MEMO FOR THE MOVEMENT LABOR DAY 2010: Excessive influence of BIG LABOR on Obama Administration and Congress has been disastrous for American workers and the Nation’s economy RE: The tremendous amount of power & influence that officials of organized labor have over this administration & congress is adding to the growth of government and makes no sense given that only 7% of the private sector workforce and 12% of the overall workforce are members of a labor union. Last year, for the first time in history, the majority of union members in the country were working for the government-not the private sector. The Obama administration & Congress’ decision making disregards the 93% of the private sector workforce in order to payback Big Labor bosses for previous campaign support-much coming from the dues money collected from workers who are subject to compulsory unionism. “We spent a fortune to elect Barack Obama–$60.7 million to be exact and we’re proud of it.” Andrew Stern, former President, Service Employees International Union (SEIU) ISSUE-IN-BRIEF: As Americans prepare to observe Labor Day, the nation’s unemployment rate continues to remain at record high levels and the federal deficit continues to grow and place a long term burden on every American taxpayer. The Obama administration and Congress have handed out one favor after another in special interest favors to union officials without regard to the public policy ramifications. For example: · Ten days after being sworn in President Obama issued 3 Executive Orders that curtail federal contractor’s free speech during union organizing drives, provide job security for employees of federal service contractors, and require federal contractors to notify employees of their right to join a union. · One week later President Obama signed another Executive Order announcing a government preference for Project Labor Agreements (PLA’s) on all federally funded large-scale construction projects. As a result of this, many projects financed by the so-called “economic stimulus bill” are subject to PLA’s and performed by unionized workers. · The Obama Department of Labor rolled back several rules issued during the Bush administration to increase union transparency on forms required to be filed with the government as required under the Labor Management Reporting Disclosure Act. · The Obama Treasury Department forced financially troubled General Motors and Chrysler into bankruptcy and swinging a deal granting the United Auto Workers respectively 17.5% and 55% stakes in GM and Chrysler. Gallup found for the first time since it began asking the question in 1997 that a majority of Americans now think “unions mostly hurt the economy.” · According to official records, the person who most often visited the White House in 2009 was Andy Stern, then President of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU)-a union that had given more than $4 million since 2006 to scandal ridden ACORN and its affiliates · An overwhelming majority of congressional democrats co-sponsored “card-check” legislation designed to deny workers a secret ballot election to determine if a union would represent them. · The Obama administration and Congress reduced funding to the Department of Labor’s Office of Labor Management Standards (OLMS)-which is the only agency in the entire federal government assigned the responsibility for oversight of organized labor. · President Obama circumvented the Senate-that had objections to NLRB nominee Craig Becker-and recess appointed him as chairman. Becker had previously worked for both the AFL-CIO and the SEIU. · Some in Congress are now proposing a $165 billion union pension bailout. As FOX Business Network reported, these pensions are in bad shape; as of 2006, well before the stock market dropped and recession began, only 6% of these union pension funds were doing well. Gallup recently found for the first time in more than 80 years of asking the question that only a minority of Americans now “approve of labor unions.” Conservative Action Project William Wilson, President, Americans for Limited Government Virginia Thomas, President, Liberty Central Tony Perkins, President, Family Research Council Tom Schatz, President, Council for Citizens Against Government Waste Grover Norquist, President, Americans for Tax Reform Duane Parde, President, National Taxpayers Union Wendy Wright, President, Concerned Women for America Edwin Meese, former Attorney General David N. Bossie, President, Citizens United Ken Boehm, Chairman, National Legal & Policy Center Tom Winter, Editor-in-Chief, Human Events Karen Kerrigan, President, Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council Colin Hanna, President, Let Freedom Ring Ron Robinson, President, Young America’s Foundation Andrea Lafferty, Executive Director, Traditional Values Coalition Mario H. Lopez, President, Hispanic Leadership Fund Dr. Herbert London, President, Hudson Institute David McIntosh, former Member of Congress, Indiana Donna Hearne, Executive Director, Constitutional Coalition Gary Bauer, President, American Values Herman Cain, President, The NEW Voice, Inc. Susan Carleson, Chairman & CEO, American Civil Rights Union J. Kenneth Blackwell, former Treasurer, State of Ohio Becky Norton Dunlop, President, Council for National Policy James Martin, Chairman, 60 Plus Association Myron Ebell, President, Freedom Action Mathew D. Staver, Founder & Chairman, Liberty Counsel Michelle Easton, President, Clare Boothe Luce Policy Institute Phil Burress, President, Citizens for Community Values Alfred Regnery, Publisher, American Spectator David Y. Denholm, President, Public Service Research Foundation Richard Viguerie, Chairman, ConservativeHQ.com Jordan Marks, Executive Director, Young Americans for Freedom Bob McEwen, former Member of Congress, Ohio Rev. Lou Sheldon, Chairman, Traditional Values Coalition Marion Edwyn Harrison, Past President, Free Congress Foundation (All organizations listed are for identification purposes only) FOR ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ON ORGANIZED LABOR AND THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION & CONGRESS PLEASE VISIT THESE WEBSITES: http://www.gallup.com/poll/122744/Labor-Unions-Sharp-Slide-Public-Support.aspx http://www.inthesetimes.com/working/entry/6290/obamaafl-cio_lovefest_once_again_labor_hopes_president_will_prove_loya/ http://union-yes.blogspot.com/2008/05/barack-obama-in-organized-labors-pocket.html http://www.unionfacts.com/ http://online.wsj.com/article/NA_WSJ_PUB:SB124227027965718333.html http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/beltway-confidential/congress-pushing-165-billion-union-pension-bailout-94828874.html http://www.faegre.com/showarticle.aspx?Show=8938 http://www.talkleft.com/story/2009/1/30/143556/925 http://www.truthdig.com/eartotheground/item/20090130_obama_gives_labor_unions_a_boost/ http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/jul/31/obama-supports-union-organizing/ http://www.nlpc.org/stories/2010/01/13/top-ten-union-corruption-stories-year http://biggovernment.com/rmanning/2010/01/20/transforming-the-u-s-department-of-labor-to-the-department-of-organized-labor/ http://www.nlpc.org/stories/2009/04/30/labor-department-rescinds-revised-lm-2-and-lm-30-rules-invites-potential-corrupti http://www.dwt.com/LearningCenter/Advisories?find=65354 http://online.wsj.com/article/NA_WSJ_PUB:SB10001424052702303491304575188263180553530.html http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/244369/cops-and-robbers-daniel-foster
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Conservative Leaders: Big Labor Excessive Influence Disastrous
This is a stunning indictment from the leader of one of America’s most successful technology companies: Unless government policies are altered, he predicted, “the next big thing will not be invented here. Jobs will not be created here.” The U.S. legal environment has become so hostile to business, Otellini said, that there is likely to be “an inevitable erosion and shift of wealth, much like we’re seeing today in Europe–this is the bitter truth.” Not long ago, Otellini said, “our research centers were without peer. No country was more attractive for start-up capital… We seemed a generation ahead of the rest of the world in information technology. That simply is no longer the case…” Otellini singled out the political state of affairs in Democrat-dominated Washington, saying: “I think this group does not understand what it takes to create jobs. And I think they’re flummoxed by their experiment in Keynesian economics not working…” As a result, he said, “every business in America has a list of more variables than I’ve ever seen in my career.” If variables like capital gains taxes and the R&D tax credit are resolved correctly, jobs will stay here, but if politicians make decisions “the wrong way, people will not invest in the United States. They’ll invest elsewhere.” Take factories. “I can tell you definitively that it costs $1 billion more per factory for me to build, equip, and operate a semiconductor manufacturing facility in the United States,” Otellini said… “If our tax rate approached that of the rest of the world, corporations would have an incentive to invest here,” Otellini said. But instead, it’s the second highest in the industrialized world, making the United States a less attractive place to invest–and create jobs–than places in Europe and Asia that are “clamoring” for Intel’s business. The most disturbing part of Otellini’s comments is that he says nothing groundbreaking, nothing unexpected, and nothing that we have not heard many times before. Otellini talks about regulation, taxation, litigation and transparency – all issues that have been cited by business leaders for years. But our ‘leaders’ in Washington ignore these concerns, and instead pile on more taxes, more regulation, more litigation costs, greater uncertainty about the climate going forward. And they do all this while claiming to be ‘pro-jobs.’ Will Congress and the White House ever realize that business leaders are telling the truth? As our government continues to make it more difficult to do business in the US, companies must increasingly look to more favorable climates abroad. If Washington really wants to spur job creation here in the US, they should repeal the health care overhaul, reduce spending, cut the corporate tax rate, give up on cap and trade, and reform litigation. Instead we have been treated to an extended experiment in government control – one that is obviously not producing new wealth, new jobs, or any real hope for the emergence of the industries of the future. Cross-posted from Liberty Central
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Intel CEO Otellini: The Democrats Are Destroying our Economy
Certainly you remember Democrat Rep. Bob Etheridge of North Carolina, who a couple of months ago showed his passion for reportorial transparency: Well unsurprisingly, yesterday former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin endorsed his Republican opponent , Renee Ellmers. The best the Etheridge campaign could come up with in response is
So, while Google may have seen the light on Net Neutrality ( which is actually, amusingly enough, making the far left sound like me ), they still have other issues going on. The WiSpy Street View spying issue is still ongoing, with South Korea raiding their offices and Germany pressuring the firm to be more transparent and responsive to privacy complaints about the program. Because as I said earlier today , asking Eric Schmidt about privacy is like asking Phillip Morris about smoking. The conflict of interest is inherent. Everyone who hides his identity from Google Analytics, Google Adsense, and every other Google program is costing the firm money. Meanwhile, the EU and the FTC are targeting Apple for an incredibly ridiculous reason. You see, Steve Jobs has kept Adobe’s proprietary, intellectual property-protected Flash framework off of iOS (which drives the iPod Touch, iPad, and iPhone). Reasons given include CPU load which drains the battery, and no apparent need for it with the maturity of HTML 5 and CSS 3 technologies available in the Safari browser and its Webkit framework. So naturally the governments are claiming that this open embrace of open, unrestricted technologies… harms competition. Yeah. Seriously. As far as I’m concerned, any government entity that forces Apple to license a closed, monopolized technology, or punishes Apple for failing to do so, loses all legitimacy forever in anything it ever says or does. That’s how irrational this is, to question the abandonment of closed technology in favor of industry standard, open technology as anti-competitive. For crying out loud, Webkit is an open source framework. Anyone can grab the source and use it, even Adobe itself, thanks to its roots in KDE . Apple does virtually everything it can to open up Webkit and Safari, while Adobe has done nothing. And yet Adobe is the good guy here, per the FTC and the EU. What a joke. I cannot express enough how much this burns me up. Meanwhile, at the FCC, the FCC has caught onto the latest buzzword that the rest of the Obama administration uses when it wants to grab power online: “Cybersecurity.” Hold onto your CAT-6 cables, because the government is coming, and it’s here to help. The FBI isn’t here to help , though, unless you’re a big corporation making millions of dollars. According to TechDirt, the FBI has made missing persons a lower priority than copyright infringement cases, which aren’t even supposed to be criminal at all, but rather civil matters. This is a subsidy, pure and simple, but in this case is literally coming ahead of people’s lives and safety. Shame on the FBI. Yet while the FBI goes nuts over copyright, TSA is going wild with file sharing as it saves half-naked pictures of travelers, despite promises that those pictures would not be stored in any form. That claim was of course laughable from the beginning, when even plain, old copiers store data these days. Do we miss the time before the TSA yet? And to finish up tonight, let’s just get a reminder of the hypocrisy of Free Press . As much as they demand transparency for thee, they themselves tell plenty of lies and keep plenty of secrets. Free Press is having many meetings to lobby for its agenda that it’s not even bothering to disclose under the Lobbying Disclosure Act’s requirements. Oops. Good catch, Daily Caller.
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Tech at Night: Google, Apple, Adobe, FCC, FBI, TSA, Free Press
It’s the first Gitmo conviction for the Obama administration and has been kept under seal for ’security reasons’. Just more of that famed Obama administration transparency we keep hearing about, I guess. How nice that it ‘benefits’ both the cook and the Government … I translate that to mean that justice for the 9/11 victims just got screwed. A former cook for Osama bin Laden’s entourage in Afghanistan has reached a secret agreement with the U.S. government that will allow him to serve any sentence at a minimum-security facility at Guantanamo Bay, according to statements by lawyers at a military commission on Monday. Ibrahim al-Qosi, a 50-year-old native of Sudan, who worked for bin Laden for years before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, pleaded guilty last month to conspiracy and material support for terrorism as part of a pre-trial agreement. The case marked the first conviction at Guantanamo Bay under President Obama, whose administration had promised that reformed military commissions would offer greater due process and more transparency. But the government and the defense, with the blessing of Judge Nancy J. Paul, an Air Force lieutenant colonel, have sealed the newly reached agreement, including the maximum sentence that Qosi can serve. A spokesman for the military commission’s prosecutors, Navy Capt. David Iglesias, refused to discuss the agreement or explain why it was kept secret, except to say the plea raises “security issues” and is to the benefit of both Qosi and the government. Two years at Camp 4? Al-Arabyia, a 24-hour Arab news network based in Dubai, cited anonymous sources to report last month that the plea agreement calls for a two-year sentence. In court Monday, Paul ordered the relevant officials at the Defense Department to ensure that Qosi serves any time he gets at Camp 4 — a minimum-security facility at Guantanamo Bay where detainees live in communal quarters — unless the military detention center at Guantanamo is closed. If that happens, and it appears unlikely as the Obama administration’s efforts to close Guantanamo have stalled, Qosi will be moved to a similar prison facility that also offers communal living. Was he more than a cook? Qosi was first charged before a military commission in 2004, when prosecutors alleged that he had managed charitable donations for al-Qaeda and a bin Laden company. But those allegations were dropped when Qosi was recharged in 2007.
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US Govt. Cooks Up Secret Deal with Bin Laden’s Chef
