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Thugs: Andy Stern, SEIU and their connection to Obama
The mere suggestion that Barack Obama's history is replete with a string of murky associations with dangerous extremists is enough to send the Left, the pragmatists, and the 'moderates' spinning in an endless cycle of dizzying indignation. Yet even his present close associations are highly problematic.
Andy Stern, who heads the workers' union known as SEIU, is the most frequent visitor to the White House. Obama has admitted on numerous occasions that he collaborates with Stern and the SEIU on a regular basis. He even stated during the 2008 campaign that he has 'worked his entire life with Stern and the SEIU on a regular basis.
All Americans should become informed about Andy Stern and SEIU. But not from their official website or from the mainstream media, where you will get the propaganda.
Several vital facts should be noted.
First, SEIU thugs attacked citizens who attended Town Hall meetings with their elected representatives last summer, seriously injuring several who required hospitalization. The thugs never threatened anyone beforehand. They simply showed up at the meetings to intimidate town hall attendees and then unleash their violence on the unsuspecting citizens by surprise.
SEIU and ACORN thugs also blocked the entrance to at least one Town Hall meeting, refusing to grant entrance to the constituents within the representative's district.
The citizens who attended these Town Hall meetings were unarmed, many of whom were retired and elderly. Yet they exercised one of their most sacred rights in this free society--to confront elected representatives and hold them accountable, this time on the highly unpopular ObamaCare bill.
Second, interestingly, Andy Stern and SEIU helped to write the ObamaCare bill that our illustrious Congress critters admitted they never read. They didn't have to. They had been bought off by the special interests who wrote the bill, and that includes SEIU and the Apollo Alliance, which coordinates efforts between big government, big labor, big business, and big environment.
POLL: Will Lois Lerner go to jail to protect Obama?
Apollo also helped craft the near-$1 trillion-dollar stimulus package for Obama.
Add into the mix Communist Van Jones, the Hugo Chavez admirer, and the 'Center for American Progress' which is run by a Leftwing extremist, and you have a healthcare bill that was conceived, nurtured, born, and bred in the bowels of American Leftwing extremism.
Thus, the hired guns of these organizations, the street-wise goons and thus of SEIU and ACORN, were charged with disrupting, intimidating, and even physically attacking citizens who care enough for the country to protest this frantic march toward Marxism.
Each of the organizations and individuals mentioned above have close ties with Barack Obama. Van Jones was hired as one of Obama's 'czars' until Patriots screamed to high heaven about a Marxist in the White House, resulting in Jones' departure, where he then wound up working for the Leftwing extremist Center for American Progress.
ACORN's connections with Barack Obama are well-known, going all the way back to his early days in Chicago as a community organizer, when Obama did legal work for the organization. They, too, were involved in the intimidation and violent threats/behavior against citizens at the Town Hall meetings.
And as for Andy Stern and SEIU, watch and listen closely to what came out of Obama's own mouth in this video.
Presently there is a massive, concerted effort on the part of the Leftwing, the mainstream media, the White House, and Democrats in Congress to portray Tea Party activists as dangerous, violent, right-wing extremists.
This, it would seem, is a perfect cover for the violence that is nurtured, encouraged, and perpetrated by the Leftwing organizations most closely associated with Barack Obama.
The death threats against Nancy Pelosi and Bart Stupak are actually but a drop in the bucket compared to the threats made against Patriots, Tea Party activists, and anyone else who dares to raise a voice of protest against this President.
source: http://www.examiner.com/article/thugs-andy-stern-seiu-and-their-connection-to-obama
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/09/05/hoffa-on-tea-party-take-these-sons-bitches-out/
Beware the Ides of May, 2011? Yep!
As reported right here in Rajjpuut’s Folly several times already in the past year . . . “THE Revolution” is underway. “THE Revolution,” you say, “Hold it, hold it, when did this start? Why wasn’t I informed? . . . er’ what revolution?” Note to self: ignorance is not bliss. Long-form headline: The Radical Left has Now Joined with Radical Islam to Initiate “THE Revolution” NOT Only Here in the United States, but Around the World . . . these moves are a culmination of several trends long in evidence . . . details to follow, and for those interested in marking your calendar: May 15, 2011 is the key date . . . .
ITEM: If you’ve been plotting something for at least 65 years and been piling up successes furtively under the cover of dark, you must become pretty emboldened to finally come out into the open in the bright light of day . . . that’s the story for socialist and communist Americans and the union LEADERS who are right now openly calling for and planning open revolt.
ITEM: if you’ve got a grievance 63 years in the boiling (since the creation of Israel, the Jewish State) and been pretty damn violent about it the whole time without success, you’ll welcome anyone who promises to join with you in common cause . . . that’s the story for the Islamic Jihadists who since Sayyid Qutb first came to Greeley, Colorado (see: The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11) to attend the University of Northern Colorado (then called “Colorado State College of Education”) shortly after publishing his first book Social Justice in Islam have been looking for a chance to martyr themselves to bring about an Islamic Caliphate and Mohammed’s Paradise on Earth. Qutb succeeded in 1966 and before his hanging remarked, “Thank God! I performed Jihad for fifteen years to earn this martyrdom.”
ITEM: Osama Bin Laden, founded Al Qaeda in August, 1988, (even before the defeat of the Soviet Union in Afghanistan less than a year later; largely accomplished thanks to huge cash and weapons influxes and military training from the United States) but the organization was kept a secret. That date is important because already at that date Bin Laden had his eye on western targets even while the war with the Soviets was still raging. Even at that date the ultimate goal was world conquest for Islam. That goal has NOT changed.
A believer whenever possible in pure Muslim activism, Bin Laden (a Saudi) went to King Fahd of Saudi Arabia in late 1990 asking to be allowed to free Kuwait from the conquest of Saddam Hussein with a purely Islamic military from many Arabian nations. He was sent away.
When Bush #1 sent in the coalition forces to neutralize and defeat Saddam Hussein’s forces, Bin Laden was aghast that “infidels” could be invited onto sacred Islamic territory to defeat Muslims. He publicly denounced Saudi Arabia's dependence on the U.S. military, saying that the presence of foreign troops in the "land of the two mosques" (the Holy Cities of Mecca and Medina in Saudi Arabia) profaned sacred soil. Not liking to have their monarch criticized publicly, the Saudis tried to catch and silence Bin Laden. Soon after U.S. troops were allowed on Saudi soil, Bin Laden’s organization in Saudi Arabia was raided by Saudi secret police and information released to the American FBI which on November 8, 1990 led to a raid on the New Jersey home of El Sayyid Nosair, a man with numerous Al Qaeda ties, which uncovered a great deal of evidence of terrorist plots against America including plans to blow up New York City (NYC) skyscrapers. Just a few months later, in 1991 Osama publicly declared unilateral war against the United States. The Arab world knew about this. The CIA and top level politicians knew about this; you were never told.
Despite Bin Laden’s declaration of war and the information discovered from the Nosair raid, the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993 was a partial success for Al Qaeda. The CIA and top level politicians, of course, knew all about all of this; again you were never told. During the next decade Osama and his buddies were responsible for attacks all around the world; most notably for several dozen terrorist attacks in the Middle East, Africa and Asia; and for blowing a hole in the side of the American destroyer USS Cole at port in Yemen in 1998; he and Ayman al-Zawahir co-signed a fatwa that same year declaring the killing of North Americans and their allies “an individual duty for every Muslim”; and most infamously for the September 11, 2001 attacks on the twin towers of the World Trade Center and on the Pentagon in Washington. D.C. Note to self: it does not take two to make a war . . . .
ITEM: “THE Revolution,” (like the attacks from Al Qaeda) constitutes a war whether you like it or not or whether or not you’re even aware of it. You now -- in this blog -- have been given information that the main launch point for highly visible and irrefutable assaults upon you, our Constitution and the American way of life is May 15, 2011. Up to now “THE Revolution” has been going on all around you for forty-four years.
The ground for the battlefield was originally scouted and prepared by self-proclaimed “neo-Marxist” Saul Alinsky of Chicago with his two books Reveille for Radicals (1946); and Rules for Radicals (1971). The two were how-to primers on radical activism aimed at community organizers in big cities. Alinsky dedicated Rules for Radicals to Lucifer (a.k.a. “Satan”) . . . that dedication has been removed in modern editions but there are still plenty of the old books around and Rajjpuut checked one out of the library less than six years ago, yep “Satan with a starting capital of just one snake” who “won his own kingdom” was lauded as “the first radical.” Alinsky “tactics” (sometimes called “street theater”) were seen all over the New Left movement of the late 60’s and early 70’s. Some thought they were too “tame.”
Most notable among these were terrorist Bill Ayers and his wife Bernadette Dorn/Dohrn (both spellings are very common and she’s also given her first name often as ‘Bernadine’) who once they left the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS -- because they were “too busy examining each other’s navels”) joined the Weather Underground sometimes called the Weathermen for whom they made and planted bombs during that era killing and maiming some police and others and losing more than a few Weathermen to incompetence. Both Ayers and Dorn are still alive; both are close friends of the President of the United States; more on those two later.
ITEM: “Tactics” is how you wage war on a day-by-day basis. “Strategy” is what the long-range goals of the daily tactics aim to accomplish. With Alinsky’s ugly tactics now well-polished, what the progressive- (we must ‘progress’ beyond the ‘outdated and ill-conceived Constitution’ if we are ever to make ‘progress’ toward Utopia on earth) leftists needed now was a grand strategy defining how to make the goal (takeover of the United States and destruction of Capitalism) over time become a reality. Two Columbia University (NYC) Marxist professors Richard Andrew Cloward and his wife Frances Fox Piven provided that strategy with their May 2, 1966 article in The Nation magazine The Weight of the Poor: a Strategy to End Poverty. Suddenly everything fell into place. Almost immediately the ideas they espoused became known as “Cloward-Piven Strategy” and C-P Strategy has remained the radical left’s most powerful, albeit slow, strategic idea ever since.
ITEM: The theme of the article was that the poor should be used as shock-troopers and only by making the rest of the nation fear them could the poor gain their rightful economic equality. The intermediate goal should be according to Cloward and Piven GNI (a guaranteed national income). The basis for their strategy was that Democratic President Lyndon B. Johnson had the previous year not only got us into war in Southeast Asia; created the two government spending boondoggles Medicare; and Medicaid (with a state side as well as a federal one which now constitute UNfunded liabilities of $75 TRillion); but also launched a “War on Poverty” dramatically expanding old and adding new welfare programs. Cloward and Piven decided that with Alinsky street tactics they could dramatically increase the number of welfare recipients, virtually bankrupt the nation and then get the Democratic Party (where they owned the most influence) to pass a GNI law . . . POOF! SNAP! Abracadabra! ending poverty and advancing the revolution, they thought, dramatically virtually overnight.
ITEM: It took them part of eight years to know semi-success. The full story is found here in a recent Rajjpuut’s Folly in its painfully-detailed entirety:
The short version is: After creating something called the NWRO in 1967 with Black militant George Wiley, Cloward and Piven crapped in their own nest by bankrupting NYC which was bailed out by the federal government in 1975; and almost bankrupted the State of New York and many other states and big cities by doubling welfare rolls by 1970 from eight to sixteen million recipients.
C&P and Wiley declared victory even though GNI was never seriously discussed in Congress. They publicly bragged about the great thing they’d done. They told their followers to now concentrate their attention on voter registration and federal housing. In 1977, one of the first things the new progressive president, Jimmy Carter, did was pass a bill called CRA ’77 (the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977) forcing lenders to knowingly make bad loans to unqualified would-be home owners. Wade Rathke, a Wiley Lieutenant sent to Arkansas in 1970 was in 1977 assigned to be the lead in creating a model organization in Arkansas to follow-up 0n the new C&P marching orders while taking advantage of CRA ’77 with C-P Strategies just as they had originally done with the welfare laws. Again the full version of events is found here:
ITEM: The nutshell version is that ACORN (Arkansas Community Organizations for Reform Now) was created in 1977. Using voter fraud** they elected an up and coming young Arkansas lieutenant governor to governor in 1978 and kept him in that post for 12 of the next 14 years until getting him elected president in 1972. Along the way they perfected their voter registration shenanigans and housing corruptions Alinsky-style so well that Rathke’s organization was expanded to every state and renamed (Associations of Community Organizations for Reform Now). They were so successful on the housing front that just by them operating in Arkansas they began to change the face of federal housing very quickly. In 1975 only one in every 404 home loans in the country was considered “suspect.” Typically, this suspect loan was made at 3% down payment to someone considered a very good risk such as an ex-military officer going to college on the GI Bill. After ACORN got involved (just in Arkansas, remember) by 1985 one in every 196 home loans was “suspect” and over half of those suspect loans were CRA ’77 loans in Arkansas and in other states that ACORN had recently spread to. These Arkansas loans were made to absolutely unqualified buyers.
ITEM: after five expansions of CRA ’77 (four expansions by ACORN president Bill Clinton alone) the financial meltdown of 2007 would hit the country like a kidney kick from a mule. As for Barack Obama, he was not only a community organizer in Chicago . . . he was also:
A. An ACORN attorney in 1994, '95 and '96 shaking down home mortgage companies not only for bad loans now; but for long-range promises of bad loan quotas for the future and even donations to ACORN itself.
B. An attorney-professor teaching both Constitutional Law and Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals in Chicago.
ITEM: After two legislative expansions of CRA ’77 in 1995 Bill Clinton (he also made a huge regulatory expansion of CRA ‘77 in 1993; and passed the Motor-Voter Act^^ in 1993 with Cloward and Piven standing behind him in the official photo) paid off his ACORN allies handsomely with a steroid-version legislative expansion of CRA ’77 in 1998. By 2005 more than one in three home loans was now suspect (34%) many of them made at 0.0% down payment for homes costing over $300,000 made to virtually homeless## clients. The full details again should be known by every voting American:
That brings us almost up to date: So what exactly do we mean by “THE Revolution” and why do we say May 15, 2011 is so important? The answer to that question goes back roughly a year ago. About that time, the “near-ground-zero mosque was floated as a trial balloon to see if the American Mainstream media would back it and they did. Shariah Law in America as a viable option has been pressed by the extreme left and Eric Holder’s INJustice Department since that time. On the other end in early spring, 2010, several powerful American Union personalities and other prominent American leftists visited a few European capitals and roughly 17-18 Middle Eastern predominantly Muslim countries. They arranged discussions about forming a coalition to destroy what they hate most -- American Capitalism. Out of that discussion came the wave of so-called Democratic revolts across the Middle East; the so-called “Gaza Freedom Flotilla” blockade run; Shariah$$ Law- acceptability being promoted (it’s actually already part of law in some places in Europe); and plans to unite because “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.”
What we mean by “THE Revolution" is exactly the same thing the left has meant by “THE Revolution" since before Alinsky, Ayers, Cloward, Piven, Wiley and others could talk. It means the downfall of the United States of America; the expansion of leftist efforts in many countries and introduction of a global government believing as they, the leftists do. By the way, the Jihadist will be fine with just the downfall of the United States but they want an Islamic Caliphate and to behead all who fail to capitulate to Islam on some glorious day in the future. But you knew all that . . . here’s what you didn’t know:
Item: The so-called Gaza Freedom Flotilla funded by a feminine Marxist organization called Code Pink; and planned by Bill Ayers and his wife Bernadette Dorn (you remember them, the bomb makers) celebrates its first anniversary this May 15, 2011.
This was the first known incidence of leftists in America and radical Jihadist Muslims joining forces. They (a group of Jihadist members of the Muslim Brotherhood (an organization that first became serious in Egypt under Sayyid Qutb) attempted to run the Israeli naval blockade (aimed at preventing arms and other military supplies getting to Gaza and to Jihadists elsewhere) and although the violence that naturally followed was at each step of the way begun and escalated by the Jihadists (each of whom had made video wills for their relatives before sailing that were captured by Israeli agents) the mainstream-lamestream media in America covered the whole affair as if it was an Israeli-provoked atrocity. Naturally the Arab press went hog-wild with the story . . . oh, sorry; Muslims don’t go hog-wild, so uh, camel-wild . . .
Among other results of this evil-vile collaboration: Mubarak is out and the “Democracy” that follows looks to be a Jihadocracy for Egypt similar to what rules now in Iran with no more enforcement of the (neutral toward) Israel peace agreement or the Trade (with Israel) agreements that Mubarak had long upheld despite their unpopularity among his people; there are now serious uprisings in almost all the Muslim Middle East; and the old version of Moammar Gadhafi is now looking pretty good as America seriously contemplates funding the Jihadist rebels out to oust his despotic butt. Anyway the first anniversary of that blockade-run attempt (May 15, 2011) will see a confluence of openly atrocious events in the Middle East and in America. Four in particular need to be exposed right now:
#1 Code Pink, Ayers and Dorn again are uniting once again for a repeat of the blockade-running event on May 15, 2011.
#2 As SEIU Union bigwig Stephen Lerner promised (it’s all on videotape at my Rajjpuut’s Folly blog site in a different blog):
the assault on the American banking system he’s planned . . . and designed to deal the ultimate crippling blow to capitalism is scheduled for May 15, 2011.
#3 A whole range of nasty union demonstrations are scheduled to coincide with . . . wait for it . . . May 15, 2011. The Union movement has now gone global (Workers of the world unite!) and far more Marxist. Go to the websites of the AFL-CIO or SEIU and see all their propaganda about all the countries “standing with Wisconsin.” They believe that Capitalism is on the ropes and all they have to do now is keep attacking the free market system until they can land a haymaker . . . and move their twisted statist philosophies into the forefront.
#4 A restoration of lost land in which Muslim Arabs on all sides of Israel are supposed to simply walk into the country and “reclaim their acreage” is also scheduled for, yep, you guessed it . . . May 15, 2011. Beware the Ides of May.
Ya’all live long, strong and ornery,
Rajjpuut
** ACORN ran a very successful voter registration drive across Arkansas; unfortunately, those who signed up as Republicans never had their paperwork delivered to the voting authorities and that’s how young William Jefferson Clinton won the state governorship in 1978. He lost the post in 1980 during the Reagan landslide, but got elected the next twelve years before becoming our first ACORN president.
^^ Motor-Voter was called “a twelve-lane highway to voter fraud” by those who understood it.
## After Clinton’s Steroid-expansion of CRA ‘77 legislatively in 1998, ACORN found it much easier to put unqualified home loan recipients into $440,000 homes in 1999 than they could into $110,000 homes five or six years earlier. These folks were typically:
A. Without jobs
B. Lacking decent credit ratings
C. Often without even a rental history
D. Welfare recipients, and especially . . . .
E. People whose only “income” was food stamps
F. Even illegal aliens
Even though this blog involves a lot of reading, every educated American voter should know the full details here:
$$ That means things like total control and oppression of women and the burkha requirement; and solely “mosque activities” of Shariah law be allowed and left alone as long as only Muslims are involved. In other words the U.S. Constitution would NOT apply to Muslims in the country.
Obamacare Forces SEIU to Drop Children’s Coverage
It seems the free market is much more compassionate than Ms. Nanny State after all . . . . At the end of October the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) informed dues-paying members of its monstrously large 1199 affiliate in New York that it was dropping health care coverage for children. That's correct, you read it right, an ultra-radical Marxist union, not evil Republicans, is abandoning our ‘chilluns’ to cut rising health care delivery costs . . . .
According to The Wall Street Journal, more than 30,000 low wage service industry families will suffer because of the decision. Who's to blame? Mitra Behroozi, SEIU 1199 benefits manager, singled out oppressive new government regulations, including the progressives’ sacred cow, Obamacare. Specifically the rule forcing insurers to cover dependents of policy holders until age 26 was singled out by Behroozi who said the Union’s financial resources are “already stretched as far as possible.” These things will happen when to a Union that pushes hundreds of millions of dollars toward losing Democratic candidates and $60 million to elect Obama himself. Not to mention anteing up bus fare for thousands of their SEIU employees to stand out in the sun at a Comedy Central anti-TEA Party rally in Washington five days before the election. The road to hell is paved with progressive intentions . . . .
Obama and Dems Push for Trickle-up Poverty
Margaret Thatcher’s famous line about socialism, “Sooner or later they’ll always run out of other people’s money,” seems quite appropriate these days given the Obama administration’s and Congressional Democrats’ penchant for taxing and spending and expanding the size and scope and unconstitutionality of the federal government. At this moment when the fate of the soon-to-be-expired Bush Tax Cuts is still in the balance, it seems evident that the contrast between the two major parties could NOT be greater. The Republicans seeking smaller government, lower spending and lower taxes are seeking the obvious “trickle-down” economic answer that worked so well for Ronald Reagan and over the first three years of the G.W. Bush administration. The Democrats as always are seeking more taxes to spend for an ever bigger and more controlling and intrusive federal government . . . while doing so they’re hoping to inspire the middle-class voter with wealth-envy by letting only the tax cuts for those earning $250,000 or more annually expire . . . policies that Reaganites called “trickle-up” poverty.
Chinese, Russians Show Disdain
for Dollar as Trade Currency
China and Russia have jointly announced that they will use their own currencies for bi-lateral trade in an effort to avoid the risk that the two nations say the American dollar now represents. While Beijing and Moscow have long wanted to heal their longtime “rift,” the announcement of their trade settlement being based upon their own currencies is a telling statement about the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank’s recent Q1 and Q2 monetary easing (demonetizing American debt and devaluing the dollar). In effect both nations are saying, “Our currency is stronger than the BUCK; and so is yours so let’s abandon the dollar and protect our domestic economies.
The two countries have long used the currencies of other countries, most notably the American dollar for bi-lateral trade. Recently, however, the Chinese Yuan has been traded against the Russian Ruble in the Chinese interbank market while the Renminbi/Yuan from China is soon expected to trade against the Ruble in Russia according to Vladimir Putin in a press conference in a meeting with Chinese leader Wen who was making a trip to Russia two months after Russian President Dmitry Medvedev's three-day visit to China in September, during which he and President Hu Jintao launched a cross-border pipeline linking the world's biggest energy producer with the largest energy consumer.
From the viewpoint of America’s economy, IF this Chinese-Russian agreement proves to be but the first of a cascade of nation’s “bailing out of the dollar” truly bad times are ahead. From the viewpoint of anyone holding dollar bills, including all American citizens, the real question is “What took so long?” In late 2008, Fed Chief Ben Bernanke printed up fourteen times the circulating currency in the United States in new bills. Thus, then with fifteen times the previous level in circulation, the 2009 dollar was POTENTIALLY worth just 6 2/3 pennies of the 2008 greenback. Now in 2010, the two quantitative easings (Q1 and Q2) have doubled the money in circulation as recently as July of this year . . . potentially, then the dollar is currently worth 3 1/3 cents of the September, 2008 dollar. All in all, news that makes you proud to be an American, eh?
Ya’ll live long, strong and ornery,
Rajjpuut
Please read the entire article:
URGENT! Federal legislation would override North Carolina, and other states bans on union organizing. It would bankrupt state and local gov. and municipalities. Harry Reid introduced S. 3194 under a rule that allows it to bypass committee review and proceed to the floor in as little as 48 hours. And guess which union ...is involved? SEIU!
http://www.carolinajournal.com/exclusives/display_exclusive.html?id=6428
Collective Bargaining Bill for Public Safety Workers Could Cost Taxpayers
Federal legislation would override North Carolina ban on union organizing
May 18, 2010
RALEIGH — Nearly 32,000 North Carolina state and local public safety employees could begin negotiating contracts with unions if recently introduced federal legislation becomes law. S. 3194, The Public Safety Employer-Employee Cooperation Act of 2009, sponsored and introduced April 12 by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., would override North Carolina law forcing the state, municipalities, and counties to recognize and bargain collectively with unions representing police, firefighters, emergency medical responders, and others.
Union officials refused to speak to Carolina Journal about the pending legislation. Neither the SEIU, which is affiliated with the State Employees Association of North Carolina (SEANC), the North Carolina Fraternal Order of Police, nor the International Association of Firefighters responded to repeated requests for comment.
Organized labor’s silence stands in contrast to vocal concerns expressed by local officials and associations over costs to taxpayers, burdens to administrators, the ability of law enforcement to nimbly respond, and constitutionality of the legislation.
The bill could become law quickly and without substantive debate. Reid introduced S. 3194 under a rule that allows it to bypass committee review and proceed to the floor in as little as 48 hours.
No action had occurred as of press time.
S. 3194 would override North Carolina General Statute 95-98, which for 51 years has prohibited public sector collective bargaining. S. 3194 would let public safety employees choose to be represented by a union and have their hours, wages, and terms and conditions of employment determined by collective bargaining. Supervisors and managers would be exempt.
The North Carolina League of Municipalities estimates 28,000 municipal and county law enforcement workers and paid firefighters would fall under the bill. The State Office of Personnel puts the number of public safety positions in state government at nearly 3,800, including members of Highway Patrol, employees of the State Bureau of Investigation, and others.
“From my experience, it would be costly to local governments,” said Wayne Bowers, city manager of Greenville and former city manager of Gainesville, Fla., where collective bargaining is law. “We had one full-time labor relations person, we had a staff assistant to that labor relations director, we had one city attorney who spent just about full time on labor relations issues, and we occasionally had to hire outside attorneys.” Cost to Gainesville: roughly $250,000.
Mint Hill Police Chief Tim Ledford, president of the North Carolina Association of Chiefs of Police, believes collective bargaining would bring tax increases and layoffs. NCACP opposes the bill. Ledford, once a union official in a different industry, says he understands rank-and-file officers see collective bargaining as a path to higher compensation. However, his experience showed him union contracts hurt good workers by protecting slackers: “With unions, everybody gets the same across the board.”
Compensation costs will rise with a unionized public sector work force, according to Chris Edwards, director of tax policy studies for the Cato Institute. In the Cato report Public-Sector Unions (PDF), Edwards writes that after adjusting for state-to-state differences in the labor market, “public-sector unions increase average pay levels by roughly 10 percent.”
Rebecca Troutman of the North Carolina Association of County Commissioners says local law enforcement officers receive a competitive salary, a 5 percent 401(k) contribution by their employers every year, a robust pension plan, and a separation allowance.
S. 3194 is an expensive, unfunded mandate, according to Ellis Hankins of the League of Municipalities. “It’s going to result in the same services being delivered at a much higher cost,” Hankins said. Like the county commissioners’ group, the league views collective bargaining and S. 3194 as a major threat that would create an adversarial relationship between employee and employer and lead to collective bargaining with other public employees.
Hankins points to Vallejo, Calif., as the poster child for what can happen when officials have no flexibility to cut budgets. In 2008, Vallejo declared bankruptcy after unions refused to renegotiate contracts. Three-quarters of Vallejo’s general fund budget went to public safety worker compensation. A bankruptcy appellate panel from the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed the city was insolvent and ordered changes to the agreements.
Lack of operational flexibility is Ledford’s concern. “You’ve got to be able to make decisions on the fly and on the spot — make immediate decisions. With a union you can’t do that. You’ve got to get buy-in from the union rep before you can make decisions about anything that affects the employee,” he said.
Fraternal Order of Police President Chuck Canterbury addressed “the boogeyman of collective bargaining having an adverse affect on public safety” before Congress last month. He said public safety officers who responded after the 9/11 attacks and Pentagon police who responded to a shooting this year were covered by collective bargaining agreements. “None of those called to action in these most extreme of circumstances paused to contemplate whether any of their actions would impact current or future negotiations,” Canterbury said.
The North Carolina Association of Fire Chiefs hasn’t taken a position on the bill, but President Frank Burns thinks North Carolina’s small towns could become all-volunteer forces if S. 3194 passes. Burns, fire chief of Kings Mountain, questions whether small towns could afford collective bargaining rules on hours worked, pay rates, benefits, and duty requirements. He doesn’t think an all-volunteer force would impact service adversely. Burns says volunteers comprise 80 percent of North Carolina’s 50,000-strong firefighting force, while 20 percent are paid.
Among North Carolina's Washington delegation, Republican Sen. Richard Burr opposes S. 3194. On May 7, he told NewsRadio680 WPTF he doesn’t see the bill coming up during the regular session of Congress but Burr did say, “I’m alarmed at what might happen in a lame-duck session of Congress post the November election, between then and January when the new Senate is seated.”
Democratic Sen. Kay Hagan’s office didn’t respond to CJ’s request to learn her position. In September 2008, then-candidate Hagan told Greensboro News & Record reporter Mark Binker, in a voice-mail message posted on the paper’s website: “Once I’m elected to the U.S. Senate, I want you to know that I will never support a bill at the federal level that mandates states allow collective bargaining of state government employees. I truly believe that’s a state rights issue. That’s my strong belief and that’s how I’ll vote.”
Hankins believes S. 3194 violates every principle of federalism and might be unconstitutional. “There really are good legal arguments that the legislation is beyond constitutional powers of the Congress. If they can do this, they can do about everything,” Hankins said.
Donna Martinez is a contributor to Carolina Journal
By Grizzlymama....Contact you Senators. Let them know we are aware of what's being done in the Senate. We oppose such legislation and the process they intend on using. We're watching them.... November is coming and we will be voting....It's the American way!
