By Mike “Mish” Shedlock

In a triumph of freedom and common sense over forced union slavery, the Indiana Senate Sends Right-to-Work Bill for Governor Daniels’s Signature.

Indiana will become the nation’s 23rd right-to-work state after its Senate exempted nonunion employees from paying dues when working alongside their unionized colleagues.

The vote was 28-22, sending the measure to Republican Governor Mitch Daniels for his promised signature. The Republican-controlled House of Representatives passed the bill Jan. 26, ending three weeks of Democratic boycotts that prevented the chamber from operating.

Republican Senator Carlin Yoder, the bill’s sponsor, said unions “will still be allowed to exist.” During floor debate, Yoder said right to work gives “freedom to those who don’t want to be part of something they don’t believe in.”

Twenty-two states, mostly in the Deep South and the Rocky Mountain West, have enacted right-to-work laws. Republican gains in the 2010 elections prompted legislation in states including Wisconsin and Ohio aimed at restricting bargaining rights for government workers’ unions.

The bill will be sent to Daniels’ desk today and, once signed, will take effect March 14.

The bill does not go far enough. What’s needed is the termination of all public union collective bargaining rights nationally. Cities and states are in trouble because politicians have been in bed with unions, driving up costs and taxpayers have to foot the bill.

It’s time to end union insanity, and more importantly union slavery. This bill is a step in the right direction. To understand why, please consider …

1. Collective Bargaining neither a Privilege nor a Right
2. Paul Krugman, Stephen Colbert, Bill Maher, others, Ignore Extortion, Bribery, Coercion, and Slavery; No One Should Own You!
3. Teachers’ Unions Don’t Give a Damn About Kids; Feeling Guilty, But …
4. Senator DeMint Says Team Obama Acts Like Thugs; Death of Right-to-Work?

Mike “Mish” Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
Click Here To Scroll Thru My Recent Post List

This chart shows how most unions are in the taxpayer pocket and continue to fuel the vicious cycle of funding politicians who then raise their pay and benefits at the expense of the taxpayer.

Twelve of the top twenty heavy hitters in campaign contributions are unions. All twelve give over 90% to Democrats.

LEGEND: Republican   Democrat   On the fence
	= Between 40% and 59% to both parties = Leans Dem/Repub (60%-69%) = Strongly Dem/Repub (70%-89%) = Solidly Dem/Repub (over 90%)

Rank	Organization	Total ‘89-’10	Dem %	Repub %	Tilt
1	ActBlue	$50,010,524	99%	0%
2	AT&T Inc	$46,077,005	44%	55%
3	American Fedn of State, County & Municipal Employees	$43,337,561	98%	1%
4	National Assn of Realtors	$38,628,441	49%	50%
5	Goldman Sachs	$33,360,252	61%	37%
6	American Assn for Justice	$33,047,779	90%	8%
7	Intl Brotherhood of Electrical Workers	$32,930,966	97%	2%
8	National Education Assn	$32,021,910	93%	6%
9	Laborers Union	$30,106,550	92%	7%
10	Carpenters & Joiners Union	$29,154,808	89%	10%
11	Service Employees International Union	$29,139,982	95%	3%
12	Teamsters Union	$29,126,809	93%	6%
13	American Federation of Teachers	$28,731,591	98%	0%
14	Communications Workers of America	$28,273,156	98%	0%
15	Citigroup Inc	$27,974,371	50%	49%
16	American Medical Assn	$27,442,570	40%	59%
17	United Auto Workers	$26,949,252	98%	0%
18	Machinists & Aerospace Workers Union	$26,170,977	98%	0%
19	National Auto Dealers Assn	$26,156,258	32%	67%
20	United Food & Commercial Workers Union	$25,226,733	98%	1%

(Source Center for Responsive Politics OpenSecrets.org)

Not surprisingly the top twenty recipients of labor cash in the 2010 election cycle were all Democrats:

(top twenty in 2009 was also all Democrats)

Big labor also spends millions lobbying congress for union welfare bills like the prevailing wage requirement and big federal projects like Obama’s high speed rail vision. Most of Obama’s proposed ‘investment’ in infrastructure spending is really an investment of taxpayer funds into the campaign coffers of Democrats after filtering through the unions.

Big labor lobbying for 2010 alone is over $46 million!And it happens at all levels of government. The NEA is the largest labor union and is the eighth largest contributor of campaign money to congress. 91% of the donations go to Democrats.

According to RiShawn Biddle in a Capital Research Center report:

‘The NEA took in an estimated $569 million that it spent on local, state and national political campaigns during the 2007-2008 election cycle, according to the National Institute on Money in State Politics. This made the NEA the nation’s single-biggest campaign contributor for the 2009-2010 election period…”

‘This fundraising prowess is why Harvard University education scholar Paul Peterson declares that the NEA is “in a position to tell state legislatures what to do.”’

A Wall Street Journal article makes the point:

” …. unlike in the private economy, a public union has a natural monopoly over government services. An industrial union will fight for a greater share of corporate profits, but it also knows that a business must make profits or it will move or shut down. The union chief for teachers, transit workers or firemen knows that the city is not going to close the schools, buses or firehouses.

This monopoly power, in turn, gives public unions inordinate sway over elected officials. The money they collect from member dues helps to elect politicians who are then supposed to represent the taxpayers during the next round of collective bargaining. In effect union representatives sit on both sides of the bargaining table, with no one sitting in for taxpayers. In 2006 in New Jersey, this led to the preposterous episode in which Governor Jon Corzine addressed a Trenton rally of thousands of public workers and shouted, “We will fight for a fair contract.” He was promising to fight himself.

Thus the collision course with taxpayers. Public unions depend entirely on tax revenues to fund their pay and benefits. They thus have every incentive to elect politicians who favor higher taxes and more government spending. The great expansion of state and local spending followed the rise of public unions.” [emphasis added]

Take a look at the growth in public sector unions:

There has been a long time shakedown of the American taxpayer with unions conspiring with Democrats to fleece the taxpayer. But something funny happened on the way to the bank. The taxpayer has run out of money.

This doesn’t seem to matter to the unions or the Democrats. Obama is possibly the worst of the bunch. Unions spent millions to help Obama get elected and he is paying them back in spades.

Recent paybacks to unions by Obama include overturning a 76 year old rule to make it easier to unionize airlines and more importantly a new executive order requiring all government contracts be to union companies. Both of these union payoffs were done without needing or even asking for congressional approval.

That is why Obama took the unprecedented and illegal step of appointing his union cronies to the National Labor Relations Board without congressional approval.

Close to half of Obama’s first $820 billion stimulus bill went ‘to entities that sponsor or employ or both members of the Service Employees International Union, federal, state, and municipal employee unions, or other Democrat-controlled unions‘ according to Ben Stein in an article last year in The American Spectator about the stimulus. More recently, congress passed the $30 billion ‘teacher bailout’ bill which funneled approximately $16 billion to union teacher and other public employee union jobs.

Obama usurped a long history of banking and creditor laws when he bailed out GM and Chrysler. In return for campaign support Obama gave partial ownership of both auto companies to the UAW and shafted the bond holders who had legal legitimate claims on the assets of the companies.

An earlier IBD Editorial pointed out the sweetheart deal Obama gave the UAW:

“Given that the wasteful work rules that UAW bosses — wielding government-granted monopoly-bargaining power over employees — insisted on for decades were largely what drove GM into bankruptcy, they certainly didn’t deserve kid-gloves treatment. Yet that’s what they got.

A UAW-controlled auto retiree health care fund was owed $20 billion by GM before the bailout.

Under the White House-dictated terms, UAW-appointed fund managers got back half of what they were owed in cash, whereas taxpayers who were owed $19.4 billion didn’t get a dime back in cash.

Instead, the Obama administration “forgave” this entire loan on taxpayers’ behalf and earmarked an additional $23.5 billion for the company’s trip through bankruptcy. In exchange for the nearly $43 billion funneled to GM, taxpayers acquired a “60.8% equity stake” in GM.”

It should be noted that the UAW is one of the most politically active of all unions. The union gave $2,119.937 to the 2008 campaigns 99% of which went to Obama and the Democrats. They gave another $1,106,500 in this past 2010 election cycle 100% of which went to Democrats. That is a total of $3,226,437 in just the last two election cycles. That does not include the phone banks, neighborhood canvassing and get out the vote efforts. Since 1990 the UAW has donated $26,510,252 of which 99% went to Democrats.

Not a bad return on investment when you consider they received billions back in ownership and benefit funding.

So in reality taxpayer money was used to pay off unions so that they could then campaign for Democrats and lobby for special favors from those same Democrats. This is change alright. An increase in arrogant corruption that is off the Richter scale.

And the cycle continues as long as citizens allow public employees to be union.

By Michael Whipple, Editor usACTIONnews.com

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by Daniel Ikenson at Cato @ Liberty

Grandiosity, denial, and revisionism are all noted indulgences of the political breed.  That’s why we should always be skeptical of their words and pity the partisan lemmings who mindlessly parrot their rhetoric.

In his SOTU speech last night, the president claimed credit for rescuing the auto industry:

On the day I took office, our auto industry was on the verge of collapse. Some even said we should let it die. With a million jobs at stake, I refused to let that happen. In exchange for help, we demanded responsibility. We got workers and automakers to settle their differences. We got the industry to retool and restructure. Today, General Motors is back on top as the world’s number one automaker. Chrysler has grown faster in the U.S.than any major car company. Ford is investing billions in U.S.plants and factories. And together, the entire industry added nearly 160,000 jobs.

We bet on American workers. We bet on American ingenuity. And tonight, the American auto industry is back.

This is a claim that is likely to be repeated as the president campaigns across the country this year, so it may be worthwhile to examine its merits.  (Who knows, maybe an effective debate moderator or Sunday news show host might find his way to asking the right questions of the president or members of his administration.)

Closer analysis reveals that President Obama (enabled by President Bush’s complicity) bailed out specific stakeholders at two auto companies at great cost to U.S.taxpayers and at great expense to important U.S. institutions.

The assertion – or implication – that he saved the auto industry is bogus. The auto industry was never on the verge of collapse.  GM and Chrysler were in deep trouble, but Ford, Honda, Toyota, Nissan, Mazda, Kia, Hyundai, BMW and Mercedes Benz (to name some U.S. producers) were fine.  Yes, in 2008-2009 the economy was in recession and automobile demand had tanked.  The companies that had been the most profligate, the most reckless, and the least disciplined were exposed, but talk of industry collapse was the product of a Detroit public relations campaign that featured the claim that 2 to 3 million jobs could be lost if the government didn’t funnel huge sums of cash to the Big Three. (Details here.)

I have shouted from the rooftops about this issue for over three years.  So rather than present all the facts and reconstruct all the arguments, let me economize with reference to this congressional testimony, given seven month ago. It pretty well sums up everything that’s wrong or misleading about the president’s narrative.

As I wrote last year:

The objection to the auto bailout was not that the federal government wouldn’t be able to marshal adequate resources to help GM. The most serious concerns were about the consequences of that intervention — the undermining of the rule of law, the property confiscations, the politically driven decisions and the distortion of market signals.

Any verdict on the auto bailouts must take into account, among other things, the illegal diversion of TARP funds, the forced transfer of assets from shareholders and debt-holders to pensioners and their union; the higher-risk premiums consequently built into U.S. corporate debt; the costs of denying Ford and the other more worthy automakers the spoils of competition; the costs of insulating irresponsible actors, such as the autoworkers’ union, from the outcomes of an apolitical bankruptcy proceeding; the diminution of U.S. moral authority to counsel foreign governments against market interventions; and the lingering uncertainty about policy that pervades the business environment to this day.

GM’s recent profits speak only to the fact that politicians committed more than $50 billion to the task of rescuing those companies and the United Auto Workers. With debts expunged, cash infused, inefficiencies severed, ownership reconstituted, sales rebates underwritten and political obstacles steamrolled — all in the midst of a recovery in U.S.auto demand — only the most incompetent operations could fail to make profits.

But taxpayers are still short at least $10 billion to $20 billion (depending on the price that the government’s 500 million shares of GM will fetch), and there is still significant overcapacity in the auto industry.

The administration should divest as soon as possible, without regard to the stock price. Keeping the government’s tentacles around a large firm in an important industry will keep the door open wider to industrial policy and will deter market-driven decision-making throughout the industry, possibly keeping the brakes on the recovery. Yes, there will be a significant loss to taxpayers. But the right lesson to learn from this chapter in history is that government interventions carry real economic costs — only some of which are readily measurable.

 

Dan Ikenson is director of Cato’s Herbert A. Stiefel Center for Trade Policy Studies, focusing on WTO disputes, regional trade agreements, U.S.-China trade issues, steel and textile trade policies, and antidumping reform. Ikenson has been involved in international trade since 1990.

________________

And this previously in June 2011 from Editor usACTIONnews.com:

Obama’s union payback to cost taxpayers $14 billion

Obama illegally gave ownership shares to the auto workers union who spent millions to elect Democrats leaving US taxpayers holding the empty bag.

Obama’s agenda is the union agenda. He said it, I believe it, the GM and Chrysler deals prove it.

Few are mentioning the theft of assets from the original creditors, the union pension bailout at taxpayer expense or the billions in funds Treasury Secretary Geithner now admits will never get repaid. Obama unconstitutionality took over a private company, overturned decades of surety laws, and paid campaign supporters with confiscated stock.

The Wall Street Journal points out that this is not near as good as was anticipated;

“So, today, amid the bally and the hoo, many have lost track of that fact. The offering valued GM at $50 billion, the low end of the hoped-for range. You would never know it, based on everything you read and hear. Once underwriters saw where demand was (not as great as desired), they shifted from talking about implied valuation to emphasizing shares issued, the per-share price and total money raised. The different storyline painted a picture of boffo box office even though the facts, as laid out just a few weeks ago, indicate that this deal really didn’t meet the hopes and expectations of GM or its biggest shareholder, the U.S. Government.”

So even though all the media hype is pushing Obama’s mantra of what a great thing it was to destroy the constitution in taking over the auto industry, the US is still short $14 billion. Obama says “it helped save jobs, rescue an industry at the heart of America’s manufacturing sector and position it to be more competitive in the future.” according to the Washington Post. Geithner said “”We cannot guarantee their success, and at some point they may stumble. But we’ve given them a better shot,”.

An earlier IBD Editorial pointed out the sweetheart deal Obama gave the UAW:

“Given that the wasteful work rules that UAW bosses — wielding government-granted monopoly-bargaining power over employees — insisted on for decades were largely what drove GM into bankruptcy, they certainly didn’t deserve kid-gloves treatment. Yet that’s what they got.

A UAW-controlled auto retiree health care fund was owed $20 billion by GM before the bailout.

Under the White House-dictated terms, UAW-appointed fund managers got back half of what they were owed in cash, whereas taxpayers who were owed $19.4 billion didn’t get a dime back in cash.

Instead, the Obama administration “forgave” this entire loan on taxpayers’ behalf and earmarked an additional $23.5 billion for the company’s trip through bankruptcy. In exchange for the nearly $43 billion funneled to GM, taxpayers acquired a “60.8% equity stake” in GM.”

It should be noted that the UAW is one of the most politically active of all unions. The union gave $2,119.937 to the 2008 campaigns 99% of which went to Obama and the Democrats. They gave another $1,106,500 in this past 2010 election cycle 100% of which went to Democrats. That is a total of $3,226,437 in just the last two election cycles. That does not include the phone banks, neighborhood canvassing and get out the vote efforts. Since 1990 the UAW has donated $26,510,252 of which 99% went to Democrats.

Not a bad return on investment when you consider they received billions back in ownership and benefit funding.

The government is subsidizing purchases of the GM Volt to the tune of $7,500 each. By the way that $7,500 is being supplied by you the taxpayer and is not being considered in the overall loss figures on the GM union payoff scam.

The UAW also spends about a million and a half a year lobbying for important issues like card check, pension bailouts and the Buy America Act. So in reality taxpayer money was used to pay off unions so that they could then campaign for Democrats and lobby for special favors from those same Democrats. This is change alright. An increase in arrogant corruption that is off the Richter scale.

The Obama campaign is claiming the union bailout saved the auto industry but neglects to mention that Ford took no money and has recovered even better than GM or Chrysler and that US plants owned by Toyota, Nissan and others continued to employ Americans without taxpayer assistance even competing against government subsidized GM and Chrysler.

The real bailout was the union money laundering scheme that keeps union dollars flowing into Democrat campaign coffers. That is the Chicago way of redistributing the wealth. Taking from the unsuspecting taxpayer to give to the union campaign supporters.

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See more great videos on our Obama, SEIU and Unions YouTube channel playlists.

IBD Editorials

EXCERPTS:

In a telltale Friday-night document dump, the White House released records showing the latest lucky recipients of Obama-Care cost waivers. By the wildest of coincidences, 87% of them belong to Big Labor unions.

This isn’t conspiracy thinking. Judicial Watch obtained records from closed-door meetings between Richard Trumka of the AFL-CIO, Andy Stern of the SEIU and other labor advocates of health care nationalization, and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, Vice President Joe Biden, Majority Leader Harry Reid and ex-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. They point to deals cut to benefit Big Labor.

… unions together shelled out $100 million in 2010 to keep Democrats in office after the fiasco.

This is political corruption at its worst. ObamaCare can’t be called a law anymore, let alone an equalizer of health care access, as it has claimed — it’s just a machine for dispensing political favors, paid for by the rest of us.

FULL ARTICLE

By David Martosko at The Daily Caller

EXCERPTS:

Beginning Wednesday, Hoosier State Democrats have been skipping out of work to prevent Republicans from passing a “right to work” law.

The legislative proposal, likely to pass the Republican-dominated state legislature — if everyone were present — aims to ban negotiations between companies and unions whose workers are forced to pay dues in order to keep their jobs.

FULL ARTICLE

Taxpayers are still on the hook in the GM bailout for over $20 billion. Looks like Obama’s “hope” was only for union paybacks and his “change” was to take more of your money and give it to his supporters. ]]> http://usactionnews.com/2012/01/newt-recall-obama-along-with-the-volt/feed/ 0