Alleged: Typical union use of public property for political campaigning
State Sen. Scott Brown is asking his Democratic rival for Massachusetts’ open U.S. Senate seat to impose sanctions on one of her political allies.
An attorney for Brown’s campaign has written a letter to Attorney General Martha Coakley, and to the state ethics commission, asking that they investigate the Service Employees International Union Local 509.
According to the letter, SEIU sent an e-mail to state employees asking them to volunteer for Coakley. The Brown campaign says that violates state ethics law against using government computer servers for political purposes.
WBUR asked the Coakley campaign if we could talk to the candidate. A spokeswoman for the campaign referred us to the attorney general’s office. A spokeswoman for the attorney general’s office says she’s looking into the matter.
Voters obsessed with corrupt seniority system, gov't unions
I'm 86 years old. My father died four months before I was born; 5-foot-3-inch mother raised me through the Depression without a bailout. No insurance, just hard work.
I enlisted in the United States Navy in 1942. Met a wonderful girl in August and married in November after nine months on an aircraft carrier in the Pacific. Kamikazes and all. Unfortunately lost her on Sept. 20 of this year. We had 65 years together.
I am not a redneck or racist, although sometimes pegged as that when expressing my views of my beloved U.S.A. Living in boarding houses until 8 years old. Then a latchkey kid. After an earthquake in South California in 1933, spent the 5th and 6th grades in tents as schools were destroyed.
The course of the U.S. today under the present left-wing party is heading for "socialism." We are farther in debt than we have ever been and the present government all across the board just spends more and more.
Health reforms? Tort reform, health insurance across all state borders so Americans can choose from any company in the USA, not some picked by just a few bureaucrats.
SEIU, AFL/CIO, teachers unions, George Soros and Hollywood bought the last election. They now run our government, not the people.
The money is all gone; now we must fundamentally transform
Sorry kids. We've hocked your future. And Obamanomics may mean you can't work.
With a Christmas Eve vote, the U.S. Senate raised the federal debt ceiling to $12.4 trillion. And that was a stopgap measure. Congress will continue to increase America's credit limit even as the White House talks tough about fiscal responsibility. Such talk is laughable given the propensity of President Barack Obama - and, before him, President George W. Bush - for spending.
But our debt is no laughing matter. The United States government owes $12,292,012,533,239.65, according to the Web site of a commonsense conservative, U.S. Rep. John J. Duncan Jr., R-Knoxville.
For perspective, our entire economy, for the year ending Sept. 30, 2009, produced $14.242 trillion in goods and services. Soon, our debt will equal our Gross Domestic Product.
"We've moved closer to the precipice, and the precipice has moved closer to us," Alan Auerbach, an economist at the University of California, Berkeley, told the Wall Street Journal. Roger Altman, a Treasury official in both the Carter and Clinton administrations, said, "At some point, if the U.S. does not address proactively its deficit outlook and its debt outlook, there will be a financial-market revolt."
But, young folks, there are other doings in D.C. that could be just as devastating as our debt. As I've oft opined during this Great Recession, three big mistakes in the 1930s turned really tough times into the Great Depression. Tight credit, higher taxes and protectionist trade policies killed the economy.
Right now, the rise of protectionist policies and the powers behind protectionism present a clear and present danger to the American economy. Marguerite Trossevin, a representative of U.S. companies that import Chinese tires, said Americans will pay for protectionism. "For the U.S. tire distributors and consumers, there's going to be a heavy burden to bear," she told The Washington Post. "It sends the message that special interests will get protection if they ask for it - regardless of what that means for broader trade policy."
Who are those special interests? The United Steelworkers union brought both cases. The USW's "wins" expose just how deeply unions inform Obamanomics. BusinessWeek reports unions spent $450 million to elect Obama and congressional Democrats in 2008, and that Andy Stern, head of the Service Employees International Union, was the most frequent White House visitor during Obama's first six months in office.
While protectionism in problematic, the rise of union influence bodes ill for young workers entering the workforce. The New York Times reported recently that the unemployment rate in Spain for workers aged 16 to 24 is a staggering 42.9 percent. The reason? Citing MIT professor Paul Osterman, the Times wrote, "Young Spanish workers, like their counterparts in the rest of Europe, face other obstacles like union rules, long-term contracts and legal protections that shelter older workers and discourage new hiring."
Again, sorry kids. Sorry for the debt. Sorry for the protectionism. Sorry that this president is hellbent on protecting his union benefactors at your expense. But, hey, it's not all our fault.
The campaigns for and against Measures 66 and 67 have sucked up millions in campaign cash in recent weeks, with big labor fueling the pros and big business the antis.
Reports last month showed Oregonians Against Job-Killing Taxes had raised $1.9 million. At the time, the leading support group, Vote Yes for Oregon, had raised only $750,000. Friday, it was boasting $3.9 million in contributions, surpassing the opposition.
Most of the Vote Yes contributions have union origins. The top contributor so far is the Oregon Education Association, which has donated $1.6 million in a campaign to preserve and protect classroom teaching jobs.
The Oregon Public Employees Union, which represents state employees, has donated $570,000. Its national parent union has donated another $500,000. So has the Oregon Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, which represents city and county workers.
I’ve noticed the chant more and more as the days have gone by. It’s a chant usually preceded by the world “only;” as in “Even if the bomb had gone off it would have ‘only’ killed 290.”
“290″ is by far the most magical number in the morass of magical thinking that’s subsumed discussion of the “near disaster” of the Christmas attempt to give Northwest 253 a “premature landing”. The number “290″ is the number of passengers and crew on board the aircraft. “290″ is a number we hear a lot in conjunction with discussion of this failed attempt at mass murder. A lot of people in the administration, the TSA, and those on the left attempting to excuse what happened would be happy if “290″ stuck. If “290″ can be made to stick then the disaster, tragic as it might have been, is merely a “pinprick” and can be, like so many other aspects of this monumental failure, lowballed.
But “290″ is, looked at from any reasonable point of view, at the bottom of the scale when it comes to discussing how many might have lost their lives. The ultimate outcome of NW253 being brought down could have been much worse and, like the attacks against the World Trade Center on 9/11, easily have risen into the thousands.
When referring to “290″ the Obama administration along with their media cohorts and apologists are assuming that the =/-400,000 pound Airbus 300 would have vaporized in thin air and, like some event in the Bermuda Triangle, the aircraft, passengers and crew would have simply gone to their reward in the middle of the sky with only a puff of pixie dust left behind. This is sweet nonsense since airliners, when bombed in mid-heaven, have a nasty habit of coming to earth. In flames and sometimes in pieces.
In flaming pieces is what happened to the closest parallel to NW253, the downing in Lockerbie, Scotland of PanAm 103. In that “incident” the parts of the aircraft fell onto a village of a few thousand people and killed 11 people on the ground as well as the 259 on the plane.
At that point comparisons between PanAm 210 and NW253 diverge. Flight 210 was on climb out from London and, interestingly enough, on a course that would have taken it into Detroit. NW253 was on final approach to the same airport on a flight path that took it over the Detroit metropolitan area with a population of some 3,900,000. It is a much, much denser area; one that might be described as a “target rich environment” for a 400,000 pound flying bomb.
Alleged: Typical union use of public property for political campaigningAn attorney for Brown’s campaign has written a letter to Attorney General Martha Coakley, and to the state ethics commission, asking that they investigate the Service Employees International Union Local 509.
According to the letter, SEIU sent an e-mail to state employees asking them to volunteer for Coakley. The Brown campaign says that violates state ethics law against using government computer servers for political purposes.
Click here or on Andy Stern's image to enlarge!
