Category: News and Opinion

Why Liberals Should Favor Strong Action Against Iran

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Liberals seem to favor a minimal response to the belligerent actions of Iran beyond the sanctions that have been put in place.  This is wrong because Iran has not only threatened the free world with its work on a nuclear device and its stealth hand in terrorism but because Iran changed America from a liberal nation to a conservative one that has refuted the very compassionate ideals of our founders.

Misinformation and Ms. Charlene

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In my years working the Lower East Side on behalf of its Senator (as he was then), Marty Connor, I got to meet a few old ladies who knew Charles Barron back when he grew up in the local projects of Loisaida.

It was from them I learned that as a young man, the pre-panther Charles Barron was universally known as “Chuck.”

The NBA Salary Cap and Executive Pay

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There is breaking news that the NBA players and owners have reached a deal to save the extended pre-season. When that many teams make the playoffs, that’s’ all the “regular season” is – a preseason at regular season prices. The owners had locked the players out because they wanted what all members of the executive class want when they come to own professional sports teams. An end to the free market in labor, to be replaced with a “salary cap” system intended to keep labor income down, such as the one now in place (with “harder” and “softer” caps different cases) in every major sport.

The attitude is very different, of course, when members of the executive class are setting each other’s pay. They claim that the huge increase in their share of total wealth in the 1990s, justified then by the stock market bubble at the time but never reduced once the bubble deflated, is the result of a sacrosanct “free market.” In reality, however, the market in executive pay is just as rigged, but in the other direction. Through the agency of the executive pay consultants they all hire, Boards of Directors inevitably conclude that if the previous deal for an executive was for X, the next executive deserves X plus 10 percent. And then when member of the Board of one company get their pay set in another company, they expect X plus 10 percent plus 10 percent. That is nothing like a free market, and very much like the way public employee pay and pensions are set – more and more for those in on the deal, leaving less and less for those forced to pay, who have no say. And there is no salary cap in executive pay, and no thought of creating one.

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