Bloodthirsty Liberal

Boy, that right wing—pretty dangerous, huh?

In the last few days, we’ve had a student threatened with arrest (albeit by his ignorant teacher) for merely questioning Obama; conservative commenter and pundit S. E. Cupp was smeared in Hustler Magazine; oh yeah, and Governor Haley’s effigy was beaten like a rented mule by a union thugette.

Who stands by what she did:

Nikki Haley said Wednesday that she found the recent video of an AFL-CIO leader smashing a piñata of her “creepy,” and the South Carolina governor described the incident as typical behavior of “union thugs.”

“It’s creepy. I still hurt every time I see it,” Haley said to Greta Van Susteren of Fox News. “This is not typical of South Carolinians. This is typical of union thugs.”

…

With onlookers cheering her on with comments like, “Wait ‘til her face comes around, then whack her,” Dewitt repeatedly beats the piñata until it eventually falls down.

The governor told Van Susteren that the incident only made her more determined to be a “union buster.”

…

“I would have played the game with them no matter it would have been pin the tail on the donkey with Nikki Haley’s face on it. I still would have played,” she told ABC News. “There was no ill intent. We were certainly [having] a good time. I’m not mad or angry.”

Haley, who said she has never spoken to or met Dewitt, said she hopes to never cross paths with the woman and that she would be surprised to ever receive an apology.

Oh yeah, and the Occupy Movement, when not squatting, defecating (different things in this case), raping, and otherwise intimidating and behaving lawlessly, conspired to blow up Chicago.

But you just watch out for that Tea Party! They’re bad people.

Okay, boys and girls, ask yourselves this:

What if a [insert conservative/Republican/business person, etc. here] had done this to a [insert liberal/Democrat/person of color, etc. here]?

On Sunday, YouTube user edbex posted video that shows South Carolina AFL-CIO president Donna DeWitt taking some whacks at a pinata with a black & white photo of Gov. Nikki Haley (R-S.C.) affixed to it (h/t Daily Caller’s Matt K. Lewis).

“After years of being treated like a union thug, Donna Dewitt gets sweet revenge at a retirement reception in her honor,” edbex approvingly notes in her caption.

Additionally:

A video posted online that shows a former union leader in South Carolina smashing a piñata effigy of Gov. Nikki Haley has riled the national office of the AFL-CIO, which wants it taken down.

“Do you think we can get this video pulled,” asked a national AFL-CIO official in an email to Palmetto State union sources.

The author of the email also worried the video might get “picked up by tea partiers, maybe even Haley herself, to attack labor again.”

Nah, you’re fine. Shouldn’t be a problem. (Never remind that I was reminded of the Rodney King beating.)

What a disturbed group of people!

We’ve determined what they are; we’re just wondering why they gave themselves for so cheap?

Video footage obtained by The Daily Caller appears to show a group of women dressed in purple Service Employees International Union-branded clothing, discussing how much they were paid to attend a March 27 protest outside the Supreme Court. The video first appeared online Wednesday.

The SEIU-affiliated women were leaving a protest in support of President Obama’s health care overhaul law. Walking past a camera, they discussed where they planned to eat lunch and how they would pay for it:

“No, no we don’t, we can go to Union Station, we can eat anywhere and then we will all leave out together, that’s what they gave us that 20 dollars for, to spend.”

“Oh, I didn’t know that was what it’s for.”

“Yes, twenty dollars.”

“Twenty dollars?”

“They gave you 20 dollars in the brown envelope!”

“In the brown envelope, in your little errr … [fades off]

“So, what you wanna do?”

I seem to recall the same thing happening before: during the Scott Brown election, I believe. In Wisconsin, in Massachusetts, in DC, SEIU realizes it can’t get its way without handing out a lot of Benjamins (or Andrews, in the case of these cheap floozies). And hopefully not even then!

It’s as much a figment as the independent judiciary:

Twenty-five journalists with the Gannett media group in Wisconsin signed a petition calling for the recall of Republican Gov. Scott Walker, according to a Green Bay newspaper where some of those journalists work.

Kevin Corrado, publisher of the Green Bay Press-Gazette, disclosed the actions of Gannett Wisconsin Media employees in a recent column and said they are facing disciplinary action.

“It was wrong, and those who signed the petition were in breach of Gannett’s principles of ethical conduct,” Corrado wrote.

The state’s Gannett investigative team recently broke the story about how 29 circuit court judges had signed the very same recall petitions.

Corrado said nobody involved in that project, or in “our news or political coverage,” had signed the petitions. “Had they been directly involved, we would identify them,” Corrado wrote.

Still, he said the fact that any employees signed it — including seven at the Press-Gazette — is “disheartening.”

…

“The recall effort has gotten state and national attention, and we as a news organization have done our best to bring that story to you,” Corrado wrote. “The journalists’ instincts, if not their training, should have kicked in, warning them not to get personally involved. They should have realized there could be a public backlash resulting from this lapse in judgment.”

Isn’t is sad to see a true believer like this editor “disheartened” by the “wrong” judgement “in breach of Gannett’s principles of ethical conduct”? Imagine how sad these reporters and judges are to learn that there are enough voters to have voted Scott Walker into office. That’s just not right!

Beautiful.

U.S. labor unions paid MSNBC “Ed Show” host Ed Schultz roughly $200,000 in 2011, and roughly $337,000 over the last seven years, according to Department of Labor documents.

Newsbusters first reported that the liberal TV talker received $190,000 from the Communications Workers of America for “representational activities” in 2011. CWA president Larry Cohen is a regular guest on Schultz’s radio program.

The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers also paid Schultz $9,900 last year.

In 2010 his union salaries totaled a comparatively small $37,350. The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME); the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW); and the Communications Workers of America (CWA) paid him $15,000, $14,850 and $7,500, respectively.

The unions classified the 2010 payments to Schultz as “union administration” expenses, according to Labor Department records.

Schultz’s union salaries doubled since the debut of “The Ed Show” on MSNBC in 2009.

The unions’ records, filed with the federal government in compliance with the Labor Management Reporting and Disclosure Act, show that his financial ties with unions date back to 2005.

Because the left wing media is so honest, transparent, truthful, objective, good, courteous, thoughtful, and sincere. Just ask ‘em.

- Aggie

Only this time, voters would drive them to the airport:

The leader of Indiana’s House Democrats hinted Wednesday that party lawmakers may walk out for the second year in a row to oppose the same Republican “right-to-work” bill blocked last year by their five-week boycott. But some lawmakers seemed split on whether to make such a move.
House Democratic Leader Patrick Bauer told The Associated Press that his caucus planned to meet Wednesday to debate how to handle the GOP proposal that would make Indiana the 23rd state to bar businesses and private unions from mandating that workers pay union fees for representation.

Bauer led the walkout last year. But new fines and lawmakers concerned about re-election in 2012 have made the group wary of another. Rep. Scott Reske, D-Pendleton, says he feels the $1,000 a day fine is expensive and he hinted that some Democrats might not push for a walkout.

“You don’t use the same tactic twice,” he said.

Nothing speaks of doing the people’s business like hanging out at the ti**y bars in Illinois. (I realize that’s actually what the Wisconsin fleebaggers did, but seen one fleebagger—or one ti**y bar—seen ‘em all.)

We didn’t need those jobs anyway.

The decision by the Obama administration to “delay” building the Keystone XL pipeline is a watershed moment in American politics. The implication of a policy choice rarely gets more stark than this. Put simply: Why should any blue-collar worker who isn’t hooked for life to a public budget vote for Barack Obama next year?

The Keystone XL pipeline would have created at least 20,000 direct and indirect jobs. Much of this would have been well-paid work for craftsmen, not jobs as hod carriers to repave the Interstate.

On a recent trip to Omaha, Neb., Mr. Obama signaled where his head was on the pipeline during a TV interview: “Folks in Nebraska, like folks all across the country, aren’t going to say to themselves, ‘We’re going to take a few thousand jobs if it means our kids are potentially drinking water that would damage their health.” Imagine if he’d been leading a wagon train of workers and farmers across the Western frontier in 1850.

Within days of the Keystone decision, Canada’s prime minister, Stephen Harper, said his country would divert sales of the Keystone-intended oil to Asia. Translation: Those lost American blue-collar pipeline jobs are disappearing into the Asian sun. Incidentally, Mr. Harper has said he wants to turn Canada into an energy “superpower,” exploiting its oil, gas and hydroelectric resources. Meanwhile, the American president shores up his environmental base in Hollywood and on campus. Perhaps our blue-collar work force should consider emigrating to Canada.

STOP! Can you imagine a time when it made sense to joke about traditional American blue collar workers (Archie Bunkers) moving to Canada? And yet, as I was reading this for the first time, before I reached that line, that is precisely what jumped into my head: They should move to Canada… and if it wasn’t so far north, maybe we all should. At least they appear to have sane leadership.

Recall as well the president’s gut reaction in 2010 to the BP Gulf oil spill: an order shutting down deep-water drilling in U.S. waters. The effect on blue-collar workers in that industry was devastating. Writing in these pages this week, Alaska GOP Sen. Lisa Murkowski described how Mexico, the Russians, Canada and even Cuba are moving to exploit oil and gas deposits adjacent to ours, while the Obama administration slow-walks new drilling permits.

Hope and Change, Guys. How many blue collar workers voted for this Doofus? A lot. A whole lot.

No subject sits more centrally in the American political debate than the economic plight of the middle class. Presumably that means people making between $50,000 and $175,000 a year. The president fashions himself their champion.

This surely is bunk. Mr. Obama is the champion of the public-sector middle class. Just as private business has become an abstraction to the new class of public-sector Democratic politicians and academics who populate the Obama administration, so too the blue-collar workers employed by them have become similarly abstracted.

You would think someone in the private labor movement would wake up and smell the tar sands. Last week’s Big Labor “victory” in Ohio was about spending tens of millions to support state and local government workers. Many union families attached to the state’s withering auto plants no doubt voted with their public-sector brothers in solidarity. But why? Where the rubber hits the road—new jobs that will last a generation—what does this public-sector vote do for them?

Many farmers, ranchers and timber workers went Republican years ago over an increasingly ideological and uncompromising Democratic environmentalism that was wrecking their livelihoods. Now the same thing is happening to blue-collar workers. Mr. Obama from his first days made clear his hostility to carbon production. At best he views much of the private blue-collar work force as carbon enablers for whom he himself will create a new harmony of “green” industries. That would be Solyndra.

Ok, enough. The rest is at the link. But I have a question: Do you agree that the Middle Class equals $50,000-$175,000 per year?

- Aggie

so goes the rest of the nation?

In “California and Bust,” a massive article in November’s Vanity Fair, Lewis details Whitney’s analysis: While many states are struggling, they’re less vulnerable than cities, because states can always bleed cities for funding. But hundreds of cities – without access to easy ways of raising revenue and with enormous unfunded obligations for pension and retiree health care costs – face fiscal ruin. Where will ground zero be for this meltdown? California, says Whitney.

Lewis fleshes out Whitney’s fears by looking at one city in the Golden State that’s already crashed and another that’s well on its way.

In Vallejo, the cost of contracts with police officers and firefighters led to a declaration of bankruptcy in 2008. Now City Hall feels like a ghost town, roads go unpaved and traffic lights are set on permanent flashing mode. Public services are skimpy – with no prospects of a rebound in sight. Under a bankruptcy plan approved by a judge in August, the city is paying its non-employee creditors just five cents on the dollar.

In San Jose, the cost of retirement benefits and contracts with police and fire agencies has been cannibalizing government services for years, and the process is about to sharply accelerate. Mayor Chuck Reed’s grim forecast: By 2014, his city of 1 million people will only be able to pay for 1,600 public workers to provide all services, down from the present 5,400, which is itself down from the 7,450 before the pension tsunami hit. Before long, Reed says, San Jose’s primary purpose may be as a vehicle to collect tax revenue to pay for retirement benefits to former city employees.

That’s not just hysterics, warns the mayor, “it’s a mathematical inevitability” – unless there are big changes, starting with San Jose’s powerful public employee unions acknowledging the enormity of the city’s fiscal crisis.

I suppose we could change the laws. Maybe we could let cities apply under a hardship clause for one of those really cool machines they have in the Federal Mint? Maybe special people could be allowed to print their own money?

- Aggie

Transport Workers Union Local 100 spokesman Jim Gannon said the Occupy Wall Street movement, which denounces social inequities in the financial system and draws inspiration from the Arab Spring revolutions in Africa and the Middle East, has advanced issues that unions typically support.

What??? The Occupy Wall Street Protests!! That’s What!

Unions, including nurses, will join the Occupy Wall Street protests.

As the Occupy Wall Street protesters rally for a third week, social media sites such as Twitter seem to be spurring similar protests in other cities.

A Twitter account called Occupy Boston mentions a city-wide college walkout there Wednesday.

Meantime, the Massachusetts Nurses Association says “hundreds” of the city’s nurses will rally with the Occupy Boston protesters on Wednesday. The Nurses Association says the protest will be part of the opening day activities for a national nursing convention in Boston.

In New York City, several unions endorsed the Occupy Wall Street movement and plan to join the protesters’ street theater on Wednesday, labor leaders said.

“It’s really simple. These young people on Wall Street are giving voice to many of the problems that working people in America have been confronting over the last several years,” said Larry Hanley, international president of the Amalgamated Transit Union, which has 20,000 members in the New York area.

“These young people are speaking for the vast majority of Americans who are frustrated by the bankers and brokers who have profited on the backs of hard-working people,” Hanley added in a statement. “While we battle it out day after day, month after month, the millionaires and billionaires on Wall Street sit by — untouched — and lecture us on the level of our sacrifice.”

It is simple. Barack Obama has torn us apart. We hate each other. Rich against poor, realistic against insane… he’s done a great job. Who lectures on the level of sacrifice? Not the business community, boyz and girlz, but none other than President Barack Obama, aka Messiah. You voted for the Scold-in-Chief, as did many of the fat cats you hate, incidentally.

There are big protests in Boston today. I plan to make a bag of popcorn (the old-fashioned way, on the stove, more frugal, ‘ya know?) and go down there to watch.

I have a contribution beyond popcorn. If you really want to destroy Wall Street, why not dump stocks? Just sell your evil 401k’s, because businessmen and women have become wealthy building those successful companies. You don’t want to own anything that dirty, do you?

And please let me know in advance so I can jump in and buy a little bit at good prices.

Thanks,

Aggie

This is your union organizer:

This is your union organizer on drugs:

Nearly two-dozen labor leaders are slated to receive a combined $56 million in municipal pension funds during their lifetimes, according to the Chicago Tribune.

A 20-year-old law which changed Illinois’ pension code has left 23 retired union officials in a position to collect that large sum from two of the city of Chicago’s ailing pension funds.

These changes became law without any public debate among state legislators and without cost analysis.

Since the law bases pension payouts on labor leaders’ union salaries, instead of on the more modest salaries they received as city officials, their pensions average three times higher than what the typical city worker receives after retirement.

Any questions?