| Obama: Hearts job-killers, demands pledges, two-faced, shames U.S., hearts union violence, hearts RINOs, hearts Van Jones. Mismanagement: Parasites govern, Congress fail, competition fail, unions rule, Teamsters strike, Governator vetoes card-check again. International: U.N. salutes Fidel, global protest v. Chávez, Chávez blasts Israel, Chávez returns to Iran, collectivist crack-down, ACORN aids Bongo. |
U.S. uninsured against parasite infestation ... Gallup finds organized labor taking a significant image hit in the past year. While 66% of Americans continue to believe unions are beneficial to their own members, a slight majority now say unions hurt the nation’s economy. More broadly, fewer than half of Americans — 48%, an all-time low — approve of labor unions, down from 59% a year ago. These results are from the 2009 installment of Gallup’s annual Work and Education survey, conducted Aug. 6-9. The 48% of Americans now approving of unions represents the first sub-50% approval since Gallup first asked the question in the 1930s. The previous low was 55%, found in both 1979 and 1981. There has been an even larger jump in the percentage saying labor unions mostly hurt the U.S. economy, from 36% in 2006 to 51% today. This is the first time since the question was established in 1997 that more Americans have said unions hurt rather than help the economy. Americans’ general concerns about the current state of the economy could certainly be a factor in these more negative views of unions, in addition to specific perceptions about unions. (gallup.com)
We don't need no stinkin' non-union jobs ... The new figures are out on employment and there is some good news and bad news. The good news is that the rate of job loss has slowed considerably - probably because employers have cut their labor force to the bone already and simply can't cut anymore without it affecting their production. The nation lost about 216,000 jobs which was less than most economists were predicting. The bad news is that the unemployment rate shot up to 9.7%, up from July's 9.4%. More people quit looking for work. More people are working part time. (americanthinker.com)
Double-fisted job-killers exposed ... With EFCA facing a difficult political environment, union leaders are going after other items on their policy wish lists -- and getting many of them. Vice President Joe Biden told the AFL-CIO Executive Committee in March that, "rebuilding our broken economy gives us the opportunity to get it right and reward workers." More specifically, he was telling the AFL-CIO that the administration would reward unions. One vehicle for doing this is the gargantuan $787 billion federal stimulus bill. To ensure that many of the jobs funded by the stimulus bill go to unionized workers, the Obama administration is pursuing two courses of action. (spectator.org)
MM takes on Obamaganda ... They think we're crazy. "They" are the sneering defenders of Barack Obama who can't fathom the backlash against the president's nationwide speech to schoolchildren next Tuesday. "We" are parents with eyes wide open to the potential for politicized abuse in America's classrooms. Ask moms and dads in Farmington, Utah, who discovered this week that their children sat through a Hollywood propaganda video promoting the cult of Obama. In the clip, a parade of entertainers vow to flush their toilets less, buy hybrid vehicles, end poverty and world hunger, and commit to "service" for "change." Actress Demi Moore leads the glitterati in a collective promise "to be a servant to our president." Musician Anthony Kiedis pledges "to be of service to Barack Obama." The campaign commercial crescendos with the stars and starlets asking their audience: "What's your pledge?" (familysecuritymatters.org)
Kaleidoscope of U.S. fraud covered-up ... As I recall, Obama campaigned and was elected on an anti-war platform. He has apparently abandoned that platform as he has the people of Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as the American people and our troops. All of these groups overwhelmingly favor an end to U.S. involvement. Did not “we the people” elect him? Did he not have a mandate from the electorate, or is there some other, more pressing agenda he must tend to? His campaign did, after all, take $10 million from Wall Street investment banks. He did, after all, vote for the bailout against the will of the people. Liberal Democrats and the “liberal media” should be outraged at the betrayal they have been handed. Or are we all just so bedazzled with ourselves for being “progressive” and electing a black president? All the Phenomenon of Obama has proven is that phony, two-faced, lying politicians come in all colors. (inforum.com)
Obama's leftwing foreign policy shames U.S. ... The Obama Administration formally cut off aid to the impoverished nation of Honduras today, and announced other impending sanctions, to pressure the country to accept the return of its ex-president and would-be dictator. The Administration did this even though its legal basis for doing so had been debunked and abandoned. Earlier, the State Department planned to cut off aid to Honduras based on the false claim that its removal of ex-president Manuel Zelaya was a “military coup.” But this claim was easily debunked, because Honduras replaced the ex-president with a civilian successor (a Congressman installed by Honduras’s Congress), who is backed by a democratically-elected legislature and a unanimous vote by the country’s supreme court. (Indeed, the Honduras Supreme Court issued an arrest warrant for the former president’s arrest, which soldiers duly carried out, and recently issued a ruling reaffirming that the ex-president’s removal from office was valid. The Obama Administration retaliated against Honduras for this ruling by imposing travel sanctions against the Honduran people). Moreover, Honduras’ removal of its ex-president was legal. (examiner.com)
Who's really running Congress, anyway? ... At what point does a well coordinated plan enter the realm of a conspiracy? In the interest of full disclosure, I have not been fitted for a tin foil hat, nor have I seen any black helicopters. Not yet, anyway. But I think that most Americans would be disturbed to learn that not only has the U.S. Congress been passing thousand-plus page laws that they admittedly have not even read—now we know that they did not even write them. Given the fact that highly complex bills of this magnitude don’t produce themselves, I think it is a fair question to ask, “Who did?” (canadafreepress.com)
Congress nixes curb on union thug violence ... Union members, at times at the behest of their leaders, aren't averse to roughing up opponents in order to win concessions. Employers and especially nonunion employees often find themselves on the receiving end of acts such as assault, extortion and vandalism or the threat of these things. At least one member of Congress, Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., wants federal law to end this behavior. This past May 21, he introduced legislation, the Freedom from Union Violence Act of 2009 (H.R. 2537), that would impose potentially stiff fines and prison sentences on anyone who commits an act of violence or extortion during a labor dispute. (nlpc.org)
Rx for Failure ... In the wake of a public outcry effectively killing the "public option," who comes along to try to revive socialistic health reform? The definitive Republican In Name Only — Sen. Olympia Snowe. The leftist supporters of radical health care reform are so crazed about its growing unpopularity that last week one of them bit the pinky off of a senior citizen for disagreeing with him at a MoveOn.org rally in Southern California. Republicans can rightly rejoice at seeing Americans practice assertive, effective citizenship. Angry crowds at this summer's town halls recognized the government-run "public option" that Democrats push is a grave threat to the best health care system in the world. (ibdeditorials.com)
We don't need no stinkin' foreign competition ... The nation's unemployment rate reaches a 26 year high. 9.7 percent of the American workforce is now looking for a job. Brian Richardson explains why even those meant to protect the workers are out on the streets. Over the last 25 years, the number of people with a union membership dropped nearly eight percent. According to economists, unions will continue to disappear as long as there is foreign competition in the workforce. (ozarksfirst.com)
The State of the Union ... Doug Stafford is vice president at the National Right to Work Committee, a 2.2 million member public policy organization based in Springfield, Va., that combats compulsory unionism. We talked Monday by telephone as America prepared to celebrate Labor Day 2009. Q: What is the overall state of labor today? A: Well, I think what we're looking at is a labor movement or an organized labor movement that is desperate. It's shrinking in the private sector and gaining in the public sector, and it's basically using every tool and scheme it can find to try to have politics give it what it's not getting otherwise, which is more power and more members and more forced dues. People are not lining up to get their services, so they're trying to have politicians make it easier and in a lot of cases just simply force people to have their services. (pittsburghlive.com)
Green Czar Van Jones: Obama's Unaccountable Anti-Government Marxist ... Why is it that none of this came out at Jones’ confirmation hearing ... right. The administration didn’t think that its executive appointee ‘czars’ [needed] to go through that silly little confirmation process. We just needed to not worry ourselves and trust them. Which is really ironic, considering that Van Jones’ name keeps coming up associated with groups and statements that pretty explicitly don’t trust the government. (redstate.com)
Who hired Van Jones? ... The Obama Administration refuses to say how communist Van Jones was hired as the "Green Jobs Czar" and who recommended him. The administration refuses to say who knew what about his communist background. The White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ), where Jones is employed, told me, in response to a series of Freedom of Information Act requests, that it had no documents about his hiring or communist background. But some possible explanations for the mysterious appointment are now coming into focus. (rightsidenews.com)Related video: Van Jones does Bush on crack
Neglected Teamster militants strike Aunt Millie ... Nearly two hundred workers from Teamsters union locals 164 and 580 are on strike, protesting a contract they say just won't work. The union members span from Battle Creek and Ann Arbor to Lansing and Jackson. Workers at one local union say they'll fight back until their voices are heard. Normally the union workers are behind the wheel selling and delivering Aunt Millie's bread, but they traded their trucks for picket signs, on strike across the state, hoping to get Aunt Millie's attention. (wlns.com)
Governator stiffs union bigs again ... Various business groups are commenting on Gov. Schwarzenegger’s veto yesterday of a bill that would have made it easier for California's farm workers to join unions. SB 789, spearheaded by the United Farm Workers union, would have allowed workers to join a union by signing registration cards, doing away with a secret-ballot process. Farm groups such as the Fresno County Farm Bureau have widely opposed the legislation, which Schwarzenegger has vetoed three times in as many years. (thebusinessjournal.com)
Left without labor? ... Several years ago, I spoke on a panel where an audience member posed the rhetorical question, "Can any of you envision a robust progressive movement that doesn't have organized labor at the center of it?" The appropriate answer -- the one that wouldn't cause the labor-heavy audience to throw rotten tomatoes at us -- was, "No." And that was also the right answer. None of us could envision a vibrant liberal movement without labor because we'd never seen such a thing. From the New Deal to the civil-rights movement, organized labor has borne much of the weight of a broader progressive vision. (newamerica.net)International Collectivism
U.N. salutes Fidel, Obama makes Marxism cool again ... The UN has declared Fidel Castro, the longtime Communist dictator of Cuba, the “World Hero of Solidarity.” Castro killed thousands and thousands of people during his rule, torturing some to death (including a few American citizens), and Cuba remains an oppressive dictatorship even today. The award was presented to Castro by the President of the UN General Assembly, Miguel D’Escoto Brockmann. Brockmann also successfully lobbied the Obama Administration to demand that Honduras allow the return to power of its ex-president and would-be dictator, Manuel Zelaya. (Two months ago, soldiers acting on orders of Honduras’s Supreme Court arrested Zelaya after he systematically abused his powers. After the Court quite legally declared that Zelaya was no longer president, he was duly replaced by Honduras’s Congress with a civilian, the Congressional Speaker). The Obama Administration recently decided to impose sanctions on Honduras, and indicated it will not recognize future democratic elections in Honduras unless Honduras first lets ex-president Zelaya return to power. Marxism seems to be back in fashion in Washington these days. Obama’s green jobs czar is the race-baiter Van Jones, a “a self-avowed communist” and "Truther" who believed that George Bush was behind the 9/11 attacks. (examiner.com)
Global protest v. DINO Hugo Chávez ... "People started to gather in 30 towns in Colombia, and we have been advised that people in more than 100 cities worldwide have joined this protest," a coordinator of the rally told Caracas-based private news television channel Globovisión. Alejandro Gutiérrez, promoter of the "No More Chávez" march, said that people have started to rally in a number of towns around the world to take part in the demonstration intended to reject "President Hugo Chávez's tyrannical attitudes." (english.eluniversal.com)
Chávez returns to Iran ... The Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez will visit the Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Tehran on Saturday for the seventh time since coming into power. During his official visit to Tehran he will meet high-ranking Iranian officials to discuss matters of mutual interest, the Mehr News agency reported late on Friday. (presstv.ir)
Chávez blasts Israel ... At a public event convened on the occasion of his visit to Syria, President Hugo Chávez called for Israel to "take its hands off Latin America." He said that through the United States they want to turn Colombia "into the Israel of Latin America." "Syria and Venezuela are facing a common enemy which is imperialism. Therefore, we must join our efforts from our origins and consciousness in all the fields of our lives," the President said. "The state of Israel has become a murderous lackey. From here, I greet the people of Israel but I condemn their government which is a genocidal government that persecutes the heroic Palestinian people. We say hurray to the people of Palestine in their cause for freedom," Chávez added. (english.eluniversal.com)Collectivists crack down ... The Vietnamese authorities have arrested another blogger, Nguyen Ngoc Nhu Quynh, who follows Bui Thanh Hieu (a blogger arrested on 27 August), Pham Doan Trang (28 August), Nguyen Tien Trung (July) and Dien Cay (April 2008). She was arrested at around midnight on 1 September on charges of violating national security laws and “interfering in state interests.” “We deplore the arrests of one blogger after another and the systematic suppression of online free speech,” Reporters Without Borders said, calling for Quynh’s immediate release. “The Vietnamese authorities are so sensitive about relations with China that one wonders what role the Chinese government is playing in this crackdown on bloggers writing about China and Vietnam.” (rsf.org)
SEIU-ACORN, TIDES Foundation boost Bongo ... Gabon government yesterday declared the eldest son of the late dictator Omar Bongo the winner of weekend presidential elections, triggering a rampage in a coastal city and allegations of fraud. Before the results of Sunday’s election were announced on state TV, police fired tear gas at opposition demonstrators who had camped outside the electoral commission in the capital overnight. They had dragged a coffin into the square representing the death of the Bongo regime, which has ruled since 1967. (businessday.co.za)
