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
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.
As direct an admission of the amorality, immorality if you prefer, of the left.
While I don't accept his economic premise, if the "working class", people who work which includes me but perhaps not the author since he likely voted Dem or Green, ignore their personal economic interests to vote based on their moral values, good for them. Dave Zweifel should be attacking the moral values, not the fact that some votes can't be bought for short term economic gain.
Frank's upset that this particular demographic no longer votes in knee-jerk fashion for the socialist left.
Gee, maybe 'cause even us rubes in the Mid-West are smarter than Thomas Frank? Ya think???
OK, thats enough. I don't need to read an further.
Thomas Frank: I'm smarter than the rest of the people in my state who all vote republican because they have I.Q.s of 70 and are a bunch of caveman homophobes.....
Winning those hearts and minds, eh? Maybe they like tax cuts and social conservatism. No, couldn't be.
Is the newspaper name an Englishing of Das Kapital? Still seem to believe in dialectial materialism, don't they?
Thomas Frank is from the Midwest.
Rise up Kansas proletariat workers! Stop voting for Republicans, you swines!
I don't disagree with you.
We all have a multitude of interests, self-interests, outside of the economic sphere for most of us.
The author takes it as a given that voters economic interests will trump all else. I dare to say he's thinking lower economic classes, but maybe not.
If Bill Gates acts against his economic interests to advance social causes, private or government sponsored through taxes, that's great. My guess there's a long list of the affluent the author would fawn over for their contributions in that sphere. But if we accept his economic premise that the Dems would be better for a middle class working stiff economically, he can't figure out how that working stiff would vote Republican on a moral basis when the Dems are offering an economic payoff.
A classic elitist, amoral view of the working class.
Rather than get into it now, imo within a year or so we'll have 10 million plus new workers, guest or "citizen embryos" I don't know, and the unions will feast on them if thay have half a brain. Unions have been in a long decline, but I suspect market conditions will be improving for them soon. For their political allies, perhaps.
And they shouldn't have to.
After all free enterprise works and supports government to boot and if our economy were based on anything different, we would be living in a third world and the complaints would be 10 fold.
No one will be able to understand them if it happens... unless they force companies to hire interpreters.
LLS
Thomas Frank asked how it is that working people in a red state like Kansas can consistently vote against their own economic interests.
Of all the elitist left-wing claptrap out there, this bit about how the poor and oppressed could be so stupid as to vote for "the current breed of Republicans" is one of the clappiest and trappiest.
About 12 percent of the U.S. workforce is unionized. If the whole U.S. workforce were unionized there would either be much fewer jobs or no jobs because small businesses, which create most of the jobs, would cease to exist and the economy would collapse.
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