Category: Unions

Obama Throws EPA Moron Under Bus, Bashes Republicans, Panders to Unions

Posted on Comments

“Oh, the wheels on the bus go round and round!“ Guess what? Obama’s big corporate donors don’t like being “crucified” by the EPA:

Top EPA official resigns over ‘crucify’ comment
— Associated Press

Days after damaging video surfaces, EPA
regional chief Armendariz resigns
— Dallas Morning News

E.P.A. Official Resigns Over ‘Crucify’ Comments
— New York Times

Environmentalists are too stupid to understand that Democrats, despite all their “green” rhetoric, are perfectly willing peddle their asses to Corporate America. But of course, environmentalists are only slightly less stupid than union members:

During his 2008 campaign for president, Mr. Obama relied heavily on unions for millions of dollars of support, as well as labor’s national get-out-the-vote grassroots network. Mr. Obama has sometimes been at odds with labor during his three years in office but will need all the support he can get from unions ahead of the November election.
In recent weeks and months, Mr. Obama’s been working to mend fences. In February, Mr. Obama delivered a blistering attack on Mitt Romney when he spoke before United Auto Workers, highlighting his GOP rival’s opposition to the auto industry bailout. . . .
“Republicans in Congress would rather put fewer of you to work rebuilding America than ask millionaires and billionaires to live without massive new tax cuts,” he said. . . .
“If we’re smart about it, we can also afford to make the investments that will help our country and the American people in the short-term,” he said. “I think that’s a no-brainer. But apparently, Republicans disagree.”

It does no good to tell union members that they’re being lied to, ripped off, backstabbed and sold out by the Democrats. No, the stupid rank-and-file membership will swallow this dishonest rhetoric — “Republicans want to give tax cuts to billionaires!” — and vote for Democrats, and will never notice that their dues are being squandered to help corrupt Democrats and union leaders get rich.

‘They Just Want the Money’

Posted on Comments

Walter Russell Mead finds amusement in New York Times employees — members of the Writers Guild union — whining about a proposal to substitute 401(k)s for their current bloated pension plan:

Nobody in the video talks about the changes in the news business that threatens to drive the Times into a deep dive. Nobody talks about the prospect of future significant staff cuts if costs can’t be contained. None of them discuss the incongruity between their own naive sense of entitlement and what is going on in the cities, companies and countries they cover.
They just want the money.
Some writers allude to the prospect of leaving the paper if the pension change goes through, but a quick check of the newspaper business suggests they don’t have all that many options. Certainly with the exception of a handful of superstars the New York Times would have less trouble replacing its current staff than the current staff would have in replacing their jobs. And if those new jobs are in journalism, good luck finding a company with a generous defined benefit pension plan.

Indeed. Perhaps the NYT’s grumbling newsroom proletariat should read about working conditions for young bloggers at the Washington Post.

The days of easy money and “banker’s hours” in the news business are definitely over, and the Writers Guild mentality is part of the problem, not part of the solution. I’m reminded of a line from Ghostbusters, after they’ve lost their university research gigs:

Personally, I liked the university. They gave us money and facilities. We didn’t have to produce anything. You’ve never been out of college! You don’t know what it’s like out there! I’ve worked in the private sector. They expect results.

Too many people in the upper echelons of the news industry never had a reason to think about the bottom line. The first newspaper I ever worked for — a tiny weekly in Austell, Georgia — went out of business five months after I started there. There was no warning; I went out to cover a high-school football game on Friday night and on Saturday morning got a phone call telling me to come pick up my final paycheck.

My next job was selling menswear in a department store.

That experience in 1986 was an early and unpleasant introduction to the economic reality of the news business, a valuable lesson that might have something to do with whatever success I’ve subsequently had. Many citizen-journalists have a much better understanding of economic reality than do the members of the Writers Guild.

Da Tech Guy has some interesting suggestions about the intersection of Old School journalism and New Media. He knows what a hard dollar it can be — please don’t forget to hit his tip jar.

Public Sector Unions: Conflict Of Interest?

Posted on Comments

by Smitty

A couple of WSJ articles of note today on one of those no-brainer questions: Ohio Voters Reject Public-Union Limits

The law would have stripped the state’s 350,000 public employees of most of their collective-bargaining rights and forced workers to pay at least 15% of their health-care costs. With 97% of precincts reporting, 61% of voters in a referendum voted against the Republican-backed law, known as Senate Bill 5, while 39% supported it
The vote was closely watched beyond Ohio as other states have debated whether to rein in public unions to help governments cut spending on wages and benefits. Unions have faced bruising battles with newly elected Republican majorities in various states this year. In Wisconsin, lawmakers passed a law restricting union rights, but they failed to do so in Indiana.

What I’m understanding is that this means Rust-Belters really think that the Greek approach is the way to go. Zero Hedge has a NSFW peek at how well that will go.

Back at WSJ, The Public-Union Albatross, What it means when 90% of an agency’s workers retire with disability benefits:

The indictment of seven Long Island Rail Road workers for disability fraud last week cast a spotlight on a troubled government agency. Until recently, over 90% of LIRR workers retired with a disability—even those who worked desk jobs—adding about $36,000 to their annual pensions. The cost to New York taxpayers over the past decade was $300 million.
As one investigator put it, fraud of this kind “became a culture of sorts among the LIRR workers, who took to gathering in doctor’s waiting rooms bragging to each [other] about their disabilities while simultaneously talking about their golf game.” How could almost every employee think fraud was the right thing to do?
The LIRR disability epidemic is hardly unique—82% of senior California state troopers are “disabled” in their last year before retirement. Pension abuses are so common—for example, “spiking” pensions with excess overtime in the last year of employment—that they’re taken for granted.
Governors in Wisconsin and Ohio this year have led well-publicized showdowns with public unions.

In the Navy, we called a union a mutiny. In the private sector, a union seems a simple matter of freedom of speech and assembly. Yet a union is tantamount to a corporation, with the significant difference being that the union not only produces nothing, but its activities frequently impede production. Meanwhile, the same people who are strangely comfortable with unions manage to hate corporations.
The girl in the picture is either extremely cynical or no’ so bright. The hair may be the decider.
In summary, public sector unions are a conflict of interest so heinous that even a dim bulb like FDR knew they suck:

President Franklin Roosevelt, a friend of private-sector unionism, drew a line when it came to government workers: “Meticulous attention,” the president insisted in 1937, “should be paid to the special relations and obligations of public servants to the public itself and to the Government….The process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service.” The reason? F.D.R. believed that “[a] strike of public employees manifests nothing less than an intent on their part to obstruct the operations of government until their demands are satisfied. Such action looking toward the paralysis of government by those who have sworn to support it is unthinkable and intolerable.”

I wonder which of our GOP hopeful will

  • say they are willing to wage war for liberty against unions during the campaign
  • deliver on the promise to protect private citizens from the public sector unions.

#OccupyWallNuts Continue Their Epic Struggle Against That One Thing

Posted on Comments

by Smitty

Trifecta is well worth your time. The rotating Kirk/Spock/McCoy chemistry of the three amigos plays well in serving up the abuse for the #OccupyWallNuts. I’m giving Whittle the Kirk role here, cheerfully telling the tools to get out of the toolbox and get a job. Green has the McCoy role, working hard, trying to empathize with a sad herd of sheep, and Ott does a Spock-tacular job of synthesizing the two, and offering a warning that the tentacles on the friendly guy handing out the money to support the protest signs that say ‘Brought to you by Cthulhu’ may be an indicator.

Stephen Green's head 'splosion whas captured by a fetching bit of silk.

Meanwhile, over at Heritage, we find this:

Stand aside, citizen-protestors. The Occupy Wall Street movement is about to get professional help. New York City labor unions have decided to join the demonstrations. Members of the Service Employees International Union and the United Federation of Teachers, among other unions, will soon be marching with the protestors.

Why is the union movement making common cause with disgruntled students?

Because these protests are useful vehicles. Unions can use them to marshal support for special-interest policies that benefit them.

Read the whole thing. A private sector union is a company without a product. A public sector union is a civil service mutiny. I’m not opposed to the former, insofar as liberty means the freedom to do even the stupidest things. However, a company without a product must be allowed to feel the winter cold on the bare bottom of their idiocy. Capitalism lives or dies on the feedback. In particular, the private sector unions must be prevented from injecting their idiocy into public sector contexts.

Update: FilmLadd has me doing a double-take:

An even smarter one would be asking how are they planning on using these protesters in 2012 to subvert the elections. My hunch is that these protests aren’t about accomplishing anything right now except to flex their muscles, test out the police, and see which supporters “they” (the White House) can count on.
In short: #OccupyWallStreet is a dry run for November 2012.

Ladd, I hope you are as correct in that prediction as I was on the Palin candidacy. Read the whole thing, where Ladd Ehlinger rips Bill O’Reilly and the rest of the media for laughing at #OccupyWallNuts.

Update II: linked at The Camp of the Saints

Update III: Prof. William Jacobson locates some fine irony about the transition from pure anarchy to union manipulation for #OccupyWallStreet:

How many of the unemployed in the crowd will make the connection between exclusive union shops and lack of right to work laws, and diminished job opportunities? How many will understand that trade unions exist to protect members of the unions, even if it means driving up the cost of products and services to consumers?
As they tearfully mourn the loss of Steve Jobs, how many will wonder why Jobs was so against unions, and fought a long battle to keep unions out of Apple? As they tweet the revolution from their iPhones and iPads, how many will realize that these devices may not ever have come into being but for Apple’s fight against some of the very unions marching along side them?

Update III: Linked at The Lonely Conservative, who, like me, cannot recall any Tea Party clashes with police.

Senate Rival Gary Glenn Calls on GOP’s Hoekstra to Disavow Hoffa Comments

Posted on Comments

Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) is up for re-election in 2012 and former Rep. Pete Hoekstra is the most prominent Republican to throw his hat in the ring to challenge Stabenow. But last month, veteran conservative activist Gary Glenn entered the GOP primary, and has not been afraid to hit Hoekstra’s record:

Noting Hoekstra’s votes for the $850 billion Wall Street bailout, earmarks such as the $223 million “Bridge to Nowhere,” and for budgets and debt ceiling increases that added trillions of dollars to the national debt, Glenn cited “Einstein’s definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.”
“Over the last twenty years, Debbie Stabenow and Pete Hoekstra have both voted for budgets and debt ceiling increases that resulted in trillions of dollars of crushing new debt on our economy and our children’s future,” Glenn said. ”A Democrat who’s been there 14 years, a Republican there 18 years in Congress and two more as a lobbyist, over three decades combined as part of the culture that got us where we are now. Is it rational to expect we’ll change the fiscal insanity in Washington by sending either one back there again?”

In the wake of outrageous comments this week by Teamsters boss James Hoffa Jr., Glenn is now calling attention to Hoekstra’s longstanding relationship to Hoffa. Here’s the press release from the Glenn campaign:

Right to Work advocate calls on Hoekstra to
publicly disavow Hoffa threat to Tea Parties
MIDLAND, Mich. — Republican U.S. Senate candidate Gary Glenn, Midland, who has championed Right to Work legislation banning compulsory unionism, Wednesday said fellow GOP Senate candidate former Rep. Pete Hoekstra — because of his close relationship with Teamsters union president James Hoffa, Jr. — should publicly disavow Hoffa’s Labor Day comments in Detroit that some have interpreted as threatening violence against members of the Tea Party movement.
Glenn cited comments Monday in which Hoffa, referring to Tea Party activists, told a Labor Day rally, “Let’s take these son of a bitches out.”
“Given Pete Hoekstra’s opposition to Right to Work and his cozy relationship and past endorsements by Hoffa and other Teamster union bosses, Pete needs to make clear to the public that his deafening silence does not indicate approval of his friend Jimmy Hoffa’s threats,” Glenn said.
“I urge Pete to join me in publicly condemning Hoffa’s violent rhetoric and use his cozy relationship to press Hoffa to retract those threats and expressly disavow actual violence against the patriotic Americans who make up the Tea Party movement,” Glenn said.
“While he’s at it, Pete should disavow his own opposition to freeing American employees from the compulsory ‘pay up or you’re fired’ unionism enforced by Hoffa and other Big Labor bosses, and join the 82 percent of Michigan Republicans who support Right to Work legislation.”
Glenn, a speaker at the first Tea Party rally in Midland in April 2009 and at dozens of Tea Party rallies and meetings since, led the campaign that succeeded in passing a Right to Work law in Idaho in the 1980s and is a founding member of the recently-launched Michigan Freedom to Work coalition, which is pushing the same legislation in Lansing.

http://www.idahostatesman.com/2010/08/04/1290957/glenn-returns-to-celebrate-25.html

Hoekstra opposes Right to Work legislation and has been endorsed and funded by Teamsters union officials in his past campaigns for Congress and, most recently, in his 2010 GOP primary campaign for governor.
http://www.crainsdetroit.com/article/20100716/FREE/100719907/michigan-teamsters-endorse-pete-hoekstra-in-gop-race-for-governor#

The New Republic magazine called Hoekstra “Hoffa’s greatest booster.”
http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/archive/bush-jimmy-hoffa-teamsters-dirty-deal?page=0,0

According to the Teamsters’ website, Hoekstra in 2006 “lauded the Teamsters…at the union’s 27th International Convention for being the ‘voice of America’s workers’ with the unique ability to get things done. ‘American workers need a voice for equality and fairness, and that’s you,’ Hoekstra told the more than 7,000 convention delegates. Hoffa called Hoekstra in return “a true friend of the Teamsters.”
http://teamster.info/content/hoekstra-says-teamsters-are-voice-america39s-workers

Veteran political reporter Tim Skubick wrote during the 2010 gubernatorial race that Hoekstra’s “close relationship with Teamster’s head Jimmy Hoffa Jr. is Hoekstra’s ace in the hole.”
http://articles.petoskeynews.com/2009-04-03/gop-nomination_24047358

Hoffa told ABC News in 2000: “Because of our contact with Hoekstra, he has now taken himself out of any endorsement of national Right to Work laws. So this type of dialogue is paying benefits with the Republicans.”
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/story?id=121904&page=2

In 2007, Hoekstra joined Sen. Debbie Stabenow and then Sen. Barack Obama in cosponsoring legislation that by federal mandate would have forced every state, county, city, township, and village in America of at least 5,000 in population to unionize its firefighters, police officers, and paramedics. HR 980:
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d110:HR00980:@@@P

Opposed by the National Right to Work Committee as well as by the National Association of Counties and the National League of Cities, the legislation would have funneled hundreds of millions of more compulsory dues dollars into the coffers of the Teamsters, Service Employees International Union (SEIU), American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), and other unions that represent government employees. In 28 states without Right to Work protections, including Michigan, union membership and/or financial support is compulsory as a condition of employment.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Safety_Employer-Employee_Cooperation_Act_of_2007#Opposition

In 2009, Hoekstra said on public television’s Off the Record with Tim Skubick: “I think it would be a bad idea to put (Right to Work) on the ballot. I don’t know if it would pass or not. I’d probably not vote for it.”
http://wkar.org/offtherecord/program.php?num=3841

During the 2010 race for governor, the Center for Michigan reported that Hoekstra was the only Republican candidate who — in response to the candidate survey question, “Should Michigan become a Right-to-Work state?” — joined Democrats Virg Bernero and Andy Dillon in answering “no.” http://www.thecenterformichigan.net/reforms-at-a-glance/

Dome magazine in Lansing reported of Hoekstra: “The Hollander refused to sign a no-tax pledge and declared he wouldn’t vote for a ballot initiative on Right to Work, seen as the holy grail by business groups, a powerful Republican constituency.”
http://domemagazine.com/features/f11109

The website of Republican students at Western Michigan University reported simply, “Hoekstra opposes Right to Work.”
http://wmugop.blogspot.com/2010/07/evaluating-candidates-for-governor.html

AFL-CIO’s Trumka Uses 9/11 Anniversary to Bash Talk Radio, ‘Extremists,’ Wealthy

Posted on Comments

Big Labor’s No. 1 honcho posts a message, “Sept. 11, 2011: A Day to Commit to Activism“:

There is no time in my memory of a more proud example of what we can accomplish when we work together. Solidarity, the cornerstone of the union movement, flowed through all of us and carried us through.
But other doors opened, too — doors to hate, suspicion of “others” and self-centered greed. Our fear was twisted into something much more dangerous. . . .
Just 10 years after 9/11, despite our vows, the public servants, construction workers and others who lost their lives or still suffer with the cancerous remnants of the Twin Towers haven’t just been forgotten. They’ve been vilified. The extremist small government posse has turned them into public enemy No. 1, as though teachers and firefighters, EMTs and nurses and union construction workers ruined America’s economy.
In state after state this year — with the heroism of 9/11 less than a decade behind us — politicians targeted the paychecks, benefits and basic rights of these workers in a rabid campaign to shift government support to tax breaks for the wealthy and already profitable corporations.
Wealthy CEOs, anti-government extremist front groups and frothing talk show hosts — from the Rush Limbaughs and Glenn Becks to the Koch brothers, Karl Rove’s American Crossroads group, Americans for Prosperity, the Club for Growth, FreedomWorks and the American Legislative Exchange Council — also pushed open the door to hate.
We’ve seen the costs of hatred in ill-thought wars, in shameful attacks on immigrants and our LGBT neighbors. We saw it in the shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. We saw it in the racism that has found overt and covert expression since Barack Obama began his run for office — from outright declarations of people who said out loud they would never vote for a black man to the ridiculously persistent obsession with our president’s birth certificate. Regardless of his policies or priorities, President Obama is shadowed by the drumbeat of suspicion based on his “other”-ness. And those suspicions are fed and watered constantly by forces that were threatened by his message of “hope and change.” . . .

You can read the whole rancid thing. Remember that this is the same Richard Trumka who was invited to sit with First Lady Michelle Obama during the president’s speech last night.

As far as “extremist front groups” and “shameful attacks” are concerned, Michelle Malkin reminds us how Trumka advocated violence — including the violence by Trumka’s UMW goons who shot and killed Eddie York during a 1993 West Virginia coal strike.

And you have to roll your eyes at Trumka’s attacks on the “wealthy,” while he collects more than a quarter-million a year in salary from the AFL-CIO, one of five top officials whose combined compensation totals $1.12 million.

Sarah Palin Shows Her Union Card

Posted on Comments

Writing “as a proud former union member and the wife, daughter, and sister of union members,” Sarah Palin denounces the “thuggery” of Jim Hoffa:

Union bosses like this do not have your best interests at heart. What they care about is their own power and re-electing their friend Barack Obama so he will take care of them to the detriment of everyone else. . . .
Recently someone commented: “I’m a union member. I’ve been a Democrat all my life. Now I’ll vote for anyone with a plan to save America.” I know what that person is feeling. I want all good union brothers and sisters to know that there is an alternative. The grassroots, independent Tea Party Movement articulates a real alternative rooted in free men and free markets, not the cronyism of Barack Obama and the permanent political class in DC. Their cronyism is why we have no job growth, massive unsustainable debt, and a housing market in the tank. Too many politicians are simply addressing the economic symptoms instead of fighting the underlying disease. The path forward is through reform. . . .
In the meantime, good union brothers and sisters, don’t let Hoffa tell you what to do. He doesn’t represent the real interests of working men and women. He’s not doing you any favors. He’s just living off your paychecks.

Read the whole thing.