Journalism MALPRACTICE: "Liberals" Behaving BADLY!

A few SHORT months ago, following the tragic shootings in Tucson in which a Federal District Court Judge and others were killed, and Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was wounded, every Democratic Party power player and every liberal media pundit made teary eyed and impassioned PLEAS for civility and a decried the need for  a "new tone" in political discourse.  This was due in large part to the fact that they blamed the TEA party for the shooting, despite the fact that it was a LEFT wing loon that actually pulled the TRIGGER.  They made a similar erroneous conclusion when ANOTHER left wing lunatic flew his plane into a building housing offices of the Internal Revenue Service.  When did they stop hiring FACT checkers in the media, and if they DO still have them, they seem to be performing at the level of sleeping air trafic controllers these days.  So, why haven't they been FIRED?  Aah, they must be UNION so they CAN'T be fired for anything less than a CAPITAL crime and not without an act of Congress or the bureaucratic equivalent thereof.


After months of media diatribes about the need for "cilivilty" in our political discourse, the newly elected Republican Governor of Wilsconsin, the Hon. Scott Walker, attempted to carry out his mandate to reign in runaway government spending in his state which necessistated curbing the power and influence of public sector unions, and the ensuing protests commence and take on a tone of rheorc reminiscent of the WORST of the Viet Nam era protests.  UNION goons harasss and even THREATEN state politicians and their supporters, trash and vandalize public property and the media is suddenly nowhere to be found.  One Wisconsin TEACHER even went to far as to communicate TERRORISTIC DEATH THREATS to the republican politicians and again NOTHING from the press, or the LAW ENFORCEMENT community for that matter.


On Tax Day when TEA party members and supporters held rallies calling for less government intrusion into our lives and less government SPENDING, they were harassed and harrangued by UNION goons.  While the MEDIA has never waivered in its' attempts to paint peaceful TEA party members as out of control crazy people, they consistently FAIL to report the FACT that it's the leftist UNION goons that are REALLY the out of control crazy people.  If you compare the two sides OBJECTIVELY, it's the LEFTIST protestors that get arrested for disorderly conduct, vandalism, assault, etc.  Not ONE Tea party member has ever been ACCUSED, let along CONVICTED for such behavior.  If you look at the TEA Party Rally held in Washington DC, the grounds were left clean and litter free at the conclusion of the events, and no publci property was destroyed.  Conversely, when the LEFT held THEIR rally, the City of Washington DC had to spend THOUSANDS on clean up, and police had made numerous arrests and issued even more summonses and citations for disorderly conduct.   Last but not LEAST, several SEIU members were arrested for disorderly conduct and criminal trespass when they attempted to barge into the office of a state official in Seattle, and not one WORD of this appeared in the PRESS.


So, why isn't the "journalists" doing their JOBS?  If you ask THEM, they ARE, and they are working harder than ever to keep pace with fast breaking news in a twenty-four/seven news cycle.  If that's true and they ARE doing their jobs, they're doing them about as effectively as a sleeping air traffic controller, unless THEY have a different understanding of what their job IS than WE do.  I never aspired to be a professional journalist, but I DID take a journalism ELECTIVE in college and in that course I was taught that the job of a journalist was the objective dissemination of INFORMATION.  To the PROFESSIONAL journlaist, however, the job is more one of "shaping public opinon"  which they do by editing the story and deciding what information the public should and should NOT receive.  They think of us in the same way Jack Nicholson's character in "A Few Good Men" thought of Tom Cruise's character, namely that we can't "handle the truth."


The REALITY if not that we can't HANDLE it, but that if we were TOLD the TRUTH, we might come to the conclusion that the things the journalists and liberals in general support are not GOOD for this country and that's what they can't abide.  They can't accept the FACT that America was at it's best BEFORE we became a progressively dominated "nanny state." Most people who live their lives in the progressively and marxist dominated professions will NEVER understand that big government is not the solution to our problems,  but rather that it's the SOURCE of most of them. The best way to explain this view on the part of those who are of the progressive mindset is with this quote by  Dresden James, who said: ‎"When a well-packed web of lies has been sold gradually to the masses over generations, the truth will seem utterly preposterous and its speaker a raving lunatic." That is why no liberal will EVER be able to relate to the average tea party member, or any small business owner.  And WHO is that has been the most ardent SELLERS of the "well packed web of lies" that government FORCE and not individual initiative and personal responsibility, is the best path to prosperity.  The two biggest "pushers" of the marxist DRUG are TEACHERS and JOURNALISTS.  


In the case of TEACHERS they were first the addicts (victims of OTHER liberal educators who instilled in them a sense of victimization and need for social "justice" delivered by government) and now they are PUSHERS perpetuating a vicious cycle that's gone on for GENERATIONS now and results in students who can't read or write, but know that gay penguins are good and dodgeball is BAD.  In the case of journalists, the same paradigm applies, but it is augmented and amplified because every "professional journalist" was trained in the Walter Lippmann model of journalism, aka PROPAGANDA.  


Walter Lippmann was part of Woodrow Wilson's propaganda trio that included Edward Bernays and George Creel.  These three were Wilson's allies in "persuading" the American oublic that we "needed" to be involved in World War I.  Wilson's motivation for wanting us to get into this conflict was very simple.  He saw it as the perfect way to bring out his "League of Nations" the precursor to the United Nations.  Of course, trying to persuade the average American that his or her SON should risk DEATH for this lofty and imperious goal was gonna take a different method of "persuasion" which is where hs trio of propagandists come into play.  In his book "The Phantom Public" Lippmann wrote "The hypothesis which seems to me the most fertile are that NEWS and the TRUTH are NOT the same thing and must be CLEARLY distinguished (emphasis added)."  He goes on to say: "the function of news is to signalize an event. The function of TRUTH is to bring to light the HIDDEN facts, to set them into relation with each other, and to make a picture of reality on which can ACT"  In other words, namely MINE, the "journalist" is, in FACT, a puppet master, NOT an honest broker of information.  Is it any surprise then that the most infamous propagandist of them all, Dr. Josef Goebbels, Hitler's Minister of PROPAGANDA, read this BOOK.


Walter Lippmann is often hailed as the "Father of MODERN journalism" especially by students of the Columbia University School of Journalism where he is practically a DEITY. Columbia University has been the "mother ship" of American Communism (which is what many of the so-called liberals REALLY are) ever since the Nazis drove the Frankfurt Institute communists out of Germany and onto the faculty of Columbia University. So is it any wonder that students at THAT school of journallism would embrace PROPAGANDA as a means to their desired goals? In point of fact, the modern censorship and thought control phenomenon known as "political correctness ALSO originated at Columbia University, and was the product of Dr. Herbert Markusa and his colleagues, part of the aforementioned Frankfurt Institute Communists expatriated from Germany by the Nazis.  Put marxists who worship at the alter of "political correctness" and "propaganda" together, and you have today's "Journalists."   


The most "liberal" professions in the fabric of mdoern American society are the legal profession, the teaching profession, and the journalism profession.  So, when teachers "misbehave" for political reasons, it stands to reason that their fellow liberals in the journalism profession would IGNORE of downplay  that behavior so that the FACTS don't get in the way of the NARRATIVE they're trying to sell us.  Teachers get a pass for bad political behavior, but they're front page news if they have SEX with a student.  Criminal and terroristic death threats to opposing party policians-NOT news, but consensual sex with horny student-front page NEWS.  It's all, quite simply, LIBERALS behaving BADLY!

The Baby Boomers, Our "WORST" Generation!

"What's the matter with kids today?" is the title of a song from the musical "Bye, Bye Birdie" pretty much sums up everything I'm about to say about the generation that gave us hippies, "Hanoi Jane" Fonda, the "Easy Rider," Woodstock, and free lovin''. I'm referring of course to the "Baby Boomer" generation, those children born in the late 1940's following the end of World War II. This generation owes it's size and everything else to the fact that there were a lot of "hookups" happening when "Johnny came marching home" from the European and Pacific theaters. These actions had consequences,  and in keeping with the morality of the day, these men and women got MARRIED and actually RAISED the children they had conceived during their drunken "hook-ups."  Lucky for the BOOMER Generation, there WERE no Planned Parenthood abortion mills or free clinics around the corner to keep THEM from being born.

So how is it possible that the generation that survived the Great Depression and then fought and defeated the Axis powers of Germany, Italy, and Japan, came back home and led this country to one of the greatest periods of prosperity and growth the word has ever seen, produce a generation that in less than fifty years time would singlehandedly undo everything their parents and grandparents had done for them? Sadly, a significant portion of the blame rests wtih the Greatest Generation, themselves. They were so determined that their children should know none of the hardship and adversity that marred their younger lives that they were over-indulgent and over protective of their children to the extent that they literally spoiled them ROTTEN.

The GREATEST generation had grown up in a country that was in the grip of the Great Depression for mos of their lives.  They had their CHARACTER forged in the blood and iron of World War II.  They had know real hardships, deprivation, and seen all manner of human suffering and they were determined that their CHILDREN would not know such things if they could help it.  This goal was made possible by the economc boom that followed the finish of both the WAR, and the economic policies of Frankin D. Roosevelt wnen a President with good old fashined COMMON SENSE took the office and proceeded to dismantle the maze of alphbet soup buracracies put in place during the New (or was it RAW)  Deal.  Truman understood that it was in fact these very policies that were responsbile for the United States being the ONLY country int he WORLD to have a GREAT Deperession, which  had only ABATED during the war and reared its' ugly head once more when Johnny came marching HOME again and tried to a find a JOB that did NOT include catching bullets as part of its' enumeration of duties.

Thanks to the economic boom that Truman enabled, the children of the BOOMER generation were the first to grow up if not actually IN the LAP of luxury, they were in pretty closee proximity to it.  It was THIS generation that was the first to expect new cloethes at the beginning of EVERY school year, catered birthday parties (complete with clown or magician), a backyard swimming pool, air conditioning, television, and the possibility of getting handed the keys to a new or late model used  car upon reaching their seixteenth birthday and obtaining their driver's license.  This was ALSO the first generation for whom the possibilty of a university education was more than a remote one.  Sadly, many of the boomers did go to college wehre they ran smack into the waiting arms of communist ideologues tthat had been infiltrating the faculties of these colleges and universities since the early part of tghe twentieth century, when Americans learned the extent of the atrocities perpetrated by the Bolsheviks during the Russian Revolution and Communism become the anathema to Americans that it did and SHOULD have REMAINED!

Imagine the pride shining in the eyes of parents of the GREATEST generation as they packed their wholesome, fresh faced, corn fed progreny off to college to become Doctors, or engineers, or even LAWYERS (which were still REPECTED in those days). These children would have opportunities the parents never even DREAMED of.  Conversely, imaagine their HORROR when, a few short months LATER, they opened their door to find a greasy, long-haired, unhygenic, drug addled HIPPIE standing  where there son had been, or if it's a daughter, add PREGNANT to the description, the father being one of her philosophy professors.  Now imagine, that you've reovered from your initilal shock,  only to find out over dinner that the child that had revered you as his HERO and wanted to be just like you, now referred to you as a "capitalist PIG" or "the MAN" or "the ESTABLISHMENT" or  a  "Bourgoisee criminal" and vowing to bring your entire way of life down around your ears.  These were scenes that played out in American households all throughout the SIXTIES and SEVENTIES.

To be fair, not EVERY member of the boomer generation turned into a HIPPIE.  Indeed, many of them, thanks to a strong  Christian family upbringing, were able to resist the lure of marxism and the temptations of hedonism.  It was for this reason that more extreme marxists like Bill Ayers opined that students needed to be radicalized at an earlier age, prompting many commynist thinkers and sympathizers to become teachers themselves and enter the elementary and secondary schools to being indoctrinating children that were less mature and less experienced.  For these reasons, they were less likely to oppose the ideas being forced upon them by teachers more interested in creating future communistis than in actually TEACHING children to do anything productive, like READ.   But that's a topic for a while different essay.

If there is a simple way to distill the real legacy of the boomers into something that will fit in a Twitter post, it would be that this generation destroyed the American concepts of  personal responsibility, and the FAMILY. If you think about it logically, thanks to boomers actions no long have CONSEQUENCES, at leastt not PERSONAL ones, in theory at least.

Think about it this way. If you're sexually irresponsible, they created a pill to spare you those consequnces, and they'll give out condoms as well as teach you how to do things in school. if you STILL manage to and get KNOCKED up, they made it legal to murder the baby so it doesn't become a burden to you, and they'll even help you get around telling your PARENTS.   If you opt to HAVE the child, you're eligible for all manner of free stuff from the federal and state government including unearned income tax cfedit, welfare, subsidized housing, food stamps, medicaid, etc.  You've hit the JACKPOT.

Likewise, If you rack up debt you can't pay, no problem. They pass a law and suddenly you're FREE and CLEAR.  If you take crazy risks run a business into the ground, no problem. Either the GOVENRMENT can bail you out, or you can go bankrupt, and as long as you  haven't committed a criminal act (like a Madoff style Ponzii scheme) , your house, car, Rolex, and bank accounts are safe.  Too bad the same CAN'T be said for your shareholders.  This explains to conduct of Wall Street, Counbtrywide Morrgage, and FANNIE  MAE and FREDDIE MAC in causing the recent housing and stock market MELTDOWN,  but why it is that only Bernie Madoff lost everything and wen tto PRISON?  Why is Angelo Mozilla still strutting aroudn free an dliving in his placial estate?

IN a different way of illustrating lack of personal responsibility, if a government wants to invade your privacy but that pesky FOURTH Amendment keeps getting in the way, no problem again. We'll just pass a PATRIOT Act, and suddenly, they can LEGALLY come into your home, business, bank account, mailbox or wahever whenever they  please, and WITHOUT your knowledge, let alone CONSENT.  The whole BOOMER generation thinks they can LEGISLATE anything, and that their drones in the LEGAL system and Judiciary will give them cover.  Sadly, they seem to have been RIGHT in that assessment for the most part. Progressive or liberal activist judges have legalized CRIMINAL behavior msny times over.

Why do you think good little commies become either LAWYERS or Community Organizers? It's to FORCE legislation, or write law via the BENCH that they can't get through the ballot box such as ABORTION!  No elected legislator ever passed a law legalizing abortion.  That was done by the COURTS.  Since the landmark and totally UNCONSITUTIONAL "Roe v. Wade" case, however, MANY legislators have voted to spend taxpayer dollars subsidizing the abortion INDUSTRY via Planned Parenthood, and now through Obama Care!   Since the boomers entered colleges, more generation of Americans are becoming Teachers, lawyers, or community organizers than any other career fields.  Wouldn't it nice if you could find a DOCTOR when you need one?  Wouldn't it be even NICER to find MEN who know how to DO more than talk or type?

The BOOMERS have been on the political, social, and economic scene for nearly FIFTY years now, and in their wake is a country that went from a moral nation and an eoconomic and military superpower that produced the finest goods in the world and had a rock solid economy, to a national riddled with debt, social problems, economic misery, devalued currency and eroding freedoms.  To see how  much we've lost form what THEY inherited, you have only to watch old movies, find old newspapers on microfilm at your local library, watch reruns of "Happy Days" or even the more current show "Mad Men."  I think one of the reasons for the popularity of THAT show, it that it reminds of the time in our history when it was really GOOD to be an AMERICAN!   Clearly we've lost a LOT during the stewardship of the BOOMERS, and like the ripple effect created in a pond when you toss a rock in th ecenter, this generation has INFECTED every successive one in greater and greater numbers.

So, the next time you see an aged hippie boomer rolling down the road on his power scooter and you're sorely temptedto exact a little "poetic justice" by pushing it over on top of him, think again.  The mantra of the boomers was "if if feels good, DO it" and though it may FEEL great to knock that old hippie over on his ass and crush him under his own scooter, don't DO it.  In that way, you're REJECTING his entire philosophy of life, and only by doing THAT can we hope to being to clean up the MESS left to us by our WORST generation and restore this country to it's natural state of FREEDOM and PROSPERITY!

The "Myth" and "Reality"of Health Care Reform

Yesterday I, like many of my fellow Americans, lost several hours of my life that I will NEVER get back watching the "Blair House Dog n' Pony" show that was the Health Care Summit. The purported idea behind the "summit" was for Republican and Democratic congressmen to engage in a free and open exchange of ideas for reforming our health care delivery system with the President and members of his administration. On the surface this is what appears to have occurred, but as we're all too well aware, appearances can be deceiving. Since this Administration and Congress took power, that seems to have become the RULE itself, not the exception it was once thought to be. What became readily apparent to me, however, was that what was happening had absolutely NOTHING to do with health care reform at all. What health care "reform" is, and has ALWAYS been, is a naked power grab by the federal government of the United States. It is the latest in a SERIES of grabs, by this government for federal control of private businesses and industries with the SOLE aim of increasing the POWER of the federal government. This is FASCISM by definition.

When the Democrats initiated healthcare "reform" their stated goal was to bring down the cost curve, to allow for portability of insurance, to eliminate the pre-existing condition exclusion, and to ensure that the however many millions of uninsured Americans there REALLY are (since the number varies in each politician's speech) could obtain affordable healthcare coverage. Then the Democratic controlled houses of Congress managed to put together and pass two bills that accomplish few if ANY of their stated goals (according to a panoply of non-political business, economic, and insurance experts), expand the size and authority of the federal government, and cost the taxpayers approximately a TRILLION dollars above and beyond the current budget.

While the public had voiced it's disapproval at the directions the Democrats were taking their legislation at Town Hall meetings and tea party rallies, the Democrats chose to ignore their constituents and press ahead. But when word of the veritable "bribery" of Senators Mary Landrieu and Ben Nelson became public knowledge, voter anger exploded and the Democrats lost their veto proof super majority in the senate as Massachusetts elected Scott Brown to the Senate head long held by the late democratic Senator, Edward M. Kennedy. This turnover of a once secure seat to a republican in the very democratic state of Massachusetts, together with rising public disapproval for their legislation, and the fact that all house democrats and several prominent senators have to face re-election in less than a year put the legislation on a very shaky footing. While the separate bills had passed in their respective houses, there were substantial differences between the two bills that would make reconciliation difficult if not impossible. To many, myself included, it appeared as though the push for health care reform was effectively stalled, if not dead.

Then, out of nowhere, it's back and now the Democrats realize they are going to need republican support to get health care legislation passed. Additionally, because of the upcoming election, they WANT the political cover of having republicans on board with this legislation. To this end, they have been courting the more progressive republicans in both the Senate and House and getting nowhere. For this reason, President Obama convened the Health Care Summit at Blair House so that prominent congressional democrats and republicans could get together with him and key members of his administration to try to arrive at a workable compromise legislation that could garner true bi-partisan support. To their credit, Republican legislators showed up and presented a variety of time tested and proven free market solutions which, if implemented, would likely produce the results the democrats claim to want, and without the trillion dollar price tag or need to expand federal bureaucracy. If the Democrats really wanted to fix the system, they would take the Republican's ideas, put them in the bill, and if they worked, take credit for fixing health care in the next election and, if they didn't, blame the Republicans in the next election. All this is merely academic at this point as health care reform is only the magician's assistant. The REAL "trick" in these pieces of legislation is the creation of an American replication of Great Britain's National Health Service.

The National Health Service of Great Britain is the largest single employer on that tiny island. One out of every three working adult Britains is employed by this agency. Of these only one out of three is a medical professional such as a doctor or a nurse. The rest are paper pushing bureaucrats. If you take into account all the workers of other British governmental agencies, nearly forty-five percent of all adult workers in England work for the government and one HUNDRED percent depend on that government for health care. This creates a large and LOYAL voting constituency for the Labor party resulting in that party's veritable stranglehold on political power for the majority of the past thirty years. A great French writer by the name of Alexis De Tocqueville once stated that "Democracy will endure until the day politicians discover that they can bribe the people with public funds." That is EXACTLY what has kept the Labor party in power, and this lesson has NOT gone unheeded by our own democratic politicians.

In addition to the INTENT of the health care "reform" legislation, there is a far more dire and (I HOPE) unintended consequence that can occur if this legislation is signed into law in it's present forms. The net effect of this budgetary nightmare might very well bring to fruition the Cloward-Piven Stragety, especially when combined with the unravelling of the Ponzii schemes that the Social Security and Medicare entitlement programs have become. Thanks in no small part to the Babt Boomer's free love and unfettered abortion policies there are not enough working adults in the private sector of the economy paying into the system to keep pace with the benefits that will have to paid out, esp if no new manufacturing or other capital producing jobs are created in the next ten years. To understand what the net effect of Cloward-Piven will be, you have only to look at what happened to the former Soviet Union, and what's happening in Greece today. Thst is Cloward-Piven in ACTION.

The total economic, political, and social upheaval in this country that would result is the revolution that many progressive Baby Boomers have been dreaming about and creaming their flower appliqued bell-bottomed jeans over since they were teenagers fornicating in the mud at Woodstock. The destruction of America as it has always been, and the remaking of it as a socialist UTOPIA is and has ALWAYS been the goal of the boomer progressives, and with this one piece of legislation, they may well be able to achieve that goal and put the final nail in the coffin that was once the United States of America.What Bill Ayers and the Weather Underground could not accomplish with their bombs, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid may be able to do with their two thousand page bills.

Woith the election of Republican Scott Brown and the loss of the democrats filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, we the PEOPLE thought we had ended this very existential threat. Sadly, healthcare reform seems to have had a "Lazarus" moment and is once again alive and well. Actually, the legislation is more like Michael Myers in the "Halloween" movies and we all know that you can't kill the boogeyman. But like the boogeyman, if you don't kill this legislation now and for all time, it will rise up again and kill you and yours, fiscally speaking.

If the Democrats are allowed to succeed in this, when we go on to our great reward, or punishment, as the case may be, we may very well have to face the Founding Fathers and account for the mess we made of their once noble experiment. Remember, these guys settled their differences with canes, swords, and pistols, and we may very well deserve the thrashing we will receive at their hands for what we have allowed to happen to what THEY bequeathed us. In less than fifty years time, these elitist idiotswill have rolled back every reform of humanism since the Renaissance, and the Enlightenment. We think it no good thing that Islamic terrorists want to take us back to the Dark Ages, but in reality it's our own progressive elites that want to return us to the Dark Ages and feudal serfdom. I truly hope there is a special corner in the hottest part of hell for progressive politicians in BOTH parties for the part they have played in systematically destroying the last, best, hope for mankind and freedom in this world.

Where Have All Our JOBS Gone?

In the days of the Hippies, and the Vietnam era protests there was a song frequently sung by the protesters called "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?" It was a hit for the group "The Kingston Trio" and the trio, Peter, Paul, and Mary, and was based on a Russian poem called "And Quietly Flows the Don." The gist of both the song and the poem were that all things have both a cause and an effect and are cyclical in nature. 

In the song lyrics,the first question posed was "Where have all the flowers gone?" Answer:"Young girls picked them everyone." The next question was "where have all the young girls gone?" Answer" Gone to young men, everyone" followed by men to soldiers, soldiers to graveyards, and graveyards to flowers illustrating both the futility of war and the cyclical nature of all things using the flower as a metaphor for life. Makes sense, doesn't it? However, when the same question is posed about American jobs, too often the political ideology kicks in and the blame game begins. 

If you're a conservative, you blame the UNIONS. If you're a liberal or Marxist,you blame big business and Wall Street. In either case, you'd be both wrong and RIGHT. To blame either faction as the sole cause of the eradication of the manufacturing sector of our economy would be an oversimplification and misinterpretation of the events that transpired to bring it about. 

From the beginning of the period that followed the end of World War II to about the mid 1970's, roughly two thirds of the finished manufactured goods sold all over the world were made in the United States.During this boom period, we had relatively non-existent unemployment because anyone willing to WORK could find a job. Not only could one FIND a job with relatively little education or experience but onecould support himself and his family in a respectable manner on what he earned from working at such a job. It was also possible to work that same job for twenty years or so and retire from it with a gold watch and a pension that, together with accumulated social security benefits, would allow one to live a relatively secure and comfortable retirement. To understand how we went from being the world's largest producer of finished goods to one of the world's largest consumers, you have to look at organized labor, progressive politicians, the legal profession (creators of the litigation INDUSTRY), and the "wolves of Wall Street."

I'm not writing this solely for the purpose of bashing labor unions. Unions have done a lot of good things for the American worker. Without Unions, there would be no 40 hour work week, sick days, maternity leave,worker's compensation, child labor laws, and a variety of other laws we take for granted in the modern workplace. At their inception, Unions were comprised of men who WORKED in the industry whose workers they represented. They were true peers of their fellow union brethren, and as such, represented their interests with diligence and empathy against corporate executives and managers. By the late 1950s however, unions had been corrupted by both organized crime, and union management that had no relationship to or understanding of its' members as they had been hired directly out of colleges and LAW schools without having EVER done a hard day's work in their lives.

In the late 1930s, the unions were infiltrated by organized crime families following the loss of their Prohibition revenues, and who used the Union's dues pools and retirement pensions as slush funds to build casinos in Havana and Las Vegas. In the election of 1960, Kennedy family patriarch Joseph P. Kennedy used this relationship to help securetheelection of his son, John F. Kennedy, to the presidency, which resulted in the "quid pro quo" exdecutive order legalizing (for the FIRST time in U.S. History) collective bargaining rights for FEDERAL employees. This provided the model that ultimately institutionalized PUBLIC Sector Unions and gave them the stranglehold they now hold on our states and municipalities. Even the uber progressive Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt knew that doing THAT would lead to econonic DISASTER, but Kennedy paid his father's BILL with OUR money.

From that time on, Union leaders saw the power and profit potential inherent in political activism and became more concerned with their personal and political ambitions than the welfare of their members. It was ALSO around this time that labor unions become the targets of infiltration by the Communist Party of the USA, whose agenda had been set forth in its "45 Stated GOALS for the TAKEOVER of America." 

Unions used their new found legislative clout to get laws passed the strengthened their position in one sided collective bargaining (especially in the PUBLIC sector) and to extort higher wages and greater benefits including "cadillac" health care benefits, unrealistic pensions and stock options for their workers. This went on for a time until the cheaper imported manufactured goods began entering the country and finding their way ontostore shelves. Free market forces put the American manufacturers in an untenable position between a rock and a hard place and they realized they could not continue in business if they couldn't be competitive in pricing their products. However, due to their high labor costs and union contracts, they could do nothing to bring down their manufacturing costs so they were hemorrhaging market share to the cheaper imports. This resulted in deminishing sales, declining profits, and lower share values. More than one manufacturer was run out of business altogether, but some found a way to shake the union yoke once and for all and still remain profitable and this is when the "Wolves" of Wall Street started to howl.

In the Reagan era the 1980s, wall streeters coined a new term for America's financial lexicon. This term was "maximizing shareholder value." It was this concept that gave rise to the corporate raider portrayed to perfection by Michael Douglas in the character of Gordon Gekko from Oliver Stone's classic movie "Wall Street." What the corporate raider did was seek out companies that had been declining in profits and share prices, but still had sufficient cash and assets to make the acquisition worthwhile. These raiders however had no intention of running the business once they bought it. Their purpose was to dismantle these corporations and sell off their assets because the companies were more valuable for their parts than for the corporation as a whole and functioning business. They would "maximize the shareholder value by buying the shares at or above market price thereby removing the shareholders from the business model. They would then either work with the existing boardof directors or a new one they inserted to liquidate the assets of the corporation like its real property, inventory, fixtures and equipment or replace them with a slate of officers chosen by the liquidator specifically for this purpose. Employees would be immediately terminated because the board only has a fiduciary duty to shareholders not to employees, and the equipment would be sold off, normally to an overseas concern. 

The dirty little secret to this whole process is that before the takeover, the boards of directors would often organize another company or corporation overseas in a country that was more hospitable to business and when the equipment and fixtures was sold, it would be that company, secretly owned and operated by the same board of directors, that would purchase the equipment and fixtures at a bargain price. The company would then set up a new company to import and sell to retail the products now manufactured overseas, and it's profit would come from the wholesale to retail sales model now inplace. By this slight-of-hand, the corporations effectively reorganized, removed the union and the high labor and operating costs they would have paid in this country, and with a more streamlined business model in place, could realize greater profits than were realized prior to the "liquidation." New corporate name and no manufacturing facilities or employees meansno more UNION obligations. This process was repeated throughout the 1980s and 90s until the manufacturing sector of the American economy was all but EXTINCT, and it's not limited to manufacturing either. Try calling customer service for your credit card to airline today and you'll probably be talking to someone in New Dehli, India. Apparently it's cheaper to pay the long distance charges and the Indian wage than it is to pay Union scale wages and benefits in the customer service industry. 

The loss of these jobs was not the goal of either the unions or the progressives in government. The INTENT of the unions was to use government power that they bought and paid for to effectively wrest (aka STEAL) control of the corporations and their profits from their rightful owners, the shareholders, as we saw in the rape of GM and Chrysler shareholders (aka the rightful OWNERS) by both the UAW and the US Governmentacting in concert. 

The LOSS of the manufacturing jobs and resulting boom-bubble-BUST economic cycles was an "unintended consequence" of the progressive political and social agenda. Seems, however, that most, if not ALL of those progressive political and social agendas are fraught with the damages from the "unintended consequences" on progressives who don't think past the end of their upturned noses when implementing their ideologically driven, but poorly reasoned, agendas. Ironically, we're NOW supposed to believe that CHANGE will come from doing the EXACT same THING only with the GOVERNMENT doing the manipulating instead of the wolves of wall street. 

At the beginning of this piece I referenced the song "Where Have All the Flowers Gone" I chose that song not only to illustrate the cyclicalnature of events, but because it has a most appropriate tag line for our current economic and political situation. That line is "When will we EVER learn?" And the sad ANSWER to the question is, apparently, WE will NEVER learn.