Harry Reid’s Push To Nationalize ALL Cop/Firemen Unions

-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”


IRS Asked to Review Unions’ Political Donations

-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”


As We Suffer, Gov’t Salaries/Jobs/Union Pyoffs Grow

-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”


Our Anti-Religious, Anti-American, Arrogant Schools

-By Warner Todd Huston

Two stories from this week shows how out of control our fetid schools have become. In New York a young boy is suspended because he dared to carry his Catholic rosary beads in school and in Virginia a principal refused to allow a mother to take her own child out of school to go to a doctor’s appointment scheduled months ago. Both reveal an arrogance of school administrators that is sure to outrage any liberty loving American.

In the first case in New York’s Rockland County, young Jason Laguna, a former Altar Boy and proud Catholic, faces suspension merely because he dared to carry his rosary beads in class. School thugocrats claimed that the rosary beads marked young Mr. Laguna as a “gang member” and pronounced that he should be punished for such a violation.

In the second case in Chesapeake, Virginia, a school principal told a mother that she would not be “allowed” to take her own daughter out of class to take the girl to a doctor appointment that had been scheduled for months. How did this arrogant cuss of a principal imagine he had the right to deny a parent the ability to control her own child’s appointments? Why he sent a letter home saying so, that’s why.

It is amazing that we are living in an America where religious children in New York can be persecuted for their religious practices or a country where a Virginia mother is barred from taking her own child out of class for a doctor appointment. But this is the arrogance of our school administrators in stark relief. This is the Orwellian world in which we live, a world where mere school employees imagine that they have the despotic powers to summarily control the lives of the children under their care and the power to deny parental rights at any given time.

These stories prove that our mis-educational system is completely out of control and has crossed the line from a system serving the citizens to one imagining itself to be wholly unaccountable to them.
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Our Anti-Religious, Anti-American, Arrogant Schools”


Study Shows Businesses Weren’t Cutting Jobs Until…

-By Warner Todd Huston

The Associated Press made an interesting concession — likely without even knowing they did so — in a recent report on the “new normal” of permanent job loss in Obama’s economy. The AP admitted that until the recession, American businesses weren’t firing people simply so improve the bottom line as many anti-business, left-wingers have been for decades claiming.

In the AP piece the headline moans that “Millions of jobs that were cut won’t likely return,” and goes on to say that “millions of jobs lost in the recession could be gone for good.”

It’s all pretty dismal news, but tucked inside the piece was this interesting paragraph:
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Study Shows Businesses Weren’t Cutting Jobs Until…”


Union News: Card Check Not Dead Yet

-By Warner Todd Huston

Wondering if a bad liberal idea is dead is sort of an amusing prospect. After all, liberals have been carrying around the stinking carcass of socialism and communism like a dearly beloved child still maintaining that it could work because it just hasn’t been tried right yet. So, saying that card check isn’t dead is sort of a given because bad liberal ideas never die, they just lay in wait like a highwayman ready to waylay an unsuspecting public at a later date.

Still, card check isn’t, dead I mean. And AFL-CIO chief Richard Trumka is reminding us of that in stark terms. He might realize that getting it passed legitimately and standing on its own like an acceptable idea is not going to work but that doesn’t mean that he isn’t still scheming to fool the public once again.
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Union News: Card Check Not Dead Yet”


Michigan Firemen Setting Fires Over Union Anger

-By Warner Todd Huston


Why was this story not national news? Outrageously, firemen in Flint, Mich. went about the city setting fires instead of putting them out last month and all because their union wasn’t happy with job layoffs. In a vain attempt to stop the layoffs, these union criminals went around setting fires to try and scare Flint’s residents in order to goad them to tell city officials to rescind the layoffs.

Imagine the breach of trust that this represents between firemen and the citizenry? What next, will Flint policemen commit murders and armed robberies in like manner to the criminal activities of the union inflamed foremen of the city?

Is this where unions have taken the safety of our cities?
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Michigan Firemen Setting Fires Over Union Anger”


Obama Tough Guy On Illegal Immigration! That Was Then…

-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…”


Mickey Kaus, Union Fighter?

-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?”


AFSCME Official’s Threats

-By Warner Todd Huston

American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees chief Henry Bayer addressed a rally of Illinois unions members on April 21. During his harangue this man revealed the exact sort of logical disconnect in which union thugs everywhere wallow.

Bayer noted that 10% of the workforce in Illinois is out of work. OK, then what was his prescription to solve this situation? More taxes! How even higher taxes on the few lucky enough to have a job could help enlarge the workforce is the $64,000 question. The answer, of course, is that it can’t.

Catch this complete lack of common sense and logic in Bayer’s spittle specked rant…

“… so they (the legislature) can’t do their job, ‘you know we can’t raise taxes because people are hurting.’ And they are absoroo…lutely right. People are hurting. But let me ask you this: if we raise revenue for senior programs will it hurt the elderly? If we raise revenue for childcare will it hurt working families? If we raise revenue for community colleges and universities will it hurt students? If we raise revenue for programs for the disabled will it hurt will it hurt those individuals who get those services? If we raise revenue for public safety will it hurt our communities? If we raise money for schools will it hurt our kids? Yes people are hurting that’s why we need a tax increase!”

If this isn’t the most stupid blather I’ve yet heard from a union tough, then I’ve never heard any. Where does this guy think all those taxes are coming from if not the very people he invokes? Does he think no one that he is interested in pays state taxes? The very people he mentioned are already losing their services because government has spent itself into a hole the size of the Grand Canyon!
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AFSCME Official’s Threats”


Warning to Mich Teachers Unions: ‘The Time to Stand up to the Unions Has Arrived’

-By Warner Todd Huston

Universally, teachers unions cry for more money and insist on raising everyone’s taxes to get it. And in an era when government spending needs to be reined in, unions are dinosaurs in the modern age, outmoded and wasteful.

Kyle Olson of the Education Action Group, an education reform organization based in Michigan, spoke to the Lansing, Mich. tea party rally on April 15. He had a few warnings for the profligate spenders in teachers unions.


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Warning to Mich Teachers Unions: ‘The Time to Stand up to the Unions Has Arrived’”


Union Thugs at Capitol Demand Illinois Gov’t ‘Raise Our Taxes’

-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’”


Brit Union Strike Over Severance Pay Might Soon Hit in U.S.

-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.”


How Unions Are Destroying California

-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”


Cokie Roberts: Japanese Internment Was an Immigration Issue?

-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?”


Unions’ Big Shift to Government

-By Warner Todd Huston

Unionism is failing miserably in this age of a greater world market and an increase in competition for business across the globe. More nations than ever have left behind the 18th century and are taking bold steps into a world made smaller by technology. No longer is but a handful of nations leading the world in manufacturing while the rest wallow in abject poverty. This greater competition is increasing the standard of living in nearly every corner of the earth but because there is so much competition, unions in the U.S. are dying out.

American unions are not conducive to the 21st century and companies shackled by them are finding that either unions have to lose their once overpowering control over production or the businesses simply have to shut their doors as foreign competitors beat them up in the world market place.

But these antiquated, jobs killing unions won’t go quietly into the night and they’ve found their path to existence: government. Unions are growing wildly in the public sector because there are no market forces to curb their excesses.
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Unions’ Big Shift to Government”


Illinois Lawsuit Loan Sharks? Stop This Latest Trial Lawyer Bill

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”


Illinois Ranks At Bottom of Best Business Climates in America

-By Warner Todd Huston

Illinois ranks a dismal 45th place in state rankings for the best business climates in the country according to a new study by the Institute for Legal Reform.

The study finds Illinois trailing the rest of the country in legal fairness with a litigation climate that is bad for businesses. Two Illinois counties, Cook County and Madison County, were also found to be the most unfair litigation climate in the nation.

In the press release, ILR says that Illinois is a “jackpot” state.

“Home to two of the most notorious jackpot jurisdictions in America and known for imposing expansive liability, Illinois has rolled out an ‘unwelcome mat’ to business,” said Lisa A. Rickard, president of the U.S. Chamber Institute for Legal Reform. “Illinois needs more jobs, not more lawsuits. Yet, even with an unemployment rate higher than the national average, the state’s anti-business legal climate discourages economic growth at a time when it needs it most.”

This ease at filing and constant upholding of frivolous lawsuits is reprehensible and decimates Illinois jobs just at a time when we need more jobs because of this bad economy.
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Illinois Ranks At Bottom of Best Business Climates in America”


Illinois Hits Highest Unemployment Rate in 27 Years

-By Warner Todd Huston

Illinois has reached an unemployment rate of 12.2 percent. ChicagoBreakingNews says that this is the highest rate in 27 years.

The state’s monthly jobless rate, which soared from last years up from 8.7 percent, outpaced the national rate of 10.6 percent. The U.S. unemployment rate in January 2009 was 8.5 percent. The rates are not seasonally adjusted.

Thank you Governor Pat “union hack” Quinn and President Obama “economy killer” Obama. Good work for the both of you… if you intend the destruction of the country, that is.

(For an ongoing update of unemployment stats, see this National Conference of State Legislatures page.)


Obama’s ‘Jobs-Saved’ Claims Flat Out Untrue

-By Warner Todd Huston

On CNBC, Tony Fratto, former White House Spokesman for President Bush, has used the nice word — that would be “deception” — to say that Barack Obama is lying about his claims that his “stimulus” efforts saved any American jobs. Not only does Fratto devastate the administration’s claims to have saved jobs, but he rightfully points out that the lapdog media is letting Obama get away with the deceit.

Fratto calls the jobs-saved rhetoric a “breathtaking deception” and is aghast at the “gullibility of the Washington press corps” for reporting Obama’s claims with a straight face and an un-skeptical eye.

Oh, it isn’t that the numbers that Obama uses to make his claims are somewhat jiggured, but that the whole claim is impossible to figure all the way around and Obama’s economic team knows it, according to Fratto. The claim is simply a fiction, a fantasy, a claim made based on no numbers and no ability to find them.

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Obama’s ‘Jobs-Saved’ Claims Flat Out Untrue”