Free Republic

Suddenly everyone in Washington wants a gas tax hike — apparently so that consumers don’t save too much money at the pump. As prices keep falling, the politicians and the moochers in Washington want a piece of the action. Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California, Sen. Richard Durbin of Illinois and even Republicans such as Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee have linked arms with the entire road-building industry and green groups that want the cost of fuel to go up.Mrs. Pelosi won’t even hide her cynical motivation: With gas prices low, maybe motorists won’t notice that we’re gouging them: “If there’s...

Backroom deals won’t do Tennessee much good if America’s national security is compromised. Tennessee Senators Lamar Alexander (R) and Bob Corker (R) must not have considered national security when they decided to vote in favor of ratifying the dangerous New START Treaty. They also failed to research Russia’s alliance with countries like Iran, China, North Korea and Venezuela. It appears the Tennessee Senators were interested in bringing home the pork at the expense of our nation’s security. Zachary Roth’s December 23rd article states: “It will likely include more than $6 billion dollars for a uranium processing facility, to be built...

<p>Kerry got into a heated exchange with Corker who said, "I want to say as I said personally, we have three senators, president, vice president, secretary of state, that are exercising terrible judgment right now.</p>

Wednesday at the Senate Foreign Relation Committee hearing on U.S. strategy for combating ISIS, after Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN) criticized Secretary of State John Kerry, Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) was left "shaking and trembling" in shock. Boxer said, "I think it is shocking and a sad state of affairs that we heard just now, such angry comments aimed at you, Mr. Secretary, and through you, at our president ....

Two senators unveiled a bipartisan plan Wednesday to raise federal gasoline and diesel taxes for the first time in more than two decades, pitching the proposal as a solution to Congress’ struggle to pay for highway and transit programs. The plan offered by Sens. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., and Bob Corker, R-Tenn., would raise the 18.4-cents-a-gallon federal gas tax and 24.4-cents-a-gallon diesel tax by 12 cents each over the next two years, and then index the taxes to keep pace with inflation. The plan also calls for offsetting the tax increases with other taxes cuts. …

Remember these sixteen names when they run for office again. The sixteen Republicans who voted to proceed were Sens. Lamar Alexander (Tenn.), Kelly Ayotte (N.H.), Richard Burr (N.C.), Saxby Chambliss (Ga.), Tom Coburn (Okla.), Susan Collins (Maine). Bob Corker (Tenn.), Jeff Flake (Ariz.), Lindsey Graham (S.C.), Dean Heller (Nev.), John Hoeven (N.D.), Johnny Isakson (Ga.), Mark Kirk (Ill.), John McCain (Ariz.), Pat Toomey (Pa.) and Roger Wicker (Miss.). List courtesy The Hill.com. As reported by RedState yesterday, this bill would allow doctors to add a person’s name to the national database currently used for background checks, and list them as...

Top White House officials have reportedly been holding private meetings with lawmakers this week to boost support for the president’s foreign policy strategy, although the outreach effort appears to have left some lawmakers confused and upset. Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) described a meeting with White House chief of staff Denis McDonough and National Security Adviser Susan Rice earlier this week as “one of the most bizarre I've attended on Foreign Relations on foreign policy in our country.” “I know several of us were involved in a very bizarre discussion last night. This continues a very bizarre discussion,” Corker added, according...

Frustrated with President Barack Obama’s reaction to Russian action in Ukraine, a group of Republican senators said Wednesday they will introduce legislation outlining a more muscular response. “What we’ve seen from the administration is a lot of rhetoric,” Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee, the top Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee, said on the Senate floor Wednesday morning. The White House has been dealing “with the situation after something bad has already occurred,” he said. Earlier this week, violence flared up in another area of Ukraine that hugs the Russian border, as the new government in Kiev criticized local police...

Senate Republicans on Wednesday blocked one of President Barack Obama's top legislative priorities, a bill to raise the federal minimum wage for the first time in five years. On a nearly party-line vote of 54-42, supporters fell short of the 60 votes that would have been needed to end a procedural roadblock against the legislation in the Democratic-led Senate. Just one Republican, Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee, joined Democrats.

(Reuters) - The United Auto Workers, surprising even its supporters, on Monday abruptly withdrew its legal challenge to a union organizing vote that it lost at a Volkswagen AG plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee in February. Just an hour before the start of a National Labor Relations Board hearing on the challenge, the union dropped its case, casting a cloud over its long and still unsuccessful push to organize foreign-owned auto plants in the U.S. South.VW workers due to testify in the NLRB hearing were already at the courthouse in downtown Chattanooga when they heard the news, which left lawyers in...

Thus marks the end of the United Auto Workers’ foray into unionizing Southern auto manufacturing. Despite cooperative management at Volkswagen, the UAW failed to convince workers in its Chattanooga facility to unionize. The union alleged interference and demanded a hearing at the National Labor Relations Board to force a revote, but unexpectedly withdrew just before the hearing was scheduled to start:

The United Auto Workers announced Monday it is withdrawing an appeal of the outcome of a union vote at Volkswagen’s assembly plant in Tennessee. In a statement released one hour before the scheduled start of a National Labor Relations Board hearing in Chattanooga, Tenn., UAW President Bob King said the union decided to put the “tainted election in the rearview mirror” because the challenge could have taken months or even years to come to a conclusion. …

CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. — The UAW announced today it is withdrawing objections filed with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) regarding February's vote at the Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, effectively terminating the NLRB review process. UAW President Bob King said the decision was made in the best interests of Volkswagen employees, the automaker, and economic development in Chattanooga. King said the UAW based its decision on the belief that the NLRB’s historically dysfunctional and complex process potentially could drag on for months or even years. Additionally, the UAW cited refusals by Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam and U.S. Sen. Bob Corker to...

p>The Talk Shows April 20th, 2014 Guests to be interviewed today on major television talk shows: FOX NEWS SUNDAY (Fox Network): Sergey Kislyak, Russia’s ambassador to the U.S.; Cardinal Donald Wuerl of Washington. MEET THE PRESS (NBC): Arseniy Yatsenyuk, Ukraine’s prime minister; Sens. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., and Chris Murphy, D-Conn.; Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla.FACE THE NATION (CBS): Gov. Devil Patrick, D-Mass.; Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York.THIS WEEK (ABC): Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas; retired Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens.STATE OF THE UNION (CNN): Sen. John Walsh, D-Mont.; Lukman Faily, Iraq’s ambassador to the United States; Kim Beazley, Australia’s...

Democrats in the U.S. House on Wednesday opened an "inquiry" into whether Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam's administration might have violated federal labor law by attempting to tie state incentives for expansion of the Chattanooga Volkswagen plant to the outcome of an election over representation by the United Auto Workers union. The probe is yet another chapter in the ongoing debate over whether Republican officials, including Haslam and U.S. Sen. Bob Corker, may have interfered in the February election in which workers voted 712-626 to reject the UAW, which was attem

Controversial housing finance reform legislation making its way through the Senate Banking Committee was co-written by a former mortgage trader for Countrywide Financial and Wachovia, two of the subprime mortgage behemoths at the center of the housing market crash in 2007.Michael Bright, the senior financial adviser to Sen. Bob Corker (R., Tenn.), worked as a trader and member of the loan-pricing desk at Countrywide Financial from 2002 to 2006, and as a senior trader for Wachovia from 2006 to 2008.Bright joined Corker’s office in 2010, and has been a key figure in crafting the Corker-Warner housing reform bill and the...

Bernd Osterloh, who is the Volkswagen AG General and Group Works Council chairman, said that future investments in the South might be hurt if workers will not unionize, according to Reuters. The comments come days after Volkswagen Chattanooga workers voted against representation by the United Auto Workers Union. After years of quiet work by union leaders and a contentious campaigning period, officials announced Friday night that Volkswagen employees opted against UAW representation with a 712-626 vote. But at that announcement, Volkswagen Chattanooga President Frank Fischer said the vote wasn't against the works council and that there is still support for...

Labor: Union bosses have contended for some time that a secret ballot isn't needed to unionize a workplace. All that's needed, they said, was employees' signatures on cards. But Chattanooga proved them wrong. For months the United Auto Workers have said a majority of workers at the Volkswagen plant in Tennessee had signed cards expressing their interest in unionizing. Why bother with a secret ballot when the workers had already spoken through the "card check" approval process? Before a much-anticipated and widely followed union-representation vote held last week, the AP reported that Gary Casteel, Tennessee-based regional director for the UAW,...

In a huge defeat for the United Auto Workers (UAW) union, workers in Tennessee voted 712 to 626 against union representation at a Volkswagen plant. This event may be remembered in the future as one of the final nails in the union coffin. We can only hope so but this news is fantastic, and even better as the UAW had a lot of advantages going into the vote. First, Volkswagen was in favor of unionization and had already been conducting talks with the UAW. Normally, businesses are hostile to unions as they are a cancerous parasite that will slowly sap...

You won’t hear much about this week’s defeat for the United Auto Workers. The thugs were trying to unionize Volkswagen’s Chattanooga plant workers. This was no ordinary defeat. It is best described as a death knell for the UAW’s efforts to unionize the South and forcibly use the increase in union dues to finance further destruction of America by their pals in the Democrat Party. That’s over now. There were a few important reasons for the kick in the teeth the union took, but one you certainly won’t hear mentioned is that “Jonah” Obama who brings defeat to Democrats wherever...