"All war is based on deception." —Sun Tzu

Obama clearly believes in a corollary to this.  For Obama, "All politics is based on deception."

It has to be.  Obama is a radical socialist.  The American People are not radical socialists.  Examining his major program elements we find that he has applied this principle of politics as deception to each of the following:

• No one making less than $250,000 a year will see their taxes go up, yet he is trying to tax many health insurance programs for people making much less than that.  He is going to tax individuals for not buying the health insurance that he wants them to buy.  He is going to tax small businesses whose owners make less than $250,000 a year for not offering approved health insurance to all employees.  There was serious talk of added taxes on soda and sugary fruit drinks, which are known to be drunk only by those making more than $250,000.  The taxes on medical clinics, medical devices, and drug companies he is adding are apparently only going to be passed on only to the wealthy.  He is eager to collect huge payments for the right to use fossil fuel energy and has exempted many very large companies from having to pay these payments in the very near future, so the large payments will fall directly on small businesses initially, but all businesses in time.  These costs will be passed on as increased costs for goods and services to everyone, in a deceptive form of taxing us all.  His advocacy for card check for the labor unions can also be viewed as a huge tax on everyone who buys goods and services, whose costs will increase, or who has ownership in the companies to be taken over.  With all the government debt, any future inflation that may result is a deceptive tax on all of us.  Meanwhile, this debt is causing the value of the dollar to drop, so everyone who buys foreign-made goods is going to be paying more for them.  Another form of tax, a very deceptive one.

• Obama said we needed health care insurance reform to lower the costs of health care and to insure everyone.  The reality turns out to be that everyone, except the very sick currently without health insurance, will see their health care costs go up.  Those who are healthy and can well satisfy their needs with a high deductible plan will see their costs skyrocket as they are forced to buy government approved plans which mandate very low deductibles and low co-pays.  Pressure is being put on the young and the healthy to buy insurance with high premiums so the insurers can cover the costs of the unhealthy, who will jump onto plans only when they need treatments.  The new Obama taxes on health insurers, medical laboratories, and medical devices will make health care more expensive.  The huge increase in paperwork for the benefit of the many government bureaucrats who will be looking over doctor's shoulders will also drive up costs.  The government requirements that more and more procedures and specialist's costs be covered in plans, the path most state interference on approving insurance has followed, will drive up costs.  Doctors, beaten down, will leave their practices.  The demand for health care will go up at first and the number of doctors will drop.  Either supply and demand will be honored with prices going up or health care quality must go down even more than it would otherwise under ObamaCare.  As the costs for health insurance go up, more and more healthy people will go without insurance, even at the cost of paying the uninsured tax.  Thus the number of people uninsured will go up rapidly.  The end result of the political deception will be higher costs and fewer covered, not to mention a great decrease in health care quality.

• Obama says we must stop poisoning the planet by producing CO2 by using fossil fuels, stop global warming, achieve energy independence, and create green jobs so the economy will go.  All deception once again. CO2 is nothing but beneficial to plants, which are beneficial to humans.  Global warming or cooling is very predominantly due to natural forces over which we have no control.  Some global warming is actually beneficial to humans, plants, and animals, but we seem to be in a cooling cycle now whether we wish to be or not.  The path to energy independence is blocked by reality and will not be achieved.  But, what we can and should do is develop and encourage a great multiplicity of energy sources all over the world.  By doing this, our increased future options will provide more access to energy at lower prices than if we take Obama's restrictive approach with a huge taxpayer funded gamble on solar and wind power, his policy of allowing virtually no exploration and drilling for oil and gas in the U.S., his attempt to put coal out of business, and his failure to remove roadblocks to nuclear power.  The claim that he will create more jobs in green energy than will be lost due to restricting coal, oil, and gasoline use fails entirely to understand basic economics.  First, the solar and wind power industries are heavily dependent upon subsidies and mandates for staying in business and even so, many are failing.  Those subsidies are based directly upon taxes, which cause businesses to have higher operational costs and hire fewer people, while consumers have less to spend on non-energy purchases.  The mandates do the same by forcing higher energy costs on everyone.  Meanwhile, the jobs of those in the coal industry, the oil industry, the mining equipment, the railroads that transport coal, shipping companies that carry coal overseas, oil drillers, oil and gas pipelines, and many another industry will lose jobs as fossil fuel use is discouraged by Obama.  Wind and solar will not replace these lost jobs.  No way!

• Obama claims to favor the working man.  Yet he is mandating that companies must use union labor for many government contracts, thereby forcing the working man to pay higher taxes or higher prices to cover the higher costs of government.   Obama wants to bring on union card check, which will deprive the working man of a secret ballot to determine whether his work relationship will be between him and his employer or between him and a socialist labor union.  The working man in the private sector has figured out that being in a union means bowing to socialist labor bosses; paying union dues, a good part of which will go to socialist politicians; losing his self-respect by doing his job well; and harming his company, which will hurt his future.  This is why the working man is not joining the desperate unions anymore in the private sector under secret balloting elections.  This is why the labor unions want to end the secret ballot and put their goons to more effectively intimidating workers into checking cards.  But, Obama would try to deceive us with an act claiming to be about employee freedom.  Ha!!!

• Obama says he wants to make education reforms.  What he wants is more power for the federal government over education and students.  The only really useful reform would be to break the power of the socialist teachers unions in government-run schools and privatize education.  Obama has signed on for some minor improvements, but he has also failed to fundamentally sign on to what is most essentially needed.  He is also bent upon using the schools to further indoctrinate children in socialism and service to the government and those who are downtrodden or victims.  He is using the schools to channel children into his favored charities and into the Democrat Party.

• Obama took an oath to preserve, protect, and defend the U.S. Constitution.  Yet, he gave a radio interview a few years back in Chicago in which he acknowledged that the Constitution did not allow the kind of income redistribution he wanted.  Despite this, he is happy to ignore the highly limited power restrictions of the Constitution and madly redistribute income and wealth.

• Again, despite his oath to honor the Constitution, Obama is doing everything he can to subject Americans to the rulings of various bodies of foreign countries who have no regard for the basic rights of the individual, let alone all of the individual rights our Constitution recognizes and makes it its purpose to protect.

The primary purpose of Obama's life has clearly been to become a master deceiver.  He is a magician-level politician.  Despite this, he has come off the blocks so fast in trying to achieve the more important goals of his socialist agenda that the American People are beginning to see through his magic and his deceptions.  Some see this very clearly now.  I hope enough will see before the 2010 elections that we will greatly reduce the power of the Democrats, his very socialist henchmen, in the Congress and at least stop most of his legislative program in its tracks.  He will still be able to do great harm through regulatory powers and in foreign policy and defense issues.  He will also be able to veto any strong efforts to repeal the great harm he and the Democrat Congress will do between now and 2010.

We must throw him out in 2012 and achieve Republican majorities in both houses of Congress.  I recognize that usually less government mischief is done when one house of Congress is controlled by each party, but in this case, we must actually roll back some very bad legislation, as opposed to the usual advantage of stasis.  We must turn back the clock on socialism.  To do that, the Republicans will have to control the presidency and both houses of Congress for at least 2 years.  They will also have to have a clear understanding of why the American People gave them such power and a goodly concern for the fact that we are watching over their shoulders a lot more carefully than we usually do.

Revival of the Labor Unions

In 1983, 20.1% of the workforce was unionized, which was already way down from the almost 36% of the workforce unionized in 1945. After steady decreases, by 2006 union membership fell to a minimum of 12%, but the first increase since WWII occurred in 2007 to 12.1% and then again in 2008 to 12.4%. The union membership increases have mostly been in the service industry and government workers areas, while the membership in manufacturing has been in decline. This increased membership has also been disproportionately in the West Coast states. In California, 16.7% of the workforce is unionized. Unions added 428,000 new members in 2008.

The unions have also been pushing their political agenda very strongly. According to the 7 September 2009 Washington Times, the AFL-CIO says it made 70 million phone calls, mailed 57 million election alerts, distributed 27 million fliers in the workplace, and knocked on 10 million doors to help Obama and the Democrats in the 2008 elections. Labor unions ran 11 of the 20 biggest non-party political action committees (PACs) during the 2007-2008 election cycle. These 11 labor union PACs spent $225 million, almost entirely for Obama and Democrats. The unions accounted for 18 of the top 20 Democrat candidate-supporting PACs

Union members massively voted for Obama also. 60% voted for Obama and only 37% voted for McCain. McCain carried the vote of white men by a 16% margin, but Obama had a margin of 18% among white male union members. McCain had a 9% lead among veterans overall, but Obama had a 25% lead among union member veterans. Among gun-owners, McCain led by a 25% margin, but gun-owning union members supported Obama with a 12% margin. Among white males not having a four-year college degree, Obama won only 43% of the non-union household vote, but in union households he won 60% of the votes. So, clearly, the unions were able to deliver the votes of their members.

Card check is the union #1 priority from the hugely indebted Obama administration and the Democrat Congress. Their #2 priority is health insurance reform with a strong public option. They have made it very clear that they will not tolerate a health reform plan without the public option. So far, the Democrats have not been able to gather the 60 votes they would need in the Senate to get either bill passed. The unions are very frustrated.

But, the unions have been given some goodies since Obama usurped the presidency. Obama made Wilma Liebman chairman of the National Labor Relations Board. She was once a lawyer for the Teamster's Union. He appointed the very socialist Hilda L. Solis, a California Congresswoman and the daughter of two union members, to be Secretary of the Labor Department. She is hiring 700 investigators to enforce labor regulations.

The first bill Obama signed was the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which makes it easier for workers to sue employers for wage discrimination. The unions backed this. He issued an executive order requiring federal contractors to display notices telling workers they have the right to unionize. The United Auto Workers Union retiree health trust was given 17.5% of GM and 55% of Chrysler after Obama shafted the creditors who by law take precedence in bankruptcies. The unions also wanted the $33 billion expansion of the State Children's Health Insurance Program that Obama signed.

The stimulus bill increased and extended unemployment benefits. It put $600 million into job training for those who lost jobs due to foreign trade. [How will they ever figure out who that is?] The $7.2 billion to expand broadband was a boon to the Communications Workers of America. The unions liked the 'Buy American' provision in the stimulus bill. The teachers and their unions were happy with the $40 billion in new spending on education in the stimulus bill.

Obama has given the unions as much as he can, except on one issue. His $4.35 billion Race to the Top initiative out of the Department of Education has displeased the National Education Association, the largest teachers union that gave $11.5 million to the Democrats in the last election cycle. They do not like this competitive grant program which they think favors charter schools. The Democrats owe more to the smaller American Federation of Teachers, which contributed $21 million, making them the #3 contributing union.

The Service Employees International Union, which has many health services workers in it, is by far the biggest donor to the Democrats at $71.0 million and has been turning out its members to pack stacked town hall meetings on health care reform. The #2 donor union was the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees at $33.0 million. The top three unions with government employee members gave a total of $65.5 million. It is hardly surprising that the unions dependent upon government workers would strongly support the party more committed to growing the public sector, while eviscerating the private sector.

Employee Free Choice Act Revisited

The union benefactors of Obama and the socialist Democrat Party want nothing more than passage of the Employee Free Choice Act, also known as Card Check. Opposition to this tauntingly misnamed legislation has been strong enough that it appears unlikely to pass without some compromised revision. As written, not only is secret ballot voting by employees no longer required or even likely to occur in most cases, but there is an important requirement that any failures of the union and company management to come to an agreement on a union labor contract will be settled by a federal arbitrator within 120 days of the union winning an election to represent the company employees.

There is now fear that this arbitration power will be used to force newly unionized workers to take on pension plan coverage with already existing union multi-employer pension plans. An editorial in the Washington Examiner discusses this. It gives some very interesting information on how badly funded these pension plans are. It notes that:

Pensions for nearly half of the nation's 20 largest unions are classified as either "endangered" or in "critical" condition due to underfunding, according to federal actuarial reports. Pensions with less than 80 percent of the assets needed to cover present and projected liabilities are considered "endangered," while those below 65 percent are classified as "critical" under the Pension Protection Act of 2006. The average union pension has resources to cover only 62 percent of what is owed to participants, according to the government-backed Pension Benefit Guarantee Corp. (PBGC). Less than one in 160 workers is presently covered by a properly funded union pension plan. Failed pension plans are bailed out by the PBGC.

It appears that getting more union members into these underfunded pension plans is to be used to improve the likelihood that these critically underfunded pension plans will either be paid up by additional companies forced into them or by the taxpayers through the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corp.

Union Card Check Bill Will Increase Unemployment

The infamous Employee Free Choice Act, known widely as card check, has now been re-introduced in both houses of Congress. This dastardly coercion of investors, employers, and employees via a process designed to eliminate secret ballot elections to determine whether employees want to be represented by a labor union in contract negotiations, will reduce the number of employed Americans. Anne Layne-Farrar has issued a study that claims that for every 3% increase in private sector union jobs brought on by card check, the next year's unemployed rate will rise by 1%. This is a decrease of about 1.5 million jobs.

Union Representation Card Check Legislation

Labor unions are doing very well in the public sector, where they have been very successful in organizing government workers. In the private sector, they are in deep trouble. In the 1950s they had 35% of private sector workers organized, but now they have only 7% in the private sector. Consequently, they have become desperate to find a way to improve their numbers in the private sector. The card check legislation, which was passed by the House in 2007, but defeated in the Senate, is once again Labor's number one lobbying priority.

Presently, if a labor union persuades 30% of the non-management employees of a company to check a card saying they are interested in labor union representation, the company must either accept the union as the sole bargaining agent of all of its non-management employees or call for a secret ballot election managed by the National Labor Relations Board of the Labor Department. Currently, labor unions win more than 50% of such secret ballot elections. This system is one full of injustice. First, it is wrong to require a company to negotiate labor contracts against its will with anyone or any organization. Company owners are not obliged to provide a job to anyone, except by their choice. When they are forced to do so, they have become slaves to their employees. Second, it is wrong to force those employees who do not wish to join a labor union to do so, unless the management freely chooses to make that a condition of employment, which they do have the right to do.

But this already union-skewed system is not enough for the labor unions. Clearly, workers have seen that unions are often very effective in destroying companies, which makes their continued employment very dubious. A very good illustration of this presently is the need for General Motors to go bankrupt, so an organization can emerge from its ruins which is not chained to many extremely uncompetitive concessions made to the labor unions. Many employees in the private sector have clearly understood the risks of joining a labor union and have chosen not to do so.

The union answer was to have Rep. George Miller (D of CA) introduce the so-called Employee Free Choice Act once again, which in the best tradition of Congress is anything but what its title suggests. This is more commonly called the card check legislation. It will require a company to recognize a union as the sole bargaining representation of all of its employees if 50% of them check off a card saying they want union representation. A union may be forced upon a company and those employees who do not want union representation even before they know that an attempt is being made to organize the workers of the company. There may never be an opportunity for the company and uninterested workers to make any counter arguments. It is also very clear that union organizers can put very great pressure on the last few employees they need to reach the 50% critical number for unionization. The secret ballot need no longer stand in their way.

This process of unionization is so easy that it can be readily applied to very small companies, which will be especially vulnerable to being taken over before they even know they are under attack. There is nothing to prevent the unionization of even very small Mom and Pop businesses. These businesses do not have the legal resources to contend with the unions. These small-time entrepreneurs have often suffered through years of personal privation to build a stable company and to get to the point where they could hire a few employees. In many cases, the lowest paid employee in such a company may be the founder of the company, who is still foregoing salary income in order to build his business. Yet, this struggling owner/manager is now forced to employ employees backed by hordes of lawyers from the union and to pay them still greater multiples of pay and benefits relative to his own pay. He may be providing them with health benefits already, which law does not allow him to provide for himself.

This proposed legislation further imposes the requirement that the company must enter into negotiations with the union within 10 days of the union getting the 50% check-offs needed. Then if no agreement is reached between the company and the union within 120 days, the government provides an arbitrator who will dictate the wages and benefits the company will provide the workers for a two-year contract. Given that the Labor Department will designate the arbitrator and given its generally pro-labor union stance, you can see why labor unions have written these provisions into the bill.

Meanwhile, a February 2007 McLaughlin Associates poll of 1000 respondents found that 79% opposed this bill and only 14% were in for it. Among just Democrats, 78% opposed the bill and 16% were for it. A 2004 Zogby poll found that 78% of union workers oppose any measure that denies them a secret ballot vote on union representation. Despite this opposition by voters, the Democrat Party obligation to the labor unions is so great that the Employee Free Choice Act, or abomination, may well pass Congress when it is considered soon. President Obama voted for it when it failed to pass the Senate last time and swore during the election that he would sign it into law as President.

Soon not only GM and U.S. Steel will be having difficulties being competitive, but your corner independently owned gas station and the local diner will be struggling even harder than normally to stay in business. Small business owners who relished doing it their way instead of opting for the safety and easier life of working for a large company, will find themselves slaves to a labor union. What a life!