Wage Hating Burger Czar As Labor Secretary?
By Thom Hartmann A...
In just a two hour span, Donald Trump has completely exposed his whole "I love the workers" routine as just another classic Trump scam.
It all began, where else, on Twitter, where on Wednesday night, Trump went after Chuck Jones, the local union president for the factory at the center of his Carrier deal.
These attacks weren't completely out of the blue -- Jones had called Trump a liar in an interview with the Washington Post -- but they were still in complete contrast to the man-of-the-people image Trump projected on the campaign trail.
Not only did Trump accuse Jones of "doing a terrible job of representing workers," he also blamed Jones and his union for Carrier moving their production to Mexico, saying that "if United Steelworkers 1999 was any good, they would have kept those jobs in Indiana".
Trump then ended his little rant by telling Jones "work more, talk less" and "to reduce dues" -- a classic right-wing attack on labor.
Amazing, right?
Get Trump a little mad and he sounds like any other Republican talking head on Fox so-called News.
This is the real Trump we're seeing now -- the Trump who allegedly stiffed his workers, the Trump who's been repeatedly accused of housing discrimination, and the Trump who's perfectly fine with importing immigrants as long as it benefits him personally.
For that Trump -- the real Trump -- workers like Chuck Jones have always just been props.
They were what he's used to cover up what is, with the exception of what he says are his positions on trade, a pretty standard right-wing set of policies.
Case in point: Trump's pick for Labor Secretary, fast food oligarch Andrew Puzder.
As the head of the company that owns Carl's Jr and Hardee's, Andrew Puzder has distinguished himself as no fan of the workers in his own fast-food industry.
He doesn't believe in a living wage, opposes paid leave, and has made it his personal mission to kill President Obama's executive order expanding overtime pay.
You really couldn't ask for a worse person to look out for American workers - besides maybe, I don't know, Gordon Gekko himself.
We heard a lot from Trump on the campaign trail about how the system was rigged.
But with his attacks on individual workers on Twitter and his choice of the most anti-labor labor secretary since Reagan's pick of Ray Donovan back in the day, it's clear that he's on the side of the billionaires and the big corporations.
So can we finally stop calling him a populist?
Comments
#2
New Secretary of Labor, what a joke, but not really a joke -- just a very bad choice for that position. I agree with the comment above. Trump has created a lot of bad karma.
#3
Yes, he can go straight ro hell, and all the ignorant fools who voted for him! All of a sudden the rest of us are supposed to be all nicey-nice, good little citizens, respect their idiotic choices, shut the hell up, and make it all work out for them -- the same disgusting trolls who slandered and maligned relentlessly everyone who tried to reason with them or who tried to support the Democrats to make this a better world. These immoral degenerates deserve nothing but utter contempt and ridicule every step along the way to hell.
#4
The word "job" needs more defintion.
What is the cost per day to have food, shelter, and medical?
Then define a job as 8 hours of activity that at least pays
for these costs for one person for one day.
Lets see if Trump can get large infrastructure projects
funded that will provide jobs.
Real jobs.
ct
ct
#5
Just like the old saying: "You get what you pay for" - "You get what you vote for."
#6
A living wage in the U.S. economy needs to cover much more than just the bare subsistence of food, clothing, and shelter to create a vibrant economy and the pursuit of happiness, as our Founders intended. First, wages have to be high enough so that families won't need public assistance. Then, an 8-hour day, forty-hour workweek, with overtime for the hours exceeded -- fought long and hard for by unions -- should cover the cost of medical care, a comfortable retirement, savings for unforeseen expenses, transportation, higher education, vacations, and enough breathing room for mentally and spiritually stimulating recreational activities with our family and friends, such as sports, going to a restaurant, a movie, a concert now and then, etc.
A wealthy nation like ours has plenty of money to pay such wages and salaries to their worthy, productive citizens, no matter what job they work. Every job should be valued and honored, because each one adds to the wellbeing of society. To survive as a healthy nation without slipping into third-world status, or some fascist hybrid, we must work to reverse the Republicans' (and corporate Democratic enablers) thirty-plus year trend of siphoning most of our bounty into the pockets of the few at the top of the pyramid. Curtailing excessive profit-taking and penalizing unpatriotic corporations that offshore our jobs, by slapping hefty tariffs on the overpriced crap they try to import back to us, would be a good place to start. If they want access to our large, sought-after markets, they have to play by our rules, not their own so-called "free" trade rules that only end up screwing over workers and the environment while enriching the greed-mongers, such as the sexual pervert and liar,Trump, and his rapacious buddies.
#7
Well Minority-elect Trump is a populist if your sample size is Billionaires ...
Unless 37 Electoral College members vote their conscience over party, I shall alway refer to this president as "Minority-elect President Trump". We've got to keep that at the forefront of dialogue as he's pulling a "Dubya" and acting like he has a mandate.
#8
Rght wing Trolls are dieing off. The cabinet picks are beyond their widest dreams.
#9
In fact, can we saddle Trump with "Minority-elect President" the same way he unjustifiably used the "birther" tag against Obama?
MEPOTUS!
(kinda sounds like Trump tweet anyway ...)
#10
Heehaw ... That's good, very funny! And true.
#11
As ever, your comments and posts bring the truthful reality into view.
Trumps's choices for cabinet positions is a list of the worst possible candidates for the American people; every one of them is an ideological, inimical, vainglory poseur who do not believe in democracy.
They are all traitors to the principles and intent of the US Constitution and instead are adjuvant players advancing the Neo-liberal/conservative agenda whose economic venom has destroyed society's social pillars and institutions that support democracy, the ethical and moral glue that shapes human attitudes and behavior, and the ruination of honesty, fairness, and the "HOPE" of a more equally prosperous pursuit of happiness.
These ideologues worship "Mammon" you cannot serve God and mammon — Matthew 6:24; Nor can you serve the democratic rights of the American people, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights or the inalienable rights of US citizens when your ideological philosophy raises questions of one's ability to honor the oath of office they swear to uphold for the American people: "No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.
These appointees have already shown where their loyalty lies, and it is not with democracy or the voices of citizens. That conflict of interests makes every appointee of donald thrump a traitor to the Constitution and the American people.
#12
The way things are shapping up, Donald Trump will become widely known as the "US Liar in Chief with his Swamp Filled Cabinet."
#13
What Thom and most leftie/socialists don't want to understand is, the minimum wage is not intended to be a living wage. It is a starting wage. Increases come with proven hard and reliable work. Winners will be rewarded. Slackers should be fired. Not everyone fits into your same communist garb.
You were all warned that the SEIU's repeated attempts to raise the minimum starting wage to $15 would actually decrease jobs. You repeatedly scoffed at that idea. You were told that many workers could be replaced with automation. Again, you continued your push.
Now, many high school kids will be deprived of a job because of your continued attempts to convince America that one should be able to live off a minimum wage.
Those efforts spurred automation and never say you weren't warned well ahead of time.
If you all really support what you say you believe in, keep your ass out of UBER cabs and support union cab drivers , dump your I-phones, rid yourself of any big bank credit cards, and only buy products from suppliers that pay their workers more than $15/hr.
That is making a difference, not complaining all day and telling others how we should live.
#14
Very well said Diane. My city has a apprentice program for high school students summer jobs which I perticipated in for years. Most first job students actually lost me money by damaging or taking up other employees time to teach them but I know everyone needs to learn so I did my part. Our government raised minimum wage to a point that I was forced to cancel it. The director said I wasn't the only one about half dropped out. Their is a huge difference between a first job and a full time job.
#15
Oh ya. Give Trump a chance. As far as job losses go, America has no where to go but up. Obamas record was horrible.
#16
@#13,14,15:
These posts are the convoluted gibberish of stereotypical consumers of false news, hopelessly immersed in the utterly ridiculous tripe born out of the ubiquitous think tanks of the right-wing, corporate-sponsored alternate universe, where facts are fungible, fiction is reality, and the truth is a lie.
Rudimentary research, existing virtually everywhere in the real universe, would easily reveal these anecdotal deflections and ideological evasions, spread around by the faithful sycophants of proven liars, as nothing but polluted air and garbage with no substance or redeemable value whatsoever. Really, there's no sense wasting too much internet ink on transparent trolls who will never recognize the sad little role they play on blog sites. Ignorance is not necessarily stupidity, but willful ignorance certainly is.
Quickly: History quite clearly demonstrates that whenever the minimum wage was increased, it put more money in consumers' pockets, thus increasing demand in the marketplace, which led to more jobs. Duh! Economics 101! Furthermore, a big percentage of those minimum wage jobs, that you so cavalierly assign to the small minority of part-time high school students, are actually being taken by adults, sometimes working two or three minimum-wage jobs to support their families, who are the victims of our largely nonunion, corporate economy.
Gee, if this fascist oligarchy is so great, why is the middle class and the poor struggling so mightily these days just to make ends meet, even for the basics, with many of the downtrodden resorting to public assistance, which Republicans also hate? I guess it's because they're all just too lazy or drug addled to climb the corporate ladder, or who had the misfortune of not being born in a wealthy family that could afford the ridiculous cost of higher education.
Finally, Obama's job record was not horrible, considering that he brought us out of the worst Republican recession since the Republican Great Depression (which, by the way, another Democrat turned around). How convenient that your memory is so short.
During Obama's Administration, depending on how it's calculated, anywhere from 11 to 14 million jobs were generated, certainly not horrible, certainly better than the village idiot, "Dubya" Bush. A quick and accurate visualization of the job history transiting between these two presidents is the infamous "Bikini Graph," which reflects very poorly on the Republicans' previous reign of terror. But I already suggested that to you before; obviously, you are more comfortable clinging to the many lies about Obama and his accomplishments that neatly fit into your skewed worldview.
#17
Trump voters poll numbers Kend fits right in. False facts do not fly.
#18
Am I the only one that remembers him saying at a rally during the primaries -- you make too much money?
#19
When a man decides to make a profit off another mans back, profit disclosure laws need to apply. For example if a guy like Puzder is making a ten million profit, and he's not paying a living wage or providing health insurance and pension benefits, then he should by law be required to accept a one million dollar profit and recycle the other nine million back into wages and benefits. He should have had the moral compass to do that in the first place.
When greed becomes so out of control and oppressive to society that it compromises the general welfare of the people, that's when good government has a mandate to step in and redirect.
Sort of related: Because TPP is still on the long term agenda, there's currently free trade propaganda circulating that blames our manufacturing job loss on automation. This totally ignores the fact that millions of manufacturing jobs have went overseas since 2000 and those jobs continue to be enormously profitable because of slave labor and greed, not automation. There's a reason concentration of wealth in this country is at a record high level.....and it's not because of automation.
BTW: Get ready for what they'll be calling a market correction...it won't be... it will be a crash.
#20
Well put. You can't keep draining the lifeblood out of an economy as big as ours and impoverishing it's people without finally crashing it, which has been proven time after time -- usually with Ayn Rand-type Republicans at the helm.
Another supreme irony is that whatever automation is created to displace workers, you can bet the parts, pieces, and technology of it will be manufactured by slave labor in some hopelessly polluted authoritarian, one-party government like China, or a poverty-stricken, crime-ridden borderline plutocracy like Mexico.
The paradigm of so-called "free" trade and unfettered greed corrupts any country it touches. Unregulated, extreme capitalism doesn't fit well in an honest and true democracy/republic.
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