Troy Senik at City Journal

EXCERPTS:

… CTA—now the single most powerful special interest in California—organized a “State of Emergency” week to agitate for higher taxes in one of the most overtaxed states in the nation. A CTA document suggested dozens of ways for teachers to protest, including following state legislators incessantly, attempting to close major transportation arteries, and boycotting companies, such as Microsoft, that backed education reform.

Seen as a national leader in the classroom during the 1950s and 1960s, the country’s largest state is today a laggard, competing with the likes of Mississippi and Washington, D.C., at the bottom of national rankings.

CTA began its transformation in September 1975, when Governor Jerry Brown signed the Rodda Act, which allowed California teachers to bargain collectively.

In 2009, the union’s income was more than $186 million, all of it tax-exempt.

CTA had spent more than $210 million over the previous decade on political campaigning—…. outspent the pharmaceutical industry, the oil industry, and the tobacco industry combined.

CTA also funds a wide array of liberal causes unrelated to education, with the goal of spreading around enough cash to prevent dissent from the Left.

FULL ARTICLE

In the height of hypocrisy Obama takes money from Blackstone Capital which is set to profit billions from the ruined real estate market. No wonder they’re supporting Obama. ]]> http://usactionnews.com/2012/05/leftist-supporter-slams-obamas-ads-against-mitt/feed/ 0 http://usactionnews.com/2012/05/biden-rants-to-auto-union-but-admitted-obama-lost-jobs-and-closed-factories/ http://usactionnews.com/2012/05/biden-rants-to-auto-union-but-admitted-obama-lost-jobs-and-closed-factories/#comments Fri, 18 May 2012 14:27:36 +0000 Mike Whipple http://usactionnews.com/?p=21426 Biden seems desperate as he loses it while speaking to a friendly auto union crowd. Biden boasts of the auto union bailout with taxpayer dollars but bond holders and non-union workers got screwed in the union giveaway. Biden has admitted that dealerships and factories were closed and thousands lost jobs in Obama’s union payback that still has taxpayers on the hook for billions.

Remember that unions supported Obama with hundreds of millions of campaign dollars and an army of campaign workers. The unions received bailouts and stock ownership costing taxpayers and bond holders about $50 billion. Not a bad trade if you are a union auto worker.

Wisconsin Right to Life PAC (WRTL/PAC) unveiled its state-of-the-art recall election website, Wisconsin Right to Life Election Center. The website includes comprehensive information about all of the candidates running for Governor, Lt. Governor and the four State Senate races in contention on June 5.

“Our election website is truly THE place for right-to-life voters to come to find out where the candidates stand on issues affecting the sanctity of human life and which candidates the Wisconsin Right to Life PAC has endorsed in these very important elections,” said Susan Armacost, WRTL/PAC Director. “While collective bargaining and public employee benefits may have ignited the flurry of recall elections in our state, the fact is that each of the targeted public officials are strong right-to-life supporters and their opponents are pro-abortion to the core. The stakes for unborn children in these recall elections are extremely high. The Wisconsin Right to Life Election Center will be very helpful to the tens of thousands of right-to-life supporters who will head to the polls on June 5.”

The WRTL/PAC has endorsed Governor Scott Walker who leads by six, Lt. Governor Rebecca Kleefisch, Senators Scott Fitzgerald, Van Wanggaard and Terry Moulton and Representative Jerry Petrowski.

The website includes dramatic videos exposing the deplorable record of Tom Barrett on issues affecting the sanctity of human life. “While in the state legislature and in Congress, Barrett had one of the worst right-to-life voting records we have ever seen,” said Armacost. “These videos will be a real eye-opener to voters in Wisconsin when they are presented with the facts about Tom Barrett’s blatant disregard for human life.”

The Wisconsin Right to Life Election Center can be accessed by clicking here.

Here is Obama letting SEIU know he stands with them:

Editor’s note: You Tube has scrubbed many of the Stephen Lerner videos revealing his radical agenda

Kyle Olson appeared on “Fox & Friends” to discuss the EAGnews.org expose on the radicals and unions seeking to blunt reform in Wisconsin. The full report can be viewed at http://eagnews.org/anarchy-101/

From IBD Editorials

EXCERPTS:

“For America’s skilled craft construction professionals, any discussion of the Keystone XL project begins and ends with one word: JOBS,” Mark Ayers, past head of the group, wrote in the Huffington Post last November. He noted that “the Keystone pipeline represents the prospect for 20,000 immediate jobs, and as many as 500,000 indirect jobs via a strong economic multiplier effect.”

Ayers added that “roughly 14% of the American construction workforce is unemployed,” a number “significantly higher” than the national average, which has remained above 8% for 38 straight months, a post-Depression record.

A number of unions, a major part of the Democratic base, are backing the project, including the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, the International Union of Operating Engineers, the Teamsters, the Laborers’ International Union, the Building and Construction Trades Department of the AFL-CIO, and the United Association of Plumbers and Pipefitters for the United States and Canada.

They want the jobs, not the campaign rhetoric.

FULL ARTICLE

H/T Todd Fein

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

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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