Frisco_Slug_Esq
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altruistic zeal...
Covering the topic from a to z.
Covering the topic from a to z.
Politics and the US Economy
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RightField
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This has been an anemic recovery, thanks in part due to the economy-crushing policies and approaches of this administration (based on political expedience rather than economic sense and growth). The article below provides some figures that illustrate the point that these democratic policies are adversely impacting the middle class and everyone else. Do you think it's a sound policy to increase taxes and provide more welfare to people who aren't working or to reduce taxes and the deficit and let capital and American ingenuity create new jobs so that people could have pride in themselves in earning their own rather than depending on a capricious democratic overlord to decide whether you're worthy.
Did you get your ObamaTaxWaiver yet?
The Obama Growth Discount
Policy matters. If Barack Obama matched Ronald Reagan's post-recession recovery rate, 15.7 million more Americans would have jobs..
By PHIL GRAMM
Wall Street Journal
April 15, 2011
Had the U.S. economy recovered from the current recession the way it bounced back from the other 10 recessions since World War II, our per-capita gross domestic product (GDP) would be $3,553 higher than it is today, and 11.9 million more Americans would be employed.
Those startling figures are based on the average recovery rate of real GDP and jobs three years after the beginning of each postwar recession. Some apologists suggest that the current recovery is so weak because the recession was so deep. But the totality of our experience in the postwar period is exactly the opposite—the bigger the bust, the bigger the boom that follows.
On average, three years after the four deepest previous recessions started, real GDP was 7.6% higher than the pre-recession level. During the Obama recovery, real GDP is up only 0.1%. Forty months after the start of the 1953, 1957, 1973 and 1981 recessions, total employment was on average 4.7% higher than the pre-recession peaks, while total employment today is still down 4.7%—that's a total employment gap of 13.9 million jobs.
The problem is not just the weak recovery but increasing evidence that the economy is now on a growth path far different from the previous quarter century. Despite the largest monetary and fiscal stimuli in American history, in 2009 the capital stock of the nation actually shrank for the first time in the postwar period. Our current economic underperformance seems so likely to continue that many economists and pundits have difficulty visualizing an America of tomorrow that looks like the America of the past half-century.
Nothing is better documented in the world economy than the principle that the economic system of a nation is the primary determinant of its success. In America, changes in economic policy have generally been so gradual that recessions and ensuing recoveries have simply brought the economy back to the same growth trend line. But there are exceptions. Would anybody seriously deny that the Reagan policies of the early 1980s had such a significant effect on economic growth and employment that they changed the growth trend line?
In 1982, unemployment reached 10.8% as the Federal Reserve tightened monetary policy in order to put the brakes on inflation. Conditions were hardly conducive to recovery and yet the strong, sustained recovery that followed is permanently identified in our collective memory as the good old days.
If we had matched the 1982 recovery rate, today annual per-capita income would be $4,154 higher than before the recession—that's an extra $16,600 for a family of four—and some 15.7 million more Americans would have jobs. That's enough jobs to employ 100% of the 13.5 million Americans currently classified as unemployed. In addition, we would have provided jobs for 30% of both the 2.4 million discouraged or marginally attached workers and the 4.8 million who have totally dropped out of the work force since January 2008.
A compelling case can be made that Reagan's tax cuts, Social Security reforms, regulatory reforms, and limits on the growth and power of the federal government not only helped the economy shake off the malaise of the 1970s but generated an economic growth premium that bore dividends for Americans until 2007.
And if the Reagan policies of the 1980s were sufficiently different from those of the previous decade to generate a growth premium, cannot a case be made that the policies of the Obama administration are sufficiently different from those of the previous quarter-century to alter the growth trend and impose a growth discount?
Under President Obama's policies, federal spending has exploded like never before. If his 2011 budget were implemented, this president would increase the outstanding federal debt more than the previous 43 presidents combined. Government control of the health-care system and the financial system has been greatly expanded. The administration also supported last year's failed "card check" legislation, an attempt at the most dramatic expansion of the power of organized labor since the Great Depression; launched diatribes against wealth accumulation; undertook a massive expansion in the regulatory power of the federal government; and proposed the largest tax increases in American history. Those tax increases were aimed almost exclusively at America's entrepreneurs, risk takers and small businesses.
The Obama administration arrived in Washington with a mandate from voters in one hand and a blank check from Congress in the other. How convenient it was to assume that government could take over the health-care system, raise taxes, hugely expand regulatory power and unleash a deficit spending orgy without producing a significant deviation in the growth trend of the previous quarter century. Apparently, Mr. Obama failed to notice that President Bill Clinton saw his strongest period of economic growth only after his health-care takeover and stimulus bills were defeated, welfare rolls were pared, the capital gains tax was cut, and the budget was balanced.
The recovery is being stifled by the unprecedented policy changes undertaken by this administration and the previous Congress. Whether in absolute or relative terms, whether in comparison to our own experience or the performance of our competitors, America's wealth-producing ability has been diminished.
Until last November's elections and the December compromise in the lame-duck Congress, it seemed certain that marginal tax rates on income, dividends and capital gains would rise dramatically. It was not until the off-year election results provided business with some confidence that the administration's ability to further implement its policies through legislative action was at an end that the recovery began to show modest improvements. In short, the 2010 elections imposed a cap on the downside risk associated with the administration's policies and slightly reduced the Obama growth discount.
A good trial lawyer might argue that the star-struck millions who voted for Mr. Obama knew or should have known that his election would mean a larger, more powerful federal government, a massive increase in social spending, and higher taxes on the most productive members of American society, and that the voters got exactly what they voted for. Elections have consequences.
But it is equally clear that Americans did not realize that the price they might pay for big government would be 15.7 million fewer jobs and $4,154 less in per-capita income. Big government costs more than higher taxes. It is paid for with diminished freedom and less opportunity. You can't have unlimited opportunity and unlimited government.
Did you get your ObamaTaxWaiver yet?
The Obama Growth Discount
Policy matters. If Barack Obama matched Ronald Reagan's post-recession recovery rate, 15.7 million more Americans would have jobs..
By PHIL GRAMM
Wall Street Journal
April 15, 2011
Had the U.S. economy recovered from the current recession the way it bounced back from the other 10 recessions since World War II, our per-capita gross domestic product (GDP) would be $3,553 higher than it is today, and 11.9 million more Americans would be employed.
Those startling figures are based on the average recovery rate of real GDP and jobs three years after the beginning of each postwar recession. Some apologists suggest that the current recovery is so weak because the recession was so deep. But the totality of our experience in the postwar period is exactly the opposite—the bigger the bust, the bigger the boom that follows.
On average, three years after the four deepest previous recessions started, real GDP was 7.6% higher than the pre-recession level. During the Obama recovery, real GDP is up only 0.1%. Forty months after the start of the 1953, 1957, 1973 and 1981 recessions, total employment was on average 4.7% higher than the pre-recession peaks, while total employment today is still down 4.7%—that's a total employment gap of 13.9 million jobs.
The problem is not just the weak recovery but increasing evidence that the economy is now on a growth path far different from the previous quarter century. Despite the largest monetary and fiscal stimuli in American history, in 2009 the capital stock of the nation actually shrank for the first time in the postwar period. Our current economic underperformance seems so likely to continue that many economists and pundits have difficulty visualizing an America of tomorrow that looks like the America of the past half-century.
Nothing is better documented in the world economy than the principle that the economic system of a nation is the primary determinant of its success. In America, changes in economic policy have generally been so gradual that recessions and ensuing recoveries have simply brought the economy back to the same growth trend line. But there are exceptions. Would anybody seriously deny that the Reagan policies of the early 1980s had such a significant effect on economic growth and employment that they changed the growth trend line?
In 1982, unemployment reached 10.8% as the Federal Reserve tightened monetary policy in order to put the brakes on inflation. Conditions were hardly conducive to recovery and yet the strong, sustained recovery that followed is permanently identified in our collective memory as the good old days.
If we had matched the 1982 recovery rate, today annual per-capita income would be $4,154 higher than before the recession—that's an extra $16,600 for a family of four—and some 15.7 million more Americans would have jobs. That's enough jobs to employ 100% of the 13.5 million Americans currently classified as unemployed. In addition, we would have provided jobs for 30% of both the 2.4 million discouraged or marginally attached workers and the 4.8 million who have totally dropped out of the work force since January 2008.
A compelling case can be made that Reagan's tax cuts, Social Security reforms, regulatory reforms, and limits on the growth and power of the federal government not only helped the economy shake off the malaise of the 1970s but generated an economic growth premium that bore dividends for Americans until 2007.
And if the Reagan policies of the 1980s were sufficiently different from those of the previous decade to generate a growth premium, cannot a case be made that the policies of the Obama administration are sufficiently different from those of the previous quarter-century to alter the growth trend and impose a growth discount?
Under President Obama's policies, federal spending has exploded like never before. If his 2011 budget were implemented, this president would increase the outstanding federal debt more than the previous 43 presidents combined. Government control of the health-care system and the financial system has been greatly expanded. The administration also supported last year's failed "card check" legislation, an attempt at the most dramatic expansion of the power of organized labor since the Great Depression; launched diatribes against wealth accumulation; undertook a massive expansion in the regulatory power of the federal government; and proposed the largest tax increases in American history. Those tax increases were aimed almost exclusively at America's entrepreneurs, risk takers and small businesses.
The Obama administration arrived in Washington with a mandate from voters in one hand and a blank check from Congress in the other. How convenient it was to assume that government could take over the health-care system, raise taxes, hugely expand regulatory power and unleash a deficit spending orgy without producing a significant deviation in the growth trend of the previous quarter century. Apparently, Mr. Obama failed to notice that President Bill Clinton saw his strongest period of economic growth only after his health-care takeover and stimulus bills were defeated, welfare rolls were pared, the capital gains tax was cut, and the budget was balanced.
The recovery is being stifled by the unprecedented policy changes undertaken by this administration and the previous Congress. Whether in absolute or relative terms, whether in comparison to our own experience or the performance of our competitors, America's wealth-producing ability has been diminished.
Until last November's elections and the December compromise in the lame-duck Congress, it seemed certain that marginal tax rates on income, dividends and capital gains would rise dramatically. It was not until the off-year election results provided business with some confidence that the administration's ability to further implement its policies through legislative action was at an end that the recovery began to show modest improvements. In short, the 2010 elections imposed a cap on the downside risk associated with the administration's policies and slightly reduced the Obama growth discount.
A good trial lawyer might argue that the star-struck millions who voted for Mr. Obama knew or should have known that his election would mean a larger, more powerful federal government, a massive increase in social spending, and higher taxes on the most productive members of American society, and that the voters got exactly what they voted for. Elections have consequences.
But it is equally clear that Americans did not realize that the price they might pay for big government would be 15.7 million fewer jobs and $4,154 less in per-capita income. Big government costs more than higher taxes. It is paid for with diminished freedom and less opportunity. You can't have unlimited opportunity and unlimited government.
Last edited:
Frisco_Slug_Esq
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I read that yesterday. Good article.
You might like this too...
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/print/264866
You might like this too...
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/print/264866
J
JAMESBJOHNSON
Guest
RIGHTFIELD ET AL
Naaah. Whats different now is this: No new technology has come to our rescue as happened in past recessions.
The PC and cable tv pulled Reagan outta the ditch. The Internet ended Bush41's recession. Cellphones helped Clinton hang on.
Going further back Ford's Model T ended the 1907 recession, radio and electric appliances ended the 1920 recession, world war 2 ended our great depression, atomic energy and computers and aviation ended the 1946-1947 recession, the interstate highway system and space program ended the 1958 recession.
Its never policies, its always technology that kicks productivity in the ass.
Naaah. Whats different now is this: No new technology has come to our rescue as happened in past recessions.
The PC and cable tv pulled Reagan outta the ditch. The Internet ended Bush41's recession. Cellphones helped Clinton hang on.
Going further back Ford's Model T ended the 1907 recession, radio and electric appliances ended the 1920 recession, world war 2 ended our great depression, atomic energy and computers and aviation ended the 1946-1947 recession, the interstate highway system and space program ended the 1958 recession.
Its never policies, its always technology that kicks productivity in the ass.
RightField
Literotica Guru
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There's a ton of new technology and it's rippling through and changing the world...again. It's in phones, computers, networks and the intersection of them all...the new net-centric world. We're just tapping it now...the problem is still in the perception that the government is abusing the powers it was given in the constitution and is asserting its control over all of us and spending irresponsibly, at levels that we can't hope to repay.
Did you see what I posted from the Wall Street Journal last week? All the libs are running around ignorantly saying that if they just tax the "rich" just another 4.5%, everything will be fine (from 35% to 39.5%). The Wall Street Journal pointed out that the libs could confiscate 100% of the money that all the people who make over $100,000 a year make and it still wouldn't be enough to cover the overspending in 2010 alone. Then, the libs take umbrage that we take $38 Billion in reduced spending out of an overrun that amounts to $1,600 Billion. They're nuts and that guy Krugman is the most crazy of them all.
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Frisco_Slug_Esq
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Krugman is over the rainbow...
__________________
"The share of Americans who are working is at its lowest level in almost 30 years.The share of the population that is working fell to its lowest level last year since women started entering the workforce in large numbers three decades ago, a USA TODAY analysis finds. Only 45.4% of Americans had jobs in 2010, the lowest rate since 1983 and down from a peak of 49.3% in 2000. Last year, just 66.8% of men had jobs, the lowest on record."
USA Today
__________________
"The share of Americans who are working is at its lowest level in almost 30 years.The share of the population that is working fell to its lowest level last year since women started entering the workforce in large numbers three decades ago, a USA TODAY analysis finds. Only 45.4% of Americans had jobs in 2010, the lowest rate since 1983 and down from a peak of 49.3% in 2000. Last year, just 66.8% of men had jobs, the lowest on record."
USA Today
Frisco_Slug_Esq
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Yesterday, he had a good one say that civility was the refuge of scoundrels, that Republicans should be demagogued to death because of Death Panels and Obama is a Socialist. He must have been napping during the Bush years...
RightField
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Where the Tax Money Is
Obama targets the middle class while pretending to tax only the rich.
Wall Street Journal
April 18, 2011
A dominant theme of President Obama's budget speech last Wednesday was that our fiscal problems would vanish if only the wealthiest Americans were asked "to pay a little more." Since he's asking, imagine that instead of proposing to raise the top income tax rate well north of 40%, the President decided to go all the way to 100%.
Let's stipulate that this is a thought experiment, because Democrats don't need any more ideas. But it's still a useful experiment because it exposes the fiscal futility of raising rates on the top 2%, or even the top 5% or 10%, of taxpayers to close the deficit. The mathematical reality is that in the absence of entitlement reform on the Paul Ryan model, Washington will need to soak the middle class—because that's where the big money is.
Consider the Internal Revenue Service's income tax statistics for 2008, the latest year for which data are available. The top 1% of taxpayers—those with salaries, dividends and capital gains roughly above about $380,000—paid 38% of taxes. But assume that tax policy confiscated all the taxable income of all the "millionaires and billionaires" Mr. Obama singled out. That yields merely about $938 billion, which is sand on the beach amid the $4 trillion White House budget, a $1.65 trillion deficit, and spending at 25% as a share of the economy, a post-World War II record.
Say we take it up to the top 10%, or everyone with income over $114,000, including joint filers. That's five times Mr. Obama's 2% promise. The IRS data are broken down at $100,000, yet taxing all income above that level throws up only $3.4 trillion. And remember, the top 10% already pay 69% of all total income taxes, while the top 5% pay more than all of the other 95%.
We recognize that 2008 was a bad year for the economy and thus for tax receipts, as payments by the rich fell along with their income. So let's perform the same exercise in 2005, a boom year and among the best ever for federal revenue. (Ahem, 2005 comes after the Bush tax cuts that Mr. Obama holds responsible for all the world's problems.)
In 2005 the top 5% earned over $145,000. If you took all the income of people over $200,000, it would yield about $1.89 trillion, enough revenue to cover the 2012 bill for Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security—but not the same bill in 2016, as the costs of those entitlements are expected to grow rapidly. The rich, in short, aren't nearly rich enough to finance Mr. Obama's entitlement state ambitions—even before his health-care plan kicks in.
So who else is there to tax? Well, in 2008, there was about $5.65 trillion in total taxable income from all individual taxpayers, and most of that came from middle income earners. The nearby chart shows the distribution, and the big hump in the center is where Democrats are inevitably headed for the same reason that Willie Sutton robbed banks.
This is politically risky, however, so Mr. Obama's game has always been to pretend not to increase taxes for middle class voters while looking for sneaky ways to do it. His first budget in 2009 included a "climate revenues" section from the indirect carbon tax of cap and trade, which of course would be passed down to all consumers. Such Democratic luminaries as Nancy Pelosi have often chattered about a European-style value-added tax, or VAT, which from a liberal perspective has the virtue of applying to every level of production or service and therefore is largely hidden from the people who pay it.
Now that those two ideas have failed politically, Mr. Obama is turning as he did last week to limiting tax deductions and other "loopholes," such as for mortgage interest payments. We support doing away with these distortions too, and so does Mr. Ryan, but in return for lower tax rates. Mr. Obama just wants the extra money, which he says will reduce the deficit but in practice will merely enable more spending.
Keep in mind that the most expensive tax deductions, in terms of lost tax revenue, go mainly to the middle class. These include the deductions for state and local tax payments (especially property taxes), mortgage interest, employer-sponsored health insurance, 401(k) contributions and charitable donations. The irony is that even as Mr. Obama says he merely wants the rich to pay a little bit more, his proposals would make the tax code less progressive than it is today.
Mr. Ryan isn't proposing controversial entitlement reforms because he likes pointless political risk, or because he likes being berated to his face from a front row seat, as he was on Wednesday. Medicare and Medicaid spending are consistently growing two to three times faster than the rest of the economy, while Medicare's cash-in-cash-out financing model means that seniors collect far more in benefits than they paid in taxes over their working lifetime. The entitlement state was designed for another era.
Mr. Obama's speech was disgraceful for its demagoguery but also because it contained nothing remotely commensurate to the scale of the problem. If the President had come out for a large tax on the middle class, like a VAT, then at least the country could have debated the choice of paying for the government we have or modernizing it a la Mr. Ryan so it is affordable.
Instead the President will continue targeting the middle class for tax increases to pay for an entitlement state on autopilot, while claiming he only wants to tax the rich. Oh, and we almost forgot: Happy Tax Day.
Obama targets the middle class while pretending to tax only the rich.
Wall Street Journal
April 18, 2011
A dominant theme of President Obama's budget speech last Wednesday was that our fiscal problems would vanish if only the wealthiest Americans were asked "to pay a little more." Since he's asking, imagine that instead of proposing to raise the top income tax rate well north of 40%, the President decided to go all the way to 100%.
Let's stipulate that this is a thought experiment, because Democrats don't need any more ideas. But it's still a useful experiment because it exposes the fiscal futility of raising rates on the top 2%, or even the top 5% or 10%, of taxpayers to close the deficit. The mathematical reality is that in the absence of entitlement reform on the Paul Ryan model, Washington will need to soak the middle class—because that's where the big money is.
Consider the Internal Revenue Service's income tax statistics for 2008, the latest year for which data are available. The top 1% of taxpayers—those with salaries, dividends and capital gains roughly above about $380,000—paid 38% of taxes. But assume that tax policy confiscated all the taxable income of all the "millionaires and billionaires" Mr. Obama singled out. That yields merely about $938 billion, which is sand on the beach amid the $4 trillion White House budget, a $1.65 trillion deficit, and spending at 25% as a share of the economy, a post-World War II record.
Say we take it up to the top 10%, or everyone with income over $114,000, including joint filers. That's five times Mr. Obama's 2% promise. The IRS data are broken down at $100,000, yet taxing all income above that level throws up only $3.4 trillion. And remember, the top 10% already pay 69% of all total income taxes, while the top 5% pay more than all of the other 95%.
We recognize that 2008 was a bad year for the economy and thus for tax receipts, as payments by the rich fell along with their income. So let's perform the same exercise in 2005, a boom year and among the best ever for federal revenue. (Ahem, 2005 comes after the Bush tax cuts that Mr. Obama holds responsible for all the world's problems.)
In 2005 the top 5% earned over $145,000. If you took all the income of people over $200,000, it would yield about $1.89 trillion, enough revenue to cover the 2012 bill for Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security—but not the same bill in 2016, as the costs of those entitlements are expected to grow rapidly. The rich, in short, aren't nearly rich enough to finance Mr. Obama's entitlement state ambitions—even before his health-care plan kicks in.
So who else is there to tax? Well, in 2008, there was about $5.65 trillion in total taxable income from all individual taxpayers, and most of that came from middle income earners. The nearby chart shows the distribution, and the big hump in the center is where Democrats are inevitably headed for the same reason that Willie Sutton robbed banks.
This is politically risky, however, so Mr. Obama's game has always been to pretend not to increase taxes for middle class voters while looking for sneaky ways to do it. His first budget in 2009 included a "climate revenues" section from the indirect carbon tax of cap and trade, which of course would be passed down to all consumers. Such Democratic luminaries as Nancy Pelosi have often chattered about a European-style value-added tax, or VAT, which from a liberal perspective has the virtue of applying to every level of production or service and therefore is largely hidden from the people who pay it.
Now that those two ideas have failed politically, Mr. Obama is turning as he did last week to limiting tax deductions and other "loopholes," such as for mortgage interest payments. We support doing away with these distortions too, and so does Mr. Ryan, but in return for lower tax rates. Mr. Obama just wants the extra money, which he says will reduce the deficit but in practice will merely enable more spending.
Keep in mind that the most expensive tax deductions, in terms of lost tax revenue, go mainly to the middle class. These include the deductions for state and local tax payments (especially property taxes), mortgage interest, employer-sponsored health insurance, 401(k) contributions and charitable donations. The irony is that even as Mr. Obama says he merely wants the rich to pay a little bit more, his proposals would make the tax code less progressive than it is today.
Mr. Ryan isn't proposing controversial entitlement reforms because he likes pointless political risk, or because he likes being berated to his face from a front row seat, as he was on Wednesday. Medicare and Medicaid spending are consistently growing two to three times faster than the rest of the economy, while Medicare's cash-in-cash-out financing model means that seniors collect far more in benefits than they paid in taxes over their working lifetime. The entitlement state was designed for another era.
Mr. Obama's speech was disgraceful for its demagoguery but also because it contained nothing remotely commensurate to the scale of the problem. If the President had come out for a large tax on the middle class, like a VAT, then at least the country could have debated the choice of paying for the government we have or modernizing it a la Mr. Ryan so it is affordable.
Instead the President will continue targeting the middle class for tax increases to pay for an entitlement state on autopilot, while claiming he only wants to tax the rich. Oh, and we almost forgot: Happy Tax Day.
RightField
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The Incredible Shrinking Obama
Peter Wehner
April 25 - May 2, 2011, Vol. 16, No. 31
Barack Obama’s budget address last week ranks among the most dishonest and dishonorable presidential speeches in generations. It contained an avalanche of false and misleading statements. It was shallow and bitterly partisan. Yet the speech served a useful purpose: It provided the American people in general, and Republicans in particular, with the basic line of attack President Obama will use between now and the 2012 election.
The White House strategy is clear: argue that Obama wants to restore fiscal balance by raising taxes on “millionaires and billionaires” while those who don’t favor higher taxes on the wealthy are fundamentally unserious. As a political matter, of course, class warfare does not have a particularly successful track record. But, to keep it that way, Republicans need to provide a compelling response to the Obama strategy. Fortunately such a response exists.
Obama’s argument is built on sand. A tax increase on the wealthy would fall far short of the revenues needed to reverse our fiscal trajectory. Our budget problems are significantly worse today than they were in the 1990s. There are not nearly enough wealthy people in the nation to tax in order to tame our debt. If the president wants higher taxes to improve our fiscal imbalance, he will need to embrace a massive middle-class tax increase and/or a value added tax (VAT). But Obama hasn’t shown the slightest preference for that option. It’s pure fiction to pretend that higher taxes on those making more than $200,000 will make much of a dent in our debt, given the size of our long-term spending problem. Obama’s argument isn’t with Republicans. It’s with basic arithmetic.
Republicans need to unmask the philosophy guiding modern liberalism when it comes to taxes. What liberals are interested in isn’t growth so much as egalitarianism and redistribution for its own sake. For many on the left, increasing taxes isn’t about economics as much as morality. They believe taxing the wealthy is a virtue, to the point that they would penalize “the rich” even if that has harmful economic consequences. Recall that during a campaign debate, when asked by Charles Gibson about his support for raising capital gains taxes even if that caused a net revenue loss to the Treasury, Obama sided with tax increases “for purposes of fairness.”
Higher taxes would keep our current welfare state in place for only a little while longer. The entitlement apparatus would remain unsustainable. Tax increases might slightly delay, but could not forestall, a fiscal crack-up. The only thing that can is reconfiguring and restructuring our entitlement programs, most especially Medicare. That is what Paul Ryan’s plan does—and what President Obama’s budget avoids doing.
The point cannot be made often enough: Modern liberalism, as embodied in the Obama presidency, is the defender of the status quo. And the status quo is a road to economic ruin.
It is important for Republicans to put this debate in the right frame. Left unaddressed, our crushing burden of debt will cripple the American economy. Yet the aim of conservatism isn’t simply lower deficits and debt. It’s also limited government and a thriving society. A leviathan state is injurious because of its effect on civic character, because it undermines self-reliance and creates dependency. And this, in turn, results in an enervation of the entrepreneurial spirit that is necessary for innovation and prosperity.
Barack Obama has amassed a dismal economic record as president. (Former senator Phil Gramm points out that if Barack Obama had matched Ronald Reagan’s post-recession recovery rate, 15.7 million more Americans would have jobs.) Obama can’t campaign on his record—so he’s betting his reelection chances on stoking embers of anger and resentment. That’s about all that’s left of hope and change.
Peter Wehner
April 25 - May 2, 2011, Vol. 16, No. 31
Barack Obama’s budget address last week ranks among the most dishonest and dishonorable presidential speeches in generations. It contained an avalanche of false and misleading statements. It was shallow and bitterly partisan. Yet the speech served a useful purpose: It provided the American people in general, and Republicans in particular, with the basic line of attack President Obama will use between now and the 2012 election.
The White House strategy is clear: argue that Obama wants to restore fiscal balance by raising taxes on “millionaires and billionaires” while those who don’t favor higher taxes on the wealthy are fundamentally unserious. As a political matter, of course, class warfare does not have a particularly successful track record. But, to keep it that way, Republicans need to provide a compelling response to the Obama strategy. Fortunately such a response exists.
Obama’s argument is built on sand. A tax increase on the wealthy would fall far short of the revenues needed to reverse our fiscal trajectory. Our budget problems are significantly worse today than they were in the 1990s. There are not nearly enough wealthy people in the nation to tax in order to tame our debt. If the president wants higher taxes to improve our fiscal imbalance, he will need to embrace a massive middle-class tax increase and/or a value added tax (VAT). But Obama hasn’t shown the slightest preference for that option. It’s pure fiction to pretend that higher taxes on those making more than $200,000 will make much of a dent in our debt, given the size of our long-term spending problem. Obama’s argument isn’t with Republicans. It’s with basic arithmetic.
Republicans need to unmask the philosophy guiding modern liberalism when it comes to taxes. What liberals are interested in isn’t growth so much as egalitarianism and redistribution for its own sake. For many on the left, increasing taxes isn’t about economics as much as morality. They believe taxing the wealthy is a virtue, to the point that they would penalize “the rich” even if that has harmful economic consequences. Recall that during a campaign debate, when asked by Charles Gibson about his support for raising capital gains taxes even if that caused a net revenue loss to the Treasury, Obama sided with tax increases “for purposes of fairness.”
Higher taxes would keep our current welfare state in place for only a little while longer. The entitlement apparatus would remain unsustainable. Tax increases might slightly delay, but could not forestall, a fiscal crack-up. The only thing that can is reconfiguring and restructuring our entitlement programs, most especially Medicare. That is what Paul Ryan’s plan does—and what President Obama’s budget avoids doing.
The point cannot be made often enough: Modern liberalism, as embodied in the Obama presidency, is the defender of the status quo. And the status quo is a road to economic ruin.
It is important for Republicans to put this debate in the right frame. Left unaddressed, our crushing burden of debt will cripple the American economy. Yet the aim of conservatism isn’t simply lower deficits and debt. It’s also limited government and a thriving society. A leviathan state is injurious because of its effect on civic character, because it undermines self-reliance and creates dependency. And this, in turn, results in an enervation of the entrepreneurial spirit that is necessary for innovation and prosperity.
Barack Obama has amassed a dismal economic record as president. (Former senator Phil Gramm points out that if Barack Obama had matched Ronald Reagan’s post-recession recovery rate, 15.7 million more Americans would have jobs.) Obama can’t campaign on his record—so he’s betting his reelection chances on stoking embers of anger and resentment. That’s about all that’s left of hope and change.
Frisco_Slug_Esq
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JUST opinion pieces...
You right-wingers NEVER have any facts!
From the lying rw Neocon AP...
You right-wingers NEVER have any facts!
From the lying rw Neocon AP...
RightField
Literotica Guru
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This is a very interesting article, though it's nothing we haven't noted a dozen times before. Nice to see some corroboration from the press though.
Peter Foster: Keynesianism’s systemic failure
Apr 19, 2011 – 9:31 PM ET |
Post-crisis stimulus stimulated little but insupportable debt and inflation
While the United States has been hit with a prospective debt downgrade in the wake of President Obama’s defiant statism, the even more statist European Union is trying to keep the lid on the consequences of its own regulatory pretensions and its members’ fiscal fecklessness.
Greece denies any need to restructure its debt, but the market doesn’t believe it, and has forced its borrowing rates to junk levels. There is backroom panic over the recent Finnish election results, which saw the rise of an anti-bailout party called True Finns. Since EU bailout packages have to be approved unanimously, there is fear that True Finns may bring the game of European musical chairs to a halt, revealing a paucity of seating.
This puts the unwanted spotlight on Portugal, which needs to keep jigging through a major bond redemption in June. It is even more necessary to keep the Spanish castanets clicking because Spain is “too big to bail.”
The real question about the still-mounting subprime government crisis is why anybody would have imagined that it had been solved — or even addressed — rather than exacerbated by the kind of trillion-dollar Keynesian pronouncements made at the G20 by the likes of former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, whose successors are struggling with the disaster he left them. Indeed, it was arguably the G20 mentality, with its delusions of universal economic security, well-planned regulatory “architecture” and panoptic “macroprudence” that created this fiasco in the first place.
Free markets are based on risk and will always be prone to particular failure. Only government attempts to prevent or compensate for particular failure can threaten the systemic variety.
Post-crisis stimulus stimulated little but insupportable government debt — and now inflation. It was joined by a downward manipulation of interest rates that has promoted what Austrian economists called “mal-investment,” plus asset inflation.
The astonishing aspect of all this — as pointed out numerous times in this space — is that spend-yourself-rich Keynesianism had already been comprehensively refuted in theory and had spectacularly failed in practice by the late 1970s.
The good news is that fettered capitalism has made the world a good deal richer since then, and thus arguably more able to withstand policy incompetence. The bad news that the tax-and-spend interventionist state has grown in parasitical lockstep, if not even faster, thus both hobbling progress and mortgaging people’s future via increasingly unsustainable health and welfare commitments. Few would dare to question the validity of a welfare state; but few could deny that it consistently threatens to grow out of control.
The Obama administration’s solution is more of the same. It wants to up the government’s credit-card limit, which the EU now does on an ongoing basis. Brussels and the European Central Bank are reluctant to acknowledge the obvious need for a Greek restructuring (i.e. default) because the EU banks that were rash enough to take on Greek debt are allegedly not strong enough to take the required “haircut.” They thus require further time at the state spa on the taxpayers’ tab.
All this further weakens institutions and economies and promotes even greater moral hazard. However, if you suggest this to the agents of the regulatory state and its elaborate multinational offshoots such as the IMF, their response would be: What other way is there?
Friedrich Hayek identified the “fatal conceit” of believing that markets are flawed and can always be rectified and/or improved and/or fine tuned by bright people with big brains and good intentions. However, the fatal conceit is not just, or even, a cognitive error; it also inevitably features a good deal of self-interest. People come into government to do good and stay on to do well.
The EU started out as a thrust to reduce trade barriers and enable industrial rationalization across postwar state borders, thus reducing the chances of further intra-European conflict. It was also promoted as a bulwark against Soviet aggression. However, in their inevitable hunger to acquire more power, the agents of the European regulatory state sought monetary union, knowing that monetary union would require central co-ordination of economic policy if it wasn’t to fall apart. However, economic policy remained in the hands of individual states, so the system is falling apart. Some governments inevitably pursued (extra) feckless policies precisely because they knew that Brussels would have to bail them out to keep its expansive dreams alive.
As my colleague Terence Corcoran noted yesterday, Standard & Poor’s warning about a possible downgrade of U.S. government debt should come as no surprise, and certainly no comfort that either ratings agencies or global regulators have a clue about how events will unfold. Indeed, they are in a state of professional denial. In the Borg-like mind of super-bureaucracy, policy failure is merely a temporary glitch, the prelude to more and bigger — and invariably “smarter” — policy. Indeed, policy failure is regarded as synonymous with the acquisition of valuable input that will make the next policy truly potent. The one policy that is rarely countenanced is more reliance on market freedom. Liberals might at this point rage at all the Wall Street malefactors who have dodged the slammer, but that reflects yet another failure of fundamental state responsibility. Any state should deal with the issues that are within its mandate and competence before it seeks to confirm the political Peter Principle that the more expansive the scope of regulation, the more likely it is to fail.
Peter Foster: Keynesianism’s systemic failure
Apr 19, 2011 – 9:31 PM ET |
Post-crisis stimulus stimulated little but insupportable debt and inflation
While the United States has been hit with a prospective debt downgrade in the wake of President Obama’s defiant statism, the even more statist European Union is trying to keep the lid on the consequences of its own regulatory pretensions and its members’ fiscal fecklessness.
Greece denies any need to restructure its debt, but the market doesn’t believe it, and has forced its borrowing rates to junk levels. There is backroom panic over the recent Finnish election results, which saw the rise of an anti-bailout party called True Finns. Since EU bailout packages have to be approved unanimously, there is fear that True Finns may bring the game of European musical chairs to a halt, revealing a paucity of seating.
This puts the unwanted spotlight on Portugal, which needs to keep jigging through a major bond redemption in June. It is even more necessary to keep the Spanish castanets clicking because Spain is “too big to bail.”
The real question about the still-mounting subprime government crisis is why anybody would have imagined that it had been solved — or even addressed — rather than exacerbated by the kind of trillion-dollar Keynesian pronouncements made at the G20 by the likes of former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, whose successors are struggling with the disaster he left them. Indeed, it was arguably the G20 mentality, with its delusions of universal economic security, well-planned regulatory “architecture” and panoptic “macroprudence” that created this fiasco in the first place.
Free markets are based on risk and will always be prone to particular failure. Only government attempts to prevent or compensate for particular failure can threaten the systemic variety.
Post-crisis stimulus stimulated little but insupportable government debt — and now inflation. It was joined by a downward manipulation of interest rates that has promoted what Austrian economists called “mal-investment,” plus asset inflation.
The astonishing aspect of all this — as pointed out numerous times in this space — is that spend-yourself-rich Keynesianism had already been comprehensively refuted in theory and had spectacularly failed in practice by the late 1970s.
The good news is that fettered capitalism has made the world a good deal richer since then, and thus arguably more able to withstand policy incompetence. The bad news that the tax-and-spend interventionist state has grown in parasitical lockstep, if not even faster, thus both hobbling progress and mortgaging people’s future via increasingly unsustainable health and welfare commitments. Few would dare to question the validity of a welfare state; but few could deny that it consistently threatens to grow out of control.
The Obama administration’s solution is more of the same. It wants to up the government’s credit-card limit, which the EU now does on an ongoing basis. Brussels and the European Central Bank are reluctant to acknowledge the obvious need for a Greek restructuring (i.e. default) because the EU banks that were rash enough to take on Greek debt are allegedly not strong enough to take the required “haircut.” They thus require further time at the state spa on the taxpayers’ tab.
All this further weakens institutions and economies and promotes even greater moral hazard. However, if you suggest this to the agents of the regulatory state and its elaborate multinational offshoots such as the IMF, their response would be: What other way is there?
Friedrich Hayek identified the “fatal conceit” of believing that markets are flawed and can always be rectified and/or improved and/or fine tuned by bright people with big brains and good intentions. However, the fatal conceit is not just, or even, a cognitive error; it also inevitably features a good deal of self-interest. People come into government to do good and stay on to do well.
The EU started out as a thrust to reduce trade barriers and enable industrial rationalization across postwar state borders, thus reducing the chances of further intra-European conflict. It was also promoted as a bulwark against Soviet aggression. However, in their inevitable hunger to acquire more power, the agents of the European regulatory state sought monetary union, knowing that monetary union would require central co-ordination of economic policy if it wasn’t to fall apart. However, economic policy remained in the hands of individual states, so the system is falling apart. Some governments inevitably pursued (extra) feckless policies precisely because they knew that Brussels would have to bail them out to keep its expansive dreams alive.
As my colleague Terence Corcoran noted yesterday, Standard & Poor’s warning about a possible downgrade of U.S. government debt should come as no surprise, and certainly no comfort that either ratings agencies or global regulators have a clue about how events will unfold. Indeed, they are in a state of professional denial. In the Borg-like mind of super-bureaucracy, policy failure is merely a temporary glitch, the prelude to more and bigger — and invariably “smarter” — policy. Indeed, policy failure is regarded as synonymous with the acquisition of valuable input that will make the next policy truly potent. The one policy that is rarely countenanced is more reliance on market freedom. Liberals might at this point rage at all the Wall Street malefactors who have dodged the slammer, but that reflects yet another failure of fundamental state responsibility. Any state should deal with the issues that are within its mandate and competence before it seeks to confirm the political Peter Principle that the more expansive the scope of regulation, the more likely it is to fail.
RightField
Literotica Guru
- Joined
- Jun 30, 2003
- Posts
- 9,361
This case alone should be enough to motivate any working American to vote the democrats out. Boeing was "doing the right thing" and keeping their growing manufacturing base in the US, in South Carolina. But the democrats didn't like it so they had to weigh in on behalf of their union supporters in Washington state.
Of course, if Boeing decides that dealing with the NLRB and the Democrats is too much of a legal and regulatory problem, they'd be able to build their secondary plant in Mexico, Canada, or any number of other countries outside the reach of the democrats, NLRB and the unions while at the same time avoiding some of the dems big and growing taxes....more jobs gone from the US....that's what you get with the democrats.
The dems might as well send Boeing and all other US businesses a letter saying "Do it our way or get out of Dodge"...and many of them have been "heading out" for years (which is why we're having a "jobless" recovery.
The democrats governing approach isn't to help the US, to foster growth and economic development so that there are more jobs for people. Their whole approach to governing is to take away your freedoms and reward their friends (unions and trial lawyers). Have you gotten your Obamawaiver yet?
Labor Board Case Against Boeing Points to Fights to Come
By STEVEN GREENHOUSE
New York Times
Today.
For businesses, it was the type of action they have feared from a National Labor Relations Board dominated by Democrats. For labor unions, it was the type of action they have hoped for. And for both, it may be a sign of things to come.
These fears and hopes were stirred this week when the labor board’s top lawyer filed a case against Boeing, seeking to force it to move airplane production from a nonunion plant in South Carolina to a unionized one in Washington State. Boeing executives had publicly said they were making the move to avoid the kind of strikes the airplane maker had repeatedly faced in Washington; Lafe Solomon, the labor board’s acting general counsel, said the company’s motive constituted illegal retaliation against workers for exercising their right to strike.
The agency’s unusually bold action angered business groups and some politicians, who said it was an unwarranted attempt by the government to interfere with a fundamental corporate decision.
But under President Obama’s appointees, the agency, including Mr. Solomon and his staff, has sought to reinterpret and more vigorously enforce the rules governing employers and employees, from what workers can say about their bosses on Twitter to the use of Internet and phone voting in union elections.
How much ultimately changes will depend in large part on the decisions made by the five-member board, led by Wilma Liebman, that sits atop the agency. That panel hears cases brought by the board’s regional offices — overseen by Mr. Solomon — after employers, workers or unions file complaints.
Democratic-dominated boards often tilt toward unions and reverse the decisions of Republican-leaning boards, which usually tilt toward management, and vice versa. The current board — made up of three Democrats and one Republican, with one vacancy — is expected to reverse a Bush-era decision that stripped graduate teaching assistants at private universities of their right to bargain collectively. Labor experts also predict that the board will adopt a policy that makes it easier to organize nursing home workers by allowing unions to go after smaller units of workers inside those homes.
The biggest surprise has been the activist stance taken by Mr. Solomon, a career civil servant at the board for 39 years. He became acting general counsel in June 2010, and President Obama nominated him to be the permanent general counsel last January. The Senate has not yet confirmed him to the post.
In the Boeing case, Mr. Solomon charged that the company had illegally moved some production work of the 787 Dreamliner passenger plane to South Carolina to punish workers for past strikes and to avoid future ones. The remedy proposed by Mr. Solomon has been denounced as extreme by many business leaders: that Boeing move the work back to its unionized Puget Sound facilities, after it made a $2 billion investment and hired 1,000 nonunion workers in South Carolina.
Outraged, the National Association of Manufacturers warned that if the agency won this case, “no company will be safe from the N.L.R.B. stepping in to second-guess its business decisions on where to expand.”
Senator Jim DeMint, a South Carolina Republican, complained, “This is nothing more than a political favor for the unions who are supporting President Obama’s re-election campaign.”
The Boeing case was not the first time that Mr. Solomon has riled the business community and its Republican allies. Saying it is the domain of the federal government, he recently threatened to sue four Republican-heavy states — Arizona, South Carolina, South Dakota and Utah — in an effort to invalidate recent constitutional amendments that prohibit private sector workers from choosing a union by signing cards, a process known as card check.
He has also sought to extend the labor board’s reach into the world of the Internet. He approved requests from regional labor board officials to bring complaints against businesses that punished employees for Facebook and Twitter posts, including one case against Reuters. Mr. Solomon has also proposed that electronic voting be used when workers decide whether they want to unionize their workplace — a proposal that business groups maintain will make it easier for unions to coerce workers.
In an interview, Mr. Solomon, a 61-year-old Arkansas native, insisted that he was no radical.
“My goal is to enforce the National Labor Relations Act,” he said. That law, enacted in 1935, governs private sector workers’ right to unionize as well as relations between tens of thousands of companies and employees.
Mr. Solomon, who has worked for board members of both parties, said this case was straightforward: Boeing had retaliated against workers for exercising their federally protected right to strike. “They had a consistent message that they were doing this to punish their employees for having struck and having the power to strike in the future,” he said. “I can’t not issue a complaint in the face of such evidence.”
While the spotlight is on Mr. Solomon at the moment, people inside the agency and out expect that attention will soon move to the five-member board, whose decisions often have broad effect, much like court precedents.
Marshall Babson, a Democratic member of the board under President Reagan, said the board had “teed up a lot of important issues for consideration.” He said its behavior had been more moderate than the Reagan board, which, he recalls, reversed about two dozen pro-union decisions in one year.
The Obama board is expected to reverse a Bush-era decision that lets workers petition to decertify a union within days of a company’s recognizing a union through card check. That new ruling would most likely restore the old requirement that workers had to wait a year before trying to oust their union.
“The current majority views its role as promoting unionization in the private sector,” said Peter Schaumber, a Bush appointee who stepped down from the board in August.
Lynn Rhinehart, the general counsel for the A.F.L.-C.I.O., applauds many of the board’s recent moves and wishes it would do far more. “A lot of what they’ve done is pretty routine,” she said. “I think the allegations of activism are pretty overblown.”
Randel K. Johnson, senior vice president for labor affairs at the United States Chamber of Commerce, said employers were expecting a series of unfavorable rulings. “Many decisions are still in the pipeline, and we think where those are going to wind up is clear,” he said.
The chamber opposes a proposal that would require all private sector employers to post notices explaining workers’ rights to unionize. It also faulted the board for being more aggressive about reinstating pro-union workers who are illegally fired during unionization drives.
Samuel Estreicher, a labor law professor at New York University, said that, so far, the Obama board’s actions had not been out of line. “I don’t buy into the accusations that they’re doing something crazy,” he said.
Nonetheless, he criticized Mr. Solomon’s complaint against Boeing, saying that companies vulnerable to strikes — like the 56-day walkout against Boeing in 2008 — should be able to move operations while explaining to employees that strikes hurt profits and production.
Boeing has called the case “legally frivolous” and “a radical departure from both N.L.R.B. and Supreme Court precedent.”
Mr. Solomon dismissed accusations that he was following President Obama’s wishes in bringing the Boeing case, saying he had had no conversations with the White House about it.
Mr. Solomon said he was just a “career person” enforcing the law. “I feel that I really had no choice,” he said.
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Of course, if Boeing decides that dealing with the NLRB and the Democrats is too much of a legal and regulatory problem, they'd be able to build their secondary plant in Mexico, Canada, or any number of other countries outside the reach of the democrats, NLRB and the unions while at the same time avoiding some of the dems big and growing taxes....more jobs gone from the US....that's what you get with the democrats.
The dems might as well send Boeing and all other US businesses a letter saying "Do it our way or get out of Dodge"...and many of them have been "heading out" for years (which is why we're having a "jobless" recovery.
The democrats governing approach isn't to help the US, to foster growth and economic development so that there are more jobs for people. Their whole approach to governing is to take away your freedoms and reward their friends (unions and trial lawyers). Have you gotten your Obamawaiver yet?
Labor Board Case Against Boeing Points to Fights to Come
By STEVEN GREENHOUSE
New York Times
Today.
For businesses, it was the type of action they have feared from a National Labor Relations Board dominated by Democrats. For labor unions, it was the type of action they have hoped for. And for both, it may be a sign of things to come.
These fears and hopes were stirred this week when the labor board’s top lawyer filed a case against Boeing, seeking to force it to move airplane production from a nonunion plant in South Carolina to a unionized one in Washington State. Boeing executives had publicly said they were making the move to avoid the kind of strikes the airplane maker had repeatedly faced in Washington; Lafe Solomon, the labor board’s acting general counsel, said the company’s motive constituted illegal retaliation against workers for exercising their right to strike.
The agency’s unusually bold action angered business groups and some politicians, who said it was an unwarranted attempt by the government to interfere with a fundamental corporate decision.
But under President Obama’s appointees, the agency, including Mr. Solomon and his staff, has sought to reinterpret and more vigorously enforce the rules governing employers and employees, from what workers can say about their bosses on Twitter to the use of Internet and phone voting in union elections.
How much ultimately changes will depend in large part on the decisions made by the five-member board, led by Wilma Liebman, that sits atop the agency. That panel hears cases brought by the board’s regional offices — overseen by Mr. Solomon — after employers, workers or unions file complaints.
Democratic-dominated boards often tilt toward unions and reverse the decisions of Republican-leaning boards, which usually tilt toward management, and vice versa. The current board — made up of three Democrats and one Republican, with one vacancy — is expected to reverse a Bush-era decision that stripped graduate teaching assistants at private universities of their right to bargain collectively. Labor experts also predict that the board will adopt a policy that makes it easier to organize nursing home workers by allowing unions to go after smaller units of workers inside those homes.
The biggest surprise has been the activist stance taken by Mr. Solomon, a career civil servant at the board for 39 years. He became acting general counsel in June 2010, and President Obama nominated him to be the permanent general counsel last January. The Senate has not yet confirmed him to the post.
In the Boeing case, Mr. Solomon charged that the company had illegally moved some production work of the 787 Dreamliner passenger plane to South Carolina to punish workers for past strikes and to avoid future ones. The remedy proposed by Mr. Solomon has been denounced as extreme by many business leaders: that Boeing move the work back to its unionized Puget Sound facilities, after it made a $2 billion investment and hired 1,000 nonunion workers in South Carolina.
Outraged, the National Association of Manufacturers warned that if the agency won this case, “no company will be safe from the N.L.R.B. stepping in to second-guess its business decisions on where to expand.”
Senator Jim DeMint, a South Carolina Republican, complained, “This is nothing more than a political favor for the unions who are supporting President Obama’s re-election campaign.”
The Boeing case was not the first time that Mr. Solomon has riled the business community and its Republican allies. Saying it is the domain of the federal government, he recently threatened to sue four Republican-heavy states — Arizona, South Carolina, South Dakota and Utah — in an effort to invalidate recent constitutional amendments that prohibit private sector workers from choosing a union by signing cards, a process known as card check.
He has also sought to extend the labor board’s reach into the world of the Internet. He approved requests from regional labor board officials to bring complaints against businesses that punished employees for Facebook and Twitter posts, including one case against Reuters. Mr. Solomon has also proposed that electronic voting be used when workers decide whether they want to unionize their workplace — a proposal that business groups maintain will make it easier for unions to coerce workers.
In an interview, Mr. Solomon, a 61-year-old Arkansas native, insisted that he was no radical.
“My goal is to enforce the National Labor Relations Act,” he said. That law, enacted in 1935, governs private sector workers’ right to unionize as well as relations between tens of thousands of companies and employees.
Mr. Solomon, who has worked for board members of both parties, said this case was straightforward: Boeing had retaliated against workers for exercising their federally protected right to strike. “They had a consistent message that they were doing this to punish their employees for having struck and having the power to strike in the future,” he said. “I can’t not issue a complaint in the face of such evidence.”
While the spotlight is on Mr. Solomon at the moment, people inside the agency and out expect that attention will soon move to the five-member board, whose decisions often have broad effect, much like court precedents.
Marshall Babson, a Democratic member of the board under President Reagan, said the board had “teed up a lot of important issues for consideration.” He said its behavior had been more moderate than the Reagan board, which, he recalls, reversed about two dozen pro-union decisions in one year.
The Obama board is expected to reverse a Bush-era decision that lets workers petition to decertify a union within days of a company’s recognizing a union through card check. That new ruling would most likely restore the old requirement that workers had to wait a year before trying to oust their union.
“The current majority views its role as promoting unionization in the private sector,” said Peter Schaumber, a Bush appointee who stepped down from the board in August.
Lynn Rhinehart, the general counsel for the A.F.L.-C.I.O., applauds many of the board’s recent moves and wishes it would do far more. “A lot of what they’ve done is pretty routine,” she said. “I think the allegations of activism are pretty overblown.”
Randel K. Johnson, senior vice president for labor affairs at the United States Chamber of Commerce, said employers were expecting a series of unfavorable rulings. “Many decisions are still in the pipeline, and we think where those are going to wind up is clear,” he said.
The chamber opposes a proposal that would require all private sector employers to post notices explaining workers’ rights to unionize. It also faulted the board for being more aggressive about reinstating pro-union workers who are illegally fired during unionization drives.
Samuel Estreicher, a labor law professor at New York University, said that, so far, the Obama board’s actions had not been out of line. “I don’t buy into the accusations that they’re doing something crazy,” he said.
Nonetheless, he criticized Mr. Solomon’s complaint against Boeing, saying that companies vulnerable to strikes — like the 56-day walkout against Boeing in 2008 — should be able to move operations while explaining to employees that strikes hurt profits and production.
Boeing has called the case “legally frivolous” and “a radical departure from both N.L.R.B. and Supreme Court precedent.”
Mr. Solomon dismissed accusations that he was following President Obama’s wishes in bringing the Boeing case, saying he had had no conversations with the White House about it.
Mr. Solomon said he was just a “career person” enforcing the law. “I feel that I really had no choice,” he said.
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Last edited:
RightField
Literotica Guru
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- Jun 30, 2003
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- 9,361
Will we soon have to run our interviewees by the local government commissar before making a final selection...you know, to make sure that the person offered a job is politically acceptable?
Frisco_Slug_Esq
On Strike!
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- Posts
- 45,618
Anti Dog-Eat-Dog rules...
U
unregistered
Guest
Frisco_Slug_Esq
On Strike!
- Joined
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- Posts
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Democrats finally found a border they think they can secure...
J
JAMESBJOHNSON
Guest
This is the sort of process that created The Reformation, the American Revolution, and Nazi Germany. That is, when gangs like the Borgias, the East India Tea Company, and Wall Street banks press their boots against your neck to strangle your prosperity, something has gotta give.
O'Drama and the Democrats learned nuthin from history.
O'Drama and the Democrats learned nuthin from history.
Frisco_Slug_Esq
On Strike!
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- Posts
- 45,618
They have iPads, proof their society has evolved and is now ready to make Socialism work...
__________________
I invented i, the square root of neutral 1.
__________________
I invented i, the square root of neutral 1.
JenAltArmy
Literotica Guru
- Joined
- Feb 18, 2011
- Posts
- 2,504
interesting, I think the only way socialsm will work (even with an ipad) would be in a bar. free booze for everyone, and no work. isn't that socialism?
U
unregistered
Guest
Sean Renaud
The West Coast Pop
- Joined
- Feb 5, 2004
- Posts
- 59,549
Wow. Alt. You are retarded. Please stop posting the real Jen is back.
And socialism in that magical way you think about it (you know the same world where blue means laser) will never work anywhere. A solid mixed economy is clearly superior to one guy owns everything including us.
And socialism in that magical way you think about it (you know the same world where blue means laser) will never work anywhere. A solid mixed economy is clearly superior to one guy owns everything including us.
JenAltArmy
Literotica Guru
- Joined
- Feb 18, 2011
- Posts
- 2,504
oh the rub,
Here is the flaw with your socialism dream. Under other counties that lean towards socialism for their style of government, there is contribution by everyone.
Here is the rub, in America one doesn’t have to work for entitlements
RightField
Literotica Guru
- Joined
- Jun 30, 2003
- Posts
- 9,361
The big question...did you get your ObamaWaiver yet?
Is there a price list anywhere on what you've got to pay in campaign and other donations to get your ObamaWaiver? Is it on a web site, after all, isn't this the administration that promised transparency?
Is there a price list anywhere on what you've got to pay in campaign and other donations to get your ObamaWaiver? Is it on a web site, after all, isn't this the administration that promised transparency?
JenAltArmy
Literotica Guru
- Joined
- Feb 18, 2011
- Posts
- 2,504
obama care is the best thing ever! now, I no longer have to pay to get a suntan.
how many obama Waivers were issued? how many millions did obama have to give in kick backs for this crap law?
