What have the corporations ever done for us?

I am absolutely pro-labor union.  Yep.

I thought I should make that very clear to my rabid right-wing debaters, if they have not figured it out already ;)

At this point, you perhaps are thinking that this is a set up for something else.  Yep.

I am pro union, if the labor belongs to a category that truly can be screwed over by the short-term profit seeking greedy firms and bosses.  If, for instance, Walmart employees want to organize, I am all for it.  If Foxconn workers wants to join hands in solidarity, I say "go for it."  

But, any public sector employees forming a union, well, that's a different story.  I don't care if the employees are police officers or sanitation workers or university faculty.  The logic is this: Who is "the man" that the union wants to stick it to?  "The man" being considered the oppressor is the taxpayer.  Not some greedy capitalist.  So, the union wants to stick it to the taxpayer?

Of course, the public sector union's leaders will argue that they are really after the greedy capitalist who wants to hoard it all.

Consider this: Here in the dark blue state of Oregon, the public sector unions, "led by teachers," are enthusiastically pushing a ballot measure:

If approved by the voters here in November, Measure 97 would create the biggest tide of new tax revenue in any state in the nation this year as a percentage of the budget, economists said — and one of the biggest anywhere in recent history. Oregon’s general fund would grow by almost a third, or about $3 billion a year, through a 2.5 percent tax on corporate gross receipts.

How would that money be raised?

If the ballot measure passes, not every company will be affected. Out-of-state corporations and those with $25 million or more in revenue would pay the new tax. Smaller businesses would not. That disparity has cut like a knife through the business community.

If only it were that simple to make corporations pay taxes.  I wonder if the unions have heard of gazillion-dollar earning tax lawyers and accountants, like the ones Apple has on its side to keep the taxes far, far away.  The public sector unions create and live in their own alternate universe!

The editorial chief at the newspaper from the state's capital had some awesome lines:

What gets me is proponents’ assumption that corporations simply will accept lower profits in order to pay the tax. At the Salem City Club recently, one advocate went as far as saying companies would transfer their revenue from other states to pay their Oregon taxes.
That’s not the way corporations work, especially ones that are publicly traded on the stock market.

Meanwhile, the state's Legislative Revenue Office ran the numbers because, well, they have to.  It is their job.  What did they find?  Much to the displeasure of the Measure's backers, the office concluded that it would harm the state's economy:

among other effects, Measure 97 would slow private sector job growth and boost the average per-person tax bill by $600 via price increases, with the burden falling mostly on low- and middle-income Oregonians.

Really?  I was going to bet that businesses love paying taxes and will never pass the costs down to consumers.  Oh, how could I have been that stupid! I need to sign up with the comrades the first thing tomorrow ;)

Teacher pay, and public outrage ... images of the day

Says a lot, doesn't it?  Discussions here ht

Bill Gates says that "state budgets are riddled with accounting tricks that disguise the true cost of health care and pensions and weighted with worsening deficits -- with the financing of education at the losing end."


But, in the public, all these are reduced to ... this?

How do you get rid of an incompetent teacher? Like so :(

No, this is is not about me! (editor: do you have a death-wish or something? Awshutup! It is not about them)

Remember the special room that New York has for its incompetent teachers who have tenure?  No? The "Rubber Room" remember?

The Rubber Rooms house only a fraction of the 1.8 per cent who have been rated unsatisfactory. The rest still teach. There are fifty Rubber Roomers—a twentieth of one per cent of all New York City teachers*—awaiting removal proceedings because of alleged incompetence, as opposed to those who have been accused of misconduct.

What goes on this Rubber Room? Ahem ...

[There] are fifteen people in the room, four of them fast asleep, their heads lying on a card table. Three are playing a board game. Most of the others stand around chatting. Two are arguing over one of the folding chairs. But there are no children here. The inhabitants are all New York City schoolteachers who have been sent to what is officially called a Temporary Reassignment Center but which everyone calls the Rubber Room.
These fifteen teachers, along with about six hundred others, in six larger Rubber Rooms in the city’s five boroughs, have been accused of misconduct, such as hitting or molesting a student, or, in some cases, of incompetence, in a system that rarely calls anyone incompetent.
The teachers have been in the Rubber Room for an average of about three years, doing the same thing every day—which is pretty much nothing at all. Watched over by two private security guards and two city Department of Education supervisors, they punch a time clock for the same hours that they would have kept at school—typically, eight-fifteen to three-fifteen. Like all teachers, they have the summer off. The city’s contract with their union, the United Federation of Teachers, requires that charges against them be heard by an arbitrator, and until the charges are resolved—the process is often endless—they will continue to draw their salaries and accrue pensions and other benefits.

Well, looks like the Windy City can put up a good competition (ht)--click on the image for larger and clearer text/graphic

America, what a country! Glad to be here edition

The US Supreme Court provided yet another evidence for me as to why I continue to place my long-term bets on America, and not on any other country, and gives me an opportunity then to follow-up on my earlier post on freedom. 

The Court ruled that the Constitution protects hateful, bigoted, speech, in the case of those awful people who go to funerals of American soldiers and chant anti-gay and anti-other-religion slogans:

“Speech is powerful,” Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote for the majority. “It can stir people to action, move them to tears of both joy and sorrow, and — as it did here — inflict great pain.”
But under the First Amendment, he went on, “we cannot react to that pain by punishing the speaker.” Instead, the national commitment to free speech, he said, requires protection of “even hurtful speech on public issues to ensure that we do not stifle public debate.”

What a wonderful contrast in how we in America handle expression, against a background of millions of people in the Middle East and Africa standing up, perhaps for the first times in their lives, to gain at least a little bit of this kind of freedom, and are even ready to give up their lives for it.

The chief justice wrote

the protesters’ speech “cannot be restricted simply because it is upsetting or arouses contempt.”

I cannot begin to understand how any person will be that much full of bigotry in order to be able to go picket at funerals of soldiers.  I am sure they fully understand that they are able to do what they do only because they are in this good ol' US of A.

The times when this immigrant gets all emotional about his adopted home country! 
Let us rope in another immigrant, from another country, to explain "freedom" in America ... yes, even in this kind of a situation, I have to fall back on humor--maybe to hide the love for USA? :)



Well, it is of course true that I don't have any free expression on campus here.  A few years ago, the faculty union's president wrote in an email to me:

join the union and go through the Bargaining Team.  If not, then please shut up 

I suppose we ought to appreciate the politeness in "please shut up" and not merely "shut up" :)

The in-coming union president at that time wrote in an email to me:

I think you should apologize for your self-serving attempt to mislead the faculty

Guess what?  I am still here!!!

Analysis of the day, of the Wisconsin situation

From Clive Crook:

The main problem with Scott Walker's assault on public-sector unions in Wisconsin is not that it's unwarranted, but that it's disingenuous. 

Crook then zooms into the larger issues:

as FDR insisted, the public sector is a special case. It is one thing for unions to check the bargaining power of capitalists, another for them to check the bargaining power of taxpayers and their elected representatives.
The question for states and cities is not whether "collective bargaining" is a basic undeniable right, but how much union power in the public sector is too much.

Stephen Colbert says that it is time for Wisconsin to invade Iraq :)

Over to Jon Stewart then:

The Daily Show - Crisis in Dairyland - Scott Walker Prank Call
Tags: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert explain the Wisconsin situation :)

These guys have carved out quite a niche for themselves, and the world never stops feeding them materials for satire.
So ...
Should I then thank all the nutcases of the world, or should I be depressed with the seemingly increasing magnitude of insanity? :)

- Crisis in Dairyland - Revenge of the Curds

Colbert?  I suppose his report on the Badger brouhaha will be a day later ...  Here is a preview :)

BTW, a student referred to Jon Stewart as an old guy (are you reading this, "S"?)  "An old guy?" I asked her.  She says, "well, he has gray hair."  I suppose I am ancient then to college freshmen :)

Governor plans to eliminate faculty unions

In Wisconsin, reports the Chronicle of Higher Education:

Wisconsin's newly elected Republican governor announced a sweeping plan on Friday that would cut benefits for state employees, including those in the University of Wisconsin system, and eradicate the collective-bargaining rights ...
it would specifically remove the right of the university system's faculty and staff members to bargain collectively. That right was just won in 2009 under a bill signed by then-Gov. Jim Doyle, a Democrat. Since then, faculty members on two University of Wisconsin campuses, Eau Claire and Superior, have voted in favor of collective bargaining

Adjunct faculty unionization is something that makes sense to me.  But, tenured faculty in public universities unionizing always seemed bizarre to me.  Three layers of job protection: indefinite tenure, collective bargaining, and public sector?

Meanwhile, the flagship campus at Madison, wants to break free (not unlike the plans that the University of Oregon has):

In response to declining state support, Madison's chancellor, Carolyn A. (Biddy) Martin, proposed last fall a plan, dubbed the New Badger Partnership, that would free the university from state controls over various parts of its operation, allowing it to set differential tuition, provide more student aid, and compensate faculty members separately from pay plans for other state agencies.
Last week, the faculty senate at Madison adopted the principles of Ms. Martin's proposal.

Most of these problems will easily go away if only we stopped overselling higher education and college degree.  The more we do this, the more we make it worthless, while driving up the costs, and triggering the need for more faculty and graduate students, and ..... Instead, we have made higher education an expensive credentialing process that forces even the disinterested and unqualified to attend college on lots of borrowed money.  Apparently, we seem to be intent on making things even worse for the youth and, in particular, those from lower-income backgrounds. 



(Editor: aren't you forgetting full-disclosure? Yes, I am getting to it. I teach at a public university where faculty negotiate through collective bargaining.  But, I am not a member of the union.)

Universities have people with clear minds and open to listening? Yeah, right!

 I am looking for that place where "there are people with clear mind to talk and open mind to listen" ... Certainly not my experience here, where I have been explicitly told to shut up.

अप्रियस्यापि पथ्यस्य परिणामः सुखावहः ।
वक्ता श्रोता च यत्रास्ति रमन्ते तत्र संपदः ॥

- हितोपदेश, सुहृद्भेद

A matured (well thought out) speech will bring out good results even when it is harsh (or unpleasant). Any place where there are people with clear mind to talk and open mind to listen will always prosper.

- Hitopadesha, Suhrudbheda

Source

Ah, academe, with its pretense of pursuit of truth, but the reality of allowing only one kind of sanctioned truth!  Like the old Soviet statement that anything not forbidden is banned :)

Hotel California is bankrupt

More to add about California failing:

What went so wrong? The answer lies in a change in the nature of progressive politics in California. During the second half of the twentieth century, the state shifted from an older progressivism, which emphasized infrastructure investment and business growth, to a newer version, which views the private sector much the way the Huns viewed a city—as something to be sacked and plundered.

Joel Kotkin does not mince words here, does he!
And the state of the state now?

Between 2004 and 2007, 500,000 more Americans left California than arrived; in 2008, the net outflow reached 135,000, much of it to the very “dust bowl” states, like Oklahoma and Texas, from which many Californians trace their origins. California now has a lower percentage of people who moved there within the last year than any state except Michigan. Even immigration from abroad seems to be waning: a recent University of Southern California study shows the percentage of Californians who are foreign-born declining for the first time in half a century. For the first time in its history as a state, as political analyst Michael Barone has noted, California is not on track to gain a new congressional district after the 2010 census.

I am more in agreement than otherwise with Kotkin pointing the fingers at public employees and their unions gone amok; environmentalists gone amok; and would add one more to it: Republicans gone amok.  It seems like social conservatism is the one and only litmus test for Republicans running for office, which has eliminated any possibility of moderate and intelligent Republicans ever winning one, even if such a candidate could gain the plurality of all voters.  (Recent example: Meg Whitman, the Republican nominee for California's governor race has already stated her opposition to the Prop 8 verdict!)  Well, I could repeat the same lines for Oregon too.

What California needs is a healthy dose of Libertarian-Democrat politics.  This would combine the best of the Earl Warren and Pat Brown policies with the Reagan approach to a focus on budget (in California--not when he was in the White House).  Or, let us see, California needs its own Tory-LibDem government.

Speaking of LibDem here in America, yesterday I came across this site devoted to Libertarian Democrat perspectives.

Unions, wages, inflation, and deflation

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics:

The Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers
 (CPI-W) decreased 1.7 percent over the last 12 months 

So, here is a question: if a big reason for unions to negotiate a wage increase is to keep up with the uptick in the Consumer Price Index, will unions now negotiate for a wage decrease?
Just asking :-)

On the death of Saturn

I drive a Saturn now--the one in this photograph on the left.  We bought this five years ago after trading in the ten-year old Saturn Wagon.

So, you can understand why I am more than a tad sad and disappointed that Saturn will, in all probability, not be around for long.

It will be only a short matter of time before automobile historians dig into how Saturn could have saved GM, and how instead senior leadership at GM killed Saturn and ended up killing GM itself.  And if you thought it was the doing of GM's management that Michael Moore caricatured, well, they had equal partners in this homicide autocide--the UAW.

Saturn was killed by its creators, GM and the UAW. The company starved Saturn for new products, and the union waged war against Saturn's labor reforms to keep them from spreading to other GM factories.

Saturn came out at the right time--small cars that were fuel efficient, with a possibility of those cars evolving into hybrid and electric cars.  And it could have worked out so well for everybody.  I am simply pissed off!!!!!
Paul Ingrassia's piece ends on this note:

Meanwhile, the Saturn workers' sense of loss is expressed poignantly by Mike Bennett, their former union leader, who says, "I wake up at night sick, thinking about all the things that might have been."

I feel terrible for the fantastic people at Saturn.  The employees in the service wing of the dealership--both in Bakersfield and in Eugene--were some of the best I have had the pleasure of working with.  Rarely did our cars have problems, and never once did I have to think twice about the quality of the work they did, nor about the prices they charged, which always seemed reasonable.  They treated me so well.  The service manager at the local dealership was a friendly, jolly, guy named Darrel.  He would recognize my name on the phone's caller ID and pick up the phone with the friendliest hello and always pronounced my name way better than even how I can.  I wish him and everybody else well .....