Google This: The Cult of Cesar Chavez

 

Some Biographical Information you may have not known about Cesar Chavez:   Google This: The Cult of Cesar Chavez

I am always amazed how the social justice liberation theology crowd (messed up) and those who want to express the preference for the care of the poor (good minded) will hold up people like Cesar Chavez who was highly influenced by Alinsky community organizing and tactics that in no way represent “loving your neighbor” rather than defeat your neighbor at all costs.  This biography points out those who influenced Chavez and it is worth the read.

The Post Star Trek Generations Make It So in California

“Make it so” now, the old familiar line of Star Trek and its spawn, seems to be the call of the fooled masses in California, who have voted for more and more add-ons to their property tax bills and ballot box sin taxes.  Promises like “we will repair the potholes” or “decrease class size” seem always to be the first to go unfulfilled in any permanent way or never fully get realized, as the insatiable need to build government and its bureaucracies and to feed the public sector unions marches on. Just because people have voted for the “make it so” events, they have not ensured the guarantee that the wish would become the reality. Their “socially liberal, and fiscally” whatever local officials were not Captain Kirks, who sought to complete the mission by conquering/eliminating the problem for a foreseeable future. No, the missions were their own re-elections paved with excuses, more public debt and increasing business killing regulations and government reliance.

But there is hope: on June 5, California voters said “NO” to a cigarette sin tax increase, and San Jose and San Diego enacted pension reform measures.  A lot more needs to be done, including the defeat of Gov. Moonbeam Brown’s $50 Billion Tax Hike Scheme on the November 2012 ballot. We need to say no to his publicly funded monument to his part in the architecture of California’s demise, aka, the California high-speed CHOO-CHOO. We need to find his successor, so he becomes a one term governor once again.

Life in California has gone through an arduous and long running bombastic period of an epic Star Trek plot. Before we can engage the battle to retake California, we must make some fundamental changes in the way we operate and think.  We need to advance the idea of subsidiarity, so that government is not the hinderer of the common good, but the promoter.  We must find the Captain Kirks who believe in their constituents and operate from the understanding that the “make it so” command means supporting/assisting the employed private sector, in order for the taxpayers in return to make the state healthier, leaner and more efficient.

Does This Ever Sound Familiar: America Magazine Michigan Catholic Hospital to Face Union-Busting Charges

This article in the back issues of America brought back memories of my time on a picket line, a first lesson in the book of unions, utopians and Alinsky social justice lessons.  America Magazine Michigan Catholic Hospital to Face Union-Busting Charges
Just to let you know the rest of this story, the nurses reached a contract and withdrew its unfair labor practice complaint with the NLRB.
A Daughter of Charity affiliation and union busting allegations reminds me of a strike at O’Connor Hospital in the 1980’s. I read an article in the National Catholic Register this morning, Who Is Sister Carol Keehan? It brought me back to the subject of the Daughters of Charity.  I truly believe that name is a misnomer, given my experiences.  It lead me to do a search to see if I could find information about that strike at O’Connor Hospital in San Jose, CA where I was forced to walk when the union (a professional organization-not a large national organization) was busted.  Fred Long and West Coast Industrial Relations was hired by the Daughters of Charity (who I now refer to in a loving way, of course, as the Daughters of Chicanery****).  You can read about the tactics used here:  Consultants, lawyers, and the 'union free' movement in the USA .
It was a very sorry state for the bedside nurse, as they were caught in the middle of a war between an employer that did not want the nurse empowered to better the practice of professional nursing in their institutions (the more work one extracted from the nurse without increasing staff to lessen the burden or paying the nurse more via better benefits or pay or without giving the nurses more say in how the day to day care should operate) and a union that wished to push a feminist argument of comparable worth as an integral aspect of pay (how that could ever happen).  Because the nurses were forced out (they had to join the union to get the job in  down economy) by a lockout, they were forced to fight the fight.  Only after she found herself on the picket line, did the average nurse start to understand what a pawn she was.  Many tragedies occurred in the personal lives of nurses as it put horrible strains on their families, as their salaries were necessary. 
There was no social justice for the nurses.  Bishop DuMaine certainly did not feel obligated towards the nurses like he did farmworkers.  The Daughters of Charity did not see that they should have concern for their own nurses like they had for immigrants and field workers.  Nurses were not important in the general scheme of things.  The nurses were sold out, pure and simple.
One should not be surprised how these programs of the social justice campaigns (such as the CCHD) of the USCCB have inflicted confusion and cooperation with organizations that oppose Catholic teaching like the Catholic Hospital Association. All this has resulted in the bringing of our traditional institutions to the brink of dropping  their Catholic identity, as appears to be the case in the Mercy Hospital system.(I direct the reader to the confusion and another stab at clarification by the Archbishop of San Francisco- Catholic Healthcare West becomes Dignity Health: What does it mean? )   They have made Saul Alinsky very proud as they show they can do it with the best of them.
Apparently, the Bishops had to finally talk about the subject in 2009 as cited in this blog of Fr. Robert Sirico, titled Comments in Our Sunday Visitor referring to Unions, yes. But When the Church is Employer .
Interestingly, guess who was on the working committee of the document: Respecting the Just Rights of Workers?  You guessed it, Sister Carol Keehan, DC!  The document is put together by the cheerleaders of CCHD.  The gist is that the management should not do union busting, and the workers should not be public about the conflict and draw the public attention to the the grievances.  The only weapon workers have is to put it in the press.  A employer-union clash in a non right-to-work situation is horrendous for the individual employee.  The paper does not address the fundamental issue of forcing any worker to join a union to work in their institutions.  The union and the administration are the only winners in such situations.  The document is pro union.  One thing I learned from the situation, I would never join a union again.
****I have known some very saintly Daughters of Charity who weeped at what their order was doing to the nurses.  May their souls rest in peace.

The Truth About Falsely Accused Priests: Catholic World Report

 

The Truth About Falsely Accused Priests: Catholic World Report

A Good Look at the Abuse Scandal Today With the Achievements and Challenges

This is a good article to read if the reader wants to be an informed Catholic in the pew.  The Church must see to the needs of the abused and the falsely accused and it needs to be the institution that says yes, we must protect children from a culture that overly and improperly sexualizes them and robs them of their innocence.

Perhaps in all this, those that have wanted to use this to bring the Church down have unintentionally helped parents to understand that our public, private and religious institutions must all have safeguards in place like the Church has employed to protect children.

In the Los Angeles Unified School District there is a particularly horrendous scandal of pedophilia in the news http://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/LAUSD-Superintendent-John-Deasy-Miramonte-Teacher-Lewd-Acts-Arrest-138775309.html  that underscores the need for such controls the Catholic Bishops have put in place.  In a large society, one huge institution should not be the politically correct place to highlight a societal problem, it should be the place that society sees as a warning to itself at large, to clear up the problem, see where else it may exist in similar types of settings and put the sunshine measures in place that will prevent the problem or promote early detection.

Pension cowardice | Press-Enterprise Editorials | PE.com | Southern California News | News for Inland Southern California

Pension cowardice | Press-Enterprise Editorials | PE.com | Southern California News | News for Inland Southern California

The excellent article points out that the unions are in no mind for sensible reforms:

The reforms proposed in Hollingsworth's bill were hardly radical: SB 919 would have raised the state retirement age from 55 to 65 for most state workers, and from 50 to 57 for public safety employees. The bill would also have limited the size of pensions workers could accumulate, so that workers could not retire with benefits equal to as much as 90 percent of their working salary. And SB 919 would have curbed the practice of inflating final salaries to boost retirement payouts.

It is time we start talking about the morality issues related to the greedy unions. Isn't time their members take a closer look at what they are doing to the society, their children and all future generations?

A Book I Plan to Purchase: Plunder: How Public Employee Unions are Raiding Treasuries, Controlling Our Lives and Bankrupting the Nation

Plunder: How Public Employee Unions are Raiding Treasuries, Controlling Our Lives and Bankrupting the Nation

Read a good review here.