Category: Labor

Koch Whores

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Koch Industries is now explicitly coercing its workers about who they vote for:

On the eve of the November midterm elections, Koch Industries sent an urgent letter to most of its 50,000 employees advising them on whom to vote for and warning them about the dire consequences to their families, their jobs and their country should they choose to vote otherwise.

The Nation obtained the Koch Industries election packet for Washington State [1]—which included a cover letter from its president and COO, David Robertson; a list of Koch-endorsed state and federal candidates; and an issue of the company newsletter, Discovery, full of alarmist right-wing propaganda.

Legal experts interviewed for this story called the blatant corporate politicking highly unusual, although no longer skirting the edge of legality, thanks to last year’s Citizens United Supreme Court decision, which granted free speech rights to corporations.

“Before Citizens United, federal election law allowed a company like Koch Industries to talk to officers and shareholders about whom to vote for, but not to talk with employees about whom to vote for,” explains Paul M. Secunda, associate professor of law at Marquette University. But according to Secunda, who recently wrote in The Yale Law Journal Online about the effects of Citizens United on political coercion in the workplace, the decision knocked down those regulations. “Now, companies like Koch Industries are free to send out newsletters persuading their employees how to vote. They can even intimidate their employees into voting for their candidates.” Secunda adds, “It’s a very troubling situation.”

This is what happens when people who earned their fortune through the genetic lottery think that they own the people who work for them.

Truly repugnant.

Buck Foeing

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The National Labor Relations Board has Boeing locating the 2nd assembly line for the 787 in South Carolina was part of illegal union busting activity:

Boeing illegally put its second 787 Dreamliner assembly line in South Carolina in retaliation for strikes in Washington and should be required to build the line in Washington, according to a potentially groundbreaking National Labor Relations Board complaint (pdf) filed Wednesday.

NLRB Acting General Counsel Lafe Solomon filed the complaint after investigating a charge that the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers union District 751, bargaining unit, backed by the national union, filed on March 29, 2010. A board administrative law judge is scheduled to hear the case on June 14.

Seriously, since Boeing bought McDonnell Douglas, and the failed McDonnell Douglas management team ended up running the company, they have consistently failed in ways that stun me.

First, they were big enough assholes that they got engineers to go out on strike and stay on strike, then they f%$#ed up the bidding on the next gen tanker twice (the first time was when they bribed an official to cut them an unconscionable lease deal), and now they have been so arrogant to get the normally hapless NLRB to unload a can of whup ass on then.

If I were a Boeing shareholder, I would be agitating to make sure that no one who ever worked at M-D from holding a senior management position at the Everett Chicago based airframe manufacturer.

We Are Officially a 3rd World Nation

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We have now become a place where 1st world nations send their manufacturing to in order to avoid regulation.

Case in point, Ikea’s factory in Virginia pays ⅓ as much and engages in policies at its US plant that are scandalous in Sweden:

When home furnishing giant Ikea selected this fraying blue-collar city to build its first U.S. factory, residents couldn’t believe their good fortune.

Beloved by consumers worldwide for its stylish and affordable furniture, the Swedish firm had also constructed a reputation as a good employer and solid corporate citizen. State and local officials offered $12 million in incentives. Residents thrilled at the prospect of a respected foreign company bringing jobs to this former textile region after watching so many flee overseas.

But three years after the massive facility opened here, excitement has waned. Ikea is the target of racial discrimination complaints, a heated union-organizing battle and turnover from disgruntled employees.

Workers complain of eliminated raises, a frenzied pace and mandatory overtime. Several said it’s common to find out on Friday evening that they’ll have to pull a weekend shift, with disciplinary action for those who can’t or don’t show up.

………

Some of the Virginia plant’s 335 workers are trying to form a union. The International Assn. of Machinists and Aerospace Workers said a majority of eligible employees had signed cards expressing interest.

In response, the factory — part of Ikea’s manufacturing subsidiary, Swedwood — hired the law firm Jackson Lewis, which has made its reputation keeping unions out of companies. Workers said Swedwood officials required employees to attend meetings at which management discouraged union membership.

………

The dust-up has garnered little attention in the U.S. But it’s front-page news in Sweden, where much of the labor force is unionized and Ikea is a cherished institution. Per-Olaf Sjoo, the head of the Swedish union in Swedwood factories, said he was baffled by the friction in Danville. Ikea’s code of conduct, known as IWAY, guarantees workers the right to organize and stipulates that all overtime be voluntary.

“Ikea is a very strong brand and they lean on some kind of good Swedishness in their business profile. That becomes a complication when they act like they do in the United States,” said Sjoo. “For us, it’s a huge problem.”

Laborers in Swedwood plants in Sweden produce bookcases and tables similar to those manufactured in Danville. The big difference is that the Europeans enjoy a minimum wage of about $19 an hour and a government-mandated five weeks of paid vacation. Full-time employees in Danville start at $8 an hour with 12 vacation days — eight of them on dates determined by the company.

Additionally, there are allegations of racism at the plant, claims, “That black workers at Swedwood’s U.S. factory are assigned to the lowest-paying departments and to the least desirable third shift.”

This sounds an awful lot like the textile plants in Bangladesh where the exits are chained shut, and workers die when a fire breaks out, doesn’t it.

You set up a factory, and you bring in local managers, with the local attitudes, and then you push them to meet difficult numbers, and surprise, they revert to the standard labor behavior that you see in south central Virginia, only worse, because they know that their bosses will not feel any blow-back, because they are thousands of miles away.

Rat F%$#ing, It’s What Republicans Do.

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So, we had a prosecutor in Indiana suggesting that Scott Walker stage a false attempt on his life in order to gain political advantage.

He’s admitted it, and has now resigned as deputy prosecutor..

Josh Marshall of TPM asks whether this is is normal Republican procedure.

The answer is Yes.

Whether it’s Nixon’s Dirty Trixters, where his operative Roger Stone coined the term “Rat F%$#ing”, or Karl Rove planting bugs in his own office to create a mock scandal, or James O’Keefe’s deliberately dishonest videos, or this instance, this sort of behavior is a part of Republican DNA.

I used to hang out with Tony Rudy, now best known as a Jack Abramhoff associate, as an SGA Senate member at UMass, I was technically a “right wing” member of the Senate as a Mondale Democrat.* and this was the sort of stuff that the College Republicans did all the time, and when they got together in regional and national meetings, they talked about it.

With me, a Democrat, people like Greg Rothman, Rudy’s partner in crime in the student senate, bragged about such things.  They reveled in and bragged about their willingness to ratf%$# their opponents.

*The left wing was the “US out of North America” crowd.

The Concept is So Repugnant that Obama Will Have to Offer a Compromise

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Just when I think that the Republican party cannot get any more contemptible, they do something that makes me sit there with a stunned expression on my face that resembles nothing more than a cow that just stepped on its own udder.

Case in point, the Republicans are trying to pass a law that would take away food stamps from the children of strikers:

However, one section buried deep within the bill adds a startling new requirement. The bill, if passed, would actually cut off all food stamp benefits to any family where one adult member is engaging in a strike against an employer:

I understand that Republicans hate labor unions, but taking it out on their children??

You have to be Ernst Stavro Blofeld with the f%$#ing white Persian cat on your lap in order to be that evil.

Of course, I’m sure that Barack Obama will find a way to compromise on it.

The Rude Pundit Asks the Right Question

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You should read his whole post about what is going on in Wisconsin, but in the last paragraph, he asks the important question:

Where the f%$# is the President? Where the f%$# is the President? Where the f%$# is the President?

(%$# mine)

The answer, of course is that the President is busy, “Winning the Future,” because pursuing a lame ass slogan in order to be reelected in 2008 is more important than defending the rights of the ordinary working man.

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?!?!?!?

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Recall time!

So, the Wisconsin State Senate just pulled the anti-union provisions out of the budget bill, and then, since they did not require a quorum, since they were non-budgetary, they passed it with an 18-1 vote.

I will note that the motion appears to be in violation of the state constitution:

The measure approved Wednesday forbids most government workers from collectively bargaining for wage increases beyond the rate of inflation. It also requires public workers to pay more toward their pensions and double their health insurance contribution, a combination equivalent to an 8 percent pay cut for the average worker.

Those savings would appear to be budgetary to me, and hence subject to the state constitution’s quorum requirement.

Firedog Lake’s invaluable David Dayen has some more of the finer points, and it appears that this is definitely headed to court, though the Wisconsin State Supreme Court is heavily Republican.

If you want to donate to the recall efforts, you can go to my Act Blue Page. There is a link there for donations.

Also note that in the middle of the most important fight for ordinary working Americans in decades, the Obama administration has decided that they don’t want to be involved:

Similarly, the White House mostly has sought to stay out of the fray in Madison, Wis., and other state capitals where Republican governors are battling public employee unions and Democratic lawmakers over collective bargaining rights. When West Wing officials discovered that the Democratic National Committee had mobilized Mr. Obama’s national network to support the protests, they angrily reined in the staff at the party headquarters.

Administration officials said they saw the events beyond Washington as distractions from the optimistic “win the future” message that Mr. Obama introduced in his State of the Union address, in which he exhorted the country to increase spending for some programs even as it cuts others so that America can “out-innovate and out-educate” its global rivals.

I guess that someone in the administration finds unions, and ordinary working people to be icky. After all, they expect to spend a billion dollars in 2012 on the Presidential election, and the working man just does not have that kind of money.

Barack Obama is very lucky that the Republicans are as awful as they are, because otherwise, as awful as he is, he’d have a serious primary challenger right now.

What can I say, when Mitt Romney is the class act in the room, you have a very scary political party.

Yes, This is Fascism

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Rachel Maddow and Naomi Klein on the “Emergency Manager” Bill

In Michigan, the governor is pushing a bill through that would grant Governor Rick Snyder the powers of a dictator.

Basically, he can declare a financial emergency for any municipal government or school district, and then he can assign an “Emergency Manager”, who could, without any review cancel any contracts (including labor contracts), dismiss elected officials, disincorporate towns, and dismantle school districts.

What’s more, the Senate version of the bill allows the emergency manager to be assigned to a corporation, like Blackwater (now Xe) or Halliburton.

There is no criteria for such a declaration, but even if there were, they are also gutting local aid, which pretty much means that they are creating fiscal crises anyway.

Basically, any elected official, and any semblance of due process is to be wiped away, in a bill that really does resemble the Emergency Laws that Mubarak used to rule Egypt with an iron fist for all these years.

This is about a corporate takeover of civil society, and the vesting of near absolute power in the executive.

If You Want to Go Postal at Work, Follow the Example of the Indians

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And I mean East Indians, not American Indians.

You see, they don’t go after their cow-orkers, they go after their boss, as in this case where they fired a member of senior management:

Indian police have detained two people after an angry mob of sacked steel workers burned to death a senior executive.

After learning they were laid off, about a dozen workers attacked a 4×4 vehicle carrying Radhey Shyam Roy as he was leaving the factory in eastern Orissa state on Thursday.

They doused it with petrol and set it ablaze, said police Superintendent Ajay Kumar Sarangi.

Needless to say, I do not endors violence against employers, even senior managers, but the fear of such violence does appear to be the only way to restrain their behavior, given that the moneyed class is pretty much above the law in most of the world, including the good old USA.

H/t JR at Stellar Parthenon.

More Evidence that the Wall Street Journal is Going to Rupert Murdoch in a Handbasket

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They were reporting that the Wisconsin State Democratic Senators were returning to the capitol shortly, which was emphatically denied by the state Senators in question.

This was clearly planted because as time goes on the Republicans are losing ground. For example, one of the more prominent teabagger PACs is begging for money because they are losing this fight, and a counter protest, complete with Koch brothers free bus service, could only muster 700 attendees.

The lesson to be learned here is that when you make nice, no one notices who was on what side, but when you fight back people do notice, and if you are on the sane side of the argument, you win.

Could Wisconsin Democrats Please Send Some Spare Backbone to Washington, DC?

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After a couple of weeks of a growing grassroots effort to initiate recall campaigns against 8 Republican state Senators, the Wisconsin Democratic party has officially joined the effort:

The Wisconsin Democratic Party has decided to throw its weight behind a nascent grassroots drive to recall a number of GOP state senators, a move that will considerably increase the pressure on them to break with Governor Scott Walker, the Dem party chair confirms to me.

“The proposals and the policies that Republicans are pushing right now are not what they campaigned on, and they’re extreme,” the party chair, Mike Tate, said in an interview. “Something needs to be done about it now. We’re happy to stand with citizens who are filling papers to recall these senators.”

Previously, Wisconsin Dems had not publicly supported talk about recalling GOP Senators, in hopes of privately reaching a negotiated solution to the crisis. The Wisconsin Democratic Party’s decision to support the recall drives represents a significant ratcheting up of hostilities and in essence signals that all bets are off.

Eight Republican Senators are eligible to be recalled right now, [the state Senate has staggered terms, and you cannot initiate a recall in the first year of a term] and various groups around Wisconsin are beginning to file papers to make it happen. Tate told me that the party would throw its organization behind such efforts.

You know, I think that when the base is motivated, this might be a better idea than what they do in DC, which is to try to defang motivated Democrats, and call them names like “Professional Left.”

Then again, what do I know.  I don’t have experience engineering the biggest electoral reversal for Democrats in history with the realities of politics.

Maybe deliberately demoralizing the party faithful actually works.

And maybe I’m Charlie Sheen.

Scott Walker Started as a Tragedy, and is Finishing as a Comedy

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So, the Republican Party’s next “Great White Hope,” Wisconsin governor Scott Walker’s assault on the right to unionize, has gone from the Republican’s best plan for tearing down the base of the Democratic party to a rather unpopular farce.

First, attempts in Indiana Republicans to ape* Wisconsin led to Indiana lawmakers fleeing the state to stop the effort.

I don’t know what this sh%$ is doing for the economies of Wisconsin and Indiana, but it sure is boosting the hospitality industry in Illinois.

Also, it is becoming increasingly apparent that these actions are unpopular, the polls are pretty strongly against it, and Republican notables are backing away from the idea, with Indiana governor Mitch Daniels telling the ‘Phants in his legislature to kill the bill, and Florida governor, and über-Teabagger, Rick Scott coming out against the idea.

So it already looks like this strategy is playing a lot like the 1995 government shutdown, and now Scott Walker got punked by the editor of the Buffalo Beast, who pretended to be David Koch.

The interesting take aways here is that he’s not seeing any need to compromise and is planning to:

  • Dock the state Senator’s pay.
  • Looking at going after them on ethics violations, and a possible felony, if they took food or lodging assistance from unions. (FWIW, he accepted an invite from “David Koch” for a flight out to California and being put up there later in the call)
  • That he’s intending to organize a “summit” of some sort with the Democrats, and use their presence to push the vote through while they are in the room with him (it’s a quorum/recess game).
  • Discussed planting “troublemakers” with the activists to either create bad press, or provide an excuse to crack down.

So, he’s now on tape admitting that he cannot be trusted to negotiate in good faith, the quote is:

I would be willing to sit down and talk to him, the assembly Democrat leader, plus the other two Republican leaders—talk, not negotiate and listen to what they have to say if they will in turn—but I’ll only do it if all 14 of them will come back and sit down in the state assembly…legally, we believe, once they’ve gone into session, they don’t physically have to be there. If they’re actually in session for that day, and they take a recess, the 19 Senate Republicans could then go into action and they’d have quorum…so we’re double checking that. If you heard I was going to talk to them that’s the only reason why. We’d only do it if they came back to the capital with all 14 of them…

So he’s been caught on tape admitting that he would basically launch a sneak attack during peace talks, good luck getting anyone to trust you ever again.

*No offense intended to primates. I’m using the verb form, and I can understand how simians might find comparing them to Republicans to be offensive.

The (legal in Wisconsin) tape of the phone call and the transcript after the break:


Part 1


Part 2

Transcript follows:

Walker: Hi; this is Scott Walker.
Koch: Scott! David Koch. How are you?
Walker: Hey, David! I’m good. And yourself?
Koch: I’m very well. I’m a little disheartened by the situation there, but, uh, what’s the latest?
Walker: Well, we’re actually hanging pretty tough. I mean—you know, amazingly there’s a much smaller group of protesters—almost all of whom are in from other states today. The State Assembly is taking the bill up—getting it all the way to the last point it can be at where it’s unamendable. But they’re waiting to pass it until the Senate’s—the Senate Democrats, excuse me, the assembly Democrats have about a hundred amendments they’re going through. The state Senate still has the 14 members missing but what they’re doing today is bringing up all sorts of other non-fiscal items, many of which are things members in the Democratic side care about. And each day we’re going to ratchet it up a little bit…. The Senate majority leader had a great plan he told about this morning—he told the Senate Democrats about and he’s going to announce it later today, and that is: The Senate organization committee is going to meet and pass a rule that says if you don’t show up for two consecutive days on a session day—in the state Senate, the Senate chief clerk—it’s a little procedural thing here, but—can actually have your payroll stopped from being automatically deducted—
Koch: Beautiful.
Walker: —into your checking account and instead—you still get a check, but the check has to be personally picked up and he’s instructing them—which we just loved—to lock them in their desk on the floor of the state Senate.
Koch: Now you’re not talking to any of these Democrat bastards, are you?
Walker: Ah, I—there’s one guy that’s actually voted with me on a bunch of things I called on Saturday for about 45 minutes, mainly to tell him that while I appreciate his friendship and he’s worked with us on other things, to tell him I wasn’t going to budge.
Koch: Goddamn right!
Walker: …his name is Tim Cullen—
Koch: All right, I’ll have to give that man a call.
Walker: Well, actually, in his case I wouldn’t call him and I’ll tell you why: he’s pretty reasonable but he’s not one of us…
Koch: Now who can we get to budge on this collective bargaining?
Walker: …I think the paycheck will have an impact…secondly, one of the things we’re looking at next…we’re still waiting on an opinion to see if the unions have been paying to put these guys up out of state. We think there’s at minimum an ethics violation if not an outright felony.
Koch: Well, they’re probably putting hobos in suits.
Walker: Yeah.
Koch: That’s what we do. Sometimes.
Walker: I mean paying for the senators to be put up. I know they’re paying for these guy—I mean, people can pay for protesters to come in and that’s not an ethics code, but, I mean, literally if the unions are paying the 14 senators—their food, their lodging, anything like that…[*** Important regarding his later acceptance of a Koch offer to “show him a good time.” ***]
[I was stunned. I am stunned. In the interest of expediting the release of this story, here are the juiciest bits:]
Walker: …I’ve got layoff notices ready…
Koch: Beautiful; beautiful. Gotta crush that union.
Walker: [bragging about how he doesn’t budge]…I would be willing to sit down and talk to him, the assembly Democrat leader, plus the other two Republican leaders—talk, not negotiate and listen to what they have to say if they will in turn—but I’ll only do it if all 14 of them will come back and sit down in the state assembly…legally, we believe, once they’ve gone into session, they don’t physically have to be there. If they’re actually in session for that day, and they take a recess, the 19 Senate Republicans could then go into action and they’d have quorum…so we’re double checking that. If you heard I was going to talk to them that’s the only reason why. We’d only do it if they came back to the capital with all 14 of them…
Koch: Bring a baseball bat. That’s what I’d do.
Walker: I have one in my office; you’d be happy with that. I have a slugger with my name on it.
Koch: Beautiful.
Walker: [union-bashing…]
Koch: Beautiful.
Walker: So this is ground zero, there’s no doubt about it. [Talks about a “great” NYT piece of “objective journalism.” Talks about how most private blue-collar workers have turned against public, unionized workers.]…So I went through and called a handful, a dozen or so lawmakers I worry about each day and said, “Everyone, we should get that story printed out and send it to anyone giving you grief.”
Koch: Goddamn right! We, uh, we sent, uh, Andrew Breitbart down there.
Walker:Yeah.
Koch: Yeah.
Walker: Good stuff.
Koch: He’s our man, you know.
Walker: [blah about his press conferences, attacking Obama, and all the great press he’s getting.] Brian [Sadoval], the new Governor of Nevada, called me the last night he said—he was out in the Lincoln Day Circuit in the last two weekends and he was kidding me, he said, “Scott, don’t come to Nevada because I’d be afraid you beat me running for governor.” That’s all they want to talk about is what are you doing to help the governor of Wisconsin. I talk to Kasich every day—John’s gotta stand firm in Ohio. I think we could do the same thing with Vic Scott in Florida. I think, uh, Snyder—if he got a little more support—probably could do that in Michigan. You start going down the list there’s a lot of us new governors that got elected to do something big.
Koch: You’re the first domino.
Walker: Yep. This is our moment.
Koch: Now what else could we do for you down there?
Walker: Well the biggest thing would be—and your guy on the ground [Americans For Prosperity president Tim Phillips] is probably seeing this [stuff about all the people protesting, and some of them flip him off].
[Abrupt end of first recording, and start of second.]
Walker: [Bullshit about doing the right thing and getting flipped off by “union bulls,” and the decreasing number of protesters. Or some such.]
Koch: We’ll back you any way we can. What we were thinking about the crowd was, uh, was planting some troublemakers.
Walker: You know, well, the only problem with that —because we thought about that. The problem—the, my only gut reaction to that is right now the lawmakers I’ve talked to have just completely had it with them, the public is not really fond of this…[explains that planting troublemakers may not work.] My only fear would be if there’s a ruckus caused is that maybe the governor has to settle to solve all these problems…[something about ’60s liberals.]…Let ‘em protest all they want…Sooner or later the media stops finding it interesting.
Koch: Well, not the liberal bastards on MSNBC.
Walker: Oh yeah, but who watches that? I went on “Morning Joe” this morning. I like it because I just like being combative with those guys, but, uh. You know they’re off the deep end.
Koch: Joe—Joe’s a good guy. He’s one of us.
Walker: Yeah, he’s all right. He was fair to me…[bashes NY Senator Chuck Schumer, who was also on the program.]
Koch: Beautiful; beautiful. You gotta love that Mika Brzezinski; she’s a real piece of ass.
Walker: Oh yeah. [story about when he hung out with human pig Jim Sensenbrenner at some D.C. function and he was sitting next to Brzezinski and her father, and their guest was David Axelrod. He introduced himself.]
Koch: That son of a bitch!
Walker: Yeah no kidding huh?…
Koch: Well, good; good. Good catching up with ya’.
Walker: This is an exciting time [blah, blah, blah, Super Bowl reference followed by an odd story of pulling out a picture of Ronald Reagan and explaining to his staff the plan to crush the union the same way Reagan fired the air traffic controllers]…that was the first crack in the Berlin Wall because the Communists then knew Reagan wasn’t a pushover. [Blah, blah, blah. He’s exactly like Reagan. Won’t shut up about how awesome he is.]
Koch: [Laughs] Well, I tell you what, Scott: once you crush these bastards I’ll fly you out to Cali and really show you a good time.
Walker: All right, that would be outstanding. [*** Ethical violation much? ***] Thanks for all the support…it’s all about getting our freedoms back…
Koch: Absolutely. And, you know, we have a little bit of a vested interest as well. [Laughs]
Walker: [Blah] Thanks a million!
Koch: Bye-bye!

Walker: Bye.

Wisconsin Seems Even More Like Egypt Now……

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So, we are seeing huge, and growing, protests, with a teacher sickout to attend the protests growing, it has now shuttered both the Madison and Milwaukee school systems, and the Democrats in the state Senate have left the state, to prevent quorum for voting on the bill, while, in a bit of traditional religious silliness, religious leaders are offering sanctuary for them if they return to the state:

Religious leaders in Illinois and Wisconsin are offering sanctuary to Wisconsin Democrats as they boycott a vote on a Republican bill that would strip public workers of nearly all their collective bargaining rights.

Actually though the most surprising development is that Barack Obama has actually felt the need to make a declarative statement on all this, as opposed to trying to make nice, and split the difference, calling it an, “assault on unions.”

What, Obama isn’t trying to split the difference and being hopey-changey?  That’s like a f%$#ing sign of the f%$#ing apocalypse.

It would be nice if we would see some more of this, because the Republicans aren’t getting any more reasonable in response to his standard modus operandi.

How Is Wisconsin Like Egypt?

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You know, I’m not entirely sure how they are alike, but recently elected wingnut governor Scott Walker looks like he might be joining Hosni Mubarak is some form of internal exile soon.

You see, in his new budget, he proposed completely gutting the right of public sector employees to unionize, forbidding unions from requiring that dues be paid, forbidding them from negotiating about pensions, healthcare, or even asking for a pay hike above that of inflation, and requiring an annual recertification vote.

He then followed this up with a threat to use the national guard against strikers, and there were somewhere between 10 and 30 thousand protesters in the capital, Madison.

We are already hearing calls for Walker to be recalled, but state law requires that a year follow his swearing in before petitions can be turned in, so that’s off the table for about 10½ more months.

Jim Webb Asks the Right Question

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The distinguished gentleman from Virginia is asking why the military has so many flag and general officers (generals and admirals):

Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va., is pressing the Defense Department for justification of why the military has so many flag and general officers, and he also wants to know why the military is paying salary and tuition assistance to officers on loan to some Washington, D.C., think tanks.

It’s a good question, with about 1/10 the men in uniform as at the height of the 2nd world war, we have more active duty general officers .

Additionally, we just have more officers, with one officer for every 5 enlisted men, up from the traditional number of 1 for 10 that was the standard for the military throughout most of history.

The answer is, I think, that much like the incompetent banksters thinking that it is all about the banksters, the officer corps thinks that its all about the officer corps.

Lots of navel gazing, and lots of waste.

Cut back on the officer corps, and spend it on senior NCOs, and you will get a better military.