On Wisconsin -"Get Christie, Love!"

The Madison hullabaloo is not about 'collective bargaining.' It is a get out the vote, stir the base, and marshal the ground forces for the 2012 President Obama Presidency.

The key issue is destroy New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who is the biggest thing to hit that State since the Zeppelin. Governor Christie is the anti-Obama. He speaks plainly and allows deeds to follow his words. Christie is not a 'teaching moment' kind of guy, because he understands the frustrations of hard working people who know exactly what causes economic disaster - a pipe fitter's paycheck can not keep pace with subsidizing other peoples necessities. Taxes are the bubonic plague of our times. Taxes come from political opportunists seeking to broaden their constituencies by having their jobs, food, medicine, schooling, and behavior paid for by working people.

Chris Christie has succeeded where other elected officials have failed,from Barack Obama to Sarah Palin. Both President Obama and Sarah Palin are effective preachers to the choirs. Chris Christie is a mechanic.

In order to destroy the Christie work ethic, the choir masters of both parties need to discredit Governor Walker's work to fix Wisconsin's debt by addressing the role of public employee constituencies that form the base of the Democratic National Committee and the President's agenda - which is playing rope-a-dope ( i.e. Obama's budget) with Congress, while attempting to mirror democratic efforts in the Mid East.
Likewise, the GOP powers that be - the folks who love to blow their own toes off with gusto like John McCain -will allow Walker to 'dangle.'

Anyone who has read even a Classic Comics version of labor history knows that when the United Mine Workers under John L. Lewis eclipsed the American Federation of Labor's power by dint of numbers of members and the dues that came along Big Labor has been more than a player in American life, it was the obstetrician who gave birth to the American middle class and the American Standard of Living. The ALF-CIO was born in 1886 when the Knights of Labor organized the skilled workers of America - skilled tradesmen: meat cutters, carpenters, electricians, engineers, drovers, and teamsters, glaziers and boilermakers. The Congress of Industrial Organization organized the factory, mine and mill workers - often considered unskilled labor.

Both labor forces were pitted against -not their neighbors, but the owners of American Capital - Carnegie, Rockefeller, DuPont, Vanderbilt and Armour. Private capital was forced to bargain -collectively- with labor.

Public salaried and tax-fueled unions came into being in the 1970's. The SEIU was born in 1973,out of the old Chicago Janitor's Union Local 25, when Toronto-based Trotskyite and former aide to George Meaney,Eugene Moats forced out President Tom Ryan and raided the local. Moats called the janitors, not Brothers and Sisters, but Comrades. Soon the union was run, not by union men and women, but by University of Pennsylvania sociologists - Andy Stern and his acolytes. Public labor grew and so did the debt of governments along with the power of numbers and dues -like John L. Lewis. Andy Stern is no John L. Lewis -Lewis was a coal miner and threw the communists out of the CIO. Andy Stern is the polar opposite. Soon government employees clerks, secretaries & etc. were organized and they got their pay from their neighbors - carpenters, auto-workers, machinists & etc.
Taxes fuel debt and the political power of Stern's Unions. The Democratic National Party and at the State levels made alliances with Tax-salaried unions. Interestingly, Moats was ousted for corruption -or charges of corruption.* The media played a big role and agreed to identify Labor universally as SEIU -or Big Labor. The skilled trades went along with that - some power was still some power. (NPR is going after Walker and the critics of Planned Parenthood as well -click my post title)



Andy Stern's PAC Power is not about the American Standard of Living won by the blood and bruises of Real Labor - it is a web that uses Palestinian/Israel misery/Gay Marriage/Green Eco-Nonsense/Race/Gender/ and anything else that wants to be co-opted in the web of power.

Chris Christie succeeded in putting the brakes on this run-away train of propaganda and power.

Wisconsin, Governor Walker, and the circus in Madison are all about 'Get Christie, Loves.'

I admire and respect real, genuine and honest American Labor - private sector, skilled, industrial workers made the American Middle Class. Andy Stern's SEIU model PACS are killing the middle class and American Labor, in my opinion.


FDR realized this and warned against public unions, but seems lost on the power players. John L. Lewis had nothing to do with Marxists, but times change and people ignore history - with the help of Bill Moyers and others.


The cat-calls in Wisconsin are familiar, but Madison is not Henry Ford's Flint, Michigan, or Republic Steel's slaughter of union families in Chicago, 1937 - the cat-calls are against genuine union people and their families, as well as Walker and especially Chris Christie.

*

Service Employees International Union. Eugene P. Moats was ousted from his position as President of the Service Employees International Union Local 25 in August 1996. Moats was charged by the International Union with misappropriation of funds and nepotism. It was alleged that Moats raised his salary without the permission of the Local Board. In addition, he was charged with converting union funds for personal use and bypassing more qualified candidates for well-paying union positions in favor of his family members. Secretary-Treasurer Richard Malkowski and 35 other Local officers were also suspended with pay. The 13,500 member Local, representing janitors and maintenance workers, many of whom are Eastern European immigrants and female, is one of the biggest Locals in Illinois.

Guess Who that might have been the gent bringing charges against Moats?

Janitors Union Chief Under Fire
March 01, 1996|By Stephen Franklin, Tribune Staff Writer.
Zdzislaw Lagodzinski was one of the angriest of the angry Thursday. The dark-haired, broad-shouldered 70-year-old janitor didn't just want the head of union boss Eugene Moats; he wanted his whole body.

"If this were Eastern Europe, we would walk in, put him in a wheelbarrow and take him out of his office," he grumbled in Polish as his co-workers eagerly nodded in agreement.

Lagodzinski makes $5.45 an hour cleaning suburban office buildings. Moats, who is a year older and is president of Service Employees International Union Local 25, makes $250,000 from two union jobs.On Thursday, Moats, one of the state's most influential union leaders had security guards and lawyers to protect him from any form of harm at a hearing on his future.

His reputation among many of the 16,000 Chicago-area janitors in the local already is tarnished, and his 22-year reign as its leader is at stake. Dissident members see him as a symbol of union extravagance and indifference. They say he has padded his payroll with family members and let the local to fall deeply in debt to its parent union. They put the figure at over $600,000. Moats says it is lower.

Thursday's session was to have been the second convened in recent weeks by the international union on internal charges filed by Moats' opponents. When it was abruptly canceled over legal questions raised by Moats without a new date being set, the anger among onlookers stayed at a boiling point.

Some janitors jeered and shouted and tailed Moats as he left yelling, "We are poor people. What are you doing to us?" Moats' supporters growled back, telling the others they are being deceived.

Feelings are strong, the janitors said, because the local has imposed a special dues collection effort to help pay off its debt. "Why take the money from me, those people have it all," said one middle-aged women, referring to Moats and other union leaders.

The squabble is ironic in that the SEIU likes to portray itself as a new, progressive voice for woman and minorities and low-wage workers.

Nearly two-thirds of Local 25 members are from Eastern Europe, mainly Poland. The rest are largely Latino or African-American. Most of its members are women.

The son of a Chicago janitor, Moats was a former aide to AFL-CIO leader George Meany when he was named a union trustee of Local 25 in 1973.

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1996-03-01/news/9608100150_1_janitors-union-leaders-eastern-europe
http://www.thelaborers.net/COIA/magazines/traditional_organized_crime_in_chicago.htm

Celebrate Real American Labor and Ignore Class Warfare Rhetoric of the Hypocrites Playing at Union

The labor movement doesn't have much to celebrate this Labor Day. Congress first established the national holiday in 1894 at unions' behest. Since then, the American labor movement's fortunes rose to their zenith in 1956, when more than three-in-10 workers were union members, only to decline each year after. Today, only 12 percent of workers hold union cards. And if you discount union members who are public employees, barely 7 percent of private-sector workers are union members.

So why has labor unions' membership declined so far in the last 54 years? Some of it has to do with the changing work trends in the United States. We've moved from large-scale industry to service and white-collar jobs, from big employers to small business, and from lifetime tenure to job insecurity and frequent career changes -- all of which makes union organizing more difficult. But the biggest problem for unions has been their own leadership, which has grown increasingly out of touch with the very people those unions hope to represent. - Linda Chavez

I wrote this in 2007 -

This Labor Day - try and rememember that thousands of people struggled and many died for the right to form Unions. These Unions of skilled trades and industrial workers moved America's poor in to the great middle class that created the standard of living enjoyed by no other Nation in History.

Let's not be fooled by the enemies of that standard of living on the political radical Right or the Left. 'Redistribution of Wealth' strategies are the latest phoney labor Ponzi scams - stay true to genuine Labor Unions. Real Labor gives people the skills to move to the next economic level and engages in collective bargaining to protect workers rights, health and welfare and above all safety on the job. Labor is not merely a lobbying tool for slick politcal agendas.


Most of all let's remember the people who stood on the picket lines and suffered the lock-outs to make the American Dream come true.

God Bless the Working Woman and Man! Honor Labor!

Caveat Labor -Chicago Labor, Being Union Does Not Mean Playing ball with Reds.

American Labor helped create the American Middle Class. Public Service Unions in league with SEIU - a PAC - are hell-bent on dstroying the Middle Class.

The Skilled and Industrial Trades should step away from these folks.

This is most disturbing. Please read -

On the national level, Unions have changed priorities. No longer is their primary objective to protect the rights of their own rank and file, their objectives has moved into politics and a progressive/Marxist objective. Hence their support of many of the Administrations policies such as Obamacare, the auto bailout and the financial regulation bill. For an administration that claims to have no special interests, Unions have been able to influence presidential policy like never before. For example the President's executive order, known as the “High Road Contracting Policy”gives preferential treatment to government construction contractors that pay their hourly workers a "union wage" and provide additional benefits such as health insurance, employer-funded retirement plans and paid sick leave. In other words, the POTUS is "cutting out" the 85% of construction companies that are non-union shops out of the $500 billion dollar market of Federal construction Jobs. A move that not only depresses the Construction industry, but raises the cost of Federal construction projects between 10-20% increasing the federal deficit.

Fresh from their domination of presidential policy, the unions are moving into building the progressive/Marxist base. The latest example of which is the AFL/CIO joining a Marxist coalition to get out the vote in the midterm election.


The following appeared in People's World a magazine for the Marxist/Communist movements in the United Sates:

The AFL-CIO executive committee voted unanimously this morning to join One Nation, Working Together, a new national coalition of labor and civil rights groups that has as its purpose to "reorder America's priorities by investing in the nation's most valuable resource - its people."

The labor, civil rights, environmental, faith and other organizations that have formed the new coalition intend to replace unemployment and economic crisis faced by the country's majority with "nothing less than a future of shared prosperity for all our people," the AFL-CIO said in a statement after it voted to join One Nation.

"None of us alone have been able to achieve our priorities," said Richard Trumka, president of the AFL-CIO.

One Nation's first official act as a coalition will be a march on Washington on Oct. 2, which unions say will energize an army of tens of thousands who will return to their neighborhoods, churches, schools and voting booths to prevent a Republican takeover of Congress in November and begin building a new permanent coalition to fight for a progressive agenda.
The AFL-CIO joins groups such as The NAACP, SEIU 1199, Green for All, National Council of La Raza, US Student Association, and the Center for Community Change in the "One Nation, Working Together" effort.


The "One Nation, Working Together" Get out the vote movement is led by United for Peace and Justice

United for Peace and Justice is leading an effort to bring the peace movement into these mobilizations UFPJ joins the AFL-CIO, SEIU and a broad range of civil rights, labor, peace and social justice organizations in endorsing this call and in organizing for August 28 and October 2 to bring as visible and strong message to the Obama Administration that it is time to deliver on their promises to end war and rebuild our country!
You can tell the objectives of an organization by its friends, United For Peace and Justice seeks friends who are for "social justice," "globalization" (world-wide redistribution of income), and who are against multi-national American corporations.

UFPJ will seek to strengthen our alliances and working relationships with other forces in the antiwar movement, as well as the movements for global economic, environmental and social justice. Our international work will be based on respect for the sovereignty of other nations and a commitment to human rights and international law. We will support and seek cooperation with our sister organizations around the world, and we will act in solidarity with progressive groups and individuals within the United States and the nations occupied by U.S. forces.
These are the people running UFPJ (the group's steering committee) most are from Marxist, progressive, or communist groups:

Dana Balicki -- Code Pink
Phyllis Bennis -- Institute of Policy Studies
Frida Berrigan -- War Resisters League
Jackie Cabasso -- Western States Legal Foundation
Steve Carlson -- Wisconsin Network for Peace and Justice
Libero Della Piana -- Communist Party USA
Matt De Vlieger -- Orlando Peace and Justice
Lisa Fithian -- Alliance for Community Trainers, Inc.
Joseph Gainza -- American Friends Service Committee - Vermont
Nora Gordon -- Brooklyn For Peace
Katie Heald -- PDX Peace Coalition
Mike Hearington -- Georgia Peace and Justice Coalition
Bill Henning -- US Labor Against the War
Marilyn Katz -- Chicagoans Against War and Injustice
Hany Khalil -- War Times
Leslie Kielson -- NYC - United For Peace and Justice
Siu Hin Lee -- National Immigration Solidarity Network
Siri Margerin -- Bay Area - United For Peace and Justice
George Martin -- Milwaukee Coalition for a Just Peace
Monami Maulik -- Desis Rising Up and Moving - DRUM
Deb McIntyre -- South Dakota Peace and Justice Center
Michael McPhearson -- Veterans For Peace
Bamshad Mobasher -- Oakland Park Coalition for Truth and Justice
Perry O'Brien -- Iraq Veterans Against the War
Shauen Pearce -- Fellowship of Reconciliation
Baltazar Pinguel -- American Friends Service Committee
Terry Rockefeller -- September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows
Virginia Rodino -- Baltimore - United For Peace and Justice
Larry Syverson -- Military Families Speak Out
David Wildman -- US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation


There is absolutely nothing wrong with Marxists, progressives, or even Communists leading a protest to get their supporters to come out and vote for their candidates. What is wrong is for Union Leaders to support these groups without the full knowledge and understanding of their membership. The AFL-CIO is telling its members that they are joining in a get out the vote movement with organizations that have similar objectives as theirs. ( Emphasis My Own)
I wonder what their rank and file would say if they announced they were joining together with Marxist, Communist, and progressive groups, whose objectives are social justice," world-wide redistribution of income (taking money out of their pockets and giving it to workers of less-developed nations) and who are against the multi-national American corporations who sign their paychecks. They would probably look for new leadership.

H/T Yid with Lid

John L. Lewis tossed the Reds out of American Labor in the 1930's - that was the beginning of the great Middle Class and the American Standard of Living.

What's next?

Amateur Hour White House Advisors Wear the Jacket in the Failed Chicago Bid for Olympics 2016

"It's a secret ballot. You can't necessarily be certain that the people who tell you they'll vote for you ultimately will," Jarrett said. "So I'm sure they did the very best they could do to get the intelligence they had."

The president made his decision last weekend. He conferred with aides monitoring healthcare legislation, who concluded that the bill would not be up for a floor vote in the 24-hour period the president was overseas. So Obama privately told his staff that he would go to Copenhagen, Jarrett said.

Click my post title for more from the Chicago Tribune.

However, Friday's Sun Times gave voice to the real nitwits.

Immediately after the Olympic Pooch got screwed the Chicagoland Boiled Beets Progressives Mensa Chapter ( Rev. Jesse 'Page Eight' Jackson, Rep.Susan Mendoza and Turkish Delight Rep. Jan Schakowsky) blamed the failure on President George W, Bush.

Get this - "There must be" resentment against America, the Rev. Jesse Jackson said, near the stage where he had hoped to give a victory speech in Daley Center Plaza. "The way we [refused to sign] the Kyoto Treaty, we misled the world into Iraq. The world had a very bad taste in its mouth about us. But there was such a turnaround after last November. The world now feels better about America and about Americans. That's why I thought the president's going was the deal-maker."

State Rep. Susana Mendoza (D-Chicago) said she saw firsthand the resentment against America five years ago when she was in Rio de Janeiro. "I feel in my gut that this vote today was political and mean-spirited," she said.

"I travel a lot. ... I thought we had really turned a corner with the election of President Obama. People are so much more welcoming of Americans now. But this isn't the people of those countries. This is the leaders still living with outdated impressions of Americans.".S. Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) said she was approached by a consul general at the plaza as they waited for word Friday. "He said ... he was hearing that there wasn't enough time for Barack Obama to dispel the old image. ... But I don't know if that's it." That Old Bush Image!

Nope.

These are the very same Boiled Beets Progressives who demand that SEIU be allowed to destroy the American Labor Movement with the elimination of the 'secret ballot' in the Employee Free Choice Act. AS Val Jarrett, who gave America the Van Jones Green Czar summer time 'distraction' says, "It's a secret ballot. You can't necessarily be certain that the people who tell you they'll vote for you ultimately will, . . . "So I'm sure they did the very best they could do to get the intelligence they had."

And that is the very best Progressive intelligence.

Val, do I hear a bus coming your way? Must be all that Copenhagen.





http://www.suntimes.com/sports/olympics/1804170,CST-NWS-olyresent03.stng

Pat Hickey's Labor Confessio -Why I am Not in the Trades - It's Work!

Behold His Handiwork! Things Pat Hickey Fixed: He is no plumber, no engineer, no electrician, no mechanic and certainly no cosmetic surgeon!

Do click my post title for the link to the great caveat to Labor and Joel Kotkin's Politico piece. H/T - Max Weismann & There I Fixed It!

George McGovern v.EFCA 'risks silencing those who would speak.' Keep Unions and America Rights Strong

George McGovern against the Employee Free Choice Act - You will not see this in Chicago Newspapers. This is a reproduction from Wall Street Journal

SEIU has smothered the Chicago Media.

As a congressman, senator and one-time Democratic nominee for the presidency, I've participated in my share of vigorous public debates over issues of great consequence. And the public has been free to accept or reject the decisions I made when they walked into a ballot booth, drew the curtain and cast their vote. I didn't always win, but I always respected the process.

Voting is an immense privilege.

That is why I am concerned about a new development that could deny this freedom to many Americans. As a longtime friend of labor unions, I must raise my voice against pending legislation I see as a disturbing and undemocratic overreach not in the interest of either management or labor.

The legislation is called the Employee Free Choice Act, and I am sad to say it runs counter to ideals that were once at the core of the labor movement. Instead of providing a voice for the unheard, EFCA risks silencing those who would speak.

The key provision of EFCA is a change in the mechanism by which unions are formed and recognized. Instead of a private election with a secret ballot overseen by an impartial federal board, union organizers would simply need to gather signatures from more than 50% of the employees in a workplace or bargaining unit, a system known as "card-check." There are many documented cases where workers have been pressured, harassed, tricked and intimidated into signing cards that have led to mandatory payment of dues.

Under EFCA, workers could lose the freedom to express their will in private, the right to make a decision without anyone peering over their shoulder, free from fear of reprisal.

There's no question that unions have done much good for this country. Their tenacious efforts have benefited millions of workers and helped build a strong middle class. They gave workers a new voice and pushed for laws that protect individuals from unfair treatment. They have been a friend to the Democratic Party, and so I oppose this legislation respectfully and with care.

To my friends supporting EFCA I say this: We cannot be a party that strips working Americans of the right to a secret-ballot election. We are the party that has always defended the rights of the working class. To fail to ensure the right to vote free of intimidation and coercion from all sides would be a betrayal of what we have always championed.

Some of the most respected Democratic members of Congress -- including Reps. Marcy Kaptur of Ohio, George Miller and Pete Stark of California, and Barney Frank of Massachusetts -- have advised that workers in developing countries such as Mexico insist on the secret ballot when voting as to whether or not their workplaces should have a union. We should have no less for employees in our country.

I worry that there has been too little discussion about EFCA's true ramifications, and I think much of the congressional support is based on a desire to give our friends among union leaders what they want. But part of being a good steward of democracy means telling our friends "no" when they press for a course that in the long run may weaken labor and disrupt a tried and trusted method for conducting honest elections.

While it is never pleasant to stand against one's party or one's friends, there are times when such actions are necessary -- as with my early and lonely opposition to the Vietnam War. I hope some of my friends in Congress will re-evaluate their support for this legislation. Because as Americans, we should strive to ensure that all of us enjoy the freedom of expression and freedom from fear that is our ideal and our right.

Mr. McGovern is a former senator from South Dakota and the 1972 Democratic presidential candidate.

Labor Day: God Bless All Working People & Save All from Redistribution of Wealth Scams!

He's facing the job - too many Americans have turned their backs on what the skilled American Tradesman is doing.

This Labor Day - try and remember that thousands of people struggled and many died for the right to form Unions. These Unions of skilled trades and industrial workers moved America's poor in to the great middle class that created the standard of living enjoyed by no other Nation in History.

Let's not be fooled by the enemies of that standard of living on the political radical Right or the Left. 'Redistribution of Wealth' strategies are the latest phony labor Ponzi scams - stay true to genuine Labor Unions. Real Labor gives people the skills to move to the next economic level and engages in collective bargaining to protect workers rights, health and welfare and above all safety on the job. Labor is not merely a lobbying tool for slick political agendas.


Most of all let's remember the people who stood on the picket lines and suffered the lock-outs to make the American Dream come true.

God Bless the Working Woman and Man! Honor Labor!

Pray for all Americans in the Path of Gustav!