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I just heard a man on Washington Journal say to the guest pollsters propagandists/marketers and to the host, "What is wrong with the idea of unions? What is wrong with the idea of helping your brother?" The answer is "nothing" and the Teamsters proved that they still have it within themselves to protect their own by saving 30,000 jobs.
If you are going to have to choose feudal lords, I’ll pick James Hoffa over Robert Rubin any day. The Teamsters cleaned up their own house and now are determined to grow and in the process show us the way out of the grasp of the vampire squid. (Thanks, Matt Taibbi).
Alexander Cockburn over at the invaluable (please subscribe) "Counterpunch" has the story on "How The Teamsters Beat Goldman Sachs"
In the midst of all the Kabuki theater of the health care bill and its latest atrocity, the tax on workers’ decent Chevy/Ford pickup health care plans, we must not lose sight of the thievery that continues as Wall Street sucks our life’s blood. Credit Default Swaps are just bets in this casino society. And these blood suckers are betting against the American people.
Hedge fund entrepreneur David Einhorn had strong words for the evil practice called "basic packaging" where some of the bondholders of the company do not have the best interests of the company at heart, but have bet against the company. They bet it will go bankrupt and then help it along. That sounds kind of illegal, but I guess it’s not anymore. Einhorn at an investors’ convention said:
“trying to make safer CDS is like trying to make safer asbestos. How many real businesses have to fail before policy makers decide to simply ban them?”
Read this short and inspiring tale of a family that is trying to take care of its brothers and sisters.
Footnote: On same Washington Journal, the host says a typical clueless Washington cocktail weenie remark. He thanks Peter Bart, the "Democratic" pollster for moving his tennis game to be on the show. This is in the midst of discussing how angry and upset the Americans he polled were on the state of America. Clueless in a nutshell. (Bill McInturff was the "Republican" pollster).
28 Comments
I also think we need a new “Untouchables”. Not being able to be bought should be cool again complete with nifty trench coats and fedoras.
I’d take organized crime over Robert Rubin. Seriously.
The mob delivers to the public all kinds of goods and services, at a fair price. No hassles, no problems. No sales or excise tax either.
Why not the mob? They succeeded with Las Vegas in the 1950s-1970s.
The mob surely would come up with a better, more cost-efficient health care system.
If progressives are going to reach hands across the table, I say they should invite everyone with potential common cause to the table. Jimmy Hoffa (R.I.P.) and his mob pals included.
The mafia started as a way of protecting the working class from, yes, the Robber Barons and their government lackeys. So I agree with Art45, that I prefer that kind of “mob” to the Rubinites. All of it is still too testosterone for me, but until we get back to a more collective society, I have to work with what we have. It’s feudal, so I want a better feudal lord than what we have now. From what I can tell from my teamster friends, James Hoffa is not his father and the Teamsters did clean up their union. And what is “clean”? The Senate is a cesspool and looks dirtier than the Teamsters ever did.
The Mafia is a gang of thugs who use terror to make gobs of money. Nothing noble about them, never was.
Okay, let’s get off the mafia and let’s steer the conversation back to Goldman Sachs and this concept of betting against the companies that they hold shares in. Cesspools are cesspools and smooth talking bankers who ruined this country in the thirties were called “banksters” by FDR. They are as bad as any mobster.
The Teamsters on the other hand have saved 30,000 jobs! 30,000 jobs! That is nothing to sneeze at.
Sure…pay up or they’ll break your leg. And then they’ll charge you more to fix the leg they just broke…
They should be illegal. Reinstating Glass-Steagall should have already been done. Why hasn’t it? (rhetorical question–banking industry campaign donations/lobbying efforts).
jesus christ are all of you so irony challenged?
Hello! Anybody out there interested in the topic? rather than what’s a good analogy or bad analogy? The Teamsters used brain power and threat of a picket of Goldman headquarters to change the game. The employees of this company were saved. Cockburn says:
That’s right. There are a lot of people who can’t wait for getting more progressives elected to work for them. This union isn’t playing the useless electoral politics game.
Do any of the unions have any ideas or plans to rebuild the manufacturing sector? Hopefully unemployed workers will realize that 30,000 of their mates still have their jobs because they were unionized. Were they not they’d be standing in the unemployment line like so many others.
That isn’t how mob-controlled Las Vegas worked.
Sure, the mobsters wanted their money, always up-front.
But they provided value and complete safety.
I’d trust the mob to deliver the goods. More than I can say for any of the assholes in D.C. or on Wall Street.
Your comment is very important. This action by a union SHOWS by action that sticking together works. The Teamsters carry things to and from manufacturers and businesses, so they are different than the steelworkers or the UAW. They look like they are concentrating on adding to their numbers by showing they can make a difference. Good tactic for them since there are less manufacturers and more businesses, long haul is being replaced by short haul. Looks like Buffett is interested in railroads and long hauling that way. Then truckers will unload from hubs and short haul to Wal-Mart or Target.
That means that the rest of us have other assignments. But taking care of your family and expanding to your fellow workers is the way to go. Cooperatives can work. Start one at work.
For twelve years this Nation was afflicted with hear-nothing, see-nothing, do-nothing Government. The Nation looked to Government but the Government looked away. Powerful influences strive today to restore that kind of government with its doctrine that that Government is best which is most indifferent.
We had to struggle with the old enemies of peace‹business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering.
They had begun to consider the Government of the United States as a mere appendage to their own affairs. We know now that Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob.
FDR,1936 Madison Square Garden address
The entire address should be read . Remarkable in it’s parallels to the current environment.
FDR Madison Square Garden Speech 1936They had begun to consider the Government of the United States as a mere appendage to their own affairs. We know now that Government by organized money is …
history.sandiego.edu/gen/text/us/fdr1936.html – Cached – Similar
Our labor unions are not narrow, self-seeking groups. They have raised wages, shortened hours, and provided supplemental benefits. Through collective bargaining and grievance procedures, they have brought justice and democracy to the shop floor.
President John F. Kennedy, 1962
The AFL-CIO has done more good for more people than any (other) group in America in its legislative efforts. It doesn’t just try to do something about wages and hours for its own people. No group in the country works harder in the interests of everyone.
President Lyndon Johnson, 1965
The American Labor Movement has consistently demonstrated its devotion to the public interest. It is, and has been, good for all Americans.
President John F. Kennedy
My father is a 82 year old retired teamster. Hell Teamsters screwed hundreds of thousands of their members back in the 80′s cut them off of their health care.
Yet I do have a great deal of respect for unions they created our middle class.
Unions gave us “the weekend”. And in their hey day they gave us the 8 hour day. Now none of us work 8 hour days and many work 6 and 7 days. Deregulation started with Carter; the airlines and trucking. But Reagan and Volcker at the Fed went for a full frontal assault. They made people feel bad about being called a “worker”. They sold Americans the idea that we were all “owners” and “stockholders”. They sold Americans the idea that it was cooler to be a “player” than a “worker”. In the process John and Joan Q. Public became Joe and Jean Six Pack.
Thanks for the FDR quotes. They are eerie. And we have no FDR now. We only have a president who tsk tsks the banksters with no return to something like the Glass-Steagall Act. We have no Ferdinand Pecora’s commission to shame the banksters unless they let Spitzer and Warren have at them. So it becomes more important than ever to try and revive the labor movement and to organize at work.
@16
My 82 year old dad hates unions- but he sure enjoyed his weekends off ./s
Unions created our middle class~~~~~and it will require unions to RE create them,imho.
“Republican Class Warfare”
“For many years now scholars and journalists including Robert Kuttner, Kevin Phillips, William Greider, Barbara Ehrenreich, Noami Klein, and others have provided a mountain of data showing that Republican Party rule has produced greater inequality in America, and that Republican class war policies have enriched the few at the expense of the many. With the current economic meltdown millions of Americans might be starting to wake up to the new reality brought on by years of unbridled greed masquerading as economic policy.
Deep inside the engine of our capitalist economy is a powerful incentive for the owners of society’s productive forces to do everything in their power to discipline labor and to push workers’ wages down as low as possible. This imperative manifests itself in the form of crushing labor unions, outsourcing jobs to low-wage countries, exploiting immigrant workers, slashing social programs that benefit low-income people, and silencing the collective strength of working-class people generally. Beginning with Reaganomics, through Rubinomics, and on to Bush’s Kleptonomics, the Republican Party, (and its enablers inside the Clintonite Democratic Leadership Council), have set the economic agenda. They have been gleefully dancing on the heads of working people in this country for decades.
This class warfare directed against the average working American with the aim of holding down wages contradicts the necessity for capitalism to sell goods and services to these same cash-strapped workers.”
Joseph Palermo, “Republican Class Warfare”,January 2008, Huff Po
Joseph A. Palermo: Republican “Class Warfare”Jan 23, 2008 … With the current economic meltdown millions of Americans might be starting to wake up to the new reality brought on by years of unbridled greed masquerading as economic policy…
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/…/republican-class-warfare_b_82904.html – Cached
The wealthy have lobbyist and the ear of politicians. The workers have unions. Trades have unions. See how much sweatshop manufactured crap would make it off the docks if the Unions still had power. Would we see the death of American Industry if the unions were still healthy? Would we see the Corporate tyranny and treachery like we do today if the Unions were still healthy? Corporations have a had a field day since Reaganomics help to undermine the unions….jobs sent offshore…collapse of industry. Fully democratic unions with an open voting structure should be supported by every American who wants the return of jobs and our industry.
In Germany, Bosch decided that they would move a lot of production out of Germany. The unions fought it and won. Bosch still opened production outside of Germany while keeping it’s German workforce in tact. What happened? Bosch just kept growing while keeping Germans employed. (I think this is from Greider’s latest book, but they are all starting to blur because I’m reading them so quickly.)
This summer a Bosch engineer came to fish the Yellowstone here in Montana (about the same time as Rahm). He said that they might be moving some production (wind turbines etc) to Michigan because we had a trained manufacturing workforce there and they probably are cheaper.
Bosch isn’t a nicer employer or necessarily smarter. But they had to deal with a very strong union. Turns out everybody won.
Michael Moore said in “Sicko” that America had to return to a “we” society instead of the terrible “me” society that was ushered in with Milton Friedman’s flim flam called free market fundamentalism which Robert Rubin continued under Clinton and went full throttle under Bush and now is in hyper drive under Obama.
We must return to the concept of a collective progress, not a return to full blown feudalism. We can do that through having a voice in every work place whether it is an office or an assembly line or in service. That is through guilds, unions, and cooperatives.
Reagan’s legacy, breaking the Airline Traffic Controller’s union, was the beginning of the end. The elites and blue collar class both enjoyed the spectacle of Daddy Reagan spanking those ungrateful workers. My father, who belonged to unions for 50 years, was one of those “Reagan Republicans,” which I never understood. Meanwhile, my mother still gets some benefits (though not many) as a result of the unions that fought the Big Three automakers, and that my father struck while he was working at GM.
I’ve always marveled that Unions and Workers became dirty words in America across the economic spectrum. It’s the desire to kick someone lower on the totem pole than you, not recognizing that it IS you, I guess.
Good post, MM. Just saw it today.
@22
“The combination of economic and political power in the same hands is a sure recipe for tyranny.”
–Rose and Milton Friedman in ” Free to Choose”
NOTE: I believe that unions provide a counterbalalnce to the inequities of corporate personhood.-Gitcheegumee
John Kenneth Galbraith’s theory of countervailing forces worked. The forces that tugged and pushed against each other in the post war era were big business, big government and big labor. Nixon, evil genius that he was, started the divide between labor and the left and it kept getting worse. Just think what power we people would have had if the civil rights movement, women’s movement, and labor remained united. “The people united will never be divided.” But they were. That made it easier for the bogus theories of Milton Friedman could catch on and push Galbraith and other left theorists aside. The first attempt to try out Miltie’s disaster capitalism ideas was the 1975 NYC bankruptcy. (I started a diary on this months ago but never finished it). Gerald Ford said to NYC “Drop Dead!” The bondsmen took over and cut services. I remember the garbage in the streets.
I’m looking forward to Rick Perlstein’s next book which continues from “Nixonland” i.e. after 1972. We should really trace this divide back to Nixon says Perlstein and I believe he is right. He didn’t listen to Friedman, but Gerald Ford did.
Maven, you gotta read this article about Cerberus. They were one of the firms involved with Chrysler-and laid off 30,000 of their workers.
A MUST read.
Cerberus Capital: Literally Blood-Sucking the Poor to Make Their …25 posts – 5 authors – Last post: yesterday
How one company made $1.8 billion by paying peanuts to human plasma donors, and then manipulated the market by restricting supply to the …
http://www.alternet.org/…/cerberus_capital:_literally_blood-sucking_the_poor_to_make_their_billions – Cached
Profiting from ruined American lives is nothing new to Cerberus. Cerberus is the same shady fund that bought Chrysler and GMAC in 2007 and drove them into the ground, blamed everything on unions (even after firing 30,000 Chrysler employees), and dumped the companies onto American taxpayers—but only after lining up tens of billions in taxpayer-funded bailout funds. Cerberus is led by some of the most aggressive “free market” Republicans of our time. The chairman of Cerberus is former Treasury Secretary John Snow, who oversaw the destruction of America’s economy while serving under Bush from 2003 to 2006, bragging during his tenure, “We are the envy of the world.”
Snow bragged again in 2007 after Cerberus acquired Chrysler, “Over 25 years ago, when Chrysler faced bankruptcy, it turned to the United States government for assistance. Today, Chrysler again faces new financial challenges. But it is private investment stepping in to inject much-needed support.” A year later, Snow was running around Washington begging and screaming for government handouts.
Joining Snow as international chairman for Cerberus is former Republican Vice President Dan Quayle, the pampered imbecile who couldn’t spell “potato” correctly. Two more perfect vampires couldn’t have been invented than Quayle and Snow for the America of the Bush Era—peanut-brained, sleazy jerks.
The top vampire in Cerberus is the fund’s founder, billionaire Stephen Feinberg, a major Republican Party campaign donor with a hardcore fetish for Harleys and big guns. Supposedly Feinberg was very uncomfortable with taking all those socialism-esque billions from American taxpayers. The New York Times described him as “a longtime free-market enthusiast and a Republican who never envisioned himself needing the government for help.”