Playing Five Card Shutdown

For a while, pundits were warning that the government of the sole remaining superpower (and the owner of the most nuclear weapons in the world) was going to shut down the office later this week. This appeals to the miscreant in me. Don't like government? Let's take it away and see how that works for you.

Shutdown is a game of brinksmanship. Each side teases the other, provokes the other, rattles their saber a bit. The spirit that makes brinksmanship effective is that each side implicitly recognizes that the other is rational and that nobody really wants to jump off the cliff.

It's a lot like mutual assured destruction as a nuclear strategy. Russia knows our missiles will survive a first strike, we know their missiles will survive a first strike, and so we've ensured peace by making a first strike irrational.


That "rational player game theory" stuff got us and Russia through fifty years, and then a funny thing happened: new players joined the game, and they might not be as rational as the old school guys who shared the mutual flick. They might even be in Pakistan or North Korea. I don't feel so good about playing Mutual Assured Destruction with North Korea.

The same flaw in the brinksmanship game becomes evident when you play Government Shutdown. Back in the day, the Republicans and the Democrats knew that the country would blame both parties for a shutdown. The Nation would see it as a failure of leadership, an abdication of responsibility. Nobody would win, so nobody would start it.

Then some new players showed up who flirted with the unthinkable. Maybe they could survive a first strike. Maybe they could shut the government down. Gosh, we'd get some good press! We'd appeal to the base! It might be a lot like Humpty Dumpty; it's easy to shut it down, it's hard to make it work.

It makes me nervous when irrational people start playing with complex, important things. It scares me when irrational people start considering the unacceptable as a strategic goal; you never know where they'll stop once they get off the reservation.

In this year's circus, the Tea Party crowd has promised to shut it down. The Dems might like to have the Republicans shut it down; it makes them seem like grownups. The older Republicans might like watching the New Kids stub their toes. At least one writer has suggested that Shutdown is a win-win for all involved.

This last week a few things left me 95% sure that the odds are over 80% that these fools are actually going to jump over the brink; this in spite of the fact that people all around the world are getting killed resisting dictators, and maybe this would be a good month for democracy to play nice in front of the new kids.

• The Republicans said they don't want a shutdown
• The Democrats said they don't want a shutdown
• Newt said we shouldn't have a shutdown, unless it's the only alternative to House Republicans losing their integrity
• somebody proposed a two-week Shutdown Buffer, which was considered a master stroke of leadership
• Newt Gingrich explained, The last big shutdown was a victory
• Frank Rich asked, Why Wouldn't They Shut It Down?

Karl Popper's turkey taught me that the past does not predict the future. I do know that if you stay around long enough, you get to see a few variations on the theme and you can appreciate the differences among them.

So, just in case our Leaders manage to jump off the cliff, here's a picture of the perpetrators of a previous Shutdown celebrating; you might caption it, "The Usual Suspects".


Newt Gingrich, John Boehner, John Mica, April 7 1995.
You remember what Milan Kundera said, right?

Brazil Critical Mass: Carnage in Puerto Alegre

Critical Mass is a bicycling advocacy demonstration where a group of bicyclists ride through an urban area usually dominated by cars.

On Friday night in Puerto Alegre, Brazil, an angry motorist mowed down a group of about 150 bicyclists riding in the local Critical Mass. The motorist accelerated his car directly through the group of riders.


From TreeHugger:

On the last Friday of every month, hundreds of bike riding enthusiasts take to the streets for Critical Mass in Puerto Alegre, Brazil to raise awareness of cycling in a city dominated by motor vehicles -- but at their most recent event, the unthinkable happened. As the lively group of cyclists pedaled together down the street, one disgruntled motorist decided to accelerate through the crowd, running down dozens of riders in a disturbing hit-and-run.

At time 00:38, this video shows a car accelerating through a crowd of bicyclists.

Discussion of the incident here.


What is Critical Mass? From Wikipedia:

The first domestic US Critical Mass ride within the present wave took place on Friday, September 25, 1992 at 6 pm in San Francisco. At that time, the event was known as Commute Clot and was composed of a few dozen cyclists.

One participant noted that in China, motorists and bicyclists have an understood method of negotiating intersections without signals. Traffic would "bunch up" at these intersections until the backlog reached a "critical mass", at which point that mass would move through the intersection. The term "critical mass" was applied to the San Francisco ride and the name caught on, replacing "Commute Clot" by the time of the second event.

By the time of the fourth ride, the number of cyclists had increased to around 100 and participation continued to grow dramatically, reaching about 1,000 riders on average.

Critical Mass is one flavor of bicycle advocacy. It has some organizational similarities to Anarchy in that there is no assigned leadership; the Mass just happens. There is no accountability. "Massers" consider their gatherings as celebrations of bicycling rather than demonstrations (demonstrations require permits and prior coordination, celebrations don't).



Pittsburgh Critical Mass used to assemble at Dippy the Dinosaur by the Carnegie Museum, last Friday of every month at 5:15 pm.


Some people say that Critical Mass is an unwarranted interruption of public roads, usually during Friday rush hour. Who are these bicyclists who presume to take over the streets and interfere with people trying to get home from work?

Here's a Critical Mass kind of answer:

Bikes are allowed to be on the road, just like cars. Every morning between 7 and 9 am, and again between 4 and 6 pm, untold numbers of car owners gather in their vehicles and congest the public roads to the point of gridlock. They do this almost every workday. Why doesn't somebody do something about all those drivers?

In my opinion, that discussion is too cute by half. I'd love to live in a Copenhagen-type environment but I don't. We live in a society fully given over to the car culture, and to suggest otherwise at your own physical risk seems unwise.

If the Critical Mass stops at red lights and allows other (car) traffic to keep moving, that's OK. But when Critical Mass blocks the cross streets with a technique known as "corking", and illegally makes drivers sit at cross streets interminably, conflicts are inevitable. When the other side has heavy weapons (cars) and your side has bicycles, guess who loses?

Assuming the facts are as presented, I think the driver in Brazil should go to prison for the rest of his life. He intentionally drove in to a crowd of people, accelerating as he went. But if the riders were illegally restraining his movement, and they should bear a major portion of the shame for this event.

There are cyclists who believe that Critical Mass tactics are counter-productive and unsafe. Bicyclists in some cities have started non-confrontational alternatives, holding rides called Critical Manners.

Pittsburgh's well-mannered alternative to Critical Mass is Flock of Cycles. From the Flock of Cycles website:

• Flock of Cycles is not a cycling training group.
• Flock of Cycles does not insist on, but may look good in, spandex.
• Flock of Cycles rides with the cyclist and motorist in mind, treating both with respect.
• Flock of Cycles is safe and fun for everyone of any experience, age or ability.

Flock of Cycles communicates pretty effectively through their FaceBook Page. Take a look.

Long-Term Implications of Teacher-Student Affairs

You see stories in the news about high school teachers who take advantage of their students, abusing their position of trust, authority, and relative power over the student. It's certainly not a normal relationship. In fact, it's a criminal relationship.







I see the pictures of the teachers involved and I wonder:

• Gee she looks mostly normal
• She could have picked on somebody her own age

I see the stories of the young students involved and I wonder:

• How does this introduction to sexuality shape the rest of their life?
• How does it affect their view of relationships, morality and family?
• Do they end up with an unhealthy worldview?
• Do they end with a twisted sense of appropriate behavior?
• Do they pose as moral paragons to compensate for their experience?
• What kind of parents will these victims be?
• How will the victims behave when they're in positions of authority?

I raise this issue because one of these kids in particular, now quite a bit older, is poised to run for the Presidency of the United States. In fact, he was just lecturing the sitting President on his dereliction of duties and Obama's risk of impeachment.

In today's NY Times, Newt Gingrich says, “People have to decide who I am. Am I a person they want to trust to lead the country or not?”

---

Newt Gingrich met Jackie Battley when Jackie was his high school geometry teacher. Newt and Jackie began dating secretly when he was 16.

According to Stephen Talbot in Salon,

As a high school student -- precocious, lonely, overweight -- Newt secretly romanced his geometry teacher, a buxom, matronly woman named Jackie Battley. The furtive romance with his teacher included nighttime sessions in the back of a car in remote areas of Fort Benning, Ga. (Newt's step-father was an Army colonel.)

Once, Newt and Jackie were so worked up, they got their car caught in a tank trap on the military base and had to call his best friend to rescue them before a daylight exposé, according to the friend's widow, Linda Tilton.

When he graduated high school, she took a teaching position at the college he was going to attend. They married when he was 19 and she was 26. His parents thought the marriage was a mistake. His stepfather, Robert, refused to attend the wedding; his mother, Kathleen, and sisters felt compelled to stay home too.

Newt and Jackie had two kids, fast, and Newt went on to advanced studies. It was, after all, the time of conscription during the Vietnam War. Children and graduate school meant an exemption.

According to an article in Vanity Fair:

Dolores Adamson, Gingrich's district administrator from 1978 to 1983: "Jackie put him all the way through school. All the way through the PhD ... He didn't work. Personal funds have never meant anything to him. He's worse than a six-year-old trying to keep his bank balance ... Jackie did that."

Dot Crews: "It was common knowledge that Newt was involved with other women during his marriage to Jackie. Maybe not on the level of John Kennedy. But he had girlfriends -- some serious, some trivial."

In the spring of 1980, Gingrich left Battley after having an affair with Marianne Ginther. It is unclear whether it was the Ginther affair or Battley's diagnosis with uterine cancer that prompted his seeking his first divorce; it is reported that he presented her with his terms for divorce while she was in the hospital. According to the NY Times, Newt's explanation of Newt's first divorce was, "She's not young enough or pretty enough to be the wife of a President. And besides, she has cancer."

Shortly after that infamous encounter, Gingrich refused to pay his alimony and child-support payments. The First Baptist Church in his hometown had to take up a charity collection to support the family Gingrich had deserted.

After his divorce from Battley, Newt married Marianne Ginther. While married to Ginther, Newt had an affair with Callista Bisek, 23 years his junior. He continued the affair while pressing the Lewinsky scandal. After Marriane Ginther was diagnosed with a condition that leads to MS, Newt divorced her.


He subsequently married his third wife, Callista Bisek.

---

There's a lot of issues with Newt and his relationships, and it seems like it might stem from his victimization in the abusive relationship with his first wife high school geometry teacher.

I'm just saying: given a choice between the Mormon, the Muslim, or Newt the Family Values Trigamist, I think I've got to go with the Muslim.

(FWIW I know he's not a Muslim. J/K)

American Civil Wars: CW1.0 and CW2.0?

Recurring Wars.
Is it possible that some conflicts involve an initial war, a period of respite from armed conflict, followed by a second war which is actually a continuation of the first rather than a new conflict? Might they be considered as separate events at the time, and their continuity recognized only in hindsight?

How The Great War became World War One
In 1914 there was an industrialized war on a scale not seen before, and when people needed a name for it they called it The Great War.

In 1941 there was another tremendous conflict. Although it was not initially recognized, the eventual understanding that this was another in a series caused people to rename the Great War as World War I (WW1), and they called the second conflagration World War II (WW2). Historians suggest that WW2 was the denouement of the forces set loose in WW1 and codified in the Treaty of Versailles.

The American Civil Wars
In the 1860s the United States was split between North and South. The philosophical differences were manifest in their economic systems; the South was an agrarian economy based on racial slavery, and the North was an industrial economy based on intensive capital investment.

The schism resulted in war. Labels and names matter, and this war was called by many names. The Southern States (the Confederacy) referred to the conflict as the War Between the States, the War of Northern Aggression, the War of Secession, and as the War for Southern Independence (attempting to position the conflict as the second wave of the War for American Independence). Southern slaves referred to the conflict as the Freedom War.

The Northern States (the Union) referred to the conflict as the War of the Rebellion or the Great Rebellion. Internationally, the war was known as the American Civil War, and that name has become widely accepted.

• Is it possible that we are in a second conflict, drawn along the same economic lines as the first civil war, which will require perspective and renaming to permit understanding in a new context?
  
• Is it possible that 1861 was Civil War One (CW 1.0), and that in 2011 we are in Civil War Two (CW 2.0)?

Then and now, the South's economy is based on cheap, poorly educated, captive labor in an economic system where capital strives to keep labor costs low. Then and now, the North's economy is based on higher-cost labor balanced by increased capital investment and higher per-person productivity.

If economics is "war by other means", is the contemporary conflict in Northern states about the role of Unions actually the second round of the American Civil War? Consider these maps of the alignment of states in both CW1 (the first American Civil War) and the current pro-labor-union / anti-labor-union split:

Click to embiggen in a New Window

Both American Civil Wars are about Slavery.
The First Civil War was about Chattel Slaves.
The Second Civil War (CW 2.0) is about Wage Slaves.

Chattel slavery is a system under which people are treated as property and are forced to work. Slaves can be held against their will from the time of their capture, purchase or birth, and deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, or to demand compensation.

Wage slavery refers to a situation where a person's livelihood depends on wages rather than investments, gifts or other forms of remuneration, especially when the dependence is total and immediate. The term refers to an "

unequal bargaining situation between labor and capital

", particularly where workers are paid comparatively low wages. In wage slavery, work is compelled under economic threat of starvation or poverty, and also of social stigma or status diminution.

Which is preferable?
Granting that any form of slavery is an abomination, which is preferable, Chattel Slavery or Wage Slavery?

The [chattel] slave is sold once and for all; the proletarian (wage slave) must sell himself daily and hourly. The individual slave, property of one master, is assured an existence, however miserable it may be, because of the master's interest. The individual proletarian, property as it were of the entire bourgeois class which buys his labor only when someone has need of it, has no secure existence. (Karl Marx)

If you were operating behind the Veil of Ignorance, which would you choose? It's an interesting question.

Labor Unions in the North have kept the incomes and relative buying power of middle class workers higher than in the non-union South. Capital and Business have moved jobs away from the North to the South in pursuit of lower labor costs and less restrictive (right to work) legislation.

Over the decades, Capital and Corporations have reduced the presence of Unions in the private sector, and they are now preparing to reduce the presence of Unions in their last bastion, the public sector.

Could it be that the current wave of union-busting is a continuation of the First Civil War by other means? After the North abolished the South's Slavery, is the South about to abolish the North's Unions?

Maybe the Abolitionists aren't winning this time.

Hello Wisconsin, Thanks for Visiting

This blog tracks visitors with a very light meta-touch, paying attention to the IP address, who their internet provider is, and where they came from to get here. If they came from a search engine, it tracks the phrase they were searching on.

Here's a screen shot from the website logs. It's a visitor who gets their internet service from the State of Wisconsin. They're using Windows XP, and Internet Explorer 7. They arrived at this blog at 12:01:55 pm on Wednesday Feb.23rd.

The visitor came to us from Google, where they had searched on "Ronald Reagan union busting", for which the #8 result on Google is this post.

It's the little things in life.

Cui Bono? Koch Brothers

The best discussions for me don't follow the "is, is not, is too" format; my favorite discussions are about the framework. I really appreciate it when, instead of answering the question differently, somebody suggests looking at another question.

A blogger whom I admire sometimes asks, Cui bono? From Wikipedia:

Cui bono ("To whose benefit?", literally "as a benefit to whom?") is a Latin adage that is used either to suggest a hidden motive or to indicate that the party responsible for something may not be who it appears at first to be.

Commonly the phrase is used to suggest that motivation may be found among those who have something to gain, chiefly with an eye toward financial gain.

The party that benefits may not always be obvious or may have successfully diverted attention to a scapegoat, for example.

Cui Bono is an elegant way to pose a blunt question. It's not too different from the advice that Mark Felt gave to Woodward and Bernstein: "follow the money".

Who profits from the Wisconsin conflict? Blogger Patience John presents his answer in a post titled, "The Koch Brothers' End Game in Wisconsin". He sees the sequence as:

• Koch Brothers move their puppet Scott Walker into power
• Governor Walker gins up an artificial crisis
• Democrats and Progressives take the bait and focus on collective bargaining
• Gov. Walker compromises on bargaining if the rest of the budget is passed as is
• Bill passes, with trojan horse give-a-way to the Koch Brothers nested inside
• Koch Brothers will buy Wisconsin state-owned power plants for pennies on the dollar in closed unsolicitated bids for which there will be no oversight
• Koch Brothers get the best vertical monopoly in a generation

A college newspaper explains why Scott Walker is an unlikely governor. Mother Jones does a good job of identifying the Koch Brother's role in funding Walker's campaign and keeping the tension high.

The budget bill contains this language:

SECTION 44. 16.896 of the statutes is created to read:
16.896 Sale or contractual operation of state−owned heating, cooling, and power plants. (1) Notwithstanding ss. 13.48 (14) (am) and 16.705 (1),

the department may sell any state−owned heating, cooling, and power plant or may contract with a private entity for the operation of any such plant, with or without solicitation of bids, for any amount

that the department determines to be in the best interest of the state. Notwithstanding ss. 196.49 and 196.80,

no approval or certification of the public service commission is necessary for a public utility to purchase, or contract for the operation of, such a plant, and any such purchase is considered to be in the public interest

and to comply with the criteria for certification of a project under s. 196.49 (3) (b).

Here's a list of what the Koch Brothers have going on in Wisconsin.

Another article, For Sale: The Common Good, makes a few salient points. Among them: Gov. Walker cancelled plans to switch several coal-fired powerplants to biofuels upon taking office. (The Koch Brothers sell coal.) (Also covered here).



Read the article, "The Koch Brothers' End Game in Wisconsin".

Another good post is here.

Wisconsin Solidarity T-Shirts

This is a traditional Wisconsin graphic, playing on the shape of the state resembling a fist:


Here's a revised Wisconsin Solidarity design:


You can order T-Shirts here:


Of course, this design draws on a rich history of Wisconsin metaphor maps:

Interesting Times: Showdown, Shutdown, Shakedown

We live in interesting times, both abroad and at home.

The Showdown: Two Iranian warships lie off the Suez Canal, a Kharg cruiser and an Alvand missile destroyer of the Iranian Navy's 12th Flotilla. Iran has announced their intention for the ships to transition the Suez Canal for a tour of the Mediterranean.

The Iranians are boxed in by several US warships: the USS Enterprise, the troop ship USS Kearsage, missile cruiser USS Leyte Gulf, and the fast supply ship USNS Arctic. The George Washington, the Abraham Lincoln, the Carl Vinson, and their support ships are all nearby.

Speculation is that if the two Iranian vessels line up single-file for entry into the canal, the American ships will separate them, stop them, and board them searching for missiles destined for Hezballah, in accordance with United Nations resolutions. This is generally perceived as a "hands-off" message to the Mullahs who would exploit the revolutions, uprisings and protests in Arab North Africa.

The Shutdown: The federal government may shut down next week. The most trenchant article I've read (Andrew Leonard in Salon) suggests that the shutdown is likely to happen because it's a political win for all of the players involved - Obama and the Senate get to criticize Republicans, the Tea Party rookies get to deliver on their promise, and the House Republican veterans get to allow the newbs to stub their toes and learn that governance may not be simple. I can't find anything to disagree with in the analysis, so I think the shutdown is likely. The big question: Will Anybody Notice?


The Shakedown: The future of union labor is being challenged in the Wisconsin power play. (soon to be seen in NJ, etc) Accepting payroll and benefit cuts is insufficient; the Republican governors want to eliminate the right to organize and negotiate, striking at the essence of organized labor. From Paul Krugman:

You don’t have to love unions, you don’t have to believe that their policy positions are always right, to recognize that they’re among the few influential players in our political system representing the interests of middle- and working-class Americans, as opposed to the wealthy. Indeed, if America has become more oligarchic and less democratic over the last 30 years — which it has — that’s to an important extent due to the decline of private-sector unions.

And now Mr. Walker and his backers are trying to get rid of public-sector unions, too. So will the attack on unions succeed? I don’t know. But anyone who cares about retaining government of the people by the people should hope that it doesn’t.

Curiously, the Tea Party (who brings you the shutdown) and the Wisconsin union-busting are both funded by the Koch Brothers. Forbes (yes, Forbes!) suggests this is the first round in "the final battle against unions":

Without the collective bargaining powers that unions bring as the only real offset to corporate greed and without the organizing strength unions bring to political action, there will be no counter-balance to corporate power. I promise that you will not like the result if our unions should disappear – even if you are not a union member.”

From Robert Reich, Shutdowns and Showdowns, What's Really at Stake:

There’s no doubt that government budgets are in trouble. The big lie is that the reason is excessive spending. Public budgets are in trouble because revenues plummeted over the last two years of the Great Recession. They’re also in trouble because of tax giveaways to the rich.

So the problem isn’t that “we’ve” been spending too much. It’s that most Americans have been getting a steadily smaller share of the nation’s total income. Yes, of course, wasteful and unnecessary spending should be cut. That means much of the defense budget, along with agricultural subsidies and other forms of corporate welfare.

But America is the richest nation in the world, and “we’ve” never been richer. There’s no reason for us to turn on our teachers, our unionized workers, our poor and needy, and our elderly. The notion that “we” can no longer afford it is claptrap.

Interesting times.

The Duty of Fair Representation

The Big Lies insidiously drive discourse into foul perfidy, presenting themselves as obvious truths (if only the people had the eyes to see), and moving the boundaries of acceptable conversation further and further toward their paymaster's purposes.

One of the techniques of the modern Big Lie is dropping small truths and reasonable questions into the stream of messages; these unobjectionable tidbits provide a foothold for unaffiliated voices to join the discussion designed by the Big Liars, unintentionally contributing a bit of momentum and credibility to the scurrilous campaign.

In the recent discovery Big Lie that public employee unions are the perpetrator of every known problem, some legitimate questions about unions have been raised. A reasonable theme (expressed by worthy bloggers and commentors) is that Unions would fare better if they choose their battles with more wisdom; in other words, Unions would get more support if they used discretion and avoided supporting their more egregious members.

It's a good question. Why do Unions support every member, even if it's onerous or unwise? The answer comes out of a 1941 Supreme Court decision regarding racism, railroads, and unions.

The history of organized labor and racism is no better than the American history of racism. A union was formed to represent railway workers, the union excluded blacks, and the union was recognized as the exclusive bargaining agent. A black man named Bester William Steele had lost his job in 1941 over the Union's racial bias. He filed suit jointly against the Louisville and Nashville Railway Company and the Brotherhood of Locomotive Enginemen and Firemen. He charged

that the Union "had refused to represent the Negro fireman fairly and impartially, had been persistently disloyal and hostile to them, had sought to destroy their vested seniority rights, and to drive them out of service", and because the Union enjoyed Congressionally conferred exclusive bargaining power, these violations comprised breaches of the fidiciary duty the union owed to members and nonmembers alike.

In the Encyclopedia of U.S. labor and working-class history, Volume 1, we read that the Court found that since the Unions had been given the status of exclusive bargaining agent, they had implicitly assumed a fiduciary duty of fair representation for all employees in the bargaining unit.

From Wikipedia:

The duty of fair representation is incumbent upon U.S. labor unions that are the exclusive bargaining representative of workers in a particular group. It is

the obligation to represent all employees fairly, in good faith, and without discrimination

. Originally recognized by the United States Supreme Court in a series of cases in the mid-1940s involving racial discrimination by railway workers' unions covered by the Railway Labor Act,

the duty of fair representation also applies to ... public sector workers covered by state and local laws regulating labor relations

.

The US Supreme Court now recognizes the necessity for protecting the "workers' precarious position between the two giants of labor and management and have recently moved in the direction of establishing a negligence standard to determine breach of the duty of fair representation".

Unions cannot pick which employees they will represent. They cannot pull out all the stops for a conscientious employee saddled with an unjust situation and not make the same effort for a despicable goldbrick. They get the ugly babies along with the pretty ones. If a Union were to treat an unappealing member's complaint with benign nonchalance, they are liable themselves and subject to decertification. A decision to abandon an unsavory Member is a decision to risk dissolution of the union.

Why do Unions support every member, even if it's onerous or unwise? In the normal world, in places like Iowa or Kansas, our answer would be:

• In general, unions support employees consistently because of the theory of Duty of Fair Representation.

---

Unfortunately, I've learned that there are two sets of answers.

There's a Normal-World (Iowa, Kansas) answer, and then there's a Pittsburgh answer.

Here in Pittsburgh, there are many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many examples of Pittsburgh unions standing up for unsavory or malpracticing members.

Given the remarkable supply of local anecdotes, we must recognize one additional Pittsburgh answer to the question, Why do Unions support every member, even if it's onerous or unwise?

• Normal World: In general, unions support employees consistently because of the theory of Duty of Fair Representation.
• Pittsburgh: Joe King and Dan O'Hara really don't have a clue, and their sense of time is about 60 years off.

The theory of Duty of Fair Representation does not provide for discretion. It's not the Union's role to handle incompetent or scandalous employees; that falls to management to handle. It's the Union's role to represent them.

It's not too different from the application of our American constitution or our Bill of Rights. We don't guarantee rights to the inoffensive, tolerable, well-mannered members of the Rotary; we guarantee rights to everybody, specifically including the poorest, the weakest, even the stupid and offensive, even in Pittsburgh, and we even guarantee these rights to Glenn Beck.

Unionized Public Employees Seen At Fiery Blaze

A Saturday night fire at an apartment building in Brooklyn, New York, killed one resident and left the other residents of the 65 apartments without shelter.



From the New York Times:

Roughly 200 firefighters struggled in the dark for seven hours — from dinnertime Saturday to early Sunday — to control the blaze at a red-brick apartment building in a heavily immigrant neighborhood made up mostly of blocks of one- and two-family homes. The firefighters battled temperatures plunging into the 20s and fierce gusts of wind reaching 40 miles per hour that whipped the flames and turned the upper floors into an inferno.

Green circles are added in order to help you identify these unionized public employees (who seem to almost blend into the environment).


More than 20 firefighters and four residents suffered minor injuries, fire officials said. None was life-threatening. The injured were treated at the scene by paramedic crews and also at local Kings County Hospital. They were all treated by unionized public employees. Concidence? ITN.



Multiple Unionized Public Employees Spotted At Fiery Blaze



The deceased victim was Mary Feagin, 62, who was a guidance counselor at a school in Brownsville (herself a unionized public employee).

Although the exact role these unionized public employees played in the evening's disaster is yet to be confirmed, their eagerness to rush to the scene, control the fire, and have their pictures taken begs for further inquiry.

Fortunately, the current mood of the American spirit will bring commentary and analysis from politicians, presidential hopefuls, and other informed experts, although at this time we are surprisingly unable to identify any member of those groups that has ever run into a burning building.