MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE
by Michael Wolraich
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Biden speaking on the right to unionize
By artappraiser on Sun, 02/28/2021 - 9:14pm |
URL:
https://twitter.com/TimothyNoah1/status/1366209694461739010?s=20
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Comments
I would agree that. Freedom of association and all that.
Do companies have the the right to replace union employees with non-union employees?
by Jeff (not verified) on Mon, 03/01/2021 - 11:34am
I don't know the answer to your question, Jeff. But I do have one for you: do you consider yourself a Republican? Just curious, not to debate with you, but because we have a couple of people on this forum who claim that bipartisan agreement is never ever possible on anything and no one who is Republican will ever agree with Biden.
by artappraiser on Mon, 03/01/2021 - 1:05pm
A Republican? No.
Its strange that you couldn't answer the question though. What gives the government the authority to force a business to bargain with its employees?
by Jeff (not verified) on Mon, 03/01/2021 - 4:51pm
The answer is no. Early in FDR's presidency, 1935, the National Labor Rights Act was passed making it illegal to fire employees for joining a union.
by ocean-kat on Mon, 03/01/2021 - 1:41pm
I guess I should have phrased the question a little differently but that's OK. Under what authority does the government have the right to tell a business whom they can and cannot fire?
by Jeff (not verified) on Mon, 03/01/2021 - 4:54pm
If you want to discuss an issue why don't you present your opinions in a logical and coherent manner with your best arguments to support your opinions? Then wait for others to respond or not based on their perceived quality of your arguments and their perceived value of their time? I can only make guesses as to your opinions by implication based on your questions but I don't truly know what you think nor the reasoning behind your opinions because you never explicitly express them. In other words you never enter into a discussion here.
by ocean-kat on Mon, 03/01/2021 - 5:29pm
I thought the question was pretty straightforward:
"Under what authority does the government have the right to tell a business whom they can and cannot fire?"
by Jeff (not verified) on Tue, 03/02/2021 - 9:03am
I like straightforward. I can be straightforward too.
Why would you think the government doesn't have that authority?
by ocean-kat on Tue, 03/02/2021 - 10:03am
I thought my links were straightforward too.
What about reading don't you like?
by PeraclesPlease on Tue, 03/02/2021 - 10:32am
I couldn't find anything in the Constitution that says anything remotely like:
"Congress shall have the power to make hiring and firing decisions for private enterprises"
Or
"Congress shall have the power to force private enterprises into negotiations with its workforce"
Maybe you can point it out.
by Jeff (not verified) on Tue, 03/02/2021 - 11:46am
The Constitution has been evolving with court decisions for 240 years. I gave you 2 links that describe the process in terms of evolving labor law. What don't you understand?
by PeraclesPlease on Tue, 03/02/2021 - 11:51am
It's rather unfair of you to expect him to read your links when you could spend some time writing a blog that summarizes the most important points for him.
by ocean-kat on Tue, 03/02/2021 - 1:40pm
Ideally supply him with a couple contemptuous dismissive lines so he wouldn't have to actually read the summaries.
by PeraclesPlease on Tue, 03/02/2021 - 1:55pm
You appeal to authority is so transparent. I'm not gonna wade through page after page of legalese to try and find where you think the justification is.
I mean really, why not just post the location of the local library.
by Jeff (not verified) on Wed, 03/03/2021 - 8:06am
A simple well-written historical summary vs your repetitive bullshit - you've got nothing, buddy. Legalese? Fuck me, it's basic English. No one's gonna hold your dick on this - might as well trot along.
by PeraclesPlease on Wed, 03/03/2021 - 10:09am
You must be a hoot at parties. Did you miss the 3 o'clock Happy Hour at the Rest Home?
by Jeff (not verified) on Thu, 03/04/2021 - 11:37am
I know what you're saying. All laws should have a specific and explicit constitution provision. I have a similar problem. I couldn't find anything in the Constitution that says anything remotely like.
"Congress shall have the power to regulate the speed of vehicles on public roads."
Maybe you can point it out
by ocean-kat on Tue, 03/02/2021 - 12:16pm
A rundown of labor & employment law over the 1st 200 years
Key changes (court cases signalling greater allowance to legislatures) during & after the New Deal especially, on rights of employees to organize et al, plus difference of public employees)
https://www.encyclopedia.com/politics/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts...
Plus a version that addresses disallowed/unfair union practices.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution-conan/amendment-14/section-1/re...
by PeraclesPlease on Mon, 03/01/2021 - 5:22pm
It sounds like you are asking if collective bargaining can be a thing recognized by law as a binding agreement. The permission allowed to employees is the same permitted to all who would represent others in an action. Business owners collect their powers in a similar way.
What is your beef?
by moat on Mon, 03/01/2021 - 8:46pm
Collective bargaining is different than being able to fire someone for joining a union. In the private sector a business is not forced to bargain with a union. In the public sector an organization is forced to bargain with a union. Two very different things but in both cases the consumer pays the price.
by Jeff (not verified) on Tue, 03/02/2021 - 11:51am
You have it backwards:
Companies have to bargain with unions. Government doesn't necessarily have to. Why don't you just read the links i posted, since none of us are experts in labor law and unions, and you can see how we got from 1783 to now through numerous cases and a gradual shift of the courts after 1900 from being totally pro-business rights to accepting the right of workers to organize.
by PeraclesPlease on Tue, 03/02/2021 - 12:52pm
Sure, they have to bargain with a union but they don't have to reach an agreement with the union. Union goes on strike.
Governments have no choice but to agree or it goes to binding arbitration.
by Jeff (not verified) on Wed, 03/03/2021 - 8:15am
Is that what Reagan did? Think not. Have to refer to the precedents, case law - not that many.
by PeraclesPlease on Wed, 03/03/2021 - 10:16am
If you are referring to the ATC strike then yes Reagan did fire them because the strike was illegal and they refused to return to work.
by Jeff (not verified) on Wed, 03/03/2021 - 11:43am
Majority of state public employees prevented from striking
https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/blogs/stateline/2012/...
Federal employees prevented from striking
by PeraclesPlease on Wed, 03/03/2021 - 12:32pm
Your point?
by Jeff (not verified) on Thu, 03/04/2021 - 11:39am
Your previous comments did not specify this observation:
"Collective bargaining is different than being able to fire someone for joining a union."
I thought you were referring to powers to hire and fire that are worked out in the collective bargaining agreement that a business owner is free to accept or reject as they see fit. If the collective deal is accepted, firing anybody because they consented to the terms of it would be tantamount to reneging on the larger deal.
by moat on Tue, 03/02/2021 - 7:00pm
Collective bargaining hadn't been brought up. Even so, where did the government get the authority to for negotiations between private parties?
by Jeff (not verified) on Wed, 03/03/2021 - 8:23am
Read the effing document, Jeff - i know it's not in cartoon, but you can handle it - have confidence.
by PeraclesPlease on Wed, 03/03/2021 - 11:27am
Collective bargaining is the singular act of forming a union. I am not sure what it means to say it has not been brought up.
The conditions for hiring and firing are always critical conditions in such contracts. I don't understand how your reference to "a clear misuse and misreading of the Interstate Commerce Clause" relates to the simpler confines of contract law.
Please elucidate.
by moat on Sun, 03/07/2021 - 6:59pm
And I don't understand what benefit you guys see in arguing about it theoretically like this.
To me it's like this: like it or not, here's what it looks like Biden is trying to do here: raising minimum wage is just like a bandaid anyhow when the second biggest employer in the country is becoming more of a monopoly middle man everyday based on competing to get ever lower prices to consumers partly by not paying decent wages. If things keep going like that, with fewer and fewer unions to balance things, could end up a disaster with a lot more consumers not being able to buy anything, no matter how cheap. It's the robber baron syndrome of the turn of the 19th-20th century.
AND YES, there is a big difference between public workers unions and these kind and rightly so. The public taxes pay for what those unions want and get.
This, on the other hand, is one FREE MARKET solution to more ballooning profits to billionaires (and capital investors/gamblers) while workers income stagnates or grows lower for years. No government involved. Willing buyer, willing seller of labor. Lessee what happens, whether the playing field levels some or not.
I don't get what arguing about it does, either you like the idea as a policy fix for an economy growing in imbalance every day or you don't. If a person doesn't , might be helpful if the person brought up examples of how unionization hurt the economy. Others could bring up the good old days what society was like when people worked with no unionization at all...
by artappraiser on Sun, 03/07/2021 - 9:23pm
P.S. those who don't like the idea have to admit that if workers income continues to fall, taxes on the wealthy have to go up to pay for public services, can't get blood from a stone. Actually we haven't gotten blood from a stone for quite some time now, lotsa people on both sides of the aisle think Earned Income Credit is a great idea, best thing since sliced bread, that if you are willing to work not only do you not pay any income taxes at all but you often get a refund of the FICA tax money you paid in for your retirement accounts, while you keep 100% of the credit for paying it in. So earned Income Credit basically becomes a government subsidy to companies like Walmart and Amazon so they can pay lower wages.
by artappraiser on Sun, 03/07/2021 - 9:23pm
It should probably be noted that Biden does subtly refer to what is going on in Alabama, and that that is a unionization drive for Amazon workers and that he also mentions "Wall Street" right away. I suspect this is to synch with the general populist drive ala Liz Warren to undo the skew away from middle class wage paying jobs and towards the squeeze of gig work etc. by ever-growing huge monopolies and what they are doing to our economic system right now.
Unionization was an essential part of correcting a similar economic skew in the late 19th and early 20th century, the power basically of "barons" in industries to keep wages low and employment precarious.
Things like minimum wage laws can't do it all, they are an imprecise tool, really, and one of many side effects they might hurt small business starting up.
Unions are one thing that can actually fight big monopoly-type business (tho of course big unions can also grow so powerful that they can be corrupt and corrupting in themselves; we are no longer currently in that situation except in rare cases, rather, there is imbalance in favor big business (who are even know to "squeeze" small businesses who have to work with them, as well as employees, I might add.)
by artappraiser on Mon, 03/01/2021 - 6:09pm
I would just like to point out that this thread started with Jeff agreeing with what Biden said.
Only THEN after that did it turn into nasty arguing with Jeff.
I'd love to see Biden discuss this with Jeff, I am betting it would turn out different.
by artappraiser on Wed, 03/03/2021 - 2:39pm
No, not really - Jeff purported to be agreeing with Biden, but he was actually pushing the line that government can't tell companies who to hire or to deal with unions. He also got the union rules for public and private industry backwards, but refused to look at documentatiin on it, preferring to just get these snippets of misunderstanding with lots of paraphrased conjecture going back and forth and wasting everyone's time.
by PeraclesPlease on Wed, 03/03/2021 - 3:13pm
Let me be clear.
Private sector workers can unionize. It is their right. Private companies should not be forced into negotiating with a union by law ( a clear misuse and misreading of the Interstate Commerce Clause).
Government sector workers can unionize. It is their right. Government entities should not be forced into bargaining with a union. There is plenty of writing on that.
And look to PereclesPlease for the nastiness, he seems to revel in it.
by Jeff (not verified) on Thu, 03/04/2021 - 11:48am
You don't like law or legal precedent or reading. Kind of tuff to have an adult conversation. But you got a packed Supreme Court now 6-3, so maybe they'll "misread" the ICC your way for a copy or decades.
by PeraclesPlease on Thu, 03/04/2021 - 1:19pm
Jeff, if you recall the "nastiness" started when you popped up and insisted Trump had done nothing wrong , and insisted *we* prove the details of the early stages of an evolving investigation (still under the Temp Administration's deflection and obstruction as well).
Instead i pointed out the obvious - as Commander-in-Chief Trump had an obligation to act, and at a minimum he went AWOL, did zilch, which is impeachable.
The other evidence continues to accumulate, including those involved in the Trump party, Alex Jones getting suckered while Trump and Roger Stone vanished, Stone's earlier scheming with the Proud Boys/Oath Keepers... But also, aside from Trump's usual bluster, pretending to have said something he didn't say, and fed to a reporter to repeat long after the fact, the evidence accumulates that he was AWOL, and he purposefully obstructed efforts to defend the Capitol either personally and/or through his unconfirmed acting SecDef. The roles of Bill Barr, Mike Flynn, maybe Bannon, and others in this will continue to dribble out.
Here's another piece from yesterday - again perhaps too long. So it goes - we get blasted for posting tweets, and then when we link longer pieces, critical don't want to read that much.
Maybe the jury summary will clarify in due time.
by PeraclesPlease on Thu, 03/04/2021 - 7:55pm
I said Trump did not incite an insurrection. That's pretty clear now. There is much evidence that the "insurrection" was planned long before his speech.
And you talk of dereliction of duty as an impeachable offense by Trump. Maybe the Democrats in the House should have thought about that and included it as an article of impeachment. They didn't. Its likely he might have been.
Can you impeach a private citizen for conduct they weren't "indicted" on?
ARTICLE 1: INCITEMENT OF INSURRECTION
The Constitution provides that the House of Representatives "shall have the sole Power of Impeachment" and that the President "shall be removed from Office on Impeachment, for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors." Further, section 3 of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution prohibits any person who has "engaged in insurrection or rebellion against" the United States from "hold[ing] and office ... under the United States.' In his conduct while President of the United States — and in violation of his constitutional oath faithfully to execute the office of President of the United States and, to the best of his ability, preserve, provide, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States and in violation of his constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed — Donald John Trump engaged in high Crimes and Misdemeanors by inciting violence against the Government of the United States, in that:
What never ceases to amaze me is how EVERYTHING comes back to Trump for you. One bit of advice for you "...let it go..."
by Jeff (not verified) on Fri, 03/05/2021 - 5:05pm
"There is much evidence that the "insurrection" was planned long before his speech."
Incited by Trump long before that one speech on Jan 6.
by ocean-kat on Fri, 03/05/2021 - 6:15pm
No, Jeff - you wanted to know why the angry words. I wasn't debating whether Democrats ran a good case - they fuck up all the time. I was noting that Trump committed an impeachable offense and should have been impeached and should be prohbited from holding office. Believe it or not, *Republicans* (more than 10) could have impeached him for being AWOL in protecting the Capitol, and *Republicans* could have helped describe these acts that they'd support so that Trump never soils public office again. The Constitution does not prohibit reining in your own party.
So, to win this argument, you have to note something that Trump did to defend the Capitol from a riot he knew to be dangerous (part of his job). If not, you have to admit Trump violated his oath gravely and deserves to be barred from office, whether Dems or Reps did a good job of it or not. Thought experiment & moral evaluation, not an exercise in partisanship. Checkmate?
(Do note that Democrats do not have the luxury of listing all impeachable acts - they are limited by the lack of cooperation by the then Senate majority leader in calling witnesses or actually treating charges seriously, as well as in the 2nd trial the relative freshness of the events and difficulty in proving details of what happened as not all the electronic evidence was properly collated, was still too quick to get info from all the gov addmin witnesses who have evidence of malfeasance, etc. But AWOL? That one's easy. Would Republicans support it? Still doubtful.)
Of course refusing to skim my links ("too long!)" on the evolution of labor law in discussing where the Constitutional right to bargain etc al got delineated (yes, you could skip all the way into the 1900s) didn't exactly raise your reputation of here to discuss the facts. Sure, if it was 1 obvious point in time to point to, but labor gained the right to bargain and strike over a number of hard fought precedents, not a clause in the Bill if Rights. Like so many other rights that we largely consider settled.
by PeraclesPlease on Fri, 03/05/2021 - 8:03pm
Comes back to insurrection, not to Trump per se (though his role in it is certainly still being dug out - but so many others slwho aren't already irrelevant now...) - here's some of the disinfo law enforcement et al have to dredge out -Rudy trying to blame everything on Antifa using a shill who's buttering up the FBI.
Doesn't that even bother you in the least?
by PeraclesPlease on Sat, 03/06/2021 - 6:32am
The people who are not letting go are those GOP who played their part leading up to the conflict on 1/6. From the article:
by moat on Sun, 03/07/2021 - 12:06pm
From a personal perspective, i now have days in a row where i don't think of Trump, and largely don't have to worry about Biden cuz he's sane and will pretty much do the right thing. Today i posted a long Stop the Steal piece, but didn't bother to finish reading - just enough that someone is "documenting the atrocities", and hopefully will be handled by FBI & DoJ, without any untoward influence of the Atty General improperly acting as the President's lawyer. In short i largely have my life back (other personal crises/responsibilities to fill the gap anyway, so nice to be able to better focus w/o the "Daily Krazy 5 things you hadn't planned on gobsmacking you"). So yeah, letting go pretty well. Spent half the day bike riding, what-me-worry style (except where needed to mask up)
by PeraclesPlease on Sun, 03/07/2021 - 12:49pm
Yes, we have passed by the auto crash, time to stop rubbernecking.
Some exploration of the past four years (at least) will be required to understand what needs attention in the future. The Civil Service was being remodeled in the former administration for political purposes. This happened in all of the agencies, not just the most visible ones such as DOJ, EPA, and GSA. It is going to take some time for all of that to be sorted out. New information will come to light in the new administration.
The GOP blitz to restrict voting will require push back on what was already done. Going forward will require not letting all of the past go.
by moat on Sun, 03/07/2021 - 6:07pm
Timothy Noah @ The New Republic on Biden on topic:
by artappraiser on Sun, 03/07/2021 - 8:00pm
Also . . .
Now... checkout the https://livingwage.mit.edu/ calulator...
Here's the New York link: https://livingwage.mit.edu/counties/36061
by The_Old_Duck (not verified) on Sun, 03/07/2021 - 8:12pm
Peracles moved my Prof. Milanovic blog to this thread I really intended to be about understanding immigrant voters and other minority voters who prefer the Republican party ideas to the Democrats way of doing things (and the woke view of the world that they tend to associate with liberal Democrats.)
And actually I think it fits better here. The professor is an economist who studies growing economic inequality worldwide and why it is happening. These questions he is thinking about, these are the type of questions that people like Joe Biden and Liz Warren think about too. So I am copying it here and deleting it there
--------
PROF. MILANOVIC ON WHAT NEEDS TO BE STUDIED ON INEQUALITY & POPULISM, AND INEQUALITY & DISCRIMINATION.
By artappraiser on Sat, 02/27/2021 - 8:50pm |
Professor Branko Milanovic who self-describes this way on his Twitter account 1) Income inequality; 2) Politics; 3) History; 4) Soccer. Author of "Global inequality" and "Capitalism, Alone" (2019). Grad Center CUNY, LSE, Stone Center has some great thought-provoking questions!
[For those who need confirmation, he is described similarly on Wikipedia: a Serbian-American economist. He is most known for his work on income distribution and inequality. Since January 2014, he is a visiting presidential professor....]
Yesterday he tweeted a stream describing what mysteries really needed to be studied by real scholars in his field. The tweets were so interesting that someone called for them to be "unrolled" on a single page. That full text is posted
after the jump.below in a quoteby artappraiser on Sun, 03/07/2021 - 9:40pm
Now go back to topic.
Things like minimum wage laws, earned income credit, even child labor laws, those things are government interfering with a free market economy, laying down some rules and/or incentives for certain kinds of behavior. To someone like Reagan,government wage control and unions of employees paid for by the public are socialist evils, BUT unions of private employees are not!
Collective bargaining between workers and private employers is: FREE FAIR MARKET negotiations. Textbook free market definition as to property: price at which the property would change hands between a willing buyer and a willing seller, neither being under any compulsion to buy or to sell and both having reasonable knowledge of relevant facts. Apply it to buying or selling labor.
In actuality, and I would not be surprised if the Professor wrote on this somewhere: one of the ways unionism can go out of control in the wrong direction is fascistic when they get too much power, not socialistic; they can manipulate governments and elections with their power. So treating Biden's instinct here as some sort of lefty proposal just strikes me as bassackwards. Strong unions here would be a free market alternative to more government regulation.
by artappraiser on Sun, 03/07/2021 - 10:15pm
by artappraiser on Wed, 03/10/2021 - 12:30am
the reality is unionizing is not going to work long term against entities like Amazon for physical labor:
right away, tho, I see a future growth job: robot maintenance and repair
by artappraiser on Tue, 03/16/2021 - 5:26pm
NYT host: Rubio's support for Amazon union part of 'culture war' against tech giant
@ TheHill.com, March 24
This is my favorite kind of coverage at The Hill, where they persue one of their primary missions as a publication, to keep congressional workers apprised of WASSUP WITH THAT? type topics.
by artappraiser on Fri, 03/26/2021 - 5:10pm