After careful consideration I'm going to close this account.  MySpace just isn't what it used to be, and nearly everyone I'm friends with here are also friends of mine on Facebook.

If you're one of the small number of blog readers I have, I've started a new one that will let me be a little more free-form than what I can do here or on Facebook.  If you'd like to check it out, just click here.

Newberry (SC) College president Dr. Mitchell "Mick" Zais...



...and Congressman/perennial presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich...

Ex-Florida Governor and potential 2012 Prez candidate Jeb Bush...

...and actor extraordinaire Beau Bridges

Grawp, from the Harry Potter series...

...and Alfred E. Neuman from Mad Magazine

Jim Parsons (Big Bang Theory)...

and Jimmy Fallon (Late Night With Jimmy Fallon)

Imagine Jimmy Fallon goes on the Slim-Fast diet and loses about 30 pounds.  This works, I swear.

"Octo-Mom" Nadya Suleman....

Before going on, I'd encourage you to become familiar with the Employee Free Choice Act.  You can read about it at Wikipedia and at OpenCongress.

Now, my politics have generally been center-left, though I try to keep an open mind about most things.  This particular piece of legislation is not one of them.

I agree there was a time and a place for unions.  Frankly, they have generally outlived their usefulness.  In this day and age, any employer who has a union in their shop does so because they failed to do three things: Treat employees fairly, deal with employees honestly, and maintain a comfortable and safe work environment.  The problem with most unions is they also fail to ensure employers do all these things.  They tend to be more concerned about wages, seniority, and strict definitions of what everybody does.  Unfortunately this tends to stifle creativity and innovation, and removes incentives for employees to do more than simply what is required.

Personally, I would rather my career be based on what I have achieved and what I am capable of achieving than how long I have been employed.  If promotion is a reward for extended tenure, what reason do I have to try and reach my full potential as quickly as possible?  It won't matter; someone who is clearly average will get promoted before me if they have been employed longer than I have.

So back to this legislation.  The way the system operates today is if 30% or more of the employees in a "bargaining unit" (which can be a branch of a company or an entire company, with some limitations) sign a card stating they want to be represented by a union, the company can either accept the union as the representative or they can request a secret ballot election be held.  This process is monitored by the National Labor Relations Board.  If the company chooses the election process, it takes a simple majority of eligible employees to accept the union as the bargaining representative for the employees.

This legislation removes the secret ballot provision if more than 50% of the employees sign the card.  At first glance this does not seem to be a big deal.  After all, if more than 50% of the employees sign the card, doesn't it then seem likely that more than 50% would also vote for the union?

Here's what the big deal is:  If you signed the card, everyone will know you supported the union.  If you didn't sign, there will be questions of whether you opposed the union, supported the company (yes, those are different concepts), or weren't asked to choose.  The only one who will know for certain is you.

One of the basic tenets of a democracy is that everyone is free to make a decision on who their representatives are, whether it be in government, in a union, or in any other elective body, free from intimidation or harassment, and in private.

Union elections have had long and ugly histories of intimidation, harassment, violence, and even murder.  In more recent years, the actions from both sides have become far more covert, with the possible exception of those companies who disregard federal law and fire union organizers and sympathizers.  Still, those companies usually get their comeuppance: They get to deal with unions in the end.

This legislation does not do anything to advance the cause of good employer-employee relations.  It creates more opportunities to institute an adversarial system which benefits no one.  The only group that is guaranteed to benefit when a union is allowed to represent the employees is the union.  They cannot force the company to pay higher wages.  They cannot force the company to provide better benefits.  They cannot force the company to not lay people off.  They cannot force the company to not shutter a facility.  They can force its members to pay dues.  They can force its members to pay fines for violating union rules.

With the economy staggering, there's no doubt many employees see safety in numbers and will be enticed to allow a union to represent them.  If that's how they want to vote, so be it.  But this legislation, which will allow them to give away their rights simply by putting their names to pieces of paper, is not the panacea.  All they have to do is look at the most heavily unionized industries.  They are shedding jobs left and right, and the people losing those jobs are totally unprepared for the economy to come.  No, that's not the fault of the union, but when you've drunk enough Kool-Aid to think your job will always be there, you have no incentive to change yourself.

The right to vote is a precious one.  It's bad enough there are a bunch of politicians who think so little of it that they will allow others to forfeit it.  But the fact there are citizens of this nation who are willing to go along with the premise is really and truly disheartening.

I'm in the midst of reading a very good book about the challenges America is facing, and though I know a lot of people disagree with some of the author's conclusions, there are a few points he makes which cannot be denied:

Let's face it.  The problems we have in this country are not going to be solved in a day, a week, a month, a year, or maybe even a decade.  Most of us can't afford to wait that long.  So why are we waiting for a bunch of lawyers who couldn't explain how capitalism works if their lives depended on it to take action?

To paraphrase Carl Sagan, society in general is more and more dependent on technology for simple things, but hardly anybody knows how or even why.  All they know is that stuff works, and when it stops working they call a toll-free number that, after a 7-minute wait listening to Muzak, connects them to somebody in Bangalore who can read a checklist in 2 hours without solving the problem.  And yet, we have millions of people who really aren't interested in learning how the stuff works, or whether something can be made better.

America was always a nation of innovators.  We were the creators, the doers, the thinkers, the teachers, and the leaders.  Now?  We grumble about raising taxes to pay teachers a living wage, yet don't bat an eye when budget cuts don't touch a high school's athletic program but 20 teachers lose their jobs.  We complain about high-paying jobs being sent overseas to lower-wage countries, then discourage our kids from going into those fields, which sends even more jobs overseas because there's no one left here who knows how to do the work.  We work so hard to shield our kids from failure they don't learn that sometimes "no" is the answer.

We've become so good at believing bad things aren't our fault that we are willing to let someone else fix the problem for us.  We let a plethora of opportunistic politicians promise they can do exactly that, and we believe them.

We react with outrage when business leaders act in their individual best interests instead of the interests of the businesses they lead, but don't hold them accountable when those businesses fail.

Businesses complain about government interference and regulation ruining their prospects for success, but come running with their hands outstretched asking for taxpayer money when things go south.

No matter who you are or what you do, at the end the only person you can count on to act in your best interest is you.  So you have a choice: Will you choose to follow a path where you can join the ranks of the innovator, the creator, the doer, or the thinker?  Or will you become a sheep, following the crowd because it seems like a good idea?

Learn how to do something valuable.  Learn to rely on yourself.  Learn how to fail.  Learn how to be bold.  Learn how to take risks.  Learn to take charge of your own life.  No one else will do it for you.

We as a nation are struggling because too many people are waiting for something to happen.  By the time that happens, whatever it is, they will have lost precious months where they could have taken charge of themselves.  Don't be one of them.  Be one in a million.