Here we have another story about ‘greedy’ labor unions and the American workers they represent:
After posting record revenue of $60.1 billion and boosting CEO pay by 60 percent, Caterpillar demands concessions from workers
Workers at an Illinois plant for the mega manufacturer Caterpillar have been on strike for a month after rejecting a concession-heavy contract proposed by the company. Yesterday, workers overwhelmingly rejected a second Caterpillar offer, by a vote of 504-116.
According to union officials, the contract “provided no raises, eliminated the defined benefits pension program, weakened seniority rights and required machinists to pay higher contributions for health care.” All of this, at a time when the company is making record profits. In fact, Fortune Magazine recently said the company is “crushing it” when it comes to profitability.
At the same time that it is refusing to give its workers a fair raise, the company saw fit to increase its CEOs pay by 60 percent:
The annual compensation of Caterpillar Inc.’s chairman and chief executive rose 60 percent in 2011, as the company posted a record revenue of $60.1 billion. Douglas Oberhelman earned $16.9 million in 2011, a figure that includes salary, bonuses, stock and option awards and retirement plan contributions.
[…] The typical American worker would have to work 244 years in order to earn what the average CEO makes in just one year. Over the last 30 years, CEO pay has increased 127 times faster than worker pay.
How dare ‘workers’ ask for living wages and benefits from a company to which they’ve contributed their labor and production? Remember it’s definitely not greed when corporate CEOs pocket all the profits for themselves — and so what if workers contributed towards that success — that’s just the way America works!
So, if corporations are people (a special class of people with lots and lots of money and influence and power), it’s fair to ask what they want. Do they want the same things as the average citizen? Do they want decent pay for all, adequate health care for all, a solid education for all, and democratic structures that foster individual creativity, informed dissent and equitable power-sharing?
To ask these questions is to answer them. Generally speaking, major corporations prefer minimal pay and benefits for workers, a largely uncritical and powerless workforce and minimal taxes, as well as unlimited power for themselves, which they can then employ to influence elections and maximize profits.
In a word, they want control.
—What Do Corporations Want? (via ryking)
![underthemountainbunker:
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Austerity on steroids: the Ryan / Romney / Republican economic ‘method’
Big spending cuts to social programs +Tax increases on lower-income people +A reduction in the size of the federal workforce= Immediate job growth and a more robust recovery?
Hardly.
Jamelle Bouie outlines what’s wrong with the current Republican economic policy (emphasis mine):
The problem, of course, is that all available evidence points to the opposite. In Europe, austerity has renewed the economic crisis—the United Kingdom, for example, is growing at a rateslower than it saw during the Great Depression. At home, austerity at the state and local level—by way of balanced budget requirements—has led to the loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs, and a significantly weaker economy.
[…] The least you can say is that this was disasterous; if states and localities had the funds to keep all, or most, of the jobs they’ve shed over the last three years, the economy would be in much better shape, and the recovery would be on a stronger path. But this is one of those areas where the administration didn’t have much control; given the extent to which Republicans have rejected friendly compromises over the last year, there was no chance that they would accept tens of billions in new relief for states.
Mass layoffs for teachers, police officers, and other public servants—this is the inevitable consequence of GOP budget cutting, should Mitt Romney win the election. Someone should ask the former Massachusetts governor how he intends to “fix the economy” with his coked-out version of European austerity.
What Ryan, Romney and the Republicans won’t do is entertain a tax increase on the wealthy, or a reduction of subsidies / loopholes for profitable corporations (corporate welfare), or go through with a formerly agreed upon reduction in defense spending. Isn’t that what ending wars should automatically do — put money back into our own country?](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m3codfOlLJ1qf10tro1_500.jpg)
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Austerity on steroids: the Ryan / Romney / Republican economic ‘method’
Big spending cuts to social programs +
Tax increases on lower-income people +
A reduction in the size of the federal workforce
= Immediate job growth and a more robust recovery?Hardly.
Jamelle Bouie outlines what’s wrong with the current Republican economic policy (emphasis mine):
The problem, of course, is that all available evidence points to the opposite. In Europe, austerity has renewed the economic crisis—the United Kingdom, for example, is growing at a rateslower than it saw during the Great Depression. At home, austerity at the state and local level—by way of balanced budget requirements—has led to the loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs, and a significantly weaker economy.
[…] The least you can say is that this was disasterous; if states and localities had the funds to keep all, or most, of the jobs they’ve shed over the last three years, the economy would be in much better shape, and the recovery would be on a stronger path. But this is one of those areas where the administration didn’t have much control; given the extent to which Republicans have rejected friendly compromises over the last year, there was no chance that they would accept tens of billions in new relief for states.
Mass layoffs for teachers, police officers, and other public servants—this is the inevitable consequence of GOP budget cutting, should Mitt Romney win the election. Someone should ask the former Massachusetts governor how he intends to “fix the economy” with his coked-out version of European austerity.
What Ryan, Romney and the Republicans won’t do is entertain a tax increase on the wealthy, or a reduction of subsidies / loopholes for profitable corporations (corporate welfare), or go through with a formerly agreed upon reduction in defense spending. Isn’t that what ending wars should automatically do — put money back into our own country?
Health care laws leave hospitals overwhelmed by ‘permanent patients’
Under federal law, hospitals must treat any patient who needs emergency medical attention even if they have no way to pay. Nursing and rehab facilities are not required by law to do so. At the same time, hospitals cannot discharge a patient without a plan in place for his or her ongoing care.
The result is patients stuck in the hospital in need of long-term care but with nowhere to go, large medical bills, and no way to pay – a cost that is usually covered at the hospital’s expense.
Image: Garrick Amato (NBC News)
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But who needs healthcare reform?
Judges Mark Ciavarella and Michael Conahan of the Court of Common Pleas in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, plead guilty in open court that they sentenced children to juvenile detention because they were paid off to do it by the PA Childcare and a sister company, Western PA Childcare corporation that ran the private facilities.
[…]
The companies in question paid the two judges more than $2.6 million dollars to send children to detention. The companies receive a stipend from the government for each inmate they house. So as more children were sentenced to the detention center, PA Childcare and Western PA Childcare received more money from the government, prosecutors said.
According to the Juvenile Law Center, a Philadelphia nonprofit group, teenagers were sentenced to detention for simple misdemeanors.
(Source: sarahlee310)
The Buffett Rule, a bill backed by President Obama that would ensure millionaires pay a comparable tax rate to middle-class Americans, fell to a Republican filibuster in the Senate this evening, despite a new poll showing it to be overwhelmingly popular. While the rule, named after billionaire investor Warren Buffett, earned a majority vote of 51-45, it didn’t get the 60 votes needed to overcome a GOP filibuster.
Pat Garofalo points out how NJ Governor Chris Christie has been literally handing his state’s treasury over to corporate interests:
Back in November, we noted that New Jersey was foolishly set to give the food company Goya $80 million to create just nine (nine!) jobs. […] One program Christie has run doled out $900 million in tax credits. The companies receiving that largesse “have promised to add 2,364 jobs, or $387,537 in tax credits per job, over the next decade.” In one instance, Campbell Soup was given $42 million to create jobs in Camden. When the company proceeded to cut 100 jobs, Christie merely slapped it on the wrist, reducing its tax credit to $34 million, with the stipulation that the company add five jobs per year over a decade after it regains its previous employment total. For those keeping score, that’s $34 million for 50 jobs.
The NYTimes reports Christie has approved a record number of corporate tax subsidies:
Since taking office in 2010, Gov. Chris Christie has approved a record $1.57 billion in state tax breaks for dozens of New Jersey’s largest companies after they pledged to add jobs…The critics pointed out that even when the promised jobs have not materialized, the Christie administration has merely reduced, not withdrawn, the subsidies. And they say that the administration is mortgaging the state’s future by forgiving so much tax revenue for the next 10 to 15 years.
Anyone with eyes can see the GOP agenda is simple: get all the money into the hands of the wealthy and the corporations now, by whatever means necessary. Period. Meanwhile, how will Christie pay for this huge loss of revenue (for decades to come)? Austerity measures:
- Cuts to cancer reasearch,
- Medicaid and Medicaid nursing home rates,
- Women’s health programs,
- State employee and teacher pensions,
- Marine-mammal rescues,
- Legal-aid funding,
- Food programs,
- Layoffs of police and firefighters and teachers,
- And diverting millions from programs like a clean energy fund and an affordable housing fund into the general fund.
You’d think that this income redistribution scheme would somehow benefit Christie personally one day, wouldn’t you? Stay tuned…
Journalist, author and publisher Charles Glass has a feature in this month’s edition of Harper’s magazine called “The Warrior Class,” a feature covering the rise of private security contractors after 9/11. The article describes a number videos shown to Glass by a source who had worked for Blackwater. Harpers published clips from the videos yesterday, which show Blackwater guards and other private security contractors operating as if living in the Wild West. One video shows a contractor randomly and “enthusiastically” firing an AK-47 from the turret of an armored vehicle and another shows a private guard yelling obscenities at passers-by and other armored cars smashing into civilian vehicles:
[Video]
Another video shows what appears to be an American-made SUV running over a civilian without stopping. The car videoing the incident also does not stop:
[Video]
Harpers reports that “the tape ended with the inscription ‘In support of security, peace, freedom and democracy everywhere.”
This is American exceptionalism at its finest.
Maddow relays censored memo on CIA ‘war crimes’ during Bush Administration
MSNBC host Rachel Maddow on Wednesday night explained a legal memo that advised the Bush Administration that so-called enhanced interrogation techniques were torture and therefore illegal.
Wired reporter Spencer Ackerman obtained the memo, written by State Department counselor Philip Zelikow, through a Freedom on Information Act request.
Bush told NBC’s Matt Lauer in 2010 that he authorized the use of enhanced interrogation techniques like waterboarding because his “lawyer said it was legal, said it did not fall within the Anti-Torture Act.” But Zelikow’s memo warned the Bush Administration in 2006 that the interrogation techniques used on terror suspects by the CIA were “a felony war crime.”
I don’t think that it’s a ‘hospitality’ guideline to prevent rape of detainees.
—Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), during a hearing on conditions at the Department of Homeland Security’s immigrant detention centers.
