| Obama: Stimulus bankruptcy, toxic NLRB appointment, Federal Reserve power-grab, fascistic health scheme OK'd by Communist Party USA, global economic leadership ceded to India, bailout sticker-shock, relying on discredited Keynes, backing LatAm Marxist thugocracies. Mismanagement: Fraud-by-mail voting exposed, striking gov't union trumps public interest, union operatives fine-tune job-killing agenda, bigs H8 privatization, union dues defended, workers vote down UFCW using oppressive secret-ballot, judge fumes at UNITE-HERE. International: Authorities H8 limits. |
Stimulus Exposed: Corporate welfare for Dem votes ... Among the 3,266 entries in a government database detailing to-date spending under the Democrats' stimulus law are expenditures for concrete outhouses, “deli-sliced” turkey, and hotel bills. Passed in February, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (AARA) – also called the “stimulus package” -- was sought and signed into law by President Obama, who declared at the time, “We have begun the essential work of keeping the American dream alive in our time.” Among the more than 3,000 projects, purchases, and grants made with stimulus money obtained through the Federal Procurement Data System, some of the projects that have contributed to keeping the American dream alive include: • $2.2 million to the Seneca Foods Corporation in Marion, NY for “fruit, canned;” the same company received another contract worth $196,797 also, for “fruit, canned”; • $4.8 million for “frozen, sliced ham”; • $5.3 million for “deli-style turkey breast” from the Jennie-O Turkey company; • $5.5 million in “canned fruit” from the Del Monte Corporation; • $16.8 million in “canned pork” from Lakeside Foods Inc. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack explained that food purchased with stimulus money went to help the needy, which also stimulated the economy. (cnsnews.com)
Obama NLRB: There is no such thing as a free choice ... The name of the legislation is straight out of Orwell, but the content is pure Kafka. The worst provision — worse, in fact, than the card-check gambit itself — would allow the National Labor Relations Board to impose contracts on businesses that cannot come to an agreement with a union. If a union enters the picture and the owners of a business are unable to negotiate a satisfactory contract, then the NLRB is empowered to impose “binding arbitration,” meaning that the government will write the contract and force the firm to abide by its terms. This amounts to extortion. President Obama has picked a like-minded lawyer culled from the ranks of the Teamsters to chair the NLRB, and another Obama NLRB pick, Craig Becker, is a labor radical who wrote that “federal policy should not acknowledge employees’ ‘choice to remain unrepresented.’” (nationalreview.com)
Gov't: Union power supersedes public interest ... Municipal workers from CUPE Local 416 and CUPE Local 79 went on strike June 22. The city has been without regular services for a month and during interviews on CBC Radio's Metro Morning neither Ferguson nor Toronto Mayor David Miller had much good news for frustrated residents who have had to drag their garbage to temporary dump sites. "Public opinion is something that we need to be concerned with," said Ferguson. "We know that this is not a popular strike with Torontonians, but at the same time we also realize that there are bigger issues at play." (cbc.ca)
Secretive Federal Reserve created or saved millions of jobs ... Still, Mr Paul has persuaded nearly two-thirds of the House to co-sponsor a bill requiring far-reaching congressional audits of the Fed. Audits would show "that it's the Fed that has caused all the mischief" in the US economy, Mr Paul says. Many Fed critics blame it for the economic crisis. They say it failed as a bank regulator and also fuelled a bubble by keeping interest rates too low for years. They also feel Mr Bernanke, who became chairman in 2006, stretched the Fed's powers too far by bailing out firms like AIG, pushing Bank of America to complete its Merrill Lynch takeover, and pumping hundreds of billions of dollars into the financial system. Mr Bernanke defends his actions. "I don't regret anything we've done," he said in a recent interview. "If the Fed and the Treasury hadn't acted" as they did, "then the global economic environment would have been much, much worse than it is today," he said. "There would have been some risk of a 1930s-style Great Depression. We averted that." (theaustralian.news.com.au)
Communists OK ObamaCare ... Sam Webb, National Chair, Communist Party USA: Let me begin with a simple observation: If the last 30 years were an era of reaction, then the coming decade could turn into an era of reform, even radical reform. Six months into the Obama presidency, I would say without hesitation that the landscape, atmosphere, conversation, and agenda have strikingly changed compared to the previous eight years. In this legislative session, we can envision winning a Medicare-like public option and then going further in the years ahead. (cpusa.org)
A dangerous fascism threatens U.S. ... However there are actually two other reasons even more important than the very high price-tag government control of medical care will have. Number two is, simply, it is unconstitutional. There is absolutely nothing in the Constitution that allows the federal government to tell patients and/or doctors how to operate in the field of medicine or preventive care. Number one, though, is that it is wrong from beginning to end. It is wrong for politicians and bureaucrats to try to tell people how to live; it is wrong to take money from certain individuals in order to hand it over to other individuals; it is wrong to impose one set of opinions onto all the people in the country, and even in medicine there are often differing opinions as to the value of any medication or surgery or treatment of any kind. I find it disturbing in the extreme that the so-called "news" media have been so slavish in accepting Obama's notion that government ought to control another aspect of our lives, and I find it terrifying that so many apparently millions of people just blindly accept such a fascistic idea. (chattanoogan.com)
Why India's economy will outperform U.S. ... In West Bengal politics, the Congress has been a spectator while the political space was dominated by the Communist Party of India (Marxist) since the late Seventies to very recent times. Opposition to the communists was articulated by Mamata Banerjee, in whose eyes the Congress was nothing more than the CPI(M)’s second eleven. This situation has changed. The communists were trounced in the elections by a joint front of the Congress and the Trinamul Congress. The former came back to the Centre with a bigger majority. (telegraphindia.com)
Obama Dems furious with Treasury watchdog ... Think last year's $700 billion Wall Street rescue package was beaucoup bucks to spend bailing out the nation's floundering financial system? That's chump change compared to what the overall price tag could be, a government watchdog says. The inspector general in charge of overseeing the Treasury Department's bank-bailout program says the massive endeavor could end up costing taxpayers almost $24 trillion in a worst-case scenario. That's more than six times President Obama's proposed $3.55 trillion budget for 2010. Much of the bailout's attention has focused on the Treasury's $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP, which Congress hurriedly passed last fall. But about 50 other federal programs that began as early as 2007 could push the government's total financial support of the private financial sector to at least $23.7 trillion, says TARP Special Inspector General Neil Barofsky. (washingtontimes.com)
Bamboozlers, hoodwinkers rely on failed, discredited economic theory of the past ... Author’s Note: The following is a relatively esoteric treatise on the political naiveté of John Maynard Keynes. In this author’s opinion, it is absolutely essential for a conservative to be able to rebut an argument in which someone cites Keynesian economics as justification for inflated stimulus bills. Whilst some parts of this article might be slightly dry, I believe that the “take home” of the article is especially poignant, especially in these trying times. (watchingthewatchers.org)
Obama's love-H8 relationship with Democracy revealed ... Eleven days later, after getting skewered by Republicans and at the urging of Clinton, Obama finally spoke out against the Iranian government, saying he was “appalled and outraged” at the brutality inflicted upon the country’s peaceful protesters. Obama and his administration insisted they didn’t speak out earlier because they didn’t want to be seen as “meddling” in Iran’s elective procecess. It seems, however, that Obama is fine with meddling in the politics of Honduras. After the Honduran government removed Zelaya from office, Obama immediately denounced the move as a military coup, said ousting the president was “not legal” and demanded he be returned to the country and resume his role as president. Obama pledged that the U.S. will “stand on the side of democracy.” (examiner.com)
LatAm Marxist thugs perfect democracy ... Insisting there is no possibility of a coup d'état in Nicaragua, President Daniel Ortega is pushing forward on a "citizen power" reelection agenda similar to the controversial political project that led to the June 28 ouster of President Manuel Zelaya in neighboring Honduras. Speaking in front of hundreds of thousands of Sandinista loyalists Sunday at a rally to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the leftist revolution he helped lead, Mr. Ortega called for a constitutional referendum on scrapping presidential term limits. It's the latest in a series of moves to consolidate power by leftist leaders allied together in the Venezuelan-led Bolivarian Alliance for the People of Our America (ALBA). Critics decry such measures as undemocratic, but Ortega, Mr. Zelaya, and other leftists say that taking the decisions to the people is the purest form of democracy and that they must band together against the conservative powers that have traditionally run things in the region. (csmonitor.com)
Job Killers have more ideas ... According to the Times report, senators are considering other moves in exchange for dropping card check. Among the rumored changes: allowing union organizers access to workplaces and barring employers from requiring employees to attend “captive audience” meetings. The legislators are also considering faster elections, the report said. Under an expected revision, union elections would be held within five or 10 days after 30 percent of workers sign union cards, instead of the current time frame of two months. Harkin spokeswoman Bergen Kenny declined to comment on specifics of the negotiations, saying, “We’re still working on the bill and we think we’re making progress.” (lasvegassun.com)
Fraud-by-mail next? Biden 'urban myth' exposed ... Former National Labor Relations Board chairman and Stanford law Professor William Gould said Monday that the biggest changes to labor law since 1935 are within reach if provisions that have inflamed employers, particularly the elimination of secret balloting in union organizing, are modified. Addressing labor relations agencies in Oakland, Gould suggested using mail-in ballots instead of the proposed card check rule, which would force employers to recognize a union if more than half the workers sign a card saying they approve. He added that Canada has largely restored secret-ballot elections after its experiment with card check. Gould cautioned that it is an "urban myth" that labor law alone can "restore the middle class." (sfgate.com)
Labor-state: We don't need no stinkin' secret ballots ... Labor unions will fight to kill the secret ballot at all costs. Labor bosses are challenging a ballot initiative that would guarantee employees' right to a secret ballot in unionization elections. The petition would blunt the impact of the Employee Free Choice Act, a proposed federal law that imposes a process called “card check," where unions are certified without workers being allowed to vote in private. They've asked the supreme court to deny Coloradans a vote on the matter. It's sad unions are spending their members' hard-earned cash to try and kill a common-sense constitutional protection for the secret ballot. Big labor knows workers are more comfortable voting "no" in private, so they naturally prefer a system that's conducted in the open where fence-sitters can be identified and harassed into voting "yes." That doesn't sound like a "free choice" to me. (facethestate.com)
AFSCME H8s privatization ... A meeting between Memphis public works director Dwan Gilliom and sanitation workers quickly disintegrated on Monday into yelling and accusations of privatization and ulterior motives. Johnie Green has worked for the city's sanitation department for 24 years. On Monday, he and other employees were standing outside Union Hall on Beale Street waiting for a meeting called by Public Works Director Dwan Gilliom. Gilliom was the main course as about 75 union members met at the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees local headquarters at Beale and Danny Thomas. "This is about clarity for our employees," said union president Ruth Davis, who called the gathering. (commercialappeal.com)
Fraud suspected in union election ... Workers at 2 Sisters Food Group Inc. in Riverside Friday voted not to join a union, but enough ballots are being challenged to cast some doubt on the final outcome of the election. Eighty-seven workers at the Meridian Business Park plant voted not to join the United Food and Commercial Workers, and 66 favored joining the union, said Bruce Hill, assistant to the director of Region 21 of the National Labor Relations Board, which includes Riverside County. However, a total of 24 votes are being challenged, either by the two sides or by federal labor officials. That could affect the outcome of the election, Hill said. Both sides will have a chance to present their views on the challenged ballots. Hill said possible labor board officials can determine whether the votes should be counted, or it might take a hearing. "We generally give both sides a week, so we're in a waiting mode," Hill said. (pe.com)#1 on the agenda: Union Dues ... New York City principals and parents have resourcefully devised a way to better equip their children’s local public schools to meet their needs. For years, some public schools in Manhattan have raised money from parents to hire additional teaching assistants to aid lead teachers in the classroom. The aides, who are independently hired, serve as lunch monitors, art instructors, and after-school teachers, and cost the schools a little more than half that of a unionized assistant. But after receiving complaints from the teachers union, the Bloomberg administration has nixed the hiring of independent teachers’ aides. (heritage.org)
Disgraceful UNITE-HERE battle explodes in court ... "Let's not play games with this anymore. I am not here to manage the internal disputes of the union here. You don't like each other, fine. I am more concerned about some other issues. This is a lawsuit. I am not here to manage the union," Judge George Daniels declared at one point to Raynor's lawyer after suggestions that Raynor's side was interfering in the management of the valuable building housing the union."You tell [Raynor ally] Mr. Fleischman that I am running out of patience. You tell everybody that I am running out of patience. I am not going to issue orders; I am going to start issuing sanctions." (politico.com)
Tax-funded, union-backed fraud workers face social justice ... A seventh person has been ordered to stand trial in connection with former ACORN workers charged with illegally filling out voter registration cards in the Pittsburgh area before the 2008 general election. Allegheny County prosecutors say 23-year-old Bryan Williams, of McKeesport, filled out 20 voter registrations in his name to help friends who worked for ACORN and allegedly had a daily quota to meet. He was ordered to trial after a preliminary hearing Monday. Six ex-ACORN officials have previously been ordered to stand trial on charges they fudged registration cards or worked under the alleged quota system. ACORN officials have denied using quotas since its workers were charged in May. The district attorney's office has said its investigation of local ACORN officials is continuing. (philly.com)International Collectivism
International disgrace exposed ... We have heard a lot about Honduras lately, but there is much more at issue than the nighttime removal of President Manuel Zelaya on June 28 and its aftermath. The far bigger story is the disgrace of the world’s major international political and economic organizations. The Organization of American States and its ambitious leader, Jose Miguel Insulza, took the lead in dealing with the crisis. The OAS gave the new de facto Honduran government three days to restore Zelaya or suffer suspension from the organization. Honduras responded by quitting first. But the OAS, the United Nations, the European Union, the World Bank and others were all shooting from the hip into the dark. These leaders had nothing to inform their decisions but fuzzy idealism, ideological prejudices, assorted self-interests and profound ignorance of realities on the ground in Honduras. But that was good enough for them. Insulza rejected conversations among contending parties in favor of macho confrontation, ultimatums and polarization, to the cheers of Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez and other Chavistas. To their great shame, every OAS member-nation went along with Insulza. The OAS is indeed the Organization of American Sheep. (pressdemocrat.com)
Honduras: Obama just doesn't get it ... Assistant Secretary of State Philip J. Crowley told reporters in Washington that U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for the first time had called Micheletti directly from India Sunday. Clinton, he said, encouraged Micheletti to focus on the negotiations being facilitated by Costa Rican President Oscar Arias, and reminded him of the potential economic and other consequences for Honduras if they should fail. "I think it was a very tough phone call. However ... she made clear if the de facto regime needed to be reminded that we seek a restoration of democratic and constitutional order, a peaceful resolution," Crowley said. (upi.com)Nicaraguan Marxist thug stands on principle ... Nicaraguan opposition lawmakers on Monday condemned a public appeal for constitutional changes by President Daniel Ortega as an attempt to extend term limits and eventually allow the leftist leader's re-election. "If we are going to be just and fair, let the right to re-election be for all and people with their vote can award or punish," Ortega told a crowd. "This is the principle that we have to defend." Nicaraguan law bars presidents from consecutive terms in office or more than two terms in all. Ortega ended a first stint as president in 1990 and was elected again in 2006 to a five-year term. (google.com)
Bush set the Castro Bros. table for Obama ... The U.S. military has released more information than usual about its annual joint disaster training exercises with Cuban troops, observers say. Under the Bush administration, little was said about the annual exercises involving the Cold War rivals at the Guantanamo Bay U.S. Navy base, but that changed this year, as officials provided details about what is called a "mass casualty exercise" with Cuba, The Miami Herald reported. Retired U.S. Marine Corps Gen. Jack Sheehan told the Herald he instituted the exercises in the 1990s as part of an outreach to a military force that would be vital to cooperate with should a natural disaster devastate Guantanamo, but they were kept secret. The increased media exposure, he said, is likely a "trial balloon" by the Obama administration in experimenting with normalizing relations with Havana. (upi.com)
