Federal Employees: A Cash Cow for the Unions

"What a deal!  I shoulda thought about this scam!  What a deal!  They don't bother to buy judges, they buy politicians!"  

I remember a day when I was young and JFK was President that we had an extended family dinner...a reunion of sorts.  One of my cousins that was at least 20 years older than me was there and he was very happy about President Kennedy issuing an order that allowed for public sector unions in the Federal government.  My father, a farmer and rancher, did not look favorably on unions and always kept his peace rather than say anything that would cause an argument; but my cousin, who was working as a union organizer at the time, was so excited that he didn’t see the sour look on Dad’s face.  But I saw it and wondered why.  It took me several decades to figure out what my father was thinking back then but I finally did.  Essentially, he could see no good coming from allowing unions to get involved in the government.  Actually, my father could see no good in unions at all as when company wasn’t around he commented that unions weren’t good for anything but driving up prices and taking people’s money.  Of course, Dad wasn’t politically correct and he firmly believed that what you got in life you got because you worked hard and did a good job.  In his mind, unions allowed people who didn’t work hard or do a good job to have job security that they didn’t deserve.  

When you look at the history of unions, however, it’s hard to say that unions were always unnecessary (and I’m not saying that they are totally unnecessary now).  To the contrary, unions were very necessary at the beginning of the industrial revolution when the economic class distinctions within the United States and elsewhere in the now developed world were stark.  Unions can rightly be credited with helping destroy the barriers that prevented the movement between economic classes and allowed for the American dream of upward mobility to come to fruition in the modern world.  The key in the early union movement was that they were formed to provide a balance between the workers of a factory who produced the goods and the owners of the factory who wanted to sell the goods while maximizing profits.  It was recognized in those early years that the workers had a valid position in sharing in the profits while ensuring that the factory continued to operate profitably.  In other words, if the union’s demands made production unprofitable the factory would close and there would be no profit for anyone.  Keep that in mind as I move on to the government.

It is now that my support for JFK during those wonderful days of my youth comes back to haunt me.  I was proud--and still am--of his wartime record and his relationship with the members of the military and that he understood the need for Special Forces; but I’m appalled when I think that it was he that opened the door for public sector unions to operate in the Federal Government.  You might ask why and the answer is simple: The Government does not operate with “profit” as an outcome of its operation.  In reality it is quite the opposite.  A Government manager who does not spend 100% of his budget is considered inept and will likely have his budget decreased in the coming fiscal cycle.  The manager who does spend 100% of his budget, and then cries appropriately about what he could have done if he had more funds, has his budget increased.  Such is the nature of government at all levels but especially at the Federal level.  There’s one other thing to consider in this formula, however, and that is that the cost of labor is never a budgeting factor.  Full Time Employee (FTE) positions are authorized and justified by Congress purely on the mission justification of the Federal Agency involved.  To increase the size of your organization you must show that your agency’s ability to complete the mission given it by Congress is suffering and you can only improve that with an increase in FTE positions.  No discussion of a cost-benefit is needed–something that a business would naturally do–but a justification of mission capability enhancement is required.  It is in this environment that public sector unions exist and, oddly enough, thrive.  

All of my government service was, of course, spent in a union-free environment as either a member of the military or in Federal Law Enforcement.  Neither can be unionized under because as ignorant as Congress can sometimes be, they have never been that stupid.  Of course, some professional organizations have sprung up to “represent” individuals in personnel matters, the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association or FLEOA, is one such but they are limited to providing access to specialized insurance policies in case the law enforcement officer is sued, and access to an attorney familiar with the Office of Personnel Management’s (OPM) rules and regulations.  OPM, you see, is the agency that governs all aspects of Federal employment for all agencies and their rules and regulations codify everything from entering on duty for the first day of work through, and including, retirement.  That includes disciplinary issues, an area that many unions like to trumpet as one of their most important duties:  protecting the employee from wrongful punishment to include termination.  One look at OPM’s regulations governing discipline and you know intuitively that the Federal Government employee is anything if not protected.  

My last years in government service dealt with exactly that area as I handled policy compliance for the Eastern half of the nation for my agency.  It was my job to ensure that all the evidence in a discipline case was collected and then to evaluate that evidence with the appropriate individuals before taking the case and the recommendation of the deciding official to Employee Relations (ER) and the staff attorney for a final review.  Nothing could be done off-the-cuff and everything had to meet the arcane standards of OPM as well as the agency’s guidelines; and, any action recommended had to be balanced with similar issues across the broad spectrum of the agency.  In simple terms that means that the Special Agent in Charge of an office on the East Coast couldn’t fire an individual for a violation that would merit a Letter of Reprimand in all the other offices.  The process was not quick and was rather cumbersome with some issues taking a year or more to resolve, but that was designed that way on purpose.  The multiple layers of review and consultation protected both the agency and the employee from the human factor that can be involved in any disciplinary issue.  It was designed to take personal feelings and put them aside to ensure fairness and it did that extremely well.  It also provided for an appeals process that went up to the agency head before going over to an Administrative Law judge and finally to the Federal District Court.  You should know that this system is in effect for both non-union and unionized Federal employees.  And OPM doesn’t deduct any kind of membership fee from the bi-weekly checks of Federal employees.

Now with all that protection in place for both non-unionized and unionized employees in the Federal Government you might be wondering what does a union do for Federal employees.  That’s a good question.  I always wondered that myself.  

First, an approved union representing Federal employees does do some negotiations on behalf of those employees.  For example, they ensure that the employee is given adequate breaks at an appropriate time during their work day.  (If you’ve ever been in a passport line at a major airport that was suddenly moved to the rear of other passport lines because the Immigration Inspector closed shop after the person just in front of youl was processed, you’ve seen this in action.)  They ensure that the employee is not required to do any work outside their job description.  (If you’ve ever been in a Federal office waiting for someone to return to their desk to help you while watching other Federal employees sit on their hands, you’ve seen this in action, too.)  They ensure that the employees are not abused with having to work unscheduled overtime and that if they are they are paid accordingly.  (If you’ve ever tried to call a Federal office with an urgent question 1 minute after closing and could only get a recording that recited the office hours, you’ve seen this in action.  Don’t these type of things make you wonder where the term “public servant” originated?)  

Now these issues were all a matter of negotiations between the union and the representative of the agency in question.  So what is the driving force behind the negotiations?  Well, for the union it is taking something...anything...back to the employees that justifies their belonging to the union.  For the government negotiator, it is getting it over with as soon as possible with an equitable win-win solution so he can get back to his regular work which is piling-up in his absence.  There is no profit to protect, there is only a desire to keep the workforce happy and, anyway, it’s up to Congress to come up with the tax dollars necessary.  The bottom line is that all the issues are already covered in the OPM personnel manual.  Employees can’t be abused regardless of the union and they do have recourse.  They do get breaks on a regular basis regardless of the union.  And why can’t they answer that phone 1 minute after closing for a 3 minute call if they are truly “public servants.”  With the employee already protected beyond anything in the private sector, why do public employee unions exist?

I’ll let you in on a nasty little secret:  They exist to put public employee money, i.e., tax dollars, in the union bank account on a direct deposit basis every two weeks, month after month, year after year.  They exist to provide the union with a ready and constant source of income for which they do very, very little.  They print up a nice membership card.  They answer the phones and they have their attorneys (the one’s already on staff) pick-up any legal questions that might come up and handle the negotiations which, in reality, aren’t negotiations but bargaining sessions in which one party (the union) has everything to gain and the other party (the government) has nothing to lose.  

It’s the greatest legalized protection racket ever devised.  Every employee is charged dues (depending on the pay grade in some instances but as much as $16.00 per pay period) that are deducted by the government from the paycheck before the employee ever sees it.  The union gets the dues monthly direct from the Federal Government and smiles all the way to the bank.  And come election time, the union bosses spend the money to suit their own interests regardless of the desires of the membership.  If Al Capone were alive today, I guarantee you he’d be the head of a public sector union instead of a bootlegger.  

Now I see that TSA may be organized by March and two different unions are competing for those 40,000 employees.  (See http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/01/24/tsa-screeners-set-choose-union-following-public-sector-trend/)  The why of it is a no-brainer.  The union that successfully organizes TSA will reap a windfall of around $15,000,000 per year in dues for doing very little.  They will tout of course, in their recruiting literature, cases involving multiple AWOLs that they managed to get reduced from removal to a mere 15-day suspension but that happens way too often anyway given the multitude of existing rules and regulations codified by OPM.  (Terminating a Federal employee for anything less than murder really does become the proverbial “Federal Case.”)  The reality of the situation is that the unionization of government agencies is a cash cow for unions.  Nothing more.  Nothing less.  And remember, isn’t being done to correct actions by the employer that starves the Federal employee.  It’s allowed to be done by politicians as payback for union support during their successful political campaigns.  That’s why President Barack H. Obama has promoted increased unionization of the Federal workforce at a time when the numbers of workers participating in unions in the private sector is shrinking.  It’s all about payback and using tax dollars to ensure continued union support.  

Like I said before, if Al Capone were alive today, he’d be running a union.  And voting Democrat, no doubt.

Overreaching Food “Safety” Modernization Act Would Destroy Family Farmers

Necessary reading for anyone dealing with the Government.

Having been raised on a farm and ranch in Southern Idaho I have to say that more government does not equal safer food.  It does equal higher production costs.  It does equal less profit for the farmer and more expense for the consumer.  It does equal fewer farmers growing food and a move to large, corporate farms.  But it absolutely does not equal safer food.

As my mother used to say, if you don't properly clean and cook the food you might get sick.  I never got sick from food when I was growing up.  We had eggs for breakfast and never had to worry about salmonella poisoning.  We ate corn freshly picked from the field and never worried about contamination.

There wasn't a lot of government involvement back then and things were safer than today.  Maybe it's all an outgrowth of feminism when, to the great appreciation of all us teenage boys in high school, girls threw away their bras and stopped taking Home Economics in school because it was demeaning to them as independent women.  And as a result they never learned the "kitchen tricks of the trade" from either teachers or their mothers.

Anyone see a corollary there?

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The Problems with Al Gore

The Problems with Al Gore

From the LA Times: "Former Vice President Al Gore and his wife, Tipper, have added a Montecito(CA)-area property to their real estate holdings. The couple spent $8,875,000 on an ocean-view villa on 1.5 acres with a swimming pool, spa and fountains, a real estate source familiar with the deal confirms. The Italian-style house has six fireplaces, five bedrooms and nine bathrooms(see pictures above, and view more here)."

AlGore's demagoguery is plain for all thinking people to see. His masterful piece of fiction, An Inconvenient Truth, won an Academy Award as a documentary in a Hollywood filled with vacuous minds that were still upset that their choice had lost to George W. Bush. I suppose that the Oscar was their way of compensating the one they believed should have been president. Be that as it may, we know now that his film should have been entitled A Very Convenient Lie as is amply demonstrated by his recent purchase of a $9 million mansion located...at the Pacific Ocean's edge. You know, one of the oceans that he told us would be rising and flooding all coastal areas around the world and making Manhattan a modern Venice. His goal was to ignite the unthinking base of the left into supporting Cap & Trade, a program falsely described as a way to save the world but in actuality a program to make AlGore and his allies in the ruling liberal elite the über rich ruling liberal elite. After all, what is the use of going into politics if not to make money, right?

AlGore's arrogant refusal to debate the issue of Anthropogenic Global Warming/Climate Change (AGW/CC) is proof enough that the theory is a fraud. President Obama, looking the nation in the eye with his chin and nose in the air also arrogantly declared that AGW/CC to be fact and closed to further debate; but that declaration was from a man who is a proven liar and cannot be trusted to tell the people the truth about anything. (Could it be that the major carbon trading company in the United States is located in Chicago have anything to do with his statement? I wonder?) Unfortunately for both AlGore and Obama, Mother Nature has also weighed in on the debate and proven them both to be fools and liars as if to underscore the fraud that was uncovered at East Anglia in the way they were manipulating the data to show that non-existant AGW/CC was real. Real scientists know that the failure to empirically question results through open debate and proven methods means that the results are not science but science fiction and that's what we are dealing with now.

Thanks to the heavy-handed liberal-progressive-socialist Democrats in power the EPA has declared that carbon dioxide is a poisonous gas which must be controlled. That means, I suppose, that there will be limits on how much each person can exhale and the only bright side to the EPA's asinine overextension of their power would be if it served to shut-up the politicians in Washington. Of course, that's too much to hope for because they will surely exempt themselves from the law. But the actual effect of the EPA's action will be to add taxes to the production of energy which will, of course, be passed on to We the People. I know this is hard for many on the left to understand because it is pretty advanced economics that is only taught at the high school level but when you tax a corporation that tax is passed on to the consumer because it is a cost of doing business. So Cap & Trade, which is basically taxation by another name (a more accurate name might be Cap & Theft) will raise the energy costs to all of We the People.

Fine, you say? You're willing to pay more to heat and light your house and drive your car? Well, ok. You can take that approach if you want but you should think it through. If you're paying more for energy, so are the corporations who produce the other things that you use. Things like food, water, clothing, medicine (yes, I know that bill goes to the Government but where will the Government get the money?) and everything else that we must use on a daily basis. It won't be just your power and gas bill that goes up. All your bills will go up. Way, way up. About the only people who won't feel the effects of such a law are the Amish and those few in Appalachia who live off their own farms and through trading and still don't have electricity or running water and to whom a vehicle driving by is a major event. The rest of We the People will see our lives reduced to a level of poverty that hasn't been seen in modern America because modern America has never been this much under the thumb of radical socialists before. The ruling elite won't suffer, however, because they will control the carbon credits and the profits will go to them.

Remember, it's never really been about the climate.  It's really about money (yours and mine) and political power (theirs).  That's why this coming November is so important.

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Deal Near on Derivatives, sp

This is one very good reason why the 41 Republicans in the Senate should stop this legislation.  The Democrats are promoting nothing more than crony capitalism where they will decide the winners and losers on Wall Street.

The Democrats will try to say that the Republicans are just protecting Wall Street greed but the truth of the matter is far different.

And why should Warren Buffet, a billionaire, be exempted from the controls on derivatives just because he supported Obama?  I'm all in favor of capitalism and he is the ultimate capitalist but this is just plain wrong.

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More American Expatriates Give Up Citizenship

I spent over 30 years in the service of my country and love it dearly.  I lived outside of the United States, mostly in Southeast Asia, for about 20 of those years and the result was not a desire to become a citizen of another country but a reenforcement of my love for America.  I can look at my country and see all her flaws, yet having seen much of the world and having lived abroad for so great a time, I've seen no other nation that measures up to her greatness.

There are certainly improvements that can be made.  Our tax system has become onerous and unwieldy.  Our government has become overlarge and has forgotten its proper role under the Constitution.  We seem unable to break the hold of the pernicious political correctness that eats away at our culture weakening it at a time when we need it to be strengthened.  Despite these and other failings, it is still the shining light of freedom in this world and if you doubt me, just look at the lines of people at embassies and consulates around the world who are trying to get a visa just to come here.

I'm certain that the people in the linked story are at their wits end to consider such an act and for that they have my pity.  But while I may understand their consternation borne of the very expansion of government that I and other Conservatives oppose, I cannot support or look favorably upon their decision.

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Gore takes cash for water campaign from chemical firm

For AlGore and the liberal-progressive-socialist Democrat machine, it's all about money...and control.

This is, of course, from a British newspaper.  The Left Stream Media is again quiet on this type of story.

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Death by CAFE Standards

Death by CAFE Standards

The number of deaths caused by CAFE standards forcing manufacturers to lighten cars and reduce passenger safety exceeds that caused by firearms. We should hold the government responsible for these deaths as they are a direct result of the government interfering in the free market.

As Ronald Reagan said, "The nine most feared words in the American language are "I'm from the government and I'm here to help."

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Morning Bell: Red Tape Rising | The Foundry: Conservative Policy News.

Morning Bell: Red Tape Rising | The Foundry: Conservative Policy News.

This article could have been titled: "The Mendacity of Over-Regulation."  Not only are we drowning in the red ink of deficit, the increasing size of government contributes mightily to that deficit both by increasing direct costs and decreasing productivity.  We are told that the regulations are to help us but the truth is the direct opposite.  We are rapidly becoming a country where nothing can be accomplished without the proper government form, sent to the proper government agency and signed by the proper government official.

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