Standing up to bullies - no, not in school: Companies and Government bullies

[The Straight Story]

You get people who have power over and individual, or small group of them, and they get screwed over (ala the company that fires you for smoking at home, government wiretapping, discriminating against gays, and so on).

And do people stand up and use their power to stop them? Nope. They just shrug and say 'whaddya gonna do?' United folks have a lot of power, yet unions continue to shrink and people let those with power get away with crap because they fear standing up.

Consumers who think the smoking thing is a sham will still buy Scotts' products, and workers there who think it is bunk won't join together and strike.

I can't help but wonder if we need a '9/11' on personal liberty before many wake up (DU'ers are an exception of course!).

We see it coming. All the warnings are there. Less personal freedom, a hijacking of our rights, and before you know it companies and the government will crash into our constitution and it will burn and collapse. You will exist for the state, not for you.

Your body, your decision. From abortion to eating fast food. Their card to play 'it costs us all more when you don't live the way we say is best' - so we trade freedom for money. Great deal there....

We do what we can, we vote, we expose on boards like this the intent of companies and government, we email, we call, and yet so many just sit drinking from the moonshine jug we call TV and doze off with fox news or sports playing in the background.

I can do more. A lot more. We all can, and they fear us organizing, but they also know there are so many complacent people they have power over that they just don't care.

Until one day they wake up and see that the bullies who took their lunch money now want that and more, and the more you give em, the more they know they can get.

Rant off.

[Mythsaje]

1. Scotts?

What am I missing here?

[Crandor]

4. Scott's Lawn Service - company that fired a guy for smoking

I don't see what the big deal is. This isn't some Big Evil Corporate Conspiracy; they probably just didn't want to have to pay for the huge health insurance premiums that smokers get.

[Selatius]

2. The problem is people are led to believe unions are bad.

You have a union like the Teamsters with past history of corruption, and perhaps ongoing corruption now, and the corporate news media takes it and runs with it, and it creates the false impression in the mind of viewers that all unions are corrupt.

Another is that laws are passed to suppress union activity. The greatest anti-union laws in America today are "right-to-work" laws, in my honest opinion. They dictate that unionized shops can accept non-union workers and that they must receive the same benefits as union workers. Of course, if you receive the same benefits as union workers do, you have less incentive to join and pay union dues.

Something fairer would be passing a law that says union shops can accept non-unionized workers but that non-unionized workers should not get the same benefits as unionized workers unless the union decides otherwise of its own initiative.

[ThomCat]

3. Thomcat's rule of history

"The bullies almost always win."
x(

Yes, it's cynical, but it hasn't been disproven yet.