Tag Archives: Big Government

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Scott Walker’s plan to reform public sector unions

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Political contributions to public sector unions
Political contributions to public sector unions (click for larger image)

(Source: OpenSecrets.org)

I am not sure if I really explained the importance of Scott Walker’s plan to rein in public sector unions in my last post.

Basically, public sector unions generate a lot of money from forced collection of union dues, and they turn around and use that money to donate to politicians who are in favor of growing government. Unions want bigger government, because they make more money if government grows.

This Wall Street Journal article explains that unions donate mostly to Democrats.

Excerpt:

Corporations and their employees… tend to spread their donations fairly evenly between the two major parties, unlike unions, which overwhelmingly assist Democrats. In 2008, Democrats received 55% of the $2 billion contributed by corporate PACs and company employees, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Labor unions were responsible for $75 million in political donations, with 92% going to Democrats.

So how much money are we talking about?

Total political contributions in 2014 election cycle
Total political contributions in 2014 election cycle (click for larger image)

To see how much unions control government, take a look at this story from National Review, written by economist Veronique to Rugy.

It says:

  • The top campaign donor of the last 25 years is ActBlue, an online political-action committee dedicated to raising funds for Democrats. ActBlue’s political contributions, which total close to $100 million, are even more impressive when one realizes that it was only launched in 2004. That’s $100 million in ten years.
  • Fourteen labor unions were among the top 25 political campaign contributors.
  • Three public-sector unions were among the 14 labor groups: the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees; the National Education Association; and the American Federation of Teachers. Their combined contributions amount to $150 million, or 15 percent of the top 25’s approximately $1 billion in donations since 1989.
  • Public- and private-sector unions contributed 55.6 percent — $552 million — of the top 25’s contributions.

Where does the money go? The Daily Caller notes:

“Nearly all of labor’s 2012 donations to candidates and parties – 90 percent – went to Democrats,” the report from CRP concluded. “Public sector unions, which include employees at all levels of government, donated $14.7 million to Democrats in 2014.”

But someone has a plan to do something about this: Scott Walker.

This Investors Business Daily article by economist Veronique de Rugy explains what he would do to the unions if elected President in 2016.

She writes:

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker just proposed a plan to overhaul the country’s labor laws, called “My Plan to Give Power to the People, Not the Union Bosses.”

It would do that by expanding employee choice and holding unions accountable to their members.

One of the main underlying themes of the Republican presidential hopeful’s private-sector reforms is transferring power and decision-making from unions to their members.

For instance, the plan would guarantee employees’ rights by strengthening secret-ballot elections. Under current law, unions have ways to work around the protections, making such elections less than secret. The change would protect workers from retaliation by not disclosing their choices to unions during workplace elections.

Though federal laws outlaw extortion, the Supreme Court has ruled that they usually do not apply to unions. Walker’s plan would change that to protect workers from threats, violence and extortion from unions.

Similarly, his reforms would protect whistleblowers who report wrongdoing on the part of a union from being fired or discriminated against.

[…][Public sector unions]… also make the government less effective and more expensive.

That’s why a President Walker would work with Congress to prohibit public employee unions altogether. Meanwhile, he would implement taxpayer and paycheck protections.

As Heritage Foundation labor economist James Sherk explained for National Review, “Walker proposes cracking down on the use of ‘union time’ — that is, allowing federal employees to work for their unions at taxpayer expense.

“He also wants to stop unions from using federal resources to collect the portion of dues that they spend on political causes and lobbying.”

Walker’s plan also would establish a nationwide right-to-work law, making voluntary union dues the default option for all private- and public-sector workers. It would give workers the freedom to choose whether they want to be in a union or not.

States that want to take this freedom away from their workers would have to affirmatively vote to opt out of right-to-work status.

[…]The Walker plan includes many more reforms, such as a repeal of the Davis-Bacon wage controls, which alone could save taxpayers nearly $13 billion over the next 10 years. If implemented, it would be a giant step toward freeing businesses, employers, workers and taxpayers from the incredible burden imposed on them by federal labor laws and union bosses.

Why should we believe that he’ll really do it? Well, unlike some of the talker candidates, Walker has already done it in his state. And it worked – a $3.6 billion dollar deficit was erased.

If you are concerned about the growth of government, and all that that entails, e.g. – higher taxes, massive spending, bloated welfare state, huge levels of corruption, government waste, abortion, gay marriage, etc – then you should know that all of that is driven by the political donations of unions.

And I don’t want anyone to think that union workers are the same as union bosses. In Wisconsin, as soon as the union workers got the right to work without having the pay union dues, the vast majority of them chose not to pay union dues.

News

Bernie Sanders’ $18 trillion spending plan will double the national debt

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Gross public debt, Democrats control spending in 2007
Gross public debt, Democrats control spending in 2007

It’s election time, and Democrat politicians like Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders are busy promising the moon to their supporters.

Here’s what Democrat voters want from their candidates:

Transcript:

Let’s go to audio sound bites, this week here’s a portion of Ken Rogulski reporting on WJR in Michigan, two people here in line for Obama cash.

ROGULSKI: Why are you here?

WOMAN #1: To get some money.

ROGULSKI: What kind of money?

WOMAN #1: Obama money.

ROGULSKI: Where’s it coming from?

WOMAN #1: Obama.

ROGULSKI: And where did Obama get it?

WOMAN #1: I don’t know, his stash. I don’t know. (laughter) I don’t know where he got it from, but he givin’ it to us, to help us.

WOMAN #2: And we love him.

WOMAN #1: We love him. That’s why we voted for him!

WOMEN: (chanting) Obama! Obama! Obama! (laughing)

The two women are from Detroit, Michigan. Surprised? Detroit has been run by Democrats for decades, and that’s why it’s bankrupt. It’s not Republicans who run these cities into the ground – it’s Democrats, and their Democrat economic policies.

I don’t think these women are any different than your typical Hollywood high-school dropout actress, or your typical trial lawyer, or your typical unionized auto worker, or your typical MSNBC news anchor, or your typical professor of Marxist Studies. Democrats across all education levels and professions and levels of income have literally no idea how jobs are created. They have no idea how wealth is created. They just want to steal money from their neighbors, money that they didn’t earn themselves.

So it’s no wonder that they love what socialist candidate Bernie Sanders is telling them.

The Wall Street Journal – which knows something about business and economics – has done an analysis of how much the socialist agenda of Bernie Sanders will cost. The final price tag? $18 trillion dollars!

Read it:

Sen. Bernie Sanders, whose liberal call to action has propelled his long-shot presidential campaign, is proposing an array of new programs that would amount to the largest peacetime expansion of government in modern American history.

In all, he backs at least $18 trillion in new spending over a decade, according to a tally by The Wall Street Journal, a sum that alarms conservatives and gives even many Democrats pause. Mr. Sanders sees the money as going to essential government services at a time of increasing strain on the middle class.

[…]To pay for it, Mr. Sanders, a Vermont independent running for the Democratic nomination, has so far detailed tax increases that could bring in as much as $6.5 trillion over 10 years, according to his staff.

A campaign aide said additional tax proposals would be offered to offset the cost of some, and possibly all, of his health program. A Democratic proposal for such a “single-payer” health plan, now in Congress, would be funded in part through a new payroll tax on employers and workers, with the trade-off being that employers would no longer have to pay for or arrange their workers’ insurance.

Investors Business Daily has more to say about Sanders’ proposals:

His “Medicare for All” single-payer health plan alone would cost roughly $15 trillion over a decade.

He wants the government to provide “universal” child care and pre-kindergarten programs, along with free tuition at any public college, and proposes spending an additional $1 trillion on infrastructure and expanding Social Security by $1.2 trillion. Add up just these and a few other items on Sanders’ list, and price tag tops $18 trillion over a decade.

[…]And this doesn’t count the massive costs of mandates and regulations Sanders wants to impose on businesses, such as a $15 minimum wage, plus mandatory paid medical leave, vacations and sick days.

He’d also make it far easier for unions to organize.

Keep in mind that when Obama became president, the national debt was about $8 trillion. Now it’s $18.5 trillion, thanks to the Democrats. And if Bernie Sanders is elected, it will go to over $36.5 trillion! Who is going to pay for all this government spending? It won’t be illegal immigrants and ISIS “refugees”. It’s going to be you, your spouse, and your kids.

I am really hoping I can retire to a less demanding job before the Democrats force plans like this on all of us. When people like Sanders are in control, the worse thing you can do is work hard for a high income. You don’t want to be responsible for a homeschooling wife and mother, and a lot of kids that you are raising yourself. I understand that socialists want to take children away from parents as early as possible and communally raise them in day care and public schools. But that’s not what I am going to work to pay for. I am going to work to pay for my plan. I am not going to work to pay secularists to indoctrinate my kids in their false worldview. I don’t want to be a slave to the secular government. When I go to work, it’s for my plan, not for tyrants like Bernie Sanders to run my life.

News

EPA dumped a million gallons of mine waste into Animas River in Colorado

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EPA dumps 1 million gallons of mining waste into river
EPA dumps 1 million gallons of mining waste into river

Yes, the Environmental Protection Agency is polluting rivers. They are not admitting responsibility, and the mainstream news media is covering for them.

Let’s get the story from Investors Business Daily.

Excerpt:

Imagine if a business dumped a million gallons of mine waste into Animas River in Colorado, turning it into what looked like Tang, forcing the sheriff’s office to close the river to recreational users, and prompting the EPA to warn farmers to shut off water intakes along the river.

Oh, and imagine that the business also failed to warn officials in downstream New Mexico about the spill.

Such a calamity would probably lead the nightly news, with calls from environmentalists and the EPA for investigations, fines, lawsuits, and tougher pollution controls.

Except in this case it’s the EPA itself that is to blame.

Newsbusters notes that the mainstream media is mum – because they are all for big government, and big government never makes mistakes:

Yet here we are four days later, and the story has gotten very little visibility outside of center-right blogs and outlets. That’s largely explained by how the wire services have handled the story. After the jump, readers will see headlines and descriptions of the stories which have appeared thus far at the web site of the New York Times:

No headline acknowledges the EPA’s admitted responsibility for the spill. Only one headline mentions the EPA at all.

[…]Although the first AP report parroted the EPA’s claim that “that there was no threat to drinking water from the spill,”a story at the Denver Post yesterday indicated that “Tests show (Animas River) water (is) acidic as coffee,” and that“EPA officials on Saturday morning also said they are bracing for another surge of acid discharge from mines above Silverton.” In other words, the ordeal is far from being over.

But look on the bright side – at least the EPA is hard at work banning coal production so that we all have to pay more for electricity, including heating and cooling our homes.

If I could close four departments out at the federal level, I would choose the EPA, the Department of Energy, the IRS and the Department of Education. Get rid of failure.