MI labor protest CARLOS OSORIO/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Greed: The inordinate desire to possess wealth, goods, or objects of abstract value with the intention to keep it for one’s self.
What to do if your party has become a no-man’s land of old white men that can’t win a national election? Do you regroup, get your act together, rethink some policies, or stop the hate against The Others? Or do you keep doing what you were doing – that is, divide the nation even further, seek to defund the opposition and hope you can deny enough Americans of their franchise that the Old White Man vote will still carry the day?
If you’re the GOP, you opt for the latter. You keep banging your head against your irrelevancy and so you must defund your opposition. In order to do this, you have to defund unions (largely Democratic and also middle class — neither of which benefits from the Republican greed for the 1%) in states where you have installed party hacks as Governors who ran as Republican “independents” or “moderates”.
So it came to be that during the lameduck session of the Michigan legislature, Governor Rick Snyder encouraged his Republican legislature to ram through “Right to Work” legislation, which actually translates to “right to work for less.” This, in the home of the union movement, from a guy who ran as a “moderate nerd” from liberal Ann Arbor — the guy who was going to be a common sense dude.
Snyder is expected to sign the legislation Tuesday, after it was rammed through without debate during the lame duck session (the same lameduck session that national Republicans say is no good to do anything during). They attached a nifty procedural trick to the bill so that voters won’t be able to vote on it per referendum as they did in Ohio. In other words, this is not a democracy.
You don’t like what Snyder does? Tough luck. He broke his promise not to go after unions? Oh well. That’s what you get with a “moderate” Republican in these times. (Note: Rick Snyder is proof positive that if they have an “R” after their name, no matter what they say, they are going to push ALEC/Koch Brother legislation.)
However, national Democrats are not taking this without a fight. Democratic leaders, including Senator Carl Levin and Reps. John Conyers, John Dingell, and Sander Levin, met with Snyder Monday morning in an attempt to talk him down from the crazy ledge. Their biggest hope seems to be that he might have the courtesy of allowing voters to vote via referendum after he passes his middle finger to the middle class. It’s a shame when you have to beg for democracy.
President Obama is expected in Michigan today to push his fiscal cliff solutions and is scheduled to meet with Snyder. Naturally, Snyder will be avoiding the Obama stop at the Daimler Diesel Plant in Redford, where Daimler will be announcing the $100 million investment in U.S. production and jobs (read: good middle class jobs). Awkward!
Michigan Laborers plan to gather and lobby at the Capitol today and have an even larger protest planned tomorrow.
The Detroit Free Press, which endorsed “Republican venture capitalist” “businessman” Rick Snyder, has found itself once again shocked and dismayed by a Republican, writing “we trusted Snyder’s judgment. That trust has now been betrayed.” They continue, saying Snyder betrayed Michiganders who elected him with a “conviction that they were electing someone more independent, and more visionary, than partisan apparatchiks like Wisconsin’s Scott Walker.”
The Free Press isn’t buying Snyder’s transparent excuses for the attack on unions. They conclude, “The real motive of Michigan’s right-to-work champions, as former GOP legislator Bill Ballenger ruefully observed, is “pure greed” — the determination to emasculate, once and for all, the Democratic Party’s most reliable source of financial and organizational support.”
Imagine if, in the exact same financial crisis, Democrats spent all of their time attacking the (largely Republican base of) megachurches’ tax status instead of dealing with the real issues of the day. It’s called having nothing to sell yourself — so you spend all of your time trying to force your opponent to lose. We might ask why anyone would consider attacking the one institution that protects the wages of the middle class, when the middle class continues to suffer as the 1% gets more and more of the wealth. But then, we know why. Republicans do not represent the middle class.
It’s sad to reread the Detroit Free Press’ endorsement of Snyder, where they hail his plan to work in “partnership” with Detroit unlike other Republicans, claiming “(I)t is pragmatism over ideology, a recurring theme in Snyder’s campaign.” They were most concerned with Snyder’s “outsider” status – worried he would have no support in Lansing. Turns out, they bought into yet another remake of the Republican tough guy/businessman/cowboy theme, this time packaged perfectly for Michigan in the practical “nerd” guise. Snyder has no lack of support in Lansing, because Snyder is not an outsider or an independent.
A lesson for modern times: You might not like the Democrat, but you’re going to hate the Republican. Sometimes voting is simply a matter of mitigating the possible damage.
At 5:30PM Monday afternoon, Governor Snyder will be serenaded by pro-labor (pro middle class) demonstrators singing Christmas carols outside of his Superior Township home.
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buckeyewill
Dec. 10th, 2012 at 1:23 pm
So sad. Very sad.
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Shiva (Moderator)
Dec. 10th, 2012 at 3:04 pm
I agree that it is greed, but there is far more involved in my opinion. He wants the ownership of the working class for his corporate friends. He cannot get anything out of this until he is out of office. But we know he will be well taken care of for taken a state like Michigan and turn it into a right to work state. Michigan voters have to at least be somewhat proud of their states history. They have to be somewhat proud of their families, their fathers, their uncles, their brothers, their mothers who have worked in union shops and even in nonunion shops to support the auto industry and the many other unions that exist there.
as a lifelong (52 years) citizen of Michigan I can tell you that it was during the Reagan years that the auto jobs started disappearing. It’s always under a Republican when jobs disappear. and now like a whip on its return trip some Michigan employers are going to take back all of the good years that Michigan gave this country and complete the destruction that Reagan started.
if people want to know why this country is in a fix, just look at the charts that show you since Reagan’s time income has gone down on average, tax revenues have gone down almost every year, and for the most part the number of people working has gone down.
Our president wants to tax those who are keeping their jobs overseas, and I stand fully behind that. I watched a report on MSNBC this morning that said it is cheaper to start jobs now in America that it is in several countries. The reason? I’m glad you asked. Lower wages and the start of the ownership society of the working class
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RB Jones
Dec. 11th, 2012 at 12:47 am
It is my impression that Detroit is totally unionized. Take pictures of that town–is it as bad as what is seen on tv? Contrast that “Union” City with any city in any “right to work state” doesn’t it raise any qestions in anyone’s mind?Which is the cleanest? best jobs, best place to work? Unions have done a wonderful service for the general public in the beginning (100 years ago?) when even little children were sent to work in factories. Hardly anyone could even read or write. There were no radios, tvs, etc. Now everyone can read and write and there are enough leftist radios and tvs to stir up and inflame everyone to prevent any infringement of rights of individuals.
In other words, has anyone thought there might be a better way than working in a unionized climate?
Contrast the union towns vs the right to work towns
Remember—-DO IT FAIRLY!!!!!!! Thanks
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Shiva (Moderator)
Dec. 11th, 2012 at 8:44 am
Detroit is hardly totally unionized. Thats a pretty foolish statement.
Detroit is a city that built the nations autos. And then had its primary source of jobs(along with all the support entities for the auto companys) pulled right out from under it. Wonder why it looks the way it does? You cant compare right to work with unions citys. Thats utterly silly.
All you are praising is the right of corporations to take away every beneift people have had for the lasat 50 years./ You are asking for workers lives to go back to where they were in Flint Michigan where the unions got a good start becuase workers were being misused in every way possible.
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Churchlady
Dec. 11th, 2012 at 5:06 pm
I lived in the South where RTW is king. It is true nothing is unionized – and having clean streets does not outweigh the rot at the heart of every institution. Red Southern RTW states are at the bottom of every societal measure – I taught school for a time, and you had NO security so you taught in cowardly ways to protect yourself. The kids learned very little of substance and have a piss poor understanding of democracy since teaching that is considered subversive. (I am NOT making this up.) Roads, sewers, public facilities are in bad shape in most of these places. Cities may look cool for tourists to the Grand Ol’ Opry, but there were unpaved roads in my town, and services were virtually non-existent. And, since I’m white and middle class, it was clear I got LOTS better treatment than I’d have done as a person of color. God forbid you were a predominantly Black rural community – you got nothing.
Detroit’s deterioration has nothing to do with unions but with the loss of massive amounts of tax base and the decline of enough public service workers to meet needs. As outsourcing ran rampant, as the auto companies deserted along with all their integrated activities, the lack of jobs was followed by tax declines. Vast numbers of the unemployed are insufficiently being supported by urban safety net or city services.
It’s the abandonment of Americans by Americans that has hurt everyone, and the RTW states are no better off for being anti-union – they just have angrier and less activist populations. And that WAS the point.
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Ingrid Buxton
Dec. 11th, 2012 at 12:54 am
Businessmen/women simply hate unions. They salivate and spew spittle, get big eyed and gesticulate wildly as they release their venom about unions. They will (and have) cut off their own nose to spite their face. They have clawed their way into power and will NOT share power with anyone “lesser” meaning a worker. Yes there is the greed component but in reality when they cant fire somebody without having to justify it with a bit of paperwork it makes them go postal. They hate unions. I worked for a very brief time (a couple months) for one of these schmucks who spent so much time plotting to take down the union that he was oblivious to the company going down the tubes.
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Churchlady
Dec. 11th, 2012 at 5:12 pm
Not a universal sentiment at all. Accepting unions is an entirely mixed bag. Some do indeed hate them – and some do not. Even in the pre-union era between 1892 (Homestead) and 1936 (Wagner Act) you could find employers who voluntarily accepted unions and worked with them cooperatively. Today Warren Buffet and many others actively seek out companies with solid union relations knowing it creates intelligent, dedicated, well educated and loyal employees.
The assault on unions is from a cadre of extremely RW people who hate PEOPLE and want a return to the Robber Baron class structure. It is entirely short-sighted, but for he moment they have this victory. It now falls to us to change the power relationships in MI and preserve union rights elsewhere. But it helps nothing to exaggerate, to ignore strengths, and to over-state the anti-union sentiments. We need our capital allies, too.
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Ingrid Buxton
Dec. 11th, 2012 at 1:03 am
Greed is nothing more than hoarding and it is a mental illness. In both enlightened industrial and primitive societies this is understood and children are trained out of it (taught to share) because greed is a socially disruptive activity that engenders envy and divisiveness.
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