Got any other nonexistent situations you want to whine about? Hey, why don’t you complain that the government is doing “illegal snooping” when they conduct the census? That’s coming up soon….

Nothing this group has done to date is well thought out. Wait to see how long it is before certain companies are exempted from this restriction. I suspect it will start with Fannie and Freddie and spread rapidly.

Also wait until Congress tastes the blood of this move. They will definately want some more very soon. As long as they have their minions shouting for more blood, they will be more than willing to comply.

The bullying of free enterprise has just begun.

You created the hypothetical of the unnamed company actively impeding the formation of a union among its workforce.

“Rather it’s up to an employer to schedule one of these precious secret ballot union elections on their premises, and during the interim period (I believe it can be months-long), screws are applied.

However, it is equally plausible to construct the opposing hypothetical under EFCA of the union officials “applying screws” based on the lists of employees matched to signatures on cards held with no respect for privacy or anonymity. Assuming those union officials bent toward some of the historical thuggery that some of the predecessors engaged, there would be no protections whatsoever for employees targeted for more active “motivation and convincing” should they need more signatures to charter.

In the case of your hypothetical, employees and unions have legal recourses should businesses act in bad faith during the decision period. In the case of mine, employees would have little to no recourse and even less motivation to do so since it would be against their own fellow co-workers whom they would be raising the charges.

The biggest impetus for this legislation is that union leaders are mad that they no longer get the results they want from many elections for representation. This legislation would allow them to identify and single out those employees hindering their efforts.

The simply questions that highlight why this legislation is a bad idea are:

- Why do they want to know who selected unionization and who did not?

- How are they planning to use that information?

On the flip side, will the legislation be providing the names and results of the “card-check” signatures to the businesses after the collection period?

If your answer is: “No, of course not, the company might use that information in a retalitory fashion against those who voted to unionize.”, then why should we expect any different behavior from leaders of the unions whose fudiciary / financial interest is in certification!

-Swami Dave

If you go away you have to keep up…… ) See my 11:30.

I’d really, really like to see things from your point of view, but I can’t seem to get my head that far up my @ss.

The greatest period of the growth of WEALTH, as well as growth of GDP in the United States co-incided with the highest marginal tax rates.

Between 1950 and 1976, the GDP grew at an average rate of 3.9 percent per year, and every sector of society increased its wealth at relatively the same rate. The working poor, the working middle class and the wealthy all saw their income increase at roughly the same rates. That is to say, everyone who worked had their personal income increase in direct proportion to their personal productivity.

Since 1979, this has not been the case. The American worker’s productivity has increased by a total of 68 percent during this period. If the average American workers income had increased at the same rate as his productivity. the average wage would be 58,000 dollars a year, not the 36,000 it is currently. This has been the legact of conservatism.

The United States economy is measured by things like GDP and HOURLY PRODUCIVITY of the American labor force, not by the wealth of the wealthy. A firm indication that America’s wealth is produced by its workers, not by the owners of the companies that these workers work for.

On the other hand, since the end of World War II the most dismal economies have occured during periods of relatively low taxation and little regulation. Over the last right years, economic growth has been tepid at best, an average of two percent.

The false assumption that conservatives make is that if you lower taxes, this money will be REINVESTED back into the company it has just been taken out of in the form of personal income. Which is a logical absurdity, because if the money is simply LEFT in the company and used appropriately in ways that generate more wealth (opening a second store or factory, hiring more employees, purchasing new plant equipment) it is completely untaxed.

It is the excess of capital extracted from going concerns that ends up creating speculative markets and market bubbles.

The U.S. Supreme Court HAS already ruled in U.S. v Carlton (512 US 26 (1994)) that retroactive taxation is not unconstitional. This was one of the few UNANIMOUS decisions that the court has held in the last few decades. There were many previous precedents that the court cited to justify this as well