I was going to shop there, but there was picket line

Today I had to run to the store for a few things.  Most of my shopping is done at Costco, but there are some things I want to buy in smaller quantities, and others that Costco just does not carry.  For example, Costco does not have shallots, and my wife had a grocery list that included 6 ounces of shallots for a recipe she intends to make.

I pulled up at Raley's, and there were pickets out.  I waved to them and moved on, taking my business elsewhere.  I had no idea what the issue they are striking over are, (I do now) but my thought was this.  All across this country, businesses are making ever increasing profits, paying their top management more and more, while at the same time trying to screw those at the bottom.  In the current climate, I will give the workers, not management, the benefit of the doubt.

So I did my shopping elsewhere and came home to do a little research.  These were the pertinent items that I was able to glean from my research.

• Management claims that they need to control costs to remain competitive.  This, though rather vague, does make sense.
• And of course 'controlling costs' means no premium pay for working Sundays, wage freezes, and the ever popular two-tiered wage rate, where current employees are paid one amount, while new hires get less.  And of course cuts in health care benefits.  Building in an incentive to get rid of current employees to replace them with cheaper ones.
• The union has asked for an audit so that they can find out if this is really about remaining competitive, or just lining the pockets of upper management (the company is privately held, not publicly traded, so much less is a matter of public record)
• Management has been unwilling to submit to an audit, which tells me that the numbers probably do not justify their demands

I have been a professional most of my adult life, and have never belonged to a union.  But that does not mean that I don't recognize what their existence have done for all of us.  And I see what is happening all over this country, the push to bring labor relations back the 19th century.

So for now, I am taking my business elsewhere.

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It is more than grammar, it is attitude

When I was growing up, when to use 'I' and when to use 'me' was drilled into me.  And whether you used 'I' or 'me', if you were talking about you and someone else, well, that someone else came first.

Somewhere around the Reagan years that began to change.  That was when the government started to become the enemy, and teachers, who are government employees began to lose respect.  And the one wage earner family began to disappear.  Working was no longer a choice for women, it became a necessity.  So after school the kids went to some kind of day care and then became latchkey kids.

Parents had less time to help with homework, or even make sure it was done. There was too much to do just to make sure food was prepared laundry was done, and all the other tasks associated with running a household were taken care of.  Many tried, but there are only so many hours in the day.

And another thing happened.  There was a shift in attitude, the every man for himself attitude.  A generation has grown up believing that they are entitled to have it all, not because they earned it, but because of how special they are.

So the next time you hear someone saying 'me and him', well that's where it came from. 

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It has always been here

As was true in Europe, there has always been class warfare in the United States.  The difference is that in this country it has been, for the most part, a one-sided fight.  The middle and lower classes have always been pitted against each other, made to fight over the same scraps.  It is another variation of the game of 'blame the victim'.

When Malcolm X suggested that blacks should respond to violence against them by having guns to defend themselves, that was called advocating violence.  When someone points out that the disparity between the ultra rich and everyone else in society is the largest it has ever been, they are 'instigating class warfare'.

Think about it this way.  When was the middle class was growing, when people were moving out of poverty into the middle class?  What is different about then, than now?

• The income tax rates were higher, particularly for the most wealthy
• Inheritance taxes were higher, which, despite the rhetoric, had little impact on the lives of ordinary Americans.  The tax has never applied to the passing of an estate between a husband and wife, and the amount excluded from taxation for everyone else in 2001 (the earliest date I found in a very brief internet search) was $675,000.
• There were real limits on how many media outlets in the same market a single company could own, so that a real diversity of voices existed.  One or two companies did not control all you see and hear.
• Your tax dollars were not subsidizing the shipment of your job overseas.

Was life worse for you then?  Were your kids likely to find decent jobs when they graduated from college?  Could you actually afford to send them to college without having to bankrupt yourself or make your child hang debt to last the rest of their life around their neck?

Yes, there is class warfare going on..  And we are losing.

What did you think it was for?

You are constantly hearing the right talking about limiting government, as though everything would be fine if only the government would just stop getting in the way of business.  So let's just look at some of those crippling regulations that business and the right fought so bitterly against.

As you walk through the supermarket, throwing  items into the shopping cart, your are checking the labels.  Your child is allergic to nuts, and you know that selecting the wrong product could be the difference between life and death.  Did you think that listing the ingredients on the labels was something the manufacturers did out of the goodness of their hearts?  They do that because the law requires it. The Fair Packaging and Labeling Act of 1966 established labeling standards that were bitterly fought by industry.

Do you work an 8 hour day?  Do you expect to be paid overtime when you work more than 8 hours a day?  Although 8 hour work days had been won in pockets throughout the country over the years, through strikes dating back to 1835, it was not until the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 was enacted that the federal government got into the business of enforcing standards and working conditions.  That established a 44 hour work week for a considerable portion of the nation, a minimum wage, time and a half for overtime, and outlawed "oppressive child labor".

When you have a cold, a fever, an ache, you can reach into your medicine cabinet and find a number of non-prescription drugs to treat the symptoms.  And you can do so knowing that none of those medicines contain poison or heroin or cocaine.  That all began with the Biologic's Control Act (1902) and The Pure Food and Drug Act (1906),  These two pieces of legislation were the foundation upon which the Food and Drug Administration was eventually built.  It is because of the FDA that pharmaceutical companies actually have to prove that a new drug works, that it does not do more harm than good, and that they have to tell you when the potential side effect are.

It is cheaper to sell contaminated food and medicinal products than it is to maintain a safe and clean facility, and to monitor for contaminants.  It is cheaper to dump your toxic waste where it will contaminate the drinking water of the surrounding community, than it is to properly dispose of it.  And if a small group of manufacturers do that, then others must do the same to compete.

Who's job did you think it was to enforce that the bottle that says 'Asprin' on it contains aspirin?  Would you rather go back to the days when you might work in a factory where the air was filled with asbestos?  If you get sick, and cannot work for a week, do you still want a job when you get back?  Did you think the only purpose of the government was to invade relatively weak countries so that US companies could do things there that would be illegal here?

The purpose of our government is to protect us from those more powerful, those we cannot fight on our own.  That includes, of course, foreign governments, that's why we have a military, but also from companies that would control our lives the way mining companies that ran 'company towns' in the 1800's did.