A desperate struggle for survival

From Terrence Scanlon at The Washington Times:

On this Labor Day, things are looking blue for Big Labor. Private-sector union membership continues to plummet - just 7 percent of the private work force is unionized, down from 15 percent just 25 years ago. And the union-cherished "card check" legislation, which would restrict the use of secret ballots in union elections - and therefore make it easier for the unions to swell their ranks - has had a rocky road in Congress and looks unlikely to become law anytime soon.

But Big Labor is not going gently into that good night. In fact, the shrinking membership rolls are making Big Labor organizations and their bosses more dependent than ever on their liberal allies in government, more desperate than ever for support from liberal politicians who hold the reins of power and can transfer taxpayer dollars to their pockets.

To that end, labor is gearing up for the political fight of its life. The twin labor powerhouses, the AFL-CIO and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), are pooling their resources and coordinating efforts to help elect as many pro-union candidates (read: liberals) as possible. As the Wall Street Journal reports, the terrible twosome claim to have a combined $88 million to deploy in support of favored candidates in 26 states, including congressional, gubernatorial and state legislature races in scorched-earth battlegrounds like Pennsylvania and Ohio.

And in the INDIANA 9th District!  Here is a list of major donors to Baron Hill's campaign:

Top 20 Contributors to Campaign Cmte

Download:   View Top 20 | Top 100

Rank	Contributor	Total	Indivs	PACs
1	Eli Lilly & Co	$19,500	$9,500	$10,000
2	Cook Group	$16,336	$15,336	$1,000
3	Covanta Holding	$12,000	$4,000	$8,000
4	Barnes & Thornburg	$11,650	$9,650	$2,000
5	American Federation of Teachers	$10,000	$0	$10,000
5	American Fedn of St/Cnty/Munic Employees	$10,000	$0	$10,000
5	AmeriPAC: The Fund for a Greater America	$10,000	$0	$10,000
5	AT&T Inc	$10,000	$0	$10,000
5	Blue Dog PAC	$10,000	$0	$10,000
5	BRIDGE PAC	$10,000	$0	$10,000
5	Carpenters & Joiners Union	$10,000	$0	$10,000
5	Laborers Union	$10,000	$0	$10,000
5	Operating Engineers Union	$10,000	$0	$10,000
5	PAC to the Future	$10,000	$0	$10,000
5	United Auto Workers	$10,000	$0	$10,000
16	Grocery Manufacturers Assn	$9,000	$1,000	$8,000
17	Indiana University	$8,919	$8,919	$0
18	Wal-Mart Stores	$8,500	$0	$8,500
19	Verizon Communications	$8,000	$1,000	$7,000
20	Altria Group	$7,500	$0	$7,500
20	International Longshoremens Assn	$7,500	$0	$7,500
20	MWH Global	$7,500	$0	$7,500
20	Plumbers/Pipefitters Union	$7,500	$0	$7,500

Note that EIGHT of the top twenty contributors are UNIONS!  How do you think Baron will vote on "card check"?  If you are concerned about the union bosses getting more taxpayer money/power then send Todd Young a contribution today!  Here is the link!  http://www.toddyoungforcongress.com/ -SP

Hypocrisy Is Big Labor’s Big Problem

From Deroy Murdock at NRO:

Labor unions don’t play by the same rules they try to impose on everyone else.

Amid Labor Day’s parades and picnics, union bosses will bellow Monday about workers’ rights and the alleged greed of management, especially inside Big Business. Such class-warfare sloganeering would be easier to stomach if Big Labor were internally consistent. Instead, when their own workers channel Norma Rae and demand better wages and benefits, labor leaders imitate union-busting robber barons.

● “I was fired for trying to start a union at the UFT,” said a stunned Jim Callaghan. For 13 years, Callaghan penned speeches and newsletters for Gotham’s United Federation of Teachers. He told the New York Post that when managers sacked one of his colleagues without cause, he decided to organize the twelve non-union scribes who write for the powerful teachers’ union. “We have no protections and no disciplinary process,” Callaghan lamented.

His employers were not amused. About two months after Callaghan announced his plans, he was jettisoned on August 12 and given 30 minutes to clear his desk. When he lingered, union bosses got six uniformed police officers to eject him.

The UFT claims that Callaghan had disciplinary problems. Even if true, compare Callaghan’s instant dismissal to the years it can take to fire failed teachers. Even those accused of groping children have become virtually permanent fixtures in union-protected “rubber rooms,” where they receive salaries, read newspapers, and even run businesses while their cases inch through administrative hoops.

● Union bosses, such as Philadelphia’s Henry Nicholas, hope that their Democratic allies in Washington enact so-called “card-check” legislation. It would force an employer to recognize a union once a majority of its workers sign cards requesting unionization. This would obviate secret-ballot elections to determine such matters.

How odd, then, that Nicholas refused to recognize the bargaining unit encompassing 20 of his own staffers at District 1199C of the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), despite signed cards from “all the employees,” as their organizer, John Hundzynski, explained to thePhiladelphia Inquirer. Instead, the National Labor Relations Board last April conducted an election to settle this question — precisely what AFSCME would deny other employers. (The union within the union evidently was approved, 17 to 2.)

● International Brotherhood of Teamsters president James P. Hoffa resembles a stingy CEO in a July 2009 letter to his local officers. “All unionized workers at the IBT’s Headquarters are a valuable part of our team,” Hoffa and secretary-treasurer C. Thomas Keegel wrote. “However, their union at the bargaining table refuses to acknowledge the current economic conditions and their impact on per capita revenues at the IBT. . . . We are now asking that workers share in the prudent belt-tightening.” Hoffa and Keegel add that they will not “commit to a collective bargaining agreement that jeopardizes the financial health of your International Union.” They conclude: “Though it pains us to do so, we must make contingency plans to operate in the event of a labor dispute.”

So, an organization’s president and treasurer decry falling revenues, urge belt-tightening, and operate during a strike. Isn’t this why Big Labor got started?

● “We’ve got to downsize,” a United Auto Workers source said last December. As its membership shrank from some 500,000 in 2008 to 431,000 in 2009, the car-industry union fired 120 of its own staffers “to balance its budget,” the Detroit News noted. More amazing, after UAW personnel rejected their management’s austere contract proposal, union bosses imposed it on remaining staffers anyway. “Go ahead. Take our pay,” seemed to be management’s high-handed message to their minions. Although they voted down this contract, the UAW’s workforce suffered reduced retiree benefits and, for each laborer, the choice of either a two-week unpaid furlough or no matching 401(k) contribution for 2010.

● Members of United Food and Commercial Workers Local 791 must have been equally startled when some 40 percent of the Massachusetts union’s business agents were sacked without warning in February 2007. “We are sure that the membership, as well as us, never thought that a ‘labor organization’ would treat its own members (or staff employees) like this,” fired personnel wrote on their own website. “Apparently, the quote ‘an injustice to one is an injustice to all’ doesn’t apply to ‘all’ of us.”

● “Justice for all, not justice for some,” several dozen members of the Service Employees International Union chanted last March as they picketed their own union’s headquarters. The union axed some 75 internal employees. “We’re in the middle of realignment,” SEIU spokeswoman Michelle Ringuette told the Associated Press. Malcolm Harris was unimpressed. The president of the Union of Union Representatives, which bargains for 210 SEIU organizers and staffers nationwide, said, “This union is supposed to be at the forefront of the progressive movement, but it can’t seem to follow its own ideology.”

SEIU dissidents have complained that the mega-union has fired those who have tried to organize separately as the National Union of Healthcare Workers. When a majority of Kaiser’s 50,000 workers in California petitioned to switch to the NUHW, union activist Lisa Tomasian reports, SEIU asked the National Labor Relations Board to delay the vote. Imagine if a private company did that.

● Private companies often complain that union labor is too expensive. The Teamsters agree. When they constructed their 16,246-square-foot union hall in Houston, they didn’t use union workers because they were too costly. “There are serious solidarity issues here,” Richard Shaw of the Harris County AFL-CIO moaned to the Houston Chronicle
.
● Unfortunately for the AFL-CIO, it practices hypocrisy within hypocrisy. When it refurbished its Washington headquarters, it employed non-union electricians and construction workers. One insider observed that “it did save us some money.”

● Not even Big Labor’s most basic activity — picketing — escapes union hypocrisy. Mirroring an M. C. Escher engraving, some unions hire non-union members to protest employers for not hiring union members.
The Mid-Atlantic Regional Council of Carpenters, for instance, has paid the minimum wage to non-union protesters to slam Washington, D.C.’s McPherson Building for renovating with non-union carpenters. How do these “activists for rent” regard this cause?

“I could care less,” unemployed bike courier Billy Raye said in the July 16 Wall Street Journal. “I am being paid to march around and sound off.”

As the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s labor-policy counsel, F. Vincent Vernuccio, observed, these de facto labor workers lack health coverage, prevailing wages, and union representation — the precise benefits that unions expect of everyone but themselves.

“Union bosses have made very clear over the years that no amount of hypocrisy is too much to impede their pursuit of more workers paying more dues,” saysMark Mix, president of the National Right to Work Committee. “Time and time again, we’ve seen union officials cut back-room deals with companies to limit wages and surrender benefits, just to keep the forced-dues gravy train rolling.”

This Labor Day, union bosses should skip the hypocritical speeches and go nap on the beach.

Globalist Soros Launches Frontal Assault Against Tea Party

From Infowars:

Kurt Nimmo
Infowars.com
September 3, 2010

Soros and the foundation left have launched a website designed to go after the growing Tea Party movement. Teapartytracker.org will post video interviews and blog entries gathered by folks on the false left who never grow weary of demonstrating their outrage over the very idea of a grassroots political effort overthrowing establishment Democrats and Republicans in the district of corporate criminals.

	George Soros is desperate to trash the Tea Party.

Teapartytracker.org will be sponsored by the NAACP, Think Progress, New Left Media and Media Matters for America. Think Progress is a George Soros operation connected to John Podesta’s Center for American Progress. Podesta is Clinton’s former chief of staff. Media Matters for America is the brainchild of a MoveOn consultant and Podesta’s Center for American Progress. Soros is a major supporter of MoveOn.

On July 13, the NAACP unanimously passed a resolution repudiating the Tea Party for alleged racism. The resolution followed accusations that the Tea Party had accosted members the Congressional Black Caucus as they traipsed the district of criminals mall on their way to vote for Obamacare, a grand larceny scam cooked up by large corporations. “Civil rights icon John Lewis was spit on, while Congressman Emanuel Cleaver was called the ‘N’ word and openly gay Congressman Barney Frank was called an ugly anti-gay slur,” a press released issued by the NAACP claims.

On April 1, Infowars.com provided evidence that protesters in fact did not spit on Missouri Democrat Emanuel Cleaver nor did they hurl racial epithets at members of the Congressional Black Caucus.

Cleaver later said a Tea Party protester did not spit on him intentionally. “All I’m saying is we all have to defuse it, and I think it is not in my best interest or in the best interest of this nation to stoke it,” he said on March 30 during a Fox News interview.

In July, Soros’ Think Progress stitched together a video purporting to show that the Tea Party is chock full of racists.The NAACP and the Soros-funded anti-Tea Party operation, however, do not share Cleaver’s desire to defuse the situation. Instead, they plan to extract as much political mileage from the fictitious incident as possible.

Recall “Crash the Tea Party,” an effort exposed earlier this year, designed to portray the Tea Party as racists and reactionary throwbacks. Tea Party hating liberals “couldn’t sell the transparently nonsensical idea that Tea Partiers are just a bunch of racists, homophobes and morons, so the Crash the Party agents on the Left are infiltrating the Tea Party in order to pose as a bunch of racists, homophobes and morons,” Mark Tapscott wrote for the Washington Examiner on April 11, 2010.

In addition to so-called liberals attempting to discredit the Tea Party movement, a gaggle of anarchists also announced an effort to disrupt rallies in April.

According to Infoshop News, an anarchist website and forum, the Tea Party movement is “a coalition of conservatives, anti-Semites, fascists, libertarians, racists, constitutionalists, militia men, gun freaks, homophobes, Ron Paul supporters, Alex Jones conspiracy types and American flag wavers,” and because of this mischaracterization they should have their right to protest against the government undisrupted.

Considering the above, how do we know Soros’ operatives will not infiltrate Tea Party rallies and demonstrations with actors pretending to be racists and closet KKK members and then pass this off as evidence that the movement is rife with white supremacists?

Of course, we have no way of knowing for sure, not that we shouldn’t expect Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann over at MSNBC — a network that owes its very existence to the eugenicist Bill Gates and the death merchant General Electric – to show journalistic objectivity and not feature whatever cobbled together and staged propaganda is produced by the well-paid minions of George Soros.

Payne: The irony of Jesse Jackson's stripped SUV

From Henry Payne at The Michigan View:

Add Jesse Jackson’s ride to prominent vehicles being stripped in Detroit.

Following the embarrassing news that Mayor Dave Bing’s GMC Yukon was hijacked by criminals this week, Detroit’s Channel 7 reports that the Reverend’s Caddy Escalade SUV was stolen and stripped of its wheels while he was in town last weekend with the UAW’s militant President Bob King leading the “Jobs, Justice, and Peace” march promoting government-funded green jobs.

Read that again: Jackson’s Caddy SUV was stripped while he was in town promoting green jobs.

Add Jesse to the Al Gore-Tom Friedman-Barack Obama School of Environmental Hypocrisy. While preaching to Americans that they need to cram their families into hybrid Priuses to go shopping for compact fluorescent light bulbs to save the planet, they themselves continue to live large.

“We need an economy that creates employment that can't be shipped overseas,” the Green Rev wrote for CNN about the march. “Home-grown American labor will be installing windmills and solar panels. A green economy is not an abstract concept.”

Well, its certainly abstract to Jesse, but I digress.

“Even now, the only sector of the economy that has seen job growth during the recession is the green job sector. Time is of the essence.”

Actually, time long ago passed Detroit by because Jesse’ favored government mpg mandates and UAW wages stripped the Big Three’s ability to compete against non-union transplants. These jobs were real – unlike the artificial, government subsidized green jobs he shakes down the feds for today.

Real jobs produced big, profitable SUVs like the one Jesse prefers to ride in. His SUV has been stripped by thugs – a fitting metaphor for what Jesse and his pals have done to the auto industry for the last 35 years.

Graph of the Day for September 3, 2010

At The American Thinker:

Randall Hoven

"We know big government does not have all the answers. We know there's not a program for every problem. We have worked to give the American people a smaller, less bureaucratic government in Washington. And we have to give the American people one that lives within its means.  The era of big government is over."  President Clinton, 1996 State of the Union Address.

"But at this particular moment, with the private sector so weakened by this recession, the federal government is the only entity left with the resources to jolt our economy back into life. It is only government that can break the vicious cycle where lost jobs lead to people spending less moneywhich leads to even more layoffs."  President Obama, 2009.

As predicted, employers pushing more health insurance costs on employees

From Rick Moran via The American Thinker:

Obamacare predicted "unintended consequence" #914: employers can't afford rising rates in anticipation of Obamacare.

The New York Times:

The shift is occurring, policy analysts and others say, as employers feel more pressure from the weak economy and the threat of even more expensive coverage under the new health care law.

In contrast to past practices of absorbing higher prices, some companies chose this year to keep their costs the same by passing the entire increase in premiums for family coverage onto their workers, according to a new survey released on Thursday by the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonprofit research group.

Workers' share of the cost of a family policy jumped an average of 14 percent, an increase of about $500 a year. The cost of a policy rose just 3 percent, to an average of $13,770. 

There have been other times when the economy was "weak" and employers refrained from passing along these increases so one must assume that the primary reason for it is that Obamacare is coming and employers don't want to be stuck with unsustainable increases in insurance premiums.

This is logical. Obamacare is not. End of story.

House Dems tout August outreach to their constituents

At The Hill:

House Democrats are touting their work during the August recess, claiming their members held 1,800 district events to promote their accomplishments and bash Republicans.

The frenzied pace is a response to the growing sentiment among the political class that the Democrats’ majority is in danger this November. The party hopes to argue that the doomsday predictions in Washington do not reflect the reality across the country, where they say their candidates are gaining traction.

“House Democrats have proven that they know how to communicate with their constituents and demonstrate that their title and job description are one in the same: representative,” said Drew Hammill, a spokesman for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.)

You must be kidding, right?!  Baron Hill evidently has not been in that group unless they are counting an event as each time he has left his house to go on a midnight run. -SP

Caddell on the Midterm Elections

From Robert Costa at NRO:

In Jimmy Carter’s White House, Patrick Caddell was, in the words of Teddy White, the “house Cassandra” — an all-too-candid pollster whose prophecies spooked the president’s other advisors. Three decades later, Caddell again is warning his fellow Democrats about electoral doom. As he sips an iced tea over lunch in midtown Manhattan, Caddell sighs and tells me that the lessons of the Carter years appear to be all but forgotten by the current crop of Democrats in Washington.

“President Obama’s undoing may be his disingenuousness,” Caddell says. After campaigning for post-partisanship, Obama, he observes, has lurched without pause to the left. “You can’t get this far from what you promised,” Caddell says, “especially when people invest in hope — you must understand that obligation. The killer in American politics is disappointment. When you are elected on expectations, and you fail to meet them, your decline steepens.”

In 1979, as Carter’s poll numbers slid south amidst a sagging economy, Caddell drafted a memo to the president urging him to recognize that the nation was “deep in crisis.” Gazing upon today’s electoral landscape, Caddell paints an even bleaker picture. “We may be at a pre-revolutionary moment,” he says, unsmiling. “Everything is in motion.” This November, he predicts, “will be more of a national referendum than any [midterm election] since Watergate.”

The polling data show how restless the country is. “A Rasmussen poll from earlier this year showed just 21 percent of voters believing that the federal government enjoys the consent of the governed — an astounding figure,” Caddell says. “Then a CNN poll showed that 56 percent of Americans worried that the federal government poses a direct threat to their freedom.”

“Democrats are aware of this,” Caddell continues. “They know that the general outcome is baked.” As the fall campaign kicks into gear, “the question now becomes whether Obama can mitigate their losses. You see them trying to localize their campaigns and pretending that they don’t know Nancy Pelosi. It’s all rather amusing.”

Unlike President Reagan at his first-term midpoint, in 1982, “Obama is not able to go out there and say, ‘Stay the course.’ That’s just not possible. The Democrats’ hope with health care was that ‘people will like it after we pass it.’ Well, they hate it, and you don’t see any effort to promote it. The Democrats had a chance to do this right — most people supported aspects of reform — but because of the way it was passed, as a crime against democracy, the country has simply not accepted it. The lies, the browbeating, the ‘deem and pass’ — all of it was a suicide mission.”

On Monday, Gallup released a new weekly poll showing Republicans leading Democrats by an unprecedented ten-point margin, 51 to 41 percent, in congressional voting preferences — the largest gap in Gallup’s history of tracking the midterm generic ballot. “I have never seen numbers like this,” Caddell says, shaking his head. “Unless Republicans can find some way to screw it up, they will win big, even though nobody really likes them, either.”

Indeed, rather than a ringing endorsement of either major party, Caddell sees November as a broader referendum on the political class — the class, he says, to which Obama, and his political fate, are irrevocably tied.

“Democrats used to be the voice of the common man in America, not his dictator,” Caddell laments. “Now, with Wall Street, their mantra is, ‘We’ll take your money, but we won’t kiss.’ The people who own the party — George Soros, the Center for American Progress, the public-employee union bosses, rich folks flying private jets to ‘ideas festivals’ in Aspen — they’re Obama’s base.”

Though Obama is bruised, Caddell is quick to note that he is far from finished — a point, he says, that Republicans prefer to whisper in the backroom. He points to Obama’s summer strategy — a serious-minded speech on Iraq, a trip to New Orleans to address the rebuilding efforts — as evidence that the president is “attempting to be presidential, which is the best thing he can do politically.” Carter, he observes, took a similar approach in 1978 — focusing on the Camp David Accords and beefing up his foreign-policy portfolio. As Caddell recalls, he advised the president that it was important not simply to govern, but tolead. By October 1978, the Georgian’s approval numbers had begun to tick up, and the Democrats lost only a handful of seats in the House and Senate.

“With Carter, I would argue that his failures were not of the heart or of intent, but, perhaps, of execution,” Caddell says. “He was never inconsistent with what he originally envisioned. I can’t say the same for Obama.” Successful presidents, Caddell argues, “realize that it is not about them — that the country is bigger than their presidency. With Obama, it is always about him. It’s a terrible thing to have to say, but I think that it has become obvious.”

Can Obama soften the blow at the eleventh hour? Caddell says it will be tough. Any efforts by Obama to right his ship, he says, will still face an electorate largely uninterested in new West Wing talking points or presidential maneuvers. Caddell believes that 2010 will be a louder, more raucous moment than 1978 in American politics. “The discontent is much larger than the turnout at Glenn Beck rallies,” he says. “A sea of anger is churning — the tea parties are but the tip of the iceberg. People say they want to take their country back, and, to the Democrats’ chagrin, they’re very serious about it.”

As we part, Caddell, once the dashing young star of Democratic presidential politics as an advisor to George McGovern, Carter, and Gary Hart, acknowledges that his criticisms may ruffle some feathers or simply be shrugged off by Democratic leaders. Still, he says, it is important to sound the alarm.

After all these years, Caddell laughs, “I know my role. I’m like Toto in the Wizard of Oz. My job is to pull back the curtain to reveal the little man with the microphone.”

Todd Young's latest TV ad!

GOP needs to offer a plan for governing

An editorial at The Washington Examiner:

Glenn Beck's "Restoring Honor" rally held at the Lincoln Memorial inspired an estimated 300,000 people from across the country to come to Washington. Attendees donated slightly more than $5 million for the Special Operations Warrior Foundation. Despite the distinctly spiritual overtones to the event, however, much of the coverage focused on opposition expressed by speakers and attendees to President Obama's political and economic agenda. But the most important message from this event was likely aimed at congressional Republicans and it was anything but otherworldly: The voters are watching and they aren't going to settle for mere promises.

The GOP must remember that the Tea Party movement started barely a month into Obama's term, mere days following the passage of the $862 billion economic stimulus package. The protests were sparked in great part by CNBC's Rick Santelli with his on-air protest of Washington's growing list of taxpayer-funded bailouts of politically connected corporations such as insurance giant AIG. As he stood on the trading floor of the Chicago Stock Exchange, Santelli called for a "Chicago Tea Party," which elicited a cheer from the traders and resolve by citizen activists across the country. But the movement was not then and is not today simply a response to Obama: It's a bipartisan protest that includes dismay over the bailouts of President George W. Bush and the big spending by the Republican congressional majority before 2006.

With the 2010 midterm congressional elections barely two months away, the GOP is heavily promoting its "America Speaking Out" listening tour. But the Republican leadership has yet to come forward with a definitive plan for governing if voters return them to the majority in either the House or Senate, or both. The Examiner is told such a plan is coming in late September. The sooner, the better: The party's future depends on it. So far there are only tiny green shoots here and there now, like pledges to put cameras in House Rules Committee meetings and provide a 72-hour period for the public to read the final version of a bill before the House votes on it.

Politico reports that Minority Leader John Boehner has also pledged a GOP majority would ban "omnibus" spending bills and ego-boosting, tax-funded projects named after living lawmakers. These are important but small advances in the war on Big Government. Boehner can promise to change the way Congress legislates, but Republicans must show the American people a credible, concrete plan to reduce government taxes and spending, resolve the entitlement crisis and cut the national debt, reinvigorate Main Street and entrepreneurial free enterprise, repeal and replace Obamacare, control our borders, and much else. If they don't, little will change in Washington except that Republicans will then share even more of the blame with Obama and the Democrats for the disaster in the nation's capital.

Former Baron Hill supporter not convinced this time!

From Jennifer Siefker in The Seymour Tribune:

District walk fails to convince

September 01, 2010 10:38 AM

By JENNIFER SIEFKER / Guest Writer

A couple of weeks ago I watched a WTHR Channel 13 report highlighting the two front-runners in the Indiana 9th Congressional District. Along with a brief synopsis of Republican candidate Todd Young’s views, they featured incumbent Democrat Baron Hill and the repeat of his “walk” around the district.

In 1990, Baron used his “walk around Indiana” to garner voter recognition and to provide accessibility to his political views. Although he ultimately lost his bid for the U.S. Senate, he did manage to win over a large number of Hoosiers. His “walk” was perceived as a down-to-earth way to get in touch with voters across the state.

This November’s hotly contested congressional seat is receiving national attention because of its potential to help swing the balance of power in Congress. Hill is hoping to rejuvenate his campaign with a repeat of this political strategy.

The only problem is, when he accomplished this maneuver 20 years ago, we believed he had honest intentions to connect with the voting public.

This time around, we see the politics behind it.

The repeated “walk” is merely symbolic, and people today are savvy enough to realize the difference. Baron is missing the mark. What the people of the 9th District expect are public forums where we can share our support on issues and also voice our concerns. We’re not interested in controlled telephone conferences or a surprise meeting on the street.

I am reminded of my encounter with Baron during the 2009 VJ Day parade. My parents and I brought signs soliciting his “no” vote on the health care reform bill that was raging in Washington. I naively thought that since the formal debate on the House floor had only begun, (and in fact the bill was not “officially” unveiled on the House floor until October 2009), that Baron would be open-minded and intent on representing the majority of his constituents.

Baron walked over to speak with us. In years past we had been his supporters. We briefly expressed our concerns about the scope of the legislation, and he began to administer talking points behind his support on the issue. We asked that he hold a local town hall meeting to better gauge the sentiment of our residents. At that point, he had declined to schedule town hall meetings anywhere in the state.

Baron gave us the impression he would fear for his safety at such an event. Surprised, we reassured him and suggested that he had a responsibility to provide an open forum for such landmark legislation. He quickly turned to rejoin the parade.

As I watched, I stared in stunned silence, realizing that while the debate in Washington had only officially just begun, our sole voice on this monumental issue had already cast his vote.

And so I hope Baron enjoys his “walk” around Indiana again. As he attempts to reconnect with his electorate, we will brace for the bombardment of junk mail and ads that hope to persuade us he’s an “independent” voice in Washington.

I am reluctant to swallow this fiction.

According to the Washington Post, Hill has voted with his Democratic colleagues 87.1 percent of the time during the current Congress. In addition, he has thrown his support behind the Obama administration on issues that will ultimately prove detrimental to Hoosiers. This November, he will face the consequences for his role in passing extensive legislation that the majority of Americans do not support.

Our most revered Founding Father, George Washington, spoke these words in his 1790 address to the nation: “Knowledge is, in every country, the surest basis of happiness.”

Many politicians prefer for the general public to stay uninformed. It’s how they are able to stay in office.

As for me, I think it’s time to bet my money on another horse.
———— 
Jennifer Siefker is a Seymour resident.

Union 'mobilization' plans to blast GOP

At The Washington Times:

Union leaders will unleash a concerted attack against Republican candidates and their "right-wing agenda" beginning this Labor Day weekend as they rally to stem expected Democratic losses in November's midterm elections.

The head of the nation's largest organized labor federation on Wednesday vowed a two-month media and grass-roots campaign to define the election as a fight between Democrats' efforts for the nation's workers versus Republicans' efforts to regain control of Congress for corporate America.

"We either rebuild a fundamentally different economy that values hard work and a strong middle class, or we'll turn back toward one that puts corporate interests before people," AFL-CIO President Richard L. Trumka said.

Kinda sounds like a TEA Party sound bite to me, Rich!-SP

Down With Big Government, Big Business, Big Labor

From Michael Barone at The Washington Examiner:

Some of the most important things in history are things that didn't happen -- even though just about everyone thought they would.

Recent example: Scads of liberals gleefully predicted that the financial crisis and deep recession would destroy Americans' faith in markets and increase their confidence in big government. Many conservatives gloomily feared they were right.

Hasn't happened. If anything, public opinion has moved in the other direction, with most Americans rejecting the stimulus package and the health care bill, denying that government action is needed to address global warming, expressing negative feelings about labor unions.

How to explain this? One way is to see the public's reaction as opposition to governance by an alliance of Big Units -- Big Government, Big Business and Big Labor.

Read it all-SP