Posted on 03/05/2011 7:45:56 AM PST by BenLurkin
Harry now blames years of union demands for an exodus of manufacturing jobs from this blue-collar city on the shore of Lake Michigan. He praises new Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker for attempting to strip public employee unions of nearly all of their collective bargaining rights. And he wishes police would clear out the pro-union protesters now in their third week of occupation of the Wisconsin Capitol.
(Excerpt) Read more at finance.yahoo.com ...
AP should know better.
I don't think there is a single American poured casting on a Case tractor anymore. China, China, China.
I wonder how much different polling results would be if the question asked about collective bargaining powers as opposed to collective bargaining rights.
It’s great when excerpts begin at the beginning so you can tell what is being written about.
Why should the unionized law enforcement officers (ULEOs) waste their valuable time in this manner. They are valiantly manning the ramparts against all enemies foreign and domestic . . . (you fill in the rest).
I have a little more sympathy for the private sector unions, that I do for the corrupt public sector parasites.
Cue the worlds smallest violin.
We created an artificial middle class of non educated employees through collect bargaining. And now it is coming home to roost.
Coercive "taking" power, when wielded against the citizenry by either the government alone (taxing), or in combination with another power (unions), is destructive of freedom and prosperity.
The following statement by Sir Winston Churchill, upon leaving office as Prime Minister in 1945, was prophetic for Great Britain, and as it turns out, the United States and the world:
"I do not believe in the power of the State to plan and enforce. No matter how numerous are the committees they set up or the ever-growing hordes of officials they employ or the severity of the punishments they inflict or threaten, they can't approach the high level of internal economic production achieved under free enterprise. Personal initiative, competitive selection, and profit motive corrected by failure and the infinite processes of good housekeeping and personal ingenuity, these constitute the life of a free society. It is this vital creative impulse that I deeply fear the doctrines and policies of the socialist government has destroyed. Nothing that they can plan and order and rush around enforcing will take its place. They have broken the main spring and until we get a new one, the watch wil not go. Set the people free. Get out of the way and let them make the best of themselves. I am sure that this policy of equalizing misery and organizing society--instead of allowing diligence, self-interest and ingenuity to produce abundance--has only to be prolonged to kill this British Island stone dead."
In the early days of America's experiment in liberty, its Founders warned of oppressive taxation by those elected to represent the people. Under their "People's" Constitution, the people were left free, and the government was limited.
While Europe struggled with oppressive government intervention, the genius Founders of America recognized enduring truths about human nature, the human tendency to abuse power, and the possibilities of liberty for individuals. Richard Frothingham's 1872 "History of the Rise of the Republic of the United States," Page 14, contained the following footnote item on the condition of citizens of France:
"Footnote 1. M. de Champagny (Dublin Review, April, 1868) says of France, 'We were and are unable to go from Paris to Neuilly; or dine more than twenty together; or have in our portmanteau three copies of the same tract; or lend a book to a friend: or put a patch of mortar on our own house, if it stands in the street; or kill a partridge; or plant a tree near the road-side; or take coal out of our own land: or teach three or four children to read, . .. without permission from the civil government.'"
Clearly the government of France at that 1868 date laid an oppressive regulatory and tax burden on citizens, robbing them of their Creator-endowed liberty and enjoyment thereof. Frothingham observed that such coercive power constituted "a noble form robbed of its lifegiving spirit."
Thomas Jefferson warned Americans:
"To preserve [the] independence [of the people,] we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude. If we run into such debts as that we must be taxed in our meat and in our drink, in our necessaries and our comforts, in our labors and our amusements, for our callings and our creeds, as the people of England are, our people, like them, must come to labor sixteen hours in the twenty-four, give the earnings of fifteen of these to the government for their debts and daily expenses, and the sixteenth being insufficient to afford us bread, we must live, as they now do, on oatmeal and potatoes, have no time to think, no means of calling the mismanagers to account, but be glad to obtain subsistence by hiring ourselves to rivet their chains on the necks of our fellow-sufferers." --Thomas Jefferson to Samuel Kercheval, 1816. ME 15:39
Note Jefferson's very last thought here. He declares that when government taxing and debt have reached certain levels, in order for individuals to survive, then their chosen "employment" becomes "hiring ourselves to rivet their (the government's) chains on the necks of our fellow-sufferers." Might that account for why it is government employment levels which have risen at such great rates in the past 2 years?
Inasmuch as government creates no wealth and has no money, the pay for every job in government must first come out of the pockets of hardworking citizens in the private sector or be borrowed (to be paid back eventually from the pockets of future generations).
Ahhh, guess that's what you call "redistributing" wealth! In Jefferson's words, it's called "rivet(ing) chains on the necks of our fellow-sufferers."
Well said, 70thD.
Someone made a good point earlier, that when the only ones at the bargaining table are the unions and the politicians that they helped elect, it is no longer “collective “ bargaining, it’s “collusive” bargaining.
And collusion is usually a felony.
Who is this ‘Harry’?
“A Wall Street billionaire, a unionized public employee, and a Tea Party member are sitting at a table eying a plate of a dozen delicious cookies. The financier reaches across and takes 11 cookies, looks at the tea partier and says, “Watch out for that union guy. He wants your cookie.”[Les Leopold]
Then the union guy whacked the Tea Party guy with a baseball bat and the CEO split the cookies with the union guy.
Then the IRS guy came by and asked “Did you declare those cookies?” and the lawyers and the government got the cookies and the government just threw their cookies away. Luckily the Tea Party guy was in the dumpster looking for Obama’s birth certificate and he ate the cookies.
These poor waifs have to learn that they can only piss in their bed for so long before it can’t be slept in any longer. Here in Virginia disciplined conservatives avoid it all together and the Democrats at least use mattress covers.
Thank you. I live in MI. I have seen shop workers make as much as I without a college degree. I have a college degree and two real estate licenses. These require further education and con ed also. So what us up with that?
They say they do not want to kill the golden goose just get every last egg. Well they have choked the chicken for the last time as far as I am concerned.
We need to stop calling these people “public” union workers.
This is government union workers uniting to exploit the working class but dictating pay and benefits to be extracted from others via taxes.
Government Unions.
. . . “nearly all of their collective bargaining rights.”
I’d prefer to call them “collective bargaining privileges.”
Did you find that in the Daily Worker?
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