Tag: Politics

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Well, it is certainly reassuring that Governor Abbott realizes that shooting migrants is against Federal Law. And, just as a helpful reminder for Abbot, it is also against God’s law. It is right there in the Ten Commandments. I thought it was against Texas Law too but, who knows, I am willing to risk being wrong here and say it is. I apologize if I am wrong.

I am sure in a week from now, after the media make a big media storm about this, rightfully in this instance, and Abbott’s political analysts assess the damage done, he might even apologize. But only if absolutely necessary. Honestly I don’t think that Abbott wants to shoot migrants. He is dealing with a difficult situation that nobody really has the answer to and he wants to make political hay. Abbott was careless. He was thinking about the problem and not that the vast majority of migrants are actual flesh and blood human beings.

So, he found himself thinking out loud and it popped into his head that the only way for this problem to end is for the migrants to disappear and an easy way to make that happen is shooting them. Then, knowing this sounded awkward, he tried to reassure his audience that, of course he can’t actually murder anyone because the Feds would arrest him. Which is not reassuring at all. It sounds very much like the only thing stopping him from mowing down migrants is the thought that he wouldn’t do well in prison and not his own strong moral values. Abbott’s tone is shockingly dehumanizing and that is worrisome.

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In a disturbing trend, businesses, particularly in the slaughtering animals industry, are continually being caught using underage workers. This has happened before (see here and here) and it seems to be gaining ground. Some Republican controlled states are trying to make it easier for businesses to hire underage labor. These aren’t jobs working at movie theaters or restaurants, these are jobs using dangerous machinery and the Florida law wants to allow up to eight hours of work. Sixteen year olds working full time and going to high school. This could be about 2/3 of their day. Tired workers using lethal machines, sounds like a good idea to me. I don’t think that most adults would perform well under these circumstances much less a 16 year old. But never mind, protecting children isn’t the concern here, cheap labor is.

The fact that these businesses continue to get caught is enlightening about their motives. These businesses are making a clear business decision. It is cheaper to break the law and pay the fines than it is to pay higher salaries. Since these are conscious decisions, it undermines the notion that these are God-fearing people making innocent mistakes. These are, in fact, criminal enterprises – knowingly breaking the law to their advantage.

If you needed any more proof regarding the criminality of these businesses, Exclusive Poultry, one of the businesses fined for hiring the underaged, also broke other labor laws. They underpaid their worker’s wages. This can’t be shrugged off as some error in HR. This is a conscious decision made by the managers in the firm to rip off their employees and, more telling, is it would have to involve people up and down the food chain. I believe this is called a criminal conspiracy.

From this I can surmise the following:

  1. Fines for labor violations are too small to have any detrimental effect on business. That so many businesses, particularly in the meat packing industry, continue to do business despite seemingly large fines suggests that they weighted their options and paying the fines was the cheaper one. In order to discourage people from breaking the laws, like with any law, the punishment has to be a high price to pay. Right now, these fines are just a more economical choice for these law breaking businesses which only encourages them to break the law.
  2. Wages need to be higher to attract qualified adults. These are dangerous jobs. People are risking life and limb to perform them. What adult labor is saying is that businesses are not paying enough for them to take this risk. In a functioning capitalist society, this is when higher pay works. Businesses clearly have the money to pay higher wages but paying government fines is a better deal.
  3. This brings me to the Republican Party. The party of family values and protecting children from books and transexuals. They are also the party, at least in Florida, willing to let 16 years work a full eight hour shift and then go to school. How can an adult be doing both well much less a 16 year old. So when you hear Republicans babbling on about protecting children — just remember no child has been killed by a transvestite reading them a story but several have been killed in workplace accidents. Which means that an awful lot of energy that the Republican party is expending on transvestites is wasted while a very real danger to children is being ignored.
  4. None of this distinguishes modern business enterprises. They are either evil or incompetent. This isn’t a few errors. There are multiple infractions involving multiple laws. Given their incredibly weak defense, these businesses are criminal and thus evil.  But, to be fair, let’s consider incompetence. They are unable to vet potential employees to see if they meet the minimum age requirement for a dangerous job. This happens a lot so they aren’t just bad at it, they are so bad that they are unable to follow the law. If this is the case, and this is what these businesses would have the public believe, then why should the public believe they are capable of following the health standard requirements for slaughtering animals or employee safety laws.  So while incompetent may absolve them of criminality, it isn’t particularly reassuring about their business practices. It would certainly make me a little suspicious. It also opens us up to a third option that they could be both evil and incompetent. The most frightening and dangerous combination of all.

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Mark Tapscott at the Epoch Times reports that, according to the National Institute for Labor Relations Research (NILRR), Unions spent $25 billion dollars on 2022 election. Which is really kind of remarkable because Federal Elections Commission (FEC) reported that the total amount of money spent on political campaigns was 8.9 billion dollars. You might have spotted a glaring difference between the two organization’s figures. I certainly did.

Why the difference? First, and this is pretty important, the NILRR is anti-union. They want to demonize the union movement so they fiddled with the figures to make the actual 54 million labor spent on 2022 campaigns $25 billion. After this little switcheroo, the relative modest spending becomes outrageously large, especially with the untampered figures from corporations. $25 billion says unions are this powerful behemoth who have an endless supply of money to force their collectivist ways on the poor employers of America.

How did $54 million become $25 billion? NILRR’s much broader interpretation of union political spending can be found here: “the bulk of unreported political power is wielded by government union officials. They’re armed with the monopoly power to negotiate salaries, pensions, and hiring practices for entire swaths of federal, state, and local government workers. This makes monopoly bargaining in the public sector, by its very nature, political.” So, everything a union does is political and, therefore, must be included in political spending. Voila, you now have a rich monster with billions to spend facing those poor corporations who are just trying to run their business.

It’s a blatantly unfair comparison. Why isn’t the same standard applied to corporate spending? In non-union shops, which is close to 90% of all American worker’s experiences, the companies have this same monopoly power to negotiate salaries, pensions and hiring practices. When there are no unions, the worker is on his own and the company has all the power. Does the NILRR consider the money spent on Union Busting as political spending? Technically, I am sure it isn’t but by the NILRR broad definition of political spending, it definitely should be.

I am confident that when you add up all the Corporate Spending on salaries, benefits, HR policies and union busting, there would be a much higher amount of money for corporate political spending. Then we can talk political spending for both Corporations and Labor. Until then I think the FEC’s figures on money spent directly on political campaigns is the only fair way to appraise political spending. It gives a much different story about who is spending more money than Tapscott and NILRR.