This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis. It was originally published at The Conversation.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=1474588
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=1474588
At a first glance, then, we’re talking about tens of millions in cost for organizing programs, hundreds of millions potentially available.
But the big questions will likely be about use of connections and social media – if the “union bump” for nonunion workers becomes a widely-understood thing, then a lot of people may start accepting the idea of going for the full experience. (It’s a little like all of the software companies that offer free versions of their apps with nags to convert to paid.)
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"Don’t mourn, organize." – Joe Hill
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If they don’t pay union dues, they shouldn’t get the benefits of unionism.
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On top of the intense corporate resistance from the likes of Tesla CEO Elon Musk,
Hopefully, the Biden NLRB will bring action against that SOB when he fires people for organizing.
I hope the UAW can force unions down his throat in every plant he owns.
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“And what they couldn’t kill went on to organize”
Joan Baez
“I dreamed I saw Joe Hill”
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While that might sound reasonable, it’s counterproductive in union organizing. Unions are about solidarity and splitting the workforce into unionized “haves” and non-unionized “have nots” is the failed strategy under previous UAW leadership (which is why Fain pushed to eliminate the different tiers of workers).
Yes, the law in many states allows some workers to get the benefits of unionization without paying the appropriate level of fees (freeriding). However, the solution is to repeal those misnamed “right-to-work” laws, not boot workers from unionization benefits.
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Sorry about this - another long Copy-n-Paste job, but y’all really need to read Last Week Right Now. It’s too good to pass up.
Vape Pens & Poop Maps & Pie, Oh My!
Probably the most disappointing thing about the Trump era is the way it proves we’ll never figure out time travel. Think about it, you wouldn’t’ve been able to step outside for a gas station hot dog in 2016 without encountering a dozen wild-eyed dudes in Pod Save America t-shirts raving “TELL HILLARY TO SHORE UP THE BLUE WALL!”
Well, over the objections of House Republican leadership, His Royal Highness Count George Santos VIII was finally forcibly ushered into the reality television show contestant phase of his life, ahead of what’s expected to be a lucrative cigarette smuggling period in federal prison.
112 Republicans voted to keep Georgie (and his vote) around, worried that establishing a precedent whereby excessive criminality disqualifies one from public office would reduce their party to Mitt Romney’s car elevator steward and perhaps a Sununu or two.
It’s a reasonable concern, given that Students for Trump founder Ryan Fournier got arrested for pistol-whipping his girlfriend, and two county-level Arizona Republican officials were charged with election interference felonies, and they’re still finding more Capitol rioters to arrest, and oh yeah, don’t forget Florida GOP Chair Christian Ziegler, I think he deserves a whole new paragraph, don’t you?
Christian, you see, finds himself under investigation. For sexual battery. Of a woman who “had been involved in a longstanding consensual three-way sexual relationship” with Ziegler and his wife, Bridget. Why yes, the very same Bridget Ziegler who co-founded the anti-LGBTQ hate group Moms for Liberty, funny you should mention it. But surely it was some other Bridget Ziegler, one who wasn’t having sex with a woman, who campaigned so vigorously for Florida’s odious “Don’t Say Gay” legislation…surely.
Anyway, I don’t anticipate anyone hanging a “no crooks allowed” sign on the Republican treehouse anytime soon. Which is good news for anybody who’s been, say, found liable for fraud and sexual assault, but still wants a major political party’s presidential nomination.
Indeed, ranting like Hitler and terrorizing judges’ wives only further endears Off-Brand Orbán to his increasingly deranged followers. They went wild when he reminded them of his intention to repeal the ACA, because ultimately, health care only delays the faithful’s ascent to that great Trump Hotel in the sky, where every man is assigned 72 piss hookers and a golden toilet of his very own.
Outside of provoking the odd death threat, Donnie Dotard’s life remains largely a parade of legal setbacks: gag orders, collapsing defenses, stuff like that. So I understand the need to celebrate every W, however meager, I truly do…but I guess what I’m asking is, how many victory laps can one man take for passing a cognitive test? Even if it is, objectively, one of the top ten achievements of his life, only slightly behind attaining the American presidency, but significantly ahead of fathering Eric?
Well, Nikki Haley still isn’t gonna be the Republican nominee, but at least she’s setting a bunch of Koch network money on fire, which is the closest thing to public service she’s ever achieved.
On the other hand, Ronnie DiSappointus may’ve finally righted the ship with…OPERATION: POOP MAP. In these tumultuous times, the American public wants that 3 AM phone call taken by a dude who carries a poop map with him at all times, just in case it turns out t’be somebody calling the White House to ask “say, where can I get some poop?”
Not even Rich Lowry is surprised anymore that this goon can’t navigate a masturbatory, 90-minute vanity debate on Fox without beclowning himself. Even with Hannity lobbing softball after softball, ignoring the taxpayer-funded, six-figure, do-nothing contracts for cronies, and the corpses piling up in the hallway outside the Governor’s office, Ron-Ron’s bat somehow unerringly found his own groin with every swing.
‘Twould appear Tommy Tuberville’s one-doofus war on military readiness is drawing to its close, almost certainly because Joni Ernst keeps DMing him hog castration videos. Coach Pencildick claims he’ll focus going forward on screening out just the “woke” officers, to be determined by conducting home and office raids in search of books of poetry.
Speaking of senatorial dumbasses, Mike Lee apparently believes the FBI issues badges in vape pen form nowadays, so dastardly deep state false flaggers can enjoy a lil’ mango-flavored nicotine infusion whilst entrapping Proud Boys, I guess.
James Comer recognized Hunter Biden’s offer to testify publicly before his committee as a trap, telling Newsmax, “the Biden crime family knows I am completely incapable of getting through a hearing without gaveling my own ballsack flat, and anyway, I’d much rather redact all the parts where Dan Goldman humiliates me.”
Sorry, haters, Elon Musk is thoroughly enjoying his doltpilled descent into anti-Semitism, and no amount of lost advertising revenue can “blackmail” him back to reality or decency. I see he finally found his way to pizzagate, so expect him to buy Comet Ping Pong in order to dig out that stubbornly nonexistent basement and stage a mad, manic SEE?!?!? media event with Greenwald and Taibbi.
Fox Nooz got all excited because they thought they had a Thanksgiving terrorist bombing to blame on Joe Biden, but Kurt Villani went and ruined it by turning out to be a regular guy having a dumb ol’ car accident. Still, they were ultimately able to give thanks, for an audience that will go right on blindly trusting them, even after they got caught in yet another reckless lie.
My own Thanksgiving was lovely, incidentally, filled with traditional liberal America-despising rituals: we crucified a gas stove, and then we hated a pie for a couple hours.
I guess Liz Cheney wrote a whole book about the fascism-enabling cravenness of her former Republican colleagues. A fertile field, certainly. Seems Kevin McCarthy sold American democracy out because the guy who tried to end it forever…wasn’t eating. Aw. Poor tyrant. Had to leave office just because the people voted him out. Breaks your heart, doesn’t it?
Quivering with carnal rage, Jesse Watters denounced Joe Biden’s lewd, lascivious, straw-sucking milkshake consumption. “The way a man’s lips purse, the way your fingers clasp on it,” Watters trembled, “WHY DOES IT MAKE ME FEEL SUCH PLEASURE AND SUCH PAIN?!?” In six weeks or so, when they discover Jesse in front of the scrotum-tanning machine, dead from autoerotic asphyxiation, with paper drinking straws clamped to his nipples, don’t say I didn’t warn ya.
By the way, I’m in the market for a medium, to put me in contact with the spirits of John Frankenheimer and Luis Buñuel, ideally at the same time, because the world deserves a film based on the “In the world of sexual fetishes, crossing the political aisle is a kink” article in WaPo this week.
Oh, and Georgia GOP district chair Kandiss Taylor still thinks globes are a conspiracy to trick you into thinking the world is round, if you were wondering. Even if you weren’t.
Sigh…gotta admit, I already miss George Santos. I hope the promised revenge tour materializes.
If not, I suppose I shall have to console myself with beer. As ever, you can support this blog by donating to the beer fund, (now accepting PayPal and Venmo!) by joining the email list at showercapblog.com, or by following @john_luzar on the Hellsite Formerly Known as Twitter. One way or another, please stay safe out there amidst the shitstorm, friend.
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Ah George, we hardly knew you. Bing Videos
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I attended grade school in the 70s and I distinctly remember an entire chapter in one of my history books about labor unions in the United States. How the steel companies and especially Ford hired goon squads to murder union organizers during the 1920s and 30s. There was even a break out section highlighting Samuel Gompers. Who under the age of 60 even knows who the fuck Gompers was? I say this as an example of just how effectively the moneyed classes and their leashed bitches in Congress and in every statehouse have silently rewritten history so the average dumbass thinks anything he gets from his employer is due to their shining imperial magnificence and concern for their workers. They’ve managed to create now 3 generations of imbeciles who have no fucking idea of the lives that were sacrificed so they can have weekends off, or not be worked to death. Instead the same companies that used to regularly murder their forebears have convinced them that “they’re family.” Just one reason why people are too fucking stupid to see who’s really fucking them over.
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C’mon. You cannot be that naive. This is not “either/or” for Musk. Under pressure to unionize, Musk would simply close all his US factories and move production to countries more amenable to his demands.
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Way to go UAW! Hopefully you will be as successful with the Japanese companies and strike (pun intended) a major blow against so-called “right to work” laws. “Right to work” is one of the most deceptive terms there is. It’s really a right of anti-union employers to confuse workers about their rights and to torpedo unionization drives. It’s a shame our US Labor Department and the Labor Relations Board are so impotent; otherwise they would bring suits to the SCOTUS to declare right to work laws as unconstitutional
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That was some good stuff from that blog. Regarding this one:
Well, Nikki Haley still isn’t gonna be the Republican nominee, but at least she’s setting a bunch of Koch network money on fire, which is the closest thing to public service she’s ever achieved.
I don’t think we should sleep on her (eww), because if Trump croaks tomorrow, there will be someone running against Biden, and it could be her.
I always thought she was too female and too not-quite-White with a funny name to be acceptable to Republican voters, but her recent rise in the polls against Mini-Me DeSantis and Christie the Outlaw Jersey Whale must mean something.
With Koch money behind her, Haley can afford to stay in the race, praying to Waheguru that a stroke or a criminal conviction takes Trump off the stage before the GOP convention next July.
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The cost to do that would be enormous. He’d be cutting off his nose to spite his face.
Of course, he’s not the most stable person…
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The UAW had best work for membership while they are on a roll, and the GOP has not yet found a legislative monkey wrench to throw at them.
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Yeah, I can’t imagine Musk pulling his business ventures out of the US and heading offshore.
SpaceX is deep in bed with NASA and the US military. No other country will provide that level of subsidized funding while giving him free rein for projects like Starship. As for Xhitter, he has a looser regulatory environment here than he’d have in the UK or many other countries. Tesla is a prestige brand overseas because it’s made in America.
That said, he could be so unstable or so baked on a given night that he just says Fuckit and pulls up stakes, but it would destroy those companies. I’m afraid we’re stuck with him.
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Does Elise Stefanik do anything except endorse crooks, wack-jobs, and losers all day long?
ETA: In all fairness, she is the chair of the HRC, so she may not have much else to work with.
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