Since when did the common worker become the enemy?

[sjdnb]

All this anti-union and anti-public servant (aka gov't worker) crap is just that ... a load of $hit. If it were not for the extreme productivity of both these groups, this country would have crumbled into the ground, long ago. Your tax dollars are not wasted on these hard working folks, it's wasted, by the millions/billions spent to make some greedy, politician contributing SOB, even more filthy rich.

BTW - Productivity continues to rise - wages fall or stagnate, Yet, the costs to employers goes down (aka why their obscene profits continue to go up)
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/prod2.nr0.htm

[grasswire]

1. first they came for the welfare queens....

etc. etc. etc.

Now the common working man or woman is under attack.

As quoted by Bill Moyers:

"The growing dominance of a right-wing media forged in a pedagogy of hate has become a crucial element providing numerous platforms for a culture of cruelty and is fundamental to how we understand the role of education in a range of sites outside of traditional forms of schooling. This educational apparatus and mode of public pedagogy is central to analyzing not just how power is exercised, rewarded and contested in a growing culture of cruelty, but also how particular identities, desires and needs are mobilized in support of an overt racism, hostility towards immigrants and utter disdain, coupled with the threat of mob violence toward any political figure supportive of the social contract and the welfare state. Citizens are increasingly constructed through a language of contempt for all noncommercial public spheres and a chilling indifference to the plight of others that is increasingly expressed in vicious tirades against big government and health care reform. There is a growing element of scorn on the part of the American public for those human beings caught in the web of misfortune, human suffering, dependency and deprivation. As Barbara Ehrenreich observes, "The pattern is to curtail financing for services that might help the poor while ramping up law enforcement: starve school and public transportation budgets, then make truancy illegal. Shut down public housing, then make it a crime to be homeless. Be sure to harass street vendors when there are few other opportunities for employment. The experience of the poor, and especially poor minorities, comes to resemble that of a rat in a cage scrambling to avoid erratically administered electric shocks."

[Liberal_Stalwart71]

33. They've always hated public education, so the president speaking with children gives them the

opportunity they've been waiting on for years. Their pure hatred for this man will be their undoing.

[rpannier]

2. Harry Truman

A bureaucrat is someone who holds a job a Republican wants

[opihimoimoi]

3. The GOP is a Party that DIVIDES

[notesdev]

4. Extreme productivity of government workers?

Unless you meant "extremely low" it is obvious you have never worked for the government.

[dorktv]

5. My staff work pretty firgging hard with a crushing workload because

someone over at OMB refuses to fully fund our section even though we generate revenue and the more staff we have, the more money we make.

[notesdev]

11. I've worked for 2 government departments and a GSE

and without a doubt these were the least productive organizations I have ever witnessed. The waste of money was on a scale I had never before dreamed possible.

One department had at one point 24 people doing a job that ended up being done by two. Another had twelve highly paid professionals hired for a job for which two part-timers would be overkill.

If your group is different, then you are a very rare exception. What is it that your group does?

[dorktv]

13. Judicial system

Granted we are the unwanted redheaded stepchildren of the system but...

Most of what I have seen with the exception of one section, possibly two if we could ever audit the books, in county government is done a shoestring.

[notesdev]

16. the judicial system is definitely an exception

no argument from me there. My experience is in the executive branch, which is the vast majority of the government.

[dorktv]

19. Well the only other experience I have had with government was kind of indirect.

So it does not count.

[sjdnb]

21. I think you meant the Executive Branch held the most power...

(aka doled out dollars to cronies) NOT THE SAME as actually doing the most work/having the most impact to make the country better.

[Justitia]

27. I have quite a few family mbrs who have worked / do work in the exec branch - they work their asses

off. Faithful public servants of many years. And they love their jobs.

I've worked very closely w/GSEs in my career and they were the height of professionalism.

From my first hand experience, the RW talking points about gov't employees are simply bullshit.

[Justitia]

28. delete - double post

[sjdnb]

15. Sorry you contributed so little ... most contribute much more

Maybe you and your peers sat on your sorry asses to collect a check, but, after over 30 years interacting and working with a variety of gov't agencies/workers, I'd have to say, if you did, you were the anomaly, not the norm. Report yourselves - you wasted gov't dollars.

[notesdev]

17. Why do you think I left?

When I found out that they did not want productive work done I moved on. As far as reporting it... who do you think would actually listen? Or care?

If you think that there's anything atypical about my experience you live on a different planet.

[Go2Peace]

20. Well when I have worked for government most worked very hard.

Whenever I run into someone in either private or public work it is usually the ones who cry about the lazyness of others that are projecting their own problems with working hard. Just saying... I have found that to be a fairly consistant observation. Government workers work just as hard as private industry workers these days.

[sjdnb]

23. You do know there is Whistleblower protection?

If you really were a gov't employee and witnessed what you've indicated you did,it is your moral obligation to report it. Otherwise, you're just another complaining chicken shit or liar.

[notesdev]

25. You mean like Sibel Edmonds?

I did report it. And the Democrat Congressman (Waxman) who ran the oversight committee couldn't care less.

Do you really think that whistleblowers get real protection? The kinds of things I saw go on left and right in every government department, confirmed to me by many of the people I worked with, who worked for various other departments.

I am shocked that you people are so naive to think that blowing the whistle is effective. Go do some reading and see what happens to whistleblowers in this government. The whistleblowers are never more powerful than the people they expose, and that is all that matters.

[sjdnb]

29. I smell a cop out ... Facts/Evidence/Data will win

I've done it in the private sector ... and, trust me, that is a lot less 'transparent' than the public sector. They'll bury you in a heartbeat, and their BOD will be carrying the shovels.

[notesdev]

30. Easy for you to say

After seeing what happened to Walpin and Barofsky, I remain convinced that it would be a total waste of time. If even an IG is subject to retaliation, a lowly grunt like me would get no chance. I have zero confidence in the system, and taunts aren't going to change that.

[cascadiance]

32. Each time there's a big "ballyhooed" whistleblower protection bill it ALWAYS has exceptions...

to leave out any protections for those working in the intelligence services or other "secure" parts of our government. Read between the lines of the various bills that have tried to make it through committee the last few years...

There lies the problem, and that is why we still only have a few like Sibel coming forward. And she just indicated in her recent deposition that with her family's assets, she wasn't dependent on her salary as an FBI translator, and can stay unemployed if necessary. Most other workers in similar positions don't have that luxury, and can't afford to be put out of work if they come forward as a whistleblower.

So please don't dismiss these folks as "complaining chicken shits" when they don't have the same power and resources as those in charge to come forth with what they know. Dismissing them in this fashion is adding to the reasons why they don't come forward, when they get beat up not only by those insiders that want to keep them quiet, but by a public that just dismisses them as "conspiracy theorists".

[notesdev]

35. You can see it right here

Who knew that there was such conservative, pro-establishment, pro-status quo sentiment here on DU? I got a half dozen people jumping down my throat right here for telling God's honest truth about what I saw with my own eyes... nobody is going to convince me I didn't experience what I experienced... this stuff is no secret here in Washington D.C., everybody knows, nobody cares except crazy people like me.

How am I supposed to believe that I would have any experience other than grief for no benefit to anybody, when corruption on a scale far beyond what I personally witnessed is well known and unpunished?

[CrispyQ]

40. I've never worked for government,

but I can tell you that government doesn't have a lock on lazy, incompetent workers. I've seen departments every bit as bloated as the one you describe. Just cuz private industry is 'for profit' doesn't mean that they operate any better than government.

[sjdnb]

6. I have volunteered in several gov't agencies as well as schools

and they have repeatedly made the privateers appear as lazy leeches. I hate it when folks who never actually work/go into the trenches spew crap about the folks who willingly enter them every day -- for little or no pay.

[sjdnb]

9. You obviously have no 1st hand experience ...

Just getting your info from Rush?

[notesdev]

14. Wrong

I have years of first hand experience.

Among other things, I wrote the program that unearthed the incriminating memos between the RNC and Bush's HUD chief.

I knew one guy who got $80k/year, answered two phone calls a week, and played computer solitaire the rest of the time. And he was only an extreme case, the general habit was not atypical at all.

Many of these people are not even ashamed enough about it to hide it.

[Hannah Bell]

10. Bullshit. I've worked at Boeing, worked in public universities, & worked in local gov't.

I had bosses at Boeing who spent the first few hours of the day reading the paper & the next few hours bullshitting with the boys.

I never spent so much time on make-work anywhere as at the "Lazy B".

[Mind_your_head]

7. ehm, since s/he couldn't pay for his/her own healthcare, I'd suppose.....

:evilgrin:

[Hello_Kitty]

8. Government organizations are, by definition, irretrievably flawed and evil.

But take the same group of people, incorporate them and add a profit motive, and all of a sudden they are (magically) imbued with competence and benevolence. No matter what the corporations do, they will defend them to the death. They worship authority.

[Go2Peace]

22. You forgot the sarcasm tag.

Amazing how deep right wing talking points is in the public concience. Even on liberal boards you have people spouting them.

[Hello_Kitty]

24. Didn't think I needed one but, okay. eom

[Journeyman]

12. When did workers begin to organize? There's your answer for when they became the "enemy". . .

Date it back to the late 18th century, and especially in the decades after the European Revolutions of 1848 and the American Civil War (though a plausible argument can be made to date it back much further).

Learn Labor's history and you'll find nothing's new these days. As Schopenhauer observed: Eadem, sed aliter. It's history's motto: The same things differently.

[Vickers]

18. Oh, about 4,000 years ago.

:thumbsup:

[omega minimo]

26. "Let my people GOooooooo!!!11"

[Confusious]

31. Since the start of the industrial revolution in this country

Owners used to lock people in to make sure they went nowhere during work hours. A couple hundred people died when one of the shitty buildings they were in caught fire and that was the end of that. People have been fighting and dying for the past 150 years just to scrape a little human dignity off the shoes of the rich. Republican poor don't even want to scrape, they think we should take the shoe off and suck the foot.

[reggie the dog]

34. anti govt. worker and anti union is international

I think it is an idea put forth by those who make a lot of money in the private sector in order to fool thoses making little money into the private sector to come to be jealous of union members and goverment workers good salaries and benefits by denigrating these unionized/govt. workers and the services they give.

[Selatius]

36. The Taft-Hartley Act passed over the veto of Truman back in 1947.

More Democrats voted with Republicans in passing this act and overriding Truman's veto than voted against the act.

[endless october]

37. for a few millennia now?

[CrispyQ]

38. They tell you that if you work hard you can become anything,

yet they disdain labor & do everything they can to minimize any benefits labor receives.

[WinkyDink]

39. Since the end of the Feudal System. Once wage-paying began, workers have been reviled.

[ThomWV]

41. The day Ronald Reagan was elected. Remember the Air Traffic Controllers?

[spanone]

42. i'm amazed. corporate america has the citizens out protesting for them

is this a fucked up country or what?

[patrice]

43. As Paolo Freire would say, "They have internalized the oppressor."

He would also say that small, autonomous, self-studying, educational/labor cooperatives would free them.

[grasswire]

44. hope I don't sound like a dunce...

...but who is Paolo Freire?

[starroute]

45. The real debate is over who creates value

When I was in high school in the early 60's, we were taught about Karl Marx's labor theory of value -- and were also taught that it was considered basic economic doctrine, apart from whatever opinion you might have of Marx's advocacy of communism.

The labor theory of value, as I recall it, states that value is created by the people who put actual effort into making things -- the labor that turns raw materials into finished product, the creative effort that produces books and movies and music that never existed before.

According to Marx, capitalists and middlemen get their share only by exploiting the workers -- by making sure that workers are paid less than the true value of what they produce and taking the difference for themselves.

I don't think I completely buy that -- there are other things besides the labor involved that add to or detract from the value of a product. But it seems undeniable that the major portion of the value of anything comes from the work that went into it and that neither the people who do the physical labor nor those who supply the creative ideas ever get their fair share.

When I was learning about this stuff as a kid, though, nobody doubted that exploitation was a fact -- and the debates were about how things like the role of unions in enabling workers to obtain a bigger piece of the pie.

But since then -- and specifically since the Reagan presidency -- the entire grounds of the discussion have shifted. Not only does nobody talk any longer about exploitation, the entire labor theory of value has vanished from the public sphere.

Instead, we have been given the noxious term "wealth creation." We have been told that it is the investor class that "creates wealth." And we have had tax cut after tax cut sold to us on the grounds that letting rich people become even richer means they will be free to create even more "wealth" and everyone will live happily ever after.

Wealth, of course, isn't value. It's just money -- and much of it not even real money but on-paper profits that vanish as soon as you look inside the box and see there's nothing there.

Meanwhile, the idea of value has gotten lost. Thanks to productivity gains, workers are creating more value while being paid less. And the environment (among other things) is being degraded because we have a system that sees no problem in destroying things of real value in order to generate the phantom of wealth.

Marx's answer to all this, of course, was communism -- giving the workers complete ownership of the fruits of their own labor. That hasn't ever proved possible to put into practice, and I think there are good reasons why not -- perhaps starting with the fact that in a society of assembly line workers and paper pushers, there simply isn't the personal investment in one's labor to make most people eager to "own" whatever it is they do for a living.

But setting aside communism as an answer, we're still left with the basic problem -- which is one of value, exploitation, and where a society needs to invest its resources and attention in order to create more value (and less on-paper wealth) and to distribute the fruits of that value-creation more equally.