Ohio Issue 2: Vote Yes for Reform
October 25, 2011
(Jump to provisions of new law)
I remember John Derbyshire arguing years ago that public-sector unions shouldn’t exist, in his top-ten list of “Necessary but Impossible” reforms:
Outlaw public-sector unions
Why do public-sector workers need unions? The purpose of unions is to protect employees against unscrupulous bosses, who might seek to maximize profits by taking advantage of those who work for them. In the public sector, however, there are no profits to be maximized, no shareholders to appease. The work that is being done is being done in the public interest — against which, as Calvin Coolidge quite correctly declared, there is no right to strike. So what do government workers need unions for? If public-sector workers don’t like their pay and conditions, they can appeal to the tax-paying public, who are their ultimate employers. If that doesn’t work, they can go get jobs in the private sector, and take their chances with capitalism, like free citizens of a free nation. Read the rest of this entry »
Update to ‘People Should Marry Earlier’
October 20, 2011
I also recommend the following related writings:
- Kathleen Quiring’s “In Defense of Early Marriage” and the other entries she links to there, expanding on various objections to early marriage; “Why You Shouldn’t Marry Early (Or Ever)”; and the rest of her excellent blog
- Mark Regnerus, “The Case for Early Marriage”, Christianity Today
- Mark Steyn, “We Are the Children” section of chapter four, After America
“Occupy Wall Street” Protesters Couldn’t Be More Different from Tea Party Movement, or from Rest of Country
October 19, 2011
First, insert here all the usual caveats about polls. Always take them with a grain of salt, etc.
That said, according to “probably . . . the first systematic random sample of Occupy Wall Street opinion,” 31% of OWS protesters “would support violence to advance their agenda.” Read the rest of this entry »
Why the Economy Isn’t Recovering
October 15, 2011
The Wall Street Journal summarizes Washington’s generous contributions to the problem: The Keystone XL oil pipeline could create more than a hundred thousand jobs, and an environmental review says it poses no threat to the environment, but the administration has held it up for three years anyway. Administrative agencies generated 81,405 pages’ worth of new regulations last year, “bringing the total cost to the U.S. economy of regulatory compliance to an estimated $1.7 trillion a year.” And so on. Read the rest of this entry »
Conversations around the Petition Table
October 9, 2011
Maybe I should try some of that first-person-narrative, personal-experience-type reporting that I’m told is blogs’ specialty.
Recently I started volunteering with some local candidates’ 2011 election campaigns. One day I went with two other volunteers, two college students, S. and D., to a big community event where we distributed literature for one of the candidates, C. While there, we ran into another volunteer, a liberal, M., a middle-aged woman, gathering signatures for a Democrat ballot initiative. The four of us talked for a while. A few things struck me. Read the rest of this entry »
Tea Party Debt Commission
October 4, 2011
Here’s an interesting idea: a Tea Party Debt Commission, organized by Freedom Works:
What is the Tea Party Debt Commission?
. . .
The Commission consists of 12 members, paralleling the structure of the new “deficit reduction super committee” created by Congress as part of the recent debt ceiling compromise. Committee members are volunteer tea party activists and leaders . . . . Read the rest of this entry »
That Works, Too
October 1, 2011
“Trapping and shooting, where legal, will also control rodents.”