Unions and CNN: The Liar Network Lies, Lies and Lies Again

Yes, CNN continues to be the master of the Orwellian Big Lir. Ihave expanded my Sodom and Gomorrah search for an "honets journalist" from the "Anti-American, Despicable Associated Press" to "CNN, the Evil, Anti-American Network" a/k/a The Liar Network, a/k/a The Hypocritical Network. You will remember that, for 7 years, I hae been serarching for a single employee of the desicable AP who is an honorable individual, without success. I have been unable to find a single employee of the aP who is an honest individual, despite a more exhaustive (oh, the SACRIFICEWS I have made for you) than anyone else alive. I have now--because of my new concentation on AUDIO sources because of failing eyesight--to include CNN. As yet, I have not found a single "honest journalist"--indeed, a sinngle honest human being--employed by CNN. Saturday's story on "unions" on CNN illustrates my point, and why I expect to report to God that I have been unable to find any evidence that CNN is worth "saving" (less of a threat than you might sppose, in contrast to the Massachusetts Democrat who has advocated that members of public employee unions need to bring "bloody" protest to the streets, since I am an agnostic). If you start to see CNN and AP offices vaporize, don't look. There is a substantil chance you will turn into a pillar of salt.

What was wrong with the CNN program? Simply put, it DELIBERATELY (tese are deliberate liars) confused public employee unions and private unions. In thie guise of looking at Scott Walker's attempt to reign in public employee unions, and similar problems of other states with PUBLIC EMPLOYEE UNIONS, CNN misrepresented history. CNN gave this history of how the unions improved the plight of the working man after wWorld War II. Now you could argue this point as to how good unionis have actually been for the working man. The publicn verdct seems to be against unions, since only 7% or so of PRIVATE workters now belong to a union. However, that is not the LIE (albeit the big battles between unon organizers and company thugs probably took place in the 1930s, and not after World War II, but a case could be made that union members did benefit from their "right" to organize after they secured that "right" mainly in the 1930s). The LIE is that this "history lesson" (George Orwell's Big Broter would be proud of the distortion of hisotry--the Big Lie) has anything to do with PUBLIC EMPLOYEE UNIONS.

You would not know it from watching CNN, but there is NO RIGHT for public employees to organize and collectively bargain. Public employees are EXCLUDED from the Federal laws requiring recognition of the right of workers to organize. Indeed, MANY states exclue public emplyees from any significant collective bargaining "rights". The kicker, however, is that FEDERAL GOVERNMENT (civil service) employees do NOT have the right to "collectively bargain") on wages or genefits. In other words, Scott Walker, in Wisconsin, is asking for LESS restriction on collective bargaining than than is now true of the FEDERAL GOVERNMENT (without potest by Obama or achnowlegement by the dishonest people at CNN).

Franklin Delano Roosevelt opposed pubic employee unions as entirely different from private unions, and the entire history of modern union "rights" (in the private sector, as there are none for public employees, except as may be recognized under individual STATE law) dates to FDR. Given this history, it is absurd to suggest that public employee unions have some sort of "fudnamental right" to collectively bargain. What has happened is that pbulic employee STATE unions--which FDR did not even think should exis, and he was right) have become of prime importance to labor unions. That is because, as stated above, labor unions have DECLINED in the private sector to the point of extinction. The only "growth" for labor unions has been in the public sector--the area where it is most questionable.

Contrary to the CNN Big Lie, it was NOT public employee unions which liberated workers from oppression by explottive employoers. That was--to the extgent accurate, and there is some truth to it--PRIVATE UNIONS (ans especially the laws making it POSSIBLE for unions to organize, meaning that it was always a threat keeping employers from being too aggressive in exploiting employees). Public emplyees have ALWAYS had--since World War II--something like civil service protection. Indeed, the Federal Courts have guaranteed public employees "due process of law"--the problem being that this has often meant that a public employee CANNOT BE FIRED (as a practical matter) for lack of job performance. This is why the teachers' unions are so DISHONEST when they say that their objections to quality control and discharge of teachers for cause relate to "need to balance due process fairness and the need for effective teachers". In practice, teachers' unions use this to make sure that their members CNNOT BE FIRED. Further, they have no intention of changing that, and I will say it to the fact of any of them. You will notice that the real problem is that "due process" is a problem for firing public employees even beyond any union. Indeed, it is clear that the teachers' unions want to make it MORE DIFFICULT to fire teachers than even the Federal Courts would make it.

Okay. CNN lies. Public emplyee unons and private unions represent entirely different issues. Pubic employee unionns get their money directly from TAXPAYERS, who are reallly their "employers". See my next article.

Thus, the question of whether public employee unions have "helped" their members get better wages and benefits is an even more tricky questio than whether private unions have helped their members. Every single extra dollar that public employee unons may get for their members--and their JOB is to get more money for their members rather than to be "fair" to the taxpayers) has to come out of the pocket of TAXPAYERS. The money does NOT come from politicians who might be "netotiating" with unions, and whose main interest is in VOTES (rather than protecting the taxpayer). The wages and benefits of public employees are a matter of PUBLIC POLICY, and it is rally absurd to suggest that unions should be able to "negotiate" away the "rights' of the taxpayers with sweetheart deals with the very politicians the unions often got elected in the first place.

Wheter you agree with all of this analysis, it is an objective FACT that the issues as to public employee unions are NOT the same as with private unions. Left wing unions might think that they are needed to "protect" public workers from "right wing thugs" just as bad as company goons. But that is absurd. Why should UNIONS be able to determine public policy on their own wages and benefits. Even if you think they should be able to do that--fool that you are--it is an entirely different ISSUE than the issue of private bargaining between private workers and private employers.

Q.E.D. CNN is The Liar Network. At the very least, CNN needs to at least acknowlege that the FEDERAL GOVERNMENT does not allow collective bargaining on wages and benefits. If you don't acknowlege that, then you have no case for saying you are not a LIAR> Of course you are (as President Obama lied when he said that Scott Walker in Wisconsin was conduction an "assault on unions", even as Walker was trying to adopt the same rules as the Federal Government--ONLY ALLOWING MORE COLLECTIVE BARGAINING THAN THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT ALLOWS).

Now you may have noticed that Repubicans ans, and even conservatives, conspire in this mainstream media Big Lie (that the issues on private unions and public employee unions are the same). Republicans do this by also talking about "unions", as if there is no difference between public employee unnions and unions in the private sector. WHY do Republicans make this error? I think it is because Repubicans fall into the trap that ALL unions are the "enemy", and therefore it is easy for them to fall into the trap of considering all unions as being equally bad. Over the last 40 or 50 years, you can make the case that unions have HURT workers--including private sector unions (a case CNN did not really make, showing it is PARTISAN as well as composed only of liars). But you still can't fall into the error of accepting the FALSE lpremis that public and private sector unions have the same issues. Legally, this is clearly false. And the issues involved are different in several fundamental ways.