• Happy Labor Day!

      Posted by John Stossel | September 07, 2009

      Just in time for Labor Day, Gallup has released a new poll that found a slight majority of Americans say they disapprove of labor unions and believe unions hurt the economy. This is the first time in 70 years that a majority disapproved of unions.

      It's no mystery why, says Ed Morrissey:

      (R)adical positions on environmentalism, health care, energy, and other issues that sometimes run counter to the economic benefit of their own members — but provide a carbon copy of the hard Left of the Democratic Party...

      Unions have shown up as enforcers for ObamaCare in town-hall forums, causing disruptions and creating violence... Pushing to end the secret ballot in workplace organizing elections makes them look even more thuggish and radical, as well as greedy and grasping.

      Gallup also found that Americans' negative views of unions involve their impact on non-union workers.

      More than 6 in 10 Americans, up from about half in 2006, say unions mostly hurt non-union workers.

      The public opinion shift has not deterred the party in power from servicing its contributors. As I've reported, a provision tucked into the health care bill approved by the House gives $10 billion to the United Auto Workers' retiree health insurance program. Every taxpayer will be asked to pay to maintain the UAW's coverage, which is better than what the average American worker receives.

      Next comes “card check," maybe minus an end to the secret ballot, but still including that nasty mandatory arbitration clause, which is just as powerful and destructive.

      Happy Labor Day.

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      Pre-October 2009

    • JOHN HAS A NEW BOOK! ORDER TODAY

    This Week's Show -- May 16, 2013

    Government is at war against the little guy.

     

    Bureaucrats pass thousands of regulations to "keep people safer" and "make the marketplace more fair." Today 170,000 pages of federal regulations are on the books. Break just one rule, and government may wreck your life.

     

    So Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson started a "Victims of Government" website that features victims of overregulation.

     

    Nevada bureaucrats tell people who teach movie make-up that they must get an expensive license or close.

     

    Stossel has two empty rooms in his house now that his kids moved out. Using sites like Roomorama, he could make a little money and rent the rooms out. But two years ago, New York passed a law that makes most of what apartment rental sites do illegal. Stossel debates Liz Kreuger, who sponsored that bill.

     

    Is there any hope for the little guy? Authors of "Madmen, Intellectuals, and Academic Scribblers", Edward Lopez and Wayne Leighton, point out that deregulation did happen once. Americans pay much less to fly and to ship something because the CAB and ICC no longer exist. And we have cell phones because the FCC finally allowed spectrum auction. They say the only time things change is when the right people, the right ideas and the right circumstances all come together to repeal the bureaucrats rules.

     

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