September 5, 2008 - 7:06 am - Posted by WTH
Todd Palin is Bankrolling Union Smears and Efforts to Defeat His Wife
National Right to Work, Stefan Gleason
Many of you probably watched Sarah Palin accept the Republican Party’s Vice Presidential nomination last night. Ironically, her husband - a member of the United Steelworkers (USW) union - is actually funding efforts to smear and defeat her.
Today, National Right to Work Foundation President Mark Mix released an open letter (.pdf) to Todd Palin, informing him that he has the right to cut off the forced union dues being used to defeat a McCain-Palin ticket. Here’s the key quote:
We understand you are a member of the United Steelworkers of America union. While I’m sure you’re excited by your wife’s candidacy for high office, you may be discouraged to learn that the union dues you pay are already being used to defeat her.
When USW union bosses endorsed Barack Obama in June, they pledged to support his campaign using funds collected from union members. Steelworker dues will pay for a variety of political activities throughout the electoral season, and a significant portion of those activities will be aimed at defeating the McCain-Palin ticket.
In fact, at the USW’s 2008 convention, union officials adopted a resolution “vowing to play a key role in electing Obama,” thus pledging workers’ dues to the effort to defeat your wife’s candidacy. Moreover, a top USW official whose paycheck you help fund is viciously ridiculing your wife’s candidacy on the Steelworkers’ website, calling Governor Palin’s selection “cynical” and claiming that by choosing your wife “McCain has clearly shown he lacks the judgment to be president.”
Here is USW Legislative Director Holly Hart’s (the top USW official cited in the letter) response to Todd Palin’s wife’s candidacy:
Presumptive Republican Presidential Nominee John McCain, on his 72nd birthday, announced a selection that revealed the depths of his cynicism and the shallowness of his judgment - and his disregard for women’s intelligence.
After looking into a pool of vice presidential candidates deep with qualification, he plucked out the least experienced person.
While Alaska does not have a Right to Work law which would make payment of union dues strictly voluntary, under the Foundation-won Supreme Court precedent Communications Workers v. Beck, employees can stop paying forced union dues unrelated to collective bargaining, such as union electioneering.
Unfortunately, millions of other workers are unaware of these rights. Workers wanting to know how to exercise their rights may obtain information and free legal aid here.
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September 4, 2008 - 3:52 am - Posted by WTH
Interestingly, several unions have this convention season tried to cross the aisle from their usual Democrat side over to Republicans looking to garner support from the Red States. The National Journal has an interesting little account of the Service Employee International Union (SEIU) and the National Education Association (NEA) and a few others trying to warm up to Republicans soft on worker freedom.
Under Stern, the SEIU is making a concerted effort to build bridges with the GOP, and for the first time ever it helped to finance a Republican convention by giving $50,000 to the host committee. Furthermore, the SEIU wrote a $25,000 check to the Republican Governors Association and gave about $10,000 to the Republican Main Street Partnership.
Money turns heads, folks. If your representatives in Congress or in your home state are suddenly finding their palms filled with union cash, take a close look at why. Unions won’t be just dispensing cash freely and without strings attached, remember.
If your Congressman is suddenly a recipient of union largess, there will be a reason and that reason will probably not be to your liking. Keep any eye on this lest you be supporting a politician that is quietly supporting unions.
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September 2, 2008 - 12:55 am - Posted by WTH
Once again in as many weeks, the L.A. Times reports on a third Service Employee International Union (SEIU) head that has been forced to step down because of allegations of fraud and misuse of union funds. Annelle Grajeda, the SEIU’s top officer in California, has resigned.
Annelle Grajeda’s boyfriend is also under a cloud for being a recipient of misappropriated union funds.
For the full story on the particular allegations, be sure and visit the L.A. Times.
What we are seeing, however, is one SEIU head after another being found to be indulging in misuse of funds, influence peddling and fraud over and over again. There’s no telling how many more such SEIU leaders will be caught up in this new scrutiny.
But, it is revelatory of the sort of corruption that is endemic with the SEIU. This is the most powerful union in the country and it is being run by a man who has designs of becoming a leader of national policy for the whole country, not just for unions, but for all of us.
SEIU President Andy Stern imagines himself a leader of national importance, yet he cannot keep the sort of horrid corruption from toppling members of his own union, and members with whom he has been intimately connected.
Worse, it isn’t Stern who has been responsible for the rooting out of corruption of his closest associates in the California offices. He has been brought to it sullenly silent not as a crusader against corruption.
And this is the man that imagines himself one who should counsel presidents?
These scandals, however, reveal an organization empty of ethics.
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September 1, 2008 - 1:39 am - Posted by WTH
The more we learn of the management style of President Andy Stern of the Service Employee International Union (SEIU) the more we see that he is an authoritarian as bad as any top-down led corporation that he and his union might criticize. And this newest abuse of office that his protege in California, Tyrone Freeman, has been embroiled in is yet another window into Stern’s undemocratic ways.
As Freeman was wildly spending union members’ dues to float little companies run by his relatives, and as Freeman’s associate Rickman Jackson went to a Michigan union to try his own hand at such abuse of office, what was Andy Stern doing while all this was going on under his nose? Instead of cleaning up his own pals, Stern was attacking another union local that was challenging his iron-fisted and unprincipled leadership.
As union member Dan Mariscal of S.M.A.R.T. says:
It is interesting to note that Mr. Stern’s “modern approach” to local union governance is not consistent with the traditional “democratic practices”, that have worked to avoid the past abuses, or appearance of abuses, by directly involving the rank and file members in important decision making, elections and checks and balances within their own locals. Mr. Stern’s loyalty-based leadership practices, although procedurally streamlining, does not leave room for the normal checks and balances usually handled by the rank and file and/or rank and file elected officers.
With regards to the first point, there appears to be evidence that someone high level, in SEIU, was aware that there may have been improprieties “involving Freeman’s finances and personal relationships” as far back as six years ago. If there is anything resembling truth to this statement, it does not bode well for the SEIU administration as a whole. It would represent a disconnect with reality and the inability to lead with integrity. The whole “Labor Movement” could be dealt quite a blow.
Stern has been engaged in an effort to lead the SEIU strictly from the main office in Washington D.C., cutting out the locals from any important decision making. He has negotiated contracts and shut down locals as well as consolidated some locals with others all without the input of the membership of the local unions involved. His has been entirely a top-down style of leadership brooking no lip from the membership.
Now, couple these concerns of Stern’s unprincipled tenure as head of the most powerful union in the country with the large canvass upon which Stern wants to work: the entire nation.
The SEIU is spending $85 million dollars to get Barack Obama elected and they fully expect for Obama to give them everything they want in payback. And there is little reason to believe he won’t because Obama comes from the old corrupt Richard Daley Democratic Party Machine of Chicago — if Obama knows anything he knows how to pay back supporters. He’s been hip deep in corrupt pay back schemes for over a decade. If the unions fully support him and pump him big infusions of cash, he WILL bend over backwards to give them anything in repayment despite what is good for the people or the country. After all, he’s done it before.
Just another reason to oppose the unions and Obama.
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September 1, 2008 - 12:19 am - Posted by WTH
-By Richard Berman, the Center for Union Facts
Remember the air-traffic controllers union strike of 1981?
Odds are you don’t — 60 percent of Americans were 16 or younger at the time of Big Labor’s last nationwide power grab.
But unions haven’t made that kind of nasty headline for a while. So it should be no surprise that this Labor Day many of these underinformed Americans approve of labor unions as an institution.
But new research indicates that unions’ popularity would be in the tank if Americans were aware of the current leadership’s record of fat expense accounts, corruption, embezzlement and discrimination.
You might be surprised to learn that in the last reported five years, inspectors from the Department of Labor obtained 1,100 labor racketeering indictments, with court judgments exceeding $400 million in fines and other forms of punishment and repayment to union members who were ripped off.
In addition, the federal Office of Labor-Management Standards has successfully prosecuted 850 corrupt union officials and obtained $103 million in restitution orders since 2001.
And since 2000, labor unions have faced more than 14,000 Equal Employment Opportunity Commission complaints — charging leaders with discrimination by race, sex, age, disability and religion.
According to the U.S. Department of Labor Office of Inspector General, “Schemes involving bribery, extortion, deprivation of union rights by violence and embezzlement used by early racketeers are still employed to abuse the power of unions.”
Read the rest of this entry »
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August 31, 2008 - 7:14 am - Posted by WTH
Any speculation that Barack Obama will suddenly find it in his heart to accept ages old democratic practices can be put to rest with a letter he recently wrote urging a company to eliminate the secret ballot of workers being solicited for union membership.
The Baker City Herald has the story of Beef Northwest, a food service company, that is undergoing union agitation. Employees of Beef Northwest are being urged to join the United Farm Workers union and Obama sent a letter in support of that initiative.
Some of the employees that want the union openly signed cards saying they want the union and want to eschew a secret ballot. Beef Northwest is maintaining that the “card check” vote is not legitimate and wants a secret ballot taken. For his part, Obama sent a letter against the ages old democratic process of the secret ballot.
Obama’s letter is dated Aug. 4, two days after the Oregon Farm Worker Ministry group, picketed a Whole Foods Market in the Portland area to put pressure on Beef Northwest owners to accept the cards collected by union organizers and to negotiate a union contract.
…Davies said he sees the Obama letter as an important document revealing the candidate’s willingness to substitute union cards for a secret ballot vote.
Obama stands against one of the oldest democratic practices in history; the secret ballot.
We are in for major anti-democratic actions by government if this dangerous man becomes president.
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August 30, 2008 - 2:22 am - Posted by WTH
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August 29, 2008 - 12:17 am - Posted by WTH
State labor board allows teacher to give union dues to charity that fights sex-trafficking
Union objected to the selection of this charity
The Evergreen Freedom Foundation
OLYMPIA—The Public Employment Relations Commission (PERC) has ruled that Susan Wiggs, a Vancouver middle school teacher, is free to send her union dues to a charity that fights sex-trafficking, despite the union’s objections to this charity. On August 22, 2008, PERC upheld an initial ruling that said individuals who object to union membership for religious reasons are permitted to select the charity that will receive their dues.
In August 2005, Susan Wiggs requested to resign from the Vancouver Education Association (VEA). State and federal law allow teachers and other workers to leave their union on religious grounds and send their dues to a charitable organization. Wiggs indicated her dues would go to Shared Hope International, a 501(c)3 organization that works internationally against sex trafficking and slavery.
VEA Executive Director Roy Maier refused the teacher’s charitable selection, saying the organization was “not acceptable” to the VEA. Wiggs provided the union with documentation of Shared Hope’s non-profit, non-sectarian status, but the union refused to accommodate her selection, and failed to provide a clear explanation for the denial.
On October 18, 2006, the VEA filed a petition against Wiggs with the Public Employment Relations Commission. Wiggs contacted the Evergreen Freedom Foundation (EFF), and EFF obtained legal representation for her PERC hearings, where she was represented by attorney Thomas F. Klein. The main issue was who has the final word on the choice of charity. The union argued it had the authority to approve or disapprove any nonreligious charity Wiggs designated.
The PERC examiner issued an initial ruling agreeing with Wiggs on January 22, 2008. In his decision Examiner Joel Greene said the law “requires the union to agree to Wiggs’s designation of an organization to receive her alternative dues payments once she proves the designated organization is both nonreligious and a charity. Wiggs met her burden of proof.”
The VEA appealed this ruling to the full commission. PERC unanimously upheld the initial ruling on August 22. “We find that the Examiner’s decision accurately states the law. Where a union agrees that an employee’s closely held religious beliefs qualify that employee to assert his or her right of non-association, as long as the employee designates a qualified non-religious charity, there is no legal issue for the Commission to adjudicate. Accordingly, we affirm the Examiner’s decision.”
“This decision has state-wide impact,” said Michael Reitz, general counsel of the Evergreen Freedom Foundation. “The union cannot exercise veto power over a teacher’s legitimate choice. Susan selected this charity because of her interest in rescuing children from exploitation. Unfortunately, she’s had to fight her own union for three years to send her money to this charity.”
The VEA has 30 days to appeal the ruling to superior court.
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August 28, 2008 - 12:05 am - Posted by WTH
(From our friends over at Union Free America comes this year’s Most Decertified Award.)
The International Brotherhood of Teamsters is the winner of Union Free America’s 3rd Annual “Most Decertified Union Award.” This honor is awarded to the labor union that lost the most decertification elections during the preceding 12 months.
The judging was based on an analysis of the reports of election results on the National Labor Relations Board’s web site for the period August 2007 through July 2008. During that time the NLRB conducted 330 decertification elections. Employees seeking to rid themselves of a union won 201 or 61 percent of them.
The Teamsters union won the “Most Decertified Union Award” by being decertified 64 times during that period. The Teamsters were involved in a total of 84 decertification elections of which they lost 76 percent.
The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) came in a distant second by being decertified15 times.
The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) won honorable mention by being certified 9 times. This may seem paltry compared to the Teamsters, but IBEW deserves recognition for being decertified in 9 out of 10 elections.
The Teamsters outstanding performance helped the Change to Win unions soundly defeat the AFL-CIO affiliates in the competition, despite the fact that the AFL-CIO is a considerably larger federation. Change to Win unions participated in a total of 164 decertification elections and lost 97 of them compared to just 132 elections with 80 losses for the AFL-CIO.
Colorful certificates commemorating these achievements have been sent to the Teamsters, Service Employees and Electrical Workers unions.
The number of union certification elections conducted by the National Labor Relations Board has been declining for quite some time. Between August 2000 and July 2001, the earliest comparable period for which data is available online, the NLRB conducted 2,726 certification elections and unions won 1,445 of them. Between August 2007 and July 2008 the NLRB conducted only 1,604 certification elections and unions won just 995 of them. That’s a decline 40 percent.
The same isn’t true of decertification elections. Between August 2000 and July 2001 the NLRB conducted 360 decertification elections a decline of only 8 percent.
The decline in the number of certification elections is generally attributable to the unions inability to convince workers to vote for union representation in a secret ballot election.
Labor union officials are pressing for legislation to deny employees the right to a secret ballot vote on union representation. This bill is ironically named the “Employee Free Choice Act.” The undemocratic scheme the unions would use to replace elections is called a “card check” in which a union is certified by a bare majority of workers signing authorization cards.
David Denholm, the founder of Union Free America, observes that, “The so-called ‘free choice act’ is a completely one sided proposal. It has no provision for allowing employees to rid themselves of unwanted unions through a card-check.”
Union Free America was founded in 2002 to provide advice and encouragement to workers fighting to stay, or become, Union Free. The “Most Decertified Union Award” was established in 2006 in response to the growing number of requests from workers for information about how they could rid themselves of unwanted union representation.
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August 27, 2008 - 12:54 am - Posted by WTH
Bernie Marcus came out strongly against the inaptly named “Employee Free Choice Act” this week in the pages of the Wall Street Journal. Worried that we will destroy our already delicate economy, Marcus said we’d “become France” if this disastrous bill passes.
He couldn’t be more right…
++++++++++
Bad Labor Law Is a Path to Economic Ruin
By BERNIE MARCUS, founder and first CEO of Home Depot
I recently said that America “would become France” if a certain bill now in Congress — which would virtually guarantee that every company becomes unionized — ever became law. Deceptively named the Employee Free Choice Act, this bill would in most cases take away an employee’s right to a secret ballot in a union election and give unions the option to have federal arbitrators set the wages, benefits, hours and all other terms and conditions of employment.
Countries other than France have suffered the consequences of bad labor laws. When I was CEO of Handy Dan, the precursor to Home Depot, I traveled to England in the 1970s to take a look at a chain of stores we were considering for acquisition. When I arrived in London, the airport workers, bus drivers and garbage collectors were all on strike. The major shareholder of the company asked me to interview three employees. He informed me afterward that he wanted me to hire them at Handy Dan “because the U.K. was finished.” He explained that his tax rate was 75% and there were no incentives to grow.
When I asked what he and his company were doing about it, he told me that the media would attack the company if it got involved politically. I jumped all over him and the company’s CEO for letting this happen without a fight. Needless to say, Handy Dan did not buy these stores. Fortunately for Britain and thanks to the courage of Margaret Thatcher, both tax rates and the power of labor unions were reduced in later years.
My advice today about the Employee Free Choice Act is the same as I gave in England: You better fight to stop this undemocratic bill. I’m not the only one who thinks the proposed law violates long-established principles of democracy. In these pages, George McGovern, a former Democratic senator and a champion of organized labor, called this bill what it really is — “a disturbing and undemocratic overreach not in the interest of either management or labor.”
Read the rest of this entry »
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August 26, 2008 - 1:29 am - Posted by WTH
This just gets better and better. You’ll recall our recent focus on the abuse of funds and influence peddling by California Service Employee International Union (SEIU) head Tyrone Freeman being investigated in depth by the L.A.Times and how Mr. Freeman has been funneling union contracts to his family members. Now a related investigation in Michigan has revealed that one of Freeman’s former associates has had to step down from a Michigan SEIU post because of similar financial misdeeds there.
Once again the L.A. Times is the source for this sad tale of union bosses abusing the power so blindly handed them by the rank and file.
It appears that Rickman Jackson, former chief of staff for the California organization headed by Tyrone Freeman, had to step down from a Michigan SEIU local when it was discovered that he and Freeman had set up a shady housing corporation that was improperly getting business from Freeman’s California organization.
Both departures followed reports in The Times that the local and a related charity paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to firms owned by the wife and mother-in-law of its president, Tyrone Freeman, and spent similar sums on a Four Seasons Resorts golf tournament, restaurants such as Morton’s steakhouse, a Beverly Hills cigar lounge and a Hollywood talent agency.
The Times also disclosed that a housing corporation Freeman helped launch used the address of a Bell Gardens home that property records show is owned by Jackson. Freeman, Jackson and housing corporation representatives have declined to say whether Jackson was paid for any use of his residence.
This scandal is getting bigger by the week.
For his part, SEIU President Andy Stern claims to be shocked by all these illicit actions of his protege, Freeman and his web of corruption.
Stern has used the cover of this scandal to move against one of his chief rivals in his own union by announcing that the officers under Sal Rosselli will be dismissed and his local put in trusteeship by the SEIU’s national offices.
The president of the Oakland organization, Sal Rosselli, denied the allegations Monday. He said the trusteeship move was an attempt to deflect attention from the spending inquiry in Los Angeles and now Michigan, and to punish him for fighting the 2-year-old proposal to transfer his members to Freeman’s local.
So, on top of exposing the corruption of Freeman and his associates and relatives, we find Andy Stern indulging in his favorite pass time as iron-fisted SEIU ruler from the top down.
Scandals to the right of me, scandals to the left of me, into the valley of tyrants rides the president of the SEIU!
Go on over to the L.A. Times for all the dirt.
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August 25, 2008 - 8:22 am - Posted by WTH
The kids at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill feel like they’ve been used and discarded by Andy Stern’s Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and they aren’t happy about it. They are so upset they’ve issued an open letter to the SEIU to air their grievances… not that it’ll matter much.
It seems that the SEIU swooped onto several college campuses and encouraged student activists to organize college foodservice workers and then, assuring the kiddies that all their work was a worthy effort, quietly worked with the colleges NOT to organize the same workers that the kids thought they were enrolling in a union.
At that point the student groups got a tad upset that all their energies went for nothing and who can blame them? After all, they thought that they were striking a blow for “the workers” against those evil “corporate slave masters” in their typically naive, young idealistic enthusiasm.
Some of you readers out there may be a tad confused at this point. Why would the SEIU, one of the most powerful unions in the county, seem to mislead these naive kids and refuse to organize supposedly willing new members? Well, its all a piece with SEIU President Andy Stern’s newest tactic wherein the union works closer with the employer to determine who will be “allowed’ to organize and who will not.
Stern’s process has been to act a little less antagonistic with potential new corporations that might find their employees come under the SEIU’s wing. The SEIU has made many closed door, back room deals with potential corporate members, deals that few of their potential or existing members are allowed to be a part of because these deals are made at the highest level of the SEIU.
The deal is that the SEIU will organize a certain section of a corporation’s workforce, but agree with the corporation not to organize others. The SEIU also agrees not to allow the local unions to enter into scorched earth, vitriolic campaigns against the corporate heads.
What’s in it for the union? Well, for one thing new membership has greatly enlarged for the SEIU. It has also made organizing quite a bit easier and less contentious. The union grows with less pain, the employers seem to feel more a member of the union team and are less antagonistic… seems like a win, win, right?
Wrong. See, to complete these secret back room deals, the locals are completely cut out of the negotiations. And this is what happened to the kids. They were not included in the back room deals that assured several college campuses that their workers would not be included in the new membership enrollments.
So, all the kid’s efforts were left ignored causing these young activists to feel used and abused. This is the same feeling that union locals all across the country have been feeling as the SEIU national office in Washington D.C. has undercut their efforts and swept in behind the scenes to cut secret deals as per Andy Stern’s agenda.
It turns out that these kids are learning a rough lesson that politics isn’t beanbag. They are also finding that there is no pure ideology in activism and compromise will happen no matter how “righteous” they think their little cause is.
Of course, it is quite amusing that a union has forged ahead with a top down, iron-fisted mode of leadership, completely cutting out the local organizations. This tactic seems to be a reflection of the top down, corporate leadership that unions constantly claim makes the business sector so anti-worker, doesn’t it?
Stern’s action rightfully seem heretical to most rank and file union members. But, in the end, if the SEIU gets as powerful as Andy Stern imagines in his wildest dreams they might, who doesn’t realize that all these tender tactics will be thrown in the dustbin and the usual, thuggish, union behavior will once again become de rigueur.
In other words, Stern is playing for chumps every corporation that works with him under these delicate new rules. They are laying the groundwork for their own demise as Stern slyly builds his trap.
Still, Stern’s is a cynical and anti-intuitive agenda and it is worrying most union rank and file organizers. Stern’s gambit could reap a bounty or the whirlwind. I’m rootin’ for the later.
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August 23, 2008 - 1:00 am - Posted by WTH
With more on the card check battle, we have a rally against Unions set up in Portland, Maine where members of the SEIU and the AFL-CIO confronted the pro-choice advocates in a typically uncivil, even threatening, union manner. One union thug even turned over a display table, trying to prevent the pro-choice folks from setting up their displays.
From reports from the scene (video here), the union thugs spat upon the pro-choicers, swore at them and generally impeded their ability to engage in free and fair debate.
John Henke, From a participant at the rally, described what was endured.
I just came from a press conference held by the US Chamber of Commerce in conjunction with the Maine State Chamber of Commerce. It was held in Portland and dealt with the EFCA [Employee Free Choice Act - i.e., Card Check]. …
After the news conference we went on the US Chambers special bus to Monument Square in the center of Portland. There were at least 75 union members holding a protest rally against the Chamber and in support of the EFCA. The interesting thing is the protest was organized by the Maine Democratic Party.
There were about 15 of us on the bus and nobody wanted to get off, so I led the way. We were heckled, swore at, and called some names. One of the young ladies from the chamber tried to set up some tables and put leaflets and information on it and the protesters kicked the tables over on the lady who was not hurt. …
[T]his protest is exactly why businesses have to work to defeat this bill. When you disagree with organized labor they resort to bullying, intimidation, and peer pressure. Why would any business want to subject their employees to that type of intimidation and bullying …
All, in all, pretty much what we expect from violence prone unions. And the fact that it was the Maine Democratic Party that organized the union thugs must not go without notice. If this sort of behavior isn’t a perfect example of why unions and their lapdogs in the Democratic Party are against democracy and our business community (you know, that business community that makes this country one of the strongest economies in the world?) then nothing does. It also shows what will happen to people who want the American freedom of being able to chose for themselves should unions get even more power.
Again, I remind one and all, that Barack Obama is in favor of giving unions untrammeled power to intimidate workers, eliminate the ages old democratic process of the secret ballot, and cause our businesses to further fall behind the rest of the world in competitiveness. And from the thuggish behavior we’ve seen in Portland, we can see what is in store for us should Obama win the White House.
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