Free Republic

You'd be wise to keep a cool head if you're going to CPAC. From the D.C. AFL-CIO: Metropolitan Washington Council, AFL-CIO)With workshops like “Return of Big Labor: What Can We Learn from Wisconsin & Ohio,” and “Taking back Wall Street: The Tea Party vs. Occupy Wall Street,” the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) descends on the nation’s capital February 9-11 and local labor activists are planning a DC lesson to ensure that the voice of the 99% are heard at this elite conservative gathering. Actions are currently being planned for noontime and after work on Friday, February 10. Featured speakers...

Two days after the West Oakland shootout that left 1-year-old Hiram Lawrence on life support with a bullet to the head and six other people wounded, one of the suspects in the attack unwittingly crossed paths with the tot's family at Children's Hospital Oakland - and got pummeled. Oakland police said the man - who was arrested on suspicion of assault - is one of the five "persons of interest" in the Nov. 29 firefight at Seventh and Willow streets, in the shadow of the elevated BART tracks. Three men in hooded sweatshirts opened fire on a group in a...

We Are Heroes, Who Need to Create a Crisis: SEIU’s Stephen Lerner at Progressive Summit Tells Unions, Community Organizers and Students They Need to Escalate Protests, Break Laws, Occupy Abandoned Houses and Spread the Crisis All Over U.S.

CHICAGO (Reuters) - More than 500 protesting port workers stormed the EGT grain terminal at the Port of Longview, Washington, on Thursday and damaged railcars and other property, Longview Police Chief Jim Duscha said. The incident came a day after several of Longshoremen were arrested after blocking a train from arriving at the newly constructed facility owned by EGT, LLC, which is a joint venture of Bunge Ltd, ITOCHU International Inc and STX Pan Ocean Inc. Early on Thursday, the protesters stormed the EGT facility, smashed guard shack windows, pushed a security vehicle into a ditch, cut brake lines on...

A band I was in years ago had a song titled, “Sheet Rockers vs. Aluminum Siders,” about a fight our singer saw at work on a construction site. I was reminded of it earlier today, when members of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) stormed the Port of Longview, Washington, where they held security guards hostage, blocked a train, and destroyed property, damaging railroad cars and dumping grain. They were protesting the hiring at a grain terminal by the employer, EGT, of a contractor employing workers belonging to a different union, the Operating Engineers. Such union turf battles are...

LONGVIEW, Wash. (AP) — Hundreds of Longshoremen stormed the Port of Longview early Thursday, overpowered and held security guards, damaged railroad cars, and dumped grain that is the center of a labor dispute, said Longview Police Chief Jim Duscha.

Gibson Guitar Corp. is claiming the Obama administration wants more of its woodwork done overseas, as a bizarre battle heats up between the government and one of the country's most renowned guitar makers. The dispute started in 2009, when federal agents raided the company over suspect wood shipments from Madagascar. Gibson took that case to court but has denounced the administration with a vengeance after agents returned late last month to raid several Gibson factories -- this time out of concern that Indian export laws had been violated. In an interview earlier this week, CEO Henry Juszkiewicz claimed that the...

On Friday, the Czech Republic became the latest country to pull out of the upcoming U.N. “anti-racism” extravaganza known as Durban III. Canada, Israel, and the United States have already given thumbs down to the event, which the U.N. is bringing to U.S. shores on September 22, 2011. While Americans will be mourning the 10th anniversary of 9/11, the United Nations in New York will be “commemorating” the 10th anniversary of the first Durban conference – an outpouring of intolerance and xenophobia. The Czech Republic’s move comes three days after U.N. negotiators quietly circulated a draft of the final declaration...

The famous quote attributed to Winston Churchill that, "If you're not liberal at 20, you have no heart...if you're not conservative by 30, you have no brain," may need some tweaking given the recent antics of the American left. Having built the credibility of their political movement on the grounds of compassion and empathy, their actions and policy proposals are reflective of just the opposite. Start with my home state of Indiana, whose Republican legislature and governor enacted a law to prohibit taxpayer dollars from flowing into the hands of any health clinic that performs abortions. Through entirely predictable demagoguery,...

After some quiet time following last year’s departure of union bosses Andy Stern and Anna Burger, it appears the purple behemoth known as Service Employees International Union, has been quietly plotting its own Egyptian-style revolution. Given the ever-shrinking private-sector union membership ranks, as well as the realization that its political influence has shrunk as well, the SEIU’s plan is apparently to engage in a class-warfare based campaign. According to a Politico piece, SEIU’s plan (called “Fight for a Fair Economy”) and will reach outside the union movement in order to “mobilizing underpaid, underemployed and unemployed workers” and “channeling anger about...

Kerry Picket of the Washington Times went to ask Washington, D.C. Mayor Vincent Gray a straightforward question on the DC school voucher program. After she was finished, a man confronted her on her ‘bias’ and told her to “drop dead” when she asked for his name. The confrontation starts at the 3:07 mark within the video.

Big Labor: Having lost its war on economics, the SEIU has declared war on the economy. Literally. One of its top minds was caught vowing to crash the stock market to redistribute wealth. Is this a union or a subversive group? Six years ago, after breaking from the AFL-CIO, the Service Employees International Union was hailed as a new kind of organization, whose dynamic leader Andy Stern would make labor strong again. His union vowed to increase its "political muscle to pressure entrenched politicians who didn't vote in the interests of their members," wrote Matt Bai in his 2007 book,...

State GOP convention: Blowup, outgoing chair accused of "thuggery" Republican State Sen. Sam Blaskeslee of San Luis Obispo, leading the charge against a conservative move to revise the party's endorsement of candidates, sharply criticized the outgoing GOP chair Saturday as a failed leader who has "resorted to thuggery." Blakeslee made the comment after walking out of a heated meeting of the state GOP Rules Committee at the start of a 3-day day statewide Republican Convention which brought 1,000 delegates to the Sacramento Hyatt. His comments come on the heels of efforts by outgoing GOP chair Ron Nehring, who has lead...

Below, you’ll find a compilation of 20 days worth of the death threats, vandalism, and intimidation practiced by pro-union thugs opposed to Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s budget repair bill. Wisconsin is my home state. I lived there until I was 27 years-old in 1993 and most of my family, including my parents still live there. For that reason and because the issue of education and teachers unions has been a passion of mine for going on two decades, I’ve been following this story very, very closely. My original intent was to compile all of this earlier in the week, but...

During a conference call with thousands of activists Thursday, Vice President Joe Biden joined Labor Secretary Hilda Solis and AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka in commending union protesters for standing up to Republicans across the country. “You guys built the middle class,“ Biden said during the ”virtual town hall” conversation hosted by the AFL-CIO. “I would just emphasize what Hilda [Solis] said and say it slightly different: We don’t see the value of collective bargaining, we see the absolute positive necessity of collective bargaining. “Let’s get something straight,” he continued. “The only people who have the capacity — organizational capacity and...

Exploiting the battle between the governor and public employees in Wisconsin, frequent White House visitor, AFL-CIO Chief Richard Trumpka has been trying to resuscitate a critically ill labor movement by setting up the entire conservative movement as the “enemy." Trumpka argues that the $14+ trillion dollar deficit is no big deal and that the GOP is trying to take money away from the middle class, only give it to those rich Wall Street CEOs. As Trumka’s participation in the public workers’ union protests grew, so did the number of incidents of union violence and thuggery associated with the them. This...

After Democratic state senators fled the state to block a fair vote, and after union members took over the capitol building, and after Republican senators received death threats, Wisconsin state Sen. Robert Jauch, D-Poplar, labeled Republican passage of a bill to reduce public employee collective bargaining power "political thuggery in its worst form." And the left wonders why so much of America doesn't take it seriously. At 9:18 Wednesday night, an e-mail was sent to Republican state senators in Wisconsin. Its first paragraph reads: Please put your things in order because you will be killed and your familes [sic] will...

At one time in this country, there were few workplace safety laws, few restraints on employers, and incredibly exploitive working conditions that ranged from slavery, to share cropping, to putting children in dangerous working conditions. Unions, to their everlasting credit, helped play an important role in leveling the playing field for workers. However, as the laws changed, there was less and less need for unions. Because of that, union membership shrank. In response, the unions became more explicitly involved in politics. Over time, they managed to co-opt the Democratic Party, pull their strings, and rewrite our labor laws in their...

"Violent," "racist," "disruptive," "astroturf," "extremist." Those are some of the adjectives the Obama Lapdog Media and Democrats have used in the past two years against the Tea Party movement, although there is very little they can actually point to to make that case. Compare that to the media coverage of the union protests in Wisconsin against Governor Scott Walker's budget proposals. Images of signs depicting the Governor as Hitler, Mussolini, or Mubarak were common, but not widely reported by the media. But the Democrat allied unions sunk to a lower level this past week. Let's just say it all started...

BOISE — Rancor didn’t dominate last week’s legislative debate of education reform, but it certainly ate up a large chunk. Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Luna on Tuesday morning discovered his truck vandalized, its tires slashed and his last name spray-painted and crossed out on its passenger side. That came after Luna had to tell an unruly man claiming to be a teacher to leave his mother’s house a few days earlier. And later Tuesday, an off-duty police officer escorted a disruptive person away from a coffeehouse where Luna was making a television appearance. In their entirety, the events meant...

Today, union thugs descended on the FreedomWorks office. It was the middle of the day, and there was some excitement outside as all the buses pulled up and people started to fill the courtyard. We decided to go out and show our support for freedom. Intern Steve was quickly suited up.....

<p>“The Tea Party is a bunch of dick-sucking corporate butt-lickers who want to crush the working people of this country.”</p>

The organized tactics of intimidation by the public employee unions in Wisconsin last week came as no surprise to me. I'm from New York, one of the most union-friendly states in the country, and I've seen the negative effects of unions my entire life. I dislike unions. But I didn't always feel that way. My first job as a 16-year old grocery store shelf-stocker was a union job. I grew up in a union household; my father was an employee of one of the Big Three automakers. Although he wasn't active in union politics, he worked in a "union shop"...

Wow, public-sector union members sure have a good deal. Incomes 50-100% above the private-sector average, plus generous benefits .... so, can anyone get in on this? Nope, sorry, membership is limited to just a privileged few. OK, so let's get this straight - only a small percentage of society is on the public-sponsored gravy train, and the rest of the working masses has to pay their bills. Where's the fairness here? President O'bastard, please explain why you are siding with the elitists. And while you're at it, what's your position on legislature members not showing up for work, just because...

CHICAGO — Showing up to check on the construction progress, the owners of the stately old brick house being renovated on Greenwood Avenue could be forgiven for feeling a bit stressed. There are blockades at each end of the block, and signs warn people that they need permission from federal authorities to go any farther. Every carpenter, roofer and mason to set foot on the job site must submit to a background check. Each night they are required to e-mail their schedules for the next day. If they say they are going to arrive at 8 a.m. and they do...

Warning: certain portions of this video's content are evil and vile. Gulag Bound has been tracking this developing election season story and have had significant conversations with those on the patriot side who are involved, including the producer of the "Twittergate" video report. We will be adding notes and wrapping a report of our own, around this video. At present, that article is scheduled for this Sunday, or Monday morning. In the mean time, you are invited to peruse and investigate, on your own. If you believe you find something significant and not to be missed, please send an email...

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius writes an utterly unconvincing retort to charges of thuggery in her threats to health insurance companies, in today's Wall Street Journal.  What is amazing about this display is that she doesn't use the space provided to defend her actions, but to attack and demonize the private health care insurance industry.  Sebelius's writing is entirely unconvincing and riddled with faulty logic. Sebelius: "Over the past decade, Americans have seen what happens when insurance companies have free rein" Currently insurance companies are regulated by both state and federal agencies.  Nearly 50% of every healthcare dollar...

On Thursday, August 12, Representative Melissa Bean (IL-8-D) held a public meeting at the Round Lake Library. The meeting was billed as a financial education seminar, to teach citizens how to manage their credit card debt. What happened at this meeting was anything but educational. During the meeting, which I attended, citizens started to ask questions about jobs, government spending and the federal deficit. Every time a citizen would attempt to ask a question, Melissa Bean's thug, who we were told worked for the Round Lake Library, would walk over to that person and hover over him or her, to...

From HillBuzz, Tomorrow morning, Sunday, July 11, on Fox and Friends Weekend Edition, the GiGi Gaston documentary, 'We Will Not Be Silenced' will be featured in the context of the fraud/thuggery/malfeasance that occurred against Hillary Clinton (back during the Primaries) was/is part of the pattern of Voter Right Fraud and Intimidation that is found in the Land of Hope and Change. What happened in 2008 in the Dem Caucus and Primaries was the precursor to what happened in Philly. And it has all been ignored. Til now.

The leader of Montgomery County's government employees union, accused by police of threatening to kill his wife and pointing a gun at her, is on leave for the next month, according to union members. Multiple county employees told The Washington Examiner Wednesday that Gino Renne is on leave until mid-July. They did not want to be identified because the union is refusing to speak about the matter. Renne did not return calls seeking comment, but his cell phone voice mail says he will be "out of the office until July 20." Renne charged at his wife with a gun during...

With pictures of oil-drenched birds, blackened beaches, and marshlands invaded with oil streaming across our televisions every day, it is easy to become angry and demand retribution from the cause of the disaster. Unfortunately, it is also easy for unscrupulous politicians to take that anger and turn it to their political advantage. History is replete with incidents of real popular anger leading to monstrous outcomes of tyranny. Yesterday the USA wrote a new anecdote in that awful book. There is no doubt that the oil spill produced by the Deepwater Horizon rig and BP is a disaster of monumental ecological...

Don’t “union” me bro!!!!! Union thugs are everywhere these days and they will “union” you where you stand. If you are selling “Don’t tread on me” flags at a campaign rally, the thugs will “union” you. If you are at a Tea Party protest, the thugs will “union” you. If you work for a bank the union thugs will come to your front lawn and “union” you. As an older guy , I wonder how I could defend myself against union thugs who are out to “union” me; beating me down, sucker punching me, or showing up on my front...

Debates over immigration reform (to take but one example) are derided as polarizing. Commentators deride the lack of civil discourse in our political speech-especially if articulated by Republicans or tea partiers (who are derided as bitter and greedy, and otherwise disparaged in Menckian terms). Yet Barack Obama who preached unity a few short years ago: "Even as we speak, there are those who are preparing to divide us--the spin masters, the negative ad peddlers who embrace the politics of 'anything goes.' Well, I say to them tonight, there is not a liberal America and a conservative America--there is the United...

The blogosphere abhors a vacuum. So when the mainstream media (MSM) leave holes in a given narrative -- in this case, the biography of the president -- bloggers individually, incrementally, and indefatigably strive to fill in the blanks -- sometimes successfully, sometimes less so. In his comprehensive, 600-plus-page biography of Barack Obama titled The Bridge, New Yorker editor David Remnick lays down the baseline of what the mainstream media know about the president -- or at least what they want us to know.

This isn’t even meant to be funny; it’s just an exercise in replacing certain words in a news story about a militia with others about healthcare and considering the results. Federal agents from the Internal Revenue Service, Bureau of Investigation, and Ted Kennedy Memorial Health Rationing Board swarmed a makeshift health clinic in Michigan yesterday, arresting eight doctors who were audaciously planning to treat patients without government authority.

If the president is going to pack the panel with cronies, how "independent" is it going to be? Chris Good of the Atlantic: "Oddly enough, SEIU actually lobbied against the creation of a bipartisan deficit commission when it was being considered in the Senate, concerned with the quasi-binding nature of the suggestions that would have been offered under that commission--the Senate bill required congressional leaders to introduce the commission's proposals, which would be produced as a bill, for up-or-down votes in their respective chambers. Under Obama's commission, Congress isn't bound to vote on its proposals: lawmakers can tweak them, allow...

New Auto Defect Report Spells Gloom for Owners of GM and Chrysler Vehicles July 9, 2009. By Gordon Gibb Rehoboth, MA: The new era emerging in the automotive industry will have an impact on issues surrounding auto defects and those encumbered with a defective car. Thanks to a loophole built into the US auto industry rescue package, liability for the defective auto no longer appears to be a worry for the newly-reborn General Motors and Chrysler. Meanwhile, a new report forecasts that more than 3,400 Americans will be injured or killed by a defective GM, or Chrysler vehicle during the...

CHICAGO -- Former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich heads to court Wednesday to answer a revised batch of charges that he schemed to sell or trade President Barack Obama's old Senate seat and swap official favors for campaign money. ..." The new indictment repeats all of the charges against Blagojevich in the earlier version but adds eight new ones -- one count of racketeering, two counts of attempted extortion, two counts of bribery, two counts of bribery conspiracy and one count of extortion conspiracy.

Legal Insurrection has up a link (rec'd notice by Twitter, I have been following Prof. Jacobson) that the 'shover' (caught on tape lst night) Michael P. Meehan is an Obama appointee to the Broadcasting Board of Governors.

Or just a really good lookalike? A tipster tells me that the man who was pushing me outside of a Capitol Hill fundraiser Tuesday night for Massachusetts Democratic Senate candidate Martha Coakley is Michael Meehan. Meehan heads up a firm called Blue Line Strategic Communications along with his partner David DiMartino, who was outside the fundraiser with Coakley tonight and introduced himself to me there. The AP reported on Monday that Meehan is also working for Coakley: "The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee also dispatched Michael Meehan, a media consultant with ties to Massachusetts, to assist the Coakley camp with messaging."

SEIU is so much more than just the union partner of ACORN, they are counted as President Obama's top advisers. Like the president, they are experts in both the Alinsky rules and Chicago Politics. Maybe that's what why when the White House released its first "visitors list" the most frequent visitor was the head of the ACORN affiliated Union the SEIU Andrew Stern who showed up on the visitors roster twenty times. The Union has also been acting as the President's personal thugs. In the beginning the congressional town halls might have been loud but they were never violent, but...

OLYMPIA — State Democratic lawmakers have a revolt on their hands among major labor groups that provide the party crucial support during elections. The Washington State Labor Council, the Service Employees International Union and unions representing teachers and state workers have either stopped or sharply reduced donations to Democratic caucus political-action committees that back candidates for the state House and Senate. "I think the labor movement is more serious about withholding support from Democratic candidates this year than I have seen in my 30 years in politics," said Dwight Pelz, chairman of the state Democratic Party. There's even talk of...

Unions are pushing state lawmakers to pass legislation that would make organizing workers easier, as efforts to rewrite federal organizing laws remain stalled in Congress. Oregon passed the Worker Freedom Act, which prohibits companies from holding mandatory employee meetings to talk about organizing. Employers say mandatory meetings, known as "captive audience meetings," are necessary to counter misleading information disseminated by union organizers. Unions say employers use the meetings to gauge worker sympathies and pressure workers not to join the union. It is unclear if the bill -- which was signed into law in June but doesn't take effect until January...

SEIU is so much more than just the union partner of ACORN. They are among the President's top advisers. Last week when the White House released its first "visitors list" the most frequent visitor was the head of the ACORN affiliated Union the SEIU Andrew Stern who showed up on the visitors roster twenty times. The Union has also been acting as the President's personal thugs. In the beginning the congressional town halls might have been loud but they were never violent, but once the Democrats began urge the SEUI to confront the opponents of Obamacare, that all changed. It...

Groups like this gang of militant homosexuals and lesbians from Michigan, have been harassing church groups and businesses who support anti gay marriage legislation, like prop 8 in California, throughout various parts of the country Picture and caption are by me, OneVike, they are not part of the original article.but they fit much better than the picture used by PS. Political issues often involve emotionally charged social outcomes and because of that it's reasonable to expect to be confronted with a certain amount of verbal insult or offense as we discuss, protest and rally for a given cause or...

Several years ago we witnessed a strange and unexpected event between a dog and a cat. A fairly good sized German Shepherd spotted a much smaller, black house cat and broke into a dead run after the cat. The cat, startled by the dog and now instantly charged with adrenalin, struck off down the street as fast as he could go, in a black blur. Now a dog chasing a cat is hardly news, but it was what the cat did that drastically altered the outcome of the chase. About a few seconds into the chase, the cat, without regard...

The Obama White House has deliberately placed favored Washington institutions of the Bush years in its crosshairs, a sign of an escalating battle between the Democratic administration and some of the city's pre-eminent power players. In recent days, the administration has attacked the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the insurance industry for opposing key administration objectives, has criticized the nation's largest banks and financial firms for outsized executive pay, and has tried to delegitimize the Fox News Channel by mocking its objectivity. "When you're on their side, it's all OK, but if you're not, they rain hell down on you,"...

Two sources with knowledge of the situation told the Tribune today they have been notified that Christopher Kelly, a key figure in the federal corruption probe into former Gov. Rod Blagojevich, is dead. The Cook County medical examiner’s office today confirmed that a body identified as Christopher Kelly was brought to the morgue from Stroger Hospital. The office would not provide any details, including his age, address and manner of death, because the family had not yet arrived at the office. Kelly’s attorney, Michael Monico, declined to comment today when reached by a Tribune reporter. Kelly is a former confidant...

President Obama intends to address schoolchildren across the nation next week about the importance of taking responsibility for success in their studies. But in these polarized times, the first-ever talk has quickly prompted accusations that the White House is using taxpayer money to politically indoctrinate children. Obama will travel to Wakefield High School in Arlington, Va. on Sept. 8 and deliver an address that will be aired on C-Span and the White House web site, whitehouse.gov. The White House says the message is intended to stimulate a discussion about persisting and succeeding in school. In a recent letter to school...

In February, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. noted that it was hard to talk about race, but cowardly not to try. In that spirit, he should answer questions being raised about the dismissal of a voter-intimidation case involving a hate group in Philadelphia. If you missed the incident, it's understandable. It was a YouTube blip on a historic election day. On Nov. 4, two black men in paramilitary uniforms, one wielding a nightstick, were reported harassing voters at a polling place. It had no effect on Barack Obama's landslide win in the city. He doesn't condone the hate group...