Are you a RINO???

[Tink1717 2]

I don't know StreetScooby personally, but he strikes me as one of these guys who benefits from all that unions fought to get and yet is bent on destroying them based on some notion that labor no longer needs protection. I'd love to see him put his money where his mouth is and live without any of the things that unions bring to the modern day workplace:
1. 8 Hour day.
2. Weekends.
3. Overtime.
4. Benefits.
5. Safety regs.
6. Merit pay and raises in general.
7. Job security.

Just to name a few. The current line up of politicos on both teams are arrayed against labor and seem bent on taking the country back to the late 1800's in terms of labor and pay.

That's why I'm a political orphan. None of the parties want to address this or any other substantial issue. The dems are bent on kissing corporate ass and not fighting for their base. In fact the dems have a rather nasty hatred of their base. They even have a name for it: "Kicking the Hippie." The GOP, for their part puts it all right out there in the open. ( I kind of admire them for that ) They make no bones about what they want and will destroy everything in their path to get it, will spare no expense, tell every lie needed and parade every phony "victim" they can in order to bring the country to some state that resembles a combination of Dickensian England at the turn of the 1900's and run by some bizzare combination of theocratic/industrial/corporate fascism where only a select few from an elite strata get to run anything and none but they can benefit.

He will vote for the right even though they'll destroy him if it will put an extra penny in their pockets. And he'll go to his grave never being able to see that.

Skydivers don't knock on Death's door. They ring the bell and runaway... It really pisses him off.
-The World Famous Tink. (I never heard of you either!!)
AA #2069 ASA#33 POPS#8808 Swooo 1717

[StreetScooby 5]

This is good, and gives a basis for real discussion rather than assertions. These data are for 2012, and I'm questioning how they've classified their breakdown, e.g.

http://www.opensecrets.org/pres12/sectorall.php?cycle=2012

Do you really think labor, across the entire country, only gave 500K to that election? Really?

But, you have provided a starting point and it's now incumbent upon me to bring some source to the table. Let me see what I can track down.

Thanks.

We are all engines of karma

[StreetScooby 5]

Ok, Tink, here's a link:

http://www.followthemoney.org/database/top10000.phtml

Number 1 on this list is NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION
Public Sector Unions, and they're shown as having donated $53M at the state level. Three of the top eleven are public sector unions, totaling well over $100M.

Not sure how to reconcile these numbers with yours. Any ideas?

Edited - numbers are across all states, not just NY.

We are all engines of karma

[StreetScooby 5]

Quote

He will vote for the right even though they'll destroy him if it will put an extra penny in their pockets. And he'll go to his grave never being able to see that.

Ah, you have an active imagination. I've been non-affiliated for 20 years now, and vote against someone much more than I vote for someone.

I live in a state where unions, especially public employee unions, are completely out of control, and have been promised far more than can possibly be delivered by politicians who are funded by those very same unions. It's broken, and there is no mechanism in place to balance it.

We are all engines of karma

[shropshire 0]

Amazon

***What is the video about? I can't be arsed to watch it when it started with that emotional manipulation horseshit about how its so awful to require a valid ID to vote, when I live in a country, where if you don't have a valid government approved photo ID, you do not vote. Period. And FYI drivers license isn't a valid ID here even if it has your photo & SSN on it.

I can't be arsed to interpret

(.)Y(.)
Chivalry is not dead; it only sleeps for want of work to do. - Jerome K Jerome

[sfzombie13 307]

that's why i try not to provide numbers to anyone for anything. you can get more numbers from somewhere else to refute the other numbers. it's too easy to manipulate them.

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Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes

[Amazon 7]

StreetScooby

Ok, Tink, here's a link:

http://www.followthemoney.org/database/top10000.phtml

Number 1 on this list is NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION
Public Sector Unions, and they're shown as having donated $53M at the state level. Three of the top eleven are public sector unions, totaling well over $100M.

Not sure how to reconcile these numbers with yours. Any ideas?

Edited - numbers are across all states, not just NY.

Are you going to add in all BILLIONS in SOFT money that your Oligarchs toss into the mix every year???

[StreetScooby 5]

Quote

that your Oligarchs...

??? And who might that be?

We are all engines of karma

[StreetScooby 5]

Quote

it's too easy to manipulate them...

We can agree on that. That's one of the problems I see happening right now. No one can agree on what's being measured, much less what it means. Thus, you're left with assertions rather than arguments. Nothing substantive comes from assertions...

We are all engines of karma

[sfzombie13 307]

now that you agree with that, maybe you can also agree that since there are so many more corporations than unions that it only follows that more money comes from corporations. you can obtain the real numbers, but you would have to gather all the records of all campaign donations, total them, and track them all back to the donor. and i am talking all, nra, madd, etc. they all come from somewhere, some corporations donate through lobbyists like these (nra, etc.) to disguise them.

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Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes

[winsor 187]

sfzombie13

now that you agree with that, maybe you can also agree that since there are so many more corporations than unions that it only follows that more money comes from corporations. you can obtain the real numbers, but you would have to gather all the records of all campaign donations, total them, and track them all back to the donor. and i am talking all, nra, madd, etc. they all come from somewhere, some corporations donate through lobbyists like these (nra, etc.) to disguise them.

This is logical gibberish.

[wmw999 2,149]

It's going to hard to come up with really hard-and-fast delineations of union vs. corporate money. Because some union members give to candidates because the union recommends, and others because they believe in their candidates. Just as some company employees give to candidates because their companies have made it clear whom they support, and others because they believe in those candidates.

You can't tell the difference between them.

If the owner of a company gives money, can it be said to come from the company? If the president of a union gives money, can it be said to come from the union?

In the absence of a good methodology for separating the two, we're going to be discussing gut feelings. And I'd rather just let gut feelings go in the airplane

Wendy P.

There is nothing more dangerous than breaking a basic safety rule and getting away with it. It removes fear of the consequences and builds false confidence. (tbrown)

[StreetScooby 5]

Quote

...you can also agree that since there are so many more corporations than unions...

No, sfzombie, we can't agree on that. Did you see the link I provided? You make it sound like every corporation in America donates to Republicans, and I don't think that's a fair view on your part. Every union in America does effectively contribute to Democrats via union dues. Unions spend alot of money on politics. Lots of liberals rail against the Koch brothers, but they're aren't even in the top 10 political donors. The vast majority of the top 10 are extremely liberal.

Here's an older article from the Wall Street Journal. Full disclosure, I read the WSJ every day, and I won't touch the NYTimes after years of BS opinion articles that were debunked thoroughly. The NYTimes isn't fit for cat litter, IMO.

===============================================

The Really Big Money? Not the Kochs
Harry Reid surely must have meant the unions when he complained about buying elections.
By
Kimberley A. Strassel
March 6, 2014 7:09 p.m. ET

Harry Reid is under a lot of job-retention stress these days, so Americans might forgive him the occasional word fumble. When he recently took to the Senate floor to berate the billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch for spending "unlimited money" to "rig the system" and "buy elections," the majority leader clearly meant to be condemning unions.

It's an extraordinary thing, in a political age obsessed with campaign money, that nobody scrutinizes the biggest, baddest, "darkest" spenders of all: organized labor. The IRS is muzzling nonprofits; Democrats are "outing" corporate donors; Jane Mayer is probably working on part 89 of her New Yorker series on the "covert" Kochs. Yet the unions glide blissfully, unmolestedly along. This lack of oversight has led to a union world that today acts with a level of campaign-finance impunity that no other political giver—conservative outfits, corporate donors, individuals, trade groups—could even fathom.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid in the Capitol Building, Jan. 25. Associated Press

Mr. Reid was quite agitated on the Senate floor about "unlimited money," by which he must have been referring to the $4.4 billion that unions had spent on politics from 2005 to 2011 alone, according to this newspaper. The Center for Responsive Politics' list of top all-time donors from 1989 to 2014 ranks Koch Industries No. 59. Above Koch were 18 unions, which collectively spent $620,873,623 more than Koch Industries ($18 million). Even factoring in undisclosed personal donations by the Koch brothers, they are a rounding error in union spending.

Mr. Reid was similarly heated over the tie-up between outside groups and politicians, by which he surely meant the unions who today openly operate as an arm of the Democratic Party. The press may despise the Kochs, but even it isn't stupid enough to claim they are owned by the GOP. Most outside conservatives groups, including the Koch-supported Americans for Prosperity, back candidates and positions that challenge the Republican line. And in any event, every conservative 501(c)(4) is so terrified of the hay the media and regulators would make over even a hint of coordination with the GOP, they keep a scrupulous distance.

Unions, as 501(c)(5) organizations, are technically held to the same standards against coordination with political parties. Yet no Democrat or union official today even troubles to maintain that fiction. Hundreds upon hundreds of the delegates to the 2012 Democratic convention were union members. They were in the same room as party officials, plotting campaign strategies. The question therefore is how much of that $4.4 billion in union spending was at the disposal of the Democratic Party—potentially in violation of a bajillion campaign-finance rules?

As for Mr. Reid's complaint that some "rig the system to benefit themselves," that was undoubtedly a reference to the overt, transactional nature of union money. Nobody doubts the Kochs and many corporations support candidates who they hope will push for free-market principles. Though imagine the political outcry if David or Charles Koch openly conditioned dollars for a politician on policies to benefit Koch Industries?

In the past months alone, unions demanded an exemption to a tax under ObamaCare; the administration gave it. They demanded an end to plans to "fast track" trade deals; Mr. Reid killed it. They wanted more money for union job training; President Obama put it in his budget. Everybody understands—the press matter-of-fact reports it—that these policy giveaways are to ensure unions open their coffers to help Mr. Reid keep the Senate in November. The quid pro quo is even more explicit and self-serving at the state level, where public-sector unions elect politicians who promise to pay them more. If the CEO of Exxon tried this, the Justice Department would come knocking. The unions do it daily.

Democrats hope to make a campaign theme out of conservative "dark" money, something else Mr. Reid knows about. In addition to other spending, unions have been aggressively funneling money into their own "dark" groups. One of these is the heavyweight 501(c)(4) Patriot Majority USA. Patriot Majority doesn't disclose its donors, though a Huffington Post investigation found it had been "fueled" in 2012 by $2.3 million in union donations. Amusingly, Patriot Majority used its undisclosed money on a campaign to expose the Koch brothers' "front" groups. Oh, and Patriot Majority is run by Craig Varoga, a former aide and close ally of . . . Harry Reid.

The unions have had a special interest in funding attacks on conservative groups, since it has led to the IRS's regulatory muzzling of 501(c)(4) speech. Under the new rule, conservative 501(c)(4)s are restricted in candidate support; unions can do what they want. Conservative groups are stymied in get-out-the-vote campaigns; unions can continue theirs. Conservative outfits must count up volunteer hours; not unions.

So now, in addition to a system in which organized labor spends "unlimited money" to "rig the system to benefit themselves" and "buy elections," (to quote Mr. Reid), Mr. Obama's IRS has made sure to shut up anyone who might compete with unions or complain about them.

Supporters of campaign-finance rules never want to acknowledge that their maze of regulations serve primarily as a tool for savvy politicians to manipulate and silence opponents. For proof, they need only listen to Mr. Reid—who is pretty savvy, and who didn't misspeak after all.

Write to [email protected]

We are all engines of karma

[sfzombie13 307]

and, fortunately, we do not have to agree on anything. it looks as if i have been talking about money paid to politicians by corporations, not campaign funds alone. i did some searching on some numbers to satisfy my curiosity and did find that the oil and gas industry only contributed $154 million in 2012, and that was just the first site i found (http://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/indusclient.php?id=E01).

and that article is making some pretty good accusations, however, i see no proof of anything there, only accusations and questions. and the 4.4 billion they were talking about was for all unions for a six year period, averages to around 730 million a year, and this is not a total contribution. i found results for one industry, 158 companies. granted this is not all of the data, and not a scientific study, but it's close enough for an internet forum. i know for a fact that all of the union dues are not used for politics, so using just those numbers i have found satisfies me that corporations give more money to government than unions. how much more, who knows? i have projects going and do not have time to think any more about it.

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Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes

[Tink1717 2]

Quote

live in a state where unions, especially public employee unions, are completely out of control, and have been promised far more than can possibly be delivered by politicians who are funded by those very same unions.

And where might that be? If there is such a place I want to work there.

I've been a union guy since my first strike at age 17. We lose far more often than we win, but when you're fighting for your very survival and security, you can trust no one who benefits from your servitude.

Skydivers don't knock on Death's door. They ring the bell and runaway... It really pisses him off.
-The World Famous Tink. (I never heard of you either!!)
AA #2069 ASA#33 POPS#8808 Swooo 1717

[Arvoitus 1]

Tink1717

What country is that?

Finland. I just never really bought the American liberals argument that Republicans are racist, sexist, bigots for wanting voters to have photo IDs to vote, when I've lived all my life in a country where that is standard way of working. No official photo ID(not drivers license) -> no vote.

Your rights end where my feelings begin.

[StreetScooby 5]

New York State.

We are all engines of karma

[Tink1717 2]

So, since you have always had that standard, it's easy to see it as non threatening. Over here it is a deliberate attempt to suppress the vote from an undesired part of the population. The right wants to eliminate the ability for the left ( what's left of the left ) to vote. That is their intent, pure and simple. Eliminate the ability of their opposition to participate and they coast to single party rule.

Skydivers don't knock on Death's door. They ring the bell and runaway... It really pisses him off.
-The World Famous Tink. (I never heard of you either!!)
AA #2069 ASA#33 POPS#8808 Swooo 1717

[StreetScooby 5]

Quote

Over here it is a deliberate attempt to suppress the vote from an undesired part of the population. The right wants to eliminate the ability for the left ( what's left of the left ) to vote. That is their intent, pure and simple.

Help us (well, at least some of us) understand what makes you think this?

We are all engines of karma

[Arvoitus 1]

Tink1717

So, since you have always had that standard, it's easy to see it as non threatening. Over here it is a deliberate attempt to suppress the vote from an undesired part of the population. The right wants to eliminate the ability for the left ( what's left of the left ) to vote. That is their intent, pure and simple. Eliminate the ability of their opposition to participate and they coast to single party rule.

Maybe I'm missing some important piece of information, but in my mind, any valid citizen can get a government approved photo ID and then vote. So the 'undesired part of the population' would be non-citizens and I don't see why non-citizens should be allowed to vote.

Your rights end where my feelings begin.

[StreetScooby 5]

Quote

Maybe I'm missing some important piece of information, but in my mind, any valid citizen can get a government approved photo ID and then vote. So the 'undesired part of the population' would be non-citizens and I don't see why non-citizens should be allowed to vote.

You're not missing anything...

While it's never been proven to have had a substantive impact on an election, Democrats are routinely caught voting multiple times by using dead people's names. For the last presidential election, I've heard that Philadelphia precincts had unprecedented turnout, with many districts having over 100+ participation. I doubt this is what Tink is referring to. Interested to hear what he has to say to the original question.

We are all engines of karma

[DanG 1]

Quote

Democrats are routinely caught voting multiple times by using dead people's names.

As someone recently said...

"Help us (well, at least some of us) understand what makes you think this? "

- Dan G

[StreetScooby 5]

Quote

"Help us (well, at least some of us) understand what makes you think this? "

I guess we read different things. As one example, did you hear about the woman convicted of this in Chicago recently?

We are all engines of karma

[sfzombie13 307]

now i would like to see some number on that, i heard that it was 86 counts of voter fraud on the last (2012) election. not near the over 100% voter turnout. and the whole argument against the federal id for voting is that is not required anywhere except to vote. a driver's license or state id should be good enough. hell, i can't even get a federal id, even though i had to bring in like 7 different items to prove it was still me after 40 + years last time i renewed mine. it was supposed to be the new federal id, but it says on it "not for federal identification".

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Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes

[sfzombie13 307]

in anyone's mind it should be so simple. but when the us government is involved, common sense goes out the window. and also, in finland, if it is anything like germany when i was there from '89-'92, almost everyone had a passport due to being in europe and within driving distance of another country, so i am assuming most there would have them as well. not so in the us. less than 25% of the population has one here, so a federal id is not predominant, it is a hindrance. there are many things from europe we need to adopt, but this is not one of them.

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Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes