Here’s Scott Roeder, the prime suspect in the murder of Dr. George Tiller. This is a picture from 1998, presumably from when he got arrested for having bomb parts in his car. You can find more of our reporting on Roeder here.
The Morning Joe crew was bashing on unions this morning, when the NYT‘s Andrew Ross Sorkin, a guest, declared:
“Name a successful unionized company. Think. You’re going to go to [commercial] break before you come up with one. And that’s the problem.”
At that point, I expected the union workers in the studio to drop a rack of lights on the cast. Was the rest of the cast’s acquiescence in Sorkin’s broadside a concession that NBC is not a successful company? Poor Jeff Zucker.
So I throw it out to readers. Can you give us examples of major successful unionized companies? And for purposes of clarity, let’s define “successful” as turned a profit in 2008. That’s a pretty high standard since 2008 was such a dismal year. But not an unreachable standard, I don’t think. Send us your examples, preferably with links.
Late Update: Media Matters is already on the case and offers UPS as a prime example. It’s biggest union is … horror of horrors … the Teamsters. We’ll be listing reader examples here.
Later Update: Reader email deluge in response. You can see the growing list here. But please try to include links in your email to the company’s 2008 profitability and to the fact of its unionization.
There’s really no topic I’m following with more interest at the moment than the back and forth between the Netanyahu government and the Obama White House over the issue of settlements. Netanyahu’s advisers now seem to be pushing the line that Prime Minister Sharon had understandings with President Bush that on-going settlement building was fine within areas already designated for settlement growth and that, at least implicitly, a broad swath of settlements the US now accepts as permanent.
This is an iffy argument on a number of levels — not least of which is that such an agreement would conflict with the ‘Road Map’, which would have a higher standing than a bilateral agreement reached by the US and Israel. More to the point, though, while governments generally put a lot of weight on honoring understandings of predecessors, the Bush ‘letter’ wasn’t a treaty or even a formal bilateral agreement. So I don’t think it has any force at all — setting aside that it conflicts with the Road Map.
More generally, as I said, I’m extremely interested to see how this develops. And we’re also interested as an organization. And this is a question that’s all going to be in the murmurs and nuances, in terms of seeing how the jousting between the two governments evolves. So if and when you see new details in articles you read, please send them along to me.
Late Update: A key part of this equation is what happens in Congress — particularly on the Democratic side of the aisle. There have been signs that AIPAC has been having its usual level of success getting members of Congress to sign letters to the president, and so forth. But I’ve been more interested to see indications that when Netanyahu’s intermediaries have gone to members of Congress to sound out what they’re willing to do to push back against the emerging policy, that they have not been hearing what they’d like to hear. TPM Reader LR just sent me this post by James Besser at The Jewish Week that looks more deeply into this part of the settlements equation.
Former GE CEO Jack Welch, challenging Joseph Stiglitz last week at a Vanity Fair forum moderated by … Andrew Ross Sorkin: “Give me a highly successful unionized industry.”
As you’ve seen, this morning on Morning Joe, The New York Times Andrew Ross Sorkin suggested
that few if any unionized companies are successful and profitable — a demonstrably false claim. And David Kurtz and our news team are on the case, reporting the story out and compiling a list of companies that belie this claim.
Now, it’s no secret to you that TPM has an editorial outlook that is broadly sympathetic to the union movement. But what strikes me about this comment is that it’s not some random chat show yakker like Hannity or Scarborough. This is one of the Times top business reporters. He runs their markets and finance blog — Dealbook, which is actually quite good and a sign, I think, that the Times is very much in the new media, iterative journalism chase. So quite apart from the politics of it, this is just a jarring level of ignorance about corporate America from someone in that position.
As a white man, I’m proud that Pat Buchanan is becoming the lead public advocate for the White Male Movement.
Yep, he’s sure running for president.
Out-going Gov. Pawlenty (R) of Minnesota is on Fox right now talking about Obama’s ‘nationalization’ of the health, auto and energy industries in the US and comparing to the country to a Latin American dictatorship circa 1970.
We’ll bring you the details shortly.