Payne: The anti-choice Left

Posted by hpayne on December 9, 2012

Remember when liberals were pro-choice?

Just weeks after winning a presidential election in which they celebrated an individual’s right to choose gay marriage and abortion, Michigan’s Left is laying siege to the state capitol in a last ditch bid to refuse Michigan workers the right to choose whether to underwrite Big Labor.

On Sunday, the Left’s flagship paper, The Detroit Free Press, used its front page to attack Governor Rick Snyder for boldly defying the state’s Big Labor lobby in favor of granting Michiganians the right-to-work – just as 23 other states (including Indiana) have done. Snyder “is failing to rise to the challenge of tough leadership — having the mettle to stand up to your political allies when they’re wrong, and having the courage to stand by principle, even when your friends pressure you to abandon it,” complained Freep editorial page editor Stephen Henderson in a desperate A1 column. “That’ll cost him, and his party. More important, it will cost Michigan.”

But all the evidence points to the contrary.

“Right-to-work states outperform forced-union states in almost every measurable category of worker well-being,” reports The Wall Street Journal editorial page last year. “A new study in the Cato Journal. . . found that from 1977 through 2007 there was ‘a very strong and highly statistically significant relationship between right-to-work laws and economic growth.’ Right-to-work states experienced a 23 percent faster rise in per capita income over that period. The two regions that have lost the most jobs in recent years, the once-industrial Northeast and Midwest, are mostly forced-union states.”

Michiganians intuitively understand this as they have watched the auto industry move south to right-to-work states over the last three decades with foreign transplants like Kia, VW, and BMW all making right-to-work a priority in where they locate new plants.

As a result, Michigan voters support RTW by a 51-41 margin, according to a new poll by Steve Mitchell. This solid support defies Freep claims that the governor’s position came from” acquiescing to a radical GOP cabal.”

You’re not a radical cabal if the majority supports you.

Governor Snyder stood on the principle of individual liberty in explaining his Johnny-come-lately embrace of RTW: “The unions ought to be able to present a good value proposition, instead of saying you have to join a union to keep your job,” he explained to The Freep. “This isn’t to damage the unions. It isn’t anti-union. This could make unions better, by making them more responsive to their members.”

Henderson laments the divisiveness that Snyder’s RTW reversal will bring: “On Tuesday, when the Legislature resumes its right-to-work steamroller, the streets will be filled. We’ll be Wisconsin.”

What planet has he been on the last two years?

The state capital has been under siege since 2010 by unions protesting Snyder’s education, labor, and spending reforms. Despite the governor’s conciliatory rhetoric, not a single Democrat has supported his major reforms.

In truth, the governoronly switched positions on right-to-work when the UAW’s Bob King betrayed him last March in putting Prop 2 on the ballot – a slap in Snyder’s face that would have outlawed worker’s right-to-work IN THE STATE CONSTITUTION. Michigan’s “radical cabal” of voters defeated that power grab by 58-42 percent on Nov. 6.

But Henderson’s feigned outrage over Snyder’s “betrayal” is particularly rich given The Freep’s support of Obamacare.

Henderson & Co. have vigorously defended that divisive legislation – despite no bipartisan support, despite Obama’s strong-arming the law through Congress including lying to former GOP Rep. Bart Stupak that it would not federally-fund abortion, and despite its unpopularity with American voters. Now that’s a radical cabal.

“The money, the time, the bitter feelings — none of it will be worth it. Right-to-work will consume Michigan politics for years to come,” writes The Freep without a hint of irony – the same publication that deemed Obamacare worthy despite its cost in jobs, debt, and national unity.

” How much more radical (the GOP)has become,” concludes Henderson. “Snyder was the hope for something different — and better.” Better is exactly what Snyder has delivered: A RTW bill that is popular with the public, that will bring jobs back to Michigan, and that will give every Michigan worker freedom of choice.

That’s radical?

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