A couple of bones to pick

Most folks have heard, at least in passing, about the the Employee Free Choice Act, or “card check,” working its way through Congress this week. And most of what we seem to hear is basically negative. Lies, even.

If you tell the truth you may not get what you want, I guess.

So here we have this great hullabaloo of worry about secret ballots, something the worriers know the American public cherishes above practically everything else. But it’s all a fraud.

What are the worriers worried about? They say they are worried about the process by which employees of a business decide whether they want to bargain as a group for things like hours, wages and benefits.

Who’s doing the worrying? The employers. That should tell you something.

But the employers aren’t worried about the outcome, not at all. They say they are just trying to be sure that their poor dumb employees aren’t denied the right to a secret ballot.

That argument is what’s dumb. The legislation in Congress right now, the Employee Free Choice Act, or “card-check,” provides for each and every employee to receive a card with the following choices:

The employee can sign up in favor of joining a union, or not. Or he can choose to have a secret ballot on the matter. The employees get to choose.

Secret ballot. There it is, right there. If the majority of the cards come back with the secret ballot choice checked, there you are, it’ll be a secret ballot.

But if 50%-plus-one come back checked in favor of having a union, the employees get to have a union. That’s a majority, but it would appear the employers who are fighting this are afraid a majority of their workers might actually want to have a union. The dirty little secret is that employers don’t want it to be simple.

Gotta wonder why.

* * *

Good ol’ Newt Gingrich is back, maybe getting a good start on 2012, and has been on various TV shows holding forth on just about everything under the sun, or at least everything Barack Obama is doing. Which he opposes.

In the context of the leadership struggles within the Republican party, Newt comes across as the sane elder statesman, according to some.

So, last week he suggested that Obama should have taken out the North Korean rocket test with some kind of laser weapon, an idea perhaps intended to show how high-tech he thinks; “high” might be the operative word here because we don’t seem to have such in our arsenal.

On at least one Sunday show he shared his opinion on health care reform, or at least what he perceives as Obama’s plan taking us down the road to “putting everyone on Medicaid.”

Now, I can’t be sure he meant to say “Medicaid,” though he said it several times, because I know the comparison that’s been drawn to one of the options being proposed for a national health care solution is “Medicare,” a very different breed of cat.

Medicaid, a form of health care coverage for the working poor, might as well be unavailable so far as Ellis County residents are concerned. Most doctors can’t afford to offer it because it pays so poorly.

Medicare, on the other hand, which most senior citizens have, is agreed by all but the unfeeling to be good coverage, cost-effective and efficient. A government plan that lets you choose your own doctor and make your own decisions, by the way.

And no, Obama’s plan is not “socialized” medicine, nor is Medicare for that matter; however, that’s the favorite term of argument for those who prefer that private insurance companies continue to make your decisions, choose your doctor, deny coverage when you most need it, and make lots of money in the process.


Originally published in the Waxahachie Daily Light April 13, 2009.