Were VW’s U.S. workers threatened into signing UAW cards?

Guest post by Labor Union Report

With its future hinging on unionizing the American factories of foreign automakers, the United Auto Workers has been desperately courting Volkwagen’s 2700 employees Tennessee since 2011.

According to news reports on Wednesday, a majority of Volkswagen AG’s employees in Chattanooga have signed union authorization cards indicating the desire “to join VW’s Global Works Council and supporting cooperative and collaborative relations with the company.”

The UAW is claiming that the cards are as valid as the workers having voted in an election.

The question that is not being posed, however, is: Were the majority of VW’s workers’ signatures were gathered based on threats, coercion and fear?

You may recall that, back in June, Stephan Wolf, a high-ranking German union official with Volkswagen AG issued an ultimatum to VW’s American workers in the press:

“We will only agree to an expansion of the [Tennessee] site or any other model contract when it is clear how to proceed with the employees’ representatives in the United States.”

Unlike the U.S., under Germany’s co-determination labor relations model, unions have seats on corporations’ boards of directors and, as such, have a say in how a company is managed.

via Automotive News:

Employee representatives at VW also get a say in new products and investments through the company’s global works council, which includes representatives from all of its organized plants.

That may give labor leaders at VW enough power to follow through on the threat made by Wolf, the deputy chairman on the global works council.

This comment was quickly seized on by the UAW’s president, Bob King, who followed up with:

“If I was a worker, if I was a member of the Chattanooga community, and I wanted to have the best chance of getting new investment and new product, I would want a voice on the world employee council,” King said. “I would want somebody there representing the interests of Chattanooga. I wouldn’t want a decision made where every other plant in the world has representation there, and I don’t have somebody speaking up for me.” [Emphasis added.]

What labor leaders implied was that without representation on VW’s employee council through the UAW, Chattanooga would not receive the hoped-for expansion.

This statement was likely repeated over and over again by UAW organizers in order to coerce them into signing cards and, if that is the case, it could very well be a violation of the Tennessee employees’ rights under the National Labor Relations Act.

In other words, if VW’s German union has the influence to steer VW’s board to take away jobs (or future opportunities) from Tennessee workers in retaliation for them not unionizing, it could be as bad as an employer who threatened to take away opportunities if employees were to unionize–bearing in mind that, in this case, the German union has power in managing the direction of the company.

According to the NLRB’s own guidebook on the National Labor Relations Act:

Section 8(b)(1)(A) forbids a labor organization or its agents “to restrain or coerce employees in the exercise of the rights guaranteed in section 7.”…

…Union conduct that is reasonably calculated to restrain or coerce employees in their Section 7 rights violates Section 8(b)(1)(A) whether it succeeds in actually restraining or coercing employees….

…Examples of violations of Section 8(b)(1)(A). Examples of restraint or coercion that violate Section 8(b)(1)(A) when done by a union or its agents include the following:

Mass picketing in such numbers that nonstriking employees are physically barred from entering the plant.

Acts of force or violence on the picket line, or in connection with a strike.

Threats to do bodily injury to nonstriking employees.

* Threats to employees that they will lose their jobs unless they support the union’s activities.

Statement to employees who oppose the union that the employees will lose their jobs if the union wins a majority in the plant.

Entering into an agreement with an employer that recognizes the union as exclusive bargaining representative when it has not been chosen by a majority of the employees.

Fining or expelling members for crossing a picket line that is unlawful under the Act or that violates a no-strike agreement.

Fining employees for crossing a picket line after they resigned from the union.

Fining or expelling members for filing unfair labor practice charges with the Board or for participating in an investigation conducted by the Board.

…Section 8(b)(2) makes it an unfair labor practice for a labor organization to cause an employer to discriminate against an employee in violation of Section 8(a)(3). As discussed earlier, Section 8(a)(3) prohibits an employer from discriminating against an employee in regard to wages, hours, and other conditions of employment for the purpose of encouraging or discouraging membership in a labor organization.

…To find that a union caused an employer to discriminate, it is not necessary to show that any express demand was spoken. A union’s conduct, accompanied by statements advising or suggesting that action is expected of an employer, may be enough to find a violation of this section if the union’s action can be shown to be a causal factor in the employer’s discrimination. [Emphasis added.]

Normally, a union–particularly a foreign union–could not threaten that, if workers don’t choose union representation, they will lose their jobs…or opportunities of jobs. Normally, only an employer would have the ability to make a threat like that.

However, normally, unions don’t have the power that Volkswagen AG’s union does and, in this case, VW’s German has every bit of control over investment that an American employer would.

Therefore, while the German union is a “union,” here in the U.S., its threatening statements would carry the same amount of weight with workers that an company’s executive threats would carry.

If Tennessee’s workers really do not want the UAW as their representative, they do have the right to file an unfair labor practice charge with Obama’s National Labor Relations Board.

While the union-appointees controlling NLRB may be inclined dismiss the workers’ charge, they may be reminded of another high-profile case, wherein they used statements made in the press by a company’s executives to prosecute a company.

That case was Boeing, and the NLRB’s rational was that Boeing retaliated against its unionized workers by the executives stating that, without a long contract with a no-strike clause, they would put the work in South Carolina. This, according to the NLRB, was retaliation against Boeing’s unionized workforce having exercised their NLRA Section Seven rights.

In the case of VW, a powerful union with control over the company’s investment decisions threatened workers that if they did not exercise their Section Seven rights a certain way (by getting representation), their plant might not get a hoped-for expansion.

If that’s not coercive, what is?

 

Get LUR updates on Twitter.

Cross-posted on RedState.

 

AFL-CIO Looks to Turn All of America Into Detroit

Guest post by Eric Boehm

One of the major themes to emerge from this week’s national conference of the AFL-CIO in Los Angeles is a push to expand union organizing beyond the traditional collective bargaining agreement and into every workplace.

And after some brief flirting, the AFL-CIO is ready to go steady with “workers centers,” which are popping up around the nation to help organize workers in the service sector. Members of the AFL-CIO, an umbrella group for dozens of labor unions, approved a resolution this week to establish a more formal connection between the union and the workers centers that it has, in many cases, helped to start.

“The labor movement cannot be confined within bargaining units defined by government agencies or limited to workplaces where a majority of employees votes “Yes” in the face of a ruthless campaign by their employer to deny them representation,” the resolution reads.

The union said it would seek to organize workers who are not in traditional collective bargaining agreements and would “mobilize these new members in electoral and other political efforts and in support of organizing drives and collective bargaining campaigns.”

To achieve that end, the AFL-CIO pledged to work more closely with “workers centers” and with foundations providing seed money to those centers.

In many cases, these workers centers have morphed into front groups for unions by using Occupy-style tactics and threats of lawsuits to make employers comply with their demands, despite the lack of a collective bargaining agreement.

Richard Trumka, president of the AFL-CIO, echoed the “big tent” message during his keynote remarks to the conference Monday night.

“All over America, workers are organizing in all kinds of ways, and they call their unity by all kinds of names — workers’ unions, associations, centers, networks,” he said.

As Watchdog.org previously reported, one of those centers – the Restaurant Opportunity Center, or ROC United, which was launched in New York City in 2001 – has been at the forefront of a recent wave of protests in major cities, attempting draw attention to low-wage restaurant workers.

BIG TENT: AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka says the labor movement should not be limited by official agreements between workers and employers.

Saru Jayaraman, co-founder of ROC-United, was a featured speaker at the AFL-CIO conference this week.

Previously, Trumka specifically praised the work of Jayaraman and ROC-United for organizing workers in New York and dozens of other cities.

It’s probably no surprise unions are looking to broaden their horizons. Union membership has been on the decline nationally for a few decades, particularly in the private sector.

“If I were within that organization, I would probably be trying to do the exactly what they are doing,” said Jade West, senior vice president for the National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors.

West said the unions’ declining influence has little effect on the daily lives of most employers, but the rise of workers centers and their organizing tactics is a real threat to workers and businesses.

In 2012, about 7 million private-sector workers were members of a labor union, according to data from the U.S. Department of Labor. That’s half of the 14 million private-sector labor union members in 1980.

Growth in public sector unions — they now account for more than 50 percent of all union membership, up from just 28 percent in 1980 — has helped the labor movement continue its powerful influence in politics, but it has also changed how the movement works.

Instead of fighting for weekends, better working conditions and a decent wage for industrious, blue-collar workers, unions today are more likely to be defending the right of a 50-year-old white-collar worker to retire early with full pension benefits until death.

In 2009, public-sector unions outnumbered their private-sector counterparts for the first time ever.

The move toward workers centers and other low-pay, long-hours, service-sector employees brings unions back toward their original purpose. Plus, it comes with the added benefit of more workers to mobilize in electoral efforts, as the AFL-CIO indicated in its resolution.

West said many workers are no longer looking for a 25-year job with a single company that ends with a gold watch and a pension, leaving unions to scramble for a new generation of members.

“They have almost become an anachronism,” said West. I don’t think the workforce really sees the need for a union.”

 
Boehm is a reporter for Watchdog.org and can be reached at Eric@PAIndependent.com. Follow @EricBoehm87 on Twitter for more.
 

"TASTES LIKE VOMIT": Michelle Obama Says Her Anti-Obesity Program is Wildly Successful, But Schools Nationwide Have Kicked It to the Curb

Yea! Three cheers for FLOTUS! Her 'healthy eating' program has saved the country from obesity!

Michelle Obama credited her anti-obesity program with bringing about a “cultural shift” in the way Americans eat.

“Make no mistake about it. We are changing the conversation in this country. We are creating a cultural shift on how we live and eat. And our efforts are having an impact on our children’s lives.”

The first lady touted the success of her Let’s Move anti-obesity program during a visit on Friday to Orr Elementary School in Washington, D.C.

Yet even CBS News reports that school districts throughout the country -- including California -- have abandoned Michelle's "healthy eating" program.

The Laguna Beach Unified School District, in Southern California, is the latest district to rebel against the federal healthy lunch program -- a cornerstone of first lady Michelle Obama's campaign against childhood obesity. The school district announced Tuesday night that it will revise its lunch menus.

The USDA (which administers the program) says growing pains are to be expected, but the complaints from school officials are getting louder; they say kids aren't eating the vegetables and low-fat choices and end up too hungry to learn. And they're saying they're losing money from throwing out all the uneaten food.

The new lunch rules, some districts say, are just unpalatable. Grumblings came from school boards in California to Illinois, Indiana and New York.

In Kentucky, one official said students thought the healthy fare "tastes like vomit."

In fact, things are going so great for Michelle's health eating program that schools in 19 states are measuring kids' BMI for obesity:

...schools in 19 states have started to conduct annual weigh-ins of students that test for their body mass index, the primary measurement used to determine if someone is overweight or obese, and then sending students home with reports – or “fat letters” – of the results.

“We look at growth charts and percentiles. And when a child is at 95 percent of their…we can look at weight for age or weight for height…that child would be considered obese,” Lauren Schmitt, a registered dietitian in California who measures the weight of hundreds of preschoolers in the San Fernando Valley, told CBS Los Angeles.

She added that out of the 900 pre-schoolers she looks at annually, roughly 200 are considered obese.

Success! Only one in four kids are obese!

Oh, and I forgot: the economy is so great a whopping one-sixth of the nation is on food stamps, and we know those are all used for the healthiest food choices imaginable.

Were they not in power, these Leftists would be employable only as comic relief.


Hat tip: BadBlue News Service.

The Curse of Liberalism

Guest post by Alan Caruba


“Liberalism has become an ugly blend of sanctimony, self-interest, and social connections,” writes Fred Seigel whose credentials include being a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. He has written “The Revolt Against the Masses: How Liberalism Has Undermined the Middle Class”, but you won’t be able to read it until it is published in January. As a reviewer, I received an advance copy from Encounter Books.

It hardly needs to be said that today’s liberals and conservatives loathe one another, nor that the nation is as sharply divided politically as in the days before the Civil War. Politically, America has swung back and forth between liberal and conservative administrations as evidenced by the elections of the previous century and this new one.

Moreover, many have noticed that there is often scant distance between Democrat and Republican administrations. Both have been led by patricians, often the graduates of Harvard and Yale. Seigel refers to them as the “clerisy” defined as educated people being a class unto themselves.

Liberalism has been a very expensive failure

“Liberalism has been a very expensive failure,” says Seigel and points to the Obama administration as an example of “the apparent disdain for the copybook maxims of faith, family, and hard work.” When liberals go to court to force schools to remove a daily prayer or a pledge of allegiance to start the day, support abortion on demand and gay marriage, seek to expand so-called “entitlement programs” and put as many people as possible on some form of government dole, this should be obvious to anyone.

The seizure of one-sixth of the nation’s economy in the form of Obamacare is yet another example and the failure of this program, passed near midnight by a straight party vote by Democratic legislators who had no idea what was in the bill, demonstrates the liberal preference for a massive central government.

“Liberalism has been dedicated to preserving the problems for which it presents itself as the solution.”

Seigel traces the beginnings of liberalism in America. “American liberals don’t like to compare themselves with other twentieth-century ideologues. But, like all ideologies that emerged in the early twentieth century—from communism and fascism to socialism, social democracy, and its first cousin, British Fabianism—liberalism was created by intellectuals and writers who were rebelling against the failings of the rising middle class.”

Among the intellectuals who advanced liberalism was Herbert Croly, the editor and co-founder of The New Republic whose 1909 book, “The Promise of American Life”, was the first manifesto of modern American liberalism. Croly “rejected American tradition with its faith in the Constitution and its politics of parties and courts.” This reeks of the intellectual snobbery that has dominated liberal thinking for more than a century at this point.

A distinguishing element of liberalism has been its admiration of autocratic leaders and this explains its embrace of dictators from the likes of the German Kaiser, Lenin and Stalin, through to men like Fidel Castro and his murderous sidekick, Ernesto “Che” Guevara. The appeal of communism has always played a large role in the ideology of liberalism.

What distinguishes liberalism today in the minds of conservatives is its rejection of the utter failure of communism and its cousin, socialism. One need only look to Russia and Europe for evidence of this, but it is manifest in America as it struggles to deal with the costs of New Deal creations such as Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, absorbing and redistributing some sixty percent of the national budget. The liberal belief in Keynesian economics whereby the government maintains the economy through massive expenditures has left America today with the largest debt in his history.

Liberalism has been driven by its disdain for America’s middle class

Liberalism has been driven by its disdain for America’s middle class that emerged from the large wave of immigration in the early 19th century and the success it has had in the business sector, entering the professions, and raising incomes. Liberalism has a deep distrust of “the masses” while claiming to represent them.

Liberal ideology produced Lyndon Johnson’s failed “War on Poverty” and embraced environmentalism with its doomsday predictions, none of which has come true. It explains President Obama’s rejection of American exceptionalism. “Liberal interests never reexamined their assumptions, even when faced with social and political failure. They never asked why, despite the vast sums expended, poverty had become worse rather than better.”

At the same time, in the latter half of the last century, liberals invented a laundry list of “rights” you will not find in the Constitution such as women’s rights, gay rights, children’s rights and even the Gaia concept of the Earth’s right to be protected against human activity.

“It was attitude and intentions—not outcomes—that matter to liberals,” says Seigel.

Liberalism is the ideology of intellectuals who looked down on the masses that became America’s middle class and produced the greatest economy the world had ever known. Now they exist to live parasitically off of it.

The great frustration of conservatives is the inability to have a rational debate or discussion with liberals. They don’t make sense. It is the curse of liberalism.

Alan Caruba writes for a variety of periodicals and his daily blog is called Warning Signs.

When it comes to obscenity, Eric Holder trumps Miley Cyrus

Guest post by Larry Sand

When it comes to obscenity, cheating kids out of a good education is far worse than a salacious dance act.

While it is a sad spectacle to watch a gawky 20 year-old stick out her tongue and sex it up in front of millions on national television, the 62 year-old U.S. Attorney General’s act is far worse, as his will do much more lasting harm. He waves his magic wand and poof – thousands of poor children are chained to the confines of failing schools in Louisiana.

Miley Cyrus would appear to be a lost puppy whose father claimed in 2011 that she was influenced by Satan. On the other hand, Eric Holder would seem to be under the spell of the teachers unions and the overrated god of diversity.

The Holder story has its roots in May when the Louisiana Supreme Court ruled that:

the current method of funding the statewide school voucher program is unconstitutional. Act 2, part of Gov. Bobby Jindal‘s 2012 package of education reforms, diverts money from each student’s per-pupil allocation to cover the cost of private or parochial school tuition. The act authorizes both the Louisiana Scholarship Program and the new Course Choice program.

In other words, the voucher program is sound, but the court thought its funding mechanism wasn’t constitutional. So on June 6^th, the Louisiana House and Senate compromised on a budget that allowed the program to use funds not allocated through the state’s funding formula.

Problem solved, right?

Not quite.

Later in June, the teachers unions – School Choice Enemy No. 1 – promptly swung into action.

The Louisiana Association of Educators and several local teachers associations have filed a class-action suit charging that the state owes local school boards $199 million as a result of the Louisiana Supreme Court decision striking down part of the state’s voucher law.

Okay, so we are still dealing with funding issues, not the legality of vouchers.

But then in August, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder dropped the bomb and The Wall Street Journal pointed out its stunning irony,

On nearly the same day the Attorney General spoke in Washington to honor the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I have a dream” speech, his Justice Department sued to block the educational dreams of minority children in Louisiana.

Late last week, Justice asked a federal court to stop 34 school districts in the Pelican State from handing out private-school vouchers so kids can escape failing public schools. Mr. Holder’s lawyers claim the voucher program appears “to impede the desegregation progress” required under federal law. Justice provides little evidence to support this claim, but there couldn’t be a clearer expression of how the civil-rights establishment is locked in a 1950s time warp.

Passed in 2012, Louisiana’s state-wide program guarantees a voucher to students from families with incomes below 250% of poverty and who attend schools graded C or below. The point is to let kids escape the segregation of failed schools, and about 90% of the beneficiaries are black. (Emphasis added.)

Impeding desegregation? On what grounds does the Justice Department make this claim? Cato’s Jason Bedrick explains,

In Tangipahoa Parish, for instance, Independence Elementary School lost five white students to voucher schools, the petition states. The consequent change in the percent of enrolled white students “reinforc(ed) the racial identity of the school as a black school.”

Five students! According to the National Center for Education Statistics, there were 143 white students out of 482 students at Independence Elementary School in 2010-11 (the most recent year for which data is available). Assuming that recent enrollment and racial composition is the same and that no black students received vouchers as well, that’s a shift from 29.6 percent white to 28.9 percent white. Though the students at Independence almost certainly would not have noticed a difference, the racial bean counters at the DOJ see worsening segregation.

But the DOJ is not content merely to prevent white students from exercising school choice. The petition also cites Cecilia Primary School, which in 2012-13 “lost six black students as a result of the voucher program,” thereby “reinforcing the school’s racial identity as a white school in a predominantly black school district.” In the previous school year, the school’s racial composition was 30.1 percent black, which the DOJ notes was 16.4 percentage points lower than the black composition of the district as a whole. According to the NCES, in 2010-11 there were 205 black students out of a total enrollment of 758, so the school was 27 percent black. Assuming a constant total enrollment, the DOJ’s numbers suggest that there were 228 black students in 2011-12. The loss of six black students would mean the school’s racial composition shifted from 30.1 percent black to 29.2 percent black as a result of the voucher program. Again, imperceptible to untrained eye but a grave threat to racial harmony according to the Obama administration’s Department of Justice.

These are the only two schools cited directly in the DOJ’s petition, so presumably they represent the two cases with the largest impact. A footnote reveals that “The net loss ranged up to thirteen students per school.”

Why is Holder doing this obscene dance?

Is he so smitten with the concept of diversity that he is letting it take precedent over the needs of poor kids in failing schools? Could be, but then again, as noted above, the voucher-driven diversity realignment is miniscule. Or, is he doing the bidding of the teachers unions who are powerful political allies? Maybe both. But whatever the motivation, the lawsuit stinks, and the harm it will inflict on mostly underprivileged, minority children is tragic.

What Holder and his ilk don’t seem to understand is that most parents are not stricken with the diversity obsession, and simply want the best education possible for their kids. If you ask any parent of any ethnicity if they rather their kid get a first class education at single-ethnicity school or a mediocre-to-lousy one at a rainbow-school, we all know what the answer would be.

Louisiana’s gutsy governor Bobby Jindal put it all into perspective in an interview with Neil Cavuto,

My parents came here over 40 years ago in search of the American dream, confident if you worked hard, it didn’t matter what race you were, didn’t matter who you knew. That’s what we’re trying to deliver for our kids. And that’s why it’s just ridiculous to me that the Obama administration would side with teachers unions over these young children.

Cavuto then asked Jindal if he thought that the teachers unions were pushing the issue because vouchers endanger their jobs. Jindal responded,

Oh, absolutely. Look, they tried, they tried to take us all the way up to the state Supreme Court to stop this program. The teachers unions did. The program is still here. They tried recalling our speaker of the House and me and some others. And we’re still here. The reality is, teachers unions, when we started this statewide, said that parents don’t have a clue when it comes to making choices for their kids. (Emphasis added.)

That’s their world viewpoint. These government unions think the bureaucrats know better. I have met with the moms. And, Neil, it would break your heart that they’re working multiple jobs. They want their kids to have a better quality of life than they have had. They’re trying to do the right thing. They’re telling me this is the first time my kid is bringing home homework, my kid is going to school with discipline. My kids are talking about for the first time thinking about going to college, the first one in our families to graduate from high school. They’re talking about becoming the first ones.

As we all know, Martin Luther King concluded his famous speech 50 years ago with the inspirational words, “Free at last, Free at last, Thank God almighty we are free at last.” But if Mr. Holder and the teachers unions get their way, a bunch of school kids and their families in Louisiana will remain shackled to their failing schools, guaranteeing that their shot at achieving the American dream and true freedom will be next to impossible. Dr. King would be outraged.

 

Larry Sand, a former classroom teacher, is the president of the non-profit California Teachers Empowerment Network – a non-partisan, non-political group dedicated to providing teachers with reliable and balanced information about professional affiliations and positions on educational issues.

Barack Obama and Eric Holder Bar the Schoolhouse Door, Blocking Minority Children From a Quality Education

Guest post by Investors Business Daily


Pro-Choice: The Justice Department has asked a federal court to stop 34 school districts in Louisiana from handing out private-school vouchers so kids can escape failing public schools, just like the president's daughters.

He didn't say it on the 50th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream Speech," but President Obama, along with Attorney General Eric Holder, also has a dream — one of leaving every black child in the Pelican State behind, trapped in schools that cannot educate them.

Almost simultaneously with the president's speech, Holder's Department of Justice filed suit in federal court to stop Louisiana's statewide voucher program.

Passed in 2012, the program guarantees a voucher to students from families with incomes below 250% of poverty and who attend schools graded "C" or below.

Liberals are all for choice when it comes to having children, but not when it comes to educating them. The irony of Obama's speech is that he pretended to honor a man who fought to have black children attend schools they were barred from as his administration fought to keep them in schools they can't escape from, a form of educational apartheid that's both separate and unequal.

White liberal hypocrite Matt Damon is typical of the elitists who don't practice what they preach.

Son of a public school teacher, the Hollywood actor has often sung the praises of public education, yet has chosen to send his four daughters to private schools that few of us non-movie stars can afford.

Chelsea Clinton benefited from attending D.C.'s most prestigious private school, pricey Sidwell Friends, where both of the Obamas' daughters, not to mention Vice President Biden's granddaughters, matriculated.

Can't have the working poor they pretend to care about have the same opportunity to exercise the same school choice with those gimmicky vouchers, can we?

DOJ's argument is that many of the schools affected remain under desegregation orders imposed 50 years ago and that, essentially, letting poor blacks leave these schools for better ones upsets the politically correct racial balance DOJ wants to achieve.

The DOJ complaint says that in several of the 22 districts involved "the voucher recipients were in the racial minority at the public school they attended before receiving the voucher."

So letting black kids leave makes these schools more white, which is bad, but getting a bad education while sitting next to a white child is apparentlay good.

According to the complaint filed in New Orleans federal court to block 2014-15 vouchers for students in public school systems under federal desegregation orders, the first year of private school vouchers "impeded the desegregation process."

How about the kids who end up not being able to read Dr. King's speech or spell "desegregation"?

Education is the enemy of the left, for with knowledge comes power, a power that does not come from the government. May we be so cynical as to suggest that an administration that fosters and feeds on dependency wants to perpetuate it by ensuring that poor black kids grow up to be poor black Democratic-voting adults?

And don't forget the necessity of letting teachers' unions feed at the public trough while babysitting the next cohort of functional illiterates.

Republican Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal actually does something to help these kids with more than boilerplate rhetoric, while Obama and Holder use the full weight of the federal government to try to stop him.

Please, Mr. President, don't stand where Martin Luther King stood, in the shadow of the statue of the first Republican president, Abraham Lincoln, leader of a party formed to fight slavery, at a gathering the only black U.S. senator, Tim Scott, was not invited to speak at, and preach about racial injustice.

What you and your attorney general are doing in Louisiana is racial injustice.


Read More At Investor's Business Daily

Terry McAuliffe Finally Brings Some Jobs to Virginia!

The Democrat candidate for governor in Virginia is a bizarre little man named "Crazy" Terry McAuliffe. McAuliffe's background is especially troubling, given his incessant efforts to turn Virginia into a forced unionization state.

But more recent revelations regarding McAuliffe's disastrous "green energy" company are even more troubling. And all of us regular Americans -- taxpayers, not you irregular Americans -- are paying for his actions.

...McAuliffe and three top GreenTech advisers met with the key White House aide responsible for helping bankrupt solar-panel maker Solyndra win federal loans and high-profile presidential support, a Watchdog investigation has revealed... the confab came seven months after a stock transfer made McAuliffe a GreenTech minority owner and company chairman.

...GreenTech’s Solyndra connection won’t surprise Kimberley A. Strassel. Back in April, the Wall Street Journal columnist wrote, “GreenTech is the latest proof (after Solyndra, Fisker, A123 and others) that the political class is adept at hooking up cronies and investors with taxpayer dollars. But creating jobs? No can do.”

Documents released last week reveal that that Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating GreenTech’s sister company Gulf Coast Funds, stating that there’s “possible fraud” in the firm’s pursuit of EB-5 investors, primarily those in China. GreenTech is behind schedule in rolling out thousands of electric vehicles while as many as 81 foreign nationals who invested at least $500,000 each are awaiting visas...

Virginians, if you want more Solyndras, more forced unionization, and more legalized theft of your private property, then by all means: vote for Terry McAuliffe. On the other hand, if you want to support a real Constitutional Conservative, then lend your support to Ken Cuccinelli.

Politico's Julius Streicher whitewashes epic failure of OFA brown-shirts' pro-Obamacare rallies

Mark this story as reason #4,602 that John Boehner is a complete sellout. There is no support for Obamacare. None. Not in government. Not among unions. Not among anyone with more than two neurons to rub together. And not among the OFA brown-shirts that organized hysterically failed pro-Obamacare rallies nationwide yesterday.

At the invaluable NewsBusters site, Noel Sheppard documents the modern-day Leni Riefenstahls at work:

Sheppard attributes the change to some editor at Politico. But my guess is Valerie Jarrett or one of her henchmen threatened the WaPo for Wash-Outs with any number of punishments.

The media is running so scared now that they won't even report on their own scoops (e.g., the latest shocking Benghazi revelations which were somehow ignored at today's press conference).

As Mediaite's Noah Rothman reports, "Journalists Worry Covering The [Benghazi] Attack Threatens White House Access."

In other words: fascism, just like every other Banana Republic.


Hat tip: BadBlue News.

Apocalypse In One Picture

Guest post by Monty Pelerin

It is nearly impossible to convince people that an economic collapse is likely, perhaps inevitable. It is beyond anything they have seen or can imagine. I attribute that to a normalcy bias, an inherent weakness of experiential learners. For many, accepting something that has not occurred during their time on the planet is not possible. The laws of economics and mathematics may shape history but they are not controlled by history.

The form of cataclysm and its timing is indeterminable. Political decisions continue to shape both. The madmen who are responsible for the coming disaster continue to behave as if they can manage to avoid it. Violating Einstein’s definition of insanity, they continue to apply the same poison that caused the problem. These fools believe they can manage complexities they do not understand. We are bigger fools for providing them the authority to indulge their hubris and wreak such damage.

Apocalypse In One Picture

James Quinn provided the following graph. If a picture is worth a thousand words, this graph is worth millions. The route to economic demise is depicted below:

The relationships in this graph are terrifying! Debt is shown relative to GDP. GDP growth has been one-third the growth in debt for the period. That is, the economy required $3 of debt to produce $1 more in real GDP. In recent years diminishing returns to debt required $6 of debt to increase GDP a $1. Whatever the benefits of debt, they have clearly diminished, almost to zero. Debt expansion has gone exponential in order to salvage the weak growth in GDP.

To put this into a perspective the average reader can understand, think of GDP as a household’s spending. The “family” depicted above has to borrow each year in order to maintain its spending level. Imagine the condition of your family if you borrow ed 6 times the amount of incremental spending each year. Then imagine the condition of your family after forty years of continuously increasing your debt levels substantially in excess of your income.

It is impossible for a family without a printing press and a cooperative Federal Reserve to engage in such behavior. The government is different, you say? Surely it is, but not necessarily in a meaningful financial manner. Just as you would not survive such behavior, governments cannot either. History is full of examples of government collapses resulting from excessive debt and overspending. A printing press only provides the luxury of more time before the failure.

You may object that a macroeconomy is different from a family. Debt (parroting the political claim) makes an economy grow faster. The evidence shown above does not support this claim. Government reported GDP growth rates are shrinking as the debt expansion accelerates. Since 1965 the growth rate of the economy has been declining.

Even if you accept government GDP reporting, the above chart shows a trend this is pointing to an average declining standard of living. That point will be reached when the GDP growth falls below the population growth.

The US economy has been underperforming since the 1970s according to government’s statistics. That is after all the games have been played with these numbers. How much longer can these trends continue and what happens at the end? No one can reasonably answer either of these questions.

What Is Known And Not Known

Two things are known:

• So long as borrowing increases faster than GDP, the ability to repay diminishes. That has been occurring for more than forty years and the differential growth rates have widened dramatically in recent years.
• Not borrowing at this pace would likely have decreased reported GDP dramatically. While that may have been a proper economic response, it is now politically impossible (or highly unlikely).

Continuing to increase debt at a rate greater than GDP ensures financial collapse. Stopping or slowing down at this point likely leads to the same point. This country has maneuvered itself into a no-escape situation.

What would happen to GDP and the standard of living if borrowing were dramatically reduced? How much of the last $10 trillion in debt borrowed between 2000 and 2009 went directly into reported GDP? Is it possible that reported GDP for this period could have been $10 trillion lower? If there is indeed a monetary/fiscal multiplier as Keynesians insist, then results would have been worse.

Answers to these questions are speculative. Those in favor of more debt argue that a calamity would have occurred had the massive rise in debt and its accompany stimulative effects not happened. For the Paul Krugmans of the world, more debt and stimulus is always the answer. All problems look like nails when you own only a hammer.

Rapidly increasing amounts of debt since 1965 have been accompanied by falling rates of growth. One may speculate what this growth would have been with different rates of debt expansion. Whether the rate of debt expansion increased or decreased the rate of real GDP is moot. Economists can use their competing paradigms to duel over this issue, but cannot come to a conclusion that is acceptable to most.

Mathematics, on the other hand, is definitive. There are mathematical limits that control the ability to service debt. Once these limits have been breached, some amount of the debt will be defaulted on. The breach point is referred to as a debt death spiral. The US has passed this mathematical point and is in a death spiral.

The political class in America, either via misguided economic policies or a deliberate attempt to hide the true condition of the country, has put us here. They will continue to employ whatever policies they believe will keep things going for a while longer. The tragic ending has been cast. Economics cannot trump mathematics.

Monty Pelerin blogs at Economic Noise.

DOOMED: Top 9 Big Cities That Will Soon Be Following Detroit Down the Black Hole of Democrat-Union Bankruptcy

Because math always trumps politics.

In April, Moody’s Investors Service, a bond rating agency, issued a report identifying 29 municipalities selected for review over concerns of credit-worthiness... Their chief concern: Some municipalities are underreporting pension liabilities; the ways in which those large costs are reported can vary widely from place to place.

...Cities on the list for review aren’t necessarily facing imminent downgrade, though their mere presence on that list makes it more likely... Moody’s, as we speak, is re-examining these nine largest cities...

9. Chicago: ...Moody’s downgraded The Windy City’s credit rating by three notches last week, as a result of $19 billion in unfunded pension debt... [and] mayor Rahm Emanuel, President Obama’s former chief of staff, [told] city employees they should sign up for the federal health insurance exchanges. It’s almost as if he might have known the city was running out of money to fund employee health care.

Sure enough, Pew reports Chicago’s retiree health benefits are exactly 0 percent funded. As in, not a single dollar against a $1 billion liability.

8. Portland, Ore.: Moody’s is reviewing the city’s credit rating for its general obligation bonds, but also for Portland’s tax obligation bonds, housing bonds and redevelopment bonds. The city has more than $453 million in unfunded pension debt... Pew notes Portland “had virtually no asset” to offset unfunded liabilities of $2.3 billion in fiscal 2009 for its pension and disability plan for police and firefighters.

7. Omaha, Neb.: ...has managed to ring up more than $1.4 billion in pension liabilities, and it has only enough cash saved to pay about 43 percent of those costs...

6. Minneapolis: Minneapolis has piled up more than $700 million in unfunded pension liabilities, prompting the ratings agency to take another look at the city...

5. Cincinnati: Moody’s downgraded Cincinnati just last week, after it was placed on the list of possible downgrades in April... The city’s unfunded pension liability tops $700 million.

4. Providence, R.I.: With a funding ratio — the percentage of pension debt versus current assets to pay — of 42 percent, Providence’s pension mess, per capita, is even worse than Chicago’s... But Pew notes Providence has taken some steps in the right direction. The city suspended annual cost-of-living adjustments for retirees and now requires all former workers olden than 65 to switch to Medicare instead of receiving health benefits from the city.

3. Trenton, N.J.: Moody’s is reviewing general obligation bonds issued by Trenton’s public school system. A downgrade on those bonds would follow fast in the footsteps of a citywide downgrade in 2011.

2. Santa Fe, N.M.: In putting Santa Fe “on notice” a few months ago, Moody’s noted the severity of the city’s pension problems. Moody’s ranked the city of Santa Fe as the worst in the country, saying it has net pension liabilities equal to six times its operating revenue.

1. Charleston, W.Va.: ...Charleston has the worst-funded pension system of any major city in the United States, with only 24 percent of the necessary funds to cover more than $337 million in pension debt...

What do all of these cities -- and many, many more -- have in common? The infernal alliance of the Democrat Party and public sector unions.


Hat tip: BadBlue Real-Time News

SKIN IN THE GAME: Obama Will Veto Defense Appropriations Bill Unless Health Premiums for Vets are Hiked

Guest post by Investors Business Daily

Politics: A veto of the defense authorization bill is threatened unless the president gets his way. He wants health care insurance premiums and co-pays increased for troops and scheduled military pay raises to be reduced.

Being used as photo-ops for presidential speeches and willing to make the ultimate sacrifice for your country apparently does not exempt our troops from the rising health care premiums that President Obama said, along with sea levels, would not rise under his administration. The next time a soldier hears "give me 50," it might be dollars and not push-ups.

The White House has threatened to veto the 2014 Defense Appropriations Act in part because it does not increase premiums and co-pays associated with Tricare, the Pentagon's in-house health system, and because it proposes a 1.8% pay increase instead of the 1% the administration demands.

Tricare, according to its website, "is the health care program serving Uniformed Service members, retirees and their families worldwide." As the administration pushes for higher health care costs for military personnel, the benefits of unionized civilian defense workers remain unscathed.

As the Navy Times reports, the president's proposal includes a freeze for 2014 for Medicare-eligible retirees in the Tricare for Life program; but there would be rapid increases over the following years, with annual hikes of $150 in maximum fees for most retirees and $200 for flag officers. For flag and general officers, annual enrollment fees for family coverage would be $900 in 2014, then more than double to $1,840 in 2018.

The current deductible is $150 for individuals and $300 for families. In 2014, deductibles would jump to $160 for individuals and $320 for families, then would rise another $40 for individuals and $80 for families in 2015.
From 2016 through 2018, the deductible would increase by another $30 a year for individuals and $60 a year for families.

The 1.8% pay increase is the percentage that would be required in order for military pay to keep pace with average private-sector wage growth. The administration's proposed smaller increase would be the first military raise in more than a decade that failed to keep pace with the private sector.

"We shouldn't ask our military to pay our bills when we aren't willing to impose a similar hardship on the rest of the population," Rep. Buck McKeon, R-Calif., chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, told the Washington Free Beacon after an earlier round of Tricare cost increases. "We can't keep asking those who have given so much to give that much more."

The White House statement threatening a veto reads: "The projected FY 2014 TRICARE savings of $902 million and $9.3 billion through FY 2018 are essential for DOD to successfully address rising personnel costs."

Yet in 2012 it was revealed that Tricare was running a $708 million surplus. Instead of leaving the money where it was, the Department of Defense sought to transfer the surplus to other programs.

Some critics believe that as with private sector insurance, this is an administration attempt to increase costs and force military personnel and retirees out of the Tricare system and into ObamaCare's insurance exchanges.

"When they (administration officials) talked to us, they did mention the option of health care exchanges under ObamaCare. So it's in their mind," a congressional aide involved in the issue told the Beacon.

For those who have served their country in uniform, the country owes them a great debt. Their commander in chief seemingly wants to put them deeper in debt. At the American Legion convention in August 2011, Obama said that "we cannot, we must not and we will not balance the budget on the backs of veterans."

Yet the administration's proposed Tricare increases and pay proposal is just that, an attempt to balance the budget on the backs of our veterans.


Source: Investors Business Daily

NO TAXATION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION: Americans Say "Hell No" to a Federal Bailout of Detroit

Guest post by Investors Business Daily

Other People's Money: Having dug itself into an $18 billion hole, bankrupt Detroit now has allies in Washington calling for a federal bailout. This isn't going to help the city recover.

Bankruptcy, invented by the Renaissance Dutch to halt a debtor's spiral of debt and the behavior that led to it, is in fact a positive first step to any sort of recovery.

"There's some good things that come out of bankruptcy," Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., told Breitbart News. "One is you get to start over. Bankruptcy lets you be forgiven of your debt. And you do so by getting new management, better management, and by getting rid of unwieldy contracts ... and things come back more to normal."

In the case of Detroit, that's what's needed, because nothing has been fiscally normal about that city since its long decline began in the 1960s.

The city's failure to confront its fiscal reality is precisely what led to its dire straits in the first place.

A bailout may bandage over the derelict city's $18 billion in debts, but it won't change the fact that it's still run by an emergency manager, has nonexistent city services, and contains abandoned houses and fallow land that make parts of the city literally look like a war zone.

Bailouts can't help because these wounds were self-inflicted, not external.

The city's top taxpayer, the auto industry, for starters failed to adapt to the global economy. Out-competed by the Japanese, it opted for protectionism instead of sharpening its competitive game.

As a result, jobs dried up, and the city lost 60% of its population, going from 1.8 million in 1950 to 702,000 in 2010. But instead of attracting new investment as more survival-oriented places do, Detroit maintained the fourth-highest rate of corporate taxation in the country, ensuring that investment stayed out.

In denial, it kept 10,000 city government workers on the payroll, boomtown strength. The Detroit News found the city had more employees per resident — 55 — than any city in the U.S. except San Francisco.

Its failure to downsize left it with unfunded pension debt of somewhere between $3.5 billion and $9 billion.
Layoffs, though hard for workers, would have freed them to find jobs in cities that could keep their promises, and would have helped Detroit. But politicians had absolutely no connection with reality to do it.

They seemed to believe money was in infinite supply. The federal bailout of the Detroit-based auto industry in 2008 went a long way toward making the city think it too would get a bailout if it wanted one.

The problem here is that there have been nearly 40 municipal bankruptcies since President Obama took office, with more to come. If Detroit gets a bailout, they'll all line up for one. Yet bankruptcy's chief virtue is that it forces cities, and the voters, to reconsider bad decisions, to change their behavior and focus on recovery.

This happened in New York in 1975, when President Ford shocked the city out of its complacency by telling it to "drop dead." It got some aid eventually, but the net result was the 1977 election of Ed Koch, who governed as a fiscal conservative. That's the kind of tough love Detroit needs right now — not another bailout.


Source: Investors Business Daily

25 Terrifying Factoids Regarding the Democrat Utopia of Detroit

Guest post by Michael Snyder

It is so sad to watch one of America's greatest cities die a horrible death.  Once upon a time, the city of Detroit was a teeming metropolis of 1.8 million people and it had the highest per capita income in the United States.  Now it is a rotting, decaying hellhole of about 700,000 people that the rest of the world makes jokes about.  On Thursday, we learned that the decision had been made for the city of Detroit to formally file for Chapter 9 bankruptcy.  It was going to be the largest municipal bankruptcy in the history of the United States by far, but on Friday it was stopped at least temporarily by an Ingham County judge. 

She ruled that Detroit's bankruptcy filing violates the Michigan Constitution because it would result in reduced pension payments for retired workers.  She also stated that Detroit's bankruptcy filing was "also not honoring the (United States) president, who took (Detroit’s auto companies) out of bankruptcy", and she ordered that a copy of her judgment be sent to Barack Obama.  How "honoring the president" has anything to do with the bankruptcy of Detroit is a bit of a mystery, but what that judge has done is ensured that there will be months of legal wrangling ahead over Detroit's money woes. 

It will be very interesting to see how all of this plays out.  But one thing is for sure - the city of Detroit is flat broke.  One of the greatest cities in the history of the world is just a shell of its former self.  The following are 25 facts about the fall of Detroit that will leave you shaking your head...

1) At this point, the city of Detroit owes money to more than 100,000 creditors.

2) Detroit is facing $20 billion in debt and unfunded liabilities.  That breaks down to more than $25,000 per resident.

3) Back in 1960, the city of Detroit actually had the highest per-capita income in the entire nation.

4) In 1950, there were about 296,000 manufacturing jobs in Detroit.  Today, there are less than 27,000.

5) Between December 2000 and December 2010, 48 percent of the manufacturing jobs in the state of Michigan were lost.

6) There are lots of houses available for sale in Detroit right now for $500 or less.

7) At this point, there are approximately 78,000 abandoned homes in the city.

8) About one-third of Detroit's 140 square miles is either vacant or derelict.

9) An astounding 47 percent of the residents of the city of Detroit are functionally illiterate.

10) Less than half of the residents of Detroit over the age of 16 are working at this point.

11) If you can believe it, 60 percent of all children in the city of Detroit are living in poverty.

12) Detroit was once the fourth-largest city in the United States, but over the past 60 years the population of Detroit has fallen by 63 percent.

13) The city of Detroit is now very heavily dependent on the tax revenue it pulls in from the casinos in the city.  Right now, Detroit is bringing in about 11 million dollars a month in tax revenue from the casinos.

14) There are 70 "Superfund" hazardous waste sites in Detroit.

15) 40 percent of the street lights do not work.

16) Only about a third of the ambulances are running.

17) Some ambulances in the city of Detroit have been used for so long that they have more than 250,000 miles on them.

18) Two-thirds of the parks in the city of Detroit have been permanently closed down since 2008.

19) The size of the police force in Detroit has been cut by about 40 percent over the past decade.

20) When you call the police in Detroit, it takes them an average of 58 minutes to respond.

21) Due to budget cutbacks, most police stations in Detroit are now closed to the public for 16 hours a day.

22) The violent crime rate in Detroit is five times higher than the national average.

23) The murder rate in Detroit is 11 times higher than it is in New York City.

24) Today, police solve less than 10 percent of the crimes that are committed in Detroit.

25) Crime has gotten so bad in Detroit that even the police are telling people to "enter Detroit at your own risk".

It is easy to point fingers and mock Detroit, but the truth is that the rest of America is going down the exact same path that Detroit has gone down.

Detroit just got there first.

All over this country, there are hundreds of state and local governments that are also on the verge of financial ruin...

"Everyone will say, 'Oh well, it's Detroit. I thought it was already in bankruptcy,' " said Michigan State University economist Eric Scorsone. "But Detroit is not unique. It's the same in Chicago and New York and San Diego and San Jose. It's a lot of major cities in this country. They may not be as extreme as Detroit, but a lot of them face the same problems."

A while back, Meredith Whitney was highly criticized for predicting that there would be a huge wave of municipal defaults in this country.  When it didn't happen, the critics let her have it mercilessly.

But Meredith Whitney was not wrong.

She was just early.

Detroit is only just the beginning.  When the next major financial crisis strikes, we are going to see a wave of municipal bankruptcies unlike anything we have ever seen before.

And of course the biggest debt problem of all in this country is the U.S. government.  We are going to pay a great price for piling up nearly 17 trillion dollars of debt and over 200 trillion dollars of unfunded liabilities.

All over the nation, our economic infrastructure is being gutted, debt levels are exploding and poverty is spreading.  We are consuming far more wealth than we are producing, and our share of global GDP has been declining dramatically.

We have been living way above our means for so long that we think it is "normal", but an extremely painful "adjustment" is coming and most Americans are not going to know how to handle it.

So don't laugh at Detroit.  The economic pain that Detroit is experiencing will be coming to your area of the country soon enough.

Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis: "Rich White People" to Blame for My Union's Catastrophic Failures

Guest post by Investors Business Daily


Education: The president of the Chicago Teachers Union charges that racism and "rich white people" are to blame for the immense financial and educational crisis facing the Chicago Public Schools.

The Chicago Public Schools (CPS) represent everything that is wrong with public education in America. They are in thrall to the unions that run the system and bankrupt it through bloated salaries and pensions while too many of the students trapped inside graduate as functional illiterates, if they graduate at all.

Poor academic performance generally, a huge budget shortfall and poorly attended schools in declining neighborhoods recently forced CPS to close 49 schools in an attempt to close a $1 billion budget gap. But according to CTU President Karen Lewis, the root cause is not the lack of educational competition or the inability to fire or reward teachers on the basis of student academic performance.

In a speech Wednesday before the upscale City Club of Chicago, Lewis asked, "When will we address the fact that rich, white people think they know what's in the best interest of children of African-Americans and Latinos — no matter what the parent's income or education level."

She decried members of the "status quo, the people who are running the schools and advising the mayor on how to best run our district, know what good education looks like because they have secured it for their own children in well-resourced, public and private institutions."

As we have noted, the unions run Chicago schools and seek to preserve the status quo of a virtual education monopoly. Lewis has fought the use of any objective analysis of teacher performance despite the fact that just 15% are proficient in reading and that four of 10 CPS students do not graduate from high school.

Lewis is also no fan of charter schools, despite the fact Chicago's charters regularly outperform their public school cousins. In 2012, nine of the top 10 performers were charter schools based on the ACT scores of their students.

Of course when you mention things like charter schools, liberals like Lewis say they get to cherry-pick their students. Yet some 60% of Chicago charter-school students are minorities and 35% are Hispanic.

Ninety-one percent qualify for free or reduced-price lunch. Doesn't sound like cherry-picking to us.

School choice and vouchers would seem to be the answer to Lewis' lament that "rich white people" call the shots while sending their kids out of the system to well-endowed, private schools, like President Obama did.

Obama, who is rich but only half-white, closed the Washington Scholarship Fund that for 17 years had allowed students trapped in D.C. public schools, even worse than Chicago's, to attend the same private schools as the Washington elites.
Lewis opposes the idea of giving all students vouchers and letting them attend the schools of their choice. In every other area of human endeavor, competition reduces costs and breeds excellence. Parents and students, like other consumers, should be free to reject poor service and take their business elsewhere.

Lewis prefers the statist solution of "investing" through higher taxes on the rich and new taxes on consumers plus financial transfers that would be redistributed to the public schools and the teacher's unions from those who can afford to leave the city with their kids.

This is not surprising since she is a socialist who has marched with Occupy Wall Street and thinks and "the whole concept of the 99 percent" (vs. the richest one percent) is "an important movement."

She has earned praise as a "fist-in-the air, crowd-rousing, dynamic union leader" from former Communist Party revolutionary-turned-school-reformer Michael Kronsky Lewis should embrace school choice. If it saves only one child, wouldn't it be worth it?


Via: Investors Business Daily.

CALIFORNIA STATE BUDGET IN AWESOME SHAPE: Bay Area Rapid Transit honcho earned $333,000 last year without working a single day

There are those who believe that California is running a budget surplus. And there are those who believe in the Tooth Fairy. Both groups have an equal amount of credibility.

California's massive pension, education, and health care obligations -- to name but a few -- have mysteriously been omitted from the current-state budget analysis. Exhibit 90 jabillion of the fiscal insanity is a particularly crusty old bird named Dorothy Dugger, who has pulled off one of the more elegant (legal) ripoffs of the state's taxpayers.

With a gross salary of more than $333,000, BART's highest-paid employee last year wasn't its general manager, police chief or a worker who racked up gobs of overtime scrubbing grime from filthy train seats... [Instead it] was someone who did no work at all for BART in 2012: Dorothy Dugger, the agency's former general manager who resigned under pressure more than two years ago.

Under a lucrative retirement scheme, Dugger, 57, quietly stayed on the books, burning off nearly 80 weeks of unused vacation time, drawing paychecks and full benefits for more than 19 months after she agreed to quit in May 2011, according to an analysis by this newspaper. By remaining on BART's payroll, she accrued almost two extra months of vacation, while sitting at home drawing a six-figure salary for unused time off.

The months of extra pay were on top of the $920,000 that BART paid Dugger to leave after the agency's board botched an effort to fire her by violating public meetings laws...[she] reaped the astonishing windfall by cashing in more than 3,100 vacation hours, saved during her 20 years with BART.

[In addition, because] she was allowed to drag out her vacation-bank payments for months, Dugger received $138,000 worth of benefits, including pension contributions and medical insurance -- perks she would not have received if she had taken her vacation payments in a lump-sum check. Since she remained on BART's payroll, Dugger also received an additional $98,000 in cash, because she was still racking up vacation time and management bonuses -- even though she had no one to manage.

...Remaining on BART's payroll also added both time and money to the calculations on which Dugger's retirement is based -- increasing her pension payments by more than $1,000 a month for life. When her time on BART's books finally ran out in December, she began to draw a pension of $181,000 a year.

...Dugger said she was proud of her time with BART. Asked if her lucrative use of vacation time exposed a fiscal flaw in the agency, she said, "I think BART's track record on fiscal management is quite solid."

Quite solid indeed.

Thanks to the nefarious alliance of Democrats and public sector unions, California's budget woes haven't even begun.


Hat tip: LVN.

CONGRATULATIONS, ILLINOIS! 15.7 Percent of State Population Now on Food Stamps!

If Democrats weren't in power, they'd be useful only as comic relief. Their Utopian plans always fail, their centralized governmental structures always collapse under their own weight, and their level of economic illiteracy is worthy of a sit-com.

Detroit being a case in point; it serves as an excellent preview of coming attractions for the state of Illinois.

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), over two million Illinoisans-- or 15.7 percent of the state's population- are currently enrolled in food stamps... Illinois was the only state to see a double-digit increase of the number of residents enrolled in the SNAP program from the same time period last year.

The United States Census Bureau's latest data shows the population of Illinois sitting at 12,875,255 people. If you take the number of residents on food stamps (2,023,635) and divide it by the population of the state (12,875,255), it shows 15.7 percent of Illinoisans are dependent on food stamps.

...a record number of households--1 out of every 5-- are now on food stamps. Food stamp rolls in America have also recently surpassed the population of Spain and the cost of food stamp fraud has more than doubled in just three years.

A fiscal collapse for Illinois would be the preferred outcome. Then maybe the taxpayers would wake up and stop voting for the Democrat crooks who have destroyed every level of government in the state.


Hat tip: Weasel Zippers.

And the Band Played On [Jim Quinn]

Guest post by Jim Quinn of The Burning Platform.

A confluence of events last week has me reminiscing about the days gone by and apprehensive about the future. I’ve spent a substantial portion of my adulthood rushing to baseball fields, hockey rinks, gymnasiums, and school auditoriums after a long day at work. I’d be lying if I said I enjoyed every moment. Watching eight year olds trying to throw a strike for two hours can become excruciatingly mind-numbing. But, the years of baseball, hockey, basketball, and band taught my boys life lessons about teamwork, sportsmanship, winning, losing, hard work, and having fun. There were championship teams, awful teams and of course trophies for finishing in 7^th place. As my boys have gotten older and no longer participate in organized sports, the time commitment has dropped considerably. Last week was one of those few occasions where I had to rush home from work, wolf down a slice of pizza and head out to a school function. It was the annual 8^th grade Spring concert.

My youngest son was one of a hundred kids in the 8^th grade choir. I think it was mandatory, since none of my kids like to sing. As my wife and I found a seat in the back of the auditorium where we could make a quick escape at the conclusion of the show, neither of us were enthused with the prospect of spending the next ninety minutes listening to off-key music and lame songs. I’ve been jaded by sitting through these ordeals since pre-school. But a funny thing happened during my 30^th band concert. I began to feel sentimental about the past and sorrowful about the future for these Millennials.

The Millennial generation was born between 1982 and 2004. Therefore, they range in age from 9 years old to 31 years old. There are approximately 87 million of them, or 27.5% of the U.S. population. In comparison, the much ballyhooed Boomer generation only has 65 million cohorts remaining on this earth. The Millennials will have a much greater influence on the direction of this country over the next fifteen years than the currently in control Boomers. There has been abundant scorn heaped upon this young generation by their elders. In a fit of irrationality befit the arrogant, hubristic, delusional elder generations, they somehow blame a cohort in which 54 million of them are still younger than 21 years old for many of the ills afflicting our society. This disgusting display of hubris is par for the course among these delusional elders.

Are Millennials addicted to their iGadgets, cell phones and Facebook pages? Probably. Do they spend too much time on the internet and playing PS3 & Xbox? Certainly. Have they been indoctrinated in social engineering gibberish like diversity and planet worship by government run public school bureaucrats? Absolutely. Are they young, foolish, immature, irrational and not respectful towards their elders? You betcha. Teenagers have acted like this forever. You acted like that. The ongoing crisis in this country and our unsustainable economic system are in no way the result of anything perpetrated by the Millennial generation.

Can the Millennial generation be blamed for the $17 trillion national debt, $222 trillion of unfunded un-payable social obligations promised by corrupt politicians, $1 trillion of annual deficits, undeclared wars being waged across the globe on behalf of the military industrial complex arms dealer mega-corporations, economic policies that have resulted in 48 million people dependent on food stamps, tax policies that enrich those who write the code, trade policies that benefit corporations who gutted the industrial base and shipped jobs overseas to slave labor factories, or monetary policies that have destroyed 96% of the dollar’s purchasing power? They had no say in the creation of our untenable welfare/warfare state.

There are no Millennials among the 535 corrupt bought off politicians slithering down the halls of Congress. There are no Millennials running the Too Big To Control Wall Street banks. There are no Millennials in charge of the mega-corporations that buy and sell our politicians. There are no Millennials at the upper echelon of the Military Industrial Complex or in the upper ranks of the U.S. Military. But, and this is a big but, they have done most of the dying in the Middle East over the last ten years in our multiple undeclared preemptive wars of aggression. They have died under the false pretenses of a War on Terror, when they are truly dying on behalf of the crony capitalists who profit from never ending war. They have been fighting and dying to protect “our oil” that happens to be under “their sand”. If the energy independence storyline was true, why is our military perpetually at war in the Middle East?

The Millennials will also be required to do the heavy lifting over the next fifteen years of this Fourth Turning Crisis. The Silent Generation is dying off rapidly. The Boomer generation has done some hard living and some hefty eating and with the oldest of their cohort hitting 70 years old, their supremacy will begin to diminish over the coming fifteen years. At 87 million strong, and millions yet to reach voting age, the Millennials will become more influential by the day regarding the future course of this nation. The question is what will be left of this country by the time they assume control. They are saddled with $1 trillion of student loan debt, peddled to them by the government and Wall Street with the false promise of good paying jobs and the opportunity for a better life than their parents lived. They have obediently followed the path laid out by their elders, but they have been badly misled. This American dream has been shattered upon an iceberg of debt, delusion, deception and denial. The unsinkable American empire’s hubris and arrogance are leading to its demise. The Millennials are coming of age during a Crisis that will reach momentous magnitudes over the next fifteen years, and they had nothing to do with creating the circumstances which will propel the chaos and anarchy that ensues. But, they will bear the brunt of the dreadful consequences.

Generational Bridge

“The Boomers’ old age will loom, exposing the thinness in private savings and the unsustainability of public promises. The 13ers will reach their make or break peak earning years, realizing at last that they can’t all be lucky exceptions to their stagnating average income. Millennials will come of age facing debts, tax burdens, and two tier wage structures that older generations will now declare intolerable.” – Strauss & Howe - The Fourth Turning

The kids on the stage at the 8^th grade Spring concert were all around 14 years old. They are unaware they are in the midst of a twenty year period of Crisis. The boys are at that gawky looking stage with pimply faces and gawky limbs. The girls mature quicker than the boys at that age. These youngsters have barely begun their lives. I was amazed at their proficiency with a wide variety of musical instruments. They displayed poise and talent. The soloists exhibited composure well beyond their years. The performers were all musically endowed and proved that hard work and practice pays off. They were clearly enjoying themselves. They were all dressed in their Sunday best. I found myself enjoying the show despite my jaded attitude upon entering the auditorium. Even my son, wearing one of my ties, actually appeared to be singing during the choir performance. What I saw were hundreds of bright eyed Millennials with their hopes and dreams for a bright future intact. They have no idea what trials and tribulations await them.

I reached a milestone on the age chart last week that had me ruminating about yesteryear and contemplating the future. I reached the half century mark. Birthdays generally do not faze me, but the intersection of the 8^th grade concert and my landmark birthday had me pondering my purpose for inhabiting this world. I’ve likely realized two-thirds of my life. The final third of my life will be spent trying to maneuver through the minefields of this Fourth Turning. I’m a father to three Millennial boys. I consider it my duty to defend and support them during this Crisis. Strauss & Howe wrote their book in 1997 and predicted a Great Devaluation in the financial markets around the time Millennials were entering their twenties. This Crisis began in September 2008 with the worldwide financial collapse created by Wall Street “Greed is Good” Boomers, as the oldest Millennials entered their twenties. It continues to worsen as more Millennials approach their twenties. We’ve reached a point in history when the elder generations need to sacrifice in order to insure younger generations have a chance at some form of the American dream.

I believe each generation has an obligation to future generations. We are bridge between preceding generations and future generations. We have a civic obligation to manage the resources of the country in a prudent manner. It’s our duty to leave the country in a financially viable condition so younger generations have an opportunity to live a better life than their parents. Every generation that preceded the Millennials has achieved the goal of having a better standard of living than their parents. I don’t believe my boys will enjoy a better life than I’ve lived. We’ve lived well beyond our means for decades. Government, Wall Street banks, corporations and individuals have run up a $56 trillion tab and are sticking the Millennials with the bill.

The $17 trillion national debt accumulated by elder generations to benefit themselves and $222 trillion of unfunded entitlements promised to themselves is nothing but generational theft. It’s immoral and possibly the most selfish act in human history. I’m ashamed that my generation and older generations have committed this criminal act of theft. Deficit spending today with no intention of repaying that debt is a tax on future generations. This egotistical abuse of power by the current and past regimes must be reversed voluntarily or it will be done by force. I’m 50 years old and will dedicating my remaining time on this earth fighting to create a sustainable future for my kids and their kids. The lucky among us get eighty years on this planet to make a difference. When did the definition of success become dying with the most toys and spending your life screwing your fellow man by accumulating obscene levels of wealth at their expense? If Boomers and Generation X have any sense of guilt about what they have done, they would be willingly offering to sacrifice their ill-gotten entitlements.

Not only are those currently in power not proposing to scale back their spending, debt accumulation, or entitlement transfers, but they have accelerated the pace of each in the last five years. An already unsustainable corrupted economic structure is being driven towards collapse by psychopathic central bankers and cowardly captured politicians. These are acts of treason against the youth of this country and larceny on a grand scale. It will lead to generational warfare and these crooks will pay for their transgressions. Strauss & Howe suspected in 1997 the elders might cling to their illicit profits acquired at the expense of the Millennials:

“When young adults encounter leaders who cling to the old regime (and who keep propping up senior benefit programs that will by then be busting the budget), they will not tune out, 13er – style. Instead, they will get busy working to defeat or overcome their adversaries. Their success will lead some older critics to perceive real danger in a rising generation perceived as capable but naïve.” – Strauss & Howe - The Fourth Turning

The elders who represent the status quo do perceive real danger in the rising Millennial generation. The initial skirmishes occurred in the midst of the Occupy protests. The young protestors initially focused on the true culprits in the crashing of the financial system and vaporizing of the net worth of millions – Wall Street bankers and their sugar daddy at the Federal Reserve. In a display of status quo bipartisanship you had liberal Democrat mayors in cities across the country call out their armed thugs to beat the millennial protestors into submission while being cheered on by Fox News and the neo-cons.

The existing status quo regime provides the illusion of choice, but both political parties are interchangeable in their desire to control our lives, flex our military might around the globe, indebt future generations and write laws to favor their corporate and banking masters. The establishment is showing contempt for the futures of our youth. Their solutions to the criminally created financial crisis have been to reward reckless debtors and bankers at the expense of future generations. Their doling out of hundreds of billions in student loan debt and artificial propping up of home prices has effectively made it impossible for millions of young people to get their lives started. Boomers have done such a poor job saving for their retirements they are unable to leave the workforce. Since January 2009, despite adding $400 billion of student loan debt, Millennials have a net loss in jobs, while the Boomers have taken 4 million jobs.

Strauss & Howe anticipated that older people would be anguished to see good kids suffer for the mistakes they had made. They thought the elders couldn’t possibly be shallow enough, selfish enough, or immoral enough to deny the Millennial generation a chance at the American Dream. They were wrong. The old regime has no plans to step aside or sacrifice on behalf of younger generations. The implications of this resistance will be dire.

“The youthful hunger for social discipline and centralized authority could lead Millennial youth brigades to lend mass to dangerous demagogues. The risk of class warfare will be especially grave if the 20% of Millennials who were poor as children (50% in inner cities) come of age seeing their peer-bonded paths to generational progress blocked by elder inertia.” – Strauss & Howe - The Fourth Turning

The social mood in this country continues to deteriorate as the sociopathic financial elite accelerate their pillaging of the working middle class, steal money from senior citizens through zero interest rate inflationary policies, and enslave our youth in the chains of crushing debt and promise of dead end jobs. When the next leg down in this ongoing depression strikes like an F5 tornado, the simmering anger in this country will explode in a chaotic frenzy of violence and retribution. The chances of class and generational warfare have increased exponentially due to the actions of the elderly regime over the last five years.

Generational Sacrifice

“You got your whole life ahead of you, but for me, I finish things.” – Walt Kowalski – Gran Torino

A couple days after the Spring concert I was flipping through the 650 channels on my TV with nothing worth watching when I stumbled across the 2008 Clint Eastwood movie Gran Torino. This was the third episode within the week that had me thinking about the future of my kids. It was his highest grossing film in history. Eastwood played a bigoted tough guy Korean War veteran whose Detroit suburban neighborhood had deteriorated into a dangerous gang infested Asian war zone. The movie did not follow the standard Eastwood plot where he kills dozens of bad guys. He grudgingly befriends two young Millennial teenage Laos refugees who live next door. He had lost his wife of 50 years. He was in his 70s and dying from some undiagnosed illness. I viewed the movie as an allegory for the generational sacrifice that should be taking place now.

Eastwood’s character, Walt Kowlaski, decided to finish things his way. He realized the two Millennials would never find peace or have a chance at a better life until the criminal gang running the show in the neighborhood were confronted and defeated. He knew he was too old to kill six gang members singlehandedly, so he made a choice to sacrifice himself and be gunned down in cold blood in front of multiple witnesses so the perpetrators would go to jail and allow his Millennial companions to have a chance at a better life. He sacrificed his life for the good of young people who weren’t even related to him. This message has not connected with the elder generations who control the purse strings and political system in this country. The media propaganda machine supporting the existing regime continues to peddle a storyline that debt doesn’t matter, consumption is good, saving is for suckers, and passing the bill for unfunded entitlements to future generations is not immoral and cowardly. Walt Kowalski displayed courage, bravery, and valor that is sorely lacking in the elderly generations today.

At the age of 50 I have a choice with my remaining 20 or 30 years. I can choose to keep accumulating material goods with debt, voting for politicians who promise never to cut my entitlements, believing deficits growing to infinity are beneficial to the economic health of the nation, supporting the military industrial complex as they wage undeclared wars across the world, applauding the Orwellian fascist surveillance measures instituted to give the illusion of safety while sacrificing freedoms and liberties and selfishly looking out for my best interests. Or I can stand up to the corporate fascist old boy regime and lure them into a violent response that will ultimately lead to their downfall. I’m willing to sacrifice what is supposedly “owed” to me on behalf of my kids and all Millennials. They don’t deserve to start life in a $200 trillion hole created by their parents and grandparents. It is disconcerting to me that more Boomer and Generation X parents are unprepared, unwilling or too willfully ignorant to forfeit entitlements awarded them under false pretenses in order to preserve a decent standard of living for their children and grandchildren. The Bernaysian propaganda programmed into their brains over decades by the sociopathic central planning status quo has created this inertia.

The inertia will be replaced by frenzied activity when this unsustainable system ultimately fails. Time seems to be standing still. People have been lulled into a false sense of security even though history is about to fling us into a chaotic transformational period in history. How do I know this is going to happen? Because it happens every eighty years like clockwork. The best laid plans of the men running the show will be swept away in a whirl of pandemonium, violence, war and reckoning for sins committed against humanity. There will be no escape.

“Don’t think you can escape the Fourth Turning the way you might today distance yourself from news, national politics, or even taxes you don’t feel like paying. History warns that a Crisis will reshape the basic social and economic environment that you now take for granted. The Fourth Turning necessitates the death and rebirth of the social order. It is the ultimate rite of passage for an entire people, requiring a luminal state of sheer chaos whose nature and duration no one can predict in advance. The risk of catastrophe will be very high. The nation could erupt into insurrection or civil violence, crack up geographically, or succumb to authoritarian rule. If there is a war, it is likely to be one of maximum risk and effort – in other words, a total war. Every Fourth Turning has registered an upward ratchet in the technology of destruction, and in mankind’s willingness to use it.” – Strauss & Howe - The Fourth Turning

Our country has entered a period of Crisis. We may or may not successfully navigate our way through the visible icebergs and more dangerous icebergs just below the surface. The similarities between the course of our country and the maiden voyage of the Titanic are eerily allegorical.

The owners of the ship (Wall Street, Washington politicians, crony capitalists) are arrogant and reckless. They declare the ship unsinkable, while only providing half the lifeboats needed to save all the passengers in case of disaster in order to maximize their profits. The captain (Ben Bernanke) has been tendered the greatest cruise liner (United States) in history. The initial voyage across the Atlantic Ocean has drawn the financial elite ruling class (financers & bankers) onboard, occupying the luxurious state rooms on the upper decks. But, the lower decks are filled with young poor peasants (Millennials) who are sneered at and ridiculed by those in the upper decks. A maiden voyage should always be approached cautiously. A prudent captain would not take undue risks.

Our captain (Ben Bernanke) wants to make his mark on history. He considers himself an expert in navigating dangerous waters (Great Depression) because he studied dangerous waters at his Ivy League school. It doesn’t matter that he never actually captained a ship in the real world. He declares full steam ahead (reducing interest rates to 0% and throwing vast amounts of fiat currency into the engine room boilers). Midway through the voyage, the captain is handed a telegram warning of icebergs (potential financial catastrophe) ahead. If he slows down the vessel, he will not set the speed record and receive the accolades of an adoring public. He ignores the warning and steams on to his rendezvous (eternal disgrace) with destiny.

In the middle of the night, the lookouts (Ron Paul, John Hussman, Zero Hedge) cry iceberg!! But, it is too late. The great ship (United States) has struck an enormous iceberg (debt & currency crisis). At first, it seems like everything will be OK. The captain and crew assure the passengers that everything is under control and their evasive action has saved the ship. But below the waterline, the great ship (United States) is taking on water (toxic levels of debt, un-payable entitlement promises, trillion dollar deficits, political & financial corruption). The engine room (Federal Reserve) works frantically to alleviate the damage (QE to infinity). The captain is sure the compartmentalization of the ship will save it. One of the designers of the ship (David Stockman) sadly declares that the ship will surely sink. The captain orders the band (CNBC, Fox, MSNBC, CNN) on deck to distract the passengers from their impending fate with soothing music. The owners of the ship (Wall Street, Washington politicians, crony capitalists) aren’t worried. They collected their fees upfront and over-insured the vessel. They anticipate a windfall when the ship sinks. It worked last time.

To avoid mass panic, the crew (government apparatchiks) has locked the youthful poor peasants (Millennials) below deck. The captain and his crew are content to let them go down with the ship. They’ve decided the women, children, and senior citizens (Middle Class) can also be sacrificed. The financial elite ruling class (financers and bankers) are piling into the boats with the ship’s jewels, escaping the fate of the peasants. The captain (Ben Bernanke) has no intention of going down with the ship. In a cowardly act, he leaps onto the 1st lifeboat to be launched. We are on a voyage of the damned. The great cruise liner (United States) has a fatal wound and is headed for a watery grave. Are we going to let the owners, captain and crew dictate who will be saved in the few lifeboats or will we rise up and throw these guilty parties overboard?

It comes down to the abuse of power by a few evil men and their henchmen as they have centralized their control over our financial, political, economic and social institutions. The existing social order is an ancient, rotting, fetid swamp of parasites that will be drained during this Fourth Turning. The Millennials are rising and will be the spearhead of the coming revolution. As each day passes they will become a more powerful force and the power of the existing regime will wane. Meanwhile, the band will play on as the ship of state descends into the abyss.