Never has that been truer than now, with the not-so-quiet war being waged on parents in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic by unionized teachers. In Chicago and Washington, D.C., as two examples, union members all but threatened the lives and livelihoods of all politicians who would insist they return to the classroom in the midst of the pandemic (while one Chicago teachers union official posted pictures of herself on Instagram frolicking in Puerto Rico). What’s new about Biden’s approach is that rather than battle the idea that he has used factors other than finding the very best person for every job, he has leaned into the notion that it’s praiseworthy to choose people in large measure on the basis of skin color or ethnic origin. It is encouraging that Biden’s pick for education secretary, Connecticut’s Miguel Cardona, has been in the forefront among officials in Democratic states, aggressively pushing for schools to reopen during the pandemic. That is a view for which Biden himself expressed support during his campaign. But the National Education Association is the largest union in the United States... Will he be willing to be confrontational in the manner of Trump Education Secretary Betsy DeVos? This is where the ideological shift from Trump to Biden might prove among the most
intimate knowledge of the Fed’s workings to help control the reserve system from her office would once have been greeted with horror. But since the fiscal crisis of 2008, the Fed has become ever more intertwined with the political players in Washington. David Bahnsen, the investment advisor and political analyst, says: Some semblance of separation between the politics of government and the monetary policy of central bankers has been maintained for a hundred years in our country, even as that semblance and separation has become less and less important since the Great Financial Crisis. Yellen’s appointment will surely mean an almost explicit partnership between Treasury and the Fed, further supporting the Japanification of the U.S. economy, where they have long felt that pretending monetary policy and the act of government were separate matters was a waste of time. Biden’s other cabinet officials will be a mix of old-style Democratic regulars – like the mayor of Boston, Marty Walsh, the incoming labor secretary. He’s a glad-handing, thick- accented type who went into politics from a career spent as a trade-union official with the intent of delivering the goods from the public coffers. So we can expect his department to be oriented in doing whatever it can to deliver federal goodies to America’s union members – who make up about 9% of the American workforce, the lowest number ever recorded. Their interests, especially those who work in the public sector, often are in direct opposition to the interests of the other 91% of workers who are not unionized.
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January 2021
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