Category Archives: Lobby/PAC

Why Democrats Love Big Labor

You don’t think that the democrats need the unions?

Organized labor spends about four times as much on politics and lobbying as generally thought, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis, a finding that shines a light on an aspect of labor’s political activity that has often been overlooked.

Previous estimates have focused on labor unions’ filings with federal election officials, which chronicle contributions made directly to federal candidates and union spending in support of candidates for Congress and the White House.

But unions spend far more money on a wider range of political activities, including supporting state and local candidates…

Indeed.

But it isn’t just the money.  It’s not just the influence that money may be able to buy.  It’s the coercion of actual voters:

…and deploying what has long been seen as the unions’ most potent political weapon: persuading members to vote as unions want them to.

And what do unions spend money on?

The costs reported to the Labor Department range from polling fees, to money spent persuading union members to vote a certain way, to bratwursts to feed Wisconsin workers protesting at the state capitol last year. Much of this kind of spending comes not from members’ contributions to a PAC but directly from unions’ dues-funded coffers.

But these costs are certainly reported as political efforts, yes?

There is no requirement that unions report all of this kind of spending to the Federal Election Commission, or FEC.

So, to review, unions are able to use money collected through dues to support the election of politicians who then pass legislation that allows unions to prevent workers from working unless they belong to a union?  And then “due” them to death.

Nice gig.

I was in Charlotte when Walker won in Wisconsin.  When he beat the unions.  I was watching Maddow.  She was crestfallen that the democratic party was at the brink.  She pointed out that without the unions, the democrats didn’t have any way to raise money.  She was half right.

Corporations and their employees also tend to spread their donations fairly evenly between the two major parties, unlike unions, which overwhelmingly assist Democrats. In 2008, Democrats received 55% of the $2 billion contributed by corporate PACs and company employees, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Labor unions were responsible for $75 million in political donations, with 92% going to Democrats.

They still get half the take, they just don’t get ALL the union take.

Let’s hope the gig is up.

One At A Time: Taking Schools Back From Teacher’s Unions

It’s no secret that teacher’s unions don’t serve the interest of the students; they serve the interest of the union.  They’re about power.  Power to influence how their members are protected and compensated.  As more and more people come to this realization more and more people are beginning to realize that taking schools back from those unions is a good thing:

(Reuters) – Hundreds of mayors from across the United States this weekend called for new laws letting parents seize control of low-performing public schools and fire the teachers, oust the administrators or turn the schools over to private management.

The U.S. Conference of Mayors, meeting in Orlando, Florida, on Saturday unanimously endorsed “parent trigger” laws aimed at bypassing elected school boards and giving parents at the worst public schools the opportunity to band together and force immediate change.

Now, guess who opposes these types of laws?

Such laws are fiercely opposed by teachers’ unions, which stand to lose members in school takeovers.

I know you’re shocked.  Shocked that a union would oppose a law that diminished its influence.  But, has this process worked?

Parent trigger laws are in place in several states including California, Texas and Louisiana and are under consideration in states including Michigan, Pennsylvania and New York. So far, though, the concept has never successfully been used to turn around a school.

Damn!

But why not?

Parents in two impoverished, heavily minority California cities, Compton and Adelanto, gathered enough signatures to seize control of their neighborhood schools but the process stalled in the face of ferocious opposition from teachers’ unions. Both cases are now tied up in court.

Ahh, not because they were given the chance and then failed.  Rather, they haven’t worked because the unions fight ’em every inch of the way.

The good news?  The power of the unions have continued to fade:

But in a sign of the unions’ diminishing clout, their traditional political allies, the Democrats, abandoned them in droves during the Orlando vote.

Democratic Mayors Michael Nutter of Philadelphia, Antonio Villaraigosa of Los Angeles and Kevin Johnson of Sacramento led the charge for parent trigger – and were backed by scores of other Democrats as well as Republicans from coast to coast.

“Mayors understand at a local level that most parents lack the tools they need to turn their schools around,” Villaraigosa said. Parent trigger laws, he added, can empower parents to do just that.

Let’s hope that the victory in Wisconsin will usher in a new era not just in fiscal reform but in actual education reform.

An Open Letter To Occupy Raleigh

I want to be very clear; I openly mock the Occupy movement.

There isn’t one single characteristic about #OWS that distinguishes it from any other leftist movement.  Listening to the rhetoric coming from Occupy you would not be able to identify whether or not your are listening to:

  1. A Greenpeace protest to save seals in Greenland.
  2. A university protest to bring attention to the wages of house keepers on campus.
  3. NAACP protests concerned about the treatment of an individual.
  4. A communist party meeting discussing the evils of profits.

There is nothing that distinguishes you from anything that we’ve already seen.

It’s anger unleashed on the world with no discernible focus.  There is no clear indication that you have a point.

You are open to mockery.

Continue reading

Right To Work: The Negative Impacts Of Unions

One of the benefits to the Tea Party election of 2010 has been the effort to reduce labor’s influence in America.  You’ve seen it in Wisconsin, you saw it in Indiana and now the results coming in from Tennessee.

States are turning to “Right to Work” legislation that allows employees to opt in or opt out of a union.  To be clear, some state allow you to opt out of a union, however, you still “get” to pay the union dues – wonderful option opting out is, yes?

So, how is Tennessee benefiting from their labor stance?

Michigan may be Motor City’s home in most people’s minds, but Tennessee has emerged as another major hub of auto manufacturing and related industries. Big domestic and foreign automakers have several facilities here and are expanding rapidly.

Tennessee, one of many Super Tuesday GOP primary states, has mostly been spared the trauma of mass layoffs, closures and bailouts that plagued the Rust Belt. Business and free-market groups cite a key advantage: It is a right-to-work state, effectively preventing Big Labor from being a major player there.

It’s growing.  And growing rapidly.

And the advantage of Right to Work laws are such that even shops that ARE union are forced to innovate, to invent to become more productive.  If they don’t, they fail.  This same incentive is not in place in full union states.  When all shops are controlled by the unions, the productivity of one slow plant isn’t different than the productivity of the other slow plant.

And why might businesses wanna come to these Right to Work states?

Tennessee’s law has held down labor costs. VW pays $27 an hour for new employees in wages and benefits, about half of the $52 an hour labor cost in Detroit. When the unionized GM agreed to reopen the Spring Hill plant last year, it forced the UAW to accept a starting wage of $15.78

It keep the cost of labor down.  Now, you may ask how that’s a good thing; how paying someone $27 an hour is better for that someone than paying them $52 an hour.

Critics cite the lower wages as proof that the laws hurt workers. But locals say that’s offset by lower living expenses. Nashville’s cost of living is 11% below the U.S. average, the Census Bureau reports. Detroit’s is only 1% below.

Tennessee isn’t immune to the auto industry’s ups and downs, but seems to weather them well.

“We got through the recession without major layoffs,” Woolley said. “There were a lot of curtailments and furloughs (for workers), a lot of short workweeks, but now we are back at full speed.”

When labor is less expensive, the things made with that labor are less expensive as well.  And, as always, while unions may increase wages for their members, they increase wages to the point that fewer and fewer workers are hired in the first place.

Big Labor’s place in America has gone by the roadside; and THAT is great news.

 

Democrat Women Silent On Liberal Slurs

I posted earlier about the fact that liberals don’t expect themselves, themselves as an identified “group” to live up a certain level of values.  The individual and specific father of three 4 who teaches school and considers himself a devote Christian?  Does he have, and live by, values?  Sure.

Same for the soccer mom who volunteers at the hospital, organizes fund raisers for charities and contributes to others and considers herself a lifelong liberal?  Her?  Is she an example of a person living a “values-based” life?  Sure.

But it ends there.  As a group, there is no demand that values be important.

Continue reading

Religious Freedom: Double Standard

When I think of the proper separation of church and state I think of the concept of the institutions.  I really think the intent of the separation came about because back in the history of the founding, the head of England was also the head of the church.  They were, in many respects, the same.

This lead to the condition where the official function of state was to discourage, and even make it illegal to practice, other religions.  I don’t think it was the goal of the time to make sure government didn’t contain religion, only that it not BE religion. There are numerous instances of examples of this belief.

Continue reading

Citizens United

The 2012 election should be interesting.  If for no other reason than to see what the impact of corporations being on equal footing with labor unions and the press.

If, for example, the Teamsters are able to contribute and influence, if, for example, the New York Times can endorse  candidate, why cannot ACME Plumbing do the same?

That’s How Occupy Rolls

The various Occupy movements around the nation claim that they represent the 99% against the 1%.  Yet even as the 99% can’t find a place to sleep while occupying the 1%, they take advantage of those who DO shelter them

I posted some time back about the Occupy vermin who shacked up in a home in Seattle.  They literally thought that this owner owed them the place to crash in.  And destroy.  And be forced to leave.

This movement is not one of accepting lawful understanding of property, of lawful permission to protest or even lawful ability to disrupt traffic.  Rather, this movement is taking pages straight out of the left’s playbook.  Protest.  Get arrested.  Destroy property.  Shout down.  Silence opposing views.

And to demonstrate how far this movement has degraded, they will steal from and desecrate even the churches that shelter them:

 

A pastor was left outraged after parts of a $12,500 bronze baptismal font went missing from his church sheltering Occupy Wall Street protesters.

Rev. Bob Brashear noticed before Sunday services that parts of the font at West Park Presbyterian Church in Manhattan, New York, had vanished.

‘It was like p*****g on the 99 per cent,’ he angrily told the 60 protesters who sleep at the church every night, according to the New York Post.

A church who had agreed to shelter the Occupiers found that they very group they offered assistance to, robbed them.   And more than robbed them of “earthly” belongings, robbed them of religious artifacts as well:

The holy water from the River Jordan seemed to have been poured into the base’s bowl from the missing attachment.

It would seem that Occupy couldn’t sink any lower.  Until they did:

Rabbi Chaim Gruber, who was formerly part of the movement, claimed last week that a protester urinated on a cross in a Brooklyn church.

You won’t hear a word of this from the press.  Not a peep.  You won’t see massive segments on CNN like you did when a Christian church threatened to burn the Ko’ran.  But piss on the Christian cross?  Democratic liberal operatives?

Nothing to see here, move on.

Any semblance of a rational and legitimate movement has long ago passed.  The remnants of this group are nothing more than individuals of an ideology far and away from the mainstream of America.

Acknowledge the damage and route around it.

Occupy Raleigh: 100 Days

How quickly 100 days come and then go.  Occupy Raleigh has been downtown at our state’s capital since October 15th, 2011.  They’ve been fighting what some might call a noble fight.  The idea that the American Dream has been taken from us, or that t has been somehow diminished by a subset of people with incredible wealth.  At some level, that rings true; and is noble.

However, from a classic leftist playbook, the Occupy crowd continued to diminish it’s credibility while showing the world it is still nothing more than a fringe group of malcontents:

Raleigh, N.C. — Two Occupy Raleigh protesters were arrested Sunday as the movement marked the 100th day since it began in October.

The group held a march around the State Capitol called “100 Reasons to Demonstrate.”

Two men were taken into custody after they refused to get out of Fayetteville Street, police said. Nicholas Alan Warren Johnson, 25, and John Christopher Pearson, 33, were both charged with impeding the flow of traffic.

March.  Demonstrate.  Say what needs to be said.  But let the world go about its business for the sake of all that’s holy.

There is simply no reason to walk in traffic just to be an ass.

But they do.  And they continue to get arrested.  And they continue to lose the dialogue.  And they continue to just not matter.

 

 

#Occupy The Democrat National Convention

What a few month’s time will do.

As the end of 2011 drew near, the Occupy Wall Street movement was in full swing.  Cities across America were host to Occupy camps full of protesters willing to make the case that the greed and corporate influence in America had reached the point that they could influence legislation.  The rich and powerful would be able to craft laws that benefited themselves at the expense of everyone else.

The system was broken.  And it needed to change.

The Democrats, facing an election year of better organized Tea Party grassroots organizations, were only too anxious to look at the Occupy movement as a method to garner support.  Support and sympathy:

“I understand the frustrations being expressed in those protests,” Obama told ABC News senior White House correspondent Jake Tapper…

The President goes on to compare the Occupy movement with the Tea Party, and then expresses the need to reach out to the Occupy protester:

“The most important thing we can do right now is those of us in leadership letting people know that we understand their struggles and we are on their side, and that we want to set up a system in which hard work, responsibility, doing what you’re supposed to do, is rewarded,” Obama said. “And that people who are irresponsible, who are reckless, who don’t feel a sense of obligation to their communities and their companies and their workers that those folks aren’t rewarded.”

Similarly, Nancy Pelosi expressed her approval of the movement like this:

During a press conference Thursday afternoon, House minority leader Nancy Pelosi praised those participating in the “Occupy Wall Street” protests. “God bless them,” Pelosi said, “for their spontaneity. It’s independent … it’s young, it’s spontaneous, and it’s focused. And it’s going to be effective.”

“The message of the protesters is a message for the establishment everyplace,” said the House Democrats’ leader. “No longer will the recklessness of some on Wall Street cause massive joblessness on Main Street.”

To be sure, each side is entitled to its foot soldiers, its partisans.  And they should be expected to pander to ’em all they want.  To think otherwise is rather foolish.  But it’s interesting to see how quickly the shine has wore off:

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Charlotte, which is hosting this year’s Democratic National Convention, may ban camping on city property, a move that would end an anti-Wall Street demonstration.

The ordinances would essentially end the Occupy Charlotte encampment at the old City Hall, where protesters have had a presence for months.

The Democrats don’t want the Occupy folks at the convention.  At the convention where people will be seen on TV.  Where questions will be asked and answers demanded.  It would appear, for the time being, that the Occupy movement has run its course.