You can win the race, and you can win the Lotto. But you can’t Winnebago.

Thomas L. Knapp:

“Like WalMart, Starbucks is immediately controversial because its employees are not unionized.”

Actually, a lot of Starbucks workers are “unionized” (i.e. they are members of the Starbucks Workers Union, which is affiliated with the IWW), in the US and elsewhere.

So far as I know, none of Starbucks stores have NLRB-type collective bargaining agreements, but that’s not unusual — IWW usually eschews such state-controlled ways of doing things. In the one case where they played that game, Starbucks appealed and IWW withdrew the election call (the appeal would have taken years to resolve) and went back to its usual worker solidarity/direct negotiation strategy.

So, in other words, being a member of a union that does not resort to either government power or outright gangster tactics has about as little effect in raising wages or benefits as being a member of the Kiwanis or Rotary?

Charles:

There probably are “millions” of us who have read and comprehend the Constitution.

Alas, I suspect there are “tens-of-millions” who’s only reading of the document was in middle school where it’s “meaning” was carefully explained to young and impressionable minds. Especially that “Balance of Powers” stuff. It sorta explains some of those inconsistencies.

Finally, there are “hundreds-of-millions” who are dependent upon the state and ANY talk of unalienable rights is “Ivory Tower.”

Can the middle-class prevail against the over and under classes who feed on them?

As you seem to point out, only by some form of “Gulching”, really. But talk about not gonna happen.

I am TOTALLY carried away speculating on what would be coming out of those garages should open war break out.

I don’t need to discuss “gulching” when my own novel, Alongside Night, offers a strategic alternative that doesn’t require retreating to a valley in Colorado. Of course I’m living in a valley in Nevada, so maybe I’m not the one to refute this idea.

I am TOTALLY carried away speculating on what would be coming out of those garages should open war break out.

Steve Reed:

Nothing more than ad verecundium, and from fan mail at that, so any further discussion becomes pointless.

It’s not an appeal to authority. It’s a counter-example of someone else holding a contrary personal esthetic, and I chose Heston as my counter-example because you’ve heard of him.