Walter Russell Mead notes [1]:
Scott Walker’s union battles may be getting all the headlines at the moment, but far away in the Empire State a very different governor is getting into a battle of his own with the unions. Although Andrew Cuomo’s union fights have not been the sort of cage match as Gov Walker’s in Wisconsin, they’ve been pretty serious, especially for a state known for its liberal, pro-union politics. Cuomo’s early struggles involved reducing benefits for public sector unions and pushing for a tougher teacher evaluation process. The latest round of the union fight concerns delegate seats at September’s DNC meeting in Charlotte.
Politico [2] reports that during the last week, Cuomo removed the leaders of four of New York’s largest public-sector unions from their seats at the convention. Although three of the leaders were eventually reinstated, it was only after considerable wrangling by the unions and frantic calls to Cuomo’s office. Although the Governor denies any motive that at the very least, Cuomo is sending a message to the unions that he will be more difficult to work with than previous Democratic governors.
Hmmm. This seems to me a reaction to the political reality that unions are very unpopular with voters, particularly public sector unions. Mead thinks so, as well.But as Mead points out this reaction of Cuomo based on nothing more than a power grab:
Ever since Teddy Roosevelt and FDR, governors of New York have had presidential ambitions—Dewey, Rockefeller (who made it to Veep), Averill Harriman and Andrew Cuomo’s father all angled for the nation’s top job during their political careers.
This Cuomo is likely no exception, and significantly, he seems to think that a record of standing up to public sector unions might boost his national ambitions. Looking at Hilary Clinton’s sky high popularity ratings, Cuomo may be thinking that the Democratic center could be the path to bigger things.
But notice the difference, here. Whereas the Lamestream media has been trumpeting the anti-union message of Walker in it’s attempt to bolster the failing effort to have him removed, they’ve said hardly anything at all, about Cuomo being equally realistic about Unions and the damage they do.
Apparently word has gone out from Detroit on just how damaging unions can be. Investor’s Business Daily: [3]
Poor Detroit. It hasn’t had any good news for decades, and now, despite a $77 billion bailout of the auto industry, its population continues to implode. The No. 1 reason: the United Auto Workers union.
Census data released Tuesday show Detroit’s population has plunged 25% since 2000 to just 713,777 souls – the same as 100 years ago, before the auto industry’s heyday. As recently as the 1970s, Detroit had 1.8 million people.
What’s happening is no secret: Detroiters are fleeing an economic disaster, the irreversible decline of the Big Three automakers.
In his now-famous Super Bowl commercial for Chrysler, rapper Eminem drives up to a theater in a sleek new 200 model and says, “This is the Motor City. And this is what we do.” But, sadly, that’s no longer the case. Detroit’s decline has been shocking.
Sure, a lot of the blame goes to a generation of bad management. But the main reason for Detroit’s decline is the greed of the industry’s main union, the UAW, which priced the Big Three out of the market.
Well, let’s be fair to the UAW, and for that matter unions in general here. They’re only part of the reason. The other part is liberalism.. the growth of government intrusion. That’s a problem that Walker has been quite successful in attacking, but Cuomo, will not even make the attempt. Which, to my mind, is precisely why the media a tax walker and says nothing whatsoever about Andrew Cuomo.
Let’s take a historical perspective, here. If you want to see what happened to Detroit’s auto industry, one need only look at the historical perspective of the passenger railroad industry in this country. It seems a strange parallel, but parallel it is as you’ll see.
[4]Consider the linkage; we had a huge, and mildly profitable, passenger railroad industry in these United States years ago. Unionization, and over regulation by government, placed a large burden on the railroad companies. So large was that burden, in fact, that the railroad industry started petitioning government to not run particular routes anymore. The government in its wisdom decided that there were too many people who depended on the railroads for their transportation. As such they denied the railroad companies that permission to cut costs by cutting lines. As such the railroad industry went under. Union imposed operating costs, government imposed operating costs, meant low profits, and indeed huge losses. When the government and the unions finally killed off the golden goose, the government stepped in with Amtrak who has never turned dime one, in total, and has invariably been a huge burden on the American taxpayer.
So what is with the American auto industry. So it soon will be with the American trucking industry. The growth of government, the unrealistic demands of unions, combined to make capitalism impossible.
The question becomes do we have anybody capable of turning that around on our political horizon?