Union picketers engage in ‘shame’ campaign
The Eastern Shore of Maryland isn’t known as a union hotbed, but members of Carpenters Local 2012 of Seaford, Delaware were recently spotted at an intersection close by the Target store in Salisbury.
A banner held up by a small group of union members read “Shame On Target For Lowering Area Standards In Our Community.” Since the Salisbury store is several years old, it was not clear if this was in reaction to proposed renovation work there or if the picketers were critical of Target in general. Like most department stores in the value-price retail segment, Target is a non-union store, but the chain is in the midst of a long-term program of renovations to existing stores.
(continued at Examiner.com…)
Odds and ends number 50
Half a hundred now of these items which deserve a paragraph or three, and in this rendition several are of national interest.
I wanted to start out with a rather comprehensive look by Accuracy in Media at voter fraud. In truth, this is less of an expose than a confirmation because we on the Right had been thinking about this for years, and some of these accounts have filtered down to a local level.
Now I’ve heard people claim that voting should be a privilege reserved to property owners or to those who pay taxes rather than receive goodies from the government. I don’t agree with that approach, but I think that perhaps if local election boards are running into a problem with last-minute registrations scant weeks before an election, the simple solution would be to simply move back the deadline. Honestly, if people wish to register to vote they’re going to do it well in advance of the election. This would also do away with the open invitation to fraud known as same-day registration.
But I also agree we should do away with motor voter laws and eliminate early voting. If people are serious enough to vote they already have the right to get an absentee ballot. To me it’s a waste of taxpayer money to spend thousands on multi-day elections when just 2% of voters participate.
And don’t even go there and tell me I want to suppress turnout, because I don’t. I want prospective voters to take their responsibility more seriously. The left always screams “voter suppression” whenever some common-sense idea like photo voter ID or those others above are introduced, but they are all in favor of oppressive campaign finance laws. Isn’t that monetary suppression? Hypocrites.
The report is well worth a read.
Along that same line, writers Peter J. Boyer and Peter Schweizer ask why certain corporate interests can go scot-free under the Obama regime while others are hounded by the Justice Department. That’s not to say that Wall Street is a batch of crooks by any means, but in politics perception is reality and the fact that Wall Street gave far more to Barack Obama than John McCain leads to the thoughts of pay-for-play and cronyism.
Speaking of entities which give Democrats a lot of money, Matt Patterson and Trey Kovacs of the Competitive Enterprise Institute asked in the Washington Times why unions just won’t let go if a bargaining unit doesn’t want to stay with them. Well, the answer seems pretty simple to me – as they write:
There is a reason why unions are fighting to hold workers against their will and challenging laws that bring greater freedom to the workplace. Union leaders need a monopoly on labor in order to bankrupt governments and corporations, and they require unfree markets to maintain their own power and wealth.
That goes in the category of “duh,” workers be damned.
And this is a video worth sharing, even if I don’t necessarily agree with the point.
Personally I would prefer Medicare eventually be phased out or devolved to the states, but I realize that’s a decades-long process. Having said that, though, it’s obvious that Obamacare is the wrong direction to go despite the fact it cuts Medicare. Paul Ryan’s not pushing seniors off the cliff.
Finally, I wanted to bring up the attention being paid to a national issue by our own Congressman, Andy Harris. In a recent release, he decried the abuse of taxpayer dollars by those here illegally:
Illegal aliens are filing false tax returns claiming numerous fake child tax credits. Once our tax dollars are in the hands of illegal aliens, it’s impossible to get the money back. Once I learned about this outrageous loophole that allows billions of dollars per year to be stolen from US taxpayers, I knew I had to act.
In November of 2011, I joined Rep Sam Johnson in introducing H.R. 1956, Refundable Child Tax Credit Eligibility Verification Reform Act, to close this loophole. The bill is necessary because the IRS claims that they are simply following the law. We had hoped that the IRS would act without legislation.
One would think that the White House would instruct the IRS to stop giving away tax dollars to illegal aliens scamming our tax system. This is an urgent and immediate problem, especially as we’ve passed the tax filing deadline of April 15th.
The child care tax credits have grown from $924 million in 2005 to $4.2 billion last year. H.R. 1956 will curb the fraud in this program by requiring the IRS to only allow this tax credit for children with a social security number. H.R. 1956 was assigned to the House Ways and Means Committee and I am waiting for the hearing to be scheduled any time. (Emphasis in original.)
So my question is why there’s been no hurry to move this bill? I guess one would have to ask Rep. Dave Camp (R-MI) because it’s his committee. Perhaps his contributors would like the waiver to stand?
In truth, though, I think this is another in the series of ill-advised cautions by the Republican establishment to not risk alienating the Latino vote. Never mind that they turn off millions of voters who are concerned about the illegal alien problem – I’ll grant it’s less of a concern now that migration by illegals is now a net outflow due to a poor economy, but once conditions improve we may become a magnet once again.
Well, that cleans out my mailbox for the most part. Glad you stopped by for some original monoblogue content – I can’t put all my good stuff on Examiner because in all honesty I’m not sure their format would lend itself to such a post. That’s why I maintain this independent, conservative site!
But by all means you should subscribe to my Examiner page to get notice of when I do post there. I’m having fun juggling all these writing plates! Haven’t broken one yet.
And a happy Mother’s Day to all the moms out there. I wrote this yesterday so I could devote a little time to the moms in my life today, so enjoy.
Odds and ends number 43
More of the small stuff you love! Let’s begin with this.
Up in the Second Congressional District, GOP candidate Larry Smith is challenging his four rivals to eight hour-long debates on various issues. But considering he has more to gain than two of his rivals (who serve in the Maryland General Assembly) that’s probably a pipe dream – not to mention they would likely be in session several nights a week.
But the key complaint Smith has is simpler: “This election should not be decided on who has the most insider endorsements, but rather who would be the best representative of the voters of the district.” All that is true, but if these debates were to come to pass I would hope that a conservative runs them, rather than the debacles we have seen with the GOP Presidential debates and their “gotcha” questions.
I wish Mr. Smith the best of luck in going to Washington.
Odds and ends number 41
Not that I necessarily keep track of these things, but this is my first look in 2012 at those items which are worth a paragraph or three, but not a full post. It helps me clean out my e-mail inbox.
I couldn’t figure out how to embed this “Made in America” video, but I found it interesting when I watched it. I’m generally in favor of free trade and against strict protectionism, but if the difference is as small as they claim then buying American is worth it. Perhaps the claim of using 5% more American products would create 220,000 jobs is a bit dubious, but I’m sure it wouldn’t hurt.
Our nation needs to take steps in regaining its onetime prominence as a leading manufacturer. But it’s interesting to note several of the companies prominently mentioned have at least one plant in a right-to-work state. I can’t ascertain whether these are all non-union shops, but chances are fairly good – given that only about 1/10 of the private-sector workforce is unionized – that these good, honest American jobs don’t come with the union label.
Not that Maryland is making any quick moves to join the ranks of Virginia and other right-to-work states – this year, HB91 hasn’t progressed beyond first reading. But the group New Day Maryland pointed out to me a couple other bills of interest in the General Assembly this term to keep an eye on, and I thought I’d pass along the word.
House Bill 23, the Dedicated State Funds Protection Act, would prohibit the fund-raiding Governor O’Malley is almost as well known for as his constant zeal to raise taxes. And House Bill 43 would allow appropriations bills to be subjected to the same referendum process as those bills not dealing with appropriations. (The last remaining legal straw opponents of the in-state tuition for illegal aliens referendum are grasping for is that the bill is an appropriations bill, although it’s not.)
Both these bills have a hearing scheduled for 2 p.m. on January 31. I presume written testimony is acceptable, too.
The Maryland Model (part three)
This will be the final part of a three-part series; in case you’re getting caught up here are parts one and two.
In truth, though, this part won’t be based strictly on the Maryland Model. It’s actually going to be a critique of a presentation I ran across, one which is presumably some sort of PowerPoint presentation translated to Scribed for the purposes of disseminating. Called Become a Force Multiplier: 5 Simple Tasks for American Activists, it addresses many of the issues we will face in 2012 with a particular focus on Big Labor’s aspect. (Not surprisingly, since it’s done by LaborUnionReport.com.) More importantly, they note that:
Several of the tactics and action models described herein have been adapted from models used by unions and other Left-wing groups. In other words, the Left is already using these models, you need to as well.
Fight fire with fire, as it is said.
The Maryland Model (part two)
In part one I related the Maryland Model in its current state to the 2012 campaign, particularly when considering the battle to repeal the in-state tuition for illegal aliens passed last year by the General Assembly. The bill was petitioned to referendum as opponents turned the trick for the first time in over twenty years in Maryland.
As you should recall, I distilled the idea behind the Colorado Model liberal Democrats used to take over that state into four simpler M words: money, message, media, and mobilization. In this part I assess the overall shape conservatives here in Maryland exist in regarding these four issues – and we definitely need to do some work!
The Maryland Model (part one)
Over the holidays I did a little bit of light reading, and while I was doing so it occurred to me that the General Assembly session is sneaking up on us rather quickly. In 2011 that session set the scene for what turned out to be one of our side’s rare successes in Maryland, the petition drive to bring the in-state tuition law for illegal aliens to referendum later this year. It appears that will be on the ballot since CASA de Maryland and other pro-illegal groups are dropping the challenge to the petition signatures and narrowing their focus to whether the referendum itself is legal while simultaneously fundraising to sustain the law at the ballot box.
That fundraising: $10 million. What that means: carpet-bombing the media with images of poor, purportedly law-abiding and successful immigrant families being denied a chance at the American Dream due to racist TEA Partiers who hate all those who look different than they do. Don’t believe me? Just watch.
And this nicely leads me into my main points of this post, which will be the first of a multipart series on what I’m calling the Maryland Model. You see, part of my reading over the holidays was this RedState article on what is called the Colorado Model, which led me to read the original post on this strategy from the Weekly Standard back in 2008. Read those articles (I’ll wait for you) then take a look at how the CASA de Maryland folks are fighting the will of the people here in the Free State.
While they have seven pieces to the puzzle in the RedState article, I’ve consolidated these to what I can call the 4 M’s: money, message, media, and mobilization.
Joe the Congressman?
Having lived in the Congressional district in question for a long time, I think this is quite funny.
First of all, the Republicans who are running Ohio’s redistricting process played quite the nasty trick by lumping two longtime liberals in Congress into the same Congressional district – Ohio’s Ninth District, which used to be primarily a Toledo-based district represented by Marcy Kaptur since 1983, now snakes along the Lake Erie shoreline toward Cleveland and has since the 2000 redistricting. But the newest Republican lines have now expanded the district far enough eastward to take in the residence of one Dennis Kucinich.
A chance of improvement
Obviously the political landscape is much different here than it is in my native state of Ohio, but there are times I still get missives from the Buckeye State because I’m still on a number of mailing lists.
One such case was today, and although I deleted the actual message the gist of it was a local chief of police calling out the opponents of Issue 2 – a measure that would roll back gains made against the overly powerful unions in the state – for misleading the public into thinking they’d be less safe if it passed. On the contrary, passage of Issue 2 would allow him more funding for hiring police officers since his other overhead costs would be reduced.
Is Ohio’s recovery on the line?
It’s been seven years since I left the state of my birth, and it doesn’t seem like politics has changed all that much.
Even the ray of hope provided when a solid conservative governor was elected may be snuffed out next week if voters in the Buckeye State are fooled into voting against Issue 2. A no vote would wipe out a series of common-sense measures designed to hold the power of the state’s labor unions in check along with making them contribute a little more to their benefit package (but still less than the average private-sector worker does.)
It’s telling that opponents of the measure, essentially Big Labor and its allies, are outspending those who want a yes vote by a significant margin. The unions didn’t want Governor John Kasich to be elected anyway, as one of his first priorities was to whip them into line. If they can’t beat him until 2014, they can do their level best to thwart his efforts. It’s nothing new from a state which is heavily unionized along the Ohio Turnpike corridor from Toledo through Lorain and Cleveland to Youngstown. The rest of the state is relatively conservative.
I’m hoping against hope that the smart voters aren’t fooled by the lies and obfuscation of Big Labor’s campaign and hand them a stinging rebuke. If they don’t, you can well see why I left the state – not that Maryland is a whole lot better, but the weather and vibe is what keeps me here. It would be nice to have a governor with the cajones to take on Big Labor, so let’s hope he’s rewarded next week.
So what can I do?
As always, I like to know what the opposition is up to.
The other day I got an e-mail from Organizing For Against America which asked if I could organize in Salisbury. I’ll come back to that question here in a couple minutes, but if you can stomach this video here’s the One talking about organizing:
I guess the first question is: did you notice anything missing?
Labor Day, once again
Well, I suppose those of us who like summer can heave our collective sighs and recall the time it was.
Of all the holidays which dot the calendar, Labor Day is probably my least favorite. Sure, I appreciate the day off work but look at all the other things going on:
- For many children (including my significant other’s), it’s literally the last day of summer vacation.
- As a Shorebirds fan, after today I have seven months without baseball to dread.
- Those in the local tourism industry see their window of opportunity beginning to close down, although the push to establish a “second season” in recent years has cushioned that blow to an extent.
But today is the day which Big Labor calls its own, allocating the celebration of the American working person despite the fact that the vast majority of workers don’t belong to a union. An area which is a union stronghold (like the city of my birth) is quite likely to have a Labor Day parade, and it irked me to no end that the Labor Day parade was much better attended and had greater participation than the Memorial Day parade which was often moved to the Saturday before. Something is amiss with those priorities.
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