Here is the latest episode of Uncommon Knowledge featuring Richard Epstein and John Taylor. Epstein and Taylor are both economists that examine the absurdity of the statement "We are all Keynesians now".
One year ago this past Saturday President Obama signed an executive order that reshapes the bidding process for federal construction projects in a manner that is heavily weighted in favor of unionized companies.
This was done as a sop to labor bosses who have thus far failed to win passage of The Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), despite large Democratic majorities in both congressional chambers. Free market groups have vigorously opposed the card check and binding arbitration components of the bill, which they argue would further burden business in a challenging economic climate.
The executive order signed on Feb. 6, 2009 calls for project labor agreements (PLAs) to be used when the cost to the federal government exceeds $25 million. PLA’s are set up as multi-employer, multi-union, pre-existing agreements designed to harmonize labor relations between construction trade unions and contractors.
Nationwide about 16 percent of the nation’s private construction workforce is unionized. This means PLAs could be used to discriminate against the more than eight of out of 10 construction workers who are not part of a union, as some critics have observed.
The mainstream media continue to ignore President Obama’s appointment of bizarre personnel to run the government. Personnel is policy. That being the case the American people need to know about these appointments. This week we look another Obama appointee. This is not an isolated incident or an occasional bad apple. This appointment is representative of the appointments he is making with little or no push back from the Senate during the confirmation process.
Mary L. Smith, Assistant Attorney General for the Tax Division, U.S. Department of Justice
Smith doesn’t have relevant tax law experience.
Smith hasn’t worked on any cases either with or before the Internal Revenue Service.
Smith hasn’t even taken one continuing legal education classes on tax law issues.
Smith’s nomination is pending before the full Senate.
Next week we will examine one more. Those who are interested in exclusive information before it reaches the public, please contact
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Last week, Moody’s issued a very public warning against the profligate spending of the federal government just a day after the Obama Administration released its ten-year budget plan that will add some $10.634 trillion to the national debt by 2020. According to the warning, "If the current upward trend in government debt were to continue and become irreversible, the [nation's Triple-A debt] rating could come under downward pressure."
Clearly uncomforted by Secretary Geithner’s dismissal of the problem, the Washington Examiner’s Mark Tapscott compared Geithner to the last emperor of Rome swearing up and down that Rome would never fall. The comparison is fitting. After all, the U.S. is not immune to the laws of gravity. This nation can be bankrupted, it can fail, and it is foolish to proclaim that it cannot.
Never say never, Mr. Secretary.
This year alone, the White House’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) projects that Congress will add some $1.556 trillion to the national debt, which today totals $12.4 trillion. By the end of Fiscal Year 2011, the national debt will probably surpass 100 percent of the Gross Domestic Product, reaching an all-time high of $15.144 trillion.
Suppose you were trudging through (or, worse yet, shoveling out of) two-to-three feet of a record-setting snowfall (for the second time in ten weeks), and some idiot told you that it never snowed anymore in your neck of the woods – and worse yet, he knew the real reason: global warming.
Well, if you live in the Washington, D.C., area, you’re the guy (or gal) knee-deep in white stuff. And that idiot is Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. That’s right, the snot-nose, spoiled-brat little know-it-all spawn of Bobby and Ethel who spent his childhood cascading down the snow-covered slopes of Hickory Hill -- so the nanny or butler could pull his sleigh back up the snow-covered crest, with him perched imperiously upon it, no doubt.
The election of a president of mixed race was supposed to mark an end to discrimination in America. Instead it has ushered in a new era of blatant discrimination.
The very first piece of legislation enacted by the Obama administration was supposed to create or save 4 million jobs and prevent unemployment from going above 8% if enacted. Instead, the Stimulus Bill provided funding for existing government programs and many state programs for two years.
The real intent of this bill was to prevent the loss of unionized public sector jobs that make up 50% of all union workers and virtually all of SEIU’s workers. Even the 10% of the bill that was supposed to repair roads and bridges contained provisions to limit the jobs to only union workers.
Consequently, the unemployment rate has risen above 10%, despite the passage of the 787 billion Stimulus Bill.
The next action taken by the Obama administration was the government bailout of General Motors and Chrysler. This bailout violated bankruptcy laws which provide secured creditors with the first right to the company’s assets. Instead the secured creditors got 29% of their investment while the United Auto Workers (UAW) got 78% of their investment and partial ownership of the company.
Rarely do candidates for public office weigh in on these types of nominations, but Jane Norton, a candidate for U.S. Senate in Colorado, released a press statement earlier today on the nomination of Craig Becker for the National Labor Relations Board.
"Senator Michael Bennet has been in office for more than a year now, and not once has he told Colorado voters where he stands on card check legislation. President Obama is now seeking to circumvent the legislative process by pushing through a union insider who would undo decades of progress in labor relations."
Becker, who works as a lawyer for the AFL-CIO, previously published an opinion stating that union-election rules, such as those addressed by card check, should be rewritten by the National Labor Relations Board to favor labor, without the consent of Congress
There is no question that a vote for Becker is a vote for card check,” continued Norton. “At a time when it’s absolutely vital that Congress turn its attention to the economy and jobs, the Obama Administration and Congressional Democrats are once again bowing to union special interests. The Senate needs to end this sideshow with a ‘no’ vote and start listening to Americans."
Update 8:30 PM: Senator Ben Nelson (D-Nebraska) has announced he will back a GOP filibuster of Becker in the Senate according to Politico:
“Mr. Becker’s previous statements strongly indicate that he would take an aggressive personal agenda to the NLRB, and that he would pursue a personal agenda there, rather than that of the administration,” Nelson said in a statement. “This is of great concern, considering that the board’s main responsibility is to resolve labor disputes with an even and impartial hand."
The Democrats’ future in the U.S. Senate looks even gloomier following Delaware Attorney General Joseph R. “Beau” Biden’s announcement on January 25 that he would not run for the seat vacated by his father, Vice President Joseph R. “Joe” Biden, Jr. Democrats at the national level, unnerved by a recent series of Republican victories in special elections, had looked to the younger Biden as their best hope for keeping both of the First State’s Senate seats in Democratic hands. The refusal of the vice president’s son to run for Senate in the nation’s second-smallest state says a lot about the current political climate.
Delawareans have been voting for (or against) Bidens since 1969, when 26-year-old Joe Biden ran for county council and won, only to run for U.S. Senate two years later, bypassing the usual political ladder of state offices and scoring a tremendous upset victory over Republican incumbent J. Caleb Boggs. In 2006, his son ran for state attorney general, successfully relying on family name recognition to defeat an opponent that was significantly better qualified. Of course, most followers of national-level politics probably have one question about the goings-on of Delaware: Who the heck cares?
The Obama administration cares. So does the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, and Democrats across the country who see their Senate majority slipping away, one seat at a time. The fact is, Biden was their only hope to defeat Delaware’s Republican candidate, current U.S. Representative Michael Castle, a former two-term governor whose moderate status has earned him nine House terms in a strongly Democratic state. Barring a miracle for Democrats, Castle will occupy a seat held by their party since 1972.
It is one thing to forget, ignore or misinterpret our nation’s history, but a group of uber-liberal educrats in North Carolina is taking the radical revisionism of America one step further. These politically-correct, taxpayer-funded “thought police” are actually trying to erase American history from our children’s textbooks.
What do they want to replace it with? Radical environmental propaganda from left-wing extremists who view American liberties as obstacles to overcome, not safeguards to be defended.
In perhaps the most glaring example to date of our government’s descent into socialist madness, the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction is attempting to remove all American history prior to 1877 from its textbooks, replacing it with a “global studies” curriculum.
Rather than learning about George Washington crossing the Delaware or Abraham Lincoln freeing the slaves (while studying from documents like the Declaration of Independence or the Emancipation Proclamation), high school students in North Carolina would instead be indoctrinated with more multicultural rhetoric and the fuzzy science of climate change (while studying form the Koran and the “Copenhagen Accord”).
This sort of raw indoctrination is worse than misguided – it’s treasonous.
If this new anti-American curriculum is adopted, American children would no longer learn about the principles on which this nation was established – and the blood that was shed in defense of those principles – they would instead be spoon-fed Obama administration talking points on how intolerant, imperialist America owes a huge financial debt to the rest of the world, one that we can start repaying immediately by helping developing nations “combat global warming.”
With the seating of newly elected Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown, Barack Obama has now agreed to hold televised meetings with Republicans and Democrats on health care reform. This feeble attempt by Obama and the Democrats to look bipartisan is nothing more than calculated damage control trying to prevent the inevitable losses in the coming 2010 mid-term elections.
According to Politico, Barack Obama stated that he wants to "look at the Republican ideas out there." But the real question is, where was this idea six months ago when Congressional Democrats were having backroom meetings while crafting a bill like a one-party aristocracy?
This shows once again that Barack Obama and his Democratic colleagues in Congress will only listen to the American people when they are forced to. And in this case, it took the special election in Massachusetts.
If this government was truly created “by the people, for the people,” then why was it that the Obama Administration and Congress refused to drop their push for socialized medicine even though the American people were vehemently opposed to it? (Final Health care poll showed 58% opposed the current bill according to Rasmussen Reports)
And before we get all excited about Obama’s newfound ways, let’s remember he has only promised to “look” at Republicans and not to start over with bipartisan input. In fact, at the Obama-GOP Baltimore confab some weeks back, Obama explicitly said that he had “read every Republican bill.” Apparently, that gem now enters the growing repository of Obama “misstatements.”
