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skates like Eck
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America loves to drive
When I think of worker's unions, I think of how low Ronald Reagan had crawled, and how he betrayed American workers before he ever got close to being elected for anything. Nancy was there to guide him up the ladder.
Walter Reuther
the Reuther brothers: Walter, the future United Auto Workers president standing next to the bloodied organizer, and Victor and Roy. Together they played a pivotal role in transforming the United Auto Workers into what was for decades the nation’s most powerful labor union.
Walter, a gifted speaker, shrewd negotiator and confidant of Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. The film also tells of Victor Reuther, the most intellectual of the brothers, who became head of the U.A.W.’s international division, and of Roy Reuther, who, as the union’s political director, used its power to help elect Kennedy and push through Medicare, Medicaid, the Voting Rights Act and other landmark legislation.
Professor Lichtenstein, also the author of a biography of Walter Reuther, “The Most Dangerous Man in Detroit,” said he was impressed by the archival material the filmmakers found, especially a recording of a phone conversation in which Johnson warned his longtime ally Walter Reuther not to turn against him and oppose the war in Vietnam.
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2012/10/10..._r=0&referrer=
http://www.salon.com/2015/03/07/the_...ammed_america/
Victor Reuther’s grandson Sasha Reuther features that photo prominently in the new documentary, which he directed and helped produce, to tell how the brothers built the U.A.W. and how that union helped raise living standards for not just one million autoworkers, but also for a large swath of America. The film shows the fierce struggles and sit-down strikes that led to the unionization of General Motors, Ford and Chrysler, and how the U.A.W. played a major role in underwriting the civil rights movement as well as that of Cesar Chavez and the farmworkers.
OCTOBER 9, 2012
Nelson Lichtenstein, a professor of labor history at the University of California, Santa Barbara, said, “There’s a dramatic story to be told about the history of the U.A.W., and it needs to be told to every generation.”
Critics (paid by the car industry ?)
Some critics say the Reuthers were so successful in pushing up wages and benefits that it made Detroit’s Big Three automakers uncompetitive once Japanese imports started flowing in. Professor Lichtenstein said, “The film puts the question forward about what happened to the auto industry, but it never comes to an answer on that one.”
1970
United Auto Workers’ last great nationwide strike.
1971
Comprehensive Child Development Act
President "Dick" Nixon vetoed it.
Congress caved to the Extreme Christian Right.
Comprehensive Child Development Act (CCDA), sponsored by Democratic Senator Walter Mondale and Democratic Rep. John Brademas, passed both houses of Congress in 1971 and awaited President Nixon’s signature.
The bill “included a sliding-scale payment system that would have made child care far more affordable for the nation’s poor and middle class alike. It came closer than any previous legislation to recognizing child care as part of women’s economic citizenship.”
"After the veto, though, the very idea of government-funded child care spawned a fantastic misinformation campaign, complete with rumors that any such efforts would inevitably lead to government indoctrination of small children, and child labor unions empowered to fight their parents."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs...time-america-almost-got-universal-child-care/
For four years during the U.S.'s involvement in World War II (1943-1946), the nation ran a universal child care program funded through the Lanham Act. The program was intended to be a temporary war emergency measure so that mothers with children ages 0-12 could contribute to the nation's war production effort. Nearly every state received Lanham Act funds to build and maintain child care centers, to train and pay teachers, and to heavily subsidize daycare costs for families.
*gsgs comment- Who is constantly shouting that we are at war ?
Women are now fighting the war, in 2015.
See- dead female soldiers
See- disabled female vets
Childcare was the bone of contention. In 1971, when President Nixon vetoed the Comprehensive Child Development Act, which both houses of Congress had passed -- the act that would have established both early education programs and after-school care across the country -- childcare became, in Levy's words,"a luxury affordable by the affluent, and a major problem for everyone else."
1972
- more cars (and trucks ?) than we could fill up from our own wells.
October 1973 was a rude awakening for the entire United States
It was a watershed month for the American middle class. The Arab Oil Embargo would lead to the downfall of the American auto industry, whose generous wages and benefits set the standard for the entire economy. It was also the month of the Saturday Night Massacre, which made inevitable the downfall of Richard Nixon.
1973
General Motors was ramping up for its bounty of Vietnam War contracts.
Sept. 23, 1973 — was the day the American middle class peaked.
October 6, 1973
Arab states attack Israeli forces
Heavy fighting has erupted between Arab and Israeli forces along two fronts.
To the south, Egyptian armoured forces have broken the Israeli line on the eastern bank of the Suez Canal.
In the north, Syrian troops and tanks are battling with Israeli defences along the Golan Heights seized by Israel from Syria in 1967.
They attacked Israel on Yom Kippur, and the holiest day in the Jewish calendar
Golda Meir begged the United States for help. Reluctantly, Nixon sent ammunition, helping Israel repel the Arab attack — and inspiring King Faisal to declare a retaliatory embargo.
1974
Egypt had invaded Israel. When the United States provided military aid to the Jewish state, Saudi Arabia retaliated by cutting off oil exports to Western nations. The Arab Oil Embargo raised the price of gasoline from 36 to 53 cents a gallon — when drivers could get it. To prevent hours-long lines, filling stations sold to cars with odd-numbered license plates on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, even plates on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays.
(I was born in 1954. Boston had an OK public transport system.)
That summer, we used bicycles to go everywhere.
Huge lines of cars waited to get gas.
2012, the UAW was so depeopled it could not prevent the Michigan legislature from passing a right-to-work law. Republicans candidly admitted the bill would have stood no chance when the UAW had 1.5 million members — three times its current strength.
The Rise of Koch sponsored politics-
The newly inaugurated governor of Illinois is Bruce Rauner, a venture capitalist who is trying to prevent public-sector unions from collecting dues, and has proposed cutting pensions for state employees. This is the cynical end game of economic libertarians’ war on labor: After reducing private sector unions to a fraction of their old membership, they direct the resentment of the newly impoverished working class at public-sector employees getting a “sweet deal” at the expense of struggling taxpayers no longer earning that kind of money.
http://www.salon.com/2015/03/07/the...iddle_class_how_october_1973_slammed_america/
1975
1975, a group of women at Cornell University coined the term sexual harassment. Previously, some women had called it “sexual blackmail,” but when legal scholar Catherine Mackinnon used the new phrase in the title of her 1979 book, Sexual Harassment of Working Women, both feminists and judges began using it in litigation against predatory bosses.
http://www.salon.com/2013/02/21/the_longest_revolution_partner/
Democrats elected to the House in the wake of Nixon’s resignation — took advantage of their numbers and of popular revulsion against The Way Things Are Done in Washington to break the power of long-serving committee chairmen who had controlled the flow of congressional legislation.
The House became more democratic, but the nation didn’t.
Money replaced seniority as the most important factor in moving a bill.
Lobbyists and political action committees began showing up in greater numbers to make sure members cast the correct votes, rewarding those who did, punishing those who didn’t.
The cost of campaigns increased.
“From an institution dominated by 20 or so powerful leaders, Congress has evolved into a collection of 535 independent political entrepreneurs with their individual interests uppermost — i.e., to get re-elected,” wrote Fareed Zakaria
When Elections Changed
1973
Among the most consequential reforms of the 1970s was the move toward open committee meetings and recorded votes. Committee chairs used to run meetings at which legislation was ‘marked up’ behind closed doors. Only members and a handful of senior staff were present. By 1973 not only were the meetings open to anyone, but every vote was formally recorded. Before this, in voting on amendments members would walk down aisles for the ayes and nays. The final count would be recorded but not the stand of each individual member. Now each member has to vote publicly on every amendment.
The purpose of these changes was to make Congress more open and responsive. And so it has become — to money, lobbyists and special interests.”
http://www.salon.com/2015/03/07/the...iddle_class_how_october_1973_slammed_america/
1984 to 2009, the median net worth of a House member increased from $280,000 to $725,000, in inflation-adjusted dollars,” while the median net worth of the average citizen remained stuck at around $20,000.
When I think of worker's unions, I think of how low Ronald Reagan had crawled, and how he betrayed American workers before he ever got close to being elected for anything. Nancy was there to guide him up the ladder.
Walter Reuther
the Reuther brothers: Walter, the future United Auto Workers president standing next to the bloodied organizer, and Victor and Roy. Together they played a pivotal role in transforming the United Auto Workers into what was for decades the nation’s most powerful labor union.
Walter, a gifted speaker, shrewd negotiator and confidant of Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. The film also tells of Victor Reuther, the most intellectual of the brothers, who became head of the U.A.W.’s international division, and of Roy Reuther, who, as the union’s political director, used its power to help elect Kennedy and push through Medicare, Medicaid, the Voting Rights Act and other landmark legislation.
Professor Lichtenstein, also the author of a biography of Walter Reuther, “The Most Dangerous Man in Detroit,” said he was impressed by the archival material the filmmakers found, especially a recording of a phone conversation in which Johnson warned his longtime ally Walter Reuther not to turn against him and oppose the war in Vietnam.
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2012/10/10..._r=0&referrer=
http://www.salon.com/2015/03/07/the_...ammed_america/
Victor Reuther’s grandson Sasha Reuther features that photo prominently in the new documentary, which he directed and helped produce, to tell how the brothers built the U.A.W. and how that union helped raise living standards for not just one million autoworkers, but also for a large swath of America. The film shows the fierce struggles and sit-down strikes that led to the unionization of General Motors, Ford and Chrysler, and how the U.A.W. played a major role in underwriting the civil rights movement as well as that of Cesar Chavez and the farmworkers.
OCTOBER 9, 2012
Nelson Lichtenstein, a professor of labor history at the University of California, Santa Barbara, said, “There’s a dramatic story to be told about the history of the U.A.W., and it needs to be told to every generation.”
Critics (paid by the car industry ?)
Some critics say the Reuthers were so successful in pushing up wages and benefits that it made Detroit’s Big Three automakers uncompetitive once Japanese imports started flowing in. Professor Lichtenstein said, “The film puts the question forward about what happened to the auto industry, but it never comes to an answer on that one.”
1970
United Auto Workers’ last great nationwide strike.
1971
Comprehensive Child Development Act
President "Dick" Nixon vetoed it.
Congress caved to the Extreme Christian Right.
Comprehensive Child Development Act (CCDA), sponsored by Democratic Senator Walter Mondale and Democratic Rep. John Brademas, passed both houses of Congress in 1971 and awaited President Nixon’s signature.
The bill “included a sliding-scale payment system that would have made child care far more affordable for the nation’s poor and middle class alike. It came closer than any previous legislation to recognizing child care as part of women’s economic citizenship.”
"After the veto, though, the very idea of government-funded child care spawned a fantastic misinformation campaign, complete with rumors that any such efforts would inevitably lead to government indoctrination of small children, and child labor unions empowered to fight their parents."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs...time-america-almost-got-universal-child-care/
For four years during the U.S.'s involvement in World War II (1943-1946), the nation ran a universal child care program funded through the Lanham Act. The program was intended to be a temporary war emergency measure so that mothers with children ages 0-12 could contribute to the nation's war production effort. Nearly every state received Lanham Act funds to build and maintain child care centers, to train and pay teachers, and to heavily subsidize daycare costs for families.
*gsgs comment- Who is constantly shouting that we are at war ?
Women are now fighting the war, in 2015.
See- dead female soldiers
See- disabled female vets
Childcare was the bone of contention. In 1971, when President Nixon vetoed the Comprehensive Child Development Act, which both houses of Congress had passed -- the act that would have established both early education programs and after-school care across the country -- childcare became, in Levy's words,"a luxury affordable by the affluent, and a major problem for everyone else."
1972
- more cars (and trucks ?) than we could fill up from our own wells.
October 1973 was a rude awakening for the entire United States
It was a watershed month for the American middle class. The Arab Oil Embargo would lead to the downfall of the American auto industry, whose generous wages and benefits set the standard for the entire economy. It was also the month of the Saturday Night Massacre, which made inevitable the downfall of Richard Nixon.
1973
General Motors was ramping up for its bounty of Vietnam War contracts.
Sept. 23, 1973 — was the day the American middle class peaked.
October 6, 1973
Arab states attack Israeli forces
Heavy fighting has erupted between Arab and Israeli forces along two fronts.
To the south, Egyptian armoured forces have broken the Israeli line on the eastern bank of the Suez Canal.
In the north, Syrian troops and tanks are battling with Israeli defences along the Golan Heights seized by Israel from Syria in 1967.
They attacked Israel on Yom Kippur, and the holiest day in the Jewish calendar
Golda Meir begged the United States for help. Reluctantly, Nixon sent ammunition, helping Israel repel the Arab attack — and inspiring King Faisal to declare a retaliatory embargo.
1974
Egypt had invaded Israel. When the United States provided military aid to the Jewish state, Saudi Arabia retaliated by cutting off oil exports to Western nations. The Arab Oil Embargo raised the price of gasoline from 36 to 53 cents a gallon — when drivers could get it. To prevent hours-long lines, filling stations sold to cars with odd-numbered license plates on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, even plates on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays.
(I was born in 1954. Boston had an OK public transport system.)
That summer, we used bicycles to go everywhere.
Huge lines of cars waited to get gas.
2012, the UAW was so depeopled it could not prevent the Michigan legislature from passing a right-to-work law. Republicans candidly admitted the bill would have stood no chance when the UAW had 1.5 million members — three times its current strength.
The Rise of Koch sponsored politics-
The newly inaugurated governor of Illinois is Bruce Rauner, a venture capitalist who is trying to prevent public-sector unions from collecting dues, and has proposed cutting pensions for state employees. This is the cynical end game of economic libertarians’ war on labor: After reducing private sector unions to a fraction of their old membership, they direct the resentment of the newly impoverished working class at public-sector employees getting a “sweet deal” at the expense of struggling taxpayers no longer earning that kind of money.
http://www.salon.com/2015/03/07/the...iddle_class_how_october_1973_slammed_america/
1975
1975, a group of women at Cornell University coined the term sexual harassment. Previously, some women had called it “sexual blackmail,” but when legal scholar Catherine Mackinnon used the new phrase in the title of her 1979 book, Sexual Harassment of Working Women, both feminists and judges began using it in litigation against predatory bosses.
http://www.salon.com/2013/02/21/the_longest_revolution_partner/
Democrats elected to the House in the wake of Nixon’s resignation — took advantage of their numbers and of popular revulsion against The Way Things Are Done in Washington to break the power of long-serving committee chairmen who had controlled the flow of congressional legislation.
The House became more democratic, but the nation didn’t.
Money replaced seniority as the most important factor in moving a bill.
Lobbyists and political action committees began showing up in greater numbers to make sure members cast the correct votes, rewarding those who did, punishing those who didn’t.
The cost of campaigns increased.
“From an institution dominated by 20 or so powerful leaders, Congress has evolved into a collection of 535 independent political entrepreneurs with their individual interests uppermost — i.e., to get re-elected,” wrote Fareed Zakaria
When Elections Changed
1973
Among the most consequential reforms of the 1970s was the move toward open committee meetings and recorded votes. Committee chairs used to run meetings at which legislation was ‘marked up’ behind closed doors. Only members and a handful of senior staff were present. By 1973 not only were the meetings open to anyone, but every vote was formally recorded. Before this, in voting on amendments members would walk down aisles for the ayes and nays. The final count would be recorded but not the stand of each individual member. Now each member has to vote publicly on every amendment.
The purpose of these changes was to make Congress more open and responsive. And so it has become — to money, lobbyists and special interests.”
http://www.salon.com/2015/03/07/the...iddle_class_how_october_1973_slammed_america/
1984 to 2009, the median net worth of a House member increased from $280,000 to $725,000, in inflation-adjusted dollars,” while the median net worth of the average citizen remained stuck at around $20,000.
