As promised. here are the video links to the Miller/Tubbs debate!

CA District 7 Debate - Oct 12, 2010 (Part One)

CA District 7 Debate - Oct 12, 2010 (Part Two)

CA District 7 Debate - Oct 12, 2010 (Part Three)

CA District 7 Debate - Oct 12, 2010 (Part Four)

CA District 7 Debate - Oct 12, 2010 (Part Five)

CA District 7 Debate - Oct 12, 2010 (Part Six)

Arrogance Runs Rampant at CA District 7 Debate!

     On Thursday Oct 14th I attended the California district 7 congressional debate between incumbent George Miller (D-CA) and challenger Rick Tubbs (R-CA).  Overall I think it was a great idea to sit down and exchange ideas about what is happening in our country and how we can fix it.  I was excited to see such a spirited debate, but only for the first 10 minutes or so.  My excitement soon faded when incumbant George Miller began to actually lie to his constituents in the hopes that they are blissfully ignorant of what is really happening in the political landscape.

     Before going into the specifics of the debate, I would like to get the generalities out of the way from the substance that was argued at this debate.  On the war in Afghanistan, Miller supports cutting funds and withdrawling while Tubbs would not cut funds to the troops but does want to find a better method of finishing the war.  On Obamacare, Miller said that he is for it but that we didn't do enough.  He says that we should have had a single payer, universal system.  Tubbs said that he would repeal the current healthcare legislation and work to replace it with common sense solutions that involved private enterprise rather than government.  He also believes that the legislation did nothing to reform healthcare itself (nothing in it brings down the cost of the care itself, the bill only changes the operations of the insurance companies).  On business and creating jobs, Miller believes that the stimulus bill is working and that we should be taxing the rich heavily while giving tax breaks to the middle class.  Tubbs believes that the government needs to step out of the way of business, cut back on the amount of regulation (not all, but the wasteful ones) and let business' prosper.  Both candidates were pro-union, and no social issues came up in the debate.

     Now, back to my main concern!  I was truly disgusted with George Millers ability to look his constituents in the eye and actually lie to them.  Additionally, he must have thought that the American people are stupid, since some of his lies are basic knowledge.

     When speaking about jobs being shipped overseas, Miller truly disgusted me.  He spoke of legislation that is in place that would give a subsidy to business' that ship jobs overseas.  Frankly, I'm not sure I believe such legislation exists simply because it would be political suicide for either party to pass a bill like that, but I will be checking into it.  Congressman Miller then continued to say that they were trying to repeal this bill but the Republicans in congress blocked it.  Mr. Tubbs was far to nice in his response and respectfully told Mr. Miller that the Democrat party has a majority in the House and the Senate.  Personally I wouldn't have been so nice.  My response would have gone something like this:
"Mr. Miller!  Do you think these people are stupid?  Do you think they are ignorant?  I'm truly dissapointed that you would make assumptions like these about your constituents.  These people are smart enough to see through your lies.  I'm sure they all know that you have a 40+ seat majority in the house and a 7 seat majority in the senate.  I'm sure they know that the Republicans could not block anything and that you could have passed or repealed any legislation you wanted in these past two years.  And furthermore, I'm sure they know that they do not want to see a liar representing them in Washington."

     Another area of contention I have with Congressman Miller was a comment he made during one of the questions about Mr. Tubbs' time in the military balancing budgets.  In the midst of a question about fiscal responsibility Mr. Miller decided to take a stab at Mr. Tubbs and said, "I'd hope you can balance a military budget.  God knows how much money we throw at it."  Now, what I don't get is that Mr. Tubbs stayed on topic during his response and did not address that attack.  Once again I would of handled it differently and it would have went something like this:
"Sure it's a large budget Mr. Miller.  Defending this country is our first priority and I would expect military spending to be somewhat significant, but the fact of the matter is that I was able to balance my budget even though God knows how much money is thrown at it.  Now Congressman Miller, your budget has infinetely more money thrown at it than mine.  When do you plan on balancing your budget?"

     Overall Congressman Miller was being dishonest and deceptive, but Mr. Tubbs was far to nice in his responses.  These lies need to be called out, and in a way that gives him no response for his lack of integrity.  I hope to see more of this on Tuesday when I attend Congressman Miller's town hall at Contra Costa College.  I plan on asking him why he thinks it was a wise decision to end a session of Congress without addressing the Bush tax cut extensions, when business' don't even know what their tax liability is going to be 90 days from now.  I wonder how he will try to spin that.

    Additionally, I would like to thank you for taking the time to read this, and obviously this is just my opinion on how the debate went, but to be objective, I will post the full video of the debate as soon as it becomes available.

Do Your Job or Resign!

     Today Congressman Daryl Issa (R-CA) has called for democrats in the house to "do their job or resign."  He is referring to the issue of extending the Bush tax cuts.  Apparently the House of Representatives intends to postpone legislation that would determine tax rates for the year 2011 until after the election on November 2nd. 
     The big argument has been whether to offer these tax cut extensions to everyone or just to those who earn less than $250,000 per year.  All republicans in the house stand united on this issue and believe that the tax cuts should be extended to everyone, while the democrats in the house are split between the two groups.  Unfortunately, once again, we are offered no certainty in regards to our future tax liabilities for the most disgusting of reasons - it's an election year.
     While I believe Congressman Issa is being a bit blunt in asking people to do their job or resign, I completely agree with the ideology behind it.  Letting the Bush tax cuts expire will effect everyone in the country in one way or another, and we can not afford to be raising any taxes in the midst of the biggest recession since the great depression.  Additionally, in light of the election, I think that we deserve to know where our Congress men and women stand on this issue BEFORE the election.  It demonstrates significant cowardice that they would not want to take up a vote.

PS.  I'm currently reading The Pledge to America, and I will write on it within the next few days, so be sure to check back.

Labor Unions: Our Rescue or Destruction?

            Unions have a long and storied history in the United States.  They have been around almost since the founding of our country, but have gained most of their political power over the last century.  The effects of unionization have a profound impact on our economic well-being, including our standard of living, relative wages and unemployment rates.  Unions are one of the reasons for our current recession and I believe that they will continue to hinder our recovery efforts in the years ahead.

            Our macroeconomic situation in the United States is extremely complex, so it is difficult, if not impossible, to define exactly how labor unions affect it.  Economists’ opinions on this topic vary wildly whether they originate from the political right or left, and entire books have been written about this topic.  Therefore, it is important to note that unions are not the direct cause of our current recession.  They only play one of many roles in our recent economic downturn.

            To examine this topic we will have to take a look at the purpose of unions and their history in the United States.  Once we have a general idea of how unions came to hold so much power we can look at the economic effects of collective bargaining.

            Unions have been around for a long time, dating back to the founding of our country.  In the early years of the U.S., unions were small, industry driven organizations.  There may have been trade unions for agricultural workers, carpenters or farmers, but these organizations were largely informal, community oriented and industry specific.  These early unions in the U.S. had two purposes: “The first was to pursue a policy of restrictionism; that is, to control the supply of labor.  The second was to work toward the establishment of minimum wage and working standards for the entire work force” (Miernyk 65).

 In the 1800’s these unions slowly grew to be a bit larger, but it was two major events in the 1900’s that brought unions into power and gave them so much political influence.  The first event took place in 1933 and opened the floodgates for the growth of union membership.  Our country was in the midst of the Great Depression and desperate for economic recovery.  It was out of this desperation that the “New Deal” Congress passed the National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933.

“There was one provision of the NIRA which was to play an important part in subsequent legislation for the encouragement of union growth.  This was the

famous Section 7 (a) which required ‘that employees shall have the right to organize and bargain collectively through representatives of their own choosing, and shall be free from the interference, restraint, or coercion of employers of

labor, or their agents.’  The law went on to specify that no worker or no one seeking employment would be required as a condition of employment to join a company union” (Miernyk 103).

Two years later the National Industrial Recovery Act was ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, but by that time union membership had already grown by almost one-third, giving unions the first big boost in their rise to political power.

            The second factor that brought unions into the forefront of the political spectrum was the merger of the AFL and CIO on February 9^th, 1955.  Prior to the merger these two organizations served as a sort of parent company to a large group of trade unions.  This marked a time that produced one of the highest numbers of union employees in United States history.  “At the point of merger, the combined membership of the AFL and CIO was less than 15,000,000 of the country’s 62 million workers” (Ginger 668).  While this number may be downplayed in the text of this quotation it is important to understand that almost twenty-five percent of the nations labor force was being employed under union contracts.  And with power in numbers the newly merged AFL-CIO became a political force that is still largely influential to this day.

            While this mass unionization may seem beneficial to the ordinary American worker, just like any public policy, it has unintended economic consequences.  One of its biggest and most harmful effects is the outsourcing of American jobs to foreign countries.  A study conducted in 2004 says,

“In 2001 we found significant differences in the union status of companies shifting production from the U.S. to China, only 14 percent of which were unionized, and those shifting production to Mexico, 26 percent of which were unionized.  In contrast, three years later, with private-sector union density now as low as 8 percent, we find that 29 percent of production shifts out of the U.S. are in unionized facilities, including 44 percent of firms moving jobs from the U.S to Mexico and 29 percent of firms moving jobs to China” (Wagner 79).

It is abundantly clear that above market labor costs decrease an entrepreneur’s incentive or even ability to produce a good or service in America, so to stay in business it is reasonable to think that the business owner may relocate his operations in search of lower cost labor.  

            Another point of contention that most critics have with labor unions are their excessive pension funds.  Most companies have some sort of retirement account for their employees, whether it be an IRA, a 401K, or otherwise, but unlike the unions, their retirement accounts are privately funded by their employees.  Unions, on the other hand, set aside a pension that their employees are entitled to collect on after a certain number of years, and the numbers are absolutely staggering.  “America’s labor leaders manage a huge sum: over $350 billion in pension funds.  Unfortunately, though, this sum is not nearly enough.  Obligations exceed assets by at least $150 billion” (Wagner 46).  And since most of the country’s current union members are government employees, it is not unreasonable to think that our tax dollars will end up bailing out these union pensions, especially in the light of the recent bank bailouts.  The pensions offered by labor unions are grossly negligent in the area of fiscal responsibility and, “One of the saddest facts about the American labor movement is that the putative beneficiaries of union-run plans have been historically less likely to get a pension than workers who are beneficiaries of company-run plans” (Wagner 47).

            Additionally, unions that push wages beyond the current market rate are a direct cause of unemployment.  And while the political left has been a big supporter of unions over the decades it is ironic that this concept comes from President Barak Obama’s senior economic adviser Larry Summers.  In The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics he writes, “Another cause of long-term unemployment is unionization.  High union wages that exceed the competitive market rate are likely to cause job losses in the unionized sector of the economy.  Also, those who lose high-wage union jobs are often reluctant to accept alternative low-wage employment (Pethokoukis).

            We can see all of these factors at work in our current recession.  You do not have to look any further than General Motors to see what collective bargaining can do to a company.  At about this time last year General Motors went belly up in the largest bankruptcy filing to ever be recorded in the United States.  While union supporters may argue otherwise, I believe that labor unions were the direct cause of General Motor’s bankruptcy.  General Motors was paying wages well above the competitive market rate and managing a large amount of pension obligations to its retirees.  They spent months trying to renegotiate union contracts as they continued to lay off workers in their factories, and in the end they could not reach an agreement with the unions and thus had to file bankruptcy only to be bailed out by the United States and Canadian governments.  It is this, among other examples, that clearly show, “American trade unions have been too successful in winning wage increases for their members.  Employers have therefore had a greater incentive to oppose unions” (Workers).

            It is all this that only reinforces my opinion that labor unions should not have a place in the private market.  They have gained too much power, harnessed too much influence, and put too high of a price floor on wages to help the American economy succeed.  For decades the American government has regulated business operations through legislation and I think it is well time to regulate unions in the same manner.  The market is supposed to set the wage rate, and saving for retirement is supposed to be a matter of personal responsibility.  Unions have been far too intrusive, and while they are not the sole cause of the recession, we could stand to do a lot better without them.

Works Cited

Ginger, F. Ann and David Christiano, ed. The Cold War Against Labor. 3^rd ed. Vol 2.  Berkeley:

            Meiklejohn Civil Liberties Institute, 1987.  Print.

Miernyk, William H.  The Economics of Labor and Collective Bargaining.  San Francisco: D.C.

            Heath & Company, 1965.  Print.

Petholoukis, James.  “Obama Adviser Summers: Unions Cause Unemployment.”  U.S. News &

            World Report Online.  31 Jan. 2009.  Expanded Academic ASAP.  Web. 18 Mar. 2010.

Wagner, Viqi, ed.  Labor Unions: Opposing Viewpoints.  San Francisco: The Gale Group, 2008.

            Print.

“Workers of the World Disunite.”  The Economist [US] 18 Aug. 1990: 57.  Expanded Academic

            ASAP.  Web. 18 Mar. 2010.