Labor wants the worker privacy bill to be voted upon. Rep. Geoff Simpson asks why a handful of Democrats can tell corporate lobbyists one thing while intending to vote a different way.
It’s all there from Joe Turner, the hardest working man left in Olympia and who refers to this thing as the “Neverending Saga.” Understandable.
Yeah, I’m sure many folks are sick and tired of the whole thing, but labor has a right to ask for a vote since the purported reason for killing the bill has now been revealed to be a pretext. And Simpson and others are well within their rights to raise questions about how the process seems to be geared toward thwarting majority rule.
It’s not that majority rule is always right about everything, but officials get elected by the people to pass laws and decide stuff. That’s why we have elections!
When leadership, corporate lobbyists and a handful of mini-Liebermans decide important issues can’t be voted upon at all in the Legislature, that’s not democracy. You could argue it’s just the way the process works, if it ever ever ever worked in the other direction, ie business and corporate interests sometimes get the same treatment, but they don’t and it’s not. Basically an economic and political elite has seized control of the levers of power and is only giving lip service to progressive values. The continued economic crisis only places this in stark relief, it’s been going on for a very long time.
It’s always the DFH that gets the shaft, usually in the name of “protecting jobs,” which is Third Way-speak for giving tax breaks and other preferential treatment to business interests at the expense of regular folks, environmental and consumer protections. You know any Republicans who fight that hard for unions? I wonder how they would fare if 5-10 of their members regularly took the side of the AFL-CIO.
It’s good to see some folks fighting the good fight, however. There are some pretty fundamental issues at stake here, both for the well-being of the state and, more peripherally, the Democratic Party.
As long as employers have a right to force workers to listen to anti-union diatribes, I have a right to get paid for not working — with my own money. Why should I put up with employer bullshit? But Republicans seem to have something against retiring on your own savings, too. You work hard all your life — like I did — and you save, pay into a pension plan, pay Social Security taxes, and then a batch of Republicans comes along and tries to steal your pension fund and Social Security! And then they criticize you for not working! Go figure! A Republican is someone who lives on other people’s money. When they live on women’s money, we call them gigolos. When they live on our money, we call them thieves.
Rich people don’t create jobs, customers create jobs, and when Republicans eliminate the jobs or reduce the wages of their customers, they’re killing their own businesses. Why don’t they understand that?
If Republicans really believed in getting paid for working hard, then when they lay off a third of the workforce and make the remaining employees do more work, they would pay them more.
If Republicans have a right to not employ me because I’m liberal, then I have a right to not work for them because they’re not. If I can support myself, why should I work? As native fauna living in a public park on flora, I don’t have to work.
Republicans comes along and tries to steal your pension fund and Social Security!
Did they NNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
Did the Democrats Steal your SS YYYYYYYYYYEEEEESSSSSSS
Your post reveal Republicans provide Jobs.
You had enough of obama too.
@5 Anytime a wingnut flings around the word “truth” — watch out!!!
Remember the Bush “town hall” meetings? His idea of Social Security “reform” was giving your SS taxes to Wall Street! And if you were against his trillion-dollar recreational war in Iraq, they arrested you and dragged you out of the “public” meeting! The way Bush ran the government was you had to support what he wanted to do — ie, give your money to his Wall Street buddies — or you were considered an enemy combatant.
We Democrats have a different plan for America’s working class. Namely, you get paid for your work, you get to keep your pension, and you collect the Social Security you paid taxes for! I like our plan better than the GOP’s plan of letting corporations file phony Chapter 11’s to weasel out of their labor contracts and pension obligations and giving your Social Security taxes to Wall Street pirates.
@6 “Your post reveal”
Your post reveals that you don’t even have shit for brains.
@6 Of course Republicans provide jobs. To Chinese and Indians. We all know that.
I wonder when the stupid wingnuts will finally figure out that it was Bush and his corporate buddies who let in all the illegals because they wanted a large source of cheap labor.
@7
It was an option, choice things that you people say you want.
As usual you left that out.
@10
If your union gangs would round them up and turn them over to ICE it would be good for the country. Nope, they see it as more union workers.
Guess the Democrats also violated NAFTA in the last bill the loser approved.
Excuse 23 I didn’t know that was in it.
@8 Another Angry liberal
Where are the Three stooges tonight you know(my left foot ,PL and notright.)
Their the best in humor.
@13 They’re, not their, idiot! “Their” is not a contraction of “they are,” you fucking illiterate. I swear, none of these wingnuts made it past 4th grade.
It is true that House leadership may see some effective push back and this bill may be a tool in that effort.
Goldy, your post might be a bit more accurate if you took some time pointing out just how the two houses operate. Both houses have a rules committee where all bills go if and when they are voted out of committee. It takes a majority of those on rules to pull the bill and even then leadership can simply not bring up the bill and let time run out.
A bill can also be pulled from rules and brought to a vote with a simple majority of all senators or all house members. Getting such a majority would be anything but simple though. Such an act would be mutiny and anyone voting for such a thing would risk loosing any chairmanship or other leadership position they may hold. So, in the House, it would be more likely that the speaker would be replaced and this is not at all likely.
Business Week magazine says the Federal Reserve has “committed itself to buying enormous quantities of asset-backed securities and debt in order to lower interest rates and revive housing, consumer lending, and small-business loans.”
In other words, the Fed is going to spend another trillion dollars — that’s a million times a million — of our taxpayer money to rescue capitalism.
Again.
Capitalism survives only because of massive government intervention every 30 to 50 years. Capitalism is not self-sustaining. It destroys itself, and capitalists have to be rescued by taxpayers — or by a Hitler — or they’d all drown in red ink.
We taxpayers saved you business owners’ hides, and don’t you forget it! We’re also your customers, and without us you’re nothing, so don’t forget that either! If you keep eliminating our jobs and cutting our wages and shifting all the taxes to us, until we have nothing, we’ll cease to be customers and you’ll have nothing, too!
Union wages built America’s postwar prosperity. Union wages are good for business. With unions everyone prospers.
Really Pelletizer@19.
Tell that to the poor minorities in WA DC school district who had their Opportunity Scholarship Program removed by Dick Turban Durbin and his NEA union lackies.
I can speak from experience cuz dad was a shop steward. I watched what he went through with the higher ups in the union. He quit after three years. Too much union BS. Told his sons to stay away, far away. There are four sons. We ain’t union!
The ruling is in. Pelletizer is certifiably a moron!
Fewer carrots, more oranges Rabbit. I hear they promote clear thinking and you are in dire need of that.
Capitalism works. Government interference with it makes it fail. Bush violated basic rules in bailing anyone out, whether that be the idiot who couldn’t be bothered to read his mortgage contract or the idiot that underwrote it to a deadbeat. By way of evidence, a majority of the renegotiated mortgages were again in default 6 months later. These people don’t pay their bills. That is why they should never have gotten loans in the first place.
Let AIG fail, by all means. Let the moron who didn’t hire an attorney to review among the most important contracts they would sign fail too. It would be a difficult world for a few years as we got back to economic basics. It will be a more difficult world if those corrupt fools in Congress and the White House try to fake reality with these expensive vote purchases, I mean stimuli.
As for unions I think you mean thugs. They extort what isn’t theirs by threats and childish whining. Union wages destroyed American automobiles. Union wages drove steel production out of the country. Union wages destroyed the textile industry. Union wages created a false economy with the frequent booms and busts that you blame capitalism for. I’ve read a union letter to my company. It was pathetic, false and looked to have been written by a 6th grade student with dyslexia. My company responded to this rude and ridiculous letter with a polite correction of their basic falsehoods. Also an invitation to prove their assertions if possible. Another nasty letter restating the same lies was the answer.
Make unions illegal under rackateering laws and democrats illegal as plain common sense and the country might just regain its’ former greatness.
One other quick note. The labor and socialist world you’d love to live in isn’t worth it. I’ve lived in Italy, which granted isn’t as bad as France. I return frequently for short trips.
I love the place and the people generally. Culturally, architecturally and for a feel of the general weight of years it is fantastic. The food is amazing and the feel very relaxing.
Having said that, try to get an appointment to go to your socialised doctor, and don’t be in any hurry at all. Try to ride from Florence to Rome for a business meeting when the train workers go on tediously frequent and pointless strikes, or pay $7 a gallon for fuel and tolls on the roads plus parking to drive there. Try to get service of any kind whatever in any place whatever, excepting high end restaurants. Boredom and a general lofty disregard of your basic existence is the best you can hope for. Try to get a contractor to finish a job on your home or business. For that matter try to get the permit for the work from the local government, it shouldn’t take more than several weeks to actually apply, and several months or a year to actually get the permit. Try to fire someone for poor performance. You’ll end up paying their health care costs for up to 3 years, plus their unemployment as nobody else wants them, and the socialist economy is so stagnant there aren’t jobs. Try to pay the bewildering range of taxes to the bewildering range of tax collectors as a businessperson, and watch your business fail as competitors don’t.
Until you’ve lived in your socialist utopia don’t try to force it on those of us who have and actually know what it looks like in practice. Save the middleman and the effort and move somewhere that practices your ‘progressive’ (to rhyme with damned,) politcs. Leave this country for the people who believe in it.
Puddy @ 20
So, your father was unable to get along in a political environment and he counseled his sons to be as bitter as he? You inherited that, my friend.
If it were up to me, the people on the Washington State Labor Council would be in prison.
PS, the Natasha Richarson death is an inditement against the Canadian health care system. I DEMAND to know if Hopital du Sacre-Coeur in Montreal did a CAT scan of Ms. Richarson!
All this in a place plagued by “socialism”.
Yep, makes a lot of sense.
Moronic.
Hey Goldy!
Remember when you thought some of us were just whining about the storm response?
http://seattletimes.nwsource.c.....ot19m.html
What say you now?
@26
It appears Goldy is to ashamed to answer you. Good, He should silently sit there in shame.
“AIG’s derivatives branch is in Dodd’s home state. Many of the bonuses in question were awarded to executives at that branch. But in his statement, Dodd said he had no idea the legislation would affect the company.
“Let me be clear — I was completely unaware of these AIG bonuses until I learned of them last week,” he said.”
http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITI.....index.html
22. lostinaseaofblue spews:
Dear Lost–
If you are telling this to Roger Rabbit, keep in mind Rog spent 30 years as a DSHS Legal Hack defending the most incompetent organization in Bureaucratic History. Roger Rabbit, supposedly doing his job, caused the anguish of families and death of children by masking over the problems.
Also, Rog took a stab at “free enterprise”. He admitted long ago to having an AMWAY DISTRIBUTORSHIP…which failed because he can be such a prick NO ONE wanted to be part of his pyramid.
Rog proves we are products of our past choices.
Hence, Socialism is the ONLY way for his likes to survive…they cannot compete or survive in the real world.
I’m just sayin’
23. proud leftist spews:
Actually Puddy’s father taught his sons a valuable lesson. Unions have their own political agenda’s 1st….helping workers 2nd.
Your Lutheran father supposedly taught you Christianity….yet you support Abortion, Gay Marriage and all the Leftist nonsense.
You father must have a big ego he passed on to you as he obviously believes he knows more than Jesus!
Be careful casting the stones pl….
Your father would be dismayed.
A quote from Goldy on 12/31/08:
“So while I was as inconvenienced as anybody—not even the Postal Service was willing to brave it up and down my hill for seven days—I’m not particularly angry or concerned about the way the city responded to the mess.”
Are you angry now? You should be. City workers wanted to focus mostly on clearing the streets in the Mayor’s neighborhood. Your silence sickens me.
@30 “Be careful casting the stones”
That’s rich, coming from the likes of you.
I was going to fuck yo mama last night but the 7th Fleet’s in town and I hate long lines. Besides, the dog at the end of the line kept growling at me.
@20 If I have to put up with BS, then I like union BS better than employer BS.
I mean, it doesn’t take a moron like puddinghead to figure out that the employer is trying to pay you less and the union is trying to get you more. So, if you think you’re overpaid and want your wages cut, then go with putznutz and his cheap labor conservative gang.
@21 “Capitalism works. Government interference with it makes it fail.”
Yeah sure … so the endless succession of financial panics and economic depressions from the 1870’s going forward was all the fault of interventionist governments run by liberal presidents like Taft and Coolidge … yeah sure … don’t you wingnut ignoramuses know anything about history, or cause-and-effect relationships? Don’t answer that, you’ll only make yourself look like an even bigger fool …
@22 Having lived in both the labor-friendly Pacific Northwest and the cheap-labor South, I prefer the Marxist paradise of Seattle to the southern hell-hole. That’s why I’m here and not there. But if you want to be an Arkansas sharecropper or chicken farmer, working 16 hours a day for $12,000 a year, go right ahead …
@24 But it’s not up to you, neener neener, BRRRAAAAACKKK!!! You are being mooned by a rabbit, click on link below for details.
http://farm4.static.flickr.com.....e42a_b.jpg
@27 too not to, you fucking illiterate!!! Cripes, did any of you wingnuts make it past 3rd grade?!!
We need a Republican Party in this country to warehouse the illiterates and morons in. But they shouldn’t be allowed to vote. Being a Republican should disqualify someone from voting. Also, Republicans should be required to register their whereabouts with the police.
@29 That stuff about Amway is bullshit.
You’re a very angry rodent, rabbit. You should see someone about your irrational emotional responses to political discourse. It’s only politics for goodness sake. I don’t think you’re evil or stupid for believing the progressive line, just misguided. I’m not evil or stupid for believing, as I do, in the Constitution as I understand it. Just different than you. “Register their whereabouts with the police?” Please.
However liberals believe in their causes in lieu of religion, mostly. It makes sense that they bring religious fervor to the debate rather than balanced thought. You can present a scientifically supported fact to a religious zealot and they will ignore it. Similarly, present facts like the thuggish behavior of unions to liberals and they simply can’t acknowledge them. Present facts like the corruption of most unions at the management level and they simply won’t listen.
Illiterate? Hardly. I am perhaps not as erudite as you Mr. Rabbit. Still, I have read the odd book and manage to string a sentence together occasionally. It is a fallacy in logic any attorney should recognize to assume that different beliefs are automatically ignorant ones. You seem to have more in common with radical mullahs here than the supposedly tolerant left. Which, by the way, is only tolerant of perversions and stupidities, never of the prevailing culture that made this country.
I wasn’t joking by the way. If I hated this country and everything it was founded on like you folks do I’d leave. It’s called intellectual honesty. Fundamentally you folks don’t believe in what this country and culture do and your happiness would be better served in one of the European or Asian socialist states. Frankly I don’t know how you stand the constant gloom and pessimism of your worldview. The oceans are rising and the sea ice melting. Seattle will be under water in 20 years or whatever the claim of the day is. The economy is awful and we’re all going to be eating each other by summer. Good Lord, how do you stand to be you?
32. Steve spews:
Wow Steve is the alter ego of stillbentovergettingprobedbyproudloony now.
I am shocked and amazed at this weeks newest lunacies from Steve. You swore you were getting off the Stupid Solution IV drip. Seems you placed it directly into a carotid artery.
Probably the left side. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAhahahahahahahaha
The never ending saga of oil prices. Obama’s polices are affecting the oil markets. Last week the price was in the low 40s, now it’s in the 50s. Way to go preznit!
But leadless douchy will foolishly blame the price rise on big oil on the oil companies.
Wait. Watch. Learn.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAhahahahahahahahahaha
@39 “That stuff about Amway is bullshit.”
Obviously. DeVoss and his multi-level underlings are all a bunch of rabid Republican extremists. Any rabbit with half a brain would find those creeps to be repulsive.
@41 Speaking of repulsive.