Scott Walker quit the race. He blames Donald Trump, I guess for being better at running for political office than Walker is. Since he was polling somewhere between Lindsey Graham and the Herpes virus, well, even billionaires have limits on wasting money.
His plan apparently is to resurface at a divided convention. But hell, even Willard Romney is harboring that dream.
There hasn't been a "brokered convention" in over sixty years. The hope of Dead Candidate Walker and Flip-Flop Mitt that one will come to pass is proof that the only cure for fire-in-the-belly is embalming fluid.
But beyond that, if the party bosses seize control of the convention and lock out the people who have been the force behind the GOP gaining the Congress, look for them to stay home in November in large numbers.
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That's a shame. Anyone that dedicated to and successful at tamping down on the union corruption problem that America suffers from would have been great in office. I'd have voted for him just on his promise to put an end to federal employee unions and the dream of all of America being "Right to Work".
Murph, Murph, Murph...you just can't stop parroting the company line, can you? With the current oversight of Unions, there is very little corruption going on. We have our own internal audits to catch any issues before DoL comes in and drops the hammer. The paper trail on Unions now makes the IRS look like kindergarten coloring. In Congress, on the other-hand, the cost of a politician is climbing as bigger and bigger money flows in from Citizens United and the regulation of political contributions is loosened.
"Right to Work" is simply "Right to Get Screwed". It's allowing a employer the right to unload you for any reason, like maybe because you complained about them dumping toxic waste on the local school playground. It's about driving Unions out of political activity by making them represent people without those people having to contribute (representation without taxation?) anything. It's really about making all employees Independent Contractors with few rights and benefits and thus reducing employers costs.
As a 27 year member of a union, in the public sector, I resent your suggestions and instead point out we've worked tirelessly to improve the safety of a system critical to this country. This is despite being repeatedly picked on by Congress with pay freezes, benefit reductions, contribution increases and the failure to fund the basic necessities of the system.
Comrade, perhaps you've become noticed by the Russian Internet Monitors and targeted? That's one explaination.
Company line? No, I'm just someone who sees unions as a means where a relative few are enriched at the expense of everyone else not because they do anything good or better but because they threaten to shut everything down if they don't get theit way. Unions are why jobs go overseas and why American-made products cost so much. Unions are why companies and government agencies cannot get rid of bad employees. Unions don't protect the jobs of whistleblowers nearly as much as they do those who steal, cheat, use drugs on the job, etc., and they keep good employees from getting ahead by insisting that merit not be used to determine raises and promotions but only how long an employee has been on the job. So bad ones get to stay and move up just for showing up, and good ones don't get to move up or in some cases don't get hired at all because they hiring authority cannot get rid of the unproductive detrius that the unions are protecting.
Get unions out of politics? Yes, please! What kind of actual bargaining is it when public employee unions give money to the very politicians who employ them? Even Franklin Roosevelt opposed unions for public employees for that reason and it may be the only thing that he and I have ever agreed on. Abolish unions and let employers both public and private get rid of employees that don't do the job or otherwise adversely affect the workplace.
And I speak as one who, over time, has been both a union organizer and a professional strikebreaker. I've seen both sides and I know that America will be better off with both employers and employees having the freedom to not do business with each other should one side or the other decide that it's not in their best interest. Good employees will always be in demand and the only ones who will wind up sitting on the curb are the ones who aren't worth a bucket of warm spit anyway.
Company line, and you've drunk too much kool-aide. Murphy, your Soylent Green is waiting for you.
Unions are why we have a five day work week, safety regulations, and a middle class. Unions ensure that actions taken against individuals are based upon facts and reality, rather than some agenda.
On your argument about donations to politicians, what kind of deal is it when businesses give money to the people who make the rules? Your "better off America" is a nightmare that I fervently pray never comes to pass, for if it does, the end will be near,
I'll concede that unions had their place once, primarily in industry where unskilled labor needed protection. But that's all being done by law now, and government watchdog agencies. There's no need for unions today any more than we need a strategic helium reserve or Army warehouses full of horse shoes.
Fact is, businesses are in business to make money, and few businesses are going to get rid of good employees. Without unuions, businesses will be free to better cpompensate the best employees based upon their unique skills and abilities and shed the worst employees, replacing those with more good ones. End result: more efficient operations, more productivity, more profit and more goods and/or services for the consumer. How is any of that a bad thing?
OH--and there is quite a difference from a business donating money to politicians and public employees who work under those politicians giving them money. The opportunity for quid pro quo is much greater in the second instance, and it makes a fiction of the idea of negotiating salary and benefits because the public employees and the legislators are in reality on the same side and the taxpayers--the ones who have to pay those salaries--are the ones who lose. Look no farther than any urban city (Chicago, Detroit, Atlanta, baltimore, etc.) and it's teachers' unions to see how this works.
Some unions are forbidden to/ agreed not to strike and use arbitration. This works reasonably well where I work; neither side wants to get really stupid although individuals on both side always seem to want to.
The problems are real- it can be hard to get rid of someone who (for example) was caught by a (gov't entity) PD officer pumping (gov't entity) gasoline into milk jugs and was allowed to retire- but similar things happened at a non-union F500 company I also worked at. The system is imperfect, but now I've bought a house. Right-to-work sounds good, but look at pay and poverty in those states, generally speaking (mentioned on this blog).
I don't like the idea of paying $ to candidates I won't vote for (and I have the opportunity to opt out), but most people consider business political donations to be:
company + donation = quid pro quo. Oh, excuse me, access.
Murphy, the "facts" you posit are based upon the fantasy world of Ayn Rand. Corporations are NOT ethical; businesses do NOT make decisions based upon an assumption that, if they act wrongly, they will be punished at the register; managers are NOT inhibited from mistreating employees by rules and law; businesses will ALWAYS push wages lower in a race to the bottom, which is why your Galtian fantasy simply results in Galt's Gulch being located in China (or Laos, or Vietnam, or Thailand...).
So, let me get this straight...a politician has no incentive to cut taxes for a business that supports him, because that business would NEVER give a "donation" to him for that? But public sector employees will immediately refund their raise to a candidate?
I guess you hate unions because they rejected you, which is why you became a professional scab. Your colors are flying in the breeze, just relax to some Fox News stories and it'll all seem better as you dream of President Walker.
Once again, Unions exist largely to protect those who should not be protected and advance the worst workers at the expense of the better workers and the consumers. Unions produce nothing and add no value to a product that a business makes, but they sure add to the expense, and because of unions, many of those products are made overseas. If I own a business and I decide to hire ten people to perform work for me, it follows that it's also my right to decide that I don't want to pay one or more of them to do that job any more if they are lazy or if they steal from me. Unions interfere with that right, and they do so because it lines the pockets of the union leadership. If any business that I owned was threatened by union organizing, I'd shut it down, fire every one of the ingrates, and hire all new workers the next week. That's MY freedom and MY rights.
As to my past...different roles at different times, each based on what made economic sense to me at that time. As a naive college kid, I tried to unionize a factory that I worked at merely to drive wages up and create a cushy position for myself in union leadership. Looking back, they were right to fire me for trying that. I'd have fired me too now. The other job entailed a business trying to deliver a product to it's customer base. A group of malcontent truck drivers and dock workers refused to take the product out of the plant. As an independent owner-operator, I got paid an insane amount of money to run the picket lines and bring the product out from the business to the customers, making everybody happy except for the malcontents. I'd do that again in a heartbeat, because the business owners and the customers that they contract with have rights too, and unions seek to deprive everyone else of their rights and liberties, which makes them decidedly un-American.
BTW, the Japanese auto plants scattered through our right-to-work South are non-union and pay decent wages and turn out decent cars without any trouble. In fact, I'd buy one in a heartbeat over some over-priced piece of junk slapped together by a bunch of UAW alcoholics just back from a liquid lunch.
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