Ascribing a motive to the perceived negative side effect is a logical error. (By misrepresenting the union's position you've created a strawman, you've also appealed to motive rather than addressed the issue.) As is insulting the person rather than addressing the argument. (Appeal to ridicule, ad hominem, etc.)

And no, high school doesn't necessarily teach that. Nor does one have to agree that the checks and balances are unequal, or that power is imbalanced. Power is wielded by the different branches in different manners and in a way that's not easily measured if you look beyond the basics. Different founding fathers wanted different amounts of power in the hands of each branch.

No, I'm ascribing a motive to something the unions have done and expressly do intentionally.(such as in South Africa, where many of their motives were expressed specifically to keep lower income blacks out of the workplace)

If your high school spent any time discussing the Constitution, it did.

Agreed.

But the person who would argue as such has deficient reading abilities. The Constitution isn't a terribly difficult read.

Irrelevant.

Irrelevant.

These headlines are KILLING me!!!!! I'm srsly CTFU over here.


"Prop 19 Fails to Puff-Puff-Pass."

Bwahahahahahahaha!!!!! :D

I'd use the ROTL smilie but I think PB used enough for one day. :p

Who said GWB??? I said "Bush" to start with. He was the one who refused to tax imports when other countries started to put such high tariffs on our cars that Europeans couldn't afford them. That was when the foreign auto companies started building plants here. Bush 2 did the same with foreign steel and put our steel companies out of business. The nail in the coffin was the de-regulation of the banking industry and the credit freeze in 2008, during GWB.

Michigan had all their economic eggs in one basket for a century. How can you blame Granholm for that? When Engler took over, our state coffers had a huge "rainy day fund" and he spent it all and left the state in debt! Engler instituted Proposal A which totally screwed up our funding for education. After we voted it down twice, he offered up two options, one of which was far WORSE than Prop A so we had to pick Prop A since it was the lesser of two evils. Engler was the worst governor we ever had. He shut down the entire mental health system in the state leaving the chronically mentally ill to live on the streets. Granholm's push for tax breaks for the film industry, her securing of contracts to build alternative energy methods have helped a lot (new car battery factories and wind mill factories opening soon). It takes time for the results to come to fruition.

As for EW: Congress has the capability of more power if they have a high enough majority to override vetoes and block filibusters.

Unions: Compare teachers' salaries in states with strong unions and states with weak unions. Union oriented states pay their teachers more. Compare hourly wages between a grocery store with unionized employees to the grocery store across the street from it with non-union employees. Union employees are above poverty level. Non-union are not. Where do you think our economy would be if all manufacturing jobs paid what they do in China or Mexico?


Dingell pulled it off, and by a 13-14% margin. Those early figures must have been from Ann Arbor. Thank goodness.

Rick Snyder's big thing is "get rid of the Michigan Business Tax". I realize that significant tax breaks can attract business and eventually bring more jobs into the state, thereby increasing the income tax and property tax revenues for the state. However, that will take time. There will be a lag between losing those tax dollars and the long term increase in revenues. What he hasn't told us is where is the money going to come from to continue state operations during that time? Or, what is going to be cut? I can't imagine what else could be cut. I'd like to know how state operations are going to be paid for in the interim.

Just thought I would chime in that this conservative environmental scientist, who has lived on UC, is happy and hopeful with Ohio election results. I'm not a huge fan of Kasich or Jean Schmidt (both won), so I wrote in my brother for Governor and Senate. I like Boehner. I thank the FSM Pelosi will be out.

FWIW, I like seeing both parties represented in Congress and in the Executive office. Idealist, yes, but it forces all sides to negotiate and compromise if they want to get anything done.

Seriously, guys, who will think of Illinois?!?!? The governor's race is 46.5% Quinn and 46.2% Brady! WE HAVE NO GOVERNOR FOR 2011!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


WOE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This is ok, it means we don't have to reserve a new prison cell yet >.>

Logical fallacy.

Logical fallacy.

I voted early -- took 10 minutes.

Meanwhile, the GOP will control the North Carolina Senate for the first time since 1868 (when they joined with the Populists to control that chamber). It will be the second time since Reconstruction that Republicans will control the North Carolina House of Representatives. The first was in 1994, with the "Republican Revolution," but the Democrats won it back in 1996.

oh dear god fix the markup. And Michigan.gov is ran by the government in office. I guarantee you Blagojevich's tenure talked a lot about the amazing things he did.

Didn't mention all the screw ups. Or the lying, or the selling of the senate seat, or the threatening of children's hospitals for campaign donations. Whether the information stays up there during the next administration or not has a lot to do with the local politics. But it's not an opinion site.

Funny how that works.

The saddest thing about Illinois is that the Greens lost major-party status, which they've held since Whitney got double-freaking-digits in the last gubernatorial election.

I want a multi-party system so bad :-/

One of the problems, I think, is that people hear "green" and think "environment", when really, at least in Illinois, "green" means "progressive on all types of issues".

To be honest, lots of people hear "Greens" and think "looney."

Yep

No, the problem is that adding a party requires a ridiculous number of loopholes. I voted Whitney last time around with getting Greens on the ballot as part of my reasoning. People didn't not vote for him because they thought loony or environment (although the typo in Chicago probably didn't help) but because he was neither D nor R.

You sound like my husband. He thinks Clinton got the most done when he didn't have the Congress behind him.

As for EW, who cares what happens with unions in South Africa, that's like comparing apples and bananas. If you want to criticize the unions, use examples from the good old USA. We have plenty of unions here...I'm sure you can find examples if you try hard enough. By the way, for all the bad you can find about unions, they have done a lot of good for workers including improving the safety of workplaces, bringing wages to liveable standards and provided a voice for workers in negotiations when their employers have all the power. You know that employees do have grievances that are valid, right? With that, I will conceded that there are abuses, and that unions don't work for everyone.

He wants to abolish the minimum wage and thinks that prohibiting workers from being abused is a violation of the workers' rights. I doubt you're going to make much inroads.

Personally I say bring back the real filibuster. No more of this just refusing to vote on it thing, make them stand up and keep talking. Stop being scared the filibuster and push things through.

so, in Maryland, 2 counties shot down bills that allowed for ambulances to charge insurances for services. This may also make ambo companies lay off workers.

Also Anne Arundel County has voted for a bill that will allow for slots gambling...but there is still the concern about it being near a very busy shopping area.

I know, it just needed to be said. The insane thoughts of the reactionary right that used to hide in the shadows feel awfully free to fly openly these days. "Lets get rid of Social Security; lets repeal the Civil Rights Amendment; lets give the corporations control of the entire country and make American citizens their slaves for $0.02 an hour." Great ideas, folks!

I agree about the filibuster. If they really want to do it, read the phone book out loud for ten hours straight. Make it painful.

Do you think this one will be decorated in red or blue?

I'm a fan of orange, to match the jumpsuit.

To be quite honest, Brady strikes me as the type of guy who keeps some sort of something hidden in his basement.

My guess is it's the bodies of all his primary foes.

I voted early yesterday 7:20 am, there was no wait. Not sure if that is good or bad because I didn't have a chance to watch the local news since yesterday morning---it was that kind of day---but chances are it is indicative of low voter turn out in my area. Happily however, much of my state went blue---no surprise---and Deval was re-elected governor. The Republicans made some inroads at the statehouse, so we'll see how it goes.

I just found out that one of my fraternity brothers from our Rho Chapter (Texas State) is now the mayor of San Marcos

link

:)

Ditto most of this. I voted for Kasich, because there was no way in hell I was voting for Strickland and his failed policies. Hoping that a complete turnover of power will bring change for Ohio.

I am, however, extremely sad to see the defeat of most of the area school levies.

Whoops, my bad. In this day and age when someone says, "I blame Bush", 99.99999% of the time they are speaking of GWB.

What's wrong with foreign auto plants operating here? Is it because they aren't UAW? They have created a lot of good jobs in TN and TX and IMHO, my neighbors Toyota that was built in TX is more "American made" than my mom's Buick that was built in Mexico.

Speaking of, I find it funny you complain about VW, Mercedes, Nissan, etc building plants here in the U.S. but you fail to criticize the Detroit auto companies for leaving Detroit to build their cars in Mexico so they only have to pay their workers $5 a day. I believe we can thank Clinton and NAFTA for that one.

Too little, too late.

I never solely blamed Granholm, there has been decades of lawmakers that have focused on courting manufacturing as their number one money maker for Michigan, her included. All of these alternative industries that she has been pushing in the later years all came AFTER half the U.S. manufacturing industry left for China or Mexico and it became obvious that the jobs weren't coming back.

I see the most likely party being added would be the Libertarians.

He did, but he was also willing to compromise. He proposed A when the Republicans wanted Z and both sides moved toward M. I would like to see more of this. The joke is, when he did that, people accused him of waffling. Compromise is what it should all be about. We are more polarized right now than I've seen in the few decades that I've been paying attention and honestly, I think that's what is hurting us. Everybody is so worried about not letting the other side win that nothing constructive gets done.

Unfortunately, neither of the two parties wants a third one unless it's one that draws voters off from the 'other guy' but not themselves.

we're still red. not surprised.

in other news, the sky hasn't fallen and the rapture hasn't happened.

We lost our blue dog and he has been replaced with someone who wants to remove all illegal immigrants, give businesses tax breaks, and not tax individuals, and dismantle the Department of Education. Since our main business is agriculture, I'm not sure how that is going to keep going without the labor of undocumented workers; workers who spend their money here and aren't filing tax returns so they aren't getting money back so the state can use it. I guess his plan to provide jobs to Idaho is removing all the migrant workers and we can have those? There's also his support of nuclear power plants, as a way to have cheap energy we can sell to Oregon and California, but I guess he hasn't left the center of the universe (Boise metro area) because if he got on I-84 and headed west he'd see the massive amount of windmills in Oregon. I'd rather have some not so aesthetically pleasing windmills on an already fugly landscape than Chernobyl.

He also worked with the NRA to make gun ownership less stringent for the documented mentally ill, is a believer that marriage is between one man and one woman, and defending the rights of the unborn. Why are people who want less government so interested in what is going on in my bed, home, and my uterus? He is a total hater of Planned Parenthood (which doesn't provide abortion services here) but why not, as this means people can get sexual health needs privately or low cost and not on Obama Care. You think he'd be happy people are not being a drain on the economy but no, let's use our religious agenda to control others.

No other races in the state bothered me as much as this one. We got rid of Bill Sali the breast cancer hater, got still kooky but tolerable Minnick, and now we're back to Sali if not further away.

We still don't have a clear-cut winner in the Connecticut gubernatorial race. Malloy was declared the winner, but News12's counts put Foley in the lead, and Foley is going to challenge. Nor does my congressional district have a clear-cut winner. Again, Jim Himes has been declared the winner, but News12's counts put Debicella ahead. (The New York Times doesn't appear to have updated since last night.)

The votes are so close that I really do believe my one vote made a difference. It wouldn't have mattered for which ticket I voted in 2008 for President/VP - Connecticut was going to Obama. (I voted nonetheless.) But I'd be surprised if there isn't a recount in at least one of the races I mentioned. And they ran out of ballots in Bridgeport, which is heavily Democratic and in my CD. And here I thought Florida had locked down the Election Mishap Award back in 2000...

Hide in the shadows?

How are these even remotely bad things? What is bad? A morally hazardous economic environment consistently controlled by the rich at the expense of the poor. That is what the economic statists have consistently (but unintentionally) promoted and compounded. They have truly proved that the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

Yes, we should promote Ponzi schemes. Love those things. I'm sure you're a big fan of Madoff too, right?

The economic statists have already done this. The classically liberal removes them from power.

Question:
How would the corporations be able to sell their goods if American citizens made .02 cents an hour (or some other absurdly low wage)?

Furthermore, it doesn't make alot of sense for corporations to offer absurdly low wages due to new intelligence and data gathering. In order to retain people, they usually pay alot more.

For example, I'm currently a human resource manager in a production plant for a fairly large company. I would say that our hourly workers average at least nine dollars an hour (probably more if we could do better at retention). It's non-union. Most of the workers do not have a high school degree. Why don't we pay anywhere close to minimum (I believe our starting salary is around 8.30 an hour or so)? Retention. We could probably pay less, especially in this economic climate. But it doesn't really make economic sense. Under your theory, we should definitely be paying minimum, right?

I know you haven't actually thought about any of this, which doesn't surprise me. If you ever have the chance, read some Classically Liberal literature...such as F.A. Hayek's The Road to Serfdom.

You do realize that $9 an hour is poverty level for most families, don't you? You do realize that a person cannot live on $9/hr?

A family does not make 9$ an hour.

A person does.
On the contrary,
9$ is 360 dollars a week. 18, 720 a year. The per capita income in my town is 15,000, the median income for males is 28k, and the median income for women is 21 k. So I guess roughly 40% of females "can't live".

Plenty do live on that amount of cash. Now if the government would remove themselves from our wallet, 18,720 would be a fairly easy existence. Unfortunately it does not do this.

Show me your budget for yourself and two kids for $18,720. Please include rent, utilities, transportation, day care, food, health expenses, clothing and school supplies.

Add savings, insurance, phone/tv/internet service, and other incidentals.

http://www.buildingc3.com/doc.asp?id=2836

When the union wage for a painter is $32.15, and the union wage for a roofer is $31.30. Is it any wonder that people are paying illegal workers for this type of work, thus taking away employment for "poor" Americans?

Considering that these hourly union wages compute out to around $65,000 a year, I'd call that way above a "liveable wage".

I work full time for an oil company, doing logistics and planning, and my salary doesn't come close to that. Maybe I should have skipped college and just picked up a paintbrush...