My family is comprised of very skilled trades workers ( men and women) who voted for Barack Obama. I am the only Hickey to back McCain. I did so because I did not and do not believe that Barack Obama was up to the job as President and that he had some very dicey people pouring poisonous ideas into his very willing ears.
I am a school teacher. I read and my relations work with their hands, heads and hearts. They are stationary engineers, electricians, carpenters, plumbers and pipefitters. Even the Hickey's( Brennans, Walshs, Winters, & etc.)with law degrees hold union cards.
When I work with tools bad things happen - to me and others. Hence, there is an ideological Mason/Dixon line drawn between me and my kin folk born of an inability and avoidance of genuine work on my part.
Hickeys are union people. I am as well - real unions. Politically, the skilled trades unions have historically made pacts with the devil in order to advance the prospects for workers to live with dignity and in safety.
In last forty years, politics betrayed the workers more than any Pinkerton agent or capitalist goon. Political Action Cadres (PACs) masquerading as Labor have co-opted Labor with sheer numbers.
Skilled Trades and Industrial Trades became enthralled by and to tax-payer salaried unions most notably Services Employee International Union (SEIU) which dictates policy to the National Democratic Committee ( Howard Dean) and the White House ( President Obama).
Our economic turmoil is not some glitch, but a planned operation - witness the recent remarks on Health Care by the daffy dimwitted Rep. Jan Schakowsky -
SCHAKOWSKY: “I know many of you here today are single payer advocates and so am I … and those of us who are pushing for a public health insurance don’t disagree with this goal. This is not a principled fight. This is a fight about strategy for getting there and I believe we will.” ( Emphasis my own -You got that right, Jan.)
Single payer ( The Government) Health Reform is the stated end game.
Likewise, One Big Union is the end game for SEIU. Skilled Trades will lose all autonomy and influence, as the jobs continue to disappear. Joel Kotkin a Social Demographer who trained under Michael Harrington and learned the dangers of creeping socialism has long been a critic of the economics of modern Progressives.
His article in Politico is a must read for all Labor People. Click my post title for the full article. Here is a bit of it.
This is Kotkin's genuine teachable moment. Real Labor might learn something.
As a recent New America Foundation report makes clear, precious little has gone to the productive side of the economy that determines the country’s competitiveness and creates many high-paying blue-collar jobs. Infrastructure, a critical component of any productivity-enhancing strategy, has accounted for barely 10 percent of the package.
The results have not been pretty for the productive sectors of the economy. Construction workers now have higher than 19 percent unemployment; jobs in this sector have fallen during the past year in 333 out of 352 metropolitan areas, with more than 200 plunging by double digits. Meanwhile, the hard-pressed manufacturing sector suffers more than 12 percent unemployment.
Why this disinclination to fund the tangible parts of the economy? One reason may be that those working in construction and manufacturing — both blue-collar workers and white-collar professionals — do not wield the same influence in this law review administration as college professors, Service Employees International Union-organized workers or unionized teachers.
One also senses that some militant environmentalists in the administration may be less than enthusiastic about anything associated with the entire carbon-creating part of the economy. Certainly, new factories, natural gas facilities, roads, ports and waterways don’t fit the professed passion of the president’s own science adviser, John Holdren, for the gradual “de-development” of the U.S. and other advanced economies.
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Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0709/25636.html#ixzz0MqRrJpSt
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