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An architect of the original bailout bill said today Democrats lack the votes to pass bill giving auto companies a piece of the $700 billion bailout pie next week. Sen. Chris Dodd to ABC News: "I want to help them if we can, but I'm not going to give anyone a blank check, so we're going to try and do something if we can next week. I don't think the votes are there. Candidly, I don't think we have the votes to get that done. With no big change between now and next Wednesday, I'm skeptical." Even after January, Democrats...

Union Voters Overwhelmingly Want to Protect Right to Cast Vote in Private The Coalition for a Democratic Workplace (CDW) today released a comprehensive analysis of data of union household attitudes from six statewide polls. The combined findings from the key states of Colorado, Louisiana, Maine, Minnesota, New Hampshire and New Mexico suggest that President-elect Obama and the Democrat-controlled Congress may have trouble convincing voters from union households that support for the mis-named Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) is a pro-worker position. Notably, the surveys found widespread opposition among union household voters (69%) to the EFCA, which would replace a federally...

TPM reports that American labor leaders are coming to Washington to meet and spell out their priorities for the incoming Obama administration: According to a senior AFL-CIO official, the labor leaders -- who could include AFL-CIO head John Sweeney, AFSCME chief Gerald McEntee, and others -- will be putting the finishing touches on plans for a national campaign, including possible TV ads, to press members of Congress for quick passage of the Employee Free Choice Act, one of labor's major agenda items. The measure, which would give workers the right to join a union as soon as a majority of...

Rick Wagoner's future as chief executive of General Motors Corp. may hinge in large part on what kind of bailout the ailing auto maker gets from the U.S. government. Momentum is building in Washington to provide financial help for the auto industry and Nancy Pelosi, speaker of the House of Representatives, plans to push for legislation next week to give "emergency assistance" to auto makers in a lame-duck session of Congress. Three big financial institutions that got federal bailouts -- including insurer American International Group Inc. and home-lenders Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- had to replace their top executives...

So the Big Three are asking for a government handout... You should write your representatives and ask them this question: Why are the Big Three going broke and asking for taxpayer money while Toyota USA is expanding?Ford, GM and Chrysler have become as sclerotic as the liberal states that host them. Like the failed state of Michigan, the Big Three promised goodies to the masses and now they have the gall to ask the American taxpayer to fund their generosity. Note to nanny-state liberals (in government and on corporate boards): It's not generosity when you do it with other people's...

Democratic Congressional leaders said Tuesday that they were ready to push emergency legislation to aid the imperiled auto industry when lawmakers return to Washington next week, setting the stage for one last showdown with President Bush. “Next week, during the lame-duck session of Congress, we are determined to pass legislation that will save the jobs of millions of workers whose livelihoods are on the line,” the majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, said in a statement. His call for the session, the first since the election, came shortly after the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, said Congress and the administration “must...

Remember when Democrats lamented the growing budget deficit and spoke of the burden our children and grandchildren would face if we didn't put our fiscal house in order? That was when Republicans ran the federal government and Democrats opposed tax cuts. Now that Democrats are about to be in charge, concern about the deficit has disappeared and spending plans proliferate, even though the national debt passed $10 trillion in September and we added another $500 billion last month. The latest, but by no means the last supplicant at the public trough, is the auto industry, which wants a bailout to...

OTTAWA–Faced with a darkening economic outlook, Prime Minister Stephen Harper and the premiers are pledging to speed up infrastructure spending, look at easing rules for retirement savings and consider ways to boost Ontario's hard-hit automotive sector. With an eye on the massive rescue package offered by the U.S. government for General Motors, Ford and Chrysler, Harper yesterday dangled the possibility of a government bailout package to help the auto industry, but fell short of promising concrete action. And in a major development for Toronto and other urban centres, Harper and the premiers emerged from a meeting about the economy agreeing...

WASHINGTON -- House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she will push legislation next week to help the ailing auto industry. "I am confident Congress can consider emergency assistance legislation next week during a lame-duck session, and I hope the Bush Administration would support it," the California Democrat said in a statement. Rep. Pelosi said she tapped House Financial Services Chairman Barney Frank (D., Mass.) to craft legislation that would give the industry "limited" assistance under the recently enacted Troubled Asset Relief Program. "In order to prevent the failure of one or more of the major American automobile manufacturers, which would have...

The advent of a new administration could mean a renewed political debate over a central aspect of life for most Americans — the workplace. Barack Obama has embraced a pro-union agenda that would strengthen the labor movement. And union leaders, who spent more than a quarter-billion dollars and enlisted more than a quarter-million volunteers to win working class swing voters, expect Democrats in both the White House and Congress to make good on their campaign promises. "We have more votes in the Senate, we have more votes in the House, and we have a mobilized electorate and union movement that...

President Bush is unhappy the conversation between him and President-elect Barack Obama has been cast as a trade-off between Bush signing a second stimulus package in exchange for congressional passage of the Colombia Free Trade Deal, administration officials told FOX News on Tuesday.

Obama Prods Bush to Aid Detroit Cordial White House Meeting Included Discussion of Auto Makers' Condition By JONATHAN WEISMAN and JOHN MCKINNON President-elect Barack Obama met at the White House Monday with the man he will succeed in January, and pressed President George W. Bush to take immediate action to help stave off the collapse of the U.S. auto industry and to aid the economy more broadly. Mr. Obama's focus on the auto industry came as fellow Democrats on Capitol Hill started moving on their own to help Detroit gain access to federal rescue funds allocated for the financial sector....

Just hours after President Bush and President-elect Obama met in the Oval Office of the White House, details of their confidential conversation began leaking out to the press, igniting anger from the president, sources claim. "Senator Obama would be wise to keep close counsel," a top Bush source warned. "BUSH AND OBAMA AT ODDS OVER AID FOR AUTO INDUSTRY," splashed the NEW YORK TIMES in an exclusive Monday evening, quoting "people familiar with the discussion." The two met at the White House in private, without staff. "Bush indicated at the meeting that he might support some aid and a broader...

The Democratic leaders in Congress, the speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, and the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, have declined to call a lame-duck session for next week, as they had hoped, without assurance that Bush would support a stimulus package.

As President-elect Obama prepares to enter the White House, he must ponder what to do about the world's trouble spots: Iran, Iraq, North Korea, the Caucasus. And, oh yes, Detroit. On Friday, General Motors and Ford announced more multibillion-dollar losses in the third quarter; closely held Chrysler doesn't publicly report results. When GM, which seems in the worst shape, was 45 minutes late releasing its results, rumors spread that a bankruptcy filing was imminent. It wasn't, but the company says it could run out of cash in the first half of next year. Make that the first quarter if the...

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid sent a letter to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson urging him to assist the Big Three auto makers by considering broadening the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program to help the troubled industry. The two top Democratic leaders in Congress are likely to make the request in a letter to the White House, which could be forwarded as soon as Saturday afternoon, said individuals familiar with the matter. President-elect Barack Obama is generally supportive of the appeal, but at the moment is moving on his own track to assist the industry,...

CHICAGO (Reuters) - U.S. labor unions, having helped Barack Obama win the presidency, entertain high hopes he will enact their agenda to bolster their negotiating power with employers and increase their numbers after decades of decline. Unions have "an unprecedented amount of leverage" after turning out white middle-class voters for Obama in battleground industrial states like Pennsylvania and Ohio that he won in Tuesday's election but had lost in the Democratic nominating primaries, said University of Illinois-Chicago labor expert Robert Bruno. "American workers won this election," said Anna Burger, chairman of the labor coalition "Change to Win" at a news...

DETROIT -- The largest U.S. auto makers posted staggering losses on Friday, blaming a worsening global economic slowdown and linking their precarious fates to the hope of a government rescue. General Motors Corp. reported a net loss of $2.54 billion or $4.45 a share, for the third quarter, including special items. That compares with a net loss of $42.5 billion or $75.12 a share, in the third quarter last year. Ford Motor Co. reported a third-quarter net loss of $129 million, or six cents a share, compared with a year-earlier loss of $380 million, or 19 cents a share. But...

No one has posted this. We need to see what he is going to do to us.

(CNSNews.com) - In April, then-Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama said in Philadelphia, “I’ve fought to pass the Employee Free Choice Act in the Senate. And I will make it the law of the land when I’m president of the United States of America.” President-elect Obama will move into the White House with increased Democratic majorities in both the House and Senate, which also support legislation designed to stem the tide of declining union membership. The bill replaces the secret ballot by allowing union organizers to publicly ask workers to sign a card in favor of unionizing. If a bare majority...

DETROIT, Nov 6 (Reuters) - United Auto Workers President Ron Gettelfinger on Thursday urged the U.S. government to provide another $25 billion in loans to struggling U.S. automakers so that they can meet their health care obligations to over 780,000 retirees and their dependents. "The U.S. Treasury and the Federal Reserve can help immediately by taking steps to provide liquidity to auto manufacturers so they can get through the difficulties caused by an across-the-board decline in auto sales," Gettelfinger said in a statement released by the union. Gettelfinger joined the chief executives of General Motors Corp (GM.N: Quote, Profile, Research,...

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger will propose one-day-a-month unpaid furloughs for state workers for the next 17 months, as well as rescinding two of the workers' 13 paid holidays, sources said this morning. The governor is scheduled to unveil his proposals this morning for closing a budget deficit that could be as big as $11.2 billion for the fiscal year that started July 1 and another $13 billion in the next fiscal year. A source, who asked not be named because they are not authorized to speak on the issue for their state agency, said the administration is estimating that by cutting...

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce urged President-elect Barack Obama and Congress to refrain from pushing legislation to make organizing unions easier until the economy recovers. The Employee Free Choice Act would force an employer to recognize a union if 51 percent of its workers sign cards stating they want to be represented by a union. An election would not be necessary. The bill is organized labor’s top priority in the new Congress, and unions spent millions of dollars to help elect Democrats in the Nov. 4 election. Unions, trial lawyers and other interest groups that supported Democrats “will expect quick...

Organized labor sees a historic opportunity with Tuesday's election and is counting on the incoming Obama administration to back its agenda in what promises to be a landmark battle with business. At the top of labor's wish list is passage of the Employee Free Choice Act, which would make it harder for companies to fight union-organizing drives. "It is the most important issue that we have," said John Sweeney, president of the AFL-CIO. AFL-CIO Secretary Treasurer Richard Trumka, left, confers with the union's president, John Sweeney, Wednesday. Unions are counting on President-elect Obama to back their legislative agenda. President-elect Barack...

WASHINGTON, Dec. 19 --Teamsters General President Jim Hoffa today praised Congress for banning funds for the Bush administration's reckless pilot program to let trucks from Mexico travel freely on U.S. highways. The ban was part of the omnibus spending bill that Congress passed Wednesday. The Teamsters opposed the pilot project from the start because of real concerns that trucks from Mexico aren't safe. "Congress just made driving safer in the United States by ensuring that dangerous trucks from Mexico aren't lurching along our highways like unguided missiles," Hoffa said. "We expect the Bush administration to obey the law and put...

SAN DIEGO – Saying he was here to fight for the safety of America's roads, Teamsters union General President Jim Hoffa led a rally Wednesday morning at the Otay Mesa border crossing to protest a pilot program that allows long-haul trucking across the U.S.-Mexico border. “The big money boys want to have trucks coming through here that are dangerous,” Hoffa said over cheers from dozens of Teamsters and the roar from Mexican trucks leaving the U.S. inspection station on Enrico Fermi Drive. “Wake up America, fight back,” Hoffa told supporters. The pilot project, which has been up and running since...

Telling a women's conference in Houston that the effort is dangerous, leader vows Teamsters will fight funding Calling a new pilot program opening the border to Mexican trucks dangerous, Teamsters President Jim Hoffa said today in Houston the union will lobby to cut its funding. Hoffa said money for the new program came from somewhere and the union will press Congress to stop it. "We can do that," he said. In prepared remarks, the union president said the Bush administration has "sucker-punched" American workers by opening highways to Mexican trucks. Under the year-long pilot program, up to 100 Mexican carriers...

Jimmy Hoffa doesn’t have a presidential candidate he and his powerful Teamster’s union is backing, but he praises Democratic candidate John Edwards for making strong appeals to labor a centerpiece of his campaign. Since James P. Hoffa, the son of the legendary Teamster’s boss, took the presidency of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters in 1999, he has energized his 1.4 million membership, making the country’s 4th largest union once again politically relevant and influential. At 66, Hoffa is not only busy building union membership – conducting recruiting efforts among workers at UPS, FedEx, and solid waste companies – but also...

Teamsters president James Hoffa on the G. Gordon Liddy Show re: 100 Mexican Carriers (trucking companies)invited onto American Highways, the Security and Prosperity Partnership, etc. You can click to listen. "We're aware of the SPP (...) this is a conspiracy of big business (...) all [safety] interests will be put aside to [eliminate borders] (...) [they're building] an enormous port down in Mexico [with a ten-lane highway](...) Toll roads built with foreign money (...) All this is being greased by big business (...) they don't want regulations, they don't want food inspection (...) This is what the "NAFTA Superhighway" is...

12th Street Riot The 12th Street Riot in Detroit began in the early morning hours of Sunday, July 23, 1967. Vice squad officers executed a raid at a blind pig on the corner of 12th Street and Clairmount on the city's near westside. The confrontation with the patrons there evolved into one of the deadliest and most destructive riots in modern U.S. history, lasting five days and far surpassing the 1943 riot the city endured. Before the end, the state and federal governments, under order of then President Lyndon B. Johnson, sent in National Guard and U.S. Army troops and...

Hot on the Hoffa trail Taylor cop thinks he has the answer to 1975 vanishing of union leader July 1, 2007 BY JOEL THURTELL FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER Jimmy Hoffa's last car ride took less than two minutes. On July 30, 1975, he rode one long block south from a two-story house at 17841 Beaverland in Detroit's tough Brightmoor neighborhood and turned right -- west -- on Grand River Ave. He passed the greens of William Rogell Golf Course and a scenic footbridge, crossed the woodsy Rouge River, cruised past the brown brick Redford Granite Co. building and the Mt....

DETROIT - FBI Director Robert Mueller said Tuesday the decades-old disappearance of Teamsters leader Jimmy Hoffa will eventually be solved. Mueller spoke during a question-and-answer session with reporters at the FBI's Detroit office, months after an expensive search at a southeastern Michigan horse farm turned up nothing. "We have a long, long memory," Mueller said. "We will continue to follow any lead that comes to our attention." Hoffa was last seen alive on July 30, 1975. Over the years, theories have suggested Hoffa was buried at Giants Stadium in New Jersey or dumped in a Florida swamp. The day he...

The Talk Shows Sunday, September 3rd, 2006 Guests to be interviewed today on major television talk shows: FOX NEWS SUNDAY (Fox Network): Sens. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., Elizabeth Dole, R-N.C., and Arlen Specter, R-Pa.; Washington Redskins coach Joe Gibbs.MEET THE PRESS (NBC): Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., and his Democratic challenger, state treasurer Robert Casey. FACE THE NATION (CBS): Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean; Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. THIS WEEK (ABC): Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del.; Sen. Lincoln Chafee, R-R.I., and his primary challenger, Cranston Mayor Stephen Laffey; actress and animal rights activist Bo Derek. LATE EDITION (CNN) : Rep. Christopher Shays,...

Preview and Analysis of the Weekend Talk Shows for 9/2 and 9/3/06It's Labor Day weekend!  The press can now concentrate (without feeling silly) on the Fall elections.  Who cares if there's actual news that might affect the future of human existence, let alone the fortunes of the United States and all Americans?  They get to report on the horse race!Meet The Press starts off the Sunday shows in my area, so I'll talk about them first.  Lil' Timmah is back and he's got a signature MTP event - live debates.  He'll get to sit upright to ask questions of Casey...

James P. Hoffa, president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, called for tighter U.S. border control yesterday, saying the country must stop illegal immigration so it can focus on the undocumented aliens already here. "We have to control our borders," Mr. Hoffa said in an interview in Detroit. "Let's stop for a while, so that we can basically take a breath and find out what we do with the people that are here."

An exhaustive two-week search of a Michigan horse farm for the body of influential union boss Jimmy Hoffa has ended without result, the FBI says. Agents tore down a barn and dug up several sites on Hidden Dreams Farm 32km (20 miles) from the restaurant where he was last seen in 1975. They had acted on a tip-off from a convict who lived there at the time. The former leader of the powerful Teamsters union apparently disappeared after meeting a mafia boss. Rumours have persisted that Hoffa was murdered by the mafia to prevent him regaining control of the union....

The FBI is wrapping up its two-week search of a suburban Detroit horse farm after finding no trace of former Teamsters boss Jimmy Hoffa's remains, a local prosecutor said Tuesday. Oakland County Prosecutor David Gorcyca told The Associated Press he was informed by Bloomfield Township police that the search was ending without any remains found at the Hidden Dreams Farm in Milford Township. The Detroit Free Press, citing an anonymous federal official, also reported Tuesday that the search had ended with no trace of Hoffa. FBI spokeswoman Dawn Clenney did not immediately return a call from the AP seeking comment....

MILFORD TOWNSHIP, Mich. -- Residents in Oakland County, Mich., near the site of the search for Jimmy Hoffa are having a little bit of fun with it. Milford Township businesses are selling T-shirts, special salads, and even baked goods. FBI agents looking for Hoffa should check the Milford Baking Co. The bakery has a hot seller with its Jimmy Hoffa cupcakes.

MILFORD TOWNSHIP, Michigan (Reuters) - FBI teams on Thursday sifted by hand through dirt from a chest-deep hole in the ground in an intense search for the body of labor leader Jimmy Hoffa three decades after his disappearance. Wearing Evidence Response Team T-shirts and hard hats, FBI agents directed a work crew that used heavy equipment to rip up the concrete floor of a horse farm barn demolished a day earlier. Investigators then worked by hand to sort through soil under the foundation of the barn and could be seen photographing and videotaping potential evidence around a hole marked off...

Michigan bakery sells Hoffa cupcakes By BRIAN CHARLTON, Associated Press Writer 1 hour, 52 minutes ago MILFORD TOWNSHIP, Mich. - Cupcakes aren't usually a best-seller at the Milford Baking Company. But since the addition of a plastic green hand emerging from the chocolate-flavored sprinkles and frosting meant to resemble dirt, the bakery can't make enough of the desserts. In the week since dozens of FBI agents, police and others invaded this small community 30 miles northwest of Detroit to search for the remains of former Teamsters chief Jimmy Hoffa, local businesses are taking advantage of the national spotlight aimed at...

The informant who is spurring the search for Jimmy Hoffa’s remains is an ailing prison inmate who recently passed a polygraph exam in the probe, says a government investigator who is familiar with the FBI operation in Michigan. The informant, Donovan Wells, 75, remembers “suspicious activity” on what is now called Hidden Dreams Farm in Milford Township, Mich., at the time Hoffa disappeared, the investigator said Friday. The investigator spoke on condition of anonymity because some of the information he was relating comes from records that have been ordered sealed by a federal judge. Among them is an FBI affidavit...

MILFORD TOWNSHIP, Mich. - The FBI said Thursday that a search of a horse farm for clues to Jimmy Hoffa’s disappearance is expected to take at least a couple weeks and likely will involve the removal of a barn. Federal agents began digging at Hidden Dreams Farm on Wednesday in a search for “the human remains of James Riddle Hoffa,” according to the search warrant, obtained by The Associated PressThe former Teamsters leader disappeared in 1975 on a night he was to have dinner at a restaurant about 20 miles away.Hoffa was to meet with a New Jersey Teamsters boss...

Breaking News: FBI Searches Wooded Area for Hoffa By Cheryl Chodun Web produced by Seth Myers May 17, 2006 A group of FBI investigators is searching a wooded area in the vicinity of Milford and Wixom in connection with the 1975 disappearance of Teamsters’ leader Jimmy Hoffa. Investigators have cordoned off a section of woods where the bones of the long-missing union official may lie. Hoffa was last seen at the Mocas Red Fox restaurant in Bloomfield Township in July 1975. Speculation regarding his whereabouts – or his body’s whereabouts – certainly comes and goes. Recently, a mob hitman named...

On July 30, 1975, former Teamsters President Jimmy Hoffa stood outside the Machus Red Fox Restaurant in Bloomfield Township, Michigan, impatiently scanning the parking lot.  The man who had made the Teamsters the most formidable labor union in the country was already angry.  It was quarter after two in the afternoon, and the men he was supposed to be meeting for lunch hadn’t arrived yet.  Hoffa was a stickler for punctuality, and it was his understanding that they were to meet at 2:00. Wearing a dark blue short-sleeve shirt, blue pants, white socks, and black Gucci loafers, Hoffa walked...

WASHINGTON -- The bolt in Chicago Monday from the AFL-CIO by the Teamsters and Service Employees International Union (SEIU) reflects a long-building reaction to John Sweeney's plans a decade ago when he muscled his way into the labor federation presidency. He wanted to restore union power through politics. His project was a total failure, and the AFL-CIO is in ruins 50 years after its creation. The scenario of the breakup was accurately laid out to me by Teamsters sources nearly a year ago. Sweeney would be offered a deal he could not accept. To keep the two big unions in...

AFL-CIO urged to rescind resolution at July convention WASHINGTON, D.C. -- A broad coalition of religious and family values organizations this week went toe to toe with Big Labor, demanding in a letter to national AFL-CIO President John Sweeney that union officials rescind an unreported AFL-CIO executive committee resolution opposing federal and state constitutional amendments to define marriage as only between one man and one woman. * See AFL-CIO resolution at: http://www.aflcio.org/aboutaflcio/ecouncil/ec03032005g.cfm Dr. Don Wildmon, Chairman of the American Family Association, said the letter's purpose is "to protect one-man, one-woman marriage and defend the precious religious liberties of millions of...

March 03, 2005 Las Vegas The mission of the AFL-CIO is to improve the lives of working families—to bring economic justice to the workplace and social justice to our nation. We believe that all union members are entitled to equal rights and that all of their families should have access to benefits they need and deserve. The AFL-CIO is dedicated to fighting for those rights at the bargaining table, in the voting booth, in city halls and statehouses, and on Capitol Hill. The AFL-CIO recognizes that families come in all shapes and sizes. As our families change, our union contracts...

DETROIT - Blood found on the floor of a Detroit home is not that of Jimmy Hoffa, investigators said Monday, ruling out what had looked like one of the most promising recent leads in the disappearance of the Teamsters boss 30 years ago. Authorities had ripped up floorboards last May at a house where Delaware Teamsters official Frank Sheeran said he shot Hoffa to death. Police in the Detroit suburb of Bloomfield Township received a report from the FBI crime lab Monday concluding that human blood from a male was on the floorboards but that the blood was not Hoffa's....

The barons of the American labor movement gathered Jan. 10 at the AFL-CIO fortress across Lafayette Park from the White House, with doors closed to the public as usual. The AFL-CIO Executive Committee's agenda prepared by President John Sweeney allotted 30 minutes for reform of the labor federation. But James P. Hoffa of the Teamsters insisted much more time was needed to debate badly needed changes. As Hoffa desired, more than two hours were spent on proposals by him and Andrew Stern of the Service Employees International Union. They would diminish the influence of the AFL-CIO, returning power to individual...

ORGANIZED labor was an undisputed election-day loser, but John Kerry's defeat was a particular blow to Teamsters chief Jim Hoffa. For Hoffa, who worked hard for Kerry after endorsing Richard Gephardt in the primaries, the election was about much more than access or influence. It was about getting the 1.3 million-member Teamsters out from under federal government oversight, in place since 1989. The stakes for Hoffa were so high because of a burgeoning controversy that exploded with the April 28 resignation of Edwin Stier, the former federal prosecutor hired by the Teamsters to clean up the union. Stier charged that...