Just the other day I was verbally assaulted with socialism.
Per my usual workday I was taking the morning commuter into downtown Chicago. As I stand in the train’s vestibule I visit with my fellow travelers. Our conversations run the gamut of silly to bordering on the unspoken: politics, religion and money.
Well, just as I mentioned, I was slimed by socialism.
As I was talking with my friends a guy comes into the vestibule to wait out the rest of the ride. He was apparently eager to get off the train and light up a smoke.
Victory cigarettes
Wearing a chartreuse tee-shirt of a union pipefitter (seen around Chicago) and with a pack of smokes in his one breast pocket, this guy proceeded to let us know that he arrived.
One of our group asked him where he worked and what he did. (We usually try to engage everyone who ‘visits” the vestibule.)
The guy mentioned that he was working in a building downtown “putting in 24” pipe.” He spoke with the raspy demonic-sounding voice of a heavy smoker.
Then, without prompting and like striking flint, he said, “I hate corporate America. I hate the rich, highly paid CEOs. Who needs gold toilet seats?!” “You think union workers get paid a lot. You should see what they take out of my paycheck!”
“OK?” I said to myself. Well, here we go again: typical union griping, now on a Thursday morning.
I have heard the same sort of discontent (putting it nicely) from union postal workers, train conductors, teachers, electricians, plumbers, service workers-from all of them. And, whether the gripe is about pay grade, work time, pecking order, vacation time, labor management (a partial list of complaints, to be sure) I have heard it all. Union people have left their destiny in the hands of others in hopes of being insured against unhappiness. Guess again. Socialism takes regular drawdowns on your account of happiness.
I have heard the same sort of morbid discontent as campaign vote pandering. It slips off the politician’s tongues (here paraphrased) as “zero sum anthropogenic poverty caused by the rich and CO2”, “…limited pie…”, “…we need unlimited government…”, and (verbatim) “Fair share”; “The 1%”.
Victory Gin
All such materialism driven policies enacted to “unionize” society, in my estimation, reduce life to a boring unromantic dystopia. In other words these politicians want you to, “go drink your 1984 Victory Gin and be happy. We will take care of you. Do what you were told with what we gave you. There is no romance in Socialism so don’t even think of love, only of sex.” (Hah, imagine Hollywood under socialist financial constraints! Morally, Hollywood is already dependent on the lowest common cultural denominator.)
I decided not to talk to the union guy unless others broached a response and decided to go there. I could tell by his demeanor that this guys’ mind was probably as darkened as his lungs must be.
He went on to speak about his working on and off again depending on … when work is made available to him…through the union. Months would go by until he got a call.
Then he spoke of his heart’s desire: “My precious!”-The long awaited-for pension. With wide-eyed craving he spoke of his retirement: “Only six more years of this stuff left.”
Unions have a unique way of making people ache for the ring of retirement. I’ve seen it firsthand. It comes, I believe, from the on and off nature of union work along with boredom and plenty of worrisome smokes in between, a situation this guy and others let others control. Socialism is losing control of your life while waiting for the day you can retire and live off your meager pension and then, likely, smoke and drink yourself to death within a short time. Union-socialism roadkill. I’ve seen it over and over.
At this point I wanted to ask him who runs his pension and ask if it was invested in something more than a saving account making 0.01% interest or a CD making 0.09 % interest. Or, was his pension invested in equities and bonds, more appreciable (and risky) financial vehicles.
One could easily figure that the “highly paid” union lords control his pension (and get their cut) and that the union pension fund itself is managed by outside financial managers who manage stock and bond purchases of the union’s pension fund.
The “highly paid” overseers of his pension as fiduciaries must look at the composite financials of companies with stock and bond offerings to determine the best option to apply to a conservative pension, to have it grow while minimizing risk.
Obviously this union guy knew pipefitting and welding. But he did not know finances let alone how to find work on his own. He, instead, left others in charge of providing him work and with overseeing his “precious” pension.
Right then and there I wanted to say to this guy that when you leave your life in the hands of others they will charge you for their effort, including “highly paid” labor leaders (e.g., Richard Trumka).
Union treasuries—filled by dues paid by union members—not only fund programs benefiting union members and their families. The money also
Richard Trumka “highly paid” Union CEO
pays six-figure salaries and benefits for labor leaders and their top staffs, and provides tens of millions of dollars for Democratic causes and candidates.
Here’s the arrogant and petty AFL-CIO union thug Richard Trumka tweeting his call for “two minutes hate” directed at Gov. Scott Walker who is dropping out of the 2016 presidential race:
#ScottWalker is still a disgrace, just no longer national.
“Highly paid” CEOs are charged with managing a company so as to make its value grow and to make its stockholders happy with the company’s prospects for future earnings. The company’s worth must appreciate in value. And when a company’s stock appreciates in value many people benefit. This includes employees who receive stock as a bonus. Pension funds invested in such a company’s stock also grow in value. Somehow I think any such statement to him would not meld with his union-socialist-collectivist way of life. He would go into Elizabeth Warren override.
I left out this: companies run by “highly paid” CEOs hire people and pay them to function within the company. Together CEOs and the people make the company profitable or otherwise. The people are free to stay or move on depending on their satisfaction with any number of things including pay, management, location, etc. “Highly paid” CEOs increase value. Collectivist governments, socialist governments and unions depreciate value-especially, your value, via coercive egalitarianism.
Those of us in the Kingdom of God must not take the wide way that is offered to us either by a self-described socialist such as Bernie Sanders or by a self-described “Christian” magazine called Sojourners which uses the banner of “social justice.”
Government is not altruistic. Government could never hit the moving “socially just” target without being totally controlling. Government can never offer a hurting person what a Good Samaritan can-one on one help. Government is impersonal, indifferent, insouciant.
And, as we have seen, redistribution of our wealth, filtered through the labyrinth of government funnels, distributes only fractional amounts of money to people government cannot even begin to keep track of and large amounts just to make bureaucracy function. Socialism burgeons while you diminish.
The unions, the Collective, Progressives, liberal “Christians” and even Pope Francis want “Social Justice”. What is this carrot on a stick dangled in front of us?
~~~
I have written elsewhere about this subject before. When I have I’ve turned to the parable of the Good Samaritan to make the point that we need to be involved in one another’s lives personally (like our Savior) and NOT via the million degrees of separation known as bureaucratic “Social Justice.”
“The Marxist political analysis that remains popular (if now usually disguised) in many universities and even seminaries, tends to pit the poor against the rich—it’s all about class warfare and alienation. The alternative vision that I have been trying to paint in these pages is beautifully distilled in the parable of the Good Samaritan, a story that has held a persistent fascination for the religious and non-religious readers alike. Of course, like all parables, its primary meaning is Christological and moral, rather than political. But it’s also possible to discern other messages in this story.
In Luke’s Gospel, a Samaritan man (someone on the margins of Jewish society in this period) stops to help a man who was beaten and left for dead on the side of the road. When the Samaritan comes upon him, he helps the beaten man from his own resources. Even when the Samaritan has to delegate the care to the man for a time to an innkeeper, he promises to pay the innkeeper back. The Samaritan was on the scene to see and understand the fallen man’s specific needs—he was the man’s “neighbor”—and he went about meeting those needs. From this standpoint, the Samaritan might be justly described as the principle subsidiary in action. Notice, too, that he would have been hard-pressed to meet the needs of the injured man if he hadn’t first possessed enough personal wealth to hire services of the innkeeper. Lady Thatcher’s memorable insight about this text is to the point: “No one would remember the Good Samaritan if he’d only had good intentions; he had money as well.”” (emphasis added)
“Within the book [George Orwells’1984], the purpose of the Two Minutes Hate is said to satisfy the citizens’ subdued feelings of angst and hatred from leading such a wretched, controlled existence. By re-directing these subconscious feelings away from the Oceanian government and toward external enemies (which probably do not even exist), the Party minimizes subversive thought and behavior.” (emphasis added)
“Ostensibly, [Emmanuel] Goldstein serves as a convenient scapegoat for the totalitarian regime in Nineteen Eighty-Four, and justifies its surveillance and elimination of civil liberties.”
Union members, as with so many others of the media-collectivist-“It takes a village…” persuasion make use of the “Goldstein Effect”, a term coined by legal scholar Cass Sunstein.
As mentioned above the effect is a means of scapegoating but it is also a means of psychological distraction and redirection.
The subverted thinking of the union member as revealed in my anecdote above is directed with anger at the “highly paid CEOs” and therefore away from the ”highly paid’ labor leaders and away from the “highly paid” Big Brother candidates those “highly paid” labor leaders support. The “enemies” generalized and amorphous existence is a product of the media’s PC Ministry of Truth, the collective’s means to larger-than–life vilification.
[The] “Goldstein Effect”, [is] described as “the ability to intensify public concern by giving a definite face to the adversary, specifying a human source of the underlying threat.”
Please! No more tattoos. Cover up your butterfly, your Mayan symbol of fertility, your undulating butt cheeks covered with spider webs. Cover up your magic marker body. I do not want to see it.
Please! No more women talking endlessly on cell phones while driving an SUV or a mini-van. They are multi-tasking my patience.
Please, no more skinny jeans. If I wanted to look at a blue toothpick then I will go puncture a Smurf.
Please, no more make-your-skin-crawl women: Rachel Maddcow, Ellen, Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, Harry Reid or Nancy Pelosi.
Please, no more city mayors telling us we can’t drink a biggie size drink or carry a gun or have a Chic-fil-A restaurant in our district.
And please. No more government!
When you voted for Obama you voted to make your life harder. I know I know. You thought life would be better but you were deceived by the “social justice” propaganda.
Voting for tax and spend Democrats (Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi) means that you spend less time with your family and more time working to pay your bills. Sure Barrack and Michelle will continue to get Hawaiian vacations and Barrack will continue to play hundreds of hours of golf but your family will have to put off vacations because of … 1) rising Federal and State taxes, 2) because of government regulations affecting your workplace which affects your pay and 3) because of rising consumer prices due to corporation taxes. And, tax rate increases for the wealthy do not occur in a vacuum. Increasing the tax rates for the wealthy affects everyone negatively.
With Democrats you are placed in what I call a Moronic Squeeze: government through taxation (including the newly tax-mandated Obamacare) demands more of your money. So now you will have to work more hours in order to take care of your family. Then because you are both working so much you can’t spend time with your kids, time the kids desperately need. Instead, a public school takes over your children. Then the public school system demands more money to teach your children and then government will come back for more tax money from you. Phew! You and your children are put in an ever tightening vise by government.
More devastating, government creates fiscal and moral poverty; “social justice” is the scam that is used to take money from your pocket and put it where it best serves a politician and his reelection needs.
When both parents are working who’s with the kids? Are you letting the public school inculcate its “diversity” values into your children because you don’t have the time to spend with them, because you work so many hours to pay government for the first five months of the year?
Social justice, better simply, “justice”, is learned at home. Invest your money there and not in government: spend time with your children, teach them what is good. The returns will be great. Government gives you pennies on the dollar return on your tax payments.
When you keep more of your own money you have more options and more time to spend with family.Voting for more government – more Democrats – does not give you more time with your precious family. Instead you must work all the harder to meet government’s demands. Obamacare is only one of the huge financial demands now placed on the middle class.
2014 & 2016: Think about your family before you vote for more government (and less take home pay) in the form of a Democrat candidate.
Because liberals, the Left, Progressives and Democrats have nothing constructive to offer they resort to name calling, ad hominems and distortion. The denigrating of people’s character, in fact, is used to get themselves elected – they get others to believe and respond to their inflammatory rhetoric. And this is exactly why Obama is in the White House (via the dirty politics of Rahm Emmanuel and David Axelrod). As everyone knows, Obama was not elected because of a political record or because of experience. He was elected because of intimidation politics played out Chicago Style.
This way of politics can also be found in the state of Wisconsin which borders Illinois.
One example of dirty politics used by the Democrats (and there are many such examples) from the Badger Pundit:
The radio message came at 22:01:44.9 Martian time: “The Community-Organizer-in-Chief has left the Washington DC Bureau of Breadlines and has fled to his Martha’s Vineyard compound.”
It was to be expected. The People’s Economy had turned on him. Unfed jobless (and tattooed) masses were walking the streets looting, robbing and killing for food. Washington, the center for The People’s Economy was no longer safe. But, we felt safe in our star-ship Gorforit. That is, Friedrich and I felt safe. My name is Milton.
You should know that there were many Capitalists in The People’s America when the Hope and Change Desolation began ten years ago. But, since that time, there is now only a small remnant left.
Back then we were called the “Free-Market-eers.” As such, we were constantly booed and jeered by The People’s Media. Flash mobs of union workers, guided by The People’s Media, attacked us. And though we were peace-keeping people, many of us were battered and some lost their lives. At one point it became so bad that corporate jet owners were being hung openly on the Mall, right in front of Lincoln Memorial.
How did this all begin? A Progressive candidate (The Candidate) won the presidential election in 2008. This newly elected president began to stir up class warfare among the people. He incited people to turn against each other, neighbor against neighbor, because of money. The People’s Media joined in.
In 2011 a “Lean Forward” campaign was launched by the People’s Media. Soon, the slothful, the dimwitted and the envious began to call themselves “The Forward Thinkers” or the “Lean-Forward Thinkers” – commonly known as the “LFT”. Their numbers, mostly union workers and unemployed college graduates with useless degrees, grew rapidly.
The People’s Media which had once campaigned for The Candidate in 2008, now campaigned for the Lean-Forward group. The campaign encouraged these marauders to take from the rich (those who had a job and some income) and to give to the “under-privileged” – those who saw what others had and wanted the same things.
From the Oval office the president, via regular People’s Media broadcasts, told the citizens that government was the best mechanism to handle society’s problems. So, with the help ‘elected’ representatives he began to take away the people’s money through taxation. People were no longer able to donate to charities or to directly help their neighbor. Every dollar was excised from the people for the people in The People’s Economy.
The People’s Media, rousing the animal passions of the LFT members, encouraged demonstrations to take place against Free-Marketeer businesses. Soon, though, the demonstrations were replaced with random looting and pillaging of stores. Strife increased between merchant and customer, neighbors and friends.
Our nations’ economy, once strong and vibrant because of free-market exchange, was now subject to the whims of recalcitrant, angry mobs and inept tyrannical leadership. It quickly deteriorated until our present time.
So, a plan was decided at our last Capitalist conclave held in a secret hiding place near Mount Rushmore. Two of us would go to Mars and begin a free market economy on a new planet. Both Friedrich and I volunteered to go. We were the oldest in the group. If something happened we were both prepared to die.
We had the star-ship Goforit but not the fuel. The People’s Economy rationed both fuel and food. So, we had to put our heads together to find a solution. Now, we had done similar things like this before so we were not overly concerned but time was running out.
There was no IPO for this venture, no influx of cash. The US dollar had folded. Instead, we had to learn to create fuel out of gold bullion. And, as it turned out, a small amount of this fuel would take us all the way to Mars. Once there we could also use it to barter with the Martians. They have no gold on Mars but they do have good underground living quarters for the two of us. We could set up shop very quickly. In fact, it was the Martians who had offered to help us. They would benefit from us. It would be a mutually beneficial relationship, something no longer found in The People’s America.
We all believed, the Free-Market-eers, that is, that there would be defectors from the People’s Economy but we didn’t know when. Things were getting nasty in The People’s America. So we decided to plan ahead and get ready for the influx of homeless and hungry. We had to start somewhere new. Somewhere that wouldn’t be affected by The People’s Media.
It seemed to us that Mars was the best option since there was a significant time delay for any radio signal to reach that planet. And better yet, The People’s Media Broadcasts would easily get lost within the noise of space radiation and our own Sun’s solar flares. “Bingo,” I said when I heard this.
*****
“Milton”, Friedrich spoke glancing out Goforit’s small window at the silent Martian orb, “soon you and I will be able to start our booming life again, but this time, on the Red Planet!”
Milton replied, “A laissez-faire world at last. To Mars or bust, my friend, to Mars or bust.”
“Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker has demanded that state workers contribute roughly 5.8 percent of their wages toward their retirement. He wants them to pay for 12 percent of their health-care premiums. Those modest employee contributions would be the envy of many workers in the private sector. “
How many democrats does it take to screw in a light bulb? Twenty-three.
10 union workers
1 union steward w/union contract
1 MSNBC reporter ( Keith Olbermann could become available.)
1 clown (for distraction. If no clown available, use MSNBC newscaster.)
1 pickpocket
1 light bulb czar
1 Chicago politician
1 Jesse Jackson
1 ACLU attorney
1 Black Panther w/billy club
1 OSHA representative
1 EPA consultant
1 Pelosi (for automatic screwing)
1 Obama (to help us understand the issue)
It takes twenty-three democrats to put the light bulb in place and one hundred taxpayers (now waiting in the dark) to fund it.
“We have entered, as I see it, a spiritual limbo. Our educational institutions are no longer the bearers of high culture, and public life has been deliberately moronised. But here and there, sheltered from the noise and glare of the media, the old spiritual forces are at work” Roger Scruton
*****
“When a common culture declines, the ethical life can be sustained and renewed only by a work of the imagination.”-Roger Scruton
*****
“Jesus prayed, “This is eternal life, that they may know You . . .” (John 17:3). The real meaning of eternal life is a life that can face anything it has to face without wavering. If we will take this view, life will become one great romance— a glorious opportunity of seeing wonderful things all the time. God is disciplining us to get us into this central place of power.” Oswald Chambers
*****
“No power on earth or in hell can conquer the Spirit of God in a human spirit, it is an inner unconquerableness.” Oswald Chambers
*****
To those who have had no agony Jesus says, “I have nothing for you; stand on your own feet, square your own shoulders. I have come for the man who knows he has a bigger handful than he can cope with, who knows there are forces he cannot touch; I will do everything for him if he will let Me. Only let a man grant he needs it, and I will do it for him.” The Shadow of an Agony,Oswald Chambers
*****
“If we wish to erect new structures, we must have a definite knowledge of the old foundations.” John Calvin Coolidge
*****
Atheism is a post-Christian phenomenon.
*****
If social justice looks like your hand in someone else’s pocket then you are stealing.
*****
“In Sweden, giving to charity, absurdly, came to be considered a lack of solidarity, since it undermined the need for the welfare state.” – Roland Martinsson
*****
“…to love democracy well, it is necessary to love it moderately.” Alexis de Tocqueville
*****
Capitalism seeks to help others through a servce or product it provides. Free Market Capitalism is the most moral and fair economic system available to man. Capitalism augments personal growth, responsibility and ownership. Charity flourishes under capitalism. Charity dies under subjective “fair share” government confiscatory policies. Socialism redistributes ambivalence and greed.
*****
“We are to regard existence as a raid or great adventure; it is to be judged, therefore, not by what calamities it encounters, but by what flag it follows and what high town it assaults. The most dangerous thing in the world is to be alive; one is always in danger of one’s life. But anyone who shrinks from that is a traitor to the great scheme and experiment of being.” G.K. Chesterton
*****
Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent.
It takes a touch of genius – and a lot of courage – to move in the opposite direction. Albert Einstein
*****
“You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you odd.” Flannery O’Connor
*****
“There is but one good; that is God. Everything else is good when it looks to Him and bad when it turns from Him.” C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce
*****
“Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him” (Job 13:15).
*****
God’s grace is not about the allowance for sin. God’s grace is about the conversation God allows regarding sin.
*****
From the book of Proverbs: We are not to favor the rich or the poor. We are to pursue justice.
*****
“Always keep in contact with those books and those people that enlarge your horizon and make it possible for you to stretch yourself mentally.” Oswald Chambers
*****
One goldfish says to another, “If there is no God who keeps changing the water?”
*****
“The truth is always there in the morning.”
From Cat On A Hot Tin Roof script – playwright Tennessee Williams
*****
God blesses those who hunger and thirst for justice, for they will be satisfied.
*****
“America’s greatness has been the greatness of a free people who shared certain moral commitments. Freedom without moral commitment is aimless and promptly self-destructive.” John W. Gardner
**
“Men of integrity, by their very existence, rekindle the belief that as a people we can live above the level of moral squalor. We need that belief; a cynical community is a corrupt community.” John W. Gardner
*****
“In the world it is called Tolerance, but in hell it is called Despair, the sin that believes in nothing, cares for nothing, seeks to know nothing, interferes with nothing, enjoys nothing, hates nothing, finds purpose in nothing, lives for nothing, and remains alive because there is nothing for which it will die.” Dorothy L. Sayers
*****
“Art, like morality, consists of drawing the line somewhere.”
G. K. Chesterton
*****
“The battle line between good and evil runs through the heart of every man.” Alexander Solzhenitsyn
*****
This is what the LORD says:
“Stand at the crossroads and look;
ask for the ancient paths,
ask where the good way is, and walk in it,
and you will find rest for your souls.
But you said, ‘We will not walk in it.’
-The prophet Jeremiah, 6:16
*****
“…our common task is not so much discovering a truth hiding among contrary viewpoints as it is coming to possess a selfhood that no longer evades and eludes the truth with which it is importunately confronted.” James McClendon, Ethics: Systematic Theology, Vol. 1
*****
Cindy Wity 
Unions, Socialism and RoadKill?
September 19, 2015 Leave a comment
Just the other day I was verbally assaulted with socialism.
Per my usual workday I was taking the morning commuter into downtown Chicago. As I stand in the train’s vestibule I visit with my fellow travelers. Our conversations run the gamut of silly to bordering on the unspoken: politics, religion and money.
Well, just as I mentioned, I was slimed by socialism.
As I was talking with my friends a guy comes into the vestibule to wait out the rest of the ride. He was apparently eager to get off the train and light up a smoke.
Victory cigarettes
Wearing a chartreuse tee-shirt of a union pipefitter (seen around Chicago) and with a pack of smokes in his one breast pocket, this guy proceeded to let us know that he arrived.
One of our group asked him where he worked and what he did. (We usually try to engage everyone who ‘visits” the vestibule.)
The guy mentioned that he was working in a building downtown “putting in 24” pipe.” He spoke with the raspy demonic-sounding voice of a heavy smoker.
Then, without prompting and like striking flint, he said, “I hate corporate America. I hate the rich, highly paid CEOs. Who needs gold toilet seats?!” “You think union workers get paid a lot. You should see what they take out of my paycheck!”
“OK?” I said to myself. Well, here we go again: typical union griping, now on a Thursday morning.
I have heard the same sort of discontent (putting it nicely) from union postal workers, train conductors, teachers, electricians, plumbers, service workers-from all of them. And, whether the gripe is about pay grade, work time, pecking order, vacation time, labor management (a partial list of complaints, to be sure) I have heard it all. Union people have left their destiny in the hands of others in hopes of being insured against unhappiness. Guess again. Socialism takes regular drawdowns on your account of happiness.
I have heard the same sort of morbid discontent as campaign vote pandering. It slips off the politician’s tongues (here paraphrased) as “zero sum anthropogenic poverty caused by the rich and CO2”, “…limited pie…”, “…we need unlimited government…”, and (verbatim) “Fair share”; “The 1%”.
Victory Gin
All such materialism driven policies enacted to “unionize” society, in my estimation, reduce life to a boring unromantic dystopia. In other words these politicians want you to, “go drink your 1984 Victory Gin and be happy. We will take care of you. Do what you were told with what we gave you. There is no romance in Socialism so don’t even think of love, only of sex.” (Hah, imagine Hollywood under socialist financial constraints! Morally, Hollywood is already dependent on the lowest common cultural denominator.)
I decided not to talk to the union guy unless others broached a response and decided to go there. I could tell by his demeanor that this guys’ mind was probably as darkened as his lungs must be.
He went on to speak about his working on and off again depending on … when work is made available to him…through the union. Months would go by until he got a call.
Then he spoke of his heart’s desire: “My precious!”-The long awaited-for pension. With wide-eyed craving he spoke of his retirement: “Only six more years of this stuff left.”
Unions have a unique way of making people ache for the ring of retirement. I’ve seen it firsthand. It comes, I believe, from the on and off nature of union work along with boredom and plenty of worrisome smokes in between, a situation this guy and others let others control. Socialism is losing control of your life while waiting for the day you can retire and live off your meager pension and then, likely, smoke and drink yourself to death within a short time. Union-socialism roadkill. I’ve seen it over and over.
At this point I wanted to ask him who runs his pension and ask if it was invested in something more than a saving account making 0.01% interest or a CD making 0.09 % interest. Or, was his pension invested in equities and bonds, more appreciable (and risky) financial vehicles.
One could easily figure that the “highly paid” union lords control his pension (and get their cut) and that the union pension fund itself is managed by outside financial managers who manage stock and bond purchases of the union’s pension fund.
The “highly paid” overseers of his pension as fiduciaries must look at the composite financials of companies with stock and bond offerings to determine the best option to apply to a conservative pension, to have it grow while minimizing risk.
Obviously this union guy knew pipefitting and welding. But he did not know finances let alone how to find work on his own. He, instead, left others in charge of providing him work and with overseeing his “precious” pension.
Right then and there I wanted to say to this guy that when you leave your life in the hands of others they will charge you for their effort, including “highly paid” labor leaders (e.g., Richard Trumka).
-“Scores of union leaders earn six-figure salaries”
Here’s the arrogant and petty AFL-CIO union thug Richard Trumka tweeting his call for “two minutes hate” directed at Gov. Scott Walker who is dropping out of the 2016 presidential race:
“Highly paid” CEOs are charged with managing a company so as to make its value grow and to make its stockholders happy with the company’s prospects for future earnings. The company’s worth must appreciate in value. And when a company’s stock appreciates in value many people benefit. This includes employees who receive stock as a bonus. Pension funds invested in such a company’s stock also grow in value. Somehow I think any such statement to him would not meld with his union-socialist-collectivist way of life. He would go into Elizabeth Warren override.
I left out this: companies run by “highly paid” CEOs hire people and pay them to function within the company. Together CEOs and the people make the company profitable or otherwise. The people are free to stay or move on depending on their satisfaction with any number of things including pay, management, location, etc. “Highly paid” CEOs increase value. Collectivist governments, socialist governments and unions depreciate value-especially, your value, via coercive egalitarianism.
Those of us in the Kingdom of God must not take the wide way that is offered to us either by a self-described socialist such as Bernie Sanders or by a self-described “Christian” magazine called Sojourners which uses the banner of “social justice.”
Government is not altruistic. Government could never hit the moving “socially just” target without being totally controlling. Government can never offer a hurting person what a Good Samaritan can-one on one help. Government is impersonal, indifferent, insouciant.
And, as we have seen, redistribution of our wealth, filtered through the labyrinth of government funnels, distributes only fractional amounts of money to people government cannot even begin to keep track of and large amounts just to make bureaucracy function. Socialism burgeons while you diminish.
The unions, the Collective, Progressives, liberal “Christians” and even Pope Francis want “Social Justice”. What is this carrot on a stick dangled in front of us?
~~~
I have written elsewhere about this subject before. When I have I’ve turned to the parable of the Good Samaritan to make the point that we need to be involved in one another’s lives personally (like our Savior) and NOT via the million degrees of separation known as bureaucratic “Social Justice.”
The Rev. Robert Sirico, “American Roman Catholic priest and the founder of the Acton Institute”, provides us with clear-cut insight into the bureaucratization of “good intentions” versus the personification of good (good becoming man):
“The Marxist political analysis that remains popular (if now usually disguised) in many universities and even seminaries, tends to pit the poor against the rich—it’s all about class warfare and alienation. The alternative vision that I have been trying to paint in these pages is beautifully distilled in the parable of the Good Samaritan, a story that has held a persistent fascination for the religious and non-religious readers alike. Of course, like all parables, its primary meaning is Christological and moral, rather than political. But it’s also possible to discern other messages in this story.
In Luke’s Gospel, a Samaritan man (someone on the margins of Jewish society in this period) stops to help a man who was beaten and left for dead on the side of the road. When the Samaritan comes upon him, he helps the beaten man from his own resources. Even when the Samaritan has to delegate the care to the man for a time to an innkeeper, he promises to pay the innkeeper back. The Samaritan was on the scene to see and understand the fallen man’s specific needs—he was the man’s “neighbor”—and he went about meeting those needs. From this standpoint, the Samaritan might be justly described as the principle subsidiary in action. Notice, too, that he would have been hard-pressed to meet the needs of the injured man if he hadn’t first possessed enough personal wealth to hire services of the innkeeper. Lady Thatcher’s memorable insight about this text is to the point: “No one would remember the Good Samaritan if he’d only had good intentions; he had money as well.”” (emphasis added)
Passage from “Why Smart Charity Works—and Welfare Doesn’t”, “Defending the Free Market: The Moral Case for the Economy” by Rev. Robert Sirico
Rev. Sirico recommends reading “Life at the Bottom: The Worldview That Makes the Underclass” by Theodore Dalrymple. I have read it and recommend it as well.
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Added 9-20-2015:
It’s “1984” all over again…
“Within the book [George Orwells’1984], the purpose of the Two Minutes Hate is said to satisfy the citizens’ subdued feelings of angst and hatred from leading such a wretched, controlled existence. By re-directing these subconscious feelings away from the Oceanian government and toward external enemies (which probably do not even exist), the Party minimizes subversive thought and behavior.” (emphasis added)
“Ostensibly, [Emmanuel] Goldstein serves as a convenient scapegoat for the totalitarian regime in Nineteen Eighty-Four, and justifies its surveillance and elimination of civil liberties.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_Minutes_Hate
Union members, as with so many others of the media-collectivist-“It takes a village…” persuasion make use of the “Goldstein Effect”, a term coined by legal scholar Cass Sunstein.
As mentioned above the effect is a means of scapegoating but it is also a means of psychological distraction and redirection.
The subverted thinking of the union member as revealed in my anecdote above is directed with anger at the “highly paid CEOs” and therefore away from the ”highly paid’ labor leaders and away from the “highly paid” Big Brother candidates those “highly paid” labor leaders support. The “enemies” generalized and amorphous existence is a product of the media’s PC Ministry of Truth, the collective’s means to larger-than–life vilification.
[The] “Goldstein Effect”, [is] described as “the ability to intensify public concern by giving a definite face to the adversary, specifying a human source of the underlying threat.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmanuel_Goldstein
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Filed under Culture, Economics, Political Commentary, Progressivism Tagged with 1%, AFL-CIO, CEOs, Goldstein Effect, progressivism, redistribution of wealth, Ricard Trumka, socialism, unions