The n-dimensional geniuses over at SEIU (Michigan) have decided to link up with the Occupy Ringworm people in declaring November 17th to be Bridge Action Day – which should, of course, be more accurately characterized as Bridge Inaction Day. The idea is that all these public sector union folks will take an unofficial day off from their jobs – which are probably a lot more | Read More »
Background on this: the SEIU was forced to cough up a copy of its “Contract Campaign Manual” as part of a court case – and it’s an interesting little document. The whole thing reads, as F. Vincent Vernuccio notes in the Washington Times, as a step-by-step checklist on how to manipulate… just about everything, really… in the course of forcing favorable negotiation terms. Mostly because | Read More »
Ben Smith reports that “the Service Employees International Union plans to use its giant political operation to try to build a grass-roots movement of public protest and organization” – which is pretty much all that you have to read of that article, frankly. This is not a slam on Ben; Politico probably doesn’t look kindly on one-sentence articles, and writers need to eat. If your | Read More »
The good news is, of course, that they’re going broke: as Classical Values, Big Government, & DRScoundrels helpfully note, in 2009 SEIU was $85,000,000 in debt, with fully one-third of its assets tied up in real estate (its headquarters) and the rest not-really-offsetting the debt. It’s been a while since I read a balance sheet, but it’s not pretty: and it explains a couple of | Read More »
Please note, not every SEIU healthcare fund*. The specific one doing the abandoning is a New York fund for 1199 SEIU, which parent organization lobbied heavily for Obamacare… let us briefly walk this one through. SEIU needs more members if it wants to cover its underfunded obligations. So it went heavily for Obamacare. Obamacare includes mandates on expanding coverage for dependents to age 26. Rates | Read More »
It’s not the lying, really: President Barack Obama’s political director failed to disclose that he was slated to receive a nearly $40,000 payout from a large labor union while he was working in the White House. Patrick Gaspard, who served as the political director for the Service Employees International Union local 1199, received $37,071.46 in “carried over leave and vacation” from the union in 2009, | Read More »
…because they’re going to be written off: Larry Kissell (NC-08) Mike McMahon (NY-13) Michael Arcuri (NY-24) Zach Space (OH-18) At least, that’s my impression from this petulant whine from the SEIU about the way that they were forced to spend ten million dollars to lose the Lincoln/Halter race, and how they’re not going to support the Senator anyway, so there. She can just go down | Read More »
Nina Easton* got to meet the faux-populists of SEIU up close and personal: Last Sunday, on a peaceful, sun-crisp afternoon, our toddler finally napping upstairs, my front yard exploded with 500 screaming, placard-waving strangers on a mission to intimidate my neighbor, Greg Baer. Baer is deputy general counsel for corporate law at Bank of America (BAC, Fortune 500), a senior executive based in Washington, D.C. | Read More »
Who is Meghan Cofield? Well, she’s a Ohio worker who lost her job, and it’s all John Kasich’s fault! No, wait, it was all John McCain’s fault! Yeah. That was an ad from 2008 – same person, and even some of the same footage – when Barack Obama was pretending to be hating on NAFTA (needless to say, that promise came with an expiration date: | Read More »
I mean, I’d push him out for this: SEIU has seen its liabilities skyrocket during the past decade. The union’s liabilities totaled $7,625,832 in 2000. By 2009, they had increased almost by a factor of 16, to $120,893,259. Meanwhile, SEIU’s assets barely tripled, growing from $66,632,631 in 2000 to $187,664,763 in 2009. A significant portion of SEIU’s current assets are from IOUs from hard-up locals. | Read More »
Because surely you don’t think that getting Establishment Democratic support from the mainland comes free, do you? With corruption running rampant through the ranks of the Democrat party in Washington, Hawai’i Democrat candidate Ed Case looked the other way when he hired Washington political consultant Fred Yang of Hart Research to do his polling. Yang has previously worked for disgraced former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich. | Read More »
Come, I will conceal nothing from you: I am growing quickly disinclined to get dragged into primary political battles for the 2010 election. This is partially because I’m getting to a position where I know some of the folks involved in the campaigns (which is why I’m counting the days until the California primaries are over), and partially because it’s going to be a free-for-all | Read More »
Eight of them: Allentown union official Nick Balzano has been a political punching bag all week because he threatened to file a grievance against the city for allowing a Boy Scout to clear a walking path in a city park. Three days of taking body blows nationally from conservative pundits, a rebuke from the Lehigh Valley’s congressman and even a lashing from his own union | Read More »
Just to repeat some of the things alluded to in this article (with some additions): We know that Patrick Gaspard is the White House political affairs director. We know that Patrick Gaspard enjoys the trust of the White House to perform sensitive tasks. We know that Patrick Gaspard is in fact one of the most quietly powerful people in this administration. We know that Patrick | Read More »
Tim Bishop (D, NY-01) is having something called a “health care reform rally” on Thursday, at (of all things) SEIU’s Hicksville NY offices (1199 Duffy Ave, starts at 1 PM). This is otherwise known as “over twenty miles outside the borders of NY-01.” Bishop is of course one of the first Democrats holding down a Red district (NY-01 is a R+0) to discover that his | Read More »
Ah, the problems with message discipline. Specifically: the problems with having the current Speaker of the House write things like “Drowning out opposing views is simply un-American” without checking to see first whether her minions over at SEIU are advocating doing precisely that: Action: Opponents of reform are organizing counter-demonstrators to speak at this and several congressional town halls on the issue to defend the | Read More »
(Via RS Diarist rechief) Turns out that the Drudge rumor was right: Pelosi & Hoyer really did write an op-ed with the title ‘Un-American’ attacks can’t derail health care debate. And it’s precisely what I expected, too. Which is to say, an op-ed that can write this: Drowning out opposing views is simply un-American. …without even a hint of a sign of a suggestion that | Read More »
(Via Dana Loesch) They’re protesting the beating of Kenneth Gladney by SEIU agents Thursday night. Demand Justice! Denounce Violence! Saturday at SEIU Office DATE: Saturday, August 8, 2009 (tomorrow) TIME: Noon LOCATION: SEIU Headquarters, 5585 Pershing Ave., Suite 130, St. Louis, MO 63112 The St. Louis Tea Party will hold a press conference and peaceable protest at SEIU Headquarters 5585 Pershing Ave., Suite 130, St. Louis, | Read More »
It’s the usual trick of taking the first half of a sentence and presenting it as a complete statement. In this case, this turns “The bill doesn’t remove the secret-ballot option from the National Labor Relations Act but in practice makes it a dead letter” into “The bill doesn’t remove the secret-ballot option from the National Labor Relations Act;” Rep George Miller (D, CA-07) and | Read More »
[I probably should have fronted it to begin with. ML] Blagojevich to SEIU to Card Check, via the folks at the Workforce Fairness Institute: When you think about it, this makes perfect sense: after all, somebody that hates secret ballots as much as Big Labor does probably has a lively contempt for the rest of our democratic institutions, too. Note the lack of capitalization, there. | Read More »
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