Barack Obama interferes in the Wisconsin union/budget battle
Barack Obama has injected himself into an area in which the president of the United States has no authority or business in the first place as he has sent his political operatives to the state of Wisconsin to help organize protests of the governor’s plan to cut back on the union benefits of state employees.
Apparently forgetting about the new era of civility that he claimed must be ushered in after the shooting in Arizona, Barack Obama called this attempt by Governor Walker an “assault” on unions. (And I thought that politicians who used words like assault were responsible for that tragic shooting.) And because unions are probably the single biggest special interest group of the Democrat party Barack Obama just couldn’t sit idly by, so he has now interfered in the business of a sovereign state–a position in which Barack Obama should have remained silent as this has nothing to do with the federal government.
But Barack Obama feels as if he is above the law, the courts, and the constitution, and this is evidenced by the fact that he has ignored court rulings in the past in regards to Obamacare and his moratorium on oil drilling, and it is evidenced in the fact that he is in the process of ignoring the constitution by implementing cap and trade and Net Neutrality even though the Congress failed to pass these bills, and now we are seeing him ignore the 10th amendment of the constitution by interfering in how a state runs its finances. Barack Obama is in the process of applying Chicago style thuggery on a national level in the state of Wisconsin but Governor Walker is less than impressed:
We are focused on balancing our budget. It would be wise for the government and others in Washington to focus on balancing their budgets, which they are a long way off from doing
He has promised that the Republicans in his state will not be bullied by the union thugs or by Barack Obama. Governor Walker made a promise to his constituents that he would balance the budget without raising taxes and that is exactly what he is trying to do. These elitist politicians continue to tell us that we have to sacrifice and that tough decisions are going to have to be made by the government because of the dire economic outlook; and here we have a case where the governor of a state is trying to make a tough decision and is asking state employees to sacrifice and what does he get in return?
He gets attacked by the very same Obama regime which preaches to us about self-sacrifice. And where are the Wisconsin Democrats during this whole fiasco? They ran away and hid so that the state would not have a quorum and would not be able to vote on this controversial issue. So much for them being willing to make the tough decisions.
America's Watchtower 
They’re showing their true colors, aren’t they?
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They don’t exactly live up to what they preach, do they?
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I’m with Matt. They are indeed showing the nation the leftists they are. I think this going to backfire big time for them and the unions. The more people see how self serving these unions are, the lower their poll numbers are going to drop.
You know if the union would just invest a portion of those union dues in some growth/savings plan, we wouldn’t be talking about pensions. The unions would have already taken care of their members. Instead they took all those dues and poured them into candidates. What a waste. If I were the union members my anger would be directed at the union leadership instead to the governor.
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YOu may have a point about this backfiring on them; I feel as if people are looking at this in disgust and it could come back to haunt them.
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It is the beginning of the end for Big Union. They have once and for all exposed themselves, the president along with them.
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They may have finally gone too far!
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I’d say they have.
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I’ll tell you who has gone too far already, and will continue to do so until they fall off a cliff…..the right wingers, the tea baggers, the Republicans. Although all the Repubs could talk about before the election was Jobs, Jobs, Jobs, they have not introduced a single bill that is remotely related to jobs since they took over the House. Instead they are trying to redefine rape, make it possible for hospitals to deny abortions to dying women, and numerous other things that ordinary people don’t want any part of. Add to that things like what Scott Walker is doing and the State Senator in Missouri trying to repeal child labor laws….Independents and other people with brains and common sense are quickly realizing they made a big mistake giving the Republicans this opportunity to run wild with their radical ideas. Mark my words.
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The dirty little secret it that the government cannot create jobs (other than government jobs) they can only create an atmosphere that is conducive to job growth. And that means cutting tax and the only way to do that is to get the spending under control; the Republicans have started that process with the latest budget and even though it does not go nearly far enough it is a start.
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Ms. Gaven doesn’t understand that government cannot create jobs but they can prevent jobs from being created by distorting the marketplace and destroying economic activity. Every dollar which government takes from its citizens is 1 dollar less which can be used to create jobs. Obama has spent over a trillion of our dollars on a stimulus that most now agree was a failure.
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I agree 100% Harrison!
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We see how well these tactics worked out during the healthcare debate. Let him keep it up and he’ll lose the senate and the White House the next time around.
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Now that is enough to bring a smile to my face this morning. 🙂
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Steve, I like how Moonbattery put it:
“In the clear choice between pathologically greedy teachers unions on one side, and the children who are going untaught and their bled-dry taxpaying parents on the other, where did you expect Comrade Obama to come down?
In addition to whatever backroom machinations are taking place, the Manchurian Moonbat publicly splashed gasoline on the flames by denouncing Governor Walker’s acknowledgment of fiscal reality as “an assault on unions.”
Elect a man whose only real political experience is as a “community organizer” (i.e., Marxist rabble-rouser), and you would be a fool to expect anything else…”
Sums it up succinctly, imo
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I think that sums it all up quite nicely!
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Union has a Monopoly and is contrary to Free society. It must be dismantled for greater good.
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Law Makers in Wisconsin should have their Pay deducted for unexplained absences. I hope the Governor is exploring it.
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What you folks don’t seem to understand is that the Union is willing to concede the financial issues here, the increase in pension contributions and health care premiums. Walker is not really interested in that. The amount of money that will save is minimal compared to the the amount he claims is deficit. He wants to strip the state workers the right to collective bargain, which has much more to do with the Republican/Conservative hatred of Unions and desire to kill them all. I am a state worker (not in Wisconsin). We are paid so pitifully, you would cry. I have a college degree and 20 years of experience and I make $32,000/year. No raise in 2 years. The pensions and the low health care premiums are what has been dangled before us as compensation for the low pay. Do not believe the misinformation about state worker salaries and benefits. Before the economy collapsed, many people looked down on state employment due to the low pay and low status. Private sector jobs paid much more. Now that so many in the private sector have lost their jobs, which is a risk they took for higher pay, they are coming after the state workers they used to look down on. We don’t have as much job security as we once did, as state jobs are being cut in every state. We still have the low pay. We probably won’t get raises for several years to come. Increasing our contributions to pension/health care is, effectively, another pay cut. Personally, with an elderly parent and a disabled adult child to care for, I barely make ends meet and I work very, very hard. Our mileage was cut from .50 mile to .37 mile, so now our vehicles are depreciating just as fast as they used to, but any benefit to us from using them (or allowing them to be used) for state business is gone. Collective bargaining covers much more than pay and benefits. In fact, in my state, the legislature and the governor decide wage and benefits and there is no negotiating on that. However, as a steward, I could tell you stories that would make your jaw drop of unfair practices that go on all over the state. Our Union contract protects us from being exploited. From being used up and thrown away. Instead of begrudging union workers the few concessions we can get, all Americans should be demanding fair wages and benefits from all employers….especially the large corporations that would rather ship your job overseas than pay you minimum wage. I can’t speak for all unions, but I can tell you that my Union president does not make a penny more than I do! So don’t be fooled by this anti-union propaganda. You can thank the Unions for your 8 hour day, your weekends, for the fact that you have benefits at all. People died to gain those basic rights for workers that you take for granted.
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What you don’t seem to understand is the fact that I don’t believe ANY government workers should be unionized. Break ’em all! And you also don’t seem to understand that the federal government has no business sticking its nose into a state’s business.
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All Obama did is make a comment supportive of the union. He didn’t file a lawsuit or send in the Army. I have no idea why you don’t think public unions should be unionized, but I doubt that it it anything more substantial than right wing talking points. What difference does it make to you that my union can make sure that I am not overloaded with an impossible amount of work and then fired when I can’t do it? That supervisors can’t play favorites with vacation and sick leave approval? That we can’t be forced to work overtime with no pay? That we have a fair and effective grievance process? What does that take away from you, Steve?
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Obama did more than just comment on this issue; he and the DNC have sent Organizing for America to Wisconsin to help organize these protests.
When a private company and a union negotiate a contract among other things they are negotiating pay. That pay comes out of the profits of that company and it is up to the two parties to come to an agreement. When a politician negotiates with a union who’s money are they fighting over? The taxpayers, it isn’t their money in the first place so when a governor stands up and tries to act more responsible with the taxpayers money I am all for it.
New Hampshire’s governor introduced a budget that will cut 255 state jobs and guess what? He is a Democrat and I support this move; while I hate to see anyone lose their job, these are tough decisions that have to be made.
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20 years? 32k? Why did you hang around that long?
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I haven’t actually been in that job all that time. My experience is from a variety of places. Social work is not a high paying field. I was there from 1990 – 1994 and I came back in 2007. What makes it worth while is the pension and the health care. That’s why, even though it sounds perfectly reasonable to make state workers pay more for those things, it isn’t as clear cut as you might think. People in the private sector may pay more for those things, but they also make more. My pension is not cushy, by the way. I stand to get about $750 a month from the pension when I retire at 67 or later. I’ve heard people turn this issue around on the workers and say “why don’t they get a better job” which sounds like what you are doing. But somebody has to do these jobs. I investigate child abuse and neglect hotlines. Its a very necessary, very difficult, sometimes rewarding, job.
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Your $750 pension is about $750 a month more than most people in the private sector get nowadays in the private sector; pensions are a thing of the past, having been replaced by 401k plans in which the employee contributes the money. Which brings us back to the issue at hand, the governor wants the state employees to pay more into their own pension plans.
Believe it or not, I appreciate what you do and I know that it takes a certain kind of person to do what you do when it involves the abuse of children because you must see things that most of us do not.
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Walker said take some small cuts or have 6,000 people laid off. Big Union composes only 11% of American workers yet they are shutting down an entire state? Private sector workers, whose employers have to make a profit to stay in business, have taken bigger cuts.
I hope Walker breaks the back of Big Union in his state so they can close their massive budget deficit brought about by Democrats spending too much money.
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Once again, the public sector unions in WI have agreed to the cuts. Walker is not really interested in the cuts. He wants to take away their right to collective bargaining, which, in the end, destroys the unions. Who wants to pay dues to a union that can’t bargain for anything? Their massive budget deficit has very, very, little to do with the compensation of the state employees and much, much more to do with the loss of revenue brought about by the economic crisis. The economic crisis has nothing to do with state or Federal employees, but with the banks and the corporations. Another big part of the economic crisis in the states has to do with the loss of good paying jobs which also means a loss of revenue. How many of you who keep talking about shared sacrifice were all for the tax cuts for the rich? They aren’t sharing anything. They are getting an increasingly higher percentage of the wealth in this country and they give nothing back. The don’t create jobs, they ship them overseas.
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Are you in favor of the bill sponsored by someone in my State Senate to repeal child labor laws?
Because I think her philosophy on a lot of things match up pretty well with yours. Seriously. If you could hire 13 year olds in your business, you could make more money.
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No, that is what illegals are for.
I am just joking, but to ask if I support forcing children into the workforce and be serious about that question tells me that you are making generalizations about me with no basis in fact and I am not going to justify that question with a serious answer.
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Steve, I don’t ask to insult you. It’s just that Sen. Jane Cunningham, the auth0r of the bill, and the Chair of the committee that needs to pass the bill to get it on the floor for a vote, espouses pretty much the same political outlook that you do. If you voted for her, you probably wouldn’t have expected that she would go after child labor laws, but that was one of the first things she did. Her thinking is that the government should not have a say in this, that it should be a parental decision. Problem is, poor parents may not feel they have a choice but to let their young children hold down jobs to the detriment of their education. Companies already take advantage of young workers and try to get around the regulations that are in place now. I don’t know how old your teenagers are or if they work, but parents often complain of getting phone calls from their kids at work, saying they are needed to stay because someone else didn’t show up, for example, and if they don’t stay, they may lose their jobs. My point is not that you, in particular, would be against child labor laws, but that people with similar views are taking things to extremes and they are able to do that because they are being financed by big money.
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I do not always agree with what the people I voted for do and because of this I will not defend them when they take a position that I do not agree with. You may be surprised to learn that I only voted for Bush once and I did not agree with him on many issues ranging from spending to amensty to banning the lightbulb. If I had voted for your state senator who was looking to repeal child labor laws I would oppose it here on my blog.
My boys are 19 and 16, one works and the other does not yet but will be soon. If one of them worked for an employer who I thought was taking advantage of them I would tell them they did not need to continue working for them and they were free to quit and find another job. Of course I would be there for them as provide for them. Just for the record my 19 year old is in college and still lives at home.
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For any of you who might be interested in facts:
Click to access 9e237c56096a8e4904_rkm6b9hn1.pdf
A well researched study shows Wisconsin public workers earn almost 5% less, overall, than comparable private sector employees.
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Did you even read it yourself?
Let me summarize: public employees might make slightly less per hour but in terms of healthcare, vacation, sick time, and pension they do MUCH BETTER than do private employees.
In effect, you are correct in the fact you state but wrong it what it really means.
State and local government employees also receive a higher portion of their compensation in the form of employer-provided nonwage benefits, and the mix of those benefits is different from those provided in the private sector.
Public employers devote a larger share of their compensation packages to health insurance
and pension benefits than do private employers. Health insurance accounts for 12.9% of state and local government compensation compared with 7% to 9.7% of private sector compensation. Retirement benefits account for 8% of state and local government compensation costs compared with 2.5% to 4.9% in the private sector.
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Harrison, I believe you are the one who has misunderstood. I believe that the article says that if you look simply at pay, state workers make about 11% less than private sector workers. But when you factor in all the non wage compensation, state workers, STILL make 4.8% less than the private sector. BTW, the non-wage compensation is not the choice of the workers….that is how state governments prefer to provide compensation for budgetary purposes. Especially the deferred compensation….you get less now for the promise of more later. The workers would prefer more now, believe me.
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Steve, what we seem to have is a failure to communicate :-). The unions are conceding the financial issues. My union doesn’t negotiate on salary and benefits, which is the case in many states. We are also not allowed to strike. But like the examples I gave you, the union makes a huge difference in how we are treated. There is an ulterior motive in Walker’s efforts here. Unions are a reliable source of support for Democratic candidates and even while the Republicans have engineered Citizens United to allow corporations to pour unlimited amounts of money into political elections, they want to get rid of the Unions as a political strategy. That is what your union brothers and sisters want you to know. And even in states where unions do negotiate pay and benefits, remember, the workers are taxpayers too. And they deserve decent pay and benefits. There has been a boatload of misinformation about how State workers get huge salaries and cushy healthcare and pensions. And if you really think that is true, I can see why you would be against the public sector unions. But the truth is that we don’t get these high salaries and our benefits aren’t cushy. We perform roles that must be performed, whatever you may say about government jobs, and, pressured to save money, the temptation is to take it from the State Workers. And there are all kinds of performance expectations, especially, for example, in child welfare, that are not reasonable given the volume we have to deal with. So we need the protection of the unions. This issue is an attempt by the corporations and the richest of the rich to split the working class and pit groups of working class people against each other. The Koch Brothers own Scott Walker. http://www.truth-out.org/scott-walker-runs-koch-money67916
I’m just trying to give you the other side of this issue. Public sector unions are not responsible for
the deficit in the States and the amount of money Walker’s plan will save is a drop in the bucket.
The issue is union busting. And I’ll say it again. The unions are why you have the labor protections you have, such as the 8 hour day, overtime, weekends, and other benefits. If the unions go, those protections (like child labor laws) will come under attack.
BTW I didn’t know that Obama had send OFA organizers to WI. So I wasn’t ignoring that, I just didn’t know.
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“Steve, what we seem to have is a failure to communicate”
How did you know that I would get a kick out of that line? 🙂
I do understand that the protections that I enjoy now are directly the result of previous union negotiations and I appreciate that but I do have a problem with unions which I will try to lay out.
I work hard for my money and I get merit based raises when it is time for my yearly review. My raise is based on my performance, the better I perform the higher my raise and that is the way it should be. However the last year has been a tough year for my company and we do not have the same amount of work that we usually do. I have not had my yearly review or raise because the company is not making the money it used to and they cannot afford to give me a raise. I understand that completely and I would never demand that the company give m something which they cannot afford. That is not always the case with union employees as they will hold out for everything they can get and it doesn’t matter what kind of trouble the company they work for may be in. They would rather the comapny go out of business than give a little back and the feel this is a principled stand. I know that I am generalizing here and that this isn’t always the case, but it is something that I have seen first hand on more than one occasion.
I also have a problem with unions because they protect and give cover to people who are not always willing to give 100% work ethic. Gone are merit based pay increases and gone is the ability of a company to get rid of a person who is not carrying their weight simply because they “get paid by the hour” and know that the union has their back even if they do not work as hard as they should. Again, this is generalizing and I know that not all union employees are lazy or bad workers, but I have seen this happen firsthand enough to be leary of union workers.
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Unions have their faults. No human institution is perfect. You work for a small business, I believe, so you probably know more about what goes on in the business than do people who work for large companies. Unions are skeptical, sometimes, about management claims of the need for cutbacks. The priorities of big business are at odds with the priorities of the workers, most of the time. Of course, the union’s priority is the best interest of the workers, and they have to be as tough on that as management has to be tough on it’s own priorities. However, in the cases of the WI public unions, they have already agreed to those cuts in compensation. Why, then, will Walker not back down? Because it’s not the cuts that he is really concerned about. His bill would take away all bargaining rights, including for work rules (the issues I have described that protect workers from exploitation). The bill would also require the unions to have annual elections to remain intact (elections are expensive, state worker’s unions are poor), and deny the current right of the union to collect dues through payroll deduction. (A bill in MO would allow the state to keep 50% of the dues they withhold from worker’s paychecks.)
These things have nothing to do with balancing the budget. I will say it again. The unions have agreed to the benefit cuts. It’s Walker that won’t negotiate. They want to take down the public unions in order to then go after the private unions.
22% of public workers belong to a union. Only 7% of private sector workers belong to a union now. So, if you bring down the public sector union, you can easily take the private sector unions down. You may think the child labor thing is preposterous, we have come to take these basis labor protections for granted. I mentioned the child labor issue just to point out that without the unions, all of those rights will become vulnerable.
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Yes, I do work for a small company so I will concede the point that I may trust the people I work for more than if I worked for a large company where many people don’t even know the people who work under them. Maybe if I worked for a larger company I would have different feelings. But even working for a small company I have come in contact with union employees on jobsites and I can attest to the fact that as a rule many–not all–do not feel compelled to work as hard as they should to assure that a job gets done on time. It makes no difference to them because they are protected against poor job performance by the union and they receive their automatic raises regardless of their performance, and in my opinion this breeds laziness and a bad work ethic.
Again–this isn’t always the case, but it happens more often than not in my experiences.
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Now that I search the internet, however, I’m not finding any evidence that it was Obama that “sent” OFA into Wisconsin but just the OFA is involved in supporting the union and the protests. What is your source?
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How about this news article, from The Associated Press?
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/02/19/obama-offers-tactical-support-unions-state-budget-battles/
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Thanks for the link Larry!
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Thanks for the link. In reading it though, I still didn’t see the basis for the claim that Obama called for the OFA to go to WI. It’s not a governmental entity, so as president, he has no power to call them up to do anything. They did form out of his campaign, so I’m sure he has some influence with them, but to the best of my knowledge its’ a non-profit organization with it’s own leadership that makes it’s own decisions. That is not quite the same as a President ordering some government organization to interfere in the state.
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This was really rank…
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Some may call the coming upheaval a *Civil War*, they will be partially correct, it WILL be a WAR, but there won’t be a damned thing CIVIL about it…
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How much more will it take before REAL Patriots rise and take up arms? When do WE find the fortitude to go forth and once again FREE this nation of tyrants? And while we’re at it, a bit of genocide against libber-pukes would work well too I think…
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Texas Fred, does it bother you at all that statements like you make do nothing to further understanding but just confirm the worst stereotypes of conservatives as being hateful, repetitive, poorly informed blowhards?
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Steve, just because the workers in the private sector have lost the benefit of pensions, does not mean that everybody should. Dumping workers out of pensions in to 401K’s has been one of the major bamboozles of the last century. How many people have lost everything they have in their 401K’s just a few years before retirement? 401K’s are a joke. They should supplement pensions, not substitute for pensions. And the point remains, for the state workers, the pensions have been part of their compensation. They aren’t gravy on top of the compensation, they are part of the compensation. Most workers would rather have the higher pay, instead of the deferred compensation. This is not something the workers chose…giving the workers a higher amount of their compensation in the form of deferred compensation has been a gimmick that has allowed state governments to avoid raising taxes to fund the services they provide.
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Companies cannot afford pension plans; they simply cannot pay people who no longer work for them. It is unsustainable and one of the reasons why the automakers are in so much trouble. I don’t blame the unions alone because it was these companies who agreed to pay for something they could not afford, but the day of reckoning has arrived and now that it has the unions are unwilling to admit that they were duplicitous in the current crisis.
The public sector can still “afford” to pay these pensions simply because they do not create any wealth, they simply take their money from the taxpayers. (Those very same taxpayers who have lost their pensions.) Surely you can see why this upsets private sector workers.
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If those same taxpayers had been promised a pension instead of adequate pay, and then when it came time for the pension to be paid and the employer tried to back out, I think they’d be furious. Remember, this is not gravy, it’s part of what we were promised when we went to work as a substitute for the wages that those in the private sector were earning.
While it is true that small businesses probably can’t pay pensions, it’s not true that these huge corporations, who are making record profits and shipping jobs overseas, can’t pay them. These same corporations are also avoiding most of their tax bill as well. Executive compensation is insanely out of proportion to that of the workers, even when the executives don’t perform well. The corporations have been allowed to get away with horrible behavior, and now, with Citizen’s United, they are poised to call the shots even more so than they have been up to know.
State workers are not the enemy. They did not cause the economic meltdown. They are just ordinary people, your neighbors and friends, who work hard and deserve decent compensation. And it isn’t right to promise them non-wage compensation to make up for low wages, and then snatch the non-wage compensation away and make it look like the workers are greedy. I have to say, Steve, that you are one of the most reasonable conservatives I have ever run across on the internet. You haven’t called me a libtard once.
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The ulterior motives behind Walker’s Bill – it’s not the budget
http://blogs.forbes.com/rickungar/2011/02/18/koch-brothers-behind-wisconsin-effort-to-kill-public-unions/#comment-3876
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With the economy in the dumps I would think these unions would be happy with just having a job. That is the way I feel about my non-union factory job. My insurance premium is cheap( only went up 11 bucks this year), paid vacation and holidays and yes I do have a pension plan on top of the 401k. So I am grateful to have this job without a say so over how much I get paid, or mandatory overtime. Besides I have a friend in a local union that has been laid off for 2 years now. Before that his union shipped most of the work south of the border. So what good did his union do ?
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Yes, there are times when the unions just cut off their noses to spite their faces. In many cases they would rather have people laid off than give even the smallest consessions back the employer to ensure that nobody will get laid off.
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There’s nothing wrong with being grateful for your job. But if the unions are all busted, the pay and benefits of all workers will take a dive. They are already stagnant. Good paying jobs are going overseas and people are being forced to take jobs that pay next to nothing. There is a method to this madness….it benefits the wealthy, whose share of the pie is greater now than any time since the “gilded age”.
I wish this guy wouldn’t yell so loud, but he’s got a lot of good points that, as a reasonable person, Steve, you might be surprised to find yourself agreeing with. NSFW.
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First, I have to admit that I had to google “NSFW.” But I don’t have access to a computer at work so no worries here. I agree that many of the benefits we now enjoy weer gained through the unions at one time, but to think that if the public sertor unions become less influential that we will suddenly be thrown back into the dark ages simply isn’t going to happen. There are now laws on the books that protect the workers–and while we may have unions to thank for that–those protections are not going to go away.
Part of the reason these good paying jobs are going overseas is because these companies can no longer afford to pay the salaries and benefits that they are paying and if they want to stay in business they have to look elsewhere.
I haven’t made it through that whole video yet, but I will. He shows the protesters that he claims the right is afraid of, but for some reason he didn’t show the video of the union guy pushing the girl to the ground.
As far as him showing the signs that people at the Tea Parties hold up: I do not deny that I have seen some signs that were in very bad taste at the Tea Parties. But what I am upset about is the way it is portrayed in the media; they treat it as if it is only the right who holds up signs like that, when we saw the very same type of signs at protests for the eight previous years aimed at Bush, but the media ignored it.
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I don’t think the media ignored the protests against Bush. Although, I must say, after having attended several in DC, it was always disappointing to see how little coverage they got. While there were definitely a lot of very angry attacks on Bush, et al, I was at many major demonstrations and never saw the degree of hatefulness…ie depicting him as Hitler, a witch doctor, attacking his American citizenship, talking about “white slavery” , calling him the anti-Christ….and I was living in DC then.
You always hear the argument that American workers are to blame for the movement of so many jobs overseas. But when you really look at it, it’s just a bromide. Most, if not all, of the major corporations are making record profits and avoiding taxes in a shameful way. They are more than willing to say that their purpose is to maximize profits, not to build the communities or the country. If they cared about the US, they’d be paying their taxes and doing what they can to keep job’s here. No US worker can work for what 3rd world workers can. The idea that the US worker is greedy is a false one to create sympathy for companies that couldn’t care less about the fate of the US. And now they have the same rights as a person…corporate citizens, as they are called, through Citizen’s United. But not the same moral responsibilities that we, as human citizens, have towards our country, our communities, and our fellow human beings. I would think Conservatives would be as up in arms about that scandalous SCOTUS ruling as any liberals. It basically gives corporations and the rich carte blanche to buy elections. By the way, if the US had universal health care, and that burden could be lifted from the shoulders of business, the businesses could make more money and people would be free to be entrepreneurs instead of being tied to jobs in order to keep health insurance for themselves and their families. Employer based health insurance is a relic and a burden for business. BTW the unions and most progressives are very unhappy that Obama hasn’t done a thing to help the workers since he made that one supportive comment. He once swore that if worker’s rights were ever threatened, he’d buy comfortable shoes and join the picket lines. That was a bunch of BS! But after hearing the tapes of Walker’s very ill advised conversation with the prankster, it is clear that his motivations have more to do with the goal of several Republican governors to kill the unions and not to get concessions necessary to balance the budgets. In my state, by the way, efforts to simply get a law requiring sales tax on internet purchases is going nowhere. Small businesses are under attack by huge companies like Amazon because if you go in the brick and mortar store, you have to pay sales tax. If you buy it on the internet, you don’t. But a St. Louis area state rep says that even though such a law would bring in 9 figure revenues, it will never even get a vote on the floor, because the politicians don’t want to be accused of raising taxes in an election year. To get out of this mess, we are going to have to raise revenue AND cut spending. Don’t be so sure that the laws that are currently in place to protect workers would not be in jeopardy if the unions disappeared. If child labor laws are not sacrosanct, then what is? All of the worker protection laws could be argued as being a detriment to business – as the minimum wage laws are. If the economy gets worse, or simply fails to get better, the chorus for unshackling business from the tyranny of labor laws would grow…because there is big $$$ behind that chorus…such as the Koch Brothers. NSFW can also be a pretty go guide for not safe for kids, not safe in public, just a be careful where you watch it kind of warning lol.
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Oh, and BTW, I think it shows pretty terrible judgment on the part of Walker that he spent 20 minutes spilling the beans to a prankster… think about it. He was so anxious to talk with his benefactor that he through all common sense to the wind. Scary. And using the jobs of thousands of workers as a “negotiation tactic” is low, unethical, and possibly illegal.
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Your I-don’t-give-a-damn attitude is a shame. You are an American communicating with another American? You sound more like an anti-American foreigner showing hate and disdain for Americans.
You All can be spotted mile away – mean-spirited Republicans talk so much hatred that they repeat yourselves and sound alike. Most of the time I think you all just want to hear yourself talk. That perverse spirit is hurtful and truly un-American to other Americans .
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I apologize, I didn’t realize that we weren’t allowed to have differing opinions any more. My bad. It’s too bad though, because I thought that Rebecca and I had a great and respectful debate on this issue. I’ll try to do better in the future.
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