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October 1st, 2009Open Source & Copyright Free Union
Disclosure - More Obama Hypocrisy The
Communist State Building Our
Love is Here to Stay ALG
in the News: Mad Money Union Disclosure - More Obama HypocrisyBy Howard Rich There are multiple examples of how President Barack Obama has reneged on his promise to bring "transparency and accountability" to Washington, D.C., but fewer are more egregious than his cow-towing to labor leaders on the issue of union financial disclosure. By rescinding Bush-era disclosure requirements for labor union leaders, Obama is swinging the door wide open to rampant corruption and systemic abuse. This decision represents a dangerous shift in federal policy – one that will no doubt be exacerbated by Obama's appointment of top labor leaders to key enforcement positions within the federal government. Instead of fulfilling his promise of "accountability," Obama has now put the fox in charge of guarding the hen house with respect to U.S. labor policy. And instead of honoring his pledge of "transparency," Obama has decided to strip away one of the few tools the public had at its disposal to hold union leaders accountable. Why are these latest Obama hypocrisies worth noting? First, they represent "pay-to-play" corruption on a sweeping, fundamental level. Labor unions gave Obama and Democratic Congressional candidates over $100 million during the last election cycle. In addition to these contributions, Obama and Democratic candidates also benefited from the efforts of a 450,000-strong "voter registration and mobilization" army of union employees. This is where the most glaring hypocrisy comes into play. Obama's stunning reversal on the issue of union disclosure is more than just the latest "payback" to union leaders. Sadly, it's a betrayal of the American workers whose money and sweat were tapped by union big-wigs to help elect Obama and his Democratic majority. Take Tyrone Freeman, president of the Los Angeles local Service Employees International Union (SEIU). Freeman was forced to resign his post after federal filings showed that he spent hundreds of thousands of union dollars on companies owned by his family members. Freeman also billed the union $8,100 for expenses related to his wedding in Hawaii. Then there is the case of Annelle Grajeda, executive VP of the national SEIU, who resigned after she was caught paying her boyfriend tens of thousands of dollars with union money, or Rickman Jackson, the Michigan-based SEIU leader who resigned his position after he was caught renting his home to a union-sponsored nonprofit and receiving nearly $200,000 in "surplus" compensation from non-Michigan unions. Most recently, we have the stunning defeat of Ernie Duran, Jr. – the president of Colorado's United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 7 – who was booted from office after it was revealed that he gave his son Ernie Duran III and daughter Crisanta Duran annual salaries of $134,000. Duran also expensed top-shelf margaritas, a new blue tooth and Denver Broncos' tickets to union members. All of these examples of waste and corruption came to light thanks to Bush-era disclosure requirements that enabled the public, press and union members to see how union leaders were spending their hard-earned dues. Unions are compelled to disclose given their various government-granted social powers (including the collection of mandatory dues) and their increasing institutional reliance on taxpayer-funded support services. Were it not for heavy federal involvement in labor policy, unions operating in a free market could insist on privacy and enter into whatever agreements with employers they like. But since the federal government dictates a wide range of rules and conditions (most favorable to the unions), they have assumed a corresponding responsibility to oversee them. Unfortunately for rank-and-file members, Obama now wants to go back to the "Wild West" system in which union leaders were permitted to spend money on whatever items they wanted without worrying about their members ever becoming the wiser. How does this approach benefit the workers whose sweat and financial clout ultimately helped elect Obama? It doesn't. In fact, it all but guarantees that union employees will never know how their leaders are spending their dues – which is an open invitation to nepotism, cronyism and every form of corruption imaginable. According to a 2009 Heritage Foundation report, over the last eight years the Office of Labor Management Standards has won 929 convictions against union officials for fraud and embezzlement – resulting in $93 million worth of court-ordered restitution to union members. Of course the real impact of the union disclosure laws wasn't necessarily the number of abuses they exposed, but the number of abuses they prevented because union leaders knew that their members would be able to track individual financial expenditures. Over the last three decades, American workers have been rejecting unions with increasing frequency – with corruption invariably ranking among the top reasons. Rather than living up to his rhetoric and rooting out this corruption, however, Obama seems intent on working with union leaders to cover it up. The author is Chairman of Americans for Limited Government. http://blog.getliberty.org/default.asp?Display=1615 The Communist State Building
ALG Editor's Note: William Warren's award-winning cartoons published at GetLiberty.org are a free service of ALG News Bureau. They may be reused and redistributed free of charge. http://blog.getliberty.org/default.asp?Display=1614 Our Love is Here to StayBy Carter Clews I have to admit that I was wrong about Sarah Palin. Oh, not after the McCain debacle, when I wrote her a "love note" of sorts thanking that game lady for having been the only bright spot in that otherwise horrific display of Republican ineptitude. I thanked her for providing us all "one, brief, shining moment." As indeed she did. And still does. No, I was wrong back when she stepped down as Governor of Alaska, and I, like so many others, opined to friends that she had made a politically fatal error. Now, I Stantonized, she "belonged to the ages." And it was our loss. But, I'm happy to say, the inimitable Sarah has proved me wrong. Ms. Palin, it seems, has more lives than nine cats. And all of the negative smears by the mainstream media from 30 Rock to Ted Turnerville won't be able to muss a hair on her comely, cunning head. (Nor will the fact that, as I am typing this column, I notice that lefty Bill Gates' Microsoft has not yet made "Palin" a part of the Word lexicon. Come on, Bill, if a weird word like "Obama" no longer brings up spell check, it's time to give Sarah Palin her just due. She is now part of the American scene, so try to stay up with the times.) Simply put, Sarah Palin is a political phenomenon. We now hang on her every word. And we cheer her every pronouncement. When she speaks, people listen – because she is the one politician in America willing to say what's on the hearts and minds of the vast mass of the American people. She says it loud, and she says it clear. And she doesn't give a hoot in Hades whether the mainstream media and their political puppet masters like it or not. From a personal perspective, I can tell you in a New York minute that Sarah Palin is the only politician in American today I would cross the street to see. And Barack Obama, of course, leads the pack of those I would cross the country to avoid. Which helps explain why Sarah's new autobio is already #1 on Barnes & Nobles' best-sellers list – a full six weeks before its release! What makes Sarah such a unique phenomenon – and what keeps freedom's foes awake at night wondering what she'll do next? Quite simply, it is the fact that her appeal is indefinable. And one of the first rules of the far left's "politics of personal destruction" is that one must first define, before one can then destroy, the enemy. The real reason the far left hates Sarah Palin, of course, is that she embodies -- top to bottom, inside and out -- all that they hate to the very marrow of their poisonous bones. She has borne a Downs Syndrome baby and refused to abort it even after she knew that, in their opinion, it had proven to be "defective." She believes in the basic soundness of the American system and the wholesome values that made this nation as good as it is great. She has insisted upon being married to the same man for more than 20 years in the far left's toss-them-off and trade-them-in society. And to top it off, she even believes in God! In sum, Sarah Palin is an outright affront to the ruinous situational ethics by which the left defines its very existence. For that, those on the left can never forgive her. And, for that as well, those on the right can never forget – and will not abandon -- her. In short, our love is here to stay. So, now the die is cast. I'm happy to say, I was wrong. Sarah was right. And, Barack Obama's utmost inner longings notwithstanding, that blur in a skirt he sees fast approaching over his right shoulder isn't going anywhere any time soon – except, perhaps, to the Oval Office. Carter Clews is the Executive Editor of ALG News. http://blog.getliberty.org/default.asp?Display=1613
http://blog.getliberty.org/default.asp?Display=1612 Americans for Limited Government |
