Big Government

Rethinking Unions V: AFL-CIOx

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Previous in the series:
I, II, III, IV

First there was TEDx, the low cost/no cost to the original TED initiative to spread the TED message around the world in local affiliated events. Now there is MITx, an initiative to create free/low cost classes with an MIT affiliation but no degree. So why isn’t there AFL-CIOx? There is no great leap necessary to figure this out. Fire up a web site and provide tools for all workers to improve their position. AFL-CIOx could provide templates on how to lobby their local governments to diversify local economies and cater to entrepreneurs so the increase in businesses operating locally would improve the chance that different employers would compete for local workers. Employers bidding up salaries in order to compete is how non-union workers get salary increases and it’s a successful strategy. It used to be that union workers earned more than non-union. That is no longer true.

And they could provide “plus” services that would carry a fee that you could take or leave. Hat sales alone would probably cover most of the electricity bill. And yes, I’d buy one. I’d also use the site as I assume a lot of people who would viscerally reject joining a union, ever. Google will index it and people will use compelling content, giving unions a 2nd chance at a large part of the population that have long written them off as irrelevant and outdated.

So where is that site? Where is the effort to improve the position of all American workers by providing a 21st century education on how to be a smart, savvy worker?

The EPA and You

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The Montreal Protocol is a document signed by many nations that gives us in the HVAC industry (and other industries as well) the road map as to how certain chemicals will be phased out over time, due to their ODP (Ozone Depletion Potential). Whether this is scientific or not is a discussion for another day. The fact is that the nations that signed on are obliged to follow the phase out.

Of particular interest to my industry over the last couple of weeks has been what is going to happen to R-22. Any of you reading this in your homes or office buildings that have air conditioning probably have a machine that uses R-22 within rock throwing distance. With the quicker phaseout of refrigerants R-12 and R-502, many commercial refrigeration applications moved to R-22 as well.

In addition to this, I have one more sidetrack to make before I get to the main point of this post. A few years ago there were to be no more new units made that used R-22 refrigerant. The Chinese exploited a loophole in the poorly written law and kept making units that used R-22, but shipped them “dry” – in other words, the technician in the field would put the refrigerant in the unit upon installation.

The OEM’s in the US put up a huge stink and demanded the EPA either close the loophole, or let everyone do it. They let everyone do it. These units were enormously popular last summer. In a central air conditioner for home use, contractors were once again able to “cut ’em out, cut ’em in” like they used to do. Before the availability of the dry R-22 units, contractors were forced to swap out the evaporator coils on the inside of the house since the new condensers, charged with the new refrigerant R-410a, are not compatible with old R-22 evaporators. To be honest, the new dry R-22 condensers aren’t either, but that is a different post for a different day. They worked, for now, and everybody was happy.

This brings us to January 2012. The previous rule for R-22 phase-out written by the EPA allocated 100 million pounds for 2011 and 90 million pounds for 2012. The EPA decided to accelerate this and was proposing anywhere from 55 to 80 million pounds for 2012. But the EPA sat on its hands and didn’t issue a ruling at all! Worst case scenario. This from one of the manufacturers of R-22 on January 5:

As of today, no producer or importer has the legal right to manufacture or import R-22 for refrigeration or air conditioning use. Under such circumstances the EPA is expected to issue ‘non enforcement’ letters to allow business continuity.

Consequently, given the current absence of non-enforcement letters and the possibility of significantly higher than previously expected reductions in allocation rights, (company x) must now evaluate the impact such a reduction may have on our ability to meet customer demands.

Meanwhile, since then, the EPA has proposed cutting the R-22 allocations by FORTY FIVE percent. This does not help business continuity, to say the least! In addition, no final ruling has been made, and we still don’t know the true allocations.

So what are the results to the market?

It is destroyed. Manufacturers are not accepting orders for any price right now. Consequently, guys like me (distributors) are halting all large quantity sales until we can figure out what is going on. Oh, the price? Since the first of the year, it has tripled to the street.

The market for R-22 is completely locked down and in a total state of chaos. Rumors are flying, and contractors don’t know who to believe or what to do.

In addition, it is time for us to begin ordering our air conditioning equipment to sell this summer. Nobody has any idea at all what to do about the dry R22 units. Will they be allowed to be sold? Will the cost be prohibitive with the new allocations/pricing on R22?

All this and more, courtesy of the Environmental Protection Administration.

So if your air conditioner conks out this summer in your house or business, or if you own a convenience store and a refrigeration unit goes down, or if you work in a restaurant and a walk in cooler goes down, expect that bill to be WAY higher than you thought it would be.

Not judging, just sayin’.

Contact Your Senators and Congress Members: Tell Them You Oppose SOPA and PIPA

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Contact information is here.

My Congressman is Danny Davis. It appears that he has not announced a position. I left a polite message asking him to vote against SOPA.

My two Senators are Mark Kirk and Richard Durbin. Kirk has come out against PIPA. Bully for him. I contacted his office and registered my approval.

I called Sen. Durbin’s office, and the person on the phone gave a well-rehearsed explanation of why the Senator supports PIPA.

I suggest that Illinois residents continue to call Sen. Durbin, and if possible have good reasons why PIPA is no good.

He may shift if the volume of contacts is large enough.

Keep working on this, please.

Update: I note that this issue seems to be a genuine example of Left / Right opposition to a naked power grab by one element of the Politico-Big Business Complex.

It is similar to the sliver of overlap on the Venn Diagram between the Tea Party and the Occupy movement: The one thing everyone who is not already an insider is opposed to is Crony Capitalism. See this post.

Does the Main Adversary at last come into view?

One can hope.

Information on SOPA and PIPA here.

“What The Republican ‘Establishment’ Really Means”

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A magisterial post by Baseball Crank (via Rand Simberg):

There is general philosophical agreement among both Republicans and conservatives about all of this. Where the fault line lies is in exactly how far we are willing to go to do something about it. Many people who got into politics as good conservatives, and still think themselves good conservatives constrained by the limits of practical possibility, are at a loss when it comes to meaningful ways to tame Leviathan. For reasons, some good (the need to use political power to protect national security, preserve control of the courts and restrain regulatory overreach), some less so, they have thrown in the towel on the central issue of the day. That is who we speak of as the “Establishment.” Others – not always with a sense of proportion or possibility, but driven by the urgency of the cause – seek dramatic confrontations to prevent the menace of excessive spending from passing the tipping point where we can no longer save room for the private sector. They are the Outsiders, the ones challenging the system and its fundamental assumptions. The analogy of a Tea Party is an apt one: the Founding Fathers had much in common with the Tories of their day, but disagreed on a fundamental question, not of principle, but of practical politics: whether revolution was needed to protect their traditional rights as Englishmen from being eradicated by the growing encroachments of the British Crown. As it was then, the gulf between the two is the defining issue of today’s Republican Party and conservative movement.
 
In short, the real “Establishment” and “Outsider,” “anti-Establishment” or “Tea Party” factions are not about who is conservative or moderate, or who is inside or outside the Beltway or public office, or who has fancy degrees or a large readership/listenership or attends the right cocktail parties or churches, or even necessarily who has or has not supported various candidates. The term “Establishment” is used and abused in those contexts, but invariably describes only a division of passing significance. The real battle between the Establishment and the Outsiders is between those who urge significant changes in our spending patterns as a necessity to preserve the America we have known, and those who are unwilling to take that step. It is, in short, between those who are, and those who are not, willing to take action in the belief that the currently established structure of how public money is spent is unsustainable and must be fixed while it still can if we are not to lose by encroachments the all the other things Republicans and conservatives stand for.

Read the whole thing.

Florida Civil Rights Progress and National Political Reform

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(WRT this.)

I noticed a few months ago that a newly installed beach-rules sign in Miami specified no weapons, contrary to state law. I’ve seen signs like this before. Until recently local officials faced no costs for promulgating local rules that violated Florida’s preemption law.

I happened to pass that sign a few days ago and the weapons line had been whited out.

It is progress. It takes a long time, sometimes. Tea Party sympathizers should keep this in mind.