Labor Unions

Many states are struggling to close their respective budget gaps. There are many options as to how a particular leadership goes about tackling this complicated issue. However, when the blame game starts by trying to blame everybody except the politicians themselves, we are on a course leading to a potential disaster. Lately, one of the favorite targets is the public sector labor movement. The general public's opinions and views of labor unions cover the field from total disdain to high praise. Politicians who intend to destroy the unions and are looking for a fight, have found the ideal cocktail to get the public excited, one way or the other.

The problem is that the political leadership is totally blinded by their vendetta and is approaching it like a bunch of spoiled brats. There is one undeniable fact, blaming the public sector labor movement for the under funded pension funds (unfunded liabilities) is ridiculous. If the state leadership were actually interested in finding the true culprit of the many problems they are facing, the state leadership including their Attorney General and together with the unions should confront the Wall Street crew and the Bankers who literally robbed them blind. These crooks managed to get different people to fight each other, while they are laughing all the way to the bank. There is only one minor problem with that general concept, how can these politicians go against their paymasters? Corporations are not very fond of unions. They represent "people power."

The ongoing battle in Wisconsin between that state's leadership and the unions is not because union members refuse to increase their contributions to their pensions and health care coverage. They already agreed and one would assume that the state at least achieved their objective to narrow the budget gap. But that is not what the state really wants, they just want to destroy or eliminate the unions. By the way, I have seen nothing, specifically describing what the state leadership is sacrificing to diminish the budget gap. Maybe they will surprise the voting public when all the contributions from their corporate supporters end up being donated by those patriotic lawmakers in order to create a budget surplus. Again, it is becoming very clear, that the battle is not over money, it is doing what Adolf Hitler did, after he was duly elected; destroy the unions.

For those of you who are a little bit rusty about history, Hitler was an extreme right wing conservative politician; some refer to that ideology as fascism. He won the election in Germany with a lot less than 50% of the vote because all the other parties were bickering and as a result diluted their potential chance of winning. In
the early 30's Germany had many ideologically different parties, from middle of the road to the far left liberals, also referred to as communists. The Nazis did not overthrow the government as many believe. Hitler was a gifted speaker and quite eloquent. One can say that he probably was a good con-artist. Many politicians who have this ability seem to ascend to leadership positions in their respective countries. Does that sound familiar? Hitler was a master at this game telling the Germans what they wanted to hear, like there would be full employment, that he was going to rebuild Germany again into a World Power, protect them from the evil foreign powers and eliminate all those who he felt were in the way to achieve that goal. The big corporations loved it and supported him financially. I think you know the rest.

By the way, if you have the urge to understand this whole left wing-liberal-communist/right wing-conservative-fascist stuff, draw a circle. The centrists are at the top of the circle, those are the people who believe in democratic institutions and the give and take of the democratic process. Then start moving clockwise, to the right, down the circle and when you reach the bottom you will meet those who moved down the circle from the other side, the left. The ones you find at the bottom usually are dictators. Do you think a communist dictatorship is any better than a fascist dictatorship? I don't think so. What is the difference between a communist and fascist dictatorship? In a fascist dictatorship the government is controlled by corporations and in a communist dictatorship the government controls the corporations. Under both, they control their citizens in different ways, none good.

I am not writing this as a supporter or foe of the unions or a particular ideology. I still believe in the country of the free. I don't mean where all government services are free for some while others pay. I mean free from government oppression. Based on my personal experiences, I see some parallels with historic events, which are quite troubling.

In order to properly explain the consequences of what is going on, I need to cover the following issues.

1. - The way we elect politicians.
2. - What was the purpose for unions?
3. - What type of government does not tolerate unions?
4. - What could be the potential outcome of this battle?

The way we elect politicians:

I am sure you are well aware that politicians demand or solicit "political contributions." I call them bribes. Obviously, it is their goal to reach for the stars and collect millions, hopefully billions of dollars. Who has large amounts of money? Corporations and wealthy people! How much money can the-not-so-rich people contribute? It is so little that the only reason they ask for your name is not to get to know you, they don't care, but to comply with the rules of the game.

How many high donation individuals get juicy positions? Like an ambassadorship nomination to any of our allies or any other powerful nation? A regular Joe would not be assigned to represent our country at the lowest ranking and poorest country in the world. Bribery works, it is a standard in Latin American countries, it's part of the 3^rd world environment. We are in good company. The majority of democratically elected governments usually have individuals assigned to their embassies and legations who have been meticulously trained in diplomacy. The recent publication of some of the notes from our ambassadors around the world shows their total lack of diplomatic training. Those publications have embarrassed a lot of our elite, not because they have done any physical damage or caused any loss of life but because those notes clearly showed their incompetence. You know why quite a bit of this material is labeled "classified?" The main purpose is to keep it hidden from the general public not from our enemies. Anything that is truly "Top Secret" becomes an invitation for foreign spies. Obviously, the reward for obtaining highly classified information is higher.

Then corporations have the same rights as individual citizens. Can any individual, except billionaires, compete for attention by politicians? On top of it, the corporations who built the voting machines can rig the equipment to produce desired results. Those that know how to write programs, I mean real programmers, would have no trouble writing the software in such a way that it can randomly change the vote. The irony is that our election officials cannot get the operating software for these machines to have it analyzed because the manufacturer deems that code as "proprietary." How do you like that reason for not providing the code? What can possibly be proprietary about a sophisticated adding machine? The irony is UPS can track your package, but we cannot track our vote. Getting a receipt that you voted is the equivalent for UPS given you a receipt that you gave them a package. It does not mean the package ended up where you intended it to be delivered. Your getting a receipt that you voted doesn't assure you that your vote was delivered to your selected candidate. In essence we have a totally corrupt election system. That is why exit polls don't seem to match as they used to way back.

Do you know, that the Chinese government demands that American companies operating in China provide normally very confidential operating software to them? These are rightfully proprietary for competitive reasons. Nevertheless, Americans, for the privilege of using cheap labor, hand them all our research on a golden platter. Our people can't get it but the Chinese do get it!

What was the purpose for unions?

One of the reasons is based on what I just explained. It is a way of increasing "people power" in order to financially compete against the money power of the wealthy and corporations. The problem is that it is as corrupting as what politicians are doing. The contributions to their politicians are also bribes. Now when unions give political contributions or their bribes to the opposing party members, we hear vehement complaints and demands that this has to stop. I totally agree. All political contributions by anyone, be it corporations, wealthy people or unions should be outlawed. Elections should be financed by the government through taxes. Wash your mouth. Taxes? Yes, taxes! Do you really believe that when corporations spend millions of dollars in bribes, sorry, I mean political contributions that they print the money like the Federal Reserve? They add it to the cost of their products and you end up paying for it anyhow. The wealthy contributors find ways, through their tax attorneys, to recover it in tax savings. Again you are paying for it.

The suggested approach would give every citizen (rich or poor) a chance to run for public office. In all probability we could end up with some real winners. In my long business career, I have met many individuals who have more brain power than those allegedly representing us. You don't have to be wealthy to be smart. Money can buy a diploma. I have seen Harvard diplomas on office walls of very wealthy but dumb people. Many of regular real life people probably would make better citizen legislators. The government should finance it at a rate that prospective politicians wouldn't lose money but couldn't advertise on TV or radio. No more 30 second clips with their big lies. What a relief that would be. They would be forced to campaign the old fashion way, meet the people who they are supposed to represent. Since the corporations and wealthy people would not know how to spend the millions of dollars in campaign contributions, maybe the money would overflow from their money vaults since it cannot trickle down from those leak proof containment facilities commonly referred to as deep pockets. You know how many poor children (in our country) could be fed with the billions of dollars that are wasted every two years on political campaigning? This would make the liberals happy and for the conservatives, I am sure there would still be enough money left to bomb another country.

What type of government does not tolerate unions?

Dictatorships! As I said before, unions represent people power. Dictators cannot tolerate them, so they always eliminate them. Good old Soviet Union Stalin blew them away. I could name one dictator after another; none of them ever liked unions.

Would you want a fascist dictatorship? If you think it can never happen here, think again. There are all kinds of signs pointing in that direction, like politicians ignoring the courts and their rulings, conducting military activities to protect civilians and rationalizing that this is quite different from conducting war like activities, which generally means dropping bombs on targets or turning over command from the US (American commander) to NATO, lead by an American commander. It is like replacing the word "purchasing" with "acquiring value". At checkout you pull a ten dollar bill from your right pocket, show it to the sales person and then deposit the bill in your left pocket and think nobody notices the difference. Words, words, words only intended to confuse us. Over and over we hear the fiction that the government is protecting us from whatever they dream up and think we don't notice, like citing us for violating the "buckle up" rule or law. Are they protecting or pick pocketing us? Nowhere in the constitution is it spelled out that the government must protect you from yourself. If you think I am exaggerating, you are dreaming. I have been there and I know the difference.

What could be the potential outcome of this battle?

The leadership that embarked on this course of action, specifically eliminating the union, does not want to lose face and back down, that could be seen as being weak. On the other hand, the unions cannot back down because they would be capitulating and give in to this oppressive form of government. What comes next? Our liberties have already been eroding little by little. For instance the patriot act is an obvious violation of our constitution by those who have sworn to uphold our constitution. This is all done to protect you from the extremists in foreign lands who allegedly don't like us. The fact is, they do not really care about us as individuals, they resent the fact that we constantly kill their children and innocent civilians and we just apologize for our friendly fire. The fact is, how would you feel if a foreign power would be killing your loved ones for doing nothing more then collecting firewood? If you would fight back, wouldn't they call you an extremist?

There is another danger and that is an activist or group of whatever ideology will take advantage of this turmoil and before you know we have the beginning of a revolution. It only takes a spark to ignite a flame. There are many signs all over. Commodity prices are increasing and we are experiencing increased inflation irrespective of the fact that those in the leadership are trying to convince you that things are improving. As food prices and fuel go up, true unemployment remains relatively high and salaries remain stagnant, something will have to give. Poor people are in the majority and when they have nothing to lose, the will lose it and rebel. Those that do not learn from history will repeat it over and over again. Instead of bringing our soldiers home and pay attention to the internals of our country, we cut back on those things which will make life even tougher for the poorest in our county while really not protecting us from the terrorist. With our presence in foreign countries we are actually creating the terrorists.

"War on Terror" is actually "War on Murder," a war between good and evil which has existed since humans showed up on our planet. The war on terror cannot be won. Why don't we just declare victory, go home, have a parade and live happily thereafter. Obviously we are not finding them there so that we don't have to fight them here. The TSA treats every passenger boarding a domestic flight as a potential terrorist, so we are fighting them here and there. Passenger trains are already beginning to receive the same attention and pretty soon busses will be next. After that they will send those little electronic spy birds down your chimney. The Nazi Gestapo and the Soviet KGP were pretty sophisticated, but the TSA is beating them by a mile. Have you ever seen banners be burned in foreign countries that read, "Death to Switzerland or Brazil or Chile or Costa Rica ? Of course not, these countries mind their own business; one of these countries does not even have an army. Minding our own business and taking care of our own country will never happen until all the things we cherish and love collapse around us or the rest of the American laid back population finally takes some real action to take our country back. At what point will we hear "enough is enough?"

The Middle East revolt, upheaval, or whatever you want to call it, started with one individual setting himself on fire in a protest about some stupid rule in Tunisia . This is what I mean by a spark that can start the flames.