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Obama Calls For Dumping Secret Ballots In
Union Elections
Fred Lucas
says, Barack
Obama, seeking to rally support for embattled Democrats in the upcoming
midterm elections, on Wednesday pledged his support for a card check
bill, which would eliminate secret ballots in elections to unionize
workplaces.
Obama told the AFL-CIO Executive Council that his
administration has taken many measures to help union workers and move
the beleaguered economy in the right direction.
"We passed the
Fair Pay Act to help put a stop to pay discrimination," Obama told the
union leaders gathered in Washington on Wednesday. "We’ve reversed the
executive orders of the last administration that were designed to
undermine organized labor. I’ve appointed folks who actually are
fulfilling their responsibilities to make sure our workplaces are safe,
whether in a mine or in an office, a factory or anyplace else."
Then he promised, "And we are going to keep on fighting to pass the
Employee Free Choice Act."
Man votes "No" to union -- ends
up in hospital
The Employee Free Choice Act, also known as the
card check bill, replaces the secret ballot by allowing union organizers
to publicly ask workers to sign a card in favor of unionizing. If
a simple majority of employees approve, then an employer would have to
recognize the union.
Supporters say that card-check organizing
makes it easier for employees to organize. "Too few workers are
able to form unions and bargain because companies routinely block their
efforts -- and our current legal system is too broken and dominated by
corporations to help them," the AFL-CIO Web site says.
But
opponents of the legislation -- including former Democratic presidential
nominee George McGovern -- warn that the legislation, by doing away with
the secret ballot, would subject workers to coercion from pro-union
groups. Everyone would know whether a worker said yes or no to
forming a union.
Obama Admits To Favoring Big Labor
Katie Gage
says that earlier this week, Obama confirmed what small business
leaders and concerned workers fear most: that he will spare no effort to
achieve Big Labor’s goals. Obama admits that labor’s top priority,
the job-killing, rights-stripping Employee "Forced" Choice Act (EFCA),
does not have the votes it needs to pass in the Senate. And with
his own words, Obama acknowledged that he has unambiguously aligned
himself with union bosses seeking to bypass Congress and cram their
priorities down the throats of the American people.
"What we’ve
done instead [of getting EFCA passed in the Senate] is try to do as much
as we can administratively to make sure that it’s easier for unions to
operate and that they’re not being placed at an unfair disadvantage,"
Obama said.
Considering Big Labor bosses already win the majority
of workplace elections, the comments are as dishonest as they are
gratuitous.
How is the Obama administration delivering on Big
Labor’s agenda administratively? Let me count the ways.
The
Obama administration inserted former American Federation of Labor and
Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) and Service Employees
International Union (SEIU) attorney Craig Becker into the National Labor
Relations Board (NLRB) after Beck was rejected by the US Senate.
Considering that he has refused to recuse himself on decisions the NLRB
makes affecting his former employers and Big Labor friends, Becker’s
credibility is in serious question, while his bias is not.
Secondly, in a recent report to the United Nations’ Human Rights
Committee, the Obama administration claimed that organizing a union in
America is difficult and that that difficulty constitutes a human rights
offense. The audacity of this claim is bad enough, but for our own
government to make it on an international level is a perfect example of
the great lengths to which Obama will go to draw attention to Big
Labor’s demands.
The third example of the Obama administration’s
pro-union boss agenda is the undemocratic regulation put through by the
National Mediation Board (NMB). This three-member board, which
oversees airline union elections, contains two Obama appointees.
Both appointees have ties to airline industry unions and both support a
new system of voting that would overhaul a rule that has been in place
since 1935. Under the new system, votes not cast would count as
votes for union bosses. Under the current system, the NMB
recognizes a workplace as unionized if a majority of its workers who
vote support unionization.
The new system assumes that workers
who do not vote support having someone else in charge of representing
their interests. Who proposed this new voting system? The
AFL-CIO, Craig Becker’s former employer. And why does the AFL-CIO
deserve special treatment? Because union bosses contributed nearly
half a billion dollars to get Obama elected and have demanded "payback."
In the coming months and years, we can expect to see more and more
"payback" to Big Labor bosses as Obama prepares for his re-election
campaign and feels the need to produce results for his biggest
benefactor.
More union members translates into increased dues,
which, coupled with a pension bailout, is exactly what these union
bosses want and, it appears, exactly what Obama intends to give them at
the expense of worker freedoms and small business jobs.
The Right To Unionize
Zip
says, as a token of his appreciation for pumping in over $100
million into Dem campaigns during the midterms, Obama is throwing his
union goons another bone. He's proposing new regulation mandating
businesses notify workers of their right to unionize.
The
National Labor Relations Board has submitted to the Federal Register a
Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, which provides for a 60-day comment
period. The rule would require employers to notify employees of
their rights under the National Labor Relations Act.
As the
Notice states, the Board "believes that many employees protected by the
NLRA are unaware of their rights under the statute. The intended
effects of this action are to increase knowledge of the NLRA among
employees, to better enable the exercise of rights under the statute,
and to promote statutory compliance by employers and unions."
And, here's a shocker! The Obama Regime has
failed to release the Annual Report on Union Corruption.
The
Office of Labor Management Statistics (OLMS) was supposed to release an
annual report tracking labor unions and evidence of corruption in union
leadership in January 2010 but still hasn’t released the document.
OLMS, which falls under the Department of Labor, has released no
such tracking report since George W. Bush’s administration, something
that has the conservative nonprofit organization Americans for Limited
Government (ALG) up in arms. ALG filed a Freedom of Information
Act request for the 2009 report, and OLMS denied the group’s request by
saying it needed more time to complete the report. Originally,
however, those reports were publicly available on the OLMS website.
The report would tabulate the number of cases nationwide of union
leader prosecution, the amount of funds they embezzle and the misuse of
union funds. It also would keep track of indictments. Those
statistics do exist elsewhere, as criminal and most civil court
proceedings become public record after the cases close, but they’re
difficult to track down as they’re in courthouses all over the country.
The OLMS annual reports kept track of that information, allowing people
to access it easily.
ALG’s current head of research, Don Todd,
who led OLMS during the Bush administration, told The Daily Caller he
doubts it would be too difficult for the Obama administration to release
that information, as they’re supposed to keep track of it all year long.
He also said that this administration’s failure to release the report is
"freakishly incompetent." He suspects politics is to blame.
Zip
says, It’s almost like he’s paying them back for something…
Feds Threaten To Sue States Over Union Laws
The AP is reporting the National Labor
Relations Board on Friday threatened to sue Arizona, South Carolina,
South Dakota and Utah over constitutional amendments guaranteeing
workers the right to a secret ballot in union elections.
The
agency's acting general counsel, Lafe Solomon, said the amendments
conflict with federal law, which gives employers the option of
recognizing a union if a majority of workers sign cards that support
unionizing.
The amendments, approved Nov. 2, have taken effect in
South Dakota and Utah, and will do so soon in Arizona and South
Carolina.
Business and anti-union groups sought the amendments,
arguing that such secrecy is necessary to protect workers against union
intimidation. They are concerned that Congress might enact
legislation requiring employers to allow the "card check" process for
forming unions instead of secret ballot elections.
In letters to
the attorney general of each state, Solomon says the amendments are
pre-empted by the supremacy clause of the Constitution because they
conflict with employee rights laid out in the National Labor Relations
Act. That clause says that when state and federal laws are at
odds, federal law prevails.
Solomon is asking the attorneys
general in South Dakota and Utah for official statements agreeing that
their amendments are unconstitutional "to conserve state and federal
resources."
In his letter to South Carolina's attorney general,
Solomon asks the state to take measures that would prevent the
Legislature from ratifying the amendment. Solomon requested that
Arizona's governor decline to make the amendment official.
Utah
Attorney General Mark Shurtleff said he believes the state is on solid
ground. He plans to coordinate a response with the other three
states.
"If they want to bring a lawsuit, then bring it,"
Shurtleff said. "We believe that a secret ballot is as fundamental
a right as any American has had since the beginning of this country.
We want to protect the constitutional rights of our citizens."
The Washington Times
relays this message to Wisconsin taxpayers: Obama and the Democratic
National Committee have declared war on you. Message to other
states: You’re next.
The political unrest in Wisconsin, billed as
some kind of grass-roots uprising, is being organized and directed by
Barack Obama‘s Organizing for America and the Democratic National
Committee. This development is consistent with Obama‘s
instructions for supporters to "get in the face" of those who oppose
them, but in this case, they are seeking to derail a lawful legislative
process.
On Thursday, 14 Democratic state lawmakers fled
Wisconsin’s capital to prevent the legislature from conducting official
business. Dan Grandone, state director for Obama’s campaign
apparatus, accused Gov. Scott Walker of "ignoring Wisconsin voices today
and asking for the power to drown them out permanently tomorrow."
It is important to note that the voices of which Grandone speaks are not
those of the public at large. Voters sent an unmistakable message
in November by taking solid majorities in the state Assembly and Senate
away from Democrats and handing even greater control to Republicans.
Walker, a Republican, won by six points.
That the protesters
speak in a different voice can be seen in the signs they carry.
Many compare Walker to Hitler, Mussolini or Hosni Mubarak. One
placard had the slogan "Repeal Walker" with the governor’s head in
sniper-scope cross hairs. This is the symbolism that Democrats
recently denounced as "hate-filled rhetoric," and it is far from the
voice of the public. It is rather the voice of an entitled class
that seeks by any means to stop its free ride from coming to an end.
The public educators engaged in the demonstrations, many of whom
earn more than $100,000 in salary and benefits, seem to think the normal
rules of professional conduct do not apply to them. Many falsely
called in sick to engage in self-serving political activism, apparently
without fear of being disciplined. A group of Madison East High
School students engaged in what a union organizer called an "unplanned
walkoff" of the school grounds, but that the students said was organized
truancy instigated by their teachers.
These demonstrations may be
dramatic and TV-friendly, but White House operatives and their union
cronies are on the wrong side of history. The American people are
fed up with a sense of entitlement, waste and abuse in government
service. Americans in the private sector have lost jobs, been
forced to take pay cuts to continue working and have reduced spending
just to make ends meet. Government workers face no such jeopardy
and instead enjoy automatic raises, regardless of performance. The
measures causing all the ruckus in Wisconsin would require public-sector
employees (excluding police and firefighters) to contribute half of
their pension costs and at least 12 percent of their health care costs,
which is a better deal than most Americans get. The public sector
employees also would lose collective bargaining rights for anything
other than pay. These are reasonable sacrifices to make in a time
of fiscal crisis, and by resisting them, the demonstrators expose
themselves as selfish and unreasonable.
The White House and its
allies have backed similar demonstrations in Ohio and Indiana, and more
may be planned for other states. One can reasonably ask why Obama
is spending his time seeking to undermine democratic processes in U.S.
state legislatures and ignoring the pleas of Iranians trying to throw
off the shackles of Islamic rule.
Related:Obama joins Wisconsin's budget
battle, opposing Republican anti-union bill
Related:Obama Administration Is Behind Chaos in Wisconsin --
Students Used as Props
Obama Defends The Privileged
John Hinderaker
says
it is infuriating to see Obama weighing in on behalf of overpaid,
underworked and greedy members of public employee unions. They are
among the more privileged members of our society, but, as full partners
in the Democrats' scheme to suck up ever more money even if it bankrupts
the country, they have Obama's complete support.
Eyeblast TV
says that shortly after the state of Arizona began cracking down
on illegal immigration, Obama and company went on the offensive
against the state.
Now, with the Gov. Scott Walker taking on unions in Wisconsin, it
was only a matter of time before Obama gave his two cents. He
has
taken the side of the state government unions against Walker’s
plan that would force state workers to cover half of their pension
contributions and 13 percent of their own health insurance cuts.
The plan would also strip government workers of the power to
collectively bargain for higher wages unless the public approved it
through a vote.
Skookum
says while teachers wail about their efforts being strictly for the
welfare of the children, their veneer of professionalism wears thinner
and thinner. There can be no doubt in anyone’s mind that the
teacher’s don’t want to give up their sense of entitlement and their
position of minor Elitists within Obama’s Socialism. No!
They have no intention of sharing the burden of financial
responsibility, that is for the non-unionists: they are the ones who
chose not to join the trade union movement; they are the ones who refuse
to get on Obama’s Gravy Train that runs on other people’s money; let
them eat cake or listen to Michelle rant about diet or listen to
Teleprompter Reader himself tell us to forgo vacations as he sends his
family to Vail to for a skiing vacation. America should face up to
facts, if you forget about going on that vacation you might not need to
worry about losing your home. Well thanks for the financial advice
Obama, but just about everyone who isn’t a public service union employee
is well aware that they will not be vacationing in Vail this winter.
If you applied some of that important financial advice to the federal
government, we might not be in this recession, now known as the Obama
recession. You know the one that has light at the end of the
tunnel: the light that only you and your sycophantic "Yes" men you have
surrounded yourself with can see.
Now the professionalism of
teachers who drag their political beliefs into the classroom are
destroying what remains of their professionalism by walking off the job
and calling in with erroneous sick calls. Yes this might work in
Chicago with sanitation workers, but Obama becomes less presidential and
involves himself in state politics and encourages illegal activities, he
lower the prestige of the office and creates a massive conflict of
interest that lays bare the corruption that is endemic within this
administration.
Now to add to the loss of professionalism and the
lowering of standards, we have medical doctors passing out sick passes
to truant teachers making a mockery of the system to the same students
to whom the teachers are supposed to serve as an example. Yes, we
are bringing our state and federal governments down to the levels of the
Chicago Machine and its primordial swamp of corruption.
From Dr
Lou Sanner, MD, one of the doctors who has passed out hundreds of
Doctor’s notes that cover employees absences with phony ailments that he
maintains are signs of stress, was quoted by the Associated Press:
"What employers have a right to know is if
the patient was assessed by a duly licensed physician about time off
of work. Employers don’t have a right to know the nature of
that conversation or the nature of that illness. So it’s as
valid as every other work note that I’ve written for the last 30
years."
Besides committing fraud and conspiracy to commit
fraud these doctors are placing their licenses in jeopardy. They
are in direct violation of the laws that require them to record their
medical records and confidentiality laws. Hopefully Governor
Walker will take necessary measures to revoke the licenses of physicians
who place politics ahead of professional standards.
Unfortunately, Obama has unofficially sanctioned and encouraged this
unlawful behavior with his endorsement of illegal union behavior and by
having his organization Organizing For America bus in 60 thousand union
thugs. These measures of financial responsibility will be repeated
in more states in the coming weeks and it is a consequence of such
measures that Obama’s system of Nepotism will be weakened and possibly
destroyed as states struggle against bankruptcy. With the
weakening of public sector unions and their strangle hold on the
nation’s financial health. He has often exhibited inappropriate
behavior for a president in time of stress and it is likely that these
outbursts that reflect his inexperience and inability to perform the
duties of the office will become more obvious now that he realizes that
his fiefdom and his defacto civilian army corps is being dismantled.
AFL-CIO Chief Talks to White House Every
Day
NakedEmperorNews has a video that
demonstrates a shocking level of influence. Big labor thug,
Richard Trumka, who is
working with European Socialists for a new global tax, says he talks
to the White House every day, and visits a couple of times a week.
Obama has cabinet secretaries that
he has
never spoken to -- not in two years. Yet, the head of the
AFL-CIO talks to the "White House" every day? And visits a couple
of times a week?
Then again, there is a lot of coordinating to
do.
From the Big Apple, the Wisconsin workers who have staged a
week-long protest against their union-busting governor are
getting some reinforcements. Teamsters Local 237, which
represents various city workers, intends to "bus a couple hundred"
members to Madison -- possibly this week -- Deputy Director Pete
Gutierrez told The Daily News.
"This governor has awakened a sleeping
giant," Gutierrez said of Gov. Scott Walker, a Republican. "We're
going to bring down as many people as possible. It's an
important issue and legitimate cause."
And in Ohio, the
CPUSA, former Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland, the state AFL-CIO and its
affiliates have
called
for a massive turnout for a rally Tuesday at the Statehouse in
Columbus to protest a Republican bill to epeal collective bargaining for
public employees.
In robocalls and emails sent throughout the
state, Strickland said "the fate of Ohio's middle class is on the line"
and urged people "to join with the thousands who will gather to oppose
Senate Bill 5 and the rest of our opponents' backward agenda."
White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer is claiming that
"This is a Wisconsin story, not a Washington one," contradicting the
Washington Post's reporting that Obama and his political apparatus has
gotten deeply involved in the effort. But Pfeiffer fails to
acknowledge that
unions, particularly in the public sector, and Obama's apparatus are the
same thing, having worked to get out the vote for Democrats for
years.
AFSCME is an arm of the Democratic Party just as much as
the Democratic Party is a part of AFSCME -- the symbiotic relationship
is clear in every political position staked out by the union, which
happily coincides with the party's consensus.
There's No Duping Obama
Neil Braithwaite
says while the liberal media
touts Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker as being "duped" by a prank caller
into "letting down his guard" and telling what his motives were
regarding public-sector unions, they choose to keep totally silent with
regard to Obama's open and well documented relationship and motives with
those same public-sector unions.
Without having to be duped by
an imposter looking for evidence of his "true" motives, Obama has
openly, and for the record, spelled out not only his cozy relationship
with public-sector unions, but exactly what his motives are in that
relationship.
So, because Obama came out in support of the unions
in Wisconsin, wouldn't his relationship and motives with public-sector
unions be newsworthy?
Well it just so happens, in 2008 while
trying to distinguish himself from all other candidates, Senator Obama
clearly stated his relationship and motives with public-sector unions
when he said the following:
"Do they (other candidates) have it in their
gut? Do they have a track record of standing along side you on
picket lines? Do they have a track record of going after
companies that aren't letting you organize? Do they have a
track record of voting the right way -- but also helping you
organize to build more and more power? "We (Obama and Unions)
built political power on the south side of Chicago -- and now the
time for us to do it (build political power) across this country.
We are going to paint the nation purple with SEIU."
There were no prank calls needed to find out
Obama's motives behind his support of the unions in Wisconsin. In
his own un-duped words, Obama boldly declared that his relationship and
motives with public-sector unions are grounded in nothing more than
"political power" -- pure and simple.
And then there is this
-- more of Obama's patented Obullsh!t:
Along with Obama, who accused Wisconsin
Gov. Walker of unleashing "an assault" on unions, pretty much every
Communist, Maoist and Trotskyist group in America
lined up to protest against the Wisconsin union bill.
International Socialists Behind Union
Rallies
Meredith Jessup
is reporting that last fall, leftist ideological groups of
socialists and communists teamed up with American labor unions to march
together for "One Nation." Now, as labor leaders struggle to
maintain a stranglehold on collective bargaining privileges in
Wisconsin, the same groups are once again marching together under a
banner claiming unions are the heart of the American dream.
As
we’ve reported, former White House green jobs czar Van Jones this week
issued a rallying call for the progressive movement to "renew itself and
become again a national force with which to be reckoned." On
Saturday, progressive groups and labor unions held
marches of solidarity in all 50 states.
Here in Washington, D.C.,
leftist activists at MoveOn.org are co-hosting a rally Saturday with the
Service Employees International Union (SEIU). But behind the
scenes, The Blaze has exclusively learned the rally has actually been
organized by the International Socialist Organization.
According to MoveOn.org’s website, the rally is meant to fight back
against Congress which has "been taken over by corporate lackeys who
want to destroy the American dream."
"The American dream," MoveOn organizer Bill Boteler
says, "is about fairness and equal opportunity… We’re standing
up for the American Dream and saying that now is not the time to start
slashing middle-class jobs in the middle of a recession, in Wisconsin,
or anywhere in America. Be there to tell the politicians: Before
you shut down the government and punish middle-class working Americans,
why not first make the richest of the rich pay their fair share in
taxes, just like everyone else."
Despite MoveOn.org and SEIU taking a leading role -- along with a
number of other sponsors including the AFL-CIO, AFSCME, George Soros’
Media Matters, the Apollo Alliance and the Sierra Club -- the National
Park Service has confirmed that the Saturday rally’s permit was
requested by and issued to the International Socialist Organization,
a group committed to building a "future socialist society."
How many unionized American workers consider the "American dream" to
be a "future socialist society?"
According to their own
website, the ISO admits its branches across the country are "helping
to build a number of struggles," including "standing up for workers’
rights":
The misery that millions of people around the
world face is rooted in the society we live in–capitalism, where the few
who rule profit from the labor of the vast majority of the population.
In the U.S., a tiny proportion of the population enjoys fantastic
wealth, while millions of people live in desperate poverty, and many
more live paycheck to paycheck. Yet we have the resources to feed,
clothe and educate everyone on the planet.
A world free of
exploitation -- socialism -- is not only possible but worth fighting
for. The ISO stands in the tradition of revolutionary socialists
Karl Marx, V.I. Lenin and Leon Trotsky in the belief that workers
themselves -- the vast majority of the population -- are the only force
that can lead the fight to win a socialist society. Socialism
can’t be brought about from above, but has to be won by workers
themselves. …
We see our task as
building an independent socialist organization with members organizing
in our workplaces, our schools and our neighborhoods to bring socialist
ideas to the struggles we are involved in today, and the vision of a
socialist world in the future.
In addition to working with liberal activists and national labor
unions behind the scenes, the ISO is just one of many
socialist/Marxist/communist groups organizing their members to support
Van Jones' new "American dream" initiative.
The Daily Caller
noted Friday that a number of radical groups -- including the Maoist
Revolutionary Communist Party, the Communist Party USA, Trotskyist
Socialist Workers Party and the Democratic Socialists of America -- are
taking up the labor unions' talking points and encouraging Egypt-like
unrest in the United States.
The Socialist Workers Party has
labeled Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker "an enemy of the people."
"Egypt, whose revolution has been a constant source of inspiration
here, reflected in signs and chants -- and Walker’s new nickname, Gov.
Mubarak," an ISO
article reads. In addition, the article labels the current
budget debates in Wisconsin as "class war" and as an affront to "the
standard of living of working people."
"Using the deficit as a scare tactic, the right-wing corporate
Republicans are on a fast track to defeat every initiative of the Obama
administration, to destroy unions and public services at the federal,
state and municipal level, and at the same time protect tax breaks for
the richest few,"
writes Joelle Fishman, chair of the Communist Party USA’s Political
Action Commission. A "broad alliance of forces for social change
(labor, racially oppressed, women, youth)" need to step forward to
re-frame the nation’s political debate for the 2012 elections, she
insists.
While many skeptics claim these radical leftist groups may agree with
the unions on a number of issues, the fact that these groups are
actually working in conjunction with unions to orchestrate the ongoing
protests says a lot about American unions’ modern-day political
orientation -- far to the left and antithetical to the real
American dream.
The communist, socialists, and
the rest of the Marxist Left are out of the closet. They see this
as their moment to seize the American political system and turn this
country into Cuba.
Obama has made this possible.
International Socialists Behind Union
Rallies
Meredith Jessup
is reporting that last fall, leftist ideological groups of
socialists and communists teamed up with American labor unions to march
together for "One Nation." Now, as labor leaders struggle to
maintain a stranglehold on collective bargaining privileges in
Wisconsin, the same groups are once again marching together under a
banner claiming unions are the heart of the American dream.
As
we’ve reported, former White House green jobs czar Van Jones this week
issued a rallying call for the progressive movement to "renew itself and
become again a national force with which to be reckoned." On
Saturday, progressive groups and labor unions held
marches of solidarity in all 50 states.
Here in Washington, D.C.,
leftist activists at MoveOn.org are co-hosting a rally Saturday with the
Service Employees International Union (SEIU). But behind the
scenes, The Blaze has exclusively learned the rally has actually been
organized by the International Socialist Organization.
According to MoveOn.org’s website, the rally is meant to fight back
against Congress which has "been taken over by corporate lackeys who
want to destroy the American dream."
"The American dream," MoveOn organizer Bill Boteler
says, "is about fairness and equal opportunity… We’re standing
up for the American Dream and saying that now is not the time to start
slashing middle-class jobs in the middle of a recession, in Wisconsin,
or anywhere in America. Be there to tell the politicians: Before
you shut down the government and punish middle-class working Americans,
why not first make the richest of the rich pay their fair share in
taxes, just like everyone else."
Despite MoveOn.org and SEIU taking a leading role -- along with a
number of other sponsors including the AFL-CIO, AFSCME, George Soros’
Media Matters, the Apollo Alliance and the Sierra Club -- the National
Park Service has confirmed that the Saturday rally’s permit was
requested by and issued to the International Socialist Organization,
a group committed to building a "future socialist society."
How many unionized American workers consider the "American dream" to
be a "future socialist society?"
According to their own
website, the ISO admits its branches across the country are "helping
to build a number of struggles," including "standing up for workers’
rights":
The misery that millions of people around the
world face is rooted in the society we live in–capitalism, where the few
who rule profit from the labor of the vast majority of the population.
In the U.S., a tiny proportion of the population enjoys fantastic
wealth, while millions of people live in desperate poverty, and many
more live paycheck to paycheck. Yet we have the resources to feed,
clothe and educate everyone on the planet.
A world free of
exploitation -- socialism -- is not only possible but worth fighting
for. The ISO stands in the tradition of revolutionary socialists
Karl Marx, V.I. Lenin and Leon Trotsky in the belief that workers
themselves -- the vast majority of the population -- are the only force
that can lead the fight to win a socialist society. Socialism
can’t be brought about from above, but has to be won by workers
themselves. …
We see our task as
building an independent socialist organization with members organizing
in our workplaces, our schools and our neighborhoods to bring socialist
ideas to the struggles we are involved in today, and the vision of a
socialist world in the future.
In addition to working with liberal activists and national labor
unions behind the scenes, the ISO is just one of many
socialist/Marxist/communist groups organizing their members to support
Van Jones' new "American dream" initiative.
The Daily Caller
noted Friday that a number of radical groups -- including the Maoist
Revolutionary Communist Party, the Communist Party USA, Trotskyist
Socialist Workers Party and the Democratic Socialists of America -- are
taking up the labor unions' talking points and encouraging Egypt-like
unrest in the United States.
The Socialist Workers Party has
labeled Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker "an enemy of the people."
"Egypt, whose revolution has been a constant source of inspiration
here, reflected in signs and chants -- and Walker’s new nickname, Gov.
Mubarak," an ISO
article reads. In addition, the article labels the current
budget debates in Wisconsin as "class war" and as an affront to "the
standard of living of working people."
"Using the deficit as a scare tactic, the right-wing corporate
Republicans are on a fast track to defeat every initiative of the Obama
administration, to destroy unions and public services at the federal,
state and municipal level, and at the same time protect tax breaks for
the richest few,"
writes Joelle Fishman, chair of the Communist Party USA’s Political
Action Commission. A "broad alliance of forces for social change
(labor, racially oppressed, women, youth)" need to step forward to
re-frame the nation’s political debate for the 2012 elections, she
insists.
While many skeptics claim these radical leftist groups may agree with
the unions on a number of issues, the fact that these groups are
actually working in conjunction with unions to orchestrate the ongoing
protests says a lot about American unions’ modern-day political
orientation -- far to the left and antithetical to the real
American dream.
The communist, socialists, and
the rest of the Marxist Left are out of the closet. They see this
as their moment to seize the American political system and turn this
country into Cuba.
Obama has made this possible.
Obama Endorses The Violence, Threats, And
Hitler Signs In Wisconsin
John Hawkins
says even though Barack Obama is a union puppet who moves whenever
they pull his strings, after an initial statement, he's tried to stay
clear of the miasma of fleebaggers, violence, threats, and hostile
rhetoric coming from the Left in Wisconsin. Not only is it
embarrassing, what you have are union members fighting to continue
bilking the public in a state with a huge budget deficit.
Yet,
let's be honest here: Obama's Secretary of Labor wouldn't be supporting
the unions against the people of Wisconsin unless he had given her the
thumbs up to do it:
Obama is staying mostly quiet about the union
battle going on in Wisconsin. His labor secretary, Hilda Solis, is
not.
"The fight is on!" Solis told a cheering crowd at the
Democratic National Committee's winter meeting over the weekend in
Washington. Giving her support to "our brothers and sisters in
public employee unions," Solis pledged aid to unionized workers who are
"under assault" in Wisconsin and elsewhere.
When the unions say
"jump," Barack Obama says, "How high?" So, it's no surprise his
administration is backing the unions, but since his administration is
now more publicly getting behind the unions, it's fair to start asking
Barack Obama more direct questions about the people he supports.
• Does he
think it's okay for Democrats to flee the state rather than vote?
• Does he condemn the violence
and threats the protestors have engaged in?
• Will he condemn the numerous
comparisons of Scott Walker to Hitler and Mubarak?
It's certainly appropriate to ask conservatives who
support the Tea Party to condemn things like this when they occur.
So, when there's more violence, incivility, and thuggish behavior in two
weeks' worth of liberal protests endorsed by the Obama administration
than there were at two years' worth of Tea Party protests all across
America, it's fair to ask Obama to speak out.
Top Communist Says Labor Is Key For Obama
In 2012
Trevor Loudon
says that according to Ben Sears, Labor Editor for the Communist
Party USA‘s Political Affairs magazine, organized labor will pull out
all the stops for Barack Obama in 2012.
Organized labor will be among President
Barack Obama’s most determined supporters in 2012. Obama’s
return to office will be regarded as a matter of life and death for
the labor movement. However, labor will be aiming higher in
2012 than in 2008. For American workers, organized and
unorganized, the 2012 election will be about much more than the race
for the White House, as important as that will be.
Why should unions back Obama? Writes Sears;
First the Obama Administration has, over the
last two plus years, accomplished much on behalf of working people.
We have seen the passage of a stimulus package that prevented the
Great Recession from deteriorating into a second Great Depression.
We have seen the passage of health care legislation that expands
affordable coverage to millions of working Americans and their
families. And we have seen Presidential appointments to the
Supreme Court, to the Cabinet and to the National Labor Relations
Board (NLRB) that all have the potential to change the environment
in which American workers struggle. We have been encouraged by
the President’s recent pledge that Social Security, Medicaid and
Medicare would not be cut while he was in the White House. And
we can point to other recent developments that underline the
significance of the changes that have occurred since the departure
of George W. Bush from the White House.
Despite disappointments, such as Obama’s failure to
pass the Employee Free Choice Act, and the as yet not fully socialized
Obamacare, Sears believes that unions will not only back Obama, but
reach out to other sectors of the US left to do so;
What needs to be emphasized is that the
disagreements and the disappointments should not dampen labor’s
support for Obama in 2012. If anything, these experiences will
strengthen labor’s determination to flex its muscle, to struggle to
defeat conservative and reactionary anti-people candidates, and to
build and expand its own independent role in our nation’s politics.
This will require labor to reach out and build alliances with other
core forces with renewed determination. This has been the
message from labor speakers at rallies across the country this
spring. As Patrick Eiding, President of the Philadelphia
AFL-CIO told a rally against education cuts on April 4, "We are
coming together as working people, union and non-union. We
have to spread the word that we will not let corporate leaders steal
our country." Or as Randi Weingarten, President of the
American Federation of Teachers (AFT) told the same rally honoring
Dr. Martin Luther King, "King walked to bring together the labor
community and the civil rights community; we need to bring them
together as never before."
Lenin did not describe labor unions as
"transmission belts of communism" for nothing.
Bedfellows
The SEIU marches side by side with
communists in Los Angeles. The majority of these people aren't
even Americans.
A May Day rally in Los Angeles, co-sponsored by
the SEIU and various communist groups, as well as other unions,
reflected yet another step in the normalization of self-identified
communist and socialist ideologies in the Obama era. Not only did
the SEIU help to organize the rally in conjunction with communists, they
marched side-by-side with communists, while union members carried
communist flags, communists carried union signs, and altogether there
was no real way to tell the two apart.
Union Made
The worst thing Obama has done is to turn the National Labor
Relations Board (NRLB) into an union-controlled agency. Some of
Obama’s union-controlled NLRB’s actions to date:
• Prosecuting an employer for opting
to open a non-union assembly plant
• Suing states whose
voters prefer secret ballots over card check
• Finding
an employer guilty of unfair labor practices for not letting
off-duty workers of a contractor on to the employer’s property
• Giving unions the okay to let their union supporters
threaten non-union supporters with physical violence
•
Moving to humiliate employers, as well as giving unions access to
employees and property
• Considering forcing all
NLRA-covered employers to post notices telling employee how to
unionize
• Contemplating letting unions unionize
workers into micro-unions
• Undermining union-free
employees by giving unions (and employers) the right to negotiate
"sweetheart deals" (before the union represents said employees) in
exchange for unionizing employees
Of course, as the NLRB has become union bosses’
go-to agency to enact an agenda that they couldn’t otherwise get through
Congress, there are other NLRB actions
here.
