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Individual liberty anywhere is a threat to the Progressive-Collectivist Cause everywhere.
Bullies wage unpopular fights (from reason.com) -- Martha Coakley's resounding defeat in the Massachusetts Senate race is hardly the sort of anniversary gift President Barack Obama could have predicted. Yet there it was, wrapped in a bow and plopped on his doorstep like a flaming bag of dog poo to mark the end of his first year in office.
Among other things, Scott Brown's upset victory means that Obama, who flew up to the Bay State to campaign for the deservedly doomed Coakley in the race's twilight, is zero for three when it comes to high-profile two-minute drills for beloved causes (remember getting Chicago the Olympics and putting together a global carbon deal at the U.N climate conference in Copenhagen?).
There are at least three basic reasons, plain as the nose on your face, that the Democrats and Obama are in trouble for the near future.
(read full article: here.)
(from biggovernment.com)In their first year in office, the Obama Administration has re-made the U.S. Department of Labor into the Department of Organized Labor, working hard to make certain that those who spent hundreds of millions of dollars to put them in office get a return on their investment.
While many dismiss the importance of the Department of Labor, virtually every person in America is directly touched by the rules and regulations that this federal bureaucracy creates and enforces, so changes at the top have real consequences for every working American.
The first order of business has been rolling back those pesky union transparency regulations that allowed watchdog groups, the media and union members to know how union dues are spent.
Next, rather than getting out of the way and allowing the private sector engine to create jobs, the Obama Administration is hiring hundreds more OSHA and Wage and Hour inspectors with their job descriptions revised away from helping companies comply with the law to strictly writing citations for as much fine money as can possibly be warranted.
Believe it or not, in spite of record lows in workplace injuries, OSHA inspectors are now financially incentivized to write citations with heavy fines encouraged. This is akin to making a police officer’s income directly related to how many tickets he/she writes. If you have the misfortune of getting pulled over, you know that it is going to cost you big time.
Continuing on the enforcement front, it is instructive that President Obama’s appointee to be the top lawyer in the Department is Patricia Smith who currently serves as the head of the New York State Department of Labor. In New York, Smith created a program that empowers unions to conduct wage and hour inspections of employers – typically, non-union employers. This powerful coercion tool is conducted under the guise of ensuring that employees are treated fairly, but actually allows a union to target employers for organizing programs using this threat as a cudgel against that business.
The theme of expanding private sector union membership permeates the entire Obama labor agenda from the recently announced deal on the health care bill which exempts union members from paying a tax on what is deemed to be Cadillac health care insurance, to the Orwellian named Employee Free Choice Act that strips employees of secret ballot union elections, to Obama appointees changing union election rules that have stood for 75 years in order to help unions organize Delta Airlines.
This emphasis on expanding union membership, even at the expense of job creation, can be seen in one of the Administration’s early acts – to require Project Labor Agreements (PLAs) for federally funded projects. PLAs require scale union wages be paid on all federally funded construction at an estimated cost of between 16-18%.
'Fundamental Transformation' differs from what many of us were expectingRelated video clips:
(from lakeoswegoreview.com) -- There seems to be quite a contrast between what Obama wants for America and what most other Americans want. Obama’s agenda is to follow the likes of Saul Alinsky, which will result in divisiveness, confusion and complete government control of our lives.Obama is always available for what he wants.
After one year of this administration, the only thing transparent is we are not going to get any of what we want or need. It is very interesting to see Obama run up to Massachusetts in support of another Democrat, but he couldn’t leave a golf game in Hawaii to speak to Americans about a terrorist who tried to blow up an airplane on Christmas Day. His goals are control, power and wealth distribution.
Obama definitely knows what he's doing
(from chronicle.augusta.com) -- Naivete leads otherwise astute people to insult our president's intelligence by saying, "Obama doesn't know what he is doing." For enlightenment, Google that phrase. Obama knows exactly what he is doing.
He is a disciple of Saul Alinsky and the Cloward-Piven strategy developed by lifelong members of the Democratic Socialists of America. That strategy implemented by Obama's ACORN foot soldiers helped drive the high-risk mortgage lending that precipitated our economic meltdown. Major media ignored Obama's radical associations, experience and background that prepared him for his messianic mission of transformative "change."
Like John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan, he fully understands that tax cuts create prosperity and jobs. But unlike them, his goal is to grow big government, destroy our capitalistic system and replace it with a socialistic, Marxist totalitarian government. He has adopted the philosophy of Friedrich Engels, who collaborated and helped Karl Marx write the Communist Manifesto. Engels saw three major obstacles to the socialistic vision: private property, religion and traditional marriage.
'Fundamentally transforming the U.S.A.' | 'The fundamental flaw of this country' |
Republicans aiming darts at the Obama White House thought they found a way to get to the president from Chicago -- and his inner circle of Chicagoans -- during the first year of the Obama presidency.(from blogs.suntimes.com)Last month, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) -- angry about the deals the White House and Senate Democratic leader made with reluctant Democratic senators to get their crucial votes on the health care bill -- said the legislation passed only because of "seedy Chicago politics, when you think about it; back-room deals that amount to bribes."
On Christmas Eve, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) said of the deal-making, "That's back-room politics of the worst sort. That's Chicago-type politics of the worst sort."
The drumbeat started earlier. In October, House Republican Leader John Boehner said White House maneuvers were "Chicago-style politics."
Obama Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and senior advisers Valerie Jarrett and David Axelrod -- Chicagoans all -- shrugged off the Chicago-bashing when I asked them to respond in separate interviews.
As the Year of the Tiger approaches (February 14th this year), Chinese workers look forward to their week-long holiday -- a nightmarish time for foreign vendors who'll struggle to get hold of anyone in the country.(from engadget.com)Sadly, this wasn't the case for Wintek -- screen supplier for Nokia, Huawei and Apple. The Taiwanese company's East China factory ground to a halt last Friday morning, while about 2,000 of its 10,000 workers went on a five-hour protest over a rumored bonus cancellation for the second year in a row.