Month: April 2011

Another state legislature passes labor union reform.

Much like similar laws passed in states like Wisconsin and Ohio, the legislation will go after public sector union abuse of collective bargaining over health care.  Let me refresh people about why that’s important: it’s important because the public perception of benefits packages has traditionally been that they are somehow fundamentally different than wages; this despite the fact that a person who used to have, say, $5,000/year’s worth of health care but now has $10,000/year has effectively gotten a $5,000 raise.  But since it’s not seen as a raise, many public sector unions have had free rein in effectively bargaining for more and more benefits every  year, in lieu of technical raises.  Which is what this legislation addresses:

House lawmakers voted overwhelmingly last night to strip police officers, teachers, and other municipal employees of most of their rights to bargain over health care, saying the change would save millions of dollars for financially strapped cities and towns.

[snip]

Under the legislation, mayors and other local officials would be given unfettered authority to set copayments and deductibles for their employees, after the 30-day discussion period with unions. Only the share of premiums paid by employees would remain on the health care bargaining table.

Continue reading Another state legislature passes labor union reform.

Democrats finally kill off SETI’s Allen Telescope Array.

A long-delayed scalp for ’em; Sen. Dick Bryan of Nevada (following in the dubious footsteps of fellow-Democrat Sen. William Proxmire) came close to killing off the Allen Telescope Array back in ’94, but private contributions saved it.  That can happen, when the government’s not sucking up too much of the wealth… which is, alas, not an accurate way of describing either the Federal or California state government, these days.

But, hey!  Don’t worry: that 2.5 million dollars a year is going to be spent right here on Earth!  Admittedly, it’ll be spent on government subsidies to reliably Democratic donors, but that’s what happens when you try to pretend that basic scientific research is more important than important things, like keeping public sector unions sweet.

Moe Lane

PS: Hey, I’m not the one who gutted the funding.  Blame the NSF and blame the state of California.  Which is to say, blame the Democratic party.  When we were running the country the budget could stretch to sums of money like this…

Barack Obama has a 116 IQ?

That’s pretty… middling decent.

Thought that would get your attention: anyway, Ace of Ace of Spades HQ is having a little fun hacking his way through the deliberately-produced tangled thicket of weighting and changes in methodology and redefined standards that goes into Harvard academic rankings.  Conclusion?  He estimates that the President has an IQ somewhere between 110 and 120… which dovetailed neatly from this estimate of 116 from 2008.  Which is perfectly respectable, of course…

…for mere mortals.

But is it fair?  Bless your heart, but why should I care?  If the President’s refusal to release his college transcripts require us to go out and calculate Obama’s (apparently not all that impressive) intelligence by hand, as it were – well, that’s his fault, not mine.  You see, in the 2004 election the existing narrative regarding Bush vs. Kerry was that the Senator from Massachusetts was clearly the more intellectual of the two… a narrative that persisted up until 2005, when it came out that in point of fact John Kerry actually had slightly worse grades in college than George Bush did.

So.  116 IQ.  If the President wants to push back on that, he’s welcome to release his college transcripts – and maybe give the right-blogosphere one heck of a black eye in the process.  Lord knows he could use a win right now…

Moe Lane (crosspost)

#rsrh Firefighters’ Union bosses turtle up.

The International Association of Fire Fighters’ Big Labor bosses have decided to, ah, reallocate their resources in advance of 2012:

As newly elected Republican state legislatures aggressively push a slew of anti-union measures, the International Association of Fire Fighters is freezing its federal political spending and shifting all resources toward its beleaguered state and local colleagues.

It’s kind of a shame that they’re not going to urinate away another fifteen million in the next national election – although possibly the ordinary, decent fire fighters who get stuck with the bill being run up on the Democrats’ behalf might find this to be a distinction without a difference.  For my own part, I’d rather have whatever electoral wars that are going to take place next year take place in the state legislature, and not Congress.  Aside from everything else, it shows who’s actually winning in the first place.

Moe Lane

New anti-Jewish flotilla planning to run Gaza blockade.

Sorry, I’m not going to pretend that I don’t recognize the essentially anti-Semitic nature of the anti-Israel movement.  And neither am I going to pretend that I take said movement’s agitprop seriously, either.  The flotilla that got intercepted last year while trying to break the Gaza blockade was providing materials to build bunkers and fortifications for Hamas, which is of course a terrorist organization dedicated to killing every Jew in the world. That’s why the Israelis intercepted the flotilla.  Some of the idiots on the flotilla resisted, and some of the aforementioned idiots got killed. And now the Hamas-lovers are going to try to break the Gaza blockade again… and the Israelis will intercept them again; only this time I would suggest that the IDF not bother with paintball guns first.

Yes.  Paintball guns.  Hearing that, you’d almost think that the IDF has the same regard for human life as civilized people.  But that’s surely impossible, of course: and if you don’t believe me, just ask the antiwar movement.  Once you start them up, one of them can go on for hours about the perfidious Jews Israelis… Continue reading New anti-Jewish flotilla planning to run Gaza blockade.

#rsrh Great Googley Moogley… it is APRIL, ABC News.

It is April of 2011.  We do not actually need to have everybody and his/her brother/sister declaring for the freaking Republican nomination, simply because Barack Obama needed to declare as early as possible that he was running so that he can get a head start on raising money.

I understand that you’re bored with Obama already, ABC – even if you’d rather gargle lava than admit it.  But that’s not my party’s fault. We’ll get around to having a nomination race on our own terms, and in our own sweet time.  Until then, go report on inflation/Syria/high energy prices/high food prices/unemployment… ah.  I see the problem, there.

Sheesh.

Moe Lane

PS: And if you don’t like reporting on Donald Trump, well, stop.

#rsrh QotD, He Said It, Not Me Edition.

Not that I disagree that the relationship between the Democrats (not just the President) and business (and not just business!) can be adequately mapped out using battered-wife syndrome as an analogy; but it’s usually not polite to use that analogy in public.  However, hedge-fund operators like Daniel Loeb (major Obama bundler in 2008) apparently feel less… constrained.

“I am sure, if we are really nice and stay quiet, everything will be alright and the president will become more centrist and that all his tough talk is just words,” Mr. Loeb wrote in an email about four months ago expressing frustration with the president’s posture toward Wall Street. “I mean, he really loves us and when he beats us, he doesn’t mean it.”

The hedge fund industry pumped a lot of money into Democratic coffers in ’08: I’m getting the impression that Obama’s going to miss it in ’12.  And their bundlers.  And their downticket support, particularly in New York (Gilibrand’s going to be up for re-election; hopefully, this time we’ll be taking the election more seriously this time).  And yes, you can tell that I am totally broken up about this.