In fact, they’re rushing to jam the thing through before Doug Jones can be certified, in a stunning act of hypocrisy from the same people who demanded that Obamacare wait until Scott Brown was seated and held up a Supreme Court seat for a year.It’s outrageous.But it also looks like really bad politics, especially given what we know is coming: calls next year for cuts in popular social programs, because of a deficit Republicans just voted to explode.So what are they thinking?I don’t know for sure, but I’d suggest three possible factors in this mad rush.First, Republicans may be suffering from an officeholder’s version of the Pundit’s Fallacy: “belief that what a politician needs to do to improve his or her political standing is do what the pundit wants substantively.”For example, “Obama can win the midterms by endorsing Bowles-Simpson,” which the vast majority of voters never heard of. Today’s Republicans are apparatchiks, who have spent their whole lives inside an intellectual bubble in which cutting taxes on corporations and the rich is always objective No. 1.Their party used to know that it won elections despite its economic program, not because of it — that the whole game was to win by playing on social issues, national security, and above all on racial antagonism, then use the win to push fundamentally unpopular economic policies.But over the years the party has seemed increasingly out of touch with that reality, imagining that if only it preaches the gospel of supply-side economics loudly enough voters will be won over.Second, the GOP may also be engaged in the fallacy of points on the board thinking — I’m taking the phrase from Rahm Emanuel, who believed that Obama could gain electoral capital simply by racking up legislative victories.The idea is that voters are impressed by your record of wins, or conversely that they’ll turn away if you don’t win enough.The truth is that this strategy didn’t work at all for Obama, who won a lot of stuff in his first two years then got shellacked in the midterms.And think about the things that have been going wrong for Republicans in special elections: desertions by highly educated suburban voters, massive African-American turnout, weak turnout by rural whites. Categories: Editorial, OpinionSo, it seems that Republicans are responding to the devastating defeat in Alabama — which is part of a sustained pattern of underperformance in special elections, demonstrating that bad polls reflect reality, not bad polling, by … doubling down on a massively unpopular tax plan, whose main focus is on cutting corporate taxes. Which of these is likely to be improved by a massive, unpopular corporate tax cut?Still, the idea that you have to win something seems to have a grip on the GOP, and of course especially on our childlike president.Finally, for some significant number of Republicans we may be seeing what I’d call the “K Street end game.”Suppose you’re a GOP Congresscritter representing an only moderately Republican district, say in New York or California — and you see growing evidence of a huge Democratic wave next year, with election results so far suggesting something like a 15-point swing.What do you do?Well, you could say, “Gee, I’d better buck the party line and show my independence to win over swing voters.”But how likely is that to work? How many people even know how their representative votes?Or you could say, “Well, I guess I’ll be looking for a lobbying job/think tank position/commentator role on Fox News in 2019” — in which case your mission in what remains of your congressional career is to keep donors and the party machine happy, never mind the voters.Now, all of these stories work better at explaining the House than at explaining senators like John McCain or Susan Collins, who are working quickly to destroy all the good will they won by taking a stand on health care.Still, I think it makes sense to tell these stories about what the Republican Party is doing in general on taxes.And while Democrats should and will fight this attempt to ram tax cuts through with the vote of a lame-duck senator, if I were a Democratic strategist looking toward next November I’d be looking at current Republican moves and thinking, “Make my day.”Paul Krugman is a Nobel Prize-winning economist and a coljumnist with The New York Times.More from The Daily Gazette:EDITORIAL: Urgent: Today is the last day to complete the censusFoss: Should main downtown branch of the Schenectady County Public Library reopen?EDITORIAL: Find a way to get family members into nursing homesEDITORIAL: Thruway tax unfair to working motoristsEDITORIAL: Beware of voter intimidation
Columnist wrong on Obama economy
Categories: Letters to the Editor, OpinionI read Ed Rogers’s Jan. 24 opinion piece [“Booker’s rant reveals Democrats’ Trump obsession”] with interest until I got to this blatantly untrue phrase: “would return a booming U.S. economy to the stagnant Obama years.” Mr. Rogers, if you don’t deal in truths you are not worth my time.Cindy FleischerDuanesburgMore from The Daily Gazette:EDITORIAL: Thruway tax unfair to working motoristsSchenectady County warns of possible COVID-19 exposure at Schenectady restaurant, Rotterdam barLocal movie theater operators react to green lightEDITORIAL: Find a way to get family members into nursing homesFoss: Should main downtown branch of the Schenectady County Public Library reopen?
Time to protect public workers from unions’ coercion
One hundred percent of its political contributions go to Democrats, and it works tirelessly to increase government spending and stop Republicans who want to reform state government.Should AFSCME be able to force public workers who disagree with its liberal agenda to pay union dues and support it?That was the question before the Supreme Court last week, when justices heard oral arguments in Janus v. AFSCME, a case brought by Illinois child-support specialist Mark Janus, who argues that forcing him to contribute to union coffers violates his First Amendment rights by compelling him to support speech with which he disagrees.Public worker unions cannot compel nonmembers to directly pay for political activities, but in states that have not passed “right to work” laws, they can force public employees to pay an “agency fee” to support the union’s collective bargaining efforts.Of course, the union gets to decide what spending is political, and the fees are usually between 80 and 100 percent of union dues.Moreover, to stop paying for the union’s political activities, workers must proactively object — and then get a partial refund of what the union claims is the extent of its political spending.This is a scam. The unions know that if they cannot compel workers to pay union dues, most will choose not to do so.In Indiana, when then-Gov. Mitch Daniels (R) signed a “paycheck protection” law barring forced collection of union dues, only 5 percent of state employees chose to continue paying — and public worker union membership dropped from 16,408 in 2005 to just 1,490 in 2011.In Wisconsin, when Gov. Scott Walker (R) passed Act 10, which included paycheck protection, AFSCME membership fell by more than half — from 62,818 in 2011 to 28,745 the following year.Other public worker unions faced similar losses in membership. And those losses have been sustained.According to a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel analysis, by 2016 Wisconsin had “132,000 fewer union members, mostly teachers and other public workers — enough to fill Lambeau Field and Miller Park, with thousands more tailgating outside.” (Disclosure: I have co- written a book with Walker.)Apparently, when you don’t force workers to stay in a union, many choose to leave.Janus wants the same freedom to choose. He argues that all spending by public-sector unions is political spending.Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. seemed sympathetic to this type of argument in a similar case that deadlocked two years ago after the death of Justice Antonin Scalia, noting that even negotiations over wages affect the state budget. “The amount of money that’s going to be allocated to public education as opposed to public housing, welfare benefits, that’s always a public policy issue,” he said.Justice Anthony M. Kennedy got to the heart of the matter this week, when he asked AFSCME lawyer David Frederick, “If you do not prevail in this case, the unions will have less political influence?” Frederick admitted they would. “Isn’t that the end of this case?” Kennedy asked. Yes, it is.As Kennedy put it, the question before the court is whether states can “mandate people that object to certain union policies to pay for the implementation of those policies against their First Amendment interests.”Liberals say conservatives are trying to use the court to break the power of public-sector unions.But if the only way they can maintain their political power is through coercion, then they don’t deserve that power in the first place.The reason so many workers quit when given the chance is because they know the unions use their power not to benefit workers but to enrich themselves.In Wisconsin, the teachers unions used collective bargaining to force school districts to buy health plans from union-affiliated insurers at inflated prices, when they could have gotten much cheaper insurance on the open market. Once the unions’ coercive power was broken and school districts were able to open their health insurance to competitive bidding, they saved $404.8 million over five years — money they were able to put into merit pay increases for teachers, and other classroom improvements.Public union bosses want that money for themselves.They want to dictate spending decisions to state and local governments, and collect compulsory union dues to perpetuate their political power and line their coffers.The Supreme Court can end this unconstitutional coercion.The only way unions will be hurt by this is if the workers they claim to represent reject them.Marc A. Thiessen is a Republican author, columnist with The Washington Post and political commentator He served as a speechwriter for President George W. Bush and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.More from The Daily Gazette:EDITORIAL: Beware of voter intimidationEDITORIAL: Find a way to get family members into nursing homesEDITORIAL: Urgent: Today is the last day to complete the censusEDITORIAL: Thruway tax unfair to working motoristsFoss: Should main downtown branch of the Schenectady County Public Library reopen? Categories: Editorial, OpinionWASHINGTON — The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) is ostensibly a public worker union.In truth, it is nothing more than an appendage of the Democratic Party.
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Berkshire gets real
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Covent Garden retail: Piazza delivery
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Manchester’s most expensive council house sold
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T&S raises £3.8m in sale-and-leaseback
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Ex-Aberdeen chief Reid founds European investor
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