Tag Archives: politics

A Union Win and a Business Loss

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The International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers union ratified the contract its managers lately extracted from Boeing.

The union got

• 38% wage increase over the next four years for its members
• $12,000 ratification payment for each of its members
• guaranteed annual bonuses for each member ranging from a minimum of 4% to as high as 6% (the guaranteed nature defeats the purpose of bonuses, and converts the payments to an annual Christmas present)
• 401(k) Boeing match of 100% of each member’s first 8% of pay plus an automatic 4% Boeing contribution
• requirement for Boeing to build its next airplane in the union shops of the Seattle area

What did Boeing get in return? The company gets to restart its commercial aircraft production in the Seattle area, and so to survive.

That’s one outcome of the legalized extortion that is union strikes.

Noncitizens Vote in Local Elections?

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Santa Ana, CA, has a referendum, Measure DD, that would allow noncitizens to vote for a variety of city offices, including mayor. One argument in favor of that is

noncitizen residents (including longtime green-card holders) pay local taxes and send their children to local schools, they should get a voice in city government. “About 1/4 of Santa Ana residents currently don’t have a say in city elections just because of their immigration status,” proponents argue. “Many have lived here for decades and contribute greatly to the local economy.”

Yeah, and? Nothing is preventing those green-card holders and other city residents present legally from changing their immigration status and working to become citizens. If they don’t care enough to do the work, they don’t need to become citizens, but they also show themselves not to care enough to vote. The work they do on the job and the taxes they pay are nice, but those are benefits and obligations of being here legally, and nothing more.

Another problem with this sort of move—not universally common, but present in the vast majority of such initiatives—is that such franchise-granting efforts make no distinction between immigrants and illegal aliens. Those who came here illegally have already shown their disdain for American law, regardless of their claimed motive for coming in illegally, and so are unfit to vote for representatives who will be impacting American law, including local ordinances. That they might work and contribute to the local economy is wholly irrelevant to their intrinsic lawlessness.

Then, too, as the WSJ asks,

[W]hat’s the limiting principle? If noncitizens paying taxes to Santa Ana deserve to vote for mayor, why don’t noncitizens paying taxes to California deserve to vote for Governor?

And on up to include our Federal government.

I’m writing this on Election Day, so I have no idea whether Measure DD will pass. Pass or not, though, my point remains: noncitizens shouldn’t be allowed to vote. If immigrants want to vote, they need to become citizens. Illegal aliens shouldn’t have the vote under any circumstances; they should be sent back. And: the lack of a limiting principle in such franchise-granting efforts remains and dangerously so.

An “Apology”

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Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks, said on The View a few days ago that

Donald Trump, you never see him around strong, intelligent women. Ever. It’s just that simple. They’re intimidating to him. He doesn’t like to be challenged by them and, you know, Nikki Haley will call him on his nonsense with reproductive rights and how he sees and treats and talks about women. I mean, he just can’t have her around.

Cuban spoke from his heart when he said that.

Some of those not strong or intelligent women around Trump are Nikki Haley (yes, that Nikki Haley), former Trump ambassador to the UN; Arkansas Governor Sara Huckabee Sanders (R), his former Press Secretary; Kellyanne Conway, his 2016 campaign manager; Kayleigh McEneny, his last Press Secretary; Senator Marsha Blackburn (R,TN); Congresswoman Elise Stefanik (R, NY); and on through the millions of American women of all stripes, single mothers to business owners and executives, who support him in the hustings.

Now that he’s catching boatloads of flak for his smear, he’s claiming to apologize.

When I said this during the interview, I didn’t get it out exactly the way I thought I did. So I apologize to anyone who felt slighted or upset by my response[.]

Now speaking only after widespread opprobrium. How is it possible to take his words of apology as anything other than insincere political CYA?

This is the level of integrity flowing from the Left in these final days of the election, and the level of outright contempt the Left has for us average Americans and in particular for ordinary American women.

There’s Deportation…

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…and there’s deportation. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R, LA) has a plan for a serious “deportation.” It’s

an ambitious plan to reshape and shrink federal government if [Republicans] win the election. That vision includes a plan to deport tens of thousands of federal bureaucrats from Washington and relocate them to middle America.

Johnson went on in his Just the News interview:

“The idea is, if you move the agency to, you know, northern Kansas or southwest New Mexico, or wherever it is around the country, then some of the swamp dwellers they will not desire to follow the job to the new, less desirable location,” he added. “They love the swamp. You know they want to stay. They’ll turn them into lobbyist or something to stay in DC.” The mass transfer and departure of bureaucrats then leads to a “business reorganization proposition” for federal government, he said.
“You’ve got agencies that you can scale down because you have empty cubicles and…almost all the agencies are bloated and inefficient,” he said. “So you can scale that down. And then in the cubicles that you do need to fill, we’ve had America First Policy Institute and some of our other think tanks that have been working to develop a notebook full of highly qualified, previously vetted, limited government conservatives who have expertise in these areas.

A very profitable twofer: move get Federal bureaucrats into the hinterland/middle America/flyover country among us citizens whose lives bureaucrat shenanigans so severely impact, and shrink the manpower size of the Federal government since those bureaucrats who would refuse to move would be selecting themselves for termination from Federal employ.

Win-win.