Working Class Shit-Headery and Current Reading

So, as some have pointed out, Toronto's disgusting rancid blob of pork Rob Ford is now moving against unionized city garbage workers. As others have pointed out, the supposed savings and efficiencies of privatization are generally non-existent.

But, no doubt, there are some working Canadians who will cheer on this assault on decent paying jobs. The public sector is currently one of the last places where an ordinary person can obtain employment allowing them to live with a modicum of dignity. We can't have that! So, rather than fight to get a union where you work, or vote for parties that will make it easier for you to unionize, you will instead vote for some son of privilege with frighteningly obvious impulse control problems, and attack other workers and their occupations, so that we can all make $11 an hour.

There! Now nobody's happy!

It's the same sort of stupidity that bewails the job security of the public sector during an economic recession. The fact that attacking millions of jobs across the country will probably make the recession longer is never a factor. It's all "I've been laid-off. I want other people to suffer, even if it means that I suffer longer."

Don't think for a minute that the masters of the universe are just as clueless. They know how the economy works. They know that it really makes no sense to engage in austerity during a recession. They're pandering to such sentiments because it fits in with their larger (but equally insane) project of pillaging working class gains made since 1945. (Only a couple more years to go with that one!Faster than they thought it would be!)

So, anyway, I'm reading Chartism: a new history by Malcolm Chase. It's a summary of the movement for electoral reform in mid-19th Century Britain. It was a working class effort which failed, although many of the demands of the "People's Charter" have since been won. Universal suffrage was considered a scandalous notion by the silk-stockinged pricks of the time, and right now, I'm reading about how the elites are using bogus laws and punitive bail conditions to harass the movement's leadership in 1839 and 1840.

Making me a wee bit angry. Especially when I look at how the forces of the state are abusing their power and trampling all over everyone's legal rights in the case of Alex Hundert and the protesters at the Toronto G20.

Say! Didn't that fat, oozing puss-ball Rob Ford, praise the cops for a job well done after they charged innocent families on their horses, held people without charges or access to a lawyer for over a day, and ripped the prosthetic leg off an amputee? I honestly hope for some heavy-handed ironic justice for Mr. Ford. A mini-Mike Harris, who gets Harris, the man responsible for the death of Dudley George, to show up for his putrid victory party.

Assholes.