The post Obama America

Three weeks before the election it appears Romney has gained the momentum and Obama is starting to panic.  It is time for some "hail Mary" disclosures and the like from the Obama campaign.  Should Obama lose, and lose decisively as is possible based where we are now, it is timel to speculate on what could happen after the election.  Who would be the winners and losers in a Romney administration. The biggest losers should be the MSM for its complicity in bringing us Obama in the first place and doing its best to keep us misinformed after he was elected.  One has to feel for those who have depended exclusively on the MSM for their news over the years because  they have been ill-served.  Likely the MSM will shrink rapidly in influence after Obama's defeat for, among other reasons, the country will get back on track under a pro business administration, and jobs will begin to materialize.  Clearly, and in the knick of time, the unions, especially the government employees unions, will take a big hit.  Sweetheart retirement deals will be revisited and scaled down and collective bargaining rights will be challenged and hopefully rolled back.  Right to work laws should be passed in many states in order for them to compete with states not burdened with closed shop laws.  Teachers unions in particular should be reigned in or simply abolished in order to put in place education reforms necessary to keep American workers competitive in the global marketplace.  Government jobs at all levels should be eliminated, probably as many as 1/3d to 1/2 of the current number and of course many of the programs should go the way of the dodo bird as well.  In short, government must be scaled back in order to free up the private sector which is the only place productive, wealth generating jobs are created.  The statist and collectivist members of Congress should take a big hit too, as their influence will wane in an economy that is expanding and creating jobs.

Detroit revisited

Occasionally, very occasionally, the LATimes produces good work  There was the series a couple of years ago about the failed hospital in south L.A., and now a piece on the California Teachers Association and its lobbyist Nunoz.  If one wants to know the depth and seriousness of the economic woes in California, one needs go no further than this article..  It tells it all.  What we have here is Detroit revisited, and we will, in due course, have the same end result.  Unions and their excessive demands caused Detroit's ultimate demise.  Yes, there was the issue of the failure of management to deal with the unions in an effective way, a fact that cannot be overlooked.  But, in the end, the compulsion of unions to keep bringing home the bacon for their members by always increasing wages and benefits, and by always adding to restrictive workplace rules and regulations, is the overriding reason Detroit shrank in population from several millions to its current 400,000,  from a thriving metropolis to a basket case, failed city that is bankrupt.

Education nightmare

Here is one and here is a second article from the WSJ that speak to the public school education problem in the US and in the EU's poorest country, Portugal.  It is clear from both of these articles that unions are at the root of underperforming schools in both countries.  The interview with Ms Weingarten, head of the NEA union, puts on full display the intransigence and self serving nature of US teachers unions. It also points out the willingness of union leaders to obfuscate, distort facts, stonewall evidence, and do what liberals and union leaders do best, lie to further their own interests. MS Weingarten's answers to legitimate questions are unhelpful and nothing short of disgraceful.  In the case of Portugal one sees the result of generations of official indifference to education and the stultifying effect of unions on the need for reform.  After reading these two articles one is left with a sense of frustration and near despair.  How is it possible in a socialized/unionized environment, where union leaders and state bureaucrats are resistant to any reform, to effect the necessary changes to improve and even save a failing system?  In the case of the US the solution is educating the public about the causes of failing schools and thereby provoking outrage and change.  But how likely is that to occur given the pro union, liberal media?  In the case of Portugal it's a matter of survival.  Portugal will either reform and educate its populace or it will sink to the status of one of its African colonies.