How Obama protects the Teamsters
My column today sheds light on the longstanding bromance between Barack Obama and the Teamsters. I especially want you to have all this information handy when Obama complains on Thursday about all the infrastructure that’s still not getting built despite the $230 billion in porkulus money set aside for construction projects.
I’ve been reporting for more than a year about how Big Labor will benefit from Obama’s new government infrastructure bank/public construction slush funds — and how feckless U.S. Chamber of Commerce officials in Washington are going along with the union-exclusive project labor agreements that punish taxpayers, employers, and non-union workers. Pay special attention to those goodies in Obama’s jobs speech. The jackals at Teamsters headquarters in D.C. can’t wait to tear up more of your tax dollars on government projects doled out by the crony-in-chief.
As usual, Jimmy Hoffa Jr.’s Tea Party-bashing is a calculated distraction from his festering ethics problems and internal Teamsters strife. According to the FBI via the Center for Union Facts, four of the last eight Teamsters presidents have been criminally indicted and since FY 2001, racketeering investigations have yielded more than 2,000 indictments and awarded more than $3 billion in fines and restitution. In past union elections, Hoffa’s team was caught laundering union funds for electioneering and for campaign polling on dues-payers’ dime. Hoffa now faces a new challenge to his union presidency from his own far Left flank this fall. Make sure to read about the latest election corruption he’s embroiled in below.
Barry and Jimmy: Birds of a feather.
***
How Obama protects the Teamsters
by Michelle Malkin
Creators Syndicate
Copyright 2011
Barack Obama and Jimmy Hoffa are like Tweedledum and Tweedledee, Lady Gaga and hype, the “Jersey Shore” cast and hairspray: inseparable. The president can no more disown the Teamsters Union’s leader than he can disown his own id.
At a Labor Day rally in Detroit on Monday before Obama spoke, Hoffa stoked anti-tea party hostility by urging his minions to “take these son of a b*tches out.” (Botched grammar added that extra boost of street-gang authenticity to the labor lawyer’s threat.) The same civility police on the left who decry any references to crosshairs as incitements to violence are now mute about Hoffa’s brass-knuckle rhetoric. The Chicagoans in the White House refuse to comment.
Those calling on Obama to condemn Hoffa’s uncivil tone are deluding themselves. The 1.4 million-member Teamsters lifted Obama to power with a coveted endorsement and bottomless campaign coffers funded with coerced member dues. Over the past two decades, the union has donated nearly $25 million to Democrats (compared to $1.8 million for Republicans).
What quid pro quo protection has the Teamsters’ money bought? Let us count the ways.
Calling off Teamsters corruption investigations. Back in May 2008, as he jockeyed with rival Hillary Clinton for Big Labor support, Obama promised to end longstanding federal probes into the Teamsters’ mob racket. In 1989, the union was facing federal racketeering charges after Justice Department officials determined it was operating as a “wholly owned subsidiary of organized crime.” The Wall Street Journal reported that Obama phoned several Teamsters heavies to convey his vow to begin dismantling the independent federal watchdog overseeing the Teamsters; an Obama spokesman confirmed it.
Teamsters reformers now consider the review board a “toothless mechanism,” according to a recent article in the left-wing The Nation magazine. As one Hoffa critic put it, “You’re so tied up into a corrupt culture. You have this culture of protecting each other.”
Meanwhile, a federal court has determined that Hoffa and his goons raided the Teamsters treasury to try to buy his own re-election support with jobs and pensions. As a court-appointed watchdog determined this spring: “The conduct revealed in this investigation reflects a culture, or mind-set where elected union officials do not clearly distinguish between their fiduciary responsibilities to the union and their separate political objectives of achieving election.”
Nevertheless, Obama’s crime-fighting crusaders are far more preoccupied with cracking down on Gibson guitars made of rare wood and covering up the Operation Fast and Furious gun-walking scandal than with cleaning up the Teamsters’ graft and pay-for-play dirty business.
The Cadillac health plan exemption. While he regularly lambastes “millionaires and billionaires” who benefit from tax loopholes, Obama has zero to say about the crony Cadillac health insurance tax exemption he doled out to the Teamsters and other Big Labor groups. In January 2010, Hoffa and his pals met behind closed doors at the White House to ensure that they would be shielded while other middle-class Americans were forced to bear the burden.
Obamacare waivers for the brotherhood. While he calls for shared sacrifice, Obama has zero to say about the exclusive Obamacare waivers he has awarded to Teamsters chapters, including:
– the Western Teamsters Welfare Trust in Seattle
– the Teamsters and Employers Welfare Trust of Illinois in Springfield
– the Teamsters Local 485 Health and Welfare Fund in Brooklyn, N.Y.
– the Teamsters Local 617 Welfare Fund in Ridgefield, N.J.
– the Teamsters Local 734 Welfare Fund in Chicago.
No comment on obscene Big Labor salaries. While he regularly lambastes Wall Street salaries, Obama has zero to say about the bloated salaries and benefits of Teamsters brass (pdf). According to internal data compiled by Teamsters for a Democratic Union, 120 top Teamsters officials made more than $150,000 in 2009 — the largest number ever. Forty made more than $200,000 — also an unprecedented number. Hoffa pulls down nearly $400,000 a year, including an exclusive housing allowance and cost of living raise.
Shutting out non-union competition for public contracts. While he rails against “special interests,” Obama has zero to say about the executive orders he signed in the first days of his presidency to give unions a leg up. Executive Order 13502, for example, essentially forces contractors who bid on large-scale public construction projects worth $25 million or more to surrender to union representation for its employees. This codification of so-called project labor agreements significantly raises the cost of highway and school construction projects (by as much as 15 percent among California public schools, according to a new study by the National University System Institute for Policy Research).
The Obama protection order shuts out the vast majority of contractors in America. As I’ve noted before, 85 percent of the construction industry workforce is nonunion by choice.
Instead of putting Americans to work, the Teamsters have been busy yanking members off projects and idling construction projects from California and Nevada to Indiana to New York in order to shake down employers.
Now, you tell me: Who’s waging “war on workers”?
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Categories: Corruption,Tea Party,Unions
Sister Toldjah
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Unions create an artificial market that influences the real life job market cutting hours and benefits for a great many part time workers.
Unions depress incentives for hiring due to their essentially very high minimum wage.
We are a nation of entrepreneurs, if you don’t like working for someone else who’s shouldering part of your personal responsibility you have the freedom to create your own vision, want that cool car? Work for it. Want that six figure take home? Get on the stick, this country is the only place in the world in which you could exercise your right to freely build your dream.
Liberals are killing that freedom and unions are their army, slashing away, at liberty, slashing away at the prosperity that makes us free to choose our livelihood and helps create the environment of freedom to prosper, world wide.
Labor Dept. power grab rewards Obama’s union allies
In a stealthy bureaucratic move, an Obama political appointee is rewriting rules to enrich unions, economically harm developers, and hinder future construction. The Washington Post takes Obama’s Labor Department to task for deciding “with a stroke of a bureaucrat’s pen” to reward unions while imposing crippling costs on everyone else . The issue involves one of unions’ favorite pieces of legislation: The Davis-Bacon Act.
The 1931 Act has required contractors to pay construction workers “prevailing wages” for construction projects involving “public buildings or public works’ funded by the federal government or by the District of Columbia.
The prevailing wages usually mean the highest union wages for that community. As an aside, this is one reason why Obama prefers government expansion: funding for the government comes with many strings attached — especially the one that requires federal funds be used in ways that empower unions-regardless of the costs to taxpayers and the budget.
Until now, the plain language of the statue has been followed: that the Act applies only to “structures funded, owned or occupied by the U.S. or District governments”.
But we live in the Age of Obama and all prior definitions, agreements, understandings are null and void at the whim of Barack Obama and his team.
The Washington Post editorializes:
Now, with the stroke of a bureaucrat’s pen, that understanding has been upset. A Labor Department regulator has ruled that Davis-Bacon covers the CityCenter DC project, a $700 million private-sector complex under construction downtown at the site of the former convention center. The decision is astonishing, both because it is such a stretch legally and because of its implications – which range from a financial hit for the District to higher costs for development across the country.
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2011/09/labor_dept_power_grab_rewards_obamas_union_allies.html
I keep hearing the talking heads speaking of “collective bargaining ‘rights’” and “workers rights”.
First, there’s no such thing as collective rights; rights belong to the individual and come from God, as opposed to privileges. Second, let’s stop using the “pro choice” language and call it what it is: collective bargaining is organized blackmail. Collective bargaining rights blackmail the employer into complying with the will of people who have nothing invested in the company, particularly with regard the union representatives.
Second, who is ‘working people’? It’s become a code-phrase the far left uses instead of “poor people”. Anyone who has known a business or chased a commercial dream knows that the small business owner works longer hours and harder, and for far less pay than does the schlub who comes in from 9 to 5 to pull a lever all day. The “workers” that Hoffa and the other communists praise and champion wouldn’t and couldn’t handle the working conditions of the entrepreneur. That’s why they trade wealth and success for relative security. Of course the entrepreneur is evil in the leftists eyes; he believes in himself. He has initiative. He won’t be swayed by self-pitying rhetoric. Worst of all, he works to create the wealth he pursues.
Who are their champions? The people too cowardly and/or incompetent to go out and try making it on their own, yet insist that, through organized blackmail, they deserve more wealth than their labor generates.
By Kipling’s definition, they’re not even men.
Why does the Soprano scene of the 5 guys sitting in lawn chairs so they can get paid union wages come to mind when I see Hoffa?
the unions and congress will ruin america
85 percent of the construction industry workforce is nonunion by choice…..
Watch the Zero-Jobs,Downgrade, Liar-in-chief, start his sob story about how his big spending plan for “infrastructure” will put construction workers back to work. Tell that to the workers in the housing industry. Big corrupt union road contractors and bridge builders don’t use very many drywall hangers, cabinet makers,carpet layers,tile setters,HVAC,electricians,painters,framers, appliances, etc.No recovery of the economy has ever happened without a recovery in housing. This industry languishes out here in America and Obama et.al. don’t even bother to mention it anymore.The only notice we receive from the Federal government is from their Alphabet Gestapo: IRS,EPA,OSHA,EOC, HUD,and dozens of other bureaucratic agencies.Since Obama wants America to drive little battery golf-sized carts, let’s just save the money and use the abundant sidewalks already built as highways!
On September 7th, 2011 at 6:09 am, sonerai32645 said:
the unions and congress DID RUIN America.
FIFY
Government, and least of all Barack Obama, have no ability or desire to create “jobs”. Power and control are the operative words. This is criminal malfeasance on its face and must be investigated and prosecuted as soon as possible. Along with a 15% GDP balanced budget and fair/flat taxation, political access to taxpayer monies has got to be terminated and rigidly policed.
And I don’t care one whit how many eager boodle recipients are expecting their payola.
Good article Michelle.
When they built our EMS building they had to use davis/bacon wages. They were double the going wage for construction workers at the time.
How does that saying go? Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absoutely. A more corrupt group of people doubtfully exists. Are drug cartels involved with unions yet?
Even committed mainline Liberals are beginning to see the insanity of this little Marxist’s plans. Obama really must be impeached. We cannot wait another 14 months. The Executive branch is wrecking havoc on the World as well as American economies. There will be no recovery until radical Socialism is fully exterpated from the federal government and the American body politic.
We need to FLOOD our Congresspeople w/ letters/emails/phone calls decrying Jimmy Hoffa Jr.’s & Joe Biden’s HATEFUL rhetoric and have them denounce the language used on Labor Day!!
I’m a taxpayer who makes about $50K per year in a non-union job. I’m single with a mortgage and a car payment, but I live within my means. I expect the government to be fiscally responsible, just as I have to be, but for this I am called a racist, and an S.O.B. I’m told to go to he11 by loudmouth politicians, and the president refers to me as the enemy who must be punished.
What kind of world are we living in where personal responsibility is considered a vice, rather than a virtue? Have we really sunk that low?
The way I see it, the overwhelming majority of Tea Partiers are patriotic, TAX PAYING Americans, who expect our elected officials to be responsible with the money they take from us. Instead, they squander it, then demand more. And we’re the ones being called names by corrupt politicians and shady union leaders. I’m sick of it!
The media has already chosen our presidential candidate for us, and even if he beats the current White House resident, there’s very little chance he’ll reverse ANY of the damage that’s been done by this administration. As I said in a previous thread, I fear we’re doomed.
For well over a decade (I’m only 37) I’ve been saying that unions have outlived their purpose. They originally formed to help give a voice to the employees who were working in deplorable conditions for subhuman wages. But over the years, the government has enacted laws prohibiting those conditions. So now, the unions only purpose is to serve themselves in perpetuity.
Here in Southern Kalifornia, the grocery workers union is considering going on strike for more benefits. And everywhere I go, I find unemployed men and women licking their chops at the prospect of going in as a scab to earn an honest paycheck.
With today’s labor laws, it’s difficult for the unions to say they’re protecting the worker from unsafe working conditions.
All that leaves is extorting more money for less work.
Rants
1. The more I read the more angry I become at anyone who will sit out the coming election because their candidate didn’t win the primary.
2. It’s increasingly hard to forgive anyone who now regrets their vote for this president.
/Rants
That’s like saying “four of the last eight heads of the Gambino crime family have been criminally indicted.”
That just means the other four were better at covering their tracks.
I did that Labor Day evening and DEMANDED to know from my Donk Congressman if he agreed with Hoffa.
Great article Michelle.
Another poitn worth mentioning is how the dues are collected. By having the dues removed directly by the government (when it comes to public employee unions) from the union members paychecks and send the money directly to the union it saves the unions tons of money. Just imagine the cost savings the unions get from not having to collect the dues themselves. Not to mention just how many members would willing send the union the money if they actually had to write a check each month to the union.
And when it comes to public employee unions that seems even more ridiculous. It is like saying the unions are protecting their members from the government which created and enforces the labor laws in existence.
Pretty much. The unions primary mission is to rake in as much revenue as possible from membership dues and have the leadership live mighty high.
Better working conditions, pay and benefits are only secondary. Happy workers who enjoy decent working conditions and are difficult to fire tend to be content or grumble less about the dues deducted from the paycheck.
oh, and buy politicians who’ll be more than glad to enact union friendly legislation.
yep, like Rush says it is nothing more than a money laundering scheme.
On September 7th, 2011 at 10:22 am, Truesoldier said:
It is like saying the unions are protecting their members from the government which created and enforces the labor laws in existence.
Reminds me of this case.
The school board in Kansas City got access to a lot more money by just admitting wrong, and getting a tyrant judge to rule “against” them.
It is also one of the more classic examples of judicial activism to the point of black-robed dictatorship.
The Federal government really has become a monstrous multi-headed hydra; while we focus on cleaning up Congress, and stopping Obama, we continue to lose ground to the bureaucracy, and the judiciary.
Gingrich: Obama Should Learn That Bad Government Ruined Detroit
Bad/corrupt government really is like a cancer that destroys itself even as it destroys its parent organism. Small consolation, but…. The sad thing is that should the economy recover there, the cancer will merely reignite.
I’m not a Gingrich fan but at least he understands this truth.
Hey look!!
It’s a web site dedicated to a bunch of idiots who hate organized labor.
Even though these same idiots like the benefits that organized labor created for them.
But what makes this bunch of idiots really special is that they also want to cut government spending – I wonder if they know that Texas cut its volunteer fire fighters budget from 30mil to 7 mil and now the state is burning:
http://www.kvue.com/video/featured-videos/Volunteer-firefighters-in-Texas-struggle-with-financial-crisis-118510059.html
So I wonder if the Wh and the MSM would have any concern if the CEO of Ford took to the airwaves in a nationally covered event and said he was going to take out the UAW once and for all. Then he went on to characterize them as lazy sons of b*tches who have ruined industry in this nation. Do you wonder if the white house speech policeman in chief might hold another presser to tell people we need more civility. And unions wonder why manufacturing is leaving the U.S. as fast as it can build facilities overseas. YO FORD UAW WORKERS, Go to India and apply for the new jobs building Fords there in the brand new 1b dollar plant. They are hiring 5000 new workers I hear, building both engines and cars. Keep listening to those mafia thugs in charge of the unions, and you will all be flipping burgers by 2020.
Okay, ILMC.. I’ll feed the troll here.
Answer me this: What is the purpose of a union today, in relation to their original founding purpose?
Ilovemycountry:
organized labor = organized crime
The firefighter union is one of the biggest ripoff of taxpayers in every city in the U.S. They have morphed from fire fighting to “fire prevention” which has caused them to take over plan reviews, HVAC inspections,ambulance services, sprinkler control, elevator and building inspections,while rarely saving a burning structure from complete ruin.They are now heading toward complete corruption as they have thrown in with the plumbing lobby and union pipe fitters to require completely unnecessary and costly residential sprinkler systems.It would be cheaper to write a check to every home damaged by fire than to pay these folks 24hous a day, 7 days a week to do little of nothing. But of course they have brainwashed the public about how they are for the “children” and public safety!
Fire dept are some of the most over funded entities you will find. Their union is obscenely strong. They spent years telling all fire dept that they MUST take over EMS or they would go back to being volunteer because fires were down in numbers and they had to justify their existence. There are more volunteer fire dept than you can shake a stick at–enormous amounts of money sitting in stations–unused. Take a look at the stats.
The cut in funding for the volunteer fire dept had little if anything to do with the TX wildland fire. Once one of those puppies gets going its strictly wildland territory–most structure firefighters know very, very little about fighting wildland fires.
For God’s sakes, people, we have to go GALT…and NOW!! We have to stop funding these horrible people before it’s too late. They are stealing our money and using it for corruption and violence. Why are we allowing this??
This has bugged me for a long time too, Hiraghm! Why are union members the only “working people”? That is stupid. There are millions MORE working people who AREN’T in the unions. Geez…and they keep getting away with that talk because no one calls them on it! Media, start doing your damn job!!
About 16 years ago, I was taking an evening test review class at the Holiday Inn next door to the Teamsters International headquarters near Capitol Hill. During breaks, I would pass by the hotel bar, where I saw a lot of guys in Teamsters jackets. I swear they all looked like they wandered off the set of “The Sopranos.”
I did not realize that volunteer fire fighters stood around out in the countryside 24/7 waiting to instantly put out grass and forest fires.
What is the standard for the number of volunteer (i.e. unpaid) firefighters per square mile that should be standing around waiting for fires to start?
I will be sure to let the members of my town’s volunteer fire department know that is within their scope of work. I fugure the department may need to expand from 20 to about 425 to meet this requirement.
I can certainly relate to the firefighters union; my ex was (now retired) a paramedic/firefighter. I saw a significant change in him once his department became unionized. He could respond to calls on his days off. Even if he was there for only 5 minutes before being cleared, he’d get 30 minutes of pay. It didn’t mean I had any more money for household expenses, either.
Nope. Barky won’t be learning this lesson. People and infrastructure of a city, county, state and nation are only to be exploited to gain power and wealth for politicians and their cronies. They will take as much graft as they can before the inevitable implosion.
Some will get away, some will get caught. Most get to the point that they egotistically believe they are legally untouchable which, on occasion, leads to a downfall for some, but not enough, of them.
Marxists always want to hurt people.
Hey, idiot ILoveMyLackofFacts: Try telling the “rest” of the story…
RealNewsReporter.com is now reporting that volunteer firefighters who had in some cases driven all night to reach Bastrop county were turned away by the feds, who claimed that since local officials never made a “formal request” for volunteers, the volunteers could not be “activated.”
So while Bastrop County burns from 40+ fires that are still raging, the federal government is actually telling volunteer firefighters to go home.
“We were at the station getting set up into strike teams, and this guy came up and said that the U.S. Forest Service had ‘assumed control of the situation, and that If you don’t have a vehicle that squirts water, go home,’ said Gordon Greer of Kirbyville, in a RealNewsReporter article. Gordon reportedly drove all night Monday to arrive in Bastrop and take part in the firefighting effort. “You’ve got guys who had driven all night long from Corpus Christi and Brownsville on their own dime, and they turned them away,” he said.
…..AND, let’s not forget FEMA’s aircraft used for dropping fire retardent…a total snafu. You are such a dope.
That same story reports that Jennifer Jones of the U.S. National Interagency Incident Center confirmed multiple federal agencies would be taking over the scene. Tuesday afternoon, the Bastrop County Office of Emergency Management stated on its Facebook page that volunteer firefighters would have to be “activated by the National Forestry Service first.”
In other words, if you’re a local Texan and you want to help other Texans save their ranches, or their homes, or their businesses, you need permission from the federal bureaucracy first!
But some Texans aren’t allowing their efforts to be thwarted. As Real News Reporter says in its story, a group of Texas Nationalist Movement members who are also certified firefighters are in the Bastrop area and aiding civilian relief efforts, with or without permission from Washington D.C.
Members of the leftside of the political spectrum never portray themselves as they really are, and you can count on anything they claim, the opposite will be the truth, the majority of the time. Cases in point:
The handle, “Ilovemycountry” displays a near rabid hatred for the country that enables him/her/it to display patriotism, or lack thereof, and to disclose sincere animosity towards anyone who is a rational thinker, with a different political philosophy.
When you hear union leaders, and members of the elected political establishment refer to “workers,” they of course, mean union workers. When they refer to “fair wages and benefits,” they are only referring to those of union workers, as they have a history of regarding non-union workers as their enemies: cross their picket lines and you are “labeled” a “scab.” They will vandalize private property, threaten, then attack and injure honest workers who just want to provide for their families. And, we all know their history of associations.
Has there ever been a positive report about union workers doing something good, without looking for notariety, or self-serving publicity?
Obama Green Jobs Con Job and the Ill Wind That Blows from Spain
Obama has become tiresome. He is over-exposed. He has overstayed his welcome. We can hear the clichés that will be laced through his speech even before he speaks — the opposite of an echo. The promises will be there — what else can he sell? Certainly not his record on the economy.
He has always been a snake oil salesman; such people always tempt the needy with promises of great things to come. So we will once more hear him tout his policies as creating legions of new “green jobs” while making America the world leader in green energy. We have heard it before. He must either think we are stuck on stupid or he is the one stuck on stupid. This policy has clearly been one giant Green Jobs Con Job.
Those green jobs we have been promised have been a mirage. They are often temporary in nature and come at an extraordinary high price.
Loan guarantees, mandates, feed-in tariffs, outright gifts of taxpayer money and other assorted goodies from the government have gone to bolster the prospects of profiteers and not the paychecks of workers.
Obama’s spending has also enriched various venture capitalist supporters in Silicon Valley and other enclaves where Barack Obama is still popular. The billions that have flowed out of Washington (that is, from us) have brightened the prospects for such Green Entrepreneurs as Al Gore, the political prospects of the Biden family in Delaware (the electric car company Fisker Automotive got hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars from Uncles Barack and Joe Biden to open a factory in Delaware of all places — despite the fact that most new car factories now are located in right-to-work states; but the Biden political dynasty needs all the help it can get back home).
The billions tucked away here and there in Obama’s trillion dollar budgets serve as a slush fund to enrich people under the Democrats’ “friends and family program” (such as the Carnahan political dynasty in Missouri, enriched by stimulus money poured into a wind farm owned by a prominent member of that family; and the Kanjorksi clan in Pennsylvania — the nephew of then Congressman Paul Kanjorski worked for companies, including a Spanish solar company, that received hundreds of millions of dollars in earmarks and grants for green energy ventures). These billions have also been a way to pay back donors and Bundlers for Barack.
There is a litany of failed efforts to create jobs. Three hundred million dollars went to Johnson Controls to make electric batteries. According to the White House, which errs on the side of optimism if not delusion, that led to the creation of …drum roll please…150 jobs. That comes out to a cost of $2 million per job.
Ironically, job growth has been stalled because of the unions’ insistence that the Davis-Bacon Act be followed and not waived by President Obama. This union-favored act requires workers on federally-funded projects be paid the prevailing wage standards for the type of work in that area. Those “prevailing” wages usually are determined to be high union wages. Abiding by the Davis-Bacon Act (which can be waived by the President, as George Bush did after Katrina to speed job growth and reconstruction) is a way to make unions — if not taxpayers who foot the bill — happy.
Spain: A Precursor of Our Future Under Obama
When I asked Professor Calzada about the genesis of Spain’s green energy program he answered that it was the desire of Spanish political elites to be “world leaders” that drove the program — and the Spanish economy off the cliff.
It was the desire of political elites to be perceived to be world leaders that led to this disaster. That certainly has echoes here in America when such terminology is repeatedly used by Barack Obama to justify his Green Schemes. It would not be the first time that personal ego played a role in damaging a nation. Indeed, Barack Obama seems to have a bit of an Edifice Complex –the problem arises when we have to pay for monuments that gratify his ego.
Professor Calzada explained that jobs were not the initial impetus behind the launch of vast programs to set up wind and solar farms. That only came later when promoters grasped onto then as a way to rationalize continued wasteful spending. Then banks and other financial institutions joined the party, lending vast sums to the promoters of the ventures. A vicious circle developed; banks were so heavily invested in these boondoggles that pulling the plug on government spending would bankrupt many of the Green Energy companies they had extended loans to. So then banks, to protect their own future, started promoting green energy programs and the prospects of politicians who would stand with them. Jobs would be lost, loans would go bad, companies would go bankrupt — so the spending spree continued. But, as Margaret Thatcher noted, the problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money.
Spain is now teetering on the brink of economic ruin. All the solar and wind farms on the sun-drenched plains of Spain will not restore the nation to health. They are saddled with sky-high energy bills (the price of electricity has soared over 100% since the Socialist took power in 2004) and weighed down by vast amounts of debt spent to boost the egos of politicians and line the pockets of profiteers who depend on them.
The victims of course were the Spanish people — those who lost their jobs, those who faced a bleak economy, and those in years to come who will be responsible for paying back the vast amounts borrowed to fuel these pipedreams. There is some hope though: the Socialists have recently been trounced in the polls. The Spanish people are rebelling.
They are also trying to warn us. There has been a tsunami of solar bankruptcies in Spain as subsides have been cut. One Spanish newspaper had a headline, “Spain admits that the green economy sold to Obama is a ruin .” That is the same snake oil he is trying to peddle to Americans.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/09/obama_green_jobs_con_job_and_the_ill_wind_that_blows_from_spain.html
Welcome, Union Brothers and Sisters http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=10150285...
Option 3 of Lead, Follow, or get the hell out of the way.
That’s how you handle the Feds.
But mostly if they resist assimilation into the collective, or they are hurt as a means of warning others of the futility of resistance or failure to comply with instruction or required productivity, or simply because they have served their purpose and are no longer useful.
To marxists, people are always useful, but expendable.
MM or Doug;
Here in the grassroots, I can tell you most black Americans see in Obama a new FDR (an esteemed hero here) for his maga-projects like WPA and such putting people to work in the 1930s. Please do a feature why FDR’s seeming compassionate and admirable public work programs would be counterproductive today.
James Greenidge
Queens NY
OT-
On 9/11/01, we lost around 3,000 citizens to Islamic terror.
Obama the Fetid, has strong-armed the new SecDef, into reducing the combat-effective number of American troops left in Iraq, after the draw-down, to 3,000…is there some significance to that particular number?
I think it is not only bizarre, but kind of unsettling to me.
A numerical coincidence? Perhaps, but that small a number of troops will be ineffectual, and their very lives will be put in jeopardy should they be targeted by a much larger Islamic presence. Either keep the number of troops at an effective number, or withdraw them ALL now…don’t leave some hanging out to dry.
The generals were adamant in their objections to Obama’s Un-plan, yet they were overridden by the more experienced Commander-in-Chief? (Cough!)
What about his promise to the troops, that he would “never send them into harm’s way, unless it was absolutely neccessary, and in the country’s best interest?” Well, his track record of keeping promises is quite miserable.
That is why Marxists, and Islamists are so alike, and always seem to help one another! Islam spread via the “join us or die” imperitive, and Marxism spread by the same type of thought process in Old Mother Russia.
He’s expected to ask for $300 billion for ‘infrastructure’.
Didn’t he say last week his plan would put 1 million people to work?
That’s $300,000 a job.
Heck, I’d dig ditches for half that.
FirstSkirt, that’s awful! Thanks for the clarification.
It reminded me of when companies and countries offering help to the Gulf oil spill were turned away.
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HI I_LOVE_MY_COUNTRY–#25. The posts above refer to the higher costs that result from closed shop union contracts. And to the loss of companies that can’t compete unless they move to right to work states–or to other countries.
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And to the corrupt crony unionism links between democrats / liberals / socialists / statists / marxists / communists like Comrade Obama and his Ilk. And to the violence prone actions taken by some corrupt unions.
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I was an IBEW Union member long ago when I was a part time co-op student worker at my local power company. It was a fair union run by co-workers. And they had a real interest in doing a good job–within the rational contract rules. No thugs there.
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Unions did serve a real purpose in the late 1800′s and early 1900′s. Before child labor laws and mine / logging / chemical worker safety and health laws were passed to protect workers.
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Later in my work career I was assigned to work in Massachusetts for a year at my company’s home office. Some of the union workers–a shop steward comes to mind–were good workers with the goal of doing a good job. Many other union workers were careless and caused a lot of problems.
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It was hard to get work done at all. At the time–1969–the SAM-D–later Patriot initial R&D effort was in full swing. Two 8 hour shifts daily–lots of shift work. One of the two modified IBM Selectric Typewriters we used to load the main computer failed in the software development lab. When a “L” was typed the ASCII code for a “C” was sent instead. And it shut down all software work for 10 skilled programmers.
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We had another system under construction on the second floor of the building about 100 ft. away. The engineer there said we could have the typewriter to use. I stood in line at the material handler’s office filling out forms and after explaining the critical need I got a priority moving approval. At White Sands Missile Range I would have picked up the typewriter, carried it downstairs, and had the system up 10 minutes later. It took 3 workdays to get the union guy to move the typewriter downstairs. The programmers went on a third (graveyard) shift for 3 days to get back on schedule.
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Ten years later I was sent to the Massachusetts plant hand carrying microwave and digital parts to upgrade a test system that had a design problem we had fixed at White Sands. A technician was supposedly standing by to install the mods under my supervision. I had done all the design and installation work myself at WSMR on our identical system.
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The union technician never showed up. I asked the back East engineer what could be done. He replied that I would have to wait until the Tech came–they wore working on a critical job in their lab. I went there and noticed 5 of them building illegal descrambler boards so they could steal over the air pay TV signals! And I had a plane leaving the next morning and critical work to do in New Mexico.
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I went to a local Radio Shack and bought a few hand tools and a soldering iron. Then I jammed the door of the shelter with a screwdriver to prevent entry and installed the mod in 2 hours, checked it out, cleaned up all debris, and left for a Red Sox ball game at Fenway Park. And got on the big bird and returned to my non union facility.
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John Bibb
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Well said.
And a little advice for the Feds…DON’T MESS WITH TEXAS!!
This administration and all its lackeys are stark raving mad. They have a collective IQ of ZERO! RED TAPE before you fight a fricken fire?? Who does that??
And by the way, I hope that some of those homes lost belong to regressive morons.
Labor unions are fighting for survival because they realize their gravy train is approaching the end of it’s track. They are also in a panic that next year they will lose their direct access to the White House and that more and more states will pull the fangs of their public sector unions.
Private sector unions will go away on their own because they have outlived their usefullness. Public sector unions will go away because the public is beginning to realize their tax dollars are never going to be enough to satisfy the unions, even though taxes are outrageous already. They are outliving their usefullness as well. One by one, in order to survive, states will put an end to powerful public sector unions.
Public sector unions have always ben a bad idea, recognized even by such Democrat stalwarts as FDR. The people who pony up the tax dollars are not included in the bargaining process that burns up more and more of their money with each new contract.
Cities, counties, states and the Federal governments all have rules and laws in place to protect workers. All the unions do is restrict what goverments can achieve less expensively, with outlandish work rules and union protections for lousy public employees.
I think Obama should be in jail. Maybe that’s just me. I hate all crooked politicians. My rep (it was reported), got a special deal for a developer who then gave her fiance a special deal on a condo. She can share Obama’s cell to save space for all I care.
Oh yeah – the unions here love her. Sure -the crooked tango takes two. Crooks of a feather…spit.
Aloha Guy
Nope. Remember when everyone called for Bush/Cheney to be tried at the Hague for “war crimes”?
Not a word on that since Libya.
Stay away from scandal!
I’d dig ditches for 20% of that.
0bama supports less than 12% of the population to the detriment of the other 88% because he can launder money through them for re-election.
It. Is. That. Simple.
Pro-unionists act like employers are not human beings. The funny thing is, the very conservatives they badmouth are usually the ones with the strong moral ethics.
My father used to tell me stories from the Depression. Men would stand around just off a construction site and wait. When they saw the foreman walk out of the shack with a pink slip in his hand, they’d begin racing one another up the scaffolding. First one there was the one hired.
A bricklayer could be fired for stopping to light a cigarette. But, a drunk was allowed to keep a whiskey bottle under the mortarboard, because the drunker he got, the faster he laid (also the worse he laid, but this was back when masonry was structural, not decorative, and if people couldn’t see the finished product, who cared how pretty it was?).
When my father began contracting on his own, he didn’t suddenly turn into a sadistic monster as unionists characterize employers. He remembered his own working conditions. His accident rate was so low that he qualified for the lowest workman’s comp rates possible. He made sure his men got a break in the morning and another in the afternoon and a half-hour for lunch (often if they couldn’t afford lunch, he’d pay for it, and not take it out of their pay). In summer he made sure there was at least 1 five-gallon thermos of clean icewater, with cups, available. In winter he had barrels around, in which we’d burn scrap lumber from the jobsite to help the workers keep warm (in addition to the salamanders and space heaters and enclosures we built to keep the mortar from freezing). If it rained, the workers didn’t work. My brother, father and I would often put in 12 and 14 hour days, but our workmen only worked an 8 hour day, and if they worked longer they got time and a half, double time for Sunday.
I can remember when the 3 of us would work in mud up to our knees, nursing a broken mixer to keep it going, sliding wheelbarrows along mud-slicked planks to the scaffolding, but he never asked our crew to work in these conditions. If it got too hot, he’d send them home. If he felt a scaffold wasn’t safe, he wouldn’t send a man up it.
One day an OSHA rep inspected us, and complained that my father didn’t have a warning for toxic chemicals posted. What toxic chemicals? The rep showed him a bag of mortar with the warning right on it. Which my father pointed out. Finally, to satisfy the OSHA guy, he nailed the warning from the bag to the construction shack.
The rep complained that two of his workers were working around scaffolding but not wearing hard hats. My father showed him the hard hats he had available, and told him that he couldn’t make my brother and I wear hardhats, as we were partners, not employees. (I refused to wear a hardhat; as a teen, part of my job had been racing along the scaffolding delivering materials and tempering mortar; with a hardhat I’d go home with a severe headache and neck ache, from banging the hardhat on the scaffolding crossbars).
My father always made sure the employees had functioning tools, gloves and other protection they needed to do the job.
I’m not just bragging on my father. I don’t think he was exceptional. These were things he did because he felt it was his moral obligation, but also because he felt it was just good business; a way to attract and keep good workers. Yes, there are stinkers out there who will treat their employees like crap. But, these people treated everyone like crap. These are the ones who hire illegal aliens because they’ll work under inhuman conditions and for slave wages, in violation of the law.
There is no association between entrepreneurial-ism and sadism or inhumanity.
The adversarial relationship between employer and employee the unions bemoan is engendered BY the unions!
lol let me correct something I said, “I don’t think he’s exceptional”. Oh, he was an exceptional person; but his policies and way of doing business were NOT exceptional. I think they were the rule.
Obama: Who’s your daddy?
Hoffa: Where’s my daddy?
Hey look! An idiot who hates the free market system, even though it’s the free market system that makes this country wealthy enough to enable him to live his wasted slacker lifestyle.
Labor can organize itself any way it pleases as far as I’m concerned. They should just have to obey the same rules of fair competition as everyone else in the market, instead of thugging and extorting to themselves what they haven’t earned.
O/T. Forest Service cancels contract With firefighter planes. Hopefully the link works.
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=46009
Hey, but you’re right about the whole Texas firefighter thing. Because we all know that only Republicans in Republican states cut volunteer firefighting budgets when budgets are tight.
Another FAIL for ilovemybigotry.
No, while some in this admin are mad, somear sly like a fox and punish their enemies as a warning to others.
Perfectly good firefighting planes that could be used to fight the Texas fires are grounded in California due to a suspicious contract cancellation that came up about 3 weeks ago between the company that owns them, Aero Union, and the Obama administration.
The government did not provide details on why the contract was canceled, but that they did not agree with Aero Union’s 15-year maintenance plan and wants the older P-3 Orions Aero Union uses to be replaced by newer and smaller Canadian built planes.
Follow the policital money trail.
Texas, it and its governor is Obama’s enemy, ergo let Texas burn.
All other states take note.
hawkeye54: Thanks for that info.
Interesting and your last two are probably true. In light of what happened when Obama visited Texas a few months back.
The Chicago way.
One of the side results of Hoffas incitement is that he is actually threatening Union members who do not toe the line and get on board completely with his message.
Do you think the conservative Union member will go to work and criticise the Union or the Unions leader after he just talked about war and fighting and taking the opposition out?
It was meant to intimidate anyone and everyone that disagrees with the Union leader. Otherwise, youse might be sleeping with the fishes. Forgetaboutit.
She is obviously a major airhead. I heard she was staring at the refrigerator section in the grocery store and when asked what she was doing, she said shhh. The Orange Juice says concentrate.
Someone saw her going repeatedly to the mailbox and looking inside but finding nothing. When asked what she was doing, she replied, “My stupid computer keeps saying, You’ve got mail.”
I want Gov. Perry to win the nomination if for no other reason than to defeat this POS POTUS and kick his ass out of MY HOUSE!! That would be good payback for what Obama is doing to Texas. Not enough, however. Obama then needs to reimburse every single person who lost a home in those fires due to his vendetta. AND, he needs to pay $1million to the families of those who lost their lives. The President of the United States is personally responsible for this tragedy.
How long can this country continue to SUFFER under a President who rewards his cronies and punishes anyone who doesn’t kiss his skinny black ass? By the way, that wasn’t racist. It was fact.
Something Barry has in common with a former dictator of Iraq and an about-to-be deposed dictator in Libya.
Especially as useful idiots.
#37 said:
Reminds me of that event a few years ago where the firefighters were burned alive because the water bag/scoop was not allowed to get the water from a pond because of the “protected species act”.
If my house/property was in the path of that fire I would be calling every person involved no matter how high up the stinkin’ government ladder I had to go.
As with most government agencies there are the “in-basket” people and the “out-basket” people and the two shall never work together because no matter happens … it was just a piece of paperwork.
#56 said:
That reminds me of a buddy of mine that started a business erecting metal buildings. His company paid very well but was non-union. Started out on small jobs. As time went by the jobs kept getting bigger. Eventually he won a larger job but it was connected to a union job. He had to pay union wages and follow the production killing rules. That was his last bid that involved unions.
I never like unions since my uncle put up strike against my father and his brothers’ general construction business.