There seems to be a trend among the Republicans these days to actively attempt to destroy organizations that are seen as being politically against them (Teacher Union, ACORN, Planned Parenthood, NPR, maybe even PBS). I am trying to come up with examples of Democrats doing the same, but coming up blank, except for back in the days of the political machines. Does anyone have any examples of such? I’m sure they exist.
Your argument completely missed my point. Let me spell it out for you:
- You’re saying we need to tighten our belts and not rely on the government.
- You apparently have no problem with the government handing out more tax breaks and the like to the wealthy.
These two points, they cannot coexist in a rational mind.
That’s nice. Do you have a cite where I said that elections do not have consequences, or that the Democrats had no right to try to push health care reform?
Regards,
Shodan
I hate any tax breaks that we ALL can’t enjoy! Trust me, I’m an average working guy, and pay my fair share, and more. Every April 15th, I owe it seems. I find the web site [URL=“http://www.cagw.org/”]http://www.cagw.org/ very helpful, in that is often shows where our tax dollars really go. National debt is killing our country, our grand children will suffer from our spending. Doesn’t matter who is in office, it keeps going up. I’m not worried about laws that protect 1% of the people, I’m worried about the bleeding of our nation. We are the little guy here, I’m thinking of becoming a Minimalist!
Not really necessary, now that we have a cite that shows you are currently posting just to needle those on the other side of the political spectrum.
I found the following. “Ram” health care through sounds to me like you do not think it is the normal legislative process at work but something being foisted on the public.
No, it is still necessary to back up claims in GD. I have been accused of inconsistency, but no evidence has been produced.
Let’s see a cite where I claimed that Dems had no right to push health care reform, or that elections did not have consequences.
Regards,
Shodan
Guilty, I have been called irrational at times and believe that I can spell pretty well. You are beating an old drum about tax breaks for the rich. Let us get beyond that. That LITTLE percentage of the total budget hasn’t gotten us to this point. Why do you talk about tax laws that we can’t do anything about? Like i said to another, if you don’t like the tax laws, vote in someone who will change them. I personally am more worried about what the Feds spend our hard earned tax dollars on. Big picture here, big picture. 
This is getting progressively more absurd. A post in which I explicitly mention getting legislation thru Congress is evidence of something other than the normal legislative process?
Let me amend my request - the cite needs to be at least remotely plausible. So far, you got bupkis.
Regards,
Shodan
My recollection is that the tax break Walker passed in December was about the equivalent cost of all the “sacrifices” he was asking for the unions to concede in the form of pension and benefit payments. I could be wrong but either way it’s hard to take him seriously about needing to cut the deficit while he’s cutting taxes at the same time (but only for the wealthy).
My bad…I am conflating different threads.
Ignore this.
You do realize that the unions offered to tighten their belts, and Walker rejected their offer?
It’s still a grain of sand on a beach. Learn to stop beating the ‘tax breaks for the rich’ drum. Every state still needs to cut millions if not billions. But more responses will keep beating the Rich vs. Poor drum, and nothing will be accomplished. This same thing will happen in every state. Can’t blame one governor for that. I await the sound of the drum once more. 
I do. 40 years ago or more, unions had their place. But unions are what have killed our economy. Ask the steel workers, anyone in the manufacturing business, small mom & pop shops. We have NO manufacturing jobs here in the USA because unions have priced themselves and us workers out of a job. Now companies just deal with China where the labor costs are low. If a union didn’t demand someone be paid $30-$40 dollars per hour to do a job function on a line, jobs would still be here. *the unions tried to ‘cut a deal’ to save their bloated necks.
I’m gonna have to call a great big CITE on that, because in actuality it sounds like you’re talking from belief rather than facts. On just about everything you’ve said, in fact. And this is the problem… people like you come into a thread like this, spread around your beliefs, and then run off when facts and figures actually contradict what you’re saying.
In this particular case, I’ll just address one point: Do you think there is any way the American worker can compete with Chinese labor? Are you really saying the unions should have allowed the wage to be like, $3/week or whatever the rate was in China at the time?
What’s more, are you even familiar with the current responsibilities of unions? I can point toward a few examples in the past few years where unions have not only saved workers, but actually saved the company trouble as well. The specific example I’m thinking of is a case where the company wanted to cut maintenance staff at a plant, since they were running more staff than the other plants. The union was the only thing that kept them from doing this… which was good, because the reason they needed more support staff was because the plant was considerably older than the other plants.
Interesting. So are you saying that unions’ demands to be paid more than 64 cents an hour have destroyed the economy? Or are you suggesting that corporations aren’t looking for the cheapest labor, and they wouldn’t go for the cheapest labor in the world, but that unions are just asking for so much that they break corporations’ normally generous hearts? Are you suggesting that it has nothing to do with trade deals that privilege capital far over labor (case in point: money can move freely across the Mexican border to find the cheapest labor; workers who move for the best jobs are breaking the law)?
Saying that unions had their place 40 years ago, but should be abolished now, is like saying that the US military served its purpose 60 years ago, but should be dismantled now. Obviously, you could argue that unions or the military are larger or more powerful than necessary, and should be cut back, but if you just abolished them, our enemies would just swoop in and swallow us whole. What do you think stops employers from going back to the company store and wage slavery?
I think one could say the destruction of the middle class began with the PACTO strike and now has finished up with Wisconsin.
Let’s add a couple words here: “in Germany”
How is it that Germans still have manufacturing jobs, pretty good pay, small mom&pop shops, and still manage to pay their workers pretty well? And manage to have fairly cheap universal health care while having about the same quality of care as the US? What makes them different from Americans?
It can’t entirely be the presence of American unions. There are worker protections in Europe that don’t even exist here. Labor costs are obviously a factor, but that can’t be the entire explanation.
Well there’s government regulations to stop that. Which the corporations won’t have to worry about for long, because they’ll just repeal them.
It could be that CEOs in America make hundreds of times the salary of the average worker at the same company.