Madison

Elections have consequences.  2008 ushered in Obama's Chicago style politics of back room deals led by, and favorable to, organized labor overlords who for years have dominated Democrat Party politics.  As a result, we got the $800 plus billion stimulus which benefited labor unions by temporality propping up state budgets that staved off public employee layoffs.  Then we got the GM and Chrysler bailouts that stole private ownership from bondholders and gave it to unions who now own a 17.5% stake in GM.  Then we got Obamacare, but the union's own "Cadillac plans" were exempted.  On top of all that, we have a labor run National Labor Relations Board that has lost any vestige of impartiality or neutrality in deciding labor disputes, and who are currently trying to promote "micro unions" in lieu of an equally job-killing enterprise known as card check.  Is it any wonder then that when the electorate spoke back loudly in 2010 that all that just might be in jeopardy?

Governor Walker versus public employee unions in Wisconsin is just the beginning of what will become the defining issue of the 2012 elections.  Where does America stand in the fight for controlling their own destiny in wresting control over local, state, and even national budgets?  Despite the scenes of angry union members and supporters in and around the state capitol of Wisconsin, and guaranteed to be replicated soon in states like Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, and any other capitol where Republicans rule (even some Democrat strongholds like California and New York), I'll place my bets and fortune with the opposition.  If organized labor thinks that they can win back independents for Obama and their Democrats by defending larger than average pay and benefits, for people who pay less than what most people pay for even less bountiful rewards, then they are even more ignorant and obtuse then even I can credit them.

I predict the power and influence of public sector unions will be greatly diminished over the course of the next few years and rightly so.  Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey has said of his fight with public unions, including the New Jersey Education Association, "If we don't win this fight, there's no other fight left."  As the Wall Street Journal put it recently, public-sector unions "may be the single biggest problem...for the U.S. economy and small-d democratic governance."  Even President Franklin Delano Roosevelt warned against the idea of public employee unions.  "Meticulous attention should be paid to the special relations and obligations of public servants to the public itself and to the Government...The process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service."  He reasoned, that "a strike of public employees manifests nothing less than an intent on their part to obstruct the operations of government until their demands are satisfied.  Such action looking toward the paralysis of government by those who have sworn to support it is unthinkable and intolerable."

A New York Supreme Court in 1943 held:

To tolerate or recognize any combination of civil service employees of the government as a labor organization or union is not only incompatible with the spirit of democracy, but inconsistent with every principle upon which our government is founded.  Nothing is more dangerous to public welfare than to admit that hired servants of the State can dictate to the government the hours, the wages and conditions under which they will carry on essential services vital to the welfare, safety, and security of the citizen.  To admit as true that government employees have power to halt or check the functions of government unless their demands are satisfied, is to transfer to them all legislative, executive and judicial power.  Nothing would be more ridiculous.

Yet despite those sentiments, most state and local governments have become door mats for public sector unions and the bill has come due.  I proudly stand with Governor Christie, FDR, the New York Supreme Court, and any other entity willing to speak truth to power.  We are on the cusp of a realignment that could potentially free public employees, including teachers, from the debilitative cookie cutter world of forced unionization, and unleash their real talent and productivity to the market forces of free enterprise.  It all starts in Madison.

...And We're Off

Governor Rick Snyder delivered his much anticipated budget today amidst the louder than usual groans and protests from  Lansing's class of nattering nabobs and takers.  "Simple, fair and efficient" is the way in which Governor Snyder would like to structure the tax code and Michigan's budget going forward.  I agree, and applaud his leadership and courage to challenge the status quo and create the kind of kinetic climate we need to kick start our sorry state of affairs.  As a county commissioner, I look forward to working with his administration in helping to make Saginaw County a shining example of economic growth and prosperity.

President Obama's $3.7 trillion budget for 2012 on the other hand reflects a politician's budget, one  which demonstrates an incredible lack of leadership, and a willing suspension of disbelief in his ability to manage our affairs responsibly or effectively.  Speaker Boehner's early, and seeming, reluctance to enjoin the battle by not fully embracing fellow Republican Rep. Paul Ryan's "Road Map for America", promises to repeat the old familiar Washington two-step.  We've witnessed this budgetary pas de deux before and it ain't going to be pretty, much less inspirational.

My advise to Speaker Boehner is to grow a pair and lead this nation where it needs to go - as debt free as possible, and with a smaller footprint then we're used to on the backs of U. S. citizens, corporations and taxpayers.  Further advice is to govern like you ran for office - unafraid of those who already oppose you and comforted in the fact that those who do will reward you for your efforts.  It's time for bold, sweeping, moves like those being demonstrated by Republican governors (and even some Democrats) across this country, like Michigan's own Governor Snyder.  Together with the Republican House leadership, they can all provide a portrait of leadership for Obama to emulate and match.

   

Kickin' It Old School

Last year I wrote a post entitled Gender Bender, about the National Science Foundation spending $135 million on a "gender bias program" called Advance, which was/is aimed at improving the lot of women in the sciences.  If you read the article, you'll find that the NSF does more harm than good in helping women to advance.  It should come as no surprise then that in a recent article by John Tierney, printed in the New York Times, at a recent conference of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, a social psychologist found that his research on the very people who do all these various studies are, themselves, extremely biased.  In other words, psychologists and other lettered people who study our behavior regarding racial prejudice, homophobia, sexism, stereotype threat and unconscious bias against minorities, are themselves bigoted against those who might have a different opinion.

Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist at the University of Virginia, polled an audience recently by asking how many considered themselves liberal.  By Dr. Haidt's count, roughly 80% of the crowd affirmed this political allegiance.  "This is a statistically impossible lack of diversity," Dr. Haidt concluded, noting polls showing 40% of Americans are conservative and 20% are liberal.  Dr. Haidt said that social psychologists are a "tribal-moral community" united by "sacred values" that hinder research and blind them to the hostile climate they've created for non-liberals.

The New York Times article claims that studies independent of Dr. Haidt's find "that Democrats typically outnumber Republicans at elite universities by at least six to one among the general faculty, and by higher ratios in the humanities and social sciences."  A  2007 study found that university psychologists who identify themselves as Democrats, outnumber their Republican counterparts 12 to 1.  According to Dr. Haidt, psychology, sociology and anthropology always attracted more liberals, but that their numbers increased disproportionately in the 1960's.  "The fight for civil rights and against racism became the sacred cause unifying the left throughout American society, and within the academy," he said, and that this shared morality both "binds and blinds."

Typical of this mindset was the criticism directed at Daniel Patrick Moynihan in 1965 for his warnings that welfare assistance was leading to a rise in unmarried parenthood and welfare dependency amongst blacks.  "Moynihan was shunned by many of his colleagues at Harvard as racist," Dr. Haidt said.  "Open minded inquiry into the problems of the black family was shut down for decades, precisely the decades in which it was most urgently needed.  Only in the last few years have liberal sociologists begun to acknowledge that Moynihan was right all along."