From the diaries by Erick

Union bosses have the federal government all sewn up. They’ve got a lock on the White House, they’ve got a lock on the Senate, as well as the House of Representatives. So, what’s the problem?

Immediately following the election, the President-Elect appointed the AFL-CIO’s Ellen Moran to be White House Communications Director (she has since moved on to the census-controlling Commerce Department), SEIU’s Patrick Gaspard to be White House Director of Political Affairs, SEIU’s Anna Burger and AFL-CIO boss Richard Trumka to his “Economic Recovery Advisory Board,” and SEIU’s Dennis Rivera is currently running the White House’s war on health care. On the day of Barack Obama’s inauguration, the newly-annointed President appointed hard-core union radical Wilma Liebman to the Chairmanship of the National Labor Relations Board. Since then, the Administration has appointed dozens (or more) of hard core unionists to various posts in the government and given union bosses some key wins early on like the Ledbetter Fair Pay Act and union-only Project Labor Agreements. [For a broader list of union wishes fulfilled go here.]

So, why are union bosses getting antsy and feeling that they’re being shoved to the side?

Read More →

Misleading statements, (empty) threats of physical violence, harassing and disrespectful language, nap deprivation: the CIA is accused of employing these and other ethically troubling techniques in the interrogation of Khalid Sheikh “Bluto” Mohammad and other al Qaeda operatives in the War on Terror the Great Unpleasantness.

This being a cruel world, however, we must recognize that there is a time and place for everything. We can employ one of the liberal’s favorite tools, situational ethics, to define when the use of violence, lies, threats and torture-ish techniques are morally acceptable.

Judging from the stated and unstated attitudes of President Obama and Attorney General Holder, there are instances in which the use of such coercive tactics may be ignored or even condoned. The following situational guidelines for coercion and threats of violence are offered in the interest of clarity.

Read More →

I wrote the other day about Sen. Ben Cardin’s (D-MD) townhall in Maryland. Senator Cardin, you will recall, had his townhall co-sponsored with the SEIU and ACORN.

Additionally, his office sent an email to the AFL-CIO, which then forwarded it out, asking Obamacare supporters to attend the event in order to fill the seats and keep out pro-America supporters¹.

The whole thing was another example of leftist astroturf being masqueraded before a willing media as authentic grassroots, complete with a certificate of authenticity signed by George Soros.

Check out this article showing just how planned the astroturf is. The article came out on the 4th of August.

Organized labor plans two mass mobilizations in August — and beyond — on health care and on the Employee Free Choice Act, interviews at the AFL-CIO Executive Council show. . . . The health care mobilization already started, and was going even as the council met. Unions arranged for 50,000 phone calls to be funneled to Congress on the issue on July 28. And on July 27, the Alliance of Retired Americans, the AFL-CIO’s affiliate for union and other retirees, arranged two conference calls, of 100 people each, to talk health care campaign strategy, Alliance President Barbara Easterling added.

And the Employee Free Choice Act mobilization aims at the fact that Democrats now lack the 60 votes needed to shut off a planned GOP-led filibuster against the bill.

What? How can that be authentic?

The answer, my friends, is blowing in the wind — AFL-CIO workers wear t-shirts made in China, not Brooks Brothers suits. Therefore, they are authentic.

Let’s also note the part about the Employee Free Choice Act — the pressure for it, like healthcare, is union generated, union powered, and union fake. The only thing authentic about it is the passion the unions have for pushing the fake pressure campaigns before they go bankrupt under the weight of their own union contracts.

Stop right there with the Pelosi-parts jokes. I have to see my children with these eyes. I’m only asking because A) I’m getting word overload on “astroturf” and B) astroturf isn’t part of a nefarious plot to drive grass out of existence, so I’m not sure it really fits here.

Yesterday, I posted a story here at RedState featuring screenshots of advertisements from around the country offering to pay people to become Obamacare advocates. I encouraged people to visit craigslist and see what they could find. Judging by the volume of responses at Twitter there are hundreds and hundreds more such ads in major cities from coast to coast.

Many of the ads are from the same handful of organizations, which may lead you to wonder two things. First, where is all this money coming from? Second, how much of this money is coming from Big Labor and Democrats Owner and General Manager, George Soros? Well you wouldn’t be the only person wondering.

Take, for example, John at Verum Serum. John got on the trail of one the most prevalent ads to find out who was behind it. You will NEVER be able to guess where the money trail leads.

Read More →

According to the White House, the video shot in 2003 that you are about to watch gives a “very false impression.”

It sure is easy to get this “very false impression” when you take the President at his word.

Or when President Obama over-ruled his Chief of Staff to support MoveOn.org’s push for a public plan option in the House and Senate health reform bills, and when his campaign organization and the DNC ran television ads against his own Democratic Congressmen to push them into supporting his plan.

This is fascinating, really:

Mayors angry with White House no-show

America’s big-city mayors are steaming over what they view as “a very dangerous precedent” set by the Obama administration in its decision to shun the U.S. Conference of Mayors annual meeting in Providence, R.I., this week.

In its attempt to honor the picket line of a local firefighters union involved in a labor dispute with the city, the administration has inadvertently angered some of its staunchest supporters in urban America, who argue that by declining to send an official contingent to the three-day mayors’ conference, the administration is caving in to labor and snubbing local governments
at a time of economic strife.

“It was a horrible decision,” said Mayor Michael Pizzi, an independent from Miami Lakes, Fla. “No matter where Obama goes, no matter what city you go to in the United States, you’re going to have some union that’s having problems.”

Read More →

What, there aren’t any websites run by American workers and hosted in the USA that the AFL-CIO’s Building and Construction Trades Department could find to host its press releases? Apparently not as far as the union is concerned, anyway, because a press release to push a Washington conference in support of the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) is hosted on PR-USA.net, a misleadingly named site hosted and run in Varna, Bulgaria and registered by one Mr. Dobri Bojilov .

Another amusing aspect of this choice for a site host is the fact that the conference is discussing the issue of H2(b) visa reform. Of course, the H2(b) visa is the the work visa offered to foreign workers by the U.S. government. So, this union is using a foreign website to advocate against the importation of foreign workers. This union is using a foreign run site to advocate for American workers.

Why is the AFL-CIO using a foreign web service to host its press releases? Don’t they care about American workers?

I wonder if the AFL-CIO can spell hypocrisy?

As union members lose their jobs all across the country, the AFL-CIO executive council met at a luxury hotel in Miami Beach, Florida this week.

The union bigwigs met at the Fontainebleau where the cheapest room rings up at $400 dollars a night.

Were I a union member, I might take exception to such extravagance for union bosses. Especially in an economy like this.