"Tom Gardner" wrote in message
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"Ed Huntress" wrote in message
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"Tom Gardner" wrote in message
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"Ed Huntress" wrote in message
...

"Tom Gardner" wrote in message
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"Ed Huntress" wrote in message
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"Tom Gardner" wrote in message
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"Ed Huntress" wrote in message
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"Larry Jaques" wrote in message
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On Thu, 17 Jul 2008 22:48:02 -0400, with neither quill nor qualm,
"Ed
Huntress" quickly quoth:


"Larry Jaques" wrote in message
news:17vv749mb19ahv7n0v4faibsp6ugl4kjqi@ 4ax.com...
On Thu, 17 Jul 2008 11:48:20 -0400, with neither quill nor
qualm, "Tom
Gardner" quickly quoth:


"Larry Jaques" wrote in message
news:08gu7458e3ppd6da2kuaiorus3m70nma7 ...
snip

You guys are sure giving that union troll a lot of air
time...again.


Ron is a troll and he knows unions are a hot-button with many
here so, he
wins!

The wise man stops to think before typing.

I don't think that Ron is a troll so much as a prosyletizer. And,
considering this crowd, he's in the lion's den.

I don't believe he'd be back for more if he weren't a troll, sir.

He's not starting conversations. He's laying out his "evidence."
Think of him as a persistent proselytizer. g



OTOH, he's about the only one here who promotes the other side of
the story.
And there are two sides to it. You just don't like to hear it.

"Promotes"? Methinks you misspelled "lies about", Ed. He praises
unions, the Army says "See the world!", and religious fanatics
talk
about "heaven", as if there's nothing else to life. Nah, don't
want to
hear about it, thanks.

That's what I mean.

--
Ed Huntress


Come on Ed, the only thing missing from Ron's pontificating is 72
virgins!

Overall, Ron is a little less than half right. That's about the same
percentage as the anti-union set delivers here. It's also about par
for people pontificating about history and economics when they were
bored stiff in history class and never read the books, and have spent
maybe an hour of their lives studying economics.

--
Ed Huntress


I'm anti-CORRUPT-union...is that the same? After 35 years, I've
experience quite a bit of that, including grand theft, fraud and
coercion that involved many police and NLB investigations.

Unions were born in brutality and corruption, with hundreds of them
hung or shot to death in the 19th century; ex-cons hired by factory
owners and given machine guns mowed them down in at least three
demonstrations; dozens were lynched for leading strikes, and the
corrupt cops who could have stopped it either cheered it on or turned
their backs. It's a brutal business. In turn, it's bred violence and
corruption within its ranks and a no-holds-barred, mob-style attitude.

Should we be surprised? The thing is, if you're anti corrupt union
because they're corrupt, then there's hardly a powerful institution in
this country that doesn't deserve the same reaction from you.
Corruption is the product of power and opportunity. No segment of
society is immune to the incentives for corruption, and no segment of
society is free of the kinds of greed and ambition that lead some
people to become corrupt. There are corrupt church ministers as well as
corrupt corporate treasurers and politicians.

So you have to put that into perspective to judge the whole system in
terms of net effects on people. I don't think that many people can
detach themselves from their emotional reactions and view it purely in
terms of economic and social effects. Either that, or they view it
through an ideological filter that blinds them to what's really going
on.

--
Ed Huntress


Are you condoning corruption in the unions or anywhere else because:

"Corruption is the product of power and opportunity. No segment of
society is immune to the incentives for corruption, and no segment of
society is free of the kinds of greed and
ambition that lead some people to become corrupt. There are corrupt
church
ministers as well as corrupt corporate treasurers and politicians."

Well, since there are corrupt church ministers...it's all OK???

SHAME ON YOU! Sorry, I can't condone it. Next, tell me my right/wrong
detector is too biased or politically incorrect; that I have no right to
form opinions about corruption.

Stop putting words in my mouth, Tom. I didn't say I condone it. What I
said was that if that's the reason you despise unions, then you'd better
despise every major institution in the US -- and the world, for that
matter. You'd might as well just hole up and hide out. Or if it really
upsets you, you could get involved with changing it...but that's a lot of
work.

--
Ed Huntress


Don't put words in MY mouth! I said: "I'm anti-CORRUPT-union." And
somehow you derive: "you despise unions". ...good try, won't fly.

Oh, cripes. Do we have to watch every word here, like with the idiots on the
kook groups?

I know what you mean. You know I know what you mean. And I know you know
that I know what you mean. d8-)

Corruption is endemic to all kinds of institutions. Right now it seems to be
running especially hot in Congress and in international banking. What I said
was, if you're objecting to unions -- corrupt unions, uncorrupt unions,
whatever -- because unions are corrupt, then you have a problem, because you
won't find any large institutions that don't have some corruption. If you're
saying that you only object to the ones that are corrupt, and that you think
other unions are just fine, then I have to say that's a darned unremarkable
position, because nearly everyone objects to the most corrupt examples of
anything.

So it's sort of a self-evident statement that doesn't say anything. But
let's be frank about it: you started off saying you object to the whole
"union mentality," so it's pretty clear that you object to unions in
general. Right? And that's what I'm responding to. Hell, damned near
everyone objects to corruption, except for people who are corrupt
themselves.

--
Ed Huntress