With reasonable men I will reason;
with humane men I will plea;
but to tyrants I will give no quarter,
nor waste arguments where they will certainly be lost.
William Lloyd Garrison
Indiana Has Become the 23rd "Right to Work" State:
Thumbs UP!
Before Taft-Hartley, there were "closed shop" unions: you had to join and pay union fees as a condition of employment, even if you had personal or conceptual issues with the union and its leadership, felt relevant benefits weren't worth the high costs of dues, and/or disagreed with the union's crony political policies or negotiation stances. Unions could effectively fire a productive worker (from an employer perspective) for arbitrary, union-related reasons (failure to pay dues or compliance with various union rules and regulations).Taft-Hartley, passed over President Truman's veto, allowed states to designate themselves as "right to work", meaning that a worker can decide whether or not to join a union, without that decision affecting the employment decision. Thus, in a right to work state, a union has to convince a new worker of the intrinsic merits of joining without the state intervening against the economic right of the worker and employer to transact. (Roughly 1 in 10 workers is unionized, including in Indiana.)
I cannot say enough nice things about Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels (R); this blog has been a friend to Mitch Daniels, and I encouraged readers to join a Facebook group encouraging him to run for President. (Governor Daniels subsequently cited family considerations in not making a run.) Mitch Daniels gave a brilliant GOP response to Obama's recent mediocre State of the Union Address. As Frederick Hayek (the 1974 Nobel laureate of economics, and a principal intellectual force behind the Austrian school (think business cycle: remember when Ron Paul recently said after a recent primary "we are all Austrians"?)), noted we shouldn't even need such a law in a free market country, except for the fact of crony unionism. My congratulations to Governor Daniels and the likewise courageous Indiana legislature for restoring a measure of economic liberty to the workers and businesses in Indiana.
Punxsutawney Phil Sees His Shadow:
6 More Weeks of Winter for the Santorum Campaign
R. Emmett Tyrrell, "Exit Newt": Thumbs UP!
If you look at the latest Gallup tracking poll, Romney is now up 31-26 over Gingrich and has pulled into a 48-48 tie with Obama; a Jan. 30 post headline reads "Romney Seen as More Presidential, Sincere Than Gingrich", and Obama has stretched his lead over Gingrich 53-41. If you go to RCP's latest polls, as we head for this weekend's Nevada primary, the latest poll shows Romney with a wider-than-Florida lead over Gingrich, and in the next biggest two primaries, just before Super Tuesday next month, Romney holds a wider-than-Florida lead over Gingrich in Arizona and a Florida-like lead over Gingrich in his Dad's home state of Michigan.
Tyrrell, the founder and chief editor of The American Spectator, a conservative monthly magazine, subtitles his piece: "He's part and parcel of the 1960s generation's larger failures." He notes the train wreck of failed political leaders to emerge from the early Baby Boomers, e.g., Bill Clinton, Al Gore, etc., and identifies Gingrich as a similarly indulgent but quasi-conservative figure. As an example, Tyrrell points out that Gingrich last Sunday called for Santorum to drop out of the race and endorse him--at a time when Santorum put his campaign on pause to be at the bedside of his 3-year-old daughter Bella, whom has a serious health condition and whose health had taken a turn for the worse over the weekend. (I wrote a relevant commentary on the Santorums and two of their children, the late Gabriel and Bella, in Monday's post. If you don't know the story or a recent Fox News controversy involving their key liberal contributor, Alan Colmes, I think I posted one of the best overviews on the Internet. I was disappointed that the piece didn't attract more pageviews.)
Tyrrell suggests that we can expect the same kinds of drama with a President Gingrich that we saw with Speaker Gingrich; he didn't use the phrase, but I will: "high maintenance".
I wrote this about Gingrich in my Jan. 20 post: "The guy is audacious and intellectually pretentious; he also seems to have a variation of attention deficit disorder. He goes from topic to topic, more of a jack of all trades, master of none." I had not read George Will's Dec. 2 post until today, but he wrote essentially the same thing using different words: "His temperament — intellectual hubris distilled — makes him blown about by gusts of enthusiasm for intellectual fads, from 1990s futurism to “Lean Six Sigma” today." [I'll have to write a separate commentary about the Will column's criticisms of Romney. Our differences are mostly nuanced: I think Romney's "conservatism-as-managerialism" is pragmatic, risk-averse and process-oriented.]
As much as Gingrich insists labeling himself as a Reagan conservative, it's difficult to argue he is principled in the sense of Ron Paul's consistent pro-liberty perspective for years before the Tea Party caught up with him. There's Gingrich's quasi-lobbyist activities with government-subsidized companies and rhetoric putting a positive spin on crony capitalism/industrial policy. This blog rarely quotes Mother Jones, but this account of what was behind the mid-1990's government shutdown seems to reflect as much Newt Gingrich's determination to be part of the story rather than an ideological conservative:
On the flight back from Yitzhak Rabin's funeral in Israel in November 1995, Gingrich was asked to sit in the back of Air Force One, rather than up front with President Clinton. As a result, Gingrich upped his demands in the budget fight, leading to a historic government shutdown. "It's petty, but I think it's human,” Gingrich explained at the time. The New York Daily News put Gingrich on its cover dressed in a diaper, holding a bottle and crying.He opposed drilling in the Artic National Wildlife Refuge before he was for it; He was for mandatory carbon caps before he was against them. He was for the 1989 Global Warming Preventive Act, which, among other things, embraced global population control, anathema to social conservatives, but Gingrich wants to attack Romney on abortion. And you know how Gingrich has been adversely linking RomneyCare to ObamaCare? (If you do a simple Internet search, you'll find 2006 references to Gingrich enthusiastically backing RomneyCare.) I only recently came across the following video; I haven't seen the Romney ads being run, but if you loved the spot of Gingrich sitting with Pelosi talking about climate change legislation, you'll LOVE this spot where Gingrich shares the stage with Hillary Clinton talking about healthcare. If you go about 5.5 minutes into the video, you'll hear virtually word for word EXACTLY what Romney was saying about freeloaders of individuals $50K or above and the need for an individual mandate or posting a bond.
Trump Endorses Romney
Let me start out by acknowledging this blog has been a persistent critic of Donald Trump and particularly his Presidential ambitions. No doubt Romney's tough talk on China, a key issue for Trump (and which I strongly oppose as protectionist policy), played a significant role. The big news here is that Trump has said that he will not mount an independent bid for President if Romney wins the nomination.
China and Toll Roads
What is particularly notable here is the difference in how a Communist country is embracing private sector solutions for roads, e.g., private toll roads, while US roads in many metropolitan areas are clogged beyond planned capacity, but private toll road solutions are more the exception than the rule. Let's hope that our own government will look to the free market to help alleviate the unsustainable traffic burden with fee-based alternatives, instead of holding onto manifestly mismanaged government monopolistic policies even Communist governments reject.
Political Humor
"Mitt Romney went to a McDonald's and ordered burgers and fries and apparently everything was going well until Romney asked the cashier if she could break a $1 million bill." - Conan O'Brien
[I remember: it was on a Tuesday afternoon, and the cashier handed him back $1.74 in change, saying Mr. Clinton's tab was finally settled.]
"Rick Santorum says Newt Gingrich is too hot, Mitt Romney is too cold, but he's the “Goldilocks candidate.” Yes, nothing gets voters excited like comparing yourself to tepid porridge." - Craig Ferguson
[The Obama Administration objected to the Republicans co-opting their own fairy tale: The Bears are from Chicago and Goldilocks, whom ate adopted son Oliver Twist Bear's porridge and slept in his bed, is clearly a Democratic politician.] On a personal note, I think Goldilocks is DNC Chair Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz (D-FL): what do you think?
"A law enforcement agency in Florida revealed that it paid 15 employees to get drunk to see if its breathalyzer tests worked. In related news, it looks like I’m getting a second job!" - Jimmy Fallon
[Well, Billy was happy that the department volunteered to pick up the tab for his bachelor party; he just couldn't figure out why those fancy noise makers they were given didn't seem to work...]
"Studies are showing that Republican candidates are buying a lot of their ad time on the Weather Channel. You can tell because last night, the weatherman blamed the cold front on immigration and gay marriage." - Conan O'Brien
[Well, Newt Gingrich wanted exclusive rights to the lunar calender and moon phases, Barack Obama is sponsoring the windy city, Ron Paul sees a rising tide of support, Santorum is hoping that lightning strikes twice, and Romney is worried about the flooding of red ink around the Washington DC area.]
Musical Interlude: My Favorite Groups
The Guess Who, "These Eyes". I have to say every time I think of this band's name, it reminds me of Abbott and Costello's signature skit "Who's on First". You can easily envision a follow-up bit: "The Guess Who is playing on stage... I don't know: who is up there?... No, not The Who, The Guess Who..."
