Free Republic

Over the Christmas weekend, Chicago surpassed the 750-murder mark for 2016. But as blacks lay dying on the streets of Chicago’s South and West Sides, a Black Lives Matter offshoot is more interested in traveling overseas to learn “resistance” from terrorists. The Dream Defenders bills itself as “an uprising of communities in struggle, shifting culture through transformational organizing.” But an investigation conducted by the Haym Salomon Center reveals the group’s embrace of anti-Semitism and collaboration with a State Department-designated terror group. In August, Black Lives Matter singled out Israel for condemnation, declaring it an “apartheid” state engaged in “genocide.” These...

This wasn't supposed to happen. The union goons have always been squarely in the camp of the Democratic party totalitarians, haven't they? After all, the economic pig-ignorance that characterizes of a large swath of unionized workers fits perfectly in line with the Democratic party platform. It might surprise you to learn, then, that members of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) support the message of GOP presidential candidate Donald J. Trump. "I am deeply concerned about what is stirring, even in our membership... where our members are responding to Trump's message," said Mary Kay Henry, the international president of the...

The Service Employees International Union (SEIU), the powerful 1.9 million-member group that helped fast-food workers protest for a $15 minimum wage, endorsed Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign on Tuesday. “Hillary Clinton has proven she will fight, deliver, and win for working families,” said SEIU president Mary Kay Henry in a press release. “SEIU members and working families across America are part of a growing movement to build a better future for their families, and Hillary Clinton will support and stand with them.” A Clinton campaign press release responded that she was “deeply honored” to earn the union’s support. It’s a crushing...

So I guess going to a New York McDonald’s isn’t a good idea right now. Videographer and conservative blogger Adam Sharp of SharpElbows.net attended one such demonstration and interviewed an SEIU member, easily identifiable as such by his purple shirt. When asked whether the union member supported the $15 per hour wage increase the McDonald’s workers were demanding, he admitted, “I’m not sure.” He also said he was there to show his support for the workers rather than the company and expressed a fear that, “if they’re [the McDonald’s employees] pissed off, they could be doing something to that food.”...

Two men acquitted last month on assault charges regarding an incident outside a contentious town hall forum in 2009 were named Friday in a civil suit. Kenneth Gladney filed the case against Service Employees International Union members Elston McCowan of St. Louis and Perry Molens of De Soto, as well as SEIU President Mary Kay Henry and local President Tom Balanoff. Gladney was selling "Don't Tread on Me" buttons and flags outside the south St. Louis County forum, called by U.S. Rep. Russ Carnahan, D-St. Louis, at the height of debate over health care reform. He alleges that McCowan and...

The nation's menu of crises caused by governmental malpractice may soon include states coming to Congress as mendicants, seeking relief from the consequences of their choices. Congress should forestall this by passing a bill with a bland title but explosive potential. Principal author of the Public Employee Pension Transparency Act is Rep. Devin Nunes, a Republican from California, where about 80 cents of every government dollar goes for government employees' pay and benefits. His bill would define the scale of the problem of underfunded state and local government pensions and would notify states not to approach Congress like Oliver Twists,...

I'm not sure who is more unpopular with FReepers, the SIEU or the IRS, but they went head-to-head today before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, and IRS came out ahead, to the tune of $52,000 and change. it's hard to post a link directly to the court's decision, but the link above is to a blog post which in turn links to the decision.

The Service Employees International Union has just dropped another wad of cash for another television commercial, this time lambasting Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger for calling for "sacrifice" by cutting social services but refusing to tax cigarettes and oil extraction.

On the heels of the resignation of General Motors CEO Rick Wagoner, the Service Employees International Union is urging President Barack Obama to oust Bank of America CEO Ken Lewis. “It defies logic, common-sense, and responsible governance to punish the auto industry while letting financial institutions off the hook,” SEIU President Andy Stern said, announcing his call for Lewis’s job Tuesday. The SEIU has begun circulating an online petition, calling on the administration to “show the door to CEO Ken Lewis.” “Firing GM's CEO is a positive step towards restructuring a broken industry,” Stern said. “But the Obama Administration needs...

California's largest union local and a related charity have paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to firms owned by the wife and mother-in-law of the labor organization's president, documents and interviews show. The Los Angeles-based union, which represents low-wage caregivers, also spent nearly $300,000 last year on a Four Seasons Resorts golf tournament, a Beverly Hills cigar club, restaurants such as Morton's steakhouse and a consulting contract with the William Morris Agency, the Hollywood talent shop, records show. In addition, the union paid six figures to a video firm whose principals include a former union employee. And a now-defunct minor...

The unions that pushed the hardest for Gov. Bill Ritter's executive order granting them a larger voice in state government could soon see a nearly four-fold increase in membership. They are also circulating among prospective members a report that recommends increasing state worker wages and health care benefits to attract and retain a higher-quality workforce. Opponents of the executive order say it's proof that Ritter has unnecessarily opened the door to future wage disputes and, ultimately, higher taxes. The unions, which had fewer than 6,000 dues-paying state workers on their rolls before the Nov. 2 order, could soon exclusively represent...

As the Democratic presidential contest moves to the distressed industrial Midwest, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have ratcheted up their antitrade, anticorporate rhetoric. The candidates have made broad attacks on corporate wealth and tax cuts they say tilt toward the rich, along with more specific attacks against health insurers and oil companies, among other industries. On Friday, Mrs. Clinton began airing a TV spot in Wisconsin in which she says, "The oil companies, the drug companies, have had seven years of a president who stands up for them.... It's time we had a president who stands up for all of...

An angry rift between union leaders filled the spotlight at last week's AFL-CIO gathering in Chicago. But to figure out what labor's divide might actually mean for workers and employers, look beyond the dueling press conferences and listen to the union talk at places like Grandma's House, a child-care center Angenita Tanner runs from her basement apartment on the city's South Side. Tanner is one of Illinois' 49,000 home child-care workers, who voted overwhelmingly this spring to be represented by the Service Employees International Union. The vote capped a nine-year campaign by the SEIU, and a bitter fight with a...

The biggest buzz out of Boston media on Tuesday wasn't Kerry's blue bunny suit, but the interview Andrew Stern, president of the Service Employees International Union gave to Washington Post reporter David Broder.Stern told Broder that a Kerry loss to Bush in 2004 might not be the worst thing that could happen to the Democratic Party in the long term.Stern, who backed Howard Dean, and was even an early booster of General Wesley Clark, is not considered part of Kerry's inner circle, though his union is perhaps one of the most influential within the broader AFL-CIO, in part because it...