Good read on the dismantling of Bidens agenda

kingstonlake wrote:Are we jgonna ignore the rampant corruption in unions? Be the one who brings it up in meeting or conventions. Let me know where that gets you. You’ll be persona non grata faster than a progressive mentioning change within their own party.

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Marty Manley
http://jamsidedown.com/bioUpvoted by
Marc Bodnick
, Harvard Gov major, Stanford PoliSci PhD student10y

I am an entrepreneur with an odd background: I used to be a union leader and served as Assistant Secretary of Labor where, among many other things, I oversaw investigations into union corruption. For the record, I think that unions played a valuable role in the US and in industries that hire unskilled people still do, but that's not the question under review.

Unlike in the Danish situation wonderfully summarized in this thread, many Americans believe that unions are corrupt because they affiliate with business-oriented political groups that dislike unions just as many people believe that businesses are corrupt because they associate with groups that dislike businesses. Neither of these views are fact-based or especially helpful.

There is some market evidence that bears on the question. Many union officials are bonded, meaning that they are covered by an insurance policy against financial malfeasance. Some corporate officials are too, so you can compare the risk across the two groups. Most of the time, there isn't a huge difference.

Second, unions and companies operate under very different contraints and these matter when trying to understand corruption. Companies are constrained by markets and competition but a labor union is granted a monopoly to represent workers under federal law, so unions are highly regulated. Unions are also vastly more democratic than companies or public agencies (I've led all three). Union economics are more transparent: every union official's salary is public, which is not true in either the public or private sector in the US (only senior public officials and the top few executives in public companies have their salaries disclosed). Union leaders can be more easily charged with misconduct under their own constitutions or various US laws than managers can. For these reasons, union leaders operate with fewer degrees of freedom than most managers in my experience. I am not suggesting that democracy, regulation, and disclosure always prevent corruption of course, but they shape the context because labor corruption is often discovered by regulators but business corruption is much harder to detect without a whistleblower.

Third, union corruption in the US is not easily measured because unions are covered by different laws. To oversimplify: a union leader who bribes a member for a vote violates the LMRDA but if he accepts a bribe from a manager, he violates the NLRA and if he misappropriates money from a pension trust co-managed with companies, he violates DOL or sometimes securities regulations. (And yeah, it's pretty much always he). A corrupt hiring hall may violate Civil Rights law and we could make this list a lot longer. Each of these rules are enforced by different agencies of the US government. Government agencies are huge and they rarely coordinate anything with other agencies not because they are malign or incompetent (most federal employees are actually very committed and many are very talented) but because they are huge and complex on their own and life is too short.

Finally, union corruption is concentrated in a few unions and in a few regions of the country. (Enforcement resources, it will not shock you to learn, are quite evenly distributed around the country). Historically the unions charged with the most serious crimes given the size of their membership have been the Laborers Union (ILUA), the east coast Longshoremen (ILA) (but not west coast (ILWU) Longshoreman), and parts of the Teamsters (although this is a lot better than it used to be). Large, old cities have it worst, in part because unions arose in immigrant communities and in a few but not most cases, corruption reflects old country ways. AFL unions (craft unions, many associated with building trades) are more likely to be involved in either hiring hall or contractor kickback corruption than industrial unions because the CIO unions don't have hiring halls and they don't work for contractors.

Probably the most cleaned up union in the past two decades is the restaurant workers / bartenders union, now called UNITE. Public employee and teacher's unions are more professional and less corrupt, unless you believe, as Franklin Roosevelt did, that the very idea of bargaining with a boss who you got elected is corrupt -- which is again, another post.

All of this said, most union leaders are not corrupt. If I had to pick someone to transport $100,000 of my cash by selecting either a random union leader or a random business leader, I would happily pick from the union pile every time. I love business and consider myself a businessperson, but on average, union leaders care more about personal trust and less about accumulating money than do business people. And very few members of either group are actually corrupt.

kingstonlake wrote:https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/07/joe-manchin-didnt-kill-biden-democrats-agenda-alone.html

The official cause of death for the Democrats’ domestic ambitions was a decision by Joe Manchin to back away from measures he had previously supported, citing rising prices.

This explanation makes no sense. He is now saying that high inflation requires him to abandon plans to fight inflation.

Biden’s plan did include one measure that Democrats intended to seed permanent reform: an enhanced child tax credit. Social scientists have unequivocally shown the payments reduced child poverty Yet Manchin opposed extending the payments anyway — reportedly muttering in private that his constituents were squandering the money on drugs

A key faction of Democrats in the House, along with Senator Kyrsten Sinema, blanched at the tax hikes. Moderates have been privately coordinating their opposition, and it seems very likely that Manchin’s sudden opposition to raising taxes on the rich comes not from him, but from them — he sometimes takes the heat for fellow Democratic moderates. In this case, he is likely channeling their concerns and passing them off as his own.

The persistence of Democratic opposition to raising taxes on plutocrats remains the party’s most damaging political liability.

As a political matter, taxing the rich is highly popular. In theory, this method can only work for so long, until you run out of efficient and productive ways to raise taxes on the affluent. In practice, the American tax system is nowhere near that point. It is shot through with loopholes and giveaways that sober, moderate economists believe can be closed without creating economic drag. This is free money on the sidewalk that a handful of Democrats refuse to let their party pick up. And the reason is simply that they listen to rich people rather than economists.

The wealthy hold a disproportionate influence on both the elite in parties, pulling Democrats to the left of their voters on social issues, and Republicans to the right of their voters on economic issues.

Democrats such as Sinema and House moderate Josh Gottheimer pose as enemies of their party’s socially liberal identity, but they have more responsibility than anybody else for its persistence. Without their popular economic message of taxing the rich and helping the working class, there is little left for the Democrats but social issues.The Democratic Party, like any successful party, needs to accommodate a broad range of viewpoints. Refusal to accept pragmatic and efficient tax hikes on the rich is one position Democrats simply cannot tolerate. Here is one place where sacrificing a few recalcitrant candidates for office would bear long-term fruit.

In the meantime, Democrats are staring at a political abyss whose bottom cannot be seen. The short-term political dynamics of an economy suffering from global inflation are punishing. The long-term prognosis of the party’s alienation from its multiracial working-class voters is grim. And the specter of the Republican Party’s descent into authoritarianism looms over everything.

GRR Spartan wrote:Kristin Sinema is angry and threatening to stop the Schumer / Manchin energy bill because she’s not getting the attention she requires.