Excellent post, PubDog. Thank you from the bottom of my tax-paying heart.

If you listened to all the politicians yesterday, you heard a bunch of crap about job creation while we continue to outsource jobs to India, Mexico, and other lower-cost countries. Not one politician said we need to cut expenses, or cut the size of government, even the Republicans.

9:01 am you don’t know much about our economic history if you expect Republicans do more than talk out of their ass about cutting expenses and the size of government. Not since Nixon has a Republican administration cut federal deficit spending and the national debt. In the last 30 years the only administration to cut federal deficit spending and the national debt was Clinton’s. When it comes to taking and spending the bread of labor, don’t expect Republicans to actually do the right thing just because you’re used to hearing them talk.

We wish to remind our readers that the elections for all four principal “Park Ridge” units of government – the City, the Park District, and School Districts 64 and 207 – are non-partisan, at least nominally; and we have yet to hear one policy or principle of local government that could reasonably and accurately be described as either “Republican” or “Democratic.”

So please put away the red and blue crayons when commenting on Watchdog posts – unless the post itself expressly encourages otherwise.

Thank you.

PW you should admit you are a Republican and take your lumps. Stop hiding behind a cloak of non-partisanship every time someone comes along and points out Republicans and their tradition of taxing, spending, and deficit spending at the federal and local level. Local Republicans including the current mayor made party politics part of the local policy debates. Why avoid talking about it now? Unless you’re afraid local Republicans including yourself would look bad.

3:54 pm the Public Watchdog didn’t deny it but if you know better then why not say what you know. The information I was told was that the Public Watchdog was at the MTRGOP Dinner Dance a few months ago. If Public Watchdog isn’t a Republican why was he at the party fundraiser? If the information I was told is wrong then I apologize to the Public Watchdog.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This editor was at that event – the only one of its kind he has ever attended – as a guest of, and favor to, a friend. And if you were to check his primary voting record over the past 20-30-40 years, you’d find that 90% of the ballots he has taken were Democrat ones.

But don’t draw any inferences from that fact, either. The only reason for that is because, as a trial attorney in Crook County, this editor prefers the election of the most qualified judges irrespective of party; and there tend to be no primary contests on the Republican judicial ballot.

But tell us, please, exactly what’s the official “R” or “D” position on any local issue?

Thanks for at least acknowledging that Labor Day was once in honor of labor. Problem is your idea of what constitutes “injury” is confined to assault and battery, robbery, burglary and murder. It doesn’t include the very real “injury” done by corporations that may have earned a big piece of the pie with some contribution two generations back but since have spent every tax-deductible nickle they can to rig every conceivable law to ensure they keep on having the lion’s share of everything and that, if caught breaking the few laws that protect consumers and workers, have ample tax-deductible funds to keep paying lawyers to stall, cast doubt and gum up any sign of fair play. (Think Wal-mart. Think BP. Think, period.) You don’t believe government should intervene to prevent that type of “injury.” I suspect you also define “labor” as the guy who keeps the books and pays the rent on the factory, but not as the guy who makes the goods and delivers the services. That “labor” can pound sand, right? We don’t like to think of it, but the differential between the top guy’s pay and the average worker’s pay is greater than it’s ever been since the days of Dicken’s workhouse. The teabaggers whose prime earning years were in the 1960s and 1970s and are now sitting pretty on their pensions (some even on union pensions!)are happily ragging on the multitudes now trying to put a life together on $8.25 an hour and no benefits despite college degrees. When the top 5 percent of the population owns more than 30 percent of the assets, that’s a banana republic. It’s a challenge to think how we can save the middle class in a global economy, but we can start by reversing the current trend of the Faux News Corp. that pits the poor against the middle class in dog-eat-dog capitalism while the high-income folk watch, popcorn in hand, from the box seats. To paraphrase, “when my secretary pays a higher percent of her salary in taxes than I do, that’s wrong.” Who said it? Warren Buffett.

The Watchdog a Republican? Tears of laughter are streaming down my face. If you only knew.

* Anon 09.07.10 @ 12:14 p.m.
We dislike the “R”s and the “D”s with relatively equal vigor, especially those who comprise “The Combine” and have wrecked this State. But nobody has yet defined a local (i.e., Park Ridge) issue that has an “R” and a “D” position to it.

* Anonymous 09/07/10 @ 3:35 p.m.
We agree with Warren Buffett. And we’re no fan of “Faux News” or the entertainers of all political stripes who pass themselves off as serious commentators.

We consider everybody who has to earn a living as “labor” – which is why we used that particular quote of Jefferson’s this year; and why we used another of his quotes, along with one from Samuel Gompers, in last year’s Labor Day post.

* Anonymous 09/07/10 @ 3:54 p.m.
See response to 09/07/10 @ 12:15 p.m., above.

* Anon 09/07/10 @ 4:56 p.m.
We’re no fans of public-sector unions, in part because public employees already enjoy the protection of civil service laws, and in part because public-sector employees draw their wages from the public purse (i.e., from our taxes). So when you get right down to it, they are the ones who effectively “take from the mouth of [private sector] labor the bread it has earned.”

3:35:

While I do not agree with all you wrote, it is clear they choose to ignore the history of Labor Day and what it actually means. It’s the Glenn Beck strategy – take a holiday or historic event and twist it for your own purposes. Maybe the quotes they used around labor are an acknowledgement of that fact. If one believes the rumor mill the person who runs this site is a Attorney and has never been involved in “labor” (by the way either have I). What I find so funny is using the Labor Day holiday in this way when they would and have beat the hell out of organized Labor in the form of Police, Fire and Teachers. These groups are smart enough to know it is not just politicians who would “take from the mouth of labor.”

4:56 pm you may find this interesting. It looks like the Attorney who runs this site may not have been involved in organized “labor” but he got a roof over his head and his belly filled by the fruits of it.

January 10, 1999
Anton J. Trizna, 87, a longtime Joliet resident and former president of the International Molders and Allied Workers Union, died Thursday in Lutheran General Hospital, Park Ridge. Mr. Trizna was born in what is now Slovakia. Mr. Trizna had planned to become an architect or a lawyer but dropped out of Joliet Township High School to work at a foundry to help his family through the Depression, said his son, Robert. Mr. Trizna joined the union staff in 1940. During World War II, he enlisted in the U.S. Army and was sent to Utah to oversee 500 German prisoners of war on work farms, his son said. He also served on the Joliet Township High School board. Other survivors include a sister, Helen Lakota, and four grandsons. Visitation will be from 3 to 9 p.m. Sunday in Fred C. Dames Funeral Home, 3200 W. Black Rd., Joliet. Mass will be said at 10 a.m. Monday in St. Mary’s Nativity Catholic Church, 706 N. Broadway, Joliet.

Actually, Anon 09/07/10 @ 9:49 pm., the editor prefers this one:

PUBLIC SERVANT ANTON J. TRIZNA LOSES LONG BATTLE WITH CANCER
Article from: Herald-News (Joliet, IL)
Article date: January 9, 1999

Anton J. “Tony” Trizna, whose life touched many parts of the Joliet community, died Thursday at Lutheran General Hospital in Park Ridge after a long battle with prostate cancer.

He was 87.

Mr. Trizna was born in what is now Slovakia, but moved to Joliet with his parents and older brother shortly afterward.

Music was a lifelong love that began when he started taking clarinet lessons in grade school and played under the renowned A.R. McAllister in Joliet Township High School.

He planned to become an architect or attorney, but dropped out of high school after only two years to work as an iron molder at a Joliet foundry to help support his family during the Depression.

That led to a career in unionism that included dangerous trips to Alabama and Mississippi in the 1960s to integrate the locals there, and the presidency of the 60,000-member International Molders and Allied Workers Union in the early 1970s.

During World War II, Mr. Trizna was sent to Utah to oversee 500 German prisoners of war on work farms. Years later, he joked that the toughest part of the military service was “learning how to be management instead of labor.”

His son, Robert, an attorney, remembers how his father refused the perks enjoyed by some of his counterparts in the trade unions, such as first-class travel, hotel suites, luxury cars and hefty expense accounts.

“He always said that every dollar he earned came from the pockets of rank-and-file union members,” Robert Trizna said, “so that he shouldn’t eat steak while they ate hamburgers.”

Mr. Trizna retired from the union in 1976, but a career in public service was just beginning.

He was elected to the Joliet Township High School Board, serving at a time when the district had to be consolidated because of growing economic problems.

He also was appointed to the Housing Authority of Joliet Board, serving for 17 years and under four mayors.

He was appointed chairman of Lt. Gov. George Ryan’s Senior Legislative Forum.

His public service continued to the end.

When informed he had only weeks to live and was bedridden in the hospital, Mr. Trizna requested an absentee ballot. He was not about to break his streak of having voted in every election since he got his voter’s card in 1932.

At the time of his death, he was a member of the board of the Senior Services Center of Will County, the Joliet Federation of Musicians Local 37, the Will County Old Timers Baseball Association, American Legion Harwood Post 5, the Joliet Lodge of the Benevolent and Protective Order of the Elks and the Knights of Columbus, Joliet Council.

Visitation will be from 3 to 9 p.m. Sunday at the Fred C. Dames Funeral Home, 3200 W. Black Road. A Mass is scheduled for 10 a.m. Monday at St. Mary Nativity Church, 706 N. Broadway.

We have two parties in Illinois: Remocrats and Depublicans. Many of you are right, the GOP has no better record on limited government than Dems, especially here in Illinois. We know Pat Quinn, if elected, will raise our income tax from 3% to 4%. I am waiting to hear if Bill Brady has pledged not to raise the income tax.