How very peculiar - TeaPublicans hiding behind the shadow of FDR on collective bargaining for Public Employee Unions!

Franklin D. Roosevelt supported the rights of Federal Employees to collectively bargain versus the TeaPublican insidious lie; another case of the truth cleverly reshaped: "FDR opposed Public Employee Unions."

FDR definitively supported the advent of public employee unions, however FDR DID NOT SUPPORT THE RIGHT TO STRIKE FOR FEDERAL EMPOLYEES, which is a separate matter and distinction. To use FDR to support the usurpation of collective bargaining by Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin is in bold error; a purposeful dissimulation of the actual facts.

FDR's Support for Public Employee Unions:

"Reading your letter (Mr. Steward, Federation of Federal Employees) of July 14, 1937, I (FDR) was especially interested in the timeliness of your remark that the manner in which the activities of your organization have been carried on during the past two decades 'has been in complete consonance with the best traditions of public employee relationships.' Organizations of Government employees have a logical place in Government affairs.

"The desire of Government employees for fair and adequate pay, reasonable hours of work, safe and suitable working conditions, development of opportunities for advancement, facilities for fair and impartial consideration and review of grievances, and other objectives of a proper employee relations policy, is basically no different from that of employees in private industry. ORGANIZATION ON THEIR PART TO PRESENT THEIR VIEWS ON SUCH MATTERS IS BOTH NATURAL AND LOGICAL, but meticulous attention should be paid to the special relationships and obligations of public servants to the public itself and to the Government."

(Break)

"I (FDR) congratulate the National Federation of Federal Employees (on) the twentieth anniversary of its founding and trust that the convention will, in every way, be successful."

(emphasis added)

Who were the National Federation of Federal Employees?

A union representing federal employees since 1917:

"NFFE was officially created at a labor convention in Washington, D.C. on September 17, 1917. It formed as an affiliate of the AFL and was at the time the federal employees union, representing several trades and industries. NFFE and other unions were able to form after 1912, when Congress passed the Lloyd-Lafollette Act to overturn Theodore Roosevelt's previous executive order. Roosevelt's mandate, frequently referred to as the 'gag rule' had previously prevented unionized activity."

Teddy Roosevelt "Gag Rule" Removed by Congress

To wit:

"Congress passed the Lloyd-La Follette Act (§6, 37 Stat. 555, 5 U.S.C. § 7511) on August 24, 1912, declaring that 'the right of persons employed in the civil service of the United States, either individually or collectively, to petition Congress or any member thereof or to furnish information to either House of Congress or to any committee thereof, shall not be denied or interfered with.'

"The Lloyd-La Follette Act provided a significant impetus to the formation federal employees' unions. In 1916, the American Federation of Labor (AFL) acted to bring the various local unions together to form a single national union. The National Federation of Federal Employees was founded in Washington, D.C., on September 17, 1917. In 1918, it became the first labor union to win the legal right to represent federal workers."

Source: Wikipedia on National Federation of Federal Employees

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Promise Maker Michigan Encouraged to Become a Promise Breaker - Deadbeat Provider

We are wearied by; tired of our obligations to those who have long served us in public ways. We would be so much better off if we could strip state retirees of their benefits and health care to improve our own bottomlines.(Union entitlement is unsustainable, 3/11/11)

Note: Dan Calabrese's posting "Union entitlement is unsustainable" posted to the Michigan View (Detroit / Heritage / Mackinac News) on March 11, 2011 was removed from the Detroit News website.

So we find our Michigan View moralist and anti-public cynic, Dan Calabrese saying:

"When the economic environment changed, they (Many units of government in Michigan) wished they could get out from under these commitments, or better yet, that they had never made them in the first place."

This candid admission shows a lack of support for honest commitment and basic integrity. Moral gives way to business practical. When we encourage these units to use a crisis to accomplish what we know is their contractual and socially committed obligations, (due to disaster capitalism and Snyders flawed budget proposals) we rationalize our firm determination to walk away.

Rick Snyder's self-created finance crisis is built atop a monster Bush created economic collapse due to systemic corruption, fraud, and cleverly designed de-regulation stepped down from Washington, D.C. by no-less than former/ousted one term U.S. Senator Spencer Abraham.

Sen. Abraham presided over the very Senate session that lowered the bar on unique and publically indecipherable investment devices and market gambling that had been previously outlawed. These retreats from market regulation, laws that had made illegal by that same body over 100 years previously.

Libertarians are almost certainly to be practitioners of an amoral code. They are highly individual. The well-being of others is shut out as they pursue the neo-Objectivist code of a dangerous Russian-born radical, Ayn Rand (Alisa Zinov'yevna Rosenbaum), whose virulent atheist, anti-Jesus gospel/tome was published titled "The Virtue of Selfishness."

Many neo-Libertarians infesting the body politic are the Evil Samaritans; who steer completely clear of those of their fellow humans in distress or need. They're not community-minded.

If being a liberal is by definition being: generous and gregarious, with a mind to community and advocates of the New England Town Meeting, collective good; they are not some say even "evil." They know nothing of the true nature of an organization that calls its members, brothers and sisters-the labor associations that have made the middle class prosper and their children attain to a higher level of education and service do to the brotherhood of association. Never forget the corporate evils of the past which were overcome by solidarity!

Dan thinks he's right. And we know he's "right" alright. Dan often here at the MIView, prides himself being "right of right" As he moves toward greed, he will be less and less troubled by "kicking against the pricks" by God and more anesthetized by his own narrow needs to the more complete exclusion of others outside his "tribe" read; mega-church and weekly Christian Businessman's meetings, Tea Party klatch.

This is why we react with skepticism when we learn that Dan's problems with unions and public employees. His reaction is rooted in the fact they represent employees with a right to organize and enjoy due process. So when things went sour for Dan's PR business, as he has revealed on this blog, Dan clearly resents and resists not having the privilege of his simple "pleasure" -freedom to tap a worker on the shoulder at a perfect moment in the work day: giving the employee a cardboard box and showing him/her the door ala his sacred right; the ability to "hire and fire at will."

We also note, Dan goes farther in his pursuit of "autonomous self-interest." Calabrese tells us; "...when you're deluded into thinking you've entered Permanent Fat and Happy Land, you do things - things you sometimes regret. You sign long-term leases on offices and equipment. You agree to generous union contracts. Hey, the numbers look good!" Dan did this, he tells us, then he decided he was being boxed in by his decision to "go under contract" with his provider at the very time his business was floundering. Calabrese's "out"? Who would believe: Violate/break the binding contract.

Dan: "The problem was that more than half my monthly expenses were from long-term leases I HAD FOOLISHLY SIGNED. I couldn't just sit there and say, 'Cut this, cut this, cut that . . .' I had to contact each of the parties involved and see if I could renegotiate. Some were willing. Others were not."

"The bottom line is this: The business survived, and is still operating today, but only because I recognized it had to be radically restructured, with REGRETTABLE AGREEMENTS renegotiated and certain elements eliminated entirely."

How did Dan accomplish survival of his business?
Dan: "In the case of (the lease company) I sent back the copier early, and told them they could try to collect more money from me if they thought it was worth the trouble. They didn't.

Wrote Calabrese:

"You may conclude from all this that I am a horrible businessman. YOU MIGHT NOT BE WRONG. But the point is that I faced problems that many businesses face every day, and I had no choice but to make adjustments and reform my organization in order to survive."

From this self-narrated story Calabrese draws this wider public conclusion: The State should likewise needs to break it's social contract and long-standing commitment to its career retirees and teachers. Dan's wisdom based on his "business experience" is just walk away. Collect if you can.

Calabrese pontificates:

"No one is ever entitled to anything forever. You (the state and business) do the best you can, given the economic realities in which you operate. You can be flexible when circumstances demand it, or you can refuse, in which case people will find a way not to have to deal with you."

In other words take what is given you (public employees) forget that the State as a retirement obligation to you or the state will "find a way not to have to deal with you."

So the promise keeper State is supported to become the promise breaker, the deadbeat manager of obligations clearly integral to the retiree's retirement fund. And all this based on a faulty logic and a contrived and purposefully exaggerated "economic crisis"; presented by Snyder et. al. as a device to target "political enemies."

How moral is that, Dan?



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Michigan's "Emergency Financial Manager Reform" is Bogus.

What passes as “emergency financial manager reform” is bogus. Don’t Buy Into It.

The Englerite Snyder strategists have overstepped, they are seeking to destroy collective bargaining by means of the backdoor device: H.B. 4215 is a cleverly designed device to force the cunning perversion of collective bargaining's framework as a cost cutting wedge. At the same time the proposed bill carries in it a threat to smash units that are being intentionally targeted by Snyder-driven cash shortages ($470/student in education, Huge cuts in Block Grants to Firefighters, etc.).

The bill empowers Snyder to strangle those units, vesting anti-democratic powers in the hands of "Emergency Finance Managers) slick attorneys already being trained by State Treasurer Andy Dillon and Pluckett/Cooney (Super High Fee Legal Beagles) to effect radical dictatorial rule and powers; as proposed in H.B. 4215; to effectively use collective bargaining as a weapon against labor and teachers, creating harmful and capricious damage to local government services.

Tricky Rick: Kill Collective Bargaining by the Inch by Inch Tricky Rick wants to see collective bargaining used to blow away opposition to his radical re-organization of Michigan's wealth out of the hands of those whose skills and career training have earned it into the hands of the constant whiners at the Michigan Chamber of Commerce and the bomb throwers at the Mackinac Centers' bawdy corporatist propaganda mill.

The News Editorial 3/6/11, ("Union attack on emergency financial manager reform is about protecting the status quo") acknowledges one clear fact; H.B. 4215 gives the Emergency Financial Manager "the power to break collective bargaining agreements that are deemed to be contributing to a community's or school district's financial failure."

Snyder Thinks He's Pulled Off A Coup As in the old story: One guy, too cheap to have my dog's tail bobbed as in the tradition vet method, so he fancied saving expense by cutting its tail off half-an-inch-at-a-time; because it's cheaper and so it won't hurt the dog so much, he rationalized. Thus with Snyder: The hurt, the acrimony and dissension inherent under the purview of H.B. 4215 is fiendishly divisive and long lasting its purposeful disunity. It will turn neighbor against neighbor; under government top-down outside pressure from Lansing many bad things will occur.

Remember when we lost local control over school operating costs under Engler's Prop A ? And now we pay the piper.

Tea Partiers Duped: Local Control Smashed - Big Government Smashes the Little Guy 

This not what Tea Party people wanted when they called for local input and protection from excessive and coercive government intervention into how our money at the local level would and could be spent. This not why TPers voted in Legislators to do. They wanted Legislators who would carry out their wishes - protecting local revenues and rights-or so they said.

Wake up Teapartisans! You've been diddled.


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