Weighing in about 2,500 pages shorter than the ObamaCare monstrosity, the Congressional bill to repeal ObamaCare – called the Repealing the Job-Killing Health Care Law Act – is 2 pages long and is posted for public viewing already – a week before the vote.
Pretty catchy name …
Punch line: Private-sector union workers are beginning to notice that their job prospects are at risk from public-employee union contracts
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Excerpts from WSJ: Labor’s Coming Class War, Jan. 4, 2011
Some may be missing the first stirrings of a true American class war: between workers in government unions and their union counterparts in the private sector.
In this recession, for example, construction workers are suffering from unemployment levels roughly double the national rate. They are relearning, the hard way, that without a growing economy, all the labor-friendly laws and regulations in the world won’t keep them working.
What’s more, “blue-collar union workers are beginning to appreciate that the generous pensions and health benefits going to their counterparts in state and local government are coming out of their pockets … they are beginning to understand the dysfunctional relationship between collective bargaining for government employees and their own job prospects.”
In some ways, this new appreciation for the private sector is simply back to the future. FDR, for example, warned in 1937 that collective bargaining “cannot be transplanted into the public service.”
These days the two types of worker inhabit two very different worlds.
In the private sector, union workers increasingly pay for more of their own health care, and they have defined contribution pension plans such as 401(k)s. In this they have something fundamental in common even with the fat cats on Wall Street: Both need their companies to succeed.
By contrast, government unions use their political clout to elect those who set their pay: the politicians.
In exchange, these unions are rewarded with contracts whose pension and health-care provisions now threaten many municipalities and states with bankruptcy.
In response to the crisis, government unions demand more and higher taxes. Which of course makes people who have money less inclined to look to those states to make the investments that create jobs for, say, iron workers, electricians and construction workers.
Full article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704111504576060092978223976.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop
TakeAway: Some of today’s most common products became hits because their manufacturers, or in many cases ordinary consumers, noticed unplanned uses for them.
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Excerpted from Forbes, “Inventions That Were Accidents” By Elaine Wong, December 23, 2010
They say that necessity is the mother of invention. But sometimes pure chance is.
Edit by AMW
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Full Article:
http://www.forbes.com/2010/12/23/ten-accidental-inventions-leadership-cmo-network-common.html
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The Homa Files 