Science under the microscope: Unprofessional behavior raises questions

Most people do not recognize the name Peter Duesberg. They don't know that he is a professor of Molecular and Cell Biology at the University of California, Berkeley, or that he was the first scientist to isolate the human cancer gene in 1970 through his work on retroviruses, and that he mapped the genetic structure of those viruses, resulting in his election to the National Academy of Sciences in 1986. Dr. Duesberg is also the recipient of a seven-year Outstanding Investigator Grant from the National Institutes of Health.

Yet, despite these impressive accomplishments and sterling credentials he is looked down upon by some of his peers because, as it turns out, the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) — known as the “AIDS virus” — is a retrovirus, a subject about which Prof. Duesberg is an authority, and based upon his knowledge of retroviruses Prof. Duesberg concluded that HIV, does not cause AIDS.

Despite his background and accomplishments, his research and scientific opinion on HIV are given no credibility among the HIV = AIDS faction of scientists, and instead he is vilified and punished.

The purpose here is not to defend Prof. Duesberg's theory about HIV/AIDS — readers can investigate that on their own and draw their own conclusions, or not, as they choose. The purpose is to call attention to the decidedly unscientific behavior on the part of those scientists who believe the AIDS orthodoxy, and who demean and vilify a highly qualified peer who disagrees with a popular theory.

Science is supposed to be a logical, methodical search for truth; it involves advancing hypotheses and testing and retesting them, disproving those that can be disproved, and allowing those that can't be disproved to stand until a better hypothesis comes along. It is often said in science that theories can never be proved, only disproved, and there is always the possibility that a new observation or a new experiment will conflict with a long-standing theory.

The noted chemist and winner of multiple Nobel Prizes, Linus Pauling, said that “science is the search for truth — it is not a game in which one tries to beat his opponent, to do harm to others.”

Yet, instead of engaging in scientific debate with Prof. Duesberg and disproving his hypothesis in a scientific fashion, the HIV = AIDS establishment responded by cutting off his research funding and making him a villain. Why?

Well, there is a lot of money in AIDS research and treatment. Since the mid-1980s the federal government has spent more than $20 billion in the U.S. for those purposes. If Peter Duesberg's theory is valid or cannot be disproved, it could upset the apple cart for a lot of people who have gotten comfortable in their lucrative work, so comfortable that perhaps they no longer care about objective truth.

If this situation sounds familiar it is because it is very similar to what happens to scientists with the temerity to challenge the anthropogenic global warming (AGW) theory, more recently referred to merely as “climate change,” now enjoying wide acceptance, but which also has been exposed as involving much less than honorable, objective science.

The Wall Street Journal noted back in 2006 that “Scientists who dissent from the alarmism have seen their grant funds disappear, their work derided, and themselves libeled … Consequently, lies about climate change gain credence even when they fly in the face of the science that supposedly is their basis.”

Those who do not toe the alarmist line are not only punished, marginalized, and ridiculed; they are even threatened with jail in some cases. Jail? Really? As Sarah Palin would say: “you betcha.”

In 2007 the following headline appeared in Agence France Press “Failure to tackle climate peril 'criminally irresponsible,' IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) told,” a sentiment attributed to Yvo de Boer, UN Environmental Programme head.

Like AIDS research and treatment, AGW attracts an enormous bundle of research and subsidy funding.

In 2007 $50 billion of taxpayer money went to global warming advocates, while just $19 million went to skeptics — a more than 2,500-to-1 funding imbalance in favor of the AGW advocates — according to information provided on the Senate Environment and Public Works Web page. Did the appeal of filthy lucre spawn the fraud, deceit, and error-ridden research that alarmists used to build support for dangerous, expensive and unnecessary changes to our way of life?

We have come to expect this sort of dishonesty and tawdry behavior from politicians. But science is supposed be above such desperate and corrupt conduct. Like journalism — another profession we depend on for honesty and truth that has lost credibility in recent years — science is fast becoming an area where theories will be taken with the same grain of salt as a Barack Obama campaign promise.

The ethical collapse of important professions like journalism, climate science and medical research parallels the collapse of our once-resilient society, one that developed through, independence, individualism and personal integrity. As our society sheds its standards, gives up individualism for dependence, and devolves into socialism, our once-ethical professions get taken down with it.

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Technorati Tags: Science, Politics, Environment, Medicine

Potential new tax threatens to keep the U.S. economy in a crisis

On April 8, Congressional Budget Office (CBO) chief Douglas Elmendorf said this about the enormous Obama budget deficit: “U.S. fiscal policy is unsustainable, and unsustainable to an extent that it can't be solved through minor changes. It's a matter of arithmetic.” What does that mean?

It means that government spending is so far ahead of its revenue collection that some major change has to occur. In such situations there are three choices: reduce spending; increase taxation; or some combination of the two.

All those who think the administration and the current Congress will reduce spending, please stand up. Those still sitting are correct: there won’t be spending cuts, and everyone – everyone – is going to pay more taxes, despite Barack Obama’s promises to the contrary during the presidential campaign.

Mr. Elmendorf suggested that the CBO has begun to study the impact of adding an entirely new kind of tax to the extensive list of existing federal taxes: the value added tax (VAT). Observers suspect that President Obama’s deficit reduction commission will recommend the VAT to counter the administration’s spending addiction; the only tool many economists believe is capable of raising enough money to make a dent in the gargantuan Obama deficit.

A value added tax is similar to a national retail sales tax but imposes a tax at every stage of business production, and its cumulative effects are paid by the consumer. Unlike earnings-based taxes like the income tax, people are taxed on what they spend: spend a lot, pay a lot of VAT taxes; spend little, pay little VAT taxes.

Value added tax systems are popular in the social democracies of Europe and other nations around the world, and standard rates range from five percent (Japan) to 25 percent (Sweden and Denmark). Most countries with a VAT have lower rates for some items, and no tax at all on a few.

On inexpensive items you won’t really notice a five percent VAT very much. An item that costs $20 will have an additional dollar of VAT added to it. If the VAT rate is 25 percent, however, you’ll pay a $5.00 VAT. That might be enough to get your attention.

On more expensive items, like something that costs $1,000, the five percent VAT will add $50 to the cost, and the 25 percent VAT will add $250. Both of those should get your attention.

The problem the VAT poses for Americans is that where it might be a suitable replacement for income taxes as a means to raise government revenue, the VAT will not replace the income tax or the myriad of federal taxes we pay, it will be added to them, since the only way to counter the Obama spending addiction is to provide additional revenue to the federal government over and above what it is already collecting.

But adding the VAT to existing taxes will have significant negative effects. Since it is based on spending, the more you make, the more you can spend. However, everyone will likely buy less because the price of nearly everything will go up, while salaries and wages will not. Imagine having to pay from five to twenty-five percent more for most things you purchase. And everyone will be affected by the VAT, not just the middle-class Americans Mr. Obama has labeled “rich.”

Since rising prices lead to lower purchasing, demand for products will drop and production levels will decline commensurately, and that will put additional pressure on employers to lay off workers. The only question is how substantial a drain on the economy the VAT will produce?

EconomyWatch notes that a concern in “introducing value-added tax is that the introduction of the tax would set in motion a spiral in which prices and wages would feed on each other – that is, VAT would be inflationary.”

That Black Hole of Economics, otherwise known as the White House, makes one blunder after another. The most serious problem facing the country when Barack Obama took office was unemployment. The most serious problem 15 months later is unemployment followed closely by the deficit.

Instead of taking action to foster job creation, like reducing taxes on business and individuals, Mr. Obama wasted more than a year focusing on a problem a minority of Americans thought was important – health care reform – and paid lip service to unemployment, the issue Americans thought was most important. He helped push through a $787 billion stimulus bill that hasn’t worked, but has doubled the budget deficit to a scary level.

When he took office, Mr. Obama inherited a deficit of about $800 billion: the original $485 billion Bush deficit, plus $100 billion in increased recession-related spending and lost revenues, plus $200 billion in unpaid Troubled Asset Relief Program loans ($500 billion has been repaid). The Obama deficit is more than $1.5 trillion today, double what he inherited, and 10 percent of GDP.

And now he may be considering imposing a new tax on the country that will increase everyone’s taxes and put additional pressure on jobs, when what is clearly needed is cuts in spending and taxes.


Technorati Tags: Liberalism, Economists, Government, Democrats

Congress shows why the Founders’ original intent must be observed

Many Americans are outraged at the component in the House Health Care bill that requires people to buy health insurance they don’t want and don’t need. The authors of this legislation felt this mandate necessary to put enough young and healthy people’s money into the system to keep it from sinking faster than the Titanic, which, come to think of it, is a pretty good analogy for the chaos surrounding health care reform. What does it say about this ghastly plan that Americans have to be forced to participate in it for it to succeed?

Congress justifies this outrage with the “Commerce Clause” of the United States Constitution. Article I, Section 8, Paragraph 3 says: “(The Congress shall have power) [t]o regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes; …”

Through liberal interpretation of the words “to regulate commerce … among the several states,” Congress has justified things that the nation’s Founders never intended, and in fact things just like the government oppression that the colonists revolted against only several years earlier.

Given that the colonists had endured circumstances bad enough that they took up arms against King George, how can anyone seriously believe that the Founders ever intended for those few words to be used for the government to gain so much control?

Looking back into history, George Mason University professor Walter Williams wrote that a “key failing of the Articles of Confederation [the first governing document of the United States of America] was the propensity of states to erect protectionist trade barriers. When the Framers met in Philadelphia in 1787 and wrote the constitution that governs us today, they addressed that failure through the commerce clause and the privileges and immunities clause that created a national free-trade zone. Thus, the original purpose of the Commerce Clause was primarily a means to eliminate trade barriers among the states. They didn't intend for the Commerce Clause to govern so much of our lives.”

Our elected public servants, however, go merrily on ignoring the protections the Constitution provides you and me against them.

Using the Commerce Clause as the basis, in 1990 Congress passed the Gun-Free School Zones Act. How so? Because, legislators said, possessing a firearm in a local school zone substantially affected interstate commerce. Huh? Well, you see, because violent crime raises insurance costs, and those costs are spread throughout the population, and across state lines, voila: interstate commerce. And if that explanation isn’t satisfying, Congress also determined that crime threatens the learning environment, thereby reducing national productivity, affecting interstate commerce. These interpretations stretch plausibility to the breaking point.

Fortunately for the country, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Congress didn't have constitutional authority to pass that act, because, "If we were to accept the government's arguments, we are hard pressed to posit any activity by an individual that Congress is without power to regulate."

Indeed, if we accept the thin premise that crime affects the learning environment, thereby creating a negative effect on interstate commerce, then what children eat, how much sleep they get, and even what they do when not in school are also factors requiring government control.

The American people have allowed this twisting of the Founders’ intentions for a variety of reasons, including ignorance, disinterest, and self-interest, the latter when a particular misapplication of the Commerce Clause fits their narrow viewpoint. They might say, “Well, the Commerce Clause really doesn’t have anything to do with outlawing guns near schools, but, hey, we don’t want guns near schools, do we? So let it stand.”

The U.S. Constitution was created not as an instrument of social engineering or of political expedience. It was carefully crafted to achieve a specific purpose: to establish a limited government that would provide a suitable framework for the nation and at the same time provide maximum freedom for American citizens.

But politicians cannot be trusted to omit ideological motivations from the lawmaking process, which is why the judiciary was given the authority to rule on whether laws comport with constitutional mandates. But the judiciary, including the U.S. Supreme Court, is often as political and ideological as the Congress.

Edwin Meese, Attorney General in the Reagan administration, notes that “Taking the politics out of the judiciary is a key tenet behind the concept of constitutional originalism. That's the idea that judges should issue rulings based on the original understanding of the authors and ratifiers of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights – rather than on outcomes that reflect the judges' personal biases or policy preferences.”

Liberalizing the meaning of the Constitution like this means that the federal government can justify anything it wants to do by giving it the magic label "interstate commerce," and the limits on federal power under the 10th Amendment and the Bill of Rights vanish into thin air.

A so-called “living constitution” is an unsuitable basis for government, since its meaning changes to fit contemporary passions. If the Constitution means only what each new generation prefers it to mean, the nation has no anchor, and floats aimlessly in the political wind.

Original intent is the only sensible interpretation of the Constitution.

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Obama’s fraudulent drilling policy

During the presidential campaign Barack Obama favored domestic drilling for oil and natural gas, but throughout the first year of his presidency he imposed numerous delays on American energy production. Now, out of the blue, he has announced he will open up portions of the Outer Continental Shelf to offshore drilling.

He portrayed the idea of needing more domestic production as something new, a great revelation that was the product of a year's worth of investigation by his administration; something nobody had thought of until this “aha” moment.

This decision has prompted a variety of responses. Proponents of developing our oil and natural gas resources are guardedly optimistic, while the anti-domestic-energy-production folks on the left are appalled that the president would abandon his more recent “sensible” position against conventional energy sources and his near-manic drive for imposing “green” technologies on the nation.

But those on the right are correct to be skeptical and the left has no reason to worry: Mr. Obama has no intention of making it easier for the country to do what is in its best interest where energy production is concerned.

If he really wants to increase domestic oil and natural gas supplies, why did this proposal not allow drilling in the Pacific Ocean, or in a large portion of the Atlantic Ocean, in some of the most promising areas of the Gulf of Mexico, or in much of Alaska? Why are there no areas for land-based exploration? And why will most new drilling will not occur until after 2012 at the earliest.

This is a head-fake by the president, who wants to force a massive new energy tax on Americans.

The Waxman-Markey energy bill would do serious harm to the economy, killing more than one million jobs per year and raising energy costs, but many in Congress believe that bill is dead. However, a new effort is being developed by Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, Independent Senator Joseph Lieberman, and Democrat Senator John Kerry.

This bill is expected to be less offensive to opponents of Waxman-Markey, and given the suspicious timing of the president’s announcement, his newly discovered need for domestic production is just a part of a plot to push through cap and tax in one form or another.

Despite a study by the American Energy Alliance that reports offshore drilling may well create millions of new jobs and would provide billions in new government revenue at the levels, we should expect an array of delays before any actual drilling takes place, such as court challenges and bureaucratic red tape.

Barack Obama continues to govern in opposition to the will of the people he serves, who understand what he does not understand: the way to energy independence is developing domestic supplies of those fuels that we have been using and are prepared to use, and who also recognize that however attractive wind, solar, and other alternative energy sources may be in terms of “cleanliness,” the technology needed for them to be utilized to any significant degree are as yet unavailable.

Technorati Tags: Energy, Politics, Government, Liberalism

The health care reform bill has passed; now we know what’s in it

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said a short while before the House of Representatives voted on the health care reform bill that “we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it,” that arrogant statement indicating that there were some surprises tucked neatly away.

During the 14 months the fight over this bill raged, Americans were opposed to most of what they knew about it, every House Republican opposed it, and 34 Democrats voted against it. Clearly, there was more to dislike than to like. Now, the bill has passed and we know what’s in it.

The attacks on the elderly and the seriously troubled Medicare program are truly breathtaking. Medicare now pays providers substantially less than their services cost, and more cuts begin this year.

In 2011: cuts begin for Medicare Advantage; the elderly are no longer allowed to use Health Care Account (FSA, HSA, HRA, Archer MSA) distributions for over‐the-counter medicine; Medicare cuts to home health begin; wealthier seniors begin paying higher Part D premiums (not indexed for inflation in Parts B/D); new Medicare cuts to long‐term care hospitals begin in July; Medicare reimbursement will be cut when seniors use diagnostic imaging like MRIs, CT scans, etc., and cuts begin for ambulance services, ASCs, diagnostic labs, and durable medical equipment.

And, additional Medicare cuts to hospitals and to nursing homes and inpatient
rehab facilities begin after October, along with cuts for dialysis treatment; Medicare will reduce spending by using an HMO‐like coordinated care model; new Medicare cuts to inpatient psych hospitals begin in July; Medicare cuts to hospice begin in fiscal 2013, accompanied by cuts to hospitals that treat low‐income seniors. In 2014 more Medicare cuts to home health begin.

Who said there won’t be rationing? And with even lower reimbursements, more providers likely will decline to treat Medicare patients.

President Obama said he wanted a bill to help people; apparently he wants to help them at the expense of the elderly.

“But those changes only affect old people,” you say? Everyone will be old someday, but at the rate Medicare cuts are being implemented, that program may not exist in 20 years.

Next year your government will impose a new annual tax on brand name pharmaceutical companies. Do you think that might cause drug prices to rise? Well, it will. And Americans must also begin paying premiums for federal long‐term care insurance.

Employers are required to report the value of health benefits on W‐2s starting in 2011, meaning folks will then have to pay income tax on the value of their health benefits.

In 2013: there will be a new tax on all private health insurance policies;, an increased Medicare wage tax of 0.9 percent; a general increase from 7.5 percent to 10 percent in the threshold at which medical expenses, as a percent of income, can be deducted; and your government will impose a 2.3 percent excise tax on medical devices, all of which will make medical care more expensive, not less expensive.

And then in 2014 individuals without government‐approved coverage are subject to what the government calls a “tax” of the greater of $695 or 2.5 percent of income. This is not a tax, however, it is a fine: How can you be taxed on something you didn’t buy and don’t own?

If you make $30,000 a year and don’t have insurance, you’ll be fined $750. Earn $50,000 and you get a $1,250 fine, just for not following your government’s demand to buy something you don’t want and may not need.

Employers who fail to offer "affordable" coverage (whatever that means) would pay a $3,000 fine for every employee that receives a subsidy through the Health Care Exchange, and employers who do not offer insurance must pay a fine of $2,000 for every fulltime employee.

What do you suppose will happen to small businesses that are marginally profitable, but can’t afford either to buy health insurance for their employees or to pay a $2,000 fine per employee for not doing what they cannot afford to do? How many people will lose their job as a result of this mandate?

Larger companies are not immune from these punishing effects. AT&T, John Deere, and Caterpillar, among others, have said effects of the reform bill will be millions of dollars each, with AT&T’s hit to be $1 billion. These additional costs will have a negative impact on how all businesses operate. Will they create new jobs or lay people off? Will they raise prices on their products?

So, while President Obama, and Congressional Democrats are popping corks on the champagne celebrating a bill that will cost $940 billion over ten years and wreak havoc on the elderly, the rest of us are wondering how we are going to handle the cost increases and health care service restrictions this bill will produce.

Opponents of this approach to health care reform said all along that a lot of improvement could have been achieved by addressing health care problems individually, instead of this massive, costly, and horribly flawed approach.

We should have listened to them.

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Technorati Tags: Government, Politics, Health Care, Democrats

The Government Can!

This is a truly excellent and well done perspective!

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Words of wisdom from a common-sense conservative

Thaddeus McCotter, Representative from Michigan, is a common-sense conservative Republican who doesn't get nearly enough exposure.

Please take a few minutes to watch and listen to this commentary on "Change" and the sad state of affairs we find ourselves in today.

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Technorati Tags: Government, Politics, Liberalism, Democrats

Washington in 2010: Bribery and scheming and corruption, oh my!

Most Americans know who Thomas Jefferson was. He was the principle author of the Declaration of Independence and one of the most influential of the founders of this nation. He was Governor of Virginia, the first Secretary of State of the United States, and the nation’s third president, serving eight years beginning in 1801. As a major figure in the founding of the United States of America he fully understood the reasons the colonies split from Great Britain, and his beliefs were fairly representative of the people of the times who decided the oppressive and tax-crazed British government was destructive of the freedoms the Creator intended for human beings.

Mr. Jefferson had a lot to say about the form of government that best allows people to live in freedom, and one of his most famous quotes is, “That government is best which governs the least ...”

Sometime before he died in 1826 he said, “I think we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labour of the industrious.” If he believed that statement was true in or before 1826, what do you suppose he would think today?

The federal government has been too big, too expensive and too authoritarian for quite a while – nearly 200 years, according to Mr. Jefferson – but it has become intolerable this year, as so capably illustrated by the health care reform fiasco: Even though most people don’t like the bill, the leaders were determined to pass it with only Democrat support, if enough Democrat arms could be twisted to get the votes required for passage. If not, they would force it through in an underhanded scheme to pass it without actually voting on it. And while all of this was going on, states are passing legislation to prevent the feds from forcing their citizens to participate in the program, an intrusion into states rights, and are threatening to sue the federal government over it. What a circus!

Our gargantuan, wealth-consuming, non-attentive government has a legislature that is isolated from the citizenry it represents. In the early days we had a part-time citizen legislature made up of farmers and merchants, and so forth, who went to the capital for a month or two, did their work, and returned to their normal lives as farmers and merchants, and were in close touch with the people who elected them.

Today’s career politician is as far from being a citizen legislator as the Earth is from the Sun. They aren’t in Washington for 60 or 90 days and then home again; they are there their entire term of office. They have a second residence in or near DC where they live during their tenure, and even if they use the scheduled work sessions at home, going back to their home state or district is more like a vacation or a business trip. Their home is Washington, DC, not the state or district they represent.

We pay them well to be isolated from their constituents. Rank-and-file members of the Congress receive $174,000 per year, Majority and Minority Leaders receive $193,400, and the Speaker of the House receives $223,500, and all get generous retirement and health benefits funded by tax dollars, though most make contributions of their salary and also pay 6.2 percent of their salary in Social Security taxes.

If legislators were in office for only a couple of years, being separated from their constituents might not be so much of a problem, but many of them are there for decades. No wonder their priorities get confused and they forget who they work for. Combine this isolation with the pressures of partisan politics, and you have an atmosphere ripe for the sort of malfeasance we see today in the health care reform movement. If nothing else screams at you that we seriously need change in how Washington works, this should do the trick.

Anyone who participated in that disgraceful process should be removed from office, and that would be a good start to restoring honest representative government to the United States. After that, three beneficial changes should be considered:

1. Term limits for Congress. The president can serve only eight years; why should Congress be different? So, Senators get one eight-year term and Representatives get up to two four-year terms, and then home they go to become normal Americans again.

2. Limit Congressional sessions to one three-month session or two two-month sessions. Between sessions members go back to their real job and the pay that goes with it.

3. Members of Congress will be paid a salary that is a bit higher than the U.S. average income, and a housing allowance. Real emergencies may warrant longer sessions, but with reduced pay. Being in the service of your fellow Americans should not be a lucrative venture for public servants.

America’s journey from greatness to mediocrity – once a long, slow decline – has been dramatically sped up by our president and his fellow statists in Congress. Unless something dramatic happens very soon, we will live in the once-great United States.

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Some serious questions about the motives of our political leaders

Are the Democrat leaders in Washington out of touch with the mood of the country? Do they have a death wish? Are they insane?

Those are serious questions, prompted by the almost incomprehensible behavior of the country’s three most visible leaders, as well as a fair number of members of Congress and administration officials.

President Barack Obama, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi seem either unable to understand that Americans are not in favor of their idea of health care reform, or they simply do not care what the people think.

Three nationwide polls reflect the mood of the country quite plainly:

• A CBS News/New York Times Poll conducted Feb. 5-10 asked, "What do you think is the most important problem facing this country today?" The economy and jobs topped the list at 52 percent, while health care garnered only 13 percent.

• The liberal Web site Daily Kos poll conducted by Research 2000 from March 8-11 asked, "Do you feel the country overall is heading in the right direction or wrong direction?" Thirty-nine percent answered the right direction, but 60 percent said the wrong direction.

• Perhaps the most telling of all is the Gallup Poll from March 4-7, which asked, "In general, are you satisfied or dissatisfied with the way things are going in the United States at this time?" Nearly four to one, Americans are dissatisfied (79 percent to 19 percent).

These polls reflect dissatisfaction with the country’s direction, which includes a dangerously intrusive and unpopular health care reform effort, but the leaders ignore this message, still obsessed with jamming through health care reform. And, not only do Americans not like the reform bills, many senators and representatives don’t like them, either.

The Senate bill needed 60 votes to pass and it took Majority Leader Harry Reid buying votes with sweet deals for a few key members to get 60 votes, and the House bill passed with only two votes more than needed. The Senate bill had no Republican support, and the House version had one Republican vote.

The next step in this compulsive exercise is for the House of Representatives to vote on the Senate bill. But some don’t like public funding of abortions, and thus don’t support the bill, and others don’t support it because it doesn’t have a public option. All in all, there’s enough stuff in the bill, and enough stuff that’s left out of the bill, that the 216 votes needed for passage may not materialize. If it passes and becomes law, the Senate will then vote for a reconciliation bill to the fix problems.

Or not. There is no guarantee that once the House passes the bill and the president signs it that the Senate will do anything, leaving features in that many object to, and leaving out things people want in. Many House members will likely support the bill only because their objections can be dealt with through reconciliation.

Undaunted by the lack of popular and legislative support for the bill, Ms. Pelosi now may resort to a scheme referred to as the “Slaughter Solution,” dreamed up by New York Democrat Congresswoman Louise Slaughter, where the House will simply “deem” the Senate bill passed by the House, which means that the president will be signing a bill into law that the House of Representatives never voted on, an act of desperation that is said to be unprecedented in U.S. history. This is underhanded, unacceptable, and probably illegal.

Here are some more serious questions: Is a bill that has the support of only one party a good piece of legislation? Isn’t good legislation that which has a broad and substantial majority of support? Did we elect these people to enact partisan legislation? And, is that the best way to run the country? The answers to those questions are: No. Yes. No. No.

What a revealing situation: In spite of negative poll numbers, in spite of crumbling support in both houses of Congress, President Obama, Mr. Reid, and Ms. Pelosi charge ahead to force health care reform through, apparently at any cost.

This behavior defies common sense. These three individuals are committed statists, and are determined to increase the size and authority of government, even if they take themselves and their party down in the process.

Their ideology is sharply at odds with America’s founding principles and is contrary to what the American people want from their public servants, but it is controlling so much of what is happening in Washington today. It appears to be more important to these leaders than their political future and the political future of other Democrats, whose re-election they expect those members to sacrifice to satisfy this lust for big government legislation with socialistic overtones that these three believe in so strongly.

Sensible Americans – Democrats, Republicans and independents – will oppose this desperate and tawdry process. They will oppose it despite what they think about the health care reform bills because they believe in the principle of good government, which is sadly missing in Washington, DC, and has reached a new low since the 2008 election.

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Technorati Tags: Liberalism, Politics, Health care, Democrats

The grassroots Tea Party movement flummoxes the left

Watching the left try to cope with the Tea Party movement is fascinating. Some evidence suggests that fear is in control, like the desperate marginalizing and demonizing of the Tea Party movement that so effectively shows the dissatisfaction of millions of Americans with government over-reaching. The left resorts to name-calling and tries to paint the Tea Party participants as a bunch of wild-eyed radicals, bent on revolution, perhaps even violence. But that is a gross distortion of these Americans, the vast majority of whom are everyday citizens merely taking advantage of their God-given and constitutionally-protected right to speak their mind.

Some on the left are unable to accept this movement as a genuine citizen protest against Big Government excesses and intrusions into personal freedom. That perspective is represented by columnist Reg Henry, who wrote last week, “If you happened to see the health care summit that President Barack Obama hosted the other day … you saw the Republicans insist with great certainty that Americans don’t want health care legislation.” Well, Mr. Henry, that’s not what Republicans said, which is that Americans don’t like “this” legislation, and are saying so loud and clear.

And as for their certainty in saying so, well, it’s because Republicans aren’t deaf or blind. They hear from their constituents, both Republicans and Democrats. They recognize that Tea Party participants are fed up with the over-bearing nature of the federal government, and the arrogant way the president and the leaders of Congress ignore their objections, and they say Congress had better not enact legislation affecting 17 percent of the economy by a 50 percent-plus-one vote when the country is so sharply divided on the issue, and Republicans are finally paying attention.

They also realize that opinion polls conducted by respected polling organizations portray the mood of the country pretty accurately, using proven and accepted methodology to randomly sample Americans who usually are registered voters, and whose statistically relevant opinions can be extrapolated to the citizenry at large with 96 percent accuracy.

They know multiple polls conducted repeatedly over several months continue to show a consistent disapproval of the direction the country is heading, ranging from 60 to 73 percent, and a small percentage of approval, in some polls as low as 22 percent.

But Mr. Henry seems to think the 2008 election was the definitive statement by the people of what they want the president and the Congress to do, even though President Obama’s campaign was one of cavernous rhetoric, devoid of detail. Furthermore, Mr. Obama’s victory margin was only seven points, 53 to 46 percent, and that isn’t a mandate to do anything. In fact, seven points is a fraction of the margin between Americans who dislike the country’s direction and those who approve of it.

Another columnist, Ann McFeatters, relies on superficial thinking and insufficient research to help her misunderstand this phenomenon, in her column taking President Obama to task “for wasting political capital and failing to get as much done as he could have.”

“The tide began to turn against health insurance reform, aided brilliantly by Republicans who began talking nonsensically, but effectively, about ‘death panels’ and socialistic medicine,” she wrote. But just because the bill does not say specifically “in our socialized medicine system there will be death panels” doesn’t preclude a mechanism evolving that will make life and death decisions based on budget considerations, nor does it mean that the system won’t become one where private health insurance cannot survive against the government’s monopolistic tendencies, and in a few years we will have socialized medicine. What Republicans did – and folks on the left didn’t do – was to look at the reform measures, and project them into the future to see what might happen.

After revealing that she didn’t look into the future to see where reform measures may lead, she blamed “Wall Street fat cats” for the recent financial crisis, showing that she also didn’t look far enough into the past to find out what really caused the financial crisis. It’s true that Wall Streeters and big bankers contributed to the collapse, but they were only playing by the rules past Congresses and administrations created for them. Ms. McFeatters only looked back a couple of years, but the government meddling that created the environment for the problem began decades ago.

She criticizes the president’s failure to fulfill promises like closing Guantanamo Bay, ending the Iraq war, and capturing Osama bin Laden. Here, she fails to consider the ramifications of his promises, or obstacles to their fulfillment. So much of what Mr. Obama promised was unrealistic, and an objective analysis showed that. But Ms. McFeatters, the news media, and 53 percent of voters didn’t analyze his promises.

No surprise that the left doesn’t understand the Tea Party movement; and no surprise that it fears its opposition. Many liberals are unable to cope with logical disagreements, and because they don’t think things through cannot present logical arguments for their ideas.

Hence, instead of working with the opposition to find common ground on the nation’s problems, the majority party tries to force its ideas on the country, which is government at its worst.

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The Latest from Bones

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Demonizing for political gain

When you want to generate a lot of support for some political program, a common ploy is to create in the minds of those whose support you seek the idea that somebody is mean, evil, wicked, bad and nasty.

The demon in the effort to impose greater government control over our health care is health insurance providers, who are attacked for all manner of improper and/or self-serving behavior, both imagined and real. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, leading the charge, calls the insurers “villains,” but speaks in generalities and fails to show evidence of actual “villainy.”

We’ve heard the criticisms of health insurers, and some of them have done bad things. However, people in every industry and type of business occasionally do bad things, so insurers are no worse than anyone else.

The most questionable of these allegations is that the insurance companies do horrible things to their customers, such as dropping someone’s coverage when they have a serious illness; rejecting coverage for people with pre-existing conditions, or charging them higher premiums; and imposing large rate increases, in pursuit of excessive profits.

Last August Dr. Mark J. Perry, professor of economics and finance in the School of Management at the University of Michigan at Flint, demonstrated that health insurers like Cigna, Aetna, and WellPoint, had a profit margin of just 3.3 percent, ranking last on a list of 86 business categories.

People often mistakenly judge whether a company makes excessive profits by how many dollars it made. But what really is important is how much money it kept from what it collected from selling what it produced: profits divided by revenue. A multi-billion-dollar profit figure isn’t really meaningful without knowing how much revenue the company had. A company with $13.2 billion in profits and $400 billion in revenue achieved only a 3.3 percent profit margin. You can get a 3.3 percent return on your money by investing it in a three-year CD, even in today’s depressed market.

Compare that margin to more profitable business groups, like beverage producers/brewers at 25.9 percent, wireless communications at 11.1 percent, and general entertainment at 6.8 percent. If health insurers are mistreating customers for high profits, their strategy is a failure.

Most business decisions have a fundamental economic reason behind them, even large rate increases like WellPoint’s 39 percent hike in California. Fox Business Channel’s Stuart Varney explained this in the “Back of the Book Segment” on Fox News’ [begin ital] The O’Reilly Factor [end ital] recently in a segment titled “Making money off people’s illness.” "There's a recession in California and 800,000 [new participants] have gone onto Medicaid [roles],” he said. “Doctors who treat Medicaid patients lose money on every patient, and they transfer that loss to privately insured people,” which raises the insurer’s costs and creates the need to raise rates.

The title of that segment, “Making money off people’s illness,” indicates that the often- sensible Mr. O’Reilly believes health insurers are behaving immorally. But think about it: if you are in a business that deals with illness, you have to make money to stay in business and pay your employees. You must therefore make money off people’s illness. Millions of Americans are guilty of this “crime,” and we should be thankful for that. This is an example where emotion impeded clear thinking, and when this occurs people are easily taken advantage of by demagogues like Nancy Pelosi.

The Government Accounting office informs us that in 2008 the median number of insurers in individual states was 27, although that varies from a low of eight or fewer in three New England states to a few dozen in other states, and that the five largest insurers provide 75 percent or more of the policies nationwide.

Consider that there are 1,262 companies in the United States that provide health insurance, according to the business information provider, Manta. However, insurance companies are licensed by each state individually, which means that every health insurance provider might be faced with 50 different sets of criteria in order to qualify to sell to everyone in the U.S. That, and widely differing population numbers, explain why some states have dozens of providers and others have only a handful, and also why the largest companies are able to adapt to such a wide and varied set of rules, and smaller companies cannot.

Obviously, it would improve the cost and performance of health insurers if we could foster greater competition among them, and surely if we freed up all 1,262 companies to sell to anyone in the country, the variety of plans and cost levels that would emerge would satisfy the needs of the vast majority of Americans, and do so at much lower costs than we have now.

Since the Tenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution (supposedly) protects state sovereignty against encroachment from the federal government, Congress cannot mandate uniformity of requirements for health insurers. However, that does not preclude a federal recommendation of sensible requirements that states can voluntarily adopt.

This is a vastly superior solution to health insurance reform than the destructive government takeover now being jammed down our throats by a blind, deaf and ideologically controlled Congress.

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Obama's Idea of "Stimulus"

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Washington in the 21st century: Failing to learn from history

The brilliant economist Dr. Thomas Sowell looks back on the Great Depression: “Nothing established the idea that government intervention in the economy is essential like the Great Depression of the 1930s. The raw facts tell the story of that historic tragedy: National output fell by one-third between 1929 and 1933, thousands of banks failed, unemployment peaked at 25%, corporations as a whole lost money two years in a row. Prior to this time, no president had attempted to have the federal government intervene to bring a depression to an end.” Presidents Herbert Hoover and Franklin D. Roosevelt opted for government intervention and the results of that ill-advised approach are a painful part of our history.

Contrast that with the stock market crash of 1987, which was similar in size to the crash of 1929, but the recovery from it was years shorter in duration. President Ronald Reagan’s administration, in sharp contrast to the administrations of Hoover and FDR, and despite media outrage at the government's inaction, did nothing; no bailout, no stimulus, nothing, according to Dr. Sowell.

Those two experiences have taught our elected leaders nothing. Beginning with the administration of George W. Bush and continuing with, and accelerated by, the administration of Barack Obama, we have embraced the failed policies that gave us the Great Depression and, interestingly, the same policies that brought on the financial crisis of 2008: excessive government intervention in the private economy.

On October 14, 2008, the Bush administration announced a series of initiatives to stabilize the markets, the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). Then on February 18, 2009, in Colorado, Mr. Obama signed the $787 billion– now up to $865 billion – stimulus bill. How have these measure fared in ending the recession that began in December of 2007?

The Government Accountability Office said last October, a year after TARP was born, that it found no evidence that the program prevented a financial meltdown, nor did it stimulate banks to start lending to business again at needed levels. Although $500 billion in TARP loans have been repaid to the federal treasury, the program did not accomplish the vast majority of its goals.

The president and other supporters of the stimulus bill touted its investments in job creation, saying it would save or create 3.5 million jobs. Without this bill, the president predicted, unemployment would rise from eight percent to more than nine percent. In fact, after its enactment, unemployment shot through the nine percent level to above 10 percent. Clearly, the stimulus did not succeed in stopping job losses, and since it aimed more money at pork barrel projects than actual stimulus activities, and delayed most payments for a year or more, little real stimulation has taken place.

We can’t know for certain what would have happened if TARP and the stimulus hadn’t been implemented, but evidence from both the 1929 and 1987 examples strongly suggests that doing nothing back in October of 2008 and February of 2009 would have been the better decision. And, the country would be $1.5 trillion better off.

Dr. Sowell points out something else we should think about: “This administration and Congress are now in a position to do what Franklin D. Roosevelt did during the Great Depression of the 1930s – use a crisis of the times to create new institutions that will last for generations. To this day, we are still subsidizing millionaires in agriculture because farmers were having a tough time in the 1930s. We have the Federal National Mortgage Association ("Fannie Mae") taking reckless chances in the housing market that have blown up in our faces today, because FDR decided to create a new federal housing agency in 1938. Who knows what bright ideas this administration will turn into permanent institutions for our children and grandchildren to try to cope with?”

Well, how about a nationalized health care system, an economy-busting energy tax, and enormous deficits as far as the eye can see?

Despite massive public disapproval, the president and Congressional leaders seem hell-bent on creating a healthcare system heavily controlled by government. And despite the fraud and deceit in climate change science, they still want to impose economy crippling levels of carbon dioxide emissions.

President Obama says that when he "walked in the door" in January of 2009 he inherited a budget deficit of $1.3 trillion. But he misstated the Bush deficit, which actually was slightly less than $800 billion when correct computations of the deficit and TARP money are used, and his deficit for 2010 is double what he inherited.

The budget deficit forecast for 2010 is 10.6 percent of GDP, up from 9.9 percent of GDP in 2009, and according to Reuters, “the budget still forecasts U.S. public debt rising above 71 percent of GDP by 2013, up from 53 percent in 2009, and almost 80 percent by 2020 -- levels that could spook investors.” Americans recognize how serious this situation is, even if their leaders do not.

They are following White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel’s dictum “Never let a good crisis go to waste,” even if that means wrecking the country to push through their ideological agenda.

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It has been a challenging year for Global Warming/Climate Change

The recent epidemic of snow, ice and cold temperatures has given rise to lots of joking about global warming, such as, “How’s that global warming working out for you?” and “we have 10 inches of global warming on the ground.” The Associated Press noted on Saturday, “Forget red and blue - color America white. There was snow on the ground in 49 states Friday. Hawaii was the holdout.”

The story went on to quote David Robinson, head of the Global Snow Lab at Rutgers University, that on Friday morning “67.1 percent of the U.S. had snow on the ground, with the average depth a healthy 8 inches. Normally, about 40 or 50 percent of the U.S. has snow cover this time of year.”

Everyone who has ever looked into it knows that the Earth goes through alternate cycles of warming and cooling that last thousands of years, and shorter cycles of warming and cooling within the longer cycles.

The global warming/climate change advocates (warmists) believe human activity since the onset of the Industrial Age is producing rising global temperatures. Skeptics point to other reasons for the increase, such as normal cyclical change and changes in Sun activity, among other reasons, and note that for the last several years there has actually been a cooling trend.

Warmists, however, behave as if the question is finally and unquestionably resolved, claiming there is a “consensus” and saying that it is “settled science.”

GreenFacts.org’s glossary says this about consensus: “The Scientific Consensus represents the position generally agreed upon at a given time by most scientists specialized in a given field. Scientific Consensus does NOT mean that:

• all scientist[s] are unanimous: disagreements may occur and can be necessary for science to progress,
• the position is definitive: the consensus can evolve with the results from further research and contrary opinions.

Therefore, Scientific Consensus is NOT a synonym of ‘Certain Truth.’"

NASA’s Home Page informs us that: “It may surprise many people that science -- the de facto source of dependable knowledge about the natural world -- cannot deliver an unqualified, unanimous answer about something as important as climate change.”

The idea that consensus does not equal certain truth – indeed, that in science certain truth does not exist because of the possibility of new information being discovered – is a major feature of the scientific method.

The University of Rochchester Physics Department defines the scientific method as “the process by which scientists, collectively and over time, endeavor to construct an accurate (that is, reliable, consistent and non-arbitrary) representation of the world.

Recognizing that personal and cultural beliefs influence both our perceptions and our interpretations of natural phenomena, we aim through the use of standard procedures and criteria to minimize those influences when developing a theory. As a famous scientist once said, ‘Smart people (like smart lawyers) can come up with very good explanations for mistaken points of view.’ … It is often said in science that theories can never be proved, only disproved. There is always the possibility that a new observation or a new experiment will conflict with a long-standing theory. "

The certainty with which warmists dismiss skeptical views of their pet theory seems to run counter to the spirit of scientific investigation.

Worse, warmists’ attitude toward and treatment of skeptics are clearly non-scientific. They include ridicule, intimidation of skeptical colleagues, personal destruction and calls for legal prosecution, all because they disagree on a scientific theory.

Worse, yet, is that in an effort to perpetuate their alarmist scenarios, some warmists have resorted to deceit and outright fraud at Penn State University and England’s University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit (CRU).

The UK Telegraph reports that “perhaps the most damaging revelations … are those concerning the way Warmist scientists may variously have manipulated or suppressed evidence in order to support their cause.”

A hacker broke into computers at the CRU, releasing 61 megabytes of confidential emails and documents onto the Internet. Knowing what these documents and emails contain, it is clear why the CRU scientists are upset that their duplicity has become public, a scandal some believe could be the greatest in modern science. These documents and emails involve some of the most prominent scientists advocating anthropogenic global warming theory and suggest conspiracy, collusion in exaggerating warming data, possibly illegal destruction of embarrassing information, organized resistance to disclosure, efforts to squeeze dissenting scientists out of the peer review process, manipulation of data, and private admissions of flaws in their public claims.

We can justifiably ask, “If man’s activities truly cause the Earth to warm, why do they need to deceive the public?” What do they fear from being honest?

As the science of global warming crumbles, the reaction of warmists to the revelations is interesting. The scientists say these revelations are a petty issue, while the policymakers go merrily on as if man-caused warming is settled science and everything is just hunky-dory.

All of this supports the idea that “saving the Earth from humans” is more about an ideology turned into a religion than about a real threat to the environment.

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Courts sometimes thwart justice

An interesting situation has developed over the last year or so regarding challenging the qualifications and eligibility of people to hold the offices they hold.

In one, Hillary Clinton’s appointment as Secretary of State has been challenged on the basis that when she was a U.S. Senator, immediately prior to being appointed by President Obama as Secretary of State, the Senate increased the salary of that position three times. The U.S. Constitution, Article I, section 6, clause 2, provides: "No senator or representative shall, during the time for which he was elected, be appointed to any civil office under the authority of the United States, which shall have been created, or the emoluments whereof shall have been [increased] during such time."

That language prohibits Mrs. Clinton from holding the office of Secretary of State, despite a “legislative fix” to roll back the compensation increase before she actually took office, according to a challenge by Judicial Watch, which disputed the appointment in the name of a State Department employee.

The details of the complaint are less important than the reason for it being dismissed by the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. The Court concluded the State Department employee lacked legal standing to bring suit.

Another similar case involves President Barack Obama, whose citizenship, and thus his eligibility to be President of the United States, has been called into question by some citizens. A number of suits have been filed, and most have been dismissed, some of them because, again, those filing the suits lack legal standing to sue a candidate or office holder.

Here is a definition of legal standing:

The legally protectible stake or interest that an individual has in a dispute that entitles him to bring the controversy before the court to obtain judicial relief.

Standing, sometimes referred to as standing to sue, is the name of the federal law doctrine that focuses on whether a prospective plaintiff can show that some personal legal interest has been invaded by the defendant. It is not enough that a person is merely interested as a member of the general public in the resolution of the dispute. The person must have a personal stake in the outcome of the controversy.

If a senator or representative is prohibited by constitutional provision from holding an office for which the body he/she served in has voted a pay increase, exactly who has standing to challenge that individual’s eligibility? If the employees of the State Department – who are sworn to uphold the Constitution and are thus prohibited from acting on orders from a Secretary that is ineligible for the office – don’t have standing to challenge their boss’s eligibility, who does have standing?

The people who question Mr. Obama’s citizenship are held in contempt by his supporters, and others who believe that Mr. Obama is a citizen as required by the Constitution. But taking the personalities and party affiliations out of the question, the fundamental issue is an important one.

Suppose for the sake of discussion that someone who isn’t a naturalized citizen manages to get through the campaign and is nominated at his/her party, wins the election and is sworn in as President, and at no time along the way was he/she required to prove citizenship. This seems an absurdly unlikely possibility, but the fact is that a candidate’s citizenship is assumed, rather than ascertained. In such a case, how do the American people remove a President from office who isn’t a citizen if no U.S. citizen has standing in the courts to bring the action?

Put another way, what is the point of having laws and established procedures on the books if no one has the standing necessary to apply them by bringing a court action?

In a country where virtually anyone can file a suit against virtually anyone else for any reason (or no reason), citizens are prohibited from filing suit against an elected leader unless they have “standing,” which seems to be so tightly defined as to eliminate nearly everyone who might believe there’s a reason to sue a leader.

If a citizen had irrefutable proof that an elected or appointed official was for some reason ineligible to hold that office, the citizen would be unable to file suit to remove the ineligible official unless he/she met the very thin definition of standing; the citizen would have to show that his/her personal legal interest had been invaded by the illegal President or Secretary in order to remove him/her from office.

And if no one has standing to sue for dismissal, or if those with standing do not sue, the ineligible official would continue to hold office. That is fundamentally wrong in this country, which prides itself on freedom and the rule of law.

For judges to view standing so narrowly in cases of eligibility to hold office is judicial tyranny. It should not be difficult to hold officials accountable to the requirements of the offices they hold or seek.

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Defeat the EFCA and Card-Check

Still looming on the legislative horizon is something deceptively called the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA, H.R. 800), the provisions of which will make it easier for union organizers to impose union representation on a group of workers by circumventing the current secret ballot method of deciding for or against union representation with an odious mechanism called “card check.”

Secret ballot voting has been a feature in US elections for more than two centuries, and that includes union elections. However, if the EFCA were to become law, the federal government will have tilted the playing field toward labor unions by giving them a tremendous advantage in the effort to organize workplaces.

Unions arose in the US more than a hundred years ago in response to issues in the workplace, but those issues no longer exist, due to an effective set of labor laws that have been enacted through the years that regulate the workplace and how employers deal with employees. Of course, if workers want some organization to represent them they certainly have that right, but the steady decline in union membership over recent years reflects workers’ comfort with the effectiveness of labor laws in satisfying their needs.

The most persuasive factor against the pro-union EFCA, however, is that labor unions produce negative rather than positive results for the economy and society at large.

There are 22 states, mostly in the south, which have right to work laws that allow workers to opt out of joining a union, even if there is union representation where they work. In non-right to work states, primarily in the north, if the business is unionized, all workers must belong to the union to work there. Right to work states have fewer unionized companies, because employees generally see no need to belong to a union and to pay expensive dues each year.

The Mackinac Center for Public Policy reports that not only is unionization down in right to work states, but those states also experience lower unemployment levels. “In December 2008, states with right-to-work laws had an average unemployment rate of 6.2 percent compared to 7.0 percent for states without right to work laws.” Michigan is the heaviest unionized state, and had the highest unemployment of all 50 states at 10.6 percent, and Rhode Island, another non-right to work state, had the second highest unemployment rate, at 10.0 percent. The six states with the lowest unemployment rates all have right to work laws.

Right to work states also have a better record than non-right to work states in three important categories, according to Americans for Prosperity (AFP):
• Productivity growth - 18.6 percent to 17.3 percent;
• Job growth - 17.6 percent to 8.9 percent;
• Economic growth - 41.6 percent to 33.4 percent.

The National Legal and Policy Center and The John M. Olin Institute for Employment Practice and Policy issued a report titled "Do Unions Help the Economy? The Economic Effects of Labor Unions Revisited," which states that studies that have looked at the impacts of proposed card check feature of the EFCA legislation have found:
• Real GDP was depressed by about $3.5 trillion dollars from 1947 to 2000 due to unions. If you added the decrease in real wages paid to employees, the total impact rises to more than $50 trillion.
• One study found that union-produced "deadweight" loss to the US economy of 0.91% of GDP in 1980 fell to 0.34% of GDP in 2000 as union membership declined.

AFP further states that right to work states have had significantly more population growth than union shop states since 1990, seeing “on average, a 65.5% increase in population over the 16-year period while states with union shops laws only experienced an average of a 45% increase.” Right to work states also have experienced a higher level of growth, AFP notes, as businesses move their operations to states that promote a friendly environment.

Proponents of the EFCA boast that union workers are paid higher wages than their non-union colleagues, but this contention fails the truth test. Workers in right to work states saw an average 23 percent increase while union shop states wages increased only 15 percent on average.

"Right to work laws make unions more accountable to their rank and file," said Paul Kersey, director of labor policy for the Mackinac Center. "When you make unions more accountable to workers, you make a state more attractive to employers. A right-to-work law by itself doesn't guarantee prosperity, but it does seem to help. Allowing workers to decide for themselves whether or not to support a union does attract job-creating businesses, making work easier to find. These numbers bear that out."

Unions may serve a useful purpose in select circumstances, but the evidence heavily supports right to work laws and keeping the workplace open and free, allowing employees to make a decision about joining a union based upon their own personal situation and desires, and without the coercion that will exist if the EFCA becomes law.

That will not only benefit workers, but the economy of individual states and the nation.

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