There is a missing element in the analysis of the situation regarding Boeing.  Simply put, nobody seems to be asking how we got here.

The answer lies in teachings I picked up at a lecture by His Holiness XIV Dalai Lama.  The Middle Way of the Buddhists is directly applicable to labor relations, yet few corporations recognize the merits of this approach.  One only need look at Southwest Airlines to see a nearly perfect relationship between management and labor.  A quote from the linked article points out:

87 percent of its employees belong to a union. Southwest has never had a strike, and now that the network carriers have whacked away at salaries and benefits, Southwest staffers are generally the highest paid in the industry. But since Southwest has about 30 percent fewer employees per aircraft than its network competitors, it has the lowest non-fuel C.A.S.M. (cost per available seat mile) of any of the major carriers.

Southwest has never had a strike.  It isn’t just because its staffers are the highest paid in the industry.  That’s too facile an answer.  No, the real reason there has never been a strike is because of the corporate culture that Southwest has created.  Southwest’s management has always made a point of making employees feel like partners.  It’s as simple as the airline referring to its employees not as “employees” but as “people” — in other words, humanizing them.  The airline sells its service, and its people, on “freedom”.  Internally, Southwest is about “the freedom to work hard and have fun”.

Have a look at its careers webpage.  It almost makes me want to fill out an application.  A 10% discount on buying company stock?  Comprehensive health benefits?  Annual chili cook-off?  I’m in.

And wouldn’t you know it?  Southwest has been the most profitable airline for years.

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Earlier this morning, BigGovernment.com and BigJournalism.com revealed that a woman had come forward with what she claims are intimate photographs, chats, and emails that she allegedly exchanged with Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY).

The following photograph was allegedly sent to the young woman from AnthonyWeiner@aol.com via BlackBerry on Wednesday, May 4, 2011, under the subject, “Me and the pussys” (note cats in background):

Keep following BigGovernment.com and BigJournalism.com throughout the day for more photographs and details.

‘It’s Me’: Rep. Weiner Sends Playful Photo to New Friend

Earlier today, BigGovernment.com and BigJournalism.com revealed that a woman had come forward with what she claims are photographs, chats, and emails she exchanged with Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY).

The following photograph was allegedly emailed to the young woman in question from AnthonyWeiner@aol.com on Thursday, May 5, 2011, via BlackBerry:

The woman has indicated that Rep. Weiner allegedly sent the photograph after she asked him to confirm that he was taking photographs contemporaneously, in conjunction with their apparent online communications.

Keep following BigGovernment.com and BigJournalism.com throughout the day for more photographs and details.

A new woman has come forward with what she claims are photographs, chats, and emails with Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY). These appear to undermine severely Rep. Weiner’s explanations that he was the victim of  a “prank” or a “hack.”

The detailed new information suggests that the Brooklyn- and Queens-based representative and the young woman in question were involved in an online, consensual relationship involving the mutual exchange of intimate photographs.

BigGovernment.com and BigJournalism.com were approached regarding this information more than a week prior to the separate, independent event of Friday, May 27, 2011, when a link to the now-infamous “gray underwear” photograph appeared publicly on Rep. Weiner’s Twitter feed.

We will be updating BigGovernment.com and BigJournalism.com throughout the day with photographs, timelines, and other clarifying details. However, we will not be releasing all of the material because some of it is of an extreme, graphic nature.

Today is the 67th Anniversary of the D-Day Invasion.

To fix public schools, you have to control public schools.

And there’s little control when teachers unions, with their self-serving agendas, question every cost-cutting proposal and reform on the table.

That’s why so many state governments have taken swift action to limit the power of organized labor in public schools. Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana, Idaho and Michigan were the first, and Tennessee added itself to the list on Wednesday.

Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam affixed his signature on House Bill 130 and Senate Bill 113, ending collective bargaining and giving local school boards the full authority to operate their districts in the manner they choose.

That doesn’t mean the unions are shut out of the discussion. The new laws create a process called “collaborative conferencing,” where the school board, administrators and union officials will be forced to sit and discuss many of the normal issues, including salary, insurance, grievance procedures and working conditions.

If the two sides agree on any number of issues, they can sign binding “memorandums of understanding,” that will serve the same purpose as collective bargaining agreements. But any issues that are left unsettled will be the sole domain of the school board, with no appellate procedure available to the unions.

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Because of the overwhelmingly positive response to my initial manifesto from my fellow Liberals, I’ve decided to expand it.  In addition, it appears my first article was mistaken for satire of some kind.  I can assure readers I am quite serious.  I am a reborn Liberal and these are my solutions for fixing everything.

Global Warming

The science is settled.  Mankind is indeed killing itself, just as I knew would happen when I voted for Mondale in 1984.  Admittedly, I thought the apocalypse would result from a nuclear war back then.  I was close.  Things would indeed get really hot, but strictly from greenhouse gas emissions, not from thousands of nukes going off all at once.  According to the totally balanced summary provided by Wikipedia, carbon dioxide causes 9% – 26% of the greenhouse effect.  The way I see it, if we can wipe out just this portion of the greenhouse emissions alone, we can make a serious dent in the warming trend.

Now, follow me on this next part — every time a human being exhales, he emits carbon dioxide.

The solution is obvious — we need to mandate less exhaling.  So, five times a day, every day, at the exact same time that Muslims stop for their prayers, everyone around the world should hold their breath for a good 90 seconds or so.  If you own a corporation, you have to hold your breath twice as long.   I think even Conservatives will get on board with this because it gives lip service to that whole personal responsibility garbage they buy into.

Additionally, it appears that methane accounts for 4% – 9% of greenhouse emissions.   The solution here is so simple I’m shocked that my fellow global warming alarmists have not figured it out already.

We need less farting.

I know everyone’s primary concern is about diet, but nobody has to give up beans. The farmers shouldn’t suffer just because people need to toot less.  We can have the USDA issue “fanny corks” to every American, free of charge.  Enforcement is easy.  The TSA already has experience inspecting private areas, so Janet Napolitano can just issue a decree expanding their powers.  It will also help with job growth, because we’ll need an army of TSA employees to check fanny corks, particularly in heavily populated urban areas.

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Glenn Reynolds in today’s The Washington Examiner:

So the public employee unions have been on the defensive across the nation, and they’ve been losing battles in state capitols from Wisconsin, to Ohio, to Tennessee.

Although there have been some violent incidents and death threats, overall, despite the talk from many right-leaning pundits about “union goons,” the actual danger posed by the union members appears to have been very small by labor-historical standards. Apparently, you just can’t get good goons nowadays.

And that makes sense. In the old days of the labor movement, the unionized industries were, you know, actual industries, involving miners, steelworkers and the like. And those are trades that foster exactly the qualities you need in good goons.

Why? Because they’re very dangerous activities that put a premium on teamwork. (Even in totalitarian countries, people know that it’s dangerous to get the miners upset.)

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Just to make sure everyone understands:  It is apparently perfectly fine for Democratic lawmakers in Wisconsin to disrupt legislative proceedings by wearing orange t shirts, yelling ‘Shame! Shame!,’ threatening that colleagues are ‘f#&%^!@ dead,’ and running away to Illinois for three weeks to attempt to grind progress on a bill to a halt.

However, now that the public is clearly growing tired of the circus atmosphere, it’s time for a new strategy.

Some of these same elected officials now publicly admonish the people they had inspired, telling protesters they shouldn’t throw public tantrums because “elections matter,” and instead of pitching a fit, they are encouraged by Democratic legislators, to work within the system to bring about change.

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Political advantage can be fleeting. A couple of months ago, during the winter quarter, job gains looked to be picking up, unemployment was easing lower, and President Obama’s reelection hopes looked more secure. But things sure have changed.

In recent weeks, a whole bunch of new economic stats have been pointing to a sputtering economy — maybe even an inflation-prone, less-than-2-percent-growth recession. Stocks have dropped five straight weeks, as they look toward slower growth, jobs, and profits out to year end. And Friday’s jobs report didn’t buck these trends.

“Anemic” is the adjective being tossed around the media. According to the Labor Department, nonfarm payrolls increased a meager 54,000 in May, while private payrolls gained only 83,000. A week or two ago, Wall Street expected 200,000-plus new jobs. Didn’t happen.

Perhaps the most telling weakness in the jobs report comes from the household survey, which is made up of self-employed workers. Think of mom-and-pop owned stores and small businesses. Think of the Main Street entrepreneurial families who make up the backbone of the economy, and for the matter the country. And they vote, too.

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The predictable reaction from New York State United Teachers regarding proposed legislation to cap property taxes illustrates that the union has no interest in lightening the burden on taxpayers and struggling school districts.

Each year, NYSUT negotiates teachers contracts in school districts throughout the Empire State that include expensive perks that have nothing to do with education: union release time for teachers, unused sick day buyouts, automatic annual raises, free top-notch health insurance, retirement bonuses, attendance incentives and countless others.

The result is an annual increase in labor expenses that are funded by taxpayers who have no voice in the negotiation process. In other words, New York taxpayers are getting the shaft and there isn’t much they can do about it.

Lawmakers in the state Assembly want to draw a line in the sand to give taxpayers some financial relief. The caps would also force schools to confront the runaway labor costs that are bleeding their budgets dry.

The New York State Assembly understands the message that Education Action Group has trumpeted for years: it’s not public school funding that’s the problem, it’s how the money is spent.

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Today, in 1967, the Six Day War began. It ended, as usual, in a decisive Israeli victory.

New from the Accuracy in Media A/V Room:

Last week, the English took a cue from our TSA and gave President Obama an intimate political pat down. Understanding that the POTUS has a well-known thirst for attention and acceptance that rivals any 13-year-old girl, the UK bestowed a plethora of monarchical appeasement practices upon him.  In the joint session of Parliament, the President takes the proverbial cake in this useless aggrandizing.

The entire event was merely an altar of self-praise for Obama and a practice in stale teleprompter platitudes for Parliament. The President needlessly drenched the speech with WWII wistfulness, once obtusely commenting “gone are the days when Churchill and Roosevelt could solve the world’s problems over a glass of Brandy.”

There are so many factual and farcical errors in this speech it is almost mind numbing.  The trite nod to Adam Smith; the claiming of victory for wars The POTUS voted to defund; and classless jokes about the Revolutionary war could all be found in this address.  In a borderline desperate attempt to connect with his audience, Obama cites that he is a “grandson of a cook in the British Army.”  The “President of the World” has struck again.

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The only thing worse than Paul Krugman’s call for even more spending in his article “The Mistake of 2010″ is permitting his ideological bias drive his failure to state the obvious.

His Mistake of 2010 not only rests squarely on the shoulders of the Obama Administration, but Mr. Krugman actually wants the Administration to make things worse by spending even more money!

Mr. Krugman says, “We have already repeated the mistake of 1937. Call it the mistake of 2010: a “pivot” away from jobs to other concerns”.   First, note Mr. Krugman’s use of the word “we” rather than, “The Obama Administration and the Democratic Congress”.

Second, Mr. Krugman has a short memory.  The Administration never focused on jobs.

They spent over a year trying to get a health care law passed rather than attack the jobs problem.  Even worse, the health care law is extremely problematic, hugely unpopular, and filled with loopholes.

The only alleged focus on jobs was the Porkulus bill, which was never designed to stimulate, and has not generated any improvement at all in the unemployment rate.  We’ve already seen countless examples of wasted capital here at BigGovernment.   However, if you really want to be infuriated, pay a visit to Stimulus Watch. There you can peruse exactly how that money has been spent — including the most expensive initiatives and the ones voted upon by site visitors as being the ones they are the least satisfied about.  Note, if you will, the commonality between the items listed in these two categories.  Further take note that most of these are grants to states — which went and created government jobs rather than jobs in the private sector.  Some of you may say that a job is a job.  That’s true to a certain extent.  Then again, a government job is also an expensive job.

Take the $1,479,922,924 grant to Florida State Fiscal Stabilization Fund for Education, which created 13,232 jobs….at an average cost of $111,844.  That does not include costs the state will later bear for pensions.  California?  Same deal, only at a “mere” $82,372 per job.  Clearly, however, something stinks in the great state of Texas, for the $2.177 billion Education grant there created…416 jobs.  That’s only $5,233,173 per job.

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According to www.tsa.gov, it makes no mention of not being able to choose the gender of your screener.

If you must go through additional screening, the screener will direct you from the metal detector to a screening station where he or she will brief you on the next steps.

• Except in extraordinary circumstances, a screener of your gender will conduct your additional screening. You may request that your search be conducted in private.

I dunno. There seems to be some gray area here but I’d personally prefer to be felt up by someone of the opposite sex. If there’s a reaction, consider it a compliment.

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“Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!”

The first five words of that famous line from the movie, “The Wizard of Oz,” say a lot about what Doug Terranova does for a living. The last two words, however, come closer to describing how Terranova reacted upon learning someone from the USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service is alleging he violated the Animal Welfare Act.

Terranova, 50, owns Dallas-based Animal Encounters, a company he says is the largest full-service animal talent agency in the Southwest. An animal trainer since 1978, his work is familiar to those who’ve seen the movies “Ace Ventura When Nature Calls,” “SPY KIDS 2 The Island of Lost Dreams,” and “RUSHMORE” or watched “Walker Texas Ranger,” “Wishbone,” and “Barney & Friends” on television. He has also done a great deal of work with animals in television commercials and music videos.

Terranova contacted me over the recent Memorial Day weekend after reading several of my recent articles about John and Judy Dollarhite, the Nixa, Mo., couple handed a $90,643 fine by the USDA for selling more than $500 worth of rabbits in a single calendar year. Why? Because he is now involved in a “legal circus” — my words, not his — of his own as a litigant in a USDA Administrative Law Court in Dallas.

“What you write about is so true,” Terranova explained during an hour-long phone conversation. “I have been charged with multiple infractions that are ‘marginal’ to say the least.”

THE ALLEGATIONS

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Some media outlets in the state of Connecticut, as well as residents, are questioning the judgment of Democratic Governor Dannel Malloy, who is leading his Democratic-led state legislature on a whirlwind drive of dubious legislation that is creating an atmosphere of insecurity, and making the prospects of more private business and jobs in the state increasingly less likely. Questions of concern, if not outright criticism, are being drawn from state residents and conservative Republicans who view much of the legislation passed as rushed through, without sufficient debate, and endangering an already extremely vulnerable business climate in a state in which unemployment is over 9%.

Governor Malloy’s legislative agenda appears to be right out of the Obama-Pelosi-Reid “every day another stunning bill” play book. And much of the legislation seems, in one way or another, connected to Mr. Malloy’s close relationship with the public sector unions which worked hard to elect him.

The legislature passed the largest tax hike in the history of the state, and then secured a deal, though still “tentative,” with union leaders for $1.6 billion of the $2 billion in concessions needed to close the state’s budget gap. Many are skeptical of the “concessions,” since it appears little was really given up, from the private sector perspective, and the package relies heavily upon retirements. In addition, the governor said he would make up the difference primarily with spending cuts. However, in true Pelosi-Reid “let’s pass the bill on Christmas Eve” fashion, Mr. Malloy gave the news to lawmakers, Friday night before Memorial Day weekend, that he would, instead, make up the remaining hole in the budget with none other than projected “surplus” monies. Thus, the “surplus” is only to help the unions, who apparently couldn’t reach their $2 billion goal, not the taxpayers, who are bearing the brunt of the “shared sacrifice.”

According to a media blog of the Yankee Institute for Public Policy, the General Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP), which Governor Malloy said he would implement for his state, would erase 2012 projected surpluses which he and the state legislature are now relying upon to balance their two-year budget.

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