Well, There’s Unions, And Then There’s Unions
Posted by Joshua Sharf in Budget, Colorado Politics, PPC on January 5th, 2011
When John Hickenlooper was running for Governor, he touted his business experience, and sold himself as a socially-liberal, fiscally-conservative, pro-business candidate. If true, even in an environment favorable to Republicans, with a viable candidate, that package is an appealing one. Unfortunately, as many of us predicted, it’s not true.
Governor-Elect Hickenlooper’s choice of political-labor activist Ellen Golombek to head the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment is the latest example. It’s not merely that Ms. Golombek runs the labor arm of the Colorado Democracy Alliance, the so-called Progressives’ political machine. It’s that she has a long history with the SEIU, the most political of labor unions, and one closely associated with public employees unions. By doing so, Hicklenlooper has put himself on the wrong side of the public on one of the central issues of state governance facing us today.
Remember that Gov. Ritter essentially unionized state workers, who started getting AFSCME cards in the mail, whether or not they had requested them. There was little interest on the part of state workers in actually joining AFSCME, though. I think we can count on Golombek using her position to actively promote union membership among state employees. While Colorado WINS apparently stopped tweeting and posting to its website, that may have been in preparation for exactly such an appointment.
It’s those unions, and their ability, through the electoral process (and in Colorado, through ballot measures), to help write their work rules and select the people they negotiate with, who are largely responsible for the impending fiscal crises in California, New York, and Illinois, with other states soon to follow. Estimates are that across the country, public pensions are $3,000,000,000,000 in the hole, and the same unions that negotiated these sweetheart deals are now crying foul when anyone tries to rein them in. Of course, what’s unfair is not attempts to treat the public fisc responsibly, but the fact that many of us will never be able to retire because of the taxes collected to pay for the 2nd-half-of-life scholarships for bureaucrats who put in 25 years, largely telling us how to run our homes and businesses.
The presence of large pots of government-controlled money has its dangers, as well. Subject to politicization, as in the California pension plan, the management of these portfolios can start investing more in the interests of their political patrons than in the interest of the beneficiaries and taxpayers.
Public pensions are, of course, only one manifestation of the problem of public unions. Work slowdowns, like the one that likely took place during the recent New York snowstorm, are effective because of work rules the unions have negotiated making it virtually impossible to fire anyone for incompetence or performance. This avoids the PATCO response, where the air traffic controllers struck in open defiance of the law. The moral indignation of New Jersey teachers when asked to contribute even small amounts to their own health insurance or retirement also shows the sense of entitlement that the culture of public unions engenders.
Fortunately, people are starting to notice, even unions.
William McGurn notes this in a Wall Street Journal op-ed:
These days the two types of worker inhabit two very different worlds. In the private sector, union workers increasingly pay for more of their own health care, and they have defined contribution pension plans such as 401(k)s. In this they have something fundamental in common even with the fat cats on Wall Street: Both need their companies to succeed.
By contrast, government unions use their political clout to elect those who set their pay: the politicians. In exchange, these unions are rewarded with contracts whose pension and health-care provisions now threaten many municipalities and states with bankruptcy. In response to the crisis, government unions demand more and higher taxes. Which of course makes people who have money less inclined to look to those states to make the investments that create jobs for, say, iron workers, electricians and construction workers.
Private sector unions have been most effective when they have confined themselves to collective bargaining for wages, hours, and working conditions. Public sector unions, almost by definition, see their role as part of a larger, leftist political program that is ultimately at odds with the healthy economy that private workers need. Given that private unions have, for the most part, shriveled into irrelevance, the alliance with public sector unions seems to benefit private unions mostly through laws allowing them to strongarm workers into unionize against the wishes of the majority. The 2010 election results will, however, put most of those legislative efforts on hold, possibly forcing the private sector unions to re-examine the value of this alliance.
Make no mistake. Private-sector unions will continue to work to elect Democrats, and will continue to put boots on the ground in urban and suburban elections to make sure that happens. But on specific issues, particularly public-sector pensions and benefits, it’s possible that governing Republicans can make allies of them in their efforts to rein in spending, and that private sector unions can put pressure on Democrats to go along, forcing officeholders to choose between factions in their coalition.
The King’s Speech
Posted by Joshua Sharf in Movies, PPC on January 2nd, 2011
This is a movie about courage. OK, it’s also a movie about love, friendship, responsibility, and heroism. But first and foremost, it’s about courage.
We all know the story about how Edward VIII abdicated the throne for American Wallis Simpson, in favor of his brother (Colin Firth) who would become George VI. It was a good trade for Britain. Nazi sympathizer Edward would rootlessly and pointlessly travel the world as the Duke of Windsor, while George would go on to hold the Empire together during WWII, if not afterwards.
What people don’t remember, although it was painfully obvious to those who heard him speak, was that George was a stammerer. A major handicap for a prince whose main function was to speak at public events. A serious morale-killer for a nation who would look to him to boost spirits and to, as George puts it, “speak for them.”
Elizabeth (Helena Bonham Carter), the current Elizabeth II’s mother, would seek out the help of one Lionel Logue (Geoffrey Rush), a speech therapist with experience helping shell-shocked WWI veterans overcome their own stammers. His methods involved a sympathetic ear and friendship with his patients as much as physical training, and some of the films funniest moments come from the comedy of manners that results from a friendship between royalty and commoner.
George, never meant to be king, never trained to be king, and plagued by private self-doubt about his ability to carry out his duties, watches in horror as events move him closer to the crown, and to a position whose one duty he seems incapable of fulfilling, in an hour when much rests on that one responsibility. The courage that he shows in facing it down stands in stark contrast to Edward’s abdication of it, long before his formal abdication.
The performances are stellar, all the moreso since they have to overcome what we do know of the current set of royals, and present us their parents and grandparents. For those of us who only know the Queen Mother as the short, plump presence next to the Queen in the Royal Box, Carter shows us an early middle-aged woman, still young enough to be vivacious, but with some of the steel that she would show later on. Ironic then, that after we know what she thought of Edward, we see her with her children, Elizabeth and Margaret, not knowing that for her family, the worst is yet to come, and that she’ll live to see it.
None of us will every have George’s responsibility, but Firth’s portrayal allows us to identify with the head of the British Empire in his struggle to connect with people like ourselves. Yet it’s in no small measure Logue’s insistence on friendship rather than submission, that allows us to see the Prince, and then the King, as a human being rather than a human flag. Rush brings a dignity and a humanity to the role of an everyman who knows his place, but refuses to be intimidated by royalty.
As historical pictures do, the film plays fast and loose with some of the surrounding facts. In the movie, Elizabeth approaches Logue in the 30s; in fact, most of Logue’s work would be done by the time George took the throne. While it explains the C.V.O., it leaves us with the impression that it’s a knighthood – in reference to some by-play earlier in the film – when in fact, CVO is short for “Commander of the Victorian Order,” where only recipients of the two higher ranks, Knight’s Cross and Grand Cross, are knights. There’s a scene where a BBC official, having only just met the King, shakes hands with him, which I believe would be most unlikely.
But these are quibbles. Logue was there with George, alone, as he makes his crucial September 3, 1939 speech upon Britain’s entering the war, and was there with him for his subsequent speeches, as well. Listen to the record of the actual speech, and you’ll hear it in a wholly different way.
In an era when a president speaks over the people in service of his ambition, it’s important to remember a time when a king spoke to his people in service to his country.
The Theodosian Walls Return
Posted by Joshua Sharf in General on January 2nd, 2011
Greece, tired of being Muslim Asia’s illegal gateway to Europe, has decided to build a border fence with Turkey. It’s not a long border, but it will significantly raise the cost of sneaking into Greece from Asia. Greece already has trouble dealing with the 300,000 illegals there, and has asked the new European border patrol to help supplement their own attempts to control the border.
Greece claims that the fence will be modeled on the US fence with Mexico. Skeptics will wonder if that means that it will be budgeted for, but not built. More likely, it will resemble the fence in another way – forcing those sneaking across to be more creative. Take a look at the Aegean Sea, and you’ll see lots of islands. Islands that Turkey, for the most part, owns. Even today, this has to be a smuggler’s paradise. I haven’t seen any reaction from Bulgaria, but unless they’re willing to follow suit, I suspect that many Asians will start turning north, rather than west, when they cross the Straits.
Some will argue that this makes the whole exercise fruitless, but these are largely people who look at the world as a football game that, like Donovan McNabb, they believe can’t end in a tie. When you’re faced with opposition, one of the most important things you can do is to complicate their planning and raise the cost of their operations. It reduces their chances of success, forces them to take risks that might betray them, and in general, makes enforcement elsewhere easier.
I’m sure there are some that will say that this will just drive a wedge between Turkey and Europe, forcing Turkey to turn east. But the current Turkish government seems to have already made that decision, and with their prosecution of some 200 military officers, also seems to be consolidating its grip on the country, showing that they are no longer afraid of the military’s intervention in civilian affairs. The proposed fence and increased border controls are more of a response to this situation than a catalyst.
Raider Nation
Posted by Joshua Sharf in Football, Sports on January 2nd, 2011
Let me be clear: I hate the Raiders. I have hated the Raiders ever since I was a small child, rooting for the Redskins who had, at the time, no discernible rivalry with the Raiders. I couldn’t stand the Cowboys, but if ever faced with my personal football Armageddon, I would have rooted for them to beat the Raiders in any Super Bowl.
Yes, my AFC team was the Broncos (making the 1989 Super Bowl a bonanza), but then, I had relatively good feelings about pretty much every AFC West team. They were fun, free-wheeling old AFL teams. I knew of the Chiefs from the trickeration they used in Super Bowl IV. The Chargers had those cool, powder-blues, played in the sun, and were sunny, Southern California. The Broncos, of course, were the Wild West personified.
Except the Raiders. I needn’t rehearse here the moral failings of the franchise or their owner. They wore black, embraced their own evil, and who was I to argue?
So why am I rooting for them to win today?
Because, at little-to-no-cost to the Chiefs, the Raiders can make history by winning every division game and failing to make the playoffs. They have taken care of the most basic of business – dominating their division – and even that will have bought them nothing. Outside the division, they have beaten only the woeful Rams and the Seahawks, which was probably just for old times’ sake.
Football, with all its mythical story lines, rarely provides this sort of poetic opportunity.
I will root for the Raiders to win, so that the failure of their season will be all the more exquisitely perfect.
Breaking New Ground
Posted by Joshua Sharf in PPC, Property Rights, Regulation on December 31st, 2010
When Kenneth Feinberg was appointed to politicize oversee the BP restitution process, many of us were worried that even under the best of circumstances, the government was forfeiting confidence in the process to gain some expediency. Now, it turns out that Feinberg was worried, too:
Remind Me Again, Who Paid For This House?
Posted by Joshua Sharf in Colorado Politics, PPC, Property Rights on December 31st, 2010
The Denver Post reported earlier this week that someone who bought a house – and the land it sits on – managed to retain the right to demolish it and build a new house. Gary Yourtz bought a nice, mid-century modern house at 825 S. Adams St. for $1.1 million, planning to raze the place and build a house he wanted to live in. Using a law designed for historic preservation, neighbors filed an application for landmark designation on his home 15 minutes before the deadline. Now, Yourtz’s lawyers are $18,000 richer, but he has the right to do what he wants with his property.
Of the two complainants, one, Susan Livingston, lives in Belcaro, the neighborhood where the house is. The other, Mitch Cowley, doesn’t even live in Denver County, yet asserts a property right over a house he likes to look at. By his logic, I have at least some right to go around dynamiting the vast majority of Denver’s public “art.” (Actually, come to think of it, some sort of citizen petition process on these eyesores wouldn’t be a bad idea.) Denver has hundreds, perhaps thousands of these houses, and I’m sure if Mr. Cowley is driving miles and miles out of his way to see this one, there are others he can learn to love.
There’s a principle in historical research that thing used are not preserved, while those preserved are not used. There’s no reason to believe that what holds for households shouldn’t also hold for houses. Eventually, these preserved buildings will appeal to a narrower and narrower slice of owner, until they turn into museums. Again, I have no problem with preserving some of these buildings. I’m not a big fan of HOAs, but if Belcaro homeowners want to get together and sign off on never changing their homes, they can do so. It’s their own rights they’re signing away, and anyone buying the house can do so knowing the rules.
Ghosts of Constitutional Debates Past – Part II
Posted by Joshua Sharf in Constitution, History, PPC on December 27th, 2010
In Ghosts of Constitutional Debates Past, I looked at some of the things that Centinel, aka Samuel Bryan, objected to in the Constitution, and how some of his projections about how power might migrate away from the original plan seemed to parallel the claims that the Progressives have made stick in order to distort the Framers’ initial plan. The next few letters in the Library of America’s compilation of the debate likewise are from the anti-Constitutional party. And they point out some of the things that they got very wrong.
One of Centinel’s worries was that the Constitution would create a permanent aristocracy. But his concerns center not on the executive, but on the Senate. Interestingly, Centinel’s analysis virtually places the Senate not in the legislative branch, but in the executive branch, since it has a role in approving treaties and confirming appointments. The Vice President, of course part of the executive branch, is President of the Senate. With a weak executive, Bryan is more concerned that we’ll see a hegemony of the Senate than of the Presidency. He’s correct that Montesquieu prescribed a strict separation of the executive and legislative powers as a precondition of liberty. But it’s the Presidency, with the help of a Congress that has delegated legislative power to the executive, and the complicity of favorable Supreme Court rulings, that has gotten there, not the Senate.
One of the recurring themes also was the preservation (or the alleged lack thereof) of the juries in civil cases. Now, eventually this was rectified in the 7th Amendment (thank you, George Mason), but what’s interesting here is the rhetoric. The anti-Constitutionalists assume that this was a deliberate act by the Convention, in order to help the higher courts usurp the lower courts, and to weaken liberties. In fact, this point was debated in the Convention, in the context of a Bill of Rights. But the reason that some opposed including it in the Constitution was that the laws varied from state to state, and that detailing which cases were appropriate for juries would be difficult. (There are some civil cases that traditionally did come before judges rather than juries; in such cases “equity” law was said to apply. I’m nowhere near an expert on what made a case an “equity” case as opposed to a jury case, and apparently the Conventioneers were similarly daunted by setting forth rules for the distinction.)
So, while Bryan and his cohort did get certain concerns correct, they missed others by a wide mark: it wasn’t the Senate that was the threat, and the fact that the Convention missed some elements didn’t imply a grand conspiracy to deprive people of their liberty.
UPDATE: After further reflection, the importance of juries in civil suits, which are by definition property rather than criminal cases, reinforces the fact that property rights were seen (and ought to be seen) as identical with political rights.
I’d also point out that Centinel’s concern that the federal courts would inevitably trump the state courts in civil cases has also not borne out. One instance is liability law, where the worse abuses have occurred in state courts (take asbestos, for instance), and the federal courts have been powerless to stop them. The situation has only gotten better with the revisions of state law to make them more sensible.
True Grit
Posted by Joshua Sharf in Movies on December 26th, 2010
Definitely not your father’s True Grit.
I hadn’t even seen the John Wayne original from 1969 until TCM showed it on Wednesday evening. (Like most people, I still haven’t read the original Charles Portis book on which both movies are based.) But seeing the two in such proximity has some advantages and disadvantages. Unlike many, I don’t have old memories of the original to fall back on, only a recent side-by-side comparison. Given the film-making of the time, the attitudes, the position that The Duke held in the national pantheon, the original can only suffer by comparison.
Much has been made of the fact that John Wayne’s only Oscar was for his portrayal of Rooster Cogburn, but Cogburn comes across to me as much less complex a character than, say, Tom Doniphin in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. By the time of True Grit, Wayne’s career was already near the end of his career, and the Oscar has the feel of a career award. Despite himself, Wayne is less cantankerous and curmudgeonly, and more avuncular.
There’s none of that with Jeff Bridges. Bridges is a tough, ornery, all-business (when he’s not drinking) Cogburn. When Wayne says he robbed a high-interest bank in New Mexico, we forgive him because he’s The Duke. When Bridges says it, we forgive him because he a tough SOB who’s proven his worth.
In the confrontation between Cogburn and the Texas Ranger LeBeouf (Glen Campbell in the original; Matt Damon in the remake), Wayne by far gets the better of it. In the remake, Damon’s LeBouef is verbose, but not the borderline-clownish that Campbell’s was; the tension between LeBeouf and Cogburn is much more evenly matched, much more serious, the anger much closer to the surface.
Hallie Steinfeld also plays a more serious, more persuasive Mattie Ross than Kim Darby. Just as tough, but called on the manage both Cogburn and the Cogburn-LeBeouf relationship in a way she doesn’t in the first movie.
On the whole, a grittier Grit, closer to the bone, and closer to the novel.
UPDATE: Lori Horn reminds me that the scenery in the original is breathtaking. True enough, given that the scenes in the “Indian Territory” were mostly shot in southwest Colorado, in the San Juan Mountains.
Ghosts of Constitutional Debates Past
Posted by Joshua Sharf in Constitution, General, History, PPC on December 23rd, 2010
I’ve been working my way (slowly) through the Library of America’s Debate on the Constitution, a two-volume set. While the Federalist is a – the – American political philosophy, it represents the thoughts of only three authors, and can’t possibly answer all of the concerns that people had about the Constitution at the time. The entire debate is a much more complete document, all the more valuable because it preserves the dissenting opinions. We do that in judicial cases because the reasoning itself may be important to future decisors. It puts the defenses in context, perhaps anticipates future arguments.
One of the first arguments against the Constitution comes in a letter from “Centinel” (they had plenty of variant spellings back then), one Samuel Bryan, in a letter to the Independent Gazetteer, dated October 5, 1787, less than a month after the Convention adjourned. While we consider the Constitution to be brilliant applied political philosophy designed to protect our God-given natural rights, the opponents were often concerned that it would prove to be a path to despotism, that is, that the Constitution itself contained the means to undermine liberty. Since the Independent Gazetteer didn’t survive long enough to sign a deal with Righthaven, I’ll quote at length.
He is skeptical of John Adams’s claim that a balance of powers at the federal level is even achievable:
This hypothesis supposes human wisdom competent to the task of instituting three co-equal orders in government, and a corresponding weight in the community to enable them respectively to exercise their several parts, and whose views and interests should be so distinct as to prevent a coalition of any two of them for the destruction of the third.
One could reasonably argue that the executive, with the collaboration of the Court and the capitulation of the Congress, has been progressively acquiring legislative powers.
Bryan anticipates the misreading of the Progressives of Article I Section 8:
“the Congress are to have the power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense, and general welfare of the United States; but all duties, imposts and excises, shall be uniform throughout the United States.” Now what can be more comprehensive than these words; … to grant… the absolute controul over the commerce of the United States….The Congress may construe every purpose for which the state legislatures now lay taxes, to be for the general welfare, and thereby seize upon every object of revenue.
He’s focusing on taxes, but the abuse of the general welfare clause is indisputable, and he anticipates the erasure of the proper reading of the Commerce Clause.
Bryan also predicts the hegemony of the courts, in particular, the hegemony of the federal courts over state courts, and of the erosion of state power at the hands of the federal government in general.
…it is more probable that the state judicatories would be wholly superceded; for in contests about jurisdiction, the federal court, as the most powerful, would every prevail.
To put the omnipotency of Congress over the state government and the judicatories out of all doubt, the 6th article ordains that, “this Constitution and the laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof, and all treaties made, or which shall be made under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land…”
By these section, the all-prevailing power of taxation, and such extensive legislative and judicial powers are vested in the general government, as must in their operation, necessarily absorb the state legislatures and judicatories, and that such was in the contemplation of the framers of it…
Now to be fair, in order to reach these conclusions, he has to ignore other sections of the Constitution, distort the Framers’ clear intent, and claim that later rebuttals are in bad faith. Congress is explicitly limited in the types of taxes it may levy. The Commerce Clause is not as expansive as he reads it. The General Welfare Clause is not blanket permission to enact any sort of law Congress wants to. Some of them would later be explicitly rectified by the Bill of Rights. Others would indeed be exploited by judges looking to change the system. But for him, these failings he claims to have discovered are a bug; for the Progressives, they’re a feature.
While we consider Madison, Hamilton, and Jay to be the heroes of the piece, that Centinel predicted so many of the distortions later introduced by the Progressives lends his arguments relevance.
More Lefty Back to the Future
Posted by Joshua Sharf in Budget, Colorado Politics, Denver, PPC, Transportation on December 22nd, 2010
Of all the ideas for public transportation, one of the nuttiest to take hold in recent years is to revive streetcars. They have all the disadvantages of light rail, on a small scale. These include inflexibility and large capital costs. They carry a few more people than buses, but no faster, and are more expensive to build and maintain. They offer virtually unlimited opportunities for graft in the form of routing and station location. They offer the additional benefit of being anti-car while not replacing enough bus service to reduce traffic. In short, they’re a bureaucrat’s dream, a union’s gravy train, a taxpayer’s nightmare, and a commuter’s inconvenience. No wonder the Left loves them. (See the numbers here, pages 19 & 20.)
The Federal government has awarded Denver $2 million to continue to study such a boondoggle from the State Capitol out to the Fitzsimmons campus. Of course, for the Feds this is chump change, seeing as they’ve already funded over $300 million of your money for other cities to build these things (p. 48 & 51). That same presentation has several different proposals for lines east of Civic Center, costing between $100 million and $175 million.
For that, we won’t replace buses, but will allow politicians and political appointees to collect their share in graft. We won’t make traffic and better, and will likely make it worse. When neighborhoods change, we’ll have to lay more track instead of just re-routing bus lines. All in all, the $2,000,000 alone would pave a lot of roads, but the $175,000,000 of the largest project would pave a lot more, and repair a fair number of bridges as well.
If after all that, for some reason, you’re still nostalgic for streetcars, you shouldn’t go away empty-handed:
-
You are currently browsing the archives.
