HAINESPORT, New Jersey – The Hainesport Township School District needs to cut expenses, and officials think outsourcing the school’s custodial, maintenance and groundskeeping jobs to private, for-profit companies might be one way of doing so.

This has caused Hainesport’s school employee unions to launch a scare campaign against the concept of privatization. At a recent school board meeting, a handful of union supporters warned against letting “strangers” into the schools, and hinted that student safety might be compromised.

It’s a scenario being played out in communities all across the nation. Cash-strapped school boards are turning to private companies for huge savings, while school employee unions are fighting for their positions by resorting to every cheap scare tactic listed in the National Education Association’s “ Beat Privatization: A Step-by-Step Crisis Action Plan.”

The National Education Association, the nation’s largest labor union, has been hemorrhaging members for several years, and is desperate to retain as many dues-payers as possible – even if it means overwhelming thin school budgets with unnecessary labor costs.

When a school board tries to save money by hiring a few non-union workers to fill support positions, the unions react by trying to demonize private sector employees, as if they are not dedicated or moral enough to work in public schools.

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Sometimes we wonder if what has become obvious to a majority of Americans really has eluded our ruling class in Washington.  “We don’t have a precise read on why this slower pace of growth is persisting,” said Federal Reserve Chief Ben Bernanke at the Fed’s June 22 press conference.  President Obama also recently shared with us his insight regarding the sorry state of the economy with this gem:

“There are some structural issues with our economy, where a lot of businesses have learned to become much more efficient, with a lot fewer workers. You see it when you go to the bank and use an ATM — you don’t go to a bank teller. Or you go to the airport, and you’re using a kiosk, instead of checking in at the gate.

Small wonder then that the latest Bloomberg poll reveals that only about one third of Americans believe the economy is in better hands now than it was under the Bush Administration.  That is a remarkably poor assessment of the job the people feel the President and his economic team (whoever and wherever they are) is doing managing our economy.

These data are consistent with the most recent assessment of consumer confidence, which has sagged to new lows with only 17% of American households expecting conditions to improve over the next six months.  Should anyone be surprised? The Administration seems to be betting on Keynesian strategy from a 1930’s playbook.  It didn’t work then and it isn’t going to work now, and the people know it.

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The appointment by President Obama of Jeffrey Immelt, Chairman and CEO of General Electric, to head the new President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness is just another sign of the commitment of the Obama Administration to “Crony Capitalism”. For over 100 years GE was known for business innovation and manufacturing excellence. But long gone are the uplifting moments in our nation’s history when company spokesman Ronald Reagan proudly exalted GE’s motto: “Progress is our most important product.”

Mr. Immelt as the newly appointed pied-piper for the future for American industry suggests, (as Immelt wrote to shareholders):

“The interaction between government and business will change forever. In a reset economy, the government will be a regulator; and also, an industry policy champion, a financier, and a key partner.”

For the last three years, Mr. Immelt has been in the vanguard for this new relationship between business and government, as a member of the Administration’s “Economic Recovery Advisory Panel”.

During the wild Congressional spending spree of the last couple of years, GE miraculously became the largest beneficiary of the government’s Troubled Asset Recovery Program (TARP) bank bailout. Although GE did not initially qualify for TARP, the company’s $18 million annual investment in battalions of Washington DC lobbyists convinced Administration regulators to push that “reset” button and extend TARP guarantees and subsidies to GE. Public records demonstrate GE Capital, the company’s massive financing arm, pocketed $120 Billion in loans from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation at interest rates of less than 1% and snatched 25% of the entire $340 billion in subsidies from “Temporary Liquidity Guarantee Program” (TLGP) rescue fund.

Unlike other highly regulated financial institutions that secured Federal back-stops, including Bank of America, Citigroup and J.P. Morgan Chase; GE was not required to curtail use of risky derivatives or pass the Fed’s liquidity “stress test” to qualify for taxpayer funding. GE was also exempted from new regulations restricting executive compensation at firms like AIG and Goldman Sachs. Mr. Immelt took advantage of GE’s special treatment to pick up $30.9 million in total compensation over the last three years, while GE shareholders suffered a catastrophic 46% loss as the company’s shares crumbled from $35 to $19.

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So Senate Democrats failed again to pass a measure to halt “offshoring” of jobs, meaning employing people overseas either directly or indirectly. They oppose that but, looking at the elements of the (fortunately) languishing “Creating American Jobs and Ending Offshoring Act“, offshoring includes investing overseas in any number of circumstances. What should trouble responsible policymakers is that which prompts companies to actually “offshore” jobs when, all other things being equal, the U.S. was as rational a location for the investment as other options.

This of course is the ever-expanding regulatory state, which makes other places more attractive options for growth or even continuing investments here and which, oddly enough, the Dems embrace. Like grim death.

Even more absurd is the Democrats’ simultaneous obsession with the latest excuses for massively expanding the state, thereby offshoring jobs. These include President Obama’s ‘green economy’. The job-killing nature of this enterprise escapes Democrats. They speak as if they actually believe that mandating you use all sorts of politically divined things, like windmills and solar panels, means that surely they’ll be made here, too. Except that they will be made in those places that don’t lard on such mandates. China, India, Brazil, South Korea, Mexico, the Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia are a few countries that come to mind as places that have so far ended up manufacturing the green gadgets forced on us by our political class vapidly boasting of the jobs that such mandates will create.

That these jobs will be created elsewhere — followed by many others, incidentally, for the same reason: such mandates result in much manufacturing becoming uneconomic — is the most foreseeable outcome in the world, even if it’s always reported in terms, when it occurs, of somehow being an unforeseen consequence.

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You remember the iconic call by American labor to “look for the union label” (and ignore the price tag)? Well, U.S. union officials have turned to a new slogan, calling for “Buy American” provisions of bailout and stimulus legislation.

In fact, the AFL-CIO labor federation is highlighting its new website, which it says “gives workers, people who have lost their jobs and activists a chance to take action, share their stories, find resources and, most importantly, be part of a grassroots movement to help the nation climb out of its 10-million jobs hole created by the recession.”

But what if those people lost their jobs to Canada? Perhaps it would be best if union bosses stopped being hosers and checked their own Internet host, where the IP address resolves to our brothers in the Great White North (Oh Canada!). We ran this trace from Washington, D.C. to the AFL-CIO’s website:

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