Freedom Versus…
Jan 5, 2011 Political
Situation:
Mr. X wants to help some people. He decides he’d like to provide them with food. He is specifically targeting homeless people in the local downtown area. He believes that these homeless that he sees need food, and he wants to meet that need. Mr. X starts up his kitchen and invites the homeless in. The homeless show up and start eating. The same homeless people come day after day and eat the food Mr. X provides. Mr. X is happy because he feels he is helping people. The homeless people are happy because they’re getting food.
After about a month, Mr. X decides that he wants to feed these people full-time. He’s going to need more money to do it, but he doesn’t have the money…
In a Free Country:
Mr. X comes to me and asks me, personally, for help. He explains his need and how he is helping people. I explain that I can appreciate his need, but I disagree with his methods. I say that I believe by providing and endless supply of food for the same homeless people over and over again that he is, instead, actually supporting them and encouraging them. After all, they don’t need to change their lives if he will provide them with food. Instead, I suggest to Mr. X that if he includes a program with job training, skills training, or placing other requirements on the free food, that I would be willing to donate some of my own time and money.
At this point, Mr. X has the option of accepting my terms and conditions, or looking elsewhere for support for his ideas. He may find others that agree with him and he continues to provide the free food. He is happy, the others are happy, the homeless are happy, and I am happy. He may not find enough others and instead agree to my conditions, and we find others who also agree. Then he is happy, the others are happy, the homeless are happy, and I am happy.
In America:
Mr. X decides he wants to feed the homeless. He sends men with guns to my house to force me to pay for the feedings. I object, and he threatens to send me to jail if I do not pay for the homeless meals. I ask why he needs me to pay for the meals, and he explains that it’s my civic duty and that it would be anarchy if I don’t pay. I ask Mr. X why he isn’t paying for the meals, and he explains that it is only civilized if I pay for the homeless meals and pay Mr. X’s salary while he is feeding them because I can afford it. He again threatens to throw me in jail if I do not pay him. He sends more men with guns to steal my property if I do not comply. More homeless show up for the free, unconditional meals, so Mr. X sends another bill to me for more money, telling me that since I have money and the homeless do not, it is my obligation to pay. I refuse to pay because I do not agree with the process, so Mr. X sends men with guns to kill me for disobeying. Mr. X is unhappy because he has a job that he does not like, but he has to pay his bills. Other people are unhappy because they have to pay high taxes they do not like. The homeless are not happy because they are not getting steak with every meal that they feel they deserve. I am dead.
I only wish this were an exaggeration. Sadly, it is not. Worse, the majority of people in America today support everything that is happening. And a wide majority completely would support my death in the situation above.
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Tags: charity, coercion, freedom, government rules
Unions Are Obstructive (And P.O.S. Too)
Aug 8, 2009 Political
Well, the unions feel that they are going to get back some membership, now that they have installed Barama the Acquiescent in the White House. In return for their thuggish prescence at the Town Hall meetings, where they can intimidate people with their prescence, Hussein can and will push through laws that unlawfully favor labor unions, and force people to join.
The first and most evident proposed law is the Card Check Act, where a union thug with no forehead and a continuous sub- orbital ridge can hover over you while “asking” you to sign a card that would require the company you work for to hold union elections- and the threshold percentage of people required to initiate the election would be 30%. When was 30% a Majority in anyone’s world?
Apparently, in Hussein’s world, 30% is a majority- no wonder they are having problems with budgets and TARP, and stimulus, and cash for clunkers- they cannot work with numbers, apparently.
So now, the other unions, besides SEIU, want in on the action, and they are not afraid to use strong-arm tactics to do this.
In an increasingly bitter Washington battle between the nation’s two largest shipping companies, some unionized UPS workers say they are being forced to write letters to their lawmakers in support of more stringent labor rules for arch rival FedEx.
Officials with UPS and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, which represents 240,000 UPS drivers, acknowledge that the company has paid for workers’ time to pen many of the letters and has supplied the envelopes, paper and stamps needed to mail thousands of them to Congress. UPS spokesman Malcolm Berkley said the effort was “totally voluntary, and any allegations to the contrary are ridiculous.”
But Internet sites dedicated to UPS-related discussions feature dozens of accounts from anonymous employees who in recent weeks have said they were forced to write the letters or felt they would be punished for not doing so. Such tactics could run afoul of both labor laws and lobbying disclosure requirements, according to legal experts.
washingtonpost.com
FedEx is not truly a rival of UPS- one ships mainly by ground transport, and the other, FedEx, ships by air, but the union wants to control FedEx, and could, if successful, cause work disruptions easier, thus forcing wage concessions easier, which of course would mean more money for the leaders of these unions. It’s all about greed with these unions, nothing else.
The letter-writing campaign is part of a costly and often fierce legislative fight between UPS and FedEx, which together have spent nearly $10 million on federal lobbying in the first half of the year. The feud captures the prominence of mass mailings, Internet campaigns and other grass-roots efforts to catch the attention of Congress in high stakes disputes, even when they involve relatively arcane regulations.
The focus of the UPS-FedEx conflict is House legislation passed earlier this year that would make it easier to unionize FedEx’s lucrative express-air operation, which is currently treated as an airline under labor rules that limit strikes and require unions to organize nationally rather than locally. UPS, by contrast, is treated as a trucking firm, allowing for easier union organizing.
UPS and the union are now concentrating on convincing the Senate to adopt the provision.
“We hope at the end of the day the Senate will see this as a simple issue of fairness,” said Ken Hall, head of the Teamsters’ package division.
FedEx has responded with an aggressive public-relations campaign of its own that includes a Web site, http://www.brownbailout.com, that mocks UPS as another wealthy corporation seeking a federal rescue. FedEx founder and chief executive Frederick W. Smith, who was mentioned last year as a potential Cabinet nominee by GOP presidential candidate John McCain (Ariz.), says the legislation would cripple his company by leaving it open to disruptive strikes.
“FedEx Express remains committed to putting our customers first and making sure Congress doesn’t change the legal framework that is the basis on which FedEx Express created the air express industry,” said company spokesman Maury Lane.
washingtonpost.com
So the union thuggery continues unabated- its not just SEIU brutes beating a Black man at a St. Louis Town Hall meeting, but AFL-CIO thugs browbeating union employees to get them to “write” letters to their Congressmen to advance a special interest on the part of the union.
The legislative fight between the companies captured headlines in Washington last month when Politico’s Web site released a letter from the American Conservative Union offering FedEx its political support, including an “aggressive grass-roots campaign to stop the legislation in the Senate,” in exchange for payments of at least $2.1 million. After FedEx refused, ACU Chairman David Keene signed on to a letter with other conservative leaders accusing FedEx of mounting a “disinformation campaign” against UPS.
The pro-UPS correspondence was also signed by ACU board member Grover Norquist, head of Americans for Tax Reform, which has received $200,000 worth of grants from the UPS Foundation since 2005. A Norquist spokesman said his group had taken no position on the legislation and does not intend to do so.
Now FedEx officials are bristling at the UPS letter-writing campaign, pointing to complaints from Scott and other UPS workers. “They are forcing us to write letters at our UPS center,” one employee wrote on BrownCafe.com, a Web site independent of UPS. Another user wrote: “My System Manager told us ‘this is not an optional activity.’ I wrote the letters and still feel dirty.”
One veteran UPS worker from New Mexico, who requested anonymity to speak about his employer, told The Washington Post that he favors a law change for Fedex but objects to UPS tactics.
“Employees were first told that they were required to write these letters and that if they chose not to then they were to write a letter to the district manager explaining why not,” the employee said. Supervisors backed down in the face of complaints, he added, only to repeat the demand again a day later and threaten to “write up” those who refused.
Most workers complied to get the extra pay, which was marked down as training time, he said.
washingtonpost.com
How nice- “training time”, huh? Just call it bribery, with just a whiff of coercion and extortion thrown in. So the union lies- gee, we didn’t see that one coming, did we? You are telling me that Unions lie and deceive, and cheat to advance their cause? Say it aint so, Joe. This is just yet another move on the part of the unions, with the complicit aid of the Hussein Administration and members of Congress, to increase reliance on unions for work, and the government for everything else. This is not right.
FedEx should be able to chart its own way in the business world, as should everything and everyone else. Unions used to have a legitimate use and function, but no more. They are the Neanderthals in the business world, and for everyone’s sake, they need to go extinct ASAP.
If, on their own, employees of FedEx chose to unionize, that would be fair, but coercion never turns out well, and the unions only end up looking like, well, cartoons of unions, demonstrating their brute side for all the world to see, and its not pretty.
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Tags: brownmail, coercion, neanderthals, thugs, unions
Judge Allows Physical Attack To Enforce Court Order
Jun 7, 2009 Political
Judge Sara Sheldon Sperrazza of Niagra County New York ruled that it was OK to Taser a person who refused to comply with a court order in order to execute the order. A man refused to give his DNA in a case. He had given it before but the police sent it to the wrong lab so they could not use it. They got another court order and the man refused to provide his DNA. He said they would have to Taser him to get it, and they did.
The police Tasered Ryan Smith and took his DNA.
It does not matter to me that this guy was probably guilty, what matters is the abuse of him in enforcing a court order and the implications this might have on others. Suppose there was a court order for you to turn over certain paperwork related to a case and you refused. In times past you would be put in jail until you complied with the order. After this ruling the cops might just Taser you and then look through your stuff until they find it. There are many court orders that are disobeyed. There are legal remedies designed to get people to comply but physical abuse is not one of them.
Reporters who refuse to give up a source per a court order are sent to jail until they do. What happens if they are Tasered until they give up the source? Why not just water board them and be done with it?
This judge gave a moronic ruling in this case and it should be overturned.
In third world countries they use physical violence to obtain information. In the US we have laws that prevent this.
Then again, we have laws that punish voter intimidation and the Obama Justice Department ignores them. We have laws preventing ILLEGALS from registering to vote but Obama’s Justice Department ignores them. Hell, we have rules that are supposed to punish people for being here ILLEGALLY but the government ignores those.
In any event, I guess it is not surprising that Smith was physically abused in order to obtain information given that Obama and his peeps want to move us to Socialism and Obama is more aligned with the Communists than the free people.
Welcome to the kind of America the Democrats accused (unjustly) our troops of. The gulags cannot be too far behind.
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Beware The Union Label
May 1, 2009 Political
Well, it’s finally happened, the union bosses finally own a business- Chrysler. 55% of the ownership will be the unions- this is part of the payback for the unions supporting Barama, and helping cram him down our throats. Now the Bosses can play with their very own company.
Let’s see if they can bury this business as quickly as Tony Soprano could bury his enemies.Maybe they’ll go from house to house, making an offer we can’t refuse, but I ain’t buying it.
The only way they will make money will be if every union guy buys a Chrysler. Then, we’ll know when they are coming down the street.
This would be hilarious if it wasn’t such a large chunk of and American business- it gives me the mental picture of Lucy Ricardo on the candy assembly line. I imagine the unions may do as well as Lucy.
The unions have absolutely no business owning anything-they have no history of being competent to own anything. Heck, their membership has been shrinking for years, as they and their legacy demands have driven businesses out of the U.S. Even airlines are opting to get their mechanical repairs done overseas, to avoid onerous costs. This is because after the “Global Economy” opened up, the companies realized they had options , and, as everyone knows, corporations have no soul, and no allegiance to a country. It’s all a balance sheet item to them.
So unions miscalculated, and like the rest of the world, were behind the curve in accepting the new, Global paradigm that NAFTA, CAFTA, and Free Trade brought about. Believe me, if we could change it most of us would. Sure we might not get plums from Chile out of season, or cheap bananas from Guatemala, but we could still have clothes that were made right, not like they were made in a communist country with artificial everything, and no safety checks on what we wear or consume. I’d rather not go up in flames just by wearing a foreign product. I know, but I’m just crazy that way.
We have almost no manufacturing capacity left. I used to love American made clothing- it was high quality, and it lasted. We have ceded almost all of our steel- making factories to China, and indeed, almost everything else, including food safety. Up until last year, I wasn’t aware that Melamine was considered, in China, to be a major food group. The companies that haven’t relocated overseas to escape crushing union costs have been bought by foreign competition, such as the Mrs. Baird’s Bakery, an institution in Texas for over 100 years, which was sold to a Mexican bakery chain.
The only unions that still have viability today are those with captive corporations, like ATT, GTE, and other communications networks, the service industry union which cleans rooms in hotels, and the auto industry.
All the rest of the unions may be hanging on, but it’s by their fingernails, and I blame the union management. While massive changes were going on, changes that shifted the power structure against the unions,the bosses were having a party on the union members dime, and missed it, just flat missed it completely.
So now the bosses want the Card Check act, or as it is otherwise known, the Employee Free Choice Act- a deceiving piece of legislation by which they hope to fool or force others into union membership, by signing a card indicating that they want a union, in front of a union steward, rather than having a secret ballot with no union intimidation.
A secret ballot is one of the cornerstones of American voting life, so why would a group that professes to be American to the core be willing to sacrifice a traditional American value such as the Secret Ballot? Easily explained, it’s all about survival- with union membership going down, and companies fleeing our shores for cheaper and less contentious labor overseas, the union bosses have to come up with some other cash cow, or management will actually have to find a job, and that, in their minds, is just not right. Other people work, they have better things to do, like party at the Fountainbleau Hotel in Miami, where the rooms start at $400.00 a night, and that is not even ocean view. All on the union member’s dime. Don’t you think, in this economy, they could have scaled back their “meeting”?
If card check passes, (and it probably will, with all the socialists in office), this will be the death knell of many businesses and certainly the utter demise of any and all manufacturing in this country, except what is ordered by the union’s new partner, the government- who will do everything they can to ensure that we the people buy union, even if we can’t afford it, or just plain do not want to. We the people will become the peon class to our new lords the union bosses and government hacks, oh joy.
I’m getting a tingle down my leg- if I am lucky, it’s the precursor to a stroke.
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Tags: coercion, global economy, nafta, unions