Sure.
No, nobody said that. Also, others upthread explained why the fears outlined in the OP are less justified than you’d originally feared.
Perhaps you could explain. It sure looked like to me.
However, I won’t see your answer until tomorrow as I’m off to bed now.
Cheers.
Sure, you said:
In which you interpret reasons one poster has for thinking you are retarded, I assume referring to this post:
In which nothing is said about what makes you and your family retarded, only that you and your family are retarded (note: I am not calling you retarded). Zhen’ka did not elaborate on the reasons s/he thinks you are retarded. You can’t infer the reason you stated above from Zhen’ka’s post.
The reason I’m against the EFCA -
From Wikipedia Employee Free Choice Act - Wikipedia
“Under current labor law, the U.S. National Labor Relations Board will certify a union as the exclusive representative of employees if it is elected by either a majority signature drive, the card check process, or by secret ballot NLRB election, which is held if more than 30% of employees in a bargaining unit sign statements asking for representation by a union. **Under the EFCA, an employer would no longer have the opportunity to demand a secret ballot election when a majority of employees have signed union cards **and there is no evidence of illegal coercion.” (Bolding mine)
Seeking to organize workers into a union- fine.
Secret ballot to form a union- fine.
Creating a union when 50%+1 employees have signed a card (when these cards can be collected over an entire year, and an employee who has signed a card cannot change his/her mind & demand the card back)- NOT fine.
I’m also concerned about a reimposition of the Fairness Doctrine, but not that much. I have heard that an Obama Presidency would also champion a Freedom of Choice Act to override present state abortion regularions, BUT I need to do the research on that.
Btw, I’ll tell you what’s retarded…
RETARDED POLICEMAN!
Why not?
It is unlikely that the Fairness Doctrine will be revived, simply because the number of outlets for free expression of ideas has expanded so dramatically in recent years.
SA’s brother and others raising this bogeyman may not know what the Fairness Doctrine was all about in the first place.
*"The FCC took the view, in 1949, that station licensees were “public trustees,” and as such had an obligation to afford reasonable opportunity for discussion of contrasting points of view on controversial issues of public importance. The Commission later held that stations were also obligated to actively seek out issues of importance to their community and air programming that addressed those issues. With the deregulation sweep of the Reagan Administration during the 1980s, the Commission dissolved the fairness doctrine.
This doctrine grew out of concern that because of the large number of applications for radio station being submitted and the limited number of frequencies available, broadcasters should make sure they did not use their stations simply as advocates with a singular perspective. Rather, they must allow all points of view."*
It’s telling that some right-wing elements would profess to being upset about the prospect of broadcast stations allowing differing points of view, but reimposed FCC mandates in that direction aren’t going to happen.
To make these rumors valid, you’ve got to hear them from a friend of a friend. That way they’re unimpeachable.
I admire SA for his ability to go to sleep in the midst of this uncertainty, what with all the things living under his bed.
The Politburo doesn’t seem to have sent me their newsletter this week, so I have no idea whether the Vast Liberal Conspiracy is planning to re-impose the Fairness Doctrine or not, but frankly, I wouldn’t mind seeing a bit more air time provided for parties other than the Big Two.
Meanwhile, Starving, are you not aware that there is a forum on this board called General Questions, where you can ask, you know, general questions? There’s no particular reason I can see why this should have been opened in the Pit, except to make it convenient to slip in an anti-liberal bash or two, maybe even right in the subject line.
I’m not quite seeing the cause-and-effect here. So the Democrats are going to punish Republican states by undermining their right-to-work status? Are they trying to hurt businesses in those states? With the exception of Iowa and possibly Florida, Virginia, and Nevada, all of the right-to-work states are leaning Republican, and mostly heavily Republican. Does your brother think this is some kind of union pitch to get people to vote Democrat, and how would that possibly work in the deep red states? Strange if it is, seeing that the Obama camp has neither announced such a policy nor asserted that right-to-work needs to be repealed.
To borrow an overused cliche from another thread…
You aren’t here for the hunting, are you?
I believe the theory is that non-RTW states will quickly become heavily unionized, and unions will strongly encourage members to vote (Democratic, of course), thus breaking the Republican stranglehold on red states.
I do see lot of cart-before-horse in that theory, though, because if those states were going to unionize, they could easily have done so prior to the enaction of right to work laws.
Well, that might even be fine, but only if they are informed that signing the card alone could bring about a union, rather than lead to the calling of a secret ballot election to form a union.
Fair enough, but that’s an issue of union organizational ethics, not law.
There have been some calls to reintroduce the fairness doctrine recently. Kerry’s supported it, as has Kucinich and Dick Durbin. I don’t think it’s going to happen, though, even with an Obama presidency. As has been said, Obama has come out against it, and if it was reimposed, it would probably be revisited by the courts, who would probably reverse Red Lion.
I’m not convinced of the “lefty liberal media bias”. In fact, I suspect that it doesn’t exist. I separate ‘media’ into ‘news’, and ‘not news’
For example, you choose what TV shows, movies and magazines you read, and they run the gamut from extreme left to extreme right. It’s hard to compel a bias on someone if they simply don’t read or watch your product.
To some extent, you choose what radio shows you listen to except that, in my town at least and I think it’s the same all over the country, almost every single show available to me is decidedly and strongly right biased.
I can change the channel, but only hear a different guy saying basically the same things. Since this is where I hear charges of liberal media bias most often, I have to take the charges with a grain or two of salt.
Since I think a lot of people get their news on the radio while driving to work, so I suspect radio has a stronger influence than magazines or tv shows.
I don’t like feeling like I’m being manipulated or misinformed, and I feel that way too often after listening to am radio.
So what to do? Who to trust?
I try to get my news from a variety of places and places less obvioulsy biased than the radio.
I read Time, Newsweek, CNN and MSNBC, mostly. I throw in BBC for an outsiders perspective. I prefer radio NPR simply because the news stories are longer and more in-depth. I’m not sure if these new sources have a bias at all but I am 100% sure they do not have the bias that is clearly and abundantly evident on the radio.
At this point, especially since the election is so close, I’m afraid anything I hear on the radio is suspect.
When I was but a lad in Waco, TX, studying for admission to the penitentiary…
There were roadhouses and stuff like that all over. My uncle owned one where Willy Nelson played, when he had a crew cut… Anyway, he covered the parking lot with pecan shells, many of them did. No, I don’t know why, except they were cheap and so was he. But I always thought it was really cool walking around there, with the crunch-crunch-crunch ever step. Neat-o!
Still have that sound bite in my mind, and I think it fits SA’s gibbering fantasy of liberal jackboots…crunch crunch crunch … drawing ever nearer!..crunch, crunch, crunch…coming to take your guns and force you into aerobics classes and make you eat your vegetables…crunch, crunch, crunch…
Know a lot of lefties. Don’t think any of them own a pair of jackboots, or even know how to lace them up.