look at the the AEI page and here's the first article listed:

Iraq's Remarkable Election

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123380162010450689.html
 

When the surge in Iraq began in January 2007, no one imagined that two years later Iraq would plan and conduct provincial elections with limited Coalition assistance and presence, that those elections would proceed smoothly and peacefully, and that the United Nations special envoy would be able to certify its legitimacy immediately. Nor could anyone have dreamt that the news story would be not the smoothness and peacefulness of the polling, but its results and the prospects they offer for political progress in Iraq.

The security was an impressive demonstration of the capabilities of the Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) and its legitimacy with Iraqis. Iraqi National Police, local police, and Iraqi Army troops were entirely responsible for the physical security of all polling places on election day. They rehearsed procedures for requesting and receiving quick-reaction forces drawn from Coalition and other Iraqi troops, but did not need to implement these emergency plans.

The author (good lod Fred Kagan) someohow manages to leave out that at least three candidates were murdered and mortars were fired at polling places.  Apparently for Fred "smoothly and peacefully" means "not a complete blood bath."

I also can't find any corroboration that the election has been certified by anyone as Kagan claims (everything I find says that certification still needs to be forthcoming, including a news article dated three hours ago).

they go on:

Iraqi voters chose nationalist, secularist parties over religious parties by a wide margin. In the mostly Shiite south, candidates associated with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's Dawa Party appear to have gained significantly. This outcome is noteworthy because Dawa came to power in the 2005 elections with virtually no grass-roots support or organization. Few would have predicted Mr. Maliki's electoral success even a year ago.

Small problem- Dawa is by no stretch of the imagination secular.  Consider the following principles that all Dawa candidates much sign on for:Absolute sovereignty belongs to God.

1. Absolute sovereignty belongs to God.
2. Islamic injunctions are the basis of legislation. The legislative authority may enact any law not repugnant to Islam.
3. The people, as vice-regents of Allah, are entrusted with legislative and executive powers.
4. The jurist holding religious authority represents Islam. By confirming legislative and executive actions, he gives them legality." ^[16]

from here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_Dawa_Party

Kagan simply disregards facts he find inconvenient in order to pretend things are how he wants them to be.  Similarly Kagan's claim that Maliki's electorla rise is so surprising is more than a little disingenuous since, regardless of grassroots support, Maliki had US backing, which as the occupying military force had a bit of clout.

Kagan again:

Moqtada al-Sadr, by contrast, relied on grass-roots support for his movement and seemed poised to dominate elections in the south a year ago. But he lost much of his popular support when Iraqi Security Forces defeated his militias in Basra, Baghdad and Maysan in June 2008. The door was open for the well-organized Iraqi Supreme Islamic Council (ISCI), the clerically dominated party that had controlled many important provincial governorships and councils in the south. Yet Iraqis voted instead for Mr. Maliki's coalition or for the secular Shiite coalition of former prime minister Iyad Allawi.

Again, lies.  The operations in 2008 were far from the ISF going man a mano with Sadr:

Coalition and Iraqi aircraft patrolled the skies above Basra providing intelligence and carrying out air strikes in support of Iraqi forces on the ground. Coalition forces provided embedded military transition teams (MiTTs) in Iraqi Army units and US Special Forces also conducted joint operations with ISOF units.^[17]

from here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Basra_(2008)

Got that?  The US provided air support, intelligence, embedded ground forces, and special forces.  The ISF actually tried to attack Sadr's forces by themselves in the beginnign and got their butts kicked pretty badly, at which point the "coalition" stepped in with the laundry list above.

In addition it was widely recognized that the government's actions at the time were meant to weaken Sadr before the elections.  To put it another way we helped Maliki to carry out a campaign of murder against those who would have voted for Sadr, and then sat back and had people like Kagan congratulate Maliki on a surprise upset over Sadr.

Early results in the Sunni-Arab core provinces of Anbar, Salah-ad-Din and Diyala are equally heartening. Large numbers of Sunni Arabs boycotted the 2005 provincial and parliamentary elections, leading to feelings of political disenfranchisement that helped fuel the insurgency. Furthermore, those Sunni Arabs who did vote in the 2005 parliamentary elections elected a very narrow and extremist slate that claimed to speak for the entire Sunni-Arab community and refused to make compromises with the Shiite government.

The Sunni political spectrum in 2009 encompasses a much wider range of views, which have each achieved a share of the votes. This development offers the possibility of real cross-sectarian coalitions, as Mr. Maliki is no longer dependent on ISCI for influence in the Shiite areas, and can choose among possible Sunni partners in mixed areas.

Again kagan conveniently neglects to mention that the Sunni tribes we courted to stop the insurgency are now claiming fraud in the vote and threatening to defy the new government militarily (with the arms we gave them no less).  See here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/04/AR200902...

Need I go on?  Kagan can't seem to go more than two sentences without comminting lies of ommission r commission.  He's a hack, and not a very intelligent one given how transparently he lies.

Because someone is willing to do the exact same job for less money.  Duh.

and you and I pay for that.

Oh, you have to pay for that?  Sure I don't mind giving the union workers a bit of extra slop on the side so long as you have to pay for it.

Me, I don't pay enough in taxes for it to matter.  I'll bet it doesn't matter for you either.

</end scarcasm>

But really, this is the reason why it doesn't matter to most.  If it costs an extra million to pave my road because the City of Columbus is using union contractors, the waste in tax dollars to me is somewhere around a nickel.  I only have to pay a nickel more, but I'm getting much more than a nickel more for those poor workers.  That is the disconnect at work.

In the agreggate it matters, but person by person it doesn't.

corporate lobbyists, dripping with money, forcing their way into the halls of Congress to snare a contract for their big boss man.

So Film Noir sounding Miss L...lol.

The corporations pay the lobbyists fees, so it  is an expense that has to be passed on to the consumer thereby raising the cost of their product.

Let me see, you are implying that hiring a person, persons, or firm, to gererate revenue, is an expense that must be passed along to the consumer when they purchase the goods or services of said company, and you are trying to say that it is comparable to a company that operates on a totally artificial scale of economy?

No, it is not even comparable.

That being said, I would submit too that the big interests ie., auto, drug, and communication, etc. companies that do so much, if not most of the lobbying, are union anyway. So your point is even worse for the union position dear.

However, I am talking about the great majority of businesses that employ the most Americans, small and mid sized companies that do not lobby anyone. That is where the great separation between organized labor and free enterprise are greatest, and there is no question but that unions have created an unnecessary, costly, overly bureaucratic, inefficient layer of burden on the economy, and the biggest drag of that is, because they have lobbied their way into being the exclusive providers for the government, health care, etc sectors...we pay big time for that layer!.

Union days are long gone, they are useless, and worse.

I don't .

Stern characterized the election as the end of 25 years of market worshipping. But, he said, the nation's business focus should not veer away from capitalism.

"I totally believe that America should be focused on capitalism and competition," he said.

"I don't think you can have a free market that doesn't have some level of regulation and some level of fair competition," he added. "I think that is what Barack Obama is trying to put back into the American economy."

Stern said his vision is a more balanced market "where people have much more sharing.

More free market lip-service.  But make no mistake.  He is a lobbyist.

The SEIU donated $85 million to Democratic campaign war chests for last year's elections, and its 2 million members put in countless hours of volunteer time on the campaign trail.

Stern was one of the first supporters of Barack Obama in the Illinois State Senate and one of the first to endorse Obama for U.S. Senate. He oversees the largest single union in the United States -- an organization that has set aside $10 million to use against office-holders in future elections if they don't deliver.

empahasis mine.  Not only has he given money to the Democratic party, but he is ready to strong-arm them if they don't do what they're told they promised.

I might agree with your assertion if companies actively went out and found a pre-organized, pre-trained union production workforce to man the machines on their production lines.  The more accurate picture is one of employees who were already employed and already trained who then organize out of a sense of entitlement.  While RW's point may be a bit strong, I think I understand his point.

Union contractors (trade labor) is another story.  And you might find it interesting enough that I have no problem with union trade labor because they are hired based on a bidding process (at least I perform a bid process).  There are cases of existing production unions requiring that only trade union workers perform and work which I don't agree with.  But I hire whomever I feel will perform the best job for the money.  Sometimes I hire union and sometimes I don't.  In this case I feel the union performs an excellent job for it's workers.  They take care of health benefits by joining a large pool of people to get discounts and so on.  They can manipulate work forces to move workers around where needed.  And another interesting tactic use is to collect a certain amount of profit from all jobs and pool it so that they can underbid jobs so as to cut out non-union trade labor workforces.  All of these things I have absolutely no problem with.  Whatever lets me complete my job for the least amount of capital.