-By Warner Todd Huston
In case you aren’t aware of the House GOP’s YouCut program, it is a website where the GOP offers ideas that can help cut the budget and we (the voters) get to vote on our favorite ones. This voting, in turn, helps the GOP leadership focus on just what cuts the American voters want to prioritize.
Our favorite one this week is the removal of Obama’s mandated PLAs.
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This Month’s YouCut: Stop Obama’s Mandated Union Fees That Drive Up Construction Costs”
-By Warner Todd Huston
Idiot Pete Stark (D, Calif.) says that the more we borrow as a nation the “richer” we get. You see, says Congressman Stark Raving, that trillions of dollars in debt proves that we are a rich people.
“If YOU’D SHUT UP,” Stark says we might be able to appreciate his genius. And if the guy that was trying to interview Congressman Stake Raving would “Get the fu*k outta here,” maybe we could all have benefited from Congressman Stark Raving’s perspicacity.
Just watch this and see why Democrats can’t be trusted to do… well, anything…
Wow, what a distempered half-wit Representative Stark Raving is.
Sadly, I see nothing to separate Rep. Stark Raving from any other Democrat. This video is pretty prosaic, really. This sort of economic ignorance piled on top of such arrogance is the Democrat Party personified.
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Video: Ignoramus Democrat Says The More we Borrow the Richer we Get”
-By Warner Todd Huston
In his recent trip to Racine, Wisconsin, President Obama claimed that his stimulus policies worked and “saved jobs.” He also said that his policies staved off another Great Depression. But lets take a look at some of the graft, waste and pointless, useless, wild-eyed spending that was in his so-called stimulus.
Well, obviously this is just a tiny list of the graft, waste, and useless spending in Obama’s so-called stimulus bill but it serves to illustrate the fact that stimulating the economy was far from the minds of those congressmen that voted for the bill. It was more about paying off constituents than stimulating the economy.
Source unless noted: * = The Hill. ** = Americans for Tax Reform, *** = Fox News.
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Obama Says Stimulus Worked, Created Jobs… Here’s a Reminder of the Waste”
-By Warner Todd Huston
You know its bad for unions when even the New York Times publishes a story reporting that Big Labor is losing friends and allies in formerly well controlled political spheres. But such is the times in which we live where fiscal disaster is highlighting the illicitness that is unions in general, but public employees unions in particular. (You know our mantra here: Unions are antithetical to good government)
For the Times Steven Greenhouse writes that Big Labor is finding new critics among “old allies in elected office.”
Greenhouse reports the words of former union member turned New Jersey State Senator Stephen M. Sweeney who has turned against his former compatriots in Big Labor and its unnecessarily high compensation packages. “At some point, you reach the limit of your ability to pay,” he told the Times.
One State Senator in Jersey isn’t the only apostate against unions.
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Even the NYT Noticing that Unions Losing Friends and Allies”
-By Warner Todd Huston
A group called Liberty Counsel is suing Florida’s Collier County Schools for banning Bibles from being distributed on its campuses even after allowing the practice for years. The organization World Changers has been distributing Bibles to students during off-school hours on the day closest to national Religious Freedom Day — held on January 16 — for some time. Yet now school district officials have declared that the Bible holds no “educational benefit” to students. (download .pdf of complaint here)
The Collier County School District policy specifically allows the distribution of literature by nonprofit organizations, but only with the approval of the superintendent and the Community Request Committee, whose members are appointed by the superintendent. Approval was denied to World Changers, despite the fact that its distribution included a disclaimer of any school endorsement or sponsorship and that receiving a Bible was purely voluntary. The district, nevertheless, censored World Changers’ message simply because it included the Bible.
Liberty Counsel founder Matthew D. Staver said in a press release, “…we are compelled to sue to protect the right simply to make free Bibles available to students in public schools. Many of our founding fathers were taught to read using the Bible. If it had no educational value, then many of them would have been illiterate. The distribution of religious literature in a forum opened for secular literature is constitutionally protected.”
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In Florida Schools, Bibles Banned… On Religious Freedom Day”
-By Warner Todd Huston
Illinois is broke. So broke it can’t pay its bills. Yet on it goes stiffing its creditors and it’s making me wonder why I bother to pay my bills at all. If the state can get away with thumbing its nose at its bill collectors, why can’t I? Oh, yeah. I’m not a Democrat. Unlike them, I’m expected to pay my bills. I forgot for a moment there. Oh, and I’m not a union member, either.
According to the Times story Illinois owes its schools, rehab centers, and childcare obligations $5.01 billion. And there’s no payment in sight.
Then there is the state employees pension plan that is underfunded by 50 percent.
Also, as the state legislature left the Capitol last month for its summer break there was no budget settled upon.
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Illinois Has Stopped Paying Its Bills”
-By Warner Todd Huston
Once again Democrats decided that it was a good idea to pay workers of federal employee unions 100% of their salary to do union business during work hours instead of doing the job they were hired for. That’s right, instead of paying these federal employees to do the job we the people hired them to do, Democrats are paying these workers to do union business during the workday. It’s on YOUR dime, folks.
The bill was HR 3251, The Federal Employee Accountability Act of 2009, and it would have stopped this practice of paying off union thugs to do nothing on our dime. Gingrey claimed that it would have saved the federal government $1.2 billion in wasted wages that are now given as a gift to union members. This bill was introduced by the Congressional Republicans to get rid of the union sop, but Democrats with their majority pushed this illicit union payoff through to a win for continued graft on a federal level.
The GOP leadership featured this bill on its YouCut.com website. A video featuring Georgia Congressman Phil Gingrey explained what it was all about.
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Democrats Continue to Use Tax $ to Pay Union Members to do Union Business”
-By Warner Todd Huston
There is no other aspect of Washington D.C. that upsets voters more than government spending surreptitiously added on to spending bills and this week Congress indulged its inner drunken sailor once again by adding a $10 billion bailout for teachers unions in the bill that is supposed to fund the war effort.
The teacher union bailout ups the $60 billion expenditure to a $70 billion tab and is causing even some Democrats to balk.
Republicans have demanded that the war funding bill be clean of any tacked on spending and have threatened to withhold support of the bill if the teachers union bailouts and other unrelated spending additions are kept.
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Dems Include Union Bailout in War Funding Bill”
-By Warner Todd Huston
The International Union of Operating Engineers and the Laborers’ District Council of Chicago have voted to walk off the job Wednesday night leaving roadwork on the Eisenhower expressway stalled and travelers inconvenienced.
The union is demanding a 5 percent raise each of three years to come. Employers counter offered 1 percent. Currently workers make $35.20 an hour for the laborers and up to $45.10 for the operating engineers (machine operators).
As it happens, while the construction trades are seeing up to 40 percent unemployment, these roadworkers are demanding a 5 percent a year increase for a three year contract. Interesting that the union doesn’t see the economic situation all around them and don’t find themselves grateful they are working at all.
Also remember, these people are extorting you and me for their 5 percent a year luxury. After all, they are working to rebuild state roads and are being paid by our tax dollars.
Apparently, grateful thy name is not union!
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Chicago Roadworkers Vote to Go On Strike”
-By Warner Todd Huston
Last week the Chicago Tribune published an editorial detailing the biggest reason why unions as they have operated in the U.S. for decades are an illegitimate venture. The Trib published a plea to new Chicago teachers union chief Karen Lewis not to protect the bad teachers under her charge and to help the younger teachers that haven’t yet proved to be bad for kids by allowing the bad ones to be laid off without complaint.
The Trib’s editorial called the practice of keeping bad teachers “dancing lemons,” revealing the sad practice of shuffling bad teachers around the system instead of firing merely because they may have tenure on the job. While new teachers are automatically laid off due to budget cuts, teachers that have a disciplinary problem or a troubled history are kept because they’ve been on the job longer. This is wrong and reflects badly on the union and teachers alike, not to mention that it leads to a bad education for our kids.
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Worst Teachers Rewarded by Unions, New Teachers Abandoned”
-By Warner Todd Huston
The Hill is reporting that Iowa’s leading Democrat, Senator Tom Harkin, is promising that the lame-duck Senate will again take up Big Labor’s favored Employee Free Choice Act, (EFCA), the famous card check act that is neither good for employees nor one that facilitates “free choice” of any kind.
Apparently, what’s bad for the nation is easier to push when Democrats already feel that the 2010 election will erase their giant majorities in Congress so they want to launch a last ditch effort to sneak this through before the people can speak at the ballot box.
And isn’t that just the thing, here? The people did speak in 2006 and 2008, after all. They spoke in favor of Democrats. Yet, even with all that support Harkin and his far left cronies couldn’t lead their overwhelming majority to pass the jobs killing bill. Even their fellow Democrats were against it because they knew the voters stood against it.
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Sen. Harkin Promises Return to Card Check”
-By Warner Todd Huston
If you haven’t checked out CNSNews.com, it is a great place to find stories not widely discussed in the Old Media. Often CNS hits stories before anyone else and the Old Media has to play catch-up to report what CNSNews already reported. Recently CNS had an investigative story detailing millions in federal funds that went to pay for ACORN sponsored youth indoctrination groups.
According to CNS the U.S. Justice Dept. gave $135,130 in 2005 to a group called The New York Agency for Community Affairs. It turns out that this group was just an adjunct of ACORN and served as a recruitment arm among young people for the parent organization.
The Government Accountability Office also reports that nearly $40 million in federal funds went to ACORN and groups like it between 2005 and 2009.
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Federal Funds Paid for ACORN Youth Groups”
-By Thomas E. Brewton
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s recent claim to be enacting the Word of God in her socialist legislative steamrolling is a rerun of the Social Gospel heresy that befell American Christianity around 1870.
Even before the 1917 Russian Revolution, leading universities in the United States had begun a transition from the Christian roots of our nation into atheistic, secular materialism in their teaching of the so-called social sciences.
Nominally-Christian theological seminaries were in the vanguard of the movement toward socialism. Rochester Theological Seminary’s professor Walter Rauschenbusch, one of the best known socialist spokesmen of his era, was a founder of the Social Gospel movement late in the 19th century. Social Gospel was nothing more nor less than socialism masquerading as Christianity.
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Pelosi As God’s Emissary”
-By Warner Todd Huston
In April I had a story that raised a ruckus in New Jersey. To celebrate women’s history month, Maude Wilkins Elementary School thought it would be cool for their grade school students to dress like women… yes, even the little boys. Well this moth yet another east coast grade school is trying to force its little boys to cross-dress, this time in New York.
Andrea Peyser reports that a Roosevelt Island school for children with special needs — The Child School and Legacy High School, a private school — decided to throw on a play, a kiddie version of the gay-themed romp La Cage aux Folles.
A father “almost choked on his Wheaties,” Peyser writes, when his developmentally disabled child expressed no desire to “wear a dress to school” that day. Of course, the father was quite upset that his special needs child was being used to push the gay agenda even as the boy didn’t understand exactly what was going on.
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Another School-Makes-Little-Boys-Cross-Dress Story”
-By Warner Todd Huston
Yippie, My First Investor’s Business Daily Article goes live: Reid’s Push To Nationalize Police Unions.
Please do check it out.
-By Warner Todd Huston
The outrage of union activities never ceases to amaze. From the Education Week blog we find that the United Federation of Teachers (UFT), the teachers union of New York, spends almost $200,000 a year of its member’s dues money on an office in Boca Raton, Florida! As EdWeek drolly says, “That’s not peanuts for a union fretting about its financially strapped members.”
Turns out that the reason the office exists is because of a union perk to retired teachers: permanent summer jobs at nearly $50 and hour.
According to Ed Week it’s called “retention rights.” The deal is that teachers with long tenure can come back each summer from their cushy retirement homes in Florida and take summer teaching jobs that would otherwise go to current, working teachers. These retired teachers essentially have first dibs on those summer jobs above the claims of the current workforce of New York educators. Retired teachers have a huge vested interest in keeping tabs on their old union, vote heavily to retain this perk, and they make huge cash taking advantage of the perk. So, the Boca office is there to serve them.
Ed Week details how lucrative this perk is for retired teachers.
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New York Teachers Union Has Branch in Florida?”
-By Warner Todd Huston
For those of you that have come to the blog often, there is a constant theme: unions are antithetical to good government. We’ve been saying this here for years, of course, but over this campaign season I think that meme is beginning to gain real traction because stories echoing this sentiment are everywhere these days.
Jay Ambrose has another such piece at Real Clear Politics this weekend.
Ambrose says that public employee unions are bankrupting both the state treasuries and the federal government so that their “members can live much better on average than those of us in the private sector.”
Spot on.
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Our ‘Unions are Bad for America’ Theme is Resonating”
-By Warner Todd Huston
Two of the three Republicans that broke with party leadership and voted in favor of the Democrats idea to take out a massive loan to shore up the union pensions of state employees have been demoted from their party positions.
Danville area Representative Bill Black had his role as deputy minority leader taken from him by GOP leader Tom Cross over the “yes” vote on the pension bailout loan. Similarly, Representative Bob Biggins of Chicago-area Elmhurt was removed as minority spokesman for the House appropriations committee.
Both Republican representatives thumbed their nose at the party establishment and voted for the bailout supported by Democrats. curiously enough, before their Democrat supporting votes both had also announced that they are retiring from state government this year.
What this shows is that neither of these two were ever solid Republicans that always voted their conscience. Only when they’d decided to hang up their career did they all of a sudden start voting against Republican interests. Only now that they don’t have to stand for election does their true, liberal selves come out.
It would not be surprising if Black and Biggins start voting for all sort of left-wing garbage as their last days in office draws neigh.
Sad to see long Republican careers end in such hypocrisy, isn’t it?
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ILL. GOP Demotes Two That Voted for Giant Pensions Loan”
-By Warner Todd Huston
The indispensable Mark Hemingway of the Washington Examiner recently caught another union outrage. This time it’s the teachers union in New Jersey trying to extort cash from parents directly, as opposed to merely extorting cash from parents through their taxes.
Hemingway alerts us to a New Jersey parent that was aghast that the NJ teachers union would be so blatant as to send a letter home with her child suggesting a novel new way to raise funds for teachers.
As both she and the letter she handed me stated, my daughter was to accomplish chores around the house with the goal of being paid by me for those chores the sum of $20. She would then have to hand the full $20 over to the school to make up for the shortfall in their overall budget which, ultimately, disallowed the kids to go on yet another class trip.
This parent was so incensed at the “mandatory” aspect of the fund raising letter that she called the school to complain. She was assured that despite all the rhetoric about it being mandatory, it was just a “suggestion.” The parent was, of course, skeptical of the later claim.
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Teachers Union Extorts Parents for Campaign Cash”
-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 SkyBluez
(Ed’s note: Sky_Bluez is one of my favorite Twitter pals and she wrote a great review of The Lottery, the film we discussed on Tuesday. It was originally posted on her blog The Song Remains the Same.)
Last night I saw The Lottery a documentary about the problems with traditional public schools in disadvantaged areas. The film follows four families who enter the lottery to get a chance at having their child leave their low performing public schools in Harlem and the Bronx and attend a much better performing charter school. The documentary shines a light on how the local Democrat political establishment and teachers unions throw road blocks at every turn and make it extremely difficult for more of these well performing schools to be available for parents who want them.
The film is very well done. You can’t help but feel invested in these children as Ameenah translates for her deaf mother, or Christian gets frustrated working on his addition with his father, or Greg Jr. Laments not wanting to go to “house #2” to visit his dad in prison. All three of these children are raised by a single parent and face great hardship . Then there is Eric Jr. who has better circumstances. Eric has two involved parents. His father is a Union bus driver and mother is an aspiring teacher. This family is torn because they are union supporters, but still want the best for their children, which is not public school.
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A Review of Film ‘The Lottery’: ‘Heartbreaking,’ How Unions are Destroying Education”
-By Warner Todd Huston
In the upside down world of unions, if you aren’t on their side you are an enemy to the country… even if you are U.S. Marine of 20 years service and have been a highly recognized teacher in a ROTC program for 14 years. Because he refused to become a union member and has accrued $500 in unpaid dues the union thugs at North High School in Worcester, Massachusetts had retired Major Stephen L. Godin fired from his ROTC teaching position.
“It just seems crazy that they’re gonna fire me over $500,” said Maj. Stephen L. Godin, senior naval science instructor at the Naval Junior ROTC Unit of North High School. “Everyone’s talking about finding good teachers – I haven’t missed a day in 14 years.”
It is crazy, especially considering the reason why Major Godin refused to join the union. He isn’t just a hide-bound, anti-unionist — not that these aren’t good reasons themselves. He has a dang good reason for not wanting to join the union.
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Union Bullies U.S. Marine”
New Jersey Governor Chris Christie has decided that to protect our children’s futures beating the schoolyard bully is the way to go. But who is the bully? Is it the sign carrying, whiney teachers? No, it’s their powermongering, kid unfriendly unions pushing teachers to act like bullies.
The unions are the bullies and THAT is who Christie is staring down!
So far THIS governor is the real deal.
On average, Federal workers are making twice as much in yearly salary plus benefits as taxpayers do.
-By Warner Todd Huston
Senate Democrat Majority Leader Harry Reid is quietly trying to nationalize rules governing every police, fire and first responder union in the nation. Through the benignly named Public Safety Employer-Employee Cooperation Act (H.R.413) Reid wants all first responders represented by collective bargaining rules emanating from Washington D.C. Naturally he thinks that it is necessary as a matter of national security.
Reid is pushing this monstrosity as a major sop to his union supporters who will greatly benefit from nationalized rules for police and fire unions. This plan would replace with federal rules all state laws on collective bargaining between state and local governments and their first responder unions and would greatly empower unions to dictate pay scales and benefits on a national level.
Imagine the loss of control that local governments will face when first responder unions no longer have to deal with local rules and laws but can force a federal one-size-fits-all style rule on all local governments. Local governments will no longer be able to determine pay scales and benefits and will lose control of their own ability to budget. Reid’s plan will also completely remove the ability of voters to have any say in local matters as a top down control from Washington will rule the day where it concerns local police, fire and other first responders.
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Harry Reid’s Push To Nationalize ALL Cop/Firemen Unions”
-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
The New Jersey Star-Ledger has a wonderful little editorial excoriating New Jersey’s teachers for having destroyed their own reputation with the public because of their petulant behavior towards Governor Chris Christie’s attempts to balance New Jersey’s over spent budget.
Take a gander at this…
Once the patient darlings who nurtured our kids, teachers now look like insensitive, out-of-touch, can’t-think-for-themselves union robots who, when forced to face economic realities, clung to an insulting sense of entitlement, heartlessly sacrificed the jobs of colleagues, called the governor naughty names and used students as political pawns.
Ouch!
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New Jersey Teachers Threw Away Decades of Goodwill”
-By Warner Todd Huston
At a public meeting New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie tells a union teacher who is whining about her pay scale that she can always quit teaching if she doesn’t like it.
I LOVE this guy!
And while this teacher was whining that she makes no where near $83,000 per year, the truth came out today that she actually makes $86,000 annually.
-By Warner Todd Huston
Unions are meant for one thing and one thing only: to “get” for its members. They have one purpose and that is to take as much from an employer as they can take, to get as much money and benefits as they can get away with. Unions are not interested in assuring quality workmanship, they are not interested in offering quality to customers, and they most certainly aren’t interested in efficiency and modernization. Unions have but one purpose, to extort as many goodies as possible from an employer regardless of what it does to a business or a profession. Unfortunately, in the State of New York, judges are looking to “get” from the Empire State’s taxpayers regardless of what it might do to our legal system.
The New York Post reports that New York judges are toying with the idea of throwing in with the New York teachers union, New York State United Teachers, so that they can engage in collective bargaining.
One activist judge in particular is behind this effort according to the Post. Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice Arthur Schack is a former teacher, member of the United Federation of Teachers has been agitating for a pay raise for quite some time.
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The End of Our Legal System: Judges Joining Unions?”
-By Warner Todd Huston
The City of Charlotte, North Carolina is still suffering an unemployment rate hovering around 12 percent. Jobs are hard to come by if you are a resident of the region, unless, of course, you work for the city government. Despite the hard times fatcats in government are still partying like it’s 1999! In fact, city salaries are likely to grow finds the Charlotte Observer.
For a whole year Charlotte City workers suffered under a pay hike freeze, but now the hard times are over as the City has announced that not only will the luxurious raises return, but more and more workers will be added to the rolls.
Let the celebration continue.
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As We Suffer, Gov’t Salaries/Jobs/Union Pyoffs Grow”