Albany, New York isn’t just the seat of a clown car state government — it’s also a college town. And college students, when boozed to the gills, can out-bozo politicians. (Well, almost.) On March 12th crowds of drunken students rioted in the Albany neighborhood known as the student ghetto. The lads and lassies, most of whom seemed to be from UAlbany (a major campus of the State University of New York aka SUNY), had prepped for the city’s St. Patrick’s Day parade with hours of bar crawls and Kegs and Eggs house parties. Eventually the breakfast bunch spewed out onto the frosty streets.

The Albany Student Press claims that the Albany police, in an effort to tamp down the annual festival of collegiate binge drinking, had rousted the house parties. Pushing participants outdoors where “frat boys and sorority chicks”* joined them in solidarity. The non-student press hasn’t mentioned any rousts. Whatever. Hundreds of students milled in the streets, wearing neon green tees and bellowing like cattle on jimsonweed. Smaller groups commenced to trash. Cars were pushed into the street and smashed. Appliances were hurled from balconies. Cans and bottles flew. Several cops were tackled. Most (though not all) in the crowd laughed to see such sport. Their cellphones captured the riot. YouTube took it viral. Suddenly, all eyes were on Albany’s student ghetto.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Albany pols and college officials freaked. Were they riled by the riot — or the nationwide publicity?

Callow binge drinkers have been stampeding in the student ghetto for years. And not just during the daze of St. Pat’s. A brief search of YouTube turns up numerous vids of students from UAlbany and the College of St. Rose (a private university adjacent to the student ghetto) making merry on many occasions. Heck — I lived on the edge of the student ghetto in 2000/2001 and can personally attest that every weekend, except for ones during breaks and vacations, was a holiday in the hood. Or should I say — a party in its mouth? The sidewalks were a mosaic of greasy pizza boxes, crushed beer cups, broken bottles, and vom. In winter the mosaic froze over, spring brought the big patty melt.

Walking through the student ghetto was an eyeball assault. Its once-beautiful two and three family homes were sinking into the sludge. Absentee landlords and young lugs living la vida transient don’t do upkeep. A virtual tour of the homes’ interiors can now be had on YouTube. Footage of semiconscious or completely zonked students being owned by their roomies is a staple on Student Ghetto, The Reality Show. If you look past the limp bodies in funny degrading poses, you can see the subdivided warrens, rats’ nest wiring, and broken windows covered with trash bags.

Code enforcement? What code enforcement?

I used to wonder if parents actually visited their kids’ digs. And what they thought if they did. After all, parents frequently pay for those digs. Some even send rent directly to the landlords. I also wondered if parents understood the intensity — and heavy underage aspect — of the student ghetto bar scene. It gave me quite a turn to see really young girls staggering out of bars blitzed blind and dumb. Particularly since the neighborhood is also a crime scene.

Muggings, assaults, and burglary shadow the student ghetto. Students are perceived as easy pickings; predators from other ghettos come to partake. In the autumn of 2008, a UAlbany senior was shot to death a few blocks from where I once lived. Drug trade? It’s like, historic. One street has an evil rep going back decades. From my window I watched deals going down on the corner of said street. The longevity of its rep made me cynical (wrongly, I’m sure) about notifying the Albany police. Instead I called the county cops and hoped for the best.

But back to Kegs and Eggs. Some 40 students were arrested. A few days after the riot YouTube footage was being used to identify more participants. Pictures taken from videos were released to the press. (Many of the alleged perps seemed in dire need of Clearasil.) Detective James Miller, official spokesman for the Albany Police Department, promised swift and certain justice.

On March 16th, a New York Daily News editorial blasted SUNY Albany for being known for “hard partying” rather than quality education. The editorial also denounced the “moms and dads” of the rioters, for contributing to a “culture you let sprout into criminal proceedings.” The next day, the first of the UAlbany students seen in the video pictures turned himself in. OMG! His father turned out to be Bob Sapio, senior executive editor of the New York Daily News. Was Dad’s face red!

Also red faced: Detective James Miller, official spokesman for the Albany Police Department. On March 18th Detective Miller (now on suspension) was arrested for allegedly driving drunk. In an official vehicle, while off duty. Miller apparently refused to take a breathalyser test. DWI cases can be more difficult to prosecute sans results from breath tests. In some cities, police officers aren’t allowed to refuse breathalysers. But Albany has its own way of doing things.

For instance, despite much local coverage of the Kegs and Eggs riot, plus related articles about housing conditions in the student ghetto, the neighborhood’s worst landlords have yet to be outed by the news media. And given the lack of code enforcement (a problem in more nabes than just the student ghetto) you’d expect some investigative reporting on who hearts who — politically speaking.

Another Albany oddity: the in-office longevity of Mayor Jerry Jennings. When Jennings ran for his first term in 1993 yes 1993 he waxed reformer about the student ghetto and vowed change. He renews those vows regularly. Particularly when public funding can be accessed via the vowing.

In April 2005, Mayor Jennings took an after dark walking tour of the student ghetto, accompanied by the late Kermit L. Hall, then president of SUNY at Albany. The town and gown twosome dialogued with students hanging in front of bars and tut-tutted over slum conditions. President Hall vowed to help rid the neighborhood of drugs, violence, and blight. Some $400,000 in government grants was set to flow through the New York State Division Of Criminal Justice into a “historic partnership”** between SUNY Albany and the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in NYC — as part of the crime fighting initiative Operation Impact. The Albany police were eventually outfitted with cool tech tools via Operation Impact. Department officials say crime in Albany is being fought more successfully thanks to those tools. Folks in and around the student ghetto aren’t convinced.

Operation Impact is one of many initiatives that over the years, have been accessed by Mayor Jerry Jennings and a string of area college officials in efforts to re-imagine the student ghetto. Yet somehow, the neighborhood remains a place where impressionable young oafs and oafettes pick up the perception that civilization is far far away.

But change may finally be in the wind. City officials are now making a concentrated effort to refer to the student ghetto as the Education District…

Carola Von Hoffmannstahl-Solomonoff
Mondo QT

*Assigning blame for Kegs N Eggs melee, Albany Student Press, 03/26/11

**Governor Pataki Announces Historic Partnership with UAlbany and John Jay College to Develop Enhanced Crime Fighting Initiatives Impact, Office of the Governor Press Release, 04/04/05

Remember the late great Tea Party? The grass roots movement that made the political establishment quake? For one glorious moment it seemed as if a truly independent, average Joe/Joan movement might be gathering steam. A memory from that halcyon time: assorted TV pundits telling Republican leaders that Tea Party people “don’t like you guys either.” To which said leaders would put on a humble face and mumble something about how Republicans had lost their way and needed to get back on track. The out-of-control spending, corruption, and support for endless wars were missteps off the path of Republican core values.

In truth, no missteps were made. The Republican core was intact. Albeit shared with the Democrats. Out-of-control spending, corruption, and endless wars R both parties.

Though the following factoid has disappeared into the memory hole of ideological rewrites, a goodly number of those initially drawn to the Tea Party did not support endless wars. They supported the troops ’cause that’s a question of loyalty. But adventures-in-nation-building weren’t their thing. They were also concerned about losing civil liberties via Homeland Security overkill. And most Tea Party protesters blamed Wall Street, as much as government, for the financial meltdown of 2008. Lest we forget, the Tea Party really took off when the too-big-to-fail banks and other financial entities that partied with housing bubble paper were bailed out by taxpayers.

For a brief period the left was equally vociferous re the bailouts. But the moment of rapprochement between progressives and Tea Party types, along with the potential for game-changing coalitions, passed when it dawned on the left that coming down too hard on taxpayer infusions and massive government interventions might not set the right tone for passing health care reform. The Tea Party was way suspicious of government (almost as much as the 60′s counter-culture had been) and it was the wrong time to fan such suspicion. Instead ’twas time to ridicule and revile the masses of average Americans who feared that a government redo would make the failings of U.S. health care worse instead of better. That this fear might be based on, say, observation of the role federal policies played in inflating and eventually collapsing the housing market buttered no progressive parsnips. As for the fear that Obamacare would be Homeland Security in a nurse’s uniform, how paranoid was that?

While the left was in the basement mixing up the medicine and the Tea Party was on the pavement thinking about the government, the Republicans seized the time. Coming back strong as champions of the people and enemy of the political elite. (Insert row of laughing emoticons here.) Hoovering up the Tea Party and making it their own. The more the left trashed “tea baggers” the more the independent spark in the Tea Party dimmed. Tea talk started sounding more and more like the type of Republican conservatism dished by Limbaugh & company. Critiques of state capitalism, particularly as practiced during the Bush years, were out. So were thoughts of a third party. Union bashing was in. With public employee unions cast as evil incarnate.

After several years of government hearings and investigations into the 2008 financial meltdown, Republicans and Democrats have been unable to reach agreement on who-done-it. Republicans put the blame on the government sponsored mortgage giants, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac; Democrats pin it on an insufficiently regulated Wall Street. No prime movers of subprime sleaze (hello Angelo Mozilo), or political enablers (hello Friends of Angelo), or major Wall Street sludge jugglers (too many for a shout out) have been prosecuted. Nor have new lending regulations staunched the growth of mortgage fraud in taxpayer-backed housing programs. However, we will be able to hang some teachers out to dry.

The concordance of big government and big finance that pumped the housing bubble and hence inflated hauls of real estate derived taxes (including property taxes) was not why so many local governments overextended themselves during the boom years and now face disaster during the bust. The real villains were teachers, firefighters, police officers, sanitation workers, and secretaries in public agencies. Aka Joe and Joan Average with a government job. Who, according to the bashers, are not average at all ’cause they get better benefits and more job security than a private sector employee or a small business owner. That being a private sector employee or a small business owner has its own set of advantages butters no conservative parsnips. The right, which typically decries attempts to stir up class warfare, is passing out flaming torches and whipping up envy. Screaming for folks to be stripped (preferably in public?) of their collective bargaining rights. Working to turn the American middle-class against itself.

And I thought only lefties were into creating social chaos…

Incidentally (or not) while the billionaire Koch brothers donated $43,000 to the gubernatorial campaign of union-busting Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, housing and Realtor groups kicked in $43,125. Not that Republicans in general are uniquely blessed by the real estate industries. In New York, another state with budget problems, the NYC real estate crowd has been particularly generous to Governor Andrew Cuomo.

As for Joe and Joan Average, who really represents them? The left or the right? Answer: neither. At least, not reliably. Under certain self-serving circumstances both do an occasional good deed. But when push comes to shove in our state capitalist times, Joe and Joan are on their own. Which is less discouraging than it sounds. Being independent means never having to say you’re sorry for noticing that your representatives, no matter how rhetorically righteous, primarily rep big money conjoined with government power.

Third party, anyone?

Carola Von Hoffmannstahl
Mondo QT

If only I were Edith Piaf. But alas, I can’t say je ne regrette rien. Once upon a wasted time (circa late 1970′s and early 80′s) I hung on New York City’s downtown art/music scene. The scene never fit me, I tried to fit it. Which was one of the stupidest things I’ve ever done. My only excuse is that I was caught in a spiritual downdraft. Couldn’t see how deeply the Punk New Wave No Wave Ironic Transgressive thing wasn’t me. Its gods weren’t mine. The Velvet Underground gave good vinyl but their legend was tiresome. William Burroughs seemed shallow. Neo-Expressionism? A few pieces were sharp (albeit over-priced) but a lot looked like puke splattered on a sidewalk outside the Mudd Club.

Oh. Yeah. Those fabulous avant-garde nite spots…

Color me ashamed for ever taking pride in being approved by a doorman.

By ’83, I was outta there. Living in Hoboken, New Jersey, across the Hudson from Manhattan. In those days Hoboken felt far from NYC. An escape from hip happening hell. David Solomonoff (my future husband) and I lived in a five floor walk-up in the tallest building on our block. No telephone. Couldn’t afford it. Up there in the clouds, where no phone ever rang, we began doing Mail Art and making music cassettes as Solomonoff & Von Hoffmannstahl. The post office became our scene and we loved it. No cliques, clacks or clutter, just real deal underground art. Via snail mail we connected with artists and musicians all over the world.

Our first connect came via Jim Sauter of Borbetomagus. (Aka the “pioneers of aggressive improvised noise music.”) Jim gave us contact info for Japanese Mail Artist and musician Masami Akita. The work received from Akita was a revelation. His dense rich collages were non splatter and his music as Merzbow was full-tilt lush noise. Apres Akita, the deluge. Our correspondents eventually numbered in the hundreds. Some were creative trifectas (art, music, words) others specialized. We developed collaborative relationships (as opposed to just trading work) with many, both for Mail Art and cassette projects. We contributed numerous pieces to cassette compilations and also supplied material for other musicians to cut up and rework.

In no particular order, our cassette culture collaborators* included: Joel Haertling (Architect’s Office), Zan Hoffman (Zanstones, Zanoisect, Zidsick, etc.), Al Margolis (Sound of Pig; If Bwana), GX Jupitter-Larsen (The Haters), Seiei Jack Nakahara (Joke Project), Rafael Flores (Comando Bruno), Mike Honeycutt (Mystery Hearsay), M. Nomized (Fraction Studio), Hal McGee (Homemade Alien Music), Shinichi Igari (Uterus of Plant), Alain Neffe (Insane Music Productions), Rudi Tuscher (Nisus Anal Furgler), Wally Shoup, Kowa Kato, Bart Plantenga, Ken Clinger, Denier Du Culte, Calypso Now, Soft Joke Productions, Magthea, Absolute Body Control, DDAA (Déficit Des Années Antérieures), Intrendent Fansette, Bog-Art, Reportage, and So On & So Forth. The last a place holder for anyone I’ve inadvertently omitted.

Over roughly four years, we produced five cassette “albums”: In The Mood, Swim Or Die, Great In Bed, God Is Love, and finally, The Element That Defies Description. Great In Bed was a compilation which included work by some of the people listed above. It came packaged in a black nylon stocking. (We’d bought boxes of them at a Hoboken odd lots store.) In The Element we took tracks supplied by others and reworked the material into an overarching musical structure and metaphysical theme.

The Solomonoff & Von Hoffmannstahl sound was shaped by having little money. Dirty Harry/Clint Eastwood once said “A man’s got to know his limitations.” The same goes for broke musicians. Our equipment was limited and we knew those limitations intimately. We worked them. Our apartment was our studio. Its ancient inadequate wiring meant lots of line hum. The hum would sing in shrill choruses when channeled through the frequency analyzer (aka ring modulator), a groovy 70′s effect manufactured by Electro-Harmonix. David had a made-in-Korea electric guitar and a Polytone Mini-Brute amp. Which was indeed brutish. When its spring-reverb was sproinging and its distortion was cranked the Mini-Brute turned into Godzilla doing Tokyo. We also had a vintage tube hifi amp which we played through the kind of wooden PA speakers that once hung in schoolrooms.

Our biggest (in terms of size and lineage) instrument was a 1960′s Vox Continental organ. The keyboard that carried The Doors. When momentarily flush from a freelance writing job, I’d bought the Vox for 200 bucks from The Major Thinkers, an Irish punk group. They claimed it previously belonged to Hall & Oates. The Vox was a workhorse. It had a few iffy drawbars but the randomness was a good thing; it seemed as if the Vox were actively improvising. Vox and Mini-Brute were bosom buddies.

Our other keyboards were miniature Casios. An MT-40 and VL-5. Among the earlier Casios on the market, their cheesy rhythm sections had options that allowed jump-cut transitions twixt say, samba and disco. When jacked with the line-humming frequency analyzer and/or our Doctor Q envelope filter (also made by Electro-Harmonix) samba and disco shattered into infinity. When the Casios’ batteries got weak, the shattering became even more extreme.

We also snagged rhythm from records. Most typically, ones from the 1950′s that demonstrated the exciting new audio technology of Stereo. Think demented bongos bouncing back and forth, forth and back, while Dad mixes martinis (clink clink) in the rec room. We also pulled snippets of exotic instrumentation from easy listening albums. We found countless treasures of Incredibly Strange Music and Exotica in Hoboken’s many junk shops. Prices ranged from 10 cents to a dollar. An LP had to be really special to warrant a dollar. Something like: Mario Lanza Gargles Gershwin — in Stereo.

We listened intently to the records we mined. Culling snippets of rhythm, minuscule musical phrases, and single syllables. Everything we sampled was sampled without a sampler. David was fast on the draw with our Pioneer turntable. He’d hover over a spinning platter, tone arm in hand — his other hand poised to punch the ree-cord button on our cheapie cassette deck. We had three cheapie decks. Plus a stereo amp with cheapie speakers, a good set of headphones, and a Radio Shack four channel mixer. Four tracks in, two tracks out. Layer up and do it all over again. Toss in a few guitar effect pedals (which we also used on samples and keyboards), a Roland analog micro synth/sequencer, a microphone, and me on vocals. That was our sound. Tech wise. As for the creative process –

When creating a piece we carefully assembled and structured the materials, then combined them through improvisation. We’d have a clear idea of what mood we wanted to create, how it should sound, and how the piece should generally progress. But the road was open to inspiration. Instrumentals by David and myself, together and solo, were improvised but sometimes sampled, cut-up, and recast. My vocals were fairly straight (no, no Yoko) inclining more to cocktail lounge and big band than rock. Sometimes a bit gospel. The sound of Solomonoff & Von Hoffmannstahl (in Stereo) was/is described by others with words such as Industrial, Electronic, Experimental, Sound-Collage, Noise, Art-Rock. I’ve never known how to describe it. Guess I’d just say it is what it is.

One thing I do know — we had a whole lot of fun doing it. Though being so broke was no fun. That big old railroad apartment was only heated at one end, by the kind of gas heater that even then was archaic. Up on the top floor we froze in the winter and baked in the summer. We didn’t have a stove for a year and juggled pots on a hot plate. And like I said, no phone. But hey, we always managed to scrape together enough for postage and blank cassettes. And when the no-cash blues got tough we got going. Cranking the Mini-Brute to the max and ring-modulating our cares into the international ether.

Carola Von Hoffmannstahl-Solomonoff
Mondo QT

“I hear you singing in the wire, I can hear you through the whine…”

Wichita Lineman, Jimmy Webb, 1968

*So as to not clog this paragraph with links, I’m supplying contacts and/or background material re our cassette collaborators below. Haven’t been in touch with some of them for years. Apologies if I’ve missed more apropos links:

• Joel Haertling/Architect’s Office
• Zan Hoffman/Zanstones, Zanoisect, Zidsick, etc.
• Al Margolis/Sound of Pig; If, Bwana
• GX Jupitter-Larsen/The Haters
• Seiei Jack Nakahara/Joke Project
• Rafael Flores/Comando Bruno
• Mike Honeycutt/Mystery Hearsay
• M.Nomized/Fraction Studio, Fraction Studio blog
• Hal McGee/Homemade Alien Music
• Shinichi Igari/Uterus of Plant
• Insane Music Productions/Alain Neffe
• Rudi Tuscher/Nisus Anal Furgler
• Wally Shoup
• Kowa Kato
• Bart Plantenga
• Ken Clinger
• Denier Du Culte
• Calypso Now
• Soft Joke Productions
• Magthea
• Absolute Body Control
• DDAA (Déficit Des Années Antérieures)
• Bog-Art
• Reportage — No info found. Too bad, ’cause their Iron Curtain sound was delightfully relentless.

Carola Von Hoffmannstahl-Solomonoff
Mondo QT

Send comments or confidential tips to:

mailto:editor@mondoqt.com

In this show, Gardner Goldsmith teams up with Brett Veinotte, of the excellent School Sucks Project and the School Sucks podcast. Brett started this audio series over a year ago, and has made it one of the most popular podcasts in the world.

In this conversation, Gard and Brett discuss the impetus of the series and project, and why public education must be stopped. Good stuff, all! Make sure you visit the School Sucks website at www.schoolsucksproject.com!

Be Seeing You!

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics announced last week that for the first time, the number of government employees in unions exceeded the number in the private sector, which fell to a new low of 7.2 percent, down from 7.6 percent in 2008. At the same time the number of government employees in unions rose from 36.8 percent to 37.4 percent.

But private sector union membership has been on a slow and steady decline for decades. While union leaders decry the numbers, saying that good union jobs are disappearing, the reality behind unions is much more complex. To an extent, they have become a victim of their own success.

The AFL-CIO, the largest union federation in the U.S., claims on its Web site that unions help “build stronger workplaces” and “give workers a voice on the job about safety, security, pay, benefits — and about the best ways to get the work done.” Further, it says, unions “represent working families before lawmakers, and make sure politicians never forget that working families voted them into office.”

All of that, it turns out, is somewhere between misleading and blatantly untrue.

“They artificially increase wages in unionized industries, limit employment opportunities, depress wages in nonunion jobs, lower rates of return on investment in unionized firms, and slow the growth of productivity,” writes James A. Dorn, professor of economics at Towson University and editor of the Cato Journal. “Unions politicize labor markets and have used the threat of violence to protect their wage premiums. In addition to using their monopoly power to secure higher than market wages, unions spend huge sums of money to maintain their power and limit competition.”

In its first issue of 2010, Cato Journal asks, Are unions good for America? The answer may surprise you, especially if you are a member of a union.

(Before going on I should disclose that I once paid union dues to the United Food and Commercial Workers when I worked at a grocery store.)

In 232 short pages of hard-hitting analysis, (but don’t do what I did and read it all in one sitting) Cato exposes some of the myths behind labor unions that practically everyone believes. Here are a few of them.

Myth: Unions work to ensure a level playing field for employees.

Fact: Unions advocate for laws which tilt the playing field in ways that are unfair to both employers and employees. Those laws often impair economic growth and innovation, as well as destroy the freedom to contract, according to Randall G. Holcombe and James D. Gwartney, economics professors at Florida State University. Over time, these labor laws actually cause a shift in employment from union jobs to nonunion jobs. In fact, research shows that the growth of labor unions during the Great Depression actually increased unemployment. Unions are still destroying jobs today.

“In the short run, because labor law has given to unions an advantage in the bargaining process, union contracts have had the effect of increasing the wages and benefits of union workers,” they wrote. “In the long run, the higher cost of union labor brought on by those union contracts has resulted in a steady decline in private sector unionism, and has eroded U.S. manufacturing in unionized industries — most visibly, the railroad and auto industries.”

Myth: Unions bargain on behalf of their members to get employees the wages and benefits they deserve.

Fact: Unions “bargain” with the guns of government in hand, to get employees more wages and benefits than they deserve, with a little for themselves on the side. By crawling in bed with government to pass laws which benefited the unions at the expense of employers — and, in the long run, employees — union leaders have drained American businesses dry. The long, slow decline of private sector unions reflects the economic destruction they left in their wake as they searched for fresh blood to leech. And today they’ve found the biggest source yet, the government.

Armand Thieblot, an economic consultant who has written books on union corruption and violence, writes:

When Samuel Gompers, then head of the American Federation of Labor, was asked in the early 1920s what unions wanted, he famously replied, “More.” At the time, everyone correctly understood that unions’ targets were the capitalists from whom additional wages and benefits would be wrested by force, and also that if unions were successful, capitalists would have to be content with “Less,” thus, just a transfer of economic rents within the system from one factor to another.

By the 1980s and 1990s, however, when unorganized capitalists had become thin on the ground and those already organized had mostly been rendered uncompetitive by past concession to union demands, unions’ new guiding trope became “More government.” To achieve it, unions became mordantly political. In economic terms, after unions had absorbed all of the readily available economic rents from their capitalist opponents, they have turned to seeking rents from new sources beyond the system — from the polity at large (from taxpayers), using government as the intermediary.

Myth: Project labor agreements reduce project costs and delays and are good for construction workers as a whole.

Fact: Project labor agreements increase costs and only help union workers. PLAs are agreements between construction project owners and unions that contractors on the project must use union labor, even if they otherwise would not. David G. Tuerck, economics professor and chair at Suffolk University, cites numerous examples of how nonunion workers were harmed when they worked under PLAs, “first by forcing them to pay twice for benefits already offered their workers and second by forcing pay cuts on their workers.” Then, unions use veiled threats to “labor peace” to intimidate project owners into accepting PLAs for “job stability.” Further, PLAs increased costs for every project studied which used them, sometimes as much as 20 percent.

“PLAs are motivated by a desire on the part of the construction unions to shore up the declining union wage premium against technological changes and other changes that make traditional union work rules and job designations obsolescent,” Tuerck writes. “Now the PLA has evolved into an instrument that the unions employ in tandem with the prevailing wage laws in order to reduce the competitive advantage of nonunion contractors.”

Myth: Prevailing wage laws are good for competition, improve safety and quality, and help train new workers.

Fact: Prevailing wage laws stifle competition, have no effect on job safety and quality, and do nothing to help train new workers. The Davis-Bacon Act of 1931, signed into law by President Herbert Hoover, mandates that on federal construction projects, workers be paid the so-called “prevailing wage” for similar local workers. In practice, the wage is set far higher than the actual prevailing wage, closely mirroring union pay scales. This virtually locks out nonunion construction workers from federal contracts.

George C. Leef, director of the Pope Center for Higher Education Policy, finds that all of the arguments for prevailing wage laws fail to stand up to even the slightest scrutiny. Worse, the Davis-Bacon Act was racially motivated: “The hearings and debate on the legislation revealed some ugly racial overtones with comments on how ‘cheap colored labor’ was driving down wages of white workers.” Robert Bacon originally proposed the bill because he was upset that a construction firm from outside his district, employing black workers, built a veterans’ hospital in his district.

Myth: Organized labor has worked to promote racial equality.

Fact: Unions have used racial discrimination as a tool to enrich themselves, and continue to do so today. In 2008, Richard Trumka, who is now the president of the AFL-CIO, said, “We know, better than anyone else, how racism is used to divide working people.” He should, because the unions have been doing it for their entire existence, and still are, as Paul Moreno, history professor at Hillsdale College, illustrates. It isn’t — and probably never was — the employers oppressing the black, or the Chinese, or the Hispanic people. Most employers, as it turns out, really are color blind, as Martin Luther King, Jr., noted in 1957: “With the growth of industry the folkways of white supremacy will necessarily pass away. Moreover, southerners are learning to be good businessmen, and as such realize that bigotry is costly and bad for business.”

As racism goes, unions made the KKK look like amateurs. Big Labor lobbied for, and got, special laws to make them completely immune for whatever they did — all the way up to outright murder. In United States v. Enmons, in 1973, the Supreme Court held that unions were immune from prosecution under the Hobbs Act if their violent acts were in furtherance of a “valid union objective.”

Moreno concludes:

The problem of racial discrimination in organized labor in America was less solved than it was outgrown. The story of racial discrimination in the American labor movement confirms the view that unions act as cartels that attempt to limit the supply of labor and raise its price. An easily identified and culturally disfavored minority group provided a convenient category for exclusion. But most unions were unable to succeed without state power, and by the time that they acquired such power, blacks had already fought their way into the industrial workforce. Discrimination within, rather than exclusion from, unions then became the chief problem — one that spawned the policy of “affirmative action.” Finally, the macroeconomic costs of unions decimated the ranks of private sector unions.

And Trumka? He talked a good game about ending racism in organized labor, but whether anything will change remains to be seen.

Myth: Unions help preserve manufacturing jobs.

Fact: Unions were a contributing factor in the decline of American manufacturing, especially in the automobile industry. Detroit makes a great example. At the start of the 20th century, Detroit was a boom town and its manufacturing jobs were paying 33 percent above the national average. Union organizers brought their message of capitalist greed and exploitation to already highly paid auto workers, where it largely fell on deaf ears. Until the Great Depression, when union organizers used a variety of underhanded tactics to force automakers, steel plants and other manufacturers to unionize.

(Interestingly, Henry Ford at the time threatened to break up his company rather than submit to union demands; he finally gave in when his wife threatened to leave him.)

Stephen J.K. Walters, economics professor at Loyola, explains what happened next. Companies, squeezed hard and struggling to survive, would move their operations out of Detroit and other cities, and later, out of the country entirely.

In sum, at the onset of World War II most of America’s great industrial firms — which, thanks to agglomeration economies were concentrated in cities throughout the East and upper Midwest — now faced labor cartels. These cartels needed some time to consolidate their power, so increases in employers’ wage costs would be significant but gradual. Further, WWII and its aftermath, during which time America’s industrial rivals’ productive capacity suffered heavy damage that would be restored only slowly, insulated the unions and firms to some degree and for some time from the most severe competitive consequences of monopolistic and opportunistic prices for labor. But the employers started to adapt immediately in ways that standard economic theory would predict — and that would ultimately help create what became known as America’s Rust Belt. Union actions, clearly, were not the only reason that industrial cities would decapitalize, depopulate, and become poorer in the second half of the 20th century, but they merit inclusion on the list.

If you’ve lost a manufacturing job any time in the last 50 years, thank your union boss for destroying your job, with a one-finger salute.

Myth: Teachers’ unions work to increase the quality of children’s education.

Fact: Teachers’ unions work to increase their membership rolls and their political power, at the expense of your children’s education. While collective bargaining has done little to increase the salaries of union public school teachers over nonunion public school teachers, these unions perform a different service for their members: preventing them from having to educate children. Andrew J. Coulson, director of the Center for Educational Freedom at the Cato Institute, explains that teachers’ unions strongly oppose government reforms which would improve the quality of K-12 education, such as charter schools, vouchers, and property tax credits.

The NEA and AFT spend large sums on political lobbying so that public school districts maintain their monopoly control of more than half a trillion dollars in annual U.S. K-12 education spending. That monopoly, in turn, offers a more than 40 percent average compensation premium over the private sector, along with greater job security. And since both the U.S. and international research indicate that achievement and efficiency are generally higher in private sector — and particularly competitive market — education systems, the public school monopoly imposes an enormous cost on American children and taxpayers. We are paying dearly for the union label, but mainly due to union lobbying to preserve the government school monopoly rather than to collective bargaining. (Emphasis in original)

Myth: Public sector unions work for the general prosperity of their members and all Americans.

Fact: Public sector unions dramatically increase the cost of government to unsustainable levels. The cost of employee wages and benefits accounts for half of the $2.2 trillion that state and local governments spent in 2008, and that number is set to grow dramatically as employees retire and generous pension packages kick in. Though, calling them generous is an understatement.

Moreover, according to Chris Edwards, director of tax policy studies at the Cato Institute, those pension obligations are grossly underfunded, which will make the fiscal crisis even more acute this decade.

The upshot of all this is that policymakers will need to make large budget reforms in the years ahead. They will to need to deliver public services more efficiently, to privatize services when feasible, to cut staffing levels, and to terminate low-value programs. Policymakers often hesitate in making such reforms, but the high level of unionization in many state workforces will make reforms even harder to achieve. During labor negotiations, for example, public officials often succumb to pressure to make short-term concessions that end up damaging public finances in the long run.

Businesses can and do mitigate the inefficiencies of a unionized workplace, but governments are much more constrained and have less incentive to do so, driving up taxpayer costs even further. And public sector unions use their large war chests to buy influence and protection. “So the problem with public sector unions is not just that they block compensation reforms, but that use their privileged status to control broader policy debates.”

Myth: Right-to-work laws harm employees and prevent employers from freely contracting with unions.

Fact: Right-to-work laws improve the economy, and employers freely contracting with unions is prohibited by the Wagner Act. That Act forces employers to bargain with unions “in good faith,” which is interpreted to mean that employers must capitulate to virtually every demand of the unions or be accused of acting in bad faith. This is hardly freedom of contract. Right-to-work laws mitigate, but do not entirely fix, this problem.

I have some experience with this, since I once worked in a non-right-to-work state and was forced to join the union. I would rather have negotiated my own terms; I’d likely have gotten a better deal. It seems many Americans agree, as millions of them have moved from non-right-to-work states to right-to-work states in the last decade, a migration that shows no signs of stopping. Richard Vedder, economics professor at Ohio University, found that both predictive models and real world evidence show that right-to-work states experience more economic growth than non-right-to-work states.

Myth: Labor unions support trade liberalization because it lowers the prices of goods that workers buy.

Fact: This used to be true, but today’s labor unions oppose trade liberalization. They believe that increasing globalization has directly led to the decline of their unions, and thus their power. This isn’t exactly true, according to Daniel Griswold, director of the Center for Trade Policy Studies at the Cato Institute. “Although the evidence is lacking to implicate globalization as a whole, two aspects of the trend have been found to have significant negative effects on labor unions: inward foreign direct investment (FDI), and ‘social integration’ across borders.”

When foreign companies invest in the U.S., companies here realize that they can also invest in other countries. “The correlation of FDI and declining rates of union density suggests that ‘many workers feel greater insecurity from seeing capital mobility in their sectors, even if not in their own particular firms,’ Slaughter (2007: 344–45) concluded.”

And social globalization, “the spread of ideas, information, images and people,” a natural result of advances in communications and transportation, “reinforces what Dresher and Gaston (2007: 176) call a ‘growing normative orientation towards individuals rather than collectivism [which] makes collective organization more difficult.’ Adding to the trends are rising levels of immigration and perceptions of younger workers who view unions as old-fashioned and anachronistic institutions.”

In competitive product markets, the drag that unions impose on firm performance can be debilitating to the firm and its workers over time. As described above, firms facing vigorous competition are not able to pass along higher costs to consumers without risk of losing significant market share. Newly unionized firms in such markets face the cruel choice of passing along higher labor costs to consumers, thus losing market share to more cost-efficient competitors, or eating the higher costs in the form of lower profits and less reinvestment in physical and intellectual capital. Either choice will result over time in an erosion of the unionized firm’s market share.

Myth: Paying workers higher wages will reduce unemployment and stimulate the economy.

Fact: The “high-wage doctrine” increases unemployment and drags down the economy. This doctrine originated with a 1921 report that Hoover commissioned while he was Secretary of Commerce dealing with what was, in retrospect, a minor recession. In addition to recommending higher wages, the report also said that government spending (now known as the stimulus package) can help the country recover from a recession. Neither is true, of course, and the report might have been completely forgotten had Hoover not become President. He put his disastrous ideas into practice, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Worse, proponents of these theories, which John Maynard Keynes gleefully signed on to, are more concerned with theories than facts, according to Lowell E. Gallaway, economics professor at Ohio University. That’s just a polite way of saying they’re full of crap. Galloway writes:

In the intellectual world, the high-wage doctrine continues to have its appeal. Prior to his appointment as chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, Ben Bernanke, collaborating with Martin Parkinson, noted: “Maybe Herbert Hoover and Henry Ford were right. Higher real wages may have paid for themselves in the broader sense that their positive effect on aggregate demand compensated for their tendency to raise costs” (Bernanke and Parkinson 1989: 214). More recently, Paul Krugman reiterated this view in a New York Times oped (3 May 2009), arguing, “Many workers are accepting pay cuts in order to save jobs.” He then asks, “What’s wrong with that?” His answer refers to what he calls “one of those paradoxes that plague our economy right now . . . workers at any one company can help save their jobs by accepting lower wages, but when employers across the economy cut wages at the same time, the result is higher unemployment.” This is simply a reprise of Klein’s (1947) views. Never mind the existence of more than a century of empirical evidence to the contrary. Krugman’s concern is not with the empirical problem, but with the theoretical connection between wage rates and employment. The high-wage doctrine still lives. In all probability, this persistent adherence to an incorrect doctrine once again will prove to be detrimental to the U.S. economy, just as it was in the 1930s.

Myth: Unions currently operate in a free market.

Fact: Unions are heavily dependent on the government to provide them unfair leverage over employers and control over their members. It is possible for unions to exist and provide valuable services to their members in a market free of government-sponsored violence and control, but those services would likely have to be geared toward helping employees improve themselves, rather than extracting undeserved compensation from employers.

Charles W. Baird, professor emeritus of economics at California State University, East Bay, examines what constitutes a free market, how existing labor laws destroy freedom, and what a union might look like in a true free market. It won’t happen any time soon, though, he says: “It is politically impossible, at this time in America, to repeal the Norris-LaGuardia Act and the National Labor Relations Act and replace them with any sort of free-market union law. Nevertheless, it is worthwhile to prepare the ground now for doing so in some future, more enlightened time.”

If you’re wondering why you’re out of a job, why Detroit is a wasteland, and why the economy is on the verge of collapse, don’t be so quick to blame Wall Street: Some of the blame belongs to the labor unions.

["AFL-CIO building, Washington, D.C." photo by Derek Blackadder; CC BY-SA 2.0]

With literally nothing to show for the $100 billion it has wasted so far, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services wants even more money to “strengthen” Head Start, a preschool program its own study finds is a failure.

The study, which was ordered by Congress in 1998 and finally released Wednesday, showed that by the first grade, any advantages children had received from Head Start had vanished.

“Research clearly shows that Head Start positively impacts the school readiness of low-income children,” HHS secretary Kathleen Sebelius said in a statement. “Now we must increase its effectiveness and continue to provide the support that our children, from birth to eight, need to prepare to succeed later in school and in life.”

That news release revealed part of the truth: “The study showed that at the end of one program year, access to Head Start positively influenced children’s school readiness. When measured again at the end of kindergarten and first grade, however, the Head Start children and the control group children were at the same level on many of the measures studied.”

The rest of the story was in footnote 99, buried over halfway through the 420-page report.

“A certain number of apparently significant results are to be expected merely by chance, and the probability of these false positives grows in proportion to the number of tests you report,” explained Andrew Coulson, director of the Center for Educational Freedom at the Cato Institute. Applying any of a number of statistical correction methods, he said, causes the results to be correctly read as statistically insignificant at best, and at worst, “these marginal results would be savagely beaten, buried in concrete, and dropped into the Mariana Trench.”

“These results make it clear that we need to build a more coordinated system of early care and education, and to focus on key improvements to teaching and learning in the early grades,” U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said in the same statement.

“There are other government education programs whose effects actually grow substantially over time, and that are comparatively economical,” Coulson wrote, such as the Washington, D.C., school voucher program, in which students showed significant educational gains over those not in the program, and at a quarter of the cost of a student who remained in a public school. Congress refused to reauthorize the program.

“Will they now redirect their efforts to the support of programs whose benefits for disadvantaged children actually grow in magnitude the longer kids stay in school, or will they continue to push for programs like Head Start that have been proven costly failures?”

Three guesses on that one.

Clearly the powers that be want children in government schools, whatever the cost, and even if the children would be better served by a program proven less expensive with better results. Even if the bureaucrats have no ulterior motives, which isn’t terribly likely, this isn’t good for your children, and alone is enough to justify removing them from public school any way you can.

Not only aren’t your children learning much of anything in public school, they may well be in mortal danger, thanks in part to the attitudes and beliefs of their teachers and school administrators.

I was recently sent a letter from a high school teacher published in the December 28 Boston Globe. In the letter, Brockton High School math teacher Doug Van Gorder, who lives in nearby Quincy, perfectly illustrates the so-called “progressive” ideology.

In case you’re tempted to believe this letter is satire, a local newspaper called him for comment and got only this: “The letter speaks for itself.”

Brockton High School was the site of a December 2 shooting which left a non-student injured. Last week another teenager was shot in the city’s Westgate Mall.

The school district is defending this teacher’s right to free speech, and I would do the same. Even the insane have a right to speech, I think. However, combined with comments from a local discussion board on this teacher’s classroom antics, a psychiatric evaluation seems in order.

It doesn’t really matter who wrote the letter, though. It captures the “progressive” ideology quite well, though it is perhaps best understood as a caricature. For a long time I didn’t believe it was possible for someone to hold such beliefs. Now I merely don’t believe it is possible for any sane person to hold beliefs such as those expressed in this letter:

I am a math teacher at Brockton High School, the site of a school shooting earlier this month.

Current school security procedures lock down school populations in the event of armed assault. Some advocate abandoning this practice as it holds everyone in place, allowing a shooter easily to find victims.

An alternative to lockdown is immediate exodus via announcement. Although this removes potential hostages and makes it nearly impossible for the shooter to acquire preselected targets, it unfairly rewards resourceful children who move to safety off-site more shrewdly and efficiently than others.

Schools should level playing fields, not intrinsically reward those more resourceful. A level barrel is fair to all fish.

Some propose overturning laws that made schools gun-free zones even for teachers who may be licensed to securely carry concealed firearms elsewhere. They argue that barring licensed-carry only ensures a defenseless, target-rich environment.

But as a progressive, I would sooner lay my child to rest than succumb to the belief that the use of a gun for self-defense is somehow not in itself a gun crime. — Boston Globe

This is not the sort of person any sane parent would want within ten miles of their children, let alone teaching them, yet every public school in America has teachers who hold similar views. Worse, they are the majority, and they are reinforced in their anti-child views by their unions.

First, teachers and school administrators really do believe that your children should be held back when they get too far ahead. If you complain too loudly, they will get shunted into a so-called “gifted and talented” program where they can be held back without “disrupting the class” with their constant need to do something more challenging, useful or important.

Leveling the playing field, in the eyes of public school teachers and administrators, has become making sure as little actual educational achievement occurs as possible without parents noticing until it’s too late.

Finally, as difficult as it is to believe, many people really do believe it’s better to die than to defend yourself. This is quite a bit different than the otherwise admirable philosophy of pacifism; in this case, they believe in and celebrate violence, especially when it is done by their group to members of other groups. Teachers and administrators holding this philosophy of death will not shed a single true tear when your child gets killed in the next school shooting, and while they talk about reducing school violence, will do everything they can to ensure that there is a next school shooting.

These individuals are truly disturbed and rarely get the psychiatric help they need. If your child’s teacher makes statements like those in this letter, you may be dealing with such an individual. In any case, they are so common in schools today that you will have to search hard to find a teacher who doesn’t subscribe to this philosophy of keeping your children ignorant and possibly getting them killed.

As always, I suggest looking anywhere but a public school if you want your child to actually have an education.

["Adolf Hitler Target" photo by Marshall Astor; CC BY-SA 2.0]

The Conspiracy is proud to present another in our series of productions designed to study the fallacies underlying arguments for government-run education. Here, we talk to Sam Blumenfeld, the legendary critic of state controlled education, and the man who predicted that the look-say method of teaching reading would produce millions of illiterate American children.

If you have kids, or plan on it — if you believe in freedom, this will be a valuable production! Spread the word.

Be seeing you!

Imagine being a child who takes peppermint into school — and is suspended for it and told he or she engaged in “wrongdoing.” Imagine being a parent who has his or her money forced from him in order to perpetuate this school system, and can get little if any satisfaction in changing the bad system.

Now imagine that this school system has been dumbing down American kids for decades.

Imagine someone speaking out against it.

That’s why we’re in the Conspiracy.

Be Seeing You at www.libertyconspiracy.com

The U.S. Department of Agriculture is buying beef and chicken to serve to your children in public school that fast-food chains reject as poor quality or even unsafe.

An investigation by USA TODAY found that quality and safety standards used by fast food chains were much more stringent than those the government uses.

For instance, the USDA supplied schools with old, rejected chickens which would have otherwise been used as pet food or compost. KFC refuses to buy these so-called “spent hens,” which are too old to lay eggs, and Campbell’s Soup cites quality as its reason for rejecting them. But your kids are eating them in school.

“Mature hens must comply with the same safety standards as any other chicken processed and sold to consumers,” Rayne Pegg, head of the USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service, told USA TODAY. But a 2002 Washington State University study found that spent hens were four times more likely to be contaminated with salmonella.

It found that McDonald’s, Burger King, and retail outlets like Costco tested their meat five to 10 times more often than the government, and that fast food standards for potentially harmful bacteria were up to 10 times more stringent than government standards for school lunches.

“We simply are not giving our kids in schools the same level of quality and safety as you get when you go to many fast-food restaurants,” says J. Glenn Morris, professor of medicine and director of the Emerging Pathogens Institute at the University of Florida. “We are not using those same standards.”

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. In 2000, then-Agriculture secretary Dan Glickman directed the USDA to adopt “the highest standards” for school meat. He cited concerns that fast-food chains had tougher safety and quality requirements than those set by the USDA for schools, and he vowed that “the disparity would exist no more.”

Today, USDA rules for meat sent to schools remain more stringent than the department’s minimum safety requirements for meat sold at supermarkets. But those government rules have fallen behind the increasingly tough standards that have evolved among fast-food chains and more selective retailers. — USA TODAY

“Companies that have to attract and keep customers to stay in business have a huge incentive to avoid such things as, you know, sending their customers to the hospital,” wrote Neal McCluskey, associate director of the Cato Institute’s Center for Educational Freedom. “Not so government bureaucrats or educationists, who are getting your tax dollars no matter what.”

A USA TODAY analysis of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data found that between 1998 and 2007, over 470 outbreaks of food-borne illness sickened at least 23,000 school children.

Now some government bureaucrats want to copy the fast food chains’ testing requirements. “Our children deserve a testing program at least as good as the fast food chains,” Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) wrote in a letter to Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack. Gillibrand also asked for the USDA “to terminate contracts with any habitual violators of your food safety policies.” Vilsack said that the department would conduct a review, but didn’t promise anything.

One of those “habitual violators” was Beef Packers of Fresno, Calif., which supplied 450,000 pounds of ground beef to the government for public schools last summer. Beef Packers had to recall another 826,000 pounds at the time for salmonella contamination. After a second recall last week where two people in Arizona fell ill, some members of Congress want Beef Packers closed.

Maybe we need corporations to save us from evil government, rather than the reverse. It’s clear that the government is incapable on its own of assuring food safety. Or, as McCluskey says, “How many more children have to get E. coli before we allow freedom in education?”

["School Lunch" photo by Ishikawa Ken; CC BY-SA 2.0]