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Try as they might, unions can’t keep members from voting with their feet once they are free. John Fund has the story.
A couple of network cameras and tripods sat outside the offices of the National Labor Relations Board here on Friday afternoon in the midst of a snowstorm. The NLRB doesn’t usually merit such attention, but it was pushed into the spotlight after Friday’s unanimous decision by a D.C. Court of Appeals panel declaring three of President Obama’s recess appointments to the NLRB unconstitutional.
No one followed the demise of the NLRB appointees with more interest than labor unions. The decision likely means that hundreds of decisions that the five-member board was able to issue only because the unconstitutional members helped meet a quorum requirement are now invalid. Richard Cordray, who was recess-appointed to head the new Consumer Financial Protective Bureau mandated by the Dodd-Frank law, may also now no longer be in office legally and could see all decisions he participated in declared void.
Unions celebrated after helping secure President Obama’s reelection in November, but it’s been all downhill since then. December saw Michigan, the birthplace of industrial unionism in the 1930s, become a right-to-work state, as GOP state legislators became emboldened by the failure of a well-financed union ballot measure that would have cemented pro-union laws into the state’s constitution.
This week the bad news accelerated. On Tuesday, Labor Secretary Hilda Solis, who had announced her departure on January 9, cleaned out her desk and flew back home to California, leaving the department in the hands of a caretaker deputy — an unusual move, since most cabinet secretaries stay on until a successor is in place.
On Wednesday, the Labor Department reported that during President Obama’s first term, the percentage of workers belonging to unions declined faster than it did during the two terms of President George W. Bush. To be specific, the unionization rate is now 11.2 percent of all workers. Private-sector unionization fell from 6.9 percent to 6.6 percent, and the government unionization rate dropped from 37 percent to 35.9 percent. …
Time to look at the Hagel debacle in the senate. Peter Wehner is first.
I wanted to second Jonathan’s analysis of yesterday’s testimony by former Senator Chuck Hagel, who is hoping to become America’s 24th secretary of defense.
It may be that another nominee for a cabinet post has been more inept than Hagel was during his hearing–but if so, I can’t think of who it might be. Mr. Hagel showed himself to be in turn evasive, ignorant, unprincipled, baffled and dim-witted. And those were the high points.
Perhaps the most alarming thing of all is that according to Bob Woodward of the Washington Post, Obama found in Hagel a “soul mate.” Woodward went on to say that the president and Hagel should “mind meld” on defense matters.
That the president would find himself so passionately attached to a man of such staggering incompetence is troubling in any case; but for Mr. Obama to want such a man to run the Pentagon is, to me, a genuinely alarming prospect.
America’s best and bravest deserve to be led by someone far better than Chuck Hagel.
Jennifer Rubin next.
It’s fascinating, actually, to see a nominee of this importance do so poorly. Chuck Hagel, nominated for defense secretary, has gone from awful to atrocious today, having to deny the obvious meaning of words he previously authored (on Global Zero), correct himself repeatedly (no, he didn’t mean Iran’s government was “legitimate”) and find himself simply unable to explain himself. Forgetting about his views, he does not radiate the confidence nor project the intelligence the job demands. It is unclear whether he was not prepped properly, whether he refused to be coached or whether he simply isn’t bright. A long-time Capitol Hill Democrat astounded by the hearing tells me, “It is very clear from the testimony that Sen. Hagel will not be bringing the potato salad to the next Mensa picnic.” …
…Even more damaging was the brilliant — there is no other word for it — interrogation from Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) who challenged him to name one senator “intimidated” by the “Jewish lobby” and to name “one dumb thing” the United States did as a result of that intimidation. He couldn’t. Why did he say those things, then? The result of this exchange was to cast Hagel as a gadfly who speaks rashly.
Hagel is sinking his own nomination. Will any Democrats throw up their hands and refuse to pretend he is credible and competent? Maybe. But every single Republican – any fair person not under the thumb of the White House, really – has more than enough reason to oppose and block the nomination. Hagel has proven himself to be a remarkably ill-considered pick. If the Democrats won’t, Republican senators should save the president and the country from an unqualified and unsuited pick. Imagine if this man were sent to Tehran or Jerusalem or Russia on a critical visit? I shudder to think of it.
We will let John Podhoretz have today’s last go at the hapless Hagel. We think he is a fitting compliment to the commander in chief.
… Hagel said many, many things yesterday — incoherent things, confused things, wrong things, untrue things, and things that seemed to contradict other things he had said previously. Some were about Israel, some about Iran, some about American policy.
First he said it was the policy of the Obama administration to “contain” Iran — meaning it will allow Iran to get a nuclear weapon and then try to box it in.
Now, that is exactly what many of us fear is the true policy of the Obama administration, especially in light of Hagel’s appointment.
For not only has Hagel spoken approvingly of engaging with the Iranians, he has his own checkered history when it comes to holding Iran to account. It includes voting against a 2007 resolution that declared the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps — perhaps the world’s foremost trainer and funder of state-sponsored terrorism — a terrorist organization.
In trying to defend that vote yesterday, he said he had done so (along with newly minted Secretary of State John Kerry) because it was an assault on an “elected, legitimate” government — by which he meant Iran’s theocracy. And because, he said, voting for the resolution would have given the Bush administration a green light to go to war with Iran.
Well, that ludicrous notion is in the past. What’s in the present is that the stated policy of the Obama administration toward the Iranian nuke is “prevention” — that it will not allow Iran to get the bomb, period, and will do what is necessary to ensure it doesn’t happen.
So Hagel corrected himself, kind of: “I was just handed a note that I misspoke — that I said I supported the president’s position on containment. If I said that, I meant to say that we don’t have a position on containment.” Whatever that means.
Later he said he was sorry he’d called the Iranian government elected and legitimate; rather, he should have said it was recognized.
“I don’t understand Iranian politics,” Hagel said — which would be understandable if, say, Khloe Kardashian were testifying. But Hagel is going to be a key official determining US policy toward Iran, and one would hope he’d bring a bit of pre-existing knowledge to the table. …
For years now Pickings has pointed to the disasters that have come from student loans. Christian Science Monitor finds another unintended consequence – low birth rates.
Karen Hu of Oakton, Va., is 28, married, graduated from law school – and thinking about babies. But that’s as far as she and her husband, a software programmer, have gotten: just thinking. What’s holding them back?
For one, Ms. Hu is finding it a challenge to land a good job in the post-recession economy.
For another, her student debt – some $164,000, with a monthly payment of $818 – is forcing the couple to think hard about taking on the additional expenses that come with having a child. “Children just don’t fit into that scenario,” Hu says.
Multiply that tale by tens of thousands of couples and you get the lowest birthrate in US history. American women of childbearing age are having babies at a rate of 63 per 1,000 women – nearly half the peak rate of the baby boom era of the 1950s, the Pew Research Center reported at the end of 2012.
No surprise, recessions typically coincide with a birthrate dip, as financial uncertainty prompts couples to postpone adding new mouths to feed. But the economy is recovering, and there’s no sign yet that the birthrate is rebounding. Some analysts now wonder if the unprecedented scale of early indebtedness stemming from student loans, affecting nearly one-quarter of the overall US populace of childbearing age, has become a permanent deterrent to parenthood.
“This is something that we have not had during earlier recessions,” says Chris Christopher, senior economist at IHS Global Insight, an international consulting group. If college costs keep rising and students continue to borrow heavily to pay for their education, the record-low birthrate may become the “new normal,” he suggests. “This is a real monkey wrench in the works of our families and economy.”
In some respects, the birthrate drop simply follows the century-long demographic glide path to smaller families, measured by fewer children per woman. Many nations in Western Europe, from Spain to Italy to Germany, are further along it, hitting a negative total fertility rate. America might have already hit that point, too, if not for higher immigration and the tendency of immigrant women to have more children than native-born women.
But the economic implications of a shrinking population are worrisome to many economists and political leaders. When the national fertility rate falls below the population replacement rate of 2.1 babies per woman – as it has in developed countries including Japan (1.4), Singapore (0.8), Norway (1.7), and Britain (1.9) – long-term plans for productivity and the social safety net become inviable. …
More on student loan problems from Walter Russell Mead.
On Wednesday TransUnion LLC released an alarming report confirming one of our greatest fears: one-third of all student loans are going to subprime borrowers, and many of these loans are beginning to go bad.
The WSJ reports:
“The Chicago-based credit bureau found that 33% of the almost $900 billion in outstanding student loans was held by subprime, or the riskiest, borrowers as of March 2012, up from 31% in 2007. . . . A majority of bank risk managers expect student-loan delinquencies to continue to rise, according to Fair Isaac.
“If you become subprime, it’s more likely that you will not pay your debt,” said TransUnion Vice President Ezra Becker, who oversaw the study.”
Given that the federal government is now responsible for nearly 93 percent of student loans, many are beginning to worry that taxpayers will once again find themselves on the hook for bad loans. And with a fraying job market and ballooning university costs, these loans won’t get any easier to pay off.
Who says there’s no higher ed bubble?
According to American.com, traveling to China is safe as long as you don’t breathe.
In 2008, the U.S. embassy in Beijing (located in the northeastern part of the city’s downtown area) installed an air quality monitoring device that measures concentrations of airborne particles with diameters of less than 2.5 microns. These tiny particles are the main cause of health problems after long-term exposure, and their monitoring provides a much better appreciation of health risks than the measurement of large (10 microns and above) particles. The Chinese authorities began to release their own measurements of smaller particles only in January 2013, but the tweeting of the hourly concentrations by the American embassy has been a perfect example of subversive information — although the city’s citizens have always known, without having the actual numbers, that they are breathing a grossly polluted air.
At 8 p.m. on January 12, 2013, the American device registered 886 micrograms per cubic meter (μg/m3). To people unfamiliar with air pollution monitoring that is just a number, moreover one given in units not commonly used in the United States. Precisely for that reason, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency developed an air quality index (AQI) that converts those measures into readily comprehensible numbers.
An AQI less than 50 means good air quality; 51–100 indicates moderately polluted air; 101–150 is considered unhealthy for adults with lung diseases; at “generally unhealthy” 151–200, everybody should reduce any prolonged outdoor exercise; at “very unhealthy” 201–300, adults with heart and lung diseases, the elderly, and children should avoid any outdoor physical activity; and when the index goes beyond 300 and all the way to 500, the best choice is to stay inside.
The peak concentration of 886 μg/m3 reached on January 12 translates to an AQI of 755, far beyond the defined scale. Beijing’s AQI rose above 500 by 2 a.m. on January 13 and remained above that level until 6 a.m. the next day.
Perhaps the best way to indicate how extraordinarily high such levels are is to note that regular monitoring at nearly 650 sites in the United States showed a mean concentration of 10 μg/m3 (AQI 32), with 10 percent of sites having levels below 7 and only 10 percent of places having concentrations above 13 μg/m3 (AQI 42). Peak Beijing levels on January 12 were thus nearly 90 times the U.S. mean, and even the city’s common winter levels of 250–350 μg/m3 are 25–35 times the U.S. mean.
High air pollution levels require a combination of two factors: high emissions and a limited mixing layer (the thickness of the atmosphere available for the dilution of airborne pollution). The first has been a Chinese constant, the second is bound to happen again and again during winter, when thermal inversion makes the atmosphere colder near the ground and hence limits the depth of the mixed layer, often to just a few hundred meters. As long as these inversions persist (sometimes just for a few hours, sometimes for several days) the near-ground concentration of pollutants soars. …