LIBERALS DON’T SEEM TO BE CAPABLE OF UNDERSTANDING JUST HOW DESTRUCTIVE THEIR OUT-OF-CONTROL SPENDING IS FOR OUR COUNTRY! THEY CAN DEMONIZE THE WEALTHY BUT EXACTLY WHO IS PAYING FOR ALL THEIR SPENDING WHEN 40% OF AMERICANS DON’T EVEN PAY TAXES!!
Dear MoveOn member
So far, more than 30,000 people are participating in a rolling fast to protest the immoral budget cuts Republicans are pushing in Washington. We never imagined this would spread so far, so quickly. In fact, 28 progressive members of Congress have now joined in.
With some help from Grammy-nominated recording artist Moby, we’ve put together a short, powerful video about this fast. Please check it out and then help spread the message by passing it on: www.moveon.org/r?r=207766&id=26920-17187892-28_i.2x&t=1
Watch the video
This is about sending the message that balancing the budget on the back of the most vulnerable is simply immoral—and the need for that message has never been greater.
Last week’s budget agreement—now public—contains cuts to critical programs but does little to make corporations and the rich pay their fair share.1
More than half of the $38 billion in cuts target education, labor, and health programs.2
The worst cuts and riders didn’t make it into the budget—but that was the Republican plan all along: propose the unthinkable, threaten to shut down the government, and then walk away with cuts that would have been beyond the pale just a few months ago.
Now Republicans are pushing a new round of proposals to abolish Medicare and make far deeper cuts to education, nutrition, health care, and other essential programs—while giving even bigger tax breaks to millionaires and corporations. And this time, after winning so much in the last round, the Republicans actually have a shot at getting every last cut they want. (more…)
Ah, but such is life when you and your brother are suddenly two of the most demonized men in American politics. For decades David and Charles have run Koch Industries, an energy and manufacturing conglomerate that employs around 50,000 people in the United States and another 20,000 in 59 other countries. Depending on the year, Koch Industries is either the first- or second-largest privately held company in America—it alternates in the top spot with Cargill, the agricultural giant—with about $100 billion in revenues. David and Charles are worth around $22 billion each. Combine their wealth and you have the third-largest fortune in America after Bill Gates and Warren Buffett. Like most billionaires, the brothers spend a lot of time giving their money away: to medical and scientific research, to educational programs, to cultural institutions, and to public policy research and activism.
David Koch’s secretary told him the news. This was in February, during the rowdy standoff between Wisconsin governor Scott Walker and demonstrators backing 14 Democratic legislators who’d fled to Illinois rather than vote on a bill weakening public employee unions. Koch’s secretary said that an editor for a left-wing website, the Buffalo Beast, had telephoned the governor posing as David Koch and recorded the conversation. And Walker had fallen for it! He’d had a 20-minute conversation with this bozo, not once questioning the caller’s identity. But then how could Walker have known? Sure, David Koch was a billionaire whose company had donated to his campaign. But Koch (pronounced “Coke”) had never talked to Walker in his life.
Teachers unions are on the defensive these days. The Obama administration is pushing various measures long opposed by the unions: charter school expansion, pay-for-performance, teacher evaluations and more. States and localities are looking to change collective-bargaining rules and scale back costly, bloated education work forces that have grown even when student enrollment was flat or declining. And Hollywood, in recent documentary films like “Waiting for ‘Superman,'” “The Lottery” and “The Cartel,” has highlighted how teachers unions block or stifle education reforms to the detriment of the low-income minority kids who populate the nation’s worst schools.
When I sit down for an interview with Randi Weingarten, who has been head of the American Federation of Teachers since 2008, my first question is whether those films are getting her recognized more in public these days.
“Actually, no,” she responds, not particularly amused by the query. “I’m used to the use of scapegoating and demonization and finger-pointing as a mechanism to divert or distract from problem-solving.” (more…)
The Census just reported that Detroit’s population dropped by 25% between 2000 and 2010, a stunning fall that is even larger than the 20% drop Detroit experienced during the 1970s. The story of this city’s devastating decline reminds us that urban fortunes depend on entrepreneurial human capital. Failed public policies that tried to fix Detroit with urban renewal and transportation projects stand as stark evidence against the view that our economic woes call for more federal spending on infrastructure.
The White House’s fondness for transportation spending may reflect the fact that projects like the Erie Canal had great value when moving goods was near impossible. In 1816, it cost as much to move goods 30 miles over land as it did to ship them across the Atlantic. Public investments in waterways and railroads created a transportation network that made the natural wealth of the American interior accessible.
Cities like Detroit grew up as entrepreneurs came to the nodes of that network. Hiram Walker moved to Detroit from central Massachusetts in the 1830s and made his fortune shipping Canadian whiskey over the Detroit River. Detroit Dry Dock produced innovative engines and boats that plied the Great Lakes, and in the process, exposed the young Henry Ford to cutting-edge engineering.
A century ago, Detroit was crammed with smart innovators who competed and collaborated in their quest to produce the newest thing. Ford, the Fisher Brothers, the Dodge Brothers, David Dunbar Buick and Billy Durant in nearby Flint were only a few of the automobile entrepreneurs who collectively invented the mass-produced car.
Henry Ford in the T Ford model in front of his car plant in Detroit, in 1900.
The biggest myth about labor unions is that unions are for the workers. Unions are for unions, just as corporations are for corporations and politicians are for politicians.
Nothing shows the utter cynicism of the unions and the politicians who do their bidding like the so-called “Employee Free Choice Act” that the Obama administration tried to push through Congress. Employees’ free choice as to whether or not to join a union is precisely what that legislation would destroy.
Workers already have a free choice in secret-ballot elections conducted under existing laws. As more and more workers in the private sector have voted to reject having a union represent them, the unions’ answer has been to take away secret-ballot elections. (more…)
That battle was lost long ago—and now the young and talented are leaving.
By WILLIAM MCGURN
The new Republican governor of Michigan, Rick Snyder, likes to say that he’s not interested in the confrontation with organized labor that we see in Wisconsin. That may be. Nevertheless, Mr. Snyder has become Public Enemy No. 1 for the protesters in Lansing carrying signs demanding that he “End the War on the Middle Class.”
Here’s a news flash: That war was lost long ago.
Michigan Governor Rick Synder
The costs of defeat are reflected in grim statistics that show a state that was once a powerhouse of the American economy sinking into stagnation reminiscent of the Old South. Today, average per capita income in the Wolverine State ranks just 37th in the nation—down from ninth in 1965. In terms of adults holding college degrees, Michigan ranks 36th. The areas where it ranks near the top are not happy ones: unemployment (fifth from the top) and outbound moves (second only to New Jersey).
How ironic that Wisconsin has become ground zero for the battle between taxpayers and public- employee labor unions. Wisconsin was the first state to allow collective bargaining for government workers (in 1959), following a tradition where it was the first to introduce a personal income tax (in 1911, before the introduction of the current form of individual income tax in 1913 by the federal government).
Labor unions like to portray collective bargaining as a basic civil liberty, akin to the freedoms of speech, press, assembly and religion. For a teachers union, collective bargaining means that suppliers of teacher services to all public school systems in a state—or even across states—can collude with regard to acceptable wages, benefits and working conditions. An analogy for business would be for all providers of airline transportation to assemble to fix ticket prices, capacity and so on. From this perspective, collective bargaining on a broad scale is more similar to an antitrust violation than to a civil liberty.
In fact, labor unions were subject to U.S. antitrust laws in the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890, which was first applied in 1894 to the American Railway Union. However, organized labor managed to obtain exemption from federal antitrust laws in subsequent legislation, notably the Clayton Antitrust Act of 1914 and the National Labor Relations Act of 1935.
Remarkably, labor unions are not only immune from antitrust laws but can also negotiate a “union shop,” which requires nonunion employees to join the union or pay nearly equivalent dues. Somehow, despite many attempts, organized labor has lacked the political power to repeal the key portion of the 1947 Taft Hartley Act that allowed states to pass right-to-work laws, which now prohibit the union shop in 22 states. From the standpoint of civil liberties, the individual right to work—without being forced to join a union or pay dues—has a much better claim than collective bargaining. (Not to mention that “right to work” has a much more pleasant, liberal sound than “collective bargaining.”) The push for right-to-work laws, which haven’t been enacted anywhere but Oklahoma over the last 20 years, seems about to take off.
