Hot Air
Global warming disappeared in January and February 2011. The global temperature anomaly was negative for two straight months. "Anomaly" means the difference of (A) the month's global average minus (B) the global average for the benchmark 1980-2010 period. IF global warming computer models were correct, such a consecutive monthly negative anomaly would not happen with a very high degree of probability. The existence of these two negative anomalies in 2011 - after a trend up for 30 years - proves the models simply are wrong and do not contain correct physics.
The "scientists" pushing those claims should be fired for either incompetence or knavery; eviscerate those grants. That's one big glob of fat in the federal government that needs to be cut now.
Just Say No
That applies to call for US intervention in Libya. First, it's the Libyans' fight; let them do it. Second, Libya is in Europe's backyard; let them do it. Just Say No. US: stay out of it.
Consolidation
News Corp. received U. K. government approval to buy satellite news service, BSkyB, leading to more consolidation in the news industry. Why this is in the public interest is beyond my feeble mental powers.
Unions
I am fiercely pro-union except when basic principles of liberty are violated. The Ohio Senate passed a bill to eliminate union powers to extract money from voters without legislative votes (aka Taxation without Representation):
"The bargaining rights of public workers in Ohio would be dramatically reduced and strikes would be banned under a bill narrowly passed by the Ohio Senate on Wednesday. ... A GOP-backed measure that would restrict the collective bargaining rights of roughly 350,000 teachers, firefighters, police officers and other public employees squeaked through the state Senate on a 17-16 vote. Six Republicans sided with Democrats against the measure.
"The bill would ban strikes by public workers and establish penalties for those who do participate in walkouts. Unionized workers could negotiate wages, hours and certain work conditions — but not health care, sick time or pension benefits.The legislation would also set up a new process to settle worker disputes, giving elected officials the final say in contract disagreements. "
That's how it MUST be. Elected officials have the final say. That's what a republican form of government requires and that is mandated by the U. S. Constitution. Let's hope Ohio leads the way.
Word of the Day
"Poteen" - noun [$10] Irish, also potheen. [from Irish poitin, the diminutive of pota, meaning 'pot'.
Poteen means alcohol made illicitly, usu. from potatoes.
Sentence: My great, great, great grandfather opened a saloon in central Ohio when it was first being settled circa 1805, but I suppose he made and sold moonshine made from grain, not poteen from potatoes.
PS: I saw that word in reading Playboy of the Western World, a play by J. M. Synge written in 1907 and first performed in Dublin in the Abbey Theatre.
Showing posts with label unions. Show all posts
Showing posts with label unions. Show all posts
Thursday, March 3, 2011
Friday, February 25, 2011
A Hodge-Podge Day
When I was a boy & my parents were going out to dinner with friends or or to the horse races in Wheeling, West Virginia, they would declare a "hodge-podge" night, meaning that my brothers & I could make whatever we wanted for our dinner (usually my grandmother would provide a bit of adult supervision). That often meant peanut butter sandwiches with chocolate instant pudding for dessert, or something tasty like that.
"Hodge-podge" - noun [$2] - means a mixture of diverse ingredients.
Today is a hodge-podge blog day.
More on Public Employee Unions
A public employee union "bargaining" for anything represents Taxation without Representation and the stripping of power of the legislature. How can a bargain be struck that deprives the people of the power to legislate spending and taxation ? That's what a backroom bargain over wages or pensions or anything means. The union bosses and their cronies in the executive get together to put the State or City into a binding contract. What role does the people have ? Nothing. The government gets bound into a contract requiring it to PAY. And from where does that money come? Taxes.
When the contract is executed, the legislature finds itself having to vote taxes to fund it or be violating the contract and subject to various judicial confiscations. This is inherently taxation without representation. People getting no benefits have thus been forced to pay for endless retirement and health benefits of long retired state workers who might no longer even live in the state. This is involuntary servitude - a form of serfdom.
No legislature can bind another - no people can bind another - without their own legislature having FINAL say. That mean NO COLLECTIVE BARGAINING RIGHTS for public employee unions. Those are a violation of democracy and the principles of the nation and a republican form of government as mandated by the Constitution.
A Thought on Libertarianism
Here's a fine quote I read yesterday in an essay by T. S. Eliot on the writings of the philosopher, Francis Herbert Bradley [in this case comparing his thoughts to Matthew Arnold]: "For Utilitarianism was, as every reader of Arnold knows, a great temple in Philistia", meaning that if all value to humanity is measured by "utility", then where do moral or social or fraternal values fit? All becomes decadence, hedonism, the "values" of the Philistine rule. And what is almost synonymous with Utilitarianism? Libertarianism. Thus to modernize the thought:
Libertarianism is a great temple in Philistia.
Tea party adherents, beware. You are going down a path of darkness.
An Intensive Course on Literature
Simultaneously read multiple works of the following:
T. S. Eliot, W. B. Yeats, H. L. Mencken, and Sinclair Lewis.
Those are three Novel laureates writers in the English and American languages and a hugely influential, entertaining and literate newspaper columnist. All wrote in the period roughly from 1890 to 1940, a period that created the foundation of the modern world. The first three have wonderful vocabularies; Lewis provides crucial societal scenes of America we can still recognize today.
Those writers cover poetry, essays, plays, critical prose, polemical prose, imaginative novels, etc. As one reads more and more, your ability to understand them grows. They complement each other.
Post World War II writing is thin gruel compared to their works. Why bother with it at all?
Word of the Day
"Miasma" - noun [$10] hmmm a card from high school days.
Miasma means a pervasive influence or atmosphere that tends to deplete or corrupt.
Sentence: The multi-decadal miasma brought by State Boards of Education to American schools has infected secondary education in science and literature with gangrenous tissue causing the whole limbs of the body of student knowledge to rot.
"Hodge-podge" - noun [$2] - means a mixture of diverse ingredients.
Today is a hodge-podge blog day.
More on Public Employee Unions
A public employee union "bargaining" for anything represents Taxation without Representation and the stripping of power of the legislature. How can a bargain be struck that deprives the people of the power to legislate spending and taxation ? That's what a backroom bargain over wages or pensions or anything means. The union bosses and their cronies in the executive get together to put the State or City into a binding contract. What role does the people have ? Nothing. The government gets bound into a contract requiring it to PAY. And from where does that money come? Taxes.
When the contract is executed, the legislature finds itself having to vote taxes to fund it or be violating the contract and subject to various judicial confiscations. This is inherently taxation without representation. People getting no benefits have thus been forced to pay for endless retirement and health benefits of long retired state workers who might no longer even live in the state. This is involuntary servitude - a form of serfdom.
No legislature can bind another - no people can bind another - without their own legislature having FINAL say. That mean NO COLLECTIVE BARGAINING RIGHTS for public employee unions. Those are a violation of democracy and the principles of the nation and a republican form of government as mandated by the Constitution.
A Thought on Libertarianism
Here's a fine quote I read yesterday in an essay by T. S. Eliot on the writings of the philosopher, Francis Herbert Bradley [in this case comparing his thoughts to Matthew Arnold]: "For Utilitarianism was, as every reader of Arnold knows, a great temple in Philistia", meaning that if all value to humanity is measured by "utility", then where do moral or social or fraternal values fit? All becomes decadence, hedonism, the "values" of the Philistine rule. And what is almost synonymous with Utilitarianism? Libertarianism. Thus to modernize the thought:
Libertarianism is a great temple in Philistia.
Tea party adherents, beware. You are going down a path of darkness.
An Intensive Course on Literature
Simultaneously read multiple works of the following:
T. S. Eliot, W. B. Yeats, H. L. Mencken, and Sinclair Lewis.
Those are three Novel laureates writers in the English and American languages and a hugely influential, entertaining and literate newspaper columnist. All wrote in the period roughly from 1890 to 1940, a period that created the foundation of the modern world. The first three have wonderful vocabularies; Lewis provides crucial societal scenes of America we can still recognize today.
Those writers cover poetry, essays, plays, critical prose, polemical prose, imaginative novels, etc. As one reads more and more, your ability to understand them grows. They complement each other.
Post World War II writing is thin gruel compared to their works. Why bother with it at all?
Word of the Day
"Miasma" - noun [$10] hmmm a card from high school days.
Miasma means a pervasive influence or atmosphere that tends to deplete or corrupt.
Sentence: The multi-decadal miasma brought by State Boards of Education to American schools has infected secondary education in science and literature with gangrenous tissue causing the whole limbs of the body of student knowledge to rot.
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
Public Employee Unions ?
Should they exist ?
The obvious answer is no.
Do taxpayers have a union ? Nope.
Can taxpayers go on strike ? Nope.
Federal labor laws do not apply to States and localities. Why ? Read the 10th amendment and the rest of the Constitution. There is no Federal power to force the States to do anything (except obey the Constitution and have a Republican form of government).
Public employee unions are inherently corrupt. The union gives campaign donations of member in-kind support and money; in turn, the beholden legislator or governor gives them more pay and benefits. Where is the taxpayer ? The taxpayer is entangled in a web of corruption and self-dealing, paying and paying for ... nothing of value.
Civil service laws, service boards and other protections can and should prevent governmental corruption from harming worker groups or individual workers. Cronyism is rampant in government - it's likely an inherent nature of the beast. The balance, however, is not to put taxpayers at the mercy of more crony tactics. Why create another beast of prey to suck the blood of taxpayers ?
Taxpayers have no choice in whether to pay or not. It's pay or go to jail or be killed resisting arrest. In the private sector, a consumer can buy another product or do without. One can buy a car made in Alabama by a non-union plant. A taxpayer in Wisconsin has no choice, but to pay ... and pay ... and pay.
All powers of public employee unions should be eliminated. If public employees want to join an organization to lobby or whatever, fine. But DO NOT give that entity any powers whatsoever.
Public employee unions - no way, no how, no where. They have no place in a fair society.
Actions
None. All is in balance after yesterday's sale of some gold & silver. Budding sell signals for some stocks are now dormant. Krypto is still waiting for QE2 to end to get better prices on taxable bonds and TIPs.
Notice
Tomorrow's blog post will be R rated.
Word of the Day
"Gallous" - adjective [$10 ? or $1,000 ? unclear]; formed from the noun, "gall" [$10] but not listed in dictionaries of any value.
Gall means (usage #1) 1. impudence; 2. asperity, rancor; 3. bitterness, anything bitter.
Gallous means having a bitter, rancorous, or impudent quality.
Sentence: Gallous actions of public employees unions in extracting money from taxpayers and exercising power must be challenged and defeated. Nearly insolvent state and city governments show that their power must be eviscerated.
"Gallous" was used in the famous play by J. M. Synge, Playboy of the Western World (written in 1907 and first performed in Dublin, causing riots). The character, Pegeen Mike, says, "There's a great gap between a gallous story and a dirty deed." I read that line in a chapter in the Cambridge Companion to W. B. Yeats, page 123, as Yeats' influence on Synge was described. The title of the play is now a cliché, but the drift in meanings of words in time and space since 1907 in Ireland has caused its usage to have almost no relation to the play.
The obvious answer is no.
Do taxpayers have a union ? Nope.
Can taxpayers go on strike ? Nope.
Federal labor laws do not apply to States and localities. Why ? Read the 10th amendment and the rest of the Constitution. There is no Federal power to force the States to do anything (except obey the Constitution and have a Republican form of government).
Public employee unions are inherently corrupt. The union gives campaign donations of member in-kind support and money; in turn, the beholden legislator or governor gives them more pay and benefits. Where is the taxpayer ? The taxpayer is entangled in a web of corruption and self-dealing, paying and paying for ... nothing of value.
Civil service laws, service boards and other protections can and should prevent governmental corruption from harming worker groups or individual workers. Cronyism is rampant in government - it's likely an inherent nature of the beast. The balance, however, is not to put taxpayers at the mercy of more crony tactics. Why create another beast of prey to suck the blood of taxpayers ?
Taxpayers have no choice in whether to pay or not. It's pay or go to jail or be killed resisting arrest. In the private sector, a consumer can buy another product or do without. One can buy a car made in Alabama by a non-union plant. A taxpayer in Wisconsin has no choice, but to pay ... and pay ... and pay.
All powers of public employee unions should be eliminated. If public employees want to join an organization to lobby or whatever, fine. But DO NOT give that entity any powers whatsoever.
Public employee unions - no way, no how, no where. They have no place in a fair society.
Actions
None. All is in balance after yesterday's sale of some gold & silver. Budding sell signals for some stocks are now dormant. Krypto is still waiting for QE2 to end to get better prices on taxable bonds and TIPs.
Notice
Tomorrow's blog post will be R rated.
Word of the Day
"Gallous" - adjective [$10 ? or $1,000 ? unclear]; formed from the noun, "gall" [$10] but not listed in dictionaries of any value.
Gall means (usage #1) 1. impudence; 2. asperity, rancor; 3. bitterness, anything bitter.
Gallous means having a bitter, rancorous, or impudent quality.
Sentence: Gallous actions of public employees unions in extracting money from taxpayers and exercising power must be challenged and defeated. Nearly insolvent state and city governments show that their power must be eviscerated.
"Gallous" was used in the famous play by J. M. Synge, Playboy of the Western World (written in 1907 and first performed in Dublin, causing riots). The character, Pegeen Mike, says, "There's a great gap between a gallous story and a dirty deed." I read that line in a chapter in the Cambridge Companion to W. B. Yeats, page 123, as Yeats' influence on Synge was described. The title of the play is now a cliché, but the drift in meanings of words in time and space since 1907 in Ireland has caused its usage to have almost no relation to the play.
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