"A mortal threat to American freedom..."
As we have been warning for some time here on the 'Grok, this US Senate session will include a fight over what we have long refered to as the "deceptively named" Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) or, as it is more commonly known-- "card check." Noted in several prior posts and discussed on our Saturday radio program, this legislation eliminates the secret ballot presently available to workers when it comes to the question of unionization. As you might suspect, Democrats are mostly in favor of its passage, given their long-time relationship with labor unions in general, and it has been up to the Republicans to stand in the way of passage of this onerous legislation.
This week during his speech at CPAC, Newt Gingrich called EFCA a "mortal threat to American freedom":
Fred Barnes has a great piece in the current issue of the Weekly Standard on the subject, and on unions in general. He writes,
Unions spur unemployment, and "there is no question" about it. "High union wages that exceed the competitive market rate are likely to cause job losses in the unionized sector of the economy." That is the unvarnished conclusion of one of the country's most admired economists. From 1970 to 1985, a state with average unionization had a rate of unemployment 1.2 percentage points higher than a state with no unions. This represented "about 60 percent of the increase in normal unemployment" in that period.
Okay, a finding from several decades ago may be a bit dated. But the phenomenon of how unionization affects unemployment isn't. Nor is the economist--Lawrence Summers, formerly president of Harvard and now President Obama's chief economic adviser. In this week's Fortune, Nina Easton calls him "the mastermind" of Obama's economic policy. His influence has limits, however, for Obama is aggressively promoting unionization at the worst possible time, smack in the teeth of a deepening recession with soaring unemployment.
Click here to read the rest. Why am I getting the feeling that the Magic Obama is headed towards the equivalent of "pouring gasoline on the fire" with regards to his sops to his union pals and what it will do to the economy? 
I'll bet he really doesn't even care what the results might be, either...
