Obama Likes Public Unions, Hates Business

Manufacturers could shift production out of the US to Canada or Mexico as a result, warned George Buckley, chief executive and chairman of 3M.

“I judge people by their feet, not their mouth,” he told the Financial Times. “We know what his instincts are – they are Robin Hood-esque. He is anti-business.” _FT

In fact the entire bureaucratic structure of the US government has become anti-business, without necessarily intending to. If you combine the anti-business attitude of Obama with his promotion of "energy starvation" policies and his massive debt growth, then you should begin to understand how impossible a meaningful economic recovery will be as long as Obamaesque policies rule the US government.

Not surprisingly, Obama loves government worker unions. He even lent his campaign apparatus to bus in demonstrators to Madison Wisconsin, to shut down meaningful government reforms there. Aided by his mega-media enablers, Obama is grandstanding his support for "union rights of collective bargaining." But is union collective bargaining closer to monopolistic trusts -- something that is illegal in every other area of commerce?

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. _WSJ

There is something quite corrupt and totalitarian at the same time, about government unions and the chokehold they can hold on a tax-paying electorate. Obama wants to teach Wisconsinites a lesson -- that no matter who they elect to office, it will always be the government unions who are in charge. Even if he must institute intimidation, violence, and monopolistic practises to enforce that lesson.