Wis. GOP strips public workers' bargaining rights

You'd make a great politician. Totally side-stepping the issue that Americans should not be forced to join and enrich groups they disagree with in order to be employed.

Workers' rights ends at the point it conflicts with your political parties' preference, huh? Smacks of Communism. It is an affront to freedom and equality.

I didn't ask for it. I want to make my own choices.

Lash,
We'd love to have you come teach school here in sunny N.C. No pesky union dues.

You agreed to that when you decided to continue to live in this country Lash.

You are free to choose any other country to live in. You are free to move to a state with right to work laws. You choose not to.

I find the conservative idea of "personal responsibility" to be a fascinating concept. It never means that a conservative has to take personal responsibility for their actions. It always turns out to mean they want others to take responsibility while they don't have to. It seems you are more than happy to accept the benefits of a union but you don't want the responsibilities that come along with it.

No, it smacks of someone who can't understand complex ideas. Do you really think that in a free society you can do whatever you want however you want? There are rules. There will always be rules. Without rules we aren't free at all. If you don't like the rules you are free to break them and suffer the consequences or you are free to move elsewhere to avoid them.

Then go teach at a private school for lower wages and benefits. What are you waiting for? Make your own choice instead of whining about how you can't make choices.

I might become a Cowboy Poet!! I'll happily pay the union dues (they're surely tax deductible?)

Sure; and take the money out of politics and business too and you have removed the greatest cause for crime... I mean, when there was practically no money on the earth, and wealth was in land and chattels, people still committed crimes for Hubris, which was often pride in their honor... But honor was wealth to those people as it is to all people really... If you cannot trust government and you cannot trust employers then there is little protection from unions you cannot trust either... Look at who has really benefitted from Unions... It has been those who have cut a deal with them, the big corporations that have benefitted from an organzied and secure workforce, and for its part, the union has worked for them by policing its own, holding standards of membership, getting rid of disaffected elements, and etc...While the better workers have had their wages held down, the porer workers have had their wages raised above their talents... And generally unions have supported workers rights for all... Even Nonunion workers compare their wages to union workers, and if talented demand the equal...

You should try to understand GS, that capitalism is crime, and all injustice in our society follows from it... Economic inequality leads to political inequality and so destroys the democracy... Economic injustice leads to sexual injustice from the moment people find they need to eat without the job to support their needs, and even there the girl on the street finds herself in competition with larger enterprizes of vice which make a commodity of every thing and everybody... There is no end to it... When property is a right, all rights become properties and not one is inalienable... Each is sold one by one into a distressed market that is manipulated by those with wealth... You are not just attacking the rights of labor and the rights of people to peaceably assemble... You are giving up your own rights in jealousy of theirs because you are a small minded and unintelligent peon.

You have a point.

OK, as soon as everyone who complains about America moves out, I'll go to private school.

You first. You complain constantly. Pack up.

If you had another ten years of eduction you would still be an idiot... It is the individual and the idea of individualism that is handed to people in leu of real freedom of action and freedom from want and fear... Freedom is always enjoyed individually, but out of necessity is always defended collectively...

Unions are ****, and they work like ****; but they are doing, after all, a job the government has admitted it should be doing, but out of idealistic preferences for capital it chooses not to do... And they more often than not impede union in the doing of the job which is theirs, and which they do not do...

As a form, Union are no different from any form... If you are capable of being in a relationship, there is not one you can point to that you would not h ave to sacrifice for, and usually that sacrifice includes some part of your self, your individuality... I sacrifice for my marriage... I sacrifice to be a citizen, and I sacrificed to be a union member... But I also suffered all the dimwits who could not see what their condition would be against corporations -which are unions- aganst the poor, the working people, and even aganst the interest of the country- IF they were barganing as individuals...

A job is a form too, and it is easy to think of the form of that relationship in primitive terms such as betweeen a small business owner and a single employee... When the enterprise is vast, and the employer has his pick of people, there is only one limit to how low the price of each employee can go out of the desparation of each to keep alive... Get your head out of the past, and consider what life would be like if each had to go hat in hand to their bosses who might by nice, or might be tyrants without checks of any sort, and there bargain against all of humanity for fair working conditions...

No one likes unions... No one in this world ever stood up and said for no good reason: Hey, let's have a union and pay dues... Unions were forced on the working class becuase government failed to do its job, and even when unions have worked at all it is because their members have possessed certain skills apart from the average that made their successful organization possible... Look at how people without unions live... It is not possible to support a family on minimum wages unless one works 80 hours instead of 40...

What defense have these people against injustice, because as it stands, it is not the republicans who are supporting minimum standards for working people of any sort... And even the democratic party only does so because the unions help them to get elected... We pay too much for the support of government when we have already paid once with our taxes... It is outrageous that we must organize... It is outrageous that we must pay dues... It is outrageous that we must bargain on equal terms with people who are criminals, and who should be hanged in public... Either we will make the government work for all the people, and quit allowing corporations to conspire against the people, or we are done and doomed... Figure it out.

I have known a lot of underpaid teachers who went out of their way, on their own time without pay to reach and teach their students out of the love in their hearts, and the understanding of how essential education and knowledge is to happiness to say nothing of success...

My daughter is home schooled, but she has computer classes available from the school... Now, we just finished government... And the thing was loaded with freemarket and property rights defenses when to my way of looking at it, all these are extranious to the subject... Except for those who think democracy such as we have it has no greater purpose than the defense of wealth and the laying off of the cost on the poor, we would not have it... When we look at the history as taught, the injustices of slavery, of industrial murder, of genocide against the indians, of the corruption of our government by the wealthy are all glossed over if mentioned at all... Our wars are never got at... How many times have we turned are arms against communism even when the only way they could have gotten at us was by our going and fighting in their lands??? How many of our lives were lost because our government, in order to protect wealth left itself poor, unready, and without defense in the face of growing menace??? Look at our conquests in this land, the war against Mexico, and how that is handled... Lincoln lost his job as a u.S. representative because he dared to tell the truth of the matter, and we dare not tell the truth of the matter nor of the many times we have followed up that bad behavior with worse... There in nowhere any free discussion of issues, of the relative benefits of one economy against another, and economics as a class was all about the benefits of some ideal capitalism when it was in the process of reducing every person in my school to a more profound poverty... I am uneducated... I admit it... But my education did not begin until my misinformation ended, and that was when I left High School..

Educators in a RTW state (Georgia for example) has a relatively high pay scale (based on their low cost of living). They do just fine without being forced to join (or not join) a union, so we don't have to organize to get a fair shake.

People in 22 states are free to choose and protected from coersion. Georgia's teachers' unions are weak naturally, due to teacher choice.

Unions should become strong when people are dissatisfied with the way they are being treated by management.

The 'free rider' issue is controversial - and I'd love to hear a plausible solution; forced membership isn't fair.

But, keep parroting what they told you. They'd be proud of how you propagate their rhetoric and insult people who have a different opinion. Maybe you'd like to swing a tire iron for them.

The difference is Lash, I don't complain about having to contribute to society.


I complain about those that feel they should be exempted from contributing as if they were somehow special compared to the rest of us.

All teachers are underpaid as far as I'm concerned - as are firefighters, police officers and many other civil servants. Inflated pay and legal robbery isn't the solution.

I was a little astonished at your statement:

Do you really believe this? Do you think the US and the USSR were just bored, looking for ways to goof off and spend money during the Cold War? What did you make of the Cuban Missile Crisis?

Really? Zipping that check out to Uncle Sam without a pesky long form to declare exemptions?

I've paid PLENTY into the system, volunteered and donated, asshole. I like contributing to society. I chafe like all hell under extortion, however.

"It is indeed probable that more harm and misery have been caused by men determined to use coercion to stamp out a moral evil than by men intent on doing evil." - Friedrich A. Hayek

LOL, we've been looking on the NC coast. You have a beautiful state....and more personal freedom than this place, fer shure.

"This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs: when he first appears he is a protector." - Plato, c. 400 B.C.

Really; and you think the Vietnamese could ever have killed and maimed so many of us if we had not given them the opportunity??? What of the North Koreans??? We get some damned theory in our heads about dominoes and apply it to world politics and economics... What is the cost; and who bears that cost... Who benefits from our present wars and who profits??? Our so called leaders are inclined to let their ideal do their thinking and they have no means of checking their facts against reality... They say: Communism is good in theory but terrible in reality.... Since all people every where have survived some form of communism and we have all come out of it, the opposite must be true, that is is terrible in theory, because it succeeded well in reality; but recreated out of an ideal, it has been a failure, and still as a failure, in many respects successful... Russia withstood the Nazis, for an example as the Czars could not withstand the Prussians or the Japanese... They went from the 6th most industrial country in the world to the second in 60 years... Only when the human cost is considered does it seem terrible, but what other cost should be considered... So we should today consider the human cost of the failure of our society which will be felt for generations to come even if we could have successful revoltuion tomorrow... The pain would go on and on... The distruction will be with us so long as we live, and that is the price of capitalism...

Democracy too springs from the need of protection, and this is served in a democracy by common organization and effort... What ever else can be said of primitive democracies, they made up for their want of technology by social organization, and you would be an individual wanting to stand alone... The people should let the likes of you stand alone just to show the rest of them how easily you are cut down to size.

You said the "Communists" couldn't have - now, you've amended to "Vietnamese." Quite a difference.


What cost is the domino theory? You seem to be devolving into some word salad, Fido. Seems like an emotional rant. Gather your thoughts and make them coherent, please.


Who is "they"? Again, I think you are in a really small group of people who think Communism "succeeded well in reality"... Ask a Russian or a former resident of the USSR what they think of the brand of Communism they lived under. I have. Those of us who thought it was a living hell were correct. I haven't had one person to say differently. Something happens to the human spirit when you are stripped of personal rights. I feel comfortable guessing that the vast majority of people would choose the strictures of Capitalism to those of Communism. Neither is perfect - but one is a great deal better than the other, imo.

I don't mind that you don't agree.