Evangelicals: Jesus votes Republican

     "What’s at stake in the 2020 election? . . .  Dive into the glaring differences between the two party platforms and what they mean for biblical values. Learn why Donald Trump is right for America and how the destiny of America is riding on this election!"

           Kenneth Copeland ministries:  Why Donald Trump is Right for America

White Evangelical Christians chose Trump.

Church membership falls below 50% for the first time.

Church membership began declining after 1970. That was the psychological anchor for America-great-again era. It was an overwhelmingly White and Christian-by-default country. The changes in demographics and attitudes of the era bringing greater integration of Blacks and women and people from Asia and Latin America had just begun. There was a plateau period in which three-quarters of Americans attended church. No politician dared not be a churchgoer. 

Then it changed: 

The change is across all demographics, but especially in the east and west regions, especially Catholics, especially Democrats, especially the unmarried. There is a sorting of Americans generally congruent with the sorting of the key demographics of the two parties, Democrats trending faster against church-going. There is an exception with college/non-college.  It confounds what would otherwise be a simple and predictable trend that Democratic-oriented groups are being turned off religion, the thesis of Charlie Sykes. It is a reasonable position to take.

Sykes, for twenty years a conservative talk radio host, is a member of what is left of the traditional, conservative, rule-of-law Reagan-type Republican Party. That leads him to be anti-Trump, who he considers a con man's perversion of traditional Republican policies and values. He attributed the fall-off in church membership in part to the consequential choice that White Evangelical Protestant leaders made to link their religion to a political party. They idolize Trump. The brands merged, to Christianity's loss. The Bulwark

Click: 2 minutes

He cited the popular televangelist, Kenneth Copeland, as a visible brand ambassador for Christianity, and a turnoff for reasonable people. Copeland, in the name of Jesus, "executes judgement on COVID-19" and casts it out. Copeland looks outlandish to people unfamiliar with this preaching style.

Both before and after the November election Copeland and other prominent Evangelical ministers were unabashed in support for Trump. After the election a bit of video went viral as Copeland said, "Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. . . . " for thirty seconds at the proposition that Joe Biden won the election. In December 2020 he was saying that the devil hoped to take office in January.

 "The wisdom of God has been functioning in Donald John Trump and that's the reason they want him out of there so bad. He's been draining the swamp. . ..The spirit of the devil--there are people that follow him all the time. He came to steal, to kill, and to destroy. He came to steal this election so he can continue to kill babies and destroy the youth of this nation."

Evangelicals linked religion to Trump. Trump linked Trump-ism to religion. They are co-branded now. Even in a calm interview-type discussion, like this one dated just prior to the November election, the premise is that God blesses Republicans. The part I am quoting here comes from minute 18 and after.

https://www.kcm.org/watch/tv-broadhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSIrQBGfUtwcast/why-donald-trump-right-america?type=371&page=1

 

"Donald Trump is an outsider. He's a businessman. He sees that regulations and all these things hold back businesses. . .. He's a great leader. There are lots and lots of reasons to like Donald Trump. Him not being afraid of the establishment. Him not being afraid of political correctness. All of those are very important reasons to vote for him. 

But as Christians, it's even more. The moral issues. It's things like life, the sanctity of marriage. It also goes with honesty, character throughout the culture. Popular entertainment and the internet and everything else is filthy, we don't talk about it anymore in the church. There's just lots of things besides those two issues that Christians need to be concerned about. The biggest one, of course, is our religious liberty. . .. We have freedom of religion. Now we see with this COVID-19 you have governors and mayors saying the church isn't essential. . ..Most of them are hostile to the Gospel. They think people like us are dangerous. . .. We see what they want to do if the other side gets in. This legislation: The Equality Act  [crosstalk: "its atrocious."] which will absolutely take away our religious liberties, actually make us persecuted. . .. We have got to re-elect this president. . .. If they get into power it's game over. We might as well pack up and go home. The fact is there is no 'new world' for us to go to like the Europeans 300 years ago. . .. We have turned the culture over to the other side. They have flipped everything around. Good being evil and evil being good. We have seen it with our own eyes.

The language and tone of desperation helps explain the post-election denial of the election loss by Trump's strongest supporters. This wasn't just an election where a loss meant one comes back next cycle to try again. This was "game over." Better to overthrow an election than to allow the devil to run the country.

It is objectively true that churchgoing is in decline. The response is both a narrowing of the base and making alliances with rising political movements. Jesus apparently has a position on business regulation and COVID mitigation guidelines. Jesus apparently likes Trump's positions on immigration, health care, marriage, and the coarseness of the internet.

The co-branding of Evangelical Christianity and Trump-style Republican populism hurts and limits both brands. Trump is an awkward ambassador of Christian virtues because he exemplifies well the values of the tribal warrior cultures Jesus rejected. Evangelical ministers like Copeland have their enthusiasts, but they put off people who aren't in the evangelical loop and subculture.

To outsiders--and maybe to some insiders--Evangelical Christians look idolatrous in their support for Trump. And silly. 

The guillotines are out.

     "Peter, this is French Revolution stuff. The left is eating its own. You need to be careful. Everyone needs to be careful."

               Guest Post: Anonymous

I had warned readers that a jury might find Derek Chauvin "not guilty." 

I got a warning in return. Don't dare suggest the possibility a reasonable, conscientious juror could consider Chauvin not guilty of a race-motivated homicide. 

On Saturday I wrote that the jurors might not convict the police officer whose knee was on the neck of George Floyd. A mid-career lawyer sent me the Guest Post below. It was less about the merits of the case than it was about the woke, politically engaged left. 

She said she thought she was a reliable liberal. She warned me about the Twitter mob. She had received some early warnings within her own workplace, a law firm that does substantial civil rights work. She is an associate on partner track. She warned that anything that did not seem sufficiently point-of-the-spear "woke" might garner accusations of closet racism and un-raised consciousness from young, very vigilant lawyers and staff. Their opinions matter because senior partners in her firm--and others like it--are loath to disagree or dismiss their comments lest they, too, face accusations. My correspondent says everyone walks on eggshells. What was commonplace to think and say five years ago will today get you knocked off partner track, or outright fired. Worse, you carry a stink that wrecks your career: Fired for being a racist. "You don't get over that," my correspondent said.

"Please don't use my name," she asked. "The guillotines are for us."

Guest Post by Anonymous

As a practicing attorney on the East Coast with substantial felony public defender experience, I can only post this anonymously due to the serious risks of cancel culture. It no longer makes any difference what a person's career or background has been in defending the oppressed, a single transgression of what we are all expected to say can destroy a career.  We are expected to say that it is 100% clear that the police officer who knelt on Mr. Floyd's neck is guilty of second degree murder and that only racist jurors in an institutionally racist criminal justice system could account for any verdict other than a guilty verdict for second degree murder. We are expected to proclaim that a verdict of only third degree murder, or worse second degree manslaughter, would be irrefutable evidence of a racist system. I note that one of your readers has already suggested that street violence might be appropriate if the officer is not convicted. 

However, most experienced criminal defenders and prosecutors believe that the case against the police officer is obviously weak from the publicly available evidence for the reasons you posted, and that the chances of the police officer getting a fair trial are very unlikely. The chances of a hung jury by one or two holdout jurors looms large. A complete acquittal seems almost impossible no matter the evidence. Of course, the only reason that the appeals court battle was waged by prosecutors over adding a third degree murder charge, called a "lesser included offense", is the belief by prosecutors that they don't have evidence beyond a reasonable doubt that the officer intentionally caused Mr. Floyd's death. Their hope is that juror holdouts on second degree murder can be pressured to at least convict on that lesser charge if for no reason other than to prevent Minneapolis from being burned down. The "lesser included offense" of second degree manslaughter is the prosecution's desperation card if they can't get the jury to conclude the officer acted "intentionally" to cause death. If there is just a manslaughter conviction or a hung jury, it will almost certainly be the end of the careers of the judge and prosecutors. Their chances of passing the political scrutiny for promotion to elevated judgeships and prosecutorial jobs would be nil.

Trial by mob and conviction by Twitter are alive and well in America in 2021. However, there is nothing new about media mobs in America history driven by public outrage demanding punishment no matter what. Thankfully, there is such a small number of these celebrated cases that they don't present a significant threat to regular order in the criminal justice system, which regularly convicts a small number of innocent defendants, even sentences them to death. 90% of criminal defendants plead guilty because they are guilty. Furthermore, there is a safeguard built into the appellate process-- delay and review by judges who have already reached the highest levels of their profession. If this police officer is wrongly convicted he has a good chance of having that conviction overturned within a couple of years by the majority on the U.S. Supreme Court. By that time, the public passions of the moment will have been eclipsed by subsequent controversial police killings.   

What is new in American history is an electronic social media mob that can act instantaneously in passing judgments meting out severe career damage with little information beyond the tweets and posts they just read. In my world, I am expected to mimic a deeply held belief that the officer is guilty of intentional murder, before the trial even begins, and long before all the evidence is made public. What is new is the consensus that reasoned public debate based on the evidence is not just superfluous, but subversive.

Unions in America: An up close view from a Labor Lawyer

     "The law in this country has, with some exceptions, served as a tool to weaken unions and workers' power."

            Jonathan Walters

Labor unions are passé.  We hear a lot about the value of free markets in everything, including labor.

Freedom to compete. Freedom from regulation and constraints. Freedom to hire and fire. Freedom to switch employers, or have no employer. People consult. They have projects, not a job. It is the gig economy. The result is a utopia of greater productivity, lower prices, more goods and services, more independence, and everyone better off. Right?

Not really. People are financially insecure. The middle class is shrinking. Jobs are being automated away or have moved offshore. Workers turned populist and angry. Prices are low at Walmart, but their employees qualify for poverty benefits. Our democracy is in trouble.

Unions are in decline in the private sector, but they aren't dead, not yet. 

Unions allow labor to organize to negotiate with the employer as a group. That way workers can offer or withhold their service, exposing the value they bring. Worker cooperation and solidarity with one another seems old fashioned in the gig economy era. It seems "socialistic." It seems ungrateful to employers, who call their workers "associates" and "team members."  Employees and employers are partners, on the same side of the table--except when they are not. Employees are also vendors, selling a service. It is a negotiation, and therefore, a conflict. In a conflict, teamwork matters.

Every reader of this blog has seen some version of a Bruce Lee-style martial arts or swordplay movie. Several times over the course of the movie the hero will face multiple henchmen of the antagonist. The hero is badly outnumbered, but confronts the overwhelming force with confidence. Each opponent comes at the hero, one at a time, to be dispatched in a few seconds by the fighting wizardry of the hero. Together, of course, they would have overwhelmed the hero, but they did not fight as a group.

Unions organize workers. They need recruitment, leadership, and because the rules of unions are complex, an attorney. Jonathan Walters is a college classmate. He became a labor law attorney and has stayed with it for 45 years so far. He reads this blog and sent this comment to the recent posts. As he described himself, he is still working in the "trenches of class warfare." He has been active in the ABA's publications on Labor Law as well as the Philadelphia Bar Association's Labor Law Committee.

Guest Post by Jonathan Walters

Walters

Peter, you are quite correct in your analysis about the power dynamic.  People doing the work get paid when they have power to insist on it. The greatest power workers have is the unified ability to withhold their labor. In the U.S. there has been a long-time systematic effort by employers (I will use that term. I could say “the power structure”, “the bosses”, or even ”the ruling class” but let us use “employers” for now) to limit that power. You may remember that originally employers argued strikes were an anti-trust violation (remember the Danbury Hatters case) but the Sherman Anti-Trust Act specifically exempted labor.

However, certainly since the passage of the Norris-LaGuardia and Wagner Acts, there has been an ongoing trend towards limiting the ability of unions and workers to strike. A big impetus for this was the Second World War and the “no-strike” pledge. While there was some labor opposition (as enunciated by John L. Lewis of the Mineworkers), most of labor went along, especially the Communist-oriented unions and leadership, which played a greater role in the 1930s in labor organizing. They had their own political reasons for limiting strikes when these groups might otherwise have challenged a no-strike pledge. This developed a whole method of resolving workplace disputes without striking, i.e. labor arbitration. Over the past 80 years arbitration has really taken away the power of unions to disrupt work during the time when a collective bargaining agreement is in place.

In the 1930s, '40s and even early '50s, many unions could strike during the term of an agreement if work place issues were not resolved. The late Tony Mazzochi was a major force in Occupation Health & Safety, an officer of the Oil, Chemical & Atomic Workers (now part of the Steelworkers) and he was involved in the Karen Silkwood matter. To my mind he was one of the best union leaders I have ever met.  He once told me that when he worked at the Ford Plant in Mahwah, New Jersey that all workplace disputes were resolved in some fashion by the end of the day. Why? Because otherwise the UAW local there would strike.

But the law moved to the point where the existence of a grievance and arbitration clause in a contract means that a union is barred from striking during the term of the contract if the dispute is over a matter that is arguably governed by the grievance and arbitration procedure. Exhaustion of that can often take months. This lessened the power of workers.

Moreover, even what became illegal strikes, called “wildcat” strikes, which were not uncommon when I first began practicing in 1976, simply do not take place anymore. One of my first assignments as a junior associate was to go down to a union hall in Chester, Pennsylvania to tell the members of a shipbuilding local that their strike over imposition of a new attendance policy was illegal and they had to go back to work. There I was, shaking in my shoes in my nice new blue corduroy suit as people who had spent the past five hours not working and probably drinking began yelling at me. Eventually we got the matter worked out. That simply never occurs anymore. I do not think I have seen any of our clients engage in wildcat strikes since 1977 or 1978.

And strikes are not as common. The fact that employers can permanently replace (not fire, but permanently replace) lawful strikers has also had a negative impact. Workers don’t just have to worry about losing wages; they also have to worry about ever returning to work. Meanwhile, the employer is shut down or has to incur greater expenses while operating with either supervisors or replacements, whom I call scabs. See Jack London’s great description of a scab. I still feel that way.

I do a lot of work in the health care area representing the largest nurses’ union in Pennsylvania. Given the shortage of RNs and the cost of bringing in temporary nurse scabs, nurses have a bit more leverage. But what did Congress do as part of the deal to give health care workers rights under the National Labor Relations Act? Unions representing health care workers have to give 90-day notice of contract termination (as opposed to 60 days for unions representing workers outside the health care industry). They also must give earlier notice to Federal and state mediation agencies, and unique to health care, must give at least explicit 10-days notice of their intent to picket or strike. I certainly understand the logic of this, as well as the deal that was worked out (with Gerald Ford, I believe, in the White House) but obviously this takes away from the power of unions in that industry.

I leave you with verses from two songs that really explain what has happened. I believe the last verse of “Solidarity Forever,” the first stanza of which is still sung at some union conventions, goes “In our hands there lies a power greater than their hoarded gold, greater than their mighty armies magnified a thousand-fold, we shall fashion a new world from the ashes of the old, for the union makes us strong.” I think I am one of the few people that actually knows two or three portions of that song. That is something I thought of when I saw your point in your blog on Saturday about the power of workers when they withhold their labor.

The law in this country has, with some exceptions, served as a tool to weaken unions and workers' power. It is the opening line of one of the paragraphs of the Internationale, although I think it was added in this country. It goes something like “the law oppresses and tricks us. . . .”

Prediction: George Floyd verdict--Not Guilty.

 A jury might find Derek Chauvin Not Guilty

Open your mind. Consider it. Prepare yourself. 

We might be seeing the American system of justice working the way it is supposed to--with the defendant putting on a well-funded, well-lawyered defense.

Derek Chauvin was the police officer with his knee on the neck of George Floyd. The video showed the apparent slow suffocation of a man on his stomach, handcuffed, helplessly pleading for his life, and then dying before our eyes. It is not too soon for readers to do what jurors in that trial are being asked to do: Consider the case with a mind free of prejudice and to give the defendant the presumption of innocence.

The trial is unusual. More typically, the defendant has fewer resources for a defense. The defendant would face a series of charges, with each carrying a long sentence and the defendant is offered a deal to plead guilty. 

This one is going to trial. A jury might decide "not guilty."

1. The 15-person jury (12, plus three alternates) could find reasonable doubt that Chauvin killed George Floyd. George Floyd was a very sick man before the police came onto the scene. He had two powerful drugs--fentanyl and methamphetamine--in his system and people often die from that. Officer Chauvin appeared to be restraining Mr. Floyd with his knee. There is a plausible, non-criminal reason for that. Perhaps he was waiting for Mr. Floyd to settle down so he could be brought to jail or a hospital without thrashing around; he was being careful and compassionate, not murderous. 

The defense could argue the impassive expression on Chauvin was not indifference. It was stoic, experienced patience, waiting for arrestee's emotional outburst to end. 

What about the cries of "I can't breathe?" The defense can argue the fact that he could talk was proof positive that he could breathe, and was therefore OK. The arrestees talk of breathing might be considered by an experienced policeman to be drug-induced emotional panic. Perhaps the breathing arrestee was worried about not being able to breathe.

What was the officer's knee doing?  Medical experts will testify that the knee does not block breathing. It was on his neck, not his throat. Inexperienced viewers of the video could be excused for mis-understanding, but the policeman and the medical experts will confirm the same thing: The side of a neck is not the windpipe. The defense will argue the video exonerates the policeman for stopping breathing.

Lawyer: A tragic accident

Bottom line: The defense can argue George Floyd died because he was a walking time bomb, an obese man sky high on fentanyl and methamphetamine, who died while the officer was waiting for him to calm down enough to take him into a squad car safely.

Is it crazy to think this way?  My readers may disagree with it, but it isn't crazy. 

2. It takes a unanimous jury, and some people believe implausible things. People shape evidence to fit their frame, not the other way around.  Apparently a full majority of fully functioning adult Republicans insist wholesale fraud took place in the 2020 election took place and it justified overthrowing the election. Apparently at least 8.5% of the American population--one out of twelve--believes that Bill Gates is attempting to insert microchip controls into vaccines and that Hillary Clinton and other Democratic leaders had--or still has--a side-hustle running a child brothel business. Some group of people on the left--certainly more than 8.5%--thought Pete Buttigieg set in motion a conspiracy two years before the night of the Iowa caucuses to arrange a vote-count ambiguity so Buttigieg could go to the cameras and announce his pleasure at having won the vote.

3. Cops are more believable and sympathetic than are people with a known criminal history. Derek Chauvin was a cop; George Floyd had a criminal history. We can leave aside issues of race--although, as always, it is imbedded--but we know that a great many jurors, especially law-abiding White ones, start with a presumption that cops are good guys with a tough job. Others disagree. People with experience observing police corruption and biased policing look at it differently. They see policemen as crooks-in-blue-uniforms. The defense attorney attempted to get those people off the jury and to get people inclined to believe policemen onto it. 

4. Put George Floyd on trial. The defense may do this delicately. George Floyd, has, on record, a violent past. Before the scene with the knee, Mr. Floyd was rough and hard to subdue. Chauvin, as the defense will explain it, was involved in an accidental overdose situation, and both men are victims. Make Officer Chauvin a sympathetic victim?  Really? When the defense establishes that George Floyd was a large, strong, violent criminal hopped-up on drugs, yes. At least for one juror.

Prediction:

1.  I predict the jury will find Chauvin not guilty of any form of murder. They might agree to convict on some minor offense. 

2.  I predict that there will be furious reactions resulting in civil unrest. Many on the left will see it as confirmation of racist-tainted justice and an indictment of our justice system. 

There is another way to look at it. The indictment of our justice system is that most defendants do not get an aggressive, well-funded defense and a real jury trial. Given that the cause of Mr. Floyd's death is arguably ambiguous, Chauvin can be judged to be what he is presumed to be: not guilty. That is exactly what the law, the Constitution, and the civics textbooks say should happen.

I have made up my mind in this case: of course Officer Chauvin killed George Floyd, with cruel indifference to his suffering and risk of death. That is why I would not be qualified to be on the jury, nor will most of my readers. The jury includes people who presented themselves as awesomely un-informed and un-opinionated. I suspect some jurors will be open to seeing the death of George Floyd the way that Officer Chauvin's attorney will describe it.

 

Worker pay: A close up look at Financial Advisors

Worker leverage, without a union.

Workers get paid if the employer is hurt more than the employee.

I had a 30-year career as a Financial Advisor. I have up close first-hand experience with the struggle to get paid for one's work.  

I owe unions a debt of gratitude. I was brought up in a middle-class home, thanks to unions. The teachers union created a floor of wages that provided a support level for principals, and my father was an elementary school principal. 

I also owe my election as Jackson County Commissioner in 1980 in large part to unions. The local building trades unions opposed my candidacy and they ran TV ads endorsing my opponent. They were joined by the local Chamber of Commerce, which ran similar ads. Both sets of ads involved heavy-set men aged about sixty, looking at the TV camera and saying they knew they could work well with my opponent. The union guy looked right out of central casting as a thuggish "union boss." He read his 30-second script deadpan, so it came across as threatening. What each man said looked like classic "good ol' boy" cronyism; we are big shots in this county and we like Peter's opponent. Their well-financed endorsement of my opponent was the boost I needed. I was a fresh-faced 31-year-old. I ran TV ads in response, saying I would "stay clear of the powerful special interests." I needed the union to be my counterpoint. I won the election, notwithstanding being under-qualified, too young, too liberal, a Democrat running in a Reagan landslide, and disfavored by the local community leaders.  

Unions might be popular in general, but "union bosses" are not. My campaign was helped by their reputation for heavy-handed self-interested behavior--as referenced in yesterday's Guest Post. A certain amount of "thuggishness" is built into the job of representing workers in a negotiation, because the negotiation comes down to raw power--the employer's power to provide a job and income, or the worker's power to withhold work and cause pain to the employer. Strikes cause pain. Labor struggles get ugly. I saw that first-hand at my next job

Financial Advisor. I left politics after one term to see if I could make friends instead of enemies, and a secure income instead of a fragile one. I worked as a Financial Advisor at Morgan Stanley, and the predecessor firms that were consolidated into it. Brokerage firms provide the platform for dispensing financial advice, They also give a client a place to "bank" their investments in a single convenient place. The firms--Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch and a variety of lesser-known companies--provide research for the benefit of advisors and clients. The firms carry out instructions of clients and advisors to buy and sell investments. Advisors find clients in part by serving as a point of contact for the investment research and recommendations of the company. They give credibility to a young Advisor. They can be an anchor of non-credibility to a well-established Advisor, who is trusted far more than the company that employs him.

In the past Advisors earned revenue from clients from commissions on transactions. Now they earn them almost exclusively by charging an annual fee that bundles all services--advice, transactions, checking accounts, everything. Depending on the size of the account it might be about one percent per year, and less for larger accounts.  

As a Financial Advisor, I was an employee of the firm, although in practice Advisors act like individual entrepreneurs finding clients who valued our advice. In general, if a client paid $100 in revenue, the Advisor would get paid about 40% of it and the company would keep 60%, from which it paid its share of payroll taxes and health insurance which amounted to perhaps another 10%. Net-net the Advisor's cost was about 50% of the revenue paid by clients. The employer also provides office space, management supervision, research, transactions, legal services, and other services. Net profit per employee might be around 25% of the revenue brought in by the Advisor. It is more complicated than this, of course, with income streams for the firm coming from stocks loaned to short sellers, investment banking, and especially from interest the firm earns from cash balances held in client accounts. That is the business model: Advisors attract clients and get paid by the client. The firm shares a big piece of that income, plus gets revenue from holding the assets in house.. 

None of this is secret. If the reader is a client of a brokerage firm, and wondered how it all worked, now you know.

I soon realized that Advisors like me were in a constant struggle with our employer. The struggle was silent and covert--a kind of Cold War. The goal of the firm was to pay Advisors as little as they could get away with. Every little change in the "payout schedule" might mean only a few dollars here and there to the Advisor, but spread across 10,000 Advisors, changing a payout from 40% to 39.9 % means millions for the firm. Every firm is searching for little ways to adjust the formula, by counting only certain types of revenue but not others, but inserting thresholds, etc. There is every incentive for the company to "shear the Advisor sheep" a little closer--at yet they reach a limit. Advisors still get paid.

It is not out of generosity, or about "fairness," or valuing "stakeholders" in their business. It is because of power--power held by Advisors that balance the power of the firm. Advisors who are unhappy at a brokerage firm can move across the street to another firm or go independent, and history shows that most clients move with them. Firms traditionally tried desperately to stop an Advisor from moving. They installed "non-compete" agreements and Temporary Restraining Orders to keep Advisors from contacting clients at the predecessor firm. It was an ugly fight, filled with hypocrisy, since the firm claiming outrage that an Advisor might leave to go to a competitor was, secretly, urging other Advisors at that same competition to move to them.  Friendships are lost, and people make accusations of betrayal. 

There is a huge advantage in the struggle held by Advisors. Established clients like and trust the advisor more than the firm.

Advisors don't have unions, but they have the bargaining power that unions can give workers, the power to withhold their work and hurt the employer. The situation for Advisors makes the point about the power of unions. It requires a credible threat to withhold work and it has to damage the employer when it is exercised. In the Advisor case, one person can do it. In the case of a factory floor or grocery store or Amazon fulfillment center, it takes the collective action. The principle is the same: When the company needs the employee, and realizes it, everything changes. The employee can insist on getting paid a bigger share of the value the employee creates.  

Unions: an up close perspective

Worker Pay. The Conversation continues.

      

     "In my Guest Post yesterday I was talking about the false notion that the best way to help people move from poverty or near-poverty into the middle class was by college-going. I argued that education level was not the primary determinant of worker rewards, but rather worker power was."

          Herbert Rothschild, author of yesterday's Guest Post

I am the indirect beneficiary of unions. My father was an elementary school principal, and school principals in southern Oregon were not part of a union themselves, but were paid an income set by the school district geared to be slightly more than the salaries of teachers they supervised. Teachers had a union, which raised their salaries, and therefore those of principals. I was brought up in a middle-class home through that chain of events. 

Click: Would customers support a worker strike?

The people who most need unions are not in a good position to organize them. Retail clerks, health aides, and people in food service--essential workers, in the COVID world--are too easily replaced by others eager for those jobs, and too few customers will refuse to cross a picket line. Employees don't have leverage. As Rothschild observed yesterday, Walmart employees qualify for public benefits: Food stamps for food, expanded Medicaid under the ACA for health, rental assistance for housing. Taxpayers fill in the gap that allows employees to survive on Walmart's pay scale.  

John Coster read yesterday's Guest Post about worker power and unions. He has direct, up close experience with unions. I received this comment in response to my observation to him about the pricing power of trades people. When a bathroom sink starts a rapid leak a customer cannot stop, or the power goes off in the house--two experiences I had recently--the customer is less concerned about price than about availability and competence. The tradesman has pricing power, based on specialized knowledge, licensing, and equipment. I was surprised by how expensive the electrician was, but I needed someone to show up, and that was the cost.

John Coster manages large construction projects for Microsoft, Toyota, CenturyLink and other companies that require complex electrical infrastructure.  He is based in Seattle. 

Guest Post by John Coster

I think collective bargaining is just one part of one solution to income inequality. In 1975 I graduated from a vocational high school in Massachusetts where I trained to be a commercial and industrial electrician. At that time, school shop time and cooperative work counted towards hours required in order to qualify for the State license exam. When I was 19 I passed both Journeyman and Master Electrician license exams which allowed me to either start my own contracting business or work as a qualified foreman or lead for an electrical contractor. 

John Coster

Union membership was not an option because the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) operated like a nepotistic private club that worked to control the qualified labor pool by limiting membership. Vocational schools subverted that model by producing qualified electricians, which enabled non-union contractors to staff their crews for 70-80% of union rates. Most of us were hired on a project-by-project basis so we never were able to organize, and moreover the union seemed uninterested in recruiting us “scabs” into their ranks and upset the equilibrium. 

 

The nature of the work meant we might work on one or two projects before being laid off, at least for a time, and we would lose our health benefits and any “profit sharing” that might be paid out once a year (if you were still there).  We knew our union “brethren” had IBEW healthcare, vacation and retirement benefits that were portable – I.e. they traveled with the worker regardless of who they worked for as long as the contractor was signatory to the IBEW. So I personally felt the exposure of being a second class worker, and I was always prospecting for my next gig knowing that my income was only as certain as the next paycheck.

 

I eventually moved to the business side and managed large projects with union crews. But construction unions are not just about fair pay, portable benefits and safe working conditions. It was a distinct culture that was tribal in its outlook. I once had over 300 union electricians working for me on a project, many of whom had travelled from other regions of the country because of the abundant work. I had to pay independent inspectors to double check work because so much had been secretly sabotaged. It was like I had the Mob working on the project. 

The attempted sabotage was always the crazy part. It wasn’t like we provoked them. Sometimes we’d find metal bars, or even chains inside transformers that would cause it to blow up when we turned it on, or they made the connections loosely so that over time it might (and did) cause a fire. It was clear that it was done systematically and deliberately. The “travelers” as they are called were always suspect.

That kind of thinking and their efforts to control labor supply eventually backfired and it has ultimately harmed their cause. Except in large, complex public projects or specialty industries, there are few union electrical shops except in major urban areas. What was once an effective monopoly is now a minor player with less than 10% of the workforce.

 

Leadership got greedy and power-hungry and were not sensitive to the realities of the marketplace, and everyone has suffered. Wages for even non-union electricians are between 60-70% of what they were in 1980, accounting for inflation. 

Here's something interesting about the tradespeople who come to your house. Do you know what the typical profit margin works out to be for members of the National Electrical Contractors Association, i.e. electrical contractors?  About 1.5%.

The current W2 wage for a non-union licensed electrician in the Seattle area is about $45.00/hour. Add to that about 25% un-billable time for travel, picking up supplies etc.  Add 40% burden for FICA, state and federal unemployment taxes, and health insurance. So that's $80 before you add home-office overhead (estimators, accounting, sales, rent, IT, depreciation, insurance, licenses, etc.).  

A hustling self-employed electrician with a truck, a website, a dispatch service and a Square payment device has lower overhead, can be more competitive, pocket the difference and do pretty well. That was me when I just started out, with my licenses and no money. A friend and I had business cards and a company name: "Two Guys and a Truck." But falling off a ladder just once can create an unrecoverable loss of revenue event for the self-employed, so that's the trade-off. 

Workers get paid when workers have power to insist on it.

You don't get paid what you are worth. 

You get paid what you can insist you get paid.

A Guest Post about the value of unions. 

Herb Rothschild is writing in response to my blog post Tuesday about the problem Democrats have winning the votes of White non-college voters, the largest single demographic group in America. 

Neither Democrats nor Republicans have delivered economic stability to that group, which left the field open for Trump and Republicans to appeal to them on cultural grounds. Nothing assures non-union workers a middle-income lifestyle except two breadwinners in a family, but at least Trump waves the flag, holds a Bible, defends guns, says he protects the borders from Mexicans and Muslims, and communicates his contempt for the pointy-headed, pencil-necked, politically-correct, job-killing so-called experts and scientists and moral scolds of the Democratic left.

All the Democratic candidates I watched closely in New Hampshire and Iowa spoke of their support for public and private employer unions. Biden told a group of New Hampshire firefighters that he owed his political career to firefighters. Beyond that, he said that first responder firefighters saved the lives of his two sons in the accident that killed his wife and daughter. Democrats try to be the union-friendly party. Mitch McConnell, in warning of "scorched earth," listed a national right-to-work law on the GOP agenda if the filibuster is eliminated. 

Rothschild writes that there is a practical solution for increasing worker pay; worker power. Workers need to organize into unions. Unions, not higher education, are the key to access to the middle class. Herb Rothschild is a retired professor of English. During his working years he was a political activist on behalf of world peace and civil rights for Black Americans. He is still doing that work, advocating for peace and justice. He lives in Talent, Oregon.

Guest Post by Herb Rothschild

Herb Rothschild, Jr.

Yes, beginning with Jimmy Carter’s administration the Democratic Party got out of touch with working class people. Under Clinton and Obama especially, it was complicit in exacerbating our nation’s huge economic inequality. One should note, however, that the Republicans’ hostility to unions and their continuing opposition to a livable minimum wage, plus their successful skewing of the tax code to the benefit of the wealthiest Americans, were the most important factors in de-democratizing an economy that from 1955 to 1975 was working increasingly well for the majority of White male workers (although not so well for Black and Hispanic workers and females of any ethnicity).

If the current unhappy trend is to be reversed, it will be crucial to put measures in place to raise low-paid workers into the middle class. College-going is not the solution to the woes of the working class.

A large number of jobs will always be unskilled or semi-skilled. In 2012, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics projected that the five occupations that would add the most workers between then and 2022 are personal care aides, registered nurses, retail salespeople, home health aides, and food service workers. Only the second category requires a higher education. Unorganized and thus with no power in the workplace, the millions of workers who filled those positions had to rely on the federal hourly minimum wage ($7.25). At one point Wal-Mart ran an ad showing the company helping its workers apply for food stamps before it realized that it was an indictment of the corporation. Further, level of education is not a reliable determinant of wages and benefits. Jobs in mining and manufacturing tend to be high-paying and well-benefited, and our switch to a service economy has contributed in a major way to the growing woes of the working class. But we need to realize that there was nothing about jobs in mining and manufacturing jobs that commanded high pay. Indeed, during the 19th century and well into the 20th, they paid subsistence wages, demanded long hours, offered no benefits, and often were dangerous. Only labor union organizing combined with government intervention changed those conditions in the U.S. and Europe. They still prevail in much of the world.

Rothschild, on behalf of First Nation

Conversely, a higher education doesn’t guarantee good wages. Take school teaching and nursing. Historically, their pay was low because those were the only professions significantly open to women before Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act forbid gender bias in employment, and because teachers and nurses hadn’t organized themselves. Thanks to their unionizing and becoming a political force in most states, their wages improved dramatically. And now, there is a large underclass of college teachers—usually called adjuncts—that have MAs and even PhDs who are working for poor pay and without job security. Only where they have unionized have they risen from poverty.

To understand why some work is well rewarded and other work isn’t, we mustn’t focus exclusively on level of education. Power is a major determinant. When workers, through their unions, had political power, they were able to secure government help in protecting and enhancing their power in the workplace. Currently, workers are, for the most part, politically unorganized and volatile in their behavior at the ballot box. Given how hostile Republican policies are to workers, it should be an easy task for Democrats to win them over. But that will mean a willingness—as Sanders and Warren have shown—to part company with Wall Street and the economic elites that the Clinton-Obama wing of the party served so faithfully.

Tammy Duckworth threat. It isn't just wrong. It's stupid.

Another brick in the foundation of Democratic self-destruction.

“So I am not going to be voting for any nominees from the White House other than diversity nominees. I’ll be a ‘No’ on everyone until they figure this out. . . . I will vote for racial minorities and LGTBQ, but anybody else I’m not voting for.”

          Senator Tammy Duckworth, (D) Illinois

Tammy Duckworth backed off her threat, but it is too late. The bell rang. 

She lost. Biden lost. Democrats lost. The message lost.  

Senator Tammy Duckworth

Tammy Duckworth told Capital Hill reporters that she was unhappy that "there's not a single AAPI in a Cabinet position. That's unacceptable."  AAPI means Asian American Pacific Islander. Duckworth herself is of Thai extraction. She is also a Senator from Illinois, a woman, and a disabled veteran, having lost both legs in a combat mission. 

Biden had nominated Neera Tanden, a woman of Asian heritage, for the Cabinet level position as headof the Office of Management and Budget. It fell through, due to opposition caused by some intemperate tweets by Tanden. 

Duckworth said that the Biden administration tried to mollify her discontent of insufficient AAIP nominees by telling her that, after all, Biden's choice of a Vice President was Kamala Harris, whose mother is from India. Duckworth called the White House response "incredibly insulting."

It is as if Democrat want to lose.

Duckworth's public comments are iterations of all-too-familiar counter-productive messaging by Democrats.  Duckworth is accentuating the least popular element of the Democratic message. It is wrong and stupid in so many ways.

First, she changed the subject from something popular to something unpopular. Democrats took a big step in addressing child poverty and the financial needs of the working poor. That is popular. The new COVID relief bill plants a seed for a major increase in the role of government to address income inequality. This seed needs nourishment in the form of Democratic officeholders talking about its benefits--selling it and defending it. Democrats took advantage of the brief window of opportunity, due to COVID, Republican deficit spending under Trump re-setting the boundaries of the acceptable, plus Modern Monetary Theory which asserts that we can spend freely and deficits don't matter. It is expensive. It puts cash into the hands of poor and working people. It is family-friendly policy, targeted to families with children. It rewards poor and middle income people, not screw-up Wall Street investment banks. Unlike the 2017 tax bill, it did not reward the wealthiest. The bill is on-brand for Democrats. Instead, she is talking about racial quotas. It is crazy.

[Note, I have written repeatedly about my skepticism that America can spend, spend, spend without limit on a charge card without consequence. But if Republicans can do it when Trump is in office, I suppose Democrats will do it when Biden is in office. I think it is dangerous. But it is popular.]

Second, she played the "insult" and "trigger" card. Duckworth is a United States Senator and combat veteran. She is supposedly powerful and resilient. After all, she survived getting her legs blown off--one tough woman. She is presenting herself as a  victim, someone offended and diminished by the rough and tumble of politics. Her response is petulance. She doesn't count the VP, she doesn't count the nomination of a director of OMB, and she doesn't count the high profile trade representative.  "I realize that we have Katherine Tai, but I don't think the trade representative is what the community understands as a Cabinet level." Duckworth is disappointed--so she wants to blow up Biden's effort to staff his administration. It is childish.

Third, she is advocating for quotas and exclusions. People resent them. She is doing exactly what she says she is not doing.

"This is not about pitting one diversity group against another. So I'm happy to vote for a Hispanic, a Black person, an LGBTQ person, an AAPI person. I'd just like to see more diversity representation."

She wants her sub-set of diversity--AAPI. Until she gets what she wants, she threatens to make the process a hostage. She thinks she can safely target one group, heterosexual White men and women. How can this fail to cause backlash and resentment among Whites? Democrats advocate for Black Pride, Native American Pride, Proud Women and yet condemn as "White supremacy" a logical and near-inevitable reaction to that by Whites. It matters. It has consequences. Democrats lost two thirds of the votes of White males in 2016 and 2020. White men hear this talk and draw the inference that maybe they are the ones facing the real discrimination. 

Fourth, she undermines the notion of national unity and racial tolerance. By saying she realizes that "we have Katherine Tai" her notion of "we" is not Americans, it is Americans with ethnic heritage from Southeast Asia and the Pacific Islands. She put herself forward as a person who could represent all people from Illinois, yet she is a member of an ethnic minority. Now she is saying only a AAPI member can truly represent AAPI people--an argument with very dangerous implications. Only Whites can represent Whites? A diverse government is possible only if a great many White Americans believe they can be well represented by minority members--people like her--and that race doesn't really matter.  

She is making the least persuasive and least popular case for racial justice. Martin Luther King wished that all Americans are judged by the content of their character and not the color of their skin. That proposition has widespread support. The checkbox of equality by category and sub-category makes race and ethnicity central, not incidental. It is the opposite of King's message. It is unpopular.

Fifth, it is Democrats talking about race, race, race. People are sick of it.

Sixth, Duckworth just showed that Biden is a weak guy who can be pushed around. Duckworth forced Biden to bend to her and her argument. She got Biden to demonstrate publicly that he is, indeed, weak and under the influence of the petulant race-conscious Democrats, more interested in fine-tuning racial quotas than getting food and rent money to working Americans. Republicans say Biden is sleepy, senile, weak, a puppet, and that he is led around by handlers and fellow office-holders. Duckworth made their case. She said jump. He jumped.

Duckworth didn't just hurt herself. She hurt Democrats and Biden. There is a message that a majority of Americans like, that we are all created equal and that in our government and society, we are judged by the quality of our character, not the color of our skin. Anybody can do well and get ahead. There are no slots of privilege standing in your way. Duckworth said there are slots, and she wants dibs on a few of them, and if you aren't in the group then you are screwed.

Woke White Educated Liberals vs. the Working Class

     “If poverty is increasing and if wages are going down, I don’t know why we need millions of people to be coming into this country as guest workers who will work for lower wages than American workers and drive wages down even lower than they are right now.” 

          Senator Bernie Sanders, 2007, on Lou Dobbs' show on CNN

Politics have evolved. The big divide in the Democratic party isn't Bernie people vs. Hillary people, nor is it Bernie/Warren people vs. Biden people. The new divide is over education levels, and it was revealed in the disappointing Hispanic vote for Democrats.

Today a comment like the one Bernie Sanders made in 2007 would be understood to be an archetypal Republican talking point.  He sounds Trump-y. By 2019, when Democratic candidates for president were jostling for attention in New Hampshire, Iowa, and in televised debates, leading Democrats could barely admit to any enforcement of national borders. Some of it was increased Democratic identification with victims, be theyracial, ethnic, religious, gendered, or immigrant. Democrats were on the side of the oppressed. They were nudged to that position by their most politically engaged supporters, coming primarily from the ranks of prosperous, urban, White, educated, and highly ideological political activists. 

Barbara Jordan, Bernie Sanders, Bill Clinton, Al Gore, and Barack Obama are all on videotape saying that too-fast immigration was unfair to the working people who are here. They said immigrants working on and off the books drove down wages. Meanwhile, it was business-interests aligned with Republicans, up to and including Ronald Reagan, who would speak in favor of immigrants. 

Democrats and Republicans switched. Republicans spoke of immigrants as irredeemably "foreign" coming as they were from Latin America and Asia--not northern Europe. Democrats saw immigrants as another group facing discrimination--their mission to fix. Republicans decided Democrats were motivated by trying to stack the vote with future Democrats. Democrats thought Republicans were motivated by racial animus.  Click: Immigrants to Texas become Texans

Reality is scrambling the presumptions of both parties. It turns out that Black Americans supported White centrist Biden, not the vanguards of progressive thinking on race. A great many Hispanic voters--who Trump openly insulted as criminals, rapists, and "not the best"--supported Trump.

Democratic thought leaders at the point of the progressive spear are out of sync with working people. Democratic support for more immigration seems like a pro-Hispanic policy to the thought leaders--and a mixed bag of job competition and social upheaval to many Hispanics. Democratic prescription that "everyone should get college or advanced skills training" sounds reasonable to prosperous educated people--and impossible and unrealistic for many working people. The Democratic policy goal of cancelling college debt sounds reasonable to the first group--and a screwing to people who didn't go to college. Democratic support for #MeToo, for "social justice," for "racial equity, not equality," seems progressive to some elites, and unfair and dilettantish to people who don't know or care about the difference between not being racist and being anti-racist.

Democrats have allowed their brand to be dominated by the people speaking to values of progressive, urban, academic, politically correct people. They are the most media savvy people, and they say the most interesting things--interesting to the media, to fellow Democrats, and especially to Republican message-makers who cherry-pick and caricature those positions. Biden is president, but AOC is a more vivid, charismatic voice. Antifa, too, became a voice.

Events in Portland, Oregon became a national symbol for Democrats. In Portland  two groups of people mingled in those protest crowds after George Floyd's death: Black and White protesters showing their concern over policing, and a second group of more-woke-than-thou White radicals. This second group wasn't worried about bread-and-butter issues of jobs; they were worried about staking out the high-ground of the political avant-guard. They were more royalist than the king.

Click: Washington Post

Images of Portland exemplified not only Democratic ineffectiveness in providing an orderly, safe community, but it shined a spotlight on the growing split within the Democratic coalition. The White antifa group could taunt the police, get arrested, and be released immediately. They could get away with setting fires in urban neighborhoods to make a point. Democratic officeholders would tut-tut but not do anything effective to stop them. Meanwhile, working people saw privilege.

Yes, Biden said the right things, but it was the weakest of political communication--just words. People wearing black, setting fires and getting videotaped doing it while chanting "Police are pigs!" were more vivid branding, and the fact that it continued night after night was persuasive body language that it was tolerated by Democratic officeholders. They were proving the very point of their protests, that there were two justice systems in America, one for the privileged and one for the poor, and Democrats weren't really going to change it.

On immigration and on justice, Democrats of the urbane progressive left remain out of step with working Americans. Democrats did not win in November. Trump lost. There is repair work to do. Joe Biden became president because he was the Democrat least associated with those point-of-the-spear leftist Democrats. He has the best chance of stitching together the real divide in the Democratic coalition, that between ideological, educated Whites, who dominate Democratic branding, and working people of all races and ethnicities.