ox45tallboy: tenpoundsofcheese: where did the last 5,000,000,000,000 go? anyone know?
Happened in the last 3 years.

Your eyes are in your head. When your head is up your arse, so are your eyes, and you aren't able to see signs like this all over the country:

[www.cornelldemocrats.org image 325x301]

Yeah, money that should be spent blowing up bridges in Afghanistan.

tenpoundsofcheese: Zombalupagus: [i.imgur.com image 562x449]

If you don't like Obama, then this is the dirtbag you end up with.

you do know that that is not real, right?

Doesn't really change my opinion of him. I actually assumed it was fake from the start but have never seen any evidence one way or another. And it's funny either way.

As for the real Romney, he's not so amusing.

I've worked for corporations like this. Those that run them are soulless miserable people that will stop at nothing to take what they can...they get very creative at stealing the bread out of your mouth and patting you on the back at the same time. This is what has made America go down...these people do not give a shiat about their customers, their employees or their reputation...only their bank account. There is a special place in hell waiting for them and I think they know that.

o5iiawah: trotsky: I love the shills with the Union Derangement Syndrome. Yes, Unions are the cause. A bunch of workers who organized a collective for evil stuff like living wages, decent working conditions and benefits. Evil mother farkers intent on destroying the American dream.

The worst part is that the morons really believe this and will vote for this worm, smiling as he ships their job the Mexico.

If only union bosses actually pushed for things like benefits, wage, working conditions and pension. There would be far less need to extract duespayer money to contribute to political campaign contributions, global warming initiatives and one-world-worker programs.

It all sounds good and fine until your union bosses start funneling your money to political movements bent on the elimination of your job. Dont believe me? Ask the coalworkers union how they feel about the EPA and the AFL-CIO funneling millions to the Obama re-election.

Guess how I know you've never been in a union?

A few facts:
1) the amount of money the national organization brings in is directly based on the number of dues-paying members in each local, and their average salary for top-of-scale workers. So there is a direct financial incentive to be maximally focused on securing the best possible benefits for their members, in the long term.

2) maybe in the bad old days things were done differently, but I have never spoken to any union official who isn't desperate to get more members to attend meetings and fill leadership roles. 90% of the work is done by 10% of the people. I heard one guy ask, really, how can I get that other 5% involved?

3) I can't speak to the particulars of some of the issues you raised (and I'm betting neither can you, past the talking points...). But what you say brings up a couple of real issues that everyone (and labor in particular is having to deal with):
a). Since we have a constant influx of new hires coming in, we have to represent the needs not just of the topped out guys 2 years from retirement, but the new guy looking to do a job for the next 30-40 years. Plus all the retirees. Contrast that with the business world; where the focused has moved from annual profits to quarterly statements, and long fark planning is anything over 5 years away, because everyone at the top plans on being safely elsewhere by then. We workers simply cannot compress our lives in the same way. So more and more we find ourselves being the ones advocating in favor of restraint and an eye to the future, while upper management is happy to burn the place down around them for the insurance money.

The mythos of the greedy union parasites gnawing at the bowels of successful businesses until they weaken? and die? A lie, from the same propagandists that convinced half the country that a decorated veteran was a war criminal, while a Fortunate Son who went AWOL while defending Texas from Charlie was a Real American Hero.

Reality is that for the workers, their whole livelihood is based on a single company. Where as to the Investor Class, that same company is just a bullet point in the annual report, holding a fraction of their net worth. Who really has the most to lose in that situation, and therefore is the most motivated to see the company succeed?


b) even in a relatively small union local, the hardest decisions a leader has to make whether to fight a decision that hurts one of our members but benefits another. In that case, we try to look at the precedents that are being set for the future. If one of our members takes a short-term hit so that ten of our members see a long-term benefit, we have to conclude that the change is better for our membership over-all, and so we can't justify spending limited resources to fight against a net benefit to our members. It can be a really tough call: how much of a.gain/loss are we talking about, and how does it position us for the future?

Now that's in a 100+ person local in a smaller national union. I can't imagine the delicate balancing acts that juggling a coalition of millions of workers in hundreds of trades must require. Nor the look to the future. But take the united world.workers projects, from what little I know, the primary goal is to help workers in other countries organize for better pay and working conditions, which is an major farking key to revitalizing our own economy. The minute we stop having entire farking countries providing scab labor is the day the Americaqn economy goes into hyperdrive. As for the coal? I would venture to guess that the AFL-CIO believes a transition to sustainable energy sources will provide more, better jobs for union members than getting in a tunnel-digging contest with Chinese orphans.

But the truth is that the modern GOP is so poisonous to organized labor that Obama could probably every member's right kidney on eBay and STILL be the friendlier option for us. Sweet Jesus, remember (recall!) Wisconsin? Those farkers aren't just happy with unilaterally breaking a contract they freely entered, just because they changed their mind midstream. (Try that shiat with your bank & your mortgage, btw...). No, even that wasn't enough for those greedy cocksuckers. They wanted to take away our very rights to organize! The right our forefathers matched in the streets, stood on picket lines, and sometimes got their heads clubbed in by Pinkertons and company men to protect! fark that, and fark them. Obama could fire me himself, tomorrow, and I'd still vote for his ass over the guy who made billions by farking the middle class coming and going, backed by an entire political party that doesn't seem to expect America to exist after 2020.

/holy shiat this is a long post. Sorry, guys.

werekoala: /holy shiat this is a long post. Sorry, guys.

Good one, though. You're now faved in green. Hope you like green.

werekoala:

Nice.

You gotta love the biased hit pieces that try to paint their bullshiat as fact. "Everything was great, we were getting big fat union checks, and then Bain came in and ruined everything." This is the early to mid 90s. Anybody believing this shiat should take a history lesson. Bain was the only chance for this place. The majority of unionized steel mills in the US went out of business during this time period because of a massive influx of cheap, foreign steel from Asia. About the only thing you can really "blame" Bain for is that they were good at covering their own asses, and made sure if GS failed, they didn't take a loss from it.

I guess they didn't like MY submitted headline: Mitt Romney; and American Parasite.

I think I submitted this one Thursday...

Wow, thanks for the kudos, folks.

Makes me feel as though the half hour I spent ignoring my family, fingers angrily stabbing my phone screen, was not in vain! :)

I have returned the favor(itting), you are now all o.k. (orange-kolored) in my book.

o5iiawah: If Union labor is safer, more efficient and better trained than non-union labor then why would any sensible business owner hire non-union labor?

Link

Because many business owners are scum?

Had a non-union mine and got 29 people killed by flouting every rule in the book.