Former secretary of state Hillary Clinton attempted to apologize for the email scandal in an interview on ABC’s World News with David Muir on September 8, 2015.
Former secretary of state Hillary Clinton attempted
Iranians burn the American and Israeli flags following the announcement of the negotiated nuclear agreement in Tehran. (Photo: Hamed Malekpour)
Members of the House Freedom Caucus will attempt to hold up the vote on the Iran deal Wednesday until the “side deals” are made public, Roll Call reported. by voting down the resoluton
“I think the plan is just to say that there’s a law on Corker-Cardin, it hasn’t been followed, we can’t ignore it, so to continue on with a vote in light of the administration not adhering to the law would be erroneous and really usurp the authority of Congress,” Mark Meadows told CQ Roll Call Tuesday night.
Meadows’ comments come after HFC held a meeting in the basement of Tortilla Coast, where they discussed efforts to force House leadership to take up the vote. The timing is no accident, as an anti-Iran deal rally is scheduled to take place in the nation’s capital the very same deal.
“On the same day that Donald Trump and Ted Cruz hold a Capitol Hill rally urging Congress to reject this deal, it will be pretty hard to argue that we should let Democrats off the hook and not take a stand at all.”
Meanwhile, in the Senate, S.C. Sen. Lindsey Graham repeated his threat to withhold funding from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) until the details of side deals, particularly any allowing Iran to conduct its own inspections, are handed over to lawmakers.
“As an indication of how serious I view the provision of copies of these side agreements to our national security,” Graham said. “I intend to condition and/or withhold voluntary contributions to the IAEA in fiscal year 2016 should they not be provided prior to the congressional debate next month.”
Members of the House Freedom Caucus will
I’m upset that the presidential candidates, all of them, rarely mention a huge problem: the quiet cancer that kills opportunity — regulation. The accumulated burden of it is the reason that America is stuck in the slowest economic recovery since the Depression.
I understand why candidates don’t talk about it: Regulation is boring. But it’s important.
The founders of this republic were willing to die rather than be subject to other people’s rules. Today we are so accustomed to bureaucracy that we’ve forgotten what it means to be free.
We now have a million rules — many so complex that even legal specialists can’t understand them. Yet bureaucrats keep writing more. And 22 million people work for government!
Okay, that wasn’t fair. Many of those 22 million deliver mail, build roads and do things we consider useful. But at least a million are bureaucrats. And if you are a rule-maker and you don’t create new rules, you think you’re not doing your job.
On his “Grumpy Economist” blog, the Hoover Institution’s John Cochrane points out that most of these rule-makers were never even elected, and legislatures rarely vote on their new rules. Yet “Regulators can ruin your life, and your business, very quickly, and you have very little recourse.”
Regulators have vast power to oppress.
Their power not only hurts the economy, it threatens our political freedom, says Cochran. “What banker dares to speak out against the Fed? … What hospital or health insurer dares to speak out against HHS or ObamaCare? … What real estate developer needing zoning approval dares to speak out against the local zoning board? The agencies demand political support for themselves first of all.”
Speaking up will bring unwanted attention to your project, extra delays, maybe retaliation. It’s safer to keep your mouth shut. We learn to be passive and put up with more layers of red tape.
Fortunately, a few Americans resist. At Boston’s Children’s Hospital, head cardiologist Dr. Robert Gross dismissed Dr. Helen Taussig’s new idea for a surgical cure for “blue-baby syndrome.” He wanted to do things by the book. So she took the technique to Johns Hopkins Hospital instead. It worked. You don’t hear much about blue-baby syndrome anymore. The embarrassed Gross went on to tell the story many times to teach medical students to listen to new ideas. Breaking the rules saved lives.
But that happened years ago. Few doctors break the rules today. The consequences are too severe.
American entrepreneurs took advantage of a “permissionless economy” to create Google, Facebook, Amazon, etc., but they could accomplish that only because Washington’s bureaucrats didn’t know enough about what they were doing to slow them down.
Now regulators have their claws in every cranny of the Internet. Innovation will be much more difficult.
Today’s regulations are often vague. A typical edict: “The firm shall not engage in abusive practices.” That sounds reasonable, but what is “abusive”? The regulator decides. Compliance is your problem.
If you have the misfortune to be noticed by the bureaucracy, or maybe a business rival complains about you, your idea dies and you go broke paying lawyers.
European regulators have adopted something even worse, called “the Precautionary Principle.” It states that you may not sell something until it has been “proven safe.” That too sounds reasonable, unless you realize that it also means: “Don’t try anything for the first time.”
Since we don’t know all the rules, we’re never quite sure if we’re breaking any. Better to keep your head down.
And sometimes the rule-makers really are out to get you. Nixon used the IRS against political enemies. So did Obama IRS appointee Lois Lerner.
It’s time for Americans to fight back. As Gen. Douglas MacArthur said, “You are remembered by the rules you break.”
America became the most innovative and prosperous nation in history because many Americans were adventurous, individualistic people willing to take big risks to discover things that might make life better.
Every day, bureaucrats do more to kill those opportunities. We’ll never know what good things we might have today had some bureaucrat not said “no.”
Presidential candidates ought to scream about that.
I'm upset that the presidential candidates, all
President Barack Obama speaks at the Greater Boston Labor Council Labor Day Breakfast, Monday, Sept. 7, 2015, in Boson. Obama will sign an Executive Order requiring federal contractors to offer their employees up to seven days of paid sick leave per year. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)
BOSTON, MASS. — In a move aimed at appeasing labor unions opposed to the Transpacific Trade Partnership, President Obama on Labor Day signed an executive order forcing federal contractors to give paid sick leave to their employees. He denounced Republicans for a “constant attack on working Americans” during a speech at the Greater Boston Labor Council Labor Day Breakfast, saying the GOP “won’t let facts or evidence get in their way.”
“You just wait, you look up at the sky and prosperity will come raining down on us from the top of whatever high-rise in New York City. But that’s not how the economy works,” Obama said, adding that Republican economics have been “wrecking the economy for a long, long time.”
Speaking of facts, how the economy works or what is wrecking it, though the White House claims that there are some 300,000 “workers” under targeted government contractors, they have no idea how many are actually impacted by the executive order. They said roughly 44 million American private sector workers don’t get paid sick leave, but couldn’t estimate how many federal contractors currently don’t offer paid leave.
Further, administration officials discounted the potential impact the order may have on wages, which have decreased by an average $1,500 under Obama’s administration.
The Labor Day decree comes as Obama hopes to smooth over tensions with labor over his trade agenda, as major unions not only oppose his new trade agreement with Asia and Europe but also have threatened to work against Democrats who voted to support TPP in Congress. Unions worry that the secret trade deals will result in job destruction, though the president has signed a law providing money to retrain workers if and when their jobs get outsourced to cheaper overseas markets.
Under the new executive order, employees working on federal contracts gain the right to a minimum of one hour of paid leave for every 30 hours they work, which amounts to 7 days over a 12 month period. Further, the order will allow employees to use the leave to care for sick relatives, as well, and will impact contracts that start in 2017—after Obama leaves office.
Nevertheless, the White House also wouldn’t speculate on the cost to federal contractors to implement the executive order, which critics say will likely come right out of worker’ wages. The Labor Department theorizes that costs would be offset by imaginary savings contractors would realize as a result of lower attrition rates and increased worker loyalty. Of course, they produced nothing by way of evidence, largely because there is no comparable example.
Obama did reference Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker in his speech, though not by name, when he mocked him for allegedly thinking “union busting” prepared him to take on the Islamic State. However, he made no mention or offered no explanation to the very real union problem of declining membership. The Bureau of Labor Statistics said that union membership in 2015 fell to a 100-year low in the year 2014. In 1983, there were 17.7 million union workers in the labor force (20.1%), but there were just 14.6 million union members in the work force in 2014. That puts the union membership rate at just 11.1%, down another 0.2% from 2013 and 9% since 1983.
AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka managed to bash President Obama for touting the creation of “poverty-level jobs” in his last State of the Union speech, while simultaneously blaming “right-wing billionaires’ extremist politics, a rapacious Wall Street and insufficient advocacy from political leaders” that has led to low-wage job creation. To be fair, the jobs Trumka highlighted have accounted for roughly 70% of the jobs created under the Obama administration, which the CBO blamed largely on ObamaCare.
Yet, he failed to recognize the hit organized labor has taken among American public opinion. At the heart of unions’ declining membership problems is a long-observed ideological shift in America and distrust that is fueling increased disapproval in organized labor. Unions have taken a significant hit in the courts, as well. In June 2014, the Supreme Court ruling in Harris v. Quinn dealt a significant blow to the effort to expand public employee unions, though it did not gut them.
Massachusetts’ voters in the state approved a similar paid leave policy state-wide, which took effect July 1. It is expected to affect 900,000 workers who previously received no paid leave, the White House said, though again, offered little concrete data to back it up.
In a move aimed at appeasing labor
President Barack Obama speaks at the Greater Boston Labor Council Labor Day Breakfast, Monday, Sept. 7, 2015, in Boson. Obama will sign an Executive Order requiring federal contractors to offer their employees up to seven days of paid sick leave per year. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)
The New England PBA (Police Benevolent Association) boycotted President Barack Obama at the Greater Boston Labor Council Labor Day Breakfast on Monday. The Boston Herald reported on the development first, which the White House has thus far refused to respond to in public. However, privately, administration officials are “furious” over the boycott in large part because it overshadowed the president’s Labor Day executive order demanding federal contractors pay sick leave.
“Our members are enraged at his lack of support of law enforcement,” said Jerry Flynn, a Lowell cop on leave while serving as executive director of the New England Police Benevolent Association. “It’s clear that he has an agenda, and unfortunately the police are not part of his agenda.”
Obama has faced stiff criticism for not supporting police in the wake of events in Ferguson, Missouri. Law enforcement officials and other critics point to the 23 cops who have been gunned down in the line of duty in 2015, and blame the rhetoric from the president and other politicians that helped to foment an anti-police sentiment nationwide.
Vice President Joe Biden, who including two NYPD officers sitting in their patrol car earlier this year.
“Let’s face it, (there have been) eight people killed in a nine-day period, eight police officers, and his silence up until recently has been deafening. And the real sad part of this — and when I went to the White House in the first term with (Vice President) Joe Biden — he said to me that he would be the voice of law enforcement. Well, as much as I love and adore Joe, his voice has been silent as well. So it’s not an Obama problem, it’s an administration problem,” Flynn said. “This is a horror show, this is an epidemic of lawless people trying to kill police officers for no apparent reasons. Case in point is the lieutenant who was pumping gas in Houston. Over 7,000 people were at that church, and where was he (Obama)? Why wasn’t he there instead of a unity breakfast?”
Following the murder of Darren Goforth, 47, a 10-year veteran of the Harris County Sheriff’s Office, Sheriff Ron Hickman slammed anti-police rhetoric coming out of Black Lives Matter activists and politicians. Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clark went even further, saying “President Obama has breathed life into this ugly movement.”
According to a recent survey, as well as a number of surveys PPD has tracked over the past year, the vast majority of voters agree with and support Sheriff Hickman and Sheriff Clark, as well as their fellow law enforcement brethren across the nation. A new Rasmussen Reports survey finds that 58% of likely voters think there is a war on police in America today, while 60% believe comments critical of the police by politicians fan the flames and make it more dangerous for police officers to do their jobs.
“I mean, he had the opportunity to do things then and he didn’t, and all he’s done is escalated and allowed these people that are hellbent on causing problems to do so,” Lowell said in reference to the rioting in Ferguson and Baltimore. “We can’t continue to have people who have no intention to do anything but to be disruptive. These aren’t good citizens. These are thugs who go out and try to cause problems. You can’t continue to have this kind of hatred and animosity and the lawlessness that’s going on in this country at the cost of police officers losing their lives. It’s irresponsible of the president and his administration.”
The New England PBA (Police Benevolent Association)
Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, left, and billionaire real estate mogul Donald Trump, right.
Jeb Bush complains that the political media have not treated Donald Trump as a serious candidate. They have not dissected Trump’s eclectic stances, which, a new Bush ad contends, show the populist as a fake conservative.
OK. Labor Day is over. Let’s get serious.
Start with that new Bush ad, titled “The Real Donald Trump.”
The ad opens with Trump on TV saying: “I lived in New York City, in Manhattan, all my life, OK? So, you know, my views are a little bit different than if I lived in Iowa.”
Trump is from New York. Who knew? That’s the home of rich, snotty liberals. Ergo, Trump must be a liberal, or so the serious Bush implies.
When it comes time to raise substantial piles of campaign cash, Jeb seems to like New Yorkers just fine. Indeed, he is a frequent flier to the Manhattan till. Last winter, private equity magnate Henry Kravis threw a fundraiser for Jeb at his Park Avenue spread. The price of admission — $100,000 a ticket — raised eyebrows even on Wall Street.
Oh, yes, we’re supposed to talk about Trump’s policy positions.
The Bush ad has Trump saying years ago that the 25 percent tax rate for high-income people should be “raised substantially.” Do note that Ronald Reagan’s tax reforms left the top marginal rate at 28 percent — and after closing numerous loopholes. Also, capital gains were then taxed as ordinary income, meaning the rate for the wealthiest taxpayers was 28 percent. (The top rate is now 23.8 percent.)
Speaking of the tax code, Trump vows to close the loophole on carried interest. It lets hedge fund managers pay taxes on obviously earned income at a lower rate than their chauffeurs pay. “They’re paying nothing, and it’s ridiculous,” Trump says.
A writer at the conservative Weekly Standard recently asked Bush whether he’d end the deal on carried interest. “Ask me on Sept. 9” was Bush’s noncommittal answer. That’s when he plans to unfurl his tax reform plan.
The ad has a younger Trump coming out for single-payer health care. That sounds a lot like Medicare.
Trump is shown saying he’s pro-choice on abortion. A recent CBS poll had 61 percent of Republicans opposing a ban on abortion, although many want stricter limits.
About Trump’s being a lifelong New Yorker, well, that’s not entirely true. He spends a good deal of quality time in Palm Beach, Florida.
“Donald is a perfect fit for Palm Beach,” Shannon Donnelly, the society editor for the Palm Beach Daily News (aka “The Shiny Sheet”), told me. “He has an office in New York but is rarely there.”
“We’re overdue for Winter White House,” Donnelly added. “We haven’t had one since that guy from Massachusetts (John F. Kennedy) moved in with all his rambunctious siblings.”
Your author cannot sign off without opining that Trump’s crude remarks about Mexicans should disqualify him from becoming president. The Trump ad tying Bush’s rather liberal thoughts on immigration to faces of Mexican criminals who murdered people in this country is rather disgraceful.
But it is not unlike the Willie Horton ad that Bush’s father, George H.W., ran in his 1988 campaign. Horton had raped a woman after being released from a Massachusetts prison on a weekend furlough. The Democratic candidate, Michael Dukakis, was Massachusetts’ governor at the time. The elder Bush’s ads continually flashed Horton’s picture in what many considered a stereotype of a scary black man.
“By the time we’re finished,” Bush campaign manager Lee Atwater said, “they’re going to wonder whether Willie Horton is Dukakis’ running mate.”
Let’s get serious about Trump’s record? Yes, and the same goes for everyone else’s.
Jeb Bush complains that the political media
Migrants arrive at the main station in Munich, Germany September 5, 2015. (PHOTO: REUTERS/MICHAEL DALDER)
The refugee crisis in Europe is one of those human tragedies for which there are no real solutions, despite how many shrill voices in the media may denounce those who fail to come up with a solution.
Some options may be better than others, but there is nothing that can honestly be called a solution. Nevertheless many countries, including the United States, could do a lot better.
The immediate problems are the masses of desperate men, women and children, fleeing from the wars and terrorism of the Middle East, who are flooding into Europe. But the present crisis cannot be dealt with as if it had no past and no future.
The future is in fact one of the biggest constraints on what can be done in the present. Anyone with a sense of decency and humanity would want to help those who have been through harrowing experiences and have arrived, exhausted and desperate, on the shores of Europe. But the story will not end there, if they do.
With refugees, as with all other human beings, the current generation will pass from the scene. Those who may be grateful to have found a refuge from the horrors of the Middle East will have a new generation of children in Europe, or in any other place of refuge, who will have no memory of the Middle East.
All the new generation will know is that they are not doing as well as other people in the country where they live. They will also know that the values of their culture clash with the values of the Western culture around them. And there will be no lack of “leaders” to tell them that they have been wronged, including some who will urge them to jihad.
Europeans have already seen this scenario play out in their midst, creating strife and even terrorism. Most of the Muslims may be peaceful people who are willing to live and let live. But it takes only a fraction who are not to create havoc.
No nation has an unlimited capacity to absorb immigrants of any sort, and especially immigrants whose cultures are not simply different, but antagonistic, to the values of the society in which they settle.
The inescapable reality is that it is an irreversible decision to admit a foreign population of any sort — but especially a foreign population that has a track record of remaining foreign.
The past, as well as the future, casts its shadow over the current refugee crisis. It may be no accident that President Obama is up in Alaska, talking about changing the name of Mount McKinley, while this massive human tragedy is unfolding in the Middle East and in Europe.
Barack Obama’s decision to pull American troops out of Iraq, with happy talk about how he was ending a war, turned out to be a bitter mockery when the policy in fact opened the doors to new wars with unspeakable horrors in the present and incalculable consequences for the future.
The glib rhetoric that accompanied the pullout of American troops from Iraq was displayed once again when the rise of ISIS was dismissed as just a junior varsity team trying to look like a serious threat. But now that ISIS controls a big chunk of Iraq and a big chunk of Syria, it is the Obama foreign policy that looks like the work of a junior varsity team.
Undermining stable governments in Egypt and Libya that posed no threat to Western interests in the Middle East was another rhetoric-laden catastrophe of the Obama administration. No wonder President Obama does not want to get involved in the refugee crisis that his own policies did so much to create. Talking about renaming Mount McKinley seems far safer politically.
Middle Eastern countries might have been expected to take in more refugees who are their Muslim brothers — especially oil-rich countries like Saudi Arabia. But the West, including the United States, could at least send more financial aid to Middle Eastern countries like Jordan and Egypt, to ease the burden of the refugees they have already taken in.
Sending money to Middle Eastern countries that are taking in Muslim refugees makes a lot more sense for the West than taking in more refugees themselves. It may even encounter far less political opposition at home. But a real attempt to deal with the underlying causes of this human tragedy will probably have to wait until Barack Obama is gone from the White House.
The refugee crisis in Europe is one
July 12, 2015: Greek Finance Minister Euclid Tsakalotos, right, speaks with Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund Christine Lagarde during a round table meeting of eurogroup finance ministers at the EU Lex building in Brussels. (Photo: AP/Michel Euler)
Back in 2013, my colleagues at the Cato Institute, Michael Tanner and Charles Hughes, released a study looking at the value of welfare programs in various states. The most shocking finding was that the overall package of welfare benefits was greater than the median salary in eight states!
And more than 80 percent of the median salary in half the states. That sounds like a hammock, not a safety net. No wonder taxpayers feel like they’re getting ripped off. This system has been bad for taxpayers and bad for poor people.
Now, Mike and Charles have a new study that looks at excessive welfare handouts in Europe. They start with an elementary observation about how people can be trapped in dependency when government benefits are too high.
If welfare benefits become too generous, they can create a significant incentive that encourages recipients to remain “on the dole” rather than to seek employment. Benefits in European Union (EU) countries vary widely, but in many of them, benefits are high relative to what an individual could expect to earn from a low-wage or entry-level job.
And he highlights some of his main finding.
■ Welfare benefits in nine EU countries exceeded €15,000 ($18,200) per year. In six countries, benefits exceeded €20,000 ($24,300). Denmark offers the most generous benefit package, valued at €31,709 ($38,558).
■ In nine countries, welfare benefits exceeded the minimum wage in that country.
■ Benefits in 11 countries exceeded half of the net income for someone earning the average wage in that country, and in 6 countries it exceeded 60 percent of the net average wage income
Since poor people can be just as rational as rich people, think about the perverse incentive structure this creates. If you work, you give up leisure time and expose yourself to all sorts of additional costs, such as transportation, childcare, and taxes.
So why endure those headaches when you can relax on the dole?
Let’s look at some charts from the study. We’ll start with one on the overall fiscal burden of the welfare state.
As you can see, nations in Northern Europe generally have greater levels of income redistribution, measured as a share of GDP. Very depressing numbers, particularly when you consider that European nations used to have small governments with very little redistribution.
But this data only tells us about the overall burden on taxpayers. It doesn’t give us much information about the incentives of poor people. So, now let’s look at a chart showing potential welfare benefits for a single parent with two children.
Wow, Denmark must be a paradise for slackers. No wonder “Lazy Robert” is so happy. Though you have to wonder how long the system can survive. The number of people producing wealth has been stagnant while the number of people riding in the “party boat” has been climbing. Sooner or alter, those trend lines will cause big problems.
You’ll notice that the United States also is included in the above chart and that handouts in America are not that different than they are on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. Indeed, the value of redistribution programs in the United States is greater than what’s provided in France and only slightly behind the value of such programs in Sweden. The numbers are even more remarkable when you look at American states compared to European nations.
Wow, Lazy Robert should move to Hawaii! But it’s not just Hawaii. Many other states, mostly from the northeast (and California of course), also provide excessive benefits. No wonder a record number of Americans are trapped in poverty.
Let’s now shift gears and look at a very interesting finding from the Cato study. Mike and Charles uncovered an inverse relationship between handouts and labor regulations.
In looking at the relationship between welfare and work, one additional factor should be considered. There appears to be an inverse relationship between the generosity of welfare benefits and the rigidity of labor-market regulations. That is, those countries with high benefits tend to have more flexible labor markets, and vice versa. …Nordic countries, in addition to Germany, the Netherlands, and a few others, have chosen to pursue what is often referred to as the “Nordic,” “Danish,” or “flexicurity” model. That version of the welfare state combines a largely deregulated labor market, one that makes it easier to hire and fire workers, with a generous safety net to cushion workers from the consequences of those policies. …In contrast, in much of southern Europe, countries such as Italy, Portugal, and Spain have smaller safety nets but much more tightly regulated labor markets. They effectively shift much of the social cost to employers.
While these nations obviously have different approaches, the bottom line is still similar.
…in southern Europe, the welfare benefits may not deter work to the same extent, but finding a job may be more difficult. Then again, in countries with flexicurity, it might be easier to find a job, but benefits and effective marginal tax rates are high enough to discourage workers from doing so. The result in both models is that workers are more likely to remain on welfare and out of work for longer than they otherwise would.
P.S. I’m actually in Hawaii as I’m writing this, so the results from the last chart got me thinking. Hawaii is one of the worst states in the Moocher Index and it does have relatively high welfare benefits, so you won’t be shocked to learn there’s a very high tax burden. But a surprisingly small share of the population utilizes food stamps, and the number of welfare bureaucrats is amazingly low.
P.P.S. Left-wing international bureaucracies such as the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development fabricate deliberately dishonest numbers when advocating more welfare spending in the United States. But we’d be much better off if we learned from the success of welfare reform in the 1990s and got the federal government out of the business of income redistribution.
Senior fellows at the Cato Institute Michael
Job seekers wait on a line to interview with jobs fair and Labor Department officials in NYC. (Photo: REUTERS)
Labor Day, which falls on the first Monday of September each year, ironically became federally recognized when President Grover Cleveland, notoriously known for his tough stance against union corruption, signed S. 730 on June 28, 1894. While millions of Americans view Labor Day as the unofficial end of summer, it was originally intended to celebrate and honor workers in the labor force.
In 2015, more Americans than ever (42%) say they view Labor Day as it was originally intended, up from just 28% who said so last year. However, a larger number of American adults (48%) still can’t shake the old mantra, though it’s down significantly from the 56% who said it was the end of summer the year prior. The survey conducted by Rasmussen Reports also found that it is still among the least important holidays to Americans.
There is little doubt that unions were behind the drive to establish national recognition of a holiday that celebrates American workers. Prior to the holiday, Americans in many states celebrated Workers Day, which fell on May 4 to mark the day in 1886 when a bomb exploded at a union rally in Chicago’s Haymarket Square. Despite the repeated clashes and violence, the golden age for organized labor unions was ahead of them, and it has since passed.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics said that union membership in 2015 fell to a 100-year low in the year 2014, further weakening organized labor in America. In 1983, there were 17.7 million union workers in the labor force (20.1%), but there were just 14.6 million union members in the work force in 2014. That puts the union membership rate at just 11.1%, down another 0.2% from 2013 and 9% since 1983. AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka managed to bash President Obama for touting the creation of “poverty-level jobs” in his last State of the Union speech, while simultaneously blaming “right-wing billionaires’ extremist politics, a rapacious Wall Street and insufficient advocacy from political leaders” that has led to low-wage job creation.
To be fair, the jobs Trumka highlighted have accounted for roughly 70% of the jobs created under the Obama administration. However, he failed to recognize the hit organized labor has taken among American public opinion. At the heart of unions’ declining membership problems is a long-observed ideological shift in America and distrust that is fueling increased disapproval in organized labor. In Gallup’s annual Confidence in Institutions survey, only 10% said they have a great deal of confidence in organized labor, and only 12 percent say they have quite a lot of confidence in them.
A 2013 Rasmussen Reports survey found a more split opinion of labor unions, though they do not boast the wealth of historical data and polling longevity on the issue that Gallup does. The survey found 44% of American adults had at least a “somewhat favorable” impression of labor unions, but only 14% had a “very favorable” opinion. Meanwhile, 45% viewed labor unions unfavorably, which included 24% who had a “Very Unfavorable” impression of them.
The future of both public and private labor unions is very much in doubt. They are bleeding membership, and losing the battles for both public opinion and legal opinion. A whopping 71 percent of Americans say they would vote for a right to work law, while 82 percent of Americans agree that “no American should be required to join any private organization, like a labor union, against his will,” a central tenet of right to work philosophy.
In June, the Supreme Court ruling in Harris v. Quinn dealt a significant blow to the effort to expand public employee unions, but it did not gut them. Still, the opposition has grown substantially. Even before the widespread Democratic defeats down ballot in 2010 and 2014, 24 states had already passed right to work laws. Republicans are now in charge of 68 of the 98 partisan legislative chambers and control 30 state legislatures, which is the most they’ve held in 150 years, as well as hold a 31-18 gubernatorial edge nationally.
With Democrats losing 11 more bodies in 2014 alone, including the Colorado Senate, the Maine Senate, the Minnesota House, the Nevada Assembly, the Nevada Senate, the New Hampshire House, the New York Senate, the New Mexico House, the Washington Senate, and both the West Virginia House and Senate, Republicans are hoping to expand right to work in several other states.
Workers in and out of unions have complained–with good reason–about stagnant wage growth over the last six-plus years. The August jobs report found hourly earnings have risen by just 2.2% on a year-over-year basis, while average hourly earnings of private-sector production and nonsupervisory employees increased by just 5 cents to $21.07. A survey by Gallup found a sad 1 in 5 employed Americans say they are worried their wages will be reduced in the near future, though that is slightly lower than the percentage of Americans who were worried about wage reductions from 2009 through 2013.
Perhaps that is partly the reason why a whopping 70% of Americans in the labor force say they are “Not Engaged” at work. It is also possible that they simply are reacting to the quality, not quantity of jobs in labor market. While the U.S. economy has technically regained all of the 8.8 million jobs lost during the financial crisis, the quality of the jobs created has been low and the economy is a part-time animal. The number of persons employed part time for economic reasons–sometimes referred to as involuntary part-time workers–stood at 6.5 million in August. These workers prefer and are searching for full-time employment, but report that their hours had been cut back or were unable to find a full-time job.
Though the headline unemployment rate fell to 5.1%, which the lowest level in seven a half years, the civilian labor force participation rate (62.6%) is at a 37-year low. The Labor Department also said the less-cited but arguably more important employment-population ratio stood at an abysmal 59.4% in August. Similarly, the U.S. Payroll to Population employment rate (P2P), as measured by Gallup, was 45.3% in August. P2P rates typically begin leveling off or falling in August after having risen through the spring and summer.
Gallup also said Americans’ confidence in the economy continued to fall last week, as their U.S. Economic Confidence Index slid three points to -17 after also declining three points the prior week. This is the lowest the index has been since September 2014.
PPD's senior political analyst Richard D. Baris
Migrants arrive at the main station in Munich, Germany September 5, 2015. (PHOTO: REUTERS/MICHAEL DALDER)
European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker is expected to announce his plan on Wednesday to distribute Syrian refugees among European Union states. An EU source with knowledge of the proposal tells PPD that the burden will fall disproportionately on Berlin, Paris and Brussels.
Of the 160,000 refugees flowing in to Italy, Greece and Hungary–primarily from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, where the still relatively unchecked Islamic State (ISIS) has sought to expand their control–more than 40,000 will be relocated to Germany; over 30,000 will be relocated to France; and, current but not decided upon proposals put Brussels as the endpoint for 20,000 to 25,000 refugees.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel warned European Union (EU) members resisting a push to agree to quotas that there will be “consequences” for their decision. Speaking at a press conference, Merkel and Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel tried to reassure the German people and EU member states that they are equipped to handle the influx, while criticizing others calling for more thorough vetting processes and debate.
“I am happy that Germany has become a country that many people outside of Germany now associate with hope,” Merkel said at a news conference in Berlin. “This is something to cherish when you look back at our history. What isn’t acceptable in my view is that some people are saying this has nothing to do with them. This won’t work in the long run. There will be consequences although we don’t want that.”
However, in Junker’s plan, entry point countries such as Italy, Greece and Hungary are completely exempt from permanent relocation. Great Britain, of course, is also exempt. To date, London has allowed just 216 Syrians into the country to be relocated, though they have granted roughly 5,000 asylum during four years of the Syrian civil war. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban again voiced his opposition to quotas on Monday, which will be a central focus of Junker’s scheme.
“As long as Europe cannot protect its external borders it makes no sense to discuss the fate of those flowing in,” Prime Minister Orban said. He expressed support for comprehension legislation that would allow the Hungarian army to be deployed to defend the nation’s southern border, said the EU’s plan premature and called for more debate on the issue. Orban, a populist right-wing leader, has taken much criticism for putting Hungarians first.
While Merkel, unlike Orban, is ironically winning high praise from international left-wing and human rights groups, the German leaders coalition partners are less enthusiastic about the government’s past actions and upcoming plans. Bavarian Christian Social Union (CSU) leader and Bavarian premier Horst Seehofer said no nation, let alone Germany should be expected to take on the burden of the Syria civil war.
“There is no society that could cope with something like this,” CSU leader and Bavarian premier Horst Seehofer said. “The federal government needs a plan here.”
While Merkel’s office did not respond to a request for comment based on the leaked proposal, Vice Chancellor Gabriel did respond to the fracture in the right-wing coalition.
“We should not pretend that this is a small task,” Gabriel said of the crisis. “We need to be realistic. We can take on 800,000 asylum seekers this year, find homes for them and help them integrate. But it should also be clear to everyone that this can’t continue every year. We need a new European asylum policy.”
But critics like Gabriel point to results, not rhetoric. Last month, alone, more than 100,000 reached the borders of Germany, who suspended normal laws by granting not-yet-vetted refugees asylum regardless of where they enter the EU. Naturally, this has made country the preferred target destination for refugees and further exacerbated the crisis. The German government is preparing to accept another 800,000 throughout the remaining months of the year, which would bring the refugee population to around 1% of the entire German public.
An EU source with knowledge of the
