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The Nation's Pulse
Big Labor, Green Jobs
Shriveling unions look for a magic cure.
THE LAST FEW DECADES have not been kind to the folks who brought you the weekend. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are around 16 million Americans on union rolls today. That figure is fully two million fewer folks than were members of labor unions in 1983, an astounding stat considering there has been an increase of more than 40 million in the number of waged and salaried workers in the United States over that period. Today just 12 percent of the workforce carries a union card, down from 20 percent at the kickoff of the Reagan economic boom.
Over the last quarter century the unions lost serious ground. The loss of labor’s influence in the econ-omy is even more pronounced when breaking down the numbers between public and private sector unions. The private sector union rate is less than 10 percent today. Labor’s numbers overall have been inflated by the proliferation of public sector employment at all levels during the steroid era of big government.
Simply, private sector unions don’t matter much to Americans anymore. To the extent Americans think of them, they are reminded of entities whose intransigence has helped draw Detroit and the airlines to the brink of fiscal disaster. A recent Pew Research Center survey on Americans’ political values and core attitudes found that respondents’ views on labor were dimming, with only 53 percent of independents saying they consider labor unions necessary to protect working people. In 2003, 76 percent agreed with that view.
Looking for help as they drown in a sea of political irrelevance, labor heavyweights like the Teamsters, the AFL-CIO, and the Service Employees International Union have reason to believe the Obama administration will throw them a green lifeline. President Barack Obama has promised to use his office to fundamentally transform America’s energy economy, transitioning Americans away from fossil fuels and creating millions of so-called green jobs in the process.
The new green economy Obama routinely invokes holds some hope for private sector unions to slow, if not even halt and reverse, their stunning declines. Obama pledged during the campaign to spend $150 billion to create green jobs, and his administration promises to spend billions more on a host of infrastructure upgrades and other energy-related stimulus projects.
Attempting to capitalize on that environmental commitment, organized labor is latching on to the green jobs movement with gusto. In August, a coalition of labor unions joined with environmental organizations to launch a 50-stop tour visiting 22 states to pressure Congress to pass cap-and-trade legislation. “If you make real things that will reduce our carbon footprint, and create good family-supporting jobs in America, that ought to be the direction this country is going in,” said Leo Gerard, the international president of the United Steelworkers, announcing the Made in America Jobs Tour. “I’ve had enough of Wall Street throwing up on my shoes because they pigged out at the candy store.”
THE MADE IN AMERICA jobs tour is just the latest push by labor to advance Obama’s energy and environmental proposals. The new labor secretary, Hilda Solis, not only is a darling of the unions, she also sponsored green jobs legislation while a member of Congress. The shock troops at the various green jobs summits and rallies held around the country in support of the Obama energy agenda are, ironically, often the same union activists who (at the direction of union officials) performed a lot of the volunteer campaign work for Hillary Clinton in her presidential run against Obama.
What is organized labor’s incentive for going green? For unions, it seems a lot less about saving the planet than about saving (or at least enriching) themselves. With the federal government pledging to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on energy related projects, labor sees a chance to grab a significant portion of that money as well as to ensure that future green energy manufacturing and other green collar employment are union jobs.
“Global warming is a working families issue,” said AFL-CIO President John Sweeney at the Good Jobs, Green Jobs national conference in February just a few short weeks after Obama took office. That event—co-sponsored by a number of prominent labor unions along with the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Sierra Club in a partnership called the Blue-Green Alliance—brought more than 2,000 labor and environmental activists to Washington to set parameters for a massive government employment program under the banner of saving the planet. Gerard called the event “the working-class and progressive movement’s Davos.” The fledgling Obama administration sent Environmental Protection Administration chief Lisa Jackson to pump up the troops, while United Nations Undersecretary General Achim Steiner and others talked up the notion of an emerging “Global Green New Deal.”
On the first day of the Good Jobs, Green Jobs conference, organizers cut off the program at noon so that attendees could flood Capitol Hill just as Congress was fleshing out the stimulus bill. President Obama signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act into law two weeks later, and it contained a treasure trove of items from Big Labor’s wish list. One was a provision that applies Davis-Bacon wage mandates to all construction projects funded by the law, including the $25 billion appropriated to green the nation’s schools and federal office buildings. It also applied Davis-Bacon to the Department of Energy’s weatherization efforts, for which ARRA coughs up $5 billion. On top of that, Congress required that iron and steel used in ARRA-funded projects be purchased in the United States, providing lots of work for American steel and ironworkers who have been watching orders go overseas to lower-cost producers.
But that’s not all labor wants in the new green economy. The federal government will spend billions of dollars to subsidize alternative energy production from wind, solar, biomass, and other industries. Those industries are already ramping up to hire new employees. Labor bosses want to ensure that these jobs pay union scale. Too often, they claim, green jobs pay too little. “We did a survey of every job currently being called ‘green’ by employers, and found the majority of them didn’t pay enough to support a family of two,” said Terence O’Sullivan, president of the Laborers’ International Union of North America. “Every worker building a green product should be able to afford a plug-in hybrid car.” If the government is footing the bill for renewable energy, labor leaders figure, then it can demand that workers be paid what unions for years have called “a living wage.”
The brass ring on labor’s green carousel would be to push the federal government in the direction of green protectionism, levying carbon tariffs against products from low-cost, no-carbon-curbing countries. Energy Secretary Steven Chu naively mused during a hearing about “level[ing] the playing field.” Those comments set off fears of green trade wars. Yet with the strong backing of the Blue-Green Alliance, congressional sponsors of cap-and-trade legislation were considering such a provision as they tried to pass a global warming bill this summer.
THE GOOD JOBS, GREEN JOBS CONFERENCE reinforced the old adage about politics making strange bedfellows. Washington’s Omni Shoreham Hotel was packed with the odd mixture of hardened steelworkers and other union toughs rubbing elbows with the effete eco-cadres from the professional environmental movement. The grizzled shot-and-a-beer types filling the hotel’s lobby and meeting rooms might have a slight degree of common cause with the Birkenstocks-and-granola crowd when it comes to the federal government redirecting billions in taxpayer cash to green programs. But that’s about all they have in common. On Walden Pond is very far from On the Waterfront.
It’s anybody’s guess how long this curious partnership will last. While there are some overlapping interests among the unions and environmentalists, at least on the surface, those interests quickly diverge. The tensions at play soon become apparent.
The Greens want to use the power of Big Government to support and prop up industries and technologies that have a tough time on their own. The clean energy sources loved by environmentalists have significant cost disadvantages compared to fossil fuels and nuclear power. The great Green challenge is to figure ways to narrow that spread, and anything adding to the cost of renewables makes it that much harder to curb greenhouse gas emissions.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (63) | Leave a comment
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Pingback| 10.12.09 @ 6:33AM
Twitter Trackbacks for The American Spectator : Big Labor, Green Jobs [spectator.org links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
Big J| 10.12.09 @ 7:55AM
In addition to the inclusion of the Davis Bacon Act, the stimulus and other government (read: taxpayer) funded "shovel-ready" jobs are riddled with Project Labor Agreements (PLA's).
The Davis Bacon Act (prevailing wage) pretty much eliminates smaller contractors from the bidders list. The paperwork required to comply with such a mandate is ridiculous, and requires immense amounts of overhead.
PLA's require a minimum amount of labor union participation in the project. Many times this requirement can be between 60-75%.
These requirements are what drives the cost of a $10 hammer up to $400 dollars when the federal government buys it.
Pay back for big labor, screw the little man.
That's the Washington Way™.
Alan Brooks| 10.12.09 @ 7:31PM
Few realize it, but ALL lower- echelon jobs today are counterproductive. Now, things will change-- but it will be extremely unpleasant. Even a Toffler knows that.
Everyone will know during the next decade
victor| 10.12.09 @ 11:37PM
New Jeresy's Thankfully Ex Governor McGreevy signed an Executive Order prohibiting non-union labor on state funded projects, which is now made worse with the high unemployment.
owyheewine| 10.12.09 @ 9:29AM
Private sector unions have sheiveled to near irrelevance because the unions insisted on high pay, restrictive work rules and low productivity. Companies that couldn't shake that constraint either went out of business or moved offshore. Enlightened companies found ways to increase productivity by empowering and engaging workers, and have prospered.
This green job movement is just a last gasp desparate effort to reintroduce union boss control of a giant sector of our economy. The effort is bound to fail because consumers will move to lower cost alternatives.
Unfortunately we are increasingly burdened by public sector unions with their inefficient featherbedded fur lined foxholes financed by taxes and deficit spending.
Lullaby's, Legends and Lies| 10.12.09 @ 9:41AM
I was a member of good standing in a union, for well over a decade, and I have the scars of two different strikes to prove it too. But I never bought into their ideas of, it’s us versus them, or good versus evil (The Union being good, and the Company being evil of course). I could never get my mind around that Union philosophy even while I was a member, it seemed very un-American to me. The philosophy of, we’re only as strong as the weakest link; therefore we have to protect the weakest link, no matter what!! What? Protect the weakest, even if he’s the worst worker, and deserves to be fired? How about this one, let the weakest links break, and then replace those weak links, with stronger ones. That would make the Union and the Company stronger at the same time, but they never did it that way. Instead they protected the worst workers, which never helped the Company that the Union claimed to be trying help prosper too.
And the Unions in America today, wonder why they’re losing the support of workers Nationwide. If Unions were what the American worker was looking for, participation in the Union’s, would grow on their own merit, not by being forced to join one (Card check). You see, Unions at their heart and soul are basically a Communist idea. The idea that everyone is created equal, share and share alike (especially when it’s the Company’s profits they’re sharing), that sounds like Communism to me. So I never bought into it myself, and I don’t miss it now that I’m done with them. If you’re a good worker, you never have to fear being fired by your Company, and you don’t need anybody to watch over you either. That’s why Unions have been, and will continue to be, a dying breed in America (unless the Government forces them back in again). The American worker doesn’t need a babysitter anymore, and the Companies of America cannot afford a babysitter anymore if they want to survive in today’s Global economy. And any Worker out there, that thinks they need a babysitter still, needs to grow up, and learn to pull his weight.
So pray that the death of the American Unions continues on, because the only hope for a strong American economy in the future is to have fewer Unions, not more. And if there is a future with Green jobs in it, there won’t be one for long, once the Unions get their greedy paws into those jobs. So let’s keep them out of these not yet create jobs too, before they destroy another industry that’s just learning to walk. Screw the Unions, and screw the weakest links, let them all break!!
olainfree| 10.12.09 @ 9:52AM
The Obama administration of "organizing for America" pushes all of its proposed legislation via expansion of unions to the detriment of our economic growth.
The Dem-Obama health-care legislation is another means to organize health-care workers into a mammoth union.
The only growing sector in our economy is government. How many government workers also belong to unions? These employees are protected, yet they contribute little to nothing to our economy.
olainfree| 10.12.09 @ 9:56AM
The saddest, most ironic commentary on the short-sightedness of unions was the plethora of "United Mine Workers for Obama" signs dotting the southwest PA landscape prior to the 2008 election. The lemmings in those unions did not pay much attention to Obama's remarks about bankrupting the businesses that created their livelihoods.
Doctor Right| 10.12.09 @ 10:07AM
Unions have always appealed to the lowest-common denominator of the American workforce, the shiftless malcontents who constantly want more money for less and less work, who think that they should be running the company, and that anyone with more money than them must have obtained it by screwing "the little guy". The fact that this is EXACTLY the line that the Democrats feed "working people" at each and every election cycle is not a surprise.
If the Unions were therefore stupid enough to by into Obama and the Left's "green economy" idiocy, then I say screw them!
Maybe one day, those who toil in private sector union jobs, and their union bosses, will realize that their best hope for the future lies with the Party that (ostensibly) embraces free enterprise and free markets. For example, the amount of money the Teamsters would make hauling oil and oil drilling supplies into and out of Alaska is staggering...And yet, they reflexively allow morons like John Sweeney at AFL/CIO to set their agenda.
It's funny...The Left likes to say that when working people vote Republican, they're "voting against their own class interests", when in fact, the opposite is true.
If "working people" are too stupid to realize that the Left's Green Agenda will cause more of them to lose jobs, then they can go to hell.
Margie| 10.12.09 @ 7:36PM
When I was a little kid, I remember saying to my Father one day after hearing a politician say "the working people of America", hey, who isn't a working person? Don't they all work? I mean, if you're working, you're working, right? I didn't get a response. Years later when I became "politically aware" I found out that he was a big Union believer. Still is. Lifelong Dem. Needless to say I didn't learn my politics from him, and what I did learn was that the only right Party for me was the Republican one. Much to his dismay I am a proud member of the "Vast Right Wing!" And do I ever know the mind of Liberals!
Michael Tomlinson| 10.12.09 @ 10:41AM
Real unemployment under Barack Obama and Democrats is 16-17% and it is only going to get worse. This is what the union label has gotten America. Got to love all that audacious change.
victor| 10.12.09 @ 11:31PM
Just remember that old joke about the label:
the goons at the
UNION MADE
us put this
LABEL
on
Mean Sign Holder| 10.12.09 @ 11:34AM
I'm just looking at results: the big union cities (DETROIT) are crumbling. I live in West Virginia, a big union state, which gets lots of pork money from Sheets Byrd. I just wish more was being done to make places like Detroit and West Virginia more hospitable to business; instead we get giant welfare checks from the producer states. We don't need more "organizing." We need real incentives. That's change I could believe in.
Mike Morin | 10.12.09 @ 12:59PM
There was a not widespread report the other day that 50,000 people showed up at Cobo Arena in Detroit for housing, energy, and food assistance. Three days ago, about 10,000 people showed up to apply for 90 jobs in Louisville, KY.
These are marginally reported manifestations of a huge problem that has been going on for years, and accelerating recently; the plight and "invisibility" of those dispossessed by the schism between the rich, the owning classes, and the losses in livability for the working and non-working (many former "middle class" elevated to such success by the former strength of unionization) poor as the inflationary spiral of Capitalism shed many and left them and others behind in the day to day struggles and realities of the "supply-side" and post-"supply side" eras.
Whereas, hope is hard to find, I found a sliver of it in the new AFL-CIO's leadership proclamation of a mission to "organize the unorganized".
We desperately need working class leadership in this country and the world. We need to commit and dedicate to the famous old slogan of the International Workers of the World (sic) [IWW], "One Big Union".
Given resource limitations, economic collapse, population pressures, and ongoing and increasing tensions brought about by environmental inequality, now more than ever we need to enunciate, inculcate, and commit to world unity and cooperation. The explicit principles to underlie such are related later in this letter.
I offer the following for your consideration, inter-organizational and related communications, and commitment relative to policy, program, and project development:
I am named after my great uncle, Mike Misenti, who worked and fought? his way from humble beginnings as a mason to President of the Building Trades Union, and later President of their Pension Fund, in the State of Connecticut.
Mike Misenti didn't care what "his folks" were building, as long as they were building. That is my major complaint with Labor Unions, their need to self-perpetuate, and offer blind loyalty and complicity with less than optimal corporations/contractors and the latters’ self-interested profit motivated projects and industries that are sometimes, if not often, counter-productive to social/environmental goals..
Don't get me wrong, I consider the interests of workers of all "stripes" and the poor to be of the utmost importance. However, in this era of post-peak oil, climate change, inequality and the tensions that such brings, and the perception of hopelessness that are held by and for youth and for the children, it is necessary that we allocate scarce resources in the most optimal ways and means possible.
We must recognize the fossil fuel age and the subsequent overshoot in automobile and airplane use as a historical exception that must be phased into perspective.
If we want to conserve precious fossil fuels for priority uses such as solar assisted heating, cooking, electricity generation, cooling, agricultural inputs, durable products, necessary industrial processes, inter-community and inter-regional transport within a paradigm of relocalization for all communities and regions (moving towards self-sufficiency), and preserve the luxury and convenience of occasional automobile and airplane travel in a manner that explicitly adjusts for economic disruption, then we must plan and implement.
We need to see the study and practice of Resource and Regional Planning beyond the historical complicity, and at best mitigation of, the irrational Capitalist growth paradigm that does not recognize and/or respect a finite planet whose limits that we are fast approaching. We must enter an era of Resource Allocation based on the explicit principles of meeting human needs, inclusion, equity, humanity, quality of life, environmental/public health and wellness, sustainability, economic democracy, and peace.
The key to a bountiful green (building) economy is the reversal of the thirty, fifty, one hundred year trend of sprawl development in the United States.
By rebuilding neighborhoods and reallocating goods and services to those renovated neighborhoods (made walkable, meaning that the great majority of Americans will be able to get what they need and reasonably want within
walking distance of their homes), we can succeed.
Such a tremendous dedication of resources will be a boom to the building trades and other sectors and will create the effect of reducing automobile
usage by 80% in the next 20 to 40 years. The automobile currently consumes 14 MILLION BARRELS of oil A DAY in the USA.
Neighborhood commercial, community and work/telecommute centers will be centrally placed in what are now alienating, automobile dependent, strictly residential areas, alleviating the problems associated with post-peak oil and climate change and bringing with it the quality of life associated
with communities and neighborhoods, that most individuals and families currently lack.
If we do this, we can take the opportunity to retrofit for weatherization, passive solar design (heating and cooling), electronic environmental controls, solar assisted hot water applications, limited PV and wind applications, etc.
Also, if done correctly, we can make changes in ownership arrangements that are much more fair and just, and work towards an equitable distribution of wealth among neighborhoods.
It is important that we fundamentally reassess our economic system and replace the current economic/finance system with one that targets
the needs of the current residents, and not, for-profit speculation.
Because of the terrible inflation of real and capital assets that is a product of the speculative and profit-taking modus operandi of the Capitalist system, it will be fundamentally necessary to reform our economic/financial system by consolidating private (while rededicating them as
quasi-public) real and capital assets and equity and writing way down the “market value” of those assets.
After completing that awesome task, we could proceed with a “plan and implement” economy dedicated to meeting the needs of the indigenous populations of all communities: inclusion, humanity, equity, quality of life, environmental/public health and wellness, sustainability, and peace.
Mike Morin
Eugene, OR, USA
www.peoplesequityunion.blogspot.com
wiserunion@earthlink.net
(541) 343-3808
Lullaby's, Legends and Lies| 10.12.09 @ 1:45PM
Mike Moron (I'm sorry but the I and O are very close on the keyboard): What can you say after reading a post like this? The only thing that comes to my mind is holy crap Man!! What planet are you from?
blackelkspeaks| 10.12.09 @ 2:18PM
As a Catholic, the only labor leader I respect is the Blessed Dorothy Day, who started the Catholic Workers Movement as a counterpoint to the Marxist-inspired labor radicals of the early 20th century. She knew that the labor movement was hijacked by the atheistic Communists who couched their totalitarian ideology in the rhetoric of being "for the working man", all the while aiding and abetting the fundamental injustice of destroying God-given liberty and freedom by advancing an agenda of government-sanctioned theft and robbery of the legitimate private property rights of the industrialists. The modern union is a gaggle of thugs who have marshalled the guns of the government to force otherwise free men to endure monopoly conditions in the labor markets.
Hillaire Belloc, another great Catholic thinker, wrote volumes about the manner in which corporations also use the government to create monopoly conditions that restrict competition and secure market share, to the detriment of the liberty and freedom of the average man. Both Day and Belloc preferred the model of a community of small businessmen ("a nation of shopkeepers") as the means to provide gainful employment opportunities for the worker and honest economic profit for the business owner and investor. Multinational corporations and their union-represented work forces are both anathema to the liberty and freedom necessary for a just and civil society.
If you don't believe this, consider what this country is like now (indeed, consider what Europe has become), with a command economy led by political gangsters micro-managing heavy industries and the banking sectors leading to unfathomed corruption and criminality destroying the foundations of our society.
Michael Tomlinson| 10.12.09 @ 3:27PM
The reality is that since pro-union Democrats took control of Congress and pro-union Barack Obama's inauguration millions of Americans have lost their jobs, homes and way of life. Under Bush and the Republican Congress according to the Bureau of Labor, jobs created averaged 19,000 per month from January 2001 through January 2009. During the time Republicans held Congress with President Bush in the White House, jobs grew from 132.469 million to 137.180 million. That’s an increase of 4.7 million jobs for an average of 65,000 per month for 72 months. (That period includes the impact of the 2001 recession inherited from Clinton as well as the 2001 terrorist attacks.) Since Democrats took over Congress in 2007 the country has lost 6 million jobs half of that number during the 8 months Barack Obama has been President and the number is predicted to continue rising well into the next fiscal year with massive unemployment to continue for years if Obama’s economic policies continue.
If you want to insure a good and healthy lifestyle for Americans then Obama Democrats need to be sent home next year and the unions that promote destroying jobs be broken.
Margie| 10.12.09 @ 8:42PM
Dear Sir,
I fear that you have been brought up in Liberal, Left leaning surroundings, perhaps like myself. It seems to me that you do not understand true freedom. I wish that I could teach it to you, from what I've learned, but that would take up even more space in here than your post did.
I'll just say that true freedom doesn't come from Union Bosses and people being forced into your way or the highway. People do not and cannot flourish under Communism, of which what you practice is a form of. Have you ever heard of the old saying "The only Union more powerful than the Teamsters Union was the Soviet Union?" Hopefully since the Soviet Union has fallen, it won't be long till the Teamsters suffer the same fate. I say this in an affectionate manner, of course.
~Oh, and by the way, our freedom comes from God, and so does our earth's oil. Haven't you heard? It does not come from fossils, and God has made it abundant.
victor| 10.12.09 @ 11:09PM
Dear Mr. Morin,
I seem to recall that I ran across your dogfaced gloom and doom in the NYtimes a year or so ago and was going to write you, but never did.
I see that you have not changed one jot or tittle of your Ehrlichian scenario or stopped wearing your Malthusian colored glasses.
There is no need to conserve one drop of oil as it is being found almost daily in various palces on the globe.
Happily, several of those places are in our backyard such as Utah, Wyoming and Colorado, which contain up to 2 TRILLION Barrels of Shale Oil which at the present rate of consumption would last 400 YEARS!.
This is just one of our reserves. We have others and Canada has more.
The bad news is that Dear Leader, by way of his Energy and Interior Secretaries have ruled these reserves out of bounds because they worship tree squirrels and blueberry bushes in direct violation of Romans 1:25 -
"Those who changed the truth of God into a lie and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator who is blessed for ever Amen"
This also applies to those Earth worshippers who are starving the farmers in California and other states to save a smelt.
"The automobile currently consumes 14 MILLION BARRELS of oil A DAY in the USA. "
http://nextbigfuture.com/2008/.....e-and.html
http://www.nuwireinvestor.com/.....51062.aspx
These are several sources to prove my point.
We have many years to go before we "run" out of oil, which is not a "fossil" fuel, but is a by-product of the earth's day to day operations.
Drilling this oil and extracting it with Raytheon's technology, which is owned by Schlumberger, the world wide oil exploration company can take weeks and months to get out of the ground.
The result would be BILLIONS upon BILLIONS of dollars going into our economy and getting us out of this mess that Obama is making far, far worse than it has to or needs to be.
It would put MILLIONS of people to work making MILLIONS of DOLLARS and paying MILLIONS of dollars in taxes. What could be better or more perfect, eh?
This could also get California out of the Red, so to speak, in weeks and get them back in the Black.
This would be good for any state that has a shoreline such as Flawida and New Joisey, but they won't, because they are scared of guys like you. Uber-Tree-Huggers! A pox on you all!
victor| 10.12.09 @ 11:11PM
These links go with the previous
http://www.americanfreepress.n.....e_oil.html
http://austinbay.net/blog/?p=597
Matt Morehouse| 10.12.09 @ 11:11PM
Mike---What if I do not want to live cheek by knuckle with the likes of you, or even the likes of me? What if I prefer to live beyond the confines of your commune? What if I want to smell fresh air and gunpowder when I take to the fields? What if I have the money to do this? Would you and your comrades deny me?
If you expect do, expect a fight.
http://conversationsaroundawoodstove.blogspot.com
Pete| 10.12.09 @ 1:30PM
Wow. Scary. This is how these people think.
Mike Morin | 10.12.09 @ 1:40PM
What is scary is that people like you don't think at all.
People are freezing and that trend will accelerate, maybe drmatically THIS winter (though it will probably go largely unreported - and who knows of the misery that has been going unreported in the commercial press throughout the years).
Will you feel self-important and uncaring as you strut down the streets and roads in your gas gluttonous opulent ostentations?
MM
Michael Tomlinson| 10.12.09 @ 3:31PM
Mike you're correct thanks to Barack Obama and Democrats more Americans are homeless and go to bed hungry than at anytime in modern US history. You're also correct that the Democrat controlled media will lie and cover up the facts while Barack and Michelle Obama strut around the world wasting taxpayer money and creating a massive carbon footprint. The best thing we can do for the unemployed and under employed is replace Democrats in Congress with Republicans and in 2012 send the cold and uncaring Obama back to Chicago.
Margie| 10.12.09 @ 7:54PM
Michael Tomlinson:
Thank you, thank you, thank you!!
victor| 10.12.09 @ 11:22PM
Please read my reply to your environmental screed about our non-exsistent shortage of oil.
You are aiding and abetting the hardship of people in the wintertime standing in the way of our own oil.
Are you content with the knowledge that Comrade Chavez and Fellow Traveler Kennedy giving Communist oil to the poor?
We have plenty of oil and we can share it with the world and give them faith, hope and capitalism, which works every time it is tried.
There is more than enough oil to give everyone a Hummer so they can drive to their place of employment or ferry those who do.
http://www.hubbertpeak.com/shale/
victor| 10.12.09 @ 11:24PM
BTW, what temperature is the Earth supposed to be, eh?
And if God sets the thermostat, what are you going to do about it?
Matt Morehouse| 10.12.09 @ 11:34PM
Mike--- Make you a deal.
Pedal your ass around town on your tricycle or in your Pious and toss your nickles to the human detritus on every corner. Live in a yurt with a dozen others of your ilk. If that is your "thing" so be it and I nor any other Conservative will ever tell you not to.
For me I'll ride my Harley, drive my SUV, live where I want , eat what I want , flush my toilets when I want, water my lawns when I want , light as many lights as I want and not feed the vermin.
All I ask is you don't tell me how to live and I don't tell you. DEAL? http://conversationsaroundawoodstove.blogspot.com
Pete| 10.12.09 @ 2:05PM
My self-importance could never even approach that of a man who believes he can control the earth's temperature. Wacko. Freezing? I thought it was warming? Oh, that's right, with a messaging alteration, ANY change in the weather can now be used to defraud the American people and further destroy the economy (while pocketing some nice coin for yourself from the "green" industry you fabricated out of thin air - you capitalist pigdog, you). Remind me to stay out of Oregon...California must be infecting you.
Lullaby's, Legends and Lies| 10.12.09 @ 2:30PM
Pete: I think it’s time to bail!!
I’m pretty sure we’re arguing with Aliens here.
Michael Tomlinson| 10.12.09 @ 3:35PM
Pete Al Gore is the best example of the greed and excess of the "green" robber barons. This failed student and politician has become the world's #1 scam artists as he globe trots around the world leaving a massive carbon footprint and fleecing the ignorant and taxpayers by getting a multi-million dollar "stimulus" grant from the Federal government. Of course, who can guess how much Obama and his crowd will steal while globe trotting and polluting around the world.
Have you heard the BBC is now saying thanks to nature we may be in for a period of global cooling? That should make the 70's kooks happy.
Melvin| 10.12.09 @ 2:54PM
There might be a Noble for me with this analysis of what has created Global Warming and this green jobs push.
It has come to my attention that due to the proximity of Washington D.C. bureaucrats to this analysis, is the main reason of the inaccurate data that allegedly substantiates Global Warming.
The main reason that those inside the Belt Way are pushing Global Warming is that the data is inaccurate because Washington D.C. is one giant pile of rotting, stinking manure. As this bureaucratic manure breaks down it emits heat and C02.
There is only one way to curb this C02, and that is to get rid of all the rotting fetid manure that resides in Congress, Senate, and K - Street.
Viola, the temperature in Washington D.C. will
subside.
Does anyone know the number to those Norwegian guys
Marc Jeric| 10.12.09 @ 3:33PM
Nuclear power is subsidized by the government at $0.08/megawatt-hour; solar and wind power is subsidized at $24/megawatt-hour. Green jobs? In the middle ages the "scientists" spent lifetimes in trying to make gold from lead - and now we have the green jobs illusion. Plug-in hybrids? And the electricity from that plug comes from where? At what cost?
victor| 10.13.09 @ 7:39PM
Instead of using Alchemists to do the job, the Greenies are using ChemistAl to accomplish the impossible: converting gold into lead.
Wasting valuable resources and energy to produce a lead balloon from golden eggs.
Not only will they crush the goose, but they will crush the desire to raise that goose.
Or so they think.
Capitalists of the World Unite!
You have only your chainers to lose!
Louis Jenkins| 10.12.09 @ 3:37PM
If unions are on the Green Movement Band Wagon then the effort is doomed to failure. A couple of opinions below, written 9 years apart, doesn't give job creation and unions much hope. Why are the Unions in league with Obama if there's a possibility that job creation will suffer?
Job Creation:
Why Some Countries Do Better
Pietro Garibaldi, Paolo Mauro
©2000 International Monetary Fund
A focus on growth in employment over the medium term confirms several empirical relationships identified by earlier studies of unemployment. The IMF research finds less job creation where unions are relatively powerful,…
Extensive employment protection appears to dampen job creation, as does a higher level of overall taxation. The finding that high dismissal costs are associated with weak job creation appears consistent with the idea that they also lead employers to substitute capital for labor.
_________________________________
January 6, 2009
Rising Unemployment: Caused by Less New Job Creation, Not by More Layoffs
by James Sherk
Allowing union organizers to pressure workers into joining a union would greatly expand union membership. Allowing unions to pressure millions of Americans into joining would further reduce job creation--the driving force behind unemployment. Academic research shows that employment growth slows dramatically once unions organize a company. Union contracts make business expansion much less profitable, so unionized companies expand much more slowly, if at all. Passing EFCA would increase unemployment.
___________________________
Oviously the Unions are interested in job security, not in job creation.
Richard Baker| 10.12.09 @ 7:28PM
Good message. When Lenin said that the West would sell the communists the rope with which they'd hang us, I don't think he had the coal miners in mind. Regardless, they support someone who openly says that he'd shut them down. The UMW must be sooo proud of its membership.
Richard Baker| 10.12.09 @ 7:33PM
My last message was for olainfree.
victor| 10.13.09 @ 7:40PM
Hopefully, it wil be Lenin-free as well.
Regalo | 1.20.10 @ 1:25PM
The trend currently followed by countries is to bet on green energy, in part because some pressure from people about the greenhouse effect and because economic issues is starting to have an alternative to polluting energy sources.
Everyone agrees with it, and even if initial impediments, the dude can not stop.
Ideas para regalos
Dhiraj Kush| 2.4.10 @ 10:59AM
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regalos | 3.22.11 @ 10:11AM
The Obama health care legislation is another means to organize health-care workers into a mammoth union. The only growing sector in our economy is government. :(
Ideas para regalar
canciones romanticas | 3.17.12 @ 11:18AM
Robert Kiyosaky ya lo dijo una vez los grandes gobiernos son gobernados en realidad por empresas y trasnacionales no por presidentes, los gobiernos de turno, solo son patrones de las corporaciones
http://www.cancionesromanticas.biz/