In case you haven’t heard, the state of Hawaii, facing the same type of budget crunch as other state governments, has to cut more than $400 million from its education budget over the next two years. Logically, that would lead to some teacher layoffs in a number of school districts.
But the Hawaii State Teachers Association has a better idea. It wants to adopt a four-day school week, with unpaid “furlough Fridays,” to avoid any layoffs. In other words, the teachers are willing to sacrifice one-fifth of their students’ education to keep the paychecks rolling in.
The idea is apparently catching on in other states, as well.
The union’s perogative of “no lay-offs” is clearly self-serving. Our organization, Education Action Group Foundation, which is based in Michigan, has estimated that 2,500 school layoffs in Michigan equals about a $1 million hit to the Michigan Education Association in terms of dues. When a state is talking about significantly more than that, one can see why the union doesn’t want layoffs.
The union needs those dues to help elect Democrats, who will then turn around and block competition from homeschoolers and private schools. This way, parents are powerless to choose a better way to have their children educated the way they choose.
Each day in Minnesota and all across the nation, billions of dollars worth of products begin their journey to be sold overseas. American farmers, manufacturers, and businesses rely on exports to strengthen and grow both their bottom line, as well as our economy’s.
Free and fair trade agreements help spur economic growth; improve efficiency and innovation; create better, higher-paying jobs for hard-working Americans; and increase the availability of lower-priced products here in the United States.
Furthermore, the role of free trade as an expression of liberty and opportunity for all individuals signifies the very principles our country was founded upon.
Yet, the free trade agreements with Panama, South Korea and Colombia negotiated under the Bush Administration remain little more than words on paper. Despite having been carefully negotiated over a period of two and half years, these agreements have become bogged down by partisan divides. In the meantime, with an average tariff of 53% imposed on U.S. agricultural products by South Korea last year, for example, there is little wonder the United States International Trade Commission estimates U.S. sales of agricultural products could increase by as much as $3.8 billion once the U.S.–South Korea agreement is fully implemented.And while Congressional leaders seem content to leave these agreements on the back burner, America’s fragile industries are left hanging in the balance. The impact of depressed exports is fully evident to those who make their livelihood from them. In fact, Minnesota’s manufacturing exports experienced a 19% decline during the first quarter of 2009, mirroring a similar decrease nationwide. And our agricultural sector, especially our ailing pork and dairy producers, certainly needs no reminder of the importance of expanded export channels to the survival of their farms.
Reading this column filled me with joy and admiration, because Michele Bachmann shows how good a Christian woman can be if she puts her mind to it. It’s so good that she has an informed view of economic policy and realizes how prosperity is important to Christians who are trying to marry and raise a family. Money is the fuel we use to run our life plans, so we all need to have jobs and to make sure that our dollar buys as many useful things as possible, by keeping prices low.
By the way, for my female readers, the male equivalent of Michele Bachmann is Alfonzo Rachel. You can see his latest video which explains why Christianity is not compatible with socialism. He’s a devout Christian and he understands economics. He also is very entertaining in these videos he makes for PJTV.
Private sector unions have a natural adversary in the owners of the companies with whom they negotiate. But public sector unions have no such natural counterweight. They are a classic case of “client politics,” where an interest group’s concentrated efforts to secure rewards impose diffused costs on the mass of unorganized taxpayers. Also unlike private sector unions, those in the public sector can achieve influence on both sides of the bargaining table by making campaign contributions and organizing get-out-the-vote drives to elect politicians who then control the negotiations over their pay, benefits, and work rules. The result is a nefarious cycle: Politicians agree to generous government worker contracts; those workers then pay higher union dues a portion of which are funneled back into those same politicians’ campaign war chests. It is a cycle that has driven California and New York to the edge of bankruptcy.
[…]Consider what happened in Washington State. After helping Democrats win full control of the legislature in 2002, the state affiliate of the Association of Federal, State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) and other unions persuaded lawmakers to lift the collective bargaining restrictions. Within three years the number of union members had doubled. With more state employees paying dues, the amount of union dollars flowing into the coffers of Democrats running in state elections also doubled. A prime beneficiary of such union generosity was Christine Gregoire, who became governor in 2004 after one of the closest elections in the state’s history. (AFSCME gave $250,000 to the state Democratic party to help pay for the recount that handed her the election by 129 votes). Once in office, Gregoire negotiated contracts with the unions that resulted in double-digit salary increases, some exceeding 25 percent, for thousands of state employees. In 2007, J. Vander Stoep, an adviser to Republican Dino Rossi, Gregoire’s 2004 opponent, prophetically remarked that the unions’ arrangement with the Democrats was “a perfect machine to generate millions of dollars for her reelection. . . . They are building something that conceivably can never be undone—at taxpayer expense.” In their 2008 rematch, Rossi lost again to Gregoire, this time by 194,614 votes.
This is a long article, but it’s probably the only one you’ll need to read to understand how unions completely destroy economies, as in New York and California. Print and read!
WINTERY KNIGHT 