Fat, Dumb, and Dead

It's been a tough week for unions. It's been a tough week for teachers. It's been a tough week for working people. I'd like to just tee off on the usual suspects. Limbaugh, Fox News, Republicans, Wisconsin governor Scott Walker, but that's a waste of time. Those people are dancing on the coffin of working people, but they never claimed for one second that they would do otherwise. In New Orleans they dance at funerals. It's called the second line, and it's made up of the folks following the hired band (1st line) on the march to and from the cemetery.




No, I never do things the easy way, so lets talk about the guy in the coffin. Since before there was a labor movement in this country the powerful have been trying to destroy the labor movement. Why did you think the work was done?

• Gorged on the American dream you still flew when Reagan crushed the air traffic controllers ( a EAW friend of mine told me he wasn't ruining his vacation over an illegal strike.(Of coarse if the right has it's way they will all be illegal). 
• When the trucking industry turned almost everyone that was an employee into an independent contractor, who could only sell his services to one place, you circled the wagons to make sure the work that was slipping away went to your people. Keep the death grip on a style long after you've been p'wned is a bad idea.
• You made a big deal about buying American, but the Sonys and Motorolas in your play room (another friend) didn't matter as long as you had a Ford truck with the right bumper sticker.
• When we'd go to a job that should have paid prevailing wage (something we didn't know and our company wouldn't tell), you didn't try to get us prevailing wage. You tried to kick us out and called us scab. I never once in 35 years disrespected a union line. I never once in 35 years ever felt like anything but an enemy at a union site.
• At the convention halls in Boston a bunch of you were drunk back in the 80's when I delivered there. Every time for years and years.
• At Javits in NYC I used to have to pay a "toll" to get unloaded.
• When I worked election sites in Boston in the early 2000's the Carpenters Union would show up, but not know the names of the people whose signs they were holding. 

I never meet Investment bankers. Anything they have done, and they have done plenty, is remote. There is no personal connection there. There is a difference between the anger you feel for an abstract on the television and the anger you feel for a person in front of you extorting money or threatening your safety. Personal is always more powerful. You hear me teachers?

Something Fishy.

I'm not a big conspiracy guy. Things are usually exactly as they seem. That doesn't mean that all kinds of people don't try to sneak all kinds of things in on you when you are not looking. Sometimes a fairly average new wave band throws a little Nona Hendrix and some P-Funk into the mix and you get a breakout album.


Sometimes a news story gets a little twist so it fits our preconceived narrative a little better.



When you follow it on the news it seems to be about a bunch of public workers that don't want to take benefits cuts to help their cash strapped state. In reality the union had already agreed to talk about cuts, then the state legislature put a provision in the budget bill that would end the right of state workers to collective bargaining. (Fire fighters and police would be exempt. Let's not ruffle the groups that have good PR with the public). Maybe you don't think state workers should be able to collective bargain. FDR didn't and he isn't exactly a raging right winger. Still news should tell you 'The News" not what makes you react or makes you comfortable or fits a preconceived narrative.

Hidden secret stuff. Sometimes it helps, sometimes it confuses the issue, and sometimes it makes stuff taste awesome.!