The ‘Right-to-Work’ Lie Being Shamelessly Perpetrated by the Corporatist ‘Right’

http://www.occupydemocrats.com/the-lie-being-perpetrated-by-the-right-that-is-right-to-work/

A catchy name;  ’Right-to-Work’ law, it would seem implementing such a law would benefit workers. I mean, the state is saying that people living in it have the right to work, but it is legislation that actually undermines the worker. It prohibits agreements between labor unions and employers and denies collective bargaining rights. It denies the union’s ability to enter into agreements with employees to become members of the union as a condition of employment, and so it leaves employees without union representation and protection. Workers are left at the mercy of their corporate masters.

Right-to-work laws are actually union busting pieces of legislation passed under the guise of helping workers, enacted by Republican held legislatures, to help the corporate interests that sponsor them. And, these corporate interests are backed by organizations like: [The]National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, Inc., whose logo says it all: “Defending American workers from the abuses of compulsory unionism since 1968.” Then there are the infamous Koch brothers. The Kochs deny any involvement in the recent move by Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s to balance the budget on the backs of labor, denying unions that represent public workers collective bargaining rights. However, what Koch does acknowledge on their website KochFacts.com, is that “Koch has always and will continue to support market-based policies that advance economic freedom, and we support candidates who do the same. This was the basis for Koch’s support of Gov. Walker’s candidacy.” I gather for Koch, supporting workers is not a market-based policy as workers are, apparently, not part of the free market. Sounds like code for support for Walker’s corporate sponsored union busting policies.

There is ALEC, (American Legislative Exchange Council), a Koch sponsored 501(c)3 tool, whose advisory council consists of members from big Phrma, AT&T, Energy, Exxon, UPS, to name a few, and the likes of Reagan era economist Arthur B. Laffer, and whose board is largely made up of Republican legislators. ALEC is at the forefront of right-to-work policy writing legislation on behalf of many states, which as a matter of public policy they deny (see Center for Media and Democracy).  Additionally, if you type ‘right-to-work’ in the search window on ALEC’s website, the first item that comes up is a May 23, 2013 report co-written by Laffer and Stephen Moore, of the WSJ —a report on ‘Rich States, Poor States’.  It is not surprising that the top 10 rich states are all right-to-work; Red states, and the bottom 10 poor states are Blue, which do not have right-to-work laws on their books. It is a disingenuous report because it ignores the states’ GDP. The aggregate GDP in 2010 of the top 10 states on Laffer’s list, is a little over $2.2 trillion.  Just California and New York, which are among the bottom 10– 47 & 49 on the list, have a combined GDP of nearly $3.1 trillion.

In fairness to Laffer et al, their study is based upon 15 economic policies that they claim determine the economic strength of a state. Not surprisingly, 10 of the 15 are in some way related to taxation. And of course, one of the 15 is determined by whether or not the state has a right-to-work statute—I gather the market value of the goods and services that a state produces is not a significant policy consideration, in determining the economic prowess of that state.

New Hampshire, the ‘live free or die’ state, has a political alliance called; “Live Free or Die Alliance” (NH’s Virtual Town Hall).  As you may recall, in 2011, New Hampshire’s mostly Republican legislature passed HB 474 prohibiting collective bargaining agreements in an attempt to add it to the list of right-to-work states. Fortunately, it was vetoed by then Gov John Lynch, and withstood an attempt to override the veto by the legislature. Lynch has been succeeded by now Gov Maggie Hassan, also a Democrat, so it is not likely to be an issue again for a while. What is disconcerting is that for the Right in general, and New Hampshire in particular, ‘live free or die’ means that corporate interests are prior to the individual’s right to protection, as an employee.  We, of course, learned last election cycle that corporations are people too.  Who is it that is living free and willing to die for the loss of freedom?  The Live Free Alliance thanks its corporate sponsors on the top of its website—Credit Suisse, Bank of America, First Republic Bank, and Waste Management just to name a few.

Yesterday, in a piece on Plunderbund.com GOP Legislators told to wait on ‘Right-to-Work until after John Kasich is reelected governor.  “We heard rumors that Ohio’s GOP legislators were told to hold off on pushing so-called ‘right-to-work’ legislation until after the 2014 election to keep Kasich from having to take a stance on the issue.”  In a recent interview with the Delaware Gazette, State Rep Andrew Brenner admits the rumors were true.  Brenner said, “I’m co-sponsor on three bills, and I’m told I’m on a wanted poster in one of the union halls. There’s right-to-work for private, public and a resolution to put it on the ballot. I don’t think any of them are going anywhere. We were told not to even bring them up, because next year is an election year for the governor. This may come up if he’s re-elected. If he’s not re-elected, it won’t come up because we won’t get it through Ed FitzGerald.”

It is apparent that Kasich, who presents himself as a moderate, has not given up on his anti-worker agenda. He and his party are simply ‘lying in wait’ for the outcome of the next election. If, as the policy hawks on the Right claim, right-to-work policy is good for the worker, and is, as Laffer and Moore argue, among the primary reasons for growth in the top 10 states on their list—Why is Kasich running from the policy and lying in wait? My suggestion is that while workers and corporations are both people, folks that work have the advantage–they know better and they vote.

Slavery Remains an Inspiration for the Right in Parts of the South?

http://www.occupydemocrats.com/slavery-still-an-inspiration-for-the-right/

http://samuel-warde.com/2013/09/slavery-remains-inspiration-right-parts-south/

Slavery is a system under which people are treated as property to be bought and sold, and are forced to work. Slaves can be held against their will from the time of their capture, purchase or birth, and deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, or to demand payment for their work.

The practice of slavery predates written records and has existed in many places, even Aristotle justified slavery, and while his justification today smacks of abhorrent sophistry, his arguments had no racist connotations.  For Aristotle, slavery was justified for captives of war and their offspring, whom he believed were incapable of directing their own lives, and would therefore be better off. Even the Bible has passages attempting to justify slavery. Both slave owners and abolitionists quoted text from the Bible.

There is no plausible justification for slavery of any kind.  In fact, the prohibition against slavery is one of the few ‘universal’ moral propositions accepted by every country in the world.  Even though today slavery is illegal in every country in the world, there are still an estimated 27 million slaves worldwide; some opponents are hopeful that slavery can be eradicated by 2042.[3]

The American slave trade was particularly pernicious. It largely came about because property owners had indentured servants, who worked off their indentures and became competitors to their former masters. This caused a shift to African slaves, who were chattel, owned by their masters. Further, Africans were not only chattel that could be bought and sold, they were regarded as less than a full person. In fact, they were, for purposes of taxation, consider three-fifths of a free person. Known as the Three-Fifths Compromise reached at the Philadelphia Convention of 1787 between the North and Southern states, Article 1, Section 2 Paragraph 3—States were to be taxed according to the Number of free persons, and not Indians, and three fifths of all other Persons, obviously referring to African slaves.

In 1860 Abraham Lincoln is elected president, a Republican who opposed slavery, but whose party did not adopt the 13th Amendment as part of its party’s platform until Lincoln ran for re-election in 1864. The Amendment was passed by Congress in 1865 and slavery was abolished. However, this did not stop the hate and bigotry, and lead to state adopted Jim Crow Laws, principally in the South.

Racism is alive and well in this country, and an integral part of the Republican’s tactics used in personally opposing the president and his policies. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 is landmark piece of legislation that outlawed major forms of discrimination against racial, ethnic, national and religious minorities, and women. The implications of this landmark piece of legislation are way beyond the scope of this article, but it has been widely seen as the nail-in-the- coffin, which motivated Conservative Southern Democrats to become Republicans. President Obama during the last election polled 40 points behind with these white voters in the South, while only polling behind between 4 to 8 points with white voters in swing states.

A new study by political scientists Avidit Acharya, Matthew Blackwell and Maya Sen“suggests that there may be a simple explanation for this divide — slavery.”

“Drawing on a sample of more than 39,000 southern whites, we show that whites who currently live in counties that had high concentrations of slaves in 1860 are on average more conservative and express colder feelings towards African Americans than whites who live elsewhere in the South. That is, the larger the number of slaves in his or her county of residence in 1860, the greater the probability that a white Southerner today will identify as a Republican, express opposition to race-coded policies such as affirmative action, and express greater racial resentment towards African Americans. We show that these differences are robust to a variety of factors, including geography and mid-19th century economic conditions and political attitudes. We also show that our results strengthen when we instrument for the prevalence of slavery using local measures of the agricultural suitability to grow cotton. In fact,our findings indicate that in the counterfactual world where the South had no slaves in 1860, the political views of white Southerners today would be indistinguishable from those of similarly situated white Northerners.”

Even after 150 years, racism and bigotry flourishes, particularly in parts of the American South, but not exclusively. The historical persistence and resentment of African Americans by radically Conservative white folks who align themselves with the Republican Party, stand to be a major stumbling blocks to their own success. Some of these Southern states are among the poorest performing states both economically and educationally. Folks in these states, consistently elect representatives that throw-up obstacles–preventing  adoption of the president’s policies, despite the fact that these policies are in their citizens’ best interests.

The radical Right, which also exerts itself outside of the South, has been responsible for the Tea Party and much of the extreme we see in Republican Party policy and politics. The Republican Party has come to hope that this fringe mobilizes like thinking white folks, and carries it back to national prominence. Besides the fact that “It’s Arithmetic” and they are a dying minority—their ideas are dead, and their representative come across like a bunch of crazy sociopaths:

Sen. John Cornyn regarding voter disenfranchisement says that “Facts mean little to a politicized Justice Department bent on inserting itself into the sovereign affairs of Texas and a lame-duck administration trying to turn our state blue.”

Citizens within the Springboro, Ohio school district are upset about the antics of the president and founder of the Springboro Tea Party, Sonny Thomas, who unfurled a Confederate flag this past Thursday at a school board meeting. And not satisfied with just that level of shock, he is reported to have said that African-Americans should consider themselves lucky since they are treated better in the United States than they would be if they were in “Black Countries” with “genocide.” What is more stunning was that, despite the man’s clear disruptive behavior, he was allowed to stay for the whole meeting while others the board deemed disruptive were removed.

Televangelist Pat Robinson has stated that Haiti’s natural disasters, poverty and political turmoil is due to the fact that enslaved Africans made a pact with the devil in order to win their freedom from the French.

Cruz senior’s claim that Obama ”is trying to eliminate God and impose socialism on the U.S. After all, he’d seen it happen before…A young charismatic leader rose up, talking about ‘hope’ and change’ Cruz yelled, as the crowd booed. His name was Fidel Castro.” Got it? Obama = Castro.

Let us not forget Donald Trump and his birther rants, or a few weeks ago, the crowd cheering a rodeo clown with an Obama mask, or Representative King’s comment about African Americans having “calves the size of cantaloupes”.

We surely cannot forget the statement that showed ‘the great Right ostrich’ still had its head in the sand–Reince Priebus’ infamous autopsy, an assessment of the state of the Republican Party,  after Republicans took a beating in the last presidential election.  Calling for more inclusion, Priebus issued a report that called for better communication strategies to avoid repelling young voters, women, African-Americans and Latinos. “Our policies are sound (my emphasis), but I think in many ways the way we communicate can be a real problem.”

Rush Limbaugh perhaps the most pernicious outside source of hatred in radical Republican politics had this to say today about the president: “Bush had Shock and Awe? We’re looking at shuck and jive here. That’s what I’m gonna name this. The Obama operation in Syria, Operation Shuck and Jive, because that’s what this is.”

The Republicans, their Conservative friends, and Tea Party supporters hold ‘freedom’ to be the paramount value…I guess they mean, only if you are white!

Study Destroys GOP Obamacare Premium Hike Myth: ‘The Rate-Shock Concerns Were Overblown’

http://www.occupydemocrats.com/study-destroys-gop-obamacare-premium-hike-myth-the-rate-shock-concerns-were-overblown/

Study Destroys GOP Obamacare Premium Hike Myth: ‘The Rate-Shock Concerns Were Overblown’

“The rate-shock concerns were overblown,” said Christine Eibner, a senior economist at Rand Corp., a California-based nonprofit research group that is releasing a report Thursday that examines insurance premiums for workers at small firms. “It’s likely the effect will be small.” Nationally, the report said, average premiums for equal plans would cost $5,837 with Obamacare in effect and $6,192 without it — a $355 savings under the Affordable Care Act. Premiums at large companies weren’t examined in the report. But Rand’s report only examined companies with fewer than 100 workers. Large companies have been providing health coverage to their employees for years but they are always looking to cut costs.

Last week, for example, United Parcel Service Inc told non-union employees that their spouses would no longer qualify for company-sponsored health insurance if they could get coverage through their own jobs. Blaming the new healthcare law, UPS told white-collar workers two months ago that 15,000 working spouses eligible for coverage from their own employers would be excluded from the UPS plan in 2014. According to USA Today, company officials also said the move, which applies only to non-union U.S. workers, should save $60 million a year. Many analysts note that such moves are part of a long-term trend of shrinking corporate benefits, but UPS repeatedly cites Obamacare in explaining its decision. According to a survey released in March by consultant Towers Watson and the National Business Group on Health, 4 percent of large employers excluded spouses from their health plan in 2013 if they could buy coverage where they work, and 8 percent more planned to do so for 2014.

In an article in Forbes, Avik Roy former healthcare consultant for Mitt Romney states, with all the ‘objective’ might of the partisan he is: “We know that Obamacare will significantly increase the cost of individually-purchased health insurance in nearly every part of the country. But we’ve generally assumed that disruptions in the market for employer-sponsored health insurance will be less severe. In particular, large employers who self-insure should be exempt from most of Obamacare’s most onerous regulations. It turns out, however, that even America’s largest companies face higher costs due to the health law. A recently-leaked letter from Delta Air Lines to the Obama administration states that the ‘cost of providing health care to our employees will increase by nearly $100,000,000 next year,’ much of it due to Obamacare.”

Suffice it to say, Delta’s numbers are convoluted and misleading. Delta speaks of additional costs for coverage of adult children up to age 26 at a cost of more than $14 million. They speak of reinsurance fees that will cost an additional $10 million. Delta estimates that it will cost them another $14 million for employees that will now elect to take insurance that have been declining because of the individual mandate in the new law. Even if true, and no doubt highly exaggerated, it only totals $38 million.

Roy concludes that “President Obama keeps insisting that, “for the 85 percent of Americans who already have health insurance,” life will be even better than it is today. But that’s patently untrue. The so-called “Affordable Care Act” will make health care less, not more, affordable.” But even Roy is forced to first admit “It’s not clear exactly how much of that sum is due specifically to Obamacare, and how much is due to health inflation and the end of Obamacare’s Early Retiree Reinsurance Program, a $5 billion fund used to encourage employers to continue providing health benefits to early retirees in the near-term.” And Roy also acknowledges, “Delta doesn’t like Obamacare’s “Cadillac tax” on high value insurance plans. But that’s because the tax is doing exactly what it should do: motivating employers to pare down on costly plans that drive premiums upward.”

On the other side of the coin is Howard Schultz, CEO Starbucks, “I don’t believe that…the health care law should be a reason or a motivation to cut benefits for either the employee or spouses,” Schultz said. “An investment in your people is an investment in shareholder value.” “Other companies have announced that they won’t provide coverage for spouses; others are lobbying for the cut-off to be at 40 hours. But Starbucks will continue maintaining benefits for partners and won’t use the new law as an excuse to cut benefits or lower benefits for its workers,” Schultz said in a telephone interview.

Tami Luhby for CNN Money tries to explain why, in some states, premiums will rise dramatically and not in others. Premiums in states like New York and California have dropped dramatically, while there are concerns about cost increase in states like Ohio, Florida, and South Carolina. But these red states have opposed ObamaCare and their projected increases do not take into account federal subsidies. There are other contributing factors such as age, deductible, benefits and quality of the plan. According to Joan Peters spokeswoman for the Department of Health Human Services, “When the marketplaces open on Oct. 1, plans will have to compete side by side, and consumers will be able to choose the one that best fits their budget and needs.” And even if rates do rise a bit “A lot of people will get more for their money,” said Sarah Lueck, senior policy analyst for the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

The Editorial Board commentary by the St. Louis Post Dispatch “Desperately flailing at Obamacare as it saves lives and money” concludes The Affordable Care Act is not perfect and may never be. Inevitably, economics will force it to give way to a single-payer national health care system. But in the meantime, it’s saving lives, saving money and making health care available to those who, as in parable of the Good Samaritan, were left to suffer at the side of the road.

Jon Favreau, the president’s former top speechwriter, argues that the uptick in the anti-Obamacare crusade is a result of Republicans’ being “terrified that Obamacare could actually work.” In a July 11 article in thedailybeast.com, Mr. Favreau asked, “If Republicans are so confident Obamacare will end badly, why not just shut up about it?”

As the Dispatch says: “The fact remains that even though some big insurance companies have refused to sign up, states that have created insurance exchanges have seen the ‘magic of the marketplace’ — once a favorite phrase of Republicans — drive down the cost of individual health insurance policies. In New York, Oregon and California, rates have fallen as much as 50 percent.”

Global Warming: Science — the Republicans and God

Perhaps the most polarizing contemporary policy debate between Democrats and Republicans; between Progressives and Conservatives is the conflict over the existence of manmade Climate Change (Global Warming).

The argument over Global Warming is a debate between Progressives and Democrats (Liberals) on the one hand, and two allied foes-- what I will refer to as Conservatives (skeptics) and Evangelical Republicans, on the other.  The skeptical debate is loosely about whom or what is causing Global Warming, and the scientific explanation of that cause. Importantly, both sides agree on the meaning of Global Warming, but skeptics deny the significance of the science, as we will see, they talk right past the science. Evangelical Republicans, on the other hand, not only deny the existence of Global Warming, but they deny science as possible explanation of natural phenomena in a World created by God (more on this to follow).

As I mentioned, secular skeptics do not deny Global Warming, but they are of two minds. In the first example below, Rep. Crawford questions some of the validity of the scientific data, and then jumps to calling into question the existence of Global Warming, writing it off to politics. In the second denial, Senator Boozman acknowledges climate change, writing off contemporary scientific concerns to the historical and expected natural changes in our climate. In both cases, since there is no evidence of anthropogenic climate change, we have no basis for concern, and the issue is not really about the science.

Rep. Rick Crawford (R-AR-01): “There’s not sound science to support some of the initiatives that the President, I think, is committed to. We know that some of the research was faulty and it drove a lot of the agenda for a long time. and then it turned out there were some questions about the validity of that research,” said Crawford. “I don’t see a lot of the green initiatives that are being talked about being supported by scientific data, but more supported by political agendas.” - See more  

Sen. John Boozman of Arkansas: “Well I think that we’ve got perhaps climate change going on. The question is what’s causing it. Is man causing it, or, you know, is this a cycle that happens throughout the years, throughout the ages. And you can look back some of the previous times when there was no industrialization, you had these different ages, ice ages, and things warming and things. That’s the question.” He also once compared the scientists who believe in man-made climate change to those who warned about Y2K.

The overwhelming preponderance of the scientific community believes that Global Warming is anthropogenic in origin, and becoming a crisis. This leaves one to wonder why there would be skepticism about the phenomenon of Global Warming given the overwhelming consensus in the scientific community. Human beings are now more than 7 billion strong, increasing like the national debt under President Bush. The world is more industrialized than ever, and we produce waste at rates unrecorded in the Earth’s history. In fact, in the 40 years or since manmade climate change has been a political football, the Earth’s population has nearly doubled. So it seems a simple matter of common sense, whether or not you think some of the scientific data is skewed, with the rapid increase in humanity and the by-products of life, there must be some impact on the environment.

Behavioral scientists, Dana R. Fisher, Joseph Waggle and Philip Leifeld, Within the U.S. Climate Change Debate: Where Does Political Polarization Come From? Locating Polarization, American Behavioral Scientist 2013 57: 70 originally published online 2 November 2012, take an rigorous look at what they believe are the sources of the polarization over the debate.

What I take from their paper is that Conservative think tanks have challenged the science of Climate Change on, ethical, economic and political, and nationalistic grounds. They question the intent and independence of the researchers, the impact on the economy, and the political motivations of those supporting the idea of climate change, while arguing that it is not in the U.S’s best interest to acknowledge environmental issues when the rest of the world pollutes. Not surprisingly, we have a major disagreement because the parties talk past each other. Liberals are concerned about the impact on Earth and Conservatives are worried about economic issues and our national self-interest, ‘here at home’. Liberals argue that if we do not act there will be no ‘here at home’, and skeptics argue that’s a politically motivated claim. There is no conversation when people talk past each others.

The skeptics conveniently throw the science out of the argument, and they are allied by the other protagonist in the debate, Republican Evangelicals. We have seen the coverage of the Biblical literalists, and it has been hard to take them seriously, but now they have come into prominence as nationally elected officials. These folks deny the validity of science, and appeal to the Bible for explanations for naturally occurring events. .

Rush Limbaugh spouted this the other day on his radio show:

“See, in my humble opinion, folks, if you believe in God, then intellectually you cannot believe in manmade global warming.”

“You must be either agnostic or atheistic to believe that man controls something that he can’t create,” he continued. “The vanity! These people — on the one hand, ‘We’re no different than a mouse or a rat.’….But how can we destroy it when we’re no different from the lowest life forms?”

“And then on the other end, ‘We are so powerful. And we are so impotent — omnipotent that we can destroy — we can’t even stop a rain shower, but we can destroy the climate.’ And how? With barbecue pits and automobiles, particularly SUVs. It’s absurd.”  See more

This is an attempt at offering a ‘rational argument’ that is less sensational then invoking the Bible as the answer to science. He states: “If you believe in God…you cannot believe in manmade global warming.” Many on the Left believe in God; consequently, they should not believe in global warming.  As evidence of the soundness of his argument, Limbaugh effectively states that ‘If God created the Earth, how can we, his creations, destroy His creation’.  This is obviously fallacious reasoning, even if we give him that both the Earth and human beings are God’s creations, it does not logically follow that humans cannot destroy the Earth. I don’t think anyone rational person believes that if all the nuclear weapons in the world were exploded that the Earth will survive, at least not in any important way.

Congress has done little except to exacerbate the conflict. One side has managed to turn science and scientific research into the Anti-Christ both figuratively and literally.  While the other is seeing a siege on the acceptance of science as the mutually agreed upon systematic tool to find testable objective explanations for natural phenomena, by which we can make intelligent and rational decisions about our social, political, and economic interests.

Positions on significant problems become very polarizing when you cannot agree on common vocabulary by which to discuss them—in fact resolution of the issue becomes intractable—but the danger does not go away.

Global Warming: Science — the Republicans and God

http://samuel-warde.com/2013/08/global-warming-science-the-republicans-and-god/

Why Do Folks On the Right Vote Against Self-Interest

http://samuel-warde.com/2013/08/why-do-folks-on-the-right-vote-against-self-interest/

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