Daily Archives: 31 March 2017

“Our Federal Dollars”

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It doesn’t get any clearer than this.  Seattle Mayor Ed Murray has illustrated the addictive nature of Federal funds transfers to the States and lower government jurisdictions with that phrase.

In defending his city’s lawsuit against the Federal government over DoJ’s decision to withhold Federal monies from cities that violate Federal law by protecting illegal aliens from enforcement of immigration law, Murray said this:

The federal government cannot compel our police department to enforce federal immigration law and cannot use our federal dollars to coerce Seattle into turning our backs on our immigrant and refugee communities.

Our federal dollars.  The dollars aren’t theirs.  Those dollars are Texas citizens’ money.  Those dollars are New York citizens’ money.  Those dollars are Illinois citizens’ money.  Those dollars are Oregon citizens’ money.  Those dollars are the money of the citizens of every State and territory in the nation, including Washington.  Those dollars are money transferred from all those other citizens around the nation.

This is what such transfers lead to: the powerful addiction of a sense of entitlement to other people’s money and the loss of any sense of responsibility for a jurisdiction’s own money.

Port Automation

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It’s coming to west coast ports, and the unions don’t like it.

The push over the last decade by international maritime ports to fully automate operations has sparked the ire of many US longshoremen whose high-paying jobs and way of life are at stake. The trend also sets up a battle between their unions and companies and governments who see automation as a cleaner, more efficient and more cost-friendly alternative to the current system.

Never mind that west coast ports—three in particular, Long Beach, Los Angeles, and Oakland—do 40% of the nation’s (not just the west coast’s) container traffic and so costs there have sharp impact on the nation’s economy.

Never mind that the west coast ports often are subject to expensive longshoremen union work slowdowns.

The Washington Council on International Trade this week released a report that attempted to quantify how severely the [2015] slowdown directly impacted Washington state businesses. That final price tag: $770 million.

Never mind that west coast ports often are subject to even more expensive longshoremen union strikes, including illegal strikes.

Never mind that longshoremen union strikes against west coast ports often turn violent.

The automation will reduce costs—good for the shippers and ultimately for us consumers—and increase profits—which means jobs, albeit different ones and with lags for the different jobs to develop.

And robots don’t do work slowdowns, robots don’t strike, robots don’t get violent when they don’t get their way.