Workers of the World....its time to unite. Collective bargaining is essential to our democracy.

Ah, but informed by who? A "free" press or one dominated by corporate interests?

If a voter is educated and unafraid to follow truth, he/she will be able to learn from each "news" source and see what is truth and what is simulacra.

The media that reaches people's ears by and large is owned by the 5 media conglomerates...and if net neutrality goes by the wayside, as it looks like it will thanks to Tea Party GOP intervention at the budget level, you can kiss informed voters goodbye.

Most people still honestly believe that Washington DC and their elected representatives by and large care about us the people. How very sad.

There are more news sources avialable to more people today than at any time in history. Less and less people are getting their news from big media.

Obviously

What happened? The deterioration of education and the systematic, intentional dumbing-down of Americans.

Vierotchka is right, America has already been dumbed down and with the new attack on schools, teachers, and education cuts in general, the only thing left will be privately owned schools that do nothing more than indoctrinate people into the Culture of Capitalism.

A byproduct of good government is an environment conducive to providing a good education and job opportunities. No matter how good the government is, there are those that fall between the cracks. This brings us to another facet of good government, social responsibility.
That's why we have Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, Unemployment Insurance, WIC, the EPA and Welfare, to name just those I came up with off the top of my head.
To balance the budget on the backs of the less fortunate is counter productive and bad government. Not to mention heartless.

What you call the welfare system for many people is the only means of subsistence. Would you just throw millions of people out onto the streets?

Please! Our teachers aren't slaves nor will they ever be. There is a difference between a public and private union and who their ultimate adversary is.

Teachers may never be slaves, but most of us are wage slaves. The 40 hour work week, overtime pay and many other benefits the non-union worker receives are a direct result of hard fought employee rights gained by unions.
Union jobs represent 7% of all hourly wage jobs, yet are being primarily blamed for States deficits. I wonder what the excuse is in right-to-work States?

Hard fought employee rights gained against private unions.

The adversary of a private union is the corrupt owner. The adversary of a public union is......the taxpayer.

Your logic fails me.
The adversary of private union is an employer that will be forced to compete against non-union shops or sweatshops in another country. Level the playing field and there would be no resistance to unions. Where corruption enters the equation, I can't see it.
Public Unions do not negotiate with the taxpayers, they negotiate with entities especially created to bargain with public employees and their union representatives. In states without a union, the voters vote down bond issues that pay for increases.
Unions set a standard for their members. A union welder has gone through school and apprenticeship. A union iron-worker knows what they're doing and insists on adequate safety.

Let's go back to the beginning. Private unions arose to combat unethical business owners. The adversary of the private union was the owner they worked for, not the one they did not. In that light, the public union is fighting whom? Not an unethical business owner but taxpayers.

Who pays the salary and benefits of the private unions? Of course, the business owenrs they work for. Who pays the salary and benefits of the public unions? Of course, the taxpayers.

In the beginning was unfettered capitalism.
At one point in time, the government considered employee job actions illegal.
However, businesses soon became a victim of their own success, becoming too large; with one business controlling to much of the pie. In other words, having a Monopoly.
With the passage of the Sherman Anti-trust Act, the Government began to recognize the legitimacy of Job Actions and worker protests for better pay and working conditions. Unions themselves started to get so big and controlling they started coming under fire as monopolies themselves. Laws were passed that exempted Unions from these anti-trust measures.
This is just some background I found interesting.
Anyway, the laws governing Public unions are very different from Private unions. Private unions are somewhat self-regulating because you can price yourselves out of a job if your employer becomes non-competitive due to high labor costs.
As far as paying the salaries of private unions, I would disagree with you and say it is not the employer that pays, it's ultimately the customer that pays.
As far as public unions, I agree it's the taxpayer that ultimately pays.
Regarding the necessity of unions, I would use the recent example of the Bank Bailouts and TARP to illustrate the dangers of unregulated capitalism and ask the question; Who ultimately paid the tab? If you answered 'The American Taxpayer' you get an 'A'.
In Wisconsin, the question to me is not so much the need for renegotiation of Public Employees salaries, it's why the Republicans feel the need to deprive the employees of the right to be in a union and have a collective bargaining agreement. The two are not tied together. The State can negotiate for all of the concessions they're asking for while keeping the union intact at the same time.
I don't question the desirability, by the Right Wing, of negotiating for all the concessions the Governor deems necessary. At the same time, I don't agree the deficit reduction should be shouldered by the remnants of the Middle Class. What I find most alarming is the goal of stripping the employees of their Collective Bargaining Agreement. This is punitive and its motives are questionable.

No question repealing the abilities of public employees to engage in any CBA is anti-union. Perhaps the actions of the public sector unions left something to be desired in in the people of WI?

The reason some feel a need to roll back public sector union power is that the public's best interests are not always served by the union.

While I agree that we taxpayers bore the brunt of TARP, the public sector unions benefited from the stimulus package (as a taxpayer who is not in a union I bore the brunt of that one too). Additionally I bore the brunt of executive and legislative actions that benefited private unions in auto manufacturing.

And I still choose to shop at the unionized Safeway.

I don't know the motives behind the move to strip teachers of their CBA, but from my back yard they appear questionable.
The fact the Governor felt the need to alert the National Guard sends me a message as well.
I have a manufacturing facility and when warned that union activists have been speaking to my employees, I've encouraged them to unionize. It would make my life a lot simpler.
No more no interest loans to employees.
I'd only have to speak with their shop steward, so no more open door policy; they couldn't walk into my office whenever they had a grievance or personal issue.
No more spontaneous barbecues and fish fries.
Regulated breaks and lunches, limited personal days.
No more loans of company vehicles because their vehicle is down.

Perhaps he felt the need to alert the Guard as the police are members of public sector unions and would ultimately side with their union when asked to choose between the union and the elected representative of all of WI.

Unionization may make sense to you as an owner. That would be a private union. You would be free to engage in CBA with your employees as it benefits you and them. Even if they were unionized, you sound like the kind of boss we all want to be/have. You would still do the fish fries, the loans, etc perhaps in part because you understand the interconnectedness of labor and management and/or labor and ownership.

What I don't understand is the heartless manner in which the right is approaching their cuts as a whole.
Their is a huge disconnect between what progressives feel is social responsibility and conservatives feel are handouts.
I remember after I was discharged from the Navy, one day I was in the South China Sea and the same day, international date line, I was back in the US. I had some leave coming to me, so when I was discharged I was paid for it. I was told I automatically qualified for Food Stamps and Unemployment.
When I got home I bought a motorcycle, a used Honda 350, and enrolled in college. Since I had not received my first GI Bill payment, this left me pretty much strapped for cash. After much soul searching, I swallowed my pride and applied for food stamps. After waiting in line for hours and filling out paperwork that asked some of the most personal questions, more personal than my enlistment papers, only to find out because I had been paid my outstanding leave, I didn't qualify for Food Stamps. This was regardless of the fact I could account for every penny I spent to get into school and have transportation to get there.
I'll never forget the degrading process I was forced to endure prior to being turned down and whenever the Government acts in a heartless fashion, it triggers memories of just how helpless and hopeless I felt.
While this may be deemed off topic, I feel it relates to the heartless manner with which the conservatives are slashing environmental policies, Planned Parenthood, Women, Infants and Children programs, our children's education and all the other social programs they find unnecessary; including the right for Public Employees to have a Collective Bargaining Agreement.
The Right may consider some folks disposable, especially those with no influence or big money, but I think how we treat those less fortunate during a time of financial hardship is a major defining point of the mental health of our country.

You are making a false distinction of private versus public...your linguistics choices are confusing.

What you mean are unions that organize around a private enterprise and unions that organize around a public enterprise.

All workers, regardless of who they work for, should have the right to collectively bargain with their employers. Your linguistic choices are separating workers into two groups and pitting one against the other.

Unionized Safeway has cheaper prices than non-unionized Market of Choice or Whole Foods in my community. If unions are so bad and expensive, then why is Safeway cheaper than a non-union store?

Because union employees are much more efficient at their jobs and the company experiences less turn over of employees which ultimately costs them more money because of paying unemployment. Those increased costs are passed onto consumers in the form of higher food prices.

It's simple where I live. Safeway is 10 - 20% higher than the other chains, Giant Food and Blooms. I shop at Safeway. The difference in price is accounted for by two things, profit and unionization.

My "linguistic choices" do no such thing. They merely point out the differences in the two types of unions.

I think the Walton family will disagree with you here.

I'm pretty sure our workers are treated pretty well yet anything I get that's made in America takes a crap faster than its Chinese counterpart. Explain that

Marx and Engels turned out to be wrong.

Of course they would, as they roll in the billions that countless workers made for them.

You obviously have nothing with which to compare working conditions in the US. Do American workers get five to six weeks fully paid vacations right from the start, 35 to a maximum of 40 hours of work per week, two years of unemployment benefits at 80% of their salaries, excellent socialized medical care that costs them practically nothing, and a salary that is sufficient to feed, house and clothe a family? As for Chinese goods, they are poorly made and frequently highly toxic. Oh, and what gets made in America besides gas-guzzling cars and war weaponry?

Unrealistic wishful thinking, at best.

Great example cited to demonstrate the inaccuracy of my statement.

I'm not sure I get what you're saying and I don't think you understood my point which was in reply to your original comment. Oh and things I own that are made in America, that are not guns, but suck include a pack of t shirts which didn't make it a month, a coffee mug with a handle that came unglued after a wash, an American flag that looks like it was on Iwo Jima after 3 months of flying and a few more.

American made is still better quality in general than Chinese made. What products are you talking about specifically?

Marx and Engles were right, but capitalists or shall we just call them by their real name, shall we FASCISTS started their sinister plans just before WW1. They invested on both sides of both world wars and actively worked to suppress democracy world wide.

If Marx and Engels were right, there would be a shining economic example.

That was in front of the curve, when government was still accountable to the public, and not in complicity with "capitalism" to defraud the United States our of it's wealth, to the degree that it now is, and before it was so successful in doing just that.

But, i won't argue with you or the facts. The information below is verifiable, as uncomfortable as it may be. I guess it's sort of like an inconvenient truth to some's world views.

P.S. It's ironic that you refer to Fascism, because beneath the threadbare veil of the words "democratic republic", our governing corporate oligarchy is behaving like a fascist regime in many ways.

Take away the right of workers to unionize and bargain collectively, and you create a tyranny of wealth. There is no balance to the oppression and abuse that the excess of wealth and power produces.

America became great by the hard work and dedication of its workers---and the just and fair compensation to the people who do the labor. Just and fair compensation and protection for the working class built America---not abuse and exploitation by the idle and self indulgent rich seeking to become richer through greed and exploitation.

Look around---you can see it happening everywhere, right now.

The exportation of jobs overseas.

The economic recession we are in right now.

The loss of income to inflation and declining standard of living.

These are all the direct result of greed, exploitation and abuse by Wall St. financiers and their followers----all looking to take everything and give nothing in return.

The downfall of the USA began with the attacks on, corruption and dismantling of the unions.

Wow dude, I don't think you understood this. If America became the greatest economy in the world and had a great middle class, then it is all due to the fights of the unions. Unions are the guarantor of the middle class. As unions are shrinking in this country, so is the middle class. On the other hand you see more and more lawsuits against employers. Example, Walmart having to pay millions to workers that were not allowed to take their breaks. See, if Walmart workers could be unionized, then that would not happen, and also then they would make enough money that we do not need the terminology "living wage". Aloha

What you say is truth! People who vote down truth? Come on.

People shop at Wal-Mart because of cheap prices. I shop at Safeway because it is unionized, but the prices are 10 to 20% higher as a result. Would the average Wal-Mart shopper still shop there with a 10 to 20% price increase? As Wal-Mart is the nation's largest employer besides government, what would be the corresponding loss of jobs with such an increase?

Wetdog, your almost there. You say Wall St. Financiers, but who are they ? Here's a little news for you, the unfederal reserve is owned by the Rothschilds family and they not only own it, they own us. We owe them $9.6 trillion of our national debt. They also happen to own EVERY central bank for EVERY nation and have ammassed over $400 trillion in assets. They also own or control almost ALL of Wall St. Here's a list of banks, and if you scroll down, a list of companies they own or control http://www.land.netonecom.net/tlp/ref/federal_reserve.shtml And here's the history of the Rothschilds and how they gained control of EVERY nations economy, currency and debt.
http://www.iamthewitness.com/DarylBradfordSmith_Rothschild.htm
THEY are the force behind globalism, THEY own the world bank, IMF, WTO, Bilderberger Group, CFR, TriLateral Commission and the G-20. It's alot worse than just politics or little corporations, it's a plan to take over the world, of which THEY of course would OWN.
N.M. Rothschilds said "Give me control of a nations currency, and i care not who makes it's laws".

AMEN, vierotchka !! Ronnie Raygun set things in motion with the crushing of PATCO, signalling that government was behind and fully supportive of corporate union busting.
Raygun was one of the first, but sadly not the last, repuke corporate criminal pols.
He's also responsible for limiting VA educational benefits that we were told were good for life when they sent us to Vietnam. (Don't get me started on King Ronnie !!).....

Definition of terms. Ownership and control are two different things. Much of the financial is done by control, not necessarily ownership.

For instance, mutual funds and derivatives. The fund managers have control---and they collect fees. The individual stock holders have ownership. The fees are collected up front, regardless of performance. But there is no say for the owners(shareholders) when things go wrong. In fact---there is very little say for the shareholders on any front. The managers collect their fees and assessments----whether the funds perform well or poorly. The risk is left to the owners(shareholders).

Mortgage derivatives are a good example of this. The people who did the packaging of low grade, high risk loans---and reselling them as prime, low risk investments did not lose money----they already had cash in hand and were gone when the truth began to become apparent .

Why does it have to be all of one and none of the other?

I shop at both WalMart and Safeway.

If I have a choice of "Made in USA"----I will almost always buy that.

If I don't have a choice of "Made in USA"---I go for cheap.

Reagan also voted to shift the health care for life benefit for the military to an insurance system.

I don't think it has to be one way or the other. I was asking the question of how unionization may affect Wal-Mart?

I suppose prices would probably go up a little. But I don't think that is doom and gloom either. The people who work at WalMart are my friends and neighbors---and most of them are really struggling just to get along. I'd much rather pay a little bit more and have my friends and neighbors able to live a little better life than see them constantly living on the very edge just to contribute to an ever increasing corporate bottom line.

Simply put---when it comes down to whom do I care for, my friends and neighbors, or a corporate profit margin----I will chose my friends and neighbors every time.

Me too which is why I shop at Safeway even though the prices are higher. However, it is economic reality that if prices are higher less people can afford to shop there and the result is less people employed.

Perhaps. I can't help thinking there is a flaw in the reasoning somewhere though.

-------" However, it is economic reality that if prices are higher less people can afford to shop there and the result is less people employed."------

Conversely---if less people are employed, fewer people can buy products.

As a person, the only product you have to sell is your time, effort and knowledge.

As the return you earn on the amount of time and effort you have to sell decreases, so does the amount of products you consume.

As the amount of products you can buy decreases, so does the amount of products that manufacturers and retailers can sell. There is no point in producing products that can not be sold.

This is called "standard of living". It balances out.

Without a labor force there are no products to sell. With a labor force that does not make enough to purchase the products there is no market for the products.

So, the economy is a balancing act. If capitalist suppliers become too powerful, and drive the price of labor too low----they have no one to sell their products to. If labor becomes too powerful and drives the cost of products too high, there is no one to sell the products to.

A healthy economy needs both capital and labor to function effectively.

While I absolutely agree with you, it still holds true (in economic theory and the Safeway test) that less people will be employed by and shop at Wal-mart if it unionizes.

Yes, there are fewer jobs available at WalMart----but in the economy as a whole, with more money to spend in the hands of the people that do have jobs, there will be greater demand for products, which means more jobs to produce those products.

Conversely, when wages are completely minimized, and even working as much as they can workers can barely afford the minimum needed for survival----the only ones to benefit are the WalMart owners. And even they do not benefit if they can not sell their products. So the only recourse is to sell their products elsewhere.

Look at where this is already happening. Capitalists are moving jobs to third world countries in order to exploit low labor costs. However, they can't sell their products in the third world countries because the people making those products can't afford to buy them. So they bring them here. When people buy those products here, they put more people here who had jobs out of work. This has been going on for 30 years. Now you are seeing the results. Eventually the US market will be exhausted, and we will be the third world.

On your first point, it is theoroetcial as to whether whay you say will come to pass. Currently with unemployment so high and underemployment we are witnessing some public sector union members with their highest wages and best benefit packages ever. Unfortunately there are not enough of them to offset the millions of unemployed and therfore do what you think will come to pass in your first point.

In your second point we are ignroing innovation and entrepreneurship. When faced with conditions like you describe inyour seocnd paragraph, Henry Ford paid his workers a wage that would afford them the product they built.

I fully agree with you on your last poit about us becoming thrid world like. However, I would add that one thing hastening this downfall is the demands and expectations of public sector unions in poor economic times. When the economy is expanding as rapidly as it did under Clinton/Gingrich there is much pie to be divided. When the pie is as small as it is now and such a large piece has to be given away to service debt, we all have to adjust our expectations and what we have been promised. The reality is the pie is only so big.

-------" When the economy is expanding as rapidly as it did under Clinton/Gingrich there is much pie to be divided. When the pie is as small as it is now and such a large piece has to be given away to service debt, we all have to adjust our expectations and what we have been promised. The reality is the pie is only so big."---------

Yes. When you give huge tax breaks, then try to fight two wars for 10 years all the while paying for them on credit----you end up with a HUGE debt to service. Then, when you demand tax cuts on top of that, you make the situation even worse.

--------" When faced with conditions like you describe inyour seocnd paragraph, Henry Ford paid his workers a wage that would afford them the product they built."------

And when Henry Ford paid his workers what was at the time considered a good wage, both he and his company, and the entire economy prospered for nearly a century. The automotive industry he developed became a cornerstone of the economy. Henry Ford was not bankrupted because he paid his workers well---80% of the cars on the road were Fords, and everyone else was scrambling to catch up.

I agree.

Exactly!

What I would like to do.

Place an import tariff on crude petroleum and petroleum products. It will increase taxes----but if people do not want to pay more taxes, they can use ethanol, biodiesel, or natural gas and not use oil. Either way---it will cut down on the HUGE trade deficit to pay for a raw material we are only going to burn.

Second---get the hell out of these wars!!!! Mainly because I hate the deaths and casualties------and the cost is b\leeding us dry. We do not even need to be in the Middle East because we do not need oil. We can do everything we need done without oil.

I think if we do that----we'll have a good start at getting things under control. And we don't need to screw our own citizens to do any of it.

This really should NOT even be a political issue---it should be an issue of doing what is right for the country and our own people.

At least, that is how I feel.

I love it. It would lead to energy independence which we have been playing heavy lip service to since the '73 oil embargo.

Thanks Sam. I hope you will help me get the word out to people---we CAN fix things, and it isn't really that hard. We just need to go in the right direction.

America has the second highest corporate taxes in the world behind Japan, and the Japanese prime minister just annouced they are lowering their 15%. Guess what that makes us ??

MSNBC was owned by GE so it's pretty clear they didn't control what was being said on air, lol.

Except we have a bazillion loopholes and targeted tax breaks that no longer are needed.

So they paid nothing last year. While your complaining ass paid ~36%

Does that seem fair?

Sand-dumb-corporate-shill-Man
Corporate America has a free pass to move labor off-shore and sell product off-shore and not be taxed on off-shore profits.

Your skewed data of truth is riot. It reflects the right-wing talking-point misinformation used to smoke reality before a less knowledgeable public. It's really just an evil, creepy, god blessed corrupt means to forward an agenda that disenfranchises the middle class.

YOU are the worst kind of human being I know. Knowing the truth of the matter but still screwing the lesser blessed.

Please leave earth. NOW. Open your veins and give the rest of humanity relief... please.

2nd highest rate, correct. What you fail to mention (or perhaps don't know) is that no corporationin the USA actually PAYS that rate. The EFFECTIVE tax rate pais is far, FAR down the list. If you had looked at the pie chart in posting #3 you could see that.

Yes and both parties allow access to the coffers and help shovel out the proceeds. This needs to stop now!

Sanded-down-man
I will not argue you the bigger picture: Deutsche Börse just bought the
New York Stock Exchange and Dominique Strauss-Kahn of the IMF is
calling for the Yuan to be onboard to create a single currency SDR.

But, I will call you out on your false contention that Corporate America
pays more in taxes when they do not... in the actual.

You need to get your glasses right and in focus.

Except during the campaign.

Weedy, my point was virtually ALL of Wall St. financial corporations are OWNED by the same entities that own the federal reserve. This link shows the ownership http://www.land.netonecom.net/tlp/ref/federal_reserve.shtml If you scroll down to charts 3-4-5 and look at the list of Wall St. companies owned or controlled by these guys it's obvious WHY they pay no income tax. Are you Aware Bush & Obama gave the federal reserve $8.5 trillion directly from the Treasury, and they then LOANED us back the $787 billion for the "Stimulus Bill" ?? And notice Lehman Brothers is on the list of owners of the federal reserve banks and worth almost $600 billion dollars yet they recieved billions from the stimulus ?? What the hell is going on when Bush & Obama are giving tax dollars to the richest people on the planet ??

I just can not figure you out 1/2 the time I disagree with every word you post then there are times like this you post something extremely relevant,to the point, and informative.

We have more in common than differences. I followed you because I have been really enjoying all your posts.

Oh and sorry about the early comment when I cursed. I didn't mean to curse you, I was cursing at the people you were quoting.

My grandfather remembers those times. He would ripe walker limb from limb, or worse if he could.

Teabaggers!

Do you mean "tea partiers" or are you making a sexual reference?