Dave Zweifel
He thinks he is smarter than the rest of us and knows what is best for your family. I say he should mind his own damn business.
Posted on 10/11/2006 3:57:39 PM PDT by SJackson
In his book "What's the Matter with Kansas?" Thomas Frank asked how it is that working people in a red state like Kansas can consistently vote against their own economic interests.
Indeed, getting the vote of low- and moderate-income people - particularly, males - has been a phenomenal accomplishment of the current breed of Republicans. The Karl Roves and Jim Dobsons of the world have cleverly used religion, abortion and outright homophobia to get folks to ignore their self-interests and elect candidates who do vote for so-called "family values," of course, but also work overtime to make life comfortable for the rich and powerful at the expense of the powerless.
We saw another example of that last week with a ruling from the National Labor Relations Board.
There's no question that thousands of working families in Ohio, for instance, voted for George Bush in 2004 to secure his re-election. An incredible campaign by the self-styled Christian Right turned out the vote for Bush in a state that turned out be a crucial one for him.
But what the voters in Ohio and in many of the other red states so often forget is that they not only elect the "born again" Bush, but they put in place a vast federal bureaucracy controlled by those who believe in and are beholden to corporate America - everything from the high-profile U.S. Supreme Court to the often under-the-radar NLRB.
As Paul Krugman of the New York Times pointed out last week, the failure of the NLRB - particularly in the years that began with Ronald Reagan - to enforce the country's labor laws has been the major factor in diminishing the power of the country's union movement.
He called it a "war on wages."
Big corporations like Wal-Mart don't have to fear firing workers who attempt to unionize because the Bush appointees to the labor board, if they act at all, will only respond with a slap on the wrist.
Last week, this administration's NLRB added to labor's woes with a ruling that expands by millions the number of workers ineligible for union representation. In a case brought by the management of some Massachusetts hospitals, the NLRB greatly expanded the definition of who is a supervisor and, hence, exempt from any union.
Until the new ruling, a supervisor was classified as someone having the power to hire and fire. Now, however, a supervisor is any worker who even occasionally can give orders to others who work with him or her. Wisconsin's AFL-CIO president, David Newby, estimated that exempts 8 million union and potential union workers.
The American worker not only got George Bush to carry the torch against gays and a woman's right to choose, but to widen the gap between the haves and have-nots, too.
Dave Zweifel is the editor of The Capital Times. E-mail: dzweifel@madison.com Published: October 11, 2006
This is true. And the business/open borders R's hate it and are doing the best to drive values voters out of the coalition.
Dave Zweifel
He thinks he is smarter than the rest of us and knows what is best for your family. I say he should mind his own damn business.
Wild and irrational conflations.
Thomas Frank
Frank argues that the problem is the "systematic erasure of the economic" from discussions of class and its replacement with a notion of "authenticity," whereby "there is no bad economic turn a conservative cannot do unto his buddy in the working class, as long as cultural solidarity has been cemented over a beer." The leaders of this backlash, by focussing on cultural issues in which victory is probably impossible (abortion, "filth" on TV), feed their base's sense of grievance, abetted, Frank believes, by a "criminally stupid" Democratic strategy of triangulation. Liberals do not need to know more about nascar; they need to talk more about money and class.
Frank says, working class will continue voting against their own self interests
Show me an article that references "working people" or "working families" and I'll show you a Democratic operative at work.
This is an irrelevant book which makes people stupid for reading it.
He is the same type of mental midget who only hears "tax cuts for the rich" when President Bush said "EVERYONE gets a tax cut."
It's impossible to be conservative on moral issues and liberal on economic issues if you expect to have a stable social order in place. What you failed to mention about "old style New Deal Democrats" is that they established and perpetuated a system that is based on unsound economic policy (which has nothing to do with "liberal" vs. "conservative") and is ultimately doomed to collapse.
Majority of the country does not agree with you.
What you failed to mention about "old style New Deal Democrats" is that they established and perpetuated a system that is based on unsound economic policy (which has nothing to do with "liberal" vs. "conservative") and is ultimately doomed to collapse.
Somehow America did not collapse yet. Do you really think that abolishment of Social Security. Medicare, Medicaid and public schools will make America stronger?
So what? That has nothing to do with whether it's right or not. I'm sure most people in this country would love to pay no taxes at all, yet have Federal government that spends 2+ trillion every year on them. That was my point . . . it's a delusional mindset that is completely disconnected from reality.
Somehow America did not collapse yet.
No, it hasn't. But in order to perpetuate this system, the U.S. has been forced to implement policies that you (and most of us here) find completely unacceptable and irresponsible (open borders, "free trade," massive budget deficits, massive long-term public indebtedness, etc.).
Do you really think that abolishment of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and public schools will make America stronger?
Yes. Next question?
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