November 3, 2010

Exposing New World Order Cronies

In Deep-blue Chicago, Dems Defend Their Party on Election Day

November 3, 2010

Yahoo News! - The Yahoo! News Ask America van was in Chicago on Election Day, and I hit the streets to ask voters whom they marked their ballots for. Even though Illinois handed President Obama's old Senate seat to the GOP, I had trouble finding a Republican in this major metropolitan area.

But I did get to ask some Democrats why they're standing by their sinking party in an anti-incumbent election year fueled in part by voter anger over the economy. Check out what they had to say.

Click here for video.

Chicago Park District Worker Mad At Unions Political Spending

October 11, 2010

Publius' Forum - A Chicago Park District employee is seen on this video attacking his union for spending his dues on political causes that he doesn’t support.



This Park District employee works for the Service Employees International Unions (SEIU) and was asked his thoughts on union spending at the Palos Tea Party’s American Voter Rally in Tinley Park, IL on Oct. 10, 2010.

One has to wonder how many other union members are upset like this — not just of the SEIU but all unions across the country? Over the last few decades unions have spent billions of their member’s dues money on extremely left-wing causes. Why, just a few weeks ago dozens of unions got together to spend their member’s dues money supporting a rally sponsored by actual, hardcore communist and socialist groups.

And unions are spending millions this term, too. They desperately want to keep overspending, socialist-leaning Democrats in power. And all this money being spent comes right out of the pockets of the rank and file union members.

The Law: Bought and Paid for By Unions

October 7, 2010

Publius' Forum - The Chicago Public School system is out of money. Like every business in the real world one solution was to layoff workers, in this case some 700 teachers. In the real world that is the way the cookie crumbles. Such employees would put themselves on the market and look for new jobs. Life moves on. But in the world of public employees unions, such employees run to the judges they’ve bought and the law they wrote themselves and had passed by politicians bought and paid for. So taxpayers are forced to give them concessions, paybacks, and special favors. It all amounts to more proof of union graft and corruption at its most common.

This has happened once again in Chicago as the teachers union went to court to prevent the everyday, common cost cutting measure of laying off workers that every normal American is faced with. And, like the true Chicago Way- styled politics that Illinois is used to, the “law” that was written by unions, paid for by unions, and passed by unions was invoked by judges placed in their court rooms by union money.

And who is left holding the bag? The taxpayers, of course.

As we find out in the Tribune story, tenured teachers continue to get paid for up to 10 months AFTER being laid off while they search for a new job. So even when teachers are laid off the government has to keep paying them for almost a year.

If any normal American had that sweet deal they’d never work more than two months a year!

Now, don’t mistake my point here. I am 100% positive that more cutting could be had in the administration end of the Chicago Public School system. I am in no way saying that by only laying off a few teachers the budget crunch would be solved.

But the arrogance of these teachers to demand that the taxpayers pay them as they sit at home watching Oprah for up to 10 months is a conceit worth highlighting. No one in the real world has such a sweet deal, for sure.

It should be pointed out that these backroom deals that make suckers out of the taxpayers are common between these big money unions and the politicians, lawyers, and judges they have bought. It is not just teachers unions we are talking about here but every public employee union.

It is a criminal racket they have going, for sure. They buy politicians that give them great benefits and shiny new laws that give them favors. Then they supply the lawyers for these compliant pols so that these new kickback laws can be written because Lord knows none of our politicians actually write their own legislation anymore. Then compliant, bought and paid for judges back them up when these tailor made, illicit laws are “violated.”

And notice who is completely cut out from this political, legislative, and judicial circle? Yep, the voters who are forced to pay for it all. They have no say whatever in the special deals that the unions purchase with their millions in political campaign donations.

This is the reason that public employee unions should be made illegal. They are antithetical to good government.

How to Fight Back Against Public Unions: A Primer (Excerpt)

June 8, 2010

American Thinker - We have reached a potential turning point in the relationship of public employee unions and the electorate they ostensibly serve. Over the past year, there has been a steady drumbeat of criticism focused on public unions and the havoc they have wrought on our public finances. Governments -- city, country, state, and federal -- are drowning in red ink. Our taxes are flowing to ever-voracious government workers (whose own ranks are growing steadily while the private payrolls shrink); they are better compensated than private workers in comparable positions.

We -- taxpayers, tea partiers and sympathizers, independents, Republicans, and Democrats -- need to come together and forge a blueprint to take back our nation. The inclusion of Democrats was deliberate, despite the fact that many Democrat politicians are in the pockets of public unions.

AFSCME, the government employee union, has a political action committee that is the second-largest in the nation, and virtually all of its donations are to Democrats; ditto the teachers' unions, or as they like to call themselves, "federations" and "associations" -- teachers know how to use thesauruses for political purposes.

But when liberal newspapers such as the New York Times now report on subway conductors earning hundreds of thousands of dollars a year and the Boston Globe takes editorial swipes at public employee unions and their greedy and self-centered leadership, the timing may be ripe for Democrats to come out of the closet and transform themselves from donkeys into fiscal hawks (see Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's efforts in Los Angeles).

When that arbiter of popular culture "Saturday Night Live" makes fun of surly government workers, we may have reached a turning point. Hope springs eternal on the political front, but what can people power do to weaken the grip of public employee unions and restore fiscal sanity to our governments' budgets?

We are in a communications war where we have a voice.

Public employee unions will spend millions to try to defeat measures to rein in their bloated salaries and pension benefits. They threaten even longer lines at government offices (and fewer of them), shorter hours at libraries, park districts cutting programs, and fewer policeman and firefighters. The list goes on and on of the plagues that will hit us if we dare take on public unions.

They never address high salaries, excessive days off, sick days being used because government employees are sick of work, or pensions being used to buy piña coladas in Pensacola.

Government unions spend vast sums on this propaganda (and on lobbyists and political campaigns to elect politicians to put in their pockets), and the exact amount is now almost unknowable. Barack Obama, in the first few days of his presidency, issued an executive order shielding unions from disclosure rules requiring them to report how they spend union dues.

But facts can be marshaled that put the blame where it belongs. Public-sector unions and state debt go hand in hand; states with the highest per capita debt have the strongest public-sector unions, who have cut sweetheart deals with politicians. We should highlight how these unions have diminished our futures.

The American Enterprise Institute, CATO, Reason magazine, and the Manhattan Institute's City Journal have all been publishing columns on the problems posed by public employee unions. Their websites -- and that of American Thinker and sites such as Newsalert, who focus on this topic -- are readily available, are open 24 hours a day, and the information can be found easily and after a few seconds (unlike, say, at government offices). The Center for Union Facts has a well-designed website (http://www.unionfacts.com/ ), and PensionWatch reports on the coming pension tsunami that will engulf America at http://www.pensiontsunami.com/.

This brief video that touches on the fiscal crisis caused by public unions can and hopefully will go viral (also see the end of this column for more reference material).

Teachers' unions are a potent problem. They use children as props -- just as cute kids are used as props to sell products. What is the pitch? Children will be shortchanged if job-killing tax measures aren't passed. This is, of course, a fallacy. Expenditures per child have been increasing for years while educational achievement declines.

And the children are not being shortchanged by any measure. One hundred billion dollars of the stimulus flowed to states to keep educrats feeding on the clover. A new effort in the Senate would give them another $23 billion. These campaigns are very skillful and play on our primal needs to protect our children. Such a campaign was a winning one in Oregon, where job-killing taxes were increased. Unions spend millions to hype the hysteria.

But their claims can be rebutted.

Did you know that salaries in public school districts are in the public record?

The educrats and their allies on school boards may try to hide this information from inquiring taxpayers, as they did in Fairfax, Virginia until determined taxpayers pried it out of them. The information is there, waiting to be tapped and publicized via the old media and the new media. The Chicago Sun-Times, for example, made one school superintendent of a small, stable school district the poster boy for ruinous spending on sweetheart deals and benefit packages. When I passed around a list of the hundred highest-paid teachers in Illinois, my friends feasted on the names and numbers (a high school guidance counselor in a suburban school district brings home one hundred and fifty thousand dollars every year -- every nine-month year, that is, with plenty of holidays off). Teachers in New York City who cannot be trusted around kids, still pull in high salaries as they while away the time in so-called "rubber rooms" that one enterprising ex-teacher (teacher on detention) uses as his office to manage real estate properties worth almost eight million dollars. John Stossel of Fox News and even "60 Minutes" reported on this travesty. The facts are on our side, but concerned citizens have to find it and spread it far and wide ...

Teachers Unions help elect ultra-liberal Ron Young to Maryland Senate
What is the average teacher salary in each state?
Teaching salary summary page for the state of Maryland:
Salary range: $36,500 - $74,134
Average teacher salary: $67,257
Average beginning teacher salary: $41,506
Median household income: $65,820
Median house price: $181,554
Per-Pupil Spending: $8,507
Cents spent on benefits for every dollar paid as salary: 31.2¢

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