I grew up under the security umbrella of the AFL-CIO MEBA

District 2.

That means US shipping in fresh water: basically the Great Lakes boats and Mississippi/Ohio/Missouri barges. (I would dearly love to hear from anyone who wants to differ with the latter categorization; I know nothing about them.)

The Union provided us with a wonderful living until the late '70s. I do, indeed, give them the credit. But then, it all went to He'll. As an interested party, I should do more research on the matter, but I've been more interested in conservative and libertarian politics since then.

Suffice to say that union economics look too damn much like classical communism to me. There's a place for collective bargaining, but unions need to fire their crypto-communist lawyers and accept the results of the Fall of the Berlin Wall, before I'll consider them respectable again.

This is a Heal of a long intro to a link to a Great Lakes sailing tale by Oldsmoblogger, but I just wanted to reiterate my credentials to talk about it. More on that in my comment on this post.