Some of President Obama's Ways and Means

(Promotion of Drags on Our Economy -- See item number 4 for points related legal and illegal immigration)

1) Do everything possible to promote labor unions and the compensation and number of jobs of union members.

The far left philosophical underpinning of the Obama strategy of gross preferential treatment for labor unions is likely the view that corporations are basically abusive and greedy and that workers need unions to protect their interests and to get their “fair” share in wages. Unionization may also be viewed as a vehicle for helping to level the distribution of income, a major objective of the “progressive” agenda.

More cynically, the Obama pro-union strategy is trying to create a growing a bloc of voters who will be indebted to the Democratic Party for their jobs and at the same time increasing the wealth of unions who will also feel indebted to the Democratic Party. The appreciative union members will vote for Democrats and the appreciative union officials will make generous money political contributions to the Democratic Party and its candidates – and thus a grand, self-perpetuating situation will be set in motion with the Democrats and the unions “scratching each other’s backs.” One source notes that "Unions gave $400 million to the Democrats in the 2008 campaign cycle...."

An early manifestation of the ultra pro-union strategy was the Obama-led, federal government supervised override of existing bankruptcy law which transferred billions of dollars from secured creditors’ interests in GM and Chrysler to the UAW, followed by White House intimidation of those creditors who tried to contest this miscarriage of justice. Beyond this bald-faced gift of money to the UAW, to preserve union jobs the federal government has poured many billions into General Motors (and GMAC) and Chrysler, thereby unfairly subsidizing them in their competition with the better-managed Ford, and the foreign car manufacturers who produce large numbers of non-subsidized autos at lower cost in non-union plants throughout our South.

More evidence of Obama’s game plan comes from the fact that Andrew Stern, a leader of the SEIU (Service Employees International Union, a union with many members who are government employees) was logged in as a White House visitor 22 times between January and July 2009, more entries than for any other visitor during this period. For many years the portion of the private sector that is unionized has been steadily contracting as it loses jobs to more efficient non-union private companies in the United States or overseas. Moreover, today workers do not need the union protections against abusive employers that they needed years ago when there were far fewer laws on the books to protect against different types of employer wrongdoing.  Consequently, only about 7 percent of the private sector labor force is unionized today. That has left the government sector as the biggest union growth story and unionized government employees now account for more than one-half of all unionized employees in the United States.

Additionally, there has been a steady campaign by the Obama administration to change government labor rules and regulations to make it easier for unions to organize workers.



2) Do everything possible to expand the role of government and the number of government employees.

The far left philosophical underpinning of this objective is the belief that a large role for government is necessary to achieve the leveling of income distribution and to assure the “social contract” for all workers entitling them to cradle-to-grave social support in health, education, consumption, living accommodations, and retirement. Moreover, there is the implicit assumption that the government knows best what should and should not be encouraged or permitted, i.e. that the government should play a larger role in the lives of citizens than it has heretofore. This is clearly the case with ObamaCare.

Expanding the role of government and thereby growing the number of government employees is very consistent with the cynical side of objective 1) as the government sector is the easiest sector for unions to penetrate, i.e. there is no competition for doing the work most efficiently as there is in the private sector. Indeed, an excellent case can be made for forbidding the government sector to unionize as it then has a monopoly on the supply of workers and a stranglehold on the sector of government involved, especially for vital services such as police, fire, and public utilities. Some government entities have had or still have prohibitions on collective bargaining for their employees. For example, employees of the state of California were not permitted to enter into collective bargaining until Governor Jerry Brown signed the Dill Act in 1978.

Politicians have direct control over the number of public jobs and the compensation paid to public employees. This being the case, it makes no sense to have the system which prevails in the United States today: politicians at all levels are given a strong incentive to boost the number of public employees and their compensation, the incentive being increased political contributions from the unions (and to a lesser extent the votes of the union members). Such political contributions are nothing more than "kickbacks" from the unions, a return to the politicians of some of the taxpayer money that they directed to public employees and their unions. This kickback arrangement is yet another very good reason for prohibiting government employees from unionizing. By the same logic, politicians should not be allowed to require, as is sometimes the case today, that government contracts with the private sector contain clauses mandating that some or all of the work be completed by union workers in the private sector.

With the growth of public sector unions and their power to extract exhorbitant pay and benefits from politicians, the pay and benefits of unionized public sector employees now usually exceed those available to comparable private sector employees and in far too many cases the wages and benefits including retirement benefits are excessive relative to the public entities' ability to pay in the not too distant future. In this regard the Obama administration directed about one-third of the stimulus money to state and local governments in the belief that it would help to delay the day of reckoning resulting from the excessive pay and benefits of unionized public employees.

The Obama administration is expanding the role of government by having cabinet members issuing rules regarding health care and environmental policies which 1) would never be agreed to by Congress and 2) are very costly to certain sectors of the private economy.


3) Do everything possible to level the distribution of income in the country.

The far left philosophical underpinning of this objective is that we are all created equal and extra pay for some comes out of the mouths of the poor and downtrodden. In other words, inequality of income is an affront to fairness and implies an inherent form of discrimination exists in the system.

The cynical Obama view is that by using the tax system to equalize the distribution of income, the Democrats can further increase the number of Democratic client-voters and reward existing ones. Higher taxes on the upper income and middle-upper income population and more welfare-related spending on the lower-middle and lower income population will generate a no-lose voter result since the latter outnumber the former and the former are part of the Republican constituency anyway. The lower-middle and lower income beneficiaries of this redistribution of income policy will feel indebted to the Democratic Party and vote accordingly.

The ObamaCare legislation taken as a whole is a stealth massive redistribution of income program as pointed out in a Wall Street Journal Review & Outlook editorial entitled "Who Pays for ObamaCare?" from the July 12, 2010 issue. This editorial also provides documented support for the view that many Democrats very much liked the redistributional aspect of this legislation.

Our legal and illegal immigration of the poor skews the distribution of income statistics in the direction of showing greater inequalities in the distribution of income thereby providing further justification for "progressive" Democrats to take legislative action to equalize the distribution of income!

It is possible that tort and other trial attorneys who sue businesses (including medical practices)are viewed by Obama as both levelers of income and punishers of the greedy corporate sector, i.e. they take from the wealthy corporations who are basically evil and abusive and their wealthy shareholders and give to the beneficiaries of class action and individual law suits who tend to be middle and low income individuals (who might be either mistreated employees or product consumers) and disadvantaged groups such as minorities or women (who might be mistreated employees).

It appears that a symbiotic relationship between those attorneys who sue businesses and the Democrats has evolved to the point that Democrats are doing whatever they can to make things easier and more profitable to sue businesses and in return, the benefitting attorneys and their trade groups must be heavy contributors to the Democratic Party and its candidates. An example of attorney favoritism is that in all of the Democratic health care legislation process, there was never a serious attempt to limit medical malpractice lawsuits, although it has been shown that the threat of such lawsuits results in a very high dollar amount of defensive medicine which might otherwise be avoided.


4) Do everything possible to promote an increase in the legal and illegal immigration of the poor and little educated.

The far left underpinning here is that the United States is a wealthy nation and fairness and social justice requires that we make our bounty available to the world’s poor. Encouraging large amounts of legal and illegal immigration of the poor helps to achieve this objective in their view.

The cynical motivation is that importing the poor and little educated is very likely to increase the number of welfare recipients, future Democrats, and future union members. In general, Obama is much more interested in getting people on to welfare than off. Immigration of the poor plays directly into that strategy. In addition, it has the indirect result of making it more difficult for poor citizens (including blacks!) and earlier poor immigrants to get ahead and off welfare.

Our poor immigrants tend to take up residence in densely populated poor urban areas which are "monopolized by Democratic Party politics."1 Long before they can vote, their presence is advantageous to the Democratic Party since our census counters are instructed to count all living in the United States including illegal immigrants and legal permanent residents who have not been naturalized (there are no questions regarding citizenship status), thereby tending to give more representation to Democratic states (which are favored by immigrants as places to settle) in the U.S. House of Representatives than they would otherwise have, as well as more electoral votes in presidential elections than they would otherwise have. Within states, the same census count will result in increased representation in the state houses by Democrats. Even though there is likely some undercounting of illegal immigrants, many millions are included in the census with strong encouragement to participate by immigrant community groups. Additionally, census results will include large numbers of American born children of illegal immigrants who are legally U.S. citizens but who are too young to vote, as well as millions of legal permanent residents who have not yet achieved citizenship status (including the right to vote) as they must be legal residents of the U.S. for at least five years as part of the requirements to obtain citizenship.

Even though most of our impoverished legal and illegal immigrants are willing to work hard, they constitute a drag on our economy because they use substantial amounts of free public services, collect billions in welfare, pay very little in taxes, and ship many billions of dollars to relatives outside of the United States. To an increasing extent they are also bringing elderly relatives into the United States who constitute an even greater drag on our economy with their costly medical needs.

Pursuit of this objective puts the Democratic interests in alignment with immigration attorneys whose legal practices benefit from high levels of legal and illegal immigration. Consequently, today there is a natural partnership between immigration attorneys whose trade group is a strong pro-immigrant lobby and the Democratic Party. The immigration bar likely makes substantial dollar contributions to the Democratic Party and many of its candidates, and at the same time the Democratic Party pursues legislation and policies which would result in an increase in legal and illegal immigration and opposes measures which would result in decreases.


5) Increase or maintain government spending on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In theory, Obama and the left might favor high military expenditures as a means to foster high government employment and to expand the role of government generally.

The cynical side of Obama’s heavy military spending includes a) increased ability to reward Democratic politicians and labor unions with military contracts for their constituents, b) to serve as a counter to the common belief that Obama would be weak on national defense, and c) Obama’s personal inability to make the hard decision to wind down our military involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The drag impact on the economy of high levels of defense spending is twofold. First it transfers money and resources from the private sector to the government sector and secondly such expenditures are unproductive compared to alternatives such as private investment or government investment in upgrading necessary infrastructure in the United States.



6) Summary -- President Obama is all about promoting drags on our economy:


A) Growth of government

B) Growth of labor unions

C) Facilitating the work of tort and other attorneys that sue businesses

D) Encouraging little-educated and unskilled illegal immigration

E) Establishing a debilitating tax system which promotes the redistribution of income and is discouraging to businesses, entrepreneurs, and anyone who wishes to work hard to improve their financial situation

F) Continuing and even increasing our military adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan

G) Increasing business costs by unilaterally imposing environmental restrictions such as expensive controls on the emissions of "greenhouse gases" which constitutes an economic drag for the U.S. in that it makes domestic energy production and manufacturing more expensive and makes the U.S. less competitive in world markets as most other countries of the world are less burdensome in this regard

H) Greatly increasing future healthcare costs through Obamacare which was forced through a Democratic Congress with little regard for the consequences


Footnote

1 James G. Gimpel, "Immigration, Political Realignment, and the Demise of Republican Party Prospects," Center for Immigration Studies, Backgrounder (February, 2010).