The hearing on the EFCA ads was held on my father's birthday, and I was in the Boston area at the time. I thought it would be hilarious if I was taken into custody the following Monday.

Other prisoner: What are you in for, son?
Me: Unfavorable deduction about Al Franken.
OP (sliding slowly away): You're his accountant?

(With apologies to Arlo Guthrie.)

As Michael posted yesterday, the complaint was dismissed (he's again posted the Order of Dismissal.) He notes the silence (also evidenced by the lack of posts on the subject found on the BlogNetNews aggregator for the state) of other bloggers who had accused others of lying.

What is "an unfavorable deduction"? The ad states that the Employee Free Choice Act would have eliminated a worker's right to a secret ballot. The defense has been that secret ballots could still happen. True, but as the Coalition for a Democratic Workplace notes yesterday in its press release announcing the dismissal:

Under EFCA, the NLRB must recognize the union without an election if a majority of workers sign an authorization card identifying who they are. Once the 50% threshold has been crossed, the statute is unequivocal in its command: "the [NLRB] shall not direct an election but shall certify the individual or organization as the labor representative."

Could the organizers still seek a secret ballot? Yes they could ... but under what circumstances would we expect them to do so? If they can just get that 50%+1 for signatures, they can dispense with the ballot, and the costs of campaigning, and not ever face the counterarguments against unionization. The cost of proceeding past 30% -- the threshold at which you can seek the ballot -- is relatively small and the benefits large. If they don't think they can get 50%+1 votes, they won't ask for the ballot. If they can get the votes, they can also get the signatures. And there is the distinct possibility that one could get 50%+1 signatures in a card-check campaign without getting 50%+1 votes in a secret ballot. So I would argue that it is highly unlikely a union would ever seek the election option. Justin Wilson of the Employee Free Action Committee makes the same point.

That's what the administrative law judge calls "an unfavorable deduction." And that's what Brian Melendez was calling a lie, and what the DFL was saying should be prevented from the airwaves in a country that still has the First Amendment.

I am quite willing to still debate the analysis and facts of EFCA with Mr. Melendez at any place, at any time. I can come by the DFL booth at the State Fair, if he was of a mind to agree to that. I don't expect he will, though, and you can draw your own unfavorable deduction from that.

Labels: Feminists, Franken, free speech, Minnesota, unions

I would have been happy to show up to visit with Al Franken as only one other person did, but I was out of town. Not because I support Al, but because the french toast and hash browns at Brigitte's are awesome.

To Duane's comment that "Maybe there is record low unemployment in St. Cloud" I would reply, no, unemployment is an issue here, even though we've got a place charging $3.49 for a gallon of gas. I suspect it's simpler than that -- with the Benton County Fair going on across town, the DFL faithful answered a different cattle call.

Labels: Feminists, Franken, St. Cloud

Visiting St. Cloud yesterday to promote his "Kitchen Table Tax Plan", Al Franken had a bit of trouble explaining his plan to end IRAs and replace them with a 401(u) plan.

The retirement plan would be funded by eliminating an existing income tax deduction for Individual Retirement Accounts for people who participate in the new program, which would be voluntary, Franken said.

“Tax deductions help people who make the most money, but they don’t help those who don’t make enough to pay income taxes to begin with,” he said. “I think Social Security will still be around years from now if we don’t privatize it, but we need something else to help people save for their retirement.”

Pressed to explain how a voluntary system could raise enough money to pay the subsidy if those with higher incomes who benefit more from existing deductions don’t switch, Franken referred people to his campaign Web site and said “it’s a wash.”

Well, OK, we went to his web page about his 401(u).

What would it cost?
The shift from tax deductions to matching contributions is close to revenue-neutral.

That's the entire entry for "What would it cost?" Oh, that's MUCH clearer now.

The 401(u) isn't a new concept. It's the "automatic in, opt out" plan that Obama has been pushing. It requires employers to take a portion of a worker's check and put it into a plan, where it receives a 30% match from government (in the Franken plan), if the company doesn't have a retirement plan for employees (and has more than 10 employees.) This relies heavily on the idea from behavioral economics that people do not often enough choose to save. If this is true, why does the Franken plan allow families to"shape their account to fit their unique needs"? If they aren't smart enough to opt in, how are they supposed to do that? The funds would at the outset be placed in "responsibly in low-cost, diverse portfolios." Who chooses those?

Mark Thoma wrote about such plans (when a Republican supported them for Social Security):

In general, I hate opt-out programs. I don’t want to spend my time filling out forms and checking boxes telling people all the things I don’t want to buy. If I’m convinced there is market failure in the market for bicycles resulting in too few being purchased, is the proper solution to drop bicycles in people’s yards unless they remember to send in the proper paperwork? I remember being in music clubs like that when I was younger… Maybe a better answer is to work a little harder on the incentives and ease of opting-in.

Last, I worry we have forgotten the Lucas critique yet again. Change the rules and change the behavior. I can imagine that if you impose opt-out now when it is uncommon participation might be high. But as it becomes more common and institutionalized people will more easily opt-out. In addition, it also seems participation rates will fall in the long-run as people hit financial stress points. If you can opt-out at will, then the first time a family faces financial distress, they will likely opt-out. Unless they are somehow brought back into the program later, participation rates will fall as time passes and revenues may not meet projected values.

I agree with Thoma, though see Beshears et al [2006] for a more positive report. Someone pointed out to me as well that one of Franken's justifications for this bill is that the tax deductibility of the 401k isn't a value to about half the workers in America, because they don't pay any or too few taxes. How ironic that it would be Franken to point out one of the effects of the Bush tax cuts!

Labels: economics, Franken, taxes

I've written twice before on the Orwellian-named Employee Free Choice Act, which would make the heretofore voluntary agreement between workers and firms to use card-check systems (allowing a union to be recognized as sole bargaining agent for all workers if a majority of workers sign cards agreeing to be so represented) binding on firms who do not agree. Firms currently can request a vote to be administered by NLRB; those workers who do not wish to be unionized would have the opportunity, along with the firm, to argue why a union would not be in workers' best interest, and a vote would be held with workers' privacy protected by the NLRB. No such protections are provided under the proposed card-check program. Those who did not sign the card, or those who were not even approached by union organizers, would find themselves in a union, obligated to pay dues, without recourse, without a check or balance. The equivalent would be to imagine you waking one morning and reading in your newspaper that organizers had gone to other homes, had others sign a card that signified that they wanted King Banaian to be president of the United States, and that because they had enough cards signed, Banaian was now president without any further action required. You've never heard me talk, you don't know my views, but I now represent you on Pennsylvania Avenue. That'd be pretty bizarre, yes?

After the DFL accused the ad put out by the Coalition for a Democratic Workplace (the TV ad was put out by them alone) of falsehoods, I wrote a letter to DFL state party chair Brian Melendez to invite him to debate the issue. We had recorded Al Franken answers twice to be sure we understood his views on the bill, and by their own admission Franken supports EFCA. So we assumed the debate would be on the merits of the bill. A discussion of the issue, I thought, might be a refreshing change to thirty-second ads.

So imagine my surprise last night to find out that the DFL would rather file a complaint. They'd rather debate through lawyers than in the state capitol. We are, of course, happy to have this debate any place Chairman Melendez chooses, but isn't it interesting that he needs to employ lawyers to assist his side?

We appreciate the coverage by the news and bloggers (Andy's post has both of the TV ads; I bet he watches them on his iPhone.) And we don't intend to go away; a new ad is running from us today.

A statement put out by J. Justin Wilson, managing director of the Employee Freedom Action Committee, said in a prepared statement,

It appears that Mr. Melendez is complicit in the scheme to deceive the public and take away working Minnesotans’ right to a private ballot vote. The irony of Mr. Melendez’s ‘complaint’ is that he is the one who is misleading the people of Minnesota in order to advance a union boss’ power grab that will generate millions in new forced dues dollars.

If Mr. Melendez truly cared about the best interests of working Minnesotans he would reject these absurd political games and agree to a substantive public debate on the private vote issue.

I reiterate that invitation, Chairman Melendez. I'm available almost any day in the month of August.

Labels: Democrats, Franken, free speech, Minnesota

A few nights ago I found my name in a post by fellow St. Cloud blogger "Political Muse", noting my opposition to sports stadia and wondering how I can square that with supporting Sen. Coleman's bid for re-election. I've met the senator and asked some tough questions of him in blogger conference calls, but I didn't know him as a mayor and thus never had the opportunity or incentive to ask his view of stadium subsidies. I did comment on Muse's post that in view of Franken's writings in Playboy I would find it much easier to vote for the re-election of Coleman.

Michael reports this morning that the Franken campaign has gone so far as to release an ad deriding Coleman's support of building the Xcel Energy Center.

I find the Franken campaign's choice odd. The reason these stadia keep getting public dollars is because the public believes somehow -- mistakenly, in the view of economists, but this is hardly the first time the public has chosen to ignore the economists -- that they are of benefit to a city and would be underprovided by private financing alone. Pointing out that Norm took from Peter to give to Paul is hardly a way to gain Paul's support in voting against Norm. There may be, there might be, a few Peters who are persuaded by the ad, but if that were true these stadium deals would not keep gaining passage. And support for hockey is enough in this state that even outstate arenas like St. Cloud and Bemidji draw public funding.

I wish there was a spokesman for the economists' view of public financing of sports stadia, but I don't think Al Franken is the right guy for that job either.

Labels: Coleman, Franken, Minnesota, sports

I don't watch the Sopranos, but I get this:
An ad ran yesterday in the StarTribune from the Minnesotans for Employee Freedom, for which I am a member of its steering committee. The ads have drawn some attention from the press this week as the first issue ad in Minnesota.

It's worth thinking a bit more about this issue: What is wrong with card check? I got a card to join AARP recently; I didn't have to fill out a secret ballot on whether AARP could represent me or not. But unions are not voluntary organizations. If 50% plus one of my fellow employees sign a card for a union, the rest of us are compelled to make it our agent for the terms and conditions of our employment. We would give away a great deal of control to our fellow workers if they were permitted to simply get 50%+1 of employees to sign cards. I would argue that a private ballot in voting for giving someone agency rights over our voluntary association with an employer is higher-stakes than our vote in a Presidential election (since the group is so much smaller, our ballot has a much higher probability of being decisive.) You might wonder why unions would be opposed to secret ballots; my answer is "cui bono?"

As I pointed out last month, and as the new ad makes clear, voting in public is coercive. Often union representatives have access to personal information about employees in a shop they want to organize, including home addresses and phone numbers, by which they can repeatedly visit and hope for a signature in a weak moment. Consider a couple of examples. From the Man Show, a spoof was done to get women to sign a petition that would "end women's suffrage." Of course, you hear that word and if not careful think "suffering" and what woman wouldn't want to end suffering? The result is, they just signed a petition to give up their right to vote.

The other is from Penn&Teller's Bullshit program, which is a petition to get dihydrogen monoxide banned. Sounds like awful stuff, until Teller draws for you what it is. Passion overcomes reason when someone is jamming a clipboard or a card in your face asking "only" for your signature.
Remember, nobody gets to talk to you when the fellow with the card comes to visit. EFCA says that employers will be found guilty of violating the National Labor Relations Act if they should interfere with a card check drive. Interfering could be anything including signs or pamphlets advising against signing cards. This after that employee and employer had already entered into a voluntary agreement. The choice is asymmetric -- laws make it much harder to remove an existing union than to create a new one. Should that agreement be abrogated by Johnny Sack with a clipboard?

UPDATE: I had not seen until someone commented on it the "Reality Check" by Pat Kessler. Kessler is misleading on two points.

The bill that Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Al Franken supports does not eliminate the secret ballot election. Workers still have the right to hold one but labor unions say the new option gives employers less control.

We've cited what the bill says, and we're happy that Kessler agrees that Franken supports HR 800/S 1041. But unions have a strong preference for card check -- which they can only get by agreement with the employer currently. EFCA removes the ability of the employer to negotiate after the cards reach 50%+1. The National Right to Work Legal Foundation has analyzed all union elections and card checks since a case was decided in favor of employees having access to information from their employers. Over 250 were done by card check since November 2007 (basically, a six month period; the last data I saw had about 2500 elections a year by 2005.) As it is, unions win a majority of elections when they are held, 57% between 2001 and 2005. According to data from the liberal Center for Economic Policy Research, perhaps a quarter of all workers organized were through card check. But obviously that's not enough because...

You can agree or disagree with the motive of the bill, but the effect is that it would make it easier to form a union. That's why labor unions want it so badly. Union membership is plummeting.

Unions are not entitled to a share of the labor force. As the traditional manufacturing sectors have declined and as service sector jobs become more high-tech and professional, it is only reasonable that union membership would decline. Union membership is also declining in Sweden, hardly a bastion of free market capitalism. Kessler misleads by implying that employers in the US have been more successful in reducing unionism against the wishes of their workers. There's no evidence that would support that claim.

Labels: Coleman, economics, Franken, Minnesota, unions

Al Franken thinks your stimulus check is a mistake. I could buy that, if he was going to say that it just implies higher taxes later so it won't really stimulate. But no, that's not what he's saying.

As he embarked on a tour of Minnesota focused on the economy, Franken said he was "not thrilled" with the $168 billion economic rescue package Congress approved in February.

While stopping short of saying he would have voted against the plan, Franken said he would have preferred more emphasis on helping states and municipalities move ahead with deferred repairs to highways, bridges and sewer systems.

"It would have the benefit of putting people to work, which is what you need to do in a recession," Franken told reporters at a state Capitol news conference. "And it would have the added benefit of actually repairing some infrastructure, which is also good for our economy."

Dollars spent put people to work, but dollars drained to pay for those workers puts other workers out of work. Which ones does he favor? The ones that are in the construction industry. These are both temporary jobs and they are unionized. Those ads playing on Twin Cities television right now blaring how good unions are for us all, are the friends of Al Franken.

Which makes him not the friend of those of us who have to pay those workers.

Labels: economics, Franken, unions

King has a long post questioning Al Franken's proposal for universal health care. Below is important information people should know before buying the rhetoric of politicians who want to control us.

Before addressing specific fallacies of so called "single payor" (ie government) systems, check this site that includes a graph that corrects life expectancy data for differences in the rates of premature death from non-health-related injury, such as homicide and car accidents. Once these non-health-related injuries are excluded, Americans live longer than anyone else, even with our obesity problem.

First, the hospital infrastructure in England is deteriorating rapidly. Why? Prior to National Healthcare, hospitals were run by private operations and charities who made it a point to maintain and upgrade the infrastructure. There never have been nor are there plans in the British system to update these hospitals. When any institution refuses to build in preventive maintenance, sooner or later the structure will become unsafe. (Source is Weekly Standard). No politician has any incentive to include maintenance funds in any program he/she uses to "buy" votes.

Second, this article by Mark Steyn outlines major problems with the Canadian health care system. The entire article is good; the healthcare issues appear at the end. A key quote below:

Canadian dependence on the United States is particularly true in health care, the most eminent Canadian idea looming in the American context. That is, public health care in Canada depends on private health care in the U.S. A small news story from last month illustrates this:

A Canadian woman has given birth to extremely rare identical quadruplets. The four girls were born at a U.S. hospital because there was no space available at Canadian neonatal intensive care units. Autumn, Brook, Calissa, and Dahlia are in good condition at Benefice Hospital in Great Falls, Montana. Health officials said they checked every other neonatal intensive care unit in Canada, but none had space. The Jepps, a nurse and a respiratory technician were flown 500 kilometers to the Montana hospital, the closest in the U.S., where the quadruplets were born on Sunday.

There you have Canadian health care in a nutshell. After all, you can’t expect a G-7 economy of only 30 million people to be able to offer the same level of neonatal intensive care coverage as a town of 50,000 in remote, rural Montana.

Everyone knows that socialized health care means you wait and wait and wait—six months for an MRI, a year for a hip replacement, and so on. But here is the absolute logical reductio of a government monopoly in health care: the ten month waiting list for the maternity ward.

Third, there are numerous stories of people being denied health care because of government rationing. Age could be a factor as well as time of year. If you require surgery but the doctor has performed his alloted operations for the year, he can perform no more, period. As my friend's friend said, "You can get diagnosed but can't get treatment - (Canadians) try to treat everything with drugs and pain killers." The email listed example after example after example. When a government rations doctors' pay, by definition they ration services. This talk sounds good but ....

There's a reason Canadians and others around the world come to the USA for surgery. Our system is better, our hospitals are in better shape, and we have access when needed, not on some government timetable.

It is grossly unfair and unjust when a politician promises something that cannot be delivered by a government as well as it can be delivered today by the private sector.

Labels: Franken, health care

At least in one race, it appears so.

Al Franken, the comedian-turned-U.S. Senate candidate, thinks the current state of health care in Minnesota — and the United States as a whole — is anything but funny.

“Every other industrialized country in the world has universal health care — we’re the only industrialized country that doesn’t — and I think it’s no coincidence that we spend twice as much per person as any other industrialized country on health care,” Franken said during a visit to the Detroit Lakes Newspapers offices on Friday. “And yet we don’t have as good outcomes as they do.

“We’re last in the industrialized world in preventive care. We have 47 million people who are uninsured, with tens of millions more who are underinsured because they can’t afford full coverage … and they live in fear that they will go bankrupt if they have a medical crisis. Medical crises are the No. 1 cause of bankruptcy in this country.

“Fifty percent of the bankruptcies in this country are caused by medical crises. They don’t have that in other industrialized countries.”

Franken also notes that the current health care system has “tremendous waste,” with 34 percent of health care dollars being spent on administrative fees.

“No other country spends more than 21 percent (on administrative fees),” he said. “We have people going to work every day for insurance companies trying to figure out how to deny you care.

“I hear story after story of incredible waste in our system because we aren’t universal.”

Where do we start with this hooey? Let's look at a couple of leading examples, say, Sweden:

Health Minister Göran Hägglund has criticized the lack of progress made toward shortening wait times in Sweden’s health system.

He made the comments in an opinion article published in Dagens Nyheter in which he stated that the 250 million kronor spent by the government on lowering wait times has apparently had a little effect.

The criticism comes in response to a report by the National Board of Health and Welfare (Socialstyrelsen) showing that nearly 45 percent of patients have longer wait times than are supposedly guaranteed by the healthcare system.
...
In Jämtland county, for example, four out of ten patients couldn’t even get through to their local clinic by telephone on the day they become ill.

Hägglund asserted that people are generally satisfied with the care provided—when they receive it.

“But the wait to receive attention—be it a telephone call to a local clinic or a first visit to a physician—is simply too long,” he said.

Hat tip Mark Perry, who wonders what would happen to Domino's or Northwest Airlines if four out of ten of their customers couldn't get their calls answered.

Next door in Norway, hospitals are suffering a budget crisis. This is worth reading in its entirety, but I will italicize the paragraph that should be used as a clue-bat to the back of Al Franken's noggin:

With waiting lists long, and patients still often lying in corridors, many Norwegians can't understand why medical care is under so much pressure in one of the world's wealthiest countries.

The board of Ullevål University Hospital in Oslo, one of the country's biggest public health institutions, announced earlier this week that it needed to cut its budget by NOK 406 million (about USD 81 million). Medical personnel were quick to claim that patient care would be affected.

The cuts come after another year of reports that patients often have to wait months for operations, that clinics face shutdown or maternity patients are sent home within hours of birth. The physical plant at Ullevål, like at many other Norwegian hospitals, can use some refurbishing, if for no other reason than to make the hospital a more cheerful, inviting place.

State officials, including Health Minister Sylvia Brustad of the Labour Party, argue that the hospitals are receiving more state funding than ever before, and that more patients are being cared for than ever. Nevertheless, cuts are warned and both hospital administrators and union leaders claim they're dealing with yet another health care "crisis."

Newspaper Aftenposten has gathered figures showing that Norwegian hospitals today have NOK 86 billion available, up from NOK 56 billion in 2002. Even though budgets have increased every year, the hospitals are using more money than they're getting. That's led to an accumulated budget deficit of around NOK 9 billion.

The number of doctors tied to Norwegian hospitals rose from 6,700 in 1995 to 10,854 in 2006, up 62 percent. The number of nurses and psychologists on staff has also increased, while administrative personnel has increased the least. The total number of hospital workers in Norway jumped from 67,098 in 1995 to 94,923 in 2006, with payroll costs jumping 70 percent.

Professor Terje Hagen of a health management and economic institute at the University of Oslo claims there is no crisis within Norwegian health care. "The hospitals have had tighter financial constraints in recent years, but they're still using more resources than planned," Hagen told Aftenposten.

Hagen says health care personnel aren't working as many hours as they did before, and notes there's more of them. Professor Ivar Sønbø Kristiansen puts the financial problems firmly on the rise in personnel and the resulting payroll hikes. He also rejects talk of a crisis.

"As I see it, neither hospital personnel nor politicians manage to say 'no' (to health care services that result in higher costs)," Kristiansen said. "When the possibilities for what can be done just get bigger and bigger, and no one sets priorities, budgets will burst.

"It's virtually immoral to talk about a crisis, when we are among the countries using the most money on hospitals in the world."

The budget that bursts is not the hospital's, in universal care. It's yours.

Now of course, Franken's supporters will argue that he doesn't really want single-payer, even though his health-care page says "A single-payer system would be the most effective in terms of reducing administrative costs, and I would be thrilled to support such a system." He just wants it for kids under 18 (that's the Obama plan, too.) But even his plan for adults -- every state mandated to come up with its own plan -- creates a problem that Glen Whitman identified a few months ago:

To enact any mandate, legislators and bureaucrats must specify a minimum benefits package that an insurance policy must cover. Yet this package can't be defined in an apolitical way. Each medical specialty, from oncology to acupuncture, will push for its services to be included. Ditto other interest groups. In government, bloat is the rule, not the exception.

Even now, every state has a list of benefits that any health-insurance policy must cover--from contraception to psychotherapy to chiropractic to hair transplants. All states together have created nearly 1,900 mandated benefits. Of course, more generous benefits make insurance more expensive. A 2007 study estimates existing mandates boost premiums by more than 20%.

If interest groups have found it worthwhile to lobby 50 state legislatures for laws affecting only voluntarily purchased insurance policies, they will surely redouble their efforts to affect the contents of a federally mandated insurance plan. Consequently, even more people will find themselves unable to afford insurance. Others will buy insurance, but only via public subsidies. Isn't that just what the doctor didn't order?

Who is going to write the mandate that says hair transplants are out? That physical therapy for a chronically arthritic shoulder is limited to only ten times a year, or that condoms are in but that new fancy IUD is out?

And what happens if you mandate that everyone buy their own health insurance, and they don't? As Whitman points out, in the 47 states with mandatory auto insurance, 12% of autos are uninsured -- a higher percentage than persons without health insurance in Minnesota. And in a third of the cases nationwide, the uninsured had household income over $50,000. (Source.)

(BTW, Arnold Kling recommends this excellent article, but it's a 7 MB pdf, so beware.)

The question comes down, as Grace-Marie Turner says, to whether you let individuals control their own care, or you let government. Sweden and Norway use government, and Al Franken thinks that's a good idea. Luckily for those Republicans suffering palpitations on their choice of presidential nominee, all of the remaining GOP candidates are not for the Scandinavian model of health care. John McCain says "To use their money effectively, Americans need more choices."

Here, by the way, is Norm Coleman's health care page. I don't see any mention of Sweden.

Labels: Coleman, economics, Franken, health care, politics