re: #194 Shimshon

Also a fun fact I just remembered about unions. Reading a biography about RFK by Arthur Schlesinger , I found it interesting that conservative politicians in the 50s and 60s supported many corrupt unions run by infamous gangsters such as Jimmy Hoffa.

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Conservatives viewed the gangsters as businessmen their business allies could do business with, to keep their union members in line and not cause trouble. RFK in the rackets commission was blocked constantly by Goldwater and other conservatives when he was trying to remove mob corruption from unions. A big departure from today when all private unions are hated by conservatives.

Nixon is the one who commuted Hoffa’s sentence IIRC. I always found it ironic that conservatives while staunchly anti-union that one of the few unions they did show support to were the Teamsters who were notoriously corrupit and mob tied. That gets me to another point regarding RFK’s brother, FJK is always called mob helped but that ignores that Nixon actually had some ties too.