One would have to be a dyed-in-the-wool Pollyanna or plain fool not to recognize that labor unions in this country, despite all the good they’ve done and continue to do, are fighting for their collective lives. Indeed, it requires every resource at labor’s disposal just to keep their heads above water. Things are grim.

On one side, unions face a deadly, triple-threat combination—Corporate America looking to outsource everything that can be manufactured or digitalized; Joe Citizen buying into all the anti-labor propaganda he’s being bombarded with; and Republican lawmakers seeking to further marginalize unions through the courts and government agencies.

Alternatively, on the other side, unions face their traditional allies and benefactors, the Democrats, who continue to embarrass themselves and disappoint the Movement by pretending to be organized labor’s staunch supporter, yet rarely go out on a limb to help. Meanwhile, the once proud and healthy middle-class continues to be chipped away.

This is not to say the battle is over, or that, despite their woeful current predicament, unions aren’t capable of making a dramatic comeback. In fact, given the climate of the country and the fundamental dichotomy and tension that has always existed between labor and management (in spite of those slick “We’re all on the same team” slogans), it can be argued that labor’s eventual resurgence, in one form or another, is almost guaranteed.

Still, just when it seemed that organized labor had been battered, slandered and beaten down about as much as it could be, we find that there’s no end to it. New plots continue to be hatched, new enemies continue to be recruited.

For those wondering whatever happened to Steve Forbes, the one-time Republican presidential candidate and radical flat tax disciple, he has recently resurfaced as a shill for a virulently anti-union organization called the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation (NRTWLDF).

In a letter dated April 28, 2008, Forbes implored the readers on his mailing list to heed the dangers posed by America’s labor unions, and urged them to fill out the enclosed questionnaire and mail it back immediately. His 4-page letter is filled with anti-union diatribe. Here’s a sample:

“Fueled by massive forced-dues dollars seized from employees as a condition of employment, union bosses are now on a legislative rampage to help the new far-left majority. Big Labor is pulling out all the stops to:

block the appointment of qualified judges on the nations’ Federal courts;

further reduce parental control over their children’s education and hand it to unaccountable teacher unions and government bureaucrats;

stop lawsuit and medical malpractice reform needed to restrain greedy trial lawyers

retain the unfair federal “Death Tax” and cancel the Bush tax cuts; and

seize new powers to collect hundreds of millions of dollars in forced union dues.”

The questionnaire (titled “Voter Opinion Survey on Big Labor”) consists of nine questions, most of them emotionally loaded, categorical and wildly misleading.

Some examples:

Question #1: “Do you think American workers should be fired for refusing to pay dues to a union?”

Question #6: “Do you think union violence should continue to enjoy legal immunity under federal law and the laws of more than 15 states?”

Question #8: “Do you believe that public employees such as police and firefighters should be forced to join labor unions?”

Very weird stuff.

Instead of focusing their outrage and fury on the federal government—for wantonly violating the civil liberties of American citizens, spending billions of dollars a month on an unpopular war, propping up maggoty oligarchies all over the globe, and bailing out greedy Wall Street investors (not to mention engaging in perjury and every other manner of deception)—this NRTWLDF group feels compelled to go after working men and women.

Of course, these are the same folks who opposed the establishment of a mandatory federal minimum wage and the creation of OSHA (Occupational Health and Safety Administration), and who favor privatizing social security. By and large, they’re the same closet-plutocrats who claim to “respect” working people but try to conceal the fact that the average American worker hasn’t received an actual (allowing for cost of living) wage increase since 1973.

Because these anti-union zealots can’t come out and honestly say what they really feel—i.e., that the notion of common working people getting a substantially larger slice of the pie makes them ill—they attack the organizations representing these workers. They use lurid, smear tactics in their attack, depicting labor unions as corrupt, dictatorial and greedy. The following paragraph is taken from the second page of Forbes’ letter:

“For America’s workers, it’s not much of a choice. Either pay tribute to labor chieftains or lose their jobs. But for union bosses, it’s like cashing in a giant lottery jackpot every day of the year. And their lust for money is nearly endless.”

If the ideology being peddled here weren’t so scary and potentially dangerous, that paragraph would actually be funny . . . funny in the same way the movie “Reefer Madness” was funny. Unfortunately, the stakes are too high to appreciate the humor.

It’s hard to understand why class distinctions remain so powerful in America. People don’t flinch when they hear of a hedge fund manager, like John Paulus, who made $2.5 billion in 2007 via the quasi-legal manipulation of money, yet they get downright resentful when they hear of a group of janitors asking to be paid $14/hour ($29,000 annually). It’s hard to understand. And it ain’t fair.

David Macaray, a Los Angeles playwright and writer, was a former labor union rep. He can be reached at dmacaray@earthlink.net


http://www.counterpunch.org/macaray07262008.html

http://slackdaddy.org/node/1137/

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All of Saddams attrocities were comitted with US support. When we wished to steal the oil we drug out all that old news as if it just occured yesterday. After Saddam supposadly gassed the Kurds we increased our aid to him.

I agree we should dump used oil in the rivers, work for next to nothing and if we get hurt on the job well we are on our own after all its your fault you got hurt

I can understand why. A well trained workforce is far better than a workforce filled with fly by nighters. My union builds the Ships of the US navey. They dont trust that type of work to amatures. We build Nuke plants ,water towers Bridges, anything they expect to last a long time is union made. (mostly) I am but a small cog in the wheel of the Union of boilermakers, , iron ship builders, blacksmiths, forgers and helpers. And I think winx they are based in your town.

Working hard every day to keep good paying union jobs here in america!

Years ago, reporters for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer are reporting this week, the FBI knew that home mortgage scams were being perpetrated by banks all across the country. They told the Bush Administration, and were denied agents or resources to pursue their cases.

Two years ago then-New York Governor Elliot Spitzer tried to prosecute banks - along with governors or attorneys general of all 50 states - for just these types of crimes and the Bush administration used an obscure Civil War era law to stop him.

Today we learn that the very hustlers who helped destroy our economy, the so-called "investment bankers" at Morgan Stanley and AIG (who have gotten billions of our taxpayer dollars in the recent bailouts) will be getting their bonuses this year, to the tune of $1.13 million in cash for the 400 brokers at AIG.

But while they should be denied their bonuses, the criminals for whom we should re-open Gitmo are Phil Gramm, John Boner, and the other Republicans who changed laws reaching back to the Republican Great Depression of the 1930s to prevent exactly these types of scams.

Reopen Gitmo! Get it ready for the Republicans!

Thom can be heard daily on his radio show 12pm - 3pm ET visit www.thomhartmann.com to stream live or find a station near you
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/20051

My job classification is utility man being I do every job in my dept.

No matter what you think day in and day out I draw a good paycheck with great medical benefits and retirenment. That is my reality. I work hard every day and my employers are greatful for my experience and work knowledge. In fact I have a class comeing up in the next month on a saurday that will pay time and a half, yes its over 30 an hour and they treat for lunch.

do t hey let you work christmas and thanksgiveing? anything over 8 for me is time and a half.

America is sitting on top of a super massive 200 billion barrel Oil Field that could potentially make America Energy Independent and until now has largely gone unnoticed. Thanks to new technology the Bakken Formation in North Dakota could boost America’s Oil reserves by an incredible 10 times, giving western economies the trump card against OPEC’s short squeeze on oil supply and making Iranian and Venezuelan threats of disrupted supply irrelevant.

In the next 30 days the USGS (U.S. Geological Survey) will release a new report giving an accurate resource assessment of the Bakken Oil Formation that covers North Dakota and portions of South Dakota and Montana. With new horizontal drilling technology it is believed that from 175 to 500 billion barrels of recoverable oil are held in this 200,000 square mile reserve that was initially discovered in 1951. The USGS did an initial study back in 1999 that estimated 400 billion recoverable barrels were present but with prices bottoming out at $10 a barrel back then the report was dismissed because of the higher cost of horizontal drilling techniques that would be needed, estimated at $20-$40 a barrel.

It was not until 2007, when EOG Resources of Texas started a frenzy when they drilled a single well in Parshal N.D. that is expected to yield 700,000 barrels of oil that real excitement and money started to flow in North Dakota. Marathon Oil is investing $1.5 billion and drilling 300 new wells in what is expected to be one of the greatest booms in Oil discovery since Oil was discovered in Saudi Arabia in 1938.

The US imported about 14 million barrels of Oil per day in 2007 , which means US consumers sent about $340 Billion Dollars over seas building palaces in Dubai and propping up unfriendly regimes around the World, if 200 billion barrels of oil at $90 a barrel are recovered in the high plains the added wealth to the US economy would be $18 Trillion Dollars which would go a long way in stabilizing the US trade deficit and could cut the cost of oil in half in the long run.


http://www.nextenergynews.com/news1/next-energy-news2.13s.html

Yes it is verry powerfull you get recalled from layoffs by senority and classification. We had a non union shop here in my small town that laid off and they picked off the older better paid workers first. Oh they allways have a justification for it but usualy its the bottem line. They count on the low paid workers to not be able to sue them for age discrimination being they cant afford a lawyer. twenty years in that sweat shop would give y ou fifteen an hour and then you have to grovel like a toad for that. I had a lay off like most the auto industry but I was laid off by senority and recalled by senority, gurenteed.

Its all those over paid union bank tellers killing the banking industry, look what they did to our country.............

Well I have dated many nurses and I know the stories well. The Largest hospital in cleveland is Union some of the smaller ones are non union. most of the non union nurses I know wish they were union. I know of one Dr who saw Obama bumper stickers on his nurses cars and he told them if Obama is elected he would let two of them go. I hope you never face something like that but if your not union you would have to listen to it.

Come talk to me when your getting old and they need to downsize and get ride of people with accured vacation time and they have some fresh hot young nurse waiting to take your place........

slightly more? it is 400 a month more and my cost of liveing in Ohio is far cheaper than yours. Somehow my company does verry well with its highly paid highly motivated work force. Gee I wish I didnt have to work in the union I could make less money and pay more for insurance. I just waste that 400 anyhow on clothes, tires on my daughters car, braces for the kids. Vet bills for the family pet, dumb stuff like that

Please what was not accurate in the Video? anything would be a fine place to start.

Please what was not accurate in the Video? anything would be a fine place to start.

Some will love this others hate it but it is accurate.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8z0454IcJ7o

John Barry has written what I will call the "move on" defense of the Bush administration in this week's Newsweek. The idea is that it is fairly clear that the Bush administration violated the law in several instances, but since we already know this and his party has already lost an election, let's just move on already.

You can read the piece here and you can see that I am not exaggerating at all. That is truly his argument. In fact, we will have Barry on the show on Monday to talk to him about this article.

If I seem incredulous at that argument, that's because I am. They never taught me that one in law school. "Look, your honor, we know my client committed this crime, we've already caught him and the victim is already dead. So, let's just move on already!"

To say Bush's defense is that his opponents want "political vengeance" is a non sequitur. Couldn't every trial in the country be characterized as some sort of "vengeance" based on this logic?

The reaction to his law breaking cannot be a defense for his law breaking. "Your honor, your attempt to try my client is an act of vengeance that justifies my client's original law breaking. Hence, he should not be held accountable for his crimes." Would that argument make any sense in the context of any other crime? You would get laughed out of court. They might revoke your admission to the bar.

But we're told that in the political context it makes sense. I think the exact opposite is true. I think it is even more important that we hold our elected leaders to an even higher standard than the average citizen. They are entrusted with enforcing the laws. If they are the ones who break them, society is in much larger trouble.

Bush clearly ordered spying on American citizens without a court order. Everyone knows this. Bush has even admitted it (after originally lying about it). This is clearly illegal. What is the defense? It's legal if the president does it? I think I've heard that one before.

This law is an admonition against the government. If no one in government can be tried for it because it would be "political vengeance" to do so, then the law has no meaning.

The same is true of torture. If a citizen waterboards someone, that is aggravated assault. If the state does it, it is torture. It is by definition a governmental crime. Who do we prosecute if the government has immunity because of the "move on" defense?

Torture is against federal statute and our treaties prohibiting its use are the law of the land. If you allow the Bush administration to do this without any repercussions at all, then you might as well take the law off the books. Because then the state can torture anyone they like. Because prosecuting them would be "political vengeance."

Some will argue that these things were not technically illegal because the Office of Legal Counsel at the Justice Department authorized them. In these cases, the OLC was not an independent actor; they were part of the executive branch and a partner in crime. If Bush said he would like the authorization to kill innocent people and the OLC gave it to him, would it be legal?

By the way, this is not theoretical. The Bush administration's orders did in fact lead to the deaths of many innocent people, like the murder by torture of a taxi-driver named Dilawar at Bagram Air Base. That's what happens when you do illegal torture. Sometimes it gets out of hand. That's part of the treason we passed laws against it.

Now, some can also make a persuasive case for investigating the Bush administration's lies that got us into the Iraq War. There is almost no doubt that the Bush administration manipulated intelligence to get us into that war, but I think that is a harder legal case to prove and it gets too close to policy-making for my comfort.

But these decisions are not mine to make. We should appoint a clearly unbiased independent prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald for example, and let him investigate what was and was not clearly illegal. Fitzgerald is a very careful prosecutor. As we saw in the Libby case, he is not going to overreach. I would be very surprised if he brought up charges on the Iraq War and I would be curious to see where he comes out on torture and illegal spying given the OLC defense. But at the very least, we have to have someone look into this. If we don't, our laws against government power become meaningless.

If the state can say that they have a "move on" defense and that any prosecution against them is an act of "political vengeance," then they will have carte blanche to break any law they like. For me, this isn't about politics. The American people have already rendered their judgment in that sphere. I'm very comfortable with their decision in that regard. I can even see some people's concerns that this might backfire politically on the Democrats. But that is not my concern.

This is about precedent. How many presidents can we allow to break the law before it becomes de facto legal for the president to break the law? In other words, before it becomes legal because the president did it!

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http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/19992