Longtime readers of my work know that I’ve been exposing the compulsory-union dues racket since my days as a columnist at the Seattle Times. Here’s my 1999 column on how public school teachers in Washington state challenged their union over their political dues power grab. Here are your rights as a union worker. Here is a backgrounder on the permissible use of forced dues. As I wrote on Labor Day in 2010, free speech not only means the freedom to voice your political views, but also the freedom from being forced to pay for someone else’s.

U.S. Supreme Court precedent established by the D.C.-based National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation guarantees the right to full financial disclosure from a union and a right to challenge the figures in court if they disagree.

More and more rank-and-file union members have been speaking up against the confiscation of their dues for political purposes they oppose. Remember this Chicago SEIU member from 2010?

Or this letter from a Minnesota teacher last year?

As events have unfolded in Wisconsin, I have been reflecting on my nearly 10 years in public education. My parents were both teachers and I greatly admired the work they did with their own students. I began with that same passion for teaching that they instilled in me, but am finding it more and more difficult to keep that flame alive.

Frustrated in Minnesota

Well, today on Capitol Hill, more brave union members are testifying about the Big Labor money machine forcibly fueled with their hard-earned money. You can watch the proceedings live at 10am at the House Oversight website. You can read the prepared testimony of Mr. Terry Bowman of Ypsilanti, Michigan, Ms. Claire Waites of Daphne, Alabama and Ms. Sally Coomer of Duvall, Washington here.

Chairman Darrell Issa’s opening statement:

Every worker should have the choice to decide whether their money is taken from their paychecks and used to fund political activity. When this occurs, a worker should also have the right to know how their money is spent.

These actions will have far-reaching consequences. I welcome the union workers who have agreed to testify today and appreciate their willingness to speak their mind about what they see as unjust restrictions on their freedom of choice in our democracy.

Kudos to Rep. Issa — and especially to the rank-and-file members speaking truth to union thug power.

Yesterday, the SEIU and left-wing USA Action launched Spanish-language radio attacks on Mitt Romney for his support of immigration enforcement measures. One of Romney’s advisers is Kris Kobach — a constitutional law professor, Kansas Secretary of State, and staunch leader in the fight against illegal alien amnesty and ACORN-style voter fraud.

Eliseo Medina, the secretary-treasurer of Service Employees International Union, blasted Romney on Monday during a conference call announcing a Spanish-language radio ad the union is launching in partnership with Priorities USA Action, a super-PAC supporting President Obama.

Medina, the No. 2 official at the influential union, was reacting to an answer Romney gave at a debate Monday night where he said “self-deportation” was the answer to ridding the country of illegal immigrants.

“It’s basically to say, ‘Make their life miserable’” by refusing to rent to them or to provide access to heat and water,” Medina said. “Make it difficult for their kids and their schools.”

Asked by The Hill how Romney’s comments could be construed to imply that illegal immigrants should be denied basic necessities, Medina pointed to Romney’s close relationship with Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, who has endorsed Romney. Kobach has been credit with writing most of Alabama’s harsh anti-illegal immigration law, which has been challenged in the courts.

“Mr. Romney has said he wants to support and he joins in supporting Kris Kobach,” Medina said. “When he says he supports those kinds of policies, he has to own all of it.”

“This is a dishonest smear from President Obama’s liberal allies and a desperate attempt to distract from his abysmal record,” said Romney adviser Albert Martinez. “It will do nothing to help the millions of Hispanics who have been hit especially hard as a result of the Obama economy.”

Martinez said Hispanics, like all Floridians, believe Romney is the best person to rebuild the economy and to replace Obama.

Well, look now, who’s mimicking the open-borders SEIU and blurring the lines between illegal and legal immigration.

Yep. Newt Gingrich:

Sen. Marco Rubio scolded Newt Gingrich’s presidential campaign over a Spanish-language radio ad that accuses rival Mitt Romney of being “anti-immigrant”

“This kind of language is more than just unfortunate. It’s inaccurate, inflammatory, and doesn’t belong in this campaign,” Rubio told The Miami Herald when asked about the ad.

“The truth is that neither of these two men is anti-immigrant,” Rubio said. “Both are pro-legal immigration and both have positive messages that play well in the Hispanic community.”

Rubio’s sharp rebuke comes a day after he subtly corrected Gingrich for comparing Romney to former Florida Gov. Charlie Crist, branded by conservatives as a turncoat who left the party before Rubio beat him in 2010.

The criticisms from someone of Rubio’s stature in the Republican Party comes as polls show a near-even race, albeit with Gingrich surging.

Rubio plans to stay neutral in the race. He’s a potential running mate whom both candidates would love to have on the ballot.

The truth is that neither Gingrich nor Romney has a strong, consistent overall record on border security and enforcement. But at least Romney’s been traveling in the right direction…while Gingrich once again echoes left-wing language and plays the race card to get ahead.

Nose plugs. Get out yer nose plugs.

***

Newt and his supporters have been deriding the notion of self-deportation as some sort of alien, offensive concept. Long-time readers of this blog and of my investigative work on immigration have been familiar with it for years. It’s attrition through enforcement, it’s humane, and it works.

***

Can you be more two-faced? Newt has been winning massive adoration and applause for claiming he’ll stand up for states like South Carolina and Alabama, which have been sued by the Obama DOJ over tough immigration laws. Then he joins the likes of the SEIU and slams the very “anti-immigrant” policies authored by Kris Kobach that the Obama DOJ wants to overturn.

Emetic of the day.

***

Update: Newt retreats. From GOP Hispanic leaders calling him out, via the Miami Herald:

While we may have differences of opinion with regard to some of Governor Romney’s policies on immigration, we nonetheless stand firmly behind him because we know he is the most qualified conservative candidate to defeat President Obama and to lift up all Americans, including Hispanics.

The Year in Obama Scandals — and Scandal Deniers
by Michelle Malkin
Creators Syndicate
Copyright 2011

With 2011 drawing to a close, it is time to account. As an early-and-often chronicler of Chicago-on-the-Potomac, I am amazed at the stubborn and clingy persistence of President Barack Obama’s snowblowers in the media. See no scandal, hear no scandal, speak no scandal.

Dartmouth College professor Brendan Nyhan asserted in May — while Operation Fast and Furious subpoenas were flying on Capitol Hill — that “one of the least remarked upon aspects of the Obama presidency has been the lack of scandals.” Conveniently, he defines scandal as a “widespread elite perception of wrongdoing.”

So as long as left-wing Ivy League scribes refuse to perceive something to be a scandal — never mind the actual suffering endured by the family of murdered Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry, whose death came at the hands of a Mexican cartel thug wielding a Fast and Furious gun walked across the southern border under Attorney General Eric Holder’s watch — there is no scandal!

Self-serving much?

Mother Jones’ Kevin Drum likewise proclaimed: “Obama’s presidency has so far been almost completely free of scandal.”

This after the year kicked off in January with the departure of lying eco-radical czar Carol Browner. In backroom negotiations, she infamously bullied auto execs to “put nothing in writing, ever.” The previous fall, the White House’s own oil spill panel had singled out Browner for misleading the public about the scientific evidence for the administration’s Draconian drilling moratorium and “contributing to the perception that the government’s findings were more exact than they actually were.”

The Interior Department inspector general and federal judges likewise blasted drilling ban book-cooking by Browner and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, who falsely rewrote the White House drilling ban report to doctor the Obama-appointed panel’s own overwhelming scientific objections to the job-killing edict.

In February, federal judge Martin Feldman in Louisiana excoriated the Obama Interior Department for defying his May 2010 order to lift its fraudulent ban on offshore oil and gas drilling in the Gulf. He called out the administration’s culture of contempt and “determined disregard” for the law.

This spring saw rising public anger over the preferential Obamacare waiver process (which I first reported on in September 2010). Some 2,000 lucky golden ticket winners were freed from the costly federal mandates — including a handful of fancy restaurants in Aloha Nancy Pelosi’s San Francisco district, the entire state of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s Nevada, and scores of local, state and national Big Labor organizations, from the Service Employees International Union and Teamsters on down. Meanwhile, as The Hill newspaper reported last month, other not-so-lucky Republican-led states seeking waivers, such as Indiana and Louisiana, were rejected.

But it wasn’t just Republicans objecting to the president’s arbitrary Obamacare fiats. In July, congressional Democrats turned on the monstrous federal health bureaucracy known as the Independent Payment Advisory Board. The constitutionally suspect panel — freed from normal public notice, public comment and public review rules — would have unprecedented authority over health care spending and an expanding jurisdiction of private health care payment rates.

Obama’s health and human services secretary, Kathleen Sebelius, faced separate legal questions over her overseer role in a hair-raising document-shredding case when she served as governor of Kansas. In October, a district judge in the Sunflower State suspended court proceedings in a high-profile criminal case against the abortion racketeers of Planned Parenthood. Bombshell court filings showed that Kansas health officials “shredded documents related to felony charges the abortion giant faces” and failed to disclose it for six years.

That same month, Bloomberg News columnist Jonathan Alter gushed: “There is zero evidence … of corruption. Where is it?”

Alter’s declaration of the “Obama Miracle” came just weeks after the politically driven half-billion-dollar Solyndra stimulus “investment” went bankrupt, prompting an FBI raid and ongoing criminal and congressional probes of the solar company funded by top White House bundler and visitor George Kaiser.

As Solyndra and an avalanche of other ongoing green subsidy scams erupted, so did the LightSquared debacle — a federal broadband boondoggle involving billionaire hedge fund managers and Obama donors Philip Falcone and George Soros. In September, two high-ranking witnesses — William Shelton, the four-star general who heads the Air Force Space Command, and National Coordination Office for Space-Based Positioning, Navigation and Timing Director Anthony Russo — exposed how the White House had pressured them to alter their congressional testimony and play down concerns about LightSquared’s interference threat to military communications.

The White House continues to block efforts to gain information about the Federal Communications Commission’s approval of a special waiver for the company, even as new government tests this month showed that the company’s “signals caused harmful interference to the majority of … general purpose GPS receivers.”

The Obama White House closed out the year with Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri demanding a probe of the smelly $443 million no-bid smallpox antiviral pill contract with Siga Technologies — controlled by big lefty donor Ron Perelman. Then there was the small matter of massive voter fraud in Indiana, where a Democratic official resigned amid allegations that “dozens, if not hundreds,” of signatures were faked to get Obama on the state primary ballot in 2008. And while Americans busied themselves with the holidays, White House and Democratic campaign officials were dumping more than $70,000 in contributions from another deep-pocketed contributor — scandal-plagued pal and former New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine, who oversaw the collapse of MF Global.

All this — and so much more — yet erstwhile “conservative” journalist Andrew Sullivan of Newsweek/The Daily Beast scoffed, “Where are all the scandals promised by Michelle Malkin?”

There’s none so blind as those who will not see.

Michelle Obama’s Unsavory School Lunch Flop
by Michelle Malkin
Creators Syndicate
Copyright 2011

The road to gastric hell is paved with first lady Michelle Obama’s Nanny State intentions. Don’t take my word for it. School kids in Los Angeles have blown the whistle on the east wing chef-in-chief’s healthy lunch diktats. Get your Pepto Bismol ready. The taste of government waste is indigestion-inducing.

According to a weekend report by the Los Angeles Times, the city’s “trailblazing introduction of healthful school lunches has been a flop.” In response to the public hectoring and financial inducement of Mrs. Obama’s federally subsidized anti-obesity campaign, the district dropped chicken nuggets, corn dogs and flavored milk from the menu for “beef jambalaya, vegetable curry, pad Thai, lentil and brown rice cutlets, and quinoa and black-eyed pea salads.”

Sounds delectable in theory. But in practice, the initiative has been what L.A. Unified’s food services director Dennis Barrett plainly concludes is a “disaster.” While the Obama administration has showered the nation’s second-largest school district with nutrition awards, thousands of students voted with their upset tummies and abandoned the program. A forbidden-food black market — stoked not just by students, but also by teachers — is now thriving. Moreover, “(p)rincipals report massive waste, with unopened milk cartons and uneaten entrees being thrown away.”

This despite a massive increase in spending on nutritional improvements — from $2 million to $20 million alone in the last five years on fresh produce.

This despite a nearly half-billion-dollar budget shortfall and 3,000 layoffs earlier this year.

Earlier this spring, L.A. school officials acknowledged that the sprawling district is left with a whopping 21,000 uneaten meals a day, in part because the federal school lunch program “sometimes requires more food to be served than a child wants to eat.” The leftovers will now be donated to nonprofit agencies. But after the recipients hear about students’ reports of moldy noodles, undercooked meat and hard rice, one wonders how much of the “free” food will go down the hatch — or down the drain. Ahhh, savor the flavor of one-size-fits-all mandates.

There’s nothing wrong with encouraging our children to eat healthier, of course. There’s nothing wrong with well-run, locally based and parent-driven efforts. But as I’ve noted before, the federal foodie cops care much less about students’ waistlines than they do about boosting government and public union payrolls.

In a little-noticed announcement several months ago, Obama health officials declared their intention to use school lunch applications to boost government health care rolls. Never mind the privacy concerns of parents.

Big Government programs “for the children” are never about the children. If they were, you wouldn’t see Chicago public school officials banning students from bringing home-packed meals made by their own parents. In April, The Chicago Tribune reported that “unless they have a medical excuse, they must eat the food served in the cafeteria.” The bottom line? Banning homemade lunches means a fatter payday for the school and its food provider.

Remember: The unwritten mantra driving Mrs. Obama’s federal school lunch meddling and expansion is: “Cede the children, feed the state.” And the biggest beneficiaries of her efforts over the past three years have been her husband’s deep-pocketed pals at the Service Employees International Union. There are 400,000 workers who prepare and serve lunch to American schoolchildren. SEIU represents tens of thousands of those workers and is trying to unionize many more at all costs.

In L.A., the district’s cafeteria fund is $20 million in the hole thanks to political finagling by SEIU Local 99. The union’s left-wing allies on the school board and in the mayor’s office pressured the district to adopt reckless fiscal policies awarding gold-plated health benefits to part-time cafeteria workers in the name of “social justice.” As one school board member who opposed the budget-busting entitlements said: “Everyone in this country deserves health benefits. But it was a very expensive proposal. And it wasn’t done at the bargaining table, which is where health benefits are usually negotiated. And no one had any idea where the money was going to come from.”

Early next year, Mrs. Obama will use the “success” of her child nutrition campaign to hawk a new tome and lobby for more money and power in concert with her husband’s re-election campaign. It’s a recipe for more half-baked progressivism served with a side order of bitter arugula.

The news just hit Twitter: Team Obama is giving up on SEIU legal counsel Craig Becker, who served on the National Labor Relations Board through recess appointment. Withdrawal tweet here. (He had been previously defeated in the Senate on a cloture vote by 52-33.)

You may recall that the radical union attorney was in hot water over conflict-of-interest charges last summer.

Flashback:

In the least surprising news of the week, Craig Becker — Big Labor’s go-to legal expert — has served on the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) for barely three months, and he’s already under investigation.

Becker lost a bipartisan Senate confirmation vote for the NLRB before Obama gave him a recess appointment. Becker is so pro-union he previously opined that “employers should have no right to be heard” in cases before the NLRB.

Aside from impartiality, the other concern about Becker was that the former associate general counsel for the radical Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and AFL-CIO lawyer would be embroiled with conflicts of interest regarding unions he’s now charged with overseeing.

Sure enough, on June 2, Becker joined in on an NLRB decision involving SEIU Local 1957 and denied St. Barnabas Hospital’s request to review a union election. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Ranking Member Darrell Issa, R-Calif., asked the Inspector General to examiner Becker’s conflict of interest in the matter. An investigation is underway.

I previously reported on Becker’s role in SEIU home invasion power grab schemes — background here and here.

Where will Andy Stern’s “go-to guy” end up next? Place your bets.

***

Meanwhile, keep your eye on the White House next steps on NLRB nominations. Labor Union Report anticipates more end-runs around the nomination process.

My column follows up on Monday’s blog coverage of the West Coast Port Shutdown by the Occupy Wall Street movement (the D12 primer is here if you missed it) — and exposes how the so-called Big Labor progressives and their propaganda tools are the nation’s biggest enemies of economic and technological progress. It’s no coincidence that businesses using cutting-edge technology and automation are now being targeted and demonized while a man who blames ATMs (which have been around for four decades) and automation for his skyrocketing unemployment rate is sitting in the White House.

Chaos is the progressive Luddites’ goal. Chaos is the reality — and enablers like left-wing Oakland Mayor Jean Quan are reaping what they sow:

In Seattle, police used “flash-bang” percussion grenades to break-up demonstrators and made arrests. Police Detective Jeff Kappel said protesters hurled flares, bags of paint and debris at officers and police horses, injuring one officer. Two others were arrested in Oakland for ignoring orders to unblock a gate where trucks were entering the port, reported interim Police Chief Howard Jordan.

Oakland Mayor Jean Quan is concerned about how the protesters will affect the people of the city this holiday season. “People have to think about the consequences,” she said. People have to think about who they are hurting. They are saying, ‘We want to get the attention of the ruling class.’ Well I think the ruling class is probably laughing, and people in this city will be crying this Christmas. It’s really got to stop”…

They’re not getting the message. Neither are the clueless elites at Time Magazine, who celebrated “The Protester” as their “person of the year.” But it looks like more on the left side of the aisle are getting tired of the mob. The liberal Los Angeles Times editorial board pans Occupy’s second act:

“The shipping industry didn’t get America into this economic mess, and there is little it could do to get us out. In times of rising joblessness, it’s common to blame foreign competition for the losses at home. But blaming ports or shippers for the changes wrought by an increasingly global economy is sort of like fingering automakers for urban traffic congestion. In its search for a new direction, Occupy Wall Street would probably do better to occupy the National Mall than San Pedro.”

So did the Portland Oregonian:

As the picketers meandered from one terminal to the next, they took a day’s pay away from almost 400 International Longshore and Warehouse Union workers who were told to avoid the protests and stay home on Monday. It’s doubtful that large exporters and ship-owning companies such as Goldman Sachs were affected in any way by Monday’s protest — but hundreds of Oregon families took a holiday hit to their paychecks.

The Occupy movement shut down the port on Monday apparently to make some kind of garbled statement about big financial companies that contributed to the global economic meltdown. What they demonstrated, instead, is that if you’re looking for the beating heart of Portland’s and Oregon’s economy, you’ll find it down on the docks.

In related news, GOP Rep. Darrell Issa is challenging the White House on whether it is allowing Occupy DC to camp illegally in McPherson Square for political purposes. In NYC, Occupy Wall Street chief flack and former public school teacher Justin Wedes was caught attempting to commit Americorps fraud and refuses to answer questions about the ripoff. And following up on my reporting last week about the Scholastic News Occupy whitewash, Susanne Hiller at Hot Air illuminates Scholastic’s hypocrisy problem.

A NYC eatery closes down as a result of the Occupy blockades.

And in case you missed it, here’s Neil Cavuto schooling an Occupy Portland tool.

***
Port Whine: Big Labor’s Occu-punks
by Michelle Malkin
Creators Syndicate
Copyright 2011

Scruffy progressive protesters locked themselves together across railroad tracks, blocked traffic and shouted profanities at police on Tuesday in a coordinated “West Coast Port Shutdown.” Truckers lost wages. Shippers lost business. This is what the Occupy Wall Street movement calls “victory.”

Aging Big Labor bosses toasted one another from the sidelines as they declared the “rebirth of the labor movement.” What’s really going on? It’s an old-school power grab by a decrepit union wrapped in self-deluded social media do-goodism.

Peace-loving agitators wielding guitars and iPhones may earnestly believe they stood up to corruption and stood up for workers this week. A socialist website promoted the port shutdown as an expression of “solidarity” for the workers’ “struggle.” One Oakland, Calif., agitator decried “exploitation by capitalism” as the shiftless busily divided their work blockages into what they called — chortle — “shifts.”

In reality, it’s the young Occupiers who are being exploited as human shields for the economy-strangling agenda of the violence-prone International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU). These ignorant punks are putting the “front” in “waterfront.”

Few remember now that the left’s three-month-long “Day of Rage” festivities kicked off in September at the Port of Longview, Wash. — a far cry from Goldman Sachs and the rest of New York’s financial district. Unionized longshoremen stormed the port there and took a half-dozen guards hostage. They damaged railroad cars, dumped grain, smashed windows, cut rail brake lines and blocked a train for hours while the ILWU and AFL-CIO cheered them on.

The violence followed a similar outburst in July, when longshoremen tore down a chain link fence on EGT’s private property and blocked railroad tracks to prevent a grain delivery — a clear violation of the 1946 Hobbs Act, which makes it a crime to employ robbery or extortion to impede interstate commerce.

Despite breaking federal law, violating a judicial restraining order and committing systematically planned sabotage and trespassing, most of the union thugs got away with wrist slaps. The ILWU received a $250,000 fine to cover damages from the vandalism — a fine that will be paid with rank-and-file workers’ hard-earned dues money.

So, what’s their beef? No, it’s not about the “right” of unions to “organize.” It’s not about the welfare of the “99 percent.” It’s about one union losing its seven-decade-old grip on West Coast port operations. It’s about six-figure-salaried union suits at the ILWU, established by bloody radical Marxist Harry Bridges, throwing a lawless tantrum against economic efficiency and technological progress.

The ILWU is trying to break the will of EGT Development, a multinational agribusiness that recently built a $200 million grain terminal in Longview. It’s a state-of-the-art facility with unprecedented automation features that will speed unloading, increase shipping capacity and bring in tens of millions of dollars in lease and tax payments alone to the region.

EGT needs a nimble 21st-century workforce. The entitled overlords of the ILWU, who have ruled West Coast ports since the 1930s, are demanding a monopoly on the company’s master control system, control over the work hour structure, excessive mandatory breaks and extortionist man-hour “premiums” to bail out the union’s underfunded pension. “We’ve worked these elevators since 1934, and we’ve always been in that master console,” local ILWU President Dan Coffman told public radio.

EGT refused and instead brought in an outside contractor with a different union to fill about 50 jobs. But the ILWU water-carriers in the Occupy movement don’t care about those workers. Or the American farmers who have been hurt by the port saboteurs. Or the independent non-union truckers who were forced to forgo work in the name of worker empowerment. Trucker Hai Ngo of San Leandro, Calif., told the San Francisco Chronicle: “The Occupy people handed out flyers to us, but never asked what we thought before they planned this. I will lose about $350, and at holiday time that hurts. It’s just a waste of our time and money, and won’t accomplish anything.”

Unfortunately, Ngo and blue-collar workers like him are collateral damage in the ILWU’s ruthless battle for Big Labor survival. Coffman, who has stoked violence for months, vowed earlier this year that “we will fight to the end to secure what is rightfully our turf.”

And now the gasping longshoremen’s union has a whole new set of Occu-tools to do the dirty work for them.

Here we go again.

You remember where the “Day of Rage” 2011 festivities first broke out earlier this fall, don’t you?

If you were paying attention, you know the answer:

The port of Longview, Washington.

Unionized longshoremen stormed the port there and took a half-dozen guards hostage in early September. They damaged railroad cars and dumped grain, smashed windows, cut brake lines, and blocked a train for hours while the ILWU and AFL-CIO cheered them on. Despite violating a judicial restraining order and committing systematically planned sabotage and trespassing, most of the thugs got away with wrist slaps. The International Longshore and Warehouse Union received a $250,000 fine to cover damages from the vandalism. One of the mobsters arrested was this unhinged ILWU guy, who threatened to beat up KGW reporters:

After the fine was dealt, longshoremen’s union bosses threatened to “do what we have to do” and ILWU vowed that “It’s going to get worse before it gets better.” All because a grain importer, EGT, chose a different union for 50 construction jobs on a $200 million grain terminal.

If you were paying attention, you also remember that this initial outbreak of violence and property destruction came right after the Labor Day incitement of Teamsters president Jimmy Hoffa Jr., who agitated the crowd in Detroit for President Obama.

“President Obama, this is your army,” Hoffa bellowed. “We are ready to march. Let’s take these son of bitches out and give America back to an America where we belong.”

Obama stood by the violence-prone Teamsters and vice versa. It’s a brass-knuckle bromance sealed with boodle.

On November 2, the Occupiers led by the Oakland contingent went after ports again. My column on the planned riots reminded you of the Bay Area Left’s violent Oakland port shutdown in 2003 and the ignominious Oakland agitator and strike leader Boots Riley — and connected the dots between Riley, Oakland’s Van Jones, Occupy Oakland, and the violent ILWU thugs and their supporters who kicked off the Day of Rage warm-up show in Longview, Washington in September. The Oakland shutdown was:

…an expression of “solidarity with longshore workers in their struggle” against grain importer EGT. In Longview, Washington, wildcat union workers cut train brake lines, smashed windows, dumped grain, and took hostages earlier this fall to protest the company’s decision to employ not non-union workers, but workers from a competing shop. A federal judge fined the ILWU $250,000 after it defied a court restraining order; even Obama’s National Labor Relations Board was forced to issue a complaint against the union’s “violent and aggressive” actions.

Here’s a refresher on how that protest turned “peaceful” protest turned out:

Source: Twitpic

Source: Twitpic

Big Labor has sent mixed public signals over whether it supports today’s coordinated shutdown. See this San Francisco Chronicle article for union leaders playing Hamlet for political viability’s sake.

But the Worker’s World website is crystal-clear on who inspired it, who’s behind it, and who’s providing the muscle:

Battle lines have formed as the West Coast Occupy movements, from San Diego to Alaska, flex their collective muscle against the federally coordinated, brutal attacks targeting the pro-Occupy Wall Street movements across the country. They are organizing for blockades of West Coast ports on Dec. 12 in San Diego; Los Angeles/Long Beach; Port Hueneme, Calif. (central coast); Oakland; Portland, Ore.; Seattle; Tacoma, Wash.; and possibly more. Solidarity actions have been called by OWS in New York and inland locations, as well.

The pro-OWS movement is aligning itself with labor and the working class, as the West Coast Occupy movements organize to support the struggle of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union in Longview, Wash. Longshore workers there are waging a ferocious battle against transnational EGT, controlled by Bunge Ltd., of the grain cartel that controls most of the world’s trade in food products. EGT is trying to break the ILWU in an attempt to drive down wages and destroy the union. (Read “Longshore workers call for anti-racist unity in their ranks” at www.workers.org/2011/us/ilwu_0922)

The West Coast Occupy movements are also aligning with the struggle of port truckers, who are fighting for the right to organize for union representation. Twenty-six of them were fired in Los Angeles for wearing Teamster jackets to work. Occupy LA and Long Beach are targeting SSA, an anti-union port terminal operator, majority owned by Goldman Sachs, the notorious Wall Street investment bank. Teamster president, Jimmy Hoffa Jr., has publicly expressed support for the Occupy movement.

Michael Novick of Anti-Racist Action, one of the main organizers at Occupy LA working on the port shutdown action in Los Angeles, told WW that the strategy will be to shut down three main targets. Novick states, “When we put the resolution through at the General Assembly in support of the port shutdown, it was tied to building a general strike on May 1st of 2012 and building relations to the migrant rights movement.”

Finally, the West Coast Occupy movements are targeting the ports as major commercial centers, showing that they can strike at the institutions which help to aggregate the wealth of the 1 percent by disrupting Wall Street on the waterfront. It’s the history of the militant ILWU which enables this attack to have teeth. The ILWU rank and file have historically supported political struggles such as the anti-apartheid movement, the anti-war movement, in defense of Palestine in the face of attacks on Gaza, in support of the Wisconsin struggle against union busting, etc.

The 1 percent, under the banner of the Port of Oakland, launched the first volley of their assault on Dec. 4, with full-page ads in the San Francisco Chronicle and Oakland Tribune against the planned Occupy port blockade. They know all too well how powerful this movement has become, evidenced by the historic general strike call and blockade of the Port of Oakland on Nov. 2, when the Occupy movement, with the support of the ILWU rank and file and port truckers, shut down the entire port.

Who bears the costs? Small business owners, independent truck drivers, and taxpayers trying to make ends meet, of course:

The mobilization of over 60,000 people that shut down the Port of Oakland on Nov. 2 is being used by organizers as the model for the West Coast efforts this Monday.

However, some independent truckers at the Port of Oakland told the Huffington Post they were dismayed by the plan.

“It’s going to have a snowball negative effect. I depend on the port to feed my family. Why should I have to be put in a predicament because these people lack the skills to get a job?” said Vladimir Torres, an independent trucker who is based out of Long Beach, CA, and comes to the port of Oakland on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Torres is an owner-operator who said he would be dually affected because he works at two West Coast ports.

Josh Thomas, a spokesman for the Port of Portland, told the Columbian that 88% of the exporters who call the port home are small and medium-size businesses. “We see this as hurting working people,” Thomas said of the Occupy movement’s port initiative.

“We consider it no laughing matter when there’s a large group of people threatening to either block or enter the terminal,” Thomas said, “and we’d have to work closely with local law enforcement agencies and our own marine security officers and potentially (the U.S) Coast Guard, if it came to that.”

Way to go, Occupiers:

The Alameda County Building and Construction Trades Council’s secretary-treasurer, Andreas Cluver, said many of his union’s workers were recently hired at port building projects after long stretches on unemployment. Given that, a port shutdown aimed at punishing the 1 percent “makes no sense,” he said.

…Nearby, changing a tire on his rig before he also left with a load of paper, Hai Ngo 0f San Leandro said he resented the loss of income.

“The Occupy people handed out flyers to us, but never asked what we thought before they planned this,” Ngo said. “I will lose about $350, and at holiday time that hurts. It’s just a waste of our time and money, and won’t accomplish anything.”

The “battle” over power at the ports has been building for months. And the progressives are only going to escalate from here. From the socialists’ website:

EGT is planning to bring a huge grain ship to the Port of Longview, sometime in December or early January, to unload the grain piled up there with the use of scab labor. That isn’t going to happen without a major fight. Plans are in the works for phase two of this struggle. Caravans will be heading up to Longview to support the ILWU’s fight to keep their jobs and maintain their union…The battle is on!

Like they said: “It’s going to get worse before it gets better”…

…and it’s all being brought to you with explicit support from teachers’ unions, Democrats, and the White House.

Remember in November.

***

9:40am Eastern…The Oakland agitators are up bright and early. ABC News 7 in the Bay Area reports that trucks have already been stopped as hundreds descend.

Occupiers in Portland and Vancouver are already congregating. Occupy Los Angeles is tweet-whining about police brutality already, setting up for a telegraphed “extension” of the port shutdown. Anti-police/anti-captialist agitator Boots Riley is spearheading the Oakland shutdown.

Livestream of mob at Port of Los Angeles.

Flash mob at the NYC World Financial Center, where shutdown sympathizers are protesting Goldman Sachs.

A few sign-holders at Port of San Diego.

More livestreaming here.

Don’t buy the ILWU double-talk.

Update 10:41pm Eastern #OccupySeattle and #OccupyOakland shut down their ports. Disruptions in LA, San Diego, Houston, and elsewhere, according to Occupy flacks.

Occupiers vow to do it again tomorrow.

ILWU Local 21 official Dan Coffman calls in to praise the Occupiers in Oakland and reportedly declares “rebirth of the labor movement.”

Oakland thugs say they’ll try and block 3am shift.

In Portland, late word is that occupiers have helped shut down Schnitzer Steel, which a KXL news radio producer, Jim Ferretti, points out supplied food to the occupiers.

In Bellingham WA, the Occu-morons chained themselves together with bike locks and blocked trains. Arrests and photos here.

I leave you with this What The Hell image of the night. Click if you dare.

People make honest mistakes. When right-leaning people make them, Soros-funded Media Matters turns it into Apocalypse Now and an opportunity to discredit all of conservatism.

But when liberal journos err, it’s like the proverbial trees falling in the forest. Does anybody hear the muffled sound?

Last night while I was on Twitter, a few left-leaning reporters fell for a hoax SEIU press release announcing the withdrawal of the union’s endorsement of Barack Obama. The timing alone — midnight-ish — should have raised eyebrows. But Marc Ambinder of the The Atlantic (who called it a “symbolic shot across the bow”) and Kenneth Vogel of Politico (who has erased his tweets about it) fell for the prank before being cautioned by Ben Smith of Politico, who quickly debunked the bogus statement. Jim Rutenberg of the New York Times also was targeted.

I asked those involved last night who they thought was responsible. My tweets were like trees in their forest. No replies.

Roll Call reports on the story this morning without mentioning who got punked:

A prankster sent reporters a fake press release Tuesday night claiming that members of the powerful Service Employees International Union had voted to take back the group’s endorsement of President Barack Obama.

The release hit inboxes just before midnight bearing the name of SEIU spokesman Mark McCullough. It included a fake quote from SEIU President Mary Kay Henry that claimed Obama hadn’t delivered enough change.

“Someone is playing a prank and using my email address,” the real McCullough told Talking Points Memo early this morning. He later issued a statement affirming the union’s support for the president.

Talking Points Memo also makes no mention of those reeled in. Lib media membership has its privileges.

SEIU’s real statement re-endorsing Dear Leader in response to the kerfuffle is here:

So just to be clear:

We stand by our November 16, 2011 endorsement of President Obama as part of a broader ’99 percent’ strategy to create good jobs now, end devastating cuts to Medicare and Medicaid and require everyone to pay their fair share.

Any reports to the contrary are simply false.

As those who have followed my coverage of SEIU and Obama for the past several years, it is inconceivable that one would disown the other. Ever. They’re stuck like glue.

But like I said: People make honest mistakes. In the end, the lightning-quick, self-correcting mechanism on Twitter worked as it should. This is the beauty of crowd-sourcing.

My question for journos on the lib side of the aisle, though: Why does it only redound to the benefit of lefties?

Something to dwell on the next time they’re tempted to hound and mock conservative bloggers, Breitbart, Fox, etc., as not “real” journalists.

So, the Office of Congressional Ethics joined in the Holiday Document Dump Spirit (ho, ho, ho!) on Friday and unloaded a two-year-old report on Jesse Jackson, Jr.’s cameo role in the Blago Senate seat trading scam.

The announcement is on the OCE site here, but you can read the 300-page report right here in case you missed it:

Review No 09-9812 Referral to Committee

The upshot: The toothless OCE found “probable cause” and “substantial reason to believe” that not only did Jackson conspire to trade campaign cash for the Senate appointment, but that Jackson also broke the law by using taxpayer-subsidized office resources to promote a “public campaign” for Barack Obama’s old seat. Straight from the report:

There is probable cause to believe that Representative Jackson either (1) directed a third-party, most likely Mr. Raghuveer Nayak, to offer to raise money for Governor Blagojevich in exchange for appointing Representative Jackson to the Senate seat, or (2) had knowledge that Nayak would likely make such an offer once Representative Jackson authorized him to advocate on his behalf with Governor Blagojevich. Because former Governor Blagojevich, Nayak and Mr. Rajinder Bedi have declined to cooperate with the OCE investigation, and because the OCE cannot compel their cooperation, the OCE is unable to determine whether there is a substantial reason to believe these allegations.

…There is substantial reason to believe that Representative Jackson violated federal law and rules promulgated by the Committee on House Administration concerning the proper use of the Member’s Representational Allowance. Specifically, the OCE learned from Representative Jackson and his staff that staff resources both in the Representative’s Washington, DC and Chicago, Illinois, offices were used to mount a “public campaign” to secure the Representative’s appointment to the Senate.

None of this is new news — most of the details emerged in the Chicago press and at trial — though the moldy oldy report includes a fresh, 17-page CYA letter from Jackson and his attorneys denying everything and invoking the see no corruption, hear no corruption defense.

The delayed disclosure of the 2009 OCE comes just as Blago is scheduled to be sentenced early this week following his June conviction in the pay-for-play corruption case.

And while OCE plays docu-dump reindeer games, the House Ethics Committee has decided to play more Kick the Can. Sporting its own holiday scandal muffler, the panel announced…it would have nothing to announce. It reneged on a do-something Friday deadline in Jackson’s ethics case and said it would continue to investigate:

Pursuant to House Rule XI, Clause 3(a)(8)(A) and Committee Rules 17A(b)(1)(A) and 17A(c)(1), the Chairman and Ranking Member of the Committee jointly decided on October 18, 2011 to extend the Committee’s review of the matter until December 2, 2011. In order to gather additional information necessary to complete its review, the Committee will continue to review the matter pursuant to Committee Rule 18(a). The Committee notes that the mere fact of conducting further review of a referral, and any mandatory disclosure of such further review, does not itself indicate that any violation has occurred, or reflect any judgment on behalf of the Committee.

As The Hill reports, Jackson faces a challenge from his left flank and has asked reverse Midas Touch pal Barack Obama for help. Careful what you wish for, crony:

While the committee has not set a new deadline for its decision, the delay threatens to push the committee’s findings into later this year — during what could be a tough primary battle for Jackson. The primary election is March 20.

Former Rep. Debbie Halvorson (D-Ill.) announced in early October that she would challenge Jackson for a new Chicago-based congressional district. That district is primarily composed of Jackson’s current constituents, but includes substantial areas of the Chicago suburbs more familiar with Halvorson.

Jackson’s concern over the district is significant enough that he reportedly asked President Obama for help in the 2012 race. Jackson headed then-Sen. Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign in Illinois.

And while the Ethics Committee emphasized that “conducting further review of a referral … does not itself indicate that any violation has occurred,” having the threat of Ethics Committee punishment looming over Jackson’s primary fight is disconcerting.

Halvorson has indicated she will make it a campaign issue.

As commenter Flyoverman quipped here almost a year ago: “The only ethics committee with any clout is an informed electorate.”

Or as I always like to put it: The ballot box is the ultimate sanitizer.

***

Previous/related:

Capitol Hill’s other dirty laundry

Summer of corruption: Blago verdict watch, Day 14; Update: Count 24 – lying to feds – GUILTY; deadlocked on all remaining counts against Blago and bro; mistrial declared; lone juror holdout

Summer of corruption: Blago verdict watch & Jesse Jackson, Jr. watch

The long, hot Summer of Corruption

Blago appointed Obama’s AG to probe corruption; probe found no corruption; Holder forgets the whole thing

So, yeah. All that White House demagoguery about prescription drug shortages I wrote about last week was simply smoke and mirrors to cover up rotten crony deals for his Big Pharma/Big Labor friends. I shed more light below on the chumminess between former SEIU thug-in-chief Andy Stern, fat cat Dem donor Ronald Perelman, and Obama health care bureaucrat Nicole Lurie.

Related non-shocker: SEIU announced its endorsement of Obama 2012. Pay to play.

Corrupt birds of a feather…

***

Obama’s Half-Billion-Dollar Crony Drug Deal
by Michelle Malkin
Creators Syndicate
Copyright 2011

What do you get when you mix Democratic fat-cat donations, Big Labor favors, pharmaceutical lobbying and Beltway business as usual? Answer: another toxic half-billion-dollar Barack Obama-approved crony deal. Move over, Solyndra. Here comes Siga-Gate.

This latest Chicago-style payoff on your dime involves a dubious smallpox drug backed by a liberal billionaire investor, along with a former union boss who was one of the White House’s most frequent visitors. They’re the “1 percent” with 100 percent immunity from the selectively outraged Occupier mobs that purport to oppose partisan government bailouts and handouts to privileged corporations.

Ronald Perelman is the New York City-based leveraged buyout wheeler-dealer who controls Siga Technologies. He has donated nearly $130,000 mostly to Democrats over the past two election cycles alone (history here), and he forked over $50,000 to pay for the president’s lavish inaugural parties. A Siga affiliate (MacAndrews and Forbes) pitched in nearly half a million more in contributions — 65 percent of which went to Democrats — and the firms have spent millions on lobbying.

Perelman’s pharma company makes an experimental antiviral pill used by smallpox patients who received diagnoses too late to be treated with the existing smallpox vaccine. Smallpox experts cast doubt on the need for the drug given ample vaccine stockpiles, the remoteness of a mass attack and questions about its efficacy. But over the objections of federal contract negotiators, competitors and scientists, the Obama administration approved a lucrative $433 million no-bid deal for Siga in May. No other manufacturers were able to compete for the “sole source” procurement, according to the Los Angeles Times.

The special arrangement was made after a competitor objected to the administration’s violating small-business rules during a first call for bids. That’s right: It’s yet another rigged giveaway from a Hope-and-Change champion who vowed on the 2008 campaign trail to “end the abuse of no-bid contracts once and for all.”

Intensifying the culture-of-corruption stench: the critical role of Andy Stern. He’s the profligate, corruption-coddling former head of the powerful Service Employees International Union — the 2.2 million-member public-employee union powerhouse that he left in April 2010 with a mountain of debt and eroding rank-and-file pensions (and looming FBI investigation).

After pouring some $60 million of workers’ dues into Democratic coffers, Stern was rewarded by Obama with a cozy spot on the White House deficit panel and dozens of visits to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue — including at least seven with the president, one with Vice President Joe Biden, and meetings with Obama Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, Biden Chief of Staff Ron Klain, OMB Director Peter Orszag, health czar aide Jennifer Cannistra and Valerie Jarrett’s former high-powered aide and Chicago fundraiser Tina Tchen.

In a classic access-buying maneuver, Siga placed Stern on its board of directors in June 2010. Four months later, Siga nabbed an estimated $3 billion contract. By January of this year, Siga’s stock had skyrocketed. The House GOP has been investigating the deal for months, which comes amid separate allegations of insider trading and political profiteering by investigative journalist Peter Schweizer.

Stern and Perelman have been scratching each other’s backs for years. In the fall of 2006, the SEIU backed off organizing protests against AlliedBarton, a security guard firm in Philadelphia owned by a Perelman interest — and then remained quiet when the firm was bought out by a longtime SEIU nemesis, the Blackstone Group.

According to the L.A. Times, which exposed the scandal over the weekend, Obama’s top biodefense bureaucrat Nicole Lurie railroaded a key dissenter at the Department of Health and Human Services who ridiculed Siga’s inflated projected profit margins. Lurie soothingly reassured a whiny Siga executive that the “most senior procurement official” would take over and mollified him in a letter: “I trust this will be satisfactory to you.”

Lurie falsely told the newspaper that she had never made contact with the official regarding the contract and deemed any such contact improper. When caught with documentation, her department spun the communication with Siga as a “national security” matter. Lurie, it should be noted, is a former Clintonite and Howard Dean health care consultant who was most recently in the headlines for pushing anthrax vaccine testing for children. According to the Labor Union Report, there have been market murmurs of a merger between Siga and the anthrax vaccine manufacturer, PharmAthene. Hard to trust Lurie’s public health moral authority with the taint of pay-for-play wafting over the Siga deal.

As always, venture socialism backed by Big Labor muscle and White House wealth redistribution is hazardous to taxpayers’ health.

Voters in the Buckeye State rejected Obamacare and its individual mandate overwhelmingly — all 88 counties approved a constitutional amendment “to preserve the freedom of Ohioans to choose their health care and health care coverage.”

Unfortunately, voters also said no to Issue 2 – the budget and union reform initiative. Ohio blogger Jason Hart, who vigilantly chronicled Big Labor’s spending, lies, and thuggery, has a must-read post-mortem here. Ohio bloggers at Third Base Politics also fought the good fight and have lots of post-election analysis.

Too bad voters didn’t listen to this wise advise from Kevin O’Brien at the Cleveland Plain Dealer. They’ll be discovering the “hidden costs” soon enough:

A “no” vote preserves the old, familiar game of hostage-taking. No school levy? Fine, no sports and no buses — and that’s the taxpayers’ supposed advocate, the school board, talking! If that doesn’t break the public’s resistance, a teacher strike will.

Want to lay off a firefighter? Fine, here’s a union grievance and a bill for thousands of dollars, payable by the taxpayers. You may win, but it will cost you a bundle. And you may not win. Or you may win for now, only to have an arbitrator decide you shouldn’t win later. Then you get a bill for the reinstated employee’s back pay, too.

Advice to voters: See the hidden price tag in a “no” vote on Issue 2, and have the sense to vote “yes.”

In this election — as in all the many contentious elections down the road, should Issue 2 fail — when the answer to the unions is “no,” the reason won’t be because taxpayers hate public employees, or envy them, or because they believe public employees are overpaid.

The reason will be because those taxpayers have studied the financial status of their very own households and have decided, on that basis alone, that they are unable to commit more money to government.

Issue 2 opponents have worked hard to make this election about emotion. They have also ignored the inconvenient certainty that the financial situations of localities across Ohio will necessitate layoffs, whether or not Issue 2 passes. They are quite prepared, though of course they will not say so, to resort to the time-honored union practice of “eating their young” when layoff time comes, so as to protect union leaders and other senior employees. That’s why any talk of merit is anathema to them.

If they win Tuesday, it will be because a majority of Ohioans do not understand the seriousness of an impending fiscal crisis at all levels of government.

Eventually, though, it will become clear that neither the money nor the public will exist to sustain the system that SB 5 and Issue 2 aim to change.

The union-friendly imbalance of power — the structural defect in the system that SB 5 begins to address — has been winked at for almost 30 years, because enough money was sloshing around that system to satisfy everyone.

Although not everyone is willing to admit it, that is no longer the case.

Elsewhere, immigration enforcement proponent Russell Pearce lost an unprecedented recall election in Arizona. Open-borders lobbyists are claiming Pearce’s scalp over his staunch opposition of illegal immigration, but it appears that local issues and the taint of corruption scandals may have played as significant a role in the race.

Elsewhere, Mississippi voters rejected a pro-life personhood amendment. LifeNews reports:

Mississippi voters on Tuesday made the Magnolia State the second to reject a personhood amendment that would have put the state on record as defining human life beginning at conception.

The amendment was controversial as it pitted some pro-life advocates supporting it against others who recognized the amendment would not ban abortions and would perhaps give a pro-abortion dominated Supreme Court or lower courts a chance to reaffirm the Roe v. Wade decision that allowed virtually unlimited abortions in 1973.

With 1559 of 1876 precincts counted, the amendment failed by a 58 to 42 percentage point margin.

Mississippi follows Colorado, which also rejected the amendment twice in both 2010 and 2008. The 2010 amendment lost by a 70-30 percentage point margin as Amendment 62 failed to gain a majority in any Colorado county. Colorado voters defeated Amendment 48 in 2008 by a 73-27 percentage margin with 1,605,978 voters rejecting it compared to 585,561 who were supportive. The 2010 Colorado personhood amendment received the support of more than 100,000 fewer voters than in 2008.

The amendment would define unborn children as persons under the law starting at the point of conception and would, if upheld, sponsors claim it would essentially prohibit abortions in the state. However, top pro-life attorneys and organizations said they didn’t expect the amendment to be upheld in court and they say, even if it does survive a legal challenge, the amendment likely won’t ban any abortions.

On the plus side, Mississippi did approve a voter ID measure requiring voters to show government-issued identification at the polls.

More mixed-bag results:

Republican Phil Bryant won the Mississippi governorship by a comfortable margin, while Kentucky Governor Steve Beshear, a Democrat, prevailed easily too, winning a second term.

…The results in Arizona and Ohio gave Democrats and their allies reasons to cheer. But Republicans also won some important victories. The party easily held its majority in the Virginia House of Delegates and also appeared on the cusp of gaining effective control of the Virginia Senate. Democrats held a 22-18 edge in the Senate prior to the election, but, with several races very tight, Republicans were very close to pulling into a 20-20 tie, which would allow Republican Lieutenant Governor Bill Bolling to cast tie-breaking votes. Republicans also were aiming to win a majority in the Mississippi House, where Democrats previously had the edge.

Taken together, the results didn’t provide a clear message from voters about what sort of policies they want or whom they’re likely to prefer in 2012. That unclear message was, in part, a natural consequence of the limited election slate, in which any single result could be written off as the product of local circumstances, not grand judgments. Mississippi and Kentucky were the only states to hold gubernatorial elections, while only Mississippi, Virginia and New Jersey held regularly scheduled elections for the state legislature.

The muddled result, though, may be a real reflection of an electorate that lacks a clear preference for any single party right now. Nationally, President Obama’s approval rating has consistently stayed below 50 percent for months, yet he still leads all his Republican rivals in many polls. Voters broadly disapprove of both Republicans and Democrats in Congress. In that context, it may not be surprising that in state contests voters didn’t give Democrats the sorts of clear victories they won in 2006 and 2008 or Republicans the same triumphs they enjoyed in 2009 and 2010.

Occupy Oakland strike promoter Boots Riley, who penned “5 million ways to kill a CEO,” celebrates the attack on the World Trade Center

My new column spotlights the Occupiers’ “general strike” action scheduled for today — and climaxing tonight in an anticipated shutdown of the Port of Oakland (Calif.). Many of the same old agitators I’ve covered over the past decade are behind the latest manufactured chaos. I refresh your memories below of the Bay Area Left’s violent Oakland port shutdown in 2003 and the ignominious Oakland agitator and strike leader Boots Riley, and also connect the dots between Riley, Oakland’s Van Jones, Occupy Oakland, and the violent ILWU thugs and their supporters who kicked off the Day of Rage warm-up show in Longview, Washington in September.

Related reading: Here’s the scathing open letter from Oakland’s police union blasting the quivering Democrat mayor Jean Quan. She’s a UC Berkeley-bred moonbat now more interested in restoring her prog credentials than in cleaning up her dysfunctional city and standing up for law-abiding businesses and taxpayers. The organizers have distributed their chants for the day, including:

“Strike, Occupy, Shut it Down! Oakland is the People’s Town”
“Every Hour, Every Day! The occupation is here to stay!”
“Occupy Everything! Liberate Oakland”
“Politicians & Bankers, Liars & Thieves, We’re taking it back! We’re not saying please!”
“No more cops, we don’t need ‘em! All we want is total freedom”
“Shut Down OPD! Not the Public Library!”
“Let’s Go Oakland! Let’s Go!” [clap] [clap]

Perhaps they’ll throw some of Boots Riley’s violent rap lyrics into the mix, too.

The mob enablers in Oakland’s city government — and the voters who keep putting these stooges in office — have only themselves to blame for disgracing their basket-case city. Shame.

***

Occupy Oakland’s dangerous “strike” follies
by Michelle Malkin
Creators Syndicate
Copyright 2011

The next stage of the Aimless Occupation of America is upon us: On Wednesday, rabble-rousers in the San Francisco Bay Area will walk off jobs they don’t have and encourage everyone else around the country to abandon work to protest high unemployment.

The Occupiers are calling their organized day of inaction a “Mass Day of Action.” The Carpenters Local 713, the Service Employees International Union, the United Auto Workers, and the Industrial Workers of the World have all endorsed the “general strike.” Longshore workers and their union agitators are rooting for the shutdown of the Port of Oakland. Teachers’ unions will push students and educators to play hooky. Their posters urge: “No Work. No School. Occupy Everywhere.”

A city suffering from chronic poverty, out-of-control crime, a $76 million budget deficit, and a 15 percent unemployment rate (nearly 50 percent for Oakland’s youth) can hardly afford such social justice follies. But a pushover Democratic mayor and an overwhelmed police force have left what’s left of gainfully employed Oakland taxpayers at the mercy of professional freeloaders and anti-capitalism saboteurs.

Instead of unequivocally condemning efforts to paralyze downtown commerce, Oakland city officials have all expressed sympathy for the protesters. For a brief moment, the city council president fretted meekly about the city’s image after a violent clash between Camp Chaos inhabitants and law enforcement officers last week. Nevertheless, city leaders — or rather, city enablers — have informed public employees they can use vacation or other paid time to ditch their offices and raise their fists in solidarity with the Occupiers.

Instead of targeting local bank branch managers and private-sector entrepreneurs, the protesters should be camping out at government offices asking where all the tens of millions in federal Obama stimulus funding for Oakland went over the past two years – including $40 million from the Department of Health and Human Services, nearly $30 million from the Department of Housing and Urban Development, $26 million from the Department of Justice, $24 million from the Transportation Department, $15 million from the Department of Education, and $5.3 million from the Environmental Protection Agency.

One local analysis found last year that the Oakland Housing Authority squandered nearly $11 million in federal project renovation and clean-up stimulus grants to create a measly 10.7 jobs.

It would all be an amusing object lesson on the impotence of the welfare state, if not for the looming shadow of violence that hangs like stubborn Bay Area fog over the movement. In 2003, a like-minded mob of police-provoking anarchists, anti-war organizers, and progressive activists descended on the Port of Oakland to coordinate a “Day of Action.” They hurled concrete, wood, and iron bolts at cops while attempting to block military shipments to soldiers in wartime – then whined about police brutality.

Fast-forward eight years. This week’s “Day of Action” is spearheaded by the likes of Oakland rapper Boots Riley, a militant, self-declared “communist” who penned “5 million ways to kill a CEO” (“Toss a dollar in the river and when he jump in/If you find he can swim, put lead boots on him and do it again”) and “Lazy Muthaf**kas” (“You ain’t never learned to drive or tie your shoe/I got my ear to the street and my eye on you/… You’re a lazy ********** ! Lazy **********!). After the 9/11 attacks, I reported on Riley’s appalling album cover depicting him partying in front of a doctored image of the World Trade Center being blown up.

Like fellow Occupier, 9/11 conspiracy theorist, and Oakland community organizer Van Jones, Boots Riley has long stoked anti-police grievances. In “Pork and Beef,” he rapped: “If you got beef with c-o-p’s/Throw a Molotov at the p-i-g’s.”

Add to this toxic mix the thugs of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union. The planned march on Oakland’s port is being billed as an expression of “solidarity with longshore workers in their struggle” against grain importer EGT. In Longview, Washington, wildcat union workers cut train brake lines, smashed windows, dumped grain, and took hostages earlier this fall to protest the company’s decision to employ not non-union workers, but workers from a competing shop. A federal judge fined the ILWU $250,000 after it defied a court restraining order; even Obama’s National Labor Relations Board was forced to issue a complaint against the union’s “violent and aggressive” actions.

The unapologetic local union president vowed: “It’s going to get worse before it gets better.”

Mark those words.

***

UPDATE: Men’s Wearhouse = moonbats.

Thousands “strike”…

Thousands of Wall Street protesters marched in the streets of Oakland on Wednesday as they geared up with labor unions to picket banks, take over foreclosed homes and vacant buildings and disrupt operations at the nation’s fifth-busiest port.

Demonstrators as well as city and business leaders expressed optimism that the widely anticipated “general strike” would be a peaceful event for a city that became a rallying point last week after an Iraq War veteran was injured in clashes between protesters and police.

Embattled Oakland Mayor Jean Quan, who has been criticized for her handling of the protests, said in a statement that she supported the goals of the protest movement that began in New York City a month ago and spread to dozens of cities across the country.

…Nurse, teacher and other worker unions are taking part in the protests, and Oakland is letting city workers use vacation or other paid time to take part in the general strike. About 5 percent of city workers took the day off Wednesday, according to City Administrator Deanna Santana.

About 360 Oakland teachers didn’t show up for work, or roughly 18 percent of the district’s 2,000 teachers, said Oakland Unified School District spokesman Troy Flint. The district has been able to get substitute teachers for most classrooms, and where that wasn’t possible children were sent to other classrooms, he said.

The day’s events in Oakland began with a rally outside City Hall that by midmorning drew more than 1,000 people who were spilling into the streets and disrupting the downtown commute.

About three dozen adults with toddlers and school-age children formed a “children’s brigade, gathering at Oakland Public Library for a stroller march to the protest in downtown Oakland. Demonstrators handed out signs written as if in a children’s crayon that read “Generation 99% Occupying Our Future,” which the marchers attached to their baby backpacks and strollers.

The protests were expected to culminate with a march to the Port of Oakland, where organizers said the goal would be to stop work there for the 7 p.m. shift. Organizers say they want to halt “the flow of capital” at the port.

Stay tuned.

Sorry, readers. I’ve been out of it the last couple of days. Trying to get back in the swing of things. While the sound and fury of the GOP 2012 race drones on, it’s the state-level battles that deserve the Tea Party’s united front, attention, energy, and activism right now.

On the November 8 general election ballot: Issue 2. As the Labor Union Report summarizes the measure:

Issue 2 on Ohio’s November 8 ballot poses a simple question to voters: Should SB5, Ohio’s government reform effort to get control back from union bosses, be allowed to go into effect?

Lined up against Ohio GOP Gov. John Kasich and fiscally responsible supporters of Issue 2:

All the D.C. unions.

The whole, deep-pocketed, brass-knuckled lot of them. Vigilant Ohio blogger Jason Hart maps the Astroturf campaign here.

Third Base Politics has been debunking the outright lies of the union opposition.

Project Veritas exposes how one corrupt, pro-union researcher at Rutgers University offered to kill an anti SB5 study in a pay-for-play scandal.

This is the website for Building a Better Ohio, the Yes on Issue 2 campaign. Fiscal reform activists have been targeted and intimidated just like they were in Wisconsin. But they are standing tall:

Issue 2 is about reasonable reforms that give our local governments the flexibility to manage their budgets and avoid the tax hikes, cutbacks, and layoffs that we’ve seen across Ohio for years.

But despite such a reasonable position, there are many across Ohio that are nervous about publicly stating their support for Issue 2. And we can’t blame them. We Are Ohio’s campaign has outspent ours by a ratio of 5-2, and they’ve made sure to tell Ohioans that Issue 2 supporters are the enemy.

To them, if you’re for Issue 2, you hate firefighters.
To them, if you’re for Issue 2, you despise educators.
To them, if you’re for Issue 2, you can’t stand cops.

Of course, supporters of Issue 2 all know that’s not the case. In fact, it’s the opposite. Issue 2 supporters recognize the dire fiscal situation our state and our nation are in, and we know only reform can help save the system from collapsing upon itself. Because when it does, tighter budgets won’t be able to keep those same firefighters, teachers, and police from being laid off.

And we’ve already seen proof of its success in Wisconsin, where similar reforms were implemented.

The misinformation campaign from the other side is punctuated with a vitriol seen all too often in politics. Instead of a fair and balanced discussion of the facts, we instead observe the politics of personal destruction…

Sick of the Occupiers? Tired of President Rerun’s class-warfare demagoguery and Big Labor coddling?

GO HERE. Take action, lend your support, and raise your voices on behalf of the responsible adults in our country.

Freedomworks and Ohio Tea Party leaders team up on Get Out the Vote efforts here.

We can’t wait.

***

UGH: Romney: Fight The SB 5 Repeal! (That I Don’t Have A Position On….)

Ladies and gentlemen, I hope you are paying attention. Democrats in Washington are turning up the heat on the GOP as they push for quick passage of the “mini” $35 billion union jobs bailout. True to Alinsky form, Team Obama is spinning more emo-narratives centered on saving teachers from layoffs. At a Save the Teachers and Children! press conference yesterday, Senate Dems poured it on thick for their Big Labor pals. So did Joe Biden, who schmoozed it up with a class of fourth graders before turning on the fear-mongering spigot. Ignoring the billions in taxpayer dollars that he’s redistributed to the National Education Association’s pet causes over the last three years, the campaigner-in-chief took to the classroom to bemoan that “We have a tendency to say great things about how important education is in the abstract, but we don’t always put our money where our mouth is.”

As I spotlighted last week, President Obama’s marquee jobless teacher/poster boy for the union jobs bailout is a Boston educator who is NOT jobless. And all the little lies serve the larger Obama fraud of endless Keynesian intervention as a “cure” — which I’ve hit on again in my new column this week. Copy, clip, and save this companion chart (h/t Veronique de Rugy) for a ready reality check:

Update: Reid’s priorities laid bare. “It’s very clear that private sector jobs have been doing just fine, it’s the public sector jobs where we’ve lost huge numbers, and that’s what this legislation is all about,” Reid said on the Senate floor.”

Video:

Listen to what this responsible teacher has to say: When funds run out “you end up fiscally going off a cliff,” said Iowa Rep. Jeremy Taylor, R-Sioux City, vice chairman of the Iowa House Education Committee. “I don’t think it’s a wise idea for our state to be budgeting based on that one-time money, and I say that as both a legislator and a teacher.

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The EduJobs III Bailout
by Michelle Malkin
Creators Syndicate
Copyright 2011

One of my son’s Suzuki violin teachers had a wise twist on an old saying: “If at first you don’t succeed, try something else.” The corollary? “When you do succeed, don’t stop. Do it again.” The White House could use some remedial Suzuki lessons in economics. They’ve got everything completely bass-ackward.

In February 2009, President Obama signed the trillion-dollar American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Nearly $115 billion was earmarked for education. The stimulator-in-chief’s crack team of Ivy League economists predicted the law would hold the jobless rate under 8.5 percent.

The actual unemployment rate in October 2009 skyrocketed to a whopping 10.2 percent.

In August 2010, President Obama went back to the well. With deep-pocketed public employee unions by his side, he lobbied hard for the so-called “EduJobs” bill — $26 billion more to bail out bankrupt states, school districts and public hospitals. Nearly half went to teachers, whose unions raked in an estimated $50 million in rank-and-file dues as a result. Obama’s economists had promised the jobless rate would be down to 7.9 percent by then.

The actual unemployment rate in August 2010 was 9.6 percent.

Now, after the Senate rejected President Rerun’s latest half-trillion-dollar stimulus proposal, Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid are pushing for a “mini” $30 billion union jobs package for teachers (with $5 billion to mollify police and firefighters unions). In addition to funding fantastical green school construction jobs (earmarked for unionized-only contractors in an industry that is 85 percent nonunion), the EduJobs III bill will purportedly “save” 400,000 education jobs at an average cost of nearly $80,000 per job. Those will be paid for with a 0.5 percent surtax on millionaires. The job-savings estimates come from the same economic wunderkinds who predicted the jobless rate today would be 7.1 percent.

The actual unemployment rate reported this month is 9.1 percent. While the White House decries layoffs, the inconvenient truth is that the EduJobs III union payoff is a drop in the bucket compared to the millions laid off in the private sector. According to official government statistics, the share of the eligible population now holding a job has sunk to 58.1 percent, the lowest since July 1983. (Moreover, as education investigative reporter Mike Antonucci and others have noted, the White House teacher layoff math is more statistical chicanery.)

So, where did all the original EduJobs money go? One survey by the Center on Education Policy found that much of the cash went to bolster fringe benefits and administrative staff. The Fordham Institute’s education analyst Chris Tessone noted: “There is no reason to expect anything but business as usual from another round of subsidies. … More subsidies just protect the status quo at great expense to taxpayers.”

While strapped, reckless-spending school districts bemoan the edge of the federal “funding cliff,” another chunk of the EduJobs money went to states that didn’t even need it — and had kept their teacher payrolls full through responsible fiscal stewardship. As education journalist Chris Moody reported last summer, states including North Dakota, Tennessee, Arkansas and Alaska whose budgets are in the black received tens of millions in superfluous school subsidies. “Arkansas,” Moody found, “has a fully funded teaching staff for the coming year, but the state will still receive up to $91 million for teaching jobs.”

In Alaska, school districts had already made hiring decisions for teachers and apportioned the children in each class based upon those numbers. Nevertheless, to fulfill their teachers union-pandering mission, Obama showered the state with $24 million under the bill — money that a state education bureaucrat acknowledged “probably would not go to adding new teachers.”

Other states, such as Illinois and West Virginia, raked in hundreds of millions more in EduJobs dough even though they hadn’t yet burned through 2009 education stimulus money. In fact, a total of 20 states and the District of Columbia have spent less than 5 percent of their allotments, according to Education Week magazine.

An Obama education official helpfully suggested that the unneeded money be spent on “on-campus therapists” instead.

Many other school districts failed to heed warnings against binging on full-time hiring sprees with temporary funding. Education Week reported this spring that the New Hanover County (N.C.) school district used $4.8 million in short-term EduJobs money to fund 88 teaching positions, in addition to more than 100 classroom slots funded with 2009 stimulus tax dollars. Obama and the Democrats blame meanie Republicans for the fiscal emergencies these districts now face.

But who devoured the Beltway candy instead of eating their peas? Washington rewards bloated school pensions, Taj Mahal construction outlays and chronic local education budget shortfalls by pouring more money down their sinkholes.

Instead of incentivizing fixes, politicians — dependent on teachers union campaign contributions and human shield photo-ops — incentivize more failure.

The solution to this vicious cycle of profligacy? It’s elementary: Try something else.

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Related must-read from Neal McCluskey, who further deconstructs the White House teacher layoff math:

The administration’s report, after all, says that 300,000 elementary and secondary jobs were lost between 2008 and 2011, which seems like a big number. The report doesn’t say whether that was net or total, and it is probably a worst-case scenario, but still, that feels huge.

Huge, that is, until you see what it’s out of. In 2008 the total number of school and district employees was 6,318,395. That means a 300,000 loss was just a 4.7 percent trimming — far from humongous. To put that in students-per-employee perspective, using the latest total enrollment estimate such a cut would have taken us from a ratio of 7.9 students per employee in 2008 to about 8.2 to 1 today. In other words, it would have created a student-to-employee situation we haven’t seen since all the way back in…2003.

Oh.

But what if we lost another 280,000, which is the scenario the administration if trying to scare us with for the current school year? Add that to the 300,000 worst-case loss between 2008 and today, and it would be a total edu-jobs loss of 580,000. In percentage terms that would be a 9.2 percent drop since 2008, and in student-per-staffer perspective an uptick to 8.6 kids per employee, a proportion we last saw in just 1998.

That’s regretable, perhaps, but considering the gigantic staffing increases over the decades — a near doubling since 1969 — and stagnant achievement scores, we should probably be asking why we’ve let cuts be so small up to now. And lest we forget: The nation has an over $14 trillion-and-growing debt, which threatens all of us like a gigantic asteroid hurtling toward Earth. In light of that, using taxpayer dollars to keep public schooling a perpetual jobs factory not only flies in the face of educational logic, it is fiscal and economic lunacy.

The Obama Administration’s edu-jobs plan might work politically — it might be a great weapon for getting votes — but as public policy it is utterly irresponsible.

My column today tallies up some of the taxpayer costs imposed by the Kamp Alinsky Kids across the country so far. There have been other nasty consequences, too — like the cancellation of a food drive and festival in Boston due to Occupier overload. Go here to donate. Latest word from NYC is that protesters are gearing up for a sunrise showdown to fight clean-up evacuation by Zuccotti Park’s private owners. (Update: The rabble-rousers got into a scuffle with police, as they wanted. The rabble is still piling up. Several arrests. See NYPost.) In Austin, TX, four squatters were arrested after refusing to leave while city workers power-washed the filthy plaza that served as Occupation Central. We’ve only just begun to see the dark side of the movement. They’ve been spoiling for a fight long before Day One of the Month of Rage.

More updates: The occupiers have met the enemy and it is…SANITATION!

Update: Denver clears occupiers’ camp at the Capitol, arrests 23.

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Costs of the Occupiers
by Michelle Malkin
Creators Syndicate
Copyright 2011

The trash generated by the “Occupy Wall Street” protests keeps piling up. So do the bills. Liberal media outlets claim the anarchic, anti-capitalist movement is more popular than the Tea Party. But wait until Americans across the country get a full picture of the costs of the aimless occupiers.

In New York City, government officials estimate the month-long siege of Zuccotti Park has now imposed $3.2 million in overtime police costs on the public. On Thursday, as Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s office pressured left-wing activists to vacate the park for cleaning, Occupy Wall Street urged sympathizers to flood the city’s customer services lines: “Call 311 and tell Bloomberg not to evict us!”

In Philadelphia, Mayor Michael Nutter told the press that demonstrators outside city hall have incurred $164,000 in overtime public employee costs and $237,000 in regular time. “At the current rate, if Occupy Philly continues to the end of the month, the city would spend another nearly $690,000 on police overtime alone,” the local NBC affiliate reported. “Besides the extra police presence being dedicated to the Occupy Philly protests, other city departments have also incurred costs.”

In Seattle, police have so far billed $30,000 in overtime and the parks department racked up nearly $4,000 in additional costs related to the protests there. Occupiers have blocked traffic, assaulted an officer, and pitched illegal tents. Merchants in the area have been hurt as the riff-raff deter customers. One business owner in Westlake Park, where hundreds of protesters remain camped out, told Seattle TV station KIRO: “There’s definitely fewer people you can identify as people out, just walking through the area.”

Seattle’s pushover mayor, Democrat Mike McGinn, now faces even greater demands from the insatiable mob – which wants a “guaranteed parking
space near City Hall Plaza that allows for around-the-clock parking,” “24-hour access to the first floor of City Hall for restroom access, and a written statement from the mayor approving the protesters’ long-term occupancy of City Hall Plaza.”

In Boston, City Council President Steve Murphy anticipates a $2 million hit to taxpayers if the protests refuse to disband by the end of October. The local Fox affiliate notes the tab represents 8% of the yearly budget for police overtime. “While we’re all sympathetic with
our protesters down there,” Murphy said, “Wall Street isn’t picking up the tab on this thing. It’s the Boston taxpayers.”

When fiscally conservative Tea Party activists held protests over the past two years, they filed for all the required permits and paid for their own power. Occupy Boston, by contrast, neither sought nor obtained any proper permits at any level, according to the Boston Globe. Instead, city and park officials have been cowed into providing them gratis electricity and camp space lest there be “conflict.”

Many of these occupiers are primarily occupied as paid rent-a-mobsters for unions, left-wing think tanks, and the radical Working Families Party. While one collective hand soaks the taxpayers, the other hand is busy soliciting free stuff. Occupy Los Angeles activists took to
Skype on their laptops to solicit donations of iPhones and iPads.

Occupy Wall Street members on Twitter organized an ongoing “#needsoftheoccupiers” drive for everything from batteries and tarps to “gently used” coats and sweaters, wool socks, sleeping bags, and energy bars. Occupy Austin organizers publicized their wish list, including a free barbecue grill, port-o-potties, extension cords, a Bobcat forestry cutter for clearing brush, and network cameras for a livestream.

These are not principled advocates of fiscal responsibility. They are professional freeloaders.

Unlike Tea Party activists who focused like a laser beam on politicians in both parties responsible for redistributing wealth to Big Business cronies by force, the Occupy Wall Street movement is everywhere and nowhere. The entitled Kamp Alinsky Kids are poaching WiFi and trespassing on private property under the guise of “social justice,” but in plain service of themselves.

Their t-shirts and speeches glorify Marxist radicals Che Guevara, Emiliano Zapata, and Chairman Mao. They lionize convicted Death Row cop killer Troy Davis and WikiLeaks collaborator Bradley Manning. They condemn “Nazi Bankers,” Jews, Fox News, the American Legislative
Exchange Council, Wisconsin GOP Gov. Scott Walker, the Koch family, and the New York Police Department (“pigs!”). They promote the illegal alien DREAM Act and 9/11 Trutherism.

They spout bumper-sticker profanities and inanities: “F**k banks.” “Unf**k the world.” “Fuuuuu*k.” “Free education.” “Smash nationalism.”
“People not profits.”

They flash peace signs while celebrity supporter Roseanne Barr calls for beheading financial industry workers and fellow marchers call explicitly for “violent revolution” or for Obama to “Send Seal Team 6” to Wall Street.

Then they huff and puff (preferably in a creepy, uniform chant they call the “human microphone”) that we just haven’t taken the time to understand what they’re all about — as they hawk $20 “Eat the Rich” polo shirts and license their protest photos to Getty Images.

Viva la revolucion! Up with people! Stop the greed! (Cha-ching. Cha-ching.)

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Related (h/t Hot Air): All I can say is: Mother Fudge Biscuits, these people are ridiculous….