President 2016

[Dan Druff]

Modern labor unions are a disaster.

They only benefit the incompetent/lazy employees who have been there for 30 years.

Any attempt to tear apart that model is a good thing.

Look at any chart on inequality and you can trace a large part of the problem to the decline of unions.

How does a chart allow one to trace the cause of income inequality?

Do you know many union employees? Ask the ones who haven't been there for a long time what they think of the union. Their answers might surprise you.

Do you realize that the sorry state of education in the US is partially due to teachers' unions? Are you aware that bad teachers in public school cannot be fired if they have tenure, unless they do something really horrendous?

Do you think that companies hampered by high salaries and benefits for manual labor employees can compete in the global market, or even in the domestic market where non-union alternatives exist?

I guess some people here are still under the delusion that unions help the average worker, while those who oppose unions are heartless corporate apologists.

[MumblesBadly]

Look at any chart on inequality and you can trace a large part of the problem to the decline of unions.

How does a chart allow one to trace the cause of income inequality?

Do you know many union employees? Ask the ones who haven't been there for a long time what they think of the union. Their answers might surprise you.

Do you realize that the sorry state of education in the US is partially due to teachers' unions? Are you aware that bad teachers in public school cannot be fired if they have tenure, unless they do something really horrendous?

Do you think that companies hampered by high salaries and benefits for manual labor employees can compete in the global market, or even in the domestic market where non-union alternatives exist?

I guess some people here are still under the delusion that unions help the average worker, while those who oppose unions are heartless corporate apologists.

Biggest factor here. From the late 1990s to now, about 250 million workers have entered the global labor force due to China's breakneck manufacturing-for-export boom alone. In fact, the textile industry jobs that moved from South Carolina to Mexico with the adoption of NAFTA in the early 1990s got moved to China in the 2000s. And now even-lower-cost Southeast Asian countries like Vietnam and Indonesia are "stealing" many of those textile jobs from China.

#YouCantFightGlobalization

[FPS_Russia]

What Druff's saying is he wants millions of dollars for himself and everyone else who's not a millionaire should work for a nickel an hour and like it. Aka eliminate the middle class. This is conservatism in a nutshell.
This is why Conservatives hate Obama care. If they have to go to the ER or something they don't want a bunch of non elite in their facilities." The non elites should just go die somewhere. Yea at the R convention they cheered for people dying w/o health ins.

They love wars unless they get drafted or have to pay for it.

That's why the right needs the behemoth C.E.C. to pump propaganda and make people vote on wedge issues like guns jesus and abortion. Without the C.E.C., corporate money and gerrymandering the GOP would be a small radical fringe group.

Politics is Druff's Achilles heel, so far gone.

[LegalizeMeth]

Look at any chart on inequality and you can trace a large part of the problem to the decline of unions.

How does a chart allow one to trace the cause of income inequality?

Do you know many union employees? Ask the ones who haven't been there for a long time what they think of the union. Their answers might surprise you.

Do you realize that the sorry state of education in the US is partially due to teachers' unions? Are you aware that bad teachers in public school cannot be fired if they have tenure, unless they do something really horrendous?

Do you think that companies hampered by high salaries and benefits for manual labor employees can compete in the global market, or even in the domestic market where non-union alternatives exist?

I guess some people here are still under the delusion that unions help the average worker, while those who oppose unions are heartless corporate apologists.

for such a smart guy, your really are completely out of touch and detached from reality about so many things. That bullshit about teachers unions is so outdated its ridiculous. At least in my state, teachers can (and do) get fired for poor performance, regardless of tenure. the thought that its the unions that are ruining education is so lol I dont even know where to begin

[Dan Druff]

How does a chart allow one to trace the cause of income inequality?

Do you know many union employees? Ask the ones who haven't been there for a long time what they think of the union. Their answers might surprise you.

Do you realize that the sorry state of education in the US is partially due to teachers' unions? Are you aware that bad teachers in public school cannot be fired if they have tenure, unless they do something really horrendous?

Do you think that companies hampered by high salaries and benefits for manual labor employees can compete in the global market, or even in the domestic market where non-union alternatives exist?

I guess some people here are still under the delusion that unions help the average worker, while those who oppose unions are heartless corporate apologists.

for such a smart guy, your really are completely out of touch and detached from reality about so many things. That bullshit about teachers unions is so outdated its ridiculous. At least in my state, teachers can (and do) get fired for poor performance, regardless of tenure. the thought that its the unions that are ruining education is so lol I dont even know where to begin

What state are you in?

This is very much still going on in California (which contains 1/9 of the population) and every other state I know of.

If you're in a state which has de-empowered the horrible teacher's unions, congrats to your state. It's not like that in most places.

Do teachers get fired for poor performance? Sure. If they've only been working as teachers for a relatively short time, they don't have nearly as much protection.

Good luck getting a teacher with tenure fired, though. They pretty much have to either stop showing up for work or commit a crime against a student in order to get canned.

This phenomenon isn't just exclusive to teachers, though. It's true in nearly all labor unions. Those with seniority have immense and undeserved protection, while those just starting out are paying dues and getting little in return. It's a highly corrupt, inefficient, and unfair system.

Have you ever been to a union supermarket before where the checker is rude/incompetent/unfriendly? Ever notice that it tends to be the older employees with a badge saying things like, "A proud employee since 1984"? That's what unions are doing for this country.

Sure, a rude supermarket checker isn't the end of the world, but bad/lazy teachers are much more serious, as is the situation where pay has skyrocketed in certain union professions to where companies are either struggling or passing on the cost to the consumer.

Unions were necessary a century ago when worker's rights were shit. Nowadays, unions have grown out of control and their benefit disproportionately favors the undeserving few while harming the many.

[Dan Druff]

Government-worker unions (including teachers) are the absolute worst, though.

At least the consumer has the right to stay away from a union shop if their prices are high or the service is poor.

So if I go to Albertson's and the checker is nasty to me, I can go to a non-union shop down the street.

However, I cannot do the same when dealing with an abusive/incompetent public service employee. I am stuck enduring the situation. Regarding schools, I am stuck with the unpalatable choice of either dealing with it, or spending a fortune to send my children to private school.

It's just a horrible situation, and these unions have no place in public service.

[Daly]

I could write a Magna Carta length posting on government unions. My wife was a mid level manager at the VAand got forced into a joke posistion because she tried to take on the Union and lost.

[Dan Druff]

LOL you guys watching the FBI's statement on Hillary's e-mail?

The FBI director sat there for 15 minutes or so jerking us off by telling us all the things Hillary did wrong and where she was shady/careless, but then just dropped the bomb that they're recommending to the DOJ to not prosecute her.

So they put out the beginning criticism as fluff so it looked like an impartial investigation, and then dropped the unfortunate (and long-obvious) truth that she's skating away on this one, just like she has done with everything else for the past 25 years.

Government corruption = JOKE

[ToasterOven]

Look at any chart on inequality and you can trace a large part of the problem to the decline of unions.

How does a chart allow one to trace the cause of income inequality?

Do you know many union employees? Ask the ones who haven't been there for a long time what they think of the union. Their answers might surprise you.

Do you realize that the sorry state of education in the US is partially due to teachers' unions? Are you aware that bad teachers in public school cannot be fired if they have tenure, unless they do something really horrendous?

Do you think that companies hampered by high salaries and benefits for manual labor employees can compete in the global market, or even in the domestic market where non-union alternatives exist?

I guess some people here are still under the delusion that unions help the average worker, while those who oppose unions are heartless corporate apologists.

Schools are shit because teachers make shit. Who would want to be a teacher and start at 25K a year? What a terrible job.

Do you know any union employees? I live in Michigan. I know more union employees than you know people.

I just think you're wrong, not evil. You have no real world experience in the market place. Almost all your experiences that you talk about are from 20 years ago. I don't think you have a very good grasp of the labor market in general. You do spout Republican talking points particularly effectively, though.

[Dan Druff]

How does a chart allow one to trace the cause of income inequality?

Do you know many union employees? Ask the ones who haven't been there for a long time what they think of the union. Their answers might surprise you.

Do you realize that the sorry state of education in the US is partially due to teachers' unions? Are you aware that bad teachers in public school cannot be fired if they have tenure, unless they do something really horrendous?

Do you think that companies hampered by high salaries and benefits for manual labor employees can compete in the global market, or even in the domestic market where non-union alternatives exist?

I guess some people here are still under the delusion that unions help the average worker, while those who oppose unions are heartless corporate apologists.

Schools are shit because teachers make shit. Who would want to be a teacher and start at 25K a year? What a terrible job.

Do you know any union employees? I live in Michigan. I know more union employees than you know people.

I just think you're wrong, not evil. You have no real world experience in the market place. Almost all your experiences that you talk about are from 20 years ago. I don't think you have a very good grasp of the labor market in general. You do spout Republican talking points particularly effectively, though.

I know a number of union employees. All of them are unhappy and think their union is shit.

Anecdotal evidence, sure, but I stand by all of my criticisms of modern labor unions even without such anecdotal evidence.

The average Los Angeles Unified School District teacher makes $58k, and that's before benefits and bonuses.

Not big money, but a far cry from the $25k figure you quoted.

They also have a more generous vacation schedule than any profession you can think of, especially with the almost three months off they get during the summer.

Pay isn't the issue here. Even if you're paying a teacher $200k per year, if he feels he can't be fired due to tenure, he will often get lazy. Higher salary doesn't necessarily equal better performance.

[FPS_Russia]

Our Democracy is gone, holy shit!!!!!
So it wasn't a lack of evidence the first time the Clintons escaped charges.
Comey was their homey.

WOW 12 plus agents, over a year of investigations, immunity agreements, many servers, not one single charge. Hell yeah there's a two tiered criminal justice system.

Let me go get a some coffee, maybe i'll wake up from this dream. HA Goodman's response is going to be interesting.

They purged me and thousands of our right to vote, then this shit. Stay home or protest vote for Trump, hmmmm

[FPS_Russia]

Boy the Republicans got this one right, they didn't even have doubts. The Clintons have been tooling them around for decades. That's worth something, yea let them bow to the cackling pansuit for a couple terms.

Wait a minute, the whole Benghazi thing was pure 100% grade A bullshit. So this server stuff was fruits of a poisonous tree. hmmmm.

I wonder if Huma is still in the Clinton circle of trust, ah whatever.


It burned me up when Republicans ran around acting like George W. Bush was doing a huckuva job(some still do lol). So I'm going to do the same to them w Hillary. Time to extract a lil personal satisfaction.

Can't beat em join em

America's grandmother
The most competent woman in the world
Hillary 2016

I'm out...

[Shizzmoney]

Embedded Tweet

https://twitter.com/twt/status/750369270203162625

What a sham. I guess the only way HRC is gonna get indicted by the Feds is if she starts an online poker site.

[MumblesBadly]

Schools are shit because teachers make shit. Who would want to be a teacher and start at 25K a year? What a terrible job.

Do you know any union employees? I live in Michigan. I know more union employees than you know people.

I just think you're wrong, not evil. You have no real world experience in the market place. Almost all your experiences that you talk about are from 20 years ago. I don't think you have a very good grasp of the labor market in general. You do spout Republican talking points particularly effectively, though.

I know a number of union employees. All of them are unhappy and think their union is shit.

Anecdotal evidence, sure, but I stand by all of my criticisms of modern labor unions even without such anecdotal evidence.

The average Los Angeles Unified School District teacher makes $58k, and that's before benefits and bonuses.

Not big money, but a far cry from the $25k figure you quoted.

They also have a more generous vacation schedule than any profession you can think of, especially with the almost three months off they get during the summer.

Pay isn't the issue here. Even if you're paying a teacher $200k per year, if he feels he can't be fired due to tenure, he will often get lazy. Higher salary doesn't necessarily equal better performance.

Three issues with how you use the salary figures here:

1) The average of $58k prolly is skewed downward by the relatively new teachers who get the worst pay and likely leave after just a few years because of burnout and disillusionment. Especially when the teachers with greater seniority can angle for the easier classes/assignments.

2) The cost of living in the LA area is ridiculously high versus most other places in the US. Especially housing. So, an average of $58k in the LA area is prolly equivalent to about $35-40k in a most of the rest of the country.

3) The average expected salaries in a career has a huge impact on who self-selects to compete in it. If the average K-12 teachers in the US could reasonably expect to earned an average of $150k-200k/year starting in five years time and going forward with bumps for cost-of-living changes, the pool of college students choosing to be education majors would balloon with a ridic number of much brighter kids versus the typical bottom-of-the-college-entrance-exam students who currently opt to be future teachers. And those much-brighter kids would definitely improve the quality of teaching in our public schools.

In fact, K-12 teachers in Finland earn about double what they do in the US, and those jobs are highly competed for. And Finland is at or near the top in student skills among the OECD countries.

That being said, I completely agree that the K-12 teachers unions in the US has completely fucked up the quality of teaching in a number of major school districts, most notably, most of big urban districts, including LA's.

[simpdog]

Don't count out Trump just yet. Still tons of people around who will vote for him.

Including this guy who put a float in a July 4th parade in Indiana.

[SysOp]

LOL @ druff thinking he knows anything about unions or how people in them feel about their union. druff go fuck yourself and grind poker(which I'm sure you hate just as much as your programming job) and talk about things you know about like, who's tweeting about someone else and social justice whatever I'm done.

[adamantium]

Schools are shit because teachers make shit. Who would want to be a teacher and start at 25K a year? What a terrible job.

Do you know any union employees? I live in Michigan. I know more union employees than you know people.

I just think you're wrong, not evil. You have no real world experience in the market place. Almost all your experiences that you talk about are from 20 years ago. I don't think you have a very good grasp of the labor market in general. You do spout Republican talking points particularly effectively, though.

I know a number of union employees. All of them are unhappy and think their union is shit.

Anecdotal evidence, sure, but I stand by all of my criticisms of modern labor unions even without such anecdotal evidence.

The average Los Angeles Unified School District teacher makes $58k, and that's before benefits and bonuses.

Not big money, but a far cry from the $25k figure you quoted.

They also have a more generous vacation schedule than any profession you can think of, especially with the almost three months off they get during the summer.

Pay isn't the issue here. Even if you're paying a teacher $200k per year, if he feels he can't be fired due to tenure, he will often get lazy. Higher salary doesn't necessarily equal better performance.

n-word Logic
A particular type of logic commonly used by n-words. The difference between n-word logic and "regular" logic is that arguments using n-word logic are logically deficient. They appear logical at first but on closer inspection they turn out to be totally illogical. Most people with average intelligence can spot n-word logic immediately but most n-words, along with retards of other races, can not.
n-word Terrence Howard told Elle Magazine that he refuses to date women who don't use moistened tissue on visits to the toilet - as they are "not completely clean".

[Sanlmar]

LOL @ druff thinking he knows anything about unions or how people in them feel about their union. druff go fuck yourself and grind poker(which I'm sure you hate just as much as your programming job) and talk about things you know about like, who's tweeting about someone else and social justice whatever I'm done.

Shits complicated. Reading Union generalizations is painful and just plain simple.

I had to do a stint project managing electrical installation of some low voltage controls in high rises in Boston.

Boston is a union town. Period.

Different electrical contractors will bid the electrical installation for a building. They all use IBEW local 103 workers from the hall.

Once they pick up a guy from the hall they realize fairly quickly whether the guy has game and is someone they want to keep.

Understand that once a job is completed the electrical workers can get turned loose. They don't get paid if they don't work. If there are no construction projects they are fucked.

Now an electrical contractor will do everything in their power to get another project lined up and continue carrying the good foremen and crew. Turn the shitbags loose.

Local 103 quality was several orders of magnitude better than non Union shops that worked the suburbs. You spec a piece of work to be installed and they would do it right and to code. They didn't give a fuck if you or their shop priced it wrong. They would not cut corners. You would not rush them. They cared about their reputation and if you fucked with them on these issues the union would stomp you.

The good skilled guys wanted to continue working project to project uninterrupted.

Their apprentice training and classroom was Harvard compared to the scumbag non Union outfits.

Go to a non Union job and you would see workers throwing wire nuts down the hallway rather than walk it. Shitty tools and pressure from the owner always meant corners cut and hack work. They sucked and were a project managers nightmare.

Such generalizations about unions are just plain naive. Some are good and maybe some suck. Maybe there are other issues at play where no worker Union or otherwise could succeed.

The checks and balances that unions provide in a healthy economy is valuable and often in the consumers interest.

[big dick]

Don't count out Trump just yet. Still tons of people around who will vote for him.

Including this guy who put a float in a July 4th parade in Indiana.

I grt the clown driving that clown car has less than 10 teethin his mouth

[SysOp]

LOL @ druff thinking he knows anything about unions or how people in them feel about their union. druff go fuck yourself and grind poker(which I'm sure you hate just as much as your programming job) and talk about things you know about like, who's tweeting about someone else and social justice whatever I'm done.

Shits complicated. Reading Union generalizations is painful and just plain simple.

I had to do a stint project managing electrical installation of some low voltage controls in high rises in Boston.

Boston is a union town. Period.

Different electrical contractors will bid the electrical installation for a building. They all use IBEW local 103 workers from the hall.

Once they pick up a guy from the hall they realize fairly quickly whether the guy has game and is someone they want to keep.

Understand that once a job is completed the electrical workers can get turned loose. They don't get paid if they don't work. If there are no construction projects they are fucked.

Now an electrical contractor will do everything in their power to get another project lined up and continue carrying the good foremen and crew. Turn the shitbags loose.

Local 103 quality was several orders of magnitude better than non Union shops that worked the suburbs. You spec a piece of work to be installed and they would do it right and to code. They didn't give a fuck if you or their shop priced it wrong. They would not cut corners. You would not rush them. They cared about their reputation and if you fucked with them on these issues the union would stomp you.

The good skilled guys wanted to continue working project to project uninterrupted.

Their apprentice training and classroom was Harvard compared to the scumbag non Union outfits.

Go to a non Union job and you would see workers throwing wire nuts down the hallway rather than walk it. Shitty tools and pressure from the owner always meant corners cut and hack work. They sucked and were a project managers nightmare.

Such generalizations about unions are just plain naive. Some are good and maybe some suck. Maybe there are other issues at play where no worker Union or otherwise could succeed.

The checks and balances that unions provide in a healthy economy is valuable and often in the consumers interest.

very well said sir.