Protestors Desecrate War Memorial in Wisconsin

This is a video you should see, even if it is a Saturday morning.

You will not be pleased.

The level of disrespect shown towards the very men and women who gave their lives to defend the protesters' right to speak is truly astonishing and shameful. One of the protesters even says she constructs memorials, so shouldn't she know about proper behavior and treatment of one?

   

Thanks to Dave in Texas over at Ace of Spades HQ.

It’s Time for a National Right-to-Work Law

The events in Wisconsin pitting teachers’ unions against taxpayers give us a golden opportunity for real freedom in the workplace by enacting a national right-to-work law.

Who needs another boss? If you work, you probably have enough of them already.

And why should you be forced to join a union if you don’t want to? Isn’t freedom all about choice? Shouldn’t you make that decision yourself? Couldn’t you use the extra money that is legally removed from your paycheck?

It’s a wonder that we don’t already have a law that prohibits the mandatory confiscation of a workers’ pay, particularly when it comes to politics. Many rank and file members are becoming increasing vocal in their opposition to having their union dues used to support a political candidate they don’t personally support.

At one time, American unions served a vital service to the workers they represented. We have the union movement to thank for the 40-hour workweek, among many other benefits that were later codified into law. But today’s unions are a different beast, as we’re seeing in Wisconsin.

Here’s a taste of some of the false rhetoric emanating from the union protestors, countered with a bit of reality…



I’d think that teachers would have a better grasp of history, especially if they were responsible for teaching my kid. If this is any indication of what’s being taught in the classroom, then it’s also time to start examining the curriculum for this type of leftist indoctrination. I suspect Billy Ayers would not welcome such a move.

Nationally, we have a big political problem with unions. As you probably know, they contribute almost exclusively to radical leftist candidates and were among the biggest supporters of Barack Obama in 2008. As president, Obama was more than happy to bail out GM and Chrysler, a move that prevented those companies from renegotiating their contracts with the unions by declaring bankruptcy. This goes back to yesterday’s post about corruption in high places and campaign contributors greedily expecting a direct favor (or favors) for their political support.

It’s no secret that wages that are well above the national average for comparable work are helping to price American companies out of the global marketplace. This also extends to the outrageous salaries that some executives receive.

There are a couple of organizations that are working towards the goal of freedom for American workers. The National Right to Work Legal Foundation is one of them. The National Right to Work Committee is another.

This is a concept whose time has come. Governor Walker is doing the work he was elected to do by standing up to the unions and their continued demands that place them above the good citizens of Wisconsin who pay their salaries.

Showdown in Wisconsin: The People vs. the Teachers Unions

If you didn’t see it already on the news, Wisconsin governor Scott Walker has introduced a bill that will finally release the stranglehold that the state teachers union currently has on the budget. After years of ever-increasing demands from public sector unions, many states are finding themselves at the breaking point. Their budgets are overdrawn due in large part to the outrageous amounts of money these unions have demanded and gotten. In fact, most state’s public sector union members receive benefits and pay that would make a mobster blush.

This just happens to tie in with a commenter’s remarks from the other day. I’m so proud that I got a comment here on the Internet’s best-kept secret, I have to share it:

I find it interesting that most rural/republican districts spout a rhetoric that doesn't match the reality when it comes to smaller government and fiscal self-sufficiency. Across the country I see that these are the districts that receive quite a disproportionate amount of money from the government compared to what they put in. While the liberal "welfare" bastions of urban areas foot there bill.

I know I’m carbon-dating myself when I say this, but there was a time when local tax money was put towards things like road and bridge repair, or infrastructure maintenance as it’s now called. Today, a disproportionate amount of this money is going to pay the for the very comfortable benefits for public sector union workers, many of whom don’t even contribute to their health care insurance like private sector workers do. That’s why local governments are forced to look to Washington for help, even with all the strings that come along with it.

In short, we’re slowly coming to the realization that public sector unions are bleeding the nation of tax dollars. It’s about time we started fighting back.

And if you think that the unions won’t mobilize to try to stop this common sense move by the officials who were elected to do so, you must be at work.

They’re protesting today at the state capitol. They’ve even enlisted students to march and called in sick all across the state so they could be seen protesting.



As you can see and hear, the students don’t have the slightest idea why they’re marching, they’re such good useful idiots. If one of those were my child, I’d yank them back home and file charges against the teacher for kidnapping so fast their head would spin. If parents need a permission slip to take their own child off campus, how did the teachers get them to the protests?

Was it a field trip to teach them about ecology?

Maybe it was a civics lesson. Hmm, how about teaching the kids that unions take the members’ dues and support overwhelmingly far-left Democrat candidates, many times against the member’s wishes and political beliefs. It’s no secret that the Democrat Party depends heavily on contributions from these unions. They contributed a great deal of money to Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, which may explain why he chose to insert himself into the fray in Wisconsin by saying this,

“Some of what I’ve heard coming out of Wisconsin, where you’re just making it harder for public employees to collectively bargain, generally seems like more of an assault on unions. I think it's very important for us to understand that public employees, they're our neighbors, they're our friends.”

Yeah, Mr. President, they’re our friends, friends who are emptying our bank accounts. Just like all my friends do.

If you’d like a bit of insight into what passes for the thought process of a public sector union worker, here’s a little taste…

While visiting a state agency in Springfield recently I had the opportunity to engage a nice, professional looking, college educated, 30ish worker in conversation. What started with my making pleasant conversation while waiting for a transaction to complete, asking how long he/she had worked there and what was his/her previous job, quickly turned into an astonishing conversation to me, although the employee thought his/her thoughts were completely normal.

…When I asked what the person's previous job had been, the person answered that he/she had been with another state agency previously and applied for this position when it came open. "Do you like it better here," I asked. "Oh yes, much better. I wanted to move here because the union is better at this agency."…

…The person then told how much he/she mistrusted "management" and didn't think "management" ought to be able to approve days off. I asked if he/she really thought managers are always that bad.
"Absolutely. The workers need protection from management. If we don't have protection, you know, these people are just going to tell us to do things we shouldn't have to do and fire people. We need protection."

"Do you really think other people you work with or all managers are that bad?" I asked.

"Absolutely, you have to have protection. The managers are all going to take advantage of you if you don't have the union. You know these legislators, the ones who say their gonna just cut budgets so everyone loses their job, we have to have the union protection from them. They just want to fire everyone."…

…"You know our state is literally bankrupt. We have massive deficits. Don't you think the people have a right to elect new people to cut government to the level we can afford to pay for?"

"No way."

Then the big one. The question and answer that chilled me.

I asked, "Well, you know those legislators are the representatives of the people. The people elected them to vote for the policies they want for our government. So our boss is really the people, who we work for. That's who the legislators represent. Don't you think the people should be respected who fund us through paying taxes and make decisions through the vote?"

"No way. I don't have any respect for the people. The people are the worst of all. No, they shouldn't be able to make that decision. They should just pay the taxes if we need more. They don't know what we do. They have no business telling us what to do."

Emphasis mine.

Read the whole thing.

Here's another reminder, just in case you're still not ready for a drink...




Courtesy of Mikes America.


Behold your tax dollars at work.

Many thanks to the Morons over at Ace of Spades.

Just What America Needs to Recover - Union Leaders at the Wheel

You would think, during one of the longest peacetime recessions in history, union leaders would be at the front of the crowd, cheering on the free market that gave birth to them.

You would be wrong. Or as the late, great Johnny Carson might say, “Wrong, spreadsheet-breath!”

Mark Gaffney, president of the Michigan AFL-CIO, writes in the Detroit News.com this piece whose title says all the right things: Stop outsourcing to save Michigan Jobs, middle class.

He starts off this way:

Outsourcing. Isn't it time to halt the hollowing of our economy and employ smart policies to rebuild American manufacturing and keep good jobs here?

He then veers wildly from the road of economic prosperity by spouting the tired, worn-out clichés that greedy corporations have been more than happy to ship American jobs offshore in their bloodthirsty quest for profit.

For three decades, American laws governing business have followed the lure of ever-lower labor costs, cheap debt, weak environmental regulations and lobbyist-written free trade pacts. It's the result of a profits-over-people strategy that caught on like a fad, and it's the underlying contributor to our Great Recession.

Then, like a drunken driver, he manages to find the correct lane, but only for a moment.

It turns out that cheap, offshore labor makes for lousy consumers, because people without good-paying jobs can't support our consumption-driven economy.


Back in the 1980s and 1990s, we were told that only the machining and assembly jobs were heading offshore. Yet in the last five years alone, we lost the jobs of 1 million scientists, software developers and high-tech researchers. Those were the jobs we were supposed to keep. But R&D follows the factory floor.


The bottom line is this: Long term, no economy of our size can be sustained if we don't invest in jobs, build things here and insist on a level playing field. That's why America needs a strong national industrial policy to rebuild, strengthen and modernize our manufacturing capacity. We need to get rid of the notion that we can't compete in the global economy.

Then we hear the tires thumping against the lane markers again…

We need to pursue with urgency opportunities in green technologies, high-end manufacturing and infrastructure. In Michigan, tens of thousands of jobs have been created through the Recovery Act, which has supported clean energy projects to develop a sustainable, green work force. Michigan now leads the way with advanced battery research and production for hybrid cars, with over a dozen companies investing here, creating tens of thousands of jobs.


Projects like this create a virtuous chain of innovation by spurring private investment and spin-off benefits. A relatively small, but key, federal investment in these projects makes the difference.

Hmm, there’s that word "virtuous" again. Now where have I heard that word recently? Oh yeah, President Obama’ recent press conference and the back yard confab where he touted his efforts to turn the economy around, which has resulted in record poverty levels in only eighteen months. Helluva job there, Barry.

It should be common knowledge amongst my two readers that “green jobs” are as much of a myth as was “global warming”. Spain proved that for every green job the government created, 2.5 regular jobs were lost. And that “small, but key federal investment” in green technology is precisely what’s wrong with it. We’ve been working on this technology in the free market for years with little success. Private companies have poured great sums into research for solar panels and the like with no marketable results. In short, we’ve already proven that green tech needs to mature in order to be effective.

Until that such time as it becomes effective, there are traditional methods of energy generation like nuclear power. However, these efforts are under constant attack from radical environmental groups seeking not clean energy, but a crippling of our country economically. It seems to be working quite well.

Mr. Gaffney concludes,

Without a massive investment to create jobs, according to the Center for Economic and Policy Research, it may take as long as 11 years for the economy to recover the jobs necessary to lower unemployment to pre-recession levels.

He speaks, of course, of the “investment” of our tax dollars, something that the free market would normally do on its own, thus creating jobs and tax revenue instead of draining it.

This trip is starting to become more than a little dangerous. What Mr. Gaffney needs is a designated driver. What he has is a passenger who is far more inebriated than he is: Richard Trumka.

If they don’t manage to wreck the car, you just know he’ll be the one who starts cussing out the police officer who pulls them over. That’ll help.

We know what Rep. John Boehner will do if he gets the Speaker’s gavel – because he’s told us! He’ll privatize and cut Social Security, protect the corporations that send our jobs overseas, slash taxes for the super-rich. There will be no more extensions of unemployment benefits. No jobs legislation. No infrastructure spending. No Davis Bacon. No retirement security. No health care.

Trumka looks as though he may hurl any second now…

That’s why I say to the hand-wringers, to the naysayers, to the detractors, to the Party of No: If you don’t believe in America, get out of the way!

Oops, they just ran into a fire hydrant. Quick, drink this six-pack before the cops get here.