Having seen both abusive and unresponsive management/owners and the protection of mediocre and unproductive workers by unions in places I have worked, I have to say that the real problem boils down to humans and egos. Both management and unions are quite capable of ruining a firm when they let egos run amok.

In the labor-management transaction, there needs to be a deal that both sides can live with and that will neither break the firm nor take unfair advantage of the worker. The problem is that in many cases, the unions have come into play only after a history of abuse by the employer, so neither side is really bargaining without an axe to grind. Once in place, unions frequently continue to push for more and more concessions, regardless of the net effect on the health of the employer and because of the employer’s attitude towards workers, the negotiators cannot really trust or believe each other.

Some of the unions themselves are unwilling to deal fairly and openly with their own employees as detailed in this piece by Deroy Murdock in National Review. Here again, it’s all about a few people not being able to distinguish between being CEO or President and being King.

Clearly there are major abuses on both sides. The “rubber room” where some union teachers spend years whiling away the day at the taxpayer’s expense because it is so complicated and expensive to just discharge them is a current example.  But, for every example of a union procedure or benefit that seems unbelievable to the rest of us, there is a negotiator somewhere that agreed to it for that employer.

In the public sector, those seen as “management” may agree to nearly anything as they have no vested interest in the “business” anyway, since revenues are based on taxation and legislation rather than a free-market. For this reason I have some real problems with unions in the public sector, unless the union contracts are subjected to a public vote by either the people or by their elected representatives. Otherwise it is just one government employee making a deal with other government employees while no one really has the responsibility to look after the public interest.

On the other side, I once worked for a firm that kept changing the bonus criteria every other month because someone in the home office decided they were paying too much out in bonuses. The net result was that it became essentially impossible to meet the bonus requirements and the very things the bonus was set up to encourage disappeared. At the same time, pay rates were frozen and the employee share of the benefits plan shot up. Needless to say, productivity suffered greatly and absenteeism became a problem. Disappointed with that outcome, management went for the stick instead of a better carrot and several workers, myself included, started to investigate union representation. It had become clear that the firm’s priorities had changed from encouraging productivity to controlling labor expense within very tight parameters.

Republicans would have us believe that all unions are evil and that business owners and managers are all fair and honest folks who just want to make an honest profit from their efforts. Democrats would have us believe that every worker, whether in private business or on the government payroll must be protected from the evils of management and owners. Like so many other issues, neither tells the whole story. Neither side wants to tell you that most things are not black and white, because then you might actually start evaluating candidates as individuals instead of by party affiliation. To paraphrase, the fault lies not in our unions or employers, but in ourselves.

I’m really getting sick and tired of hearing every stupid statistic trotted out as Breaking News and then a flurry of  professors and so-called experts from former administrations wringing their hand about what this may or may not mean. This week it is home sales. Let’s see, unemployment still high so not many home sales, what a shocker.

The one thing that should be abundantly clear from all of this is that Washington does not control the economy, no matter how much they borrow from abroad to throw at selected industries in the name of spurring economic growth or recovery or whatever.  It doesn’t matter whether the administration is controlled by either party, the whole economic engine of the country is just too big and too complex for the goofballs in D.C. to do anything more that twiddle around the edges and drive the national debt to new heights. The only difference in the two political parties is who they give our tax money to in order to pay back campaign contributions. No amount of government spending whether on missiles and ships or teacher unions and road construction is  going to bring back a middle-class with jobs and futures and realistic hopes of retiring some day.

In the fine FDR tradition of creating an extra-legal agency to “address” every problem, the Obama administration (and their many friends wanting high-paying, low stress jobs in Washington) now want BP to pay billions of dollars into an escrow account AND have disbursement of the funds from this account administered by a third party. Anyone want to guess what this third party will look like.

OK, I’m no fan of BP. Their safety and deferred-maintenance record has not been very good in North America in the last decade or so and the continuing mess in the Gulf of Mexico is just the largest and latest.

The White House and the Dems on the Hill are behaving predictably – “Something must be done!” – even if it has little or no effect on the real problem. Not ones to let an opportunity pass, they now propose to have BP escrow billions of dollars in funds and then set up a “third party” to administer the claims on these funds.

I can only imagine how this “claim processor” will be constituted. First we’ll need a big name chief for the Wesley Mouch role, and a blue-ribbon panel of former office-holders, technical experts, legal experts, financial experts, then lots of administrative paper-pushers to build and monitor “process.” This “FreddieSpill” will almost certainly set new records for overhead eating up the available funds.

No doubt Congress will pass some special enabling legislation for FreddieSpill that puts it beyond the normal legal-judicial process so no one will be able to appeal or contest the rulings of this “third party.”

Once an entity like this is created, it will never die, so this will become the de facto liability oversight agency for the oil and gas industry in the U.S. Since this agency will be outside the normal legal process, its determinations will be impossible to predict since it is essentially a political animal, thereby dramatically cranking up the risk for US exploration and production at the very time we desperately need to find and produce energy here.

So, the net result will be lots of jobs for friends of those in the administration, a rapid whittling away of the escrow funds, arbitrary and capricious disbursement decisions that cannot be appealed in courts and a frightening risk variable on the domestic oil and gas industry.

Wow, do these people know how to make lemonade or what?

Headed by President Hamid Văn Thiệu Karzai, Afghanistan is not just like Vietnam, it IS Vietnam. Here we are again backing a corrupt so-called leader after the result of a highly questionable election that we would certainly condemn if it were held anywhere else. (Nguyễn Văn Thiệu got around 94% of the vote in Vietnam in 1971).

We had the opportunity to grab Bin Laden and the key Al Qaeda people in the earliest days and lost the opportunity by a combination of indecision and the faulty belief of a few that smart-bombs, UAVs and Black Ops forces could replace regiments if not divisions in a sparsely populated, mountainous land.
Another 100,000 troops, even if they were all shooters, will not bring back the opportunity that was lost years ago.

The political leadership, past and now current, can not or will not even tell us what success would look like in Afghanistan because they want to be able to change the definition as they go.  Do you really think our fathers, uncles, grandfathers and such would have hit the beaches on Tarawa, Iwo Jima, Okinawa, Omaha or Utah if they had no idea of how success would be defined. That’s what we are asking our troops to do now. How can we look them in the eye and ask them to do this! Saying “Remember 9/11″ is only going to last a little longer. They’re going to have to start up the draft again because we have absolutely worn out all of our active duty, reserve and National Guard troops.

This is the LBJ moment. It’s sounding now that Barry is going to push ahead so as not to look weak. Yes we have lost good people there and yes their sacrifice is very much appreciated and gratefully acknowledged by this old jarhead and countless thousands of others. At this point, the best way to show that we truly support our troops is to get them out of a situation that has no end in sight, before thousands more are maimed and killed.

Can’t we be smart and retain some of the lessons of our own history. Must we continue to follow the failed steps that Britain followed in both Afghanistan and Mesopotamia. I’m not ignoring or forgetting the history of Al Qaeda or the Taliban, but continuing to send the best of our youth and literally tons of our treasure to this place that has swallowed up armies from Alexander to the Soviets is just madness and does a great disservice to those who must fight and die so politicians can say that they did not forget 9/11.

Over 50,000 of us died for the domino theory of Communism in southeast Asia. We lost a generation, nearly ruined the Army and Marine Corps as career options for patriotic Americans and thought we had forever changed how our country’s military forces would be deployed in foreign lands. How many more Americans have to be killed, maimed and forever emotionally scarred in this exercise in futility?

The pundits and progressives are all aflutter about some recent townhall meetings with Congress members that have gotten loud and rowdy.  This should not be a real surprise as healthcare is a very personal issue—especially so if you have a chronic condition or are retired on a fixed income. Sure, some of the participants may have been seeded by those with a particular position, but many are just angry at what certainly looks like a huge change with no public debate.

First, it would help a lot if all of us could actually see and read what we are debating. I’d be very surprised if all the members of Congress have even read it all, much less understand it.  With all the communications outlets currently available to the Congress and the Administration, there is no reason why the people should not be completely informed on the proposed package so we are not running scared with rumors of death boards. Yes, I know we can read the whole thing online, but can most of us make any sense of it?

This is a very serious subject which directly affects people’s lives. Broad outlines from the Administration and a few members of Congress from each side of the aisle does not constitute a debate.  Likewise, one speaker making statements and answering questions in a room full of constituents is not a debate either.

In the absence of clear, concise information about exactly what is changing and what is will cost us all, it is not surprising that many will react with fear. Add to this the number of people, both broadcasters and politicos that know that nothing motivates people to action better than fear and you have a formula for emotional reactions and outrage. The liberals are outraged that the masses would dare question the wisdom or motives of the progressive elite who always know what’s best for us and the conservatives are outraged that there is not a lot they can do to stop this train regardless of where it is currently headed.

Many of us have personal experience with finding out after the fact that a nameless, faceless entity has determined that something  is “not a covered expense” or  “not medically necessary, ” but we have to pay for it anyway. Therefore it is not surprising that people are reluctant to trust what sounds like another group of insurance salesmen telling us not to worry.

It’s real simple. If you don’t want us screaming about the latest rumor we’ve heard, replace those rumors with detailed, accurate information, not broad gentle reassurances. Tell us what exactly this bill is trying to accomplish and how a given section or subtitle accomplishes that.

Congress and the Administration need to spend the next month or two putting out detailed accurate information and give people a chance to digest it. Then, go back and make the changes that this discussion has shown are needed and put it to a vote of both houses. Let’s get this decided on its merits, not on who is best at stampeding their followers.