Obamacare and unions will be in the news tomorrow

Tomorrow will be a big day for the Supreme Court. It will be issuing decisions on two cases, before adjourning for the rest of the summer.

The Hobby Lobby case will examine whether the government can force a private employer to provide abortifascients for women employees who want to kill their babies.

The other case will decide whether public sector unions can collect fees from workers who are not members of the unions.

Obama: Unions bad for companies, good for workers

I am sure you have heard about the Volkswagon workers in Chattanooga, Tennessee voting last week not to unionize. Reuters reported last Friday, while the vote was going on, that President Obama weighed in at a private meeting: "Obama said everyone was in favor of the UAW representing Volkswagen except for local politicians who 'are more concerned about German shareholders than American workers,' according to a Democratic aide who attended the meeting with Democratic lawmakers in the House of Representatives."

James Taranto writes,

if the secondhand Obama comment is accurately reported, it reflects some serious misconceptions, as well as an unwitting but telling acknowledgment.

One misconception is the vaguely xenophobic claim that VW is owned by "German shareholders." In fact, although Volkswagen AG is a German company, it is publicly traded on multiple stock exchanges. Its shareholders include American workers, either directly or through mutual funds and retirement accounts. Owning VW stock does not make you German (which may come as a relief).

Obama's unwitting acknowledgment is that unionization is bad for companies, a corollary of its being bad for shareholders. But that leads to another misconception. If unionization is bad for companies, it does not follow that it is good for workers. The relationship between employers and employees is not fundamentally an adversarial one.

A city controlled by Democrats

Kevin D. Williamson writes about a city that has been controlled by Democrats for well over a half century. The story of Detroit is a story of

its corrupt public institutions, its feckless leaders, its poisonous racial politics, its practically nonexistent economy, the riots that have led to its thrice being occupied by federal troops. The most horrific story may be that of the death of its children.

Detroit represents nothing less than progressivism in its final stage of decadence: Worried that unionized public-sector workers are looting your city? Detroit is already bankrupt, unable to provide basic services expected of it — half the streetlights don’t work, transit has been reduced, neighborhoods go unpatrolled. Worried that public-sector unions are ruining your schools? Detroit’s were ruined a generation or more ago, the results of which are everywhere to be seen in the city. Worried that Obamacare is going to ruin our health-care markets? General-practice physicians are hard to find in Detroit, and those willing to accept Medicaid — which covers a great swath of Detroit’s population — are rarer still. Worried about the permissive culture? Four out of five of Detroit’s children are born out of wedlock. Worried that government is making it difficult for businesses to thrive? Many people in Detroit have to travel miles to find a grocery store. This is the endgame of welfare economics: What good is Medicaid if there are no doctors? What good are food stamps where there is no food? What good are “free” schools if you’re so afraid to send your children there that you feel it prudent to arm them first?