It should not be legal for law enforcement to establish unions, and I'm pro-union. The police are the arm of governmental power, and policing in the US in general can be traced back to union-busting efforts.

If police unions had a history of fighting for issues that benefit society overall my view would likely be different, but they always seem to focus on eliminating accountability and supporting evil assholes.

Your video, Union Busting: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO), has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

Isn't the Invisible Hand of the Marketplace doing anything about this? Or does it keep it's focus on union busting and promoting the gig economy?

Earlier today, I was sent a link to an article in Bloomberg titled Why Workers Are Losing to Capitalists. Marx in Bloomberg? Impossibru!

But nevermind Marx. That opinion piece is 800 words, give or take, on labour's share of income. Yet it doesn't mention policy once. Not a single time. It's automation, it's globalisation, it's Gremlins. But not a single peep on policy.

Nothing on union busting. Nothing on taxes on capital vs taxes on labour. Nothing on minimum wages. Nothing on welfare. Nothing on the public sector.

If you read about inequality and related issues in these papers, there's rarely any agency. It's always something abstract like market forces, globalisation, innovation, etc. Nothing on decisions made by people in power, parliament first and foremost, that often had the explicit aim of reducing wages to "increase competitiveness".

@renatojj

Corporations already use force. They are more subtle about it than the Somolis, sure, that's an extreme example, but why do you think Foxconn employees commit suicide in such high numbers? They are forced to work long hours, the company forces them to live on-site, the company forces them to develop no social contact.

Companies in the States even use force on the government. They threaten to pull up stakes if a state won't change the laws to their liking. They pay billions of dollars to force their message down the throats of gullible people (such as yourself).

You want companies to have more freedom, to what end? Perhaps it would mean an increase in GDP, but a larger share of that GDP would go to a smaller number of people. If 95% of the people are worse off, 4% are the same and 1% do better, is that good policy? Look at Sweden, which has high taxes and strict laws governing how corporations must act. Are they suffering? Nope, the people are doing way better than America. Same for Japan. In spite of all their economic troubles, the PEOPLE of Japan are doing quite well. Americans? Not so much. One of the highest crime rates in developed countries, one of the highest infant mortality rates, near the lowest education and literacy levels, near the highest in poverty rates, near the lowest life expectancy. Is that the place where you want to live? More freedom for corporations means more gulf oil spills, more union busting, lower wages, lower employee benefits, more offshoring of American jobs.

Finally, China is not doing as well as most people suppose. Much of their economic boom has been real-estate driven and it is in a bubble which will make the US look like a joke by comparison. There are whole cities in China with space for two million people that are completely empty. All of it was driven by government legislation (ie. not free). In fact China has a much more restrictive business environment than America in many ways, they just have rock-bottom wages, a near endless supply of people and moderate education levels. That is why they're doing well (for now, we'll see what happens when their bubble pops).

Good talk NR. I'm not convinced.... there are cabinet appointments, etc. he's made that make me not trust him, but I am listening. Ob's speech a couple days ago has me wondering you've got a direct line to him or something.

In reply to this comment by NetRunner:
>> ^Truckchase:

I know where you're coming from and I don't disagree with your logic, but I'm not gonna get out there and campaign for or vocally support Obama because I do think his administration is still heavily corrupted by (mainly) the financial industry. As you point out he's not nearly as bad as the repubs, so unless by some miracle Buddy Roemer gets any real traction I'll most likely be voting for Obama and running from the polling place in a ankle length trench coat and hat like a family man from 1974 escaping the newsstand with a smut rag.

Oy, Buddy Roemer? The problem with Buddy Roemer is that he seems to think his becoming President is the only/main way to fix the problem with money in politics. Never mind that the biggest problem with campaign finance law is that a) Republicans always oppose it and b) the Supreme Court has deemed real campaign finance law unconstitutional.

The answer to that is a Constitutional Amendment, not giving Buddy Roemer the potential ability to appoint SCOTUS judges, especially since he'd only get to replace liberals in a 2013-2017 term, not roadblocks like Thomas, Scalia, or Roberts.

I personally don't think silent support is good enough. I'm gonna be out campaigning for Obama nice and loud. I'm especially going to be pushing back against what I see as crazy misinformation, like the story Cenk is pushing here.

Once you strip away the misinformation, the only legitimate liberal complaints I've heard about Obama boil down to "he didn't do enough to make things better" as opposed to "he made something worse". People seem to have rather quickly forgotten the width and breadth of the damage done by Bush and a Republican congress.

Most people just remember the wars, the Patriot Act, and the tax cuts. Fewer people remember the US Attorneys scandal, fewer people remember the way he gutted the SEC, put the EPA on hold, sabotaged the FEC, tried to gut the FCC, turned the NLRB into a union-busting department, and so on. It was a nonstop deluge of sabotage, fraud, and abuse that just went on and on relentlessly for eight fucking years.

It grates me that it's only partially and often only temporarily being undone by Obama, but now those low-publicity nitty-gritty detail stories are almost universally good ones.

The choice isn't really one of a "lesser of two evils" it's a choice between empowering an enemy who's sworn to destroy everything you hold dear, or empowering a friend who's let you down. I see this as a choice between feckless and imperfect good, or pure, ruthless evil.

>> ^Truckchase:

I know where you're coming from and I don't disagree with your logic, but I'm not gonna get out there and campaign for or vocally support Obama because I do think his administration is still heavily corrupted by (mainly) the financial industry. As you point out he's not nearly as bad as the repubs, so unless by some miracle Buddy Roemer gets any real traction I'll most likely be voting for Obama and running from the polling place in a ankle length trench coat and hat like a family man from 1974 escaping the newsstand with a smut rag.

Oy, Buddy Roemer? The problem with Buddy Roemer is that he seems to think his becoming President is the only/main way to fix the problem with money in politics. Never mind that the biggest problem with campaign finance law is that a) Republicans always oppose it and b) the Supreme Court has deemed real campaign finance law unconstitutional.

The answer to that is a Constitutional Amendment, not giving Buddy Roemer the potential ability to appoint SCOTUS judges, especially since he'd only get to replace liberals in a 2013-2017 term, not roadblocks like Thomas, Scalia, or Roberts.

I personally don't think silent support is good enough. I'm gonna be out campaigning for Obama nice and loud. I'm especially going to be pushing back against what I see as crazy misinformation, like the story Cenk is pushing here.

Once you strip away the misinformation, the only legitimate liberal complaints I've heard about Obama boil down to "he didn't do enough to make things better" as opposed to "he made something worse". People seem to have rather quickly forgotten the width and breadth of the damage done by Bush and a Republican congress.

Most people just remember the wars, the Patriot Act, and the tax cuts. Fewer people remember the US Attorneys scandal, fewer people remember the way he gutted the SEC, put the EPA on hold, sabotaged the FEC, tried to gut the FCC, turned the NLRB into a union-busting department, and so on. It was a nonstop deluge of sabotage, fraud, and abuse that just went on and on relentlessly for eight fucking years.

It grates me that it's only partially and often only temporarily being undone by Obama, but now those low-publicity nitty-gritty detail stories are almost universally good ones.

The choice isn't really one of a "lesser of two evils" it's a choice between empowering an enemy who's sworn to destroy everything you hold dear, or empowering a friend who's let you down. I see this as a choice between feckless and imperfect good, or pure, ruthless evil.

I think part of the problem is that there's a whole lot of people out there who can't quantify how much wealthier the people feeding them the "Creating Jobs" stuff are. See: http://videosift.com/video/Most-Americans-Unaware-of-Growing-Concentration-of-Wealth at the 1:40 mark. Everyone thinks they are middle class that's a 29k avg neighborhood and 140k neighborhood, 3:30 repeats it again....they think the majority of Americans are middle class.

I'd venture to say that many people in that crowd are there, not because they understand that the people working on wall street dwarf their salary probably by a factor of 4 or 5 in the lower paid white collar jobs and up into the 100+ factors when they get into the upper positions. They are there because they want what they had back, and they can now see that Wall Street or at least the mentality of Wall Street has in a very short period of time affected many aspects of their lives.

If they could still afford a place to live, food, and have a decent job, they probably would have never noticed the long term erosion of the system by those with the money and power...twisting it so they took more of the pie and left the middle and lower class to figure out how they will afford their house (debt which in turn shifts more money up the ladder).

I mean most people who have jobs right now, the only information they care about on unemployment is when it comes from someone they know who they consider to be a "useful employee" and not their stoner brother, etc. And even then it's probably "These things happen, you'll find another job." until they are still unemployed 6 months later....maybe they were just lazy. 12 months rolls around and they are still unemployed? Now it starts to scare the living shit out of people, especially when another friend or family lost their job a month or two back. When it looks like it might affect them personally is when they care, and by that time it's been 1-2 years of people they know going unemployed at various times...working at McDs or Walmart because there's nothing out there.

http://videosift.com/video/Food-Speculation-Explained

Showing another way the Wall Street mentality is just giving us all a good screwing. Instead of these folks taking their talents to create something, they leech off of the people doing the work and drive up costs while creating massive uncertainty for everyone involved.

http://videosift.com/video/Elizabeth-Warren-The-Coming-Collapse-of-the-Middle-Class

Shows that people were experiencing bankruptcy more often that you would assume, but were able to hide it. Plus the general fixed costs being increasingly higher over the years with no overall salary gains to offset them.

http://videosift.com/video/Paul-Krugman-Income-Inequality-and-the-Middle-Class

Showing that they have been on the union bust kick for 30 years now at least, and it's something unique to the US because Canada in a similar global economy still has the level of unionized work force as the US had 30 years ago. Education has nothing to do with the income disparity. And the income disparity was fixed by policies put in place during the 1930s and early 40s. Which have been removed layer by layer since then, with increasing frequency in more recent history. And he points out in the video that the highest paid hedge fund manager makes more in a single year than 88000 NY teachers do in 3 years, my recounting of it might be off a little it's near the end of the video.


http://videosift.com/video/Multi-Millionaire-Rep-Says-He-Can-8482-t-Afford-A-Tax-Hike

Then you have this knucklehead talking about 200k to feed his family and how he can't afford a tax hike because it will prevent him from investing in store improvements and openings (that make him MORE money, so yeah..). Jon Stewart covered this in a much more funny way and how stupid the argument being made is. I'll re-iterate my take on this though. If they can't create jobs with the money they have coming in now after all the other tax deductions over the years, and all the opportunities before this day to do.....they will not do so. It's a fool's bet to depend on some guy who can't demonstrate how he has created jobs in the last 2-4 years in some meaningful way and how those low taxes make it possible to do so. Taxes would pretty much force him to reinvest in his business because if he tried to take it in profit he'd be paying a chunk of it out in taxes.




I think the most profane thing about this country right now is that people who want to work can't find work. And those who are working, especially blue collar jobs have a bunch of white collar guys speculating on their production....every thing that blue collar guy makes/produces probably has 10 or more white collar guys trying to make a buck off of it. It's like a house of cards, except the support structures are the very few people who still put out useable materials. It's crazy how something like that was let run wild, with more and more of the regulation taken away so they could stack even more cards onto the mess. The money isn't to be had in production, it's made in speculating/futures/etc...and it's just massively crazy to realize that all the middlemen are allowed to drive up the costs of oil/food/etc instead of cutting that shit out through regulation.

qm is right. This is pretty left leaning.

I think this country has gone too far to the right economically, but I still couldn't help but ask myself while watching this if this recession is so bad, why are they interviewing middle class after middle class person who isn't homeless, is not going hungry, etc. There's the one interview of a couple, where the wife is a home maker, why is she not working?

The talk shouldn't just be centered around the same left talking points of what ills the economy. What about the declining importance in middle class culture for education? In middle class culture, there's a growing distrust of public education, education institutions, of the academic elite, etc., why? What about seemingly the middle class's refusal to adjust to reshaping of demand for skills? What was deemed a large portion of middle class jobs generations ago required less education, and less ongoing enhancement of skills. The middle class now seems to insist on jobs that the US economy has diminishing demand for, and not be attracted to professions we desperately need more labor and skills in, such as IT professionals, where we issue work visas and IMPORT LABOR for to get the job done, even when the economy is so bad right now. And of course, these new jobs require more initial and ongoing investments in education.

I don't intend to suggest that this is all these people's faults, because it's not. But what is killing the US economy isn't just outsourcing, bank bailouts, union busting, and poor government policy decisions. In fact, part of the reason outsourcing occurs in some industries such as IT is there's so little supply for a skill in the US and such high demand for it, such as in IT, that it's cheaper to send that job overseas where there's more supply for it.

There's absolutely no reason for the US to be shipping IT jobs overseas. We should be figuring out ways to keep them here, and disregard political ideologies to make that happen. Maybe it involves more gov't grants to encourage people in the US to get the training they need to be able to do those jobs. Maybe it's more socially promoting the importance of math and science subjects early on in school. To me, one of the biggest problems the US economy faces right now is the jobs of the future require more skills and education than ever before, yet it's becoming increasingly difficult to get the required education.

These are the problems I wish were discussed objectively and intelligently debated instead of having to combat idiotic stuff like Santorum stating gov't bailouts have in the short run cost American jobs.

>> ^COriolanus:

Paul / Kucinich 2012


One would be for regulating the Corporations one wouldn't....so no that's not gonna happen.

>> ^quantumushroom:

Explain again why the Governor of Wisconsin--trying to save his state from bankruptcy by organized crime labor--is being sweated by the communist Keebler Elf from Ohio?
Midget, please.


Because in a democracy you don't fuck with the people...and the people protested and show'd big time what's going on. The people in Wisconsin stepped the fuck up...we have to thank them and take it as a great sign that America ain't dead yet.

>> ^quantumushroom:

Explain again why the Governor of Wisconsin--trying to save his state from bankruptcy by organized crime labor--is being sweated by the communist Keebler Elf from Ohio?
Midget, please.


yo QM,
check your fly..
your ignorance is showing again.
zip that shit up..kids are watching.

>> ^NetRunner:

>> ^blankfist:
And the middle class gets squeezed to make up for the difference.

I'm glad you've come to the realization that that's what union busting, corporate tax cuts and deregulation does.


Well, corporate tax cuts certainly squeeze the middle class as long as we have income tax, because the government won't cut its spending and chooses to raise taxes on the middle class to offset their revenue deficiencies. To me, this has nothing to do with union busting and deregulation, though.

>> ^blankfist:

And the middle class gets squeezed to make up for the difference.


I'm glad you've come to the realization that that's what union busting, corporate tax cuts and deregulation does.

>> ^Winstonfield_Pennypacker:

The robber barons of America's past abused power in a way far more like what Stewart is whining about here. They ran roughshod over people, and there were no laws to stop them. A good thing happened, and the people forced government to pass laws that allowed government to regulate such abuses. It was a good thing.

Yes, so let's do that again. We just need to roll back the robber barons' acquisition of government. They took it over in the immediate aftermath of the progressive era in the early 20th century -- by 1929 they basically ran Washington, just like now.

Back then, people demanded a New Deal, and got one. We had an era of real growth, where the resulting prosperity was relatively equally shared. The rising tide really did raise all boats. Not because businesses were more kindhearted, but because we had strong unions, and regulators who saw their job as actually regulating business.

Then Ronald Reagan came along, and it became Mourning in America. Unions got systematically broken up and destroyed. Business was welcomed into Washington with open arms, and allowed to write regulation. An anti-Fed objectivist became chairman of the Fed. Taxes for the rich were slashed, so were benefits to the poor. Everyone (who matters) wins!

Now we're getting a Great Depression of our own, and it looks like instead of us getting a New Deal, the robber barons are. More union busting, more tax cuts for the rich, more deregulation, and all so we can "compete" with authoritarian dictatorships that run sweatshops, by setting up our own here at home.