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Addicted to Nonsense On February 7, I received an email from the office of the House Minority Leader, Rep. Nancy Pelosi, with a headline that read as follows: Pelosi: "It is Long Past Time to Take Action to Prevent Climate Change."
This is the politics of nonsense. What is needed is common sense. What do you think the Democrats, the Republicans, and the entire U.S. government can do about preventing climate change? Can the government prevent hurricanes? Tornadoes? Blizzards? The next Ice Age? The obvious answer is no. There is nothing any government on the face of the Earth can do about the climate except perhaps to help those affected by it. And, if hurricanes Katrina and Rita are any indicator, it doesn’t do a particularly good job, despite throwing billions at the problem. Then, too, the science about climate is not "clear." The best climatologists in the world have no really good idea why clouds do what they do. The entire "global warming" theory is based on computer models. Ginned up by the UN’s International Panel for Climate Control, they have been revised and revised until it is quite obvious their creators and interpreters haven’t a clue whether global warming is anything more than a perfectly normal climate cycle. At best, there is no indication of any dramatic change other than whatever the computers calculate. The data they use is, to be nice about it, limited at best. What is truly remarkable is the way satellite and other data does a fairly good job predicting the weather in any region of the U.S. about a day or so in advance. If you are counting on the accuracy of a prediction for next week, you might as well just roll dice for an answer. As for Pelosi’s lament over "energy independence", someone better explain to her that we are currently importing slightly more than half of the oil necessary to meet our needs and that it comes from sixty different nations. Given the uncertainty of events in the Middle East, any shock to the system will drive up the price, but blame the Islamofascists for that. Meanwhile, the Democrats in Congress have spent the past twenty-five years preventing access to the development of ANWR’s oil reserves. The buzz in the energy industry is something called "peak oil"; the view that the world will be tapping its last barrels by pick-a-date. Rarely is the activation of new oil fields reported, but there are new fields and there are likely to be more in future. If you trust the naysayers, then buy a bicycle. On at least five occasions in the past, the public has been told that the world was running out of oil. The good news is that the U.S. has huge reserves of coal that account for half of the electricity generated. (Previous efforts to begin coal gasification were dropped when the price of a barrel of oil hit $10, rendering it financially unfeasible.) We need more nuclear facilities to generate the electricity we need. And, after we have accessed offshore and other known oil fields, we may well begin to extract oil from the vast shale deposits in U.S. western states if it becomes economically feasible. It is sad to hear the House Minority Leader spouting such nonsense and scary if she really believes what she is saying is true. In fairness, the President, in his State of the Union speech, called for energy independence, saying, "America is addicted to oil." No, we are not "addicted." We are, like all industrial societies, dependent. There’s a difference. If our political leaders don’t know the difference, if they continue to blather about "global warming" and "energy independence", then we all need to worry that our grandchildren could be back to lighting their homes with whale oil or kerosene. And here’s where common sense should kick in. We all need to be more confident that the global energy industry is not going to leave us in the dark. Shortly after the aborted New York Transport Workers Union’s strike just before Christmas, I got to thinking that the union movement in America is dead. Or probably should be. Unions are among the most corrupt organizations in the nation and, if one examines their history, always were. The New York transit strike was bizarre. First, consider the timing. There were a variety of estimates of the cost to the city, from $400 million a day, to one news report of an estimated one billion dollars in lost revenue during the few days of critical Christmas shopping in the city. In fact, it was not just Manhattan that was affected. The strike included the Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn, and Staten Island. Overall, some seven million people who needed to get to work or anywhere else, were told to take a hike by 33,000 public employees who, by law, weren’t even permitted to strike! Among the issues involved was the union’s demand that its members be able to retire at age 55. No, not 65, but 55! And they wanted to exempt those workers from having to contribute to health insurance costs. Metropolitan Transportation Authority workers earn between $47,000 and $55,000 annually. However, no one who is a party to the strike has clean hands. The MTA discovered it had a $1 billion dollar surplus this passed year. Suffice it to say the MTA is highly politicized. It happened that, as all this was occurring, I was reading "Solidarity for Sale: How Corruption Destroyed the Labor Movement and Undermined America’s Promise" by Robert Fitch ($28.50, Public Affairs). It is a highly entertaining book, particularly if you are a fan of "The Sopranos." Having been born and lived in New Jersey for nearly seven decades, I can tell you that, between New York and the Garden State, the book on union corruption was written by the major crime families. Fitch laments that the ideals behind the union movement were strangled in their cradle because "for most of the last hundred years or so it’s been stagnation and decline" so far as the union movement is concerned. Need it be said that the worldwide Socialist movement saw the New York strike as a great clash between the poor, exploited union members and the Wall Street elite? No, it was more a street fight between two gangs that were defined by an extensive body of law. One of the most amazing things about the union movement is that, "The most important coercive powers of American trade unions are perfectly legal," notes Fitch, adding that, "The system turns into a protection racket almost from the beginning." For decades unions have worked their way behind the scenes as their leaders enjoyed salaries that often exceeded what we pay the President of the United States. Their sons and daughters were frequently on the union payroll, but the most distinguishing fact about unions was the way they were, for the most part, run by the mob whether it was New York, Detroit, or Los Angeles. The endless jail sentences handed out to various union leaders has not had any affect on this. While one wants American workers to earn an appropriate salary, the fact remains that we have seen both General Motors and Ford undergo major restructuring that will cost auto workers thousands of jobs as the result of union contracts that left both auto manufacturers struggling to survive and which added an estimated $1,500 or more to the cost of each car for the consumer. In an opinion editorial prior to the State of the Union speech, Andrew L. Stern, president of the Service Employees International Union, had the nerve to say, "Unions have always succeeded in creating good jobs in this country and around the world." No, Andrew, the only jobs that unions create are the no-show jobs contractors have to pay for in order to do business with unions or the union jobs that go to the family members and those folks who think "The Godfather" is a documentary. In New York, its building contractors "have achieved the nation’s highest construction costs. And the city has the lowest rate of housing construction among all American cities experiencing population growth." In 2004, the median apartment sold for $1.2 million. Unions haven’t done a thing to improve the overall economic condition for most Americans, workers and consumers alike. The U.S. has "the highest—and deepest—rate of child poverty, the highest percentage of elderly poor, and the highest percentage of people who are poor at least once in the lives," notes Fitch. "U.S. workers experienced the longest period of wage stagnation in modern American history: median non-supervisory worker wages fell between 1971 and 1995." In so many ways, the union movement in America has been a disgrace. Its sole reason for existence was to advance the criminal activities and enrichment of those who controlled them through a system that was more extortion than negotiation, through countless little labor fiefdoms, through a system that actually excluded people from gaining entrance to a skilled trade, and, it must be said, through its long association with the Democrat Party. In the 2002 election cycle, the AFL-CIO spent nearly $100 million on candidates, more than 90% of whom were Democrats. Union members increasingly have rebelled against the use of their dues to advance candidates for whom they would not vote. In the meantime, the largest employer and one of the largest unions in the nation is government. As the Cato Institute recently noted, "State and local workers earned $36 per hour in wages and benefits in 2005, on average, compared to $24 per hour for U.S. private-sector workers." Fully 42% of state and local workers are represented by unions, as compared to 9% of the workers in the private sector. Of the state and local workers, the greatest beneficiaries have been teachers. Between 1994 and 2004, while the number of children in public schools increased 9%, the number of teachers and administrators increased 22%. And you wonder why you are paying exorbitant property taxes? Unions breed corruption and incompetence. They increase costs. They ignore their own membership. They engage in nepotism. They are advocates of the most retrograde liberal programs and politics. Is there really a good reason for unions to continue? I cannot think of one. There are many sources of information available, but every week "Warning Signs" tries to keep you informed about the most important issues of our times. To help the Center continue this mission, your donation is very important. If you prefer to send a check, please make it payable to The Caruba Organization, 28 West Third Street, Suite 1321, South Orange, NJ 07079. Thank you!
©
2006 Alan Caruba. |
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Referencing "a gripping presentation to House Democrats on global warming" by former Vice President Al Gore, Pelosi’s office quotes her as saying "The science is clear. It is long past time to take decisive action to prevent climate change. The energy proposals in the House Democrats’ Innovation Agenda, which will move our nation toward energy independence, will also help reduce greenhouse gas emissions. And we must do even more."