Posted on 11/01/2011 8:09:12 AM PDT by markomalley
Writing at RedState, blogger LaborUnionReport highlights this amazing interview with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi from last week, in which she declares that Boeing should be forced by the government to close down its non-union South Carolina plant, although she mercifully adds, “I would hope that they would make it union” to avoid this fate.
LaborUnionReport is willing to cut Pelosi a little slack and allow that she might just be an uninformed boob spouting off about something she doesn’t understand at all:
In fairness, Pelosi’s advisers may have neglected to tell the former speaker that the South Carolina plant was once unionized before employees chose to exercise their rights to become union-free. Her advisers may have also neglected to tell the former speaker that the only reason the Machinists union likely filed charges against Boeing is because those employees chose to exercise their rights to become union free–which would be unlawful retaliation on the part of the union.
[Of course, the NLRB seems to be dragging its feet on the union's retaliation as it may complicate things for the union-run agency--like how the NLRB has allowed itself to become a union pawn and allow its prosecutorial process to become a joke by going after Boeing instead of the union for its apparent retaliaton.]
(Emphases mine.) This story really caught my attention because there’s so much anger at “special interests” these days. Why, people have taken over public parks and converted them into squalid dens of iniquity and circular drumming to protest the way working Americans are getting screwed by special interests.
Well, here is the ultimate, 190-proof, straight-up-no-chaser example of special interest politics. The woman who was once Speaker of the House - and will resume the position if people are foolish enough to vote her party back into power next year - just declared that raw government power should be used, in defiance of the law, to literally destroy a private entity that refused to cooperate with the demands of the most powerful special interest there is.
Labor unions are almost wholly dependent upon the corrupt use of government power to maintain their riches. They don’t just use political contributions to cadge a few favors here and there from the political elite. Labor unions are mega-corporations, and their entire business model, as currently construed, depends on using government power to rig the marketplace against their competitors. That would be you, if you don’t belong to a union.
Destroying the South Carolina Boeing plant would wipe out a good 4,000 jobs, on behalf of a corporate entity that sells extravagantly overpriced labor to other corporate entities. Here’s a little snapshot of the mega-corporation in question, the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, courtesy of an informative March 2011 look at Big Labor by Fox News:
QUOTE
IAM, which grew out of a secret meeting of 19 machinists in a Georgia rail yard in 1888, represents machinists and aerospace workers in over 200 industries. At the union’s Maryland headquarters near Washington, 34 officers and employees earn over $200,000 in salary and benefits. Robert Buffenbarger, who became president in 1997, received $284,975. Over the past two years, the IAM donated $1.98 million to Democratic candidates and $34,000 to Republicans. Popularly known as the machinists union, IAM is affiliated with the AFL-CIO. Its membership jumped in the 1950s and 1960s with the growth of the airlines and aerospace industries. More than 1 million belonged to the union in 1968. In the early 1970s, membership began declining, a change the union blames on layoffs in the defense industry.
END QUOTE
How about it, Occupiers? Are you really against “special interests,” or not?
She'd have every state in the union circling the drain just like CA if she could.
Could someone please refresh my memory about Pelosi and tuna?
truth does not matter.
Her constituents are more interested in the medium of a us congress woman demanding the union.
SHE is the message.
truth does not matter.
(see the Medium is the Massage, it is a very short book)
If you wrote a work of fiction with a character just like Pelosie in it, a good editor would make you change it because the character is just not believable .
What is the aerospace equivalent to Wyatt’s Torch?
Indeed Nancy must miss the old CCCP.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1738226/posts
I don’t have a problem with Nancy’s solution as long as they tell her to have her grapes and her hotels unionised post haste.
This hypocrit scumbag talks the talk, but she and her rich husband do not pay Union workers.She is the lowest of the low IMHO.Then the rich botox brained skunk declares that she is on the side of the “Occupy” forces, when she is the rich they are protesting.What has she done for the poor except make them poorer?
Agree but she lives by the do as I say rule,seems to be a lot of thet in her party as well as tax issues.
Thanks for the post.
There are already many unions for actors/actresses (Screen Actors Guild for one) and the people who work on movies such as cameramen and engineers. I know there are writers unions too but am not sure about journalists.
Your argument shouldn’t be about the income disparity within the entertainment industry, it should be between the entertainment industry and everyone else.
Whether a union or the Soviet Union, the thinking is the same.
If I was Boeing, I would never have built another US plant to begin with. Commercial aircraft demand over the next thirty years is going to be overwhelmingly from Asia.
I wish that the village she escaped from would display some integrity and step up and admit that yes she is our idiot. that way she could be returned to her proper duty.
I know about the screen actors guild. My point was really about hypocrisy. There’s no way that ego driven Hollywood, or network news people etc. would ever go for the kind of homogeneity they keep pushing for the rest of society. We should constantly be pointing out their hypocrisy. The disparity of income between a top actor or actress, and someone who works as many or more hours doing commercials or bit parts is probably at least as much as many of the examples they use in their support of socialism. Why should they get away with trying to take away the ability of others to distinguish themselves, when they are driven in large measure by the desire to make distinguish themselves?
Correct! Pelosi and her husband own vineyards and restaurants which are hardly bastions of union activity. They are worth 30-40 million, an empire built on paying slave wages and exploiting plenty of illegal aliens
And yet she has the unmitigated gall to tell SC they have to Unionize.
Who TF does she think she is.
Pelosi and Bammy always have a smirk on their faces because they know the media will obediently spread their lies and bs. Meanwhile, Republicans have a hard time getting out their unfiltered message
So much for a “free” country.
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