'70s Radical Mark Dayton Gets Court Smackdown for his Big Labor Scheme

'70s Radical Mark Dayton Gets Court Smackdown for his Big Labor Scheme

Minnesota Judge Dale Lindman ruled that Gov. Mark Dayton's Executive Order (EO) calling for the unionization of child care providers is unconstitutional.  Judge Lindman, an appointee of Gov. Arne Carlson, said that Gov. Dayton's EO is "an unconstitutional usurpation of the Legislature's right to create or amend laws", which "is a violation of the Separation of Powers principle." The Examiner called it s "stinging defeat for Gov. Dayton, AFSCME and the SEIU."   Judge Lindman said that the BMS doesn't have statutory authority through Chapter 179 to get involved in this dispute, adding that they only have the authority to mediate in employer-employee disputes. HotAir.com weighs in on the news: Dayton attempted to bypass the state legislature in this effort by declaring through executive order that day-care centers that indirectly receive state aid through their clients are in effect public-sector workplaces — a definition not found in law or in legislative intent.  In fact, as Gary Gross points out, it arguably contravenes state law.  That way, Dayton could order an election that would allow his union allies to force their way into day-care workplaces, including many independent operations, and start extracting dues on a massive basis. I use the word extreme for a couple of reasons.  First, it fits; had Dayton succeeded in his imposition of public-worker status, the precedent established would have been so broad as to threaten the very notion of a private-sector workforce altogether.

Union Bosses Raid Pensions

Union Bosses Raid Pensions

Taxpayers are footing the bill and business is getting the blame for the pension crisis in California but the real culprit is the union bosses of the Golden State, the Investors Business Daily reports: Reports from a variety of media reveal California state employees are spiking their pensions to stratospheric levels, leaving nothing for their brother employees. Sorry, can't blame Wall Street for this one. In a laudable instance of the mainstream media doing its job, the Los Angeles Times, the Sacramento Bee, Bloomberg News and City Journal have all exposed "pension spiking" by California public employees. Basically, they manipulate rigid unionized pay and promotion systems to raise their pensions well above what they earned during their working years. The Los Angeles Times on Saturday pieced together tough-to-get data from Kern and Ventura counties and found a fiscal horror story: In Kern, 77% of public employees with pensions greater than $100,000 actually get more than they did during their working lives. In Ventura, the figure is 84%. Kern has a $761 million pension shortfall, in part due to the practice. Both the practice and the lack of transparency are signs of a rotten system. Bigger counties like San Diego and Los Angeles also permit pension spiking.

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!

AFSCME & SEIU Bosses Spend Big Against Romney

AFSCME & SEIU Bosses Spend Big Against Romney

The Hill is reporting that big union bosses dipped into their forced-union dues treasuries to try to damage Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney: Unions including The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) and Service Employees International Union (SEIU) are making ad buys to hit the Republican presidential contender. AFSCME, the country’s largest public sector union, spent $500,000 on Internet, television and radio ads to air in Ohio that target Romney before the state’s GOP presidential primary this coming Tuesday, according to Federal Election Commission (FEC) records. Last month, the union also spent $1 million on Internet and television ads opposing Romney in Florida before that state’s GOP presidential primary. Larry Scanlon, AFSCME's political director, told The Hill that while Romney has yet to officially sow up [sic] the nomination, the general election season has begun. "Our position is: We are in a general election now. We want voters to hear our message," Scanlon said. "We have endorsed Obama, and we're going to do what we can to get him reelected." Scanlon also said that unlike other GOP candidates, the ex-Massachusetts governor has concentrated on issues key to labor. “Romney has been talking about our issues, workers' issues, and he's on the wrong side of those issues. So that's why we're going after him,” Scanlon said.