The Fence I'm Straddling has Barbed Wire - Ouch!

Sometimes it's hard to be a liberal however one likes the meaning of the word. It is equally hard to be a conservative with respect to wanting to conserve institutions that work and get rid of or modify the ones that don't, which is, by the way, the true meaning of conservatism, or at least a truer meaning than the one touted by so-called conservatives nowadays in the radical Tea Party and its radical friends. David Brooks is usually "too" conservative for me, although I don't see him as a radical, but in this Op-Ed Columnist - The Paralysis of the State - NYTimes.com, I can't disagree with him. I'm straddling the fence again and I'm uncomfortable.

As a general rule, I hate union busting for a couple of reasons. First is that unions have been somewhat successful in making sure the everyday worker is paid a reasonable, living wage or at least paid a wage that is not less than the wage of ten, twenty or thirty years ago. Unions built the middle class, and it is the middle class that has driven America to a level of prosperity that so-called "management" would have never been able to do. Management, as I interpret it to mean, are those CEOs that pay themselves multi-million dollar bonuses and stock options, and other ridiculously expensive benefits. The middle class built America because the middle class had "Purchasing Power." Well, all of that turns out to be only half true. Management, it seems, according to a recent report that I've forgotten where to find, has managed to sell us hocus pocus, voodoo capitalistic ideals that management knows best over the past forty years and so the everyday Joe worker has not really seen an increase in wages since the 1970s, if you count inflation. Perhaps I heard that from Robert Reich, who seems to have his facts and logic together. So, it makes sense to me to "redistribute" a little of the top wealth back to the middle class and the poor through tax changes, i.e., tax the rich and not the poor or middle class - that is if you want them to buy anything.

There are some cases of union busting that simply fly in the face of all reason, and that's what I hate about union busting. Take the case of Gibson County's Commissioner Bob Townsend's attempt last year. As I understand, the Gibson County Local 215 employee union is now operating without a contract, so he was somewhat successful. If Townsend had made a reasonable attempt to bargain with the union, I probably wouldn't have said a word, but he didn't. In fact, there was every appearance of graft, favoritism and corruption at the center of it. The fuss was all about the County's health insurance policies, purchased through the so-called "city and county" insurance agent, the one and only John Dyer, for non-union workers and the "group" insurance policy purchased by the union . I suspect that the group policy is the better and less expensive policy, because group policies usually are. But, Dyer, it seems, has the sole right to sell the City of Princeton and Gibson County their insurance policies. Was he the only agent in town? How about competitive bidding? The other troubling aspect in the comedy skit was the Princeton Clarion, the newspaper. While there was trouble in River City, the Clarion said not one word other than reporting, verbatim, what was said at an "open and public" County Commissioner-Employee meeting that included both union and non-union people. It didn't "investigate" one iota of the situation. Instead, it reported on a lost dog and the November garage sales and other such articles, and lamented on the coming of Winter in its Op-Ed pages. Big deal! Later, after I joined Facebook and befriended the Clarion, I learned that the Clarion is basically a Tea Party newspaper and it won't investigate nor print anything contrary to Tea Party views or the shenanigans of Republican administrations. In other words, anyone reading the paper will never know about hanky-panky at the County seat. That's usually the case in union busting, it's all rigged against the worker and for the rich managers, including newspaper publishers. If I lived there, I'd send Andrea Howe, the editor, an email every day telling her the "what for." And, I would keep sending them until she either quit or got off her ass and did some real investigating. I sent her a couple anyway. She didn't respond when I asked a few pointed questions.

But, David Brooks, and the study he cites, has a point. When unions become too big and begin to have enough influence to elect their bosses, then we need to worry. That the unions have become big enough for states to pass laws that give them 90% of their working salaries for retirement is outrageous. When did we ever believe that we can afford that? But, the real question is, why wasn't there a BIG STINK raised when it happened? Where were the newspapers and news media back then? Silent, like the Princeton Clarion is on the Gibson County back-room favoritism, wheeling and dealing with John Dyer.

The other "real" question is what is the most significant "cost" that makes a high pension necessary in the first place? What makes the unions scream so loud? The answer is: HEALTH INSURANCE. And, the real point to that is that perhaps we could pay Joe worker a real, honest-to-goodness wage if we didn't have to pay the outrageous Health Insurance Blackmail. Then, taking the next reasonable step in that argument, there is the one thing that we could do that would punch the Health Insurance Companies squarely on the nose: Pass the Public Option law and circumvent the Insurance Companies entirely. But, that too is a Republican No-No vote. Go figure.

So, from union busting, graft, favoritism, corruption, health insurance loving, bug business loving to not investigating and reporting those things by right-wing news media, I still see Republicans as the Party Without A Clue, but I have to agree that powerful unions are just as dumb and greedy in their demands on taxpayers. That barbed wire on the fence I ride sometimes hurts.

I guess we could go one step farther, too, and that is to ask: How did we come to a time when Unions and Corporations have so much clout in our elections as to elect the people who will return favors? I guess we could take that to the Supreme Court case: Citizens United v. the Federal Election Commission. Wonder who bought the five Supreme Court Justices who made that decision and, by the way, changed the law? Are you really thinking they were not paid for? If so, you're delusional.

Dave

I Told You So - The Bush Effect: An Activist Supreme Court

Surprise, surprise. Is it too early to say, "I told you so?" If I can already say that, then it's a surprise to me too. I thought the "Bush Supreme Court Effect" would take longer and that I may not live long enough to say "I told you so." But, it appears to be time, so here it is. If you are conservative or libertarian, I'll bet you believe you stand for "Freedom," with a capital "F." And so, under that delusion, you voted for G. W. Bush, stomped for war and big defense spending, joined in celebrations when we invaded Afghanistan and Iraq, call Arabs ragheads, yelled "drill, baby, drill" in unison with John McCain and Sarah Palin, and you may be on the Tea Party path, all for the cause of Freedom and Democracy. And, you may have that symbolic gun on your wall or on a rack behind your pickup seat. You may be even wearing a gun around your waist, just beneath your pot belly and will, more than likely, shoot your own foot when you pull it out than protect yourself from some imaginary foe. I would say, however, that owning that "gun" is about the only Freedom you've got. You have already, symbolically, shot your own foot.

This article, "Court Under Roberts is Most Conservative in Decades," shows that you've got your wish, you can own a gun. But, you may not have any right or freedom from prosecution under the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution, the one that says you are protected from "unreasonable search and seizure" of your property and home. In fact, in the case of Hudson v. Michigan, the court ruled that the police can enter your home anytime, without notice or knocking, and seize anything it wants and use it as evidence against you. Was it Senator Sam Ervin, the Chairman of the Watergate Committee, who told John Ehrlichman, in response to Ehrlichman's claim that breaking into to Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office was okay, "the King cannot enter your house without permission?" I guess under the Robert's Court, The King can now enter your home whenever he wants to, and take whatever he wants. The Forth Amendment is dead. I'm reminded of a series of questions that apply to the death of the Forth Amendment. It goes something like this. "If there are ten innocent people, will you destroy it?" "No," was the answer. And, from ten innocent, the questioner reduced the number one by one to finally ask, "If there is a single innocent person, will you destroy it?" "No," was still the answer. What do you believe? Can the police enter a home, before the guilt or innocence of a person is determine by trial, and seize property without a warrant, or even knocking first? Is a person's guilt determined before a trial?

And then there is that hottest item on the agenda, abortion, the main question being whether a woman can control her own destiny or not. It is ironic that the best way to reduce abortions is to provide these woman with good, affordable healthcare, but that was defeated by conservative and libertarian movements. In all countries that provide socialized healthcare, abortion rates have been reduced to nearly zero and only those that are a threat to the woman's life are performed. You can read those statistics by searching the United Nations database yourself. But, here we are, shouting for better treatment of women in Afghanistan and Iran (they're going to execute a woman in Iran because of some archaic law), and in China women can have only one child, yet we want to make our own women criminals when they are faced with choices that mean life or death to themselves. Perhaps we should go the way of the Catholic Church without the slightest birth control, and then become like China with so many people we restrict families to one child or go to jail? How many innocent women will we jail or, for that matter, die? Can we say that no woman getting an abortion is innocent? What if only one, of all that get abortions, is innocent and is forced into her circumstances by our own archaic laws or social oppression? But, it appears that the Robert's Court is moving to overturn Roe v. Wade and make a woman's body the property of the government, innocent or not.

How about freedom of speech? I suppose we still have that in that we still can say what we want to say. But, as an individual, our voice is nearly a whisper compared to corporate voices. We will not likely be heard. In Citizens United v. the Federal Election Commission, the Robert's Court overturned a previous ruling that restricted corporate campaign spending, and now, even when the campaign ads and information are lies and deceitful, corporations and unions are allowed to spend whatever they want from their corporate profit to promote deceitful ads and misinformation in our elections. The real result is that our individual freedom of speech is diminished and oppressed. And, then there are the voices of the poor. Who hears those voices? Do they say anything at all? I think when they can't speak, neither can we. When there is no justice for them, then we have no freedoms either.

There's more and I recommend reading the article. It turns out, it seems to me, that liberalism is freedom's cause, not conservatism or libertarianism. The very meaning of the word, liberal, means freedom. I hate to say it, but I told you so.

Dave