Abandoning Wisconsin's Unions

Wisconsin's public employee unions are being abandoned by the media. Not the Glenn Beck/Rush Limbaugh media, instead liberals like Time Magazine's Joe Klein and The Washington Post's Charles Lane have dumped their support for the unions and their methods.

Klein kind of summed up the irony of the moments:

I mean, Isn't it, well, a bit ironic that the protesters in Madison, blocking the state senate chamber, are chanting "Freedom, Democracy, Union" while trying to prevent a vote?

After the Tuscon incident of only a few weeks ago we were all worried about civility in politics. Suddenly Madison has opened some left leaning journalists eyes, showing them their own group is as uncivil as any. John Jagler on Twitter points out that staffers at the capital in Madison have been told not to wear ties to work, evidently to avoid them being used to to assault them.

Lane points out the hypocrisy of the left coming out so quickly:

This is hypocrisy on an epic scale. I can't think of a more overwhelming refutation of the claim that incivility is the unique province of the American right -- as opposed to what it really is and always has been: a two-way street with both right and left lanes. No wonder so many Americans in the broad center of the political spectrum are turned off by both parties and their sanctimonious "bases."

Both at different points call out the Ed Schultz/Rachel Madow wing of the left for spewing false information, having it proven false, and refusing to acknowledge it.

President Obama, during the health care reform debate last year reminded us, as do Klein and Lane, elections have consequences. Though listening to the President this week you'd think he doesn't agree with that idea anymore; or at least the consequences when they aren't the one's he'd like.

The New York Times points out, it's not just Wisconsin going after public sector unions; though Walker is going farther than others. California and New York, led by liberal icons Jerry Brown and Andrew Cuomo are both attempting to reign in their unions lavish pay and benefits packages also, looking at 8 and 10% pay and benefit cuts. They didn't really mention Chris Christie in New Jersey, who's also gone after the pay and benefits packages, in a much more vocal way.

While the Times isn't quite as blunt as Klein and Lane, read the undercurrent of their article and you see little sympathy for the union's position.

Back to the President's (earlier) thought that elections have consequences. The whole reason Wisconsin flipped both chambers of their legislature and the Governor's office was simple, the people are tired of living in a tax hell. A big chunk of that hell is the personal income tax, which is still higher than neighboring Illinois' after a 66% increase in the Land of Lincoln.

The people saw that the only job growth in their state was in government employment, and realized it's an unsustainable model. Many probably looked at their neighbors to the south and saw that kind of dysfunction heading their way if something wasn't done, soon.

If more recent (than 2 months ago) evidence is needed, again, look to Illinois who did increase taxes considerably, but still has to borrow nearly $9 billion to pay it's past due bills because they didn't do anything about their spending when they jacked up taxes.

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Hypocrisy

Jonah Goldberg of National Review Online has an excellent editorial in today's Chicago Tribune on the intellectual hypocrisy of the folks currently in charge.

His idea of the intellectual hypocrisy of the government is based on a JP Morgan chart, which shows the private sector experience of the President's appointees.

As you can see from the chart, Obama's cabinet doesn't fall a little short of others in "real world" experience, but about 2/3 short of previous least experienced cabinet (Kennedy).

His cabinet isn't made up of folks who've run things, and done things that they had to worry about the cost of. It's made up of people who've never managed an actual enterprise.

Goldberg's point is that folks who've never run everything are proposing to run basically everything from your health care to auto emissions to banks and auto makers.

Their record, by the way, isn't so good so far. They took over banks with TARP, and set rules for how they can pay people, and now the banks can't find experienced bankers to run them under the new rules.

And, since the banks are finding ways to meet the TARP repayment requirements early, and get out from under the government, the Fed now wants to change to rules so it can take over healthy banks it thinks might be a threat to financial stability. That change is sure to make it easier to get folks to work in the industry.

They took over GM, fired the old CEO, ousted his replacement, and now worry about finding anyone else who wants to run Government Motors. My guess is they won't find a senior level executive with experience in that industry to take the job.

I'll refer our friends in D.C. back to a book I read some 20 years ago, that explained exactly why the government was bad at running things. Command of the Seas by John Lehman; Regan's Secretary of the Navy; who wanted to get the government out of the shipyard business because they did a poor job of running them. Government regulations on compensation made it impossible to get anyone above the mid-manager level in the civilian sector to take on the job of managing any of the Navy's shipyards. Lack of experience led regularly to decisions that caused huge cost overruns, poor performance, and a lack of competitiveness with the civilian sector on nearly every job the government managed yards performed.

Lehman found those problems not only at the yards, but in every part of the Department of the Navy that was run by career civil servants. He also found the one thing that could stop any government reform from working as designed; Congress. As hard as anyone would try to fix something, someone in one chamber or the other would find it a threat to a constituency and get a rider passed in a bill that undid the reform.

Anyone that thinks health care reform or cap and trade is going to work any different doesn't understand the culture of government, and the hypocrisy of their intellect.

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Government to Mandate Auto Ownership!

The government has decided to mandate automobile ownership, one of my inside sources told me.

Why would they do such a thing? Well it seems that those who drive automobiles are getting stuck with an extra charge that drives the cost of a car up, they have to pay extra to subsidize public transportation.

Gas taxes, wheel taxes, registration fees and tolls are all funnelled into public transit funds, making those who drive pay for those to take the bus. Yes, bus and train riders do pay a fare, but it doesn't cover the actual cost of providing public transportation.

The way it is being put together, if you can't afford to buy a car, you'll get a government subsidy to help pay for it, through an approve government auto dealer (GM or Chrysler, since the government owns them). You won't be allowed to buy one from outside those approve dealers if you use the government money.

The feds will also determine what type of vehicle is available through the dealers. There will be no waivers, if the 4 passenger Cobalt won't work for your family, that's too bad.

If you do have a car, but it's blue book value exceeds a preset limit, you will be charged a tax on it, to help fund the subsidies to those who don't have cars.

If you can afford to buy one, but insist on using public transportation, at the end of the year the IRS will verify you don't have a car, and assess you a fine, from $800 to $3900 a year based on income, to punish you for not buying one.

Does this sound insane? Yes. And it's not happening. However, the part about drivers subsidizing public transit is true, just like insured people subsidize the uninsured (or those on Medicare).

So why would you consider this a reach, when the Senate and House are already considering legislation, using this same logic, in the name of health care reform?

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The Government Can!

Great YouTube video from Tim Hawkins



Thanks Charlie

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Why We Don't Trust Congress

Need a(nother) reason not to trust Congress on health care reform? We've all heard about HR 3200, the House version. Well Chris Dodd's Senate committee also has a 1,000 page bill that they've voted on.

No one on the committee has even seen the full bill, much less the whole Senate getting a chance to read it. The only thing up on their site is 790 pages before amendments. According to this Wall Street Journal article, committee staffers have said it probably won't be posted by October.

We were promised a new era of tranparency in government not long ago. Evidently the only thing transparent is that promise, not the process of health care reform.

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Health (S)Care Stories

Here's the health care story I put up on barackobama.com today.

I'm pretty sure it won't be there long. Let me explain it. As a retired military veteran I can get coverage under Tricare. The great advantage is cost. I do pay less per year than most do per month for coverage. (Never mind that when I joined the military I was told it would be free for life, the back end payment for 20 years of substandard wages, crazy hours and long deployments.)

The downside is that unless you meet certain criteria, if you live within distance of a military treatment facility that becomes your primary care provider. Because there are also about 5,000 active military and their familie's in the area, Great Lakes has a hard time keeping up with demand for services.

So here's what I wrote to the folks on the web over at Health Care Stories for America:

I've been subjected to government managed health care for the last 27 years. To get treatment for a sore throat with lesions my wife has waited for over six weeks. Sorry, no chance to get a different doctor, we live to close to the treatment facility, and just get wait listed.

Why would I want to subject the rest of America to this kind of care?

I'm pretty sure it won't stay up there long. But I suggest everyone who want to gripe about health reform blast the "Health Care Stories for America" site.

Now, some of you I'm sure are questioning why I'd stay in that system when both of our employers offer insurance. The truth is we are both fairly healthy, and don't use the system that much. So the trade off in money saved is worth the inconvenience that we put up with.

When the wait for appointments begins to exceed our desire to save some money, we'll chose (if we still can) one of our employer based plans.

By the way, that's the same reason a lot of the 40 million or so without insurance don't have it. They figure they are healthy, and can deal with using acute care clinics and ER's and the associated bills. When they have a family, or start worrying about health issues, they start looking for insurance.

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Trickling The Wrong Way

President Elect Obama laid out his plans for getting 2.5 million people back to work by 2011. Unfortunately, it's the standard liberal plan. Spend a bunch of government money on projects, instead of trying to create long term sustainable jobs outside of the government.

His major proposal is to put people back to work fixing our infrastructure. And it's hard to disagree that it needs it. However, road and bridge construction aren't long term projects for the most part, and with a $500 billion dollar deficit next year, where does the money come from?

One proposal that will gain steam come January is to jack up the gas tax. In fact ideas of raising the baseline gas tax, then having a "punitive tax" added on to keep gas prices at a certain level are very popular on the left.

If you set the level high enough, you have tons of cash for building those roads and bridges. Never mind that the "fair for all crowd" is championing one of the most regressive taxes there is, getting rid of SUV's is more important than making sure low income workers can afford to drive to work.

The downside is another price spike in oil and suddenly the punitive tax is wiped out, and they still have a money hungry group of road builders to pay.

Another proposal of Mr. Obama's is to put folks to work building new solar and wind farms. Great idea, because renewable energy is a great idea. Utilities actually don't mind wind and solar power. They cost much less to operate and maintain than coal and gas fired plants. However, they balk at "minimum renewable" requirements for various reasons, and the fact that most legislatures put the onus on them to create the power, but limit their ability to recover the higher than normal start up costs.

The different wings of the same environmental lobby that wants those wind and solar farms sues to prevent the construction of the transmission lines to get the power to the grid. Here's a site from Rhode Island that is trying to prevent government bodies and utilities from building either the wind farms or transmission lines. It's not limited, just google wind farm lawsuits.

Yet another group sues to stop the wind farms based on the birds and bats that might fly into the blades.

Solar is another good idea, but it costs so much per kilowatt hour that most consumers couldn't afford electricity if it becomes a major source. The second problem with it is the industry itself. Most of the solar industry loves the idea of the "roof top" installations where individual homeowners make their own power, or a portion of it. Unfortunately it's also the least efficient manner of installation, since it's normally a fixed installation, where you never really get maximum benefit of the solar panels,

Utilities, on the other hand, like the "solar farm" plan, where you toss thousands of KW worth of panels in an area, and have them on movable platforms to produce the most power possible whenever the sun is out. It's also the most cost effective way of producing solar power, with the lowest cost per user.

All of these plans seem to have one common thread. The federal government is central to their planning, implementation, and execution. In other words, the least economical mode of operation is the default setting. While roads and infrastructure are probably best handled at the government level, the state and local levels are better for it than the feds. Power issues are better handled by utilities, unabashed by government mandates, regulations, and interference.

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Please Don't Help, You've Done Enough!

John McCain and Barack Obama are promising to end the current culture on Wall Street, and bring stability back to the markets through regulation. I have a better idea, get government the hell out of the markets. As Reagan said a quarter century ago "Government is not the solution to our problem. Government is the problem."

Zachary Karabell, writing in the Wall St. Journal notes that much of what's ailing the financial sector today has to do with the knee jerk 'solutions' the government came up with after the Enron fiasco a few years back. He doesn't advocate no regulations on the market, but points out that bad regulations are killing it.


His example is AIG. Because of new accounting rules, companies like AIG that either hold or insure mortgage based derivatives have begun marking down their values. The problem is that because of a number of regulations, some of these mortgage based derivatives are being valued at $0, even though they are obviously worth more than that.


If you have a portfolio with $1 billion worth of mortgage paper, and housing prices decline 20%, how does that suddenly add up a portfolio worth $0? It doesn't in a sane world, but in the one created to prevent an Enron it's creating a disaster of much larger proportions.


AIG and other companies have warned shareholders that the losses they are reporting aren't "real". Why would they say that? Because they know that regulations require one type of accounting, but real value uses a different one.


AIG is now a government held entity not because there was a run on their mortgage based security insurance products, but because their "might be" a run on them, and they couldn't cover it.


How weird is this environment? Goldman Sachs reported higher than expected earnings yesterday, and their stock DROPPED about 20%. If you listened to the news today, you probably figure that they are done, the next big investment bank that will fail.

Did you know that the 20% drop brought their share price down to $114.00? Or that they earned $1.81 per share, yes, they turned a profit, of 810 million dollars! Yet markets are freaking out over their liquidity.

Only in a government "helped" world would a company that earned 800 million dollars be considered primed for failure. Only in a government "helped" world would a company holding $1 billion in good mortgages be in trouble because of $200 million in bad ones.

I've seen what the government does to help, thanks but no thanks. If you are really interested in helping, consider fixing your screw up on financial reporting so that good investments don't look bad.

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George McGovern's Surprising Thoughts

George McGovern was the 1972 Democratic nominee for President (He lost, in case you forgot), and a Senator from South Dakota. So, much to my surprise, he wrote a piece fitting of a GOP capitalist called "Freedom Means Responsibility" in Friday's Wall Street Journal.

McGovern blasts both the right and left for their "paternalism" on issues such as sub prime lending, health insurance (especially regulations by states), and payday loans. Surprising issues to hear someone from the left argue about leaving alone!

I'm not sure if what he's writing about health care is a jab at government managed care as a whole, or just on the silly regulations many states have put into effect, you can read it and figure that out:

Health-care paternalism creates another problem that's rarely mentioned: Many people can't afford the gold-plated health plans that are the only options available in their states.

Buying health insurance on the Internet and across state lines, where less expensive plans may be available, is prohibited by many state insurance commissions. Despite being able to buy car or home insurance with a mouse click, some state governments require their approved plans for purchase or none at all. It's as if states dictated that you had to buy a Mercedes or no car at all.

Wisconsin is a great example, the legislators complain incessantly about the rising cost, but every year or so add something to the list that is "required coverage" to sell policies in the state. Oddly, they are the same legislature that is considering required "al a carte pricing" for cable TV, because requiring consumers to purchase channels they don't watch isn't fair to them.

He sums up the entire article in a thought that is surprisingly simple, but positively true:

The nature of freedom of choice is that some people will misuse their responsibility and hurt themselves in the process. We should do our best to educate them, but without diminishing choice for everyone else.

Unfortunately many in today's legislative world won't listen to him, believing that government knows best, or should manage everything to protect us. We, as the consumer end up paying for the paternalism, through higher health care costs, more difficult to get mortgages, etc. But, hey, at least we are safe, right.

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Fixing Illinois

Jack Davis has a nice piece in the Chicago Tribune about the mass transit funding bill that saved the Chicago area from a transit doomsday. And he rightfully says it didn't go far enough, but disagree with him on where the fixes need to be centered.

Jack, and the non-profit group he works for Chicago Metropolis 2020, like many in Springfield believe that the only way Illinois as a state can be great is to make Chicago better, and have the greatness spread. I say they are all blind, and ignore the fact that we've been trying that since the state was formed, and it's not working.

Instead, a "spread the weath" formula needs to be developed. While the 2020 groups contention that faster rail would make folks more likely to use it has merit, so does the idea that a non-Chicagocentric system for the RTA would help. Making it easier to get from Points A and B, without going through Chicago, or close to it would help. Metropolis 2020 ignores the fact that a lot of the traffic on Chicago freeways isn't going to Chicago, it's going somewhere less well served by our current transit structure.

One of the downsides to the current transit structure is that is makes it nearly impossible for the collar counties to develop their own transit systems, the money they have for it is already tied up in the bloated RTA, CTA, Pace, Metra system leaving little for regional transport outside of Chicago.

Chicago Metropolis 2020 points out that the number of trucks jamming the roads is part of the problem. Easing truck congestion is much easier than anyone will admit, because it doesn't fit in the "Chicago First" mold. Rockford has an excellent airport that is tossed occasional bones in cargo transit, but is basically locked out of becoming a major regional hub by O'Hare contracts. The same is true of major brand airlines trying to fly from Rockford. Anything that takes away from idea of O'Hare as the epicenter of Northern Illinois transit is looked on as bad, and whispers of punishment from the O'Hare folks shut down the idea quickly.

DeKalb and Rockford both have the rail, road and air transport facilities to reduce the congestion in the O'Hare area, and Chicago area as a whole, but have been, through state and regional actions, hampered in developing them to their full potential. Both area also closer to other states time and distance wise than Chicago, and could be used to attract business from them, growing Illinois, but the same groups that want to grow Illinois by making Chicago better ignore methods that would grow Illinois anywhere but Chicago.

So, how does this get fixed? Well this year Illinois has the chance to vote on holding a Constitutitional Convention to rewrite or Amend the State Constitution. Changing Article IV of the State Constitution to change the makeup of the state legislature would be a good start. Currently the makeup is completely population based, with 59 districts, each providing one Senator and 2 Assembly members. Because over 65% of the states population is located in Cook County and it's "collar counties" both houses of our the legislature are disproportionately representative of that area, making everything else in the state second rate as far as the legislature is concerned.

A good change would be to make the Legislature more like the Federal Government. The Assembly could be made slightly bigger, by coming up with 70-75 districts based on population, with 2 members from each. However, the Senate could be based on Counties instead of population, with 1 Senator from each of the 102 counties. By giving equal voice to all of the counties in one branch of the legislature we'd be able to mitigate some of the Chicago First mentality, and maybe, just maybe, grow the whole state from different angles, instead of hoping growth radiates from an overgrown and overburdened epicenter.

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Still No Unity

My title doesn't refer to Iraq, where our Congress would have us believe that not having complete unity of the country after 5 years makes any efforts there a complete failure. Instead, it refers to this article in today's Washington Post, about the lack of full unity in Bosnia.

It seems that 12 years after ending their civil war, they still have no national security force, instead it's divided between the two ethnic enclaves in the country. Yet that country is the example of how to "do it right" by some on the left. Funny, but they are fractured into two major "sectors", each lead by it's own leader, reporting to a PM, each supplying it's own security forces, even in different uniforms. That's not exactly a "unified" country.

I bring it up because I'm surprised the Post published the story. It gives credence to the idea that maybe our Congress is pushing for too much to fast in Iraq, and setting unrealistic benchmarks. Hell, it will probably become fodder for the legion of right wing talk radio hosts and bloggers to point out that progress is slow in new democracies.

And rightfully so; it took 3 years for the fledgling US to come up with the Articles of Confederation, our first shot at a national unity government. It failed after just a few years, and we started from scratch with the Constitution we now have. It was five and a half years after the end of the Revolutionary war before we had a President under the Constitution; that was 13 years after we declared our independence. Iraq, though, should have everything done in under six, with no infighting or problems, right?

Technorati Tags: Iraq, Bosnia, United States, Government, Unity

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More Please....

Governor Rod Blagojevich has realized that me made a mistake with his proposal for a $6 Billion dollar tax hike on Illinois business. The Mistake? It wasn't big enough! That's right, just like at the federal level, the state has a problem with getting enough votes to pass things, so it buys them.

In this case the Governor was already going to go after "big bad business" and make them pay for free health care for everyone, and now an extra billion for schools and (supposedly) property tax relief.

Once again, our elected officials have shown that when the votes aren't there to get their way, they'll look for another way to buy votes to get their pet projects.

The biggest problem with this whole thing is that health care and property taxes aren't the biggest issues that he should be looking at in the state budgets. Instead, he might look at the state's underfunded pension liabilities; a problem he's exasperated by funding other projects by deferring payments to that fund.

School funding is an issue, but it's one that could be addressed separately from the health issue, and probably get enough votes to pass on it's own merits if the right plan were presented.

Instead, Governor "Buy All The Votes" has decided that instead of taking care of existing problems; which may well require a tax increase; he'd rather create huge new layers of goverment, and probably future funding issues.

Technorati Tags: Illinois, Blagojevich, Health Care, Taxes, Business, Government

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