Protests against public sector union busting continue

You tell me that in each thread I link the Times. Becoming threatening as hell.

Anyone with a degree of disregard for others that labels them as "misguided" in this fashion, one thread after another:

 "Seems to me that the problem is the source of links.  The inspiration for the thread may have been IWD but expecting feminists to respond to the NY Times editorial board and a male columnist seems a little misguided.  I suspect that most thought the piece was a puff piece not the underlying issues.  To my mind here is some good American reporting on some of the same issues.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39826272/ns/msnbc_tv-documentaries/        "

And then engages in a schoolyard-bully taunting. As others here can attest, a couple of weeks ago I would have had other explanations for you, but I'm now on good behaviour, threatened with excommunication if I give you an honest-to Gaia response. And so far, you seem to be on the side of the Gods.  I may yet be found at fault in this correspondence.

The quotations you have used are lifted from discussion with another babbler. All of that, in context, is descriptive of someone's "left wing analysis."

The "wisdom of the NYTimes" was the NYTimes' attack on the far right in Congress and the Wall Street Journal.  But, of course, that does not count for you.  Just as the NYTimes quotes that I used to demostrate feminist activity in the U.S. and open a new thread, was also dismissed by you. It was from the NY Times.

I read the business pages of the Globe and Mail to understand what the enemy is about. I'm just about to quote from an article headlined: "Big funds want in if private pension plans approved."

Shoveler: "I am sure you would agree I have every right to state my preference in news articles just as you so forcefully state your opinions."

Of course you do. You have every right to use quotations from sources your approve in supporting your own take on the world.

You should have absolutely no right to follow me around, repeatedly denouncing the source of the news without giving a rational criticism of the content. Why it is wrong.

At least, you, in all fairness, should not have the right to muscle in and shit all over another's work only because of its source. What of the ideas it contains? But the powers that be are not willing to require rational exchanges along those lines. So the news is purified by the thought control people like yourself.

George Victor wrote:

You should have absolutely no right to follow me around, repeatedly denouncing the source of the news without giving a rational criticism of the content. Why it is wrong.

At least, you, in all fairness, should not have the right to muscle in and shit all over another's work only because of its source. What of the ideas it contains? But the powers that be are not willing to require rational exchanges along those lines. So the news is purified by the thought control people like yourself.

George I am not following you around.  Boy that is one weird accusation.  We seem to share an interest in the same political events and for some reason you presume the privilege to dismiss left wing analysis and attack me as a stalker for my view that MSM sources are pap.

It seems George that what you call a hard hitting attack on Wall street and what I would call such a thing are not the same.  Here are some of the ideas in one of the puff pieces you posted.

Quote:

Art Pulaski, the chief officer of the California State Labor Federation, said the Wisconsin standoff could encourage some Republican governors to take a harsher stance in bargaining. “But for those with a more moderate stance, those not tied to the Republican strategy, I think they’re going to hold back, and say: ‘Wait a minute. The response is so vigorous and spontaneous and strong, we have to be careful how far we go on this,’ ” he said.

But focusing national attention on public employees’ benefits could put unions on the defensive in many states. Thomas A. Kochan, a professor of industrial relations at the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said he thought unions were increasingly recognizing reality. “There has to be a new bargain in the public sector on pension costs and health care costs, and to get out front on it,” he said. “That helps them take that issue off the table and to focus on the issue of worker rights and the attack on unions.”

I find this kind of analysis to be from a pro-business anti-union perspective.  What is good about saying we need workers bargaining rights but their benefits and old age security is just too rich.  It just leaves me cold.

There is that enough analysis and will you stop attacking me personally with lines like, "muscle in and shit all over."  I have posted nothing on this site that deserves such an insulting and demeaning response.

Good for you, Shoveler.  Your  first evidence.  More, please.

And what is there in this, my posting above, that is anti-union or pro management or anything else?

Paul Krugman's explanation for what is at work in Wisconsin:

Shock Doctrine, U.S.A. By PAUL KRUGMAN

Madison, Wis., is looking a lot like Baghdad in 2003, with government officials exploiting fiscal crises for fun and profit.

And this NYTimes editorial, from a post above, so clearly defends Koch and the Wall Street Journal and its publisher

Editorial The Hollow Cry of 'Broke'

Though it may disappoint many conservatives, there will be no federal or state bankruptcies.

March 2, 2011

The Hollow Cry of 'Broke'

"We're broke! We're broke!" Speaker John Boehner said on Sunday. "We're broke in this state," Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin said a few days ago. "New Jersey's broke," Gov. Chris Christie has said repeatedly. The United States faces a "looming bankruptcy," Charles Koch, the billionaire industrialist, wrote in The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday.

It's all obfuscating nonsense, of course, a scare tactic employed for political ends. A country with a deficit is not necessarily any more "broke" than a family with a mortgage or a college loan. And states have to balance their budgets. Though it may disappoint many conservatives, there will be no federal or state bankruptcies.

The US unemployment rate fell slightly to 8.9% in February, down from 9% the month before.

It is the third month in a row that the jobless rate has fallen, with February's figure marking a near two-year low.

Employers added 192,000 jobs last month, the US Labor Department said, above market expectations.

Paul O'Neill, former US Treasury Secretary, described the data as "very positive".

A Labor Department statement said that most job gains were in manufacturing, construction, business services and transport.

State and local government slashed 30,000 jobs, the most since November as budget cuts continue to bite.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-12648347

That would be your good news bad news story.  The good news is the rate fell slightly, the bad news is the places in the US with the highest levels of unemployment are getting higher.  The desperation of the urban masses is increasing so this is not to me a good news story merely an interesting statistical anomaly that almost every single city has had an increase in unemployment. This is from 2010 but this new report doesn't even mention the rates in cities. 

Quote:

A new report from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) sheds new light on the unemployment crisis facing hundreds of urban areas in the United States. According to the report, released March 19, the unemployment rates in a staggering 363 out of 372 metropolitan areas were higher in January than they were a year before.

 

Thirty-five metropolitan areas registered official jobless rates of 15 percent, placing them well above the official national unemployment rate, which stood at 10.6 percent in January, up from 8.5 percent one year earlier. At least 187 metropolitan areas reported unemployment rates of 10 percent or more in January.

Of the 35 areas with jobless rates of 15 percent, 15 were located in California, and 6 in Michigan (which has one-quarter of California’s population). California was also home to the three metropolitan areas with the highest unemployment rates: El Centro, with 27.3 percent; Merced, with 21.7 percent; and Yuba City, with 20.8 percent.

The metropolitan area formed by Los Angeles, Long Beach and Santa Ana, California, lost 248,600 jobs last year, more than any other metro area. Other areas suffering large numbers of job losses included the New York City-Northern New Jersey-Long Island area, where 224,220 jobs were eliminated; Chicago-Joliet-Naperville in Illinois, Indiana and Wisconsin: 174,700 jobs lost; and San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont in California, with a loss of 103,100 jobs.

In the 49 metropolitan areas in the US that have a population of 1 million people or more, the area comprised of Detroit, Warren and Livonia, Michigan, and the area in California made up of Riverside, San Bernardino and Ontario have the highest unemployment rates, with 15.6 and 15 percent, respectively. Within the Detroit-Warren-Livonia area, Detroit-Livonia-Dearborn suffers from an official jobless rate of 16.4 percent and Warren-Troy-Farmington Hills, 15 percent. The latter metropolitan division underwent one of the most severe over-the-year percentage decreases in employment, 4.9 percent.

http://www1.wsws.org/articles/2010/mar2010/unem-m23.shtml

And back to the "protests against public sector union busting..."  as Paul Krugman says, "don't expect either Mr. Walker or the rest of his party to change those goals. Union-busting and privatization remain G.O.P. priorities, and the party will continue its efforts to smuggle those priorities through in the name of balanced budgets."

Clearly, support for the GOP must be eroded. Seems to me that that is a challenge for unions that during their organizing days, raised a lot of money for the party that had given them a voice, allowed them action, since the 1930s.

Organized Labor Hopes Attacks by Some States Help Nurture Comeback
By STEVEN GREENHOUSE

Efforts against unions in Wisconsin and elsewhere have energized them.

Both Sides Begin Efforts for Recalls in Wisconsin
By MONICA DAVEY

The fight over collective bargaining rights for public employees remained at an impasse, even as its political fallout grew larger.

America is NOT Broke  - by Michael Moore (and vid)

http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/274-41/5178-america-is-not-broke

"America is not broke. Contrary to what those in power would like you to believe so that you'll give up your pension, cut your wages, and settle for the life your great-grandparents had, America is not broke. Not by a long shot. The country is awash in wealth and cash It's just that it's not in your hands. It has been transferred, in the greatest heist in history, from the workers and consumers to the banks and the portfolios of the uber-rich. Today just 400 Americans have more wealth than half of all Americans combined.."

@ George

You say the Capitalist had all the cards do ya, nice apology.

To bad the facts state other wise.

Here in Toronto they had a City Workers strike last year. How many members in that Union, Nation wide, Province wide?

How many sympathy strikes did they have?

How many work stoppages around the province did they have?

Ill tell you, the answer is zero.

Zero mobilization of the working class by the Union leadership, oh that's right, the capitalist held all the cards and the poor Union leadership couldn't do anything.

What about the fact that workers in Windsor were having a strike at the same time. Why didn't they tie the two strikes together? Oh that would mean raising the awareness of the working class to the bigger struggle. Na. it's just easier to sell the workers out and give up a few more rights to maintain everyone's current social status. Except for the workers that is.

America is not broke

If these people are correct, the corporations of America are sitting on about 2 trillion dollars. You know just sitting there doing nothing and then asking from tax breaks.

------------------------

et us consider, starting with the low-hanging fruit, where the money could be found to wipe out the deficits of all 50 states combined, which this year come to a projected $130 billion.

• The extension of the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, enacted by a Democratic-controlled Congress in December with the approval of the Obama administration, pumps $700 billion over the next ten years into the pockets of the rich. Reclaiming two years of that tax windfall would eliminate all the state budget deficits combined.
• Total compensation at Wall Street banks and securities firms last year hit a record $135 billion, according to an analysis by the Wall Street Journal, on all-time-high revenue of $417 billion. The recipients of the Wall Street bailout could bail out the states out of their own pockets.
• The 400 richest individuals in the United States dispose of a staggering $1.37 trillion in assets, an average of nearly $3.5 billion apiece. A levy of 10 percent on the resources of these billionaires would also erase the deficits of all 50 states.
• Combined profits for all American corporations rocketed upwards in 2010, hitting an annual rate of $1.66 trillion in the third quarter. A tax of eight percent on those profits—the same percentage as the cut Walker seeks to impose on schoolteachers and park rangers—would eliminate all state deficits.
• US corporations are currently sitting on $2 trillion in cash, refusing to hire workers despite collecting tax cuts that are supposed to be incentives to do so. A levy of 10 percent on that idle cash would provide enough money to eliminate not only the deficits of the states, but the deficits of all cities and local governments too, as well as preserving the jobs of hundreds of thousands of public employees.
• Hedge funds assets rose to $1.92 trillion in 2010, the highest ever, up from $1.18 trillion at the beginning of the year. Given a standard earnings formula of 2 percent of total assets plus 20 percent of the increase, hedge fund bosses stood to collect roughly $186 billion in personal income. An 80 percent tax on that income—less than the percentage rate on multimillionaires levied under the Eisenhower administration—would produce more than enough revenue to put all 50 states in the black. (It should be pointed out that the top hedge fund manager, John Paulson, had a personal net profit of more than $5 billion in 2010, while more than a dozen hedge fund bosses had personal incomes above $2 billion and many more took in over $1 billion).

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2011/mar2011/pers-m07.shtml

[url=http://www.themarknews.com/articles/4305-is-the-us-s-union-battle-headed... the U.S.'s Union Battle Headed Canada's Way?[/url]

Cash-strapped U.S. states have launched an unprecedented assault on unions. There is growing evidence that the trend is making its way north of the border.

Paul Moist wrote:

 A troubling aspect of these attacks, whether they are happening in the U.S., in Canada, or anywhere else around the world, is the skewed portrayal of workers.

The large majority of public-sector workers are in health care, schools, social services, and local government. They are mostly women, and they are far from highly paid. Of the over 600,000 members of CUPE, the average annual pay is less than $40,000. It takes a certain amount of gall to portray these workers as privileged.

Gall, however, is something not lacking in the Canadian right. Instead of tackling this country’s economic recovery in a responsible and equitable way, they take up a diversionary strategy in casting the public sector as scapegoats while extending even more corporate tax cuts to Canada’s banks and finance industry. Corporate tax cuts, which at this point should surprise no one, have not been proven to generate any of the new jobs or investments it is claimed they will.

Will "middle America" recognize what is going on and turn out to support/demand a return to worker rights in 2012 , or will it retreat further into a frightened, apolitical sulk?

Indeed they should, but I'll not hold my breath at the prospect of even "progressives" demanding anything in any numbers, "out there."

The late Irving Kristol, the self-professed and generally recognized father of neo-conservatism, observed in Neo-Conservatism:Selected Essays 1949-1995, that "left-wing politics has within it the seeds of its own frustration (note his takeoff on Marx's observation about Capitalism) And this frustration always (my emphasis) takes the form of denouncing the party leadership for lacking sufficient devotion to the party's ideals and sufficient determination to realize them....(and) we have also seen it happen in our own Democratic party."  (1976)

I add this, not out of reverence for the words of Kristol, but because this old one-time Trotskyist was probing the weaknesses of "the enemy" in his essays (liberals, or social democrats, their European counterparts in his mind) and his ideas were to give cohesive force to the campaigns of the right, starting in 1980. 

It's my belief that "the left" should move to a new recording to properly explain, in its frustration, just what is wrong with its theory (theories) of social change.

In Wisconsin Battle on Unions, State Democrats See a Gift
By MONICA DAVEY and A. G. SULZBERGER

Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin won his battle to cut bargaining rights but his victory also carries risks for the state's Republicans.

A NYTimes editorial:

It's Not Over in Wisconsin

Republican lawmakers in Wisconsin have reversed half-a-century's middle-class progress in the state by erasing collective-bargaining rights for public employees.

[double post]

As for what is happeing to the working class. On the lasted front of our battle for equality, the ruling elite in Wisconsin, have enter new laws of explotaion by giving themselves more power over us.

While I don't, for one minute, find what the Government has done as alarming. What I do find alarming is how unorganized the working class is and how the leadership in the Unions are moving to shut the protested down and move it into the arms of the ruling elite. They are doing this by telling the workers to go back to work, put up court challenges and try to elect more democratic representatives.

All these bourgeois options have already been tried, that is why the workers are on the street protesting. They understand that the leadership is a bunch of sell outs.

So now what is the way forward for us?

here in Canada, we must look at the world and realize that our leadership needs to change before we can take control of the government and implement a Socialist economy.

So first on our agenda should be the reorganization of our political groups. Once we retake these organizations, we can then move on to lay claim to the bourgeois government and then take it down and rebuild it.

In BC the rights of our public sector where stripped away and 6 years later the government got a slap on the wrist.  The union workers lost their public jobs and the contractors who took over were surprised by the fact the HEU just signed up the new workers as fast as they could hire them.  Still union but now private sector at less pay and more work for the employees and more dirt for the patients. 

Let me know when Canadian workers are going to wake up and in the meantime I wish the workers in Wisconsin well but did they do anything when the Greek and Irish and other workers were in the streets the last couple of years.  Same Wall street origins but strangely neither Canadian or American unions seemed to understand that they were next and sat on their hands while workers throughout the Western world were stripped of hard won benefits because the Wall Street casino went bust.