Metra embraces 1980s technology in 2010

Starting in January 2010, Chicagoans who ride commuter trains will finally be able to buy Metra tickets by credit card.

Why so late? Wrong question. The only reason they’re doing it at all is because “legislation was introduced last spring requiring them to accept plastic”.

This is what generally happens when government has a monopoly on a service or product. The convenience of the customer ceases to matter, because, hey, tough crap pal! Try that other train service. Oh, right, there isn’t one.

We’ll leave similarities between this and any pending federal legislation as an exercise for the reader.

What Copenhagen is really about: money, i.e., economic redistribution and tax revenues

They’re politicians. They can’t be honest, or we’d kick them all out.

Capping Emissions, Trading On The Future – Forbes.com

The media shills, scientists, bureaucrats and corporate rent-seekers gathered at Copenhagen won’t give much thought to what this means to the industrialized world’s middle and working class. For many of them the new carbon regime means a gradual decline in living standards. Huge increases in energy costs, taxes and a spate of regulatory mandates will restrict their access to everything from single-family housing and personal mobility to employment in carbon-intensive industries like construction, manufacturing, warehousing and agriculture.

You can get a glimpse of this future in high-unemployment California. Here a burgeoning regulatory regime tied to global warming threatens to turn the state into a total “no go” economic development zone. Not only do companies have to deal with high taxes, cascading energy prices and regulations, they now face audits of their impact on global warming. Far easier to move your project to Texas–or if necessary, China.

Politicians who can raise your taxes don’t need to care about the dangers of chasing business away to other countries. It doesn’t affect them, or at least, not directly. It affects you and me though, because it affects the economy that sustains us.

Politicians who understand how markets and economies work would realize that they benefit from a robust economy as well, in the form of higher absolute tax revenues. But they’d rather just enrich themselves by making deals under the table and then raise our taxes when the going gets tough. It’s probably easier.

I find this next part particularly interesting. It frames the debate as a class war, which is an angle that probably isn’t highlighted enough:

So why do leaders like Barack Obama and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown continue identifying themselves with the climate change agenda and policies like cap and trade? Perhaps it’s best to see this as a clash of classes. Today’s environmental movement reflects the values of a large portion of the post-industrial upper class. The big money behind the warming industry includes many powerful corporate interests that would benefit from a super-regulated environment that would all but eliminate potential upstarts.

These people generally also do not fear the loss of millions of factory, truck, construction and agriculture-related jobs slated to be “de-developed.” These tasks can shift to China, India or Vietnam–where the net emissions would no doubt be higher–at little immediate cost to tenured professors, nonprofit executives or investment bankers. The endowments and the investment funds can just as happily mint their profits in Chongqing as in Chicago.

Global warming-driven land-use legislation possesses a similarly pro-gentry slant. Suburban single family homes need to be sacrificed in the name of climate change, but this will not threaten the large Park Avenue apartments and private retreats of media superstars, financial tycoons and the scions of former carbon-spewing fortunes. After all, you can always pay for your pleasure with “carbon offsets.”

It’s like a big game of Risk to these corrupt fools.And we are the game pieces.

I think what this gets down to is the same split that I’ve identified in the past as the key distinction in political life, despite Left vs. Right diversions: between political haves and have-nots. The corrupt and the regular folks that work for a living. More and more, this is the split that informs my worldview and is validated week after week.

Copenhagen is war all right, it’s just fought with CO2 and money instead of bullets and bombs.

Less guns, more crime? More whistles!

The Chicago suburb of Oak Park banned handguns years ago. In response to a recent (and inevitable) increase in robberies and burglaries, their genius plan is to hand out whistles at the train station.

I’m glad I don’t live there any more.

WTF is this … ?!?

It is stunning to me that this Kevin Jennings character is even allowed within 500 feet of any of our schools, never mind that he has been appointed to a ‘Safe Schools czar’ position, whatever the hell that is.

Breaking: Obama’s “Safe Schools Czar” Is Promoting Child Porn in the Classroom– Kevin Jennings and the GLSEN Reading List

Out of curiosity to see exactly what kind of books Kevin Jennings and his organization think American students should be reading in school, our team chose a handful at random from the over 100 titles on GLSEN’s grades 7-12 list, and began reading through.

What we discovered shocked us. We were flabbergasted. Rendered speechless.

We were unprepared for what we encountered. Book after book after book contained stories and anecdotes that weren’t merely X-rated and pornographic, but which featured explicit descriptions of sex acts between pre-schoolers; stories that seemed to promote and recommend child-adult sexual relationships; stories of public masturbation, anal sex in restrooms, affairs between students and teachers, five-year-olds playing sex games, semen flying through the air. One memoir even praised becoming a prostitute as a way to increase one’s self-esteem. Above all, the books seemed to have less to do with promoting tolerance than with an unabashed attempt to indoctrinate students into a hyper-sexualized worldview.

These are books targeted at children at the 7-12 grade level. There are also books meant for K-6. Oh, and another list of books for teachers. Awesome!

Go click and read. I dare you.

Jennings founded GLSEN. It’s his baby. And of all the people to pick for “Safe Schools Czar”, apparently, Obama thought this guy would be perfect.

Apparently all the actual child molesters were busy.

Maybe the media would like to dig into this story a bit. Even with the best possible shine applied, and the best possible motives assigned to all, it seems kinda sensational, no?

On distinguishing between evidence and total bullshit

One thing I find amusing in the various reactions to the leaked ClimateGate CRU files is the position summarized by: “sure they are embarrassing, but they don’t mean that much in the big picture“. Or that the substance of the files is the emails rather than the software files themselves.

Really? Are you sure? Because I think they do mean “that much”. And the reason I think that is because it’s true. And I find it amusing that so many people think we are so stupid that they can say something so dumb and illogical, and then expect us to believe it.

We’re not as dumb as we look, you know.

Let’s lay out some truth for a change, and analyze it. Just for fun.

The media thinks we’re all morons

Stories like this are exactly why the mainstream media has become a joke: Stolen Climate E-Mails Cause A Ruckus In Congress : NPR.

That headline is ridiculous, and so is the story. The real story here is not that emails were “stolen”, especially since the best evidence indicates that they were leaked. And since all these files were the target of multiple FOI requests by scientists trying to dig into the research, for years, but denied every step of the way, an unbiased observer might conclude that this information was really public for all intents and purposes, anyway, and should have been available years ago. Plus, I thought the media loved using FOI requests to bring down the powerful and the arrogant? Yet now they don’t even want to mention it without using loaded words like “stolen”. So very, very odd!

And the real fallout from the real story is much, much more than a “ruckus”; use of the word ruckus frames it as a bunch of spoiled brats arguing about who touched who first. The real story with the “stolen emails” is that the credibility of the IPCC–what was still left of it, anyway–is gone.

When the going gets tough, the tough pour a glass or three

For about a week now I’ve been suffering from this horrible cough … I sound like I’m coughing up a lung. I’ve probably got the swine.

So tonight I’m trying a new strategy: port wine.

I’ve had two glasses–so far–and it seems to be working. And if it doesn’t, well, who cares?

Yeah. More regulation. That’ll fix it right up.

Not:

U.S. Bank Examiners Faulted for Oversight at Failed Lenders – Bloomberg.com

Nov. 27 (Bloomberg) — Treasury Department and Federal Reserve examiners should have done more to halt risky lending at U.S. banks that failed amid real-estate losses, reports by agency watchdogs show.

Ten of the 12 bank-collapse reviews released by the Fed and Treasury inspectors general this year fault oversight weaknesses including failure to limit excessive concentration in commercial real-estate loans. Examiners from the Fed, and Treasury’s Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and Office of Thrift Supervision also failed to issue enforcement orders and hold banks accountable for recommended changes, according to reports posted to agency Web sites.

Of course, the flipside of too little oversight is too much, which hinders growth, limits consumer choices, and breeds inefficiency.

 

A little common sense would be helpful

From American Thinker: Justice for Accused Navy SEALs?:

The SEALs were offered non-judicial punishment for their alleged crimes (called a Captain's Mast in the Navy), but they turned it down in favor of courts-martial. While technically not an admission of guilt, accepting a Captain's Mast is generally tantamount to one. Presiding officers very rarely find the accused sailors innocent, and they often impose effectively career-ending punishment instead.

Even if the SEALs prove their innocence in courts-martial or back the command down into dropping the charges, their careers might be ruined anyway. The problem is the military’s reliance on the justice system to address command problems. If these SEALs did, as accused, punch a captured terrorist and bust his lip in the course of arresting and transporting him, there ought to be a less dramatic way of dealing with the issue than the slippery slide to courts-martial.

Several years ago, in the midst of the Haditha hearings, I proposed in Proceedings Magazine (“Make the Military Justice System Fairer,” November 2007) a “good faith exception” to courts-martial. This would apply in cases where a warrior technically runs afoul of complex rules of engagement, but where there is evidence that the servicemember acted in the honest belief that he or she was properly performing his or her duties. Published guidelines could establish alternative means of discipline and victim compensation short of dragging in the judicial system.

Of course, my recommendations were ignored.

We will have to await a more detailed accounting of the facts in the SEALs’ case to make a truly reasoned judgment regarding their guilt or innocence. But the point is that unless there is a lot more here than initial reports suggest, this is not a matter that should involve the military justice system.

That last point should be obvious to all. The fact that it isn’t obvious to military judicial leadership points to a problem that needs to be solved, post haste.

Branching out with the blogging platforms

I’m spending more and more time at my tumblr.com “tumblelog”. For those who have no idea what that means, tumblr.com is like a combination of social networking and a really easy-to-use blogging platform that easily posts pictures, videos, text, links, and audio.

And frankly I’m starting to love the tumblr platform, because I can’t imagine how it could be any easier.

One thing I especially like about it is the emphasis on images and the visual. People post tons of pictures, and its easy to find them, especially via the hypnotic “popular” feed which streams recent updates past your eyes. If you think I’m exaggerating with the word hypnotic, I encourage you to try it sometime.

Of course, some people push the envelope with some of these pictures, if you get my drift. It is the Internet, after all.

This emphasis on the visual allows me to show an entirely different side of my personality. I like visuals, and have been huge into photography for a long time. I re-blog all kinds of things at my tumblelog that I just don’t bother with on this site, since it’s too much work to save it locally, upload it to the blogging server, and then write something around it.

So I encourage you to check it out. The RSS feed is here.

SEALs court-martialed for captured terrorist scumbag’s bloody lip

This story is so insulting to our armed forces, it almost reads like parody. I can’t even believe it’s true:

FOXNews.com – Navy SEALs Face Assault Charges for Capturing Most-Wanted Terroris

Navy SEALs have secretly captured one of the most wanted terrorists in Iraq — the alleged mastermind of the murder and mutilation of four Blackwater USA security guards in Fallujah in 2004. And three of the SEALs who captured him are now facing criminal charges, sources told FoxNews.com.

The three, all members of the Navy’s elite commando unit, have refused non-judicial punishment — called a captain’s mast — and have requested a trial by court-martial.

Ahmed Hashim Abed, whom the military code-named “Objective Amber,” told investigators he was punched by his captors — and he had the bloody lip to prove it.

He’s probably lying about that, but even if he isn’t, so what?

Really. So freaking what? Is this the new standard now? Terrorist ends up with bloody lip of indeterminate nature, so obviously we must end the careers of the brave SEALs that brought him in? What kind of trade is that?

The obvious criticism is that this is prosecutorial over-reach. But that doesn’t go deep enough.

It’s time to ask some uncomfortable questions.

The first one is, just whose interests does that policy serve?

Not ours, I’m pretty sure. In fact, I’m pretty sure this serves our enemies interests for both propaganda and a clear strategic advantage.

And when a military policy during wartime serves the enemy’s interests, well, that is some pretty bad policy.

Which leads to the second question: just who is responsible for implementing these policies, and what is their background, especially in light of the Ft. Hood murder spree by a major who was also a jihadi. Was that just a one-off? Maybe, but to jump to that conclusion is irresponsible.

Some details about the SEALs charged:

Matthew McCabe, a Special Operations Petty Officer Second Class (SO-2), is facing three charges: dereliction of performance of duty for willfully failing to safeguard a detainee, making a false official statement, and assault.

Petty Officer Jonathan Keefe, SO-2, is facing charges of dereliction of performance of duty and making a false official statement.

Petty Officer Julio Huertas, SO-1, faces those same charges and an additional charge of impediment of an investigation.

Neal Puckett, an attorney representing McCabe, told Fox News the SEALs are being charged for allegedly giving the detainee a “punch in the gut.”

We’ve gone completely off the rails with our cowardly policy of way too much attention to minor discomfort of captured illegal enemy combatants. Simply stated, we’re not going to be able to find SEALs or anybody else to do the heavy lifting, if we unleash ankle-biters on them for doing their damn jobs. Jobs that they love, and that we desperately need them to do.

During the Bush 43 presidency, he decided to capture these scumbags in order to interrogate them and gain useful intel, instead of double-tapping them in the head immediately after capture and leaving their bodies to rot, as per long-standing military tradition. As it turns out, this decision ended up helping the terrorist cause, and has repeatedly set us up to be tried in a court of ridiculous America-bashing opinion.

Rights of any kind are too good for terrorist scumbags. Yet we grant the whole package to them, to the worst that humanity has to offer, as if they were instead American citizens that deserve those protections.

This is insanity. And by granting rights to those who try to kill us, it’s insulting to every American, but most of all, it’s insulting to our troops.

UPDATE: See Jules Crittenden, “Free the Fallujah One!”

“Boston Globe Climate Beclownment Spectacular”

You just know that Global Warming as a political movement is in big, big trouble when you read these reader comments to a Boston Globe “green” story about a supposed threat from a small future sea level increase.

Some really funny stuff here. Which means (94% confidence interval) that this party is just about over.

But really, forget the politics, there is some funny stuff there. Here are just a few:

Yes! I’m getting waterfront property in Beacon Hill!

This would be interesting we didn’t just learn that climate researchers have been engaged in massive fraud.

Wow- then all those overpriced condos really will be “underwater”!!!

Help us, Obama-wan Kenobi, you are our only hope!

My favorite, though, is this:
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That’s why we have boats right? Where is Dennis Quade when you need him?

Did he or didn’t he?

In which I ask, Did Bill Ayers write Obama’s “Dreams From My Father”?

Not only does literary analysis point in that direction, but he claims authorship, as well. But then again, he is a Narcissistic Post-Modern Radical Toolbox. So who can really tell?

Scientific “consensus” is ripe for corruption

There are these inconvenient things called “rigor”,  ”peer review”, and “repeatability” that are all kinda important.

What the Global Warming Emails Reveal – WSJ.com

Yet even a partial review of the emails is highly illuminating. In them, scientists appear to urge each other to present a “unified” view on the theory of man-made climate change while discussing the importance of the “common cause”; to advise each other on how to smooth over data so as not to compromise the favored hypothesis; to discuss ways to keep opposing views out of leading journals; and to give tips on how to “hide the decline” of temperature in certain inconvenient data.

There is much, much more. Read it all.

The big picture here is that much of what we’ve been sold as “science” over the last 15-20 years is in fact “politics” with a “sciency gloss”. And it fooled BILLIONS of people into supporting expensive taxation schemes, in addition to all the other BILLIONS who don’t care if the research supports the conclusions or not.

Awesome.

Can I suggest here that we’d all be better off with a bit more suspicion of “scientists” that are forever claiming we are destroying the planet? Along with governments and other taxing bodies?

The sad truth, friends, is that lots of people view mankind as toxic to the planet, and want to remake the world according to that view.

And they will tell you anything that sounds feasible in order to make that happen.

If this is a hate crime, what is it called when you shoot 50 unarmed people on an Army base?

Our descent into madness continues apace:

Woman accused of hate crime against Muslim – Chicago Breaking News

A woman who allegedly yanked the headscarf of a Muslim woman in a Tinley Park supermarket two days after the Fort Hood shootings has been charged with a hate crime.

Bank teller Valerie Kenney, 54, of the 16500 block of Evergreen Ave., is accused of confronting Amal Abusumayah while she shopped at the Jewel supermarket at Harlem Avenue and 171st Street on Nov. 7, Tinley Park police say.

Abusumayah alleged last week that Kenney made a reference to the Fort Hood shootings while passing her in an aisle of the supermarket.

Minutes later, Abusumayah alleges, Kenney approached her from behind near the cash register and pulled on her headscarf.

I’m sorry, but this is moronic. Charged with a “hate crime” for pulling someone’s headscarf?

Even worse, a FELONY?! She faces up to three years in prison and a fine of up to $25,000.

(voice over PA) George Orwell, pick up the red courtesy phone. George … Orwell … pick up the red courtesy phone.

If two white women got into a little tussle at the grocery store, and one of them pulled off the other one’s scarf, would that qualify for a hate crime? No, silly, that would just be a “chick fight”.

Hate crimes, you see, require class divisions, with a perceived victimizer exploiting a perceived victim .

Hate crimes are about guilt, basically. There is no guilt to repay when it’s just two white women. Who cares, right? But as soon as we get two people from different sides of the perceived victimizer – victim split, bingo! Hate crime!

Americans: you can now be charged with a felony and face 3 years in jail for the horrible crime of pulling a scarf off of someone’s head. Depending on who they are, and the level of perceived grievance they have against us at the time. Could go up and down over time, we don’t really know.

This is a thought crime. We enjoy Constitutionally protected freedom of speech, and to assemble and worship, but we aren’t allowed to have certain types of opinions about people. Got that?

Yeah, I’m sure the Founders would have been OK with that.

Let’s just lay this out there: the law has no business deciding which thoughts are permissible and which thoughts are not. Why this even needs to be mentioned, I do not understand. It goes against every concept that underlies the meaning of being a truly free people.

And besides, hate crime legislation is unnecessary, because beating up on people and killing them and stuff is already against the law.

Pulling on scarves, though, not so much. There’s the only divide that matters. You either assaulted somebody, or you didn’t. You either killed somebody, or you didn’t. You either committed a real crime, or you didn’t.

Instead, we now go down a bad road, a very bad road, when we lose that distinction and focus more on motivation than actions.

And, of course, as with any law, you have to plan for the inevitable overly-aggressive prosecution. Like this one, it seems. So, now an American citizen has to hire lawyers to fight against her own government–that she funds with her tax dollars–because she pulled off a scarf.

Help me out here. That nutjob Hasan who killed 13 people (plus an unborn baby of one of the victims) on Nov. 5 at Ft. Hood, and who for years had praised jihadis and suicide bombers, and made so many people uncomfortable about his jihadi ways that numerous complaints were filed about him, and who was even caught emailing a frigging terrorist fer-crying-out-loud … well, they just couldn’t quite figure out if he was a risk or not!

What were they hoping to find? An Al-Qaeda membership card? Electronic interception of direct orders from Osama bin Laden himself, like “IMPLEMENT OPERATION ‘KILL INFIDELS’ NOW!”? After getting a search warrant, of course.

This is sheer lunacy.

Obvious craziness motivated by real hatred is virtually ignored, while petty rudeness at the grocery store is elevated to a felony.

Sometimes I feel like I’m in a movie, filled with bad dialogue, stupid characters, and a scary plot where the people of a country forget who they are and what made their country great. And then they end up pissing it all away, afraid of their own shadows. I don’t really like that ending much. I’m hoping for a different ending, where people wake the hell up and realize they are under siege. You have to admit you have a problem before you can start to address it.

Maybe there is more to this story, more info that will make it seem less idiotic and dangerous to our Constitutional freedoms. If so I’ll re-evaluate. But as it stands right now, this looks to me like a needless politically-motivated prosecution of an private American citizen by her own government.

If only that same government had felt just as compelled to intervene with the Hasan situation.

AP style

Rich at threedonia.com writes about an AP article and putting the least important piece of the story at the end:

They ran a nineteen paragraph, 703 word story yesterday. When do the writers first mention Hasan’s terrorist connections? In paragraph nineteen (aka: the last paragraph), after 649 words of the story (aka: after 92% of the story has been written), we finally get this:

“The FBI learned late last year of Hasan’s repeated contact with a radical Muslim cleric in Yemen who encouraged Muslims to kill U.S. troops in Iraq. President Barack Obama already has ordered a review of all intelligence related to Hasan and whether the information was properly shared and acted upon within government agencies.”

This then, according to AP’s own stylebook, is the least important part of the Hasan story. Hasan’s terrorist connections (though we note that AP reporters Anne Gearan and Pauline Jelinek scrupulously avoid the use of the “T-word”) are deemed less important than: Army personnel policies, Army mental health services, suicide rates in the Army, the formation of an investigative panel and making the questionable point that Hasan opened fire on “mostly unarmed soldiers and civilians” (emphasis added) – among other things.

Right on, Rich. The AP “style” plus their biases and irresponsibility continues to push people away with a world view that many readers not only detect, but reject absolutely.

In fact, I believe that one major factor in the decline of newspapers is that industry’s near-complete dependence on the AP for non-local news. Life is too short to read anti-American lies and spin every damn day. More and more people have probably said, like I have, “why do I need this in my life?” I started skipping AP stories routinely about 3 years ago.

The WSJ, on the other hand, is doing just fine. They don’t use the AP, as far as I know.

I hear news types whining constantly about the Internet, and how valuable their role in our society is, and on and on. I never hear any of them say “you know, maybe the monolithic biased content was a problem since only 40% of the country sides with us”.

 

Wine packaging, glassware, ratings

A fair amount of b.s. around all that? Sure looks that way.

This article from Gourmet Magazine about wine glasses is pretty interesting reading if you’re convinced that there are physical explanations for wine tasting ‘better’ when consumed in expensive glassware vs. a Flintstones jelly jar: Shattered Myths.

Also, boxed wine vs. bottled: most people can’t seem to tell which is which, from the little bit of reading I’ve done on that.

None of this should surprise us. At least, it doesn’t surprise me at all. Our sense of taste is subjective, and therefore subject to biases. And one of those biases, it appears, is that we expect things to taste better when we believe we are ‘pampered’ with higher-quality utensils and packaging. And there’s really nothing wrong with that, as long as we understand it is actually more about our individual senses and biases than the wine itself.

And just today, this from the Wall Street Journal: A Hint of Hype, A Taste of Illusion, about wine ratings and judges. Apparently, they aren’t all that.

According to a series of studies done by Robert Hodgson, a retired math professor and winemaker, when you point the harsh light of double-blind studies at wine judging, the wheels start to come off. For instance, even when tasting the same wine, individual judges are all over the map, depending on all kinds of uncontrollable factors like when they ate last, the time of day, the other wines in the competition, etc. And wines that win gold medals at one competition get dismissed at others, which seems unlikely if there is a truly objective hierarchy that we can decipher accurately with our individual senses of taste and smell.

Again, unsurprising. I’ve long been openly antagonistic to the whole idea that if Robert Parker rates a wine a 94, then by golly, we’re all going to like it, too! Here’s why. If I don’t like it, I don’t care what the number is on the label. A rating from somebody who is not me is useless. And likewise, if I do like it, I also don’t care what the number is. I already know that I like it, so what other info do I need, exactly? Ratings might be useful in some situations, but they can never be more useful than your own taste buds telling your brain “this tastes good” and “this doesn’t”.

So, my advice is: Drink what tastes good to you, poured from boxes or bottles into jelly glasses or fine glassware, without regard to price or awards or ratings, and ignore everything else. It’s all good. It is wine, after all.

 

Pfc. Michael Pearson, R.I.P.

Michael Pearson, one of the victims in the Ft. Hood massacre, laid to rest:

Sobs could be heard throughout the funeral parlor and in an overflow room where families watched the services on a television monitor. Other televisions flashed childhood pictures of the soldier who was also known for writing poetry and giving impromptu guitar lessons.

“He enjoyed making people happy with music,” said Scott Lorich, Pearson’s former guitar teacher. “He was doing music theory as a hobby. He loved it that much.”

Lorich said Pearson had enrolled in his beginning guitar class at Bolingbrook High School, even though his skills far exceeded the skills of others in the class, including the teacher.

He was just 22 years old. He was murdered in cold blood by a maniac who should have been kicked out of the Army, but was instead protected by cowardice at both the individual and institutional levels.

I have 3 sons, the oldest is 21, the youngest ones are 10 and 8. All three of them play guitar, mostly because I play, and bought them all a guitar of their own.

This hits home for me. Yeah, you could say that.

And Pfc. Pearson was just one of the 13 dead, not to mention the dozens of wounded.

More than 100 motorcycles bearing American flags, led the procession to Abraham Lincoln National Cemetery in nearby Elwood, where Pearson was buried with full military honors under a cloudy sky early Saturday evening. Hundreds gathered by the casket as gun shots were fired in salute and a bugle played “Taps.”

The honor guard fired three volleys. Three spent shell casings were placed inside the folded flag and presented to his mother. Each casing represents duty, honor and country.

May he rest in peace.

And may we re-discover sanity in our culture. Soon.

 

‘Creating jobs’ explained

Creating ‘union government jobs’ isn’t what we had in mind

Maybe this explains why wages for federal employees have risen so fast: for the first time, the majority of union members work for local, state, or federal government.

This is not good. Unions act as clearing houses for political contributions to Democrats, and together they make deals to grow government. Now that most union members are now government workers, this is a huge conflict of interest.

So now we have a perfect storm: unionized government bureaucrats, whose salaries come from our tax dollars, and whose compulsory union dues are funneled (sometimes against their wishes) to Democrats for the purpose of growing a government that is already too big, too expensive, and a drag on the economy.

More, from the above:

Last month when the White House released its visitor log for the first six months of the Obama presidency, one name appeared far more often than any other: Service Employee International Union (SEIU) President Andrew Stern. Stern has every right to expect to be welcome in the Obama White House. He has repeatedly bragged about the fact that under his leadership, the SEIU spent $60.7 million to elect Barack Obama president. And what is Stern buying with his $60.7 million besides White House tours? Ever expanding federal government programs and state government bailouts which are rapidly bankrupting our country.

There was a time when unions protected working people from harsh, inhumane conditions. But do today’s government workers, who mostly sit in cubicles in temperature-controlled offices, need to be unionized? To protect them from what? Lower (and more realistic) wages?

Again, from the above:

Union membership has fallen to 7.3% of private sector workers – the lowest rate since Roosevelt signed the National Labor Relations Act into law. But it is a completely different story in the public sector: 37.6% of government employees belong to unions, up almost a percentage point since last year. Those 7.9 million unionized government employees are 51% of all union members nationwide.

So when we hear Obama continually talking about “creating jobs”, we have to remember: he must mean creating government jobs. Because that’s the only kind his kind of economic policies can create.

Thank you for your service

On this Veteran’s Day, I want to pay tribute to those who serve our nation.

Your tremendous efforts and sacrifices, and those of your families, are hereby noted.

And I instruct my children to respect the military, and to honor those who fight for our country and the greater cause of freedom in the world.

So I offer my most humble, and most sincere, “thank you” to all who serve the United States military, today and in the past. The world is a better place because of it. And I don’t just think about that on Veteran’s Day, I think it every day of every year.

Even Google (!) is showing respect for Veterans today: