So Helpful: AFL-CIO Offers 'Progressive Tax Revenue Proposals'

In the real world, a place the AFL-CIO hasn't lived in in decades, we call these tax increases. But when you've got your greedy paws on may wallets and want to squeeze more money out for pie-in-the-sky spending schemes, you call them progressive tax revenue proposals. They just never learn, do they?

The AFL-CIO is proposing a number of tax hikes and healthcare policy reforms, along with drawing troops down in Afghanistan and Iraq, to help bring down the national deficit.

In a memo sent to reporters Monday, Alison Omens, the labor federation’s director of media outreach, says the AFL-CIO will be urging members of Congress this October to help get Americans back to work, including passing $140 billion in funds for rebuilding the nation’s infrastructure and aiding state governments as proposed by President Obama in his American Jobs Act.

I didn't realize it was the job of labor unions to offer advice on the military. Then again, top thug Jimmy Hoffa did say he had an army ready to fight back against those evil tea partiers.

In addition, healthcare costs can be brought under control without cutting benefits, according to the AFL-CIO. They propose establishing a government-run insurance program known as “the public option,” which they estimate could save $88 billion over 10 years; allowing prescription drugs to be re-imported, saving $11 billion over 10 years; and having Medicare negotiate drug prices, saving $200 billion over 10 years, among their suggestions.

Calling them “progressive tax revenue proposals,” the AFL-CIO also recommends a number of tax hikes on the wealthy and the financial services sector to pare down the debt. That would include a financial transactions tax, saving more than $1 trillion over 10 years; a millionaires’ surtax, saving more than $400 billion over 10 years; and taxing capital gains as ordinary income, equaling savings of more than $168 billion over 10 years, among their proposals.

Notice how they call tax hikes savings. They sure won't be saving any jobs when they keep hiking rates on those evil millionaires. You know, the employers that do the hiring.

Obama, of course, is talking the same nonsense with his latest tax schemes.

SCOAMF To Spend Time With Union Thugs at Government Motors

Other then playing golf where else would you expect the man to be? Obama is going to be spending at least a portion of his day in front of what he hopes is still his loyal followers by giving a speech to the AFL-CIO at a Government Motors facility in that failed union held, liberal bastion of economic success called Detroit. Probably the best thing about the whole visit is he is going to be using the opportunity to do a "dress rehearsal" of that all important, earth shattering, answer to all our needs, jobs speech that he will be giving to congress later this week.

Obama's speech at an annual event sponsored by the Metropolitan Detroit AFL-CIO was serving as a dress rehearsal for the jobs address he'll deliver to a joint session of Congress on Thursday night.

Yeah, you read it. If you get the transcript of today's speech to the union storm troopers you will have a good preview of what he is going to say Thursday night in a speech that he expects the country to be watching, but for most of us will have us scrambling for the remote to find an infomercial on television rather then have our ears assaulted yet again by this SCOAMF.

Obama spent part of the holiday weekend at the Camp David presidential retreat in Maryland "putting the finishing touches" on the proposals and the speech, said spokesman Jay Carney.

Poor Detroit, just when they thought things couldn't get any worse "The Curse" comes for a visit.

Who Is Ron Bloom?

A lot of attention is being brought to bear on all of these so-called czars that Obama is now making an integral part of his administration. It is a tactic that has proven to be effective since these appointments avoid scrutiny from congress, like they really scrutinize anybody, and also allows him to proceed unworried by any sort of probing by the so called fourth estate, the media.

There shouldn't be any Pulitzer prizes awarded for investigative journalism for a while, but I forget they still have plenty of make believe hit pieces involving conservatives to pat themselves on the back about and hand out their "Hey, look at me" trinkets.

Anyway, the name Ron Bloom is one that we need to start paying attention to. He has a long history of being the negotiating face of unions in a suit. He is a Harvard Business School graduate who has worked for the unions beginning with SEIU for decades. The most recent union he represented was the United Steel Workers (USW) before becoming a part of the automotive team that Obama put together. You know the one that had the head Steven Rattner having to resign over some questions about his personal finances mixed in with a little fraudulent money gifts.

Rattner was replaced by Ron Bloom, and voila the United Auto Workers (UAW), got a sweetheart deal backed up by the power of the federal government to try and stave off bankruptcy.

Both inside and outside the USW, Mr. Bloom is known as a financially savvy negotiator — with a tendency to spout profanities.

Today Obama is going to go make a speech at a gathering of the AFL/CIO, supposedly to try and push his healthcare agenda, which nobody can seem to figure out, and at this union picnic he is going to announce that Mr Bloom is now going to be the senior advisor for manufacturing. In other words another czar.

Even to the casual observer it is impossible to miss the numerous connections between Barack Obama and the unions. He brings the unions in to act as his muscle, not only against his political opponents, but allies also.

Do you remember this from the automotive bailout plan?

Also at the hearing, Bloom denied that the government had coerced Chrysler's debtholders into dropping a legal protest that they were being treated unfairly in court. Some holders of $6.9 billion in secured Chrysler debt initially protested that they were being pushed behind unsecured creditors such as the United Auto Workers union's retiree health care trust.

But the debtholders dropped their protests after receiving $2 billion in cash to wipe out their debt.

In what can only be termed a serious case of deja-vu over at the Planet Gore portion of NRO (National Review Online), we have this piece from February of 2009.

But most significantly, Bloom (and Keilin) made their reputation battling steel companies which, burdened by excessive union costs, suffered through a very similar experience to the Detroit Three thirty years ago. In fact, as the New York Times’s David Streitfeld points out in this superb article, five U.S. steel companies received over $300 million in bailout loans from the Carter Administration in the 1970s.

“If they were allowed to go under, their partisans warned, the consequences would ripple through the economy at a cost too high to bear,” writes Streitfeld of Big Steel’s predicament in the Carter years. “The old saying, ‘As steel goes, so goes the nation,’ was as much a threat as a boast.” Sound familiar?

Yet, despite that government rescue — the domestic steel industry continued to whither because its unions would not make the concessions necessary for Big Steel to become competitive against foreign competition. In the late 1980s, Keilin and Bloom — representing steelworkers with Bethlehem Steel and LTV — even proposed a national solution with labor, industry, and government involvement.

Yet, as Prof. Richard Fruehan, a steel industry expert with Carnegie-Mellon points out, it was only bankruptcy in the early part of this decade that finally saved U.S. steelmakers. Suffocated by their union and pension overhead costs, Bethlehem & Co. went into Chapter 11. And they emerged only when venture capitalist Wilbur Ross told labor that the mills would re-open if the unions took the concessions they had resisted for years.

The Democrats, who for years have pandered to the unions and rely on their infusions of cash into their campaign coffers every election cycle will find it hard to go against the unions desires on this health care issue, which has now boiled down to one major sticking point, that being the "public option".

The definition of public option continues to change. Is this an option at all or a mandate dictated by federal requirements?

Today's meeting with a powerful union, while announcing yet another veteran of unions to a high level position all under the guise of furthering the health care reform debate appears to be more of message to those Democrats in congress that not giving Barry O what he wants on this issue, which he will supposedly outline on Wednesday, could have some unfriendly consequences for those wishing to continue to draw a taxpayer paycheck.

Great News: Card Check Will Cost Millions of Jobs

Barack Obama has declared his eagerness to sign this into law.

Well, it will cost millions of jobs. Apparently that's what he wants.

Empirical data shows that organized Labor's effort to pass the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) comes with a terrible cost to jobs and the economy, according to a detailed study released today by noted economist Dr. Anne Layne-Farrar.

According to the study, An Empirical Assessment of the Employee Free Choice Act: The Economic Implications, every 3 percentage points gained in union membership through card checks and mandatory arbitration will result in a 1 percentage point rise in the unemployment rate the following year.

Dr. Layne-Farrar concludes "The costs [of EFCA] should be carefully weighed against any purported benefits of passing the Act, all of which appears to benefit some groups at the expense of others. There is no coherent theoretical argument that explains how the higher costs, greater legal uncertainty, and expanded government intervention entailed in EFCA would improve overall social welfare."

The report finds conclusively that the unionization of 1.5 million existing jobs under EFCA in year one would lead to the loss of 600,000 jobs by the following year. Job losses directly attributed to the passage of the Employee Free Choice Act would be equal to the entire population of Boston, MA.

Recent comments made by organized labor reinforce the economic peril associated with the report's findings.

"Andy Stern, head of the Service Employees International Union, predicts that ECFA would cause unions to 'grow by 1.5 million members a year, not just for five years but for 10 to 15 straight years.'" (Labor Goes for the Brass Ring, The American Spectator, September 16, 2008)

"Stewart Acuff, special assistant to AFL-CIO president John Sweeney, said the 428,000new members last year is just a small portion of what unions could recruit if the card-check bill passes." (Union membership rises for second straight year, Associated Press," January 28, 2009)

"EFCA would help achieve organized labor's goal of increasing dues-paying members at the cost to the U.S. Economy and, ironically, jobs," said Philip A. Miscimarra of Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP, and counsel to the Alliance to Save Main Street Jobs. "This research shows EFCA would promote a surge in job losses and stifled job creation. These are terrible problems at any time, but devastating in today's economic environment."

Obama: 'We Will Pass the Employee Free Choice Act'

Another dagger into the heart of American businesses.

President Barack Obama told AFL-CIO union leaders Tuesday in a videotaped address that the controversial Employee Free Choice Act will pass, signaling his full backing for legislation that makes union organizing easier.

"We will pass the Employee Free Choice Act," President Obama told more than 100 top labor officials in a closed-door meeting at the labor federation's winter gathering in Miami, according to people at the meeting.

The bill would make it easier for unions to recruit workers because it would let them join unions simply by signing cards rather than through secret-ballot elections in which companies can campaign against the union. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other business organizations have been campaigning against the legislation.
...
Business groups say they will intensify their lobbying against the bill as it is introduced. Randel Johnson, vice president of labor policy for the Chamber of Commerce, said the group will focus its heaviest lobbying efforts on senators in about seven states, and that an endorsement of the bill by a small number of companies "would not affect the political dynamic," because employer opposition to the bill is "overwhelming."

If anyone thinks this is good for business they have another thign coming. This is just another payoff to the union thugs supporting Obama.

The Obama economic destruction continues unabated.

Of course, Obama ignores the fact that three-quarters of union members oppose this legislation.

In polling conducted for CDW in January by McLaughlin & Associates, nearly three-quarters (74%) of union households were opposed to the card check provisions in the Employee Free Choice Act. An overwhelming 88% of union households believed that a worker's vote should be kept private during a union organizing election, and 85% of union households believed that a secret ballot election is the best way to protect the individual rights of workers when they are deciding whether to join a union.

"The American people, including rank and file union members, are strongly opposed to card check because it will strip away worker privacy and put our economy at greater risk," said Brian Worth, the chairman of the Coalition for a Democratic Workplace. "The Obama Administration would be wise to rethink its support of card check instead of blindly following the wishes of Big Labor."

Memo from Obama to workers: Fuck You!

Paying Off Unions Trumps Airport Safety

It's bad enough there are security and safety issues at our airports. It's even worse when Democrats are looking to throw a bone to the unions that helped get them elected while safety is an afterthought.

Elections have ramifications, but you knew that already, didn't you?

Unions vs. Security

It's getting to be a full-time job keeping track of the favors that Democrats in Congress are doing for Big Labor. The latest two episodes are especially notable because they'd benefit unions at the expense of national security.

First up is Senator Jim DeMint's (R., S.C.) proposal to bar certain convicted felons from working in ports. Members of Congress professed to be outraged last year when a few U.S. ports would have been managed by Dubai Ports World. But a far larger concern is that 750,000 workers currently have unescorted access to secure port areas, and felons are obvious recruitment targets for any number of bad actors, including terrorists.

Mr. DeMint offered this amendment last year as part of the port security legislation. Democrats unanimously consented to it on the Senate floor, only to gut it later under the cover of a House-Senate conference. This was done at the request of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, which later bragged about its political clout.

Mr. DeMint was back trying again last week, and every Senate Democrat once again voted for his amendment. However, they also voted for a separate amendment from Hawaii's Daniel Inouye that would allow future Administrations to delete the DeMint requirements. Both amendments now go to House-Senate conference, and with Democrats in the majority it's not hard to guess which one will emerge in the final bill.

Democrat Honeymoon is Over

With any luck, the American people will file for divorce from Nancy Pelosi.

For Big Labor, this week's "card check" victory marked the ultimate payoff for past Democratic election support. For House Democrats, it marked the end of the honeymoon.

Democrats won in November in part by playing down their special interest patrons--unions, environmentalists, trial lawyers--and by playing up a new commitment to the moderate middle class. The big question was whether the party had the nerve to govern the way it campaigned, and card check was the first test. The answer? AFL-CIO chief John Sweeney isn't smiling for nothing.

Pelosi and her ilk are incredibly sleazy. I don't hold out any hope the media will highlight such payoffs, but then again, people are tuning out big media in droves, so the word may just filter out.