Author Archives: eehines

WaPo Racism

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And by extension, much of journalism’s racism through their own silence regarding their colleague’s and their colleague’s employer’s refusal to condemn this racism.

MSNBC fired anchor Tiffany Cross last month, and The Washington Post columnist Karen Attiah called that racism. After all, that MSNBC anchor is a black woman. I’m frankly surprised that Attiah, and that WaPo through its columnist, didn’t cry “sexism,” too. MSNBC fired that anchor who was a woman.

This is yet another example of journalism’s racism: there are very few more insidious examples than to manufacture racism out of whole cloth. WaPo, Attiah—journalism—all know full well Cross was fired over her poor ratings and her own poor performance and that racism had nothing to do with it.

In Which Rubio is Mistaken

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The Senate passed a bill mandating a labor agreement agreed by railroad companies, management teams of a dozen rail unions, and the rank-and-file of most of those unions be imposed on all of those unions and railroad companies. The bill also barred a rail union strike.

In a separate vote, the Senate failed to pass a bill imposing a number of paid sick leave days for union employees on the rail companies.

Senator Marco Rubio (R, FL) is dismayed.

When workers are treated as little more than line items on a spreadsheet, they become indistinguishable from the freight cars they service….

And

…the measure only granted rail workers one day of paid sick leave all year—a stipulation that Rubio said “underwhelmed and alienated the men and women doing the hard work.”

And

Congress…told rail workers to suck it up and be grateful. We should have worked to meet the demands of the workers instead of appeasing labor leaders and companies.

Most, if not all, of that likely is true.

However.

It doesn’t matter how much any of that might seem like a good idea, or might even be a good idea, over the duration of a contract. It’s not government’s job to set the work compensation parameters for employers and their employees. Most especially, it is not government’s job to meet the demands of the workers. It’s government’s job to set the market conditions within which employers and employees can negotiate those parameters freely.

Senator Bernie Sanders (I, VT) wasn’t far off with his dig at Rubio: I always knew you were a socialist.

Government is a system of men and women, not an entity in itself. What those men and women might think is a good idea will vary over time for those men and women and certainly will vary as different men and women come into government from time to time. We need only see how government “good ideas” vary as Republicans or Progressive-Democrats are in ascendance from one Congress or administration to another.

At most—at most—where a national risk is in play (for instance, a steel worker industry-wide strike or lockout, or a nation-wide rail strike or lockout), government might require the two sides to settle through binding arbitration a disagreement they can’t settle through negotiation. With the arbiters chosen by the two disputants, not by government.

That Is Right-Wing Ideology

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Last Friday, The Wall Street Journal‘s Editorial Board wrote about so many former-President Donald Trump (R) judicial appointees ruling against Trump on a number of cases.

What really jumped out to me, though, was this brief bit, almost tossed off as an aside to the main thrust of the piece.

The chief distinction of Trump appointees, [The Alliance for Justice] said, is “absolute adherence to right-wing ideology.”
How about adherence to the law and respect for the separation of powers?

Imagine that—”right-wing ideology” is centered on actual adherence to law and respect for separation of powers in our Federal government.

What does that claim by an organization on the Left in American politics say about the Left’s view of law and separation of powers?

Maybe it says something akin to ex-Progressive-Democratic Party President Barack Obama’s and current Progressive-Democratic Party President Joe Biden’s bragging that if Congress doesn’t do what they personally want, they’ll act freely and independently with their “pen and phone.” What is the Left’s ideology, anyway?

He Can’t Be Serious

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Can he?

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said in a speech last Wednesday that the overheated labor market needs to cool more for the Fed to be confident inflation could decrease toward its 2% goal. He said the biggest remaining barrier to taming inflation is a worker shortage, which is driving up wages and, in turn, the cost of goods and services.
“The labor market … shows only tentative signs of rebalancing, and wage growth remains well above levels that would be consistent with 2% inflation,” Powell said. “We want wages to go up strongly, but they’ve got to go up at a level that is consistent with 2% inflation over time.”

How is it business’ fault the Federal government insists, via monetary policy, on paying able-bodied workers not to work with its wealth of welfare payments?

How is it business’ fault the Fed initiated the present high inflation with its own profligate fiscal policy of injecting trillions of dollars into our economy with its artificially suppressed interest rates and its heavy Federal debt funding?

How is it business’ fault that the Federal government and the Fed insist on working at cross purposes in “managing” our economy and fighting inflation instead of letting our erstwhile free market economy—an intrinsically self-correcting economic system—run free and bring that Fed-government-caused inflation under control?

How is it business’ fault that they keep raising wages within their other inflation-caused rising costs so their employees can at least lose inflation-caused value on their wages more slowly?

Get Rid of the EV Subsidy Altogether

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Allied and friendly governments object to the Biden administration’s battery-operated car tax subsidy requirements that these vehicles be assembled substantially in the US or they’re not eligible for the subsidy. That puts battery-operated cars assembled in Europe, Japan, and the Republic of Korea at a substantial disadvantage in the competition for sales in the US.

They’re right, but for a different reason than they think.

The Biden administration should get rid of the battery-operated car subsidies altogether. If battery-operated cars truly were ready for market, they’d need no subsidy: Americans would buy them on the merits of the cars. If we don’t want them, or don’t want them in large numbers, government intervention (via subsidies here) is no more appropriate than is government intervention in any other section of our free market marketplace.

Full stop.