Are Public Unions Necessary?

Public unions threaten democracy which is why the left supports public unions. All public unions should lose their collective bargaining status. While public servants should be allowed to form associations and while individual public servants should be allowed to get involved in politics to the degree that such involvement doesn’t pose as a conflict of interest as it relates to their public function, public unions per-se should be disbanded. Such a measure would lead to a better, a more efficient, and a more honest government. 

The idea that public servants, paid out of taxpayer funds and conducting public functions, should be allowed to organize and to advocate for themselves poses as a profound conflict of interest and as a recipe for corruption. Only elected officials, elected by the people to represent their interests, should be responsible for setting policy as it relates to public servants on such issues as salaries and benefit packages. Public jobs are generally good paying jobs. The taxpaying public ought to reserve the right, as expressed through city councils and state legislatures, to determine how public employees are compensated and treated. This would be the democratic approach.  

The government is not comparable to a private corporation where unions are often necessary and constructive as a counter-balance to the for profit corporation. In a private setting, workers often have a good reason to organize and to establish their right to bargain collectively. Concessions to workers by the corporation come out of corporate profits. Public union concessions are subsidized by the private citizen, the hard-working taxpayer. 

Public unions mean that the government, the public sector, gives itself the power to enrich itself while doing an end run around the taxpayer. Public unions also establish legally binding contracts that often determine such matters as employment and advancement. In this way, bad public servants are retained while good public servants are punished. Because of the existence of the union, the taxpayers have no say in these matters and, to a certain degree, those elected to represent the taxpayers find that their hands are also tied. Again, this approach to government is un-democratic. 

Adding to the dangers that public unions pose to democracy is the fact that many public unions get involved in politics financially and with in-kind support. This should not happen in a free society. Individual public employees should be free to support candidates of their choice, in cases that don’t pose as a conflict of interest, but when a public organization, deriving its finances from the taxpayer, supports a candidate that would preserve and possibly advance those financial benefits the taxpaying public is placed in a position of double jeopardy. The possibility of corruption, of quid pro quo, is obvious and is indeed rampant. There are laws against private corporations financially supporting a candidate for office and then benefiting from the candidate, if elected, passing legislation that directly benefits that corporation. Not so with public unions which are free to pour money and in-kind support toward electing candidates who then vote to raise taxes or in favor of some other measure that benefits the public union. 

Presently, public unions are choking municipalities across much of the country with their cost and their increasing power and influence. An example of this was cited by Phillip K. Howard, chair of Common Good, in an article published by The Wall Street Journal (The Public Union Albatross 11/9). The article reports that over 90% the Long Island Rail Road public union members claimed disability upon retirement adding $36,000 per employee to their pensions costing New York taxpayers $300 million over the past decade. Howard reports on the inefficiency of public contracts with a reference to a New York City union contract in which, “whenever new equipment is installed the city must reopen collective bargaining "for the sole purpose of negotiating with the union on the practical impact, if any, such equipment has on the affected employees." Howard reports that “trying to get ideas from public employees can be illegal as a deputy mayor of New York City was "warned not to talk with employees in order to get suggestions" because it might violate the "direct dealing law." 

Let’s return control over our public sector to our elected representatives who would be charged with rewarding success, punishing failure, and returning the government to the people.

Was Nation Magazine pro-Stalin?

My dust-up with Nation Magazine contributing writer Ari Berman occurred at the onset of what I had hoped would be a constructive conversation on my radio program “The Fairness Doctrine - left, right and uncensored. My co-host, liberal commentator Patrick O’Heffernan had invited Berman on the air to discuss President Obama’s State of the Union address. I began by asking if it was ok if I diverged from the topic briefly to clear up a matter regarding a piece of history related to his magazine. Then came the fireworks.

I brought up that fact that the editor of Nation Magazine, Freda Kirchwey, had been a loyal Stalinist in the 1930’s and 1940’s and remained loyal to Stalin after the 1939-1941 Hitler-Stalin Pact. The pact divided Poland between the two socialist behemoths, Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia, and triggered World War II. Kirchwey became editor of Nation in 1937 and had turned the magazine into a virtual organ of Stalinism. This meant, I contended, that Kirchwey and many of the writers for Nation were therefore de-facto pro-Nazi in those years.

In 1939 Kirchwey criticized the Committee for Cultural Freedom, a group whose members included eminent leftists with a conscience such as Sidney Hook, Max Eastman and socialist Norman Thomas, for releasing a statement condemning both the Nazi and the Soviet dictatorships as totalitarian. This was too much for Kirchwey who wrote that the term totalitarianism should only apply to Fascism and not Communism and that the group threatened left-wing unity. Hook responded to Kirchwey writing that her statement “brings the Nation that much closer to 13th Street (Communist Party Headquarters) in the public mind; some members of the committee have told me that after reading your editorial they felt as if the Nation had died.” Kirchwey’s selective condemnation was a blind spot that still infects many leftists today, one that stands in stark contrast to the consistent conservative position of accurately condemning both Nazism and Communism equally and on the same moral grounds.

Berman responded to my remark with the claim that the American right had been pro-Hitler. His evidence to back up this absurd statement was that the right was non-interventionist before America got into the war. This would be as ridiculous as claiming that all who opposed the Iraq War were pro Saddam Hussein. If he had done some research before throwing out such an ugly slur Berman would have known that the America First Committee, the most prominent American anti-war group at the time, was made up of both liberals and conservatives, Democrats and Republicans, left and right. America First counted as members such prominent leftists as Chester Bowles, former Nation editor Oswald Garrison Villard, and socialist Norman Thomas. The only major group in America that was pro-Hitler in the years leading up to the war, other than the Nazi Party itself and their small coterie of followers was the Communist Party and its fellow travelers during the 1939-1941 Hitler-Stalin pact.

Before hanging up the phone, Berman asserted that he really couldn’t comment on any of this since it happened before he was born. This juvenile line of reasoning would, assumedly, limit any discussion of the Nazi Holocaust to those born before 1945. Berman’s archive on the Nation Magazine website reveals the same sort of rabid partisanship that would have no doubt done Freda Kirchwey proud. He writes under the assumption, for example, that the right was responsible for the Arizona shooting but he does it in a sophistic and indirect style that employs innuendo and guilt by association.

A Google search of Ari Berman reveals a handsome young man and Berman is as smart as a whip. Hopefully he will mature to the degree that his mind won’t be warped and his moral compass won’t be permanently shattered by this sort of hyper ventilating partisanship and blind goose-stepping to a party line. But than again, by taking such positions, Ari no doubt is invited to many fas

Why not invite a Patriot?

web posted March 4, 2002
In the coming months, university commencement speakers will dish out the same interminably dull, moth-eaten anti-American slogans they've been serving up for decades. The same old authoritarian leftists and empty-headed Hollywood show horses will be trotted out for the usual honors. The elite media will inform us that these demagogues reflect the best American values. The rest of us lumpen patriots, those of us who live in "fly over country" will be roundly ignored or sneered at by the over-stuffed glitterati as they congratulate each other's humanitarianism. With a nation at war, the commencement farce will be an even more glaring demonstration of how out of touch the American university is with average Americans and genuine American ideals.
This year, especially this year, why not invite a patriot? Why not invite someone who instinctively understands the nature of the war we have been in since September 11? Most Americans understand that those who crashed planes into the World Trade Center and who chopped off the head of Daniel Pearl believe that they are commanded by their god to kill Jews and infidels. They are conducting Jihad to create a Dar el-Salaam or a world that has completely submitted to Islam. While most Muslims are no more true believers in Islam than most Germans believed in Nazism or most Russians believed in Communism, nevertheless, it is imperative that we understand the texts and beliefs of that element that does believe. This won't be discussed on commencement day.

Haven't we heard all that Chomsky has to say?

In the spirit of honest intellectual dialogue, something universities         claim to foster, a frank discussion should take place regarding the anti-American ideas that prevail in the Islamic world and how those ideas run concurrent on many American campuses. In a recent Gallup poll conducted in Islamic nations 61 per cent of those polled believed that Arabs were not involved in the World Trade Center attack and a high percentage expressed the opinion that the attacks were justifiable. This outright lie is sustained by leftist conspiracy theories that blame America, Israel, and the capitalist west generally for all negative events in the world. Leftist professors such as Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, Lani Guinier and many others weave sinister anti-American conspiracy theories in order create a sense of contempt and loathing for our Republic and its principles of freedom. Their hatred for this country has led them to justify the attack and their propaganda has contributed to an anti-American atmosphere in the world today especially in the Islamic world.
It is, of course, necessary to criticize our government and to root out corruption. The leftist culture that pervades on the American campus today is, criticizing the government not as a means of setting it back on the right course, but to undermine the very foundations of free market capitalism, limited representative government, and the maintenance of moral standards as a positive ideal. With their ample salaries, benefits, and tenure, leftist professors try to change a system that offers the only hope for the rest of us as we struggle to accumulate some capital and independence for our families and ourselves. The leftist professors believe, along with their fellow travelers in government, entertainment, the media, and business, that they possess a superior intelligence which gives them the         right to run the lives of the rest of us from cradle to grave and that we should smile and thank them for the privilege of receiving their tender ministrations. They scoff at the concept of self-rule, sovereignty, and individual identity.
Why not hear from someone who is paying up to 40 per cent of his income in taxes? This burden requires increasing amounts of time spent away from family in order to support the ever-expanding government. Many of you think that government exists to solve social ills and has an obligation, therefore, to extract capital from the earner and creator. Many of you will probably go on to work in that vast bureaucracy so, before you go, why not hear from someone who will be paying your salary? This won't likely happen on commencement day.
Our nation, and our very lives, are under assault today from a foreign enemy that seeks to annihilate us. Were all in the same boat in this regard as the enemy doesn't discriminate between liberal and conservative, rich or poor as they blow up buildings and kill thousands. We are all in this together whether we like it or not and we will either sink or swim together. Anyone who thinks that the threat is over should be viewed as insane. If you refuse to support the war effort out of a sense of patriotism and respect for our way of life, you should still support your country if for no other reason than to protect your own life and future. We must not forget that were all survivors of the September 11th attack.
As the comic strip character Pogo said, "I've seen the enemy and the enemy is us" and this describes the present culture on most American campuses. You represent the best and the brightest and the cream of the crop. Your parents sacrificed greatly to send you here and their ability to provide you with this rarefied experience didn't simply fall out of the sky. They were able to provide you with an experience envied by all of us, and a life of prosperity and freedom unequalled in world history, because they live in an America that your commencement speakers will be loathe to discuss. Someday, probably soon, many of you will be in positions where your decisions, and philosophy, will have a direct effect on the freedoms and even the lives of the rest of us. Why not, just this once, invite a patriot? 
Chuck Morse is a talk show host on WROL 950 AM in Boston.

Was Hitler a Communist?

Little is known about Hitler before 1920 as many who knew him in his early years were murdered in the 1934 Nazi purge known as the night of a thousand knives. Additionally, files about Hitler’s life in Vienna were likely expunged when the Nazis entered the city in 1938.

One persistent rumor about Hitler, not proven, was that he was a male prostitute in Vienna where he lived in the years leading up to his move to Munich and the outbreak of the world war in 1914. It is known that he lived in Vienna as a bohemian artist and that he associated with the artist community. Hitler had inherited money from his late father and as a result he never had to work.

This left him with enough time to study politics and, according to his own autobiography, Mein Kampf, he immersed himself in Marxist studies. In spite of his brave actions during the war, actions which earned him the Iron Cross, he was never promoted higher than the rank of corporal. There has been some speculation that this lack of promotion might have been due to his communist associations or politics. The truth will never be known as his war records disappeared.

After the armistice of November, 1918, Hitler returned to Munich around the same time that Kurt Eisner, a left-wing leader of the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany (USPD) declared Bavaria to be a free state and a Socialist Republic on November 8, 1918. Eisner, who was subsequently assassinated on his way to submit his resignation to German authorities on February 21, 1919, had overthrown the seven centuries old Wittlesbach monarchy and had formed an alliance with the Soviet Union.

Eisner’s assassination was followed by an uprising that led to a brief and violent Bavarian Soviet Republic under Eugen Levine which lasted from April to May, 1919. A photograph has survived that seems to indicate that Hitler marched in Kurt Eisner’s funeral procession. The Freikorps, made up of German army personnel returning from the war, and under the command of German General Franz Ritter von Epp, responded to the attempted Soviet takeover in Bavaria by marching into Munich in May, 1919. The short lived Bavarian Soviet Republic was crushed, many of its leaders were executed, and thousands of its irregulars were imprisoned.

Along with thousands of other soldiers, Hitler was arrested and imprisoned assumedly for his support of the Soviet uprising although the exact reasons for his arrest have never been clear. Hitler, assumedly seeking to make a deal to win his freedom and to save his reputation, volunteered to serve the German government as a spy and to identify other soldiers who had supported the two Bavarian socialist regimes. Hitler thus began working for an official commission investigating the Bavarian uprisings. It can be assumed that Hitler knew the various subversives involved in the Soviet inspired attempted coup as why else would the German authorities entrust him to infiltrate these cadres? One question that will likely remain unanswered was how many of Hitler’s friends, who might have taken part in the Soviet conspiracy, joined him in the nascent German Workers Party, later to be known as the Nazi party.

Bavarian authorities asked Hitler infiltrate the small and recently formed German Workers Party in 1920. It is reasonable to assume that the German authorities were concerned that the new party might be a communist cell and their might have been reasons for this suspicion. Hitler was impressed by the party leader Anton Drexler who favored a strong central government, what he called a non-Jewish version of Socialism, and a strong spirit of fraternity among all Germans.

Thus was born the nationalist strain of socialism that would become the trademark of the German Nazi State. Drawing inspiration from the same European enlightenment font that gave birth to Communism, Nazism patented socialism in one state as opposed to the Communist model which was a one world socialist collective. The German language is structured in such a way that when an organization has two names the second name is the formal name and the first name is a descriptive qualifier. Thus the term National Socialist was understood to mean the socialist party that was a nationalist socialist party.