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Individual liberty anywhere is a threat to the Progressive-Collectivist Cause everywhere.
It's official: Michigan's home health care "dues skim" has ended.(full story "Confirmed: The SEIU 'Dues Skim' Finally Ends" at michigancapitolconfidential.com)
For the first time since 2006, the Service Employees International Union is not deducting money from the Medicaid checks of the state's 59,000 home-based caregivers.
James Haveman, director of the Michigan Department of Community Health, confirmed that the money no longer is being taken from the checks.
"The Department of Community Health successfully ended the contract with the SEIU and, in turn, stopped the dues from being taken out of Michigan home health care worker paychecks," Haveman said. "Making this happen was a priority for me and our administration and I’m glad to see that with this next round of paychecks this has become a reality."
The SEIU, however, took $34,416,335.21 from the elderly and disabled in Michigan, according to the Michigan Capitol Confidential skim tracker, an online scrolling ticker that was tracking the money the SEIU took.
More than two years after Scott Walker’s showdown with organized labor in Wisconsin, the official numbers for the state’s public sector union membership are in — and they are down. Way down.(full story "Wisconsin public sector unions report drastic membership declines" at washingtonexaminer.com)
According a Labor Department filing made last week, membership at Wisconsin’s American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Council 40 — one of AFSCME’s four branches in the state — has gone from the 31,730 it reported in 2011, to 29,777 in 2012, to just 20,488 now. That’s a drop of more than 11,000 — about a third — in just two years. The council represents city and county employees outside of Milwaukee County and child care workers across Wisconsin.
Labor Department filings also show that Wisconsin’s AFSCME Council 48, which represents city and county workers in Milwaukee County, went from 9,043 members in 2011, to 6,046 in 2012, to just 3,498 now.
These numbers come from the locals’ LM-2 filings, annual reports they must make to Labor Department. They can be found here.
Cora Carper, 32, of Churchton pleaded guilty Friday to embezzlement from a labor union, in connection with a scheme to steal at least $200,000 from the union’s political action committee.(via "Ex Union Official Pleads Guilty to Embezzlement" at workplacechoice.org)
The guilty plea was announced by United States Attorney for the District of Maryland Rod J. Rosenstein and District Director Mark Wheeler of the U.S. Department of Labor, Office of Labor – Management Standards.
According to her plea, Carper was a secretary with the International Association of Heat and Frost Insulators and Allied Workers, assigned to perform clerical tasks associated with the operation of the Insulators Political Action Committee (PAC) fund. Carper’s duties included processing disbursement requests.
In Tbilisi - the Soviet Socialist Republic of Georgia - anti-Soviet peaceful demonstrators and hunger strikers demand restoration of Georgian independence and are dispersed by the Soviet army, resulting in 20 deaths and hundreds of injuries (1989)
Georgia declares its independence from the Soviet Union (1991)
b: Paul Robeson (1898), Viktor Chernomyrdin (1938); d: Wilhelm Canaris (1945), Phil Ochs (1976), Robert Mapplethorpe (1989)