Free Republic

During a speech today in Washington D.C., AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka called the looming debt disaster a "manufactured crisis" and said "there isn't a fiscal cliff." "There is no fiscal cliff," Trumka says in prepared remarks to the National Mediation Board Conference in Washington on Thursday. "What we’re facing is an obstacle course within a manufactured crisis that was hastily thrown together in response to inflated rhetoric about our federal deficit." Obama met with Trumka earlier this week, in addition to other far left leaders, to discuss economic policy. Apparently a $3500 tax increase on every family doesn't serve as...

Breaking windows will stimulate the economy, according to a leading public pension advocacy group. Skeptical? The National Institute on Retirement Security (NIRS) has not literally endorsed breaking windows, but a report recently published by the organization relies on the same economic fallacy. According to NIRS-whose membership consists principally of public employee unions, the pension plans in which they participate, and the actuarial and investment firms that serve them-the best economic stimulus is not tax cuts or unemployment checks, but increased pension benefits to public-sector retirees. Each dollar of pension benefits produces $2.37 in economic output, NIRS says, creating millions of...

Conventional wisdom has Ohio being vulnerable to a Democratic rollback in 2012 after a GOP sweep in 2010. Approval ratings for Governor John Kasich have been low after his reforms of public-employee unions in a state where Big Labor is thought to have a wide reach. However, a new Quinnipiac poll on a proposed right-to-work reform may indicate that their power is not as broad as first thought: Despite the overwhelming victory by organized labor and its allies in repealing SB 5 in this past election, by 54 – 40 percent Ohio voters favor the idea of passing a “right-to-work”...

Protesters at Friday’s “Occupy CPAC” event, organized by AFL-CIO and the Occupy DC movement, told The Daily Caller that they were paid “sixty bucks a head” to protest outside the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, D.C. One protester told TheDC that all the “Occupy” activists were being paid to protest, and that his union, Sheet Metal Workers Local 100, approached him about the money-making opportunity. “I have nothing nice to say about Local 100. … They just told me ‘you wanna make sixty bucks? So c’mon,’” the protester said. Other “Occupy CPAC” protesters were unwilling to speak on camera...

SEIU Healthcare 775NW is hiring a Lead internal organizer to lead a team of eight organizers who are focused on leadership development, the “Leaders In Action” field team, working with public and private sector home care workers. This team develops leaders and builds networks to take action in a variety of campaigns.

A last-ditch drive ends in disappointment for Penn State, which loses to Nebraska, 17-14. Not having any timeouts crippled the offense, which completed two passes short of a first down, including one with seconds left, but couldn't stop the clock. This is a different Saturday in State College. Immediately after McGloin's final pass fell incomplete, the Penn State crowd cheered the team's effort: the cheering grew to a roar as the two teams again met a midfield, such as they did right before the game. Again, as occurred several times during the game, there were chants of "We love JoePa."...

Labor is poised for a big victory in Ohio Tuesday. PPP's final poll on Issue 2 finds 59% of voters plan to reject Senate Bill 5, with only 36% voting for approval. What might be most remarkable about the 23 point margin in this poll is that it's exactly identical to what we found the first time we polled on this issue all the way back in March. Voters were furious then and that anger has continued all the way to November. Democrats are almost unanimous in their opposition to SB 5, supporting repeal by an 86-10 margin. Meanwhile there's...

In response to a series of controversial decisions by the National Labor Relations Board, the House of Representatives will vote on a bill curtailing the power of the NLRB Thursday afternoon. The Protecting Jobs From Government Interference Act, H.R. 2587 is currently being voted on and is expected to pass the Republican-controlled House. An earlier vote on the bill on the floor passed 239-176, with all Republicans and six Democrats voting in favor. The bill would prohibit the National Labor Relations Board from ordering any employer to close, relocate, or transfer employment under any circumstance. The NLRB has been the...

Madison - A Dane County judge has struck down Gov. Scott Walker's legislation repealing most collective bargaining for public employees. In a 33-page decision issued Thursday, Dane County Circuit Judge Maryann Sumi said she would freeze the legislation because GOP lawmakers on a committee broke the state's open meetings law in passing it March 9. The legislation limits collective bargaining to wages for all public employees in Wisconsin except for police and firefighters. "It's what we were looking for," said Dane County District Attorney Ismael Ozanne, a Democrat. Ozanne sued to block the law after Assembly Minority Leader Peter Barca...

The Tennessee state legislature tomorrow will vote on a bill that would limit collective bargaining for teachers’ unions — the only government unions allowed in the state of Tennessee.The bill echoes the legislation the Wisconsin legislature passed earlier this year in the face of union protests and the flight of 14 Wisconsin state senators. Around that time, union protesters marched in Tennessee, too — but, in recent weeks, Tennessee’s version of a bargain-limiting bill has moved forward to relatively little national fanfare, even though both Tennessee Education Association activists and Tea Party supporters have continued to express strong views on...

H. L. Mencken defined puritanism as the haunting fear that someone, somewhere may be happy. The National Labor Relations Board is haunted by the fear that a company somewhere might be creating jobs with a nonunionized work force. Boeing has run afoul of that fear by investing more than $1 billion in a new plant in the right-to-work state of South Carolina. With only the flimsiest legal justification, the board wants to force Boeing to reverse course and locate the facility with its current operations in Washington State, where its workers are unionized. The NLRB’s claims are laughable on their...

The National Labor Relations Board's recent challenge to Boeing over the second 787 production line is malign nonsense. Laughably meritless on its face, it nonetheless poses a serious threat to both economic recovery and economic freedom. Such things must always be confronted and overcome. Briefly, the complaint filed by the NLRB's acting general counsel says Boeing engaged in unfair labor practices as it considered its expansion plans. So, 17 months after the company announced its decision and subsequently invested billions of dollars, hiring more than 1,000 workers in North Charleston, S.C., the complaint would have the company move the work...

When Governor Scott Walker took steps to limit the power of public-employee unions and return the power over policy to the voters of Wisconsin, many of us knew that the newly-elected Republican would start a wave of similar efforts in other states. However, it’s safe to say that one place we didn’t expect to see that wave break early on Plymouth Rock. Not only has the Massachusetts state House passed a new law barring all PEUs from collective bargaining on health care, it passed by a veto-proof majority — because Democrats pushed the bill: House lawmakers voted overwhelmingly last night...

Across the country, from Wisconsin to Ohio, Republican governors are battling Big Labor. Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina, in an interview with National Review Online, says that her state is the next front. But Haley’s foes are not graybeard professors or drum-banging state workers; she is facing off against bureaucratic activists in Washington, D.C. The National Labor Relations Board, a federal agency dominated by President Obama’s appointees, is attempting to block Boeing from building jets in Charleston, S.C. By producing planes in a nonunion plant thousands of miles from its base in Everett, Wash., the NLRB alleges that Boeing...

Are you the kind of person who loves hearing the bug zapper? Who likes it when the highway paves over a few neighborhoods? Who secretly wants the tank to flatten the kid with the flower? Then you're going to love the NFL owners in this mess. It's hard to find anybody to like in this coming distraction known as the NFL lockout. But look closely. Yes, some of the players are millionaires. But half of the owners are billionaires.

Jo Ann Emerson is sponsoring HR 413, a bill that will provide unions so much power at the bargaining table they'll have no reason to stage lockouts or strikes.

The Obama Administration is sending signals that could prompt foreign manufacturers to shut down their plants in the USA and cost more Americans their jobs. All to help GM, Chrysler and the UAW.

Less than 48 hours before Christmas, Keith Gladney was fired from his job as a St. Louis County (Mo.) Animal Control Officer, according to a BigGovernment.com article published the same day. Why is his firing important? Because, as you'll see in reviewing the points noted below, integrity of government is at stake:

Thanks to contributors David Donar at Political Graffiti, Curtis D. Tucker at Curtoons.com and "Michael" at the now-defunct My Personal Litmus blog, I was able to share a great number of fantastic editorial cartoons. Below, I share the first five of my Top 10 favorites of 2009 in no particular order. Click on any image below to read the posts in which the image appeared.

Dressed in blue jeans and wearing a large parka, ski cap and sun glasses, I spent almost 20 minutes early this afternoon mingling among approximately two-dozen people being paid, according to a union source not at the rally, $11 an hour by St. Louis-area union bosses to wave pre-printed signs in support of President Barack Obama’s so-called “health care reform plan.”