A Definite Case of Poor Timing

[ProblemAgain]

Monday i was reading an opinion piece by Michael Reagan....rather interesting in the time sequence since he was excoriating union thugs yet at the same time they are doing funerals for some union thugs who died trying to protect their students....and the critique comes from a person who basically has made HIS living off his daddy and being his daddy's son...

Misdirected anger ... in Obamaville

Misdirected anger ... in Obamaville

Posted: Monday, December 17, 2012 10:45 pm | Updated: 12:50 pm, Tue Dec 18, 2012.

By Michael Reagan

All those union thugs who were rioting in Michigan last week were angry about the wrong thing.

They were demonstrating – which in union-speak means breaking things and punching people – against Michigan’s decision to become a right-to-work state.

If you believe the union spin, or the mainstream liberal media’s spin, or the Obama spin, which all come from the same propaganda factory, that means Michigan no longer cares about workers, the right to organize, living wages, etc., etc.

But what Michigan’s new law really means is that the voters and a majority of the politicians in the state have miraculously decided that a citizen’s freedom of choice should extend to the freedom to be able to choose not to join a union.

What a concept.

It’s a great step forward for a troubled state that has seen its signature industry crippled to the point of near extinction by unions that had too much power over the lives of workers, American carmakers, politicians and the economy.

If those union thugs and their allies in the Democrat Party really had a clue, they would have been demonstrating – peacefully, if that’s possible – against what has happened to the once-great, but now pathetic, city of Detroit.

The statistics are staggering. Detroit – a union town if America ever made one – is a socialist hell on wheels.

Its city government is broke and nearly $50 million in the red, in part because it pays $1.08 in benefits to municipal workers and retirees for every $1 it pays in salaries.

Its population has fallen from 1.8 million in 1950 to about 700,000 as of 2011, and too many of the Detroiters who are left don’t pay taxes, don’t form traditional two-parent families, don’t have jobs and aren’t interested in having one.

Of the roughly 224,000 residents who actually have a job, only 190,000 work in the private sector. A third of the populace is on food stamps. Oh, and 99,000 of Detroit’s 363,000 housing units are vacant.

Welcome to Obamaville – and the future Obama America.

http://www.yourhoustonnews.com/courier/opinion/misdirected-anger-in...

again we have the conservatives blaming obama for in this case union thugs and detroit...without mentioning it was the guys at the top driving the bus who turned the corners to get to this place...it was not the employees who moved the production of automobiles out of detroit....it wasn't obama who made cars that were absolute pieces of sh** in the early 70's and thus allowed the japanese to capture a share of the car market...it wasn't the employees who outsourced the parts supply chain to mexico and brazil and onward to cut the costs of assembling a car...and of course you will be in the red when you are paying for the retirees who used to handle a city that was two and a half times larger than what you have now in population..and when that population has been in a recession and severe unemployment for a number of years...and once again they fail to address the fact that over 40 years the warning about underfunding pensions was ignored by cities, counties, states and private industry....and now instead of blaming the administrators for the shortfall, the far right has the absolute gall to blame the employees and former employees for expecting what was promised to them when they were working and making money for the trickledown employers...

[Trish]

Don't get me started on Ronald Reagan, who was an Alzheimer's sufferer who was led around by the nose by the rich. 

[Dennis Barsten]

He was an Actor....

[P.A.]

Michael is an adopted son who has made his living on hate radio for years because of his name. Ron Reagan is a natural born son and is a democrat.

[Lifesighs]

Detroit is in trouble going back to Coleman Young and all the other politicians since who robbed it blind and messed it up, hopefully Bing can help put some of it back together again. Michael Reagan is an ass. Ron Reagan (the son) is an intelligent and thoughtful person.

[exedir]

Of course we are mixing up points, one about unions and union activities as related to right-to-work laws and limits on collective bargaining and, those that happen to belong to unions whether by choice or by necessity due to representation rules.  

What we have here is the changing face of labor and labor economics in our times.  This is not your father's labor market.

It is highly competitive and stack against labor to work its will on corporations and employers as they did decades ago.  And no, this is the beginning of industrialization of the 19th century, this is post-industrialization milieu where labor can no longer isolate production and some types of services for bargaining purposes as was possible in the past.  

The enemy of labor is progress, the progress to ship the misery of doing labor to other parts of the world for profit and economic efficiency just like Adam Smith foretold in the Wealth of Nations.  What was done by working hands and backs has been shipped to low wage, low skill labor forces overseas and in return we get cheap goods to buy and use while we do things that was foretold as the knowledge based society, an unemployed knowledge based society as a consequence of productivity and efficiency which replaces and destroys jobs, of all types.  

[P.A.]

Horse crap again. The problem is corporate greed and outlandish salaries for executives, worrying about the stock price more than doing a good job and not putting their country ahead of there pocket book.

[ProblemAgain]

can you please clarify your post? we aren't mixing any points up...i was pointing out that obama and liberals and unions are being blamed for corporate decisions which occurred, in some cases, well before the twinkle was out of daddy's eye...and the whining about pensions is because the people on the other side of the table WHO AGREED to the terms and contracts DID NOT FULLY FUND THEM. if they had, we would not be having this conversation about "union thugs". it is an intellectually dishonest attempt by the right to demonize the working people of this nation as the source of the problems rather than the business decisions by the well-paid executive staff of corporations to remove americans from payrolls and substitute them with cheaper workers abroad...great decision til it comes back to haunt the country that the aggregate loss of jobs has hurt the ability of the nation to be consumers without debt and that all that money the corporations shipped off to india, pakistan, afghanistan, taiwan and others to pay for that cheap labor IS NOT COMING BACK...and as i have said...in the meantime, people are blaming the passengers for the destination of the bus, not the driver

[ProblemAgain]

luvy the point is that the phrase union thugs has been used to paint EVERY member or supporter of a union and to blame unions for what business and government has done all by themselves to this country...i'd wager money the guys at the top of the banks are wailing that they don't have any union thugs on whom to blame their financial fiascos

[ellevan]

Ditto

[P.A.]

I understand that he was a Fox reporter. Lord knows what he did to get the union guy to hit him. It was the headline on fox for two days.