January 10, 2017

Unions Facing the Trump Era by Jonathan Rosenblum January 3, 2017

Beginning in 1979 in Seattle, WA, Jim Levitt expertly fabricated custom aircraft parts and tools, helping make the Boeing Company one of the most successful businesses in the world. But in 2013, corporate executives issued a threat: They demanded that Levitt and his fellow machinists surrender their pensions, and that Washington State political leaders hand over a record $8.7 billion in tax benefits. In exchange the company promised to keep production jobs in-state. The Democratic governor of Washington, along with virtually the entire political establishment, caved in to the blackmail. So did Levitt’s international union leadership – they had bargained the deal secretly with the company. The capitulation cost 32,000 Boeing workers their pensions.

“We’ve lost collective bargaining, for all intents and purposes,” Levitt observed in the wake of the corporate blackmail. In recent weeks we’ve seen no shortage of reasons – and excuses – for why Hillary Clinton blew the election and Donald Trump will be our next president: the Russians, an unfair Electoral College system, FBI Director James Comey, xenophobia/racism/sexism, a weak Democratic candidate, Wikileaks, and faked news. Some Clinton backers even blame the “tough” primary run that Bernie Sanders gave their candidate. What’s barely given any attention in the mainstream media is the role that decades of destruction of union power played in the 2016 election debacle. But it’s no mystery to Levitt, his fellow Boeing workers, and millions of other workers from all walks of life who’ve justifiably grown cynical about a political establishment that repeatedly has failed them over the years.

This, my friends, is the difference between third way and New Deal socialist Democrats. A lot of people are cynical, and we blame them for that, particularly if they voted Trump or worse, did not vote at all. But Levitt and his fellow union machinists were betrayed, simple as that. They have every right to be cynical; they had a reasonable expectation that our party to help them when Boeing made the attempt to steal their pensions, but our party did not.

Decades of Democratic leaders caving in to corporate crimes has so eroded our party's base that it has made the entire American public a bit cynical. It is sometimes difficult to understand what our party actually stands for, particularly when we can observe that much of our leadership has the same corporate donor base as the other party.

We have to learn, people, to better articulate our positions (and please don't say we did a good job of that, because we did NOT). We must also learn to stand up against the immorality and odiousness of corporate greed like the Washington Dems DID NOT. We need to call things like what Boeing did what they are - horrible moral wrongs foisted off on innocent people so corporate coffers can become even more swollen with profits.

Start doing that and backing it up with deeds, legislation, and votes, and we will begin winning elections. Most Americans HATE living and functioning in this dog-eat-dog 'real world.' They yearn for something else, leaders who at least try to mitigate the worst of the corporate greed, employee, consumer and environmental abuse, and who address the yearning we all have within our hearts for a kinder, gentler world where we can at least sometimes believe justice will prevail.

I don't, in short, want to be told that my way isn't even feasible because that's not how the world works. blah blah blah.

Because to that I say, "WHY????"

When our party leaders hear messages like this, and act on them, then we will begin winning elections and we together will create a better world.

November 25, 2016

A rant from a loyal Democrat.

When I think of my own purchasing power and how it has dramatically declined since the 1990s, it makes me sick. I blame the 'free trade' policies which were never about moving goods and services over international boundaries - we could already do that just fine. Nope. These 'free trade' agreements are about moving capital over international boundaries. The idea that a factory can move its jobs from Flint, MI to someplace like Indonesia, get tax breaks and even be able to 'offshore' the profits so they DON'T EVEN PAY US INCOME TAX is wrong. But hey, look at GE and numerous others who have said 'goodbye' to paying US income tax.

Basically, the working class has gotten fucked since 1948 when Taft-Hartley passed and it was no longer legal for unions to strike in sympathy with one another. Because, I'll tell you, this 'primacy of shareholder' theory where the CEO of a publicly held company is ONLY expected to increase value for shareholders (at the expense of the workers, the consumers, the community and the world environment, including the climate) is FUCKED. Without workers there can be NO profit, so if we all put our hands in our pockets for a few weeks and resisted the massive pressures put on us individually and as a group by corporate enforcers, we'd get some action. But, gosh, that's now illegal...

So now, I get to go to the store and pay and pay and pay. More and more and more. For less and less and less. I've got shitty, rationed healthcare with financially crippling copays. I have no real economic security because my employer can fuck with me at will - gee, I live in a 'Right to Work' state! Talk about an anti-worker concept.

And the people in my state just overturned an amendment that would keep our private prisons from profiting from the slave labor of prisoners.

The ice caps are melting at a truly scary rate and in ten years this world may not be recognizable, but we STILL pander to shitheads who think the world is 6000 years old and climate change doesn't exist.

So...I think you get it...I'M FUCKING MAD.

The neoliberal economic philosophy of 'privatize, deregulate and gut New Deal programs' purposely rapes our treasury and prevents OUR tax dollars that WE pay into OUR government that is supposedly OF, BY and FOR us, the people from being used for anything that actually makes our lives better. Instead we fund war, 'defense,' massive domestic spying and other useless shit that we don't need.

And, instead of getting rid of the Federal Reserve Act of 1912 and coining our own money like it says in Article II of our Constitution, we foolishly pay back money we should 'owe' ourselves to bankers with interest.

So, because of this SHIT we live in a world of artificially created scarcity, with the mistaken idea drummed into us for years and years that we have to be rugged individuals and pull ourselves up by our bootstraps, and helping others has become a radical political position...gasp...socialism!

Yeah, I'm plenty mad. But I'm educated. I have a graduate degree. I keep abreast of issues. I watch our corporate owned media and the right-wing corporate propaganda noise machine keeping our people ignorant.

And I want to PUKE.

I voted for Clinton, but it should be REAL EASY for any Democrat in any kind of responsible party position to see how someone as angry as I am could see Clinton as the quintessential establishment candidate and instead vote for Trump, because hey, the establishment has been fucking me since 1980 unrelentingly and now I can vote in an OUTSIDER who will make change.

See?

This is the DANGER of grossly misreading the mood of the people. I'm sorry to offend some of you but we ran a weak establishment candidate in an election where the working class is in near revolt against the very establishment she represented. How can we be surprised we LOST?

Oh, and we've REALLY LOST. Under a Trump administration, we're fucked. So now...I'm MAD at the Democratic party, too. And I have this friendly advice for any powerful Dem apparatchiks reading this rant - GET THE HEAD OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY OUT OF ITS PROVERBIAL RECTUM AND START LISTENING. I can well remember how patronizing the Democratic establishment was as it crushed Bernie, who maybe could have won. "Oh, well, none of these things are practical..."

But, LISTEN UP. I don't want practical...I want CHANGE.

LISTEN.

November 2, 2016

Election Day Is Less Than A Week Away, And We Still Don’t Know James Comey’s Next Move

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/james-comey-clinton-fbi_us_5818c17fe4b064e1b4b4f0b4

I know where this guy's next move should be:

OUT

as in FIRED, and

prosecuted for failure to comply with the Hatch Act.

What has this country come to where an odious asshole like Trump might actually WIN????????????????

October 28, 2016

GOP Senator Makes Distasteful Remark About His War-Hero Opponent’s Ancestry

So here's the quote from the HuffPo article:

Illinois Republican Sen. Mark Kirk made an ill-advised jab about the birthplace and ancestry of his Democratic opponent, Rep. Tammy Duckworth, during a debate on Thursday. Duckworth, who is challenging Kirk for his seat, had just finished talking about her military service and that of her ancestors, dating back to the Revolutionary War.

“I forgot that your parents came all the way from Thailand to serve George Washington,” Kirk said in the debate at the University of Illinois Springfield. It was an odd comment from a senator who has a reputation for making odd comments, but particularly impolitic given his opponent’s backstory. Duckworth was born in Thailand to an U.S. Marine father and a Thai mother of Chinese descent.

Makes me feel like giving some money to Duckworth's campaign.

Sigh...

Link: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/mark-kirk-tammy-duckworth_us_5812b694e4b0390e69cf47d0

October 11, 2016

GOP Senator Says Grabbing A Woman’s Genitals Is Not Sexual Assault

"I think that's a stretch."



That's right...it's Jeff Sessions, that paragon of Republican manhood!

I'm really having a hard time stopping laughing here.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/jeff-sessions-trump-sexual-assault_us_57fbb902e4b068ecb5e06988?section=us_politics

October 10, 2016

Just a comment from the peanut gallery...

Clinton is doing REALLY GOOD on this debate. Really good.

October 8, 2016

Will this new Trump outrage go 'full Cosby?'

CNN anchor relays hauntingly familiar story of Donald Trump making vulgar advances. Here's a couple of fun links:

http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/10/08/1579304/-This-is-not-how-men-talk-It-s-how-sexual-predators-talk

http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/10/08/1579350/-Is-the-flood-starting-Another-disendorsement

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/10/08/1579309/-Just-beginning-CNN-anchor-relays-hauntingly-familiar-story-of-Donald-Trump-making-vulgar-advances

Okay, that's enough. I've been appalled by Trump since he slithered out of his man-cave to engage in the GOP primaries. You know what bugs me the most? The guy is CLEARLY not qualified to be president at all, but people keep supporting him. Get out a vote folks - FOR CLINTON - because if this cretin gets anywhere near the White House we'll all be livin' that dystopian dream.

September 12, 2016

Pastor Allen Joyner says people who don't stand for national anthem should be shot

So...does this make you wonder if this guy serves the other side...

You know...

The 'Adversary.'

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/pastor-allen-joyner-national-anthem-shot_us_57d61590e4b03d2d459b0ec6?section=&

I mean, when I think of a real Christian, and I mean a real one - the message is love, don't judge, be kind, be merciful.

LOL. Looks like Joyner missed that part of the Bible, doesn't it?

August 18, 2016

His eyes stare coldly into the distance, hardened by thousands of executive decisions

designed to raise value for shareholders without regard to the environment, the community or the customers who depend on his company...

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Meet Mark Bertolini, CEO of Aetna, which has recently pulled out of the Affordable Care Act public exchanges in all but four states, citing 'persistent losses' in the face of overall profit increase of 38% in the final quarter of 2015.

So...what is the REAL REASON Aetna pulled out of ACA, you ask? Heck, they're making plenty of money.

Well, here it is: The real reason Aetna pulled out of the ACA was the big, bad US Justice Department opposed its proposed merger with Humana.

That's right. You heard correctly. IT'S A PISSING CONTEST!!!

Bertolini said, "It is very likely that we would need to leave the public exchange business entirely and plan for additional business efficiencies (euphemism for threatened layoffs - my note) should our deal ultimately be blocked."

Here's the link to the capitalist criminal's profit mongering reasoning behind his company's recent move, which hurts individual Americans like you and me: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/aetna-obamacare-pullout-humana-merger_us_57b3d747e4b04ff883996a13?

August 16, 2016

Aetna drops Obamacare in all but 4 states, citing persistent losses.

Somebody at HuffPo decided to turn off the copy ability from their articles, but here's the link: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/aetna-obamacare_us_57b262cbe4b0c75f49d7eb27?section=us_politics

I just have two words to say about this:

Single payer, single payer, single payer, single payer, single payer, single payer, single payer.

Single

Payer

Single payer.

It is the RIGHT thing to do because it removes profit from the healthcare equation. Healthcare is a BASIC RIGHT. That means that ALL AMERICANS should be able to access healthcare. WHEN, do you think, will we rearrange at least our healthcare system around human need rather than human greed?

When???

Single payer.