Caveat Lectores on Political Party Loyalty

The primaries are over and it now comes down to voting for candidates based on beliefs and party affiliation. The Lector dredged this up and dusted it off for consumption prior to the general election of 2010.

I do not know what happened to me, but...

OK, I had this politically epiphanal moment while driving recently. There was this realization that I have been all wrong in my lifetime condemnation of the Republican Party. My family and the state of the world warped me into looking at life only from the viewpoint of a Democrat.

It is not about the party. It is about the viewpoint of the candidate. My new mantra is... Vote for the candidate that fits your values not the party. I was just a blind follower of a political dogma that has become passé. R & D / liberal and conservative do not have the meaning they once did.

Here are the top ten political traits that I will seek in a candidate. I will assume that this person is not dedicated to the destruction of government by finding ways to disallow the provision of vital services by asserting that paying for those services through taxes is Un-American.

1. Must be willing to let a woman decide her own reproductive destiny;
2. Must be willing to separate church and state;
3. Must support the First Amendment;
4. Must appreciate the role of the working person and the value of collective bargaining to society;
5. Must have more concern for persons of color than how cheaply they will work;
6. Must be willing to provide some meaningful oversight to business and industry;
7. Must be willing to attempt to remove us from the strangle hold of the fossil fuel industry;
8. Must be willing to seek peace in a way that does not presume total annihilation of anyone who disagrees with the USA.
9. Must have enough intellect to be willing to accept the reality of evolution;
10. Must believe that the environment is more than an outhouse for humanity and a playground for development.

Should such a person exist who is registered as a Republican, I may vote for that person.

I am not worried about ruining my prior record of never having voted for a republican. I guess I set my standards too high.

And oh yes, have a nice Day?
Wjc
Caveat Lectores by Jeff Carnes

7312 Readers in 498 Cities, 46 States and 22 Countries
Read at your own risk.

Lectores Labor Consulting 813-240-8165
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Caveat Lectores on Inexperienced Politicians and Insanity

Today’s Caveat Lectores Rant is specific to Florida, but I am willing to bet it applies in the other 49 states as well. If it does not apply to your state, please let me know so I can start plans for the move.

We have heard this before. It seems when some of the public becomes disenchanted with the current political climate, the cry is… “Throw the bums out!” The Lector could not agree more when I look at many of the current crop of incompetents and easily corruptible nincompoops who for some reason want to devote their professional lives to harming the best interests of me and the general public. BTW, not all are rePuPlicans. The Democraps are fully capable of some, though not all, of the insanity that comes from the heart and soul of a right wingnut.

While I am just as frustrated with the political climate and incredibly poor policy-making as anyone else, the anti-incumbent mantra has some real problems as does the notion that term limits is the answer. There is absolutely nothing wrong with a “career politician” unless that person is also incompetent and/or corrupt. Yet, this is the disparaging tag many are placing on incumbents as if experience is a bad thing. WTF is in their minds if there is anything at all?

Term limits are not the answer because it makes sure that inexperienced people will run government. Inexperienced people end up relying too heavily on cronies, staff and lobbyists for background to make good decisions. The very notion that someone who is incompetent can make sound policy decisions is insane. Who is at fault if the public keeps voting for the same bad candidates over and over again? Throwing the good elected officials out of office to get rid of the bad ones makes no sense. Term limits are fundamentally wrong because it is telling me who I cannot vote into office. It may not be unconstitutional but it is wide of the mark.

The notion that only inexperienced people with business backgrounds and no public policy experience will automatically be effective is naïve insanity. As soon as the neophytes assume office they become incumbents. If these people get elected and run government like so many businesses are run, we will go bankrupt for sure. If we start running government like GM, the financial industry or the textile industry, the country will implode in less than a generation.

In Florida, we have two candidates running for governor who, once we look at them, have “issues.” (There is a third candidate who does not count unless he decides to stay in the race and hurts Alex Sink.)

• My personal favorite is Alex Sink. She is a Democrat, competent and experienced. Her brief tenure as an elected official as the CFO of Florida does not qualify her as a “career politician.” She is from my home state of North Carolina which could be a negative since we both apparently are exiled in Florida. Her prior professional career was former president of Florida Operations at Bank of America. This has some baggage attached. Yes, she has vast experience in business, but it is an industry that I have lost all respect for because of the current mortgage fraud crisis that has threatened out economy. Was she a part of the problem or just incompetently ignorant of what was occurring? Even with her possible negatives, she is clean and energetic, rich but not too rich to take her daughter to a movie on a Saturday afternoon recently (I saw them), bright but not a nerd, shrewd but not a thief like some. We must not let the fact that she is not a dynamic public speaker get in the way of electing her. (She speaks with a NC harsh southern accent when she is excited)

• Rick Scott is the right wingnut rePuPlican candidate who came from nowhere and beat a career screw up by using his own money to buy the election. He touts his incompetence as a politician. He has promised to do everything in his power as governor to wipe out government, reduce service, lower taxes and annihilate that pesky government regulation that gets in the way of unlimited profit for corporations. That will make him the darling of right wingnuts, tea baggers, real estate developers, regulated corporations and anyone else looking for short term profit-making utopia. He is rich beyond imagination because of a career in an industry so dysfunctional and sometimes corrupt that it has condemned America to being nearly third world-like in its provision of healthcare. Scott was the CEO of a healthcare company that pleaded guilty to too many fraudulent practices charges to list here. “Scott was forced to resign in the wake of the initial fraud charges in 1997. ” http://www.forbes.com/2000/12/15/1215disaster.html His modern day political defense is that he was never personally charged with fraud. “He was the fucking boss. The question becomes. Was he a knowing conspirator with criminal culpability or an unknowing dupe with serious problems with his ethical accountability? Is he an unindicted criminal or an unsuspecting incompetent? Either way, he has problems that should disallow him from being elected to the highest position in Florida government …. Sure, he can run but surely no one would trust his ability to make good decisions. ” http://wjcarnes-caveatlectores.blogspot.com/2010/08/caveat-lectores-on-convenient-truths.html

And oh yes, have a nice Day?

Wjc

Caveat Lectores by Jeff Carnes

7312 Readers in 498 Cities, 46 States and 22 Countries
Read at your own risk.

Lectores Labor Consulting 813-240-8165
LectoresIT.com
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Caveat Lectores on a Lesson from Martin Niemöller

I was having a productive day at my desk without serious interruption when it came time for lunch, and I made the mistake of going to Facebook. The first item on the list was an opinion piece by Keith Olbermann of MSNBC entitled: There is No “Ground Zero Mosque”. Naturally, I clicked on the hyperlink.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/38731398#38731398
The editorial comment was long and after watching the entire piece, I found myself in tears. I have made some comment on the Mosque issue but have been timid because public sentiment has been so seemingly overwhelmingly against the Muslim Cultural Center near the site of the 9/11 disaster. Many of my friends and clients are firefighters who have a very strong sentiment about the lives of brother and sister public safety personnel lost to terrorists that day. It is a sentiment I share with them.

The tears were from shame because I had failed to remember the saying I kept on my refrigerator door all through law school that was to serve as a reminder of why I left the fire service to become an attorney dedicated to the causes of working people and organized labor.

"THEY CAME FIRST for the Communists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist.

THEN THEY CAME for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist.

THEN THEY CAME for the Jews,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew.

THEN THEY CAME for me
and by that time no one was left to speak up."

I encourage you to click on the hyperlink and reflect on what is occurring. For some of you, this is just Keith and Jeff preaching to the choir. For others there may be a lesson that is worth learning. A few of you may be so far gone nothing can help you. Maybe your God will forgive you. Such is life.

And oh yes, have a nice Day?

Wjc

Caveat Lectores by Jeff Carnes
7312 Readers in 498 Cities, 46 States and 22 Countries
Read at your own risk.

Lectores Labor Consulting 813-240-8165

LectoresIT.com

Caveat Lectores on Facebook

Do the Lector a favor: If you like the stuff we post, share it on your Facebook profile by clicking the "Share" link under the item you like. Also, please use the "Suggest to Friends" link below our logo in the upper left corner to tell others about our Facebook page!

Although he (Friedrich Gustav Emil Martin Niemöller (14 January 1892 – 6 March 1984)) was a national conservative and initially a supporter of Adolf Hitler,[2] he became one of the founders of the Confessing Church, which opposed the nazification of German Protestant churches. He vehemently opposed the Nazis' Aryan Paragraph,[3] but made remarks about Jews that some scholars have called antisemitic.[4] For his opposition to the Nazis' state control of the churches, Niemöller was imprisoned in Sachsenhausen and Dachau concentration camps from 1937 to 1945.[5][6] He narrowly escaped execution and survived imprisonment.[7] After his imprisonment, he expressed his deep regret about not having done enough to help the victims of the Nazis.[3] He turned away from his earlier nationalistic beliefs and was one of the initiators of the Stuttgart Declaration of Guilt.[3] From the 1950s on, he was a vocal pacifist and anti-war activist,[7] and vice-chair of War Resisters' International from 1966 to 1972.[8] He met with Ho Chi Minh during the Vietnam War and was a committed campaigner for nuclear disarmament.[7] (Wikipedia, of course)

Caveat Lectores on Public Pension Reform

Waaa, Waaa, Waaa! That is what I expect to hear soon from multitudes of firefighters, police officers, teachers and even more general public sector employees AND retirees who are about to be F*CKED out of all or part of their pensions. Never mind lack of pay raises or pay cuts. All that you have worked for is at risk. Wake the fuck up! Numbnutz!

I told you so will mean nothing to me in the way of a warm fuzzy feeling. I hate being right. Check these websites out for more doses of what I have been announcing to a deaf audience.

States Test Whether Public Pension Benefits Given Can Be Taken Away
Caveat Lectores on Strange Days in Oz
Caveat Lectores on Glenn Beck and Pensions for Public Employees
Caveat Lectores on S. 3194: Lies and Deception
Caveat Lectores on Underfunded Pensions

What this is all about is that state and local governments are looking for ways to save money. Public employee’s wallets are a convenient source of savings. Pensions, chronically underfunded in the past, are even more expensive today and only reward deeds of the past. Existing pensioners and future pension benefits cost money, and those receiving them provide no benefit to the employer. The mantra is…”So what have you done for me lately?”

Private sector pensions that were once part of the American dream have been destroyed along with much of the organized labor movement that negotiated them into the terms and conditions of employment we call a collective bargaining agreement. “Right to work” and “employment at will” are not your buddy.

The public sector worker is now being demonized and made a scapegoat by the right wingnut conservative politicians and media mavens. Is it just a matter of taking the punishment or can public sector workers do something about it? You had better hope you can do something about it, or accept that your financial future will be raped into oblivion.

What can YOU do to help stop the right wingnuts from raping you? Stop supporting them dumbass! That would do for a start. All the labor lawyers in the world cannot undo what you do when you vote for or support the people who will vote to end your dream if given the chance.

God, Guns and Gays seem to be the important topics of the far right wingnuts and tea baggers. Add reproductive rights to the mix and they have enough single issue hot button topics to fulfill the complete rePuPlican distraction. With the 3-Gs, rePuPs can stir up the concerns of the religious zealots, xenophobes, hyper-paranoids, racists, homophobes and pseudo-patriots all at once and get them so riled up they will support a faction that will target their careers and life styles for destruction. Real rePuPlican values only concern maintaining wealth in the hands of the few who deserve it, the wealthy. They do not give a crap about the 3-Gs.

By making fun of the tea baggers, right wingnut rePuPlicans and the 3-Gs, I recognize I am stepping on some working class toes here, but I would stomp on them if I could. I want to make some public employees so angry they will stop drinking the right wingnut Kool-aid long enough to really look at what real American values are.

Real American values are about more than 3-G topics and wealth for the wealthy. The right wing conservative leaders of the rePuPlican Party have co-opted the term so that it means little except an attack on anyone who does not claim to be a right wing conservative. This has become a spectacle of “you are with us or you are not a true American.” That is Bullshit!

WHAT IS THE SOLUTION THAT WILL SAVE YOUR JOB AND PENSION?

• If you belong to a union, get involved in a hurry to try to make up for lost ground. Demand the leadership give you a job to help in the fight. The IAFF, PBA, FOP, IUPA, AFSCME, AFL-CIO, ATU and the other large unions know what is happening. Some are failing less than others in the war to save your future. They need your help. The dirty war has just begun. It is not too late.
• You and your union may have to decide whether to fight an all or nothing battle or to try and mitigate the damage by negotiating away some of the hard fought benefits you now have. This will not be easy and there is not a one size fits all answer.
• If you do not belong to a union, you are pretty much out of luck unless there is some sort of organization that can mobilize to build public support for public employees and lobby the politicos to try to curtail the slaughter. You may have to just stand by and hope a union brother or sister saves your ass. Some of you do not have collective bargaining rights, but you can organize in other ways for political purposes.
• Get off your lazy butt and fat wallet and support candidates who have not dedicated their political careers to destroying government and those who serve in it. Many but not all are Democrats.
• Understand that there are real funding problems in state and local government. This is not just something made up to screw with you, but the right wingnuts are trying to use it as an excuse to destroy government.

Public employees can make a difference if they choose to get involved. If the choice is to watch from the sidelines as the players in the game destroy their futures, they will deserve what they get.

And oh yes, have a nice Day?

Wjc

Caveat Lectores by Jeff Carnes
7312 Readers in 498 Cities, 46 States and 22 Countries
Read at your own risk.

Lectores Labor Consulting 813-240-8165
Give us a call. We can help

LectoresIT.com

Caveat Lectores on Facebook
Do the Lector a favor: If you like the stuff we post, share it on your Facebook profile by clicking the "Share" link under the item you like. Also, please use the "Suggest to Friends" link below our logo in the upper left corner to tell others about our Facebook page!