Category Archives: Business

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Ending Unionism As We Know It

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Mickey Kaus says that the Employee Rights Act doesn’t cut it:

The problem with Wagner Act unionism isn’t necessarily that unions aren’t democratic. It’s that they are granted a power–mainly the power to go on strike as the sole and exclusive bargaining agent of a firm’s workers without the strikers getting fired–that maybe they shouldn’t have. The UAW is a democratic union. That didn’t stop it from crippling the auto industry. The problem is that the wrong people voted in the UAW’s democratic elections–not the suppliers who would be hurt when UAW members decided democratically to win themselves inefficient work rules, not the mayors whose towns were decimated, not the taxpayers who had to bail them out (in part to save the suppliers and mayors), and certainly not the customers. Making even entrenched undemocratic unions more democratic might have the perverse effect of validating those unions’ exercise of their Wagner Act power. According to Barnes, Sen. Hatch “insists the ERA isn’t antiunion.” That’s not a feature. It’s a bug.

Indeed.

Business, Economics, Political Commentary, Space

The Commercial Crew Forum

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Clark Lindsey is taking notes.

They are looking at different certification regime options.
– One option is to develop certification that works in parallel with the SAAs.
…
– Safety requirements have been posted (are “on the street”).
– So any participant will know what requirements they need to meet.
– Safety goals: What would firms do to feel comfortable flying their own people on the vehicles?

We need to have a metadiscussion about appropriate levels of safety. We can’t allow NASA’s irrational approach to contaminate the entire industry, or allow their “certification” to become a standard. Different people are going to have different risk/reward thresholds. I’m working on an Issue Analysis on this topic for CEI right now.

[BTW, the entire February space issue of Reason, from which that linked Zubrin piece on NASA’s irrational approach to safety comes, is now on line.]

Business, Economics, Political Commentary, Science And Society

The Eco-Fascists

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Why are they trying to ban incandescent bulbs? It’s got to be motivated by religion, because it’s both economically irrational, and tyrannical.

[Update a few minutes later]

Germany starts to come to its senses:

What has set it all off? One of the fathers of Germany’s modern green movement, Professor Dr. Fritz Vahrenholt, a social democrat and green activist, decided to author a climate science skeptical book together with geologist/paleontologist Dr. Sebastian Lüning. Vahrenholt’s skepticism started when he was asked to review an IPCC report on renewable energy. He found hundreds of errors. When he pointed them out, IPCC officials simply brushed them aside. Stunned, he asked himself, “Is this the way they approached the climate assessment reports?”

Vahrenholt decided to do some digging. His colleague Dr. Lüning also gave him a copy of Andrew Montford’s The Hockey Stick Illusion. He was horrified by the sloppiness and deception he found. Well-connected to Hoffmann & Campe, he and Lüning decided to write the book. Die kalte Sonne cites 800 sources and has over 80 charts and figures. It examines and summarizes the latest science.

Conclusion: climate catastrophe is called off

The science was hyped. The book started hitting the bookshops today and has already hit no. 1 on the Amazon.de list for environment books. Indications show that it will climb very high in the overall bestseller charts. It’s published by a renowned publishing house and is now sending shock waves through the German climate science establishment. The first printing will produce 20,000 copies. I expect they will sell out rather quickly.

Unfortunately, the lies and fraud in the service of the holy faith continue here.

[Update a while later]

Just in case people don’t realize the significance of this, this guy is the German equivalent of Britain’s George Monbiot.