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Morning Links
Tuesday, February 22nd, 2011- Wisconsin Protests: Myths and Facts.
- Speaking of which, oldie but goodie: Vice magazine takes on the NEA.
- Churches criticized for opening doors to displaced Muslims.
- “Donald Rumsfeld Is Above the Law and Jose Padilla Is Beneath It”
- City will no longer pay cops’ legal bills.
- I think I’ve linked to this before, but someone just sent it again — great ad campaign for a job-finding site.
- Oklahoma woman gets 10 years for selling $31 worth of pot.
“Myths and Facts”?!? More like PR bulls**t.
Union supporter speaks, childish music plays. Non-union supporter speaks, childish music stops.
As somebody posted at the video site –
“‘Well worth watching, whatever side you’re rooting for.’
As long as it is the good side.”
Ah, labor unions. Where mobster/union bosses get always get rich, while members never do (except NFL union members).
Gotta love ‘em. After all, If unions had their way, we would still be getting all our retail goods by horse and buggy.
Go to a mosque, ask to use their building for Christian worship on Sunday. What a bunch of dhimmi idiots.
Ron, I think even the NFL union members for the most part don’t get particularly rich, especially for the physical hardship. They say that most NFL player’s careers are 3 years active, and most of those guys are at the league minimum, around 200k.
Now, while $600,000 would probably let me live pretty comfortably for quite a while, it’s not really a lifetime’s worth of income, and it’s certainly not if you are a football player who doesn’t realize that income will be gone in 3 years. Even if you get serious and save half of it, that’s not really ‘rich’ when faced with the rest of your life at age 25.
<sarcasm>Oh no! That would be terrible!</sarcasm>
As for the police union needing to pay for officer defense in cases of alleged brutality, all I can say is “Finally!”
Will there be some folks who wrongly claim brutality? Yeah. Will there be some others who have iffy cases? Yeah. But the police have, at their disposal, many tools to safeguard them from accusations of brutality. Embrace video recording of all encounters with everyone. Be honest and truthful. Be level headed and rational in all situations, as much as possible. And maybe if these hotheaded officers who can’t keep their nightstick off another person’s skull start affecting the union, the union will rethink their policy of defending cops that cause a lot of brutality complaints.
A man can dream, can’t he?
“The NEA spends 500 million dollars a year on political campaigns”
“For every 10 teachers the government hires only one or two of them will actually make it to a classroom. The rest will be sucked into the NEA to raise more money and get more teachers.”
These numbers are farcically wrong.
“In New Jersey the final exam at teacher’s college gives 52% of the grade to teachers who can ‘Draw all the letters of the alphabet, both upper and lower case.’”
This is from an account of someone once seeing this question written on a blackboard.
And so on, I can only presume. I imagine there’s an excellent case to be made against the NEA. This is not it.
Thank Odin for the ACLU in the fight against the US Torture State. This is the ACLU at it’s best.
Interesting that citizens are thinking about maybe protesting budget cuts and union busting, but not the torture state.
Or, they could just obey the law.
Police officers should be indemnified against legal judgements pertaining to the performance of their duties. No problem. Unfortunately, beating people and other illegal acts aren’t part of their duties. So sorry.
Highway, according to USA Today the average NFL starter was earning an average of $2.25 *million* in *2006*. There are at 22 starters per team, no? Then you have promising rookies/understudies who don’t start but who command a lot more than the $200k minimum. Though it is true that NFL teams need to carry a number of warm bodies for practice fodder who never sniff a starting lineup. Somehow I doubt the NFL union bosses are going to the mat out of any altruistic fervor for the practice-fodder stiffs. The real cheese in NFL union dues comes from the players with the big contracts, of which there are plenty on a percentage basis.
“Wisconsin Protests: Myths and Facts.”
Interesting music.
SCRANTON, Pa. (AP) — A former juvenile court judge defiantly insisted he never accepted money for sending large numbers of children to detention centers even after he was convicted of racketeering for taking a $1 million kickback from the builder of the for-profit lockups.
Former Luzerne County Judge Mark Ciavarella was allowed to remain free pending sentencing following his conviction Friday in what prosecutors said was a “kids for cash” scheme that ranks among the biggest courtroom frauds in U.S. history.
Ciavarella, 61, left the bench in disgrace two years ago after he and a second judge, Michael Conahan, were accused of using juvenile delinquents as pawns in a plot to get rich. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has dismissed 4,000 juvenile convictions issued by Ciavarella, saying he sentenced young offenders without regard for their constitutional rights.
[...]
Pa. judge guilty of racketeering in kickback case
A “Myths and Facts” video from Reason.tv? Yea, no bias there at all :)
“Union supporter speaks, childish music plays. Non-union supporter speaks, childish music stops.”
Well you do know what the Koch brothers actually fund, right? That governor is their pet. They also funded the people who made the video. But hey… im sure its all completely unbiased (wink wink).
I bet they think theyre going to buy wisconsin power plants for pennies on the dollar (selling them on no-bid contract basis is in the budget bill, giving the governor the power to single handedly sell them). Yeah, that wont be happening either. The nerve…
“# City will no longer pay cops’ legal bills.”
The remedies to the out of control the Prison-Industrial Complex will be financial, not moral. That 2008 economic melt-down was horrible, but at least
it might help us re-think how we run our system of policing.
Now if I could just get all those stupid cops and robbers shows off my cable.
My synagogue used to rent space from a Methodist church until construction finished on our own building. Somehow this never turned into a major act of sacrilege. I wonder what the difference is!
“A “Myths and Facts” video from Reason.tv? Yea, no bias there at all :)”
Of course not. Please watch this other video on the myths vs facts regarding the drug war. Video shot by the office of national drug control policy and dea.
;-)
From the Oklahmoa weed woman article:
“It does not appear the defendant is aware that a problem exists or that she needs to make changes in her current behavior.”
It does not appear the State is aware that a problem exists or that it needs to make changes in its current behaviour.
Seriously. 10 years in fucking prison for selling some goddamn ditchweed. Mark my words: this is going to be what Americans are looking back at 50 years from now, going “What the fuck were they thinking?” the same way we look back at segregation and lynching.
Regarding the church/Muslims thing: the people complaining about this are douches, yes, but I’d hesitate before calling them anti-Muslim bigots. The church next to my childhood synagogue abruptly stopped allowing us to use their space for High Holy Day services for reasons that sounded a lot like those cited by the opponents in that article. It’s entirely plausible that the opponents actually believe what they’re saying.
And the main reason there wouldn’t be a lot of reciprocity: there’s no bleedin’ way most Christian congregations could fit inside the average American mosque.
The “myth vs. facts” video shows text relavent to the proposed benefit cuts only (cuts the unions have already agreed to btw) but doesn’t mention the other non-economic (union busting) proposals in the bill. Why is that? It isn’t “myth vs. facts” its just one-sided.
Nice to see the union thugs out in full force today.
“Verily I say unto thee, do only unto others as much as you think they would do for thee.” Matthew 29:10
@ Chris,
Noticed that as well. There’s a long list of legit concerns about unions and public service, but that just isn’t getting addresses by the Union Fan Boys.
YES! I finally get to use the “fan boy” slam after years of putting up with it for my beliefs. The glove is on the other foot now!
From the Muslims in Christian Churches link:
Guess Dr McFarland missed the Parable of the Good Samaritan.
And Mike appears to have missed the part about “turning the other cheek.”
according to the article, 48% of the women incarcerated in OK are locked up for drug convictions…
the money quote, for me-
‘Former Kingfisher County Judge Susie Pritchett, who retired in December, said the women were conducting “an extensive operation” and included children in the business.
“It was a way of life for them,” Pritchett said.
“Considering these circumstances, I thought it was lenient. By not putting the grandmother in prison, she is able to help take care of the children.”
the prisons are gulags- if you can’t afford decent legal representation, you’re fucked. if these women could’ve afforded the legal ‘fees’ and bribes, they would’ve walked out with probation. There are 1000 similar stories to this in OK…
“Union supporter speaks, childish music plays.”
Well, what kind of music should be playing when someone makes childish comments?
But seriously, the music is a bit much. The words themselves are really enough.
I’m confused, why shouldn’t we relegate unions to the ash heap of history?
No. You have the vast majority % of NFL players being one-and-done. Some can get a second 1-year deal. I’m too lazy to post mean/average…math stuff and stats. That’s about it for most. Every year there are another couple hundred rookies coming in at the bottom. Every year.
Regardless of where the majority of the union dues come from, the vast majority of the union members are not rich, even by Democrats’ definition, when they leave the NFL.
Justice…
Naturally, his buddies in the DA’s office offered him a sweet plea bargain, but the Federal judge threw it out. Good!
I’m confused, why shouldn’t we relegate unions to the ash heap of history?
For the same reason we don’t relegate corporations to the ash heap of history.
Free will and association…and all that jazz.
Personally, I was absolutely anti-union until I was working at PEMCO in Dothan, Alabama as a contractor doing aviation sheet metal work on MD-80 aircraft. As a 90 day temp, I had nothing to do with the union there. I was dismayed by some of the work rules that required me to send a work order to another shop to have a single screw removed from a bonding cable, since to remove it myself would be depriving another person of a job.
Sheesh. Nonsense.
However, I ended up having a problem with management when I applied to become a permanent employee. An anonymous “bad report” from a supervisor not only made it impossible for me to be a direct employee, but made it impossible that I could ever come back as a contractor. All of my supervisors told me they had recommended me for direct status, so the provenance of the bad report was a mystery.
The union had no obligation to help me. I was not a member, and I was not even a direct employee. I was just a 90 day temp contractor. I called the union rep and they went to bat for me immediately. Although they could not get me on direct hire status, they managed to get the “do not rehire” taken off of my records so that I could come back if I wanted.
That was my turning point. Sometimes, you need help when a work place problem is too big for you to handle effectively, and the union helped me even though I had never paid a dime in dues and was not a member.
“#26 | Mattocracy | February 22nd, 2011 at 12:04 pm
Well, what kind of music should be playing when someone makes childish comments?”
Yakety Sax. It makes everything better.
Scott Walker forgets to mention that his budget relies not only on union busting but also holding a fire sale of state assets: a sale that would be governed by non competitive bidding rules where his closest financial bff’s can get their hands on state assets for peanuts. Fiscal conservatism in 2011.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/02/21/947954/-The-other-part-of-the-Scott-Walker-plan:-Firesale-of-Wisconsin-state-assets
I totally agree. It amazes me that “get rid of unions” is a common opinion. People should have the right to organize if they want. I also believe businesses have a right to either negotiate with those groups or not at their discretion.
What I really don’t understand is why we tolerate specific laws giving businesses and unions powers to balance each other. The idea that we would debate state laws saying “union votes will be secret” or “union votes will not be secret” is ludicrous. Let the union and business follow their own rules of engagement like any other private entity.
Where there is money, there will be laws.
The effort to destroy public unions is awesome. There will be civil war in the US any day now. Public union members are going to defend their privilege by any means necessary, mark my words.
BTW, there is a clear distinction between private unions and public unions. Even that darling of the labor class FDR spoke strongly against the concept of public unions.
Public unions have no right to exist. Or at the very least, taxpayers have no obligation to recognize a public union’s right to exist. It is only through political apathy that public unions came into being and persisted. Their days are numbered, perhaps in single digits.
#32 | Z- you’re hitting on what’s intriguing me. conspiracy theory people are saying the union busting is a front- Walker will bow to the unions if the dems agree to pass his budget. after the budget passes, he gives away the utilities to campaign contributors…
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/02/21/947947/-The-Koch-Brothers-End-Game-in-Wisconsin
@ #30 | celticdragon |
The reason they didn’t want you as a direct hire is because you’d become another union member they’d have to contend with. Or so the cynical theory goes.
It shows what a nasty cycle it is. There is so much antimosity between unions and employers that it has really taken all sensable dailogue out of the process. If unions just did collective bargaining to get resonable treatment and not protect shit employees, this wouldn’t be an issue. Likewise, corporations (especially large ones) can do to people what huge government agencies do, fuck them over leaving you no recourse to correct it.
I actually think the church/mosque issue is much more nuanced than it appears at first blush. Keep in mind that while the Bible teaches love and tolerance, it also teaches that you should only worship the Christian God, and accordingly worshiping Allah is a sin. Let’s consider another sin: adultery. While I think most theologians would agree that a church should welcome a prostitute who seeks to worship, I think most would also agree that the church should not rent itself out to the local madame to run her brothel on Friday and Saturday nights. I think that’s the fine line between providing humanitarian aid or social services to Muslims (which clearly falls into the “love thy neighbor” category) and facilitating their participation in an act which is strictly forbidden by your religion (i.e. worshiping another god).
At the same time, you can make the utilitarian argument that they’re going to worship Allah either way (and you’re not actively promoting Islam) so what’s the harm? I went to a Lutheran university that provided a prayer room for Muslim students and never really thought anything of it. Personally, I believe that when in doubt you err on the side of loving and respecting others so I wouldn’t lose any sleep over it, but I think one can reasonably object to such practices without being an anti-Muslim bigot and/or Islamophobe.
@ Aresen
If that church believes what in Jesus’ teachings….
The Parable of the Good Samaritan comes right after this.
Priorities are ranked
1) God
2) Others
Helping others worship something other than Him is a bad idea.
I don’t think Unions that have obtained more power than their members’ employers are a good thing, but god is that NEA article bad. It’s just a long factless rant filled with gems like Education being 75% of the Federal Budget, and the “recent” Indiana initiative to round Pi (recent being 1897, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indiana_Pi_Bill). He just goes from one diatribe to the next filled with gross generalizations, to the point where I seriously have to remind myself that every single cause has lunatics among its supporters.
re: Oklahoma
Aren’t they one of the states about to go bankrupt? Wonder if the residents will be able to put 2 and 2 together. My guess is..not..
#37 | ClubMedSux | February 22nd, 2011 at 1:06 pm
Allah : Jehovah : Yahweh….
Same god.
RE: Vice magazine takes on the NEA
I’m reading along, getting pissed at the NEA and thinking “Damn, can’t wait to see his sources!” Kept reading then realized there weren’t going to be any. So I look up a couple of the more outrageous claims. This one kinda stuck out.
“The Indiana State Legislature recently decided to make students’ lives easier by rounding up pi to 3.2.”
Really? Gotta find out who it is so I can have a good laugh at their expense! Turns out “recently” was 1897 as far as I can tell. Yea – not this century, not last century but the one before that.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indiana_Pi_Bill and
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/805/did-a-state-legislature-once-pass-a-law-saying-pi-equals-3
Was there another incident where it happened? If so who and when? Pics or it didn’t happen.
Ever get into an argument and find out the people you relied on for info where full of BS? It makes you look like an idiot, you lose the argument and you lose the chance at getting a few more converts.
I agree with the articles conclusions but this guy is like Leeroy Jenkins for the smaller gov’t side of the argument.
-2 points to you mister Balko.
Carry on…
It shows what a nasty cycle it is. There is so much animosity between unions and employers that it has really taken all sensible dialogue out of the process. If unions just did collective bargaining to get reasonable treatment and not protect shit employees, this wouldn’t be an issue. Likewise, corporations (especially large ones) can do to people what huge government agencies do, fuck them over leaving you no recourse to correct it.
Indeed, and I have seen just how much damage that large unaccountable corporations can do to individuals. If you think a single person has actual bargaining power with a company, you are smoking something illegal.
By the same token, it is certainly true that unions have badly abused their power in the past and ruined their reputations in this country. I think a lot of what is at play here is the memory of badly made union automobiles in the 1970s and actual union thuggery 30 years ago when crossing a picket line could get you shot and your house fire bombed (I heard a lot about that from my grandfather who worked for McDonnel Douglas).
Now, an awful lot of the bullshit from the right has less to do with union rules and more about how they hate “liberal teachers” who believe in evolution and teach about black history month.
I love the commenter on the 10yrs for $31 of pot article who thinks that surgeons are going to start smoking “doobies” before surgery if marijuana is made legal. That lack of logic is stunning.
“But seriously, the music is a bit much. The words themselves are really enough”
What words did you find childish? The ones were the union members accept the cuts but only want to maintain bargaining rights?
#35- To paraphrase and adopt an old line to a new, scuzzy age, “That’s so slimy it might actually work!”
What I really don’t understand is why we tolerate specific laws giving businesses and unions powers to balance each other. The idea that we would debate state laws saying “union votes will be secret” or “union votes will not be secret” is ludicrous. Let the union and business follow their own rules of engagement like any other private entity.
I agree.
celticdragon – your story encapsulates the best and the worst of unions. Work rules that restrict productivity and representatives that stand up to do justice for workers.
Please use a term such as “Muslim deity” instead of “Allah”. “Allah” is the name of the monotheistic God in Arabic, and Christians who speak Arabic use the same name. It’s like saying the Spaniards have a different god named “Dios”, while the Germans have “Gott” and the Jews have “Jehovah”.
“Jehovah” and “Yahweh” are the same word with different transliterations. It’s usually shown by the JHVH or YHWH, known as the tetragrammaton. More info here:
http://acharlie.tripod.com/gtrin/jhvh.html
“Allah” is the equivalent in Arabic, as I said above. In English, we just use “God” with a capital “G”.
The “myths vs. facts” video isn’t from reason.tv. It’s from the Heritage Foundation. They aren’t known for their ability to win a truth-telling contest, and that doesn’t seem to differ here.
Of note, the budget deficit numbers are misleading. The 137 million dollar deficit isn’t going to “grow” into 3.6 billion. Wisconsin has a balanced budget amendment. Budgets are passed with various projections about tax revenues and project costs. The state has to reconcile these numbers every so often as projections meet reality. The 137 million is what WI is under water in the short term. In terms of the overall budget, this is a tiny number and could be made up for in any number of ways.
The 3.6 billion dollar is an estimate of the budget deficit for the next biennium. that number has to be made up, as our balanced budget amendment requires it. This number is inflated off of the 2.2 billion dollar number that had been estimated going into this year because Walker’s people are counting all dept. biennium revenue requests to be filled in full rather than using more sound projection methods. But whatever the actual number turns out to be, the structural deficit is large and real. It’s just not “growing.” If anything, it’s shrinking as revenue is coming in faster than projections.
The shortterm compensation hits Walker is proposing will save the government money roughly comparable to what was already agreed to by the unions under the lame duck session last year. It’s not a ton, but it’ll be a dent. The only way this saves any money beyond that is if stripping of bargaining rights allows the state to massively cut into state employee compensation. Which it might, but it’s not being talked about.
#37 “Allah is a sin” Um no, definately not. It is the same Father or God in Christian liturgy, just the Arabic word for it. The difference being Jesus is a prophet of Islam, and Mohammed would offer the final revaluation of God’s word. I go to my AA. meetings at a Mosque fwiw.
#49 I see you covered it, I sometimes reply.before reading all replies.
I know the judge who put the woman away in Oklahoma. I am…stunned, on a personal level, but being familiar with that part of the world, I cannot say I am surprised.
For those unaware, Walker’s budget repair bill authorizes the governorship to sell off state owned utilities that are on and supply state owned UW campuses and prisons. But, curiously, it makes it a no-bid process. If the goal was to simply generate as much revenue from the sales as possible, it would make sense to open them to a bidding war.
Given the amount of dishonesty and corruption Walker has already shown in his short term in office, speculation is rampant that these sales are going to go as payback to political supporters and cronies. We’ll see.
If you read that article about 10 years for pot, the judge sat there and said, presumably with a straight face, that the penalty was so stiff because kids were involved. I guess the possibility of ruining an entire family rather than just one person’s life was too much to resist.
On the other hand, she refused the offered deal of 2 years, so I assume their policy of hitting people who don’t just take whatever the prosecutor demands had to be held up. Again proving that plea bargains are just legalized blackmail/extortion.
Maybe this is why we have less serial killers these days. All the psychopaths go into the criminal justice system because they notice that there they can destroy many times more people at virtually no personal risk, and get paid for it to boot!
“#47 | celticdragon | February 22nd, 2011 at 1:44 pm
What I really don’t understand is why we tolerate specific laws giving businesses and unions powers to balance each other. The idea that we would debate state laws saying “union votes will be secret” or “union votes will not be secret” is ludicrous. Let the union and business follow their own rules of engagement like any other private entity”
Because the alternative led to significant violence and disruption bordering on civil war.
I like that (for the most part) the attacks on the union video related to the music and not the substance.
Highway, according to USA Today the average NFL starter was earning an average of $2.25 *million* in *2006*. There are at 22 starters per team, no? Then you have promising rookies/understudies who don’t start but who command a lot more than the $200k minimum.
The median salary in 2007 is $770K/year. It’s pretty nice cheese, admittedly, but it isn’t the millions. Especially since the vast majority don’t play long enough to be eligible for the pension or health care plan. Over the past 20 years, only 4% of players have played 3 or more years and are therefore ineligible for retirement benefits.
Also, the only rookies that make significantly more than the median are 1st rounders (i.e. one per team). Second and third rounders make about $500K-$1M. The vast majority of everyone else makes around league minimum.
Because the alternative led to significant violence and disruption bordering on civil war.
The laws at the time significantly favored the mine owners etc, and in the particularly nasty strike in W Virgina, the Army Air Corps dropped bombs on the strikers in combat missions.
The Battle of Blair Mountain happened after miners took up arms over slave-like work conditions and armed attacks by mine agents on family members, including machine gun attacks on women and children in other states. The leader of the union resistance, was assassinated by mine agents as he was walking into court with his friened and both of their wives.
In a move familiar to many here, the federal government suspended habeas corpus and arrested scores of people without charge. Mine agents were able to operate with federal agents with impunity.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Blair_Mountain
The government was not at all a neutral bystander here, and since the miners were “white trash” or not even considered white at all (Slavs and southern Europeans were not really “white”, and were called “hunkies”. Mining and working in boiler rooms was called “hunky work” and specifically held apart from “white man work”.)
http://www.jstor.org/stable/27500236
I think it is fair to say the impression the Heritage Foundation video is meant to create is this:
The protestors in Madison are a comical sort who are disputing a relatively minor change in their compensation that is still better than what a private sector person would get. Walker is doing this to close a serious and growing budget problem. And because unions can’t stop living on the high hog, they compare him to Hitler for it.
This is so misleading as to be a fabricated myth. Morgan Spurlock territory, really. And yet Balko posts it with an implicit endorsement. Radley Balko is one of my favorite commentators in America, but this is terribly disappointing.
All bickering about how Allah means God in another language aside, the God worshiped by Christians is not the Muslim God and is not the God of Judaism. I’m sure that will make a lot of people think I’m an idiot, but it’s true. One God has already sent his son to die to provide the only means for salvation, one has his followers do good works to offset the bad works to be saved, and one is presumably still requiring sacrifices while awaiting the day when he will send the yet-to-come Messiah. If you can say with a straight face that all three of those are the same, you’re in a post-modern fog where words have no meaning, I suppose.
For one, the unions negotiated a comparable compensation concession in the lame duck session at the end of last year. How that shook out in terms of furloughs and so forth was a bit different, but the overall % compensation cut was similar, if not a little worse.
(In fairness, they probably were willing to take that deal out of fear of Scott Walker.)
This was all set to pass, avoiding this current mess, when two lame duck Democratic State Senators inexplicably voted against the deal at the last moment. They gave no reason for their actions. Coincidentally, one of them already now as a 90k a year political appointment from Walker. Strange, that.
The Unions have also agreed to the compensation concessions Walker proposed so long as the bargaining rights and union procedural changes are not enacted.
No Sale. Walker said he will not negotiate.
So this clearly isn’t primarily about the compensation issue.
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2011/02/teacher-benefits-in-wisconsin-since-1993.html
Seems pretty reasonable to me. Heritage was unsurprisingly very single sided.
I’m not saying everybody believes the same thing about God. I am saying that it’s ignorance to say “Christians don’t believe in Allah”, since the statement is properly translated as “Christians don’t believe in God”.
The correct statement is “Christians have different beliefs about the monotheistic God than do Muslims or Jews”.
I hear a lot of very ignorant people use “Allah” to mean “the Muslim god”, and that’s not correct.
Re: #63 – it’s meaningless to see what happened to teachers wages in WI over those time periods without a comparison to wages in private industry. Particularly if you factor in our current unemployment problem. I think you’d find that teachers there are still better off and still getting better raises than the national average.
This.
I have been told by Muslim friends* that “Allah” means “the God”, so the Muslim prayer literally means “There is no god but The God.”
(*Hi, Mo and Ali, if you are reading this.)
OTOH, one of my favorite jokes runs:
The Pope was dying and, as the world faded to black, there was suddenly Light – blinding, brilliant light that filled and illuminated the entire Universe. And there was music – glorious triumphant music that stirred the body and the soul.
And the Pope felt a Majestic Presence come around him that lifted his pains and sorrows away, clensed his sins and filled his heart with Peace.
The Pope cried out “O Lord Jesus Christ! Thank you for taking me unto you at last!”
And a Great Voice spoke. A voice which seemed to fill the Universe yet at the same time seemed to be for his ears alone. “It’s Allah. I prefer to be called Allah.”
The Han Solo of my Star Wars fan-fiction is not the same Han Solo mentioned in your Star Wars fan-fiction. I know this because in my story, Han Solo died at the hands of Darth Stinkerton, while in your fan-finction, Han Solo died in a mining accident on the Planet of the Apes. The Han Solo stories contradict each other, so they can’t be the same person.
If you can say with a straight face that both of those people are the same, you’re in a post-modern fog where words have no meaning, I suppose.
@#59,
Is that where “honky” comes from?
I also wonder about “hunky dory.”
”designed to punish the union and its members for exercising their collective bargaining rights.”
Uh well, no it’s not! It’s designed to make cops more like real people where their actions have REAL consequences too!
*******
#34 “Public unions have no right to exist. Or at the very least, taxpayers have no obligation to recognize a public union’s right to exist. It is only through political apathy that public unions came into being and persisted. Their days are numbered, perhaps in single digits.”
**
Have been saying that since I learned of their existence!
Where unions are needed today is in the vast area of companies like ARAMARK, Forever Resorts and Zantera rec management firms. They run concessions at arenas and national and state parks. Those places that hire thousands of seasonal workers and treat them like shit and worse. Pay workers 8 bucks an hour in some remote isolated complex, force them to purchase fixed meals and pay rent on govt owned facilities. Only place for shopping is the co store. It’s but an existence. managers usually aren’t qualified to run a hot dog stand and think it’s cute to step on these folks and label them as Parkies!
Public sector unions have absolutely no right to even exist. The sooner they’re gone the better. Good riddance.
Lol@ that union article, really.
The teachers unions (plural, four major ones) in the UK are not a closed shop by any means – it’s roughly 40% membership for qualified teachers, and 20% for auxiliary staff and further education teachers (who need no formal qualifications), and the different unions have radically different views and different priorities.
Painting a picture of this overarching “teachers union” here is simply incorrect. (Shit, I wouldn’t go near the ATL with a stick – yes, I teach at a University and no I don’t have a formal teaching qualification, just a BSc…)
#33 | omar | //The idea that we would debate state laws saying “union votes will be secret” or “union votes will not be secret” is ludicrous. Let the union and business follow their own rules of engagement like any other private entity.//
The fundamental problem is that government rules make union votes binding upon people who did not agree to be bound by them. If 51% of the workers in a shop vote to unionize, no other workers or prospective workers are allowed to negotiate anything not approved by the union, and management is forbidden from simply finding replacements for those 51% of the workers.
The critical factor in determining whether a shop goes union should be whether enough people want to unionize that management would be unable to readily find replacements for all of them, even if allowed to do so. If the supply of prospective workers who would be willing and able to do a job exceeds the number of workers in a plant, management should not be required to favor the union workers over the prospective workers.
Well #61 I don’t “think you’re an idiot”. You have incontrovertibly proved that thus is the case. Are you a pagan? I’m agnostic, but that seems like a whole lotta Gods running around up there for any monotheist to countenance.
#67 | Omar | “The Han Solo stories contradict each other, so they can’t be the same person.”
Indeed, they are not the same person. If X and Y are the same, any true statement made about X must be true of Y. If any statement made of X is not true of Y, then X and Y must be different.
Muslims, from what I can tell, believe in a god who ordered that human named Mohammed should be venerated, that those who venerate Mohammed should oppress those who do not, and that people who venerate Mohammed should not be allowed free will to leave Islamic culture. Many of today’s Christians believe in a god who has not and would not give such an order (acknowledging that people throughout history, including some claiming to be Christians, have claimed to have received such orders).
If two people’s beliefs are essentially similar, but differ in some small detail which is not central to their belief, it is possible that they may believe in the same entity but one or the other may be mistaken in the detail. The question of whether God intends for his followers to have free will seems like a rather big incompatibility, though.
ARVADA, Colo. — An 11-year-old Arvada boy was arrested and hauled away in handcuffs for drawing stick figures in school – something his therapist told him to do.
His parents say they understand what he did was inappropriate, but are outraged by the way Arvada Police handled the case. The parents did not want their real names used.
They say “Tim” is being treated for Attention Deficit Disorder and his therapist told him to draw pictures when he got upset, rather than disrupt the class. So that’s what he did.
Last October, he drew stick figures of himself with a gun, pointed at four other stick figures with the words “teacher must die.”
He felt calmer and was throwing the picture away when the teacher saw it and sent him to the principal’s office.
The school was aware that the boy was in treatment, determined he was not a threat, notified his parents and sent him back to class. His mother, “Jane” was shocked when Arvada Police showed up at their home later that night.
She says she told her son to cooperate and tell the truth, but was horrified when they told her they were arresting him and then handcuffed him and hauled him away in a patrol car. His mother says she begged police to let her drive her son to the police department and to let her stay with him through the booking process but they refused.
They put him in a cell, took his mug shot and fingerprinted him. He says he thought he was going to jail and would never be able to go home again.
[...]
Arvada Police arrest 11-year-old over ‘inappropriate’ stick figure drawing
#45 | luvzbob |
How about the very beginning where the woman says that Hitler busted up unions then killed Jews…so obviously Wisconsin is Nazi Germany now.
I liked the “stop dolphin rape” sign. Really pertinent huh? :)
That sign was at the end of the Wisconsin video, sorry.
The teachers union is saying this isn’t about money, but that’s bullshit. This all about money. Heaven forbid they pay more for the benefits they get like the rest of us do in the private sector. Heaven forbid that their average pay more closely resemble that of the average American. They aren’t losing their collective bargaining power. They just aren’t going to be able to completely rape the tax payer anymore. Oh, the huge manatee of it all!
Some people really get shitted on by their employers, but public unions are rarely good examples of that. When is the last time a government employee really got mistreated by their employer? If anything, it’s probably vets coming home from Iraq who aren’t getting the treatment they need.
The law strips them of their collective bargaining power. Are you even familiar with it?
And the teachers’ unions were already limited on wage issues by the QEO, so the teacher’s union in particular are being stripped of virtually everything they bargain for.
#74,
If two different people make contradictory claims about you, are they talking about different people? It seems more correct to say that they are both talking about you, but just believe (or at least say) different things about you.
For what it’s worth, people who use the term “post-mondern(ist/ism)” in internet debates rarely have any clue at all what they’re talking about. Rather, much like Team Red/Blue hacks who liken their political opponents to Nazis, or conservatives who use the term “moral relativism” or “political correctness” for some behavior they find problematic, or center-leftist policy wonks refer to some political critic or opponent as “ideological” or “unpragmatic” or “moralistic”, or libertoids or Randroids who denounce some position or person they dislike as “socialist” or “collectivist” – they simply use the word emotively to express disagreement without saying anything substantive.
What? A city is cutting off paying legal bills for police officers after a mere $1.2 million? Scandalous! Here in Pittsburgh, we’re willing to at least cover the first $13 million without batting an eye.
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/11052/1126855-53.stm
“Oklahoma woman gets 10 years for selling $31 worth of pot.”
I blame Merle Haggard.
The music was especially annoying given that I wasn’t expecting it. I was laying a bet in my head that the video wouldn’t mention the whole “the teachers have agreed to the financial cuts, they just want to keep their collective bargaining rights” issue. And I won.
But the music really did take it from a tolerable=-if-one-sided portrayal that missed the major issues into Morgan-Spurlock-level unwatchable.
“How about the very beginning where the woman says that Hitler busted up unions then killed Jews…so obviously Wisconsin is Nazi Germany now”
At the time Hitler busted unions he hadn’t started killing jews, and the scale of his atrocities were still unimaginable. So their is a factually valid parallel that raises an important question: Hitler busted unions to eliminate a power structure that could oppose him – he went on to mass murder and the destruction of his own country because he had successfully eliminated all the structures that might have opposed him. Scott Walker is seeking to eliminate a power structure (the unions have agreed to accept ALL his economic proposals, so this isn’t about the money) that could oppose him. Once he has done that, where will it lead?
One thing we DO KNOW from history: Absolute power corrupts absolutly. Walker’s three pronged approach: Bust the unions, strict voter registration that disenfranchises students & minorities, replace civil service professionals with political appointees, is designed to give him power with essentially no checks. We KNOW this will result in corruption which will be detrimental to the state.
“They just aren’t going to be able to completely rape the tax payer anymore. Oh, the huge manatee of it all!”
Total education spending in WI as a percentage of GDP has been shrinking for a decade. So your claim that the taxpayer is being raped is obviously FALSE.
luvzbob –
When you post thoughtful comments here with supporting links, you do occasionally make me rethink my positions. Or at least make me support them better. And I think it’s good to have regular dissenting commenters here.
That said, if you actually believe what you just wrote, you’ve lost all credibility. To suggest there are any parallels whatsoever between Walker and Hitler is so absolutely absurd it reads like crappy, unimaginative satire.
Hitler busted unions, Walker is busting unions – for the same reasons, no? Is that not a parallel?
From our perpspective its easy to look back at hitler and consider everything he did as one big monstrous act. But the lesson of history is that from the perspective of 1933 he didn’t look like a monster (and enjoyed substantial support in germany and abroad) – how do we know any given year isn’t 1933 all over again? We don’t – unless we compare them to the historical lessons from the 1933 perspective- and we have to prevent unwarranted accumulations of power just in case the person accumulating it just happens to be an unreaveled hitler. If there never had been a hitler in the last century, and he appeared on the scene in the US today, americans would fall for his schtick, hook, line and sinker (he’d substitute muslims for jews of course)- don’t you think?
I will say that the prime symptom that someone might become a future tyrannt is the observation of attempts to accumulate power by any means, no matter how nice and reasonable they seem. Walker appears to fit this system. I’m willing to bet that in 3 years your blog is full of reports of Walker’s abuse of government power. (BTW – Walker admitted in a recorded phone conversation to thinking about planting “troublemakers” among the protestors)
Many say we shouldn’t compare people to hitler – but I say that only way to avoid another hitler is to make comparisons to hitler of ’29 or ’33 ALL THE TIME. If the comparison doesn’t work then don’t worry, but if it does – WATCH OUT. That’s the only thing that “learning from history” can mean.
Whatever elese anyone wants to say about the WI union issue, can we chalk this up as another example of liberals who hate the Citizens United ruling fully – and without noticing the irony – supporting the “corporate rights” of corporations *they agree with*?
Always good to point out the hypocrisy on that issue.
Luvzbob:
You do know that Hitler supported government-built and maintained roadways, right? So I expect to see your support for privatizing the roadways any day now.
Or could it be that the fact that an evil person or regime did X *doesn’t* by itself tell us much about whether X is evil, or whether other people who do/support X are evil people?
[90] Count me as one who would like both union $ and corporate $ out of politics to the degree it’s possible (it appears impossible). Removing one and leaving the other, however, has some fairly obvious implications.
As for Walker & his motives, I think they’re pretty clear: cut taxes, bust unions, and sell off state assets in no-bid sales. The path to prosperity, citizens!
The unions have agreed to benefits cuts. That’s *not the issue*
“Or could it be that the fact that an evil person or regime did X *doesn’t* by itself tell us much about whether X is evil, or whether other people who do/support X are evil people?”
No, it doesn’t. BUt I would say that heavy handed power grabs almost certainly do.
(Strike 2 BTW, Walker admitted considering sending “troublemakers” (i.e. brownshirt 1929) into the peaceful protests- but didn’t ONLY because he was concerned that they would be counterproductive, not because it was wrong or immoral.
Where’s the-anti government outrage now? Why the silence about the thug in the governor’s office in Wisconsin.
Has anyone else noticed there’s no controversy whatever concerning the Atheists? Oh yeah, go godless, or go home! Seriously, go home and keep your idiotic religion to yourselves.
Silly religionists, arguing over who has the better Fairy Tale and/or the best Good Fairy for kowtowing. Religionism would be one of the best comedy shows on TV if you creeps didn’t do real damage to real people. From where I sit all of you are capable of, and ready, willing and able to hijack airplanes and then to fly those airplanes into buildings filled with soon to be dead people.
Well, let me go back and except the Jews. Of all the Fairy worshipers they seem to be almost rational, and they make a point of keeping the irrational parts of their version of the Fairy Tale to themselves. You actually have to make an effort and go look in order to find Jews when they’re acting nutz. For christ-yuns, moslems, hindus, mor(m)ons, or catho-licks, just stand on any street corner for 15 minutes in their respective bailiwicks and you’ll get to see them acting whacked out, in public, and unashamed of their insanity. Why yes, let’s spend some time arguing about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. (no I didn’t forget buddhists, they’re atheists too. Atheists that are nutz, but atheists nonetheless.)
I thought they didn’t smoke merry wanna in Muskogee?
Oh wait, I see that’s from the 1960s, and in 2011 Merle Haggard has endorsed re-legalization of cannabis.
#81 | JOR | “If two different people make contradictory claims about you, are they talking about different people?”
Let me offer a more concrete example, by way of explanation. Moe, Larry, and Curly live in the same house, near a highway.
Moe believes that there exists one particular black semi which he has seen passing the house every day at 11:00pm.
Larry believes that there exists one particular navy blue semi which he has seen passing the house every day at 11:00pm.
Do they believe in the existence of the same vehicle?
It is possible that there exists a particular semi which passes the house every day at 11:00pm, and that Moe and Larry both saw it. At least one of the men would have to be slightly wrong about the color, but both men might regard that as plausible. In this scenario, both men believe in the same vehicle.
It is also possible that there exists a black semi which Moe has noticed, and a navy blue semi which Larry has noticed–both of which pass by daily at 11:00pm. In this scenario, Moe and Larry clearly do not believe in the same vehicle.
It’s also possible that Moe and/or Curly may be wrong about having noticed a particular vehicle driving by every day. There may simply happen to be enough black or navy blue semis that someone who looks out the window out at 11:00pm one is bound to see one. If one man is correct about having persistently seen the same vehicle, and one man is incorrect, they do not believe in the same vehicle. If both men are in error, but base their observations on having seen mostly the same vehicles, they can probably be said to believe in the same vehicle. If they base their observations on having seen different vehicles, they do not believe in the same vehicle.
Now consider Curly, who believes that there exists one particular orange Yugo which he has seen passing the house every day at 11:00pm.
Whether Curly is right or wrong in his belief about the existence of a particular Yugo that passes daily at 11:00pm, it would seem highly unlikely that Moe, Larry, and Curly all believe in the same vehicle. One is not likely to mistake a dark-colored semi for an orange Yugo, nor vice versa. It would be more plausible that someone mistook the coincidental passing by of similar-looking vehicles to be the regular passing-by of a single vehicle, than that someone would have so grossly misidentified the type of a particular vehicle.