One would assume that everyone wants to see that our kids get the best education possible. I mean, who could possibly be against kids getting the best opportunities? Well, apparently the one entity that you’d expect to really care about kids is the one standing in the way of their education: teachers. Sadly, it is obvious that teachers as a group don’t care a whit about kids, at least as far as their union is concerned.
take the Republican led policy called the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program. It is a program that provides worthy minority student in the Washington D.C. school system with $7,500 a year for tuition and fees at private schools. We all know that government schools are nearly universally substandard and this program helps minority kids find their way to better schools so that they might get a better education.
Naturally, the Teachers union opposes it.
Fortunately, Republicans seem to care about kids more and have been able to sustain this project for several years. But, now that the union lapdogs in the Democrat Party have become the emerging force in Washington, this great opportunity for minority kids is about to be eliminated.
The Washington Post reports that the Democrat led subcommittee on financial services and general government, the committee that funds this project, said that the good times are over.
A House Appropriations subcommittee voted yesterday to fund for another year the federal voucher program that allows about 2,000 low-income D.C. children to attend private schools. But the panel’s chairman said that this was probably the last time that the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program would receive full financial support from the government.
Of course this is because he is the slave to the anti-intellectuals in the teachers unions for it is they who oppose this program.
Once again, this sort of anti-kid, anti-education effort from a union proves that unions should never be allowed for jobs that are supposed to serve the public interest. Unions are entirely antithetical to the public weal and this is just one more example of that truth.
In an historic decision that I hope is duplicated in other states, Connecticut has finally passed the “bad boy clause,” a law that would find public employees (like elected politicians and state workers) who are convicted of criminal behavior having their pensions denied them as a result of that criminal behavior.
Of course, unions are against this law. They claim it would be a breach of their union contracts, but really all they want is to shield their criminal members from the consequences of their criminality. Why is it no surprise that unions want to reward criminal behavior by allowing those who steal from the public and break the public trust by allowing them to continue stealing from the public treasury in the form of unearned and undeserved pensions?
This is just another example of why unions are not in the public’s interest and should never be allowed for state workers. Unions are not interested in the public good. They are only interested it what they can get for their members.
the idea of a union is antithetical to good government at every level.
Steve Peoples of the Providence Journal (Rhode Island) gives us a great reminder that the voice of the labor movement has far more power than it does public support. He details all the politicians, lobbyists and union reps intertwined in government in the State House and how, even if the people of the state aren’t realizing it, those union voices are every day scheming to get the union agenda passed at every level of State government.
While union membership is at its lowest level in 50 years, labor leaders’ daily contact with lawmakers is as strong as ever.
Most days on Smith Hill, union lobbyists far outnumber those from other interest groups.
“In fairness to labor, they’re up here every single day, talking to people,” says Senate Finance Committee Chairman Stephen D. Alves. “You don’t see the Chamber [of Commerce] people here every single day. Do [unions] have more access? I suppose they do — only because they’re here. They catch you in the corridor. If business people were up here and want to talk to us, they’re more than welcome to.”
This is the insidious method. While the people are unawares, the labor movement worms its way into every aspect of our lives. Union member or not, we pay the ultimate price for unionism in higher prices, lost jobs, and high taxes, regulation, etc.
And it’s because unions slither their way into every crack of our governments.
People’s does a great job of detailing the undue influence unions have at least in Rhode Island. But, writ larger, it is the same in every state as well as the Federal government.
A fellow named Will Franklin over at Willisms.com has done some number crunching and he has discovered that states that support a right to work policy grow at a much higher rate than states that are awash in forced unionization.
From 2004-2007, no Right To Work state grew less than 5.1%, while fifteen Forced Unionization state grew below that level.
Meanwhile, while America’s GDP growth from 2004-2007 by 8.4%, Right To Work states grew by 10% on average, while Forced Unionization states grew by only 6.2% on average. The median Right To Work growth rate was 9.2%, compared to the median Forced Unionization rate of 4.9% (the national median for all states was 7.3%).
As expected, it appears that unionism is an albatross, a mill stone around the necks of the workers limiting the success and growth of a state.
Of course, this will not sit well with the “two Americas” types on the left in this country. As Will points out, the side that they are on is the side of failure and a stifled economy. So, good luck with that concept, there.
Soren Dayton has a great piece over at The Next Right on the dangers of the SEIU as this campaign season begins.
++++++
I have been meaning to write about this for a while, but just haven’t gotten to it. One of the more politically frightening things that I have read recently was Todd Beeton’s write up of SEIU’s Secretary-Treasuer Anna Burger’s speech to the SEIU convention in Puerto Rico two weeks ago. I can’t find the text of the speech anywhere, but Todd has excerpts. It focused on “Card Check” or the “Employee Free Choice Act” which would end the use of secret ballots in the votes to unionize shops. From Beeton:
Beeton: And the key reason it is so important:
It is the fuel — the opening — for SEIU to change our growth curve from 100,000 to a million or more workers a year.
Which ought to be enough to scare anyone. More union members means more union dues spent on politics. It is clear that the unions get this incremental approach. Read on after the jump.
What seems like a minor technical change is actually something that gives them political access to potentially transformational political power. Back to Beeton:
Beeton:That in itself, Burger argues, makes the Employee Free Choice Act larger than any one single issue, even more important than healthcare.
We are the leaders of the fight for healthcare. We are the biggest healthcare union in our three nations because we fight for it every single day. It’s time that the United States and Perto Rico join our sisters and brothers in Canda and win quality, affordable healthcare for every man, woman and child in 2009!
And:
Beeton:The passage of the Employee Free Choice Act, Burger argues, will make the difference between incremental change and transformational change, because it will allow the creation of a movement that will not only demand that change, but enable it. So, the Employee Free Choice Act is more important than healthcare because without it, there is no healthcare reform, or at least not the real reform we want and need. Same goes for every other progressive legislation we hope to pass in the post-Bush era.
Imagine a world where five years after the Employee Free Choice Act is signed into law, SEIU is organizing a million or more workers a year and the labor movement has added 20 million members to its ranks. Through the Employee Free Choice Act we’ve built a principled, permanent workers movement that will redefine politics for the next century.
This is permanent majority language. However, when we were talking about permanent majority, we were talking about moving assets into the hands of more Americans. (this is the ownership society that Barack Obama belittles) This vision is about coercively moving more and more Americans into political organizations which use their precious financial resources in a way that they neither control nor even understand.
Given what is likely to happen in the Senate this cycle, this should be taken as dire warning of what an Obama presidency would mean for our society and our economy.
In addition, it is a call to arms both in the 2008 election for Senate seats and the White House, but also for analysis and data collection. The unions and their lackies in the Demcratic party are intent on a path that will destroy our productivity for a significant period of time. We need to document where we are and what happens
Several years ago, the New York Times thought they had a major story of Walmart working behind the scenes with several conservative think tanks and pundits to create Walmart policy. It happened that Walmart had asked groups such as the American Enterprise Institute, the Heritage Foundation, and the Manhattan Institute to guide them.
Of course, who could either be surprised or even alarmed at these facts? After all, Walmart has the right to consult anyone they want to help them create their own policies. They ARE a company, not a government. For that matter, why should anyone get all up in arms by such a thing, even a government?
Still, the Times thought they had some outrageous scoop and this non-story, story even appeared on the front page of the business section.
Flash forward three years. Now the Times is finally fessing up that the anti-Wal-Mart group called Wal-Mart Watch has secretly been assisted behind the scenes by one of the most powerful, extreme leftwing union in the country, the SEIU.
Over the last several months, a confidential report has circulated within the headquarters of Wal-Mart Stores, proposing sweeping changes to its employee health care plans.
It looks like a typical corporate planning document, but it is not. The nine-page report, written by an Emory University professor, Kenneth E. Thorpe, was commissioned, paid for and given to Wal-Mart by its longtime foes, the Service Employees International Union, and a group the union finances, called Wal-Mart Watch. They are known for attacking the chain, not cooperating with it.
But after waging an aggressive public relations campaign against Wal-Mart for three years, the company’s full-time, union-backed critics, who once vowed never to let up, are putting down their cudgels.
Of course, we are belatedly presented this SEIU meddling in Wal-Mart’s affairs in a strictly matter of fact way by the Times, here. No amazing revelations of secret backroom deals, no similar sensational reporting style with which they reported on Wal-Mart’s conservative allies.
But, there we have it anyway. Even as the Times attacked Wal-Mart for having conservaitve ties, they make no such accusation for Wal-Mart Watch and its extremist, leftist ties.
Ah the hypocrissy looms.
(H/T Clay Waters of Times Watch)
Looks like the Center for Union Facts is hitting a little too close to home for some union thugs in Maine, eh?
+++++++++ Brewer: Union head slams ads
By Eric Russell
Saturday, June 07, 2008 - Bangor Daily News
BREWER, Maine — Local union representatives are hitting back at a national nonprofit agency that has been running targeted television advertisements, including some in Maine markets, slamming labor practices.
Jack McKay, president of the Eastern Maine Labor Council, said the Center for Union Facts of Washington, D.C., claims to support workers’ rights but “everything they do undermines workers.”
“The biggest thing, I think, is that these ads are deceitful and they misrepresent what unions are asking for,” McKay said Friday of the ads, which ran on local NBC, ABC and CBS affiliates in recent weeks but have since stopped. “Truthfully, they know what we want and they are deliberately misrepresenting that.”
One of the ads in question portrays children voting in a class election and then depicts union bosses hijacking the process. Read the rest of this entry »
The last order of business for the Service Employee International Union ended with the election of the next slate of SEIU leaders. Andy Stern did not expect any “democracy” to take place in this election, though. You see, no ballots were prepared for the membership to vote upon.
It seems that the ballots prepared ahead of time only had Andy Stern’s nominees on them. Yet, when the floor was opened for nominations from the actual membership, 13 other members were nominated to run for one position or another. 13 members that Andy Stern did not have in his back pocket.
And, then everything bogged down to a crawl as Stern’s minions ran about trying to figure out how to print ballots with the nominees that Stern didn’t approve of printed thereupon. It is even reported by Maya Morris that Stern’s toadies were heard to say that they “weren’t prepared to print ballots” showing that Andy Stern didn’t expect to have any other members running for office. Obviously Stern imagined that he had his iron fist successfully beating down any other opinions. To heck with democracy.
As Maya said:
But when confronted with real democratic processes, Stern’s team was woefully unprepared. SEIU scheduled elections for its International Executive Board and its International Vice Presidents as the last agenda item on the last day of the convention. After five days of misinformation and disinformation, Stern’s management team apparently felt so confident that the Stern-approved slate of candidates would run unopposed that they did not even bother to plan a process to prepare ballots.
Nothing highlights the arrogance we’ve witnessed here at the convention more than this moment. Our message is that the union is about members; their message is that leadership rules. This election process proves our point.
Like I’ve said before, if Andy Stern is determined to eliminate democracy even among his own membership, what the heck do you think he’s going to try with the rest of us and with his influence in our government? This is a man that despises the American way of democratic participation. He believes solidly in autocratic, tyrannical rule of the elite over the rabble… and, in case you missed it, Stern thinks you and I represent the rabble.
Stern wants to do to us what he has done to his own people. Beat them down, ruin their relations with others, and destroy their reputations so that he can get his despotic will enforced.
This is the lesson of the SEIU convention. My fellow Americans, I urge you to understand that now that Andy Stern has eliminated his internal dissension inside his union, you and I are his next targets.
SEIU insurgent leader Sal Rosselli scolds Andy Stern over his campaign to destroy the UHW. This has been a vicious fight and some very underhanded tactics were perpetrated by Stern and his henchmen.
Ah, the politics of personal destruction raises its ugly head again. And, let me remind you, THIS is how union folks treat each other! Imagine how ruthless, uncaring, and cutthroat they will be with the rest of us!
Here is a radio interview with UHW member and executive board member Rosie Beyers who is voicing her displeasure at her union being summarily eliminated and folded into another local by the SEIU Washington office without the support of the UHW membership.
Why is the SEIU ignoring the vote of the members in the local? Because President Andy Stern has a plan and that plan doesn’t need any agreement by the members. Stern’s royal pronouncements don’t need any old concepts of “democracy” to get in the way.
So, what place does a union have to even discuss national war policy, much less make “resolutions” against same?
In this video a self-loathing Vietnam vet who came home to become a Vet against the war, rails about Vietnam and Iraq and makes the false claims that only poor kids fight in the war to make “the rich, richer and richer.”
This graying, ponytailed, oldster is exactly the sort of radical, anti-American that fills the SEIU right up to the brim. A union has no place discussing national war policy.
Bacack Obama spoke to the SEIU yesterday and here is the video of that appearence.
Some highlights: Obama says he “has SEIU to thank” for his campaign. Says that he agrees that he is his “brother’s keeper” and his “sister’s keeper” (excuse for big government). Barack also promises to “take back” the labor relations board which is a sly way to say that he will eliminate union oversight to allow union corruption to run amuck. And he also promised universal healthcare.
One of the nation’s largest unions revamped its constitution at a convention in Puerto Rico yesterday. Among the changes at SEIU is system that will send more money from locals to union headquarters in D.C. SEIU Leaders say will use that to launch an unprecedented campaign to help elect Barack Obama president and send pro-union lawmakers to Congress.
In Washington state, the Service Employees International Union is the largest active unions. But the new union rules will see more dues money from members here going to finance campaign activities in states more likely to decide the presidential election. David Rolf, president of SEIU Healthcare 775NW, said:
I think there’ll be an exporting of resources and talents to some of the swing states to mobilize union members.
Rolf says SEIU will still be active in campaigns here. But, he said, “We aren’t seeing competitive races emerging all over the state.” That means money and resources can be sent elsewhere.
Rolf is a strong backer of SEIU International President Andy Stern. Stern pushed through an agenda at the quadrennial convention, called Justice for All. The Wall Street Journal reports that “will further consolidate bargaining and organizing efforts across industry lines, a move that could limit the power of local unions but give the union greater leverage with big employers.”
There was an organized, but small, group opposing Stern’s plan. That opposition grows out of what The Nation calls “ The biggest union feud since the AFL-CIO split three years ago.” Read the rest of this entry »
The last order of business for the Service Employee International Union ended with the election of the next slate of SEIU leaders. Andy Stern did not expect any “democracy” to take place in this election, though. You see, no ballots were prepared for the membership to vote upon.
