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Joel Johannesen

Feature-length columns by BoldColors editor Joel Johannesen

North American labor unions: bad week for union mobs & goons; good week for the rest of us

By (links to archive) • Twitter link or Web site: Joel Johannesen
December 14, 2012  •Leave a Comment

The media reports of the news about the passage of a pro-citizen, pro-Michigan right-to-work law, and of Canada’s new federal union transparency law are fun. Of course by “fun” I mean it’s fun when you can predict with exacting accuracy the tone and substance of news stories even before they’re written.

The liberal-left news media report some things — like right-to-work and union transparency laws — as if they are self-evidently bad things. So when they happen, it’s not just “a bad week,” but in some cases, they’re reported as outright tragedies and examples of Republican or Conservative travesties of “worker justice” (or some other socialist code-term employing the specious suffix “justice.”)

Most make an good attempt at pretending to report objectively, as they are well-practiced at doing this, but their reports are actually just replete with opponents’ views of the laws. Other simply begin with the lament: for example, a Yahoo News blogger begins his article like this:

“It hasn’t been the best of weeks for the labour movement in North America.”

Of course he’s exactly wrong.

To be charitable, I’ll allow that by “labour movement,” the author must really mean those big far-left labor union bosses and their union mob goons, such as those protesting — violently — against the democratic actions passed this past week by our various governments, whom we elected to do exactly what they did. He really should have stuck some of those media scare quotes around the term “labour movement” the way they sometimes do when tendentiously referring to “the war on terror” or to “pro-life,” because it’s actually good news for the real labor movement — that being regular working people and all the other normal citizens alike.

Yes the rest of us — most normal workers, union or not — are the real labor movement. And we are actually popping corks, because it has of course been a great week for people engaged in, you know, “work” and “providing for our families,” and for those of us who don’t enjoy “being forced to join a left-wing political mob simply to get a job,” and “financing left-wing causes unbeknownst to us and often vehemently against our conscience and free will,” and so on.

Of course many in Canada’s journalistic hit squads are themselves encumbered (happily, it seems — they’re a strange lot who seem to embrace their conflicted, Stockholm Syndrome-like union existence) by those very unions whose finances are now going to be subject to more transparency, including the extent to which their union financially support left-wing and far-left wing and sometimes downright Marxist political causes. They were forced to join their union, and forced to pay their dues. And then their dues are used for left-wing politics. And then they report on politics. Assuming they’re not actually affected by some malediction like Stockholm Syndrome or hypocrisy or horribly corrupt journalism, the fact they don’t complain about this tells us a lot. For example, it tells us that they may well embrace this left-wing political advocacy.

When this kind of union transparency enlightenment happened in the United States years ago, countless union bosses and union executives were jailed.

“Bill C-377 is similar to a law unions opposed in the United States that has helped to lead to a stream of union officials being carted off to prison after millions of dollars in union dues disappeared.

Charges ranged from embezzlement to using dues to pay for prostitutes, weddings, vacations, golf tournaments, NFL tickets and other things.”

– Sun News Network

Will that happen in Canada? Well if it does, it might not get much media attention from the mainstream media union members. Again with the fun predictability. Just as the Michigan labor union mob goons, who violently attacked those who dared speak in favor of the changes that their democratically-elected officials were about to pass, did not get much attention if any real attention at all, I expect a full whitewashing and burying of the future news about the perfidy of Canada’s union bosses.

For an example of the selective non-reporting, this episode happened in Michigan, which only conservative bloggers and some transparent and more open-minded folks like me and news media like Sun News in Canada and Fox News in the U.S. did see fit to report (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_F3oev06i0):

 

… And not that I’m trying to make an even better week out of this than it was, this example of selective non-reporting of a horrible, violent union goon mob has a silver lining around it too: as the video goes viral, it further advances the ongoing decline of the liberal-left mainstream media, in favor of the more honest, non-union reporting of citizen bloggers like me.

Normal people remember when the mainstream media tried their hardest to make every tea party rally, at which the people were all nice, patriotic, well-meaning peaceful just-plain-folks, who left their rallies in a cleaner state than when they got there, into an “yet another example” of supposed right-wing or conservative “anger” and “racism” and “thuggery” (all provable lies.) And then they will juxtapose those stories with the selective non-reporting of these actual, overtly violent, left-wing mob protests.

If every week moving forward were going as “bad” as this past one, we’re all going to be in much better shape very soon.

 



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• By (links to archive) • Twitter link or Web site: Joel Johannesen
December 14, 2012 •Leave a Comment

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Here comes Newt. Insert [laughter] [sadness] [excitement] here.

By (links to archive) • Twitter link or Web site: Joel Johannesen
January 31, 2012  •Leave a Comment
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Newt Gingrich is now being sued by the authors of the song “Eye of the Tiger,” for Gingrich’s unauthorized usage of it over the past couple of years during his grand entrances into rooms and halls.

Well I don’t really care about that. I hate the song.  But here’s what I hate even more: politicians who use loud music for their entrances into rooms. They do that to try to stir-up emotions that don’t always really exist amongst the audience. Using loud and supposedly exciting pop music can always be relied on to stir-up the naive and sophomoric among us, or make it appear as though there is a lot of excitement. Personally I find it embarrassing.

When a politician walks into a room, it’s not as a member of a football team or any other team sport, after all. But of course politics is now played by some as nothing more than a team sport or personality-driven psycho-drama. And if that’s the motive, it’s even worse.

It’s not that people shouldn’t get excited. Campaign folks and supporters and candidates hope people do get excited, of course. But (and this is one of the very few times I like the word), it should be an organic experience.  If the candidate is really evoking excitement among his fans, there would be no need to prop it up with BS “excitement” music. If they feel compelled to engage in contrived, phoney stimulants like loud, rousing music, they’re showing me that they are failing, or at least that they fear what might actually be.

Organically, if you’re excited about a candidate, you’re passionate and excited because of the politician’s ideas and the prospect of his winning the election. I would hope it’s not because of some sort of a contrived “vibe” built around him, Obama-style, wherein the “aura” created around him is bigger than his ideas and abilities. We can see where that got us. In case you’re clueless, it got us President Barack Obama.

It’s not the same as playing “Hail to the Chief” when the president of the United States walks in. Yes, that music is possibly meant to drum-up a contrived, phoney emotion (grandeur, power, respect, etc), but actually the feeling is usually already present among people, it is real, and it is mutual; and we all know the militaristic music is played more to respect a grand tradition and protocol, than to try to force people to feel respect for a guy walking onto a stage. Besides, that piece is in the public domain.

I slot-in the Gingrich kind of political event music-playing pseudo-anthem BS with the same annoyance as laugh tracks on those terrible sitcoms on TV. They mostly put laugh tracks in the really truly bad sitcoms  –  the worst ones  –  because the comedy just isn’t funny. It is so not funny that they have to goad people into believing it is using psychological trickery to arouse a group-think, Orwellian, or North Korea-style mentality, and cause idiots to clap like trained seals (or laugh, in this case) because they hear other people laughing, and thus feel “it must be funny!” The idea that the writers and producers actually acknowledge that their work is a failure, yet they go ahead and put it on air, used to shock me. I’m jaded now. Most shows on TV are moronic.

Another example is that idiotic, hyperventilating pseudo-music played throughout the so-called reality series Amazing Race  –  you know, that’s where the teams are simply, calmly boarding an airplane, and yet the background music is blaring and thumping and shrieking away like the racers are all in the middle of fighting a nutty, wild, 9-foot ‘gator in the everglades. On American Idol, whenever they’re setting you up for another one of those pre-audition sympathy plays, where they’re introducing the latest contestant by telling the sob-story of their poor, deprived, bad-health-riddled, or single- mother-raised yesteryear of one of their contestants, the producers feel the need to play that sad-sounding music in the background. It’s as if to signal to the idiotic in the TV audience that “this is sad, so please respond according.” It’s pretty insulting if you think about it. If the story is sad  –  if the story stands on its own  –  people don’t need to be told it is sad, or be goaded into feeling sad with the aid of “sad music.”  That sad music is the laugh track used in reverse.

So I hope the Eye of the Tiger writer wins the law suit, if only to shut that crap up.

Now clap.



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• By (links to archive) • Twitter link or Web site: Joel Johannesen
January 31, 2012 •Leave a Comment
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So-called “honor killings” contrast with “so-called” war on terror.

By (links to archive) • Twitter link or Web site: Joel Johannesen
January 29, 2012  •Leave a Comment
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The quadruple family murder trial of that evil immigrant Muslim threesome Mohammad Shafia and his son and wife, has just concluded today in Canada with a jury’s guilty verdict.

Those three killed four of their own family members  –  three of the four being teens and one being a polygamous wife of Mohammad, in what is hideously called “honor killings” by them and a minority of others within a specific backward segment of the Muslim culture and religion.

As if to ridicule the use of that term “honor killing,” the jury in Kingston, Canada, have ruled that the heinous death of those four women was in fact what we civilized people call “first degree murder,” not “honor killings,” since “honor killing” doesn’t exist in the non-barbaric world we all call Canada. So God bless that jury.

Shafias all found guilty of first-degree murder

Three Afghan-Canadians charged with murdering four relatives in a so-called “honour killing” have been convicted on all charges. …

Aside from the obvious dismay and outrage I have felt over the death of those four Muslim women  –  three of them young girls  –  a couple of things stand out from a crass news analysis point-of-view.

First, it is the fact that throughout the murder trial, most news media have amply demonstrated that they are still afraid of facts when facts don’t adhere to their liberal-left, political-correctness template.  Even the mere mention of the word “Muslim” and “Islamic”, if used in what could possibly be perceived as a possibly negative context, is avoided by bad journalists and the news organizations they work for. And they largely fail to discuss the the poor integration of immigrants into the secular but Judeo-Christian-based values of Canadian culture, and moreover, the abject failure of its multicultural mosaic model as envisioned by past liberals. As such, they are omitting pertinent, important facts. But they don’t care.

The murderers’ religion, Islam, lies at the roots of the Shafia family murders. But just search through the Shafia news stories are you’ll find very few if any references to “Muslim” or “Islam” in the stories. Or, indeed, to “multiculturalism,” which is the other icon of liberalism, especially in Canada, where they value their failed “multicultural mosaic” above all else except their sacred failed healthcare system, and their sacred failed state-owned media. Yet the murders were done, at least in large part, as a result of an importation of the murderer’s Muslim cultural and/or religious beliefs.

It’s yet another example of the idiotic political correctness of the liberal lamestream media in their effort to avoid offending anyone in the Muslim community, or indeed anyone in their politically correct liberal readership base  –  a base which news media has helped nurture with their incessant political correctness.

But today, for once, they got something at least somewhat right. A adjective stood out for me in a particular news story, and that was their use of the adjective “so-called” as applied before the term “honor killing.” Well yay. No mention of “Muslim,” or “Islam,” but at least they used “so-called” correctly.

The Globe and Mail, reporting on the story (see it above), twice referred to the alleged motive behind the killers as it being “so-called” honor killings.  They’re absolutely right in using the phrase “so-called”. We all know what the purpose is, in using that adjective before “honor killings.”  It’s meant to convey that they don’t buy into the claptrap of it being anything like “honor”.  It’s just killing. Murder. In deploying the adjective “so-called,” they are literally putting it out there in their reporting that they don’t agree with the term, even if they don’t explain it, or explain from whence the bogus term “honor killing” is derived.

But their use of “so-called” recalled for me a contrast with its use by the hideously left-wing and rabidly anti-conservative (and anti-Republican, but moreover, rabidly anti-President George W. Bush) state-owned media in Canada, the CBC. The CBC, immediately post-9/11, as soon as Bush embarked on the war on terror, began referring to the war on terror as “the ‘so-called’ war on terror,” in CBC's so-called war on terrornearly all their biased stories about the war on terror. (I pointed out this perfidy a million times in my blogging at the old site ProudToBeCanadian.ca). When the systemically left-wing-biased CBC were in a particularly anti-George W. Bush mood, which was actually every single day, the CBC blithely called it “George Bush’s so-called war on terror.” Seriously. “George Bush’s so-called war on terror.” They are just that arrogant and ridiculous. And deranged.

And of course that’s exemplary of utter bullcrap reporting, on every level, and it draws a bright line under the abject bias at that left-wing network. But we see what they’re doing there  –  at least those of us who are sober do. Obviously there was, and is, nothing “so-called” about the war on terror. At least not in the context of it being phoney or in terms of the term being a repugnant lie, as “honor killing” is. But they abhor it. And they want us to know it.

And of course it wasn’t, and still isn’t, “George Bush’s” war on terror. It was and still is everyone’s war on terror. It’s even President CBC- so-called war on terror Barack Obama’s, despite what he and his Obamamania media (like the CBC) might have led you to believe during their amorous, kiss-up coverage of his so-called “yes we can” election campaign.

So the takeaway is that sometimes an actual example  –  unwitting though it may be  –  is the best way to prove  a point. And so it happens that from that example we can see the contrast between pure, biased idiocy in reporting, and something with a semblance of propriety.

Tangentially, but not coincidentally, the left-wing, state-owned and taxpayer funded CBC is the asinine network which, aside from their terrible news reporting, brought Canadians the idiotic so-called sit-com to TV, called “Little Mosque on the Prairie,” which was nothing more than a terrible, taxpayer-purchased exercise in pro-Muslim and pro-multiculturalism and pro-political correctness propaganda run amok. That’s the way they prefer to “discuss” these things.

It’s nothing better than so-called knowledge and facts, not the real deal, from the news media. But it is what we should expect and watch out for today.

 

P.S. The state-owned CBC has the audacity to write-up a news story today asking its readers, as if there’s some reason for doubt: “Do you agree with the Shafia verdict?”

It’s currently running at about 92% “yes”, but the very idea that they even feel compelled to ask the question is amazing.



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• By (links to archive) • Twitter link or Web site: Joel Johannesen
January 29, 2012 •Leave a Comment
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“Disgusting” would be a good word for it

By (links to archive) • Twitter link or Web site: Joel Johannesen
January 27, 2012  •2 Comments
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I’ve never heard the word “disgusting” used to describe a State of the Union speech until this week. Then again, I’ve never heard a State of the Union that was, in fact, disgusting, until this week.

(See my pre-SOTU blog post, here, in which, ever the optimist, I predicted something merely nearly disgusting).

“Disgusting” wasn’t my word. I am jealous I didn’t think of it at the time and have the balls to call it out during my Tweet-fest of the SOTU speech (see that Tweet-fest here). But I came close, as I show you below. It was Jonah Goldberg’s descriptive word.  He’s the brilliant author of the best seller Liberal Fascism  –  one of the best books I’ve read, and its title is another good turn of phrase in and of itself  –  and it was in his weekly column today, “Obama’s Vision for a Spartan America.” Here’s an excerpt:

President Obama’s State of the Union address was disgusting.

The president began with a moving tribute to the armed forces and their accomplishments. But as he has done many times now, he celebrated martial virtues not to rally support for the military, but to cover himself in glory — he killed Osama bin Laden! — and to convince the American people that they should fall in line and march in lockstep.

He said of the military: “At a time when too many of our institutions have let us down, they exceed all expectations. They’re not consumed with personal ambition. They don’t obsess over their differences. They focus on the mission at hand. They work together. Imagine what we could accomplish if we followed their example. Think about the America within our reach.”

That is disgusting.

What Obama is saying, quite plainly, is that America would be better off if it wasn’t America any longer. He’s making the case not for American exceptionalism, but Spartan exceptionalism. …

In like mind (alas not intellect), and not to toot my own horn (but as Goldberg points out, that’s actually sort of half the point of America and its credo of liberty and individual pursuits, etc), I made the following Tweets among many others during the SOTU speech :

[blackbirdpie url="https://twitter.com/#!/JoelJohannesen/status/162008034703454209"]

[blackbirdpie url="https://twitter.com/#!/JoelJohannesen/status/161997101193117696"]

[blackbirdpie url="https://twitter.com/#!/JoelJohannesen/status/162011124127121408"]

Obama’s vision seems to be a hyper-extension of the old and arguably socialist proverb “it takes a village…” (a proverb purportedly derived from, of all places, Africa), and as not coincidentally used in a book title by his progressive ally or opponent (depending on who you ask, and to what date of reference we are referring), Obama’s current Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton. For Obama it applies not just raising children, though, but to transforming America itself into his vision of America, which, as Goldberg rightly points out, is not “America” at all.

Sticking to pure politics and political campaigns and ideology, which is what Obama was quite wrongly overdoing with his SOTU speech, it’s worth pointing out that former Republican Senator Rick Santorum, a current contender for the GOP presidential candidacy and a conservative, wrote a follow-up book in 2005, meant to rebuke Hillary Clinton’s and compete against it with his own advocacy and the more correct vision of America, called It Takes a Family: Conservatism and the Common Good. In addition to plain good advocacy, it’s also the right forum for it  –  that being the likes of Amazon.com and such common peoples’ marketplaces of ideas, from whence it cannot be imposed on a nation.

There’s nothing wrong with blithely advocating, even using the prestige and the mega-pulpit afforded uniquely to the President of the United States, a political ideology. I might even say it’s tolerable, in a place like America, even if it isn’t congruent with the goals and aspirations as established by, say, a Declaration of Independence, or in a nation’s Constitution, or as envisioned by the Founding Fathers and discussed at length in, say, the Federalist Papers. But to claim that your incongruous national vision is in fact America’s, when it most certainly is not, or even that it is the right vision for America to adopt, when it is most certainly not, is plain wrong. And to do it as the President of the United States, in a State of the Union speech instead of confining it to the sophomoric left-wing rhetoric used in another deceptive, crass Obama election campaign speech, is in fact disgusting.



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January 27, 2012 •2 Comments
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Today is the shortest day of the year; least daylight time for government to screw things up.

By (links to archive) • Twitter link or Web site: Joel Johannesen
December 22, 2011  •1 Comment
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Sadly, they’ll just turn on some lights, and continue to screw things up.

I sure hope the light they use comes from those ugly $40 florescent twisty enviro bulbs that don’t fit into our old standard light fixtures  –  the light fixtures that all have to be replaced, at minimally $40 a pop, now that the government is trying to make all Americans buy and use, by force of law, those stupid $40 florescent twisty enviro bulbs. Forcing, mind you, by way of their big nanny-state government laws and regulations created by them in pursuit of their idiotic political central government planning and social-engineering agendas.

Take Obama.  No I mean take him right out of the White House. That will save about $40 per second.

Today, on the shortest day of the year, his liberal media division turned on their non-florescent TV lights (I’m pretty sure the law doesn’t apply to TV cameras fixed on Obama’s mug), and gazed upon his greatness, then they obediently sat there taking notes, and drank it all in as he read, off his ridiculous teleprompters, a carefully crafted “This is exactly why people get so frustrated with Washington” piece of political bullcrap disguised as something non-partisan and  meaningful.  This, from a president who, as we’ve seen lately in lieu of actually being president and making deals and getting things done  –  like a budget  –  has chosen to spend precious hours in the past few months burning through tons of CO2 and spending countless millions of taxpayer dollars on simply flying around America on Air Force One, campaigning.  Campaigning so he can continue to maintain control over the people and their behavior and and carry on re-arranging America on his left-wing, big government terms, which has already cost Americans, now and well into the future, a huge portion of their earnings.

Seeing hyper-political politicians get up there on the big media-provided bully pulpit, and rambling off a whole lot of hyper-political crap from a teleprompter (because they’re incapable of even speaking about something they’re pretending is so important from their own heart and brain)  –  is actually “exactly why people get so frustrated with Washington.”

In actual fact, not standing on principle, and instead, doing only what’s politically expedient, even after a 2008 campaign promising to end that sort of hyper partisan political culture in Washington –  is “exactly why people get so frustrated with Washington.”

Want more light?  OK: Voting for yet another 11th-hour Band Aid solution to help save this president’s political hide, and to cover-up this president’s and his fellow Democrats’ inadequacies, like not passing a budget in over 900 days, and like this current Band Aid  –  a ridiculous two-month extension of a payroll tax holiday, instead of a full year-long extension, for political expediency  –  is “exactly why people get so frustrated with Washington.”

Not jumping  –  for political reasons  –  on the biggest and most obvious and legitimate “shovel-ready project,” the Keystone pipeline project, which would help end American dependance on unethical oil from lousy foreign sources  –  sources that clearly don’t even like America or Americans … is what Americans are sick and tired of. The Keystone pipeline project is one which would be financed by private investors instead of more so-called “stimulus” cash bilked from current and future American taxpayers and borrowed from communists in China.

Democrats suddenly calling payroll taxes “taxes”  –  instead of what they have been trying to call their Obamacare taxes (“premiums” or “payroll deductions,” for political expediency) just so that they can now dub them a Obama “tax break” (for pure political expediency), is “exactly why people get so frustrated with Washington.”

40-dollar BS banner

Click to see the graphics from WhiteHouse.gov -- the government web site now being used for partisan political gain.

He muttered on and on, this morning, to the useful idiots, about what $40 means to average American workers, in a pure political play. This, after overseeing the blowing, by Democrats, of at least $5 TRILLION of future taxpayers’ cash and essentially making $40 of workers’ cash a mere millisecond’s worth of  interest on what is the Obama debt, for decades to come. To say nothing of the $40 light bulb.

In his now typical hyper political ramble, in which he blasts politicians for being “political” and “partisan,” he summarily blasted only the Republicans  –  not the Democrats, and not himself  — for their  –  not his  –  failure to make a deal.  Failing  –  as he was busy campaigning. Failure to come to an agreement to pass his half-ass but mostly idiotic bill to extend a payroll tax holiday for two months instead of a year, which, even at a year, wouldn’t do much to change the job creation sentiment in America, which is what he says this is about.  He says their failure  –  not his  –  to make a deal and pass his bill will result in Americans losing $40 per paycheck. He’s right about the $40 but wrong about everything else.

This deceptive, hyper-partisan speech, from a guy who has never written a paycheck in his life, and has lived almost entirely off one government or government-subsidized payroll or another, and after his massively media-covered shopping trip yesterday –  which included his blowing $40 on Seasonal Greetings and Festivus crap for his freaking dog, which we were led to believe was in Hawaii on vacation with Michelle, but which he suddenly had at his side with him for a photo-op to make out as if he’s just an average Joe. (Was the dog flown back for the photo-op? That would have cost something more like $4,000.)

Then he was shown blowing another $40 buying three pizzas to take home. To the White House. You know, like the pizzas the First Lady has spent nearly the past three years lecturing us about not eating, and advancing all manner of government policies and mandates and regulations to get pizzas out of our homes and out of our schools.

He is “exactly why people get so frustrated with Washington.”

And this was the shortest day of the year.

 

UPDATE:  I read today where Obama’s vacay in Hawaii will cost taxpayers $4 MILLION.  That’s 100,000 times $40.

.



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• By (links to archive) • Twitter link or Web site: Joel Johannesen
December 22, 2011 •1 Comment
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Public school teachers paid twice hourly wage of private-sector workers

By (links to archive) • Twitter link or Web site: Joel Johannesen
December 15, 2011  •6 Comments
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Today’s lesson is: how do you spell corruption?

According to a Bureau of Labor Statistics report, teachers are now being paid twice as much as private sector workers in the United States.  And government workers generally get nearly 50% more than private-sector workers.

Little red schoolhouses are now but a branch-plant subsidiary of militant labor unionsBut that’s OK because as we know, teachers do twice the work, are twice as important, are twice as valuable to society, are twice as educated, and/or are twice as smart as the rest of us. All of them. Equally. Merit aside. And outcomes notwithstanding.

At a rate of $56.59 per hour in combined wages and benefits, public school teachers enjoy a rate of pay even higher than other state and local government public-sector workers.  The average state and local government public worker gets an average of $40.76 per hour.  Private industry workers get an average $28.24 in wages and benefits.

Makes sense, as public-sector workers are generally about 50% smarter and harder working than shlubs like you and me.

In fact, all of that hilarity aside, many of the public-sector workers should be fired simply on the basis that their attitude seems to be that they’re 50% smarter and better and more put upon than us in every way. Well that and their eyebrow piercings, and those ever so fashionable new tattoos adorning their necks. Of course you can’t fire them though. It’s really only private-sector workers who can be fired if they’re lousy at their jobs or choose to look like irreverent douches.

This arrangement makes sense only in China or Cuba, and only you’re a government official. And/or you have pierced nipples and are an irreverent douche currently occupying Wall Street or a port.

Read more below the ad.


I suspect that this perversion of sanity and logic is a result of a dangerous compound of (1) militant left-wing unions who contribute tons of cash to sympathetic  –  almost always left-wing or so-called “progressive”  –  politicians and political parties, and which also spend tons of their union cash incessantly lobbying way-too-big governments for their ever-higher wages, benefits, and limits on competition.  And (2) the fact that public-sector worker unions are among the biggest and richest “enterprises” in the land, and are the biggest political donors and government lobbyists.

This power is a result of unions’ absurd and some say ill-gotten mandate to legally plunder their forced membership of a portion of their earnings under the guise of maintaining those workers’ “rights” and their interests, but which is now really more to serve the purpose of building and using the union as nothing short of a left-wing political machine which, owing to its massive power, has the ability to elect and continue to corrupt governments.  It has thus become self-sustaining, by design. And the worst part is that it turns its members, whether wittingly or unwittingly, into far-left political lemmings; politic minions and tools whose personal political interests may be in direct opposition to their union’s.

The unions are corrupt, and they’re gaming the system with the aid of compliant (usually left-wing or progressive) politicians in way-too-big governments. And a compliant membership.

The problem is, in fact, “progressive.”  And that’s one spelling of corruption.

Unions such as teachers’ unions get their way  –  and their wages  –  by buying it. Public-sector unions like the teachers’ unions can essentially buy their own bosses  –  the governments  –  who in turn know they don’t even use have to spend their own money to pay (pay back) those who bought them. And many of them  –  the progressives  –  don’t care. In fact many of them have an agenda which exactly equals and is entirely sympathetic to, and which often includes exactly this sort of arrangement.

Private-sector workers, whether unionized or not, cannot buy their own bosses who then use taxpayer cash to pay their employees.

This huge union and its collective bargaining concept results in massive unions buying government, in what is often a monopoly market. In the case of schools, it’s particularly true in the absence of a school voucher or school choice plan. But even then, it’s difficult or impossible for any kind of enterprise, whether academic or not, to compete against their own government and their profligate ways.

It’s perverse. And it’s corrupt.

And that’s why collective bargaining in the public sector should be eliminated.  And it’s partly why I’m a conservative.

It’s also why government should reverse its exponentially increasing size and scope and its growing meddling in what should once again be a fully private-sector-based competitive, free-market economy, where things like merit and value and efficiency are the determinants of wages and benefits and profits, rather than power and pay-offs and systemic corruption between governments and any collective.

Government is the target of so much of this union and corporate lobbying, and so much political campaign cash, and is subject to so much corruption such as this, simply because it has grown to such an extent, and become so pervasive in our daily lives and that of our whole economy.  Government has grown to such a size and scope that it is now so central, so intrusive, and has worked its way into so much of what we do and think, that many of us are completely reliant upon government for our jobs or the success of our businesses  –  and the rest of us are to at least a some extent.

Government now engineers and controls and regulates so much of lives and our businesses and our economy generally, that it practically runs our lives and owns our businesses, or might just as well own them. This is not a sustainable model, witness the Soviet Union, North Korea, and Cuba.

For citizens it leads to servitude. We’re losing our freedom. And the bigger the governments continue to grow, the more this becomes true.

Reduce governments’ growing size and power, and much of the corruption, such as that enjoyed by teachers’ unions, would disappear.

Class dismissed.

Read a summary of the Labor stats here.

.



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An increasingly nervous whiner and a divider versus a calm thinker and problem-solver

By (links to archive) • Twitter link or Web site: Joel Johannesen
October 29, 2011  •Leave a Comment
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For a president who, during his election campaign, styled himself as a uniter, and as one who could uniquely rise above politics and as the one who is above all that nasty Washington partisanship, and who could alone avoid all the Washington lobbyists and special interests, particularly the crony capitalists, etc, Barack Obama is the biggest divider and most spiteful political partisan I have seen in recent U.S. history.  And it’s a matter of historic record that nobody in the history of the world has benefited from more “Wall Street” cash than Obama and his party, to say nothing of all that labor union cash invested in him.  And, sadly, vice versa  –  the coincidence of which I’ll leave for you to measure.

But as Peggy Noonan observes this past week in her Wall Street Journal column,

… there is a broad fear out there that we are coming apart, or rather living through the moment we’ll look back on as the beginning of the Great Coming Apart. Economic crisis, cultural stresses: “Half the country isn’t speaking to the other half,” a moderate Democrat said the other day. She was referring to liberals of her acquaintance who know little of the South and who don’t wish to know of it, who write it off as apart from them, maybe beneath them. …

She’s right, and it goes beyond just that.  Obama speaks of championing certain segments of society against another, in what he seems to now tacitly admit is a class war of his own making.  See this video for an example, in which he doesn’t stop at acknowledging the class war, but takes sides and describes himself as a proud “warrior” for that side.  I do understand the populist sentiment he is trying to attract and appease, but it’s unattractive for a sitting President, not the least one who fancies himself as a “uniter;” as the self-styled post-partisan leader who will preside above petty partisan politics, and more generally, above all the crass political fray.

The prestige of the Presidency goes flying out the window as soon as a president takes sides in this way, for crass, political reasons.

Obama regularly speaks of wealthy Americans as if they are lepers.  He seems to imply that wealth is not something to which one should aspire, but rather something to abhor and disdain and attack.  And perhaps worse, the owners of that wealth are people whose riches “America” should usurp, by way of a new style of government  –  a non-American one in my estimation  –  for redistribution to the other “classes.”

Economic “classes” in America are largely an imaginary construct of far-leftists in America.  I believe it isn’t an American tenet at all.

That’s all bad enough.  But as if buoyed by the cheers from the far-left in his carefully-arranged audience, he then carries on like that about his broader political opponents  –  Republicans  –  as if they officially represent “the rich,” and nothing more.  Which is actually preposterous, contrary to the truth, and worse, he knows it damn well.

He has shown nothing less than full-on dismissal and even contempt for the folks in the tea party movement, which should be nothing if not ironic since the tea party was born of their love of America  — of the U.S. Constitution  –  and their abhorrence for crony capitalism, and for the government bailouts of banks and huge corporations. But alas, as it turns out, it’s not ironic at all, since Obama has shown himself to be chief among them  –  the cronies  –  and a faithful ally of the Washington elite  –  and of corporate, banking, and big union lobbyists.  And the corruption inherent within them.

(By the way, the “capitalists” part of “crony capitalists” is a grave misnomer.  By definition, these people are not free-market capitalists at all, but rather cogs in a liberal fascist wheel.  They’re exactly not capitalists, even if they do thrive in an erstwhile capitalist system).

As if to display his departure from his own 2007-2008 campaign rhetoric (and we now know to be nothing less than specious, deceptive rhetoric) I recall one of his so-called post-partisan “presidential” talks to a group of Americans, wherein he snidely, dismissively, and disparagingly reflected his observations this way: “…and you see folks waving tea bags around…”, as he theatrically played to the audience by wagging an imaginary tea bag around. (http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0409/21870.html)  The implied if obscure negative shot at the privately-owned Fox News Channel  –  the most watched news channel on cable  –  was just an added bonus.

A sneering, judgmental remark like that from a shrill leftist Obamamania media vassal like MSNBC’s Chris Matthews would be par for the course, but what kind of arrogant, and make no mistake, calculated condescension is this, from a president of all the people?Representative Paul Ryan (R)

I don’t recall ever seeing anything like it in my life.

Peggy Noonan alludes to the brilliant Republican Congressman Paul Ryan in her column.  He made some outstanding remarks this past week at the famed Heritage Foundation in a speech in which he addresses the divisions Obama has created, his lack of political wherewithal, his economic failings, and more.  Watch it here –  http://blog.heritage.org/2011/10/26/video-rep-paul-ryan-on-saving-the-american-idea/  —  also embedded below). The speech was aptly called Saving the American Idea: Rejecting Fear, Envy and the Politics of Division.” 

Ryan, unlike Obama, crafts not only his rather acute but mannerly criticisms and proven failings of his political opponent, but calmly offers concrete, well thought-out, and importantly, documented solutions to the problems he outlines.

…Instead of working with us on these common-sense reforms, the President is barnstorming swing states, pushing a divisive message that pits one group of Americans against another on the basis of class.

This just won’t work in America. Class is not a fixed designation in this country. We are an upwardly mobile society with a lot of movement between income groups…

…

Telling Americans they are stuck in their current station in life, that they are victims of circumstances beyond their control, and that government’s role is to help them cope with it – well, that’s not who we are. That’s not what we do.

Our Founding Fathers rejected this mentality. In societies marked by class structure, an elite class made up of rich and powerful patrons supplies the needs of a large client underclass that toils, but cannot own. The unfairness of closed societies is the kindling for class warfare, where the interests of “capital” and “labor” are perpetually in conflict. What one class wins, the other loses. …

There’s simply too much to quote here.  See the same link for the full transcript.

The message is bleak: that Obama is making America weaker, not stronger. Thank God there are elections right around the corner. I hope the tea party folks keep “waving tea bags around” until then.

(http://blog.heritage.org/2011/10/26/video-rep-paul-ryan-on-saving-the-american-idea/)

 



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Communist Party, Nazi Party, Democrats officially support “Occupy” mobs

By (links to archive) • Twitter link or Web site: Joel Johannesen
October 17, 2011  •Leave a Comment

Merry Christmas! I know it’s early.

But it’s an amazing thing for people like me when so many of the things you warn people about come together in such a festival of truth. The talk has been that one of the biggest of the many problems with the “Occupy” mobs is their lack of any cohesive message rather than it being a funky socialist, progressive, labor union, lazy bum, anti-capitalist, anti-bail-out (hello my brothers!), communist, anarchist, professional rioter, hippie, camping tent salesmen, or nutbar whine-fest (or “focused” as Nancy Pelosi beguilingly called it).

But unwittingly, the Occupy mobs have congealed one message and it seems to be this year’s cool Christmas gift.  And maybe because of the horrible Obama economy, it’s like it was designed to be the gift that just keeps on giving. 

That’s American free-enterprise ingenuity for you.

First it was Iranian dictator/leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and brother Hugo Chavez supporting the “Occupy” mobs.  But this past week, it’s Communists and Nazis who are playing Santa. Yes, various species of official and not-so official U.S. socialist and full-on Communist organizations and Nazi organizations have plopped something down the chimney for us.  Just what I always wanted!

But at least it’s better than actually getting plopped on by one of the mob.

Now we can add their endorsement to the early endorsement of President Obama and Democratic House minority leader Nancy Pelosi and most other Democrats and their media and academia divisions. If you’re real quiet and look up on a clear night, I’ll bet you’ll see Kim Jung Il coming on his sleigh (pulled by starving North Korean children)!  It’s like the best Christmas ever because it’s a gift to the nation  –  or the whole world.

A number of bloggers and internet news and opinion sites  –  conservative all  –  have revealed these latest endorsements in the past week. Not Reuters. Not the New York Times.  None of the liberal mainstream media, because most of them demonstrably part of the mob.  And they are embarrassed by the truth.

This linking of socialists and Nazis with these “Occupy” mobs is an especially welcome gift because it’s not me who is giving it, but rather themselves who gave it to us all.  I’m not calling them “Nazis” or “Commies,” they’re doing it themselves!  It’s such a good exhibition of truth for me and all of us.  And I love truth.  (I wanted one in DNC blue but if cowardly yellow is all they got, that will do.)

It’s a gift of learning.  Aside from the overall political alignment issue being exposed, it’s another good teaching moment for all the people on the left who have been fooled  –  brain-washed  —  into thinking that Nazis are somehow more akin to conservatives and Republicans than the far left.  The fact that Nazis  –  including Hitler’s own party  –  are actually national socialists, and are about the furthest thing away from our conservatives and particularly the tea party movement, is a fact that has been purposefully eviscerated from the consciousness of people.  Thanks to “progressive” media and academia and others, it’s now taken as a self-evident truth that when discussing Nazis, you’re really talking about far right folks.  It’s preposterous.  Have I mentioned they are embarrassed by the truth?

That gift in learning is a gift for them as much as for us.  But it’s a gift the left will sneeringly return for cash.

But it’s almost like the gift was given to us just to one-up the gift already given to us by others in the family.  What an abominably terrible call, or what I call a gift given by President Obama, Minority leader Nancy Pelosi (D) and other notable Democrats, as well as all the usual, reliably left-wing and often outright Marxist huge labor union leaders, that they all became united, unwittingly, in publicly endorsing (and in some cases offering more than mere moral support), the extreme leftist “Occupy” mobs.

This, despite the massive number of arrests already made, the violence, the shear stupidity as exhibited by the mobs as captured and displayed all over YouTube, the impossible to dissemble stench, and the overt displays of garbage and filth, the lack of any cohesive message or objective, the overall dark and dismal display of the mobs, and the verbalized threats of extreme, mass violence to come.  Despite it all, these supposed leaders glibly toss their political capital in with that crowd, and happily rushed to endorse what could nominally turn out to be a horribly embarrassing situation not just for them, but for everyone.

“God bless them,” Nancy Pelosi said when asked about the “Occupy” mobs. By way of reference, when speaking to the matter of the comparatively peaceful, positive, and notably clean and arrest-free tea party rallies, Obama, Pelosi, and all the others hurled invective and exhibited nothing but shear contempt for them, using language normally reserved for terrorists and murderers, and insinuating they were manifestly a very bad group of people akin to, well, Nazis.  “They can go straight to Hell,” Democratic congresswoman Maxine Waters belted out.  Steve Cohen, the Tennessee Democrat, directly compared Republicans to Nazis, as did Hollywood’s Rob Reiner, as did a school teacher from Texas.  It’s a meme  –  a narrative  –  those nasty elves are trying to craft out of pure BS.

So let’s get them straight and really understand them: patriotic Americans looking out for America were and are cast as a very bad, nefarious crowd.  Nazi and communist and Iranian leader-endorsed left-wing mobs: “God bless ‘em.”  Got it?

The amazingly brazen extremist left-wing politics inherent in these “Occupy” mobs aside, if that kind of endorsement versus contemptuous judgement of the passive and organized and clean and well-meaning causes of the conservatives and their patriotic “tea party” (just compare the monikers!) isn’t a measure of irresponsible decision-making for national leaders to make, I simply don’t know what is.

Remember that Barack Obama suggested we judge him by those whom he surrounds himself with, and those who surround him and support him and his ideas.  That was a gift he’d take back himself, now, I’m guessing.

But it’s all quite a theme for Christmas 2011.  And I love the festive display.

Truth is the gift I referred to at the beginning. But truth is what is so pernicious to the left. Which is yet another truth being revealed.  It’s really another lesson the left will studiously ignore, but at the length truth will out, as Shakespeare said.

 

LATE UPDATE (Wed Oct 19): North Korea endorses “Occupy” mobs. Headline: “North Korea: Capitalism is fading from history”



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Unions joining anti-bailout mobs? Now we KNOW it’s just more extreme left-wing politics.

By (links to archive) • Twitter link or Web site: Joel Johannesen
October 14, 2011  •Leave a Comment
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We’ve all made fun of the abject hypocrisy of some of the complete idiots in the occupied territories of New York and other cities in America, inasmuch as they are among society’s chief beneficiaries of the taxpayers and their progressive cowardly governments’ myriad social welfare programs. But we’ve simply held our noses (literally) and laughed many of them off, as so many of them could easily (and by numerous YouTube examples) be explained away as being naive, simpletons, and abject ignoramuses.  We’ve seen example after example of many of them who, if they didn’t drop out of sixth grade, were taught (mostly “art” and “social justice” classes), extremely badly, in our failed taxpayer-funded public schools and colleges, by so many militant, unionized, left-wing ideologues. All funded by taxpayers.

But for huge labor unions  –  the direct beneficiaries of most of all of that ongoing government “stimulus” (ha, FAIL) and ongoing taxpayer bailout cash  –  to join those mobs?  Well now that’s just preposterous.  Now they’re mocking us.  They’re thumbing their noses at us all.  It’s actually insulting.

I can easily take all those ludicrous, horrid insults from liberals, progressives, and socialists in the media and as robotically regurgitated by useful idiots in the general public as they hurl them at our tea party and tea party rallies, because their insults and reports have been and are so demonstrably false.  I think they actually hurt their own cause and help ours, with each passing demonstration of their intolerance and unintelligent non-debate.  But this is seriously hideous.

There is at least a level of consistency here:  much like the progressive governments they elect, they think you’re all complete idiots.

Let’s talk about “greed.”  Well let’s not even, because that just makes them look even sillier, if that’s even possible.

This is betraying itself as nothing but an organized political distraction designed to redirect our attention away from what has now been proven, once yet again, to be the another example of a complete failure of successive progressive governments, and the Keynesian, progressive government policies they have demanded be enacted over the years.  And not just since Obama, but mostly, since I think he was the impetus for this mob-fest.  Regular voters were lured by him and his leftist mobs to buy into his bogus rhetoric.  They invested so much in him, and relied on him to prove their grand, Utopian socialist theories would work.  Again: FAIL.  Their frustration is being directed at straw men and fallacies now. They can’t look themselves in the mirror.

Indeed, the excuse-maker in chief, President Barack Obama, has endorsed this mob-fest.  As have his cohorts Nancy Pelosi, and Michael Moore, and so many other students of the left-wing radicalism as taught by radical militants like Van Jones and Cloward–Piven. And Marx.

Today I read where the militant and extremely left-wing political union, the Canadian Auto Workers Union, is throwing its weight behind the planned Canadian mob protests staring today and this weekend in various cities in Canada.

The CAW and its Marxist-sounding boss Ken Lewenza have previously blamed “the right wingers” for all of Canada and the world’s economic woes, leading my wife and I to buy a car that we were sure was not made by the CAW, last time we bought a new car. (We studied the matter for a few minutes, and bought a Ford Escape  –  Ford because they didn’t get a government bailout  –  and an Escape because it wasn’t built in Canada by the militant left-wing political labor union, the CAW, but rather by the UAW in Kansas City.)

But alas the UAW has also endorsed the left-wing mob.  Japanese cars made by non-union labor (Toyota, for example) are sure to make our next car-buying short list.  Hopefully built in a right-to-work state.

One of the all too many inconvenient truths is that unions are, themselves, among the biggest and most powerful businesses in North America, to say nothing of them being among the most powerful special interest groups, and richest, biggest lobbyists in Washington. And the most frequent guests at the Obama White House. And the biggest funders of Obama and the Democrats.  And unions and their members are the direct beneficiaries of a huge percentage of all the government bailouts.

This is known as crony capitalism run amok, though it barely adheres to any notion of capitalism at all. It’s really known as liberal fascism, and insanity.

More?  And those huge unions totally depend for their livelihoods on “rich” investors, and banks, and all the big huge financial institutions which are the rent-paying tenants and owners of many of those building on the Wall Street the “occupiers” have taken over and literally crapped on.  That all goes right over the heads of some of these naive hypocrites. Or at least they pretend it does, in many cases (a point which becomes embarrassingly obvious when you confront them directly with these facts.  You’ve never seen anybody change the subject, hurl invective at you, and then tootle off, faster in your life).

People  –  including unions members  –  should be protesting against the massive labor unions who benefited from the massive government bailouts.  They’re a huge part of the problem.  Progressive governments are at least half the problem.  That “1%”  –  the rich people the mobs so resent, represent almost exactly 1% of the problem.  And I’d bet a thousand dollars they mostly fund and vote Democrat  –  which circles around again to them being the problem.

The left-wing mobs’ object of derision should really be themselves  — unions and the progressive governments they elected and funded, and all the lazy bums and the people who made stupid and irrational decisions in their lives, like taking “art” and “sociology” in taxpayer-funded colleges.  They should really have an “Occupy Mirrors” protest, and hold mirrors in front of their faces, right in front of the Obama White House, and at all government and union offices.



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Obama: Steve Jobs not self-made at all. Government deserves credit for Steve Jobs.

By (links to archive) • Twitter link or Web site: Joel Johannesen
October 12, 2011  •Leave a Comment
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The “Occupy” mob in L.A. demands a “workers’ revolution” and “socialism” and suggests violence is the only way to those ends. The ends being fundamentally transforming America.  Into a socialist state where everybody ends up equal.  The “Occupy” crowd then cheers and claps.

Of course the media won’t pick up on that truth, especially after Democrats and Nancy Pelosi and even President Barack Obama have thrown their hat in with that lot (though they made no secret of their utter contempt for the tea party folks).  So I’ll help with the truth with the aid of this capitalist tool called YouTube:

Meanwhile today, President Obama explained to the little people that none of us can make anything of ourselves without the great, benevolent government and all of its nanny-state aids and welfare and supports, and “investments.”  And of course in order to fix America and allow people to make it, more government “investment” is now needed, on account of America failing in that regard, so far, see?

In that way, he sounds much like a Chinese communist leader to me.

Which somehow led to his remarks about Steve Jobs.

Specifically, and not to make a cheap partisan and ideological political point out of Steve Jobs’ death, but oh wait, Obama went ahead and did precisely that today (I couldn’t have done it without you, government!):

Obama: “None Of Us Make It On Our Own” Without Government Help

“…But none of us make it on our own. Somebody — an outstanding entrepreneur like a Steve Jobs — somewhere along the line he had a teacher who helped inspire him. All those great Internet businesses wouldn’t have succeeded unless somebody had invested in the government research that helped to create the Internet. We don’t succeed on our own. We succeed because this country has, in previous generations, made investments that allow all of us to succeed.”

See, Jobs’ was not so great after all.  What’s really great is government, according to Obama and not a few like-minded Steve Jobs with Bill Gates“Occupy” protesters from L.A. to New York.  All those government welfare and support schemes.  Government “investments.”  “Stimulus.”  And if I understand past rhetoric and his union lobbyist support correctly, left-wing labor unions.

Besides, Steve Jobs never paid his “fair share.”  Am I right Mr. President?  Ripped us off.  The bum.

And here you thought the great Steve Jobs was, well, great. And what we used to able to call “self-made.”  No.  That’s so 1988.  No, according to Obama, even Steve Jobs can’t have made it on his own.  In Obama’s amazing spin-room of a noggin, even Steve Jobs made it only thanks to government and government “investments.”

That’s some tribute to the individual American inventiveness and spirit and drive and entrepreneurship and capitalism which built America; and to the freedom from government contained within a unique constitution which actually helped create an America as an exceptional nation  –  and as the richest and most powerful nation in history.

Drawing an  inference that extends directly from government via public school and public college teachers, across and up the board to the successful Steve Jobs and his company Apple, and then across to all the myriad corporate success that was spawned from that   –  is just about the most illogical bit of nonsense  that I’ve heard in a very long time.  And this claptrap is from Barack Obama, a guy liberals call “brilliant.”

Never mind that Jobs quit college after just one semester. And since Obama brought up what helped inspire him (by which Obama means government in one or another of its forms), Steve jobs  — capitalist college drop-out and massive success story  — is about as big an inspiration, to millions of children and adults, as ever there could be, short of Superman (for whom I presume we should thank unionized public school art teachers).

And did Jobs think anything like Obama?  No.

“The unions are the worst thing that ever happened to education because it’s not a meritocracy. It turns into a bureaucracy, which is exactly what has happened. The teachers can’t teach and administrators run the place and nobody can be fired. It’s terrible.”

– Steve Jobs, 1995

Turns out Jobs also said what was needed today in education was competition.  Yes, he thought the state-run schools are now a state-run monopoly and, therefore, they’re failing.  He also touted a voucher program, so if parents who are forced to pay taxes for a failing schools system run by the state which doesn’t meet their needs, and they want to send kids to a private school instead, they could afford to.

“I believe very strongly that if the country gave each parent a voucher for forty-four hundred dollars that they could only spend at any accredited school several things would happen. Number one schools would start marketing themselves like crazy to get students. Secondly, I think you’d see a lot of new schools starting. I’ve suggested as an example, if you go to Stanford Business School, they have a public policy track; they could start a school administrator track. You could get a bunch of people coming out of college tying up with someone out of the business school, they could be starting their own school. You could have twenty-five year old students out of college, very idealistic, full of energy instead of starting a Silicon Valley company, they’d start a school. I believe that they would do far better than any of our public schools would. The third thing you’d see is I believe, is the quality of schools again, just in a competitive marketplace, start to rise. Some of the schools would go broke. Alot of the public schools would go broke. There’s no question about it. It would be rather painful for the first several years…”

Obama should have done his homework before making what I think is a travesty of truth, and of logic, and of the greatness of America as we have seen through the life and success story of Steve Jobs.

What a mindset for a U.S. president, in which he thinks there are no more self-made people, and it’s only thanks to government and its benevolent programs and controls and social engineering and welfare schemes that the Steve Jobs of the world arise.  To believe that, one has to also think America is, then, essentially finished as an idea.  The entire concept of America is left bereft of its exceptional meaning.

But this really is the mindset of Barack Obama, who like the socialists in L.A., seek to “fundamentally transform America.”  And those last words are Barack Obama’s, circa 2008.

Jobs saw it differently. And I like his words better than Obama’s:

“I’m a very big believer in equal opportunity as opposed to equal outcome. I don’t believe in equal outcome because unfortunately life’s not like that.”

Just so.



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