ex•tor•tion [ik-stawr-shuh n] –noun
1. An act or instance of extorting.
2. The crime of obtaining money or some other thing of value by the abuse of one’s office or authority.
3. Oppressive or illegal exaction, as of excessive price or interest: the extortions of usurers.
4. Anything extorted.

Early in our industrial infancy, the cheapest labor was often recent immigrants, indentured for their trip from the old world. Like many nubies, they were mocked as unsophisticated or slow witted by some in pop culture for their low socio-economic standing and lack of understanding of local norms. They were employed at a slower rate than assimilated workers. Unscrupulous business owners, and I might add, political parties, took unfair advantage of their ignorance. Workers were hired under misleading arrangements specifically worded to entice these workers into unfair contracts. The workers did what all workers in a free market do when treated dishonestly, the walked out. This wiped the gotcha-smile right off the bosses faces. The bosses could not infringe upon one’s right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. One of the principles essential to the right to pursue happiness is the ability to keep the fruits of one’s pursuits, the protection of private property. The bosses wanted to get the production from the worker, and keep much of the remuneration as well.

To infringe upon this right required collusion with government.

Fraudulent employers got bigger, helped elect business friendly politicians who then enacted laws allowing employment contract skippers to be arrested and to allow local police to enforce the terms of the contracts. Railroads, coal mines, steel, were industries notorious for taking advantage of workers, enforced with the help of local and state police. They paid in script only accepted at the over priced company store. This is the part of the story we have all heard. The employees banded together and stopped working. Without production, the bosses could not buy the government they needed to keep the employees working. Such collusion only works to the advantage of the privileged few. We elect our government and the majority of Americans do not appreciate fraud and corruption, even now. Once the lights were turned on, the roaches scurried.

For most of the rest of our country’s history, unions could strike and business owners could fold. Pay and benefits were negotiated somewhere in the middle. All agreements were subject to either party simply walking away, at least temporarily. If the business folded, no amount of picketing would create money from thin air. If the employees walked, no amount of retained profit would produce. Soon equilibrium was reached whereby the employees felt favorably compensated, the business owner had labor he could count on and little changed year to year. Employees questioned the relevancy of the unions and hesitated to pay the dues for no change year to year. But politicians, as they are prone to do, followed the politically expedient source of money and grew to be on the “side” of unions, for a price. The unions used the means at their disposal to enact favorable legislation of their own. So was born the closed shop. If you wanted a job in a union shop, you had to join the union, often before applying for the job. Anyone who was not pro-union would not be allowed to join and therefore could not get the job. Friends and family were the only ones allowed to join and dissention in union matters was scarce. Even with this arrangement, employees were less and less interested in joining unions and paying the extorted dues. Non-union shops could pay less and charge less and fire people more easily, at the same time, they hired more easily and sometimes the take home pay was higher as no one was supporting a union infrastructure. This was especially true for other countries. Soon, a new generation of workers grew up only hearing stories of the labor movement. Their union loyalty faded as the union looked less and less like the savior of mistreated employees, and more and more like the bloated bureaucracies that had enslaved their grandfathers. Unions needed a better way of growing members in order to survive.

One option, the hard way, was to insist on minimum standards for members for training, ethics, dependability, etc. They could insist on eliminating poor performers from their ranks. This would give unions a reputation for the best employees for the money and guarantee a steady supply of employees wanting to join and a steady supply of employers wanting to hire them. The downside, the dues would have to be really low to keep newly employed members from leaving once they got the job. And, there is the downside of having to produce something in return for the dues after years of getting closed shop dues for relatively little. But if they could find another option, a new steel industry or a new coal industry, where the businesses hardly had any competition for employees, it would be much easier. Such a business would be staffed by employees with little choice but to work for the union. What would be even better is if they could do so in an industry with considerable profit margin from which to negotiate. The search was on for an industry with unlimited funds, relatively high tolerance of favoritism and nepotism, and a favorable political climate.

The perfect industry exists. However it was illegal to organize until the late 1950’s. Then a New York City mayor wanted to secure a few city worker votes and the public sector union was born. Democrat politicians across the country rushed to add public sector union members to their roster of campaign contributors. The unions could push the entitlement form of pay and benefits, and get the government to pull their closed shop union dues straight from the employee’s paychecks. The union could then use those dues to help elect pro-union politicians with which to negotiate those entitlements. The position normally held by the business that could go out of business was now filled by the tax payer. The tax paying public can not cease to exist due to unprofitable employment arrangements. Moreover, the union employee gets to vote for their representative on the government side of the table, same as any other tax payer. They then also get to send a second negotiator on the union side. The first places to adopt such laws were those states where a large portion of the state’s employees worked for big, heavy industries which were already union supporters. The rust belt fell first along with steel and dockworkers heavy states. More would follow as right-to-work states had uprisings to get the “right” to extort higher pay from their taxpayers as well. All went as planned, at first.

The arrangement in Wisconsin threatens the golden egg laying goose for two simple reasons: Greed and incompetence. Pay is peanuts; the big money is in pensions. A public sector worker can work for 30 years as a teacher, from 25 to 55 years old, retire with a pension, live to be 85 years old, and draw more in pension in those 30 years than they were paid to actually work 30 years. Each time a teacher in Wisconsin retires, the cost of their replacement is double, one for the replacement, one for the pensioner. In a private sector business, where pensions have long gone the way of the dinosaur, the money for the pension would be set aside each year the teacher worked. The cost would be obvious as the $52,000 teacher also had $52,000 set aside for her pension in hopes that she only lived 30 years following retirement. Retired teachers who live to be 90 could see 5 years when the cost is triple. The number of retirees, who do so, increases every generation, as does the base pay, all of which is renegotiated each year. The public sector union employee in Wisconsin grew up seeing their parents get this pension, without paying into it themselves, and now expect the same. They see it as a right. They feel entitled. Public sector pay and benefits outweigh the private sector employee packages from which the public sector pensions are paid, and the private sector employee also paid for a significant portion of their own retirement. Private sector pensions are all but nonexistent because no one can predict how long a new 25 year old employee will live after retirement. No business decision can be made 30 years in advance with any security. Private sector employees must live off of the retirement they helped pay for as well as continuing to pay for the public sector pension for a retiree who did not. The cost of a public sector union employee far exceeds that of the private sector employee’s pay and benefits. Which would be OK, if the electorate feels they are getting their money’s worth. The downside of favoritism and nepotism in an environment of employees motivated by belief in entitlement to the job, is that performance will always be lackluster at best, and never approach the performance where continued employment and promotion require it. Indeed, the union can be counted on to talk higher performers into slowing down or performing less to prevent bringing undue attention to the overall lackluster performance. But the internet allows parents to realize that their students are more likely than other similar students to perform poorly, despite spending much more per capita on education. As teacher pay increased, public school student performance decreased. We understand child learning better now than in previous generations, we have computers and other teaching tools available to us like never before, and a large portion of Wisconsin public school 8th graders cannot read proficiently.

But the death knell for the public sector unions in Wisconsin and the rest of the U. S. sounded when they took a stand on the ability to renegotiate their position, on the promise of accepting pay and benefit cuts now. They got the nation’s attention when they stated flatly, that cutting pay and benefits for union members instead of raising taxes on everyone was solving a money mismanagement problem on the backs of the unions.

Really? The collective scowl from the country was palpable.

Although they were correct about the mismanagement, it was at the hands of the union-elected miss-managers. Taxes had already been raised 60% to pay for the existing packages as businesses left the state. Fewer students to educate could not be accepted as a sound reason to lay off unneeded teachers. The teacher’s union wants everyone to pay even higher taxes, following an election upset run and won on the promise of cutting spending and taxes,  The union promises that union members will take a small hit now, so long as they get the opportunity to negotiate themselves raises and increases in the future, (when they can get more union friendly politicians elected). What I heard was, “We will keep the roaches out of the kitchen so long as the light is on.” Such negotiations in the past have often been accompanied with back pay for those cut years. In other words, “Write us an IOU for the “pay cuts” we are borrowing from the next generation of workers we are under-educating, or we will shut down the underperforming school system we took an oath not to abandon. Really, we promise.” To put it in terms some of you might appreciate, they said, “Nice school system you have here. Be a shame if something bad were to happen to it. A threat?!! Heavens no, it is illegal for teachers in Wisconsin to strike! I’m just sayin’ if something were to happen, organically without our community organizers community-organizing it . . .”

We are at a crossroads in this country on so many levels, but this is ground zero for the entitlement culture war. (Wisconsin is also seen by many as the beginning, ground zero, for union solidarity of past unions. I find this ironic, but perhaps fitting that the attempt to skew the political processes in favor of the privileged few, on the backs of the many, would be exposed there and defeated there.) If Wisconsin folds, so folds the country.

I call for the formation of a new union, one representing the over 80% of all workers who are not currently represented. I suggest that membership be open to all taxpayers not belonging to a union and that membership can be begun and ended year by year, with a prorated refund of dues anytime a politician you don’t want to support is supported. I suggest that we vote ourselves the “right” to bargain and the “right” to have union members pay OUR retirement and healthcare. In fairness, the unions will likely loose the ability to negotiate pension and healthcare soon either way. Perhaps we should only reserve the one right we truly do have; the right to the pursuit of happiness; the right to keep our property. I suggest we organize a taxpayers union and strike to end the extortion of our property on the threat of public employee sickouts. I want the right to strike and put the golden egg laying goose out of the egg laying business. I want to strike to end the practice of borrowing from our children without their informed consent, to send from balanced-budget/right-to-work states like Virginia, to states like Wisconsin.

We can survive without public sector unions. They cannot survive without us.

Eventually, the unions put up candidates of their own for government positions and the practice of government enforcement of unfair labor practices was replaced with regulatory protections against them. However, just as business used this influence to their advantage, unions worked to enact legislation favorable to themselves through their elected officials. Eventually, all truly unfair business/employment practices were eliminated by legislation. Unions were no longer relevant in matters of fairness. To remain relevant, they negotiated from a position of solidarity for better than fair pay and benefits. Pay to union employees rose above non-union pay and unions could not persist. Businesses resisted hiring union employees, knowing pay and benefits would be extorted above market price. In some areas of the country, unions were influential enough to successfully support a sufficient number of elected officials to make it legal to force businesses of a certain size to only hire union employees. The concept of a closed shop was born. Join the union, or don’t bother applying for a job. Favoritism and nepotism replaced merit and production.

Businesses that could not survive the new burdens of employee strikes and unfair legislation, did not survive. They either moved to more business friendly environments following the paths of looms past, or businesses formed by others in such friendlier locals put them out of business. This cycle of business start up, unionization of the successful ones, and their eventual demise continued until all but the large industrial employers with factories and plants too large to move easily were gone. Now, a business opens in a union state and makes a profit long enough to get the attention of a union. The union convinces the employees that they deserve a larger portion of the difference between their current pay, and the profit retained by the owner, real or imagined. This is an easy sell in union states as it is common knowledge in such states that union jobs can pay several times what non-union work pays. The owner is told that the union will supply well trained employees and the increased pay will be an advantage as the unions will not tolerate non-union shops which might open to compete with the union shop. This is an easy sell as well, since the owners often grew up in the union rich society of the union state. The owner tolerates the union and can sometimes negotiate help from the union elected government officials in the form of competition limiting regulation in return for better pay and benefits for the employees. Over time, the negotiated arrangement is re-visited and changes in favor of the employees creep in. Rarely does an economically weak company gain relief with newly negotiated employee contracts, as the union continually attempts to get as much of the profits for employees and the union as is possible, while threatening to interfere with commerce if any reduction is requested. Often, concessions in good economic periods render the business unprofitable in another. High labor costs in high skill, labor intensive fields encourage automation in competitors where such automation would prove too costly without the union bolstered pay scales. Eventually, unionized industries fail more often in union states and less often in non-union states or countries. Unions fail and disappear in direct relation to the death of the host organism they helped starve. As profits shrink in favor of high pay, even the large industrial employers are replaced by foreign competitors. Unions could have educated and trained their members to be more competitive than non-union workers, instead they worked for conditions where they would not have to compete.

There is one industry however, which can never be outsourced. There is one industry which has almost no connection between the existence of the employer and the financial feasibility of the employee pay package. There is one industry where competition for survival has no connection to the production of the workers. This industry is government. Union organized public employees can pay dues to support the election of union compliant officials, and then “negotiate” a “fair” pay and benefits package with those same officials. Since unfair business practices or unfair pay and benefits are no longer left to fight, the union must fabricate such in order to remain relevant. This is exactly what happened in Wisconsin. The “union busting” legislation proposed in the Wisconsin legislature, if passed, would only make Wisconsin state teachers’ bargaining abilities equal to those for unionized Federal employees. The proposed legislation would not however bring the teacher’s union employee’s pension or health insurance contributions in line with either non-union Wisconsin residents or in many cases, other union employees. So why would the unions and their members take an extremely hard stance on an incremental loss in abilities which are out of line with most other employees’ abilities? They are not fighting for safe working conditions. They are fighting to be able to re-negotiate when the electoral pendulum swings back in their favor and they once again choose the government negotiator. They are fighting to continue to negotiate from both sides of the table. They are trying to make the voters, their employers, regret challenging the status quo.

The unions have drawn the line in the sand. The risk is that voters will not regret challenging the unions, but regret allowing them to exist at all. If the proposed Wisconsin legislation passes, I believe this will be the first time that public sector employee unions have lost any significant gains for their employees. There have been some temporary decreases in benefits, or temporary freezes on pay raises, or temporary freezes in hiring. I assert that this is the first permanent setback in the slow progression of pay and benefit improvements. I assert that this is the first setback that will not be re-negotiated with the elected official of their construction. If this legislation passes, the unions will have to negotiate in the open venue of public elections directly with their employer, the voters, instead of behind closed doors with someone who owes them for their job. They will have to stand in the public square and convince them that union members are entitled to pay raises when everyone else is taking cuts. They will have to convince the public that higher union pay will lead to better educated students, . . . this time. They will have to convince the voting public that tax increases best balance a bloated education budget, coincident with rising teacher pay. If the proposed legislation passes it could indicate a realization by the public that unions are obsolete, to be replaced by automation or at least, lower paid labor. I first suspected they recognize this too when I noticed the unprecedented pressure being brought to bare on Madison Wisconsin by the union friendly, union elected power players outside of Wisconsin. The unions are calling in their chips and the union elected officials are doing what they promised to do, knowing this will not go unnoticed by the voting public. President Obama publically put his support behind the unions. I assert that he does this as a knee jerk reaction resulting from his coming through the union rich political machinery of Chicago somewhat oblivious that his actions caused most of the rest of the country to pause at their own jobs and look up to see what he has done. The DNC sent their chairman, Tim Kaine to help with organizing protests, knowing(?) the people in the right to work state of Virginia will not understand his support for a union fight against negotiating directly with the tax payer over tax payer supplied pensions, and may not vote him into office again. President Obama put his left-over campaign resources into the fight via his campaign organization, Organizing for America. Solidarity. President Obama’s oath is to the Constitution. He is an employee of the very tax payers he has sided against. It seems lost on him that the fact he cannot represent “US” and “THEM” at the same time and that he chose to move to this side of the table. It seems lost on him that the fact the taxpayers have realized this is the very basis for the November upset in Wisconsin, and the new support for union restraint there. Is it more likely that such support for a union is because teachers are barely being fairly compensated in union negotiated contracts, or that the union contracts are so lucrative that the union members will pay dearly to keep them?

Consider this: If the school system took bids for teaching jobs, union and otherwise, would the low bids from out of work teachers be the same as the current teacher pay? Or, could current teachers be replaced from the free market for a price much lower?

So long as there are out of work teachers, the pay is too high. We expect the highest moral character in our teachers. We want them to be attracted to teaching because of a heartfelt desire to be in the profession. We want teachers driven with a desire to encourage such character in our children through example. What I see in Madison are teachers apparently attracted to teaching by a strong union, lying to their employers the taxpayers, saying they are sick and cannot work. I see them doing so in public, in front of their students, in front of an electorate not stupid enough to believe them. I see them doing so, knowing that no one believes the obvious lie, yet they persist. I see doctors lying on camera, writing notes to the very teachers who would not accept a bogus doctor’s note from their students. I see the kind of lying and cheating that money buys. I see teachers claiming that an education is a right while interfering with said education. I see them causing a stop to education activities and claiming without the union, education of the children will cease. I see teachers willing to teach children that lying for money is acceptable. I see teachers deliberately confusing the difference between rights and privileges, for their personal monetary gain. I see teachers using school yard bully tactics against legitimately elected officials with whom they disagree, for the purpose of interfering with the sworn duties of teacher and Congressman alike. I am not alone when I plainly see what an entrenched union will do when challenged.

What the union members do not realize is that much of the country is watching. Most of us did not grow up believing that such poor behavior is acceptable in the protection of the union interest. What they do not realize is how disgusted I am with the thought of my personal friends who are teachers, being forced to support and pay dues to such an organization as a condition of their being allowed to teach my children. I find it particularly unsavory that one of my teacher friends would be required to pay to support the election of a particular candidate as a condition of employment. I am not alone. The line has been drawn. Tremendous force is being applied in Madison in the protection of the unions. I find it a little ironic that their “fight for the freedom to negotiate” as unions could lead to Wisconsin’s freedom from them. All that stands between union survival and union oblivion is freedom to work without paying the union for the privilege. Simply allowing a teacher to work as a non-union teacher for the same pay as a union teacher will mark the end of teacher’s unions. The teacher’s union could have simply allowed this proposed bill to pass, quietly, then wait a couple of years and have the union supported Congress that would one day return, “fix it,” and get back to negotiating ever increasing benefits. Instead, they want to end challenges to public employee unions by their employers, and punish those who dare to do so. I wholeheartedly hope they succeed in doing just that. I hope that freedom ends this debate once and for all. What a fitting place for the progressive movement to have gained an early foothold, and ultimately the place where it shot itself in the foot, marking the end of the belief in the long term sustainability of socialist tenants. What a fitting end to public sector union conflict-of-interest, at the hands of voter solidarity.

There was a time when teachers were examples of the better parts of our society. They were generally kind, articulate and selfless. They worked for little pay compared to their education level and often took tutoring in the evenings and summers to bring their pay up to that typical of their communities. We held them in high regard for their job choice and insisted that our children treat them with the highest respect, often more than elders and family members. Something changed, in us or the profession or those attracted to it. Somewhere along the line we coined the phrase, “Those who can, do, and those who cannot, teach.” We claim that public teaching is the fall back occupation for some people seeking an easy occupation, recognizing they work alongside those well suited to and proficient at the task of preparing our children for the future. I know this because I have met some amazing teachers, mine and those of my children. With an increasing percentage of our population getting degrees in subject areas unsuitable to any other profession, (gender studies?) it is predicable that teaching would begin to look like a more representative cross section of our good and bad society than the better-among-us of the past. What happened to the days when parents looked at school as a path to a better life for their children than their own?

But I called them crazy and I’m sticking to it. If you look at the two extremes of teachers in the profession, you would have an example of the typical government bureaucrat on the one end, and the consummate professional on the other. The stereotypical bureaucrat is not more interested in being a teacher than any other government profession. This person could have as easily applied for a Postal job but teaching opened up full-time first and the local municipal staff are expected to work summers for less pay, so teaching it is. Some of these are capable of being good at most anything but didn’t like their private sector prospects. Many are talented and can be fairly decent lecturers. Good students with mediocre drive can get a good education from such a teacher. Their main goal is to keep their head down and survive to retirement while avoiding summer duties. The worst teachers come from this group, but rarely the exceptional ones.

On the other end are the committed teachers. (Not loony committed, although it seems I am making that argument.) These take an interest in their student’s success and judge their own by it. They notice and are affected by students who do not perform to their potential. They notice techniques and seek out methods which make them more effective teachers. Students with any drive will succeed in such a teacher’s classroom, some without drive are motivated by them and excel. They are most frustrated by students and parents who treat school like day care, some place to exist, not a place of opportunity. Such frustration peaks when they see parents in jobs they hate; oblivious to the link between being able to learn and being promotable at work; living vicariously through their children. Imagine the discouragement felt in a parent-teacher conference with a parent encouraging their child to take school lightly and berating the teacher for expecting too much and not “letting a kid be a kid,” How hard would it be for such a teacher to not scream at such parents? How hard not to scream that they are stacking the deck against the kid’s future ability to compete for a job they enjoy. The best teachers almost always come from this group, although some good ones start in this group and migrate towards the other end of the spectrum as their careers beat the drive out of them. The really bad teachers rarely come from or have ever been in this group.

Obviously, we should encourage the consummate professional and at a minimum, weed out the poor performing career bureaucrat. But this is why you have to be crazy to be a public school teacher. We do neither of these even as we lament the fact. Given my previous description, which I find people generally agree is accurate, we should have no trouble noticing which type we encounter.

In Madison, Wisconsin teachers called in sick in such large numbers that their schools were closed. There is pending legislation which, among other things would require teachers to pay for part of their retirement pensions as apposed to the tax funded arrangement the teacher’s union secured previously. Further, they would have to pay a portion of their own health insurance, the details of which would be set legislatively. Also, pay raises would be linked to inflation instead of going up faster than private sector salaries and related tax revenue. Keep in mind that business owners pay all of their own retirement, and a portion of their employee’s retirement. Private employees pay more of their own insurance premiums and retirement contributions than the proposed portion Wisconsin teachers are being asked to pay. State laws and the new federal health care mandates determine the details of private insurance policies even as union employees are exempt. Pay has gone down in recent years in the private sector as taxes go up and inflation indexed raises for teachers would go up as well. The teacher’s union rep would not answer the question of how the lying about being sick would be explained to students whose lying would not be tolerated on moral grounds. It appears that the Madison school system will allow the absent teachers to use personal days to cover being away from school, contrary to policy. In the private sector, this is called fraud. I wonder if the ones who showed up for school on time will have to loose a personal day as the school was closed? I am certain that those parents who had to come home from work when their kids were sent home when the school closed, did not get paid for their time or lost vacation days. I know that some had to hire sitters as they cannot leave work with such short notice. The school system is supporting the absent teachers, despite the children’s education being adversely affected, with tax revenue from the working people who paid for their absence and additional child care.

Meanwhile, Natalie Monroe, a Philadelphia suburb teacher, was suspended pending dismissal proceedings for writing in a blog where she called some students, “lazy.” Specifically, “My students are out of control, . . . They are rude, disengaged, lazy whiners. They curse, discuss drugs, talk back, argue for grades, complain about everything, fancy themselves entitled to whatever they desire, and are just generally annoying.” Please note that she did not use her full name or the names of any of her students in her blog and in the life of her blog, very little of the content had been about her students or even being a teacher. Her blog could have been written by any teacher in any school about any students, anywhere in the country. It could have been fictional, but she was suspended immediately. She is not being called out for lying about her students, no one is even suggesting that what she said is not true, simply that it is inappropriate for a teacher to say such. I should think that students should be encouraged to critically evaluate such a claim and determine if it has merit. I should think that a teacher should be obligated to speak the truth as often as possible, not to avoid it whenever it is contrary to the bureaucracy narrative.

It seems obvious to me that teachers’ mass lying to students and their employer is acceptable to the Madison Wisconsin school system, even when the student’s education is suspended and the community is disrupted in support of the bureaucracy. It seems apparent to me that the Philadelphia area school system is not concerned that a discouraged teacher speaks in generalities about the state of student entitlement. They are however concerned that a teacher would comment on current culture in which she has intimate professional knowledge. They are not concerned enough to investigate if they are true, or if changes in that culture could be brought about by changes in the bureaucracy and lead to better performing students.

These are stark, perhaps extreme, examples of the state of public education in this country. But it seems to me that similar situations arise and play themselves out in school systems across the country every day. Most are small, almost unnoticeable exchanges to those outside the system. It seems that good bureaucrats are more valued than good teachers. It seems to me that good bureaucrats can lie about their absence and allow students to go unsupervised and untaught for days in the pursuit of monetary gain. It seems that firing a teacher for expressing her personal opinion on her personal web page, on her personal time is acceptable even if the opinion would be permitted by any other member of society. A person would have to be crazy to devote themselves to teaching students who do not value them, be berated by parents who want them to lighten up on school workload and complexity, while reporting to bureaucrats who will not support them except when lying about their motives contrary to their work agreement.

I for one am thankful that such insanity exists.

I was surfing for some news this evening on my Sirius Radio while driving in my car. The dreaded drive hours, more advertising than music. Today reminded me of those days, I was flipping through my news channel presets and thankfully the BBC doesn’t care as much when we are in our cars. But eventually I stumbled onto Stuart Varney filling in for Neil Cavuto on his business news program Your World. He was doing an acceptable job in being politely cynical of the assertions of Dennis Kucinich, (D-Representative of Ohio’s 10th). I feel no need to be impolite, but ration is neither polite nor rude so I feel no desire to ignore the truth in the name of being polite. Nor do I feel the need to be disrespectful of Mr. Kucinich, he is willing to put his feelings out here for the likes of me to challenge, which is more than I can say for many of his 535 or so Congressional colleagues. But fallacy deserves no respect, as misleading people, no matter if inadvertent or well intended is to be eliminated whenever it is discovered. You be the judge of my reasoning.

The discussion that caught my attention, (in addition to not being another advertisement extolling the virtues of buying physical gold or online data backups), was about President Obama’s stated intent to “invest” in, among other things, an expansion of the Smithsonian Library to the tune of $100 million. Small change compared to the high speed rail President Obama wants to replace the mostly empty slow speed rail the government currently “invests” in every year. Mr. Varney asked how the conversation could be about lowering the deficit in the same breath as suggesting that we borrow more money to build infrastructure. Mr. Kucinich said several incorrect things but I will only challenge one of them, “We need to have good paying jobs in America, and when the private sector isn’t creating the jobs, the public sector has a moral responsibility to do that.” His assertion was that government spending on infrastructure creates jobs for people who then pay taxes and tax revenue will go up, reducing the deficit. Sounds good, a kind of Government-Reagan-Trickle-Down on steroids, investment for short.

First think back to high school (I know, it hurts), do some math using the Smithsonian expansion as an example since the round $100 million price tag makes it somewhat simple. I am a simple man, I need simple explanations. If all the money went to pay people doing these new jobs, none for materials etc., and all the new employees make more than the magical $250K, and do not take advantage of any of the myriad deductions like employer provided health insurance, so they all pay the maximum 35% back in the form of income taxes, the tax revenue would be $350,000. Tax revenues cannot be increased with the spending of tax revenues, as this is not an “investment” but rather an expenditure. Even if we grant poetic license to the use of the word investment, spending $100 million in hopes of getting a maximum $350,000 return is a terrible investment. But, I can cut the guy some slack since he blurted out his financial rationale in the middle of making the bigger point that this is a moral imperative.

I looked on Mr. Kucinich’s website where he claims to be “America’s Congressman,” and “America’s most courageous Congressman.” He also asks that visitors sign a petition to make healthcare a “civil right”. I know from such that he is drawing on people’s feelings more than their logic. If health care is a right, a person could infringe on someone else’s rights simply by choosing to become something other than a doctor or a nurse, or an orderly. The government could put people in jail for such infringement on people’s right to their health service. It seems obvious to me that Mr. Kucinich turns to his sense of morality for guidance instead of his sense of reason. It does not take courage to do what feels right. Courage is doing the right thing when people like Kucinich want you to feel like it is wrong or immoral. I contend there is no contradiction and that logic will give you the morally superior direction. People who do not turn to logic first, often disagree with me. I could be wrong. This is such an instant.

If you want to put more people to work, do you borrow money to hire them and then tax the pay to pay it back, with interest? Or do you let them keep the money to start with and save the overhead and interest? Logically, you choose the most efficient method which is the one without the interest. The one who would get the money now, and be taxed later may not like it, but in the end, some wealth is consumed in the borrow-spend arrangement. If your answer requires some leap of faith and ignorance of logic with an explanation that sounds something like, “the prosperity if creates will employ more people and amplify the effect,” then I suggest your answer is based on hope not reason. Los Vegas was built and thrives on people waging their own money on hope and a roll of the dice. Consider how powerful such hope is with other people’s money and a belief in “moral responsibility. If people hired by government investment would be able to pay back the loan with interest in the form of taxes, then government subsidy would not be needed. They would be able to borrow the money themselves, which is an investment by the lender in the worker. They would pay it back themselves, right? This is the logic behind school loans, borrow now and pay it back via the job you get later. The benefit of teaching a man to fish far outlasts the original investment. But where will the job be for the person working on the Smithsonian expansion once it is finished? This is the fallacy of all government “investment.” They all rely on a ponzi scheme of some sort where more and more people pay more and more into the scheme to keep it going. The Smithsonian job is an example of a Government bubble; take away the subsidy and the job is gone. The private sector is not investing in the project because there is no economic return. To keep the job, more borrowing or taxation and subsidy will be required. This is not creation, but consumption. But this spending is not about investing, or even getting a larger Smithsonian, or putting people to work or any other morally admirable goal. It is about getting money from some people, namely those of the future, and giving it to others, namely those of the now. You can try to assign any number of motivations to this desire, for example now people vote now, and future people vote later. Maybe Mr. Kucinich prefers to entice people to vote for him now as apposed to hoping they will vote for him later. But I don’t need to question his motivation, I can simply point out that his logic is flawed.

As I have pointed out, government infrastructure spending, although tolerable in some circumstances, is a form of consumption. But I assert his main failing in logic, which prompted this post, is that Mr. Kucinich suffers from selective morality. Albeit well intentioned, he is a hypocrite, although I suspect he is not aware of it. He is like the person who insists that the rich pay their share of income taxes, and then do not disclose all their income on their own tax return. Mr. Kucinich took a solemn oath to defend the Constitution of the U.S. He did this freely as a condition of the job of U.S. Representative. There is no provision in the U.S. Constitution confirming Mr. Kucinich’s assertion that the Federal Government has any authority to provide American jobs because he is unhappy with how the private sector does so. This does not change for good paying or otherwise. It does not change because Mr. Kucinich would choose industries different from that of the private sector. Further, there is no provision in the U.S. Constitution with which moral responsibility is implied. Mr. Kucinich is attempting to use the office which he holds for personal motives of morality, as he defines it. Mr. Kucinich took an oath to defend the Constitution from all enemies and then ignores that oath and the Constitution or assumes the Constitution is flexible to fit his own morality. Even if he were attempting to persuade me to donate to his cause of my own free will, I must be skeptical of his description of moral responsibility when he has turned his back on his freely accepted responsibility to the Constitution. His oath did not stipulate enemies who would attack the Constitution, or break it, or bend it to their will. His oath stipulates ALL enemies. He is the domestic enemy he is sworn to defend against.

Much political discussion involves terms and phrases used in ways contrary to their definition. The cynical call it spin. President Obama says he wants to “invest” in research, education, and infrastructure. In part, his motivation for this “investment” is to get ahead of the Chinese in the green technologies race and fabricate a “sputnik” moment. He wants us to “Win the Future.” On the surface, this sounds great, after all who would not want to “Win The Future”, which I will abbreviate WTF. Would I be a loon if I wanted to loose the future green race to the Chinese? After all, they are so interested in being green in China, they have a head start, right? They have demonstrated some technological advance on par with the Russians beating us into space to prompt a Sputnik moment, right? So what could the President possibly mean? As an attorney, he understands that words have meaning, and that reasonable people turn to the dictionary to determine the common accepted definition, so let’s start there. He obviously did not intend for us to understand a meaning different from the common accepted definition. Did he? He would not count on us reacting to our feelings about the word instead of critically checking to see if he used it properly. Would he?

I have to believe his intentions are pure, that he thinks he is doing this for our own good. But his perspective, and belief in economic salvation through government fiat makes me skeptical that he has the usual understanding of the word investment. So consider the following, recognizing my skepticism, and decide. For example, an office manager might invest in training for the staff, invest in education. But buying everyone beer one evening after a training session is spending on a consumable expense. The training should lead to improved production, team cohesion, etc., payback in excess of the costs. The beer, leads to trips to the bathroom. Similarly, truthful investment in research would be in technologies with potential for a return on that investment. Spending on research in thousand year old technology with physical or chemical limitations that limit financial feasibility, would not be investment. Do you agree? We would not, for instance invest in research in windmills or ethanol. If we are to invest in education, like the office manager, we should choose those areas in which we expect the greatest, financial, return on our investment. Such investment might be in the form of incentives to attract medical students to increase medical professionals and lessen the shortage, especially in anticipation of all the new people expected to be on Medicaid in 2014. Investment in education would not be in subjects with no practical use, except to produce future professors. Investment in education would be in science, economics, and business management. There would be no investment in educating people in trades with no market demand as there would be no return on that investment. And any investment in infrastructure would be along the lines of the Panama Canal. We would invest in infrastructure with proven economic advantage over our current methods. We certainly would not invest in more government operated railway, for instance, high speed or otherwise. It would be easy to see the evidence of sincerity and understanding of the word investment. We should not see a line waiting outside the men’s room, or hear talk of free beer.

Simple investment is made in assets which are expected to go up in value with time. This can be raw materials which are tooled or modified so as to add value to them, or it can be real estate which can be improved to add value. Investment can be in people, by increasing their ability to do such things. In other words, investment is the act of taking wealth (capital) and using its ability to produce work to create more wealth. A factory owner might invest in more efficient tools and in the education of the workers to operate them, only if it allowed that owner to increase production value and therefore see a return on that investment. Without a return, spending is consumption, or charity, not investing. A factory owner could find busy work for his employees and call it investment, for a while. But just as beer is a fools investment, his capital would soon be flushed down the proverbial toilet, and he would not long be a factory owner.

“Green” is not relevant to this discussion.. When we spend tax money on research on such limited use technology as solar panels or windmills, we are duplicating research conducted for generations by the private sector. The areas where this method of power generation is preferable to other methods is well understood and found unfeasible outside of limited, remote situations. My family uses solar powered devises and I have seen solar powered wells provide water where it was not feasible to bring power lines. For as long as there has been written record, windmills have lifted water into elevated tanks for later use. But, whenever we must rely on such devices, we must have an alternative for days when the wind does not blow or clouds persist. Any savings in the “free’ energy is lost in redundant spending on duplicate structure. When we can tolerate intermittent failure, we put up with the inefficiency and losses for the savings. But, make no mistake, energy companies have thoroughly tested known material and aerodynamic technology and continue to do so secretly. Each is desperate to be the marketer of the next nuclear fusion plant or any other fossil fuel replacing technology. Are we likely to get that kind of fanatical zeal for discovery through government-grant-investment research? Perhaps, but will the zeal be to find something economically feasible, or something popular, or the answers which bring more congressional funding?

We know how much energy reaches the earth from the sun. There is not enough energy in sunlight to power our country if we could capture it all, with 100% efficiency. Solar panels and windmills will never be 100% efficient, nor will the energy storage arrangements they charge. Anyone who suggests we could have a breakthrough to change our understanding of physics sufficiently to overcome this fact is praying, not planning. Such a person is praying for a change in the natural, physical world, not planning for an improvement in our understanding of it. They are banking on an answer existing in the realm of what we do not know, no in the overall expansion of what we know. A cynical person might attribute such folly to spin as well.

I suggest we let the private sector spend its own money when something new is to be gleaned, instead of spending the money confiscated from all of us because we wish it were so. Following the real Sputnik moment, we didn’t beat the Russians to the moon, we ran there alone. No one was following us. The world was more than willing to let us spend the resources, and watch for the occasional discovery when we stumbled onto one. The world is doing the same now that we are in the “green race”. We performed a technological feat with no financially viable use for it. The world knew it could be done, but only government would do it without answering the question of why would we. I think it is really neat that we have been to the moon, and love the romantic images of doing so with a slide rule. But I would never condone outpacing the Russians if it meant borrowing the money from the Chinese, giving our discoveries to them, and mothballing the program a generation later to rely on Russian rockets to get our satellites into orbit and our astronauts to a space station we share with them. We went to the moon to prove that American ingenuity can solve any problem, the Russians went into space to prove to the Russian people that the Russian government was the solution to any problem. Which more closely resembles the arguments President Obama makes for, “investment”? Let us not spend money we borrow from our kids to mothball another technology without financial feasibility when we can do it now for free.

When we have invested (spent) tax money on education, we got more expensive education. Don’t believe me? Why would anyone spend the tax money to educate their kids in a public school, and also spend the tuition money to educate them in a private school, (as all private school parents do), if one were not better than the other? As education spending doubled in this country, our student’s performance relative to the rest of the world did not change appreciably. When we spent tax money to help students pay for college tuition, we got a corresponding increase in tuition costs. When we use government loan guarantees, we get students studying subjects and pursuing degrees they never would on their own dime, much less if a private bank had to be convinced that demand for workers with those degrees was sufficiently high to empower the graduate to repay the loan. Only the idle rich would pay their own money for degrees in un-marketable subjects. A musician of moderate skill and disadvantaged background can get a loan and earn a music degree with no hope of being employed as such upon graduation. This is not investment, it is entitlement. We believe that this mediocre musician has a right to pursue this career path and some believe he is entitled to have the rest of us pay for it. But more importantly, is such a young musician well served in being led to believe that a music degree and loan payments provide a better future than being a brick mason, for instance?

When we spend tax money on our “crumbling infrastructure”, we are doing maintenance, not investing. Such maintenance is a consumable, not an investment. This is not to say that maintenance is not necessary, but it is not investment. I suggest a restructuring instead. I suggest that we go back to the funding scheme that built much of our crumbling infrastructure. I suggest that we use the gasoline tax for road construction and maintenance as it was originally sold to us. I suggest that we end the practice of raiding that tax to subsidize public transportation like Amtrak and city buses.

I challenge you to find any area where the government operates in even tangential competition with the private sector where the government efficiency is on the same order of magnitude as the private sector. Find any activity where the government keeps its promise of controlling costs and continuously improving customer satisfaction. There is no private concern which can survive any substantial length of time without doing just that, and paying a return on investment. There are legitimate uses for government, such as refereeing and national defense. But anytime government spending is recommended as an investment, or to control costs, or as a way to provide for those who cannot provide for themselves, there has been and by the very nature of it will be, an ever increasing collection of resources and liberties in an attempt to react to the cascade of disappointments and demands. Spending tax money on beer leads to well used toilets, not return on investment. Unfortunately, it also assures votes from the brewer’s union, big toilet manufactures, and drunks.

The Great American Experiment followed the sacrifice of, “lives . . . fortunes . . . and sacred honor” in defense of an idea. The idea that individuals, free from the tyranny of central command and control, protected their individual interests better than any unrelated protector, no matter how kind, caring or otherwise motivated. The Great American Experiment was funded, fought, and died for on the promise that freedom led to higher standards of living for everyone, greater innovation in business, agriculture, and every other aspect of life for everyone it touched, successful and failing alike. The government would be as limited as possible, the people as free as possible.

Carl Marx, believed the antithesis of these ideas. Marxism suggests that such freedom, and the fact that some people would be immensely more successful than others under such freedom, hurts the average person. Marx believed that for some people to succeed, others must fail, that the size of the pie is fixed, and who gets large pieces and who goes hungry is mostly random, except that dishonest people predisposed to fraud will skew things to their advantage. The typical honest person will suffer under the abuse of the dishonest. People are better served, in his theory, when each produce according to their abilities, and a central authority distributes according to one’s need. The average is better served when everyone follows the plan.

Every society in human existence has either answered to a central authority like a king, or had some system whereby the people chose their governors. In early history, a king who fought for the position was best able to fight to defend his people from invaders and pillagers, or to invade and pillage neighbors. Most were still farmers and hunters. Later, when technology progressed to the point where people could produce more than they consumed, trading came on the scene with the evolution of the middle man (middleous homosapien). This relied on fair play and people were hunted down and killed for foul play. Knowing who could be trusted and a person’s reputation became valued knowledge. Middleous man evolved to make a living off of what they knew instead of what they could grow or hunt. This only happened because there was enough excess produced to support people who did not directly hunt or gather food, make clothing, or build shelter, and there was efficiency in producing a couple of commodities where the climate was best suited to it and trading them for goods that could be more efficiently produced elsewhere. (This is why we raise beef and corn here, and they raise sugar cane in the tropics). It was almost unregulated. The middle men got together and formed colleges, or congresses, (groups of like minded people to serve a common end). Being a member of such could encourage producers and buyers to deal with you. The members of such groups would promise better and better prices to producers, and better and better quality to the buyers. Some would temporarily make a better living by such promises than from what they knew. They promised more than their competing middle men, until they could no longer produce and the group collapsed. They were replaced.

This system was ultimately replaced by the selection of fair play representatives (governors) by consensus. This made the selection based more on the perception of the candidate’s abilities than on actual performance. (Sound familiar?) Sometimes the selection was fair; sometimes it was coerced and intimidated. Indeed, control of all societies has been and is by governments chosen by a range of methods, with violent seizure of power after surrender on one end of the scale, and free and frequent elections on the other.

I am only concerned with the violent seizure method in that it is no more or less likely an end to any society, regardless of where their system currently lies along the scale, and is therefore mostly unpredictable. Such systems arise when the people are not able or willing to withstand its takeover. My concern is with the other end where America selects its government. Every society in human existence who chose their governors based on promises of representation have ultimately fallen to wasteful spending. The cliché is that they fell when the electorate voted themselves larger shares of the stores of grain than they were motivated to produce when fed with free grain. It is another of human’s natures. Until the mid 1900’s, these happenings were part of common education.

These are well known facts. In the pre-American world, kings tried to motivate their subjects with a system of taxes and entitlements. Prior to America’s founding, it was generally believed that anarchy would ensue without divinely inspired and chosen leaders. Many cultures still believe that today. Our founders believed that no one is more or less divinely created than the next, and that anarchy ensues without a divinely inspired population. They conceived a system whereby people could correct tyranny by choice. They conceived, debated, and persuaded the acceptance of a system that limited the power of the government to only that which the people authorize it to have. They demanded limits on government which could not be changed by the government serving those limits. They knew that human nature would compel elected officials to promise ever increasing rations from the public stores, and that once government control got sufficiently complicated, one size-fits-all policies would be the only way to manage the complexity thereby limiting innovation and individual motivation. They believed that nearly every government activity must be controlled locally, or fail.

So here we are. We stand at the cross roads where intellect faces human nature. On the one hand, intellect can rightly lead us to the conclusion that perfect management of a well motivated populace, provided for in accordance with the needs of each, eliminates suffering caused by bad decisions made by the individual. Human nature can lead us to accept Marx’s arguments without challenging the assumptions inherent in them. Marx’s utopic theory requires that human nature be resisted by the managers so that corruption does not foul the system, and that human nature be resisted by the managed so that defense of individual best interest no interfere with the common good even when contrary to individual good. Human nature explains why corruption is so common in countries with Marxist leaning systems. The self interest of the briber is provided for by the indulgence of the self interest of the bribed. Innovation is only relevant when conceived by or recognized by the managers and no incentive exists outside of ego for the innovator or the observant manager. Likewise, human nature leads us to vote ourselves larger shares of the public stores on the promises that “they” will be sufficiently taxed and sufficiently tolerant of the taxes to continue to produce grain undeterred. Human nature leads some to believe this despite the evidence to the contrary.

On the other hand, intellect can lead us to look for examples of both systems, socialist and free market, and determine which provides better conditions for the poor, or disadvantaged. Human nature would be to choose the best performing system.

Have we chosen the system whose theory stands up to rational debate when devoid of real world examples, or the system that has proven successful in practice despite being too complicated to fully explain every action rationally?

The choices, as I understand them are these: Recognize that we have the best medical system in the world BECAUSE the rich pay more than the poor, BECAUSE the rich have access to new treatment and technology before it is cheap enough for mass consumption; Recognize this it is this arrangement which makes medical care for the poor more available than it was a decade ago; Recognize that medical treatment of the poor is more available than it is in any other system in the world; Recognize that much of the medical treatment available to the world’s poor only exists as a result of the American medical system; Recognized that more treatments are available to the poor than would be if FDR had been successful in realizing socialized medicine; Recognize that a generation from now, the poor will have less access to as yet undiscovered treatments under socialized medicine than would be available if the rich continued to fund research and development; Recognize that socialism, Marxism, communism, statism, progressivism, liberalism, or however else you chose to label it, has led to the death of more people in the world than all other calamities combined; Recognize that because these systems rely on complete adherence to the common plan and surrender of the protection of individual defense of one’s best interest, violence and oppression are always used to control the population; Recognize that the wealth created by American entrepreneurs has funded the defense of most of the free world for two generations. Simply, choose to protect the rights of the individual to succeed or fail by one’s own decisions, unencumbered by agendas of social justice and wealth redistribution.

Or, choose the path chosen by every free society ever known. Choose the path dictated by emotion and human nature. Choose to bankrupt the country by trying to plan and provide an ever increasing array of goods and services, devised by a politically motivated committee that sets it own limits, provided to increasingly less motivated and demonized producers.

Will intellect win out over emotion? Am I wrong in my belief that I am on the side of intellect and not emotion? Is it arrogance that got us here in the first place, to believe that the human nature cycle of tyranny-escape-freedom-prosperity-guilt-entitlement-dependancy-tyranny can be short circuited without the pain of tyranny fresh in our minds? Are we destined to go down as the society arrogant enough to think that it manage all things for all people, just as the Romans did?

I hope not. I hope, that the success of the Great American Experiment thus far, can inspire us to not relinquish this prosperity and freedom in return for short term illusions of social justice. I hope that we recognize the success that took us from 13 colonies, too worthless to warrant the resources to control those colonies, to the most prosperous, powerful, free, and generous people in the world in less than 100 years. I hope that we collectively believe in our hearts, that the reason people immigrate here from every country in the world is freedom and opportunity and not a random coincidence. I hope that we as a country do not give in to the human nature that leads us to believe that our neighbors make poor choices at home, but perfect ones when electing officials, that these same neighbors make poor decisions at home, but perfect ones once in Washington DC.

I hope that we recognize that it is because of human nature, not despite it, that socialism and statism have always failed wherever they existed, and that free markets have succeeded everywhere they have existed. There is only so much motivation garnered from threats of fines and imprisonment, but the motivation of the hope for a better life is only limited by one’s imagination.

We were promised that Social Security taxes were the property of the person paying them, that they would be available with interest once one retired, and that they could be passed on to one’s heirs should one die before drawing the funds out. How does that resemble what we actually have?

We were promised that if we only gave people who needed it a Welfare hand up, we could assist most in moving back into the working main stream. Now, more people are on Welfare as a percentage of population, the programs were extended to less and less willing to accept a hand up over a hand out, and who find a gap between what the government will pay them to stay home and what working people are paid (after the taxes are paid).

We were promised that the 4 cent per gallon gas tax would only be used to fund highway construction and maintenance. It did just that, until Congress voted to use the funds to support public transportation like Amtrak, city busses, subways, etc. Now, transportation funds are scarce, Amtrak looses $39 per passenger (despite promises that it would be returned to the private sector, at a profit for taxpayers, once it is profitable), and gas taxes are many times the 4 cents per gallon that originally worked.

In Virginia, we were promised that if we allowed a state lottery, the money would be used for public education. Although the amount spent on education does come from the left over lottery money, the left over money equaled the previous budget. The original money was used for other desires. Now, the Virginia lottery participates in the Mega Millions ring that includes several states, the payouts have risen in dollar amounts, the chances of a Virginian winning have gone down, and the school systems are still peddling cans of Virginia Diner peanuts to help supply classrooms.

In June, a District of Columbia Metro crash killed 9 people. Accidents happen, and the causes must be identified and corrected, regardless of who is in charge. In an unrelated line of thinking, the NTSB and others exclaim this as an example of the need for more federal oversight of locally operated systems. They say that there needs to be more uniform rules among States and within localities. Why is this related to the “Trust me, I’m with the government” charade of the previous examples?

The District of Columbia is the exclusive purview of Congress. The DC Metro is completely within federal control. How can the NTSB then claim that the accident indicates the need for more federal oversight? They do so same way that they say that the deficit in highway spending is the result of anything other than Congressional raiding of the funds for other desires. They do so in when talking about the deficit in funds for Social Security after allowing people to get benefits without being citizens, much less contributors to the system. They talk about amendments to the current health care “bills” to forbid the use of Medicare money for other programs, even though the “trust fund” has long been dissolved and the money spent for other desires and Medicare funds do not cover Medicare expenses now, much less other desires.

In the words of Ronald Reagan, “Government is not the solution, Government is the problem.”

Are we more interested in doing the most good with the available resources? Or are we more interested in having equal good for all, even if it is, on average less good?

The “poor” are now a powerful electorate demographic, our children are less educated despite the spending, Amtrak is still bankrupt, people are still “denied” health care, and the list goes on. And the statist wrings his hands and points to these facts as proof that the original takeovers of these things didn’t go far enough.

I ask a simple question: Is there any cause for which our public servants solved the problem in their charge, where the program and its offices were then closed, and where the taxes collected for that purpose stopped?