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© 2011 The Union Label Blog & Grassfire Nation
Just another note on how Jerry Brown is directing the erection of the tombstone over California’s grave. This from Mike Brownfield:
But opposing automated checkout machines and imposing new restrictions on local governments to void union contracts weren’t the only victories. The L.A. Times reports that all told, Brown signed more than a dozen labor-backed bills “ensuring prevailing wages for trash haulers, increasing fines for employers who violate labor laws and restricting the use of non-union contractors for certain state services.” Brown also signed a bill that would move all statewide ballot initiatives to November ballots, giving unions a leg up on a measure that would affect their ability to use union dues for political purposes.
Nationally, Big Labor is hard at work trying to cement and expand their power, too. Unions have lobbied the Obama Administration to change the rules of the game to make unionization easier, prevent private employers from locating in right-to-work states–as the NLRB is doing with Boeing case in South Carolina–and pushing for more government spending on infrastructure projects that employ primarily union members.
Unfortunately for Californians, Gov. Brown is putting union interests before those of the state. And unfortunately for Americans, President Barack Obama is doing the same.
I’m sure that Brown expects millions more to flow into his pocket for this payoff to big labor.
Democrats are the death of every state.
Until now many of the often-illegal antics perpetuated by several individual Wisconsin-based protesters appeared to be random acts committed by disillusioned agitators. But the MacIver News Service has learned that these acts have been highly orchestrated and perpetuated by an organization whose members are told to deny their involvement in the group. A group, we’ve discovered, which is financed by thousands of dollars from Big Labor.
With that funding comes clout. They have shared the stage with Congresswoman Tammy Baldwin, a Democratic candidate for the United States Senate. They’ve hosted prominent Democratic legislative speakers such as Representative Cory Mason and Minority Leader Peter Barca, a rumored potential candidate for governor.
These protesters have played a key role in many of the most visible events in and around the State Capitol since February. This week, their organization was listed alongside the Democratic Party of Wisconsin and United Wisconsin as key organizers behind the efforts to recall Governor Scott Walker.
And they’re currently organizing and participating in many of the ‘Occupy’ protests in Washington, DC, New York and Wisconsin.
Bill Osmulski reports in this MacIver News Investigation. See the video HERE.
-By Michael J. Mishak and Anthony York, Los Angeles Times
When the dust settled on Gov. Jerry Brown’s first legislative session in nearly three decades, no group had won more than organized labor, which heralded its largest string of victories in nearly a decade.
At the urging of the food workers’ union, Brown agreed to crack down on the use of automated checkout machines in grocery stores. At firefighters’ request, he approved new restrictions on local governments seeking to void union contracts. He guaranteed wages for workers in public libraries that are privatized — a bill sponsored by another labor group.
Those unions and others helped bankroll Brown’s campaign last year.
Brown has long compared governing to steering a canoe — you paddle a little on the left, he says, and a little on the right. And indeed, he signed some measures desired by key interest groups this year while vetoing others…
Read the rest at The Los Angeles Times.
-By Larry Sand
Steve Jobs knew how to create wealth. The parasitic Wall Street protesters and teachers unions want to destroy it
There are many theories as to who is orchestrating the “Occupy Wall Street” protests – known in some circles as “Kamp Alinsky” and “Kamp Kvetch” – in lower Manhattan and elsewhere throughout our country. George Soros? President Obama? Could they possibly be spontaneous?
No matter. The protesters and their message of social justice, socialism and general hatred of all things corporate will not affect the great majority of Americans. The average Joe and Jill are just trying to pay their bills, raise a family and live a decent life. Hence the Wall Street rabble, a motley combination of bored teenagers, old guard lefties and hard core partiers, many armed with iPhones, digital cameras and many other luxuries produced by corporations, are badly missing the mark. As usual, the protesters’ signs tell the story – none more so than the one that says, “A job is a right. Capitalism doesn’t work.” Could any serious types associate with this fringe mentality?
Enter Michael Mulgrew – the United Federation of Teachers president. Speaking “truth to power,” his tax-the-rich talk at a Wall St. rally fit right in with the angry mob that thinks wealth is evil and that if A has more money than B, A owes B some of it. It’s the mentality that thinks that there is no moral difference between Bernie Madoff and Bill Gates. Continue reading »
This past weekend, the AFL-CIO played host to “more than 800 young people” at a conference in Minneapolis in an effort energize young activists to go forth and multiply the members by targeting America’s youth. As noted last week, U.S. Labor Secretary Hilda Solis attended the organizing “summit” and the labor secretary used some of her 30-minute speech to call for passage of the AFL-CIO’s American Jobs Act, as well as to take potshots at the Tea Party (beginning at 29:00 here).
Interestingly, one of the documents linked on the conference website spelled out in greater candor why the AFL-CIO is trying so hard to attract younger members…
Read the rest at LaborUnionReport.com.
-By Warner Todd Huston
Tis is an Illinois centric story, but I am posting it here because these things are not just happening in Illinois. Every single state of the union is scandalized by these sort of union outrages. Check around in your state. You’ll find this…
Andrew Thomason of the Illinois Statehouse News agency has a pair of stores on the criminal syndicate that is unions in the Land of Lincoln this week that have to be seen to be believed. In fact, these stories and the ones like them we’ve seen for the past several months in Illinois are proof positive that unions should be illegal for government employees.
In one story, Thomason reports the tale of Michael Johnson, a corrupt teacher out to milk the taxpayers dry by collecting $209,379.43 in pension benefits while at the same time also collected $324,785 from a separate Illinois pension fund. And so far this crook has already collected $1.1 million of our tax dollars on top of the $198,105 a year he makes for “part-time work” for the school district.
This is called double dipping. Johnson was able to do this because he worked at one job in Illinois education, “retired” from it, then took a second job in the same field. This means he gets two pensions to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, likely totaling up to millions by the time he dies. All paid for by the taxpayers of Illinois.
Thomason’s second story is about union leaders that “pull down millions in public pensions.”
Illinois taxpayers are on the hook to make sure union officials’ six-figure pensions keep flowing for years to come.
Former employees of the National Education Association, or NEA, Illinois Education Association, or IEA, Illinois Federation of Teachers, or IFT, and Illinois Association of School Boards, or IASB, drawing pensions have collected more than $47 million from the Illinois Teachers’ Retirement System, or TRS, to date.“The union leaders who are not government workers are draining millions of dollars from the hard working rank-and-file public employee’s pension system each year. This is flat out unacceptable for taxpayers and for public employees,” said Adam Andrzejewsk, who unsuccessfully sought the Republican nomination for governor and now runs his own group, For the Good of Illinois, a nonprofit that calls for “limited, accountable and transparent government.”
These two stories are not outliers, either. This kind of stuff is happening in the Firemen’s pensions, police pensions, political pensions, in short every pension system of every public official and government employee is being robed in similar ways. We are paying pensions to people and making them millionaires while government services are cut, our schools are failing, our taxes are skyrocketing, and our state on the verge of bankruptcy.
As I said, this is proof positive that government employees should not be allowed to unionize. It is unionization and back room political deal making that has caused this intolerable situation. Government employees should not be allowed to unionize and in fact, they weren’t able to prior to the 1960s. Even one of our most left-wing presidents of all of them, Franklin Roosevelt, understood that unionizing government employees was a disaster waiting to happen and refused them the capability.
As mentioned above, we finally have a way to find out exactly where our money is going in public salaries.
Adam Andrzejewsk write me to say, “The openthebooks.com portal broke all the state level pension corruption. This is at least a $47 million pension scam from our opponents, union leadership and the corrupt IASB.”
You can review the “For The Record Scorecard to see how your member of the general assembly in Springfield voted on 11 key pieces of legislation.
For more information check out www.forthegoodofillinois.org.
Eric Odom (Media Director)
Warner Todd Huston