Carlin was right about workers' plight

[Earth Bound Misfit]

I checked to see if this was already posted, but could not find it.

http://www.adn.com/opinion/story/454266.html

COMMUNITY VOICES: A guest columnist's view
VINCE BELTRAMI

Three things happened last week that all juxtaposed in my mind. George Carlin died, I took right-wing radio mouth Dan Fagan to task on the Employee Free Choice Act because he had it all wrong, and the Exxon Valdez verdict came down from the Supreme Court.

Most people are familiar with Carlin's "seven words you can't say on television."...I thought I'd offer seven dirty terms relevant to Alaskans which they better remember come November: greed, corruption, indictments, convictions, apathy, short memories and injustice.

Carlin did a special not too long ago that featured a bit called "The American Dream." It wasn't funny. It was brooding and cynical, but I saw it as a call to action by one of the most accurate, if not offensive, social commentators of our time.

Carlin took Americans to task and lamented how we've been sold a bill of goods on the American dream, and blasted us for standing by as the "real owners" of America stick it to working folks and how the real owners, big-business interests, have taken control of politicians, the media, the judges, etc. They want more for themselves and less for everybody else. They don't want well-informed, well-educated citizens, capable of critical thinking. That doesn't help them. That's against their interests.

Carlin went on to say, "They want obedient workers. People who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork, and just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly (expletive) jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, the reduced benefits, the end of overtime, and the vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it. Good, honest, hard-working people; white collar, blue collar, people of modest means, continue to elect these rich (expletive) who don't give a (expletive) about them."...

A few days before Carlin's passing, Fagan was railing against EFCA, also called majority sign-up. Fagan's misinformation came from the spin provided by the ultra-conservative corporate-sponsored Heritage Foundation, not exactly a champion of worker's rights.

The act would actually fix a broken National Labor Relations Board system meant to protect workers seeking union representation, and right the wrongs that corporate-friendly appointments to the NLRB since Reagan have created. The union election process has been perverted. This act would protect workers from harassment and intimidation rampant in the organizing process today. It would also do away with typical stall tactics many employers use during negotiations, often for years....

When the elections come around in November, we can do what we've always done and get what we've always gotten or we can demand change and give regular folks a fighting chance. If we don't, in my frustration, don't be surprised if I lament by shouting out Carlin's original seven dirty words at the top of my lungs. Rest in peace, George.

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Vince Beltrami is president of the Alaska AFL-CIO.

FULL STORY AT LINK

[Blue_In_AK]

1. I remember reading this a few days ago.

Thanks for posting it. Alaskans are waking up.

[baldguy]

2. The Romans knew how to keep the masses quiescent.

Bread And Circuses: keep the proletariat fat (but not too fat, just a few steps from starvation) & happily distracted (but not too distracted, they still should have a strong undercurrent of fear) and keep up the pretense that they are part of the bourgeoisie ruling class (that they are "important" and they have a stake keeping the power structure as it is) and the capitalist oligarchs can do pretty much anything they want.

[Omaha Steve]

3. Kick

For George.