Flipping Mickey Ds For Ever! SEIU's Commie Gimmickry and Wage Slavery

 

I worked in the fast food industry from September 1969 - November 1969.  Gene Mahoney hired me along with Pat Murphy and Timmy Atkins, as well as about six young ladies to work at Chicken Unlimited on north east corner of 79th & Wood Street for $1.30 per hour.

Gene Mahoney had a gold mine due to his foresight and a loan from Standard State Bank at 79th & Ashland. The corner of 79th & Wood was a people magnet.  Around the corner on Wood was a saloon ( very busy)and across the street the 18th Ward Republican Headquarters ( rarely visited) on the south east side of the corner was Kiley and Kalina's Drug Store two more busy saloons, a fore-runner to 7/11 Hites' - which sold candy and pop to hundreds of Little Flower Grammar School & High School students and the bread and cheese that Dads forgot while visiting the three saloons - ' Here's a buck, run up to Hites' and get a loaf of that Butternut and a hunk a Baloney, or your Old Lady will crucify me.'

 Across the street was Fields one of many Greek restaurants that served Mass go-ers, mourners from Sheehys/Walter Quinlan & Sons, or high school teachers and  coaches from Little Flower High School on break.  Fields, with manager/cook/ owners named Chris, Jim and Gust,  served consistently wonderful food and coffee that was better than any brewed by a Barista extant.

Gene Mahoney niche-marketed , shift changers, teen-agers with pocket change, guys who needed nourishment to go along with the Great Taste of Drewrys/Hamms/Meister Brau and Schlitz, and families requiring a quick meal of fried chicken , hamburgers, fries, shrimp and creamy cole slaw with very generous helping of buns and honey.  Gene Mahoney was an electrician by trade and managed a hardware store, as well as operated this Chicken Unlimited station. He later opened two more.

Gene Mahoney tasked me, Pat Murphy and Tim Atkins with deep frying chicken, shrimp and spuds and also grilling the beef patties for low-end hamburgers and the signature Wham-Burger ( so-named for its size and secret Wham Sauce) according to franchise standards.  I was an adept with a spatula, but miserable a deep-fryer failure.  Chicken, shrimp and spuds were to be cooked to a golden brown  Mine came out of the bubbling oils with all of the  texture and appearance of a Rawlings,  a Spaulding, or a Wilson . . . football.

I took home eight pay checks.  On Halloween, Gene Mahoney informed me that I should seek employment where I needed to deep-fry "nothing."  I went to work at Gee Lumber two miles west on 79th Street - it was longer walk to work, but found my skills and attention level to detail work more suited to cutting 2X4s, mixing cement or stacking lumber.  I continued to take my high school lunches at Chicken Unlimited on Wood Street all through my senior year and was delighted to see that my replacement, Kevin Glynn, was superb fryer of foods.  I was paid $ 1.30 at Chicken Unlimited and at Gee Lumber and banked that cash at Standard State Bank for my looming tuition at Loyola University.  I did not aspire to be a chicken fryer, nor a cutter of lumber.

Would I have been happier making $ 15 an hour soaking a hamburger with Wham sauce?  I rather doubt that, unless my aspirations matched the prevailing minimum wage.

1954 - Full Universal Health Care for all Local 25 Members and their Families - not now.  SEIU spend dues on the likes of Gov.Pat Quinn, Sen. Dick Durbin and Marxist 501(c) 3s and entertaining the Chicago media..  

SEIU, is the son of Local 25 Chicago Office, Theatre, and Amusement Building Janitors' Union. In 1969, that Local was run by old timey union tough guys, like its President Tom Burke,  who had their heads busted by management goons hired by the Building Managers Association of Chicago while walking picket lines.  I worked out of this local during my summer vacations between my junior and senior year.  I made $ 1.85 ($.55) more than the Chicken Unlimited and Gee Lumber scale. Nickels added up back then. When my summer work ended in August 1969, I settled for the lower wage in order maintain a less than full-time weekly set of hours.  I was still in high school. Gene Mahoney, and Mr. Jim Gee, Jr. helped me pay the $80 in tuition at Little Flower High School and save for the $1,400 annual tuition at Loyola. SEIU was born when Local 25 was seized and turned over to the Toronto Local run by Marxists in 1973 and they controlled the union Cook County Democrats, the Chicago news media and murdered the aspirations of its membership - in my opinion.

The Reds ran Local 25 and adopted the color purple under the now invisible direction of Marxist Andy Stern.

Today, labor remains very confused.Labor  History has been forgotten, or erased by SEIU. Skilled and Industrial trades have cooperated with SEIU for decades and allowed the "producers" to go-along to get along.

A producer was laborer who had something to show at the end of his labors - a carpenter, a butcher, dress-maker, a canner, a boilermaker, a steam-fitter, a pipe-fitter could join the Knights of Labor - the people who actually won the eight hour day and forty hour week.  A priest, a parson, a clerk, or an academic could not be a member of the working class. 

The Knights of Labor was a rather inclusive group. It sought to unite together all "producers." Producers included anyone that constructed a physical product in the course of their workday. The Knights of Labor welcomed factory workers and business owners into its ranks. The group rejected "nonproducers"—people who did not engage in physical labor, such as bankers, lawyers, and academics. The Knights of Labor sought to create a united front of producers versus the nonproducers. The organization even allowed women and African Americans to join its ranks. Together, the producers sought an eight-hour workday, an end to child labor, better wages, and improved working conditions in general. Under (Terence) Powderly's leadership, the organization also sought to instill morality in its members, including providing support for the temperance movement.(emphases my own)

 Terence Powderly and the Knights of Labor, like Mother Jones and Booker T. Washington have all but disappeared from the labor conscious vocabulary.

All labor is noble; by that I mean any job accepted by woman or man and carried out with care and conviction.  Some Labor remains noble; by that I mean, organizations of working men and women who bargain in good faith with wage providers.  SEIU, in my considered opinion, is and has been dangerous.

The Minimum Wage Dodge is no more than another Cadillac Commie gimmick to destroy the American Middle Class and the American Standard of living.  Leadership of SEIU comes out academia and  not the work force.  Schools of Social Work produce Andy Stern, Anna Burger, or discredited scams like ACORN which gave Illinois Keith Kelleher. I doubt any SEIU Clipboard, or Bullhorn Artiste ever swung a mop, stripped a floor, or cleaned brass.  

The skilled and industrial trades are led by producers - workers actually know how to pack a pump, thread pipe, and the difference between red, green, white and black wires. 

Skilled trades people aspired to wages they earned.  SEIU enslaves its membership to a wage it manages squeeze out of taxpayers via legislation.  

$ 15 an hour are slave wages.  

SEIU Scabs - It's All Good . . .evidently

Ever wonder where the labor term "scab" comes from? For those who might not know, a scab is also sometimes called a"strikebreaker:" a person who returns to the job without permission from the union or the striking workers during a strike action. One of the most powerful weapons a labor union has is a strike. By crossing the picket line, a scab can render a strike useless. Kate Thomas -SEIU.org

I grew up in a family that despises scabs.  We were all taught as soon as we could walk -Never Cross a Picket Line.

That is an absolute. I never have done so. Nor have I given business to anti-union entities - No Wal-Mart ever; unlike many Progressives. Real labor created the standard of living that I have been blessed with all my life.  Real labor is sacred.  

These days?  Not so much.

When Real Labor decided that SEIU made a good partner a few years ago things changed. Big Labor is equated with SEIU and AFSCME and many manifestations of teachers unions.  All are public-salary entities.

Real labor took a beating that will continue until the goals of the Marxists who run and control public service labor are reached and the middle class built by organized labor will disappear.

Here is just one example of this Marxist/Trotskyite hypocrisy that goes unchallenged by news papers, radio and television:

Message to All SEIU Local 73 Members at Chicago Public Schools
Posted by adamrosen on September 6, 2012SEIU Local 73 stands in solidarity with 26,000 public school teachers, clinicians and paraprofessionals who are fighting for a contract with Chicago Public Schools. However, we do have a contract with Chicago Public Schools and we cannot go on a sympathy strike with CTU.  The majority of our members approved a contract with CPS that included a no subcontracting agreement for the life of the agreement along with a “me-too” clause on wages comparable to what is achieved for paraprofessionals. . . .(wait for it!). . .However, we do have a contract with Chicago Public Schools and we cannot go on a sympathy strike with CTU.  The majority of our members approved a contract with CPS that included a no subcontracting agreement for the life of the agreement along with a “me-too” clause on wages comparable to what is achieved for paraprofessionals.

Solidarity?   Uh, huh.  Now, that's some real Studs Terkel Lefty Horse-shit! Imagine a guy telling the mother of his six children, " Babe, I only kinda slept and had sex with that man." The heart wants . . . what the #$%^?

Real labor backed the Chicago Tribune's striking printers from January 1986 and all the way through the buy-out settlements in Sept. 1987.

Pickets from every skilled trade union marched with the Printers and did not cross the picket line and cancelled the Chicago Tribune.

 That was then.
This is now.  
I doubt if an inflatable rat will get dumped at SEIU headquarters on Ashland, but one should be carted there in Teamster City.

O Tempora, O Mores!

Different Times, different bullshit, or horse-shit, or both.



http://www.seiu.org/2010/01/origins-of-a-scab.php
http://seiu73.org/2012/09/06/message-to-all-seiu-local-73-members-at-chicago-public-schools/
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1987-09-30/business/8703130991_1_printers-tentative-accord-usery
















http://www.seiu.org/2010/01/origins-of-a-scab.php

Rahm, Explain NATO/G-8 Benefits to "Everybody" . . . Very, Very Slowly.

“Everybody understands the big upside for our city’s economic activity, job creation. There’s gonna be world leaders, foreign ministers, finance ministers, press from around the world to see what we all know to be the greatness of the city of Chicago*.”

Yep,and Yessiree, Bob! Why only last August the protected activists announced the icing on Rahm's Window to the World Welcome Cake! Light them candles!

Chicago could see crowds of protesters similar to the 35,000 or so activists who descended on St. Paul, Minn., during the 2008 Republican National Convention, said Joe Lombardo, co-coordinator for the New York-based United National Anti-War Committee.

"With the war (and) the global economy as they are, and the (U.S. presidential) election in full swing next spring, I think it will have the potential to be bigger than the protests in Minnesota," said Lombardo, a retired New York state government worker who has participated in demonstrations since the 1960s. "Those issues are not going to go away (by May), and Chicago is a larger city than some of the other places they've had these summits recently."

Chicago activist Joe Iosbaker, who helped organize the RNC protests in 2008 and whose home was raided by FBI agents in October 2010, said he applied for permits to hold demonstrations in Daley Plaza and Federal Plaza downtown the day the White House announced the city would host the summits.

So far, he has not heard anything about the status of the permits from Cook County about using Daley Plaza or the agency that controls Federal Plaza. City officials also have said organizers will not be able to apply for a permit for a planned march through the city until the first of the year, Iosbaker said.

"They told me they would get back to me in two weeks to let me know at least that we were in the process of getting the permit," Iosbaker said. "That was nine weeks ago."

Local activist Andy Thayer said demonstrations will be peaceful, despite a recent statement by police Superintendent Garry McCarthy that the department is preparing for "mass arrests" of protesters during the summit. . . . Iosbaker noted that events like the G8 and World Trade Organization summits have seen some violence in their host cities. Iosbaker attributed the clashes to aggressive police and said his group is planning to do nothing to disrupt the city or the conferences.

"What we want is a safe, permitted, legal protest," Iosbaker said. "Something that parents feel safe bringing their babies in strollers to, and we want our voice to be heard."

DUDE!!! Anarchists, SDS Senior Citizens, Joe Isobaker's XXXXXL SEIU Purple T-Shirted Shouters, Andy Thayer's Gay Rainbow Multi-Purpose Protest Coalition, Mummers, Zombies, The Hamas Cruise Directors, ISM's Kevin Clark and the Catholic Schoolgirls Against the War, Happenin' Dudes in V-Masks, Code Pinkettes, Wobblies, OWS Veterans, Billy Ayers and his Odious Old Lady, Peoples Law Office Ambulance Chasers, More Andy Thayer, Clowns, Balloons and Michael Moore Rides for the Kids!

My Questions, Rahm:

Ample Parking? What about Ample Parking?

Cinco De Mayo? No Mas, or will it be a moveable feast like October Fest?

How you gonna get all the off the clock Euro-Trash Conventioneers to the Horseshoe Casino?

What's the Over and Under on the Litigation Net?

Where's the Youthful Flash Mobs supposed to loot?

Does Christine Amanpour still get a press pass?

Will CTA Forest Claypool be get time and half, or double bubble driving buses without a pee?

How will this affect side-walk cafe life for the Liberal Gentry?

North Avenue Beach? Open? Closed? Film at Ten?

Should be a dandy May.


*Chicago Principles
• Our solidarity will be based on respect for a political diversity within the struggle for social, economic and
environmental justice. As individuals and groups, we may choose to engage in a diversity of tactics and plans of
action but are committed to treating each other with respect and working towards a common goal of peace and
justice.
• As we plan our actions and tactics, we will take care to maintain appropriate separations of time and space
between divergent tactics.
• We oppose any state repression of dissent, including surveillance, infiltration, disruption, limiting our action
to “free speech zones,” and violence, or attempts to divide our movement through the conscious creation of
divisions regarding tactics, organization, strategies, and alliances.
• Any debates or criticisms will stay internal to the movement, avoiding any public or media denunciations of
fellow activists and events.http://cang8.wordpress.com/
https://www.google.com/search?q=NATO+G8+Summit+in+Chicago&rls=com.microsoft:en-us:IE-SearchBox&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&sourceid=ie7&rlz=1I7GGIH_enUS268

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO_summit

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Resist-the-Chicago-G8NATO-Summits-May-2012/199067310146117

Mandarin Andy S(EIU)Tern Occupies Wall Street Journal

Which is why I remark,
And my language is plain,
That for ways that are dark
And for tricks that are vain,
The heathen Chinee is peculiar, --
Which the same I am free to maintain.
President Obama still could not find a Chinaman on 22nd Street.


Years ago, before Senator Barack Obama appeared in the Temple of Isis ( or Oprah) in Denver at the Democratic National Convention, SEIU's Andy Stern and Anna Burger made extended and frequent visits to Red China.

Purple Mandarin Andy Stern and Anna May Wong Burger on The Road for the Reds in 2006.

Newsweek and Time had fabulously ornate photos and syrupy articles of Mandarin Andy and Shanghai Anna meeting with their Maoist pals. You will need to spend hours and hours on the information super-highway digging up those articles and photos tossed down the Orwellian Memory Hole after 2008.

President Obama bowed to Red China, no doubt prompted by Mr. Deficit Stern - that obeisance did not work out all too well for Nobel bed-decked Olympic Barry.

Mandarin Andy was appointed to President Obama's Deficit panel along with Illinois clown Congressperson Jan Schakowsky, but Andy was tagged with accusations of fiscal malfeasance and exited stage left. Mandarin Andy immediately Google-scrubbed the accusations and his purse puppies like Tom Friedman, Ezra Klein, Joan Walsh and MSNBC looked to Eygpt for Hope and Change - the Islamic Brotherhood won in a landslide this week and Jordan is next!

Red China is trying to get another stimulating wad of cash out of America, but that damn Congress is just too mean. Dragon Dancers are Occupying every city . . .well sort of . . .the Heathen Chinee are very, very patient. Maybe a Barbara Boxer Rebellion is in the offing?

Well,Ding Hao, Feather merchants!

Mandarin Andy, President Obama's Old China Hand, is back smooching the Red Rumps of the Beijing in of all places the Wall Street Journal. Stern-first steaming his Purple XXXXXL gunboats down the Yangtze River of Capitalist Commerce!

The conservative-preferred, free-market fundamentalist, shareholder-only model—so successful in the 20th century—is being thrown onto the trash heap of history in the 21st century. In an era when countries need to become economic teams, Team USA's results—a jobless decade, 30 years of flat median wages, a trade deficit, a shrinking middle class and phenomenal gains in wealth but only for the top 1%—are pathetic.

This should motivate leaders to rethink, rather than double down on an empirically failing free-market extremism. As painful and humbling as it may be, America needs to do what a once-dominant business or sports team would do when the tide turns: study the ingredients of its competitors' success.

While we debate, Team China rolls on. Our delegation witnessed China's people-oriented development in Chongqing, a city of 32 million in Western China, which is led by an aggressive and popular Communist Party leader—Bo Xilai. A skyline of cranes are building roughly 1.5 million square feet of usable floor space daily—including, our delegation was told, 700,000 units of public housing annually.

Meanwhile, the Chinese government can boast that it has established in Western China an economic zone for cloud computing and automotive and aerospace production resulting in 12.5% annual growth and 49% growth in annual tax revenue, with wages rising more than 10% a year.

Team China????

You Flyin' Tiger!

http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2006/10/16/8390290/

John Ruberry Marathon Pundit on the Street With SEIU . . .I mean OWS Chicago

Pat Quinn and his Marxist guru Dr. Quentin Young* - Shanghai Pat is sporting his SEIU Purple Tie - wears it alot.

That purple tie and the color purple here in Illinois is the icon of the next layoff for a skilled tradesman, cop, nurse, firefighter, Chicago sanitation worker ( Garbage Collection Grid), Water Reclamation District employee ( think Rahm's looming Tax Water Park, kids) all thanks in large part to the influence of SEIU on Illinois' political/journalistic/academic culture.

When all the taxes have been sucked dry, it's lay-off time! We have larded the government work rolls and the pension debt at the say-so of SEIU.

Yesterday, I wrote about the Vanishing American Middle Class. This morning I read Marathon Pundit by Morton Grove's on the scene pundit-blogger John Ruberry.

Rubes is a guy who is like so many Americans; he has a good memory and is not much for the Memes.

When The Catholic School Girls Against the War tossed fake blood on worshippers at Holy Name Cathedral he too remembered that International Solidarity Movement ( Hamas Activists)leader Kevin Clark not only goaded the goofy kids taken away in hand cuffs after their assault, but had also encouraged American-born Rachel Corrie to place herself in front of an Israeli Bulldozer and become an International martyr for the Left. Kevin Clark is a Gay Liberation activist as well and all purpose goader who manages to avoid arrest.

More so, John Ruberry also recognizes that activists like the shameless Clark work and play together, while the lazy Chicago media actively ignores their complicity in every confrontational demonstration and manage to spark police bashing universally.

Hamas, or the Palestinian Blockade, or George Bush Hate Fests, or anti-Catholic Gay Rights shout-downs, Condoms for Kindergartners, or Big Box SEIU Tax Raises, Kevin Clark, Andy Thayer and SEIU's Joe Isobaker are in the thick of the goading, shouting, liquid tossings, or press opportunities.

The Middle Class, in particular families supported by members of the Skilled Trades and Industrial unions, has been chipped away to near invisibility by SEIU and their lesser lights. SEIU is the monster PAC that masquerades as a labor union.

SEIU became legitimatized under the leadership of oafish John Sweeney in the 1970's, along with Teachers Unions, AFSCME, and radicalized under the great Mandarin of "Labor" Andy Stern.

SEIU is the most dynamic of organizing machines. They amass numbers - members, dues, and votes. Their members stay in low paying jobs for their entire lives as members of SEIU - janitors, nursing home bed-pan tossers, some nurses & etc.

SEIU members depend upon the threats of the leaders over cowardly, or cynical legislators, City council members, or any one who can raise tax revenue. That is collective bargaining SEIU fashion.

The Democratic Party and the Skilled Trades found it convenient to play-ball with SEIU, in this our post-Shakman Progressive world. SEIU feeds platitudes to lazy ink-slingers and copy for the morning reads.

Pipe-fitters, Insulators, Operating Engineers, Iron Workers, Electricians, Carpenters and Industrial workers have allowed the bullhorns of SEIU and its armies of XXXXL Purple T-shirt clad mobilized forces to intimidate legislators and keep American Labor in the news. In fact so effective was the Marxist Andy Stern in leading labor that BIG LABOR became synonymous with SEIU. SEIU is the voice of the National Democratic Party on Health Care, Gay Marriage, Abortion and Redistribution of wealth. SEIU organizes. SEIU is Occupy Wall Street as it was Occupy Madison and get Walker.

Click my post title and read John Ruberry and take a gander at the great photos take by a real journalist. You won't find this coverage of OWS kiddies in the Tribune or the Sun Times.

Thanks Rubes!

*

The primary figure who delivered Obama to the single-payer camp was Quentin Young, an 86-year-old retired physician who was a longtime friend and neighbor of Obama in Chicago. Young joined the Young Communist League as a teenager in the late 1930s. From the mid-1940s through the mid-1970s, he was closely associated with the Communist Party. In October 1968 he was called to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee, which was probing the extent of his knowledge about the riots that had erupted at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago two months earlier. The Committee accused Young of belonging to the Bethune Club, an organization for communist doctors; the group was named after Norman Bethune, a communist physician who devoted his services to the totalitarian regime of Mao Zedong.



Dr. Young was active in the radical movements of the Sixties and Seventies and led a small delegation to Communist North Vietnam in 1972. In the late 1970s, Young became associated with a Marxist organization known as the New American Movement, which was initially convened by Michael Lerner, an America-hating radical who counseled young people to explore the use of LSD and other hallucinogenic drugs as portals to a greater comprehension of socialist principles.



In 1980 Young founded the Health and Medicine Policy Research Group, a single-payer lobby group whose Board of Directors he chairs to this day. In 1982 Young helped establish the Democratic Socialists of America, which, as the principal U.S. affiliate of the Socialist International, asserts that "many structures of our government and economy must be radically transformed." In 1987 Young co-founded Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP), a single-payer advocacy organization where he currently serves as national coordinator. In PNHP’s view, government-run healthcare "should be financed by truly progressive taxation."

In 1995 Young attended the now-famous meeting at the Hyde Park home of former Weather Underground terrorists Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, where Barack Obama was first introduced to influential locals as the hand-picked successor to Alice Palmer, a pro-Soviet radical who planned to vacate her Illinois State Senate seat in pursuit of a higher elected office. Young quickly became a friend and political ally of Obama, teaching the latter about the merits of single-payer healthcare. In a 2009 interview with Amy Goodman of Democracy Now!, Young reminisced about the germination of his ideological kinship with the young Obama:

"Barack Obama, in those early days [as a state senator] -- influenced, I hope, by me and others -- categorically said single payer was the best way, and he would inaugurate it if he could get the support, meaning [Democratic] majorities in both houses, which he’s got, and the presidency, which he’s got. And he said that on more than one occasion…."

Another noteworthy influence on Obama’s views vis à vis healthcare has been Dr. Peter Orris, who co-founded Physicians for a National Health Program with Quentin Young. The son of a Communist Party member, Orris in the 1960s was a leader of Harvard University’s campus chapter of Students for a Democratic Society, the New Leftist organization that aspired to overthrow America’s democratic institutions and remake the nation’s government in a Marxist image. He later joined the Communist Party (CP) for more than two decades, before ultimately shifting his allegiance to the CP splinter group, Committees of Correspondence, where he remains a prominent figure to this day.

The Vanishing American Middle Class

"It ain't much, but it is our's" - 1947

"Just go to the ATM" - 2011


The vanishing American Middle Class is one of the wonders of the world, or should be.

Being Middle Class was once a badge of honor. Immigrants who braved coffin ships to scratch out the American Dream, worked, saved, prayed, and most of all learned together and kicked down the walls of economic isolation and poverty. Italians worked along the Chicago River north and south of its flow cutting lumber for this growing City. The Irish largely chased cattle, pigs, and sheep into pens and up onto steep ramps to the killing floors, where Poles, Lithuanians, and Bohemians hammered America's meat to be cut and chopped and processed by more Irishmen and Germans.

The Germans arrived here already Middle Class, as did German Jews, and were skilled craftsmen and professionals - doctors and lawyers. Swedes were skilled wood workers.

African Americans, freedmen, lived among white settlers and immigrants and often were more affluent than newer arrivals all through the Civil War and for a few decades after.

The labor strikes of the late 1880's through WWI brought waves of impoverished black men and women into Chicago, as strikebreakers, forced to compete with white ethnic immigrants. Industry shaped the competition, but learning moved the poor up into the Middle Class.

A man was proud to exchange a blue shirt for a crisp starched white shirt and attachable collar. Paddy learned to do more than dig. Stash learned to do more than hammer a cow, pig. Vitas learned to cut and put pipes together, after he was black-listed by Armour, or Swift, or Cudahy. Vito watched Emerson in the lumber yard and learned how to frame. Washington learned to not cross a picket line with his friends from Georgia and earn the trust of the angry white faces calling him every color-rich sobriquet and animal metaphor imaginable.

They learned to read, write, converse and get along. They learned to save, as well as spend from the Bohemians who not only made their beer, but owned the building in which they lived. They became as respectable and dignified in a few years off of the boat, or the train from Alabama.

By the 1920's, America was rolling toward the Middle Class. A Depression nearly choked it but the lessons learned from the previous century had taken root - learn a trade, develop a skill, make yourself useful, take care of others.

Parallel to the striving wave of impoverished Americans were American born, educated, radicalized by the Hegelian university professors who dominated academia, and contemptuous of 'lesser beings.' They became the Progressives. They viewed the Middle Class with scorn and contemptuously abandoned the bourgeoisie for Artist Colonies, or subjected Italian kids to Aristophanes.

They saw the Republican and Democratic political machines who were boosting the Masses toward the Middle Class, as a threat to true Self-Fulfillment, which could only be realized through their human laboratories.

Babbitry was and remains Middle Class hypocrisy - owning a modest home, making a modest income and the value attendant upon such aspirations were subject of laughter and derision. The Great Classless Society was to be fought for with patience and cunning.

WWII accelerated the American Middle Class and the lessons learned from the 19th Century and WWI made America the Moral and Economic Power of the Free Word pitted against the great Classless Societies formed by Stalin and Chairman Mao.

War did not erode the American Middle Class. Values taken for granted at best, or dismissed as stupid infected the American soul.

Labor made a pact with the Devil, when it admitted the Progressive ideologies through the back-door. The Reuthers and John L. Lewis were replaced by a Sweeney and a Stern. Big Labor was no long the trades or the industrial unions, Big Labor was public sector labor - SEIU.

By playing ball with Progressives, Labor and the American Middle Class drugged itself.

Here we are today -

The number of middle-income neighborhoods in the United States has dwindled significantly over the past 40 years, as the rich-poor divide deepens across the country, a study released Wednesday showed.

In 2007, nearly a third of American families -- 31 percent -- lived in either an affluent neighborhood or a mainly low-income one, up from just 15 percent in 1970, according to the study conducted by Stanford University, and released in partnership with the Russell Sage Foundation and Brown University.

Meanwhile, 44 percent of American families lived in middle-class neighborhoods in 2007, down from 65 percent in 1970.

"Mixed income neighborhoods have grown rarer, while affluent and poor neighborhoods have grown much more common," the study said.

For the study, researchers used data from 117 metropolitan areas, each with more than 500,000 residents. In 2007, those areas were home to 197 million people -- or two-thirds of the US population.

The values of faith, hard work, achievement, and charity, have been replaced by a universal ethic of entitlement. Go to the ATM for more money. We are OK with abortion. Too many of us believe that sexual inclination is a Civil Right. The more the Middle Class agrees with Progressives the quicker it will vanish into the Classless Society dreamed of by John Dewey, Roger Baldwin, WEB Dubois, and George Soros.

Joel Kotkin Holds a Mirror to California and We See Illinois

Gov. Pat Quinn is one hobbled donkey.

CHICAGO -- Gov. Pat Quinn said Tuesday that he plans major spending cuts, including layoffs, as he tries to keep state government running within the tight budget sent to him by Illinois legislators.

Quinn would provide no details about the scope of the cuts. Asked if thousands of state employees could lose their jobs, he said, "We have to do what we have to do."

Forbes Magazine

Gov. Quinn's Labor Day must have been a sobering one, or maybe not. He's got a few years left and Lt. Gov. Sheila Simon has his back. Dr. Quentin Young, Planned Parenthood, SEIU, Sierra Club, Dawn Clark Netsch, Terry Cosgrove and every civil union, and of course TaxaPalozza's Ralphie Martire is always armed with pie charts to keep the Illinois peasantry quiet with platitudes and promises. Gov. Quinn stayed away from Labor Day marches and celebrations, because he had some really bad news - lay-offs are coming and it is THEIR fault.

THEIR (THE HAPPY ELECTORATE OF ILLINOIS REGULARS) consists of anyone and anything. Well, me for example. I voted for Pat Quinn. I was happy to help Pat Quinn, Catholic League guy with a compelling narrative of personal thrift and devotion to the working guy.

I knew better. Pat Quinn is hobbled by the powerful interests that got him elected. It was long dusty road to the Governor's Mansion. Pat Quinn mowed his own lawn, while George Ryan hired kids from Greenwood Street in Kankakee. Pat Quinn buried his 'personal opposition to abortion' in favor of his very public support of a Woman's right to choose to kill her unborn child. Pat Quinn saw the rise of public service unions as adding votes and not subtracting tax-dollars from Illinois' once robust middle class. Pat Quinn agreed Green every step of the way and drank gallons of Andy Stern's SEIU Purple Kool-Aid.

I remember when one of the parents of a couple of my students in Kankakee was vigorously organizing State, County and Municiple clerks into one of the one big unions, shortly after AO Smith, Roper and other industries left Kankakee County. He argued that getting clerks, secretaries, go-fers and others into a public sector union would build an army of voters.

Skilled trades and indutrial unions were all about cutting a trail to the middle class by dint of skills acquired and voctional advancement. SEIU changed all of that.
An unskilled worker was paid not by a standard collective bargaining agreement between a union and a private manager, but via legislation that is politically goaded. Vote this way and get support. That worker's dues were subtracted from his State, County, City, or State funded hospital, school district, or whatever paycheck.
Those dues went back to the one big union. The SEIU janitor remained a janitor and was doled out benefits after the right legislative session. The SEIU janitor is yet a janitor.

Pat Quinn the Governor is about to lay off that long serving janitor. Pat Quinn is the Governor looking for nickels in my basement couch. They're not there. I used them to buy Illinois ethanol gas at Kean.

Demographer and scholar Joel Kotkin has been the Jeremiah of economic disaster coming at the hands of the Progressive Philistines for years.

California's Progressive Template Governor Jerry Brown is Pat Quinn writ large.

Here's what he has going on:

In its modern origins California was paean to progress in the best sense of the word. In 1872, the second president of the University of California, Daniel Coit Gilman, said science was "the mother of California." Today, California may worship at the altar of science, but increasingly in the most regressive, hysterical, and reactionary way.

California's dominant ruling class—consisting of public-employee unions, green jihadis, and Democratic machine politicians—has no real use for science as Gilman saw it: as a way to create prosperity for its citizens. Instead, the prevailing credo of the state has been how to do everything possible to return to its pre-settlement condition, with little regard for what that means to the average Californian.

Nowhere was California's old technological ethos more pronounced than in agriculture, where great Californians such as William Mulholland, creator of the Los Angeles Aqueduct, and Pat Brown, who forged the state water project, created the greatest water-delivery system since the Roman Empire. Their effort brought water from the ice-bound Sierra Nevada mountains down to the state's dry but fertile valleys and to the great desert metropolis of Southern California. Now, largely at the behest of greens, California agriculture is being systematically cut down by regulation. In an attempt to protect a small fish called the Delta smelt, upward of 200,000 acres of prime farmland have been idled, according to the state's Department of Conservation. Even in the current "wet" cycle, California's agricultural industry, which exports roughly $14 billion annually, is slowly being decimated. Unemployment in some Central Valley towns tops 30 percent, and in cases even 40 percent. . . . Of course, the self-described "progressive" mafia that runs California will point to Silicon Valley and its impressive array of startups. But for the most part, firms like Google, Twitter, and Facebook employ only a small cadre of highly educated workers. Overall, during the past decade the state's high-tech employment fell by almost 4 percent, while Texas's science-based employment grew by a healthy 11 percent. The sad reality is that turning T-shirt-wearing kids like Mark Zuckerberg into multibillionaires doesn't do much to reduce unemployment, which even in San Jose—the largely blue-collar "capital" of Silicon Valley—now hovers around 10 percent.

Magazine cover stories and movies cannot obscure the fact that entrepreneurial growth—the state’s most critical economic asset—has now stalled. In fact, according to a study by Economic Modeling Specialists Inc., last year the Golden State ranked 50th among the states in creating new businesses.

California remains rich in promise, home to spectacular scenery; a great Pacific location; leading firms like Apple and Disney; and a still-impressive residue of talented, diverse, entrepreneurial, and ingenious people. But the state will never return until the success of the current crop of puerile billionaires can be extended to enrich the wider citizenry. Until the current regime is toppled, California's decline—in moral as well as economic terms—will continue, to the consternation of those of us who embraced it as our home for so many years.

Illinois is the reflection of California. Take a good look. I quit THEIR, here.



http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2011/09/06/general-il-illinois-budget_8661451.html

FBI Probing SEIU Mandarin Andy Stern in Corruption Inquiry

Well, we do wonder why SEIU is not Standing in Solidarity with SEIU Local 73 Chief Steward Joe Iosbaker in the FBI Terror Probe! Hell, quick-quitting and vanishing SEIU Mandarin -former SEIU President Andy Stern - the Media's Main Guy, is being probed -God I hope so -by the FBI for Corruption! Corruption, Boys and Girls!

Mr. Class WarFare? Get This!!!!!! Give the Man his day in court . . .by all means!

FBI Investigates Prominent Labor Leader Andy Stern
WASHINGTON September 28, 2010, 09:29 am ET
People interviewed by federal agents report the FBI and the Labor Department are investigating prominent labor leader Andy Stern as part of a corruption probe involving the Service Employees International Union.

Two organized labor officials met with federal agents this summer to answer questions about Stern's role in approving money to pay the salary of an SEIU leader in California who performed no work and a book contract that Stern landed in 2006.

Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the investigation. The FBI and the Labor Department's office of inspector general declined to comment for the record.

Stern abruptly resigned as president of the 2.2-million member SEIU in April.

And, irony of ironies, I got this from NPR! Go figure!

Andy was up to his purple pockets in the Blagojevich scandal too, but then President Obama's guy to fix the National Deficit took a Murphy from the public view -most abruptly.

Some folks think that I am just a tad cynical.

F.B.I. Probe of Terror is Not Intimidation: It is Uncomfortable.

Now, Old Billy Ayers has had a very warm and close relationship with UIC where SEIU Chief Steward Joe Iosbaker leads the cheers for Solidarity. Billy Ayers has had a very warm relationship with Hugo Chavez and has lectured on Bolivarista Agenda against Columbia. Billy Boy is a FARCer. You see FARC* is a terrorst group supported by and in Solidarity with SEIU. FARC is now linked to anti-Israeli Terror and some activists who call themselves Peace Activists. In Solidarity with the gutless Media of course.

Click my post titlefor many more photos from SEIU Local 73 Rally for Higher Education.

Also pictured at the Local 73 Rally is an old pal of Billy!
SEIU Pal Bill Ayers and the guy who hired him at UIC? Is that Stan Ikenberry? Stanley!

Some people are made uncomfortable to have their assumptions rattled. It was perfectly wonderful that the F.B.I. arrested a deranged goof who wanted to make the world a better place by putting a bomb in front of the Cubby Bear Lounge in Wrigleville.

However, when the same scrutiny into the network that actively supports terror in the name of Peace makes hand-wringers sad.

Two people, on an instructor at Wright College and her husband a Chief Steward for SEIU at University of Illinois at Chicago (UICC), has made some people with warm relations to the media most prickly - in fact they plan two days of protests.

Activists are gearing up for demonstrations against recent FBI raids on the homes of anti-war activists in Minneapolis and Chicago.

Maureen Murphy is a member of the Palestine Solidarity Group in Chicago. She and others met Sunday afternoon in what they called an ''emergency meeting'' to plan demonstrations today and Tuesday.

On Friday the FBI searched eight addresses in Minneapolis and Chicago. Warrants suggest agents were looking for links between anti-war activists and terrorist groups in Colombia and the Middle East.

But Murphy claims the government is trying to quiet activists.

Iosbaker and Weiner declined to discuss their relationship with any groups abroad, citing their upcoming testimony before a grand jury on Oct. 5.

Prickly, they are downright chilled. Brrrrr. Chilled in Post-Bush America?

You see, there are uncomfortable connections. SEIU, which is the twin of ACORN, is a Political Action Committee that the Media calls Big Labor. SEIU gives oodles of money to politicians who will tow the line. SEIU gives news copy and advertising to Media icons and outlets that tow the line. SEIU has wonderful ties to Academia, because its leadership grew, not from laboring men and women, but from Academia. SEIU leaders are fashionably schooled academics.

Skilled Trades Unions, real labor, is lead by Tradesmen.

SEIU is a Marxist/Leninist operative with ties to every leftist advocacy agenda in America.

This is not some mystery. SEIU hides in plain site. All it requires is for the Media do as it is bidden by SEIU.

The Media is more than compliant; it is positively in the tank.

"These raids, searches and grand jury investigations are nothing more than an attempt to intimidate us and to intimidate the anti-war movement," Iosbaker said. "We have done nothing wrong."

FBI spokesman Paul Bresson said Saturday that the bureau's investigations "are predicated on criminal violations, not First Amendment protected activities."

The spin provided by the Media for SEIU scrubs the association of an SEIU Leader to the FBI probe of terror that has linked anti-Israeli Terror to Columbia's FARC.

There was a great deal news concerning FARC and Bernardine Dorhn and Bill Ayers in Spring and early summer of 2008 - that was when "guilt by association" linking candidate Barack Obama to domestic terrorists Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn. It got well scrubbed by the Media. Hey, it was in all the papers . . .for a little while.

Bill Ayers was denied emeritus statues bu University of Illinois following the impassioned statement by Chris Kennedy. Only hours later the FBI were searching the homes of people who just might be linked to terror. Odd that.

Bill Ayers and Joseph IosBakker of SEIU are comrades. Links to terror are not intimidation, but they will make many folks uncomfortable.

Now, that is an uncomfortable truth.

Let's get the Media to do its job and not what it is bidden to do by SEIU.

http://www.suntimes.com/news/metro/2747598,CST-NWS-fbi27.article

http://www.seiu73.org/your_job/higher_ed/Default.aspx

*Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia
Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia - FARC
Description

Established in 1964 as the military wing of the Colombian Communist Party, the FARC is Colombia’s oldest, largest, most capable, and best-equipped Marxist insurgency. The FARC is governed by a secretariat, led by septuagenarian Manuel Marulanda (a.k.a. “Tirofijo”) and six others, including senior military commander Jorge Briceno (a.k.a. “Mono Jojoy”). The FARC is organized along military lines and includes several urban fronts.

In February 2002, the group’s slow-moving peace negotiation process with President Andres Pastrana's administration was terminated by Bogota following the FARC's plane hijacking and kidnapping of a Colombian Senator from the aircraft. On 7 August, the FARC launched a large-scale mortar attack on the Presidential Palace where President Alvaro Uribe was being inaugurated. High-level foreign delegations—including the United States—attending the inauguration were not injured, but 21 residents of a poor neighborhood nearby were killed by stray rounds in the attack.



Strength

Approximately 9,000 to 12,000 armed combatants and several thousand more supporters, mostly in rural areas.



Location/Area of Operation

Colombia, with some activities—extortion, kidnapping, logistics, and R&R—in Venezuela, Panama, and Ecuador.



External Aid

Cuba provides some medical care and political consultation. A trial is currently underway in Bogota to determine whether three members of the Irish Republican Army—arrested in Colombia in 2001 upon exiting the FARC-controlled demilitarized zone (despeje)—provided advanced explosives training to the FARC.

Although the FARC-controlled safe haven, or "despeje" -- which is situated between two of Colombia's largest coca cultivation areas -- is not considered a major area for coca cultivation or drug trafficking, many FARC units throughout southern Colombia raise funds through the extortion ("taxation") of both legal and illegal businesses, the latter including the drug trade. Some insurgent units raise funds through extortion or by protecting laboratory operations. In return for cash payments, or possibly in exchange for weapons, the insurgents protect cocaine laboratories in southern Colombia. Some FARC and ELN units are independently involved in limited cocaine laboratory operations. Some FARC units in southern Colombia are reported to be directly involved in drug trafficking activities, such as controlling local cocaine base markets.



Activities

Bombings, murder, mortar attacks, kidnapping, extortion, hijacking, as well as guerrilla and conventional military action against Colombian political, military, and economic targets. In March 1999, the FARC executed three US Indian rights activists on Venezuelan territory after it kidnapped them in Colombia. Foreign citizens often are targets of FARC kidnapping for ransom.

Although the Colombian government has given the FARC political status and has attempted to negotiate with this terrorist organization to stop the recruitment of minors, the FARC has refused. The Colombian government's Family Welfare Institute estimates that at least 30 percent of the FARC's fighters are younger than 18, compared to about 15 percent a decade ago. However, international and Colombia agencies that track the use of child fighters now think the FARC's numbers may be higher. During recent skirmishes between the Army and a FARC column, 32 of the 77 fighters captured by army troops were under 18 years old, and 19 of those were 15 and under. Of the 46 FARC fighters who were killed in the skirmishes, 20 were children. The UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) estimates that there were about 6,000 minors serving in the FARC and AUC terrorist groups last year.

The FARC broke off negotiations with the government in October 2001, protesting government security measures around the zone and military flights over the territory. On 12 January 2002, President Pastrana gave the FARC 48 hours to come up with a new proposal for talks, or, he said, he would abolish the safe zone he had granted them three years earlier as a condition for talks. Colombian army units took up positions around the zone and many people here feared a major escalation of the war was imminent. That crisis was averted on 14 January 2002, when the FARC agreed to immediate talks, and dropped the complaint about government security measures. The resulting agreement on a timetable for talks represents the most significant advance toward peace in Colombia in nearly four decades of war.

On 20 January 2002 representatives of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, signed an agreement with the government of President Andres Pastrana that sets a timetable for peace negotiations. Less than four hours before the deadline for an agreement set by President Pastrana was to expire, the rebels and government negotiators announced their timetable and plan for talks. The last-minute accord prevented what many feared would be an escalation of the 38-year civil conflict. The timetable included a number of target dates for completing discussions of such issues as a cease-fire, kidnappings and other action that harm civilians, and the dismantling of anti-rebel para-military groups. The timetable set 7 April 2002 as the deadline for reaching an accord on these issues.

On 12 February, 2003 a plane tasked to the program working on eradicating Colombia's coca plantations and flying on a routine reconnaissance mission, crash landed in FARC territory. The plane was carrying a Colombian sergeant and four American contractors. Once located it was discovered that the Colombian soldier and one of the American passengers had been shot by FARC rebels and the three other Americans were taken captive. The three American hostages were accused of being CIA spies and were used as bargaining leverage to negotiate a prisoner exchange with the Colombian government. As of July 2006, no exchange had been made. This event exemplifies the abduction and ransom tactics the FARC has used to extort money and power for their cause. The FARC are believed to be in possession of hundreds of kidnapping victims ranging from Colombian politicians, policemen and other prominent figures.

In 2004 President Uribe launched a large military operation called "Patriot Plan" involving 15,000 government soldiers who pushed into FARC controlled territory in an attempt to wrest part of the countryside from rebel hands and capture key Guerilla leaders. The plan was partially successful causing the FARC to retreat and lose territory they had controlled for decades. The Patriot Plan was limited in its success of capturing key FARC leaders producing few apprehensions and driving most of the group's top leaders into deeper hiding.

By 2005 President Uribe's efforts to increase pressure on FARC appeared to have some partial success, decreasing the intensity of attacks on Government forces. However, statistics demonstrated that while the intensity of attacks had decreased the frequency of clashes remained the same. There was a resurgence of violence in early 2005 when 50 Colombian soldiers were killed in the month of February. Also in 2005, 3 Irish Republican Army (IRA) members who were awaiting final sentencing for training the FARC on IRA bomb tactics fled Colombian parole and resurfaced in Ireland. They were detained and questioned by the Irish national police and released without charge. The Colombian government requested their extradition. Ireland does not have an extradition treaty with Colombia; the case remained under review and the three fugitives at large.

In August 2005, the Brazilian Federal Police arrested Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) "spokesman" Francisco Antonio Cadena Collazos under an international warrant. In August 2006, the Government of Brazil granted him political asylum and denied Colombia's extradition request.

On 3 September and 25 October 2007, Colombian authorities announced the deaths of commanders Tomas Medina Caracas "El Negro Acacio," and Gustavo Rueda Diaz, “Martin Caballero,” respectively, noting that they represented serious blows to the FARC.

In November 2007, President Alvaro Uribe agreed to a request of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and Colombian Senator Piedad Cordoba, to act as intermediaries for a possible "humanitarian exchange" of FARC-held hostages for FARC prisoners in Colombian jails. The Colombian government-sanctioned effort ended in November after Chavez and Cordoba repeatedly failed to adhere to Colombia's guidelines. Nevertheless, Chavez continued his efforts to gain the release of hostages including a failed effort at year's end involving the promised release of three Colombian hostages (Clara Rojas, her son Emmanuel, and Consuelo Gonzales de Perdomo) to an international delegation that included former-Argentine President Nestor Kirchner. The Government of Colombia revealed that the FARC had turned over Emmanuel to a sympathizer, who had in turn placed the child in Colombian social services. Confusion over Emmanuel's whereabouts coupled with FARC allegations that the Colombian military was operating in the area led the FARC to temporarily call off the release. The FARC, under intense public pressure, eventually turned over Rojas and Gonzales to President Chavez.

In March 2008 Colombia forces mounted a raid against the FARC in Ecuador, leading to the capture of laptop computers and other intelligence. The raid resulted in an immediate regional crisis over the apparent Colombian violation of Ecuadoran sovereignty, with both Ecuador and Venezuela mobilizing military forces. The Colombian authorities intially suggested that the raid had been conducted with Ecuadoran approval, but later appeared to back away from this assertion. In return Colombian authorities claimed the intelligence recovered proved links between the governments of both Ecuador and Venezuela and the FARC. The crisis and potential military confrontation were later resolved, but an investigation continued into the allegations of regional support for the FARC.

Capture of Rodrigo Granda in Venezuela, 13 December 2004
The FARC found itself in late 2004 in the middle of a growing diplomatic crisis between Colombia and Venezuela. On 12 January 2005, Colombia's defense minister acknowledged that the Colombian government had paid bounty hunters to seize Rodrigo Granda, a member of the FARC, from neigboring Venezuela. President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela subsequently described the capture, which occured on the streets of Caracas, as a violation of his country's sovereignty and demanded an explanation.

The Colombian government refused to divulge any information pertaining to the capture. For weeks the government had claimed the capture had occured in the Colombian border city of Cucuta. Any details relating to who was involved in the operation and how much they were paid is still unknown. A Venezuelan lawmaker, Luis Tascon, claimed that the amount was $1.5 million-an amount the Colombian government later denied. Defense Minister Jorge Alberto Uribe has asserted that Colombian agents were not involved, while a close ally of President Alvaro Uribe has claimed that "Venezuelan agents" had carried out the operation.

Adding to the mystery was the detainment of four Colombian officers in Venezuela just days before the capture. The four officers were suspected of taking photographs of military installations in the central city of Maracay, but were later released without being charged.

In a 14 January 2005 communique, the Colombian government claimed "The United Nations prohibits member nations to provide safe haven to terrorists in an “active or passive” manner... Mr. Granda participated in a Bolivarian Congress held in Caracas on December 8 and 9 of 2004, in representation of the FARC."

Rodrigo Granda, a senior FARC member, was reportedly responsible for garnering international support for the FARC. This, in sum, could be described as the source of the current conflict between Colombia and Venezuela. Colombia has often complained about the lack of cooperation from the Chavez government in cracking down on leftist rebels.

On 16 January 2005, the Colombian government released this 9-point statement:

■1. The right of the people to be free of terrorists needs the efficient and resolute cooperation of all democratic governments.
■2. Colombia pays rewards to informants who allow the capture of terrorists. It does not bribe. Venezuela must present proof supporting the alleged bribe to government officials.
■3. We cannot be cynically deceived by the FARC which presents the capture of kidnappers like kidnapping.
■4. Colombia will present proof to the Venezuelan Government regarding the protection provided by officials of that country to Mr. Granda. The safe haven provided to terrorists violates the sovereignty of Colombia, an offended country, for it increases the risk of terror against its citizens.
■5. Colombia does not accept that representatives of terrorist organizations be admitted in a political event sponsored by official Venezuelan institutions. Political opposition is one thing, another very different one is terrorism.
■6. With surprise it is read in the Foreign Affairs Office in Venezuela communiqué, the intention of involving 4 Colombian police officers in the Granda case. The Venezuelan authorities timely new that it concerned another antinarcotics operation. They were investigated and released.
■7. Colombia has used the diplomatic and official channels. What is demanded is that such channels operate in an efficient manner. Once again, information will be delivered to that Government concerning the presence of Colombian terrorists on Venezuelan soil. The name of 7 high ranking terrorist leaders and the location of various camps will be included.
■8. The will of the Colombian Government to work in harmony with the Government of Venezuela is reiterated and according to the procedure defined by the Offices of Foreign Affairs.
■9. Terrorism cannot harm the unity of our nations.
As of 17 January 2005, the crisis between the two countries continued. President Hugo Chavez agreed to meet with President Alvaro Uribe in a bilateral meeting. By the end of January 2005 the diplomatic standoff between the two countries appeared to be improving. On January 28 representatives from Colombia and Venezuela met in Lima, Peru. Tensions with the countries reached even more serious levels, following a 2008 Colombian raid against the FARC in Ecuador, with President Hugo Chavez mobilizing military forces before a meeting with Alvaro Uribe appeared to defuse the situation. Major economic links between Colombia and Venezuela, as well as Colombia and Ecuador were said to be a factor in resolving the crisis.

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?