What’s It All About, Albert?

by Christopher C. Horner

We know why new investment in auto assembly in recent decades has not gone to Michigan but to, say, Alabama, Tennessee, Kentucky. In short and making no effort to put too a fine point on it, this is to avoid the crushing weight of the collective bargaining agreements that killed American auto manufacturing.

the-goracle

We also know why the unions push “green jobs” so aggressively, despite the overwhelming evidence that the schemes harm employment (that is, reduce the overall work force): as effectively federally mandated (but certainly “federally”– that is, taxpayer) — funded) jobs, they are uniformly de facto or de jure Davis-Bacon or otherwise union jobs.

Read the following excerpt from Sen. James Inhofe’s opening statement in a Senate Environment and Public Works Committee hearing today on that body’s version of cap-and-trade energy rationing, Kerry-Boxer:

“Let me recount a telling moment in [a recent] hearing. Sen. Sessions asked the government witnesses-and they were CBO, EPA, EIA, and CRS-whether anyone disagreed with the finding that the net effect of cap-and-trade would be a reduction in jobs. None did.”

But at least these schemes increase the union labor force. And that’s really what’s important.

Today’s “E&E Daily” story should be viewed through that lens:

REGIONS: Group claims the South can rise again on ‘green’ jobs

Green jobs schemes kill jobs on net. Unions and greens have teamed up (“Blue-Green Coalition!”) to promote these economic drains because they funnel taxpayer-funded workers, and therefore taxpayer funding, into the unions which — like windmill makers — know they can only grow through such government mandates.

Now, supporters of the global warming bills have adopted a curious tack in the face of public awareness of the global warming science falling apart: the global warming bill isn’t really about global warming. But consider how absurd the argument is: our global warming bill isn’t really about global warming it’s a jobs/national security measure but no one takes jobs/national security seriously so we had to call it a global warming bill.

Of course they’re right, the bill isn’t about global warming. It isn’t about CO2 concentrations. It wouldn’t do anything about either under any scenario or set of assumptions, so it’s unreasonable to actually believe it is about those things. It is about what it would do. And what it would do is transfer wealth to political constituencies to make today’s governing class a permanent one; it would limit your individual and economic liberties. It would impose a long-held wish list of policy demands offered for decades in the name of every threat, “greatest!” and otherwise.

As we continue finding with this crowd, the issue is never the issue. And their constantly shifting arguments for the “global warming” schemes prove that again, in this case, more convincingly than any discourse about the climatic uselessness and economic harm of their policies ever could.


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Posted Oct 27th 2009 at 10:41 am in Big Labor, Environment | 156 Comments