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Wasn’t Wisconsin Wonderful?
This June may be one of the most pivotal months in years. It started with the disastrous jobs report and subsequent market fall, and continued with the victory of free markets and free peoples in yesterday’s Wisconsin recall vote. As the month continues there is an election next week for the congressional seat vacated by Gabriel Giffords. We could also see the collapse of the EU. And later we will learn of the Supreme Court’s decisions on healthcare and Arizona’s immigration law. In the healthcare case, the Court might protect our freedoms using the Constitution’s Commerce Clause. Almost 80 years ago the Court used the Commerce Clause in the case of the Schechter Brothers of Brooklyn. The Freeman tells the story of four Jewish brothers who stood in the way of the beginnings of FDR’s New Deal.
Roosevelt created the National Recovery Administration (NRA) to enforce the NIRA’s provisions. It wrote or helped industries and labor write “codes” that governed production, prices, and labor relations. The AAA was a similar attempt to plan agricultural production. In the name of keeping prices up for farmers, millions of piglets were slaughtered and millions of acres of cotton were plowed under—while large numbers of Americans were hungry and cold.
Stores displayed the NRA “Blue Eagle” sign to show they were abiding by the codes, and consumers were encouraged to patronize only companies that did so. Thousands of inspectors checked for code compliance and initiated prosecutions against violators. Enter the Schechters.
The four brothers were born in Hungary before their parents made their way to the United States. With heavily accented, broken English, they were right out of central casting for the oft-stereotyped immigrant Jewish rube—and the Roosevelt administration treated them that way. The Yiddish version of their last name, Shochet, is also the word for their profession: butcher. More specifically, they were poultry middlemen, buying chickens from across the country, then butchering and selling them to the New York City market, mostly to retailers who then sold directly to consumers. Middlemen of course were exactly the sort of “problem” the NRA was designed to deal with, because in the eyes of the FDR crowd they profited off consumers while providing little in return. Additionally, prejudice against middlemen has been historically difficult to disentangle from anti-Semitism, since Jews have long performed this role and borne the brunt of ignorance about how trade creates value.
Most important to the story is that the Schechters ran a kosher butcher business. The Jewish laws of kashrut serve many purposes. Among them they specify how to safely kill and dispose of animals so as to avoid a variety of possible diseases. Also, they enforce a set of ethical obligations about how to treat animals that we kill and eat. The provisions about how to kill animals and what can and cannot be eaten helped the community avoid potentially unhealthy practices (and animals) and signaled that the animals sold had been inspected by recognized community authorities—namely rabbis trained to ensure that sellers followed the biblical rules. A certified kosher butcher has the equivalent of a Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval from the most respected members of the local community.
Tuberculosis was the major issue with chickens, making it crucial to inspect the lungs to make sure they were smooth and therefore healthy. The word glatt in the phrase glatt kosher means “smooth,” which assures buyers no signs of tuberculosis were found. Importantly, customers at kosher butcheries could choose the birds they bought, which gave them the ability to enforce kashrut through their buying choices. So even if the birds were certified kosher by a rabbinical authority, customers could still exercise their own judgment about the quality of the chickens. Kosher butchers allowed this as a way to attract customers.
The problem for the Schechters was that Section 2, Article 7 of the NRA’s Code of Fair Competition for the Live Poultry Industry of the Metropolitan Area in and about the City of New York, which sounds like something out of Atlas Shrugged, mandated “straight killing,” which meant that customers could not select specific birds out of a coop. Instead they had to select a coop or half coop entirely. The code thus directly contradicted kashrut. This put the Schechters in an untenable position: Abide by the New Deal or abide by kashrut. Do the former and lose your customers. Do the latter and get arrested.
In June 1934 the Roosevelt administration expanded NRA inspections, and prosecutions began in earnest. The poultry industry was targeted because of alleged corruption. It is worth noting that corruption was not alleged to have caused the Great Depression, and the law said little about it. As is often the case, power assumed by the government for one purpose is very easy to use for other, more nefarious purposes.
Jennifer Rubin speculates on what follows a Walker win.
In all likelihood, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) will survive the recall tonight and become an unlikely rock star on the right. As Churchill said, “There is nothing more invigorating than to be shot at without result.”
The consequences of a Walker win may not be fully appreciated. So we’ll get the ball rolling:
1. Wisconsin becomes a key swing state, causing panic among those pundits who declared that Mitt Romney’s path to 270 electoral votes is “very narrow.”
2. Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) zooms to the top of the VP list on the arguments that he’s so much less boring than the other front-runners, he can lock up Wisconsin, and the Ryan-Biden VP debate would be comedy gold, raising the question: After 30 minutes, should there be a mercy rule? …
Juan Williams writes on the meaning of the Wisconsin vote.
Ann Coulter on the right and Rachel Maddow on the left agree Wisconsin’s vote this Tuesday on recalling Gov. Scott Walker is going to have national implications.
They’ve got that right.
If Walker wins, it will encourage Republican governors around the nation to enact more laws that diminish the power of public worker unions. Those efforts usually involve stripping unions of collective bargaining rights in an effort to shut off the money flowing from unions to Democrats.
Since the 2010 midterm elections, GOP governors have been intent on closing off the flow of cash from taxpayers to public sector unions which then support Democratic candidates.
In trying to choke the life out of unions, those governors have had varied degrees of success.
But if Walker wins, governors like Michigan’s Rick Snyder, Ohio’s John Kasich and Pennsylvania’s Tom Corbett will find new pockets of money and political support for their anti-union fight.
By the same logic, if the unions cannot defeat an unpopular GOP governor whose policies have threatened their power – and their very existence in one of the most pro-union states in the country – Republicans and Democrats alike will perceive them as weak.
The state’s labor unions – including the AFL-CIO, AFSCME and the SEIU – could not get their favorite candidate, Kathleen Falk, nominated as the candidate to run against Walker. …
Allysia Finley tells us why Rahm Emanuel may be rooting for a Walker Wisconsin win.
Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel helped raise money for Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, a fellow Democrat who is trying to unseat Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker in today’s recall election. But part of Mr. Emanuel may be developing an appreciation for some of the Republican governor’s reforms. The Chicago school district and teachers union can’t agree on a new contract. The biggest roadblock? Collective bargaining, the same issue that sparked the Wisconsin recall effort.
The union is demanding a 30% raise over the next two years and class sizes capped at 23 students. Mr. Emanuel wants to give teachers a 2% raise next year and establish a merit pay pilot program. …
You may remember the Dem polling outfit PPP said Sunday Walker had only a 3% lead. Nice job PPP! Does that stand for Pretty Putrid Polling? Ed Morrissey has the story.
What to think of the latest PPP poll in Wisconsin? On one hand, a narrow lead within the margin of error on the day before an election might signal a slight and final shift in momentum in Tom Barrett’s favor. On the other, PPP is a Democratic pollster who might be looking for the best possible take on the race — and having the Democrat down three as a best case would be a positive for supporters of Scott Walker. The Hill reports on the results:
A new poll finds Republican Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker with a narrowed lead over Democratic challenger Tom Barrett ahead of Tuesday’s recall vote.
A Public Policy Polling survey released Monday shows Walker with the support of 50 percent of likely voters, ahead of Milwaukee Mayor Barrett at 47 percent.
The Economist has pointed words about Obama’s class war rhetoric.
… Mr Obama has even managed to choke out a few kind words about private equity, which, he says, is “a healthy part of the free market”, manned, in many cases, by “folks who do good work”. He claims he has no problem with the industry itself, but simply does not consider it a good proving ground for future presidents (unlike, say, community organising). Mr Romney’s contention that his experience in business will help him get the jobless back to work is flawed, Mr Obama’s argument runs, since private equity exists “to maximise profits, and that’s not always going to be good for communities or businesses or workers”.
The disclaimers are more than a little disingenuous, since Mr Obama often does seem to suggest that financiers are greedy wreckers from whom America’s economy must be saved. But that aside, and in spite of the Republicans’ bluster, his rhetoric is hardly illegitimate or extreme. America’s middle class is struggling. Median incomes are stagnant, while the rich have been getting richer. It is easy to argue that the average Joe is not getting a fair shake—or at least not the same shake he used to. The question is whether voters care most about that, or whether they simply want to see the economy humming again, equitably or not.
In that case, the election will revolve not around fairness, but competence. Mr Romney is fond of saying that Mr Obama has no idea how the economy works and how jobs are created. The way the Obama campaign talks about Bain Capital suggests that his criticism is correct. Mr Obama, as noted above, likes to insinuate that there is a conflict between pursuing profits and creating jobs. In the long run, however, in a competitive economy, that is nonsense. Only profitable firms can sustain any jobs, and the more profitable they are, the more money they have to invest in new ventures with new workers. Mr Obama is guilty not of rhetorical excess but of economic muddle. That is far more worrying.