Big Labor -- Obama's Shock Troops

Big Labor -- Obama's Shock Troops

Nolan Finley of the Detroit News argues that "Now we know how United Auto Workers President Bob King will repay Barack Obama for holding the union harmless from the Detroit automakers' bankruptcy: He'll provide the ground troops for the president's class war."  SEIU , Van Jones, and MoveOn.org are also involved in this program. Finley continues: The Daily Caller blog says it found evidence that King and the UAW are behind the "99 Percent Spring," which aims to train and deploy 100,000 Americans for "non-violent direct action" in the months leading up to November's presidential election. The Daily Caller says files on the group's website, which have since disappeared, indicate the UAW is providing the organizational support for protests designed to support the president's narrative that America is divided into two camps — the wealthy 1 percent and the struggling 99 percent. "99 Percent Spring" will replace the Democrat's previous grassroots charade, the tainted Occupy movement, with its filthy camps and allegations of violence and rapes that gave it no chance of resonating with mainstream voters. This new movement will perpetuate the myth that Obama bears no responsibility for the economic suffering that has marked his tenure. It will foist the blame instead on wealthy individuals and big corporations, and mask the failure of the president's wealth transfer schemes, oppressive regulations and job-killing tax plans. It's a perfect way for King to pay back Obama for tossing aside established bankruptcy law and moving the UAW to the top of the pecking order when Chrysler and General Motors filed for Chapter 11.

Big Labor -- Obama's Shock Troops

Big Labor -- Obama's Shock Troops

Nolan Finley of the Detroit News argues that "Now we know how United Auto Workers President Bob King will repay Barack Obama for holding the union harmless from the Detroit automakers' bankruptcy: He'll provide the ground troops for the president's class war."  SEIU , Van Jones, and MoveOn.org are also involved in this program. Finley continues: The Daily Caller blog says it found evidence that King and the UAW are behind the "99 Percent Spring," which aims to train and deploy 100,000 Americans for "non-violent direct action" in the months leading up to November's presidential election. The Daily Caller says files on the group's website, which have since disappeared, indicate the UAW is providing the organizational support for protests designed to support the president's narrative that America is divided into two camps — the wealthy 1 percent and the struggling 99 percent. "99 Percent Spring" will replace the Democrat's previous grassroots charade, the tainted Occupy movement, with its filthy camps and allegations of violence and rapes that gave it no chance of resonating with mainstream voters. This new movement will perpetuate the myth that Obama bears no responsibility for the economic suffering that has marked his tenure. It will foist the blame instead on wealthy individuals and big corporations, and mask the failure of the president's wealth transfer schemes, oppressive regulations and job-killing tax plans. It's a perfect way for King to pay back Obama for tossing aside established bankruptcy law and moving the UAW to the top of the pecking order when Chrysler and General Motors filed for Chapter 11.

Breitbart Exclusive: SEIU Aim to Destroy Free Market

Breitbart Exclusive: SEIU Aim to Destroy Free Market

Working with the Occupy Wall Street radicals, the SEIU union bosses have created an alliance designed to destroy capitalism. Breitbart.com has received exclusive tape of an Occupy Strategy Session at New York University, billed as a group talk on “The Abolition of Capitalism.” One of the headline speakers at this session was Stephen Lerner, former leader and International Board Member of the SEIU and frequent Obama White House visitor. Lerner argued in favor of people not paying their mortgages and “occupying” their homes; he spoke in favor of invading annual shareholders meetings to shut them down. But his big goal was to get workers to shut down their workplaces. That’s where the SEIU agenda and the Occupy agenda truly meet: once workers begin to occupy. Here are the relevant portions of the transcript: Let me just throw out a couple ideas here. One, I think a theme here that’s really important is Occupy Homes as a key part of the stew in multiple spheres. There’s eviction defense, there’s folks who are moving back into homes that they were evicted from that have been sitting empty, there’s community organizing, there’s a fight with Fannie and Freddie, but this notion that millions of people are losing their homes and we can physically help them save it, very important … This second question, this question of moving money, which has mainly been an individual act so far, you know, move your account out of a bank, getting institutions, schools, universities, school boards, to move money out of banks as a way to put them into either credit unions or things that do economic development, it captures both what is wrong with finance capital, but then it’s something everybody can do … In fact, it’s infused by the energy of somebody that just got thrown in jail for trying to keep their home … But here’s the real crux of the matter: How do we give workers the confidence? … How do we create a mood in the nation where we’re occupying our workplaces, where we’re shutting down our workplaces? … Where workers are sitting in, where workers are shutting down their places of work, and when the police come, when the injunctions come, we’re all there with them, so we can really deal with part of the reason that the economy’s so screwed up … which is a few people have got all the power. Think stew, think hope, death to the Stockholm Syndrome!

Union Bosses, Enemies of the 99%

Union Bosses, Enemies of the 99%

Gary Beckner argues that the union bosses and Big Labor are enemies of the 99%: Since the class-warfare message of the Occupy Wall Street protests started nearly two months ago, the two largest teachers unions, the National Education Association (NEA) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), have taken every chance possible to stand in solidarity with the group of mostly underemployed college students and left-leaning activists. With AFT President Randi Weingarten joining in protests and state affiliates taking part and organizing protests of their own, the teachers unions are quick to point out that “public education, teachers and unions have increasingly come under attack from the one percent,” as Leo Casey, spokesman for the AFT’s New York City local put it. The union support is pouring in state after state. For example, in the union stronghold of California, California NEA affiliate President Dean Vogel called on the rich to pay more taxes. “It’s time to put Main Street before Wall Street, and for corporations to pay their fair share of taxes,” he said. Meanwhile, the union rank and file are resorting to taking the fight into the classroom with lesson plans titled “Who are the 99 percent? Ways to teach about Occupy Wall Street.” As the protests continue and the union rhetoric becomes more radical, one can’t help but find the situation ironic. While the teachers unions claim they are being persecuted by the wealthiest Americans, clearly it is the unions and union bosses themselves that have benefited from a system that takes advantage of taxpayers at the expense of our students. An examination of the staggering amount of money accumulated by the teachers unions puts the situation into perspective. The AFT collected $211 million in dues in 2010, while the even larger NEA pulled in $397 million. Taking into consideration affiliated state groups, the unions collectively take in about $1 billion, more than half of which is taken by force in states with compulsory unionism. If you take into account their vast budgets and revenue streams forcibly collected from teachers, the NEA and AFT numbers align nicely with those of the corporations they so vehemently criticize. In terms of salaries, union executives rake in nearly 10 times the average household income. AFT President Weingarten collected nearly half a million dollars in 2010, a 15 percent increase from the previous year. Are teachers or anyone in the private sector experiencing those increases in times of financial hardship? Clearly, the teachers laid off in 2010 were not made aware of  Weingarten’s impressive haul. Then again, when nearly 600 staffers at the NEA and AFT are raking in more than six figures, the interests of the rank and file seem far off.