Rant of the DAY!: Unions no longer needed.

Rant of the DAY!: Unions no longer needed.: "At one time in this country, there were few workplace safety laws, few restraints on employers, and incredibly exploitive working cond..."

Unions no longer needed.

At one time in this country, there were few workplace safety laws, few restraints on employers, and incredibly exploitive working conditions that ranged from slavery, to share cropping, to putting children in dangerous working conditions. Unions, to their everlasting credit, helped play an important role in leveling the playing field for workers.

However, as the laws changed, there was less and less need for unions. Because of that, union membership shrank. In response, the unions became more explicitly involved in politics. Over time, they managed to co-opt the Democratic Party, pull their strings, and rewrite our labor laws in their favor.

"Power tends to corrupt," and that has certainly been true for the unions. Unions have become selfish, extremely greedy, and even thuggish in their never-ending quest to take in as much as they can for themselves, at the expense of everyone else who crosses their path. 

 That's why today, unions have changed from organizations that "look out for the little guy" into the largest, most rapacious special interest group in the entire country. Where unions go, disaster usually follows.

The divide in the "Disunited" States of America opened wider with the concerted effort of progressives and teacher union’s latest escape from reality. When people lament that there is little civility left in this country, they mostly refuse to face facts. There is a pitch battle for the hearts and minds of citizens. So far the public education lobby has been winning the war. Their victory is self-evident with the sorry state of literacy much less rational ability that passes for the collective consciousness of the public. The prime directive and accomplishment of the government school system is the development of a society of fools and idiots. Here, here to the union of public thugs and sophists, who work diligently to destroy the American Nation. 

The Left has misread the post bailout populist sentiment all along, assuming public anger was directed at the rich. But American anger, I suspect, is directed not at some people who have money or success, but at those who profit through "crony-ism" and their connections to power.

 In 1959, the state of Wisconsin enacted the first state statute permitting municipal employees the right to form, join, and be represented by labor organizations. Three years later, President John F. Kennedy issued Executive Order 10988, which granted federal employees the right to join and form unions and to bargain collectively. The order established a framework for collective bargaining and encouraged the expansion of collective bargaining rights to state and local government employees.


"The Supreme Court held in the case of Smith v. Arkansas State Highway Employees, Local 1315 (1979),  that nothing in the U.S. Constitution requires public employers to either recognize or collectively bargain with public employee unions."

What escapes the marginal intellectual integrity of so many public employees is that government ever creates wealth. All taxation is not theft. Some is needed for community shared protection for example.  Mandating that government schools, paid for with public funds, teach subversive doctrines and socialist redistribution of wealth, is a primary cause of producing the walking zombies who feel "owed" everything that populate this country. 


How many parents find it strange that our children believe that they are entitled to a reward for just trying?  Whatever happened to telling our children that we are sorry that they didn't win but next time if they work harder they could be the winner.

Results matter, even in the public sector. A substitute replacement for pampered teachers is needed. With a dismal record of performance and a pattern of taxpayer extortion, the progressive sisterhood reaches out to their brothers of sleaze, who use the tactics of street hoods collecting juice for a loan shark enterprise. No wonder that when courageous politicians challenge the status quo, crazed public union fanatic’s go into full damage control mode. New Jersey, Governor Chris Christie is one such hero and has experience with public unions.
  

This pattern of teacher employee abuse is not unique. This next example out of  Allentown, Pennsylvania  is a public union outrage beyond the pale.

"In pursuit of an Eagle Scout badge, Kevin Anderson, 17, has toiled for more than 200 hours hours over several weeks to clear a walking path in an east Allentown park.
Nick Balzano, president of the local Service Employees International Union, told Allentown City Council Tuesday that the union is considering filing a grievance against the city for allowing Anderson to clear a 1,000-foot walking and biking path at Kimmets Lock Park.

Balzano said Saturday he isn't targeting Boy Scouts. But given the city's decision in July to lay off 39 SEIU members, Balzano said "there's to be no volunteers." No one except union members may pick up a hoe or shovel, plant a flower or clear a walking path".

The reality that many "so called" civil servants still refuse to face. "It must be quite a shock to government employees all across the country that are actually losing their cushy jobs, those positions that they imagined were theirs forever. With the reality of the massive overspending by Democrats spurred by union leaders the consequences of which are finally coming home to roost, these union members that for so many decades felt entitled to their jobs are losing them".

Public employee unions are a threat to the very foundation of the Republic. The Hill reports that "Rep. Michael Capuano (D-MA) fired up a group of union members in Boston with a speech urging them to work down in the trenches to fend off limits to workers' rights like those proposed in Wisconsin." "Every once and awhile you need to get out on the streets and get a little bloody when necessary." He is a disgrace and his words border on subversion.

You can support trade unions if you are so inclined, but a public union that is taxpayer funded is an abomination. Progressives need to search their souls. The alliance that should bond all populists together is the fight against the global corporatist economy that has caused the outsourcing of living wage employment overseas. Expanding government is not the answer in reversing this betrayal. True populism must be rooted in sound economic principles, based in a wealth created private sector. 

 Substantially scaling back public employee jobs is a necessary step because the private sector taxpayer is broke to a large degree because of government policies. A civil service employee is, by nature, a secondary citizen. The taxes they pay come from the earnings of those who are the producers of prosperity. The La Follette tradition opposes the centralization of economic control. Woefully, governments lavish excessive pay and benefits on the public sector at the cost of the real main street economy.   

“The deal used to be that civil servants were paid less than private sector workers in exchange for an understanding that they had job security for life. But we politicians — pushed by our friends in labor — gradually expanded pay and benefits . . . while keeping the job protections and layering on incredibly generous retirement packages. . . . This is politically unpopular and potentially even career suicide . . . but at some point, someone is going to have to get honest about the fact.” Willie Brown 

Rant of the DAY!: Rant of the DAY!: Can we afford 4 more years!

Rant of the DAY!: Rant of the DAY!: Can we afford 4 more years!: "Rant of the DAY!: Can we afford 4 more years! : 'Ok, people can we afford 4 more years of Obama? Can we list the reasons why we can't? 1. ..."

Rant of the DAY!: Can we afford 4 more years!

Rant of the DAY!: Can we afford 4 more years!: "Ok, people can we afford 4 more years of Obama? Can we list the reasons why we can't? 1. Amnesty 2. Cap and Trade 3. Debt 4. Foreign P..."

Our Founding Fathers

How wonderful would it be to sit down with Washington, Jefferson, Franklin and the other Founding Fathers to see what they would say about how our beloved Country has come to be today, after independence was won, when they wrote, "We The People", establishing a freedom above all else that has withstood all challenges even from within, time and time again.

That their light still lingers in our distant morning,
A star that we perceive across the void.

Long after their bright star has burned out,
We chart our passage by your words, still burning.
 
Yet hope remains the engine of our fire,
Hope that someday all of us will be
Happy in the least that we require:
To follow our own path to being well-fed, well-housed, safe, secure, and free.
This dream we still pursue.

No longer do we speak of "natural" rights.
Nor can we think that REASON guides our will.
Yet, they would see that there remains a proud majority
with a deep love for our great country,
who will always be there to honor what they began,
keeping the USA the land of the free!

We will build with our hands and when we are done, 
we are going to hang the flag so high so all can see who ever might come,
that freedom still lives the way our Founding Fathers wanted it to be. 

So be proud of our home, flag, but most of all our freedoms!

Rant of the DAY!: Amnesty

Rant of the DAY!: Amnesty: "Ok people, Obama now thinks he is a KING. He has ideas of signing an amnesty act without the House or Congress. WOW... Why do you think that..."

Rant of the DAY!: Does the Government Get Off the Hook - Again

Rant of the DAY!: Does the Government Get Off the Hook - Again: "Being able to raise the debt ceiling almost at a whim obviously hasn't been much of an incentive for the government to b..."

Does the Government Get Off the Hook - Again

Being able to raise the debt ceiling almost at a whim obviously hasn't been much of an incentive for the government to balance the budget and get out of debt. Thus, some politicians, investors and economists argue that not raising the ceiling is now the only way to curb federal spending.The U.S. government is a lot like a person in that it can borrow money. Unlike people, though, with the approval of Congress, the government can raise its debt ceiling - the most its legally allowed to owe - if it hits the current limit. That's sort of like you and I being able to automatically up our credit limit if we've maxed out our cards.

As you may be aware, the issue has caused heated debate this time around. Some members of Congress say the debt ceiling must be raised for the government to keep functioning. Others insist it's high time Uncle Sam learned how to get by without any more borrowing. Clearly, there are two sides to the story. The main pros and cons of raising the debt ceiling.

A higher ceiling only compounds a debt burden that's already unsustainable. If borrowing and spending are left unchecked, the government could owe $20 trillion, maybe more, by 2020. By then, interest payments alone could reach $800 billion a year.

Since the government relies heavily on borrowing to make payments on existing debts, raising the debt ceiling would prevent default on those payments. Not raising the ceiling would result in America's first default ever, and some leaders of the financial community believe that would be disastrous, which would certainly be a painful situation. But those who oppose raising the debt ceiling reason that the emergency would force politicians to focus hard on the debt issue right now, not later. If we were in a position of not being able to pay our debts in the short term, it would concentrate the politicians' minds dramatically.

Highly regarded investor Bill Gross, managing director of the bond investing firm PIMCO, is one such leader. According to Gross, it would be unwise to let the U.S. default because its debt plays a central role in world finance and trade. A U.S. default may severely undermine confidence in the financial system, triggering panic in financial markets around the world.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner also support raising the debt ceiling. Bernanke has described a failure to do so as a "recovery-ending event." According to Geithner, not raising the ceiling could spark high interest rates that lead to a worse financial crisis than the one the U.S. is still in the process of recovering from.

According to Moody, we will lose our triple A rating no matter which way we go at this point.  Without deep cuts in spending, we have no way of paying back these loans. Now would the other countries lend the US anymore money, unless they want to own us. Question that we really should be asking ourselves.

What did Obama say about the Debt?    When he was a Senator.

This is from a speech Obama made in 2006:

"The fact that we are here today to debate raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the U.S. Government can’t pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our Government’s reckless fiscal policies.
Over the past 5 years, our federal debt has increased by $3.5 trillion to $8.6 trillion. That is “trillion” with a “T.” That is money that we have borrowed from the Social Security trust fund, borrowed from China and Japan, borrowed from American taxpayers. And over the next 5 years, between now and 2011, the President’s budget will increase the debt by almost another $3.5 trillion.

Numbers that large are sometimes hard to understand. Some people may wonder why they matter. Here is why: This year, the Federal Government will spend $220 billion on interest. That is more money to pay interest on our national debt than we’ll spend on Medicaid and the State Children’s Health Insurance Program. That is more money to pay interest on our debt this year than we will spend on education, homeland security, transportation, and veterans benefits combined. It is more money in one year than we are likely to spend to rebuild the devastated gulf coast in a way that honors the best of America.

And the cost of our debt is one of the fastest growing expenses in the Federal budget. This rising debt is a hidden domestic enemy, robbing our cities and States of critical investments in infrastructure like bridges, ports, and levees; robbing our families and our children of critical investments in education and health care reform; robbing our seniors of the retirement and health security they have counted on. Every dollar we pay in interest is a dollar that is not going to investment in America’s priorities."


Senator Barack Obama
Senate Floor Speech on Public Debt
March 16, 2006

I am in agreement with Michelle Bachman’s statement:

"I am opposed to raising the debt ceiling.  We have raised it ten times in the past ten years. and each time Congress has failed to get to the heart of the problem: out-of-control federal spending. Instead of being serious about stopping our government’s spending addiction, we continue to rack up massive annual deficits.
It’s time we stopped being spend thrifts, get realistic, and get our financial house in order. The Debt limit is just the tip of the iceberg when you look at all the unfunded mandates."

So, we the American people have the right to ask why is it right to raise the debt ceiling now. Are all the federal programs somehow more important now?  Like shrimp on treadmills, how big gay mens' penis are, billions to the United Nations, money to Brazil to build oil wells in our Gulf and the big one Obamacare. The list goes on and on. 

I am so sorry but I am not alright with putting all this debt on our children, grandchildren and great grandchildren, are you? Let's take our hits now and not leave it for the next generation. After all it is our money that theirs' to spend. Why is it that the government doesn't have to ask us how it should be spent?

Is It the End of an Era?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A few hours after watching the final launch of the space shuttle on TV along with a crowd estimated to be as large as 1 million who traveled to the Kennedy Space Center for what may turn out to be the end of the great American space age were asking if this launch signifies the beginning of the end of U.S. leadership in space and technology. 

The White House continues to offer little more than glowing words about how wonderful America's space program can be if spaceflight is cheaper. NASA is being jerked around in a partisan game of political football. NASA, like any organization that strives for great accomplishments, needs a challenging goal and a hard deadline to achieve that goal. President Obama does not seem to understand that particular precondition for progress. 

The goal of returning American astronauts to the moon and then traveling to Mars was canceled by the president. As a result, NASA is now like one of the crabs that scurry across the Space Coast beach; the agency is able to move sideways at best, but not forward. NASA might as well be the National Science Foundation if it is prohibited from executing a human space exploration effort. The president speaks grandly about exploration, but only of past accomplishments and planning for some indeterminate future venture. 

NASA has been told to pursue campus scientific research goals as the exploration goals have been ripped away. It is not so much a matter of making spaceflight cheaper so we can afford to do more in the future as it is a matter of allowing America's robust space-technology muscles to waste while NASA is chained to the ground by a president who lacks vision. 

Some say the space shuttle's return to earth for the final time marks the end of an era, but also opens an unprecedented age of private and commercial spaceflight. This new era will require international collaboration to keep watch over the practice, a University of Nebraska-Lincoln professor and internationally renowned space law expert said that this will prompt private entrepreneurs to invest in commercial spaceflight. Some companies -- like SpaceX of Hawthorne, Calif., an American space transport company founded by PayPal co-founder Elon Musk -- are close to launching their first flights. SpaceX, like other companies including Virgin Galactic, has critical U.S. involvement.  

The legal implications for this new wave of commercial spaceflight are already becoming visible, The United States is leading the way in carefully developing a balanced regulatory regime for private commercial spaceflight on a national level, and also with considerable consultation with Europe.  Soon, such questions will have to be addressed at a truly international level, where the same balanced approach between the interests of the operators in this infant industry to make things happen and the interests of the public at large regarding safety and security should somehow determine the details of such systems as well.

Another international legal ramification involves security -- specifically, laws concerning export controls on "dual-use technologies," which can be used for both civil and military purposes, von der Dunk said. A sensible approach to current U.S. policies on ITARs, or International Traffic in Arms Regulations, will be important in that realm.

ITARs, which are interpreted and enforced by the U.S. Department of State, safeguard national security and further foreign policy objectives through the control the export of defense-related articles and technologies.

The gradual progress in making the current U.S. regime on ITARs increasingly more sensible, efficient and effective is a very important step both for allowing relevant U.S. technology to serve those developments -- and therefore the U.S. industry -- and for allowing a more globally coherent approach to the security issues involved.

It’s important to recognize, though, that the decision in question belongs to all of us, and not just Obama. The administration wouldn’t be cutting the manned spaceflight program if Americans were still enthusiastic about going to the stars — if space exploration still occupied a privileged place in our imagination, if our jocks still wanted to be astronauts and our nerds still wanted to build rockets. Obama is simply bowing to our culture’s priorities: Our geeks want to build a better XBox, and our jocks want to buy it to play Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. Our technological energy is still immense, but it’s increasingly turned inward — toward communication, life-extension, and computer-generated adventure — rather than outward toward the stars.

In this sense, James Cameron really is an appropriate choice to opine about the space program. “Avatar,” not NASA, probably represents the future of the American relationship to distant planets. In the real world, we’ll be permanently earthbound — but inside the space of  virtual reality we’ll be kings of infinite space.

So, America have we lost the desire to reach the stars. The oldest of us remember laying in the yard watching the stars and wondering if we would ever reach them. Have our children forgotten to how to dream of the universe and what lies beyond?