Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: jlallen who wrote (200783)	11/7/2001 1:10:26 PM
From: Zoltan!	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 769667

Dem's scheme is to sacrifice airport security for payoff to corrupt unions: November 7, 2001 Rewarding Mr. McEntee In arguing that baggage screeners must be "federal employees," liberals talk about police, firemen, Marines, the Coast Guard and every other noble public image short of making Saint Francis of Assisi a Teamster. The one name they don't mention is Gerald McEntee. Yet Mr. McEntee is arguably the single most important player in this entire political debate. He runs the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, the 1.3 million-member public-worker union and perhaps the largest single force in today's AFL-CIO. He is definitely the union consortium's biggest political hitter, the Rasputin behind John Sweeney's successful insurgency in 1995 and the main voice behind turning the AFL-CIO into a partisan vehicle to overturn GOP control of Congress. The baggage screener debate has very little to do with airport security. As we've written before, the Israelis and most of even socialist Europe manages very well with private screeners operating under government standards and oversight. What this debate is about is Democrats rewarding Mr. McEntee for services rendered. Unions have had a hard time organizing private sector workers for years, but government employees have been their saving grace. If baggage screeners become government employees, that will mean 28,000 more dues-paying members for some union, if not AFSCME itself then another affiliated with the AFL-CIO. And a large portion of those nonvoluntary dues will go to finance political ads and organizing to elect Democrats. Political security Of course if you hire a private security company, you can always fire it. And that private company in turn can always fire incompetent or derelict workers much more easily than the federal government can. Chicago's O'Hare Airport just this week suspended workers who missed a passenger carrying knives and a stun gun. Anybody who has ever dealt with a government union knows how hard it is to fire public employees for anything. They'd almost have to hijack the plane. The idea of unions dressing themselves up as virtuous public servants is also something of a stretch. No doubt most federal workers are honorable, as are the private companies that now hire the screeners. But AFSCME itself has a recent history of widespread corruption, especially in its District Council 37, the umbrella for local unions representing 125,000 workers in New York City. A probe by Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau has uncovered vote-rigging, embezzlement and fraud; 30 union leaders have been convicted or pled guilty. Mr. McEntee was himself linked by trial testimony to a scheme to channel $50,000 to re-elect then-Teamsters president Ron Carey. Mr. McEntee denies any wrongdoing and Mr. Carey was recently acquitted in the case, after several earlier convictions in trials of lower-level players. With all of this on the public record, it's amusing to hear GOP Senator John McCain claim that House Republicans are the ones beholden to "special interests" for preferring private workers. What "interests" are those? The airlines that will no longer be responsible for screening under either bill? The main interest involved here is Mr. McEntee's. All Mr. McCain is doing is grandstanding one more time for campaign-finance reform, as if Osama bin Laden ran on "soft money." We'll admit to astonishment, if not quite admiration, that Democrats have been able to spin all of this as one more private-sector perfidy. But that doesn't mean they should be able to get away with it. interactive.wsj.com