Union Perspectives

Why did all these people go to Washington, D.C.? Did they go just to break things? Or just because one person asked them to? Some say they went to take down our government. If that is true, then what type of rule or government do they want to replace it with? As outlined in Machiavelli’s The Prince: there are three kinds of government: principality, aristocracy and democracy. But, others say there are six types of government: three are good, principality, aristocracy and democracy; the three are bad are tyranny, oligarchy and anarchy. The good types are fragile and can easily slip into one of the bad. This happens when a democracy turns into anarchy, and aristocracy becomes an oligarchy or a principality becomes a tranny. An example of this slippage of one government becoming another could be seen in our own country last week. What if they had succeeded in their mission? What kind of government would we be ruled by today had they succeeded—anarchy? Some say democracy is the dictatorshi...

The disempowerment of the workers worldwide and the USA is driving the wage inequality wider each day, which puts the capitalists’ consumer-driven economy into a death spiral. This spiral began in the mid-1980s when executives and directors tossed aside their old patriotic inhabitations against laying off workers, cutting wages, closing U.S. plants, moving production overseas to dirt-cheap labor, and taking on debt. Most of this was driven by locally owned companies becoming stockholder corporations where the bottom line was all that mattered, no matter the cost. Their only concern is the shareholders; but this way of doing business is proving counterproductive. There is no way to grow. There is no wages or jobs. No spending. No economy. It’s essentially like committing business suicide. This type of death spiral was also supported by the business roundtable in the 1990. They changed their statement of corporations’ mission from making goods available at a fair price to generating eco...

In the writings of Niccolo Machiavelli’s “The Prince,” he explains the types of government and how they succeed or fail. To uphold laws of a country, it is done by fear of either some god, who the blame of punishment can be laid upon or fear of the government or a combination of both. If there is good, the government or prince takes the credit; but if it is bad, then god did it. You can see why a type of god is so important in most governments. Most all three types of governments use this as a way to keep control of the masses. The three types of government are: principality, aristocracy, and democracy. These are the good one, but there are also three bad types of government, which derive from the three goods ones when they fail. The principality slips into tyranny; aristocracy becomes an oligarchy, which has no respect for any civil rights; and the democracy turns into anarchy. Sparta, which lasted 800 years, used a constitution by Lycurgus that combined all three: principality, ar...

Will the Patriot Act or parts of it be used against labor or most any worker movement, such as the quest for a minimum wage increase, Occupy or the women’s movement? The answer will probably be yes for if you look back at history you will see government used the Alien and Sedition Laws of 1798, which jeopardized the freedom of speech, press and assembly, and was a long step toward Totalitarianism. And then there was U.S. Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer, appointed by Woodrow Wilson, who recruited J. Edgar Hoover as his special assistant in 1917 to enforce the Espionage Act of 1917, especially the Sedition Act of 1918 engaged in the Palmer Raids. These Acts were used to launch a campaign against the so-called radicals, such as the IWW (Wobblies) labor movement, which was at the time the most feared labor group. The oligarchies wanted them destroyed and they were, to a point. The next Act the government used against its people went after labor, women’s rights and civil rights was ...

I find that it is not quite as painful if I understand how and why the 1% do and how they do it to us 99%, such as how do the 1% control the 99% of the wage slaves in a country that is a democracy. The people elect their leaders, which then always supports the wishes of the 1%. This goes back to the founding of this country. Well, the 1% has had control since the beginning of our country. Our Constitution was originally written for the 1%, the rich white men, and little rights were given to the 99%. Rights that included the 99% were written only after the 99% fought back and got the Bill of Rights. Then the 1% started to devise ways to weaken the 99%, which was a two party system and for the GOP money people, and one for the leftovers, the Democrats. But when the leftovers were getting too strong the 1% figured out how to split the leftovers into smaller groups by divisive issues, such as race, gender, religion, abortion, sexual orientation and so on. Always something new like gu...

We have to know where we have been in order to know where we want to go, and how to get there. So, why do we still have to explain to our union members who they should support in elections? I think we need to adhere to what an old union leader once said: “We now have them organized so now we need to unionize them.” This is where we union leaders have failed our wage slaves and I think it should start from the top and the bottom in order to do it fast and then hopefully we’ll meet in the middle with knowledgeable union people. We should all be studying the Art of War by Sun Tzu and the Prince by Machiavelli. These books will get you solitary confinement in some prisons; but they are required reading in large corporations and all military schools. There must be a benefit in learning strategy of war and business. This is exactly what we wage slaves are involved in. In fact, it will be do or die in the next few years. We must organize and rebuild our labor influence and power. Our labor fo...

Are retired union workers living under a rock? I have often wondered why union retirees, with a union pension, move to Shasta County and become a GOP nut job and vote for people who oppose unions and the working class. These same people collect all sorts of government sponsored programs, such as Medicare, social security and possibly veteran services. Do they just want to belong? Are they conformists? Are they ashamed to have their GOP neighbors know they are Democrats or retired union workers? Or are they coldhearted, bloodsucking gnats who got theirs so to hell with everyone else? I just don’t understand. I, for one, am proud of my union pension, my medical coverage, and my social security. I worked very hard for all three and I will fight hard to keep them. If other retired union members, social security and Medicare recipients don’t think the GOP are trying to take these benefits away, you’ve had to have been living under a rock. I think all of us with these union and governm...