September 15, 1976

Carter Loser On The Real Issue

Now we know for sure.

Jimmy Carter is not his own man.

He has been bought, paid for and delivered to the labor unions - most particularly to the United Automobile Workers.

Carter's- choice of Walter Mondale - a bona fide, left wing liberal - as his running mate surprised all the political observers.  Carter had won the Democratic primaries as Mr. Clean Conservative.  Mondale is a labor pipeline to Washington and a 93-percent supporter of the Americans For Democratic Action Committee.

It was common knowledge at the Democrat convention that Carter accepted a labor patsy for vice-president in order to get union money and volunteers.  However, such a cynical deal consummated in a smoke-filled union hall was contrary to Carter's public image; and commentators were psyched out of their usual speculations.

Mondale, himself, put foundation under the rumors when he addressed a Labor Day gathering of UAW members in Detroit: "I want to personally thank Leonard Woodcock (head of the UAW) for going to Jimmy Carter and suggesting me as vice-president."

What a delicate choice of words -"suggesting."

It smells to me more like the God Father's "deal you can't refuse."

Carter and Mondale are confident their alliance with organized labor is going to win.  Consequently they don't bother to conceal what would be a pay-off scandal if it involved Republican candidates.

Thinking Americans may deplore such arrogance, yet it brings out into the open the real issue of this campaign.

The rhetoric may hinge on amnesty and abortion, but a fundamental turn of socioeconomic development in this country is to be decided in this election.

It is simply this: shall we continue to operate under the private enterprise or under a socialist system?

Shall it be every man according to ability, or every man according to need?

The labor leaders have opted for socialism, and by their monopoly of critical industrial services have driven an uncomprehending majority ahead of them.

Labor made a tactical error by sitting out the last presidential election.  This pout enabled President Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford to begin the dismantling of the liberal courts and bureaucracy so carefully built up by Democratic administrations during the past 45 years.

Nixon turned around the permissive Supreme Court and made inroads into the Federal District Courts with moderate appointees.  The most potent element of executive power - the vast bureaucracy -was moved toward center by the two successive Republican presidencies.

The Democratic-controlled Congress has successfully blocked President Ford from filling 52 Federal judgeships.  This plum awaits the next president.

To understand the importance of this maneuver it should be remembered that it is the federal judges appointed for life by former Democratic presidents that largely is responsible for such non-Congressional "law" as school bussing, open neighborhood zoning, and easy criminal probation.

Regulatory agencies which exert widespread restraints on American businesses while favoring unions, also have been undergoing moderation under the last two Republican presidents.  It is likely that one more Republican administration will de-fang the liberal bureaucracy built up over the years by the coalition of Democrat presidents and big labor bosses.

It is for these reasons that organized labor has put together a record $100 million political action fund to regain control of the presidency.  It must get back in the driver's seat or see its preferential position in the economic and social systems wither.

Congress has decreed by law that $22 million is all that a presidential candidate can spend for campaigning.  Businesses that have tried to sneak around this limit are heavily fined, disgraced and jailed.  Yet, there is no limit to union spending for political purposes.

The result has been, and remains, an uneven weighting of the two-party political system in favor of labor socialism.

This may be okay if you really believe in state control of life.  But the experience of Great Britain, Italy, Cuba and a host of other modern countries that have tried this ancient scheme is far from reassuring.

It is human nature to want more for less and to lionize those demagogues who say it can be done.  However, the path of history is littered with the debris of nations that have gone the full route of "popular democracy" which in the end becomes very unpopular poverty.

Carter may think he can back away from this prospect once he is elected, but the real issue is a one-party versus the two-party political system.  Carter's influence on that issue is already lost.

Author: Lindsey Williams