Thomas Sowell wrote this opinion column a few days ago at National Review, Barack Obama, Control Freak, Fresh face, same old fallacies. The following are some snips from the article. Enough to give one an idea of his Sowell’s POV and his less then factual grasp of reality,

Senator Barack Obama recently said, “let’s allow our unions and their organizers to lift up this country’s middle class again.” Ironically, he said it at a time when Detroit automakers have been laying off unionized workers by the tens of thousands, while Toyota has been hiring tens of thousands of non-union American automobile workers. It is not that people don’t want automobiles. Toyota is selling plenty of cars made in its American factories with non-union labor.

Detroit is laying off workers because GM and Ford have been shown a remarkable ability not to adjust to market demands not because union workers are paid too much – though one could make the argument the continuing tie between workers/employers and health care is a factor – versus some kind of public health care. Mr Sowell, being an expert and all does know that unionized companies can and have negotiated for lower wages and benefits. Toyota is hiring workers because they make a higher quality product then Detroit and they don’t hire union workers because they have a policy against it. According to this NPR report from 2005 the reason that Detroit is losing market share and money is not because of union wages versus Toyota’s non-union wages, well because they are about the same, Toyota Powers Ahead at Kentucky Plant

The United Auto Workers have tried to crack the Toyota plant since before it opened. Last spring, they opened their own organizing office just down the road. But Brown says that Toyota’s wages are so close to the union’s, she doesn’t see the advantage. That workers like Brown aren’t interested in unions is no accident. Manufacturers like Toyota locate their plants in regions hungry for jobs with good salaries. It’s the result of a strategy foreign car companies have used for years to avoid unionization. Gary Chaison, who teaches industrial relations at Clark University in Masachussetts, says Toyota and its peers also try to treat workers well, take their opinions into account and give them a stake in the plant’s success. Despite the wages, some Toyota workers say they need a union. They complain the company drives them so hard that people get injured, and when they can’t work anymore, Toyota pays them off to leave Leonard Habermehl is a skilled repairman and makes up to $85,000 per year. When he came to Toyota in 1990, he didn’t see why he needed a union. But after years of service in which he says he has seen people injured and forced out of their jobs, he now believes the plant should unionize.

It should also be pointed that union wages are a driving force behind Toyota’s wages. If union wages go up the wages at non-union plants at Toyota and Honda do also. If unions are the reason that American car companies are tanking then why are Japanese car and electronics companies which do have unions in Japan doing well. The disparity between American companies and Japanese companies cannot be simply because of the mere presence of unions.

Mr. Sowell is pushing the same tired hypocrisy that Republicans have been pushing for years that they honestly believe that salaries should be tied to productivity. Conservatives like Sowell only believe that when the productivity has a blue collar. When it comes to executives it is a whole other story – Why Are American Executives Paid So Much?

CEOs and CFOs in the U.S. make 400 times what the average worker earns. In 1965, it was more like a factor of 20.

A commenter at MyDD left this snip from a report called Executive Excess 2006,

“In 2005, average total compensation for CEOs of 350 leading U.S. corporations was $11.6 million.” A CEO making $10 million/year makes as much money in a month as someone working at the minimum wage makes in her lifetime. There is no reasonable justification for one person to make as much money in a month as another earns in a lifetime. No matter how smart, beautiful, refined, charismatic, brave, clever, educated, experienced, or hard working, no human being deserves to receive a thousand times as much money as another.

While I wouldn’t have worded My objections to executive pay structure quite that way the point is well made. Executives and I have meet a few are not supermen. They are not blessed with any special gifts in the way of management skills, marketing, sales, quality control or any other kind of business skills or acumen that warrants that kind of pay disparity. I hate wage and price controls. What people like me want to rely on is a sense of ethics and moral responsibility by executives and their boards. To see their place not just as morally detached business people who only see the economy in quarterly profit reports, but as caretakers for hundreds and sometimes thousands of people and their jobs and families. These business pros and the corporate board members that are supposed to set reasonable standards for compensation – such as linking pay to performance ( and ethics too for that matter). Sowell and other conservatives say they worship the gods of pay for merit, but like so many of the other fine sound bites that slip so easily from conservative forked tongues, on close examination they always seem to fall short of the mark, unless being huge hypocrites was what they were aiming for. This is the PDF link to that executive pay report.

From a Republican blog called STR : THE FREEDOM BLOG, Athiest troublemakers not O.K. in OK, August 26th, 2006 | Category: Liberal Democ-Rats, Christian America, STR Action Alerts, Atheism

Can somebody tell me why Athiests have to be so disruptive? Why do they have to break all the rules cause so much harm? I know a minority of STR.com readers believe that we should “live and let live” with athiests, but the simple fact is that an Athiest is nothing more than an intellectual terrorist. Some terrorists attack America using bombs and guns. Athiests attack America with their evil words and ideas. For the the parents of kids at Hardesty School, Texas County (Not far from my own dear Tuttle City), a local athiest family is becoming a serious threat. Please read on for an example of just how much damage an athiest can cause. I am sure after reading this article you will agree that something has to be done about the Athiest problem: It all started when Nicole Smalkowski refused to say the Lords Prayer before a basketball match.

The United States of America is so fragile an institution that objecting to being coerced into prayer before a game of b-ball will surely mean the end of the Republic. There is nothing worse then those basketball prayer hating atheists is there?

Minister Arrested Charged With Cocaine Possession

Sandy-area pastor charged with 23 counts of fraud

Marin City pastor arrested in drug case in Novato

Church pastor charged with child rape

Prosecutors charged the pastor of a church here with four counts of first-degree child rape and two counts of child molestation.

Clay County Pastor Charged With Sexually Assaulting Girl

Those are just a few of the news stories about Christians that have run in the past 14 hours of doing this post. Which reminds me of this from John 8:7, “So when they continued asking him, he lifted up himself, and said unto them, He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.” (KJV) The young woman that writes that blog might want to take off the blinders. The atheists did nothing to her or her family – they didn’t steal, commit adultery, murder or commit any other serious moral violation unlike some of her fellow holier-then-thou brethren. The atheists just think that public school events should be, as in accordance with the Constitution a neutral grounds not a place or time to turn into an improvised tent meeting. If actual crime, harm, wrong doing consisted solely of those committed by atheists you could walk down any alleyway or street in America 24/7 relatively confident that you will not be sexually assaulted or defrauded. On the other hand if you feel that not being able to coerce people into praying is one of the biggest crimes one can commit and one of the biggest challenges facing the nation maybe its time for some careful reflection and reordering of priorities.