The Republican War on Workers

There are some people who think unions need to go. They think unions are just troublemakers and they give workers too much power.  That workers should not have right to collectively bargain for better pay, good work conditions and other benefits.  They complain that non-union workers don’t have all the benefits that union workers have.  They allege that business and governments required to pay their workers a living wage because of unions are unduely burdened. The free market should set the wages and normal workers don’t deserve so called “Cadillac” benefit packages. These people are wrong!

As a proud child of white collar and blue collar union workers, I know the only reason I was able to grow up in a nice home, wear nice clothes and live a good life is because my Mom belonged to the Communications Work of America (CWA). My mother had a good job and good benefits all negotiated through collective bargaining.  My Grandmother was in the Postal Workers Union. My father belonged to the National Football League Players Association (NFLPA). I once belonged to the AFL-CIO when I worked as a bartender at Riverfront Stadium.  I support unions and I support the workers of Wisconsin 100% and you should too!

Unions have given us safe working conditions, the end to child labor, the weekend, vacations, sick days, a higher standard of living, and the opportunity for many of us to lead better lives.  Unionized workers were no longer indentured servants of their employers. Workers gained rights. Businesses still made lots of money and they still do.  Now in 2011, Republicans politicians and their lapdog constituents want to take us back to a time where unions did not exist. The republican politicians know what they are doing; give tax breaks to the rich and balance the budgets on the backs of workers.  The Republican flunkies, aka crazy people who vote against their interests and assist in the down fall of America, have been brainwashed to believe business owners know what’s best and that everything will be fine when the unions are gone.  Without unions most of us would not be where we are today.  A unionized workforce raised the wages of all sectors of employment. Unions have set norms and established practices that become more generalized throughout the economy, thereby improving pay and working conditions for the entire workforce. Since the decline of unions, wages (adjusted for inflation) have remained stagnant or decreased. Those who cheer for the demise of unions are fools. Businesses will take back all the benefits we have as workers because they will not have any reason to give them to us and we will not have any way to stop them. Unionized worker benefits are the reason that most non-union jobs have benefits.    

I have no desire to live on the wages of a Chinese worker. I have no desire to work in the same conditions that Chinese workers do. Do you?  Don’t think it could not happen here. Go to Wal-Mart and ask someone who works there what it’s like.  And remember the same people who think getting rid of unions is a good thing are the same people who thought bank deregulation is a great idea and we saw how that worked out.

Support the workers of Wisconsin. Call or write Wisconsin government officials and tell them everyone should have the right to bargain collectively. Or better still, go to Wisconsin and join the protest.

   

The People United Will Never Be Defeated!

Fobbsie

First They Came - For 21st Century America

• First they came for the minorities and everyone was happy. They are lazy, on welfare, and a drain on decent society. They get what they deserve.

• Then they came for the gays and no one cared because they are an abomination against God.
• Then they came for the women and it didn’t matter because they should all be at home barefoot and pregnant. It’s a man’s world. They don’t really need equal rights or equal pay.
• Then they came for private sector unions but it didn’t matter because people in unions made too much money and their high wages were making the prices too high. They were trouble makers and needed to be stopped.
• Then they came for the manufacturing jobs and took them to other countries, telling us it will make things cheaper if they are not made in America.
• Then they came for the IT jobs and sent them off to India because it could be done cheaper there.
• Then they came for the High Tech manufacturing jobs and sent them off to Korea and other Asian countries.
• Then they came for Muslims, because they are all dangerous and their religion is invalid.
• Then they came for public sector unions and they stood up and fought for us all.

The workers of Wisconsin are fighting for their rights, their jobs, and the security of their families.  Wisconsin’s Republican Governor Scott Walker has stated he is ready to call out the National Guard on workers if they make trouble. Does that sound like what's happening Bahrain or Iran? Is this the America we want to live in? Do we want to live in an authoritarian country where no one can speak out for their rights or come together in common cause?

Public sector employees in Wisconsin, Ohio and other states are facing the same fight to retain their collective bargaining rights. We all need to support their fight because they are our last best hope. If they lose, in the next 10 years all of us normal people will be working for low wages, if we’re lucky, and/or picking through garbage dumps in order to survive. 

THERE IS NO SHARED SACRIFICE! The only ones who sacrifice are normal working people. The rich will get richer while the middle-class will get poorer and the poor will become beggars.  Do not sit quietly and hope that they will not notice you. Stand up and support the workers of Wisconsin. If we don’t support them, who will be left to fight for you when they come for you.

People of Wisconsin, Fight the Power!

Fobbsie

Kick Us When We’re Down

Wow! I just saw the Obama budget proposal. What is wrong with this man? After boosting the fortunes of the richest people in the country with massive tax breaks, he now attempts to balance out the budget on the backs of the rest of us. I guess I should have seen that coming but I hoped that we still had Democrat as president.  President Obama is actually an undeclared hard-right Republican. He is off the chain and needs to check himself before he wrecks us all. The declared Republicans are not any better with their budget proposals. 

Obama is a disaster.  He is too conservative and too pro-business to be an effective President for these times in our nation.  I had only a small hope for him and that has finally been completely extinguished. Quite honesty I think he believes that if he out republicans the actual republicans, so called conservatives will like him. But they won’t because he is a black man and he can never be white enough for people who think that way. I fear for the future of our nation and the future of my family.  We have a democrat president who does not adhere to the principles of liberalism. We have a minority democrat party and republican majority in the House of Representatives. The Republicans are crazy and are only going to do wacky things. We have a Senate that has a democrat majority but many of them are heavily corporatist.  All and all, we have a government that is not for the people. In fact, our government is completely against the people. 

The preamble to the constitution states: We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

We seem to always be able to provide for the common defense; the defense budget is 50% of discretionary spending. As for justice, ensuring domestic tranquility and the general welfare, we just don’t know how to provide that for our citizenry. Our government is supposed to support the people’s general welfare, all the people in the United States of America. Not corporations, or foreign government, or foreign militaries. When will we demand our rights? When will we say, enough is enough?   I think we never will. Too many people are too brainwashed to by years of listening to self-serving babble of corporations and rich people. We don’t think we have the right to demand our tax money is spent on us. No one should have to pay for an education in America. No one should be homeless in America. No should be hungry in America. No corporation should get a tax break for moving jobs to other countries and then selling their products back to us. The elderly should not live in cold homes and eat cat food. Bridges should not collapse, street should not be filled with pot-holes, teachers, firemen and police should not be fired to save money. Water should not be poisoned because it helps the profits of corporations. Any cuts to the welfare of the citizenry of America are unacceptable.

We need to decide as nation and as individuals that this madness has to stop. No more money to corporations! No more money spent on pointless wars! No more money to foreign governments. No more money spent on the immense failure called the “War on Drugs”! I want my money spent on me and my family and all the families in America and our welfare!

2011 election is coming up and we need a 3^rd party candidate to run for President. No more of this BS. No more looting the American people.  We need a populist president, populist congress people and populist senators. We need people who will be for us, not against us.

To read about the President’s Budget cuts click here

No Justice, No Peace,

Fobbsie

So Long Mubarak!

2011 is differently a year of change.  Finally, Mubarak has come to his senses and resigned.  Exactly what happened is not clear but for now it is enough that he is gone.  There is an exciting, celebratory air on the streets of Egypt; millions of people have turned out on the streets to celebrate.  I wish the people of Egypt my most heartfelt congratulations and I hope that they get the chance to participate in the democratic progress for which they have fought.  He was in power for 30 years but deposed in 19 days by the will of the people.  This is an amazing event!

Tunisia and Egypt are the living proof that the desire for democracy must come from within a people. It cannot be forced on people from the outside or from the barrel of a gun.  The people joined together in a struggle for freedom and won.

Democracy Now and Al Jazeera English are providing live coverage.

May the people of the next country wishing for liberation be successful.

Power to the People,

Fobbsie

Fear of Fundamentalism Should Start at Home

 One of the main points I keep hearing from reporters, political pundits and government officials is a fear of Egypt turning into a country run by Muslim Fundamentalists.  This is one possible outcome of the events in Egypt. I believe it has a very low probability because the people have been living under a dictatorship for decades.  My question today is why don’t Americans worry about becoming a country run by Christian fundamentalists?

Christian fundamentalist extremists are a minority in the United States, at about 50-100 million people. However this is a large and vocal minority.  The version of Christianity they profess is violent, regressive and destructive. Christ is not a man of peace; he is a vengeful warrior who will return with a sword and kill everyone who does not believe the correct way in a gruesome and violent way. They scorn modernity, helping others and believe that we do not have to do anything to protect the earth because God will restore the earth after his return.  But most importantly, they want the United States to be a theocracy and those who do not accept their beliefs would be second class citizens. They claim that Christian men with specific theological beliefs are ordained by God to run society. They believe woman should be subservient to men and their primary reason for existence is child rearing. They home school their children so they don’t get any secular information about science and learn an alternate version of history tailored to their distorted world view. 

I recently saw the film “Waiting for Armageddon” and it left me extremely scared. We have an ever growing death cult in our midst and they are taking over the government. They are not just another Christian sect. They are not merely super religious. They believe Christ is going to return with a sword and an army and slay all the wrong doers. They believe god will renew the earth. But before all that happens, there will be a ”rapture” and that they will be swept up to heaven just before all the mayhem occurs. The books, movies and violent video games from the “Left Behind” series reinforce this world view and seek to spread this doctrine of death to non-believers through the use of popular culture. I recently watched the first “left behind” movie which starred Kirk Cameron, who is a fundamentalist and quite frankly crazy. Cameron, who starred in the popular television series Growing Pains, writes in a blog post titled “Sex Ed” about how sex is not the cause of pregnancy. Babies are placed in the womb by God as whole beings with arms, legs, etc. I am paraphrasing his post, so in order to get the full sense of his beliefs I would suggest you read the blog yourself. I would not recommend watching the “Left Behind” movie because not only was the plot bad, the acting really sucked.

If you listen to these people, they are not talking about normal Christianity. If Odin or Zeus was substituted for Jesus, most people would not take them serious. But because they worship, the common “God” most people assume they are just like rest of us. However, they are not just like the rest of us, they are crazed and driven to the destruction of the earth and the death of all non-believers; non-believers are anyone who does not believe they way they do. The book of revelation defines their belief.  There are many Fundamentalist in local, state and federal government.  An example of fundamentalist in Federal government and their wacky beliefs is Rep. John Shimkus (R-IL). He read a bible verse in a climate change hearing and stated his belief that god promised not to destroy the earth again and that he believes in the inerrant word of god.  No one ever claimed that climate change would destroy the earth; it will make it really hard for humans to live on the earth. To watch the video of this nonsense and an interview with the congressman, click here.

So while we worry about other countries being taken over by Muslim extremists, the United States is being taken over by Christian extremists. These extremists philosophy is anti-democratic and anti-modern. They are using democracy to serve their agenda. Most of these believers vote, while a majority of people who do not share their beliefs do not vote. More than a third of the electorate sits at home, doesn’t vote and then complains when we get a lot of wacky, crack pots in office.  Many average Christians don’t reject fundamentalism because they are either afraid to do so or don’t want to say anything due to so called religious tolerance.  Christian Fundamentalists do not have tolerance, they believe theirs is the only way and the rest of us will die torturous deaths for our false beliefs.

Other films to watch on this subject are “Jesus Camp” and “What’s the Matter with Kansas”.

If we continue to ignore our own fundamentalist problem, we do so at our own peril.

Ciao for now,

Fobbsie

P.S. I welcome your comments on this or any other post.

No Justice, No Peace

After all these days of the Egyptian people fighting for their freedom from tyranny, one thing is clear to me: Many American and Israeli politicians and pundits only think about what a free Egypt means to them. Those self-centered people are a disgrace. The leaders of two so called “democratic nations” have propped up a dictator for 30 years and they should be ashamed of themselves. They prefer stability of the region. The stability has been maintained by not letting people have any free will or say over the direction of their countries. The stability of dictators is a thin cover for the unrest and discontent of the people. The underlying instability of this region will always be there as long as the people are repressed, abused and downtrodden.  I have read “people” are afraid Egypt will go the way of Iran. However we (Britain and America) made Iran a place ruled by Islamic fundamentalists. In 1951 Iran was a parliamentary democracy and Mohammad Mosaddegh was elected as Prime Minister.  He undertook a number of reforms, including nationalizing Iranian oil fields, which the Britain and America did not like.  We could not let Iran control their oil, so after a series of unsuccessful efforts to get rid of him by making the lives of the Iranian people difficult, the US hatched a coup plot. Does this sound familiar? This is how we roll; if a leader does anything to care for their people and in turn subordinate American interests for the welfare of their country, they will be killed and replaced by a dictator who will do what the American government and its corporations want.

After the Iranian coup, Reza Shah was placed in charge of Iran. We know him as the Shah of Iran. Prior to his return to Iran, he was in exile mostly because he sucked as a leader but also because he was not really interested in governing.  There was an opposition to his return and to the removal of the Mosaddegh. However with the help of the west the opposition was squelched.  So from 1953-1979 the Iranian people had a leader that they did not choose or want, who was a pawn of another country. The Western oil companies where happy but the people were not happy with his autocratic rule. The Shah of Iran was a despot and did not let any other political parties but his exist.  This meant that the only way for the people to revolt was through religious organizations. Religion was their only outlet. So in 1979, America was surprised about the overthrow of the Shah; just like we were surprised about recent eventsTunisia and Egypt.  Which shows what Western governments and corporate powers really think about the people of the Middle East: The people are too stupid to want freedom. If we had left Iran alone, they probably would not be governed by fundamentalist Islamic clerics, they would be a democracy. As we saw by the attempted revolution in 2010, the people of Iran want to be free and live in a democracy.

Egypt does not have to be like Iran and I don’t think it will be.  The forces of fundamental Islam in Egypt are weak. However if we worry too much about our interests and prop up a dictator for the sake of stability, we could drive them into creating a fundamentalist country.  The time of Mubarak is over, he just needs accept it. Like any good dictator he wanted his son to take over but he needs to forget about that too.  He needs to let his son be free to choose his own path and let the people of Egypt be free to choose their national path.  

Egyptians will not choose to go to war with Israel because unlike in America war is not an abstract concept. Any war that takes place in the region would involve their houses, their families, their lives. They have been at peace for over 30 years and they most likely don’t want to experience war again. As in Western Europe there are people still alive that remember what war is like when it is in your country and will not be eager to have happen again.  Egypt has a huge tourist industry and no matter who is in charge of the country people will want to preserve it. Tourism is a $12 billion industry, war and regional instability would disrupt Egyptian economic interests. The same with the Suez Canal; services will not be disrupted because they want the money.

Mubarak supporters have instigated violent acts and turned a peaceful revolution in to a literal fight for freedom.  It seems having to fight for freedom has not deterred the people of Egypt from their quest to be free. It anything it has hardened their resolve. The violent response of the government makes it impossible for those who crave freedom to back down because the government has turned it into a life and death struggle. And now it seems the Mubarak government is planning to crack down on the pro-democracy protesters. As I wrote earlier, a dictator only works to preserve his power even at the expense of the lives of the people in the country. President Obama needs to make Mubarak stop this violence and step down. America has the power to do this and live up to our ideals, liberty and justice for all.

America and Israel and their supporters need to let go of their fears and support the deposition of a dictator. A free Egypt = A free America. None of us will be free or safe as long as there is oppression in the world. I am not a utopianist, I am realist.  No justice, No Peace.

Power to the Brave People of Egypt,

Fobbsie

Egypt Update – Mubarak Supporters Are Bad Losers

I knew it was too good to be true.  The Egyptian people had a peaceful revolt going but the dictator and his supporters could not let the happen.  They could not win back the hearts of the people with a self-serving speech so now they have to crush them. This afternoon Mubarak supporters entered Tahrir square and started to attack people including women and children. I’m sure that will make them think the oppression in their country is much better than be free. Not!  People who think they have the most to lose when a repressive regime ends are always the most dangerous. The people will not be crushed. They want Freedom!

There are several reasons why I think the privileged classes in any country act like ass-holes. The first reason is that they think if they give egalitarianism a try, the poor will treat them as badly as they have been treated. I do not think that is true. Most people just the opportunity to live a decent life, support their families and enjoy their lives.

The second reason is that they believe the “little people” don’t deserve anything. If they did deserve something, they would have worked as hard as the rich to get what they have. The rich always believe that they are working harder than anyone else. The Privileged class really believes that they are inherently better than the lower classes and that if you are poor it’s because you are dumb and lazy.  In reality a majority of people of privilege were born that way. Not much work involved in being born.

The third reason is simply that many people in the privileged classes prefer authoritarian dictatorships. This allows them to treat the unworthy like they should be treated:  like dogs or slaves.

The final reason is most people are not very imaginative and they can’t image a world where all people are treated fairly and all people have the same opportunity to succeed. Or maybe they can image it and it scares them. I think they should be scared. 2011 is a year of change. More change is coming…Please stand-by.

Power to the People,

Fobbsie

Support the Egyptian Peoples Revolution

After the surprise ouster of the Tunisian President Ben Ali’s, the call for the ousting of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak is a double surprise. The Mubarak regime was been in power for almost 30 years and it is a dictatorship, even if the government calls itself something else.  Because the government of Egypt is a dictatorship, there is no other way for the Egyptian people to change the government without a revolution. If you look at American history, we revolted because we were under the rule of a Monarch and did not want to live under the oppression of that ruler (This is a very simplistic explaining and I know there were a number of complex factors that caused the American revolution.).  Monarchies of the past (and some in the present) were essentially dictatorships. Democratic governments are by and for the people. Non-democratic governments are not for the people, they are for the perpetuation of the ruler’s or the ruling party’s power. The 30 year rule of Mubarak is evidence of that lack of democracy in Egypt. They hold elections and Mubarak’s party always wins a unnatural 80% majority. Egypt has been under martial law since 1981. Martial law allows the government to detain anyone deemed to be threatening state security without court orders. Many people have been detained and beaten in Egypt. Public demonstrations are banned. The existence of the ban against demonstrations makes the people of Egypt very brave and also illustrates their determination to be free from living under a dictatorship.

In 2006 I visited Egypt. I talked to all sorts of people there and they were all very nice, friendly and helpful. They loved America and were happy to talk to an American since not too many Americans come to Egypt. In my experience most people in the middle-east like Americans contrary to popular opinion. They do not hate us for our freedoms. They like our freedoms and wish they had them. What they don’t like is the US government's support for Middle Eastern dictators. Most countries in the Middle East are Monarchies or Dictatorships. Middle Eastern people are not free; they do not participate in democratic processes. The Middle East is mostly run by authoritarian governments which suppress their people. Egypt is a country that is suppressed; it is not something that was obvious to me when I was there. I had the feeling that a lot of the joie de vive was missing and that things just felt wrong. After my vacation, I decided that I did not really want to go back there again because of the weird atmosphere. Now I think I would like to return when the people are free.

Everyone around the world should support the self-liberation of the Egyptian people. They want freedom and self-determination. We need to support them in their peaceful struggle for liberation. Egyptian internet and mobile phones have been cut off by the government and when they have mobile phone service they cannot send text messages. This is just one more sign of repression. By the way, the US government want to the ability to shut off the internet, too.

You can help the people of Egypt by setting up an internet bridge for them. Information on how to do this can be found at https://www.accessnow.org/proxy-cloud/page/join-the-cloud

The latest news on Egypt can be seen on Democracy Now. They have had one of their staff reporters, Sharif Kouddous, on ground in Cairo, Egypt since Saturday. 

Or on Al Jazeera English at: http://english.aljazeera.net/

Power to the People,

Fobbsie