I’m a union guy. Truth be told, I understand why Biden stepped into the fray with the railroad workers. Our economy is improving but still too weak to suffer a major economic setback. Of course, that’s the POINT of a strike. If the company won’t do the right thing, pressure on the company can (and often does) force them to do the right thing. The workers weren’t looking for million-dollar-a-year contracts or anything outrageous like that. All they wanted was paid sick leave. That’s the big unsettled question, effing sick leave. They currently have to use vacation time or take a pay hit if they get sick. They wanted paid sick leave. The Biden administration imposed the contract offered by management – with NO sick leave. The worker’s demand is not outrageous but when a contract was imposed, it was the management contract and not the union version.

I stumbled across a conservative talk show on the radio right in time to hear the hosts agreeing that greedy workers are taking advantage of generous companies through paid sick leave. It’s no wonder the people who don’t understand things ARE the people who don’t understand things. “All praise the benevolent corporations” is a sentence of almost complete and pure bullshit. You know how I know? We’ve been suffering through an exodus of American corporations moving their companies out of America for over 40 years. The workers in those companies found other ways to make a living but the companies STILL needed workers. They just wanted cheaper workers. Non-union workers. Workers who thought pay of $1.50 a day was good money – and where the government allowed the companies to build encampments that often imprisoned the workers. And when those companies left the country, certain media outlets began saying that the “good jobs” had left the country but do you know what made them the good jobs? It was NOT that they were manufacturing jobs. It was that they were union jobs.

Cons like to pretend that if workers get too uppity, the glorious corporation will only introduce robots and there won’t be any work to do. They say this as though the companies are offering jobs out of altruism. Here’s a prediction you can take to the bank: the very minute robots can be trusted to do the work, robots will do the work and the human workers will be cut loose just as quickly as possible. The corporations DO NOT care about anything – anything – except the profit margin. Period.

There used to be a difference between the Democratic and Republican parties. The cons (currently ostensible Republicans) like to pretend workers owe fealty to their glorious corporate overlord and anything the company does is good for everyone. Currently ostensible Democrats like to pretend they stand for the people against the overbearing power of maleficent corporations. This railroad debate put the spotlight on the Democrats true colors and, I believe, they failed.

I’ve already mentioned, I understand why the Dems stepped in to protect our struggling economy. But Biden COULD have used the same authority he has to impose contracts to impose the union version WITH sick leave. He didn’t. He sided with management.

I’ll tell you this: Any way you look at it, that’s a betrayal of the working class…

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There’s an old Aesop fable that teaches that a man is known by the company he keeps. Donald trump hangs around with racists and criminals. Yep, checks out…

Here’s a worse part. It’s reported that he felt he had to take the dinner with known, avowed racists so as to not alienate “his base.” So…what does that say about his base? If I suggest in this column that the cons might be leaning a little too far into racism I get quite a lot of pushback. Now the object of con love has suggested that HE thinks his base is racist. Some of the Republicans are using the opportunity to distance themselves from the trumpster – but not all of them. There are STILL people out there supporting trump. Racists, all, apparently. Hey, don’t take it up with me. Talk to your lord and savior, the racist Donald J. Trump. As the saying goes, he said it, I believe it, that settles it…

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Speaking of morons…I’m kind of loving what’s going on with Alex Jones these days. He’s trying to protect himself by filing bankruptcy. At this point, he has been ordered to pay something like 1.5 BILLION dollars to the families of the Sandy Hook victims for continually saying it was all a hoax. The so-called Sandy Hook Hoax is what gave Jones his big boost in the bullshit business. It looks like his hoax is going to bring him down, too.

He’s tried everything he can think of. He tried moving money to offshore investments but he got caught and they made him stop. He claims he’s nearly a pauper and has nothing – but a forensic accountant found over a hundred million dollars- still not enough for a $1.5 Billion dollar judgement, of course. Now he’s trying to discharge his debts through bankruptcy – but one CAN NOT discharge the kind of punishment from this kind of judgement through bankruptcy. He WILL have to completely open his books to the bankruptcy court, though. Attempting to lie to a bankruptcy court is a Felony.

Oh, he also says he’s going to appeal some of the judgements against him but most (as I understand it) are default judgements. That is, he was offered an opportunity to refute the charge early and made the choice not to. As a rule, cons actually believer things they make up in their own minds and I suspect he thought he could just ignore his way out of this problem. Once he found out that reality continues whether he signs up or not, he decided, “Hey, maybe I ought to put up a fight.” Hey, maybe he should have. But he didn’t…