| Welcome to The New Coffee Room. We hope you enjoy your visit. You're currently viewing our forum as a guest. This means you are limited to certain areas of the board and there are some features you can't use. If you join our community, you'll be able to access member-only sections, and use many member-only features such as customizing your profile, sending personal messages, and voting in polls. Registration is simple, fast, and completely free. Join our community! If you're already a member please log in to your account to access all of our features: |
| Unions; could they be an unlikely saviour? | |
|---|---|
| Tweet Topic Started: Apr 5 2009, 10:03 AM (74 Views) | |
| 1hp | Apr 5 2009, 10:03 AM Post #1 |
|
Fulla-Carp
|
By Chris Reed - San Diego Union Tribune A most unlikely savior from AB 32's coming assault Can anyone rescue California's economy from the slow-motion suicide that will result from AB 32's forced move to much more expensive sources of energy? I used to be skeptical, given the hammerlock that green true believers have on the state Democratic Party. I'm not as skeptical anymore. Our savior just might be unions, believe it or not. The fact is private unions want jobs, so they want a healthy economy. Public sector unions want lots of revenue, which in taxphobic California means a healthy economy. Now that the economy is in a huge slide, unions need to be more pragmatic than ever about the policies been foisted on the state by their environmentalist allies. This isn't just me blathering. Consider the recent L.A. Times story about Brian D'Arcy, leader of the lnternational Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 18. He ridicules L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's push to have 20 percent of the L.A. Department of Water and Power power comes from wind and solar power and other renewable resources by 2010. "'Environmental leadership' isn't meeting some artificial deadline by any means necessary," he told the Times. "Environmental leadership is actually creating economic development while cleaning the air where you live, putting people to work and linking the environment to it. That's not really what's going on, if you ask me." The barely hidden truth about the larger green movement, however, is that economic development just isn't a priority. And so we see proposals like AB 32, which reflect a worldview that it's no big deal to make California's businesses bear unique costs, because who really cares if those businessess succeed or fail anyways? Well, unions do. They benefit from growth. At some point, this bottom-line fact inevitably will lead to a fight between greens and unions for primacy in the Democratic Party -- and in California, at least, my money's on the unions. They have more money, more savvy and much more of a readiness to play hardball. Speak up, Brian D'Arcys of the world. Rescue us from the purveyors of the Green Kool-Aid. One also has to wonder at the Federal level - will the Unions start fighting back. The UAW has become the scapegoat of the auto industry, more truckers from Mexico are being allowed to drive further into the US, etc..... |
| There are 10 kinds of people in this world, those that understand binary and................ | |
![]() |
|
| « Previous Topic · The New Coffee Room · Next Topic » |






4:37 PM Jul 10