Unions

I Hope The NYPD Temper Tantrum Lasts

January 4, 2015 by Bitchy

So I came across a story in the (I know, I know) NY Post a few days ago. They took a look at police activity during the course of the week that Pat Lynch’s promised a "slow down" of cops doing their damned jobs. They looked at the week of December 22 through December 29th and compared a few statistics to the same week last year. Here are the things they looked at:

Overall arrests – down by 66%
Traffic citations down by 94%
Summonses for low-level offenses (public drinking, urination, etc) down by 94%
Parking violations down by 92%
Drug arrests down by 84%

When asked what the fuck they thought they were doing, police officials cited "safety concerns" as the reason for the pseudo strike. Safety concerns? While writing parking tickets? Are you worried about accidentally slipping on a discarded bagel, falling on your pen and slicing open your jugular vein?

Well I say BRAVO! I hope they can keep this up for another 3 months or so. Why? I have a few reasons.

For one thing, I’m not interested in wasting resources on drug arrests. I’d prefer that our cops fight actual crime, rather than clogging up the court system with this nonsense. Each time they arrest someone for something like drugs or selling loosie cigarettes, they get to spend half of a shift booking that wanton criminal. So basically, we end up with a cop on the clock, basically standing there with his dick in his hand for 4 hours. That doesn’t really seem to me like it serves the greater good.

Another good thing to come out of all of this is that these bullshit offenses that are in place to generate revenue, rather than keep our city orderly are largely hurting low income people who end up sitting in jail because they can’t afford to bail out. I say great! I don’t need 3/4 of our jail population being comprised of people who couldn’t raise $100 bail for a public drinking offense.

But my biggest reason for wanting this to continue is that it will debunk the unicorn known as "broken windows policing" that some obnoxious mayors had embraced in the past. The purely unproven theory is that if you crack down on low level criminals, you will deter them from becoming more serious, career criminals. Bullshit. From 2001 – 2010, when New York City was broken-stop-and-frisk-windowing, violent crime dropped by 29%. That sounds awesome, only if you don’t think critically and ask for context. If you do a little research, you’ll find out that during that same period of time, big cities that weren’t harassing people suspected of being low level offenders were experiencing much larger declines in violent crime.

Los Angeles – 59% drop
New Orleans – 56% drop
Dallas 49% drop
Baltimore (yeah, the one from The Wire) 37% drop

One piece of data without context is meaningless but the people that want to manipulate you know that most people will take one data point and run with that in order to create a whole ideology behind it. Three months of this pseudo strike should be enough to debunk the theory of broken windows policing, or at least make it seriously questionable. Violent crime will continue to drop. Why am I so sure? Because it’s been dropping steadily all across the country for 20 years now. Regardless of the policing practices, and independent of reductions or increases in police force size, crime is going down. I have no reason to believe that’s going to change. If I’m right, we will not only debunk this vehicle for acceptable racist practices, but we can start looking at how many cops are too many cops in New York City.

I have to wonder if the revenue they’re generating by writing these pointless tickets and making these petty arrests can’t be offset by shedding some salaries, pensions, and civil suit settlements through a reduction in force. So you keep up the temper tantrum, NYPD. Keep disrespecting the mayor and stay on strike while still cashing your paychecks while you can because this childishness may come back to bite you in the ass. And then perhaps you’ll see your fearless leader, Pat Lynch for the small minded idiot that he really is.

Harris v Quinn Is Going To Be A Shitty SCOTUS Decision I Welcome

June 30, 2014 by Bitchy

So unions and many democrats are freaking out about today’s impending Harris v Quinn decision from the Supreme Court. Let me give you a little bit of detail about the case before I get to my point. This case is about public sector unions, which ultimately means it will be about all unions. The plaintiff, Pamela Harris has a son who needs ongoing medical care, which she provides for him. In order for her to be able to do this, she receives Medicaid funds and is therefore considered a home health care worker, employed by the state of Illinois. At some point, home health care workers voted to unionize so they’re represented by SEIU Healthcare Illinois-Indiana. Since the majority of them voted to unionize, they are all members of the union and must therefore pay union dues. Back in 1977, the Supreme Court issued a decision on union dues (I’m not going to do a deep dive into this case, but it’s Abood v Detroit Board of Education is you want to look it up). The court basically said that all public workers who are represented by the union must pay the fees associated with bargaining for them minus the cost of political activity.

So this ~~twit~~ shill Harris sued because she doesn’t want to pay her fair share. Why do I call her a twit? Before the union, wages in IL for a state employed home health care worker was $7.00 per hour. The union negotiated that salary up to $11.65 per hour now, with a scheduled increase to $13.00 per hour in December. Calling her a twit is clearly more flattering than she deserves, but I digress.

So now the court is basically going to redecide union dues. Remember, this was already decided so we’re looking at a major act of judicial activism here. Anyway the unions are freaking out because if the court decides that the twit doesn’t have to pay her fair share, they’re basically only get dues from their members on a voluntary basis. Unions represent both members and nonmembers so if people are allowed to opt out of paying their dues, they basically get all of the work that a union does to negotiate their wages for free. This is referred to as freeloading. I refer to it as twittery because if the union falls apart, the twit’s wages start to go back down immediately. Nonetheless, people are stupid and short sided and significant percentage of them will choose to get something for nothing, until it all falls apart and they’re left with nothing.

Unions are freaking out because this could effectively end unions. Democrats are freaking out because unions are the still biggest known (remember, our elections are mostly funded in the dark now) contributors to the democratic party.

I’m not freaking out. Not because I think the decision will be the right one, and not because I don’t think this will end unions. It will likely be the wrong decision and if it is, it will end unions. I’m not freaking out because when history repeats, the results always come out the way they did the first time around. Since a large percentage of humans are dullards who aren’t interested in history, (cause what could history possibly have to do with them?) we repeat history over and over again. Most people don’t realize that they have weekends off because of unions. They don’t realize that without unions, they would be working fourteen hour days side by side with their kids. Some dipshits believe they’re above exploitation because they’re "educated". Never mind the fact that the libertarian Paypal founder (Peter Thiel) and douchebag is trying to build a slave labor barge full of dirt cheap foreign software developers far enough off the coast of San Francisco, that he’s not subject to compliance with US labor laws. But that’s not going to affect "educated" people cause, free market!

Things are definitely going to go to shit for workers if unions disappear. But they’re slowly going to shit now as unions are shrinking. Disappearing them is just going to bring us to the end game of worker misery a little faster. So here’s how it’s going to go; unions disappear, workers’ already flat wages start to drop precipitously, democrats turn to corporations for money.

Democrats will definitely get that money. They’re getting it now. They’ve been getting it in ever increasing amounts since Bill Clinton put up the "for rent" sign at democratic national headquarters. That’s why it’s been harder and harder to tell democrats apart from republicans over the past couple of decades. Once the democratic party becomes 100% reliant on corporations to fund them (as republicans have been for four decades), their constituency will shrink dramatically to include only; GE, Verizon, Goldman Sachs, Lockheed Martin, Monsanto, and Pfizer. Notice how you’re conspicuously missing from that list? That’s because your only lobbyist, unions will be gone. Unions are your lobbyist whether you belong to one or not. Study after study shows that wages go up across the board in places where unions are strong.

Once they’re dismantled, you go back to being completely powerless. There will be no need for libertarian douchebag billionaires to invest in building slave barges because software developers in San Francisco city limits can look forward to being treated to the same conditions that a Bangladeshi garment workers enjoy now, but with a view of the Golden Gate bridge.

So why am I not worried about this decision going wrong? Because history repeats in the same way over and over again. We the people have been slowly losing our power and our voices since about 1980. It’s clear which way the pendulum of history is headed. We have about the same level of income inequality that we had in the 1920s. Thanks to the Supreme Court and decisions like McCutcheon v FEC and Citizen’s United, the government serves corporations almost exclusively (as they did in the 1920s). We are slowly digressing back to a time when conditions for the average American were miserable. I say we should speed that process up.

Americans are increasingly becoming aware that something is horribly wrong in America. This is why we’re seeing both parties fracture into different factions. Republicans have their teabaggers and their libertarians pushing up against the corporatists. Democrats have their Clinton, Booker corporatists vs the Warren, Grayson, Sanders populists. Right now, we’re at the stage of "horribly wrong" where people can be manipulated to act against their own self interest. Libertarians are clinging on to their unicorns harder than ever, and teabaggers have been duped into becoming foot soldiers for the Koch brothers. Democrats are actually excited about the possibility of Hillary Clinton saving the day, despite the quarter million dollar speaking fees she’s getting from Goldman Sachs.

This shitty decision from the Supreme Court is going to wake up the liberals. More and more of us have moved away from the democratic party and vehemently supported "socialist" candidates like Bill de Blasio and Elizabeth Warren. More and more of us are organizing to amend the constitution, whether it’s with Move To Amend, Wolf PAC, or Rootstrikers.

If you’ve been following me, you know that my opinion is that a constitutional amendment to get money out of politics is the only remedy we have left for our ailing government. I don’t know how many Elizabeth Warrens we can afford to support when our wages are going down. Remember that 94% of the time, the congressional candidate with the most money wins. Warren and de Blasio (I know he’s a mayor, but it’s not different) were the candidates with the most money. They weren’t the exceptions to the money statistic, they were the rule. The only amazing thing is that Warren managed to raise enough money from us, to defeat her bank backed opponent (de Blasio was a slightly different scenario that I won’t go into).

More liberals need to wake up and get to the conclusion I came to. The support I’m seeing for Hillary tells me that we still have a way to go on the path to "the awakening". Why do I focus on liberals? Because liberals always have been, and always will be the only ones who affect change. It doesn’t matter where in the world, or what period of history you look at, change is always brought about by liberals. Conservatives, by definition conserve. They don’t like change and they don’t rock the boat. The devil they know is just fine because "that’s just how it is". If conservatives had their way, the United States would be part of the UK. That’s just a fact. Liberals always have been, and always will be the activists.

The evisceration of unions is going to remove the thin veil that the democratic party still wears. Remember Obama bailed out Wall Street, appointed a Monsanto executive to a high level position at the FDA, and failed to put on his picketing shoes to help labor in Wisconsin. But that’s all okay for some democrats, cause he gave us the Affordable Care Act. Don’t get me wrong, I’m marginally satisfied with the ACA as a stop gap, but I want more. I want food that isn’t going to poison me, water that isn’t flammable, and a bank that doesn’t have its hand in my pocket at all times. As long as money determines our elections, we’re not going to get any better than Obama, and as long as democrats throw us some crumbs every decade or so, liberals aren’t going to wake up to that fact. I’m very clear on the reality that I’m never going to get these things as long as money is the primary driver and motivator for our political system.

I need more liberals to wake the fuck up and join me, because we are our only hope. Because I know that things need to get shitty enough to activate the activists, I’m okay with this incredibly shitty decision from the Supreme Court. We’re already on the road to shitty so let’s get there already so that we can turn this sinking ship around.

What About The Children?

June 2, 2013 by Bitchy

Pew Research put out a report a couple of days ago that (you should have seen this coming, since it’s “research”) has some right wingers in a tizzy. The research, called Breadwinner Moms finds that women are now the primary or sole breadwinner in 40% of American households. I wasn’t even remotely shocked when I read this report because I fucking live in America. I have plenty of friends who earn more money than their husbands, or who are single moms. I do not live in a 1960s bubble where Mad Men is a reflection of the times, rather than a look back to days of old where the Fox News family seem to live.

Watch Lou Dobbs, Juan Williams, and Erick Erickson lose their shit over modernity;

Let’s go through the batshit crazy in this video point by point.

Juan Williams (the “liberal”) makes the point that men have been harder hit by the recession than women. Why is that, Juan? Could it be that professions like construction work, coal mining, and other industries that are male dominated have taken the biggest beating in the past twenty years? Then he refers to “something going terribly wrong in American society, and it’s hurting our children”. Why, Juan? Why are the children affected by which parent the breadwinner is?

And then Lou Dobbs gratuitously mentions the number of abortions that have taken place since Roe v Wade, as if those children having been born would have resulted in fewer female breadwinners? What the fuck?

And then we get to the grand poobah of douchebaggery Erick Erickson, who absurdly claims that people who are fine with female breadwinners are “anti-science” because nature shows us that males are born to dominate. Hey asshat, have you ever heard the term “queen bee”? I won’t go through the list of species in which females dominate because you can Google that for yourselves, and because that’s not my point. My point is that it doesn’t get any more anti-science than making bogus claims about nature, just to bolster more bogus views. He goes on to ramble about “complementary” relationships between men and women, assuming that men and women can only complement each other as long as the male is dominant. Wow! How much Xanax does your wife have to take, just to get our of bed every day? Erickson then goes on to twist some of the data in the report. He claims that “3/4 of the people surveyed recognize that having moms as the primary breadwinner is bad for kids and bad for marriage”. What the report actually says is that 74% of adults say the increasing number of women working has made it harder for parents to raise children, and that 50% say that it has made marriages harder to succeed. I will get to Erickson’s monumental douchebaggery later. For now, I want to finish unpacking this video.

Juan Williams jumps in to add, “…it is tearing up minority communities even worse than white communities in this country”. I’m sorry, Juan I’m not getting your point here. Are you blaming minority women for being more careless with their families than white women? Do you think that maybe minority women need to work more because of the increased unemployment rate among minorities? Could that be the cause?

In my view, the feminist movement wasn’t about putting women in the workforce. It was about giving women the same options that men have. Unfortunately, right after the feminist movement got some serious traction, those options immediately became limited. Why? Because somewhere in the 80s, families could no longer make it on a single income. I believe that lots of women were forced to work because their husband’s salary was not sufficient to support the family, which is why Erick Erickson is a giant douchebag.

You can’t light your hair on fire over the increasing presence of women in the workforce, while supporting policies that bring wages down. You can’t be for busting unions and for stay-at-home moms. You can’t support Paul Ryan’s bill to eliminate overtime pay and expect those worker’s families to make it on a single income. In short, you can’t support GOP wage suppression policies while demanding that women stay home and raise the kids.

So apparently Erickson got enough shit for his comments, that he had to write a post to clarify his comments so that he would sound less misogynistic. Here’s what he said;

Prior to having kids, Christy and I both worked. Once we had our first child and I was making a full time go of RedState, Christy had to work if we were to have insurance. Frankly, we could not make ends meet on my salary alone and, even after the cost of day care, had to have the remainder of Christy’s salary to help make ends meet. We still struggled.

Hold on Erick, did you just make a case for health insurance reform? And did you just say that you lived my point about families not being able to make ends meet on a single income? I will never understand people who go through the difficulty of a situation and continue to advocate against remedies to those difficulties. This man is an asshole, who goes through life learning nothing. He goes on to say;

At one point I had to contemplate being a single dad, but thank God I did not have to be. When we made the decision that Christy would stay home with the kids…

I’m sorry, did you just liken your wife going to work every day with single fatherhood? Are you fucking kidding me with this shit?

And then he goes on to say;

What should be insulting to single moms is for society to tell them they can do it all and, in fact, will subsidize their doing it all. I know a number of wonderful, nurturing single mothers. They do as best they can. Most of them have wonderful children. But not one of them prefers to be a single mother.

Then why the fuck are they doing it, Erick? Could it be that financial pressures are a big factor in marriages falling apart? Do you think that Boeing opening a plant in South Carolina (a nonunion state) and paying those airline mechanics half of what they pay the union workers in Washington may be putting some pressure on the families? Asshole!

You can’t make a career out of beating up on workers and then beat them up for the consequences of those policies. Something has to give here. You can either have a society that implements the tools necessary for a single breadwinner household or you can embrace the effects of not doing so, but you can’t do both because that just makes you a bloviating asshole.

Come On And Lie To Me

May 14, 2012 by Bitchy

Lie to me
But do it with sincerity

No, this is not turning into a blog about new wave music of the 80s. But these Depeche Mode lyrics are what keep running through my head when I think about the Scott Walker recall election next month.

Why? Because Wisconsinites aren’t voting on what most people think they’re voting on. Most people believe that they are voting on the issue of either preserving or decimating unions’ rights to collectively bargain. Those people would be wrong, and your opinion on that issue should not factor in to how you vote. The core issue here has nothing to do with unions or collective bargaining.

The core issue in this recall election is whether or not you’re good with politicians flat out fucking lying to you, while they’re trying to get your vote. Scott Walker did not run on a union busting platform. In fact, he said very little about busting unions when he was running for governor. Don’t believe me? Go to archive.org and check out caches of Scott Walker’s official site. G’head, go back and check his messaging back to freaking 1999 if you’re so inclined. You won’t find the union busting agenda that he ultimately executed on.

Still don’t believe me? Watch this campaign speech and see if you can spot the pledge to bust unions;

Still don’t believe me? Perhaps some campaign commercials that don’t include the words “collective bargaining” will convince you;

How about this one;

He ran on jobs, just like every other politician did in 2010. His solutions include the standard republican rhetoric about jobs through lower taxes, less regulation, blah, blah, blah. Spending reform, blah, blah, blah. He seemed a little confused on the issue of improving health care in Wisconsin. He did advocate for the standard, “free market solutions…blah blah blah” republican rhetoric, but he also seemed to be advocating for more government regulation and more medicare;

Government’s role should be to provide a system of checks and balances and a safety net for those who need it, while encouraging competition and transparency to make the system less complicated and more manageable for consumers.

We must also ensure that there is one standard of care for everyone – regardless of age, income level, or location – and that people have the option of taking their healthcare plan with them when they change jobs or move.

Huh? I’m confused.

But I don’t want to talk about his policies. I want to talk about making the horrible, horrible fucking mistake of upholding an election that was won on a lie. It doesn’t matter how you feel about unions, and it shouldn’t matter which party you’re affiliated with. The only thing that matters is that Scott Walker took lying to a whole new, dizzying level (even for a politician) in order to get elected. The question before you in this election is; Are you going to condone being lied to?

You should ponder that question long and hard before casting your ballot, republicans. I don’t believe that you are any more okay with this than I am. I do, however believe that you’re prone to falling for the narrative that this election is about your opinion on unions and their ability to collectively bargain. And I do believe that you, like most people, are more forgiving when your party lies to you.

But here’s the deal; if you vote for Scott Walker, you’re ensuring that the lies coming from our politicians mouths will grow exponentially. You’re ensuring that they will lie more, with ever growing impunity because you encouraged them. You will reassure politicians that you can be counted to tow the party line, regardless of the bullshit that your party spews out.

This is not a partisan issue. I would be writing the same blog if a democrat pulled a bait and switch in mammoth proportions the way Scott Walker has. This whole fucking blog is about taking off the partisan blinders.

Politicians depend on our partisan divisions to distract us so that they can screw all of us. Republicans don’t selectively fuck over only democratic voters in their districts, anymore than democrats selectively fuck over republican constituents. We all get fucked equally. And we let it happen to us by falling for the false narrative that we’re fundamentally divided.

This is not an issue upon which we should be divided. When a politician tells giant fucking lies to get elected, they should expect to get recalled. Period. No unions, no republican vs democrat. You lie, you get the fuck out of office. That is what this recall election is about.

Don’t let them shit all over your ability to elect candidates based on the issues they’re running on.

Snatching Defeat From The Hands Of Victory

August 17, 2011 by Bitchy

That should be the tagline for the democratic party. How can I say that a week after democrats successfully recalled two state senators in Wisconsin, and a day after they successfully defended two Wisconsin senate seats? I can say it because they’re poised to fuck up the rest of the work that needs to be done in Wisconsin.

Here’s the deal; Scott Walker, whose approval rating is abysmal is eligible to be recalled in January. Sounds like a great position for democrats, right? Not so fast. National democratic strategists (I use that term loosely and with with much disdain) are now thinking about rolling the Walker recall vote into the 2012 election. Why would they let this asshole keep screwing working people in Wisconsin for another year and a half? Because it’s not about the people. It’s about the politics. And to rub salt in the wound, it’s about bad politics.

These brilliant “strategists” think that they have a better chance of recalling Walker if they ride the Obama wave in 2012. Yup, you read that correctly; The Obama Wave. I don’t know what the fuck they’re doing, but I’m looking at the polls. The only waving being done here is by Obama, waving at his approval rating as it fades into the distance. He has plummeted into the high 30s. That’s right, the guy that defeated the pirates and killed Bin Laden is within 10 points of Bush when he left office. Now, depending on who you talk to, the low approval ratings are either because 70% of us are among the unreasonable “professional left” or, Obama is just the most ineffective president in recent history. But that’s a topic for another post, or several previous posts, as the case may be. My point is that they’re factoring in a mythical movement that isn’t validated by one single piece of empirical evidence. There’s no Obama wave. There is Obama frustration and Obama apathy. There is a decided lack of “wave”.

I believe that the Walker recall has a better chance if it’s a stand alone election. The polls clearly show that Wisconsinites want him to get the fuck out now. I don’t know why you would dick around for another year, hanging your hopes on an advantage that doesn’t exist.

On top of the sheer stupidity, waiting for 2012 clearly sends a message by democrats; We don’t give a shit about Wisconsin or it’s citizens. We just want to win.

This is exactly why most people don’t pay attention to politics and why they don’t vote. All of the options fucking BLOW, and the politicians are getting worse and worse at pretending they don’t suck.

But don’t despair, there is a glimmer of hope. Wisconsinites can buck the national democratic party and get the recall signatures on their own. They can snatch victory from the hands that want to snatch defeat from the hands of victory. Wait, I’m all confused now. Well, you get my point. Wisconsinites have the opportunity to set an example by ignoring the democrats’ nonsense and the republicans’ tyranny. If they take it upon themselves to rectify the situation, independent of either party, they have the chance to give us all hope that we can buck this two shitty party system that we have.

Both parties are being allowed to be shitty by us. It’s time that we start getting active in a meaningful way. I’m talking to you, Wisconsin! Go get em!

The Remedy To The Walker Dictatorship

February 28, 2011 by Bitchy

Here’s the deal – Walker is going to win in Wisconsin if he doesn’t blink. I hate that is it so, but it is. The only way that he won’t successfully take away collective bargaining rights for public employees, is if he backs down. I’m not saying that it’s not possible that may back down, but if he doesn’t he will get his way.

Honestly, if I were him I wouldn’t back down at this point. He’s already ensured that he’s going to be a one term governor. He’s also already ensured that he’s going to get a very high paying lobbying job when his one term is over. There’s no reason for him to back down so going after him is the wrong strategy.

But don’t worry, it’s not hopeless. There is a a winning strategy to ensure that this doesn’t happen all across the country. Wisconsinites must swiftly move to recall every member of the state house and senate that voted to strip public workers of their bargaining rights. They need to take a page out of Darrell Issa’s (he orchestrated the recall of Grey Davis in California) book and start collecting signatures to recall everyone that is eligible for recall right at this moment. I know that Wisconsin has a provision that says that a legislator must fuck up for a full year before they can be recalled, but there are plenty of people supporting Walker that have served for a year. Walker’s bill has passed the house, so there’s already a list of names to start with. If Wisconsin can get enough names to instigate a recall of even one or two state house members, there’s some chance that they can peel off a few republican votes in the senate.

Let’s be honest about the current situation – averting this vote, means having faith that democrats can hold out. When was the last time a democrat held out and stood on principal? Oh yeah, that would be Russ Feingold, who Wisconsin voted out of office last November! But aside from Feingold and a handful of others, the odds of democrats holding their ground are historically slim. No, banking on democrats to have balls is not going to turn out well for us.

Other republican governors that were talking about union busting are already losing their stomach for proceeding down that road, so public pressure has done a lot of good. A swift move to remove Wisconsin legislators that helped to make this happen will put the fear of god in every pro-union busting piece of shit all across the country. Here’s the thing – although Walker is assured a big fat Koch brothers paycheck at the end of all of this, the legislators that supported him aren’t. They key here is to go after the low hanging fruit. No politician in their right mind is going to sacrifice themselves so that some other asshole can get rich. No, they’re far more interested in amassing wealth and power for themselves. Making it clear that we won’t give them the opportunity to get rich if they go against the will of the people should remedy this situation.

You’ll never get to be a Koch whore if you’ve only served for a year in government because a year isn’t long enough to make you worth anything to them.

Trust me on this one, going after Walker is futile. Counting on democrats to stand firm is foolish. The only way to win this is by recall, recall, RECALL.

Low Self Esteem

February 22, 2011 by Bitchy

I’ve given a lot of thought to why the hell anyone that depends on a paycheck to survive, would possibly support the busting of a union. The only explanation that I can come up with, is that they have low self esteem. This explanation actually works to explain several otherwise perplexing opinions.

On any given day, Rush Limbaugh spends three hours riling up his listeners by telling them that they should hate people that have more than they do. “Fuck the people with pensions! You don’t have one, so fuck em!”. That’s his mantra, day after day. Fox news is a little more subtle, but the message is basically the same; the problem always lies with the people that have what you don’t, unless of course, we’re talking about the richest 2% among us. In the case of the mega rich, you need to fellate them, until they generously trickle their wealth down to you.

I get why the commentators that take this stance. They’re being generously paid to do the bidding of corporate America. But the working class people that buy into this? They obviously suffer from low self esteem issues.

Let me explain. Every single one of us knew a bully in our school days. And every single one of us remembers that when confronted, the bully crumbled like a republican economy. On the day that someone finally confronted the bully, we all realized that he/she was the most insecure person on campus. A bully chooses bullying because it’s easier and less thoughtful than self-improvement. Why put the time and effort into becoming someone that you can feel good about, when shitting on someone else offers so much instant gratification?

Fighting to get a pension for yourself takes a lot of work and organizing. Hating people that have pensions is much easier! You don’t have to organize. You don’t have to educate yourself. And you don’t have to confront your employer, which requires self esteem. The instant gratification of hating someone that has something that you don’t, simply requires having a small mind and a bitter attitude. It’s easy. And voila! You get a little boost in your mood without having to do any work.

And the reason why you don’t want to do the hard work required to get what the people that you hate have? Say it with me, it’s low self esteem.

This also explains that Sarah Palin phenomena. Think about, the thing that you hear most often from her supporters is that “she’s just like me”. And they’re right. She’s ignorant, and too lazy to remedy that ignorance by learning things. Her supporters know that they’re in no way qualified to occupy an office in the white house, but having someone like them some so close makes them feel better about themselves. The “reasoning” is this; she doesn’t know anything, just like me. And if she can make it into the white house, I have a shot.

What those people failed to consider, is that her ignorance isn’t what got her so close (although it didn’t hurt). Her fuckability is. Poll after poll shows that the majority of her supporters are men. Here’s a newsflash for Sarah Palin’s ignorant supporters; if you’re ignorant and you weigh 300 pounds, Bill Kristol’s penis is never going to pick you to be a vice presidential candidate. But don’t let that deter you. I understand that supporting her helps you feel better about your low self esteem issues.

Low self esteem is what makes people believe the unbelievable. Like the inexplicable belief that government workers are taking us all to the cleaners, with their above market compensation packages. Seriously, how can you believe that? If that were true, everyone would be clamoring to work for the state of Nevada, instead of Google. Why are technology professionals fighting over low paying Google jobs, when they can get rich on a government salary? You have to be an idiot to actually believe that. Trust me, I battle the behemoth that is Google to hire talent every single day. The fact of the matter, is that Wisconsin state workers’ total compensation is 5% below that of their private sector counterparts. That’s right, their total compensation (including health benefits and pensions) is 5% under what the market dictates.

I’m not even going to bother posting all of the statistical data that shows that government jobs pay less than private sector jobs. You can find that for yourself, and it defies common sense anyway so it’s not worth my time. So I’m going to go the other way, and ask you to suspend your self esteem for a moment. Let’s all hate government and union workers together, by accepting the premise that they’re all getting fat on our backs. If you add up all of the state and federal employees, government would by far, be the biggest employer in America. If all of those government entities were grossly overpaying their employees, wouldn’t that drive up your wage in the private sector? Wouldn’t your company be forced to compete with the government and it’s bloated compensation structure in order to get anyone to work for them?

Okay, I can’t keep this up. My self esteem isn’t low enough to accept this bullshit premise. I’m worried if I keep it up, my IQ will go down and that I will become angry and insecure.

I would like to say to working class people that support Scott Walker – please work on your self esteem. I know it will be hard at first but in the end, you and your family will benefit from the strong belief that you deserve better.

I would like to say to Fox news – you should encourage your viewers to fight for more, because this will help your rich benefactors in the long term. When people make more money, they have more to spend on your rich friends’ products.

And lastly, I would like to say to Rush Limbaugh – you need to find a way to be happy. I know that your viagra fueled limp dick and your giant ass are bummers. But you’re filthy fucking rich! You can afford to pay people to get you viagra, and you can afford to pay women to fuck you! See the glass as half full, Rush. You’re not doing your listeners much good when you’re this angry.

Parity

April 3, 2015February 20, 2011 by Bitchy

I’ve always loved that word. I love the way it sounds, and I love what it means.

[par-i-tee] – equality, as in amount, status, or character; equivalence; correspondence; similarity; analogy

Parity is the single most important ingredient in what made America great back in the day. We didn’t start this country off with parity. Contrary to what Michele Bachmann will have you believe, our founding fathers did not fight to free the slaves that they owned (holy shit, that woman is an idiot!). Nor did they advocate for their wives’ right to vote and right to work. No, parity was more abstract back then. It was an ideal, espoused in our founding documents. The actuality of parity is something that was fought for, and earned throughout the evolution of our nation. I believe that those ideals of parity that were fundamental in our founding documents, were the motivational tools that kept Americans fighting for equality over the course of our evolution. We are now in an era where parity is being systematically dismantled in our country. I fundamentally believe that in any given situation, the best possible result is achieved when two opposing forces with parity are forced to compromise in order to get to the end result. The greatest era in American history was one in which the government butted heads with corporations, and achieved compromise that resulted in the greatest expansion of our economy that we’ve ever seen. Thank you, FDR for showing us how to get it right. We no longer have that parity between corporations and government. We now have a situation where both entities are on the same side, leaving Americans with no one to fight for us. The situation in Wisconsin is the perfect illustration of the further breakdown of parity. Make no mistake, what Scott Walker is trying to do in Wisconsin has nothing to do with balancing a budget. It’s about creating more disparity. Just to recap, Scott Walker was sworn in as governor of Wisconsin a month ago. At the time of his swearing in, his state had a budget surplus thanks to his his democratic predecessor. Here’s where the story starts to sound really fucking familiar. This asshat, Scott Walker took that surplus and spent $140 million dollars in a month. He gave the wealthiest Wisconsinites $67 million in tax breaks and spent the rest on kickbacks to cronies, thereby creating a budget crisis. A crisis that he wants to remedy by (say it with me) crapping on working people. This situation would be pretty fucked up if it were just about a reverse Robin Hood menacing working people in Wisconsin, but that’s not what he’s doing here. He’s not asking Wisconsin state employees to make sacrifices in order to balance the budget that he fucked up this year. He’s asking them to forever relinquish any bargaining power they have. This is about the age old GOP tradition of busting unions. Unions that by the way, were formed in order to remedy the disparity between American workers and corporations that existed early on in our country’s history. Before unions, the average worker faced 12 hour work days, 7 days a week. But that isn’t as bad as it sounds because they got to work right next to their kids. It really was a golden age of quality time with the family. You see, because there was no parity between workers and companies, people got fucked. Corporations have no feelings or compassion because they’re not people. Corporations are motivated purely by profit, which doesn’t leave much room for human rights’ issues to prevail unless people organize and created a modicum of parity. Regardless of what you do for a living, you have benefited from the existence of unions. You wouldn’t have a weekend if it weren’t for unions. You wouldn’t have vacation time were it not for unions. You wouldn’t have dozens of other rights that you take for granted if it weren’t for unions. I’m not saying that unions are perfect. Far from it. Unions definitely have their fair share of corruption and embezzlement. But they create a level of parity. Without unions, labor’s power is eviscerated. And when one side is eviscerated in any negotiation, we all lose. How you personally feel about unions is irrelevant. I would hope that you would have the common sense to understand eviscerating workers is a bad idea, just as eviscerating corporations would be a bad idea. We need parity. I am utterly flummoxed and disgusted by anyone that doesn’t understand this. Listening to right wing media this week has been a particularly vomitous experience. The constant barrage of insults against working people that just want parity is not something that is comprehensible to me. You wanna know who has the right to negotiate their working conditions, benefits, and termination packages? Every single fucking asshat on Fox news that is telling you that unions blow, that’s who. You wanna know who else has a shit ton of bargaining power? Really fucking rich people, regardless of their level of competence. That’s right, Crazy Carly Fiorina negotiated the $40 million dollars that she ultimately got paid to leave HP, because she sucked. Can you, in your wildest dreams, imagine sitting on one side of a negotiating able saying, "And if you need to fire me, I will need $40 million before I leave"? I can assure you that every single Fox News "personality" has negotiated generous exit packages for themselves, in the event that they get fired. The fact that they have disdain for people who want what they have is appalling, but it’s also the very foundation of Fox news. You shouldn’t listen to people that tell you that you don’t deserve what they have. That makes you a fucking idiot and a tool for a machine that places no value on you. You also shouldn’t listen to anybody that wants to eviscerate one side in any power struggle. That person is a tunnel visioned ideologue that can’t understand the value of parity.