Republicans in Florida are now privatizing their union-busting efforts...
By louisehartmann
Republicans in Florida are so obsessed with privatization – they are now privatizing their union-busting efforts. The City of Winter Park – just hired a firm of right-wing political consultants to fight 150 city workers who are trying to form a union.
The consulting firm has ties to far right-wing organizations like the Ayn Rand Institute and the Federalist Society – and routinely boasts on their website that the “labor movement is dead” and that third world sweatshops are good things. The motive here is pretty clear – the city is hiring anti-union thugs to screw their public workers.
At least when Scott Walker was doing it in Wisconsin – he was doing it himself – and not giving piles of money to some sketchy right-wing yahoos who claim they can bust unions.
Comments
#2
You seem to forget that workers in the private sector are people too. The cost of doing business in our country has gotten far to expensive and have made us uable to compete in the global market. This has led every company that could to go outside the US to have products manufactured. I do recognise that there are some companies that take advantage of this, but the vast majority of business are small to medium size and do not have the financial where with all to keep themselves competitive.
If each state can reduce their costs that would benefit the majority and allow smaller businesses to put money into their operations. The union leaders have been screwing the taxpayers with no regard to the state of affairs our economy is in. Our government at nearly every level has not done the proper policing of the market place and has allowed fraudsters and criminals get away with bundles of cash and has not held them accountable.
If people want jobs in the government sector they have to accept the fact that their jobs are political and come and go at the will of our misinformed public.
#3
Florida rednecks are dead from their Neck up!
#4
All in good time 2 1/4 yrs after taking on global crash TARP - wars . Passed Major health care / Wall St reform.. good start in right direction. Killing Bin laden 9 years after Bush promised to get him and failed.- gave up to attack iraq. Obama musts fight the GOP - FOX daily hate fest . Manage long wars..slowing leaving Iraq. 5000 to leave Afghan war in July. Pirates- baggers- Trump Palen GOP daily lies & smears. GOP threats of filibusters / .blocking 100's of bills Trying to defund Planned Parenthood when NO FED funds are used for abortions . Planned Parenthood does mostly cervical & breat cancer screnings, family planning, STD tests. Just 4 % is abortions. GOP is busting unions / trying to privatize Medicare / Social security Things we all pay taxes for all our lives. Its not welfare Not a hand out There are fair ways to cut not like hatchet job of GOP ? Ryan is so over with .He's toast .Yesterdays news Newt will be too . Gov Walker will be recalled Many have been recalled in WIS People power works
#5
The differential in wealth between business owners who outsource and to the workers displaced as a result of their outsourcing is enormous. Germany protects their skilled labor and it shows. Americans are doing nothing but eating their own young. It is a ridiculous policy that has destroyed the moral fiber
of our nation encouraging greed for the individual who has built a fortune by practicing treason against national well being. Policies of lobbying congressman and officials remind me of the Boardwalk series.
Corporations are the main concern in America, and by their activity they are the new government. Workers are subject to the corporate constitution and they must tow the line under that administration lest they wind up being dismissed, black balled, and disenfranchised from self sufficiency. Much like Mendenhal when he dared exercise his free speech on twitter and was fired from Hanes /champion.
This is a corporate government, corporate company store, and corporate cast system. Democracy died somewhere along the line while we were watching some stupid sitcom on TV, or a superbowl,
or video game, or MTV. Unions were the last line of defense against an oligarchy bent on controlling
everything and everyone. Big corporate money at least had some competition with pay rates and benefits guaranteed by collective bargaining. Pressure from well paid union workers encouraged workers to seek better pay or vote a union in their own plant. That was a good thing. This is not the same nation I was born in. It has become a hell hole for coke snorting high wheeling corporate cavaliers who have one self interested concern. Themselves.
#6
@Gerald:
Thanks for the link. "An executive order being considered by President Obama......." ok, we'll see if Obama will again sell out to the Republicans. Anything that Obama can (will) do before the election will help. I hope he succeeds and the criminals in the Chamber of Commerce and Carl Rove can just take a hike....but I'd rather see more of them in jail where they belong.
Looks like they managed to sack a hedge fund crime lord.....heh, heh, heh! There are a lot more that needs to be caught and thrown in the clink.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011/may/11/hedge-fund-boss-rajaratna...
#7
Right on, Delster, you know!
#8
@Dianhow: How do you excuse Obama's appointing the very same people who wrecked the economy in the first place? How do you excuse Obama's giving away trillions of dollars to those same people who robbed us? How do you excuse Obama's constant "just trying to get along" mentality when it is obvious to most people that the Republicans will never just get along?
I agree that many of the cards were stacked against Obama, having inherited a real mess from the Bush regime but aside from a couple of times when Obama stood up to redress the Republicans he still ended up giving away the store and the ruling elite got what they wanted anyway. Let's see how hard he fights for the executive order that is talked about in Gerald's link. It's one thing to assassinated an old man, OBL, and 22 other people but our President needs to assassinate (figuratively speaking that is) some real enemies to the majority of the people in the US...more people like the one they just arrested...the Hedge Fund crime lord.
#9
It's horrifying to watch the asininity of their subjugation as the republican/tea party clowns continue marching brainwashed and instep with a few rich egocentric sociopaths.
Privitization with anti-union sentiment, just like trickle down economics, is a big freaking lie started by elite sociopaths, and used to facilitate redistribution of working class wealth, into a relatively small number of tax dodging offshore bank accounts.
Wise up Flori-duh!
#10
Just who are they all trying to save? How can we be broke? How can we be in debt? If you can just print the money for war , why not print your way out of debt. Just print it and pay the debt. Simple ! There is no debt, Print Print..
#11
delster, Good point, this country allows economic treason/terrorism, due to the purposeful dismantling of our democracy by a few, in order that they might gain all. The German govt. obviously respects and is representative of their working class majority.
#12
You have been brainwashed by the Right to believe this nonsense! Small businesses NEED Middle Class workers with decent jobs and wages to KEEP Small Businesses operational! No Job, no money, no business!
This is a FUNDAMENTAL economic fact! Heck, you don't even need to be educated to grasp this. Try running a business, any business, where there are no jobs in the community and so no money coming in! What happens when a family has paid all the bills and there is no money for food or necessities! Small businesses suffer.
The billionaires have sold this fantasy about Unions and Taxes ad infinitum. THE UNIONS Created the Middle Class in this country! Without them we'd all still be on the farm milking cows and shoveling manure for .25c an hour, if at all!
At times I think that the majority of American people, especially those fed a steady diet of Fox Lies, are simply insane, or just too lazy to simply think for themselves.
This is NOT a hard fact to grasp: as middle class wages go up, so does the standard of living. Business expands, jobs are created, and everyone in the community benefits. The problem arises when those at the top want more of what they have and so they try to find ways to give less to the middle class worker. So they go to China and other places for cheap labor so they can sell to the middle class who are now, or will shortly, be without jobs. Jobs and industry in America are lost and the vicious cycle continues.
Who will get hurt the most here – SMALL BUSINESSES! People who have no jobs have no money to spend! How hard is this to grasp? It seems VERY VERY difficult for a great majority of supposedly intelligent and educated Americans to grasp this most fundamental of economic truisms!
#13
You need to get off this Obama hatred thing. At times you do write some insightful comments - but then comes the Obama hate mail and it all goes to pot.
You are 180 degrees off on Obama - in everything you say. You'd save yourself a lot energy to comment on and discuss what really is killing and destroying this country - Right-wing propaganda, fundamentalist hatred and Corporate and Bankster Greed!
At the end of the day it will be OBAMA who will save this country, at least in the short term. Hopefully the American people will eventually wake up to what the Right is really trying to do - Hopefully. But this constant Attack on Obama is certainly NOT the way to go!
And here is what to fear most – The Right will NEVER desist! At least as long as Citizen’s United and Big $$$ is around! Americans have to change that or we are goners as a Democracy and a Free Country. Just think – In Florida, right now, they want to pass a Bill to REQUIRE MANDATORY drug tests to receive Food Stamps! Small government you say the Right wants – I say this is a precursor to Awfully Big Government that starts with an F – FASCISIM!
So Obama is the least your problems. Concentrate on the big ones!
#14
I'd like nothing better than to be completely wrong about Obama and the Democrat Party. I had a lot of hope in him, and the Democrat Party when I voted for him/them. It is really not just Obama, though, it is the whole corrupt two party system that is owned lock-stock-and-barrel by the ruling elite. They sell the Democrat party as the refuge from the Republican dogs but the ruling elite use both parties to control us and get what they want. The Democrat party appears to be a bait-and-switch, smoke-and-mirrors, good cop of the good cop, bad cop organization that sells hope we can believe in. But many people are finally beginning to realize that they are not going to save us...because they are corrupt or too cowardly to stick up for their ideals (or what they say are their ideals).
I sincerely hope that the Republicans do not get into office again...but I don't have any hope that the Democrats will be much better. In fact, maybe even worse, because that would show that their system of deceit is working and that people can still be fooled which will buy the ruling elite yet more time to exploit us. I agree with most every thing that most of you all say about how demented and criminal the right-wingers are and that we are headed down an abyss that we may never be able to get out of. I think that it is inevitable that Americans will eventually wake up en masse and take to the streets...and riot...against our oppressors. Until the masses rise up and make it very, very uncomfortable for the ruling elite to continue their sacking of America there will be no change. The corrupt two party system will continue to ooze in one useful idiot fool after another.
The useful idiots in the Tea Party are just as misdirected and fooled as the useful idiots in the Democrat Party. It's not fun to find out that you have been taken to be some rich man's fool...thinking you are putting time and energy into helping your cause just to find out that you have been used and then dumped on and left homeless, starving, and dying of a treatable disease that you can no longer afford to buy medical help. It is going to get much, much worse....definitely if a Republican takes over and very likely the same if Democrats retakes the government.
Had Obama come out swinging as he indicated he would when President and had some numbers in Congress that would have backed him...then he would have been seen, by the people who voted for him, to practice what he preached and a tough President that could not be pushed around. Even if he had failed....he would still have earned the kudos from his constituency and with the overwhelming numbers impressed by his actions it would not have mattered how large the ruling elite coffers were in supporting opposition....the people would have voted their pride in a President who did what he said he would do. He would have been a President of the people...and not a useful idiot and push-over for the ruling elite.
#15
I'm not necessarily against big government and neither are the right wingers....but the big government I am for is the one that keeps greedy capitalist wolves from stealing our well-being, keeps banksters in check and honest, and keeps corrupt gangsters from recklessly gambling with our retirements and bank accounts. I am for a big government that keeps corporations from shipping our jobs overseas and keeps the rich paying their fair share of taxes. I am for a big government that keeps our infrastructure running and roads and bridges from collapsing. I am not for a big government that the right wingers are for...and that is a big government that allows the rich to get away with all of the aforementioned things. You can't just say "the government is bad" "the government needs to be drowned in a bathtub" as the right wingers do...they love big government....as long as it lets them get away with whatever they want.
That is part of their deception....to blame everything on "big government" when they only mean ...that part of big government that doesn't let them get away with maximum exploitation and tax avoidance.
I agree, the right will never desist..and never compromise. That's why we need to butt heads against them and not give in...bring the whole country to a complete standstill. It would help to have a President that was on our side and presented a strong condemnation of the kind of exploitation and non-compromise positions of the Republicans. Obama is hoping for yet another bubble to keep our economy afloat but it is a disaster in the making. It will only result in yet another huge bailout of those who continued to play the Wall Street ponzi schemes and derivative roulette wheels. With big bailouts and no effective enforcements of the things that made it fail before...it will happen again and again....they will continue to print money making it more worthless than it already is.....hyperinflation...wheelbarrows full of dollars to buy a loaf of bread as in Germany. Obama needs to break free of those Chicago Boy shackles and stop thinking in terms that will enslave us all. Who does he think he is Ghandi, Jesus, Rodney King (can't we all just....get along?)? Duh!!!
I am not an Obama hater. I think he is, for the most part, a good guy and I admire him for his accomplishments except for any "accomplishments" that helped turn middle class America into a slop trough for the capitalist pigs.
Like I said before, I hope I am totally wrong and full of it...because it's my life too..and I am not rich...I am struggling along like everyone else. I hope Obama and the Democrats make me eat crow and make great changes to our very crooked system.
#16
"Constant attack of Obama" Well if Obama never got the message that there are lots of his base that isn't very happy with the little he has done for it and how much he has given away to the ruling elite then he would think that he is doing everything right and nothing would change. Obama did say something to the effect, right after being elected, that we, the people, his base, needs to "force him to effect the change that they expect"...or something to that effect. I don't have any personal animosity against Obama..heck I voted for him..but I believe that he may have had high hopes for the change he preached and realized that he really isn't in control. He probably came to realize just how corrupt the system is and that to really cross these people is a very dangerous business. That's how dangerously corrupt these people are. Russia had secret police running around pulling people out of their houses and I suspect that this will happen here as well. We are very close to that happening. In fact, they already do on a small scale...special renditioning people and targeting them in many ways..if they are part of groups that work for changing the system. They infiltrate these groups with spies...we are not much behind what some other countries do to their people and in fact take the lead in many terrible things.
Perhaps the only reason why I might vote for Obama again is just to really p!ss off those small-minded, idiot, racist bigots on the right.
#17
@Palindromedary, criminals need to be in jail. Most Americans believe that white collar crime pays and blue collar crime spends time in jail. I do not believe that we are a nation of laws. We are a nation that circumvents the laws.
How has perpetual war become part of the American psyche?
#18
http://www.opednews.com/articles/China-The-New-Bin-Laden-by-paul-craig-roberts-110510-387.html
There will always be OBL’s among us! This article is TRULY A GREAT READ!
#19
I think the major flaw in Randian/free market/republican/conservative unthinking/willful ignorance is that the industrialist "builds" the business himself. He cannot achieve this end or create profit without the people (Rand calls "moochers") who work for him and who "build" the product or perform the service, and it is those people, now consumers/taxpayers (also moochers), whose tax dollars or consumer dollars are what line his (and stockholder's) pockets.
In commerce/business there are THREE important elements: the person with the idea, the laborer who builds the product (or performs the service) and gets it to market, and the consumer who uses/purchases the product or service with the money he/she earned as a laborer.
Randians/free marketers/republicans/conservatives hold contempt for the laborer, the consumer, and the real taxpayer. Today that is more evident when companies record record profits while lowering wages, busting unions, whinning about the little bit of taxes they do pay, and fighting consumer and environmental protections.
People who make sweat shop wages are penniless consumers. Why can they not see that they plot and hasten their own end?
#20
I just love it when people write "the cost of doing business in America has gotten too expensive". This is code for "kill the American workers". We haven't become too expensive. They've just used foreign labor costs as a model to kill the American dream, except for the executives who get unconscionable bonuses for their predation.
#21
Welcome to Walker Disney World, land of the tomato-slave, home of the Amarillo Yellow Cab Shamrock Pool. Turn east for Whitehall, south for Lincoln Road.
Florida's first Senator, David Levy Yulee, was a Republican Jew who converted to Christianity and became a high ranking official in the Confederacy. The remains of the Confederate Treasury carried by Wells Fargo with the papers of Jefferson Davis, disappeared on the banks of The Florida Railroad, on the Senator's plantation. He wasn't home at the time, but later was released from federal prison and awarded other favors in the new government, becoming known as "The Father of Florida's Railroads. "
The Barnett Bankers, DuPont, Flagler, Deering, and essentially every notable American industrialist used Florida as their investing playground during the Great Depression, acquiring the developments of others for nothing and most of the rest of the state. The timber land has always been controlled by International Paper, the Old Black St. Joe Company, big sugar and the groves by the Brewers, Bottlers and Distillers, along with BATCO, British American Tobacco Company.
In 1917 the Florida Legislature voted to Drain the Everglades, an absolute necessity to make Florida into "The Bread Basket of America." The work was paid for by taxpayers and culminated with some of the world's most notorious ecological destruction attributed to the Army Corps of Engineers.
Floridians at that time also sacrificed millions of the state's best acreages, freely awarded to "the Pennsylvania Syndicate" in the deal to dredge and fill the Kissimee River, some of which, through the loophole called "Reedy Creek Drainage District" eventually ended up platted as Lake Buena Vista.
XXXXX
#22
Our greatest hope is the younger people in this county. They seem to see the problems and are willing to take a hit to save everyone. Their social media conections are closed to many of left and right wingers that try to exploit that connection, but when they flash over to protest like they have many time of late, it's an inspiring thing. The Slut Walk come to mind. If the boomers that are finally seeing that there chance of a secure retirement evaporate, will get on board with the "kids" we might be able tomake a noise loud enough to be heard through the walls at 1600 Pennsylvania.
#23
The solution to outsourcing and fair pay is NOT disbanding unions, which are the only outlet for many working class people to turn to to get a fair shake. If you think the salaries of policemen, firemen, teachers, and nurses are too high--you are sorely mistaken. In FL, last night on the news, they reported our average salary is $36,000., which is $10,000. less than other parts of the country. Teachers start at @ $31, 000. For police, FL is about 4% lower than comparable job markets. So, I don't think the unions are breaking the banks to get people outrageous salaries.
We can keep taking from the poor and giving to the rich, who are oursourcing America's jobs at our expense and we can keep letting them get away with it, or we can punish them for doing it (tax them). We can stop giving subsidies to oil companies who are making billions in profits, or keep giving these big earners money from the pockets of people who earn $7.50 an hour. If you wish to believe they are creating jobs with our money and won't be able to afford to hire the same people without our money--you have been indoctrinated into believing that by your Republican overlords. It is the only argument they have and it keeps working on the sheeple. But if you, really, examined the results of the Bush tax cuts over the 10 years they were enacted, they helped nobody but the wealthiest and corporations. Bush's dad even said trickle down ecomonics don't work. He called them, "voodoo economics." Look it up.
#24
How does one "excuse" Obama for those things? Because he is doing so many more good things to counteract his "bend over backwards to be fair to the Republicans" attitude. You'll have to excuse him if he is trying too hard to be the better man than Bush (or any Republican for that matter). I do.
#25
smivicus, Sorry this comment is way late, but I'll make it anyway! The exploitation of a desperate workforce anywhere on the planet is the act of only a singular motive known as GREED. You're not fooled, nor am I by lame justifications for shipping jobs to slave markets and at the same time destroying our economy. Great point!
#26
Well I read all your posts. On Obama, I think you are missing one crucial fact - reality. It is one thing to say what you are going to do, another thing to actually do it.
Obama met that brick wall, Reality", and kind of figured out he had his work cut out for him. There were, and still are, way too many obstructions to do frontal assaults. So he compromised.
I've seen this "Big Guns Blazing Macho Take-No-Prisoners”" tactic in action before, and most of the time they are big disasters! Remember Bush and his 2 Wars! Obama quickly saw that he would never get anything done doing frontal assaults, as your enemy can see you coming and can plan to defeat you or bog you down. So his tactics are more cerebral and less intrusive - a tactic well suited to defeat the Right, as they have no concept of cerebral anyway!
What I am trying to say is that Obama is NOT an ordinary politician! When all is said and done, he may very well be one of our greatest presidents. I read somewhere he admired Lincoln, and Lincoln was no ordinary mortal either! They may very well be similar personalities.
And you make statements, such as he has sold liberals out by filling his office with Right wing people who are influencing him to sell out to the Corporations and the Super Rich.
I have a different viewpoint. He is a great Strategist, but an even greater Tactician! You don’t want “Yes Men” who kiss your behind 20 times a day! With Bush that is all he had and they even had to have lower I.Qs! A smart leader wants SMART people, of all political and religious and Economic persuasions around him, the better to get the lay of the land, mount an offensive and get the job done. You can’t fight Wall Street if you have people who don’t know Wall Street – the why for Geitner. You can’t tackle the Pentagon if you have none Pentagon people – the why for Gates. I could go on and on. He uses people wisely and he makes decisions based on the input he gets. And very successfully may I add. Just imagine what could get accomplished if he didn’t have all these obstructions from the Right!
There was a time during the Health Care era that I thought as you do. I was very depressed and angry at Obama. But since then I’ve changed my mind. It is just amazing what he and his people have accomplished in the face of all that strident opposition from the Right. And with the killing of OBL, it is very clear what Obama is doing – he is fighting and he is winning, a bit at a time. Hopefully, better things are in the offing. The Right is doing pretty stupid things right now – on Medicare – Tax Breaks for the Rich – restricting Voting Rights – Union Busting – trying to kill Collective Bargaining – Siding with Big Oil – Mandatory drug Testing to get Food Stamps – Doing away with Child Labor Laws – on and on! This will be their waterloo and Obama and Democracy will win in the end. Gotta keep the faith or we all die in our foxholes!
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