We are going to have a president who will side with regular folks.
President-elect Barack Obama said that union workers in Chicago who are protesting their factory’s sudden closure with a sit-in are justified in demanding their benefits and pay.
“I think they’re absolutely right,” Obama said today in response to a question at a Chicago news conference. “And understand that what’s happening to them is reflective of what’s happening across this economy.”
Obama, who gave up his Illinois Senate seat last month after the Nov. 4 election, was asked at a press conference today to weigh in on the protest at Chicago’s Republic Windows & Doors factory, which closed on Dec. 5 after Bank of America canceled its line of credit.
Obviously one could dream up a scenario where a president has to make a tough call that involves compromise. The real world is not simple, nor is it perfect.
But here we have Obama siding with workers who are simply demanding what is theirs. That is a profound change.
You never know how history will shake out when you are living it. But the workers at Republic Windows and Doors deserve not only their pay, but the thanks of the entire country for standing up to the corporate oligarchy. Who knows what their action will inspire? The financial sector thieves who brought this mess upon all our heads need to be held accountable, for starters.
Reminds me a bit of the early 1930’s, when striking workers would take over a factory. In those days the factory owners (Ford, especially) would hire thugs to go in and break heads. I guess the bankers are a bit more sqeamish, and in this case the company itself doesn’t really care – it’s out of business, and the facilities are owned by the bankers now.
Remember that one of the reasons why the gangsters of the early 1930’s (Dillon, Bonnie & Clyde, etc.) got away with robbing banks for so long was that people hated the banks anyway. They were foreclosing on homes and farms even though they would remain empty and deteriorating, rather than working out some accomidation with the owners.
Cross Post From SeattleJew
I hope this means a LOT of outof the box thinking from Obama, not just sympathy for those fucked by our system.
As an example, isn’t there an important lesson in the Detroit bailouts? IF it is OK to finance the big three, in the national interest, why wouldn’t the same be true of putting fed dollars into venture capital?
As an example from my own expertise, it is clear that genetic engineering has a huge and a patentable future. Why not add a new Institute to the NIH, the National Institute for Biologic Entrepreneurial Resources. The NIBER would function to centralize development of resources that would give Americans either patents or resources to compete on an unequal footing with the rest of the world.
For example, ALL drug companies have big investments in chemical libraries called, “combinatorial libraries.” The damn stupid thing is that these resources are generally redundant and never as good as they would be if combined. Why not create a super resource and sell its services?
There are many such examples:
Sequencing Technology. This has become predictable, like chip design. BUT the absence of a short term profit motive limits capital.
Proteomics, the ability to assay several proteins at once, is still developmental but we already know that for enough money we could do high throughput cytokine analyses (hormones that control most dideases).
Large scale human genomic sequencing. Every biologists knows the power of this will be awesome, Why can;’t the US own it?
The criteria for all the NIBER would be profit. The US HAS done this very successfully in the past (RCA, Groton, the Internet, Computing).
Whyy does this not exist already? A major issue for modern corporations, incl. the druggies, is that they have a problem undertaking long term projects .. anything over 5 years is too long.
Finally, unlike a lot of energy research, most of this is now easily dooable. Energy means discovering new things. Biology, at this level, is like going to the moon ..it is an engineer’s problem. There is no “discovery here,” merely the need to spend capital at low risk..
I posted this on a previous topic, but it seems more relevent to this one.
This past weekend we decided to tile our downstairs laundry room/bathroom before putting in a new washer and dryer. The cheap linoleum tile was tearing up from the movement of the washing machine going through it’s cycles, and this seemed like a good time to fix the problem by installing ceramic tile instead. I haven’t laid ceramic tile before, but it didn’t seem too complicated, so I planned on doing it myself. I know that scraping the old flooring off was going to be unpleasant, I had done that before when installing linoleum flooring.
We had no sooner mentioned it to a couple of our friends than we got about six calls from other friends, who mentioned that they had a family member who was recently laid off from work and needed a job, and they had experience laying tile flooring. We decided to go ahead and hire one of them to do the job because, hey, I’ve been laid off before in tough economic times, and I respect anyone who’s willing to work hard to support their family any way they can.
So the guy we hired had laid tile for his parent’s company for about ten years, but decided to break away into another line of work a couple of years ago. But about three weeks ago was laid off from that job, and he needs the work.
Last night he called me up and asked: “Hey, do you mind if my Dad comes and works on the job with me? He’s got thirty years of experience experience in his own company installing flooring. When I told him what I was doing, he volunteered to help me. His company hasn’t had a job to do in over two months now, and he’s bored stiff.”
So it looks like the building trades are getting really pounded, right before the holidays. If you were planning on getting any work done, and you still have a job yourself, you might want to give your local tradesman a call. They really need the work right now.
How about using HA as a referral service? Goldy could set up a subblog for this purpose?
Then there are other ways to waste our $$ (also from SJ)
Can anyone explain to me why North Dakota’s NORTHERN BORDER is less safe than its SOUTHERN BORDER? How about drones over the Oregon/Cal border?
This is a stupid waste. If we want more security on the north, we should work with Canada in a joint effort to improve immigration surveillance.
The simplest answer? National identity cards. Immigrants and visitors, unless they come from trusted countries with their own NIC, would be required to acquire one at entry to the US or Ca. Anyone eligible for entry in one but not the other country would be stymied in crossing the border.
Drones etc would only make sense if we thought it was awfully easy to get in to C. Wanna bet which of the two North American English speaking countries is easier to infiltrate now?
It just makes more sense to handle the situation with a shared immigration control policy with Canada, rather than trying to patrol thousands of miles of border between the countries. It’s a lot easier to control immigration at the ports of entry (by both air and sea). Remember that it works both ways – they don’t like us bringing our guns up north.
By the way, how come we are always thinking of the “northern border” when it comes to Canada, we ignore the very long border between Canada and Alaska?
Although some Al Quida “types” entered the U.S. through Canada, the biggest influx of illegal immigration into the U.S. via Canada was in the 1980’s, when wealthy Hong Kong citizens used their commonwealth passports and status to immigrate legally to Canada, and then move south into the U.S. posing as tourists. That isn’t so much of a problem now that Hong Kong is part of China.
Obama is an EXPERT at one thing..
Spending Other People’s Money.
Obama is an OPM Addict!
The Car Bailout is foolish.
Simple Reason——-
We are lacking one major component in the equation to be successful.
That component is CAR BUYERS!!
Sheesh…we save jobs & execs in a dying industry with a massive lack of customers for our inferior product.
What’s next?
A Bailout where the GOVERNMENT buys all the unsold cars and gives them to illegals!
rhp
we are together on this.
I would REALLY like to see Obama have the OMB go through the budget to elimnate stupidities:
a. the Mexican wall and the border wi CA.
b. The ABM program
c. Marijuana laws
d. ethanol from corn
e. freeways
just a start.
Yep side with the unions. A big problem with our economy. They harbor a work environment for laziness, inept, and worthless overpaid workers. That’s why foreign companies walk right into the US and set up shop without unions and succeed all the time. no briner.
The border fence in Mexico would be a good start. A lot of our tax money is spent on illegal aliens. That would be a revenue saver big time.
Make sure to uphold all the marijuana laws because gang members who perpetuate violence peddle drugs and kill people over turf.
The lazy American workers are going to get
paid back for the last twentyfive years of
bad attitude, cheating on their hours, showing
up late and generally holding the employers
hostage, and all around theft. I know, I’ve been an employer for 27 years. I hope they all go live in a ditch because thats what 98% deserve. FUCK em. I think those window workers
should go start their own business since it’s so easy and they can give their employees a year notice and million dollar severence packages. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
I think they need to pick their cry baby butts up and get another job, sheeeezzzze, before they are whining they can’t find one. Have to go on welfare, and we wind up paying for their kids to go to college out of our college fund for our kids.Remember the last time the clintons were in charge? Well rerun hellloooooo or maybe worse this time ewwwwwweee the clintons and a socialist, what a nasty picture.
Mark @ 11: Well, we know what kind of a boss you were, and what kind of employees you hired. You probably simply got what you paid for – the bottom of the barrel, because that’s all you were willing to pay them. I’ve never had a big employee problem in my own businesses, or in my role as a manager in a large corporation (although I sometimes have to fight that battle with cost-cutters in higher management).
KeepitSimple@12: Yep, I remember when the Clintons were in charge. After a couple of tough years getting the economy out of the doldrums after 12 years of Reagan/G.H.W. Bush economics, the economy had record growth. The DJIA had 225.37% increase during his eight years in office (compared with -20% and worse under G.W. Bush). If you see the Clinton years as a disaster, you are either sadly misinformed (too much wingnut A.M. radio or Fox News, I suspect), or you have an incredibly bad memory.