Comments by "wvu05" (@wvu05) on "Jon Ossoff Releases Surprisingly Great Ad" video.

@chriscarbaugh3936 Somebody said that Reagan was a President who could make us proud, and I asked him if selling weapons to the Iranians who held Americans hostage to fund an illegal war made him proud. He never did give an answer.
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@leeblount7046 You know what's even more ridiculous? A) Not understanding the basic point that if you want to address the deficit, taxes need to go up (and unless you're making six figures, they aren't going up for you, anyway), and B) not understanding that you yourself are doing the exact same thing.
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@leeblount7046 Then, you are living proof of the theory that if you give people someone to look down on, they can more easily pick your pockets.
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They hate the same people.
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@meafrenchie7143 People voted for Biden because accelerationism is a lie. People don't dare to dream when someone truly awful takes over. They just want to get rid of the awful, and they get fed stories that they need a "safe" choice. That being said, when the general election comes, one of only two candidates is going to win the election, and if you insist on purity, you end up getting nothing. See: the 20 year Green/Republican alliance.
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@leeblount7046 Look at corporate welfare, and look up the Two Santa Claus Theory. Republicans intentionally run up deficits when they take power and then complain about deficits when Democrats take over. I am 41, and literally the only federal balanced budgets of my lifetime occurred after tax cuts for the rich and scaling back increases in defense spending.
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@meafrenchie7143 You mean Iran/Contra? I don't know his exact age, but he's old enough to be a Vietnam veteran. Some people care more about symbols than they do about substance. I still don't understand the need for people to put a flag pin on their lapels.
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@AW-nb5dt An op-ed from a right wing news site is not research. If you don't show the actual research, then you are either lying to me or you are lying to yourself. I cited an organization that has no skin in the game and only tabulated the data. You are citing people with an agenda.
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@AW-nb5dt Funny that you just dropped the idea that you were an expert on the transportation industry and how much better non-union workers get paid. I guess you didn't have an answer when actual evidence proved your anecdotal evidence (probably something your boss told you in a brainwashing session) wrong.
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@RocketmanRockyMatrix Okay, what kind of reforms do you think should be done?
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@AW-nb5dt So, how does this "force" workers to unionize? Even states that are not right to work for less don't require workers to join unions, and Taft-Hartley prohibits closed shops.
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@RocketmanRockyMatrix Oh, come on. Surely, you have the answer on what your reforms should look like. Or is just easier to dump on everything and you find yourself unable to provide an answer for your own proposal when asked?
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@RocketmanRockyMatrix I asked you first. You insist that welfare "needs to be reformed." I have asked you twice before, so what kind of reforms do you think should be put in place?
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@AW-nb5dt So, you just cite anti-worker propaganda? Again, allowing workers to organize does not force everyone into a union. Your scaremongering fools no one. And as far as the phrase right to work for less goes, we have had decades of competitive evidence, and the results are real. Using nonpartisan sources, it turns out that non-union workers make 19% than those in unions, with only Asian men making more in non-union jobs: https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2020/nonunion-workers-had-weekly-earnings-81-percent-of-union-members-in-2019.htm So, yes, taking away the right to organize means the right to work for less. It also means at-will employment where you can get fired because your boss just feels like it. How terrible that some people are trying to ensure better pay and job security!
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@RocketmanRockyMatrix You are aware that TANF is already temporary, right? And that program has insanely low thresholds to qualify for. SNAP is also gradual. So is LIHEAP. About the only thing that is really dramatic is Medicaid, but you can't really have people sort of covered, can you? Why is it that when people talk about "reforming welfare," they want things that are already policy? And is the middle of a recession really the time to do that?
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@RocketmanRockyMatrix And that is why countercyclical spending is needed. That is also why there are temporary waivers to work requirements in periods of high unemployment.
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@RocketmanRockyMatrix So, that is why your big idea is to propose something that already exists? Okay, then. My bold idea is that there is a fund that people pay into that serves as social insurance, it is paid for by a tax on payroll, and once people reach a certain age, are disabled, or become widowed or orphaned, they get to withdraw from that fund. We'll call it Social Security. You sound like Dave Rubin accidentally inventing the ACA or the Republicans I dealt with in 2013-14 who, when I asked them to say what they thought health care reform should look like, it was the ACA minus the individual mandate.
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@RocketmanRockyMatrix Unemployment benefits are paid for by an employer payroll tax. At this point, I have to wonder if you are just hoping for probability to kick in and eventually you'll get something right.
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@RocketmanRockyMatrix Foreign aid is less than 1% of the federal budget. You could get rid of all of it tomorrow and still not balance the budget.
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@RocketmanRockyMatrix The problem with the ACA is a problem of too much private sector, not too much. Also, the ACA is not just the exchanges. The exchanges are for people who aren't covered by their employers. That is why it costs what it does. Private insurance is expensive, especially if your employer isn't picking up most of the tab.
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@AW-nb5dt The US Chamber of Commerce is a right wing lobbying group. You remind me of the joke where two fish are swimming along, and one says to the other that it's really wet in this water, and the other asked "what's water?"
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@AW-nb5dt I fixed the link above. Again, no one is "forced to join." Unions are forced by law to represent everyone at the shop whether they join or not, but no one is required to join. Paying an agency fee that is determined to be the costs of representation is not joining. If you don't like that, then maybe you should be complaining about the freeloaders who love their extra pay and worker protections, but don't want to pay for it. Just in case you don't want to go looking for the link again, here it is: https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2020/nonunion-workers-had-weekly-earnings-81-percent-of-union-members-in-2019.htm
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@notcherbidness501 Who considers Bernie difficult to work with? He is the Amendment King. The real problem is that their aren't enough people in Congress who want to go along with him on major legislation. He was let down by strategists who never had a Plan B on case opposition coalesced around one candidate (which is part of why you hear people complaining that it was somehow unfair when Buttigieg and Klobuchar dropped out before Super Tuesday) and thought he could win the nomination with 30%, 2) too many of his voters didn't show up. I did everything I could to help Bernie win, but we need to understand why he lost.
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@AW-nb5dt I didn't cite a union source. I cited Bureau of Labor Statistics information. I found other labor sources, but I didn't use those. And I didn't say that unions were neutral. Try to keep up.
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@AW-nb5dt What specific section of the Constitution does it violate? If you want to play that card, you need to actually use the word correctly. Or is that just like your "research" that was an op-ed column at a right-wing website? Didn't the whole "Opinion" at the very top clue you in? Riddle me this, Batman: what other private organization is required by law to represent non-members? Do you know the difference between membership dues and agency fees? If you're going to troll against workers, you have to at least try better than that.
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@AW-nb5dt The BLS statistics answer the question of whether or not people who have union jobs make more. That was the question on the table. It was pointing out that my term for laws that make it harder for workers to organize is accurate. If non-union workers make 19% less on the whole, calling it right to work for less is accurate. It doesn't answer the toothless laws that allow intimidation and infinite delay to avoid certification. For example, there was an effort to unionize the student teachers at Temple. It took four years to get the certification finalized because the administration kept delaying to the point where most of the people who were involved in the fight had already graduated. End result? A 40% increase in pay with cost of living adjustments and health insurance. Part of the delay was that even after the vote to allow the union was approved, the school made endless delays in recognizing it. It is hardly a situation of "no one wants to join."
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@AW-nb5dt Again, not forced to join. Apparently, your lack if knowledge knows no bounds. And Taft-Hartley is not the Constitution, therefore, it can't be used to argue that something is unconstitutional. When it comes to questions of business, the Interstate Commerce Clause almost always beats the Tenth Amendment. If the Chamber or the Business Roundtable or ALEC or any other union busters are paying you, they should arm you with material that is fresher than a two-year old gallon of milk. Oh, and another hint, if you want to cite something that contradicts the idea that union workers get paid more, GDP is irrelevant to average income. For that matter, since the union busters started getting their way and unionization started to plummet in the 1980s, productivity isn't, either.
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@AW-nb5dt You know, your point about the union executive was a good point... until I thought of all times that I have seen CEOs rob their companies blind, or crash the economy like they did in 2008.
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@AW-nb5dt Answer my question: what other private organization is legally required to represent non-members? Apparently, you missed that in throwing out your red herrings. And I don't work in a right to work for less state, and I intend to keep it that way.
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@AW-nb5dt It does not "remove the voting process." It says that if an absolute majority say that they want to be in a union, that constitutes a Yes vote and the union is recognized if the members so desire.
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@AW-nb5dt And if the union "outlived its usefulness" and wasn't targeted for extinction by management, why do you explain polls saying that a majority would join a union if they could, and why wages have stagnated over the last 40 years? You can't, because you would much rather be a company stooge.
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@AW-nb5dt And as far as teachers unions "ruining education," itself funny that the people who have done actual studies beg to differ: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2523492?seq=1
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@AW-nb5dt You're right, we can go back and forth. The difference is that I don't pull things out of my butt and say that my sources aren't what they really are and I don't avoid questions.
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@AW-nb5dt If you know Taft-Hartley is not in the Constitution, why use it as an example of something that it would violate in the Constitution? And if you really want to invoke Taft-Hartley, it also prohibited closed shops, which some states allowed, so their goes your Tenth Amendment argument, too. I guess you just used that phrase to mean "I don't like it and I want to try to dishonestly use a trump card rather than defend my arguments on the merit."
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@casey4602 And that evil turtle even held up the funding for black lung patients. I think he may be the most purely evil force in America. Trump is bad, but McConnell is bad and good at getting what he wants.
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@AW-nb5dt Oh, yes, because the government forced a bunch of rich people to make bets on the housing market that totaled more than the entire world GDP and nobody really knew what was in those bets. Funny that the party of "personal responsibility" never wants to say that rich people have any when their actions harm us all.
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@AW-nb5dt I am, and I have seen the difference in union work and non-union work. Sorry, but saying that "you sound like you don't live in a state controlled by this law" doesn't sound like a question, nor is relevant to the question at hand. You still haven't had a response to the fact that on average non-union workers make 19% less, and once the federal government stopped enforcing rules about employer interference, that productivity stopped being linked to pay.
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@AW-nb5dt The rule doesn't take it away, because it does not force a card check only model. The difference is that is up to workers rather than employers who fire the organizers and make all kinds of threats to any shop that votes to organize. If a majority say that they want it and they don't want to wait, then a ballot is little more than a stalling tactic.
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@AW-nb5dt Ah, just as I suspected. You only have anecdotes. The 19% figure was the average among all workers in the United States. Well, I can look at what happened in the coal industry in my native state. Probably the biggest example of this was what Don Blankenship did when he took over Massey Energy and they bought another company. Blankenship would bring his plane in and give the same old anti-union spiel, insisting that things would work so much better for the workers if they abandoned the union and they wouldn't have to pay dues anymore. The first thing that happened after they decertified was that their shift increased from 8 hours to 12, and safety checks plummeted. It ended in multiple explosions in mines due to unsafe conditions culminating with an explosion in Upper Big Branch that killed 29 people. Everyone I knew who worked in the mines said that no union shop would have ever allowed such unsafe conditions to continue. So, look at the evidence and then show either what is faulty or provide counter evidence, because random incidents (even if they are true) are not what we base policies on.
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@AW-nb5dt An anecdote is a story told without evidence. You have provided none. I was pointing out that I can provide anecdotes, too, but that still doesn't change the fact that I am the only one who actually provided evidence as to whether or not union workers make more or have better performance (as I did with education). And you still haven't answered the question for why you think that suddenly when unions diminished that wages were no longer connected to productivity.
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@AW-nb5dt Provide evidence. Don't tell me stories. You have proven yourself to be an unreliable witness since several things that you said were evidence turned out not to be what you said they were. So, you said that non-union transportation workers make more than their union counterparts? Funny that the good people at the BLS also broke it down by sector, and as of 2011, union transportation workers made more in every subcategory. Civilian union transportation workers overall made 51% more, private industry union transportation workers made 51% more, and government union transportation workers made 42% more. https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2013/04/art2full.pdf What a shock! Your facts turned out to be alternative again. Anecdotal evidence (n) Evidence in the form of stories that tell people about what has happened to them. Example: His conclusions are not supported by data; they are based only on anecdotal evidence. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/anecdotal%20evidence At this point, I have to ask if you are continuing on in hopes that probability will kick in and sooner or later you'll get something right.
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@AW-nb5dt And you never answered my question since you think agency fees are so evil: name one other private organization anywhere that is required by law to represent non-members.
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@AW-nb5dt Answer my question. Name another private organization required by law to represent non-members. Those freeloaders can whine about paying fees, but they sure do go running to the union when it comes time to get the representation that the union is legally obligated to provide if it represents the shop.
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@AW-nb5dt You mean a decision that invoked a 1910 decision that outlawed minimum wage and child labor laws that got overturned in 1937? Is that really the hill you want to die on. Oh, so businesses should just be allowed to do whatever they want? Yeah, that always works so well.
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@notcherbidness501 I wouldn't call it "awesome and diverse." Haaland is really about the only pick that is cause for excitement. Maybe Fudge, too, although other positions would have been a better fit. It's an improvement over what we have been getting the last four years, but when Biden won, my mean feeling was relief that Trump lost.
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