Kneecappings Are Making A Comeback

“There was an age when trade unions carried out vital work. It was, unfortunately, about 200 years ago”

Thanks for the ignorant Republican perspective.

You are intentionally misinterpreting what the author said. This makes you look bad, not him.

Absolutely correct. While organized labor still has a place, the absolute corruption of the mega unions has done more to ruin our economy than W and Nancy P combined.

Nice job pricing auto labor out of existence, UAW. Enjoy your giant salaries and war chests while the individual workers you exploit continue to be buffaloed by your “everyman” bullshit.

Why in the world would we want transparency in union accounting. The Chicago Outfit needs loving too!!

Hilda would ever so much like to repeal reporting regulations that allow union members to see how union bosses spend their dues.

That is an open invitation for graft of the worst sort. What’s she been smoking?

Hopium (what else?)

You ought to watch throwing around those polysyllabic words like ignorant, with which you are apparently unfamiliar, as it probably applies more to your comment than the perspective to which it was made, goob.

You got me on that one, jwrjr. LMAO.

I say we should let this woman speak publicly. People should hear her thoughts and ideas. Should be allowed to question her.

Unions do seem to working at cross-purposes with union members. Unions for Union Dues!
http://www.redpills.org/?p=3907

OK – I’ve been Union and I have and still own companies.

Unions should be required to show where the employees dues went just as companies should be required to show shareholders where they spent the shareholders’ money. Is this a difficult concept?

Both have a fiduciary duty to be open and transparent. It’s someone else’s money, not yours.

Why is fiduciary duty and conflict of interest so difficult to understand these days?

Why are so many simple concepts beyond people?

I say we should let this woman speak publicly. People should hear her thoughts and ideas. Should be allowed to question her.

That’s OK by me. However, allowing unions to spend money without it being out in open and subject to review does not appear to be wise practice. I can think of no reasonable explanation as to why such information would be kept secret. It smacks of cigar-smoke filled back rooms…. Oh, wait, that’s it–it’s the way the Democrats nominated That One. Good enough for the Democrats, good enough for the unions.

Paco,

Let me rephrase your comment. You are saying the fact that, with unionization, automobile workers in the U.S. have health insurance, short-term disability, long-term disability, sick leave, and the like, the cost of which ‘benefits’ now contribute to a higher hourly wage than, say, their counterparts in Japan, whose government provides health insurance, short-term disability, long-term disability, sick leave, and the like; explains why the auto industry is bankrupt. http://www.manufacturing.net/News-GM-Vs-Toyota-Wages-And-Benefits.aspx

And you are excluding as a causality of bankruptcy in the auto industry that,in 2006, in the United States, the average CEO earned more than 364 times the average U.S. worker — a huge increase from, say, 1980, when the differential was just 40 times more. Japan, on the other hand, has one of the lowest CEO pay gaps in the world, with chief executives earning on average 10 times more than the average worker.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/opinion/2008936833_opinb29jacoby.html?syndication=rss

Did I get that right?

Ellen D, understanding these concepts is simple. Under David Axelrod, spinning them has become an art.

Yes, well, this is DEFINITELY part of the problem, besides the fact that we are witnessing the most thuggish and law breaking administration we’ve seen.

Buying Brand Obama

Posted on May 3, 2009

By Chris Hedges

Barack Obama is a brand. And the Obama brand is designed to make us feel good about our government while corporate overlords loot the Treasury, our elected officials continue to have their palms greased by armies of corporate lobbyists, our corporate media diverts us with gossip and trivia and our imperial wars expand in the Middle East. Brand Obama is about being happy consumers. We are entertained. We feel hopeful. We like our president. We believe he is like us. But like all branded products spun out from the manipulative world of corporate advertising, we are being duped into doing and supporting a lot of things that are not in our interest.

What, for all our faith and hope, has the Obama brand given us? His administration has spent, lent or guaranteed $12.8 trillion in taxpayer dollars to Wall Street and insolvent banks in a doomed effort to reinflate the bubble economy, a tactic that at best forestalls catastrophe and will leave us broke in a time of profound crisis. Brand Obama has allocated nearly $1 trillion in defense-related spending and the continuation of our doomed imperial projects in Iraq, where military planners now estimate that 70,000 troops will remain for the next 15 to 20 years. Brand Obama has expanded the war in Afghanistan, including the use of drones sent on cross-border bombing runs into Pakistan that have doubled the number of civilians killed over the past three months. Brand Obama has refused to ease restrictions so workers can organize and will not consider single-payer, not-for-profit health care for all Americans. And Brand Obama will not prosecute the Bush administration for war crimes, including the use of torture, and has refused to dismantle Bush’s secrecy laws or restore habeas corpus.

Brand Obama offers us an image that appears radically individualistic and new. It inoculates us from seeing that the old engines of corporate power and the vast military-industrial complex continue to plunder the country. Corporations, which control our politics, no longer produce products that are essentially different, but brands that are different. Brand Obama does not threaten the core of the corporate state any more than did Brand George W. Bush. The Bush brand collapsed. We became immune to its studied folksiness. We saw through its artifice. This is a common deflation in the world of advertising. So we have been given a new Obama brand with an exciting and faintly erotic appeal. Benetton and Calvin Klein were the precursors to the Obama brand, using ads to associate themselves with risqué art and progressive politics. It gave their products an edge. But the goal, as with all brands, was to make passive consumers mistake a brand with an experience.

“The abandonment of the radical economic foundations of the women’s and civil-rights movements by the conflation of causes that came to be called political correctness successfully trained a generation of activists in the politics of image, not action,” Naomi Klein wrote in “No Logo.”

Obama, who has become a global celebrity, was molded easily into a brand. He had almost no experience, other than two years in the Senate, lacked any moral core and could be painted as all things to all people. His brief Senate voting record was a miserable surrender to corporate interests. He was happy to promote nuclear power as “green” energy. He voted to continue the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He reauthorized the Patriot Act. He would not back a bill designed to cap predatory credit card interest rates. He opposed a bill that would have reformed the notorious Mining Law of 1872. He refused to support the single-payer health care bill HR676, sponsored by Reps. Dennis Kucinich and John Conyers. He supported the death penalty. And he backed a class-action “reform” bill that was part of a large lobbying effort by financial firms. The law, known as the Class Action Fairness Act, would effectively shut down state courts as a venue to hear most class-action lawsuits and deny redress in many of the courts where these cases have a chance of defying powerful corporate challenges.

While Gaza was being bombarded and hit with airstrikes in the weeks before Obama took office, “the Obama team let it be known that it would not object to the planned resupply of ‘smart bombs’ and other hi-tech ordnance that was already flowing to Israel,” according to Seymour Hersh. Even his one vaunted anti-war speech as a state senator, perhaps his single real act of defiance, was swiftly reversed. He told the Chicago Tribune on July 27, 2004, that “there’s not that much difference between my position and George Bush’s position at this stage. The difference, in my mind, is who’s in a position to execute.” And unlike anti-war stalwarts like Kucinich, who gave hundreds of speeches against the war, Obama then dutifully stood silent until the Iraq war became unpopular.

Obama’s campaign won the vote of hundreds of marketers, agency heads and marketing-services vendors gathered at the Association of National Advertisers’ annual conference in October. The Obama campaign was named Advertising Age’s marketer of the year for 2008 and edged out runners-up Apple and Zappos.com. Take it from the professionals. Brand Obama is a marketer’s dream. President Obama does one thing and Brand Obama gets you to believe another. This is the essence of successful advertising. You buy or do what the advertiser wants because of how they can make you feel.

read the rest here:
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20090503_buying_brand_obama/?ln

Looks like the spam filter is in HIGH GEAR.

PLEASE FREE ME…I’m being held captive in SPAM OR NOT Prison!

“In the UK, trade unions now account for up to 90 per cent of donations to the Labour Party”
So, labor should not contribute to the Labour Party?

“There was an age when trade unions carried out vital work. It was, unfortunately, about 200 years ago”
Right, who needs unions anymore? We have the corporate captains to look after our interests, we don’t need to worry!! And they are doing a-heckuva-job…

Thanks jbjd. I guess I’d also like a return to plain speaking.

My post was on this article I will just post and hope you all will see and read.

Buying Brand Obama

Posted on May 3, 2009
By Chris Hedges

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20090503_buying_brand_obama/?ln

Well as a Democrat I agree with the article… The Unions are the downfall of American industry! Why do you think so many manufacturing jobs have left the US? Because Unions “Demand Demand Demand” and it’s just easier not to have to deal with them! Once upon a time Unions were great but they got too big for their britches and have not gotten themselves backed into a corner!

So, save the “Republican perspective” for some other left wing nut job who will agree with you! Thanks!

Okay, I’ll say upfront this GM issue is a thorn in my side. I have plenty of family that works for GM, friends and family that are teachers as well and in a Union.

While none of these individuals with whom I share a link with voted for Barry, both Unions did support him.

You can bet there were plenty of backdoor deals.

Being from Ohio I can say when I looked at the voting maps of counties it was the inner city vote across the state that carried Barry.

He targeted inner city voting like mad here. Leaving flyers on the doors telling inner city voters where to vote, phone numbers to call if they needed a ride. and the all inspiring message at the bottom of the door knocker.

“this is our time”

Barry doesn’t give a damn about the auto worker. I suspect the Union doesn’t either. They get what they want. If the bill gets passed to create Unions in any workplace this is a cash cow for the Unions that exist. Plain and simple.

Well I read the one link almost entirely, and the juice is the new rule that removes the Bush rule that caught and convicted 900 union thiefs taking anywhere from 5,000 to 100,000 dollars extra is repealed, or will be, or won’t be enforced.
Now, the thing is, how is that for the small guy – or for transparency, or for just general rpinciple ? I mean the idea that you let those on top (even in a union, admittedly less thatn wall street takes on first look) steal as much as they dare in the dark, and not prosecute, and make sure reporting requirements are nixed, and claim it’s so the lower workers don’t get mad seeing how much the upper union management make…
I mean these little things in the law in order to keep criminal behavior at bay and a decent belief from all involved that if not fairness then at least the basic facts are available…
I’m sure it “secures the vote” in this chicken hearted quack Solis’ mind.
I can’t even begin to condone any of it.
” Just rob whatever you feel you deserve, we know you’re good guys and gals working so hard, and campaigning so nicely, too, err, just take whatever we won’t look, your workers can’t look, you don’t even have to tell us how much you ganked.”
It’s really AMAZING.
Open, full blown rights to steal, with those getting ganked from shut out from seeing the dirty ledger – and the government okaying and enforcing it all (all the crime).
It’s just a mind blower.

No, of course not. Trade unions are free to contribute to Labour, or any other political party.

However, when unions become virtually the sole source of funding for a given party (and especially the one in government, as in this case), there is clearly a problem.

Conflict of interests, hello?

You’re right on, as usual PK. Smoke-filled rooms. These unions need to be squeaky clean. No smoke-filled backrooms.

But you know what places this in bizarro land? In the olden days, when a D was a D, we could at least count on D legislators not to pass such obviously un-democratic legislation. Now, we have to campaign against every attempt to further statify the wealth and power (read, INFORMATION) in the hands of the very very few.

I have never been so busy being a citizen, in my life!

statify = stratify

Unions have priced our manufacturing jobs right out of the country. Don’t just blame union bosses, workers voted for the contracts that provided them with benefits and wages much higher than the average worker. These are mainly unskilled jobs which require no formal education. They make more than a college graduate and most don’t work half as hard.

Great link. He has That One and his cronies down pat. What a condemnation.

This is just plain scary: ” LM-30’s required shop stewards to report information needed to expose “no-show jobs” in which paychecks go into union coffers instead of a real worker’s bank account. ”
Ahh, and there’s a free vote come election time, that must be cast, and a union vote that gets cast in favor of the power thief.
Wow.
” the department is pulling back on the new forms because the union leadership is concerned about how their members might react when they see how generous the compensation is ..”
LOL
- they make so much money noone in the union below them should know. That doesn’t include the theft parts.
” More than 900 union officials were convicted on embezzlement, fraud and conspiracy charges, …. The amounts embezzled ranged from $5,000 to more than $100,000. ”
I see. I’m not big on overdone sentencing, and would prefer a bit more reason where charges match the crimes… but for pete sakes, if it’s out and out obvious stealing and not some expenses argument, ok then.
SOLIS: ” Solis agreed with union officials’ claims that there was no proof members would benefit by knowing the information reported …”
WOW…
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columns/special-editorial-reports/Obamas-labor-department-quashes-union-financial-reports-44124467.html
One would hope the Justice Department is checking her bank accounts now. What the heck ?
Are we Russia now, or ahh… what !?
Solis and co don’t want to check whose getting robbed blind, and especially not LABORERS ?
What ?
Man we are GONE.
The USA is gone.
It’s endemic. Everywhere. Gosh I wish I was overreacting.
What is wrong with her ? (criminal mind)

Union bosses in BMWs? I see where this is going.

lol – Yes the corporate captains… oh wait, they probably love the union captains, and the “rules of no controlling law authority”.
I agree unions can be fine, but if they go overboard like the corpo captains and they’re both in on the highway robbery, doesn’t work out too well. The third leg of Obamanonmmics is the gigantic theft of tax takes for decades into the future, with some serious treasury printing and fed fistful swapping in the interim.
We are GONE.

rofl – ” The Obama campaign was named Advertising Age’s marketer of the year for 2008 and edged out runners-up Apple and Zappos.com. Take it from the professionals. Brand Obama is a marketer’s dream. President Obama does one thing and Brand Obama gets you to believe another. This is the essence of successful advertising. ”
lol – total fraudster – he won the conjob award!

Solis is sort-of right.

Union leadership is accountable to its members, not the US government. These reports were used as propaganda in Bush’s anti-labor bent. Getting rid of them is a good thing.

If the union membership allows for these types of shady transactions, then it’s their own bloody fault.

To put it bluntly, this type of oversight should be part of the union’s own bylaws and not the government.

If union members don’t like how their unions are run, change it or leave and form their own union.

If anything has “destroyed” unions, it’s been automation and technology making many positions redundant. You don’t need 10,000 workers in a steel mill anymore…

If it’s not that, then the next culprit would be manager greed, and in a twisted way, union pension funds putting pressure on the management of other companies they’ve invested in for ever higher returns.

But if you had to finger a single group, it would be the greed of management and shareholders. As Chris Rock famously put it, minimum wage means employers would pay less … but it’s against the law.

It’s been reported that Solis’ focus is here:

“Ensuring undocumented workers get paid and improving worker safety are two priorities for the Department of Labor, its first Hispanic secretary said Wednesday.”

I have a vague feeling that the priority [#1] on undocumented workers might make a few American working-class people howl. Sure do hope she’s willing to improve safety standards for US citizens, too.

Call me paranoid but I’m beginning to wonder who our representatives and government as a whole are really representing here. I have no problem protecting the interests of all workers, as long as American citizens are first in line.

Excuse me, even Rednecks get first dibs!

Patrick,

Agreed in theory, but how often does self-regulation work properly (much as I wish that it would)?

If this regulation is repealed, union members are left to make decisions with a dearth of information.

Then combine this with card check, and see how easy it is for union members to either get the relevant info or change the union or leave it…

I’ve noticed the city activists here have kept the jobs out – fighting factories for decades – keeping them out…
Right here – at some city activist level – one didn’t want the cornfield view that was already gone ruined.
On the other hand a very powerful factory of two established with high or nice wages had some negotiations a couple of times and kept it together over the last decade plus I’ve noticed.
So, it’s not just a one size fits all.
I believe more often than not the nimby network is the most powerful force going – and since all the modern eggheads get all the data on every single possible problem that could develope from a factory or whatever production unit wants in, not too many places want them anymore.
Then publicly at a national level there’s a huge outcry it’s all going because of lack of competition. Well, one ought to take a look at what kind of welcome they get here in the USA, and it’s everything short of pretty. It’s clearly one that is filled with hatred and opposition.

Make sure you apply that theory to the rest of everything, since the government already gives them the law that says they don’t have to show, no matter what union members do, they are told the police will be called.
I guess the problem you’re forgetting about is people are already stuck with the blackout, and nothing you spout off will make that their fault, when the government is already meddled so deeply into it, the entire lawbase needs rewritten to get them out, not to mention scratching a thousand court verdicts.
Good luck with your fantasy.

Umm, I do believe the idea of “regulation repeal” leaves the false impression that no law is left regulating the remainder.
The repeal legalizes the total blackout – and that blackout is thus law. Complainers will be told the police can change their minds about what fair is, since the law says the one desiring the information is a criminal.
I see Patrick screams they can quit and get another job or make their own union, however as he should have noted there are a multitude of laws going there – that certainly will preven that – especially in the same shop.
Nice fantasy Patrick has going there.
I’m really thrilled with how the administrative portion of all the workings of the labor dept. is “up for interpretation” – and therefore can codify criminal conduct into secrecy and prevent anyone from discovering theft.
Sounds like a perfect clone of the wall street policies. Make crime legal, look the other way, steal as much at the top as possible, throw the people a bone and turn them into criminals with plenty of elgalized incentives to keep it all going.
That is what I call change, that’s change all right – not like it hasn’t been changing already but now were geting total capstone level.

I think you’re right, PKJ, because I live in solid, like 10 to 1, republican ‘burb territory and no one ever bothers us with fliers here. (I’m not a repub.)

The repubs take our votes for granted and the dems find us a waste of time. O’s gang would have targeted the inner city (plus a few areas west) and the university area north.

I’m amused now thinking about that overly confident repub caller when Reagan first ran and the repubs were targeting “cross-over” dems. I told her that I would cut off my right arm before I voted for a republican.

Ah–the yeller dawg dem days!

Let’s not forget, the regulation that is left, is the “short form” that Solis takes in, has her little directed trolls spend countless hours perusing, and what comes of it ? Oh yeah, that rubber stamp – and when a union memeber calls for a redress because her gigantic bloated pig labor department is queen of the hill on the whole matter – she jumps up on stage and says there were no problems with the required paperwork the unions faithfully and masterfully submitted, and if said complainer has a real problem she surely would like to hear about it and there is a website.
Then the news reports what Solis said, how wonderfully kempt the incoming paperwork is.
I mean DUHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.

SiliconDoc, I like the way you think.

Unions have their proper, useful places. Too bad many don’t stay there.

I’m glad that you liked it. (grin)

Indeed. Unions have become the very thing they were supposed to be a bulwark against in the first place.

I have been asking Dick Durbin this question for some time now. Who is he representing? In IL, the senators represent illegal aliens and let legal citizens hang out to dry. They’re all from Chicago and Chicago is now more Mexican than Caucasian.

I would sincerely love to know why both Republican and Democrat leaders in D. C. are having a huge love affair with illegal hispanics. It seems so blatantly obvious that allowing millions of members of a particular ethnic group to force their way into this country and take over can only be dangerous to the country in the long run. It’s one reason why we have immigration laws in the first place.

All the ‘bots who shout that people are not illegal and there should be no borders must be cracked from the same mold as Obama–can’t understand that it won’t work unless all countries have open borders which they don’t. It still wouldn’t work, IMHO.

I happen to be in favor of unions, and I have dealt with at least a hundred of them in collective bargaining over several decades.

I do think the regulation of unions has been excessive, and I wish corporations were subjected to a similar level of scrutiny.

But I do not think those who disagree with me are Republican. In fact, many of them agree with me.

Therefore you are jumping to an erroneous conclusion. This is what bots do. Their goal is to avoid truth and tarnish the brand.

I also believe in a two party system. And I believe it was a grievous mistake to elect Obama.

Yes, pretty sad commentary isn’t it, with the supposed leftest there is labor secretary, and she’s spewing the new fangled twist on the line about “workers getting along without hurt feelings” as the nature of secrecy justification.
I see, the children can’t face reality, it’s better to take their money and secretly pay yourself, spend it willy nilly, or flat out rob it, otherwise it creates a “hostile work environment”. lol
She doesn’t want to know, either. Blind yourself Solis, while “taking full responsibility” for the integrity of the process and “checking that laws were followed”.
Criminal, or insanity, or criminally insane.
I guess this is a lesson in lack of responsibility, or not taking responsibility – I guess this is what they meant when they said it, and it’s worse than I thought.

It is vitally important for their to be some vehicle which allows the middle class to have its view heard. Historically, that has been the unions. Today however their voice is diminished partly because of Taft Harley (2 year terms), partly because of imagination and partly because they have been lazy.

I recommended to the Hillary campaign that they recruit a proposed Secretary of Labor like Dunlop who served under Kennedy. Obama has chosen someone with no such stature. It tells you what he really thinks of unions.

If you do not want unions as the spokesman for the middle class and working Americans then fine. But you had better come up with an alternative, because this is what we are up against:

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20090503_buying_brand_obama/

the ignorance of your statement is unbelievable.

the comparison needs to be made between the cost to Japanese manufacturers labor costs HERE versus American manufacturers labor costs HERE. The unions, primarily because of “lay off banks” and excessive retirement benefits, cost the American manufacturers about $35 per hour more in benefits then their Japanese counterparts. That’s the real issue.

and then the predictable class envy argument has 0 relevance to solving the economic issues of the auto workers. nearly 30% of the cost of making a vehicle is labor while CEO executive pay is way less then 1%. If you completely eliminated any pay for the CEO is would have 0% bottom line effect but if you eliminate the lay off banks and the excessive retirement the companies would be solvent and on good footing. People like you are less interested in the truth and solving the problems then you are in propagating your own party or ideology. To Hell with the auto industry (and it’s workers) as long as your liberal ideology is served.

I’ve caught some of the videos on the corruption of the old and then great Foundations that rich industrialists and the like left as a legacy in the USA. Carnegie was a local favorite of mine. I’ve watched a few videos about the Congressional investigation into those, and remember the complaints in Kerry’s run concerning he and his wife’s connections – and it seems to me the accusations are not baseless but I don’t have a feel for percentage.
So I read your link and see the Ford Foundation backing illegals, and also find out a loophole in 1986 no less allowed illegals to be unionized.
Now, my mind also goes to Wal Mart, which used to be a buy USA thing, but devolved into a great China made warehouse sale, but which also was a sore for many for not being unionized.
I guess the issues are so entrenched, so endemic, so preposterously out of whack already, that the destruction train just continues chugging along.
It’s getting eery and going backwards, as the title suggests, as well as becoming a sort of corrupt crime as usual sort of thing – and worst of all I keep finding these endemic crimes are from ten and twenty plus year stretches, and the hope and change movement is cranking them up ever more.

jwrjr, made me laugh too.

I also believe in a two party system. And I believe it was a grievous mistake to elect Obama.

Agree with the latter but not the former. Centrists have always been left out of the two-party equation because a two-party system is not geared towards a base consisting of the middle but towards getting the nuts and flakes and then, as an afterthought, throwing a bone to the adults in the electorate in order to win.

Moreover, the two-party system is only a construct and has no real basis in law, except that those two parties between them make said laws.

What a powerful post! I’ve bookmarked it.

Nice job pricing auto labor out of existence, UAW. Enjoy your giant salaries and war chests while the individual workers you exploit continue to be buffaloed by your “everyman” bullshit.

Only 7% of the sticker price of the car is labor cost, btw. This idea of unions pricing themselves out of the market is just another one of those silly talking points the GOP likes to continually trumpet.

The whole economy is going down the crapper. You see over and over the government propping up those of means. It doesn’t bother to help those at the bottom, the 80% of America now, that don’t have anything to actually lose, now that many are losing their jobs, their homes, their healthcare…

Call me crazy but Obama is undocumented and I see hispanic in that quote so what else could we possibly expect, but undocumented and hispanic taking top priority.
I suppose if one is realistic one could easily add corpo republican labor desires, but I don’t believe this is 1901 so I don’t buy the republicans hire illegals or poor workers idea.
I think the horror facing us is both parties are beholden, democrats are richer than republicans and numbers show that (although also poorer in inner cities), and whatever the causes this Odmubo express can payoff wallstreet and anyone else without the cries that would otherwise be at highest decibel level all over the TV day and night.
Instead tax tea day was a sex joke and a racist lie.
So it looks like faith in The One after the trillion dollar raids to cover the unfortunate crimes pushed to the home consumer level and quaddoozled at every investor level on the Street are what we are left with.
The very idea that Americans should be first is obviously a total zero project with this guy.
I haven’t seen proof he is an American and I certainly think I know exactly why. No controlling legal authority and decades of that in the new way of doing things in the turmoil of days following his birth, naturally converted to the new litigiousness and open insanities and lies from the media revolution.
Americans first and rednecks too ? lol It’s time to pay for sins, the endless decades worth…and everything must be done to make sure that never, ever happens again, in any form, Hola ? Barry did the impossible as an imposter, undocumented, time for reparations.
The only way to continue the crimes at every level are to bail by the trillions and crank on another new layer. If you’re not one of the preferred lawbreakers you’re not in the package, ok ?

I have a pro-union friend and he thinks this is actually a good idea. Based on the source document, I view the first paragraph completely differently from what I’m reading.

Basically, it sounds as if Obama is continuing right along with Bush dismantling whereas he sees this as removing crappy law Bush started.

Framing this into the perils of self-regulation is a good one although how this information can be used to attack the necessity of unionization is also problematic. Compared to the amount of graft and bribery at the executive level, union corruption is peanuts.

Can I get an answer from a labour lawyer who can explain that the removal of LM-2 forms is a bad thing for unions? What I’m worried is that you can get a union leadership that can be immune from the membership and these forms may be the only way of forcibly extracting PROPER information with the weight of law behind it.

Another way of framing this is the possibility that union bosses can lie … and no one will be given proper information in order to counter it.

I’ve also did some basic research and noticed that they’re removing requirements for LM-2 (big unions) but not for LM-3 or LM-4 (small unions). Is this an omission or part of Solis’ plan of chummin’ up to SEIU Obots?

It’s the titanic buddy and it’s hitting the rocks, forget ice, ice might melt or crack and spread.
Europe is older entering the “D” band of population age, and the USA is getting very “C”, and family planning removed 47 million young people from the books, so importation is all they have left, and they knew the former “C” problem way back when in 1968 – Teddy wrote the first round bill, before the post 1972 population control.
So combine the issues with the centralized benefit structures, and the government’s plans in the west all over the world really haven’t been tested to their ends – although great victories have been declared for decades, the aging time bomb combined with health technology costs pinned up with computer finance and amazing worldwide movement of markets and goods and city problems is exploding on governments.
The scramble to scrape off the rocks cracking the hull wide open and save it all from sinking is underway, has been if you ask me.
In the mean time the strange goings on do at some disturbing level have a method to their madness, or so they hope.

see how union bosses spend their dues.

My dues are going to hold classess for those illegal aliens who want to become citizens. All green cards holders aside.

I asked the State President of my union why we would spend money on this as there were American Union members who could be retrained.

It turns out according to their way of thinking, it was because they could “recruit” [sic] union members.

So much for American made.

Great analysis Patrick, and what is most interesting is that corporate executive and the like malfeasance is likely immsensly higher – just common sense and what we’ve already seen easily confirms that I’d say.
Heck, Obamacorp gave em trillions, though.
That makes me want to take it back, this administration and it’s branch are really screwing up.
Nobody would have believed this before the election. It’s total corruption in crisis plus and whips the crap out of shrub completely and that’s quite a 100 day accomplishment.
It’s not even really comprehensible at this point – it’s mind blowing.

I don’t buy the 7% figure, I don’t buy the 80% figure either.
I don’t think calling XYZ a talking point, then not getting it correct yourself is really very worthy, and you likely don’t either.
Nice try, no cigar, you get a mulligan or two.

It’s pretty simple.
Unions collect dues (from the dumb and lazy, mostly);keep a nice cut for themselves and pass on a nice chunk to the demcong – who wail over the “working families” and pass laws that benefit the union bosses who have financed them.
And the beat goes on…

And to wobbei who dealt with over 100 hundred unions:
Of course, you like them.
If you didn’t have unions to “bargain” with, what would you do for a living?

The rather laughable claim that unions are a protection for the little guy is belied by the strong arm thuggery unions use to intimidate the little guy.

I’ve worked in union and non-union situations, and any threats I’ve recieved (there have been plenty, some obvious, some veiled) have always come from the union side of the equation. I’ve never been threatened or intimidated by an employer.

Here are some comments from Congressman John Campbell, about why per unit costs for American-made cars can be higher than for Japanese-made cars, in America. (Congressman Campbell holds a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Economics from the University of California at Los Angeles, and a Masters Degree in Business Taxation from the University of Southern California. For nearly 25 years, Campbell worked in the automotive industry. He spent a majority of his career representing several automobile franchises, including Nissan, Mazda, Ford, Saturn, and Saab.)

The problem is not that current UAW workers make too much money. In fact, newly hired UAW workers in a number of job classifications will make less money at a Ford plant than their non-union equivalents at a US Honda or Nissan plant. The problem is that back in the 1980s, Big 3 executives made deals with their unions to pay for all kinds of costs after retirement, and to continue paying workers that had been laid off. The executives thereby preserved their current earnings by not incurring large increases in wages, but left the next generation of executives holding the bag for these costs after the original execs had retired to Florida (by the way, local governments are doing the same thing with their public employee union workers right now). The problem is not that the people working on the line today are paid too much in current wages. With robots and just-in-time suppliers, assembly line labor only makes up about 10% of the cost of a car now anyway. The problem is that for every current assembly line worker getting paid, the Big 3 are paying 6 non-working former employees either nearly full wages for years after being laid off or are paying unsustainable retirement and health care benefits. The $78/hour figure you hear spreads the legacy costs over the existing workforce. They do not make anywhere near that much money today. Also, The US is not the only country with generous union contracts. Look no farther than Germany. Your Mercedes, if assembled in Germany, is done by workers who have a maximum 30 hour work week and 6 weeks a year paid vacation. Similar rules exist in France, Sweden, Italy and other countries. So, the UAW “legacy costs” are a big problem and cannot be sustained. But you cannot lay the failure of these companies at the feet of the current UAW wages.

http://www.campbell.house.gov/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2222&Itemid=73

Here is more evidence of bad management practices in the auto industry, leading to higher per unit costs.
http://www.ad-mkt-review.com/public_html/air/ai200709.html

“From our perspective, the only interest served by this rule was to harass unions,” said AFL-CIO attorney James Coppess.

http://www.newser.com/article/d97n2nvg3/labor-department-moves-to-rescind-last-minute-bush-administration-rule-on-union-finances.html

(You’re welcome.)

I’m a Linda Too,

Thank you so much for you reference to Mr. Hedges’ article. It is spot on brilliant and well worth everyone’s time to read. I will certainly buy his book when it comes out this summer.

I’m a Linda Too,

Thank you so much for your reference to Mr. Hedges’ article. It is spot on brilliant and well worth everyone’s time to read. I will certainly buy his book when it comes out this summer.

thank you for posting this here. Chris Hedges is often spot on and I missed this piece.

And this piece is astonishingly accurate but where was this analysis last year during the primaries?

His primary analysis was here:

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20080428_hope_for_corporate_america/