New collectivist nationalism exposed ... What exactly are the "petty grievances," the "worn-out dogmas" and the "stale political arguments that have consumed us"? Well, as the most liberal senator in Washington, as a man who has called for redistributive justice and who told Joe the Plumber, "I think when you spread the wealth around, it's good for everybody," it is a fair guess that free markets, low tax rates and a respect for private property are the worn-out dogmas, petty grievances and childish things that he believes we cynics must move beyond. One man's worn-out dogmas are another man’s philosophical lodestars. I believe that Obama intends to craft a new nationalism, using the disassembled timber of our traditional values to build a new, more collectivist and less individualistic ship of state. The planks will look vaguely familiar, but the ship will be quite different. It is as if he would disassemble the warship Old Ironsides and build with its timbers a collectivist’s ark. (citizen-times.com)In case you missed it: The Union News weekend: Saturday | Sunday
U.S. Organizer-in-Chief Gets Right To Work
Pro-union organizing package revealed ... When someone takes the time to actually read the proposed "Card Check" legislation (H.R. 800), and cut through the intentionally confusing legalese, you will discover that many of the proponents of this legislation have lied. Review the following side-by-side comparison of the rules for unionizing a workplace now versus what the rules would look like if the legislation passes, and you make the call. (northstarwriters.com)
D.C.'s anti-democratic union organizers advance ... We are seeing many TV ads supporting the mistakenly named Employee Free Choice Act. It is my understanding that employees would be required to openly declare if they are, or are not, in favor of having a union in their workplace. The secret ballot is one of the hallmarks of American democracy. Every citizen is allowed to vote his choice without fear of harassment. This is absolutely against everything America and freedom stand for and only demonstrates the influence that unions have over our elected senators and representatives. (2theadvocate.com)
Misfit: Unqualified, nativist extremist tapped for Labor Dept. ... The hearing to confirm Hilda Solis as labor secretary in the Obama administration was put on hold last week when it was learned her husband recently paid off $7,630 in county tax liens for his auto repair business, some dating back 16 years. But the Senate’s attention should not be on taxes in this case, but squarely on Ms. Solis’ troubling track record on workplace and trade issues. The daughter of immigrant parents from Nicaragua and Mexico, Ms. Solis has a compelling personal story. One of seven siblings, and the first member of her family to attend college, she worked in both the Carter and Reagan administrations and won election to the House in 2001. But she was also the only member of Congress to serve on the board of directors of American Rights at Work, a pro-labor lobbying group that is a strong proponent of the Employee Free Choice Act, which would eliminate secret-ballot elections in union organizations in favor of a card-check system. In fact, Ms. Solis served as unpaid treasurer for the organization between 2004 and 2007. Moreover, Ms. Solis has been a staunch opponent of free trade agreements, including the Central American and Peru free trade deals, and opposes such a deal with Colombia. She has consistently earned near-perfect scores for her voting record from big labor, while raising the hackles of business organizations. It is any president’s prerogative to nominate the Cabinet members he wants, and to assemble a team that is in keeping with his overall governing philosophy, whatever that may be. But a nominee who has been so consistent and outspoken in her support of extreme, pro-labor positions may not be the right fit for the labor department at a time when labor and management need to work through policy differences and help put America back to work. The Senate should scrutinize this nominee very carefully, indeed. (telegram.com)
Card-Check justice compromise floated ... Will those who want a “roll call” vote on forming a union — after all, that is what a “card check” system really is — accept the following? The law establishing this identified and signed vote must include continuation of the “card check” for rejection of the union when it proves to be nonresponsive to the members’ wishes, and the law must establish a prison term of not less than two years for conviction of harassment over the vote cast. If this bad idea is passed, it must provide protection for those who are made targets for harassment by the public nature of the records. The records themselves must remain available for any who wish to count the votes. The “card check” itself must be made not less than once a month. (lasvegassun.com)
We don't need no stinkin' work stoppages ... He is also on record favoring a "card check" bill that would enable unions to represent workers without secret-ballot elections. And he endorses the union view of U.S. economic history. As he recently told CNN, "Over the last 100 years, the middle class was built on the back of organized labor." By such logic, the middle class had its best year in 1954. That was when union power, measured by the percentage of the work force in union ranks, was at its height. Have things really been downhill ever since? Hardly. The past 55 years have been largely a time of progress and rising living standards. Recent decades have also seen a great lessening of labor strife. The Bureau of Labor Statistics keeps tallies going back to 1947 for what it calls "major work stoppages." These are strikes involving at least 1,000 workers for one full shift or more. (ibdeditorials.com)
Bam plays by 'Rules for Radicals' ... Saul Alinsky was a Chicago agitator who wrote a book for radicals dedicated to Lucifer. His followers hired Barack Obama to teach South Siders to overcome the enemy by getting in their face, for government intervention and more taxpayer dollars. Make no mistake, when the arrogant Obama and his liberals talk about remaking America, they're not kidding. Their goal is to replace our system of free enterprise, traditional values and morality with Big Brother socialism. Instead of remaking America, liberal Democrats need to remake themselves. Both contradictory and hypocritical, they play the victim but are always on the attack, claim the righteous high ground, but can't find leaders who pay their taxes, and label conservatives racist and hateful, when in reality they are the ones obsessed and consumed with racism and hatred. (santamariatimes.com)Bonus links:
• Summary of Saul Alinsky's 'Rules for Radicals'
• 'Rules for Radicals' at amazon.com
Bam's crippling $3 trillion deficit gets a free pass ... Even as Americans still wrap their heads around the idea that the federal budget deficit will top $1 trillion this year, one research firm says the red ink could hit $3 trillion — and some well-respected policy analysts think it isn't that far-fetched. The specter of massive deficits has spurred a push to slash some $100 billion from the Senate stimulus bill, which has topped $900 billion. A new Congressional Budget Office report suggests the extra deficits from that mammoth package would actually hurt long-term economic growth. According to a CBO letter released yesterday, the stimulus impact of increasing the budget deficit could encourage investors to buy Treasuries instead of putting money into private investment. This "crowding out" of private investment "would reduce GDP by 0.1% to 0.3% on net" by 2019, reported the CBO. (investors.com)
Rewarding chronic union-backed fraud ... A multi-million dollar liberal non-profit activist conglomerate reportedly under federal investigation may get a big piece of the economic recovery stimulus pie now under consideration by Congress. It’s the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now – the infamous ACORN. That’s right. ACORN, the activist group that has been implicated in voter fraud and registration deception in at least 14 states may get the financial bailout it needs to pull off another round of schemes in the next election season. Last fall, nearly every time ACORN was in the news the group’s credibility was -- rightfully and appropriately -- questioned. In the final weeks leading to the election, twice as many voters held a negative view of the group than a positive view. But now that ACORN is receding from public view, it’s apparently counting on the economic crisis and its friends in Congress to refill its coffers with up to $4 billion in aid. Many people are already familiar with ACORN’s dubious pretension as a get-out-the-vote organization. It’s alleged that of the 1.3 million registration cards it “got out to vote” in this election, about a third turned out to be faked. But ACORN’s close relationship with fraud is nothing new. In fact, it’s chronic. (dcexaminer.com)
Congress urged to strip the union-backed fraud from the Porkulus package ... The $800-plus billion, so-called "stimulus" package passed by Democrats in the U.S. House is loaded with earmarks for liberal pork programs that will not help the economy to recover will not help individual Americans. Those earmarks include more than $5 billion for ACORN, a supposedly nonpartisan, tax-exempt agency that allegedly helps low-income people with housing. In fact, ACORN has proven to be a left-wing front group that helped liberals get elected to national office in 2008. There are many current investigations of voter fraud by ACORN that the liberal, mainstream media will never tell us about. The Senate should completely rewrite this package to take out all such pork projects. President Obama promised us that the stimulus package - aka "bailout" - would be devoid of special-interest earmarks. In fact, the House package is loaded with such earmarks, reported to include close to half of the funds. This is why all Republicans in the House and 10 "blue dog" Democrats voted against this monstrous boondoggle at taxpayer expense. (newschief.com)Newt takes on Bam, Porkulus
Three Reasons the Porkulus Will Fail ... The Administration and Congress have decided that a massive, debt financed, increase in government spending is correct public policy. This policy is marketed as a stimulus evoking the image of an after dinner restorative for a glutton. The stimulus will fail for 3 reasons that people in power today ignore but are surely not ignorant of since the current U.S. regime assures us it is intelligent, well read, sophisticated, honest and hard working. We have their word for it. The 3 reasons why the stimulus will fail in the U.S. (as it will in the EU) are: 1. Foreigners will not bail us out; 2. Confidence, not cash, is in short supply; 3. Assumptions are not truths. (seekingalpha.com)
UNITE-HERE: Disorganized Labor ... With the economy in crisis and a new labor-friendly president in the White House, this should be a time when labor unions pull together. But one of the nation’s best-known unions, Unite Here, which represents nearly 400,000 apparel, hotel, restaurant and casino workers, is doing anything but that. “This union is engaged in a civil war,” said Bruce Raynor, president of Unite Here. The hostilities have grown so serious that violent confrontations erupted last month when one faction ousted the union’s top official in Michigan. (blueridgenow.com)
SEIU workers fight against Andy Stern's anti-democratic autocracy ... In the largest single-day filing in California healthcare history, the National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW) petitioned for elections in 62 California hospitals and healthcare facilities today with National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) offices in Oakland and San Francisco. NUHW is a new, independent union formed by union reformers only last week. In only five days after its founding, NUHW has filed petitions to represent nearly 9,000 workers. The new union expects to file petitions for thousands more in coming days with the NLRB and with the California Public Relations Board for those workers whose employers fall under state rather than federal labor laws. "Thousands of workers are rushing to sign petitions for NUHW. I helped to signed up 106 people at my facility within hours," said Suzanne Redell, a respiratory care practitioner at Saint Louise, a Daughters of Charity hospital in Gilroy, who is organizing her co-workers into NUHW. The new union has pledged to be more democratic than SEIU. (indybay.org)
Striker replacements chided by unionists ... The chant "We Are Stella!" was belted out by striking Stella D'oro workers, along with their supporters and other unionists, as they marched 200-strong down Broadway in the Bronx on a bright but sub-freezing day on January 31. The march traced a path from the picket line outside the Stella D'oro factory to a nearby Target store that continues to sell the scab cookies, where Joyce Alston, president of the union local that represents the strikers, elaborated on the meaning of the chant. "We can't sit by and allow people to be destroyed," Alston said. "We are the market. We produce the product." A spirited and militant atmosphere prevailed on the march, with strikers joined by contingents from the community who turned out to show their support, plus a small musical troupe of children, as young as three, who beat on drums and shook maracas. The 135 workers, members of the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers (BCTWGM) International Union Local 50, have been on strike for over five months. Management has brought scabs in to keep the factory running, though production is reportedly at just 35 percent capacity. (socialistworker.org)
Union political front-group bedevils Empire State ... At times yesterday, the biggest alarms were sounded about the Working Families Party - seen as playing the kind of ideological tail-wagging-the-dog role in the state Democratic world that the Conservatives have played at times with the battered Republicans. State Conservative chairman Michael Long warned the "ultra-liberal" WFP is "well financed" and "well engaged" and "on the march" with street operations - and needed to be offset from the right. He disputed those who consider the party "conservative" in Suffolk and upstate. Election lawyer John Ciampoli cited the WFP party's ties to the group ACORN. (newsday.com)Police union crisis hits Hollywood
Aging folksinger has second thoughts, admits 'stupid' mistake ... American folk singer Pete Seeger has revealed in his new Seeger bio, "The Protest Singer," that he regrets having been a member of the Communist Party. Seeger, 89, told the author of his bio, Alec Wilkinson, that he had no idea about the person he was following and should have left sooner. "I thought Stalin was the brave Secretary Stalin and had no idea how cruel a leader he was," the New York Post quoted him as saying. "I got out in '49, though ... I should have left much earlier. It was stupid of me not to ... I didn't realize the danger the world was in," he added. (newstrackindia.com)International Collectivism
Latin socialist earns Iran's support ... In 2005, Chávez told his people that "descendants of the same ones that crucified Christ" are in control of the world's wealth. He has become a fast ally of Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who yearns to wipe Israel off the map. And, most recently, he mounted extraordinarily vicious attacks against Israel for its response to Hamas rockets from Gaza. Branding Israel's government as "genocidal," Chavez expelled its ambassador. While the conflict was underway, pro-Chávez lawmakers wore Arab keffiyehs in the National Assembly, and a pro-government Web site called for a boycott of Jewish-owned stores and malls. (nydailynews.com)
Campaign of hatred advances in workers' paradise ... Is it likely that a contemporary state in Latin America would dare to adopt an official policy of anti-Semitism? We would like to believe that the answer is No. Not in our part of the world. Not in view of the universal disavowal of racism among nations of the region. But take a look at what is happening in Venezuela, and suddenly it doesn't seem unlikely at all. The reprehensible attack on a synagogue in Caracas on Jan. 31 has spread widespread fear within the Jewish community in Venezuela and sent shivers across the hemisphere. The brazen and well-planned assault represents an escalation in a menacing drumbeat of events that began years ago under President Hugo Chávez and includes the welcoming embrace of Iran, Israel's sworn enemy; the recent break in relations with Israel; and the growing volume of anti-Semitic propaganda tolerated, when not actually sponsored, by Mr. Chávez's government This was no random act of vandalism. Two security guards were overpowered by about 15 people who ransacked the synagogue's sanctuary and offices, shattering religious objects and leaving graffiti such as, ''Jews, get out.'' Such actions will multiply unless the government takes an unequivocal stand against anti-Semitism and stops spewing anti-Jewish and anti-Israel hatred in the government-controlled media. (miamiherald.com)
