What’s news today?
Let’s start with the story that’s constantly changing.
From the NYPost
“The White House yesterday denied it edited talking points about the terrorist attack that killed the American ambassador to Libya — contradicting remarks made a day earlier by disgraced ex-CIA chief David Petraeus.
“The only edit that was made by the White House and also by the State Department was to change the word ‘consulate’ to the word ‘diplomatic facility,’ since the facility in Benghazi was not formally a consulate,” Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes told reporters aboard Air Force One.
“Other than that, we were guided by the points that were provided by the intelligence community. So I can’t speak to any other edits that may have been made.””
Somebody is lying.
And speaking of things the Obama admin seeks to hide…….
From the WashingtonTimes
“A House committee has launched an investigation into whether EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson used an email alias to try to hide correspondence from open-government requests and her agency’s own internal watchdog — something that Republican lawmakers said could run afoul of the law.
The science committee has asked Ms. Jackson to turn over all information related to an email account under the name of “Richard Windsor,” which is one of the aliases identified by a researcher looking into the EPA.
The committee has also asked the White House’s lawyer and EPA’s inspector general to look into the matter and report back by the end of this month, saying that the secret email accounts could have been used to keep key information from official watchdogs as well as the public.”
Say it with me now, “The most transparent administration EVAH!”
Now to the Republicans. Already? Really?
From the DailyCaller
“As the Republican Party regroups after Mitt Romney’s defeat, the message Saturday night at Iowa Republican Gov. Terry Branstad’s birthday fundraiser was “turn the page” and “look to the future” — and what that future apparently holds is Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, the event’s featured speaker.”
“Even before they heard him speak on Saturday, Iowans were attracted to Rubio. Branstad said the fundraiser generated more than $600,000, a total he said was greater than he had raised before in any single event.”
I’ve always liked Rubio, but I can’t help but think this is just pandering for minority votes from the party bosses.
But he’ll need a running mate, preferably one with an established “ground game”. And maybe as an added bonus a re-unification of the party. That’d be good. Say, maybe Rand Paul? And what better way to start an effective “ground game” than this. Have his Dad help.
From TheHill
“Retiring Rep. Ron Paul plans to deliver speeches on college campuses next year and beyond, continuing his message of liberty and reducing the size of the federal government.
In an interview with The Hill, the Texas Republican clearly indicated that he isn’t ready for the rocking chair.
The 77-year-old physician-politician said, “I’m excited about spending more time on college campuses, not less. College campuses will still be on my agenda. That’s where the action is.”
He added, “The young people don’t like the debt they are inheriting, the violation of their civil liberties. They don’t like the war and it’s a fertile field.”
Hmmmmmm………. This could work.
Another Union is about to do something stupid.
From CBS
“Employees at Los Angeles International Airport were considering plans Friday to walk off the job ahead on what is traditionally the busiest traveling day of the year.
A coalition of Southland labor and community leaders are calling for the protest of alleged violations by LAX contractor Aviation Safeguards (AVSG) after breaking their contract with the airport earlier this year.
Andrew Gross-Gaitan, the director of the Southern California Airports Division of SEIU, told KNX 1070 NEWSRADIO that AVSG left more than 400 LAX workers without affordable family health care when it failed to comply with the city’s Living Wage Ordinance.”
And when you are aware of the consequences, but you do it anyway, well what other word but stupid applies?
From RedState
“With the demise of 18,000 jobs weighing on their shoulders (though certainly not their consciousness’) and just in time for the Sunday morning talk shows union bosses are now trying desperately to point fingers at the victim (and Mitt Romney) for the union’s strike that ultimately destroyed Hostess and its 18,000 jobs. This blame game is going on despite the fact that the bakers’ union knew that its strike could, ultimately, lead to the company’s closure.
Ranging from the AFL-CIO’s Big Daddy Rich Trumka to the bakers’ union bosses who pulled the trigger by calling the strike that killed Twinkie the Kid, unions are now in full spin mode to make America believe that it was the company and Wall Street–not the union that called the strike that caused the company to go out of business.”
And score another one for the good guys.
From LifeNews
“A federal court today stopped enforcement of the Obama administration’s abortion pill mandate against a Bible publisher which filed a lawsuit against it.
The mandate has generated massive opposition from pro-life groups because it forces employers, regardless of their religious or moral convictions, to provide insurance coverage for abortion-inducing drugs, sterilization, and contraception under threat of heavy penalties.
The Obama administration opposed the order, arguing that Tyndale House Publishers isn’t religious enough for an exemption from the mandate, a component of ObamaCare that forces employers, regardless of their religious or moral convictions, to provide insurance coverage for abortion-inducing drugs, sterilization, and contraception under threat of heavy penalties.”
“The court’s order is the third nationwide against the mandate and the second obtained by Alliance Defending Freedom attorneys.”
Wandering Views 
Good for Ron Paul. He was never going to be President, but he is the most intellectually honest politician I have seen in my lifetime. There needs to be one conservative voice on US college campuses.
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Hostess and the union — The union is of course not without blame for Hostess’ demise. Neither is the company itself which got itself into 2 bankruptcies to begin with .
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CB, The company’s real mistake was to ever think they could remain competitive with union employees. If I owned a company and my employees formed a union, I would immediately shut the doors and sell the company’s assets.
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Have any of you ever worked a “union” job? I grew up with my dad being in management for a paper mill. Every year employee’s college student children could apply for a “lottery” number and if your number got pulled you got to work 89 days at union wages to help pay for college. My number got pulled which was amazing since my dad was management, but I worked 89 days in a pulp mill one summer. You think it’s hot? Wait until you go OUTSIDE in the summer time to cool off.
I was among the last group of college kids allowed to ride the man lifts. That amounts to a vertical conveyor belt with a step and a handle. I would ride them down but I wouldn’t ride them up. There were a lot of dangers in the paper mill even then and even I saw them.
Unions served a purpose at one time to get better working conditions. I was raised anti-union. During one strike our house was broken into and sugar was put in a gas tank. During another strike, I had to be left at home alone but I slept with a pistol under my pillow. I think unions have probably served there purpose but even with the experiences I had I wouldn’t color them all bad. I think like everything else, an elite few got power and let it go to their heads and want to support the style to which they have become accustomed. We need to get rid of the union bosses! who are calling for strikes when people are barely making it.
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Kim, There was a time (after WWII) when the US had such a competitive advantage over the rest of the world that a company could go union and survive. That time is in the past. Today, the primary employers that are still unionized are the government and defense contractors (quasi-government). Young people should know that if their employer unionizes, they need to look for a new job because their company isn’t going to survive.
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Kim, there was a time when unions were important for improving working conditions and safety. However, like all organizations, they eventually became bureaucracies. The leaders had to continue providing benefits, increased pay, vacation time, retirement, health insurance. All those good things in order to satisfy their clients, the workers. The Board of Directors of large companies could easily add more retirement, and other benefits that didn’t cost them much, but came off future company income. i.e. They didn’t care. They kept pushing Congress to raise minimum wage, which added no long term benefit at all.
I used to work for a minimum wage of $.75/hr. A minimum wage of $7.50 today leaves the worker in no better condition.
What it does is make it profitable to have somebody in China make a phone, ship it by boat, and still sell it below the price of a domestically made model
What they have done is negotiated themselves out of jobs.
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Addendum to my 10:13.
The people doing the negotiations at the time didn’t care.
As long as it didn’t happen on his watch.
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A FB friend posted that the Hostess president raised his pay 80% and cut the pay of all the workers, citing a truck driver who took home less than $500 a week after some long hours on the road.
She gave no references for her information and she doesn’t work for the former Hostess. See the need for independent news sources? 😦
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I agree that unions have served their purpose, but there was a time they were needed and served a purpose.
I am just glad to have seen both sides.
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CB,
That may be true, but the bakers union is to blame for the closing. Even the Teamsters have acknowledged this.
http://www.teamster.org/content/teamsters-bakery-workers-should-hold-secret-ballot-vote-hostess
“On Wednesday, Nov. 14, Hostess Brands indicated that if it couldn’t resume normal operations by 5 p.m. EST on Thursday, Nov. 15 that it would have to begin the liquidation process. Teamster Hostess members and all Hostess employees should know this is not an empty threat or a negotiating tactic, but the certain outcome if members of the BCTGM continue to strike. This is based on conversations with our financial experts, who, because the Teamsters were involved in the legal process, had access to financial information about the company.
As stated previously, Teamster Hostess members have been frustrated by numerous missteps by a variety of Hostess management teams, but the union has tried to engage constructively to find a solution to preserve jobs. That comprehensive engagement has spanned 18 months.”
“On Friday, Nov. 9, the BCTGM began to strike at some Hostess production facilities without notice to the Teamsters despite assurances they would not proceed with job actions without contacting the Teamsters Union. This unannounced action put Teamster members in the difficult position of facing picket lines without knowing their right to honor such a line without being disciplined.”
“As is our longstanding tradition, Teamster members by and large are honoring Bakery Worker picket lines when encountered and complying with their contractual obligations when not encountering picket lines. The BCTGM leaders are putting Teamster members in a horrible position – asking them to support a strike that will put them out of a job when they haven’t even asked all their members to go on strike.
That strike is now on the verge of forcing the company to liquidate – it is difficult for Teamster members to believe that is what the BCTGM Hostess members ultimately wanted to accomplish when they went out on strike. We may never know unless the BCTGM members, based on the facts they know today, get to determine their fate in a secret ballot vote. Teamster members would understand that the will of the BCTGM Hostess membership was truly heard if that was the case. “
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I can relate to your experience Kim. I worked a vacation relief position in a union wood products factory for a summer while I was going through college. The heat in that place was beyond belief and I finally got to see what my dad had to put up with for 35 years. The union fought hard for it’s members to have better working conditions and the old timers told me that it was much better then than it had been in years past. People who don’t believe that there’s a need for labor unions anymore need to step a few rungs down the socioeconomic ladder and try the jobs that many Americans are forced to work and they would quickly understand why laborers try to band together for better working conditions and pay.
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Aj,
Which part of, the unions bear some blame that I stated above provoked a longish reply to prove that in fact the union bears some of the blame? All I did was observe that the company is also to blame.
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Here’s something else we can have the Chinese manufacture for us.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=ZFjGbOyd2ek%3Frel%3D0
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CB,
Because I thought that while you were correct that the people running the company shared some blame in the bankruptcy, they weren’t at fault here.
Both held blame in the financial stupidity that got them here. But it ends there. The closing is on the bakers union, as even the Teamsters pointed out. And it should be pointed out, so I did.
So CB,
Does the idea of a CB/moderate news post day at WanderingViews appeal to you? It would give you the chance to use some of those more moderate sources you like. You are after all a part of our little family here, so the offer applies to you as well, not just us right-wingers.
🙂
If it does, let me know.
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I am descended from coal miners on both sides of the family. Both my grandfathers worked in the mines. One was killed and the other injured, so I know that there was a need for unions at one time, but it seems that when people get power they often turn into what they once hated. Hostess has a right not to want to run a company that is losing money and the workers have a right not to want to work for lower wages. Everyone should be happy, right?
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Aj,
You know it has appeal!
On hostess – a failed negotiation takes at least 2 and each side will continue to believe it was right. That said, one can fault the union for being the last straw and one can fault the ceo and managment for getting to the last straw in the first place.
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Have you ever noticed that unions brook no dissent? They name-call and get physical. “No retaliation” means the union will but the not other side.
Union people are not nice. Most Democrats I know act the same as union people.
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Even if Hostess failed as a result of poor management, the unions got what they deserved. Even a parasite knows better than to kill the host. Apparently, unions haven’t yet figured that out.
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I agree there is a need for unions in some cases, probably more in the past when labor laws were so lax or non-existent. Unions have done a lot of good and have protected people who truly needed protection.
But I also agree with KBells in noting that power corrupts unions just as much as it corrupts CEOs — and, as Bobbuckles pointed out, power makes them not really very nice, to put it mildly.
I’ve seen teachers screaming & throwing food at cars while parents tried to get their kids into a school gate. I’ve covered many a union rally that consisted of loud, in-your-face, ugly, aggressive screaming. I hate covering union “events,” to be honest. The nicest people (individually) turn into total jerks in a heartbeat when they get caught up in all of that.
And any time we happen to report our local blue collar union salaries (quite lavish, really, and more than twice what any of us will ever make, trust me) in an article in the paper during contract negotiations, we get the inevitable obscenity-laced, menacing, anonymous telephone calls. 😦
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And maybe not so fast at burying the iconic Twinkie:
CNBC@CNBC
BREAKING: Hostess and Bakers Union agree to mediation, preventing shut down.
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Me thinks there is a rat somewhere in Florida. http://www.punditpress.com/2012/11/breaking-st-lucie-county-florida-had.html
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The most dangerous unions are those for public school and college teachers and government workers both in excessive demands for wages and benefits and resisting efforts for more efficient and effective government work results. Teacher’s unions routinely thwart any charter-school reform or getting rid of mediocre curricula in favor of rigorous courses.
Unless these unions are thwarted, we shall end up like the third-rate Mediterranean countries such as Greece, Spain, and Italy. Scott Walker is an exemplary leader by seriously curtailing excessive union power in Wisconsin.
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Unions are as relevant today as they were 100 years ago, and in fact the decline of the working and middle classes has been directly correlated to the decline in unions both of which have been happening since the 1980s.
The following link demonstrates the benefits unions give members and non-members.
http://www.epi.org/publication/briefingpapers_bp143/
The current Hostess fiasco is a demonstration of managerial incompetence and worker desperation. After repeated management changes and successive CEOs none of whom had bakery experience but were quick to give themselves raises while cutting workers’ wages, its no wonder workers walked. After all, they really had nothing to lose except an other wage cut.
Anytime I hear a management team refuse to work with a union, I wonder about their competence. Its far easier to manage when you only have consideration, yourself and your profits, as opposed to caring about your employees and other standards.
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Sails — teachers unions are for the most part wimps in the workplace, as most teachers don’t have the testicular fortitude to carry out an effective strike action. However, they are more effective in the political arena.
The majority of charter schools have had mediocre results with higher than expected results. And in most cases curriculum changes are opposed by parents, school boards as well as teachers for different reasons. Try making a course more difficult and see how far you get with parents and administration. In fact you will be calling the union while administration egged on by parents takes you to the proverbial woodshed.
Greece fell apart due to corruption from both major parties on the left and right. Furthermore, the switch to the Euro did not allow them to devalue the currency the only real way out of the mess they are in. Interestingly Spain ran balanced budgets for several years but ran into problems when they bailed out banks suffering the effects of a real estate bust. Spain is the starkest example of austerity for the sake of bank bailouts.
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HRW, excellent private schools that have no unions end the senior year with rigorous content filled courses including literature, history, calculus, physics a modern foreign language and Latin IV. The earlier years lead to this; there are no frilly gut courses with which public schools are littered.The teachers majored in the subjects they teach and often have graduate degrees in the subject. Should they not prove able, they are let go.
Able teachers pay scant attention to those interested in watering down content.
Mediocre unionized teachers and parents who tolerate weak subject matter is the bane of public schools.
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Pardon me, that last verb ought to have been “are.”
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Of course there are private schools which provide exactly what you state. However, its a niche market. First, only so many students are capable of such a programme and second, society (parents, employers, etc) don’t actually want such well educated young people.
Sometimes watered down content is actually needed or the only. Public education serves everyone and not everyone is capable of “rigorous content”. Able teachers differentiate instruction, content and expectations.
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hwesseli,
I had nothing in common with the union for my school district. They wanted my money and my vote.
One of the NEA presidents said that all of the union stuff was about political power. Power in state houses and in Washington. The unions forced me to give them MY MONEY to a political party I did/do not like or respect. They (unions and Democrats) lie and cheat. They only want me for my money and my vote. They are a bunch of thieves.
As for “rigorous content” how about expecting everyone to go to college? How silly and foolish. But it does provide more union jobs! Silly, foolish, lying thieves!
By the way, I always advised my son, a Teamster, to go on strike when the union did. The company he worked for could always raise prices, unlike school districts. Besides that, Teamsters not only have work rules agreed to with the companies, they also had requirements of how much work was to get done. you know, tangible results.
By the way, yesterday I asked,
“Under your “Single Payer” system, all health care workers will only work for one employer.
What if my doctor doesn’t want to work for that entity?
Do you see any problems with this?”
Oh, I see. No one will have any choice, they will have to work for the government. A closed shop, union paradise.
I need to go to bed. I get too worked up about unions and Democrats.
I wonder if there will be any unions in heaven?
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Oops! I posted that long anti-union, anti-Democrat screed.
Bob Buckles
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