Travis Rowley: Union Politics: One Big Racket

Saturday, February 22, 2014

Travis Rowley, GoLocalProv MINDSETTER™

Almost a year ago we discussed just how valuable an ignorant underclass is to the Democratic Party . And this week, several issues have served to remind us of a related political observation: Liberalism is the ideology of the mindless and emotional.

For proof of this allegation, we can observe the Left’s favorite activity – taking from some in order to give to others.

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Redistribution is linear and visible. Infants have the capacity to understand it.

Grab. Give.

Conversely, is a child likely to imagine a way in which a poor man could improve his lot in life without direct redistribution? How about millions of poor people simultaneously?

Comprehending free market capitalism – how millions of individuals pursuing their own separate interests can secure and deliver resources for vast numbers of people – is not so simple; which is probably why it took thousands of years for humans to figure it out.

For people to resist the temptation to have government directly assist the poor is an unnatural discipline.

Conservatism is learned. Liberalism is trite, and derived from our most basic instincts.

The Politics vs The Reality

Cheer up, liberals. Because the politics of this ideological competition doesn’t favor the free market apologist – particularly as the culture of individualism continues to erode.

This week conservative Fox News commentator Charles Krauthammer analyzed the issue of hiking the federal minimum wage to $10.10 per hour – the populist rallying cry Democrats have chosen for the 2014 elections. After the Congressional Budget Office reported that the Democrats’ plan “would lift 900,000 workers above the poverty line” but would also “cost 500,000 jobs,” Krauthammer explained, “We know that Democrats like to redistribute income, and they pretend it’s always from the rich to the poor. What the CBO has shown, absolutely clearly, is that when you raise the minimum wage, you’re redistributing income from one set of low income people to another set of low income people…There are going to be about half a million people who go from $7 an hour to zero…They’re going to be destitute.”

Krauthammer is exactly right. But that won’t stop Democrats from pretending that there are no costs or tradeoffs in the real world, and that Republicans are disinterested in assisting the poor – instantly whipping up enthusiasm among the emotional, the envious, and the ignorant this election season.

Here in Rhode Island

If Rhode Islanders want an up-close look at how progressives manipulate the uninformed, they can head over to the Hilton Hotel in Downtown Providence, where socialist agitators continue to harass the Procaccianti Group – an Ocean State employer – in an attempt to form an officially recognized union.

Accompanied by City Councilman Luis Aponte (D) and City Councilwoman Carmen Castillo (D), dozens of employees allowed themselves to be organized into rally formation once again this week.

Curious minds had to wonder: By what measure do these workers contend that supporting the efforts of Unite Here – a prominent outfit of organized labor – will benefit them as a whole? On what grounds do they believe that these labor religionists are truly fighting on their behalf?

Have they forgotten that union-Democrats have held dominion over Providence’s City Hall and the RI State House for decades?

Continuously considered to be “the worst place for business,” Rhode Island’s minimum wage is among the highest in the country. So is its corporate tax rate. Providence businesses suffer from one of the highest commercial property tax rates in the country – second only behind the folded City of Detroit.

These are hardly the hallmarks of a region being trampled by its business leaders. In fact, just over a year ago, RIPEC cited the State’s high “cost of doing business” as a major obstacle to an economic recovery – the very thing that unions openly attempt to increase.

Today “more than a fifth of children in Rhode Island are living in poverty, and over 10 percent are in extreme poverty.”

Providence fares even worse. “More than one in three children…[are living] in poverty.” And the average annual income for Providence residents is short of $22,000.

Rivaling certain Providence neighborhoods, it was reported during the summer of 2011 that the “unemployment rate across the building trades [was] running between 25 and 40 percent” across Rhode Island. The secretary-treasurer of the RI Building and Construction Trades Council, Scott Duhamel, called this “unheard of” in the summer, when the unemployment rate is typically between 5 and 10 percent.

Yup, it’s a real “workers’ paradise” around here (well, perhaps for well-off union leaders it is).

But the progressive record matters little in Rhode Island. Unite Here – “through organizing” – specializes in turning “low-wage jobs into good, family-sustaining, middle class jobs.”

Thousands of Rhode Islanders are still buying that crap. They want “fair wages.” And they know of only one way to achieve them.

Grab. Give.

That’s all they know. That’s all they understand. And that’s all progressive Democrats want them to understand.

Travis Rowley (TravisRowley.com) is the author of The RI Republican: An Indictment of the Rhode Island Left.

Related Slideshow: Timeline - Rhode Island Pension Reform

GoLocalProv breaks down the sequence of events that have played out during Rhode Island's State Employee Pension Fund reform.

Travis Rowley: Union Politics: One Big Racket

Related Slideshow: Timeline - Rhode Island Pension Reform

2005-2010

January 2009

2009

2010

November 2010

April 2011

May 2011

October 2011

October 2011

November 17, 2011

November 18, 2011

January 2012

March - April 2012

December 5, 2012

March 2013

April 2013

June 2013

September 2013

October 2013

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