Socialism

00Publius Contributor - Democrats/Leftists - Education - Elections - Entertainment - Media Bias - News - Socialism - Society/Culture - Warner Todd Huston

Kid Rock: Entertainers Should ‘Keep Their Mouths Shut on Politics’

August 27, 2008 by 4 Comments

-By Warner Todd Huston

Read it and weep, Dixie Chicks. Shove it Bruce Springsteen. Put a sock in it Johnny Cougar Mellencamp. Because, in a refreshing change of pace for the entertainment industry, Kid Rock is telling CMT Insider via People Magazine that entertainers should stay quiet on matters political.

How many times have you seen the uninformed blather of some goof from Hollywood, or some crank from the music industry filling your TV screen or oozing from your radio? How many low brow maestros have had your eyes rolling when they imagine themselves to have some prescient insight into matters of politics? Apparently rock singer Kid Rock is signing onto your piquancy because he has said that singers should just shut up about politics.

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00Publius Contributor - Communism - Crime - Democrats/Leftists - News - Socialism - Society/Culture - Unions - Warner Todd Huston

Calif. SEIU Funds Abuse Spreads to Mich.

August 27, 2008 by

-By Warner Todd Huston

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.

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00Publius Contributor - Budget - Congress - Democrats/Leftists - Economy/Finances - Media Bias - News - Socialism - Society/Culture - Taxes - Warner Todd Huston

Reuters

August 26, 2008 by

-By Warner Todd Huston

Reuters thinks that tax breaks and loopholes “costs” government its tax receipts. This is a perfect example of class hatred ginned up by the media to further class warfare between Americans. The absolute truth is that if people use the tax code to limit their tax burden they are not costing the government anything, but are using legal means to avoid a higher tax burden. Further, our money is NOT the government’s property in the first place so a lower tax take is in no way “costing” the government anything. Yet, Reuters still uses this class warfare rhetoric to report its story revealing its attack-the-rich agenda.

The Reuters headline employs the class warfare rhetoric right off the top screaming, Tax loopholes seen costing billions annually. “Costing”? No, if tax receipts are lower it isn’t because people are depriving government of due receipts. Again, it is because taxpayers are obeying the law and properly using the tax code as crated by Congress. If there are loopholes in the tax code they were placed there by Congress, whether wittingly or unwittingly, but still it

00Publius Contributor - Business - Communism - Democrats/Leftists - News - Socialism - Society/Culture - Unions - Warner Todd Huston

Union Disses the Kids

August 26, 2008 by 1 Comment

-By Warner Todd Huston

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.

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00Publius Contributor - Communism - Constitution - Democrats/Leftists - History - News - Patriotism - President - Security/Safety - Socialism - Society/Culture - Thomas Brewton

Thomas Paine and the Values of 1776

August 26, 2008 by

-By Thomas E. Brewton

Paine’s ideology was the antithesis of the ethos that produced our Constitution.

Responding to A View From the Left, Kenneth T. Ellis wrote:

Mr. Brewton,

As a member of the Thomas Paine Assn. I am appalled when I see what has happened to the U.S. and its downtrodden masses.

These words by Thomas Paine should ring out loud and clear to every American that today is in want.

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00Publius Contributor - Business - Crime - Democrats/Leftists - Economy/Finances - Media Bias - News - Socialism - Society/Culture - Unions - Warner Todd Huston

More On Union Thug Tyrone Freeman

August 24, 2008 by

-By The Heritage Foundation

With continuing coverage of the Tyrone Freeman investigations (see Here and Here) in L.A., here is an entry from the Heritage Foundation Daily Bell updating us.

Can Our Economy Afford More Union Corruption?

The president of California’s largest union local, the 160,000-member Service Employees International Union (SEIU) in Los Angeles, yesterday announced he would take a leave of absence and the local would be placed in a temporary trusteeship. Tyrone Freeman’s departure comes after an in-depth series of Los Angeles Times articles detailing how Freeman fleeced union members — who make about $9 an hour caring for the infirm and disabled — of over $1 million in 2006 and 2007 alone.

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00Publius Contributor - Communism - Democrats/Leftists - Media Bias - Military - News - President - Security/Safety - Socialism - Society/Culture - Warner Todd Huston

LATimes Brooks Thinks Russia/Georgia War is Funny

August 23, 2008 by

-By Warner Todd Huston

The L.A. Times’ Rosa Brooks has done it again, taken a serious subject and made an uninformed romp of it. One wonders how the old Georgian lady seen in news photos standing wounded among the ruins of her apartment building, or the Georgian Mother running down the street, infant in her arms, trying to escape Russian tanks might feel about the humor with which Brooks brings to bear upon their plight? But, there it is for all to see in Brooks’ “The Cold War, reheated” wherein Brooks puts the funny back in war. It’s been too serious for too long for Brooks, apparently. We need the sunny side of ethnic cleansing, brutal invasion, and crushing occupation, don’t we?

Oh, and let’s not forget the skewed history, incorrect conclusions, and partisan inanities that Brooks blurted out with her little attempt at “Springtime for Gorbachev.” Only with this production, Brooks is seriously trying to absolve the U.S.S.R.

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00Publius Contributor - Democrats/Leftists - Media Bias - News - Security/Safety - Socialism - Society/Culture - Thomas Brewton

Can Senator Obama Talk Us Out of This One?

August 23, 2008 by

-By Thomas E. Brewton

Talk, they say, is cheap. And generally worth no more than it costs, when confronting international military aggression.

Senator Obama’s eagerness for face-to-face meetings with foreign dictators, without preconditions, echoes Senator John Kerry’s “sensitive” foreign policy enunciated in the 2004 presidential election campaign:

Last Thursday, Kerry told minority journalists at the Unity 2004 conference in Washington that “I believe I can fight a more effective, more thoughtful, more strategic, more proactive, more sensitive war on terror that reaches out to other nations and brings them to our side.

That approach failed in the 1930s with the League of Nations and failed repeatedly with the UN after World War II. Why should we be surprised that it makes no impression upon the Russians today?
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00Publius Contributor - Business - Congress - Democrats/Leftists - Economy/Finances - Media Bias - News - Security/Safety - Socialism - Society/Culture - Warner Todd Huston

Union Tries to Interfere in Petition Results, Fails

August 18, 2008 by

-By Warner Todd Huston

Denver right-to-work balloters won a small victory last week when a judge accepted the legitimacy of the gathered signatures on their ballot effort by tossing out a nuisance lawsuit brought against them by unions.

The union representatives sought to have more than the legally required amount of petition signatures verified hoping to have Amendment 47 thrown out. But Judge Christina Habas said she had no authority to do so.

Judge Christina Habas ruled Wednesday that she doesn’t have the authority to review every signature submitted by the right-to-work group. State law limits the court’s jurisdiction to the random sample reviewed by the Colorado secretary of state’s office, she said.

The Judge determined that the Colorado Secretary of State followed the proper procedures to verify the signatures on the ballots and therefore Amendment 47, a move to ban forced paying of union dues, is legal and correct.

Amendment 47 spokesman Kelley Harp said Thursday the ruling shows that the allegations are “frivolous.”

It goes to show that unions will go to any lengths from intimidation, to threats, to any manner of nuisance lawsuits to thwart the ability of people to democratically vote and have their voices heard.

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00Publius Contributor - Communism - Democrats/Leftists - Media Bias - Nancy Salvato - News - Security/Safety - Socialism - Society/Culture

Censorship May Open Our Eyes to China

August 17, 2008 by

-By Nancy Salvato

Reporters charged with covering the Olympics are now whining about “not knowing what they will be able to cover and not knowing how much the Chinese government will censor their online coverage.” (1)

The fact that the mainstream media is even remotely surprised at a Communist Government not allowing complete freedom of the press is laughable, irrespective of the fact that China promised them complete freedom to report on the events after this one party state was awarded the honor of hosting the Olympics. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung is absolutely right when it reminds folks that the Chinese government is “only doing what authoritarian and dictatorial regimes always do.” (2)

Those reporters who dominate the mainstream media are finally getting a small taste of what it feels like to navigate the barriers set up by a country that limits their liberty to speak their mind. The New Media writers have been all too aware that the continuing erosion of our own country’s freedoms in the name of political correctness has been steadily subsuming our constitutional rights for years now. Many writers plying their craft in the New Media are used to their message not being published by agenda driven mainstream papers. A substantial number of people who rely on the New Media for the news have long recognized that the sovereignty of our people is being subsumed by the one world agenda being preached by the socialist left and echoed by the alphabet network lemmings. The hours spent identifying and exposing the prejudices embedded in the mainstream coverage of the issues has well honed the analytical skills of New Media writers.

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00Publius Contributor - Business - Democrats/Leftists - Economy/Finances - Elections - Media Bias - News - Socialism - Society/Culture - Unions - Warner Todd Huston

Obama’s Dangerous Sop to Unions

August 15, 2008 by

-By Warner Todd Huston

Donald Lambro had a great piece warning about the promises that Barack Obama has quietly made to the nation’s unions on August 8. Of course, we have talked about it many times here on the blog, but the union’s “card check” plan in their so-called “Employee Free Choice Act” is a bad, bad bit of policy that would deprive union members of one of the oldest benefits of a democracy: the secret ballot.

Lambro does remind us of Obama’s union promises, but he makes two great points that I have not really seen discussed.

Firstly, Lambro mentions that Obama’s union support has been quiet.

Obama doesn’t talk about this issue much before general audiences, but it his No. 1 promise when he speaks to unions — pledging that the so-called Employee Free Choice Act will become law in 2009 if he wins the presidency in November.

Unlike past candidates, Barack Obama has not used his union support very obviously in stump speeches. Its as if he is trying to hide from the general voting public his union support. This is an interesting observation.

Secondly, Lambro brings out a singular fact that should be talked about more often.

The House passed the card-check bill last year, but when it went to the Senate, it fell nine votes short of the 60 votes needed to end a Republican filibuster. With predictions of a six-seat Democratic gain in the Senate this year, Obama Democrats hope they can get just close enough to a 60-vote majority to pass this dangerous and very anti-democratic legislation.

If John McCain does not win and the GOP loses more seats n the Senate, a victory for the anti-democratic unions seems a sure thing. We anti-unionists should be discussing this thin wall blocking “card check” in the Senate far more often than we have.

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00Publius Contributor - Communism - Democrats/Leftists - Education - History - Media Bias - News - Security/Safety - Socialism - Society/Culture

The power of one

August 11, 2008 by 1 Comment

-By Michael M. Bates

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who passed away this week, meticulously documented Communist oppression in his books. The subject was one with which he was all too familiar.

In the final days of World War II, he wrote critically of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin in a letter to a friend. Describing the mass murderer as “the man with the mustache,” he received an eight-year prison sentence for the impertinence.

Such was life in the Soviet Union. Secret police, neighborhood spies, knocks on the door in the middle of the night, false charges, clandestine tribunals, show trials, and long-term incarceration in an extensive prison and work camp structure named by Solzhenitsyn the Gulag Archipelago were all too real. The author estimated that 60 million people were swallowed up in the system.

In achingly specific detail, he chronicled it all. One incident included in the first book of his exhaustive Gulag Archipelago trilogy still remains with me more than three decades after reading it.
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00Publius Contributor - Crime - Democrats/Leftists - Elections - Media Bias - News - Socialism - Society/Culture - Taxes - Unions - Warner Todd Huston

Corruption With Boston Fireman’s Union Disability Claims

August 9, 2008 by

-By Warner Todd Huston

On August 6, the Boston Herald reported the good news that Boston’s Retirement Board finally turned down the disability retirement claim of a fireman that was filmed participating in a bodybuilding contest even as he claimed that permanent back injuries suffered on the job had ended his firefighting career. The Herald hoped this decision heralded the end of the constant corruption of the Retirement Board that had become “a virtual adjunct of the firefighters union.”

Perhaps there might be hope that the corrupt Retirement Board is reforming what with the retirement of executive officer Robert E. Tierney who is leaving under a cloud of suspicion of corruption — and may be jumping ship just ahead of charges being brought against him.

Hopeful the Herald wonders if the backlog of undecided disability cases will soon be addressed as soon to be former executive officer Tierney allowed nearly 100 cases to sit unaddressed. Conveniently for the firefighters who have filed their disability requests, they continue to receive their salaries tax-free while they await the decision of their cases.

Naturally, the denied firefighter (Albert Arroyo) will appeal the decision and will continue to get his salary tax-free while he awaits that decision. Not only that, but he will not be required to pay back his previous ill-gotten salary.

But let’s not get our hopes up. After all, cronyism still rules the day in the Boston Fire union. For instance, the union employs one Larry Curran as a lobbyist on Beacon Hill (the State Capitol). Curran is also currently the Chairman of the Retirement Board. As it happens Curran announced that he is not seeking re-election this year. It turns out that Boston Fire Union President Ed Kelly is running his own brother to fill Curran’s soon to be vacated seat.

Yes, cronyism is alive and well in the Boston Fire Union. So, I doubt we’ll be seeing the cozy relationship between the Fire Union and the Retirement Board clearing up anytime soon. Corruption has become a way of life, after all.

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00Publius Contributor - Democrats/Leftists - Europe - Media Bias - News - Security/Safety - Socialism - Society/Culture - Thomas Brewton - UN

World Citizenship?

August 9, 2008 by

-By Thomas E. Brewton

It means different things, depending upon your religious faith.

Responding to Senator Obama, Citizen of the World, a reader emailed this observation:

June 17, 1982 – Ronald Reagan speaking to the United Nations General Assembly, “I speak today both as a citizen of the United States and of the world. I come with the heartfelt wishes of my people for peace, bearing honest proposals and looking for genuine progress.”

Would you care to come to the same conclusions about President Reagan?

My response is that the difference between Senator Obama’s usage and President Reagan’s is a matter of intent.
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00Publius Contributor - Communism - Congress - Democrats/Leftists - Elections - Media Bias - News - Socialism - Unions - Warner Todd Huston

Even George McGovern is Against Anti-Democratic ‘Card Check’ Union Plan

August 8, 2008 by

-By Warner Todd Huston

On August 8, George McGovern had an editorial published by the Wall Street Journal that astounds for the fact that it runs counter to union aims.

In it, McGovern warns the unions against their woefully misnamed “Employee Free Choice Act,” the legislation that has as one of its main goals the elimination of democratic styled, secret balloting for union elections. Unions actually wish to eliminate the union member’s ability to keep his vote private. This act will serve to put pressure on union voters to conform to the union’s party line because, after all, every vote they make as individuals will be open for their union bosses to see.

Saying that voting is an “immense privilege,” McGovern worries that the unions are abut to destroy that privilege.

That is why I am concerned about a new development that could deny this freedom to many Americans. As a longtime friend of labor unions, I must raise my voice against pending legislation I see as a disturbing and undemocratic overreach not in the interest of either management or labor.

The legislation is called the Employee Free Choice Act, and I am sad to say it runs counter to ideals that were once at the core of the labor movement. Instead of providing a voice for the unheard, EFCA risks silencing those who would speak.

McGovern tells his fellow Democrats that “we cannot be a party that strips working Americans of the right to a secret-ballot election.”

McGovern sums up with the following warning:

I worry that there has been too little discussion about EFCA’s true ramifications, and I think much of the congressional support is based on a desire to give our friends among union leaders what they want. But part of being a good steward of democracy means telling our friends “no” when they press for a course that in the long run may weaken labor and disrupt a tried and trusted method for conducting honest elections.

I have to say that, for once, George McGovern is on the right side of an issue. I welcome his support to stop the card check system being implemented. However, I doubt his voice will be heard by the radical left, sadly.
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00Publius Contributor - Communism - Democrats/Leftists - Elections - Media Bias - News - President - Race - Religion - Security/Safety - Selwyn Duke - Socialism - Society/Culture

Barack Obama and Defining Anti-Americanism Downwards

August 8, 2008 by

-By Selwyn Duke

If Barack Obama sought to win the votes of Germans, he need seek no more. Of course, his new image was all the rage in the Old World long before he gave his July 24 speech in Berlin. Along with the mainstream media and murderer Dale Leo Bishop, Senator Sweetness and Light is the man the Europeans want as our leader.

Although Obama certainly has a stateside cult following as well, one reason Americans’ enthusiasm pales in comparison may be that we – at least some of us, anyway – can decipher his words better than foreign-language speakers. As to this, there is a certain segment of the Berlin speech I’d call your attention to:

“I know my country has not perfected itself. At times, we’ve struggled to keep the promise of liberty and equality for all of our people. We’ve made our share of mistakes, and there are times when our actions around the world have not lived up to our best intentions.”

It might be pointed out to Senator Obama that if he finds a perfect country, he should be sure not to go there.
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00Publius Contributor - Business - Democrats/Leftists - Economy/Finances - Education - Media Bias - News - Socialism - Society/Culture - Unions - Warner Todd Huston

CA Teachers Union Illegally Uses Dues for Political Campaigns

August 6, 2008 by

-By Warner Todd Huston

On Friday, August 1, the Press-Telegram of Long Beach, CA reported that the Teachers Association of Long Beach (TALB) has apparently been using general union funds to assist political campaigns of favored candidates for school board during the 2006 and 2008 campaign season. At least $110,000 was illegally used for political purposes.

An audit of the TALB’s books seems to show that, along with the funds legally set up to be used for political purposes, the general fund was also used for political campaigning. This is illegal because in California, union members can request that their dues not be used for political purposes. If a member makes such a request his dues are supposed to go to the general union fund and not into the political accounts.

Along with the misappropriation of funds for political purposes, there are questions on the method used by the union to pay back past political campaign overruns. The union basically extorted it from the members and also used funds that were to go for campaigning in other years.

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00Publius Contributor - Communism - Democrats/Leftists - Elections - GOP - Media Bias - News - Patriotism - President - Security/Safety - Socialism - Society/Culture - Warner Todd Huston

AP: GOP Convention Protesters Create ‘Marketplace of Ideas’

August 5, 2008 by

-By Warner Todd Huston

Talk about a puff piece, this Associated Press short is a story with absolutely no substance. Not only that but after seeing the headline and then reading the story, one is hard pressed to believe they belong together. This Amy Forliti puffery is incongruously headlined “Protesters expected to transform the streets outside GOP convention into marketplace of ideas,” yet there isn’t any discussion at all of any such “marketplace” or about any real “ideas” in the story. In fact, the only “ideas” are ages old, stale and losing their grip among more Americans everyday.

Oh, Forliti talks about protests filled with prosaic anti-war sentiment, ages old oil protests, anarchists and 9/11 truthers, but there is no discussion of real “ideas” in this piece. Nor does the piece discuss exactly who is organizing these protests, people who are themselves filled with the dead ideas of another era — just for instance the United For Peace And Justice (UFPJ) is mostly a socialist organization and they are always a part of these coalitions of misfits.

After reporting that a retired 73-year-old doctor will parade about holding a styrofoam gravestone who will be on hand at the RNC convention in Minnesota and after talking about how a “philosophy professor” will agitate for 9/11 trutherism, the AP piece lets us know that these folks comprise a “marketplace of ideas.”

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