On a recent trip to visit my youngest son's Family, I met yet another OPP-er for the first time. After years of efforts to make contact, I had the pleasure of meeting Dtucker300 for breakfast. He made the effort of coming up from Vista, Ca. (near Camp Pendleton) to join me near the AMRAK station in L.A. In his case, though we had our differences, I had always viewed him favorably. So, as I had a 4-hr. layover, I appreciated the chance to meet.

'Tuck' is one of about thirty OPP contributors I have personally met over the past dozen years. Just as the others didn't disappoint, neither did he. We have had numerous exchanges over the years, but this was the first time things aligned in a manner that allowed us to actually sit across the table from each other. From my viewpoint, we had an enjoyable time discussing wh**ever popped into our minds. I don't recall politics or personal ideologies consuming much of our conversation. Rather, we mostly discussed/shared tidbits of experiences during our lives. I must say that meeting him confirmed once again that, if given a chance to meet face-to-face, many (if not most) contributors on this forum would get along just fine. I would encourage others on OPP to make efforts for meeting fellow members and get to know them better. It is my contention most Americans have much more in common than they realize.

"I don't like that man. I must get to know him better." - Abraham Lincoln

Other threads covering trips meeting fellow OPP members...

https://www.onepoliticalplaza.com/t-12163-1.html
https://www.onepoliticalplaza.com/t-45333-1.html
https://www.onepoliticalplaza.com/t-97135-1.html
https://www.onepoliticalplaza.com/t-101534-1.html

https://www.nrtw.org/news/nissan-nj-decert-v**e-04302024/

Somerset, NJ, Nissan Employees Overwhelmingly V**e Out UAW Union Bosses

Nearly 70% of distribution center employees v**ed against UAW, v**e proceeded despite last-minute contract ratification by union officials and management

Somerset, NJ (April 30, 2024) – During a secret b****t e******n last week, workers at Nissan North America’s parts distribution center in Somerset, NJ, v**ed to oust United Auto Workers (UAW) union officials from power at their facility. The workers who participated in the April 24 union decertification e******n v**ed by nearly 70% to remove the union. Nissan employee Michael Oliver spearheaded the union removal effort with free legal aid from the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation.

Oliver kick-started the effort by filing a union decertification petition on April 1 with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), the federal agency responsible for enforcing federal labor law, which includes administering e******ns to install (or “certify”) and remove (or “decertify”) unions. Oliver’s petition contained support from enough of his coworkers to trigger a decertification v**e under NLRB rules.

Because New Jersey lacks Right to Work protections for its private sector workers, UAW officials maintained contracts with Nissan management that require Oliver and his coworkers to pay union dues as a condition of keeping their jobs. In Right to Work states, in contrast, union membership and all union financial support are strictly voluntary.

However, in both Right to Work and non-Right to Work states, union officials in a unionized workplace are empowered by federal law to impose a union contract on all employees in the work unit, including those who oppose the union. A successful decertification v**e strips union officials of both their forced-dues and monopoly bargaining powers.

If union officials file no objections to the e******n by midnight on April 30, NLRB officials will certify the v**e and Somerset Nissan employees will be officially free of the union.

UAW Union Officials Rushed New Contract in Likely Attempt to Prevent Removal V**e

After Oliver’s April 1 submission of the decertification petition, UAW union officials announced on April 18 that they had ratified a new union contract with Nissan management. The last contract had expired.

While the NLRB’s dubious “contract bar” generally allows union bosses to quash worker-filed decertification efforts for up to three years while a union contract is in effect, the contract bar didn’t stop Oliver and his coworkers’ requested e******n, because union officials weren’t able to reach a monopoly bargaining agreement with Nissan before Oliver filed his decertification petition. The contract bar does not appear in the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), the federal law the NLRB is charged with enforcing, and is instead the product of union boss-friendly Board decisions.

Had union officials been able to ratify the contract just a few days earlier, the UAW likely would have succeeded in trapping the workers in union “representation” and forced-dues payments, despite a wide majority wanting to be free of the UAW.

Workers Across Country Growing Dissatisfied with UAW Agenda

Across the country, workers are choosing to affiliate with unions in record-low numbers, according to the most recent Gallup poll on the subject. In 2023, the UAW’s membership fell to its lowest level since 2009. Nonetheless, the UAW’s top bosses are engaged in a multi-million-dollar campaign to expand their influence across nonunion auto facilities, particularly in the South.

Workers are also increasingly attempting to exercise their right to v**e out union officials they disapprove of. According to NLRB data, since 2020 decertification petition filings have gone up by over 40%. To resist this trend, the Biden NLRB is attempting to make it substantially more difficult for workers to decertify unions, and could soon issue a final rule invalidating the E******n Protection Rule. The E******n Protection Rule is a policy which contains multiple important safeguards regarding employees’ right to decertify unions they oppose.

“Mr. Oliver and his fellow Nissan employees are another example that workers who see the UAW up close and personal end up disliking the union’s so-called ‘representation,’” commented National Right to Work Foundation President Mark Mix.

“While these Nissan workers were able to get a v**e to eliminate the UAW from their workplace, too often we hear from workers who are frustrated to learn they may have to wait years before even being able to seek a v**e to remove unwanted union monopoly representation,” Mix added. “The vast scores of auto industry workers now within the crosshairs of the UAW’s sweeping organizing plan should remember that union officials often prioritize their own power over workers’ interests, and that biased NLRB standards like the ‘contract bar’ may make it very difficult to remove a union after it has been installed.”

Au, I feel the same way. In early biblical times the universe was from the Nile River to the two rivers in Babylon. By the time of Rome , it had expanded to include the entire Mediterranean, and they knew of places like China. Along came the last hundred years, and we now know that the universe includes billions of planets in our own galaxy. Now we know that the universe consists of trillions, and trillions of stars. There is now talk among scientists that it is possible that there are other universes possibly many other universities out there.
My amazement of what G-d is, and can do is in direct proportion how much more he created than a small part of the earth. Those of us that believe in a G-d should know that science is just now showing us his eternal power, through exploration of physics, and astronomy.

Governments Could Stop Inflating If They Wanted. But They Won’t.
By: Daniel Lacalle

Price inflation is no coincidence. It is a policy. Governments, along with their so-called experts, attempt to persuade you that price inflation stems from anything other than the consistent, albeit slower, rise in aggregate prices year after year. Issuing more currency than the private sector demands, thus eroding its purchasing power and creating a constant annual t***sfer of wealth from real wages and deposit savings to the government.

Oil prices are not a cause of inflation but a consequence. Prices increase as more units of the currency used to denominate the commodity shift to relatively scarce assets. Therefore, oil prices do not cause inflation; they are one of the signals of currency debasement. Furthermore, if oil prices caused inflation, we would go from inflation to deflation quickly, not from elevated inflation to slower price increases.

The same goes for all the causes that governments and their agents try to use as an excuse for rising prices. Most are just manifestations, not causes of inflation. Even if the global economy were dominated by three evil and stupid oligopolistic businesses, they would not be able to increase aggregate prices and maintain an annual increase if the quantity of currency in the system were to remain equal. Why? Two things would happen. First, those three monopolistic evil corporations would see their working capital soar because citizens would not have enough units of currency to pay for all they produce. Two, the rest of the prices would decline as there would be a significantly lower number of units of currency to purchase other goods and services.

Even a group of quasi-monopolistic corporations cannot make all prices rise in unison and consolidate the annual level, only to continue rising. However, the monopolistic issuer of the currency, the government, can make all prices rise while at the same time diminishing the purchasing power of the units of state debt that they issue.

It is surprising to see how some so-called experts say that a few large corporations make all prices rise but deny that the state that monopolizes the creation of money is the cause of price inflation.

Governments are at the root of rising prices. While banks can generate money—credit—through lending, they rely on projects and investments to support these loans. Banks cannot create money to bail themselves out. No financial entity would go bankrupt then. In fact, banks’ largest asset imbalance comes from lending at rates below the cost of risk and having government loans and bonds as “no-risk” investments, two things that are imposed by regulation, law, and central bank planning. Meanwhile, the state does issue more currency to disguise its fiscal imbalances and bail itself out, using regulation, legislation, and coercion to impose the use of its own form of money.

Monopolies cannot simply drive up prices unless they are able to force consumers to use their products without any decline in demand. We also must understand that destructive and inefficient monopolies can only exist if the state imposes them. In any other situation, those monopolies disappear due to competition, technology, and cheaper imports from other nations. So, which is the only monopoly that can force consumers to use their product regardless of the real demand for it? Government fiat money.

The government is the largest economic agent and therefore the most important driver of aggregate demand, as well as the issuer of currency. The government can end today’s high price-inflation rates any time by eliminating the unnecessary spending that causes the deficit, which is the same as money printing. Taxing the private sector to cut price inflation is like starving the children to make the fat parent lose weight.

If Senator Warren and President Biden were right and corporations were to blame for rising inflation, competition, cheaper imports, and a decline in demand, they would have taken care of their unjustified prices. Only the government can cause and perpetuate inflation, using the central bank as its financial arm and regulation as the imposition of the state’s IOU (currency) as the “lowest-risk asset” in banks’ assets. The government creates the currency and imposes it, and when its purchasing power declines, it blames the economic agents that are forced to use its form of money.

MMT defenders and neo-Keynesians say that the government can issue all the currency that they need and that their limit is not fiscal (deficit and debt) but price inflation. It makes no sense because price inflation is the manifestation of an unsustainable fiscal problem, reflected in the vanishing confidence in the currency issuer. It is, literally, like a giant corporation issuing debt endlessly and thinking nothing matters. It is a subterfuge to implement the constant increase in size of government in the economy, knowing that once it controls a large part, it is virtually impossible to stop the state.

Stephanie Kelton and others say the government should spend all it wants and, if price inflation rises, tax the excessive money away. This is funny. So, the government increases size on the way in, spending and diluting the purchasing power of the private sector’s earnings and savings, and then taxes the private sector, thus increasing the size of government on the way out. Furthermore, there is no government that would recognize that price inflation comes from spending too much, so the destruction of the private sector continues and the diminishing confidence in the currency extends, as history has proven numerous times.

Governments cannot tax away the price inflation they have created by bloating spending. They can only weaken the private productive sector further and worsen the economic situation and the price inflation outlook.

There is no such thing as perennial monetary sovereignty. Like any form of debt, currency demand disappears with the government’s solvency and the economic weakness of the private sector consumed by taxes. Once the government destroys confidence in the currency as a reserve of value, the private sector will find some other way to make t***sactions outside of the imposition of a state-issued currency.

When governments present themselves as the solution to price inflation with large spending programs and subsidies, they are only printing more money, like putting out a fire with gasoline.

Biden says the government has a plan to cut price inflation, but all they have done is perpetuate it, making citizens poorer and the productive sector weaker.

If Biden wants to cut price inflation, all he must do is eliminate the deficit by cutting expenditures. The reason why governments should never oversee monetary policy and be allowed to monetize all deficits is because no administration will cut its size to defend citizens’ wages because nationalization by monetary inflation and taxes is the goal of interventionism: to create a dependent and hostage economy.