Santorum says the United States has a moral authority to fight "godless socialism."He nattered on about China and Venezuela, but as China is communist and Venezuela is pretty fucking Catholic, we know who he was really aiming his remarks at and why.
I can only repeat what I've been saying: it's not that the field is small; it's that the winnowing has begun early.
....
But, look, we call this period the "invisible primary" for a reason: just like in the state-by-state primaries to come next year, the current contest has winners and losers, and the losers tend to drop out. Now, some potential candidates really haven't contested the invisible primary...I haven't read anything, for example, about Jeb Bush. So I'll chalk him up as a "did not run." But those who hired staff, sought endorsements, traveled to Iowa and New Hampshire and South Carolina -- they contested the invisible primary. They were candidates for 2012. Even if they didn't quite make it all the way to 2012.
The National Labor Relations Board, which under Obama has launched an assualt on workers and businesses at the behest of unions, is planning to sue two states that have constitutional amendments protecting workers' rights to a secret ballot in union elections, the New York Times reports.
According to the Times, the NLRB put Arizona and South Dakota on notice in a letter sent Friday, warning that it planned to sue the states because they passed amendments prohibiting unionization through "card check." The "card check" procedure allows a site to become unionized if labor leaders can collect signed cards from 50 percent of the employees, plus one. It denies workers access to a secret ballot, enabling for rapid unionization at the federal level.
With the Obama administration unable to enact a federal law on card check, it's seeking to undermine secret ballot elections through the regulatory route.
But, again by an irony that unites both these thinkers, the historical experiments unleashed by them, despite remarkable early promise, could not reach successful fruition. The process of globalization of finance made the nation state that was supposed to override the whims and caprices of finance, subservient precisely to these very whims and caprices for fear of capital flight; as a result we have the current bizarre spectacle of capitalist countries enacting one after another 'austerity measures' in the midst of a recession, which will only accentuate the recession. Keynes would be turning in his grave at this absurd course of events. Likewise, the Soviet Union founded under Lenin's leadership no longer exists; communist parties, barring a few, have dwindled into insignificance; the socialist credentials of China and Vietnam are barely visible and have to be established by the committed few through elaborate theoretical and statistical exercises; and a question mark hovers over the fate of Cuba, buffeted by imperialism. Those who invoke either Keynes or Lenin today are few and far between.So it is, so it is. This article is the unknowing prequel to my forthcoming ballade, "Trotsky and (George) Romney."
So, when those firemen took the steps of the Madison Capitol a few weeks ago, I was among those heartened and stirred. I could not resist, though, feeling more than a twinge of disappointment. I fear if it had been just some state home care workers or public school kindergarten teachers up there on the steps, it would not have ignited the same public sympathy and this fight would not be taken as seriously as it is.
Late last night, long after normal business hours, the New Hampshire House became the latest state government to pass legislation balancing the budget on the backs of the poor and vulnerable. The most contentious part of the legislation gets rid of negotiation rights for the state’s 70,000 public employees if their contracts expire before a new agreement has been reached.Unreal. It just keeps going.
This is my 10th presidential campaign, Lord help me. I have never before seen such a bunch of vile, desperate-to-please, shameless, embarrassing losers coagulated under a single party's banner. They are the most compelling argument I've seen against American exceptionalism. Even Tim Pawlenty, a decent governor, can't let a day go by without some bilious nonsense escaping his lizard brain. And, as Greg Sargent makes clear, Mitt Romney has wandered a long way from courage. There are those who say, cynically, if this is the dim-witted freak show the Republicans want to present in 2012, so be it. I disagree. One of them could get elected. You never know. Mick Huckabee, the front-runner if you can believe it, might have to negotiate a trade agreement, or a defense treaty, with the Indonesian President some day. Newt might have to discuss very delicate matters of national security with the President of Pakistan. And so I plead, as an unflinching American patriot--please Mitch Daniels, please Jeb Bush, please run. I may not agree with you on most things, but I respect you. And you seem to respect yourselves enough not to behave like public clowns.
But are we witnessing the spirit of Joe Hill on Capitol Hill? I doubt it. If his ghost walks the earth, it is in the third-world where it might still find seriously unsafe and unhealthy working conditions, 12-hour work days, six-day work weeks, child labor, and company stores keeping workers trapped in debt -- that is, actually exploited workersReally, read the whole thing. We do "anti-union nutjob fuck" in MI just as well as they do in OR. Mebbe even better.
...In a word, the union mentality is unbecoming. Why not face the world as an individual? Offer your knowledge and skills in trade with others. Rise or fall on your own merits. Find job security in being valuable to your employers. Make your employer’s goals and objectives your own. Make your bosses worry that they might lose you. Or start your own business. At least have enough self-respect to realize that if you need asinine work rules to keep your job, you don’t deserve your job.
Again, this is how nomination politics works. For all one hears about efforts to market candidates to mass electorates (that's what things like the "authenticity" debate are all about), the bulk of nomination politics is retail, not wholesale -- and the customers candidates are trying to reach are a relatively small group of party elites. It is not, to be sure, only party officials...it's a fairly large and usually evolving group; it includes not just formal party officials, but also leaders of party-affiliated groups, campaigning and governing professionals, activists, and politicians. That's more like thousands, not hundreds, of people; it's only the dreaded "establishment" if the term is used very loosely to mean anyone with a long-term commitment to party politics, and even then both parties are at least somewhat permeable to new people and groups.Trots for Romney everywhere semi-agree that these same realities, when brought to bear on Governor Tim Pawlenty, will cause his ultimate defeat. Religious folk shall march with Huckabee, and party chairs will cluck for Mittens. TPAW must pass between the Scylla of Jesus maniacs and the Charibdis of organized banking in order to clear a path, and to build a tent, pour le victoire. The odds, one must admit, are long.
At a young age, I saw up close the face of challenge, the face of hardship and the face of job loss. Over the last year I've traveled to nearly every state in the country and I know many Americans are feeling that way today. I know that feeling. I lived it.YES HE DID!
But there is a brighter future for America.
Ronald Reagan personified [America]. And Lincoln stood courageously to protect it. That's why today, I'm announcing the formation of an exploratory committee to run for president of the United States. Join the team and together we'll restore America.YES HE DOES!
We, the people of the United States, will take back our government. This is our country. Our founding fathers created it.YES HE CAN!
Men and women of good faith know what I mean.
America, prepare to be TPWND!
FOR A
NATIONAL TEACH-IN
ON DEBT, AUSTERITY
AND
HOW PEOPLE ARE FIGHTING BACK
TUESDAY, APRIL 5TH, 2011
2:00 – 3:30 PM (EST), National Teach-in Live Streamed from New York City
3:30 – 5:00 PM (EST), Local Teach-in and Strategy Discussions on Your Campus
Participate in the National Teach-in by organizing a teach-in on your local campus (see the next page for an organizing guide).
It’s a lesson we all supposedly learned as children: The end can’t justify the means.I'm not sure if this something we all supposedly learned as children. Don't eat the paste. Play nice with others. Always put your name at the top of the paper because your teacher can't know who wrote it if there's no name at the top of the page. These are the things I learned as a child. I'm not sure if I missed the day my class tackled complex philosophical arguments and came to definite conclusions on them, but then I was sick a lot, so it's completely possible.
School funding is a noble and necessary end; however, the means chosen for this mission by the Eugene City Council in its income tax proposal are nothing short of tyranny as our forefathers understood, and for that reason the proposal must be defeated.Tyranny! Nothing short of tyranny!! The kind of tyranny our forefathers faced!!! Do you think she wanted to go with Founding Fathers, but backed off because she realized that no, nothing she is about to write about has anything to do with the founding of this country? I don't know, but "forefathers" it is.
As is predictable, proponents provide nothing beyond the same old arguments about taxes “boosting” the local economy without bothering to evaluate the very real impact of additional taxes on an already struggling economy — completely discounting or ignoring the impact on already overburdened local taxpayers.Okay, but what about the tyranny? You promised me tyranny, dammit.
Nobody disputes the value of a high-quality education. The problem is that few supporters of this proposal can argue much past “it’s for the children” and focus on the horrendous details of the actual proposal.Ok, horrendous details. Let's have 'em. And I'm still waiting on that tyranny.
Nothing in the proponents’ arguments addresses the prospect of an offset of collected taxes against equalization revenues from the state, addresses the authority of one government jurisdiction to levy taxes for another, or explains how this could possibly be a “temporary” measure when the structural problem that has caused it to occur remains unsolved.No details. No tyranny.
In Oregon, schools are funded locally through property taxes, but Measure 5, approved by the voters in 1990, placed strict limits on those taxes. Instead, this proposal is a blatant attempt by the city of Eugene to evade Measure 5 and constitutes double taxation on Eugene residents who have already funded schools through their state income taxes.Double taxation! Heavens. But wait. I fund schools through my local property tax and through my state income taxes?! Holy fuck, I'm already being double taxed. This would be triple taxation! Or quadruple, if you want to throw the feds in the mix. And I do!
Under Oregon’s Constitution, the state Legislature is tasked with funding schools using state taxes. Why not hold our Legislature accountable? Instead, the city simply wants Eugene voters to pay twice — even though the funds raised could well be deducted by the state Legislature in its own equalization distributions (resulting in no net benefit at all).This doesn't make a lot of sense. And by that I mean it's not very well written. I get that Cooper doesn't like the tax, but by this point I feel a bit Milhouse over here. When are they going to get to the fireworks factory?
Given that Measures 66 and 67 were proposed last year as the solution to the very same underfunding problem, what assurances can voters be given that the current proposal will in fact be the real and final solution? Unfortunately, none — precisely because this “solution” is not even within the jurisdiction of its proponents.
Nor is that simply a technical problem. Instead, the jurisdictional issue strikes at the very heart of fairness and accountability, and demonstrates that the proposal is blatantly unconstitutional and irresponsible. This proposal is a fundamental mismatch between taxing authority and spending goals, and the consequence is a basic lack of both due process and equal protection.I should mention here that Laura Cooper is an attorney, so when she says something is "blatantly unconstitutional" I have every reason to believe that she knows what she's talking about. And while blatantly unconstitutional is not exactly tyranny, I've perked back up. Due process, equal protection. Those are concepts I know. Let's do this thing.
Here’s why: The jurisdiction of the city of Eugene extends only to the contiguous city limits, and thus the tax would affect all people who reside within those city limits and file state tax returns. By contrast, school district boundaries extend well beyond those city limits. What that means is that families that reside within the boundaries of the school district but outside the city limits would be exempted from paying the proposed tax because the city cannot exercise its jurisdiction over them.Ummm...is that really what "due process" and "equal protection" mean? Some people wouldn't have to pay taxes that they don't get to vote on, but they get the benefits? I'm not sure those words mean what she thinks they mean.
We've walked back "nothing short of tyranny" and "blatantly unconstitutional" to "unfair" and "unwise." Yes, Johnny, there are times when I feel as if I have been cheated. This happens to be one of them.Thus, River Road-area neighbors who live on either side of city boundaries and send children to the very same schools will be treated completely differently with respect to this tax, simply by virtue of their residences being on opposite sides of the city limits.
The class of persons paying the tax bears no rational relationship to the class of persons benefiting from it.
In addition to being blatantly unfair, the proposal is also unwise.
She does finish nice though.School district governing bodies are neither accountable to nor legally subordinated in any way to the city of Eugene, or vice versa. The city cannot dictate to the schools, or vice versa, and thus there is no procedure whereby the city can adequately oversee or monitor accountability for the funds it raises for the schools: it lacks basic authority to acquire information to enable it to determine the appropriate level or use of the taxes it seeks to impose.
As a practical matter, then, the Eugene City Council can provide no assurances that this new funding stream will correct or even address any of the underlying problems for which it is being proposed. In short, it cannot enforceably condition the funds on anything. For example, it cannot address the systemic problems creating the shortfall: It cannot require the school district to cut administrative overhead or renegotiate pension deals with the dollars that it directs toward the schools. Funding with no accountability is a direct ticket to waste, fraud and abuse.
Means matter. What’s next? If the city’s power to levy taxes can be used to fund anything the City Council desires, what is to stop it from collecting taxes for world peace? This proposal must be defeated.Exactly. If the City Council can propose a 1% income tax with the funds directed to schools, put it on the ballot, and have a majority of citizens vote to pay higher taxes, then where does the madness end?
Unions spend scores of millions in every election cycle, and send their members out to campaign and round up voters on election day, and get little or nothing in return for all their efforts. This is one of the tragedies of American politics: organized labor has to choose between a party that tolerates their presence but basically ignores their interests, and one that wants to destroy them. Some choice, eh?still....
There can never be any better politics in this country until there’s a rebirth of the labor movement.
I wouldn't argue that the events in Wisconsin presage a grand revival of the labor movement or anything. But they may mean that when people hear "union workers" in the near future, they'll be more likely to think of teachers, nurses, and firefighters. Which can't be bad.
In the Wall Street Journal a couple of weeks ago a breathless story about a possible $100,000,000 organizing campaign being launched by SEIU in more than a dozen cities around the country was attributed to an anonymous SEIU board member and other sources. Whatever the merits and truth of those reports, SEIU and every other union need to pull all of their last dollars together and figure out how to survive and turn the tide and do it now, make it real, and make it very, very different, because the bell has rung on the old school and the old ideas, as Stern acknowledges, and we are running out of time and money with the tide coming in hard against us.
But the trade union movement's weak public relations outreach is puzzling. In this age of streaming video, where is Labor's television station, or even nation-wide radio programs? Where are the academy-award nominated documentaries about labor's pivotal contributions to American society? How about some public service ads educating people about union contributions to social and economic progress in America?
It's no longer enough have labor leaders do guest spots on news programs and talk shows. a much more aggressively pro-active p.r. and educational effort is needed. That commitment, coupled with an effort to modernize union recruitment and membership could help insure that sleazy politicians like Walker never get the chance to do their worst.
What makes Christie compelling to so many people isn’t simply plain talk or swagger, but also the fact that he has found the ideal adversary for this moment of economic vertigo. Ronald Reagan had his “welfare queens,” Rudy Giuliani had his criminals and “squeegee men,” and now Chris Christie has his sprawling and powerful public-sector unions — teachers, cops and firefighters who Christie says are driving up local taxes beyond what the citizenry can afford, while also demanding the kind of lifetime security that most private-sector workers have already lost. It may just be that Christie has stumbled onto the public-policy issue of our time,which is how to bring the exploding costs of the public workforce in line with reality.Get hyperbolic much, NYT?
The political rallying cry came as some liberals and labor activists had questioned why President Obama hadn't visited protesters in Wisconsin, especially in light of a 2007 campaign line. Then-candidate Obama told a crowd in South Carolina "understand this, if American workers are being denied their right to organize and collectively bargain, when I'm in the White House, I'll put on a comfortable pair of shoes myself, I'll walk on that picket line with you as president of the United States of America."
On Thursday White House spokesman Jay Carney, asked about why he wasn't making such a trip, said, the President has "an ability to be heard when he speaks, and he spoke to the situation in Wisconsin and his views on it last week. And I'll leave it at that."
But in an attempt to build political consensus, the proposed constitutional revision, which would have to go before voters, would offer more.
Now, I seem to recall being assured that if Measure 48 passed, that would be the end of Oregon as we know it. I guess not. Or maybe so.GOP lawmakers and business interests showed a liking for [the idea] because it proposes to place a threshold on government spending by tying spending increases to population growth and inflation, thereby seeking to prevent state government spending from mushrooming in times of economic boom.
Steve Buckstein of the libertarian Cascade Policy Institute said the spending cap intrigued him because “taxpayers have very few ways of regulating the growth of government.”
Many strategists and even some labor officials argue that the genuine passion and emotion being felt and displayed on the ground in Wisconsin is obscuring a central problem: Unions still haven’t figured out even a semblance of an effective PR strategy.True enuff, as far as it goes -- but how far does it go? To what extent is the problem just the frame, unionistas? There's also the structural problem of state fiscal crises, and the political-cultural problem of ubiquitous deficit hawkery, right?
“Whatever happened to the vague sense 10 years ago of the need to develop a community unionism?” asked another official, who suggested labor leaders on the ground in Wisconsin shouldn’t have been surprised by the Walker attack, yet were clearly caught off guard. “They’ve been talking only to themselves for too long.”
"This whole idea that I don’t care about the collective bargaining process is absolutely false," Christie said. "I think they’re going to enjoy working with me."
You are killing yourselves and this country by protecting weak employees who have no business being in their jobs. You bankrupted the auto industry (just look at it! look at it! do you need further proof?) and you are harming our children. Please, please, just think about what you are doing.Consider yourselves pled with.
Many viewers here—even cinephiles—will not have heard of director Nobuhiko Obayashi. Is he well-known in Japan?
Obayashi was already famous in Japan as a director of commercials before House, and its trailer even uses this as a selling point. And check out this Mandom ad—one of his nuttiest. He’s since directed almost forty films in many different genres, and is also a well-known television personality.
House is basically indescribable. But if you had to, how would you describe it?
An exhilarating grab bag of visual tricks, a disturbing satire that turns the giddy sheen of pop culture against itself, and an oddly moving coming-of-age allegory. I think it’s easy to praise the film as surreal, weird, etc., and leave it at that, but it’s a very carefully crafted work, and reveals a new layer with each viewing.
LCC’s Strategic Plan (2010-14) in part promises to “Promote responsible stewardship of resources and public trust [and] ... apply principles of sustainable economics, resource use, and social institutions to Lane’s learning and working environments.” Lastly, the 2010—11 budget commits to “focus on our mission of teaching and learning.”
Reports on the best current available estimate for LCC’s combined downtown projects of $52 million pencil out to approximately $294 per sq. ft. Problematically, remaining downtown projects’ construction costs unfunded liability attach to the 90,000 sq. ft. learning facility planned at the former Sears site. Depending on the accuracy of various available yet sketchy estimates, the budget deficit approximately oscillates between $650,000 and a whopping $8 million.
Although according to The Register-Guard 85 percent of the funding is virtually guaranteed through the issuance of bonds and state and city of Eugene funding, moving forward in spite of as much as an $8 million funding hole during this extraordinary economic time, may expose the Board of Education to an even more on-point charge of governance entropy than recently leveled against the college’s administration. Lest LCC’s board panic, reasonable taxpayers may consider embracing a PAYGO or similar funding methodology.
Jose Ortal, Blue River
Jesus said abortion is murder and nothing you say is going to change that. He's God, you're not.
The labor market recession continued to exact a toll on union membership in 2010. According to the latest Bureau of Labor Statistics Union Membership report, the unionized share of the U.S. workforce dropped to 11.9 percent last year from 12.3 percent in 2009. The private sector unionization rate fell to 6.9 percent in 2010, from 7.2 percent in 2009.
Even as employment losses slowed in 2010, unions continued to lose members, compared with 2009 where union membership and overall employment decreased at about the same rate. In 2010, union rolls shrank by about 600,000 members. Over 2009 and 2010, the Great Recession helped to reduce union rolls by more than 1.3 million members. In the absence of federal support for state and local governments, public sector cutbacks will continue to depress the overall union membership rate.
Senator Jeff Kruse
But as Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson argue persuasively in "Winner-Take-All Politics," labor has long been the largest organized, sophisticated, and funded group advocating for working-class interests in the political system. But they're in decline -- and they're in decline even as business groups double down on their efforts to affect political outcomes.If you even vaguely believe in the importance of interest groups in the political system, you should consider this a very big deal. But, again, it's not at all clear what can be done about it. My depressing answer is that it's so hard to imagine a successor to organized labor that perhaps the only plausible response is to also reduce the political power of business groups, perhaps through something like the Fair Elections Now Act (which would presumably reduce the political power of all groups, while increasing the political power of voters and small donors). But maybe other people have better thoughts on this.
Only labor can replace labor, Ezra.
Hard to see, but six jets left contrails in the sky while I was walking to work this morn.
From the California section of N+1′s year in review:
Without any pressure telling them otherwise, Democrats, faced with an ineluctable revenue crisis, are going to go with what has been their signature political move for decades: conceding. The point is, it hardly matters whether you cut the budget with fat Republican enthusiasm, like Chris Christie in New Jersey, or gaunt Democratic humility, as Jerry Brown has promised. What effect this coming evisceration of social services and mass layoff of public servants will have on the makeup of the country is incalculable. That it will only contribute to the deep recession, which supposedly ended several months ago, is axiomatic.
I think the spirit here is right, but the details are wrong. The thing about state governments is that they need to balance their budgets. Consequently, it actually matters a great deal whether you implement cuts with Christie-like enthusiasm or not. Christie has actually been lowering taxes on the richest New Jerseyites, thus increasing the need for cuts. Conversely, while it’s quite true that state budget cuts amidst a recession impair recovery, it’s also true that state tax hikes amidst a recession impair recovery. The only solution to the macroeconomic problem of state/local budget cuts is for congress to appropriate funds.
This is a really big problem! Congress should appropriate funds. What’s more, congress should—but gives no indication of giving any consideration whatsoever to doing so—be looking at some way to reduce the systematic tendency of state and local government to engage in pro-cyclical budgeting. So it’s really two big related problems, and their scope is much wider than the ideological back-and-forth about the optimal size of the state/local public sector.
Just started reading Nixonland on my Amazon-brand e-reader (Kindle). The book opens with some stirring scenes from LBJ as he goes about creating the Great Society. For a second there, you remember that there were politicians who really seemed to care about helping people, not just winning elections.The welfare policies of the 1960s gave people money without asking for work and personal responsibility in return, and these had to be replaced. The welfare reforms of the 1990s involved big and intrusive government, but they did the job because they were in line with American values, linking effort to reward.And I, of course, starting thinking about how if linking effort to reward is America's #1 value, how come we always focus with the poor and not on the inheriting rich? Maybe we can take all their money and they can know the morality of working for a change.
The geniuses flock to finance, not industry.And I was reminded that no one can possibly take David Brooks seriously.
This was Amber's main present from me this year. A Kichenaid 3b from c. 1948.
Steve Benen flags Chris Christie’s defense of leaving the state governorless amidst the snowstorm by, among other things, saying “My first and most important responsibility, in my view, is as a husband and a father.”
In a Real Talk sense, I think this is false. But be that as it may. What about Christie’s work in his second most important job? New Jersey, historically, hasn’t had the office of lieutenant governor. But the state authorities decided very recently that was a bad idea and created one. It’s really not a post that carries with it a ton of responsibilities, but filling in for the governor if a situation develops while he’s on vacation in Florida is on the list. Under the circumstances, it seems pretty clear that the governor and the lieutenant governor shouldn’t go on vacation simultaneously and that the governor should put some effort into working this out. Failure to coordinate the schedules properly hardly makes Christie history’s greatest monster, but it was an error. An error that nine times out of ten probably would have gone unnoticed, but the snowstorm meant the error turned into a problem for the state. The decent response to a small-but-real error is just to apologize and move on but Christie’s managed to turn an asshole persona into national YouTube stardom so I guess he thinks it’s best to act like a jerk.
The NYT apparently has not learned about the financial crisis that followed in the wake of the collapse of the housing bubble. That is the only possible conclusion that readers can take away from an article about anger at public sector workers that failed to note that the plunge in the stock market in 2008-2009 was the major cause of the shortfalls in public sector pensions.
Certainly if the reporters and/or editors at the NYT had known about the financial crisis and the stock market plunge it would have been featured prominently in this piece.
In a Wall Street Journal column, he said most labor union members now work for governments, which Obama has rendered "the only booming industry left in our economy." Since January 2008, he wrote, "the private sector has lost nearly 8 million jobs while local, state and federal governments added 590,000."Politfact proved that the stats were bogus and that the 590,000 only included part-time census workers. The problem I have is that if the private economy did lose 8 million jobs, shouldn't the government have created a fuckload more than 590,000 jobs? Wouldn't we want the government to create something on the order of, oh I don't know, 8 million jobs? Of course it can't, but shouldn't that be the goal here?
6. Ideology "in general" "has no history" [i.e. no actual content, no concrete origin in wrong perceptions etc.], although specific ideologies do. Ideology in general is always "imaginary", representing a non-historical "reality". Imagination is "eternal" [i.e. makes the same continuing, permanent, and wrong relations between people and social reality, the famous "imaginary relationship of individuals to their real conditions of existence".] Ideology is a representation of this imaginary relationship. It is not just an illusion which can be easily dispelled by a correct interpretation, not just a lie to fool subordinate classes, not just the result of a necessary alienation - ideology is needed in social life. Ideology does not just misrepresent the real nature of capitalist society - the relation of individuals to the realities is necessarily "imaginary distortion".
But, I repeat, the relative autonomy of the state, founded on the separation (constantly being transformed) of the economic and political, is inherent in its very structure (the state is a relation) in so far as it is the resultant of contradictions and of the class struggle as expressed, always in their own specific manner, within the state itself- the state which is both shot through and constituted with and by these class contradictions. It is precisely this that enables us exactly to pinpoint the specific role of the bureaucracy which, although it constitutes a specific social category, is not a group standing above, outside or to one side of classes: an elite, but one whose members also have a class situation or membership. To my mind, the implications of this analysis are of great importance.
But I don’t think states or municipalities need much help from the federal government in their desire to rewrite public employee union contracts. There has been a concerted effort for years to demonize and delegitimize public employee unions, from both Republican pols and the media in general. This has left a distorted impression about greedy union contracts and well-paid government functionaries. So the new class of Republican governors would certainly want to capitalize on that by pleasing the public, who now favor things like wage freezes (which Obama just instituted at the federal level) and furloughs and bigger pension contributions, punishing those workers. And they are animated by a general hatred of unions, which have maintained their strength in the public sector while fading away in the private sector.
1208 Kelly Blvd., Springfield, OR, the house I grew up in, is for sale.
