by Lance Thompson

New, stringent regulations will govern defense contracts with Lockheed Martin, Northrop-Grumman and other defense industry companies, according to a 16 March 2007 Wall Street Journal story by Jonathan Karp. Future military contracts will be of the fixed price type, rather than the more financially elastic cost-plus variety, in which the government reimbursed contractors for cost overruns. The military’s insistence that the contractor adhere to original estimates seems fair, until one realizes that cost overruns are not always the fault of the contractor, and are often due to changes insisted upon by the military customer.

Defense contractors generate tremendous amounts of revenue by supplying our military with everything from nuclear submarines to combat boots. Abuses of the system are part of our history, from Revolutionary War profiteers selling French muskets to the Continental Congress at five times their value to the 2003 scandal in which Boeing hired an ex-Air Force acquisitions official who was involved in a Boeing aerial-tanker proposal. Ever since President Eisenhower, in his 1961 farewell address, warned of the growing power of the "military-industrial complex," Americans have viewed defense contractors with growing suspicion and mistrust.

The truth is, there is no military-industrial complex. Companies in the defense industry compete vigorously with each other to design war-fighting ships, tanks and planes. The military buys from the contractor that offers the best combination of capability, quality and price. This is, if not an adversarial relationship, at least an open and competitive free-market arrangement between the military customer and the industrial suppliers. There is no conspiracy or cabal.

There has always been friction between the military and the defense industry. In 1927, Army General Mason Patrick, outraged at the $800,000 profit earned by Consolidated Aircraft in a four-year contract to supply trainer aircraft, demanded a $300,000 rebate from company president and founder Reuben J. Fleet. Fleet had invested his company’s money and future in materials and tools with no guarantee of winning the original contract. After winning the contract, Fleet had fulfilled all obligations by supplying aircraft at the agreed price and schedule. Nonetheless, General Patrick considered Consolidated’s profit to be excessive, and demanded a give-back. As an aircraft manufacturer, Consolidated desperately needed the military contract and future business, since there were no other customers who could place such large orders. A compromise was reached in which Consolidated provided the Army with 50 extra trainers, valued at a total of $300,000, at the cost of $1 each.

The transaction illustrates a turbulent relationship that endures to this day. There are only a few large defense contractors who can design and build the advanced military systems our armed forces depend on. These contractors have only one major client, the United States military. Of course, they can also sell these systems to other nations, but only with the permission of the State and Defense Departments. And those sales only materialize if the products have first been purchased by the American military. There is little international market for a military airplane, ship or tank that has been turned down by the Pentagon. Northrop discovered this in 1982 when it invested $100 million in the F-20 fighter aircraft but, despite the plane’s impressive performance, was unable to find a foreign buyer since the fighter was never used by the U. S. military.

The military, like any customer, wants to obtain the greatest value for its money—"more bang for the buck." The defense industry, like any other, wants to realize the maximum profit. This dynamic tension is part of every free-market transaction.

High costs are caused by many factors, including some shared by all manufacturers. Certainly, mismanagement will increase the cost of any product. So will labor disputes and labor shortages, as well as rising costs of materials. Electric Boat, the submarine-building division of General Dynamics, saw material costs for its Los Angeles class nuclear subs increase 83% during the inflation-heavy years 1970-1977.

The cost of weapons systems also rises when the military customer changes contract requirements in mid-production. These requirements, known as military specifications, or MILSPECS, change constantly, abruptly, and rapidly throughout the development and production process. Sometimes, as is the current case, these changes are driven by combat experience. Our ground forces went to Iraq with unarmored Humvees, since those utility vehicles were never designed to withstand small arms, rocket or IED attack. Now that these vehicles are engaged in protracted urban warfare, the necessity for heavily armored versions, is clear. New, "up-armored" Humvees, with a ton or more of extra armor protection, obviously cost more than the original models.

In other cases, MILSPECS change to reflect projected future needs. The contract that prompted the military’s recent decision to revise its contract with Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman concerns the Littoral Combat Ship, whose estimated cost has risen 50%. Part of this increase is due to changes mandated by the military, including a new requirement by the Coast Guard that the ship be able to survive a nuclear detonation. Complying with this requirement is not as simple as spraying the ship with an extra coat of nuclear Scotchguard. It involves hardening every major component on board, obviously at substantial additional cost.

Since development of the more advanced systems, like warships and aircraft, can stretch over years, the military understandably wants to incorporate the most advanced features into each product. The contractor also wants to provide the most advanced product, but cannot absorb the cost of continual changes, and so the price goes up. The changes slow the production process, putting the product behind schedule as well as over budget.

This vicious circle is illustrated by the development of the B-2 bomber. Northrop Grumman originally estimated the cost of the B-2 Stealth Bomber at approximately $500 million for each of 133 aircraft. As MILSPECS changed, the cost rose, and the budget did not. Thus the order was halved, but a smaller order meant that the production cost would have to be borne by fewer aircraft, and the unit cost rose to $800 million. More changes, higher costs, reduced orders, higher unit prices–the pernicious cycle ended with only 21 B-2's built, at a price of $2 billion each.

These costs seem astronomical, but the defense industry is tasked to produce systems that are a generation ahead of anything else on earth. In the case of the B-2, the military required a long-range bomber, virtually invisible to radar, capable of delivering up to two dozen precision-guided weapons against distinct targets on the other side of the world, while evading or defeating defensive measures and bringing its crew home safely. Northrop competed against Lockheed for the contract. Both contractors had to estimate the cost of an aircraft that had no equal. They would be dealing with exotic materials, new construction techniques, technology and electronics that hadn’t been invented yet, and a performance envelope that had never been achieved by such a massive aircraft. It is impossible to accurately predict the costs involved in this, or any such unprecedented program. Balanced against the B-2's lofty price is the fact that a military aircraft conceived over a quarter of a century ago, first flown in 1989, and in active service since 1993 still has no equal or close counterpart in any nation’s air force.

Whether it’s an amphibious tank with the nautical performance of a speedboat, an advanced aircraft invisible to radar, or a communications system that contacts submerged submarines by using the Earth itself as an antenna, defense contractors are creating systems that are beyond the frontiers of modern technology. They conceive, design and fabricate systems that have previously only been dreamed of.

During the Apollo space program, a giant sign stretched across one wall of a Lockheed factory exhorted workers to "Waste Anything But Time." Military contracts, especially during a time of war, have the same mandate–our troops need and deserve the best equipment in the world, and they need it now. When American forces are engaged in combat, the quality of the weapons and equipment they use must be superior to the enemy’s. That superiority often comes at a high price.

People employed by the defense industry, from CEO’s to technicians on the production line, realize that American servicemen and women trust their lives to the ships, tanks, airplanes and weapons they produce. Defense workers are hard-working, dedicated and patriotic. They take pride in providing world-class tools for American fighting men and women.

When Americans go into battle, they know they are driving the most powerful armored fighting vehicle, flying the most sophisticated war plane, sailing aboard the most advanced warship. The high price of these systems reflects military necessity. When Congress or the Pentagon experience sticker shock on a new system that meets ever-changing requirements and the highest standards , they shouldn’t punish the companies that meet those requirements and exceed those standards. Producing the weapons and technology that ensure our troops will prevail on any battlefield is not like any other business. The demands are larger, the stakes are higher, the costs are greater. But ask any man or woman in uniform: who pays the price when weapons and equipment don’t make the grade?

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Lance Thompson has written for television (Mr. Belvedere), been a script doctor for motion pictures (The Two Jakes, The Honeymooners), and is an award-winning veteran of hundreds of motion picture ad campaigns (Paramount, 20^th Century Fox, Disney). His writing and photography have appeared in magazines (Air & Space Smithsonian, Cowboys & Indians, Hemispheres, Delta Sky) and newspapers (Los Angeles Times, Dallas Morning News). He lectures on writing at the Scriptwriters Network and lives in Sun Valley, California, with his wife and daughter.

by Lance Thompson

On 9 March 2007, liberals lost a gun fight. The U. S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia decided to restore to citizens of Washington, D. C., a Constitutional right that had been denied them for 31 years. In a 2 to 1 decision, the court decided that the city’s law banning all handguns, requiring shotguns and rifles to be disassembled or locked while in the home, and additionally requiring a permit to keep such guns in the home, was a violation of the right to keep and bear arms guaranteed by the Second Amendment.

Thanks to this enlightened decision, citizens of a city with a high rate of violent crime (20% higher than the national average in 2004) can now legally defend their homes and families with firearms. In 1976, when the District’s strict gun law was passed, the murder rate in Washington, D. C., was 26.8 per 100,000 residents. From 1976 to the present, there was no change in the gun law. However, murder rates fluctuated widely, rising to a high of 80.6 in 1991and a low of 23.5 in 1985. The restrictive gun law did not prevent murder rates from tripling fifteen years after enactment. Robbery rates, at 1003 in 1976, also fluctuated, reaching a high of 1635 per 100,000 in 1985 and a low of 621 in the year 2000. Clearly, other factors influenced violent crime rates much more significantly than the gun law. (For example, lower crime rates coincided with a decrease in population.) Undeniably, the strict gun law did not contribute to a suppression of violent crime.

It is self-evident that a criminal would prefer to prey on an unarmed citizen than an armed one. But it is not necessary to rely on common sense to grasp the value of armed citizens in suppressing crime. FBI statistics cited in a Gun Control Symposium sponsored by Saint Louis University Law School in 1999, covering the years from 1993-1996, tabulated an average of 398 justifiable homicides by police officers per year, and 299 justifiable homicides by private citizens annually. Though police officers have more frequent contact with criminals, private citizens are still responsible for a large percentage of criminals killed during the commission of a crime.

Criminals have a high degree of career inertia. That is, a criminal is likely to continue in a life of crime until interrupted by a traumatic event–arrest and conviction, injury or death. Thus, each of those 299 justifiable homicides by private citizens not only prevented the crime the criminal was engaged in, but every crime that criminal would have committed during the rest of his life outside the law.

Lethal use of privately-owned guns accounts for only a small portion of the number of crimes prevented or deterred by private citizens with guns. Estimates of the number of times guns are used in self defense range from 1.5 million per year (P. J. Cook’s and J. Ludwig’s "Guns in America: National Survey on Private Ownership and Use of Firearms" in National Institute of Justice Research in Brief, May, 1997) to over 2 million (G. Kleck’s and M. Gertz’s "Armed Resistance to Crime: the Prevalence and Nature of Self-Defense With a Gun," in Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, volume 86(1), 1995). This means that 1.5 to 2 million would-be victims of crime owe their safety to privately owned guns. Now residents of Washington, D. C., will be able to defend themselves in the same way. No longer will a criminal predator brazenly invade a private home, knowing that the law severely restricts his victim’s access to firearms to defend himself.

The Second Amendment has long been a point of contention between liberals and conservatives. It reads, in its entirety: "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed." Liberals have focused on the opening dependent clause as a loophole in the right to own a gun. In a 2002 decision upholding California’s assault weapons ban, the oft-overturned Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the Second Amendment does not apply to individuals, but is instead a "collective right" applicable only to militias. Conservatives believe that the Constitution guarantees the individual’s right to own firearms, and that it is a vital defense against criminal predators.

Liberals abhor violence, yet they coddle violent criminals when they protest capital punishment, harsh sentencing laws, and expanded search and seizure capabilities for police. Liberals treat violence as a deadly social contagion; conservatives judge violent acts individually. For a liberal, a mob pulling an innocent motorist from his car and mercilessly beating him is no more objectionable than a line of policemen using batons, mace and tasers to break up the same violent mob. Conservatives see the criminal act as punishable violence, the law enforcement act as necessary and sanctioned violence.

Liberal opposition to individual gun ownership follows the same pattern. For liberals, any violent act that involves a gun is objectionable, whether the target is the innocent victim of a hold-up or an armed intruder who breaks into a family home in the middle of the night. This is illustrated by the statistics liberals use to bolster arguments for more stringent gun control. They tell us how many people are killed by guns, how many people are wounded or maimed by guns. But innocent victims are counted with law-breaking ones. How many of those killed by guns are criminals? How many were killed during the commission of a crime? How many were killed by a police officer defending the public, or a homeowner defending his family? Liberals see any death by gun as an argument for the elimination of guns. Conservatives see the death of an innocent person as a tragedy, the death of a criminal as a consequence of breaking the law.

So, naturally, the liberal municipal leaders of Washington, D. C., are considering an appeal of the court decision. They would rather deny guns to law-abiding citizens because fewer guns mean fewer gun deaths. But surely, the deaths of criminals during the commission of crimes should not be tallied as a cost, but rather as a benefit to society. Every crime deterred by a gun means one less citizen turned victim, one less criminal act perpetrated.

The passage of the District of Columbia’s highly restrictive gun law in 1976 did not diminish violent crime. But a decrease in violent crime will likely result from its repeal.

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Lance Thompson has written for television (Mr. Belvedere), been a script doctor for motion pictures (The Two Jakes, The Honeymooners), and is an award-winning veteran of hundreds of motion picture ad campaigns (Paramount, 20^th Century Fox, Disney). His writing and photography have appeared in magazines (Air & Space Smithsonian, Cowboys & Indians, Hemispheres, Delta Sky) and newspapers (Los Angeles Times, Dallas Morning News). He lectures on writing at the Scriptwriters Network and lives in Sun Valley, California, with his wife and daughter.

By Rose Pedenko and Tanya Simon

A lie gets halfway around the world before truth puts its boots on.

-Mark Twain

When Ronald Reagan left this earth, countless numbers of American citizens trekked to the Reagan Library in California to pay their respects to “The Great Communicator”—waiting in line for hours, both in Simi Valley and Washington, D.C. Yet, when President Reagan left office, based on a Gallop poll, he was not considered a popular president. Herein lies a contradiction—if he was not well-liked, why then was there such an overwhelming public display of grief at the report of his death?

History is the great equalizer. It eventually confirms or refutes recorded media, and serves as a reminder, not only to report the truth, but to scrutinize everything reported more closely. It is not always necessary to wait 10 or 20 years to separate the wheat from the chaff of news coverage, specifically, Ronald Reagan’s mass appeal before and after he died. The left, who prefer to think of themselves as intellectuals, maligned Reagan as lacking in intelligence, or as William F. Buckley noted, “[Reagan] confounds liberal critics, who assessed him many years ago as a bumpkin with oratorical gifts…” They have never followed up with an explanation of how the dumb guys on the right beat the smarter guys on the left.

The 2008 Republican presidential hopefuls are the subject of interminable swill, over-blown praise, negations, and evasion of fact, all masqueraded as truth and spelled out with erratic detail by the media. In a recent article written by Scott Helman of The Boston Globe, yet another “exhaustive internal campaign document” mysteriously surfaced, this time from Mitt Romney’s camp. The lead in the Globe article suggests one item causing concern: “His hair looks too perfect.” This bit of fluff undoubtedly surfaced as a comparison to another Republican candidate with movie star looks: Ronald Reagan. It is identical to the slam during Reagan’s 1984 campaign, but should be considered a dunk when added to Romney’s undeniable appeal. This particular assault on Romney’s hair is being blown out of proportion by the same communications industry that financially thrives on youth and beauty. So what’s the problem?

As for the other Republican candidates, Rudy Giuliani is being touted with hammer force as “the man to beat,” based solely on his now legendary appeal as a leader in time of crisis, and John McCain is, of course, “the” war hero. If both the liberal and conservative media objectively examined a candidate’s qualifications to run this country—a journalistic imperative—it would obviate the obscene costs of running a campaign by whittling away the dead wood early. Not surprisingly, we are now watching both Giuliani and McCain, (and even Newt Gingrich), jump through hoops about their private lives. Mitt Romney, on the other hand, appears to be the only Republican candidate whose private life, marriage and family are untainted by scandal.

Reagan (in 1984) and Romney (in 2007) have both been minimized for not being wartime leaders. Here’s a news flash for the MSM: there are no declared candidates in either party that are wartime leaders. John McCain was held captive in a Vietnamese POW camp for 5 ½ years and survived. This is a commendable testament to his perseverance, but does not confer upon him the status of a battlefield commander. With the exception of Dwight D. Eisenhower, no president in recent history meets that requirement. The Presidency of the United States requires leadership that is the product of depth and breadth of experience. Last time we looked, neither Hillary Clinton, nor her opponent, Barak Hussein Obama has ever served in the military. The liberal media continues to skip over the details that do not serve their agenda.

On the subject of gun control, the press have stated that in the past, Romney emphasized his support of gun-control measures. That would be a ban on assault rifles and a waiting period for the purchase of handguns. While he has always supported the Second Amendment, there is no shortage of common sense to Romney’s approach. If he recently joined the NRA in order to garner their support, it should be viewed as a strategically sound decision. This is, after all, a political campaign. Next thing you know Romney will be criticized for shouting the words “Gentlemen, start your engines” while putting his finger on the pulse of the American majority.

The MSM is also having a field day with the notion that Mitt Romney is the Republicans’ John Kerry on the matter of flip-flops. On closer examination of a highly controversial topic, i.e., Romney’s evolving position on abortion, in 2002 Romney pledged not to change Massachusetts’ abortion laws, despite his personal opposition. Changing one’s mind is a sign of growth, versus intractability in the face of criticism. This is an important point because it reflects Romney’s ability to govern without allowing his religion to interfere with his oath of office. Religion has always been the “other” elephant in the room created by the media. John F. Kennedy mitigated that argument long ago. If Mitt Romney’s faith were a material problem, then both Harry Reid and Orrin Hatch have a lot of nerve pretending it doesn’t interfere with their duties.

In 2004, Steve LeBlanc of The Herald News reported on the proposed constitutional amendment banning gay marriage in the State of Massachusetts. LeBlanc stated: “…Romney has made his stand clear: He opposes gay marriage, his opposition being rooted in a strong sense of tradition about the institution of marriage, which he [Romney] described as ‘the foundation of a harmonious family life’ and ‘the basic building block of society.” And this is a bad thing? Rather than attempt to explain the majority view, the liberal media prefers to ignore the clear “physiology” of traditional marriage between a man and a woman.

An important point to remember in the coming months: there is no one-size-fits-all candidate in either party. It doesn’t matter if we are moderates or conservatives. In the end, it will come down to trusting in the candidate’s intelligence, integrity and ability to lead the most powerful nation on earth. Emulating an admired former U.S. president should never be cause for negative speculation, suspicion, or lop-sided humor. In the final political analysis, it won’t be about hair, or any other “single” issue. It is time, however, for the media to measure a man by his actions and his ability to transcend the political road kill created by their unfair reportage.

By Lance Thompson

Most words don’t elicit much debate. Some are controversial. There are even people who believe there are a few words that should never be uttered at all. But I don’t believe that some words can be used by one group, and prohibited for another.

Controversy over Ann Coulter’s comment during a speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference on 2 March, in which she employed the term "faggot" in reference to John Edwards, brought widespread condemnation from the media, liberals, and many conservatives.

Coulter’s comment obliquely referred to a previous incident in which Isaiah Washington, an actor on Grey’s Anatomy, used the term to refer to fellow cast member T. R. Knight. Washington subsequently apologized, underwent psychological evaluation, counseling, and attended a residential treatment facility—severe penance for a single remark.

Twenty-five years earlier, actor Sean Penn rose to prominence in Fast Times at Ridgemont High, in which one of his character’s most memorable punch lines was, "Those guys are fags!" The term is commonly employed as an insult by those with limited command of the language, and does not always refer to the object’s sexual preference, but often to effeminate traits in a male. It is considered particularly derogatory toward the gay community, although members of that community commonly employ the same term, or derivatives thereof, in casual conversation with each other. Thus, it is permissible for gays to employ the term, but not for straights—a clear double standard.

Any discussion of proscribed terms eventually leads to the pinnacle of prohibited vulgarities. "Ni[g]ger" is the nuke of disallowed slurs. At the 1995 O. J. Simpson murder trial, homicide detective Mark Fuhrman was discredited as a prosecution witness when it was proved that he had used the term some time in the previous decade. When Michael Richards used the term while responding to hecklers at a Los Angeles comedy club on 17 November 2006, it was considered professional suicide and he was pilloried by the media. The word itself is considered so radioactive that even in the extensive media coverage, the term itself was rarely used, forcing commentators and journalists to resort to the imprecise euphemism "racial epithet" or the adolescent-sounding "n-word."

Yet in films, in hip-hop music, in casual discourse among blacks, "ni[g]ger" is employed quite often. One of Richard Pryor’s best albums is his 1974 release "That Ni[g]ger’s Crazy." Me-Shell NdegeOcello’s 1996 album Peace Beyond Passion includes a song called "Deuteronomy: Ni[g]ger Man" where the term is employed repeatedly in the lyric, in a far from derogatory application. (The same album contains a song titled "Leviticus: Faggot") Kool G. Rap and DJ Polo, in the 1990 song "Wanted: Dead or Alive," use the term more than once in the lyric.

In a four-day conference at Stillman College in Alabama in February 2007, participants discussed these issues. Some, including Congresswoman Maxine Waters and Jesse Jackson, advocated an outright ban on the word by entertainers. However, use of the derivative "ni[g]ga" was defended by activist Tim Robinson as a term of endearment between blacks, arguing that it was legitimized by the Tupac Shakur song "N.I.G.G.A." The acronym reportedly stands for "Nothing Ignorant Getting Goals Accomplished."

Clearly, there is scant difference between "ni[g]ger" and "ni[g]ga," other than the phonetic spelling that reflects vernacular pronunciation. To argue that this term can be used by blacks to and among themselves, and have a convivial connotation, but if used by whites, it is demeaning, insensitive and inflammatory, is to make a racist distinction. If one race can employ the term, but another can’t, that is certainly racially discriminatory. And if the term is really so incendiary if a white person uses it, how can it be completely disarmed merely by the color of the speaker and listener?

Racist hypersensitivity is so pervasive that even when President Bush compliments Democrat presidential hopeful Barack Obama with the term "articulate," it is attacked as a racist back-handed insult. Does every comment about one race by another need to be vetted by language lawyers? The answer, of course, is no—unless the speaker is a white conservative.

Liberals use extreme language as a matter of course. Bush is a "murderer," a "war criminal," a "racist." Does anyone consider those terms demeaning, insensitive or inflammatory? Evidently no one on the Left. John Kerry said our troops in Iraq were breaking into civilian homes in the dead of night, terrorizing children. Could those words be hurtful or harmful to our troops? Nobody on the Left thought so.

Language issues like these are part of the manufactured outrage of the Left. The twin bogeymen of racism and homophobia are, as radio talk show host Dennis Prager often points out, the reflexive refuge of liberals who have no intelligent arguments. Playing the race card or the sexual orientation card used to be a winning move in political argument. Call the other side "racist" or "homophobic,"and expect immediate capitulation. Politicians will support legislation, approve funding, and abandon principle to avoid being painted by the bigot brush. Jesse Jackson has made a career of racial blackmail, squeezing millions of dollars in corporate donations from various companies merely by threatening to label them as discriminatory toward blacks.

The terns "faggot" and "ni[g]ger" are derogatory, bigoted and inflammatory. But if they are so profane as to be placed in a special category of words never to be uttered, then the same restriction should apply to all users, of every race and sexual orientation, and in every situation. If these terms are permissible to be used by some, they must be permissible to be used by all. Any other policy demonstrates the same pernicious bias implied by these explosive terms.

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Lance Thompson has written for television (Mr. Belvedere), been a script doctor for motion pictures (The Two Jakes, The Honeymooners), and is an award-winning veteran of hundreds of motion picture ad campaigns (Paramount, 20^th Century Fox, Disney). His writing and photography have appeared in magazines (Air & Space Smithsonian, Cowboys & Indians, Hemispheres, Delta Sky) and newspapers (Los Angeles Times, Dallas Morning News). He lectures on writing at the Scriptwriters Network and lives in Sun Valley, California, with his wife and daughter.

**Brackets used around epithets because Townhall does not permit use of those words.

by Lance Thompson

United Auto Workers are making some concessions to auto makers in recognition of the shrinking market for domestic cars. Never has the description "too little, too late" been more appropriate.

In a front-page story in the 2 March 2007 Wall Street Journal, Jeffrey McCracken reports that United Auto Worker members at individual Ford manufacturing plants are voting to make concessions in order to help their employer weather tough times, including hiring non-union workers to fill lower-skilled jobs and forgoing overtime for some weekend shifts.

In the same article, McCracken points out that labor costs add between $1,080 and $1335 to the price of a car built by an American company compared to similar offerings by Toyota, Honda or Nissan. The greatest portion of that handicap is due to UAW retiree’s health care costs. The Japanese car companies also build cars in the United States, but their workers are not UAW members.

American car companies’ market share has dropped steadily as that of Japanese car makers continue to increase. Many of the Japanese cars and trucks supplanting American models are built in America, by American workers. The difference in the manufacturing process is that the Japanese companies aren’t dealing with a decades-old adversarial and parasitic relationship with their workers.

Daimler Chrysler is rumored to be searching for a possible buyer for its Chrysler division, which is now losing money only a short time after finding success with innovative designs and new engines. But the reason Daimler wants to sell is the same reason few want to buy–Chrysler’s staggering legacy costs due to extremely generous pay and benefits for its union workers.

When American cars dominated the domestic market, and a considerable portion of the world market, the Big Three could afford to accede to union demands that made American automobile workers the highest-paid in the world. But now, as American companies lose market share to the Japanese and other foreign brands, they are bound by union contracts that restrict adaptability and agility. Regulations preventing lay-offs result in insane institutions like the "job bank," where workers are paid almost full wages for performing no work. The domestic companies’ solution is to employ job bank workers to build more cars than the market demands, further reducing the value of every car built as well as weakening the auto companies.

Unions are among the most outspoken critics of outsourcing–displacing American jobs to offshore sites where the cost of labor is much cheaper. More than being critics, unions are a principal cause of outsourcing. Demands for higher wages, improved conditions and greater benefits are unceasing, so the only relief from spiraling labor costs is to move manufacturing overseas where labor costs are lower. Union work rules and demands make every company with union members less competitive, less adaptable to changing conditions, and less profitable. Strikes and work slowdowns make outsourcing seem even more desirable to the employer. And as each company succumbs to foreign competition, or shifts jobs to offshore sites, more union jobs are irrevocably lost.

Unions have crippled American industry, even as the percentage of union workers has declined. Currently, only 7.4% of the private-sector work force is unionized, down from 20% as recently as the 1980's. (The public sector is the only area where union membership is growing–public employees are four times more likely to be unionized than private sector workers.) Nonetheless, unions’ vast and largely unregulated pension funds and available manpower are irresistible to politicians seeking campaign cash and personnel. On 1 March 2007, Democrats in the House passed the misleadingly-named Employee Free Choice Act. The legislation removes the right of workers to vote for or against union organization by secret ballot. Instead, unions will be able to conduct elections by card, with representatives obtaining signatures from workers by persuasion, coercion or threat. The secret ballot is a cornerstone of our democracy, but it’s not good enough for unions desperate to reverse dwindling membership.

In the late 19^th and early 20^th Century, American workers were exploited by large corporations. Unions served a useful purpose by organizing laborers and establishing work rules that ensured the safety and fairness of work environments. But union work rules, and the laws that shield unions from the sort of scrutiny and oversight that is demanded of every other American company and organization, have gone too far.

We have laws prohibiting monopolies in any one industry–automobiles, computers, utilities, broadcasting. But there are no rules prohibiting a monopoly of labor, which is exactly what a union is. When one company employs unfair practices to impair another company’s ability to compete in the marketplace, it is called restraint of trade, and is punishable by law. When a union impairs an employer with a strike, work slowdown, or demonstrations, those actions are legally protected. Most labor law favors unions rather than union members. Unions can contribute union funds and manpower to political campaigns, even if some members object. Union books are not open to public scrutiny, as those of a publicly-held corporation would be.

Unions don’t always limit themselves to legal methods in labor representation. The Office of Labor-Management Standards reports for Fiscal Year 2005 114 indictments and 97 convictions for violations of labor law by union officials. Crimes included embezzlement, filing false reports, keeping false records, destruction of records, extortionate picketing and deprivation of rights by violence. In 2005, court-ordered restitution by unions who victimized union members, employers and non-union workers totaled over $23 million.

From 2001 to 2005, the Labor Department’s Inspector General issued over 1100 indictments against union leaders on federal racketeering charges. Over 700 convictions were obtained. Nearly half of those cases involve pensions and employee welfare benefit plans.