-By Warner Todd Huston
We’ve been reporting that it looked like the Service Employees International Union was going to ignore past President Andy Stern’s pick of Anna Burger to be ushered in as his replacement and would instead pick Mary Kay Henry for its new president.
Well, that has come to pass. It is now official that Mary Kay Henry is the new SEIU president.
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It’s Official, Henry New SEIU Prez”
-By Resa LaRu Kirkland
One party shouted chants, the other shouted profanities. One party questioned with boldness, the other grabbed its crotch. One party spoke with clarity, courage, and the Constitution, the other threw bottles and food at the policemen who were there to protect them.
One party flew the American flag with joy, the other flew the Mexican flag with menace.
Yep, we are now a two-party people: The pro-American Tea Party, and the anti-American Tequila Party.
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Tea Party, Meet the Tequila Party – The Rule of Law vs. the Law of Rule”
-By Warner Todd Huston
Nothing says Washington crookedness like a congressman slipping a clause into a bill that has absolutely nothing whatever to do with the main purpose of the legislation. Here we have just another cynical, corrupt bargain made in Washington D.C. with the effort of Henry Waxman (D, Ca) who slipped a little clause into the Wall Street “Reform” bill that is little else but an attack on the healthfood industry. This provision would give Congress more control over all health supplements and vitamins in America and likely lead to many of these businesses shutting their doors.
So often Congress acts like the little kid with his mom in the grocery store. While mom is putting fruits, vegetables, milk, and good marbled beef into the shopping cart, the bratty kid is throwing candy and toys made in China into the basket when he thinks mom isn’t looking. Congress is, of course, the bratty kids of our system. And they need a good whipping.
The Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2009 (H.R. 4173), was passed by the House and is now in the Senate waiting for that body to take action. But while this law is supposed to be saving our economy, Rep. Waxman seems more interested in destroying the country’s vitamin stores. And to that end, he slipped into this economics bill more regulations on the dietary supplement industry.
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Rep. Waxman Slips in ‘Bad Vitamin’ clause into Wall Street Reform Bill”
-By Warner Todd Huston
Apparently all one need do to cause Police and Firemen and their union supporters to violate their oath to protect the citizenry these days is to question their union. Union thugs in California proved that to be true in Napa Valley last week when a local business owner had the temerity to exercise his free political speech in a letter to the editor that was published by the St. Helena Star newspaper.
In the letter, Napa Valley Winery owner Dario Sattui of V. Sattui Winery made the mistake of “venting” about the overly generous union contracts that the public employees of his town had “negotiated” with compliant, left-wing politicians.
“I thought I was doing well in the wine business. Had I had any real brains I would have become a firefighter. What a racket they have. While I respect the work they do and the inherent dangers, they are greatly overpaid, work only two days a week (a third of which they sleep) and get to retire at 50 years old at 90 percent of their pay after working 30 years. I don’t blame the firefighters. Good for them for getting as much as they can. The blame goes to the politicians and the government administrators. What do they care? It isn’t their money.”
In response cops and firemen in California, or their supporters at the very least, let him know that they hoped his business would be destroyed both economically AND by fire. So much for these “public servants” and their oath to protect the public.
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Unionists Threaten CA Business Owner Over His Letter to the Editor”
-By Warner Todd Huston
Once again we see that anything that Obama says has an expiration date. In 2006, then Senator Obama was a tough guy on illegal aliens. Flash forward to 2010 when he wants desperately to find an issue with which he can beat up on Republicans, suddenly Barack Obama pretends to be every illegal alien’s buddy.
In 2006 an illegal alien named Elvira Arellano was discovered working illegally in Chicago. She escaped going into the custody of ICE officials and ended up hiding in a law breaking Catholic Church in Chicago. She was eventually apprehended and deported as she should have been. But before that happened this lawbreaker made a special plea to the two U.S. Senators in Illinois. Barack Obama was one of them.
He rejected her pleas saying, “We live in a country of laws. We don’t do things sort of based on, you know, one person’s situation.”
Thanks to the ever alert Naked Emperor News…
Oh, a tough guy was he. Yep, just another Obama “principle” that was conveniently thrown away when Obama needs a new one to fit his new political needs.
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Obama Tough Guy On Illegal Immigration! That Was Then…”
-By Warner Todd Huston
Earlier this morning I said that it looked like former Service Employees International Union head Andy Stern’s handpicked replacement wasn’t going to succeed her Svengali. Looks like that was correct.
As reported by the Wall Street Journal’s John Fund, the new SEIU head is Mary Kay Henry as we discussed earlier.
Now, we wait to see if the SEIU withdraws a bit from the national scene and again begins to cast its eyes inward as many think will happen under Mz. Henry’s leadership. Time will tell.
-By Warner Todd Huston
Pictured: Barack Obama; Henry Nicholas;
Anna Burger; Andy Stern
Not long ago, Service Employees International Union (SEIU) President Andy Stern abruptly resigned from his powerful position and we still aren’t sure why. But as he headed for the exit, Stern recommended his long-time confidante and current SEIU Secretary-Treasurer, Anna Burger, to be his replacement. But shockingly it is beginning to look as if Stern’s druthers will not win the day.
Andy Stern has been one of the most powerful union leaders in America for a long time. Along with Burger, Stern was one of the most frequent visitors to Barack Obama’s White House, he’s spent years gobbling up smaller unions and placing them under the thumb of the SEIU with the result that his union has grown exponentially, and he’s succeeded in insinuating his union into the bowels of just about every state and local government office in the country. He’s wielded the power of multi-million dollar political campaign donation funds and has been involved at the highest level in U.S. labor policy. He was even named to Barack Obama’s Deficit Reduction Commission tasked with finding out ways to restructure federal budgeting.
I have my suspicions as to why he’s so suddenly stepped down (I spoke about those suspicions here) but what is beyond doubt is that Andy Stern has held in his hands an awful lot of power as the head of the SEIU. So it is a bit shocking to learn that his handpicked replacement might not be the shoo-in that might otherwise have been imagined.
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Stern’s Handpicked Replacement Not as Strong as Advertised”
-By Warner Todd Huston
Until recently, Andy Stern was the President of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), a union that has served as one of President Obama’s biggest donors as well as filling the ranks of his ground troops. In a surprise move, Stern resigned his post this month and no one is really sure why at this point.
Andy Stern has been one of the closest union chiefs to a president in history. Along with SEIU treasurer Anna Burger, he was one of the most frequent visitors to the White House. He was even chosen by President Obama to serve on his Deficit Reduction Commission — a sort of contradiction in terms that.
Upon his resignation, it has been learned that Andy Stern’s leadership of the SEIU has not brought financial solvency. As F. Vincent Vernuccio reports in the Washington Times, Stern has left the SEIU in pretty shabby shape.
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Andy Stern: Union Chief Fleeing Ahead of Illinois Indictment?”
-By Warner Todd Huston
For the Washington Post’s Post Partisan Blog Charles Lane’s somewhat irreverent, perhaps even dismissive treatment of the admittedly quixotic Senate campaign of journalist Mickey Kaus painted the would-be candidate as a union fighter. Interestingly, he isn’t far off the mark, which is odd for the fact that Kaus is a pretty straight down the line liberal.
Could Mickey Kaus be the “harbinger” of a new, mildly anti-union Democrat that might replace the sold out, in-the-back-pocket sort of Democrats we’ve seen for decades and decades?
Recently City Journal writer Steve Malanga wrote a great piece detailing how the public employees unions are killing California. “The unions’ political triumphs,” Malanga wrote, “have molded a California in which government workers thrive at the expense of a struggling private sector.”
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Mickey Kaus, Union Fighter?”
-By Warner Todd Huston
In the late morning hours of April 21 dozens of rented buses streamed into Springfield, the Illinois capitol, and began spewing out hundreds of tax-gorged union thugs. It was as if the Illinois Hog Producers association had pulled up to the capitol and thrown wide the doors to their livestock carriers.
Some estimates say the unionists mounted some 15,000 participants all there to wave their professionally printed signs and wear their gang colors… er, I mean wearing their T-Shirts bearing their union’s signature colors.
And what did they want? They wanted the Illinois legislature to raise taxes on everyone in the state so that those few union members could get even more undeserved bennies, richer pay scales and even higher pensions than anyone in the private sector could ever expect — all things they already enjoy.
But, a protest is all American, right? These guys are just like the tea partiers, aren’t they?
Not so much.
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Union Thugs at Capitol Demand Illinois Gov’t ‘Raise Our Taxes’”
-By Warner Todd Huston
A few weeks ago several British civil service unions launched a two-day strike over cuts in severance pay that the government authorized for workers that were let go because of reductions in the government work force (called a “redundancy cut”).
The cap in “redundancy pay,” said British government unions, could see workers losing a third of their “entitlement.”
Government officials said that the new pay scheme could save the government £500 million. Starting in April “anyone earning £30,000 or less will be entitled to a maximum of three years’ pay or £60,000, whichever is lower.”
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Brit Union Strike Over Severance Pay Might Soon Hit in U.S.”
-By Warner Todd Huston
Steve Malanga of City journal has a great piece detailing how California’s public employee unions are destroying that once great state.
Malanga starts by repeating the ominous warning to the politicos at the state capitol in Sacramento made by a Service Employees International Union chief. “We helped to get you into office and we got a good memory” the official said on to California’s pols. “Come November, if you don’t back our program, we’ll get you out of office.”
To me this is reminiscent of the warning by the old Soviet Union’s Nikita Kruchev who said that “we will bury you.” Only, the SEIU has far more power to bury our governments than the old Soviets had!
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How Unions Are Destroying California”
-By Warner Todd Huston
On April 19, House Republican Whip Eric Cantor and Illinois Congressman Peter Roskam joined Fox News Chicago to talk jobs and the economy. The anchor brought up the claim made by many in the chattering classes that the GOP is just the “party of no.” Roskam had a great come back for this dismissal of the GOP’s principled stance against Obama’s socialist-like attack on our political system.
-By Warner Todd Huston
Why is it that lefties always get history wrong? The Jewish World Review recently published an editorial by NPR commentator Cokie Roberts and her hubby meant to urge the country toward “comprehensive” immigration reform by praising America’s history of immigrant labor. But even as much of what the two Roberts say is dead on, there are still a few glaring errors one of which is their claim that Japanese internment during WWII was an immigration issue.
Cokie, whose full name is a mouthful — Mary Martha Corinne Morrison Claiborne Boggs — garbled history at the tail of her piece by saying that the internment of Japanese during WWII was little but “anti-immigrant sentiment.”
American history has been scarred by outbursts of anti-immigrant sentiment… In the 1940s, we interned Japanese-Americans living on the West Coast.
But this is an absurd statement to make. Japanese Americans were not interned into holding camps during WWII merely because they were immigrants, it was because their distant fellow Japanese relatives were at war with us. In fact, Franklin Roosevelt also interned Germans and Italians in similar camps, though in lesser numbers, because he was worried that they might be enemies within. This was no “anti-immigrant sentiment,” it was war. Right or wrong, it was war.
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Cokie Roberts: Japanese Internment Was an Immigration Issue?”
-By Warner Todd Huston
According to The Politico, Andy Stern, the President of the Service Employees International Union, is resigning his post.
The news come to Politico from the President of an SEIU local based in Seattle, Diane Sosne. Politico is taking her word as true.
No reason for the resignation is known and Stern has yet to actually make an official announcement.
I expect that Stern is moving to some position in the Obama Administration. Remember that Stern was the number one most frequent visitor to the White House.
More news as it becomes known…
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Breaking News: SEIU’s Stern Resigning”
From the U.S. Chamber Institute for Legal Reform…
Illinois’ reputation for lawsuit abuse hurts our jobs climate.
The last thing we need are measures in Springfield that would encourage trial lawyers to file more lawsuits.
So then why are our state legislators considering a law that would do just that?
This wrongheaded bill (S.B. 3322) would legimitize a new “lawsuit lending” industry in Illinois — creating new “lawsuit loan sharks” who loan money to help people file lawsuits.
More Illinois lawsuits? That’s the last thing we need.
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Illinois Lawsuit Loan Sharks? Stop This Latest Trial Lawyer Bill”
-By Warner Todd Huston
On a panel talking about immigration on April 6, 2010, union chief Gerry Hudson of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) said that his white union members are “so fuc_ing rabidly racist” that is scares him.
I am also a bit amused that this nut is shocked that there is “significant worker opposition to comprehensive immigration reform.” I mean, isn’t that logical? Union workers are afraid that this flood of illegals will take all their jobs away from them! It seems like a “Duh!” to me and I don’t understand why he doesn’t get that? Hudson is so sold out to the Democratic agenda that he doesn’t even understand his own members. The man fails utterly as a union representative.
-By Warner Todd Huston
The Hill Newspaper is reporting that unions are “amping up” for a battle against America’s big banks when Congress is next in session. Uniopns want Congress to institute financial regulatory reform because they feel that banks need to be “held accountable.”
The first thought that comes to mind is to wonder when Congress will ever hold unions accountable for anything! Perhaps unions should avoid throwing stones in that glass house of theirs!
Service Employees International Union (SEIU) head Anna Burger railed against the “greedy actions of the financial industry” and announced that the SEIU was scheduling protests against banks in San Francisco, Kansas City, Charlotte and on Wall Street.
It is a hoot to see the SEIU saying that other people are “greedy.” Seriously. A union thug railing against other’s greed! It’s just a hypocrisy beyond belief.
The SEIU is also upset at the executive pay of several bankers. One wonders that if the SEIU is so against high salaries, when they will cut the salaries of their own chiefs that make hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars a year?
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Pot Calling the Kettle… Unions Say Banks are Corrupt”
-By Warner Todd Huston
The state is abuzz with the announcement by former Illinois Governor Jim Edgar that he is now in favor of amnesty for illegal immigrants. At a press conference sponsored by the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant Rights, Edgar came out to chastise Republicans for fighting against illegal alien lawbreaking.
During the event, Edgar said that the GOP is making a big mistake to seem so antithetical toward immigrants and that immigrants have “brought a vitality to the Illinois economy.”
He went on for sometime about how wonderful immigrants are and that we need to work toward “comprehensive immigration reform.” It is easy to assume that Edgar wants total amnesty. But does he?
Sadly, Edgar was full of wonderful platitudes and kind words for illegals, but he was a far sight short of any actual policy suggestions. What did he mean to do with all these illegals? He just didn’t say.
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Ex-Gov Edgar Roots For Amnesty for Illegals”
-By Warner Todd Huston
No posts have emerged from me today because I was away for most of the day witnessing the Tea Party Express as it rolled into rolled into Rockford, Illinois.
Rockford is situated about 90 miles west (and a bit north) of Chicago in Northern Illinois. It’s a region that has been hit particularly hard by this recession and has the highest unemployment rate in a state that has one of the highest unemployment rates in the country.
The Tea Party Express is ranging across the country in an effort to keep the Tea Party spirit alive. If you want to find out if the Tea Party Express is coming to a town near you, check out the itinerary at www.teapartyexpress.org.
The Rockford Tea Party folks had hoped to get 1,000 Illinoisans to attend their rally, but there was at least 2,000 that actually came (some say 3,000) so they most certainly met their goals. These were some great Constitution-loving Americans that were very concerned about the downward direction that their country is taking. These people were worried, of course, but all seemed buoyed by their shared fellowship in patriotism. These are all great Americans. With citizens like this, we may yet bring our nation back from the brink of the leftism that is destroying Europe… unless Obama, his regime and their co-conspirators can help it.
The pre-event was held by the Rockford Tea Party folks (www.rockfordteaparty.org). And they had a nice line-up of local Illinois pols and political folks.
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Tea Party Express Hits Rockford, Illinois”
-By Warner Todd Huston
Despite all our talk of CommieObamie being a socialist, it is a straight out fact that the far left in America are mad that Obama didn’t turn us into the U.S.S.R. lite the second he took office. His pace at selling us out and turning us into a social democratic system ala France isn’t happening fast enough for them. For unions the fact that Obama hasn’t summarily castrated the business community and forced card check down everyone’s throats yet is a downer. And with that in mind, unions have announced that they are taking their ire out on those mythical “Blue Dog” Democrats that are trying to run for reelection in conservative districts in the upcoming midterms.
Friend to the blog David Denholm gave us a delicious example of this cutting off of the Democratic nose to spite the union’s face going on in Pensylvania’s 17th Congressional District.
There the AFL-CIO is refusing to support “Blue Dog” Tim Holden. Why? Because he voted “no” on Obama’s take over of American healthcare, that’s why. Ridiculously enough, Pennsylvania’s AFL-CIO front man, Bill George said that Holden has “been good to us on a number of bread-and-butter issues,” but that they have refused to support him because Obamacare was a “revolutionary, historical vote.”
Viva la Revelucion.
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Unions Cutting off Noses To Spite Their Faces”
The good folks at Reason Magazine strike again…
From the Hayes for Congress campaign (2nd District)…
CHICAGO – The Republican Nominee for Illinois 2nd Congressional District Isaac Hayes released the following statement today:
“For the past year, Americans have suffered the collateral damage of unemployment due to a deaf ear from partisan ideologues who were more concerned with taking over the health care industry than putting people back to work. Still it appears Democrats haven’t gotten the message as they are now seeking to take over the energy industry. This administration’s number one priority should be jobs, jobs, jobs. Americans recognize this political power grab at their expense and they will deliver pink slips to Congressional Democrats in November.”
For more information on Isaac Hayes’ run, please go to: www.isaac4honesty.com
The good folks at the Free Enterprise Alliance has launched a new site to encourage people to join the effort to stop this out-of-control, anti-jobs, anti-business climate that President Obama and the Democrats are ginning up in America today.
So, pass the site around to those like-minded folks that want to stop intrusive government. Let pro-business folks everywhere know that this site has been launched and let’s
-By Warner Todd Huston
Mark Hemingway of the Washington Examiner had another piece on Obama’s appointee to the National Labor Relations Board, union hack Craig Becker. Hemingway wrote about Becker’s past articles ripping the worker’s rights group National Right to Work and wondered if Becker could be fair to them now that he’s in a position to adjudicate between them and big labor?
One does not hold out much hope for Becker to be fair, though.
Hemingway reminds us that the NRW is involved in a lot of worker’s disputes with labor and Becker has attacked them mercilessly in past opinion pieces and appearances. Apparently he’s called them the “anti-union fringe” and are “ideologically driven” (as if Becker isn’t??).
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Obama’s Appointee Has Attacked Worker’s Right Group”
-By Peter List
Yesterday, President Obama recess-appointed SEIU and AFL-CIO attorney Craig Becker, along with union attorney Mark Pearce to the National Labor Relations Board, making the “bi-partisan” board a tool of union bosses.
[NLRB Chairman Wilma Liebman is an attorney formerly employed by the Teamsters and Bricklayers’ unions.]
With only one Republican Board member to three union-friendly Board members, even a modicum of “neutrality” on the Board is finished.
The following is a round-up from around the web [my emphasis added throughout]:
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Putting Employers ‘Out of Their Misery:’ A Round-up on the New Union-Controlled NLRB”
-By Warner Todd Huston
Immigration is a difficult issue for conservatives these days. It is fraught with emotions and passionate feelings. Whenever someone tries to discuss the issue dispassionately, the old canard of “no true Scotsman” is employed against them. But conservatives need to continue to have this discussion and get their ducks in a row on the issue because the other side has a successful call to arms that we need to prove wrong. It is too easy for the left to claim that it has “compassion” for immigrants and we don’t. We need to pull the debate away from faux “compassion” and toward the facts.
On the right we have at least two main ideas about immigration. Some want open borders and easy employment for immigrants so that business has a quick and constant source of low-priced labor. These business-oriented conservatives (some might call them country club Republicans) are less interested in social issues and more interested in money and economic growth. Opposing the open borders folks are those that might be called nativists, those that feel America should not have a wide open border and that America is for Americans. The extremes of these positions are on one hand not following our immigration laws and on the other making race-based, cultural-warfare arguments. But there is a path to reconcile the two extremes.
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Let’s Get Serious About Immigration, Conservatives”
-By Warner Todd Huston
President Obama is determined to misuse his office to payoff unions and to that end he has given union goon Craig Becker a recess appointment as the head of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), the agency tasked with implementing fair and responsible federal rules to govern labor and employers.
The U.S. Chamber of commerce has slammed Obama’s appointment of union hack Becker to such an important position. The Chamber was disgusted by Obama’s actions. According to The Hill the Chamber slammed the decision because it “‘disregards the Senate’s bipartisan rejection’ of Becker and ‘contradicts the president’s claim to change the tone in Washington,’ said Randel K. Johnson, the chamber’s senior vice president of Labor, Immigration and Employee Benefits.”
“This is the first time since 1993 that the Chamber has opposed a nominee to the NLRB,” Johnson said. “The Chamber’s opposition is based on Mr. Becker’s prolific writings, which suggest a radical view of labor law that flies in the face of established precedent and case law and is far outside the mainstream.”
Now unions can likely expect Becker to re-write NLRB rules to allow the things that unions want to get implemented even though Congress has in a bi-partisan manner refused to do so thus far. Obama is, in other words, warping our process, subverting Congress, and using back doors to get his radical, left-wing agenda passed above the desires of the people’s representatives and the will of the voters.
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Union Hack Becker Gets Recess Appointment”
-By Warner Todd Huston
This weekend President Obama implemented a recess appointment for Craig Becker to head the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).
On January 8th, 2001, Becker told a radio audience that he was a supporter of American businesses hiring undocumented, illegal aliens.
The man that will be implementing rules to govern labor relations in America is a supporter of breaking America’s labor laws to hire illegal workers.
… and Barack Obama’s radical agenda rolls ever onward.
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Obama’s Appointee Supports U.S. Business Hiring Illegal Aliens”
-By Warner Todd Huston
My friend Lennie Jarratt was featured on Fox News Chicago last night. The subject was the $85 billion dollar deficit that the Illinois finds its public employee pensions confronted with. Fox News reports that every Illinois citizen would have to fork over $6,600 to instantly solve the problem. And what has caused this problem? Unions.
Lennie has some great lines in this piece and he’s right on. He is right that education in America has become “legalized theft.” Here are some of his main points:
Illinois isn’t the only state in this union-made morass. Nearly every state in the union is in this mess.
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Fox News Chicago Digging Deeper on Illinois Pension Mess”