Published - Idaho State Journal, Blackfoot Journal, 03/20/11

James Madison, the “Father” of the Constitution, said, “I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.” His statement seems prophetic when we assess the encroachment on our individual liberty by what we could broadly classify as “well-intentioned” government officials. 

This gradual elimination of personal choice and liberty, as well as our concomitant individual accountability, was partially delineated last week in the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. Kathleen Hogan, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Energy Efficiency at the Energy Department was testifying to the committee when Senator Rand Paul inquired, “I was wondering if you’re pro-choice.” Hogan responded, “I’m pro-choice of (light) bulbs.”

The Senator responded, “Well, actually, that’s the point. The point is that most members of your administration probably would be frank and would be up front to characterize themselves as being pro-choice for abortion. But you’re really anti-choice on every other consumer item that you’ve listed here. Including light bulbs, refrigerators, toilets, you name it, you can’t go around your house without being told what to buy. You restrict my choices, you don’t care about my choices.”

“You raise the cost of all the items with your rules, all your notions that you know what’s best for me. Frankly, my toilets don’t work in my house. And I blame you and people like you who want to tell me what I can install in my house, what I can do. You restrict my choices. There is hypocrisy that goes on when people claim to believe in some choices but don’t want to let the consumer decide what they can buy and put in their houses. I find it insulting.

“I wish you would come here to extol me…to try to convince me to conserve energy. But you come instead with fines, threats of jail. You put people out of business who want to make products you don’t like. This is what your energy efficiency standards are.

“I find it really appalling and hypocritical and think there should be some self-examination from the administration on the idea that you favor a woman’s right to an abortion but you don’t favor a woman or a man’s right to choose what kind of light bulb, what kind of dishwasher, what kind of washing machine.

“I really find it troubling, this busybody nature that you want to come into my house, my bathroom, my bedroom, my kitchen, my laundry room. I just really find it insulting and I find that all of the arguments for energy efficiency you’re exactly right we should conserve energy – but why not do it in a voluntary way? Why do it where you threaten to fine me or put me in jail if I don’t accept your opinion. In America we believe in trying to convince our neighbors and but not trying to convince them through the force of law. I find this antithetical to the American way.”

The dichotomy presented by the Senator is significant: the freedom to choose to end a life while in the womb is sacrosanct while the freedom to choose what kind of light bulbs to use is trumped by government mandates. It’s okay to kill an unborn child but heaven forbid that we choose to use a 100 watt light bulb instead of a 95 watt bulb. This is not only inane and sheer lunacy, but it, pardon the pun, illuminates the morally bankrupt status of our steadily growing “nanny state.”

Someone once said, “Men fight for freedom, then they begin to accumulate laws to take it away from themselves.” And Louis Brandeis declared, “The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.” Yet that is precisely what is happening as government mandates reduced freedom and choice in health care, health care insurance, energy consumption, use of salt and trans-fats in food preparation, proscribing the proliferation of fast-food restaurants, disallowing the distribution of toys with children’s meals, and dictating standards for appliances, toilets, and light bulbs. With every government statute and mandate, individual freedom is sacrificed anew.

Freedom is usually characterized as something fought for against tyrannical ideologies and totalitarian regimes. We arguably have a totalitarian state emerging right before our eyes where our individual freedom is steadily eroded by self-supposed elitists who think they’re better equipped to make all of our decisions for us.

There is a moral imperative to freedom that allows us individually to make decisions and to be accountable for the consequences of those decisions. Perhaps it’s time to introspectively assess if we’re still the “land of the free and the home of the brave,” or if we are now the land of the oppressed and the home of the nanny state.

Published - Idaho State Journal, Blackfoot Journal, 03/13/11

The old truism, “You may not be interested in politics, but politics is definitely interested in you,” seems self-evident these days. Each of us, whether we take an interest in political issues or not, is affected by decisions made in City Hall, Boise, and Washington, D.C. Whether you like it or not, you’re affected by politics and it’s reflected on your pay stub from increased tax withholdings, higher health insurance costs, higher costs of regulations imposed on your employer, increased layoffs by your company due to those costs, or a host of other ways.

When President Obama started being criticized for some of his controversial initiatives early on in his administration, he shot back with a one-liner, “Elections have consequences, and we won.” One would think that what’s good for the goose is good for the gander. After all, Governor Walker was hardly reticent on his intentions to rein in Wisconsin state spending if elected, and he signed the legislation this week that removes benefits and pensions from state union employees collective bargaining agreements, and ties wage collective bargaining to inflation.

And for his efforts, Governor Walker is pummeled with every conceivable aspersion, accusation, and pejorative noun and adjective known to man for trying to get a grasp on his state’s spending. With chants of “Hitler Walker” and allegations of “Nazi-like” tactics while he attempts to get a grasp on one of the largest components of Wisconsin’s budget is not only imprudent because it’s an erroneous comparison, but it’s diametrically opposed to the fiscal responsibility he is attempting to inculcate in his state government.

It should be an affront to all of us that any American would be bantered with Hitler-esque allegations. As I have said before, we have no Hitlers in America and to make such claims minimizes the immensity of the affront to humanity that Hitler perpetrated. Swastikas have no legitimate place in the American political dialogue. As such, all such references should be eschewed as overstepping the reasonable and ethical boundaries of acceptable political dialogue, especially in this highly animated state of political agitation we find the country in today.

The U.S. House of Representatives is looking at ways to reduce spending and identifying ways to trim or eliminate government support of things like Public Broadcasting and Planned Parenthood. To legislators of a different era, those were “good ideas” that merited taxpayer support and funding. But in an era where government spending at all levels has blown far beyond the realm of logical appropriation, everything should be measured against what is absolutely essential and what is not. All government spending, even that which is constitutional, should be eligible for review. We can’t afford all the “good ideas,” and it’s time to get back to constitutional and reasonable restraints.

We see the same illogical and radical responses to efforts in Boise to balance a state budget, which is required by our state Constitution. With references to Idaho legislators as “pirates” and caricatures of State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Luna as a cartoon “Luna-toons” character, the immature and specious get in the way of logical and reasonable analysis of the issues affecting all of us. There should be no “sacred cows” immune to a budgetary slice here and there, yet based on responses by some on the blogs and even in the pages of the Journal, you’d think the whole cow was being sent off to the slaughterhouse.

How do we get a grasp on all this radicalism exhibited around us? Perhaps we should start by reading for the first time, or re-reading the Constitution. In very explicit terms the Constitution lays out the powers enumerated to the federal government. In very explicit terms it lays out the rights and privileges that are held by us as citizens and taxpayers. We are now in uncharted waters as our total government debt, federal spending deficit, and unfunded entitlement obligations are at unprecedented levels and threaten the very financial stability of the nation. Hillary Clinton was right when she said our financial condition is a threat to our national security.

Secondly, we all need to take a deep breath, think with our minds and not with our hearts, and be part of a rational debate over these issues affecting all of us. People from both sides of the political spectrum do their cause no good by wallowing in the pigpen of political diatribe and calling names, questioning intelligence, or engaging in the most oft-used logical fallacy, the ad hominem attack on individuals rather than discussing the issues. If you object to what’s being proposed, fine, articulate it and back it up. Leave the impish name calling and mud-throwing in the pigpen where it belongs. 

Published - Idaho State Journal, 03/07/11

Most federal government unions do not include pension and benefits in their collective bargaining. And yet President Obama has the audacity to scold Wisconsin Governor Walker for trying to restrict collective bargaining by his state government employees to wages only, the same as the federal employees. Interesting dichotomy.

The two million federal civilian (non-postal) workers Obama presides over can't bargain over benefits, and it is the rare exception for federal employee unions’ benefits to be subject to union contracts. The President said in November that federal government employees are required to "make some sacrifices" to the tune of $2 billion this fiscal year, in announcing a two-year wage freeze affecting all federal union members. Yet Governor Walker is somehow the “union-buster” for “restricting” his state unions to collective bargaining at the same level of most federal employees, while being labeled in the most despicable of terms.

One cannot be a student of history without recognizing the tremendous contributions unions made to the emergence of the middle class in early to mid 20^th century America. They forced improved working conditions, workweek hours, and compensation levels. But one can’t help but wonder if they’ve outlived their usefulness to the rank-and-file worker, as they have become primarily political entities, with forced union dues used heavily for amassing power in the political arena. Even Bob Chanin, former top lawyer for the National Education Association, admitted that in his farewell speech two years ago. “It’s not about the kids…it’s about power.”

According to Department of Labor statistics, only about 7% of America’s private sector workforce is unionized. In post World War II era, it was nearly 40%. The trend is reversed for public employees, where 60 years ago the unionized segment of the public employees workforce was less than 10%, while it currently is nearly 37%. Logic leads one to surmise that maybe all those “evil corporations” have gotten it right, and are providing pay and benefits at a level that employees are satisfied with. While the same logic might lead us to believe that, following those trends, it is “evil government” that is taking advantage of employees and must be represented by collective bargaining.

I rather suspect it has more to do with the deep pockets of government with a virtually assured continuous revenue stream (taxes), and the political influence those public employee unions can exercise over their employers, our elected officials. Private employers can only go so far until the strong-arm tactics of organized labor bankrupts their companies, as we saw with the U.S. automakers. However, state, local, and national governments can be forced to meet labor demands by increasing the taxes the rest of us pay for their contracts, while holding us hostage to the services they provide. If we fail to pony-up on their demands, teachers, firefighters, and policemen are forced by their union management to walk out on their obligations to us, their real employers.

A New York Times Magazine essay titled “Labor's Future,” published in 1955, quoted AFL-CIO president George Meany, “The main function of American trade unions is collective bargaining. It is impossible to bargain collectively with the government.”

And in 1940, Arnold Zander, the Wisconsin union organizer who became the first president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, wrote that AFSCME saw “less value in the use of contracts and agreements in public service than . . . in private employment.” Instead of collective bargaining, he argued, “our local unions find promotion and adoption of civil service legislation . . . the more effective way” to serve the interests of government employees. As late as the 1950s, AFSCME considered collective bargaining in the public sector desirable but not essential, and viewed strong civil service laws as the best protection for government workers.

There is a fundamental problem with unions’ collective bargaining with governmental entities, which invariably results in unions being represented on both sides of the negotiating table. Union demands are voiced by their union leadership, and those demands are echoed by politicians who owe their elected positions to those unions that are bargaining on the other side of the table. That’s what has Wisconsin over a barrel. Not coincidently, the ten states with the most budgetary red ink to reconcile are in the same situation, with organized labor holding the states hostage to their platinum-plated health care and pension programs. Negotiated entitlements and unrestrained spending are breaking the backs of those states’ budgets.

Some who are pro-public-employee union are waking up to this fact. As David Crane, of the California Board of Regents recently wrote, “Collective bargaining in the public sector serves to reduce benefits for citizens and to raise costs for taxpayers.”

If companies cannot control their costs, they fail. If governments cannot control their costs, they tap their perpetual income stream (tax payers) for more. Since support of corporations is voluntary and support of government is compulsory, ethics and fiscal responsibility are on Governor Walker’s side.