Post #327,049
5/29/10 6:07:44 PM
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digby has a question for Rand Paul
http://digbysblog.bl...y-and-im-not.html
Perpetually Indebted
by digby
... otherwise known as slavery [ http://www.tampabay....-this-day/1098420 ]:Jewel Goodman eases back into his porch chair and breaks the filter off a peach-flavored Clipper cigar. He rolls it absentmindedly in his fingers and closes his eyes to smell the breeze tattle on an incoming storm. In his 57 years, he's seen enough hard days to know not to rush an easy one.
For most of his life he has toiled long days in hot fields picking cabbage, potatoes and tobacco. Eight of those years were spent on a farm in Hastings, south of St. Augustine. In 2007, Ronald Evans was sentenced to 30 years in federal prison after holding Goodman and other farm workers "perpetually indebted" in what the U.S. Department of Justice called "a form of servitude morally and legally reprehensible."
Goodman is one of more than 1,000 slaves who have gained freedom in Florida since 1997.
Goodman lights his cigar, takes a slow draw, leans back and remembers.
"I had to scrap with the devil for my living. And by the devil, I mean contractors," he says. "All the camps I been in, some of them was good and some of them wasn't, but Evans . . . that was slavery time. No playing around."
It started one day in the early '90s, when a white van stopped him in front of the Fruit Stand grocery store in Hastings and asked if he needed work. He did. But as soon as he met Evans he knew he had found trouble. Evans was mean in a way that made Goodman feel suddenly aware of how far out of town they were. There was no phone. Chain link and barbed wired surrounded the property. The crew leaders looked hardened, "like they just come out of prison." The field workers called them henchmen.
One of them gave him a pair of bloodstained work boots.
"He said 'These belong to the last guy who ran. If I catch you trying to get down that road, you're going to answer to me too.' "
He eventually got away. The man who enslaved him is serving a 30 year sentence. Imagine what happens to undocumented workers who can't go to the police.
I wonder if Rand Paul thinks the government should have enforced the oral "contract" this man made with his boss rather than intervening on the side of the "perpetually indebted." I'm guessing he would think the dispute should have been adjudicated in civil court at the very least.
[...]
There are real-world consequences to limiting the power of governments to enforce things like civil rights. Purists like Drs. Paul, and jingoists like Tom Tancredo, don't seem to want to accept that.
Cheers,
Scott.
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Post #327,054
5/29/10 8:04:02 PM
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so you would have him work as a slave until
the government got around to it? Be easier to kill the SOB and bury him in a shallow grave
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Post #327,056
5/29/10 9:17:54 PM
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Um, no...
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Post #327,057
5/29/10 11:59:19 PM
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What's your suggestion?
The A Team?
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I think it's perfectly clear we're in the wrong band.
(Tori Amos)
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Post #327,067
5/30/10 8:40:52 AM
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suggest that folks quit associating rand paul with slavery
other than that unionize farm workers
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Post #327,090
5/31/10 12:46:54 AM
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where's the fun in that
they wouldn't have anyone else to pick on, apparently.
I will choose a path that's clear. I will choose freewill.
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Post #327,138
6/1/10 1:30:27 AM
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Let me get this straight...
So, we stop picking on Rand Paul for his faux-pas r.e. slavery and he'll come up with a free market means of freeing slaves that works better than arresting slavers.
Hey, anything that works.
Me, I think a fictional band of misfit Vietnam vets being hunted by the government for a crime they did not commit is more likely to get the job done, but just in case, I'll quit picking on Rand Paul vis-a-vis slavery.
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I think it's perfectly clear we're in the wrong band.
(Tori Amos)
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Post #327,140
6/1/10 7:15:36 AM
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And he tosses in an A-Team reference!
I will choose a path that's clear. I will choose freewill.
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Post #327,143
6/1/10 8:17:21 AM
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FTW!
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Post #327,145
6/1/10 8:23:57 AM
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already told you the free market answer
you are too busy with your fingers in yer ears going lalalala to understand it. Unions ARE a free market solution
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Post #327,148
6/1/10 8:44:23 AM
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NIT
Unions ARECAN BE a free market solution
The problem with Unions... is the problem with Unions. If Unions get to much "backing" they being to drive costs UP and UP and UP. Look at the effing Auto-Industry!
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Post #327,149
6/1/10 8:56:25 AM
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counter NIT
if shareholders get too much backing they drive costs/wages down down down and wont be able to sell shoddy goods. See GM
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Post #327,153
6/1/10 10:41:07 AM
6/1/10 10:41:20 AM
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counter counter NIT
Unions had as much to do with Shoddy product as anything else.
Dude, you ever been inside a GM plant for engines or transmissions or body?
I have. Unions caused huge amounts of automation to be forced to be broken *just* to make another Union job.
Plus, during the 80s and early 90s, the Unions became so much a part of the engineering process that they forced GM to reduce bolt counts on most items. Just so that one person woudl only have to put in 3 bolts vs 5 bolts.
There are horror stories I could tell you about.
Like, me going to Ford's Cleveland motor plant number 2. The machine I worked on had Electricity, Air and Fluids in it to be used. That meant a Plumber, an Electrician and a Hydraulic pipefitter was there standing around watching me work for 5 days.
Tell me how *THAT* is good for the situation.
Edited by folkert
June 1, 2010, 10:41:20 AM EDT
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Post #327,159
6/1/10 10:55:56 AM
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so we should only allow slavery in auto factories?
not disagreeing Greg, just that a free market does allow for corrections
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Post #327,173
6/1/10 12:05:26 PM
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Not Slavery....
Unions have their place. Fighting for workers rights and good enough pay and benefits.
Unions have NO Place in the engineering sections. They also shoudl not have the ability to chop apart a fully automated line to create a job for people to move, say an engine block, from the output of one process to the input of another process.
I saw similar things where they force GM to cut a 6 foot section out of a chain line to make it so that a person had to "assisted lift" an engine block from one part of what was obviously a single line output of one machining process to input of the next machining process, except they took out the line from it.
I also saw automated screw and tightening machine have one or more stations disabled so that a person could put in a screw and another could then torque it further down. Rather than have it be one process and insert and tighten the screw with one machine.
Don't think I'm for all this bull, but the excesses the Union took and are still taking in GM Ford and Chrysler... sheesh.
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Post #327,186
6/1/10 3:17:10 PM
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Unions wouldn't have rescued this guy
You think a slaver is going to respect the right to organize? The slaver here was refusing the most basic right of an employee - the right to quit and leave.
The only way that could possibly work is if there were universal union membership, which would have to be mandatory, and that's far more intrusive than what we have now.
One thing I notice in dealing with Libertarians is that often their proposed work-arounds are far more damaging to liberty than the government. Their basic blind spot, for the most part, is to see the government as the only threat to liberty. Which is kind of like being in the jungle and only worrying about tigers.
As for unions as a substitute for some regulations regarding worker's rights, hell yeah, where it works. But I kind of suspect a lot of people who fly the Libertarian flag now would not be happy about that.
I see myself as a small-l libertarian, my basic position being "get outta my face (and the other guy's face too)" but addressed to more than just the Feds. And willing to use the Feds, where appropriate, to get other entities outta my face.
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I think it's perfectly clear we're in the wrong band.
(Tori Amos)
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