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GM, Chrysler Take Over UAW

Posted by Josh Todd on Thursday, April 30, 2009 10:39:35 PM
Imagine that the United Auto Workers was having a difficult time keeping members. In fact, over the years, they have lost thousands of members and their dues; therefore, the UAW is hurting badly. Actually, the UAW is in serious jeopardy of, well, going extinct.

Enter the Republican Party. Owning the presidency and both houses of Congress, the GOP aims to help its chief ally, big business (I know that most executives are huge liberals, but accept this premise for now), which, in this case, includes General Motors, Chrysler, and Ford. Under the guise of helping America’s workers, the Republican president makes speeches proclaiming that he has a marvelous plan to save the unions (particularly the UAW).

Weeks pass and rumors come and go before the president announces a plan: the UAW and the auto dealers (“Big Auto”) have struck a deal. In this deal, Chrysler and GM executives will get to populate the International Executive Board and the Regional Directors’ offices. Under this arrangement—and since no one “owns” the UAW via stock like a corporation—Chrysler and GM will have de facto control over the UAW. That is, they will run the UAW.

Then Democrats cry foul, citing the obvious conflict of interest. After all, the Big Auto Big Wigs have an interest in keeping labor costs down. Instead of giving the UAW and its workers their God-given rights to collective bargaining, they Fat Cats can keep their labor costs down, thus screwing the workingman and lining their own pockets with the profits.

All of that would be true. But the converse is true, as well. Now that the UAW will have a 55% equity stake in Chrysler and a 39% stake in GM (in real life, not my scenario), a similar conflict will come.

The UAW exists to extract fringe benefits—via collective bargaining and supporting sympathetic political candidates—from the Big Three. If they own a majority stake, or even a large chunk, of one of the auto companies, then they have de facto control and help run the business. Then, they can simply dictate what they want for their workers without collective bargaining. Well, why bargain with thyself? The UAW, then, will line its pockets and increase its power and prestige.

That doesn’t quite seem right, either, does it?

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124104678893870699.html
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A Personal View

Posted by Josh Todd on Wednesday, April 29, 2009 10:16:28 PM
Discussing President Barack Obama's first 100 days with my wife, she described the new president differently from what I have heard or read elsewhere. Yes, he's well-spoken; yes, he's popular; but he "lacks class, tact, and he's not couth."
 
After thinking about it, I believe I agree. Not knowing the president personally, we really do not know what he is like. All we see is what the media lets slip through the filters. And often times, one longs for the bad English of the previous president.
 
Class: The fresh, new, master bipartisan president has shown a lack of class in several instances. For example, he is already snubbing Fox News reporters in press conferences. Sure, the Bush White House began passing on Helen Thomas, but that was after putting up with her questions for many years. President Obama, 100 days in, is already passing on a media outlet that asks challenging questions not even close to the silly probing of Helen Thomas.
 
Another example is the president's speech from yesterday wherein he talked about those pesky tea baggers and how he is interested in a serious conversation. Apparently, Tea Partygoers had nothing serious mind. I don't recall President Bush ever dismissing critics with such condescension.
 
Tact: The president's tea bagger comments also fall under the category of tact. But so does a remark he made to a reporter asking a question about the Somali pirate situation. President Obama cut the reporter off, reminding him that he was there to discuss other matters.
 
Couth, or sophistication: The man can't speak without a teleprompter. He bowed to Saudi royalty. He sent back a gift to the Brits. It seems that President Obama, having met most of the qualifications of the elite--education, stature, the right friends, etc.--isn't all that refined, after all. He appears intellectual without actually being so. While he is bright, he seems to lack knowledge in key areas: foreign policy and economics, for example. Either that or he is an absolute ideologue.
 
Again, taking my wife's opinion at face value, one may be taken aback. Still, she may be right on.
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To the Right?

Posted by Josh Todd on Tuesday, April 28, 2009 9:35:30 PM
Arlen Specter has switched political parties. As Mark Hemingway put it at the Corner on National Review Online, "I read that [Specter] was switching parties, but I was disappointed to learn he's still a Democrat." I suppose that's the gut conservative reaction. After all, Arlen Specter has annoyed conservatives for years.
 
Specter has voted in opposition to conservatives and general Republicans for years for what seems to be roughly 50% of the time. Over the past year, for instance, he voted against tax rebates, budget cuts, spending limitations, an earmark moratorium, and Medicare choice while supporting auto, mortgage, and financial services bailouts and farm subsidies.
 
Which leads me to Specter's remark that the GOP has gone too far to the right over the years. Well, after all, it's true! Under President Bush, the GOP supported a new prescription drug entitlement, expanded S-CHIP, implemented a steel tariff, increased spending into the hundreds of billion-dollar-deficit territory, and campaign finance reform. You know: all of those long-time, close-to-the-heart Republican issues.
 
All kidding aside, the Senator's remarks about a far-right GOP--while obligatory for a new Democrat--are patently absurd. He's never been a very conservative Republican (examples given above). Specter's ACU rating is 44%, meaning that his voting record is not even half-conservative.
 
Which brings me to another Specter remark, one that tells the real reason he's quitting the GOP: "On this state of the record, I am unwilling to have my twenty-nine year Senate record judged by the Pennsylvania Republican primary electorate.” There it is! He expected to be beaten; therefore, in order to survive, he's switching sides.
 
Which revives a memory (I'll quit with the "Which" bit, I promise) of a piece I wrote about Michael Bloomberg, whom I dubbed "the fair-weather candidate." Bloomberg went GOP after 9/11 because Republican was hot and left the GOP when Republican had gone cold. It seems that Specter might be doing the same thing, moving to what is hot.
 
But, who knows? Maybe he'll be a thorn in the Democrats' side, too.
 
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Pinching Pennies...Literally

Posted by Josh Todd on Tuesday, April 28, 2009 9:34:20 PM

A family man had spent $100 more than he had. This clearly infuriated his wife, but the man has his kids on board. They needed it, after all, they reasoned.

Still, the wife argued her cause often and loudly. After several weeks of badgering, the man relented, proclaiming, “Okay, honey. We’ll shave a penny off the total.”

Well, that’s what the Obama Administration has effectively done. Having ordered his cabinet to cut spending by $100million, the president wishes to show the public that he is making attempts to slash spending.

The problem most of the public will have here is that, after spending (and projecting to spend) many trillion dollars, $100million isn’t much. Certainly the sentiment and effort are appreciated, but the spending so many Americans object to is not simply confined to bureaucratic waste.

Still, those on the left—the president, a certain comedian/actress, and a few CNN reporters, for instance—believe the Tea Parties were about rednecks and racism; anti-government and anti-Obama.

If one has read, say, National Review for the past eight-to-ten years, there has always been concern, followed by disappointment, then antipathy for the spending—and the overall philosophy of compassionate conservatism—of the Bush Administration and GOP Congress. As over the top as Bush spending was, Obama spending is beyond ridiculous. It would as if the wife in our scenario divorced her husband for spending $100 too much only to marry a fellow who vowed to spend $1million.

Thus, if the president’s gesture is meant to “have it both ways” on spending, he is making a serious miscalculation. Hopefully that is the case and the American people respond in 2010 by electing more limited government types—only this time the type that will actually vote according to the principle.

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Intelligence and Lies

Posted by Josh Todd on Tuesday, April 28, 2009 9:33:27 PM
I don’t typically like to write blatantly partisan bits. Instead, I opt for ideological pieces that often times fall along party lines and may, therefore, appear partisan when my intent, again, is ideological differentiation. Here, however, I must delve into a partisan matter because it is a matter of national security (to use an overused cliché).

The Politico has published two pieces wherein an apparent contradiction is detailed. Speaker Nancy Pelosi is the culprit. Recently, she has insisted that she did not know that the Bush Administration had authorized waterboarding as an interrogation technique. In response, the Politico unearthed a 2002 Washington Post piece stating that Speaker Pelosi was briefed in great detail about proposed interrogation techniques, including waterboarding.

What is disturbing here is the pure partisanship present not only in Pelosi’s maneuvering, but in Democrat maneuvering altogether, particularly regarding Bush era interrogation tactics.

Pelosi’s lie tells only a small portion of the overall story. For years, Democrats have apologized for, or at least hindered US efforts against, thug dictators—Castro, for instance—who have used tactics far more brutal than those employed that they currently describe as torture.

Fidel Castro—a Democrat favorite (and if you doubt me, look up the comments of the Congressional delegation that visited him recently)—came to power via a brutal takeover and is known to have imprisoned political opponents in the past. In past years, major Democrats (think Henry Wallace) were sympathetic with Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, who was responsible for the gulags and the brutal murder of millions.

It’s not that Republicans are completely innocent in this regard (think Pinochet), but the GOP is not in power now nor are they bloviating about American abuses.

Instead, Democrats, including Pelosi and the Obama Administration, are smearing the Bush Administration’s approved interrogation techniques and publishing them (many of them are, er, were secret). Why? I’m not sure, really. One view is that they are attempting to make themselves appear more righteous than Republicans. Another view holds that they are positioning the Republicans in the corner with regimes that really torture people.

Here, it appears that the success of these so-called torture tactics is being ignored. Former Vice President Dick Cheney has argued that the Obama Administration should release those memos, as well; but they have not. As a former intelligence analyst, I know that these methods did yield valuable information. Upon considering their success, the average Joe might re-think the Obama position, after all.

Thus, one might understand why some conservatives and Republicans might question the patriotism of some Democrats. If a technique is working—saving American lives—and is mild in comparison to the beatings, maiming, and murder of other regimes’ interrogation techniques, then why quit?

I personally believe the Democrats are playing a political game—and they’re playing it with American lives. Sure, they may succeed in making Republicans look like gulag-loving types, but they will also succeed in making our human intelligence (HUMINT) collectors so timid for fear of prosecution that our collection activities will be reduced to those using technology. The result will be to put us all at greater danger. But the Democrats will be in a better position to win elections, so it’s okay, right? 
 
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Dispatch: Dayton, OH

Posted by Josh Todd on Thursday, April 16, 2009 10:43:37 PM
DISPATCH: Dayton, Ohio. I attended the Dayton Tea Party at Courthouse Square in downtown Dayton, Ohio yesterday. I must say that it was not nearly as exciting as some of the left-wing protests I’ve observed in person and on television.

By now we have all heard or seen the CNN hit piece at an Illinois Tea Party. It was said to not be family viewing, implying that it was full of angry, hateful, irrational people. However, if I use Dayton as an example, I saw very little about which to be ashamed.

The organizers of the Dayton event received well over 7,000 RSVPs, even though they anticipated only 1,500 attendees when they began planning the event. At first, I guessed there were perhaps 2,500 folks in attendance (I am quite familiar with large crowds and am able to guess fairly accurately); but people continued pouring into the square. By the time I left, I thought there might have been 5,000 demonstrators. Local media reports estimated nearly 8,000 (so I was off, I suppose).

Clearly, in terms of attendance, the Dayton Tea Party was a great success.

Each of speakers was equally intriguing. Local businessman Harald Zieger, who was born behind the Iron Curtain, told a compelling tale of his journey through Communist Eastern Europe. State Rep. Seth Morgan spoke, as well. None of the speakers was hateful and only one was what I would call a tad too excited (Greg McAfee, owner of McAfee Heating and Air Conditioning), though he was the only speaker to really get the crowd fired up.

Despite the bitterly cold temperatures, Courthouse Square was packed with cordiality. I only witnessed two counter protester incidents, although I was told that one “impostor” was talking about stabbing people while in police custody. I wasn’t able to confirm. No one I saw was overtly hateful or violent (no right-wing extremist, domestic terrorist types here, Secretary Napolitano). I only three signs I would not have wanted at a rally I organized—one of them said that Hitler gave good speeches, too. That is clearly over the top.

In one incident, a counter protester held a sign begging onlookers not to trust the “tea baggers.” This person was not making a scene in any way that I could see, but at one point, five tea partygoers surrounded the counter protester, thus covering his sign. I found that humorous.

Overall, the event was, frankly, kind of boring because average right-wingers tend to be, well, plain and boring when compared with our eccentric friends on the left; however, it did buoy my spirits about the state of our voting population. The demonstrators gave me some hope about the future of our country—hope that it may again be closer to what it was intended to be.
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Giving to the Wealthy

Posted by Josh Todd on Thursday, April 16, 2009 10:25:26 PM
Yesterday, President Obama said the following: “They [the American people] need a government that is working to create jobs and opportunity for them, rather than simply giving more and more to those at the very top in the false hope that wealth automatically trickles down.”

Did you catch that? The government should not give “more and more to those at the very top”—that is, the rich, the wealthy, the high-income earners. And it’s a “false hope that wealthy automatically trickles down”—more on that at a later time.

The errant assumptions in this lone sentence are crucial to understanding how the president views his role and taxpayers in general.

First of all, the government gives nothing to the wealthy; or, more accurately, they give nothing to about 60% of working Americans (some 40% do not have a net federal tax burden at all). When people work, they are effectively trading their time and labor for pay—that is, the employee and employer agree to terms. If they don’t like the pay, they have the option of leaving.

So the notion that the government gives more money to the wealthy is false: they earn it and the government decides how much it takes. And if the president was referring to, say, wealthy folks who do not currently work and get their income stream from stocks and other securities, well, they worked for those and saved at some point, too.

President Obama’s view is problematic because he views himself as the arbiter of fairness. He decides how much we get paid, regardless of our work. If person A works his way through engineering school and makes $50,000 per year while person B, who decided to forgo schooling and enter the workforce as shoe salesman making $20,000 per year, Obama views this as unfair. On the contrary, the respective salaries are the direct result of decisions each person made. At a deeper level, each person has different talents, too. If I am very good at teaching teens, I may make $35,000, but my friend, who is an average engineer (and I am speaking in general) may make twice what I make because we have different abilities…and interests.

This view is also dangerous because it requires a definition of justice that is completely arbitrary. Traditional views of justice hold that everyone be treated the same under the law. Obama’s view demands that different people be treated differently. Unfortunately, the only remedy is to give a third-party the arbitrary power to choose favorites instead allowing people to know the playing field in advance and to pursue happiness as they choose. In conservative circles, we call the former condition tyranny, or dictatorship, or authoritarian, etc.

And that is the very antithesis of freedom, and the truth, for that matter.

Source(s): http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/15/AR2009041501600.html?wprss=rss_politics
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The Mockery: An Ad

Posted by Josh Todd on Tuesday, April 14, 2009 7:00:59 PM
VET SEEKS EMPLOYMENT: A US Army Iraq War veteran is seeking gainful employment. My skills are detailed below.

Education

I am well educated, having completed a B.S. degree from a major university in Ohio. Likewise, I have completed intense education in the military as well as securities and life insurance licenses. Clearly, I have the aptitude for book learning.

Military Experience

I served 5.5 years in the US Army as an intelligence analyst. My service took from Fort Campbell, KY—where I learned the arts of helicopter operations—to Iraq—where I battled America’s mortal enemies. I am skilled in the use of a wide array of weaponry to include organic US weapons and many potential threat weapons systems. Furthermore, I am versed in hand-to-hand combat. Additionally, I have vast skill and knowledge in the areas of military strategy and tactics.

Background

For the past several years I have worked in the now-struggling financial industry (about which I am very disgruntled—and government control and taxes irk me). This experience has given me great knowledge of legitimate finance as well as the illegitimate variety (my firms have always provided excellent training in the detection of fraud, money laundering, and other potentially useful arts).

Preferred Position

I seek a vital position inside one of our numerous right-wing militia groups now gathering in the United States. But I will consider other employment, such as abortion protester, immigration (all types, no caveats) enforcer…

Please note that the Mockery is a satirical column before reporting me to the Department of Homeland Security, the Civilian Defense Corps, ACORN, the IRS, etc.
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Capitalism v. Socialism

Posted by Josh Todd on Friday, April 10, 2009 10:27:04 PM
A Rasmussen poll released earlier this week shows that a mere 53% of Americans believe that a capitalist economic system is superior to a socialist system. That’s what the headlines said. So, without reading the article, as many of us do, 47% believe in socialism, right? Not so: 27% believe socialism is better while 20% simply do not know.

The poll was further broken down: Investors prefer capitalism by a 5-1 margin. Non-investors like capitalism by a mark of 40% to 25%. Republicans favor capitalism by an 11-1 mark while Democrats prefer the system by a mere 39%-30%. Most disturbing, perhaps, are the results for the under-30 types (a group I just left eight months ago): capitalism wins 37%-33%. Very close.

Pollsters did not define the terms “capitalism” or “socialism.” And in an earlier poll, the terms were changed, with 70% of Americans preferring “a free market economy” to 15% preferring a “government-managed economy.”

Interesting results, but the big story is unstated. Two intertwining truths should be considered when examining these results: First, how many Americans actually understand capitalist and socialist systems? I posit that a percentage around 25% is probably accurate. Second, the United States is not a laissez-faire, free enterprise, dirty, rotten, capitalist nation.

I question how many Americans actually have a solid understanding of capitalist and socialist economic systems. Browsing the Ohio Department of Education’s Social Studies standards, I found the principles of the systems are covered but the terms “capitalism” and “socialism” are not used. Instead, the state opts for “market economy” and “command economy”(though I’m sure the textbooks used contain the terms “capitalism” and “socialism”). In reality, economics is a very small part of what a student is supposed to learn in the K-12 years.

In fact, I recall zero economic lessons from my public school days. All of my economic knowledge came from my undergraduate studies and leisure reading during and thereafter. Beyond that, many of my fellow college graduates with whom I’ve discussed economic matters show scant understanding of basic macroeconomic concepts. Thus, I stand by my 25% figure—and it may be even lower than that.

On the second matter, one of my left-leaning, cap-and-trade-loving, flat tax-hating econ professors actually said something with pinpoint accuracy seven years ago: the United States isn’t capitalist or socialist. It’s a little of both. Use that as a poll question.

Democrats campaigned in 2008 in part by blasting free market capitalism. Not enough regulation, they cried. Well, Ayn Rand had it right when she wrote that capitalism was an untried or unknown idea. Since the 1930s, the United States has indeed been a mixed economy—market-based with quite a bit of command from the government. In fact, one could argue quite persuasively that the command bit caused much of our current economic mess. So leftist critics of our economy are wrong in blasting our snobbish, robber baron, capitalist pig ways, because we simply don’t have a true free market system. I suppose, if you hate America’s capitalist regime, then you must hate its socialist regime, too, because you have both.

I would challenge Rasmussen—or anyone, for that matter—to poll Americans as to the definitions of capitalism and socialism. Then, ask them what sort of economic system we have in the United States. Personally, that would be a far more telling poll. It would tell us how we’ve failed to adequately educate our citizens—particularly those under the age 30 (just look at the Rasmussen results)—about fundamental economic concepts. It might also show us that we have a system where the elected officials, who, for the most part, probably understand the differences, prolong a system that keeps the masses in the dark about what is really happening.

Then we might be able to stop the rush to a more socialist union.

Source(s): http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/general_politics/just_53_say_capitalism_better_than_socialism; http://www.ode.state.oh.us/GD/Templates/Pages/ODE/ODEDetail.aspx?Page=3&TopicRelationID=1706&Content=59094
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