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By MARC McDONALD
The normally mild-mannered Thom Hartmann finally got enraged when NeoCon Seton Motley spewed one wingnut lie about labor unions too many on his "The Big Picture" TV program yesterday.
The two were discussing Wisconsin governor Scott Walker's war on state workers when Motley started spouting endless, predictable NeoCon bullshit about how public sector unions are basically evil and should be abolished.
Even a cool, rational figure like Hartmann, though, has his limits of tolerance and he finally called out Motley for his lies. When the latter continued to spew his wingnut venom, Hartmann showed a rare (for him) flash of anger. Although he lost his cool, Hartmann didn't lose his head and he proceeded to completely demolish every lie that Motley spewed out.
"I'm not going to let you get away with these lies!" Hartmann said. (I hope the "liberal" corporate MSM was taking notes on how to counter blatant Conservative propaganda).
One thing I've long admired about Hartmann is that he is always well-informed and he always has a ready comeback, with a heavy dose of the facts, to any NeoCon who is simply making up bullshit.
At one point, Motley claimed that unions were forcing themselves on the American people. "People don't want to unionize!" he claimed.
To this sheer nonsense, Hartmann had a ready reply: "More than 60 percent of Americans say they would join a union if they could."
To which Motley could only meekly (and falsely) reply: "That's a lame poll."
Yeah, right, whatever.
I myself have personally been intimidated and threatened by employers for simply talking about unions (even though it was on my own time and it wasn't on company property). I personally know of many other people who were threatened and even fired for simply talking about organizing. Yes, there are supposedly labor laws on the books that prohibit this sort of thing, but since the Reagan era, such laws have been rarely enforced.
The bottom line is: the capitalist bosses will do anything (even kill) to prevent American workers from joining unions.
I applaud the union workers in Wisconsin and I wish them well. However, I think they should be aware that Walker's threat to use the National Guard is no empty threat. Indeed, when I think of previous labor clashes in our nation's history (like the 1914 Ludlow Massacre, in which 19 people were killed by the Colorado National Guard), it makes me worried.
Hartmann's "The Big Picture" TV show airs live Monday through Friday at 9:00 p.m. EST with a repeat broadcast at 2:00 a.m. EST on FSTV DISH Network channel 9415, DIRECTV channel 348.
Additional program info is here.
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6 comments:
Thanks for the tip, Marc. Motley, Scott Walker, and John Kasich are all full of shit. I predict the latter two will be one-termers, driven from office by those they are trying to attack in the pocketbook. We DO have a budget crisis, to be sure, but we CANNOT allow the budget to be balanced on the backs of the poor, the middle class, or union workers, while the wealthiest 2% of the country take their deficit-growing tax cuts and sacrifice NOTHING. This is starting to look like all-out economic war, and it is totally unnecessary!
Hi Jack, thanks for your comment.
re:
>>>while the wealthiest 2% of the
>>>country take their
>>>deficit-growing tax cuts and
>>>sacrifice NOTHING
Yes, this is literally true. In fact, the rich benefit the most from the existence of our government (the 2008 bailout for the crooks on Wall Street dwarfs any program ever enacted in the history of the U.S. for working class people or poor people).
And yet even though the rich benefit handsomely from the government, they pay less of their income into taxes, as a percentage of income, than any working class person does.
Even Warren Buffett, the second-richest man on earth, has noted that he pays less a percentage of his income into tax than does his cleaning lady.
I bet 99 percent of Americans are unaware of this. If they were, we'd have another Egypt right here in the U.S. tomorrow.
I'm personally eagerly looking forward to such an event. It's long overdue.
TAX The WEALTH! And COURAGE, please.
I hope there's enough billionaires and millionaires to go around for all us poor folks!
Public employee unions are bankrupting federal and state governments and threatening the financial security of the rest of us.
re:
>>>Public employee unions
I'm sure public employee unions aren't entirely blameless.
But are you seriously suggesting that public employee unions are doing more damage to America, than, say, the trillions of dollars that we piss away on unnecessary wars? Or all the trillions we spend on bailing out the crooked banks on Wall Street? Or corporate welfare?
Why is it that with you Cons, you always single-mindedly focus on the same old targets: unions, the poor, gays, etc.
With you people, somehow the problems of this country are never the fault of the mega-billionaires and multi-national corporations that actually own this country.
And before you predictably go off on a screed about how I'm supposedly "anti-capitalist," I'd like to point out that there is absolutely NOTHING capitalist about using our tax dollars to bail out crooked Wall Street banks.
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