Right-to-Work and The New Gilded Age

(Credit: AP Photo/Dave Kolpack)

Here's a byproduct of the so called Right-To-Work laws I never knew: besides being a masterful bit of marketing in terms of its labeling, these laws have helped to move jobs from Northern states to Southern states and eventually to cheaper overseas markets.

In fact, the more I learn about them, the more I come to understand that they are anything but a vehicle to ensure anyone's "rights" or that there's work created by them for anyone. At least not work normally associated with what we fancifully recall as a middle class lifestyle.

As the New York Times op-ed piece entitled, "Workers' Paradise Lost" points out, union and non-union workers both benefit when unions are more powerful and influential. Corporations once literally had to compete for labor by offering good wages and benefits.

Anyone happen to notice, recall, or learn in their rapidly-disappearing civics classes about the wealth and prosperity the middle class in America enjoyed after World War II and up to about the late 70s and early 80s? (Bonus points will be awarded for naming the B-movie-actor-turned-president who launched the decline in earnest back then by firing federal union workers and being the willing mouthpiece and marionette at the end of Alan Greenspan's fingertips.)

Here's another new fact I learned from the Times op-ed.

The Taft-Hartley Act was pushed through in 1947 by "pro-business Republicans and Southern Democrats" in the immediate wake of the UAW's rise to prominence. This Act was how states in the South and out West were able to pass right-to-work laws and attract businesses away from their neighbors in northern markets with cheaper labor. I didn't know how it had gotten started and that it went back that far.

And what happened next and when corporations felt that the labor wasn't cheap enough in the South and West? What has been happening since the early 80s and as unions have continued to lose their influence over elected officials, corporations, and thanks to years of vilifying by corporations and the GOP, even the influence unions and their members had with their neighbors? Where did business look for even cheaper labor? It wasn't on these shores. Labor is and was increasingly powerless to fight the flight of manufacturing overseas. It's sad when you consider that they couldn't even get their neighbors to stand with them to defend those jobs, and that those neighbors all too often are still jealous of what they perceive to be the largess of being a union worker.

(To be sure, we as consumers also have ourselves to blame, too, for demanding the Walmartification of America with cheaper and cheaper goods, but that's fodder for its own post.)

All of us owe a debt of gratitude to organized labor for basically forcing corporations to share the wealth. That's not a dirty or even Socialist expression. Labor is what brings into being and delivers to market the creativity and genius of the entrepreneur. One cannot exist without the other. It must be understood, however, that only one side has the "accounts receivables" and, hence, control over how revenues are distributed. CEOs didn't always make hundreds and even thousands of times what they pay their workers, and corporate profits overall in America are at historic highs.

We also owe a debt to unions for things we take for granted today. Things like child labor laws, workplace safety, the 8-hour workday, the 5-day week, and so much more. When examined purely from the economic and business perspective, these changes would probably never have come into being without workers literally dying as part of the labor movement to win them.

These are all things worth thinking about the next time we're tempted to side with trickle down theorists and defenders of capital - as if they needed us to stick up for them.

Actually and come to think of it, maybe they do.

So long as they - and let's be candid, "they" are big money, corporations, and most assuredly the Republican party - are successful at duping so many of the middle class into believing the "us versus them" of non-union versus union, we're likely to see the scales continue to tip away from the middle class and even more toward the wealthy. It's like something I saw recently on Facebook that said (and I'm paraphrasing), "Don't be jealous of my union benefits. Demand your own." I agree with that sentiment.

The scales of labor-management are out of balance. I think it's important to understand whose thumbs are on it and how the scales continue to tip toward the 1-percenters and big business. If we don't bring the scales back to the middle then my advice is that we might want to start thinking up names for this new Gilded Age.

The Inconvenient Truths About the Economy and the GOP

First Trust chief economist Brian Wesbury's 2nd Quarter GDP research reports...

"Corporate profits were also revised up slightly, to a new all-time record high. Profits were up at a 13.7% annual rate in Q2 and are up 8.5% versus a year ago."


How's that for an inconvenient truth for the GOP, for their big business puppet masters, and for the inexplicable non-two-percenters who defend them both?

So where are the jobs?
Where's the recovery?
Anyone? Anyone?

Greta? Gretchen? Shawn? O'Reilly? Anyone?

Herman? Michele? Rick? Mitt? Sarah? Anyone?

How come none of them talk about this?

Corporate profits are at historic levels, as is the wealth gap. Taxes are already at historically low levels, as are interest rates on credit for those rich corporations and individuals who have access to it and the neo-cons, Randians, tea baggers and the GOP want to blame all of our problems in our economy on, what, overpaid civil servants, the 11% of American workers still in a union, illegal immigrants, and the poor and working poor?

Isn't that just a little bit ridiculous?

30 Years Ago: The Day the Middle Class Died

Had to add a few comments to this one.

The Reagan worshipers don't want my emails. Too bad. I would truly like to understand how this narrative can be repudiated.

Didn't they actually live the life described below, too? I can't say with absolute certainty, but I'm pretty sure that no one I know grew up in places like today's Westlake, TX, Kenilworth, IL, Mission Hills, KS, or a whole list of NYC suburbs (http://www.forbes.com/2011/01/18/americas-most-affluent-communities-business-beltway.html), and they don't live there now.

My father was a high school graduate who put 3 of his 4 kids through college without crushing debt and with one decent paying union job at Westinghouse. He owned his own home after paying off the 30-year mortgage. We went on vacations to "exotic destinations" like Washington, DC, and Ocean City, MD. We occasionally but not all that often ordered a pizza or went out for dinner. (Anyone else remember the Ho-Jo fried clams? That was big time for us!). Every 6 or so years he was able to buy new middle class sedans like Plymouth Satellites, Dodge Darts and Ford Futuras (woo-hoo!) made in America by fellow middle class workers. He had decent enough benefits so that he and we weren't bankrupted when he was diagnosed with heart disease and needed a quadruple bypass in the late 70s.

He retired with dignity and with a pension that wasn't anything like a lottery windfall but at least was sufficient enough to keep him from having to find part-time work at a McDonald's or WalMart just to make ends meet.

What was so wrong with that America?

What would be so wrong with having some of that back?

How the hell did we screw things up this badly?

I'll tell you. The unvarnished, bald-faced, honest and harsh truth is that we got here exactly and precisely by believing the lies we were told by Reagan, Greenspan, the GOP, and the rest of the trickle-downers who convinced too many of us that if the rich got richer all our boats would rise with that tide.

It was and still is a lie. Now those of us left in the middle class are left to drown in that rising tide.


Published on Saturday, August 6, 2011 by CommonDreams.org
30 Years Ago: The Day the Middle Class Died
by Michael Moore

From time to time, someone under 30 will ask me, "When did this all begin, America's downward slide?" They say they've heard of a time when working people could raise a family and send the kids to college on just one parent's income (and that college in states like California and New York was almost free). That anyone who wanted a decent paying job could get one. That people only worked five days a week, eight hours a day, got the whole weekend off and had a paid vacation every summer. That many jobs were union jobs, from baggers at the grocery store to the guy painting your house, and this meant that no matter how "lowly" your job was you had guarantees of a pension, occasional raises, health insurance and someone to stick up for you if you were unfairly treated. [On August 5, 1981, President Ronald Reagan fired every member of the air traffic controllers union (PATCO) who'd defied his order to return to work and declared their union illegal. They had been on strike for just two days.] On August 5, 1981, President Ronald Reagan fired every member of the air traffic controllers union (PATCO) who'd defied his order to return to work and declared their union illegal. They had been on strike for just two days.

Young people have heard of this mythical time -- but it was no myth, it was real. And when they ask, "When did this all end?", I say, "It ended on this day: August 5th, 1981."

Beginning on this date, 30 years ago, Big Business and the Right Wing decided to "go for it" -- to see if they could actually destroy the middle class so that they could become richer themselves.

And they've succeeded.

On August 5, 1981, President Ronald Reagan fired every member of the air traffic controllers union (PATCO) who'd defied his order to return to work and declared their union illegal. They had been on strike for just two days.

It was a bold and brash move. No one had ever tried it. What made it even bolder was that PATCO was one of only two unions that had endorsed Reagan for president! It sent a shock wave through workers across the country. If he would do this to the people who were with him, what would he do to us?

Reagan had been backed by Wall Street in his run for the White House and they, along with right-wing Christians, wanted to restructure America and turn back the tide that President Franklin D. Roosevelt started -- a tide that was intended to make life better for the average working person. The rich hated paying better wages and providing benefits. They hated paying taxes even more. And they despised unions. The right-wing Christians hated anything that sounded like socialism or holding out a helping hand to minorities or women.

Reagan promised to end all that. So when the air traffic controllers went on strike, he seized the moment. In getting rid of every single last one of them and outlawing their union, he sent a clear and strong message: The days of everyone having a comfortable middle class life were over. America, from now on, would be run this way:

* The super-rich will make more, much much more, and the rest of you will scramble for the crumbs that are left.

* Everyone must work! Mom, Dad, the teenagers in the house! Dad, you work a second job! Kids, here's your latch-key! Your parents might be home in time to put you to bed.

* 50 million of you must go without health insurance! And health insurance companies: you go ahead and decide who you want to help -- or not.

* Unions are evil! You will not belong to a union! You do not need an advocate! Shut up and get back to work! No, you can't leave now, we're not done. Your kids can make their own dinner.

* You want to go to college? No problem -- just sign here and be in hock to a bank for the next 20 years!

* What's "a raise"? Get back to work and shut up!

And so it went. But Reagan could not have pulled this off by himself in 1981. He had some big help:

The AFL-CIO.

The biggest organization of unions in America told its members to cross the picket lines of the air traffic controllers and go to work. And that's just what these union members did. Union pilots, flight attendants, delivery truck drivers, baggage handlers -- they all crossed the line and helped to break the strike. And union members of all stripes crossed the picket lines and continued to fly.

Reagan and Wall Street could not believe their eyes! Hundreds of thousands of working people and union members endorsing the firing of fellow union members. It was Christmas in August for Corporate America.

And that was the beginning of the end. Reagan and the Republicans knew they could get away with anything -- and they did. They slashed taxes on the rich. They made it harder for you to start a union at your workplace. They eliminated safety regulations on the job. They ignored the monopoly laws and allowed thousands of companies to merge or be bought out and closed down. Corporations froze wages and threatened to move overseas if the workers didn't accept lower pay and less benefits. And when the workers agreed to work for less, they moved the jobs overseas anyway.

And at every step along the way, the majority of Americans went along with this. There was little opposition or fight-back. The "masses" did not rise up and protect their jobs, their homes, their schools (which used to be the best in the world). They just accepted their fate and took the beating.

I have often wondered what would have happened had we all just stopped flying, period, back in 1981. What if all the unions had said to Reagan, "Give those controllers their jobs back or we're shutting the country down!"? You know what would have happened. The corporate elite and their boy Reagan would have buckled.

But we didn't do it. And so, bit by bit, piece by piece, in the ensuing 30 years, those in power have destroyed the middle class of our country and, in turn, have wrecked the future for our young people. Wages have remained stagnant for 30 years. Take a look at the statistics and you can see that every decline we're now suffering with had it's beginning in 1981 (here's a little scene to illustrate that from my last movie).

It all began on this day, 30 years ago. One of the darkest days in American history. And we let it happen to us. Yes, they had the money, and the media and the cops. But we had 200 million of us. Ever wonder what it would look like if 200 million got truly upset and wanted their country, their life, their job, their weekend, their time with their kids back?

Have we all just given up? What are we waiting for? Forget about the 20% who support the Tea Party -- we are the other 80%! This decline will only end when we demand it. And not through an online petition or a tweet. We are going to have to turn the TV and the computer and the video games off and get out in the streets (like they've done in Wisconsin). Some of you need to run for local office next year. We need to demand that the Democrats either get a spine and stop taking corporate money -- or step aside.

When is enough, enough? The middle class dream will not just magically reappear. Wall Street's plan is clear: America is to be a nation of Haves and Have Nothings. Is that OK for you?

Why not use today to pause and think about the little steps you can take to turn this around in your neighborhood, at your workplace, in your school? Is there any better day to start than today?

P.S. Here are a few places you can connect with to get the ball rolling:

Main Street Contract for America
Showdown in America
Democracy Convention
Occupy Wall Street
October 2011
How to Join a Union by the AFL-CIO (they've learned their lesson and have a good president now) or UE
Change to Win
MoveOn
High School Newspaper (Just because you're under 18 doesn't mean you can't do anything!)


---
"I thought Republicans believed in government out of our lives, the precious right of privacy, and the right to be left alone. Well, then what they hell are we doing in abortion, and gay/lesbian issues, and mental health…I have a cousin who was gay who was a war hero, World War II. We're all human beings.”
Former Wyoming GOP Senator Alan Simpson (http://bit.ly/k5FRjB)

Ann Coulter's Latest Drivel: Look For The Union Fable

Ann is up to her same tired act: talking out of her you-know-what.

This time she's making a pathetic attempt to comment about what's happening in Wisconsin with Walker's attempt to kill state unions. She then goes into some disjointed blathering about government in general.

Here are a few choice phrases from her rambling babble with my own following each! You decide which of us is crazy.


"Government unions have nothing in common with private sector unions because they don't have hostile management on the other side of the bargaining table."
-> That's idiotic on its face. Walker and the entire Koch Party is hostile to every state worker because they presumably tend to vote Democratic. If the Walkergate Tapes don't prove that, then you're living in the warm embrace of blissful and self-imposed ignorance.


"This is why the head of New York's largest public union in the mid-'70s, Victor Gotbaum, gloated, "We have the ability to elect our own boss."
- > Never heard of this guy so I did a search. Didn't find this quote. Even if it was something that he said, he does seem to be recognized at least in part for making concessions when it was in everyone's interest.
Under Gotbaum's leadership, DC37 successfully organized thousands of municipal hospital workers in the 1960s and helped create New York City's Office of Collective Bargaining. During the New York City bankruptcy crisis in the mid-1970s, Gotbaum and DC37 agreed to major collective bargaining concessions, which set a pattern that forced other municipal unions to do the same. The action helped the city avoid default on its bonds.[2] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_Gotbaum#cite_note-1)

The reference source listed in the footnote led to this:
The New York unions in the Seventies, led by Victor Gotbaum and his colleagues, agreed to major concessions on their contract demands and to make investments in city bonds from their pension funds; both of these decisions will be difficult to duplicate. http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2002/nov/21/from-new-york-to-baghdad/


Democratic politicians don't think of themselves as "management." They don't respond to union demands for more money by saying, "Are you kidding me?" They say, "Great -- get me a raise too!"
-> This is really effing stupid. Like Democratic politicians are the only ones who vote themselves pay raises and if they can't get that passed they just go to their pals in the government unions to decide how much to raise only Democratic pay. Typical idiotic Coulter hyperbole.

BTW, it's become popular among both parties in Congress to suddenly come to the realization that not only are automatic pay raises a bad idea, maybe they can curry favor with us if they vote to cut their pay. http://www.philly.com/philly/news/nation_world/116523318.html

LOOK!!! YOU DON'T SEE THIS OFTEN!!!!!
I want to give special kudos to some GOP reps. Rigell (VA) is sending 15% of his pay back to the Treasury. Coffman (CO) wants to cut Congressional pay by 10%, supposedly saving the government $5.5billion. (You do realize that that means total Congressional compensation is $55billion. Can that be right?) Buchanan (FL) introduced a bill that would forbid any pay raises to Congress unless the budget was balanced. THIS ALL MAKES PERFECT SENSE TO ME!!!

Here was an eye-opening passage from the Philly.com article:
With the economy still reeling, members of Congress - nearly half of whom are millionaires - are eager to show they are in touch with their constituents' economic pain

These are the people we elect and who are supposed to represent us? Opens up a tiny crack of understanding as to why some people are attracted to the tea party. Want a real slap of reality? Here are some net worth numbers of both parties that are jaw-dropping. http://www.opensecrets.org/pfds/overview.php?type=W&year=2009 Anyone not think these people fall under the generalized category of RWMFs?



In 1937, the American president beloved by liberals, FDR, warned that collective bargaining "cannot be transplanted into the public service."
-> FDR's letter sure has become popular.

Too bad the right continues to so blatantly take one or 2 phrases so badly out of context. The whole thing can be read at http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=15445

It's obvious that what FDR was actually saying about unions and collective bargaining is that:
a) the administration (i.e., management) are elected officials sent to their position by us to represent us and as such,
b) they cannot agree to any old desire or demand, especially if it violates the law.

That's it. The reason that collective bargaining "as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service" doesn't mean that FDR thought that public service unions should be dissolved, disbanded, or kept from collectively bargaining. All he basically said was that union and management, alike, need to understand that there are different circumstances that govern public versus private service.

Here's the paragraph from which the quote is surgically removed and grossly misused by Coulter and everyone else on the right.

All Government employees should realize that the process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service. It has its distinct and insurmountable limitations when applied to public personnel management. The very nature and purposes of Government make it impossible for administrative officials to represent fully or to bind the employer in mutual discussions with Government employee organizations. The employer is the whole people, who speak by means of laws enacted by their representatives in Congress. Accordingly, administrative officials and employees alike are governed and guided, and in many instances restricted, by laws which establish policies, procedures, or rules in personnel matters.

The preceding paragraph in FDR's letter is where he expresses unequivocal support of unions, including even in government and with special considerations for the differences that exist when compared with private sector.

The desire of Government employees for fair and adequate pay, reasonable hours of work, safe and suitable working conditions, development of opportunities for advancement, facilities for fair and impartial consideration and review of grievances, and other objectives of a proper employee relations policy, is basically no different from that of employees in private industry. Organization on their part to present their views on such matters is both natural and logical, but meticulous attention should be paid to the special relationships and obligations of public servants to the public itself and to the Government.


George Meany, head of the AFL-CIO for a quarter century, said unions were not appropriate for civil servants.
-> When I did a search on this sentence, the search results page was pretty much full of results pointing exclusively to Coulter. Hints strongly that she might have made this up. I couldn't find any other resources on the quote, but I did find this: http://www.basicfamouspeople.com/index.php?aid=1563.

Personally, I give no credence to anyone with "McCarthyist policies" regardless of who they were and what organization they led. In other words, who gives a if Meany said anything like unions are inappropriate for civil servants if he had anything in common with McCarthy.



There's never a recession if you work for the government. The counties with the highest per capita income aren't near New York City or Los Angeles -- they're in the Washington, D.C., area -- a one-company town where the company is the government. The three counties with the highest incomes in the entire country are all suburbs of Washington. Eleven of the 25 counties with the highest incomes are near Washington.
-> What's Ann claiming here, that overpaid school teachers, firefighters, park rangers, and government workers in DC are living in the lap of luxury?

And WTF does this have to do with Wisconsin?

As for DC, I wonder if she's ever heard of "government contractors?" I'd love to see some data on how much of the wealth encircling DC is actually private businesses started and/or led by ex-elected officials who legislated for corporate lobbyists instead of us and then turned that into a lottery win once out of office.

Teachers, whether in DC or Wisconsin? Clerks in state or federal government? Nurses in the VA? Low- and mid-level workers?

They are the ones living in mansions in Madison and Loudon County? Please.

Ann, you're an idiot.

GOP Should Just Go Ahead and Change Name to Koch Party

"In Wisconsin, union leaders agreed to concessions requested by Mr. Walker: to pay nearly 6 percent of their wages for pension costs, up from nearly zero, and double payments for health insurance. At that point, most governors would declare victory and move on. Instead, Mr. Walker has rejected union concessions and won’t even negotiate. His true priority is stripping workers of collective-bargaining rights and reducing their unions to a shell. The unions would no longer be able to raise money to oppose him, as they did in last year’s election, easing the way for future Republicans as well."

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/23/opinion/23wed1.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha211


The Wisconsin governor is dutifully following the Koch GOP playbook: kill unions because members and supporters tend to vote Democratic and, as everyone knows, elected GOP politicians will dutifully do the bidding of wealthy capitalists faster and with greater zeal than the Dems.

It's politics. It really isn't about balancing budgets. That's just a convenient excuse to lie some more but, once again, the math doesn't lie and the unions have already agreed to the $300million in concessions on a $3600million dollar budget shortfall. That's 8.3%, and the union has agreed to it so what's the problem?

Wisconsin, and more broadly labor unions everywhere, are targeted elements of a bigger and broader GOP strategy to.......wait for it.........control more of your lives from corporate boardrooms instead of state capitols. The beauty of the plan is that Charles and David Koch never have to appear in public, never have to defend their policies against their opponents in pre-election debates, and never have to run and win elections. They and their allies in conservative media like Limbaugh and Murdoch have gotten very good at spending relatively small amounts of their fortune to whip into a frenzy people who don't or won't bother with facts.

It's just too bad that there are as many Americans as there are who have bought into and now desperately cling to the biggest lie of all: that they are part of the Koch/GOP grand plan for greater American wealth and prosperity. They're not, except as chattel.

Anyone outside the richest 2% who still believes the lies of the GOP is just carrying their water like a dutiful servant is expected to do. They've been duped into the complete masquerade and utter sham that Republicans are fiscal conservatives interested in doing anything at all to improve the condition of average Americans.

Here are more inconvenient numbers from Gallup.

It's really only a slim majority of Republicans, 54%, who even agree with the idea of taking away collective bargaining rights of state union workers. It should be noted that two-thirds of Independents oppose it, as do two-thirds of all adults nationwide. The key word there is 'adults.' People with the maturity, wisdom, and experience to know right from wrong and to discern fact from fiction.

Put simply, if you agree with breaking state unions you are in the minority. There's a reason for that. Opposing workers is not just bad for them, it's bad for America and the economy. We have no economy without a thriving middle class, and state workers - teachers, firefighters, law enforcement, and even the dreaded "bureaucrats" - are part of that middle class.

You can be mad at me for continuing to say these things, and you can dig your heals in deeper because you hate me for rubbing your noses in the reality of where your party is on issues like this. It won't change the facts: the GOP is pro-business and anti-worker. Always has been.

While I've never been a member of a union and probably never will be, I don't see how America rises to such economic prosperity and prominence post-WWII without unions. I'm proud of the fact that my father provided a middle class life to us in part because he was a union worker. I wonder how many reading this are willing to say the same?

What about all that nostalgia for the post-WWII years to which conservatives always seem to want to "take our country back?"

I seriously doubt that my father and all the other hard-working men and women in the 40s, 50s, and 60s would have been able to own a home and raise kids in a working class (and barely middle class) neighborhood had he had to endure the indignities and oppression that his father, a coal miner at the beginning of the 20th century and at the start of the labor movement, endured. Given the generosity and benevolence of late 19th and early 20th century capitalist, I'm completely comfortable saying that the answer would be no. This country rose to economic prosperity as much on the backs of labor as it did on the business acumen of entrepreneurs and capitalists. It's symbiotic. One cannot exist and thrive without the other.

All the trickling down in the world - then and now - doesn't turn the GOP into a party that even remotely approaches being pro-middle class. Tax cuts for the wealthy are not stimulative. That was proven yet again in 2001, 2003, and 2010. Deregulation only opens up more opportunities for corporations and a select few to rig the system so they prosper with all the rewards and none of the risk. We - the middle class - are left with the economic, environmental, and social bills while the Kochs, Murdochs, Limbaughs, and Becks laugh their way to their overseas bank accounts.

Let's Keep Blaming Labor

A friend recently shared a Detroit News video report from 2007 about Camacari, "Ford's most advanced assembly plant," that opened in 2001 in Brazil.

The piece ends with the following claim:
"Sources in Dearborn say privately that this is the sort of facility Ford would love to build in the U.S. if only the UAW, historically adverse to this sort of supplier integration, would allow it."

Let me begin by saying that I've never worked in the automobile industry, although very close friends have. I've never been a member of the UAW, nor any other labor union.

That said, I have to wonder about the kind of thinking and reporting that leaves the viewer with the unchallenged conclusion that it is labor's fault that good paying, middle class jobs like building cars goes overseas because the UAW won't "allow" modern plants in America.

The auto industry is clearly one of the central pillars of our economy, and the web of dependencies that has been created seems completely entrenched and undoable. The reason it will be almost - not quite, but almost - impossible to change any of that and build a broader, more sustainable, diverse, and healthier economy is simple.

Money.

And who controls the money?

This report says it's the unions. Has to be them, right? I mean, the piece ends by saying that Ford supposedly wants to build plants like the one in Brazil in America with automation and JIT suppliers integrated inside and all that but the unions won't allow it.

Really? Unions? Are they the people who decide where to invest capital to build plants? Seriously? Is that really the reason Ford doesn't build plants like that in America?

Or is it possible that it might be because the Brazilian factory worker lives in a country where the minimum wage is less than $300 a month (http://tinyurl.com/24v5l8k)?

Ford's employees in Brazil probably have no health care or other benefits, and while they may be "middle class" in Brazil I'm willing to bet just about everything I have left that they can't even afford to buy one of the cars they make.

This is the kind of bullshit news reporting that really pisses me off, mostly because too many Americans are gullible enough - especially my friends on the right - to believe it. They buy this line of thinking that those poor bastards in the boardrooms and corner offices of corporate America are being held back by labor and government. All those magnanimous and benevolent capitalists want to do is invest more money into more businesses to create more jobs, but labor and the big bad government are keeping them from doing that. What a crock of shit!

It comes down to money. Yes, organized labor has money and power but make no mistake, dear reader. The money that matters and that makes these decisions is the real money - the richest 2% kind of money. GOP kind of money. It's why I'll never understand how middle-class Americans could ever, ever, EVER vote Republican. They're voting against their own economic self-interest. The trickle-down, Randian economic model that was sold by Alan Greenspan and bought hook-line-and-sinker by that moronic B-movie actor and GOP god, Ronny, and his minions in the GOP has proven not to work.

None of those facts seem to matter, though, to the latest crop of defenders of the wealthy and so-called free markets; the tea baggers, the Boehner/McConnell crowd, and the real whack jobs like Rand Paul and his Libertarians. Less regulation, more wealth protection, and even tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans has become religion for them, and that belief system has been perpetuated by liars and haters like Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, and others so much so that uninformed and easily-duped Americans actually believe in the magnanimity of the rich, and worse, the fallacy of the American Dream that they, too, can someday be rich.

Devotion, admiration, and even worship for wealth, the wealthy, and the so-called captains of industry is how we got to the sorry-ass state we're in now. Maintaining that devotion and electing devotees of Ayn Rand and Ronny Reagan to high office is how we'll go over the cliff for good, too.

But, hey, not to worry. Our children, grand children, and great grand children will have it better. Unregulated, unfettered, and under-taxed free markets and the absurdly wealthy who run it are making sure that we're going to be a big part of the third world by the end of the century - maybe sooner. Then maybe all those middle class jobs will come back.

How, you ask?

Because we'll be the nation of poor, desperate people willing to do anything for a few bucks an hour.