Parteibuch Aggregator Feed - Items from date 2010-09-02

Uncommon Knowledge: Who is Dismantling America? Dr. Thomas Sowell Takes the Pulse

Uncommon Knowledge — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 23:17:37 +0000

Always a popular guest, Dr. Thomas Sowell returns to the show to discuss his latest book, Dismantling America. The book’s focus is wide ranging, as is the discussion. To take one example, Dr. Sowell questions whether most people understand what is meant by President Obama’s background as a “community organizer.” A community organizer isn’t a friendly local expert doling out advice on better living, but is rather someone who mobilizes resentment at the behest of third party interests to put the public into battle on their behalf.

Dr. Sowell’s basic accusation of those who he believes are destroying America is that they do not–and have never–believed in the fundamental principles of the United States. President Obama, he argues, has always sought out associates who share this skepticism. Nevertheless, Obama is not responsible for the development of this thinking, but is rather the culmination of a long standing trend. This trend has been happening rapidly under Democratic presidents and unfortunately persists ,albeit more slowly, under Republican presidents.

Watch the full video below:

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LaborUnionReport: Teamsters Win 2010 ‘Most Decertified Union’ Award

LaborUnionReport — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 21:33:59 +0000

With their pension plans about ready to implode no wonder they’re clamoring for a union pension bailout , a union boss who was just dumped by his top running mate, and with hundreds of members out on strike, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters can now add one more thing to their pot of bad luck: The union just won the 2010 Most Decertified Union Award.

Every year for the past five years, Union Free America one of a handful of websites that is committed to helping employees maintain their independence gives out its Most Decertified Union Award and this year’s award winner or loser, as the case may be is the International Brotherhood of Teamsters:

Teamsters Union Wins 2010 Most Decertified Union Award

The International Brotherhood of Teamsters is the winner of Union Free America’s 5th Annual “Most Decertified Union Award.” This honor is awarded to the labor union that lost the most decertification elections during the preceding 12 months.

The judging was based on an analysis of the reports of election results on the National Labor Relations Board’s web site for the period August 2009 through July 2010. During that time the NLRB conducted 251 decertification elections. Employees seeking to rid themselves of a union won 157 or 63 percent of them.

The Teamsters union won the “Most Decertified Union Award” by being decertified 48 times during that period. The Teamsters were involved in a total of 64 decertification elections of which they lost 75 percent.

The United Food and Commercial Workers Union UFCW came in a distant second by being decertified in 9 out of 15 elections, or 60 percent.

The International Union of Operating Engineers IUOE won honorable mention by being decertified 8 times. This may seem paltry compared to the Teamsters, but IUOE deserves recognition for being decertified in 8 out of 8 elections.

The Teamsters outstanding performance was not enough to help the Change to Win federation edge out the larger AFL-CIO in the competition. AFL-CIO unions participated in 99 decertification elections and lost 69 of them while the Change to Win unions participated in a total of 101 decertification elections, but lost only 60 of them.

Colorful certificates commemorating these achievements have been sent to the Teamsters, Food and Commercial Workers and Operating Engineers unions.

Read the rest here.

In order to win an award of this nature means that unionized workers in workplaces across America were brave enough to educate themselves about the complicated nature of union decertification, gather signatures from their co-workers, likely withstand union harassment and legal wrangling before, finally, exercising their right to vote the union out.

This is particularly noteworthy as President Obama’s union-controlled National Labor Relations Board considers ways to make it more difficult for workers to decertify unions.

The National Labor Relations Board, in 3-to-2 decisions, has granted review and invited interested parties to file briefs in two sets of cases that question when a labor union’s support among employees can be challenged.

One set of cases Rite Aid Store #6473 and Lamons Gasket Co. asks the newly-constituted Board to reconsider the 2007 decision in Dana Corp., 351 NLRB 434. In that decision, the Board majority held that when an employer agrees to voluntarily recognize a union based on signed authorization cards, it must post a notice advising the employees that they have a right, within 45 days of the notice, to file a petition for an election to decertify the union or in support of a rival union, if they so desire. If the notice is not posted, the union and employer may not later claim that their contract bars a petition by a rival union or for decertification.

As the union-controlled NLRB is likely to rule however the unions want it to, it is likely that agency will establish rules making it more difficult for workers who are newly unionized to file for decertification in the manner described above.

So, in the meantime, congratulations to all those workers out there who helped the Teamsters earn this award! You’ve overcome obstacles, as well as saved yourself hundreds of dollars per year in union dues.

__________________

“I bring reason to your ears, and, in language as plain as ABC, hold up truth to your eyes.” Thomas Paine, December 23, 1776

Dan Mitchell: Crocodile Dundee vs Australia’s Tax Police

Dan Mitchell — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 19:54:41 +0000

Here’s a Reuters story about the Australian Tax Office harassing Paul Hogan, better known to Americans as Crocodile Dundee, because of a tax dispute. The grinches at the tax office took advantage of Hogan’s return for his mother’s funeral to hold him hostage, refusing to let him leave the country until he coughs up some cash. It appears that the tax police in Australia are just as politicized and above the law as the IRS.

Hogan has never been charged with tax evasion and there are plenty of signs that the bureaucrats want to make him a high-profile victim to justify the amount of money that has been squandered in a probe of supposed offshore evasion.

Actor Paul Hogan, star of the “Crocodile Dundee” movies, has vowed to continue fighting the Australian tax office which has barred him from leaving Australia until he pays a massive bill, saying he’s victim of a witch hunt. Hogan, 70, was served with a departure prohibition order 10 days ago while in Australia to attend his 101-year-old mother’s funeral which has prevented him from leaving to return to Los Angeles where he lives with his wife and son. The Australian Tax Office refused to comment on reports of seeking tax on A$38 million $34 million of allegedly undeclared income from Hogan, saying it cannot give details of individual taxpayers. But the actor went public in the Australian media this week to put forward his side in his five-year row with the tax office, saying he had done nothing wrong and the tax office was on a witch hunt for a high-profile case. …”If I was a tax evader, which I’m not, I must be the dumbest one in the world to keep coming back here instead of fleeing to a tax haven … I know they’re absolutely desperate to nail some high-profile character with money to justify the expense to the taxpayer.” Hogan, who was once a painter on the Sydney Harbour Bridge, is under investigation as part of Australia’s biggest probe into offshore tax evasion, Operation Wickenby. The operation is budgeted to cost at least $300 million. The tax office has claimed he put tens of millions of dollars in film royalties in offshore tax havens, a claim that he has denied. He has never been charged with tax evasion.

This story is symbolic of a bigger issue, which is the the unfortunate tendency of governments to create ever-more oppressive and misguided laws in response to failures of existing policy.

We see this in the failed War on Drugs, which leads to trampling of civil liberties and erosion of privacy. We see it in the failed War on Poverty, which leads to more redistribution that further traps people in dependency. We see it in the failed government-run education system, which wastes more money every year as outcomes remain stagnant and children from poor and minority communities suffer.

In the case of tax policy, politicians impose high tax rates and punitive forms of double taxation. As anybody with a modicum of common sense could predict, this bad tax policy undermines economic performance and drives economic activity to jurisdictions with better tax law. The politicians then have two ways to respond. They can lower tax rates and reform tax systems, an approach that simultaneously would boost growth and improve compliance as happened during the Reagan years . Or they can tighten the thumbscrews on taxpayers, trample their rights, and conspire with other high-tax nations to punish the jurisdictions that do have good policy.

Not surprisingly, most politicians choose the latter approach. And the attack on low-tax jurisdictions is a particularly loathsome part of their response. As this video explains, tax competition is a liberalizing force in the world economy and the effort by high-tax nations to penalize so-called tax havens is driven by a statist impulse to prop up decrepit and inefficient welfare states.

Seton Motley: FCC Chair Genachowski Blinks on Internet Regulation

Seton Motley — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 18:31:27 +0000

Yesterday Federal Communications Commission FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski issued a statement on Network Neutrality and Internet reclassification that is difficult to interpret in any way other than “I’m not interested in walking the Media Marxist Net Neutrality plank.”

Chairman Genachowski has called for another round of public comment on the two contentious components of Net Neutrality – and how they should be applied to both wired and wireless Internet. And did so in such a way as to make it very difficult for the pro-Net Neutrality Media Marxists like Free Press to raise any objection. After all, who can protest more input from the American people?

He made it difficult – not impossible. For no amount of Reality is insurmountable for the Media Marxists. These are the folks who continuously called for us to “Listen to the People” – until it became exceedingly obvious that the people weren’t with them.

So now their rallying cry becomes “Overregulation by Any Means Necessary.” They are demanding the FCC reclassify the Internet under ancient 1930s land line telephone rules – and that they do it immediately.

And that they do so against the will of 299 members of Congress, from both Parties, more than 150 organizations, state legislators and bloggers, seventeen minority groups, and the Washington, D.C. Circuit Court – led by a Democrat-appointee.

Free Press Research Director S. Derek Turner today said:

“Today’s announcement does nothing to change what the FCC must do next. The crucial first step for the agency is to reassert its authority and reclassify broadband access services under Title II of the Communications Act.”

Public Knowledge Co-Founder and President Gigi B. Sohn:

“Nothing in this public notice prevents the FCC from taking prompt action on its ‘Third Way’ proceeding.”

Media Access Project Associate Director Matt Wood:

“The record also shows that the Commission must retain authority over specialized services.”

Translation: “Forget what the people have to say! Overregulate – NOW!!!”

How very populist of them.

Another possible factor in Chairman Genachowski’s wise decision is the series of apparently productive stakeholder meetings currently underway. He may be curious to see what these multi-billion dollar investors in the industry come up with.

The Chairman indicated receptiveness to this sort of input in the opening line of today’s statement:

“Over the past months we have worked to preserve the freedom and openness of the Internet, based on the conviction that an open Internet is vital to innovation and private investment, competition, and free speech.”

Not to mention job creation. The communications industry is, after all, one of the few operational segments of the economy – it is hiring while most others are firing. So it would seem worthwhile to let the stakeholders contribute to the discussion in the same way they are contributing to our fiscal well-being.

The Media Marxists’ tiny Net Neutrality “coalition” continues to shed members. And the American people – and two branches of government – vocally oppose their agenda. So they are forced into their last refuge – unilateral regulatory fiat.

Thankfully, it appears Chairman Genachowski isn’t prepared to provide them safe harbor. Here’s hoping he never does.

Stephen Kruiser: Hedge Fund Manager Earns Millions on Carbon, Spends it Financing Global Warming Initiative Campaign

Stephen Kruiser — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 17:29:10 +0000

The state that is home to Hollywood often leads the nation when it comes to creating illusion. Sometimes, the illusion becomes a law like AB32, the so-called “Global Warming Solutions Act”. Two Democratic presidents and one Republican agreed in deciding that the Kyoto Protocol was a fundamentally flawed idea and refrained from having the United States commit to it.

California, however, is governed by legislators who are clueless about the fact that the state is teetering on the edge of a cliff and are more than willing to pass laws that will help push it over. AB32 is a Kyoto-esque bill that seeks to reduce the state’s carbon emissions to 1990 levels by 2020. It was sold to the citizens with the dubious “stimulate green jobs” sales pitch that, so far, has proven to be more of a dream than a reality.

The law purports to create an economic green tech boom in California through the research and development of solar and wind power the latter of which is becoming increasingly problematic .

California now faces unemployment levels second only to Michigan and a perpetual budget crisis that is only made worse by laws that kill jobs and financially prop up industries that are unable to compete in the marketplace on their own merits. Prop 23 is a ballot initiative that would suspend AB32 until the unemployment level in the state hits 5.5% or lower for four consecutive quarters.

As this is such a hot-button issue for those on both sides, the money is flying all over the place to fight it. The largest financial contributor to the “No On 23″ effort is is hedge fund manager Tom Steyer, who heads up Farallon Capital in San Francisco. Steyer is bankrolling a counter campaign that paints Prop 23 as a public health hazard. A quick look at the companies Farallon invests in would indicate that his deep concern for the havoc being wrought on the public health by carbon fuels doesn’t extend much beyond the California border, however.

Farallon owns almost ten percent of a company called FreightCar America, a company that boldly proclaims on its website that, “No one builds more aluminum, steel, and stainless steel coal cars than FreightCar America.” That’s a significant investment in a company that’s solely in the business of transporting environmentalists’ least favorite fuel.

Farallon also invests in the second largest coal company in Indonesia, Adaro. Check out the picture Adaro has on the linked page. Getting that “committed green evangelist” vibe about Steyer yet?

Coal isn’t the only thoroughly non-green fuel Steyer is directing investors’ money towards. His fund also has stakes in two oil and natural gas exploration companies: Sandridge Energy and Energy Partners, Ltd

It is often pointed out by climate change skeptics that the deeds of the most prominent voices preaching climate doom rarely match their apocalyptic caterwauling. How many times a year does Al Gore circumnavigate the globe in a gasoline fueled jet to condescendingly tell the masses that their use of gasoline is killing the planet?

And how worried can Tom Steyer be about the ill effects of carbon fuels if he’s helping to fund the development and delivery of them?

An Inconvenient Truth: Enviros’ Doomsday Rhetoric Breeds Eco-Terror

An Inconvenient Truth — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 16:11:12 +0000

In the wake of yesterday’s terrorism outside Washington, DC by Discovery-network hostage-taker James J. Lee, let’s consider the position articulated by, say, radio host Glenn Beck to not attribute responsibility to Al Gore’s eco-ranting. The latter is of course larded with assurances of a certain eco-catastrophe brought about by dark forces impeding salvation, and disturbing utterances like “the tide in this battle will turn only when the majority of people in the world become sufficiently aroused by a shared sense of urgent danger to join in an all-out effort.” Earth in the Balance, p. 269

Any sane person knows that such exhortations for an all-out effort to stop urgent danger are merely calls to get involved, say with direct mail campaigns and bake sales.

Now, both Fox News and CNN have reported that Lee attributed his radicalism to the writings of two men — Daniel Quinn and Al Gore. The Washington Post carried a fairly lengthy article exploring the former, who dismisses any connection. That piece and the main news feature are both silent on the deceased’s giving equal credit to Gore although a pop-up ad for China’s solar industry does accompany one of them . This is true of the Wall Street Journal’s coverage, among others.

Beck’s somewhat backhanded, I understand rationale for exculpating Gore of partial responsibility is that the terrorist was not a sane person. Yep. But the two — culpability by Gore and other radical green imams, and acting out by mentally unstable members of their targeted demographic — aren’t mutually exclusive. We know that individuals bear responsibility for reasonably foreseeable consequences of their actions, both the instigator and the instigated.

One might not like the connection, what with environmentalism being as chic as a Che Guevara handbag, but you can’t deny it. Take the quiz, “Did Al Gore say it? Or was it the Unabomber?“. I dare you to score better than 50%. That should make you uncomfortable. Then read Lee’s manifesto, and really squirm at the similarities.

This isn’t Jody Foster somehow recklessly taunting John Hinkley. Al Gore dressed up quite nicely to stand on a stage and…show a near-term swamping of much of America, with massive loss of life, unless people are stopped. He vows there is no disagreement of this “truth” except for a few crazies and those in the pay of the oil industry causing the planetary crisis, what Gore calls “the most serious threat that we have ever faced,”[ EITB, p. 40 . Gosh. What could possibly go wrong?

I made the connection on Washington, DC's WMAL morning radio show this morning, to the distress of one of the hosts who responded with the obvious counter that, erm, the Tea Party used the word "target" in their rhetoric accompanied by a scope-sight in graphics showing targeted races. Ah. I suppose that reasonable minds can differ whether assassination is a logical or reasonably foreseeable consequence of this repetition of the long-standing use of "target" in the political context. No rash of actions has borne this out, however.

But yesterday's hostage-taking is just the latest "isolated incident" of eco-nuts engaging in "all-out efforts" that “we must make the environment the central organizing principle for civilization." Gore, EITB And it is the logical, foreseeable consequence of the green movement's perspective and rhetoric.

In my first book "The Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming and Environmentalism ", I serially lay out quotes by establishment greens reflecting Lee's eco-driven revulsion at population as always, the peril of this mostly white, middle class movement is other people being born, other people building homes, other people getting wealthy, etc. , and a whatever-means-necessary attitude.

These remarks are too numerous to cherry-pick one or two. In short, environmentalists think people are pollution. And they must be stopped. Just like Lee writes in his manifesto.

Also difficult to ignore are the examples cited backing up the title of my second book, "Red Hot Lies: How Global Warming Alarmists Use Threats, Fraud, and Deception to Keep You Misinformed": attempts and threats on the lives of those who...dare disagree, and oppose the eco-agenda.

There is a reason an astrophysicist who oddly suggested the sun might have a somewhat larger influence on the Earth's climate than Man should be subjected to having her picture circulated with the accompanying charge "Mass Murderer". Again, what could possibly go wrong? Possibly the same thing in mind -- or, negligently not considered -- when Greenpeace widely posted a picture of me, with bold letters convicting me for their followers' knowledge as "Climate Criminal". Why they want people to know what I look like, I can only speculate. But it did lead to them even finding and staking out my house, taking my trash on a weekly basis while they were there. I got off lucky.

Environmental rhetoric regularly consists of gross exaggeration, claiming certainty about looming catastrophe, calling for radical campaigns to stop those dark forces assuring our destruction. As I write in RHL:

"But as global warming alarmism continues not merely to spin further into the land of the rabid it is actually encouraged in its mania by the establishment media and politicians. Barbara Boxer, senator and chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, employed on the Senate floor employed a variant on Al Gore’s protect-the-baby metaphor at about the same time as [a murder in Australia by a man angered over another's thoughtless eco-waste: watering his lawn], ‘We would never leave a child alone in a hot, locked car, and I believe the [committee] will not leave this issue of global warming burning for another generation to address.’ As one commenter noted, ‘When the notion takes hold that humans are little more than scavengers and parasites on Mother Earth, we shouldn’t be surprised when a fanatic weighs the life an old man against a little water, and finds the former to be of less value.’” citations omitted .

Sound familiar? If not, read yesterday’s terrorist’s manifesto.

Politics hates uncertainty, and the “global warming” agenda in particular demands so many privations and sacrifices of liberty that it cannot withstand scrutiny. So it, and its proponents, relies upon wild exaggeration of knowledge and catastrophe as a means to avoid debate. It’s past time we recognize this and shame those who shriek of catastrophe to advance a political agenda. At minimum, you are taking advantage of and encouraging those of sensitive, tenuous dispositions, with proven dangerous consequences. As I also detail in RHL, they are particularly terrorizing children, leading even to psychiatric commitment.

Eco-terrorism is terrorism. Stop waving it away as a different kind of terrorism, each incident in the pattern of behavior merely an isolated one. Willful or not, these incidents are the logical consequence of the doomsday rhetoric.

Environmental radicalism has been mainstreamed, the latest poisonous “radical chic”. But there are consequences to this indulgence. Stop Gang Green before they harm again.

William Shughart II: Get the Federal Government and Federal Reserve Out of the Way

William Shughart II — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 13:59:08 +0000

Economists and pundits, who contend that the Federal Reserve System has little room to maneuver in using monetary policy to jump-start our anemic economy, often have claimed that America is mired in a Keynesian “liquidity trap”, a situation in which the demand for money is unresponsive to changes in market interest rates.

After all, those commentators emphasize, the Fed has adopted a target for the federal funds rate the interest rate charged on overnight interbank loans of between zero and 0.25 percent. The implication is that further reductions in that rate will have little or no effect on the incentives of businesses to invest in new plant and equipment or of consumers to borrow in order to finance the additional spending necessary to raise GDP growth above the recently downwardly revised estimate of 1.6 percent during the second quarter of 2010.

But those commentators overlook or ignore the easily verified reasoning of John Maynard Keynes, who defined a liquidity trap in terms of long-term rather than short–term interest rates. The long-term ten- or 30-year rate on Treasury securities now runs at about three percent, meaning that the Fed still has arrows in its quiver. Unfortunately, however, those arrows, the use of which would demand the central bank engage in further “quantitative easing”, requires it to purchase more under-performing, “toxic” assets from banks and other financial institutions that lent money to homeowners who could not repay their mortgages. Engaging in such transactions places more bad debts on the Fed’s balance sheet, constrains its ability to conduct monetary policy in the future and raises the specter of higher rates of future price inflation.

In his recent speech at Wood’s Hole, Wyoming, Fed Chairman Bernanke was right to say that economic recovery cannot depend solely on the policies of the central bank over which he presides. But the fiscal discipline spending and tax cuts required to achieve that goal is incompatible with the vote motives of incumbent politicians or their challengers for political office.

In consequence, the United States will not return to genuine economic prosperity for years to come. Americans ought to be grateful if a “double-dip” recession is the only price they are forced to pay as the result of recent monetary and fiscal policy choices. It would be far better to make the Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 permanent, to reduce the tax rate on corporate income and estates to zero, and to limit government at the federal level to the powers granted to it by the people and the Founders of our compound republic.

America will be able to reclaim the path to prosperity only if the federal government and its central bank get out of the way.

Thursday Open Thread: Earl Edition

Thursday Open Thread — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 08:34:42 +0000

The East Coast where BG is largely based is bracing for Hurricane Earl. Having grown up amid tornados in the midwest, this seems mostly just a big thunderstorm, but, man, do people go crazy around here…probably because there are too many federal bureaucrats around these parts…