What is going on here?

[osan]

All of a sudden states are going to war with unions, telling the federal government to take a flying leap, removing requirements for permission to carry weapons, and so forth.

What is this?

I would very much like to think that it is the manifestation of 150 years of oppression and usurpation-gone-wilder-by-the-day finally having become too much for even the more complacently distracted among us.

I would like to believe that the instinctual desire to be free has been dormant long enough in sufficient numbers of people that they are now saying "enough!"

I want to believe that those at the highest levels of state government have somehow retained enough sense and personal integrity to realize we cannot go any further on this path lest we come to the end of things for not only ourselves, but our children's children's children, and on into the unforeseeable future.

All of this I want - so much so that I find myself immediately placed on alert because none of it feels right. How is that? How is it that as the very things that need to happen begin to occur, I become alarmed that it is not real - that there is something behind this - that it is a set up of some sort?

It is because those in power will not go quietly and that to challenge them in this fashion is to bring the issue of our collective status in relationship to them to the fore to be answered authoritatively and for generations to come. Will we be slaves or free? I hold little doubt that a fight is brewing. But am I right, or have I gone off the rails? Is recuperation of our freedom as simple as I have said it is all these years? Is all we need to do is stand up and tell them to step off? Now that we are apparently moving in that direction I am filled with an odd sort of wonder about it. Not fear - but mild suspicion. What if I was wrong and these events are not what they seem? I suppose these thoughts represent in some measure the way in which I regard the would-be masters - that they will never give up without a horrific fight.

One other thought has occurred to me: what if this is all the desired result of those in power? Dissolution of the USA as such might be a goal of those seeking broader dominion. Would a dissolved union be as strong? Would it be a more ripe target for attack, whether economic, political, or even military?

What are your thoughts on all these suddenly rising events - these apparently newfound senses of self preservation, or freedom, or whatever it is that drives it so abruptly? I can think of so many possibilities, but calculating the odds is proving difficult.

[acptulsa]

They see that we're waking up to their crap on a wholesale basis, and they're giving us warm milk and singing us lullabyes--or, at least, throwing us bones--and praying fervently that we go back to sleep before we throw all the bums out. That is their favored outcome.

If they don't get it, how pissy will they be? I agree that calculating the odds is very difficult.

[Acala]

Republicans are bombing Democrat supply lines (unions) and thwarting Federal initiatives, to the extent they were intiated by Democrats or send money to Democrat supporters. In other words, it's just partisan politics.

Alert me when States with Republicans in charge start unwinding Federal REPUBLICAN commands - drug war, foreign intervention, badge-licking, No child left behind, Bank worship, etc.

[2young2vote]

Part has to do with Ron Paul's campaign for president getting a lot of attention and waking a lot of people up. Has to do with Obama (democrat) being president. Has to do with over $14 trillion in debt with a $1.3 trillion deficit. Has to do with the recent election and how there were a lot of semi fiscally conservative people elected president.

[Krugerrand]

I certainly don't have evidence to discount any sort of conspiracy. At the same time ... I would expect those who could perceive a threat to their power and influence to find ways to mitigate that threat. The Tea Party stuff is a great example. You had their a great ground swell of public opinion. Democrats have been arrested to trying to run phoney Tea Party candidates. Neo-cons have tried to co-opt the momentum.

People try and take what's there and make it work for themselves. Of course, those with the most power and influence and who stand to lose the most also have the best means to co-opt, etc. Mitt Romney has money to send bus loads of supports to vote for him. George Soros set up MoveOn.org. It's a deceitful world out there.

[Pericles]

One is never at greater risk, than when on the verge of success.

[Elwar]

People have a level of tyranny that they're willing to tolerate.

Most libertarians tolerate 0 tyranny so we're always upset with the government. Those on the left and right can tolerate X amount of tyranny so they have only mildly complained in the past but not too much.

Now that we have tyranny climbing at X*X...it's going beyond what people are comfortable with and they're lashing out.

Government will fix this by going back to X+2 and the sheep will be ok with it and adjust their tolerance to X+2.

[osan]

It's a deceitful world out there.


One is never at greater risk, than when on the verge of success.

I agree strongly with each statement.

One can only wait and see how it all shakes out. In the meanwhile I do what I can to help people see reason and awaken to truth. Not sure what else there is.

[acptulsa]

One can only wait and see how it all shakes out. In the meanwhile I do what I can to help people see reason and awaken to truth. Not sure what else there is.

If we're to have a functional republic, there is nothing else. Just education.

[osan]

People have a level of tyranny that they're willing to tolerate.

Agreed.


Those on the left and right can tolerate X amount of tyranny so they have only mildly complained in the past but not too much.

Exactly. They tolerate and even embrace that which I call "pretty slavery". Those elements of their slavery with which they are in agreement are OK with them. The rest is not to varying degrees.


Now that we have tyranny climbing at X*X...it's going beyond what people are comfortable with and they're lashing out.

This is both promising and scary at the same time. Promising and a relief to see that finally some limit of tolerance has been reached and that when things get real, even those who have heretofore made like boiled turnips begin to show signs of intelligence. The scary part for me is the thought that when the level of slavery returns to some formerly tolerated level, all those people will return to their former status as boiled turnips. Will "intelligence" stick? Will the attitude of intolerance last? Will it become part of a lifestyle of liberty? Will it be passed down to the coming generations or will we go back to falling for the same old crap, repackaged?


Government will fix this by going back to X+2 and the sheep will be ok with it and adjust their tolerance to X+2.

That is what I fear. But I see an immense opportunity at our feet - one that may never present itself again in our lifetime. At the moment those in power are utterly crazed with their power. It seems to me, judging by appearances (never the best way), that they may be assuming the battle is as good as won. Now is the time to work more diligently than ever to educate the fence sitters and anyone else who will listen. Strike while the iron is hot. I'd say it is glowing brightly right now.

[Stary Hickory]

Unions need to busted, so that is good....very good. Labor parties are like parasites in many countries. The reasons unions are now being paired down is because of the unique fiscal challenges facing states theses days. Union pensions and benefits are a major major budget expense. Combine this with the fact they are basically a Democratic support machine feeding off the tax payer you can see why the newly elected GOP congress and Governors are trying to wind them back.

[anaconda]

Webster Tarpley suggests that some of this "union busting" may be actually new world order strategy conducted by phony tea party agents in government. And that ironically, a labor solidarity in this country at this moment in time might actually be very unwelcome for the globalists.

http://tarpley.net/2011/03/15/behind-the-2011-orgy-of-destabilizations/

[osan]

Webster Tarpley suggests that some of this "union busting" may be actually new world order strategy conducted by phony tea party agents in government. And that ironically, a labor solidarity in this country at this moment in time might actually be very unwelcome for the globalists.

http://tarpley.net/2011/03/15/behind-the-2011-orgy-of-destabilizations/

I have wondered about this for a longish while now. I despise unions - the mentality is revolting. I do, however, understand why they arose and the purposes they served were not all bad. Industrial management was pretty nasty back in the day - slavish in their treatment of their employees and in positions of power due to a buyer's market for labor. Onus lies with all to behave properly.

That said, we can readily see what the unions have become - every bit as corrupt as the management with which they do battle, and often in cahoots with them.

But even so, do the unions still serve a reasonable purpose in keeping the rapacious habits of corporate management in some check? I cannot really say one way or the other, though I do suspect they may - as much as I hate to admit such a thing.

I've been in the business world 30 years and I have watched what has occurred in the course of the various vicissitudes of the markets. The moment the India labor market became viably available in the IT industry, management at US and European companies immediately dumped their relatively higher cost domestic employees in favor of their significantly inferior but drastically less costly Asian counterparts. This is perhaps understandable from a certain way of looking at things, but that way is often distorted by the weakness of overemphasizing short term financial considerations vis-a-vis the longer view wherein a more holistic and organic view of costs is taken into consideration within the greater context of broader benefit to all stake holders including managers, shareholders, employees, and customers. This broader and longer view is now out of fashion and we are paying an excruciating price in many ways.

The point here is that we have entered an age of renewed viciousness in the conduction of business. The prevailing conditions have established a set of self-reinforcing circumstances that make it nearly impossible for companies to refrain from becoming part of the lowest denominator, which these days amounts to lowering costs as far as possible in order to remain competitive. And it is precisely here that I see great plausibility in the prospect of conspiracy. Consider the great forces that seem to be arrayed against freedom and individual prosperity - the great global thrust to world socialism, which is nothing more than a euphemism for global oligarchy. Capitalism is one of the pillars of economic freedom and an expression of property rights. What could be more essential to those who would have the world as their own than to undermine the very foundations of freedom and prosperity? If this be so, then capitalism must be eliminated in the minds of the mob as a viable system of economic prosperity. Quite the opposite must be accomplished - to paint the concept of free market capitalism as a capricious, heartless, and vicious system of exploitation wherein the common laborer is treated as naught but a commodity to be used as needed and disposed of when convenient.

If this further be the case, then what we see happening in the world markets makes complete and utter sense. Set up conditions such that businesses must devolve to the lowest denominator and single-dimensional consideration of cost-as-everything. It seems to me that this has been successfully accomplished and the result has been ever decreasing general prosperity, increasing stress and misery, and rising conditions wherein with the crossing of some as-yet unmet threshold, people will begin to scream and rant for change - for salvation - for anything that will make their lives less of a stress-ridden hell. Enter the socialist oligarchs and exit individual liberty for what I can easily see would be generations to come.

In defense of this thesis, consider "free trade". It is nothing related to free market capitalism, yet it is equated with it implicitly and often explicitly to an uneducated mob who appear to have mainly accepted this fiction as truth. As this system piecemeal self destructs pursuant to an endless parade of scandalous examples of greed run amok, the common mind sees the failure not of a wholly unsound system of institutionalized insanity, but of free market capitalism. The stage is set. All that remains is to turn the wick up until the breaking point is reached, then call in the knights in shining armor, the devils in hot pursuit.

The game afoot is alive and playing itself out and I believe that few people see it for what it really is. These observations and inferences of mine may be wrong. I hope like hell they are. But what if I am on the money? We had better start preparing for a very different mode of response or we will be nothing better than lambs being lead to the slaughter.

Food for thought.

[pcosmar]

Keep your powder dry.
The present system is crashing, the earths axis is shifting. All is in flux.
The globalists have not given up.

Don't stand in front of the fan.

[Mach]

It's pretty simple, once you get so far up the ladder you see a group that covers all of their bases, they may have a preference, but it's really not that big of a deal, it doesn't matter what happens either way, they are always waiting just around the corner.

[osan]

Webster Tarpley suggests that some of this "union busting" may be actually new world order strategy conducted by phony tea party agents in government. And that ironically, a labor solidarity in this country at this moment in time might actually be very unwelcome for the globalists.

http://tarpley.net/2011/03/15/behind-the-2011-orgy-of-destabilizations/

Another thought popped up - I don't have a problem with unions per sé, in case anyone misconstrued my meaning when I wrote that I despise them. What I despise is the entitlement mentality and the mafia tactics. Another thing I do not like is the fact that labor law protects these gangsters from being shown the door when their demands become extortionate. I have no problem with collective bargaining in and of itself. That to which I object is the protection they receive under law by government goons such as the courts and so on.

If an employee body for a private firm wishes to unionize - let them. If their demands go beyond a line, the choices legally left to the owners should not be "cave" and "go out of business". "Fire everyone" or even "fire some" should be on the menu as well. It can be abused, but no more than are routinely the case with union demands.

If the labor market is free, the union negotiates a collective contract with management. If there are no legally mandated and protected elements such as automatic raises and other similar rot, then all parties are free to negotiate in good faith and to the limits they set for themselves. If a set of demands goes too far, the management can say "no". In return, the union can strike. If it is that big a deal to management, they should be free to fire all the workers or go back to the bargaining table. Each party has its limits of tolerance for the overall conditions set forth in the bargaining and may walk away at any time. Is this not what free markets are about?

If the union bargains reasonably, the cost to the management will be less than the cost to fire everyone and hire and train all new employees or close their doors permanently. But if the union become unreasonable and intransigent, the cost to fire is lower and everyone loses their jobs because they overplayed their hands. Still a high cost to the company - one they would endeavor to avoid by any reasonable means, but one that is available to them in case the union threatens the very life of the firm itself.

This is how unions should work in a free market. The result is a far better balanced mix of potentially conflicting interests when compared with the system of legitimized theft that now exists. You are not entitled to a job and companies should be paying reasonable wages, though they are not obliged to. Free and open negotiation should be a cornerstone here and not mafia extortion.

[Michigan11]

Osan I think you have some very interesting points you're bringing up. It's always good to think and try an figure out what is going on. Good stuff.

[jkr]

it is all just a blowback event in response to austerity measures...oh i thought you were talking aboot portugal... :(

[osan]

It's pretty simple, once you get so far up the ladder you see a group that covers all of their bases, they may have a preference, but it's really not that big of a deal, it doesn't matter what happens either way, they are always waiting just around the corner.

Well sure. What better way to ensure your position than by owning all sides of the argument? If you can bet on a football game and get someone to give you 50:1 for team A and another to give the same for team B, not only can you not lose, you cannot avoid making a royal killing in the deal.

[erowe1]

Dissolution of the USA as such might be a goal of those seeking broader dominion. Would a dissolved union be as strong? Would it be a more ripe target for attack, whether economic, political, or even military?

No. A dissolved union would be much harder to get control of than one that is already under a central control.

[osan]

No. A dissolved union would be much harder to get control of than one that is already under a central control.

Why?