The Problem with the FAA and Sequestration

“The world runs on individuals pursuing their self-interests. The great achievements of civilization have not come from government bureaus. Einstein didn't construct his theory under order from a, from a bureaucrat. Henry Ford didn't revolutionize the automobile industry that way.” — Milton Friedman

As lines grew at airports and passengers began to fume, Congress lumbered into action, holding hearings on furloughs and sequestration, and, ultimately tweaking the law to allow the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to add more manpower at the nation’s air traffic control towers. The only silver lining to the whole calamity may be that some small part of the government actually had a real discussion about spending. Not that it solves the underlying problem or averts mounting complaints about flying. If Congress was serious about improving air travel, they would have moved forward with plans to modernize our aviation system with new technologies that would render many of the existing towers redundant and obsolete, while allowing private entrepreneurs to play a larger role in airport management.

Airlines were deregulated in 1978, saving consumers billions of dollars and opening air travel to a much larger public. But as anyone who has flown recently knows, air travel is far less enjoyable than it was in the days of regulation and pampered passengers. It’s not just the TSA security checks; airlines have restructured their routes to keep flights as full as possible while trimming back on amenities. And airport facilities lag far behind the growing demand for air travel. In short, air travel is a no frills experience that leaves many passengers dreading the trip to the airport.

A large part of the problem is that while airlines have been deregulated, airports remain mired in red tape and bureaucratic sclerosis that make expansion and modernization difficult. The FAA relies on antiquated technologies to regulate increasingly congested skies. An upgrade is sorely needed, and the technology exists to more accurately monitor planes in the sky with significantly fewer facilities on the ground. In fact, a study by the Reason Foundation finds that over 100 air traffic control centers could be closed if new technologies are adopted for a smaller set of modern facilities that can manage flights “from anywhere-to-anywhere.” These changes would generate a one-time windfall of $1.7 billion as well as annual savings of $1 billion a year.

In addition to obsolete technologies, airport infrastructure improvement projects are hampered by bureaucratic oversight and politically powerful interests — from the air traffic controllers union, to monopolistic airlines with virtual veto power over new gates, to politicians seeking to divert federal dollars to favored projects. Delays and cost overruns plague airport improvement projects, leaving passengers in crowded and dilapidated waiting areas.

A better solution would be to harness the power of entrepreneurship by allowing the private sector to manage airport facilities and the ATC system. The deregulation that began in 1978 needs to be extended to airport facilities and air traffic control as well. The United States is a straggler in this respect, with many countries around the globe already shifting airports and airport management to private companies. From the U.K. to Australia, airports have been shifted towards private management, funded by aviation users. Canada has completely privatized its air traffic control system and is a model for other countries, including the United States. A shift to the private sector would provide access to capital markets to fund the necessary improvements that are fast outstripping the capacity of the Airport Trust Fund and the federal government’s ability to pay.

Unfortunately, the United States has a long way to go before air travel is on solid operational and financial ground. Despite the obvious flaws of the current system, the political interests that have congealed around the status quo make change difficult. Much of this can be explained by what economist Gordon Tullock called the transitional gains trap. That is, the current system bestowed substantial benefits on particular groups, such as the air traffic controllers who continue to man the control towers that would become obsolete in an upgraded system. Or the politicians who see dollars and jobs in airport improvement projects. Tullock notes that over time these benefits dissipate and the programs may become ineffective. Yet change will impose significant costs on these groups, creating a powerful coalition opposing reform.

Federal involvement in air traffic control has a long history. The 1926 Air Commerce Act tasked the Department of Commerce with issuing and enforcing air traffic rules, licensing pilots, certifying aircraft, establishing airways, and operating aids for air navigation. In the mid-1930s, the federal Bureau of Air Commerce took over the initial air traffic control centers for en route tracking created by the airlines, which complemented the operation of local control towers by municipal authorities. During the 1940s, the federal government began taking over the operation of local control towers, and following World War II all aspects of air traffic control became federal.

Airport development took a different path. In the early years of commercial aviation, some private airports (e.g., Burbank, California) existed alongside those established by state and local governments. Today, virtually all U.S. commercial airports are owned by state and local governments. The federal government's role has been to regulate and subsidize those facilities. Federal financial aid to airports began with work relief programs in the 1930s, and was followed by the Federal Airport Act of 1946, which provided $500 million in airport grants to state and local governments over seven years.

The coming of jet aircraft and the large number of aviation accidents spurred Congress to pass the Federal Aviation Act of 1958, which created the Federal Aviation Administration. The new administration replaced previous federal agencies involved in air traffic control and airport development.

Congress started taxing the commercial aviation industry soon after it was established. It passed an excise tax on gasoline and aviation fuels in 1932 and an excise on airline passenger tickets in 1941. The revenue from these levies went into the federal government's general fund. That changed in 1970 when Congress passed legislation creating an Airport and Airway Trust Fund, which had dedicated streams of revenue to be used for air traffic control and federal aid to airports. Trust Fund revenue sources included ticket taxes on domestic and international flights, taxes on fuels, and various fees.

The Airport and Airway Trust Fund currently raises more than $12 billion annually from a 7.5 percent tax on domestic airline tickets, a tax on each segment flown, taxes on gasoline and jet fuel, international departure and arrival taxes, and half a dozen other fees. Trust Fund revenues pay for almost four-fifths of the FAA's $16.4 billion budget, with the balance coming from general federal funds covering the FAA's safety regulatory and miscellaneous other activities.

While air traffic control is an increasingly technology-intensive industry, labor union issues have long played an important role in the ATC system. A period of labor unrest began in the late 1960s as FAA controllers pushed for job improvements and official status as an employee union. In 1969, about 500 members of the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization stayed home "sick" causing air service interruptions. The following year, 3,000 PATCO members took part in another "sickout" or illegal strike, which caused chaos for the nation's air traffic.

Labor problems continued during the 1970s, with various work slowdowns and union protests over contract issues. Then in 1981, PATCO declared a major system-wide illegal strike after negotiations on a new contract broke down. That prompted President Ronald Reagan to order controllers to return to work within 48 hours or else face termination. More than 11,000 controllers refused to return to work and were fired by Reagan and initially banned from federal service. PATCO was dissolved and a new controllers union was created in 1987, the National Air Traffic Controllers Association (NATCA).

Today, an important aspect of the federal ATC system is the high labor costs. In 2010, the operations portion of FAA had about 43,000 workers who earned a total of $6.5 billion in wages and benefits, or about $151,000 per worker. Just looking at controllers, a 2005 FAA study found that compensation packages averaged $166,000 annually. Labor costs account for two-thirds of the cost of FAA operations.

While organized labor has created management challenges for the FAA, so has the implementation of new technologies. Delays and cost overruns on major technology projects have been common. For example, the Advanced Automation System project was launched in the early 1980s and was originally expected to cost $2.5 billion and be completed by 1996. But by 1994, estimated project costs had soared to $7.6 billion and the project was seven years behind schedule. The FAA terminated some parts of the AAS program and restructured others, but $1.5 billion of spending ended up being completely wasted.

More recently, a 2005 study by the Department of Transportation's Office of Inspector General looked at 16 major air traffic control upgrade projects and found that the combined costs had risen from $8.9 billion to $14.5 billion. The cost of the Standard Terminal Automation Replacement System project had jumped 194 percent to $2.7 billion and was seven years behind schedule. The OIG said that the STARS project was "facing obsolescence" even before it was completed. Meanwhile, the cost of the GPS controlled Wide Area Augmentation System (WAAS) project had jumped 274 percent to $3.3 billion and was 12 years behind schedule. A Government Accountability Office analysis in 2005 found similar cost overruns and delays in these projects.

Many experts are predicting major problems with U.S. aviation infrastructure in coming years as large demand growth outstrips the capacity of available facilities. In addition to a rising number of airline passengers, the average size of planes has fallen, which increases the number of planes in the sky that the ATC system needs to handle. On the supply side of the aviation equation, the FAA has long had problems with capital funding, high labor costs, and an inability to efficiently implement new technologies. Major changes are needed because the increased air traffic will soon bump up against the limits of the current air traffic control system.

In 1999 I received a consulting contract from the U.S. Trade and Development Agency to provide precise geodetic GPS surveys at 10 airports in Central America. The surveys were needed for the implementation of GPS navigation and approach to the airports. We were also contracted to provide training in the establishment of the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) for airport approach systems.

When this contract was announced at an aviation conference in Miami I gave a presentation to the audience on the purpose of the contract and what we would be providing through USTDA and with the cooperation of FAA. During the dinner I sat at a table with Jane Garvey, the then FAA Administrator and gave her a more detailed explanation of what we would be doing and how the GNSS would be a tremendous benefit to civil aviation in the region. Ms. Garvey was quick to grasp the technology and its benefits. When I asked her why the United States was not moving forward with this less labor intensive and less expensive technology her answer was simple and direct — “it’s the unions.” She explained that any new technology introduced into the ATC system had to be approved by the NATCA. The approval was not for the viability of the technology or the safety of the airways but for the impact the technology would have on the union jobs of the air controllers. This did not bother the aviation officials in Central America as they were more concerned with implementing an ATC system they could readily afford and one that would satisfy the airlines serving the region.

Virtually all commercial airports in the United States are owned by state and local governments. But around the world, airports are becoming viewed more as business enterprises, and less as monopoly public services. Governments in both developed and developing countries are turning to the private sector for airport management and development.

The benefits of a more entrepreneurial approach to running airports include increased operating efficiency, improved amenities, and more rapid and efficient expansion in capacity to reduce congestion. Airlines, passengers, private-plane owners, and taxpayers can all benefit from this new commercial approach to airport management.

For existing state and local airports, the simplest form of privatization is to contract out management of the airport on a short-term basis. But long-term leases can shift much greater responsibility and entrepreneurial incentive to the airport company, while liberating much of the city's previous investment in the airport. To create new airport facilities, the private sector can be brought in as a partner and granted either a long-term or perpetual franchise to finance, design, own, and operate the new facility. Full private ownership and management of airports is also possible and is becoming fairly common in Europe.

Airports have been fully or partly privatized in many foreign cities, including Amsterdam, Athens, Auckland, Brussels, Copenhagen, Frankfurt, London, Melbourne, Naples, Rome, Sydney, and Vienna. Britain led the way with the 1987 privatization of British Airports Authority, which owns Heathrow and other airports. Other countries followed with a wide range of commercialization reforms under which private firms own or operate various aspects of airport facilities.

Since 1987, more than 100 airports have been partly or fully privatized worldwide. A recent survey found that there are about 100 companies around the world that own and operate airports, finance airport privatization, or participate in projects to finance, design, build and operate new airports or airport terminals.

Many aviation experts predict serious trouble in coming years as air travel demand grows faster than the ability of the U.S. air traffic control system to expand capacity. In the 2003 reauthorization of the FAA, Congress acknowledged the seriousness of the problem by creating the Joint Planning and Development Office (JPDO) to coordinate the transition to a Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen). NextGen will be a major redesign of the ATC infrastructure, as described by the Congressional Budget Office:

“The new system is designed to accommodate up to three times the volume of current air traffic by making more efficient use of both the national airspace and airport facilities. The new air traffic control system would be more decentralized than the one currently in place in the United States. Guidance systems on planes would work in conjunction with satellites of the Global Positioning System (GPS) to supplement direct supervision by ground-based controllers and radar stations. As a result, each plane would depend less on instructions from an air traffic controller and more on its own resources for maintaining a safe flight pattern and would be better able to adjust to the particular air traffic conditions in its vicinity.”

The JPDO has estimated that not expanding the ATC system's capacity will be costing the U.S. economy $40 billion per year by 2020 because the overburdened system will force significant rationing of flights. That rationing would increase prices and eliminate some trips entirely. To avoid this crisis, JPDO has called for restructuring the ATC system to safely and efficiently handle the heavier demand.

One problem is the mismatch between the growth in air traffic and the projected growth in FAA revenue. The FAA will need about $1 billion more per year over the next 20 years just to implement NextGen. In 2007 the FAA proposed a user-fee-based funding reform that could provide a more efficient and growing revenue source. The idea was to make each air transportation user's burden on the ATC system more closely match that entity's cost for using the system. That approach has thus far been ignored by Congress.

However, the challenge ahead for the ATC system is more complex than just financial. NextGen will be a major paradigm shift — from 20th-century (manual) air traffic control to 21st-century (semi-automated) air traffic management — and it will be more complex and riskier than any other challenge the FAA has previously attempted. Given the FAA's management and cost overrun problems in the past, simply fixing the funding problem for the ATC system without dramatically reforming its governance poses risks of larger and more dramatic failures and greater congestion down the road.

Here are three key problems with the current government-owned and operated system of air traffic control:

Inflexible Funding. Government funding sources tend to be static and subject to political considerations, and they are decoupled from changing market demands. Changes in aviation over the past decade have hurt the FAA's funding base. A large part of the FAA budget comes from aviation excise taxes, especially the 7.5 percent tax on airline tickets. As average ticket prices have fallen over time, ATC funding has been squeezed. Payroll costs of the current labor-intensive ATC system consume most of the available budget, leaving less funding for capital investment.

Making the transition to NextGen will require billions of dollars of new investments in advanced technologies. The FAA's capital budget is still focused mostly on patching up the existing system, such as replacing antiquated display consoles. Such investments are needed in the short-term, but won't add very much capacity to the system. But that is nearly all the FAA can afford under the current funding structure.

Some people argue that Congress could solve the funding problem by appropriating a larger amount of general federal revenue for the ATC system. But given the giant federal budget deficit, federal discretionary spending is going to be severely squeezed in coming years. The solution, as discussed below, is to create a commercialized ATC system that can flexibly respond to changing conditions and access private capital markets for investment.

Technology Implementation Risks. The FAA has been attempting to modernize its system, expand capacity, and increase its productivity for decades. But dozens of reports over the years from the Government Accountability Office and the Office of Inspector General in the Department of Transportation have faulted the FAA for poor management of major projects, which are often delayed and over budget. The Advanced Automation System, Wide Area Augmentation System, and other major projects have had large cost overruns and been years behind schedule or cancelled, as discussed above.

In 2005 two OIG researchers presented an overview of the FAA's failed efforts over the years to modernization the National Airspace System.25 In reviewing what went wrong, they concluded that FAA modernization efforts had neither reduced costs nor increased productivity:

“NAS modernization plans have been consistently subverted by requirements growth, development delays, cost escalations, and inadequate benefits management. All these things were symptomatic of the fact that FAA didn't think it needed to reduce operating costs.”

Many experts are greatly concerned that the FAA's institutional culture is poorly suited to implementing anything as dramatic as NextGen. In 2004, the National Academy of Sciences convened an expert panel to assist the GAO in understanding the cultural and technical factors that have impeded previous ATC modernization efforts. It found that "the key cultural factor impeding modernization has been resistance to change, which is characteristic of FAA personnel at all levels" and that "the key technical factor affecting modernization has been a shortfall in the technical expertise needed to design, develop, or manage complex air traffic systems."

As a government agency, the FAA is not designed to judge risks, aim at the most efficient investments, manage people to produce results, reward excellence, or punish incompetence. It is therefore not equipped to fundamentally reform the ATC system. Thus, major institutional change is probably a prerequisite for implementing the advanced ATC system the nation needs to meet rising aviation demand. This echoes Jane Garvey’s comments to me in 1999.

Political Constraints. A third impediment to ATC reform is political. The redesign of the ATC system foreseen in NextGen could potentially deliver major cost savings and greatly expand ATC capacity. However, realizing those gains would require retirement of large numbers of costly radars and other ground-based navigation aids and the consolidation of ATC facilities. One current proposal would replace 21 en route centers and 171 terminal radar approach control (TRACON) facilities with just 35 air traffic service hubs in a redesign of U.S. airspace. 28 Physical control towers located at many smaller airports would gradually be phased out as "virtual tower" functions are built into the new super-hubs.

However, Congress tends to resist consolidating ATC facilities because of concerns about job losses and the like, which is similar to the political resistance to closing post offices and military bases. A major 1982 proposal for consolidating ATC facilities was quietly dropped after it became clear that getting it through Congress would be very difficult. Similarly, Congress came extremely close to forbidding the FAA's recent success in outsourcing its Flight Service Station system, which involved reducing the system from 58 facilities to 20. The prohibition was defeated only by a credible veto threat from the Bush White House. In sum, as long as ATC remains government-owned and controlled, making the needed reforms to improve efficiency and implement NextGen will be very difficult.

In 1999 and 2001 I spent a great deal of time at the FAA headquarters in Washington, D.C and in offices of Representatives Don Young (R-Alaska) the then Chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee and John Mica (R-Florida) the then Chairman of the Committee on Aviation. During one meeting with Rep. Young I explained what we were doing in Central America with GNSS and he was flabbergasted that he was not aware of this project. He was more annoyed that ate the current time Congress was holding hearings on the cost overruns of Lockheed-Martin’s STARS system. That’s the last I ever heard of GNSS implementation. Evidently Lockheed Martin had way more political and financial clout than one obscure consultant.

The way to address all three of these organizational problems is to take the ATC system out of the federal budget process and make it a self-supporting entity, funded directly by its customers. Variants of this commercialization approach have been recommended by a series of federal studies and commissions over the past 15 years.

As part of Vice President Al Gore's efforts at "reinventing government" in the 1990s, for example, the Clinton administration proposed turning the ATC system into a separate, self-funded, nonprofit government corporation within the Department of Transportation. The 1997 National Civil Aviation Review Commission, which was chaired by Norman Mineta, similarly proposed moving toward a self-supporting air traffic control organization.

Commercialization would entail shifting from aviation-related taxes paid to the U.S. Treasury to fees for ATC services paid directly by customers to a new self-supporting Air Traffic Organization (ATO). This change would allow fees to grow in proportion to the growth of flight activity, rather than being tied to a less-stable variable, such as fuel prices or airline ticket prices. Moreover, a predictable revenue stream that was not subject to the federal budget process would provide the basis for the ATO to issue long-term bonds for funding capital investments.

Commercialization would also address the management problems that have plagued the FAA's efforts to modernize. A non-civil-service ATO could attract the best private-sector managers and engineers skilled at implementing complex technology projects. Such an ATO could hire, fire, and compensate its employees as other high-tech businesses do. Private sector managers would have an incentive to ask tough questions about whether new investments offered real value for the money, a process that often doesn't occur at the FAA or in Congress.

In addition, a separate, self-supporting ATO—no longer part of the FAA—would be overseen at arm's length for aviation safety by the remaining FAA. Numerous studies have pointed out that the FAA's air-safety role is compromised when it comes to the ATC system, since that system is operated "in-house" by a different branch of the same FAA. All other players in aviation—pilots, mechanics, aircraft manufacturers, airlines, and so forth—are regulated at arm's length for safety by the FAA. This separation of ATC operations from safety regulation is especially critical given the major changes entailed by shifting to the semi-automated NextGen, where numerous safety versus capacity questions will need to be addressed in a rigorous and transparent manner.

Finally, a self-supporting ATO would address the political obstacles to improving system efficiency, such as making decisions to close facilities. By passing the enabling legislation for ATC reform, Congress would delegate such contentious issues to the customer-oriented ATO organization.

During the past two decades, nearly 50 governments have commercialized their air traffic control systems. That means they have separated their ATC activities from their transport ministries, removed them from the civil service, and made them self-supporting from fees charged to aircraft operators. These new air navigation service providers (ANSPs) are usually regulated at arm's length by their government's aviation safety agency.

Britain's ATC system has been commercialized by means of a "public-private partnership." National Air Traffic Services (NATS) is a jointly owned company, with British airlines owning 42 percent, airport company BAA owning 4 percent, employees owning 5 percent, and the government owning the remaining minority stake. NATS is operated on a not-for-profit basis.

Canada's ATC system has been fully commercialized. In 1996, Canada set up a private, nonprofit ATC corporation, Nav Canada, which is self-supporting from charges on aviation users. The Canadian system has been widely praised for its sound finances, solid management, and its investment in new technologies.31 The Canadian system is a very good reform model for the United States to consider.

Nav Canada's corporate board is composed largely of aviation stakeholders. It has 4 seats for the airlines, 3 for the government, 2 for employees, and 1 for the non-commercial aviation industry. Those 10 stakeholders select 4 directors from outside aviation, and then those 14 select the company president, who becomes the 15th board member. To further strengthen governance, neither elected officials nor anyone connected with suppliers to Nav Canada can serve on the board. Nav Canada also has a 20-member outside Advisory Committee.

A number of studies have found that ATC commercialization has generally resulted in improvements to service quality, better management, and reduced costs. At the same time, air safety has remained the same or improved in the countries that have pursued reforms to set up independent ANSP organizations.

A thorough 2009 report by Glen McDougall and Alasdair Roberts compared the performance of 10 commercialized ATC systems and the FAA during the 1997 to 2004 period. They looked at large amounts of performance and safety data from the systems in the various countries and conducted over 200 interviews with managers, workers, and users of the different systems. The researchers found:

“ANSP commercialization has generally achieved its objectives. Service quality has improved in most cases. Several ANSPs have successfully modernized workplace technologies. The safety records of ANSPs are not adversely affected by commercialization and in some cases safety is improved. Costs are generally reduced, sometimes significantly. Other risks of commercialization—such as erosion of accountability to government, deterioration of labor relations, or worsened relationships between civil and military air traffic controllers—have not materialized.”

For the United States, a commercialized ATC organization would be more likely than the FAA to efficiently implement the major aviation infrastructure advances that the nation desperately needs. Air traffic control is more complex and dynamic than ever, and it needs to be managed in the sort of efficient and flexible manner that only a commercialized environment can offer. Countries like Canada have shown the way forward for air traffic control, and U.S. policymakers should adopt the proven organizational reforms that have been implemented abroad.

As you can see from this long report sequestration did not have a damn thing to do shutting down ATC control; towers and furloughing civil service employees. This was merely Obama’s way of creating pain for the air travelers so he could get the public behind him in his fight with Congress. It was petty, childish and mean. But like the scorpion in Alsop’s fable of he scorpion and the frog Obama was merely being a scorpion and reverting to his Saul Alinsky playbook on politics.

Air travel has become an inconvenience, and it will only get worse in the future. Congress rescued the flying public from the burden of sequestration, but has done little to address the more serious concerns about the future of aviation. The federal budget — with a debt ceiling looming and a growing entitlement problem — is hardly up to the task of bringing air travel into the 21st century. The United States should take its cue from the countries around the world that have turned to the private sector to build the air transport systems of the future. We have the technology and we have the skills. If Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Guatemala, and Honduras can do it we certainly can if we have the political will. Next we need to privatize the TSA!

What is Happening to the NFL?

“I'm not claiming that football is the nation's salvation in this area, but it's one of them, one little thing that apparently has captured the imagination of a large sector of our society. But when football can't be a relatively pure outlet, a fun thing, then it hurts itself.” — Pete Rozelle, former commissioner of the National Football League.

In 1892 former Yale All-American guard William Heffelfinger was paid $500 by the Allegheny Athletic Association to play in a game against the Pittsburgh Athletic Club, making him the first ever professional football player. However it wasn't until 1920 that American football achieved a league of any true organization. The American Professional Football Association was formed on September 17, 1920 and included ten teams from four different states. However the APFA lasted only two seasons when it was reorganized on June 24, 1922 into the National Football League. Only two teams currently in the NFL, the Decatur Staleys (now the Chicago Bears) and the Chicago Cardinals (now the Arizona Cardinals), are founding members. The Green Bay Packers, founded 1919, (joined the NFL in 1921), is the oldest NFL franchise in continuous operation with the same name in the same location.

At the turn of the 20^th century and on into the 1930’s college football was considered the game to watch. It was a game sponsored by alumni in coon-skin hats, vicuna coats and driving Stutz Bearcats. The game was attended by alumni and students waving the pennants of Yale, Harvard, Princeton, Rutgers, and other Ivy League elite universities. Fordham was a powerhouse and the two military academies fielded powerful teams. Of course there was that little college of Our Lady in Indiana. College football was considered a “gentleman’s” game that taught physical fitness and team work. As Knute Rockne, the famous coach of Notre Dame stated:

“Four years of football are calculated to breed in the average man more of the ingredients of success in life than almost any academic course he takes.”

On the other hand professional football was considered a game for the Model-T crowd. It was a game played on muddy fields by men who wanted to pick up a few bucks each week for knocking a few heads and not getting arrested for it. Players wore thin leather helmets and little padding. It was a game for boilermakers, not “gentlemen.”

This changed in 1924 when George Halas, the owner of the Chicago Bears signed Red Grange, the “Galloping Ghost” from the University of Illinois on the day he graduated from college. Halas believed he needed collage stars to draw people into the stadiums and bring a semblance of legitimacy to professional football. Soon after other teams like the Chicago Cardinals, New York Yankees (football), and the Green Bay Packers followed suit. The surge of recruiting college football players became so cut-throat that the new league, with Halas’ approval, instituted a rule that no college player could be recruited or signed until he had graduated for college. This rule stands today and is the basis of the NFL Draft.

I saw my first professional football game during World War Two when my father and uncle took me to see the Cleveland Rams (eventually the Los Angeles Rams and now the St. Louis Rams) at League Park in Cleveland Ohio. Both my father and uncle were rabid Ram fans (as I am today) even when the team left Cleveland in 1946 for Los Angeles when taxi-cab magnate Arthur B. "Mickey" McBride secured the rights to a Cleveland franchise in the newly formed All-America Football Conference. Due to Cleveland politics McBride was also able to secure the rights to the Cleveland Municipal Stadium for his new team the Cleveland Browns and drive the owner of the Rams, Dan Reeves, to move to the west coast.

The two competing leagues fought each other for players and stadium rights and in 1949 they reached a merger agreement of sorts, but many of the teams were still bleeding cash in the bidding war for top notch players. The rich teams were getting richer and the poor teams were getting poorer. This created an imbalance in the competition in both leagues causing some teams to go broke and bail out of pro football.

By the middle of the 1960s competition for players, including separate college drafts, was driving up player salaries. In 1965, in the most high profile such contest and a major boost to the AFL, University of Alabama quarterback Joe Namath signed with the New York Jets rather than the NFL's St. Louis Cardinals for a then-record $427,000. In 1966, the NFL's New York Giants broke an informal agreement and signed placekicker Pete Gogolak, who was under contract to the AFL's Buffalo Bills. Then AFL Commissioner Al Davis embarked on a campaign to sign players away from the NFL, especially quarterbacks, but behind the scenes a number of NFL team owners began action to end this detrimental rivalry.

Several NFL franchises led by Cowboys General Manager Tex Schramm asked to meet with AFL owners to negotiate a merger. In an agreement brokered by Schramm and AFL founder Lamar Hunt, the two leagues announced their merger deal on June 8, 1966. The leagues would thenceforth hold a Common Draft and an end-of-season World Championship Game between the two league champions (later known as the Super Bowl and reverting to simply an NFL championship game). Still another city received an NFL franchise thanks to the AFL, as New Orleans was awarded an NFL team after Louisiana's federal Congressmen pushed for the passage of Public Law 89-800, which permitted the merger and exempted the action from Anti-Trust restrictions. The monopoly that would be created needed to be legitimized by an act of Congress. In 1970, the leagues fully merged under the name National Football League and divided into two conferences of an equal number of teams. There was a financial settlement, with the AFL teams paying a combined $18 million over 20 years.

The competition really began ending in  1960 when a brilliant advertising and marketing executive named Pete Rozelle became the commissioner of the NFL. Rozelle held a series of public relations jobs in Southern California, marketing the 1956 Olympics in Melbourne, Australia for a Los Angeles based company. He joined the Los Angeles Rams as its public relations specialist. By 1957, Rozelle was offered the GM job with the Rams. He turned a disorganized, unprofitable team, lost in the growing LA market, into a business success.

After Bert Bell's death in 1959, Rozelle was the surprise choice for his replacement as NFL commissioner. According to Howard Cosell in his book “I Never Played the Game”, the owners took 23 ballots before settling on Rozelle as NFL Commissioner at a January 26, 1960 meeting. When he took office there were twelve teams in the NFL playing a twelve game schedule to frequently half-empty stadiums, and only a few teams had television contracts. The NFL in 1960 was following a business model that had evolved from the 1930s. NFL sources credit Rozelle with bringing concepts such as gate and television profit-sharing, policies already in place in the rival American Football League, to the NFL. The revenue-sharing was a major factor in stabilizing the AFL and guaranteeing the success of its small-market teams. Rozelle recognized the value of such an arrangement, and following the lead of the rival AFL, Rozelle negotiated large television contracts to broadcast every NFL game played each season. In doing so, he not only deftly played one television network against the other, but also persuaded NFL team owners — most notably Carroll Rosenbloom of the Baltimore Colts and George Preston Marshall of the Washington Redskins — to agree to share revenues between teams. His business model, which emulated that of the AFL, was essentially a cartel that benefited all teams equally, from revenue sharing to the player draft. This was not wealth redistribution — it was wealth creation. Over the years teams that were valued in the millions are now valued in the billions. He established NFL properties, which shares the profits from every piece of merchandise sold with the NFL logo are distributed equally to all teams. Under Rozelle’s leadership the NFL grew into the most successful sport franchise in history.

The NFL was made for television. It’s a natural due to the many timeouts in play during the game allowing the TV networks to sell advertising to beer, automobile, and products men buy companies. A 30 second spot during the Super Bowl can exceed $3 million dollars. This is why the NFL can demand billions from the TV networks to televise their games.

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Rozelle’s vision for the NFL brought great wealth to the owners and players. Today a No.1 draft picks can sign a contract exceeding $50 million dollars. But Rozelle’s vision may be in jeopardy for three reasons. One was the player lock-out of 2011. Two is the pay for pain scandal and the suspension of the New Orleans Saints head coach Sean Peyton and some of their players. And third is the current contract battle with experienced NFL officials.

The former commissioner, Bert Bell, believed that the integrity of the game depended on qualified, experienced, and unbiased game officials. From the head referee to the time-keeper he wanted officials that knew the rule book backwards and forwards and could maintain control of the players and the game. The public wanted to watch a game that was fair and where penalty calls, ball placement, and player control was quick and decisive. To some extent the adoption of instant replay took some of the quick out of the game, but it allowed more fairness in the calls.

This season, due to a contract dispute between the owners and the officials over a pension plan, games are being officiated by “replacement” officials, some no more than high school officials. The pro game is so much faster and more violent that even the college game and the rules are very different. So far in the 48 regular season games played thus far there have been many examples of the inexperience and incompetence of these replacement officials. They can’t seem to manage the play or game clock. They give extra timeouts to teams (Vikings vs. 49ers). They are very inconsistent on holding pass interference, and personal foul calls (Steelers vs. Raiders — the head shot on the Raiders receiver Darrius Heyward-Bey by the Steelers’ safety Ryan Mundy was not only a violation, it was a dangerous career ending hit.) They allow coaches and players to intimidate them and they just don’t know the rules.

The most recent example happened last night when the Baltimore Ravens kicked a last second field goal to win the game against the New England Patriots and the coach, Bill Belichick, of the Patriots grabbed one of the officials by his arm wanting to scold him for what he felt was a bad call. Whether the call was good or bad is not the issue. Attacking a game official is. Bert Bell or Pete Rozelle would not have tolerated such actions by a coach or player.

But to put all of the blame on Belichick is not quite fair. Every sports page across the nation has criticized the replacement officials as have the radio broadcasters for the 32 teams. Even the TV announcers have taken shots at the replacements while being careful not to criticize too much and alienate their network bosses. Even the cautious Al Michaels, of NBC’s Sunday Night Football, weighed in on the ref situation, calling the league's standoff "ridiculous." The crowd at the game needed fewer syllables to express their discontent. If you read the comments sections of the various sports pages you will find a plethora criticism of the officials and the league. The game that Bell and Rozelle worked so hard to turn into a multi-billion dollar franchise is losing its integrity and public support over a contract dispute.

I have for a long time believed that the NFL institute professional officials like Major League Baseball. In baseball the umpires are professionals trained in the minor leagues and move up to the majors when they are deemed qualified and competent. They control the game and are almost always in position to make the proper call. Time after time slow motion instant replay has confirmed that they have made the correct call whether it’s a ball or strike or a bang-bang play at first base. They allow managers and coaches to express their opinions, but when the argument becomes heated or foul language is used they are ejected from the game. This gives baseball fans confidence that they are watching a fair game officiated by competent umpires.

Professional football should take a page from baseball and follow the same course. The franchise is too valuable to allow it to deteriorate over contract dispute. I am not familiar with all of the demands of the officials or the issues stalling the negotiations, but if the owners and commissioner cannot resolve this dispute soon the game will continue to deteriorate and the fans will become disenchanted with the game. The TV networks will not like this and the NFL could be relegated to the status of professional wrestling or the roller derby.

As Pete Rozelle stated:

“People are interested in pro football because it provides them with an emotional oasis; they don't want football to get involved in the same types of court cases, racial problems and legislative issues they encounter in the rest of American life. “

Pete Rozelle must be turning over in his grave.

Updated September 25, 2012.

I have just finished watching the most incompetent and unfair example of officiating in the history of the NFL. In this example not only was the game determined by the officials, the outcome of the season could be jeopardized for one of the teams by not allowing them to make the play-offs. The game was the Green Bay Packers vs. the Seattle Seahawks where the Seahawks were handed a 14 to 12 victory over the Packers due to a bogus call on a final second touchdown by the Seahawks.

Fox News reported:

“The furor over the work of replacement officials reached a fevered pitch during Week 3 in the NFL, especially Monday night when Seattle beat Green Bay on a desperation pass that many thought was an interception.

Seahawks receiver Golden Tate was awarded a touchdown on the final play after a scrum on the ground in the end zone. Packers’ safety M.D. Jennings appeared to catch the ball against his body, with Tate getting his arm around the ball.

After a few seconds, one official indicated a stoppage of play, but another signaled touchdown for a conclusion former NFL coach Jon Gruden, working the game on TV, called "tragic" and "comical."

To add further insult to the fans USA Today reported that one of the officials at the Packers-Seahawk game was fired from of all places – the Lingerie Football League: A spokesman for the LFL stated to USA Today:

“"Because of the LFL's perception it is that much more critical for us to hire officiating crews that are competent, not only for the credibility of our game but to keep our athletes safer. Due to several on-field incompetent officiating we chose to part ways with a couple crews which apparently are now officiating in the NFL. We have a lot of respect for our officials but we felt the officiating was not in line with our expectations. We have not made public comment to date because we felt it was not our place to do so. However in light of tonight's event, we felt it was only fair that NFL fans knew the truth as to who are officiating these games."

This was not the only example of incompetent calls during the game. There were roughing he quarterback calls that should not have been called, offensive pass interference calls that were not made, and improper ball placements.

Officials signal a touchdown by Seattle Seahawks wide receiver Golden Tate, obscured, on the last play of an NFL football game against the Green Bay Packers, Monday, Sept. 24, 2012, in Seattle. The Seahawks won 14-12. (AP Photo/Stephen Brashear)

Public Sector and Teachers Unions are Bankrupting America

“All Government employees should realize that the process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service. It has its distinct and insurmountable limitations when applied to public personnel management. The very nature and purposes of Government make it impossible for administrative officials to represent fully or to bind the employer in mutual discussions with Government employee organizations. The employer is the whole people, who speak by means of laws enacted by their representatives in Congress. Accordingly, administrative officials and employees alike are governed and guided, and in many instances restricted, by laws which establish policies, procedures, or rules in personnel matters.” Franklin Delano Roosevelt, letter to Luther C. Steward, President of the National Federation of Federal Employees, of August 16, 1937.

In his August 19, 1937 letter to Luther C. Steward, the president of the National Federation of Public Employees F.D.R. went on to say:

“All Government employees should realize that the process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service. It has its distinct and insurmountable limitations when applied to public personnel management. The very nature and purposes of Government make it impossible for administrative officials to represent fully or to bind the employer in mutual discussions with Government employee organizations. The employer is the whole people, who speak by means of laws enacted by their representatives in Congress. Accordingly, administrative officials and employees alike are governed and guided, and in many instances restricted, by laws which establish policies, procedures, or rules in personnel matters.

Particularly, I want to emphasize my conviction that militant tactics have no place in the functions of any organization of Government employees. Upon employees in the Federal service rests the obligation to serve the whole people, whose interests and welfare require orderliness and continuity in the conduct of Government activities. This obligation is paramount. Since their own services have to do with the functioning of the Government, a strike of public employees manifests nothing less than an intent on their part to prevent or obstruct the operations of Government until their demands are satisfied. Such action, looking toward the paralysis of Government by those who have sworn to support it, is unthinkable and intolerable. It is, therefore, with a feeling of gratification that I have noted in the constitution of the National Federation of Federal Employees the provision that "under no circumstances shall this Federation engage in or support strikes against the United States Government."

In 1955 George Meany, considered by many to be the father of the labor movement in the United States, said this about public sector unions:

“Nothing could be further from the truth. The main function of American trade unions is collective bargaining. It is impossible to bargain collectively with the government. Unions, as well as employers, would vastly prefer to have even Government regulation of labor-management relations reduced to a minimum consistent with the protection of the public welfare.”

That wasn’t Newt Gingrich, or Ron Paul, or Ronald Reagan talking. That was George Meany — the former president of the A.F.L.-C.I.O — in 1955. Government unions are unremarkable today, but the labor movement once thought the idea absurd.

The founders of the labor movement viewed unions as a vehicle to get workers more of the profits they help create. Government workers, however, don’t generate profits. They merely negotiate for more tax money. When government unions strike, they strike against taxpayers. F.D.R. considered this “unthinkable and intolerable.”

Government collective bargaining means voters do not have the final say on public policy. Instead their elected representatives must negotiate spending and policy decisions with unions. That is not exactly democratic — a fact that unions once recognized.

George Meany was not alone. Up through the 1950s, unions widely agreed that collective bargaining had no place in government. But starting with Wisconsin in 1959, states began to allow collective bargaining in government. The influx of dues and members quickly changed the union movement’s tune, and collective bargaining in government is now widespread. As a result unions can now insist on laws that serve their interests — at the expense of the common good.

In 1977 State Senator Ralph C. Dills (Democrat-32^nd California Senatorial District authored the infamous act bearing his name authorizing collective bargaining for public sector unions in California. The bill was signed into law by Governor Jerry Brown in 1978, and as Frederic Bastiat stated; the unseen consequences began.

California is the nation's shameful example of what happens when Democrats influenced by big-government labor rule the statehouse for forty years. Jane Jamison wrote a very comprehensive article of the effects of the Dills’ Act in American Thinker in 2010:

“With 12.5% unemployment (up from 4.5% a mere three years ago) and a "recognized" budget deficit of $21 billion, California has just found that out it is in much, much more financial trouble than anyone, especially a Democrat, really wants to admit.

California's governor Schwarzenegger commissioned a study by Stanford University, which has found that California's three public employee pension funds (The California Public Employees' Retirement System [CalPERS], California State Teachers' Retirement System [CalSTRS], and University of California Retirement System [UCRS]) lost $109.7 billion in portfolio value in one year (June '08 to June '09) and are currently in shortfall of "more than half a trillion dollars."

By law, California taxpayers are required to pay the public employees' pensions shortfalls that may occur. Local governments cannot "print money" as the federal government does to cover budget deficits.

What should have been considered a huge scandal in the state pension fund system in the past year got little attention but is more pertinent now: The two largest plans, CalPERS and CalSTRS, were reportedly near bankruptcy in 2009 after it was learned the funds had lost from 25%-41% of their value due to risky investments in real estate and the stock market. Former employees of the state plans were accused in January of getting huge fees to direct pension investments to certain banks or ventures.”

…..

“Since Brown gave them a green light in the 1970s, public employee unions have become a muscular, dominating force in California politics. State employee unions spent a whopping $31.7 million on state races just from 2001-2006, according to the California Fair Political Practices commission -- higher than any other group, including corporations. The majority-Democrat California legislature has voted accordingly.”

There is a great new book available that explores the effects of government workers unions on our economy and politics. In his book, Government Unions and the Bankrupting of America, Daniel DiSalvo explains how Government-workers unions have been political juggernauts in the U.S. since the collective bargaining rights revolution of the 1960s and 70s. DiSalvo exposes how these unions have created cartels with their political allies, mostly in the Democratic Party, to the detriment of the taxpaying public.

Daniel DiSalvo, a political scientist at City University of New York and a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, is worried that public employee unions upset the balance of power in a democracy. While the title suggests the topic is about unions bankrupting government, the actual focus of the book is on how unions give undue political power to public servants. The effects of generous retirement benefits and paychecks on state and local budgets are only one part of his argument. It is a thesis worth considering.

In brief, DiSalvo suggests that public employee unions differ from private sector unions (as did George Meany and F.D.R.) in that they have the power to elect their own bosses. This means that the adversarial relationship that characterizes private sector unions and businesses can be replaced by a more cooperative relationship. Moreover, government jobs do not include the same restrictions as private service jobs. If a union demands too much from a private firm, they may raise that firm's costs enough to force it out of business. As a result, unions in the private sector have some limits on what they can ask for. German unions have known this for years and have a saying; “Du sollst nicht töten die Gans, die goldene Eier legt” – “Don’t kill the goose that lays the golden egg.”

By contrast, in the public sector employees do not have to worry about driving the government out of business, though state and local budgets do provide some limits to their ability to bargain. And the elected officials who approve their contracts do not have to pay out of their own profits: the money comes from taxpayers. Finally, a portion of this money winds up as public service union dues, and is used to fund political activities and candidates who will continue to support the interests of the union. For the most part, DiSalvo argues, these candidates and causes are synonymous with the Democratic Party.

The following video, prepared by Declaration Entertainment gives a brief, but great overview, of the problem facing America today of the influence and dangers of the public sector unions.

Daniel DiSalvo exposes how these unions have created cartels with their political allies, mostly in the Democratic Party, to the detriment of the taxpaying public

Usually it takes a national government to spend itself into a debt measured in the trillions. Yet it comes as little surprise that the same profligacy that pervades the corridors of federal power infects this country’s 87,000 state, county and municipal governments and school districts. By 2013, the amount of retirement money promised to employees of these public entities will exceed cash on hand by more than a trillion dollars.

An April 23, 2010 Washington Times editorial states:

“The reason pension plans are headed toward financial disaster is simple. Ever-expanding public-sector unions have flexed their political muscle and larded up with lavish benefits to be be paid out decades from now. In a properly run, private-sector business, future retirement benefits are paid for using present-day contributions. This is not the case when lawmakers have the power to boost public-employee benefit packages while using accounting gimmicks to conceal and pass on the debt to future generations.

California’s public-employee retirement system stands in the most perilous condition, facing a half-trillion in unfunded liabilities. That’s not surprising when you consider a California highway patrol officer can retire at age 50 and collect up to 90 percent of his salary for the rest of his life. According to the agency’s website, a typical officer’s pay will reach $109,147 after just five years on duty - an amount that can rise significantly with overtime benefits. That means a fit and healthy 50-year-old “retiree” who began work at age 20 would receive $98,232 a year from taxpayers for the rest of his life, and nothing prevents him from taking another government job to collect two paychecks. This form of double-dipping is rampant.

While most private-sector firms have trimmed their work force during the recession to achieve more efficient and profitable operations, public agencies have expanded. State and local governments employ about 15 million individuals, a figure that has jumped up 40 percent from 1992. By 2016, the number of state and local bureaucrats is projected to reach 20 million. Too many of these people are being promised far too much money, leaving state and local systems as bankrupt as Social Security, Medicare and other multitrillion-dollar federal entitlements.”

Steven Malanga, a senior fellow with the Manhattan Institute, wrote in Real Clear Markets in February, 2011 why Collective Bargaining Doesn't Work In the Public Sector:

“Shortly after California voters passed Proposition 13 in 1978, open warfare broke out in the union movement between leaders of public and private worker groups.

In the Washington Post, an anonymous lieutenant of AFL-CIO president George Meany criticized the aggressive stance of Jerry Wurf, head of American Federation of State County and Municipal workers, in trying to defeat Prop 13, which capped property taxes. The problem, the Post pointed out, was that the AFL-CIO's members were the "taxpaying employers" of Wurf's workers and favored the tax and spending limitations of Prop. 13. "Jerry's big problem with the tax thing lies in convincing the rest of the trade union movement of the legitimacy of the positions he has taken," said the AFL-CIO official.

What a difference a few decades makes. Today, public sector unions dominate the union movement, including the AFL-CIO, and have become the chief lobbyists for higher taxes and more government spending in America. Meanwhile, defenders of government unions argue that any attack on them is an attack on unionization in general. So Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker's efforts to trim collective bargaining for state workers has elicited a host of apocalyptic declarations from politicians heavily supported by government unions, including President Obama, who called Walker's agenda, "an assault on unions."

….

“George Meany himself once declared that "you can't collectively bargain with government,' and as government workers lobbied increasingly for unionization throughout the 1950s some private sector labor leaders resented the argument of their public sector counterparts that government workers were somehow oppressed and desperately in need of union protection. The period was one of reform, in which cities were already enacting civil service laws protecting government workers from being summarily fired, and employee associations rose to testify for public worker rights even, though these groups didn't have bargaining rights.

But the public sector union movement gained traction because of changing political currents. Unionization came to be associated increasingly during that period with the Democratic Party thanks to legislation like the 1935 Wagner Act, sponsored by New York Democratic Senator Robert F. Wagner, which gave private sector workers the right to bargain. As unions played an increasingly important role in the Democratic Party in the 1940s and 1950s, their political value became apparent to elected officials like Sen. Wagner's son, New York City Mayor Robert F. Wagner, Jr. Mayor Wagner jolted the public sector union movement into life when in 1958 he gave city employees the right to collectively bargain, in the process making them valuable political allies in his reelection bid and igniting a series of similar moves by other politicians in cities and states across America.

What happened next confirmed the fears of many critics. The 1960s were a time of government strikes, including several dozen in September of 1966 by teachers that shut down school systems in some of our largest cities. When cities and states responded with laws outlawing strikes among government workers, unions developed a new strategy, concentrating their firepower in state capitals and city halls to elect leaders sympathetic to their cause. Over time they've become the biggest players in places like Sacramento, Albany and Madison, and such a permanent presence that every effort at reform is eventually undermined.

In the late 1970s, for instance, New York State enacted changes to its pension system for state and local workers after rich employee perks played a role in New York City's near bankruptcy. But over time public workers clawed back their benefits so that today, as Gov. Andrew Cuomo said during his election campaign, public pensions are unsustainable in the Empire State. In New York City alone pension contributions in one decade have gone from $1.5 billion annually to $7 billion, straining the city's budget.

California enacted pension reforms in 1991 which limited the impact of pensions on the state budget. But in 1999, Gov. Gray Davis and the state's Democratically controlled legislature wiped out those reforms, retroactively putting everyone who had joined the state's workforce in the 1990s into a new, richer system so that today California has unfunded pension liabilities ranging from $200 billion to $500 billion.

That's become a strategy of public worker unions. They fight reforms, but if they lose they wait 'till they can elect a new set of more sympathetic legislators and then reclaim their gains.

Public unions are bolstered by the fact that government never goes away, unlike private businesses where unions overreach. In the public sector, there are always taxpayers to turn to when a pension system or health care plan needs to be bailed out thanks to rich giveaways to unions.”

According to the laws of the federal government and most states strikes are illegal for federal workers and many state and local government workers, but that does not prevent strikes from happening. New York City transit workers, Tacoma Washington teachers, Detroit teachers, and postal workers have all gone on strike illegally. When the Professional Air Traffic Controllers struck in 1981, in violation of federal law, PATCO president Robert Poli snapped: “The only illegal strike is an unsuccessful one.” PATCO’s strike was unsuccessful because President Reagan fired all the air traffic controllers who refused to follow his order to return to work.

On August 3, 1981, the union declared a strike, seeking better working conditions, better pay and a 32-hour workweek. In addition, PATCO no longer wanted to be included within the civil service clauses that had haunted it for decades. In doing so, the union violated a law — 5 U.S.C. (Supp. III 1956) 118p. — that banned strikes by government unions. Ronald Reagan declared the PATCO strike a "peril to national safety" and ordered them back to work under the terms of the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947. Only 1,300 of the nearly 13,000 controllers returned to work.[4] Subsequently, Reagan demanded those remaining on strike return to work within 48 hours, otherwise their jobs would be forfeited. At the same time, Transportation Secretary Drew Lewis organized for replacements and started contingency plans. By prioritizing and cutting flights severely, and even adopting methods of air traffic management that PATCO had previously lobbied for, the government was initially able to have 50% of flights available.[4]

On August 5, following the PATCO workers' refusal to return to work, Reagan fired the 11,345 striking air traffic controllers who had ignored the order, and banned them from federal service for life. In the wake of the strike and mass firings, the FAA was faced with the task of hiring and training enough controllers to replace those that had been fired, a hard problem to fix as, at the time, it took three years in normal conditions to train a new controller. They were replaced initially with nonparticipating controllers, supervisors, staff personnel, some nonrated personnel, and in some cases by controllers transferred temporarily from other facilities. Some military controllers were also used until replacements could be trained. The FAA had initially claimed that staffing levels would be restored within two years; however, it would take closer to ten years before the overall staffing levels returned to normal. PATCO was decertified from its right to represent workers by the Federal Labor Relations Authority on October 22, 1981. The decision was appealed.

Some former striking controllers were allowed to reapply after 1986 and were rehired; they and their replacements are now represented by the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, which was organized in 1987 and had no connection with PATCO. The civil service ban on the remaining strike participants was lifted by President Bill Clinton in 1993.

But how would another federal worker strike transpire on President Obama’s watch?

According to Mallory Factor writing in Towhall.com National Security Unions represent a threat to America’s safety:

“Most people believe that while many other classes of government workers are represented by Big Labor, our military and national security employees cannot be unionized. But is that really true?

Could President Obama unionize our armed forces? Our active duty military, comprising about 1.5 million servicemen and women, cannot be unionized under current law. But our full-time national defense includes more than 700,000 civilians who are integral to our military. These civilian Defense Department employees are already almost 60 percent unionized. This means that our entire full-time military, including civilians, is more than 20 percent unionized. As former Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld told me: “Even the Department of Defense has come under the influence of unions.” Government unions are on our military bases and inside the Pentagon, determining workplace rules and norms, filing grievances, and influencing personnel decisions in these sensitive job sites.

What about national-security workers? The 1978 Civil Service Reform Act explicitly bars collective bargaining among CIA, FBI, NSA, and Secret Service employees. But many staffers who work for other sensitive security agencies have already been unionized.

Transportation Security Administration (TSA) baggage screeners could not bargain collectively until President Obama’s TSA Administrator, John Pistole, subjected them to unionization in 2011. Although less than 40 percent of TSA workers voted in the runoff election between two unions seeking to represent them, all 44,000 TSA baggage screeners today, and all future screeners hired will be spoken for by the winning union — the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) — absent an unlikely union-decertification election. That is how government unions work — once a union wins certification in a workplace, the union is the exclusive representative of that group of employees in perpetuity with no further vote required. Ever.”

….

“If national-security employee unions haven’t created enough policy concerns already, President Obama is giving government employee union unprecedented input into policies affecting the federal workplace. Early in his administration, President Obama issued Executive Order 13,522, which requires federal departments and agencies to consult with these unions before setting almost any workplace policy—even on matters over which these unions cannot lawfully bargain. Never before have government officials needed to first consult union officials before making workplace rules and personnel policies. It is hard to imagine what greater powers the president could give these unions over the federal workforce and workplace. The one certainty, however, is that greater union control will be on the agenda of a second Obama Administration.

As more and more sensitive civilian national security and military jobs are unionized, this sets the terrible precedent to change the law and unionize our active-duty GIs, CIA members, FBI agents, and any other federal security workers not yet captured by the labor bosses. While the government-employee unions would love to swell their ranks and dues income, Americans must resist the temptation to let any private interest, especially strike-happy unions, wrest control of our critical and sensitive government workplaces.”

While the power and influence of private sector unions decline in the United States due to outsourcing public employee unions are on the rise, and have been for the past 20 to 30 years. Industries such a steel, auto, electrical appliances, computers, and rubber tires have gone out of business or moved their operations to India, China, or Mexico. Foreign and domestic manufactures have moved their operations out of the traditional “rust belt” states to southern climes where there are right to work laws and they do not have to deal with unions and their demands. In essence the goose of our traditional manufacturing sector died years ago.

According to a new report Co-authored by former Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge and former Assistant Secretary for Infrastructure Protection Robert B. Stephan From 2000 to 2011, nearly 66,484 U.S. factories closed, and millions of skilled manufacturing workers lost their jobs. We've lost capacity to make drywall, steel, concrete, antibiotics, high-tech circuit boards--the list goes on. Most of these were private sector union jobs,yet the union drones will continue to support the Democratic Party.

On the other hand a new goose was born — and this goose is named the American Taxpayer. The public sector unions have a goose with an unending supply of golden eggs – or at least until the nation or state goes bankrupt. They will continue taking more and more of these eggs and giving some to the politicians that will give more opportunities to plunder the taxpayer as long as the unions will keep them in power.

Unless the voters come to realize that this cycle of public sector unions and bureaucrats supporting politicians and politicians handing out golden eggs to the public sector unions can be broken we will continue to amass more and more public debt and unfunded liabilities. Scott Walker has shown us the way, but it will be tough row to hoe. If you have any doubts just watch the upcoming Democratic National Convention and see all of the special interest groups (including public sector unions) laying their claims on the Democratic Party.

Where Are The Jobs?

“When it becomes dominated by a collectivist creed, democracy will inevitably destroy itself.” — Fredrich August von Hayek

In a new Gallup survey, 9 of the top 10 U.S. markets with the highest job creation are in red states, states with a Republican governor. While 7 of the lowest 10 markets in job creation are in blue states, those with Democratic governors.

Gallup surveyed workers in the 50 largest metro areas about whether employers were hiring or letting people go during 2011. The spread is what Gallup calls their Job Creation Index.

Oklahoma City, OK led their list. Although, coming on the heels of abysmal March job creation numbers from the Labor Department, it's faint praise. Gallup noted, "Oklahoma City led because of the relatively low percentage of workers (12%) who said their employer was letting workers go or decreasing the size of its workforce."

Oklahoma City, Okla., had the highest score on Gallup's Job Creation Index among the 50 largest U.S. metro areas in 2011, followed by Pittsburgh, Pa., and several Southern metros. More than one in three workers in each of the top-performing metro areas said their employer was hiring or expanding the size of its workforce, Although, coming on the heels of abysmal March job creation numbers from the Labor Department, it's faint praise. Gallup noted, "Oklahoma City led because of the relatively low percentage of workers (12%) who said their employer was letting workers go or decreasing the size of its workforce."

The individual components of the metric reveal some other successes and challenges. The San Antonio, Houston, and Memphis, Tenn., metro areas reported the most hiring, while the Riverside, Calif., Virginia Beach, Va., and Las Vegas metro areas reported the most letting go.

The large metro areas in the South tend to have better job creation situations than those in the East and the West. Eight of the top 10 metro areas with the highest Job Creation Index scores are in the South, while eight of the bottom 10 are in the East or West.

It should also be noted that the largest metro areas overall — New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago — ranked closer to the bottom of the list than to the top.

Gallup's Job Creation Index tends to be a strong predictor of jobless claims at the national level, and these results at the local level may also be an indicator of future local unemployment rates. The top five large metros in Gallup's Job Creation Index for 2011 had an average unemployment rate of 7.4% in January 2012, according to not-seasonally adjusted data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, while the bottom five large metros' unemployment rates averaged 10.7%.

In this reporter's opinion, government doesn't create jobs, employers do. Nevertheless it's interesting that so many of the markets which reported relatively strong job creation were in states such as Oklahoma, Florida, and Texas that generally rank low in taxes, and, yes, government services.

Even with Pittsburgh, the Rust Belt city near the top of Gallup's list, Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett has made job creation and tax relief priorities.

These results would seem to support the GOP's contention that lower taxes encourage job creation and economic growth.

Even more troubling for Dems, the markets where the most folks reported employers were laying off workers were in blue states. Combined with increasing agony at the gas pump, soaring food costs, and depressed — and depressing — real estate values, this could potentially mean more trouble for the “O Team” if this turns out to be a pocketbook election, as many observers expect.

Conversely, if Obama manages to carry these states despite job losses, it may indicate that the nation has reached a tipping point at which more people prefer government benefits to a job.

Along with the jobs report Gallup also publishes and interactive political map showing the recent trends in conservative and liberal leanings in the states. A few examples of the so called “battle ground states” show slight increase in “leaning Republican” from 2009 to 2011:

• Ohio: 2009, 37.0%, 2011, 41.2% and a conservative leaning increase of 3%
• Virginia: 2009, 38.5% 2011, 42.3% and conservative leaning increase of 2.8%
• Florida: 2009, 38.5%, 2011, 40.5% with a conservative leaning increase of 1.6%
• North Carolina: 2009, 38.3%, 2011, 42.1% with a conservative leaning increase of 1.6%
• Missouri: 2009, 37.5%, 2011, 42.8% with a conservative leaning increase of 5.2%

According to Gallup Mississippi is the most conservative state, while D.C. is the most liberal. Mississippi, Utah, Wyoming, and Alabama are the four most conservative states in the U.S., each with 50% or more of its population identifying as conservative. The District of Columbia and Massachusetts are the most liberal states. — no surprises here.

Gallup shows that more states have moved to GOP in 2011. Seventeen states showed a Republican advantage in party affiliation of at least five points in 2011, up from 10 in 2010 and 5 in 2008. Meanwhile, 19 states including D.C. showed a similar Democratic advantage, with 15 competitive Seventeen states showed a Republican advantage in party affiliation of at least five points in 2011, up from 10 in 2010 and 5 in 2008. Meanwhile, 19 states including D.C. showed a similar Democratic advantage, with 15 competitive.

Gallup also shows that Obama’s approval above 50% in 10 states and D.C. in 2011. President Obama's job approval rating exceeded the majority level in 10 states plus the District of Columbia in 2011. His ratings were highest in D.C., Hawaii, and Maryland, and lowest in Utah and Idaho, and declined in most states.

You can use this interactive map to make your own Electoral College predictions.

It should be noted that the top states in hiring are states with right to work laws.

As today’s government-union bosses push higher taxes, establish dues schemes to fund their bloated salaries and union-bought politicians, the evidence has become pretty clear: Government unions have become political, parasitic entities injuring taxpayers and the communities they control (see Central Falls and Providence, RI; Detroit, MI; and the once-great State of California for examples).

In the private sector, however, where taxpayers’ pockets are not in endless supply, the parasitic model of today’s unions, far too often, allows unions drain companies and ends up killing their hosts.

In large measure, the power unions have gained to cripple economies and companies comes from the ability to require workers to pay union dues (or have the workers fired from their jobs should they refuse to pay the union tribute).

In the public sector, union bosses have declared war on Wisconsin’s Scott Walker, Ohio’s John Kasich, Florida’s Rick Scott and, to a lesser extent, Arizona’s Jan Brewer, for their threats to union treasuries through collective bargaining reform.

In the private sector, however, while Indiana finally became the 23rd state in the nation to became a Right-to-Work state—which outlaws unions from having workers fired for refusing to pay union dues—other states like, Maine and Ohio are considering the reform, as well. (Note this page contains an interactive map showing the various states and their RTW laws.)

In Ohio, for example, where unions spent in excess of $30 million to crush reforms to the Buckeye State’s antiquated laws governing collective bargaining for government unions, the state is among the worst states in the nation to do business—only topped by California, New Jersey and New York.

In their Pyrrhic victory in beating back reform, Ohio’s union bosses demonstrated they can dominate a state, regardless of the price. This, in part, may explain why Ohio is losing more high-tech jobs than the national average and companies like NCR are moving to more business-friendly climes like Georgia.

In late March, Ohio’s Buckeye Institute released a report entitled: Ohio Right-To-Work: How the Economic Freedom of Workers Enhances Prosperity.

In the report [in PDF], Economist Richard Vedder and his colleagues state that Ohio’s residents would benefit if the Buckeye State enacted a right-to-work law, making Ohio a more attractive place to do business:

“The typical Ohioan today would have a higher income and standard of living if the Buckeye State had matched the nation in its rate of economic growth in recent decades. However, it did not, and one reason is that the labor climate in the state is unattractive both to businesses making strategic investments and workers wishing to work.”

In addition to pointing out that Ohio’s “substandard performance with respect to economic growth since the late 1970′s would have been eliminated if a right-to-work law had been adopted several decades ago,” Vedder and company estimate that personal income for a family of four would have been $12,000 higher annually if Ohio had a right-to-work law in 1977.

The report provides an excellent analysis on the history of unions’ legal authority to coerce dues from workers, as well as the emergence of states’ ability to enact right-to-work laws in 1947 and the chronology of individual states’ enactment of those laws.

The report also provides a history of Ohio’s failed efforts to enact a right-to-work law in the late 1950s—much of it due to a lack of a clear and cohesive campaign. Like the recent SB5/Issue 2 campaign, where unions outspent and out organized collective bargaining reform proponents, the lack of a united front (right-to-work proponents were besieged with internal divisions in the late-50s) gave unions the upper hand to defeat right-to-work and solidified union power for decades.

Unions and their union dues-funded think tanks, like the Economic Policy Institute, continue to downplay and fight right-to-work laws by claiming right-to-work states have a negative effect on wages.

However, the Buckeye Institute report addresses that issue as well:

“A recent study by Robert Reed helps clear some of the ambiguity by demonstrating that when one controls for the economic conditions of a state prior to its adoption of a RTW law, the relationship between RTW and wages is positive and statistically significant. Reed estimates that when “holding constant economic conditions in 1945—average wages in 2000 [were] 6.68 percent higher in RTW states than non-RTW states.”

The Buckeye Institute’s report on Ohio Right-to Work is an excellent read, both for the economic argument behind right-to-work, as well as the history of the effort in Ohio.

As Ohio continues to lag behind the nation due to the continued domination of unions in that state, over time, more may realize the right-to-work is right for Ohio (and elsewhere, as well).