Peggy Noonan doesn't understand the American malaise that she recently commented on in the Wall Street Journal. Probably, because she is part of the problem and doesn't realize it.
The president of the United Auto Workers union has acknowledged the stark truth: industrial unions are killing American manufacturing jobs. In a June 13 article by Jeffrey McCracken, the Wall Street Journal reports: "United Auto Workers President Ron Gettelfinger, acknowledging that his union confronts the toughest challenges in its 71-year history, told delegates to the UAW's leadership convention that solutions to problems such as rising health-care costs or the rash of auto suppliers filing bankruptcy-law protection must come largely through the political process." This takes them back to their origin as favored children of the socialistic New Deal. One must admit that members of industrial unions have made out rather well, able to afford nice homes, automobiles, vacations, and college educations for their children. There is, however, a less attractive side to industrial unionism. With union labor costs about double those of non-union Japanese and other foreign auto manufacturing plants in the United States, Big Three American automakers are financially bleeding to death. This outcome was inherent in the origin of industrial unions in the violence of revolutionary socialism. In addition to higher wages and benefits, industrial unions impose work rules that reduce worker productivity and add directly to the labor costs of production. These costs are added to the prices of manufactured products and ultimately are funded by the non-union members of society. When an industry like autos is hit with import competition of equal quality, at lower prices, it must cut its profits and ultimately lay off workers. There is therefore a one-to-one relationship between industrial union militancy and destruction of American manufacturing jobs. Industrial unions are unlike crafts unions, which descended from medieval crafts guilds whose members had skilled trades that were acquired through long apprenticeships. Members of mass industrial unions such as the United Auto Workers are mostly unskilled workers from all kinds of jobs within an entire industry, the proletariat of Marxian ideology. Industrial unions' origins have in nearly all cases involved violent property destruction and deaths as they strove to supplant capitalism and place business management in the hands of the workers. Such were the 1869 Knights of Labor, organized shortly after the Civil War, when railroads and other large, interstate business corporations came into being. Its membership dwindled after its identification with the 1886 Chicago Haymarket Square riot between police and unionists that resulted in several deaths when bombs were thrown into the crowd. A similar history of violence and murder surrounds the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), which was formed in 1905. The Marxist theoretician of industrial unionism in the United States in the 1890s was American Socialist Party leader Daniel De Leon, who, in common with European syndicalists, advocated destruction of the capitalist system and seizure of private industry by industrial unions. Before the 1933 advent of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, industrial unions were not as large or influential in the labor movement as the older crafts unions. Roosevelt came to the presidency from the governorship of New York. Socialist labor's great champion in the New Deal was New York Senator Robert F. Wagner, who was born in Germany, the home of Europe's most powerful socialist party, and immigrated to New York City, the epicenter of American socialism. In Senator Wagner's case, one has the sense that he was a genuinely worshipful adherent of the religion of socialism. In President Roosevelt's case, it seems more likely that he simply made the shrewd calculation that industrial unions could provide lots of votes, if the Democrats enabled membership growth. The result was the 1935 Wagner Labor Relations Act, which gave industrial unions a favored, elitist position protected by the Federal government. Before the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act, industrial unions were allowed to get away with almost any sort of action against employers, but the latter were usually hauled immediately before the National Labor Relations Board and fined for any opposition to union action. In the bleak depths of the 1930s Depression, with the support of the New Deal's Labor Relations Board, industrial unions were able to force large manufacturers to raise their wages, exerting downward pressure on the wages of the vast majority of citizens, who were non-union workers. Adding insult to injury, unions' government-imposed higher wages were an inflationary force that raised the living costs of all those non-union workers. In short, industrial unions are free-loaders who had the backing of Feds armed with legal black-jacks to extort unearned privileges at public expense. Now that economic reality has at last overtaken them, unions can only run back to mommy crying for more special treatment.Labor Unions Admit They Are Killing American Jobs
A bipartisan coalition of 21 The senators suggested a tougher standard would be “extremely burdensome for farmers and livestock producers.” They pointed to higher projected costs for farmers due to the excessive dust control measures. “We all want a clean and healthy environment, but it defies common sense to mandate that farmers keep dust between their fence rows when combining or that the county government keep gravel dust on the road,” said U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley of
By R. Jeffrey Smith Washington Post Staff Writer Saturday, July 31, 2010; A01
Rep. Charles B. Rangel (D-N.Y.) has chosen a less-than-collegial defense to charges that he violated House ethics rules when he asked corporate donors with legislative interests to give to an academic center bearing his name.
He was not the only lawmaker to solicit donations in this manner, his lawyers argue, saying that peers who did the same thing were not punished.
With a trial of Rangel by the House ethics committee possible by mid-September, his legal team reached across the Capitol to point a finger at Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who helped raise money for a center named for him at the University of Louisville. Rangel's team cited similarities with the recently deceased Sen. Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.) and with former Republican senators Trent Lott (Miss.) and Jesse Helms (N.C.).
"These activities have never been regarded as creating an improper benefit to a Member," the lawyers said in their 32-page rebuttal. The logic apparently figured heavily in Rangel's reluctance to negotiate a settlement to 13 charges of ethical misconduct, even when colleagues said Friday they had been ready to impose only a reprimand: Why should he be singled out when others haven't?
The practice of influential lawmakers asking monied donors to give to a charity in which they play a key role, which lies at the heart of 10 of the allegations against Rangel, has long troubled ethics advocates. By taking part in fundraising for such charities, they inevitably arouse suspicion that the donor is getting some legislative favor, even when there is no evidence of a quid pro quo. (See the rest of the story at Rangel says colleagues who similarly sought donations were not punished) Read more...© Blogger templates Newspaper III by Ourblogtemplates.com 2008
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