Why The Citizens United Decision Matters

Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, 558 U.S. 310 (2010), is a landmark United States Supreme Court case concerning campaign finance. The Supreme Court ruled on January 21, 2010, prevents the government from restricting campaign contributions from corporations, including nonprofit corporations, labor unions, and other associations.

National Review posted an article on March 5, 2014, showing political campaign donations from 1989 to 2014. Below is the chart included in the article:

As you can see, unions donate a significant amount of money to political campaigns.

On Thursday, The Washington Examiner reported that the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) is investing $150 million to defeat President Trump in November.

The article reports:

The get-out-the-vote campaign is the biggest investment that the union has ever made in getting voters to the polls. It will largely focus on Colorado, Florida, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Wisconsin, according to the Associated Press. It will also focus on urban areas such as Detroit and Milwaukee. And while television ads will be part of the campaign, most of its resources will go to direct contact and online ads targeting minority voters.

Maria Peralta, the union’s political director, said Trump has made inroads with some minority voters who traditionally vote Democratic if they do vote. The Trump campaign plans to open community centers to win the black vote. The offices will feature African Americans who support Trump.

So what is this about? Through deregulation and other policies, the Trump administration has seen record economic growth. In order for the Democrats to stay in power, they need a permanent underclass that is dependent on the government to support them.

On February 15, Breitbart reported:

Approximately 6.1 million individuals dropped off the food stamp rolls since President Donald Trump’s first full month in office in February 2017, according to the latest data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).

This is a threat to the growth of the Democrat party. If the Democrats can defeat President Trump, reverse his economic policies, and create a failing economy, they can gain more control over the everyday lives of Americans. That is their goal. That is the reason we need corporate money in elections to counter the union money. That is the reason Citizens United was a good decision.

It should also be noted that as the number of people dependent on the government decreases, the size of the administrative state should also decrease. That should also decrease the cost of government. That is a goal that totally frightens those involved in the administrative state. If the administrative state continues at its present size, we will never get federal deficits under control. Eventually the deficit will crash the economy.

This Should Never Have Been Legal

Yesterday The Daily Caller reported that President Trump made a change to a 2014 Medicaid regulation. Some states had been skimming money from Medicaid payments and funneling it into union coffers.

The article reports:

The Obama administration issued a regulation that protected a state practice that had, by that time, been practiced for decades. Since the 1990s, states have accepted Medicaid money from the federal government meant for home health service providers, often the family or friends of the Medicaid-assistance recipient, according to the conservative think tank Freedom Foundation.

In distributing checks to the health providers, some states had begun skimming money and diverting it to unions and other interest groups in the form of dues, even though home health providers may not be members. The Center for Medicaid Services will begin cracking down on the process in July.

…The new regulation will prevent states from skimming up to $150 million per year from Medicaid payments and diverting it to other causes. The Freedom Foundation found that in 2018 eight states – California, Connecticut, Illinois, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Oregon, Vermont and Washington – were skimming money off Medicaid payments to caretakers.

As expected, the unions opposed this new regulation:

Unions slammed the Trump administration over the new rule. The Service Employees International Union (SEIU), one of the largest public-sector unions in the U.S., said the new policy was “anti-worker.”

The final rule attacks “roughly 800,000 home care workers’ ability to use common paycheck deductions for health insurance contributions, union dues, and other expenses,” the SEIU said in a statement. “The rule wrongly targets independent provider home care workers who, without a union, are faced with a physically and emotionally demanding job with a median wage of just $10.49 an hour, no healthcare, no paid sick time and no benefits.”

How about letting home care workers decide for themselves whether or not they want to join a union or pay union dues? The Obama regulation was simply another way to put money in union coffers that they could donate to Democrats during election cycles.

Taking Advantage Of Those Who Can Least Afford It

The Daily Signal posted an article today about another battle in the war on the involuntary taking of union dues.

The article reports:

Sally Coomer of Seattle, who cares for her disabled adult daughter at home, doesn’t like the fact that union dues are deducted from the Medicaid payment she gets for her services under a Washington state policy.

“The money that is taken out in union dues, if it was not siphoned off, could be used to provide for more care,” Coomer told The Daily Signal about the Medicaid stipend given to home care providers.

“A lot of family members forgo careers to take care of family members and are working in situations where they are really financially struggling,” she said.

Washington is one of 11 states where the state governments work with public-sector unions to automatically deduct a portion of the Medicaid stipend and divert it to unions representing state employee unions.

The other states are California, Connecticut, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Missouri, New Jersey, Oregon, and Vermont, according to the State Policy Network, a conservative think tank that focuses on state issues.

Nine states take money from Medicaid home child care workers: Connecticut, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, and Washington.

Taking care of your child at home should not result in having union dues taken out of money you receive for the care of that child.

The Trump administration agrees:

However, the states face pushback from the Trump administration and, potentially, the courts in light of a recent Supreme Court ruling striking down mandatory payments to public employee unions by employees who don’t belong to the union.

The rule proposed by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services would eliminate states’ ability to divert part of Medicaid payments from providers to a third party.

The article continues:

Caregivers may pay up to $1,000 per year in union dues, according to the State Policy Network, which says state governments are “dues-skimming” an estimated $200 million per year from home health providers and $50 million from child day care providers to give to unions.

Coomer’s daughter Becky, almost 28, has cerebral palsy and a disorder that causes seizures. She is blind and developmentally disabled.

Coomer, who has become an advocate for other families who don’t want to be forced to pay union dues, said many home care providers are not aware they have a choice in joining a union.

To qualify in Washington state, family members are required to go to an orientation run by the Service Employees International Union, which represents state government employees.

“At the orientation, they would tell people they are required to sign up,” Coomer said. “I don’t know what benefit we get from the dues. The only time I hear from the union is when they inundate me with a political agenda.”

The proposed new Medicaid regulation, announced July 10, is open for public comment.

Let’s hope that the practice of taking union dues from people caring for family members is ended quickly.

 

When The Government Tries To Control Families

The American Spectator posted a story today that illustrates how twisted the government’s involvement in families can be.

One night on his way home from work, Greg Euston was involved in an auto accident. As a result of the accident, he was partially paralyzed. His parents stepped up to the plate to help with his care.

The story reports:

Today, Greg works from home as a software engineer. Next year, one son will graduate from college, and the other will begin his service in the U.S. Navy. While Greg still needs help with daily care, he has succeeded at the most important task that we parents face. He provides a loving home, education, and parental guidance for his children.

Getting in and out of bed, dressing, meal prep, and almost all other daily tasks require assistance. For 13 years, Greg has had an aide for 40 hours of every week. Tom and I take turns going to Greg’s house in the evenings. We rarely spend the night under the same roof.

This isn’t a job for us. This is caring for our son. This is necessary.

However, Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf didn’t see it that way.

The article continues:

Like us, most of Pennsylvania’s 20,000 home care workers care for a family member or close friend. We learned of this scheme by mail when we were asked to elect the United Home Care Workers of Pennsylvania — a partnership of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) to represent us against our “employer.”

To represent us against our son.

Mr. Wolf went out of his way to share our names and contact information, without our consent or request, with those unions. The governor further stacked the deck by lowering the standard participation requirements for union elections. In the end, the union won with just 13 percent of home care workers voting “yes.”

I’m not opposed to unions, but forced representation? How could a union possibly improve our family’s situation? So far, the only “improvement” they propose is to limit when and how we care for our own son.

What’s in it for the union? As much as $8 million in dues annually. It’s a case of political payback, pure and simple.

AFCSME and SEIU were two of the largest contributors to Mr. Wolf’s gubernatorial campaign, donating nearly $1.5 million between them.

This is an example of elected officials working against the interests of those who elected them and for the interests of big donators. This was on the state level, but obviously things are not any different on the federal level. The fact that the unions can make large donations to candidates is the reason I support the Citizens United Supreme Court decision. If unions can buy candidates, corporations should also be able to buy candidates. At least that provides some degree of balance. If the people of Pennsylvania are smart, they will remove Governor Wolf from office when the next election occurs. If they do not remove him, they deserve what they get. In the end, the voters decide what level of corruption they are willing to tolerate.

 

Sometimes Reality Is Just Not Fun

The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) is known for its fight for a $15 minimum wage for fast food workers. The union chooses to ignore the fact that these are entry-level workers learning the basics of holding a job–showing up on time, being conscientious, treating people with respect, etc. Recruiting these people into the SEIU provides a larger base for union dues (and bigger donations to Democratic candidates), but where has the battle gotten the workers?

Ed Rensi posted an article at Forbes on Tuesday talking about the consequences of the push for a $15 minimum wage for fast food workers.

The article points out a few of the unintended consequences:

Let’s start with automation. In 2013, when the Fight for $15 was still in its growth stage, I and others warned that union demands for a much higher minimum wage would force businesses with small profit margins to replace full-service employees with costly investments in self-service alternatives. At the time, labor groups accused business owners of crying wolf. It turns out the wolf was real.

Earlier this month, McDonald’s announced the nationwide roll-out of touchscreen self-service kiosks. In a video the company released to showcase the new customer experience, it’s striking to see employees who once would have managed a cash register now reduced to monitoring a customer’s choices at an iPad-style kiosk.

…Of course, not all businesses have the capital necessary to shift from full-service to self-service. And that brings me to my next correct prediction–that a $15 minimum wage would force many small businesses to lay off staff, seek less-costly locations, or close altogether.

…The out-of-state labor groups who funded these initiatives aren’t shedding tears over the consequences. Like their Soviet-era predecessors who foolishly thought they could centrally manage prices and business operations to fit an idealistic worldview, economic reality keeps ruining the model of all gain and no pain. This brings me to my last correct prediction, which is that the Fight for $15 was always more a creation of the left-wing Service Employees International Union (SEIU) rather than a legitimate grassroots effort. Reuters reported last year that, based on federal filings, the SEIU had spent anywhere from $24 million to $50 million on the its Fight for $15 campaign, and the number has surely increased since then.

This money has bought the union a lot of protesters and media coverage. You can expect more of it on November 29. But the real faces of the Fight for $15 are the young people and small business owners who have had their futures compromised. Those faces are not happy ones.

I suspect that over time many of the businesses involved would have switched to kiosks anyway, but the drive for $15 an hour definitely helped speed up the process. The fact that the SEIU was able to gather (or pay) protestors and that the news covered this story in a positive light is evidence that we are not teaching people basic economics in school. Somehow we have lost sight of the fact that businesses are in business to make a profit. When businesses are no longer profitable, they go out of business. In this case even the businesses that could afford to automate cut back on their workforce because of increasing labor costs. This is another example of shortsightedness on the part of the unions and of the law of unintended consequences.

Voter Fraud Is A Felony–It Needs To Be Prosecuted

Yesterday The Washington Post posted an article about nineteen dead people who have recently registered to vote in Virginia.

The article reports:

One case came to light after relatives of a deceased man received a note congratulating him for registering, Rockingham County Commonwealth’s Attorney Marsha Garst said Thursday.

“His family members were very distraught,” said Garst, who confirmed the existence of the FBI and police investigation but said she could provide few details because the case is ongoing.

…All of the forms had been submitted by a private group that was working to register voters on the campus of James Madison University, according to the Harrisonburg registrar’s office. The group was not identified. No charges have been filed.

Republicans in the state House of Delegates, who in recent years have supported tighter voter ID laws, held a conference call with reporters to call attention to the investigation.

“Oftentimes we hear our Democratic colleagues suggest that voter fraud doesn’t exist in Virginia, or it’s a myth,” House Speaker William J. Howell (R-Stafford) said. “This is proof that voter fraud not only exists but is ongoing and is a threat to the integrity of our elections.”

Unfortunately there are political candidates that think winning is more important than ethics.

As previously reported here in 2011:

“Most of the findings focused on a group called Houston Votes, a voter registration group headed by Sean Caddle, who formerly worked for the Service Employees International Union. Among the findings were that only 1,793 of the 25,000 registrations the group submitted appeared to be valid. The other registrations included one of a woman who registered six times in the same day; registrations of non-citizens; so many applications from one Houston Voters collector in one day that it was deemed to be beyond human capability; and 1,597 registrations that named the same person multiple times, often with different signatures.”

A similar story appeared here earlier this year about Ohio:

True the Vote (TTV), the nation’s leading voters’ rights and election integrity organization, today announced details surrounding its effort to help Cuyahoga and Franklin County officials in Ohio remove more than a thousand duplicate voter registrations ahead of voting in 2016.

Upon receipt of True the Vote’s research, 711 duplicate voter registrations were removed in Cuyahoga County, while 465 sets were processed in Franklin County.

Voter fraud is a problem. We need to take a closer look at some of the groups engaged in registering dead or illegal voters. Voter fraud is a felony. We need to start sending people to jail when they engage in it.

UPDATE:

From The Gateway Pundit:

Just yesterday we wrote about an FBI investigation into potential voter fraud in the critical swing state of Virginia after it was revealed that 19 dead people had recently been re-registered to vote (see “FBI Investigating More Dead People Voting In The Key Swing State Of Virginia“).  While the Washington Post caught wind of the investigation, it was not known who was behind the operation…until now.

Meet, Andrew Spieles, a student at James Madison University, and apparently “Lead Organizer” for HarrisonburgVOTES.  According to the Daily News-Record, Spieles confessed to re-registering 19 deceased Virginians to vote in the 2016 election cycle.

Americans Are Learning to Fight Back

The Washington Free Beacon posted a story today about home healthcare workers in Illinois who are fighting for their right not to be part of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU).

The article reports:

Home health aides in Illinois are fighting to recoup $32 million that was taken out of their paychecks in a coercive unionization scheme that the Supreme Court declared unconstitutional.

More than 80,000 home healthcare workers were forced to pay Service Employees International Union (SEIU) hundreds of dollars each year under a policy devised by the now-imprisoned Democratic Gov. Rod Blagojevich. Illinois declared that the aides, many of whom were caring for disabled relatives, were public employees since their compensation came through state Medicaid funds.

Pamela Harris, who provided care to a severely disabled daughter, sued the state and union arguing that the arrangement wrongfully deducted money from her check. The Supreme Court ruled in her favor in Harris v. Quinn, declaring the arrangement unconstitutional in 2014.

Some of the healthcare workers in Illinois have filed a class-action suit to get the money that was taken from them returned.

The article further reports:

Workers in Illinois stopped paying SEIU following the suit and now some are waging a class action lawsuit to make the union return deducted cash. Lawyers from the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, which argued Quinn v. Harris before the Supreme Court, have now taken the battle to federal appeals court. National Right to Work Foundation president Mark Mix said failing to return the money to the aides would set a dangerous precedent, incentivizing unions to continue pushing for forced dues collections.

“If SEIU bosses are not required to return the money they seized in violation of homecare providers’ First Amendment Rights, it will only encourage similar behavior from union officials eager to trample on the First Amendment to enrich themselves at the expense of tens of thousands of homecare providers,” he said in a release.

SEIU, which did not return request for comment, has said that it should not be required to pay back the workers because not all workers opposed union representation. A district court judge ruled in June that individual plaintiffs could recoup several thousand dollars paid to the union beginning in 2008, but nixed the class action status filed on behalf of all the home health aides.

The union is arguing that many of the workers did not object to the arrangement and would have paid the dues if they had been given a choice. So why then weren’t they given a choice? Hopefully the healthcare workers who had their money stolen will be able to get it back.

How To Pass A Minimum Wage Hike Without Hiking Minimum Wage

Hot Air posted an article today about the recent fight in California to pass an increase in the minimum wage. Unions and business owners are supporting the increase. Each have their own reasons.

Under the new law, hotels that are unionized don’t have to increase their wages. Hotels that are open shops have to follow the law and increase wages. So a union hotel employee who pays $56.50 every month for membership in the hotel workers union does not get a raise, while his non-union equivalent gets a pay raise.

The article concludes:

The raison d’etre of unions is supposedly to arrange better conditions, compensation and benefits for their members, so why they would agree to that deal doesn’t jump out at you. But the reality is that not all of the hotels are unionized. The ones who run open shops fall under the new arrangement and have to pay their workers significantly higher wages. So how do they get out of this sudden spike in labor costs which could put them at a disadvantage with their competitors? (Cue the Jeopardy music…)

They can just unionize their work force.

It’s really a genius maneuver if you think about it. Getting a raise for some of the workers in the city who already belong to your union doesn’t really translate into that much more money in dues because they only collect a small percentage of the increase. But if you can suddenly enlist the workers at a whole raft of new businesses into your organization you get a piece of all their paychecks. It’s the perfect plan, really.

Of course, the people who get left out in the cold are the actual members of the union, particularly once they find out what’s going on. But that was never the real objective of the union in modern times anyway. What’s critical is enlisting as much of the workforce as possible and keeping the cash flowing in so they can continue to fund the political campaigns of Democrats.

It pays to read laws carefully and look at who is supporting them. In this case, those in the unions who have worked to pass the law assumed that they would gain by its passage. Those in the upper levels of the union had another idea. They supported a law that would cost union shops less while potentially increasing the number of union shops. This is only one example of the damage that the alliance of unions and politicians can do.

But I Didn’t Think That Law Would Apply To Me!

Yesterday the Washington Free Beacon reported that Media Matters is forcing its employees to make the vote to unionize under the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) a secret ballot. This is amazingly ironic. Media Matters is a liberal organization headed by David Brock, a strong supporter of Hillary Clinton.

The article reports:

It is unclear why Media Matters did not opt to allow its employees to organize through a card check campaign, in which a union submits signed petitions from employees expressing their interest to join the union. MMFA, its attorneys, and the SEIU did not return requests for comment.

Media Matters has a long record of slamming Republicans and conservatives who want to protect secret ballot union elections.

The organization published multiple pieces celebrating the Democrat’s so-called Employee Free Choice Act, which would make it easier for unions to organize through card check campaigns and prevent employers from forcing a secret ballot election.

Media Matters researcher Meagan Hatcher-Mays took to the organization’s blog to criticize “a wave of Republican anti-union legislation [that] has placed obstacles between workers and union representatives and disrupted opportunities for workplace productivity.”

It is becoming very obvious that the best way to illustrate the problems with the liberal agenda is to ask liberals to abide by their own laws.

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Unions Members Inspecting Non-Union Companies

Yesterday the Daily Caller reported that union representatives are allowed to accompany OSHA to nonunion work sites due to an Obama administration rule clarification. The clarification has been accused in congressional testimony of violating federal laws.

The article reports:

Union representatives from the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) are now accompanying federal government safety inspectors on site visits to review labor complaints at nonunion private businesses, The Daily Caller has learned.

SEIU and other labor unions can accompany the government inspectors on site visits due to a quiet and contested Obama administration rule clarification issued last year in response to a request from a union representative.

SEIU agents recently accompanied an inspector from the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), a division of the Department of Labor, on three visits to nonunion work sites under contract with the Houston-based janitorial company Professional Janitorial Services (PJS).

The argument against allowing SIEU and other union member to be involved in OSHA inspections is that it brings into question the neutrality of OSHA in labor-management disputes. Union members have no business being involved in the inspection of a non-union company.

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Horrible Situations Should Not Result In Bad Laws

The Democrats have been known to exploit the death of a child (or children) for political purposes, and what is currently happening in Ohio is the most recent example of that. A young man named Teddy was removed from public school by his mother to be home schooled and was later killed by his mother’s boyfriend. Now an Ohio Democrat is attempting to pass a law that would severely restrict home schooling.

The bill, Senate Bill 248 (SB 248), is nicknamed Teddy’s bill.

An article posted at a website called Media Trackers sheds a little light on what is going on–it lists the donors of Sen. Capri Cafaro‘s (D-Hubbard) campaign.

The article reports:

Sen. Cafaro is strongly supported by public employee unions, whose business model depends on government spending and especially on education spending. In 2012 alone, Cafaro’s campaign committee received:

SB 248 has not yet been assigned to committee. Both the Ohio Senate and Ohio House are controlled by Republicans.

This bill is a blatant example of money in politics used to encourage favorable legislation for the donators.

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America Is Having A Bad Day

This quote has been reported by various sources:

“We’ve been told to make life as difficult for people as we can,” an angry Park Ranger told the Washington Times. “It’s disgusting.”

The National Mall in Washington is closed, the World War II Memorial is barricaded, the Vietnam Memorial is closed, and other monuments are blocked off. However, if your politics agrees with the politics of the Obama Administration, you have access to the closed Mall.

Today’s Washington Examiner reported:

Susana Flores, a spokesperson for the rally (“Camino Americano: March for Immigration Reform“), confirmed for the Washington Examiner that the Park Service will allow the event to take place under the group’s rights granted by the First Amendment.

About 30 members of Congress are expected to attend the rally, including House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J.

The event is hosted by several immigration activist groups, together with the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and the AFL-CIO.

What about the rights of the businessmen the Park Service has closed or the elderly couple the Park Service evicted from their houseboat on Lake Mead? This is politics at its worst. We need to remember this in November 2014. The problem here is not the shutdown–we have had shutdowns before–the problem is the war on the American public by the government. The Obama Administration loves to pick winners and losers. In this battle the losers are the American public. We need to vote anyone out of office who took part in this war on Americans.

 

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Looking For A Way To Earn Some Easy Money?

Yesterday PJMedia posted a story about the protesters who showed up at the World War II Memorial.

The article reports:

After about an hour, about 20 protesters arrived on the scene chanting “Boehner, get us back to work” and claiming they were federal employees furloughed because of the shutdown.

As usual in Washington, things were not what they appeared to be.

The article further reports:

Then, remarkably, a guy carrying a sign passed by wearing a McDonald’s employee shirt, which I noted. I then began asking them how much they had been paid to protest, at which point the guy wearing the McDonald’s shirt came back and admitted he had been paid $15.

Huffington Post reporter Arthur Delaney states that the protest was organized by a group called “Good Jobs Nation,” not SEIU as I previously reported, and that, remarkably, the protesters weren’t even federal employees at all but individuals who WORK in federal buildings affected by the shutdown.

This is the video:

Whatever happened to real protest?

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Confusing The Issue By Adding Facts

There have been a lot of charges made lately by Democrats that Republicans want to suppress the black vote by passing voter identification laws. There is no mention of the fact that you need a driver’s license or such to enter a federal building, board a plane, case a check, etc., but that’s another story. But occasionally, when charging people with racism, inconvenient facts get in the way.

Ed Morrissey at Hot Air posted a story today showing that when Georgia became the first state in the nation to enact voter identification laws, the black and Hispanic voter turnout increased. From 2006 to 2010, voting by black and Hispanic voters increased dramatically, outpacing population growth for those groups over the same period.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution also posted an article today dealing with the same subject.

The The Atlanta Journal-Constitution article reports:

Under Georgia’s law, an in-person voter who arrives at the polls without a photo ID may cast a provisional ballot. The provisional ballot is counted only if the person returns with proper identification by the Friday following the election.

Records show that since 2008, 2,244 provisional ballots were cast by voters lacking photo ID. Of those, 658 returned with an ID and 1,586 did not — meaning their votes did not count.

That disturbs Laughlin McDonald, director of the Voting Rights Project of the American Civil Liberties Union, one of the original plaintiffs who challenged the law.

“If one person is deprived of their right to see their vote count, that’s a violation of the Constitution,” McDonald said.

I guess I have become a little cynical of late, but I am not thoroughly convinced that the 1,586 voters who chose not to return with identification were legal voters. Just a thought.

There is no way to prove that voter fraud was stopped by voter identification laws. However, we can show that the laws do not suppress votes. In terms of stopping fraud, one blatant example of voter fraud was found in Houston, Texas, by a group called True the Vote. (See rightwinggranny.com) When True the Vote examined the voters registered by a group called Houston Votes, a voter registration group headed by Sean Caddle, who had previously worked for the  Service Employees International Union (SEIU), they found that only 1,793 of the 25,000 registrations the group submitted appeared to be valid. I don’t know if 23,000 votes is enough to change the outcome of an election, but this clearly seems to be an example of voter fraud.

Anyway, hooray for voter identification laws–the keep our elections honest!

 

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Sometimes There Is A Reason A Law Needs To Be Changed

Today Hot Air posted an article about some changes Texas has made in its voting laws.

The article explains the conflict between the state of Texas and Eric Holder‘s Justice Department:

What Holder proposes to do is to tell Texas to get DoJ approval for its voting (and redistricting) laws before putting them in force, right after the Supreme Court told Texas and the other Section 4 states that they don’t need to do so.  Holder can file a lawsuit to attempt to force compliance, but that’s just bluster. Texas isn’t going to comply, and it’s doubtful a federal court would do anything but laugh at the filing after the ruling last month.  The DoJ has no more jurisdiction to tell Texas to get pre-approval for laws passed under its own sovereignty.  This is grandstanding on a particularly demagogic scale.

In 2011, Texas passed a law requiring the following forms of identification in order to vote (according to the Texas.gov website):

With the exception of the U.S. citizenship certificate, the identification must be current or have expired no more than 60 days before being presented for voter qualification at the polling place

Why are these laws necessary? As I reported in rightwinggranny.com in September 2010, this is what happened when a group of people decided to investigate who was voting in Texas:

“”The first thing we started to do was look at houses with more than six voters in them” Engelbrecht (Catherine Engelbrecht, founder of True the Vote) said, because those houses were the most likely to have fraudulent registrations attached to them. “Most voting districts had 1,800 if they were Republican and 2,400 of these houses if they were Democratic . . .

“”But we came across one with 24,000, and that was where we started looking.”

“Vacant lots had several voters registered on them. An eight-bed halfway house had more than 40 voters registered at its address,” Engelbrecht said. “We then decided to look at who was registering the voters.”

“Their work paid off. Two weeks ago the Harris County voter registrar took their work and the findings of his own investigation and handed them over to both the Texas secretary of state’s office and the Harris County district attorney.

“Most of the findings focused on a group called Houston Votes, a voter registration group headed by Sean Caddle, who formerly worked for the Service Employees International Union. Among the findings were that only 1,793 of the 25,000 registrations the group submitted appeared to be valid. The other registrations included one of a woman who registered six times in the same day; registrations of non-citizens; so many applications from one Houston Voters collector in one day that it was deemed to be beyond human capability; and 1,597 registrations that named the same person multiple times, often with different signatures.”

It seems as if voter id would be a good idea after that kind of fraud. Why would the Department of Justice want to prevent a law that would stop voter fraud?

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Following The Money In ObamaCare

Who makes money in ObamaCare? Not doctors, hospitals, consumers, or health insurance companies, so who is making money and what is it all about?

On Wednesday, John Hinderaker at Power Line posted an article explaining where some of the money the government will take from taxpayers to fund ObamaCare will go.

ObamaCare is not about health care–it’s about politics. The Power Line article used an editorial posted at Investor’s Business Daily on Tuesday as its main source of what is happening to taxpayer money.

Investor’s Business Daily reports:

The Obama administration granted a whopping $910 million to California to set up its insurance exchange. That money is not for bandages, surgery, nurses and doctors to care for the sick. Nor is it for insurance plans, though $910 million could buy generous coverage for at least 113,000 people!

Shockingly, the $910 million is slated for bureaucracy, including rich compensation packages for exchange employees ($360,000 a year for the executive director) and contracts for computer equipment, public relations and “outreach.”

Outreach is the largest expenditure and where the real monkey business occurs.

What in the world is ObamaCare outreach? It seems as if California lawmakers don’t want the taxpayers to be able to answer that question:

Amazingly, California legislators passed a law that the exchange could keep secret for a year who received the contracts and indefinitely how much they were paid. California’s open-records laws would otherwise prohibit such secrecy.

Most of the groups that got the money are not health care related. The include: the California NAACP ($600,000), Service Employees International Union (SEIU) ($2 million), Los Angeles County Federation of Labor AFL-CIO ($1 million),

The article reports:

These organizations, closely allied with the Democratic Party, are being funded by your tax dollars to conduct “outreach,” meaning the kind of phone banking and door-to-door canvassing that activists do to turn out the vote. They will turn out the uninsured to enroll on the exchanges and in the Democratic Party.

The $37 million awarded last month is only the first installment of California’s $190.4 million to be spent on contracts for “outreach” through December 2014.

ObamaCare will create generations of Democrat voters and horrendous health care for everyone. It needs to go away very fast.

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An Incredible Coincidence

Today’s Daily Caller posted a story about former Internal Revenue Service commissioner Douglas H. Shulman, a frequent White House guest during the period when the IRS was targeting conservative nonprofits. Mr. Shulman is married to Susan L. Anderson, senior program advisor for Public Campaign, an “organization dedicated to sweeping campaign reform that aims to dramatically reduce the role of big special interest money in American politics.” I don’t have a problem with the idea of reducing special interest money in American politics as long as the reductions include both unions and corporations. So far, those suggesting these changes are only citing corporations and conservatives.

The article reports:

Public Campaign receives “major funding” from the pro-Obamacare alliance Health Care for America NOW!, which is comprised of the labor unions AFL-CIO, AFSCME, SEIU, and the progressive activist organization Move On, among others.

Public Campaign also receives funding from the liberal Ford Foundation, the Common Cause Education Fund, and Barbra Streisand’s The Streisand Foundation, among other foundations and private donors.

I think that list of organizations provides a pretty good idea of where the group sits politically.

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A Whole New Meaning To Thanksgiving Turkey

Breitbart.com reported yesterday that the Los Angeleslabor unions have decided to hold a protest at Lost Angeles Airport on Wednesday, the biggest travel day of the year. The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) is leading the charge.

The article reports:

What exactly is SEIU protesting for? They say that an airport contract is breaking the city law on living wages – which, of course, is nonsense, since that would be prosecutable. They also say that the contractor has eliminated “affordable healthcare” for over 400 workers. Which is, again, bull. After all, can’t the SEIU just rely on Obamacare?

Sometimes I truly wonder what the SEIU actually wants.

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Thug Tactics In Recruiting Union Members

This story is based on two sources–a Washington Free Beacon article on Thursday, and a MyCentralJersey.com article on Wednesday.

The Washington Free Beacon reports:

HealthBridge and CareOne, two nursing home companies, are suing the New England Health Care Employees Union (Service Employees International Union Chapter 1199 New England), accusing the labor leaders of using political threats and dangerous workplace sabotage to force several non-union shops into their ranks.

The explosive charges stem from a July labor walkout in which identification badges were removed from elderly patients’ doors, including from some who suffer from dementia and Alzheimer’s, and medical records were mixed up. The lawsuit alleges that such tactics constitute the same sort of intimidation that the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) were designed to prevent.

MyCentralJersey.com reports:

Among the prestrike acts of sabotage alleged in the court filing: Workers removed patient ID wristbands, dietary stickers and name plates from doors; tampered with medication records; and hid or damaged blood pressure cuffs and stethoscopes — acts designed to leave “patients and replacement workers to fend for themselves.”

…The lawsuit alleges that the unions are resorting to desperate measures because their pensions are underfunded and the groups need the union dues to sustain their operations.The New England affiliate, which represents 29,000 workers, contributed $3.5 million in dues to SEIU in 2010. The New York affiliate represents 350,000 members and contributed $40 million in dues. SEIU comprises 2.1 million workers nationally.

On June 13, 2010, I reported (rightwinggranny.com):

The reference for this story is a May 25 article in the Washington Examiner.  The article deals with the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation (PBGC).  Senator Bob Casey, (D-Pa.), introduced S. 3157 in late March.  According to Thomas.gov, the bill is currently in committee.  The bill is called “Create Jobs and Save Benefits Act of 2010.”

The bill would back union pension funds with federal tax dollars.  The article in the Washington Examiner points out that in 2006, before the recession, only six percent of these union pension funds were doing well.  In a column in the Washington Examiner in April, Mark Hemingway pointed out that the average union pension plan had only enough money to cover 62 percent of its financial obligations.  Pension plans that are below 80 percent funding are considered “endangered” by the government; below 65 percent is considered “critical.”  Union membership is declining, which means that less people are paying into these funds.

The union pensions are essentially a Ponzi scheme. The only way that union members will receive their pensions is if the membership of the unions increases to cover those expenses. Meanwhile, the unions are spending millions of dollars to support political candidates that will be sympathetic to their cause.

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Unionization of Home Based Family Care Providers In Massachusetts

The following letter is reprinted with the permission of the writer. It originally appeared in the Community Advocate which covers Hudson, Marlboro, Northboro, Southboro, Westboro, and Shrewsbury.

Dear Editor,

I’m writing to set the record straight about the recently passed legislation forcing family care providers into a state employee union if they accept one child on a state voucher.

Rep. Carolyn Dykema has claimed that is untrue. As a family care provider who is living with the situation, Dykema is wrong. We are home based businesses that care for children. We are the ultimate small business.

For the past eight years, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) has tried to recruit us into their union. No one joined. That should be an indication that we don’t want to be part of a union. Unfortunately, the legislature did not pay attention to what we wanted and they passed the bill anyways.

Dykema will say there were hearings and testimony. The people who testified were connected to the SEIU. The rest of us were working managing our small business. How were we supposed to know about this legislation being forced upon us?

Unlike the big corporate centers which are exempt from being forced into a union, we don’t have a lobbyist. We are just normal people trying to run a home based business. We expect that our legislators will protect us not betray us for a big powerful labor union.

Dykema will also say that this legislation was passed to help us providers get an increase in our reimbursement rates from the state. That’s untruthful as well. The legislature can increase those rates without forcing us into the union. The Senate took a vote on increased rate in July and it was rejected.

If this can happen to home-based family care providers like us, then it can happen to your business. I urge voters to hold Rep. Dykema accountable for this very anti-small business vote.

Kathy D’Agostino
Kathy’s House Family Child Care and PreSchool
Watertown

Just for the record, Marty Lamb is opposing Carolyn Dykema in the 2012 House of Representatives election in Massachusetts. He does not support this legislation.

 

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Paid Protesters

The video that went viral yesterday was the Obama Phone video, but there was another story at the Romney rally in Bedford, Ohio on Wednesday.

The Daily Caller posted a story yesterday reporting:

The amateur filmmaker who shot the footage (Obama Phone video)  also has released video revealing that the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) paid protestors during a recent rally for Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney .

I have shared this story before, but two years ago, when working on a campaign in Massachusetts, supporters of the Republican candidate were faced with paid protesters at a debate. There was a definite attempt by the union thugs to stir up an incident that would be reported by the press. No incident occurred, as most of the people attending the debate were mature enough to ignore the provocations. It was a lesson to me on how paid union protesters operate.

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Somehow I Think The Unions Have Lost Their Way

If you belong to a union, I am sure that you are grateful for the job protection and voice that the union gives you. I am sure you appreciate the benefits your union has bargained for and won for you. But have you ever thought about the seamy side of unions?

On Monday the Washington Examiner posted the following:

Something questionable is going on when a state chapter of the Service Employees International Union advertises on the SEIU national website a “Lead Internal Organizer/Home Care (LiA)” position paying up to $65,000 a year for somebody with the following qualifications:

• Train and lead members in non-violent civil disobedience, such as occupying state buildings and banks, and peaceful resistance.

The article lists some of the other qualifications. It does talk about planning takeovers of capitols and banks.

The article further reports:

…what SEIU is looking for is somebody who has no qualms about joining with other union-trained cadres and like-minded people from other organizations to invade government buildings such as state buildings and private banks — and getting arrested (“peaceful resistance”) in the process. We’ve already seen the kind of thuggery SEIU has in mind. Remember two years ago when 14 busloads of leftist demonstrators from SEIU, National Peoples’ Action, MoveOn.org, and other activist groups converged on the private home of a bank executive in the Maryland suburbs of the nation’s capital?
 
It seems as if the unions have forgotten what their original purpose was.
 
The article relates the story of the union convergence on the private home of a bank executive in Maryland. It is worth reading for the report on the incident. I personally encountered a political example of union thuggery during a primary election debate for a Massachusetts seat in the House of Representatives. One of the candidates in the debate was supported by local unions. Union thugs showed up early for the debate and blocked off the parking lot from supporters of the other candidates. They then proceeded to line up in an intimidating manner in front of the doors leading to the debate hall. This was followed by a series of actions designed to create an incident that would be covered by the press. The funny thing about the whole exercise was that the audience in the debate was generally over the age of fifty and not likely to respond to the taunting and intimidation.
 
However, there are enough examples of union thuggery in recent years to cause us to rethink the role (and the amount of money involved) of unions in our society.
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I Realize That I Am Old-fashioned, But What Is This ?

This is the resources web page for the “US Day of Rage” which intends to occupy Wall Street on September 17. According to the Business Insider website, the Day of Rage is supposed to be a day of non-violent civil disobedience orchestrated by such people as Stephen Lerner (Service Employees International Union – SEIU) and Association for Community Reform Now (ACORN) founder Wade Rathke. The resources web page gives some instructions on how to nonviolently commit civil disobedience, but it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that there will be violence and destruction of property.

The article at Business Insider reports:

Now, the US Day of Rage protests, staged by a collective of activist groups allegedly in conjunction with Lerner and Rathke, are planning the actual “occupation” of Wall Street September 17, complete with a tent city set smack-dab in the middle of Manhattan’s financial district. Similar protests are purportedly set to take place across the nation — and even world– at the same time. Some Day of Rage organizers are even calling on activists to squat in Manhattan’s financial district for months.

What is the world are these people trying to accomplish? Wall Street did not cause our financial difficulties–the government did! When the government began pressuring banks to make more risky loans, the real estate bubble began. Wall Street traded the paper because they had to in order to remain in business.
The article further reports:

The aim, according to Lerner, is to “destabilize the folks that are in power and start to rebuild a movement.”

“How do we bring down the stock market? How do we bring down their bonuses? How do we interfere with their ability to, to be rich?” Lerner asked rhetorically in March.

It really does no good to interfere with the ability of the rich to be rich. Generally speaking, rich people hire people–if they are not hiring people to run a business they own, they are hiring people to clean their houses and mow their lawns. Rich people provide jobs. If you interfere with the ability of rich people to earn money, you interfere with the middle class’s opportunity to earn money. You are cutting your own throat.

I fear that September 17 will bring the kind of riots we saw happening recently in England. This is not a healthy thing. It can’t be stopped because protest is legal in a free society. I just hope that the amount of damage to people and property is kept to a minimum.


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