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Politics : American Presidential Politics and foreign affairs -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: haqihana who wrote (4826)	2/28/2006 10:23:15 AM
From: Peter Dierks	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71588

Competition is good for every organization. Education improves when there is competition. It improves even in the worst schools. In my fathers' days the readers at school often used bible versus. The generation he and Bob Hope were in produced many good and moral people. With the removal of God from school you can expect more Clinton's and fewer Washington's. "amusing that she could brow beat her husband" I suspect you are correct in your choice of words. Brow beat. A couple years ago I used to waste a lot of my time trying to point out facts to BDS sufferers.

To: haqihana who wrote (4826)	3/7/2006 9:09:32 AM
From: Peter Dierks	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71588

Union War Rules A not-so-flexible civilian fighting machine. Tuesday, March 7, 2006 12:01 a.m. EST In drafting the U.S. Constitution, the Founders entrusted national security largely to the President. But to protect the Republic today, the executive branch must first comply with something James Madison never imagined--union work rules. In a decision last week, Judge Emmet Sullivan sided with union plaintiffs and tossed out the Pentagon's new personnel system, which the Defense Secretary and White House say they need to safeguard the nation. His decision comes after Judge Rosemary Collyer threw out a similar personnel system at the Department of Homeland Security in August. (That case is under appeal.) The danger here is that the collective bargaining rights of 650,000 civilian workers will trump the collective right we all have to a military organized to confront 21st-century threats. Five years ago Donald Rumsfeld returned to the Pentagon to find that its personnel system was even more outdated than GM's. He was forced to negotiate with some 1,300 unions and operate under rules that rewarded seniority over initiative and prevented managers from redirecting civilian workers to more pressing assignments. This is especially dangerous in wartime, when the Defense Department is forced to put uniformed troops in administrative jobs that need to be filled quickly even though they might be put to better use in Iraq or elsewhere. Not so incidentally, this also encourages the best civilian employees to quit for private-sector jobs that will pay them better. So the Administration pushed for basing pay on performance, allowing the Pentagon to shift employees to meet emerging threats and allowing the new rules to go into effect even if the American Federation of Government Employees and other unions didn't agree to them. Congress passed legislation in 2003 calling for a "flexible" and "contemporary" personnel system. But thanks in large part to Republican Senators Susan Collins (Maine) and George Voinovich (Ohio), the bill also said that employees were allowed to "bargain collectively" through their unions. It was on this hook that Judge Sullivan hung his decision, arguing that the new regulations would undermine agreements with union officials. So the Defense Department can have a new personnel system, but only if it's identical to the old system. We doubt this is what Congress had in mind in authorizing the Pentagon to "establish and from time to time adjust a labor relations system . . . to address the unique role that the Department's civilian workforce plays in supporting the Department's national security mission." It also glosses over the fact that, even under the new system, Defense officials will continue to negotiate with unions over pay and benefits and will have every incentive to use their new flexibility in a way that doesn't produce labor tension. The Pentagon hasn't decided what its next step will be, but we hope the Administration will appeal. It's hard to see how Mr. Rumsfeld's drive to use his uniformed soldiers more effectively can proceed if he doesn't gain the flexibility to better use his civilian workforce. Improving Defense's "tooth-to-tail ratio" requires getting the civilian tail out from under union work rules. opinionjournal.com