After President Obama was reelected, I believed the people had spoken and the war being waged by the Karl Roves and the Koch brothers and the Sheldon Edelmans was over and the good guys had won. Boy was I wrong.
In 1929, the big banks, a greedy Wall Street, a deregulatory environment and a wayward Congress drove the country into The Great Depression.
In order for the country to claw its way back to stability, a big step in that process was the Securities and Exchange Acts of 1933 and 1934.
They basically put the full faith and credit of the U.S. Government behind deposits of up to $100,000 in federally and state chartered banks while restricting the loans that banks could make with the money. They also required transparency and the rules under which financial institutions could function within the securities and financial markets. There were rules such as the "know your customer" rule wherein a broker could not sell a risky transaction to a little old lady with limited funds.
Since the day the system collapsed in 1929 and wiser heads then succeeded in fixing it, the greed wagons have been fighting to get back to disastrous times.
Why would they do it?
Because we're docile, isolated, and they can get away with it.
They're basically rich, powerful, dumb, greedy and selfish.
And I guess if any of us were in their position we might get corrupted too, I'm sad to say.
Apparently Karl Rove and the Koch Brothers, Sheldon Adelson, et al don't even care that their guy "Mitt who?????" lost. The sneaky betrayal of Michigan workers the other night is proof that their war is in global thermonuclear phase.
The exploitation of workers overseas acquiesced to by a compliant Congress and both Democratic and Republican presidents who refused to veto trade deals that did not protect environmental laws and workers' rights overseas that had existed here has been so successful under their so-called free trade that a right wing Supreme Court with their vote on Citizens United, states with right wing Republican Governors and right wing Republican legislatures, the greed wagon domination is in full offense to kill off any control due to workers re: constitutionally "protected" rights.
What's the goal?
Absolute Surrender. Serfdom. Slavery, if you will.
Damn the country, damn the Constitution, damn the planet. Kill, Kill, Kill!!!!!!
Anyone ever heard of the National Labor Relations Act?
The National Labor Relations Act, NLRA, or Wagner Act (after its sponsor, New York Senator Robert F. Wagner) (Pub.L. 74-198, 49 Stat. 449, codified as amended at 29 U.S.C. § 151–169), is a 1935 United States federal law that protects the rights of employees in the private sector to engage in concerted activity. This may include creating labor unions (also known as trade unions), discussing organizing and workplace issues among coworkers, engaging in collective bargaining, and taking part in strikes and other forms of protected concerted activity in support of their demands. The Act does not apply to workers who are covered by the Railway Labor Act, agricultural employees, domestic employees, supervisors, federal, state or local government workers, independent contractors and some close relatives of individual employers.[1]
Under section 9(a) of the NLRA, federal courts have held that wildcat strikes are illegal, and that workers must formally request that the National Labor Relations Board end their association with their labor union if they feel that the union is not sufficiently supportive of them before they can legally go on strike.
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
So in 1935, 6 years after The Great Depression of 1929, New York Senator Robert F Wagner was able to get his bill passed that gave employees in the private sector the right to organize as unions and legally strike.
Now, anyone ever heard of the Taft–Hartley Act?
The Taft–Hartley Act (Pub.L. 80-101, 61 Stat. 136, enacted June 23, 1947) is a United States federal law that restricts the activities and power of labor unions. The act, still effective, was sponsored by Senator Robert Taft and Representative Fred A. Hartley, Jr. and became law by overcoming U.S. President Harry S. Truman's veto on June 23, 1947; labor leaders called it the "slave-labor bill"[1] while President Truman argued that it was a "dangerous intrusion on free speech,"[2] and that it would "conflict with important principles of our democratic society,"[3] Nevertheless, Truman would subsequently use it twelve times during his presidency.[4] The Taft–Hartley Act amended the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA; informally the Wagner Act), which Congress passed in 1935. The principal author of the Taft–Hartley Act was J. Mack Swigert[5] of the Cincinnati law firm Taft, Stettinius & Hollister.
So, shortly after the Great Depression, we have the National Labot Relations Act, but by 1947 it was amended by Taft Hartley, the "slave-labor bill".
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
What about the Right-to-work law?
A right-to-work law is a statute in the United States of America that prohibits union security agreements, or agreements between labor unions and employers that govern the extent to which an established union can require employees' membership, payment of union dues, or fees as a condition of employment, either before or after hiring.
Right-to-work laws exist in twenty-four U.S. states, mostly in the southern and western United States. Such laws are allowed under the 1947 federal Taft–Hartley Act. A further distinction is often made within the law between those employed by state and municipal governments and those employed by the private sector with states that are otherwise union shop (i.e., pay union dues or lose the job) having right to work laws in effect for government employees.
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
How on earth did the Congress get away with calling this virulent anti-labor law the "right to work" law.
It should have been called the "rob labor blind" law.
It twists distorts the relevance of worker solidarity and bargaining rights into the so-called "freedom" not to pay dues.
Well, as we've all seen, corporate leaders have their dues to ALEC paid for by their companies. They like paying their dues, so ALEC can scheme to legislate away more workers' rights.
But union dues are bad mouthed and discouraged to strip away any power that labor might be able to achieve through solidarity.
No, the war isn't over. It's in full bloom.
2014 must be the year that gerrymandering has ended. All state Congressional districts must be randomly constituted by dividing states up into vertical or horizontal strips that each contain the correct amount of people without any political input on how the divisions are made.
2014 must be the year that corrupted Republicans are tossed from state governments and from Congressional and Senate seats.