OT: Hostess Brands Liquidating

[NateS]

http://represent.us/cliff/

We don't have $43 million to buy access to the debt talks, but we do have this:

We’re heading for the “fiscal cliff”. It’s an issue that could affect the wallets and pocketbooks of every single American. There’s a lot at stake.

That’s probably why yesterday, a group of 54 high-profile CEOs representing a campaign called “Fix The Debt” descended on Washington for a meeting to protect their million dollar “executive retirement plans”. Their group has at least $43 million in lobbying money, and it’s buying them a whole lot of access to our elected officials.
We don’t have $43 million. So we’re fighting back with our own Million Dollar Bill and asking Harry Reid and John Boehner, “Hey, where’s MY meeting?”

It’s no coincidence that the “Fix The Debt” group is spending heavily to buy influence. One of their largest funders, Wall Street Billionaire Peter Peterson, has spent nearly half a billion dollars lobbying Washington to push his agenda. He’s purchased meetings with everyone from Paul Ryan to Bill Clinton.

These negotiations are just one more example of a government that represents lobbyists and special interests, but leaves the rest of us behind. We’re going to keep fighting against it until we pass the American Anti-Corruption Act.
Sign your name to the Million Dollar Bill, then Join the fight to pass the Act here.

http://represent.us/

[chunkyfrog]

Maybe the 'iconic products' will have less appeal once they are re-engineered by new owners.
Remember Meadow Gold ice cream and yogurt? Easier to say "no" to the Blue Bunny dreck.

[BlackSpinner]

And more about those pirates


http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/w ... cit-112912

The 71 Fix the Debt CEOs who lead publicly held companies have amassed an average of $9 million in their company retirement funds. A dozen have more than $20 million in their accounts. If each of them converted their assets to an annuity when they turned 65, they would receive a monthly check for at least $110,000 for life. The Fix the Debt CEO with the largest pension fund is Honeywell's David Cote, a long-time advocate of Social Security cuts. His $78 million nest egg is enough to provide a $428,000 check every month after he turns 65. Forty-one of the 71 companies offer employee pension funds. Of these, only two have sufficient assets in their funds to meet expected obligations. The rest have combined deficits of $103 billion, or about $2.5 billion on average. General Electric has the largest deficit in its worker pension fund, with $22 billion.

[Slinky]

It will be interesting to see, hear and read what the mainstream media and FOX News have to say about this organization - if anything.

[49er]

It will be interesting to see, hear and read what the mainstream media and FOX News have to say about this organization - if anything.

They will find a way to somehow blame this on the unions

49er

[Slinky]

I was, of course, referring to the "represent.us" group.

Something to keep in mind is that the USA managed to con the USSR into spending itself into oblivion. I seriously doubt that our "enemies" failed to take note of that. And I'm equally sure that our "enemies" are doing their utmost to con the USA doing the same to itself.

Of course, there is always this to consider: how much does a 75% tax rate on $1 Billion equal?? How many Billionaires are there in the USA? They want to move out of the USA and take their moneys w/them??? Penalize them for leaving by levying a "healthy leaving penalty tax". Say 90% of their wealth stays here and out of their reach when they leave.

Forget "earned income tax", go for a REAL income tax, tax ALL income in any form. Hey, they charge a new sales tax on a car every time it is sold thru out its lifetime. Lets tax ourselves into oblivion.

[idamtnboy]

The way I see it, Republicans have learned to LOVE deficit spending. Why? Simple. If they have to hand over money to Uncle Sam as a tax it is gone for good, forever, never to be seen again. When they hand over money to Uncle by way of a loan, i.e., buying gov't bonds, they MIGHT someday actually get it back. Or they can sell the bond to a retirement fund for 90 or 95% of face value, losing only 5 or 10% of the money, not the 20 or 30% they would if they paid it as a tax. If they keep the bonds they can always put them up as collateral at a bank in return for a loan at a far better rate than with no collateral. That way, for far less cost than a tax rate they can turn money over to Uncle, do their civic duty, and still have it to spend!

In other words, rich Repubs have figured out that they really can have their cake and eat it too!

[ChicagoGranny]

Very happy to see that Michigan is joining the growing list of states who grant the basic right to individuals to be able to work for any company without being forced to join a union.

Good job Michigan!

Mich. Legislators Defy Unions, OK Right-to-Work

By JOHN FLESHER and JEFF KAROUB Associated Press
LANSING, Mich. December 6, 2012 (AP)

The new legislation in Michigan, a cradle of organized labor, gives the the right-to-work movement its strongest foothold yet in the Rust Belt, where unions have been dealt one body blow after another recently.

[PST]

Very happy to see that Michigan is joining the growing list of states who grant the basic right to individuals to be able to work for any company without being forced to join a union.

Good job Michigan!

Mich. Legislators Defy Unions, OK Right-to-Work

By JOHN FLESHER and JEFF KAROUB Associated Press
LANSING, Mich. December 6, 2012 (AP)

The new legislation in Michigan, a cradle of organized labor, gives the the right-to-work movement its strongest foothold yet in the Rust Belt, where unions have been dealt one body blow after another recently.

Just to be clear, there is no place in the United States where anyone can be forced to join a union as a condition of employment. The most anyone can be forced to do, if the contract between a union and an employer provides for it, is to pay union fees, which consist of so much of the normal dues as are used for collective bargaining, contract administration, and grievance adjustment. No one has to pay amounts that go to political activity, lobbying, or the like. The National Right to Work Foundation has a good summary of the law as established by the Taft-Hartley Act and court decisions interpreting it.

The effect of right-to-work laws is to allow some employees to be free riders on the efforts of others: entitled to the same wages, benefits, and employment security as union members, but without contributing to the union. It is indeed a clever way to make unions less effective, just as making the payment of taxes voluntary would be a clever way to make government less effective. The special twist in Michigan is the divide-and-conquer strategy of exempting police and firefighter from the law, presumably because they are generally popular and carry a lot of political weight. If the Republicans really thought of this as pro-worker legislation designed to give workers the right to choose that they crave, I wonder why they would screw over police and firefighters by denying them this benefit. Obviously, the pro-worker line is eyewash.

What I find interesting is how strikingly this contradicts the direction in which the younger and brighter minds in the Republican Party are turning in the wake of the recent election. While the Jindals and Rubios are trying to tune their messages toward those with middle incomes -- a group that includes many union members -- much of the party seems to be on cruise control, bringing out war horses like right-to-work laws that draw enthusiastic responses from some of their traditional constituencies, but which do nothing to win over a single new voter. I doubt this will look like a smart move a year from now.

[Boyce]

there is no place in the United States where anyone can be forced to join a union as a condition of employment. The most anyone can be forced to do, if the contract between a union and an employer provides for it, is to pay union fees

Oh great, you don't have to join the club but you do have to pay the dues. Isn't this quite a strain of semantics and logic?

It is indeed a clever way to make unions less effective, just as making the payment of taxes voluntary would be a clever way to make government less effective.

This is exactly backwards.

We can see from decades of observation of markets that entities that have to compete become more effective. If you are a worker in a "non-right-to-work" state and your workforce is unionized, then your workplace union does not have to compete for your business (your dues) and the employer deducts dues from your paycheck.

If you are in a right-to-work state your union has to compete for your dues because you can easily refuse to join and pay dues. Your union has to be much more careful to represent your interests so that you will voluntarily join and pay dues. Competition makes the unions more effective for the employees and there is also less corruption among the union bosses.

make government less effective

Truly voluntary taxes along with competition make government more efficient. Where there are government user fees (voluntary taxes) and the taxpayer has private sector options the government services will become more effective (or cease to have users). Take for example USPS. You are taxed when you use the service and alternate services are available. So what is happening with the post office that hardly happened for 200 years? They are in a big struggle to become more effective and they are having some limited success.

The special twist in Michigan is the divide-and-conquer strategy of exempting police and firefighter from the law, presumably because they are generally popular and carry a lot of political weight. If the Republicans really thought of this as pro-worker legislation designed to give workers the right to choose that they crave, I wonder why they would screw over police and firefighters by denying them this benefit. Obviously, the pro-worker line is eyewash.

The argument being made is confused and overcomplicated. It is really quite simple. The politicians knew how far they could go and stay in office. It is a practical move that has nothing to do with pro-worker or anti-worker.

exempting police and firefighter from the law, presumably because they are generally popular and carry a lot of political weight

This is the next and necessary step. Many states already have laws that prohibit state and local government employees from forming unions for the purpose of collective bargaining. You will see more states forced to adopt such legislation and eventually the federal government will do the same. May I quote one of your heroes and one I consider a villain?

Prior to the 1950s, as labor lawyer Ida Klaus remarked in 1965, "the subject of labor relations in public employment could not have meant less to more people, both in and out of government." To the extent that people thought about it, most politicians, labor leaders, economists, and judges opposed collective bargaining in the public sector. Even President Franklin Roosevelt, a friend of private-sector unionism, drew a line when it came to government workers: "Meticulous attention," the president insisted in 1937, "should be paid to the special relations and obligations of public servants to the public itself and to the Government....The process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service." The reason? F.D.R. believed that "[a] strike of public employees manifests nothing less than an intent on their part to obstruct the operations of government until their demands are satisfied. Such action looking toward the paralysis of government by those who have sworn to support it is unthinkable and intolerable." Roosevelt was hardly alone in holding these views, even among the champions of organized labor. Indeed, the first president of the AFL-CIO, George Meany, believed it was "impossible to bargain collectively with the government."

If you think through the logic of what a public union is, you will understand that it means that a group of employees is negotiating their wages and other conditions of employment with a group of management that they hired and have the power to fire (by voting in public elections). Now is that just to the taxpayers who are forced to pay for the public union? No and many states recognize this with legislation prohibiting public unions.

The taxpayer is becoming smarter and beginning to realize that the power of size of government has grown to unhealthy limits. Limits must be proscribed.

[Boyce]

Here is something "wonderful" that unions do for society - on your lunch break you can drink beer and smoke pot and keep your manufacturing job -

http://www.myfoxdetroit.com/story/20292 ... on-the-job

[zoocrewphoto]

Back before union dues were automatically removed from the paycheck, a union rep would come to the store every month, and compare the list of employees to the list of employees who paid. If you went too long without paying, you were removed from the schedule. Now, they take it directly from our paychecks. We are not allowed to work there and not pay dues.

I don't know how much of the dues go toward real employee issues, but they sure do spend a lot of our money on politics. Mailers, phone calls, tv ads, etc. Our last contract was pretty decent. We've had some bad ones over the years. Back when I started, we went on strike for 13 weeks. We ended up agreeing to a worse contract than the one we refused. And 9 years ago, the union president stood in front of a huge group of union members on voting day and insisted that the contract we were voting on was NOT a two tiered system. Three y ears later, they vowed to get rid of the two tiered system we had previously voted for.

Years ago, when it was time to vote on a contract, we had several locations and 8am to 8pm. Nine years ago, we had one location and two hours to vote. A lot of people hurried in, read the short summary, voted, and read the contract proposal later. It was the worst contract we ever accepted. Three years ago, they had a few locations and dates, but we had to sign up in advance for an appointment so that we could sit there for a talk first. Times were pretty limited, so I wasn't even able to go. I was scheduled to work during all the ones that were available within 20 miles.

In the last few years, the only time a union rep comes to the store is when they are passing out stickers and asking us to vote for something. I had a coworker who filed 5 grievances because they kept giving people on the bottom 40-48 hours per week, while giving her only 24. She had no requests off, worked 6 days, going to multiple stores. And still couldn't get any hours because our direct boss played favorites. The problem was only corrected after I borrowed 71 weekly schedules (made copies of every one of them) and made a chart showing every week, how many hours she got, how many hours the people below her got, how many days she worked, etc. I then made a summary and could show that the person below her got more than 8 hours more than her in a week XX% of weeks (I think it was 70 some percent), etc. I proved it was a long time pattern. Finally, she started getting more hours. During that time, any time I gave her a shift, I would get punished the next week with my schedule. I was actually called into the office once and asked if I was being pressured into giving her my shifts.

[Boyce]

Only 7% of private sector union employees have ever voted for their union to represent them. But in non-right-to-work states 100% of workers can be forced to pay union dues.

Sign the petition to end the coercion - http://righttoworkcommittee.org/rprtwac ... ?pid=fb928

[ChicagoGranny]

[49er]

Damm CG, you keep reminding me of my ho ho withdrawal symptoms. Stop it.

49er