Misery Index

From the Courier-Journal in Kentucky:

This card check law would be partially damaging to Louisville where the manufacturing base is still a dominant part of the economy.

As far as Kentucky is concerned, Toyota would be a top-of-the-agenda target and thus would probably pick up its operations and move them to Canada or Mexico.

As a former chairman, and still a member of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce labor policy committee, I can assure you that this is the most potentially damaging piece of proposed union legislation to both the freedom of the individual employee and the health of U.S. productivity to come along in memory.

And how does this possibly affect the transportation industry?  From Logistics Management:

"I expect HOS to be revised and perhaps even codified and I would not be surprised to see driving hours reduced to 10 based on a 12 hour work day. (Which means less miles, thus less money.  And goods to be delivered at a slower rate.) You should expect to see a mandatory fuel surcharge program and stronger enforcement of the EPA Model Anti-Idling law; and many (not just LTL) trucking companies could become unionized.  Lastly, all efforts to improve productivity through Size and Weight, will quietly be put to sleep."

As a little overview of the EFCA, in its current form, once the legislation passes, unions will be able to penetrate the workforce by merely obtaining a simple majority of employee signatures on authorization cards - known as a "card check" process - which substitutes a signature for a secret ballot vote.

One a majority of signed "authorization" cards are obtained and presented to the employer, the union will be entitled to legal recognition as the employees' exclusive bargaining representative.    This "system" however, allows for pressuring employees and peers to sign the cards and everyone will know who supported a union and who didn't.  And since unions can press employees for their signatures before and after work, during their breaks, at local bars, churches and even at their homes and this could be a problem for those who do not wish to participate.

Also under the proposed legislation, there is a  section entitled "Facilitating Initial Collective Bargaining Agreement."  Under this section, collective bargaining agreement must begin within 1-0 days and must be reached within 90 days after a demand is made by the union to commence negotiations following a successful card-count.  If an agreement is not reached, the parties must submit the negotiation process to mediation. 

If no agreement is reached with negotiation after 30 days, then it is sent to a federal arbitration panel.  That arbitration panel settles the negotiations by determining the terms of a binding two year agreement, setting wages, benefits, hours, work-rules and all the other terms of employment.  When it reaches this level, employees do NOT have a say or a vote on pay, benefits or workplace conditions.

And then there are the Union dues to be paid every week.

First, this means that there will be a major waiting period before the union benefits "happen".  It will not happen overnight.  And secondly, do you really think that employers who are not "union friendly" will employee those who want the union?  No, they will choose for cheaper labor (i.e. illegal) or choose to outsource their work overseas.

And if you say that legitimate large employers don't hire illegal immigrants, well, let me tell you of something that happened to me within the past few days.  I was at a local McDonalds, as I have a horrible horrible liking for their vanilla shakes, and overheard two employees talking about one of themselves.  One employee was professing that he did not have a social security card, or a social security number, yet this employee was obviously over the age of 18.  He then proceeded to tell the other employee how he had gotten a fake social security card.  While I stood there listening to their conversation, the manager realized that I was listening and told the two to end their conversation looking at me.  Now McDonald's might not be the dream job that everyone thinks of, but its a job, and in this economy where jobs are thin, a job that a legal American might need, it was given to an illegal immigrant by a Fortune 500 company.  And this is NOT a lone observation or overheard conversation where I live.  And no, this is not going to turn into an immigration post.

Now supposedly Obama supports employer use of the federal E-Verify program and increasing the number of visas allowed (why are we increasing visas when we don't have enough jobs to go around now?), but shares labor concerns that H-1B workers are sometimes used to substitute for American workers and would likely put more restrictions on how employers can use the visas. 

The Patriot Employer Act of 2007 is suppose to help stop companies sending jobs overseas by giving tax breaks to companies that keep jobs in the United States, maintaining their corporate headquarters here, pay a certain level of wages, stay neutral during organizing drives, pay at least 60 percent of the healthcare premiums of employees, prepare workers for retirement and support workers who serve in the military.   There's only one problem with that.  Where are the jobs?  If there are no jobs, then there are no employees.

And Obama plans on taxing employers for the new national healthcare program.  Under Obama's proposal, employers that don't provide a "meaningful" contribution to their workers health coverage will have to pay the government a percentage of their payroll.

Obama also co-sponsored an act that eliminates caps on compensatory and punitive damaged awarded in discrimination cases.  This act would parallel the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, where every time an employee receives a paycheck or pension payment, they can sue for pay discrimination.  Obama is a strong supporter of this act.

Obama also plans on increasing the minimum wage to $9.50 per hour and also require employers with at least 15 employees to provide seven paid sick days per year.  (Obama co-sponsored the sick days bill.)

So do you REALLY THINK that employers are going to keep jobs in the United States with all these new rules and expenses?  Seriously.... Now I am not saying that people are not entitled to these rights however, do you think every company and business in the United States has the money to back all of this up, especially with the significant drop in business and sluggish sales?

Now I'm all for workers rights with fair pay for a fair job done.  But forced unions are not going to "fix" the rising unemployment level.  All they are going to do is raise the unemployment level, driving major corporations to send jobs overseas to lower costs, and lower hassle.  The main point of Congress should NOT be to "fix" unions.  It should be to stimulate the economy, stimulate jobs, stimulate spending, and help people, not the black hole AIG banks out of trouble.

And the only people it seems that will make any money out of this act, will be labor lawyers and union heads.  But I could be wrong.  Time will tell, if the act and/or acts pass.....

Oh, and one other thing.  Pushing for organized workers and unions for all jobs is a trait of socialism.  Don't believe me?  Check out the Socialist Party USA's, Socialist Party Handbook on "Working Class Unity".

In AIG's defense, Ashooh said, "This is not taxpayers' money they are going to run away with."  "We are trying to take the incentive away for people to leave now, until we have time to get the company running right again," he added.  [Anyone notice lately if Ashooh's nose is growing?  And why would anyone leave with how tight jobs are on Wall Street right now, and with the high number of such unemployed?  Exactly where would they go, since nearly all financial companies have a hiring freeze on right now.  Can you say "Doesn't pass the smell test" boys and girls?]

Ohh.. umm.. Mr. Waxman?  Sir, may I see the receipts for this please, since I've helped bail their butts out WAY TOO MANY TIMES?   Personally, I'd say FORGET IT.  If you have to pay someone extra to keep them on with unemployment as high as it is right now, then let them go, especially if there is no contract between AIG and the employee.  There are thousands of financial advisers and such without jobs right now from Wall Street.  They will be MORE than happy to take their place and have a job again to those who don't want to work.  Especially since your CURRENT workers can't seem to show the company a profit. Hello, $37.63 billion loss in the 3rd Q!  Show me the money!

And I'd give Liddy until the end of the year, to begin to turn the company around, especially since when AIG was first bailed out, he stated that the original loan would be paid off by the end of this year.  If he can't/won't/doesn't, then it's time to replace him.

NO TO THE DEFERRED COMPENSATION!

Other agencies who use Celente are The Today Show, Good Morning America, CBS This Morning, 48 Hours, CNN, CBS, ABC, NBC, PBS, BBC, MSNBC, CNBC, NPR, The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Washington Post, USA Today, The Independent, The Wall Street Journal, Entrepreneur, Time, Business Week, Financial Times, Newsweek, Time, U.S. News and World Report, Investors Business Daily and The Economist, just to name a few.

Clients of Celente include Bank of America, American Express, The Coca Cola Company, Du Pont, Nestle', Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, 3M, and Kimberly-Clark as examples.

Subscribers to his magazine "Trends Journal" include AT&T, Aetna, Audi, Ford, Mobil, Samsung and Nestle.

This is what Celente said in November, 2007 about 2008.

A financial crisis will likely send the U.S. dollar into a free fall of as much as 90 percent and gold soaring to $2,000 an ounce, a trends researcher said.

"We are going to see economic times the likes of which no living person has seen," Trends Research Institute Director Gerald Celente said, forcasting a "Panic of 2008."

"The bigger they are, the harder they'll fall," he sad in an interview with New York's Hudson Valley Business journal.

Celente -- who forecast the subprime mortgage financial crisis and the dollar's decline a year ago and gold's current rise in May -- told the newspaper the subprime mortgage meltdown was just the first "small, high-risk segment of the market" to collapse.

Derivative dealers, hedge funds, buyout firms and other market players will also unravel, he said.

Massive corporate losses, such as those recently posted by Citigroup Inc and General Motors Corp., will also be fairly common "for some time to come," he said.

He said he would not "be surprised if giants tumble to their deaths," Celente said.

The Panic of 2008 will lead to a lower U.S. standard of living, he said.

A result will be a drop in holiday spending a year from now, followed by a permanent end of the "retail holiday frenzy" that has driven the U.S. economy since the 1940s, he said.

Obviously everything that Celente predicted has come true or is starting to come true.

In January, 2008 Celente stated:

"We're in the USSA."  "Just like back in the days of the Soviet Union, in the USSR.  They're doing the same kinds of things.  When you look at the government numbers, for example, they don't add inf ood - for which prices have gone up over 25 percent in the last year - and fuel - oil prices have gone up some 60 percent year to date.  They don't add those numbers into core inflation."  "And the government is taking over the country in a lot of different ways, so people have to take steps themselves.  They have to stop buying a lot of garbage that they don't need.  And here's a country with self-storage units?  This is something unique around the world; nobody's ever haerd of such a thing.  So we have to start cutting back, we have to start doing a lot of smart things and becoming more locally involved.  Because if a lot of people do little things collectively, big things can happen.  And I believe the vacuum is so big right now; that it can be filled with anything."

By now you should realized why Celente is stated to be the modern "Nostradamus", minus the fortune telling part.  Ready to read what he says we have coming for us in the future? 

" [Celente] is now forecasting revolution in America, food riots and tax rebellions - all within four years, which cautioning that putting food on the table will be a more pressing concern than buying Christmas by 2012. [...]

Cliente says that by 2012 American will become an undeveloped nation, that there will be a revolution marked by food riots, squatter rebellions, tax revolts and job marches, and that holidays will be more about obtaining food, not gifts.

"We're going to see the end of the retail Christmas....we're going to see a fundamental shift take place....putting food on the table is going to be more important than putting gifts under the Christmas tree," said Celente, adding that the situation would be "worse than the great depression".

"America's going to go through a transition the likes of which no one is prepared for," said Celente, noting that people's refusal to acknowledge that America was even in a recession highlights how big a problem denial is in being ready for the true scale of the crisis. [...]

In a separate recent interview, Celente went further on the subject of revolution in America.

"There will be a revolution in this country," he said.  "It's not going to come yet, but it's going to come down the line and we're going to see a third party and this was the catalyst for it:  the takeover of Washington, D.C., in broad daylight by Wall Street in this bloodless coup.  And it will happen as conditions continue to worsen."

"The first thing to do is organize with tax revolts.  That's going to be the big one because people can't afford to pay more school tax, property tax, any kind of tax.  You're going to start seeing those kinds of protests start to develop."

"It's going to be very bleak.  Very sad.  And there is going to be a lot of homeless, the likes of which we have never seen before.  Tent cities are already sprouting up around the country and we're going to see many more."

"We're going to start seeing huge areas of vacant real estate and squatters living in them as well.  It's going to be a picture the likes of which Americans are not going to be used to.  It's going to come as a shock and with it, there's going to be a lot of crime.  And the crime is going to be a lot worse than it was before because in the last 1929 Depression, people's minds weren't wrecked on all these modern drugs - over-the-counter drugs, or crystal meth or whatever it might be.  So, you have a huge underclass of very desperate people with their minds chemically blown beyond anybody's comprehension."

 

Here's a video of him talking recently to FOX News.  (Yea I know Fox however, he talks to everyone, who pays that is...):

From an August 2008 interview with Terry McNally and from Celente's book "Trends":

2012.  The future has arrived.  Empire America is collapsing.  The Panic of '08 because the Crash of '09.  The global financial system has melted down.  Most paper money isn't worth a dime.  The worse of environmental fears have been realized.  What some call the "War on Terror," others call WWIII.  The onset of The Blackest of Plagues has the world's populace terrified.

The streets are teeming with the homeless, helpless and jobless.  Major cities look like Calcutta.  Neither Big Bother's surveillance, corporate security squads, or angry vigilantes can stop the pandemic crime wave.  Even gated communities provide no sure sanctuary; the rich have become the targets of choice for kidnappers, gangs and organized criminals.

Food is plentiful if you can afford it, but dangerous to eat unless you grow your own or get it from reliable sources.  After years of drought and mismanagement, water shortages have reached crisis levels in much of the world.

But even as this is written in 2012, the official word is still, "Take a deep breath, the fundamentals are sound."  They're not.  Yet those who didn't see it coming, still keep telling us what to do.  Seeing through the media and government spin machines and smoke screens, many sensed the seriousness of the situation, and in their gut expected the worst.  But either through instinctive fear, stubborn denial, or conditioned inertia, few prepared for what was to come.  They now live between the helpless states of "what-might-have-been" and "I-wish-I-did."

You can hear the interview between Celente and Terrence McNally in a podcast.

Now you can choose to listen to Celente's words, and think about what he has said and predicted and be informed.   Now you may have the opinion that the "powers that be" will never let the United States fall into such a situation.  Well, where exactly are they going to get all that money to "fix" and "change" things for the right?  The bailout has now topped $5 TRILLION in less than two months.  Where is that number going to be in six months?  And where is all that money to fix the financial institutions that decide to become nationalized?  And what if the banks can't pay that money back in a timely manner?  (Note I didn't take the total doomsday scenario of what if they can't pay it back at all.)

Now I'm sure some Obama supporters are screaming that Obama promised that middle-class taxes aren't going to go up.  Well, don't forget that little added line from September 17, 2008 when he stated that taxes will go up once we are out of the recession.  Well, one what if we don't come out of the recession within the next 4 years, and it drops.  And two, what if we do come out of the recession within the next four years, what kind of bill are we as taxpayers looking at, especially considering a $5 trillion bill for bailout for only two months?

And  one final thing; what is the deal with 2012 being spouted out as a date for when things either go good or bad?  Oh wait, that's when Nibiru is suppose to pass by us, or according to the Mayan calendar on December 21, 2012 that the world ends....... oh yea....   But seriously, what is the deal with 2012 other than the next Presidential Election? 

Oh wait.. according to Biden & Powell someone is going to meddle with Obama in January...... never mind.  The world as we know it ends in January.. have a nice Christmas everyone!  And if your wondering, what I want for Christmas is a nice cave up in the mountains away from civilization, with a nice stream and cover.