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  • Posted by starguy 11 years, 8 months ago
    Lord Barry knows best!

    We are but to serve...and obey.

    Thinking is NOT permitted. Praise Allah!
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  • Posted by $ stargeezer 11 years, 8 months ago in reply to this comment.
    My Dad worked in a local factory third shift and worked as a general contractor during the days. From the time I was seven years old I carried a hammer around behind him until by the time I was 12yo I knew what to do with it when he told me to do something.

    The result of "working" with my Dad as child labor, I can build a home or shopping mall. I have ALWAY'S had a trade that paid well for as long as I wanted to claim it. It lead me to start my own construction firm and to acquire a civil engineering degree. I built (my company at least) all sorts of buildings on military installations. From barracks to flight simulator buildings to small bridges. Even test targets at White Sands NM. I could always provide for my family.

    It was also a very happy time with my Dad, who, it seemed was always working.
    .
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  • Posted by airfredd22 11 years, 8 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Re: LetsShrug,

    Well put, Bundy's comments were ill advised and inarticulately stated. as you said, his comments also don't change the fact that the BLM acted with force when force was unnecessary. There is of course also the question of the real reasons behind these actions.

    Fred speckmann
    commonsenseforamericans@yahoo.com`
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  • Posted by airfredd22 11 years, 8 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Re: Hiraghm,

    A truly wonderful story about your relationship with your father, but it also demonstrates how a father in the home is so important. Sadly I lost my father as a 9 year old and didn't have the chance to experience that kind of relationship with him.

    Fred Speckmann
    mailto:commonsenseforamericans@yahooo.com
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  • Posted by Robbie53024 11 years, 8 months ago in reply to this comment.
    There's something going on with the spell check, I swear. I've posted a comment and then go back later and a word has been substituted with a homonym or near match (for example, one of my comments had now when I swear that I typed nor).
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  • Posted by KYFHO 11 years, 8 months ago
    Back in the sixties, before this history was rewritten for today's standards, Mexicans came to America for a season of grapes, lettuce, and other produce and worked their butts off and then went back home to mexico for the rest of the year. They were able to live well in their villages for 6 months of the year for 6 months of work. They were given migrant worker housing while here and even though conditions were not great, they were better than they were given as workers in mexico. Even as short a time ago as the eighties migrants worked the ornamental (trees, bushes, etc.) fields here in Oregon. They still do, but they are no longer migrant, and their families are on welfare. Their children get head start and free school lunches. They are also given a free heated and air conditioned building to meet in so they can do day labor for contractors and the city is considering providing day care for that venture. They shop at Costco and drive great big fancy trucks, wear expensive leather boots and belts and real levis, yet somehow they qualify for state medical and dental. I will not shed a tear for what was but I sure will grit my teeth over what is.
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  • Posted by $ stargeezer 11 years, 8 months ago in reply to this comment.
    I forgot to add that this was exactly how EVERY BA I ever met behaved. In their mind you don't own your business, they do. They tell you what jobs you can take, how much you can charge, how many men you will work on the job. If you think the job requires three men, but the BA tells you that you will work 5 men, that's how many you will pay to work - and pay the union for their cut of the job.

    The Mafia is more fair than a union.
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  • Posted by $ stargeezer 11 years, 8 months ago in reply to this comment.
    When you start out with the premise that unions are honest and do have the employees affairs at heart, you're right, I'll never be able to prove that unions are corrupt organizations that parasitically feed on the membership dues to support themselves as they feed the liberal wing of the democratic party as it works to subvert everything and every value most workers hold dear.

    Again, once you have some life experience to base your own decision on, enjoy the union that you pay dues to while it's working against you.

    Unions exist to tell the business owner how he can operate his business. If you are the better worker than a lazy bum who has two days more seniority than you do and there's a promotion coming for somebody, the lazy bum will get it instead of hard working mapf who shows up on time and does his work quicker and better than anybody else. The owner might like to give you the promotion, but because there's a union involved, he can't promote based on merit - he MUST promote based on seniority because that's how unions write their contracts.

    Next thing, maph has worked hard all year and the boss wants to reward good employees. In a non union shop, the boss might walk up at the end of the year and hand you a check for $5,000, because YOU made him a lot of money. In a union shop with the same company statistics and hard working maph and sloppy, lazy clide, the boss cannot give you ANY better bonus than clide gets. So you worked hard, made the company money but clide blew a major deal and lost thousands of profit - but because of the union, clude will get $2,500 and hard working maph gets $2,500. Everybody is all equal right? Except you worked hard and helped the company stay in business but clide, who got the same bonus (you both got half of what you would have gotten without the union) as you did - pushed the company closer to going out of business. Tell me, next year with everything being the same, are you going to work as hard?

    Next thing - unions take workers dues and fund political candidates. Everybody knows I'm big on the 2nd Amendment and owning guns - lots of guns. If I'm a member of a union that takes my union dues and gives those dollars to a gun grabbing anti-gun liberal zealot, they are campaigning AGAINST my personal political stand. In effect, using my 1st Amendment free speech rights to fight against myself.

    Fortunately this has been found unconstitutional and now I may demand a reduction in my union dues to offset the dollars taken from dues and given to my opponent. But the union will still give as much to my opponent as they can get away with.

    Perhaps life will open your eyes to what unions really are before our nation is ruined, I'll be gone in a few years and you will be stuck with the mess you support today. History is a merciless bitch - you need to learn what mistakes have already been made BEFORE Obama's thugs finish rewriting the books to reflect what a glorious age this is as we bask in his wondrous grace to us little people. Him and the union bosses that put him where he is.
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  • Posted by Kittyhawk 11 years, 8 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Thanks for sharing your fascinating viewpoint, based on your wife's experiences. I had no idea about the awful conditions that existed in California for migrant farm workers. I hope it is all in the past.

    People have a natural and constitutional right to freedom of association, and I think the workers were surely entitled to meet and plan together, and ask the employers for better conditions. They didn't have a lot of options, the way you describe the situation. I was thinking that many people would have objected and wanted to help -- why didn't some reporter let the public know? But I think you said "the system" (the media and politicians in league with the wealthy farmers) wouldn't let the truth get out.

    There are some real sociopaths in charge of our country who let people suffer like that. I'm not sure that asking those same sociopaths for regulations is a viable solution, as some have suggested.

    I feel for the workers who were lured to a foreign country with false promises, and treated badly, with no real way to change it. But I do agree that a line was crossed by using violence against innocent immigrants, which was apparently either arranged or condoned by Chavez.
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  • Posted by 11 years, 8 months ago in reply to this comment.
    You've been a case for a while. The conclusion I draw is that you refuse to see what's obvious.
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  • Posted by DaveM49 11 years, 8 months ago
    Hmmm.....revisionism!

    I have often seen Cesar Chavez as the anti-John Galt. He gave a voice to the voiceless, but the voice he chose was that of someone who felt "entitled" to the share of an employer's profits and property that HE dictated. Have often wondered why he did not start a collective farm for his followers.

    On the other side of the coin (though this does not connect directly to Chavez), a number of years ago, I recall a group of California fruit growers marching on Sacramento and demanded an increase to the minimum wage. They complained that the sort of workers they could get for the minimum wage were not worth having.

    It does not seem to have occurred to any of them that they were free to pay whatever wage they believed needed to get competent employees.
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  • Posted by Herb7734 11 years, 8 months ago
    Chavez's organization would picket supermarkets, grocery stores and fruit stands that carried California grapes. Often, they would rush into such places, throwing merchandise off the shelves and creating as much chaos as the could before the police arrived or the employees shooed them out. I was part of a group of Objectivist activists who picketed the picketers. We called it "going graping." It didn't amount much, but it made a tiny squeak in the weird time of the 60's. By the way, Chavez was a hero in the same way that horror, Che Guavera was. Take my word for it -- I was there.
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  • Posted by Maphesdus 11 years, 8 months ago in reply to this comment.
    No, I was the subject of your case. The case itself would have been whatever it was you were trying to prove about me, which I'm still unclear on. What conclusion did you draw from my post above?
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  • Posted by Maphesdus 11 years, 8 months ago in reply to this comment.
    I would suggest being very careful when waving around the Reflexive Property of Equality like a battle cry, otherwise you may find yourself inadvertently making false equivalencies. ;)
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