BCT Editorial – 3/3/11

Below is a detailed critique of the subject editorial.

“The U.S. is reverting to pre-Great Depression economy and society”

[RWC] The first five paragraphs appear to be filler to take up space on the Times op-ed page and/or an attempt to appear high minded.  The editorial doesn’t get to its true message until the penultimate paragraph.

The Times does know the decade before the Great Depression is referred to as “The Roaring Twenties,” right?  Using 1920 (the first year after World War I) as a base, the Harding/Coolidge administrations reduced spending 55% by 1927, reduced taxes 45% by 1925, and ran eight straight surpluses.  According to the BLS, unemployment for 1923-1929 averaged 3.3%.  The “progressive” policies of the Hoover and FDR administrations took what should have been a short-term “normal” recession and turned it into a 10+-year Great Depression.  Now you know why lefties like to brush over the 1920s; it provides proof Hoover/FDR/Obama “stimulus” programs don’t work but conservative principles do.

“Social Darwinism is making a strong comeback in the United States, as witnessed by the assault on public unions that is taking place in Wisconsin.

“Social Darwinism, a gross misreading of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, was used by industrialists, capitalists, economists, politicians and others in the late 19th and early 20th century to justify their dominance over and indifference to others.  (Witness the abysmal working and living conditions and wages of the men who worked in the mills and mines.)

“It’s survival of the fittest applied to economics and society, where poor equates to lazy, inequality is the result of personal shortcomings, and failure represents a lack of will power.

“While social Darwinism never went away, New Deal reforms and the post-World War II boom pushed it into the background.

“Now, it’s back in the limelight, in large part thanks to wealthy individuals and corporations who are using their money to manipulate the message in the media and the politicians who make the rules.”

[RWC] You have to get a kick out of this.  The editorial seems to object to “wealthy individuals and corporations who are using their money to manipulate the message in the media and the politicians who make the rules,” but isn’t that exactly what Calkins Media, Inc., (owner and operator of the Times) is doing with this editorial?  Beyond this, the Times would have us believe guys like Peter Lewis (Progressive Insurance), George Soros, Teresa Heinz Kerry, etc. don’t exist and don’t “manipulate the message in the media and the politicians who make the rules.”

“If the right succeeds in destroying public unions (as they have, to a large extent, private sector unions) and in continuing to pit workers against each other, the United States will revert to pre-Great Depression status when employers hired and fired as they liked, determined wages and work loads [sic] with little or no regard for the consequences on their employees, and denied responsibility for the conditions under which their employees worked.”

[RWC] Did you note the editorial didn’t tell us what “the right” did to “destroy … to a large extent, private sector unions?”

The editorial fails to mention FDR (patron saint of lefties) opposed public sector labor unions.  In a 1937 letter to Luther C. Steward (President of the National Federation of Federal Employees), FDR wrote, “… meticulous attention should be paid to the special relationships and obligations of public servants to the public itself and to the Government.  All Government employees should realize that the process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service.  It has its distinct and insurmountable limitations when applied to public personnel management.”  Likewise, George Meany (first president of the AFL-CIO, 1955-1979) opposed collective bargaining for public sector employees.  I’m surprised lefties haven’t tried to convince us Messrs. Meany and Roosevelt were really conservatives.  When politicians negotiate with labor union management, they negotiate with people who will return part of what they win to the politicians via taxpayer-funded campaign contributions.  It’s called a conflict of interest.  There’s a reason 93% of labor union management PAC contributions to federal candidates (over $62 million) went to Democrat candidates in 2010.

Perhaps the Times can explain why businesses should not be allowed to hire and fire as they like and to determine wages and workloads.

“To a large extent, we’re already there.  Public unions are merely the last domain to crush, the last line of resistance.  Think that isn’t so?  Consider this observation by columnist Dick Polman of The Philadelphia Inquirer:”

[RWC] Once again we have a Times editorial citing an opinion column as if it were a credible source of fact.

“‘If those unions went away, pro-Republican corporate dollars would dominate the political process to an extent not yet seen, with a monumental assist from the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United ruling that essentially freed up corporate largesse. (The playing field is already a tad asymmetrical; in the 2010 races, according to federal figures, 71 percent of all the political action committee money came from business PACs.  Labor’s share of the total PAC money?  Fifteen percent.)’”

[RWC] The Times could have saved some ink and newsprint by starting with this paragraph and eliminating everything before.  It’s all about funding to advance the lefty agenda and the Times understands a big chunk of lefty funding comes from mandatory dues collected from employees forced to join labor unions by closed-shop labor laws.  What outlets like the Times tend to omit is Wisconsin would stop being the dues collector for labor union management.  That is, Wisconsin would no longer deduct labor union dues from employee paychecks and send it to union management.  This means union management would have to bill public employees for their dues and public employees would have to write checks to union management every month, pay period, whatever.  Call me cynical, but I suspect this is the real problem for labor union management.

The editorial appears to link the Citizens United ruling with PACs.  PACs are mostly about making direct campaign contributions to candidates and political parties.  Direct contributions to federal candidates remain illegal for corporations and labor unions.  Citizens United was about the ability of anyone to take out their own ads, commercials, etc. expressing their position regarding candidates and issues.

The Times has been wound up about the Citizens United ruling since it was made in January 2010 and usually misrepresents it.  For example, the ruling also applies to labor unions but the editorial didn’t mention that part.  For more about the Times and the Citizens United ruling, please read “For what it’s worth” and “Scared stiff.”  As I’ve written before, the Times has no problem with free speech by corporations as long as those businesses are part of the press.  That is, the Times is all for freedom of speech (“using their money to manipulate the message in the media”) for itself, but would deny the same freedom to Jim Bob Steel Company across town.  Why should Calkins Media, Inc., (owner and operator of the Times) be allowed to use its wealth to publish columns, editorials, and “news” articles advocating candidates and issues, but not Jim Bob Steel?

When the editorial says “The playing field is already a tad asymmetrical,” it’s an attempt to convince us campaign contributions from both sides should be about equal for a level “playing field.”  That’s BS.  If 75% of people support one candidate and 25% support the other, why should we expect contributions to be split 50/50 between the candidates?  Even if the figures cited by the editorial are correct, keep in mind only about 6.9% of private sector employees belong to a labor union.  Given that fact, why would anyone expect labor union management contributions to approach business contributions?  Also, the editorial mentions only direct campaign contributions.  The editorial did not mention things like 527s and in-kind contributions (knocking on doors, manning phone banks, generating and distributing collateral, rallies, etc.) indirectly supporting candidates beyond PACs.  Of the top ten contributors to 527s for the 2010 election, six were labor unions and three others were Democrat/leftist-affiliated.  Number one was Service Employees International Union at $17.6 million, more than four times number two (United Food & Commercial Workers Union) on the list and more than five times the largest business-related contributor (Pharmaceutical Product Development, Inc.) at number four.

As for “asymmetrical,” I wonder if the Times considers 93% of labor union management PAC contributions to Democrat candidates to be asymmetrical.

“See you in the mines.”

[RWC] Nothing like a little hyperbole, is there?  The editorial fails to note many (most?) of the things (whether good or bad) labor union management lobbied for are now codified in state and federal law.  To a large degree, labor union management helped make labor unions largely irrelevant.