Union Membership is a Slow-Motion Train Wreck

Last night I alluded to union membership – it dropped in 2010, from 12.3% of the wage and salary population to 11.9%. There were 612,000 fewer overall union memberships in 2010 than there were the year before.

Among the public sector  employees, who only lost among cities, states and federal workers only approximately 100,000 jobs, lost 273,000 union memberships in 2010.

In the previous 10 years, during the decade of 2000-2010, public sector unions had added 508,000 members, and private sector union membership had lost more than 2.1 million.

Any way you look at it, unions are a dying trend.

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/union2.nr0.htm

Think I’ll Skip the State of the Union

The president has not even kept his promises to his own people (see GITMO, rendition, Patriot Act, etc) while controlling every lever of political power, so I have zero confidence in anything the president says to his political opposition.

I’ll pass on the speech, listen to Bach and await the president’s actions.

Meanwhile, I’ll be satisfied that union membership, even among government workers, is going down.

“This is a message to every liberal to shut up or be shot.”

Arizona?

No, Pakistan.

Pakistan has a law forbidding blasphemy against Islam, and although no one has been executed for this crime, many are imprisoned for it and assassins have killed many who are accused of this crime.

But the most outrageous crime, was the assassination of the governor of Punjab Province Salman Taseer), who was killed by one of his personal bodyguards – not because he blasphemed Islam but because he supported easing the laws against blasphemy!

The initial sentence (“This is a message to every liberal to shut up or be shot.”), was spoken by his daughter.

The assassin is being held, but no lawyer can be found to act as prosecutor to prosecute him, and at least 500 scholars have jumped to his side.

Pakistan is our “ally.’

How do you like these apples?

 

“American voters say 52 – 41 percent that “heated political rhetoric drives unstable people to commit violence,” the independent Quinnipiac (KWIN-uh-pe-ack) University poll finds. Liberals rather than conservatives are more responsible for such rhetoric, voters say 36 – 32 percent.”

http://www.quinnipiac.edu/x1295.xml?ReleaseID=1548