A split in the ranks of organized labor has followed in the wake of President Obama’s decision to kill the Keystone XL pipeline:
The Laborers’ International Union of North America (LIUNA) left the BlueGreen Alliance on Friday, citing a disagreement with the group’s members over the Keystone XL pipeline. “We’re repulsed by some of our supposed brothers and sisters lining up with job killers like the Sierra Club and the Natural Resources Defense Council to destroy the lives of working men and women.”
LIUNA has learned the tough lesson that greenwashing isn’t free. The NRDC, Sierra Club and Union of Concerned Scientists, are more than just anti-energy, anti-development zealots, they’re members of the established, rich elite. The sort of people who sneer at people who work jobs that get their hands dirty:
In turning down Keystone, however, the President has uncovered an ugly little secret that has always lurked beneath the surface of environmentalism. Its basic appeal is to the affluent. Despite all the professions of being “liberal” and “against big business,” environmentalism’s main appeal is that it promises to slow the progress of industrial progress. People who are already comfortable with the present state of affairs — who are established in the environment, so to speak — are happy to go along with this.
It is not that they have any greater insight into the mysteries and workings of nature. They are happier with the way things are. In fact, environmentalism works to their advantage. The main danger to the affluent is not that they will be denied from improving their estate but that too many other people will achieve what they already have.
Obama has been talking like a class warrior in the run-up to his re-election campaign. Now he’s ignited a real class war, on the left. Together with Hollywood seething about the failure of SOPA/PIPA, the President has lost some hefty fund-raisers and handed a big jobs bat for GOP candidate Mitt Gingtorum to smack him with as the campaign heats up.
Popcorn futures are up.
[...] Global warming fades away; A split in the ranks of organized labor has followed in the wake of President Obama’s decision to kill the Keystone XL pipeline … [...]
Gonna agree with Stark. Not a one of these guys would ever vote for a Republican. The best we could hope for is that they stay home on election day, but that’s unlikely. Maybe they’ll just register fewer dead voters.
Here in Australia, the Labor/Green alliance/coalition/love-fest/circle-jerk have regular lovers tiffs, all splashed across the newspaper headlines periodically.
This is to remind voters of each respective party that, really, they are only in partnership while holding their noses, and that the Labor party isn’t really a bunch of job-destroying eco-loons, and that the Green party still does want to close down all industry and progress towards holding hands and singing kumbayah in the forest.
These periodioc lovers tiffs are played out on extremely minor issues like the closure of a sawmill somewhere, or a minor divison in policy like whether to hand illegal immigrants two or three years worth of free accomodation, food and phone calls.
But the reality is they’re both deep into deep-green policies and are just as keen as each other to give the general populace -blue or white collar- the spiky end of the green stick right where it hurts in the pocket.
The best thing that ever happened in Australia was for the Greens to actually get to write some policy rather than harping on at the sidelines moaning all the time. Because now voters have seen what the Greens are about, and they don’t like it.
Only 18 months (or sooner) till the next election, and normal service will resume, and the Greens can go back to moaning in the corner again.
It might just turn out to be the straw which broke the camel’s back. The trend is your friend.
Pfft. Until I quite literally see the goons out cracking greenies’s heads, & biting of their fingers, I’m going to say this is just a clanging of cymbals or a tinkling of brass.