Labor Should Fight

It is time for the new labor movement. Young people don’t remember what it was like before Reagan started busting the unions. Maybe membership is dwindling because the new generation doesn’t understand the power and might of working class people united in ensuring that all workers are given fair compensation for their labor. A generation that grew up with Wal-Mart being the largest employer of underpaid, undercompensated workers wouldn’t understand that they have the right and ability to demand what is fair and they can bring about change through the power of collective bargaining. The young people today are just happy to get any job and are satisfied with the status quo. That was all planned by the corporatists. They shouldn’t be. They should do what our grandfathers did and not settle. If we become satisfied with earning an existence wage then we will soon become a country of forced labor like China. You see right wingers, workers get to vote with their feet. They get to walk out and they can conspire and collude to strike just as you can conspire and collude to create wars to send their children to fight, create fake markets to crash the US economy, and you collude and conspire to force them to give up their rights.

The Koch-Tea Party-front groups are now in the mix in Wisconsin, ensuring the voices of the billionaires are heard. Union reps have agreed to cut pensions and salaries but the Governor is not willing to negotiate. He wants everything and will give on nothing. This should be a total walkout across the country of all union workers. This is the continuation of a generational battle to take away the rights of workers that started with Reagan and will only end when workers are subjugated or workers fight back. IBEW, AFSCME, UAW, AFL-CIO, SEIU the whole lot should strike.

This is all because the collapse of the economy. You want a low down of what happened and why we can’t afford the pensions we promised to pay people. The pensions were invested in Wall Street, you know, like the plan to privatize Social Security would have done. Well, when the last bubble burst, thanks to Alan Greenspan,“The Biggest Asshole in the Universe,” as called by Matt Taibbi in “Griftopia,” this left the pensions depleted. The pensions were laden with the junk AAA-rated investments that at best were D-rated because the revolving door and deregulation left speculators and Wall Street tycoons to do whatever they wanted and get off scott-free with golden parachutes when the rigged bubble burst. This was the only outcome possible. This wasn’t an accident. This was so purposefully planned that these people should be lined up on death row for premeditated murder of the economy. So, now these pensions are coming due, the pensions people paid into over years of work. When unions negotiate they usually give up pay in order to gain benefits like pensions and healthcare. In a real free-market the pension holders would be required to pay what they owe or go to prison but in our kleptocratic oligarchy that will never happen. Wisconsin isn’t the end every state, 401k and nearly every pension program was invested in these junk securitized mortgage packages.

Because the people that owe the money have ensured that they can fix the rules by pumping billions into elections, thanks Citizens United and Supreme Court, that they will never have to pay what they owe or be held accountable. If you create a Ponzi scheme and dupe people out of thousands of dollars you’ll go to jail, but if you dupe people out of billions by creating a false economy that almost collapses an entire country then you get to go work for presidential administration or move to K Street and begin lobbying to ensure that rules are never put into place that would hold you or your future “yous” accountable for international grand larceny. So, who gets to pay for their greed? The working-class schlep who will never see a pension, lost their 401k and can’t afford to buy legislation to hold the scammers accountable.

Fascists don’t like unions because people are much easier to control individually. The autocratic personalities, like Republicans, conservatives and Tea Baggers like having one strong man in charge. The “every man for himself” mentality fits very well into their Social-Darwinist outlook. This is why they have obligatory masturbation whenever the word Ayn Rand is mention. One man’s “objectivism” is another man’s social Darwinism. Divide and conquer. Pit individual against individual and the objectivists can’t lose. That’s the Tea Party way, the conservative way, the Fascist way. Darwinism. Survival of the fittest. Doesn’t much fit their persona of good Christian American, because we all know as told to us in Matthew that Jesus asked for a co-pay before healing the lepers and welcomed the capitalists into the church.

As much as the right wing preaches about democracy, they don’t really like it. As much as they preach about being heard by their representatives they don’t really like that. Their adoration and worship of money and corporations puts their priorities on profits, prophets and corporations as holy institutions. Private industry and corporations can do everything better. CEOs are the latter-day Saints. This makes them Fascists, by definition. They would be much happier if we put the Koch Industries, Inc. in the White House and disbanded the legislature and the judiciary.

The only problem is that, as mentioned above, and as has been proven corporations are sociopaths. If you’ve watched the documentary “The Corporation” you know what I mean. If a real person, not a corporate person, did what a corporation does they would be put in a mental institution or locked away on death row as a danger to society. Operating with reckless and wanton abandon for the quality of human life with the only goal being “profit” does not leave very much respect for the working person or the human race. Doesn’t leave much room for rights.

So, who should be allowed to determine their destiny? The people themselves, en masse, as prescribed by democracy having their grievances heard? Or the unaccountable, megalomaniacal, corporations that have bought legislation to ensure subjugation? I think in a democracy the choice is clear and workers get to vote with their feet.