I keep hearing the narrative that somehow, as though it were written in stone, collective bargaining is a right for public sector unions. I would disagree entirely: collective bargaining is a privilege, not a right, for public sector unions. And you know what? About 50 years ago, the A.F.L.-C.I.O. agreed with me. The union’s Executive Council in 1959 said: “In terms of accepted collective bargaining procedures, government workers have no right beyond the authority to petition Congress — a right available to every citizen.”

And it is a privilege that has been badly abused for years; U.S. Bureau of Labor statistics show that public sector employees, many of them unionized, make nearly $40 an hour in combined wages and benefits versus roughly $27.50 for those in the private sector.

So I applaud what Scott Walker is doing in Wisconsin, but I actually feel he didn’t go far enough. All his Budget Repair Bill is doing is addressing the public sector unions’ right to collectively bargain over pensions and health care. I think it would have been nice to address the right to collectively bargain for wages, and here’s why: at the end of the day, the public sector unions are not collectively bargaining for a greater share of earnings, as do the private sector unions. They are bargaining to get a bigger slice of the pie of tax dollars, which the government has taken from the American taxpayer.

Now to be clear: paying a certain amount of taxes is a part of being involved in an organized civilization. If you want to make sure you have roads and national defense, you’re going to have to pay taxes. But that being said, taxes are removed through a threat of force from the taxpayers by the government (yes, I mean force. Try not paying property or income taxes and see what happens). So the government is run off of money earned in the private sector. Government does not create jobs; when there are reports of more jobs, but they’re all government jobs, the government is not creating anything: it is merely funding even more government jobs off the backs of the private sector. Which compounds the problem because by taking capital from the private sector to create government jobs, you’re not creating jobs that create more capital, as private sector jobs do.

So, public sector unions, unlike their private sector union counterparts, are not creating more capital. Do they provide services for the public good? Absolutely. Are they creating capital? Absolutely not.

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So Al Gore has come around on the policy cancer that is ethanol, even as Newt Gingrich decides that telling the truth on this would be politically inconvenient. Yet the great strategist Mr. Gingrich does not see that support for ethanol leaves him completely unable to speak the truth about the booming wind and solar debacles threatening to expand this economic black hole even wider.

That is, unless he wants to look like a certain other candidate defending his own state version of ObamaCare while decrying Obamacare. Not pretty, not conducive to attracting voters.

As Congress considers the booming debt and which programs to nibble at for meager reductions, possibly they should heed Gore’s complaint: “It is not good to have these massive subsidies.”

True. And Gore even specifically noted ‘for first generation’ ideas like corn squeezins. But big ol’ subsidies make even less sense for fully mature technologies, like wind, whose electricity was commercialized 120 years ago (despite the mysticism, romanticism and silly talk of ‘new technology’ shrouding windmills, they’re creaky technology for which any improvements will be at the margins of efficiency. It’s a windmill.)

And now guess what? Windmills have surpassed ethanol’s pocket-pickery.

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Talk about change. Last year, over 1,000 American high schools participated in a contest to have Obama deliver their commencement address. The White House has now extended this year’s application deadline, given that only 68 schools seem to have elected to participate. The reason? Well, it can’t be Obama’s sagging popularity, so they say it’s obvious that the schools are simply procrastinating! Typical, Obama, when things get bad, blame someone else.

On top of that, the administration is pulling out all the stops to get Democrats and even the Cabinet to put the arm on schools, hopefully getting them to step up. Great, it isn’t as if our government has anything more important to do right now, what with the Middle East imploding and the American economy continuing to lag. So much for the change Obama wanted us to believe in.

The White House is ramping up an effort to promote a nationwide competition to decide which high school wins a commencement speech by President Obama.

An internal White House memo indicates that the White House is facing a shortage of applications less than a week before the deadline.

The competition was extended from the February 25 deadline until Friday, March 11 after few schools met the original application deadline. CBS News has learned a White House Communications Office internal memo dated February 22 noted “a major issue with the Commencement Challenge.”

“As of yesterday we had received 14 applications and the deadline is Friday,” the memo said. The memo also urged recipients to, “please keep the application number close hold.”

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On today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, Brad Jackson and Ben Domenech are joined by Francis Cianfrocca to discuss the potential takeover of the NASDAQ, and whether or not America’s best days are behind us.

We’re brought to you as always by BigGovernment and Stephen Clouse and Associates. If you’d like to email us, you can do so at coffee[at]newledger.com. We hope you enjoy the show.

Related Links:

London Stock Exchange mulls Nasdaq takeover
Are America’s Best Days Behind Us?
Poll: America’s Best Days
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Hope and Change from the Associated Press:

Oil prices continued to set new post-recession highs Monday as forces loyal to Moammar Gadhafi pounded rebels near a key oil port in Libya. It’s unclear how long the country’s oil exports will be cut off, and traders prepared for a worst-case scenario in which world supplies would be under pressure for months. .

Benchmark West Texas Intermediate crude for April delivery gained 52 cents at $104.95 per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The price almost hit $107 per barrel earlier in electronic trading, the highest since Sept. 26, 2008.

In London, Brent crude added 32 cents at $116.29 per barrel.

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Translating Democrat waterboy, Greg Sargent at the Washington Post, the Wisconsin Democrats are flailing. Now, desperate to try and help their image and too afraid of the union bosses to go back to work, they’ve devised a strategy to try and turn the tables on Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker.

Governor Scott Walker’s conduct on the prank call with the David Koch imposter has largely receded from the national media spotlight, but if Wisconsin Democrats have their way, it will be the subject of an investigation by Wisconsin’s enforcer of campaign finance laws.

The Wisconsin Democratic Party is set to file a complaint today to the state Government Accountability Board that alleges Walker repeatedly violated Wisconsin statutes by appearing to request support from Koch in shoring up vulnerable Republicans and by indicating that he would use the threat of layoffs as a political tool.

Sargent posts a copy of their complaint. This is all they’ve got, after 3 weeks camped out in out-of-state hotels? They must be dumber than I thought.  Based on his tone, they didn’t even impress Greg Sargent very much. That, or his editor at WaPo only lets him carry the water so far. Even his Dem-friendly summary is enough to conclude there’s no there there. Hint: Democrats are desperate for some good PR, so they decided to give a bogus Koch-related complaint stunt a shot. Hopefully now they will find a way to get back to work. The cowardly Wisconsin Democrats have been AWOL for three weeks in what amounts to an assault on the democratic process.

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Connecticut’s first Democratic governor in 20 years, Dannel Malloy, won his race last November by less than a percentage point, largely because of the public sector unions of the state, who worked tirelessly to have him elected. So, when Malloy unveiled his budget a couple of weeks ago, proposing to close his state’s deficit of $3.5 billion by hitting taxpayers with one of the largest tax hikes ($1.5 billion) in Connecticut’s history, and by having the unions, who worked to get him elected, give back $2 billion in concessions over the next two years, the unions made it clear that they expected their governor to give them a payback in the form of much higher taxes on the rich, who fared well during the Bush years.

The Journal Inquirer (available online by subscription only) reports that a meeting between the governor and union leaders on Friday was marked by blunt conversation, with Malloy, nevertheless, admitting, “The reality is in many ways, I won this election because of you…And I’m proud of that.”

But union leaders criticized Malloy for openly advertising his hopes of befriending more businesses in Connecticut, like current resident, Pratt & Whitney, which just became a winner of a $35 billion U.S. Air Force tanker plane contract. AFL-CIO officers rebuked Malloy for sending businesses, which have cut union jobs, signals of support. Ultimately, the message from union leaders was: the wealthy should give up more and businesses are anti-union. These leaders clearly still view their members as the “working class” from the twentieth century. To them, business ruins a state. Union jobs are what count. Sounds like a parallel universe.

In fact, Malloy was one of many, mostly Democratic, candidates whose names appeared twice on Connecticut ballots, once under a traditional party ticket column, and another on the “Working Families Party” line. The Working Families Party is essentially labor-backed, and endorses those candidates who support the public sector unions.

Here, notice again, the common liberal theme that “working families” are only public sector union members, while middle class, private sector taxpayers, are not “working” for their “families.”

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When Thomas Jefferson warned his peers (and his posterity) about the threat of expansive governments, he said, “A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take from you everything you have.” In other words, the habit of looking to a government to meet our wants can be very costly because governments big enough to satisfy those wants are too large to control. In the end, all the goodies such a government provides come at a price too high: the price of freedom.

And although Jefferson issued this warning two centuries ago, many citizens in blue states like Connecticut and New York may think them strangely contemporary. And the reason they might think this is because politicians in those two states are openly pushing legislation that will control, if not take away all together, said citizens’ ability to exercise their God-given, 2^nd Amendment rights.

For example, in New York, S.B. 2994 is currently making the rounds in that state’s senate. Not only will this legislation require gun owners to register every gun they own with the state, it will also charge them an annual per-gun fee for every gun they own. Moreover, gun owners will even have to tell the government where they store their guns when not in use.

Now think about this: the justification given for S.B. 2994 is that it will enable New York officials to “come a step closer to identifying…illegal firearms.”

Hmmm….  I wonder how many owners of illegal firearms will be complying with S.B. 2994 should it pass? I’d say there’s a better chance that owners of legal firearms will get a knock on their door at some future date, when the government that knows how many guns you own and where you keep them decides it’s time to get those firearms off the streets too.

In Connecticut’s legislature, Bill No. 1094 – “AN ACT BANNING LARGE CAPACITY AMMUNITION MAGAZINES” – has been proposed.  If enacted, this bill would not only ban the sell of magazines that hold more than 10 rounds of ammunition, but would also make it a felony for a gun owner to have one. (That’s right – a felony.)

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Wake up America.  We are heading head long into a brick wall and we are ignoring it.  While our elected officials debate spending cuts in the range of $50 billion to $100 billion, our nation is facing trillion dollar deficits for years to come.  The new ten year forecast by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), scrubbed by The Heritage Foundation of unrealistic assumptions the CBO is required to use, predicts an additional $13.6 trillion will be added to the national debt over the next ten years.  Simply put, by 2021 our debt will climb to $27.9 trillion and will require nearly half of all federal income tax revenues just to pay the interest.

The major reason for this crisis is clear, but there is little courage in Washington, D.C. to address it.  Here it is.  Medicare expenditures have grown 81% since 2000 and Medicaid expenditures have grown 87% since 2000.  It gets worse.  Today there are 39 million Americans over the age of 65, but that number has been growing at the average rate of 10,000 per day since January 1^st of this year and will continue to grow at this rate for the next ten years.  Why?  Baby Boomers born between 1946 and 1955, approximately 36 million, will turn 65 over that period of time and become eligible for Medicare.  With life expectancy at 78 for men and 80 for women, we can safely assume that there will be almost twice as many Americans over the age of 65 by 2021.

Persistent slow growth in the economy due the drag of massive federal debt combined with heavily restrictive regulations on business will continue to suppress job growth and force more citizens on Medicaid.  By 2021 the other half of all federal income tax revenue will be required to pay for Medicare and Medicaid.  Even if we assume that Social Security will pay for itself, which will require substantial tax and benefit reform, where will we find the money to fund all other government expenses – including defense and other entitlement programs such as food stamps?  There is not enough rich, middle-class, corporate or any other income that can be taxed more in order to solve this problem.

The only answer is Medicare and Medicaid reform.

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This thirty second video will show you everything that is wrong with public sector unions.

The budget debate in Wisconsin has forced a long-overdue discussion about public sector unions. Always a questionable proposition, unionization of the public sector, for a period, seemed a luxury we could afford. Yeah, public workers had job security and great benefits, but their pay was lower, so it seemed a fair trade-off. Over the last couple decades that implicit understanding was upended…public sector pay moved much higher and those great benefits were jacked up on steroids. Worse, we’ve recently learned that the benefits aren’t actually ‘paid for.’ As a result, we face the prospect of far higher taxes to meet these past promises.

At the same time, globalization and the natural forces of competition changed the economic equation for many of us in the private sector. We have had to become more productive, shoulder a greater share of our benefits and assume greater responsibility over our retirement. We’ve also realized that past politicians’ promises about Social Security were checks that couldn’t be cashed.

For the past couple of years, we’ve stayed awake at night wondering whether we would keep our job or whether our employer would stay in business. We saw our take-home pay eroded by higher state and local taxes and higher contributions to our own benefits. We watched in December as politicians of both parties congratulated themselves that they weren’t going to take even more of our earnings–well, for at least a couple more years. After that, who knows…

But, that isn’t the worst of it.

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With nothing happening in the world, President Obama was able to tear himself away from his home brewing hobby to enjoy his 60th round of golf. Its great when everything is quiet on the economic and the diplomatic front.

MADISON, Wis. (AP) – About 700 people rallied Sunday in support of Republican Gov. Scott Walker and his anti-union plan to balance the budget—a demonstration meant to counter three weeks of large anti-Walker protests in and around the state Capitol.

The rally was the culmination of a 10-stop bus tour sponsored by the conservative advocacy group Americans for Prosperity that started Thursday in Kenosha. It took place at the Aliant Energy Center in Madison, which is a couple of miles from the Capitol, where thousands of pro-union demonstrators rallied Saturday and Sunday.

Hundreds of pro-union counter-protesters lined up outside the arena entrance and parking lot carrying placards and chanting “Shame!” at the Walker supporters. The governor’s backers held their own signs with messages such as “I Stand with Walker” and “Dems Serve Unions not ‘The People.’”

Matt Seaholm, the state director of Americans for Prosperity, said the purpose of the bus tour and rallies was to show that Walker still has support among those who voted him into office in November.

“We’ve got to continue the push!” he said at the rally to loud cheers. “It’s not going to end anytime soon.” (more…)

All across the land, it would seem that there is but one story to be written regardless of the locale – and budget cuts are that story.  For years, rational legislators and commentators have warned American voters, and those legislators that have thrown economics to the wind, that spending beyond our means will lead to government meltdowns – and so it is today.

Here in California, during the recent State of the State by California Governor Jerry Brown – remarkable only for its brevity – Brown demanded more tax increases to “solve” the State’s now perennial budget crisis.  In doing so, he decried politics as usual but demanded policies as usual.  California has become the tax and spend capitol of the world (outside of Washington DC) and its budget next year will feature a $7.65 billion in debt repayment alone – more than it spends on public universities and more than the overall budget of 21 states.  By comparison, Wisconsin’s $137 million deficit seems quaint compared to California’s $20 billion+ deficit.

Brown also falsely claimed in his State of the State that no one was giving ideas on where else to cut and that if Republicans (and voters) didn’t go along with his tax hikes, he would cut deeper into education.  Brown didn’t offer to cut the state bureaucracy – he threatened to cut education funding – as Democrats are wont to do in order to scare voters.

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Most of us instinctively know that something very important — historic, even — going on in Wisconsin. Well, there is something historic going on in Wisconsin. It is the first salvo in a battle that is going to preoccupy the rest of our lives, for we live in a very unique time in human history — the kind of cusp that has only happened twice before in all of human history.

The pro-Union forces may or may not win the Battle of Wisconsin — but as to the larger war, they are irretrievably doomed. This is not just politics. It is something much, much bigger.

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This past Thursday, we (along with the Shopfloor blog), shed some light on a startlingly pro-union Google ad being placed by the union-controlled National Labor Relations Board that stated:

“Find Info on How to Start a Union

Get the Process & More on Our Site!“

__________

__________

A day later, on Friday, the National Labor Relations Board posted what appears to be its first-ever “Fact Check” that stated the following:

Fact Check

This feature encourages accuracy in the media by correcting common misperceptions and errors of fact when they are brought to our attention.

Google Ads
It has been reported that the NLRB spent Agency funds on Google ads. An initial review indicates that the ads were provided at no charge beginning in 2008 by Google. The Agency has decided to discontinue them.

Now that the NLRB has taken it upon itself to correct the record by stating the ads were free from Google, it would be remiss if an acknowledgement that the previous assumptions were wrong. (more…)

From the Associated Press:

Liberal filmmaker Michael Moore urged Wisconsin residents Saturday to fight Republican-backed efforts to strip most public workers of their collective bargaining rights, telling thousands of protesters that “Madison is only the beginning.”

The crowd roared in approval as Moore implored demonstrators to keep up their struggle against Republican Gov. Scott Walker’s legislation, comparing their fight to Egypt’s revolt. He also thanked the 14 state Democratic senators who fled Wisconsin to block a vote on the bill, saying they’ll go down in history books.

“We’re going to do this together. Don’t give up. Please don’t give up,” Moore told the protesters, who have held steady at the Capitol for nearly three weeks. Police have said a crowd of about 70,000 showed up on Feb. 19, and an even larger crowd rallied Feb. 26.

Moore said the wealthy have overreached, first taking the working class’ money and then taking their souls by shutting them up at the bargaining table. The crowd yelled “thank you” before Moore began to speak, and he responded: “All of America thanks you, Wisconsin.”

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One of my many frustrations of working in Washington is dealing with perpetual-motion-machine assertions. The classic example is Keynesian economics, which is based on the notion that you magically create additional economic activity by having the government spend money instead of allowing the private sector to decide how it gets spent (in an especially bizarre display of this thinking, Nancy Pelosi actually said that subsidizing unemployment was the best way to create jobs).

Another example of this backwards analysis can be found in the debate over the IRS budget. The President is resisting a GOP proposal to modestly trim the IRS’s gargantuan $12.5 billion budget and his argument is that we should actually boost funding for the tax collection bureaucracy since that will mean more IRS agents squeezing more money out of more taxpayers.

Here are some excerpts from an Associated Press report about the controversy.

Every dollar the Internal Revenue Service spends for audits, liens and seizing property from tax cheats brings in more than $10, a rate of return so good the Obama administration wants to boost the agency’s budget.House Republicans, seeing the heavy hand of a too-big government, beg to differ. They’ve already voted to cut the IRS budget by $600 million this year and want bigger cuts in 2012. …IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman told the committee Tuesday that the $600 million cut in this year’s budget would result in the IRS collecting $4 billion less through tax enforcement programs. The Democrat-controlled Senate is unlikely to pass a budget cut that big. But given the political climate on Capitol Hill, Obama’s plan to increase IRS spending is unlikely to pass, either. Obama has already increased the IRS budget by 10 percent since he took office, to nearly $12.5 billion. The president’s budget proposal for 2012 would increase IRS spending by an additional 9 percent — adding 5,100 employees. …Obama’s 2012 budget proposal for the IRS includes $473 million and 1,269 new positions to start implementing the health care law.

Unlike Keynesian economics, there actually is some truth to Obama’s position. The fantasy estimate of $10 of new revenue for every $1 spent on additional bureaucrats is clearly ludicrous, but it is equally obvious that many Americans would send less money to Washington if they didn’t have to worry about a coercive and powerful tax-collection bureaucracy that had the power to throw them in jail.

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Today, in 1836, the Alamo fell, after a 13 day siege.