uaw or walmart

My father had to deal with union workers at his plants and whenever he would come home during or after the negotiations he would be alternately pale or red, exhausted and short tempered. When I was a little older, he started talking and this is basically what he said, " we have guys who haven't done a thing for 20 years making $30 an hour (this is 1980). They don't show up to work, they file for workman's comp if they catch a cold, they cost us a fortune and we can't fire them or the union will shut us down. We can barely make a profit, and the guy who hasn't showed up for work this year has taken home more pay than me." The reason we hate unions is the same reason we hate welfare, there are enough slackers and losers who are gaming the system to corrupt , or at least make it appear as if the whole system is compromised. We don't really object to union workers making a living wage do we? $22 million was paid in executive compensation to the CEO at Ford in 2007 when the company posted a $2.7 billion dollar loss. Ford's CEO earned the equivalent of 354 senior union workers. What really gets our goats is the imbalance - whether it is a guy making $60,000 a year for not showing up to work, or $22 million for riding his company into bankruptcy.

We hate welfare, we hate unions. We resent food stamps, we don't want to offer bail outs. We fear that taking steps towards social responsibility is the path to installing Stalin in the White House. And yet, we still cling to the ideal that fair play and hard work can and should be rewarded.

Time has come for some serious rethinking on our compensation philosophies and weirdly enough the model that is most intriguing right now is professional sports. There formulas for dividing compensation by class - workers and managers have created asset pools that are allocated or divided based on performance. Creative thinking is what is needed if we want to do real problem solving for labor unions and to address the tenure system in our education system. If the goal is to have an optimally productive work force, then that workforce has to be invested in the success of the company. A system that fosters investment in the company by workers, would necessarily require investment in the workers by the company.

This interlocking of interests is so basic and fundamental it compeletely escapes me why more unions are not taking it up as a model. Part of the reason is that the screaming is so loud at the negotiating table, no one can think clearly. And the other is that most labor unions have for far too long followed ridiculously incompetent leadership. Not ill-intentioned, but hopelessly over their heads when it comes to matching up with the talent on the management side. And so workers are represented by tacticians who are sometimes honest, but who rely on stupid and ugly. In this time of the resurgence of appreciation for smart and nimble, maybe its time the unions, following the model of the NBA, NFL and MLB get themselves some union leadership smart enough to sit at the same table as corporate management.

goodbye politics hello economics

National pasttimes are not supposed to be swapped overnight. It's taken what? 50 years for football to blitz baseball into irrelevance. But wow, nothing like a global meltdown to erase the unrealistic exuberance of the Obama victory. From now on all we are going to hear about is how bad the economy is, and whether we should jump or paddle. Misery loves company, and bear that in mind - because traditional media is in its own death throws making it impossible to trust anything you read by anyone ever. Disaster sells. If all sources of information are suspect, and the rest are utterly unqualified (is that me?) then what we become are a few hundred million chickens running around without heads, or at best empty heads. Here is the danger that has come and gone and come and gone as civilized societies suffer from collective panic. We really can't be trusted to think rationally or to the benefit of the whole when the fire alarms are going off. People will be trampled in the crush out the door. When FDR mentioned fear, this is the phenomena he was pointing out.

hangover

Hey, I gave, I volunteered and I voted. So I earned my right to offer a little feedback, which is PC talk for bitch and moan as my Pa would say.

First, what is the dealio, or new deal, or post modern inversion of a deal, with every corporate CFO in America lining up to take a chunk out of my $700 billion donation, which is starting to look more and more and more like it would have been better spent handing out thousand dollar bills to the middle class to go spend at WalMart and restart a little consumer confidence. Not saying this is the America I really want, a bunch of crap in everyone's pot so's we have a million new $7 an hour jobs, but if you read the WSJ or the NYT now you know, it's back on your everyman to go out and buy buy buy again. Something really stinks and I'm hoping it isn't the Chicago school of economics. I'm from Ohio and here's a big fat red flag from my people - in another 15 minutes we are going to be really pissed off about this new corporate welfare program, which is the complete opposite direction of help for the middle class, and start blaming the guy who isn't even President yet.

Second, Hellooooooooo - genocide, Congo, what are we doing about that?

Third, does anyone really still care what is on Sarah Palin's mind anymore? Couldn't we just forget this ever happened?

WSJ man out on the ledge

Silly man, is there so much panic and anxiety in your world that an American presidential candidate can actually cause you to fall over yourselves on your way to...what, locking up your cash under your bed? Good grief already with the doomsday, "he's going to take all my money and give it some crack ho'" craziness. Just how bad was it for you under Clinton after all? The sackcloth, the ashes, the hysteria as if the O-man were some kind of Lord of the Rings evil wizard who could, with a wave, vaporize the basic capitalistic infrastructure around here, psychic and otherwise. News flash, my man, Social Security is a really great program that keeps a lot of seniors out of the pet food aisles. Universal health care would actually save a lot of misery, maybe lives, and put a lot more cash in the working man's wallet - to save, invest and buy the kind of crap that keeps the American economy strong. Alternative energy might actually be the new dot.com revolution that can re-energize our economy. Doing right by folks, and investing in the future should not scare you so much. Hey, is that your backbone I saw laying by the side of the road a few miles back?

a few more for good measure

Obama is the muslim communist with a communist agenda for this great country.Do we need the muslim communist in OUR WH?

If you don't believe Barack Hussein Obama has santorum from Ayers all over his bits, then just wait til you wake up in socialism and wonder why your doubts never led you down the right path.

George W Bush is a liberal at heart while wearing a conservative mask, and Obama is even more so.

Obama and his Acorn kronies registering illegal alians, dead people, and UFO's for the democatic election.

Many of us were around 8 years old when Charles Manson killed actress Sharon Tate and several other people. We knew that we should stay away from him then and also 20-30-40-years later. Stop the lying Obama -we have you all figured out.

The New York Daily News reported this week that a "top McCain strategist" said, "It's a dangerous road, but we have no choice. If we keep talking about the economic crisis, we're going to lose."

voices from the bottom 50% and ps i am not making this stuff up

...your boy Obama is the one sleeping with a copy of "the Communist Manifesto of Neocolonialism" under his pillow while he was at columbia university; not to mention skipping classes to go to conferences at Cooper Union that had socialist themes.

Obama has been "created"! His experience is not by happenstance, he was formed by Chicago machinery - pruned to be in the White House - but not by the black folks, as one might think, but by radical islamics - he is a TROJAN HORSE AND IS ONLY ABOUT 24 DAYS FROM TAKING OVER THIS COUNTRY -

You forgot about "has not actually proven he is an American citizen" and "has an Indonesian passport"

Obama trained ACORN operatives, and he is closely allied to this criminal group which in large part is responsible for the financial crisis

As the falsities of Obama are purged and cleansed of their devious protection we, the voters, should embrace the truth and act accordingly.

guest editorial

Yes We Can!

More than 10,000 people came to se Barack Obama Speak at Abington Highschool on Oct 3rd 2008. After driving 30 Minets of driving, Climing what felt like the worlds largest hill to the school. Wating on a one houer line going through a meddle detector, and wating another houer siting on the blechers and lisaning to Sittisons. Barack Obama fanaly came out and started a "Perfechinal" Conversation. I thought that I might go deaf from the Sound that came out of the crowd when Barack Obama came out from behind the curtens. "We nead to bring home or solgers and end the war in Irag!" He said

O-BA-MA O-BA-MA

The crowd was going crazy! People wher standing on the fild to get aglims at the next presadent of the united stats of america. "Can we make this a better contry?" Barack said
Yes - We - Can !

Mc vs Me

Once upon a time, McCain didn't seem such a bad second choice. Being that he didn't sign on to the whole ugly "toll road to heaven" conservative agenda, and seemed to disdain the pork and the pork pushers, and did some truth speaking to power, and given his military service, would, like most combat experienced soldiers, be willing but wary. With increasing speed over the last few weeks, John McCain has been putting a lot of distance between that old, it-maybe-wouldn't-be-so-horrible-if-he-got-elected-guy, and this new, OMG-what-was-I -thinking?! person. And all of this transformation just kind of rolled out as a completely finished product at the debate last night and, ick. Definitely not the person I want standing up as my proxy, not the voice of my people, not the vision for my future.

VP or Babysitter

I could not be the only one to notice that since nominating her, he can't leave her side. Once in seventh grade my little brother needed me to stick up for him. Since then he's been pretty much able to handle it on his own. Here is the picture I want to see - little johnny poking his head out from behind the big swishy red skirt. My skill is not photoshopping. Can anyone help me out here?