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© 2011 The Union Label Blog & Grassfire Nation
Could it be? Could Bill Clinton be supporting a candidate because that candidate is not the union choice? Well, apparently Hell hath frozen over because your favorite lip-biting president and mine… OK, not our favorite, but you know… appeared at a fund raising event for Arkansas Senator Blanche Lincoln and said he supports her because she isn’t the chosen candidate of those nasty “outside” unions — as in Big Labor that comes from outside Arkansas.
Arkansas is not very union friendly, it should be remembered. After all it is a right to work state and one of the main reasons the unions are mad at Lincoln is that she was one of the few Democrats that have been soft on the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA). This is why Big Labor has been supporting her opponent, Lt. Gov. Bill Halter.
Democrats think that Lincoln has a much better chance against what ever Republican that might face her than Halter does because he is the Big Labor candidate. Plus she is an incumbent and the party machinery is built to push her candidacy.
Over the last year Senator Lincoln has wavered on the EFCA at one time seeming disposed toward approving it and at others saying she couldn’t vote for it at this time. She has been all over the map, really.
Make no mistake, if she wins this election, you will be seeing her sidle up to her Democrat leadership in Congress and voting their way, ignoring her so-called principles and turning against her constituents.
But, that aside, it really is true that politics makes strange bedfellows. When we have long-time union flak Bill “Bubba” Clinton tossing the anti-union card to support a sitting Democrat Senator, we can see that old saw born out.
The New Jersey Star-Ledger has a wonderful little editorial excoriating New Jersey’s teachers for having destroyed their own reputation with the public because of their petulant behavior towards Governor Chris Christie’s attempts to balance New Jersey’s over spent budget.
Take a gander at this…
Once the patient darlings who nurtured our kids, teachers now look like insensitive, out-of-touch, can’t-think-for-themselves union robots who, when forced to face economic realities, clung to an insulting sense of entitlement, heartlessly sacrificed the jobs of colleagues, called the governor naughty names and used students as political pawns.
Ouch!
For the Star-Ledger Kevin Manahan explains what happened to the once respected New Jersey teachers:
How did it happen? That’s easy: One bad decision, one stupid miscalculation: An overwhelming majority of teachers refused to accept a pay freeze. They could have won taxpayers’ eternal gratitude, but instead demanded their negotiated raises and fought against contributing a dime toward budget-breaking health insurance benefits. Teachers could have pitched in, but they dug in.
They thumbed their noses at taxpayers, who have lost their jobs, had their pay cut, gone bankrupt and fallen into foreclosure. As taxpayers made less, teachers demanded more. You do that, you become a villain. Fast. It doesn’t matter how many stars Junior gets on his book report.
This is, of course, the natural, logical end of the actions of all unions. but it is especially egregious behavior from people that are supposed to be servants of the people. After all, these teachers work for us, we the taxpayers. We pay their generous salaries (New Jersey teachers average $63,000 a year while the median household income in New Jersey is about $55,000 a year), we pay their huge pension benefits, and we pay most of their generous healthcare plans. And these haughty public servants refused to take a stinking one-year pay freeze and a small increase in their out-of-pocket for healthcare? In fact, they demanded generous raises?
No wonder New Jersey’s voters have turned against these ingrates.
The Washington Times is reporting that the Landmark Legal Foundation is requesting that the Internal Revenue Service review all the millions being spent by Big Labor on Democrat political campaigns during the 2010 midterm elections.
As we discussed earlier this week, Big Labor is spending at least $100 million on the upcoming elections — actually even more because we have no numbers reported by the AFL-CIO. Landmark is worried that this giant blanket of money could possibly raise questions of legality.
In the request, Mark Levin, President of Landmark Legal Foundation, said, “Landmark requests that the IRS begin immediately a thorough examination of these labor unions’ political activities and that the IRS commence without delay the collection of all relevant information and data.”
He went on…
“It is crucial that the IRS get its hands around this to ensure these groups are not commingling funds,” Mr. Levin said in an interview. “The public-sector unions are the most powerful entities in the nation.”
He pointed out in his letter that labor organizations generally are exempt from paying income taxes to the federal government except when they use their funds for political activity.
“To illustrate, when a labor organization receives a dollar in dues from one of its members and places that dollar in its general treasury, then it does not owe the IRS any tax,” he wrote. “However, if the labor organization then takes the dollar and uses it for political activity, then that dollar becomes taxable income, and the expenditure must be reported.”
Mr. Levin pointed out that the unions have separate funds for their political activities as required by law.
“However, as Landmark has demonstrated through various complaints in recent years, the extent to which these organizations appear to be blurring the line between legitimately exempt activity and taxable political activities is growing more and more troublesome,” he wrote.
Naturally all the unions are feigning “great concern” over the rules claiming that they are making sure to stay within the law.
Sadly, with the union bought president and his administration fairly at midterm, expecting this president and his government to monitor unions for illegality is asking the fox to watch the hen house.
At a public meeting New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie tells a union teacher who is whining about her pay scale that she can always quit teaching if she doesn’t like it.
I LOVE this guy!
And while this teacher was whining that she makes no where near $83,000 per year, the truth came out today that she actually makes $86,000 annually.
Echoing what we’ve been saying for quite a while, Bradley Blakeman of Fox News has a piece today warning on the influence of public employees unions on the upcoming elections.
-By Bradley Blakeman, Fox News
Unions have made no secret that they plan to spend $100 million dollars to keep Democratic incumbents in office in 2010.
Unions have made no bones about their upcoming involvement in the midterm elections of 2010.
In short, unions are scared to death that they will lose their grip on their control of the House and the Senate unless they spend tens of millions of dollars and force their members to campaign for Democratic incumbents.
Unions have been able to run the table when it comes to getting what they want from the White House, Majority Leader Harry Reid and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.
This is what President Obama recently said to a gathering of big labor, “I do not view the labor movement as part of the problem,” he adds. “To me, and to my administration, labor unions are a big part of the solution.”
The president and the leadership of the Democratic Party has heaped great praise on unions for helping pass the over 700 billion dollar stimulus bill, the auto industry bailouts and most recently health care. Democrats believe that they could not have “accomplished” these efforts without the help of unions.
Now unions are fearful that their “gravy train’ could be derailed by the midterms and they are gearing up to influence elections nationwide in a way that may eclipse the efforts of individual candidates or even the Democratic National Committee.
Unions have made no secret that they plan to spend $100 million dollars to keep Democratic incumbents in office in 2010. In addition, they plan to use hundreds of thousands of man-hours with their members “campaigning ” and “organizing” in key election districts all across America.
Here is what the president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) said with regard to the midterm elections, “We have got to protect the incumbency in the House. We have got to protect the incumbency in the Senate…It is going to be hard. Those tea-baggers are out there. There is an anti-incumbency mood out there.” As far as I’m concerned, this sounds more like a statement from a party chairman than a union president.
Here is what communications director Steve Smith of the California labor Federation said with regard to their upcoming election efforts, “We are going to devote more resources to the 2010 campaign than we have ever done in any prior campaign.”
Unions have been emboldened to act as a shadow political party. They have used the law to act brazenly and shadowy when it comes to their support of candidates. Unions today can coordinate with the DNC and candidates to strategize and place resources without restrictions.
The Federal Election Commission promised new rules in light of the Supreme Court’s decision in the Citizen’s United Case to insure candidates and parties do not lose control over campaign messaging and spending.
The fear is that in the aftermath of Citizen’s United, unions would not only be permitted to spend without limits but they will also no longer have time restriction on when monies can be spent and restriction on direct coordination with campaigns and parties.
Without new rules set by the FEC, unions and corporations will be able to spend freely without disclosure to the FEC, shareholders or the SEC. In addition, without new rules corporations and unions who greatly benefited directly from legislation would be able to “reward” their friends and punish their enemies without disclosure.
Unless new rules are put in place to govern union and corporate coordination and disclosure, political parties will be eclipsed by non-political entities that are selfishly motivated.
The American people should demand that the FEC act now before the 2010-midterm elections.
The people not powerful unions and corporations should decide elections.
Bradley A. Blakeman served as deputy assistant to President George W. Bush from 2001-04. He is currently a professor of Politics and Public Policy at Georgetown University and a frequent contributor to the Fox Forum.
For decades unions have mishandled their pension funds. These funds have been embezzled into the pockets of union chiefs, they have been wasted on needless expenses, and have been spent away on left-wing political causes not to mention simple mismanagement and bad investing. It has gotten so bad that few union pension funds for the rank and file members are adequately funded and retirement money for millions of union member’s is now at risk — naturally the separate pension funds for union bosses are almost universally in the black.
So, what’s the solution? What will befall the retirement funds of these poor rank and file union schlubs? As far as nine Republican Representatives are concerned you and I should bailout out these union thugs that have filled their pockets with their member’s retirement funds by giving them our tax dollars in a bailout plan supported by the Obama administration.
Apparently union crooks and neer-do-wells are too big to fail and these nine Republicans think that our taxes should go to reward the criminal behavior and neglect by union bosses.
Is that what we elected these Republicans for? I sure hope not.
The nine Republicans that are supporting this Obama union payoff are Representatives Patrick Tiberi (OH), Steven LaTourette (OH), Ginny Brown-Waite (FL), Jo Ann Emerson (MO), John Linder (GA), Thaddeus McCotter (MI), Peter Roskam (IL), Aaron Schock (IL), and Tim Murphy (PA).
Americans for Limited Government sent out a letter to the nine recalcitrant GOPers urging them to dump their support of this bill.
On the ALG website President Bill Wilson said, “We are asking that each Representative remove his or her cosponsorship of this blatant handout to unions, which are now asking the American people to bail them out of their own mismanagement of pensions. Compensating poor investment strategies, like those pursued by the multi-employer pension plans, only incentives further underfunding of these plans.”
This bailout bill is a bad, bad idea. Yes, yes it’s regrettable that all these poor union members have had the wool pulled over their eyes and have been fooled into thinking that their union bosses care about them. Yes it’s not nice that many may never see the retirement funds that they thought they worked so hard for. But unions will never be reformed — or better yet eliminated — if the federal government shores up their criminal behavior and papers over their monumental mistakes.
Unions are not too big too fail and the sooner they fail and are swept under the rug the better. These nine Republicans are not doing the right thing by supporting this bailout. I hope they all pull their support and I join ALG in their call for them to do so.
Eric Odom (Media Director)
Warner Todd Huston