More Counts Against The News-Press by NLRB
From the Teamsters....Sara
The General Counsel of the National Labor Relations Board has determined after a lengthy investigation and deliberation that it will prosecute the SB News-Press for violating the National Labor Relations Act by hiring and deploying newsroom employees through an employment agency to perform the same work done by Union-represented employees in a putative "temporary" capacity, though they may have performed in that capacity for as many as 16 months. The General Counsel issued a complaint (attached) which says that the N-P violated the National Labor Relations Act by refusing to bargain over the temps' terms and conditions of employment, by paying them less than the people in the unit, and by transferring bargaining unit work outside the unit.
This ruse by the News-Press was central to its longstanding plan to devastate Union support among newsroom employees by dishonestly diminishing the numbers of people it contended were in the unit. With that transparent charade the News-Press has sought and continues to seek to unilaterally decrease the number of newsroom employees represented by the Union, while still having others it disingenuously claimed were outside the unit performing the same newsroom work, in unprecedented fashion. "With the curtain finally raised exposing this longstanding cynical maneuver by the News-Press, perhaps the newspaper will decide it must obey the law", said Ira L. Gottlieb, counsel to the Union. "We hope that management will treat all employees who work in the newsroom fairly and equitably and will no longer use this artifice to decimate the union-represented group for obvious and illegal anti-union reasons", Gottlieb added.
The General Counsel decided to move forward with this prosecution based on charges the Union filed last November. The General Counsel will also prosecute on a number of other labor law violations that have been accumulating since bargaining began almost a year ago, including:
1. Bad faith bargaining (announced in July);
2. Hiring and refusing to bargain over temps as described above;
3. Laying off one alleged temp without bargaining;
4. Failure/refusal to timely provide information about the temps;
5 Assigning a non-unit person (Robert Eringer) to perform bargaining unit work as an "investigative reporter";
6. Discontinuing annual raise policy for 2006 and 2007;
7. Suspending and firing Dennis Moran (and refusing to bargain over those decisions); That set of allegations is not included in the attached complaint because the General Counsel's Office of Advice in Washington, D.C. is deliberating on one further aspect of the Union's charge concerning him before issuing the agency's complaint challenging the News-Press' illegal firing of Moran.
8. Discontinuing annual evaluations policy.
The temps charge, the temp layoff charge, the annual raise charge, and of course the charge protesting Dennis Moran's suspension and firing - when the complaint on that last set of allegations issues as previously announced by the General Counsel - could mean compensation for people in the unit if successful.
The General Counsel is still investigating and/or deliberating on the Union's pending charges against the News-Press concerning failure and delay in providing information requested by the Union, interference with the NLRB's investigative process by Wendy McCaw, and refusal to bargain over mandatory subjects of bargaining.
The complaint sets a hearing date of February 23, 2009, which is subject to change.
The General Counsel of the National Labor Relations Board has determined after a lengthy investigation and deliberation that it will prosecute the SB News-Press for violating the National Labor Relations Act by hiring and deploying newsroom employees through an employment agency to perform the same work done by Union-represented employees in a putative "temporary" capacity, though they may have performed in that capacity for as many as 16 months. The General Counsel issued a complaint (attached) which says that the N-P violated the National Labor Relations Act by refusing to bargain over the temps' terms and conditions of employment, by paying them less than the people in the unit, and by transferring bargaining unit work outside the unit.
This ruse by the News-Press was central to its longstanding plan to devastate Union support among newsroom employees by dishonestly diminishing the numbers of people it contended were in the unit. With that transparent charade the News-Press has sought and continues to seek to unilaterally decrease the number of newsroom employees represented by the Union, while still having others it disingenuously claimed were outside the unit performing the same newsroom work, in unprecedented fashion. "With the curtain finally raised exposing this longstanding cynical maneuver by the News-Press, perhaps the newspaper will decide it must obey the law", said Ira L. Gottlieb, counsel to the Union. "We hope that management will treat all employees who work in the newsroom fairly and equitably and will no longer use this artifice to decimate the union-represented group for obvious and illegal anti-union reasons", Gottlieb added.
The General Counsel decided to move forward with this prosecution based on charges the Union filed last November. The General Counsel will also prosecute on a number of other labor law violations that have been accumulating since bargaining began almost a year ago, including:
1. Bad faith bargaining (announced in July);
2. Hiring and refusing to bargain over temps as described above;
3. Laying off one alleged temp without bargaining;
4. Failure/refusal to timely provide information about the temps;
5 Assigning a non-unit person (Robert Eringer) to perform bargaining unit work as an "investigative reporter";
6. Discontinuing annual raise policy for 2006 and 2007;
7. Suspending and firing Dennis Moran (and refusing to bargain over those decisions); That set of allegations is not included in the attached complaint because the General Counsel's Office of Advice in Washington, D.C. is deliberating on one further aspect of the Union's charge concerning him before issuing the agency's complaint challenging the News-Press' illegal firing of Moran.
8. Discontinuing annual evaluations policy.
The temps charge, the temp layoff charge, the annual raise charge, and of course the charge protesting Dennis Moran's suspension and firing - when the complaint on that last set of allegations issues as previously announced by the General Counsel - could mean compensation for people in the unit if successful.
The General Counsel is still investigating and/or deliberating on the Union's pending charges against the News-Press concerning failure and delay in providing information requested by the Union, interference with the NLRB's investigative process by Wendy McCaw, and refusal to bargain over mandatory subjects of bargaining.
The complaint sets a hearing date of February 23, 2009, which is subject to change.
Labels: NLRB, Santa Barbara News-Press, Teamsters
posted by Sara De la Guerra | 11/08/2008 06:48:00 AM
Our Community Guidelines ask that you use the Blogger/Open ID login or the
more private Name/URL option when making comments. Comments using "Anonymous" will not be published. For more info, see choosing an identity.
28 Comments:
I hope Wendy closes the NewsPress down rather than submit to this Obama/Union thuggery. It is only going to get worse when the Obama takeover of federal agencies is complete.
This "General Counsel" is just one more example of the biased thuggery we can expect more of driven to kill free enterprise and every single business it touches. Independent blogs which unions cannot control are the only viable news media now.
The unions killed one more US tradition and industry. They devour their own and eventually they will starve themselves to their own death. But it will be very ugly and destructive until they finally turn all the lights out in America or Obama gets impeached and the world starts making sense again.
Wendy, we can live without the NewsPress better than we can live with Obama taking all our freedoms away. I would rather see the NP gone, than be humbled to its knees by this pack. Then I will never read it again because it will serve no purpose. The unions will have corrupted its very essence of being. And the world will be better if you just walk away.
The power of the unions has to be countered with the power of free enterprise. We support you, Wendy.
Because you are a woman, the Democratic Party operatives will not stop until they destroy you just like they did to Hillary Clinton, Sarah Palin and now even attacking Nancy Reagan.
You are their next woman to destroy, Wendy. They will be relentless unless you move first and do it on your own terms. The deck is now stacked against you and they will take you down. Fold up shop now and come back only when America regains its senses again.
Peter, you have an interesting concept of "thuggery" and a bizarre notion of cause and effect. In most sentient beings' minds, it is the rule of law that is being applied here, and Wendy has violated that rule time and time and time again. Thuggery is what Wendy engages in by openly and vehemently defying the law, denying her own employees the right to a voice in their workplace to which they are entitled, and severely punishing anyone who dares exercise their expressive and associational rights under federal law.
If "free enterprise" had its way, there would be no minimum wage and maximum hours, no anti-discrimination law, and management's Pinkerton hordes would replace the silver-tongued devils with baton-wielding criminals with phony badges, as happened last century before the New Deal.
Unions are the only hope to restore and maintain the American middle class, because the Wendy McCaws of the world are so obsessed with control over their petty fiefdoms that anyone who might wish to improve their lot and protect their integrity would be bulldozed by her. That's where the true thuggery lies; she is the only one to have violated the law, and to have presented lies, perjury, embellishment, fabrications and pettifoggery in her own feeble albeit expensive defense.
What this has to do with Barack Obama is a complete mystery, Peter, since he has not taken power and has no influence or authority over what the General Counsel of the NLRB does. Yes, workers can hope for a better, fairer shake under an Obama administration than they've gotten for the last 8 years (or would have gotten if McBush had won), but you are delusional if you really think Obama had anything to do with this latest blow to the McCavian Empire.
Lawbreakers of every gender need to be brought to justice, PP. Clinton has not been destroyed, just beaten in the democratic process. Palin is an incompetent doofus who poorly handled the media, was poorly handled by her own staff and that of McSame, is essentially clueless, and needs some serious schooling if she wants to play in the big leagues.
It was President Bush who appointed the current General Counsel for the National Labor Relations Board, the federal agency that oversees labor laws and the protection of employees.
Hmm.... never thought of Bush as a biased union thug.
Anyone want to take bets on the likelihood that Travis Armstrong is in this comments page? I think I recognize a couple of rhetorical tics... or maybe enough of Wendy's paranoia is out in the general atmosphere now that I'm catching it too.
-You can't just close up shop to avoid being prosecuted. She can shut the newspaper if she wants, the cases won't go away.
-Right. Democrats hate women so much that they put Jackson up to run for SD-19, support abortion rights, equal pay for equal work, etc.
Three strikes, you're out.
-Hillary Clinton was destroyed by Democratic Party insiders? Is this satire?
Missing in this argument is any reason Wendy is required to keep the paper open and keep these people employed.
Always and totally missing. If employees want to keep their jobs they need to think less about their "rights" and more about the reasons any boss would want to put up with them when they don't have to.
The Entitlement Generation is living on fumes. We erred in raising them so indulgently.
Who matters more to the success of a paper: 10 employees who demand to get their way or 10 customers who will cancel their subscriptions if those very same employees ever get their jobs back because of some court order.
Cry babies, see if you can understand this simple equation. You have your rights as an employee. And the employer has his/her rights to quit the business that employs you.
Where is your middle ground, if you want your employer to stay in business? I have never once heard any concessions on your part to make Wendy's life better. All I hear is your demands to enforce 100% if your rights and never considering Wendy always retains 100% right to close the whole thing down.
Hillary Clinton was destroyed by Democratic *outsiders*; not insiders.
Jackson created the obscene 19th District. She owed the district to take it on.
Abortion rights benefit only men - one more faux feminist issue. Women who have sex know and want to get pregnant. Abortions allow men to escape child support. Simple as that. Abortion has never been a feminist issue; it is a please men issue.
Equal pay happens when women stop taking low paying jobs. Quitcherbicthin.
Back in the 1970s, in my first community newspaper job, the publisher wanted to influence what and how we wrote.
He used to edit into our stories his pals speaking at meetings they'd never attended.
And he'd allow his friends to pre-edit stories about themselves before they appeared in the paper.
This ended when our editor threatened to walk and take his staff with him.
We became a reputable newspaper!
AFL-CIO unions brag their members get 30% more pay than non-union members.
Detroit Big Three auto workers get paid $60 a hour. New South auto workers for foreign makers get $40 an hour. Detroit automakers are going bankrupt and closing. You do the math.
Does Obama bring the union ethic to the New South auto plants or does he bring the New South ethic to the Detroit auto plants?
AFL-CIO & SEIU promised $800 million into Obama's campaign kitty and delivered at least $500 million, but who knows since Obama took so many illegal and hidden pre-paid credit card donations.
You decide what Obama will do? Will he throw the unions under the bus like he did with Reverend Wright and his church, and netroots with FISA and women in the Democratic Party, or the hajib wearing muslim supportors behind the cameras, or the long time black activists like Jesse Jackson, or will he do the right thing and take the union money and break the union's destruction of the US economy?
Will Obama stand tall and say he will never stand for special interest money, and union money is very much special interest money and do what it right for America and the American worker and not let them or American industries ever be dragged down by unions ever again?
Or will Obama take the money, keep his mouth shut about it being special interest blackmail and claim in defense of the middle class worker he will take our money and bail the union workers out?
This could go either way. Stay tuned because you don't really know which way Obama will go now that his pay grade requires he not vote present. Obama will have to decide and someone is going to be disappointed.
Unless he brings out his magic wand and finds a way to keep lying out of both sides of his mouth and hope most people still have not caught on to his monumental history of fraud and duplicity.
Peter, to respond to your comments:
1. Unions
I spoke to a pretty conservative labor economist the other day, and he said there's no evidence any union has killed any US industry. "They're not stupid," he said, "they're not going to kill the goose that lays the golden egg."
On the contrary, we've seen unions in every sector volunteer to give up pay or benefits when times get rough, in order to help their employer survive.
Of course, the News-Press is a different situation than most. Remember, the News-Press was very profitable when Wendy took over. She CHOOSES to lose money rather than comply with the law. If she ultimately closes the paper, that will be nobody's choice and nobody's fault but her own.
Perhaps the best outcome would be for that to happen, and the paper could then be sold to someone willing to follow the law and uphold minimal standards of journalistic integrity. The paper's not much good to anyone otherwise.
2. Feminism
You say women who have sex want to get pregnant? Really? Always? Yes, abortions allow men to escape child support; they also allow women to end pregnancies they never intended and DO NOT WANT.
While you're right that there is a poorly paid pink-collar ghetto and women should look for jobs outside it, that is not the equal pay problem. The equal pay problem is when a woman with the SAME education, experience and performance as a man in the SAME job is paid less -- and that's still pervasive.
And what's up with the right-wing Hillary haters suddenly posing as Hillary defenders? Give me a break. You're the same lot that was flaming her 8 ways to Sunday til she lost the nomination to a black guy, and if that hadn't happened, you'd be flaming her to this day.
3. Trolls
Webmasters -- how about a one post per day limit, so we can discuss the actual article, rather than wading through post after post by the same ranting respondent, like my friend Peter here?
Peter Pan wants someone other than him to say that Wendy should close the newspaper, so he can use that statement for some nefarious purpose. Forget that, PP. The N-P is Wendy's paper, but she needs employees to make it run, to do the writing, the editing, the layout and the photography. All would benefit from decent labor relations and acceptable mutually agreed upon basic terms and conditions of employment. What's so hard about that, PP?
Treedom,
In refusing to allow comments on his site, Craig Smith once said that moderating a blog would be like directing traffic in Mexico City. One post a day doesn't really work as you can give yourself any identity you want. I see your point but the structure -- including my time commitment doesn't allow for it.
Sara
This is to echo Treedom's spot-on comments, addressing Peter. It was mismanagement, short-sightedness, design and building of poor quality gas guzzling cars in the '70s that hurt the auto industry then, and the Japanese and German auto manufacturers are still running rings around GM and Ford, and not because of labor costs. Unions have contributed more than their share to every industry facing difficulties where they are present (e.g., airlines), and too often have gotten little in return when times were good. Of course, the bankers and financiers and lenders ruined their businesses and the economy without any union presence.
Which leads me to Nobama. What are you talking about? What economy are you living in that you claim was "ruined" by unions? Lehman Bros., AIG, etc. were harmed by unions? The best and clearest way to rebuild the middle class is to give unions the tools to give workers what they have repeatedly said they want: collective bargaining and the protection of a contract. The way employers defeat that desire -- and Wendy is an extreme but hardly the only example of this -- is by intimidation and by calculatingly violating an ineffectual law that makes it worth their while to defy it in order to keep the union out. What "democracies" are you aware of that decide elections by intimidation? What if one side in the election could jail the opponents' main supporters with impunity? How long would that opposition last as a viable alternative? That's really what's going on with NLRB "elections" today, and why some other means to the end of encouraging workers to organize must be found.
Unions destroyed the steel industry. Unions destroyed education. Unions destroyed the train systems. Unions are destroying local governments. Unions tried to destroy the airline industry.
Unions destroyed the viability of the downtown Vons's. Support for union strikers told Von's they were not needed or welcome in this town. Don't blame them for leaving.
Unions in fact have destroyed the auto industry because taking all the money for salaries and benefits leaves nothing left for retooling, redesign and competition.
Unions have been short-sighted and have killed the very enterprise that feeds them. That is why membership has dropped so dramatically in the past decades. They destroyed themselves by killing off jobs for their members.
Union strikes in the coal industry and the steel industries brought this nation to halts in the 50's and 60's. Where are these industries now? Gone and their jobs along with them.
The only reason foreign auto companies moved into the South and are able to build superior cars is because these new companies are not saddled with the union contract albatrosses that choked innovation in Detroit. Detroit could not make enough money selling cheaper cars because of their union benefit liabilities.
You need to do a lot more homework about unions. Public employee unions have choked our education system into almost last place in California.
A few years ago public employees learned it was easier to buy enough legislators to get what they wanted than bargain with their local employers. The prison gaurds were the first and then the rest caught on to the game. Buy enough votes in Sacramento and get over-reaching legislation that pours millions of tax dollars into union coffers and you have a bullet proof situation to get more and more union favorable legislation with every session Sacramento holds.
Obama was totally a stealth union puppet. And now he has to pay them off. Watch every move he makes from this point on and you will find union favors in everything he says and does.
You were not looking at this when you were drinking his "historic" Koolaid and screaming racist at every crititicism. But now many are waking up and they are finally digging a little deeper into the Obama Phenomenon and they are coming up with only one thing: the unions.
I repeat, every single thing Obama does he does for the good of the unions -- not for the "middle class" and not for the "workers" though he will use these buzz words.
Take the scales off your eyes and look what you bought. And ask yourself why you thought you were getting something else. And then please explain your departure from sanity to me. Thank you.
And then if you have some time left over, please explain to me why Obama never identified unions and their hundreds of millions of dollars in campaign donatation and thousands of hours of GOTV time as "special interests".
Lay off the Kool-Aid. We are stuck with him now. And his agenda is very harmful. You need to know what is actually is and always has been. Big government. Bigger government and a lock on a nanny state Democratic majority.
What is wrong with that, you say. Let the goodies flow and make sure I get my share. Always absent in any discussion and Obama avoided this totally in the debates is who and how are you going to pay for this. Every single European country you cite as examples of enlightened unionism elected conservative governments. Every single one of them. Totally out of step, the US elects a quasi-socialist and promises an entitlement generation safety and security will flow from government coffers.
Maybe it is time to rethink the socialist agenda since Europe has learned it can't afford it and they have been prospering in trade far better than we have. Our US money goes out the door while Europe was still bringing it in. And even then they learned they could not afford the massive entitlement dependency class they created. Obama came across as a retro European Santa Claus.
And the unions have killed the coal industry so you won't even wake up later to find lumps in your Christmas morning stocking because there is not any even left for that.
You can't blame Wall Street for the current economic meltdown. You have to go back a little further and blame the CBC and groups like ACORN and lack of Democratic congressional oversight.
You have to go back to Obama's campaign finance chair Penny Pritzger (google her) and learn where the subprime mess all started - with her bank. And she is one of Obama's economic experts just convened to help us all out.
Get a clue people. This info has been all over the net for months now.
Nobama, your ahistorical rant is amazing in its ignorance and single-mindedness. ACORN is to blame for the recent economic meltdown? There have been no reports of actual voter fraud, even if you believe ACORN registered fictional people. They still would have had to prove they were who they said they were. But how any of that gets tied to the meltdown is something you can't and don't explain. That's why it's called a "rant".
Why was this country prosperous in the 50s and 60s when unions were at their membership height? And how can you blame today's economic horror show on unions when membership is down?
As for education, you can whine about unions (for a change), but we should be paying teachers far more than we do, and in California our per capita spending is near the bottom for any state.
Your rant lacks something: reality, facts, support based on anything other than unbridled hostility.
And you Repubs have gotten to calling anything involving the government "socialism", which really is just a call to arms to refuse to help others in need. Truth be told, if we let the corporations take over the government -- which is what this bailout could turn into, and what Bushco has been trying to do for the last 8 years -- we're into fascism, which didn't work so well in Germany or Italy.
Sad that you have such a problem with working people, who have an awful lot to do with creating the wealth in this country, providing the security and the infrastructure. The CEOs can't do it all by themselves, and are in any event mightily overpaid.
Nobama needs to be reminded that Obama won largely because Nobama's radical ideology has been thoroughly discredited by eight years of the worst administration in U.S. history.
The country is circling the bowl because Bush and his corporate cronies acted with virtual impunity, raiding the treasury in the name of freedom, security and apple pie.
The unions, and the middle class, were cut out of the process at every turn.
Incessantly raving about Obama being a union puppet doesn't make it true. The guy hasn't taken office yet and you've already convicted him of what? bad intentions? Relax. Take off your tin hat. He can't possibly be any worse than Bush & Co.
You lost. Get over it.
Sara: Craig Smith doesn't allow comments on his site because he likes to have a one-way (tunnel vision) conversation about the world according to Craig.
Bill, Craig is a bit like Wendy that way (and only that way), huh? The difference is that Craig runs a blog that doesn't pose as a journalistic enterprise and makes no pretense of being "fair and balanced", and Wendy insists she is ethical and is probably even less so than that other great "news" outlet that actually uses that slogan.
You betcha, right on, nobama.
The $500 million bonuses that the captains of the steel industry, the automakers, the investment houses, etc, took, had *ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO DO WITH THE FAILURES OF THOSE INDUSTRIES*.
What makes industries fail is the workers who do the work getting raises from $8.00 to $9.00 an hour. The nerve of those twerps!
And wanting health care! What audacity. If they get sick and die, that reduces the excess population; death is the ultimate freedom, and work makes you free.
Workers are lucky they are not slaves, who work for nothing and end up owing the company $1 million after a lifetime of work.
And the little children of workers... educating them is *A WASTE OF TIME*, they are not smart enough to deserve the resources. Let them get into the assembly line or get to work cleaning the toilets of captains of industry. If they're lucky they'll satisfy the sexual fantasies of a rich captain of industry and get a free meal for it every so often.
Nobama, you are so right. Money is for the rich!
You all err to your own prejudices and irrational temperment to assume I was ever pro-Bush, simply because I am anti-Obama/Soros/unions.
America was prosperous in the 1950's not because of unions, but because it was a post-WWII economy with no global competition. Unfounded assumptions and historical revisionism will sow the seeds of defeat for the Obama "progressive" agenda just like they did for Bush.
Read the WSJ today to learn more about the two US auto industries - which one is Obama going to "help". The old Detroit union auto industry or the New Auto industry in the South who does not carry the union albatross that destroyed the Detroit one.
Law allows Obama to only bail out the domestic Detroit car industry and not the New South foreign owned auto industry, but that does not help Detroit. it only keeps them on life-support for a little more time because the union demands continue to choke the life out of them.
There was not a single Detroit make car in the Obama headquarter parking lot the entire time of the campaign here. Not a one.
Obama workers support the non-union car makers and stick up their noses at the Detroit car maker brands.
What does that tell you about the depth of commitment of Obama promises except his supporters were willing to say anything and use tax dollars to buy every vote they could, but not really do anything of personal sacrifice to stand for anything that would show they cared or understood anything about the fundamental issues facing America.
Nope, when pushed came to shove Obama supporters stuck a knife in Detroit and the union auto workers and bought non-union foreign make cars. What does that tell you?
The biggest problem in this campaign is Obama was for nothing, except not being Bush. This was the only change he could offer, which would happen even if Atilla the Hun were running. That change, getting rid of Bush, was already a fait accompli.
Obama wasted too much time promising that and failing to offer anything else. He has already distanced himself from almost his entire campaign agenda and that is even before he have been sworn in.
You don't know what you bought with Obama besides his not being Bush. Well duh? This is no way to run a country at this difficult time. Stop thinking so simplistically as just shown in all preceeding "rebuttal" comments. You have a big country to now manage. Please show you are up to it, because your early start is already failing badly.
Don't base your Obama administration on lies like you based your entire campaign. That is what got Bush in trouble and he deserved to be kicked out, which you refused to do when you took over the Congress in 2006.
You would think you would have learned from Bush's arrogant excesses. But you start out with an attitude and an agenda that looks more and more like Bush III than you would like to believe. Be careful for what you have asked for because you are already showing you do not stand for change. You just stand for more of the same: lies, pettiness, divisivness, vindictiveness and authoritarianism bordering on fascism.
We had enough of that from Bush - go down that same road if you want. But if you do, the seeds of your own destruction will have been firmly planted. Thank goodness.
Vett this all you want but blaming the Democrats for this financial meltdown is widely shared by plenty others than just myself: http://www.examiner.com/x-268-Right-Side-Politics-Examiner~y2008m9d30-Shame-on-the-Democrats-and-their-community-organizers
Pays to get out of our Obama Bubble and start reading more widely. We Nobama's have been forced to confront the MSM pro-Obama stuff so in the spirit of "reaching across the aisle" how about reading some of our side too?
Wouldn't hurt you one bit to bookmark Drudge Report so you can keep in touch with what the rest of the country who choose not to live in mind-sucking ObamaLand.
Snobama, the tragedy is that Wendy literally believes what you've written.
Oh, Nobama... you're so cute - linking to articles that once again are nothing more than partisan hacks blaming Clinton for the economic crisis. Are you kidding me? Might you be reminded that, when Clinton left office, there wasn't a trillion dollar deficit and there was additional government oversight over these programs - not the least of which is due to having the money to provide that oversight.
No one forced these banks to make stupid loans - which, incidentally, were largely to rich white people. Yeah, I said it. Rich white people are responsible for the current meltdown. And for a better analysis, here's an article from that bastion of liberalism, Newsweek:
http://www.newsweek.com/id/162789
Third, lending money to poor people and minorities isn't inherently risky. There's plenty of evidence that in fact it's not that risky at all. That's what we've learned from several decades of microlending programs, at home and abroad, with their very high repayment rates. And as The New York Times recently reported, Nehemiah Homes, a long-running initiative to build homes and sell them to the working poor in subprime areas of New York's outer boroughs, has a repayment rate that lenders in Greenwich, Conn., would envy. In 27 years, there have been fewer than 10 defaults on the project's 3,900 homes. That's a rate of 0.25 percent.
...
I await the Krauthammer column in which he points out the specific provision of the Community Reinvestment Act that forced Bear Stearns to run with an absurd leverage ratio of 33:1, that instructed Bear Stearns hedge-fund managers to blow up hundreds of millions of their clients money, and that required its septuagenarian CEO to play bridge while his company ran into trouble. Perhaps Neil Cavuto knows which CRA clause required Lehman Brothers to borrow hundreds of billions of dollars in short-term debt in the capital markets and then buy tens of billions of dollars of commercial real estate at the top of the market. I can't find it.
BTW - one of the areas hardest hit by the housing bubble bursting is Irvine, CA - hardly the bastion of liberalism or heavy CRA enforcement. But again, it's full of white people, so we'll give it a pass, right?
We're learning more and more about you.
ETR, we are learning more and more about you too. No one says "poor people" cannot make good borrowers. I know that from my own personal experience. I had no assets but I was willing to work hard and steady and became a homeowner, now with a paid off asset. I was a good risk.
Luckily, I am not rich so I don't have to worry about you eating me. I would make you choke and get nauseous anyway if you tried.
The issue here and always has been the blatant exploitation and aggressive demands of groups like ACORN to demand banks ignore prudent lending practices in order to foster their own agenda of housing giveaways in the name of "fairness and equity", but in fact was a totally flawed social engineering campaign.
So if you want to cherry pick your arguments to distort the issues at hand so you can remain closed minded and woefully ignorant yet biasedly partisan and whiney, flail away. And I won't even taste good even doused with a large dose of organic catsup.
Keep reading Drudge and spare me quotes from Newsweek. I read both. So should you.
Obama is finally exposed even before he takes office for being a stealth union lackey. It is wonderful watching him have to finally vote something other than present on this whole UAW Detroit car maker meltdown.
The lines could not be clearer where his real loyalties lie. Which way will he flip-flop this time? Obama hid his union sell-out through out most of his campaign. Now he has to deliver either exclusively to the unions which funded him (bought him) or to his adoring fans who ultimately carry his tax burden bailing out his union buddies.
Tough call Obama - I enjoy watching the drama, Obama.
There is a model for a successful US car industry in the South and the foreign makers non-union US auto industry. There is a model for a non-successful US car industry in union strangled Detroit.
Obama is not asked to rescue the US auto industry. He is asked to bail out Detroit union workers only. Or, will he as a prudent steward of our US tax dollars demand Detroit restructure itself on the successful US auto industry that exists outside of Detroit.
Pass the popcorn, I am waiting. Obama does have the opportunity to do the right thing, and earn my respect. I concede that. The issue with me is more what happens, rather than who takes credit for it. If Obama delivers Hillary Health Care, then I say Bravo. If Obama delivers McCain work ethics and personal responsibility ethos, I will say bravo again.
But if all Obama does is sell out to the unions and strangle the US taxpayers with favored treatment for his campaign contributors, then I say Fie! No you can't Obama. No, you can't.
Boy Wonder has it now all in his hands. He asked for this moment. You gave it to him. Which way will he flip-flop when the buck finally stops with him and he actually has to make a decision.
The irony here of course is no one know which way he will flip-flop because even after this long campaign, no one knows Barack Hussein Obama. You don't and I don't. But now we both shall learn, together. We are united in this journey learning who the real BHO is. He brought us together.
Nobama, politics ain't beanbag, and you have to choose sides. Where were you when Cheney/Bush chose to serve the rich oil execs and drillers, at the expense of taxpayers and the environment? Where did they get their money so they can go on the tube and say, with a straight face, "Drill, baby drill"? Class warfare is OK as long as the wealthy class is winning, huh? Unions, on the other hand, represent the interests of the vast majority of people in this country who have to work for a living, struggle to make ends meet, pay for health care and send their kids to college. You can use the flaccid rhetoric of "union bosses" and "lackeys", but the bottom line is that unions are made up of people, they fight for people, and they help people. Republicans, on the other hand, care first and foremost about capital, and greed, and helping rich folks keep the working class from gaining the power that they could amass if they joined together. That is what unions -- and community organizers, for that matter -- are about. So Palin and Giuliani can ridicule them, but Obama's organizing skills shone through, and maybe the corporations who want to turn this country into a corporate state will have to take a step or two back to allow the middle class to flourish again.
And by the way, Drudge is a liar and a charlatan on the order of the Enquirer. Seen any good alien space ships lately?
Tommy, you err and jump to unfounded conclusions. Stop it. I have always been anti-Bush. Vehemently so. I remain as stunned Bush won two terms as I am stunned Obama won this one. The office of POTUS has been cheapened to a freakish side-show of spite, reaction and petty vindictiveness ....... in both cases.
The Obama-Union fraud is belatedly coming to light and even former Obama fans as diverse as George Will and Thomas Friedman in the WSJ today are finally waking up to the horror of more union dysfunction being imposed on our economy by Obama and his massive union payoff debt for this campaign.
T.Boone Pickins bails out on Obama's "new" America resorting to his own self-interests as well. Watch for the massive defection from Obama's shallow ranks of defectors. Even George Soros, Obama's primary and early mentor, admits he will not be happy until he destroys America. Invest accordingly.
Drill, baby, drill is music to my ears because you Obama people can't tear yourselves from your leased SUVs.
Class warfare has no place in US society. Rewarding personal initiative does. Obama fostered both racism and class warfare cries in this country. Obama pandered to the mob and could only claim by lying this was the fault of McCain-Palin. Obama's house of cards is shattering all around him now the pre-election Kool-aid is making everyone sick to their stomachs.
Unions cannot "represent the vast majority of people in this country" because they produce nothing, and serve only to pay union bosses, destroy enterprises which they devour with their organized greed and thuggery, and have caused the death of any "hope or change" for a healthier resilliant economy.
Obama lied when he claimed he took no special interest money. Obama was nothing other than a front for the unions - signed, sealed and delivered to us by the unions lock, stock and barrel.
You can keep defining life as a struggle between the moribund Democratic and Republican parties, but the current political shift is not defined by either party's fringe agendas. Even Obama has now turned his back totally on every promise he used to get Democratic votes this election. What does that tell you about Democratic party values? He can run on them, but he cannot "rule" on them.
The current political shift is a realignment between those who want government to control more and more aspects of their lives (the welfare nanny state paid for by "someone else") and those who want barriers lifted to allow everyone to reach their own level of personal responsibility and accountabilty, if this is their choice.
The continued aging of the baby-boomer demographics will produce more and more conservative voters. This year's election was the last gasp of the 1960's feckless rebellions. Their personal concerns will start weighing against their socialistic idealism once they see the bill for it in the coming retirement years. Then you will see a massive shift of this demographics to the right. Plan on it. Invest in it.
A social service safety net is always part of any healthy society for those truly frail. But bailing out the "middle class" (primarily union workers with many in the public sector paid with tax dollars) using "rich" people's money is not a vision of "hope and change" for America.
Obama's true union socialistic nanny state agenda for America is finally getting unmasked. He forgot or did not understand his agenda kills the very people he assumed would be paying for his massive socialistic agenda.
Obama created this current divisive class warfare. He will go down as the most polarizing President we ever elected. Bush at least fought and "external" enemy when he tried to destroy America. Obama is much scarier because he is pitting America against America is a ghoulish, cannibalistic destruction of this country from within.
Relax and enjoy the popcorn Tommy because the media is finally waking up to what they created and are quickly joining the ranks of the loyal opposition. The media that followed Obama on a daily basis did not like him. His press coverage will only get worse as he isolates himself further and further in his own inbred socialist cabal.
MSM is dead. Blogs now rule the media, tailoring messages to unique affinity groups. You need to read more widely and get out of your MSM echo chamber. You will wake up sorrier and unprepared if you do not.
Drudge provided the most accurate source of news and continues to do so. There is only reporting here, not editorializing. If you don't like Drudge, try Townhall. Try American Thinker, but for goodness sakes get out of your cocoon.
It was MSM that brought this trail of lies, exaggerations and slurs that finally has destroyed itself. One cannot be sorry to see it go. Hedge funds are shorting the NYT. Couldn't happen to a sorrier institution who double thugged us first by lying for Bush and then lying for Obama.
And this is why you cannot no longer say the country is divided between Democrats and Republicans. it is divided between liars and truth tellers. Obama started his political career based upon lies. And you will get what you deserve with him.
Tommy, you ask a good question - where was I when Cheney destroyed our country. I was standing right by your side looking appalled the 2006 Democratic Congress did not impeach his *ss along, with his boss. But it never happened. Where were you?
You know what they say, conservatives are liberals who got mugged. My mugging was learning for all the wonderous rhetoric of the Democratic Party, they are just stoolies for the unions and have created public employee strangulation of our government.
The scales fell from my previously "liberal" ideals and I chose no longer to be a shill for the exceedingly special interest unions.
I don't regret my move but I also have no love for the Republican "values" fringe. See if you can find a way to deal with me the way I am and not the cartoon way you want to think of me. Call me one of the newly minted independents now.
You waste your keyboard time treating me either as a joke or a scourge. I am perplexed and caught in the middle of this mess and I learned early Obama has no answers beside protect the unions who bought this election for him.
I saw early what you still fail to see, but now we are both in this together. Bailing out Detroit is proof positive Obama is nothing more than a union shill or the Grand Flip-Flop Equivocator.
Sorry, but that is the truth. More and more people are finally waking up to this. Gone out the door are all the "ideals" you thought Obama represented. He ruthlessly hard-balled his very first political office - his self-serving agenda should come as no surprise.
Obama is pure Chicago politics and that is all he is. I am sorry you got misled he stood for something else. He does not. Learn what this now means. And protect yourself against him.
And that means even if you are already just a union shill yourself, your game is about to get exposed and you will be on the wrong end of a huge voter backlash. Start training for another line of work that does not depend on public tax payer money, direct or indirect.
Nobama, you persist with some amazing reality challenged if sometimes interesting observations. Of course, no one can know what an anonymous blogger's positions were in the past, so there's no point in arguing that.
You still persist with your version of class warfare, however: it's OK as long as the upper class is "winning". Well, that doesn't work so well for the vast majority of people in this country, who may have awakened a bit in this last election to vote their economic interests. Whether Obama can or will deliver on those pro-union promises and positions remains to be seen. But rebuilding unions is the surest way to rebuild a staggered middle class that has been eroded by a generation of anti-union employer and government hostility and anemic law enforcement.
McBush and Palin said they wanted to get government out of the way to enable "free enterprise", but government under Repubs has invariably propped up big business while letting workers suffer. It propped up the airlines after 9/11, it's propping up the financial institutions now.
The rich didn't get that way merely by dint of their own ingenuity and enterprise; the government protected them, supported them and allowed them to flourish, more or less depending on what enterprise we're talking about. Those businesses should not be able to shun unions so easily, or avoid the costs of government protection and infrastructure through tax dodges. That's what Repubs are all about, however.
Unions are for the middle class a form of their own enterprise, countering -- as the laws of this state and country expressly encourage -- corporate organization with human collective organization.
Frankly, government ought to lift the health care burdens from employers, save them costs and take on that burden itself, as it does now, quite successfully, with medicare and medicaid.
Obama did not by any means "create" class warfare, not even in its current incarnation. We have to go back at least to Reagan for that, but in reality, it's been there since classes have existed. It is far too soon (obviously) to judge Obama's presidency or willingness or ability to bring people together, but I don't sense that this will be a government by, for and of corporations, as was Bush's 8 years. Those enriched, bloated and corrupt corporations will do all they can to fight pro-union legislation and decisionmaking, but there is reason to hope that the interests of the majority of people -- working people -- will finally be realized in the next presidential cycle. If employers were more willing to cooperate with and encourage their workforces to respond productively to positive reinforcement, rather than punitive hostile measures, unions would be recognized even by those corporations as a positive force, and actually might not be as necessary as they remain today.
Post a Comment
<< Home