Well, the Repugs in Cheddarland bent over backwards to admit that union-busting has nothing to do with money and everything to do with power and croaked collective bargaining for public workers’ unions. Lovely.
The working stiffs in Wisconsin have shown tremendous courage and staying power so far — it will be interesting to see how they respond to this latest shameless attack on labor. I’ll cast around a bit for more information and if I unearth any means of showing support that doesn’t involve jetting to Madison and giving Scott Walker a kick in the nuts, I’ll pass it along.
Speaking of people who need a swift shot to the ball bag, IRA supporter Peter King (R-Car Bomb) got one from Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) as the insane Islamophobe King began his despicable hearings into whether all Muslims are killer robots. Good for Ellison, and shame on King, as if the dizzy sonofabitch would even recognize the state.
Mad Blog Media 
And speaking of Mr. King… It’s worth noting that one of the latest abortive bomb plots, to blast the Martin Luther King Day parade in Spokane, WA, , appears to have been the work of a home-grown nutcase.
You don’t suppose any of his staffers have brought that to his attention?
“…f I unearth any means of showing support that doesn’t involve jetting to Madison and giving Scott Walker a kick in the nuts, I’ll pass it along.”
Hell, what’s wrong with jetting to Madison and kicking Walker in the nuts? If you can get away with it, that is.
I am so pissed at the bullshit that is going down in this country.
Lately I feel like I’m living in a really bad sci-fi movie about a dystopian future.
We’re just stunned here. Next is the courts and recalls, which are moving along.
Good luck with that. As we all know, elections have consequences. Wisconsin (not to mention the rest of the country) has to get out the vote in 2012 and shitcan these Repuglicans. This was a naked power play, pure and simple.
Might be time to move back to Hawaii for me. At least the People’s Republic doesn’t look for easy scapegoats such as public workers for problems made severe through forty years of economic mismanagement in the USA.
Yet.
I was thinkin’ maybe Canada. I like Larry T.’s goal of making Italy his permanent P.O. Box.
I’m working harder than ever on getting outta here. This NY KING is as batty as the bozo from Iowa who “represents” the KKK members of Iowa’s 5th District. We’re hoping when Iowa loses a congressman due to redistricting it’ll be Steve King who ends up lobbying for the right-wing causes from an office on K Street and someone (anyone?) else will be representing us in DC.
We WILL be living in Italy (providing we get a visa, please Mr. Berlusconi) for a year soon after our bike tour season ends in the fall so we’ll (happily) miss all the Repuglican prez wannabees who’ll troop through here in advance of the moronic Iowa Caucus.
Why aren’t there more folks pointing out the huge revenue shortfalls these right-wingers are using to justify busting the unions are mostly because they’ve given HUGE tax breaks to corporations, thereby cutting the revenue available to the states to pay for public services –isn’t this the REASON most of us pay taxes?
I feel for y’all on the west coast of Iowa. I’m hoping that they’ll give the WingNut King the boot when the redistricting happens too.
We can only hope a little good comes out of this…
http://blogs.forbes.com/erikkain/2011/03/10/is-wisconsin-the-real-republican-waterloo/
Man, how I wish I could be as optimistic as E. D. Kain here, but I’m not. I see this as a classic divide and conquer technique by the Republicans, one likely to succeed. I’ve seen and heard far too many working class people express resentment toward union workers for their better pay and benefits. Instead of supporting those union workers while striving toward getting those same benefits for themselves, they choose to resent those union members. Instead of resenting their oppressors, they resent those who aren’t quite as oppressed. And like that, they end up unwittingly doing the heavy lifting for the wealthy American Aristocracy. I’m afraid what’s going on in Wisconsin is just another battle in the class massacre.
Maybe if the Democratic Party was capable of actually going on the attack, what’s going on in Wisconsin could backfire. But the Democratic Party won’t, after all they need to feed from the same corporate troughs as the Republicans, especially since it looks like unions won’t be around much longer.
I think living in Dysfunction Junction is really getting to me.
As a union member (begrudgingly of course because I had no choice in the matter), I say “bring it on!” to the absence of collective bargaining! The state has employed me to do their job for them. Now they can pay me a market wage!
The problem with some people seems to be that they see the union as a good thing. Not where I sit. The union I ‘belong to’ is about as useful as a piece of one-ply toilet paper trying to mop up Lake Michigan. Instead of trying to show WHY they are needed the staff of the union is more worried about WHAT may happen if they are not around. Well….the only thing that will happen if they are not around is that they (the union ‘workers’) will have to go back to their jobs working for the state. That is one of their perks that they want to conveniently sweep under the carpet. No matter that they have not been “working for the state” for years….they will get their old jobs back!!
So…..maybe instead of telling us WHY that is a “good thing” someone can explain WHY that is needed. If the union in Wisconsin wants to be treated fairly, equitably and above reproach then they should realize that they are part of the problem. Instead they have not – from what I have seen – offered a solution to the problem. The problem being that they have stood strong for “job security” instead of “equality.” Instead of worrying about the union’s business…..the union should be worrying about their future.
I’ll comment later. Right now, too nice out and I’m outa here.
A good friend of mine quipped last week “…the only thing worse than unions is not having them.” I would tend to agree in a lot of cases. Certainly not all.
Generally, unions help when you have a lot of people who are easy to exploit and who don’t have much power to influence the workplace. Hence the rise of unions during the industrial era. There are still a lot of jobs where you don’t individually have much power vs. the boss. Does that mean you should not have any? After all, at the risk of sounding like a Marxist, those owners of industry wouldn’t be getting shit done if not for the guys down in the trenches. Work should be a shared enterprise.
Sure, a lot of unions suck. So do a lot of corporate moguls, hence why so many US corporations and hedge fund operators have fucked up their industries. Unions, like corporations, are only as good as the people active running them.
At the U of Hawaii, a lot of my colleagues didn’t think we needed a union. After all, faculty have tenure, right? Of course, the university tried taking away most of our intellectual property rights. Then, a colleague of mine found out that a big shoreline land owner tried to get him fired for writing papers on proper land-use planning. Then, a colleague got wrongfully accused of sexual harassment and a politically-correct administration tried to hold a star-chamber proceeding against him. In all those cases, the union attorneys and union president (a senior faculty member) stepped in.
Interestingly, the guy who tried to run me down in a picket line when the faculty were on strike in 2001 was another union worker–a United Public Workers guy who thought we were a bunch of whining faggots. So much for union solidarity. It was another union guy, a cop, who chased him down.
I was in the minority on the union board that wanted to meet the Governor more than halfway on merit pay. After all, my own unit, the School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology, was already a meritocracy. We did end up settling. No one was happy with the outcome. I guess that is good. Compromise always means everyone is bitching about something.
I would unionize again as long as the union was good. Many are not worth the dues you pay them.
As it was, we didn’t have a choice as to whether to collectively bargain. We were forced to by state law. I’m not sure that was a great idea. The problem is, no one has a clue as to what most faculty do out there. In SOEST, we brought in a shitload of money into the university. That was pretty hard to miss. For other faculty, esp. in the community colleges, it was tougher to fend off stupidity. Right now that Governor of Wisconsin and a few other dim bulbs are equating faculty competence with student success rates. I can tell you that is a rather simple minded assumption. My wife bailed out of a full professorship at a CC because she was tired of being blamed for other people’s problems, i.e., why Johnny can’t read even though he had a high school diploma.
As a former union man, I’d say Khal has it dialed: “Unions, like corporations, are only as good as the people active running them.”
It’s a pain in the ass, being a union guy; damn’ near as bad as having a second job, one in which you’re management instead of labor. Frankly, it’s kind of like running a bike club. Everyone wants to get the jersey, but nobody wants to sign the sponsors, do the design, shepherd it past the sponsors to the sublimators, get the samples, take the orders, chase down payment for same, handle delivery, take complaints about sizing. …
In fact, it’s a little bit too much like work.
You got it dialed, too, Patrick. Like most things, if it is worth doing, it is worth the work to do it. If people are lazy, the results will show.
My old man destroyed his back on an assembly line in a Chevy plant back in the mid-sixties. Union and management sat down and he got a settlement, back surgery, and was re-trained as a machinist so he didn’t have to bust his ass putting transmissions together any more. The plant got a good machinist and my family got food on the table for another thirty years. You are goddamn motherfucking right to think I am pro-union.
“I would unionize again as long as the union was good. Many are not worth the dues you pay them.” Khal……that is where I am at. Sadly though I don’t have the choice in the matter. The thieving b@stards take 2% of my pay whether I agree with them or not (and right now I don’t). On top of that they bargained away two paid holidays, 5% of my monthly pay AND in lieu of a raise or guarantee to get a raise this year (or next) I get to contribute an extra 3% of my pay to my pension!
So….as long as I am funding their incompetence to look out for my best interest, I would rather pay myself to do that. Lord knows I could enjoy the 8% pay ‘increase’ to fund my other projects in life.
That being said: unions are not bad in theory. In practice though – right now – they are as much a part of the problem as the fat cats in corporate offices snorting nose candy off a $400/hour escort’s “assets.”
Honestly I could care less about the union I belong to. One reason is because IF I had a chance to choose a union to belong to this would not be it. Secondly I honestly believe that part of the problem with unions in state government is that they are not filled with the “brightest” lawyers, stewards, employees or even managers. They are more worried about their piece of the pie then what I (a ‘paying’ customer) could do for them.
I would love nothing more to have my union dissolved and forced to bargain for my own job. Why? Because in lieu of job security, low pay and working with some of the most clueless people I have ever worked with I could demand higher pay, a better job and more perks. As crazy as it sounds – in a down economy it is a buyer’s market….and for the right price I am sure we could work something out.
Besides I never said I was a “good salesperson” I just said I was willing to be bought! 😉
http://www.usuncut.org is something I’m checking into. It would seem if these fat-cat corporations who want to enjoy life in the USA were to pay their fair share of the tax burden, all this ranting about loss of revenue would be moot. Some might say we can’t afford to let’em move out of the USA but my question is WHY NOT? What are these folks doing for us other than exploiting US workers while paying zero taxes? They seem to have plenty of dough to spend on helping Repuglicans get elected to office!The “we don’t need any stinkin’ union” argument reminds me of the wife’s description of Title 9 legislation to her female student-athletes. They seem to think the nice folks at the college sports governing bodies just decided on their own to fund women’s sports rather than being forced to — by Federal law. If labor unions hadn’t fought for LAWS regarding 40 hour workweeks and overtime pay, do you think the swell folks who run Sprawl-Mart would just do it because they’re nice folks who care so much for their workers?
Of course, you could be in Japan right now…
That looked like a hydrogen explosion to me, not a blast of the containment vessel (if anyone thought so), and apparently that’s what the experts are saying. Not that such is entirely good news.
But JFC…you want to see some chilling video:
http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/world/2011/03/12/grimston.japan.nuclear.cnn
I am so heading to the square for Tractorcade! Man I love this state. Starts at 10am!
Thousands of pissed of Farmers. Only 50 pieces of machinery allowed on Capitol square, but that’s cool. They are calling for 100,000 again today but I think more like “only” 50 or 60 thou. God I love Wisconsin!
This rat is going to be recalled, I swear it.
Swell…..one piece of advice if y’all decide to recall Walker: don’t pick an actor!! Or really, honestly, be careful what you hope for because the alternative might not be as good.
Looks like I was wrong – take a look at the crowd today
http://plixi.com/p/83495666
Live feed from Wisconsin Capitol = some say 200,000 people
http://www.livestream.com/theuptake
Mark Rudd just said “don’t mourn organize” at the 2011 Tucson Festival of Books. He was comparing the present mindset to his youth. As seen live on C-SPAN3 (Book TV). He’s participating in a panel with Joyce Maynard and Martha Dod Todman about coming of age in the late 60’s and early 70’s. It’s available online and usually archived online,too. Very interesting.