Dems and Their Special Interests

The way our Democratic friends tell it, Big Oil and Big Drug are evil special interests.

But Big Green and Big Ed are noble activists and teachers. And Big Labor is just out to help working people.

It all depends on your point of view.

But Thomas Sowell takes a dim view of Sen Barack Obama’s plan to bring an end to secret ballots in union representation elections.

Labor unions have a problem. Union-represented workers in the private sector amount to less than 10 percent of the workforce and going down every year. That’s a problem—for unions, at least.

Since unions are losing the game under the current rules, their obvious answer is to change the rules. Specifically, they want to do away with secret ballots when the government conducts elections to determine whether the workers in a particular company or industry want to be represented by a union.

Sen. Obama supports the end of secret ballot elections for unions.

“I will make it the law of the land when I’m President of the United States,” Barack Obama has said to the AFL-CIO.

I wonder what the American people will think of that when the issue actually comes up on the radar?

Then there’s Big Green. Environmentalists are fanatically opposed to exploration and production of hydrocarbon resources. And so are the Democrats. Well they were, until yesterday, when Speaker Nancy Pelosi allowed as how she might allow a vote on oil drilling.

There’s no doubt that Americans want to conserve the environment. But they are not prepared to sacrifice the present to the future, whatever rich trust-fund environmentalists may say.

Then there’s education. Democrats are united in opposing reform of education through relaxation of the monopoly of union teachers.

Even the Congressional Black Caucus dares not vote for vouchers or any other form of school choice that the teachers’ unions oppose. Better to let a whole generation of black children be trapped in failing schools that employ union teachers.

Someday, the dam is going to break on all this special-interest politics. But that day is not yet. But at least we have Thomas Sowell to witness today’s errors, crimes, and injustices and to point with audacious hope to a better day for America.