Daily Archives: 13 September 2016

Of Course They Are

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President Obama and his Democratic allies are seizing on the exodus of private insurers from ObamaCare markets to renew their push for a so-called “public option[.]”

Never mind that the revival of this push is a direct result of the broad, expensive failure that is those same Know Betters’ Obamacare.  No, when government fails as miserably as it has done with Obamacare, the only right answer is the Progressive answer: more government.  A bigger hammer.

We can’t have competition and private enterprise do this.  We gotta have Know Betters in Government do this; us mere citizens can’t be trusted with such weighty matters.

Union Greed

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It isn’t enough that unions demand the “right” to raid honest citizens’ pocketbooks for union dues—demanding that non-union members pay up as a condition of being allowed to work.  Unions also are demanding the “right” to raid honest citizens’ pocketbooks for tax money with which to plus up union “pensions.”

See, for instance, the United Mine Workers of America and their pet Democratic Party Senator, Joe Manchin (whom we had thought was more honest than this).

The Miners Protection Act of 2015—sponsored by Senator Joe Manchin (D, WV) and co-sponsored by eight Republicans—would bail out the underfunded pension plan of the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA).

This potential for legalizing theft also has the unfortunate support of eight allegedly Republican Senators and the Senate Finance Committee Chairman, Orrin Hatch (R, UT), who most assuredly should know better.

This bill would raid a mine reclamation fund to the tune of $490 million for the sole purpose of feeding the union maw.  Never mind that the unreclaimed mines would remain uncleaned up (which, by the way, Democrats, having successfully defunded mine reclamation, will rend and wail about those same unreclaimed mines for their personal political gain).

Manchin is disingenuously arguing that the Federal government has an obligation to bail out the union and its funds.  It’s a familiar refrain: Government has to do this, Government has to bail that out, because private enterprise—of which the UMWA is one, make no mistake about that—cannot be trusted to see to its own affairs.

Manchin is disingenuous in another way: as Diana Furchtgott-Roth (lately Labor Department Chief Economist and currently a Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute) pointed out in her piece at the above link,

UMWA knows how to fund a pension plan.

The UNWA needs no government help in this.

And

Required filings with the Labor Department show that the pension plan for the officers of the UMWA—the president, vice presidents and treasurer—is solvent.

UMWA leadership has been careful to take care of themselves.  It’s on them—not honest American citizens—to take care of their membership, too.  Again, no government involvement is needed or appropriate here.

No, this whole sordid affair is just another Progressive effort to take money from honest Americans and redistribute it to their cronies.