“ . . . it signaled Obama’s opinion that all jobs are not created equal . . .” Rajjpuut
“ . . . we're going to build a constituency of people who believe in limited government, fiscal common sense and individual liberty." Matt Kibbe
Obama’s Heinous Favor
to Union Supporters;
NLRB Complaint
Outrage South Carolinians
When Barack Obama made his recess appointment of Craig Becker to the National Labor Relations Board in late March, 2010, many economists were shocked. Becker’s appointment, in effect overriding a Senate Republican filibuster, was among the most appallingly partisan political IOUs ever paid and it openly signaled Obama’s opinion that all jobs are not created equal and only union jobs deserved legal protection. Becker, at the time a union lawyer with a particularly nasty resume, had repeatedly and unequivocally stated “No worker should have any right to opt out of union representation.” While work continues at Boeing’s new aircraft assembly site in North Charleston (in South Carolina, a “right-to-work-state”) President Obama set his dogs from the NLRB upon Boeing. The NLRB complaint is that Boeing is planning to build airplanes at a non-union plant in S.C. rather than at its home site in Seattle, Washington. In 2009, Boeing announced it would build some additional assembly lines at a new factory in North Charleston, South Carolina to aid in producing Boeing 787 airliners.
The move was widely regarded as an economic measure for Boeing since Washington state laws support union-requirements that new workers must join a union to be eligible to work at a union site while South Carolina as a right-to-work-state . . . where each worker can decide individually if he wants to join a union or not . . . is less susceptible to high union pay demands. Of course, they were also naturally thinking of the crippling 2008 strike and the resulting brouhaha at Boeing’s Seattle factory by the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace workers.
Boeing execs have long asserted that being “knocked offline” by union demands was adversely affecting the business. Clearly, the new factory scheduled to open this summer, makes sense in light of Boeing’s concerns but the union has filed a complaint against Boeing and the NLRB has taken up the complaint claiming that Boeing used “unfair labor practices.”
South Carolinians are up in arms, "This is nothing more than a political favor for the unions who are supporting President Obama's re-election campaign," said S.C. Republican Senator Jim DeMint. "Unfortunately, it comes at the expense of hundreds of jobs in South Carolina and thousands of jobs nationwide." DeMint argues if the complaint goes forward, right-to-work states will struggle to attract jobs and the pace of jobs leaving the country and heading overseas will become a torrent.
“It will have a chilling effect on job growth in my state and in the country,” said DeMint. Boeing and DeMint point out that the company has added 2,000 jobs in Seattle since the South Carolina construction began. That, however, is no sop to the union demands: "Boeing's decision to build a 787 assembly line in South Carolina sent a message that Boeing workers would suffer financial harm for exercising their collective bargaining rights," IAM Vice President Rich Michalski said in a statement on the union's website.
S.C. Senator Lindsey Graham, another Republican added, "If successful, the NLRB complaint would allow unions to hold a virtual ‘veto' over all business decisions. Left to their own devices, the NLRB would routinely punish right-to-work states that value and promote their pro-business climates." Since the jobless rate is 8.9% and this week saw the largest jump in new claims for unemployment in several years . . . the president’s contradictory claims notwithstanding, we are not seeing a true “rebound,” or “economic recovery” at all -- and his NLRB is doing everything they can to make sure that our economy never does recover.
In any case, this week has given us a “treasure trove” of other Obama contradictions and outrageous proclamations . . . .
ITEM: in other “outrageous news,” the United Nations is now talking about taking the United States to the World Court for “war crimes” associated with taking down Usama Bin Laden, the world’s most notorious terrorist.
ITEM: After dithering for three days before deciding NOT to reveal the photos and videos proving that Usama actually was killed because, “. . . we don’t need to spike the ball, that’s not who we are,” Barack Obama . . . GASP! went ahead and spiked the ball by making a visit to “Ground Zero” in NYC -- his first visit there since the 2008 campaign. Invitations to former presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush to join in the victory lap photo op were declined.
ITEM: Along with the atrocious recent NLRB actions against South Carolina and Boeing, Obama's administration is this week trying to force businesses bidding on federal government jobs to reveal political contributions . . . obviously this could have a chilling restraint on contributions to opposition parties and a positive effect for in-parties . . . an awfully bad idea.
ITEM: The contradictions just continue to mount up for Barack Obama. He allowed flag-draped coffins of fallen Americans this week to be published and of course, they wound all over the internet in the Muslim World. Meanwhile he won’t publish the death photos of Bin Laden.
ITEM: IF the Guantanamo site had been closed, the threads that led to discovering Usama’s location would not have existed. Obama has fought to close down that site for over seven years. He has also ordered his Justice Department to prosecute CIA (and other) interrogators who helped elicit the clues that finally tied together the whereabouts of Usama Bin Laden.
ITEM: Without the benefits and the threads provided by water-boarding and other EITs (enhanced interrogation techniques) evoking the eventual cooperation from the big three internees in Guantanamo, Usama’s location would still not be known. Mr. Obama has banned the CIA from using not only water-boarding but any EITs at all . . . thus handcuffing the nation’s intelligence-gatherers in the War on Terror. Mr. Obama has actually used the word “terror” recently and eschewed the phrase “man-caused disaster” that he originally preferred. In fact, to his supporters’ chagrin, Mr. Obama has almost totally come to adopt and even expand the “Terror War” exigency measures such as the Patriot Act, Guantanamo, and military courts which were first employed by George W. Bush.
ITEM: The Bin Laden death photos “would inflame the Muslim world” according to Mr. Obama who has banned release of that information. Mr. Obama has also told us that no real Muslim can be a terrorist (remember the great to-do that occurred when Bill O’Reilly visited the TV show “The View” and said “Muslims attacked us on 9/11”) then Obama's recently turned around 180 degrees and proved that the great Bin Laden actually was a Muslim who deserved full burial respect within 24 hours, including the proper ablutions, appropriate burial clothing and sacred words spoken above him. Some might complain that since Mr. Obama in 2009 released over 2,000 photos of Abu Ghraib prison abuses, it might be logical to permit one picture of Bin Laden’s corpse.
ITEM: Mr. Obama reaffirmed his loan of $2 Billion for deep sea oil drilling to Brazil saying, “We look forward to being your best customer,” meanwhile, this week his Department of the Interior has thrown new obstacles in front of land drilling; shallow-sea drilling; and, of course, deep-sea drilling anywhere in and around the United States proper . . . and this country has not built one single new oil refinery in the last 37 years because of congressional restraints . . . while the average price of a gallon of gas has reached $3.99 and the price of food has risen by 36%, Mr. Obama and Treasury Secretary Geithner and Federal Reserve chief Bernanke have denied any responsibility for rising prices and indeed denied that inflation was occurring at all . . . certainly there could be no connection between the Fed’s policies, oil-drilling bans and what we consumers face at the pump and the grocery store checkout counter according to them.
ITEM: Ward Churchill, of Colorado University infamy (he’s the fool who called the innocent victims of the 9/11 attacks “Little Eichmanns”) who was in Tucson, Arizona, with numerous Obama supporters of “social justice” got upset and threw a fit along with the other leftists present because a class advocating that Southwestern lands of the United States must be returned to Mexico was no longer a required class, but just an elective.
The riot that ensued for the next three hours prevented a school board meeting from occurring. The syllabus of the class in question includes some real gems: “Thanksgiving was the first celebration of the beginning of genocide on the Native Tribes.” Virtually everything taught in the class is seen only through the lens of supposed White racism and undoubted Marxism. “Capitalism is the oppressive economic belief that the rights of the wealthy are more important than the rights of the poorer working class,” etc., etc. ad nauseum. You can read the full curriculum at GlenBeck.com as well as seeing Ward Churchill’s mug in the videos.
The group is calling for Obama’s and Eric Holder’s Justice Department to get involved and protect the students’ rights to hear this anti-American propaganda just as Justice got involved to protect a Muslim teacher’s right to be paid (and to pay for a substitute) during the weeks while she makes a “holy pilgrimage” trip to Mecca. The teachers’ union, of course, backed her up 100%. One might expect that she could make her pilgrimage after retirement or during summer vacation (if she wasn’t so particular about being there for the Hadj (a.k.a. Hajj) pilgrimage dates) . . . but common sense is probably not appropriate here.
ITEM on the Periphery: Government Motors (a.k.a. GM) has produced a monumental advertising blunder equal to the worst in their history. The same people who decided a generation ago that the perfect GM car for Spanish, and South and Central American markets was their Chevy Nova (any wonder a car called the “Doesn’t Go” <No va>) in Spanish doesn’t sell really well in lands where Spanish is spoken) have initiated a big ad campaign for the Chevy Camaro featuring an amorphous yellow manlike form. In 90% of the shots, however, the “head” of the yellow form is all that’s seen, and it looks remarkably akin to a certain sour yellow citrus fruit. Rajjpuut can’t speak for you, but he won’t be buying any LEMONS from GM anytime soon. A prediction: if GM and Chrysler ever actually do pay off their debt to the taxpayers who bailed them out, they will face bankruptcy again within ten years (which would be the third bailout for Chrysler: 1979, 2009 were the prior two).
ITEM of Curiosity: Since 1957 when Atlas Shrugged was first published, the three topmost enduring best-selling books year after year in the United States and Great Britain have been:
#1 The Holy Bible
#2 Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged (1957)
#3 Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead (1943)
It seems that even with those sterling results, improvement was still possible. Since 2008’s election of Barack Obama to president, Atlas Shrugged has sold over a million copies which is the greatest sales that book has ever known in any similar time period. In 2009, 520,000 copies were sold worldwide. And, of course, Atlas Shrugged Part I has been surprising theater goers for the last three weeks and is now about to jump from limited circulation to 2,000 theaters this week. According to Freedom Works President Matt Kibbe, "In a lot of ways, that project reflects the ethos of the TEA (“Taxed Enough Already”) Party. You had Republicans and Democrats and Independents who feel rejected by the establishment joining the TEA Party, and the same process is going to happen with Atlas Shrugged: We're going to build a constituency of people who believe in limited government, fiscal common sense and individual liberty."
Ya’ll live long, strong and ornery,
Rajjpuut
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