We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.
Here’s the real point: If you want to work for government (which can be a very honorable or practical or neutral thing to do), you are forced to pay union dues. You know, when you pay those dues that they will be used to fund the Democrats. This is true whether or not you, personally, want to fund the Democrats.
Once elected, the Democrats shower benefits on the public sector unions, since that ensures that the unions will then shower money right back on the Democrats. What’s important to remember is that these elected Democrats are your employees, just as the public sector workers are. Nevertheless, you, the tax payer, have been cut out of the loop. Instead, there’s an endlessly cycling mutually beneficial relationship going on between unions and benefits, that you’re paying for.
Rather than listing that long explanation of who you are at the top, why don't you just say "we're a bunch of privileged children who have never had to work and thus couldn't possibly understand the desire to unionize"? Brevity, my friends, brevity.
I am an independent contractor who has neither the paid holidays nor the paid vacations nor the great pension plans nor the great health insurance that unionized workers enjoy. I pay 15% for FICA/Social Security, in contrast to the 7.5% that gets taken out of employees’ paychecks. My average income the last ten years would be considered beneath the dignity of most unionized workers.
I see the union protesters in Madison as a bunch of self-centered greedy SOBs who want to maintain their privileges, privileges that I do not enjoy.
I will be damned if my taxes will be increased to insure that unionized workers maintain themselves with salaries and benefits that I do not enjoy. Nor do most of them have the skills that I have. They just are lucky to belong to a featherbedding union.
Go jump in a lake, Freddie, and may the lake you jump in be full of feces.
I worked for twenty years for an employer who could legally order me to risk my life. I had no legal recourse but to obey, and in fact could have been sent to prison for refusing to comply.
My pay was beneath union pay scale for the entirety of my employment there, and my pension lower still.
When the union guys have it worse than the US military, call me.
Freddir, you wrote: "Conservatives and libertarians have systematically dismantled the mechanisms in our country that provided for mass improvements for the lower classes relative to those at the top."
Government is incapable of providing those 'mass improvements'. Those improvements are incremental and are provided by creative people everywhere.
What standard of living would you rather have: Low and same or High and different? Communism and socialism gives all (except for the leaders) the same low standard of living. Look at Russia or China. Capitalism may provide a very high standard of living for some, but everyone else benefits.
Make no mistake, we understand the desire to unionize. So that you can exclude others from applying for your job therefore you won't have to compete. And so that you can band together to extort money under the threat of violence. Unions in this country have a violent, angry, exclusionary history. The ONLY good thing we can say is that unions have a much worse history in other countries.
Sent your "Hurt Feelings Report Form" to my Army career kid for application when his kids whine. Was a HUGE hit! Thanks to whoever thought up that humor.
The Chicago Machine stole Boeing Headquarters from Seattle, or did the Seattle bosses( old monied families) come to a mutually beneficial arrangement?
Either way Boeing is now in the hands of the Chicago Machine--make no doubt about that! In my mind it is tantamount to putting the plans for the nuclear bomb in the hands of the gun dealers. Kinda close don't you think, after all Boeing did just get another big military contract-nice money if it's coming in to your back yard, er Ward.
No comments yet on the female faces, huh? I guess I'm the only dog around here, other than Bird Dog of course!
I found the western European ones (and their descendants) to be on whole the most appealing. I must therefore be raaaaacist. Anyone else with a take on this?
If I was a ski-area operator, I'd have one of those snow-disk courses in the parking lot. I'd probably have to make three, because the lines of squealing kids would be too long. In fact, I see a new business opportunity there. Can you just imagine what a super-mega-ultra-snow disk course would look like? The kids wouldn't even want to go snowboarding.
If I was a ski-town city council, we wouldn't dare put one of those up in the city park, even though we have all this darn snow to be gotten rid of, because of the liability exposure, and because it would only be 3 feet high because some kid might slip on the stairs. If I was a homeowner, and I got together with the other parents to build one for all the neighborhood kids, the city would come and make us demolish it for some stupid reason, even though it was on our own property.
And the ski-area operators wouldn't even have to do much. They just pile up the snow, and let their employees carve out the runs. Hilarity would ensue. New runs weekly. It would be a way to build esprit among the employees. It would be like a roller-coaster arms race, with each ski area attempting to outdo the others. Imagine one where the point would be who could get the biggest air at the far end of the ramp, and land in big globs of the soft stuff.
Is anyone else around here old enough to remember attaching a sled to the back of a car and cavorting down a steep hill to suddenly release while the car went to the side and you just sailed forever on the snow totally out of control?
Does anyone here know what these projects are: "The earmarks Republicans would eliminate range from $1 million for a Customs and Border Patrol solar-powered batteries program to $341 million for Army Corps of Engineers construction." Most particurlarly I would like to know what, if any, Corps of Engineers projects were scheduled for strengthening the border. Is that what the Republicans are cutting?
Review of Saul Bellow's letters,