Protesters took to the streets of Cairo about a month ago, and the protests did not end when President Hosni Mubarak stepped down on February 11 and handed power to the military. The revolution in Egypt followed on the heels of protests in Tunisia, and revolutions are cascading across the Middle East, Africa, and the Far East. "Days of rage" have taken place in Yemen, Algeria, Morocco, Jordan, Bahrain, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Oman, and China. There are reports that two vice presidents of Google as well as union members were behind the unrest in Egypt.
Unlike in Egypt where the military refused to fire on their citizens, civilians and anti-government protesters in Libya are being gunned down by troops and mercenaries. Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi is clinging to power even though his diplomats at United Nations headquarters in New York and other embassies worldwide are calling on him to resign for shooting his own people. An influential Muslim cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, has issued a fatwa instructing Libyan soldiers to shoot Gaddafi if they have an opportunity.
Arabs are fleeing to Europe, and European leaders are concerned that their countries will have protests. Gadhafi is threatening that a flood of immigrants from Africa will go to Europe if his regime falls.
Oil prices are surging because of the unrest in the Middle East. The price of oil jumped 8.5 percent in one day, and gasoline prices are already over $4.00 in California. To add to these problems, Gadhafi has ordered his security services to start blowing up oil pipelines and cutting off the flow of oil to Mediterranean ports. Chaos reigns in Libya and may cascade into Saudi Arabia, causing even more problems with the oil.
The United States is seeing protesters in the streets of Madison, Wisconsin, as Governor Scott Walker and Republican state legislators attempt to solve the financial problems of the state. Governor Walker recognizes that his state does not have enough money to meet its obligations, and he wants to make some changes in order to balance his budget. He wants a budget repair bill that would limit the power of unions and require union members to help pay for their health insurance and pensions. Teachers called in "sick" last week in order to spend their time protesting the Governor's plan and were joined by members of other unions.
The state of Wisconsin faces an immediate deficit of $137 million for the fiscal year ending on July 1, plus another $225 million for other back debts. The budget repair bill would require state employees to pay about 5.8 percent toward their pensions, an amount about the same as the private sector national average. The bill would also require state employees to pay about 12 percent of their healthcare benefits, an amount about half the private sector national average. The Wisconsin bill would also limit the ability of government workers' unions to collectively bargain. Without this ability, union dues will not be taken out of paychecks, employees can choose whether or not to join unions, and unions lose power and money to help elect more Democrats to state and federal offices.
Democratic state legislators in Wisconsin left the state in an effort to stop the bill, but Walker and the Republican legislators are standing firm. If the bill does not soon pass, about 6,000 state employees will be laid off their jobs. The majority of people in Wisconsin seem to be siding with the Governor because they understand that government employees generally receive higher pay and better benefits than their private sector counterparts.
President Obama added to the problems in Wisconsin when he sided with the protesters and called the new bill an "assault" on the unions. This is not the first time that Obama has sided with protesters against governments. He openly supported the protesters in the Middle East - except those protesting in Iran and Libya. Obama knows that he will need the support of the unions in order to be reelected in 2012.
The political fight over unions is escalating as labor leaders are planning new protests in dozens of other capital cities. These protests have brought the role of labor unions into the national debate as well as who should make the necessary sacrifices in order that states can balance their budgets. Yesterday thousands of steelworkers, autoworkers, and other labor activists started protesting in Indiana against a bill there that would weaken the power of unions in the private sector. Public unions in Indiana have already lost their collective bargaining rights. Yesterday a House committee approved a new bill that would free private-sector employees from the requirement to belong to unions and to pay union dues. Employees would then have the right to work without union influence if they so choose. Democratic legislators in Indiana also fled to Illinois in order to avoid a vote.
A protest took place in Columbus, Ohio, today to oppose a bill to strip collective-bargaining rights from about 400,000 public employees. Tennessee is also considering a bill that would dissolve the collective bargaining rights of the state's teachers. Hundreds of police are marching in the streets of Hartford, Connecticut, in opposition to proposed police layoffs. Across the state of Idaho, teachers are walking picket lines to oppose proposals to lay off hundreds of teachers and restrict collective bargaining rights. Union leaders in Michigan are calling for protests against proposals giving emergency financial managers power to break union contracts in schools and cities as well as remove elected officials.
Public employees at the federal, state, and local levels are generally paid higher wages and better benefits than the private sector. As thousands of people have lost their jobs in the private sector in the past two years, federal government employees have increased by 200,000. There is no requirement for the federal government to have a balanced budget - yet, but many of the state constitutions include a requirement for a balanced budget. Governors are wise to attempt to reign in the unions and expenses in order to balance their budgets. If Obamacare is declared to be constitutional, states will be required to pay more of the expenses in Medicaid in their states as well as other requirements.
I expect that protesters will march in more of our states, probably starting in the Northeast, as state and local governments attempt to balance their budgets. Anchorage has been making cuts for over a year in an effort to keep expenses within the income of our city. As Republicans in the US Congress attempt to cut costs and bring the federal expenses down, conservatives in state and local governments are trying to do the same on their level. I certainly hope that conservatives are successful in reigning in government expenses, but I also expect much more chaos in our nation as we work through these problems.
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Showing posts with label labor unions. Show all posts
Showing posts with label labor unions. Show all posts
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
The Civil War
I questioned the name of this war because I connected the word "civil" with "civility," which means polite behavior or courtesy. I discovered that "civil" means having to do with citizens, such as civil service or civil rights. This definition means that the name of the war makes sense: it was a war between the citizens of the nation.
The Civil War was the greatest crisis and bloodiest war that the United States has ever experienced. It took more American lives than any other war in history and divided families and communities as well as the nation. It was basically between people in the Southern States who wanted to preserve slavery and an agricultural way of life and people in the Northern States who wanted a more modern way of life and to end slavery.
The Civil War started on April 12, 1861, when Southern troops fired on Fort Sumter in South Carolina. It ended four years later on April 9, 1865, when Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered to Union General Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House in Virginia. The United States in 1861 had 19 free states and 15 slave states.
Abraham Lincoln said that the country was "a house divided." There were many basic differences between free and slave states besides slavery; therefore, there were numerous reasons for the war. The root cause was slavery but there were differences in economies, ideals, and ways of living.
The conflict over slavery began in colonial times when most Americans considered slavery to be evil. Numerous of our Founding Fathers wanted to end slavery, but they had to compromise over it to get the Constitution written and ratified. Many Northerners in the early 1800s thought slavery was wrong, and Abolitionists there started a movement to end slavery. Most Southerners believed slavery was good even though only 25-35 percent of them were members of slave-owning families.
The Compromise of 1850 was made in Congress in an attempt to settle the slavery question. It allowed new territories to decide for themselves whether to permit slavery. It also admitted California as a free state. This compromise included a fugitive slave law that required Northerners to return runaway slaves to their owners. Northerners resisted this law by operating the underground railroad, a system of safe houses and escape routes for runaway slaves. Uncle Tom's Cabin, written by Harriet Beecher Stowe, was one of the most effective attacks on slavery and the fugitive slave law. If you have not read this book, I highly recommend that you read it.
In 1854 Congress passed the Kansas-Nebraska Act. The act created Kansas and Nebraska as territories and allowed slavery in them. It also said that when the people in the territory organized as a state, the people could decide whether to continue slavery. Kansas voted against slavery and joined the Union in 1861 as a free state.
In 1857 the United States Supreme Court tried to settle the slavery issue with its Dred Scott Decision. Dred Scott was a slave who claimed freedom because he lived in a free state and territory for a time. The Court ruled that no black could be a United States citizen and that Congress could not prohibit slavery in the territories. This ruling aroused anger in the North and showed that the courts didn't have the answer.
In 1859 John Brown and his followers tried to start a slave rebellion by seizing the federal arsenal in Harpers Ferry, VA (now West Virginia). Brown was captured by Colonel Robert E. Lee the next day. He was soon convicted of treason and hanged. Many Southerners blamed the North for plotting to force an end to slavery.
Abraham Lincoln joined a new political party called Republicans and was elected President in 1860. He won all the electoral votes from every freed state except New Jersey, which gave him four of seven votes. He won the electoral vote but gained only 40 per cent of the popular vote. Almost none of the popular vote came from Southerners because they were afraid he would end slavery or at least restrict it. By the time he was inaugurated, seven Southern states - South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas - had seceded and established the Confederate States of America. Virginia, Arkansas, North Carolina, and Tennessee joined the Confederacy after Fort Sumter, for a total of eleven Confederate states.
Staying loyal to the Union were California, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Wisconsin.
The territories of Colorado, Dakota, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, and Washington were also on the Union side. Each side included slave states located on the border where some citizens supported the North and some supported the South. Border states on the Southern side were Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas. The western part of Virginia remained loyal to the Union and formed the new state of West Virginia in 1863. Border states that stayed in the Union were Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri, but groups in both Kentucky and Missouri seceded, set up state governments and sent representatives to the Confederate Congress.
When the Civil War first started, neither the North nor the South planned to draft soldiers, but as the war continued both sides started drafting men. The Confederate army reached its peak in 1863 and then started declining in numbers. The Union army continued to grow. After the Emancipation Proclamation, Lincoln announced his decision to use black troops. About 180,000 blacks served in the Union army, two-thirds were Southerners who had escaped to the North. About 20,000 blacks were in the Union navy.
Most of the Civil War was fought from Pennsylvania to Georgia and from Virginia to Memphis and New Orleans. By 1864 the Confederate army was declining due to battle losses, war weariness, and Northern occupation of large areas of the Confederacy. Southern railroads had almost stopped running, and supplies were short. The war finally ended when Union armies crushed Confederates enough to force surrender.
The Union won the war and THEN started showing their humanity by helping to rebuild the South. The Civil War took a great toll on our nation. About 620,000 soldiers died, almost as many as the combined American dead of all other wars from the Revolutionary War (1775-1783) through the Vietnam War (1957-1975). Both North and South suffered economically, but direct damages were most severe in the South. Towns, farms, industry, and trade as well as lives of men, women and children were ruined in the South. The entire way of life in the South was destroyed.
The Declaration of Independence states "all men are created equal," but America remained the largest slave-owning nation in the world until the Civil War. Soon after the end of the Civil War, Americans ratified the Thirteen Amendment to the Constitution, which officially abolished slavery throughout the United States. Even though Congress passed the Civil Rights Amendment in the 1960s, there are still problems in our nation about a real or at least perceived inequality for blacks.
The Civil War did establish two facts: 1) Every human being has the right to be free and 2) No state has the right or power to end the Union. Many of the facts and information for this blog post are from an article written by Gabor S. Boritt, World Book Encyclopedia, Vol. 4, 614-635.
The Civil War was the greatest crisis and bloodiest war that the United States has ever experienced. It took more American lives than any other war in history and divided families and communities as well as the nation. It was basically between people in the Southern States who wanted to preserve slavery and an agricultural way of life and people in the Northern States who wanted a more modern way of life and to end slavery.
The Civil War started on April 12, 1861, when Southern troops fired on Fort Sumter in South Carolina. It ended four years later on April 9, 1865, when Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered to Union General Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House in Virginia. The United States in 1861 had 19 free states and 15 slave states.
Abraham Lincoln said that the country was "a house divided." There were many basic differences between free and slave states besides slavery; therefore, there were numerous reasons for the war. The root cause was slavery but there were differences in economies, ideals, and ways of living.
The conflict over slavery began in colonial times when most Americans considered slavery to be evil. Numerous of our Founding Fathers wanted to end slavery, but they had to compromise over it to get the Constitution written and ratified. Many Northerners in the early 1800s thought slavery was wrong, and Abolitionists there started a movement to end slavery. Most Southerners believed slavery was good even though only 25-35 percent of them were members of slave-owning families.
The Compromise of 1850 was made in Congress in an attempt to settle the slavery question. It allowed new territories to decide for themselves whether to permit slavery. It also admitted California as a free state. This compromise included a fugitive slave law that required Northerners to return runaway slaves to their owners. Northerners resisted this law by operating the underground railroad, a system of safe houses and escape routes for runaway slaves. Uncle Tom's Cabin, written by Harriet Beecher Stowe, was one of the most effective attacks on slavery and the fugitive slave law. If you have not read this book, I highly recommend that you read it.
In 1854 Congress passed the Kansas-Nebraska Act. The act created Kansas and Nebraska as territories and allowed slavery in them. It also said that when the people in the territory organized as a state, the people could decide whether to continue slavery. Kansas voted against slavery and joined the Union in 1861 as a free state.
In 1857 the United States Supreme Court tried to settle the slavery issue with its Dred Scott Decision. Dred Scott was a slave who claimed freedom because he lived in a free state and territory for a time. The Court ruled that no black could be a United States citizen and that Congress could not prohibit slavery in the territories. This ruling aroused anger in the North and showed that the courts didn't have the answer.
In 1859 John Brown and his followers tried to start a slave rebellion by seizing the federal arsenal in Harpers Ferry, VA (now West Virginia). Brown was captured by Colonel Robert E. Lee the next day. He was soon convicted of treason and hanged. Many Southerners blamed the North for plotting to force an end to slavery.
Abraham Lincoln joined a new political party called Republicans and was elected President in 1860. He won all the electoral votes from every freed state except New Jersey, which gave him four of seven votes. He won the electoral vote but gained only 40 per cent of the popular vote. Almost none of the popular vote came from Southerners because they were afraid he would end slavery or at least restrict it. By the time he was inaugurated, seven Southern states - South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas - had seceded and established the Confederate States of America. Virginia, Arkansas, North Carolina, and Tennessee joined the Confederacy after Fort Sumter, for a total of eleven Confederate states.
Staying loyal to the Union were California, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Wisconsin.
The territories of Colorado, Dakota, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, and Washington were also on the Union side. Each side included slave states located on the border where some citizens supported the North and some supported the South. Border states on the Southern side were Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas. The western part of Virginia remained loyal to the Union and formed the new state of West Virginia in 1863. Border states that stayed in the Union were Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri, but groups in both Kentucky and Missouri seceded, set up state governments and sent representatives to the Confederate Congress.
When the Civil War first started, neither the North nor the South planned to draft soldiers, but as the war continued both sides started drafting men. The Confederate army reached its peak in 1863 and then started declining in numbers. The Union army continued to grow. After the Emancipation Proclamation, Lincoln announced his decision to use black troops. About 180,000 blacks served in the Union army, two-thirds were Southerners who had escaped to the North. About 20,000 blacks were in the Union navy.
Most of the Civil War was fought from Pennsylvania to Georgia and from Virginia to Memphis and New Orleans. By 1864 the Confederate army was declining due to battle losses, war weariness, and Northern occupation of large areas of the Confederacy. Southern railroads had almost stopped running, and supplies were short. The war finally ended when Union armies crushed Confederates enough to force surrender.
The Union won the war and THEN started showing their humanity by helping to rebuild the South. The Civil War took a great toll on our nation. About 620,000 soldiers died, almost as many as the combined American dead of all other wars from the Revolutionary War (1775-1783) through the Vietnam War (1957-1975). Both North and South suffered economically, but direct damages were most severe in the South. Towns, farms, industry, and trade as well as lives of men, women and children were ruined in the South. The entire way of life in the South was destroyed.
The Declaration of Independence states "all men are created equal," but America remained the largest slave-owning nation in the world until the Civil War. Soon after the end of the Civil War, Americans ratified the Thirteen Amendment to the Constitution, which officially abolished slavery throughout the United States. Even though Congress passed the Civil Rights Amendment in the 1960s, there are still problems in our nation about a real or at least perceived inequality for blacks.
The Civil War did establish two facts: 1) Every human being has the right to be free and 2) No state has the right or power to end the Union. Many of the facts and information for this blog post are from an article written by Gabor S. Boritt, World Book Encyclopedia, Vol. 4, 614-635.
Monday, October 19, 2009
Freedom
Please go to http://nationaljuggernaut.blogspot.com/2009/09/this-cartoon-seemed-far-fetched-in-1948.html for a good depiction of what can happen if we let freedom slip away from us. This is a funny cartoon with a very serious message. It is interesting to me to realize that this cartoon was made in 1948, just a few years after FDR wanted to give America a Second Bill of Rights. When you see the cartoon, please remember all the isms that are causing us problems now: racism, socialism, etc.
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