Back in 1967 when I was working for the welfare department in
Harlem and already becoming convinced of the analysis that would
persuade me to join the Trotskyist movement, I went out on strike.
The union was led by Judy Mage, who was married to Shane Mage at
the time I believe. Even though I had learned how to read the
newspaper of record with a jaundiced eye, I was still not prepared
for the outright propaganda. The paper argued that our strike
would hurt welfare mothers when in fact Judy Mage was a tribune
fighting to preserve benefits.
If anything, the paper has become even more propagandistic over
the years—a function no doubt of the declining power of labor. But
it took some degree of chutzpah for them to print Matt Bai’s
gargantuan (6600 words) puff piece on New Jersey’s Republican
Governor Chris Christie, whose attack on public service unions is
as vicious as that being mounted in Wisconsin. Bai writes:
Like a stand-up comedian working out-of-the-way clubs, Chris
Christie travels the townships and boroughs of New Jersey, places
like Hackettstown and Raritan and Scotch Plains, sharpening his
riffs about the state’s public employees, whom he largely blames
for plunging New Jersey into a fiscal death spiral. In one
well-worn routine, for instance, the governor reminds his
audiences that, until he passed a recent law that changed the
system, most teachers in the state didn’t pay a dime for their
health care coverage, the cost of which was borne by taxpayers.
full:
http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2011/02/28/matt-bai-gung-ho-against-public-sector-unions/
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