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With all the hateful fanaticism that has risen in this country, and the world, I am reminded of the words of Pastor Martin Neimoller in Nazi Germany; perhaps we all need a reminder.
Please note, there are several versions of this poem, and some disagreement as to which is the correct version, so I will provide the version I was taught in grade school in the 1960's.
A Vanishing Ritual:
Descent - The Responsibility To Object
They came after the Jews
And I was not a Jew
So I did not object
Then they came after the Catholics
And I was not a Catholic
So I did not object
Then they came after the Trade Unionists
And I was not a Trade Unionist
So I did not object
Then they came after me
And there was no one left
To object
East is west; up is down; Trump and the Republican Party will pass legislation that helps workers and unions. It's right-wing Bizarro World!
TomDorr (#16) just dumped so many right-wing Big Lies in this thread that nobody can adequately respond to them all without writing several books. (I'll try to scale it down to pamphlet-size.) Karl Rove perfected the tactic and called it "dump trucking."
At least Kend (#18) kept to just one lie: No, Kend, Clinton was not going to shut down 20 coal mines in Kentucky. Big Coal is simply struggling to compete in the marketplace with cheaper and cheaper clean energy that more and more utility companies are adding to their supply grids. Hillary merely pointed out that many more and much better jobs could be created as the nation transitions to energy sources that will reduce greenhouse gases, which, left unchecked, will eventually destroy most life on the planet.
China -- because they can't breathe! -- is on the verge of leading the world in green technologies and potentially adding at least 14 million jobs, which could be ours for the taking if Republicans weren't stuck on last century's technologies. Your words are those of a climate denier. Go to the I.P.C.C. website, do your homework, and quit watching Fox Faux "News."
Diane's loopy lies (#23): Whatever.
TomDorr's (corrected) lies:
Obama couldn't sign worker-friendly bills because Senate Republicans filibustered virtually all progressive legislation that House Democrats passed to them, including "card check." Republicans contested Al Franken's election and Scott Brown took Massachusetts after Ted Kennedy died; ergo, Democrats didn't have the votes to override filibusters. Nice try at changing history, though.
The Affordable Care Act saves tens of thousands of working people's and their family members' lives every year, saves a bundle of taxes (CBO), and generates more quality healthcare jobs, which benefit everyone. (Read Wendell Potter's books or go to his website.)
The "cadillac tax" was a poison-pill compromise -- pushed by Republicans, always thinking of money instead of lives -- to help reduce the cost of subsidizing less generous plans for less fortunate workers.
Raising the minimum wage adds little to the cost of products, which are priced at whatever the "market will bear" (economics 101), as KCRuger (#21) pointed out. In fact, putting extra money in workers' pockets fuels the economy and leads to more jobs down the line. Every minimum wage increase in history clearly demonstrates that.
Normal human beings with any empathy at all want to allow undocumented immigrants a path to citizenship so that America can avoid breaking up families and shipping off 11 million people like Nazi Germany. Having documentation also allows workers not to be abused by Republican-owned businesses, who are forever trying to prevent union movements on their properties.
Your disgusting comments about normalizing relations with Cuba, because their workers are coming to steal our jobs (based on nothing but scare-tactic hyperbole), as well as calling fellow human beings who deserve dignity "illegal," is nothing but pure bigotry and racism.
NAFTA, like every other bad trade deal, is a Republican/Wall Street policy from beginning to end, continuously opposed by the vast majority of Democrats in Congress. Obama and Bill Clinton were damn fools for bucking their own party and playing along with Republicans, thinking they could somehow tweak billionaire-friendly schemes to make them more labor friendly.
"Right to work" and "paycheck protection" are Republican ant-union initiatives written by ALEC and rubber-stamped by Republican state politicians. Democrats have been fighting back tooth and nail against this kind of crap in every state for decades. Quit giving undue credit to Republican politicians for Democratic successes!
As far as infrastructure bills go, Republicans repeatedly nixed every single plan the Democrats came up with in the last eight years to create thousands, if not millions, of jobs --because they wanted Obama to fail! (Read "When the Tea Party Came to Town" by Robert Draper.)
Trump's proposed infrastructure scam, like all his grandstanding self-dealing, is designed to make his billionaire buddies richer by borrowing the money from them and forcing taxpayers to pay it back with exorbitant interest. Instead of We the People owning our own infrastructure, Billionaires will also charge us tolls to use "their" private property. Nice!
Despite all the Republicans' unpatriotic treachery, and much to their chagrin, Obama's presidency will go down in history as a prosperous period called a "virtuous cycle." He was handed a completely ruined Republican economy with double-digit unemployment called a "vicious cycle." He will hand off to Republicans, like Clinton before him, a vibrant (albeit not perfect) Democratic economy with only 4.6 unemployment. And even that would have been much lower had Republicans not obstructed every single Democratic effort to help working people and, by extension, labor unions.
Bottom line: Despite every historical, on-the-record fact to the contrary, TomDorr, Kend, and every other brainwashed Trump troll full of swamp gas, will always blame Democrats whenever Republicans screw over America's workforce. That's what they are programmed to do.
If I was TomDorr's conductor, I would dump the air before he could pull out of the yard, then call for another engineer (preferably UTUE). There's no way anyone could last a whole trip cooped up in the same cab without stabbing one's temple with an ice pick! The trainmaster would understand.
:--))
Mr. Ed: I visualize your fingers pounding the keyboard with teeth clenched,
Thank you, for once again, you made my day.
Tom @16: Relax a bit and understand the two most bitter losers here are Legend and Mr. Ed. There are now and never will be, any positive comments out of their mouths for the next eight years. Reality has sunk in and the Prozac and Zoloft even at inflated prices will be consumed by the handfull.
Support a general strike, holding ones breath until they turn blue, or should I say turn as red as their states have, disrupting business, and stammering over the airwaves every time President Trump sneezes. It served them well in the election where they choose a candidate that was the first one in history to be defeated by a Twitter account, and it will serve the same benefit for the Democrat party in the next election.
Join the rest of the conservatives where every day is Christmas morning.
I have been calling for a general strike on my other posts and I think it is time to bring the Republican scum and their corporate masters to their knees.
TomDorr: Raising the minimum wage to $15/hr. would harm other workers via inflation? Then why don't we benefit everyone with no minimum wage or any other labor regulations, for that matter? At least you didn't say something I've heard; it would harm minimum wage workers via inflation. The truth is, $15/hr. would add no more than ten cents to your Big Mac.
Absolutely it's time to strike. Strike at the root causes of less democracy. It is time to call out the Democratic Party to stand up for democracy or change it's name. Here is my letter I send to all the Dems.
Dear Democratic Party, I have voted Dem most of my life, but I am getting quite frustrated with your lack of desire to move forward with best democratic processes. The founders did not have the guts to trust democracy and concocted the EC to protect the slave states via a rigged republic. No other nation in the world uses this rigged system to choose democratic leaders. Not one state elects their Governors by such a rigged county system. I say to you stop asking for money until you accept your namesake and fight for democracy. The young generations will get this. They are fully digital. Wake up to the future and go for it. We need young leaders that will finally Finish the Revolution to a Democratic Republic. Abolish the Electoral College, draw the 2020 districts by multi-computers, automatic registration at 18 in all states, and encrypted electronic voting. Now that is Progressive. It's time the Democratic Party stood up for democracy and Finish the Revolution, or change it's name.
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STRANGLED by THE DONALD {1.60 limericks}
The press explores many angles
of the Trump-versus-anti-Trump wrangles.
Our nerves are in tangles
while Trumpismo mangles
the durn’ little Hope which dangles
that America’ll survive
the Trumpsters’ jive.
On The Donald our nation strangles.
===========================
Once again Tom(nofacts)dorr facts shut you down
Look at the Union endorsements of Trump:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Donald_Trump_presidential_campaign...
Look at the Union Endorsements of Hillary:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Hillary_Clinton_presidential_campa...
Lot of people smarter than you out there.
Kentucky jumped the fence to Republican because Clinton was going to shut down the only money making industry they have. how can you say the Democrats are the working people's party when they are closing down all the best paying jobs in America. There is over 5000 coal mines in China and no one cares. But it was one of Clinton's priorities to shut down all 20 coal mines in Kentucky. It is easy to save the planet from your NY apartments or your smog filled streets of LA. I would much rather breath the air in Kentucky then Southern California. So why isn't the end user the one to blame. So why don't they Shut the furnace, air conditioner and auto makers down it would have a better impact on saving the planet. I guess because their isn't enough votes in Kentucky for the Democrats to care. Party for the working people, ya right.
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CHAOS WITHOUT SMARTS {a limerick}
Too much discontinuity
and too much incongruity, -
- when the Trumporama
reverses Obama.
Chaos without acuity.
====================
I was watching something on YouTube the other day. It was some reporters who were going around in different states asking young people (1) who is Joe Biden, and (2) who is ? (some character off some sit-com.) It was appalling. They correctly identified the TV sit-com character but had no clue who Joe Biden is. It is no small wonder this country is so ripe for the picking by nefarious groups like the military-industrial complex, the banksters, and the churches. How many years are we into all of this now and still so much of this country is sound asleep? One thing good is that Trump is so brash and unsubtile, just maybe people will notice that the tide is going out, the sky is turning a bright orange, and there are fish flopping around on the exposed seabed.
I voted NO because he is not a king and there is nothing regal nor benevolent about him. He is a dictator in all the trappings of our Central and South American cousins.
@ the Trump troll Bobbsey twins:
"Dang... duh link don't work."
It works just fine, Ou8-diot, but you must first click on it. With your mouse? Oh, never mind. Please watch the video; it is so appropriate -- haha, especially after your last post!
Once again, you are projecting onto others your own embarrassing insecurities, Diane. Poor baby... slowly, painfully, it must be dawning on your barely conscious mind that you appear as stupid as you are in your simplistic, scatterbrained posts, where you seem stuck in endless loops of poorly written logical fallacies. Honestly, I've read fourth grader's papers that were more coherent.
Speaking of Trump, I don't need no stinkin' thesaurus to come up with words to describe the dirty old white man who has grabbed your ...ah... fancy. They just roll off the tongue naturally. He's a national treasure of comedic relief. Too bad for the rest of us, though, that he's got a gig at the White House instead of SNL.
Eight years? He'll be lucky to make it four years without being impeached, shot, or committed. More likely, the seventy-year-old pervert will have a heart attack or stroke. His blood vessels bulge visibly whenever he spews out his deep-seated hate and paranoia -- sure can't be good for the ol' cardiovascular system. Pop!
Goodbye; good riddance!
Legend: You can name call all you want, but it just shows your simplistic views on unions, there members, and politics are reflexive and don't reflect reality.
The Dems with the House and Senate under Obama for the first part of his term had the opportunity to help unions greatly, as was promised. But they put union workers rights on the back burner while fixating on other interests.
Rather than get the Unions the "Card Check" plan to even the playing field Obama and Co instead instead pushed through an unsustainable "Affordabl Care Act which proscribed a "Cadillac Tax" that would, in a few years, hurt many union members badly in their health care packages and perhaps wages and working conditions.
Further schemes would have hurt muddle class union workers greatly. The Dems idea of raising the minimum wage tp $ 15 dollars an hour would harm all middle/upper middle class workers due to the inflation and cost of basic goods it would produce.
Allowing illegals to work here legally, even without giving them citizenship, would make permanent the destruction illegals and unscrupulous employers have caused American workers, especially in the construction, manufacturing, and food production industries.
The Dems did nothing to restructure NAFTA, which has hurt union members, and even pushed for similar Pacific Trade deals.
Making Cuba a trade partner would be like having a Bangladesh-like workforce just 90 shipping miles away from our shores.
Yes< I hate th idea of "right to work" and "paycheck protection" laws. But they seem to be on a state-by-state business. Pennsylvania Republicans, who heavily dominate the State Houise and Senate, will not push for right to work because Pennsylvania is a union-friendly state that would not tolerate it.
Same is true in Washington. Trying to push a "paycheck protection" on unions would hurt too many Republicans in many states politically. Just because Paul Ryan wants something doesn't mean he will get it.
Besides, skilled unions can wean out the non dues-paying "freeloaders" by ostracising them, having dues paying members shun them on the property, and simply "going through the motions " defending employees who need union help in discipline and other reasons.
Skilled construction craft unions can simply ignore them in the hiring hall, and basically blackball ( not "overtly", of course) freeloaders who try to get selected for jobs.
Skilled unions have many arrows in their quivers to stop this freeloading. I know from experience I had a few union members who decided they didn't want to pay union dues. What happened to them was not pretty, but I will just say none of them are working now, and no "freeloaders"' have subsequeltly appeared.
Maybe low skilled unions with very little bargaining power and much less unified and sophisticated members might not do well.
I think Trump and his advisors are smart enough to know that the skilled unions in this country felt betrayed by the Dems, who focused more on catering to the needs of many of the weird fringe groups in society.
If Trump and the Republicans (with the help of "pro union") Democrats can create more decent jobs in this country by tearing up unfair trade deals, eliminating the onerous parts of Obamacare that hurt unions, preserving the jobs in the gas and coal industries, incentivising businesses to hire, and removing the illegal immigration presence on decent paying jobs, skilled unions can come out in better shape than they are now.
This would be a great help to Republicans, as cleaving away the skilled unions from the innefective Dem-Left fold would ensure strong results in subsequent elections.
I know the Police and Fire unions, as well as a few other unions supported Trump, and I believe many skilled union members turned their backs on a party that didn't prioritize them.
If the Proposed 3 Trillion infrastructure bill becomes a reality, along with building the wall, many more high paying union jobs will be reality. Building the pipelines will also develop skilled jobs.
So please don't lecture me on how horrible this administration will be for unions.
The last eight years have shown unions to be the victims of benign neglect, and a change in leadership and priorities was a gamble I and other union workers were, and are, willing to take.
#9 - Appropriate indeed
However, I fear the hour is come without the man
#1 - Only a week???
Towards what sort of outcome?
Sufficient time to get a satisfactory result would make more sense
Reply to cccccttttt
No, no, no!
It is the employers of those places that have the following view:
Pay them very little so they qualify for food stamps and other government programs.
The employees have three streams of income:
-The employer
-The government
-Charities
My view is that the voters in those states are being had and are glad for it.
@ Legend #5:
Technically, the strict definition of scab means a nonunion worker hired by a company to replace a union worker knowingly and willingly during a strike. They are considered the lowest form of scum crawling on the Earth!
The definition can and should be expanded to include anyone else who supports policies that are primarily designed to hurt workers in general and to further enrich our fascist overlords, even though they may be paying dues and honoring strikes.
I wholeheartedly agree with your sentiment. Unfortunately, too many union members match the dictionary definition of hypocrite, infesting the rank and file, voting against the best interests of their fellow employees.
A scab is a scab in their heart. I also regard Democratic politicians who climb on board with Republican anti-worker legislation as the lowest form of scum. At least we know Republicans are the enemy of working people. Democratic traitors, on the other hand, are far worse -- I'd rather be punched in the gut by a known enemy than stabbed in the back by a double-crossing "friend."
I think Anonymous is calling for February 17...
For most people, a general strike would be a BFD on steroids. Even setting aside the relative rarity of leave time for any purpose, does a chunk of it EVER fall into a category amenable to strikes? "Mental health" maybe, if your boss could have won prizes as a comedian.
I submit that a scary-huge percentage of those who aren't already gig workers would damn soon after a strike be driving for Uber (and I adore you, Thom, but WHAT possessed you to voice a chirpy ad for those city-stomping mafiosi of automotive plunder from ripoff toll splits to subprime finance?).
We're SO not France. Not only will we never sigh, "Another day, another road waist-high in haricots," we'll never have a general strike that lives up the name until the day before the shooting starts.
is it time for a general strike? no, it is time for a revolution. remove this corrupt congress bought and paid for by the kochs and replace it with one representing the country's best interests, not the oligarchs and corporations.
Low-information or politically indoctrinated employees who are against unions, and corporate politicians reeking of greedy corporate-stink who support dishonestly misnamed "right to work" policies, obviously have never worked a good union job and have no idea what they are talking about.
The following is a dissenting perspective from someone who has been a dues-paying member in good standing of an international union and has worked for a large company for thirty-four years:
A unionized workforce enjoys superior training, higher pay, much better benefit packages, honest and fair representation, the certainty of a defined benefit pension, and the peace of mind of job security. As long as performance standards are meant and rules are followed, an employee can't be disciplined or fired on trumped up charges or on a whim from a biased official; before any disciplinary action is taken, a thorough investigation must be held and conducted fairly and justly, where both sides are adequately represented.
Unions also cooperate with companies to remain viable in the market place for shared self-interest, to relieve them from having to deal with everyday personnel issues, to ensure a steady supply of highly skilled and committed employees, to negotiate mutually beneficial contracts that are financially predicable, which can be relied upon for years without any serious disruption -- as long as both sides respect the agreement -- and that ensures a smoothly run operation. Plus, contracts are always designed with enough wiggle room to provide flexibility in adjusting to unforeseen events and changing times.
The few oddball employees on the property who selfishly withhold their dues and yet still enjoy all the benefits of union representation are considered pariahs and not thought of very highly by their fellow employees, and rightfully so.
Replace the word "union" with "family." Most union members are hard-working breadwinners who selflessly trudge off to work everyday, often times to very dangerous jobs, to support their families with a higher standard of living that doesn't have to rely on government assistance, which is a good thing for the economy and the country. Beyond the hollow rhetoric of identity politics, isn't that what Republicans also want?
Unions are a good thing! The negative portrayal by the right is nothing but disingenuous, corporate-sponsored false propaganda that does not reflect the reality on the ground.
Agree with you 1000% !
YES YES YES. In fact I wrote to my congress people today prior to reading this that we need a general strike. Money is the only thing corporate whores understand.