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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.

Welcome to California government, 80 percent-style. This is the first of 12 weeks in a row that the state will shut down every Friday. Between unpaid furlough days and paid holidays off, most California civil servants won't work a five-day week again until Jan. 29. But how much will the public notice – or care? We've had nine months to adjust to a part-time state government. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger started furloughing workers two days per month in February and upped it to three "Furlough Fridays" in July. Meanwhile, the public's most acute fiscal pain is closer to home. "Cities, counties,...

PORTLAND, Maine — Voters on Tuesday repealed the state’s same sex marriage law after an emotionally charged campaign that drew large numbers to the polls and focused national attention on Maine. In a defiant speech to several hundred lingering supporters, No on 1 campaign manager Jesse Connolly pledged that his side “will not quit until we know where every single one of these votes lives.”

While Democrats have more than seven months left to choose their candidate for governor, one of the party's key constituencies has already made its preference clear, at least in the all-important money race. Unions all across the state and country have poured more than a million dollars into Attorney General Jerry Brown's campaign coffers – even though he has yet to officially announce his candidacy. That includes influential statewide bodies such as the California State Council of Labor and the California Nurses Association as well as out-of-state carpenters unions from New York to Honolulu. Meanwhile, the only declared Democratic candidate...

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has made several significant concessions to organized labor in the healthcare reform bill he is preparing for the Senate floor, according to a source familiar with the legislation. Reid has increased the threshold of high-cost insurance plans that would be subject to taxation to pay for healthcare reform. Legislation passed by the Senate Finance Committee would impose a 40 percent excise tax on family plans costing more than $21,000, a provision estimated to raise $201 billion for healthcare reform. Under heavy pressure from unions, Reid has increased the threshold so that only family plans...

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka warned Senate Democratic leaders not to include a tax on high-cost healthcare plans in a bill that is expected to reach the floor in coming days. Trumka dismissed the notion that Democratic leaders could placate the powerful union by raising the threshold on plans that would be subject to the tax. Under the Senate Finance Committee’s bill, plans costing more than $8,000 for individuals and $21,000 for families would be hit with a 40-percent excise tax. “Working families struggling to pay for healthcare should not be required to pay even more in the form of a...

Just look at what has happened to state workers and their unions in 2009: Furloughs. Looming layoffs. Columbus Day and Lincoln's Birthday erased from the paid holiday calendar. New rules that make it harder to earn overtime. It's never a good sign when the court bench becomes labor's focus instead of the bargaining table. Unions are party to most of the 21 furlough lawsuits statewide arguing that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's policy is illegal or ill-conceived. If you think unions have ruined government, you're rooting for the governor to win. If you're one of the state's 200,000 or so union-covered employees,...

Tonight, Dede Scozzafava, the Republican candidate for the November 3 special election in the 23rd congressional district, spoke to about 100 Republicans at the Lewis County GOP dinner at the Elks Lodge 1605. After a dinner of turkey, mashed potatoes, and stuffing, Scozzafava fended off criticism that she wasn't as conservative as third-party candidate Doug Hoffman and urged her supporters to vote for her in order to keep her Democratic opponent Bill Owens from serving as a rubber stamp for Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama's agenda in Washington. It was a fairly typical evening--until the speech ended and someone with...

When California's government employees gained collective bargaining rights three-plus decades ago, thanks to then-Gov. Jerry Brown, it was depicted as merely giving those on the public payroll equality with private workers, but in fact it went way beyond parity. Yes, unions could bargain with public agencies on contracts. But unlike those in private business, public worker unions could try to select those on the other side of the bargaining table by contributing heavily to campaigns for state and local offices. Seeking contracts from those you've placed in office is a far cry from the arm's length bargaining over private sector...

A solid majority of California voters think state and local governments should make pension benefits for new hires less lucrative than the current system, according to a new Field Poll released Thursday. However, that same survey of 1,005 registered voters in the state indicated that only a third of those asked think that pensions for current employees are too generous. More than half believe that state and local government worker pensions are about right or not generous enough. Meanwhile, a majority of voters surveyed approve of somewhat more generous pensions for safety workers such as firefighters and police than for...

WASHINGTON - The nation's nurses have an idea for how to improve health care: Allow more of them to unionize. But as they press Congress to approve a bill that would make it easier to organize, nurses and other unions have identified a big obstacle in California Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein. While President Barack Obama and a majority of Democratic senators are behind the Employee Free Choice Act, Feinstein is not. And after she scored a perfect 100 rating from the AFL-CIO last year, many union activists are scratching their heads, wondering why Feinstein has parted ways with them on...

Several DMV offices closed, but state government escaped largely unscathed Monday from a Columbus Day contract dispute that had union leaders threatening to shut down operations. Government officials said the day was largely uneventful. "Of our 168 field offices, 164 opened and stayed open," said DMV spokesman Mike Marando. While some offices in San Francisco scaled back services, he said, "This was largely a non-event." Service Employees International Union Local 1000 offered a different assessment, saying eight Department of Motor Vehicles offices in Southern California and the Bay Area were closed. They said an additional 45 statewide opened late because...

We'll see on Monday how much pull the state's biggest public employee's union has - with its own members. The fight over whether Columbus Day remains a paid holiday for state workers "has become the hill that our union is willing to die on," said Angela Morales, a job steward for Service Employees International Union Local 1000. Yvonne Walker, president of the local, has told the 95,000 employees she represents to treat Monday as a paid day off. It's not, says Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's Department of Personnel Administration. On Tuesday, DPA's Julie Chapman fired off a letter to the union...

Brian Walsh with the Heritage Foundation has this hilarious, ridiculous, depressing story at the Washington Times: “You don’t need to know. You can’t know.” That’s what Kathy Norris, a 60-year-old grandmother of eight, was told when she tried to ask court officials why, the day before, federal agents had subjected her home to a furious search. The agents who spent half a day ransacking Mrs. Norris’ longtime home in Spring, Texas, answered no questions while they emptied file cabinets, pulled books off shelves, rifled through drawers and closets, and threw the contents on the floor. The six agents, wearing SWAT...

Six demonstrators were arrested Monday morning at UnitedHealth Group's corporate headquarters in Minnetonka after they blocked the doors and refused to leave during a protest over health care reform. About 110 protesters sang and spoke about the need to change the way health care is organized and financed in the United States, and said that insurers such as UnitedHealth are making people sicker because the system doesn't offer proper coverage for many patients. They cited what they said is UnitedHealth's practice of "denying care and claims in order to generate record profits." The demonstration was organized by a group called...

Needed: A 'clean line' to determine lawfulness"You don't need to know. You can't know." That's what Kathy Norris, a 60-year-old grandmother of eight, was told when she tried to ask court officials why, the day before, federal agents had subjected her home to a furious search. The agents who spent half a day ransacking Mrs. Norris' longtime home in Spring, Texas, answered no questions while they emptied file cabinets, pulled books off shelves, rifled through drawers and closets, and threw the contents on the floor. The six agents, wearing SWAT gear and carrying weapons, were with - get this- the...

PHOENIX (CN) - A homeowner says a Phoenix police officer shot him six times in the back during a 911 home-invasion call, and the 911 tape recorded the officer's partner saying, "That's all right. Don't worry about it. I got your back. ... We clear?" The family says the officers were not aware that the 911 call was still recording as they spoke about covering up the shooting. In their complaint in Maricopa County Court, Anthony and Lesley Arambula say an armed intruder "crashed through the front window" of their home on Sept. 17, 2008 and ran into one of...

Just about everyone in Connecticut wishes Pratt & Whitney would keep its Cheshire and East Hartford plants open, with their 1,000 good-paying jobs, 3,000 to 6,000 jobs indirectly related to Pratt's operations, lavish tax payments to local and state government, and all of the other benefits such employers bestow on their communities. But do Connecticut residents really believe it's acceptable and appropriate to chain Pratt to the state? Is this the impression they want to give present and future businesses— once you're in our clutches, you have to stay here or we'll tie you up in federal court? Worse still,...

Occasionally, watching the hate speech of MSNBC provides useful information. Last night, the two most influential leaders of the American labor movement clearly laid out their plan to partner with the Democratic Party in foisting the “public option� on the American people. It sounds exactly like the one I outlined two weeks ago, and it may be unstoppable. The new president of the nation’s largest union demonstrated seriousness in his interview. Richard Trumka made his first television appearance as head of the AFL-CIO on The Rachel Maddow Show last night. Maddow introduced Trumka, whom she said had been “named”...

… and will your state government give them the power to do so? Kansas’s Democratic governor has just announced he’s thinking better of his decision to use the state’s resources to help the Service Employees International Union target home care workers as new union members. SEIU — part private sector union and part government union — grows by getting friendly Democratic governments to allow the union to collectively bargain for independent home care workers paid by state agencies. Sure, it’s a bad deal for taxpayers: rates go up and their side of the “negotiating” table is run by a union...

  From Pennsylvania Right-to-Work:Most readers are already aware of a growing scandal involving the pro-forced unionism Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now (ACORN) in New York, Baltimore, Washington, and now, California. For those who missed it, ACORN representatives were caught on camera giving advice to undercover journalists on how to open an illegal brothel, launder its profits, and commit a host of other illegal activities.According to The Washington Examiner, teacher union officials have contributed over 1.3 million dollars (in mostly forced union dues) to ACORN since 2005.We decided to do a little digging into union financial disclosure forms on...

Statement of Andy Stern, President of SEIU WASHINGTON DC--Andy Stern, President of the Service Employees International Union, issued the following statement today regarding recent attempts of right wing extremists to silence working families by attacking progressive individuals and community organizations: "This is a moment of profound change for this country--from kitchen tables to town halls to the floor of the Senate, this nation is engaged in a vigorous and heated debate about how we rebuild our economy, solve our national healthcare crisis and restore the American Dream. "As has always happened when progressive change is in the air, the backlash...

Andy Stern, head of the Service Employees International Union, has just released a statement vowing not to be "silenced" by "right wing attack dogs" targeting "progressive individuals" and "community organizations." Stern, whose union has sometimes been linked with the community organizing group ACORN, which yesterday suffered an enormous blow when the House of Representatives voted 345-45 to cut off all federal funds for the organization, said his union will not be intimidated by a right-wing "backlash" that is "fierce, ugly and anti-American." Here is the full text of Stern's statement:This is a moment of profound change for this country—from kitchen...

The plan for a series of grass-roots demonstrations Tuesday to promote President Obama's health care agenda calls for tightly scripted events and an "escalation" of efforts against "enemies" of reform. Organizers insist there is no comparison to rowdy summer town hall meetings and recent "tea party" protests that have challenged White House policies. But Health Care for America Now (HCAN), which is backed by a coalition of labor unions and liberal groups including ACORN and MoveOn.org, organized the protests to target insurance companies and drafted the plan, which describes the demonstrations as part of its "insurance enemies project." The document,...

Andy Stern, President of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) issued a poorly timed press release this afternoon that nevertheless blasts patriots with both rhetorical barrels.Anti-American, right wing extremists, right wing attack dogs, teab*****s, cruel, venomous, Glenn Beck, Fox News. Stern hurls every eptithet in the liberal handbook except racist. Maybe he's waiting to play the race card until next week. SEIU put out the press release at 1:33 p.m. this Friday, a time when official Washington and the media are trying to shut down for the weekend.Friday afternoon and evening is when pros try to release news they want...

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,...

50 year old Jaime Enrique Feliciano was sentenced yesterday in Sacramento to 25 years in prison. He was convicted of child molestation, possession of child pornography, and manufacturing child pornography. Feliciano was working for the state of California when the Sacramento County's DA's office was tipped off to his illegal activity last September. They searched his home, where they found thousands of pictures depicting children in various sex acts, Also found were countless images and videos both on his personal laptop and his State owned computer. He also raped a young girl, then attempted to keep the woman from going...

President Obama's rally at the University of Maryland on Thursday was a highly choreographed campaign event that drew in college students and union members by the thousands. Instead of campaigning for an election, the President was campaigning for health care reform. Obama didn't quite fill the 18,000 seats in UMD's Comcast Center and appeared three hours later than the scheduled 9am start time. It didn't seem to bother the crowd, which performed "waves" around the stadium with their hands to the music of UMD's school band, which played hits like "Sweet Caroline," "Thriller," and "Let's Get Ready To Rumble." It...

President Obama gave a corker of a campaign speech yesterday at the AFL-CIO convention in Pittsburgh, promising to deliver on his promise to ease the rules for union organizing. If you want to know what this means in action, consider the current Teamsters play to control California ports. The dispute concerns the Clean Truck Program announced in 2007 by the Port of Los Angeles to ban the dirtiest trucks from carrying port cargo. L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, a former union organizer, seized on the program as an opportunity to help his Teamster friends. Current law doesn't let the Teamsters organize...

For one of Big Labor’s most notorious organizing partners, ACORN, the “chickens have come home to roost” thanks to the James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles continuously unfolding ACORN exposé. If you rely on MSNBC for your news, you may not have noticed ACORN’s very thin “community organizer” veneer being sanded away exposing the rotten termite-infested wood underneath. Part of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now’s (ACORN) rotten core includes a very cozy relationship with Big Labor. In fact, in many instances ACORN and Big Labor are one and the same. In 2008, Big Labor funneled ACORN millions of...

President Barack Obama’s address to the AFL-CIO on Tuesday will shed light on a precarious friendship that will be tested in the near future. Though the president is expected to celebrate his relationship with unions that fervently supported his 2008 campaign, differences between Obama and organized labor will be at the forefront during his address at the AFL-CIO’s convention. On healthcare, Obama has voiced support for a public insurance option but is not insisting on one. Organized labor wants a public option to drive down healthcare costs, and the AFL-CIO is expected to approve a resolution that backs a government...

An interesting admission by James A. Williams, president of the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades in Philadelphia, can be seen in an interview he did with the Philly Inquirer. It is an admission that conforms one of the things that anti-union folks have been saying for years, but one union officials are loath to admit. While discussing the hard economic times, the Philly Inquirer asked how the recession was affecting the union. In his answer President Wilson admitted that his union uses out-of-work members for "political events." Wilson mentioned that they lower dues to $1 a month after...

The Kossack's Site says, "SEIU.org Sponsored Headlines." They have had SEIU thugs supporting them for months and months. Socialists supporting other Socialists

A Senate bill gutted and then amended to require local governments to get state vetting before filing for bankruptcy threatens delivery of basic public services, opponents say. Cities, counties and special districts opposing the bill say the measure would thwart their ability to cope with the fallout from the sour economy and the state budget crisis. "Counties provide state health and human services for entitlement programs," said Jean Hurst of the California State Association of Counties. If the county cannot seek bankruptcy court protection to avert insolvency, she added, "something is going to have to be done. Some level of...

Remember Elston McCowan? He’s one of the SEIU purple shirted thugs who were arrested for beating a Black conservative for daring to protest Obamacare outside a town hall meeting featuring Democrat Congressman Russ Carnahan. It turns out McCowan actually had the nerve to ask for Workman’s Compensation payments because he is “injured” and unable to “work.” Missouri had the good sense to tell this deadbeat to get lost, but moochers like McCowan don’t discourage easily when something for nothing is at stake. He has applied to the SEIU to pay him, thereby acknowledging he was there and committed this assault...

This is not a celebratory Labor Day for California's workers, and that includes government employees who believed that labor contracts and civil service rules gave them bulletproof job protection. California is mired in one of its worst economic recessions, with unemployment approaching 12 percent and likely to rise higher, but even those with jobs are often pinched by wage freezes and reductions, furloughs and cuts in fringe benefits. The jobless rate is twice as high as it was a year ago, the California Budget Project points out, and the recession has wiped out the state's employment gains in the last...

JERICHO, Ark. – It was just too much, having to return to court twice on the same day to contest yet another traffic ticket, and Fire Chief Don Payne didn't hesitate to tell the judge what he thought of the police and their speed traps. The response from cops? They shot him. Right there in court.

LAVONIA, Ga. (ABP) -- Members of a Southern Baptist church in Northeast Georgia want answers about the police-shooting death of their 29-year-old pastor in a drug-sting operation gone wrong. Jonathan Ayers, pastor of Shoal Creek Baptist Church in Lavonia, Ga., died during the night of Sept. 1, hours after being shot by undercover police officers outside a gas station where he had just gotten money from an ATM machine. The Stephens County Sheriff's Office initially identified the shooting victim as a suspect involved in a drug transaction. Later officials clarified that drug enforcement agents were not investigating Ayers, but a...

THOUSAND OAKS -- A 65 year old man had his finger bitten off Wednesday evening at a health care rally in Thousand Oaks, according to the Ventura County Sheriff's Department. Sheriff's investigators were called to Hillcrest and Lynn Road at 7:26 p.m. About 100 protesters sponsored by MoveOn.org were having a rally supporting health care reform. A group of anti-health care reform protesters formed across the street. When someone from the pro-reform side crossed over to the anti-reform side, a fist fight ensued, which resulted in the man's pinky finger getting bitten off. It's believed the man was on the...

In the beginning, the congressional town halls might have been loud but they were never violent, but once the Democrats began to encourage unions and other organized groups to confront the opponents of Obamacare, that all changed. It started with the indecent in Saint Louis, where Kenneth Gladney was attached by members of the SEIU. Yesterday's rally in Thousand Oaks California was the most violent ever:

The unions are gearing up for a fight – again – with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. A coalition of national unions that includes grocery clerks, hotel workers, farmworkers, Teamsters and the Service Employees International Union dumped $1 million Tuesday into a campaign fund to fight a proposed water bond

The man expected to become the AFL-CIO's next president said Monday that lawmakers will pay a price if they abandon a government-run option in any health care overhaul. "We need to be a labor movement that stands by our friends, punishes its enemies and challenges those who, well, can't seem to decide which side they're on," said Richard Trumka, currently the AFL-CIO's secretary-treasurer. The threats came less than a month after a protester outside an Aug. 6 health care forum meeting organized by Rep. Russ Carnahan, D-Mo., was sent to the hospital after a beating inflicted by goons wearing SEIU...

This will not shock too many people who have followed the antics of counter-demonstrators at Congressional town-hall meetings. It’s the same strategy employed at the Tucson tea-party meeting, without the thrown elbows; maybe they’re just implied. In this video taken just before a town-hall meeting held yesterday by single-payer advocate Rep. Jan Schakowsy (D-IL), a Health Care for America Now (HCAN) organizer instructs his troops on how to disrupt and shout down others so that they “take their cookies and go to bed” (via HA reader Joel P):

Here is a video report on a Town Hall Meeting held by Sen. Harry Reid at UNLV that was "by invitation only" - and the only people invited were supporters of ObamaCare, with a heavy union presence. When one man tried to get in who was against ObamaCare, he was told to get out. That confrontation is on this report. The man told those keeping him out, that Reid was supposed to be representing him, but he was told that he was not invited and that he should get out. . . . . (Watch Video)

Inspired by the speed and spending of the Apollo moon landing, the Apollo Alliance — a coalition of community organizers, environmentalists and big labor — is aggressively pushing President Barack Obama’s plan to regulate carbon emissions through cap-and-trade. If a recent meeting of labor and environmentalists is any indication, however, cap-and-trade may end up in a disaster more reminiscent of the Apollo 13 mission than the triumphant Apollo 11 landing. Earlier this month, the AFL-CIO and its Washington state affiliate hosted a conference on the proposal in Wenatchee, Wash. Despite labor’s seat at the table, Bob Baugh, executive director of...

The nation’s largest labor union and some allied Democrats are pushing a new tax that would hit big investment firms such as Goldman Sachs reaping billions of dollars in profits while the rest of the economy sputters. The AFL-CIO, one of the Democratic Party’s most powerful allies, would like to assess a small tax — about a tenth of a percent — on every stock transaction. Small and medium-sized investors would hardly notice such a tax, but major trading firms, such as Goldman, which reported $3.44 billion in profits during the second quarter of 2009, may see this as a...

More than 900 residents met U.S. Rep. Tim Bishop's promise to approve only a health care bill that "improves on a status quo that is unacceptable" with a mix of cheers and boos at a packed town hall meeting in Farmingville Thursday night.

"This used to be America," argued a protester outside a health-care town hall meeting in Reston, Va., after a police officer threatened him with arrest for holding up a sign with a picture critical of Barack Obama. The officer's response? "It ain't no more, OK?" A video of the town hall held earlier this week by Rep. Jim Moran, D-Va., shows an unnamed protester standing on school grounds carrying a sign that read "Organizing for National Socialist Health Care – The Final Solution" and depicted Barack Obama in the Joker's makeup. Officer Wesley Cheeks Jr. then told the protester that...

NY Congressman Tim Bishop tried to pack his town hall with unions on the ‘take’ for nationalized healthcare. The people of his district erupt in open rebellion when one of the union goons tries to speak! Union members, many from outside the district, were snuck into the hall beforehand in an effort to stack the deck with a friendly audience. The last straw came when one of the union leaders from outside the district was asked to speak. The citizens erupted in open revolt which almost led to violence from the union goons.

A local union leader was booed out of Rep. Tim Bishop's town hall meeting last night in New York.Like they tried to do here in St. Louis, union members, many from outside the district, were snuck into the hall in an effort to stack the deck with a friendly audience. There are reports that as many as three busloads were brought in.Things boiled over when Mr. Mitchell, head of the Long Island Federation of Labor, steps up to the podium and announces that he in fact does not reside within the borders of NY's First Congressional District.