You know, I’ve told you guys about AP, once again…he’s in his nineties, and what a great bunch of people he and his family are. I’ve also mentioned AP’s concern over the goings on in our Country today, and with this being the case AP started throwing his two-cents out there in his own bid to try an educate as many people as he possibly could.
When he first started out with his political writings it was during the campaign and post-election of our sitting President. He saw the associations kept by our President, and the ideology of his political agenda. Thus, he titled his first writings, and it stuck…”The Revolution.”
Since the takeover of our Congress by a Republican majority, and the closing of the gap in the Senate, and seeing the growth and popularity of the Tea Party, AP saw a swing in the attitude of the American people.
In a show of support to these things taking place, and seeing a new movement by the people to “vote the bums out,” AP dropped the “R” out of “The Revolution,” and it became simply “Evolution.” Let’s all hope and pray that he’s right on the money in his assumption.
Here’s my good buddy’s thoughts for the week…enjoy.
EVOLUTION………SEPTEMBER 1, 2011
“If you don’t read the newspaper you are uninformed, if you do read the newspaper you are misinformed”…….Mark Twain
Over the weekend, I started to think about what I wanted to write about Labor Day because I thought the day of celebration was later this week, only to be informed that Labor Day was next Monday……since I will not be able to remember for that long a period of time, let us just “make believe”….
The first Labor Day in the United States was observed on September 5, 1882 in Boston by the Central Labor Union of New York, the nation’s first integrated major trade union. It became a federal holiday in 1894 when, following the deaths of a number of workers at the hands of the U.S. military and U.S. Marshals during the Pullman Strike, President Grover Cleveland put reconciliation with the labor movement as a top political priority. Fearing further conflicts, legislation making Labor Day a national holiday was rushed through Congress unanimously and signed into law a mere six days after the end of the strike. First called “International Workers Day”, the name was changed to the current “Labor Day”, chosen by the CLU of New York, because President Cleveland thought the original name would stir up negative emotions tied to the Haymarket Affair: on May 4, 1886 a bomb went off in Chicago that ignited the nation’s first Communist scare. The blast killed seven police officers and led to the hanging of four anarchists accused of plotting the attack.
My brief exposure to the fear of Communism among labor union workers took place on one of my father’s projects, where there were always men sitting on the curb opposite the buildings, looking for work. When none were hired, they started calling those who were working (non-union) scabs and started throwing rocks, which soon became ugly enough to call the police. In our family there was only one die-hard union member…..that was our beloved, gentle Uncle Harry, who was a member of Local 1 Union of Electrical Workers……..no way a “red”, but devoted enough to always having an argument with the rest of the white collar workers of the family.
HURRICANE IRENE………what more could I add to what you have witnessed this past week……Mother Nature really unleashed her fury, and it will be years for the people affected to regain what were once their most valuable possessions, if ever…….Having lived in one of the most damaged areas of Vermont, is was with great sadness that I watched on TV the town of Wilmington almost disappear……..Wilmington was high in respect to its elevation; the Chamber of Commerce called our hills “Mountains” to ensure skiers would try their skills on Mount Snow and Haystack “Mountain”………this area, like most of Vermont, was quite hilly, with lots of streams (also called “rivers” by the locals). Most of the roads were winding two lanes, some paved, that had stone bridges over the streams…..during the height of the winter season, little to no water passed under these bridges as they were frozen, which caused spring flooding ……while watching Irene causing her destruction, I saw two historic covered bridges floating down one of our larger streams, now a river, and the other, which crossed the Connecticut River, collapsed and started to float south. I doubt if either of these historic bridges, which were both over 75 years, will ever be replaced, and the photos will be the only evidence of what Vermont once was. Of course, the stories around the local bars will be enhanced by the beer induced conversations……..IRENE will long be remembered by Vermonters and all the other states that experienced the wrath of IRENE……
THE FISCAL HURRICANE SEASON…….Hurricane Irene is out to sea now. Surprisingly, Florida was spared, but that doesn’t mean the danger is over for the Sunshine State or taxpayers across the country. Florida still faces a fiscal hurricane that is going to hit the state’s catastrophic insurance funds when the next big wind blows, and ALL AMERICANS may end up paying. This situation may be repeated in the states that have been affected by Irene.
The Florida Catastrophic Fund (CAT FUND) estimates that if this storm had landed in Florida, its CAT FUND would have had about $18.8 billion in liabilities, but only $7.3 billion in liquid assets, leaving a gap of $11.5 billion. The FUND forecasts a 5.4% chance that a hurricane could cause more than $15 billion in claims….
If you think a 5% chance is unreliable, remember Category 5 Katarina in 2005, or Andrew in 1992.
NATIONAL LABOR RELATION BOARD (partially repeated from previous EVOLUTIONs)…..which is tasked with overseeing unions and companies they work for, you can see the pushiness in the NLRB’s brazen behavior in the case where the NLRB has taken Boeing to court because Boeing had decided to open a plant in South Carolina, a right-to-work state.
It goes back to the days of FDR, who inadvertently changed the Wagner Act into a more ambivalent, but still aggressive law called the Taft-Hartley Act, ending the glory days of the closed shop of bullies. But it allowed unions to demand dues, or the equivalent of fees, from the non-union workers who would now sit beside unionized ones. This ruling was changed to allow the states to write their own labor laws, “right-to-work” being the nucleus of the right of the twenty-plus right-to-work states.
As the suit against Boeing began, Audi moved their plant to Mexico, rather than Chattanooga, TN where its parent company, Volkswagen, has a plant.
“The best Labor Days will come in the future, when Unions are truly voluntary”, as a speaker at the Council on Foreign Relations noted in 1918, “American unions have to be voluntary to be democratic. There may be here and there a worker who for certain reasons unexplainable to us, does not join a union; this is his right no matter how morally wrong he may be”….the name of the speaker was Samuel Gompers. Gompers started his labor career sympathetic to the ideals of socialism. By 1896 he adopted a more conservative approach to labor relations, making peace with Capitalism and the American system. He had once preached the inevitability of class conflict and the need to abolish “wage slavery”….He slowly began to proclaim the virtues of class harmony and the possibilities of a more benevolent Capitalism…..Gompers was a very sick man; he collapsed in Mexico City on December 6, 1924 while attending the Pan-American Federation of Labor conference. Knowing he had little time to live, and wanting to die on American soil, he was placed aboard a special train and sped to the border. Samuel Gompers was buried at the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Sleepy Hollow, New York. Ironically, he was buried a few yards from industrialist Andrew Carnegie, another important figure of industry during the Gilded Age. This was a man who gave his life to promote peaceful, organized economic power of the workers.
THE AMAZING STEVE JOBS………people will be trying to isolate and bottle the “leadership secrets of Steve Jobs” till the end of business time, but of course it’s impossible.
His story isn’t just a story of one person, but the combination of time, place and person, spawning a career in industrial of awesome proportions. Mr. Jobs founded two pivotal companies in American history. Both happened to be named Apple. One was the apple of Macintosh; the other was the apple of iPhone. He made it official when he made Apple Computer to APPLE. His purpose was not to fill a niche in an industrial landscape, but to realize the full potential of the medium that Apple had committed itself. It made Mr. Jobs, despite himself, an empire builder. His success brought rivals Amazon and Google.
His determination to cling to life, at least partly for the benefit of the company he created and the customers he had accrued is outstanding. His willingness to show his withered self in order to show the world the latest wonders of Apple product development was painful and glorious to watch.
We’ll put up Part 2 in our next column…