Are those labor union bosses feeling any buyer’s remorse for “flushing $10 million” against Blanche Lincoln, who won anyway? The Politico quotes AFSCME leader Gerald McEntee sounding exactly like this vulgar, beloved AFSCME commercial’s narrator, which means …. the unions are really pissed at Bill Clinton.
“We worked like hell to get the Senate and we worked like hell to get the White House, and our people are saying, ‘What the hell are we getting out of this?’” said Gerald McEntee, president of AFSCME, which shelled out $3 million to back Halter in Arkansas.
“We lost an election on Tuesday, but we laid down a marker,” he added. “We made the good fight, and we also made the point that we are not going to be boxed in by anybody.”
So why do the comical union bosses hate Clinton so much? They need to hate somebody, after blowing all this money in a state with few union members and a conservative-leaning Democratic incumbent senator who managed to win her primary runoff anyway.
Plus, isn’t Bill Clinton always such a jackass on the campaign trail?
Again, from the Politico:
One small consolation for the White House is that if union officials are annoyed with Obama, they are infuriated with Bill Clinton, a Lincoln supporter who accused Halter of being a tool of Big Labor.
That angered McEntee, a die-hard Hillary Clinton supporter who provided her campaign with cash, counsel and volunteers far into the spring of 2008 — after it was clear Obama had sealed the Democratic nomination.
“He called us terrorists in one of those speeches,” McEntee said. “It’s not like he didn’t ask for our support and Hillary didn’t ask for our support. We were the first union to support him for governor of Arkansas, and we were on the last bus home for Hillary. I guess he forgot that. It was [a] slap in the face.”
Terrorists? Did he really do that? Haha, Bill Clinton: Bringing dignity to the office of president since 1992. [Politico]
{ 39 comments }
nobody can stay mad at bill. except newt gingrich, but he’s really just mad at himself.
Awesome ad. It’s always amazing that people get so mad about unions in this country, where they have almost no influence. It is easy to hate on government employee unions, though: the idea of people who work a six-hour day and get three months off every summer (and two weeks at Christmas, and a week for Space Jeebus every spring) being oppressed members of the working class is a bit of a stretch.
How could the unions be made at Bill after everything he gave them NAFTA?
[re=595995]JMP[/re]: You can still make out a little of that giant sucking sound Ross Perot loved to talk about. What was up with Perot and all the sucking?
‘What the hell?’ indeed.
[re=595995]JMP[/re]: Gah. NAFTA didn’t send any union jobs SOTB. All those jobs were already in South Carolina and Georgia, and nonunion. The only industry NAFTA really jacked around in the U.S. were $5/hour apparel-plant jobs in unairconditioned sweatshops in the deep South. Which moved almost immediately from Mexico to Bangladesh, anyway. All the downside of NAFTA was on the Mexican side of the border.
the idea of people who work a six-hour day and get three months off every summer (and two weeks at Christmas, and a week for Space Jeebus every spring) being oppressed members of the working class is a bit of a stretch.
Meh. They deal with middle schoolers all day and haven’t gotten a raise in three years. I think that entitles them to some grievances.
Ken, isn’t writing for the Politico kinda like testing to see if you will go nutso crazy if you were trapped in a small toilet stall? I’m not a writer, but wouldn’t being trapped in a small toilet stall be a good metaphor, or even metafive, for the intellectual reach you’re allowed chained to your intertube Smith Corona at the Politico?
Like a phoenix, unions in China are rising from the ashes of the American labor movement. Soon they’ll have their own Wa Tei Ruta and then a Ximi Xofa.
I can’t believe the unions spent money on Bill Halter; he sucks Wal*Mart’s and Agribusiness’s dicks as much as Blanche does.
[re=595991]V572625694[/re]: The idea that’s completely bogus, of course. The people that enter houses to investigate child neglect and the fucking floor moves under their feet from who-knows-what living between the layers of cat shit and newspaper. Yeah, nothing like smelling cat piss and seeing starved/abused children all day and then come home to one of your County Supervisors bitching on the news about how the taxpayers are getting ripped off by employee unions. Nothing like knocking on the door at the start of a child abuse investigation and have the child molester who answers the door quoting your boss’s comments from the previous evening. Yup. Do that 30 years and then find out your pension wasn’t funded after all. Fucking employee unions.
[re=596005]Spike[/re]: As most of my family aside from myself are teach, I can say that they really are spoiled with all that time off. And don’t even realize it; they see summer vacation and xmas break as entitlements. The pay is a little shitty compared to their education, yeah, but it’s for only a half a year of actual work.
Too many Democrats are going to suffer gag reflex at the thought of voting for Blanche. She’s going down. Essentially, Clinton gave the seat to the Republicans. Now we’ve all been subjected to Bill’s bukake routine.
[re=596012]steverino247[/re]: I was trolling a bit, I guess. Lots of gummint employees I know work as hard as anyone, and I grew up among teachers back when there was still homework and thus papers for my mother to grade every night, and the women were paid less than the men because, after all, they didn’t need the job.
Wellllll your average union member might be rude and crude (lord knows the ones I know are) and probably a tad on the racist and sexist side too, BUT, union membership rates of about 33% of the population correlate almost perfectly to the doubling of the nation’s median income, during the Non-Sucky Years (roughly 1948-1973), just sayin’. Those were also the days when Big Labor really was Big Labor instead of just Ok-sized Labor.
Yeah, all those dipshits that got Lincoln elected are going to be cheering hard when her ass is dropped for some equally repulsive Republican dbag.
Well, Squidward, what have we learned today. Incumbents win 99% of the elections, sometimes even when they are dead, like our former Attorney General John Ashcroft found out. So the smartypants union decides to put 10 million on a 99-1 horse at Santa Anita, and they are shocked SHOCKEd that they lost. Lets face it: Unions have gone the way of the Hoag Duster Company. Rearrange some deck chairs, blather about not much, and then tell the members that a doubling of their medical insurance deductible is good for them, and is in exchange for a cost of living increase, ie more pay.
And this is Bubba’s fault? As we say in Hawai’i: That is SO buk buk (“retarded”)
[re=596033]Dr. Feelquestionable[/re]: Labor is now Rush manhood-sized: teany penee
The CNN airhead yesterday was literally gleeful at the chance to talk about what tiny dinguses the union members must have. Then it occurred to me that not only is she a member of a union, but she’s one of these idiots who resents being “forced” to join one, because she’s earning so much from sucking wrinkly programming executive cock that she can’t ever imagine what kind of benefit a union could possibly represent for her.
Shorter Mr. Blifil: I wanted to punch her.
I could beat a dead guy
[re=595991]V572625694[/re]: Heh, this is true, but the only reason they ever got those benefits is because of a strong union. It’s easy (as you say) to rail against unions when American workers have it relatively good, but important to remember that as soon as they disappear, it’s all aboard the rape train again.
[re=596005]Spike[/re]: I had the same problems — I worked in corporate America in the ’00s.
Oh,it so easy to blame the unions, since they represent only a small percentage of employees. Remember, they gave you the 40 hour work-week, vacation, holidays, overtime, OSHA, FMLA, etc. They also provided the men/women power to elect these dems, who so quickly forget when they get to DC and hang out with their corporate cronies. The next weekend your are off work, thank a union member. The working folks should be mad as hell at Lincoln, for courting the unions, then throwing them under the bus, the first chance she got.
[re=595991]V572625694[/re]: Holy shit! You’re talking about schoolteachers? Help yourself to gut-bustin’-size serving of lightly salted school cafeteria posion rat dicks, sir.
Union rank and file people are great folks, but some union leaders have gotten totally lazy. They think donating bucks is why they’re powerful, when the real power of unions in their heyday was turning out the vote. Turning out votes is as hard as it was in 1948, so it’s so much easier to just plunk down a big check. Some also suffer from the common malady of wanting people to like them. Did people like John L. Lewis, Cesar Chavez, or Jimmy Hoffa? Never — they loved ‘em or hated ‘em, depending on whether they belonged to or sympathized with their unions. Shaking money out of management is not pretty work.
[re=596027]V572625694[/re]: No offense taken. I figured you were being sarcastic and since I’ve heard that shit almost every day for the 25 years I’ve been working in public mental health, child welfare/abuse investigations and in my current position, I thought I’d throw my .02 into the pot. I’ve also negotiated with management on five contracts over those years, so I’m very familiar with their bullshit at the managment level.
[re=596124]lawrenceofthedesert[/re]: Power can corrupt, of course. The ideas are good, even if the people promoting them get to used to sitting and not working.
Clinton should be out washing ducks.
Lighten the fuck up, bros. This is one seriously unfunny thread. All the debate about the merits of the labor movement is harshing my buzz. Wonkette, get it? Butt secks? Remember?
Not only am I a union member, I’m an AFSCME union member, and the only time I vote for the candidates that AFSCME recommends, it’s purely coincidence. What my union (which I’m required to be a part of to have this job) does for me is take money from my paycheck every month and every 4 years have surreal paranoid negotiations with the nice folk who run my place of work, where mgmt says because of the negative property growth caused by the recent bubble, we’re losing 1.5 million in tax revenue a year, we’re concerned we may need to close locations and lay people off, and the union says: YOU’RE LYING YOU’RE HIDING MONEY IN THE FLOORBOARDS WE ALL NEED A 6% COLA NOW AND FOREVERMORE AND BONUSES AND PROMOTIONS AND PONIES AND FREE TRIPS TO DISNEY WORLD!!!!
Populucious, management lackey since 1819.
[re=595991]V572625694[/re]: I think Government unions are quite a stretch as well, but not many Gov. workers are in it, and they do obstruct and slow down some of the management stupidity, like the pointless “re-orgs” they do every year.
Unions didn’t destroy the economy, but they get blamed for everything regardless.
Former Union Boss Ronald Reagan said it best: “When I was poor I loved my union. When I was rich I became President to destroy them.”
I am a believer in labor generally. I’ve never been a full member of a union, but I appreciate their value and history in a lot of fields.
But AFSCME (and its lesser stepsister SEIU) is in a different league. Populicious has theleaderships tone just about right. Protecting bad employees (and the dues they pay) are also a big part of the message. Between the unions and civil service regulations employees in state insitutions can pretty much get away with killing people they are supposed to be taking care of.
Imagine this, if you will – 2 health care employees get in a knife fight on state property. One says she was acting in self-defense. The other says she was trying to get her stolen property back. The property in question? Crack cocaine (which was, in fact, found in the first employee’s purse). The union, of course, defends BOTH of them.
Backstory on the video:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/02/11/gop-rep-cantor-attacked-f_n_166033.html
[re=596392]Berkeley Bear[/re]: [re=596261]populucious[/re]: Heh, former SEIU member here. You guys are remembering it pretty much the same as I do. The shop foremen where I worked didn’t actually do much in our shop, except teach the rank and file how to look like they were busy when they weren’t really. Honest, these guys spent as much effort avoiding work as they would have done actually doing it.
I’m not saying it’s the same with all unions.
[re=596466]Lascauxcaveman[/re]: [re=596392]Berkeley Bear[/re]: We did have layoffs recently, as well as demotions, due to the horrific impact of the housing bubble on our revenues, which would have meant 13 people losing jobs. But because of AFSCME, and because we have “bumping” in our contracts, over 30 people ended up being bumped from their jobs, domino style, into lower/different positions. The crusty olds still have their jobs or close to them, while some of the best, energetic, smart young leaders we had either went out the door or are working in low level clerical positions now.
It’s nauseating.
[re=596036]Greg Comlish[/re]: I see our Ms. Blanche just voted for the republican Dirty Air Act Res.26 I think it was called.
The word cunt is going to be used again.
[re=596013]JMP[/re]: Personally, I’d do anything rather than teach in US schools. I’d masturbate chickens. I ran a parking lot for years. Now I’ve emigrated to China (where I teach in universities!). All rather than teach in US high schools, have parents threaten me with guns if their illiterate boy can’t play football because he’s an F student, etc.
[re=596384]Fox n Fiends[/re]: I hope we don’t all have to become broke-ass peasants again before we realize the benefit of being in a union.
You guys, you’re all missing this poetry!
We were the first union to support him for governor of Arkansas. And we were on the last bus home for Hillary. I guess he forgot that.
Poignant, yes?
Comments on this entry are closed.