This Just In--Democrat Grows a Pair!

Oh my. Did this really happen? It did, didn’t it? Please tell me it did.

After a summer of being brutalized and battered, of remaining mute even as the most outrageous lies were being told, did a Democrat actually make a fist and hit back?

Yes!

Alan Grayson, a freshman congressman from Florida, inflamed and outraged House Republicants while addressing health care reform. In his presentation, Grayson had the chutzpah to lay bare the Republicant idea of health care, whose essence--in Grayson's words--is 1.) Don’t get sick and 2.) Die quickly.

When asked by Republicants to apologize, Grayson took the floor and apologized to everyone who has died because of insufficient health care. Then he apologized to their families. Then he told Republicants they need to give a damn about people--even after they're born.

Ha!

Republicants are indignant. Indignant because Democrats have been meek and obedient lap cats this long hot summer, and done everything in their power to give the impression of being, if not spineless, then neutered.

Grayson’s behavior must be a terrible shock to them.

Congressman Grayson, wherever you are, thank you. Here’s hoping your chutzpah is an airborne contagion which spreads rapidly throughout the House and Senate.

The Stop Light

Ordinarily, I would welcome the distraction of colored lights. I would revel in their ephemeral, continually-changing array, and delight in the sense of whimsy they brought to the hard urban landscape.

But I don’t. I hate them. They are my sworn enemy.

It doesn't matter whether they're mounted on the ground or suspended in the air. They make my upper lip curl in an Elvis-like sneer. They just can’t win with me. I hate the long ones and I hate the short ones

And how the hell do they always know to turn red as I'm approaching, anyway? It's motion detectors, right?

I’ve lost track of the times I’ve seen two-dozen drivers on an enormous, six-lane boulevard come to a stop at the scrawny driveway of a dilapidated strip mall only to stare at an empty intersection. What end does it serve? What point does it make?

I’m convinced traffic signals are set by an evil consortium of brake pad manufacturers and oil companies. That or strip mall land lords.

But that's not all. I hate how they keep traffic compacted into a tight little knot until the next light. It’s like a rolling pressure cooker. Lane changes require elevated levels of testosterone.

The kid subjecting his car to death via hip-hop is invariably next to you. And if you couldn’t assume the next light was red, you wouldn’t be able to see it for the lumbering SUV in front of you.

Aside from making a powerful argument for Libertarians and insuring that our trips take as long and contain as many stops as possible, I really can’t think of a good use for traffic signals.

Maybe I should call Martha Stewart. She might know how to turn them into planters. Or mailboxes.

Anything would be more useful.

For Labor Day

For the balance of human history, workers were employed at the whim of their employer. There were no rules governing working conditions or compensation or time off. The terms were whatever suited the employer, when it suited the employer.

And workers suffered accordingly.

With the onset of the Industrial Revolution, the imbalance only worsened. For the employer, mechanization meant greater output and greater profits with lower production costs.

For the employee, it meant exhausting days under gruesome conditions. Children were enlisted to feed industry’s insatiable appetite. Six-day work weeks with ten-hour days were typical. At its worst, seven-day work weeks full of fourteen-hour days devoured the lives of men, women and children alike.

Reform eventually began with children, and with the rise to power of the union soon extended to adults. Workers at last had a say in the conditions and terms of their employment, putting an end to the exploitation enjoyed by the nation’s employers.

And this was a good thing.

The wealthy were loathe to admit it, but the rise of the union (and with it the middle-class) only enriched them, as it meant more people with more disposable income. It was a far cry from the Marxist redistribution of wealth America’s captains of industry had feared. But the equilibrium couldn’t last. A handful of unions began to amass enormous power.

The United Auto Workers union (UAW) was the most-powerful.

America’s auto manufacturers had a near-monopoly on what was easily the world’s biggest market. And General Motors controlled fifty-percent of that market. The other half was essentially divided between Ford and Chrysler, with a handful of smaller automakers and imports fighting for whatever remained.

And the UAW controlled one-hundred percent of their labor.

The UAW was phenomenally-successful at extracting generous terms for its membership. Even as domestic automakers began to lose market-share, UAW members continued to receive lavish contracts, with salaries and benefits disproportionate to their skill and education levels. This was the fruit of a corpulent corporate culture that would soon be receiving a lap band.

As America’s industrial might migrated overseas, its manufacturing-based economy was replaced by a service-oriented one. These were typically lower-paying jobs in offices, not factories. They were also rarely unionized. The convergence of increasing consumer unhappiness with domestic automobiles and an increasingly white collar workforce changed the perception of unions.

Unions were held-up as shelters for wildly-overcompensated, lazy and incompetent workers. The workers at Chicago’s McCormick Place were exposed to public derision for the terms of their union contracts; contracts which drove and rewarded unproductive behavior.

Then-president Ronald Reagan was widely-praised when he smashed the air traffic controller’s union. Unions had become overripe fruit. The social pendulum had reached the end of its labor-friendly swing, and was now beginning a move in the opposite direction.

As the seventies became the eighties and the eighties became the nineties, union membership continued to fall. Where they still existed, unions were mere shadows of their former selves. Members routinely made concessions in return for having a job to report to.

Mercury Marine (an outboard motor manufacturer in Fond du Lac, WI.) recently demanded that union members either accept a seven-year wage-freeze and a thirty-percent wage-cut for laid-off workers (called back to work), or face losing their jobs when the company opened a proposed non-union plant in Stillwater, OK.

Additional concessions would reduce vacation time and affect both health care and pension benefits.

Faced with having a job versus not having a job, workers voted Friday and reluctantly accepted the company’s offer.

The gulf between America’s richest and poorest continues to widen. An ever-increasing percentage of America's wealth is held in fewer and fewer hands as income inequity continues to soar. CEOs make hundreds (hundreds!) of times what their employees do.

Yet America’s workers are told they must concede to remain competitive in the new global marketplace. Curious that executive compensation continues to rise amidst all this belt-tightening and globalization, isn’t it?

On the one-way street that employment has become, it is clear that unions are once again the best path towards restoring two-way traffic. In a country with an economy which is two-thirds consumer-driven, even the short-sighted and the self-serving that pass for corporate leadership need to acknowledge the importance of a viable middle-class.

And that begins with viable unions.

It's time to give the pendulum a shove in a new direction.

Political Science Project

Copies of the following were sent to all 39 Republican senators (Mel Martinez (R-FL) vacated his seat in early-August) and the Milwaukee 'Journal-Sentinel'.

I'll keep you posted as to what--if any--responses are received.

Dear Senator ___________:

Since their epiphany last January 20th, Republicans have issued repeated and dire warnings about the horrors of big government. With this in mind, I would like to take this opportunity to respectfully submit that government downsizing begin with you.

By resigning your post as U.S. Senator, you enable the Republican Party to position itself as the party that not only stands behind its beliefs, but as one willing to sacrifice for them. While one party speaks of change you can believe in, Republicans offer change you can see.

By leaving the senate, you say “small government starts with me." It is leadership by example. It is standing tall by getting small. And in these economically-challenged times, imagine the credibility your party stands to gain with America’s legions of unemployed.

It is the kind of “win-win” PR firms only dream of.

It is my hope you will take this under consideration.

Sincerely,

La Piazza Gancio