It looks like gov't unions have lost the Washington Post

Three editorials from yesterday do not support them.

Our fiscal paradox: Governments too costly to function
by Michael Gerson

....To fund commitments made to the providers of services, services must be cut. So piles of money go to government pensions and benefits instead of roads, education or mental health services. This is one of the primary reasons the public resists tax increases. A tax increase used to provide an actual public service might have a shot at support. But a tax increase to prop up a system that consumes endless resources while cutting services is a harder sell.

Government pensions, an obesity epidemic
by Richard Cohen (definitely not from the Tea Party) key points:

....
Like Reagan, Walker has tapped into a feeling of disgust - the always-dangerous sense that you and I have played by the rules and saved for our modest retirements, while government workers, on our dime, have run off with pensions they do not deserve. We feel we have been played for a fool.
To their credit, some union leaders have recognized that they have gone too far. They have - or will - agree to givebacks, and the teachers unions are acknowledging that they have to do something about incompetents. (Still, if there are cutbacks, it will be done by seniority - meaning some very good but young teachers will be let go.)
......
It was one thing when unions went after giant corporations run by guys who played golf at restricted clubs. But when it comes to government workers, we are the boss and we pay the bill. To quote what Sam Spade told the woman he loved in the "The Maltese Falcon," "I won't play the sap for you." When it comes to public-sector unions, my sentiments exactly.

Public employees must help rein in unaffordable pension and benefits costs
(they are really getting strong on the position in this editorial) key paragraph:

If the government-employee union movement wants to retain public sympathy and support, it must show definitively that it understands why so many people who are not Tea Party Republicans nevertheless worry about the cost of state and local pay and benefits. After all, Democratic officials - from Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa to New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo - have also targeted unsustainable personnel costs. No one should demonize public employees, who by and large are as hardworking as their private-sector counterparts. But efforts to rein in unaffordable public-sector compensation are not necessarily an attack on workers and their rights. Public-sector workers and their unions should help lead the national search for equitable, creative solutions to the fiscal crisis of the states and local governments.

Unions - a super parasite killing their hosts?

Bookworm has a great post about this.

Union members apparently don’t want to kill the American goose that is laying their golden eggs

A deeply disappointed New York Times reports that the Democrats are not able to rely upon the union stalwarts in the upcoming election:

[...]

I wonder if the problem doesn’t lie only with failed Democratic promises, something that would definitely agitate the union leaders. Perhaps the real problem amongst the rank and file is that a lot of ordinary Americans who pay union dues, either from a weak commitment to the unions or because their job forces them to do so, are finally figuring out that unions can bring benefits to their members only if there is a fat and happy U.S. to generate those benefits — and that if you become a super parasite, your host will die, denying you the nutrition on which you feed.

Read it all, then read the rest of her blog.

You have to pay the piper,

Dance with him that brought you, etc. etc. It all comes home eventually. New York and California politicos have been bought and paid by the unions. In New York some chickens are coming home to roost. (enough of that old adage thing, ok?) From Gateway Pundit:

Bought and Paid For Gov. Finds Doing Right Thing Hard

-By Warner Todd Huston guest poster

The unions in New York have the idea that they own state government. It’s not too easy to deny their claim seeing as how unions (all of them) have been paying the bills and filling the pockets of ruling Democrats for decades now.

But Accidental Governor of New York David Paterson is finding himself in a quandary, one that more and more politicians are finding themselves in these days. These pols are finding that doing the right thing is hard when all your financial backers don’t want you to do the right thing at all.

Like most deep blue states, New York is about bankrupt without having to say it out loud. Its financial responsibilities far out pace its treasury. From state pensions, welfare, Medicaid and healthcare, to the simple day-to-day operations of operating a government, New York State is unable to pay its way.

New York spends an astonishing $4,328 per second which amounts to $10,983,333,333 per month. It is estimated that New York will face a $14.6 billion shortfall for the 2012 budget.

So, Gov. Paterson has tried one of the sure ways to cut the budget: cut the luxurious salaries and benefits that go undeserved to public employee unions.

That sounds like an "OOPSIE" to me. Read the rest here.

In this case the union is telling the truth

in the Politico:
AFL to White House: 'Labor isn't an arm of the Democratic Party'

The truth is that the Democratic Party is an arm of the Unions.
 That is my take on it.  Go read the article.  Poor union is mad at the Democrats, the Democrats are mad at the union for spending money on someone other than their candidate. This is the dispute:

The major labor federation AFL-CIO took sharp objection tonight to a White House official's assessment that they'd "flushed $10 million of their members' money down the toilet" in the "pointless exercise" of supporting the failed bid of Bill Halter to unseat Sen. Blanche Lincoln.

They really have some nerve in talking about how much money was spent,they are telling us how corrupt they are. This was provided by union dues. In many cases union dues paid in because they must pay the dues or be penalized.  When will teachers and others realize if they could keep that money they could spend it on something besides union bigwigs and politics. Money they could spend on their own children, their own homes, their own lives.

Who Spends the Most?

Bookwormroom has this post on an article from the SF Chronicle.  It is about California spending but it is so telling. And appalling. And shameful.

Two unions spend $319.2 million over 10 years to affect California political process

Here’s a list of the the biggest spenders in California politics for the past decade:

These 15 groups spent more than a combined $1 billion over the past 10 years to influence public policy:

– California Teachers Association: $211.8 million

– California State Council of Service Employees: $107.4 million

– Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America: $104.9 million

– Morongo Band of Mission Indians: $83.6 million

– Pechanga Band of Luiseno Indians: $69.2 million

– Pacific Gas & Electric Co.: $69.2 million

– Chevron Corp.: $66.2 million

– AT&T Inc.: $59.6 million

– Philip Morris USA Inc.: $50.7 million

– Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians: $49 million

– Southern California Edison: $43.4 million

– California Hospital Association: $43 million

– California Chamber of Commerce: $39 million

– Western States Petroleum Association: $35.2 million

– Aera Energy LLC: $34.6 million

Source: California Fair Political Practices Commission

Bookworm lives in the San Franciso area and sees first hand what the union control of a state can do. Note the unions are the biggest spenders by far.  She has written much more about this. Read it all.

Unions and the government bureaucracy

From Townhall.com
Most Union Members Are Govt Workers, Not Private Sector
Posted by: Meredith Jessup

From today's New York Times comes this gem of info:

For the first time in American history, a majority of union members are government workers rather than private-sector employees, the Bureau of Labor Statistics announced on Friday.

In its annual report on union membership, the bureau undercut the longstanding notion that union members are overwhelmingly blue-collar factory workers. It found that membership fell so fast in the private sector in 2009 that the 7.9 million unionized public-sector workers easily outnumbered those in the private sector, where labor's ranks shrank to 7.4 million, from 8.2 million in 2008...

This is not a big surprise but it is alarming.  Read it all.

The Defeat of the "Kennedy Seat"

From the Wall Street Journal:
The Fall of the House of Kennedy
The battle over who defines the work and institutions that make a nation thrive and grow.
by Daniel Henninger

....Scott Brown's victory in Massachusetts will not endure unless Republicans clearly understand the meaning of "the machine" that he ran against and defeated.....

....The central battle in our time is over political primacy. It is a competition between the public sector and the private sector over who defines the work and the institutions that make a nation thrive and grow.

In 1962, President John F. Kennedy planted the seeds that grew the modern Democratic Party. That year, JFK signed executive order 10988 allowing the unionization of the federal work force. This changed everything in the American political system. Kennedy's order swung open the door for the inexorable rise of a unionized public work force in many states and cities.

This in turn led to the fantastic growth in membership of the public employee unions—The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and the teachers' National Education Association.

They broke the public's bank. More than that, they entrenched a system of taking money from members' dues and spending it on political campaigns. Over time, this transformed the Democratic Party into a public-sector dependency.

This is a long and detailed article, a very important one, go read it all.

Some Unions are not Happy with the Healthcare bill

From the Washington Post
Labor's messy health-care bargain
by Harold Meyerson

The Net roots is up in arms about the Senate's version of health-care reform, with many rooters demanding it be voted down. The liberal establishmentarians lament the compromises they were compelled to accept but support the bill's passage. In between the two, indignant and stuck, is organized labor.

"There's an excise tax on policies, but there's no public option to hold down the cost of those policies," says Leo Gerard, president of the United Steelworkers. "There's no Medicare buy-in, no pay-or-play mandate for employers. There's no Canadian reimportation to hold down drug costs, on the grounds of 'safety.' No one gets sick from Canadian reimported drugs," adds Gerard, who is Canadian. "I know a guy who got sick from a Chinese-made ingredient in an American drug, but there's no restriction on Chinese drug imports."

Gerard is hardly alone in his criticisms. Labor believes, rightly, that the cost controls in the Senate bill come chiefly from insurance policy holders (among them, labor's members), rather than from insurance and drug companies. Both the AFL-CIO and the Service Employees International Union have condemned these provisions, while hailing the bill's epochal creation of affordable health insurance for 30 million Americans. They're careful, too, to exempt President Obama from their criticisms.  Read the rest.

Notice that last line - they exempt the president from their criticisms. If you read the whole column you see how much time and money they spent electing the Man, how can they now criticize him?

Who Has Obama’s Attention?

Mostly the SEIU, that’s who.

Investor’s Business Daily (in addition to many others) has an article about who is on the list of people who visited the White House and in particular who visited the president.   Head of the list is Andrew Stern.  “Who is Andrew Stern?”, you might ask.

Here is the answer:

In the former category, there's Service Employees International Union boss Andy Stern, who told the Wall Street Journal that if the power of persuasion didn't work, then the persuasion of power would have to do. The records show Stern had 22 meetings, many face-to-face with the president, more than anyone else known so far. Stern might as well borrow a White House bedroom.

And that may be why the president has been so solicitous of union demands at the expense of the economy. As the jobless rate hits 9.8%, unions have managed to persuade the president to impose tire tariffs, violate the NAFTA treaty with Mexican truck restrictions, place protectionist "Buy American" limitations on federal contracts, and ice Colombian, Panamanian and Korean free trade treaties. Stern's union has also harassed banks that took bailouts, making one wonder if a sort of Cuban or Venezuelan revolutionary mob activity against business has the White House imprimatur.

While Stern gets what he wants from the White House, the released visitors list shows no record of huddling with U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk, whose trade pacts could create 600,000 jobs if ratified, according to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

If only President Obama would give that much attention to the war in Afghanistan, real jobs creation and other real American problems, instead of toadying up to his cronies, we might be starting a real way out of the messes we are in.

Toyota is leaving California and sending even more business to Texas

This is how Alamo City Pundit Puts it:

GM Screws Thousands of CA Union Workers; San Antonio Picks Up the Slack

I’m sure you’re quite familiar with the story; GM (and Chrysler) goes hat in hand to the Federal government — Federal government nationalizes GM, fires CEO, restructures company, offers “Cash for Clunkers” to get people to buy cars from new Government Motors monstrosity . . .
However, somewhere along the way, the idiots restructuring GM an Chrysler – most of whom have never actually worked outside of government in their lives – forgot about the NUMMI plant in California where GM and Toyota make cars (and trucks) together.

And apparently, the Unions thought Toyota would just play along with the madness:

FREMONT, Calif. — Toyota Motor Corp. officially confirmed Thursday that it will relocate production of the Tacoma pickup from a plant in Northern California to its state-of-the-art manufacturing facility in San Antonio by next summer. As part of the plan to shift Tacoma production to San Antonio, Toyota will stop making vehicles at the New United Motor Manufacturing Inc. plant — its first manufacturing facility in the United States, which started in 1984 as a 50-50 business deal with General Motors — in March 2010.
Toyota’s decision to end its 25-year relationship with the NUMMI plant, which also produces the Corolla, came nearly two months after GM said it was pulling out of the joint venture.

Read here to see his theory on exactly what might have happened.

National Right to Work Foundation

A friend in Louisiana send me this email with a petition from the National Right to Work Foundation. Click on the link to view the web site and see the petition.

I owe those unions... When their leaders call, I do my best to call them back right away. I don't mind feeling obligated." - Barack Obama, Audacity of Hope

Dear Friend: Barack Obama may indeed owe the Big Labor Bosses. But his election did not give him a "mandate" to dramatically expand their forced unionism power... and your PETITION below sends that message loud and clear to our new President! As a member of Congress, I can tell you that we now face OVERWHELMING challenges in stopping these forced unionism power grabs. Generating massive grassroots pressure is our only hope. Because it is vital that he understands HE HAS NO MANDATE to give his Big Labor patrons new powers to enslave millions of additional workers in unions and steal their income through confiscatory dues... and your PETITION below will do just that! If the union bosses get their way, you and I will pay the price in higher taxes, bigger government, and more job-killing, freedom-crushing forced unionism. Make no mistake: We fail at our nation's peril! I hope you agree. And that I hear back from you without delay.
Sincerely, Steve King (R-IA) United States Congressman