Free Republic

A state worker is recovering after a bloody brawl at a union hall. He says members of the local SEIU 1000 beat him up and sent him to the hospital all because he wanted to expose allegedl corruption within the union. Ken Hamidi is a state worker at the California Franchise Tax Board. Last night he walked into a union hall in Sacramento for an SEIU local 1000 meeting. After he and a photographer walked in to the meeting, it didn't take long for Hamidi to be right out the door and on his way to the hospital.

The economic crisis has forced every state to scramble to get its budget in balance. This has meant torturous efforts to preserve essential services and minimize the pain and damage from slashed spending and lost jobs. Every state has sacrificed. But Hawaii has sacrificed its own schoolchildren. The 50th state, the only one with a single statewide school district, has just cut 17 days from the academic year, under a new labor contract with public school teachers that avoids layoffs in favor of pay cuts and furloughs, all to be taken on instructional days.

Dennis O’Connell pushes the piano on stage at Carnegie Hall, when a piano is called for. For Carnegie's fiscal year ended in June, for this work he was paid $530,044. The four other members of the full-time stage crew — two carpenters and two electricians — had an average income of $430,543 during the same period, according to Carnegie Hall’s tax return. They are all members of Local One of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees Union. During a strike, they shut down 26 Broadway shows for nearly three weeks in November 2007. You really have to wonder how...

Leadership: What are we to make of a White House visitors list that includes 22 swiftly scheduled appointments with a union boss at a time when Gen. Stanley McChrystal can't get face time with the commander in chief? Late Friday during the idle hours of the news cycle, the administration released the names of 100 White House visitors in 481 visits. It wasn't exactly the transparency the president promised. It was simply in compliance with two court rulings that ordered the names to be made public record. Unable to admit misconduct, the White House insisted its disclosure was voluntary. It...

Bob Dewar, author of the new book A Savage Factory, was general foreman at the Ford Sharonville transmission plant in Ohio in the 1970s, and says he saw upfront the industry’s ethic of waste and meet-the-quota at all costs, quality be damned. Car and Driver said A Savage Factory details “the savage but darkly funny war waged between the hourly line workers, the factory foreman, management, the UAW, and the ‘Detroit Mafia’—a/k/a the ‘suits from Dearborn.’ If One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest had taken place in a plant in the 1970s, it would be A Savage Factory.” So far...

'the chicago way' is obama's way October 28, 2009 always right fran eaton featon@illinoisreview.com It was in the 1987 movie "The Untouchables" that we learned first about "The Chicago Way." Overall, the gist is that when someone's done something wrong, the victim retaliates with something slightly worse. "The Chicago Way" seems to be the Obama administration's modus operandi. The administration is teaching "The Chicago Way" to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Fox News and the health insurance industry. During presidential addresses, Obama drops hints of who's irritated him. Obama mentioned the amount the chamber has spent on lobbyists, he pointed...

Transit system workers in Philadelphia voted to authorize a union strike Sunday, less than a week before the Phillies play their first home game of the World Series, but a transit spokesman said he hopes a deal can be concluded before then. Willie Brown, president of the Transport Workers Union Local 234, said the 4,700 workers voted overwhelmingly to allow him to call a strike if negotiations with the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority fail. Talks are slated to resume Monday. Brown said he hoped a walkout would not affect the series, but he said workers have been without a contract...

Obama lifts accountability and transparency rules for Unions as he cuts CEO pay of bailout firms!Remember the shock this week when Obama's pay czar announced up to a 90% cut in the salaries of executives at firms which took federal bailout help? The thinking is that those firms, which include Chrysler and General Motors took government help and will live by government rules. Fair enough perhaps but what about the Auto Unions? They got a huge handout in both GM and Chrylser bailouts. The Auto workers union will end up owning Chrysler. Yet, in a move which got no publicity...

In Hawaii, school's out for recession By MARK NIESSE Associated Press Writer HONOLULU -- At a time when President Barack Obama is pushing for more time in the classroom, his home state has created the nation's shortest school year under a new union contract that closes schools on most Fridays for the remainder of the academic calendar. The deal whacks 17 days from the school year for budget-cutting reasons and has education advocates incensed that Hawaii is drastically cutting the academic calendar at a time when it already ranks near the bottom in national educational achievement.

The public is being warned to avoid downtown Chicago expressways after pavement was damaged during construction work on the northbound Kennedy Expressway at Adams Street. "We're advising people to stay off the downtown expressways for the next 24 hours," said Marisa Kollias, a spokeswoman for the Illinois Department of Transportation. "This is a major crisis." Workers were pumping concrete into an underground freight tunnel this morning when "pressure made the road erupt," according to an IDOT dispatcher. Two right lanes of the northbound Kennedy have been closed. It was not known how long the lanes would be shut down. The...

On January 15, 2008 (one year and five days before his presidential inauguration), Barack Obama spoke at an SEIU meeting. He vowed to “Paint the Nation Purple”, SEIU’s signature color. (video below) “We organized voting registration drives, that’s how we built political power on the south side of Chicago and kept on building it in Illinois. And now the time has come for us to do it all across this country. We want to paint the town purple and we want to paint the nation purple with SEIU.” Video: Obama Vows to Paint the Nation SEIU Purple

"Robert E. Lee was, in my estimation, one of the supremely gifted men produced by this nation." unquote--Dwight D. Eisenhower

Speaking to a respected Hispanic leader in KCK, Dennis Moore reportedly called decorated and disabled Marine Veteran and Congressional Opponent "White Trash" in a recent (recorded) telephone conversation. The KCK leader, who has formally supported the incumbent congressman, is supporting Daniel Gilyeat's candidacy for the Kansas 3rd District Congressional seat. Dennis Moore called the KCK man after hearing the Hispanic community leader's support had changed. Dennis Moore said he had $7 million for the campaign and could not believe the naturalized citizen was supporting "White Trash" over Moore.

The only solution to the present problem of instability in Afghanistan and Pakistan is in the Union of these two countries based on principles of Democracy and Federalism. In history, Durani Empire was composed of all the areas in which today's Pakistan and Afghanistan are located, and during the Mughal Empire together they were a single country. In the initial period of the British Empire, they were also the same country.

Democratic lawmakers in a handful of states are facing pressure from Republicans to distance themselves from the Service Employees International Union as a result of its ties to Acorn. Republicans in Kansas, Virginia and Illinois in recent weeks have called on union-backed Democrats to return SEIU campaign contributions, citing the close connection between the union and the community organizing group, whose full name is the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. Acorn has been under fire in the past month after secretly recorded videos showed Acorn employees offering advice on evading taxes, setting up brothels and smuggling illegal immigrants....

Blame the lack of reform on teachers’ unions that are “extraordinarily powerful.” They quote a study of state-level politics that found teachers’ unions to be the single-most-powerful interest group in the entire country throughout the 1990s. This lets unions block reforms, like pay for performance and the firing of incompetents, which are not in the interest of their members. It is ironic that the United Auto Workers union has taken so much heat for contributing to the economic woes of U.S. manufacturing. One might argue teachers’ unions should get a bigger part of the blame simply because they’ve put their...

He defeats main rival Anne-Marie Johnson with 44% of the vote while his coalition consolidates its power on the national board, winning a majority of the 22 seats up for grabs on the 69-member board. Ken Howard scored his second big win this week. Screen Actors Guild members elected the veteran character actor, who on Sunday won an Emmy for his role in HBO's "Grey Gardens," as the group's new president, capping a bitter election campaign that divided Hollywood's largest union. Howard soundly defeated "In the Heat of the Night" actress Anne-Marie Johnson, SAG's first vice president, who was backed...

Dear xxxxx As part of our Issues Advocacy and Grassroots Lobbying campaign we have begun running TV ads in the Richmond and Hampton Roads TV markets. We wish we had the funds to run the ads everywhere. You can help get the word out by watching the ad by clicking the link below: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4F46R6NRP7Q Please share the link with your colleagues, family and friends. Please go to the website (and encourage family and friends to do the same) and sign the petitions to McDonnell and Deeds. www.supportvirginiaschools.com Thank you, Robley Jones VEA GR

Welcome to Obama’s America where you are forced to become a union member even if you had no idea you were being inducted into one. In fact, in Obama’s America you won’t even know you are IN a union until you notice union dues are being withheld from your checks. This is the case in Michigan where Sherry Loar and Dawn Ives work out of their home talking care of children for low-income families. One Friday the pair realized that union dues were being withheld from the checks they receive from the state for the subsidized daycare they perform for...

Useless Unions by: Sarah Carlsruh, September 21, 2009 According to a recent ad campaign sponsored by American Rights at Work, the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) is all about “letting workers choose to join a union to earn better pay and benefits.” Yet Diana Furchtgott-Roth and Andrew Brown of the Hudson Institute disagree, referring to the “sorry state of unions” as a reason the organizations are embracing EFCA, which is currently pending in Congress. Their September 2009 study, Comparing Union-Sponsored and Private Pension Plans: How Safe Are Workers’ Retirements? states that “many of the major national unions advertise that union...

Biggest surprise here: He accuses the right of pretty much everything except racism. Proof positive, I guess, that the backlash has finally reached the left-wing brain trust. Since, per Maureen Dowd and Michael Eric Dyson, it’s now kosher to put words in people’s mouths that they didn’t actually say, I’m going to imagine that Stern finished with, “Take my advice or we’ll send more of your guys to the hospital.” This is, after all, a man who once boasted creepily about the “persuasion of power.” As has always happened when progressive change is in the air, the backlash gets fierce,...

<p>In 1859, Ohio Native Dan Emmett first performed “Dixie” New York City.</p>

British labor unions agreed Thursday to support a boycott of some Israeli goods in response to the offensive in Gaza. The boycott, approved at the annual conference of the Trades Union Congress, calls for a ban on importing goods produced in some Israeli settlements, an end to arms trading with Israel and disinvestment from some companies. Union officials said the boycott would target products including dates, herbs, fruit and vegetables grown on Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

The President just finished a rousing speech to the AFL-CIO today and was given a standing ovation for his address on government run health care with a public option. There was no bi-partisan talk here, just plain and simple “Obamaspeak” to a friendly audience. He is speaking to an important core constituency here and must produce for them. Organized Labor is highly in favor of a government takeover of the health care system and wants the public option in the bill. It's one of the main reasons they helped put Obama in office. You would too if you had thousands...

We've launched a new blog to keep you up with the latest on Election '09 news and the Association's efforts. Check it out at www.VEAElection09.com. In addition to breaking news and advocacy materials, the blog gives you access to information about the VEA Fund for Children and Public Education, why and how we make candidate recommendations, voter registration information, and much more. Of course, we encourage you to visit the site frequently. If you have election-related content you think ought to be mentioned in the blog, please e-mail to John O'Neil, VEA Communications, at joneil@veanea.org. Thank you, Robley Jones VEA...

General Motors was not so long ago the largest motor company in the world, who would have thought one day would be taken over by the miniature Japanese autos. This documentary struggles to answer this very question.

The $1 movie rentals available through DVD kiosks like Redbox could spell "disaster" for the film and video industries—or at least, that's the argument of representatives for video stores and Hollywood unions, who want movie lovers to dump Redbox and return to their corner "mom-and-pop" DVD rental outlets. Video Business reports that the Video Buyers Group, a trade organization for some 1,700 independent brick-and-mortar video stores, is prepping an ad campaign that'll paint Redbox as a threat to the film industry as we know it. Why? Because its $1-a-night rental rate is "generating less revenue" for Hollywood studios than the...

Unions across the country are campaigning hard for Obamacare over Labor Day weekend. The AFL-CIO has made creating a government run “public plan” their top priority. Yet polls show that most Americans strongly oppose this. So why have the self-proclaimed advocates for America’s workers made government-run health care their top priority? Union leaders say they are fighting to win “win secure, high-quality health care for all” against greedy and self-interested corporate defenders of the status quo. Many union activists sincerely believe this. But altruism does not explain why the labor movement is spending tens of millions of dollars on this...

Kathy Keith has cared for a son with Down syndrome for 23 years and never dreamed that one day organized labor would consider her a prime candidate for a union card. So she was skeptical when representatives from two of the nation's largest unions began competing for her attention over the last few weeks with unannounced visits to her home, mailings and phone messages promising to fatten her state stipend.

The approval rating of one of the biggest supporters of Obama's attempt to impose a socialist system on America has plummeted. Gallup has been polling on the public's attitude to Labor Unions since the 1930s. They report public support of unions is at an all time low. More broadly, fewer than half of Americans -- 48%, an all-time low -- approve of labor unions, down from 59% a year ago. This is seven percentage points below the former low of 55%, reached in both 1979 and 1981. In addition, such a sharp decline has also only been seen once before,...

Minnesota's top teachers union official is urging schools to show President Barack Obama's live speech to students on Tuesday. It's the first day of school for most Minnesota districts. Dooher says some superintendents are getting pressure not to show the speech, and are even getting calls from parents threatening to keep their children home because they don't want them to watch what they view as a political message from the Democratic president. Dooher says the speech shouldn't be taken as political. He says he expects it to focus on the importance of education. A spokeswoman for the Minnesota Department of...

From a blog: You may recognize Elston McGowan. He is the Public Service Director of SEIU Local 2000 and a local Baptist minister. He is also one of the SEIU thugs who beat Kenneth Gladney after the Russ Carnahan town hall meeting in St. Louis last month. McGowan said Gladney, who is half his size, actually attacked him. He claims he was the victim even those he was hauled to jail for the attack. ** 24th State is reporting tonight that Elston McGowan is asking the SEIU for workman's comp for the injury he suffered at the Carnahan rally while...

Mother upset after 8-year-old daughter is left at wrong bus stop LAS CRUCES, N.M. -- What would you do if your child was forced to get off a school bus at the wrong stop? That is the situation one Las Cruces mother had to grapple with Wednesday, when her 8-year-old daughter was let off on a busy street nearly half a mile from her usual stop. Eight-year-old Destiny Maciel got off the bus at Valley and Tashiro, a busy intersection where there is no place to stop and ask for directions. Destiny's mother Amanda said that didn't stop a bus...

As many parents are focused on back to school clothes and supplies, the royal Czar Czar prepares to circumvent parental authority and speak directly to our children in one week. What will he command? That's a good question that the media won't ask, and one that could easily be answered right now while parents still have time to decide if they need a sitter or not. But like all things Obama does, it's spur of the moment and covert. We do know that there is a task demand being handed out to Pre-K through sixth graders that includes students writing...

Marc Armbinder of The Atlantic is reporting that President Obama will be unveiling his own healthcare plan in the coming week as a way to kick start the debate back in his favor. One of the easy digs against Obama until this time has been that he not only had nothing to do with the various plans floating around Congress (at least three bills thus far) and, worse, that he hasn't seemed to really know what is in any of them. Now Obama is about to offer his own plan. Some of it will be ideas already in play and...

The Café des Artistes has been doing a steady restaurant business in New York City since 1917, but is now forced to close its doors. One of the main reasons for this happens to be the fact that the Café is unfortunate enough to be a union restaurant and the exorbitant costs of supporting a union workforce has contributed to killing the business. A blog called the 212DressingRoom, a website about New York fashion, culture, art and other rather Bohemian subjects, has detailed the sad end of the long time café written by the owner of the place, Jennifer Lang....

The Rubber Room The battle over New York City’s worst teachers. by Steven Brill August 31, 2009 Print E-Mail One school principal has said that Randi Weingarten, of the teachers’ union,“would protect a dead body in the classroom.” Keywords Education; Schools; New York City; Temporary Reassignment Centers (Rubber Rooms); United Federation of Teachers (U.F.T.); Joel Klein; Randi Weingarten In a windowless room in a shabby office building at Seventh Avenue and Twenty-eighth Street, in Manhattan, a poster is taped to a wall, whose message could easily be the mission statement for a day-care center: “Children are fragile. Handle with care.”...

There is no such thing as ‘a right to a job’—there is only the right of free trade, that is: a man’s right to take a job if another man chooses to hire him.” —Ayn Rand, “Man’s Rights,” 1963— If you want to understand the most common reason for unemployment in America—the real unemployment rate of which is now well into the double digits—you need only look as far as Washington, D.C., home of the federal government, for the answer: bureaucratic intervention in the economy in the form of minimum wage laws, “public works” projects, “stimulus” programs and the regulation...

Some of us have been wondering how viable the Voluntary Employee Benefit Arrangements (VEBAs) set up by the United Auto Workers for its auto industry employees really are. This is of particular concern at the VEBAs tied in to General Motors and Chrysler. What happens to the employer stock these VEBAs own will heavily influence whether they have the money to pay promised benefits. The answer to the viability question must be "not very," because the House version of health care that has made it out of committee has a $10 billion provision tucked into it that would largely work...

Some scholars squabble about the particulars, but there is no question that democracy's roots go back at least 2,500 years to practices developed in the Greek city-state of Athens. But the adoption of a key pillar of democracy — the secret ballot — came far more recently. In England in the 1830s, disenfranchised working-class men and sympathetic members of Parliament launched the Chartist movement. The most crucial of its six objectives was universal suffrage for all men over 21, but not far behind was the secret-ballot provision. It took decades, but eventually the secret ballot became the democratic norm —...

Here is the gist of a report filed by an American citizen who attempted to attend a Town Hall meeting staged August 14 in Bozeman, Montana, by our country's new Doctor-in-Chief. I say "staged" because, instead of holding it at one of several convenient and available auditoriums or gymnasiums offering easy access from any direction, with plenty of parking, seats, tables, utilities, audio equipment, not to mention a stage and podium, the President's scouts chose the most remote site imaginable ­ the most inaccessible hangar of an airport outside ofBelgrade, a tiny, nearby town, totally secluded from the public. No...

Never mind about those revised union financial disclosure requirements President Obama inherited from his predecessor. Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis now says she won’t make union officials comply. Unions officials complained for eight years that regulations issued by Elaine Chao, President George W. Bush’s Labor Secretary, were more rigorous than required by the Labor Management and Reporting Disclosure Act (LMRDA), which calls for modestly detailed annual financial reports by unions with receipts of $250,000 or more.

Toyota said today it plans to shut down the NUMMI plant because of high labor costs, associated with California’s high cost of living, and not because the UAW represents workers at the plant. “The UAW presence does not have a direct impact on the decision,” Executive Vice President Atsushi Niimi said in conference call today. “California is a high-cost location,” Niimi said.

In a statement released today by the UAW, union President Ron Gettelfinger said, “It’s unfortunate the company chose to close a U.S. facility after benefiting so greatly from the federal cash-for-clunkers program, which is funded by U.S. taxpayers.”

Note these names in particular: George Soros–Multi-billionaire funder of leftwing causes and groups, Tides Foundation’s Wade Rathke (ACORN founder), and Anna Burger–Secretary Treasurer of SEIU, with massive influence over Obama. The Alliance has boasted of writing both the stimulus bill AND Cap and Trade. And it is driving the Obama Reich’s agenda with unbelievable force.

How is it that California’s unemployment rate can be at 11.6% and still soaring yet California’s public employees unions are getting more jobs? How is it that those taxpayers paying the bills are losing jobs by the thousands yet those taking taxpayer dollars are being hired right and left? On August 4th, the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association wondered this same thing noting that “During the 12 months that ended in June, state government added 3,600 jobs in California, a 0.7 percent gain.” "I don't know how this can happen," said David Kline, a spokesman for the California Taxpayers Association. "A...

Deeds' Speech Shows Contrast with McDonnell More Info Creigh Deeds persuasively made the connection between public education and a strong economy today in a major campaign speech at George Mason University. "This election is about Virginia's future: how we deal with the economic challenges we face and how we make our public schools the best and most innovative we possibly can," Deeds said. The singular most important piece of evidence we have of the candidates' stance on public education is the historic 2004 bipartisan effort that gave a $1.4-billion boost to public schools. Deeds voted for the measure; Bob McDonnell...

A city police officer who was fired last year after he punched a robbery suspect in front of a patrol car dashboard camera should get his job back, an arbitrator wrote in a decision sent to the police department today. Officer Jason Zangara, 36, was fired in August 2008 along with Officer Louis J. Schwartz, 30, after a department probe concluded the duo used excessive force in arresting Pablo Gilberto Valenzuela, 43, of West Palm Beach. A third officer, Kurt Graham, still was on probation when the internal investigation started. He resigned in July 2008. In June, Schwartz and Graham...

August 17, 2009 Dear xxxxx: The Caps Hurt Kids rally is at the Bell Tower in Richmond's Capitol Square (9th and Franklin Street) at 1 p.m. on Wednesday. Certain rules do apply to events at the Capitol: No parades are allowed on Capitol Square (We'll be playing music, but resist the temptation to form a Conga Line). No stick-holding placards will be permitted (bring a sign, but no stake). No food may be served. No parking will be available on Capitol Square. No signs or other items are permitted to be placed on the Capitol Square fence. Please remember these...

Let me tell you about a German-American who, with no thought for his personal safety, saw to the spiritual needs of his fellow soldiers.