Join the Discussion

Reply
Report this post

Re: James A, Sweeney: I know where you are coming from. I was a refinery kid (Mobil Oil, Beaumont, Texas) and I notice that refinery workers seem to be much more affluent than my dad was in the 1950s & 60s. Of course, it is all an illusion brought on by easy credit. Another amazing occurance is that so many retired refinery workers, once Yellow Dog Democrats, have retired and are driving cars with old "W" stickers on the back window.

Reply
Report this post

Re: Masako;...Sir, the process was inevitable of all wealth getting into the hands of the rich; but R. Reagan sped up the process as though he had shoved it off a cliff... The trend has been relentless.... Since Capitalism cannot survive without exports, the pressure on wages as been total, so that we could have some overseas markets...But while many of our rival countries could afford a social safety net, and public health care, we could not... Two groups primarily covered the cost of medicine in this country: The unions as part of fringe benefits and the government which picked up all that private individuals could not.... So the effect is socialism in name only from the stand point of the Government, or ruinous prices from the stand point of the unions....Why does union labor cost so much??? When they are the only ones carrying insurance they are going to get the bill for all without insurance; unless the hospitals will go broke....This has allowed great profits for non union and anti union companies.... The only solution for the union is to forget insurance and leave the whole price of healthcare to be laid on the community as a whole... If the people cannot pay their bills let them go bankrupt... If the hospitals can't pay their bills, let them go bankrupt... If the government can't pay its bills, let it go bankrupt too; because there is no getting around the fact that every society has to support all its members; and the people cannot conveniently drop dead because they are made un profitable....The only choice the government has at this point is to tax those who have the wealth of this land.... If the government makes the means of production impossible to hold, they will be returned to the public purse, and the people can support themselves with them.... If you leave the rich with the choice, they will do as they have done in the past, and export our production to lands where labor is impossibly cheap, and then import to a credit market until we are ruined; as if we could be more ruined.... It is a hard life, but if we can tax the rich we can at least end up with some real estate, and subsist by farming... Counting on a handful of rich to fund our retirements out of a shrinking pool of profits is crazy.... We have to make that capitalist class live up to the promises they once made to have labor peace, or we should go to war with them...And we will, if we are not demoralized and ready to become slaves...Thanks, and peeece....Sweeney

Reply
Report this post

Sir;....I have to admit that Mr. Reagan was popular....That popularity points out the problem of our failed democracy more clearly than any single detail.... His message, anti communism and small government, was tailor made to get him elected, but it was pure demgoguery...Communism, which was living hand to mouth, -could not keep up with the Jones's, by borrowing from the Jones's...Victory, Reagan....Did we take a lesson from that??? The unions tended to keep all wages, and working conditions high....Without unions the working man's sole protection was an uncaring government.... That did not work... So low wages ruined us as a market, and forced credit upon us... Victory, Reagan....Small government did not mean lower costs, but deferred costs...Small government did mean deregulation of just about every business which has caused economic havoc and anarchy ever since.... Victory, Reagan... You have to admit that any guy with such ebullient self confidence, and a beaming smile, and the ability to laugh at himself, and physic, and good looks to match had a chance at being president.... But his election actually proves our inability as a people to face reality, and to do our home work....Mr. Reagan was not the last gasp of the American Dream; but the point where the American fantasy slipped finally into Nightmare...There was a point reached in the conquest of Alexander, some where in India, where everything began to come apart...His soldiers began to see through the fabric of victory to the grave beyond, and to long for home from that far and fatal shore.... Reagan was once more able to pump us up, and plug us into the breach, but he was like Himmler demanding the ultimate from Germany's children to keep the escape route open for his murderers one more day.... Victory will always go to men like Reagan who can fill the minds of men with nonsense because reality itself is beyond their grasp.... That is what you get for breeding trust instead of respect for education among a people...No people on this earth has such contempt at this moment in time for the educated and the intellectual.... The world is becoming educated, often at our expense, and at our universities, while we wallow in belief, and in contempt of the educated.....And we are kept uneducated because men such as Reagan could not be elected by anyone with critical judgement....Mr. Jimmey Carter tried to tell the people the truth... Even today, former presidents try to avoid him like the crabs...Why??? They recognize in this people the pathetic inability to handle the truth.... As long as we can live in denial we shall... And I would say; as opposed to your opinion on the News Hour, that if Mr. Obama will be in the least successful he must bring the reality of the situation home to people like Rush Limbaugh, and to those who listen to him, if he expects any positive results....We see the Republicans absolutely against everything he is doing.... Their ranks are closed....Mr. Limbaugh is the big chief of the bunch, and If Mr. Obama lets him get away with anything, he is playing the fool....Now, you see the nation has problems.... The people who listen to Mr. Rush either do not feel those problems, or can blame those trying to resolve the problems.... Collectively, the GOP is like the man drowned in a vat of whisky after fighting off his rescuers....If they do not want to be saved, then they are the problem...So there is no point in dancing around it, because to not do battle will be seen as weakness.... And I realize it is perverse, and irrational; but for the civilized to have ever shown mercy to savages, in the end, cost more lives and not less -because mercy among some is counted a moral fault.... Mr. Obama knows better than the republican wasteland how terrible things are... If he informs them, they can never say he did not; and if Mr. Rush mis informs them he will suffer their disrespect sooner than later....Now, I do not think the system can be saved; but we are rapidly becoming two societies, and that will mean civil war...Once Again; Victory, Reagan...Only a shared vision of truth can possibly unite us; so what ever else, the government, if it will govern, must deliver the truth, and not fear demagogues to do so.. ....Thanks...Sweeney

Reply
Report this post

When I see something broadcast or written about Ronald Reagan, the first thing that comes to my mind is that he fired all of the air traffic controllers.

Reply
Report this post

Interestingly enough, it may be that we are only witnessing now the true impact of the Reagan administration's brand of tax-cuts-for-the-rich, supply-side economics. Affably and with the best of cheer, Reagan cemented for generations to come our slavery to this destructive brand of "voodoo economics", as, I'm sure you recall, Bush senior referred to it. He charmingly waltzed around decrying the hypocrisy of big government while dramatically expanding the military and other programs he liked, never once being willing to call them "government." He spent so many tax dollars in doing so that David Stockman, Reagan's Director of OMB and the architect of what started out as at least an honest approach to implementing that exercise in economic superstition, bailed out and eventually accused the Reagan cabal of being a bunch of liars who somehow thought their brand of big government was somehow exempt from the laws of the universe. You heard it here, folks: the stock market is not finished taking its little trip down memory lane. We're headed back to the very beginning of the 90's, when those little Reaganites settled in to the rotting wood of our infrastructure, and those nostalgic market lows are going to force the denial brigades to study and remember in vivid detail what the pestilence conceived during the Reagan years and incubated by the cheerleaders of greed ever since, has actually done to our once beautiful old underwater house.

Reply
Report this post

Re: Paul M. Petkovsek;....And right then and there, there should have been a general strike of all union people across the country.... Except; that would never happen.... The union say we can't do anything with 20% of the population, and then later, we can't do anything with 15% of the populations, and then, we can't do anything with 10% of the population.... It was union men that put Reagan into the presidency.... The unions rallied around and supported Nixon.... Once they got some decent working conditions, and some money in their pockets they thought they were middle class, and not working class... Well, welcome to reality, because if there is nothing you will fight over you won't have nothing.... The whole thing of unions is pointless.... If the government will not support your rights; rights for which is was formed, then no orgaanization within the country will be able to do against the will of government what the government will not do.... .And it does not help that Union leaders are the lazy-est, and most useless people on the planet.... If people want to work, they work...If they want to sit on their esses, they get elected Business Agent.... There is no third catagory.... There are only carriers and riders; but the unions which should be able to carry their young, and carry their old. too often find they carry a bunch of dead wood at the top that like the U.S. government, suffers from too little education, and too little imagination to justify their ambition... One thing is clear.... No union in America should ever consider striking... It is suicide for organized labor and nothing more....But divide and conquer.... So long as unions divide us we will not see we are all in the same boat suffering the same oppression.... Let us welcome the day we are united in poverty because that may be the only unity we ever know... Thanks...Sweeney

Reply
Report this post

Re: william coleman;... Every single effective tool of organized labor was found to be illegal by the supreme court because of conflict with the rights of property....What makes Unions corrupt is the lie behind them, that labor can cooperate with capital with good for all... All the unions were doing from that point on was sliding down hill... If union leaders themselves did not identify so much with the rich, admire them, and want to be them; then there is a chance they could see the truth and speak the truth....Our whole contitution was written for the same goal that every union is created.... The preamble of the constitution clearly states the goals for this country, and even humanity.... The thought that people must on their own form organizations to achieve what the government was made to achieve, and will not by choice achieve, is some kind of cosmic obscenity... If the government cannot achieve union, justice, welfare, and tranquility; what hope has a maligned group of individuals banding to gether against the will of the government and the employers??? We would be closer to meaningful change if every capitalist succeeded in their goal of destroying the unions.... Why do they hate the union???The reason is clear... As much as they paint the unions as corrupt, and there is that corruption as fact; the true target of their hatred is democracy... I hated my union, and would have done anything for them; and they hated me too, and did a lot for me....But they were far more democratic than this state, or the federal union... Hell; the Hells Angels are m ore democratic than the govenment... Lack of democracy is a part of the problem with the unions... A near total want of democracy is THE PROBLEM with the government... It does not work for us because we cannot make it... We throw pure and virtuoussouls at it, and they send them back corrupted and well on the way to hell... The answer to our problems requires revolution, and only if that revolution gives us democracy will it bring about the good every government should achieve...Thanks...Sweeney

Reply
Report this post

to masako ...the thing i remember about reagan is, when he was gov. of Cali, he sicced the dogs on those kids occupying the offices of Berkley ...and as an old union man i rememebr thinking 'thats it, its all downhill from here' when he rousted the ATC's union ...yea its sad that the unions have degenerated into the crime ridden, narrow-minded politicos like everyone else ...that said i love how mark shields can make the connection between the 2 that i would never have made myself...

Reply
Report this post

...my bad ...to mr. petkovsek...