At State Spending From Gov. Pete Wilson to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger” warns, “I think we are starting to approach a tipping point.”

Do the politicians in Sacramento want to do something about the train wreck that is coming? The answer as of now is clearly no. There is no evidence that they are willing to curtail spending and reform the pension laws that cover 500,000 state employees. They know the State of California cannot go bankrupt under existing laws. However, if they will not act, the people may act for them. Just as they did in 2003 with the recall of Gray Davis, the people are taking the initiative. They are sponsoring the Citizens Power Initiative to curtail the ability of unions to use payroll deductions for campaign purposes. Another initiative would make California’s full-time legislature part-time. In the meantime, the California economy continues to grind to a halt. Will the people of California shock the nation like the people of Massachusetts did with the election of Scott Brown? Or will the unions buy another election and drive the Golden State over the edge, making it the First Failed State?

The failure of California would seem to be inevitable. The only question is what will arise from the ashes.

Read More...

Summary only...

Experiential Learning, California & Civil War

An anonymous commenter wrote this insightful observation a few days ago:

Here's one of the more common errors of The Right. The Left does not lack for intellect. What it lacks is wisdom. "Common Sense". They do not learn from any mistakes. Not their own, and not from those of others.

As the commenter went on to explain, that is why you see the left so wedded to socialism, despite its unblemished track record of failure. I think there is a lot of truth to his or her observation. And I thought of it again today when I saw an article on legislation about to be approved in The People's Democratic Republic of California,

California is a state that the left has pretty much destroyed over the past three decades. The state now stands $20 billion in the hole and on the edge of bankruptcy. The state is hemorrhaging business and residents, fleeing our nations most oppressive legislation and some of its worst taxation. It is, as George Will described it recently, a unionacracy - a state run by and for the public employee unions. One would think, given that the Sword of Damocles is hanging by a final, frayed thread over the state, that the legislature would learn from their past mistakes - that they would adopt austere fiscal restraint and start furiously cutting regulations and taxes to create a better environment for business. Right . . .

California, long a trendsetter for eco-friendly living, is breaking ground again this week. It's set, as early as today, to adopt the nation's first statewide green building code, which environmentalists say is not tough enough, and is also considering paying residents to cut their energy use. . . .

Just amazing. This isn't merely ignoring past mistakes, its full head buried in the sand acting outrageously crazy ignoring past mistakes.

I don't particularly care if California goes into bankruptcy, that union contracts are broken and a receivership takes over the purse strings. I don't care if California can't even get junk bond ratings for its bond issues over the next decade. But on the flip side, should Obama and friends opt to send our tax dollars to underwrite this failed far left experiment in modern socialism in order to protect Democrats from the consequences of their outrageous acts, then its time for a full on blood in the streets second civil war.

Read More...

Summary only...

Stimulus, Unions, Obama & Jobs

When Obama sold us the massive piece of Democratic Party pork that was the 2009 Stimulus Bill (or "Porkulus" in the common vernacular), he did so on the promise that it would keep unemployment under 8%. To this end, he relied primarily on funding "shovel ready" infrastructure projects. Of the $787 billion dollar stimulus, $81 billion was slated to go to these projects. Given that construction jobs are temporary and, in some cases, very specialized, this hasn't worked out so well.

The most recent figures put the unemployment rate at 10%, but as Hot Air points out, even that number is deceptively low.

The only reason the unemployment rate stayed at 10.0% was because so many people stopped looking for work at all. The number of people in the job market dropped to its lowest level since 1985.

Now Obama wants to double down with Son of Porkulus in an effort to bring down the unemployment numbers. He is asking for an additional $79 billion to fund "shovel ready" infrastructure projects, but in a detailed analysis looking at local unemployment figures, AP reports a bit of a bombshell in Obamaland today - these "shovel ready" projects have had no effect on unemployment. This from AP:

Ten months into President Barack Obama's first economic stimulus plan, a surge in spending on roads and bridges has had no effect on local unemployment and only barely helped the beleaguered construction industry, an Associated Press analysis has found. . . .

While it might have escaped the left's notice as they ran at top speed towards the trough, small business is still the major engine of our economy. According to the historical records of the SBA, small businesses employ just over half of the country’s private sector workforce and have been responsible for some 90% of all new jobs created annually. Yet the Porkulus all but ignored small businesses. Between tax credits and pumped up SBA lending funds, the grand total of the Stimulus directed at small business was worth approximately $21 billion or 2.6% of the total Stimulus package. Indeed, add together the small business funds and the infrastructure funds, and you still have a Stimulus Bill that, looked at in the best of lights, only set aside 13% to actually create - or save - jobs in the private sector. Huh? Where did the rest go?

The reality is that, besides the massive special interest pork in the bill, nearly one third of the $787 billion to save public sector / union jobs - i.e., those folks who form the Democrats power base. This from Michael Barone writing in the Washington Examiner:

Public-sector employment peaked at 22.6 million in August 2008. It fell a bit in 2009, then has rebounded back to 22.5 million in November. That's less than a 1 percent decline [compared to a 6% decline in the private sector].

This is not an accident; it is the result of deliberate public policy. About one-third of the $787 billion stimulus package passed in February 2009 was directed at state and local governments, which have been facing declining revenues and are, mostly, required to balance their budgets.

The policy aim, Democrats say, was to maintain public services and aid. The political aim, although Democrats don't say so, was to maintain public-sector jobs—and the flow of union dues to the public employees unions that represent almost 40 percent of public-sector workers. . . .

Thus do our Democrats seem like some peverse sort of Robbing Hood, stealing from the private sector to give to their union supporters. In this, Obama seems to be looking to California's legislature - a body which has moved the Golden state to the precipice of bankruptcy and created, as George Will wrote recently, a "'unionocracy,' run by and for unionized public employees, such as public safety employees who can retire at 50 and receive 90 percent of the final year's pay for life." And as Victor Davis Hanson opines, the "California model is important because Obama is adopting it as a blueprint on a national scale." That is scary.

In any event, the smoke and mirrors of the stimulus, so little of which went to create public sector jobs, is not the end of the story. On top of that are Obama's proposed major pieces of legislation - health care reform and cap and trade - that portend to saddle small businesses with a far greater bill than $21 billion. Thus is it any surprise that real unemployment is well above 10%, that our tax base is hemmoraging while our national debt is shooting up into the stratosphere? Can't you feel the hope n' change?

Read More...

Summary only...

California Upholds Prop 8 - Marriage Is Between A Man & A Woman

You can cancel the cake. The California Supreme Court has bowed to the will of California's electorate on the issue of gay marriage - it is no longer a Constitutional right in California.

The California Supreme Court, which last year found a state constitutional right to gay marriage under the state's equal protection clause, has now found that Prop 8 - a Constitutional Amendment passed by the California electorate - worked a valid change to the state Constitution. Gay marriage is no longer legal in California. The Washington Post has the story.

Gay rights activists have pursued a two pronged approach to furthering their goal of legalizing gay marriage throughout America. One is through the ballot box - and though I disagree with gay marriage, that's fine. The ballot box is where new social policy should be made. The second prong pursued by activists - and with which I vociferously disagree - is the tried and true left wing blueprint of using our Court system to force on America a cause they cannot pursue through the ballot box. This invariably becomes an argument for gay marriage under state equal protection clauses.

The equal protection clause of most states' Constitutions date back well over a century and were not composed in contemplation of modern, avant garde social issues. Indeed, I think it safe to say that, given the much stronger role of religion in life of the time, that the drafters would have explicitly excluded gay marriage from equal protection clause if they could have foreseen it ever arising as an issue.

The duty of a Court is to interpret the laws passed by legislators and constitutional conventions. It is not the duty of a court to create law - particularly Constitutional law - according to its own whim. Doing otherwise inevitably creates massive distortions in our democracy. Think the abortion of Roe v. Wade.

In California, the people have spoken - and the Court has acted appropriately. The recourse of gay rights activists is now to the ballot box - precisely where it should be.

Update: Gay Patriot has a similar take - that the California Supreme Court made the right call.

Update: That bane of our nation, the ACLU, is all set to use this decision to stoke their piggy bank. According to the ACLU, the decision of the California Supreme Court puts all minority rights up for grabs in California - a proposition ludicrous on its face, but one that will no doubt help the cash flow.

Read More...

Summary only...

Hayek And Will On Socialist Thugocracies

Speaking of the rise of the socialist state, with its forced nationalizations and growth in power of the unions in post WWII Britain, author FA Hayek wrote:

The most serious development is the growth of a measure of arbitrary administrative coercion and the progressive destruction of the cherished foundations of British liberty, the Rule of Law . . . [T]he attempts at economic planning under the Labour government carried it to the point where it is doubtful whether it can be said that the Rule of Law prevails in Britain. . . . It is a despotism exercised by a thoroughly honest and conscientious bureaucracy for what they sincerely believe is the good of the country. . . .

Our modern day Mr. Hayek may well be George Will, who is emerging as the most cogent of observers of the Obama regime and its emerging practice of heavy handed tactics that mirror those which occurred in post WWII Britain. As Mr. Will observes, our new President is ruling this country with "a tincture of lawlessness."

This from Geoge Will, writing at the Washington Post:

. . . In February, California's Democratic-controlled Legislature, faced with a $42 billion budget deficit, trimmed $74 million (1.4 percent) from one of the state's fastest-growing programs, which provides care for low-income and incapacitated elderly people and which cost the state $5.42 billion last year. The Los Angeles Times reports that "loose oversight and bureaucratic inertia have allowed fraud to fester."

But the Service Employees International Union collects nearly $5 million a month from 223,000 caregivers who are members. And the Obama administration has told California that unless the $74 million in cuts are rescinded, it will deny the state $6.8 billion in stimulus money.

Such a federal ukase (the word derives from czarist Russia; how appropriate) to a state legislature is a sign of the administration's dependency agenda -- maximizing the number of people and institutions dependent on the federal government. For the first time, neither sales nor property nor income taxes are the largest source of money for state and local governments. The federal government is.

The SEIU says the cuts violate contracts negotiated with counties. California officials say the state required the contracts to contain clauses allowing pay to be reduced if state funding is.

Anyway, the Obama administration, judging by its cavalier disregard of contracts between Chrysler and some of the lenders it sought money from, thinks contracts are written on water. The administration proposes that Chrysler's secured creditors get 28 cents per dollar on the $7 billion owed to them but that the United Auto Workers union get 43 cents per dollar on its $11 billion in claims -- and 55 percent of the company. This, even though the secured creditors' contracts supposedly guaranteed them better standing than the union.

Among Chrysler's lenders, some servile banks that are now dependent on the administration for capital infusions tugged their forelocks and agreed. Some hedge funds among Chrysler's lenders that are not dependent were vilified by the president because they dared to resist his demand that they violate their fiduciary duties to their investors, who include individuals and institutional pension funds.

The Economist says the administration has "ridden roughshod over [creditors'] legitimate claims over the [automobile companies'] assets. . . . Bankruptcies involve dividing a shrunken pie. But not all claims are equal: some lenders provide cheaper funds to firms in return for a more secure claim over the assets should things go wrong. They rank above other stakeholders, including shareholders and employees. This principle is now being trashed." Tom Lauria, a lawyer representing hedge fund people trashed by the president as the cause of Chrysler's bankruptcy, asked that his clients' names not be published for fear of violence threatened in e-mails to them.

The Troubled Assets Relief Program, which has not yet been used for its supposed purpose (to purchase such assets from banks), has been the instrument of the administration's adventure in the automobile industry. TARP's $700 billion, like much of the supposed "stimulus" money, is a slush fund the executive branch can use as it pleases. This is as lawless as it would be for Congress to say to the IRS: We need $3.5 trillion to run the government next year, so raise it however you wish -- from whomever, at whatever rates you think suitable. Don't bother us with details.

. . . The Obama administration's agenda of maximizing dependency involves political favoritism cloaked in the raiment of "economic planning" and "social justice" that somehow produce results superior to what markets produce when freedom allows merit to manifest itself, and incompetence to fail. The administration's central activity -- the political allocation of wealth and opportunity -- is not merely susceptible to corruption, it is corruption.

Read the entire article. I could not agree more. Not only is the Obama administration displaying overt corruption, but it is of a kind that will have long term ramifications. Those industries in which Obama has inserted his malign influence may well find the cure more toxic than their original economic problems, particularly when they try to raise capital and lure private investment.

Read More...

Summary only...

"Lucky Lefty" Obama, TARP, Chrysler, California and Gangster Government

Obama is not running the government as President according to the Constitution - he is running it like a mafia don from the pages of a Mario Puzo novel. As Michael Barone describes it, we now have "Gangster Government." And as Dafydd ab Hugh has cynically but appropriately tagged him, our nation's leader is more aptly termed "Lucky Lefty" Obama.

First are the TARP "loans" to banks. They came with numerous strings attached. When some of the banks said they wanted to pay the loans back and crawl out from under the thumb of the Obama government, Obama's administration said "not so fast." Like the most lawless of loan sharks, to the contrary, the Obama administration floated a plan to forcibly convert the TARP loans into common stock, thereby making the government the dominant owner of the banks.

As it is, TARP funds are grossly distorting our economy in three ways. One, recipients of TARP loans are being leaned on by the government to act in ways that support Obama goals instead of those of the bank's shareholders and customers. Two, this government interference is going to give great pause to anyone so foolish as to be thinking of investing in any entity subject to Obama administration interference. And lastly, TARP funds are leading to corruption and fraud on a world record scale.

Then there is Obama's well blogged (though anything but well publicized in the MSM) extortion of Chrysler secured bond holders. It is a charge the Obama administration first categorically denied. Now, after others have verified the story, the White House simply refuses to answer questions on the topic . Obama strong-armed the secured creditors to give up their property rights - rights protected both in bankruptcy law and the Constitution - so that Obama could reward the UAW on a grand scale. It is government theft - stealing from innocent investors to give to his union supporters. The Obama administration threatened to destroy the bondholders in the press if they did not comply. Obama excoriated the bond holders as "speculators" at his 100 days press conference - an absolutely outrageous act. There were anonymous death threats made to the bond holders. And to put the icing on the cake, the bankruptcy court ordered exposure of the bond holders.

To add onto all of this, many of the secured bond holders were TARP recipients. These entities were not among the hold-outs seeking to uphold their legal rights. To the contrary, the TARP recipients rolled over long before this, giving up their legal rights so Obama could legally steal from them and give to the UAW. Do you think they were given an offer they couldn't refuse?

Then there is California, a state whose finances have been so mismanaged by the far left for over a decade that now, under fiscal stress, they are headed for bankruptcy by July. Seeing the writing on the wall, Gov. Schwarzenager pushed through legislation to lower compensation for union health care workers - a move that was expected to save over $72 million. The Service Workers International Union appealed directly to Obama. Now, in an absolutely outrageous act, Obama has unilaterally threatened to withhold all $6.8 billion in stimulus funds slated for California unless the California government reinstates the old wage rate for the unionized workers. Dafydd at Big Lizards has the entire story - and it is Obama's extrajudicial actions that led Dafydd to tag Obama as "Lucky Lefty" - an appropriate gangster nickname for our Don in Chief.

I have to laugh when I look back at this point and ponder the last eight year's worth of baseless left wing claims that the Bush Administration was shredding the Constitution. What we are being treated to now is the real deal. It really is "gangster government," and the Constitution doesn't seem worth the paper it is printed on to "Lucky Lefty."

Read More...

Summary only...

In Support of Gay Marriage

I come out today in support of gay marriage in Maine.

I am adamantly opposed to gay marriage in Iowa.

Why the difference?

The difference between Maine and Iowa is that Maine's decision, signed into law today by Governor John Baldacci, was made by their elected legislature. Iowa's decision was made by an activist court imposing its will on society. The former is the only appropriate forum in which to decide social issues of this ilk. The latter does not lead to a more just society, irrespective of the personal beliefs of the justices. To the contrary, it leads to overwhelming divisions that tear at the very fabric of society. Indeed, one need only look to Roe v. Wade to see that truth. The activist decision in Roe has done incalculable damage to our democratic institutions and warped the democratic process.

My individual views on gay marriage are that I oppose it on religious/historical grounds, in addition to reasons of practicality. I could wax on this at great length, going back to the origins of marriage and the Church's sanctification of marriage vows, but that would, I am sure, cost me, out of sheer boredom, the loyalty of the two people who have occasion to regularly read this blog.

That said, I recognize that there are colorable arguments in favor of gay marriage, such as those made by Rick Moran in a post here. It is a social issue that individual communities must be able to answer for themselves. It most decidedly is not a Constitutional legal issue except to say that at the time the "equal protection" amendment was passed, gay marriage was not a consideration of the drafters. To the extent anything else can be gleaned from that era, it is a safe assessment that the majority of the drafters of the equal protection clause would have opposed gay marriage. Moreover, what advocates of gay marriage seek is not "equal protection" of the laws, but the modification of laws to give them a new right not heretofore recognized in American history. Thus their recourse is to the public, not the courts.

All of that said, Maine's legislature voted overwhelmingly to allow gay marriage in that state. The Governor signed the bill today. Therefore, whether I personally agree with it or not is irrelevant. By virtue of it being a community decision, it has my support. To those who fought for this in Maine and succeeded, I congratulate you.

To those who opposed this decision on religious grounds, the larger community has spoken. You have every right to argue for a change to this decision, but if you are going to be able to grow your flock and spread your message amongst the community, you also need to come to terms with the decision and not make of it a sole and defining issue. Looking to the larger picture, there is expontially more - indeed, a million times more - to the word of Jesus than whether gay marriage is recognized in Maine.

Read More...

Summary only...