Radioactive Communist Zombies

More Liberal Wish Lists

Story in the Los Angeles Times (Hat tip: Instapundit) about liberal groups now feel welcome in Washington D.C. again and have a wish list of programs they want passed.

In the article by Mike Dorning and Jim Tankersley liberal groups outline their plans for screwing up the country:

Their vision includes federal laws banning job discrimination against gays; expanded hate-crime laws; public land protections from logging and oil drilling; and easier union organizing of workers . . . a pathway to citizenship for illegal workers.

And environmentalists are lining up to shut down as much of the economy as possible:

Environmentalists expect Obama to "hit the reset button," as the Sierra Club's Josh Dorner put it, on a host of regulations that Bush weakened. They expect more input from scientists in framing environmental policy and more action from the Environmental Protection Agency in limiting greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act, in keeping with a Supreme Court ruling from last year.

Of course, those scientists will only be the ones that harp on the global warming is man made dogma.

We can only hope Republicans can raise enough votes for a filibuster on most, if not all of these items.  Otherwise it's going to be a very long and very bad for the country four years.

Labor's Wish List: Bad for the Economy

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce announced Tuesday that it plans to spend $10 million defeating the Orwellian named "Employee Free-Choice Act."  As the Wall Street Journal reports (sub required):

Randel Johnson, vice president for labor, immigration and employee benefits at the Chamber, said defeating the measure was the lobby group's top priority in the coming session of Congress, and he described the coming fight in Congress over the issue as a "firestorm bordering on Armageddon."

The "Employee Free-Choice Act" (EFCA) would allow union officials--who never use violence and intimidation to get what they want--to organize a union in a workplace by simply having a majority of employees sign a "check card."  This eliminates 70 years of secret ballots in choosing whether or not to go union.  And eliminating the secret ballot means employees can be bullied into signing the check cards (or lied to about what they mean) making union organizing much easier. 

And if that weren't bad enough, the law also imposes mandatory government arbitration after 120 days of negotiations.  As the U.S. Chamber website reports:

Under EFCA, if a first contract is not agreed to within 120 days (which is an extremely short time period for these negotiations) the matter would have to be submitted to binding interest arbitration and a contract developed by a panel with likely no understanding of the business, or the competitive forces it faces, would be imposed on the company for two years. This contract would cover precise details of how that business would operate for the duration of the contract such as the wages, benefits, ability to use employees most productively, and how many employees would be used for specific tasks. This process would virtually always result in a contract that is beyond what the employer is prepared to accept and provides a strong incentive for the union to undermine the collective bargaining process to ensure that the process lasts long enough to end in binding arbitration. Finally, this provision would result in employees losing a second vote since they would have no opportunity to ratify the contract as they currently have in most cases.

The EFCA is an undemocratic attempt to give unions more power to unionize workplaces.  The reason for this is union membership (except in government unions) has been declining since the 1980's.  And unions need members to pay dues so they can give money to Democrats.

Unions say it will be better for the economy:

"We're looking to restore the law the way it was in 1935," Service Employees International Union President Andy Stern said in a recent meeting with reporters, referring to the current card-check debate. Mr. Stern says employers want to keep their power, but giving workers an easier path to organizing will help the economy by creating a more equitable distribution of wealth.

I don't know of an economist who thinks redistributing wealth helps an economy.  This will, in fact, kill jobs, as unionization will kill some small companies and the jobs they provide.

In addition to that egregious piece of legislation, the WSJ lists the rest of the union's wish list they hope to get passed now that Democrats are in charge.  The next is the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2007.  This act (also on the trial lawyer's wish list) would eliminate the statute of limitations on pay discrimination suits.  As National Review Online says:

 [E]mployers would have to disprove discrimination even when the employees involved are long gone and their memories faded. This longer period wouldn’t stop discrimination today but would open the floodgates for fee-hungry lawyers to root around for old grievances.

This will be another job killer as employers, large and small, divert resources to defend against the inevitable lawsuit.

You'd think unions slash labor would want things to make more jobs, not kill them.  But labor union leaders want more power for them and their unions.  If they cared about the working man, they wouldn't support job killing legislation.  

But obviously, they don't.

Buyer's Remorse?

Will the hard left have "buyers remorse" when it comes to Obama?

Maybe.

When Obama earns praise from Karl Rove it's just possible that maybe the President-elect is doing something right.  In today's Wall Street Journal, Rove praises Obama's economic team:

Mr. Obama's announcement of his economic team on Monday provided surprisingly positive clarity. He picked as Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, the respected, soft-spoken New York Fed president. Mr. Geithner has been a key player with Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke in confronting the financial crisis. Every major decision in the rescue effort came only after the three agreed.

The National Economic Council director-designee, Larry Summers, is another solid pick. Mr. Summers has been an advocate for trade liberalization, he was the Clinton administration's negotiator for the financial deregulation known as Gramm-Leach-Bliley, and he even attempted to rein in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in the 1990s.

Mr. Obama also named a respected monetary expert -- Christina Romer -- to head up his Council of Economic Advisors. On Tuesday he selected a first-rate thinker, Peter Orszag, to be director of the White House's Office of Management and Budget.

And Rove concludes:

But, overall, Monday's announcement of Mr. Obama's economic team was reassuring. He's generally surrounded himself with intelligent, mainstream advisers. Investors, workers and business owners can only hope that, over time, this new administration's economic policies bear more of their market-oriented imprint.

But there are some troubling signs, too, Rove writes:

The only troubling personnel note was Melody Barnes as Domestic Policy Council director. Putting a former aide to Ted Kennedy in charge of health policy after tapping universal health-care advocate Tom Daschle to be Health and Human Services secretary sends a clear signal that Mr. Obama didn't mean it when his campaign ads said he wouldn't run to the "extremes" with government-run health care.

So we might have Obamaide universal health care.  You know, government run health care with the compassion of the IRS, the efficiency of the Post Office, and the spending restraint of Social Security.

But it seems, Obama, at least on economic issues, Obama isn't going to go off the deep end into hard left statism.  And while the Moveon.org crowd may not like it, anyone with a job, investments, and pays taxes should be a little less worried.

GM to "Shed" Pontiac, Saab, and Saturn?

Before GM goes back to re-beg Congress for more money they are tasked with coming up with a plan of how they are going to survive.  Bloomberg is reporting that part of that plan may be to "shed" Pontiac, Saab, and/or Saturn along with Hummer that they are already trying to sell:

Selling or dropping brands would save money and reduce overlap as the biggest U.S. automaker struggles to avoid running out of operating cash by year’s end, said the people, who didn’t want to be identified because no decision has been made.

So does "shed" mean an Oldsmobile-like shutdown or trying to find a buyer?  Selling Pontiac seems problematic as so many pieces of the cars come from the GM parts bin.  Pontiac has been part of GM for 82 years.

But as GM continues to "burn cash" it says it needs a government bail-out to avoid bankruptcy.  (Some are saying bankruptcy wouldn't be all bad for U.S. automakers.)

The largest problem the Big Three car companies have are their union contracts.  As Holman W. Jenkins Jr. writes in the Wall Street Journal, it's North America where GM is losing money:

If GM can make cars profitably in China, why doesn't GM import them to the U.S.?

For that matter, any of the brainpans on the Hill might have asked why Ford and GM managed to build viable auto businesses all over the world but not in North America.

You don't need the Hubble telescope to tell the answer: The UAW is present only in the U.S., not all over the world.

What you wouldn't know is that the single biggest factor in preserving the UAW's monopolistic power has not been labor law but Congress's fuel-economy rules. These effectively have required the Big Three to lose tens of billions making small cars at a loss in UAW factories. Not only were the companies obliged to forgo profits they might have earned importing such cars, but CAFE deprived them of crucial leverage to control labor costs by threatening to move jobs to a factory in Spain or Taiwan or Poland. (Let's face it, that's what other successful U.S. manufacturers do.)

The byzantine rules of CAFE don't allow the importation of such cars and gives the UAW bargaining leverage unprecedented in U.S. industry.

This is, as Jenkins writes, a cautionary tale about government interference in markets that the Obama administration should heed. 

But probably won't.

Happy Thanksgiving

Since I'm taking tomorrow off from posting, this will be my Thanksgiving message:

Be thankful that you live in the best country on Earth.  That we can have a change of power that involves no blood or turmoil.  That we still have our freedoms and our rights under the Constitution.  Give thanks that our economic troubles have yet to reach even Carteresque levels (although they may).  

And give thanks for family and friends. 

Terror in India; Threat at Home

Today we got reminders that terrorists can still hurt us and want to.

In India, gunmen attacked people indiscriminately, killing at least 80.  As the BBC reports:

At least seven high-profile locations were hit in India's financial capital, including two luxury hotels where hostages were reported to be held.

A fire is sweeping through the Taj Mahal Palace, Mumbai's most famous hotel, which is now ringed by troops.

Police said four suspected terrorists have been killed and nine arrested.

So far no definitive word on who's responsible but the consensus seems to be Islamic extremists.

Meanwhile, federal authorities are warning New York police of a possible threat to the city's subway system.  The consensus is that it is an al-Qaeda plot.

Terrorism is still with us.  We still need to be vigilant.  The election of Barack Obama hasn't changed that.  And we still need surveillance and interrogation techniques that are appropriate for the threat.  I don't mean torture, but aggressive interrogation techniques short of torture should be allowed.

Question is, will an Obama Administration worry more about "world opinion" than keeping Americans safe?

Crisis as Opportunity Leads to Disaster

Thomas Sowell (who'd I elect President tomorrow) warns that viewing a crisis as an opportunity often leads to disaster.  The economic downturn we are experience isn't even at crisis level, yet:

Amid all the political and media hysteria, national output has declined by less than one-half of 1%. In fact, it may not have declined even that much — or at all — when the statistics are revised later, as they very often are.

We are not talking about the Great Depression, when output dropped by one-third and unemployment soared to 25%.

But what all the hype allows is politicians to use the "crisis" as an excuse to micromanage the economy.  We know this because that's what they did during the Great Depression:

Much as we may deplore partisanship in Washington, bipartisan disasters are often twice as bad as partisan disasters — and this is a bipartisan disaster in the making . . .

Despite a myth that Herbert Hoover was a "do nothing" president, he was the first president of the United States to step in to try to put the economy back on track.

With the passing years, it has increasingly been recognized that what FDR did was largely a further extension of what Hoover had done. Where Hoover made things worse, FDR made them much worse.

Herbert Hoover did what Barack Obama is proposing to do. Hoover raised taxes on high-income people and put restrictions on international trade, in order to try to save American jobs. It didn't work then, and it is not likely to work now.

Barack Obama as Herbert Hoover.  That's what we're facing. 

Obama wishes to use the "opportunity" (Rham Emanuel's word) of the economic crisis to nationalize huge swaths of the economy so his economic team can micromanage them.  And that will, like during the Depression, only prolong the nation's agony

24 Redemption

Well, it's been about 24 hours since I watched the "24 Redemption" movie.  Due to a DVR screw up, I  missed about 5 minutes in the first hour of it.

Impressions: it was quite good and realistic.  Although the blatant product placements were a bit trying (Hyundai and Cisco).  There is a real problem with child "soldiers" in the third world.

Of course, the whole thing was just to set up Season 7 of 24.  I stupidly watched the preview (I'm mad at myself that I did).  I won't say anything in case you didn't watch it.

But Jack once again sacrifices for the greater good.  Now he'll go to Washington and undoubtedly save the world.  It will be interesting to see how President Clinton, errr, Taylor is portrayed.

Stupid Voting Public; Stupid Elected Officials

(That title may be redundant, I understand)

The Intercollegiate Studies Institute gave a test to self-identified elected officials.  The test was on history, civics, and economics.  As AFP reports:

US elected officials scored abysmally on a test measuring their civic knowledge, with an average grade of just 44 percent, the group that organized the exam said Thursday.

Ordinary citizens did not fare much better, scoring just 49 percent correct on the 33 exam questions.

One question of the multiple choice test was who were our enemies during WWII.  Only 69% of respondents got that right.

The test, by the way is here.  When I took the test I got 94% correct.  So I'm way above average.

Years ago I proposed a test for voting so that people who vote at least have some knowledge of what they are voting about.  I called it the "Standardized Test of Understanding the Institutes of Democracy" (S.T.U.P.I.D).  It had 10 questions such as:

STUPID Question One:
Which of the following words/phrases appear at least once in the U.S. Constitution?

A. "separation of church and state"
B. "right to privacy"
C. "woman's right to an abortion"
D. "king"

(The correct answer is D. "king")

Well, we have stupid voters and therefore, we have stupid elected officials.  We truly get the government we deserve (unfortunately).

(Here's the rest of the STUPID test)

STUPID Question Two:
The equation: x²+3x-4=0 has how many roots? (hint: if you solved this how many answers would you get?)

A. 1
B. 2
C. 3
D. 0

STUPID Question Three:
There are three (3) branches of government under the U.S. Constitution, they are:

A. The Executive, the Press, and the Legislative
B. The Executive, the Senate, and the House of Representatives
C. The Executive, The Cabinet, and the Legislative 
D. The Executive, the Judicial, and the Legislative

STUPID Question Four:
What is the correct way to wear a baseball cap?

A. With the brim over your face.
B. With the brim over your neck.
C. With the brim over your ear.
D. While playing baseball.

STUPID Question Five:
Each state has the same number of votes in the Electoral College as they have Senators and Representatives.  What is the minimum number of votes a state may have in the Electoral College?

A. 1
B. 2
C. 3
D. 4

STUPID Question Six:
Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution enumerates the powers of Congress.  Among those powers are:

A. To borrow money on the credit of the United States.
B. To provide aid to those in need.
C. To control commerce in matters of employment.
D. To well regulate the militia and the ownership of firearms.

STUPID Question Seven:
Fill in the blanks:  The richest 1% of all taxpayers (income over $196,000) pay ___ of all income taxes paid.
The poorest 50% of all taxpayers (income below $22,000) pay ____ of all income taxes paid.

A. less than 1% ; more than 50%
B. less than 10%; more than 35%
C. more than 25%; less than 5%.
D. too little; too much.

STUPID Question Eight:
Fill in the Blanks: There are ____ members of the Senate and ____ members of the House of Representatives.

A. 50 ; 100
B. 100 ; 435
C. 100; 345
D. 435; 100

STUPID Question Nine:
Fill in the Blanks: In 1981, there was a large tax cut.  After the tax cut tax revenues _______ and the deficit soared because ________.

A. almost doubled ; the Democratic controlled Congress spent money even faster.
B. stayed the same ; Reagan took money from the poor to build up the military.
C. dropped; revenue dropped and Reagan spent too much money on the military.
D. dropped because rich people weren't paying enough; military spending rose while Reagan cut welfare and that's why we have all these homeless now.

STUPID Question Ten:
Passing this test as a condition of being allowed to vote is unconstitutional because of which part of the Constitution:

A. Article I, Section 4.
B. The 19th Amendment
C. The 24th Amendment
D. The Bill of Rights.

The answers are:

1:D, 2:B, 3:D, 4:D, 5:C, 6:A, 7:C, 8:B, 9:A, and 10:C  (Yes, this test is dated and yes, the last question is not very accurate.)

Obama on Mt. Rushmore

I was joking when I said we should put Obama on Mt. Rushmore.  These people aren't, apparently: