Organized Labor v. White House

Ben Smith at POLITICO wrote today that he had a call on the Blanche Lincoln race in Arkansas, from a “White House official” with the word that:

“Organized labor just flushed $10 million of their members’ money down the toilet on a pointless exercise,” the official said. “If even half that total had been well-targeted and applied in key House races across this country, that could have made a real difference in November.

http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0610/White_House_official_Organized_labor_just_flushed_10_million_of_their_members_money_down_the_toilet_.html

While that is undoubtedly true, it would have been a waste anyway since both Democratic Party candidates are running 20 points behind the Republican candidate.

Unions have so much money that they can well afford to waste some – after all, they have a lot of members they can continue to scam.

Now Lincoln had both Obama and Bill Clinton supporting her, and she still barely won. That has to be a sore point between the White House – indeed the entire Democratic Party and Big Labor.

Oh, there is not divorce coming between Democrats and labor. They need each other because neither can win without the other, but need does not equate love. They are like Siamese Twins who have vastly different taste in music, art, education and people – but can’t live without their hateful twin.

Fiscal discipline is a bitch!

Fiscal discipline is a bitch!

Whatever your school district, its problems are the same as the San Diego School District. It is just that the SD School District, being much larger, get more attention for the media, in this case the voiceofsandiego.com. Emily Alpert REALLY covers the San Diego education sector daily, and well.

http://www.voiceofsandiego.org/education/schooled/

As I have mentioned before, in the REALLY old days before the Poway School District became a good school district, I attended more than 100 school board meetings and jousted with the school board on a continuing basis.

I loudly supported Prop. 13, and told the board that the reason I supported it was the school board. Week after week, I saw that school board NEVER turn down a request – new band uniforms, longer bus trips, new whatever.

If the kids wanted it, they got it. If the teachers wanted it, they got it. If the administrators wanted it, they got it. Dreams were not too much, ever. All the school board had to do was raise the property tax rate just a few cents at a time. Eureka!

On the meeting after Prop. 13 passed, amid cries of the fire stations, libraries, and police stations closing, I gloated to a fair-thee-well before the PUSD school board, and explained to them that when the next beautifully-scrubbed teen said the band needed new uniforms because everyone in the Rose Parade had seen their last-years uniforms, someone was not going to ask that pretty teen, “Do you want us to take the money from the football team, or the library?”

Suddenly, PUSD became budget conscious. Of necessity.

That same sort of fiscal discipline is being imposed, and yes it MUST be imposed because there is a natural tendency to do whatever is “good for the children.” That natural desire is in all of us – we all raise our children in familial socialism, and they expect to get that, forever.

In the case of the SD school system, they have made $50 million in cuts, immediately face $50 million more, and the long-term prognosis is that the cuts will continue because the state is OUT OF MONEY!

The Second Law of Street Economics is “Nobody gets it if there ain’t any.’

This is a hard lesson for politicians to deal with. The politician in them does not like being made to make choices.

It is easier for those in business because they face that problem on a daily basis.

The worse news is that even the teacher cuts (where they actually exist) will be much more drastic because teacher employment has been subsidized by the federal “stimulus program,”  that money is running out and even this Congress knows it cannot be extended.

School districts everywhere are in for a hard time, and they will soon come a-begging with: “It’s for the children.”

No it isn’t.

It’s for the unions.

Not the “Year of the Politician” — and Jerry Brown IS a Politician!

The NY Times reports: “Federal Reserve, Ben S. Bernanke, warned on Wednesday that “the federal budget appears to be on an unsustainable path,”,,,

He says it, but no one in this administration is listening.

Congress certainly isn’t.

Obama certainly isn’t.

Our own Democrat running for Governor, certainly isn’t.

Just to put things in some sort of perspective: Greece is seven points lower in the deficit to GDP ration – they are essentially bankrupt and living on Germany’s credit.

California is only one point below neutral in the deficit to GDP ration.

Germany is five points above neutral in the deficit to GDP ration.

I am not certain where the US is – and I doubt anyone else is either – because we are such a moving target as we spend at an enormous rate. We are literally burning though money, hence the Bernanke “the federal budget appears to be on an unsustainable path.”

That is why my reading of last night’s political theatre is simply that the ole’ time pols took quite a hit and the hits will continue.

And Jerry Brown is certainly an ole time politician. He will have a massive and uber powerful unions support effort, so he is not an easy mark – and he can change spots like no one else in politics, but this is no year to be a professional politicians. And Jerry is, if nothing else, a professional politician.

But defeating SEIU and the Teacher’s unions is not easy, even in this anti-politician climate

BP Had a Bad Record

ABC News had a report back on May 27 that BP has the absolute worst safety record, at their Texas and Ohio refineries, according to OSHA reports.

It seems that Bp has had 760 “egregious, willful” safety violations, while the next worst oil company, SUNOCO had EIGHT! EXXON had ONE!

It appears that BP had a bad record going into Big Spill.

Geek, Reporting for Duty…

Those of you who were watching the votes coming in.

Well, to build on my previous mention that I am a certifiable Geek, you probably intuitively realize that there is some Gnome, sitting at a computer in the musty bowels of the San diego Registrars Office, reading vote releases and sending messages to some national company who then feeds the information to TV and radio.

For many years, I was that gnome. Both primary and presidential elections, yours truly was the computer operator far into the wee hours of the morning.

(I would not ever do that again.)