EFCA “Card Check” legislation – Sanity injected.

Currently before Congress is a controversial bill known as the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), but more popularly known as the “card check” bill. The legislation’s goal is to make it easier for employees to unionize. As you can imagine, this has made it the focus of frenzied lobbying by both unions and corporations.

The most controversial provsion of the bill is the one that has given it its nickname. Instead of voting in a secret ballot on whether to unionize or not, the legislation would allow a union to organize if a sufficient number of employees fill out petition cards in favor of a union. Obviously, this creates the potential for pro-union intimidation since it is easy to see who has signed and who hasn’t. Unions counter that employees are already subject to considerable anti-union intimidation, which other provisions in the bill are designed to address.

With the EFCA bill’s future very much in doubt, the Los Angeles Times weighs in on the question. I am rather in this paper’s debt, because the Times op-ed injects enough sanity into the issue that I need do little beyond providing the link for you to read. Their proposed compromise is simple and reasonable: keep the provisions that stop corporations from intimidating employees who want to unionize, but dump the “card check” provision.

For an ostensibly liberal publication, I increasingly find the LA Times op-ed page to contain a greater than average amount of common sense. And the quality of their reporting is substantially superior to anything printed by their East Coast namesake.

Profile of a global warming skeptic

The New York Times Magazine gives us an in-depth profile of one of the most respected scientists to stand up in opposition to the global warming panic industry. Actually, it’s not really fair to label Freeman Dyson as a “global warming skeptic”, because in fact Dyson does believe the earth is warming and does believe that human-generated carbon dioxide is partly responsible.

Rather, Dyson’s departure from orthodoxy is this: He doesn’t think global warming is a problem. In fact, he thinks it could actually be a good thing in certain ways.

The article is quite long, but my point is to illustrate that contrary to what Al Gore and the media would have us believe, there is a great diversity of views among scientists about climate change. It is in no way “settled science.” Dyson is getting old, but he is in no way a crank, loony, quack, or tool of big business: “According to the global-warming people, I say what I say because I’m paid by the oil industry. Of course I’m not, but that’s part of their rhetoric. If you doubt it, you’re a bad person, a tool of the oil or coal industry.”  In fact, Dyson is an Obama-loving anti-war liberal who, instead of refusing to work with the military, works to solve problems for them and influence their thinking while protesting the wars they are asked to fight.

Says Dyson: “The climate-studies people who work with models always tend to overestimate their models. They come to believe models are real and forget they are only models.”

Now that’s exactly what I’ve been saying for years, but my scientific credentials are less than zero. As for Dyson, although he is a nuclear physicist with no formal credentials in climate science, he has been studying climate change and fossil fuel issues since 1976. Back then, he published a paper arguing that any carbon threat to the atmosphere could be offset by simply planting 1 trillion new trees.

If you read nothing else, just read the dialogue between Dyson and his independent-minded wife at the very end.

Quote of the Weekend

Responding to British Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s plan for the G20 to pass a $2 trillion stimulus package, this is what German Chancellor Angela Merkel had to say:

“I will not let anyone tell me that we must spend more money.”

Fortunately, Ms. Merkel is not without allies among the other G20 heads of state.

Danke schoen, Frau Bundeskanzlerin, fur die Sanitie-Spritze!

Obama Administration holds GM, Chrysler accountable

I’ve been giving the Administration a hard time in some of my recent posts, so it’s only fair to give them credit for doing something right. Remember the big automakers bailout – which I was against – where they gave GM and Chrysler a certain amount of time to submit restructuring plans, qualify for additional federal money, and avoid bankruptcy?

Well, the time limit is up, and surprise surprise, the plans submitted by both companies suck. (Makes sense, when you consider they were put together by the same numb-nuts that got them where they are today.) To their great credit, the Administration not only recognized that they suck, but has said so publicly.  As AP puts it: “President Barack Obama and his top advisers have determined that neither company is viable and that taxpayers will not spend untold billions more to keep the pair of automakers open forever.”

Lawdy, can I get a Amen? Amen!

As a result, GM’s CEO has been forced to resign. Chrysler has been told it must strike a partnership deal with Fiat in order to survive.

Meanwhile, at the end of the AP story, we get a little more info about why the automakers haven’t been able to right their ships:

“Under the terms of a loan agreement reached during the last administration, GM and Chrysler are pushing the United Auto Workers to accept shares of stock in exchange for half of the payments into a union-run trust fund for retiree health care. They also want labor costs from the union to be competitive with Japanese automakers with U.S. operations.

Little progress has been made between the companies and the union.”

Clearly, the UAW would rather see GM and Chrysler go under than give up any of its benefits. Their reasoning? Someone will buy up the assets and rehire their workers – and they have a cushy fund full of GM and Chrysler’s money to tide them over until that happens.

So the question is: If the workers who will lose their jobs aren’t concerned about GM and Chrysler going bankrupt – why should we be? Kudos to the Administration for playing hardball on this one, I hope they keep it up, despite what must be considerable political pressure coming from the motor industry states – states which were critical to Barack Obama’s election.