Yes, and that should be a hint. The NSA surveillance is directed at terrorism and national security issues, not at ordinary criminal activity. The local police and FBI go after ordinary criminal activity, and play by the criminal law rules.
Every time you fly on a commercial plane, you get a search directed at terrorism and national security. But if they find you carrying a pound of grass in the course of that search, they'll prosecute you for that ordinary criminal activity anyway.
The "criminal law rules" that the local police play by include getting cocaine-addicted prostitutes to testify falsely to get false convictions in murder cases, so I don't share your confidence.
The FBI and Republican federal prosecutors used financial transfer information that they got under the Bank Secrecy Act to bring a prosecution against an effective Democratic governor in New York, leading to his being replaced by an ineffective governor http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eliot_Spitzer_prostitution_scandal It's not clear that he actually broke any laws, but these Republican prosecutors charged this Democratic governor under the Mann Act and agreed to drop the prosecution if he resigned.
Yes, the Bush White House told Carole Coleman that now she wasn't going to get the interview with Laura Bush that they had been hinting at.
The Clinton White House told Amy Goodman that now they would never answer her phone calls again. (Her response was something like, "OK.")
The reason these interviews turned out this way was that, besides being smart reporters, they didn't cover the White House regularly. For the reporters who do cover it regularly, there's a quid pro quo that they won't ask tough questions and in exchange they'll get regular access to the political celebrities. It's important for a reporter on the beat to get lots of interviews with the big shots, even if they don't say anything. That's what their editors want. If they asked tough questions, and the White House cut them off, they wouldn't be able to do talking head interviews with the president and first lady any more (and they might have to find other sources and cover real news, but that wouldn't occur to them).
There's a similar quid pro quo between reporters who cover the police beats and the cops. The reporters don't talk about brutality and corruption, and in exchange they get a steady stream of crime stories.
It's a lot easier to write regular stories, or at least turn out a lot of words, if you cooperate with the people you're covering.
But for an independent reporter there's no reason to play that game.
There's an old saw in journalism that news is something that the people in power don't want to get out.
I as a reader don't need any of the self-agrandizing bullshit that politicians spout on the PBS Newshour, for example. I want to know what my political leaders are doing to serve or harm my interests, say in health care, or going to war. If PBS won't do that for me, I'll go somewhere else.
There are reporters who cover politics who don't need the President or White House at all. There are lots of smart people to interview who understand the issues and tell the truth more than most politicians, and are happy to talk to reporters. Look at the people Amy Goodman interviews on DemocracyNow.
You could probably write a better story by interviewing the people who are demonstrating in front of the White House than by interviewing the president.
There are some comments that are so completely wrong that they should be modded up, because it's a valuable lesson to see other people explain why it's wrong.
"Well, Billy, why don't you explain why you don't believe in evolution."
Perhaps you are not familiar with journalists who ask hard, uncomfortable questions to someone's face. If you are in the US, you are probably used to interviews where the questions are vetted beforehand, and "questioning" is done in the absence of the questioned in clearly biased opinion broadcasts. Professional journalism in a functioning democracy consists of asking people hard questions to their face, and either have them answer them fully or partially, make a promise to give an answer if they don't know, or obviously refuse to answer them. An important part of that sentence is the bit allowing them to answer the questions; "opinion" televeision does not allow that. The only time I saw an american president being asked hard unscheduled questions in a live interview, it was a foreign journalist who later received death threats for being "rude" enough to ask the president a question he had not agreed beforehand was an acceptable one for him to answer. And you call yourselves the land of the free.
THE PRESIDENT:... Look, Saddam Hussein had used weapons of mass destruction against his own people, against the neighborhood. He was a brutal dictator who posed a threat -- such a threat that the United Nations voted unanimously to say, Mr. Saddam Hussein --
Q Indeed, Mr. President, but you didn't find the weapons of mass destruction.
THE PRESIDENT: Let me finish. Let me finish. May I finish?
He said -- the United Nations said, disarm or face serious consequences. That's what the United Nations said. And guess what? He didn't disarm. He didn't disclose his arms. And, therefore, he faced serious consequences. But we have found a capacity for him to make a weapon. See, he had the capacity to make weapons. He was dangerous. And no one can argue that the world is better off with Saddam -- if Saddam Hussein were in power.
Q But, Mr. President, the world is a more dangerous place today. I don't know whether you can see that or not.
THE PRESIDENT: Why do you say that?
Q There are terrorist bombings every single day. It's now a daily event. It wasn't like that two years ago.http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2004/06/20040625-2.html Transcript of Interview-White House
In defense of American journalism, I must point out that there are also American journalists who have asked tough questions of American presidents (although not too many):
AMY GOODMAN: You’re calling radio stations to tell people to get out and vote. What do you say to people who feel that the two parties are bought by corporations and that they are — at this point feel that their vote doesn’t make a difference?
PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON: There’s not a shred of evidence to support that. That’s what I would say. It’s true that both parties have wealthy supporters. But let me offer you — let me just give you the differences. Let’s look at economic policy. First of all, if you look at the last eight years, look where America was eight years ago, and look where it is today. We have the strongest economy in history. And for the first time in 30 years, the incomes of average people and lower-income working people have gone up 15 percent after inflation. The lowest minority unemployment ever recorded, the highest minority home ownership, the highest minority business ownership in history — that’s our record....
AMY GOODMAN: President Clinton, since it’s rare to get you on the phone, let me ask you another question. And that is, what is your position on granting Leonard Peltier, the Native American activist, executive clemency?
PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON: Well, I don’t — I don’t have a position I can announce yet....
You can have highly-paid workers, highly-paid managers, profitable stockholders, and still compete in the market. That's what automation and industrial engineering does.
Indeed, labor is only 10% of the car's cost, so you can pay workers well without a dramatic effect on prices. In fact, many business owners believe that their better-paid employees do a better job. The well-paid German union workers, for example, don't get into jurisdictional disputes the way American unions do. A German worker doesn't have to get a union electrician to put a plug into a wall socket. If you have one worker doing the job rather than two, you've saved a lot of money.
The German manufacturers seem to be concentrating on high-end products, particularly those made in small runs and used industrially. I think of Siemens and their CRT scanners, or Hell and their high-end printing presses. They also make a lot of automated machinery, pollution control, etc. Price isn't that much of a factor to the customer. A web press that turns out twice the volume and uses half the manpower is easily worth another 10% or 20% to your customer. They don't want to be the lowest bidder.
Their workers are highly trained. Some newspaper described how a welder was laid off, during which time he got almost the same income, and went to training to learn advanced welding techniques.
The New York Times had a column written by an American high-end furniture carpenter who visited a German company as a potential U.S. distributor, to compare their procedures. (Sorry I don't have the URL.) They were heavily automated, perhaps too heavily, they thought.
This is in contrast to the low-paid, free-market system in the U.S., like the stock pickers at Amazon.com, who have to meet a quota or get fired, and are increasingly speeded up. It doesn't have to be like that. It doesn't have to be a race to the bottom.
I remember some Republicans complaining that if we had universal health care, like they do in Europe, a slice of pizza would cost 15 cents more. Well, I'm willing to pay 15 cents more for a slice of pizza to have universal health care.
What country do you live in, where they practice some utopian Econ 101 principles? I'd like to move there, because I currently live in a country where it's some twisted variant of that. A place where instead of paying higher wages when demand for workers goes up, they bribe (sorry, "lobby") the government into changing the rules so that low-wage workers from another country come in to do the job, then go back home where that money is worth much more.
A job is a property right. If I'm living in a free market, I can contract to work for an employer under any terms I want.
One of the terms I want is an employment contract (i.e. a union contract) that gives me a long-term right to a job.
Those are the terms that the most profitable American corporations (like IBM, Kodak) gave their workers during the most economically productive period of American history,
Those are the terms that some of the world's most profitable companies in the world (German, Scandinavian) give their employees today.
During the time when this economy was working well for workers, they could negotiate terms like that. If American workers followed their interests and organized into unions, they could have those favorable terms again.
"Union violence" is a straw man. There was union violence, and employer violence in historical times, but it's rare today.
Unions are organizations formed by workers to negotiate with their employer. That's their right under a free market. When you oppose unions, you're opposing the right to freely contract.
When workers "threaten" to refuse to work -- which is their right in a free market -- you call that "intimidation."
So if I'm in a group of workers making $50 an hour like they get in Germany, and you tell us you're going to reduce our salary to $20 an hour like they get in South Carolina, and we tell you that we won't work for less than $50 an hour, is that what you call "intimidation tactics"?
Do we have a right to refuse to work for less than $50 an hour?
Unless you've seen the financial statements, and you know how to understand the financial statements, you don't know whether there is enough money to take.
I've known businessmen who told the banks that they were doing great when they applied for a loan, and then told their union that they were practically going out of business when they negotiated salaries. As it turned out, they were doing well.
Obviously some businesses in America are profitable. (Or do you believe that there are none and American capitalism is a failure?)
GE is a publicly traded company, so the owners are the stockholders. With a union, the employees could get more salary and the stockholders could get lower dividends.
There are many companies that give low dividends -- notably Apple. In the 19th century, business owners were less likely to take dividends but instead preferred to reinvest in the company.
In an extreme case, you would never give dividends, and invest all your money in the company. You could say that dividends lower investments too. But nobody does that.
In any case, GE's stockholders have to accept the idea that employee salaries are a cost of doing business. If GE workers have strong unions, then the salaries are going to be higher than they would be otherwise. Stockholders are trying to maximize their income as investors. Employees are trying to maximize their income as employees. If GE is a strong, efficiently run business, stockholders will invest even with higher salaries.
And if you look around the world, for example Germany, you'll see that the employees make much more than similar employees in the US, and the spread of income is narrower. The spread of income is narrower in any other place in the world. We're one of the most unequal societies in the world, and one of the wealthiest.
Just ask all those union workers in Germany how it's worked out for them.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/frederickallen/2011/12/21/germany-builds-twice-as-many-cars-as-the-u-s-while-paying-its-auto-workers-twice-as-much/ Frederick E. Allen 12/21/2011 @ 5:42PM |60,178 views How Germany Builds Twice as Many Cars as the U.S. While Paying Its Workers Twice as Much In 2010, Germany produced more than 5.5 million automobiles; the U.S produced 2.7 million. At the same time, the average auto worker in Germany made $67.14 per hour in salary in benefits; the average one in the U.S. made $33.77 per hour. Yet Germany’s big three car companies—BMW, Daimler (Mercedes-Benz), and Volkswagen—are very profitable. How can that be? The question is explored in a new article from Remapping Debate, a public policy e-journal. Its author, Kevin C. Brown, writes that “the salient difference is that, in Germany, the automakers operate within an environment that precludes a race to the bottom; in the U.S., they operate within an environment that encourages such a race.” There are “two overlapping sets of institutions” in Germany that guarantee high wages and good working conditions for autoworkers. The first is IG Metall, the country’s equivalent of the United Automobile Workers. Virtually all Germany’s car workers are members, and though they have the right to strike, they “hardly use it, because there is an elaborate system of conflict resolution that regularly is used to come to some sort of compromise that is acceptable to all parties,” according to Horst Mund, an IG Metall executive. The second institution is the German constitution, which allows for “works councils” in every factory, where management and employees work together on matters like shop floor conditions and work life. Mund says this guarantees cooperation, “where you don’t always wear your management pin or your union pin.” Mund points out that this goes against all mainstream wisdom of the neo-liberals. We have strong unions, we have strong social security systems, we have high wages. So, if I believed what the neo-liberals are arguing, we would have to be bankrupt, but apparently this is not the case. Despite high wages . . . despite our possibility to influence companies, the economy is working well in Germany. At Volkswagen’s Chattanooga plant, the nonunionized new employees get $14.50 an hour, which rises to $19.50 after three years.
http://www.remappingdebate.org/article/tale-two-systems A tale of two systems By Kevin C. Brown Remapping Debate Dec. 21, 2011 American autoworkers are constantly told that high-wage work is an unsustainable relic in the face of a hyper-competitive, globalized marketplace. Apostles of neo-liberal economic theory — both in the public and private sectors — have stressed the message that worker adaptation is necessary to survive.... But the case of German automakers — BMW, Daimler, and Volkswagen — tells a different story. Each company produces vehicles not only in Germany, but also in “transplant” factories in the U.S. The former are characterized by high wages and high union membership; the U.S. plants pay lower wages and are located in so-called “right-to-work” (anti-union) states.... the UAW has made significant concessions on wages, especially through the creation of a permanent “Tier 2” level for all new employees. Whereas incumbent “Tier 1” workers earn about $28 an hour, all new UAW hires at the GM, Ford, and Chrysler earn around $15 per hour.
Management was fighting to fire him,. but the union was fighting for him not to be fired. I don't know who prevailed in each case (the situation was related to me several years ago), but my point was that the union was fighting the issue at all. They had gone from taking an adversarial positions when necessary to protect the interests of their membership, to taking adversarial positions being what they were always supposed to do.
In the course of my business, I once spoke to about half a dozen employment lawyers, representing employers and employees. When non-union workers -- high-level managers and professionals working with employment contracts -- get fired, and they think there's any chance of keeping their job, or leaving under better conditions, they hire a lawyer.
Back in the 1980s, a lot of companies were firing programmers in their 40s and 50s. The programmers argued, with some credibility, that they were being fired because of their age. They were good workers, they had steady salary increases over the years, and now their employers decided they could fire the old workers and hire new ones at a significantly lower salary. The employers said they needed programmers who knew the new languages. The programmers said that they could easily learn the new languages, and were learning the new languages. It was difficult for many of these workers to get new job, and many of them never worked again. They argued, with some credibility, that they were being subject to age discrimination.
The programmers sued, and a lot of these cases went to court, where a lot of the usually-confidential facts came out. There did seem to be a lot of irrational age discrimination. It also seemed as if it would be more efficient to keep a programmer on the job, even if his productivity had declined slightly, than to fire him and leave him unemployed for the rest of his life.
The point is, in our society we believe that an employer has a right to be treated fairly. If somebody gets fired, he has a right to a fair hearing, in which the employer can make his case against the employee, and the employee can defend himself, with the help of a lawyer (or union representative). It's best (and cheapest) to do this within the organization, but if they can't reach agreement, they can do it in court. If the employer has a clear-cut case of a serious violation of safety rules, then the employee should be fired. Sometimes it's not such a clear-cut case. Maybe he didn't really violate the rules. If I was an employer, and my employee had violated a safety rule, putting customers' lives at stake, I'd fight like hell to get him fired. That's the legal process.
Here's an example: Joel Klein http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joel_Klein was the chancellor of New York City's schools. He was a lawyer with no training or experience in education before Bloomberg appointed him.
Klein was complaining about how hard it was to fire union teachers. He claimed that one teacher should be fired because the teacher put his arm around a female student. The union defended it, it went to arbitration. During arbitration, the union's representative came up with a photo of Klein putting his arm around a female student in exactly the same way. The teacher won the arbitration. Now I don't know what the propriety is these days for teachers touching students, but it seems unfair to fire a teacher for doing the same thing that the chancellor did.
Of course the union had to fight to defend him. It was in the course of fighting that they came up with this picture.
If the teacher really was sexually abusing a student, and the facts were clear, I don't think the union would waste much time and money on a losing case. When some teacher gets caught having sex with a student, the union doesn't defend them.
(If you read the Wikipedia link, you'll see that Klein also fired Rashid Khalidi, for basically political reasons. Kalidi didn't have a union representing him, so he couldn't get the job back.)
It's difficult to fire somebody and it should be. I've worked with lawyers. I believe that everybody has a right to defend himself, with a lawyer if he wants.
Do you believe that there is such a thing as negotiating skill?
Two business owners hire a printer for the same job. One business owner pays $20,000, the other business owner pays $15,000 because he's a better negotiator.
Two people apply for the same job. One person gets $50,000 a year, the other person gets $70,000 because he's a better negotiator.
Competition is one factor, but it's not the only factor.
If you look at a financial statement, you see that a certain amount of revenue is going to employee salaries and a certain amount of revenue is going to "non-exempt" or employer salaries. In some companies, the owner takes a draw which is like a salary.
Then there's another part of the financial statement where they invest in the company.
You can keep investment constant, and still change the distribution of revenue between the employee and employer.
Proposition 13 and the rest of the tax revolt had a lot to do with that debt.
Guess what -- if you cut taxes, and continue to spend money, your debt goes up.
And yeah, the right-wing solution is to drown the government in the bathtub. Well, guess what -- people want hospitals with emergency rooms when they unexpectedly get sick. People want education for themselves and their children. People want roads. People want police and firemen. People don't want to live in Somalia.
2. In several cases, workers show up drunk to work and also violate safety rules in ways that could seriously hurt or even kill other workers -- by starting a fire, for instance. When management tries to discipline or fire these workers, the union fights them tooth and nail. If I was one of these guys' coworkers, I would damn sure want them gone. How is the union protecting my interests by keeping people on the job who are risking setting the hotel on fire and possibly getting me killed?
I have a hard time believing that. If it did happen, the management should be fired for safety violations. How come the management isn't fighting tooth and nail to get them fired?
My father was a union aircraft mechanic. His main concern in life was not to make a mistake that could kill a planeload of people, and he never did. He knew that as long as he followed the book -- the FAA and aircraft maintenance rules -- he would have a job until he retired. He also knew that if he was drunk on the job, he would get fired, and he didn't expect the union to protect him. Yeah, a union is an advocate for their member, but if he got caught red-handed and he really was drunk on a safety-critical job, there isn't much they can do to protect him. Nor would they want to, given the safety culture of the industry.
The National Transportation Safety Board investigates every aircraft accident in the US and a lot of accidents abroad, and they usually find out what caused it (and how to prevent it from happening again). I've read a lot of aircraft accident reports, and I've never heard of an accident caused because a union employee was drinking. I did once read a Society of Automotive Engineering study of aircraft accidents caused by alcohol and drugs, and as I recall, every one of them was in general aviation.
I would challenge you or anybody to give me an example of an aircraft employee who got drunk and wasn't fired.
Like backward, poverty-stricken Germany, where employees who are laid off during downturns are sent to vocational schools to learn the latest technology.
How Germany Builds Twice as Many Cars as the U.S. While Paying Its Workers Twice as Much
In 2010, Germany produced more than 5.5 million automobiles; the U.S produced 2.7 million. At the same time, the average auto worker in Germany made $67.14 per hour in salary in benefits; the average one in the U.S. made $33.77 per hour. Yet Germany’s big three car companies—BMW, Daimler (Mercedes-Benz), and Volkswagen—are very profitable. How can that be? The question is explored in a new article from Remapping Debate, a public policy e-journal. Its author, Kevin C. Brown, writes that “the salient difference is that, in Germany, the automakers operate within an environment that precludes a race to the bottom; in the U.S., they operate within an environment that encourages such a race.” There are “two overlapping sets of institutions” in Germany that guarantee high wages and good working conditions for autoworkers. The first is IG Metall, the country’s equivalent of the United Automobile Workers. Virtually all Germany’s car workers are members, and though they have the right to strike, they “hardly use it, because there is an elaborate system of conflict resolution that regularly is used to come to some sort of compromise that is acceptable to all parties,” according to Horst Mund, an IG Metall executive. The second institution is the German constitution, which allows for “works councils” in every factory, where management and employees work together on matters like shop floor conditions and work life. Mund says this guarantees cooperation, “where you don’t always wear your management pin or your union pin.” Mund points out that this goes against all mainstream wisdom of the neo-liberals. We have strong unions, we have strong social security systems, we have high wages. So, if I believed what the neo-liberals are arguing, we would have to be bankrupt, but apparently this is not the case. Despite high wages . . . despite our possibility to influence companies, the economy is working well in Germany. At Volkswagen’s Chattanooga plant, the nonunionized new employees get $14.50 an hour, which rises to $19.50 after three years.
http://www.remappingdebate.org/article/tale-two-systems A tale of two systems By Kevin C. Brown Remapping Debate Dec. 21, 2011 American autoworkers are constantly told that high-wage work is an unsustainable relic in the face of a hyper-competitive, globalized marketplace. Apostles of neo-liberal economic theory — both in the public and private sectors — have stressed the message that worker adaptation is necessary to survive.... But the case of German automakers — BMW, Daimler, and Volkswagen — tells a different story. Each company produces vehicles not only in Germany, but also in “transplant” factories in the U.S. The former are characterized by high wages and high union membership; the U.S. plants pay lower wages and are located in so-called “right-to-work” (anti-union) states.... the UAW has made significant concessions on wages, especially through the creation of a permanent “Tier 2” level for all new employees. Whereas incumbent “Tier 1” workers earn about $28 an hour, all new UAW hires at the GM, Ford, and Chrysler earn around $15 per hour.
What I know personally is that unions enshrine mediocrity. I would personally have been hired for specific jobs that were filled by lame union workers if they could have fired them.
Maybe you're not really as good as you think you are.
After productivity increased, due to better technology, public education, and other causes, the question is how the benefits of that increased productivity should be divided among the people who contributed to it.
When workers organized together into unions, they were able to negotiate a bigger slice of the pie. If I pay $5 an hour in union dues, and I get $15 an hour more in salary than the non-union guy at the next place, then my union organizer is providing me with a good service for my dues.
My boss will get a smaller slice of the pie. Better him than me.
All that is true. Put it together and unions have one fundamental benefit: You have a much better negotiating position when you negotiate with your boss together as a union than you do when you negotiate with your boss as an individual.
That should be obvious to anyone who understands economics, or even mathematics. If you go to the hospital as an individual with a sprained ankle, they'll charge you $2,000. If you go as a member of an insurance plan, they'll charge you $500. That's because the insurance company has a stronger negotiating position than you do as an individual. It seems that union wages are about $10 an hour more for the same job as non-union wages.
TALKING UNION
If you want higher wages, let me tell you what to do; You got to talk to the workers in the shop with you; You got to build you a union, got to make it strong, But if you all stick together, now, ‘twont he long. You'll get shorter hours, Better working conditions. Vacations with pay, Take your kids to the seashore.
It ain’t quite this simple, so I better explain Just why you got to ride on the union train; ‘Cause if you wait for the boss to raise your pay, We’ll all be waiting till Judgment Day; We’ll all he buried - gone to Heaven - Saint Peter’ll be the straw boss then.
Now, you know you’re underpaid, hut the boss says you ain’t; He speeds up the work till you’re ‘bout to faint, You may he down and out, but you ain’t beaten, Pass out a leaflet and call a meetin’ Talk it over - speak your mind - Decide to do something about it.
‘Course, the boss may persuade some poor damn fool To go to your meeting and act like a stool; But you can always tell a stool, though - that’s a fact; He’s got a yellow streak running down his back; He doesn’t have to stool - he'll always make a good living On what he takes out of blind men’s cups.
You got a union now; you’re sitting pretty; Put some of the boys on the steering committee. The boss won’t listen when one man squawks. But he’s got to listen when the union talks. He better - He’ll be mighty lonely one of these days.
Suppose they’re working you so hard it’s just outrageous, They’re paying you all starvation wages; You go to the boss, and the boss would yell, "Before I'd raise your pay I’d see you all in Hell." Well, he’s puffing a big see-gar and feeling mighty slick, He thinks he’s got your union licked. He looks out the window, and what does he see But a thousand pickets, and they all agree He’s a bastard - unfair - slave driver - Bet he beats his own wife.
Now, boy, you’ve come to the hardest time; The boss will try to bust your picket line. He’ll call out the police, the National Guard; They’ll tell you it’s a crime to have a union card. They’ll raid your meeting, hit you on the head. Call every one of you a goddamn Red - Unpatriotic - Moscow agents - Bomb throwers, even the kids.
But out in Detroit here’s what they found, And out in Frisco here’s what they found, And out in Pittsburgh here’s what they found, And down in Bethlehem here’s what they found, That if you don’t let Red-baiting break you up, If you don’t let stool pigeons break you up, If you don’t let vigilantes break you up, And if you don’t let race hatred break you up - You’ll win. What I mean, Take it easy - but take it!
Words by Millard Lampell, Lee Hays and Pete Seeger (1941)
I remember about 15-20 years ago grad students and adjuncts were complaining that they weren't getting health insurance from their universities.
The universities had a good bargaining position, the individual grad students had a bad bargaining position, and the students couldn't get health insurance.
When the grad students organized a union, and organized together, they had a better bargaining position, and they were able to force the universities to give them health insurance.
That sounds to me like the union being responsible for the grad students having health insurance.
The student tuition dollar goes to pay for a lot of things. When the grad students have a union, more of that student tuition dollar goes to the grad students, including for health insurance.
I wonder. There isn't any way to prevent them from cashing my check, is there?
I pay somebody by check, they deposit it to their bank, it goes through the international clearinghouse, gets paid by my bank, and get charged to my account.
The clearinghouse can't just decide not to pay checks drawn to iPredator, is there? It's a legally binding obligation.
Or if there was, it would be easy to get around it, right? iPredator could open a new account under the name "iPredator's Girlfriend" or something.
Slashdot Mirror
Bechtel (I think) once installed a nuclear power plant upside down.
Yes, and that should be a hint. The NSA surveillance is directed at terrorism and national security issues, not at ordinary criminal activity. The local police and FBI go after ordinary criminal activity, and play by the criminal law rules.
Every time you fly on a commercial plane, you get a search directed at terrorism and national security. But if they find you carrying a pound of grass in the course of that search, they'll prosecute you for that ordinary criminal activity anyway.
The "criminal law rules" that the local police play by include getting cocaine-addicted prostitutes to testify falsely to get false convictions in murder cases, so I don't share your confidence.
The FBI and Republican federal prosecutors used financial transfer information that they got under the Bank Secrecy Act to bring a prosecution against an effective Democratic governor in New York, leading to his being replaced by an ineffective governor http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eliot_Spitzer_prostitution_scandal It's not clear that he actually broke any laws, but these Republican prosecutors charged this Democratic governor under the Mann Act and agreed to drop the prosecution if he resigned.
Yes, the Bush White House told Carole Coleman that now she wasn't going to get the interview with Laura Bush that they had been hinting at.
The Clinton White House told Amy Goodman that now they would never answer her phone calls again. (Her response was something like, "OK.")
The reason these interviews turned out this way was that, besides being smart reporters, they didn't cover the White House regularly. For the reporters who do cover it regularly, there's a quid pro quo that they won't ask tough questions and in exchange they'll get regular access to the political celebrities. It's important for a reporter on the beat to get lots of interviews with the big shots, even if they don't say anything. That's what their editors want. If they asked tough questions, and the White House cut them off, they wouldn't be able to do talking head interviews with the president and first lady any more (and they might have to find other sources and cover real news, but that wouldn't occur to them).
There's a similar quid pro quo between reporters who cover the police beats and the cops. The reporters don't talk about brutality and corruption, and in exchange they get a steady stream of crime stories.
It's a lot easier to write regular stories, or at least turn out a lot of words, if you cooperate with the people you're covering.
But for an independent reporter there's no reason to play that game.
There's an old saw in journalism that news is something that the people in power don't want to get out.
I as a reader don't need any of the self-agrandizing bullshit that politicians spout on the PBS Newshour, for example. I want to know what my political leaders are doing to serve or harm my interests, say in health care, or going to war. If PBS won't do that for me, I'll go somewhere else.
There are reporters who cover politics who don't need the President or White House at all. There are lots of smart people to interview who understand the issues and tell the truth more than most politicians, and are happy to talk to reporters. Look at the people Amy Goodman interviews on DemocracyNow.
You could probably write a better story by interviewing the people who are demonstrating in front of the White House than by interviewing the president.
There are some comments that are so completely wrong that they should be modded up, because it's a valuable lesson to see other people explain why it's wrong.
"Well, Billy, why don't you explain why you don't believe in evolution."
Perhaps you are not familiar with journalists who ask hard, uncomfortable questions to someone's face. If you are in the US, you are probably used to interviews where the questions are vetted beforehand, and "questioning" is done in the absence of the questioned in clearly biased opinion broadcasts. Professional journalism in a functioning democracy consists of asking people hard questions to their face, and either have them answer them fully or partially, make a promise to give an answer if they don't know, or obviously refuse to answer them. An important part of that sentence is the bit allowing them to answer the questions; "opinion" televeision does not allow that. The only time I saw an american president being asked hard unscheduled questions in a live interview, it was a foreign journalist who later received death threats for being "rude" enough to ask the president a question he had not agreed beforehand was an acceptable one for him to answer. And you call yourselves the land of the free.
I think you are referring to Irish journalist http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carole_Coleman Carol Coleman's interview with George W. Bush.
THE PRESIDENT: ... Look, Saddam Hussein had used weapons of mass destruction against his own people, against the neighborhood. He was a brutal dictator who posed a threat -- such a threat that the United Nations voted unanimously to say, Mr. Saddam Hussein --
Q Indeed, Mr. President, but you didn't find the weapons of mass destruction.
THE PRESIDENT: Let me finish. Let me finish. May I finish?
He said -- the United Nations said, disarm or face serious consequences. That's what the United Nations said. And guess what? He didn't disarm. He didn't disclose his arms. And, therefore, he faced serious consequences. But we have found a capacity for him to make a weapon. See, he had the capacity to make weapons. He was dangerous. And no one can argue that the world is better off with Saddam -- if Saddam Hussein were in power.
Q But, Mr. President, the world is a more dangerous place today. I don't know whether you can see that or not.
THE PRESIDENT: Why do you say that?
Q There are terrorist bombings every single day. It's now a daily event. It wasn't like that two years ago.http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2004/06/20040625-2.html Transcript of Interview-White House
In defense of American journalism, I must point out that there are also American journalists who have asked tough questions of American presidents (although not too many):
AMY GOODMAN: You’re calling radio stations to tell people to get out and vote. What do you say to people who feel that the two parties are bought by corporations and that they are — at this point feel that their vote doesn’t make a difference?
PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON: There’s not a shred of evidence to support that. That’s what I would say. It’s true that both parties have wealthy supporters. But let me offer you — let me just give you the differences. Let’s look at economic policy. First of all, if you look at the last eight years, look where America was eight years ago, and look where it is today. We have the strongest economy in history. And for the first time in 30 years, the incomes of average people and lower-income working people have gone up 15 percent after inflation. The lowest minority unemployment ever recorded, the highest minority home ownership, the highest minority business ownership in history — that’s our record....
AMY GOODMAN: President Clinton, since it’s rare to get you on the phone, let me ask you another question. And that is, what is your position on granting Leonard Peltier, the Native American activist, executive clemency?
PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON: Well, I don’t — I don’t have a position I can announce yet....
You can have highly-paid workers, highly-paid managers, profitable stockholders, and still compete in the market. That's what automation and industrial engineering does.
Indeed, labor is only 10% of the car's cost, so you can pay workers well without a dramatic effect on prices. In fact, many business owners believe that their better-paid employees do a better job. The well-paid German union workers, for example, don't get into jurisdictional disputes the way American unions do. A German worker doesn't have to get a union electrician to put a plug into a wall socket. If you have one worker doing the job rather than two, you've saved a lot of money.
The German manufacturers seem to be concentrating on high-end products, particularly those made in small runs and used industrially. I think of Siemens and their CRT scanners, or Hell and their high-end printing presses. They also make a lot of automated machinery, pollution control, etc. Price isn't that much of a factor to the customer. A web press that turns out twice the volume and uses half the manpower is easily worth another 10% or 20% to your customer. They don't want to be the lowest bidder.
Their workers are highly trained. Some newspaper described how a welder was laid off, during which time he got almost the same income, and went to training to learn advanced welding techniques.
The New York Times had a column written by an American high-end furniture carpenter who visited a German company as a potential U.S. distributor, to compare their procedures. (Sorry I don't have the URL.) They were heavily automated, perhaps too heavily, they thought.
This is in contrast to the low-paid, free-market system in the U.S., like the stock pickers at Amazon.com, who have to meet a quota or get fired, and are increasingly speeded up. It doesn't have to be like that. It doesn't have to be a race to the bottom.
I remember some Republicans complaining that if we had universal health care, like they do in Europe, a slice of pizza would cost 15 cents more. Well, I'm willing to pay 15 cents more for a slice of pizza to have universal health care.
What country do you live in, where they practice some utopian Econ 101 principles? I'd like to move there, because I currently live in a country where it's some twisted variant of that. A place where instead of paying higher wages when demand for workers goes up, they bribe (sorry, "lobby") the government into changing the rules so that low-wage workers from another country come in to do the job, then go back home where that money is worth much more.
Boy, I'd hate to live in a country like that.
A job is a property right. If I'm living in a free market, I can contract to work for an employer under any terms I want.
One of the terms I want is an employment contract (i.e. a union contract) that gives me a long-term right to a job.
Those are the terms that the most profitable American corporations (like IBM, Kodak) gave their workers during the most economically productive period of American history,
Those are the terms that some of the world's most profitable companies in the world (German, Scandinavian) give their employees today.
During the time when this economy was working well for workers, they could negotiate terms like that. If American workers followed their interests and organized into unions, they could have those favorable terms again.
"Union violence" is a straw man. There was union violence, and employer violence in historical times, but it's rare today.
Unions are organizations formed by workers to negotiate with their employer. That's their right under a free market. When you oppose unions, you're opposing the right to freely contract.
When workers "threaten" to refuse to work -- which is their right in a free market -- you call that "intimidation."
Their employees average US $67 an hour. How is that abuse?
So if I'm in a group of workers making $50 an hour like they get in Germany, and you tell us you're going to reduce our salary to $20 an hour like they get in South Carolina, and we tell you that we won't work for less than $50 an hour, is that what you call "intimidation tactics"?
Do we have a right to refuse to work for less than $50 an hour?
Unless you've seen the financial statements, and you know how to understand the financial statements, you don't know whether there is enough money to take.
I've known businessmen who told the banks that they were doing great when they applied for a loan, and then told their union that they were practically going out of business when they negotiated salaries. As it turned out, they were doing well.
Obviously some businesses in America are profitable. (Or do you believe that there are none and American capitalism is a failure?)
GE is a publicly traded company, so the owners are the stockholders. With a union, the employees could get more salary and the stockholders could get lower dividends.
There are many companies that give low dividends -- notably Apple. In the 19th century, business owners were less likely to take dividends but instead preferred to reinvest in the company.
In an extreme case, you would never give dividends, and invest all your money in the company. You could say that dividends lower investments too. But nobody does that.
In any case, GE's stockholders have to accept the idea that employee salaries are a cost of doing business. If GE workers have strong unions, then the salaries are going to be higher than they would be otherwise. Stockholders are trying to maximize their income as investors. Employees are trying to maximize their income as employees. If GE is a strong, efficiently run business, stockholders will invest even with higher salaries.
And if you look around the world, for example Germany, you'll see that the employees make much more than similar employees in the US, and the spread of income is narrower. The spread of income is narrower in any other place in the world. We're one of the most unequal societies in the world, and one of the wealthiest.
Just ask all those union workers in Germany how it's worked out for them.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/frederickallen/2011/12/21/germany-builds-twice-as-many-cars-as-the-u-s-while-paying-its-auto-workers-twice-as-much/
Frederick E. Allen
12/21/2011 @ 5:42PM |60,178 views
How Germany Builds Twice as Many Cars as the U.S. While Paying Its Workers Twice as Much
In 2010, Germany produced more than 5.5 million automobiles; the U.S produced 2.7 million. At the same time, the average auto worker in Germany made $67.14 per hour in salary in benefits; the average one in the U.S. made $33.77 per hour. Yet Germany’s big three car companies—BMW, Daimler (Mercedes-Benz), and Volkswagen—are very profitable.
How can that be? The question is explored in a new article from Remapping Debate, a public policy e-journal. Its author, Kevin C. Brown, writes that “the salient difference is that, in Germany, the automakers operate within an environment that precludes a race to the bottom; in the U.S., they operate within an environment that encourages such a race.”
There are “two overlapping sets of institutions” in Germany that guarantee high wages and good working conditions for autoworkers. The first is IG Metall, the country’s equivalent of the United Automobile Workers. Virtually all Germany’s car workers are members, and though they have the right to strike, they “hardly use it, because there is an elaborate system of conflict resolution that regularly is used to come to some sort of compromise that is acceptable to all parties,” according to Horst Mund, an IG Metall executive. The second institution is the German constitution, which allows for “works councils” in every factory, where management and employees work together on matters like shop floor conditions and work life. Mund says this guarantees cooperation, “where you don’t always wear your management pin or your union pin.”
Mund points out that this goes against all mainstream wisdom of the neo-liberals. We have strong unions, we have strong social security systems, we have high wages. So, if I believed what the neo-liberals are arguing, we would have to be bankrupt, but apparently this is not the case. Despite high wages . . . despite our possibility to influence companies, the economy is working well in Germany.
At Volkswagen’s Chattanooga plant, the nonunionized new employees get $14.50 an hour, which rises to $19.50 after three years.
http://www.remappingdebate.org/article/tale-two-systems ... the UAW has made significant concessions on wages, especially through the creation of a permanent “Tier 2” level for all new employees. Whereas incumbent “Tier 1” workers earn about $28 an hour, all new UAW hires at the GM, Ford, and Chrysler earn around $15 per hour.
A tale of two systems
By Kevin C. Brown
Remapping Debate
Dec. 21, 2011
American autoworkers are constantly told that high-wage work is an unsustainable relic in the face of a hyper-competitive, globalized marketplace. Apostles of neo-liberal economic theory — both in the public and private sectors — have stressed the message that worker adaptation is necessary to survive....
But the case of German automakers — BMW, Daimler, and Volkswagen — tells a different story. Each company produces vehicles not only in Germany, but also in “transplant” factories in the U.S. The former are characterized by high wages and high union membership; the U.S. plants pay lower wages and are located in so-called “right-to-work” (anti-union) states.
Management was fighting to fire him,. but the union was fighting for him not to be fired. I don't know who prevailed in each case (the situation was related to me several years ago), but my point was that the union was fighting the issue at all. They had gone from taking an adversarial positions when necessary to protect the interests of their membership, to taking adversarial positions being what they were always supposed to do.
In the course of my business, I once spoke to about half a dozen employment lawyers, representing employers and employees. When non-union workers -- high-level managers and professionals working with employment contracts -- get fired, and they think there's any chance of keeping their job, or leaving under better conditions, they hire a lawyer.
Back in the 1980s, a lot of companies were firing programmers in their 40s and 50s. The programmers argued, with some credibility, that they were being fired because of their age. They were good workers, they had steady salary increases over the years, and now their employers decided they could fire the old workers and hire new ones at a significantly lower salary. The employers said they needed programmers who knew the new languages. The programmers said that they could easily learn the new languages, and were learning the new languages. It was difficult for many of these workers to get new job, and many of them never worked again. They argued, with some credibility, that they were being subject to age discrimination.
The programmers sued, and a lot of these cases went to court, where a lot of the usually-confidential facts came out. There did seem to be a lot of irrational age discrimination. It also seemed as if it would be more efficient to keep a programmer on the job, even if his productivity had declined slightly, than to fire him and leave him unemployed for the rest of his life.
The point is, in our society we believe that an employer has a right to be treated fairly. If somebody gets fired, he has a right to a fair hearing, in which the employer can make his case against the employee, and the employee can defend himself, with the help of a lawyer (or union representative). It's best (and cheapest) to do this within the organization, but if they can't reach agreement, they can do it in court. If the employer has a clear-cut case of a serious violation of safety rules, then the employee should be fired. Sometimes it's not such a clear-cut case. Maybe he didn't really violate the rules. If I was an employer, and my employee had violated a safety rule, putting customers' lives at stake, I'd fight like hell to get him fired. That's the legal process.
Here's an example: Joel Klein http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joel_Klein was the chancellor of New York City's schools. He was a lawyer with no training or experience in education before Bloomberg appointed him.
Klein was complaining about how hard it was to fire union teachers. He claimed that one teacher should be fired because the teacher put his arm around a female student. The union defended it, it went to arbitration. During arbitration, the union's representative came up with a photo of Klein putting his arm around a female student in exactly the same way. The teacher won the arbitration. Now I don't know what the propriety is these days for teachers touching students, but it seems unfair to fire a teacher for doing the same thing that the chancellor did.
Of course the union had to fight to defend him. It was in the course of fighting that they came up with this picture.
If the teacher really was sexually abusing a student, and the facts were clear, I don't think the union would waste much time and money on a losing case. When some teacher gets caught having sex with a student, the union doesn't defend them.
(If you read the Wikipedia link, you'll see that Klein also fired Rashid Khalidi, for basically political reasons. Kalidi didn't have a union representing him, so he couldn't get the job back.)
It's difficult to fire somebody and it should be. I've worked with lawyers. I believe that everybody has a right to defend himself, with a lawyer if he wants.
Do you believe that there is such a thing as negotiating skill?
Two business owners hire a printer for the same job. One business owner pays $20,000, the other business owner pays $15,000 because he's a better negotiator.
Two people apply for the same job. One person gets $50,000 a year, the other person gets $70,000 because he's a better negotiator.
Competition is one factor, but it's not the only factor.
If you look at a financial statement, you see that a certain amount of revenue is going to employee salaries and a certain amount of revenue is going to "non-exempt" or employer salaries. In some companies, the owner takes a draw which is like a salary.
Then there's another part of the financial statement where they invest in the company.
You can keep investment constant, and still change the distribution of revenue between the employee and employer.
Proposition 13 and the rest of the tax revolt had a lot to do with that debt.
Guess what -- if you cut taxes, and continue to spend money, your debt goes up.
And yeah, the right-wing solution is to drown the government in the bathtub. Well, guess what -- people want hospitals with emergency rooms when they unexpectedly get sick. People want education for themselves and their children. People want roads. People want police and firemen. People don't want to live in Somalia.
2. In several cases, workers show up drunk to work and also violate safety rules in ways that could seriously hurt or even kill other workers -- by starting a fire, for instance. When management tries to discipline or fire these workers, the union fights them tooth and nail. If I was one of these guys' coworkers, I would damn sure want them gone. How is the union protecting my interests by keeping people on the job who are risking setting the hotel on fire and possibly getting me killed?
I have a hard time believing that. If it did happen, the management should be fired for safety violations. How come the management isn't fighting tooth and nail to get them fired?
My father was a union aircraft mechanic. His main concern in life was not to make a mistake that could kill a planeload of people, and he never did. He knew that as long as he followed the book -- the FAA and aircraft maintenance rules -- he would have a job until he retired. He also knew that if he was drunk on the job, he would get fired, and he didn't expect the union to protect him. Yeah, a union is an advocate for their member, but if he got caught red-handed and he really was drunk on a safety-critical job, there isn't much they can do to protect him. Nor would they want to, given the safety culture of the industry.
The National Transportation Safety Board investigates every aircraft accident in the US and a lot of accidents abroad, and they usually find out what caused it (and how to prevent it from happening again). I've read a lot of aircraft accident reports, and I've never heard of an accident caused because a union employee was drinking. I did once read a Society of Automotive Engineering study of aircraft accidents caused by alcohol and drugs, and as I recall, every one of them was in general aviation.
I would challenge you or anybody to give me an example of an aircraft employee who got drunk and wasn't fired.
Like backward, poverty-stricken Germany, where employees who are laid off during downturns are sent to vocational schools to learn the latest technology.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/frederickallen/2011/12/21/germany-builds-twice-as-many-cars-as-the-u-s-while-paying-its-auto-workers-twice-as-much/
Frederick E. Allen
12/21/2011 @ 5:42PM |60,178 views
How Germany Builds Twice as Many Cars as the U.S. While Paying Its Workers Twice as Much
In 2010, Germany produced more than 5.5 million automobiles; the U.S produced 2.7 million. At the same time, the average auto worker in Germany made $67.14 per hour in salary in benefits; the average one in the U.S. made $33.77 per hour. Yet Germany’s big three car companies—BMW, Daimler (Mercedes-Benz), and Volkswagen—are very profitable.
How can that be? The question is explored in a new article from Remapping Debate, a public policy e-journal. Its author, Kevin C. Brown, writes that “the salient difference is that, in Germany, the automakers operate within an environment that precludes a race to the bottom; in the U.S., they operate within an environment that encourages such a race.”
There are “two overlapping sets of institutions” in Germany that guarantee high wages and good working conditions for autoworkers. The first is IG Metall, the country’s equivalent of the United Automobile Workers. Virtually all Germany’s car workers are members, and though they have the right to strike, they “hardly use it, because there is an elaborate system of conflict resolution that regularly is used to come to some sort of compromise that is acceptable to all parties,” according to Horst Mund, an IG Metall executive. The second institution is the German constitution, which allows for “works councils” in every factory, where management and employees work together on matters like shop floor conditions and work life. Mund says this guarantees cooperation, “where you don’t always wear your management pin or your union pin.”
Mund points out that this goes against all mainstream wisdom of the neo-liberals. We have strong unions, we have strong social security systems, we have high wages. So, if I believed what the neo-liberals are arguing, we would have to be bankrupt, but apparently this is not the case. Despite high wages . . . despite our possibility to influence companies, the economy is working well in Germany.
At Volkswagen’s Chattanooga plant, the nonunionized new employees get $14.50 an hour, which rises to $19.50 after three years.
http://www.remappingdebate.org/article/tale-two-systems ... the UAW has made significant concessions on wages, especially through the creation of a permanent “Tier 2” level for all new employees. Whereas incumbent “Tier 1” workers earn about $28 an hour, all new UAW hires at the GM, Ford, and Chrysler earn around $15 per hour.
A tale of two systems
By Kevin C. Brown
Remapping Debate
Dec. 21, 2011
American autoworkers are constantly told that high-wage work is an unsustainable relic in the face of a hyper-competitive, globalized marketplace. Apostles of neo-liberal economic theory — both in the public and private sectors — have stressed the message that worker adaptation is necessary to survive....
But the case of German automakers — BMW, Daimler, and Volkswagen — tells a different story. Each company produces vehicles not only in Germany, but also in “transplant” factories in the U.S. The former are characterized by high wages and high union membership; the U.S. plants pay lower wages and are located in so-called “right-to-work” (anti-union) states.
What I know personally is that unions enshrine mediocrity. I would personally have been hired for specific jobs that were filled by lame union workers if they could have fired them.
Maybe you're not really as good as you think you are.
After productivity increased, due to better technology, public education, and other causes, the question is how the benefits of that increased productivity should be divided among the people who contributed to it.
When workers organized together into unions, they were able to negotiate a bigger slice of the pie. If I pay $5 an hour in union dues, and I get $15 an hour more in salary than the non-union guy at the next place, then my union organizer is providing me with a good service for my dues.
My boss will get a smaller slice of the pie. Better him than me.
All that is true. Put it together and unions have one fundamental benefit: You have a much better negotiating position when you negotiate with your boss together as a union than you do when you negotiate with your boss as an individual.
That should be obvious to anyone who understands economics, or even mathematics. If you go to the hospital as an individual with a sprained ankle, they'll charge you $2,000. If you go as a member of an insurance plan, they'll charge you $500. That's because the insurance company has a stronger negotiating position than you do as an individual. It seems that union wages are about $10 an hour more for the same job as non-union wages.
TALKING UNION
If you want higher wages, let me tell you what to do;
You got to talk to the workers in the shop with you;
You got to build you a union, got to make it strong,
But if you all stick together, now, ‘twont he long.
You'll get shorter hours,
Better working conditions.
Vacations with pay,
Take your kids to the seashore.
It ain’t quite this simple, so I better explain
Just why you got to ride on the union train;
‘Cause if you wait for the boss to raise your pay,
We’ll all be waiting till Judgment Day;
We’ll all he buried - gone to Heaven -
Saint Peter’ll be the straw boss then.
Now, you know you’re underpaid, hut the boss says you ain’t;
He speeds up the work till you’re ‘bout to faint,
You may he down and out, but you ain’t beaten,
Pass out a leaflet and call a meetin’
Talk it over - speak your mind -
Decide to do something about it.
‘Course, the boss may persuade some poor damn fool
To go to your meeting and act like a stool;
But you can always tell a stool, though - that’s a fact;
He’s got a yellow streak running down his back;
He doesn’t have to stool - he'll always make a good living
On what he takes out of blind men’s cups.
You got a union now; you’re sitting pretty;
Put some of the boys on the steering committee.
The boss won’t listen when one man squawks.
But he’s got to listen when the union talks.
He better -
He’ll be mighty lonely one of these days.
Suppose they’re working you so hard it’s just outrageous,
They’re paying you all starvation wages;
You go to the boss, and the boss would yell,
"Before I'd raise your pay I’d see you all in Hell."
Well, he’s puffing a big see-gar and feeling mighty slick,
He thinks he’s got your union licked.
He looks out the window, and what does he see
But a thousand pickets, and they all agree
He’s a bastard - unfair - slave driver -
Bet he beats his own wife.
Now, boy, you’ve come to the hardest time;
The boss will try to bust your picket line.
He’ll call out the police, the National Guard;
They’ll tell you it’s a crime to have a union card.
They’ll raid your meeting, hit you on the head.
Call every one of you a goddamn Red -
Unpatriotic - Moscow agents -
Bomb throwers, even the kids.
But out in Detroit here’s what they found,
And out in Frisco here’s what they found,
And out in Pittsburgh here’s what they found,
And down in Bethlehem here’s what they found,
That if you don’t let Red-baiting break you up,
If you don’t let stool pigeons break you up,
If you don’t let vigilantes break you up,
And if you don’t let race hatred break you up -
You’ll win. What I mean,
Take it easy - but take it!
Words by Millard Lampell, Lee Hays and Pete Seeger (1941)
I remember about 15-20 years ago grad students and adjuncts were complaining that they weren't getting health insurance from their universities.
The universities had a good bargaining position, the individual grad students had a bad bargaining position, and the students couldn't get health insurance.
When the grad students organized a union, and organized together, they had a better bargaining position, and they were able to force the universities to give them health insurance.
That sounds to me like the union being responsible for the grad students having health insurance.
The student tuition dollar goes to pay for a lot of things. When the grad students have a union, more of that student tuition dollar goes to the grad students, including for health insurance.
I wonder. There isn't any way to prevent them from cashing my check, is there?
I pay somebody by check, they deposit it to their bank, it goes through the international clearinghouse, gets paid by my bank, and get charged to my account.
The clearinghouse can't just decide not to pay checks drawn to iPredator, is there? It's a legally binding obligation.
Or if there was, it would be easy to get around it, right? iPredator could open a new account under the name "iPredator's Girlfriend" or something.