Here’s who the anti-union jihad of the GOP and the glibertarians is targeting:
Jodi and Ralph Taylor are public workers whose jobs as a janitor and a sewer manager cover life’s basics. They have moved out of a trailer into a house, do not have to rely on food stamps and sometimes even splurge for the spicy wing specials at the Courtside Bar and Grill.
While that might not seem like much, jobs like theirs, with benefits and higher-than-minimum wages, are considered plum in this depressed corner of southern Ohio. Decades of industrial decline have eroded private-sector jobs here, leaving a thin crust of low-paying service work that makes public-sector jobs look great in comparison.
Now, as Ohio’s legislature moves toward final approval of a bill that would chip away at public-sector unions, those workers say they see it as the opening bell in a race to the bottom. At stake, they say, is what little they have that makes them middle class.
“These jobs let you put good food on the table and send your kids on school trips,” said Monty Blanton, a retired electrician and union worker. “The gap between low and middle is collapsing.”
Gallipolis (pronounced gal-uh-POLICE) is a faded town on the Ohio River, one whose fortunes fell with the decline in industries like steel in bigger cities along the river. That erased a swath of middle-income jobs in the area, said Bob Walton, who, as a commissioner for the Southern Ohio Port Authority, an economic development agency, has tracked the economic history of the area for decades.
“It’s a real big change,” Mr. Walton said. “It has changed the complexion of our community.”
Today, storefronts are mostly dark. About one in three people live in poverty. Billboards advertise oxygen tanks and motorized wheelchairs. Old photographs in a local diner look like an exhibit from a town obituary. The region has some of the highest rates of prescription drug abuse in the state, with more people dying from overdoses than car crashes, according to Ed Hughes, executive director of the Counseling Center in Portsmouth, about 55 miles west of here.
David Beaver, 65, a barber, said that when he got out of high school, “you could go anywhere you wanted to and pick your job.”
“Now, it’s depressing,” Mr. Beaver said. “I hear the boys talking. They can’t find anything.”
It is not that there are no jobs, but rather that the jobs available pay too little and have no benefits, resulting in, as Mr. Beaver put it, “just scraping by.” A private hospital and two power plants do offer good jobs, but they are highly competitive and many require some higher education, something that fewer than one in five people here have, according to 2009 census data.
So most people scrape by, as Ms. Taylor did before landing her state job in 1996. At the time, she was living in a trailer and working in low-wage jobs at Wendy’s, Dairy Queen and a Big Lots discount store. Her hourly wage jumped to $9 when she started at the Gallipolis Developmental Center, a state home for mentally retarded people, up from $5.25 at a private nursing home.
It’s an interesting mind that can tell you that the jump from 5.25 an hour to 9 dollars an hour makes someone a fat cat union employee while simultaneously arguing that 250k a year is not rich. I’m sure there is a Reason video somewhere that explains this.
Ahh, glibertarians.
polyorchnid octopunch
Pretty much puts it in a nutshell, that.
Judas Escargot (aka ninja fetus with a taste for bruschetta)
I’m still wondering when the people snap. And how that will manifest.
There are solid, logical reasons that you shouldn’t force people into a corner, where they feel they have no legal means to better themselves and their lot. Yet that is exactly what the GOP is doing to them.
Again… no long game at all. Are they really that stupid? Or has the Right decided that there will be no ‘long game’, period.
Redshirt
Of all the philosophical tricks the Repugs have pulled over the last 30 years, I think one of the greatest is getting working men and women to actively fight against their own interests is the most impressive, whilst simultaneously defending the fat cats to make as much money as possible.
Voodoo Economics indeed.
Remember that? Right before St. Ronnie’s Revolution? Bush Sr. could actually criticize – reasonably – the insanity before it was fully launched, the insanity that is now sucking us down into oblivion.
Bulworth
Welcome to the southernification of the national economy. Michael Lind talks about this in Up From Conservatism; how conservatives, using the “host” Republican Party (as Dennis would put it) desire to export the anti-union, low-wage, non-regulation framework from the Southern states to other states and the national economy.
Phylllis
Absolutely. And those are the employees who are hit the hardest by furlough days, increases in employee-contributions to retirement and health insurance and all the other little costs that nibble away at middle class attainment.
Sideshow Bill
I once dated a girl from rural Tennessee where the biggest employer in town was the state prison. Notably, prison guards also qualified for WIC.
bkny
bwahahaha — sharia law (and some not inconsiderable pressure by the us) saved mr davis’ ass. someone needs to ask frank gaffney about this – via nyt:
Under Pakistani law, families can demand so-called blood money, or compensation, for slain relatives. Once an agreement is reached between the parties, the state prosecution is closed. They can also demand blood for blood, in the form of a death sentence.
Mr. Butt complained that the families of the victims were taken from their homes late Tuesday night by the police and pressed by officials to accept the payment. Members of the two families, including women, were present at the jail all day and left in two cars after the American consul. Mr. Butt said he was prevented from speaking to them all day and was warned not to speak to the news media.
Mudge
Another depressing aspect is that this is a married couple who scrape by. The era of a single earner middle class is dead. Yet, many of the Republican policies decimate programs that assist working mothers. The Repugs believe everyone should be married and all kids require a stay at home mom. Anyone who doesn’t conform doesn’t deserve their help. The issue of destroying the public schools is another blow to lower income families.
Let’s track how many jobs are created by these corporate tax cuts the states are enacting versus the increase in profits. Class warfare, folks, Republican style.
Bullsmith
The real problem is that the more the pyramid scheme that is the modern American economy gets out of whack, the harder it is to satisfy the Galtian Overlords at the top. For one master of the universe to pocket an extra billion, he needs to reduce the wages of 1 million workers by 1,000 bucks a year. The rich are SO RICH at this point, that in order to make them feel like they’re getting richer, which of course is job one of the government and everyone else, they have to grab an ENORMOUS amount of wealth from the poor suckers who are actually working for a living.
SenyorDave
There has to be a movement to counter the tea party that starts to have a voice. And it has to be a grass roots movement not funded by the “usual suspects”, because God nknows our MSM (rot in hell, Fred Hiatt – it took you to make me hate the WaPo after subscribing for 13 years) will attack it if it is shown to have any connection to Moveon or Soros or any of the other boogey men.
My fear is that ultimately people will be manipulated enough to hate unions so much that the GOP will completely destroy them. Because when Christie can lie consistently about public employees not paying part of the pension we have a real problem.
singfoom
This is what happens when people internalize the message that the important unit in this country is the Corporation.
We have a tiered system of citizenship in this country.
The best citizens are corporations, which can do no wrong and must be and are protected by their servants in congress.
The second tier are the Galtian overlords who run these corporations and are the most wise and wonderful people on the planet. They deliver value to their shareholders, regardless of the blood or suffering they cause. Truly awesome patriots.
The third tier is the rest of us normal people, working jobs to get by and trying to avoid being killed or maimed or poisoned or bankrupted by the lovely products our Corporate citizens “provide” for us.
All hail our Corporatist overlords!
ETA: “is are” is an awesome phrase.
Zifnab
I remember when the Democrats were raising the minimum wage from $5.25 to $7.15, back in ’06. And the right wing outfits had a crazy screaming fit, suggesting that $100 / hr labor rates were coming soon if the bill wasn’t stopped.
A higher minimum wage hasn’t been suggested since. :-p If anything, Republican hubris has put the very idea of a minimum wage back into the cross hairs.
The Political Nihilist Formerly Known As Kryptik
I can’t even snark about this or be bitter about it, or even sarcastic. It’s just…good fucking god, how is this shit really happening? Why so much fealty to the Alger-esque myths that justify the rampant ratfucking we keep being subjected to? Why so many people willing to fucking rage to death at their neighbors when they have their own Mr. Potters sitting up on the hill wondering how they can depress everything else enough to buy towns at plum prices?
How the fuck, how the fuck, why the fuck, and are we ever going to ever fucking stop it at this rate?
The Political Nihilist Formerly Known As Kryptik
@Zifnab:
Yeah, to justify destroying the very concept of minimum wage at whole. ‘Cuz you know, we just can’t afford to have it anymore, businesses are insecure as is, and how do you expect them to hire when such impositions make them so worried?
Seriously, at the rate we’re going, Min. Wage is gonna end up abolished before it ever gets raised. I mean, we’re already fucking seeing the return of pro-Child Labor.
giltay
@Judas Escargot (aka ninja fetus with a taste for bruschetta): If I were cynical, I’d say that the long game is to force enough people into such desperate poverty that they’ll listen to anyone who tells them they have a solution. I’d say people on the Right see themselves riding across the continent as liberators, directing the frustration and rage against the enemies of the Right. I’d say they expect, after all responsible, liberal government is toppled, to see themselves on the top of the
rubbleheap, to rule as kings.If I were cynical, that is.
Nylund
It’d be one thing if the GOP simply thought everyone should have to work for minimum wage. That’d be bad enough, but in truth, they think the minimum wage is too high and should be abolished.
A more accurate statement would be that the GOP wants everyone to work for less than the minimum wage.
FlipYrWhig
Then again, John, these gluttonous bastards probably have parlayed their cushy gigs into both a phone _and_ a TV. And that’s our tax money!
/ ick.
geg6
@Judas Escargot (aka ninja fetus with a taste for bruschetta):
Personally, I hope it’s soon. And I fervently hope that pitchforks and torches are involved.
kd bart
It’s truly amazing that most of the richest counties in America voted for Obama in the last election while most of the poorest voted for McCain. That’s what happens when you run a 40 year con game of various cultural issues to distract people from seeing what you’re really doing to them.
Moonbatting Average
@Judas Escargot (aka ninja fetus with a taste for bruschetta): When a good portion of the electorate and their representatives think that they are going to get whisked away to heaven sometime during their lifetime or, at worst, immediately after death, it makes long-term planning kind of a hard sell.
Linnaeus
@Bulworth:
Lind makes a good point in that book; what’s ironic in my view is that Lind (and a couple of other liberal writers/bloggers/thinkers that I’ve read) has taken the “yeah, we need unions, but they’re pretty much over and done with so we need to find something else” position. A view, by the way, that I don’t share.
Trouble is, the Linds of the world don’t seem to know what that “something else” is.
artem1s
Kasich released his budget yesterday. Looks like he is moving to deregulate/privatize services so the local municipalities have to make the tough calls on what to cut and how. The budget just gives the cities less. doesn’t tell them what to spend less on. so pretty much the wealthy municipalities will do fine and the poorer ones will get screwed.
also.too.he thinks he is going to sell the prisons off and privatize them. I knew the toll roads were in his sights and figured the union busting measures were part of that. But the prison security guard unions are pretty strong in this state. that at least will be an interesting fight.
The Political Nihilist Formerly Known As Kryptik
@Nylund:
FTFY.
MikeTheZ
@The Political Nihilist Formerly Known As Kryptik: Cosigned.
Pococurante
Polis is not usually pronounced POLICE.
Please to focus on the important things.
The Political Nihilist Formerly Known As Kryptik
@artem1s:
‘Cuz we all know that private prison complexes are amazing, efficient, and never prone to fraud ever!!
Fffffffffffffffff- are we ever going to get out of the shithole that’s been dug for us? Especially considering the country’s predilection to give Dems only a couple of years to fix something before deciding they fucked up and giving Republicans another decade of total fucking dominance?!
Gen
I live between Gallipolis and Portsmouth and last night I found out they’re cutting education 16%. They’re cutting the STEM and TAG programs at the local school. So no kid will be able to leave and find another job. So they’ll be ignorant, uneducated and angry. So they’ll vote republican.
Sad Iron
Having benefits pretty much elevates you to the status of “terrorist” these days. What has happened to us? Jesus.
Mnemosyne
But there are some union members in a few areas of the country who are overpaid because the Mafia runs everything, so clearly people like the Taylors have to sacrifice to make up for that.
Gen
Pococurante, it IS pronounce POLICE. And it’s important to the people scraping by there.
Moonbatting Average
@The Political Nihilist Formerly Known As Kryptik: I guess that the logical endgame for the southernification of the national economy would be the re-institution of the peculiar institution.
Linnaeus
@The Political Nihilist Formerly Known As Kryptik:
As to why this is happening, I have some thoughts on that, but don’t think I could encapsulate them in a single comment, so I won’t even try to do that here.
As to what can be done, one way to start is good old-fashioned pavement pounding. Folks need to start organizing. And it’s going to take years to turn things around, because we need to start locally and build upward.
Yevgraf (fka Michael)
My take is that we’re one faux terror event away from a trip through fascism land. I know its wiki, but please consider this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weimar_Republic
My personal favorite is this next one:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enabling_Act_of_1933
Sounds like it is named straight from the Teahadiot playbook.
Judge Crater
As someone who is at the very leading edge of the baby boom generation, I can say that the rise of the corporate plutocracy and the collapse of the middle class is the most astounding and incomprehensible event of my lifetime.
And the advent of the Citizens United decision is really the nail in the coffin of economic equality in America. To paraphrase Ben Franklin, ‘It’s a banana republic if you can keep it.’
The Political Nihilist Formerly Known As Kryptik
@Linnaeus:
Meanwhile, the next time we manage to fluke out power, the country will give us 2 years, decide that fuck you, you’re the REAL problem, and give the GOP another fucking 10 years to do their damage because obviously they are the true and great Economic and Social Saviors of the Great Fucking American States.
Judas Escargot (aka ninja fetus with a taste for bruschetta)
@giltay:
If I were cynical, I’d say that the long game is to force enough people into such desperate poverty that they’ll listen to anyone who tells them they have a solution.
Well, I am cynical, and you may well have a point there.
But the Right can barely contain the Teabaggers now (just ask Mr Boehner). They are utter fools if they think they’ll be able to control the blind, angry, hungry mob they’re so busily creating.
New Yorker
@Gen:
Bingo. I just looked, and of course the 2008 election map showed this area going for McCain overwhelmingly. Hey, they might all be broke, and the GOP might be squeezing them ever more, but at least they don’t live under Sharia law and the gays won’t be marrying at Gallipolis city hall.
I’ll ask it again: why do I, living in upper-middle class luxury in New York, seem to care more about the plight of working-class whites in southern Ohio than they themselves do? You can lead a horse to water….
Ash Can
The more enlightened societies recognize that the middle class is the real engine of economic growth, and formulate policies accordingly. I’m still hoping that the collective bargaining clusterfuck in WI will turn out to be a wake-up call to people to see the Republicans as what they really are, and to stop voting against their own self-interests. It depends, however, on how well the recall effort goes (and I’ll consider it a partial success if it only makes enough noise to keep people’s attention focused on it). The real proof, however, will be what happens in the 2012 election. If working class folks turn on the Republicans and kick them to the curb, that would definitely signal that the chickens have come home to roost in droves.
Mudge
A problem is the deterioration of manufacturing. Machinists are skilled, so a strike cripples the industry and an accommodation is needed. As long as the supply of (skilled) workers in an industry is limited, workers have leverage. Service unions have no such wedge, most are unskilled (although possibly experienced) and they can be fired and replaced. Even some of the more skilled professions (pilots for example) have a glut of willing workers, so Southwest could fire all its pilots and hire new. The tactic for skilled public workers (teachers, nurses, police, fire) is to ban strikes, so they have no leverage other than sick-outs. Now their bargaining rights are being destroyed.
The objective is to diminish the wages of the working class to further enrich the wealthy, as the minimum wages discussion shows. A combination of lower taxes and lower costs (wages) allows the plutocracy to get richer, which is how they achieve self-gratification. I am reminded of the illegal immigrant bill proposed for Texas in which yard workers and maids were exempted because it would inconvenience the plutocracy. Heaven forbid they hire a legal maid for $7.25/hr, much less actually send in social security and medicare payments.
Yevgraf (fka Michael)
@The Political Nihilist Formerly Known As Kryptik:
In a Randian paradise, you should live to work and love your work so much that you shouldn’t expect to be compensated for it – expectations of fair compensation are greed, which is bad.
Unless, of course, you are a Galtian master, in which case your greed is good. In that case, the ideal workplace is one where a laborer has to work extra hours in order to afford to buy music albums (for reference, see Atlas Shrugged on 20th Century Motors).
danimal
I read this and I remember all the way back to yesterday, where I’m supposed to empathize with those poor millionaires, 40% of whom don’t feel rich.
I bet those millionaires aren’t sweating a reduction in the minimum wage or a 10% cut in hours.
Pococurante
@Gen: I never realized how much a person’s welfare and quality of life depended on mispronunciation.
Polis –
pōlĭs, IPA: /ˈpɒ.lɪs/, paul-iss
Police –
IPA: /pəˈliːs/, pohl-ess
How can they improve their own lives if they firmly believe it is important to mispronounce things? Perhaps it is a side effect of electing people that slash their education.
/snark
Linnaeus
@The Political Nihilist Formerly Known As Kryptik:
Part of the reason for that, IMHO, is that today’s Democratic Party has to a significant degree embraced conservative economic positions. When the electorate perceives that little has actually changed, they’re going to vote accordingly.
4tehlulz
@Pococurante: Well, to be fair, the GOP motto is “Fuck the Polis”.
soonergrunt
@geg6:
That’s pretty violent, for a self-proclaimed pacifist.
Or are you hoping somebody else picks up the pitchfork? Does it take somebody with a sick mind to do what you want done and won’t do yourself? Or do they do your needful thing and then develop the sick mind?
Isn’t that amazingly selfish, or does it take a sick mind to see it that way?
Sly
Hey, hey, hey. All the glibertarians are doing is exploiting a particular labor demand. No one else is going to so selflessly rise to the defense of social parasites like hedge fund managers and bank executives, because no one else is that smug.
Kirk Spencer
It might help to put these things in apple to apple comparisons.
$250,000 per year is $125 per hour.
$9 per hour is $18,000 per year.
50 weeks of work at 40 hours per week is 2000 hours per year.
Spare me, please, the comments of overtime and how the person making $250,000 is working 50 to 60 hours per week and all that crapola. Give him the 60, assume time and a half for everything over 40, and the hourly rate is still over $71 per hour.
The whiners aren’t rich at $70 per hour, but $9 per hour is a fat cat union employee.
(edited to fix typo.)
giltay
@Judas Escargot (aka ninja fetus with a taste for bruschetta):
You could just stop partway through that sentence. In my less cynical moments, I merely think they’re fools for believing in their outmoded disproven economic theories.
daveNYC
@Judas Escargot (aka ninja fetus with a taste for bruschetta): If you were extremely cynical, you might think that the Republicans don’t care about having total control over the mob. They probably believe that they can point the mob in a general direction, and be able to avoid becoming part of the unfortunate collateral damage themselves.
The Political Nihilist Formerly Known As Kryptik
@daveNYC:
And if the mob does run over one or two of your colleagues…GOOD! Less competition for the pie!
4tehlulz
It’s worked so far. Why stop?
Gen
@Pococurante: Becuase it was settled by French immigrants. And just becasue I want to pronounce Pococurante ‘twɪt’ doesn’t make it right.
Sorry- I missed the /snark on that.
gene108
That’s in 1996 dollars. Assuming miss union thug extorted a 3% COLA every year from her employer, she’d now be making $14.88/hr. That’s a 65% increase in her wages over 14 years.
In order for someone who was making $250,000 to keep up with the rapid increase in miss union thugs wages, he’d have to make $412,500 and there are no union thugs looking out for most people making $250,000 year back in 1996 or today.
It’s not a fare comparison. Clearly the chances of someone earning $250,000 being guaranteed pay increase, like miss union thug, are less and therefore miss union thug is getting unjustified raises, for doing the same damn thing on the taxpayers dime.
soonergrunt
@daveNYC: I don’t think you need to be cynical to see that. Just observant.
The Political Nihilist Formerly Known As Kryptik
@gene108:
…
It’s sad that it took me a few seconds between who said this and what was said to realize it was snark, because god help me I’ve seen this kind of argument said earnestly.
JZ
I was driving down to DC over the weekend and came upon some workers who would dash-out and quickly fill pot holes when a car wasn’t barreling down that particular lane. As they jumped out of the way, I turned to my wife and laughed at the lazy public workers. Last thing those folks need is a living wage and the right to bargain together as a unit.
celticdragonchick
@geg6:
Because I am most definitely not a pacifist…and some of the banksters need to be put against a bullet riddled wall.
Just my two cents.
Emma
Giltay: Can I be cynical with you?
Except that as many, many have learned throughout history, one you unleash the rage, you can’t stop it without some pretty unpleasant goings-on(see, Revolution, French; Bonaparte, Napoleon).
Of course in our case, it will probably be a Nehemiah Scudder, not a Napoleon.
The Moar You Know
When only half the people who can vote do, you are not going to see any kind of change anytime soon.
The Political Nihilist Formerly Known As Kryptik
@Emma:
But see, that’s why we have brown people to hate. I mean, they must be at fault, they’re brown!
Linnaeus
@The Moar You Know:
Good point. That is also a big part of the problem.
ppcli
@4tehlulz: I doubt that I will encounter a more brilliant remark than this one for the rest of the week. At least.
mikefromArlington
Listen, I’m completely against the attack on Unions and think it will ultimately kill whats left of the lower middle class families but….
There was a time in this country when families would migrate to where the jobs are. I watch on the discovery channel about stories of folks moving out of the south to the big cities to look for factory jobs, etc. Do people do this any longer? Sites like Monster.com make it a real possibility. Look, I know some peoples homes are underwater and they are left with few options but there’s got to be many others that are waiting for jobs to come to them.
I really haven’t seen much on this but it seems the U.S. is at a point where great migrations are needed to keep our folks employed.
Sometimes a change of scenery can make a world of difference. There are sections of America that don’t stand a chance of rehabilitating themselves as they are too isolated and will remain that way so long as Republican Governors continue to squash public investment into rail.
gene108
@The Political Nihilist Formerly Known As Kryptik: I read some Red State yesterday. They really do believe this or would flock to the argument, if presented to them. Scary, scary folks in terms of their world view, which seems to demand rigid social conservatism and somehow equates it with supply-side economics.
sketch
Has anyone noticed how selective the cons are in their denunciation of unions? We never hear about those “greedy cops,” “money-grubbing longshoremen,” or “overpaid firefighters.”
It seems like the rank-and-file really make an effort to avoid denouncing union groups who might react violently to one of their whiny counterprotests.
Aaron Fown
I’ve spent the past few days compiling every quality, mainstream link I could find pointing out who the real thieves are. Basically, it’s an open letter to the middle class; stop attacking yourselves! The unions are not your problem.
http://www.aaronfown.com/post/3877563818/an-open-letter-to-americas-middle-class-stop
Spread it around. I’m not sure how effective a tidal wave of facts might be, but redirecting the rage towards the real culprits (the banks and Wall St.) would be a great improvement over our current self destruction on behalf of the criminals who caused this mess.
Mnemosyne
@Yevgraf (fka Michael):
The only thing saving us right now is that we don’t have anyone who can credibly set themselves up as our dictator, and you can’t get to an authoritarian state without someone at the top holding it together. The only person with anything resembling that kind of popularity is Obama, and I think that even the one-note Nellies who comment here would have to admit that the man shows zero signs of wanting to be a dictator.
Mnemosyne
@mikefromArlington:
It’s not just their homes being underwater, which is definitely a factor. It’s also having a home that you can’t sell in this market. It’s being near family who can help you out with childcare that would cost you $1,000 a month if you moved somewhere without family nearby.
Plus, where do you picture them going? The factory towns are gone. Unskilled labor is easy to find, especially if you’re willing to pay people under the table. There’s no place for people to migrate to where they think they’ll be able to get a job. And most people are not going to pick up and move their entire family somewhere without being pretty sure there’s work there.
ETA: The Okies picked up and moved to California because there was farm work there. Where is today’s spot where hundreds or thousands of people can show up and get employment?
geg6
@soonergrunt:
Nope, I will happily give up my pacifistic tendencies in order to violently overthrow our Galtian overlords. See, even Quakers can find themselves confronted with a situation in which it’s kill or be killed. And since, in this particular situation, we are confronted with a small number of people with all the power and money, the only thing little people like us have to fight them is the threat of violence. It’s not anything like the American military’s usual MO of being the most powerful bullies in the schoolyard, picking on the smallest, poorest, weakest kid. In this case, it’s all the weak kids ganging up to kick the shit out of the big fat bully. Other than the Revolution and the Civil War and WWII (all, I must point out, far, far in our past), please point me to an instance where the US military was a force for good?
batgirl
@Moonbatting Average: Marx was right about a lot of things including:
Kirk Spencer
@gene108: Nice trolling, concentrating on the tree to avoid seeing the forest.
First let’s fix the tree. A 3% COLA per year would be $13.61 per hour, a 51% increase.
Second, let’s examine the second tree. The $250,000 is today. At the same rate of increase, that salary was $165,279 per hour in 1996. Care to guess what the people making $250K now were making in 1996?
Finally, let’s examine the fricking forest.
$14.88 per hour is a union thug stealing from the taxpayer.
$125 per hour is barely making it and needs a bailout and tax cut to get by.
Scott
@mikefromArlington: It costs money to move. It’s easy to say, “Just pack everything into the Studebaker and move to a new life,” but it isn’t at all easy. As Mnemosyne said above, you’re leaving an area where you’ve made contacts, where you may have friends and family, for a chance of not starving to death.
You gotta rent a trailer, pack up your belongings, pay for gas and travel expenses, get to a new city, look for a job, move on to a new city, look for a job, move on to a new city, look for a job, move to a new city, finally find a job, find an apartment, pay first and last months rent, pay for utilities and other new move-in expenses. That’s a shitload of money.
Bob Loblaw
I’m sure I’ll once again get attacked for being insensitive to the historical traditions of this country, but um, why are so many people still living in SW Ohio?
Fucking move.
This is a massive, gigantic country. And it’s always been internally expansionist and pioneering at its foundation. And it’s not like it’s some uniquely American shame to have to change behavior patterns in a post-industrial society. Look at the way Polish migration workers move about the EU, for example. If industry won’t find its way to you anymore, you just might have to find your way to it. It’s the only way considering neither political party has any plan to seriously eliminate poverty conditions in this country, and while the Democrats would seriously like to improve the funding and quality of the education system, the GOP would sooner set Washington D.C. on fire than risk the possibility of a more informed populace. Especially those little black and brown people. Can’t risk it.
artem1s
@Pococurante:
sorry, my father’s family has lived in Gallia county since 1800 or so. I have NEVER heard anyone pronounce it POLICE. PO-(like potato) Liss.
giltay
@Emma: I take some small, selfish, guilty comfort that the Republic of Gilead doesn’t reach Canada.
Barb (formerly Gex)
These fucksticks need to stop voting Republican then. Ohio went Bush in 2004. I don’t want them to be in this position, but I’m not going to get all bent out of shape because Americans want to fuck themselves over.
Linnaeus
@Bob Loblaw:
I do think that there’s value in preserving and rehabilitating communities, but I won’t attack you because moving is a reasonable response to an untenable economic situation.
It’s just that moving, as a few other commenters have pointed out, is not always an accessible option. Moving often carries with it considerable economic and social costs to the person doing the moving, and this can be a serious barrier.
I was able to – and did- move when the opportunity that I sought appeared somewhere other than where I was living at the time. But I had resources I could draw upon to do that, as well as little in terms of family commitments, etc. It was a lot easier for me than for some others.
soonergrunt
@geg6: That’s not on me. I’ve never claimed that the military was anything like a force for good.
That’s not the role of any military organization anywhere in the world.
And if you think that your desire for violence is OK or should be acceptable because your intended victims are less deserving than others of decency and respect, I can tell you that the only thing impressive about such belief is the mental gymnastics you have have to accomplish to simultaneously call yourself a pacifist and justify your desire to kill others. I’ll also tell you that you are absolutely no different than any other politician who saw force and violence as the answer to your problems.
Because that’s what that is, you know.
Somebody has done something that you cannot abide, and now you want them dead. By others’ hands preferably, but by your own if necessary. Your contempt for me and my brothers and sisters comes, mainly it seems, from us not doing our thing to the people you want dead, but to others. Or are you enough of an asshole that you’d hate the ones who did what you wanted there too?
And I’ll note that your faith isn’t much of a faith if it’s a matter of convenience, as it is with you. It is only this fantasy that you are somehow better, more moral than the the sword you that you would wield so freely that allows you to look in the mirror without self hatred.
Tell me something, cause I’m curious. When you’re ‘helping’ veterans, as you claim to do, don’t you despise them for what they are, when they sit right in front of you? Can you tell when they come through the door, the difference between the mechanic and the infantryman and the computer technician and the military police? And don’t you despise yourself for your role? Veteran’s benefits are, and have been for a very long time, recruitment tools. So all you really are doing is closing the circle on turning these people into the sick monsters you think them. Think about that for a minute. You enable a system that you claim to hate, that turns people into sick murderers and rapists, and you do it for money.
And you say we’re sick.
Barb (formerly Gex)
@Judas Escargot (aka ninja fetus with a taste for bruschetta): The GOP is banking on this causing a race war or religious war rather than a class war.
gene108
@Kirk Spencer: (1) It was snark. Someone wanted a right-wing response. I gave it to them.
(2) How can one try to do an authentic right-wing rant and get the numbers right?
Barb (formerly Gex)
@Nylund: This particular political movement stems from when they had slave labor. Every year since then in America has been one in which they were forced to actually pay for labor instead of steal it.
Svensker
@Linnaeus:
I think this is the real problem we’re having. The Repugs may be fascist-capitalist rapists, but a large majority of the Dems seem to go along, as well. Look at our fucking president — he seems to love Goldman Sachs, sees no need to punish any of the folks who caused the economic meltdown, and doesn’t seem to care about what’s happening to non-rich folks. The Dems in Congress are just as bad or worse.
If we had Dems who were out in front on this, talking about how the middle-class is getting screwed, the poor are getting screwed, while the Galtian overlords are screwing, there might be a chance that the poor folks in Gallipolis Ohio would vote for them. Right now, the choice seems to be between insane corporate cocksockers who hate teh brown folks, and reasonable corporate cocksockers who don’t hate teh brown folks. I don’t really blame the Gallipolians for not seeing much of a difference and clinging to their God and guns as someone once said.
Edited to add — brown Gallipolians see more of a difference, obviously
john b
@Mudge:
I understand that “skilled public workers” as you put them are often banned from striking. But at some point, why don’t the aggrieved say to hell with the law. of course, it would be a lot tougher to convince a large group of people (who are likely in a difficult financial situation) to do that. but change doesn’t come easily.
cinemabee
@artem1s:
Bingo! Seconding that as another long-time Southern Ohioan.
Kirk Spencer
@gene108: Realized that after the post edit was ended – you just hit the tone too well. (See the comment from @The Political Nihilist Formerly Known As Kryptik.)
Barb (formerly Gex)
@mikefromArlington: Which regions have a glut of jobs and a shortage of workers?
iPirate
Sounds like my hometown on the Ohio River. Sad and true.
Class warfare exists whether we talk about it or not.
t1
“David Beaver, 65, a barber, said that when he got out of high school, “you could go anywhere you wanted to and pick your job.””
Shhhhhhh, be quiet everybody, an old man is talking ….
Barb (formerly Gex)
@Scott: It’s sad to see how thoroughly Americans have been programmed to view themselves exactly how the Galtians see them.
Just move people! Who cares if there are no jobs anywhere. Or that you’d be leaving support systems. If these fucking useless workers aren’t willing to uproot everything and wander like nomads looking for work, then they have nothing to complain about.
Shit. Who needs Republicans when mikefromarlington can tell us exactly why it’s our fault that we are in dire straits.
gene108
@Svensker:
Did the folks, who caused the collapse do anything illegal? The laws may not have been effective and they got made bad economic decisions, but that is different than doing something illegal.
There’s an on going criminal and civil case against Lehman Brothers, but SEC investigators may not have a strong case.
ET
Here’s a question – how many people in those places were swayed but the nationalistic bravura spewing from GOP candidates and ended up voting Republican?
Svensker
@Bob Loblaw:
Huge swaths of the mid-west are depopulated. Some folks stayed because they still had a job. Some folks stayed because family was there and they couldn’t figure out how to make it on their own. A bunch of folks stayed because they didn’t know what else to do.
A single person without much money can up stakes and move fairly easily. If that person has to live down and dirty in a new spot for while, well not a huge deal. But what happens when you’re so poor you don’t have the money to go anywhere. What happens if you take care of your sick parents and if you go, they’re stuck. What happens when you’ve got three kids — do you take them out of school and away from family to a new place you may not be able to afford to try to get a job you may not get?
Blame the folks who destroyed the towns, not the folks who still live in what’s left of those places.
Judas Escargot (aka ninja fetus with a taste for bruschetta)
@mikefromArlington:
There was a time in this country when families would migrate to where the jobs are.
It costs a lot of cash to relocate. Renters probably have a hard time picking up and moving these days, especially with no job/insurance lined up beforehand. As for homeowners, many are underwater in mortgages with banks that won’t even answer their phone calls, much less negotiate a short sale.
Gee. Almost as if the PTB realize that limiting personal mobility is a great way to reduce people’s options.
iPirate
@Pococurante – the pronunciation in question is not of the word “polis” but of the name of this city, “Gallipolis.” Here’s an amusing 1950s authority, The Pronunciation Guide to Places in Ohio.
Svensker
@gene108:
I don’t know. The whole thing is way too complex for me to figure out. What I do know, however, is that no one has lost his or her job for those horrendous mistakes (illegal or not), and that the banksters have not lost money nor status during this meltdown. In fact, they seem to have gained money and status.
If there were no technical illegalities, it would still be nice for the president and Democratic leaders in Congress to stand up and say that these people played fast and loose with the law, observing the letter but not the spirit. The Pres and the Dems should be pushing for heavy regulation and reform, rather than partying with these dudes and giving them cushy jobs.
How many members of Goldman Sachs does Obama want to have in his government?
jcricket
And yet 90% of the time the media reports on the plight of the poor, poor not insanely rich folks who scrape by on $250k.
I think the real problem is that everyone in the media and everyone in the government is rich. Yes, everyone. Even those in most local governments “only” making $50 or 60k (which is greater than the median family income in America).
So all these rich people basically spend all their time making plans and rules and laws that help other rich people. All the while 70-80% of this country is slipping further into poverty (yep, poverty – I don’t care what the actual poverty level is – the middle class are poor by any real definition).
And the rich think it can go on forever. So far they’ve been right. We’re all willing to work in what amounts to indentured servitude, sometimes complicit in our own misery (not me, I vote Democrat, but you get the idea).
If the 30-40% of middle class and poor white folks who currently vote Republican voted instead their economic interests, Republicans would never again get elected to anything important. But I guess fucking over the brown people and the homos is more important than a chance to actually get ahead or have healthcare or whatever.
sukabi
@geg6: don’t forget the pikes and ropes… lots and lots of them.
FlipYrWhig
@Bob Loblaw: If you’re living in an area where home prices crashed, you might have to bring money to the table to get out of your own damn house. That puts a bit of a damper on the romance of moving out.
FlipYrWhig
@4tehlulz:
Awe. Some.
befuggled
@iPirate: Ooh, nice link. I was about to tell anybody complaining about pronunciation to go to Versailles and try using the “correct” pronunciation.
Hint: pronunciation isn’t fixed.
As for why people don’t leave the area, well, it can be difficult. My wife got out of the area, but lots of her cousins are still stuck. Most of them have jobs, though. It isn’t just the economics of finding a job in an area far away that keeps them there. Their family and their culture have a big pull.
The time to get out is definitely before you have kids, though.
Jamey: Bike Commuter of the Gods
@Bulworth: We are all Cannon towel-makers.
currants
@singfoom:
Why does this remind me of Vonnegut’s Player Piano…?
Mike in NC
Here is the actual title of an article by a glibertarian asshole named Don Campbell that appeared in yesterday’s USA Today:
Shorter Campbell: sucks to be you!
PurpleGirl
@mikefromArlington: People can’t do that. For one, they can’t sell their current house; without that sale, they can’t buy another one someplace else. And secondly, there probably aren’t many jobs any where; they don’t have the resources to move someplace and then try to find a job. You need to have the job waiting for you in order to move.
soonergrunt
@t1: win
PurpleGirl
@sketch: There aren’t many longshoremen left. That sector was eviscerated by containerization in the 1970s. Yes, there are some left in container ports but no where near the number there once was.
opie_jeanne
@Redshirt:
That one comment by Bush Sr. endeared him to me for life.
Ronnie’s handlers took him aside immediately and threatened him with evisceration or something worse, and he never peeped about it again.
gene108
@Svensker:
The leading Democrats, like Barney Frank and even President Obama, said mean things about Wall Street. They called them “fat cats” and what not.
Wall St. hated the rhetoric. They felt they were being unfairly criticized. They hated the Dodd-Frank bill and will spend however long it takes, i.e. even 20-30 years, to undo it.
Wall St. felt so put out by Democrats, they spend over a $100 million (thanks to Citizens United) to get Republicans elected in 2010.
Exchange between Obama and hedgefund manager back in Sept of 2010. The hedgefund manager feels “under attack” by Obama. They really do. The disconnect with the investors and everyone else is pretty huge. The investors feel they do very important work, which is essential to the functioning of the global economy. Without them, the world’s economy would devolve to the stone age.
Something that hit me yesterday, having a strong middle-class is a value a country decides to have. There’s no economic reason for it. If you are rich, you may not have a need for certain jobs to pay well. If someone, somewhere can do something for $.50/hr, why pay an American more? There’s no value added, because it’s done by an American.
A lot of the business community in this country really feels no they derive no inherent benefit from America. They feel they can pull up stakes and move anywhere and do the same thing and make the same money. It is America that benefits from their presence.
The usual argument about taxing the rich was that a government provides the framework for you to obtain your wealth, therefore you are indebted to the government, to a certain degree for your wealth.
The rich no longer think this way. We’ve trained a generation of folks to only care about their bottom line, which they feel does not depend on anything, any one country has done for them.
I really don’t know what the solution is. Somewhere we lost our basic values and need to get it back.
Omnes Omnibus
@befuggled: I once date a girl from that town. I had many years of French courses from grade school through college. For some reason, she laughed at me. Life is unfair.
Davis X. Machina
Something that hit me yesterday, having a strong middle-class is a value a country decides to have.
You can have any society you want, the economy is just how you get there. There’s a preponderance of power, if not of people, who want a society the way we have it ordered today. Shift the power, everything else goes with it.
Omnes Omnibus
@Omnes Omnibus: I dated her, that is. Stupid grammar.
Zak44
No one has said it better than James McMurtry:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTW0y6kazWM
PS: I’m still waiting for Fox to call the 50 Japanese workers still at the Fukushima plant “union thugs.”
geg6
@soonergrunt:
You seem to be internalizing my criticism of the military and its brass and enablers. I really don’t blame any of the poor, duped cogs of the military machinery for what they do in its name. They are victims just as the people of Iraq or Vietnam or Panama are its victims. I don’t hate any of them, even those who commit the crimes of rape, murder, and torture. I don’t even hate you despite the fact that you’ve decided to hate me because I oppose the military and would have it abolished.
As for faiths, I have none. I see faith as a crutch and I’ve never been one to need a crutch. I have no faith, no creed. I’m, generally, a pacifist because I don’t really see the point of war as it exists between nation states. It does nothing to help the people who need help and really benefits those who least need any benefits. There have been exceptions, which I call just wars, such as the Revolution, the Civil War, and WWII, but too few to nullify my overall resistance to war.
In the economic and social situation which exists in today’s USA, I would consider a violent revolution to overthrow the oligarchs who rule us as a just war. And I’d be one to volunteer for the front lines. You may see this as some sort of contradiction, but it’s not to me. And I really don’t give a damn what you think about it or the work I do now or pretty much anything you have to say about me or my ideas or, well, anything. You don’t know me, I don’t know you, and we obviously wouldn’t be friends if we did. All of which is to basically say, as politely as possible, to go fuck yourself.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Davis X. Machina:
The academic discipline currently known as “economics” was originally called “political economy”. I think an essential truth was lost with the name change. We can try to pretend that there is such a thing as a politically neutral or apolitical economic system, but I don’t believe it.
Paul in KY
@celticdragonchick: One banker, one bullet.
rikryah
I don’t think we can tell these stories enough, because they are very real, and are just the plain, fundamental truth about what’s happening out there in this country.
EthylEster
@artem1s wrote:
So that’s why that jerk was on C-SPAN last night.
I’d never seen the guy before and I have to agree totally with something Kay mentioned recently: I found this guy personally repulsive. Clearly another ego maniac pol. I felt dirty after listening to him pimp himself.
EthylEster
@Gen wrote:
Ok, but some people pronounce the word “police” as POlease.
Others say poLEASE. So it’s confusing to use the word “police” to suggest pronunciation of another word.
something fabulous
@Omnes Omnibus: See also: “Des Plaines.”
Omnes Omnibus
@something fabulous: Oh, that one makes perfect sense; I’ve lived in the Chicago area. VerSAILS just bugs me.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@something fabulous:
Duh rain in deh Spain stays mainly in Des Plaines
AAA Bonds
As well-meant as this article is, it’s very New York Times. You can almost hear the gasps of well-heeled liberal art-buyers at how horrible life must be for The Poor People Who Buy The Spicy Wing Special.
“That may not sound like much”, indeed. Probably not to your average reader of the Times, but to the rest of America, it’s how life is.
AAA Bonds
@gene108:
You have to be kidding me. Yes, they’ve all done SOMETHING illegal, somewhere along the line. What an effective government does is this situation is go after them for the little things that can be easily proven in a court of law, and make these people living demonstrations of what swindlers get.
You don’t have to put them to the firing squad. Five years in prison would be enough to terrify any of the young professional joiners who end up on Wall Street.
I’m not much for high-and-mightiness about the rule of law when rich crooks face no rules at all.
TenguPhule
Sometimes I think violence will be the only solution.
Then I get drunk and almost convince myself it won’t go that far.
Matt
As others have pointed out, I just can’t feel that sorry for the residents of Gallipolis; elections have consequences, and this is what they get for voting Republican. Maybe next time they’ll use their brains in the voting booth instead of their Bibles.
DPirate
It doesn’t matter who has the job and how bad they are struggling. This seems to be the propaganda used to rally against government cuts. “Oh poor me”. True or not, it is not any kind of substantive argument. If the tax income won’t support the compensation that legislative fools voted in during fat times then either those wages or the jobs themselves have to go. If every other relatively equal job in the community pays a lot less money, then it is no more than welfare to pay the govt. employee more.
I would like for everyone to make a good living, but the public sector must follow the private, for good or for bad. If you want a demon, it is neo-capitalism and “free trade”. The same greedy selfish narcissists who tried most recently to
destroy the economyget rich quick, and who have offshored and outsourced every decent job they could, built Box O’ Crap Marts on every streetcorner, and sent us all over the world to do their dirty work.