Month: March 2009

Employee Free Choice Could Save The Economy

This is a statement from the AFL-CIO blog:

AFL-CIO Now In a statement delivered today to Capitol Hill and published as a full-page advertisement in The Washington Post, more than three dozen of the nation’s top economists call on Congress to pass the Employee Free Choice Act to help restore an economy that works for everyone, built on a sustainable, wage-based growth.

The statement, signed by 39 of America’s top economists, including two Nobel Prize winners, points to the failure of U.S. labor laws to protect employees’ freedom to form a union and bargain as a major factor in our economic crisis. The statement says in part:

Indeed, from 2000 to 2007, the income of the median working-age household fell by $2,000—an unprecedented decline. In that time, virtually all of the nation’s economic growth went to a small number of wealthy Americans. An important reason for the shift from broadly shared prosperity to growing inequality is the erosion of workers’ ability to form unions and bargain collectively.

These economists, representing respected universities and policy institutions from across the nation, point to the corporate-dominated system for forming unions—and the coercion and anti-union campaigning by management—as the causes for declining wages and a gravely weakened economy.

A rising tide lifts all boats only when labor and management bargain on relatively equal terms. In recent decades, most bargaining power has resided with management. The current recession will further weaken the ability of workers to bargain individually. More than ever, workers will need to act together.

Although current headlines are dominated by the crises in the stock market and the financial sector, working families have been struggling for years under the weight of an unbalanced economy. These economists say that restoring bargaining power and ensuring working people have a voice in their workplace, and in their health care, pensions and wages, is critical to rebuilding our economy.

James K. Galbraith of the University of Texas, one of the economists who has signed on, says the freedom to form unions and bargain has many benefits for the economy and the country.

I support the Employee Free Choice Act for two reasons. First, it levels the playing field after a generation of anti-union policies, and in a world where far more workers are in decentralized, hard-to-organize workplaces than was true a generation back. Second, unions are a proven ally of progress, not only in politics but also in economics: unionized workforces promote technical change and productivity growth, because they make it possible to distribute more fairly and less brutally the costs of change.

Breast-aurants

You know what I am speaking of…places like Hooters.   In case you have not been it is a eatery with 20 something women in shorts and tank tops that are about 2 sizes too small and in some cases lots of cleavage.

I recently saws a piece about these types of eateries and they are being called “recession proof”.  They contend that with times getting tough…people will flock to these places as a form of escape from the outside world…at least for an hour or so.

The waitresses interviewed talk about their contribution to helping the community…..thinking….I guess showing half your tits, showing lots of leg and shaking you butt,  is in some small way a contribution.

But then the best part of the piece was when they interviewed the patrons.  They talked about the friendliness of the waitresses and the quality of the food….Wait!  The food?  These flipping perverts would eat crap on a plate if it came with a good dose of fake flirting and fine set of tits shoved in their faces.

So why not be honest?  You go there to see young tight bods, pushed up tits and lickable butts.  Bless their hearts…..but hopefully the women have something else in the fire besides the sexuality they try to ooze.  Hopefully they know that eventually gravity will take its toll…..youth is fleeting.

Let us all be truthful……admit it….you are a pervert and what better place to exercise your lustful fantasies than a Breast-aurant?  NO ONE subscribes to Playboy for the “articles”.  NO ONE “reads” Hustler.  And absolutely NO ONE goes to Hooters for the Nachos……

GOD! I Love This Stuff!

The conservatives are making this all too easy.  The Dems have been trying to make Rush the face of the GOP and evertime one of these guys apologizes to Rush they are just helping the Dems in ways they can not imagine.

Two days after calling Rush Limbaugh a mere “entertainer” with an “incendiary” talk show, Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele apologized and acknowledged the radio commentator as a “national conservative leader.”

Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele says he has reached out to Rush Limbaugh to tell him he meant no offense when he referred to the popular conservative radio host as an “entertainer” whose show can be “incendiary.”

“My intent was not to go after Rush – I have enormous respect for Rush Limbaugh,” Steele said in a telephone interview. “I was maybe a little bit inarticulate. … There was no attempt on my part to diminish his voice or his leadership.”

Steele comments were thus:

Steele told CNN host D.L. Hughley in an interview aired Saturday night: “Rush Limbaugh is an entertainer. Rush Limbaugh — his whole thing is entertainment. He has this incendiary — yes, it’s ugly.”

And then the Rush fires back at Steele:

“Why are you running the Republican Party?” Limbaugh asked on his radio show. “Why do you claim you lead the Republican Party when you seem obsessed with seeing to it that President Obama succeeds? … I would be embarrassed to say that I’m in charge of the Republican Party in the sad-sack state that it’s in. If I were chairman of the Republican Party, given the state that it’s in, I would quit.”

This comedy of errors just keeps rolling along…snowballing as it slides down the political slope….GOD!  I love this stuff!


Tax Cuts? Tax Cuts!

Oh crap…..we are still singing that tired old song?  Repubs have been rattling this piece of crap since 2001…it promises jobs and growth and …and….and….well just about anything you want it to; but what does it really bring with it?

Not much that it promises.
What did the Bush tax cuts really bring forth?

unemployment was up

opportunity was down

poverty went up

income went down

anxiety went up

prosperity was down

And yet with all that, the Repubs just keep throwing the failed policies of the past into the fray of any stimulus plan..  Why?  That is an easy question to answer.  They have NO plan B to offer the people or to save the economy.  And yet again they keep winning elections with no plans for the future other than to cut taxes.

Why?  Another easy one to answer.  The American people are so damn gullible that they believe the tax cuts that are promised will somehow benefit them and make their lives all the much better.  HA HA HA!  Dream on fools!  It only helps those who do not need the help.  Just like the newest stim plan.  The average middle class worker will make an extra $13.oo per pay check–guess that means the vacation to Cancun is out of the question, huh?

The American people are ALWAYS foolish when they hear the word TAX CUT…that somehow they will benefit…they seldom do.  Please Stop Lying To The American People!

Do you remember the American Recovery & Reinvestment Act?  That is the recent stimulus plan that was passed by Congress with little support from the Party of “NO”, the GOP.  Why no support?  They wanted more tax relief.  But the largest part of the plan is $288 billion is for tax relief, and is not that what the Repubs kept screaming about?

They, the GOP, got their way, they got their way on tax relief but yet they still would support the bill.  Reality dictates that they would have supported the Act regardless what was put into it.  It was never about the bill but rather the positioning for the next election in 2010.

Are You Listening?

To the flap trap BS of the GOP, RNC  and conservatives…..you guys have an internal battle royale going on….right now between Steele and Rush…I guess these guys are the voice of conservatism right now…..if so then the GOP is in lots of trouble.

Steele is characterizing Rush as..an entertainer and ugly…Rush fires back and basically calls Steele a joke…..who will apologize first?  My guess is it will be Steele.

All this name calling and capitalism promotion is doing NOTHING to help the GOP to find its way that it has lost during the Bush years.  Oh yeah, they are all “fiscal conservatives”, but where was this concern on spending for the last 8 years.  These guys are not concerned with the ailing economy…they trying to set up themselves for electoral victories in 201o.

The Repubs have NO idea how to fix the economy…they just know that they cannot agree with Obama and his plan.  The only plan they can offer is a tax cuts…HAHAHA…what a plan…we had those for the last 8 years and look where we are now….a new plan needs to be found.

The GOP is not showing any leadership on the repair of the economy…they are showing that elections are more important than the lives of the people they should be representing.

Could Unions Save The Economy?

Exerpts from an article written by Joel Wendlad for Ploitical Affairs magazine:

Joining a labor union provides the most direct path to improving a worker’s standard of living. If done on a large enough scale, unionization could help revive the entire US economy, a chorus of voices have argued recently.

In a recent telephone conference to discuss the economic benefits of unionization with reporters last week, former Labor Secretary Robert Reich said, “One big reason we’re in the crisis that we’re in is that consumers have run out of money.”

Median wages dropped over the course of the past decade, making the period after the 2001 recession the first time ever that working-class wages have fallen during a an economic recovery, Reich noted.

The collapse of the housing market and the credit crunch combined with declining wages meant that working families had little or no personal financial safety net to fall back on, worsening the economic crisis to its historic proportions. “The entire economy is in trouble because there simply is not enough demand out there,” Secretary Reich said.

“If [workers] did have higher wages and higher benefits, they would have the purchasing power they need to buy more of the goods and services that this economy produces,” Reich emphasized. “And that would strengthen the economy overall.”
According to congressional Web sites, the Employee Free Choice Act aims to establish or revise three basic labor laws: 1) to give workers a choice about how to certify a union in their workplace, using either a secret ballot or a majority sign-up process; 2) increases and enforces penalties on employers who threaten or harass workers who try to join a union; 3) eliminates red tape by speeding up the process of arbitration and mediation that employers often now delay endlessly at taxpayer expense.

Union members earn an average of about 30 percent higher in wages, are 59 percent more likely to have health benefits and 54 percent more likely to have retirement benefits. Union membership also sharply reduces inequalities in wages and benefits by gender and race.
Beth Shulman, co-director of Fairness Initiative on Low-Wage Work, said that in working with low-income workers, she discovered that as workers joined unions they quickly saw higher incomes, better health care benefits and a sense of dignity and empowerment in the workplace.

“At the end of the day, having a union for millions of workers across the country really is the difference between having a decent wage and impoverishment,” Shulman pointed out. Unions also make a huge difference for communities by raising standards of livings and providing a tax base for improved public services, she added.