The Almighty Unions

[egbert]

The telegraph companies have been consolidated, which in simple language means that Mr. Jay Gould controls every wire in the United States over which a telegram can be sent. Mr. Gould has for a long time had his eye on this business. He was not satisfied with owning half the railways in the country, and being able by a single wave of the hand to make a million or so every day in Wall Street by stock fluctuatuions; but he now goes in for higher game, and seeks to control everything in the country. There is not a single staple, there is not a single business interest that is not now under Mr. Gould’s thumb. We are all human, and so are telegraph operators; and it would be quite awkward if one fine day a little error could be made to a quotation of the price of cotton, which would result in the tuin of men who deal in that article, and cause Mr. Gould and his friends, if he has any, to pocket the few extra millions.

The error would be, of course, rectified in a few hours, or at least the next day, and the telepgraph operators severely reprimanded, if not dismissed; but it would then be too late; all the mischief would be done. A trifling misquotation of this kind could occur several times a month. Petroleum would serve the purpose one day, corn and wheat the next. And then what is to prevent a special stock being quoted in a special manner in a special city? We do not mean to say that Mr. Jay Gould would do any of these wicked things; he is too good, too virtuous, too pious for that; and like Deacon Richard Smith, as the Sun represents him, he may have wicked partners who will have their own way and refuse to be guided by the righteous and unselfish Mr. Gould, although they must be conscious of the pain they are inflicting on their chief. Think of the poor man shedding tears in the solitude of his library at the ungratefulness of human nature and the obstinacy of his naughty associates.

We Americans are by no means modest. We pride ourselves on being a Republic, on our freedom, on our boundless prairies; in fact, it is very difficult to say on what we do not pride ourselves. But are we a Republic, and are we free? We don’t think we are. no country can be called free where it is possible for a private individual to acquire as his own personal property all the means of communication among its citizens. This is what Mr. Jay Gould has done by consolidating the American Union with the Western Union, and Atlantic and Pacific. He is now a more powerful autocrat than the Czar of all the Russias. As for the Emperor of Germany and the Queen of Great Britain, they are very small personages, indeed, compared to this financial Alexander the Great. They can do nothing without the consent of their legislatures, while Mr. Gould is responsible only to himself. The press is completely powerless in the matter. He already owns two papers, body and soul; and those that he does not own dare not speak their minds, fearful of running the risk of having their telegraphic news cut off from them. Jay Gould is to-day the Emperor of the United States with absolute power.

H.C. Bunner

http://superitch.com/?p=9486

[Coito ergo sum]

[sandinista]

another picture battle coitos favorite!

[egbert]

Without unions, things would be very unbalanced indeed. The power of capital, and its understandable desire to drive wages and conditions as low as possible, means that individual workers have little chance to gain a fair share if they act alone. Collective, organised action by workers is vital; without it, capitalism would tend to become the total monster that sandinista thinks it is already...

Become? We've been there already see Anti-Trust laws and Robber Barons. And now the "Global economy" scam is being used to force workers to "compete" in a race to the bottom.

[egbert]

Franklin Roosevelt rejected the notion of public sector unions collectively bargaining for pay and benefits, and striking against the public. Why is it so wrong for the rest of us to agree with him?

The usual right wing twisting of the truth.

Taxpayer-financed union busting in the United States

During the 1960s, low-paid workers at nonprofit hospitals formed unions and demanded recognition. Major American cities experienced a series of hospital strikes, some of which were violent.[citation needed] Hospital workers and labor leaders insisted that the NLRA be amended to cover employees at nonprofits, and by 1974 President Nixon had signed such a law.[citation needed] In 1979 Congress investigated a backlash against new union organizing resulting from that law and learned that public money was often used to pay for union busting activities, some of which were brutal or illegal.[49]

A substantial amount of fees paid to union busters had come from the federal Medicaid program, even though union busting is not an allowed fee. In spite of prohibitions, the hospitals managed to finance union-busting costs by packaging them with training costs. A hospital watchdog agency in Massachusetts ordered six hospitals to reimburse Medicaid $250,000 for anti-union campaigns from 1974 to 1976.[50]

State laws at one time sought to prevent taxpayer funds from being awarded to union busting corporations through government contracts. One such law, passed in Wisconsin in 1979, was struck down by the United States Supreme Court in the decision Wisconsin Dept. of Industry v. Gould.[51] The 1986 Supreme Court decision means that it doesn't matter if the punishment for illegal behavior under federal labor law is limited, those punishments are the maximum allowed and states cannot eliminate such companies from government contracts. Critics charge that, in effect, "federal labor law forces states to hire unionbusters."[52]

Also in the 1970s, the Department of Defense partially financed union busting by its contractors. Such activities appear to be illegal, for they conflict with the NLRA.[53] In 1998, Catholic Healthcare West, the largest private hospital chain in California and a major recipient of state Medicaid funds, conducted a campaign against Service Employees International Union (SEIU) in Sacramento and Los Angeles at a cost of more than $2.6 million. After the Catholic Healthcare West campaign, the California state legislature passed a law prohibiting the use of taxpayer funds for anti-union activities.[14]

However, in a 2007 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Chamber of Commerce of the United States of America et al. vs. Brown, Attorney General of California et al., the court ruled 7-2 that federal labor law pre-empted a California law that limited many employers from speaking to their employees about union-related issues. Justice John Paul Stevens stated that Federal labor law had embraced "wide-open debate" about labor issues, as long as the employer did not try to coerce employees into accepting its point of view. Consequently, the state law is incompatible with federal labor law.[54]

Other efforts to restrict the use of tax dollars for union busting have also been struck down. A major recipient of state Medicaid funds, the Center for Cerebral Palsy in Albany, New York, hired a law firm to fight a UNITE organizing drive. In 2002 the State of New York passed a labor neutrality act prohibiting the use of taxpayer dollars for union busting. The law was passed as a direct result of the campaign against UNITE. In May 2005, a district court judge struck down the labor neutrality law in a ruling that the legal representatives of the Center for Cerebral Palsy described as "an enormous victory for employers."[14]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_bust ... _tricks.22

[sandinista]

Without unions, things would be very unbalanced indeed. The power of capital, and its understandable desire to drive wages and conditions as low as possible, means that individual workers have little chance to gain a fair share if they act alone. Collective, organised action by workers is vital; without it, capitalism would tend to become the total monster that sandinista thinks it is already...

Become? We've been there already see Anti-Trust laws and Robber Barons. And now the "Global economy" scam is being used to force workers to "compete" in a race to the bottom.

"become" indeed. Already there jimbo.

[egbert]

Who cares? I'm fine with socialists driving their economies into the ground and trying to steal people's property, because capital flows away from taxes

Why don't you share your right wing knowledge, and tell us how civilization exists without taxes?

[Seth]

Who cares? I'm fine with socialists driving their economies into the ground and trying to steal people's property, because capital flows away from taxes

Why don't you share your right wing knowledge, and tell us how civilization exists without taxes?

It doesn't. But capital still flows away from taxes, like water. The higher the taxes, the less capital there is around to invest in the economy because it's flowing to lower-tax locations. The trick is to find the happy medium where taxation and capital investment can coexist productively.

Interestingly, when you examine, for example, US income tax rates over the last century, and you plot them against actual dollars of revenue collected by the Treasury, you find an inverse relationship, and the amount of taxes, in actual dollars collected, remains remarkably close to 19 percent of GDP no matter what the marginal tax rate is.

What this indicates is that government spending should be constitutionally limited to, say 15 percent of GDP, so that the government can never burden the economy so much that higher taxation is required.

And the best, fairest, most efficient way to impose those taxes is as a universal 15 percent sales and consumption tax on all goods and services, with no exclusions. That way, people are taxed on how they consume, and people can choose how much tax they pay by modifying their consumption habits, and the wealthiest pay more in absolute terms than the poor because they consume more. Eminently fair, egalitarian and it produces adequate revenues for all truly necessary government operations, leaving the rest of the wealth circulating in the economy, where real people get to use it rather than having it wasted on government.

Of course this means cutting literally all social welfare programs, perhaps with the exception of emergency programs for the truly indigent, which is something that socialists simply cannot comprehend.

[MrJonno]

Of course this means cutting literally all social welfare programs, perhaps with the exception of emergency programs for the truly indigent, which is something that socialists simply cannot comprehend.

Nah just something no decent human being could comprehend, most atheists, christians, communists, conservatives,men,women, marsians etc

[Coito ergo sum]

[Coito ergo sum]

[Coito ergo sum]

[Seth]

Of course this means cutting literally all social welfare programs, perhaps with the exception of emergency programs for the truly indigent, which is something that socialists simply cannot comprehend.

Nah just something no decent human being could comprehend, most atheists, christians, communists, conservatives,men,women, marsians etc

This is yet another cognitive disconnect of socialists. They cannot comprehend the notion that people are capable of caring for one another without the necessity of government force. Nor do they comprehend how most social welfare programs enslave people. They enslave the productive class to the service of the dependent class, but worst of all, they enslave the dependent class to the state, and prevent the dependent class from ever achieving economic success.

The old AFDC program, that has destroyed much of minority culture and doomed generations of primarily black youth to perpetual dependency is a perfect example of the hell that good intentions lead to.

Ben Franklin said it best: "I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion of the means. I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it. In my youth I travelled much, and I observed in different countries, that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer."

Natural human altruism and charity, as well as rational self interest are sufficient to help those who are actually incapable of helping themselves, particularly in a vibrant and economically advanced free market economy. It is true, however, that the more socialist the state, the less altruistic and charitable its citizens, and in the advanced stages, socialists abandon every principle they ever had and will stand by and watch the poor starve to death because there is nothing left for them to give, and because they have been trained and indoctrinated into the false belief that it is government's job to care for others, not theirs.

[MrJonno]

This is yet another cognitive disconnect of socialists. They cannot comprehend the notion that people are capable of caring for one another without the necessity of government force. Nor do they comprehend how most social welfare programs enslave people. They enslave the productive class to the service of the dependent class, but worst of all, they enslave the dependent class to the state, and prevent the dependent class from ever achieving economic success.

Dependent class, productive class care to define this concepts?. I know farmers are parasites on the tax payer but its all a bit confusing to me not living on planet Libby

[.Morticia.]

if I put a rolls royce badge on a dodge it's still a dodge