The Unions Run This Place

The clip that stopped me was not the tax plan. It was the line about the unions.

Dave Rubin had Steve Hilton on today. Hilton is the Republican nominee for California governor, running against Xavier Becerra. Hilton is the former Fox host and, before that, the man who helped shape David Cameron’s early years in Downing Street. He has lived in California since 2012.

Watch the interview here: [VIDEO]

Hilton said he tried to put a housing initiative on the ballot. He needed roughly ten million dollars and never raised it. When he asked a Democratic legislator for support, the answer he got was that the unions run the place. That, Hilton says, is the moment he decided to run for governor instead of trying to work around the legislature.

VIDEO: Union assault on camera

[VIDEO] This video was aired on Hannity last night, Steven Crowder was in Lansing, Michigan and he was assaulted and the tent he was in torn to the ground by union thugs. This is unbelievable footage.

This is in relation to Michigan passing and ultimately enacting into law "right-to-work" legislation which simply means that no one is forced to join a union when they take a job. Michigan is said to be struggling as a state perhaps even before the economic downturn that started in the last decade.

Perhaps right-to-work will enable companies to reinvest in Michigan and hire more personnel, time will tell. We do see an example of who doesn't support this policy in the people who attacked Crowder. This is how passionate a lot of people take this issue.

Another battle to fight in Michigan is revitalizing Detroit. The city is teetering towards bankruptcy and I recently showed the video of a city councilwoman wanting more money for the city from President Obama. Although perhaps right-to-work may not be what puts that beleaguered city back on the map.

Via Newsalert!

Judge blocks contentious Wisconsin union law - Chicago Breaking News

Judge blocks contentious Wisconsin union law - Chicago Breaking News

A Wisconsin judge has blocked the state's new and contentious collective bargaining law from taking effect, raising the possibility that the Legislature may have to vote again to pass the bill.

Lawmakers had passed Gov. Scott Walker's measure last week, breaking a three-week stalemate caused by 14 Senate Democrats fleeing to Illinois. Demonstrations against the measure, which would strip most public workers of nearly all their collective bargaining rights, grew as large as 85,000 people.

Dane County District Judge Maryann Sumi granted the temporary restraining order today in response to a lawsuit filed by the local Democratic district attorney alleging that Republican lawmakers violated the state's open meetings law by hastily convening a special committee before the Senate passed the bill.

Sumi said her ruling would not prevent the Legislature from reconvening the committee with proper notice and passing the bill again.

I suppose Wisconsin will be in for more drama, though perhaps not as much as had existed last month.

Check out the poetry of Ann Althouse!

Althouse: "Now, Walker, Scott, and Kasich are doing exactly what they should do, and exactly what Barack Obama did in 2009."

You know I never thought about it this way.

"They won power; they're using the power to push through structural political and economic changes that will be hard to reverse. They're making the same bet Obama did — if they do this, the economy will rebound, and their political opponents will have been weakened in a way they may never recover from."

Taking on the unions and successfully challenging their collective bargaining rights. Yeah that may be hard to reverse, but I'm sure that it'll be tried. Of course it was noted that while this may be good news in the long term for Ohio & Wisconsin this could spell trouble for Republican Presidential hopefuls.

Mayor of Detroit interviewed by Wall Street Journal

Today we take another virtual ride to the great American city of Detroit. This time courtesy of the Wall Street Journal with an interview with that city's Mayor, David Bing:

Dave Bing has just signed on to four years of maybe the most futile and thankless job in America: mayor of Detroit. What in the world was he thinking?

"I wouldn't have taken this job if this wasn't doable," he tells me. "I finished basketball in 1978, then went into my own business in 1980 and did it for 29 years. . . . Now I get to the end of that career and probably should have retired. But there was a calling greater than anything that I ever envisioned, and that was to help bring this city back."
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His highest priority is balancing a budget that is swimming in red ink. "We have a $325 million deficit, and 2010 doesn't look any better. Right now revenue growth is still negative. We're taking in less money each year. We can't rebuild this city by constantly cutting, but in the short term, we don't have an option," he says.

How much has to be chopped? The major says that at its peak Detroit had a $3.6 billion budget. He hopes to get it down to $2.9 billion, almost a 20% real cut.

Dave Bing is no Milton Friedman when it comes to economic solutions. He's praying for lots of federal aid to help the city pull out of its ditch, he wants to borrow against future tax revenues, and he hasn't ruled out tax increases "if they have a sunset" to pay the city's bills. He believes it's a core responsibility of government to help people.

Yet Mr. Bing is a realist, something Detroit hasn't had at the helm for a long time. "We've been paralyzed by a culture in the city of Detroit, and maybe the state of Michigan, of entitlement," by which he means ever-rising union wages. "Our people, I don't believe, truly understand how dire the situation is. There are ugly decisions that need to be made and I'm surely not going to be popular for making them. But I didn't take this job based on popularity."

One group that surely isn't a fan is the public employee unions. He grumbles that there are 17 unions with over 50 separate bargaining units. "I can give you a data sheet that will show you we've got several of those bargaining units with less than 100 people, and each one of them has a president that's paid by the city to negotiate against the city," he says. "Coming from the private sector, I find that insane."

Mr. Bing's gladiator-like brawls with the union bosses have drawn national attention. Earlier this year, he forced nonunionized city workers to take a 10% pay cut and unpaid furloughs. Now he's demanding the same pay concession from the unions. At one point the union got so fed up with Mr. Bing's refusal to buckle to their demands that they asked the courts to toss him in jail for violating their contracts. That didn't happen, but the unions did win a court challenge when the mayor refused to collect union dues out of city paychecks.

"Today in the city of Detroit," he tells me, "our union employee benefits cost 68% of what their base wage is. I don't think that happens in any other place in the country." To give a sense of how excessive those pay packages are, he adds: "When you look at one of the most dominant labor unions in the world, the UAW, they're nowhere close to what we give our city workers."

Unions! In Chicago, they're costing the Chicago Transit Authority a lot of money. They're costing Detroit a lot more apparently, of course they have some pull as well whether in Chicago or in Detroit.

At the same time Bing is a Mayor of a long suffering city and I wish him a lot of luck. It'll take a lot of time to bring Detroit back to one of America's finest cities. But MoTown has a long way to go in that regards. I look forward to more news.

Via Urbanophile!

Training will help blacks in trades

This article is from the Tribune via the Capitol Fax Morning Shorts.

Unions have been taking hits from embattled black Aldermen, especially those who chose to oppose the Living Wage Ordinance last summer. They unions came out in force this election to show their muscle. The results seemed to have been mixed but a few Aldermen are in trouble especially in the runoffs coming up this month. Note to read last night's post.

Well I guess now we see a proposal that will address this..

Members of the Illinois Legislative Black Caucus announced Sunday a $6 million job-training initiative to help blacks enter the building and construction trades.

Rep. Marlow Colvin (D-Chicago), House chairman of the caucus, said the state money will fund apprenticeship-training programs that will get people on the path to jobs such as electrician, plumber and carpenter. The program will include academic training and on-the-job instruction.

"We're talking about lifelong careers, careers that create opportunities to buy homes, save for children's education, save for vacations and all the amenities that make up the American dream," Colvin said.

Colvin said the initiative -- called the Access to Opportunities Grant Program -- was created in partnership with the Chicago and Cook County Building and Construction Trades Council and the governor's office.

Sen. Kwame Raoul (D-Chicago), Senate chairman of the caucus, said it was the first time since the 1970s that black political leaders in Illinois were able to meet with trade union representatives and work out a mutually agreeable plan to encourage more blacks to enter the field.
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Colvin and Raoul said that they are taking proposals from groups interested in setting up the training program and that it's too early to know how many people could be enrolled and exactly how the training would work.