Republican electoral college scheme in California would backfire

Republicans are backing an initiative on next June’s ballot to change how the electoral college’s votes are allocated. The Constitution grants to the states the decision on how to allocate the electoral votes, currently 55 for California, in the presidential election.

Currently, California gives all its electoral votes to whichever candidate wins the most votes on election day. For Republicans, the problem is that the state now has tilted so Democratic in the past decade that it will be another 100 years before a Republican wins here again.

If this initiative passes, the electoral votes will be apportioned according to congressional district (with 2 votes going to the statewide winner). In the 2004 election, that would have meant 19 electoral votes lost to the Democrats, with similar results in 2000. In both cases, really close elections in the electoral college would have been easy Republican victories. 19 electoral votes is more than the electoral votes in 43 other states.

But if this initiative gets on the ballot, it will backfire. It will create a hornet’s nest of opposition, not just in California, but nationally. Democratic money will pour in as we’ve never seen it to make sure they don’t lose 19 electoral votes. “The Republicans are stealing the government!” will be the outcry.

The June election normally would favor Republicans, being a low-turnout state primary sandwiched in between the March presidential primary and the November general election. But this initiative would inflame the June election and defeat whatever other Republican initiatives might be on the ballot, as well as defeat Republicans in local races.

It would be similar to the 2005 Special Election initiative slate that Arnold called. Remember that one? The Democrats’ union allies especially hated Prop. 75, which would have stopped unions from using mandatory union dues for political campaigns, unless first getting a union member’s approval. Unions nationally saw that as a threat to their power, and poured in the cash, as did Democratic activists.

The defeat in that election so damaged Arnold’s fragile, egg-shell psyche that he immediately flipped and became a Kennedy Democrat, ditching his previous attempts — however feeble — to rein in state spending and slow Democrats’ nuttier ideas, such as shutting down the economy to fight “global warming.”

It could happen again if this new initiative makes it to the ballot next June. Republicans used to be better than this at long-term strategy. Now — witness Bush’s Iraq War — they seem like ADD-afflicted children, unable to realize what will happen a few days after their schemes go into effect. They should be put on Ritalin.

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UAW and GM make a deal

After a short strike, the UAW came to an agreement with GM. It became obvious even to the union bosses that they had to do something to help reduce production costs that had gotten way out of line. Similar agreements will be reached with Chrysler and Ford, giving the near-bankrupt Big Three a temporary stay of execution.

A key, according to the Detroit News, was “setting up a UAW-run trust to administer health-care costs for 340,000 retirees and surviving spouses, GM will shake off the burden of spending an estimated $3.3 billion on medical bills.”

It may be that both sides expect President Hillary to set up a national socialized medicine scheme that would preclude whatever they did, so why argue about it?

The agreement effectively makes the UAW itself a major health-care administrator, giving them massive clout in the national debate over socialized medicine. And the UAW always has favored socialized medicine.

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UAW’s suicidal strike of GM

I grew up West of Detroit and well remember the long, 67-day UAW strike against GM in 1970. There was an electric tension in the air as two giants went at one another. Eventually, they settled their differences.

That was the height of the power of the U.S. auto industry, especially GM. Everything has been downhill since then. GM then was the most powerful industrial company in the world. Today its market capitalization (total worth of its stock) is just $20 billion, a fraction of the $129 billion of Apple, a firm that didn’t even exist in 1970, and which today makes funny little boxes you hold in your hand. And Toyota only sold a handful of cars here.

Some other comparisons of market capitalization:

GM: $20 billion
Ford: $18 billion
Chrysler: $7 billion (recent sale price)
Toyota: $208 billion (10 times GM’s value)

Microsoft: $275 billion
Apple: $129 billion

It’s clear that the future of American industry and jobs is not in the auto industry. All those deals GM and the other Big 3 auto companies made with the UAW in the early 1970s produced a $20 per hour price differential with other auto companies working in America, much of it to pay off the pensions of workers who now are retired, and don’t produce anything.

And as Detroit News auto columnist Daniel Howes notes, the Big 3 already are transforming themselves into firms more concerned about global production that U.S. production:

Welcome to uncharted territory for the UAW leadership. Not since the mid-1970s, roughly a decade before Toyota Motor Corp. opened its first U.S. assembly plant, has the union ordered a national strike against one of Detroit’s automakers.

In union parlance, this is the “heat-and-light show” writ large — the union turns up the heat until the company sees the light. Except that this company, GM, and its crosstown rivals are less the Big Three of old than they’ve ever been.

They’re bleeding cash. Their market share is declining. Their debt is rated “junk.” They’re growing overseas where they are unencumbered by 70-plus years of tradition, bargaining history and a crushing, backward culture. They’re selling assets so furiously that they look like companies either preparing for a confrontation with labor or in partial liquidation or both.

Most importantly, their competition isn’t standing still. The Chinese and the Indians are pushing the Koreans. The Koreans are pushing the Japanese. The Japanese are pushing the Germans, French, Italians and Americans.

Denying or denouncing the competitive labor-cost imbalance of roughly $20 an hour between Detroit and its Asian competitors operating in the United States may make some feel better, but it won’t make the numbers any smaller or less consequential.

Only cooperation, not strikes, by the UAW will give the Big 3 a chance to survive in America, if it’s not too late already. The 1970s are over.

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How many riders did bus strike lose?

The OC bus workers’ strike appears to be over:

The roughly 1,100 striking bus drivers were likely to accept the deal that gives a smaller proportion of wage hikes to veteran drivers than union officials had originally demanded, said Patrick Kelly, secretary-treasurer of Teamsters Local 952.

It may have dawned on union bosses that every day the strike lasted, people found ways around the rigid, government-imposed bus grid. It will take some time to find out, but many people who car-pooled, biked, drove alone, or walked to work during the strike may have permanently reduced the number of bus riders. Maybe not. But last Friday the Register reported on …

thousands of bus riders who are now seeking alternate travel options, after the Orange County Transportation Authority reduced its service on July 7 in response to an employee strike.

During the strike, I had a good discussion on this blog over privatizing the system. I called for unleashing private jitneys. A reader then pointed out that insurance and other regulations wouldn’t make that possible.

Now some people, at least, discovered the past week their own private alternatives to using socialist buses.

I was right: no grocery strike

When the grocery stores began negotiating a new contract with union workers, I predicted there would be no long grocery strike as in 2003-04. The last strike was too painful. And union bosses didn’t want any more light pointed at their own, member-funded, massive salaries.

Looks like things are being worked out:

The union representing 65,000 Southern California grocery workers and the three largest supermarket chains in the region continued to close the gap in their contract negotiations Sunday.

In marathon bargaining sessions over much of the weekend, the United Food and Commercial Workers Union and Albertsons, Ralphs and Vons had settled multiple contract issues and were zeroing in on wage increases.

Update: 3 pm: Interesting perspective in the comments section, that this time around the union leadership actually was more responsive to workers’ needs. Click here.

Thanks for the comment.

Lack of jitneys: blame the feds and regulators

In a previous post, on the O.C. bus strike, I lamented that O.C. doesn’t have jitneys — privately run, small buses.

Calwatch added a comment that explains a lot:

While jitneys are nice, the problem is not state regulations… it’s actually federal regulation, specifically the ADA [Americans With Disabilities Act] that Republican Senator Bob Dole championed and Republican President George H.W. Bush signed. And for good reason, since folks in wheelchairs can board a bus just like anyone else, or call a taxi company and request a wheelchair cab stop at their house. But the ADA also requires that all public facilities be accessible, which presents an unreasonable demand to jitney operators to have their drivers handle the physically disabled.

In addition, you have the wonderful world of liability insurance to come into play. Most jitneys look like crap and can’t afford all the liability insurance. California’s only legal jitney operator, in the wonderfully liberal bastion of San Francisco, paid $18,000 in liability insurance a year in 1997, and that on a then-19 year old GMC van. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/1997/07/28/MN52459.DTL Could they meet OCTAP’s demands of working air conditioning, seat belts, and rollable windows? Could they afford the liability insurance? Generally, insurance companies don’t like you carrying strangers, or goods for hire. That is the real killer of the free market, not alleged government regulation.

Thanks for the information, Calwatch. This is another example of how the past century’s government foolishness continues to weigh us down. When I was the Register during the ADA debate, I must have written about 20 editorials against that Soviet-modeled oppression of Americans.

All I can add is it’s another reason to break up the state, which is expected to have a population of 60 million by 2050.

Then Orange County would become a separate state and could eliminate some legal barriers to jitneys. Any better ideas out there?

Magic Bus Strike: Why buses are so big and empty

In 1997, the Register sent me to a conference on local government given by some liberal academics up in Ventura. The first problem was that nightmare of every journalist: no free booze.

The second problem was the liberal academics. I didn’t need to suffer, dry, through a weekend of socialism.

Turned out it was really interesting. Hey, liberals, I have an open mind — sometimes.

The most interesting lecture was about how high costs for government transit workers’ wages and benefits mean they have to operate large buses, which means fewer riders on some routes.

It makes sense. There’s only so much money for bus transit. Wages are high because bus transit is a monopoly and the union exerts pressure. That leaves less money for buying buses. So the transit authority — in our local case, the Orange County Transportation Authority — buys large buses that often, as everyone notices, ride around with one or two passengers.

And the unions often go on strike, as we’re now seeing in O.C. in the third day of the bus drivers-strike.

If a free-market system were set up, as I called for yesterday, wages would be set at lower levels. That would give more people jobs as bus drivers, while leaving more money available for capital — that is, more buses. We would have more but smaller buses on more routes.

Resolve O.C. bus strike: Privatize the system

Roll up, roll up, for the Magical Strike Tour!

O.C. bus drivers went on strike Saturday, demanding a 13% pay raise over three years. That’s 4.33% per year.

Think you’ll get that much of a raise in your private-sector job as a drone who exists to pay taxes into the system of government queen bees?

The solution is to entirely privatize the O.C. bus service. Auction the resources. Allow competition.

Private jitneys would spring up, taking us where we want to go, not where the bureaucracy and unions say we should go.

When I first came to Orange County 20 years ago I took the bus system from Huntington Beach to the Register’s office in Santa Ana. It took 1 hour and 45 minutes on three buses. By car, it took just 30-40 minutes. The bus routes haven’t changed since then.

A private jitney system would see entrepreneurs starting new lines everywhere, including one with a single bus ride from Huntington Beach to Santa Ana. Such jitneys work in Argentina and the Philippines. Time to adopt them here.

NEA vs. America

If there’s one phrase I hate it’s “human capital.” In fact, humans are not capital, but create capital through saving and investing. Improvements to people, such as education or good moral habits, are not “human capital,” but simple goodness of one sort or another.

The dreaded National (dis-)Education Association uses the phrase in a press release (not yet online):

National Education Association President Reg Weaver is calling for a new, national education initiative to develop the nation’s human capital and keep America competitive in the 21st century. The proposal would involve closing tax loopholes to strengthen the nation’s investment in education at all levels. The project is called the Extension Service for Knowledge, Information and Development, or KIDs.

That means they’re also destroying another great word, “kids.” Remember how fun it was when you were a kid, or how much fun you have with your own kids? Now it’s an acronym for a new socialist scheme to control kids (the real kind, not the acronym).

“Closing loopholes” is a code phrase for massive tax increases that throw the country into a recession.

As to keeping America competitive, the best way would be to entirely abolish government schools and repeal truancy laws. Let parents take care of their own kids through private, parochial, or home schooling. It’s time for the separation of school and state.

nd if parents let their kids run wild in the streets, that, at least, would be better than putting them for 13 years into the clutches of the NEA.

I don’t think there will be a long grocery workers’ strike

The five-month grocery strike of 2003-04 hit hard the grocery stores and the union workers. About the only ones who didn’t suffer were the fat-cat union bosses.

Although the workers foolishly just gave their union bosses authority to call a strike, I don’t think it will amount to much. The rank-and-file remember how bad the last strike was and won’t want a repeat.

Economically, unemployment is down from nearly four years ago, meaning striking workers easily could get other jobs, albeit with pay that might not be as high.

But housing prices are way up, about double the mortgage payments on a new home. So younger workers who just bought homes won’t want to go on strike long. And those in apartments also have seen their rents soar.

The union also is unlikely to get favorable treatment from the Bush administration or the federal courts, which have a lot of Republican judges. Schwarzenegger has enough problems and probably won’t help. The Democratic Legislature has its own agenda and is more in thrall to the powerful government shirkers’ unions.

And as I mentioned in an earlier post, consumers have more food buying choices than before.

And the grocery companies probably aren’t in much of a mood for large concessions. They see the competition. And they know that the only unions with much power nowadays are those in monopoly industries, mainly the government.

So, there might be a strike of a couple of days, then a cave-in by the unions.