The story is heating up about the American Conservative Union (ACU) switching course in a dispute between FedEx and UPS . . . after FedEx declined an offer to ‘donate’ $2 or $3 million to the ACU in order to launch a grassroots campaign.

At the heart is a lobbying effort by UPS to have FedEx subjected to the same labor regulations as UPS currently is. A trucking based carrier, UPS operates under the NRLA; while FedEx is subject to the Railway Labor Act (RLA) since it primarily relies on air transport.

Soon after UPS started the lobbying, at ACU’s request FedEx administration met with them, and ACU then sent them a letter suggesting a $2.1 to $3.4 million donation to fund a campaign opposing what FexEx is calling the “Brown Bailout.”

FedEx is concerned (rightly) about changes in labor law that would require enormous changes in personnel, materials, regulations, training, routes, schedules, and other areas. Any company would be concerned about their bottom-line, and FedEx opposition is reasonable. The ACU position that changing the law is handing unprecedented power and control to large labor unions is also reasonable, and the UPS-proposed change would add to clout the Teamsters, the nation’s largest trucking union.

FedEx thanked the conservative group, but declined their offer. Two weeks later, FedEx got a letter decrying their use of the term ‘brownbailout’, signed by representatives of numerous other ‘conservative groups —including ACU’s president David Keene— complete with the groups’ logos.

So when FedEx claimed that UPS was seeking a government bailout, we were prepared to jump all over another wasteful government program. But after looking into FedExʼs claims, we realized that FedEx was not telling the truth. UPS was not seeking any taxpayer funds — only regulatory reform that would insure equal treatment of both companies under our nationʼs labor laws. . . . What FedEx falsely and disingenuously labels a bailout is merely UPS asking that the government treat both competitors the same. –letter to FedEx

In fact the term ‘bailout’ means “A rescue from financial difficulties” . . . at least according to the American Heritage Dictionary that these ‘conservative’ failed to consult. UPS is trying, through the government, to get more business by causing FedEx costs to go higher. It would be a providential stroke —for UPS— if that happened.

To be precise and pendantic, if anything it is our government that is incorrectly using the term ‘bailout’. That should be no surprise to anyone. What is surprising is the string of ‘conservative organizations’ signed up to extort FedEx.

Rent-seeking is par for the special-interests course, but switching positions is not. The ACU has issued a press release denying any switch in their position, but their president Keene’s name and their logo is on that letter. If the ACU is honest, their only honorable course is to fire president Keene (after obtaining an apology) for signing the letter and using their logo.

The same applies to the other ‘conservative groups’ that signed: Frontiers of Freedom, Americans for Tax Reform, 60 Plus, Citizen Outreach, Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council, and the National Taxpayers Union.

This type of soft-extortion or coercion has no place in ethical organizations. [Spit]

Hat-tip to Politico

Interesting juxtaposition; while the President of the United States lectures Africans on what makes good government, the leader of his own political party closes public restrooms for ‘not enough tax’ . . . while refusing to audit the state’s transportation department. Hmmm.

“No country is going to create wealth if its leaders exploit the economy to enrich themselves … or if police - if police can be bought off by drug traffickers. No business wants to invest in a place where the government skims 20 percent off the top … or the head of the port authority is corrupt. No person wants to live in a society where the rule of law gives way to the rule of brutality and bribery. That is not democracy, that is tyranny, even if occasionally you sprinkle an election in there.” —President Obama, (speech in Accra, Ghana)

Governor “No-Potty-Breaks-For-You” Kaine; showing what his Party will do when they can only skim 36% off the top.

Hat tip to Don Boudreaux

If those aren’t liberal credentials, nothing is:

Carmack Waterhouse Professor of Constitutional Law at Georgetown University Law Center. AB, Chicago; JD, Harvard. After graduating from Harvard Law School in 1971, Professor Seidman served as a law clerk for J. Skelly Wright of the D.C. Circuit and U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. He then was a staff attorney with the D.C. Public Defender Service until joining the Law Center faculty in 1976.

Louis Michael Seidman:

“Speaking only for myself (I guess that’s obvious), I was completely disgusted by Judge Sotomayor’s testimony today. If she was not perjuring herself, she is intellectually unqualified to be on the Supreme Court. If she was perjuring herself, she is morally unqualified. How could someone who has been on the bench for seventeen years possibly believe that judging in hard cases involves no more than applying the law to the facts? First year law students understand within a month that many areas of the law are open textured and indeterminate—that the legal material frequently (actually, I would say always) must be supplemented by contestable presuppositions, empirical assumptions, and moral judgments. To claim otherwise—to claim that fidelity to uncontested legal principles dictates results—is to claim that whenever Justices disagree among themselves, someone is either a fool or acting in bad faith. What does it say about our legal system that in order to get confirmed Judge Sotomayor must tell the lies that she told today? That judges and justices must live these lies throughout their professional carers?

Perhaps Justice Sotomayor should be excused because our official ideology about judging is so degraded that she would sacrifice a position on the Supreme Court if she told the truth. Legal academics who defend what she did today have no such excuse. They should be ashamed of themselves.” —Seidman

The professor is absolutely right; the nomination system is corrupted, and there isn’t a single point of time when the break-down began. But there is one measureable point; the point of no return, the point where there is no turning back:

“Robert Bork’s America is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens’ doors in midnight raids, schoolchildren could not be taught about evolution, writers and artists would be censored at the whim of government, and the doors of the federal courts would be shut on the fingers of millions of citizens for whom the judiciary is often the only protector of the individual rights that are the heart of our democracy. ”- Senator Kennedy

That speech was given 45 minutes after the nomination. When the left went beyond any reasonable opposition and attacked a nominee, when Joe Biden —now our Vice President— created the Biden Report that left us with the word “bork” (borking, to bork) in the dictionary, meaning to savage, to vilify, to defame.

That was the point of no return. And yes, we will now have a lying, perjuring, morally unqualified Justice . . . or she’s just plain stupid. One way or another, America lost, ‘thanks’ to Biden, Kennedy, and their party.

You should have seen it coming.

When the former Secretary of Defense died at age 93, the MSM had canned obituaries, short bios, and eulogies ready to roll. But here are —previously unpublished— examples about who Robert S. McNamara really was and why we lost the Vietnam conflict. For those who believe we didn’t lose, Secretary McNamara is a strong reason we failed to win.

McNamara was reputed to be sharp; “lawyerly and a student of statistical analysis” is one media description. Yet it was a reputation manufactured by McNamara, foisted onto a gullible press who didn’t know the difference between statistics or hogwash. The truth about McNamara was the exact opposite; he deliberately ignored discarded facts.

Victor Krulak was assigned to be Robert McNamara’s special advisor on insurgency. Krulak went to pick up McNamara for a scheduled trip to Vietnam and found him writing like mad, finishing up his trip report. When Krulak asked McNamara how he could write a trip report before they went, McNamara replied “I know where I’m going to go and what I’m going to see.” (oral communication from Krulak*)

McNamara was US Secretary of Defense for Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, was advisor during the first Cuban fiasco (the Bay of Pigs) and Cabinet level for the second Cuban fiasco (the Cuban Missile Crisis); but McNamara’s main legacy will be as ‘Architect of the War in Vietnam’.

McNamara was the Secretary of Defense who —along with others in the administration— lost all hope of winning the Vietnam conflict . . . after he had bought into the inhuman concept of ‘body counts’. The body count philosophy was that as long as the kill rate was higher than the [CIA's projected] North Vietnamese birth rate, McNamara could project that we were winning.

Another illustration of McNamara is from one of the first Saigon meetings that he attended:

The first presentation scheduled was from an Air Force General; not just a decent guy but a former pilot known to be smart and articulate. He had only gotten into his introduction when McNamara slammed his fist on the table and shouted, “Sit down! I don’t want to hear that bullshit!”

There was a shocked silence in the room; officers were used to respect. McNamara looked around the muted table, pointed at a Colonel and growled, “What do you want?” A crusty old Corps veteran of WWII and Korea, the officer was slightly deaf and thought McNamara asked ‘What do you have?’

Unfazed by the attitude and uncomfortable silence, the Colonel listed the manpower and equipment that made-up his division; what he had. McNamara sat silent as the officer carefully and completely enumerated the men and material he commanded. When the officer was finished McNamara stood up.

“Now that’s what I like to hear”, he said, addressing the room. Turning back to the officer, McNamara barked “You got them”

It took the Marines all night long to figure how to integrate a complete duplicate division. More important, it taught the military a harsh lesson about the jerk parading as who was Secretary of Defense.

In researching the article, I found that Krulak had died six months before; on 29 Dec 2008. A man of sterling integrity, it is fitting that his words be contrasted to the mess that McNamara represented.

Not even five and a half feet tall, skinny and blond in addition, the sarcastic-yet-fond nickname of ‘The Brute’ stayed with Krulak from the Navy Academy. The youngest General the Marines ever had, respected among peers as ‘pure genius’ on military science, Krulak helped develop the modern landing craft and the strategy(ies) that use it.

One of Krulak’s credos was ‘to be a man’. It was Krulak who told Lyndon Johnson the truth about winning in Vietnam; knowing it ended any chance to become Commandant of the Corps when Johnson kicked him out of the White House.

The outlines of that incident are well-known. Krulak wanted to emphasize pacification, the effort to win over the South Vietnamese villagers by assisting in economic projects and protecting them from the enemy. He also advocated the bombing and mining of Haiphong’s harbor to cut off supplies to North Vietnam.

When I asked the General for more details, to tell me what happened next, he said: “President Johnson stood up, placed his hand in the small of my back and ushered me out of the Oval Office.”

In the past year we have read of retired Generals publicly criticizing the President over the war, but it should be remembered they are retired, and they were not looking the President in the eye when they criticized him. They had nothing to lose. General Krulak did the right thing. And there is always a price to pay for doing the right thing. He was not appointed Commandant. He did not receive his fourth star. But he did receive something that has eluded President Johnson: a lasting reputation as a man of integrity. —biographer Robert Coram

Requiem in pace General Krulak.