Conservatives Declare War On Unions – Public Employee Unions to Be Outlawed in Wisconsin

State workers protest in Madison
This week in Wisconsin, conservatives are making perhaps the single biggest assault on collective bargaining that’s taken place in the last 60-80 years.
The republican-controlled Wisconsin state legislature is trying to take away the collective bargaining rights of state, county and municipal workers.
These takeaways include:

  • Automatic yearly elections where 51+% of all employees in a bargaining unit would have to vote in favor of union representation or the union would be decertified;
  • No more union shops where membership or an equivalency fee are required as a condition of employment;
  • Would limit wage increases to a small percetage based on the increase in the cost of living;
  • Would force employees to pay nearly 13% of their healthcare costs;
  • Reduces employers pension contributions.

And those are just the highlights. Basically, it would do away with public employee unions in Wisconsin.

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Yes on Initiative 1082 – Let’s help the BIAW and the insurance companies get rich!

Dino Rossi, the Italian Stallion, with his head up his ass as usual

One of the most asinine initiatives in Washington state this election has got to be 1082
– the initiative to privatize the state worker’s compensation system. The primary sponsor is the Building Industry Association of Washington – Dino Rossi’s erstwhile masters – and the large insurance companies. (Rossi is pictured at the right, with his head up his ass, as usual).

So far, the BIAW has spent a reported $500, 000 on its Yes-1082 campaign – a staggering sum of money. But it’s nothing compared to what they potentially can make if 1082 passes. Here’s a detailed look.

It’s all about offering better “case management” than Labor and Industries. Which translated, means screwing legitimate claimants – denying or delaying valid claims – just to save the insurance companies a buck.

Here’s a story about my experience with Safeco Insurances claims management practices.

But wait, there’s more: one of the main insurance companies that would take care of Worker’s Comp in Washington state if this passes is AIG.

That’s right, AIG – the company whose top notch management is so great that the US taxpayers had to come up with $85 billion to bail them out rather than have the company go bankrupt. The same AIG that, right after receiving the $85 billion bailout, sent their executives on a week-long retreat at the St Regis Resort in Monarch Beach California at the cost of $433,000 – of taxpayer money.

So let me get this straight – the BIAW wants to privatize the state Worker’s Comp system – to save us all money – and to carry out this task, they’re going to use AIG, the company that managed itself into bankruptcy, and sends its executives to $433,000 retreats at public expense?

Sure that sounds reasonable.

Run Dino, Run….

Dino Rossi, the Italian Stallion, with his head up his ass as usual
Spokane, WA (AP) – Perennial candidate for big business, Dino Rossi (R – Spokane), seen at right with his head up his ass, as usual, is off and running again, this time for the US Senate.

Foiled in his two recent attempts to claim the governorship of Washington state, Rossi decided to attempt to capture Patty Murray’s (D – Seattle) Senate seat this time.

“That bitch is going down!” Rossi was heard to have said last week, following a press conference. “All those homo liberals in Seattle are gonna eat their words. They stole the last governor’s election, now we’re gonna make ’em pay!”

Always popular with big business and conservative republicans, Rossi was the number one homeboy for the Building Industry Association of Washington in the last governor’s election. This time for his Senate campaign, he’s branched out and broadened his support to include right-wing religious nuts, greedy millionaires and other fringe lunatics.

Asked what his platform was going to be, if elected, Rossi said, “We’re gonna take the country back for the real Americans – the rich, white, Christian people like me. All those liberal homo assholes are gonna have to move back to California, or something. Yee-ha!”

Go Sarah, GO!


Des Moines, IA (AP) – In a bold, audacious move, the Republican party today announced their dream ticket for the 2012 presidential elections – Sarah Palin and Christine O’Donnell.

Governor Palin, the failed vice-presidential candidate in the 2008 elections was elated. “I can see the capitol from my house,” she was heard saying.

In a joint press conference early today, Governor Palin and Ms O’Donnell announced the main points of their platform:

· Christianity will be made the state religion for the United States
· Abortion for any reason will be outlawed
· Corporate taxes will be reduced to 1% or $10, whichever is lesss
· And a whole lot of other important stuff

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Click! Network Responds

D'oh!
And yet another open letter to Click! Network management:

One of your people called me a few days ago to talk about DOCSIS 3.0

I’m sorry, I don’t recall his name.

He was under the strong impression Comcast just rolled out DOCSIS 3.0 here in Tacoma in December 2009.

WRONG.

As I told the guy, Comcast rolled out DOCSIS 3.0 here in the Seattle Tacoma area slightly over a year ago – mid-December 2008. Check out this thread on dslreports.com and please note the posts’ date: DOCSIS 3.0 available in Tacoma

Yes, that’s right: Comcast rolled out DOCSIS 3.0 in Tacoma in mid-December, 2008. The first post in the thread is dated 12-19-2008.

And you guys thought the roll-out had just happened? Seriously? And according to what the guy told me, you’re just now getting ready to ask the city council for money to build-out a DOCSIS 3.0 system?

This really disturbs me.

How on earth could you people have missed a major market event such as that?

The guy I talked to told me that the vast majority of your customers are at the Res 1 level, so that was another reason Click saw no real incentive to upgrade. Well duh! You ever suppose the reason all your customers are at Res 1 is because the other products are so inferior that anyone interested in real bandwidth and real value will go to Comcast?

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Is Click! Network Trying To Commit Suicide? Looks That way…

D'oh!Comcast started offering DOCSIS 3.0 connections here in the Seattle-Tacoma area over a year ago. Where is DOCSIS 3.0 for Click customers?

An open letter to Click! Network Management

Sirs:

Comcast started offering DOCSIS 3.0 connections here in the Seattle-Tacoma area over a year ago. At the time Comcast premiered it’s product here, I called Click! customer service and was assured you were “working” on our DOCSIS 3.0 upgrade and that it would happen sometime relatively soon.

Well it’s a year later, and we still have no upgrade. Comcast customers get twice (or more) the bandwidth we do.

Put this another way – say both Click! and Comcast were selling electricity. Click! sells 10 kWh for $62, but Comcast sells 30 kWh for the same price. That’s what we have with internet bandwidth – Comcast gives their customers double or triple the bandwidth for the same exact price.

And this is a city owned utility! Why should Tacoma residents – who own Click! – pay more for their internet through their own utility? If anything, city utility prices should be less expensive!

Continue reading “Is Click! Network Trying To Commit Suicide? Looks That way…”

Port of Tacoma – NYK Deal – Money Mostly Well Spent


Like I said in the last post, I don’t usually read the Tacoma News Tribune. It’s a scandal rag, owned by the McClatchy organization.

Last week, I couldn’t help looking at their story on the Port of Tacoma – a copy was lying there on a table at work, open to the story, Port of Tacoma’s Blair Development: Millions to nowhere. So reluctantly – knowing that with a title like that, it couldn’t be a good story – I read on.

In the article, they tell the story of the development of the proposed new container terminal for NYK.

Briefly, in 2007, the Port of Tacoma signed a deal with the shipping line NYK, to provide them a new dedicated 168 acre container terminal in Tacoma, located on the tip of the Blair Peninsula. Integral to building the new terminal was relocating an existing terminal, Totem Ocean Trailer Express (TOTE), and the demolition of existing buildings, as well as the cleanup of some toxic waste sites.

Because the Port didn’t own all the property necessary for the project, it spent some $146 million on property acquisition and demolition.

In 2007 when the deal with NYK was inked, the economy was going great guns. All the projections – which were accepted pretty much universally – held that Chinese imports would explode in the coming years, with cargo growth rates reaching as much as 25% a year. The big fear, up and down the West Coast, was that we would not have enough dock space or the infrastructure available to handle the glut of Chinese cargo coming in.

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Tacoma News Tribune – A Newspaper Only In Name

Tacoma News Tribune - RIP
I don’t generally read the Tacoma News Tribune. It’s a McClatchy “newspaper” – and I use that term loosely.

McClatchy rags all seem to tout the McClatchy line – they’re anti-labor, right-wing, rags with a very specific, narrow agenda. I guess you could say they’re the print equivalent of Fox News.

When McClatchy bought the TNT from the Baker family years ago, one of the first things they did was engineer the breaking of the newspaper’s union – pretty much just as they’ve done at most all the other McClatchy rags. That kinda set the tone for everything else.

I stopped reading the TNT – cancelled my subscription – when they came out with a story about longshore workers in Tacoma, about the longshore casual selection process. The story was quite biased and the editorial that followed was a sniveling, whiny piece of drivel – motivated by what was obviously the fact that the editor’s kid must not have gotten a casual card and the editor was pissed.

When you intimately know a subject – I am a longshoreman in Tacoma – then it’s easy to separate fact from fiction. The story about ILWU Local 23 was severely biased. And if the TNT promotes lies about that, then I have to figure the rest of their coverage is similarly biased.

So like I said, I quit subscribing.

I did pick up an occasional Sunday paper – mostly for the ads. And I continued to read the online version – for the local news.

Then a few months ago, the paper published yet another whiny, anti-labor editorial that was blatantly untrue and biased – and since then, I quit reading the online version.

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Time Magazine 2009 Person of the Year – George W. Bush

George W. Bush - Our Fuhrer - Dictator For Life
Editor’s note: We came within about an inch of this actually happening. Let’s not forget!

We’re lucky to have secured a pre-release excerpt from the new Time Magazine issue set to be on newsstands the week of December 21, 2009 – Time’s Person of the Year edition.

2009 Person of the Year

Selecting the Person of The Year is always a tough call, but given the recent political developments in the United States and the world generally, this year was somewhat easier and we were unanimous in picking George W, Bush as our 2009 Person of the Year.

It’s easily demonstratable that George W, Bush has made life much safer for God fearing Christians the world over, and on that basis alone, our choice for Person of the Year was easy.

In the turmoil following the terrorist bombing of the 2008 Democratic National Convention – which precipitated the loss of all the top Democratic Party leadership including nominee Senator Barack Obama – George W. Bush boldly took charge, suspending the presidential elections, declaring martial law.

By immediately rounding up all the godless heathen terrorists – Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, homosexuals, anarchists, liberals and the like – the United States is now finally enjoying the peace and safety we deserve.

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Passings – Farrah Fawcett and Whacko Jacko

Hitler's Painting
I was saddened to hear of the death of Farrah Fawcett. She was a really classy, beautiful and talented lady.

Conversely, on hearing Michael Jackson died at about the same time, I think I felt relief. My reaction was along the lines of, thank god, another psycho pedophile has been taken out of action.

When Farrah Fawcett debuted on TV, a lot of people dismissed her as just another pretty face – one of the “Charlie’s Angels.” It was hard to draw a different conclusion back then – face it – Charlie’s Angels was the Baywatch of the mid-70’s. The whole premise of the show was to put beautiful women in improbably situations to showcase their good looks.  Not much plot. Terrible writing and acting. But great looking babes. It’s a TV show formula that’s been proven to work, over and over.

Reinforcing that no-talent/beautiful airhead impression was the iconic poster she did – and the hysteria about her trademark hair.

But then to the amazement of everyone, she left the show after only a year.

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