It was supposed to be this: On the 17th of September, we want to see 20,000 people to flood into lower Manhattan, set up beds, kitchens, peaceful barricades and occupy Wall Street for a few months. Instead, as they say about the best laid plans, it was something entirely different. It was, frankly, a stroll through a park—Zuccotti Park, in lower Manhattan, to be exact. A Non-Union | Read More »
Since the union appointees at the National Labor Relations Board have taken control, there has been a common complaint emerge from those NLRB watchers in the labor relations community that the Obama NLRB has taken a decidedly pro-union/anti-employer position. Unions and their apologists, however, dispute this. Well, if one questions whether or not the Obama NLRB is biased, one need only to look at the | Read More »
Let’s start with this screenshot of a new website launched by a yet-unidentified group that is calling itself “Californians Against Identity Theft.” Apparently, the sole purpose of this group is to scare Californians away from signing petitions to put ballot measures on California’s November 2011 and 2012 ballots. According to Capitol Alert, whoever is behind the scary site (and a radio ad) doesn’t appear to | 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 »
It was only a matter of time, you know. As unions in California have long placed their cronies into political office from San Francisco to San Diego, their control over the state legislature in Sacramento is nearing final completion. What little Republican resistance there is will likely be decimated in the coming years as the SEIU’s plan to mate liberals with RINOs comes to fruition. Now, | Read More »
That’s a rhetorical question. However, after seeing this L.A. Times passage from last month, one might come to the conclusion that 1) an armed robber usually only has one victim (whereas, the SEIU has millions), 2) an average armed robber does not have politicians in his back pocket, and 3) an armed robber is more intellectually honest—at least he tells you he’s robbing you, where | Read More »
Last year, prior to the defeat of California’s Proposition 19, it appeared as though unions had a budding new industry in which they could grow their memberships. First, the United Food & Commercial Workers jumped onto the cannabis bandwagon. Then, the Teamsters waded into the weed growing business when Jimmy Hoffa’s union unionized 40 pot growers in Oakland, California. Pretty soon, all of the unions (it | Read More »
By request, I took a look at this poll by PPP for Daily Kos and SEIU. Markos Moulitsas himself is hyping the poll as showing an enthusiasm gap, which of course was one big indicator of the electoral wipeout we saw in 2010. I think that he’s right, to a degree. However I read the figures as having two conclusions: First, the TEA party effect | 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 »
Last week, The Blaze posted two audio recordings of Stephen Lerner, an SEIU boss who was lecturing an audience on how to bring down the American economy. While Lerner had reportedly been fired from the SEIU last year, it turns out that that may not have been the case. During the audio, Lerner was introduced as being “of SEIU.” Moreover, former ACORN founder, Chief Organizer | Read More »
We know that the SEIU wants to convert millions of illegal aliens into U.S. citizens. We know the SEIU’s goal is to turn those illegal aliens-turned-U.S. citizens into a “progressive voters.” We know that the SEIU’s membership consists of illegal aliens from whom they collect union dues because they say so—freely. We know that the SEIU does not want enforcement of immigration laws, be it in | Read More »
It seems The SEIU is making rediculous threats for a change. They will get their way – NOW! Otherwise, they intend to get the banksters by crashing Wall Street. They intend to end capitalism as we now know it and redistribute the proceeds fairly. Silly me. I always thought you could do that by voting for Democrats. So just how does one get the banksters? | 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 »
Download Podcast | iTunes | Podcast Feed On today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, Brad Jackson and Ben Domenech are joined by Tim Carney to discuss unions, Wisconsin and the influence of special interests. Then Pejman Yousefzadeh discusses Chicago’s new Mayor, Rahm Emanuel. We’re brought to you as always by BigGovernment and Stephen Clouse and Associates. If you’d like to email us, you can do | Read More »
Yesterday, Massachusetts Democrat Representative Mike Capuano encouraged union members to go out in the streets and get a little bloody, as Guy Benson at TownHall reported earlier: A Democratic Congressman from Massachusetts is raising the stakes in the nation’s fight over the future of public employee unions, saying emails aren’t enough to show support and that it is time to “get a little bloody.” “I’m proud to be here with people | Read More »
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