A defeat for organized labor in the South

The New Neo Posted on by

Workers of the South, unite:

The workers at the VW plant in Chattanooga voted 712-626 to stay out of the union after a lobbying fight in which Republican politicians warned unionization could lead Volkswagen and automobile companies to leave the state.

Volkswagen actually offered some support for the UAW in its effort, which deepened the blow to UAW.

Union officials praised Volkswagen but blamed politicians who had warned workers that by joining they union, they could hurt their own economic interests.

…UAW officials vowed they would not give up in their effort to organize workers in the South, a region that historically has been much more difficult to unionize.

Give up? Never. They are patient.

Here’s an interesting statement:

“While we’re outraged by politicians and outside special interest groups interfering with the basic legal right of workers to form a union, we’re proud that these workers were brave and stood up to the tremendous pressure from outside,” said UAW Secretary-Treasurer Dennis Williams. “We hope this will start a larger discussion about workers’ right to organize.”

The article goes on to add that the UAW president said the union is contemplating legal action about this “interference.” So, who “interfered,” and exactly how? Is telling workers how unions might function in a way that’s counter to their interests “interfering” with the union’s own campaign to woo them?

Further research on this question came up with this:

UAW President Bob King sharply criticized Tennessee politicians who he said scared workers away from voting in favor of union representation.

How did these scare tactics occur? This is the best I’ve been able to do so far in terms of locating the specifics:

Tennessee Republican leaders suggested that the union might limit chances for a plant expansion and make the GOP-controlled Legislature less willing to help the German auto maker expand…

More here about what those Republican leaders said. Apparently the governor said something about the likelihood that if the plant didn’t unionize, an SUV-line might be brought in. I can’t seem to find any actual quotes, though, either from the governor or those other Republicans, so it’s hard to evaluate what’s true. The quote from Senator Corker, however, appears to be this:

Corker, a Tennessee Republican who helped negotiate the incentives package to bring Volkswagen to Chattanooga, said he has talked to VW leaders numerous times and “there’s not a push by the executive leadership or the board toward the UAW.”

“I know for a fact that at the highest levels of VW, they’re aware that if the UAW became involved in the plant, it would be a negative for the future economic growth of our state,” he said.

So Senator Corker’s telling people about the economic effects on the state of Tennessee’s reputation as a place that doesn’t encourage unions is scare tactics, I guess. At least, according to the unions.

Some of the union’s angst – and another significant part of the back story – seems to be the fact that “a majority of workers at the Chattanooga plant [had] signed cards supporting being represented by the union in a European-style works council.” Apparently that led union leaders to believe they had this in the bag. Funny thing, though, a secret ballot is different than signing a card – remember card check, one of Obama’s original goals?

Your friendly neighborhood IRS

The New Neo Posted on by

In the past, I can’t say I’ve liked the IRS. Who does? My attitude has always been that they’re a nuisance, and a cause for mild anxiety. The tax laws are the tax laws, but the IRS was not responsible for them. They just administer them, and for the most part they seemed to do it competently as far as I was concerned, anyway.

Now I find that I regard them as not-so-secret agents of the Obama administration. This is not paranoia. As Ed Rogers wrote yesterday in the WaPo, it is fact:

Encouraged by the lack of a public backlash, an uninquisitive press, cover from the White House and an eager-to-please bureaucracy, the Democrats are boldly counting on the IRS to be their political and policy enforcer.This statement isn’t an overreach by the “vast right-wing conspiracy” or a phony crisis created by hecklers (like me) on the right ”” it goes back to the early stages of President Obama’s reelection campaign.

Rogers goes on to list some of the more egregious examples of what has occurred and how the administration has been emboldened by the fact that so far there have been no negative consequences to them for their actions. The hue and cry that was expected – and to a certain extent came at first, when some of the revelations about Tea Party harassment were revealed – has been muted and blunted. So now the excesses are being further and more openly institutionalized:

Last week, we learned President Obama unilaterally gave the IRS the mandate to monitor the thinking and attitude of any business that might be trying to circumvent the negative impacts of Obamacare, and punish them accordingly. And presumably the punishment isn’t limited to civil fines, but includes criminal perjury charges as well.

Anyway, the blatant use of the IRS as the Democrats’ cat’s paw has clearly taken root within individual Democratic campaigns. An article in The Hill quotes several vulnerable Senate Democrats ”” such as Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) and Sen. Mark Pryor (D-Ark.) ”” who are openly demanding the IRS increase their intimidation of organizations that may oppose them. Obviously, the Democrats expect more from their team members at the IRS in the months leading up to the 2014 elections.

In the comments section to Rogers’ post, I find a smattering of liberals arguing the old, disproven, “liberal groups were targeted too” approach to the subject. It demonstrates once again how the Big Lie works, and how in the case of the IRS scandal (no longer a scandal, apparently) it soothed the liberal troops, at least some of whom might have otherwise become alarmed by what had occurred.

I wonder, though, how much the IRS scandal has affected Obama’s and the Democrats’ ratings with the public. I can’t find any polls about the subject since last summer, but my guess is that it has had some part in the downturn. I certainly hope so; all Americans of any political stripe should be highly alarmed, although of course that isn’t happening. One of the most pernicious reasons is ignorance of history; some people say, “Oh, all administrations do this.”

No, they don’t; not like this in terms of extent and success. Nixon was excoriated for wanting to do it in the Nixon tapes, and the assumption has been that he did do it. But in fact for the most part he failed at it. Why? Because the heads of the IRS at the time would not cooperate (see this for a background discussion).

Here’s a very short history of the efforts of other presidents. You can see that, except for the Nixon example, it seems that most of the presidents who were involved with any small success in such undertakings were Democrats. That’s no accident because, as “Nixon henchman Jack Caulfield astutely complained,…the IRS was a ‘monstrous bureaucracy”¦dominated and controlled by Democrats.’”

So Nixon is convicted in the eyes of the public for what appears to have been largely thoughtcrime, whereas the Obama administration and its handmaidens such as Lois Lerner get off seemingly free (so far) for the actual crime. Obama’s much greater success compared to earlier efforts appears to be due to several factors: greater drive, boldness, and scope; public ignorance/apathy; the coverup attempts by much of the MSM; and the simpatico political persuasion of much of the IRS.

So, you think you were admitted to MIT?

The New Neo Posted on by

Not so fast, kids, not so fast:

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology sent an e-mail to prospective students, erroneously telling them in a line at the bottom that they had been admitted…

The mix-up happened when MIT combined two separate lists for an electronic mailing about financial aid. At the bottom was a footer that said “You are on this list because you are admitted to MIT,” according to Peterson. By merging the lists in a program called MailChimp, admissions officers mistakenly imported the footer from a list of students accepted under early admissions.

Hey, it’s not as though MIT should have any special knowledge about how to work computers or computer programs, is it?

My favorite sentence in the article is this one:

Such mistakes are occurring more often across the country as university and college admissions offices rely more on electronic communication with prospective students.

Computers can do wonderful things. But their very ease can sometimes make it easy to slip up. I am reminded of the fact that in all my recent encounters with doctors and the health care system, everyone has groaned and made a face when discussing the new requirement to keep electronic records. Not to mince words about it, everyone basically thinks it’s not only a royal pain in the butt but also a total crock of BS. Garbage in, garbage out, and very time-consuming garbage at that.

[Hat tip: College Insurrection.]

The mammogram study and the NY Times

The New Neo Posted on by

Here’s an article in the NY Times about a new mammogram study that’s gotten a lot of attention.

And here’s the study itself.

Compare and contrast.

The first sentence of the Times article:

One of the largest and most meticulous studies of mammography ever done, involving 90,000 women and lasting a quarter-century, has added powerful new doubts about the value of the screening test for women of any age.

From the study’s abstract:

Objective: To compare breast cancer incidence and mortality up to 25 years in women aged 40-59 who did or did not undergo mammography screening…

Conclusion: Annual mammography in women aged 40-59 does not reduce mortality from breast cancer beyond that of physical examination or usual care when adjuvant therapy for breast cancer is freely available.

There were many more details, of course. Both articles are long, especially the study. But the Times article never even mentions the age limitations of the study, and that first sentence in the Times implies that women of all ages were part of the study, which they were not. The study explicitly dealt only with woman between the ages of 40 and 59.

I wonder what the Times’ agenda might be here, although never underestimate the possibility of mere shoddy and slipshod reporting.

The study itself offers some evidence that annual mammograms in those age groups don’t reduce mortality significantly as compared to regular breast examination (not as compared to nothing). There are the usual problems with methodology in large epidemiological studies of this type, and there are other studies of the subject that agree and disagree. But this one should certainly add to the amount of information that we have, as well as the amount of confusion.

Why does age matter so much? Breast cancer is not a unitary disease. There are many types, and the disease in younger women often works somewhat differently than in older women. Let’s not forget, by the way, that 1 in 100 cases of breast cancer occur in men.

Jonathan Turley, principled liberal

The New Neo Posted on by

Jonathan Turley is a liberal star, a constitutional law professor with impeccable credentials:

Turley holds the Shapiro Chair for Public Interest Law at The George Washington University Law School where he teaches torts, criminal procedure, and constitutional law. He is the youngest person to receive an academic chair in the school’s history. He runs the Project for Older Prisoners (POPS), the Environmental Law Clinic, and the Environmental Legislation Project.

Prior to joining the George Washington University, he was one of the youngest professors to be offered tenure at the Tulane University Law School.

But Turley has an interesting quirk that makes him unusual in another way: he thinks for himself. Sometimes he agrees with the liberal line and sometimes not. Turley has been relentless lately on the topic of Obama’s power overreach (see this, for example). He’s one of the very few liberals these days who is not so focused on content (the end justifies the means because of the goals) that he ignores process (wait a minute – tyranny is dangerous even if I happen to agree with the goals).

As such, I salute him. It’s sad that perspective and courage like his has become so rare, but it has.

Here is Turley on Wednesday, telling it like it is:

I have grown used to…

The New Neo Posted on by

…the fact that I’m now living in the Arctic.

It’s been that kind of winter. It’s snowing now—snowing along most of the eastern part of the country, I think. We here in the north actually have gotten less snow than some more southerly places, but we’ve still gotten plenty.

Plus, it’s been cold, bitter cold. I now think of 15 degrees during the day, and zero or below zero at night, as the new normal. It’s not so bad, really, if you bundle up. Long underwear if I’m going to be out for some time, but even if I dispense with that there’s the obligatory down coat, earmuffs, down mittens, several scarves, boots, and a face mask if the wind has decided to blow.

The funny thing is that it’s not bad. Granted, I don’t have a lot of auto commuting to do; I do hate driving in the snow. But we haven’t (knock wood) had too many ice storms this winter, and ice storms are the thing I fear the most, in part because of the driving and in part because of the power outages. There’s something about a real winter, an authentic, old-fashioned, snow-cover-and-freezing-all-the-time winter, that’s invigorating and even beautiful in New England.

Not that I won’t welcome spring.

The truth, the whole truth: the Obamacare Plan

The New Neo Posted on by

Reading the administration’s announcements about how many people have signed up for Obamacare so far*, I realize that not only do I not trust the figures to tell the whole story, but I don’t trust them to have any relation to reality at all. Whether they are based on something (how many people have placed a plan in their carts without paying?) or on nothing except the wishful thinking and imagination of those issuing them, these statistics have become so much blah blah blah. Pure propaganda.

And that is true of just about everything this administration says, as Victor Davis Hanson points out. It’s not that previous administrations have always told the truth—they most certainly have not—but the frequency, scope, and nature of this administration’s lies have caused not only the opposition to distrust what he and his spokespeople say but have even caused Obama’s followers and supporters to distrust what he and his spokespeople say. The difference between the first and the second group of distrusters is that, to a far greater extent, his supporters accept, defend, cover up, and even in some cases admire his lies for their strategic value.

Obama has discovered something about the American people, which is that most are not following things that closely or thoughtfully. And so if you are audacious enough (and your name is Barack Obama) you can fool most of the people most of the time. And your supporters will defend you for it, as long as you’re not lying to them about some pet issue of theirs.

This is not a discovery that bodes well for the country. It’s one of those things that, once seen, cannot be unseen. With the press behind you and the wind at your back, you can do just about anything.

[*NOTE: Something about the whole process reminds me of the Soviets’ Five Year Plans and especially the propaganda surrounding the announcements of their success.

Fiddling around on YouTube I found the following Soviet propaganda animation. It’s from 1939 and the graphics are really wonderfully done. I think it demonstrates very well the sentiments that were played on, both the hatred and the hope:

The Kulaks were “eliminated.” Quite a verb, that.]

Conservative proposals

The New Neo Posted on by

I just noticed a trend today: my two most recent posts are about conservative proposals for change. “Conservative” and “change” is not an oxymoron, either, because (unlike the idea some people have of conservatism) conservatism does not just represent stagnancy, or going back to something that once was. It does represent certain principles, many of which are rooted in the past, but there’s nothing against new solutions based on those principles.

All too often, though, the Republican Party (and conservation, which is not the same thing) has allowed itself to be defined as staying in the past, a sort of ossified fuddy-duddyism that doesn’t meet people’s needs. If conservatism is ever going to appeal to enough people to matter, it must change that perception and somehow override the liberal press to get out a message that will resonate with people.

There is no question in my mind that conservatism has such a message, and that it is a better message (although a more complex one) than that provided by today’s liberalism or the left. Conservatives had better learn how to formulate it, operationalize it with specifics, and deliver it in a way that people can hear and understand, or they will be marginalized. I’m convinced it’s possible to get the word out, but to do it conservatives can’t focus on side issues. Right now it’s the economic issues (including Obamacare) that are in people’s faces and for which people want solutions. The hype is that Republicans and/or conservatives don’t offer them. We need to stop complaining that the press is obscuring the real conservative message (although it is) and concentrate on making that message louder and clearer.

Of course, that’s hardly the only thing that needs doing. But it’s a very urgent thing.

The 2017 project

The New Neo Posted on by

This looks like a very interesting website. I haven’t had time to peruse it, but just a glance indicates it’s worth studying.

One of the features is a proposal for a conservative alternative to Obamacare. Again, I haven’t read it so I can’t say what I think of it, but I plan to. Here’s a summary:

It would solve the three core problems that called out for real reform even before the Democrats passed Obamacare: getting more people insured; dealing with the problem of preexisting conditions; and lowering costs. In providing politically attractive and substantively sound solutions to these three core concerns, it would justify bringing an end to Obamacare, and thus would pave the way for full repeal.

Just as important as what our proposal would do is what it wouldn’t do. It wouldn’t force anyone to buy insurance. It wouldn’t auto-enroll anyone in any plan. It wouldn’t reduce the tax break for employer-based insurance (aside from closing the tax loophole at the high end). It wouldn’t cost anywhere near the $2 trillion over a decade that Obamacare would cost. It wouldn’t undermine religious liberty. It would allow Americans to keep their current plan if they like it.

I think that last horse (the final sentence of the quote) has already left the barn, though.