Labor Day 2024

Welcome to Labor day, or as we refer to it this year: August 33rd, just about the earliest Labor Day there can be. I'd even call it September 2nd because it has been an exceptionally cool day here today with the high only reaching 82 - thanks to drizzle on and off all day and dense clouds to temper the sun. The chances of rain tomorrow are being put at 70% so rather than smoking something, I'll be trying to duplicate my method of smoking some ribs but using an indoor oven. Since I don't have a backyard pergola to keep the rain off things. 

Since we're celebrating Labor Day in a time when the Teacher's Unions are coming to the forefront of union abuses of power, I thought it would worthwhile to use a "blast from the past" re-post of something I originally posted in 2013.    

The Bloody History of Organized Labor

 I enjoy my extra day off this week as much as anyone, but the history of the American labor movement that led to this day off is a pretty bloody history. Most of us are probably aware of the recent incitements to violence and riot, such as the problems in Wisconsin in 2011, when legislation to attempt to get control of the state budget led to confrontation in the state offices.  Remember this email, sent to several State Senators by a union supporter because lawmakers were going to ask union members to simply contribute to their benefits plan, instead of it being 100% paid for by taxpayers?

Please put your things in order because you will be killed and your families will also be killed due to your actions in the last 8 weeks.

Please explain to them that this is because if we get rid of you and your families, then it will save the rights of 300,000 people, and also be able to close the deficit that you have created. I hope you have a good time in hell. ...

We have also built several bombs that we have placed in various locations around the areas in which we know that you frequent. This includes: your house, your car, the state capitol, and well, I won’t tell you all of them because that’s just no fun…

Please make your peace with God as soon as possible and say goodbye to your loved ones. [W]e will not wait any longer. YOU WILL DIE!!!

In what world is it acceptable to threaten killing someone and their family, and not expect any negative consequences for it?  Only in the upside down world of labor unions.  Daniel Sayani at the New American puts together a short history of union violence in this country.  The first blood spilled by union activists apparently goes back to the Haymarket Square massacre in 1886, in which:

... striking union workers threw a bomb at Chicago police, killing eight police officers and countless civilians, after being incited to their lethal rampage by socialist Samuel Fielden (not unlike how Marty Lamb was beaten after the crowd of unionists was inflamed to violence by “progressive” Rep. Capuano) [Note: explanation of Rep. Capuano reference in that article from the New American - SiG] 

Because of their enormous influence in the Democratic Party, unions have specifically gotten themselves exempted from laws the rest of society must follow.  You probably know about the exemptions from the anti-trust laws, and extortion laws, and that they're trying to exempt themselves from Obamacare.  (just one example for each of those).  And, of course, you know when unions physically assault conservatives like Kenneth Gladney there never seems to be any consequences for the union thugs.

Unions are progressively more desperate because membership in non-government employee unions is down. Only government workers' unions are growing, where no true negotiation takes place because there are no parties at the table risking anything. Unions like the SEIU and the AFSCME are the beneficiaries of fat government contracts. They get more union dues which they siphon off to contribute to getting Evil Party politicians elected who will negotiate new, fat contracts with them.

(source)

While I could tweak things here and there in text, it's pretty good as it sits. It's showing its age a bit with references to efforts to pass a $15/hr minimum wage and it mentions the SEIU instead of the American Federation of Teachers - which in way just underlines the persistence of this problem.

Labor Day 2022

Welcome to Labor day, or as we refer to it this year: August 36th.  While being retired means it's not even a long weekend, it's one of those rare years where Labor Day is Mrs. Graybeard's birthday.  As we tend to do, I offered to take her to dinner if she'd pick the place and she picked here.  I started smoking a pork butt at 4AM and it was ready to take out of the smoker and pull by 5:15 PM.  

We were treated to a pretty Falcon 9 Starlink and ridesharing mission last night at 10:09 PM EDT with weather better than the last several launches.  That meant we got to watch it until the second engine started and it powered in a direction behind some thicker (or maybe just stretched out longer) clouds.  The flight was the 40th mission of the year for SpaceX in the 36th week.   

Not merely a Starlink mission, Starlink 4-20 was SpaceX’s sixth Starlink rideshare. Sitting atop the stack of 51 Starlink V1.5 satellites was an experimental spacecraft built by Spaceflight Inc. Known as Sherpa-LTC2, Spaceflight and partner Astro Digital turned the orbital transfer vehicle (space tug) into a satellite for customer Boeing. The purpose: carry and test a prototype communications payload built by Astro Digital and designed to verify new V-band communications technologies for a planned constellation of Boeing satellites in Low Earth Orbit (LEO).

The US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) approved Boeing’s plans for a 147-satellite V-band constellation in November 2021. It’s unclear what the purpose of the constellation would be or if Boeing already has customers or partners lined up. The prototype spacecraft built by Spaceflight and Astro Digital – known as Varuna in recent FCC filings – will be crucial for determining the constellation’s future. Boeing wants to use a swath of spectrum known as the V-band that has a higher frequency than the Ku and Ka bands commonly used by most other communications satellites. A higher frequency could mean higher connection speeds and more available bandwidth, but V-band radio waves tend to struggle to pierce through rain and other adverse weather conditions.

Awkward statement time.  I don't know off the top of my head where V-band is because the nomenclature is honestly pretty devoid of meaningful clues.  S-band comes before C-band when going up in frequency. L-band comes before S-band.  Basically, when I come across a new designation, I look it up.  The article mentions Ku and Ka, which I've worked with before so I know that Ku is in the vicinity of 14 GHz (that table says 12 to 18 GHz) while Ka is near 40 GHz (26.5 to 40 GHz).  The table says V band is 50 to 75 GHz.  When I worked on some V-band stuff, we just called it 60 GHz (although nothing about the system actually worked on 60 GHz.  Go figure.)   

I will note that oxygen absorption peaks in V band but toward the middle, around 60 GHz.  The absorption isn't as bad at 50 or 75 Gigs, but nowhere is the loss as low as it is at Ku or even Ka band.  Which might be a sign they're using V band because they don't want to communicate down to the ground.  

Still, that's just interesting and not related to Labor Day.  

Unfortunately, Labor Day has been more associated with unions than just the vast majority of people who work day in and day out to build a better life with their families, bringing along their communities and country.  Because of their enormous influence in the Democratic Party, unions have gotten themselves exempted from laws the rest of society must follow - not to mention behavior that would get most everyone else locked away.  Over and over again we've seen it demonstrated that unions can get away with things that no more conservative organization could possibly get away with.

Labor Day 2021

Welcome to Labor day, or as we refer to it this year: August 37th.  While being retired means it's not even a long weekend, we'll be doing something unusual - rather than smoking something, Mrs. Graybeard said she'd prefer some turkey chili, which she makes from turkey thighs. 

Since we're celebrating Labor Day in a time when the Teacher's Unions are coming to the forefront of union abuses of power, I thought it would worthwhile to use a "blast from the past" repost of something I originally posted in 2013.   

The Bloody History of Organized Labor 

I enjoy my extra day off this week as much as anyone, but the history of the American labor movement that led to this day off is a pretty bloody history. Most of us are probably aware of the recent incitements to violence and riot, such as the problems in Wisconsin in 2011, when legislation to attempt to get control of the state budget led to confrontation in the state offices.  Remember this email, sent to several State Senators by a union supporter because lawmakers were going to ask union members to simply contribute to their benefits plan, instead of it being 100% paid for by taxpayers?

Please put your things in order because you will be killed and your families will also be killed due to your actions in the last 8 weeks.

Please explain to them that this is because if we get rid of you and your families, then it will save the rights of 300,000 people, and also be able to close the deficit that you have created. I hope you have a good time in hell. ...

We have also built several bombs that we have placed in various locations around the areas in which we know that you frequent. This includes: your house, your car, the state capitol, and well, I won’t tell you all of them because that’s just no fun…

Please make your peace with God as soon as possible and say goodbye to your loved ones. [W]e will not wait any longer. YOU WILL DIE!!!!

In what world is it acceptable to threaten killing someone and their family, and not expect any negative consequences for it?  Only in the upside down world of labor unions.  Daniel Sayani at the New American puts together a short history of union violence in this country.  The first blood spilled by union activists apparently goes back to the Haymarket Square massacre in 1886, in which:

... striking union workers threw a bomb at Chicago police, killing eight police officers and countless civilians, after being incited to their lethal rampage by socialist Samuel Fielden (not unlike how Marty Lamb was beaten after the crowd of unionists was inflamed to violence by “progressive” Rep. Capuano) [Note: explanation of Rep. Capuano reference in that article on the New American - SiG]

Because of their enormous influence in the Democratic Party, unions have specifically gotten themselves exempted from laws the rest of society must follow.  You probably know about the exemptions from the anti-trust laws, and extortion laws, and that they're trying to exempt themselves from Obamacare.  (just one example for each of those).  And, of course, you know when unions physically assault conservatives like Kenneth Gladney there never seems to be any consequences for the union thugs.

Unions are progressively more desperate because membership in non-government employee unions is down.  Only government workers' unions are growing, where no true negotiation takes place because there are no parties at the table risking anything.  Unions like the SEIU and the AFSCME are the beneficiaries of fat government contracts.  They get more union dues which they siphon off to contribute to getting Evil Party politicians elected who will negotiate new, fat contracts with them.

 

(source)

I didn't mention in last night's post [about the $15 minimum wage ] that the SEIU and other unions are the ones behind the minimum wage protests.  Despite the rhetoric, they're not trying to make anyone's lives better except for their own.  If members get some crumbs that make their life better, that's nice.  For the non-unionized workers, who have to pay them their higher wages, too bad.  As the saying goes, FUJIGM.

The Amazing Idiocy of the Post Office Conspiracy Theory

The year has kept up its feverish pace of every week handing me something that makes me shake my head and say, "what planet is this, anyway... and how did I get here?"  

This week it's the idea that Orange Man Bad is trying to shut down the Post Office (instead of trying to rescue it, which seems to be something that's actually going on).  The evidence?  Mail trucks break down while mailboxes get locked overnight in some places and swapped out of service in other places.  The first thing I saw posted somewhere was this tweet form Performing Monkey Jamie Lee Curtis (can't call her a singing or dancing monkey):

 

There's more than one example of stupid here.  The easiest one to poke fun at is her conclusion that because the driver of the red truck had a red hat with white letters, Trump's minions are engaged in an "outright attempt at stealing the election by denying access of the @USPS."  

I probably don't need to say that I don't know Ms. Curtis, but I'm going to say the evidence says she's a moron.  Thankfully, she didn't say that the guy was wearing a MAGA hat, but he was wearing a red hat with white letters, which must be the same thing.  It would apparently never cross her tiny little mind that a tow truck with a red cab might just use red as their company colors and the driver might be wearing a uniform with matching red hat.  It also appears that JLC apparently thinks that mail trucks are some sort of Alien technology that makes them the only freakin' vehicles on the road in this country that don't break down and need to be towed!!!  

Needless to say, JLC is not the only brain-damaged liberal in America.  This photo was also tweeted:

It blows my mind that there are grown-ass adults who don't realize that mailboxes might need routine maintenance.  It's like they believe mailboxes are the only things in the world made out of some miracle alloy that never rusts out or needs to be serviced.  It's alien technology again.  

These aren't isolated examples, they're everywhere.  In one case, New Jersey Representative Mikie Sherrill tweeted a similar picture which saw more than 5,600 retweets, and she only later noted they were being replaced by newer mailboxes (which is pretty visible if you actually look at the original photo).  I'm sure you've seen other pictures.

Let me stop to note that Rep. Sherrill says in her Twitter "about me" box that she's a former Navy pilot and former Prosecutor, which certainly implies she's a lawyer.  Nothing about that background particularly screams "moron" - and doesn't even say she's a Democrat.  I always wonder when I see something that idiotic from a politician if they're really that stupid or if they just believe the people following them are so stupid they'll fall for it.  

Anyway... there's lots going on here.  There's definitely an attempt to get people mad and outraged.  There's a layer that has to do with them really wanting access to millions of votes to control.  And there's a layer of union workers and Democrat politicians scratching each other's backs (as always).  Anyone who has worked in a union shop, especially a government union shop (cough, Kennedy Space Center contractors, cough) has seen situations where work just doesn't get done all week so they can come in and get it done for time and a half on Saturday.  The union and Democrats (but I repeat myself) don't like Trump's new Postmaster General appointee who's trying to unscrew the USPS.  If you want to read real background information there's the link up in the second paragraph, here's one to House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy's article on Fox News.  Townhall's Kurt Schlicter writes that "The Post Office Conspiracy is First Class Stupidity."  Finally, Legal Insurrection asks, "Does Anyone Really Believe the Trump vs. USPS Hoax?"

The Other Big News From The Supreme Court Today

Of course, the really big news is the retirement of Justice Kennedy, giving President Trump his second chance to put his choice of a justice on the Supreme Court.  Although not a slam dunk, the Republicans do have a slight majority in the Senate which should lead to confirmation for whomever he picks, unless someone who hates Trump, like John McCain, or a liberal Republican like Susan Collins gets in the way.

I want to point out the other news out of the court today that I think is a really big change and could potentially lead to big changes in the way things are done.

In the case of Janus vs. the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), the court ruled in favor of Mr. Janus.  The suit was over his being forced to pay dues to a union that he had no desire to join.  The court essentially ruled that no one should be compelled to fund political speech with which they disagree.  Justice Kagan's dissenting opinion said this was "weaponizing the first amendment" (excerpt here) - which I have a difficult time understanding.  I don't see how strengthening the freedom of people to decide what political causes they support is somehow an expansion of some sort of government or judicial tyranny.

Letting the Townhall piece pick up the meat of the story:

The decision overturns the 1977 Abood v. Detroit Board of Education case that upheld agency fees for a union’s core activities, such as collective bargaining, but also said nonmembers could not be forced to support the union’s direct lobbying and electioneering activities.  In practice, this distinction became blurred.  For example, unions routinely used agency fees to fund their national conventions, which in many cases were overtly political.

Janus, a child support specialist for the Illinois Department of Healthcare and Family Services, argued that when public unions bargain collectively with the government, they are engaging in inherently political activity because it influences countless matters of public policy: taxes, spending, pension liabilities, debt and others.  As a result, the agency fees that unions demand amount to forced political speech and violate the First Amendment.

For long time readers, you'll know that I have a tendency to be rather disapproving of civil employee unions like AFSCME and the SEIU.  Even America's worst president (or one of the top few worst) FDR was against government employee unions.  There's simply no honest negotiation going on.  This isn't a group of stoic but kindly old Bob Cratchits negotiating with grizzled, mean old Ebeneezer Scrooges; it's one group of unelected Democrats (the union bosses) that donated money to get the other Democrats whom they'll negotiate with elected.  Money flows back and forth between the unions and politicians, and it's money fleeced from the taxpayers.  It's the closest thing to a perpetual motion machine you'll see.  In a real negotiation, Ebeneezer Scrooge has real money at stake, money that's arguably his to do with as he chooses; with government employee unions, both parties are arguing over OPM - Other People's Money (the most addictive drug known).

Getting back to the main story, the court included a major change in their ruling.  They said that union membership needs to be "Opt-In" not "Opt-Out"; employees have to join the union willingly.  In doing so, they recognized the union dues were essentially a mandatory fee to get their job.  

There are indications the unions are running scared over having this little scam broken down.  There are also indications that these unions are facing tough financial times even without the loss of this income from mandatory dues.  The AFL-CIO launched a national advertising campaign in advance of today's decisions, trying to sell the idea of union membership - maybe they should have been doing that for years.  I'm not sure this ruling affects all people getting union dues taken out of their pay against their wills, but I hope it does. 

 

Eric Allie, from Townhall.com in 2011.  I used this in an article on union thugs and this incest. 

The Bloody History of Organized Labor - A Repost

It's Labor day, or as we refer to it around here: August 35th.  While being retired means it's not even a long weekend, we'll be smoking some Atomic Buffalo Turds this afternoon.  We're keeping a wary eye on Irma, which is not behaving nicely but being more threatening.  For a few days, the spaghetti plots were tracking east and pushing it offshore the South Carolina/North Carolina area.  Yesterday, the models abruptly reversed to pushing it back over us.  It's still a week away, and I don't think those forecasts are worth anything over three days out, but all we can ever do is watch. 

So a repost of something I did for Labor Day in 2013, that I think is worth sharing again. 

I enjoy my extra day off this week as much as anyone, but the history of the American labor movement that led to this day off is a pretty bloody history. Most of us are probably aware of the recent incitements to violence and riot, such as the problems in Wisconsin in 2011, when legislation to attempt to get control of the state budget led to confrontation in the state offices.  Remember this email, sent to several State Senators by a union supporter because lawmakers were going to ask union members to simply contribute to their benefits plan, instead of it being 100% paid for by taxpayers?

Please put your things in order because you will be killed and your families will also be killed due to your actions in the last 8 weeks.

Please explain to them that this is because if we get rid of you and your families, then it will save the rights of 300,000 people, and also be able to close the deficit that you have created. I hope you have a good time in hell. ...

We have also built several bombs that we have placed in various locations around the areas in which we know that you frequent. This includes: your house, your car, the state capitol, and well, I won’t tell you all of them because that’s just no fun…

Please make your peace with God as soon as possible and say goodbye to your loved ones. [W]e will not wait any longer. YOU WILL DIE!!!!

In what world is it acceptable to threaten killing someone and their family, and not expect any negative consequences for it?  Only in the upside down world of labor unions.  Daniel Sayani at the New American puts together a short history of union violence in this country.  The first blood spilled by union activists apparently goes back to the Haymarket Square massacre in 1886, in which:

... striking union workers threw a bomb at Chicago police, killing eight police officers and countless civilians, after being incited to their lethal rampage by socialist Samuel Fielden (not unlike how Marty Lamb was beaten after the crowd of unionists was inflamed to violence by “progressive” Rep. Capuano) [Note: explanation of Rep. Capuano reference in that article on the New American - SiG]

Because of their enormous influence in the Democratic Party, unions have specifically gotten themselves exempted from laws the rest of society must follow.  You probably know about the exemptions from the anti-trust laws, and extortion laws, and that they're trying to exempt themselves from Obamacare.  (just one example for each of those).  And, of course, you know when unions physically assault conservatives like Kenneth Gladney there never seems to be any consequences for the union thugs.

Unions are progressively more desperate because membership in non-government employee unions is down.  Only government workers' unions are growing, where no true negotiation takes place because there are no parties at the table risking anything.  Unions like the SEIU and the AFSCME are the beneficiaries of fat government contracts.  They get more union dues which they siphon off to contribute to getting Evil Party politicians elected who will negotiate new, fat contracts with them.

(source)

I didn't mention in last night's post [about the $15 minimum wage ] that the SEIU and other unions are the ones behind the minimum wage protests.  Despite the rhetoric, they're not trying to make anyone's lives better except for their own.  If members get some crumbs that make their life better, that's nice.  For non-unionized workers, who have to pay them their higher wages, too bad.  As the saying goes, FUJIGM.  

SEIU Is a Corrupt Bunch of Thugs

And in other news, water is wet and fire will burn.

Back on March 30th, the Daily Signal ran a story about Patricia Johansen of Minnesota who worked as a care giver for her two special-needs grandchildren.  This must have been something other than grandmotherly concern because she was getting paid by someone, apparently the state's Medicaid office, because she recently found that her paycheck was being reduced to pay union dues.

Since she never agreed to join the union that represents such Medicaid-eligible caregivers in Minnesota, Johansen was surprised to discover that union dues had been deducted from her benefit check for about four months.

In an affidavit, the Fergus Falls resident says she is convinced the union, SEIU Healthcare Minnesota, forged her signature so it could start deducting the dues.

Here it turns into the kind of story you would think it is, involving a political appointee by Democratic Gov. Mark Dayton; an appointee who's accused of conducting this fraud, as well as “fraudulent signatures, nonexistent voters, and ballot tampering” in a 2014 unionization election.  They're going to get right on it.  Honest.

In the wake of the 3/30 article, people started contacting the Daily Signal to report they also had their signatures forged by the SEIU, in various parts of the country.

Dear Daily Signal: I live on the South Shore in Massachusetts, and the same thing happened to me. I was a personal care assistant for a number of years for a young boy, Joey, and was paid by Cerebral Palsy of Massachusetts.

The union began taking money out of my paycheck. I made several calls to complain about it and got nowhere. I even called my state senator, and that got me nowhere. This is Massachusetts, of course.

The one that stands out is the guy claiming to have been an SEIU officer fighting this kind of corruption.

Dear Daily Signal: I’m an activist and organizer who worked for a short time, from October to December 2012, as lead organizer for SEIU United Long Term Care Workers, which, pre-scandal, was called SEIU 6434 in California. The local was in the middle of a huge leadership corruption scandal when I was hired with the charge of bringing the union back to the workers.

I was fired after a few months when I brought up these very concerns ...

The care workers through their paycheck deductions support the exorbitant salaries of staffers and high-level union administrators. Most members have no idea how much these administrators make. The care workers themselves get really nothing in return from the union.—E. Garcia  

To echo what I said at the top, next thing you know they're going to tell us water will wet us and fire will burn.  It's not just that SEIU is a bunch of lawless thugs, this particular scam isn't new.  I wrote about a case in Michigan back in 2011.  I suppose, though, it's illustrative that it's still going on.  Things like this are part of the structural reasons we're headed for economic collapse; the SEIU donates money to Democrat politicians, when they get elected, they pass laws or appoint the right people to carry out operations like these that transfer taxpayer money back to the SEIU.  It's the closest thing to a perpetual motion machine you'll see.  SEIU gives dues money to Democrats, Democrats give taxpayer money to the SEIU, who give part of the taxpayer money back to the Democrats, and on it goes.  No one ever gets punished, no one ever gets in trouble, the machine just keeps spinning.

Remember back during the days of TEA Party protests, when the SEIU thugs beat down Kenneth Gladney for selling Tee shirts, and then got away with it in St. Louis courts? 

 

The Florida NAACP Is Trying to Kill A Program to Help Poor Students

Courtesy of Daily Signal, we get one of those stories that makes you shake your head.  The somewhat-long-titled article is, "I’m a Black Woman Whose Relatives Fought for Civil Rights. I’m Disappointed in NAACP’s War on School Choice."  If you listen closely, you can hear MLK and some of the civil rights leaders of the 60s spinning in their graves.

Last week, the Florida Education Association—the state’s largest teachers’ union—along with the Florida NAACP and other plaintiffs made a third attempt to challenge Florida’s tuition tax credit scholarship program, which allows individuals and companies to receive tax credits if they donate to a scholarship fund that helps low-income students attend the school of their choice. [Emphasis added: SiG]

I added the bold specifically to bring your attention to that this is their third attempt to block this tuition tax credit scholarship program.  Obviously, they really, really don't want this to pass.  I can understand the Florida Education Association fighting this: they're a teachers' union and chances are if the students are going to schools where they need scholarships they're (1) private schools, (2) non-union schools and (3) better schools than the ones the FEA members teach in.  They have a vested interest in mediocrity, as a casual glance at public K-12 education in the country reveals.

A little poking around added the other names that are trying to stop these scholarships: the Florida School Boards Association, the Florida PTA, the Florida Association of School Administrators, and the League of Women Voters of Florida.  The opposition to this group appears to be school choice advocates including pastors and loosely-organized parents.  It's likely that some of the pastors may benefit from the addition of students who receive these scholarships.

Thanks to a lawsuit, over 92,000 kids, many of them children of color, from low-income families are at risk to lose their privately funded scholarships to attend the private schools of their choice.
...
After losing in trial court and then again in the 1st District Court of Appeals, the Florida Education Association and NAACP, along with other parties, appealed to the state Supreme Court on Sept. 14. Their lawsuit challenges the constitutionality of the 15-year-old education choice program.

The author, Virginia Walden Ford, goes on to give examples of how important getting a good K-12 education was for her and others she knew, both as an end in itself and as a preparation for a college education.  She acknowledges the helpful role the NAACP played in those days, but criticizes them for this move, rightly IMO.

The NAACP, which was started to support the rights of black people, is now taking a position that, in my opinion, only hurts black children and other children of color’s chance of getting a quality education in this country through access to school choice. Involving itself in lawsuits against the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship Program seems counter to their mission.

I have been involved in advocating for school choice for the last 20 years and I still don’t understand why anyone, especially the NAACP, would oppose families having a choice in education.

Why, indeed.  Here's a clue: unions and politics, mostly Democratic politics.  The NAACP is following Black Lives Matter on this, as BLM has recently called for a moratorium on charter schools, arguing that what they call corporate control of schools leads to “unhealthy learning environments.”.   This led St. Paul, MN BLM leader Rashad Anthony Turner, who has been a school choice advocate in Minnesota and anti-police BLM protest leader, to leave the group.  Turner said his support for charter schools and education reform put him at odds with the group.  Look at that list of organizations suing to stop the scholarship program.  Not a conservative in the bunch.

(Stock photo from the Daily Signal article)

The Star Trek Future and Getting There From Here

Science fiction has regularly depicted a world where the robots were ubiquitous and ... somehow ... society had evolved.  Remember in Star Trek, they somehow were beyond money; in a society that had gone beyond scarcity?  They were officers in a space-going Navy, but never talked about getting paid?  When they wanted something, they told the replicator to make it for them.  But nobody in that universe ever depicted the world between ours and theirs, where the robots were displacing workers and society had to be funded more and more by fewer and fewer people.  Replicators are cool, but unlike warp engines, I'm not even aware of any research leading to them; the mathematics of special relativity that give us the incredibly large amounts of energy when we turn some matter into energy needs to run backwards in a replicator.  It would take the energy of multiple hydrogen bombs to "freeze out" the matter in a few drops of water. 

Consider the Star Wars universe.  It was a universe where robots were everywhere.  Parts to build intelligent robots were so common that a kid on a desert planet could build his own.  What place is there for humans?  In the Force Awakens, we see the heroine, Rey, scavenging parts from derelict ships and wreckage for money from a scrap merchant, giving the impression humans do the jobs that are beneath the ubiquitous androids.  If that scrap were valuable, wouldn't they send robots to strip the wreckage?  In this universe, humans are still needed for work, despite sufficient Artificial Intelligence that 'droids are free to move at will in society.  How is that even possible? 

(Star Wars: The Force Awakens scene, with Rey selling scrap to Unkur - source.)

All of that is to lead into an article I'd like to recommend folks read.  It's not academic or remote from our current situation at all; it examines the stresses in a society where the few who still have the desk make a good living as we transition to a society where the robots do all the work and humans are reduced to a minor side role.  The article is "The Omen of Lost Shirts", and it's on LinkedIn - a place I hardly ever read.  H/T to 90 Miles from Tyranny. The author, a mechanical engineer/ PE, writes:

... I’d like to lead in with the following quote from an on-line political newsletter I stumbled upon:

Destroy people’s hopes for a better life and you make riot, revolution, anarchy, and war inevitable.

Think about that quote in the context of these three articles, Drop in real wages longest for 50 years, says ONS, Shocking data revision by feds: Americans’ wages dropped 4.2% instead of rising in the first quarter, and Working 60 Hours A Week At 3 Part-Time Jobs And Still Living Paycheck To Paycheck among a legion of similar pieces over the last few years.  And then consider this, specifically that “Nearly half of Americans would have trouble finding $400 to pay for an emergency.”  And this quote about the AI/robot jobpocalypse (bolding added):

Harari calls it “the rise of the useless class” and ranks it as one of the most dire threats of the 21st century. In a nutshell, as artificial intelligence gets smarter, more humans are pushed out of the job market. No one knows what to study at college, because no one knows what skills learned at 20 will be relevant at 40. Before you know it, billions of people are useless, not through chance but by definition.

"The Omen of Lost Shirts" refers to an incident that happened in France last October.  Two officials of Air France, one of them an deputy director of HR, were running a meeting about layoffs.  Some 3000 union protestors were present, and some of them rushed the two executives.  One had his jacket and shirt shredded, presumably by grabbing and pulling, while the other had his shirt ripped off from under his jacket.  Both were eventually able to flee under police protection.  

The author spends time talking about H1B visas and the shenanigans going on with them, which I've written about, as well as the incident I also covered in which SEIU protestors went to a bankers house to "make it personal", invading the porch space and physically threatening the child left in the home. 

It's safe to say you and I are not the only ones expecting a bull market in pitchforks, and torches, because this just can't go on and continue to escalate.  Someone is going to catch a load of 00 buckshot in their face and you know the old saying, "it's all fun and games until someone loses an eye everything from the neck up".   

It's a longish article, but the smartest thing I've read in weeks.  Do go RTWT.  I don't know that any society can navigate the road from our current economics to the shiny, optimistic Star Trek future.  At some point, it seems that 10% of society will be working while paying 90% taxes for that privilege, and I don't think any society can work with those numbers.  The alternative is a dystopian future more like Blade Runner. 

(the dystopian El Lay of Blade Runner)

Tales From the Over Regulated State #20 - Who Will Be the Gibson of Ivory?

In 2011, the Gibson guitars factory in Nashville was raided by Federal government agents for alleged violations of the Lacey Act and importation of Indian rosewood fret boards.  In reality, the situation was much more complex.  It first appeared to entail violations of the Indian laws as interpreted by the US DOJ, but in the end appears to have been totally political: a union-powered shakedown of a successful non-unionized company in a heavily unionized industry.

Thus began a five-year saga, extensively covered by the press, with reputation-destroying leaks and shady allegations that Gibson was illegally importing wood from endangered tree species. In the end, formal charges were never filed, but the disruption to Gibson’s business and the mounting legal fees and threat of imprisonment induced Juszkiewicz to settle for $250,000—with an additional $50,000 “donation” piled on to pay off an environmental activist group.

(The more common word for that $50,000 “donation” which prosecutors demanded is “extortion”).

Today, Knife Rights tells us of the sweeping new ban on ivory importation which recently passed congress.  You may know that the sale of new elephant ivory has been banned since 1989 and subject to all sorts of legislation since then intended to stop the slaughter of African elephants.  That means this law is based on the handling of ivory that's already in the US and has been for varying amounts of time.  If you're interested in all the details, go RTWT:

The new rule covers "interstate commerce" in only elephant ivory and not fossil ivory (see below an explanation of why interstate commerce covers much more than you might expect).  It includes two exceptions to the near-total ban, both of which will have an adverse effect on trade in ivory handled and decorated knives.

1. The antique exception covers ivory that's 100 years old or older and was never repaired or modified since 1973

2. The de minimis exception covers ivory that is less than 100 years old and is further narrowed by six other criteria, all of which must be met.

The rules for these exceptions appear to be a minefield.  For example, since any ivory sold 100 years ago didn't have today's documentation on it, someone will need to determine that it's an antique.  (I don't know if you have a receipt for that ivory from a sale in 1910 that anyone would believe it).  The problem is that while the Fish and Wildlife Service (who enforce this law) respects the experts who appraise ivory, there's no guarantee they're going to take the word of any expert.   Expert opinions are simply potentially useful and not determinative.  A well worded justification for why your expert says a piece is antique will go farther than just saying it is one.

The second clause might be more problematic.  Let's assume you have an ivory handled knife made in 1860.  According to that "never repaired of modified" clause, if you had that knife repaired after 1973, it magically became new ivory and not antique!  It's hard figure out a rational reason for that.

The de minimis exceptions are even worse.  It consists of six criteria and every word of all six must be met for it to be legal to sell a piece of ivory.

FWS refused to create any "safe harbors" or binding criteria that a seller could rely upon to be certain an item qualifies as an antique or under the de minimis exception. Instead, it is totally up to the discretion of enforcement personnel whether proof or documentation in any given case is sufficient to prove whether an item is an antique or meets the de minimis exception. FWS said that more guidance would be forthcoming, which typically means that after enough issues arise in seizures and prosecutions, they will use their dispositions to provide further clarification of what they can get away with.

FWS also maintained their position that the entire onus is on the ivory seller to prove themselves innocent. If they seize your ivory-handled knife, it is up to you to prove that it is legal. They have no obligation to prove it is illegal. So, yes, this means you are guilty until you prove yourself innocent, the opposite of how justice is supposed to work in America.  [Bold added - SiG]

Welcome to the new police state of America, where most of us commit Three Felonies a Day without ever knowing it and everything is forbidden unless there's a specific law allowing it.  And we could go on with examples for that all week.

Knife Rights goes on to say that the law is like most of the laws the enviro-nuts and flakes get passed: well intentioned but stupid, and divorced from reality, ending up as just a way to feel smug.  Not once since the first ban in 1989 have ban advocates been able to provide any rational connection between these bans on ivory that's been legally here in the U.S. for decades and the poaching in Africa.

The FWS and proponents of the bans have lied since day one about the size of the illegal elephant ivory market in the U.S. which is utterly insignificant compared to China, estimated at 95% or more, and insignificant compared to almost all other countries as well. The U.S. trade in illegal ivory was already essentially the lowest in the world before this ivory ban campaign began.

The FWS has continued to lie about the current situation in Africa which has actually seen a significant DECLINE in poaching of elephants since 2011, prior to when this rule was first proposed in 2012. This decline has been the result of a combination of enhanced law enforcement in Africa and Asia along with a drop in demand for commodities like ivory in China. These efforts were already achieving the desired reduction in illegal elephant poaching. The ban does nothing to further efforts to reduce poaching in Africa.

So you just know that someone who makes pianos with ivory veneers on their keys, or someone who makes ornamental pieces (scrimshaw), or a knife maker is going to fall into the same trap over ivory that Gibson got snared by.  A prosecutor with a union buddy, or some other agenda, will go after a business that's the same as every other business in terms of what they use, but they won't have crossed the right palms somewhere so they'll be extorted like Gibson was.  I just have to wonder who it's going to be.

(source - fairly far down this page)

Tales From the Over Regulated State # 18 - Redefining Employment

The National Labor Relations Board issued a ruling that will dramatically impact franchise agreements, and could lead to franchises completely going away.  Franchising has always been based on an independent business model; that is, compared to a company opening another branch or office, a franchisee got the benefit of the name but was essentially an independent business who (for fees) could operate essentially as they wanted.  This ruling turns that upside down.  From PJ Media:

The National Labor Relations Board issued a ruling that revised its “joint employer” standard, making the parent company of independently owned franchises responsible for many labor practices.

The case at issue involved a California Teamsters local who asked the NLRB to declare Browning-Ferris and a staffing agency “joint employers.” The staffing firm, Leadpoint Business Services out of Phoenix, had been supplying Browning-Ferris with temporary workers and the Teamsters wanted the board to recognize the bargaining rights of the subcontracted labor.

Years ago, in my first "supervisor" position, I was sent to a seminar on unions, who were trying to unionize the electronics company I was in at the time.  The saying then (under Jimmy Carter) was, "never assume the NLRB arbitration is fair or objective".  Damn near 40 years later, no real change.

What the NLRB has done here is to say that the franchising corporation is jointly responsible for the actions of a franchisee.  It also means unions no longer need to be concerned with organizing every franchisee in the country (for giants like Burger King or McDonald's); they could unionize entire operations by simply organizing at the "home office".  Rueters reports,

The board, in a 3-2 decision that will likely be appealed in U.S. court, said the existing standard, under which companies had to have “direct and immediate control” over employment matters such as hiring and firing to be considered employers, was outdated and did not reflect the realities of the 21st century workforce.

“We will no longer require that a joint employer not only possess the authority to control employees’ terms and conditions of employment, but also exercise that authority,” Board Chairman Mark Pearce wrote.

The decision means large companies that use a franchise model or staffing agencies will in many cases be required to bargain directly with unions and employees, potentially making it easier for them to win higher wages and better working conditions.
...
Michael Lotito, a lawyer at Littler Mendelson in San Francisco who works with industry groups, said companies will have two main options moving forward: take more control over workers, which would upend existing business models, or back away and risk losing control over brand identity.

“The NLRB has totally upset the apple cart with respect to an understanding over accepted business risk,” he said
...
The decision came as McDonald’s Corp (MCD.N) is facing a series of NLRB cases brought against dozens of its franchisees around the country. The fast food giant has argued that it is not a joint employer because it does not hire and fire franchise workers, and Thursday’s decision may make it more difficult for the company to make its case.

The articles focus on companies like McDonald's and Burger King, but franchising is very wide spread and by no means ends with food services.  There are franchise systems in education, home furnishings,  clothing, oil change chains, gas stations, convenience stores, fitness stores, coaching, tanning salons; essentially "you name it".  When I was about 10 or 15 years younger and contemplating other things to do in life, I considered buying a franchise for a Woodcraft store, so add woodworking stores. 

In essence, as the dissenting members of the NLRB said, they've redefined employment.  PJ Media states:

Franchises account for more than $2 trillion of America’s economy. There are more than 800,000 franchises nationwide with more than 18 million employees. All of that is threatened by the ruling of the labor board that seeks to destroy independent franchise business owners.

Why should any business want to sell franchises anymore if they become responsible for everything the franchisees do?  It implies the franchisers will be responsible for (read: subject to lawsuits over) hiring and firing decisions, and possibly every aspect of policies and procedures the franchisees will implement.  If a franchise holder fires an employee, that employee can apparently sue both their "local" boss and the national corporation.  Franchise owners buy franchises as a way to get national name recognition as they start a business while still usually retaining more flexibility over these sorts of mundane policies.  That freedom goes away under this ruling.

This is yet another example of the problem of the effects of government agencies writing law on their own without going through congress.  This ruling will be appealed, but assume for a moment they get a friendly judge and the ruling is upheld.  They've then changed the nature of full time employment nationwide, not just for the 18 million people working for a franchise, but for everyone.  It's impossible to estimate what sort of effect it would have, but one possibility is that full time employment eventually ends. People contract to some business and are self-employed small businesses for their entire working lives.  It's something I think I've seen coming for years.

(source)

Note to really long time readers: I knew I've done a lot of these "Tales From the Over Regulated State", but since I never started to number them, they were always hard to search for.  I just used the search tool in the upper left to search on Over Regulated and see how many there have been.  This seems to be number 18, so I'll use this number and try to number from now on.

Catching Up

It has been a bit quieter than usual around here, so allow me to explain that Monday night I was doing "something close to nothing" (as Prince once sang) and when I got up, I could feel pain starting in my lower back.  Both Monday night and last night I couldn't sit at this keyboard and type - and that's not exactly strenuous.

Not sure what it is, but it's definitely sore to the touch on the right side, and I think it's muscle soreness, not a bad disk or the bone itself.  Close to the iliac crest.  Standing up and sitting down are the worst things.  Once I'm standing up and past the painful part of motion, I'm OK.  I can move fairly well once I get past that stiffness, but getting upright and moving is really not pleasant at all.  Like everyone, I've had some back pain before, but never missed a lot of work because of it.  I know this means I should be doing more situps and other back-strengthening exercises, but I haven't been keeping up with them, so it's my own fault.

That sort of discomfort tends to focus one's attention, so I haven't been watching the world as closely.   I see more from the Planned Parenthood Shop of Horrors, yet the Senate couldn't come up with a vote to shut down their funding.  I'm beginning to see them as doing the same corrupt tricks as the SEIU and government employees' unions in general.  They give money to Evil party members to get elected and once they're in place, the Evils give the money back to PP.  Each party skims some off the top of the pile; don't worry, you're paying for it.  Of course, this is exactly how the government employee unions work with their cronies in the Evil Party.

Mark Steyn has had some of his usual excellent observations on the Little Shop of Horrors.

If abortion were the respectable medical procedure its proponents insist it is, there would be no such thing as "Planned Parenthood", anymore than there is a Planned Hernia megacorp. We are told constantly that abortion is a very teensy-weensy, barely statistically measurable, all but undetectable micro-sliver of the wide range of "women's health" services Planned Parenthood provides. So it only does an estimated third of a million abortions per year - or about as many abortions as the combined total of half the remaining G7 nations (Germany, France, Canada). It is the single biggest aborter on the planet.

So the "right to choose" has facilitated the rise of a characteristically American racket: a billion-dollar "non-profit" that gets over half its funding from the US taxpayer and pays its eight top executives an average of 300 grand in order to serve as the paramilitary wing of reproductive liberalism. Planned Parenthood is an abortion-industrial complex: America is, alas, the abortion mill of the western world, and Cecile Richards' organization is its Standard Oil, US Steel and American Tobacco combined. Its ministrations fall disproportionately on minority women, so in that sense it is still true to the racist and eugenicist theories of its founder, Margaret Sanger: among blacks in New York City, there are more abortions than births - a grim ratio one otherwise has to go to Russia and its satellites to find.
...
Among developed nations, only America kills on this scale and in this manner. You can't do it and retain your humanity.

I think too much of you, dear readers, to go into details on the false arguments for how much women need PP.  Many sources have covered this information in the last couple of weeks.  I thought a purpose of Obamacare was to provide any service any woman wanted.  We also fund something like 9000 community health centers, several times the number of PP clinics in the country. 

The Single Best Way to Rip the Economy Apart

I've been thinking about this for a while, and I'm concluding that the best way to crash the economy would be to follow the Obama/Labor Unions/Hildebeest push and mandate a $15/hr minimum wage.  I think the market distortions would create literal earthquakes of disruption that would tear the economy apart.  Try this simple thought experiment: current federal minimum wage (which was never intended to be a "living wage" or pay "to raise a family on") is $7.25/hr.  $15/hr is more than doubling that, and there is a wide spectrum of jobs that make between $7.25 and $15.  By law everyone in that gap will be given a raise to $15, and everyone who worked hard, sweated hard, and got specialized training will suddenly have all of the effort negated.  They will suddenly see that couple of dollars that distinguished them from the newbies/new hires vanish and they'll be lumped together.  But, at least, they'll get something for it!  Think of the people making $15.25 or $15.35.  They will suddenly be just on the verge of being minimum wage workers.  I'd say "again" but it's possible they never worked even close to minimum wage.

You don't really need to do this as a thought experiment, and you don't need to stop at $15/hr.  It has been done at a much higher minimum wage, albeit on a small scale  Ever hear of a payment processing service called Gravity Payments?    Back in April, CEO Dan Price announced a three year plan that would raise everyone's pay in the company to $70,000/year, even volunteering to cut his own pay to do so.  This made minimum wage in that company about $35.65 an hour.  Social Justice Warriors must have been beside themselves in orgasmic fits.  Today, just 3 months later:  not so much.  Now some of his best employees are leaving, the group isn't happy and the CEO has leased out his house, living in the garage to make ends meet.  Business Insider has the story:

“Everyone start[ed] screaming and cheering and just going crazy,” Price told Business Insider shortly after he broke the news in April.

But in the weeks since then, it’s become clear that not everyone is equally pleased. Among the critics? Some of Price’s own employees. 

The New York Times reports that two of Gravity Payments' "most valued" members have left the company, "spurred in part by their view that it was unfair to double the pay of some new hires while the longest-serving staff members got small or no raises."

Maisey McMaster — once a big supporter of the plan — is one of the employees that quit. McMaster, 26, joined the company five years ago, eventually working her way up to financial manager. She put in long hours that “left little time for her husband and extended family,” The Times says, but she loved the “special culture” of the place.

But while she was initially on board, helping to calculate whether the company could afford to raise salaries so drastically (the plan is a minimum of $70,000 over the course of three years), McMaster later began to have doubts.

“He gave raises to people who have the least skills and are the least equipped to do the job, and the ones who were taking on the most didn’t get much of a bump,” she told The Times. A fairer plan, she told the paper, would give newer employees smaller increases, along with the chance to earn a more substantial raise with more experience.

Fox News reports:

“I’m working as hard as I ever worked to make it work,” [Price] told the Times in a video that shows him sitting on a plastic bucket in the garage of his house. “I’m renting out my house right now to try and make ends meet myself.”

The Times article said Price’s decision ended up costing him a few customers and two of his “most valued” employees, who quit after newer employees ended up with bigger salary hikes than older ones.

“He gave raises to people who have the least skills and are the least equipped to do the job, and the ones who were taking on the most didn’t get much of a bump,” Gravity financial manager Maisey McMaster, 26, told the paper.

She said when she talked to Price about it, he treated her as if she was being selfish and only thinking about herself.

“That really hurt me,” she said. “I was talking about not only me, but about everyone in my position.”

Approaching burnout, she quit.

Grant Moran, 29, also quit, saying the new pay-scale was disconcerting

“Now the people who were just clocking in and out were making the same as me,” he told the paper. “It shackles high performers to less motivated team members.”

There's a lot more texture between the various sources (and H/T to the Young Conservatives for  starting me down the trail) but it's the reality of market driven wages, workers driven to succeed, and well-intentioned but clumsy attempts to "do good".  It might be a rough transient for Gravity and Dan Price, and maybe they'll recover just fine, but it might also be the blow that will destroy the company. As a business, of course, they're free to pay anyone anything that both parties agree to, at least in my way of thinking.  I do think it's a potent message about doubling the minimum wage, though.

And these people wouldn't have had to deal with the inflationary consequences of a minimum wage increase.  This is the voluntary actions of one company, not the sledgehammer of Federal Law. 

Checking my blog archives, I see I've written on this several times.  I shouldn't really repeat them, but if you want more info, check out "Econ 101- Minimum Wage Style" and "Fundamental Transformation".  Both address aspects of raising the Min Wage to $15 that I don't address here. The first one talks about the inflation this would cause while the second talks about real impacts on unemployment, showing measured data on the enormous impacts measured in California - more unemployment and more misery for everyone, but especially those demographics they say they're trying to help. Yet a third piece, "Economics 101 - An Example of Political Stupidity" includes snippets of a great piece by Thomas Sowell. 

(Commieus americanus var. laborus) 
To quote myself just a little, I get tired of arguing this point because (1) we're always right and (2) then they raise minimum wage anyway and we suffer the consequences we told them would come.

People with no understanding of Economics insisting that raising the minimum wage will help them are like the people who insist gun free zones protect their kids at school.  They just can't get past the first idea to ask "then what happens?".

Wisconsin's Organized Lawfare Raids

Wisconsin, the cradle of progressive politics, has lessons to teach us all about the horrors of the merger of state and unions.  Ed Morrisey at Hot Air summarizes the story, with links to David French's in-depth report of the terror of Wisconsin’s “John Doe” raids in a new report for National Review (you should RTWT):

Cindy Archer, one of the lead architects of Wisconsin’s Act 10 — also called the “Wisconsin Budget Repair Bill,” it limited public-employee benefits and altered collective-bargaining rules for public-employee unions — was jolted awake by yelling, loud pounding at the door, and her dogs’ frantic barking. The entire house — the windows and walls — was shaking.

She looked outside to see up to a dozen police officers, yelling to open the door. They were carrying a battering ram.
...
“I begged and begged, ‘Please don’t shoot my dogs, please don’t shoot my dogs, just don’t shoot my dogs.’ I couldn’t get them to stop barking, and I couldn’t get them outside quick enough. I saw a gun and barking dogs. I was scared and knew this was a bad mix.”

Others noted by David French in that National Review article also participated in conservative politics and policy development, all of whom got raided in exactly the same manner — warned not to talk about it, warned not to get a lawyer, all while the government confiscated their papers and computers.  How can this be legal?

How does something like this start?  Politics.  How else?

In 2009, officials from the office of the Milwaukee County executive contacted the office of the Milwaukee district attorney, headed by John Chisholm, to investigate the disappearance of $11,242.24 from the Milwaukee chapter of the Order of the Purple Heart. The matter was routine, with witnesses willing and able to testify against the principal suspect, a man named Kevin Kavanaugh.

What followed, however, was anything but routine. Chisholm failed to act promptly on the report, and when he did act, he refused to conduct a conventional criminal investigation but instead petitioned, in May 2010, to open a “John Doe” investigation, a proceeding under Wisconsin law that permits Wisconsin officials to conduct extensive investigations while keeping the target’s identity secret (hence the designation “John Doe”).

John Doe investigations alter typical criminal procedure in two important ways: First, they remove grand juries from the investigative process, replacing the ordinary citizens of a grand jury with a supervising judge. Second, they can include strict secrecy requirements not just on the prosecution but also on the targets of the investigation...

Why would Chisholm seek such broad powers to investigate a year-old embezzlement claim with a known suspect? Because the Milwaukee County executive, Scott Walker, had by that time become the leading Republican candidate for governor. District Attorney Chisholm was a Democrat, a very partisan Democrat.

Of course, this was the point: to intimidate conservatives into not speaking, not organizing into a real political movement.  Wisconsin Club for Growth head Eric O'Keefe found that affiliates were cancelling meetings and refusing to talk with him.  They understandably thought being affiliated with someone who had gone through such investigation might lead to getting the early morning battering ram raids themselves.  O'Keefe had to abandon fundraising for the Club because he could no longer guarantee to donors that their identities would remain confidential, could not (due to the Secrecy Order) explain to potential donors the nature of the investigation, could not assuage donors’ fears that they might become targets themselves, and could not assure donors that their money would go to fund advocacy rather than legal expenses. As O'Keefe later said, "The process is the punishment".

In international law, the Western world has become familiar with a concept called “lawfare,” a process whereby rogue regimes or organizations abuse legal doctrines and processes to accomplish through sheer harassment and attrition what can’t be accomplished through legitimate diplomatic means. The Palestinian Authority and its defenders have become adept at lawfare, putting Israel under increasing pressure before the U.N. and other international bodies.

The John Doe investigations are a form of domestic lawfare, and our constitutional system is ill equipped to handle it. 

In the coming days, thanks to the gyrocopter idiot, you'll be hearing a lot of talk about campaign finance.  I've written many times that I think the role of money in politics is overblown: it's an easy excuse for rotten campaign managers or rotten candidates and we routinely see the underfunded candidate win.  The counter to that is the argument that big money controls everything.  I've already heard the arguments that Hildebeest has got "2.5 billion dollars" and will win.  The basis for the horrors people went through was the idea that money in politics is a greater evil than a government empowered to shut down political speech. 

The John Doe law in Wisconsin shows exactly why government intervention in political speech is worse than any corruption it attempts to prevent. The use of force in Wisconsin got applied to one side exclusively, and intended to shut down conservatives before they could exercise their legitimate political power. It’s even more egregious than the IRS targeting of conservatives between 2009-2013, but it’s the same kind of abuse of power, and it leverages the same kind of campaign-finance reform statutes that give government at state and federal levels entrée to control political speech.

(generic stock-ish photo of police seizing computers, as happened to so many conservatives in Wisconsin - from Metronews.ca)

"You Never Want to Let a Crisis Go To Waste" - Ebola Edition

Everyone knows the Rahm Emmanuel quote, and I'm sure it popped into everyone's heads with the lunatic fringe left saying Ebola is all the Republicans' fault because if they just let us have a surgeon general, this wouldn't happen.  Along with all the usual suspects (cough... CNN... cough MSNBC) chiming in chorus. The president, showing his usual approach, nominated an "Ebola czar" without a medical background, and no relevant experience: Ron Klain, whose only experience has been political, having been Chief of Staff to both Joe Biden and Al Gore.  Yeah, that's some qualifications right there. Plus, we're treated to the head of the NIH saying if those mean old Republicans hadn't cut his funding, why he'd have had an Ebola vaccine on the shelf and ready to use.  Riiiiiigghht.

There's a lot wrong about this stuff; in fact there's absolutely nothing right in any of that.

Let's start at the top.  Yo!  CNN, in answer to your "We need a surgeon general right now" piece.  We already have a surgeon general right freaking now.  Meet Acting Surgeon General, Rear Admiral Boris Lushniak, M.D., M.P.H.  RADM Dr. Lushniak served as Deputy Surgeon General from November 2010, until July 17, 2013, when he assumed the duties of Acting Surgeon General.  RADM Lushniak started working in the National Health system in 1983, right after getting his M.D degree and about the time controversial Surgeon General nominee Vivek Murthy was going into first grade (Murthy was born in 1977).  To say RADM Dr. Lushniak has much more experience than Murthy is a gross understatement; he has been an MD pretty much as long as Murthy has been capable of organized thought. 

The problems with Murthy, though, only start with him being too young.  First, he hasn't really done anything noteworthy in his career (my interpretation of his background here);  he's just not distinguished enough to be Surgeon General at 37.  There's no "Murthy procedure" known by surgeons far and wide; there's no "Murthy test" that internists use to diagnose something.  He was never "Dean Murthy" of Prestigious Medical School (or Ordinary Medical School); he was never department head of any hospital, or chief surgeon or chief anything.  With the exception of being a little too far to the "Quackademic" side of medicine, he comes across as really ordinary.  He doesn't appear (to me) any more qualified than my own Family Practitioner to be Surgeon General, and probably not more qualified than my cat's veterinarian.

Murthy's really big problem is that he started down the "guns are a public health menace" rabbit trail and keeps pushing it.  That, naturally (and thankfully) got the NRA, the NAGR, and everybody else on our side against him.  Which, as night follows day, turns the narrative into "that nasty old NRA is getting another godlike Obama appointee blocked!", and "those evil Tea Party zealots like Rand Paul are keeping us from having a surgeon general!" - totally ignorant of the fact that we have a surgeon general.

So how does a rather ordinary guy like Murthy  get picked to be nominated at all?  Of course it's a trick question!  This is Obama: Murthy was picked for his political activity.  He was picked for starting Doctors For America, a money bundling, pro-Democrat/pro ACA group that helped lobby to get the ten pound turd of Obamacare passed!   

Which brings us to the newly-appointed Ebola czar and former chief of staff for numbnuts Biden and "even numb-er nuts" Gore.  Because we absolutely need an Ebola czar.

Guess what?  We already have an Ebola czar, too!

Not ten years ago, the federal government created and funded a brand new office in the Health and Human Services Department specifically to coordinate preparation for and response to public health threats like Ebola. The head of that department is Dr. Nicole Lurie, who is still very much on the job - despite the fact that no one has mentioned her, no one has interviewed her and no one has brought her forward as the doctor in charge of the "emerging diseases branch" of the NIH.

As National Journal rather glowingly puts it, “Lurie’s job is to plan for the unthinkable. A global flu pandemic? She has a plan. A bioterror attack? She’s on it. Massive earthquake? Yep. Her responsibilities as assistant secretary span public health, global health, and homeland security.” A profile of Lurie quoted her as saying, “I have responsibility for getting the nation prepared for public health emergencies—whether naturally occurring disasters or man-made, as well as for helping it respond and recover. It’s a pretty significant undertaking.” Still another refers to her as “the highest-ranking federal official in charge of preparing the nation to face such health crises as earthquakes, hurricanes, terrorist attacks, and pandemic influenza.”

So why doesn't everybody know about Dr. Lurie?  You'll have to ask Obama about that.  Maybe his Top Men don't even know her office exists.  And maybe it has to do with corruption her office has been involved with (this is the Obama administration, after all):

There are a few interesting things about the scandal Lurie was embroiled in years ago. You can—and should—read all about it in the Los Angeles Times‘ excellent front-page expose from November 2011, headlined: “Cost, need questioned in $433-million smallpox drug deal: A company controlled by a longtime political donor gets a no-bid contract to supply an experimental remedy for a threat that may not exist.” This Forbes piece is also interesting.

The donor is billionaire Ron Perelman, who was controlling shareholder of Siga. He’s a huge Democratic donor but he also gets Republicans to play for his team, of course. Siga was under scrutiny even back in October 2010 when The Huffington Post reported that it had named labor leader Andy Stern to its board and “compensated him with stock options that would become dramatically more valuable if the company managed to win the contract it sought with HHS—an agency where Stern has deep connections, having helped lead the year-plus fight for health care reform as then head of the Service Employees International Union.”

The award was controversial from almost every angle—including disputes about need, efficacy, and extremely high costs. There were also complaints about awarding a company of its size and structure a small business award as well as the negotiations involved in granting the award. It was so controversial that even Democrats in tight election races were calling for investigations.

Last month, Siga filed for bankruptcy after it was found liable for breaching a licensing contract. The drug it’s been trying to develop, which was projected to have limited utility, has not really panned out—yet the feds have continued to give valuable funds to the company even though the law would permit them to recoup some of their costs or to simply stop any further funding.

The Los Angeles Times revealed that, during the fight over the grant, Lurie wrote to Siga’s chief executive, Dr. Eric A. Rose, to tell him that someone new would be taking over the negotiations with the company. She wrote, “I trust this will be satisfactory to you.” Later she denied that she’d had any contact with Rose regarding the contract, saying such contact would have been inappropriate.

So, let's review:  we don't need a surgeon general right now because we have one in the job.  The current nominee isn't being held up because "rethuglicans are mean", it's because he's not really qualified.  We don't need a new Ebola czar because we have one already, and while the one we have is only marginally qualified (largely by her experience), the one Obama nominated is completely unqualified.

The other big lie you hear now is that the NIH is underfunded.  This is the quote you'll come across:

“Frankly, if we had not gone through our 10-year slide in research support, we probably would have had a vaccine in time for this that would’ve gone through clinical trials and would have been ready.”- Dr. Francis Collins, head of the National Institutes of Health (NIH)

The slide, such that there is one, is caused entirely by the inflation the government is trying to create (through the Federal Reserve's QE).  I read that the NIH’s budget has increased from $29 billion in 2007 to $30 billion this year, which we'll call a cut because of the inflation caused by the Fed.  But that's overlooking an important fact:  vaccines don't just happen;  you don't just pour federal dollars in a blender and out pops a vaccine.  It's difficult, slow work.  In the last decade, the NIH has prioritized other diseases, principally AIDS, over Ebola; it's only natural when all the Ebola outbreaks in history have killed 1/1000 of the number killed by AIDS in 2012.  If you don't have infinite resources (which you never have) do you go after the big killer or the little one?  And don't forget all the insane stuff NIH has spent their money on:

• $702,558 grant for the study of the impact of televisions and gas generators on villages in Vietnam.
• $175,587 to the University of Kentucky to study the impact of cocaine on the sex drive of Japanese quail.
• $55,382 to study hookah smoking in Jordan.
• $592,527 to study why chimpanzees throw objects.
• Last year there were news reports about a $509,840 grant from NIH to pay for a study that will send text messages in “gay lingo” to meth-heads.
• And who can forget the money spent on the study of why lesbians tend to be fatter than gay men

It looks like the NIH isn't underfunded so much as they're really poorly managed.

But looking at that list, does anybody else get the impression the NIH is full of fat, older lesbians having problems with hot flashes?