By Ed O’Keefe: September 22
The federal government pays out millions of dollars to dead people each year — including deceased retired federal workers, according to a new report.
In the past five years, the Office of Personnel Management has made more than $601 million in benefits payments to deceased federal annuitants, according to the agency’s inspector general. Total annual payouts range between $100 million and $150 million.
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Collective bargaining on a broad scale is more similar to an antitrust violation than to a civil liberty.
By Robert Barro
How ironic that Wisconsin has become ground zero for the battle between taxpayers and public- employee labor unions. Wisconsin was the first state to allow collective bargaining for government workers (in 1959), following a tradition where it was the first to introduce a personal income tax (in 1911, before the introduction of the current form of individual income tax in 1913 by the federal government).
Labor unions like to portray collective bargaining as a basic civil liberty, akin to the freedoms of speech, press, assembly and religion. For a teachers union, collective bargaining means that suppliers of teacher services to all public school systems in a state—or even across states—can collude with regard to acceptable wages, benefits and working conditions. An analogy for business would be for all providers of airline transportation to assemble to fix ticket prices, capacity and so on. From this perspective, collective bargaining on a broad scale is more similar to an antitrust violation than to a civil liberty.
In fact, labor unions were subject to U.S. antitrust laws in the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890, which was first applied in 1894 to the American Railway Union. However, organized labor managed to obtain exemption from federal antitrust laws in subsequent legislation, notably the Clayton Antitrust Act of 1914 and the National Labor Relations Act of 1935.
Remarkably, labor unions are not only immune from antitrust laws but can also negotiate a “union shop,” which requires nonunion employees to join the union or pay nearly equivalent dues. Somehow, despite many attempts, organized labor has lacked the political power to repeal the key portion of the 1947 Taft Hartley Act that allowed states to pass right-to-work laws, which now prohibit the union shop in 22 states. From the standpoint of civil liberties, the individual right to work—without being forced to join a union or pay dues—has a much better claim than collective bargaining. (Not to mention that “right to work” has a much more pleasant, liberal sound than “collective bargaining.”) The push for right-to-work laws, which haven’t been enacted anywhere but Oklahoma over the last 20 years, seems about to take off.
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By KEN THOMAS – The Associated Press
Monday, November 1, 2010; 1:00 PM
WASHINGTON — The Federal Trade Commission is being asked to explain why the rental car industry shouldn’t have to live by the same rule that requires auto dealers to fix vehicles under recall notice before they can be sold.
Two consumer groups have asked the FTC to force the country’s largest rental company, Enterprise Holdings Inc., to fix vehicles under recall before renting them out. Enterprise Holdings is the parent company of rental car companies Enterprise, National and Alamo.
Safety groups say most business travelers or those renting cars for long trips don’t know whether the vehicle they pick up at the rental lot has been the subject of a recall, posing a potential safety threat. The issue has taken on more significance this year following a series of safety recalls by Toyota Motor Co. and several large recalls involving other automakers.
Congress could get involved next year.
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By David A. Fahrenthold – Wednesday, May 26, 2010
Inspectors with the Minerals Management Service — charged with enforcing safety and environmental rules on offshore rigs — routinely took gifts from the companies they were supposed to be policing, including hunting trips, college football tickets and meals, according to a new report.
The report, released Tuesday by the Interior Department’s inspector general, does not directly relate to the Deepwater Horizon oil rig, which sank after an explosion April 20 and set off a massive spill in the Gulf of Mexico. It details misconduct in the service’s Lake Charles, La., office, which oversaw a different region of the gulf, and covers up to 2008, before the problem well was approved.
But the report adds to a growing portrait of the Minerals Management Service as corrupted by industry: Many inspectors, the inspector general found, were already friends with industry officials. Some had worked in the oil and gas business before their stint in government, and would again. One official inspected four platforms owned by one company at the same time he was negotiating for a job at that firm.
The result, the report found, was regulation that often looked less than rigorous. One confidential source, it said, told investigators that service inspectors let the oil and gas companies fill out their own inspection forms — in pencil. Then an inspector would trace over their writing in ink.
“Of greatest concern to me is the environment in which these inspectors operate — particularly the ease with which they move between industry and government,” Mary L. Kendall, the Interior Department’s acting inspector general, said in a cover letter to Interior Secretary Ken Salazar.
Tags: All About the Money·Disillusioned Government·Empty Promises·Government Incompetence·Greed·Misuse of Power·Obama-Nation·Something To Hide
