Right to Work Laws

I wasn't aware that anything was being done about right to work laws on the federal level. Currently there is no law requiring people to join a union, but there is law that says, once a union has been certified, it becomes the sole bargaining agent for all the employees in the defined unit, and it has to represent all those workers whether or not they are union members. People who refuse to join the union are called "free riders", and are not well liked by the union members in the plant. To keep peace in the family, many employers and unions have negotiated "union shop" agreements, which require everybody to join the union as a condition of employment. In a "right to work state", such agreements are prohibited by state law, although some of them allow unions to collect an "agency fee", which means that non union employees pay a fee in lieu of union dues to compensate the union for representing them. Whatever percentage of the members' dues that is used for political activity, or anything other than the direct costs of representation, is usually deducted from the required agency fee. Several states, Michigan among them, have recently passed right to work legislation, and the union people are not pleased about it, which is probably why the issue has come before the Supreme Court.

I quit the Libertarian Party some time during W. Bush's first term of office, and I voted to re-elect Bush to his second term. I don't know as I would call the Libs "dovish", they are more like isolationists than peaceniks. An isolationist policy might keep us out of some wars, but it wouldn't guarantee us peace in our time. It might have kept us out of the Mideast if it had been in force for the last 70 years or so, but it's too late for that now. To implement it now, we would have to throw Israel to the wolves. Not that we haven't shamefully abandoned any of our allies in the past, but I was against it then and I am still against it.

I have heard that what Obama and his ilk really wanted was a single payer plan, but I don't think it was ever proposed in Congress. If the Republicans had the power to block that, then why didn't they also have the power to block Obama care?

There are a number of reasons why somebody would want to own more than one gun. If you hunt deer, waterfowl, and upland small game, you need three different guns right there. If you go off to Africa or someplace to hunt really big game, you will also need something more powerful than your deer rifle. My personal choice for self defense in the home would be a shotgun, but if I felt the need to protect myself downtown, I would probably get a handgun. A small caliber rifle like the .22 is fine for target practice because the ammunition is relatively cheap, if you can find it anymore, and some people use it for small game, although I don't. Then there are the collectors, both the serious hobbyists and guys like me who keep old family guns for sentimental reasons. I also have Old Betsy for the muzzle loader season, and Old Betsy's predecessor, which doesn't work anymore, but could probably be fixed if I was so inclined, which I'm not because I like Old Betsy so much better.

Be that as it may, it is my understanding that Obama's election inspired lots of people to buy guns who never owned them before. This is good because, if any of them were previously Democrats, they will likely turn into Republicans because they now have something to lose.

how to fire six guns at once

Of course I don't think you are so reasonable, you are much more right wing than most of the people I know.  You are pretty temperate about talking about things though, you don't fly in a rage and spout slogans like much of your ilk, and you are always ready to submit the issue to the good offices of wiki.  Well this is after all the forum for reasonable discussion among reasonable people.  You would think there would be more than two of us reasonable people, but so it goes.

There was one of those obviously false billboards on fb yesterday.  I call them billboards because they have like a photo, or maybe some fancy background, or sometimes they are made to look like they are typewritten by one of those old timey typewriters where like the inside of the 'o' is greyed a little, and they include some kind of message (usually political or inspirational) written over the photo, on the assumption I guess, that the background somehow supports the message.  Right wingers and left wingers see them and then share them on their page so they get passed around throughout the internet.  My feelings, and I am sure I have expressed them before, is if you can't say whatever you have to say in your own words don't post one of those damn billboards

Anyway this particular billboard was clearly false (something about a school shooting being averted by an armed guard and the media not covering it).  Fat chance the media would not be covering that so i went to Snopes and sure enough it turned out that the shooter did shoot somebody and that the armed guard had no role in apprehending the killer)  Here it is: http://www.snopes.com/arapahoe-school-shooting-stopped-armed-sro/  So I posted it to this guy's page and usually I am completely ignored or told to go fuck myself, but in this case the guy actually apologized for not checking it and offered to take it down.  On my part I don't not say "You damn well better you fucking asshole," but merely said something about discussions on both sides in these troubled times and we had best make sure that what we were arguing about was truthful.  So that's some kind of progress isn't it?

I think the more money I am being paid the more I value my job and will work harder at it because I want to keep it.  I think you are right though pay is probably mostly determined about the least money the employer can get away with paying.  And with unemployment remaining high for some time to come you know if there wasn't a minimum wage they would be paying like five bucks an hour and people would have to take it.

I'm too lazy now to look up exactly where the minimum wage comes from, but dollars to donuts it was unions, like the five day week and the eight hour day.  We would have never had them without unions.

There is a case before the supremes right now where some teachers don't want to pay their union dues, because they say they disapprove of the union's political activity, which may be true but dollars to donuts again, they just want to freeload in accepting the job benefits that the union dues payers worked to get them.  Indications are that the unions will lose this case, people will be able to freeload and the unions will be poorer and weaker, easy prey for the republican steamrollers to roll right over. 

You were still a libertarian during the Bush regime?  I thought you turned against them because they weren't sufficiently hawkish on jihadis, but wasn't Rand's pop dovish way before that?

I'm with you on insurance, and I am sure you know that Obama wanted the single payer but the republicans wouldn't let him have it.  The republicans have this weird theory where if we have all these different insurance companies they will be competing with each other like in the free market and the consumer will be able to pick the best one.  Which is all garbage because hey all have to make a profit and medical costs are more or less fixed.  But now they all seem to be consolidating and I have this weird theory that when they all combine into one, it will be so obvious that they are merely taking a cut on transactions and providing no services, maybe then we will rise up and toss them under the bus.

The thing about you gun nuts rushing to the gun store whenever Obama coughs, and let's face it he hasn't mentioned gun control until just lately and you have been running to gun stores since he was elected.  Well not you I don't think.  You have been trying to get a new stock for Old Betsy, but i don't think you have bought any lately. 

Aren't these guys rushing to the gun stores guys who already have three or four, so now they will have five or six?  So maybe they can fire with both hands and hook one to each foot somehow so the toe is on the trigger, and they could probably pull another trigger with their tongue, and maybe they could stick their dicks through the the trigger hole in the sixth ones so that when they get the hard on from seeing the jackbooted feds busting down their doors to take away their guns, that one will fire too.  A little graphic, but I was on a roll and couldn't pause for good taste.

Weren't we going to discuss the women's movement?  That last paragraph I am afraid is not fit for refined young ladies so the subject will have to wait for tomorrow morning.

I Prefer the Term "Reasonable"

I think I got that way from the internet. Before that I mostly read and listened to stuff that supported what I already believed. When I ventured into cyber land I frequently found myself in the middle of the left wing nuts and the right wing nuts and concluded that I must be more moderate than I thought I was. Either that or the extremists on both sides have gotten more extreme than they used to be, while I have stayed pretty much the same.

I don't think paying people more money makes them work harder, I think it's the other way around. First you improve your performance, and then we'll talk about raising your pay. Truth be known, pay scales are probably more linked to supply and demand than they are to work performance. The harder it is to find qualified candidates to fill a position, the higher the wage scale is likely to be. I'm not sure if that holds true in the management positions, though. With them there's the "who you know and who you blow" factor, but I don't know how much relative weight they give to that. I understand that women still make less money than men in the executive world because the job titles and job descriptions can be more easily manipulated than in the world of the hourly worker.

I don't know much about the Clintons or the Bushes either. In those days I was a Libertarian and believed there wasn't a dime's worth of difference between the Democrats and the Republicans. Since then, both parties seem to have assimilated their fringe groups, which has pulled them away from the center. I agree that most of the old line Republicans would seem liberal by today's standards, which is why I never voted for them back in the day.

I think the old time Republicans were more interested in immigration "reform" than the new breed is today. I seem to remember that the last amnesty program was passed during the Reagan administration. John McCain used to be for amnesty too, until he found out that the majority of his fans were against it. I don't think that either side has this health care thing right. Insurance is not the solution, it's a big part of the problem. If health insurance had never been invented, I'm sure that health care costs would not be nearly as high as they are today.

I used to worry about creeping gun control laws, but not so much anymore. Lately it seems that, the more they talk about gun control, the more people buy guns. If they keep it up long enough, everybody in the country will be armed to the teeth.

I never was in favor of wasting money on the Mideast. Back in the 70s, when the OPEC states first started flexing their muscles, I said that we should cut off all aid and trade to them. We have other sources of oil, but those camel jockeys don't have other sources of money. Well, they didn't used to back in those days, by now they have diversified into all kinds of investments. Do you know that the tallest building in the world is in Dubai? Those people used to live in tents before we gave them all that money.

What I looked up over the weekend was those goofballs in Oregon, and I learned that they are even goofier than I thought. Ammon Bundy claims that he started this whole thing because God told him to. He's the kind of guy who gives Mormons a bad name. Dwight and Steve Hammond, the guys who got arrested for playing with matches, have been warring with the Feds for decades. They own 12,000 acres right next to this wildlife refuge, and they think that entitles them to control the refuge too. Once, back in the 90s, the Feds tried to build a fence to keep the Hammond cattle off the reservation, and the Hammonds threatened people and interfered with the effort so much that they were arrested for it but, for some reason, the charges were eventually dropped. Back in 2001 they started a "controlled burn" on their own property that got out of control and turned into one of those classic western wildfires that burns all summer. Then, in 2006, there was a big fire burning on the federal land and the Hammonds started a backfire in an alleged attempt to keep the main fire off their own spread. The problem is that they didn't think it necessary to coordinate with the crew that was fighting the main fire, and four guys got caught between the two fires and barely escaped with their lives. That's why they were charged under the terrorism laws, because people's lives were jeopardized on federal property.

is Beagles going soft?

I did some googling on that CEO thing.  I didn't find any hard connections, but I did find that sometimes board members did become CEOs, and CEOs became board members.  I still think there is a sort of club up at the economic top and they all help each other.  I don't see where these high paid CEOs are any supermen,  You never see one have a great turn at one corp and then go on to do the same at another, and another after that. 

If these corporations think that paying people a lot of money improves their performance why don't they spread that corporate largesse to their minimum wage workers?  Wouldn't their peons work harder and be more conscientious if they were making more money? 

You're right about jihadis not being out to impress chicks, I just threw that in sort of casual like to go along with some point I was making.  They tend to treat their women like chattel.  If you gain money or power you can get chicks, but impressing them won't do the trick because they are owned by their male relatives.  That's why they keep them covered up too.  A pretty girl is sought after and that gives her some power and they don't women to have any power.

Well it's a shame the way most of the rest of the world treats women.  We were never as bad as the rest of the world, but I remember how different attitudes were before the woman's movement of sixties.  Now that I think about it the ERA never passed, but I think there were a lot of anti discrimination laws passed so it turned out not be needed,  I don't think we have ever discussed the women's movement. 

We'll soon have the big girl ruling us so we'll see how that works out.  Probably not that different than if she was a man though, probably not that different from loveable old Bill.  Remember how your ilk hated Bill?  And then along came Obama and they forgot all about Bill, how fickle. 

What was it your ilk hated so much about Bill?  Well he was the prez from the dems, I guess that's plenty.  My ilk certainly ended up hating W, but we gave him some leeway at the beginning of his term and didn't really start hating him until he invaded Iraq.  Anymore I don't hate him so much.  I think of him as amiable dimwit who was manipulated by dat ol debble Dick Cheney.  In fact if he was to run this year he would surely be to the left of any of the current candidates. 

You don't think the constituents of the Grand Old Party want to have an immigration or healthcare program?  You think they are a bunch of anarchists who would rather just have us drift into whatever?  The real problem is that the only immigration program they could all get behind would be to build a hundred foot high wall, and deport everybody, and the only healthcare program they could agree with is some kind of health care savings account thing which would be so skimpy that people would end up paying a lot more out of their pockets.  And though programs like that would be fine in the world of the republican primary, come election day, when indies and dems had a chance to vote they would sink like a stone.

I don't think I accused you of being an NRA member, but aren't you a fellow traveler?  I thought you told me once that you stood against any gun control measure because you feared losing one would move the gun control nuts to the next one like that ww1 army moving trench by trench until they reached the bonny bonny swamp of Beaglesonia?  Isn't that your strategy?

And haven't you yourself gone soft on islamic terrorism?  It seems like lately you have been talking about the mideast being such a mess that you didn't want to waste our fortune on it, which sounds pretty soft to me.

My Momma Didn't Raise No Hoodlum!

I never did like any of that hoodlum stuff. I didn't like the way they looked, the way they talked, the way they acted, the way they wore their hair, their music, or the movies that were made about them. The only thing I ever admired about the hoodlum culture was their women folk, and I got over that early on. By the time I was in my sophomore year I had come to the realization that I was never going to sleep with any of the hoodlum women. Maybe they did put out, as was rumored, but they didn't put out for me, so there was no point in getting all excited by the prospect. I was just kidding when I said that I wish I had thought about pretending to be a hoodlum just to impress their women. Truth be known, I don't think I've ever tried to impress anybody in my whole life. If people didn't like me the way I was, well too bad for them. I suppose I did impress some people without trying because I didn't go out of my way to not impress people either.

I don't think those Islamics care about impressing their women. Their attitudes towards women don't seem to have evolved much since Old Testament times. If they're trying to impress anybody, it's probably their heathen god, or maybe each other.

The constitution is pretty vague about the powers of the president. I didn't find the words "executive order" anywhere in there. All legislative power is supposed to reside with congress, although the president "shall from time to time give to the congress information of the state of the union, and recommend to their consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient;" (Article II, section 3) I think that the president, like the supreme court, has assumed powers and practices over the years, and the congress has let them get away with it for one reason or another.

Maybe the reason the GOP doesn't have a healthcare plan or an immigration plan is because they believe that their constituents don't want them to have one. I have heard the GOP described as "the party of no", and maybe that's what they're supposed to be. Back in the day of Teddy Roosevelt, the Republicans were known as the progressive party but, somewhere along the line, that designation transferred over to the Democrats. Maybe it was when that other Roosevelt was president. Of course the Reps are having an identity crisis right now, and the outcome of that  remains to be seen.

I thought I made it clear before that I am not now, nor have I ever been a member of the NRA. My father was, and I used to read their magazine when I lived in my parents' house, but that was a long time ago. By the time those gun laws were passed I was busy organizing my own life and wasn't paying much attention to the news. Some time later, when I bought my first gun under the regime, I didn't have a problem with it, I just filled out a form and turned it in to the dealer. Later they added those "instant background checks", and I have bought a couple of guns that way. While they weren't  exactly instant, they were completed in the time it took me to step outside for a cigarette. No big deal.
I really don't know what all the fuss is about. Maybe it's because a Democrat is trying to do it. Lots of times a Republican can get away with more socialist shit than a Democrat, which is why I voted Libertarian for a decade or so. If the Libertarians hadn't been so soft on Islamic terrorism, I might be with them yet.

looking cool, impressing chicks

I always wanted to be a bad guy, in the sense of being a tough guy.  I tried to comb my hair into a ducktail, but it seems like I could never get the right grease and it kept falling apart.  I raised the collar in the back of my shirt, I wore pointy shoes, I practiced my swagger and tough guy phrases.   I hung out in front of Talmans with a cig dangling from my lips trying to look like a rebel without a cause.  But to be a really tough guy I would have to like steal hubcaps.  Remember stealing hubcaps?  It was like the JD thing.  Remember juvenile delinquents?  They seem almost cuddly now with their switch blades and their zip guns,  I thought West Side Story was way way cool.  And besides stealing hubcaps, hoods were expected to get into gang fights, and sometimes to roll a guy.

Well I was way too weenie to do any of that.  A guy could get in trouble, a guy could get hurt.  I just wanted to look the part, you know like the guy who buys the hat and becomes a cowboy.  Speaking of which, I hate to say it, but those guys in Oregon really look cool in their cowboy hats and flannel jackets, hanging in groups of four or five with that taciturn look, though when given a chance they talk way too much because none of it makes any sense.   You know who else looks cool?  ISIS.  I know you don't watch CNN, and I don't much either, but it's on in the gym with the sound off.  When CNN has one of their breaking news (which it never is, breaking, that is, it's the same crapola they have been going over and over and over for the last four hours) stories behind Wolf Blitzer they have this video clip in a loop.  When they do stories on ISIS they put one of their propaganda clips into the loop.  So there you are sweating and gasping for breath and you look to the tv and there are Wolf's lips moving and behind him these black-clad guys are brandishing super weapons and flags and jumping in and out of these cool pickup trucks with machine guns in the back.  Way cool.

Now in the September, maybe the weekend after Thanksgiving, of my life I am a little puzzled as to why i wanted to look like a tough guy when I was such a weenie at heart, and really didn't approve of stealing hubcaps and rolling guys, a switchblade would be cool though, that ominous click, but I certainly didn't to stab anybody and even more get stabbed.  So why was I doing that?  Well of course, to impress chicks.  I mean why do we ever do anything except to impress chicks?  If there weren't chicks around to impress we would probably both be lagging pennies on Christiana Avenue.  That's why I don't get these jihadi guys.  Their women are all locked up in their houses and when they do come out they are wearing those things where sometimes you can't even see their eyes, so how can you tell if they are impressed?  I don't get it at all.

I'm pretty sure the USA is just as guilty of imposing their opinion on people in other countries as the late great USSR.  We have certainly done more invasions of other countries than they have.  I think it's generally assumed that Russia is being led by mobsters and kleptocrats.  Ivan Sixpack is probably not one, but you know he loves his Putin because he thinks he can make Russia great again.

I don't know why you are so touchy about presidential edict.  Isn't it in the constitution?  I'm not sure about that, you are the constitutional scholar, but anyway it is generally recognized as the law of the land?  And didn't the majority vote for the prez? 

What if your man Rand (anything is possible in the rep primary) gets to be prez, but the dems take both houses and they pass a bill to take Old Betsy out of your hands, and the only way to keep that from happening is for Rand to do a presidential edict, are you going to tell him not to issue it because you don't approve of presidential edicts?

I don't understand the details on this particular edict, it may be that the courts will rule against it, so then things should be fine with you.  It may be that the courts will rule for it, which will displease you in principle, though not in content, but that will be the law of the land.  Everybody knows that if the reps win the edict will be dead as a doornail, but if the big girl wins it will be set in stone, so the public gets to choose.  What could be more American than that? 

As for why those gun control regs were left out, I think you are being awfully coy pretending that you don't know why that was.  Could it have been the NRA and the republican party who are currently having conniption fits about it?  Is that possible?

This whole thing where things should only be enacted by 'additional legislation' is really hypocritical.  Where is the GOP healthcare plan?  Where is the GOP immigration plan?  Where is the GOP allowance for a few minor details in gun control which most of the country is for? 

Obama is frustrated by the refusal of congress to cooperate with his agenda and so are most of the American people and he is doing what he can about it, and that, my friend, is politics in the good old USA.

Wrote down "Internet research on CEO salary" on a piece of paper and set it by the computer, so I should have something for you Monday morning.

Bragging Bad Guys

Now that I think of it, I haven't heard anybody brag about being bad for a long time, maybe since my army days. Before that, those hoodlum types in Gage Park H.S. used to brag about being bad too. I think it all started with that strange song:
"Bad, bad Leroy Brown, baddest man in the whole damn town.
Badder than old King Kong, meaner than a junkyard dog."
Maybe it was just a figure of speech after all. Nevertheless, why would anybody want to use a figure of speech like that to describe himself? If he isn't truly bad, he must want people to think that he is. Is he trying to impress the other bad guys so that they will accept him socially? Why would anybody who isn't bad want to be accepted into a bad society? Unless..... it wasn't the bad guys he was trying to impress, it was the bad girls. Damn! Why didn't I think of that? Oh well, too late now.

I don't consider people to be bad just because they have different opinions than me. It's when they try to impose their opinions on others by force that they become bad. That's why the Commies were bad, and that's why the Islamic terrorists are bad. Crooks are bad too because they steal people's money, whether by force or by deception. Bullies are also bad because they pick on people and push them around. I suppose that vandals are bad too because they damage other people's property, or maybe they're just nuts. I'm not sure that gays are bad either, maybe they're just confused.

I can't speak for my ilk, but I never believed that Russian Communism crashed because of anything that our government did or didn't do. I like your "cheap suit" metaphor. Also, there was some famous guy who said, "Russia and the United States were in a race to see who could go bankrupt first, and Russia won.....just barely." As I remember it, the first crack in the wall came from Poland. They had tried to secede before and were brutally crushed but, this time, they got away with it for some reason. Once they got away with it, all the rest of the satellites fell like dominoes. Finally, Russia seceded from itself, and that was all she wrote. Afghanistan might have had something to do with it too. I don't think that Russia ever really had Afghanistan, but they liked to think that they did. I remember when the news about Afghanistan broke. I had not heard of it until I came in to work, where the guys were talking about it in the break area. Some of them didn't believe that Afghanistan was a real place, they thought it was mythological like Shangri La or Bumfuck, Egypt. As luck would have it, I had recently read a book about Afghanistan, and I said, "You know maybe the Russians have finally bit off more than they can chew. Afghanistan might turn out to be their Vietnam."

I wasn't aware that Russia is currently full of "mobsters and kleptocrats", but I'll take your word for it.
I have heard that Putin is kind of a prick, or should I say "scalawag"? He looks mean on camera, but that may be from living through all those Russian winters. That thing with the Ukraine is more complicated than it appears. I understand that lots of Russians have been living there for generations, so they might think of it as their country now, just like we of European descent think that the U.S. belongs to us and not the indigenous Native Americans. I'm not saying that they're right, but I can see how they might think that way.

We have talked before about closing the loopholes in the gun purchase laws. I said that I had no objection to it as long as it's all they want to do. I don't know why that was left out of the original legislation, but it seems that the problem should be corrected by additional legislation, not presidential edict. I understand that Obama is frustrated by the refusal of Congress to cooperate with his agenda, but that's politics in the good old U.S.A.