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Thursday, February 5, 2009
Is anybody scared of Obama? If you're going to be an effective president, don't people have to be at least a little scared of you? At least with Bill Clinton you'd worry that you'd be audited. ... 12:02 A.M.
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Wednesday, February 4, 2009
Forget Anna Wintour: kf's temporary Paris bureau chief suggests Caroline Kennedy for Ambassador to France. A good prix de consolation. Plus she speaks French fluently. And they would love her--at least initially. ... Assuming Secretary of State Holbrooke approves. ... 11:46 P.M.
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Tuesday, December 30, 2008
Enjoy your daily print newspaper. It's later than you think. ... 1:02 A.M.
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Magical Moment: One seemingly sure sign Obama is actually, really not going left, at least on economic policy: Robert Kuttner isn't sucking up!** Instead he's frankly anguished about the incoming economic team. ... P.S.: OK, there's a small, vestigial suck-up at the end. ...
**--For Kuttner's 1992 flattery of president-elect Clinton, click here, search for "epic." ...12:47 A.M.
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Monday, December 29, 2008
Fire Fire Mickey Kaus. They're falling down on the job. ... No wonder I still have this gig.
Update: They've been spurred into action, arguing
It's true that unions are poor vehicles for equitable distribution of wealth. They have also failed to cure cancer, and they haven't done anything to stop Russian aggression in post-communist Europe.
Now it's obvious unions are "poor vehicles for equitable distribution of wealth." Please tell it to Kevin Drum (and Paul Krugman). ... 7:26 P.M.
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Life in the Left Cocoon: Promoting the Southern, corporate, anti-UAW agenda, Kevin Drum says he's "open" to "good-faith efforts to address reform" of "mushrooming work rules." But he's still for greater unionization:
Conservatives flatly oppose anything that gives labor any additional bargaining power, full stop, and that doesn't leave much room for compromise. So unions it is. Especially in the service sector, they're pretty much the only idea on the table for seriously addressing low-end wage growth, and that means I'm for 'em. [E.A.]
The only idea on the table? How about restoring economic growth and creating a tight labor market, giving all workers (not just the unionized) greater bargaining leverage? That's the traditional Clintonite formula, no? To that you could add border control to ensure that competition from unskilled immigrants doesn't undermine leverage among lower-wage workers..... Drum goes on the cite Ezra Klein for the proposition that:
the last great leap forward for unions was during World War II, and the last great expansion of the American middle class followed in its aftermath. In contrast, the most recent expansions -- which have largely occurred in the absence of unions -- have benefited America's rich. [E.A.]
Huh? The biggest recent expansion, during the '90s, a) benefitted Americans at all levels, but especially average workers and b) occurred largely while union power was ebbing. The Clintonite formula worked. Maybe it can't be achieved again. Maybe it's flawed because (sorry!) the rich got richer too in the Clinton years. Maybe a return to Carter-era union power will be better still! But those are arguments Dems like Drum and Klein won't even deign to make as long as they keep reassuring each other that they not only have the best ideas around but the only ideas around. ...
P.S.: Klein also argues;
The countries with the world's highest growth rates -- the Nordic economies -- also have some of the world's highest rates of unionization. Denmark, Sweden, and Finland all approach 80 percent.
There's an argument that in countries with 70-80-90 percent unionization, unions have to be more responsible--union leaders know that any inflationary wage increases are going to be paid for by their own members (who are essentially everyone), and they know that any declines in productivity will hurt their own members (essentially everyone). Not only do they have an incentive to be reasonable, but they have the power to keep their own membership--say, those unions that could get bigger-than-average increases by striking--in check. But we aren't going to get 80% unionization. We're going to get 20-25% or 30% unionization, with unions that are powerful enough to cut good deals for themselves (and impose resulting price increases on everyone else), but not so large that they have to take everyone's interests into account. ... (This is point made by Mancur Olson and noted by Robert M. Kaus a year before Klein was born. Yikes.) ... 4:06 P.M.
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They Said It Couldn't Be Done! How to Make Caroline Kennedy More Boring: Caroline Kennedy's ragging of NYT reporters, for which she's now being pilloried, is of course one of her better recent moments:
NC: Could you, for the sake of storytelling, could you tell us a little bit about that moment, like, where you were, what you said to him about your decision, how that played out?
CK: Have you guys ever thought about writing for, like, a woman’s magazine or something? (Laughter)
DH: What do you have against women’s magazines?
CK: Nothing at all, but I thought you were the crack political team here.
Kennedy's bristling at the embarrassing, sentimentalizing conventions of journalism (at Newsweek the question was always "what were you eating") and isn't afraid to invoke some undiplomatic truths (i.e. women's magazine's often run softball crap). Either she'll keep it up--in which case maybe there's something to the idea that she has the virtues of an independent outsider--or, more likely, she'll become even more safely platitudinous. ... 3:19 P.M.
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The Aribtrariness of Wagner Act Redistribution: Richard Posner makes an essential point usually overlooked by those on the left who instinctively support unionism in the hope that it will achieve some sort of just redistribution of income:
The redistribution of wealth that they bring about is not only fragile ...[snip] ...but also capricious, as it is an accident whether conditions in a particular industry are favorable or unfavorable to unionization. [E.A.]
Or, as Robert M. Kaus put it in very small type in 1983:
The "economic power" that the Wagner Act gives unions is determined by all sorts of factors that have nothing to do with the moral basis of a union's cause. Workers who work in a single location, for example,are easier to organize than workers who are geographically dispersed, even though the latter may work in sweatshops and the former in comfortable, lighted factories. Some industries are extremely vulnerable to strikes--industries that deal in perishable goods, for example, or industries (e.g. Broadway theaters) where you can set up a picket line that will intercept a lot of customers. In other industries, advances in technology have weakened the power of strikes, as petroleum and chemical workers discovered when they walked out and found that skeleton crews of supervisors could run computer-controlled refineries for a long time. Did the chemical workers deserve to be paid less simply because their industries had become more strike-proof?
This arbitrariness is not just a trivial side effect of the collective bargaining system. A truism within the labor movement holds that "the workers who need the unions the most don't get them." .... The answer of labor leaders to this dilemma is simple: more unions. .... But even if the law required unions in every workplace, there is no reason to think wage inequalities would shrink in any systematic fashion. Sol C. Chaikin, president of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union, often complains about the "two-tier labor force" in the United States--but he is complaining about a disparity that exists within the ranks of organized labor. ... The Wagner Act gave Chaikin's union the power to strike. Unfortunately, fate did not give it any of the chance attributes that might enable it to use strikes to boost wages dramatically above their market levels. [E.A.]
If you organized the operators of drawbridges going into Manhattan, under the Wagner Act your union will be able to extract quite a premium by striking. If you organize fast food workers, not so much. I've never understood why leftish idealists ever bought into the idea that this is distributive justice. ... 1:12 A.M.
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Sunday, December 28, 2008
Two year-end TV roundups--by Tom Shales and by Inside Cable News. One of these guys is paid an incredible amount of money. And one of them phones in a list of usual suspects. ... P.S.: From the other one:
Unlike NBC’s very public axe wielding, CNN’s cuts came about suddenly as a bunch of on the air talent lost their jobs. Most notable loss; CNN veteran Miles O’Brien. CNN has yet to publicly account for all this talent loss, which flied in the face of the public posturing done by Jonathan Klein regarding how his network was in the money.
Jonathan Klein, dissembling? We're shocked. ... 7:00 P.M.
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Friday, December 26, 2008
Don't Blame Gettelfinger: Rand Simberg's anti-UAW-work-rule post was better than mine. He has horror stories, including his own--noting that there are too many floating around for them to be "merely anecdotal." (Another bit of confirming evidence: The union firms went broke! Non-anecdotally broke.) Simberg makes a point that's especially relevant now that the UAW is arguing that labor is only "10% of the cost of the vehicle."
And the rules don’t just affect productivity — they affect quality as well. When you can’t discipline employees for being absent without leave, when you have to bring in unfamiliar workers to fill in for them, when you’re missing half your plant during hunting season — yes, the stories about avoiding buying cars built on Monday or Friday in the fall are true — you can’t expect to put out a quality product, regardless of how well or poorly designed it is. You particularly can’t expect to do so when the union rules put all responsibility for quality and production on management, but give them no authority to manage the workers and provide the workers with no incentive to build a quality product if they lack the personal pride to do so. [E.A.]
Labor may only be 10% of the cost of the vehicle, but it's still going to be a vehicle nobody wants to buy if it's poorly made. ... Note: The UAW does make some high quality cars, especially at the NUMMI joint venture with Toyota in San Jose, where they threw out the UAW work rule book. Why couldn't GM successfully spread the NUMMI system to all its other plants? Ask the UAW. ...
P.S,: Here's a Business Week profile of the UAW president Ron Gettelfinger. Seems like a reasonable guy! But that's the point. Gettelfinger isn't the problem--I suspect, for example, that the UAW leadership knows pretty well what the problems are in its factories. The problem is the system, the American adversarial labor-management negotiating system, in which reasonable people doing what the system tells them they should do wind up producing undesirable results. Just as negotiating over work assignments means factories adjust too slowly to generate continuous efficiency improvements (which often involve constantly changing work assignments) negotiating ponderous 3 year contracts (in which Gettelfinger must extract every possible concession to please the members who elected him) means contracts adjust too slowly to save the companies from failure if market conditions change. From Business Week:
[T]here is a pragmatic Ron Gettelfinger as well. Three years ago, the automakers were in trouble, and he knew that without concessions there would be no jobs for his members to report to. When Detroit came looking for givebacks, Gettelfinger ultimately agreed to a contract that set back starting factory wages 30 years: New hires will begin at $14 an hour—half the wage for veterans and a pay scale not seen since the '70s. Plus, he has watched the Big Three cut some 80,000 jobs since 2005.
That also brings up a key criticism from Detroit's executives. Gettelfinger made those key concessions starting in 2005, but not until Ford and GM were reeling toward massive losses. The union has never given enough to get the companies ahead of the curve. "It's always a day late and a dollar short," says one former GM executive. [E.A.]
See also this interview, pointing out that the $14 wage scale for new hires hasn't had an impact because nobody new is being hired by the UAW's employers, who are shrinking, not growing. The obvious alternative to cutting the pay of nonexistent future workers would be to cut the pay of existing current workers--but they are the people the system tells Gettelfinger he needs to please. ...
Fifteen years ago, at the start of the last Democratic president's administration. incoming Labor Secretary Robert Reich famously said "The jury is still out on whether the traditional union is necessary for the new workplace." Tactfully put. This fall, if not earlier, the jury came back. 5:19 P.M.
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What's Worse Than Camelot? Cuomolot! I should say that I'd certainly prefer Caroline Kennedy to at least one candidate for Hillary Clinton's seat. That candidate would be Andrew Cuomo. Caroline may be boring but she does not seem evil! (For some links on why I think Cuomo is a thuggish irresponsible opportunist, click here. I also had some unpleasant dealings with his self-promotion machine at HUD, when they were busy hyping and distorting some homeless statistics in order to get his name in the paper.) ... These are not the only two people in New York state, however. ... 4:30 P.M.
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Tuesday, December 23, 2008
Alert reader D on the SEIU chief Andy Stern's defense of "card check" in a bloggingheads discussion with Robert Reich:
His substantive problem is that he assumes the conclusion, which is that workers need and want unions. Anything that interferes with that is therefore by definition wrong and is contrary to their will or at least to their best interests. If workers vote a union down it must be because they were intimidated, because a negative vote like that would be like a man voting against eating. It would be unnatural and open to suspicion. Stern could not stand up to a good interviewer for five minutes. Even Reich knew he was not responding to the question and was unconvincing - which is saying plenty.
One of the good things about bloggingheads is that if you can't make your case there you can't make it anywhere. You have the time, you have a non-disrespectful, non-cross-examining interlocutor, you're in familiar surroundings and don't have distractions.
In the process Stern dances around the issue of taking away the secret ballot, saying the issue is "whose choice about how to form the organization is this, the employers or the workers." No, the issue is how do you determine what the workers' choice is. If Stern wants to have a secret ballot about whether to have a secret ballot, then he'd be amending the labor law to give workers the choice he says he wants to give them. (Maybe that's not a bad compromise.) ...
P.S.: A common tactic of card check proponents is to say that opponents aren't really against the elimination of the secret ballot, they are really against unions. Hey, why can't I be against both? There are two legit issues here: democratic principle and whether more American-style unionization is the answer to our economy's problems. Yes, if there were a procedurally fair reform that promised to dramatically increase the unionization rate, I'd have a more difficult choice. But this isn't that case. I'm willing to bet that a) workers who vote anonymously, free of the collective social pressure that can come with public voting, will rationally decide, often enough, that the drawbacks of unionization (in terms of the adversarialization of the workplace, lost productivity, and winding up like Detroit) outweigh the benefits, and b) workers who do decide to unionize their companies will find those companies losing out in the marketplace and shrinking (as has been the case, most conspicuously, with Detroit). ... Bet (a), at least, is a bet Stern obviously doesn't want to take--even though in the bhTV interview Reich is clearly, if timidly, trying to push him in the direction of a package of reforms aimed at curbing employer "coercion" rather than ending the secret ballot. ... 7:54 P.M.
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"We don't report stuff like this" Except, you know, when it involves John McCain and not Pinch Sulzberger. ... Keep rockin! ... 6:01 P.M.
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Monday, December 22, 2008
The "Community" Strikes Back: Matt Yglesias is kidding either himself or us when he claims that he won't self-censor just because Jennifer Palmieri, "Acting CEO" of the outfit he blogs for (the "Center for American Progess Action Fund") commandeered his site** to post a disclaimer in BS-ese after Yglesias criticized a CAP ally. He writes:
Under the circumstances, it’s better for me, better for CAP and CAPAF, and better for everyone to understand that I’m writing as an individual not as the voice of the institution. Pointing that fact out isn’t contrary to me having an independent voice, it’s integral to having one. ...[snip] ... My role is to say what I think on the blog; that’s what I’ve always done and will keep doing.
No. Next time Yglesias wants to write something that might alienate one of CAP's numerous friends, he has to ask himself a) do I want Jennifer Palmieri to come squat on my blog again, and b) even if she doesn't, do I want the hassle of arguing with her or my bosses to prevent them from acting to ... er, "clarify" the situation in some other way? That has to tip the scales slightly--and, if my experience is any indication, more than slightly--in favor of pulling your punches and avoiding the hassle. ... Keep in mind, Palmieri didn't intervene because what Yglesias said was wrong--factually or logically---but rather simply because what he said differed from the position of the "institution." Why doesn't she get her own blog? ...
This is all hugely embarrassing for CAP. Palmieri, last seen helping John Edwards lie, owes Yglesias a published apology. I would think Yglesias could and should insist on it--he was a prestige acquisition for CAP, and it would damage them if he left. As things stand, he's been semi-emasculated.
Keep rockin'.
P.S.: Is the group Third Way's "domestic policy agenda" really "hyper-timid incrementalist bullshit"? America wants to know! Or it does now! Isn't the first rule of flackery don't issue a denial that just gives more publicity to the charge you are denying? ...
**-- I should not have said "commandeered." I regret the error. CAP is a key leader in the progressive movement. I look forward to working with them in the future. What I meant to say is that Yglesias "allowed Palmieri an opportunity to issue a different opinion." Our fraternal Soviet comrades are welcome in Prague anytime! ... [via Insta] 9:58 P.M.
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Wednesday, December 17, 2008
Card Check Update: Democratic Senator Blanche Lincoln is waffling and waffling; potential GOP crossover Voinovich seems to remain a firm no. Marc Ambinder says card check "is teetering on the brink" of defeat, even as he also serves as conduit for pro-union spin. (Sample: "Labor may not have the 60 Senate votes it needs to beat a filibuster, although some labor strategists are confident that, in private, the numbers are there." In private, "comprehensive immigration reform" passed in 2006. Only the voters objected.) .. See also Faughnan (who argues that, "It's a shrewd move by Lincoln to announce her opposition early"--except that Lincoln's office then quicky revised her position to "undecided.")
Plus: kausfiles has strange new respect for Rev. Sharpton! ...
P.S.: Alert reader J emails with an interesting proposal: Let the unions have their "card check" provision--allowing them to substitute publicly-collected, signed cards saying "we want a union" for a secret ballot vote. If the union gets 51% of the employees to sign the cards, it gets recognized. But let the employer also collect cards from employees who don't want a union. If the employer gets 51% the union has to go away for five years. You'd hear soon enough about how collecting cards in public is unfair, opening the door to pressure tactics, intimidation, etc.. ... 12:54 A.M.
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Surefire Recipe for a Good Time: Newsmax is sponsoring a cruise featuring Dick Morris, "some of the nation's top alternative health doctors," and Alexander Haig. ... P.S.: Venn Diagram, please! ... 12:30 A.M.
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Tuesday, December 16, 2008
"She was 'no drama' before 'no drama' was cool." I think they've discovered a tactful way to say "boring." ... 10:50 P.M.
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Time to call a meeting of UAW defenders to sort out kinks in the party line. The NYT, blaming Republicans for the bailout deal's Thursday collapse, writes:
After Senate Republicans balked at supporting a $14 billion auto rescue plan approved by the House on Wednesday, negotiators worked late into Thursday evening to broker a deal, but deadlocked over Republican demands for steep cuts in pay and benefits by the United Automobile Workers union in 2009. ...
The automakers would also have been required to cut wages and benefits to match the average hourly wage and benefits of Nissan, Toyota and Honda employees in the United States.
It was over this proposal that the talks ultimately deadlocked with Republicans demanding that the automakers meet that goal by a certain date in 2009 and Democrats and the union urging a deadline in 2011 when the U.A.W. contract expires. [E.A.]
But wait a minute--didn't I read somewhere the claim that the UAW shouldn't be blamed because its labor costs were already competitive with Honda and Toyota? Yes, I did!
The leaders of General Motors Corp. and the United Auto Workers union told Congress this week that a new union contract will virtually erase the labour cost gap between GM and foreign competitors with U.S. factories. [Nov. 19, 2008]
If the gap had already been "virtually" erased, how could the cuts required to close whatever gap remained have been "steep"? ... 12:49 A.M.
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Thursday, December 11, 2008
Hierarchy Recalibration! Let the record show that Rod Blagojevich, sitting governor of Illinois, the fifth largest state in the union, was apparently willing to sell a U.S. Senate seat and his soul, and abandon his office, for a job paying less money ($250,000-$300,000) than is made by several hosts on National Public Radio. ... Randy Newman, call your office. ... 3:14 P.M.
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Bam Sandwich? Yikes. 1) Rezko's talking; 2) The FBI's been asking about the house deal (an Election Day story I'd missed). ... 1:44 A.M.
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The Trouble With the Bailout Deal: Here's the key passage from the briefing on the bailout "deal":
Now, how does the process work? It was very important to us that there be--that this President's designee [the "auto czar"] have sticks, leverage, to make sure that all these stakeholders who are participating in the process of negotiations have a very strong incentive to make the deep and meaningful concessions that will be necessary for these companies to become viable over the long term. So there are a number of sticks. The first is, if these companies do not arrive in the negotiations at a plan that meets the test for long-term viability, that bridge financing shall be called by the President's designee. That means we get paid back at the end of the period.
The period is until March 31st, or April 30th if the Presidenti's designee want to grant a one-time, 30-day extension because they're making progress and there's likelihood of success. So at the end of that period, if there's not a plan that makes these firms viable, the government gets its money back.
Now, remember what I sad at the outset that this is a bridge to either fundamental restructuring or bankruptcy. They either have a long term plan that's viable, or we get our money back. And if we call our money back, which is required under this bill, then those firms are not going to be able to survive. That is a real incentive and a real stick for this President's designee to ensure that the stakeholders all across the board make the concessions that are necessary. [E.A.]
OK. Might work! But some questions: 1) How is the government going to "get its money back" if the money has been spent and the firms are bankrupt? Only by liquidation, it would seem. So does the bailout deal eliminate the option of restructuring (as an ongoing enterprise) under the aegis of the bankruptcy court? Either the firms are saved under the "czar," or they are liquidated, apparently. 2) The big "stick" is to kill the firms, then. Isn't that too big a stick? Like a nuclear weapon is too big a stick? Come April 29th, if the choice is to approve a half-assed "restructuring" plan that has maybe a 35% chance of succeeding, or to kill General Motors, there's going to be an awful lot of pressure not to kill General Motors, no? The threat is so big it pressures the auto czar, not the executives, investors and union members. What's needed is an intermediate threat that's more credible. How about empowering the auto czar to declare the companies' labor contracts null and void? And to indefinitely delay payment of all executive salaries and bonuses? That would get the "stakeholders" attention, maybe. 3) Shouldn't there be a different "czar" for each firm? Having a single czar for the whole industry muffles what might be salutary competitive pressures. Maybe Chrysler's workers are so desperate they'll give up more in terms of pay and work rules than Ford's workers. Shouldn't that sort of choice be encouraged? Dueling "czars" would encourage this viability-enhancing reverse solidarity. ...
Update: Walter Olson has a sharp, clarifying answer to all these questions. Sen. DeMint concurs. I tend to agree more with National Review's Jim Manzi's argument that "if we could stipulate that we could get all of the effects of an orderly bankruptcy through some government-sponsored process that just had a different name, then of course we should do it." Even if the current deal is designed to protect existing "constituencies," as Olson claims, and eventual bankruptcy is in the cards, given the acute economic downturn there's virtue at this point in postponing the inevitable until a time when the nation can better absorb the blow. But it would be better to have a solution now that actually saved Ford and GM and the jobs they create, instead of saving the UAW's work rules. ... 12:28 A.M.
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Wednesday, December 10, 2008
Name That Issue! Hmm. What issue would be at the top of the "legislative agenda" of Andy Stern's S.E.I.U. that Illinois Gov. Blagojevich generously offered to help pass after he was through appointing Obama confidante Valerie Jarrett to the U.S. Senate? If you said "card check"--the bill eliminating the secret ballot in union recognition elections--you win.
Rumors that the name of the bill is going to be changed to the "Rod Blagojevich F----ing Valuable Choice Act" could not be confirmed as of press time. ...
P.S.: Let's assume SEIU president Andy Stern did nothing wrong, and indeed maybe even blew the whistle on Blagojevich's offer of a "three-way" quid pro quid pro quo (after promising to "put that flag up and see where it goes"). Even so, if Stern was an authorized Obama "emissary" to the governor, in the attempt to get Jarrett a Senate seat, that should trouble opponents of "card check." Why? Because it means Obama wasn't worried about owing Stern a huge favor (if he'd succeeded in getting Jarrett the seat). Would Obama do it if he was planning to disappoint Stern? ...
True, "card check" isn't the only issue Stern cares about. Universal health insurance would probably be considered a sufficient repayment of the favor. But "card check" will come up much sooner. ...
Update: According to several reports, the SEIU official who met with Blagojevich was not Stern, but Tom Balanoff, head of a powerful SEIU local in Chicago. The above analysis still applies--though, as Mary Katharine Ham notes, the question of whether the SEIU was indeed Jarrett's (and Obama's) authorized "emissary" or was freelancing seems fairly crucial. ... The NYT' s Steven Greenhouse implies it was Blagojevich who reached out to the union official, but a) I don't trust Greenhouse--in part because of bias** and in part because b) his story is foggy on the actual details. For example, Greenhouse mentions that a Blago aide "approached" the unnamed SEIU offical, but ignore's the indictment's claim of a later call between Blagojevich himself and the official. ... This seems like a pretty good case of Times readers not getting a clear picture of what went on. ...
**--You can hear Greenhouse on "Talk of the Nation" where he sounds only a bit more pro-Obama than Austan Goolsbee. ...11:30 P.M.
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Caroline, No ... 12:17 P.M.
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The Big Center (Part 2): The Nation's Katha Pollitt, voice of reason, on the Ayers op-ed:
Like his memoir, Fugitive Days , "The Real Bill Ayers" is a sentimentalized, self-justifying whitewash of his role in the weirdo violent fringe of the 1960s-70s antiwar left.
I'm actually not sure I agree with Pollitt when she argues that Weatherman-style violence was counterproductive when it came to stopping the Vietnam War. It seems to me that it contributed to the sense on the part of the "silent majority" that everything was spinning out of control and it was time to reverse course. That doesn't mean Ayers isn't a self-serving fool, or that planting bombs--in one case a nail bomb, as Pollitt points out--isn't terrorism, and crazy, and criminal. ... 11:49 A.M.
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