President of the AFL-CIO Richard Trumka says we “don’t have a deficit crisis” in this country. Obama has spent us trillions into debt and this hack claims we don’t have a deficit problem?
We are approaching 100% of federal debt to GDP, and this union thug says we have no deficit problem?
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Why anyone thinks that this man has any credibility is beyond me.
-By Warner Todd Huston
Pay close attention, Delaware. Your Congressman, Mike Castle, just voted for the $26.1 billion union bailout. Castle was one of only two Republicans to vote yes on this bloated union pay off (the other was Louisiana’s Cao).
On a 247 to 161 vote, the House passed the $26.1 billion Education Jobs and Medicaid Assistance Act. Democrats claimed that it would “save” the jobs of teachers, police and firemen across the country. In truth this is just a union payoff.
AFL-CIO union chief Richard Trumka was thrilled with Tuesday afternoon’s vote. “Today’s vote means that hundreds of thousands of teachers, firefighters and public safety officers will keep their jobs,” Trumka claimed. “It will prevent layoffs and provide aid to struggling state and local governments so that critical services aren’t cut … With today’s vote, House Republicans showed they value Wall Street and tax cuts for the rich over teachers, police and firefighters. This is yet another example in the laundry list of anti-jobs votes they’ve taken.”
Why the states needed this new money is hard to understand. They still have $30 billion in the last teachers bailout that has yet to be allocated. Well, maybe it isn’t so hard to understand when you realize that unions will be the biggest recipient of this money and we are just ahead of an election. Now Democrats can tout their payoff to said unions to pander for votes.
In fact, it is obvious that this was a union payoff in another way. The House was already on recess for the Summer when the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) pushed Speaker Pelosi to reconvene the House in order to push this massive payoff.
In return, the unions promised to kick their campaigning for Democrats into high gear in the coming months.
No, this wasn’t much of a back-room, sweetheart deal between pliant Democrats and grasping unions, was it?
So come on, Delaware, vote ChristineO’Donnell in November. Let’s get rid of the corrupt bargains for which Mike Castle is famous.
Rep. Michelle Bachman had a few words about this raw deal today, too…
$26.1 Billion Union Bailout Bill Passes”
-By Warner Todd Huston
The AFL-CIO plans to spend another $50 million coming to the aid of Democrats during this campaign season for the 2010 midterms. But all is not well in uniondom as many unions are very, very unhappy with various and sundry Democrat candidates across the country.
Still, AFL-CIO chief Richard Trumka has issued a call to arms for the Democrats anyway. “We know you’re angry,” Trumka said to his membership. “We know you’re frustrated. We know we haven’t achieved everything that we worked for. But we’ve made progress, and we have to keep it going.”
Unions are a smaller political constituency than ever before, however, with only about 12% of America’s workforce being unionized. Despite the hundreds of millions that unions gave Democrats in the 2008 election cycle, their diminished numbers may have made some small dent in the once Pavlovian response that Democrat politicians had to the union beck-and-call. Despite the money, the votes are not there like they once were.
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AFL-CIO Chief Pleading for Union Support of Dems in Nov.”
-By Warner Todd Huston
Ben Smith of Politico is reporting that an administration insider told him that unions just wasted millions of dollars on a forlorn hope in the Arkansas primary in an attempt to beat Democrat Blanche Lincoln.
“Organized labor just flushed $10 million of their members’ money down the toilet on a pointless exercise,” the official said. “If even half that total had been well-targeted and applied in key House races across this country, that could have made a real difference in November.”
Big Labor — like the SEIU and the AFL-CIO — threw millions of dollars into the Arkansas campaign of Bill Halter in an attempt to chastise Democratic Senator Blanche Lincoln because she had yet to vote “yes” on the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), a union friendly bill they’ve been panting after for several years.
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Unions ‘Flushed $10 Million Down the Toilet’ in June Primary”
-By Warner Todd Huston
The Washington Times is reporting that the Landmark Legal Foundation is requesting that the Internal Revenue Service review all the millions being spent by Big Labor on Democrat political campaigns during the 2010 midterm elections.
As we discussed earlier this week, Big Labor is spending at least $100 million on the upcoming elections — actually even more because we have no numbers reported by the AFL-CIO. Landmark is worried that this giant blanket of money could possibly raise questions of legality.
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IRS Asked to Review Unions’ Political Donations”
-By Warner Todd Huston
Not long ago Andrew Breitbart issued a challenge to the anti-tea party left to show proof that the “N” word was thrown at black members of Congress by Tea Party protesters in their walk to Congress just prior to their passage on Obamacare. In fact, Breitbart has offered $100,000 for video or audio proof of any racism during that incident. No one on the left has been able meet the challenge.
On the April 7, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka was giving a speech at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and in the audience was one Andrew Breitbart. During the question and answer phase of Trumka’s appearance, Breitbart asked the Union Chief about the supposed racism of the Tea Party movement and asked if he, Trumka, would denoucne the violence that union thugs perpetrated against Tea Party folks at the event in Searchlight, Nevada.
In answer to Breitbart’s charges of union thuggery, Trumka claimed that he was a witness to the “N” word being cast toward black members of Congress during the Democrat’s solidarity walk previous to their vote on Obamacare. “I watched them spit at people, I watched them call John Lewis the n-word,” he said. “I witnessed it. I saw it in person. That’s real evidence.”
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Union Chief Claims He Witnessed ‘Racism’ At Tea Party…Yeah, Riiiiight”
-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
Three interesting stories on unions have hit the media this week that should be watched.
#1- Bush’s Union Transparency Rules Retracted Under Obama
The Washington Times reports that Obama is still giving favors and pay back to Big Labor. This time Obama is eliminating the transparency rules that Bush had put in to try to keep unions honest and legal. Saddly, Obama doesn’t care much if unions are held to the rule of law.
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A Couple of Union Stories in the News”