As I’m still kind of getting back to speed after spending a week in Vegas last week, I am re-airing the three rounds I spent debating Andy. I figure putting them together like this might inspire more people to read it as I had a huge turn out for the first round, but diminishing attendance for the second two. Plus, I wasn’t really around to advertise last week’s so I feel I owe it better than that.
Red State vs. Blue State: Brody vs. Anti-Union Andy, Round 1
Today I debate one of the wealthiest guys I know who’s always been vehemently anti-union. He’s also an all around fiscal conservative blowhard who routinely interrupts me whenever we have a conversation about economics (more theories to him than an actual impact on people’s lives), and usually to quote some Libertarian think tank or post a link to some BS article from them. My strategy for today’s debate was to interrupt him as much as possible. Otherwise, the debate would be me asking one question and a 20 paragraph monologue from him in response. So just call me Brody O’Reilly this week.
Brody: Thanks for coming on.
Anti-Union “Andy”: You’re welcome
Brody: You should say ‘thanks for having me,’ but whatever dickhead. [Anti-union Andy is not amused]. So you’ve always been a corporate blowhard that hates unions, do you feel like Wisconsin’s Governor Scott Walker and his defenders are now copying you?
Anti-Union Andy: I take offense to your word choice, but actually, I’m thrilled that they’re copying me. There have always been informed opinions that see unions for what they really—
Brody: Yeah, yeah, who gives a shit? I’ve been making a big push to have more people that do debates come on as themselves and have their actual name run. Last week a Russian spy agreed to be listed under his real name, why won’t you?
Anti-Union Andy: I don’t like that you’re insinuating I’m hiding—
Brody, interrupting Andy for once: I’m not, I just want to know.
Anti-Union Andy: Ordinarily, I’m never shy about my views—
Brody, interrupting again, a guy could get used to this: Oh I know it.
Anti-Union Andy: But the unions are very powerful and usually have ties to organized crime, there’s an article on—
Brody: Before you start quoting “Libertarian” websites that are really just so conservative Republicans won’t claim them, I have to ask, you think the Wisconsin schoolteachers are mobbed up? When gang members flash a W I always thought it stood for west side, not Wisconsin.
Anti-Union Andy: I’m saying historically organized crime and the unions have been very close. That’s not just me saying that.
Brody: That is you saying that. You’re the one saying it.
Anti-Union Andy: But I’m not the only one, far from it. There’s well documented evidence the mafia and unions collaborate, that’s fact. Even including people as powerful as the Kennedy family, who also had ties to unions and organized crime. Organized crime has directly profited from their association with unions.
Brody: You really believe that?
Anti-Union Andy: Yes, it may not be a popular fact or one that hasn’t been white washed out of history but there are a few still brave enough to speak the truth [Andy laughs, cracking himself up at how brave he is].
Brody: I don’t know if people who think that are brave so much as wrong, but I would like to ask—
Anti-Union Andy: If you’ll allow me at the end of the interview I can link to anything I mention—
Brody: God no Andy, I’m telling you straight up nobody wants to read this debate and then go hunt for “truth” on websites written by closet neo-nazis who run “think tanks” that feature the minds of 8 people. Now let me ask, you are a white male, you are Christian, you are rich, you are, I believe, heterosexual even though I have never seen you want to fuck anything that wasn’t a pile of money, and yet you always make it seem like you’re the brave one standing up for a power system that has always been in place in America. Why is that?
Anti-Union Andy: I think there is a conspiracy afoot in the media and elsewhere to silence white males and discredit them at every turn.
Brody: You have got to be fucking kidding
Anti-Union Andy: I won’t respond well to cursing.
Brody: Oh shit, are we going to get into fisticuffs Andy?
Anti-Union Andy: I will say that there is no affirmative action for white males, no scholarships for white males, if you speak your mind as a white male you are going to be labeled—as you just did a few seconds ago—a Nazi. There is a lot of discrimination and bias against white, Christian males. All Christians are silenced by organizations like the ACLU and others—
Brody: But are extremely vocal through the 5,000 Christian organizations that are also politically active and the Christian political lobby in—
Anti-Union Andy, completely unfazed: And as for being wealthy. Well, I do not feel that way as I am taxed almost half my income.
Brody: You are taxed 36 percent on an income that’s more than 99 percent of America makes. 64 percent of a million is still better than a hundred percent of 500 bucks a week.
Anti-Union Andy: I work for it! If others would work as I do instead of taking handouts from the government and refusing to work—
Brody: So somebody who is on food stamps can just up and get a job at JP Morgan tomorrow pulling in six figures? It’s just a simple matter of them showing up to work every day and they too could be a millionaire?
Anti-Union Andy: Education is a big part of that. My degrees in finance reflect the wages I’m paid—
Brody: WELL then why don’t you support schoolteachers in Wisconsin making 65,000 a year when they have as much education as you do? Aren’t you pretty full of shit to suggest they shouldn’t make that much, when you make at least 4 times that amount with the same education?
Anti-Union Andy: First, you don’t know how much I make—
Brody: I know it must be at least 250,000 or you wouldn’t be complaining about taxes of 36 percent. That’s why I said you make at least 4 times their salary.
Anti-Union Andy: I’m sure I also work more hours than they do with less time off—
Brody: You work at least 4 times their hours? You work a workweek of at least 160 hours a week?
Anti-Union Andy: I’m not going to dignify anything about my salary as a response because this is about unions milking the taxpayer dry. My salary is paid by a private sector employer and completely different—
Brody: The only difference is that it’s your money instead of theirs. Conservatives always think somebody else’s money should be less and their money should be more.
Anti-Union Andy: An average Wisconsin schoolteacher makes 80,000 a year—
Brody: Wrong
Andy, unfazed: That is significantly higher than the national average.
Brody: The answer isn’t to lower Wisconsin wages, but to raise them nationally.
Anti-Union Andy: So your suggestion is to bankrupt states by raising teacher wages?
Brody: My suggestion is that tax cuts for the rich racked up these debts, not a schoolteacher in Milwaukee.
Anti-Union Andy: That’s false, because half the state budget in Wisconsin goes towards education—
Brody: Tax cuts take away from the state budget. Lowering taxes on the wealthy and corporations inside a state insures states won’t have the operating budget to pay teacher’s salaries. It’s a revenue problem that’s been spun into an overspending problem.
Alabama Liberal Note: The debate goes on longer, much longer actually, but I decided to divide it up. Join us next week for Round 2 where we discuss if corporations are blondes and brunettes are the middleclass, if Scott Walker is a fascist (answer: yes), and union busting as a means to wipe out the political competition.
Red State vs. Blue State: Brody vs. Anti-Union Andy, Round 2
I’ll post the last comment from last week as a refresher of where we left off, the rest is the middle section of our debate. We join this debate already in progress…
Brody: Tax cuts take away from the state budget. Lowering taxes on the wealthy and corporations inside a state insures states won’t have the operating budget to pay teacher’s salaries. It’s a revenue problem that’s been spun into an overspending problem.
Anti-Union Andy: Lowering taxes creates growth and creates jobs—
Brody: In Thailand and China where the US jobs move to after the tax breaks
Anti-Union Andy: If taxes are too high in a state, those jobs will relocate to a state with a friendlier tax structure. You can’t raise taxes because it’s actually lowering them.
Brody: I can’t wait to hear this explained. Will this math logic make calculators explode?
Anti-Union Andy: The more you raise taxes on corporations inside a state, the more corporations will leave your state and relocate. Then you will receive no taxes from them after they’ve left.
Brody: So your answer is to lower taxes so low the state practically loses money to keep them there? Isn’t this kind of like chasing the only gold digging blonde at the bar at the expense of ignoring the just-as-hot brunette who’s just as into you?
Anti-Union Andy: That’s a really bad analogy in terms of economic theory.
Brody: Not really, Republicans think the government should chase after gold digging blondes, i.e. corporations, who just want to get rich and have a good time and will dump you the second it’s not in their economic interest, hooking up with cheap labor in Korea instead. Democrats know a long term, stable relationship with a brunette woman who loves America for its core value of equality is much better, plus there are 50 times as many brunettes.
Anti-Union Andy: No—
Brody: Yeah man, it’s a great analogy. You can quote me later if you want.
Anti-Union Andy: I don’t want. It’s clear we see the world in drastically different ways. You are entitled to your opinion but you could not be more misinformed.
Brody: Well I guess I need to spend 6 hours a day reading “Libertarian” sites that read like a call to fascism to know what’s going on in the world.
Anti-Union Andy: They are not fascist sites. They are calls to freedom from over intrusive government that—
Brody: Why do you call Governor Scott Walker a hero when I have read articles calling him a fascist, a liar, hell, everything but a horse thief?
Anti-Union Andy: I think he is a hero for conservatives who have tried to stop the waste and inefficiency of unions but have failed. He is doing something a lot of conservatives concerned with out of control spending would like to see done. He is absolutely not a fascist but sounding the first whistle of economic freedom against—
Brody: You keep bringing up spending and blah blah about economics, but that’s actually not what this is about. Wisconsin currently has no budget deficit, and the unions have said they would make the money concessions he was asking. Clearly, budget reduction is a smokescreen used to cloud the issue of union busting.
Anti-Union Andy: I do think it’s about out of control spending and employee benefits better than those in the private sector, paid for by the taxpayer. I also think it is about ending unions, which I would argue is a great thing for America.
Brody: Those benefits are not paid for by the taxpayer! They are deferred payment on a job already done. It’s not a handout from the government or like the taxpayer is personally giving them a check every week. Teacher retirement is paid for by the teachers themselves.
Anti-Union Andy: It is paid for by the taxpayer. Obviously, taxpayers pay teacher salaries.
Brody: These are government jobs, and government runs on taxes, but it is not an entirely one sided relationship. People use schools, and want well paid, qualified teachers in those schools. And Wisconsin has some of the highest test scores in the country.
Anti-Union Andy: If they’re paying teacher’s salaries, they should be allowed to say what is too much for that service. Scott Walker is trying to curb what many feel are luxurious benefit packages and retirements.
Brody: Right, Wisconsin schoolteachers are ballers for sure. I don’t know how I missed that episode of Cribs where they took us inside the home of a Milwaukee schoolteacher, and they showed off all their bling. This has nothing to do with “out of control” wages so much as Scott Walker is a pasty faced, buttoned down suburban fascist.
Anti-Union Andy: That’s outlandish and slanderous. You have no basis for saying that because he’s asking Wisconsin schoolteachers to chip in to their own retirement.
Brody: They are already chipping in! It is their damn money deferred. This bill amounts to an 8 percent pay cut for them. And I am justified to call him a fascist.
Anti-Union Andy: No, it’s completely unfounded. The definition of fascism has the state gaining greater control—
Brody: He’s gaining greater control of almost everything by destroying collective bargaining rights.
Anti-Union Andy: That’s a false—
Brody: Let me finish. He gains greater control through destroying collective bargaining rights. He’ll be able to slash wages and benefits, and this bill makes it impossible to get a raise higher than the rate of inflation. A blogger tricked him into admitting he wanted to plant fake protestors into the crowd to get unruly and make the protestors look bad. He has blocked pro-union websites from the capital’s servers. He won’t compromise with the unions whatsoever, because he wants them destroyed, not weakened. The unions are the biggest fundraisers for the Democrats who are already grossly underfunded, so it amounts to the creation of a one party system by way of economic starvation. This bill also gives him the power to cut Medicare as much as the federal government will allow, and gives him the right to privatize the state’s power plants to the Koch Brothers who are his corporate puppet masters. That’s everything, that’s being an autocrat, that’s trying to destroy the political opposition, that’s stripping away worker’s rights, and that’s bringing in select corporate interests which fascism usually does. It rounds all the bases for a fascism homerun.
Anti-Union Andy: Planting protestors is hardly fascism.
Brody: If he’s so in the right, why does he need to discredit the protestors with fakery? Why can’t the people see both sides and make up their own minds—and wait a fucking minute, that was one point I made and you said nothing about the others.
Anti-Union Andy: I think slashing Medicare and privatizing more government services like power plants is a good thing. Business can see to those things better than government can.
Brody: I think you’re trying hard not to think in a critical or deep way. I don’t think you’re offering much of a defense of this guy, because there isn’t one. He really is a fascist.
Anti-Union Andy: No, although I do think it’s very clever to paint Walker as a fascist instead of Obama as a socialist.
At this point, I wish Madea from the Tyler Perry movies were here so she could say “Oh honey, you just opened a can of worms.’”
Join us next week for round 3 of this debate, the dramatic final round that has it all…love (my defense of Obama), war (why “Libertarianism” really seems to just be a codeword for racist), hypocrisy (Tea Party vs. Wisconsin protestors) and the timeless question: Why do ultra conservatives wear bowties?
Red State vs. Blue State: Brody vs. Anti-Union, Final Round
Frazier vs. Ali, Tyson vs. Holyfield, Brody vs. an ultra conservative who refuses to give his real name, these are the great battles of our time. Well, two of them are at least, and the third one (with two pasty white guys battling politics instead of two athletes literally pounding each other in the ring) is coming to a close today. I hope this isn’t the last we’ve seen of Anti-Union Andy, but I also highly doubt he’ll be back. Even he might have a tolerance for how long he can debate someone on the internet. We join this debate from last week’s stopping place…
Anti-Union Andy: …I do think it’s very clever to paint Walker as a fascist instead of Obama as a socialist.
Brody: Are you really going to trot out the old “Obama is a socialist” line?
Anti-Union Andy: It’s not a line. He fits the definition—
Brody: Wanting to make it illegal to drop people’s healthcare after they get cancer isn’t socialism, it’s something that should have already been in effect.
Anti-Union Andy: It’s interfering with business. It’s the government telling an industry it has to do something, how to operate, which is absolutely socialism—
Brody: So you think Obama fits the definition for Socialism better than Walker fits the definition for fascism?
Anti-Union Andy: Walker doesn’t fit the definition for fascism—
Brody: I laid out why he did earlier.
Anti-Union Andy: And he still didn’t fit it. Obama has clearly overreached into what industries are supposed to—
Brody: Cut the shit Andy. Obama is barely a liberal, let alone a socialist. He has barely talked about the Wisconsin protesters and the plight of unions in America today, and doesn’t really get along well with the AFL-CIO. He’s even said bad things about the teacher’s unions and NEA before.
Anti-Union Andy: And I applaud him for that. That’s probably the thing I like about Obama.
Brody: You like that he’s pissing off his own base and not fully supporting the last real muscle his party has?
Anti-Union Andy: Yes actually [laughter] I love it.
Brody: Why don’t you tell the truth about why you’re really calling Obama a socialist? People see a black President named Barack Obama, his mom’s an atheist, and his dad is a Muslim from Kenya, and he has an association to the Weather Underground because he’s met Bill Ayers, and his church might have been extreme at one time because of the comments his former pastor made. All of these things make him seem like some sort of radical that he really isn’t. Wouldn’t you rather just call him the Black Panther President but can’t?
[There is a long silence before Andy continues] Anti-Union Andy: I think that’s…that’s definitely not true. I’m not sure exactly what you’re saying or suggesting.
Brody: I’m saying that lily white conservatives think he’s a socialist because in their worldview an America that’s equal enough to where a black man can become President is socialism.
Anti-Union Andy: No, that’s false, that would go against Libertarian ideals—
Brody: Libertarians talk a good game, but that really just seems to be a codeword for racist.
Anti-Union Andy: I don’t know what basis you have for saying that.
Brody: Every Libertarian I’ve ever met is the basis. They don’t really give two shits about minorities or their struggles or inequality and just think, typically, the government shouldn’t get involved in anything that isn’t someone trying to steal property from a rich guy. They want to see all social programs and entitlements dismantled because they don’t want to pay taxes on anything. They always paint the movement as “radical freedom” but it really just seems like a bunch of well off, stuffy white fucks wearing bowties and trying to accumulate as much stuff as they can get their hands on.
Anti-Union Andy: Private property rights do play a big part in right leaning libertarianism.
Brody: Which is more or less the only kind currently on the menu. You guys pretend like the government shouldn’t get involved in social issues, but every one of you I’ve talked to doesn’t believe in abortion, gay marriage, affirmative action, and thinks Obama is a socialist. You’re just extreme fiscal conservatives who want to abolish all things like Medicare and social security.
Anti-Union Andy: Those things should be abolished.
Brody: You’re just so conservative the main Republican Party doesn’t want you. So you call yourselves Libertarians.
Anti-Union Andy: Obviously, I don’t see it that way. It sounds like I really need to take a minute to educate you on Libertarianism. Libertarianism is a movement—
Brody: No, you really don’t. I’ve heard this probably 5,000 times. I would like for you to tell me why I have seen you wear a colorful bowtie on multiple occasions, why I have also seen other conservatives such as Tucker Carlson wear colorful bowties, and why nobody else on the planet wears them?
Anti-Union Andy, puzzled for a second: Wait—I want to go back to Libertarianism.
Brody: I don’t. Also, I have seen the US chapter of the Muslim Brotherhood wear colorful bowties. Did you ever think you would have something in common with them?
Anti-Union Andy: I have to defend Libertarianism against some of the charges you made earlier. The movement is—
Brody: Jesus, you sound like a guy defending your girlfriend’s purity when everyone knows she’s been around. Why are you ducking my bowtie question? What is it about bowties you don’t want us to know? Do they hold power in and of themselves?
Anti-Union Andy: I will talk…bowties, I guess, if afterwards you allow me to defend and explain Libertarianism against what you accused it of.
Brody: Sure, absolutely, so bowties, go.
Anti-Union Andy: I know I for one, and I cannot speak for the others, but I really liked wearing bowties from a young age. They make me feel a little more distinguished. It’s something my grandfather probably would have wanted as he always wore them. I don’t always wear one, and prefer a necktie, but I will wear a bowtie a few times out of the year. I don’t know if there’s some conspiracy as you’re suggesting and I find it actually very absurd, but I do like them.
Brody: Okay, well that’s all the time we have. Thanks for dropping by Andy.
Nice. Way to get him on the bowties at the end. I fucking hate bowties on a grown man.
It’s good to see someone else in Alabama fighting the good fight!
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