supporter
Posted by Stone (+1594) 16 years ago
With all the partisan bickering in the "budget" post it occurred to me that we are right were the true rulers of America want us. Bickering amongst ourselves while they rule the world and increase profits. The nonpartisan, billionaire, puppet masters control our lives and you fools just do not get it. Partisan politics is a yoke of slavery around the necks of the middle class. Keep arguing until you have no rights left because things like NAFTA, CAFTA and homeland security have taken your freedoms and you are to blind to see it.

The Marriage of Hypocrisy and Corruption


By David Sirota

We all know that special interests talk out of both sides of their mouths whenever they are trying to buy public policy. But in recent weeks, we have seen glaring examples of sheer hypocrisy that are eye-popping, even by Washington standards. On issues from pharmaceutical prices to democracy to trade, lobbyists are stepping all over their own rhetoric in attempts to keep Congress from embracing a populist, middle-class agenda.

The first example came when corporations recently pulled out all the stops against the Employee Free Choice Act, the legislation that strengthens workers' democratic rights to form unions. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce issued a press release claiming it opposed the bill because it supposedly "undermines the fundamental concept of our workplace democracy." Yet, just days later, the president of the Business Roundtable attacked legislation strengthening company shareholders' ability to vote down exorbitant executive pay packages, saying that "corporations were never designed to be democracies." Yes, Corporate America wants Congress to believe that it is worried about workers' democratic rights at the very same time it is telling shareholders (the owners of the companies) that they should have no democratic rights at all.

On international trade, it's the same thing. With a new Wall Street Journal poll showing that Americans are more skeptical of America's job-destroying trade policy than ever, the Financial Times recently reported that CEOs are pressuring Congress to drop any and all efforts to place basic labor standards in new trade pacts. "Top business leaders warned that placing strict rules on working conditions in bilateral trade agreements would threaten the U.S.'s ability to make pacts with emerging economies," the Times story said, quoting one CEO "saying that emerging economies could not be expected to have the same labor standards as developed and fully industrialized nations."

Of course, the hypocrisy is that you don't hear any of the same complaints about the thousands of pages of strict patent, intellectual property and copyright protections rammed into these deals - protections that, for instance, artificially inflate the prices of life- saving medicines in the developing world.

The selective arguments expect lawmakers to arrive at the absurd conclusion that preventing countries from enslaving children or violently crushing unions is less important and far more difficult than preventing countries from producing counterfeit medicines or pirated DVDs.

Not surprisingly, the pharmaceutical industry has been one of the strongest proponents of these unfair trade deals. Drug industry lobbyists tell Congress that more trade deals are necessary to help consumers all over the world gain expanded access to medicine. Yet, at the same time, the Associated Press recently reported, "the pharmaceutical lobby pushed back against a renewed effort in the U.S. Congress to pass a law enabling American consumers to buy cheaper prescription drugs from Canada and other countries." The bipartisan legislation would allow individuals and pharmacies to order lower-priced FDA-approved drugs from 19 countries.
The industry claims its opposition is motivated by safety concerns, even though other industrialized countries that have long engaged in drug importation have reported no safety issues, and even though our own FDA told Congress it could not produce even one example of counterfeit medicines harming American consumers who already travel to Canada to purchase medicines. The real motivation is obvious: Drug companies want free trade deals to expand their patent reach in other countries, but ultra-protectionist measures here at home - all in order to keep consumers paying inflated prices.

What's troubling about this behavior is not that Corporate America pursues profit at all cost, but the admission of corruption inherent in the utter disregard for consistency. When moneyed interests no longer even hesitate to contradict themselves in presenting arguments to Congress, they signal an assumption that hypocritical policy rationales can now be entirely trumped by big campaign contributions. And with Washington policymakers happily embracing such dishonesty, the problem for the rest of America is that this assumption is entirely accurate.
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Posted by Jay (+278) 16 years ago
Very good. No matter what ones political ilk may be, who could argue about this. Again, very good.
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supporter
Posted by Rick Kuchynka (+4461) 16 years ago
The first example came when corporations recently pulled out all the stops against the Employee Free Choice Act, the legislation that strengthens workers' democratic rights to form unions.

Since when was the abolishment of the secret ballot considered protecting "free choice"???

We all know that labor unions have had a pristine reputation of protecting individual rights. (ie for many "Teamsters" is synonymous with organized crime.)

But I'm sure if GW were calling for the government to have a record of how everyone voted in the next general election, it would be referred to by union members as "Free Choice" These underhanded and unamerican tactics show just how desperate labor unions have become.

[This message has been edited by Rick Kuchynka (edited 4/1/2007).]
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supporter
Posted by Levi Forman (+3710) 16 years ago
Keep arguing until you have no rights left because things like NAFTA, CAFTA and homeland security have taken your freedoms and you are to blind to see it.

Huh? I don't follow the logic that free trade is taking my "freedoms".
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supporter
Posted by Stone (+1594) 16 years ago
Rise up old Joe Hill

Rick, it is good to see that you remain patrician no matter what. I am sure that the "Right to Work" web site is in your favorites file.
To bring up Teamsters and their relationship with organized crime is like limiting discussions about WWII to the internment of Japanese American citizens. Lets not discuss the good things that unions have provided every citizen in the U.S. just Jimmy Hoffa. Teamsters and organized crime are synonymous because that is the only thing ever taught about Labor History. For a more encompassing prospective go to http://www.kentlaw.edu/ilhs/curricul.htm to learn more.

As far as secret ballots go most State National Labor Relation Board's do not recognize them. Instead they have 50+1 card signing. That is the easiest way to form a union get 50+1 signatures and you have a union, unless the National Labor Relations board is packed with antiunion, procorperate cronies. The Republican run NLRB has turned the National Labor Relation Act into a farce. Ironically enough Corporate backed politician both republican and democrat have absolutely gutted labor law. When a union comes into a work place the employees that are opposed can call for Hudson Fair Share to avoid joining, so no one is forced to join the union. The teachers union in Miles City is by volunteer only. Closed shops are an unfortunate relic of the past. Why is that unfortunate- because nonunion employees receive the same benefits as good standing union members?

The University of Harvard and the University of Wisconsin ran polls and found that 42 million Americans would like to join a Union but have not had the opportunity. They also found that many of the people that voted against joining a Union did so out of employer intimidation and harassment. In 1997 NAFTA administrators found out that over half the companies whose employees tried to join a union threaten to close their doors. (Needless to say this did not encourage NAFTA administrators to put labor concerns into their agreement.) These companies are willing to spend millions of dollars to keep out a thousand dollar union. A billion dollar cottage industry has developed around busting unions. You do not have to look any further than Miles City to witness that. Their union negotiator has made around $100,000 fighting local unions.

Your buddy Tom Delay hates Unions so bad that he called the teachers union, "a clear and present danger to the United States and that unions were an enemy of freedom and democracy." Business interest gave $100 million dollars in campaign contributions to members of two congressional committees that oversee labor laws in America in order to insure Union suppression.

Rick, you said that, "The private-sector union is a dinosaur. The end is near." You might be right but I would argue that the dinosaur was created by the constant onslaught of antiunion legislation and rhetoric perpetuated by corporate paid union busters, congressmen both democrat and republican.

Levi, you said, "I don't follow the logic that free trade is taking my "freedoms"." The NAFTA free trade agreement has language in it that supercedes the U.S. Constitution. I am not opposed to free Trade as a concept I only think that it should include labor concerns in the body of the agreement.

Rick I think I am going to reframe from many more conversations with you about Unions. We will just be beating a dead horse.


[This message has been edited by Stone (edited 4/2/2007).]
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supporter
Posted by Stone (+1594) 16 years ago
Today the South Korean government rammed through a flawed trade deal
to make sure it's included under Bush's Fast Track
trade-promotion authority--but the pact contains no enforceable
protections for workers' core rights, and it will undermine both
governments' ability to protect food safety, the environment and
public health. It does not matter which party you are in Big Buisness will get it's way.
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supporter
Posted by Rick Kuchynka (+4461) 16 years ago
I don't really care who's backing what or who recognizes what or why. I don't understand how eliminating the secret ballot in union elections favors "free choice."

The secret election is the only time people can voice their real opinion without fear of retribution from either employers or coworkers.

I think the reason unions want this so bad is because they know alot of people get peer-pressured into signing union election cards (knowing they can then vote against the union in secret)
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supporter
Posted by Rick Kuchynka (+4461) 16 years ago
"You might be right but I would argue that the dinosaur was created by the constant onslaught of antiunion legislation and rhetoric perpetuated by corporate paid union busters."

And I would argue that unions are dying because they've pushed their sense of entitlement too far, and are no longer competitive, even when compared to non-union workers in the United States.

Refer to those Big 3 Vs. Toyota, Honda, and Nissan articles I posted on another thread. American-owned automakers are being driven into the ground because UAW workers are too expensive. The foreign automakers aren't handcuffed to UAW, and are subsequently putting UAW shops out of business. And the people working in those new factories know it. UAW has tried to unionize those foreign-owned factories, but the employees there are smart enough to say no.

Like everything, there's a balance. I've never been anti-union in principle. They had their purpose at one time, and may have a purpose again. But at this juncture, I'd say they've overreached, and are now suffering the consequences.
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Posted by Stone (+1594) 16 years ago
Rick, that is pure excrement. No union has driven people out of business, GREED and the bottom line (dividend Check) is what they want and they do not want their employees hands on any of it. To put ones employer out of business would be career suicide. Although there might be an example of that in MC.

Rick, you said," I don't really care who's backing what or who recognizes what or why". That is your problem you look at the outside of you political house but you never go inside to see who is paying the bills. Both parties are rolling in corrupt blood money and people do not seem to care.

Rick you also said, "And I would argue that unions are dying because they've pushed their sense of entitlement too far, and are no longer competitive, even when compared to non-union workers in the United States".

Hers the truth Rick,

" The typical coverage of labor disputes goes something like this: A corporate executive pleads poverty for his company, claiming he needs to "renegotiate" the preexisting contract with the union that represents the company's workers. That "renegotiation" inevitably includes massive wage cuts and health care benefit cuts. The public is told that if workers don't except the cuts, the company will go belly up-leading us to believe that the unions success in securing decent wages and benefits for its members is the reason the company is in trouble. This all fits perfectly into the overall portrayal of unions as evil, overly powerful monsters whose only goal is to bleed companies dry."

"What rarely gets reported by the media or regulated by politicians, however, are the unethical and dishonest shenanigans that run counter to this one sided story line. We rarely hear how these same executive pleading poverty often not only refuse to take the same pay cuts they are demanding from the workers, but actually give themselves pay increases. We rarely hear how the company that is supposedly going bankrupt is actually sitting on a hidden pile of cash- some of it being used for vicious antiunion attacks."

Example- "In 2005, Northwest Airlines executives demanded $175 million in wage and benefit cuts from its mechanics, pleading poverty. Yet when those mechanics reacted by going on strike, the New York Times revealed that in the month leading up to the demand for wage and benefit cuts, "the airline spent more than $100 million to hire and train 1,500 substitutes. If the company was in such severe financial straits that workers pay/benefits were required, how did executives have $100 million to throw around in antiunion activities."

"In 2005, executive at Ford and GM started making it known that they wanted its workers union to agree to wage/benefits cuts because the companies had hit a financial bump in the road. But buried in the Business Week story like a needle in a haystack was the truth. Both companies also have huge cash hoards," the magazine noted. "$20 billion at GM and $23 billion at Ford." What's more, the magazine reported that Ford and GM "execs aren't sharing in the pain they are prescribing for workers"-a major red flag of dishonesty. The magazine pointed out that when Chrysler pled poverty and secured wage cuts in 1981, "Chrysler canceled its stockholder dividend, top execs took a 10 percent pay cut and Lee Iacocca worked for a dollar that year." But in 2005 "both GM and Ford still pay a dividend, and GM CEO G. Richard Wagoner Jr. got a $2.5 million bonus for 2004 on top of his $2.2 million dollar salary."

"This is an example of how politicians and the wealthy are more than happy to create one set of standards for ordinary people and another set for themselves. Unions they are telling us are menacing mafia-esque organizations that need a crackdown. Think Al Capone. But corporations, we are told, are honest and clean. Think Enron." Or Montana Power.

"Labor expert Nathan Newman notes that what's really amazing is just how clean the labor movement is in comparison with Corporate America."
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supporter
Posted by Rick Kuchynka (+4461) 16 years ago
Rick, you said," I don't really care who's backing what or who recognizes what or why". That is your problem you look at the outside of you political house but you never go inside to see who is paying the bills. Both parties are rolling in corrupt blood money and people do not seem to care.

No, what I said was...

I don't really care who's backing what or who recognizes what or why. I don't understand how eliminating the secret ballot in union elections favors "free choice."

I said I don't care because I wanted to set all the other points of contention aside, and get an answer to this one burning question...

I don't understand how eliminating the secret ballot in union elections favors "free choice."

Please, explain this to me. Just so we don't get distracted, I'll concede every other point and drop the whole thing right now if we can just have this one answer.
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supporter
Posted by Richard Bonine, Jr (+15535) 16 years ago
Brady: What in the world do you have against a company making a profit? As a small business, I need to make minimum 15% gross profit just to keep the doors open. Only if I do that can I afford to give employees benefits like 401k's or SEP accounts, etc. It is really difficult to do this when my competition doesn't care about quality work, hires unqualified help and pays them 30% less than our company.

I have worked around both unionized and non-unionized coal mines for the last 20 years. On a couple of occasion I have had to cross picket lines. I can tell you that in every instance non-union mines are much better run and more productive than union operations.

I would urge you to rethink your apparent hate of those entities that pay a lot in taxes, take risks to employee people, and make our economic system the envy of the rest of the world.
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Posted by Stone (+1594) 16 years ago
Richard and Rick, I agree to disagree.

In Solidarity, Brady
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Posted by Stone (+1594) 16 years ago
OK, I lied.

Richard said, "Brady: What in the world do you have against a company making a profit? As a small business, I need to make minimum 15% gross profit just to keep the doors open. Only if I do that can I afford to give employees benefits like 401k's or SEP accounts, etc. It is really difficult to do this when my competition doesn't care about quality work, hires unqualified help and pays them 30% less than our company."

First of all Richard very few small business are in partnerships with unions unless you live in Butte.

Richard you also said, "I would urge you to rethink your apparent hate of those entities that pay a lot in taxes, take risks to employee people, and make our economic system the envy of the rest of the world."
Richard, I have nothing but admiration and patriotism for democracy, capitalism, and profit. However, I have pure hatred for sinful CEO's who take advantage of there employees and rob them blind, treat them like property, steal there pension plans, inflate stock prices, post date stock options, cut health insurance, outsource and hire union busters for more money than they would have ever given there employees with a union raise. Greed is only good for Gordon Gecko and nonprofits hiding under the economic veil of religion. Do you think we are still the envy of the world? Maybe?

I fail to understand why average people have an executive mentality, about things like layoffs and outsourcing. There are middle class people who have been brainwashed into believing that these are just sound business practices. When in fact, along with a few other things, they are ripping apart the very fabric of the middle class. Class warfare has arrived and to speak out against the atrocities of the rich is not undemocratic, unpatriotic or socialist. It is common sense piety. Fighting against economic dictators and Neo-feudal lords is the good fight. Sitting by and excepting what has happened to the middle class and shrugging it off as good business is pathetic. Corporate greed and domination of the middle class flies in the face of everything Christian. Not to speak out against these corporate sins is un-American. Are there good CEO"S and good employers? Of course and not surprisingly they are usually not union. Those companies do not need unions. In a perfect world union would not be needed. Unfortunately they are needed as never before.


It's no accident that the 25-year decline in workers' wages in our country has paralleled a 25-year slide in the size of the America's unions. There is a reason that 60 million Americans want to join a union. Even the wealthiest nation in the world -the United States of America-fails to adequately protect workers' rights to form unions and bargain collectively. Millions of U.S. workers lack any legal protection to form unions and thousands are discriminated against every year for trying to exercise these rights. The right to form unions, the right to quality health care, the right to bargain collectively, and the right to safe workplaces are non-negotiable. Too often American workers face harassment, intimidation, and coercion when they try to exercise the right to join a union. The Employee Free Choice Act preserves this fundamental freedom, benefiting all American workers and their families. The right to join a union should be a fundamental right in America. It should be added to the bill of rights.

Rick, I red the entire FCA and found no mention of anonymous voting. It states that a petition or card signing 50+1 = a union. Not in that simplistic of terms. That seems to be all that I can tell you about it. The entire document is three pages long and is an amendment to the National Labor Relations Act. I do not see anything that suggests coercion on the part of the bipartisan authors. If you believe that there is more union harassment of nonunion workers than there is employer harassment of pro-union workers then we will probably never come to an agreement of this issue. But I would suggest that there has probably been harassment of pro-union employees in this town, maybe even by employers that you know. Ask around- you might learn something--
http://www.kentlaw.edu/ilhs/curricul.htm

1936
The United Rubber Workers (CIO), in the first large sit-down strike, won recognition at Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co.
In Flint, Michigan, United Auto Workers make effective use of the sit-down strike in a General Motors plant.
The Anti-Strikebreaker Act (Byrnes Act) declared it unlawful to transport or aid strikebreakers in interstate or foreign trade.
The Public Contracts Act (Walsh-Healey Act) established labor standards, including minimum wages, overtime pay, child and convict labor provisions, and safety standards on all federal contracts.
1937
General Motors agreed to recognize the United Auto Workers (CIO) as the bargaining agents for autoworkers and not discriminate against union members following a year of sit-down strikes.
US Steel recognizes the Steel Workers Organizing Committee as the official bargaining agent of the steel workers. Workers also earn a 10% wage increase and a 8 hour day/40 hour week.
The Wagner Act (National Labor Relations Act) was declared Constitutional by the Supreme Court (NLRB v. Jones & Laughlin Steel Corp.).

The 1936 sit down strike in Flint Michigan by UAW of General Motors virtually over night created the existence of the middle class. (8 hour day and 40 hour week bacame commonplace)Before that you were either poor or rich. You worked for the rich at a starvation wages or you did not work. Can you imagine if that were true today you were either be rich or poor. If you were not rich you could not buy a house, send your kid to school of college. You would not have the middle class amenities and modern conveniences. Your wage would be that of a third world labor force.

So that's why they want to move there companies and factories to the third world - in order to make more money and to do away with the only thing standing in the way of world wide economic domination of globalism. The middle class of America. Who never existed before 1936
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supporter
Posted by Stone (+1594) 16 years ago
More on Corperate domination

by David Sirota

1. How many jobs need to be eliminated and how long to wages have to stagnate before Democrats stop promoting the orthodoxy that says Bob Rubin is the greatest economic guru in American history?

As writer Bill Greider notes, when Citigroup executive "Robert Rubin speaks his mind, his thoughts on economic policy are the gold standard for the Democratic Party." The former Clinton Treasury Secretary is considered by Democratic policymakers to be a deity on everything from trade to job creation. Yet, pick up the New York Times today, and you will note that at the same time Rubin is being asked by candidates like Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama to write their economic policy platforms, Rubin is overseeing one of the largest single layoffs in recent memory, with Citigroup announcing plans to fire 17,000 employees. Meanwhile, nobody bothers to mention that Rubin's supposedly stellar record on behalf of ordinary workers - the record that purportedly gives him his moxie in Democratic circles - is actually fairly unimpressive. United for a Fair Economy's new report shows that during the Clinton years, wages stagnated, even as CEO pay and corporate profits rose - and worse, immediately after Rubin's crowning achievement, the China PNTR deal, passed, those divergences intensified.

I say this record "purportedly" gives Rubin his moxie among Democrats, because that's only the public rationale. Democrats know all of the hard data - they know Rubinomics helped rig an economy that creates much, much more for much, much fewer people. But they also know that Bob Rubin can deliver a lot of Wall Street cash to a political campaign. And so the question remains: At what point do all of the undebatable economic data overwhelm the manufactured orthodoxy of "Rubin as guru" that this corporate moneyman is able to buy from Democrats with his Wall Street cash? Is laying off 17,000 workers not enough? How many does he have to layoff to lose his luster? And how much flatter do national wage trends have to be for the chief economic architect of those wage trends to lose the "guru" label?

2. How many union organizers have to be executed, forests defoliated and children enslaved before Washington politicians stop promoting the orthodoxy that "free" trade is designed to help people in the developing world?

Unable to explain away the economic destruction "free" trade pacts have wrought in America, the last refuge of the "free" trade fundamentalists in Washington is the claim that pacts like NAFTA are all about helping poor people in impoverished countries like Mexico. We are supposed to simply ignore the fact that, say, 19 million more Mexicans have been driven into poverty since that pact was signed. But perhaps even worse, we are expected to be prospectively ignorant - that is, project ignorance into the future by ignoring things right here in the present, before we sign new trade pacts. As I noted in a post yesterday, President Bush is pushing a proposed U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement as a way to promote "freedom and prosperity" in that country. Yet, as the Washington Post reports, the Colombian government that Bush is proposing to reward with this trade pact in the name of "freedom and prosperity" is right now helping paramilitary death squads execute workers who join unions. This says nothing of the other trade pacts being pushed that economically reward countries that have no basic environmental or child labor standards.

Obviously, the politicians pushing these trade pacts know all of this - but they also know huge corporate money is behind the drive for trade agreements that create an international legal framework for cost-cutting human and environmental exploitation. So again, the question is simple: At what point do the human and ecological data surpass the orthodoxy that claims this trade policy is good for people in the developing world?

3. When will corporate executives and politicians stop citing retail sector "challenges" as the rationale for the orthodoxy that says retail workers must be paid substandard wages?

Executives, economist and other corporate apologists tell us that the low wage orthodoxy at places like Wal-Mart is justified because the retail sector supposedly subsists on tiny profit margins. Even after taking a peek at Wal-Mart's healthy, multi-billion dollar profit margins, that justification might hold a drop of water, except when you read a story like this one in the New York Times about how executive pay in the retail industry is skyrocketing. How high do profit margins and executive salaries have to go for "experts" to stop assuming the orthodoxy that says low wages in the retail sector are an economic necessity?

4. How clear do the numbers have to be for the media to stop parroting President Bush's claims that negotiations over military funding are endangering troops?

It seems everywhere you look, major newspaper reporters are transcribing President Bush's claim that congressional negotiations over the Iraq War supplemental bill are delaying money that the military imminently needs, and that this supposed delay is endangering the troops. This is a version of the Washington orthodoxy that claims any congressional input into or restrictions on military spending threatens to "cut off funds for the troops" and effectively leave American soldiers naked, starving and unarmed in a Baghdad shooting gallery. Yet, as at least some trade journals like National Journal note, the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service has definitively reported that "the Pentagon can finance military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan until as late as July." Faced with these facts, when will the media and politicians back off the fact-free, "you are cutting off funds for the troops" orthodoxy?

5. How specific did the Founding Fathers have to be about three separate, equal branches of government for today's Washington power-worshipers to back off the orthodoxy that claims the President of the United States is an all-powerful king?
This past Sunday's Meet the Press roundtable (stacked, of course, with a right-wing pundit and no progressive counter-voice) provided a typical view into power-worshiping, constitutionally-illiterate Washington. Tim Russert read a Washington Post editorial criticizing a visit by Speaker Nancy Pelosi to Syria which claimed she was "attempt[ing] to establish a shadow presidency" by "substitut[ing] her own foreign policy" for the White House's. That Pelosi delivered the White House's exact policy in her message to Syria, that Pelosi was accompanied by Republican lawmakers, and that Pelosi was following in the well-trodden footsteps of past speakers of both parties wasn't mentioned - but that's not even the point. What's disturbing is the overarching orthodoxy from these Washington pundits that says the leader of a branch of government co-equal to that of the executive branch should have absolutely no voice at all in foreign policy matters and that, in effect, when it comes to issues of global reach, the President is a king.

We are expected to assume that this orthodoxy is exactly the way the Founding Fathers set things up, even though a cursory glance at a 4th grade history book shows that preventing a monarchy like this was precisely the reason the Founding Fathers created co-equal branches of government in the first place. Obviously the president is supposed to be the lead person on foreign affairs, but the idea that constitution somehow declares that the legislative branch should have no say over such matters at all is an insult to the principles this country was founded on. I'm not sure where this Beltway media orthodoxy comes from, beyond basic power-worshiping and vanity. For example, someone like NBC White House reporter David Gregory, desperate to feel important, has proximity to an increasingly irrelevant president, and thus the more he goes on TV
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Posted by Rick Kuchynka (+4461) 16 years ago
Rick, I red the entire FCA and found no mention of anonymous voting. It states that a petition or card signing 50+1 = a union.

Hmmm. Right now:

50+1=Secret Ballot Election

but the new plan is:

50+1=Union

But you can't see where the secret ballot (anonymous) voting is being removed? Your thinking seems troublingly selective.

If you believe that there is more union harassment of nonunion workers than there is employer harassment of pro-union workers then we will probably never come to an agreement of this issue.

I never said that. Common sense would tell you that there's pressure from both sides. So how do you alleviate that pressure on both sides? Obviously with a secret ballot. The only thing I come away with is that unions obviously no longer want a level playing field on this issue.

[This message has been edited by Rick Kuchynka (edited 4/12/2007).]
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