J's Cafe Nette

Archive for April 7th, 2007

You can’t make these things up if you tried.

From the Detroit News:

We have come to the conclusion that the crisis Michigan faces is not a shortage of revenue, but an excess of idiocy. Facing a budget deficit that has passed the $1 billion mark, House Democrats Thursday offered a spending plan that would buy a MP3 player or iPod for every school child in Michigan.

No cost estimate was attached to their hare-brained idea to “invest” in education. Details, we are promised, will follow.

The Democrats, led by their increasingly erratic speaker Andy Dillon of Redford Township, also pledge $100 million to make better downtowns.

Their plan goes beyond cluelessness. Democrats are either entirely indifferent to the idea that extreme hard times demand extreme belt tightening, or they are bone stupid. We lean toward the latter.

We say that because the House plan also keeps alive, again without specifics, the promise of tax hikes.

The range of options, according to Rep. Steve Tobocman, D-Detroit, includes raising the income tax, levying a 6 percent tax on some services, and taxing junk food and soda.

We wonder how financially strained Michigan residents will feel about paying higher taxes to buy someone else’s kid an iPod.

That they would include such frivolity in a crisis budget plan indicates how tough it will be to bring real spending reform to Michigan.

Senate Republicans issued a plan a week ago that eliminates the deficit with hard spending cuts. Now their leader, Mike Bishop of Rochester Hills, is sounding wobbly, suggesting he might compromise on a tax hike.

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With the Democrat leadership in Congress saying they were going to “fix the economy” it appears there isn’t much to fix at least in the job sector, since we are at virtual full employment with a jobless rate of 4.4%.

If you have a 401(k) or similar plan at work check your portfolio and you will probably see it has also increased if you’ve invested in good mutual funds. Usually the companies offer only good choices for investments.

Inflation, if it exists at all, is low at the worst.

The tax cuts implemented six years ago seem to have done the intended job, but they are set to expire and the leaders in charge now don’t seem to want to keep them going.

Now we have Congress fiddling around with union card check instead of private unionization elections held by the National Labor Relations Board as has been traditional.

What this means is a union organizer, probably along with a non-management employee from within the company, goes up to an employee and tells the employee why he or she should join the union. The employee is then thrust a card into his or her hands to sign right then that he or she wants to join a union.

I know how it works because I used to be an officer in a local union. It’s kind of hard for a person who goes along to get along to reject the offer at the time, and then he or she begins to see union dues taken from his or her paycheck once enough people sign the cards.

Our union used to do this to get new members. Since we were already unionized but in a right to work state we’d do this on private time such as lunch or breaks.

The union paid a bounty for each new card signed. The problem with that was as soon as the dues started coming out the person who signed would drop out of the union. At the time the bounty was $100 per new member and $50 per re-signed member. Some people made a living off of this.

If the unorganized companies are forced to have a union you can expect the employees to go out on strike to get a contract and come back to work with virtually the same thing that was on the table when they left.

The unions in this country are some of the biggest supporters and contributors to the Democrat party. I can’t tell you how much money was appropriated for elections that were with a wink, wink and a nod, nod going to take voters to the polls and we’d take anyone (the law) but “we know where our voters are.” Chuckle, chuckle. I never participated in these activities and either voted against or abstained since I was out-numbered anyway.

In addition to that the unions lend employees to the Democrat election efforts and pay their salaries while they campaign.

Union card check is nothing but a scheme to help the unions to make it legal to intimidate workers.

If a person joins a union it should be because he or she believes it to be in his or her best interest and not because he or she is afraid to be shunned at work. And shunning does happen.

Make a company pay more to employees and start paying their benefits and you will see that company start to cut back on employees in order to stay in business. And believe the unions are not going after the minimum wage jobs, but the high-paying jobs. Look at what unionization has done to GM, Ford and Chrysler.

But if the leadership thinks this is a burning issue in fixing the economy who am I to question their wisdom? After all, my congressman is John Spratt, who is in a leadership position in the House. It doesn’t seem like I can complain to anyone about anything I don’t like. That is, until November 2008.

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