Archive for the ‘Richard Trumka’ Category

Organizers of a drive to recall Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker said they have far more signatures than they need to file on Tuesday to force the controversial Republican to defend his seat in a special election barely a year into his first term.

Recall officials expect to turn in far more than the 540,208 signatures required on Tuesday to force a special election, a milestone in their effort to recall Walker and slow an agenda that has diminished the power of public unions.

If the state Government Accountability Board, the agency charged with validating the petitions, determines enough valid signatures have been gathered, it will set a recall election for Walker and Lieutenant Governor Rebecca Kleefisch.

Only two governors in U.S. history have been successfully recalled — California’s Gray Davis in 2003 and Lynn Frazier of North Dakota in 1921.

No Democrat has emerged to run against Walker, although Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, who ran for governor against Walker in 2010, and Secretary of State Doug La Follette have been mentioned as possible candidates.

Others include former congressman Dave Obey, state Senator Jon Erpenbach and former Dane County Executive Kathleen Falk.By law, organizers had only 60 days to conduct the formal petition drive, which they launched in November with thousands of volunteers fanning out across Wisconsin.

The roots of the drive stretch back nearly a year to efforts by Walker and the Republican-controlled state legislature to pass a raft of controversial measures that included strict limits on the union rights of public employees.

The anti-union measures triggered weeks of mass protests in Madison and a fierce political backlash from Democrats and union supporters.

Walker defended the measures as necessary to address a budget gap and to make Wisconsin attractive to employers.

Backing his agenda, which also included passage of voter identification and looser gun laws, six Republican senators and Walker allies faced recall last summer. Three Democratic senators who opposed the measures also faced recall.

Of those, two lost their seats to Republican challengers.

Along with the governor and lieutenant governor, as many as 17 state senators — 11 Republicans and six Democrats — could face recall elections this year in Wisconsin.

The contests could tip the balance of power in the state senate, where Republicans hold a slim 17-16 majority.

On Friday, organizers of a separate effort to recall Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald said they had enough signatures to force the Republican to defend his seat in a special election.

Fitzgerald has filed a complaint with the GAB, claiming recall organizers took too long to collect signatures.

According to a GAB report, processing the Walker recall petitions will cost the state more than $650,000, including the purchase of software and staff time. The total cost of recall elections for the state and municipalities may be more than $9 million, according to estimates from GAB officials.

Comment by Corkie Taylor-WashingtonWe already know that Obama is behind this. We know that AFL-CIO Union thug Richard Trumka is behind this and we know that state “outsiders” are behind this.
Governor Scott Walker NEEDS our help! Without our help he will lose his elected position from the onslaught of left wing lunacy that want to unseat him because of his conservative values and love for his state to bring it out of Obama debt! Don’t forget the Democrat elected officials who ran and hid in order to shirk their civil duties to create a budget that would bring Wisconsin out of debt. They along with their cheat and liar in Chief of the United States, Barack Obama are out for his head.
Please, do what you can do to help him even if it’s a word of encouragement. He has only been able to raise aprox. 5 million for his defence. Much of that from outside sources.
America NEEDS Scott Walker!

In a recent interview with Bloomberg, AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka confirmed his friendship with president Barack Obama, and to a socialist future for America. Asked if Obama is a friend or an acquaintance, Trumka said, “He’s a friend. There’s a lot of things we disagree with him on. There’s far more things that we agree with him on….”

Trumka said he’d like to see the U.S. become more like a European nation that provides pensions and health care for all its citizens. He said he is accustomed to criticism and doesn’t mind if conservatives call that socialism.

“Being called a socialist is a step up for me,” he said.

MSNBC reports that President Obama is no longer meeting with his cabinet members and is instead seeking presidential council elsewhere. Who had his ear? Union boss Richard Trumka said, “I am at the White House a couple of times a week…two, three times a week.” What does Glenn think about this unprecedented access that unions have to the Obama administration? How does this all tie into “top down, bottom up” insurrection that Glenn has been warning about?

By Chris Field

The president promised his union buddies that “we’re gonna help our friends.” Now, he’s using the power of the White House to overturn decades of bankruptcy and labor law in their favor and to funnel tax money their way.

———–
“Imagine having a president whose life work was your work.” It was September 2007, and Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., was challenging members of the Service Employees’ International Union (SEIU) to dream the dream of owning a president — him.

Obama, who was seeking the union’s endorsement in the upcoming presidential primaries, reminded his enthusiastic crowd that the SEIU had supported him in the past: “All these folks sitting here, right here, they walked doors for me, they made phone calls for me, they turned out the vote for me!”

Months after Obama’s speech, the SEIU threw $60 million and 100,000 volunteers behind Obama’s election effort. The AFL-CIO nearly matched that, with $53.4 million in election spending — enough to help put their debt-heavy union into a minor financial crisis.

But it was probably worth the price.

In an explosive and revealing piece for the May issue of Townhall Magazine, “Obama’s Gangster Government,” best-selling author and Washington Examiner online opinion editor David Freddoso exposes how the president is ignoring and twisting the law to help Big Labor and is funneling millions of taxpayer dollars to his union thug buddies.

This heavily researched, in-depth piece names names and details who’s doing what to benefit the labor unions at the expense of the rest of America. You don’t want to miss this report, which you can read only in the newest issue of Townhall Magazine.

Here are some excerpts from Freddoso’s feature story to give you a taste of what he has uncovered:

Today, organized labor owns the executive branch of the United States government. All of its appointees are sympathetic to unions, and some are shameless cheerleaders — especially Labor Secretary Hilda Solis, whose contribution to the dispute in Wisconsin was to join the picket line and start shouting. “The fight is on,” she said in a recent speech. “We work together. We help those embattled states right now where public employees are under assault.”

And the union bosses have all the access they could possibly want. Former SEIU President Andy Stern, before leaving his job last year, visited the Obama White House nearly 60 times in less than two years. Richard Trumka, head of the AFL-CIO since September 2009, visited the White House 47 times in just over a year, meeting with Obama 17 times and with Vice President Joe Biden three times. He boasts that he speaks to White House officials “every day” — even on weekends.

Given recent revelations of how badly Obama has ignored his own appointees, Trumka appears to have more contact and possibly more influence with Obama than most of the president’s cabinet secretaries

President Obama stands with AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, who has bragged about his frequent and easy access to the White House

In a heated moment on the campaign trail last year, President Obama declared, “We’re gonna punish our enemies, and we’re gonna reward our friends who stand with us.” This comment was intended as an exhortation for voters, but it is actually an accurate statement of administration policy. It is also a fundamental principle of “gangster government,” which bends and breaks laws to achieve its policy goals, rejects or stretches limits on its own power, and subordinates the public interest to favored special interests.

Gangster government has reared its ugly head in many areas during Obama’s first term. …

But no special interest is nearer to President Obama’s heart than organized labor, and when we talk about “friends” whom Obama helps, we are talking primarily about labor unions. Obama isn’t even slightly ashamed of his transactional relationship with unions. Here is how he describes it in “The Audacity of Hope” (his second memoir) after noting all the help the unions had given him in the course of his political career up to that point: “So I owe those unions. When their leaders call, I do my best to call them back right away. I don’t consider this corrupting in any way.” …

In September 2007, then-presidential candidate Obama rallied the troops at the SEIU Political Action Conference. He offered SEIU members the dream of owning a president.
The average American cannot expect to have the Treasury Department rig his bankruptcy, the Labor Department rig his election process, or federal procurement officers rig a bidding process in his favor. Labor unions can count on Obama for all of these things, and he’d deliver them even more special favors if he could. He is using the White House in every conceivable way to pay back a special interest that spent $400 million to elect Democrats in 2008 but whose fortunes are waning and whose relevance to the average worker has not been lower in decades. Obama isn’t about to let the unions go down without all the help that he can force taxpayers to muster.

You might think that when the Obama administration bails out banks with one hand and then shatters lenders’ confidence with a special favor for the UAW on the other, the two acts simply cancel each other out. You might think the same when he attempts to stimulate the economy, but then creates few jobs because the money is being wasted on overpriced union contracts.

But these acts do not, in fact, net out to zero. Rather, each separate act increases the Obama administration’s power over business, health care, the economy and people’s lives generally. Each act expands his power and helps him choose winners and losers, directing rewards to the politically favored and punishments to those who stand in his way.

And that’s the whole point of gangster government.
Order Townhall Magazine today to get the entire piece exposing the Obama administration’s gangster government.

The normalcy bias refers to a mental state (head in the sand) people enter when facing a potential disaster.
It causes people to underestimate both the possibility of a disaster occurring and its possible effects.

This often results in situations where people fail to adequately prepare for a disaster, and on a larger scale, the failure of the government to include the populace in its disaster preparations.

The assumption that is made in the case of the normalcy bias is that since a disaster never has occurred that it never will occur. America will always be America – yeah right.

It also results in the inability of people to cope with a disaster once it occurs. People with a normalcy bias have difficulties reacting to something they have not experienced before. People also tend to interpret warnings in the most optimistic way possible, seizing on any ambiguities to infer a less serious situation.
Possible causes

The normalcy bias may be caused in part by the way the brain processes new data. Research suggests that even when the brain is calm, it takes 8–10 seconds to process new information. Stress slows the process, and when the brain cannot find an acceptable response to a situation, it fixates on a single solution that may or may not be correct. An evolutionary reason for this response could be that paralysis gives an animal a better chance of surviving an attack; predators are less likely to eat prey that isn’t struggling.

Effects
The normalcy bias causes people to drastically underestimate the effects of the disaster.
Therefore, they think that everything will be all right, while information from the radio, television, or neighbors gives them reason to believe there is a risk.
This creates a cognitive dissonance that they then must work to eliminate.
Some manage to eliminate it by refusing to believe new warnings coming in and refusing to evaluate (maintaining the normalcy bias), while others eliminate the dissonance by escaping the danger.

The possibility that some may refuse to evaluate causes significant problems in planning for the future.

Our present disaster is the Obama – Soros (Fabian Socialists) dumbing down of America, Making America a third world country. They are presently behind all the uprising in the middle East. The Fabian Socialists believe the smashing apart the World and rebuilding it in their elite One World Order image. It is easy to pick up their agenda. We write about it every day at our website – www.itmakessenseblog.com It is time to wake up your neighbors and your children.

Sad to say my grown children get their news from the comedy channel, the food channel, the travel channel and believe that somehow the world will stay the same.
Let’s try to get their heads out of Normalcy bias. – The Meister

To complete the Trumka trifecta here is a older Blaze video showing Trumka working
with European socialists and a Blaze video of Trumka admitting his main goal is using his union to advance his political vision.

Tumka Works with Socialists for Global Tax

Trumka Admits Main Goal is Using Unions To Fundamentally Change America into His Progressive Vision

To complete the Trumka trifecta here is a older Blaze video showing Trumka working with European socialists and a Blaze video of Trumka admitting his main goal is using his union to advance his political vision.

Tumka Works with Socialists for Global Tax

Trumka Admits Main Goal is Using Unions To Fundamentally Change America into His Progressive Vision

Submitted by Carl Horowitz on Tue, 01/11/2011 – 16:05

Organized labor, masters of aggressive politics, had its share of triumphs in 2010. With Democrats having taken control of the White House and both houses of Congress in 2009, this was to be expected. AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka and other union officials used their window of opportunity to pressure Congress into passing a health care overhaul mandating unprecedented degrees of government intrusion, and by extension, major opportunities for unionization of the health care labor force. They also secured key presidential appointments.

That said, the year was noteworthy for legislative mandates unions didn’tachieve, especially forced private-sector employer recognition of majority union “card checks” and forced state and local government bargaining with public-safety unions. The new Congress, with a GOP House majority, is far less likely to deliver on either count. Meanwhile, Justice Department crackdowns finished off various union-Mafia scams. Embezzlers, great and small, got their comeuppance. And the unions’ favorite nonprofit, the once-thriving ACORN, is no more. In other words, liberty and public accountability had their share of triumphs, too.

Union leaders put their penchant for political backroom dealing to good use in 2010, helping to deliver for constituents health care “reform” legislation that will cost taxpayers $940 billion over the next decade (if not more), and with far less consumer choice. Richard Trumka and soon-to-depart Service Employees International Union (SEIU) President Andrew Stern operated as virtual White House lobbyists to shape the final package, which the House of Representatives passed in March by a slim 219-212 margin. Parliamentary maneuvering led by union ally Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., had short-circuited a Senate filibuster. It’s not as if union bosses in Reid’s home state forgot their benefactor come election time. Highly persuasive evidence emerged that SEIU-affiliated workers in Clark County, where three-fourth’s of Nevada’s population resides, rigged voting machines to bring about Reid’s improbable come-from-behind win against GOP challenger Sharron Angle.

Labor’s handprints were on presidential appointments. M. Patricia Smith, after several months of delay, won Senate approval in February as solicitor for the Labor Department. Having previously served as New York State Commissioner of Labor, she has put into place an aggressive litigation program to go after employers presumably in violation of wage and hour laws and a lawyer referral program for aggrieved employees. President Obama, for his part, in a March recess appointment named SEIU lawyer Craig Becker to the National Labor Relations Board. Union officials couldn’t have asked for a better choice; as a law professor in the Nineties, Becker argued the case for giving unions the right to muzzle employer free speech during an organizing drive. Two pending appointments also underscore union clout with the current administration. Paul Tiao, Obama’s nominee for Labor Department Inspector General, has expressed a belief that immigrants, even those here illegally, ought to be granted voting rights – a welcome piece of news for union leaders, who for at least a decade have been enthusiastic proponents of open borders. And Leon Rodriguez, the nominee for head of DOL’s Wage and Hour Division, though thoroughly inexperienced in labor law, has shown in his pronouncements and track record as a civil-rights prosecutor that he leans as far leftward as virtually any union official.

The year witnessed federal prosecutions ending mob-assisted union scams in the New York City area. New York District Council of Carpenters longtime boss Michael Forde and nine other defendants pleaded guilty or were convicted by a jury of participating in a scheme to siphon off more than $10 million in scheduled contributions to Carpenters benefit funds and receive bribes from contractors. One of the defendants, contractor Joseph Olivieri, had ties to the Genovese crime family. Federal prosecutors in Brooklyn announced the results of a multiple racketeering indictment against eight suspected Colombo crime family members and associates; two of the defendants had ripped off benefits from Teamsters Local 282, one of the most notorious Mafia-connected unions in New York or anywhere else. And Warren Annunziata, former president of Local 91 of the United Craft and Industrial Workers, pleaded guilty in Manhattan federal court in July to extorting at least $500,000 from local school bus companies. As the indictment had referred to “others known and unknown,” he’s likely to have had help in the shakedowns.

Embezzlement stories abounded. In the worst single-person case ever, a Manhattan federal grand jury indicted Melissa King, former benefits manager for Laborers Local 147 (“the Sandhogs”), for fleecing members out of $42 million. The indictment followed her arraignment the previous December, an event that earned her the number-three spot on the Top Ten list for 2009. John Orecchio, a Chicago-based financial manager, was sentenced for embezzling more than $24 million from various Michigan-based union pension plans. Joseph Castello, a Greenwich, Conn.-based businessman, was ordered by a federal appeals court to pay more than $12 million that he’d generated from his check-cashing scheme about a third of which represented pension funds from unnamed labor unions – they didn’t call him “Joey Checks” for nothing. Noteworthy, if less flagrant, were: Carolyn Sue Alderman-Connon, manager of a regional Boilermakers union training program in Florida, pleaded guilty in October to embezzling more than $1.2 million; Wayne Mitchell and Lawrence DeAngelis, successive bosses of a Communications Workers newspaper print shop and mail room workers local in New York City, pleaded guilty to combined theft of more than $300,000; Florida pastorGregory Sims, moonlighting as an Electrical Workers benefits manager, pleaded guilty to diverting more than $800,000 in union funds to his church; and Stephen Arena and David Caivano, respectively, president and secretary-treasurer of a Jersey City Production Workers local, were arrested for embezzling more than $375,000.

Taking into account subjective criteria used in years past, here are the ten stories that stuck out the most in 2010:

10) John Orecchio receives a lengthy sentence for union benefit scams. This story ranked number eight the last time around, and it is number-ten here for good measure. Orecchio, CEO of the Chicago-based equity fund AA Capital Partners, managed about $170 million in trust accounts on behalf for union clients, mainly in the Detroit area. During 2002-06 he converted as much as $60 million of that to his own consumption or investment and eventually was indicted for ripping off $24 million. This past June in federal court he learned the price of his ways – a nine-year, four-month prison sentence and a full restitution order.

9) M. Patricia Smith, confirmed by the Senate as Labor Solicitor, goes after private-sector employers. Solicitor is the third-highest ranking position at the U.S. Department of Labor. Trisha Smith, belatedly confirmed by the Senate to this post in February, isn’t wasting any time in going after private-sector employers – and to the applause of union leaders. Her office in September issued a draft plan to aggressively step up DOL pressure upon employers it suspects of violating federal wage and hour laws. Look for union rank and file to be deputized as investigators, as was the case in the Wage Watch program she instituted while serving as New York State Labor Commissioner.

Former Sandhogs union benefits manager Melissa King indicted for $42 million theft. Though the indictment amounted to a formality, this story still qualifies as a shocker. King, accused late last year of fleecing Laborers International Union of North America Local 147 out of $42 million during 2002-08, was indicted by a Manhattan grand jury in February. A half-year later she complained about her high legal bills. She’s not getting any sympathy from the union, whose rank and file dig subway and water tunnels underneath New York City and surrounding areas. Were the sybaritic Ms. King’s thefts “only” $4.2 million, this still would be a major story. But $42 million is almost inconceivable.

7) Union official Warren Annunziata pleads guilty to extortion of school bus companies. United Craft and Industrial Workers Local 91, which represents about 2,000 drivers and auxiliary employees of New York City-area school bus companies, has about $85 million in pension and other assets. Now we know where at least some of that money comes from. Annunziata, the union’s former president and current pension fund administrator, pleaded guilty in Manhattan federal court in July to extorting more than $500,000 in payoffs from unionized bus company officials.

6) Andrew Stern yields SEIU presidency to Mary Kay Henry.The Service Employees International Union has well over 2 million members and associates, a more than doubling from 1996, when Andrew Stern took over. In his 14-year reign, Stern boosted membership with his take-no-prisoners style of organizing, though (as critics frequently maintained) at the cost of winning quality contracts, especially in the health care sector. Flush with victory from the Obama health care bill signing, he resigned this spring with two years remaining in his current term. SEIU Vice President Mary Kay Henry defeated Secretary-Treasurer Anna Burger in the succession battle. Several months after Stern’s departure, media reports circulated that the FBI and the DOL wereprobing Stern for potential ethical violations.

5) President Obama appoints Craig Becker to National Labor Relations Board. By law, the NLRB must have three members from one major party and two from the other. Union leaders couldn’t have been more delighted with President Obama’s nomination of SEIU Associate General Counsel Craig Becker as one of the Democrats – or with Obama’s late March recess appointment of Becker, sidestepping a Senate filibuster. As a law professor in the Nineties, Becker argued that unions should have the right to veto employer free speech rights during organizing drives. If he’s backed away from this view, he hasn’t let it show. And he’s already made his presence felt; he cast the tiebreaker vote in August (despite a clear conflict of interest) in the board’s decision to revisit the Dana case, which NLRB in 2007 had decided in favor of making it easier for dissenting workers to undo a successful union card check campaign.

4) Grand jury indicts Colombo mobsters and associates; two defendants may have fleeced Teamsters benefit fund.Organized crime in New York experienced a major blow last march when a Brooklyn federal grand jury indicted eight suspected members or associates of the Colombo crime family, including son and nephew of now-imprisoned family boss Carmine Persico, on racketeering and other charges. Two of the defendants, Colombo associate Edward Garofalo Jr. and his wife, Alicia DiMichele, embezzled an unspecified sum from Teamsters Local 282, a concrete and construction materials truck drivers union long under control of the Gambino, Genevese and Lucchese crime families. There’s nothing like a piece of the action.

3) Unions negotiate key provisions in final health care bill.Organized labor obviously has a major stake in unionizing the health care labor force. So when it came time a year ago to hammer out a bill reconciling differences between House and Senate health care overhauls, union leaders played a prominent role in shaping the final measure. Led by AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, union leaders engaged in a three-day marathon session with White House negotiators to break the impasse, especially on how to tax high-end insurance plans. The result: A five-year delay on applying a surtax on such plans, if union-sponsored. The decks cleared, Congress passed the conference bill in March. Obamacare will cost taxpayers an estimated $940 billion over the first ten years, and possibly a good deal more.  Thank union hardball in some measure for this.

2) SEIU likely rigged ballots to win Senate re-election for Harry Reid. The 2010 congressional elections were a disaster for Democrats. The party lost its majority in the House and came close to losing it in the Senate. Things could have been far worse had Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., not rallied from behind to defeat Republican challenger Sharron Angle. This “miracle” may have been union-initiated. Evidence indicates that in October, during early balloting, SEIU-affiliated voting machine workers in Clark County (Las Vegas) had been tampering with the devices; they rigged machines to record a check mark next to Reid’s name without the benefit a ballot being cast. Union leaders deny any wrongdoing. Yet a full investigation very easily could turn up something, especially given that one of Sen. Reid’s sons is Clark County Commission chairman.

1) Michael Forde, nine others convicted in Carpenters district council racket scheme in New York. The leadership of the New York District Council of Carpenters, representing some 25,000 workers in 11 unions, ran a lucrative racket for more than two decades, siphoning off more than $10 million from scheduled benefit contributions and accepting to $1 million in illegal contractor bribes. In 2010, the fun ended. Free-spending district boss Michael Forde pleaded guilty, as did eight other union members and associates. Additionally, Long Island-based contractor association president Joseph Olivieri, a reputed Genovese crime family associate, was found guilty by a jury. Forde had beaten the rap twice before, but this time the feds were determined to not let him walk. He wound up with an 11-year prison sentence. Perseverance does pay.

(Dis)honorable mention. Joseph “Joey Checks” Castello, a Greenwich, Conn.-based businessman, ordered by a federal appeals court to forfeit more than $12 million; manager of a Florida-based Boilermakers regional training program, rips off $1.2 million from the union; president and secretary-treasurer of Jersey City Production Workers local arrested for embezzling more than $375,000; Milwaukee AFSCME activistembezzles $180,000 from union voter registration drive fund; Operating Engineers bookkeeper in Las Vegas steals $230,000; United Auto Workersbookkeeper in Michigan embezzles $200,000; Buffalo transit union treasurer sentenced for theft of more than $250,000; Vince Anello, former mayor of Niagara Falls, N.Y. pleads guilty to Electrical Workers benefit fraud, tests U.S. Supreme Court ruling on “honest services” statute; New York-New Jersey Port Authority union boss Daniel Hughes pleads guilty to embezzling nearly $300,000; Locomotive Engineers President Edward Rodzwicz pleads guilty to bribery, related charge; NYC newspaper workers bosses sentenced for thefts; Colombo mob-connected Operating Engineers local business agent Joey Coriasco sentenced in NYC construction scam; Florida pastor moonlighting as Electrical Workers benefits manager diverts $800,000 from union to church; former Aerospace Workers boss Anthony Forte, brother sentenced in Philadelphia-area Boeing workers credit union fraud and kickback scheme.

The union chief tries to intimidate CEOs from backing reform.

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka seems to have learned a thing or two about strong arm bully techniques.

Last Wednesday Mr. Trumka gave a speech at the National Press Club denounc­ing business groups that support pro-reform Governors, calling them “shadowy commit­tees . . . aimed at depriving all work­ers—public and private sector—of the basic human right to form strong unions and bar­gain collectively to lift their lives.”

He then started foot stomping, naming Rupert Mur­doch, CEO of News Corp., which owns the Wall Street Journal newspaper, and Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein as participants “in a committee formed to raise business funds to attack pub­lic employees.”

The AFL-CIO didn’t return our calls asking what group he has in mind, but we’ll guess that it’s the Committee to Save New York, a nonprofit organized last year to promote eco­nomic reform in a state that desperately needs new business and job creation. We don’t know if Messrs. Murdoch or Blankfein donate to the Committee, but they are board members of the Partnership for New York City, a business group that also wants to save the state.

The Committee aims to raise $10 million and supports a balanced budget, capping property taxes and fewer state mandates for cities. Its board includes such radicals as Democratic financier Felix Rohatyn and Carl McCall, a former Democratic candidate for Governor. It recently released a TV ad praising new Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo and plans to support his effort to clean up Albany.

That program represents a direct threat to government unions and their allies, which have long opposed any cuts in the rich pay and pensions that are bleeding the state budget. As Mr. Cuomo noted in his state of the state speech this month, “government costs are simply unsustainable.” New York’s Medicaid payments are larger than those of Texas and Florida combined. The state faces a nearly $10 billion budget deficit and a pension gap pro­jected to hit $6.2 billion in 2013.

Mr. Trumka realizes that he can’t influence GOP Gov­ernors, but he’s desperate to stop a Democrat like Mr. Cuomo from breaking the union stranglehold on Albany. He’s wagering that his public pressure will cause some of Mr. Cuomo’s business allies to drop their support, and on that score he may be right.

Ridhard Parsons, the chairman of Citigroup and a founding member of the Committee, re­signed from the board sometime after Mr. Ro­hatyn proclaimed his support in a December op-ed in the New York Post. A spokesman for Mr. Parsons wouldn’t confirm the date of the resignation but told us it had nothing to do with union pressure and that Mr. Parsons wanted to “focus on his current business re­sponsibilities as well as his other civic and philanthropic activities.”

Meanwhile, the Blackstone Group, which manages billions of dollars of state and local public pension money, issued a statement seemingly out of the blue last Wednesday op­posing the “scape goating” of “public employ­ees.” A Blackstone spokesman told us the statement was not linked to the Trumka speech, but we’ll go out on a very short limb and say it had everything to do with maintain­ing access to pension cash controlled by poli­ticians who answer to government-employee unions. We’re reminded of the old line that capital is a coward.

As they’ve done in the past, unions and their allies will run millions of dollars in TV ads trying to stop Mr. Cuomo’s reform efforts. Without business support for ads that counter this demagoguery, the unions might prevail once again. Given his liberal record, Mr. Cuomo is an unlikely reformer, but so far he’s sounding enough like New Jersey Republican Chris Christie to offer taxpayers hope.

We also hope business leaders aren’t intim­idated by Mr. Trumka’s, communist tactics, war whoops and keep supporting efforts to save New York from the public unions that are driving its economic decline.

In late July and August, a series of reports in the “mainstream” national media focused on the all-but-inevitable accession of militant union boss Richard Trumka to the AFL-CIO presidency at the giant union conglomerate’s convention in Pittsburgh, Pa., this month.

The reports ostensibly assessed dispassionately Mr. Trumka’s life story up to now, his character, and the course he will steer as the head of the AFL-CIO empire of 56 national and international unions.

However, up to this writing the “mainstream” media accounts of what Mr. Trumka will likely do in his new command post have omitted important and disturbing information about this former chief of the United Mineworkers (UMW) union and current AFL-CIO secretary-treasurer.

Specifically, reports in major news outlets like the New York Times have failed to say anything about Mr. Trumka’s long, well-documented history of inciting and condoning violence against employees as a means of breaking down the resistance of employers.

Richard Trumka: People Who Work During a Strike Should Know They’ll Get ‘Burned¹

For example, as a result of one particularly horrendous incident, Mr. Trumka and some of his former cohorts were forced to fork over an undisclosed sum, which media speculation put in the millions, to settle a wrongful-death suit out of court.

In early 1993, then-UMW President Trumka ordered more than 17,000 miners in seven states out on strike. One of his objectives was to ensure that coal operators force miners to pay union dues as a job condition.

Almost from the beginning, the strike was rife with violence. Thugs vandalized homes, fired shots at a mine office, and cut power to another mine, temporarily trapping 93 miners underground.

West Virginia heavy-equipment operator Eddie York wasn’t as fortunate as the trapped miners. On July 22, 1993, this husband and father of three was shot in the back of the head as he drove

The fact that AFL-CIO union chieftains are poised at their convention in Pittsburgh, Pa., this month to select

past militant UMW strikers away from a work site. He died instantly.

UMW goons then pounded would-be rescuers with stones.

Mr. Trumka’s public reaction to the strike violence was chilling. He implied, as quoted in the Washington Times September 3, 1993, that employees who work during a strike deserve whatever happens to them:

“I’m saying if you strike a match and put your finger in, common sense tells you you’re going to burn your finger.”

UMW-intimidated West Virginia courts never charged the UMW gunman, militant strike captain Jerry Dale Lowe, with murder or any other crime.

But he was ultimately convicted by a federal court on four lesser charges, including the “use of a firearm to incapacitate [through homicide] a driver engaged in interstate commerce.”

‘Kick the **** Out of Every Last One of ^fEm^f

By then, Mr. York’s widow had already filed a $27 million lawsuit.

In addition to Mr. Lowe, it named Mr. Trumka and several other top UMW officials, charging that union strike tactics and directives (including memorable Trumka exhortations like “kick the **** out of ever last one of ‘em”) contributed to Eddie York’s death.

For four years,  UMW lawyers bloody-minded former United Mineworkers boss Richard Trumka as their leader says a lot about them.

zealously fought Wanda York’s suit. But the course of the legal battle suddenly changed after federal prosecutors announced on June 23, 1997 that they would release evidence from Mr. Lowe’s criminal trial to her attorneys.

After that bombshell, it took UMW lawyers just two days to reach a secret settlement with Mrs. York.

“The Eddie York story says a lot about Richard Trumka. And the fact that his fellow AFL-CIO bosses are surely aware of it, but apparently aren’t the least bit perturbed by it, says a lot about them, too,” commented National Right to Work Committee President Mark Mix.

“Large ‘mainstream’ media publications have an obligation to give their readers a realistic picture of the man who is poised to take the reins of the already militant AFL-CIO this month.

“That’s why the ‘mainstream’ media’s amnesia about the slaying of Eddie York and Richard Trumka’s attitude toward the crime is so unfortunate.

“This month, the Committee’s media department will be contacting national news and opinion journalists again and again to help them get the story right during the AFL-CIO convention.

“With Committee members nationwide reinforcing the Right to Work message to the national media, I’m cautiously optimistic it will get through.” 1

National Right to Work Newsletter - September 2009

By KENNETH P. VOGEL & JESSICA TAYLOR | 11/16/10 11:45 PM EST Updated: 11/17/10 9:46 AM EST

Some of the Democratic Party’s biggest donors met Tuesday afternoon with influential party figures such as AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka, organizer Joan Fitz-Gerald and former White House aide Communist Van Jones to discuss the lessons and implications of the GOP’s landslide midterm election victory.

The meeting – organized by a group of wealthy, politically active liberals called the Democracy Alliance – took place at Washington’s swank Mandarin Oriental hotel, where off-duty police officers and other security patrolled the halls looking for reporters and other uninvited guests, who were escorted from the premises.

“The agreement is that everything that goes on here is confidential,” one adviser to major liberal donors said while waiting for a taxi outside the hotel. “I didn’t come up with the policy, but I think it serves the purposes of allowing people to speak freely and let their hair down,” said the adviser, who did not want to be identified violating the agreement.

Among the donors spotted at the conference on Tuesday, the second day of the three-day gathering, were former Stride Rite chairman Arnold Hiatt, hedge fund financier Donald Sussman, electronics pioneer Bill Budinger, real estate developer Wayne Jordan and Suzanne Hess, the wife of real estate mogul Lawrence Hess.

There was no sign of some of the deepest-pocketed Democracy Alliance members, such as tech entrepreneur Tim Gill, insurance magnate Peter Lewis, or billionaire financier George Soros, though Michael Vachon, a Soros representative, did attend.

The conference itself featured mostly big picture analyses of the midterm elections and their predicted impact on the donors’ favored policy causes, rather than strategic planning for the 2012 elections, sources told POLITICO. And – despite the tens of millions of dollars in independent advertisements aired in 2010 by GOP allies attacking Democratic candidates – Democracy Alliance is not formally recommending its donors contribute to any outside groups that focus primarily on election advertising.

But the source said some donors on the sidelines of the conference discussed whether they should try to match the GOP’s outside advertising effort in 2012, and, if so, how to balance that giving with their support for the groups recommended by Democracy Alliance, which focus largely on shaping policy and the media, as well as mobilizing voters around issues.

“I don’t think that it’s an either-or type of situation. People are interested in both of the two things,” said the source, who nonetheless added, “Karl Rove and others on the right have shown an instinct for the political jugular that our side lacks.”

Democratic operatives with experience in advertising campaigns, including Erik Smith, a Democratic operative who worked for the Media Fund in 2004, could be seen mingling with attendees. That group and a linked organization called America Coming Together raised a combined $139 million, much of it from donors now involved in Democracy Alliance, such as Soros, to air ads boosting Sen. John Kerry’s unsuccessful Democratic challenge to George W. Bush’s reelection.

Smith – who is also executive director of a group called Common Purpose Project, which has received Democracy Alliance support in the past – declined to comment. But another operative who planned to attend the conference told POLITICO that the donors who funded the anti-Bush efforts “told us in 2004 that we couldn’t come to them every two years and ask them for $10 to $20 million.”

Democracy Alliance was established in 2005, partly to channel liberal donors’ disappointment with the failure of the 2004 effort into a new approach to giving that seeks to offset what the Alliance sees as the right’s superior intellectual infrastructure.

The thinking is that in order to be competitive in the messaging – and idea – wars, the left needed to replicate well-established conservative think tanks such as the Cato Institute, American Enterprise Institute, the Heritage Foundation and the Hoover Institution, as well as training outfits like the Leadership Institute and the Young America’s Foundation.

Democracy Alliance requires its members to pay annual dues starting at $15,000 to support member activities including its twice-a-year conferences, which feature a mix of policy briefings, dinners and cocktail parties, and its staff, who vet and recommend non-profit groups to which its members can contribute.

Members are required to contribute a minimum of $100,000 to recommended groups, which have primarily focused on policy, issue advocacy and voter mobilization, and not campaign advertising.

Democracy Alliance declined to comment for this story, but last week, its chairman Rob McKay, a California venture capitalist who is heir to a Taco Bell fortune, told POLITICO: “Our unyielding commitment to DA’s mission – to build modern, high-performing progressive state and national organizations and a more vibrant democracy – has never been clearer or more urgent.”

Among the organizations represented at this week’s conference were the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, the centrist NDN think tank, Campaign for America’s Future, Campaign for Community Change, Advancement Project, Brave New Films, State Voices, and union-related groups that work to mobilize liberal voters, including Working America, Progressive Majority and America Votes.

On Monday evening, big donors visited the offices of some of the recommended groups and listened to presentations from their leaders.

And on Tuesday, representatives from some of those groups and others mingled with donors before a panel about how the political landscape will affect economic policy, which featured the communist union leader -Trumka.

Melanie Sloan, executive director of the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, talked with Budinger. According to tax records analyzed by the conservative Capital Research Center, Budinger’s family’s foundation in 2007 contributed $100,000 to the White House-allied Center for American Progress, one of the Democracy Alliance’s earliest beneficiaries.

Sloan did not respond to questions about her participation in the meeting.

Other attendees who are influential in liberal politics and policy also milled about Tuesday, including Fitz-Gerald, president of the influential political organizing group America Votes; Robert Borosage, co-director of the Campaign for America’s Future; Ellen Dorsey, executive director of the Wallace Global Fund; Matt Ewing, director of a Democracy Alliance-funded project that invests in early stage new media organizations; Philip Dufour, a Washington event planner; Eric Liu, a former speechwriter and deputy domestic policy adviser to former President Bill Clinton; fundraiser Lisa Versaci and radio host Thom Hartman.

Donors, panelists, guests and Democracy Alliance staff were all required to wear name tags identifying themselves and their involvement, and this reporter, who did not have a name tag, was ushered out of the conference after being informed by a security officer that it was a “private event.”

Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1110/45260.html#ixzz15dbkVQA4

Groups pushing for socialist and communist policies gathered in the nation’s capital this last weekend for a march aimed at recapturing momentum for their agenda and mobilizing supporters before next month’s midterm elections.

The “One Nation Working Together” rally at the Lincoln Memorial on Saturday comes one month before the Nov. 2 elections and one month after conservative broadcaster Glenn Beck’s “Restoring Honor” rally. Organizers say more than 400 organizations — ranging from communist party, socialists party, labor unions to faith, environmental and gay rights groups — came together to advocate for job creation, communist ideals, socialist education and social justice.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wkw7n9Qagu8&feature=player_embedded

“It’s critical that as we stand there on Oct. 2, that socialist and communist people think about Nov. 2, that they own the fact that what happens on Election Day is up to them,” said Benjamin Todd Jealous, president of the NAACP, one of the organizers

The groups said on their National Park Service application that they anticipate 50,000 people to attend. Washington’s Metro subway system also is opening an hour earlier than usual on Saturday, costing the groups $29,500, which will be refunded if Metro gets enough riders. They also will pay extra to operate additional service on one of the system’s rail lines. Organizers say they have 1,600 buses with parking spaces confirmed coming to the event.

Beck and former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin gathered near the Lincoln Memorial on the anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech last month to urge a vast crowd to embrace traditional values. Though also billed as nonpolitical, the rally was widely viewed as a protest against the policies of President Obama and congressional Democrats. Around 800,000 people participated.

Some participants said the rally provided an opportunity to speak for what they consider a more representative socialist swath of Americans and their concerns, which they feel have been overshadowed by more vocal groups on the right.

Richard Trumka, president of the AFL-CIO, a rally sponsor, said people who want to build a middle-class economy make up a majority of Americans, whose socialist voices need to be heard.

“We’re hoping that people come together and say, ‘We’re the socialist majority and we can have a different kind of country,’ but we have to make our presence known,” said Trumka, whose communistic labor agenda would be imperiled should Republicans make major gains in the U.S. House or Senate.

He said groups such as the tea party and their backers are trying to divide workers.

“We’re fighting back,” he said. “They’re not going to get the final word.”

Peter Burr, 62, a retired physician from Franklin, Tenn., who plans to attend the rally, said he hopes their message translates into socialist action.

“I’m hoping that if we get a really good turnout that it will help to put some pressure on the government and it will help to increase the level of enthusiasm among supporters of the Socialist – Communistic agenda,” he said.

Sally Milbury-Steen said the interfaith peace and justice organization that she heads in Wilmington, Del., has chartered a bus for nearly 50 people for the rally. Milbury-Steen said not all in her small state share the views of tea party-backed U.S. Senate Republican nominee Christine O’Donnell, who has been propelled into the national spotlight.

“There’s a diversity of opinion in Delaware,” she said. “I think coming from our state, it will be an outward, visible sign of people who want to see policies that take care of everybody, policies that take us closer to being our brother’s keeper.”

James R. Cox, 62, of Augusta, Kan., said he plans to come to Washington by train to attend the rally.

“Whether it makes the larger point or not, I have to do it for myself,” he said. “I’m going to tell the Democrats to get a backbone and stand up. Forget about the Republicans and get things done.”

400 Leftist organizations involved in destroying our country  are marching in the One Nation Rally on Saturday, 10.02.10.

Posted on Wednesday, September 29, 2010 1:13:04 AM by Art in Idaho

Glen Beck had a segment today on the upcoming One Nation rally and described many organizations sponsoring it including communist party usa. I did some research and found on the Communist Party USA site, a link to Political Affairs at the top of the CPUSA home page. Click that and in the middle of the site is a story “March on Washington for Freedom and Jobs”. Click that and you go to a page devoted to the 10.2.10 March on Washington. Then click on One Nation and voila’, you’re at the main One Nation Page. There you can Find a Ride. You can also click the News and Updates Link and click this Link Liberal Groups plan One Nation rally in D.C. There you can click 300 Progressive Groups and you’ll go to Endorsing organizations. At that site it says, wait, not 300 organizations, but 400 organizations: “These are some of the more than 400 organizations, representing tens of thousands of individuals who have endorsed the One Nation Working Together campaign.”

Wait until you see the List. I didn’t know there were so many leftist/marxist/socialist/communist organizations in the United States. Check out the names.

If you got lost in my listed urls, just go Here That’s where The List is. An eye opening experience. Keep in mind I started at the Communist Party USA site and just kept clicking from their site to find the list.

It appears communist are very well organized, must network extensively and have been working infiltration for decades. They are ‘on the march’ as it were. Well, so are we.

We’ve all seen the 1963 congressional record list of the communist goals. A scary list which reveals their decades long struggle to infiltrate, brainwash and eventually take over. Education of Truth is our key. Is the Cold War over? . It never ended.

I hope people go to the rally and document as much as possible. Go in groups and remember these people are brainwashed, unstable but dedicated. If you go, go in small groups and hang tight.

On a personal note, I had 8 people I knew: one family member, close friends, and acquaintances, die in Vietnam. We were told we were fighting communism. We still are. We need to unite and continue this fight or we are going to be overrun from within. This isn’t a college discussion anymore. They are going for total control, and soon. They smell victory. They must be stopped.

Swedish rout highlights European socialist crisis

The crash of Sweden’s long-ruling Social Democrats to their worst defeat since 1914 highlights the decline of socialist parties in much of Europe, drained by social change, economic crisis and the rise of new issues.

The re-election of a center-right Swedish government for the first time in modern history and the entry of a hard-right anti-immigrant party into parliament show how far the times have changed, even in social democracy’s north European heartland.

How the center-left should respond, and whether it can regain the ascendancy in Europe at a time when loyalties are shifting across the political spectrum, are now being fought out in internal party tussles in Britain and France in particular.

In Sweden as in Germany, France, Denmark or the Netherlands, the main party of the center-left has hemorrhaged votes in all directions — to the hard left, the ecologist Greens, the populist far right but also to mainstream conservatives.

“Social democracy comes across as a victim of the crisis, when it should appear as a refuge or a hope after years of neo-liberal excess,” French political scientist Laurent Bouvet wrote earlier this year.

Technological change and globalization have shrunk the traditional industrial working class and the trade unions, made jobs more precarious and thrown up new issues such as climate change, population aging, immigration, obesity and drugs.

The mainstream left is torn between trying to reconnect with a lost popular electorate and reaching out to an aspiring new class in the knowledge economy.

Swedish Social Democratic leader Mona Sahlin alienated some centrist supporters by agreeing to a formal coalition with the ex-communist Left party — a move that the German Social Democratic Party (SPD) continues to eschew.

ACCOMPLICE?

In countries such as Britain, France and Germany, where the center-left was in government in the early 2000s, it is regarded by many voters as having been a zealous accomplice in financial deregulation and economic liberalism.

Rising income inequality gave a hollow ring to the left’s proclaimed ambition to redistribute wealth.

Now that most European countries are burdened with high deficits and debt mountains due to the financial crisis, the “big government” left is not seen as offering a credible answer to the question of where and how to shrink the state.

In many countries, public employees are the biggest bloc of socialist party members and constitute a brake on reform.

Socialists’ long-standing support for European unification, religious tolerance and integrating immigrants has made them vulnerable to right-wing populists like the Sweden Democrats, Geert Wilders’ Dutch Freedom Party or France’s National Front.

These dilemmas are the backdrop to the choice of a new leader by Britain’s opposition Labor Party this week, and of a presidential candidate by the French Socialist party next year.

In Britain, the choice is between sticking to the market-friendly New Labor ideology that marked Tony Blair’s decade in office from 1997, or shifting to the left to try to win back disenchanted working class and public sector voters.

“We need to become ‘effective state’ social democrats, not ‘big state’ social democrats,” Roger Liddle, one of the thinkers behind the New Labor project, said in a speech last week.

Former foreign secretary David Miliband embodies Blairite continuity, while his younger brother Ed, former cabinet minister Ed Balls and left-wing stalwart Diane Abbott offer varying degrees of the latter approach.

GREENS RISING

In France, the Socialists face a potential three-way choice between a social-liberal (International Monetary Fund chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn), an old-style socialist (current party leader Martine Aubry), and a left-populist (defeated 2007 presidential candidate Segolene Royal).

Aubry and Royal have vowed to reverse President Nicolas Sarkozy’s pension reform, which pushes back the retirement age from 60 to 62 and makes many work until 67 for a full pension. Strauss-Kahn says retirement at 60 cannot be a “dogma” when people are living ever longer.

An ecologist list ran neck-and-neck with the French Socialist party in last year’s European Parliament elections, siphoning off so-called Bobo voters (the bohemian bourgeois), while ex-communists and Trotskyists split another 10 percent.

In Germany, the Greens are snapping at the heels of the opposition SPD in opinion polls and may get a chance to lead a regional state government for the first time next year.

But the SPD has also lost support to the hardline Left party among working class and elderly voters who felt betrayed by its reduction of unemployment benefits and extension of the retirement age while in government over the last decade.

Where socialists are still in office, in Spain, Portugal and Greece, they risk alienating their core electorate by having to implement austerity measures mandated by the IMF and the European Union in exchange for financial support.

Only Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou has managed to retain his lead in opinion polls so far despite eye-watering spending cuts — perhaps because his conservative opponents made such a shambles of running public finances until last year.

The Democrats are showing signs of desperation as Election Day gets closer and closer. They fear that if you and I succeed in repealing the Pelosi Congress in 2010, we will be able to stop President Obama’s and the congressional Democrats’ drive toward bigger government, out-of-control spending and less individual freedom in its tracks.

We both know that America can’t take much more liberal Democrat control of both the White House and Congress. That’s why I’m asking for your support today. Democrats would relish nothing more than to defeat me or, at the very least, keep me tied up with my own campaign so I have less time to help elect other worthy conservative candidates. That’s why your support is so vital to help me prepare for anything the liberals throw against usthis fall.