Pat Oliphant for February 08, 2011

^ Agreed!!

A blind squirrel finds an acorn once in a while!

Good show, Sir!

silly, silly, silly. US unions were deserted by workers over the decades. US unions did nothing to keep American businesses in black ink making American vehicles and Detroit is the model of the Union Legacy!

I have been a union member, and I have read a years’ worth of the UAW monthly propaganda magazine to know that some unions are built on a base of Marxism and hate “capitalism” and Big Biz.. Main interests in unions I joined in my ignorant youth, keep raising wages until priced out of the market, keep trying to control how the owners of the business operate, and ELECT DEMOCRATS. I quickly learned that I was not the “union fanatic” some workers seemed to be at the time….1950.

by 1960 in spite of a liberal high school and later liberal media “education” I was definitely Conservative, in politics and in social policies….and opposed the Union rhetoric.

The howgozit critter thinks the de-unionization of American (and International) labor is a good thing apparently. Such folks who ignore their history are doomed to repeat it.

Unless of course, such critters are part of the head busting, scab problem.

And for disgustedtaxpayer, you conveniently left out the part where the unions had nothing whatever to do with the design and efficiency decisions the American auto makers made. They simply built what management gave them to build. To wit: a marketing manager in the ’60s when asked why his company didn’t build more reliable vehicles, his answer was (paraphrased due to the passing of years) “why should we? We are selling all we can make now?”

I love it the way you conservatives work so hard to disrememberambuligate the actual past.

The fact that you ended up conservative, both of you is not due to actual facts in the marketplace but due to laziness and the lack of actual ethical and moral grounding that would force you to work against injustice. Typical American dolts.

The public sector unions are doing quite well these days, though–but they also tend to get blamed for all kinds of things by lazy pundits who won’t actually did a little to find out the facts.

fennec, I don’t know all the details as to why union membership is at an all-time low, but I can attest first-hand that part of the reason union membership is so low today is because the unions dug in for the “people” to the point that the companies they were negotiating with had no choice but to close shop. I’ve seen it in the auto industry and in the forestry products industry. Not saying the unions were entirely at fault for the factors that led to shops closing, but they absolutely had a portion of the blame.

Señor Kent’s right. The last and biggest union workers are all in government and they take the form of teachers, firemen, and police officers. You know, the good guys. And it amazes me to no end how the conservatives are going after everyone’s jobs. Somehow they convinced a few that these people are pariah to our society.

Very very sad.

NEA unions are crushing the states.

I think mismanagement & outsourcing have had a LOT more to do with the demise of our low-skill jobs that were the rank & file of the unions than the unions did.

We haven’t had a pro-labor President since before Reagan came into office with the clear intent of destroying unions for ideological & political reasons. Nixon was probably as pro-labor as Obama…

Wnalle said:

“When unions actually did exert some influence, the middle class expanded. Working people could afford to buy necessities and a few comforts without going into debt. Business thrived, both big and small. The country prospered.”

Worth repeating. We need to find ways to stop the flow of wealth to a small number of Americans. I’d rather see it done through the capitalists realizing that they need to pay labor more money in order to keep our economy thriving rather than taxation.

Imagery in this cartoon is depressingly hopeless. And all it’s generated are screenfulls of pro- and con-unions.

Also, it’s depressingly true.

Yes, it’s so much better to have our products produced by 7 year olds in slave-wage countries than to pay anyone a living wage in this country.

And the administration we have to thank is that of the man we’ve been lauding all week – Uncle Ronnie – remember PATCO?

This mentality is turning America into a Third World country and we have only our greedy selves to blame.