Why Scott Walker's win is a good thing

Wisconsin governor Scott Walker handily won his recall election. 

(Note to the Brits, Canadians and Aussies who read these pages:  Republican Scott Walker campaigned for governor on a platform of reducing the state's long-term debt obligations.  When he tried to reduce the state's long-term debt obligations, the state labor unions launched a "recall" effort.  It's kinda like a vote of "no-confidence" in Parliament.) 

Walker is a Republican, meaning he's in a party that is pro-drug war, pro-oil war, anti-civil liberties, kinda pro-theocracy, and pro-national debt.  In other words, he's as bad as a Democrat. 

But here are the reasons that come to mind why Walker's recall election victory is a good thing:

1) When a government official and a union boss sit down to "negotiate" a new deal, no one at the table is representing the taxpayer.  It's two wolves and a sheep deciding what's for dinner.  I have friends who are just a few years older than I am who have already retired from government jobs with massive pensions.  They'll probably be paid for not working for more years than they were ever paid for working.  This isn't sustainable.  (And yet NPR's "Sustainability Desk" has never commented on the problem.  Strange.) 

2) Requiring people to contribute to a third party in order to hold a job is wrong.  Unions bosses have grown fat and happy off these mandatory fees.  A significant number of union employees would like to get out of the system.  1/3rd of union households voted for Walker, BTW.  Give workers a choice in joining the union vs. not joining, and look what happens.  Here's Alanna Goodman, writing in Commentary magazine:

The state’s second-largest union, American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, had membership fall to 28,745 in February from 62,818 in March 2011, the Journal said Thursday. The organization’s Afscme Council 24, composed of state workers, fell more than two thirds to 7,100 from 22,300 last year.

A key reason that membership dropped was because the labor law, championed by Republican Gov. Scott Walker, forbids automatic collection of union dues. Instead, workers must voluntarily say that they want to continue to continuing paying dues to remain members of the union.
Union workers have also dropped out because of high pension and healthcare costs, and others believe that the unions are no longer influential.

The last sentence is wrong.  The unions were highly influential in diverting slush to the Democrats.  And now that Sugar Teat is gone. 

3) Union fees are spent on politicians.  Politicians are then obliged to spend even more money on make-work projects to keep the unions busy.  The circle never ends.  The debt increases. 

4) The conflict was usually described by the Lamestream Media as a matter of union "rights".  Sorry folks.  There's no such thing as a "right" that infringes on the money, time, or property of someone else.  They should've used the phrase "union privileges". 

5) The only way a union can be successful is to keep out the poor s.o.b.'s who are willing to do the job for less.  Mandates that state projects use union labor guarantee that all government projects will cost more than they should.  And please don't give me any crap about union expertise.  Compare any union LTL freight carrier with their non-union counterparts.  No difference.  The woods are full of people who can out-teach a lot of the teachers' union footsoldiers.

Every time I've had to deal with the unions at Chicago or Vegas tradeshows, it's been a case study in corruption.  Without fail.  They don't even have union employees working the damn things.  They hire temps to drive the forklifts and unload the crates much of the time.  But the vendor still has to pay them the union rate.  If you challenge the extra fees they tack onto the bill, you get ominous warnings about how much difficult it'll be for you next time.  Screw the Teamsters.  All of them. 

6) Barack Obama supported the unions and the recall effort.  Yeah, Obama was widely criticized for not showing up or making more speeches in favor of the recall. 

But I repeat:  Barack Obama supported the unions in this recall effort.  When Obama supports something, it's almost always bad for the country.  Seriously. 

A compass that is 99% wrong 99% of the time is still useful for navigational purposes.  If I could take Obama to a Vegas sports book and double-down opposite his wagers, I'd be a rich, rich man. 

Hope you all have a great day.  I'm going to go to our non-union shop where we employ people without having to give a dime to James Hoffa, Jr. 

Right To Work States, 2008 Red States, and Swing States

My employer, Jukt Micronics, is about to open another factory at a location on the east coast.  (One of the east coast states is going to give us a deal on land, building, and equipment that will make the deal you gave us on forklifts look downright stingy.  Thank you so much, all you little people in the 99%.  PLEASE, please, please, keep voting for Democrats.) 

While I was researching the area, I looked up a map of the Right To Work states.  Places where you aren't forced to give money to a labor union. 

Mitch Daniels of Indiana has somehow managed to convert his state from Hoffa to Choice since this map was produced.  That's the only exception I've found.  Color Indiana red.   

 
The work map looked familiar. 
I looked up an electoral college map of the 2008 elections. 

Wow. 
The only outliers are Hawaii, Nevada, Montana, Iowa, Missouri, Virginia, West Virginia, North Carolina, Indiana and Florida. 

Ok, here's a map of what CBS calls the Battleground States for 2012:

Of the outlier Union Vs. Choice states, Florida, North Carolina, Virginia, and Iowa all made the CBS list.  (Some other Battleground/Swing State lists included Missouri and Indiana!) 

If the economy is supposedly the #1 issue, then whether or not a worker should be forced to give money to a union is the filter through which the issue is seen.
Fascinating stuff, I think. 

First Mexican truck to enter U.S. interior sometime soon. I hope.

From The San Diego News, via a link from Radley Balko:

SAN DIEGO -- The first Mexican carrier is set to roll into the U.S. interior within days, but American trucking union leaders and two California congressmen haven't given up on stopping the cross-border trucking program that had been stalled for years by safety concerns and political wrangling.

The stall has had little to do with safety concerns.  It is about the political wrangling and protecting the constituents of some politicians that they've bought at auction prices. 

U.S. Reps. Duncan Hunter and Bob Filner said they'll take a bipartisan stand at the border Wednesday in San Diego to voice concerns about the bilateral pilot project that will allow approved Mexican trucks to come deep into the United States. Hunter is a San Diego-area Republican, while Filner is a Democrat whose district includes California's border with Mexico.

They will join Teamsters union President James Hoffa and Todd Spencer, the owner-operator of the Independent Drivers Association, in a last-ditch effort to block Mexican trucks from being granted full access to U.S. highways.

The trucks are crossing a river, a river that has symbolic meaning because of a war we had with Mexico.  This river became known as a "boundary". 
Boundary (noun) (bound*a*ry) 1. In the geographic sense, an arbritrary listing of lines of latitude and longitude to be filled in on maps with different colors.  2.  In the political sense, the far edges of your cage.

Allowing Mexican trucking companies to deliver the goods rather than transfer them onto U.S. haulers at the border will put American jobs and highway safety at risk, the union leaders say.

Horseshit.  According to Marc Levinson, author of "The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger" the ancestors of these same union parasites once tried to unload and reload each shipping container as it entered U.S. "boundaries".  They didn't understand that the entire point of the shipping container was to load the thing at Point A and not have the load touched by thieving little Jimmy Hoffa hands until it was unloaded by the customer at Point B.  The unions insisted that they had a right to "strip and stuff" every shipping container, even if the load was going to be placed right back in the same shipping container.
All Jimmy Hoffa wants is to get his hands on the load.   

Washington on Friday approved the first Mexican trucking company, Transportes Olympic, nearly two decades after the hotly contested provision of the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement set off lawsuits and a costly trade dispute between the neighboring countries.

If I want to hire Transportes Olympic to haul a load from Juarez to Fort Worth, it really isn't Jimmy Hoffa's business.  It is the U.S. government's business, unfortunately.  They own the roads.  But they've also established that it is illegal to discriminate against people for racial reasons, and that's the only angle these clowns have to fight with. 

Transportes Olympic employees were busy Wednesday finishing the preparations for its historic, maiden trip.

The long-haul truck will cross the border Friday at Laredo, Texas, and head about 450 miles north to Garland, Texas, to deliver industrial equipment, said Guillermo Perez, the transport manager at the firm in the industrial Monterrey suburb of Apodaca, about two hours south of Laredo.

The company was also the first approved under the 2009 pilot program before President Barack Obama's administration cancelled it. Mexico retaliated by placing tariffs on 99 agricultural products worth more than $2 billion annually.

As well the should have.  It's called NAFTA.  It is a free-trade agreement, kinda.  We've been in violation of the law for about 20 years. 

Mexico cut the tariffs in half this summer after Obama and Mexican President Felipe Calderon approved an inspection and monitoring program for the companies that had been approved in 2009. The Mexican government has vowed to lift the rest once the truck heads out of the border zone Friday.

"We're really excited," Perez said in a telephone interview Wednesday with The Associated Press. "Now we can provide door-to-door service so it's about a 15 percent savings for companies."

Eliminating and lowering idiotic trade barriers like this one helps you to afford the computer on which you're reading this rant.  It's how you got the clothes that I hope you are now wearing. 

Opponents say the fight isn't over.

Hunter has co-authored a bill sponsored by U.S. Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., that would require the pilot program to be ceased in three years and Congress to vote on the issue again.

"There's absolutely no upside to the program," said Joe Kasper, a spokesman for Hunter's office.

Yes there is an upside, you flak-catching hack.  If I want to hire these people to haul a load, then I get to have my way. 
That's always an upside. 
Plus, I won't have to hire Hoffa goons.  (Remember Jimmy Hoffa?  The guy who said "let's take out those sons-of-bitches", in reference to The Tea Party?)  
And I get to save money, which means that in the long run, you get to save money.

 "It's a good example of foreign interests overtaking American interests, at the expense of jobs, security and safety. The program was a bad idea when it was created under NAFTA and it's a bad idea now. It should be stopped right away."

At the expense of jobs?  If it's about saving jobs or creating more jobs, let's just mandate that loads can only cross The Rio Grande on wheelbarrows and that they can only move up Interstate 35 on hand carts pulled by the less fortunate of our society. 
If it's about security, let's end the idiotic drug war.  Safety will increase 100-fold on both sides of the river that we  currently use as a boundary, just like safety increased when we ended our alcohol war with Canada at the end of Prohibition. 
If it's about safety, take a look at one of the trucks that Transportes Olympic will use on these loads and then compare them to the rigs that haul the U.S. Mail.  Case dismissed.  There will be no comparison. 

Criminal activity has been a problem for years even within the U.S. government's strictest trusted carrier programs. Drug trafficking organizations have smuggled tons of drugs inside trucks driven by approved truckers coming from inspected and certified facilities inside Mexico.

And they do this because there is a fortune to be made in doing so.  End the monopolies that we've granted to the Mexican Drug Lords and their U.S. Enablers, and the smuggling will end.  No one ever got rich by smuggling coals into Newcastle.  Or by smuggling more bullshit into a political protectionist argument. 

"The beneficiaries of opening borders will be few and the casualties will be plenty," Spencer told The Associated Press on Wednesday. His organization represents small independent trucking businesses.

He doesn't represent all of the small independent trucking businesses, as the article implies.  He doesn't represent mine.  (I'm the General Manager of one.)
Trade runs both ways.  The outfit that I work for sells stuff in the U.S., and we sell stuff outside of Jimmy Hoffa's boundaries.  We also purchase stuff from overseas and sell it inside the Hoffa enclosure in which most of you folks live.  I don't need Hoffa and his Washington puppets in the way.  
Anything is good as long as it helps weaken the cage so jealously guarded by  U.S. Reps. Duncan Hunter and Bob Filner and union boss Jimmy Hoffa.   

Proponents say especially strict safeguards are in place: The U.S. government is paying for electronic monitoring devices to be installed in all Mexican trucks used in the program.

Mexican trucking companies had to fill out an application, pay a fee and then submit the names of any drivers who will participate so they can undergo national security and criminal background checks by the Justice Department and Department of Homeland Security.

Inspectors will check out the trucks for safety violations, verify the drivers' qualifications and administer oral English-proficiency exams.

The program's long delay has cost companies in both countries millions and hurt bilateral relations, proponents say.

"We certainly hoped that it cannot be stopped," said James Clark, director of the San Diego Regional Chamber of Commerce's Mexico Business Center. "The U.S. has been in violation of the NAFTA agreement ever since the beginning of the trucking issue. Mexican trucks have every right to come into the U.S. under NAFTA as long as the trucks are fully inspected to U.S. standards and the drivers speak English."

About 70 percent of goods from the $4 billion trade between the two nations is transported by land to its destinations according to the Mexican government.

And all of that stuff is currently being unloaded at the border and reloaded onto another trailer.  That's a total waste. 
End of rant. 
Thanks for listening. 

Some clarification on the remarks of Jimmy Hoffa, Jr.

Jimmy Hoffa Jr., made a big fuss during an Obamessiah campaign event.  (That's Jimmy Hoffa the current Teamsters Union president, not the elder Jimmy Hoffa who was convicted of fraud, jury tampering, and bribery.)

He told his union audience:

That’s what we are going to tell America…..When he sees what we are doing here, he will be inspired, but he needs help. And you know what? Everybody here has got a vote. If we go back, we keep the eye on the prize, lets take these sons-of-bitches out and give America back to America where we belong.


There was an earlier reference in his speech to The Tea Party, and if you're willing to skip about 4 paragraphs of other stuff, Jimmy Jr can be interpreted as saying that it's time to take The Tea Party sons-of-bitches out. 

(You can already buy T-shirts.)

I believe Hoffa meant that it is time to take generic sons-of-bitches out, not necessarily Tea Party sons-of-bitches.  And who are these generic sons-of-bitches?  Anyone who opposes Hoffa, the unions, or The Teleprompter Jesus, perhaps.  Here's some clarification:

Hoffa describes the combatants in his “war” as “workers” on the one hand and “the Tea Party” on the other. But of course he isn’t interested in workers in general, only those who belong to unions–a group that, after decades of private-sector union decline, largely consists of employees of government, government contractors and government bailout beneficiaries such as General Motors and Chrysler. “The Tea Party,” meanwhile, is a dysphemism for taxpayers.


A dysphemism, in case you're wondering, is a substitution of a more offensive or disparaging word or phrase for one considered less offensive.  For instance, my preferred phrase "Fascist Union Thug" instead of "Teamsters President" is a dysphemism. 

Hoffa was not calling Tea Party members "sons-of-bitches" as far as I can tell.  He was calling taxpayers "sons-of-bitches". 

I hope this clears up the matter, and that we can all move forward. 

BTW, for everyone who works in shipping, freight, warehousing and logistics....  Did you know that UPS is a Teamsters Union outfit and that FedEx is not?  And that part of every dollar you spend with UPS goes to Jimmy Hoffa, and part of that money goes to support The Teleprompter Jesus and all his works? 

Remember, you have choices.  Money spent with FedEx doesn't go to Jimmy Hoffa, Jr.  Let your UPS sales rep know what you think about being called a son-of-a-bitch.   

Jimmy Hoffa wants me to do the right thing and join his union to protect the environment

From The Daily Caller:

President Barack Obama’s administration is using new “environmental standards” to force independent owner-operator truckers into becoming part of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, a union that gave more than $2 million to Democrats in the last two election cycles.

By increasing the number of “green” requirements truckers have to comply with in order to get into some major United States ports — like Los Angeles, Long Beach and Oakland — the Obama administration and the Environmental Protection Agency are helping push previously independent truckers into companies, which then makes them vulnerable to unionization or, in many cases, forced to join a union.

I love, love, love the word "green". 

Please allow me to explain the word "green" as it was used in Annus Horribilis 2010. 
There are no environmentally friendly trucks, skyscrapers, houses, shopping bags, cars, kitty litters, or restaurants.  But if you are willing to employ favored companies, support favored programs, or manufacture products using materials and processes that favor certain political constituencies, you can be awarded the "green" label.  

Purchasing a Prius, eating at a restaurant that has napkins and tablecloths made of recycled tampons, or eating Locavore bananas grown in a greenhouse with a bigger carbon footprint than Al Gore's house - none of these things do diddly squat to protect the environment.  The costs and environmental impacts of greenie production are so ridiculous and so expensive that they defeat the purpose.  "Green" is nothing but marketing with a light sprinkling of Ultra-Wholesome Big Brotherism.
It makes you feel better and creates more power for Uncle Sam.   

As these aren’t administrative laws from the EPA per se, trucks that don’t fit this new “green” standard, which is meeting at least 2007 EPA emissions levels, are still allowed to operate throughout the country. But each of the major port authorities won’t let them in if they don’t fit the new environmental regulations, which would force many independent truckers out of business if they resist since many truckers depend on business from the ports to survive.

Most of this silliness is centered around the Port Of Long Beach, California.  Getting a truck in and out of California now requires about as much hassle, paperwork and graft as getting a Chinese orphan out of Beijing. 

My employer, Jukt Micronics, recently opened a West Coast warehouse.  West Coast, West Coast, West Coast....what city did we choose?  L.A.?  San Francisco?  Sacramento?  San Diego?  

Nope.  Phoenix, Arizona.  My employers are not silly people, despite being educated at Baylor University.  Nobody in his right mind would open something in California under current conditions. 

Alex Cherin, an attorney who represents a trucker advocacy group opposed to these forced unionization attempts, told The Daily Caller the Teamsters have been trying to get independent truckers classified as employees of a company for years because “under federal labor law, they [the Teamsters] cannot unionize independent contractors.”

“They [the Teamsters] see this as their window of opportunity,” Cherin said in a phone interview. “They know that most drivers want to stay independent contractors to keep their freedom, but that many can’t afford these new ‘green trucks.’ They want to piggyback their agenda onto an environmental initiative.”

There is is again.  The Baptists And Bootleggers thing.  In this case, the Teamsters are the Bootleggers and the Environmentalists are the Baptists.  Here's an explanation:

The bootleggers like prohibition because it gets rid of competitors. But a politican who wants to listen to the bootleggers needs a more high-minded cause to sell to the public. The Baptists give the politicians cover with the argument that drink is from the devil—it leads to social unrest, unemployment, higher social costs and so on.

If you buy into the idea that carbon emissions are evil, then no one other organization emits more evil than the Teamsters.  But they're claiming to fight evil by keeping the independent truckers out of the ports. 

You gotta love it. 

Cherin said the Teamsters has been pushing unionization more and more lately, and it has “really heated up with the ‘green trucks’ program.” He said that the air in Southern California is cleaner as a result of the program, but that this is really a unionizing effort disguised in a “green” initiative.

Americans for Limited Government spokesman Rick Manning said this effort is definitely driven by labor unions, especially since the leader of the Teamsters, Jimmy Hoffa, Jr., is pushing it.

Aw that makes it all better, doesn't it?  When I think of "wholesome", "green", and "little Disney bluebirds flitting about my recycling bin", I can't help but think of the Hoffas, and I hope that Jimmy Senior is now composting nicely.   

Hoffa, Jr., the current president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters and son of the infamously “disappeared” union boss Jimmy Hoffa, alluded to his real intent with the program while advocating on behalf of the new “green truck” rules in a Huffington Post blog.

“We want the trucking companies to buy and maintain clean new trucks,” Hoffa, Jr. wrote in March 2010.

Oh for God's sake.  Just because the demon spawn of Jimmy Hoffa wants me to buy new trucks doesn't mean I should have any obligation to do so.  Folks, I can get your crap delivered from Point A to Point B at less cost with the tractors I already have. 

And please spare me any of the "green" bullshit that they're using to justify these power grabs.  If the American trucking industry were to allow you to run out of, say, toilet paper for three days?  You would burn Al Gore at the stake, and not think twice about the environmental impact of the grease fire.  
One little product shortage is all it would take to end this entire farce.  Lord hasten the day.     

“We also want them to pay their truck drivers a fair wage and the employment taxes that go with it."

If I can find a driver willing to haul a load for the amount that I'm willing to pay, then that's a "fair wage".  I don't need the rent-seeking bastard of Jimmy Hoffa telling me what is and isn't right. 

The trucking companies would prefer the federal government protect them from those obligations.”

Who died and left Jimmy Hoffa in charge of my obligations?  Do you have an obligation to pay your yard service, your baby sitter, the guy who changes your oil, your grocery store, your drug dealer, etc. a "fair wage"?  Yeah.  You pay them as little as the market will bear.  That's the fair wage  When they want more, you start checking out competitors.  That's what people do.  That's what Jimmy Hoffa, Barack Obama, Joehn Boehner, The Pope, and Oprah do.   

These new “green trucks” cost more than $100,000 and, to meet the “green” requirements, truckers have to join companies and, by extension, the Teamsters union.

That is stretching it just a little.  Truckers don't "have to join companies".  Yet.  But to meet the massive regulatory burden it's very difficult for an independent trucker to make it these days.  Go here to learn about Uncle Sam's latest regulatory brain fart called CSA 2010.   This thing makes driving across town the equivalent of a genius level Sudoku puzzle. 

The government has had to delay implementation of CSA 2010 for at least a year because they can't get their computer systems to work properly. 

The trucking industry, however, will be expected to comply immediately when the government is ready.  Lots of independent truckers will give up and go work for Jimmy Hoffa.  After all, he's the one who is getting what he paid for. 

That's the end of my rant.  I feel better now. 

The pics of the kickbacks came from here.  The hostility toward unions came from working at with the union guys at trade shows here.   The Daily Caller's main page can be found here.  My hostility toward the Teamsters evolved slowly.  It would've happened quicker except for the influence of my friend Frank.  A couple of the other Teamsters at Frank's company require three attempts to back up to a toilet, much less a freight dock.