Memorandum to the President
Gilber, George & swanson, bret
"Memorandum to the President" expressed private regret at the antics of the NEA's state affiliate, but he still staunchly maintains the union has done nothing wrong. "So you tell me how I can possibly separate NEAs collective...
...It is paid for from automatic and sizable annual deductions from teachers' paychecks...
...A $7-trillion loss in asset values—something we've seen in the past two years—dwarfs $30-billion "real" income increases, $20-billion up-ticks in consumer spending, $10-billion surges in fixed investment...
...That's precisely the problem and why paycheck protection laws need to be passed in the 47 states that lack them...
...The union spent some $40 million on UniSery programs in 1996, but the LM-2 form has no category to list it, making the filings the NEA does make virtually meaningless...
...The LM-2 forms that unions are required to file are supposed to allow members to see where their dues money is going...
...The $100-trillion balance sheet of the United States dominates all other economic data...
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...Disclosure abuses could also go well beyond politics...
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...Bret Swanson is executive editor of the Gilder Technology Report...
...Given their widespread influence on the 2000 elections, we can expect them to be even more active in the closely fought Senate elections this fall...
...Multitrillion-dollar changes in stock market values overwhelm even 16 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR • SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2002 THE BEST HISTORY HAS TO OFFER Take 4 Books for $1 Each membership (NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER 84-1577 Pub...
...But they understand the political potency of the issue...
...Cam Findlay, the deputy secretary at the Department of Labor, plans to update the forms because "the existing forms utilize such broad general categories that union leaders could easily use them to hide overspending, financial mismanagement and other irregularities from their members...
...No waiting for meaningless 10-year "tax cuts" to kick in...
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...As Bob Williams testified before Congress, "There would be nothing wrong with the political machinery of the unions except for one thing...
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...The 1959 reporting requirements enshrined in the Landrum-Griffin Act have to be updated to take into account the consolidation of many unions into larger, more complex organizations...
...But many unions don't even bother to fill them out, or send them in months late...
...Stop the frivolous legal harassment of technology companies—now...
...Of course neither the Times nor its favorite political party suggests actions that would actually help investors...
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...Similarly, GDP was growing more than a year before the 1992 election, but the stock market was not...
...Unions have a right to participate vigorously in the democratic process, but Supreme Court decisions honoring the right of members to withhold their dues money from political uses must be honored...
...Expand free trade—and stopprotectionism—now...
...No more babbling...
...9Instead of playing on the Democrats' turf of corporate shenanigans, why not play on our turf of enterprise and economic growth...
...Only freeing enterprises and entrepreneurs from the pitfalls of complex taxes, unstable currencies and excessive regulations can do the job...
...So you tell me how I can possibly separate NEAs collective bargaining from politics—you just can't—it's all politics...
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...And it cannot be to throw more CEOs in jail...
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...But won't they do so any-way this fall...
...Only economic growth can produce the revenues we need to win the War on Terror...
...tJust as business deserves greater scrutiny in the wake of the Enron, Global Crossing and WorldCom scandals, so, too, do unions...
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...And the only way to tell them with confidence where we're going is to do the things that always work...
...Make the Democrats explain the desirability of 7 million words of federal tax law...
...And so did JFK and Ronald Reagan...
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...And you certainly cannot encourage these things by cracking down on capitalism or making CEOs certify 3-foot-high piles of paper full of inscrutable accounting details dominated by a 17,000-page tax code...
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...Believe us—they won't...
...The NEAalso uses member dues to pay for 1,800 UniServe directors, who it charges with "managing all political activities" in their local areas...
...In 2000, the Labor Department reports over 34 percent were either late or never filed at all...
...Recent revelations regarding the lack of disclosure by unions on their LM-2 forms have prompted the Bush administration to seek more funding and staff to better monitor compliance with disclosure requirements...
...For example, the Land-mark Legal Foundation has found that during the 2000 Gore campaign, the NEA budgeted $386,000 in member dues for "organization partnerships with political par-ties, campaign committees and political organizations...
...Just as business deserves greater scrutiny in the wake of the Enron, Global Crossing and WorldCom scandals, so, too, do unions...
...Ten of the biggest unions have never been audited—it was never a priority for the Clinton administration...
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...Absent that, it's important that better disclosure of union political activities be made...
...The fall campaign message will be set by the president, and in order to change the debate, revive the economy and win the election, the message must be bold...
...The president can replace anti-business Clinton holdovers in the Justice Department's antitrust division before they do further harm to the leading edge of the economy...
...George Gilder is a senior fellow of the Discovery Institute and editor-at-large of The American Spectator...
...No hoping things get better...
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...2002 History Book Club L $100-billion surges in budgetary deficits or $80-billion bulges in the trade gap...
...Small wonder the unions are so adamant in making sure the pointed questions posed by the Evergreen and Landmark Legal Foundations are never properly answered...
...MEMORANDUM TO THE PRESIDENT FROM: George Gilder and Bret Swanson RE: leading on the Economy .. . Purging Barman's Ghost L et's get one thing straight right off the bat...
...But the Dow Jones Industrial Average, a simple proxy for asset values, was literally stagnant...
...And a much better predictor of political fortunes...
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...They will scream...
...But, as in Japan, even real estate cannot maintain its value in the face of bad policy...
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...Instead of playing on the Democrats' turf of corporate shenanigans, why not play on our turf of enterprise and economic growth...
...This fall you need to be able to tell voters where we've been and where we're going...
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...Asset values, not government-measured and manipulated statistics, turn out to be a much more accurate measure of the real economy...
...For those that are filed, compliance audits have fallen from 1,583 a year in 1984 to only 238 in 2001...
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...Between 1965 and 1982, the output of the United States as measured by GDP grew 3 percent per year...
...They also convey accurate information in real time, unlike industrial purchasing surveys, phantom indices of consumer confidence or misbegotten monetary aggregates...
...But little of this activity is to be found on the NEA's LM-2 forms...
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...And as we've seen in Washington state, when teachers are given a choice, they vote to remove their dollars from union political activity in droves...
...Assets determine the movement of interest rates...
...And the fall campaign message cannot be, "Well, the tax cut we passed in 2001 should be kicking in any minute now .. . Really, we mean it this time . . . Our economists tell us so...
...He must create the economic news...
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...Coolidge knew it...
...It also plans to modernize and expand the reporting requirements on the LM-2 forms...
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Vol. 35 • September 2002 • No. 5