November 17, 2012

I worked for the Postal Service for almost 33 years in Employee & Labor Relations.

I was always on the ER side and the last half of my career I dealt with labor climate. During my years USPS had a pretty combative relationship between management and the unions. I dealt with both, and with employees as well.

As big as we were, our rolls were a reflection of the diverse population we served. I saw some slackards - they exist. But 95% of what I saw was hard working people trying to do a good job. I saw the unions be unreasonable sometimes and I saw management be unreasonable sometimes. But every day I thanked God for those labor contracts, because if we hadn't had them, some managers would have mopped the floors with those employees. The unions were the only line of defense even the best one had.

I have a lot of former coworkers on my Facebook, mostly from Labor Relations. One bozo who promoted up to a District Manager for Employee & Labor Relations makes derogatory remarks about unions all the time, even though all non-union managers made better pay because of those contracts (written into the law) and he himself made a better salary. He posted this a few days ago: "Of all the bad things unions have done in recent years (they were once necessary), leading Hostess to go bankrupt and quit making Twinkies tops the list! Look at all the folks who are now out of jobs. Way to go bakers union!" Things I've read recently indicate there's much more to the Hostess mess than greedy bakers and their union (which I won't go into here), but his line that blew me away was "...they were once necessary".

I think we need them more than ever. People died for the right to stand as one for fair wages and decent working conditions. Many in our corporatist state would love a workforce so desparate they wiill accept a Chinese payscale. Many authorities say Reagan slayed the unions when he fired the FAA employees. The assault continues. The GOP is well on its way to privatizing the Postal Service right now. With that blow they will eliminate almost 500,000 union members and get to profit by privatizing USPS as well. All the crap now about companies cutting hours or laying off or closing because of Obamacare? All to deny employee needs. The Walmart employees are being very brave - listen for the same kind of tune from Walmart - I'm betting it will come.

Oh, did I say I support unions? Mark me "YES"!

October 15, 2012

LADY ANN is as big a celebrity wanna-be as Palin. In her dreams

she has her own un-reality show where the unpaid poor kids from Brigham Young clean all her houses, feed her grapes, and tell her how beautiful and compassionate she is as they call her "Your Highness".

October 12, 2012

Joe did a great job but I wish he had pointed out Ryan cosponsored a "personhood" bill.

This is far, far more radical than many realize. It would not only ban but criminalize abortion and some contraceptives, even in cases of rape, incest, life of the mother - - it would open the door to putting women in jail/on trial when they suffer a miscarriage, forcing them to "prove" it wasn't murder.

October 9, 2012

I've been wondering why the change in Exit Polls this year...

Posted by Newsjock:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1014255567

Networks, AP cancel exit polls in 19 states
Source: Washington Post

Breaking from two decades of tradition, this year’s election exit poll is set to include surveys of voters in 31 states, not all 50 as it has for the past five presidential elections, according to multiple people involved in the planning.

The National Election Pool — a joint venture of the major television networks and The Associated Press — has not announced the states that won’t be included, but the decision is sure to cause some pain to election watchers across the country.

Voters in the excluded states will still be interviewed as part of a national exit poll, but state-level estimates of the partisan, age or racial makeups of electorates won’t be available as they have been since 1992. The lack of data may hamper election night analyses in some states, and it will almost certainly limit post-election research for years to come.

Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2012/10/04/networks-ap-cancel-exit-polls-in-19-states/

October 7, 2012

Any day now the GOP will claim Obama fudged the stock market improvement, too!

(no way could it have been the highest in five years!!! conspiracy!!! conspiracy!!!)

October 6, 2012

GE owns NBC and MSNBC. Think Jack Welsh has anything to do with this?

October 5, 2012

I've often wondered why people didn't sue to demand that provisional ballots are counted.

I've read if a voter is challenged they have to provided a provisional ballot. But I've read tons of articles that say provisional ballots are collected but not counted.

I understand it would take some time for a voter to respond to a challenge, so a final count would necessarily be delayed, but aside from the generalization that provisional ballots are not counted, I've never seen an explanation of how it actually works.

Aybody know? Can y'all straighten me out?

(With the TrueTheVote crap sweeping the nation, I think the number of challenges/provisional ballots to Democrats will skyrocket this year.)

October 2, 2012

CURRENT TV just ran the Greenwald documentary on the Koch Bros and it included the Crossett AR

Georgia Pacific plant in their expose. It is a totally damning film. These people need to be fried.

Do you know if the Koch Brothers are involved in the fracking in Arkansas now? I live in Memphis and have two adult step children in Heber Springs. I have no doubt the recent spate of Arkansas earthquakes is caused by the fracking. More reason for the slug Kochs to be putting legislators on their payroll by controlling your elections.

Link to the full documentary:

Robert Greenwald's "Koch Brothers Exposed" (Full)

September 30, 2012

What a hoot that would be!!! Imagine Mittwit confidently smirking while an advisor is feeding him

info through a wire - - - - - - - -
when ZAP!!!! THE LINE GOES DEAD!

I'd love to see those mean eyes grow to saucer-size while he sputters, then he falls to the floor curled in a fetal position yelling for Ann to save him!!!

Thanks for the fun fantasy visual, Turbineguy!


(Of course, given his great gift for saying stupid stuff, the GOP wiring him up isn't fantasy!)

September 24, 2012

Flip-flop much? AND it sure sounds a lot like REDISTRIBUTION to me!

from the link:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/23/mitt-romney-60-minutes-health-care_n_1908129.html

"Getting rid of high numbers of inefficient emergency room visits was actually a key goal of Romney's health care reform in Massachusetts, as he noted in his book "No Apology":

After about a year of looking at data -- and not making much progress -- we had a collective epiphany of sorts, an obvious one, as important observations often are: the people in Massachusetts who didn't have health insurance were, in fact, already receiving health care. Under federal law, hospitals had to stabilize and treat people who arrived at their emergency rooms with acute conditions. And our state's hospitals were offering even more assistance than the federal government required. That meant that someone was already paying for the cost of treating people who didn't have health insurance. If we could get our hands on that money, and therefore redirect it to help the uninsured buy insurance instead and obtain treatment in the way that the vast majority of individuals did -- before acute conditions developed -- the cost of insuring everyone in the state might not be as expensive as I had feared.